tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-92379072012-01-29T19:35:58.613-08:00Ideas for an Indian centuryPrimary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.comBlogger8491100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-88423934195860562292012-01-29T05:15:00.000-08:002012-01-29T05:40:49.944-08:00Watching "Inshallah Kashmir" the other day, I had an epiphany.<br /><br />I now understand why we talk past each other on so many things.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">All issues worth debating have layers in them. Which layer one chooses to look at frames one's narrative.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There is the human layer. Nothing more personal than raw human emotion.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There is the institutional layer. Nothing more practical than policy prescriptions.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There is the ideas layer. Nothing more inspiring than the force of ideas.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We talk past each other because we talk in different layers.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I've often made larger points using stories of humble people.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Personalizing any issue makes it hard for empathetic people to turn away. The stories of the tortured and the exiled of Kashmir are precisely that. Or those of Indians charred to death in their own homes, by their neighbors in Gujarat. Or the human-level horrors in Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Jaffna, Iraq, Afghanistan, Balochistan, Dharavi, Rwanda, and all manner of other places.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Suffering lives where humans dwell. Their stories tell themselves, often ending without closure.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Then, there are failing Governments, amoral Corporations, and communal identities to talk about.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Talking at this layer moves the conversation away from personal horrors to policy debates. These stories are about institutional interests, goals, capabilities, actions, conflicts, successes, and failures. They lend themselves to analysis and prescription. It feels great to lay out options, debate pros and cons, and make recommendations - even if nothing is ever done about what one suggests. Kashmir, for example, becomes a discussion of Center vs State, Army and AFSPA, Pakistan and jihadis, NHPC and CRPF, etc etc etc</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Institutions are actionable. Their stories are mostly academic, but satisfy like comfort food.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Finally, there is the realm of ideas.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Here, we abstract far away from the suffering people or their failing institutions. Our focus is on the eternal story of right versus wrong. There are larger patterns in the ebb and flow of history. These allow us to see the world beyond our own humble existence. Here, Kashmir is not a heaven on earth or hell on people but a battle of big ideas like faith and identity and freedom and modern nationhood.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Ideas are where history is made. Their stories are grand because this is how humans become gods.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We talk past each other because we talk in different layers.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Those without authority talk at the human-layer.&nbsp;Those with authority talk at the institutional-layer. The dispassionate talk at the ideas-layer.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">For example, I do not like Narendra Modi and his government in Gujarat. My arguments are almost always about human suffering and failure - Zakia Jafri and Sanjiv Bhatt and Mayaben Kodnani and Narendra Modi. His supporters talk about institutional success. Look at Gujarat, look at its governance, look we have data and upward pointing GDP charts. We end up talking past each other.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Happens in every situation. I can write the foregoing paragraph for Kashmir or Salman Rushdie without any effort.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The arguments are all fine - it's just that we aren't engaging at the same layer. Parallel polemics don't a debate make.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In my humble view, we should really talk at the layer of ideas. That's what history remembers.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There was a lot of human suffering and institutional failure in Ashoka slaughtering Kalinga. Today, his Chakra is India's national emblem. Not to diminish anyone' suffering, but we don't remember the names of those who died at his sword. We remember his embrace of Buddhism as a consequence. In the end, this big idea is all that mattered.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I believe that some ideas are better than others and, in time, they always prevail.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In my eyes, there are no better political ideas than secular democracy and free markets. All other ideas have had their moment in the sun, and they have always come up short. Always.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Regardless of how I feel at the human and institutional levels, ultimately the only question that really matters for me is this:&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Will my argument advance secular democracy and free markets or set these winning ideas back?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">You don't have to agree with the ideas I favor but surely you can see this is an extremely clarifying way to think. It cuts through the heart-rending emotion of human suffering and the never-ending boasts of human institutions. It makes the complex simple.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I think we can make great headway if we all talked at this level.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-8842393419586056229?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-49856680302894325942012-01-02T10:43:00.000-08:002012-01-02T14:42:16.418-08:00The specifics of the CISF shooting will emerge in time. I'd like to make three larger points.<br /><div><br /></div><div>One. The governance capacity of the Indian State falls far short of the demands on it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Two. This capacity deficit is dramatically exposed in conditions of extreme stress.</div><div><br /></div><div>Three. Addressing this requires both capacity building <i>and</i> impact mitigation when the State fails.<br /><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div></div><div style="text-align: left;">Let me draw a parallel.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In Finance, credit analysts use two independent measures of risk. <i>Probability of Default</i>&nbsp;measures the odds that a borrower will fail to make the required payments in a given time frame. <i>Loss given Default </i>measures what the lender is expected to lose in the event of default by the borrower.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">One can have a high probability of default (say, if the borrower doesn't have income to pay his interest) but low loss given default (say, if the loan is collateralized by real assets).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Imagine the Indian State as the borrower. It has borrowed governance authorities from the citizenry.&nbsp;In return, it must provide good governance as interest for the authorities it has borrowed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Given its means to provide such good governance are limited, the Indian State defaults repeatedly. In other words, the probability of default of the Indian State is high, which manifests itself in a myriad of ways too numerous to list but familiar to us all.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This does not mean, however, that - when the State inevitably fails - the impact should be tragic. The loss given default can be managed&nbsp;and mitigated in the event the State defaults.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">When the demands on the State are many and it further arrogates to itself a breathtaking array of responsibilities, it can either find limitless resources to satisfy these demands/responsibilities adequately, or cut corners everywhere to make its limited resources appear to be satisfying these.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The Indian State specializes in the latter. It pretends to do a lot while doing very little, and that too poorly.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This pitiable circumstance is made much worse under conditions of stress. All human systems are designed for "acceptable" fault tolerance levels. They work - more or less - under normal conditions but start fraying at the edges under stress. Even the best of systems will fail, by design, under extraordinary stress. The black swan cannot be evaded. &nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">A State with means designs systems that fail in extremely rare circumstances. A State without means designs systems that fail far more frequently. What is manageable stress for the former can be extreme for the latter. These are tradeoffs States make based on their political and economic realities.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">That Indian State is designed poorly and fails - repeatedly and pervasively - shouldn't be surprising. India has a patronizing State that thinks it must supervise and control every aspect of human existence. Its reach exceeds its grasp by a mile, but that doesn't seem to deter its dismaying ambition.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Should we really be shocked that Indian security forces are simply not equipped enough to do their job professionally? I've written about the Indian police previously <a href="http://bit.ly/sR6xJ4">here</a>. What these forces lack in capacity, they make up in brutality.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The excesses of poor policing are amplified in places like Kashmir or the North East where war-like conditions have prevailed over extended periods of time.&nbsp;The fault tolerance of the State has a much worse threshold in these conditions.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Clearly, the people who live there know this. Their provocations are partly a means to expose the weakness of the State through its dramatically tragic failures. The fact that a young child dies is supremely tragic - but his death becomes a very powerful stick to beat the State with. Such opportunistic cynicism is at least as bad as the original tragedy.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">These tragedies will continue, alas, because the State is weak and brutal AND its foes are not above exploiting the death of a young child to make their political argument.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">So what is to be done?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Far be it for me to suggest solutions to the cynicism of the human heart.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But, this is not an altogether hopeless situation. We may not be able to stop State failures in the short term but we can and must mitigate their impact. With that in mind, here are a few suggestions:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>1. Strengthen State capacity</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This will take time and resources and - most crucially - a willingness of the resource-constrained State to focus on the things it must do and let go of things it need not do. Also, merely because the horizon for this is the long-term does not mean the State can make pious noises and go back to its comfort with failure. The long-term after all is a series of short-terms - so the effort has to begin now.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>2. &nbsp;Identify State failures that hurt national interest</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Not all State failure is created equal. My parents await their passport renewal four months after application but this is not a life and death issue. A high school kid being shot in his chest, merely for protesting, is.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">So, State failures should be analyzed to identify those whose impact is so severe as to damage national interest. Every Kashmiri kid who is shot while protesting non-violently, for example, falls in this category. An innocent Indian dies, the stress on the State rises further causing even more failures, and India is demoralized by the politicization that follows.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Identifying such failures is crucial if India is to prevent them in the long-term and mitigate their impact in the short-term.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>3. Mitigate failure impact</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Once the State knows its greatest vulnerabilities, it should mitigate their impact. This requires resources, yes, but in a prioritized way. So, maybe my parents can wait another month for their passports but if that delay creates resources to buy rubber bullets for CISF, it's entirely worth it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">India wouldn't have strengthened its governance capacity as the CISF jawan would still shoot at the kid. But, at least, the kid won't die.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This is basics of management. Why the Indian discourse doesn't take this form baffles me. All the debate tends to be is about disputes on a specific tragedy, arguments of political oneupmanship, and a transient outrage that solves nothing.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Instead, the conversation should be about how to fight off the Black Swan when it inevitably flaps its wings.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-4985668030289432594?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-17626218148339002852011-12-31T04:03:00.000-08:002011-12-31T05:57:44.514-08:00<i>For last year's words belong to last year's language</i><br /><i>And next year's words await another voice</i><br /><br />T.S. Eliot. Little Gidding<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><br />Unrelenting hope amidst unfathomable despair.<br /><br />India was here before. Bofors, Shah Bano, Mandal, Kashmir, LTTE, Masjid, IMF, Bluestar, Bhopal. India endured.<br /><br />Best part, it wasn't a messianic strongman who led us out.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">***</div>Gandhi spoiled us. We search for superheroes who do not exist.<br /><br />Democracy spoiled us. We seek angelic outcomes from human institutions.<br /><br />Vastness spoiled us. We summon strength from our continent-sized weaknesses.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: left;">It isn't a superhero or an institution or her vastness that will save India, rather the&nbsp;common sense and ability and hard work of ordinary Indians.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I learned this from an illiterate Indian carpenter. Born in caste-riven Eastern UP to parents who could give him nothing, he bootstrapped himself out of despair, went overseas, and became indispensable to privileged hotshots like me. I asked him, why? So that, one day, my children will grow up to be like you, he told me.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I've never been more humbled in my life.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">He couldn't care less for patronizing superheroes who saw only his faith and caste and poverty as vanity projects to pad their egos. There were no institutions where he grew up. He was a nobody among India's intimidating vastness.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But this illiterate carpenter taught himself to be more skilled at what he did than superheroes could ever dream of being. He saved himself with unrelenting aspiration, sheer will, and his own two hands.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This is how India will be saved. All she needs is for superheroes to get out of her way.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">*** &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Let me end where I started.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>And all shall be well and</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>All manner of things shall be well</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>When the tongues of flame are in-folded</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Into the crowned knot of fire</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>And the fire and the rose are one</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Happy new year!</div><br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-1762621814833900285?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-89870908441746461592011-12-14T15:42:00.000-08:002011-12-14T17:03:03.078-08:00India's median age is 26 years and falling. A majority were born after Bangladesh. The '71 war is a fading memory. Alas.<br /><br />Forty years have elapsed since that emphatic victory of light over darkness. Bangladesh finally became free. India emerged as a military power to reckon with. Pakistan shied away from overt war since.<br /><br />The partition of Bengal in 1947 followed a debilitating famine. Its proud people, who share Tagore's music as their anthem, were torn asunder by forces impossible to comprehend. Denied basic human dignity, they asserted their nationhood. The Pakistani Army, which hasn't seen a war it cannot lose, unleashed a campaign of terror - a genocide on its own people that the world looked away from. Tellingly, there were no UN Security Council Resolutions on Bangladesh until December of 1971.<br /><br />Yet, Bangladesh won the war. She thrives today, a nation at peace with her neighbors. Pakistan never found its footing again. <br /><br />India did what any moral nation must. It intervened with decisive force and clear military purpose. Few military campaigns have been so effective since the Second World War. Korea remains in armistice. Vietnam burned America. Afghanistan toppled USSR. Other "savage wars of peace" have been costly, prolonged, and bloody. In Bangladesh, in a matter of weeks, Pakistan was crushed and shattered forever.<br /><br />I look at Balochistan where Pakistan still wages the exact same war that lost it half of its bifurcated nationhood and most of its boastful manhood. But Pakistani Generals, sadly, see no parallels. If there were an exemplar of insanity, surely this is it.<br /><br />Are there lessons from that great moral and military triumph? At a time when India is mired again in self-doubt and political paralysis, it's instructive and satisfying to note that - when the moment called for it - the nation came together, stared down two superpowers, and demolished the enemy with remarkable ease. It took conviction, iron will, and leadership. I watch Mrs Indira Gandhi's interview from then (http://youtu.be/nRAfs_LPFI4) and take solace that, even in the era of Manmohan Singh and L K Advani, India may yet find a decisive leader among its Billion people.<br /><br />Let me close by saluting the brave people of Bangladesh who won the war and the triumphant Indian army that made this happen.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-8987090844174646159?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-52894402758179382332011-12-03T13:34:00.000-08:002011-12-03T15:28:48.416-08:00<i>I am shame and boldness.</i><div><i>I am shameless; I am ashamed.</i></div><div><i>I am strength and I am fear.</i></div><div><i>I am war and peace.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>From <i>The Thunder: Perfect Mind</i></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div><br /></div><div>Veena Malik bared her body and exposed the nakedness of her society.</div><div><br /></div><div>But she is not alone. In recent weeks, Egyptian Aliya Magda Mahdi posted bold self-photographs on her blog. Tunisian actress Nadia Bostah posed provocatively to promote a film.</div><div><br /></div><div>Something's happening here. And it could be very significant.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: left;">We heard the footsteps of what was coming in Naipaul's 1982 classic <i>Among the Believers</i>. We sensed it in 1988 when Ayatollah Khomeini threatened Salman Rushdie over <i>Satanic Verses</i>. We saw it in the 1997 film <i>My Son the Fanatic</i> (based on Hanif Kureishi's short story).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Then we saw it play out on our television screens on 9/11.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The destructive anger, the rejection of modernity, the war on freedom.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Something had gone badly wrong in Islamic societies.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: left;">Much has been said about how to change this dynamic.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">From toppling dictators to killing terrorists, from settling intractable political conflicts to encouraging democracy - all manner of ideas have been proposed to change this ugly bend of history.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There has been some success. Arab societies, in particular, have rebelled against their stagnant status quo. Their dictators have been shown to be paper tigers - they hide in spider holes and gutter pipes when under fire. Their armies are weak - they run from the battle and don't dare defend national sovereignty. These tigers, that roared at home and terrorized own people, turned out to really be mice.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Where change has been slower is social practice. The community's failure to stand with Shah Bano, the illiterate stabbing of Naguib Mahfouz, Salman Taseer's assassination by his naat-singing bodyguard all tell the story of social darkness. Honor killings happen even in the West, Saudi women still can't drive, Ahmadis cannot exhibit the Quran in India, and raped women are still put in prison. The 2002 <i>Arab Human Development Report</i> drafted by distinguished Arab intellectuals is a stunning and powerful lament on the horrendous state of that society.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This sad circumstance is partly due to a community frozen in the glare of excruciating scrutiny. Also, Wahabi and Salafist financing of mosques and madrasas is a major problem, even in secular societies. Finally, the men in this male-dominant community - with rare exceptions - have failed to champion change.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In response, non-Muslims have either taken the multicultural view of "respecting" the community's practices, looked to "moderate Muslims" to make change happen, or (in bigotry) claimed that Islam is somehow incompatible with modernity.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But none of this has led to change.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div>Then, Manal al Sharif decided to drive a car in Saudi Arabia. Prof Amina Wadud led Friday prayers in America. Shaista Ambar released a model nikahnama to protect women's rights in India.</div><div><br /></div><div>And, yes, Veena Malik, Aliya Mahdi, and Nadia Bostah boldly defied the purdah.</div><div><br /></div><div>These may seem like acts of small defiance but they are no less significant than an old man making salt to challenge the empire in which the sun never set.</div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We may be witnessing a nascent social revolution in Islamic societies. Their women have wept through vicious wars and suffered through brutal suppression. Now they are leaping to lead.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This is perhaps the most promising development of the last decade of war.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Social change won't be easy. Entrenched tradition and extreme misogyny are hard to overcome. But, such change is surely an idea whose time has finally come.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It's not our wars or diplomacy or aid that will make this happen. It's not moderate Muslims or reformist Kings who will make this happen. It's the humble Muslim woman in all our communities who will lead this change. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Standing with her as she fights to honor her faith, community, and society is the most important thing non-Muslims can do.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-5289440275817938233?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-53943392744389807162011-11-27T08:39:00.000-08:002011-11-27T10:55:01.213-08:00<span class="Apple-style-span">Not long ago, I was in mofussil UP for a cousin's wedding. We woke up one day to a commotion. My aunt was arguing with the sabziwallah about a payment she thought she had already made to him. He was pleading she hadn't.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">A family friend, a police man, grabbed the sabziwallah by his collar and slapped him black and blue. Didn't ask anything, didn't hear anything, just beat him up. The poor man left humiliated and in tears.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">Shellshocked, I harshly protested the violence. My friend told me this is how he and his colleagues deal with "these people" all the time, and that I should keep out.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">This is the heartland of India's political culture, the region where several Prime Ministers have found their respective paths to parliament. There's a lot of baggage here - caste and class, history and tradition. The modern State is here too - it wears the wardi and beats people up.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">Of course, it turned out, my aunt was mistaken about having made the payment.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span">***</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span">In his seminal book, The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama told us we were witnessing the end point of mankind's ideological evolutio<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; ">n, that liberal democracy had prevailed in the clash of ideas.</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; ">Independent India has been on the right side (for most part) in this clash. Whatever challenges the Indian State confronts, we know, it will eventually prevail due to the superiority of its ideas.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; ">All Maoists have is a discredited ideology. Religion-based separatism is not exactly the world's cup of tea. Finally, Hindutva is so ideologically bankrupt, it can't even convince devout Hindus of its purpose.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; ">India is impregnable. This is a wonderful thing. But, it also</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 19px; "> makes the brutality of its State instruments extremely dangerous. This brutality is here to stay and there is no escaping it. We can endure the murderous ways of all manner of cults and movements because we know they will eventually fade away. But how can we possibly cope with the murderous ways of a State that is here forever? </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 19px; ">This is Dante's inferno.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 19px; ">***</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 19px; ">India's defense budget in 2011 was ~$36 Billion. The budget for police was ~$9 Billion.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 19px; ">I don't have the data on this but I'd wager more Indians die each year just from murder and violent politics than from war or terrorism by foreigners.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 19px; ">Police in India are resource deprived. This leads to bad recruitment, weak training, sub-standard equipment, stress filled facilities, poor wages, limited accountability, shattered morale, and non-existent leadership. Let's not even talk about outdated laws, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: georgia; line-height: 19px; ">political interference,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: georgia; line-height: 19px; "> and a broken justice system.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 19px; ">Police find themselves trying to survive in a brutal environment. To this end, they can really only rely on the nobility of our constitution, the authority of their wardi, the command of their superiors, and the brotherhood of their peers.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 19px; ">This must be a highly insular, morally corrupting, and terrifying context to operate in. As Milgram experiments have shown, even moral people can be coerced into "obeying authority figures who instruct them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience". And as William Golding describes in The Lord of the Flies, terror creates the perception of a beast that has to be viciously destroyed for survival. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 19px; ">Does it surprise any of us that men in these conditions would psychologically succumb to slapping an innocent sabziwallah, shattering shins of under-trials, shooting dead college girls, watching passively while mobs lynch Indians pleading for their lives, and now - engaging in the most vile (alleged) sexual torture on Soni Sori?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 19px; ">***</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 19px; ">For too long, India's middle class has looked away. After all, the police are instruments of our State, the people they torture are not like us, and they have surely committed crimes for which they deserve to be harshly treated. Besides, they are likely making false allegations any way.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; ">The sheer moral bankruptcy of such thinking is self-evident.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; ">We don't fear evil because it is dancing on the screams of, what my friend in UP called, "these people". What I didn't tell you is that he also said the police could do the same with me - and I, with all my means and vocabulary, could do very little while they trample all over my constitutional rights.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; ">It may not seem it but, at the wrong time in the wrong place, I could be Soni Sori too.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; ">And because my tormentors would be the instruments of a State that will always be here, so will my tormentors. Waiting for me. Waiting for you.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; ">This, ironically, is how impregnable India will fall. From deep within, at the hands of its own protectors.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; ">***</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; ">Better men than I have written about this topic. All I can do is plead that we make police reform the highest priority of our nation. Thank you for reading.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; "> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; "> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; "><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px;"> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px;"> </span></span></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-5394339274438980716?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-78263764951031792582011-11-25T06:43:00.000-08:002011-11-25T09:39:11.537-08:00Indians don't wish ill of Pakistan. Rather, we are apathetic to its fate. The only thing we really care about is expanding prosperity and security for our people.<div><br /></div><div>Pakistan sought and obtained divorce. Sixty four years on, Indians are glad. Other than a few lunatics, most Indians are relieved Pakistan's 180 million are not part of our national life.</div><div><br /></div><div>If Pakistan is burning itself down, we care about it as much as we care about Rwanda.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">To the extent, Pakistan has presented itself directly to India, it is through war. Interestingly, for all our angst about this, India has already prevailed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This in spite of the apparent Pakistani belief that each of their soldiers is equal to ten of ours :p</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There are good reasons for this. While Pakistan has inflicted a painful cost on India, it hasn't been nearly enough to derail our economic advance. And while India has seemingly been passive, it has craftily expanded the war from lonely glaciers and crowded bazars to the high tables of economic globalization.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Arrival of nuclear weapons in the region has prevented outright conflict. For Pakistan's commando generals, this means we are now in the era of - what Steve Coll called - Ghost Wars. These are fought mostly in the shadows and, on occasion, on world's television screens.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">What their tunnel vision misses is that, while still painful, such terrorism no longer terrifies. When something is expected, it doesn't shock any more. It still hurts, but more like a rubber band snap than a scorpion sting.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Anything more than a scorpion sting risks provoking all out war. Anything less than a rubber band snap is futile. The terrorist finds himself deterred into a range of tactics that are too weak to hurt India while sufficiently ghastly to make the world recoil from Pakistan.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">India has wisely portrayed this dynamic as Pakistani terrorism against Indian economy. This is a real powerful narrative that doesn't require India to compromise on her values. Sixty four years after the war began, the increasingly globalized world sees India as an emerging economic superpower while routinely calling Pakistan a failed State. Easy to see who has prevailed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior while expecting different outcomes. By this definition, Pakistani huqmaran have not only lost the war, they have lost their sanity too.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I disagree with those who call on India to match Pakistan's murderous ways.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We have an approach that is already very effective. All we need to do is to keep reinforcing the narrative of Pakistani perfidy in every possible forum - in this, we are aided by Pakistan's galactically stupid conduct. Each terrorist gambit of theirs only serves to make our point. You'd almost think Pindi and Aaabpara are agents of New Delhi!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Each time we ask Pakistan to arrest and bring to justice the perpetrators of Mumbai, they come across as dragging their feet. It doesn't take a 150 IQ to see how self-destructive this conduct is.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Where we really should focus, is hardening our defenses against Pakistani terrorism. We need ever higher walls to hold back their pawn soldiers - not bridges to engage their killer brass.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We need homeland security of the sort that has prevented attacks on US since 9/11. I favor adopting the 1% doctrine on these matters.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We need police reform to focus on real terrorists rather than gunning down college girls and pretending this somehow makes us safe.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We need to ensure that our economic growth brings prosperity to Indian muslims and that they emerge as role models for the newly democratizing Islamic world.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We need our media and political elite to stop hobnobbing with Pakistani elite merely because they can offer titillating sound bites and scandal fodder.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">As private Indian citizens, we can do even more. Indians are now an integral part of the global economy and culture. This gives us unique visibility and influence over flows in capital, trade, and ideas. We should deploy this power to deny Pakistan wherever we can.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My Pakistani liberal friends call such views of mine hate.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">They tell me these views only serve to strengthen the grip of army and obscurantists on their national discourse.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">They ask me to engage the good in Pakistan and stand with civilians in Government.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I believe these are great prescriptions for Pakistani liberals to follow. It's their country and they should fight to preserve its honor. Nothing will give us in India greater happiness than the day Pakistani liberals prevail.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In the meanwhile, we have to take steps to protect our people and prevail over enemies.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-7826376495103179258?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-33937454173394089392011-10-29T16:09:00.000-07:002011-10-29T19:34:13.905-07:00I love India but no longer like much of what I see.<div><br /></div><div>A billion people have swung on destiny's pendulum. From scarcity of means to scarcity of class. As if trying to compensate by escaping what we used to be. Bad and good. </div><div><br /></div><div>The past is a place we don't want to be. So we're systematically erasing it all away.</div><div><br /></div><div>Indians are becoming refugees in our own mind.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: left;">The 80s and the 00s can't be any more different in Indian consciousness.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">80s was when fate switched off the light. We were riven by identity, suffocated by air, vulnerable to theft. Bluestar, Bhopal, Bofors. And most of us were poor.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">00s was when fate shone on us. The earth became flat, India became young, the world accepted our bomb. Davos, Demography, Deal. And some of us became prosperous.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">On the surface, this is a great narrative. And, yet, something seems amiss.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: left;">We used to be humble. Now we are brazen.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We valued achievement. Now we value accumulation.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We thought our birth made us Indians. Now we insolently ask for loyalty oaths.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The angry young man on a bicycle could still serenade with song. Now the angry young man shoots models in the face and rapes schoolgirls in cars.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: left;">The pendulum will swing back again some day. From a surplus of means to a surplus of class. But this will take a generation or two and a lot of effort.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The refugee in the mind may yet come back home. But he'll have to start with the man in the mirror. This is the hardest thing of all, alas.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-3393745417339408939?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-30417465055750176092011-10-08T04:57:00.000-07:002011-10-09T05:43:15.200-07:00As long as I can remember, I've viscerally disliked Hindutva.<div><br /></div><div>Visceral is a strong word. Deeply felt, intensely real.<br /><div><br /></div><div>This wasn't inevitable. My family and social context would have suggested otherwise. Even my personal sense of faith.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I think this has to do with doubt, reason, and free choice - ideas on which modernity is based.</div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My own politics are motivated by self-interest. I doubt the Government as an institution. I reason we'd be better-off if it got out of our way. And I make a free choice on who to stand with politically to achieve this goal.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Given the secular character of India and US (where I live), faith is rarely a driving motivation in any of this. I don't feel politically more in common with random co-religionists than with folks who share my social and economic reality.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Hindutva, in contrast, demands we make unquestioning common cause with other folks merely because they too were born into a common faith. This is imposed politics of incidental commonality, of religion over reason.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There's also some caprice here. There are many incidental commonalities based on birth. Wealth, class, gender, language, left handedness - you get the point. Why is faith any more important than any of the other such commonalities?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There is a cult-like character to this strain of politics. There is no room for doubting the central artifice on which the cult is built. If outcomes are not favorable, it's because of personality issues or implementation mistakes, never the ideology itself. Since there is no room for doubt, exercise of reason makes one's loyalties suspect. And if one exercises free choice of political (dis)association, one is hounded (as whistleblowers are) and sometimes even worse.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Does this not remind one of socialism, that other great cult that has afflicted India? Except that socialism pretends to be born out of doubt and designed by reason, although it too rejects free choice.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There is no doubt that Congress' socialist legacy has been debilitating for India.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Two generations lived through undeserved poverty. Hundreds of millions still do. India's entire politics was reduced to patronage by printing money. And pitting one group of Indians against another. This is a horrendous legacy of what is essentially a personality cult.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Even worse is the reactionary whirlwind all this has spawned.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Hindutva attempts to be everything Congress is not. And yet, it has become everything it is. The cult of personality has been challenged by its cult of othering.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Instead of asking Indians to doubt our ideological chains and asking us to use reason to make free political choices, Hindutva has made that choice for us in a presumptuous and patronizing act. The choice it has made is communal hatred. And it has sought to impose this on us in an imperious manner.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Hindutva is not Hinduism. It pretends that it is and brooks no dissent. The cost of dissent, ultimately, is violence. This too is typical of how cults act.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Arun Shourie is a leading modern intellectual within Hindutva. He is also a decent man who has suffered much personal pain in life. Yet, here is his reaction to 2002: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small; ">Frankly, I must say, I was more affected by Atalji’s pain than by what had happened in Gujarat. Maybe this is my inhumanity or something. I can’t claim that I was that great liberal</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This comfort with, and indifference to, violence is deeply ingrained in such cults. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It is not a surprise that such attitudes attract support from sociopaths.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We see this in the so-called "Internet Hindus" who stalk the by-lanes of cyberia.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Leading Hindutva voices contemptuously dismiss them as fringe elements, in private. In public, they say nothing as they watch these demented mobs mug decent people.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Even if we concede these are fringe elements, it is worth contemplating their nature. When I blogged harshly on Binayak Sen, I was challenged by those on the left but in a relatively civil way. My own politics also has a fringe - that would be Ayn Rand purists! I do think there is a qualitative difference between the trolling by Internet Hindus and the tortured argumentation by leftists and Randists. It says a lot, doesn't it?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Lest I be accused of letting off the Left gently, I should note that while the Maoists leave the internet alone, they do reserve their violence for the jungles of Dantewada.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Sonali Ranade has written about why Internet Hindus are on the wrong side of history (<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><a href="http://t.co/MjZivLDS" url="http://bit.ly/qjqoRW" title="http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp/?page=2011%5C10%5C09%5Cstory_9-10-2011_pg3_2" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" class="twitter-timeline-link" url="http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp/?page=2011%5C10%5C09%5Cstory_9-10-2011_pg3_2" url="bit.ly/qjqoRW" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(153, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; ">http://bit.ly/qjqoRW</a>)</span>. I think, the same can be said for the entire Hindutva project. History is evidence that human advance has come not from unthinking obedience to cults but from doubt, reason, and free choice. Hindutva denies us all these and is not the antidote to socialism we've been looking for.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This is why I have visceral dislike for this false idea.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-3041746505575017609?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-78063643851473249332011-09-17T07:47:00.000-07:002011-09-17T08:49:30.445-07:00When I was younger, I had even less time than now with all the burdens of age.<div><br /></div><div>There was so much to learn, places to see, fortunes to make, reputations to shape, fall in love, break a few hearts, rebound from heartaches, and find my authentic voice. The only things I didn't have time for is to breathe or sleep.</div><div><br /></div><div>Can't imagine I would have given up any of that for Twitter or Facebook.</div><div><br /></div><div>How do today's twentysomethings manage it all?</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: left;">The conventional wisdom is that India's economic growth is a consequence of reform.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In truth, we've barely had any reform. India is still infatuated with socialist chains that criminally impoverished two generations. The political contest is between the secular-left and the religious-left. The economy is still micromanaged with five year plans.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">How has India grown when this discredited thinking took down the mighty USSR?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I think this has to do with growing confidence. A confident population consumes more things, which creates demand for products and services, which creates higher paying jobs, which creates a confident population.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This confidence is not the result of any geopolitical change or domestic policy. Rather, I'd argue, it's because India has progressively grown younger. The median age is now 26 years and falling. The youth may lack knowledge, experience, even social graces - but they don't lack confidence. A long life lies ahead, caution is not in their vocabulary.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I've not researched this but am certain that the older the Indian, the less confident he/she is.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">You can see this in the polity. The octogenarians who pretend to rule India are anything but confident. Their inferiority complex on the world stage is something to behold. And despair about.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Caught between the uninformed confidence of youth and the unfortunate caution of the experienced, India sails on as a middling nation with delusions of past glory and day dreams of future greatness.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: left;">Amy Winehouse died recently. She was merely 27.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Silicon Valley is all about the young. Fresh ideas pursued with infinite boldness.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The young are busy shaping their era. Except, I fear, in India.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Maybe they are out there. Putting their heads down and chasing their dreams. Maybe those on social media are not the dreamers and doers. We should look elsewhere.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But what if this is not the case?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">What are the big ideas and achievements of the youth bulge in India?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I may disagree with him, but Mr Anna Hazare has big ideas. And, Nandan Nilekani. They are not young. Where are the big ideas of youth?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">When we think of art, we still debate M F Husain &amp; bow before Gulzar. Where is the twentysomething art to give expression to a young India asserting its place in the world?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Let's take politics. Yes, there are a few young voices but they are hardly authentic. And, no, trolling people on twitter is not a big idea of politics.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I've interviewed a lot of people over the years for jobs. Many of them Indians. I've noticed a growing brashness in Indians, not usually substantiated with real knowledge.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I think of when I came to business school. All these smooth talkers discussing swaps and options and beta and gamma and this and that. I was rather unnerved for I had never studied economics nor ever understood what stocks and bonds are. Then, in my microeconomics class, I discovered I was the only one who understood what slope of a line is. Or, how compounding works. The rest, as they say, was a breeze.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I think that Indians used to be more like me. Maybe we didn't know all the fancy stuff but the foundations we knew better than anybody. This is why we won.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Now, they have become more like my classmates. They know all the fancy stuff but the foundations are cracking. You know where this leads.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">India is growing because it is increasingly confident.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But it isn't reforming. And its confidence is the callow brashness of the young.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There is so much for them to learn, places to see, fortunes to make, reputations to shape, fall in love, break a few hearts, rebound from heartaches, and find their authentic voice. The only things they don't have time for is to breathe or sleep.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Or spend their time chitchatting on social media.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I'm not so confident about India's future. I guess my age is showing. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-7806364385147324933?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-91497820895746583472011-09-11T07:43:00.000-07:002011-09-11T09:02:42.362-07:00<div>At a distance my God stood</div><div><br /></div><div>With his hands folded</div><div><br /></div><div>And said nothing at all</div><div><br /></div><div>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------</div><div><br /></div>When I think of 9/11, I think of the smell that lasted that whole month.<div><br /></div><div>The sweet smell of sorrow. The young flesh charred too soon. Some were friends. All were family.</div><div><br /></div><div>For years, it felt like someone had socked me - and my city - in the jaw. The magic was that we took the blow but did not fall. For months the city was a dark, brooding, miserable place. Then, still in the midst of a harsh recession, we found a way to start smiling again.</div><div><br /></div><div>It had been a tough year. The internet bubble had burst. Buddha's face was shredded in Bamiyan. Politics were ugly from the hanging chads of Florida.</div><div><br /></div><div>America wasn't ready for jihad on its soil.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>Still, there were no riots in New York. Instead, there were inter-faith prayers in Yankee Stadium. Om and Allah and Christ and Yahweh and the Gurus were all invoked.</div><div><br /></div><div>This wasn't the blood-soaked Delhi of 1984. Too bad Gujarat did not learn.</div><div><br /></div><div>No, this wasn't about naive self-flagellation and othering that India is so used to doing. America was going to war, united. It would - over the next decade - hunt down Bin Laden, topple a murderous Saddam Hussain, and incite Arab Spring.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>I supported both wars. I desperately wished India had the same resolve when hit again and again and again in Kandahar and Kaluchak and Akshardham and Sansad Bhawan and Mumbai and Delhi and so many other places.</div><div><br /></div><div>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------</div><div><br /></div><div>We had returned from a meeting that had lasted all morning. Having missed most of what happened, I was trying to grasp it all. A colleague barged in. I'm leaving to re-enlist, he said, I must be in the fight.</div><div><br /></div><div>He was a marine. He had lost fingers in Desert Storm. He had lost firefighter friends that morning. He was ready to avenge that loss.</div><div><br /></div><div>All I could tell him is that he should do what he felt he needed to do.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then I started reading and couldn't stop for years. Ahmed Rashid's Taliban. Huntington's Clash of Civilizations. Fukuyama's The End of History, Kaplan's The Coming Anarchy, Coll's Ghost Wars, Naipaul's Among The Believers, Perkovich's India's Nuclear Bomb, Maxwell's India's China War, and so many others.</div><div><br /></div><div>I was an engineer discovering history. Radically reshaping my worldview.</div><div><br /></div><div>I started writing. A few newspaper columns. A lot of blog posts.</div><div><br /></div><div>It took me years to reconcile my liberalism with the new hawkishness I felt. Eventually, it became self-evident that liberalism must be fought for. That some ideas are superior to others. That while I respect everyone's right to whatever views they hold, only modernity - underpinned by the twinning of freedom and reason - must shape how we live.</div><div><br /></div><div>I came to see myself as a neoconservative. A liberal mugged by reality.</div><div><br /></div><div>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------</div><div><br /></div><div>Ten years later, my rage at jihad's temper tantrum hasn't yet ebbed.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm also glad that, unlike India, America doesn't move on. It fights back - whatever the cost.</div><div><br /></div><div>I watch people taking potshots at this great shining city on the hill. Iraq was a mistake. Drones are wrong. Pakistanis see Americans darkly. The wars have depleted America. Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo.</div><div><br /></div><div>I've even heard people argue Iraqis were better off under Saddam than under freedom.</div><div><br /></div><div>I guess they haven't spoken to the little Afghan girls freed from the tyranny of the imposed veil. Or, the Shia of Iraq liberated from genocidal chemical attacks.</div><div><br /></div><div>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------</div><div><br /></div><div>Sometimes I feel we are back at 9/10. Commercial buildings are full of people in downtown. Tourists visit where the twin towers stood. Hawkers sell them trinkets. We are mired in yet another recession.</div><div><br /></div><div>But that smell of 9/11 wakes me up quickly in the sweet hereafter.</div><div><br /></div><div>The air has been cleansed. The clothes dry cleaned. The dead interred. But the smell is still here.</div><div><br /></div><div>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------</div><div><br /></div><div>The caravan departs in a rising dust of memories</div><div><br /></div><div>The dirge wafts in through the windows of my heart</div><div><br /></div><div>My God turns and walks away</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-9149782089574658347?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-58779859996154574842011-08-21T07:21:00.000-07:002011-08-21T08:16:24.574-07:00I find it more than a coincidence that India's Anna movement is playing out concurrently with American Tea Party resurgence, Israeli Tent City protests, UK underclass rioting, and Arab Spring revolutions.<div> <br /></div><div>Sonali Ranade, in her recent Daily Times column, linked middle class protests to the credit crisis. In her thesis, the enormous losses suffered by large financial institutions are being surreptitiously socialized through stealth taxation on middle class savings.</div><div> <br /></div><div>In this essay, I'll attempt to expand on this analysis.</div><div> <br /></div><div>Clearly, the aftermath of the credit crisis is crucial to explaining the global governance crisis. When highly indebted financial institutions tottered in 2008, they threatened to take down the global economic system. Governments, themselves highly indebted but with some residual ability to print and borrow money, found a variety of ways to take the bad debt off bank balance sheets.</div><div> <br /></div><div>In the US, Government partially nationalized leading banks and the Federal Reserve provided them with near-zero cost funding. In Europe, authorities did the above plus allowed banks to not fully recognize their losses. The principle was the same. Postpone the reckoning where possible, socialize private sector losses where necessary, and transfer wealth to banks so they can recapitalize.</div><div> <br /></div><div>All this played out while Governments in India and China went on debt-fueled binges of welfare and infrastructure expansion respectively.</div><div> <br /></div><div>This is how the banks were saved and the Governments imperiled.</div><div> <br /></div><div>How do deeply indebted Governments resolve their debts? They can print money to inflate it away, sell assets to pay for it, impose taxes, seize private wealth, cut back entitlements, or declare bankruptcy. No other way, really. Except war.</div><div> <br /></div><div>In all of these, there is an implicit transfer of wealth from one set of citizens to another. To expect this to happen without political push-back is naive. Each group will inevitably flex its political muscle to lay down a marker for politicians to contemplate. </div><div> <br /></div><div>Where entitlements have been cut back (e.g., UK), the underclass has revolted. Where entitlements have expanded financed by corrupt asset sales &amp; inflation (e.g., India), the middle class has revolted. Where the debate is raging between entitlement cuts and increased taxes (e.g., US), everyone is morose. Where a kleptocratic autocracy has financed its lavish lifestyle through taxation, inflation, and forcible appropriation of national assets (e.g., Maghreb), revolutions have happened. Where utter confusion has reigned (e.g., Europe), everyone has gone on vacation!</div><div> <br /></div><div>The global credit crunch has become a local political crisis - everywhere.</div><div> <br /></div><div>This is how we must understand what's happening. This isn't about dial 101 for integrity or democracy in the desert or even a new social contract between the rulers and the masses, this is fundamentally about money. And the way this is resolved is not the tedious (and violent) battles for redistribution, rather through new wealth creation.</div><div> <br /></div><div>So how is this to be done?</div><div> <br /></div><div>Prosperity has come to the world in waves, riding the euphoria of new ideas. The end of the cold war, the peace dividend, technology, globalization, and easy credit carried us for two decades. We now need new catalysts to carry us forward.</div><div> <br /></div><div>Some of these can be the end/down-gearing of seemingly interminable wars (e.g., India-Pakistan, Israel-Palestine), new agreements for expanded global trade (e.g., the much delayed Doha round), radical economic reforms in BRIC countries (e.g., privatization and professionalization of economies), dramatic increase in technology usage to rationalize the highly inefficient welfare States in OECD countries (e.g., healthcare subsidies), a new surge of investment in education for the information era, etc.</div><div> <br /></div><div>These are big ideas that require big visions and bold leadership. Our challenges are not going away by use of batons on protestors or expressing helplessness about lack of political consensus. And the Jan Lok Pal ain't going to create prosperity by diktat out of thin air. If we don't take bold steps for reforms now, we should be deeply pessimistic about the coming decade. Not only will we see Anna style protests at home, we are likely to see regional and even global wars break out. This is the lesson of our history. Every major turning point of this magnitude, where huge wealth has been taken from some and given to others, has always come with protest, revolutions, and war. We have a small window to head off this fate. This is the bottom line. </div><div> <br /></div><div>The stock market is a great barometer for our collective belief in the future. Presently, it is telling us we don't believe our leaders have it in them to be bold. Were they to start acting as leaders instead of chickens with their heads cut off, we will see this reflected in the markets immediately. Mr Hazare can then go home.</div><div> <br /></div><div> <br /><div> <br /><div> <br /></div><div> <br /></div></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-5877985999615457484?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-5307444738284387792011-08-15T14:43:00.000-07:002011-08-15T16:47:34.878-07:00Something surely is rotten in the state of India.<div> <br /></div><div>Why else would Anna Hazare, a virtual unknown to many outside Maharashtra, vault into national consciousness and force our democratic Government on the defensive?</div><div> <br /></div><div>Much ink has been spilt discussing his agenda and his methods. Much mud has been slung on all sides. After all this, we have now reached a stalemate where an increasingly belligerent Government is in a staring match with an increasingly intransigent Anna Hazare.</div><div> <br /></div><div>As Indians debate this grammar of anarchy, we should separate out several threads mixed in this mire.</div><div> <br /></div><div><b>First, there is a real crisis of governance in India</b>. Our existing political systems have proven incapable of checking rampant corruption at petty and epic levels. The high cost of our sprawling democracy has created a patronage state to pay for it. The vast reach of our patronizing Government has created opportunity for corruption at a continental scale. The subservience and incompetence of our investigative bodies has created near immunity for corruption. Our parliamentary system has failed to provide sufficient checks and balances on the Government of the day. Our overburdened and, sometimes corruptible, judiciary has been unable to dispense speedy justice. Even our clamorous fourth estate has been compromised in its mortal competition for audience.</div><div> <br /></div><div><b>Second, our people are smart enough to sense that this state of governance anarchy is not self-correcting</b>. This is why the upsurge in support for Anna Hazare, who people may not know but see as being a potential force for change. That Indians have less faith in their Government than a man most of them do not know and whose ideas they do not understand is telling in itself.</div><div> <br /></div><div><b>Third, the response of Government of India to this frontal assault has been self-defeating</b>. Its initial defensive crouch has evolved into an increasingly menacing posture. Unable to make a case for its agenda or counter the reality of its inherent corruption, the Government is attacking Mr Hazare in personal terms and his movement by use of force. In so doing, it reaffirms the negative view Indians hold of their political system. If the institution of democratic Government is under siege, it is at the hands of the Government herself - not of Mr Hazare. The many commentators who cite Ambedkar's grammar of anarchy notion to attack Mr Hazare also fall into the same trap. Grammar of anarchy is only problematic in a self-correcting political system. India doesn't have that alas and change here takes way too long to be meaningful. To attack Mr Hazare's protest on the grounds that it sows anarchy misses this obvious point and makes Indians regretfully suspect the credibility of these commentators. </div><div> <br /></div><div><b>Finally, it is self-evident that Mr Hazare's prescriptions are profoundly dangerous</b>. In the best of circumstances, they will create deep levels of risk aversion among even honest Government servants fearful of painfully intrusive investigations. In the worst of circumstances, they will create a super-Government that is above the democratic process - which would be a major retreat from freedom in India.</div><div> <br /></div><div>So, what is to be done?</div><div> <br /></div><div>This is a moment of perilous opportunity for India. Thoughtful Indians should seize upon the nationwide desire for structural reform in our political system. Yes, the country must reject the fascistic ideas that Mr Hazare offers, but at the same time must embrace the change that he demands. Political and civil society leaders must begin leveling with the people and outlining their visions for a self-correcting political system. We cannot be so rigidly wedded to the current system and so harshly averse to Mr Hazare's ideas that we miss the forest for the trees. Our need for political reforms is perhaps even greater than our need for economic reform.<b> The economic superpower that India can become is being thwarted by the political subpower that it unfortunately is</b>. This has to change - and starting immediately. </div><div> <br /></div><div>The current moment is a cry for help from the Indian people. Using police tactics or lofty rhetoric to smother this cry would be a Himalyan blunder. </div><div> <br /></div><div> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-530744473828438779?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-91710228289001119182011-05-20T23:28:00.000-07:002011-05-21T00:34:09.033-07:00I've been thinking a lot about sovereignty lately. <div><br /></div><div>Like any good neoconservative, I believe that simultaneous exercise of freedom and equality is a natural human right and an imperative for sovereign nation-states with reference to their citizens. Violation of this human right by any nation-state is self-evidently against natural law.<div><br /></div><div>However, I have strong aversion to internationalist notions of world government, even in weak form. For me, bureaucracies like the UN and International Criminal Court have always been problematic given their supranational and universal jurisdictions. I've also struggled with religious assertion of supranational legal authority independent of the secular jurisprudence of nation-states. These institutions are clearly violative of national sovereignty. </div><div><br /></div><div>Ensuring that nation-states fulfill their sovereign obligations without a priori violation of their sovereignty is like trying to square a circle. You see the problem?</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, I'm not lettered in political theory or philosophy of sovereignty. But I know this. Any nation that hounds into exile its intellectual giants violates its own sovereignty in knowledge. Any nation that legally makes some citizens less than others violates its own sovereignty in humanity. Any nation that permits its territory to be used by supranational terror groups to violate other nations' geopolitical sovereignty violates its own. Any nation that dictates to its people what they can think, express, or how they will dress violates its own sovereignty in culture. Any nation that uses its military prowess to smother its own people and rape their dignity violates its own sovereignty in manhood (am using the word in a non-sexist sense). </div><div><br /></div><div>In the past, when the world was less connected, these violations would've remained local or at worst regional issues. With internet and jumbo jets, each such incident now is the proverbial flapping of butterfly wings that sets off storms half way around the world.</div><div><br /></div><div>What is to be done?</div><div><br /></div><div>Perhaps we can all agree with the simple notion that <b>sovereignty must advance modernity</b>. Modernity is about equality and freedom in all spheres of human endeavor. Any assertion or action by nation-states that impinges on modernity of their own or other people is anti-modern. </div><div><br /></div><div>If so, I'd then argue, that any nation-state that - in its<b> conception of nationhood</b> - violates these precepts of modernity, loses the right to assert sovereignty as a defense against other nations taking actions in <b>self-defense of modernity</b>. This does not mean that there will necessarily be such action but, if there were any, the nation-state in question will not have sovereignty as a defense in international law. This would also remove legal hurdles for modern states to intervene militarily when such action would prima facie advance modernity.</div><div><br /></div><div>This approach based on <i>c</i>onception (not practice) of nationhood is a means to strip sovereignty from those nation-states that are anti-modern in design. This is a <b>narrow dilution of universal sovereignty</b> that will ensnare autocracies and theocracies while leaving liberal democracies alone.</div><div><br /></div><div>Of course, merely because a nation-state asserts modernity in conception does not imply it will practice it in reality. The response in these instances is not to strip democracies of their sovereignty but to persuade and pressure them to live up to their own aspirational conception. </div><div><br /></div><div>In a world that's struggling with failed, suicidal, genocidal, and abhorrent states, this new approach may begin to square the circle between robust defense of sovereignty with equal championship of modernity. </div><div><br /></div><div>I'm posting this idea as a means to trigger dialog that will inform and further clarify these issues. I welcome your thoughts and insightful reactions which, for me, will be highly educational and valuable. Thank you for reading and reflecting.</div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-9171022828900111918?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-25741537630541975402011-05-08T03:09:00.000-07:002011-05-08T03:10:21.377-07:00<div>Doesn't this moment feel a bit like the withdrawal of USSR from Afghanistan?</div><div><br /></div><div>The war is likely over and, with that, the gravy train for Pakistan.</div><div><br /></div><div>They sure have perfected the art of boiling water at the right temperature. In the 80s, the water boiled just enough for a decade-long milking of the United States. In the 00s, the same happened once again.</div><div><br /></div><div>In a perverse way, strategic depth is almost not the point. Strategic positioning to milk the patron power is the ball game. A triangular game where Pakistan is the pivot is what they seek.</div><div><br /></div><div>The logic of concealing Osama becomes self-evident with this perspective. His capture would have ended the war. As long as he was at large, the water could be kept boiling in Afghanistan and funds could be squeezed from the US. The fate of Osama and of Afghanistan inevitably had to be secondary to this goal.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now what?</div><div><br /></div><div>In the late 80s, after the gravy train stopped, Pakistan was left with a bankrupt State and a jihadi infrastructure. It redirected the jihad to India.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the early 10s, after the gravy train will stop, Pakistan will be left with a bankrupt State and a jihadi infrastructure and the bomb.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you were the Generals, would you not pull out the 80s playbook? Redirect the jihad to India. And this time, try to even create a new triangular game.</div><div><br /></div><div>A thought experiment. What if nuclear Pakistan uses its jihad infrastructure to tie India down in return for Chinese funds? Is this so hard to contemplate?</div><div><br /></div><div>In this game, China becomes the new US and India, in their jaundiced eye, becomes the new USSR.</div><div><br /></div><div>One can imagine a whole series of other scenarios where the Pakistani State unleashes its fury at India. Can we deal with this? Can we afford to not deal with this? If not, how would we preempt?</div><div><br /></div><div>The one thing I'm certain we cannot do is to bask in schadenfreude and assume that serendipity will deliver security. It's not "aman ki asha" that's needed now, rather "jang ki tayyari". If war does come, it's not Kashmir settlement that we should seek, rather a Pakistan settlement.</div><div><br /></div><div>I fear that things will go south quickly. I sincerely hope not. But history and Pakistani tactics are not very reassuring.</div><div><br /></div><div>Everybody knows the plague is coming. Everybody knows it's moving fast.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-2574153763054197540?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-5857967865708203122011-01-07T16:33:00.000-08:002011-01-08T03:55:13.073-08:00My first consciousness of the Sangh is as a boy, waiting for the school bus on Delhi's Ring Road. It was a quieter time and Ring Road was not the snarly mess it is today. I distinctly recall being startled by a throng of bicycles flooding the road - men in khaki shorts speeding away to who knows where. Someone at the bus stand hobbled one of the bikes, then forcibly let out the air from its pneumatic tires. Its rider in khaki shorts looked small and sullen, protesting helplessly.<div><br /></div><div>I remember being shocked by the violence of the moment. Summoning my courage, I asked what this was all about? I was told, in a tone of unmistakable warning, the man in khaki was RSS - keep away from him.</div><div><br /></div><div>I was a curious child. No doubt I must've asked my quite conservative Hindu family what RSS was. Whatever the response, it surprisingly didn't make an impression. All I remembered of the Sangh was the small, sullen, and helpless man in khaki shorts.</div><div><br /></div><div>In retrospect, it feels odd that I didn't pay real attention to RSS till I was a young adult. There were relatives, I discovered, who were part of it. A senior ideologue even came to our family weddings. It was always around me in some form but simply wasn't relevant to my life.</div><div><br /></div><div>I felt secure in my identity so wasn't looking for a group to validate it. I didn't fear any other faith, so wasn't looking for muscular friends to protect me from them. I was - and remain - relatively religious &amp; literate on my faith, so wasn't looking for someone to lecture me on it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Only as an adult, did I see RSS as a political entity. This vague organization, that kinda' hovered around my life but I knew virtually nothing about, was - in a quirk of history - important to the destiny of my nation. Perhaps it was the small, sullen, &amp; helpless man in khaki, perhaps it was the bigoted relatives who said they were in RSS, or perhaps it was the blood-curdling rhetoric of the ideologue who came to our family weddings - whatever it was, I didn't like the Sangh. The shrillness of its Twitter supporters has only served to validate &amp; strengthen this feeling. </div><div><br /></div><div>As RSS comes back in view, somehow linked (allegedly) to reprehensible bombings that I usually associate with Pakistani terrorism and Indian naxalism, I wonder if there isn't something profoundly wrong with it. How is it possible that it was defined for me - a conservative Hindu boy who I'd think would've been a prime recruit at one time - by serendipitous interactions &amp; distasteful memories? Worse still, how is it possible that the Sangh has let itself be painted, in fairly negative hues, by those who don't like it? Worst of all, how is it possible that its own anglophone supporters on social media have squandered the unique opportunity to redefine it as a modern, civil, and engagement-worthy entity versus an aggressive, angry horde that attacks, attacks, attacks?</div><div><br /></div><div>I have no idea if the Sangh is involved in any way with the terrorist attacks it is being linked to. But I know this: either the Sangh is comfortable with or is a really poor manager of its public image. If the former, then very little needs to be said beyond the usual critique. If, as I suspect its defenders would argue, it gets a bad rap - surely it needs to do a lot better image management. Whatever its purpose is, surely it must be possible to articulate it in an intuitive manner. Whatever its achievements are, surely it must be possible to describe them in a straightforward manner. Whatever its outreach strategy is, surely it should be better than browbeating people into somehow accepting its version of reality?</div><div><br /></div><div>This organization that apparently has been around for a long time, yet is somehow unable to do as basic a task as protecting its public image, is hardly the competent protector of the broader faith its rather aggressive supporters assert it is. Given this, I suspect, for me it will likely always remain the small, sullen, and helpless man in khaki shorts. Quite an image, isn't it?</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-585796786570820312?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-62899653488175864772010-12-25T03:42:00.001-08:002010-12-25T03:52:28.011-08:00<div>Twitter is abuzz about Binayak Sen. Mostly outraged that the good Doctor has been condemned to life in prison for crimes against the Indian State.</div><div><br /></div><div>His case intrigues me. The confused volley of arguments made in his favor suggests a deeper reason for why his case has so exercised the anglophone Indian mind. I want to briefly address these arguments then talk about why it is that we feel such empathy for him and why this is profoundly dangerous for our republic.</div><div><br /></div><div>First the arguments. From reading of twitter, I see at least six arguments that have been made.</div><div><br /></div><div>First, that he is a good man caught in bad circumstances. Well, he put himself in these circumstances willfully. He deliberately built links with people who are responsible for extreme acts of violence not just against the State but anyone even among the people they seek to represent who opposes their ways. He knew full well that the Maoists have declared war on the Indian State and that past experience suggests the State will eventually crush them. This is not a valley of flowers he was entering but a war zone. Bad things happen to even good people in war zones. Cry me a river.</div><div><br /></div><div>Second, he has done a lot of good for a lot of people. I salute him for this. But good people do bad things all the time. His good deeds may eventually be an argument for mercy and commutation but are not evidence of innocence. Indeed, his guilt is compounded by the fact that he rashly risked all the good he was doing on the ground to pursue a selfish political agenda. Did he not see that his patients in the tribal areas needed him more than the Maoist elite? I bet he did, but delusions of grandeur made him pawn his healing touch for the steel of the gun.</div><div><br /></div><div>Third, the State's evidence is lacking &amp; even fabricated. This is entirely plausible in today's India. But, surely, those of us here who haven't seen such evidence can't opine on it. The only legitimate venue for making this argument is the courts (both sessions and appeal). Only they see the entirety of the evidence and can arrive at appropriate judgements based on it. We can't possibly second guess the court based on fragmentary and agenda-driven tweets or magazine articles. Trial by media would end whatever semblance we have of the rule of law.</div><div><br /></div><div>Fourth, our justice system is compromised. Sure. This is a major sore spot in India for we aspire to be a nation of laws. This is something that does require all of us coming together, regardless of our political belief. But turning this specific case as a trial of the justice system seems weird. Lots of people are railroaded every day by our justice system - what is so profoundly unique about this case that requires an extraordinary intervention by the civil society? I don't see anything myself.</div><div><br /></div><div>Fifth, others in politics &amp; bureaucracy are equally guilty or worse. OK - let's go after them all. What's that got to do with Dr Sen's guilt? Surely, the fact that others are getting away does not imply that the guilty in the net ought not face consequences.</div><div><br /></div><div>Lastly, sedition is itself a crime that should be outlawed. Perhaps so. But that is again an argument to be made in the parliament (if &amp; when it's in session), not in the wild west of twitter &amp; our compromised media.</div><div><br /></div><div>These arguments are interesting not only because none of them stands up to scrutiny but that there are so many of them. It's as if Dr Sen's defenders are making a volley of arguments hoping one or more may stick and that his simple to understand guilt is diffused by the complex veil of sophisticated arguments.</div><div><br /></div><div>Why does India's anglophone elite feel such empathy for this man that they engage in such argumentation? I'd posit it's because he is like many of us but much more. Well schooled and articulate, he shunned the comforts of urban life to go into less privileged communities. He inspires guilt in many of us for our lack of similar initiative. At core, most of our elite is left-leaning and his is in many ways the ideal life they aspire to in their inspired moments. Hence, the inevitable outrage when the hero falls apart because his feet are made of clay. The outrage is less about Dr Sen but about themselves - it allows them to assuage their guilt and move on tomorrow to the next episode of BB4 or Munni or whatever else it is that amuses them in their comfortable but guilt-ridden lives.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is unremarkably kitschy conduct except for the danger it represents for India. Maoists are not Gandhians with guns. They are waging war on our State and their vision for the future affirmatively is not freedom. Indeed, they are guilty of keeping the regions where they roam shackled to poverty. There is limited investment that would create jobs, no law and order that's crucial for day to day life, and a traumatized generation growing up in the midst of war. Not only is the present awful, the future has also been poisoned.</div><div><br /></div><div>Maoists need to be crushed but they can't be unless the Indian elite sees them as the enemy. By "them" I don't mean the local foot-soldiers they send out to kill and die. I mean the people like us - like Dr Sen - who inspire empathy in the people of twitter and media. This empathy at a personal level prevents us from seeing through to the evil that they represent. How can we defeat it if we see the devil as the victim?</div><div><br /></div><div>This is what we must all ponder. There is war ongoing and we need to take a black &amp; white stand. The grey will get us all killed.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-6289965348817586477?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-90066698645260598162010-11-18T02:34:00.000-08:002010-11-21T17:47:32.990-08:00<div>For polemicists, pundits, &amp; politicians Kashmir is a career - a gift that keeps on giving. For people on the ground, it's their home that's on fire.</div><br /><div>In a recent Hindustan Times essay on the topic (<a href="http://bit.ly/c0iozE">http://bit.ly/c0iozE</a>), educator Sabbah Haji of Doda emotionally asserted her Kashmiri identity, and said she doesn't feel Indian. Her words mean a great deal more than those of interlopers like Arundhati Roy who use the issue to principally further their celebrity or shrill voices on the internet for whom Kashmir is yet another stick with which to attack the Indian State.</div><br /><div>Sister Sabbah, this is written for you by a fellow Indian. </div><br /><div>Compliments for courageously laying out your thoughts &amp; feelings for the world to react. Forgive the tardiness of my response but I was busy with gulshan ka karobaar :p</div><br /><div>This may sound strange but, while not exactly persuaded by what I read, I empathize completely. We may disagree politically but I believe engagement with voices like yours is crucial to moving forward.</div><div><br /></div><div>You made three points in your essay each of which I'll respond to briefly.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>First, you spoke about India's "heartless governance" and the heavy boots of our troops. When in Kashmir recently, I saw first-hand the unbearable suffocation that's become daily life for folks. It bothers me to this day and I don't even live there.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'd suggest, however, that this is a tragedy not just in Kashmir but in many parts of India. We require significant reforms in the governing infrastructure of our State and the blunt force approach of our security mandarins. Instead of making this a cause for separation, however, shouldn't we come together to make things better for all of us? Leaving the world better for those who follow us is what politics is all about, isn't it?</div><div><br /></div><div>Next, you spoke about being from a "generation of anger". Who wouldn't be? I can never walk in your shoes but have walked on your earth and fought my own rage. Regardless of what other good India may have done or that our anger is better directed at the retrogressive leaders of the secessionist movement, the fact that there is such anger is ultimately a mark of our collective failure. You have the right and the privilege to express this anger - like a sister does with her brother. But, eventually, you must let it go because anger is the most self-corrosive of all emotions. As you do so, believe me, your siblings from India's vast plains &amp; plateaus will stand with you.</div><div><br /></div><div>Finally, and most crucially, you wrote about your Kashmiri identity. You love India but don't feel Indian. Of course, no one can force any feelings on you. I respect your sentiment and don't see that as a reason to call you names. The cool thing about India is that all manner of sentiments are perfectly fine. Your Kashmiri identity is not one iota in conflict with Indianness. Greater conflict, I'd submit, would be between your Kashmiri identity and the Arabic desert that Mr Geelani wishes to impose on your verdant valley.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't write this to persuade you to change your notions but do want you to know that even hawks like me consider themselves your brothers and offer our understanding. This is no substitute for the angry years gone by but, hopefully, is a good start for happier years to come.</div><div><br /></div><div>Let me be transparent. I don't support the notion of Kashmiri Azadi nor of any autonomy that would dilute the secular character of our republic. I don't believe Pakistan, or any other State, has any business poking its nose in what are internal matters among us. And I am convinced that, while there is understandable anger among Kashmiri people as acknowledged before, the violent jihad and stone pelting are manifestations of a Pakistan-sponsored psychopathy that must be crushed.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>I say all this in candor so you can see that engagement with people like me is not only possible, it's the only way forward. Provocateur polemicists like Arundhati Roy who exploit your anger to further their fame and fortune may parrot your words, but they are not invested in resolution. What would they do with their time if this cause celebre were to fade away? Likewise futile are the shape shifting mobs on the internet who, in the name of liberalism, embrace any number of illiberal causes as long as these stand opposed to the Indian State. These voices too may echo your anger but they aren't really invested in your peace. Suffering of people on the ground is, at best, a tertiary issue to their madcap ideologies and purposes.</div><div><br /></div><div>It may sound ironic but the best allies of the Kashmiri people in their quest for modernity and advance are people like me. We seek an honorable resolution because we gain nothing from extending anyone's misery - of the good people on the ground, of the security forces who toil in impossible circumstances, and of your progressive polity that needs time &amp; space to find its voice. And we have far greater credibility with the broader Indian nation than the shrill activists would ever have.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>So, what is this honorable resolution? Whatever its contours, it must preserve the best elements of your Kashmiri identity and India's liberal ideal. This is entirely possible - indeed significant elements of this have already been sketched out in the background. In broad strokes, the resolution would acknowledge Kashmiri political aspirations by granting the people greater say in running their affairs, recognize Kashmiri yearning to reunite with lost siblings across the LOC by simplifying people-to-people contacts, and preserve the sovereignty of the liberal and federalist constitution of India. Northern Ireland shows such a complex resolution is entirely practical.</div><div><br /></div><div>What remains, frankly, is the dirty business of horse trading among key stakeholders to ensure their respective political interests are preserved in the new dispensation. This makes the present a very delicate moment that enemies of peace seek to sabotage. Inflaming passions at this stage by people like Ms Roy is counterproductive - something she herself, in her self-righteousness, may not fully recognize.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is where we are, at a perilous moment of possibility. It may be that our reach exceeds our grasp but we sincerely reach for peace. We need impassioned young Kashmiris like you to stand with us to make it happen. You alone can leave behind obstacles to peace like victimhood, anger, and narrow notions of identity. Instead, if you find a way to feel empowered, forgiving, and at once Kashmiri and Indian, believe me, this will change the world.</div><div><br /></div><div>This moment is a test for your generation - a stark choice between the haunting of the past and the calling of the future. Carpe Diem.</div><div> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-9006669864526059816?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-75082630385525631572007-07-15T09:25:00.000-07:002007-07-15T09:57:35.496-07:00Surprisingly little has been written in the Indian blogosphere about Mohammad Haneef, charged in Australia as having -- recklessly but without intention -- supported terrorism in the UK. As a forum that has written forcefully against Islamic terrorism, it seemed appropriate for this blog to make an observation on this matter.<br /><br />Haneef is a cousin of a vicious terrorist to whom he gave a SIM card. He was also hurrying to leave Australia in the immediate aftermath of the failed UK attacks.<br /><br />These facts make it imperative that he be thoroughly investigated. Australia is well within its rights to ensure the safety of its citizens.<br /><br />If Haneef is found guilty of willing and knowing complicity, we would support the harshest possible punishment for him. Further, even if the investigation leads to little in terms of any real complicity, it would be prudent for Australia to deport him back to India. We would likely do the same if there were a Pakistani cousin of the terrorist Sheikh Omar found in odd circumstances, however explainable, in India.<br /><br />What India must not accept (and what will undoubtedly damage our nascent strategic relationship with Australia) is Haneef's imprisonment notwithstanding any absence of evidence that proves his willing complicity in the abhorrent UK terror attacks. The Government of India needs to be proactive in making this crystal clear to John Howard.<br /><br />We must provide all needed support for Australia and the UK to complete a thorough investigation of the horrific affair. We must not, however, silently tolerate innocent Indians being railroaded by overzealous Australian prosecutors and politicians cynically playing to the understandable fears of their people.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-7508263038552563157?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-53987809055392563222007-06-24T04:45:00.000-07:002007-06-24T05:02:54.522-07:00The President of India is mostly a ceremonial position -- yet, somehow, one feels that its contenders should not inspire the question: who?<br /><br />Mr. Kalam is an unpolished man -- a President by serendipity -- but he has shown that the Presidency can inspire India in ways otherwise impossible by a political system that merits only contempt from our citizens.<br /><br />Given this, the Presidency is evolving in the public mind to something akin the Bharat Ratna -- greatness in life being a prerequisite for Presidency.<br /><br />How utterly disappointing it is then to see pygmies jockeying for the position -- yet not surprising from a political system that specializes in disappointing India.<br /><br />Too bad.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-5398780905539256322?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1160312518248851782006-10-08T05:47:00.000-07:002006-10-08T06:08:38.716-07:00Just a few words supporting the commutation of Mohammad Afzal's death sentence.<br /><br />This blogger has no personal view on Afzal's guilt except to note that he has been convicted through our process of law -- which is how we settle such issues in democratic India.<br /><br />Afzal's guilt, therefore, is not an issue at all.<br /><br />The the only issue is the manner in which we should treat such terrorists.<br /><br />Executing Afzal does little to advance justice any more than his lifetime incarceration. Why then should his evil blood be on the hands of the good citizens of India? For vengeance?<br /><br />Forgiveness is surely a greater virtue than vengeance. This blogger hopes that India will act accordingly -- with greatness and mercy.<br /><br />Let's also join most leading democracies by abolishing capital punishment in India.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-116031251824885178?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1153268245115616022006-07-18T16:39:00.000-07:002006-07-18T17:21:46.306-07:00India's response to repeated terror attacks has been sickeningly predictable.<br /><br />Official outrage and vows of vengeance are followed by a quick moving on. The most that we appear capable of is a temporary drama-queen delay of our so-called "peace" process with Pakistan.<br /><br />This is largely because India has global aspirations which compel it to act "responsibly", no matter the cost to our people.<br /><br />The paradox of this posture is that we end up pleading with the world to recognize our new-found "power" even as terrorists castrate what little remains of our tattered mojo.<br /><br />This is, therefore, not about whether India should or not talk to Pakistan (it doesn't really matter, does it?) -- rather, this is about India's structural misunderstanding of the nature of power in our world.<br /><br />Whereas great powers use muscle to assert their influence, India seems to be intent on acquiring its geo-political weight through permission and charity of others.<br /><br />As long as this remains the view of our political elite -- across the ideological spectrum, it needs to be emphasized -- Indians will continue dying while our elite express unfelt regret then continue chasing their mirage of faux-power.<br /><br />To this retired blogger, it's clear that sensible Indians will now quit celebrating meaningless adulations in the world media, quit talking about great power status, quit our obscene and unearned swagger, and quit talking big while carrying a really small stick.<br /><br />Instead, we need to get back to hard work, back to our democratic revolution for throwing overboard this pussilanimous elite-- we need to get back to reversing, in Gore Vidal's words, the overturning of our real history by their made-up myths.<br /><br />This is what we owe the dead of Mumbai and Delhi and Akshardham and Ayodhya and Kaluchak and Kargil and Kashmir as also Godhara followed by its viciously evil whirlwind.<br /><br />Let's begin by acknowledging how extremely weak our state is presently and how unbelievably far we have yet to go. There is surely no shame in beginning with the truth about ourselves.<br /><br />As Faiz wrote, Aaiye haath uthaein hum bhi.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-115326824511561602?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1152045499776880022006-07-04T12:58:00.000-07:002006-07-04T13:38:20.026-07:00Odd post this.<br /><br />This lapsed blogger finally found himself in Paris this past weekend where he stole precious time for Louvre and Versailles between heavy swatches of work.<br /><br />At Louvre, three icons were on the wish list.<br /><br />Of course, the Mona Lisa -- much too small and locked up with too many people all around her.<br /><br />Then, the magnificent Venus de Milo. Just like one had imagined having seen a cheap replica way back in the innocence of childhood.<br /><br />But most important, the law codes of Hammurabi. Few people around, fewer still understanding its colossal significance. There it stands, lonely in Louvre, like a rock.<br /><br />Have concluded the ancient is far more interesting than the medieval. This is a change of heart -- had not felt the same awe of the distant forbearers while in Egypt many years ago. This rethink must be, what Eliot called, one of the gifts reserved for age.<br /><br />Mona Lisa and Taj Mahal feel ridiculously pretentious now -- come look at me, how clever I am, how gifted, how very metrosexual! In contrast, those who chiseled out the law codes in Akkad or moved the Earth to shape the Great Pyramids and the Great Wall, or those who invented Zero were surely the real men among men.<br /><br />Then, Versailles -- where Marie Antoinette lived at the end of one metrosexual age and the beginning of another. Impressive in a profoundly gaudy sense -- no wonder the nouveau riche are drawn to it as a venue for their children's weddings!<br /><br />The best part of being in Paris was watching the local Portuguese celebrate their team's world cup victory over England. Seemed like the entire nation of Portugal had congregated at the Arc de Triomphe. Then France won -- Champs Elysees overflowed with emotion and libation. Fascinating stuff.<br /><br />Odd post this. From a lapsed blogger and political junkie. Now, returning to hibernation.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-115204549977688002?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1147665592319292732006-05-15T09:00:00.000-07:002006-06-07T11:10:43.126-07:00Colleagues<br /><br />I now post at <a href="http://cynical-nerd.nationalinterest.in/">http://cynical-nerd.nationalinterest.in/</a>. Do visit sometime. Here are three posts on the <a href="http://cynical-nerd.nationalinterest.in/?p=40">Indian Navy</a>, <a href="http://cynical-nerd.nationalinterest.in/?p=43">Nepal</a> and <a href="http://cynical-nerd.nationalinterest.in/?p=52">China</a> with a co-blogger.<br /><br />Best regards - Vaikasi 1, 5108<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114766559231929273?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rajanoreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1147080471404275202006-05-08T05:30:00.000-07:002006-05-08T02:50:57.680-07:00I was informed last week that this blog will be shut down. I had started to blog in October, 2005 and enjoyed the experience. The thrill is in the readership. I must thank each of you. <br /><br />I will continue to post elsewhere as "Jaffna".<br /><br />Let me end my stint here with a quote from the 6th century BC Chinese classic, the Tao Te Ching.<br /><br />"The wise leader knows,<br />When enough is enough. <br /><br />Stretch a bow too far<br />And it will snap. <br /><br />Sharpen a knife too much,<br />And its edge will not last. <br /><br />Fill your house with gold and jade,<br />And you can not defend it. <br /><br />Exalting in your success,<br />Invites a certain fall. <br /><br />When your work is done,<br />It is time to move on".<br /><br />Tao Te Ching - verse 9.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114708047140427520?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rajanoreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1146633273174181932006-05-03T12:15:00.000-07:002006-05-03T05:11:30.223-07:00The issue of caste-based reservations has been a controversial one in India. Part of the disillusionment can be attributed to the blatant electoral motives of the Congress party. Its objective to garner more votes at the next polls will fail since caste-based policies reward casteist, not national parties. However, the concept of reservations in itself is not flawed. <br /><br />Some maintain that educational standards will decline with reservations. Others allege that state interference in the private sector's ability to hire and fire individuals will compromise the open market. <br /><br />Let me reflect here. The UPA had widened the ambit of reservations to include private fee-levying educational institutions. It exempted <a href="http://secular-right.blogspot.com/2005/12/india-constitution-schools-caste-and.html">minority religious schools</a> from the new policy - a poll tactic to not alienate the minority religious vote. It then endeavored to extend reservations to Muslims but failed due to judicial intervention. It now plans to introduce legislation to make it mandatory for the private sector to hire a fixed proportion of the backward castes, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. <br /><br />While I do not care for India's <a href="http://secular-right.blogspot.com/2006/04/siachen-sell-out.html">Prime Minister</a>, the policy of reservations does have its merit. Education and employment standards might not necessarily be compromised. However certain caveats are in order. <br /><br />India is a pluralist land with many languages, ethnic groups, caste configurations and religions. It is a county poised for economic and military take off. It is only correct that different caste groups share the best education opportunities available and the fruits of economic development. A policy of reservations would ensure greater representation of marginalized groups and would help integrate them into the national mainstream. <br /><br />While not all "backward" castes are marginalized, they are under-represented in the modern urbanized economy. Integration through socialization, inter-marriage and close bonds would take place once they are fully represented in education and employment. This can only strengthen India, not weaken it. <br /><br />Would this compromise the quality of education in the elite IITs and IIMs that have churned graduates only to lose them to the United States? I think not, provided <em>rigorous</em> admission and graduation standards are retained. Only the most qualified amongst the backward castes, the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes should get admission into the elite institutions of higher learning. And only the most qualified should be allowed to graduate. <em>The admission and graduation standards can not be compromised</em>. Quotas to ensure adequate representation of different caste groups would integrate India's myriad castes <em>provided rigorous standards of admission and graduation are retained</em>. <br /><br />Some would argue that this would strengthen caste through university admissions and employment. But one can not deny that caste is already a social reality that strikes one in the face. Its existence can not be denied. Integration would only follow once different caste groups are represented in the mainstream. I provide the example of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. <br /><br />Reservations are in keeping with the Indic historical tradition. The Panchayat (five castes) or the basic structure of local government in ancient and medieval India was a forum where the five broad caste groups convened to jointly decide on village affairs. The five groups were the Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, Shudras and the "Untouchables". All five had to jointly anoint the king upon his coronation.<br /><br />This is not to deny the reservation pitfalls. The current UPA administration has arrogated the right to interfere in private university entrance fees. It excluded minority religious institutions once again in the most cynical manner. This is a dangerous precedent. Interference in the fee structure undermines private education. <br /><br />The administration should instead set up an endowment to provide scholarships to India's neglected and marginalized. It needs to invest in grass-roots education to ensure the improved competitiveness of non-elite caste groups over time. Nehru failed to do so and it is high time to rectify this anomaly. Until then, caste-based reservations are needed to ensure national integration. India can only emerge stronger.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114663327317418193?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rajanoreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1146516985161396552006-05-01T13:40:00.000-07:002006-05-01T13:56:25.326-07:00Blogging has been slow lately.<br /><br />This blogger's time's been at a steep premium and he's been traveling much on work. But more importantly, his zest for blogging has faded.<br /><br />Why?<br /><br />Because nothing ever changes and politics' become a bore.<br /><br />Because summer is here, finally -- convertibles and surf trump politics and prose!<br /><br />Its been fun talking with you all, and reading your views. Its been a useful experiment. But this is where the road ends for this amateur blogger. Maybe a future guest post or two, here or there, but that's really it.<br /><br />Cheers.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114651698516139655?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1146480340729641722006-05-01T03:34:00.000-07:002006-05-01T03:45:40.800-07:00Yet another murderous outrage in Kashmir, another in Afghanistan, and the passing of John Kenneth Galbraith -- there's misery all around this Monday.<br /><br />On Kashmir, one wonders when Indians will turn their rage at our Government that has clearly failed to secure our people even after 17 years of waging war. Where's the accountability? How come we haven't yet crushed this terrorism in Kashmir and smashed its infrastructure in Pakistan?<br /><br />On Afghanistan, we know who the Taliban is a proxy for. Why are we not at war with the terroists who rule Islamabad?<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114648034072964172?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1146401206097627552006-04-30T17:00:00.000-07:002006-04-30T06:09:57.396-07:00<div align="justify"><br /><p>The 49 mile long Siachen Glacier forms part of the watershed that separates Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. The Indian Army has been deployed on the commanding Saltoro Ridge since 1984. The line of deployment is known as the Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL). India and Pakistan appear to be currently negotiating troop reductions in Saltoro. The agreement might entail a redemarcation of the ground position. It is difficult to assess the proposed deal as the negotiations are being conducted in stealth.</p><br /><p>M.K Narayanan, National Security Adviser to the Manmohan Singh administration <a href="http://ia.rediff.com/news/2006/apr/20indpak.htm?q=tp&amp;#038;file=.htm">indicated</a> that India and Pakistan were about to reach agreement on the mutual reduction of troops and troop withdrawal in Siachen. In contrast, the Indian Army Chief of Army Staff, General J.J. Singh has <a href="http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&amp;#038;ct=us/1-0&amp;#038;fp=4454825fa5c0b4c9&amp;#038;ei=6FdURO2-KMSGwwHm8s3ECw&amp;#038;url=http%3A//www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200603302022.htm&amp;#038;cid=0%3Eexpressed%20concerns%3C/a%3E">expressed </a>concerns that "We have conveyed our concerns and views to the Government and we expect the composite dialog between the two countries will take care of all these concerns" and added that "demilitarization is not on the horizon"</p><br /><p>The United States might have facilitated discussions on the vexed subject. It is in American interest that Indo-Pakistan relations improve so that the strategic objectives of the United States can be better met in the <a href="http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2003/3027ledeen_iran.html">extended</a> region. Any settlement on Siachen should not compromise India's long term interest to ensure a corridor to Central Asia. India needs to retain its presence to prevent further consolidation of the Sino-Pakistan axis across the Karakoram pass.</p><br /><p>This is not to deny the value of mutual troop reductions in Siachen. The current deployment of troops is not cost effective. However, the rumored redemarcation of the AGPL (even if accepted by Pakistan) is not in India's interest. Writing in the <em>Asian Age</em>, former Vice Chief of Army Staff Lt. Gen. Vijay Oberoi says that "while the Indian Army is not averse to vacating the AGPL, if the nation so desires, but wants that what it secured with great effort and many sacrifices, and which it has held safely for the nation, in the face of enemy action, as well as the severity of the climate and the treacherous terrain, for the last 22 years, should not be sacrificed at the altar of expediency, merely to notch up one more CBM towards the ephemeral peace process". He added that "if India withdraws from Saltoro and Pakistan captures it, the situation then becomes irreversible".</p><br /><p>Nehru had erred in "conceding" ground control over <a href="http://secular-right.blogspot.com/2006/01/baltistan.html">Baltistan</a> and Gilgit to Pakistan in 1948. That terrain had enormous geopolitical significance given its proximity to Central Asia. Mrs. Gandhi recaptured Kargil - one of three districts of Baltistan - in 1971. India occupied Siachen in April, 1984. Pakistani troops under a certain Brigadier Musharraf unsuccessfully endeavored to undo this in 1987 and in 1999. Recall that before the Kargil aggression of 1999, Siachen was an unoccupied zone since 1949 with the positions of LoC clearly delineated as per the 1972 Simla Agreement. Yet the Pakistani Army had no scruples in violating these borders. There is a good reason not to trust them today since the mastermind of that war is still the ruler of that country.</p><br /><p>There are reports that India might even drop its insistence on marking a AGPL in Siachen before withdrawing to show its 'eagerness' for the peace process during Prime Minister's upcoming <a href="http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1026739&amp;#038;CatID=2">visit</a> to Pakistan in July. This is an unwise move devoid of strategic considerations. It is in India's long term interest to annex the restive region of Baltistan when Islamabad is preoccupied with domestic insurrections and Beijing focused elsewhere. Any compromise on the line of control could foreclose future options. Moreover, New Delhi can not forego its de jure claim on the territory.</p><br /><p>The reported deal benefits Pakistan. Pakistan currently has 80,000 troops stationed in <a href="http://delhi1029.blogspot.com/2006/01/balochistan-blues-another-bangladesh.html">Balochistan</a> to crush an insurrection there. It has another 80,000 troops tied down in the North West Frontier Province/Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Its military is stretched and it needs to urgently redeploy troops. Islamabad now requires a stable eastern frontier to tackle domestic issues to its west. India can use this to leverage better terms. For one, it should not concede on the line of control in the Siachen segment. While Pakistan would find this difficult to accept, India is not pressed for time.</p><br /><p>The lack of transparency vis-a-vis the current negotiations is disturbing. India is a democracy where the executive is held accountable to the elected legislature. The authorities in New Delhi need to <a href="http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1026871&amp;#038;CatID=2">take</a> Parliament into <a href="http://www.hindu.com/2006/04/29/stories/2006042906591200.htm">confidence </a> on an issue of such importance. The Government must realize that its only constituency is the local one, not foreign interests.</p><br /><p><em>Further reading:</em></p><br /><p>Subhash Kapila, <a href="http://www.saag.org/papers18/paper1778.html">India: Government set to repeat strategic blunder of Aksai Chin in Siachen?</a>,<em>South Asian Analysis Group</em>, 2006.</p><br /><p>Vishnu Makhijani, <a href="http://www.newkerala.com/news2.php?action=fullnews&amp;#038;id=49464">From Haji Pir to Siachen, it is deja vu for the Indian Army </a>, <em>IANS</em>, 2006.</p><br /><p><strong> Co-authored by <a href="http://secular-right.blogspot.com/">Jaffna</a> and <a href="http://cynical-nerd.nationalinterest.in">Cynical Nerd</a></strong></p><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114640120609762755?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rajanoreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1146145276794104442006-04-27T06:40:00.000-07:002006-04-27T06:41:16.893-07:00Via Stratfor:<br /><br />What India will likely do is employ a two-pronged approach in dealing with the Maoists. Existing fissures among the Maoist cadres over the future of the movement are waiting to be exploited by New Delhi and Kathmandu. The personal hatred between Prachanda and Baburam Bhattarai, another leading figure in the party, is widely known, and their differences will only deepen once the group faces the critical issue of disarming and merging with the Nepalese army in exchange for political representation. By reopening these fissures, India can work with the Nepalese government to divide the Maoist movement and undercut its ability to deadlock the entire country through blockades and attacks.<br /><br />And the Maoists may not be the only ones suffering from internal divisions. It is questionable whether the unprecedented unity of Nepal's political parties will succeed in holding out for much longer without the king as a common enemy. Moreover, the political parties want guarantees from India that they will not come under attack from the Maoists down the road. As the parties proceed with their own political agenda, their alliance with the Maoists is likely to come under serious duress when the Maoists begin to feel like they are being sidelined out of the political process. With King Gyanendra slowly retreating into the background, the difficulties in maintaining the alliance among the seven parties and weakening the Maoist movement will only add to New Delhi's task list for maintaining order in its own backyard.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114614527679410444?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1146038454936689762006-04-26T04:00:00.000-07:002006-04-26T02:49:01.833-07:00Known for its tenacity and grit, the LTTE is now at the cross roads. It fought fierce conventional battles, captured major army bases and significant swathes of land, and attacked Colombo in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This affected investor confidence, tourism and forced the incoming Government to enter into a Norwegian mediated cease-fire with the LTTE in February 2002. The cease-fire is now at breaking point.<br /><br />While the LTTE retains the ability to wreak havoc with the Sri Lankan economy, it has few real options. For one, it has been increasingly sidelined in the international arena given its human rights record and terrorism. Australia, Britain Canada, India and the United States have designated it a terrorist outfit. The European Union is likely to ban it should the current cease-fire be broken. This restricts their international fund raising capability. Financing constraints would prevent a return to prolonged conventional warfare.<br /><br />The fighting capacity of the LTTE that once allowed it to take on the Sri Lankan military might now be dented. Reports suggest that Indian intelligence had instigated the revolt of Eastern/Batticaloa LTTE cadre led by Karuna in March, 2004. The Northern command of the LTTE crushed this but in doing so lost one of its most capable strategists. Karuna defected to the military. The LTTE has a Northern/Jaffna leadership that controls the sea tigers, the incipient air tigers, its intelligence, its finances, its international procurement and its mercantile shipping. However, many of the foot soldiers hailed from the poverty stricken East. While the LTTE has not lost the East, its ability to recruit fighters there has been dented. It now faces a shortfall in cadre.<br /><br />The close ties forged between Karuna and the Army under Indian sponsorship resulted in snipper attacks on LTTE leaders. The LTTE retaliated with claymore mine attacks on army convoys. The military responded with the murder of Tamil civilians. <span style="color:#000000;">Last afternoon's attempted assassination of the hard-line Army Commander deep within the fortified Army Headquarters in Colombo and the subsequent Sri Lankan Airforce bombardment of Tamil villages in Trincomalee indicate that we might be in for turbulent weather.<br /></span><br />The LTTE retains the capacity to attack Colombo and destroy investor confidence. Any terrorist attack in Colombo would send the economy into a tailspin. Even if there were to be a return to conventional war due to trigger-happy hard-liners on either side, both parties realize that they lack the means to sustain it. There would be the inevitable peace talks after a swift territorial redemarcation of areas controlled by either side. As in the past 25 years, Sri Lanka remains in a stable equilibrium of continued uncertainty.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114603845493668976?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rajanoreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1145887012233585452006-04-25T05:00:00.000-07:002006-04-25T01:08:49.996-07:00<a href="http://secular-right.blogspot.com/2006/04/nepal-update.html">Nepal</a> just might have been rescued from the brink as King Gyanendra announced at 11.30 PM yesterday that he had <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/04/24/international/i105837D77.DTL">reinstated</a> the lower house of parliament. He apologized for those killed in three weeks of pro-democracy protests which he went on to describe as a "people's movement". The monarch had transferred executive power to the political parties last Friday. The Seven Party Alliance of Parties dismissed that as insufficient demanding the restoration of the legislature. He has now done so. Pressure from the European Union and the United States in light of the intensifying protests helps explain the King's about turn.<br /><br />By contrast, the Indian role has not been altogether benign. The Indian Foreign Secretary - <a href="http://news.ft.com/cms/s/b372396e-d314-11da-828e-0000779e2340.html">Shyam Saran</a>- announced over the weekend that India had abandoned its "Twin Pillar" policy of supporting a multi-party democracy and a constitutional monarchy. He added that it was for the Nepalese to define their political system. New Delhi appears to have had a tacit understanding with the Maoists.<br /><br />The Maoists might still consolidate their hold in the emerging political vacuum. To quote, United States Ambassador <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2630&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;ncid=2630&e=95&amp;u=/nm/20060423/india_nm/india246025_1">Moriarty</a> "My real concern is that the successor Government may end up being dominated by the Maoists. The Maoists under the current situation swing a lot of weight because they have the weapons and the parties do not".<br /><br /><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2630&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;ncid=2630&e=95&amp;u=/nm/20060423/india_nm/india246025_1">Others</a> confirm the not so hidden clout of the Maoists. Maoist cadre had directed the street demonstrations in Kathmandu and provided the manpower. The SPA had no real control on the streets. A significant number of the protestors appeared to be from Maoist controlled rural areas.<br /><br />Hundreds of Maoists had stormed the Nepalese town of <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4937496.stm">Chautara</a> 75 miles east of Kathmandu attacking the local hospital, the post office, the education office and administrative buildings yesterday. The <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060424/ap_on_re_as/nepal">Maoist insurgents</a> destroyed the communications network. Military reinforcements had to be airlifted in. Kathmandu was under curfew for five days. Protestors had already occupied the 17 mile long ring road. The <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060424/wl_afp/nepalunrest_060424073231;_ylt=Am3CZ8s2eBlLE14zg5Bz.AgrjhcB;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl">Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist)</a> had announced plans to march to the royal palace today to declare a "Democratic Republic". Let's hope that the politics of reconciliation now sets in.<br /><br />The Maoists control one third the territory of Nepal. They have set up local government authorities. They have built a 55 mile road through the mountains that might eventually link up with China. The Maoists collect taxes. They run collective farms, riverine fisheries and livestock. They retain links with Indian Maoist rebels in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Telangana.<br /><br />New Delhi blundered with its sponsorship of Tamil militant groups in Sri Lanka in the 1980s. It has no coherent policy in <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/nepal_what_next">Nepal</a> either. The current deal in Nepal owed more to European and United States proactiveness than to any initiative in New Delhi. It might be intended to contain the Maoist insurrection and ensure political space for Nepal's moderates. Let's hope that the restoration of democracy last night leads to peace and economic growth in the Shangri-La that once was Nepal. We need to watch events today to see whether this would indeed materialize.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114588701223358545?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rajanoreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1145712673244332532006-04-22T09:30:00.000-07:002006-04-22T06:31:13.370-07:00The United States Congress passed legislation in 1985 to permit full civil nuclear cooperation with China. The Congress approved this notwithstanding official testimony that China had then been covertly assisting Pakistan's nuclear program. China became a NPT signatory in 1992. The Sino-American civilian nuclear deal was delayed by 13 years. It took effect in 1998 after the Clinton administration lifted the sanctions imposed in the aftermath of the Tiananmen protests.<br /><br />Reuters had an interesting blurb on the subject datelined April 21, 2006. Chinese leaders view nuclear energy as a counter to increased reliance on hydrocarbon imports, not to mention the environmental pollution in Chinese urban areas. China intends to quadruple civil nuclear capacity by 2020. And yet, this would only provide 4% of Chinese energy needs. Opponents warn of challenges that include waste disposal and the steep cost of new generators.<br /><br />China had opted to rely on a mix of American, Canadian, French and Russian civil nuclear technology designs. The objective was to keep China up to speed on the latest development in the technology realm in different countries. However, the nine nuclear reactors currently in operation barely contribute 2% of the nation's power today. This is a mere one-eight of the global average. The plan is to raise this to 4% over the next 15 years by building 30 new reactors. Many doubt whether this target could be met given the difficulty in constructing 2 major reactors each year. The reliance on fossil fuels is thus set to remain.<br /><br />The Chinese are moreover pursuing designs that use less uranium as international uranium prices have tripled since 2004. The financial challenge ahead is daunting and China hopes to tap into the power utilities listed in its share market to help fund the nuclear expansion. This would be an interesting development to watch.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114571267324433253?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rajanoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1145541637786449172006-04-20T06:57:00.000-07:002006-04-20T07:00:37.793-07:00Even as President Bush greets President Hu at the White House, Washington's elite wake up to Jim Hoagland's essay reminding them of <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/19/AR2006041902480.html">Bush's Indian Ally</a> -- our visionary Prime Minister.<br /><br />Great timing indeed.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114554163778644917?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1145540988741273862006-04-20T06:38:00.000-07:002006-04-20T06:49:48.930-07:00This blog has long supported the idea of India being the enforcer of political modernity in our neighborhood.<br /><br />This means recognizing the simple fact that India's emergence as a superpower is constrained by our (politically and literally) bombed out neighborhood. Also, that our long term interests are in alignment with those of the people in our neighboring countries -- not with their frequently autocratic rulers.<br /><br />Therefore, in Nepal, we should be squarely with the people demanding democracy. The King's fortune has run out and there is little gain in including him in the next chapter of Nepal. It's time for him to retire in exile.<br /><br />What we need to do is to find a way of sidelining the Maoists. This is possible if India can persuade the Nepalese Army to join the democracy bandwagon -- and the political parties to accept an India-backed Nepalese Republic in exchange for their pledge to crush the Maoists.<br /><br />Hopefully, this is precisely the prescription Shyam Saran and Karan Singh have taken to Kathmandu.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114554098874127386?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1145443540496888142006-04-19T06:45:00.000-07:002006-04-19T03:45:40.596-07:00These thoughts on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawaharlal_Nehru">Jawahar Lal Nehru</a> are based on personal reflection. I do not refer to any one publication. Many would disagree with me. Moreover, I am not a historian. Let me begin by mentioning that I am not awe-struck by Nehru. India would have been a stronger, more prosperous and enlightened country had he not governed for so long. And yet, Jawahar had his strengths and leadership.<br /><br />The unstinted support of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on two crucial occasions explains Nehru's rise in the political firmament. The Indian National Congress had three leaders of towering national stature in 1920 - Sardar Vallabhai Patel, Mohamed Ali Jinnah and Subhas Chandra Bose. Gandhi sponsored Jawahar due to the close links he had with Jawahar's father. Jinnah left the Indian National Congress although he retained ties with the party until 1929. Subhas Chandra Bose veered in his direction. Gandhi nominated the 40 year old Jawahar as President of the Indian National Congress in 1929. The Indian National Congress had its presidential elections once again in 1946. Several state units nominated Patel for the position. Gandhi asked Patel to withdraw from the race to allow Nehru to run uncontested. This paved the way for Jawahar to become independent India's first Prime Minister in 1947.<br /><br />Nehru's legacy of constitutionalism and the rule of law was profound. This Kashmiri barrister educated at Harrow, Cambridge and Inner Temple nurtured the institutions of liberal democracy in India. He ensured the resilience of the judiciary, the legislature, the federal structure, the cabinet and the civil service. India today is one of three countries in the Asian continent to have had such institutional continuity - the other two being Israel and Japan.<br /><br />Nehru had a contradictory persona which makes one grudgingly respect him. Highly westernized, he made the transition to a Gandhian nationalist. An authentic liberal, he supported socialism. He opposed his father in demanding a complete break with Britain. His nationalism compelled the colonial authorities to imprison him several times in contrast to <a href="http://secular-right.blogspot.com/2005/10/bhimrao-ambedkar.html">Ambedkar</a> and Jinnah. Nehru's international outlook in the pre-independence era revealed a cosmopolitan world view. The support for the Irish Freedom Struggle, the passionate endorsement of the republican cause in the Spanish civil war and support for Iraqi nationalism in light of the incessant aerial bombing by the Royal Air Force was noteworthy.<br /><br />And yet, Jawahar was a flawed leader. While Sardar Vallabhai Patel successfully integrated the multitude of problematic princely states (such as Hyderabad, Junagadh, Manipur and Travancore) into the Indian Union, Nehru messed up the <a href="http://secular-right.blogspot.com/2005/10/kashmir-in-1947-viewpoint.html">Kashmir issue</a>. He dithered when action was called for. He imposed conditions on the Kashmir Maharajah when Pakistani irregulars were ready to invade in 1947. Pakistan captured large tracts of land. Indian troops fought back and were poised to retake the strategic terrain of Baltistan and Gilgit when Pakistan called for a cease-fire. Nehru accepted the offer when his military was on the winning streak. He referred the matter to the United Nations unnecessarily internationalizing it. The issue remains unresolved to date. <a href="http://secular-right.blogspot.com/2005/10/indira-gandhi.html">Indira Gandhi</a> did her bit to recapture lost ground by retaking Kargil and Siachen in 1971 but was stopped on threat of United States intervention.<br /><br />Nehru's China policy was tarnished for similar reasons. The Chinese People's Liberation Army captured Beijing in October, 1949. It moved into <a href="http://secular-right.blogspot.com/2006/04/tibetan-blunder.html">Tibet</a> in 1950 and occupied Lhasa in 1951. The Tibetan administration tabled a motion at the United Nations appealing for international assistance. Nehru's delegation prevented its inclusion in the UN agenda. He withdrew the Indian garrison from Lhasa in 1950 and accepted Chinese suzerainty over 471,700 square miles of Tibet without extracting commensurate Chinese recognition of Indian claims on Kashmir.<br /><br />China was not a member of the United Nations at that point. Nehru defended China in international fora while Beijing stealthily annexed 15,000 square miles of territory in Aksai Chin in 1957. India was caught unprepared. China invaded India's 32,000 square mile North East Frontier Agency in 1962 and crushed Indian resistance. Nehru helped establish the Nonaligned Movement with much ado. However, not one Non Aligned Country supported India's case vis-a-vis China. It was left to the Kennedy administration to do so.<br /><br />Much has been written on Nehru's policy of socialism, centralized planning and the stifling of private initiative. India had the proverbial 2 to 3% Nehruvian rate of growth in the 1950s and 1960s. The fact that 40% of India's population continues to live on less than US$ 1 a day is an indictment on the Nehruvian vision for economic progress.<br /><br />Jawahar focused on heavy industry, engineering and technology. He established the Indian Institutes of Technology. And yet he failed to build primary schools, health clinics and rural roads to educate the poor and provide decent health care in India's poverty stricken hinterland. India's record vis-a-vis literacy, infant mortality and maternal mortality was amongst the worst in the developing world. These human indicators demonstrated the failure of Nehruvian social policy. His administration had conceptualized the policy of reservations to help integrate India's scheduled castes and tribes into the national mainstream. But he did little in way of substantive investment on the ground to raise the competitiveness of the Dalit youth.<br /><br />India's agricultural sector fared poorly under Nehru. Despite the anti-American rhetoric, he was dependent on American food aid. It was Mrs. Gandhi who ushered in the Green Revolution, achieved self-sufficiency in food production and turned down PL 480.<br /><br />Nehru failed to introduce the uniform civil code - that ultimate test of modernity. An Indian woman's right to divorce, inherit and sue on marital grounds is constrained by the religion she is born into. Nehru fell short of the imperative of gender equity and national integration. There needs to be a level playing field applied to all Indians regardless of religion.<br /><br />Jawahar alienated the likes of Ambedkar, Jayaprakash Narayan, Purushottam Das Tandon, Rajagopala Chari (rugger playing charlie) and Shyama Prasad Mookerjee. India would have had a different history had Nehru not been in power for 17 years. Term limits on the lines of the United States have their value. But alas India had been introduced to the politics of dynasty! And a controversial one at that too.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114544354049688814?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rajanoreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1145370627952033552006-04-18T07:27:00.000-07:002006-04-18T07:30:28.300-07:00Via Stratfor:<br /><br /><em>In an attempt to split the SPA (seven party alliance) and Maoists, the king announced in a Hindu New Year address April 13 that he would call national elections and consult with the country's political parties. The promise of elections was viewed as a complete farce, and the opposition's calls to replace the monarchy with a constitutional assembly only grew louder.</em><br /><em></em><br /><em>Politically, however, India has no easy options. Supporting King Gyanendra -- an autocratic monarch who has lost practically all standing with his people -- would be futile, but New Delhi also cannot afford to sit by and allow the monarchy to be overthrown, since that would provide an opening for the Maoists to take power. Since the king disbanded parliament, India has been taking its time to formulate a strategy on Nepal, but it's now clear the clock is ticking and spillover is possible. Recognizing that Nepal's fate depends primarily on the mindset of its generals, India's attention likely is fixated now on the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA). Senior army officials feel that New Delhi, formerly one of its chief suppliers, ditched the army when it cut off military aid to Nepal following the royal takeover. If New Delhi and the RNA can make peace, India might begin to draw the SPA away from the Maoists with the promise of RNA backing to topple the monarchy. </em><br /><em></em><br /><em>Though a military coup is likely in the cards for Nepal, such political maneuverings by the SPA and India would need time to develop. Meanwhile, the dark cloud of emergency rule hovers.</em><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114537062795203355?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1145144317455602792006-04-15T16:32:00.000-07:002006-04-15T16:38:37.766-07:00If the Indo-US deal is so terrible for India, how come there is such <a class="textlink" href="http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\04\16\story_16-4-2006_pg3_4">stupefied heartburn</a> among Pakistani commentators?<br /><br />Daily Times' Khalid Hasan is even reduced to <a href="http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\04\16\story_16-4-2006_pg3_4">parroting</a> the lunatic Vladimir Zhirinovsky's vile outbursts against Condi Rice. Lost your own tongue, Khalid?!!!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114514431745560279?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1145114813738922432006-04-15T11:25:00.000-07:002006-04-15T08:36:54.443-07:00The <a href="http://secular-right.blogspot.com/2005/10/nepal-crisis-at-indias-doorstep.html#comments">Nepalese</a> monarchy is in deep crisis. The Maoists have positioned themselves to be the lead political actor in the weeks to come. New Delhi lacks a policy to address this. Nepal is adjacent to Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. The spectre of a Maoist corridor between Nepal and Telangana is real.<br /><br />The Maoist insurrection started in 1996. 13,000 have died since then. King Gyanendra dissolved the legislature in 2002. He suspended the All Party Government in 2005. The situation has since worsened. As the Chennai-based "<a href="http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/br/2006/04/11/stories/2006041101381700.htm">Hindu Newspaper</a>" put it, "<em>A novice in politics and statecraft, Gyanendra is all tactics and no strategy</em>". It is clear that he needs to either hold free and fair elections or abdicate.<br /><br />The <a href="http://svaradarajan.blogspot.com/2006/03/another-blow-for-popular-sovereignty.html">Seven Party Alliance of Political Parties</a> (SPA) had signed a political compact with the Maoists in November, 2005 and March, 2006 to (i) initiate a nationwide agitation against the autocratic monarchy; (ii) restore parliament; (iii) form an interim administration: (iv) conduct elections for a constituent assembly; (v) and initiate the process of constitutional reform. The goal is "Loktantra". The word could either mean "people's rule" or outright "republic". The Seven Party Alliance is led by the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal - Unified Marxist-Leninist.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.hindu.com/2006/03/30/stories/2006033008371300.htm">India</a> helped negotiate the deal. This is surprising given the extent of anti-Indian sentiment held by the Maoists. India until recently had the "twin pillar strategy" that it believed held the key to stability in Nepal. The "twin pillar" entailed the co-existence of a constitutional monarchy and elected government.<br /><br />The <a href="http://www.hindu.com/2006/03/30/stories/2006033008371300.htm">United States</a> on the other hand had pressured the SPA not to enter into the agreement with the Maoists. <a href="http://www.hindu.com/2006/03/18/stories/2006031819201800.htm">Washington</a> expressed concerns that the deal had failed to commit the Maoists to abandon the campaign of violence. <a href="http://srilanka.usembassy.gov/specialprrelease0317.html">Donald Camp</a>, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, stated in the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific at the House of Representative Committee on International Relations that the United States had only two goals in Nepal i.e. the (i) restoration of multi-party democracy; and (ii) prevention of the Maoist take over. This vision is in New Delhi's interest given the anti-India record of the Maoists, not to mention the Maoist campaign of murder, torture, bombings, extortion, kidnapping and the recruitment of child soldiers. It is in India's interest to coordinate with the United States in this instance.<br /><br />King Gyanendra is increasingly unpopular. The nationwide agitation has had its effect. The King held Municipal elections on February 8, 2006 to test the waters. The call for a boycott by the SPA and the Maoists succeeded with only 20% of the electorate casting their vote. Only 15% of the seats were contested while 54% of the seats had no candidates. The Maoist campaign of terror and high levels of popular disaffection explain this.<br /><br />The latest <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20060411/ts_csm/opeople">civil uprising</a> is now in its tenth day. There is now grass roots support for the anti- government demonstrations. The elderly, women and children defied nationwide curfews to come out to the streets and protest. They clashed with security personnel. Students, teachers, professionals, doctors and civil servants joined them to barricade roads, burn tires and chase away the police. Lawyers took to the street. Journalists did the same. There are increasing calls for the monarch to be exiled.<br /><br />Nepal is a landlocked country. It is one of the ten poorest countries in the world. Kathmandu is heavily dependent on India for trade, transit and riparian rights. It is heterogenous with numerous tribes, ethnic groups and dialects. The Caste Hill Hindu Elite that comprise 31% of the population is dominant. The need for a smooth transition in Kathmandu from an inept autocracy to a representative democracy is in India's interest. The days of the monarchy appear numbered unless the King were to dramatically shift gears. A Maoist takeover is therefore possible in the upcoming political vacuum. This is not in India's national security. The deafening silence in New Delhi is therefore perplexing.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114511481373892243?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rajanoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1145072143642659592006-04-14T20:09:00.000-07:002006-04-14T20:35:43.756-07:00The perennial Indian obsession with reservations is back and, unsurprisingly, generating a great deal of heat.<br /><br />Personally, we are strongly opposed to quotas and reservations -- these are highly inefficient and profoundly immoral means of trying to correct real and perceived inequities in our society.<br /><br />Having said this, we see little value in expressing stale lament over Government's attitude on this subject. Our politics have long since fallen to the seductive and poisonous embrace of brazen populism -- this strategy is a vote-winner, hence nothing else really matters.<br /><br />Frankly, what reservation opponents ought to be doing is not protesting Government's predictable senselessness, instead constructively engaging the purported beneficiaries of its myopic approach on why we think this is counterproductive.<br /><br />Given our democracy and our demographics, persuasion is the only real way to win this valid battle. This long-term process will be costly -- we'll probably lose IITs, for example, as the genius factories that they used to be -- but this would be a cost worth bearing if we ultimately convince the vast majority of Indians that reservations are profoundly violent to the spirit of our equalizing constitution.<br /><br />If we fail, unfortunately, so will India.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114507214364265959?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1145038257972119142006-04-14T11:04:00.000-07:002006-04-14T11:10:58.056-07:00Via New York Times, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-India-Explosions.html?hp&ex=1145073600&amp;en=4ed367cfbcf99aa0&ei=5094&amp;partner=homepage">Attack at Main Mosque in New Delhi </a><br /><br />This joins the long list of disgraceful assaults on our places of worship -- from Akshardham to Varanasi to, now, the Jama Masjid, we've been witnessing an unrelenting assault on basic human decency.<br /><br />Hopefully, all Indians will join together to condemn this latest barbarity.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114503825797211914?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1145028675016081772006-04-14T08:28:00.000-07:002006-04-14T08:31:15.170-07:00Via BBC, <a id="r-0_1105770657" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4906188.stm">Natural light to reinvent bulbs</a><br /><br /><em>A light source that could put the traditional light bulb in the shade has been invented by US scientists.</em><br /><em><br />The organic light-emitting diode (OLED) emits a brilliant white light when attached to an electricity supply. The material, described in the journal Nature, can be printed in wafer thin sheets that could transform walls, ceilings or even furniture into lights.</em><br /><br /><em>The OLEDs do not heat up like today's light bulbs and so are far more energy efficient and should last longer. They also produce a light that is more akin to natural daylight than traditional bulbs.</em><br /><br />Cool! Bye, Bye, bleeping tubelights!!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114502867501608177?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1144864609904063832006-04-12T10:41:00.000-07:002006-04-12T10:58:51.400-07:00This blogger is astonished by <a href="http://secular-right.blogspot.com/2006/04/nuclear-deal-addressing-domestic.html">the intense negativity</a> in the linked post.<br /><br />The criticism of the Indo-US nuclear deal has become rather personal -- brazenly accusing Dr. Singh of selling out India's security interests. Sample this from the linked post:<br /><br /><em>Nonetheless, the charges persist that Manmohan Singh might have traded long term national security for immediate commercial benefit.</em><br /><br />First, if such an ugly and personal charge is to be made, why not make it directly rather than hiding behind the construct "charges persist".<br /><br />Second, to cite Yashwant Sinha and Vajpayee ji as voices of dissent here is laughable -- these folks were pretty close to making a similar deal themselves, then suffered an electoral reverse. Now, their protestations sound like "sour grapes". Afterall, what's Vajpayee ji's legacy? Incompetence in Gujarat, cowardice in Kandahar, the irrelevance of BJP.<br /><br />Debate is good. Mudslinging is not. Many issues that are being raised relate to steps India has not taken (e.g., agreeing to fissile material cutoff, abiding by CTBT, etc.), nor intends to take. Why then all the alarmist talk?<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114486460990406383?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1144856684470096992006-04-12T08:38:00.000-07:002006-04-12T23:45:37.720-07:00<div style="margin: 6pt;"><br /><p style="text-align: justify;"><font>We respond to the <a href="http://secular-right.blogspot.com/2006/04/you-go-girl.html#comments">comments</a> on Pragmatic's post on Condoleeza Rice's <a href="http://cynical-nerd.nationalinterest.in//?p=21">testimony</a>. There has been little clarity in New Delhi on the precise contours of the Indo-American nuclear deal. The ongoing US Congressional deliberations led Brahma Chellaney (<a href="http://www.asianage.com/viewarticle2.asp?newsid=142852">here</a> and <a href="http://www.asianage.com/viewarticle2.asp?newsid=144777">here</a>), <a href="http://www.hindu.com/2006/04/04/stories/2006040419071200.htm">Yashwant Sinha</a> and <a href="http://www.asianage.com/viewarticle.asp?newsid=219153">AB Vajpayee</a> to reopen the debate in India. Manmohan Singh had failed to provide sufficient detail to the Lok Sabha. He now needs to answer the concerns raised in light of US Congressional deliberations. </span></p><font><font><font><br /></span></span></span><p style="text-align: justify;"><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font>Condoleeza <font>Rice <a href="http://www.hindu.com/2006/04/07/stories/2006040719121400.htm">indicated</a> that the Bush administration will push for a South Asia-wide moratorium on the production of fissile material. China rejected the draft Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) and so <a href="http://dtirp.dtra.mil/tic/tic_fmct.htm">did</a><font><font> the United States. A formal regional cap will compromise Indian nuclear options vis-à-vis China. Critics counter that India’s interest will be affected once Chinese nuclear submarines with ballistic missiles start lurking in Indian waters. Furthermore, the United States Congress plans to insert riders into the deal mandating India not to test nuclear weapons. The United States Senate <font><font> <a href="http://dtirp.dtra.mil/tic/tic_ctbt.htm">rejected</a> the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and Washington therefore has no right to enforce it upon India just as it keeps <font><font> sub-critical tests to further perfect its large arsenal. Some in the US Senate like Sen. Sarbenes <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/05/AR2006040502334.html">propose</a> that India enter into an Additional Protocol with the IAEA before the Indo-American deal is made effective.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><p style="text-align: justify;"><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font>A <a href="http://www.govtrack.us/data/us/bills.text/109/h4974.pdf">clause</a> on the Congressional resolution states that “A determination under subsection (b) shall not be effective if the President determines that India has detonated a nuclear explosive device after the date of enactment of this Act.” The pro-deal advocates say that India has in any event announced a moratorium on nuclear tests. The opponents stress the need for options should China or Pakistan test a weapon overtly or covertly. In any case, it should be up to India to retain the flexibility whether to respond with further tests or not. This should be a national decision, not an international obligation. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><p style="text-align: justify;"><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font>American sanctions will then be inevitable since a non-P5 country testing a nuclear device will not be eligible for trade in civil nuclear, weapons and high-technology items in keeping with the US Arms Export Control Act and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978. This has happened before when the US <a href="http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2006/03/30/stories/2006033015880100.htm">stopped</a> fuel supplies to the Generic Electric built Tarapur plant when India tested a weapon in 1974. The present amendment to the 1954 Atomic Energy Act makes this explicit with respect to India. The Government of India should explain the ramifications of possible US sanctions and the constraints this would pose. There needs to be a public debate on the issue.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><p style="text-align: justify;"><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font>India</span><font> might still be guaranteed fuel through other Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) members. This was </span><a href="http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2006_4_7.html#15F48BB7">reiterated</a> by no less than US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns. Nevertheless, India should lobby hard to obtain full membership with the NSG to ensure sanction free supplies - like our earlier <a href="http://delhi1029.blogspot.com/2006/02/n-deal-looking-ahead-boldly_21.html">post</a> on getting Uranium from South Africa, Niger or Brazil. Other NSG heavyweights like France and Russia will have to be lured with the prospects of buying reactors from their countries. These countries will then not antagonize India for fear of forgoing a commercial nuclear deal.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><p style="text-align: justify;"><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font></span><font></span><font></span></span></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font>Another issue is the nature of safeguards and the IAEA Additional Protocol. Obviously, India will not agree to an intrusive full scope safeguards which is applied for non-Nuclear Weapons State (NNWS)/NPT signatories. It just has to prove that none of the fuel from the civil reactors receiving foreign fuel/assistance ends up in its military program. This is still more stringent than the free pass given to NWS like China despite their massive proliferation activities. The United States in fact agreed to sell Westinghouse reactors to China with </span><a href="http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2006/03/15/afx2596162.html">technology transfer</a> to prevent Russian or French export firms from entering into the lucrative Chinese market. American business interests reigned supreme in China’s instance. India conversely is being set against more stringent standards.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><p style="text-align: justify;"><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font></span><font></span><font></span></span></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font>Critics allege that India will not be recognized as a formal nuclear power. India will not get open access to natural Uranium supply. It will only be able to import externally pre-determined amounts and that too under international supervision. Advocates claim that the deal would address India’s energy needs in a crucial period of economic take-off. India is poised to grow at maximum speed for which access to cheap energy is vital – nuclear included. They add that the current nuclear deal is a stop-gap arrangement (till the Thorium cycle takes over) to make sure that Indian economic growth is not constrained.<br /><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><p style="text-align: justify;"><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font></span><font></span><font></span></span></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font>Nonetheless, the charges persist that Manmohan Singh might have traded long term national security for immediate commercial benefit. India would replace its dependence on international hydrocarbon reserves bought and sold in the international market with a dependence on the NSG. The international price of coal has continued to drop in the past 20 years. The price of Uranium has increased in the last 18 months. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><p style="text-align: justify;"><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font></span><font></span><font></span></span></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font>The United States clearly benefits from the deal. For one it caps India’s strategic options. </span><font>Condoleeza</span><font> Rice also revealed in a recent op-ed that India had agreed to import 8 nuclear reactors by 2012, at least some of which were to be from the United States. Brahma Chellaney </span><a href="http://www.asianage.com/viewarticle2.asp?newsid=144777">writes</a> that each 1,000 MW reactor would cost US$ 1.8 billion which is 23 times the annual budget of the entire Indian nuclear power industry! The deal would revive the US nuclear power industry which has not received a single reactor order in more than 30 years. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><p style="text-align: justify;"><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font></span><font></span><font></span></span></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font>There are no easy answers to such questions of national importance. However, a debate is needed in the public domain to ensure that the concerns raised are effectively addressed. India’s national security interests demand that.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><p style="text-align: justify;"><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font></span><font></span><font></span></span></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><strong></strong><font>Co-Authored by Jaffna and Cynical Nerd</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><font></span><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/></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114485668447009699?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rajanoreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1144850292671614462006-04-12T06:56:00.000-07:002006-04-12T06:58:12.743-07:00Via Opinion Journal, MIT atmospheric science Professor Richard Lindzen <a href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220">opines</a>:<br /><br /><em>There have been repeated claims that this past year's hurricane activity was another sign of human-induced climate change. Everything from the heat wave in Paris to heavy snows in Buffalo has been blamed on people burning gasoline to fuel their cars, and coal and natural gas to heat, cool and electrify their homes. Yet how can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes?<br /><br />The answer has much to do with misunderstanding the science of climate, plus a willingness to debase climate science into a triangle of alarmism. Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policy makers who provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to increase the political stakes. After all, who puts money into science--whether for AIDS, or space, or climate--where there is nothing really alarming? Indeed, the success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today. It can also be seen in heightened spending on solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol and clean coal technologies, as well as on other energy-investment decisions.<br /><br />But there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.</em><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114485029267161446?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1144776001642741012006-04-11T10:18:00.000-07:002006-04-11T10:20:01.750-07:00Via Stratfor:<br /><br /><em>An explosion took place during evening prayers April 11 in Nishtar Park in Pakistan's largest city, Karachi, where Barelvi Sunni worshippers had gathered to celebrate the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed. At least 70 people were killed and scores more were wounded. </em><br /><em></em><br /><em>That this attack targeted a gathering of Barelvi -- who constitute the majority of Pakistan's Sunnis -- and that it occurred during the celebration of the Prophet Mohammed's birthday, Eid Milad-un-Nabi (or Mawlid, as it is referred to in the Middle East), indicates the likely perpetrators were extremist Deobandi and/or Ahl-i-Hadith militants. Followers of these groups strongly oppose such marabout-type practice, and reject all religious ideas and acts that were not practiced by the Prophet Mohammed and his companions.</em><br /><em></em><br /><em>This is the second attack in Pakistan targeting Barelvis; the first was the suicide bombing against the </em><a href="http://www.stratfor.com/products/premium/read_article.php?id="><em>Bari Imam shrine in Islamabad</em></a><em> in 2005. The timing and target will create a significant backlash against groups that share the views of the Taliban and al Qaeda, and could open up the mainstream Sunni versus Wahhabist fault line that divides the Pakistani Sunni community. </em><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114477600164274101?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1144769238922535032006-04-11T08:25:00.000-07:002006-04-11T08:27:19.020-07:00Via The Hindu, <a href="http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200604111240.htm">Canada labels LTTE a terrorist organization</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114476923892253503?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1144702464095411162006-04-10T13:48:00.000-07:002006-04-10T13:55:03.020-07:00Here's news for global warming panicmongers. The Telegraph reports that global warming <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xml&amp;sSheet=/news/2006/04/09/ixworld.html">stopped in 1998</a>!<br /><br /><em>Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).</em><br /><br /><em>Two simple graphs provide needed context, and exemplify the dynamic, fluctuating nature of climate change. The first is a temperature curve for the last six million years, which shows a three-million year period when it was several degrees warmer than today, followed by a three-million year cooling trend which was accompanied by an increase in the magnitude of the pervasive, higher frequency, cold and warm climate cycles. During the last three such warm (interglacial) periods, temperatures at high latitudes were as much as 5 degrees warmer than today's. The second graph shows the average global temperature over the last eight years, which has proved to be a period of stasis.</em><br /><em><br />The essence of the issue is this. Climate changes naturally all the time, partly in predictable cycles, and partly in unpredictable shorter rhythms and rapid episodic shifts, some of the causes of which remain unknown. We are fortunate that our modern societies have developed during the last 10,000 years of benignly warm, interglacial climate. But for more than 90 per cent of the last two million years, the climate has been colder, and generally much colder, than today. The reality of the climate record is that a sudden natural cooling is far more to be feared, and will do infinitely more social and economic damage, than the late 20th century phase of gentle warming.</em><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114470246409541116?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1144627140646047612006-04-09T16:31:00.000-07:002006-04-09T16:59:00.753-07:00This blogger has been away for a couple weeks -- traveling and working and not blogging at all.<br /><br />Sorry about that.<br /><br />But you know sometimes, as bloggers, we find ourselves reading and writing a great deal, therefore thinking we know what's going on. But, on reflection, this is much like placing one's ears on a cold steel rail -- listening for the distant murmur of oncoming trains -- and thinking we have a good window on the world.<br /><br />One's really got to get away to regain perspective.<br /><br />So, this blogger's been in the Middle East -- and thinking about Iraq and America and, of course, India. Thinking more than reading or writing.<br /><br />You know, we had a train fire in 2002 that killed nearly 60 people and pogroms followed in Gujarat. In Iraq, suicide bombers seemingly take out more people daily and, yet, we do not see rioting in the streets of Baghdad. What does this say about the inner strength and patience of the Iraqi people -- and what does it say about our own?<br /><br />In America, there's a huge political battle being waged over illegal immigration -- mainly from Mexico. The contours of this battle match our own challenge from similar migration out of Bangladesh. Americans are frustrated as Indians are -- and, yet, for all the walls we build on our frontiers (which we support, don't get us wrong), such migration can likely only be slowed, not stopped.<br /><br />We ran into a man from Karachi on a flight from Dubai. He complained that Americans do not let direct flights originate in Pakistan for security reasons (surprise, surprise!) -- he tried to reason that North Indians have little in common with South Indians, that Indian Muslims are structurally deprived, and that trade with India would be bad for Pakistan. Wasn't a fun flight at all.<br /><br />The Indo-US nuclear deal is likely in trouble. President Bush is very unpopular these days and is unlikely to get much of his agenda through the US Congress. The key thing to remember is this: given how the world is shaping, US will need India even more tomorrow than it needs us today. They might turn away the deal today, but will be back -- then, we should up the ante and demand a better deal. The current deal, which we've supported, would then be the minimum marker on what India would rightfully expect -- that would be just fine from our point of view.<br /><br />Blogging resumes now. Our ears are back on the cold steel rail. Looking forward to our ongoing conversation.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114462714064604761?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1144576292277469022006-04-09T05:50:00.000-07:002006-04-09T22:24:18.206-07:00April 9 marks the third anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. The insurrection in Iraq persists unabated and the country is at the brink of civil war. The attacks on the Shi'ite majority of 60% continue each day. The civil turmoil conceals the ongoing political process, one that is noteworthy despite shortcomings. There were elections to a constituent assembly, the deliberations on drafting the constitution, the referendum on that constitution, subsequent general elections and the political maneuvers linked to cabinet formation. This is a political process at work. However, the prime shortcoming is that the post-election process is confined to the Green Zone. The vast majority of Iraqi citizens are not part and parcel of the process.<br /><br />Law and order have deteriorated outside the Green Zone. The civil administration is under stress except for the Kurdish areas in the North. Armed gangs roam the streets and a person can be bumped off a fee to settle private scores. Suicide attacks on American military installations and Shi'ite civilians continue. Iraq is perched on a precipice.<br /><br />There might be four reasons for this.<br /><br />For one, the Sunni Arab minority of 20% has always governed Iraq since the days of the Abbasid Caliphate in the 8th century. The Shi'ites have never ruled. The thought of democracy, of one person-one vote and majority rule is anathema to the vast majority of the Sunni population. The prospects of a Shi'ite administration governing them is something that will never be accepted by the ordinary Sunni citizen.<br /><br />The United States is partly to blame for this. Their strategy to date, right or wrong, is perceived as undermining Sunni interests. A nation is based on a confessional or ethnic compact of sorts, one that the United States may have unwitting weakened by its repeated attacks on the Ba'ath. While certain Sunni legislators might have been bought into the political process, the vast majority of the Sunni civilians have not.<br /><br />The insurrection has significant support in Sunni triangle. Rebels are housed in private residences, suicide lorries packed with explosives are parked in Sunni homes the previous night near the intended target, wounded militants are rushed for treatment by doctors who provide their services for free and many wounded are nursed in mosques. An insurrection can not be crushed if it enjoys such massive civilian support.<br /><br />Two, significant segments of the Islamic world perceive the West as leading an offensive against their traditions, their culture and their religion. The clashes between immigrants and locals in Europe, the cartoon controversy, the Sydney riots, the responses in the aftermath of any terrorist attack be it in Bali, Istanbul, London, Madrid and New York, not to mention the dual policy towards Iran and Israel have widened the gap between the West and Islam. Fundamentalist youth in several countries volunteer to take on the Americans in Iraq. Chechens blow themselves up in Baghdad for the greater cause of Islam. The Iraqi insurrection is fueled by activists from different countries motivated by a hatred of the West.<br /><br />Three, my sense and I could be wrong here, is that elements in the Sa'udi establishment and those of neighboring Persian Gulf emirates support the Sunni insurrection just as they had financed Saddam Hussain against Iran in the 1980s. The Sa'udis belong to the Wahhabi school of Islam that views the Shi'ites as Kufr - i.e. infidels. There is no love for them. The thought of a Shi'ite led administration in Iraq next to an already significant Shi'ite regime in Iran disturbs them. I suspect a flow of funds from the Gulf to finance the uprising in Iraq.<br /><br />Four, let us not forget that the kingdoms of the Persian Gulf rest on a fragile political base. Their have their own Islamist political activists keen to establish a more purist Islam in their kingdoms and overthrow a royalty perceived to be un-Islamic, corrupt and allied to the United States. I would not be surprised if some in the elite circles of Riyadh prefer that such activists be tied down in a never-ending conflagration in Iraq rather than move to the Hejaz.<br /><br />The outlook for a return to peace in Iraq is remote. The United States appears caught in quick-sand that it can not extricate itself from. Many an Islamist militant would wait it out for a change in guard in Washington in November, 2008. And until then, the embers would continue to burn and flame-up intermittently to the detriment of the ordinary citizen of Mesopotamia.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114457629227746902?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rajanoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1144250481123587332006-04-05T10:20:00.000-07:002006-04-05T08:21:21.296-07:00I had posted an article on <a href="http://secular-right.blogspot.com/2005/10/tibet-and-china.html">Tibet</a> in October. I now refer to Brigadier J.P. Dalvi, "Himalayan Blunder: The Angry Truth About India's Most Crushing Military Disaster". Orient Paperbacks: New Delhi. I refer to his paragraphs on Tibet and Krishna Menon.<br /><br />In 1904, British India under Lord Curzon organized a military expedition to Tibet. The largely Indian troops under Colonel Younghusband entered Lhasa and forced Tibet to accede to the Anglo-Tibetan Treaty. Britain thereafter controlled Tibetan foreign policy. The Anglo-Chinese Treaty of 1906 confirmed the 1904 Treaty. Lord Curzon urged that London provide de-jure international recognition to Tibet as an independent state. The Home Government remained non-committal.<br /><br />In 1910, Qing dynasty China invaded Tibet and forced the Dalai Lama to flee to India. The Dalai Lama returned to Lhasa in 1912 and drove out the Chinese garrisons. Tibet proclaimed its independence in 1913. In 1914, Britain entered into an understanding with China to divide Tibet into two regions i.e. Outer Tibet and Inner Tibet. Outer Tibet had an area of 471,700 square miles. China agreed not to send troops into Outer Tibet. Inner Tibet meanwhile was incorporated into neighboring Chinese provinces. In 1914, Britain entered into an agreement with Tibet not to recognize Chinese suzerainty over Tibet. In 1921, New Delhi informed China that it intended to deal directly with Tibet bypassing China.<br /><br />During World War 2, Tibet opened its own Foreign Affairs Bureau. It declared its neutrality when Japan invaded China. In 1947, a Tibetan trade delegation traveled overseas on Tibetan passports. Brigadier Dalvi quoted Jayaprakash Narayanan to mention "China has not exercised suzerainty, sovereignty or any other form of control over Tibet at any time from 1912 to 1950 when Chinese Communist Forces invaded the country." Jayaprakash Narayanan had attacked Nehru "<span style="color:#990000;">The worldly-wise, who by their lack of courage and faith, block the progress of the human race not towards the moon but towards humanity itself. These persons have a myopic view and forget that nothing stands or can stand still in history - not even the Chinese Empire</span>".<br /><br />On October 7, 1950, the Red Army entered Tibet. K.M. Panikkar, the Indian ambassador to China and a left-wing ideologue, advised Nehru not to oppose the annexation of Tibet. Sardar Vallabhai Patel opposed this recommendation sending a letter to Nehru on November 7, 1950 urging that Nehru not recognize Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. Brigadier Dalvi reproduces the letter which makes for painful reading giving the remarkable percipience of Patel. I quote Patel "<span style="color:#990000;">Chinese irredentism and Communist imperialism are different from the expansionism or imperialism of the Western powers. The former has a cloak of ideology which makes it ten times more dangerous. In the guise of ideological expansion lie concealed racial, national and historical claims</span>".<br /><br />Tibet appealed to the United Nations on November 23, 1950 for international assistance to oppose Chinese annexation. The Indian delegate to the United Nations opposed the inclusion of the question on the agenda. The issue was dropped on India's insistence. Sardar Vallabhai Patel died in December, 1950. The Red Army entered Lhasa only on September 9, 1951. The Tibetans revolted in 1959. The Chinese crushed the revolt and the Dalai Lama fled to India.<br /><br />This assumed strategic significance. Tibet had exercised ecclesiastical authority over the North East Frontier Agency, Bhutan, Sikkim, parts of Nepal, Inner Mongolia and Outer Mongolia. China used this to lay claims to large tracts of land on India's northern frontiers and Mongolia's southern borders.<br /><br />Brigadier Dalvi quoted Commandant General W.D.A Lentaigne, a distinguished British General with an impressive war record, that India could have forestalled the Chinese sequenced annexation of Tibet in 1950 and 1950. The General had predicted that China's next step would be to annex large tracks of land in Ladakh and the North East Frontier Agency. History proved him correct!<br /><br />Brigadier Dalvi then describes Krishna Menon. Menon had studied at the London School of Economics. He obtained his Ph.D. in Glasgow. He was linked to influential British socialists such as Harold Laski and Bertrand Russell. Menon was closely associated with the far left of the Labor Party. In 1938 he toured Spain, then in the throes of civil war between the leftist Republicans and rightist Nationalists, arguing the case for the left.<br /><br />Brigadier Dalvi mentions sources that described Menon as a Fabian Socialist or outright Communist. Menon had repeatedly advocated the case for the People's Republic of China at the United Nations in the late 1950s in the face of strenuous opposition from the Eisenhower administration. Indo-American relations plummeted to a new low.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114425048112358733?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rajanoreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1144226560802259352006-04-05T01:21:00.000-07:002006-04-05T01:42:40.910-07:00US Secy of State, Condoleeza Rice, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/04/AR2006040401865.html">heads to Capitol Hill</a> today to argue in favor of the US-India nuclear deal and address concerns from lawmakers. We will watch her testimony with interest.<br /><br />Another <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/02/AR2006040201315.html">article</a> details the dealmaking behind the scenes. We credit Rice and Bush with the vision to reshape the world and the courage to move away from tired, old thinking. We credit the Indian negotiators for holding firm on its strategic program. This deal is good for India, the US, and the world.<br /><br />Meanwhile, we are disappointed by some members of the India caucus who <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1664180,001301790001.htm">oppose</a> this bill before the debate has even begun. These fair weather friends must be weeded out. Support on this bill must be the litmus-test of friendship with India.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114422656080225935?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Pragmaticnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1144430548671244502006-04-05T01:20:00.000-07:002006-04-09T03:01:47.966-07:00It is difficult to summarize a complex sequence of events in a single post. There are many versions to a story. Each side has its own interpretation. The views below are expressed in my individual capacity. I have simplified the narrative in the interests of brevity.<br /><br />The word "Sri Lanka" is derived from the Sanskrit "the resplendent isle". The country has an area of 25,000 square miles and a reported population of 19 million. The country has not had a complete census since 1981. In that census, the Sinhalese constituted 72.9% of the population, the indigenous "Sri Lankan Tamils" constituted 12.6%, the Muslims (a separate ethnic group that largely speaks Tamil) constituted 7.4%, while the "Indian Tamils" (who were the descendents of indentured labor who had immigrated in the 1800s) constituted 5.6%.<br /><br />Sri Lanka obtained its independence in 1948 - six months after the British withdrew from India. Inspired by Jinnah, the indigenous "Sri Lankan Tamils" had demanded weighted representation in the legislature in the immediate prelude to independence. The ethnic polarization had begun. Sri Lanka proceeded to strip the "Indian Tamils" of their citizenship in 1949. The then Government of Don Stephen Senanayake was unabashedly pro-American.<br /><br />Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike campaigned on a platform of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism in 1956. He won the elections and replaced English as the official language of the country with Sinhalese. Many "Sri Lankan Tamils" vociferously opposed the move and demanded parity of status between Sinhalese and Tamil. The parallels with East Pakistan in the 1950s were remarkable.<br /><br />Assassinated by a Buddhist monk in 1959, Bandaranaike was eventually succeeded by his wife, Sirimavo Bandaranaike. In the Sino-Indian border dispute in 1962, she cautiously edged towards the Chinese position on the case. She managed to persuade India to take back half the island's "Indian Tamil" population. Lal Bahadur Shastri was only too keen to wean away Sri Lanka from the growing Chinese links in the aftermath of the 1962 Sino-Indian war.<br /><br />1971 marked the Sinhalese youth insurrection driven by unemployment and landlessness. Mrs. Bandaranaike crushed the revolt and declared emergency. An estimated 20,000 Sinhalese youth had died. Pakistani ships and planes refueled in Colombo enroute to Dhaka in the Bangladesh war of independence in 1971. Sirimavo introduced affirmative action to encourage Sinhalese intake into the university system and Government jobs. This in turn precipitated the Tamil revolt.<br /><br />Junius Richard Jayewardene won the elections in Sri Lanka in 1977. Indira Gandhi expressed concern at the pro-American tilt of Sri Lankan foreign policy in 1979. The United States had sought refueling facilities for its airforce and navy in Sri Lanka, had reportedly expressed interest in the strategic port of Trincomalee, and had requested to set up a Voice of America relay station to beam news to the Indian subcontinent. India viewed the VoA station as an intelligence gathering device. This alarmed Mrs. Gandhi all too aware of the rapprochement between the United States and China, the traditional close links between the United States and Pakistan, not to mention the coup in Bangladesh in 1975 that overthrew the pro-Indian Mujib-ur-Rahman.<br /><br />The anti-Tamil pogroms in 1977, 1981 and 1983 had led to the death of many Tamils, arson attacks on Tamil businesses and the flight of Tamils from Sinhalese majority areas of the island. Tamil youth groups responded with bomb attacks, assassinations and murder of Sinhalese. Bank robberies financed Tamil militancy. Several traveled to Lebanon, Libya and Syria for training. Mrs. Gandhi saw this as an opportunity to out-flank the increasingly pro-American Jayewardene regime. She proceeded to support Tamil militancy to avoid the perceived encirclement of India by pro-American regimes. This had the added advantage of ensuring electoral support in Tamil Nadu that had been inflammed by events in Sri Lanka.<br /><br />India armed, aided and abetted several Tamil groups in the early 1980s. The LTTE was the only group that chose to be independent of Indian influence. Its leadership had temporarily moved to India and had received some training. But it soon returned to the island unlike other militant groups.<br /><br />Both the Sri Lankan military and the Tamil Tigers carried out mass murders of Tamil and Sinhalese villagers. There were acts of terrorism. Colombo gradually lost control of Jaffna. It turned to Israel for support which trained its military and adviced the arming of Muslim home guards to neutralize Tamil militancy in the island's east. The Muslim home guards attacked Tamil villages in the East and the LTTE responded with brutal murder of entire Muslim congregations at prayer. The situation had grown out of control.<br /><br />Mrs. Gandhi was assassinated in 1984. Rajiv Gandhi attempted to enforce a negotiated settlement on the island. Jayewardene acquiesced by agreeing to a land mark constitutional amendment in 1987 that recognized Tamil as an official language on par with Sinhalese. He devolved power to Tamil majority areas through the establishment of provincial councils. India in return had to enforce the cease-fire. India proceeded to disarm Tamil militant groups. It succeeded in all instances except with regards to the Tamil Tigers. The Tigers took on India with ferocity.<br /><br />India lacked a unified command and control structure in the island. The Indian military was caught between the politics of the Ministry of External Affairs, the state government of Tamil Nadu and India's Research and Analysis Wing. Wounded Tamil Tiger cadre were shipped to Tamil Nadu for medical treatment while simultaneously fighting India. The LTTE imported arms through Tamil Nadu to sustain its battle against Indian forces.<br /><br />The presence of Indian troops in the island precipitated the second Sinhalese youth uprising between 1987 and 1989. The Australian Human Rights Commission had estimated that 60,000 Sinhalese youth died fighting the Jayewardene administration in protest at the perceived capitulation of the Government to India.<br /><br />Jayewardene ended his two term limit in 1988. Premadasa succeeded him and promptly demanded the withdrawal of Indian forces. The LTTE entered into a strategic alliance with the Premadasa regime. Colombo and the Tamil Tigers declared a cease-fire. Colombo armed the Tigers to fight the IPKF. The LTTE imported weapons and ammunition through the port of Colombo.<br /><br />Rajiv had lost the elections in 1989 and V.P. Singh agreed to the Premadasa demand to withdraw. The last Indian troops left the island in March, 1990. 1,000 Indian soldiers had died between 1987 and 1990 fighting the Tamil rebels in the island. The LTTE was to later boast that they had defeated the world's fourth most powerful military.<br /><br />The LTTE resumed hostilities against Premadasa in June, 1990. The LTTE assassinated Rajiv Gandhi in the run-up to the 1991 Indian elections to forestall the return of the Indian military to the island. It assassinated Premadasa in 1993. This brought one chapter of the island's murky and bloodied politics to a close.<br /><br />The LTTE and the Sri Lankan military continued to fight massive conventional battles in the late 1990s. 65,000 people are estimated to have died in the Tamil insurrection. The LTTE formed a naval wing, an incipient air wing, an illicit mercantile shipping wing and illicit real estate operations overseas to raise funds. India abandoned open intervention in the island's politics and opted for more subtle behind-the-scene maneuvers.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114443054867124450?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rajanoreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1143961112513840222006-04-04T19:00:00.000-07:002006-04-05T00:36:02.463-07:00These are random thoughts of mine based on previous reading. I do not refer to any specific text per se.<br /><br />The history of the Marxists in India has been one of repeated betrayal of the country. They have let India down time and again when it came to the clash of interests with the Soviet Union or China. Their political loyalties lay outside.<br /><br />M.K. Gandhi broad-based the Indian National Congress to include the teeming masses belonging to all ethnic, caste and religious groups in the anti-colonial freedom struggle. To quote B.R. Nanda "From a three day Christmas week picnic of the upper-middle class in one of the principal cities of India, it became a mass organization with its roots in small towns and villages". The Indian Marxists never had this rural base. There's was an urbanized elite leadership.<br /><br />Stalin entered into a pact with Hitler in 1939. The understanding reached between the two was for Germany to annex western Poland while the Soviets annex eastern Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and parts of Finland. It was a territorial demarcation of war spoils between Europe's two most expansionist and authoritarian regimes. The Community Party of India then supported the independence struggle with a series of blitzkrieg trade union action, shut downs, gheraos, strikes and sabotage which crippled industrial activity. The railway workers, the sailors, the dockers and the textile workers belonging to the Marxist trade unions led the strikes. The intent was to weaken the colonial hold on the Indian economy and open a third front against Britain given that Stalin and Hilter had joined on an anti-western platform.<br /><br />However, Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. German troops had reached the outskirts of Moscow by December that year. The Soviet Union had suffered unparalleled destruction and did an immediate policy reversal to join the allied war effort. The Communist Party of India changed track in tandem. It decried the Indian freedom struggle as weakening the international struggle against fascism, a movement which the Marxists had initially allied with. The Communists pulled out of the freedom struggle. M.K. Gandhi had launched the Quit India Movement in the summer of 1942. The Communists turned informants and helped the colonial authorities to identify and imprison the entire leadership of the freedom struggle. The Indian Marxists supported the British in this crucial interlude given the new Soviet-British alliance against Hitler.<br /><br />M.K. Gandhi and the Congress hierarchy were behind bars between 1942 and 1945. The Congress had convincingly won the 1937 elections while the Muslim League had suffered a devastating defeat at the hands of the Congress in all Muslim majority provinces of pre-partition India except East Bengal. While the Congress leadership had been imprisoned, Jinnah was free to organize the Muslim League and strengthen its holds over sections of the Muslim population of British India. The fortunes of the League rose between 1942 and 1945. The Marxists meanwhile supported the ideological case for partition arguing that the Muslim population was entitled to self-determination. This was interesting given the Soviet Union's own suppression of Muslims in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Stalin had deported the Chechens and Tartars to Siberia en-masse!<br /><br />The British partitioned India in 1947. Pakistan immediately expelled its Marxists who fled to India!<br /><br />Nehru, a self-proclaimed socialist, did not oppose Communist China's annexation of Tibet in 1950. Tibet had an area of 471,700 square miles. China was then fighting the United States in the Korean war and Nehru could have easily retained the colonial-era Indian military presence in Lhasa and consolidated it further in order to ensure Tibetan independence. Furthermore, Nehru supported Peking's cause in the United Nations. China responded by annexing the 15,000 square mile Aksai Chin in what remained of Indian-held Kashmir in 1957. Pakistan had earlier annexed Baltistan, Gilgit, Hunza and Muzafarabad that had an area of 32,000 square miles.<br /><br />The Nehru administration was not even aware of that development in Aksai Chin while his Marxist Minister of Defence, Krishna Menon continued to support China in international fora such as the United Nations. Taiwan then occupied China's seat at the Security Council. The Indian Marxists later defended Chinese actions in Aksai Chin pointing out that enclave's historical links with Chinese-held East Turkestan, now called Xinjiang.<br /><br />China invaded the North East Frontier Agency with an area of 32,000 square miles in 1962 and then quite as suddenly withdrew its troops. The road to Assam was open and Nehruvian India lay prostrate. The Indian Marxists defended Chinese actions on the alleged grounds that NEFA had historical links with Tibet. Not one of them questioned China's initial hold on East Turkestan and Tibet on historical grounds to begin with. China had no valid territorial claim on either under modern international law. China detonated the nuclear device in October, 1964. The Indian Marxists welcomed that step as part of the global war against international imperialism! Yet, when India exploded its second nuclear device in May, 1998, the Indian Marxists opposed that as an unnecessary belligerence.<br /><br />The Indian Marxists have repeatedly let India down. They do not have Indian national interests at heart. They currently control the Departments of History in major Indian universities such as JNU. With that platform, they are able to twist the past to suit their nebulous aims in the present. I refer here to Habib Irfan, Harbans Mukhia, K.N. Panikkar, R.S. Sharma, Romila Thapar and Sarvapalli Gopal. Other individuals such as Arundhati Roy, Barkha Datta, Brinda Karat, Mani Shankhar Aiyer, N. Ram and Praful Bidwai in India, and Meera Nanda, Sarmila Bose, Sugato Bose and Sumantro Bose overseas continue to occupy the intellectual and media space in a disproportionate manner. They leverage this vantage point to weaken India!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114396111251384022?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rajanoreply@blogger.com48tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1144148023492077232006-04-04T05:50:00.000-07:002006-04-04T04:20:46.673-07:00The blog had covered incipient <a href="http://secular-right.blogspot.com/2005/10/sino-japanese-billiards-indic.html">Sino-Japanese tensions</a> in a previous post. Japanese Prime Minister <a href="http://secular-right.blogspot.com/2005/10/indian-eye-on-koizumi.html">Koizumi</a> had defied China on several issues.<br /><br />Cabinet spokesman, <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060404/wl_afp/japanchinadiplomacy_060404062247;_ylt=AtL4GekRlG39L4Ykrev8Sw4iANEA;_ylu=X3oDMTA2ZGZwam4yBHNlYwNmYw--">Shinzo Abe</a> is increasingly viewed as the front runner to succeed Koizumi in September this year. Mr. Abe accused China today of destabilizing Asia with its military expenditure. He reported that Chinese military budget had registered a two-digit annual growth in the past 18 years. He blamed China for having a democracy and human rights deficit and denied the existence of the rule of law in that country. This was a harsh attack on China. Mr. Abe urged that the foreign ministers of Australia, India, Japan and the United States convene each year given shared threat perceptions and democratic values.<br /><br />Another candidate in the run-up to replace Koizumi is Taro Aso, Minister of Foreign Affairs. Not to be outdone, he reiterated that China's military build-up was a threat to Asia. The Japanese Defence Agency had released a study last month on Chinese military expenditure. It had expressed concern of the allegedly under-reported increases in Chinese defence expenditure estimated at US$ 28 billion by the World Bank in 2003.<br /><br />A major point of contention between China and Japan has been Prime Minister Koizumi's symbolic visits to the Yasukuni Shinto Shrine that honors Japan's 2.5 million war dead each year. China had sharply reacted to such visits alleging that Japan had not renounced its history of aggression directed at China during World War 2.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114414802349207723?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rajanoreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1144067103905769292006-04-03T07:25:00.000-07:002006-04-03T05:25:04.036-07:00<a href="http://secular-right.blogspot.com/2005/11/iran-reconsidered_30.html">Iran</a> has been in the news over its reported nuclear program. On March 31, 17,000 elite revolutionary guards began <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060403/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_missile;_ylt=AqsAqXEil.aX8lAILinhu3qbOrgF;_ylu=X3oDMTA4NTMzazIyBHNlYwMxNjk2">naval maneuvers</a> in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. Iran tested the Fajr-3 missile that day. The missile is intended to avoid radar and hit several targets with multiple war heads. Iran tested a second missile on April 2 firing a high speed torpedo intended to deter surface and submarine threats to its shipping. The new torpedo, the "hoot" is reported to have a speed of 223 miles per hour. It is reportedly as quick as the world's fastest submarine missile - the Russian made Shkval developed in 1995 - in fact three to four times faster than a normal torpedo. Teheran announced that it would test <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060403/wl_nm/iran_wargames_dc_2;_ylt=AngadQlGGDyVs.blLppBonQUewgF;_ylu=X3oDMTA2ZGZwam4yBHNlYwNmYw--">another missile</a> today and more tomorrow.<br /><br />Iran already possesses the ballistic Shahab 3 missile that can hit targets within a range of 1,200 miles. This includes Israel. Shahab 3 is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. Iran has invested in a nascent <a href="http://secular-right.blogspot.com/2005/11/iran-and-its-satellites.html">space program</a>. It is still unclear whether these steps represent genuine advances in military technology or are mere gestures of defiance. They are likely however to provoke the United States whose Naval Fifth Fleet is based in the Persian Gulf.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114406710390576929?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rajanoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1143871768720954642006-04-01T00:05:00.000-08:002006-04-01T03:51:55.633-08:00<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060328/ap_on_re_mi_ea/mideast_religious_freedom">Associated Press</a> had an insightful article on the freedom to choose one's religion in the Middle East and North Africa . Unlike India, Japan, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand, almost all states in the Middle East and North Africa criminalize Christian missionary activity. Algeria, Tunisia and Turkey are the only three countries in the region that permit an individual to convert from Islam to any other religion.<br /><br />Lebanon is a secular state that once had a Christian majority. The Christian population appears to have now declined to 35% due to an exodus. Muslim religious authorities forbid the change of religion in Lebanon and will not legalize a marriage between a Christian man and a Muslim woman. The reverse is allowed since the Prophet Mohammed had 12 wives, one of whom was a Christian. Muslim Lebanese women travel to Cyprus to marry a non-Muslim man and register this marriage upon their return to Lebanon.<br /><br />The Shari'ah considers the conversion of any Muslim as apostasy that is punishable by death. According to Palestinian law, Muslim women who seek to divorce their husbands who convert to Christianity have only to report the matter to a Palestinian court to have the marriage nullified. Muslim women who wish to divorce the husbands in Jordan who converted to Christianity can report the matter to court and the courts will convict the man of apostasy. A Muslim man who adopted Christianity in 2004 was convicted, fired from his job and had his marriage annulled.<br /><br />The law of Israel forbids organized Christian missionary activity amongst Jews.<br /><br />Sa'udi law forbids conversion from Islam and does not permit the public practice of any religion but Islam within the kingdom. Missionaries are not allowed entry and the law forbids the construction of churches in Sa'udi Arabia. Riyadh has a different scale of compensation for those murdered depending on the religion of the victim. Families of Muslim male victims are entitled to maximum compensation under the law while the families of Hindu women victims are paid the least - a fraction of the compensation received by a Muslim male's family.<br /><br />In May, 2005, a Muslim who converted to Christianity in Egypt was charged for contempt for religion, a charge that entails a jail sentence of 5 years. The man however has not been charged and remains in indefinite custody. A court convicted a Shi'ite Muslim who adopted Christianity in Kuwait but did not punish him since the criminal court did not spell out a punishment. Sudan enforces the death penalty for Muslims who convert to Christianity. A Sudanese Muslim who allegedly converted in Khartoum but denied it upon arrest remains in prison and has been tortured according the United States Department of State.<br /><br />The case of <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060323/wl_nm/religion_afghan_reaction_dc">Abdul Rahman</a>, the 41year old Afghan who converted to Islam and was referred to an Afghan court for possible execution hit the world headlines in the last fortnight. Even Amin Farhang, the Afghan Economic Minister who had lived in Germany for 22 years before returning to Kabul had defended possible prosecution arguing that Afghanistan can not switch suddenly from one extreme to the other" and the added that the right to convert was impossible in a land that continues to uphold the Islamic punishment for apostasy.<br /><br />Afghanistan was forced to release Abdul Rahman given the avalanche of international criticism. As Bush had remarked on March 22, "It is deeply troubling, that a country we helped liberate would hold a person to account because they chose a particular religion over another". Or as the New York Times put it, "If Afghanistan wants to return to the Taleban days, it can do so without the help of the United States". The Anglican Archbishop of Canada had mentioned "I'm absolutely horrified to think that this kind of fanatical literalism would be applied to this time and age". The Milan-based newspaper - Corriere dell Serra - added that "western states helping Afghanistan should launch a movement to reform Islam there".<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114387176872095464?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rajanoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1143903764502713412006-04-01T00:00:00.000-08:002006-04-01T11:35:07.933-08:00I largely rely on Robert Eric Frykenburg, "Elite Formation in Nineteenth Century South India: An Interpretative Analysis" in "International Association of Tamil Research Proceedings," First International Conference Seminar of Tamil Studies: Malaysia 1968. I will confine myself to the material dealing with the time period from the 6th century CE to the 17th century CE. I have simplified the subject in the interests of brevity.<br /><br />Frykenburg explains that "centuries of ceaseless contact, collisions and pressures between increasing numbers of groups" helped define South Indian society. The nuclear areas of human settlement and land control date back to the Pallava-Chola period. South India had highly organized villages.<br /><br />There were three types of villages. They were inter-linked and inter-dependent. One produced the agricultural surplus, the other sponsored learning and culture while the third was centered on industry and commerce. "Representative" territorial assemblies called the "Periya-Nadu" controlled dense clusters of agricultural villages dominated by the elite agrarian castes. These included the Vellalars, Mudaliars, Kammas, Reddys, Nairs and Vokkaligas depending on the region. There were the privileged and tax-free Brahman-dominated agraharams that served as sanctuaries of piety and learning. These were largely located in Kanchipuram, Madurai, Tanjore, Tirupati and Uduppi. The third category was the <a href="http://secular-right.blogspot.com/2005/11/indic-mercantilism.html">mercantile </a>villages of the great trading guilds of early medieval South India. This included the Ayyavole of Karnataka, the Manigramam of Tamil Nadu and Chettinad.<br /><br />"Primitive" peoples occupied the largely forested areas outside these "nuclear areas". There was a "continual tension between the barbarian darkness of the forest and the cultural enlightenment of each settled region". The Periya Nadu villages absorbed the forested terrain over the centuries and integrated the jungle peoples. These communities were relegated to the mass of untouchables that comprises 15% of South Indian society today.<br /><br />The events of the 13th century CE shook this order. Pandyan warriors, allied to the Sinhalese, defeated the Chola Empire. Muslim incursions from the Delhi Sultanate led to the southern movement of Telugu refugees and the establishment of the Vijayanagara Empire. The Reddy warriors and the Niyogi Brahmans formed the new elite. A section of the Chola Vellalar immigrated to Jaffna to establish a militaristic kingdom there in 1215 CE permanently displacing the Sinhalese of northern Sri Lankan in the process.<br /><br />The subsequent defeat of the Vijayanagar Empire at the battle of Talikota in 1565 CE led to the emergence of Telugu ruled enclaves such as the Nayaks of Tanjore - whose aristocracy later headed the last ruling dynasty of the Sinhalese kingdom of Kandy in the 1700s CE. Other Telugu administered enclaves included Mysore, Madurai and Ramnad. Meanwhile, the Sultans of Bijapur and Golconda that had replaced Vijayanagara hired Muslims nobles from the wider Islamic world to fill the highest ranks of their kingdoms. They failed to address the shortage of Muslim administrators and foot soldiers.<br /><br />The Sultans increasingly turned to the Marathas to make up for the severe manpower deficiency. The Desastha Brahmans became the elite cadre of fiscal and local administrators while the Maratha warriors served as light and irregular cavalry in the Sultanates of the Deccan. This contributed to the swift replacement of the Sultanates in the 17th century by the Maratha Confederacy under Chhatrapati Shivaji. It led to the influx of Marathas into the indigenous elite of South India. The Maratha Naiks replaced the Telugu rulers in the kingdoms of Madurai and Tanjore.<br /><br />The Portuguese appeared on the scene with the annexation of Goa in the 1500s CE. The trade route from the Gangetic plains to the sea - and the wider world beyond financially superseded the land route to Persia. The Marathas controlled the route to Goa and prospered with the economic boom. The Rajputs situated on the overland route to Iran declined due to the lack of transit revenue.<br /><br />The "Dravidian" history of South India is therefore a multi-faceted one. Numerous forces and events beyond the borders shaped it. This rich, inter-connected and fascinating history influenced the elite formation of the nineteenth century which I reserve for another post.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114390376450271341?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rajanoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1143779338169965812006-03-31T00:05:00.000-08:002006-03-30T23:10:07.883-08:00This blog was of the view that <a href="http://secular-right.blogspot.com/2005/12/ariel-sharon.html">Ariel Sharon's </a>vision for the territorial redemarcation of Israel represented the best chance for that country's security in a turbulent region. The redrawing of the borders would ensure the demographic sustainability of the Jewish majority state. While Sharon subsequently fell into coma, this weeks election results conclusively establishes that Sharon's vision is destined to reshape Israel and by extension the Middle East.<br /><br />Sharon and Olmert had formed the centrist Kadima party in November, 2005. <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060329/wl_mideast_afp/mideastisraelvote_060329053026">Kadima</a> won 28 seats of the 120 seat knesset in this week's elections under the system of proportional representation. While significantly lower than the initial forecast of the opinion polls, Kadima is nonetheless poised to form the next government in coalition with the Labor party that won 20 seats on its center-left welfare platform<br /><br />The hard-line Likud came a humiliating fifth place with just 11 seats. Netanyahu's Likud had hoped to cash in on Jewish fears in the aftermath of the Hamas victory at the Palestinian polls in January. It had vociferously opposed any withdrawal from the West Bank and campaigned on a neo-Thatcherite welfare-cutting agenda.The Ultra-Orthodox Shas Party with 13 seats and the Ultranationalist Yisrael Beitenu with 12 seats are likely to back Olmert.<br /><br />Israel will have a coalition government as it has had since 1949. While Kadima is likely to drive the peace agenda, Labor is likely to define the social and economic policy of the new Government on a leftist platform.<br /><br />Olmert intends to redefine <a href="http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article354485.ece">Israel's borders</a> by 2010 with or without Palestinian concurrence. The plan would uproot 70,000 Jewish settlers from the West Bank and retain territory west of the 450 mile security barrier that cuts deep into the West Bank. This would include 250,000 Israeli settlers within Israeli jurisdiction, retain control of East Jerusalem and annex agricultural land. The proposal would still allow for a contiguous, sizeable and heavily populated Palestinian state. The Israeli military would remain in the evacuated areas until a comprehensive peace deal is signed with the Palestinians. The Sharon agenda therefore remains salient.<br /><br />The Palestinian authority under the leadership of President Mahmoud Abbas has now called for the resumption of the negotiation process. Meanwhile, Ismail Haniya, the incoming Hamas Prime Minister has insisted that Israel can not fix the borders unilaterally. Kadima's plans to remove Jewish settlements is likely to be welcomed by the international quartet of the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia. Tony Blair had commended Olmert's victory as one that "changes the shape of Israeli politics". Israel is in for eventful times.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114377933816996581?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rajanoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1143732433356961392006-03-30T07:25:00.000-08:002006-03-30T07:27:13.553-08:00Apologies for no posts over the past week.<br /><br />Have been traveling in the Middle East and engaging local executives at the highest level in very revealing business discussions.<br /><br />Will write about overall impressions shortly.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114373243335696139?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1143741371567322202006-03-30T07:15:00.000-08:002006-03-30T21:30:56.676-08:00Let me join Primary Red in expressing regret at our collective absence. The flu hit me bad in hot and humid Colombo.<br /><br />I just went through Robert Eric Frykenberg's "Religion, Nationalism and Hindu Fundamentalism: The Challenge to Indian Unity." in Ethnic Studies Report, Vol. XI, No.2 - Colombo, Sri Lanka. Frykenberg attacks Mohandas K. Gandhi as a "latent Hindu fundamentalist" and as "No friend of democracy, representative government, social or political equality, nor even of constitutionalism...". He dismisses Gandhi as "a caricature invented by Louis Fisher, dramatized by Richard Attenborough, and proudly subsidized by Indira Gandhi's government...", who in addition "so completely alienated" the Muslims". He adds that Gandhi had a "closed Hindu perspective....". Frykenberg's rhetoric can be refuted in depth but given the massive nature of such a project, I will address select points.<br /><br />M.K Gandhi did not alienate the Muslim population in pre-partition India. He helped integrate them. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, to mention a few, supported Gandhi's endeavors to retain a united India. Gandhi had conceived of the Khilafat movement as far back as 1919 to mobilize Muslims and Hindus on a shared platform against the Raj. The intent was to reverse the eviction of the Ottoman Caliph although the agitation unfortunately deteriorated into an anti-Hindu pogrom in the Malabar.<br /><br />Mohandas envisioned India as a commonwealth of village republics. To depict him as anti-democratic is devious. He worked against social and political injustice. He organized a campaign in 1924-25 to combat caste discrimination against untouchables in Vaikom, Travancore. Gandhi resisted the insidious British proposal to introduce separate electorates on the basis of caste. He correctly viewed this as a prelude to even further political fragmentation. He recommended that seats be reserved for untouchable caste candidates running for legislative elections in otherwise joint electorates.<br /><br />The Mahatma attempted a process of inter-religious dialogue. He supported the Sikh struggle in 1921-22 to re-take the management of their shrines from the Hinduized Mahants. While Gandhi focussed less on Black Africans during his South African sojourn, subsequent statements in support of African and African-American rights suggest a person who evolved and learnt with time. Martin Luther King based his thought and political strategy upon Gandhi's example. Nelson Mandel followed suit albeit in a lesser manner. To dismiss Gandhi as caricature ignores the real estimation others had for him. These include George Bernard Shaw, Reverend C.F Andrews and Rabindranath Tagore.<br /><br />Albert Einstein commended Gandhi in the aftermath of Europe's "world war" and holocaust as, "a man who had confronted the brutality of Europe with the dignity of the simple human being, and thus at all times risen superior. Generations to come, it may be, will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth."<br /><br />Gandhi re-introduced the term "harijan" to designate the untouchable castes. This was not an attempt to coopt the untouchable castes into the Hindu framework and make the religion a "permanent majority" as Frykenberg wrongly supposes, given the pre-Gandhian origins of the word "harijana". Ramanuja, the 11th century Vaishnavite philosopher, suggested the Tamil term Tirukulattar (God's people) to dignify the impoverished and oppressed untouchable castes of the Tamil lands. Narasimha Mehta, the Gujarati saint of the 15th century, coined the term "harijana" to refer to the untouchable castes as God's people, in his attempt to reverse the ritual stigma imposed upon them in the name of religion. Gandhi merely continued such endeavors at removing the social humiliation imposed upon the untouchables. Dr. Ambedkar considered this patronizing. But Gandhi had positive intentions. His life was a constant and committed fight against untouchability.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114374137156732220?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rajanoreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1143186102736899492006-03-23T23:30:00.000-08:002006-03-24T00:06:45.570-08:00<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=1674437">Here's</a> a feel-good streaming video clip on India hosted by Diane Sawyer. Tom Friedman's sound-byte captures the essence: <i>"you're seeing 50 years of pent-up aspirations ... if you want to know what India feels like shake a champagne bottle for an hour - remove the cork ... you don't want to be in the way of that cork ... ". </i>Or Freidman again: "<i>to me India is a miracle</i>".The host on education in India - <i>"education is like a form of worship. Parents will skip meals for the kids to go to private school"</i>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114318610273689949?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>libertariannoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1143118931179427212006-03-23T04:40:00.000-08:002006-03-23T09:39:17.206-08:00<em>The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,<br />But in ourselves, that we are underlings.</em><br /><br />Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141)<br /><br /><a href="http://indiauncut.blogspot.com/2006/03/india-1947-iraq-2006.html">Amit</a> links to yet another Peggy Noonan <a href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110008126">masterpiece</a> -- having written for Ronald Reagan, her fluency with words and ideas puts pretenders like <a title="permanent link" href="http://secular-right.blogspot.com/2006/01/arsenic-laced-honey.html">Arundhati Roy</a> to shame.<br /><br />Ms. Noonan has been reading "Freedom at Midnight" -- from which she draws the lesson that political leadership, by construction, isolates even the most well-meaning of leaders from the people they seek to lead. Consequently, they are blinded by an urgent sense of personal and historical mission -- ground realities of the little people figure little in these cosmic calculations.<br /><br />This is why, she concludes, India bled upon partition -- for its leaders (except Gandhi) had no idea of what was about to follow. They were rushing towards their respective trysts with destiny with little regard for the grass they were trampling upon.<br /><br />If, conversely, Mountbatten wasn't in such a hurry to achieve Indian independence, Jinnah might have fallen to TB, the partition might never have happened, and Gandhi -- the singularly towering Indian over two millennia -- might have died peacefully of old age, instead of gunshot wounds.<br /><br />There are parallels here for Iraq. Ms. Noonan is passive-aggressively attacking the (elitist) neoconservative zeal for democratizing Iraq -- and the greater Middle East. Perhaps, she seems to be suggesting, slowing down is a better notion.<br /><br />We don't disagree with a lot of what she has to say. While we are firm believers in neoconservatism and the (Leninist!) idea of "vanguard elites" leading ideological revolutions, we readily concede the structural risk of elitist isolation from the masses -- causing bad decision-making.<br /><br />On India's partition though, we disagree. It wasn't an old man's hidden disease or a dashing Viceroy's bullheadedness, or a democratic idealist's personal ambition that savagely tore India apart -- India split because it could no longer sustain its internal social contradictions that had simmered for hundreds of years ever since Mahmoud swooped down from the mountains near Ghazni.<br /><br />Similar contradictions are now playing out their tandava the world-over.<br /><br />Regardless of Jinnah, Mountbatten, or Nehru, India was therefore likely destined for a tryst with communal bloodletting.<br /><br />Perhaps they could have slowed down this horror -- but it's hard for us to imagine a powerful change of power as we faced in India not leading to this kind of unfortunate rite of passage. What do our readers think?<br /><br />The good news is that, at least in India, this sacrifice became the foundation for our political modernity and, increasingly, our economic prosperity. Also, in secularism -- no matter how flawed our version is -- we began shaping, for the first time, a socio-political construct for seriously reconciling our internal contradictions.<br /><br />Pakistan, on the other hand, has little to show for the horrors it summoned into being. This is why it is likely to suffer the fate of the erstwhile USSR.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114311893117942721?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1143028427155745902006-03-22T03:47:00.000-08:002006-03-23T08:58:10.776-08:00Via Asia Times, Syed Saleem Shahzad warns about a brewing <a href="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HC23Df05.html">Revolution in the Pakistani mountains</a><br /><br />The Taliban, having taken Waziristan, are now slouching towards Islamabad.<br /><br />While war rolls down the mountains, naive <a id="r-1_1105214655" href="http://www.theindiancatholic.com/news_read.asp?nid=1318">Indian students march to Pakistan with letters of peace</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114302842715574590?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1142862684883078842006-03-20T05:48:00.000-08:002006-03-20T05:53:14.446-08:00Via New York Times, <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&oi=news&amp;start=0&num=1&amp;q=http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/20/international/asia/20polio.html%3Fhp%26ex%3D1142830800%26en%3D77bd1cdb5c2ad815%26ei%3D5094%26partner%3Dhomepage">Rumor, Fear and Fatigue Hinder Final Push to End Polio</a><br /><br /><em>BAREILLY, India — The cry went up the moment the </em><a title="Recent and archival health news about Polio." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/poliomyelitis/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier"><em>polio</em></a><em> </em><a title="Recent and archival health news about Vaccination and Immunization." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/vaccinationandimmunization/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier"><em>vaccination</em></a><em> team was spotted — "Hide your children!"</em><br /><em></em><br /><em>Some families slammed doors on the two volunteers going house to house with polio drops in this teeming city's decrepit maze of lanes, saying that they feared the vaccine would sicken or sterilize their children, or simply that they were fed up with the long drive to eradicate polio.</em><br /><br /><em>"We have a lot of other problems, and you don't care about those," shouted one woman from behind a locked door. "All you have is drops. My children get other diseases, and we don't get help."</em><br /><br />This is a real important, and tragic, public health story -- whose epicenter is India's Hindi heartland. A must-read.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114286268488307884?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1142774953617334862006-03-19T05:07:00.000-08:002006-03-19T05:34:34.640-08:00Via The Times of London, <a class="sectionhead" href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25689-2091462,00.html">Now Chinese parents must use set menu to pick baby's name</a><br /><br />We think that denial of even such basic social freedoms as naming one's own children is an act of profound intellectual violence.<br /><br />In free nations like India and US, no Government would even dare think of such profanity.<br /><br />The Chinese State clearly feels it can apply partial tourniquets to its people's thought without amputating national imagination -- imagination being crucial for China's (and everyone else's) prosperity quest.<br /><br />We think this is so arrogantly stupid as to defy description. When a people start walling off portions of their minds -- creating thought zones they may not visit -- they start killing off the only real resource human beings have: their ability to freely imagine their own futures, then visualizing their path to get there.<br /><br />No amount of physical resource-squatting (as the Chinese State is currently engaged in) can possibly overcome the loss of free spaces in the Chinese mind.<br /><br />We have deep, deep sympathy for the plight of China's people, and pray for their eventual liberation from this horrendous tyranny they must now endure.<br /><br />(Hat tip: Huffington Post)<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114277495361733486?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1142773269570924922006-03-19T04:59:00.000-08:002006-03-19T05:03:06.613-08:00Via <em>The Globalist</em>, Professor Prabhu Guptara describes <a href="http://www.theglobalist.com/storyid.aspx?StoryId=5083" target="_self">Why the Next Decade Will Be Neither Chinese Nor Indian </a><br /><br /><em>My choice may be particularly surprising, given that Japan's economy has been dragging for the last 25 or more years, in spite of everything that the Japanese government has tried.</em><br /><em><br />So why am I now putting my money on Japan? Sadly, it is not because I believe that Japan is on the verge of rejecting the cultural limitations imposed by its past.</em><br /><em><br />Rather, it is because of robots! My view of Japan's place in the world through the next couple of decades started changing in mid-summer 2005, when I was one of the over 22 million people who visited the World Expo in Aichi.</em><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114277326957092492?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1142693743138209882006-03-18T06:49:00.000-08:002006-03-18T12:09:39.423-08:00New York City's terrific <a href="http://www.mta.nyc.ny.us/mta/pim/index.html">Poetry In Motion</a> program places poem-placards in the spaces usually reserved for advertisements in subway cars and buses. Perhaps this is a worthy idea for India's unruly public transport system!<br /><br />Do check out <a href="http://www.poetrysociety.org/motion/mapsite/pimpoems/newyork/nyindex.html">ten years worth</a> of great poetry in motion.<br /><br />Anyway, last night, this blogger was rushing from work to catch a movie -- subways are the fastest way around town in Gotham -- and caught Robert Hayden's classic <a class="l" onmousedown="return clk(this.href,'res','3','')" href="http://www.english.upenn.edu/~hbeavers/281/hayden-sundays.html">Those Winter Sundays</a> on the subway wall.<br /><br /><em>Sundays too my father got up early<br />and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,<br />then with cracked hands that ached<br />from labor in the weekday weather made<br />banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.<br /><br />I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.<br />When the rooms were warm, he'd call,<br />and slowly I would rise and dress,<br />fearing the chronic angers of that house,<br /><br />Speaking indifferently to him,<br />who had driven out the cold<br />and polished my good shoes as well.<br />What did I know, what did I know<br />of love's austere and lonely offices?</em><br /><br />Reminded us of <a href="http://rageagainsthefishbowl.blogspot.com/2006/03/unpoem-for-my-father.html">this</a> magnificent effort linked on <a href="http://indiauncut.blogspot.com/2006/03/on-poetry-online.html">India Uncut</a>.<br /><br />Great stuff, indeed.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114269374313820988?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1142668859856619562006-03-17T23:23:00.000-08:002006-03-18T00:00:59.950-08:00Pakistan's foreign minister <a href="http://news.ft.com/cms/s/674bb44c-b51f-11da-aa90-0000779e2340.html">demands</a> "equality of treatment" from the US on the nuclear deal. George McGovern, 1972 Democratic Presidential candidate, <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/14121723.htm">writes</a> that US is "maintaining flagrant double standards regarding nuclear proliferation".<br /><br />We agree that this is clearly a case of double standards i.e. different standards for India than for the others (Pakistan, Iran, North Korea).<br /><br />So what? In business, or in the business of geopolitics, not everyone is equal. The powerful have different standards. The 5 nuclear powers in NPT have different standards than the others. The same 5, on the security council, have different standards than others. America, with its pre-emptive strike policy, among other things, holds itself to a different standard than others. Large businesses get preferential treatment over small businesses all the time. One may not like it, but it is the inevitable consequence of power.<br /><br />India is an emerging power, no matter how you look at it. Pakistan needs to realize it never was, nor will be, equal to India by any measure. Liberal critics' arguments about geo-political equality are as naively unrealistic as communism was with its misplaced sense of individual equality.<br /><br />These folks need to shed their dreamy, abstract notions of equality and wake up to the real world of double standards.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114266885985661956?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Pragmaticnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1142630287163683382006-03-17T13:11:00.000-08:002006-03-17T13:18:07.290-08:00<a class="l" onmousedown="return clk(this.href,'res','1','')" href="http://counterterror.typepad.com/">The Counterterrorism Blog</a> carries the following post:<br /><br /><a href="http://counterterror.typepad.com/the_counterterrorism_blog/2006/03/sebastian_junge.html">Sebastian Junger Revisits Afghanistan and Points Finger at Pakistan</a><br /><br /><em>... he fingers elements in the Pakistan army and intelligence service ("ISI") as critical sponsors in the resurging Taliban activity. He notes that while Pakistan has captured and turned over key Al Qaeda operatives, it hasn't turned over a single mid- or high-ranking Taliban official to the U.S. since the attacks. Junger talked with a former Taliban government official with current knowledge of that assistance. He writes that some Pakistani military are training Taliban recruits. The Taliban official gave him the name and phone number of an ISI agent who brings recruits from a region in Afghanistan, inserts them into training camps in western Pakistan, and then sends them back to fight. Junger also writes that the ex-Taliban told him that the Paks are receiving as much money from Osama Bin Laden to not capture him as they are taking from the United States to catch him. If true, this claim indicates both a level of duplicity that must start near the top of the Pakistani government, and a level of resources available to Bin Laden that is extremely high.</em><br /><br />How did a society so similar to our own go so horribly wrong? It is inconceivable to us that this tragic country can survive its own catastrophic choices for much longer.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114263028716368338?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1142619074245580862006-03-17T10:05:00.000-08:002006-03-17T10:18:34.703-08:00Via Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, <a href="http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/entertainment/s_434268.html">China Curbing "American Idol" Copycat Shows That "Undermine Socialist Values"</a><br /><br />If the comrades in Beijing are worried about TV shows, their grip on power is surely less secure than the world imagines.<br /><br />Also, if shows like American Idol, and Indian Idol, undermine socialist values, then shouldn't we have all channels broadcasting this stuff all the time!!<br /><br />Clearly our contempt for these shows that celebrate bourgeois kitsch was greatly mistaken!!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114261907424558086?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1142516644025552472006-03-16T05:39:00.000-08:002006-03-16T05:44:04.143-08:00This morning, US has issued an updated version of its <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2006/">national security strategy</a><br /><br />Among other interesting themes, here is what it says on India's neghbourhood:<br /><br /><em>We have made great strides in transforming America’s relationship with India, a major power that shares our commitment to freedom, democracy, and rule of law. In July 2005, we signed a bold agreement – a roadmap to realize the meaningful cooperation that had eluded our two nations for decades. India now is poised to shoulder global obligations in cooperation with the United States in a way befitting a major power.</em><br /><br /><em>Progress with India has been achieved even as the United States has improved its strategic relationship with Pakistan. For decades, outsiders acted as if good relations with India and Pakistan were mutually exclusive. This Administration has shown that improved relations with each are possible and can help India and Pakistan make strides toward a lasting peace between themselves. America’s relationship with Pakistan will not be a mirror image of our relationship with India. Together, our relations with the nations of South Asia can serve as a foundation for deeper engagement throughout Central Asia. Increasingly, Afghanistan will assume its historical role as a land-bridge between South and Central Asia, connecting these two vital regions.</em><br /><br />On China, it says:<br /><br /><em>The United States encourages China to continue down the road of reform and openness, because in this way China’s leaders can meet the legitimate needs and aspirations of the Chinese people for liberty, stability, and prosperity. As economic growth continues, China will face a growing demand from its own people to follow the path of East Asia’s many modern democracies, adding political freedom to economic freedom. Continuing along this path will contribute to regional and international security.</em><br /><em><br />China’s leaders must realize, however, that they cannot stay on this peaceful path while holding on to old ways of thinking and acting that exacerbate concerns throughout the region and the world. These old ways include:</em><br /><br /><em>Continuing China’s military expansion in a non-transparent way;</em><br /><em><br />Expanding trade, but acting as if they can somehow “lock up” energy supplies around the world or seek to direct markets rather than opening them up – as if they can follow a mercantilism borrowed from a discredited era; and<br /></em><br /><em>Supporting resource-rich countries without regard to the misrule at home or misbehavior abroad of those regimes</em>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114251664402555247?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1142461378884008012006-03-15T14:12:00.000-08:002006-03-15T14:25:30.943-08:00In 9/11's aftermath, Dr. Noam Chomsky has been cited frequently by the opponents of the war on terror to lend their -- frankly embarrassing -- complaints some intellectual weight.<br /><br />Dr. Chomsky has been articulate and vicious in his critiques of America. In many ways, he is a more learned and American version of <a href="http://secular-right.blogspot.com/2006/02/landmines-under-trucks.html">Arundhati Roy</a>.<br /><br />It is instructive, therefore, for some of Dr. Chomsky's -- particularly Muslim -- supporters to learn of the nature of ideas he has endorsed in relation to the recently deceased Slobodan Milosevic's genocide of Muslims in the Balkans.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2084190,00.html">Here</a> is David Aaronovitch in the Times of London:<br /><br /><em>Recently, after a published interview with the antiwar intellectual Noam Chomsky, The Guardian erased the article from its website and apologized to Professor Chomsky for the interviewer's suggestion that either he, or Diana Johnstone, an author whose work he praised, had denied that the Srebrenica massacre had taken place.<br /><br />This correction was entirely wrong. In the sense that the world understood there to have been an act amounting to genocide at Srebrenica -- ie, an act that we would have been justified in attempting to prevent by force -- Johnstone certainly, and Chomsky implicitly, had most certainly denied the massacre. In Johnstone's book, Fools' Crusade, and elsewhere she had argued that the numbers of deaths had been exaggerated, that many supposed victims were in fact still alive somewhere, that Srebrenica had actually been an armed camp, that the Bosnians had deliberately let it be overrun hoping for a anti-Serb propaganda coup, that there had been some regrettable "revenge" killings, as can happen in wartime. Anything and everything, indeed, except the truth -- which was that 7,000-8,000 Muslim men were killed by the Bosnian Serb forces precisely because they were Muslim men. Johnstone argued this, and Chomsky commended Johnstone. But why?<br /><br />Most charitably we may understand this by thinking that Chomsky sees the road from Srebrenica to Iraq just as I do. If Bosnia was the betrayal through inaction and appeasement, Srebrenica the consequence and Kosovo the determination not to let it happen again, then the line runs clear.<br /></em><br />(Hat tip: <a href="http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/03/the_meaning_of_.html">Andrew Sullivan</a>)<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114246137888400801?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1142435639601946462006-03-15T07:06:00.000-08:002006-03-15T07:13:59.766-08:00New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/11/international/middleeast/11sultan.html?ex=1299733200&en=d13886daba5e586f&amp;ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&amp;emc=rss">profiles</a> Dr. Wafa Sultan who three weeks ago was <em>a largely unknown Syrian-American psychiatrist living outside Los Angeles, nursing a deep anger and despair about her fellow Muslims.</em><br /><em></em><br /><em>Today, thanks to an unusually blunt and provocative interview on Al Jazeera television on Feb. 21, she is an international sensation, hailed as a fresh voice of reason by some, and by others as a heretic and infidel who deserves to die.</em><br /><em></em><br /><em>In the interview, which has been viewed on the Internet more than a million times and has reached the e-mail of hundreds of thousands around the world, Dr. Sultan bitterly criticized the Muslim clerics, holy warriors and political leaders who she believes have distorted the teachings of Muhammad and the Koran for 14 centuries.</em><br /><br /><em>She said the world's Muslims, whom she compares unfavorably with the Jews, have descended into a vortex of self-pity and violence.</em><br /><br /><em>Dr. Sultan said the world was not witnessing a clash of religions or cultures, but a battle between modernity and barbarism, a battle that the forces of violent, reactionary Islam are destined to lose.</em><br /><em></em><br /><em>Perhaps her most provocative words on Al Jazeera were those comparing how the Jews and Muslims have reacted to adversity. Speaking of the Holocaust, she said, "The Jews have come from the tragedy and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling."</em><br /><br /><em>She went on, "We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people."<br /></em><br /><em>She concluded, "Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them."</em><br /><br />Tough talk, certainly hard to take, but largely true. She has our deepest admiration.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114243563960194646?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1142431380901643832006-03-15T06:02:00.000-08:002006-03-15T06:03:01.413-08:00Via BBC, <a class="tsh" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4807846.stm">Tamil rebels 'coercing diaspora' </a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114243138090164383?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1142367772564348722006-03-14T13:18:00.000-08:002006-03-14T12:23:26.583-08:00Via National Review, Maneeza Hossain writes about <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/hossain200603140819.asp">A Muslim Democracy in Peril</a><br /><br /><em>Bangladesh has all the elements necessary to succeed as a secular Muslim democracy; but it also has enough poverty, frustration, and disillusionment to make a state-failure a real possibility. The West would do well to help ensure that elections in Bangladesh are fair and open. The alternative is dire, both for Bangladesh and for the world.</em><br /><br />While we agree with the sentiments expressed here, we must note that "The West" is both very far away and rather preoccupied. Bangladesh should, instead, look to its immediate west -- to India -- for guidance on building a robust and sustainable democracy.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114236777256434872?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1142357343267882812006-03-14T12:24:00.000-08:002006-03-14T09:30:11.250-08:00Via BBC, <a id="r-5_1105026605" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/click/rss/1.0/-/2/hi/middle_east/4804270.stm">Dozens of bodies found in Baghdad</a><br /><br />Byron wrote:<br /><br /><em>Let there be light, said God, and there was light</em><br /><em>Let there be blood, says man, and there's a sea.</em><br /><br />If this isn't civil war, its not clear what is?<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114235734326788281?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1142352518680122942006-03-14T11:05:00.000-08:002006-03-14T08:09:17.363-08:00<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7035/664/1600/3.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7035/664/320/3.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />Terrorism cannot bring down the infectious joy of these Holi revelers in Varanasi!! Happy Holi all.<br /><br />(Photo courtesy: BBC)<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114235251868012294?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1142336422748215612006-03-14T10:36:00.000-08:002006-03-14T03:42:25.386-08:00We've repeatedly complained about India's over-active judiciary -- it frequently involves itself (via so-called public interest litigations) in matters that correctly belong in the legislative and executive branches.<br /><br />Dr. Manmohan Singh seems to <a href="http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20060311&fname=manmohan&amp;sid=1">agree</a>. We hope this is the beginning of a corrective dialogue on this subject.<br /><br /><em>The PM asked if the PILs 'become a tool for obstruction, delay and sometimes even harassment and added that 'judicial activism too must be used in a restrained manner to fill up any institutional vacuum or failure and to clarify legal positions, retaining its character as a powerful but sparingly used instrument for correction.'</em><br /><br />(Link courtesy: Outlook magazine)<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114233642274821561?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1142336105232573462006-03-14T06:35:00.000-08:002006-03-14T04:14:13.530-08:00I refer to Samuel Huntington, "Who Are We: America's Great Debate", London: Simon and Schuster, 2005. I am half way into his book and have not reached the point where he discusses the fast growing Hispanic population.<br /><br />Huntington highlights the Anglo-Saxon Protestant foundation of the United States. He asserts that America is the most religious country in the industrialized world and is the only Protestant civilization premised upon individual responsibility, the work ethic, the right to dissent and individual interpretation of scripture. The early Americans favored the separation of church and state to safeguard religion from political intrusiveness. The intent was to establish a minimalist state that ensured complete freedom for society to practice its religion. And that society was a Protestant one with an impressive network of independent church institutions.<br /><br />To quote him "In Europe, existing societies accepted or rejected the Protestant reformation. In America, the reformation created a new society. Unique amongst countries, America is the child of that reformation..... America was created as a Protestant society.....".<br /><br />And yet, one can not deny the changing face of the United States. Roman Catholics comprised 1% of America's population in 1789. They account for 23% today. 63% of the United States is Protestant. The Census Bureau in Washington released data in June, 2005 which revealed that non-Hispanic whites had declined to 67% of the American population. They were 197.8 million out of a total of 294 million. The fast increasing Hispanics constituted 14% of the population i.e. 41 million while African-Americans were 13% or 39 million. The Bureau projected that whites and non-whites would equal each other in the year 2050.<br /><br />The continued increase in the number of Hispanics is due to the youthful age profile, the higher birth rate and sustained immigration. According to a report released by the Pew Hispanic center last week, the number of "illegal" immigrants in the United States stands at 12 million. 4,250,000 had arrived since 2000. The report suggests that Latin Americans account for 78% of illegal immigrants. Until recently, many immigrants moved back and forth across the Rio Grande comprising a floating population.<br /><br />The House of Representatives passed the Border Security Bill last year to crackdown on illicit immigration. This had an unintended consequence. What had previously been a seasonal influx has now become permanent. Those already in the United States are nervous of traveling to Mexico for fear of not being able to return. The increased fertility of young immigrants is one that will sustain the aging American work force and finance the retirement benefits of senior citizens. But it will also change the United States. 850,000 illegal immigrants had arrived in the United States in 2005 alone.<br /><br />Huntington's vision of a unique Anglo Saxon Protestant polity might not hold for much longer as Latin America slowly integrates its northern neighbor into the Iberian universe. As Auguste Compte alluded, "demography is destiny".<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114233610523257346?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rajanoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1142335265024254292006-03-14T03:02:00.000-08:002006-03-14T03:24:04.373-08:00This blogger just concluded a weekend business trip to the UAE.<br /><br />Even as the Emirates have boomtown written all over them, they feel very much like the last time we were there in the 80s. Modern, cosmopolitan, even progressive by regional standards. Extremely impressive stuff.<br /><br />There was a puzzling inconsistency, however. Of all our favorite blogs, <a href="http://opinion.paifamily.com/">The Acorn </a>strangely was blocked in the country for "content inconsistent with UAE values". Not clear what has provoked this.<br /><br />Finally, last week saw the US Congress snub President Bush on the latter's support for a port deal with a UAE company. This is a reflection of the very weak domestic position of the President. The implications for the Indo-US deal are worrisome.<br /><br />There will be much pressure on India to <a href="http://localnewsleader.com/jackson/stories/index.php?action=fullnews&amp;id=157347">negotiate</a> the deal all over again with the Congress. India ought to resist this. The strategic value of India is not a function of how strong or weak the US President is domestically. It is not for India to cede more ground on an already tough deal -- rather for the US Congress to raise its vision beyond petty political concerns in an election year.<br /><br />If the US Congress insists on imposing unacceptable new conditions on the deal, India should walk. The loss is India's for sure, but much more so for the US. If <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/12/AR2006031200978.html">America's Opportunity With India</a> is as we and the Bush administration sees it, US will have to come back to the table -- sooner or later.<br /><br />If, instead, India opened up the negotiations again, there is no end to the kind of concessions that will be asked of us. Let's hope for sanity in the US Congress -- if not, let's prepare to walk away.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114233526502425429?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1142173463881131662006-03-12T09:20:00.000-08:002006-03-12T06:24:24.036-08:00The Sino-American rapprochement of the 1970s represented a paradigmatic shift in the foreign policy of the United States. <a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/03/10/opinion/edkiss.php">Kissinger</a>, who had conceived that alliance, now writes on the emerging Indo-American partnership. Here are selective quotes.<br /><br />"In the north, India faces the Chinese giant across the intractable barrier of the Himalayas and the Tibetan massif. Here India has pursued the traditional remedy of a great power confronted by a comparable rival - a security belt against military pressure. Neither China nor India has so far engaged in a diplomatic or security contest over pre-eminence in the heartland of Asia. For the foreseeable future, both countries, while protecting their interests, have too much to lose from a general confrontation".<br /><br />"In the region between Calcutta and Singapore, India seeks a role commensurate with its economic, political and strategic significance.<br /><br />India is well aware that the future of Southeast Asia will be determined by economic and political relationships in which China, America, Japan and India will be the principal actors. A developing Association of Southeast Asian Nations is, or should be, in their common interest. Attempts at hegemony are likely to lead to countervailing pressures. Here American and Indian interests are - or could be made to be - quite congruent".<br /><br />"In the region between Bombay and Yemen, Indian and American interests in defeating radical Islam are nearly parallel. Until 9/11, governance in the Islamic world was largely in the hands of autocrats. Indian leaders used nonalignment to placate their Muslim minority by cooperating with the Muslim autocrats.<br /><br />That condition no longer prevails. Indian leaders know that fundamentalist jihad seeks to radicalize Muslim minorities by undermining secular societies through acts of terrorism.<br /><br />Contemporary Indian leaders have understood that if this demonstration of global restlessness spreads India will sooner or later suffer comparable attacks. In that sense, even if India had preferred some other battlefields, the outcome of the American struggle against terrorism involves Indian long-term security fundamentally.<br /><br />America is fighting some of India's battles, and the two countries have parallel objectives even where their tactics differ".<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114217346388113166?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rajanoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1141939969860295022006-03-09T13:26:00.000-08:002006-03-09T13:38:32.990-08:00On February 27, this blog cited public sources about <a href="http://secular-right.blogspot.com/2006/02/terror-on-high-seas.html">pirates</a> commandeering an Indian ship off Somalia. We thought this was a matter for the Indian Navy to resolve immediately.<br /><br />Today, March 9th, Hindustan Times reports of <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1646780,0008.htm">a plan</a> to finally free the captive Indians.<br /><br /><em>Negotiations having failed so far, the Indian Navy is ready with a contingency plan to rescue the 21 Indian and 11 other sailors held hostage on a cargo ship by Somalian sea pirates since late last month. Only sketchy details are known about the February 26 hijack. The fate of the Indians is also unclear.</em><br /><em></em><br /><em>The navy was informed about the incident earlier this week. "We've been told that negotiations are currently on among the ship's Dubai-based agent, the Indian High Commissioner in Kenya and the hijackers," said a naval officer. "If we're asked to act, we will."</em><br /><br />What in God's name are we doing here? Negotiating with pirates while the Navy twiddles its thumbs? How is it that the Navy learned of this only earlier this week, when this blog -- hardly plugged into high intelligence (!) -- was writing about this in February?<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9237907-114193996986029502?l=secular-right.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Primary Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16140741949208891119noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9237907.post-1141928447976371482006-03-09T10:15:00.000-08:002006-03-09T10:37:03.043-08:00Via BBC, <a id="r-0_0" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4746480.stm">Muslim girl dances social divide</a><br /><br /><em>The family of a young Muslim girl in India's southern state of Kerala say they are being shunned by the local mosque committee (mahallu) because she is practising Indian classical dance.</em><br /><em><br />VP Rubiya, 16, came first in Bharatnatyam, Kerala natanam and folk dance competitions at the recent Kerala School Festival.</em> <em>Now she ha