Times of India Editorials

Hi MPVs,

I am starting a thread on Times of India Editorials. It will be great fun if people post their comments on what you people think about the article. It will be a great experience....i believe......

so lets put on our editor's cap.......
 

indrajit_v5

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
The 1st one starts today.....

Dance Of Democracies

New York, Mumbai fight adversity with coura
ge

David C Mulford

Five years ago, on September 11, nearly 3,000 innocent people, including many citizens of India, were killed in the largest terror attack ever in the United States. Two months ago, India was viciously attacked, when terrorists planted explosives to kill and maim unsuspecting passengers on five separate trains in Mumbai. Last Friday, dozens more were murdered by terrorist bombs in Malegaon. Terrorism is not new to our countries, yet our resolve in the face of these incidents vividly demonstrates the principles that unite our two great nations.
As Americans and Indians reflect on these separate tragedies we are coming to the same conclusion: Terrorism is not just an attack against one nation or community, terrorism is a direct assault on free societies everywhere. Motivated by hatred, the vision spawned by terrorists loathes open, democratic and pluralistic societies like the US and India. Although terrorism inflicts much pain and suffering, its malign vision will ultimately result in its own failure. The ideology of hatred espoused by terrorists prevents them from appreciating the deep reserves of strength that are woven into the fabric of open societies like India and the US.
On recent visits to New York I have been deeply impressed by the resolve of New Yorkers to restore their sense of community and to show the world their strength and their resilience in the wake of tragedy. Visiting the area where the World Trade Center once stood is truly a moving experience. In the same spirit, I will visit Mumbai today. Like many others throughout the world I was also inspired by images of Mumbai commuters filling trains on July 12 — people determined to return to work, to resume their lives, to persevere and to provide a better life for their families. We hope that the citizens of Malegaon will do the same. The people of India have shown not only undaunted courage, but also impressive calm and restraint in the wake of the attacks. In addition to our losses on 9/11 in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, Americans today will also be thinking of our many other citizens and soldiers who have been lost to terrorism. Throughout its history, India has suffered repeated terrorist attacks. Today, we remember 9/11, the coordinated July 11 Mumbai train attacks, and the Malegaon blasts, but we cannot forget attacks in New Delhi, Srinagar and India’s north-eastern states.
There can be no justification for terrorism. All major religions teach that life is precious and that taking innocent life, including your own, is wrong. The victims of terrorism are
innocent men, women and children senselessly murdered on their way to and from work or school, visiting relatives, and simply going about their daily lives. After suffering a vicious attack on its people, India’s determination to maintain and strengthen its democratic institutions and practices has been worthy of the world’s admiration. On this day, the people of New York, and Americans from across the US, reaffirm their support for the people of India in this struggle and we share your sorrow even as I know you stand with us.
Prime minister Manmohan Singh spoke for everyone in this country when he declared, “Mumbai stands tall once again as the symbol of a united India, an inclusive India”. In his condemnation of the Mumbai train bombings, President Bush was very clear, “Such acts only strengthen the resolve of the international community to stand united against terrorism and to declare unequivocally that there is no justification for the vicious murder of innocent people”. The president’s words hold true for Friday’s terror attacks.
The US shares India’s view that terrorism has no place in a civilised, democratic, tolerant, peace-loving society. During the past few years, the US-India partnership has expanded greatly, including our increased cooperation in combating terrorism. The people and government of the US will do all we can to help India bring those who commit acts of terror to justice. We have a growing counterterrorism relationship. We are sharing sensitive information that will save lives. We are sharing police and investigative best practices in forensics and threat detection. We have also expanded security protections for sea cargo and are working to cut off access to terrorist financing.
Even before 9/11, India was a victim of terrorism originating directly from Afghanistan. Since the fall of the Taliban, we have worked closely together to assist with Afghanistan’s reconstruction, strengthen Afghan democracy, and ensure that country never again becomes a breeding ground for extremism or a platform for terrorism against other countries. In the aftermath of their respective strategies, Mumbaikars and New Yorkers are moving forward with their lives. Survivors of these terrorist attacks have responded to hatred and violence by renewing their commitment to the preservation of diverse, tolerant democratic societies — societies founded on the rule of law and respect for human rights. Our two nations share a vision for a better and safer world, and a determination to create a stronger strategic partnership to combat the forces of disintegration that use violence to challenge the most basic foundations of our societies.
 

indrajit_v5

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
Freud At 150

His vision is relevant for our violent times


Ashis Nandy



This summer the global academe has celebrated, with much flourish, the 150th birth anniversary of Sigmund Freud, one of the four eponymous individuals who have defined the dominant world image in our times — the others being Darwin, Marx and Einstein. It is surprising therefore that the huge mass of writings published on the occasion, by some of the best known academics and Freud scholars, has turned out to be a tame affair. Perhaps aspects of Freud’s worldview have become so much a part of our life that his capacity to shock has now declined. Perhaps the academics and the universities so thoroughly dominate the intellectual domain in the West that debates on the Freudian heritage have mostly centred on the gradual exit of psychoanalysis from medical schools, its triumphant entry into literary theory and cultural studies, and its new love affair with film studies and popular culture. Certainly I have not seen many serious efforts this summer to grapple with the larger global significance of psychoanalysis and its fate outside North America and West Europe.
Those who try to deploy Freud’s thought and method to map human subjectivities outside the West are likely to have other reasons for finding the summer’s fare insipid. Looking back on the last 50 years, perhaps the most significant new contribution of applied psychoanalysis has been towards our understanding of human violence. When Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams heralded the beginning of the age of Homo Psychologicus, it was the theory of psychosexuality that provoked most controversy. In the post-World War II era, the focus has shifted to violence. In the African and Asian colonies, this change took place much earlier.
In India, despite the fond belief of many, the theory of psychosexuality has never aroused the anxiety that it did in fin-de-siecle Vienna or Edwardian England. Not even when psychoanalysis first came to India in the 1910s. Puritanism was not unknown to India, but its main bastion was the urban middle class. Even there, few found Freud’s emphasis on sexuality more shocking than, say, some of the Tantrik categories and many left-handed religious practices and thought.
Indians in diaspora, perennially waiting to be shocked by the irreverence of psychoanalysis, will be very hurt that, in India, the first generation of applied psychoanalysts did not consider very many things sacred enough to be outside the purview of their discipline. Their readers were not offended by their audacity either. In the 1930s was published the first psychoanalytic essay on Tagore, already India’s national poet and deified as a timeless genius. Nobody was embarrassed, not even Tagore himself.
Indeed, Carl Jung never found the same degree of acceptance among Indian psychologists and psychiatrists as Freud did. Jung had great admiration for Indian thought and there were convergences between his thought and aspects of Indian philosophy. He also visited India and was associated with the establishment of two university departments of psychology in India. But serious intellectuals in India were not collecting testimonials for their culture; they were searching for new baselines for social criticism in a society where they and their children would have to live.
India is not an exception. In Africa, outside the psychiatric clinic, the major impact of Freud has been on studies of colonialism. The sensitivities of Aime Cesaire, Franz Fanon, Octavio Manoni and Albert Memmi — all francophone African scholars and none of them an academic — were deeply tinged with psychoanalytic thought. Even when they differed from each other, as Fanon and Manoni did, they shared common categories and imageries. As if psychoanalysis was their language of self-expression and conversation.
Why? After all, Freud has been appropriated — rather thoroughly, some would say — by the dominant global culture of knowledge. Is there another Freud less digestible, less easy to fit in with the regnant ideas of rationality, individuality and dissent? Is there in psychoanalysis, beneath the pragmatism of its therapeutics, a persistent negation of the global regime of truth and, thus, an invitation to non-western intellectuals who have lost their language of self-articulation?
Contrary to appearances, Freud was not a fully assimilated Ashkenazi; he carried within him the traditions of an East European Jew. He was a child of the Enlightenment all right, but a defiant step-child. In a well-known remark on his cultural self, the unrepentant atheist described himself as ‘an author who is ignorant of the language of holy writ, who is completely estranged from the religion of his fathers — as well as every other religion — and who cannot take a share in nationalist ideals, but who has yet never repudiated his people, who feels that he is in his essential nature a Jew and who has no desire to alter that nature’. Freud always remained bit of an outsider in the modern world.
Time, familiarity and changing social mores have taken the bite out of many once-provocative ideas of Freud. But what has not dated is his intellectual vision, which grapples with contemporary evil, without being contaminated by its language of hatred and without endorsing ideologies of violence promising to undo the evil. Even in the West, perhaps the greatest gift of psychoanalysis during the last 50 years has been its insights into the dispassionate, bureaucratised, machine violence in which our times have specialised. The 210 million who died in organised mass violence in the twentieth century have bestowed on Freud a new lease of life.
 

indrajit_v5

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
Vande Mataram cannot be yardstick of nationalism

Vande Mataram cannot be yardstick of nationalism

Rajeev Dhavan

Indians are being cajoled to fight for a song. Atal Bihari Vajpayee now wants the controversy closed. For him, the song is no more than a symbol of devotion. But, that is precisely what the controversy is about. The converse proposition is that those who do not sing Vande Mataram are not devoted to India. So, singing Vande Mataram is not a symbol, but emerges as a test. Those who do not agree to being forced to sing the song are branded as opposed to Bharat Mata.
Devotion is a matter of inner
feeling. You can persuade but not force people to have inner feelings. Symbolism is another matter. In our context, national symbols such as flags and songs were 19th century inventions to coalesce and promote what Benedict Anderson called ‘imagined nations’. Perhaps, what the BJP is really saying is that their idea of India is only ‘imagined’ and they need to put it together through songs and appeals to Bharat Mata. The upshot is that I cannot love my India for what it is worth, but I must accept and propagate the BJP symbols of nationhood to prove my worth.
But, why should a song like Vande Mataram, which was a song of liberation, be transformed into a song of oppression? Why should it become a devotional litmus test of Indian nationalism? That is what it has become. Its divisiveness is as prominent as the controversy that fuels it. Newspapers and magazines are full of news and pictures on Muslims agreeing to and singing the Vande Mataram with gusto. Do they have to be coerced into demonstrating their national fervour? Sonia Gandhi is attacked for missing a Vande Mataram function. Not to sing Vande Mataram may put us in peril. We may not be attacked, but we may be subjected to public obloquy. Equally, we may be socially targeted and challenged.
The Constitution’s guaranteed freedom of speech, which includes the right not to speak or sing, is based on the good common sense that restrictions to free speech must be (a) reasonable and (b) clearly related to certain aspects of public interest. Being forced to comply with the BJP’s symbolism of India is not one of them. Although in the Jehovah’s Witnesses case (1986), the Supreme Court struck down Kerala’s compulsory order to sing the national anthem on technical grounds, there was much wisdom in not forcing singing the national anthem but simply ensuring that it was respected. Americans remain so even if they claim the right not to salute the national symbols of flag and anthem. Even during the
Second World War their supreme court declared in 1943 that compulsory flag salutes were not necessary. In 1990, the court invalidated laws which punished the mere desecration of the American flag. India’s Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971 does not force compulsory honour but indicts deliberate dishonour.
But why this fight over symbols now? Whose symbols are these? Who contrived them for contemporary consumption? Why exactly are they being forced down as loyalty tests? It is not necessary to get drawn into controversies over the historical or even historic role of Vande Mataram. The real question is the reason for the revival of Vande Mataram as a symbol and test for nationalist loyalty. The revival comes from the BJP and sangh parivar. Their goals are not the goals of a secular India. BJP’s policy of revivalism is entirely political for the purpose of inciting social sentiments to create vote banks based on divisiveness. BJP’s rise to power through the anti-Babri masjid movement and by directly and indirectly targeting minorities is well known — even to a point of destroying libraries and paintings. But we must get to the root of what the sangh parivar is trying to do. What the BJP has tried to construct is a new pseudo-religion. The title of this faith is Hindutva. Its colour is saffron. Its credentials are aggressively coercive. But the BJP obviously feels that its newly devised Hindutva faith needs something more. For them, the faith needs a song. The revival of Vande Mataram now provides a song to support their new faith. Vande Mataram deserves better treatment than to become the instrument of communal politics.
It does not seem to matter if Vande Mataram, which was meant to unite people, is now used to divide them. During colonial rule, Vande Mataram was appropriated as a counterblast to the British making ‘God Save the Queen’ compulsory. The effect of Vande Mataram was electric. The constituent assembly honoured the song.
No one wants to dishonour Vande Mataram. It has its place in history. But advocating the compulsory singing of Vande Mataram is not to honour the song but to add fuel to a new Hindutva and to target minorities, especially Muslims, with a loyalty test. The parivar creates communal tension and then pretends to complain about its creation. To create provocative friction by coercive compulsion is destructive. It is targeting besieged minorities that is anti-national.
 

kartik

Kartik Raichura
Staff member
Hey Indrajit..

How about you put your own views followed by the article so that we can debate on the editorials
 

indrajit_v5

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
thats what was the main motto ...that ppl will start pouring their own views about it....maybe you can be the first person.......
 

indrajit_v5

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
Waiting For Winter

Waiting For Winter


Great chance to enact law on women’s reservation



Brinda Karat


The prime minister’s recent statement that his government will bring the women’s reservation Bill to Parliament in the next session has been widely welcomed. It is 10 years since the Bill was first introduced and then virtually kept in cold storage. India set the pace for a giant leap in increasing women’s representation in panchayats and municipal bodies through the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments in 1993. Now, it has fallen far behind other countries, which have taken different routes to increase women’s representation depending on their electoral systems.
These include national quotas, seat reservations, party list reservations in countries that have a proportional representation system and so on. India has just 8 per cent women in Parliament and a worse record in the states. In the 14 state assembly elections since 2004, the average percentage of women elected is only 6.62 per cent.
This is one issue on which India is not the envy of its neighbours. Pakistan has made dramatic strides in women’s representation in provincial and national bodies in just four years, from 1.4 per cent to 22 per cent; Afghanistan has 27.3 per cent women representatives; Bangladesh has adopted a Bill for 13 per cent; Nepal has declared one-third seats for women in the next elections and China has more than 20 per cent women deputies in the National People’s Congress. Twenty countries across the world have achieved 30 per cent or more. Apart from the Nordic countries, these include low and middle-income countries like South Africa, Rwanda (which has 49 per cent), Mozambique and Tanzania. Palestine, besieged by war and aggression, has quotas for around 20 per cent.
There is, therefore, no room for delay. Most people believe that if the women’s reservation Bill is ever to be passed it will be in the present political circumstances, where a combination of factors make it both possible and probable. One such factor is unequivocal support of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi to the Bill, which is crucial since her party heads the government. Gandhi has persuaded vacillating Congressmen to fall in line. Another factor is the strength of the Left parties and particularly the CPM, the most consistent advocate of the Bill, in Parliament. At the initiative of the Left, the commitment to the Bill was included in the common minimum programme accepted by all the coalition partners.
The third factor which will contribute to a possible breakthrough is that all coalition partners, including those who had either opposed the Bill outright or who had reservations about it, have now indicated their support.
Under Article 368 of the Constitution, a constitutional amendment will require the “majority of not less than two-thirds of the members present and voting” and “shall also require to be ratified by the legislatures of not less than one-half of the states”. In an era of coalition politics, where different parties run state governments, it is necessary to bring at least all coalition partners on board. This becomes more crucial because of the utterly opportunistic if not hostile stand taken by the BJP.
At a time when the chances of the Bill being brought to Parliament have improved because of sustained united efforts, Atal Bihari Vajpayee has chosen to deliberately confuse the issue, by saying that the BJP will support a Bill that enhances seats by one-third, not a Bill which reserves one-third.Earlier,women’s organisations had to meet L K Advani to protest conflicting statements made by him. Perhaps, it has escaped the memory of the BJP leadership that this proposal made by the home minister last year was discussed threadbare with all parties, including the BJP leadership. The majority found it unsuitable because it would delay the entire process.
The present delimitation process has been on for three years, but is still not complete. Various parties and candidates, depending on their perception of their own base in the area, hotly contest every area in a constituency that is sought to be removed or added. To reopen the process for 543 constituencies so as to be able to carve out onethird more seats from existing constituencies means that women would have to forget about reservations at least for the next Lok Sabha elections. During those discussions, a BJP leader famously declared that his party was giving the government a blank cheque to decide any route to enhance women’s representation. Going by Vajpayee’s statement, the cheque has bounced.
Earlier, women’s organisations had demanded that regardless of the support or opposition of members of the UPA coalition, the government should bring the Bill to Parliament, since the numbers added up. As can be seen now, this situation has changed with the BJP’s shifting stance. It is only if the Bill is moved on the basis of an agreement among all UPA partners and the Left that the BJP will find it difficult to frontally oppose it.
The prime minister indicated in his recent meeting with women MPs that scenes like those witnessed in the past when the Bill was introduced have to be avoided. Every effort must be made to persuade the JD(U) and particularly the Samajwadi Party not to lend their shoulders to the BJP to shoot down the Bill. But there can be no such guarantee. The government must be fully prepared to counter disruption. The procedures are well established, including suspension, removal and so on. But what it requires is the political will to do so. Hopefully, that will be displayed in the winter session of Parliament.
 

indrajit_v5

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
well the situation is a very grim situation.....even smaller countries has more percentage of women in the decision making. With the history of India , where so many atrocities on women is happening still now, this case should be seriously dealt with.

It has been a 10 years for this bill to pass.Well this is not something new...Check this quote

"Although India was the first country to announce an official family planning program in 1952, its population grew from 361 million in 1951 to 844 million in 1991. "

I think the government should do something about it as soon as possible before the stituation gets out of hand.....

I am also including a link ...just go thru it.....

http://www.thp.org/reports/indiawom.htm



Enjoy........
 

indrajit_v5

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
Rise Of Gandhigiri


Lage Raho Munnabhai reinvents Gandhi



Sharmistha Gooptu


Bande Mein Tha Dam (The guy had guts), Bandemataram! goes the opening line of a song saluting Mahatma Gandhi in Lage Raho Munnabhai, the immensely enjoyable second part of Munnabhai MBBS, which made the inimitable crooks Munna and Circuit a rage. For the uninitiated, Munna is a small-time ‘dada’ in Mumbai, ably assisted by his devoted crony Circuit. Though kidnappings, extortions and bash-ups are very much their cup of tea, these two have hearts of gold which make them modern-day Robin Hoods, who have their own unique techniques for bringing smiles to people’s faces. Cheeky to the core, they’re nonetheless sensitive where it really matters — they’re the humane face of street-smart India who debunk history and its legacy but cannot discard it.
In their latest adventures, Munna and Circuit take to ‘Gandhigiri’ or living life by the principles of Bapu, as opposed to their habitual dadagiri, after the ghost of Gandhi appears to a hallucinating Munna. It holds a mirror to the gun-toting Munna and tells him to win his battles with a smile. Inspired by the Gandhi way of telling the truth and taking your opponent with a smile, Munna becomes the rage of town, with a following of young people, who find these simple principles the key to their complex lives.
So, was this a goody-goody modern-day take on Gandhi, non-violence, no alcohol and the rest? Not on your life — not when Gandhivadi becomes the Gandhigiri of Munna and Circuit. The Gandhi of Lage Raho Munnabhai is not the historical figure we have been taught to revere for his unflinching moral strength. This Gandhi is like a grandfatherly genie, who appears any time Munna thinks of him ‘from the heart’, and makes for a sympathetic confidant who makes tough decisions appear simple.
It is interesting that in this film Gandhi’s identification is with the 20-plus generation who are most likely to scoff at the Gandhi of their textbooks — that great but boring old man who said uh-oh to sex, no to drinking and seemed uncomfortable with any fun in life. The principles that Gandhians have sworn by become, in this film, hip concepts for getting the best of life. So, a young girl who calls Munna to seek advice on how she should judge a prospective husband selected by her father, is advised, with Gandhi in the background, to check out how the young man treats people who are
socially inferior. And of course, the boy’s condescending treatment of a waiter in a restaurant seals his fate.
Now that was quick and easy, and was it very far from Gandhi’s philosophy of the social uplift of the underprivileged (which is, of course, a much debated issue)? The film works because it strips away the stiff layers of principle from Gandhi and makes available the very basic of his world view. It acknowledges that Gandhi was a great man, who lived by his principles, but that we can’t all be great men like him and neither do we want to. But what we do want is not to forget him and some basic truths that were as relevant in his time as they are today.
So sitting in the police lock-up for staging a satyagraha in front of the wily promoter Lucky Singh’s house (when the easier option of just bashing him up was available) Munna and Circuit bask in their goodness and fantasise of the day when there will be statues of them in parks, their pictures on 500-rupee notes, roads named after them, but not a dry day on their birthdays like on Gandhi’s! For those one can already hear screaming at the film because of its cheekiness, its commodification of the great man and what not, let’s just say this — maybe the Gandhi of Lage Raho has more resonance to us today than the Gandhi in books, whose only relevance seems to be that extra holiday he gets us.
If this film makes Gandhi the flavour of the month, if people below 40 have identified with even the very basics of Gandhi courtesy Munna’s Gandhigiri, it can’t be such a bad thing after all. Even during the nationalist movement, Gandhi was appropriated by people at all levels and in ways that he himself had not bargained for — to the hordes of peasants who flocked to see him, he was Gandhi Baba, a sadhu with miracle powers who had set out to drive away the British.
Had Gandhi lived today, he might have frowned on Lage Raho, or maybe he would have quietly smiled. Who knows? This film comes after a whole bunch of ‘patriotic’ films of recent years where Gandhi figures as some kind of dithering weakling, who could have saved Bhagat Singh and his friends from the gallows, but couldn’t. In fact, Gandhi has been out of favour with under-40 Indians because the Gandhi they know seems too good to be true. Statist discourse has mummified Gandhi making him inaccessible in a fast changing society. Lage Raho reinvents Gandhi for us.
The writer is a PhD student at the University of Chicago.
 

indrajit_v5

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
Unsung Hero

Unsung Hero


Leander remains a sporting icon


Boria Majumdar


People have suggested that when Sachin Tendulkar walks out to bat, the nation comes to a standstill. When the Indian cricket team wins a major series, anarchy has a field day in India. What will await Greg Chappell on his return to India if he can lead the team to a World Cup win in the Caribbean in 2007? Maybe he will be awarded the highest civilian honour and hailed as one of the most popular Indians of all time. None of the above madness happened or is likely to happen when Leander Paes stepped on the court to play the US Open men’s doubles final or when he spearheads the Indian challenge in the Davis Cup. One can perhaps take a risk and suggest that when Leander, partnered by Martin Damm, played Bjorkman and Mirnyi at 2.30 am IST on September 10, the entire nation (except maybe a handful) was asleep.
Yet Leander continues to inspire, to amaze, to startle and to top it all win laurels for the nation with amazing regularity. At the Australian Open earlier this year, Leander finished runners-up. He followed it up with a semi-final appearance at Wimbledon and now the ultimate crown at the US Open. Yet, let alone the fanaticism over Sachin, Leander hasn’t ever managed to spawn the hype generated by Sania Mirza following her 4th round US Open appearance last year.
It is commonplace to suggest that Leander is an average tennis player who reaches another level when he dons India colours at the Davis Cup. While on the one hand, this is meant as praise — he continues to remain patriotic after 16 years of professional grind — on the other hand, it dwarfs all his other achievements. Seven Grand Slam titles in 13 final appearances, which has helped reinstate India in the world tennis map. If Andre Agassi can play the US Open as an American, play before his home crowd and make them weep, what makes us feel that Leander only plays the Davis Cup for India and all other tournaments for himself ? Or is this yet another example of the famous Indian treatment of its sporting icons?
For the record, it was almost impossible to follow the men’s doubles final at the US Open. It was played simultaneously with the second
men’s semi-final between Roddick and Youzhny and understandably all attention was focused on Roddick. Channel 9, which was showing the US Open here in Australia, was covering the Roddick match and did not bother to move on to the doubles even after it ended. The only way to keep tab of the proceedings was to follow the score on the Internet. And having downloaded the point tracker at the US Open site, it was a unique experience. You could hardly blink, for if you did you ran the risk of missing a point. And while staring at the computer in the wee hours I was amazed to see that the point tracker informed me of the score at least two seconds in advance of the television broadcast. Even before Roddick had won a point on television, the point tracker had been updated on the Net. It was like watching a deferred live telecast, even though the delay was only a matter of seconds. And this rather startling contribution of modern technology gave me a kind of perverse pleasure — I was able to follow Leander and shout for him seconds before the television broadcast would have enabled me to.
When Leander and Damm lost the first set tie-break 5-7 after leading 5-3, it was almost impossible to keep gazing at the computer screen. Suddenly the glare was affecting my vision; suddenly my bed seemed a more coveted place to return to. And when they came back to win the match in three sets, I was amazed to see that not one Indian 24/7 television web portal updated the news that instant. In fact, it was after two hours that the news of Leander winning his first US Open title was updated. Can we imagine a similar plight for Rahul Dravid and his men?
But so what if the news wasn’t updated? So what if people don’t throng the airports when Leander comes back to India next? So what if he continues to be hailed as a Davis Cup wonder? The truth is that Leander, along with Vishwanathan Anand, has been the best thing to happen to Indian sport in the last two decades. And when he finally retires, nothing, not even the frenzy associated with Indian cricket, can take this truth away from him. He will continue to be the most awe-inspiring Indian sporting icon of all time. For who else could say, “Most people see Davis Cup as pressure on their shoulders. For me Davis Cup puts pressure under my shoulders, pressure that lifts me up”. Maybe the US Open did so too when Leander saw some Indian tricolours being waved from the stands.
 

indrajit_v5

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
New Delhi and the dilemma of anti-US sentiments

American Graffiti

New Delhi and the dilemma of anti-US sentiments


Ronojoy Sen

Can any country afford to be anti-American? That’s the question being asked in different parts of the world. Tony Blair has last week in a foreign policy paper blasted the ‘anti-Americanism’ of certain European leaders. At around the same time, at the NAM summit in Havana, several heads of state, including the Iranian and Venezuelan presidents, have appealed for an anti-US front. The sharp polarity between Blair’s view and that held by some of the leaders present in Havana represent two competing visions of the world. Which way the debate goes is of some importance to New Delhi, now involved in a complicated tango with Washington.
Blair’s rant against the ‘anti-Americanism’ of some European politicians is nothing new. Earlier this year, he had made a similar point in a speech to Australian parliament. In both his paper and his speech, Blair suggests that Europe’s and America’s vision of the world is identical, and that it is in everybody’s interest that the US does not follow an isolationist policy. Blair writes, “The strain of, frankly, anti-American feeling in parts of European politics is madness when set against the long-term interests of the world we believe in”. He adds that the issue is not that the US is too engaged with the world’s problems; rather the danger is if they decide to “pull up the drawbridge and disengage”. What Blair has posed in stark terms is this: You are either with the US or against it; there is no middle ground.
While Blair might be under pressure to constantly justify the absolute alignment of Britain’s foreign policy with America’s, his counterparts in Europe have also had to grapple with the same question. The post-World War II carving up of the world and subsequently the Cold War dictated the nature of Europe’s relationship with the US during the second half of the 20th century. But with the dismantling of the Cold War apparatus and disappearance of the Soviet bogey, the nature of Europe’s relationship with the US was significantly altered. The occasional cracks in the trans-Atlantic alliance widened considerably after George Bush became president. Relations hit a low during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 when France and Germany vocally opposed Washington’s unilateral action. Blair, of course, stood by Bush even then.
The anti-American mood in Europe during the Iraq invasion was not just a passing phase. A survey by the Pew Research Center last year revealed that a majority of French, Germans and Spaniards don’t trust America, and they want to see a loosening of trans-Atlantic ties.
Here, too, Bush is an important factor. In Spain, 76 per cent of those surveyed said Bush is the main reason for anti-US sentiment. The figures for Germany and France were around 65 per cent. The survey was conducted in six European countries — Britain, France, Germany, Netherlands, Poland and Spain. Only in Britain and Poland did a majority of respondents have a favourable opinion about the US. The differences between Britain and rest of Europe have surfaced on various issues: negotiations with Iran over its nuclear capabilities and Israel’s war against Lebanon.
Anti-American rhetoric is, however, ratcheted up several notches at NAM where a number of arch-foes of the US are part of the grouping. These include Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela. Just sample some of the sound bytes emerging from Havana. Cuba’s acting president Raul Castro, brother of the ailing Fidel Castro, said in his inaugural address to the NAM summit: ‘‘When there is no longer a Cold War, the United States spends one billion dollars a year in weapons and soldiers and it squanders a similar amount in commercial publicity. To think that a social and economic order that has proven unsustainable could be maintained by force is simply an absurd idea’’. He was enthusiastically backed by Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.
But NAM also includes traditional US allies such as Thailand, Philippines and Pakistan, making it a collection of dissonant voices. So where does that leave India, which under Jawaharlal Nehru coined the term ‘non-aligned’ and was a founder-member of NAM? And how does New Delhi navigate a situation where it is actively trying to improve relations with Washington, but is at the same time attending a meet bristling with America’s avowed enemies? The first thing that the Indian government must realise is that the ties of anti-colonialism that bound together many NAM nations no longer hold. The world has moved on and so has India.
India has little in common with socialist Cuba, theocratic Iran or oil-rich Venezuela. It has more in common with countries like Brazil or Mexico. While superpower status for India might be some time away, economic power has decisively swung the way of developing countries. It is now well known that until the 19th century India and China were the world’s largest economies. The latest issue of The Economist predicts that they are well on their way to reclaim their former position.
In a rapidly changing global situation there is no need for New Delhi to hang on to the coattails of Washington like Blair; it also needn’t spew invective at the US like some NAM countries. India has the economic leverage to chart an independent course and form alliance with like-minded countries. A strategic relationship with the US can be part of this gameplan.
 

indrajit_v5

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
Leave Those Kids Alone

Keep politics out of the classroom


Nina Martyris

As the nation went through the paces of Teachers’ Day this year, the mood in many staffrooms was grim. A section of the academic fraternity even boycotted the celebrations and wore black armbands to protest the brutal murder of a professor by BJP-affiliated student rowdies on an Ujjain campus during college elections. Just two months ago, a senior lecturer at Mumbai’s Wilson College had his face blackened and was dragged through the streets on a distinctly fishy sexual harassment charge by Congress-affiliated student goons.
Even as India strives to become an economic world power, its most fundamental civilisational block, the classroom, is under attack as is its keeper, the teacher. The series of political degradations steadily visited upon the classroom have debilitated it both in body and spirit. The incursions have been at every level from primary school to higher educational institutions, the line of attack both surreptitious and shrill. From the toxic fracas over saffronised and de-saffronised textbooks, the prating debate on the patriotic litmus value of Vande Mataram, and finally and most worrying, the hate-filled reservations schism that has set student against student and plunged the country into a caste war, it is dangerously evident that this is not education’s finest hour.
There is an elephant in the Indian classroom clad in the whitest khaddar whom we can no longer ignore: the patriot politician with his truncheon of chauvinism. As society’s first sentinel in a child’s life, it is the teacher who must be alert to this invisible agent provocateur so set on sowing the seeds of divisiveness. The patriot politician has become the unlettered but fierce custodian of Bharatiyata, a tradition he is completely ignorant of but of which he will brook no criticism. He has zeroed in on the classroom as the perfect place to plant his flag and flex muscle.
The resulting sense of siege, overt in Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, where Hitler is held up as an exemplar in textbooks, is being progressively felt even in a state like Maharashtra, known for its culture of academic debate. That image has been grievously compromised in recent years after a number of violent attacks on professors and institutions that a craven government has winked at, worse, condoned. The nadir of cowardice was the mindless pillaging of Pune’s Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute by the Sambhaji Brigade (whose parent organisation has the tacit support of Sharad Pawar) in 2004 on the specious grounds of defending Shivaji. Not only did the state do nothing, home minister R R Patil in the strangest sort of perverse justice said he would take action against historian James Laine, whose book on
Shivaji had triggered the controversy. Equally dismaying was the Maharashtra Higher Secondary Board’s astonishing decision to suspend five paper-setters who had chosen a passage on the saint-poet Tukaram for an examination paper. The reference to Tukaram’s simple-mindedness offended political hoodlums who, claiming they were Warkaris or disciples of Tukaram, barged into the board office and beat up the chairman. The board bent over backwards to apologise.
The growing attack on intellectuals was the subject of writer-activist Githa Hariharan’s 2003 polemical novel, In Times of Siege. In the book, Shiv Murthy, a liberal history professor, is threatened by fundamentalists of the Itihaas Suraksha Manch whose sentiments have been hurt by his writings on the 12th-century radical poet Basava, who challenged the caste system. Significantly, the attack comes not just from the fundoos who ransack Shiv’s office but also from colleagues in his department, who, like their real-life counterparts, are eager that he apologise and placate the ruffians. But in an unexpected act of courage, Shiv decides to take a stand and not be bullied by this sullen, intolerant nationalism.
It is unfortunate that the state of education has sunk so low in a country whose founding fathers took utmost care to set up an integrated system where the school would be a secular temple of learning, an equal space where the best ideals and values would be coded into a child’s mind and heart to help build a modern, more rooted India. Thanks to those enlightened minds, India was truly ahead of its times: in 1947, the US still had segregation in its schools, an apartheid demolished only by the historic Brown vs Board ruling of 1954; in Israel, Arab and Jewish children still study in separate school systems sealing them off from each other’s cultures and beliefs and promoting the suspicion that comes from ignorance; while in Iran today, ‘secular and liberal’ teachers are being purged in a repressive move to impose a national Islamic identity.
The schoolteacher must set the nation’s moral compass and undo the prejudices that a child may have picked up from the environment around. After all, the school is the first social laboratory that a child steps into after the familiar womb of his family, and any orientations and mindsets learned here are learned for life. Generations of Indian students who have been blessed with good teachers in progressive, enlightened schools where, for example, the Lord’s Prayer was taught alongside a Sanskrit shloka, and Diwali, Christmas and Id all celebrated with a shared togetherness, know the immeasurable worth of an inclusive, liberal schooling. This is where the fight against terrorism really begins, the good fight in which there are no losers and the only one capable of kneading this spectacularly diverse country together. It is this intangible heritage that should underpin every syllabus, and one that we must protect and preserve.
 

indrajit_v5

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
Targeting Muslims

Targeting Muslims

Malegaon tragedy exposes bias of investigating agencies


Tanweer Fazal

When a blast claims innocent lives, we, with a fair degree of conviction, point to Islamic militants of whatever ilk, Kashmiri jehadis or desperate groups out to avenge Gujarat. No sooner does an incident takes its toll, the story is laid out threadbare — the organisation and its module that carried out the operation, its link with Pakistan, antecedents of the terrorists involved, their training camp in Jalalabad. Incriminating documents, AK-47s, suspects and their confessional statements are out in double-quick time. We can hardly restrain our pride at the ability of our sleuths to track down the culprits — SIMI, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba, teachers and students of madrassas.
The plot and the protagonists remain the same; it is only their ability to constantly discover one vulnerable site after the other that grants a novelty to the terrorist strikes. But if so much was known, why couldn’t the strike have been averted?
We are outraged over racial profiling of Asians (had it been only Arabs?) in US and in Europe. But religious profiling is what Muslim youth in India, especially those in the ghettos, live with every single day. SIMI was an instant suspect in all eyes following the Mumbai train blasts. The anti-terrorism squad (ATS) of the Mumbai police, therefore, relinquished all other lines of investigation. Irrespective of their involvement in the blasts, a witch-hunt for all ex-activists of this radical Muslim students organisation was launched.
An overzealous superintendent of police in Tripura found the beard and the cap of the Tablighis too offensive — 11 members of the Tablighi Jamaat from Mumbai were detained in Tripura for a week on mere suspicion. Only in April this year, two Bajrang Dal activists died while making a bomb in Nanded, leaving a trail of evidence — detonators, timers, remote control devices, costumes associated with Muslims, maps of the mosques nearby. And indeed, mosques were bombed, in Parbhani, Purna and in Jalna. But for the Maharashtra police, this was not worth investigating.
It is not security agencies alone that stand to be blamed. Mohammad Akram, a madrassa teacher in Gaya, was arrested for his involvement in Mumbai blasts. While his arrest hit national headlines, his subsequent release, having been cleared of all charges, failed to enthuse the media. Perhaps some lessons could be drawn from the Ghatkopar bomb blast case. The Mumbai police had chargesheeted around 20 Muslims based on their links with SIMI and Lashkar-e-Taiba, the police drew confessions, produced documentary evidence,and even witnesses, but failed to impress the court. The special POTA court acquitted all of them — but it was too late
for Khwaja Yunus, who was killed in custody.
The script, however, seems to have changed with Malegaon. The ATS is in no hurry to name the culprits; neither have India’s elite intelligence agencies pointed the needle of suspicion towards any outfit, Hindu or Muslim. The foreign office, as of now, has not given any briefings on Pakistan and its involvement. There is little frenzied speculation in the media about the identity of the perpetrators. Also absent are those Muslims, who with placards in their hands ‘Down with Pakistan’, would come out to display their loyalty lest anyone doubts it.
This time, they are taking to the streets, in Malegaon, in Akola and in other parts, to ask certain fundamental questions. Why is the police so reticent in naming the suspects or the organisation to which they belong? Why has Malegaon remained so neglected?
Malegaon has a history of communal riots, so newspapers inform us. But the last big flare-up in 2001 was less a communal clash and more an instance of state terrorism unleashed on its Muslim residents. Some local youth were distributing pamphlets after the Friday prayers. The pamphlet ‘Be Indian, Buy Indian’ made a fervent appeal to boycott US goods in protest against the American war on Afghanistan. But the state reserve police posted there tried to stop distribution of the pamphlets. Indiscriminate police firing left three dead. If this is not religious profiling at work, what is? Why must every political move of Muslims be met with suspicion and dread?
Amidst these unanswered questions, there are other pertinent issues. Malegaon mirrors any other urban locality with a predominantly Muslim population. It is marred by infrastructural decay — narrow lanes, open drains, inadequate sewage disposal, frequent power cuts, madrassas making up for the lack of schools, and no public hospital.
There are many other similar towns — Bhiwandi in Maharashtra and Murshidabad in West Bengal that reported starvation deaths, Bahraich in UP with the country’s lowest human development index, impoverished Mewat abutting the millennium city of Gurgaon, Bihar’s Kishanganj with the lowest literacy rate, and Muslim-dominated old-city areas in major metros.
That Malegaon is a town populated by weavers has not helped. Call it the darker side of globalisation or sheer governmental apathy, weavers across the country are seeing the dwindling of their businesses. Most of them happen to be Muslims, Ansaris or Julahas, as they are called. Dearth of government orders, shortage of yarn, inadequate marketing and credit facilities, erratic power supply and stranglehold of Marwaris and banias have contributed to their impoverishment. It is this everyday brutality of deliberate state neglect and unrelenting suspicion that violates their dignity and being — more than three mysterious bombs ripping through the streets of a sad, desolate and decaying town
 

indrajit_v5

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
United Colours Of Peace

United Colours Of Peace

A minute’s silence for a world without conflict



Shashi Tharoor


When the temperature rises above 25 degrees Celsius in New York in mid-September, people respond as if they have been given an unexpected gift — one last chance before the cold autumn rains and the snowy depths of winter to take to the parks and bars and basketball courts. The city comes, almost desperately, alive. One consequence of a late hot spell — what Americans call an ‘Indian summer’ — is that this normally noisy city becomes even noisier, and the noise continues late into the balmy night, as Manhattanites try to squeeze in one last animated conversation or one last drunken chorus before they go into hibernation.
Unlike my neighbours, I — having just returned from a fascinating but intense series of meetings around the world at which I sought support for my candidacy for the UN secretarygeneral — was looking forward to some quiet, some sleep and the chance to awake refreshed the next morning. But the traffic and crowds and the bustle kept me awake, my mind spinning with over-eager thoughts. Those thoughts turned not to the high politics of my meetings with presidents and the press, but rather to the cause that has led me to seek the secretary-generalship — the search for peace. And from there, my mind wandered to one special day that was fast approaching — the International Day of Peace.
The chain of thought began with the demands the organisation that I have served for nearly three decades regularly makes on its global constituents. The UN asks a great deal, of both people and of governments. The UN Charter is, in effect, a compendium of hopes for a better world, one where everybody lives with more freedom and more security — both economic and physical. And because the UN tackles the most difficult and intractable problems, it is constantly engaged in a battle to bring out the best in human nature — encouraging bitter enemies to put aside their animosities, forge alliances and live in harmony, challenging those with a great deal to help those with far too little, and pressing busy people focused on the bottom line and the fluctuations of the stock market to invest in something as seemingly ephemeral as the long-term health of our planet.
Being challenged is not a bad thing. Indeed, it is often challenges that allow us to grow, both individually and collectively. But the challenges we are posing people all around the world today, on September 21, the 25th International Day of Peace, are not so great. The first of these challenges is one that dates back to the UN General Assembly’s declaration of the international day in 1981. That resolution called
on all those actually involved in conflict to enter into a one-day truce, to put aside their weapons for one day and taste the fruits of one day of peace.
Of course, we know that not all those in the trenches or on the frontline will listen to this plea. But experience has shown us that some will. Perhaps they will learn something from the experience, or perhaps all that will happen is that the guns will fall silent for one day. But if each life lost in a preventable conflict is a human tragedy, then one life saved as a result of one day of peace is surely a triumph.
The second challenge is directed at everyone. We are asking people wherever they are, and whatever they are doing to pause for one minute and silently think about peace. One minute may not seem like much, but I like to envisage this minute rippling across the globe like a benevolent tsunami, bringing not death and destruction but calm and reflection in its wake. And silence and contemplation may not force others to give up their weapons, but Mahatma Gandhi taught us that human greatness “lies not so much in being able to remake the world — that is the myth of the atomic age — as in being able to remake ourselves”.
In New York, secretary-general Kofi Annan will lead the UN in a minute’s silence immediately after he rings the peace bell — a bell cast from coins donated by children on all continents that serves as a symbol of the cost of war and the power of collective action. As the bell tolls, world leaders and diplomats gathered at UN headquarters for the beginning of the annual General Assembly session will join with teachers and students who travel here — physically and virtually — from the four corners of the globe on this special day and spend one minute reflecting on what they can do for peace.
After my recent travels, I need no reminding that mid-morning in New York is late afternoon in India, and close to midnight in places further east. Were it not for these time zones, I may have simply slept through the bustle of the New York Indian summer that triggered this chain of thought. And not everyone can stop what they are doing at a particular time of day. So we are not setting a particular time for this minute, but rather calling on each individual to make his own decision about when to take a long breath, to stop talking or listening, and to allow his imagination a brief space to conjure up a world at peace.
As I sat in my apartment and thought about all these things, to the bang and clash of a hot New York evening, I decided to practise — to hold my own minute’s silence as a rehearsal for September 21. And as anyone who has experienced jet lag may have guessed, by the time the minute had passed I was no longer awake.
 

indrajit_v5

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
Thailand In Transition

Thailand In Transition


Hope, anxiety in the air as tanks overrun Bangkok



John Samuel




On the night of September 19, the Thai television channel suddenly started playing the national anthem, and international channels disappeared from the screen. Military vehicles started to appear on the streets. A taxi driver confirmed that there was a coup and advised me to rush home, fearing a fight between different factions of the army. Bangkok witnessed its 18th military coup since 1932, bringing to an end 15 years of experiments with democracy. But Tuesday’s coup was rather smooth, and the people of Bangkok hardly faced any inconvenience as it unravelled.
It is in the name of restoring democracy that democratically-elected caretaker prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has been ousted. Though there were voices of protest from civil society and democracy activists, the people of Bangkok seem to be pleased with the departure of Thaksin. The mood is a mix of quiet celebration and anxiety.
This coup is also interesting because the leader of the Administrative Reform Council that ousted Thaksin is General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, the first Muslim chief of the army in a predominantly Buddhist country. Though the constitution and parliament have been terminated, it is also noteworthy that the Privy Council — headed by General Prem Tinsulanonda who was in power from 1980-88 and is now an advisor to the king — is playing a significant role in the new political context.
The politics and society of Thailand have been shaped by a stable and highly revered monarchy, the military and religion. Even when there were spells of democratic government, these forces controlled the political discourse and sustained their power base. Even after 15 years of experiments with democracy, most TV channels and radio networks are controlled by the military.
Fifty-seven-year-old Thaksin was a protagonist in Thailand’s economic recovery after the 1997 East Asian crisis. He symbolised the strength and limitations of Thailand’s experiments with democracy. Thai politics was corporatised during his time. He is a third-generation Chinese-Thai, born in the northern city of Chiangmai. He began his career as a police officer in 1970 and went on to study criminology in the US on a government scholarship in 1973. On his return, he became an extraordinarily successful businessman and billionaire within a span of 15 years. He started his first computer dealership in 1987 and went on to build Shin Corporation, one of the biggest business conglomerates in South East Asia.
His political outfit, Thai Rak Thai (Thai loves Thai) is like a corporate venture, with its headquarters in one of the big towers owned by Shin Corporation. Like an intelligent investor, he
invested money and got Thai magnates to list as shareholders in his political body. Thai Rak Thai was neither right nor left. It sold dreams of economic recovery in the language of Thai nationalism. Within three years of launching his party, Thaksin became prime minister.
Thaksin advocated populist poverty eradication programmes and was liberal with pro-poor rhetoric. However, he favoured big corporations, including his own, and promoted privatisation of state assets. He abhorred criticism and fancied himself following in the footsteps of Mahathir Mohammed of Malaysia.
In the process, Thaksin ended up as a populist but authoritarian leader. Democracy was just a rhetorical means to legitimise his power. Hence, he failed to provide a political solution to the unrest in southern Thailand, led by a minority Muslim population. More than 1,000 people were killed within a span of months. Thaksin was accused of rampant violation of human rights, especially because of extrajudicial killings of an estimated 2,500 suspected drug peddlers.
Through clever political management as well as media campaigns, Thaksin won his second term with a landslide majority (377 out of 500 parliament seats) in the February 2005 elections. However, during his second term he became increasingly unpopular with the civil society, especially the middle class in Bangkok. The perceived subversion of law and democratic institutions to sell off his family stake in Shin Corporation for a whopping $1.9 billion, without paying any tax, to a powerful investor in Singapore, created a huge political backlash.
This resulted in unprecedented political mobilisation against Thaksin. As a part of his ‘put up or shut up’ policy, he dissolved parliament and called for a snap poll in April 2006. Thaksin won 57 per cent of the vote, with the main opposition Democratic Party boycotting the election. However, the constitutional court declared the election null and void and asked the government to conduct a fresh election. Thaksin decided to continue as caretaker prime minister, in spite of widespread protests.
Thaksin is a hero, villain and victim of Thailand’s experiment with democracy. He used democracy to further his corporate interests. He ended up as a victim of his sense of invincibility.
In this landscape, the unifying and stabilising force is the revered king Bhumibol Adulyadej. He has been head of the state for the last 60 years, the longest-serving monarch in the world. He commands a unique sense of moral authority. Despite several political coups, the rare interventions of the king and his gentle manner have helped stabilise the polity and political process.
Today, the people of Thailand will expect the king to play a key role in restoring democracy. It is yet to be seen whether the promised restoration of democracy will generate a genuinely democratic political process
 

shrijit_s

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
Re: Thailand In Transition

indrajit_v5 said:
Thailand In Transition


Hope, anxiety in the air as tanks overrun Bangkok

Though this bloodless coup has got Thailand and the Thai people respite frm the corrupt Thaskin, it is essential the democracy is soon restored so that no one takes undue advantage of the current crisis to bring in monarchy or some other autocratic form of governance.
 

indrajit_v5

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
Very well said man, if the condition is not restored soon...then maybe Thai people will go through the same problems which the Iraqis' are still facing.....It becomes more and more difficult to handle the situation as time passes by.....

Something has to be done really fast in order to bring Thailand back to peace......
 

indrajit_v5

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
Brand Mahatma

Brand Mahatma


Bollywood packages Gandhi for easy consumption



Shiv Visvanathan



This is the era of Bollywood sequels. Dhoom 2 is threatening to emerge, Hera Pheri is promising a third round. A friend of mine, a perceptive critic, suggested that the sequel to Munnabhai is more than just laughs. She claimed it was more than a story of a man who enters a quiz contest on Mahatma Gandhi. She contrasted it to Rang De Basanti for its sense of history. Her hints set me thinking.
There are two basic oppositions which mark the Bollywood movie. The first was the opposition between town and country. The opposition was spatial and cultural providing the axis for the great doubles of Hindi cinema like Ram aur Shyam and Sita aur Gita. The poignancy of town versus country disappeared in the seventies, especially with the rise of Amitabh Bachchan, the first truly urban hero.
The second opposition is that between past and present. The past was represented as history, as heritage, as legacy, as civilisation. If Amitabh squelched the poignancy of town and country, in Lage Raho Munnabhai, the past is neither a problem nor a problematic. This city is constructed on the simultaneity of the present. History embalmed in a textbook makes little sense to the city dweller. If Rang De Basanti shows that history has to be reinvented to be relevant, Munnabhai goes a step further here. History as conceived in the textbooks does not count. The present is all and the presence in the present is all that counts. Gandhi as archive, monument, and history remains inaccessible unless he is reworked as a contemporary.
Secondly, history does not appear as knowledge. History is not a value frame or an ideology, it is mere information to be tactically used as and when needed. All information is created as equal before the quiz. Arshad Warsi (Circuit) explains to a reluctant professor: you know Gandhi as I know my locality. You are expert on one as I am of the other. Knowledge may be withheld but information is transactional. It is for trading. More crucially, all information is equal. Knowing Gandhi does not make one superior to the expert on bus routes. Each city possesses a variety of such expertise and success belongs to those who can access it.
The movie also suggests that the most democratic and agonistic form of information is the quiz. The quiz packages relevant information and transforms it into a game. It provides the primordialism of the hunt or search in an information society. Thus Gandhi in the library is inert and meaningless. Gandhi as part of a
radio quiz returns a community ferment back to knowledge. Democracy is reborn when dull catechisms are transformed into quizzes. Also, once Gandhi exists in the quiz format, he is liberated from history and becomes another contemporary game. It shows that knowledge about Gandhi not only has value but a price or prize. As exchange value you can trade correct answers for a toaster, an iron or a fridge.
Warsi who plays the resident philosopher and commentator provides footnotes to the theory of Gandhi as information through his body language. Accessing Gandhi or an occupied house is for him two forms of activity. Information is always applied. It is a form of doing. You need information to do things. There is a second tactic of contemporaneity which Munnabhai develops. It realises that for the new generation Gandhi cannot be history. As a monument, he is a burden, as an archive he is unvisited. Nor can Gandhi be myth because myth is full of contradictions. Also Gandhi as myth would demand constant reinvention and moral inventiveness is tiring.
Bollywood is always brilliant with questions. It asks that if myth and history are irrelevant, what is the alternative? The answer that Bollywood claims is branding. Branding is a term that sees the market as a set of niched spaces. To capture a particular niche, the old persona or product has to be vitalised, rechristened, relocated, redefined as value. Branding reworks the imagination of the product. It is simpler than myth and less contradictory. A brand is consumer friendly and user friendly and it is precisely this that Gandhi becomes transformed into the movie.
Gandhi as information has to work and work quickly. Like instant food, he can’t insist on deferred gratification. Gandhi has to work with the immediacy of an agony aunt providing alternative to an impending suicide and a girl running away from a crooked father. Gandhi like ‘Boost’ or any magic formula has to demonstrate that he works, Gandhi cannot be comic. He has to be funny in a cathartic way.
Happily, Gandhi is now locatable and consumable in between popcorn and chips, Nescafe and Maggi noodles, Dale Carnegie and Vincent Peale. From distant myth he is now part of modern folklore re-engineered in a new role as agony aunt and management consultant. He appears practical, effective, gentle and professional. He is not mystical, religious or political. This new Gandhi is a pragmatic art of life man.
Munnabhai in that sense is a radical shift, a move away from history and myth. It is more drastic than Rang De Basanti which still carries a sense of history. The former wants to repeat history by reliving it. The latter wants to rework it as brand, making it comfortable, friendly and facile. It has all the makings of an epistemic blockbuster.
 

indrajit_v5

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
Thailand’s political future in doubt after coup

Thailand’s lightning military coup d’etat on September 19 against the government of Thaksin Shinawatra was unexpected but unsurprising. Something had to give sooner or later, as the political confrontation between pro- and anti-Thaksin forces became indefinitely deadlocked. Thaksin was unwilling to step down voluntarily, whereas his opponents, led by the People’s Alliance for Democracy, were equally determined to take him to task for his corruption, abuses of power, and overall lack of legitimacy.
The coup resolves the nine-monthold political crisis in the short-term, but much uncertainty and volatility remain in the longer-term, especially as the ousted prime minister lurks in the background, poised to plot a comeback when the opportunity arises. The military junta — the Administrative Reform Council under Constitutional Monarchy — will try to move expeditiously to install a respectable and credible civilian-led caretaker government and put in motion a political reform process revolving around a new constitution, as the 1997 charter has been abolished. The handover of power to a universally acceptable civilian-led government in the interim will be crucial to restore Thailand’s international credibility and reassure jittery investors and markets both at home and abroad.
Persistent coup rumours had been swirling for months dating to February-March this year, intensifying in recent days while Thaksin was overseas. The latest putsch represents a pressure cooker that came to a boil. Several contributing factors led to the military takeover. First, Thaksin was involved in an untenable tussle with the army chief, Gen Sonthi Boonyaratglin. They had different approaches towards the management of the southern insurgency. Thaksin and his government categorically rejected negotiations with the insurgents, whereas the army preferred to extend an olive branch to pave the way for dialogue. The former PM also tried to wrest control of the army by promoting his loyalists and former classmates to key commands, including the position of army chief, in the annual reshuffle. Tinkering with the annual military promotions was part of Thaksin’s undoing.
Second, the controversial allegation of a car bomb assassination plot implicated senior army officers. As details of the case simply did not add up, the army saw this as an affront on its institution, a Thaksin manoeuvre to keep the army on its back foot. Third, the PAD was reviving its street protests, and signalled that it was willing to go for broke, possibly resorting to violence to provide a pretext for Thaksin’s
demise. The growing likelihood of violence in the streets between the PAD-led and Thaksin’s forces was a key consideration in the putsch. Fourth, both sides had their hands forced on the day. Troop movements led to Thaksin’s pre-emptive declaration of a state of emergency and removal of Sonthi, who reacted by seizing control. Above all, the growing and defiant challenge that Thaksin and his core supporters posed to the palace and the establishment became unbearable. Deeply royalist,Sonthi acted to stave off Thaksin’s challenge and defend the widely-revered king. According to Sonthi’s post-coup statement on state-run television network, the defence of the throne and Thaksin’s lack of legitimacy due to unaddressed corruption allegations were the twin rationales for the military intervention.
That the coup-makers were able to act so swiftly without palpable opposition in Bangkok is attributable to Thaksin’s eroded legitimacy and his underestimation of the generals’ decisiveness and resolve. Thaksin also stayed overseas for too long and deprived himself of the tactical manoeuvrability that could have averted the putsch.
The immediate consequences of the coup are manifold. Chief among them is Thaksin’s future. He is unlikely to return to Thailand in the near term as long as Sonthi’s forces are in charge. Thaksin would certainly be detained on a wide variety of charges. His assets would come under investigation. He could end up on trial for corruption and mishandling the southern insurgency, potentially landing in jail. His exile in the immediate term is now likely, probably in London where he has purchased and stored extensive assets, thanks to his connections, including the owner of a world-famous department store. And his offspring and school-age in-laws are ensconced in public schools in the UK.
But Thaksin is not completely out of the picture in the longer term. He knows that he can still return and reclaim an electoral mandate if circumstances change. After all, his Thai Rak Thai party won a 57 per cent majority of popular votes in the April 2 election. Thaksin’s opponents, on the other hand, will do everything they can to make sure that the legal charges against him are so insurmountable that he will not want to come back.
Another crucial consequence is Thailand’s political future. The coup has catapulted Thai democracy back 15 years when the last putsch transpired and ended in disgrace for the military-backed elected government, which was overthrown in a bloody street confrontation in May 1992. Thailand has thus returned to square one, to a vicious cycle of constitution-electiongovernment corruption-coup. Although a new constitution will be drafted between the next six to 18 months and overseen by the caretaker government to be set up by the military’s ARC, its contents and enforcement will not ward off the likes of Thaksin unless they incorporate parts of the overthrown leader’s legacy that was positive, such as his focus on the rural grass roots and urban poor.
 

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Thailand’s political future in doubt after coup

indrajit_v5 said:
Thailand’s lightning military coup d’etat on September 19 against the government of Thaksin Shinawatra was unexpected but unsurprising. Something had to give sooner or later, as the political confrontation between pro- and anti-Thaksin forces became indefinitely deadlocked. Thaksin was unwilling to step down voluntarily, whereas his opponents, led by the People’s Alliance for Democracy, were equally determined to take him to task for his corruption, abuses of power, and overall lack of legitimacy.
The coup resolves the nine-monthold political crisis in the short-term, but much uncertainty and volatility remain in the longer-term, especially as the ousted prime minister lurks in the background, poised to plot a comeback when the opportunity arises. The military junta — the Administrative Reform Council under Constitutional Monarchy — will try to move expeditiously to install a respectable and credible civilian-led caretaker government and put in motion a political reform process revolving around a new constitution, as the 1997 charter has been abolished. The handover of power to a universally acceptable civilian-led government in the interim will be crucial to restore Thailand’s international credibility and reassure jittery investors and markets both at home and abroad.
Persistent coup rumours had been swirling for months dating to February-March this year, intensifying in recent days while Thaksin was overseas. The latest putsch represents a pressure cooker that came to a boil. Several contributing factors led to the military takeover. First, Thaksin was involved in an untenable tussle with the army chief, Gen Sonthi Boonyaratglin. They had different approaches towards the management of the southern insurgency. Thaksin and his government categorically rejected negotiations with the insurgents, whereas the army preferred to extend an olive branch to pave the way for dialogue. The former PM also tried to wrest control of the army by promoting his loyalists and former classmates to key commands, including the position of army chief, in the annual reshuffle. Tinkering with the annual military promotions was part of Thaksin’s undoing.
Second, the controversial allegation of a car bomb assassination plot implicated senior army officers. As details of the case simply did not add up, the army saw this as an affront on its institution, a Thaksin manoeuvre to keep the army on its back foot. Third, the PAD was reviving its street protests, and signalled that it was willing to go for broke, possibly resorting to violence to provide a pretext for Thaksin’s
demise. The growing likelihood of violence in the streets between the PAD-led and Thaksin’s forces was a key consideration in the putsch. Fourth, both sides had their hands forced on the day. Troop movements led to Thaksin’s pre-emptive declaration of a state of emergency and removal of Sonthi, who reacted by seizing control. Above all, the growing and defiant challenge that Thaksin and his core supporters posed to the palace and the establishment became unbearable. Deeply royalist,Sonthi acted to stave off Thaksin’s challenge and defend the widely-revered king. According to Sonthi’s post-coup statement on state-run television network, the defence of the throne and Thaksin’s lack of legitimacy due to unaddressed corruption allegations were the twin rationales for the military intervention.
That the coup-makers were able to act so swiftly without palpable opposition in Bangkok is attributable to Thaksin’s eroded legitimacy and his underestimation of the generals’ decisiveness and resolve. Thaksin also stayed overseas for too long and deprived himself of the tactical manoeuvrability that could have averted the putsch.
The immediate consequences of the coup are manifold. Chief among them is Thaksin’s future. He is unlikely to return to Thailand in the near term as long as Sonthi’s forces are in charge. Thaksin would certainly be detained on a wide variety of charges. His assets would come under investigation. He could end up on trial for corruption and mishandling the southern insurgency, potentially landing in jail. His exile in the immediate term is now likely, probably in London where he has purchased and stored extensive assets, thanks to his connections, including the owner of a world-famous department store. And his offspring and school-age in-laws are ensconced in public schools in the UK.
But Thaksin is not completely out of the picture in the longer term. He knows that he can still return and reclaim an electoral mandate if circumstances change. After all, his Thai Rak Thai party won a 57 per cent majority of popular votes in the April 2 election. Thaksin’s opponents, on the other hand, will do everything they can to make sure that the legal charges against him are so insurmountable that he will not want to come back.
Another crucial consequence is Thailand’s political future. The coup has catapulted Thai democracy back 15 years when the last putsch transpired and ended in disgrace for the military-backed elected government, which was overthrown in a bloody street confrontation in May 1992. Thailand has thus returned to square one, to a vicious cycle of constitution-electiongovernment corruption-coup. Although a new constitution will be drafted between the next six to 18 months and overseen by the caretaker government to be set up by the military’s ARC, its contents and enforcement will not ward off the likes of Thaksin unless they incorporate parts of the overthrown leader’s legacy that was positive, such as his focus on the rural grass roots and urban poor.
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