Mahendra Ved, Author at Lokmarg - News Views Blogs

When Gandhi Met Godse

By Mahendra Ved 17th January 2023

As India celebrates 75 years of its independence from colonial rule, a debate rekindles a clash between the ideals Mahatma Gandhi espoused and those that caused his assassination. The timing seems perfect for the Gandhi-Godse: Ek Yuddh film. It is being released on January 26, just four days short of the day he was killed 75 years ago.

It is based on a double assumption: that Gandhi survives the attempt on his life and engages in a debate with his unsuccessful assassin, Nathuram Godse. The clash of ideas forms the crux of the film, leaving the verdict to the viewers, and the people outside, not just in India but wherever Gandhi is known, understood and appreciated.

The basic idea is not new. It formed the hypothesis of Godse @ Gandhi.com, a play scholar-writer Asghar Wajahat wrote in 2010. It has been performed in different languages in different cities and generated a measure of closed-door debate. The film now seeks to take it to larger audiences.

Still recouping from the bullet wounds, Gandhi meets Godse in jail, outside of the prison cell and without being held in chains. He refuses to depose before Godse which helps to reduce the latter’s jail sentence.

More importantly, both engage in a debate. A clash of ideals, not a jugalbandhi, it shows Gandhi calm and all smiles, while Godse is angry, tense and frustrated, unwilling and unable to agree with everything Gandhi says. One preaches ‘ahimsa’ the other rejects it. One wants to carry all citizens along, but the other pitches only for the Hindus. Godse continues to hold Gandhi responsible for the country’s Partition and vows to undo it. No appeasement of Muslims, be they in Pakistan or those who have stayed on in India.

It is an open-ended debate. The two engage in what resembles the current Hindutva debate, with the deification of Godse, questions on the relevance of non-violence, re-writing of history and the “me too” factor in who won the country’s freedom, and how.

The Gandhi-Godse debate is unique, and also essential in the present times when Gandhi sought to be appropriated first, to be questioned, dismissed and possibly discarded. His most likely replacement would then be the culture that nurtured Godse, and the reliance on violence that Gandhi preached against.

The filmmakers may aim to be neutral and objective. But this writer must inject a disclaimer, for whatever it is worth, and take the Gandhian side.

The debate takes place amidst decades of indifference and lip service paid to Gandhi’s ideals. So, it is a critique of not just his baiters, but also of those who claim to follow him but lost their way post-Independence.

In the film, Gandhi quits the Congress when his followers — Nehru, Patel and Azad – reject his call to disband the party now that it has helped achieve the country’s Independence. (This is an issue that Congress baiters have found handy). He also launches community development projects as per his ideas and leads anti-government protests. They are thwarted by his followers now ruling the country. He is imprisoned in independent India even as people continue to revere him as “the Father of the Nation.”

Gandhi is put in the cell where Godse is serving his prison term. As the two meet, this allows for the resumption of the debate over Akhand Bharat, the Partition of India, on Pakistan and Hindutva. Both re-evaluate their ideas. Gradually, Godse and Gandhi understand each other, even as they disagree.

Gandhi maintains that Godse is not the wrong man. Only his views are wrong. Although Godse is influenced by Gandhi’s thoughts and personality, to what extent, remains unstated. Critics are likely to ask: Is he the new anti-hero?

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Gandhi’s own frailties come to the fore in a story within the story. Sushma, his young woman devotee, loves Naveen, a college teacher. Gandhi separates the two. He wants Naveen to continue “serving the nation” as a teacher, without distracting Sushma’s mission. He resents Naveen secretly meeting Sushma and asks Sushma to quit his ashram.

Gandhi’s controversial views on celibacy come into play. With this new weapon in his arsenal, Godse attacks Gandhi for being unfair, especially to his women devotees, by insisting that like him, they practice celibacy. Gandhi is made to realize this by his deceased wife Kasturba. She comes into his dream and pleads for the young couple on an issue that she had suffered when alive. Gandhi relents and blesses Naveen and Sushma’s marriage in jail. Is it Kasturba’s persuasion that works or Godse’s trenchant criticism?

How much of all this will be accepted/rejected by Gandhi’s acolytes and how far do today’s Hindutva followers feel vindicated? The film’s interpretation of Godse and his “filmy re-trial” shall remain to be judged by those who will watch the film.

Given the current times, the film could well boost Gandhi-baiting, also Godse’s advocacy. The Congress has already launched an agitation, while the BJP camp defends the film as a work of fiction.

Producer-director Rajkumar Santoshi has told the media that Godse’s viewpoint has not received adequate space in his view. Besides Wajahat’s story, he has incorporated portions of Godse’s statement recorded in the court during his 1948 trial. Godse was eventually convicted and hanged. “My take is, I might dislike the person but I will fight for that person. It has been done in a democratic setup”, Santoshi says. “I request people to watch the film with an open mind and not come to theatres with any preconceived notions. Those coming with an open mind will truly enjoy the film,” he appeals.

Santoshi is leaving the film’s conclusions open to public interpretation. So is Asghar Wajahat, the playwright and the film’s writer. The duo want Gandhi versus Godse debated in a true fashion that Gandhi would have approved, whether or not their current lot of his followers and baiters relish.

Save Santoshi himself and music by A R Rahman, the rest of the ensemble has no marquee, only performers. Deepak Antani and Chinmay Mandlekar, both seasoned performers, play Gandhi and Godse respectively.

Santoshi has made films that entertain, some of them with his preferred actor Sunny Deol. The latter is famous for the “dhai kilo ka hath” fisticuffs, and also for using the gun to secure justice on his own terms in the face of vested interests all around.

Santoshi’s heroes have also protected women, taken on the law, screaming the famous “Tarikh pe Tarikh” on the propensity of the powerful to seek postponement of court hearings if they find the going tough. The phrase, incidentally, was used approvingly by a judge in the courtroom recently.

The Gandhi-versus-Godse is a different cinema terrain for Santoshi, but that cannot be a reason for anyone to prejudge his new work. Good filmmakers are known to switch gears and move from popular entertainment to what they consider “purposeful” filmmaking.

As per Wajahat’s play, Gandhi and Godse agree to disagree on their points of conflict in a true gentlemanly fashion. Their respective jail sentences end, dramatically, on the same day, July 5, 1960.

Bidding farewell, Gandhi says: “I shall continue to do what I have been doing and I am sure you will do the same.” Both part with a Namaste. Their respective courses are open, to be viewed and interpreted. Perhaps, the way it is being done now and shall be done in future as well. There is no last word.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Indian Navy@75 – The Rime of The Modern Mariner

By Mahendra Ved 9th January 2023

When a Task Force of the United States Navy’s 7^th Fleet headed by USS Enterprise sailed into the Bay of Bengal in December 1971, ostensibly to counter a Soviet flotilla but actually to impact the ongoing conflict in favour of close ally Pakistan, it was India’s hour of reckoning. Till high-octane diplomacy helped, the only defence arm protecting the Bay, and carrying out assaults in the Arabian Sea, was the Indian Navy, a tiny force by the two superpowers’ reckoning.

“What would have happened had you come face-to-face with the Enterprise?” Looking back, then Eastern Command chief, Vice Admiral N Krishnan’s response to the question this writer put a month after the conflict is immaterial. What remains is the supreme confidence on the face of that chubby sailor in the Navy’s hour of glory and its long-awaited, full-blooded participation in a war that India won.

That hour, the centuries that took to build it, and the Navy’s evolution over the next 50 years are vividly recorded by Commodore (retd) Ranjit B Rai, co-author Aritra Banerjee and dedicated contributors in The Indian Navy@75… Reminiscing the Voyage. An individual’s labour of love, it deserves a warm welcome. Rai’s many books done earlier and his naval museum to record India’s naval prowess make him a worthy sailor storyteller.

Rai was a rare witness to some of the Navy’s ‘sea-mark’ moments, from Goa’s liberation to the 1971 war to the operations in Mauritius, Seychelles, Madagascar, the Maldives and then the disastrous Operation Pawan in Sri Lanka. A former Director, Naval Operations (DNO) and Director, Naval Intelligence (DNI), he adopts an autobiographical style even as he tracks down his peers and shipmates, long after their retirement to construct a narration that, given India’s notorious lack of a sense of history, could otherwise drown in the whirlpool of time.

It has not been easy in a country that has always faced adversaries from the north. The common Indian psyche is to think of the soldier and the airman, much less the sailor. Launching “Make in India”, it has perforce indigenized, more than the two other services.

It still needs emphasizing that the Indian Ocean has always occupied a vital place in India’s national security and economic prosperity, more now as it has risen on the world stage. The Indian Ocean’s waters wash the shores of 40 countries and have four strategic choke points and 90 per cent of India’s trade by volume, and 85 per cent of oil imports for India come by sea. Half of the world’s container and one-third of the world’s cargo traffic pass through this region.

Perceptions have changed. The British thought IN was not “mature enough” to acquire submarines, till the Russians stepped in. Australia was alarmed over India’s “blue water ambitions” in the 1980s. Now it partners the Navy along with US and Singapore and in the IN’s outreach, including the Malabar naval exercises.

The book stresses that over time, the Navy has gained importance as the 21st century is predicted to be a Maritime Century and the centre of gravity of the world has shifted East, with the rise of China and India.

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Yet, for long years the Navy remained the “silent Cinderella” when it came to allocating funds. Ships and submarine acquisitions suffered long waits. The inter-service rivalry forces ‘silence’. On writing on the Navy’s wish list, pre-Budget, for a Mumbai paper in 1983, this writer’s editor was requested by the then Western Command chief, late Admiral R H Tahiliani, to ask me to pipe down a bit. Mercifully, the Navy has now been given ₹47,590.99 crore ($7 billion) for capital spending in 2022-23 and is tasked to be the net security provider in the IOR.

No other service has had to change the basics as much as the Navy. Rai tells you how a question from Soviet Admiral Sergei Gorshkov visiting INS Nilgiri in 1960, “where’s the weaponry?” prompted the Navy to alter its British-based philosophy to Russia on weapons fit. He traces the IN’s journey from the British, to the Russians and now, many others in the new century to reach the world class.

The Navy evolved from buyer to builder post-1972 but its limitations remain. Cmde. (retd.) Uday Bhaskar notes that while it can design ships (few other nations do), build the hulls and develop some of the missile systems, it still imports most of the gadgetry and weaponry that make a ship sea and combat-worthy.

As the only service that has to work outside the territorial boundaries and on the high seas, the Navy’s challenges lie there and far outweigh its progress. Take just the aircraft carrier. After six decades of refitting foreign ones to its needs, it has just acquired its first indigenous one. Late-coming China has three and is projected to possess five or six by the 2030s.

Indeed, China’s advent into the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) poses the biggest security threat that India must tackle. The reality is that IN could pulverise Karachi port and harbour in 1971, and blockade it in 1999 during the Kargil conflict and in 2001 when the Indian Parliament was attacked. Now, the Chinese presence and a heavy stake in the shape of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor are bound to prevent such a recurrence.

As the only military service that operates outside the country’s borders and on the high seas, IN plays a key diplomatic role, of hard and ‘soft’ variety. Rai correctly says IN is a necessary adjunct to the foreign office and matches its diplomatic objectives far and near. Its noblest mission, of course, was in 2004, to reach, within 12 hours of the Tsunami, Indonesia and the Malacca Straits, its guns covered, not blazing, on a disaster relief mission.

As Defence Advisor posted in Singapore in 1991, Rai takes the widest possible picture of India, then on the cusp of historic economic reforms. He narrates his experiences when Manmohan Singh under P V Narasimha Rao and with Montek Singh Ahluwalia, marshalled the much-needed resources. India began to “Look East” and it is just as well that it now “Acts East.” As emphasized by Harsh V. Pant, this is where its security lies given the need to counter China’s pushy advances.

The Indo-Pacific has become crucial to India’s statecraft as evidenced by the Prime Minister’s articulation of Sagar (Security And Growth for All in the Region), and Mausam and Sagarmala. The changing security architecture in the maritime Indo-Pacific with the rise of China and QUAD behoves the Government and the Navy to review India’s maritime strategy and the strength of platforms it needs, and swiftly provide the funds.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Ameen Sayani – Music To The Ears

By Mahendra Ved 20th December 2022

For India’s post-independence generations, if Lata Mangeshkar was the melody queen reaching and enriching every possible ear, Ameen Sayani was, and remains, the Shahenshah of the spoken word.

There could be a debate, driven by personal preferences for or against Lata. But Sayani has no real competitor.

Behno aur Bhaiyon…main aapka dost Ameen Sayani bol raha hoon…Aur aap sun rahe hain Binaca Geet Mala…” Generations of India post-independence grew up on that mesmerising announcement at 8 pm every Wednesday.

My listening post as a child was an Irani restaurant in Mumbai. One-anna milky tea for my seniors, but not ‘eligible’ for tea, biscuits for me to last an hour’s exquisite musical treat. My love for music and Hindi/Hindustani film songs began there.

Only with time, I learnt to appreciate the broadcaster’s baritone, his unique style of introducing a song and in that era of “bhaiyon aur beheno,” his politically correct placing of the sisters before the brothers. Grooming in an educated, multi-lingual family and mentoring by elder brother Hamid showed.

Hamid was to English broadcasting and compering what Ameen became to Hindi. The launch pad was Radio Ceylon and with beginning at just ₹25. That experiment brought 9,000 responses. The Indian advertisers were happy. Ameen and his broadcasting career took off. And so did the island’s radio.

This was a filmy-musical slap from Ceylon on the face of B V Keskar, India’s longest-serving Information and Broadcasting Minister (1952-1962). Keskar had banished film music from All India Radio (AIR). Like many prudes of his era, he overlooked Indian cinema and its “golden era.”

Mostly derived from Hindustani Classical Music, the film music then was embellished by great singers, music composers and lyricists. Ameen’s presentation added to its mass popularity. Across South Asia, and wherever Hindi film music was heard, nothing else moved during that magical hour.

His choice of simple Hindustani, which was also the language of the songs in his days, endeared him to both, the actor-musician-singer behind the song and his listeners.

He has produced or spoken for over 54,000 radio programmes and 19,000 spots/jingles since 1951. Binaca Geetmala was the first of its kind show in India which was completely crafted and hosted by Sayani. It happened to run from 1952 to 1994, 2000 to 2001 and then from 2001 to 2003, with slight variations in its name.

It has also been aired on various stations throughout the world, from Red FM, Radio City, Big FM, Hum FM in the UAE, Spice Radio in the US, and the BBC in the UK. All India Radio which banished film music in 1952 felt compelled to make Geet Mala one of its front-line programmes on Vividh Bharti in 1989. At one stage, Ameen produced 30 programmes per week.

Those programmes, long past, still have a recall value across generations seeped in nostalgia. And nostalgia is a multi-million business. Technology that made mono radio redundant and ushered in the transistor has helped with digitization. The entire range of Geet Mala is available in the listening form and on YouTube.

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By the way, the two superstars, Lata and Ameen, were very close. A few years younger, Ameen never called Lata ‘didi’. Their hard work paid. Both ‘cleansed’ their Hindustani/Urdu of their respective Marathi and Gujarati intonations to gain national and global acceptance.

Both dominated their respective scenes around the same time and lived on their past laurels as decades passed. Lata stayed on longer in the public eye, before departing last year to the other world. Her music is lasting. Sayani, too old to work now – he will be 90 this month — is not that lucky, because the spoken word has limitations.

Numerous singers prospered even when Lata sang and after she bowed out, leaving them a high benchmark to strive to reach the highs and depths of her vocal cord. Sayani on retirement has left a void, yet to be filled. It’s a walk-over.

Not that there are no good comperes around. But now you have cacophony in the name of compering. The performer’s limbs move more than their vocal cords. Huge programming and digital technology are required to heighten the impact.

While Sayani also prepared and had others write out the lines he spoke, he appeared spontaneous even when he read. That kind of liberty and space is not available to the present-day radio jockey.

With the advent of television, and now digital platforms and much else, radio has lost the primacy it once had. The public taste has also changed. Listenership doesn’t change much except for the fact that each generation has its own likes and dislikes.

The new century’s generation can be forgiven for not knowing Sayani, not having heard him. He is no longer “in circulation.” These days, one only hears him endorsing furniture of a New Delhi firm, presumably obliging a die-hard fan.

Nostalgia prompts me to say that the generation is missing something the elders were blessed with. Like they have not heard a Melville De Mellow. Incidentally, a random list of famous Indian broadcasters starts with Ameen Sayani — not just because the name begins with ‘A’.

Sayani worked in the era of the Bollywood trinity – Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand – and many more with unique voices and the way they spoke. They had copy-cats, many of whom were hugely successful. The world of radio broadcasting had only one choice: Sayani. But of course, Sayani’s copy-cats are a legion, and many have done well. God bless them.

Sayani shed that ‘fillum…’ drawl long ago. He said in an interview that he holds “his head and cannot stop laughing” when he hears them.

Save for a few guest appearances in films, Ameen Sayani’s contribution to Hindi cinema and its music is unique. Yet, the prudery that banished film music out and which Ameen brought back, persists. Consider, most of his awards have come in this century, 50 years after he made a broadcasting career.

From song on his lips, Sayani plans to switch to the written word, penning his autobiography for posterity to read and relish. It is appropriately named: My Life: Garland of Songs. What else can it be?

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Release of Rajiv’s Assassins–India’s Gordian Knot

By Mahendra Ved 5th December 2022

When a nation seeks to leave behind its disastrous military involvement in another country and as a consequence, the assassination of its former prime minister, then that is reason enough to pause and think. Without admitting it, India is seeking to purge itself of its role in Sri Lanka in the 1980s. This is evident from the way everyone wants to move on from its worst outcome, the death of Rajiv Gandhi.

Actually, India is struggling to forget two events. His mother Indira Gandhi ordered the attack on the Golden Temple in 1984. Like the Sikh sentiment, the Tamil sentiment was hurt. Both paid with their lives. Mercifully, violence post her assassination against the Sikh community did not get repeated among the Tamils because Rajiv’s killing was seen as a ‘foreign’ conspiracy. Decades on, the two are being consigned to unpleasant history, best forgotten.

Rajiv’s ‘crime’ was that he signed a pact with Sri Lanka’s wily president JR Jayawardane in 1987 and dispatched to the island Indian troops under the banner of the Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF).

From a modest 3,000, this force exceeded 100,000 at one time. But it was unable to tame the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who, well-armed and highly motivated, enjoyed support from the local Tamil populace, the Tamils across the Palk Strait in India, and the Tamil diaspora in a dozen nations. Their fighters were able to defy both the Sri Lankan forces and the IPKF.

Inevitably, the Indians, trapped by the agreement, got caught in the crossfire between the Tigers and the host government. The triangular tussle – political, diplomatic and military – became India’s Vietnam or the more recent Afghanistan. When the IPKF returned, losing 1,000 soldiers and many maimed, there was no ceremonial welcome.

In the Lok Sabha elections some months on, Rajiv was seen as winning, with prospects of returning to power. A worried LTTE decided that he must die. It succeeded on May 21, 1991. A suicide bomber exploded herself while welcoming him at an election rally. The LTTE itself met a gory end in 2009 when the Lankan forces annihilated an unaccounted number of Tamil fighters, but also unarmed civilians.

Of those involved in Rajiv’s assassination, India’s Supreme Court convicted some to death and some more to life imprisonment. It concluded that the terrorism charge did not stand under the law as it then existed. In the intervening years, however, no effort has been made to update that law in light of terrorism’s global spread that has not spared India. The death sentences were later commuted.

Last month, the court released the last batch of convicts. Finding the convicts’ behaviour ‘satisfactory’, it released them in batches, first in May and the rest last month. The Supreme Court first commuted the death sentence and found it prudent to release them.

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Among them was Nalini, an Indian who participated in the LTTE-hatched conspiracy. On being released with much fanfare, Nalini showed no remorse. She claimed to be innocent, although various courts convicted her on many of the 250 charges levelled against her.

Witness the cynical political drama. She claimed to belong to a “Congress family”, and that her family members “cried and did not eat for three days” to mourn Rajiv.

But she neither wept nor surrendered to the police after the crime. She was on the run for several days till she was caught with her husband. Old records show all this, but her mushy sentiments went unchallenged, and she was off to London.

She skirted a media question if she planned to meet the Gandhis. Apparently, her political conviction allowed no such courtesies. She and her fellow convicts would not be free but for the Gandhis’ forgive-and-forget stand. The Gandhis sought an end to this saga of bloodletting. Priyanka had a tearful meeting in jail with Nalini some time back. The convicts could have been hanged or imprisoned for life. But no government, including those of the Gandhi-led Congress, ruling for 15 of those 30 years, desired it.

Now, see various players in this gory tale. When India stood defeated, it was a victory for successive Tamil Nadu governments irrespective of political hues. Tamil sentiment, built up against the north historically, played out against the rest of the country. Both national parties, Congress and BJP, have done little to counter it. That explains their silence and the Tamils’ renewed sense of victory on the convicts’ release. It neither conforms to the Congress’ “idea of India” nor to BJP’s “one nation” slogan. For a multi-ethnic nation, this sets the wrong precedence.

Among the Tamil politicians, Jayalalithaa had turned from an angry opponent of the LTTE to its sympathiser since it appealed to the Tamil voters. She outdid the Karunanidhi family to win the state’s two-horse race. It is hardly surprising that Karunanidhi’s son MK Stalin, the current chief minister, commended and received Nalini. He hugged AG Perarivalan, another convict earlier sentenced to death. It is now Stalin’s turn to consolidate the Tamil ‘sentiment’.

New Delhi’s current government, not burdened with Tamil baggage, has maintained silence throughout the entire saga. But it has sought a review of the final judgment, not out of love for the Gandhis, nor to strengthen the law to curb terrorism. Its concern is that the Centre had no role in a case that was pushed by Tamil Nadu. But what did it do when consulted by Gujarat? It cleared the release of those convicted for life in the 2002 rape and murder of the family of Bilkis Bano. The two cases bear similarities, raising the question of whether justice has been done. Minority opinion perhaps, but it exists, that it has not been done.

Although the Gandhis had long ago “forgiven” the killers, Congress has called the Supreme Court verdict “totally unacceptable and erroneous.” It has ‘disagreed’ with Sonia, Rajiv’s widow and its longest-serving president. It is preparing to challenge the verdict. The effort may, in the final run, prove as futile as the one in the Bilkis Bano case, and worse, could get embroiled in politics. Short of allies, Congress needs to keep Stalin and Tamil Nadu on its right side. It’s realpolitik at work.

Nobody has talked of the families of the 14 people who died in the blast that killed Rajiv. These, like any conflict, remain collateral damages, to be silently suffered.

From Prateep Philip, Rajiv’s security detail surviving with a thousand pellets in his body to the highest in the land, each for their own set of reasons, stated or implied, think that this is time and an opportunity to move on. Time has taken its toll and none seems interested in justice that could stir up more problems than solutions.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

The Prime Minister Whose Work Speaks Louder…

By Mahendra Ved 14th November 2022

As many ask if India, under its current dispensation’s ‘majoritarian’ agenda, can have a ‘minority’ prime minister like British premier Rishi Sunak, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rightly, but rather conveniently, has named its long-time target, Dr Manmohan Singh, a Sikh.

He is the only top Congressman not attacked these days. At 90, now that he holds no office, he is being praised, grudgingly or genuinely, by BJP ministers. And they are neither mavericks nor dissidents in the Modi team.

Singh’s ‘qualifications’ that suit their political peeves must include not being a Nehru-Gandhi scion. He is their convenient mascot as they demonize everything Nehruvian.

Union Minister and former BJP president Nitin Gadkari recently said that the country is ‘indebted’ to Singh for ‘liberal’ and “pro-people” economic reforms. Citing his own experience of the 1990s, he said he was able to raise millions from the public and from the institutions to lay roads and bridges in Maharashtra. With them, he had gained national limelight.

Singh’s contribution is big enough to attract sugar-coated negative jibes. Another minister Mansukh Mandeviya has alleged that Congress had blocked Singh’s plans to introduce the goods and service tax (GST) for ten years. The minister needs to remind that Modi as Gujarat’s Chief Minister had refused to cooperate. The BJP had opposed the GST at the ministerial council, although that body was headed by one of their own men. Indeed, GST had become a political football for long years.

Singh criticised Modi’s dramatically introduced demonetisation, precisely six years ago. He was called “anti-national” in the House for predicting a fall in the GDP. He proved right, but none showed the grace to acknowledge it. Recalled last week was Modi’s seeking 50 days’ time for demonetisation to succeed, failing which, he had said: “Zinda jala dena” (burn me at the stakes).

Singh’s low-pitched voice of sane economics that the likes of George Bush Jr. and Obama respected is being missed at home amidst a plethora of claims of achievements.

Occasionally, he speaks his mind. Conferred an award last week, he asserted that India “will continue to rise and show to the world the way forward by blending tradition with modernity.”

But there are caveats. Economic growth, social change and political empowerment have brought in their wake “new aspirations of an entirely new generation of Indians.” They must be fulfilled.

He had tackled two such generations at the turn of the century. As the prime minister in 2004, a surprise choice of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi who chose not to take the post herself, Manmohan Singh recalled, “I took on that responsibility with diligence as my tool, truth as my beacon, and a prayer that I might always do the right thing. As I have said on many occasions, my life and tenure in public office are an open book. Serving this nation has been my privilege. There is nothing more that I could ask for.”

Today, people forget that the automobile and aviation revolution was really unveiled under Singh. Cars and plane tickets became affordable for the Indian middle class and two-wheelers for the larger masses.

Asked to assess his own performance as the premier, Singh had once modestly rated himself 6/10. Perhaps, he had left room for future criticism, allowing for re-assessment to fluctuate with time — and political changes.

Unsurprisingly, some of the criticism has come from latter-day critics who once praised his reforms. Among them is NR Narayan Murthy, the Infosys czar, who recently called Singh ‘extraordinary’ as the prime minister, but maintained that he had ‘blocked’ reforms.

Murthy is not alone. Switching sides after the surprise defeat of the Vajpayee Government in 2004, much of India’s corporate sector supported Singh as the prime minister. But they had tempered their praise with caution against spending too much on poverty alleviation schemes. Singh did not play the ball on that score.

In the 1990s, Corporate India gingerly recognised Narasimha Rao’s political backing that had enabled Singh’s reforms. Rao had wanted that they must have “a human face.” But they did not appreciate Singh’s political compulsions as the prime minister of allocating billions, even if he had reservations, for the anti-poverty programmes that formed the Congress’ political plank.

They dealt with Singh like they had done with Narasimha Rao earlier. Impatient during the political turmoil in the latter half of Singh’s second term, they accused his government of “policy paralysis.” They switched their support to Modi’s promise of graft-free reforms that placed earning with dignity over doles.

But while the wisdom of welfare-ism has been questioned, none has recognised the fact that Modi has continued with many of those schemes, ‘sinking’ more billions, albeit under different titles.

Times have definitely changed, and so has media-driven public perception. Those who criticised Rao and Singh’s ‘silence’, called “mauni-baba” in their times, have no problem with Modi’s one-sided discourse, full of rhetoric, on economic management, or, his silence on myriad contentious issues. His claims of achievements go unchallenged, even as he blames the past governments, from Nehru to Singh (Vajpayee’s period included).

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Singh is a misfit in the present times. Even when he was in the government, he was a misfit on many counts. Rao had thrown the economist/bureaucrat-turned-reluctant minister, to the wolves, they being full-time, hard-core politicians, unlike Singh. He had let him prioritize the reforms, but also let him face the music.

Singh’s reforms, when introduced, were difficult to digest. At least two of his cabinet colleagues, now dead, had told me privately, “Bhai, yeh toh hamein dubayega” – he will sink the government and the party. Eventually, Rao lost the 1996 elections, only partly due to the scams – sugar, share market, and telecom — but mainly due to his political miscalculations, ranging from Babri demolition to wrong electoral alliances.

A political non-entity who became the prime minister, Singh was without Rao-like political backing. With iffy support from Sonia Gandhi, he had to bear pressures from his party men, some of whom flaunted greater proximity/loyalty to the party chief. Some alliance partners not just chose their nominees in the council of ministers, but also demanded specific portfolios.

Yet, he had kept the economy going during the global depression and ended his decade at a higher growth rate than the present-day figure. His jugular for the civil nuclear treaty with the US surprised his supporters and frustrated his critics.

The Left-influenced schemes such as MNREGA won the Congress a second term despite vicious propaganda that the nuclear deal with the US had made India a ‘satellite’ of the US-led western bloc.

He may have succeeded in making the India-Pakistan border irrelevant and reducing tensions if India’s ‘nationalists’ had displayed vision and Musharraf had survived his own follies. And a Sikh premier had apologized to his community for the 1984 violence.

Thirty-one years back, he had said that the emergence of India as an economic powerhouse was “an idea whose time has come”. His contribution to that tryst during half of that period needs a calmer assessment.

Manmohan Singh had once expressed the hope that pilloried by the present, history may judge him “more kindly”. For now, that will have to wait.

Toxic Environs (No, It Is Not About Pollution)

By Mahendra Ved 4th November 2022

Rishi Sunak, a foreign-born prime minister of another country, has been ‘appropriated’ by Indians because of his family’s undeniable roots. He has their attention though not necessarily affection as, arguably, he has given them a sense of ‘achievement’. That it is Britain with which India has had bitter-sweet relations helps, also thumbing the nose at Winston Churchill who had foreseen a grim future for India and Indians. The problematic part is if Sunak does not ‘favour’ India, he will become Brutus.

However, something Churchill did not say sticks. Sunak is hailed as the “first Hindu”, although some from the diaspora in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean region preceded him. He is welcome as a “Saraswat Brahmin” by those who grudgingly overlook his holding platefuls of beef produced by his electors, in the same hands that worship Hindu deities.

These are but a few contradictions Indians live with. They resent being reminded that they rejected an Italian-born widow to be an Indian prime minister in spite of being the president of a party that had elected British-born presidents before.

The Sunak euphoria seems many times more than that experienced two years ago and has since vanished, about United States vice president Kamala Harris. Any suggestion that this could be because Kamala is also African and a Black is bound to be rebuffed.

Harris prides herself on her connection to her Indian mother, personally and culturally, but not politically. She represents the US, after all, just as Nicki Haley did as a Donald Trump administration officer. Haley did not mince words in telling India what the Americans expected. So, beware, Sunak.

Indians are getting smarter. Their adulation is not absolute. A Preeti Patel or a Suella Bowerman, despite their Indian connections, has not won their approval because they oppose Indian ‘over-stayers’ in Britain.

All this is neither about diaspora nor about differing affections of Indians who appropriate or abhor them. It is about how conflicting sentiments have played, and are playing in public discourse where aggression and intolerance have come to rule. Sunak’s election and the day earlier, the cricket match that India won over Pakistan, are only the latest occasions.

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The two events that added spark to the Diwali celebrations last month generated a parody – yes, a parody — of how they were supposedly viewed by some known critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party.

It would take a genius, even of the argumentative Indian to connect the two events to the usual suspects: writer-activist Arundhati Roy, TV anchors Nidhi Razdan, Rajdeep Sardesai, Barkha Dutt, Ravish Kumar et al; Congressman Shashi Tharoor, Rahul Gandhi’s advisor Sam Pitroda, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Modi-baiter journalist Rana Ayub. The common thread linking them and many more, with quotations attributed to them, was that these ‘anti-nationals’ had ignored, tweaked, condemned or belittled the two historic ‘achievements’.

Views, even on imaginary things and events are fine. I may be wasting your time and mine on this parody. But many actually believed the alleged statements to be true and aggressively condemned them. I was a target of many ‘friends’, some long-time acquaintances, who insisted that I also condemn them. My plea that they were merely a figment of some professional troll’s fertile imagination made them turn their guns at me.

Not a new trend, this has been around for some years. Many on social media have become aggressive, howsoever docile they may be in their real lives, practising and preaching non-violence.

The war of “Forwards” in the media often takes Mahabharata-like proportions with the Pandava-Kaurava binary. The battle lines (minus Krishna, though) are neatly drawn.

They go well beyond political issues. Even ‘magic’ cures and preventions during the Covid-19 pandemic (although some may be genuine) were bandied about as medical Gospel that you dare not question. A convenient three-word caution, “sent as received” means none takes responsibility. The level of conformity with the unknown, untested and unverified is complete.

Forget the less privileged, it is worrying when even the educated middle-class exercises no discretion and turns blind believers. That they seek to impose their beliefs on others makes it worse. The irony is that those aggressively propagating their viewpoint, even ‘forwards’, want everyone else to stay objective and neutral.

One hears of families being divided on issues that do not necessarily affect them in their daily lives. It jeopardizes harmony and relationships. The time when people disagreed and moved on is over in this era of ‘un-friending’ and ‘blocking’.

Going beyond being argumentative, we have become my-views-or-none. We have stopped rationalizing. We have stopped being accommodative. And this could come with abuse – damn the civility that supposedly comes with education.

Numerous reports indicate how word spread through social media apps has led to sectarian and political violence. Since it is an individual act of participating in collective information/ misinformation, generated without physical participation, the authority is helpless and is often late in responding.

The Supreme Court recently condemned hate speech. Possibly, it was using an all-inclusive but neutral term to cover all forms of hatred. It could not be unaware of this daily occurrence that heightens during elections – and India is in election mode all the time.

Save a few newspaper editorials, did anyone in the government(s), or in any political party, endorse the court’s observations and warn their employees and cadres? It was mainly the political class. Now even some bureaucrats have also begun to get controversial. Just how many ministers, MPs, MLAs and other elected representatives have been brought to book for hate speech?

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal wants photos of Lakshmi to be printed on one side of the currency notes, the other side retaining that of Mahatma Gandhi. He may be wanting to ‘trap’ the Modi Government and outperform the Hindutva political plank. But he must be naïve not to know that many people, particularly young whose peers have themselves gone hateful and wayward, want Gandhi to be removed altogether. Basics are being questioned. That points to the level of hatred.

Is it any surprise that this aggression, individual or collective, fed on social media, but also by mainstream media through TRP-driven television channels and websites, has numbed the public mind into accepting the most unjust when it is staring in their faces?

People who thronged the streets ten years ago to protest the rape of Nirbhaya have not thought it fit to protest the release of 11 persons tried and convicted for raping a woman and then killing her family members. A provision in law has been conveniently invoked by the Gujarat Government and endorsed – and since defended before the Supreme Court by the Union government. They were freed for “good behaviour”, garlanded at the jail gate and were feted in public.

Symbolic of the toxicity prevailing in our body politic, this carries an inherent warning. The release of the 11 came on August 15, the much-celebrated country’s 75^th Independence Day. Does one need to say more?

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

The Badass Bollywood

By Mahendra Ved 18th October 2022

In celebrations of Amitabh Bachchan’s 80^th birthday last week, how the “angry young man” evolved as a significant part of his filmography was debated. A point missed, perhaps, was that in his many portrayals, he did not use profanity to heighten that anger.

Neither Vijay of Deewar abused when he challenged society, nor Jai of Sholay. To contrast the characters of Jai and Viru, who fought banditry in the revenge saga in Sholay, the latter did hurl a few at Gabbar Singh, the rampaging villain.

Dilip Kumar playing the farmer-turned-dacoit who fought feudal oppression in Ganga Jamuna died fighting without using cuss words. The anti-hero that Shah Rukh Khan played in his early years, with a blood-splattered visage and all, did not swear.

Dharmendra and Sunny Deol, the father-son duo, popularised their brawny portrayals in many films. But papa did not go beyond yelling “kuttey, kamine…” On anything more severe, his lips moved, but the voice was muted. Sunny’s character in Ghadar fought an entire Pakistan Army regiment, it would seem, displaying his famous foul temper, but not the foul mouth.

Profanity in Hindi movies was restricted until recently to phrases combining canines, nasty people and individuals of suspicious intent. The general rule was that the villains did the swearing and the noble, if erring, heroes lost control of their tongues only when provoked.

Speaking generally, heroes no longer have to compete in crudity with villains who continue to swear. Better directors fine-tune their negative characters to make them effective. Govind Nihalani’s Ardh Satya used vulgar colloquialisms that were perfectly in sync with the characters. Foul language has now replaced the dressing and demeanour that a villain earlier had.

This century’s Hindi cinema does not deal with the noble and the righteous so much as it seeks to portray life as it is lived. It is more about what is, not what should be. There is no effort at building an idealistic society as our peers had visualized. To that end, technology has taken over artistry and the victims are the language and culture as we have known. The old sabr is lost in the fast lanes and nazaqat to the demands of time and transactional relationships.

Bandit Queen (1994) was the pioneer. This writer recalls seeing it with his spouse. She was shocked beyond belief and wanted to walk out, till we found that there were other families, perhaps, equally shocked. The raw treatment of a woman dacoit filmed in the rural badlands was underscored best by the frequent use of abuse. You couldn’t quarrel with that.

Through the last century, the angry repertoire of even the villain was confined to “Harami, Kutta, Suar ki aulad or Napoonsak”. The cuss words have gained currency in the last two decades and are heard in Gangs of Waseypur, Ishqiya, Udta Punjab, Rangoon, Omkara, Satya, Shootout at Wadala, NH10 and many more.

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Almost all these stories narrate the crass, violent, reality of rural or urban India. They are about the world of crime and confrontation with the law. Udta Punjab deals with drugs. Wasseypur is about gang war and so is Badlapur.

While British cinema has by and large stayed clean, Indian cinema, which has for long copied and competed with Hollywood, has surrendered to the f-word. Cuss word has become contemporary and a useful tool to make films seem more realistic.

In an inter-mix of cinema and society, Indian filmmakers have started to embrace the flowery language heard in our surroundings. Whether or not it works to enhance a film’s authenticity, one cannot be sure. But abusive language does add certain oomph to the narrative and its presentation.

The problem is with profanity for its own sake, even granting that people do talk that way to get over an unwelcome situation. Profanity can be a staccato, the easy way out. There can be ten other, better ways to say the same thing. But we are living in the era of instant coffee and instant gratification.

There is less and less exploring of literature. The new emphasis is on real-life characters and incidents. With varying results, writers and filmmakers are tinkering with fresh formulas and templates. Their version of real life has meant that gangsters and college students must sound as if they are in our midst. They must drop f-words, jokingly refer to sexual functions and doubt the ancestry of those they seek to insult.

Just two decades back, there was a great deal of focus on getting the language right, whether at home or in public. People don’t bother anymore. The language per se has deteriorated. It is for the filmmaker to decide whether the use of the f-word or its numerous Indian variations is appropriate — forget sexism and insults to womankind.

The state made an unsuccessful bid to intervene. In 2013, an expert committee headed by Justice Mukul Mudgal prepared a new Cinematograph Bill to update the old Cinematograph Act of 1952. The report begins thus, “The Committee is [of] the view that the provisions of the Act dealing with guidelines for certification must include provisions which protect artistic and creative expression on the one hand while on the other requiring the medium of cinema to remain socially responsible and sensitive to the values and standards of society.”

But this failed when the Censor Board for Film Certification headed by Pehlaj Nihalani issued a list of cuss words banning their use and then withdrew it when filmmakers protested.

This brings us to the changing norms being increasingly established in products on OTT platforms. The censorship is less stringent, if not benevolent or lax, compared to mainstream cinema. It is becoming the rule as these platforms become the end-users of films that have failed in cinema theatres and multiplexes, whatever the reasons.

Combine this complex process with India’s urbanisation. The audiences hunger for entertainment to relax at home. Add to that the increasing trend to make Indian cinema for global audiences. The tone may be different, but the language spoken in films even with small-town settings is roughly the same as what is spoken on roads, on transport or in company boardrooms.

Cuss words are used as endearments, in perfectly normal conversations, even between husband-wife or lovers. Slow, thoughtful prose is passé. The poetry and the old Sher-o-Shayari have gone, replaced by jarring night club and party beat. And dancing that requires no skill. On the floor are men and women, all compulsively young and good-looking, who drink, smoke and abuse.

Indians generally don’t kiss in public. But Kissing in films has become common and no longer elicits feelings because we are used to seeing it. Will profanity also gain social acceptance in the near future?

Saying all this does sound anachronistic. Since times are a-changing and the f-word is their flavour, one may, like it or not, join in with “what the-f”.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Gandhigiri to Push Back Goondagiri

By Mahendra Ved 7th October 2022

Specially invited to participate in Mahatma Gandhi’s birth centenary celebrations in 1969, ‘Frontier Gandhi’ Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan went on an indefinite fast to protest sectarian violence in Gujrat, till Prime Minister Indira Gandhi apologized on behalf of a distraught nation.

Not that communal violence has ebbed. Over 58 major communal riots are estimated to have occurred in 47 places since 1967. They have taken more collective and diabolical dimensions in recent years if you follow the aftermath of Indira’s 1984 assassination, Babri Masjid’s demolition in 1992, across Gujarat again in 2002, and many more.

Both the Gandhis would have strongly disapproved of this trend. If around today, they would have fasted to protest the numerous incidents of violence. While not always taking the form of a communal riot as understood in the last century, it nevertheless has political content and overtones that are concealed by authorities and overlooked by the mainstream media. But since a smartphone allows for pictures/clips these days, they get amplified on social media platforms. It doesn’t require great research or insight to see through these persistent trends.

Thus we had “Nathuram Godse Zindabad” trending in cyberspace to mark this year’s Gandhi anniversary. A “Gandhi look-alike” was displayed as Mahishasura, the demon, at a Durga Puja pandal in Kolkata, hosted by the Hindu Maha Sabha (HMS). Public outrage ensured that the asura got a new look; a wig was added, and the spectacles were removed.

This is precisely how the message is driven home — take a resolute, mischievous step forward, and then step back if things get hot.

Keeping silent on acts that encourage hatred is as bad as voicing support. The complicity is not veiled. For the fading HMS, the pandal episode could well be an attention-grabbing bid to remain in the public consciousness.

The HMS is known for its right-wing stance that is more radical than that of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mentor of the country’s current political dispensation. Interestingly, the latter’s proponents who point this difference out, on social media again, did not disapprove or distance themselves from the HMS’s Kolkata act. The organisation’s branches in parts of the country have set up Godse shrines in the recent past, till they gather protests or till the police booked those responsible.

The Union Government’s unwillingness to tackle fringe elements, and asking the state administrations to do the same, has facilitated their exponential rise. Their clout has grown. Their capacity and ability to create public disorder and take the law into their own hands assume newer, disconcerting forms daily.

Across the country, however, there is no dearth of such hotheads eager to leave their imprint and be noticed, even if for all the wrong reasons. To be sure, some of them are MPs and MLAs, even ministers.

Officially called “fringe elements” when criticized by the governments and rights bodies abroad, a motley crowd of ill-read, jobless, systematically filled with hatred people is being motivated to run riot. Not reining them in is fraught with serious consequences. The blame would lie not with the fringe players, but those who choose to let them thrive.

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These are but tips of the proverbial iceberg that those in power tacitly condone and even promote. In the given discourse among the urban middle classes that are gaining increasing strength and voice in the media, not surprisingly, children have begun to question the wisdom and the need of having the Mahatma’s photograph on currency notes.

The elders who ought to reason with the young are not doing their part. They are too squeamish to ween the latter away and are okay swimming with the ‘young’ tide. It’s the “khao-piyo-aish-karo” culture.

This attitude of the old and the young alike, history books warn, is precisely what promoted extreme right-wing ideas – fascism and Nazism — in the name of nationalism in Europe in the last century between the two World Wars. Significantly, among the afflicted are several countries that claim to practice liberal democracy and preach the same to others.

Parties propagating right-wing ideas are on the rise across Europe and as in Italy’s case, have captured power. The fascist leader Benito Mussolini’s granddaughter is a star in the party of Prime Minister Georgia Meloni. In France, Marin Le Pen has gathered more votes than before. In Germany, although not moved far-right, much of the good work that Angela Merkel did during her long years in office, is being undone. In distant Brazil, former president Luiz Inácio Lula is engaged in a see-saw electoral battle with the foul-mouth, army-backed President Jared Bolsonaro.

The wheels of history appear to have come full circle and there are legitimate worries if India is following the global trends. It is worrying because time was when India, despite being poor, provided the moral compass to the world in the last century. Non-violence was a noble goal, whether or not a people actively pursued it.

India’s concrete contribution – although in celluloid form — was facilitating the making of the film Gandhi. This is the fortieth anniversary of the film that revived global interest in Gandhi, and through him, India.

It was made in 1982. Part-financed by the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC), it had a distinct India stamp, even if it was produced and directed by Sir Richard Attenborough, a Briton to boot, with no commitment to non-violence. Indira Gandhi braved domestic protests from the filmmakers’ community that boasted numerous names with global standing. Even Gandhi was played by a Briton with part-Indian parentage.

Acknowledged as a classic, the film bagged Oscars and several other awards. Indira had taken risks, and India won. Pakistan, by contrast, made a film on its founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, in a copycat act, but failed to make an impact.

The intervening years have seen many films featuring Gandhi, some even critical of Gandhi, like Gandhi, My Father, on his deeply flawed relationship with his eldest son. But the theme of truth, love, non-violence, and communal harmony have been the same. Even Munnabhai’s “Gandhigiri” spread that universal message amidst laughter and entertainment.

The man and his message are intensely relevant to the present times. As India aspires to play the Vishwaguru, the global teacher, it needs to curb sniping at the Mahatma who has close proximity to what the world thinks India is and should be.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Why Peace Remains Elusive In Indo-Pak Relations

By Mahendra Ved 1st October 2022

On Shaheed Bhagat Singh’s 115^th birth anniversary last week, his life and death for an undivided India’s freedom, and that he is revered on both sides of the India-Pakistan divide were recalled. But save such sentiments shared by minuscule sections, little is left to work on building good-neighbourly relations.

One people for centuries, they became two adversarial ‘sides’ 75 years ago. Separation resolved nothing; it only deepened the crevices. Unwilling to forget the past, and unable to deal with the present, they are trapped in a cul-de-sac and unable to move forward to that goal.

The sad thing is that once you begin exploring prospects of improving the perennially tense relations, you run into innumerable obstacles and imponderables.

As one sees Pakistan posturing for peaceful ties in diplomatic forums, this is yet another moment. Everyone knows that the current government has neither the mandate nor the pull with the military, to smoke the peace pipe. The all-powerful force where the buck stops is clueless about how to resolve the problems it created by playing favourites, and has conceded space to the squabbling politicians.

Aware that this is the neighbour’s weak moment, India is simply not interested. That has long been its stance. For every Pakistani salvo on Kashmir, India returns the terrorism charge. To every charge of the ‘Hindutva’ campaign, India points to the ill-treatment of Pakistan’s minorities. India’s undeclared goal is to make hay while the sun is not shining on the neighbour.

Social media talks of a contrast. The 4,500-year old drainage system of Mohen Jo Daro in the Indus Valley efficiently disposed of the rain and flood waters when a third of Pakistan was under water. But three Chinese companies gather and dispose of garbage in modern-day Karachi, nicknamed ‘Venice of Sewage’.

What about the flooding of Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, and other Indian cities? Actually, we are sailing in the same boat that is stuck in sewage. Climate change is hurting both, but they are bogged down in old, divisive issues, unable to discuss such common threats and address them jointly.

Amidst constant diplomatic wrangling, there’s a déjà vu. Like it did in the 1980s, India has protested the $450 million US dole to Pakistan for the “sustainment and support” of the F-16 combat aircraft. It did not work then and it is unlikely to work now.

The sale in that Cold War era was meant to shore up Pakistan’s defences against India. That fig leaf is not available in the radically changed geopolitical situation. Instead, Washington now insists that the aircraft are meant for counter-terrorism. India’s S Jaishankar said: “At the end of the day, for someone to say I am doing it because it is for counterterrorism when you are talking of an aircraft of the capability of an F-16, everyone knows where they are deployed, what is its use, what is its capability. You are not fooling anybody by saying these things.”

Does Anthony Blinken really believe what he says? With changed equations, India sees itself as a bigger US ally, but the latter has always drawn the line at the India-Pakistan border. India is an ally against China only in East and Southeast Asia. That is unlikely to change since the US continues to woo Pakistan to keep it away from China.

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Diplomacy can be brazen. Both India and Pakistan must now await its subtle strokes. Like earlier American administrations, particularly the Democratic one, Biden also wants India and Pakistan to talk. But the two are in no mood. In anticipation of this, like two boxers in the ring hitting out before the bell rings, there was no ‘adaab’ from Shehbaz Sharif, nor an extended hand from Narendra Modi at the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit. Unsurprisingly, while the two committed themselves to peace, the Kashmir-versus-terrorism drill also played out at the UN General Assembly.

India’s approach has unanimity – the political opposition is afraid to even utter the word Pakistan for fear of annoying the ultra-nationalists. Pakistan’s stance is also well-calibrated. Shehbaz listed Kashmir as the Number One issue — he can’t afford to miss. His brother Nawaz suffered when he skipped it at Sharm el-Sheikh in 2009.

Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari told a French TV network that India had not helped in fighting floods, “nor was there any expectation.” Surely, Modi telephoned Shehbaz to empathize but did not offer any help the way India does to countries far and near that are hit by natural calamities.

Doubly assuming that the offer was made and Pakistan accepted, it would have caused controversies. Modi would have been accused of feeding the ‘enemy’. Shehbaz had to be careful. Damned for having ‘surrendered’ to a “Hindutva driven” India, he would have gifted a missile to Imran Khan, who wants a snap poll, whatever happens to Pakistan. He has added ‘war’ to his set of issues that would not deter his campaign. War against whom?

There are always “fringe elements” thriving with official or tacit support from the powerful. Amidst global appeals for help and inviting the likes of UN Secretary-General and Angelina Jolie, tomatoes imported from Iran were destroyed by Sunni militants, in full public view, because they were ‘Shia’ produce.

Like ‘fringe’ elements in India shouting “go to Pakistan” to anyone they disagree with, the India angle is strong in Pakistan as well. Imran Khan – and he is not a “fringe element” – playing to the political gallery, has accused the Sharifs of trying to reach “a secret understanding” with India to “promote their business interest.”

Khan and Pakistan’s elite with farming backgrounds do not appreciate this, but there is something about the Sharifs that Indians find easier to work with. The Lahore summit and the unscheduled Modi visit at a Sharif event in 2015 indicate this.

How does one talk trade when that word is anathema? Pakistan Army chief General Javed Bajwa does not say it anymore. In March 2021, he stirred a debate by stressing geo-economics. Among other things, the “Bajwa Doctrine” recommended restoring peace within by putting down various internal insurgencies, reviving economic growth, and reconciling with the neighbours. Analysts thought this was a radical change in the Pakistan Army’s stance. Taking the cue, the commerce ministry decided to resume trade with India.

But the Khan Government annulled it. Sections of the business community saw a win-win situation in bilateral trade, even working to Pakistan’s advantage. But they have been ignored. Nobody in Pakistan has bothered to explain why the “Bajwa Doctrine” was junked, and India couldn’t care less.

Last but not the least, both have electoral compulsions – there will always be. Politicians on both sides indulge in this profitable pastime in the name of democracy, despite Covid, calamities, and constraints on the economy. And ‘war’, if you note Imran Khan’s resolve.

One of Pakistan’s most perceptive writers, F S Aijazuddin, writes: “… the funeral of the late Queen Elizabeth II has caused many to marvel at the plans made for it years in advance. That is not unusual. Pakistani politicians, too, have been planning each other’s funerals for years.” Isn’t it the same, across South Asia?

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Operation Blue Star – When India Failed Punjab

By Mahendra Ved 16th September 2022

Of independent India’s many disasters, Operation Blue Star in 1984 must rank among the worst. It has left behind a legacy that nobody owns, and none has been held accountable.

“Blue Star was a disaster – ill-conceived, poorly planned, and terribly executed. Consequently, for the troops, it was a pyrrhic victory. A few hundred militants were killed. But their death sowed the seeds for ethno-religious nationalism to proliferate and generate violence far worse than what the operation had eliminated.

“Blue Star was not the epilogue, but a prelude to the violent struggle for Khalistan. The Army won the battle but at the cost of peace in Punjab,” Ramesh Inder Singh writes in Turmoil In Punjab: Before and After Blue Star, an “Insider’s Story”.

“It was a brutal time. The nation lost a Prime Minister, a former Chief of Army Staff, a Chief Minister, many ministers, leaders, and thousands of innocent citizens and of course some not so innocent, ” he notes in his 555-page work.

The writer was District Magistrate, Amritsar, during and after the various operations by the Indian Army against militancy, including Operation Woodrose and Operation Black Thunder I, and II. Which makes him an ‘insider’. He retired as Punjab’s Chief Secretary.

Singh is not the first to write. Many politicians, bureaucrats and generals have given their side of the story. It has been analysed by academics and security analysts, at home and abroad. Journalists, some getting vantage views, have recorded what led to 1984 and its aftermath. But his is perhaps, the first attempt at an all-in account.

His principal point is that while militancy was over by 1993, all the factors that caused it are present. He argues that militancy, which started with the Akali-Nirankari clash in 1978, was never a separatist movement for Khalistan.

He says the state lost the battle of perception. It failed to carry the community along. “This was, more than any other factor, the cause of the fatal consequences that followed Blue Star, and it continues to haunt the community even today”.

The civil administration, working on the ground was under constant pressure dealing with the diverse and fluctuating demands of the political class. It got compromised and governing Punjab became a nightmare.

As the events unfolded, he says, it became obvious that the Central leadership and the key military advisers were not conscious of the public sentiment or the political consequences of launching a direct assault on space considered sacred by millions.

It was a flawed strategy. No appeal was made to the militants to surrender. No attempt was made to negotiate to forestall the armed confrontation. The troops launched the attack suo moto. That left the trained, heavily armed and religiously motivated men with no option but to kill and die fighting.

Nobody comes out unscathed, untarnished, be it the politicians at the Centre or in the state; officials, both military and civil; the Sikh clergy and their Hindu adversaries; the media, the intelligentsia, and most certainly, not the militants with their varying emphases on tenets of the faith and on means they adopted. It was, and remains, a collective failure of a nation.

Imagine an India that hosted in a span of a few months of 1982-83, the Asian Games, the 7^th Non-Aligned (NAM) and Commonwealth Summits, lapsing into a bloody turmoil in 1984.

Inevitably, the buck stopped at then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s desk. She reneged on softer, conciliatory options, including a deal worked out by Congressman Swaran Singh, brokered by Marxist leader Harkishan Singh Surjeet.

Although politically stable and most powerful then, she was not the Indira of 1971 when India helped Bangladesh’s birth and dismembered its principal adversary. Her advisors were no match to the earlier set.

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The book deconstructs the making of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale into a demagogue, as a counter to the Akalis, helped by Congress leaders Snjay Gandhi and Giani Zail Singh.

Diverse and even conflicting political factors coloured Indira’s decisions or their absence. Her government missed many psychological moments when it could have acted. She baulked when bold, potentially less damaging, options were proposed. Her prescription was no civilian casualties and no damage to the Golden Temple. Yet, both happened.

Blue Star was kept such a top secret that even the Intelligence Bureau director did not know. At the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs (CCPA) meeting in May 1984, Pranab Mukherjee opposed Army action but was overruled.

She first lost her way to the ‘why’ of the militancy and then, on the military action. She was hustled into both to block the “foreign hand”. Horrified — “Oh, My God”, she exclaimed – and rued that she had trusted those who promised a swift surrender.

She knew that she would have to pay a price. Her place in history was assured after Bangladesh. But Blue Star was different. Her idol now was Joan of Arc, the Frenchwoman who died at the stake. “One has to pay a price to find a place in history,” she told Chandra Shekhar, a fellow politician and future prime minister.

The Army lacked a Manekshaw who could refuse untimely action to the political leadership in 1971. It was inducted despite its earlier reservations. It stormed an enclosed structure, without intelligence on the scale of resistance. Sophisticated arms with unlimited ammunition with the militants and fortification of the shrine proved too formidable.

The militants’ defences were the handiwork of cashiered (some say, wrongly) Major General Shabeg Singh, the Army’s own hero-turned terrorist. Shabeg and Indira, although perched on extreme ends of a blood-soaked see-saw, underscore Punjab’s tragic irony.

The Army officially acknowledged 83 soldiers (four officers, four JCOs, and 75 from other ranks) dead, and 249 (13 officers, 16 JCOs, and 220 from other ranks) wounded. Although hardline Akali leader Simranjit Singh Mann claims 25,000 to 30,000 civilian casualties, Singh says the correct figure is 783.

He does well to place Punjab in the domestic and regional contexts to which, one must add the global one — that of the cold war’s hottest period. Was Punjab, like India, its unwitting player-cum-victim? Was Pakistan avenging the loss of its eastern province by promoting militancy in Punjab and Jammu and Kahsmir?

Given Zia ul Haq’s uncanny ways, the Pakistan factor did force India’s decisions in Punjab. But post-Zia, Singh claims, Pakistan was also part of the swift end of militancy. Benazir Bhutto shared crucial information on militants with Rajiv Gandhi in exchange for the withdrawal from Siachen. Later, she accused Rajiv of not keeping his commitment.

Pakistan’s ‘establishment’ couldn’t have relished this. Through the 1980s, its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) simultaneously worked on promoting militancy in Punjab and the West-supported ‘jihad’ in Afghanistan, diverting resources from the latter to the former. ISI’s chiefs, Abdul Rehman and Hamid Gul scored successes on both fronts. Punjab militants would meet America’s favourite Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

How has India fared? Those responsible for the excesses, alleged or real, in Punjab and for the November 1984 killings of Sikhs, over 5,000 across the country, of them 3,000 in Delhi, have, by and large, gone unpunished.

The 1984 events impacted India as few others have. But Indians are particularly bad at reading their past. No lessons have been learnt. By the end of the same decade, moves began on how to deal with another minority, the Muslims, leading to the demolition of Ayodhya’s Babri Masjid in December 1992. That, again, led to more sectarian violence in 1993 and thereafter, in Gujarat in 2002. It is seemingly an endless cycle of actions and reactions.

And although there are no, or fewer, communal riots as per official records, compared to the last century, fear, polarisation, mutual distrust, the ghettoization of the minorities, and, partisan actions of the state in dealing with each of these issues, are there to see, provided one is sensitive and discerning.

Regrettably, 38 years after Blue Star, those who are currently engaged in putting their political stamp on the past and the present, as also those who are fighting to retain their ‘Idea’ of an inclusive, pluralist India, are both guilty of glossing over it. To put it bluntly, even their crocodile tears have dried up.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com