Category: Opinion

Qassem Soleimani Funeral

Iran And US – Waiting For The Soleimani Effect

By Jasdev Singh Rai

There is a sense that Iran’s punitive response to the assassination of Qassem Soleimani may not be the last act of revenge. However, weakened further by its admission of the unfortunate and horrific tragedy of the civilian Ukrainian Airline plane brought down by error, the Iranian regime appears to be on the backfoot.

The United States played its hand with confidence. Trump’s unconventional gamble that broke international norms alarmed powers around the world. Has he gone too far and has he broken a convention that leaders of other countries are not assassinated? In realpolitik all issues of international law become academic, if power gets the result and/or is far too big to be punished. But it is not always as simple as that.

Iran’s does not have the military or financial capability to challenge the US. It missed the boat on nuclear weapons. Unlike North Korea which is protected by its nuclear arms and a powerful benefactor next door, Iran does not have a superstate completely on its side. Moreover, Iran has been adventurist itself thus making it fair game for retaliation.

Having lost the chief architect of its Shia crescent policy in Middle East, will Iran now start to negotiate with its weak hand? This is what Trump has gambled on. But the United States is not quite in the ascendant in the Middle East.

Also Read: Donald Trump, What Is There Not To Like?

The United States has lost in Afghanistan, in Syria and is just hanging on in Iraq by force.  US policy itself appears incoherent. Its approach to the Middle East lacked understanding of the region in 1990s and still does. From cheered liberators it became victims of hate.

That is the weakness of United States that Iran is most likely to exploit. As a weaker military power, it has played a deeper, lateral, asymmetrical and longer game. Iranian conspiracy with planted agents has been considered to have been one of the reasons the US went to war against Iraq. Apparently Iranian trained agents infiltrated US decision making giving the US false evidence that Saddam was building nuclear weapons.

As an immediate expression to the anger and loss of Qassem Soleimani, Iran carried out carefully choreographed attacks sparing US lives. Iranian people may not have been completely satisfied but felt that ‘something’ at least had been done in retaliation. Until that is the Ukraine flight disaster. This has made the regime look blundering, weaker and target of a frustrated People. It is quite often the case that when people feel defeated, they turn on themselves and blame their own leadership for their sense of hopelessness.

The US is not going to leave matters where they are. Neither is it going to negotiate on equal terms. Trump needs a diplomatic victory against Iran to look strong and strategic for the next elections and brush aside the impeachment. Weakened at home, he needs a masculine win to look strong again.

The US will certainly exploit the cracks in the Iranian regime and encourage the people’s frustration by financing a new revolt as in Syria, in the hope that Iran regime will begin to crumble. That gamble is one that is part of a repeating classical script of United States foreign ventures, despite the fact that it rarely succeeds. For instance Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Venezuela and now Syria among others, it continues to lift this gameplan off the shelf and have another go in another geopolitical setting. There is usually rarely any original thinking in US policy. And unlike China, USA has not yet quite mastered the art of business without military intervention.

Iran’s Options

The Iran regime is used to revolts. It too works on its tested strategy of crushing opposition through any means. The US no doubt hopes one day either its plan will work or the Iranian regime crackdown will fail through strategy fatigue.

That distraction is not going to stop Iran hitting at US interests. The regime is deft at dealing with its own and external challenges. Its aim will be to oust the United States not only from Iraq, but from most of Middle East. It is likely to foment trouble in some of the pro US Kingdoms without taking direct action. It may even give ISIS a new lease and turn it against the Kingdoms. It will be a difficult one as both ISIS and the Kingdoms are Sunni, pitted against Iran’s Shia resurgence. Nevertheless Iran will not be lost for other ghost allies who want to see US influences further reduced in the region and turn the ISIS Frankenstein against its benefactors.

Iran could also play a more daring but dangerous game that is not beyond its very scheming ability. The Ayatollahs are patient and devious individuals who have long experience of conducting lateral war. It could play a leading stealth role in starting rebellions within the United States and begin its break up. The US is more divided today than any other time in recent history. Neither the black nor the Latino population of US are happy as resurgent white racism threatens them under Trump.

The US is ridden with internal strife. Both China and Iran would like to see the power of US reduced and even consumed by internal tensions. It will be Russia’s icing on the cake for the break-up of the Soviet. It might seem far-fetched but then so was the conspiracy that Iran hatched to get US into war against Iraq, as was the Russian engineering of US election. Both were once unimaginable.

The third reaction from Iran will be its continuing policy of undermining the world’s dependency on dominance of the Dollar and create a different international financial order that can bypass the Dollar as reserve currency. It is something Iran has been engineering but has failed so far. It may escalate its efforts but it is an uphill battle that could be could take decades to have an impact.

The fourth Iranian action may well be a strategic game it has played quite often. It will appear to both negotiate and stall negotiations giving it enough time to build the nuclear weapon it so covets. That will be disastrous for the Middle East as it will kickstart a nuclear race. It is not a situation the world wants to find itself in, given the volatile and infectious appetite for war in the Middle East. On the other hand it might turn out to be the deterrence that Middle East needs to stop its incessant wars.

Matters could turn out differently but it depends on the US. Iran is weakened both militarily and financially. It has hinted a few times that it will negotiate with dignity. The US on the other hand is always tempted by a weaker opponent and go for the kill rather than negotiate.

It seemed at the time of Barack Obama that the US was willing to let matters be and settle with Iran for a prolonged period of moratorium on its nuclear ambition. Unfortunately it is one of the weaknesses of American democracy that leadership has to appear macho. Its leaders need to win a ‘war’ to become political Rambos. Trump needs to have a win without actually going to war now that Congress has tied his hands.  He has rubbished the Obama deal. He has written the script for a conflict that he may not be able to back off from unless he loses power or is impeached.

However, Trump is also the one person who can wriggle out of his own holes without losing face. He may blame Congress for reversal on his position on the nuclear deal and renegotiate with minor tinkering.

Trump’s fall may be the most desired outcome for Iran along with its attempt to acquire a nuclear weapon. The assassination of Soleimani may prove to be expensive both for Trump and for United States if it does not rethink its policy and put further fetters on Trump.

Yet that may all be irrelevant speculation as another rogue actor joins the game. Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister, desperate to regain some international respect after his disastrous few years that began with an ill-fated visit to India, has started a belligerent rhetoric prodding the West to take a hardline approach. It is often the unexpected that lays waste the best laid plans. Trudeau, it seems, may be the new Blair. An apparent evangelic liberal with a perverse appetite for war and pontificatory lectures to the world. It is not Boris and the British war machine that the world needs to watch but the new-born Liberal Party whose leader has so far been a damp squid, now willing to turn hawkish.

There is the other unknown, the actions of Israel. Its democracy seems to throw up leaders who can be ever more aggressive towards the neighbours than the previous one. Its actions on Iran may be the aberrant that lights the fuse in Middle East. Qassem Soleimani’s shadow may last much longer than anticipated beyond the grave.

Modi Govt Has Dented India’s Image Abroad

By Mahendra Ved

When External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, a seasoned diplomat who understands America well, declined to meet a US Congressional delegation that included an Indian-origin member critical of India’s current Kashmir policy, eyebrows were raised. Besides Kashmir, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and a National Register of Citizens (NRC) that are widely perceived as discriminatory have painted a negative picture of India abroad.   

Signals are unmistakable. United States Ambassador to India, Ken Justor, has removed from his official web account pictures of him visiting different religious shrines. Diplomats posted in New Delhi do not speak on record but they convey their ‘concerns’ privately. Their classified reports sent back home couldn’t be positive.

Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe, although a friend of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and foreign minister of Bangladesh, India’s friendliest neighbour, recently postponed their visits. Dhaka is having to do diplomatic fire-fighting to prevent domestic fallout. While foreign governments are silently monitoring, some of their lawmakers, representative bodies and the media are vocal.

For many weeks, protests over the two laws are raging across the country and not just in the winter-hit North; in cities and not just the university campus where they are accused by the Modi Government and its voluble political and ‘cultural’ arms as housing “urban Naxals”. The government says these protests are engineered by disgruntled political parties and groups of Left-liberals and “anti-nationals” who are “pro-Pakistan”, having an agenda to “break” (tukde-tukde is the term).

The reality is quite different. Violence which has hit many a university campus, critics say, is officially sponsored. Only, the government does not want to acknowledge it. Over 25 protestors have died. Unsurprisingly, the world sees it as a Hindu-Muslim conflict. Nothing draws international attention to a country more than a religious conflict.

Some of the government’s political allies and members of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) are, after supporting it have, quite opportunistically, done a U-turn.

The government has been assuring foreign governments that its actions, taken and those intended, are its “internal matter”. But widespread protests indicate that concerns persist.  Being a democracy, shutting out the Internet in parts of the country in this information age, legislating and acting without conducting due processes and marshalling of evidence before declaring chunks of population as “illegal immigrants”, even if they came from neighbouring countries, cannot exactly be seen as “internal”.

More so, because far from being a hush-hush exercise, it is part of a high decibel public discourse. The government’s credibility is being seriously questioned. Its aggressive, even toxic justification, calling supposed illegal migrants ‘termites’ and its policy’s critics ‘traitors’ has worsened things.     

Worst, perhaps, is enacting CAA to accord unsolicited citizenship to people in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. If it is meant to undo ‘injustice’ done to them during 1947 Partition, as the official argument goes, why Afghanistan, not really a part of the British Empire, and where India has invested billions to earn goodwill, is included? Why Buddhist majority Sri Lanka, the Maldives with near-total Muslim population, Hindu majority Nepal are excluded remains unexplained. Why a number of communities with microscopic or zero populations in those countries like Jains and Zoroastrians, are included? It is obvious, by process of elimination, why Muslims are not.

Asking people of other countries to become Indian citizens casts aspersions and is an affront to their sovereignty. Two questions arise. One, have those people sought Indian citizenship and two, what has been done about those who have sought and are already in India?           

The Modi Government with over four years left to renew its current popular mandate is firmly in saddle. But the restiveness at home has certainly hit its popularity abroad. What message an expelled foreign student on university exchange scholarship and a Norwegian woman tourist asked to leave for participating in protests carry back? 

Leaving out political shenanigans, the issues coming to fore are how the world looks at India. Since its Independence, it has been comfortable with an India that, despite all its flaws, is pluralist, tolerant of its great diversities and essentially democratic and federal, where rule of law by and large has prevailed. Indeed, progress following economic reforms of the 1990s, democratic values, culture and the positive role of the diaspora have defined India’s image so far.

Pakistan figuring in India’s political discourse has had many debilitating effects. It has revived the “two-nation” theory – treating Hindus and Muslims as separate ‘nations’ that India had rejected right from the beginning. But this has been Home Minister Amit Shah’s principal justification for enacting the twin laws.

The Hindutva fervour has made India seem a mirror image of Pakistan. Ordinary Indians seem like Pakistan-haters and by implication, wary, suspicious and even hostile to fellow-Muslims. Despite recurring sectarian violence that is mostly politically inspired, this has not been India’s record.   

The tragedy is that Modi Government’s own development agenda has been overtaken by the political one. This is compounded by an economic slowdown, a halved GDP, dip in rural spending, increasing evidence of joblessness and farm distress. Most of the political agenda that it is in haste to implement is strongly divisive and two together have contributed to its current image abroad.

Many Indians reject this as foreign ‘interference’ in internal matters. But being democratic, India is not water-tight. There is no absolute freedom, be it political or economic on how religious, ethnic and other minorities are treated in a country. Support to this thinking comes from some European scholars who are mesmerized by Hinduism but are unable to distinguish it from the political agenda currently sought to be thrust. Sadly, many Indians have also fallen victims f this.       

Some of the Modi Government’s own achievements during its first term (2014-2019) are being undone on the diplomatic. Modi’s close rapport with Trump, including “Howdy Modi” has not prevented Congressional censures, the US from trying to block crucial defence purchases, restricting visa facilities, pressurising on “buy more” of American goods and getting India into the US-China trade crosshair. Rapport with Saudi Arabia and the UAE have fetched investment pledges. But that has not stopped the two royalties from holding a Kashmir conference to boost Pakistan’s standpoint. The personal rapport that Modi has painstakingly struck with many a world leader has its limits.

Ditto, the diaspora. They respond to the Indian situation because the governments in the countries they live treat them accordingly. The admiring crowds that thronged Madison Square Garden and Wembley are silent. After Shinzo Age postponed his India visit, a small group was shown supporting the controversial laws in Tokyo. You wonder for whose benefit these expensive shows of solidarity are staged. Politicizing diaspora, even assuming many are Modi admirers, has its limits too.

Granted that we are living in a world — societies down to individuals and families — that is getting divided, if the birthplace of Yoga does not have peace for its own citizens, its plans to become “vishwaguru” (teacher to the world) carry little relevance.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

How Nirbhaya Convicts Will Be Hanged In Tihar Jail

By LokMarg

Four rapists, who were on Tuesday issued a black warrant by a Delhi court for brutally raping and murdering a 23-year-old physiotherapy student, are expected to be hanged according to directives prescribed under the Delhi Prison Rules, 2018.

Since the death sentence was awarded to the convicts named Pawan, Akshay, Vinay and Mukesh years ago, the issuance of black warrant or death warrant by the court merely confirmed the date and time of their hanging.

More than seven years after the horrendous act was committed, the rapists are now scheduled to be executed on January 22 at 7 am in New Delhi’s Tihar jail. What procedure will the prison authorities follow to hang the rapists?

Firstly, they will be kept in isolation cells until the date of their execution. According to the manual, if desired by the prisoner, jail authorities have to inform their relatives and facilitate their last meeting.

The convict facing the gallows is also allowed to prepare his will.

Days before the execution is slated to be carried out, the Superintendent of the prison will inspect the gallows and the rope which is to be put around their neck for execution.

The official is also entrusted to see if the rope, made of either cotton yarn or manila, is carefully tested.

“As a rule, a dummy or a bag of sand weighing 1 and 1/2 times the weight of the prisoner to be hanged and dropped between 1.83 and 2.44 meters will afford a safe test of the rope,” the rules states.

The rules also go into great detail about the weight of the prisoner and the corresponding height from which he should be hanged.

For example, if a prisoner weighs less than 45.360 kilograms, he should be given a drop of 2.44 meters so that the rope does not break during the execution. “If he weighs more than 90.720 kilograms, a drop should be of 1.830 meters.”

The extreme limits of 1.83 meters and 2.44 meters are adhered to as per the physical peculiarity of the prisoner. Wax or butter is also applied to soften the ropes.

The rope for the execution of Parliament attack case convict Afzal Guru in February 2013 was brought from Bihar’s Buxar jail.

The prison rules also categorically mention that the execution should take place early in the morning before it gets bright.

The prison rules state that Superintendent, Deputy Superintendent, medical officer-in-charge and a resident medical officer should be present at all executions. If so desired by the person to be hanged, a priest of his faith is allowed to be present at the place of hanging.

No other person, especially relatives of the prisoner, should be allowed to witness the execution. The jail authorities may, however, permit social scientists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, etc. to conduct the research there.

On the morning of the execution, the Superintendent has to make sure if any communication is awaiting him regarding the execution. He should then visit the prisoner in his cell and get any document requiring his attestation, such as a will, signed by him.

Next, the hands of the prisoner are pinioned behind the backs after which he is escorted to the scaffold guarded by the head warder and six warders, two walking in front, two behind and two holding arms.

On arrival of the prisoner near the scaffold, the Superintendent confirms his identity to the Magistrate. He then reads the warrant to the prisoner in a language he understands.

A cotton cap, with a flap, is then put on the face just before he is taken to the gallows-enclosures.

The prisoner should not be allowed to see the gallows. According to the manual, after entering the gallows, “the prisoner shall mount the scaffold and be placed directly under the beam to which the rope is attached, the warder still holding him by the arms”.

The executioner then straps the prisoner’s legs tightly together and adjusts the noose around his neck. The Hangman is paid by the government of Delhi for the execution of each prisoner. The person to execute the four convicts in the Nirbhaya rape case is being brought from Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut district.

Subsequently, the Superintendent should make sure that the rope around the neck of the prisoner is adjusted properly and the knot is placed in a proper position.

“The warders holding the prisoner’s arms shall now withdraw and at a signal from the Superintendent, the executioner shall draw the bolt”

The operations should be done simultaneously and as quick as possible. “On completion of all these operations, the Superintendent shall give a signal, on which the executioner in-charge shall push the lever to release the trap-door,” the manual stated.

When the trap-door is opened, the prisoner falls through and dies. After the execution, the body remains suspended for half an hour before being taken down or until the Resident Medical Officer has certified that “the life is extinct”.

The Supreme Court in Shatrughan Chauhan judgment in January 2014 made it mandatory to conduct a post-mortem after the hanging.

It is then disposed of according to the requirement of the religion the deceased belong to.

The body can also be handed over to the relatives if they give an undertaking that they will not make a public demonstration of the cremation of the executed prisoner.

“The body of the executed prisoner shall be taken out of the prisoner with solemnity. A municipal hearse or ambulance shall be used for the transportation of the body to the cremation or burial ground,” the rules state.

New CDS Has A Dual-Hatted Role & Multiple Challenges

By Mahendra Ved

Amidst so much ongoing controversy and toxic debate in India, one decision of the Narendra Modi Government to receive universal welcome is that of the appointment of the first Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) at the top of three pyramids of the armed forces.  

Appointed to the post is General Bipin Rawat, PVSM, UYSM, AVSM, YSM, SM, VSM, ADC. Age 61 and commissioned in 1978, his three-year tenure as the 27th Chief of Army Staff concluded over the year-end.   

His appointment fits into the current dispensation’s muscular approach to security-related issues. Some of it has stridently entered the political arena and public discourse (read Pakistan), dividing people, but also capturing popular imagination.

But that does not diminish the CDS’ importance as a reform in management of military affairs at the top and for the vital military-civil synergy.

India was the only large democracy without a single-point military advisor with all P5 countries having one, till Modi announced the intent during his Independence Day speech in August 2019. His government stands out, like the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government did, for taking long-pending security related decisions on which the past Congress-led governments were extremely cautious. After years of debating, the Vajpayee regime had appointed a National Security Advisor. Today the NSA has Cabinet rank in the government.

The status of the CDS, of course, will be below that. He will be heading a new Department of Military Affairs within the Ministry of Defence. As the name indicates, it is envisaged as the principal focal point for military affairs within the civilian set-up.

This has been long awaited by the military, albeit with silent reservations in its top echelons, depending upon individual and institutional preferences. But this military super-boss should certainly cause deep consternation among the civil servants.

On Independence, India inherited British-trained military forces whose top officials took orders from civilians who in turn enforced what London desired. The new leadership, concerned about the role the military was playing post the World War II, particularly in Asia and in its immediate neighbourhood, consciously enforced civilian supremacy. As a result, India became a democracy, howsoever chaotic, while the military seized power for long years in the next decade or so, in Pakistan, Myanmar, Indonesia and elsewhere. 

Also Read: We Stay Away From Politics: CDS Rawat

This political supremacy and civilian control over the military in India has, in effect, meant overriding powers for the bureaucrats who have kept the military way down in parity. The CDS’ appointment tweaks this arrangement a bit, gently introducing into the room a man in uniform. At the same time, the CDS has been assigned no command function, which means the three Services Chiefs are free to run the day-to-day affairs.

By assigning the CDS a key role in planning, procurement, tri-service institutions, defence diplomacy and quality assurance, the government could simultaneously unleash a host of critical reforms that have been unheard of until now.

Past records show that the idea of creation of such a post goes back seven decades to Lord Mountbatten, India’s last British Viceroy. As Army Chief, General KV Krishna Rao had advanced creation of the post of CDS in 1982.

It was formally envisaged after the Kargil war in 1999, but was put on the back-burner, despite authorities recommending the need for creating a post for a single command centre in matters of warfare and nuclear weaponry.

The Kargil Review Committee, Report of Task Force on National Security (Naresh Chandra Committee), and the Committee of Experts on Enhancing Capability and Rebalance Defence Expenditure (General Shekatkar Committee) had chalked out a strategy for higher defence management.

In 2017, intelligence and security officials and analysts had said that the absence of a CDS was hampering India’s combat capabilities. With an ongoing proxy war with Pakistan and a stand-off with China on Doklam plateau, many security officials said a single chain of command was imperative to strengthen India’s collective defence might.

About the CDS’ positioning, veteran security analyst Commodore (rtd.) Ranjit observes: “History needs to be heeded as access to the Prime Minister in India as head of the Cabinet matters as India runs on Cabinet Control. President is Commander-in-Chief only formally. The PM retains the real power.” Hence, personality of the Chief matters.”

He recalls: “In 1971 General (later Field Marshal) Sam Manekshaw set a bench mark as the Chairman of Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC) to act like a CDS with direct access to the Defence Minister and Prime Minister. This instilled confidence and ensured effective preparations for the impending war that followed in 1971. It took months to get the machinery going for that victory, something we ought not to forget.”

But Manekshaw did not make it to the CDS post. He “almost became CDS but then IAF Chief ACM Pratap Lal had objected (as per Lal’s autobiography).”

Rai offers another recall: “When the Navy Chief, Admiral S M Nanda was told by the Defence Secretary on phone that Manekshaw was going to be the CDS, he remarked, ‘make any one anything as long as you do not remove a star from me’, or words to that effect.” Years later, Admiral Sushil Kumar could not become the CDS due to the Air Chief’s objection.

Indeed, several Chiefs of one Service or the other have objected to having a super-boss. If the Army is oldest and many times larger than the Navy and the Air Force, goes the argument, the latter two are more technical in tune with modern times and in no way less in strategic terms. 

The Modi Government has ignored/over-ridden such a possibility. But issues could arise in the future. To avoid such situations, Rai strongly recommends, “the CDS will have to bring in Jointness and many challenges will then ease in his big task of tri-Service training and procurement and operations.”

As an aspiring regional power jointmanship is the way forward for India, like the United States, China, the UK and Australia. It may not be easy since the Services Chiefs have had no experience of working under a single, unified command. On the other hand, given the way the system works in India, there is fear that this may end up as another layer, like an onion peel in the multilayered and often opaque decision-making apparatus.

While the Department and the Defence Ministry shall remain intact in its original form, the CDS will be the single-point advisor to the Defence Minister. But that the three Service Chiefs will continue to remain advisors to the Defence Minister about their own Services seems contradictory.

As Lt. Gen. (rtd.) Prakash Menon puts it, in essence, the CDS “is dual-hatted and will have to adjudge contentious issues initially at the inter-service level as Permanent Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee (PC-COSC), and thereafter as CDS at the departmental level.”

This “dual-hatting” is better explained by the need for the CDS to act as a bridge between the political leadership and the military instrument, which has to encompass the shaping of the military through long term plans that are guided politically.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Citizenship Law And Justice For All!

By Amit Sengupta

The blood in Uttar Pradesh has still not dried. At least 22 people have died in various towns of this state, even as clashes continue. The police in a bizarre argument has said that the people killed, died because of the crossfire within protesters. Only the UP Police can give such an argument even while media reports say they allegedly went inside homes of Muslims in Muzaffarnagar at midnight, beat up residents, including women and children, broke whatever they saw including refrigerators, TVs and washing machines, and stole money. Despite the police denial, there is visual evidence to prove how law enforcement agents became lawless goons loaded with a communal bias. After all, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had called for ‘revenge’. That the Prime Minister, the Home Minister are backing Yogi is also without doubt.

Will the people of Uttar Pradesh get justice?

In 1984, media reporters, including this writer, were on the spot in the State-sponsored killings of Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere, master-minded by Congress goons and politicians, especially in Delhi. The mediapersons covered on foot bloody lanes and bylanes in east and west Delhi, witnessed the burnt out homes with the smell of kerosene.  

Also Read: Deconstructing India’s New Citizenship Law

When a big tree falls, the earth will shake, said Rajiv Gandhi, then. The Congress ran a diabolical and sinister anti-Sikh campaign after Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her own bodyguards. The Congress won by a huge margin in the next national polls. The BJP got two seats in the Lok Sabha. It took more than three decades to put Sajjan Kumar in jail. After god knows how many commissions of enquiry.

How did the Sikhs feel then? Did they get justice? No.

Ask the Muslims of Hashimpura, Maliana and Meerut in Uttar Pradesh about 1987 violence. Taken out with their hands up in the lanes of their colonies, with guns pointing at them, scores were shot in cold blood by a communal Provincial Armed Constabulary in mafia/Nazi execution style, their bodies dumped in the Hindon river. It was a Congress regime at the Centre and the state.

Did they, their relatives, the survivors, the community, get justice? No.

Not till date, after 33 years. And what was the message to the Muslims by a so-called secular regime? Trust, you know, you were, you are, you will be, always, second class citizens of independent, modern India, though you willfully chose a secular democratic State, not a theocratic State.

Did the secular Indian society get justice in the protracted Babri Masjid demolition issue which was trapped in the labyrinths of the judicial process for decades? Who led the demolition as a public spectacle under a BJP regime in Lucknow, who were the leaders who were openly celebrating the demolition in Ayodhya, while Indian and foreign journalists were getting bashed up by the Bajrang Dal activists? Who led the Somnath-to-Ayodhya regime with the slogan: Mandir wahin Banayenge?

Was anyone held responsible for the riots that followed and killed scores across the damned Indian landscape?

Did anyone get punished for the killings of Muslims in Bombay in the macabre winter of 1992-93, despite the meticulously documented Sri Krishna Commission Report? Did the Congress, NCP, BJP, Shiv Sena regime implement the report?

I will skip the details about the 2002 barbaric, State-sponsored genocide in Gujarat under the helm of Narendra Modi. Mediapersons reported the genocide in great details and even after 2002 kept digging and documenting. We waited for justice after the macabre gang-rapes and killings, the people burnt alive as a public spectacle, and the fake encounters that followed. Not one, a series of fake encounters. Mission Assassination Modi – they were called.

Did the mass murderers get punished? Did the fake encounter specialists get punished? Did the Muslims of Gujarat get justice? No.

Till date, almost four months after 8 million people in Kashmir, under military occupation, await justice from the highest court. In Assam, almost 19 lakh Indians, mostly Hindus, tribals, Gorkhas and indigenous communities, apart from Muslims, have been left out of the National Register of Citizens and condemned allegedly as foreigners or ‘doubtful voters’ – will they get justice? Undoubtedly, no.

It is a good thing too. The loss of faith should energise the political struggle. Because, it is the non-violent political struggle which will liberate us from our masters’ masculine arrogance and disregard for all institutions, including the Indian Constitution. Can we have faith in the courts in contemporary times? That is the widespread question right now across the spectrum which had always believed in the judicial process, especially the Supreme Court.

However, the peaceful political resistance and mass movement must do what it must, as a political struggle, and not seek judicial intervention which might effectively kill the movement. And it is a struggle which is secular. Everywhere, in Assam and the Northeast, as much as all over India now, from Kurnool in Andhra to Nuh in Mewat, from Mumbai to Kolkata. It has spread and taught the masculine arrogance of the current regime a good lesson.

But there is a remote possibility of justice, especially when it is political struggle for justice. But who will turn the tide? A mass movement, in synthesis with theory and praxis, led by the young. A peaceful, non-violent, united mass movement – as it is now happening across the Indian landscape, as a rainbow revolution. Yes, led by the young.

There is no defeat in a movement. All movements are victorious, for they create a spiral of new movements and ideas and adventures and literature and cinema, counter-culture and knowledge systems. They create new scaffoldings of resistance and barricades.

That is why an idea cannot be killed. That is why Bhagat Singh and his comrades, as much as Babasaheb Ambedkar, or even Lenin and Che and Fidel, can never die. Nor will Gramsci. Nor will the Mahatma.

There is hope in a non-violent, Gandhian, mass upsurge. ‘Don’t be silent, Don’t be violent’ – as the current slogan says, among an extraordinary repertoire of brilliant slogans. Like a hundred flowers blooming, and one hundred new sublime schools of thought.

Bangladesh – A Long And Firm March Towards Prosperity

By Mahendra Ved

Preparing to hug the half-century milestone, Bangladesh this month celebrated with aplomb its 49th Bijoy Divas or the Victory Day. On that day in 1971, over 93,000 Pakistani soldiers surrendered to the Joint Command of India and Bangladeshi Mukti Bahini forces, permanently altering the world map.

That slice of history may mean many things to many people today. But to succeeding generations of those who went through political turmoil followed by ten months of organised violence, and ending in a decisive military victory, remains and shall remain forever an extraordinary moment.

The parade marking the occasion showed a confident Bangladesh. Military hardware was proudly displayed on the ground and in the sky. That combined with floats and tableaux of projects, programmes and achievements made for an impressive show.

Indian veterans led by Lt. Gen. (rtd.) R S Kadian marched and so did a contingent and band of the National Cadet Corps (NCC). It struck Muhammad Iqbal’s musical note, “Saare Jahan Se Achha,” that harks back to an undivided South Asia.

Bangladesh has assigned itself a two-year tryst by which time it will complete 50 years of independence. It wants the world to notice its rise from being dubbed the “international basket case” in initial years to become, at annual 8.5 percent gross domestic product (GDP) rise, one of the world’s fastest growing economies.

Putting its cheap work force to good use and with many plus points that have eluded most others among the least-developed countries (LDCs), Bangladesh has all the makings of a developing nation. Out of the food scarcity rut, it is diversifying farm and industrial output and even exporting surplus.

It aims to leap into the cyber-digital era with come-hither calls to anyone who cares to respond.  With its good debt servicing record, Bangladesh is an attractive investor’s destination. Both regional giants, China and India, are wooing and being wooed.

At independence, over 90 percent of its annual budget was foreign-financed. Two decades later, it was 70 percent and was 50 percent a decade back when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina returned to power.

The figure has now reversed. Ninety-two percent of the budget is being funded internally. Booming garment exports, some to marquee global brands and remittances from its 10 million working abroad contribute generously.

Bangladesh has long seen itself as a bridge between South and south-east Asia. With Cox’s Bazaar beach and Royal Bengal Tigers in the Sundarban, its tourism pitch is rising. People are warm and hospitable. But much needs done to improve infrastructure.

Many of Bangladesh’s human development indicators are better than others in the region. The economy is already the best-performing in South Asia, outdoing in proportional terms larger neighbour India and certainly, Pakistan, from which it violently separated.

Due to this past, Pakistan’s image remains negative in official and much of the popular discourse. India figures high despite the current concerns over two Indian laws with bearing on its east and northeast that encase Bangladesh. If persisted, they could have political fallout.

Sheikh Hasina cherishes India ties and has diligently worked to nurture them. For one, she has ended Indian militants’ run. She appreciates India’s contribution to Liberation and thereafter. She is trying hard to keep the current political and diplomatic discourse triggered by Indian laws, to the bare-minimum, so far. This reflects self-confidence and maturing of a nation of 165 million people.

There are other signs of a young nation with young people having the highest proportion in South Asia of women in every field. Farms and garment factories are ample proof of that. Exuberant crew members want to get photographed with passengers as part of the PR effort as more and more privately run airlines fly passengers in and out.

On political front, Hasina remains firm on punishing killers of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s foremost leader and her father in a 1975 military-led coup, and most of her family. The West is critical of the process employed and the Islamic world is unhappy. But both can’t ignore Bangladesh.   

Ethos of the Bengali language stir of the 1950s and the freedom movement remains strong in the face of religious extremists. When these forces inflicted violence in 2013, Muslims and Hindus together fought back at Dhaka’s Shahbag Avenue. This conflict remains a constant challenge.

Bangladesh is, uniquely both. An Islamic nation that, thanks to its culture, is also broadly secular. (Secularism as basic principle remains part of its Constitution). The society as a whole remains conservative, respectful of elders and displays overt religiosity.

This complex amalgamation ensures co-existence and diversity. With that comes a high measure of political stability, due principally to Hasina’s continuance in office for a third consecutive term. She looms large over the country’s horizon. Forbes’ ranks her 29th among the world’s most powerful woman.

As investors get attracted, she has forced Western governments to ignore her hard line on political opponents, especially the Jamaat-e-Islami. Her arch rival and two-term former premier, Begun Khaleda Zia, is ailing, ageing and denied bail, currently imprisoned for graft.

There are negative indicators, too, when it comes to transparency, sanitation, ease of doing business and media freedom that, as in the rest of South Asia, should hopefully improve with longer spells of political stability.

Contradictions seemingly persist and are growing with changes in other spheres. The pristine riverine scape of the boatman and his folk songs as one read in Tagore and Nazrul literature is slowly yielding place to increasing urbanization.

A provincial capital at Independence, Dhaka has become unbearably chaotic with 24×7 traffic snarls around high-rise buildings. As bridges and fly-overs struggle to make movement faster, a rapid mass transport system now under construction shall continue to add to the chaos, till it is completed.

These are but brief, broad-brush impressions, of one who has witnessed Bangladesh for over 45 years. Handicapped by inadequate knowledge, of language in particular, they are compensated, hopefully, by best wishes for bright future for its people.

The writer recently visited Bangladesh at the invitation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Deconstructing India’s New Citizenship Law

By Sanjoy Narayan

In an impassioned speech to mark the launch of his party’s campaign for the Delhi elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi repeatedly assured Indian Muslims that the recently enacted Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAA) or the proposed roll-out of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) would not discriminate against those who were born in India. This comes in the wake of widespread protests, mainly by urban students, across India. The protests, including violent incidents leading to destruction of public property and clashes with police, spread across India, before being quelled.

What were the reasons for the sudden and spontaneous uprising by students? Mr Modi and his colleagues in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) attribute it to their political rivals, chiefly the Congress party, who they claim have provoked the agitations by the students in order to gain electoral advantage in the forthcoming state elections, notably in Delhi, which goes to the polls in early 2020. But Mr Modi’s critics and the student agitators believe that the CAA and, potentially, the NRC, discriminate against Muslims, while they favour almost all other religious minorities. The Act and the register, critics feel, will further marginalise India’s population of 200 million Muslims and turn the country into a majoritarian state, dominated by Hindus, which is contrary to the secularist tenet of the nation’s Constitution.

What exactly does the CAA intend to do? Primarily, the Act amends the existing Indian Citizenship law, which prohibits illegal migrants from becoming Indian citizens. The old law prohibits illegal foreigners who enter India without valid visas or travel documents from staying in the country and denies them Indian citizenship. Under the new Act, which Mr Modi’s government has formulated, there are exceptions to that law. Now, Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis, and jains (notably not Muslims), if they have genuinely immigrated from Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan, will be allowed to stay in India and can be eligible for citizenship if they live or work in the country for six years. The government believes that this will provide sanctuary to those who have fled other countries because of religious persecution.

What then is the controversy surrounding the CAA? The Modi regime’s critics argue that the new Act discriminates against Muslims and, therefore, goes against the secular principles in the Indian Constitution. By separating Mulsims and non-Muslims, the Act, critics feel incorporates religious discrimination into a law and that runs counter to India’s long-standing secular principles. If illegal immigrants from other religions are allowed to seek refuge legally in India, why not also the Muslims who are persecuted in other countries. People belonging to certain sects in Pakistan (Ahmadis, for instance) or in Myanmar (Rohingyas) face oppression and persecution in their countries. Why should they be denied sanctuary? they ask.

What is the controversy over the NRC? The NRC is a register of people who are able to show proper credentials to prove that they came to India before March 24, 1971, the eve of the formation of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan), which neighbours India. Initially, the register was introduced in Assam, which has for decades faced a problem of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Before the register was published, the BJP government had rooted for it but after it was found to be ridden by errors—millions, primarily Bengali Hindus, were excluded—it was scrapped and could now be re-framed. The CAA and the NRC are interlinked. Now, non-Muslims who were exclude from the register could seek citizenship and not face deportation, particularly in states such as Assam.

The Modi regime, led by Home minister Amit Shah, now wants to roll out the NRC across all Indian states. This would mean illegal immigrants would have to prove their credentials in order to be entitled to permission to stay on in India. Critics believe that coupled with the CAA this could discriminate against Muslims who have migrated to India and have been staying in the country for a long time. Non-Muslims who are not on the NRC could be protected by the CAA and, hence, seek citizenship by naturalisation, while Muslims who are on listed on the register would be denied the right to stay.

What is the provocation for the protests? The student agitation—which Mr Modi and his colleagues in government say is a movement by “urban Naxals” (a reference to the ultra-Left Wing violent uprisings that peaked in the 1970s)—is fuelled by the view that the new law would discriminate against the largest minority community in India (the 200 million Muslims in India make it the country with the largest Muslim population outside of countries that are Muslim dominated) and , therefore, not only violate secularist principles but drive in the wedge further between the Muslim minority and the Hindu majority. A citizenship law that is based on religious affiliation destroys the secularist fabric of India, critics argue. But the student protests have to be viewed from a broader perspective.

The trigger point for the recent agitation by students was the CAA and NRC and the first protests took place in or around the campuses of two Muslim-centric universities—Aligarh Muslim University in Uttar Pradesh and the Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi. They quickly spread to other universities in India where students empathised with the protesters and organised their rallies, marches and assemblies. However, there have been other build-ups to the actual protests. The Modi regime is viewed by students as being intolerant and non-secularist. In particular, students have been apprehensive about recent developments that have demonstrated discriminatory trends.

The crackdown in Kashmir where leaders were put under house arrest, and communication was blocked after the government repealed special status for the Muslim-majority state is one provocation for the restiveness that has come to prevail on Indian university campuses. The Babri Masjid verdict, which, in essence, gives the go ahead for Hindu activists to gain control over a plot of land where an old mosque stood (it was demolished by Hindu activists in 1992) and build a temple dedicated to the mythological figure, Rama, is yet another point of discord.

India’s students are a significant force. As much as 50% of Indians are below the age of 25 and in recent years many of them feel insecure both economically as well as socially. Unemployment rates are high (although authentic data are difficult to access in India); the economy has been slowing down; consumer demand and, as a consequence, investment by industry is at its nadir. Increasingly, this is making India’s youth disenchanted with the establishment. The recent protests could, thus, be a foretaste of more serious agitations. It is time the Modi regime took note of the stark writing on the wall.

Recycling Is The Only Solution To Manage e-Waste Hazards

By Kunal Bose

India would have been in a better position today to handle the enormous quantities of electronic waste or e-waste in shorter form had it taken note of the serious health and environment damages caused to Guiyu in south China’s coastal province Guangdong where almost every family was engaged in processing imported and indigenous e-waste. What would you expect Guiyou township to become when the people there were extracting valuable materials such as gold, silver and copper from e-waste in makeshift workshops in their backyards without any protection?

As e-waste items would be given acid bath and incinerated and much of that happening by the side of the river, the water got polluted. Remains of heavy metals such as lead, tin and chromium removed from e-waste in a crude fashion settling on ground made the once rice and other crops growing Guiyou barren. The toxic air and water in 54 sq km Guiyu were also the reason for the children having high levels of lead in their blood that would compromise their intelligence and damage development of central nervous system and miscarriages level being much higher than national average.

The health and environment disaster that clumsy recycling continued to wrack on Guiyou, the world’s most notorious dumping ground for e-waste, invited unrelenting global criticism that made an embarrassed Beijing to ask  Guangdong provincial authorities to be quick on cleanup operation. The place rightly earned the moniker the world’s graveyard for e-waste. Farming ruined, Guiyu residents were left with no alternative but to depend on e-waste processing for sustenance.

This being the reality, what Guandong decided in December 2013 and finally executed in 2015 was to move the family run recycling workshops numbering more than 1,200 to an industrial park built at a cost of 1.5 billion yuan ($233 million). While the ones that refused to move their work to the park were banned, those who came in went through many mergers ending in about 30 big operations. The park has enforced strict discipline by way of checking what e-waste comes in for processing and what recovered materials go out.

The reason for deliberating on Guiyu crisis and its resolution by way of official intervention in so many words is because China’s response to combat a health and environment disaster could act as an alert for New Delhi to cope with the fast developing crisis centring e-waste. There is no way we can pretend ignorance that India is the world’s fifth largest generator of e-waste after the US, China, Japan and Germany. The accumulation of such waste and its open air processing as was the case in Guiyu till a few years ago or as is to be widely seen with roadside dismantling of lead acid batteries in our cities and countryside is nothing short of our sitting on an environment and health destroying time bomb ticking away.

Conservatively estimated India’s annual output of e-waste is 2 million tonnes and not more than 5 per cent of that is recycled. Even then for that recycled amount it will not be claimed that much of dismantling of discarded e-materials from smartphones to computers to new age TVs is done scientifically in an ideal environment like what now obtains at Guiyu. Generation of e-waste is not confined to traditional IT products. From air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines, vacuum cleaners to small appliances such as toasters, irons and coffee machines all now have components that leave e-waste at the end of useful life. Indian rich and the middle class constitute a consumer society with a rising disposable income. Then consumer loans available from banks and other financial institutions help in buying all kinds of things, including electronic products. No wonder the market for consumer electronic products in the country continues to grow at an annual rate of 15 per cent defying major demand slump for automobiles and the whole range of fast moving consumer goods.

Two factors contributing to the growing menace of build-up of e-waste are: First, an unaccountable number of smartphones, laptop computers and several other electronic products come into the country with Indians returning from abroad. Knowing how much such products are appreciated here, foreigners visiting India also bring these as gifts. Second, purely for commercial reasons producers of consumer electronics items, particularly smartphones will launch new products – in most cases an apology for refreshed – at regular intervals to lure customers to buy these and discard the ones with still useful life.

People need to be made aware of the consequences of 95 per cent of e-waste accumulating in individual residences – a south Asian phenomenon of common disinclination to get rid of old things – offices and factories, out in the open and in landfills. Electronic equipment contain toxic materials such as lead, zinc, nickel, chromium and barium. Lead left in the open will cause harm to human health with children in particular suffering damages to blood, kidneys and nervous system. We are seeing here how workers engaged in dismantling end of life vehicles in an archaic fashion suffer health problem. There is mindless throwing here of e-waste in the open but when it gets heated under the sun, toxic chemicals are released in the air to environmental detriment. Leave e-waste in landfills, the toxic elements will seep into groundwater whose use will prove damaging to human health and growing of crops as was seen at Guiyu.

Seeing the emergence of a major crisis, the UPA government enacted e-waste management rules in 2011 and the NDA regime further inserted teeth to the rules twice in 2016 and 2018. But the initiatives have not yielded the desired results in the absence of simultaneous build-up of public awareness of the menace facing them. Thankfully, more recently marketing outfits such as Flipkart, which was acquired in May 2018 by Walmart and Tata group owned Croma have got into the act in tie-ups with some major electronic brands for collection and sending e-waste to centres where it is processed in an environment friendly way.

Let the domestic and foreign companies with manufacturing outfits here follow the example of Apple which is committed to reusing as much of materials recovered from e-waste as possible in its new products. To give an example, Apple is using 100 per cent recycled rare earths in a key component in its new series of iPhones. Finally, the rate of recycling of e-waste in India will depend on motivating consumers to return end of life products to retailers and for that get a decent discount for their new purchases. At the same time, all the stakeholders will have to see that government authorised recycling centres in good numbers which will take care of the health of workers come up in different parts of the country.

Pakistan And Citizenship Amendment Act

By LokMarg

December is a humiliating month for Pakistan. The wounds of 16 December 1971, when 93,000 of its soldiers surrendered to India in Dhaka and it lost half the country are still fresh. To vent its frustration and disgrace, Pakistan has seized upon the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) to hit back at India. Four strands are noticeable in its reactions.

First, Pakistan’s attempt is to misrepresent the CAA as anti-Muslim since it fast-tracks citizenship for all non-Muslim immigrants from neighbouring countries but does not extend this provision to Muslims. It has been projecting that such discrimination against Muslim would marginalize them and India would no longer be a secular and democratic state.

The second strand is the flagrant interference in the internal affairs of India. For example, a Resolution adopted by Pakistan’s National Assembly on 16 December called upon India to revoke the discriminatory clauses in the CAA and immediately halt the brutal use of force against the religious minorities, in particular, Indian Muslim students. It also demanded the release of peaceful protesters detained during the crackdown against minorities.

The third strand is the insidious attempt to incite the Muslims of India. The narrative being pedalled by Pakistan is that the CAA is a weapon — disguised in legal language — to permanently disenfranchise India’s Muslims; that Indian Muslims are under assault; they know that it is a do or die situation for them; they are well aware that silence over the matter of citizenship is nothing short of enabling the government to ghettoise them and this would lead to dangerous sectarian tensions within India.

The final strand is the focus on the character of the BJP government. Imran Niazi called the CAA part of the RSS Hindu Rashtra design of expansionism propagated by the fascist Modi government. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi tweeted, ‘The Modi government continues to curb and undermine the rights of minorities in accordance with Hindutva supremacist ideology. The illegal annexation of Kashmir, Babri Masjid, Citizenship Amendment Bill which excludes Muslims are all targeted towards the subjugation of minorities.’ The Pak Foreign Office in a statement termed the CAA as ‘…driven by a toxic mix of an extremist ‘Hindutva’ ideology and hegemonic ambitions in the region.’

Pakistan has tried to make a comparison with Nazi Germany’s discrimination of the Jews. The linked argument is that the then major powers appeased Hitler instead of acting against him that ultimately led to WWII. The implication is that appeasement of India now would be a precursor to the disaster that could engulf the region and the world.

Then, of course, DG Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Major General Asif Ghafoor couldn’t hide his glee at the protests in India when he tweeted ‘Today all minorities of India should have again realised that vision of our great leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah about Hindutva was absolutely right. They would now regret more convincingly to be part of India.” Perhaps Ghafoor would be better off worrying about the extension of his army chief and the death penalty of a former chief.

What Pakistan’s leaders and the media have deliberately obfuscated is that the CAA does not take away the citizenship of any Indian irrespective of her or his faith. Indian leadership has repeatedly stated this. All that it does is to accelerate the process of giving citizenship to those religious minorities from selected countries who are persecuted. Moreover, anyone regardless of faith can continue to seek Indian citizenship through the regular procedure as before. By interfering in India’s internal affairs Pakistan has opened itself to its horrendous human rights record in Balochistan and its treatment of the Pashtuns being raised by India.

In reality, Pakistan is hardly in the position to talk about minorities since the systematic persecution of its Hindus, Christians, Ahmadis and Shias has been widely documented. Ahmadi mosques, Christian churches and Hindu temples have been repeatedly attacked, the members of their communities have been killed, their women raped and forcibly converted to Islam. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, over 1000 girls belonging to religious minorities are forcibly converted to Islam every year. Hindu traders, merchants and moneylenders have been frequently kidnapped for ransom while the authorities have done nothing. In addition, the blasphemy law has been used mostly against Hindus and Christians. According to Minority Rights Index, Pakistan ranks as the ninth worst country in the world.

In Pakistan, minorities are not merely discriminated against by a radicalised population but also by the state in the form of several discriminatory laws that have been a part of the Constitution for several decades now. Thus, Pakistan had declared Ahmadis as non-Muslim in 1974, while under Zia, Ahmadis were prohibited to call themselves Muslims and were not allowed to even recite Islamic text as prayers. The targeted killing of Shias in Pakistan has been termed as genocide and not merely sectarian conflict. Recently, an assistant commissioner was forced to ‘clarify’ her stance after she said there should be no discrimination against Ahmadis. Efforts have been made to discredit army chief Gen Bajwa by alleging that he was an Ahmadi and a case was also filed that he was not fit to be the army chief on this account.

Pakistan thus has no credibility to shed crocodile tears on the alleged treatment of minorities in India who have constitutional and institutional protection. Nevertheless, Pakistan’s sinister designs to stoke protests in India through falsehoods need to be noted and guarded against.

What Pakistan really needs to do is to look at the functioning of its own moribund parliament; the fragility of its own democracy; the polarization of its political parties and polity; the tragedy of its vacuous leadership that is only adept at frequent ‘U-turns’ and above all at the institutionalised discrimination of its minorities, religious and ethnic. India is perfectly capable of taking care of all its people.

(Tilak Devasher is Member, National Security Advisory Board and Consultant, Vivekananda International Foundation. Views expressed are personal.) – ANI

India’s Soft Power Drives Hard Bargains

By Mahendra Ved

How does one survive in a world torn between forces for and against globalization? How does one promote mutual acceptance when even bare tolerance is missing? The only answer is cross-cultural communications.

“Bring it at the centre table”, declares retired Indian Ambassador Paramjit Sahai. Cultural exchange, he says, is all about openness and India with its multiple identities within and of the nearly-thirty million diaspora across the globe exemplifies it the best.

His book on Indian cultural diplomacy is for “celebrating pluralism in a globalized world”. Its strength “lies in the tangible way it works. It opens the doors by changing mindset and creating a positive and friendly atmosphere.”

An official representative in many counties, Sahai insists that cultural diplomacy should, however, be essentially “people-centric” and as far as possible, independent. The government should ‘vacate’ areas like films and Yoga that have “come of age” and can be privately handled. He is right.

Actually, cinema has for long grown out of Embassy environs into theatres to be savored not only by the diaspora but also local audiences, to become a multi-billion business.

I saw Raj Kapoor’s Awaara (1955), dubbed ‘Chavargo’ in Hungarian language, over four decades back drawing full house in Budapest’s niche theatres. Returning to it in 2016, I found the craze for Bollywood even more, for younger Kapoors, along with the Khans and the Bachchans.

The Japanese some years ago demanded Rajinikanth’s Tamil films underscoring the point that cinema has its own language.

This “soft power” yields hard currency. As much as the difficult to-assess export earnings, Indian cinema exudes a mix of nostalgia and brand loyalty that has sustained for generations and is growing. A big draw among the South Asian diaspora, it has become commercially rewarding, enough for Hollywood production houses to set up shops in India and make it global.

It is amazing but Indian TV serials are popular in distant West Africa. “Everything comes to a halt in our homes at 7.30 PM when they start,” says Richard J A Boateng, a film actor-director from Ghana. So smitten is he by Bollywood that he produced, directed and performed the lead in the first Ghana-India co-production titled Mr. India.

Indian yogis and ‘god men’ have for long thronged the Western world. The Modi Government has extended the Yoga foot-fall on the Thames, on the Danube and with Eiffel Tower forming its backdrop.

Yoga’s global emphasis is on lifestyle, health, restraint, fulfillment and well-being. Some Malaysians debated whether it was okay for Muslims, who are in majority, to perform a “Hindu’ thing that requires chanting ‘Om’. But privately-run yoga centres are thriving.  

This “soft power” draws deeply from the past and the present, bolstered by deep cultural ties forged by visitors from and to India.  Few other societies can boast of this.

At official level, it is fostered by Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), the cultural arm of the external affairs ministry. It runs 36 centres across the globe like the one in Budapest, named after Indian-Hungarian painter Amrita Shergill and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Centre in Kuala Lumpur.         

Cultural diplomacy sometimes rubs off on non-diplomatic spouses. Sahai’s wife Neena has published a delectable book on her experiences, good and not-so-good and how she freely imbibed local art and culture wherever she went.

Another example is Hema Devare. While diplomat Sudhir went about promoting India across Southeast Asia, she explored artworks and textiles in that region, discovering and writing about ancient links with India.

Their scholar-journalist daughter Ashwini has done one better. She grew up changing countries along with parents, describing her quest for self-identity in a book “Lost at 15, Found at 50.”       

Ambassador Malay Mishra on retirement is pursuing his doctorate in Hungary, studying Roma or the gypsies, migrants from South Asia, now inhabiting Central Europe.

It is a revelation that Romas or Romanis identify themselves with B R Ambedkar, the Dalit leader who framed India’s Constitution in the last century. Viewed from the human rights prism, Amberkar’s ideas have found echoes among the Romas, 500,000 of whom live in Hungary alone. 

In an apparent blowback, the Romas have found connections with Dalits, the socio-economically oppressed Indians, waging their own struggle in the present-day India. Although centuries and hundreds of kilometer apart, they are conscious of their roots even as they struggle to integrate in societies they feel discriminated.

Contemporary India nurtures these ties, albeit in a limited way, helping run schools in parts of Europe and hosting world Roma conferences.

The important thing is that India does not need to be introduced in many parts of the world. But it needs to be cultivated and promoted. One thing the government can do is to follow up the bilateral cultural agreements signed or updated during almost all visits, forgotten at times.

If basic goal is to make friends and influence people, India needs to “catch’em” young, at universities. Here again, the ethos in Indian universities where foreign students come, needs to be radically changed. Colour prejudice against the Blacks from Africa raises the question: is India spreading culture meant only to blondes and whites?

Sahai’s book is set against the backdrop of India’s ethos of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ (The World is a Family) and its pivot is the “Idea of India.” He has a set of questions:

“Can India give the message of spiritualism in a globalized world that is dominated by materialism? Can India lead in sending a message of diversity and pluralism, as lived by it, when the world is passing through a period of divisiveness and hatred?”

“More important than this,” he asks commenting on the present times, “can it retain its own Idea of India, which is coming under strain? While achieving our political goals, we should not lose sight of our ‘Big Picture’ of an India whose strength lies in ‘Unity in Diversity’ and which has been viewed as a benign power.”

Warning against India being seen as a “cultural hegemon”, he lauds the objective of emerging as ‘Vishwaguru’. But says that India should never move away from Sikh faith’s tenth Guru Gobind Singh’s teaching that calls for end to distinction between the teacher and the taught: “Ape Gur, Ape Chela” (He is both a teacher and a student).

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com