PRAKASH KARAT ON CUBA

The CPI (M) in India still smarting after the drubbing it received in the national elections has been looking around for a ray of hope.
And Prakash Karat, the party’s General Secretary at the national level, has had a revelation. Behold Cuba and emulate her. Cuba is the Socialist Paradise that shines bright amid the Capitalist Wolves.
Cuban Solidarity Committee had organized a Cuba Festival recently in Bangalore to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Glorious Cuban Revolution.
Karat tried his best to cheer up his depressed comrades and the rank and file of the party. One should not lose heart by the electoral reversals, he said. Socialism is marching ahead at the international level in spite of all the capitalist, imperialist conspiracies. You want evidence? Well, look at Cuba, he said.
Cuba! You say in utter disbelief.
According to Comrade Karat, “Cuba has fought the mightiest imperial power and overcome all the difficulties in its way.” (Emphasis added). What an incredible achievement!
Another surprise “Cuba wiped out illiteracy in a year!” In which year was it Comrade Karat? (Emphasis added). Ashamed that I was not aware of such a great feat by Cuba I asked my colleagues and friends. They and I realized how ignorant we have been all these years. None of us had heard about Cuba wiping out illiteracy in a year. The ratio between doctor and patient is 1:1000000, which is also superior to that of developed countries. What about development? Cuba has scaled great heights in development also. It is far ahead of other countries.
Comrade Karat went on to say that “It is not only a symbol of internationalism and resistance to imperialism, but also a source of inspiration for all countries which were under colonialism and imperialistic exploitation”.
All this nonsense in 2009. Twenty years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and reunification of Germany. And the break up of the USSR, said to have been created by one of their oracles, Lenin after the Glorious October Revolution in 1917.
Do not think that you can talk with the Marxists and try to convince them that all talk about the paradise on earth is meaningless. They just cannot get rid of their ideological blinkers and take a look at the course of history. They still firmly believe that they have a Grand Scientific Theory with which they can read the past and predict the future. And it has not failed them at any point in time.
Listen to what Karat said “Many of our friends and critics told us to give up the fight against imperialism because it has become irrelevant in the 21st century. If we do that, we cease to be what we are; we cease to be a force for progressive change and that lesson we must learn from Cuba”.
(In a conversation Mr. Anil Tandon of Doordarsan had with Mr. Sitaram Yechoori, Rajya Sabha member and a theoretician of the CPI (M) on Doordarsan channel, Tandon asked Yechoori to comment on an old joke that the CPI (M) is confined to just four places, West Bengal, Kerala, Tripura and Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. Yechoori seemed to admit it gracefully while saying that it is to be looked into.)

MUHAMMD ALI JINNAH

Retrospection and introspection are expected to yield come concrete results. They often bring to light what was hidden or unknown to light. Reassessment of individuals and movements helps us to learn from our past mistakes and move ahead.
An assessment of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, widely known as the Father of Pakistan is worth ones while. However, unlike any other political figure Jinnah is one of the most complicated both as an individual and a political leader. Both Jinnah and Gandhiji came from Gujarat. While Jinnah spoke little Gujarati, Gandhiji spoke and wrote in Gujarati. Both of them were also trained lawyers. They studied law in England. While Gandhiji claimed to represent millions of ordinary people Jinnah said time and again that Gandhiji represented the Hindus alone. And he wanted to be the ‘Sole Spokesman of the Muslims’.
The Sole Spokesman of the Muslims spoke little Urdu. He did not take the trouble to learn it. But he claimed that there was a concerted effort to wipe out the language. He was a chain smoker. He enjoyed his pork, something a devout Muslim considers to be the abode of the devil. He did not say his prayers five times a day as a devout Muslim is supposed to do. He is reported to have touched the Holy Quran the sacred text of the Muslims only once. But he wanted to be recognized as the sole representative of the Muslim community.
It is also reported that his driver was a Sikh from the Punjab, his stenographer a Brahmin from Kerala, his cook a Hindu from Goa. He fell in love with a Parsi woman and married her. However, he objected when his daughter, his only child, fell in love with a Parsi and married him. He went to Pakistan alone. His daughter stayed back in India.
He never kept a diary or authored any book.
When Bal Gangadhar Tilak was accused of being anti national by the British, Jinnah tried his best to save him. Gopal Krishna Goghale thought that Jinnah was free from all sectarian prejudice and had all the qualities that would make him the best ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity. Sarojini Naidu, the nightingale of India said, Jinnah,“whose fair ambition it is to become the Muslim Goghale may in some glorious and terrible crisis of our national struggle pass into immortality as the Mazzini of the Indian Liberation”.
The same Jinnah also said, “The Mussalmans are not a minority, as it is commonly known and understood…. Mussalmans are a nation by any definition of a nation, and the must have their homelands, their territory and their state.” (Pirzada II, Pa337)
As neither Gandhiji nor the Congress regarded Jinnah as the sole spokesman of the Muslims, he said, “Why does not Mr. Gandhi agree-and I have suggested this to him more than once, and I repeat it again from this platform-why does not Mr. Gandhi honestly now acknowledge that the Congress is a Hindu Congress, that he does not represent anybody except the solid body of a Hindu people? Why should not Mr. Gandhi be proud to say, ‘I am a Hindu, the Congress had solid Hindu bcking?’ I am not ashamed of saying that I am a Mussalman. I am right I hope, and I think even a blind man must have been convinced by now,that the Muslim League has the solid backing of the Mussalmans of India. Why then all this camouflage? Why all these machinisations? Why not come as a Hindu leader proudly representing your people and let me meet you proudly representing the Mussalmas…” (Pirzada 2, pa 333)
The fact that Mahatma Gandhi alone was the person who always opposed partition is also known widely. Pyarelal, his secretary and biographer has noted Gandhiji as having said , “The purity of my striving will be put to test only now. Today I find myself all alone. Even the Sardar and Jawaharlal think that my reading of the situation is wrong and peace is sure to return if partition is agreed upon…..They do not like my telling the Viceroy that even if there is to be partition, it should not be through the British intervention or under the British Rule…. They wonder if I have not deteriorated with age….Nevertheless I must speak as I feel I am to be a true and loyal friend to the Congress and to the British people, as I claim to be…regardless of whether my advice is heeded or not. I see clearly that we are setting about this business the wrong way. We may not feel the full effect immediately, but I can see clearly that the future of Independence gained at this price is going to be dark. I pray that god may not keep me alive to witness it...” (Pyarelal, The Last Phase, vol II 200) Mahatma’s words are plain enough.
Nehru himself has admitted as much later.
Ayesha Jalal Pakistani scholar and historian in her The Sole Spokesman, says that actually Jinnah did not want the partition. And the demand for Pakistan was just a bargaining chip. Although many have hailed it as a scholarly work it did not find her arguments convincing.
What has Jaswant got to say about Jinnah? He says that Jinnah has been demonized in India. In an interview with Karan Thapar broadcast by CNN-IBN, Jaswant commented that, “a distinction has to be made between Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s personal attributes as a human being and his politics. The personal attributes are admirable. His equations with human beings of all communities were a real example. His politics were abhorable. Particularly after 1940”. What is one to make of it?
Karan: - you said India has demonized him and yet you completely overlooked and ignored the fat that he launched against India the first threat to Indian sovereignty and the first war that India faced. And he did it within three months of partition. That is not mentioned.
Jaswant: - That would have required altogether a different and a separate book. Already it was running to 900 pages. The book had to be cut down. There are limits to it.
Karan: - What happens if people turn around and say that by overlooking and ignoring this, you have not only written a one-sided account but you have exculpated Jinnah of the charge of launching war against India?
Jaswant: - I have not exculpated because among the first of the sentences that I used in this interview is that a distinction has to be made between his personal attributes and his public conduct. These are two very different things”.
Is he going to write a sequel to his biography of Jinnah that runs to 669 pages?
Are we to wait and watch?

PAKISTAN'S PREVARICATIONS

The fact that Pakistan is the epicenter of terrorist activities in the region is an open secret. It is also known to everyone that Pakistan and its ISI were behind the attack on the Taj hotel in Mumbai. Indian and American investigators have gathered ample evidence to prove their involvement. American government also pressed Pakistan to bring the perpetrators and the organizations to book.
And Pakistan has on its part assured India and America to punish them the moment they are found out. India has handed over the details of many of the terrorists involved in the attack. One of the persons, Kasab who took part in the dastardly attack has been taken into custody. He has agreed that he and his associates came from Pakistan. His father in Pakistan recognized his son and admitted that Kasab was his son. For long authorities in Pakistan refused to admit the obvious and kept saying that Kasb or the killed terrorists were not Pakistani nationals. It refused to accept the dead bodies of those killed in the commando operation by India saying that there was no evidence to show that they were Pakistan citizens.
Under severe pressure from the US Pakistan later admitted that Kasb and all the killed terrorists were Pakistani citizens. Pakistan requested India to hand over the list of persons India claimed it had with it and all the evidences India had gathered to trace the terrorists hiding in Pakistan and bring them to justice.
Though Pakistan arrested Hafiz Saeed, chief of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, when the UN proscribed the outfit for alleged involvement in the Mumbai attack, the Lahore High Court set him free saying that there was no evidence to link him to the Mumbai attacks. On 1 August 2009, India handed over a seven page document with annexure to Pakistan which, Mr. Chidambaram India’s Home Minister claimed contained some more evidence showing the involvement of Saeed. Pakistan could find answers to its questions in the documents if they took the trouble to read it, the minister added.
When Mr. Manmohan Singh met Zardari, Pakistan’s president immediately after Singh’s re-election as the Prime Minister of India, he told bluntly in front of the international media that the renewed mandate just allowed him to tell the president that he was supposed to take concrete action against the terrorists operating from the Pakistani soil.
On 15 April 2009, while talking to the Editor’s Guild Mr. Singh said “There won’t be any resumption of bilateral talks till Islamabad stops allowing terrorists to use its territory against India”.
But on 16 July 2009, Singh signed a joint declaration with his Pakistani counterpart Mr. Gilani that read, “India was ready to discuss all issues with Pakistan, including all outstanding issues”. Not only had that Sing also expressed India’s concerns about the situations in Balochistan. It was a grave error on the part of the Indian Prime Minister. It gave the Pakistani Prime Minister a chance to state “the joined statement signed by me and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh underlines our concerns over India’s interference in Balochistan and other areas”.
As it led to uproar in India and the opposition accused Singh of de linking bilateral talks and terrorism Singh said in the parliament that India would not talk to Pakistan until it took concrete actions against the terrorists.
On 29 August Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Mr. Shah Mohammed Qureshi said at a news conference in Islamabad that “India hesitates on meaningful dialogue but they want cooperation in probing the Mumbai attacks. They want progress and then they shy away from talks. Both things cannot go together”. He further said that if the bilateral talks were not resumed soon the terrorists would determine the future course of events”.
India has responded saying that there was no point in talking now. Now that we have made it clear that we would not talk with Pakistan we must stick to it. There is no point in handing over any more evidence to Pakistan. It will keep asking for more evidence. It knows and every one around the world knows that the terrorists came from Pakistan and that they had been trained in Pakistan. But it is certain that Pakistan is not going to take any action as it is obvious that India would not take any military action against it.

KATI PATANG

It seems that the BJP has learned nothing from the drubbing it received in the recent national elections. The party was very confident of getting enough seats, in fact to win more seats than it did last time, and form the government at the centre. It had stated about a year back that Mr. L .K. Advani would be the Prime Minister if the NDA won the election.
Dashing all its hopes the people rejected it and voted the UPA to power for a second time. The Congress won 206 seats where as the BJP could win only 116 seats. The difference was significant and the BJP admitted defeat gracefully and congratulated Mr. Manmohan Singh whom it had dubbed as the weakest Prime Minister India ever had. Although the BJP performed well in Karnataka and Gujarat, the Congress made it bite dust in Rajasthan and Delhi. In Delhi Congress won all the 11 seats. In Madhya Pradesh the BJP lost many seats it had won earlier.
The BJP leaders were at a loss to explain their loss. Later the success of Congress was attributed mainly to its National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and the wavier of bank loans before the elections.
Soon it became clear that the BJP leadership could not explain away the defeat so easily. The party seemed united behind Advani before the election. No body had openly challenged Advani. Arun Shourie, a senior leader and former Disinvestment Minister in the Vajpayee government, spoke and wrote articles supporting Advani. Even Shekhavat a senior BJP leader and former Vice President who seemed to do so became silent soon. It cannot be said with any degree of certainty that there were any differences on its Prime Ministerial candidate.
Advani said that, as soon as the verdict was out, he was resigning as the leader of opposition owning responsibility for the poll debacle. However many others in party prevailed upon him not to resign. Slowly and gradually murmurs were heard from within the party about the way the election campaign was conducted. Yashwant Sinha, a senor leader and Finance Minister in the Vajpayee government, came out openly against the party leadership for its mishandling the campaign. He resigned all the party posts he had held. The party accepted his resignation, though it did not dare to expel him from the party.
Now it has become clear the Arun Shourie also had expressed his displeasure at the manner in which the campaign was run from Delhi. He said the campaign managers decided even the places where the hoardings were to be put up, sitting in Delhi without consulting the local leaders. Neither Advani nor Rajnath Singh paid attention to what Sinha and he had to say. The party did not invite nether of them to attend what was called ‘Chinthan Baitak’, a session of introspection.
Meanwhile Jaswant Singh, another senior leader and a member of the party since its inception published a biography of Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. He claimed that Jinnah was not that communal as he was made out to be. He also said both Nehru and Patel were as much responsible for the partition as Jinnah was. This was not acceptable neither to Rajnath or Advani. So Jaswant was expelled from the party for defying the party discipline. However, it is interesting to recall that it was Jaswant Singh who stood behind Advani when he stated Jinnah was not communal leader but a secular leader. The Gujarat government has also banned the book in the state.
It was then Arun Shourie came in the open and called the BJP a ‘kati patang’ (A kite with broken chord). In an interview given to the NDTV on 24 August, Shourie dubbed Rajnath Sing the party president, “Alice in Blunderland” and “Humpty Dumpty”. He said, “In my view, the BJP is a kati patang. And unless it is gotten hold by….not by the people in the BJP; they are simply incapable of doing it. The RSS should get hold of it….My question is the BJP a private property belonging to some individuals?”
Although many expected the party to expel Shourie from the party immediately, it has not happened yet. Rajnath Singh discussed the interview with the vice-president of the party M.A.Naqvi, and general secretaries such as Thawarchand Gehlot, Ramlal and Vinay Katyar and asked Shourie to ‘clarify’ his comments in the interview. Perhaps the party is afraid to expel him lest he reveal many other things.

PAKISTAN'S TACTICS

Finally the Americans seem to have realized it is high time it told the Pakistanis not to meddle with the arms it supplied to Pakistan to wage war against the terrorists nestled in that country. India has been saying for quite some time that Pakistan is using the planes and missiles the American gave it to fight the Taliban and other terrorist groups against India. But the American administration seemed not to care.
Now The New York Times has reported that Pakistan has also altered the structure of the planes and missiles America gave it, in such a way that they can be used against India. The paper reports that Obama administration has accused Pakistan of altering the structures of the Harpoon anti-ship missile and aircraft P-3C.
Harpoon is a barbed spear used for hunting large fishes. The Harpoon missile is an all-weather anti ship missile developed by the US. It can be launched from air crafts and ships. It flies at a wave-skimming altitude till it reaches the target ship. The missile as it is constructed cannot be used against any target on land. However, Pakistan has changed the structure of the missile so as to make it capable of attacking a target on land. And the target is obviously India.
The P-3C is a maritime surveillance aircraft. The air craft has advanced anti-submarine warfare avionics including the IBM Proteus and an advanced acoustic processor
The daily reports that the Obama administration has lodged a protest with the Pakistani Prime Minister Gilani in June 2009.
Indian External Affairs Minister Mr. S. M. Krishna had told the Americans that giving arms to Pakistan without verifying how Pakistan was using them would be counter productive. India knows that Pakistani’s are using the American weapons meant to use against the terrorist groups inside that country, are being used against India for some time. India had also conveyed its concerns to the American administration. But the American administration obsessed as it is with the war on terror is yet to address the Indian concerns.
According to The New York Times, Pakistan has denied the American charge and claimed that it developed the missiles on its own.
Meanwhile Mr. Hans M. Kristensena, top American scientist, has said, citing the Nuclear Notebook, that Pakistan has been developing nuclear arms at a fast pace. According to his report the number of nuclear war heads Pakistan has at present is somewhere around 70-90. According to Kristensen, Shaheen-II medium range ballistic missile would be operational quite soon. In addition to this Pakistan is also developing two types of cruise missiles that are capable of carrying nuclear devices. One of them, Babur is launched from the ground and the other named Ra-ad, is launched from air.
A chemical separation facility and two plutonium production reactors are also nearing completion. According to Kristensen Pakistan’s ability to make cruise missiles that can carry nuclear devices point to the fact that Pakistani designers and engineers have succeeded in making small and light plutonium warheads.
India should take note of all these developments and take precautionary measure so as not to be caught unawares. Instead of asking the Americans to keep an eye on the activities of Pakistan, and asking them to declare Pakistan as a rouge country or a failed state we must prepare ourselves to meet all eventualities. We have fought Pakistan three times and beaten them. Now they know well that it is not that easy to beat India in a war. The recent Kargil war must have driven this point again. All the same we cannot be complacent about the threats from Pakistan as long as it sees India as its enemy.

ANOTHER FRAUDULENT ELECTION ?

Afghanistan went to the polls on 20 Aug 2009, to elect its president and 420 councilors in 34 provinces. The incumbent President Hamid Karzai and the former Foreign Minister Abdulllah Abdullah are the main contestants. Ramazan Bashardost, a Kabul law maker and Ashraf Ghani are the other prominent contestants. Ashraf Ghani was once with the World Bank.
Hell bent on sabotaging the elections the Taliban carried out attacks as it had said. In the western province of Heart, militants stormed three polling booths and set the building on fire. They also destroyed the votes cast in the boxes. In the Northern Province Kunduz, the army repelled the militants. Reports say there were four explosions in Kandahar before the poll began.
The government, well aware of the militants plans to interrupt the election, had deployed 300,000 Afghan and foreign forces to ensure that the people came out to vote. However, compared with the turn out in 2004, the turn out in 2009 was not promising. President Hamid Karzai thanked the people of Afghanistan and said it had been a good day for the country.
Mr. Anders Fough Rasmussen, the Chief of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, said the voter turn out was ‘encouraging’ though it was low compared with the figures of 2004 elections. He reportedly said, “it was a clear demonstration that the Afghan people want democracy, they want freedom and reject terrorism”.
The Taliban had earlier distributed leaflets in the south of the country that read, “This is to inform respected residents that you must not participate in the elections so as not to become a victim of our operations, because we will use new tactics”. Qari Yousuf, a Talinan spokesman said that they were using new methods to attack election centers.
The government also warned the journalists in the country not to report threats or attacks of the Taliban as they are ‘forbidden’. However, they are free to report the polling. At the same time the Taliban is compelling the journalists to report the threats and dangers involved in voting.
Both Karzai and Abdullah have claimed victory in the election though the results are not out. It was reported that Abdullah was so confident the he declared “I am in the lead, no doubt. The incumbent should think for a single second that he could be out of that office and he should prepare himself mentally and physically”. When the counting began they were neck and neck. However, as the counting progressed Karzai began to establish clear lead.
None in the West expected the elections to be free of rigging. The American does not want Karzai to win. They know well that Karzai who desperately wants to win the election would buy votes using money and muscle powers. But at the same time they do not seem to have any other person in mind who could take charge in Afghanistan and deal with the Taliban firmly as they like.
There were allegations of fraud such as stuffing votes in the ballot boxes in favour of Karzai, and intimidation of the voters from the beginning. There were complaints about the indelible ink also. The Electoral Complaints Commission, which has the authority to declare the votes as invalid and order re-election, has received about 2500 complaints so far.
Mr. Kai Eide, the UN special envoy to Afghanistan, said that there were many irregularities in the poll. He also requested the political parties to trust the Complaints Commission and let it find out the details of the reported irregularities.
Even if Hamid Karzai is declared elected he will not enjoy the confidence either of his own people or the international observers. And a government without legitimacy cannot be expected to fight a determined militant force such as the Taliban and bring peace to the region.