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.

JASWANT'S JINNAH

Mr. Jaswant Singh, a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party has brought out a biography of Mohammad Ali Jinnnah, the Father of Pakistan. In India he is looked upon as the person mainly responsible for the Partition of India into Hindustan and Pakistan.
However, Mr. Singh thinks otherwise. He thinks Jinnah a secular man to the core, was not responsible for the partition. Acceding to him, Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India and one of the most prominent leaders of the Congress party, and Mr. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who integrated about five hundred small states into India as we know it today, immediately after independence, and the first Home Minister of independent India were responsible for the partition.
In his Jinnah:India-Partition-Independanc, Jaswant Singh has sought to dispel, so he claims, many misconceptions about Jinnah and the partition. He says, “We have misunderstood him because we needed to create a demon. We needed a demon because in the 20th century the most telling event in the subcontinent was the partition of the country”.
Indeed partition of India is one of the telling events in the 20th century. And it also goes without saying that the events and circumstances that led to the portioning are to be carefully looked into and documented. The British have told their version of the story in detail in their “Transfer of Power in India”. Unfortunately we Indians are yet to record our version of the story for our own sake. The attempt by the Historical Council of India to prepare a detailed account of our freedom struggle has not got anywhere.
As Jaswant sees it, Jinnah was “a great Indian” who has been “demonized” to absolve Nehru and Patel of their complicity in the partition of the country. According to Jaswant, Nehru had a streak of authoritarianism. He wanted to concentrate all authority at the centre. Jaswant Says, “Nehru believed in a highly centralized polity. That is what he wanted India to be. Jinnah wanted a federal polity. That even Gandhi accepted, but Nehru didn’t”. Nehru “stood in the way of a federal India until 1947 when it became a portioned India”.
Apart from the exception, the widely held view all over the world is that Jinnah was responsible for the partition of India. The very tile of Rafiq Sakaria’s book on Jinnah “The Man who broke up India” speaks volume. M.J.Akbar in his well known work “India Siege Within” refers to Jinnah at one place as “the man who eventually destroyed Gandhi’s dream of a free and united India”. At another place he describes Jinnah as “Modern Aurangzeb”.
Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy in India had this to say “I had never realized that an intelligent man, well- educated, trained in England was capable of closing his mind-it wasn’t that he didn’t see it-he closed his mind. A kind of Sutter came down. The others could be persuaded, but not Jinnah. He was a one man band, and the one man did I like that”.
“Mind you, Jinnah is now forgotten. He was the man who did it……..All this misery and trouble was caused by Jinnah and no one else. And he hasn’t had one word said against him. He was the evil genius in this whole thing”. (Page: 44;(emphasis original)Mountbatten and the Partition of India, Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre.)
Was Jinnah a secularist?
It is widely known that Jinnah used to enjoy his whisky and pork quite well. Something a devout Muslim counts as untouchable. The Jews and the Muslims consider the pork as the abode of Devil.
It is also recorded that he touched the Quran only once when he joined the bar.
Was Jinnah a religious fanatic?
Arun Shourie writes in his “The Pistol Jinnah Forged”, “Once he returned to India he devoted his time and energy to ‘unify’ the Muslims, ‘under one Allah and behind one flag, one slogan, one leader”, to ‘organize’ the League so that it would become their sole spokesman, and finally to centralize authority within the League entirely in himself”.
Jaswant Singh’s book does not reveal anything new, something unknown till now. He has not dug up anything new that warrants a reappraisal of Jinnah and his place in history. And it does not display scholarship of any kind.

AHMADINEJAD'S COUNIL OF MINISTERS

Mr.Ahmadinejad, the new president of the Islamic Republic of Iran has named his council of ministers. Out of the 21 persons nominated 11 are new to their job. They do not have any previous experience in the government. He has also named three women to be inducted as ministers. If he succeeds they will be the first women cabinet ministers in Iran since the Revolution.
According to the Iranian constitution the president is to nominate his ministers within two weeks of assumption of office. Ahmadinejad began his second term in the office of the President on 5 August 2009, ignoring allegations by the opposition, of malpractices in the national election.
However, some of his party men have come out in the open against many of the candidates. Ali Larijani, the speaker of the parliament has warned him that the law makers may object to many of his nominees. The Deputy speaker Mohammad Reza Bahonar has also warned the president that he cannot get the law makers to support some of his nominees as they are wet behind the ears. Ahmadinejad had faced difficulties in choosing his cabinet ministers 2005 also.
The three women nominated would hold, if the law makers supported them, the ministries of Health, Education and Welfare.
Marzieh Vahid-Dastjerdi, the woman he wants to be the Health minister is a Gynecologist. At present she is a member of the Medical Ethical Boards Committee at the Tehran University of Medical Sciences.
Fatemeh Ajorlou, is the president’s nominee for the Welfare ministry. She is a member of the Parliament.
The president has not changed his Foreign Minister. He wants the incumbent Manouchehr Mottaki to continue. He is a strong supporter of Ahmadinejad. He is likely to continue his anti American policy, something that made the president popular among the people.
All the same one has to wait and watch how many of his nominees are going make it. The pro government Principlists has criticized the president for not consulting the Parliament before nominating the persons he wants to be in his cabinet.
Ahmadinejad had been criticized for keeping inexperienced ministers during his first reign also.
Meanwhile, Ahmad Jannati, head of the Guardian Council, said that the opposition leaders and their followers should be arrested for conspiring to overthrow the elected government of Ahmadinejad. He is reported to have said, “Everyone knows that they are the origin of the plot and corruption, but they are linked with some powerful people”.

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: INDIA'S CRIMINAL SILENCE

The military junta in Myanmar has sentenced Aung San Suu kyi to 18 months imprisonment, dashing the hopes of millions all over the world. In fact the military court sentenced her to three years of hard labour. Than Shwe, the leader of the junta commuted it to eighteen month’s house arrest. With this she stands disqualified to contest the election in 2010. Suu Kyi, who has been under detention since 1989, is accused of meeting and accommodating John Yettaw, an American national at her house. Yettaw has been sentenced to seven years of hard labour and imprisonment. However, the security personnel who had been guarding her house have not been punished for dereliction of duty.
Southeast Asian Nations, the US and the United Nations have expressed their disappointment over the sentence. The Dalai Lama extended his support to Suu Kyi and said the verdict ‘deeply saddened’ him.
US secretary of State Hillary Clinton who was visiting the Democratic Republic of Congo said “We continue to call for a release from her continuing house arrest”. Clinton opined that, “She should not have been tried and should not have been convicted”.
Indeed no one had expected the Junta to act otherwise. That she would be kept under house arrest was a forgone conclusion.
All the same none of her neighbours such as India and China have raised their voice against the Junta. China said it respected Myanmar’s sovereignty. One can understand the silence of China a country that has silenced many a dissenting voice. Dalai Lama and Rubiya Kadeer are lucky enough in that they are able to air their views. They are also lucky to have a large audience who share their concerns and strain themselves to see to it that these leasers are not silenced by the mighty Chinese State.
What appalls me is the silence of India that never tires of thumping the chest claiming to be the largest democratic county in the world. Moreover Suu Kyi belongs to the rarest of a rare species. She is a living example of truthfulness and non-violence, of the spirit of Gandhiji, the father of our nation. Hence, India’s silence can be described only as criminal.
We do not dare to speak for the Dalai Lama and his people. True Nehru let him stay in India and operate as a government in exile. But he dared not speak for the Lama. He knew the Chinese intentions very well. He new well that China had no right over Tibet. In fact it is one of the few countries that had a language and culture of its own. It has almost all attributes of a ‘nation’. I dare say neither Benedict Anderson nor Eric Hobsbawm, the modern scholars on nation and nationalism, would challenge Tibet’s right to call it a ‘nation’.
However, Nehru fascinated as he was by the communist, socialist ideals failed to recognize the socialistic pretensions of China. He was also obsessed with his concept of the ‘brotherhood of India and China’. Even when mountain of evidences showed that China was crushing the Tibetans and trying to annex it Nehru kept looking the other way. Finally when the Chinese descended the Himalayas and marched into India he was shattered.
Of course Myanmar does not pose any such threat to India. However, the possibility of China joining hands with it and threatening India is to be kept in mind, though such a possibility is very remote at present. Besides, as stated earlier as a country that is proud of its legacy of non violent struggle for freedom India must speak loudly and clearly against the kind of treatment meted out to Aung San Suu Kyi and her people. We must exert all the pressure we can on the Junta and see to it that Suu Kyi is freed from her house arrest soon.

SECOND REIGN OF AHMADINEJAD IN IRAN

Brushing the allegations of rigging the election and the concerns expressed by the western nations aside, Mr. Ahmadinejad assumed the office of the President of Iran on 5th August 2009, with the blessings of his mentor Khomeni. Ahmadinejad said later that he would resist the “oppressive powers”. He also claimed that his election is a sign of change in Iranian politics.
Even as Ahmadinejad assumed office, protestors gathered in front of the parliament chanting “Death to the dictator”.
The opposition leaders did not attend the function. Rafsanjani, former President and supporter of Mousavi, was also conspicuous by his absence. However the envoys of Britain, Sweden and France attended the official function.
Outside the parliament riot police and Islamic militiamen had a tough time controlling the protestors. They used pepper spray to disperse the agitated demonstrators who continued to protest despite warnings of stern action by the government. Police later arrested Mir Hamid Hassanzadeh, the former director of Mousavi’s website and Reza Noor Bakhash, the chief editor of Farhikhetegan, a paper that supported Mousavi.
Mousavi said “I have noticed the birth of a strong national feeling during the course of the election”. He expressed confidence when he said that the protests have united people from different groups in the society.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who was on an African tour said, “We appreciate and we admire the continuing resistance and the ongoing efforts by the reformers to make the changes that the Iranian people deserve”
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran had on 3rd August, 2009, endorsed Ahmadinejad as the new president of the country. Khamenei who stood solidly behind Ahmadinejad all along the present crisis described him as ‘courageous, astute and hardworking”. Khamenei also cautioned Ahmadinejad to listen to his critics and be prepared to face the challenges ahead.
However, Khamenei did not allow the new president to kiss his hand as he did in 2005. Ahmadinejad had to satisfy himself with a kiss on the leader’s shoulder.
Although the government has released 140 of the people rounded up during the protests after the re-election of Ahmadinejad many still languish in prison. Former president Mohammad Khatami said that the ones who were arrested should be compensated adequately. Khatami a pro reform leader and supporter of Mousavi said, “Blood has been spilled and several families are damaged psychologically. Illegal and un-Islamic acts have been committed against the people”.
Let us wait and watch the course events take in Iran.