In My View

Northern tears for Northern Areas

Pakistan’s ambassador at Brussels, Mr M Saeed Khalid, has ended his country’s decades of “calculated ambiguity” on the status of what is called Northern Areas of Gilgit, Skardu, Diamir, Ghizer, Ghanche and Astore. This is an area of 1.5 million people comprising normally vast, remote and mountainous terrain of 72, 495 kilometres. Ambassador Khalid’s first contention, made in his recent letter to the European Union’s Baroness Emma Nicholson of Winterbourne, consists of essentially two points:

(1) The Treaties of Lahore and Amritsar of 1846 that constitute as the main documents for establishment of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, do not recognise the area west of the river Indus. Thus the whole of Northern Areas were not a part of J&K on August, 1947.

(2) The United Nations resolutions are also relative to the state of J&K and do not apply to any part of the Northern Areas, “which were not a part of the state of Jammu and Kashmir before 1947. For this perspective, integration of the Northern Areas with Pakistan is also not prohibited.”

Baroness Nicholson, the Member of European Parliament who has drafted a recent report, “Kashmir, Present Situation and Future Prospects” has responded to the letter of Ambassador Khalid by stating that her careful perusal of the maps and historical documents has given her the belief that, “…Gilgit and Baltistan regions were constituent parts of Jammu and Kashmir by 1877, under the sovereignty of Maharaja (Ranbir) Singh and remained under the domain of the independent princely state up to and including the formation of India and Pakistan on 15 August 1947 and the accession of the State of Jammu and Kashmir in its entirety to the new dominion of India on 26 October 1947.”

Now, this unequivocal assertion by a member of the European Parliament should actually gladden any patriotic Indian as a sure sign of international recognition to its claim to the whole of the acceded territory of J&K, including the six districts of Gilgit and others. But unfortunately this heartwarming development should not in any way lead India to strut on the global stage as the true of inheritor of a controversial legacy.

Because the latest ‘Great Game’ in town – if the world can be considered a small town – is the global “War on Terror” (WOT) in which the West has marked as the contending enemy, sizable sections of the community of Muslims. India’s 150-200 million Muslims belong to this global religious community and contribute to its civilisational ethos.

But from the perspective of the WOT, the Western or the developed North’s, multipronged strategy seems to be to sow sectarian divisions amongst the Muslims so that they do not subscribe to the concept of the quasi-religious ummah (brotherhood), without addressing the ideological predilections of Muslim anger; attack Islam culturally as an insular monolithic without dealing separately with the self-aggrandising former Islamic allies (like Osama Bin laden) of West who now have turned against them; and contain the Muslims politically so that they do not taste success in their quest for ‘real’ freedom, without addressing the imperialist root of the Western domination that they are challenging.

The latest European angst over the conditions of Northern Areas needs to be viewed in this light. As a precursor to the European Parliament draft report, the Brussels headquatered International Crisis Group, published a paper Discord In Pakistan’s Northern Areas.

The paper details how sectarian discord was systematically sown in the area by the late Gen Zia ul-Haq, an ally of the West in the frontiers of the Cold War in Afghanistan in 1988. It talks of how the predominant Shi’i population of the Area was butchered by the Sunnis of the neighbouring North West Frontier Province of Pakistan as the security forces of the country stood aside, quietly. This, the paper avers, was a part of Gen Zia’s plan to Islamise the nation under the leadership of the Sunnis.

Not surprisingly, a Pakistan-based columnist Mr M Ismail Khan wrote with great derision in The News, “Strangely, it took the EU or any of its member country, for that matter, a good 60 years to figure out that the Northern Areas have been wronged.” And indeed the European Parliament’s current draft report is designed to sow as much confusion as possible when both India and Pakistan are inching towards a solution to the Kashmir tangle.

Indian policymakers would do well to focus on the fact that largest amount of space – 11 points in all – in the letter by Ambassador Khalid was spent on buttressing not the political status of the Northern Areas, but on India’s domination of Siachen. He insists that India had accepted Siachen’s status as a part of the Pakistan controlled Northern Areas when the former acknowledged the 1963 border agreement of Pakistan’s with China, by which Pakistan ceded some of the territory of Northern Areas so that China could build the Karakoram Highway.

He has sought to establish that India did not challenge the contention of the political control either in 1947, 1965 or in 1971, the occasions of three wars the two countries fought. In April, 1984, all that changed when India put its armed forces atop the glacier.

In other words, the letter seems more as a step towards establishing negotiating positions than any attempt at renewing calls to hunker down and protect the homeland at any cost. An Indian war of words on the issue, would only heighten tensions in the sub continent, thus bringing the WOT to its doorsteps. Matured diplomacy is about establishing one’s own rights through concrete evidence in dialogues away from the glare of publicity, without grinding the face of the other side in dirt.

Pinaki Bhattacharya, currently located in Kolkata, is a Special Correspondent with the Mathrubhumi, Kerala. He writes on Strategic Security issues. He can be contacted at pinaki63@dataone.in.

In My View

Iran on a diplomatic overdrive

Riyadh. Sharm Al Shaikh. Abu Dhabi. Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s diplomatic sweep in the recent months seems to say something to the people of West Asia on the one level and the world, on another. The message he has driven is radically different from what the West Asians have heard almost since the Second World War – that the region belongs to them. And they do not need others – outsiders - to put their house in order.

Ironically, the message in bold relief – West Asia for West Asians – is being delivered by a Teheran that the West is still seeking to isolate and punish. And yet, Ahmadinejad is getting a resonance in the capitals of the region. In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, he extracted a promise from King Abdullah that the countries would jointly fight “conspiracies’ against the region. They vowed to increase efforts for unity in the Islamic world and “block discord amongst Islamic sects.”

Iran walked a tougher tight rope in its preparation for meeting the other parties in the Iraq conflict at Sharm al-Shaikh, Egypt. Courted by many like the hosts, the Egyptians, the Iraqis and the Saudis to definitely attend the summit, Iran had begun with a few concerns.

It had felt that the meet could turn into a ‘indict Iran’ kangaroo court where the US and its allies would seek to lay the blame for the ills of Iraq at Teheran’s door.

Or the meet, more specifically its much hyped sideline tete-a-tete between the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice and the Iranian Foreign Minister, Manourchehr Mottaki could lead the Americans to up the ante in the nuclear stand off. The exchange between two representatives of the country could allow the US President, George W. Bush to argue that he walked the extra mile only to be deadlocked by the Iranian intransigence on the nuclear issue.

And third, Iran felt that the meeting was being organised as a “consequence of the US attempt to lay the heavy burden of running Iraq's affairs on the shoulders of other countries and urge its neighbors to support the Iraqi government," as the Iranian news agency, IRNA had reported.

Some in Iran had wanted the government to set preconditions for attending the talks. Their logic ran thus: If the USA refused to fulfill the conditions Iran could not have attended the conference and thus walk the minefield. Or if the US did acquiesce, the latter could then begin the meet as a winner.

The next stop of Ahmadinejad in Abu Dhabi and Oman was pure theatre smacking of major power politics. He snapped at the heels of the US Vice President, Dick Cheney, who visited the region just days before entreating the nations to create roadblocks for an Iranian dominance of West Asia.

The rhetoric that emerged was equally florid on the other side. The Iranian president asked the Americans to pack their bags and leave. He addressed three public events in Abu Dhabi, including one at a football stadium, where thousands chanted anti-American slogans as he gave marching orders to the USA.

From the government of UAE, heavily in collusion with Washington, he extracted a promise that they would be neutral in Iran’s stand off with the West. But curiously they also talked of establishing regional security. Again, the message was about inter-sect peace and stability.

At Abu Dhabi, Ahmadinejad did not fail to deliver the almost triumphant message: that Iran will be talking with the USA directly on a bilateral basis in the near future, of course, for the cause of bringing peace to Iraq!

Here is a nation that was being pilloried daily by the USA and its main Western ally, the UK, as being led by a pariah regime seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction. And here they are engaging each other in a dialogue that could prove important for the region, if not just for Iran.

Of course, both the USA and the Iranians are approaching each other with great caution and trepidation. American domestic opinionmakers are busy clarifying the fact that the dialogue would be limited only to the extent of Iraq and not any other issue, read nuclear. And Ahmadinejad has gone on record to say relations between two nations are based upon “justice, equality, and peace.” And the present conditions between the two do not match up to that standard.

India’s External Affairs Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, was in Teheran only a few months ago amidst much speculation about the state of Indo-Iranian relation. Recently, a few US Senators even wrote a letter to the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh about how not to run that relation in light of the growing strategic relations between India and the USA.

Yet, not one quite appreciated an area of strategic convergence between Iran and India, and even the USA. Mukherjee in his press statement issued from Teheran had barely touched upon it in one sentence. “I expressed our appreciation of the cooperation extended by Iran to our assistance projects in Afghanistan,” Mukherjee had said.

With sections in Pakistan’s establishment seeking to raise the Taliban once again from the abyss it was in 2002, and with sections of the Bush Administration even seeking to open channels of communication with the new Taliban for supposedly ‘stabilising’ Afghanistan, Iran, India and the sensible sections of the USA have interests in shoring up those ruling sections of the Afghan elite whose mortal enemy are the Taliban.

Not surprisingly, Indian Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Murli Deora, known for his links with the West, sounded so strident in favour of the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, only a few days ago. When built the pipeline would be a guarantee that neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan ever becomes a safe haven for an Osama Bin Laden and his fellow travelers. That would in turn go a long way to stabilise West Asia, whether the Americans choose to believe so or not.

Pinaki Bhattacharya, currently located in Kolkata, is a Special Correspondent with the Mathrubhumi, Kolkata. He writes on Strategic Security issue. He can be contacted at pinaki63@dataone.in .

The Base Expands

In My View

NPT coming under the scanner

In the past month two critical developments in the nuclear weapons realm have turned the spotlights to shine on the significant issue of global security. First was the convening of the Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) for the 2010 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). And the second, introduction at the Conference of Disarmament (CD) of a draft presidential decision to start work.

The draft decision included four crucial elements;

(a) substantive discussions on issues of nuclear disarmament

(b) prevention of arms race in outer space

(c) negative security assurances; and

(d) negotiations on a treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.

Each of these issues has gained added salience in the past few years. And over the next few years these two parallel platforms will dovetail in many areas. Hence, it is imperative to see them together and examine the cross linkages, especially for countries like India, which are nuclear weapon states outside of the official purview of the NPT.

The NPT ‘PrepCom ’ kicked off in Vienna with a speech by the US Special Representative for NonProliferation, Dr Christopher A. Ford in front of the 130 members of the 189 signatory nations. Dr Ford had outlined the key areas of concern of the NPT in 2007.

Concerns about the Iranian nuclear programme, and North Korea’s withdrawal from the Treaty has focussed attention on its continuing efficacy. Pakistan’s AQ Khan ran the nuclear retail business that threatened the world order with a kind of vertical proliferation, which upended any of the safeguards the International Atomic Energy Agency could uphold. Finally, a key provision of nuclear energy cooperation in the NPT became a sticking point as a ‘dual use’ capability that the US aims to stymie.

Interestingly, the US Special Representative provided great amount of attention to Art VI of the Treaty that aims at a complete elimination of nuclear weapons. While on the one level, he waxed eloquent about the US effort to reduce its own stockpile of nuclear weapons in line with its bilateral treaty obligations with Russia.

On another level, Dr Ford sought to turn the disarmament clause into more of a guarantee of non proliferation and strategic weapons limitation issue. Added to that was the intention of linking the aim to include Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) to the issue of complete elimination of nuclear weapons, which he hoped, could be concluded “in this review cycle” of the NPT.

And here lies the rub. In a lengthy speech delivered at the Vienna ‘ PrepCom’ the Iranian Permanent Representative to the IAEA Ali Asghar Soltanieh delivered a damning indictment of the nuclear weapons states, particularly the USA, as the ultimate transgressors of the Treaty. Teheran took a position that they would not acquiesce to the agenda of the ‘ PrepCom’, which required a complete consensus to move forward. Their objection was to the phrase, “reaffirming the need for full compliance of the NPT.” For they felt, that language was inserted to harass them as they move ahead with their plans to continue with nuclear fuel cycle activities the US sought to debar.

They wanted the language to be changed. Eventually they accepted a South African suggestion that a footnote be appended to the agenda, that “compliance” indicated “with all provisions,” thus signifying that even the nuclear weapons states would be in a spot if they seek to make heavy weather out of the stipulation.

India too is front and centre of the ensuing debate. Though the country officially is not a member of the NPT – the US interlocutors like its Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and her Undersecretary of State, Nicholas Burns believe India has fallen in line with main provisions of the Treaty – it is being sought to be engaged through the CD.

India’s Ambassador to the CD has already stated, “India has a multilateral vocation and is ready to participate in the substantive work of the Conference, should it decide on appropriate parameters and do so by consensus.” He has even assured the CD that “…we would like to reiterate our consistent position, in respect of an FMCT, of the importance we attach to the negotiation of a universal, non discriminatory and verifiable treaty.”

Clearly, the current international mood is to shore up the weather-beaten Treaty and create a substructure that could hold up the tattered remains of an inherently discriminatory nuclear regime. It remains to be seen how much resonance the Iranian position of a direct challenge to the nuclear ‘haves’ gets.

And of particular interest would be to watch India function “with its multilateral vocation” after concluding the final bilateral deal with the USA on the nuclear issue. Of crucial importance would be when the CD and the NPT Review Committee takes up the issue of universal nuclear disarmament. Already, the USA has started talking of “practicable processes” that need to be undertaken, before the goal is reached. Would India abjure its idealist positions of yore and walk a similar self-serving path, now that the gates of the nuclear club are being opened a crack for it?

Pinaki Bhattacharya, currently located in Kolkata, is a Special Correspondent with the Mathrubhumi, Kerala. He writes on Strategic Security issues. He can be contacted at pinaki63@dataone.in .

Check This Out

In My View

Will Pakistan’s woes derail peace process?

A leading Pakistani commentator, Hussein Haqqani claims that the country is ruled by an ‘oligarchy.’ Pakistan’s ruling class is dominated by oligarchs who either rule by muscle or by money, but more usually, both. These are the people who still own thousands and thousands acres of the country’s arable land; enjoy the status of minor potentates in the communities they belong; or draw their strength from the mullahs. In the north west of the country, of course, the ruling paradigm is that of traditional tribal ties.

They care little about the laws of the land. For they know all laws in the country can be manipulated to their advantage; and the only modern institution of the country, the armed forces, also do their bidding to maintain its hold on power. This combine has little to do with democratic discourse; and care little about the nascent civil society.

From that light, the recent popular upsurge in the country against President, Gen Parvez Musharraf’s decision to initiate judicial disbarment against a Supreme Court chief justice, is curious, to say the least. This is an expression of popular discontent that is not being overtly led by any political party of the country. So it leaves scope for some interrogation.

And in the context of Pakistan what better place to begin the questions fly than the neoliberal school’s belief that waning influence of the political parties can be replaced by what they call, ‘non-majoritarian’ institutions, like the civil society organisations and the judiciary.

A potentially dangerous proposition, it seeks to bypass the democratic structures of a nation – they claim it is undertaken only when those institutions have fallen into disuse or altogether do not exist - and tries to empower various interest groups to the exclusion of popularly chosen politicians.

South Asia seems to have fallen particularly in the grip of such experimentations. Bangladesh confronts a similar prospect. And the ground in Pakistan seems to being created for such activism.

From the viewpoint of an analyst, it opens doors for some healthy speculation about its pros and cons. Considering Pakistan has a limited rule of law that could be upheld by the State, a tightening grip of such ‘non-majoritarian’ groups could bring in fair play, atleast at the outset.

They could also provide a fillip to the building of more enduring institutions in a country where most other bodies are conspicuous in their absence. A judiciary seeking a broader mandate can try to gather legitimacy from such international covenants, which can instill abiding values of liberal nature into a country where mosques and mullahs can declare the rule of Shariat in their compounds, in contravention to laws of the land.

But the downsides outweigh the positives. In a country where the majoritarians seldom wield enough State power, a ‘non majoritarian’ experiment can only push it to the extremes of unrepresentative and non-democratic practices. The stymied popular voices thus could seek release in more sectarian avenues, threatening the very fabric of the nation.

Some in India believe that every time, the two cross border twins seem close to seminal changes in their relations, the efforts get derailed by forces beyond the control of those who sought to lead the change. Be it the close interaction between Benazir Bhutto and the late Rajiv Gandhi or Atal Behari Vajpayee and Mian Nawaz Sharif or even now, Gen Musharraf and Manmohan Singh, any attempt at addressing the root problems ailing the dialogue between the two neighbours have always been stifled by political instability.

Reports had been emerging lately that the two nations were inching closer to a deal on Kashmir, that could lay to rest decades of animosity and ideological frictions. So the crowds on the streets of Pakistan in favour of an unseated Supreme Court judge threatens to move the focus from conflict resolution to newer conflicts that could raise grave doubts about the legitimacy of the Musharraf regime.

Add to that are sudden spurt of international concern – read, the US – about the continuing ownership of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, as exemplified in a recent New York Times report. The irony of the situation could not be missed by most perceptive observers of the country; a nation that has allowed a virtual free run to foreign investigation and intelligence agencies like the FBI and the CIA for more than five years is now being questioned whether it can safeguard its weapons of mass destruction.

People with longer memory might also remember that the current US Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, when she was the National Security Adviser three years ago, had reassured the world with grave certitude that the nuclear weapons Pakistan had, were in the safest custody.

So the question that needs to be asked now is, in the sub continental context what is more important – a Pakistan subservient to the US interests, or an Islamabad that could break free from this bondage by addressing History’s embedded misfortunes.

From the Indian standpoint, it would be a prudent course to follow the developments in Pakistan closely while seeking to establish the public markers of its interest in the Musharraf regime. This could help stabilise the shaken foundations of the regime with whom New Delhi has dealt for some years, away from the public glare, to seek a lasting solution.

Pinaki Bhattacharya, currently located in Kolkata, is a Special Correspondent with the Mathrubhumi, Kerala. He writes on Strategic Security issues. He can be contacted at pinaki63@dataone.in

Politics of Default

A Tribute

Bringing home the Dead

Sankar Ray

Sudipta Kaviraj, then a young academic at the new-born Jawaharlal Nehru University had modestly suggested to Puran Chand Joshi that the CPI at long last accepted his tactical line of a ‘National Front’ with the ‘national bourgeoisie’ against the rightist forces backed by the US imperialism, in 1972. This was When the West Bengal state council of the Communist Party of India set up a the Progressive Democratic Alliance with the Congress. They had even supported the Congress government from outside after the most controversial state legislative assembly election in 1972.

Pat came a benign rebuttal from PCJ. “No, I never meant unity of the CPI and the progressive section of the Congress to be concluded over telephone. By unity, I meant Unity through mass actions.” Kaviraj narrated the anecdote to this writer and a few other friends. The National Front between communists and Congress PCJ perceived, during his 12 years (1935-47) as CPI general secretary was not to be dominated by parliamentarism. The compulsion of struggle in the NF, he used to tell cadres in his inimitable style at the general body meetings, would be an acid test for freedom fighters

Born on 14 April, 1907, PCJ fully immunized himself all through his life from ‘parliamentary cretinism’ – first coined by Marx in his Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte - and had abiding faith in democratic mode of struggle against the Right reaction outside the parliamentary arena. He moved into the shoes of Dr Gangadhar Adhikari as the third CPI general secretary in 1935.(The first GS: Sachchidanand Vishnu Ghate). He was a member of the first central committee (1933) of CPI. As the CPI chief, he brought in a sea change in the communist movement transforming the nascent CPI into an organized entity through half-partisan struggle , a mix of open mass action in the freedom struggle within restricted constitutional rights and underground organization among toilers in the long term against the oppressive British regime and conveying to them what the communists meant for freedom, distinctly different from bourgeois nationalist aims. There is no denying that the CPI grew differently in contrast to the Congress,led by Mahatma Gandhi even in mainstream politics.

He was the youngest among the 32 accused in the historic Meerut Conspiracy Case (1929-33) allegedly to ‘overthrow the British rule’. His seniors included Ghate,Shripad Amrit Dange, Muzaffar Ahmed, Sohan Singh Josh, Adhikari, R S Nimbkar,Radharaman Mitra, Gopen Chakravarty, Ben Bradley, Philip Spratt and S. S. Mirajkar who turned the court room into a platform for spreading the message of socialism as the legitimate alternative to the Raj. The colonial bureaucracy was incensed to crush the communists who stood unflinchingly behind the exploited people. This exposure of the Raj in a way foiled the colonial plot to silence the communists when CPI was yet to become a centralized national party.

PCJ’s deposition before the colonial judiciary was a semi-theoretical expose of finance capital under the cover of `crown'. The native people were subjected to unprecedented oppression by the British rulers who unleashed economic exploitation in fulfilment of commercial and industrial objectives .The symptomatic manifestation was abject poverty, starvation and unprecedented famines including artificial one like the Bengal Famine of 1943. PCJ quoted Albion scholars such as W W Hunter and William Digby. The trial was a shot in the arm for the toddler CPI that rapidly matured into a reckonable political formation.

PCJ’s organizational talent and political clarity was legendary and that was a catalyst CPI’s penetration among the masses with its uncompromising politics and ideology. There the party differed conspicuously with the Congress whose commitment to campaign for the end of the rule Britannica was never scanned cynically by PCJ, while driving home CPI’s independent class role that attracted the toilers and intellectuals. He brought out CPI’s first ideological journal The Communist (cyclostyled) in 1935.

Braving the ban on CPI until 1942, PCJ was instrumental in building mighty mass fronts like All India Kisan Sabha,Progressive Writers’ Association and All India Student Federation in 1936. In 1938, National Front, CPI’s central organ, was brought out and in 1943, the Indian Peoples Theatre Association came into being, courtesy PCJ. And all these fronts were mass fronts as long as PCJ had been at the helm of CPI. Let me give an example of how he was committed to separation between party and mass organizations. The late Hemango Biswas, a unique mass singer who infused folk song-tradition in the IPTA, recalled an incident. At the Andheri Commune, where Ravi Shankar and Timir Baran – the two outstanding Sarod players of the 20^th Century – also stayed as performing artistes. “ Benoy Roy (a top IPTA functionary of the commune-SR) one day said, Ravi Shankar, Timir Baran and Santi Bardhan lack political understanding and I will write to Comrade PCJ on this. I couldn’t share with this view but remained mum. He wrote to Comrade Joshi who sent a cryptic reply the very same day – ‘ They are your polit bureau. Learn at their feet.”

How difficult it was to work among the economically weaker sections with the communist scheme for top leaders like PCJ was described by Michael Carritt, the British ICS officer, who discreetly kept liaison with the CPI, in his memoirs of the 1930s, A Mole in the Crown. Carritt, conscientiously gravitated towards Marxism, seeing the severity of colonial torture against armed freedom fighters in the mid-1930s, joined the CP of Great Britain while heading the home (political) cell in Calcutta. Along with Michael Scott, outwardly a clergyman but another mole , Carritt met incognito with PCJ in the late 1930s in Calcutta. He wrote about the first meeting with PCJ. “Unlike his usual cheerful self, he now seemed in poor form. The reason for this was soon apparent; he had not eaten anything for twenty four hours; he was penniless and without any place to lodge since his undercover arrangements in Calcutta had, for some reasons, broken down. This kind of crisis was by no means unusual in the life of an underground political fugitive…. The immediate food and money problem was easily solved my Michael and myself; we rather shamefacedly turned out our pockets and found enough loose change to keep him going for more than a week.”

PCJ, defying the overwhelming influence of Stalin era and Stalinism, thought independently of the revolutionary situation in colonial India. “He thought that the Indian communists under-rated the revolutionary role of the small peasantry and over-emphasized that of the comparatively small number of textile mill-workers in Bombay and Ahmedabad. I myself agreed with him but Michael, more loyal to the orthodoxy of that time, was doubtful”, Carritt noted.

The decision by the CPI(M) central leaders to pay tribute by remembering PCJ in his birth centenary year is assertion of their right to own the revolutionary heritage no less than the CPI whose card-carrying member PCJ was until he breathed his last in 1980. The CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat who had numerous meetings with PCJ when Karat was a student at the JNU and PCJ was engaged in building an archive of freedom struggle, cogently wrote that apart from an able organizer, PCJ was “indefatigable in his work to bring new people and sections to the Party. The core of the cadre who served the Party at the all India level and in the provinces owed a lot to his personal guidance and nurturing”.

Karat is an admirer PCJ’s powerful pen that was a USP for CPI-managed journals like National Front and People’s War. After meeting the four Kayyur comrades in Malabar Jail, on the eve of their execution, he wrote an unforgettable reportage in People’s War (13 April 1943) : Flowers of Humanity that can never perish. “The party is not losing you but gaining four martyrs. Let them send you to the gallows that we can’t help today. But inspired by you four, we will win 400, 4,000… new party members”, PCJ wrote in an emotion-choked but politicized piece.

Indian communists didn’t have a GRamsci unlike their Italian counterparts or Recabarren like the Chilean comrades. But they had sterling leaders like PCJ, Ajoy Ghosh and EMS. Remembering PCJ is natural for both the CPI and CPI(M) but it is time to revive the debate on the PCJ line and to free him from slanders during the BTR-Adhikari-Bhowani Sen period of sectarian adventurism.

Penblunt & Hogwash

Life in the times of Ashoka and Television!

Penblunt

Goaded by the missus, at the ripe old age of 48, I decided to take the masters in history examination, and the other day, I was reading about the tremendous times of Ashoka the Great.

I was reading and rum-ming, and rum-ming and reading when suddenly, I came upon the chapter, “Outlines of the electronic media: 304 BCE to 232 BCE”.

Apparently, from the time of Mahabharata, India had a distance vision-narration system… if you remember, in the Bhagvat Geeta, there are constant mentions of Dhritarashtra uvacha and Sanjay uvacha… Uvacha meaning, “Said”.

In fact, the Geeta starts off with this:

Dhritarsahtshtra uvacha:

Dharma kshetrey Kurukshetray samaavetaa yuyutsava

Mamakapandavashchaiva kimakurvat Sanjaya?

The blind king asks Sanjay, sitting far away from the scene of battle: “Oh Sanjaya, in the holy battlefield of Kurukshetra, where have congregated the fabled warriors, pray, what are my Kauravas and the rival Pandavas doing?

To which Sanjaya uvacha, or Sanjay says… and so it goes on.

So I was not surprised that there was a more advanced electronic media during Ashoka’s time, and don’t you be either, and let me just get along with the Hi-story….

There were several channels, apparently: the Sanskrit language elite RPTV (Rajdhani Pataliputra TV); Bhavishyatak, which was in the layperson’s Prakrit language channel which used a red backdrop in all its news reading studios; then there was Bharat TV, which in fact always showed a saffron emblem on the right hand top corner and the divine Aum would flash before and after every commercial break.

There was also a small channel, called Dridakalama (meaning something like “penblunt”) TV, which often went off air due to paucity of funds.

There was also a Breaking News concept, but each had distinct visuals for that:

RPTV: a pair of scissors would swiftly slice through a curtain, and the news would pop out.

Bharat TV: A mosque like structure comes crumbling down and from each brick comes out the bits and parts of the Breaking News.

Bhavishya-Tak: An earthen pot would come flying in and crash on the ground with a deafening roar, and Lo! The news would splinter about, read by a man looking like a Dasyu, with a menacing grin from twisted lips.

Dridakalama did not have all the money, I guess, for such fancy stuff, so its editor officially held that News itself is a break with the past, so there cannot be Breaking News. It is just news.

Anyway.

Before the great king went to war, coverage on RPTV mostly related to conditions of roads and lack of drainage, business for the community of Vaishyas going down or coming up, and so forth.

Instead of Vaishyas, Bhavishya-Tak channel concentrated on Veshyas (sex workers) and how certain ministers of the state were caught coming out of their houses… for comments, the ministers said that sex workers were part of the society and their well being also needed to be looked into.

There was the odd suicide, and the odd student turned out from Gurukul, in which case the Bhavishyatak channel went sneaking on to the ‘abominable conditions’ of Gurukuls in the Kali Yug.

Bharat TV showed the kingdoms spiritual attainments, the espose on the nastiness of Greek theatre, which often dealt with offensive subject like Electra and Oedipus complexes, and it also showed news from the Gurukuls and temples, but refrained showing anything to do with the Devadasi system, which employed thousands of meritorious women well versed in the arts.

Dridakalama was more scathing on health conditions and corruption, but unlike Bhavishya-Tak, which had the image of snakes creeping about for corruption stories, Drida just quoted general people on their problems and got hold of officials to get promises out for quick rectification.

When Ashoka declared war on Kalinga, RPTV slashed the curtain and announced, all in Sanskrit, but for you here is the English version: The King has declared war on Kalinga, and has geared up a massive army of one lakh soldiers. The war could begin anytime now.

Bhavishyatak was furious and the pot crashed viciously this time: “The king has all the world at his feet, but the poor tribals of Kalinga are not being left alone, and with health sector investments down and hospitals suffering, this war is just a hogwash to divert the attention of the people from the (the snake crept out now on the screen) of total Veshyagiri of the nobles and other sordid affairs of state!”

The channel also brought in analysts and said that according to Hindu astrology, if the king started the war on the latter half of a Thursday, he would lose!

The king had already announced that the war would start from a Monday, after full rest from preparations for the war.

But that was part of Bhavishyatak’s strategy, worked out by its brand managers, because it knew the might of the Maurya empire would crush Kalinga and it would later take credit, saying: “In fact, Bhavishyatak had already predicted that the king would win if he did not start the war on a Thursday afternoon.”

(Much like when just before the World Cup, every channel said “Dada mein dum hain” and predicted Saurav Ganguly would get into the team, and every channel claimed exclusive Breaking News even after all the channels had said the same thing, and all claimed Breaking News through morning, afternoon, evening and night!)

Drida managed to pull in some loans to go on air after a financial breakdown, and announced that the king was indeed going on war, but analysed that the tribals of Kalinga were becoming notorious war mongers and perhaps the king had no option, but of all the channels, stating the correct reason got Drida the lowest rating on the LP (Lokpriyata) Matra or popularity scale.

Then the war started and Ashoka got a helluva initial beating.

Bhavishyatak: Kalinga has smashed the assault by the Mauryan army, and as we had already revealed in a sensational disclosure last month, the problem is the wheels of the chariots are all asymmetrical… it may be recalled that Bhavishyatak had shown details of the wheeling deal was done on the wheels by the Yuddh Mantri’s secretary. 10,000 Mauryan soldiers dead in two days.

When Ashoka’s media manager sent him the transcripts of the channel war news, he smiled and said: “Good, they have quoted six times the number, and hope the Kalingans have seen this so they will be over confident tomorrow and we shall have them.

He tossed a bag of silver coins, and gave it to his messenger for the editor of Bhavishyatak: “Give to him as reward as Best Inverted News Leading to War Effort Award.”

And now here is the commercial break!

Dekhtey rahiye agley haftey tak!

In My View

Defending the indefensible

Poland, like India, is one of the two admiring nations of the US President, George W. Bush. (Don’t believe it? Check the 2005 poll data of the US-based Pew Research Institute.) And Poland is now getting missile defence installations, once the Russians under an irascible Vladimir Putin get persuaded. The argument in favour of the missile defence runs thus: Poland and Czechoslovakia have to fear from the missiles lobbed from Iran, targetting them and their American way of life!

Defence against incoming missiles is a hot button issue in the capitals of the nuclear weapon states. In lay terms, the scope of the issue can be explained thus; by the curious logic of nuclear theology, the prospect of mutually assured destruction (MAD) is what holds up the nuclear deterrence posture. Any defences erected against such nuclear holocaust threatens to upset the apple cart in favour of the defending country as it provides it the capacity to launch a nuclear first strike without the fear of a retaliation. This unfair advantage tilts the global scale of instantaneous justice thus nullifying offensive deterrence against nuclear weapons.

During the Cold War, one may recall, this kind of devilish rationale had held up the prospect of peace in the most important battleground of the War. Both sides, Warsaw Pact countries and the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) nations were armed to the teeth, facing off each other; but peace had held as both feared the Armageddon.

But after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the end of the Cold War, when the American strategists scoured the world for prospective enemies whose presence could justify their multi-billion dollar armaments industry, they found that the enemy in the post-rationalist world is a fungible mass that takes shape in the oddest of times. So they propounded the logic of ‘rogue nukes,’ nuclear weapons in the hands of the nation-states outside the nuclear non proliferation realm or nuclear weapons that could potentially land in the hands of non-state actors, inimical to the interests of the USA and its allies.

Considering that conventional deterrence did not provide solutions to the rogue nuclear weapons, the US sought defence behind missile shields that would ward off the danger. But the problem with the missile shield lay in the fact that they could also ward off weapons belonging to the conventional nuclear powers, which followed the deterrence logic to base their defences and attain stability in international affairs. They protested.

But the USA was not in a mood to listen. Under the Bush Administration, the country went about dismantling the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) it had signed with then Soviet Union. Russia and China were against the abrogation of the Treaty. They feared that the USA would become world’s nuclear hegemon in the absence of the checks and balances. India, under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government of Atal Behari Vajpayee – suddenly finding virtue in aligning with the USA after the Pokhran II blasts – had acquiesced with the cancellation of the Treaty, without any debate in the country on the strategic implications of the US action.

Now the USA has decided to place anti-ballistic missile systems in Poland and Czechoslovakia, on the borders with Russia. This is clearly a provocation to the Russians who have had historically rocky relationship with Poland, and have only recently ceded control of this part of Europe.

The US logic that Iran could target Poland and Czechoslovakia sounds facetious at best, as no strategic rationale can be found for such fear. It is like saying that Taiwan needs a missile shield because Papua New Guinea could threaten the island; or providing a missile defence to Bangladesh because Myanmar could hold out a rogue nuclear threat.

The US intention behind such a façade is clear. It is to extend its hegemony over vast stretches of the world. The question is whether the triumvirate, India, Russia and China should turn over and accept that line of thinking. For today it may be Poland and Czechoslovakia, tomorrow, it could be Taiwan and Japan and Bangladesh. That shield could metamorphose into a subversive weapon behind which, nations could plan and enact offensives against neighbours when their strategic interests collide.

Worse, it could trigger arms races in various continents as the Russians have concluded and threatened by their stated objective of withdrawing from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), a cornerstone of the Cold War East-West detente. For, the remaining nuclear weapon states that do not belong to the Western bloc would need to maintain the credibility of their deterrence by countervailing the technological and strategic developments of the US anti-missile programme.

They would have to closely watch the potent concoction of missile shields, coupled with American projects of unilateral, indiscriminate regime changes and extraneous nation building projects across the world. It poses a clear and present danger to the global political stability. With the NATO too expanding its mandate by going beyond their territorial demarcations and conducting peacemaking operations further afield, it could pose problems of gigantic proportions to the other powers of the world. Rest of the world cannot just roll over and ask for more.

Pinaki Bhattacharya, currently located in Kolkata, is a Special Correspondent with Mathrubhumi, Kerala. He writes on Strategic Security issues. He can be contacted at pinaki63@dataone.in .