MANMOHAN GETS LEMON, KIYANI BIRYANI

After 26/11, there have been a number of commentators who have been selling the line to ordinary Indians that a strong Pakistan in India's supreme national interest and that if the former implodes, India will have to face the frightening prospect of heavily armed Talibanis and other jihadis running into India and creating mayhem here. A strong Pakistan, according to them, will be just the dove that India wants as a neighbour; its democratic government, judiciary, page three junkies and journalists will be enough to ensure that its military and 'non-state' actors are kept in check, Kashmir will then become a border-less ocean of amity and 'Aman ki Asha' will cease to be a tamasha.

Coincidentally, Pakistan has also been selling the 'strong' line to the United States. However - and this is the crucial difference we always deliberately miss - it has not been doing it so that it can live in peace with India, but to ensure that it retains the military balance that is vital for it to continue to prosecute its jihadi agenda in Kashmir and the rest of India till India falls. Worse, it has not even pretended to use fake moralistic arguments, the kind India has all but patented. On the contrary, it has deviously fought against and simultaneously promoted various terror groups to ram home the message to the Americans that their war in Afghanistan cannot be won without the help of Pakistan. More importantly, it has also demonstrated with deathly effect that once the Americans leave Afghanistan, no one else but Pakistan can ensure that the territory of that nation is not used to launch attacks against American interests across the world as well as on the mainland, and violently demanded that India must have no role to play there.

India, on the other hand, has, as always, displayed a paralysis that does not befit a nation of its size and potential. All that it has done to secure its national interests and keep America on its side is to talk of democracy, shared values, NRIs doing well in the US and, above all, its willingness to play the poor friend in awe. Remember Dr Manmohan Singh's famous words to Bush: "Indians love you deeply"? Unfortunately, that, as we should have learned by now, is the surest way to ensure the exact opposite in the long run and remain almost helplessly trapped in the reactive mode that has repeatedly cost us heavily. In 25 years, China has moved from being in awe of the US to getting the US to begin to look at it in awe; in the same period, India has just gaped as China has gone well past it and as Pakistan has closed the power gap that had opened up as a result of the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of contrived sentimentalism that drives India's frightening lack of response to the challenge that it continues to face from Pakistan. What does a nation do when a senior politician and former diplomat like Mani Shankar Aiyar says that Pakistanis are our own people but for Partition, an "accident of history"? There are many other influential voices, particularly in the media, singing the same song. No doubt there are a few such voices across that Radcliffe Line too - which we revel in highlighting - but the crucial difference is that unlike here, they do not drive or even remotely influence national policy and objectives, particularly as they relate to India. As a result, while we keep tying ourselves into doing virtually nothing as a nation, Pakistan's temerarious strategists operating behind the smokescreen continue to pursue their agenda, to surprise India with monotonous regularity.

The US discovered long back that the real power in Pakistan lies in the hands of the military and not the democratically elected government. Pragmatic as a nation should be, it wasted no time to get into a substantive engagement with Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kiyani and the military brass, while ceremoniously humouring civilian leaders and giving them doles.

India, on the other hand, has stuck to the proxy route, not knowing how to deal directly with the military. The problem which India's policy makers have created for the country is that with the kind of structures that they have put in place with cadre rather than national interest in mind, India can deal directly with the military only if there is military rule. But when there is a civilian façade, then there is no one who can engage with and understand the language of the Army Chief and DG ISI. Since the long established balance of power in Pakistan is not going to change in the foreseeable future, India should have long back had, at the very least, a retired General as the National Security Advisor and a serving one as the DG of RAW. Then, not only would have the PM not have had to lament that he did not know whom to talk to in Pakistan, but the Pakistani military would have also known that it had serious business to attend to and not dismiss vacuous political statements that had no meaning whatsoever for it.

The US is laying out the red carpet for Pakistan's Army Chief as he visits the US this week. Although the delegation is headed by the Foreign Minister, no one is in any doubt about who the real boss is. And no one - except a few romantic Indians and fewer similarly inclined Pakistanis - is disturbed about this mockery of democracy. Kiyani has a huge shopping list of arms, the objective of which is completely unambiguous: India, six times Pakistan's size, must not be allowed to disturb the power parity that Pakistan has painstakingly established over the last few decades. And he is not pleading to America's love or sense of fair play or some such nonsense to accede to his demands. As has been mentioned above, shorn of semantics, he is talking cold barter, if not old fashioned blackmail: he will help the US out of the Afghanistan imbroglio, but at a steep price.

The expensive war in Iraq followed by the economic slowdown has weakened the US more rapidly than anyone could have imagined when Bush was in the White House. Far from being able to fight two wars without feeling the pinch, the US is now not in a position to sustain even the war in Afghanistan for long. It has to pull out in the next three to four years. But without being seen to be defeated. It is primarily because of this constraint that the US has changed strategy mid-course and looks set to adopt what would have been its least preferred, almost unacceptable option a couple of years back. That is why a non-assertive, confused and almost pleading India is not only finding itself out of the loop, thanks to some brilliant maneuvering by Pakistan's military that has read the situation well, but is also going to find itself under increasing US pressure to yield ground to Pakistan on Kashmir.

The situation is changing so rapidly that the US is now reportedly actively considering giving to Pakistan the same exclusive Nuclear Deal that it has to India. This has got some analysts to condemn Dr Manmohan Singh for signing the deal with Bush. They overlook the important fact, among many, that if the deal had not been good, Pakistan would not have been demanding it for all these years. The deal does not become bad if Pakistan gets it too. What will become distasteful then is that India will lose the advantage that it had got by signing it, and get hyphenated with Pakistan again. India's leaders and policy makers need to be castigated for allowing this to happen, if it does. It is only coincidental that the Congress is in power at the moment. Be sure that nothing would have been any different had it been the BJP or any other party. It is a systemic failure because as a nation we yet have no strategic vision, no strategic objectives, no idea about how our backyard, our neighbourhood, our sphere of influence should look like and behave.

There is also strident criticism of President Obama for being 'anti-Indian'. While the imprint of a President's personality cannot be denied, let us not forget that in the US the President does not take decisions affecting national security based on the advice of an ill-informed kitchen cabinet or on a personal whim. The changes that we are witnessing now in America's Af-Pak and India policies have emerged after factoring in America's visibly reduced economic might and ability to wage war post the Wall Street collapse. Just last month, Fareed Zakaria had given an indication of the impending shift in US Af-Pak policy by giving it another spin altogether. Since India failed to exploit the golden opportunity provided by 9/11 to decisively settle problems created by Pakistan in Afghanistan, Kashmir and the rest of India, the US is now left with little choice but to prop Pakistan, the creator of the problem, and bribe it to become its solver too. This must teach India that timeless lesson about "permanent interests", but will probably not, again.

These developments cannot be good news for India at all. All those who have been romantically and brainlessly clamouring for a strong Pakistan are, if things continue in the direction they appear to be moving in now, going to have their wishes more than fulfilled in the next few years. Then we will not have leaderless jihadis of a weak nation or nations attacking India, but extremely motivated killing machines wreaking havoc here, guided by a powerful military that believes it can bloody India's nose should it take the fight into Pakistan, and helped by an even more petrified Indian leadership that will be thinking not about responding "swiftly and decisively" but about giving even more concessions to buy temporary respite and wish the immediate threat away. But the growing monster won't go anywhere, not when it is ready to 'fight for a thousand years'. Or till its ability to wage war is destroyed.

No use blaming the US for giving Manmohan a lemon and serving biryani to Kiyani. No use blaming even Pakistan for doing what it believes is in its national interest. It is we who are inviting a horrific disaster to unleash its fury on us. Eyes wide shut.
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ROY AND THE ROMANCE OF THE RED ANT CHUTNEY

Arundhati Roy has written another long story,"Walking with the comrades", in Outlook magazine, about her latest royally deferential conducted tour of Dandkaranya (DK), the land of the Maoists, the "Gandhians with a gun."

This tale, which is almost unreadable after a few paragraphs despite Roy's powerful, compelling prose, is notable for little new other than Ms Roy's much celebrated story telling ability. For those who have never ventured into India's countryside, Roy's vivid and romantic description of the places she visited during her tour and the simple, frugal and seemingly liberating living conditions of the poor who have turned 'red', will be gripping, even moving. But, what she won't say, or perhaps does not know, is that the poor in most remote parts of India still live in near identical conditions. In many other parts, they did so a generation or two back, before development and education changed their lives and environment forever. For the better, one must add, after the pain of transition had been endured: no one wants to reverse the clock and move back into the forests that their ancestors struggled to live in.

Roy, however, is an exception. Or at least pretends to be one. The way she romanticises sleeping under the stars on bare ground on which a blue plastic sheet, a "jhilli (without which they will be no Revolution)", has been spread, as " my private suite in a thousand star hotel", and walking in the forest at night as "the most beautiful thing", one would imagine that she would make Dandkaranya her home and never return to live in the hated, polluted, developed city where she lives and drives a swanky SUV, or use any of the fancy gadgets without which she would feel helpless and cut off from even her own self.

But no. Roy has neatly divided her life and her beliefs into two separate, water-tight compartments that are not allowed to "pollute" each other. May be that is way she is wired. Otherwise how can anyone, means anyone, argue that the tribals of DK "do not need to learn to count beyond 20 and are best off if left alone?" For them, she sees absolutely no good whatsoever coming out of development, and wants them to continue living just as they have been for thousands of years. And to protect that way, the culture of the gun, the use of wanton violence, is seen by her as a "Gandhian" response, fully justified against a brutal, rapacious state that wants to usurp their land for the benefit of people like Roy who live in the big cities.

Ms Roy admits that she is a "directional dyslexic". That impairment is evidently not just along the physical dimension. Unknown to her, it seems to have penetrated her logic too. If the world follows her foolishly romanticised path, then change, the only constant, will become a bad idea, to be opposed at all costs, by all means. Roy, ensconced safely in her comfortable, modern silk cocoon, is effectively condemning the people whose cause she seeks to promote. She can't see the tyranny of it precisely because she does not have to lead that life for her whole life. What for her is an exhilarating "thousand star" holiday is a grind from which the ordinary tribal and his children will be only be happy to be liberated.

Roy can pick up any group of people resisting change for any reason anywhere in the world and reproduce what she has written, with only minor changes. There are many "thousand star hotels" even in the Hindu Kush mountains. And, to some, the Talibanis there are also as angelic as the Maoists here.

It is not that Roy is all romance and no sense. She knows her politics only too well. She is acutely aware of what she needs to mention in her story to prevent action against her for her vile, seditious words. That is why Rahul Gandhi figures in her tale as the "People's Prince". That is why Hindu organisations working in DK are berated, even equated with Nazis - "Dhwij/Nazi sentiment." That is why there is not even a whisper about the activities of Christian missionaries there. That is why the Indian state is portrayed by her as "an essentially upper-caste Hindu State...which harbours a reflexive hostility towards the ‘other’. One that, in true colonial fashion, sends the Nagas and Mizos to fight in Chhattisgarh, Sikhs to Kashmir, Kashmiris to Orissa, Tamilians to Assam and so on."

Wonder where Roy has imbibed so much of hatred from.

It cannot be anything but extreme insensitivity that makes Roy romanticise the fact that in the 21st tribals have to eat red ant chutney, not as a delicacy in a fancy restaurant, but as part of a bare jungle meal to survive. Roy samples it like royalty in DK and says it is "nice. Sour. Lots of folic acid." Perhaps it is her so-called love for everything "Red" that makes her miss the real point, the tragedy. Otherwise, how can she not see that what she and others like her are trying is to ensure that DK becomes a giant national park for tribals, in which they, like tigers and lions and other wild animals that have no voice, can continue to live in their wild natural habitat as they always have been, even as across the river others who are just like them live as if on a different planet?

A few months back, Arundhati Roy had written a similar article, "Mr. Chidambaram's War". I had responded with a detailed post then. This piece of hers, if you keep the many short stories of her DK travel aside, is little more than a cleverly re-packaged version. That is why I have not commented on the main issues that she has raised again. The response to them can be found in the earlier post that can I am appending below for the benefit of readers.

Picture source: Outlook
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Long before many of us were born, there lived a man in India who raised his voice against exploitation of India's resources and its citizens by the state that was then run by a colonial power. This man, despite being born into wealth and privilege, and educated in the land of the exploiting kingdom, chose to fight for his countrymen to free them from that oppressive yoke.

Like many before him, he too could have wined and dined in Delhi and Bombay, written fine articles in the language of the master whose ways he had adopted, and filled himself and the oppressed with hatred, to incite them, from the comfort of his home or wherever, to wage war against the 'state' by picking up a gun, or the bows and arrows that they had been using since 'long before there was a country called India'.

But, no, he did something else altogether. He shed almost everything that represented the repression he was fighting against, and took to living the life of the poor people he wanted to awaken and help. Without hatred or violence, that man in a loin cloth electrified India and overthrew the greatest empire on earth.

63 years after Independence, the state run by its own people remains the oppressor and exploiter in the eyes of over 800 million Indians for whom freedom and democracy are words that still have no meaning whatsoever. They remain poor, uneducated, hungry and as developed as they were hundreds, even thousands of years ago. And now, their land is under threat too, ready to be taken over by large corporations ready to extract bauxite, iron ore and much more, to feed the needs of an India that is growing and developing rapidly, unconcerned that a large part of it is still stationary and therefore moving farther away.

Many tribals, failing to find a real leader who can lead them into light, have fallen prey to a few who have made them believe that like Mao, they too will free them from the yoke of a state that has done nothing for them, a state that cannot be distinguished from the colonial regime that preceded it, a state that suppresses them using the same tools of governance that it found demeaning when their reins were in white hands.

Those few - call them Maoists, Leninists, Naxals, whatever - left a viciously violent legacy, wherever they held sway, be it the Soviet Union, China or Kampuchea. In the last century, they murdered close to 110 million people, many more than the 38 million who were killed in all the wars of the century put together. That is what they will do in India too, should they get power in the name of the people whose cause they are championing. What they did recently in Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere in India should have left no one in any doubt that this path has the same ending, no matter where it is followed.

Enter a new breed of educated 'liberators' of India's downtrodden tribals, most ensconced comfortably in 21st century enclaves in cities, and loving it. They are the unlikely defenders and champions of Maoists, and are not willing to open their eyes to any but their anachronistic notions of a solution based on a discredited, violent ideology that they watch and cheer from a safe distance.

One of the most prominent of these romantics, for want of a better word, is a celebrated author armed with the Booker and, as Sagarika Ghose puts it, luminous prose. Arundhati Roy has been angry with the state for a very long time, for reasons that may be revealed in a future novel or autobiography. I have not followed her closely and have not read her 'God of Small Things' or her latest, but I do remember reading, among other things, that some time back she had seceded from India and become an independent mobile republic of one.

This republic is at war with India again. This time on behalf of the poor tribals who live in a vast forest area that was once called Dandkaranya.

Roy knows her statistics well and knows how to use and conceal them creatively to show you just the kind of picture she wants, the kind that will impress many but move a few, notwithstanding her incandescent words. One is almost charmed by the canvas she paints to lull you into believing that there is real pain in her heart for the forest people, that she wants nothing more than seeing that their lives improve, that her opposition to the state is born out of such feelings alone. But, at the end of it, like in her Outlook article entitled 'Mr Chidambaram's war', she emerges looking no better than an artificial flower; it looks very real - can't tell - but simply doesn't have the right smell.

Roy rejects the model of development that India is following and wants to dismantle and replace it, not really knowing with what and how; that does not concern her. Her focus is on destruction and violence, not construction and peace. You know what she wants, or at least what she wants you to believe, when she says that the bauxite and other minerals that are going to be mined should 'remain in the mountain', because if the hills are destroyed, 'the forests that clothe the tribals will be destroyed too'. She is convinced - not erroneously, given the unforgiveable track record of the Indian state thus far - that the tribals will have to pay the price of progress. So, she doesn't want them to pay that price, like most of us don't. But, unlike most of us, she is comfortable condemning them to paying a far greater one.

The only way to protect the tribals, as one can surmise from what Roy says, is by keeping them just where they have been for thousands of years. They should stick to bows and arrows, live on forest produce and let the forest clothe them. From that it must follow that they should also never cook their meals in aluminum utencils on steel stoves, and never take a bus or train - none of these has ever been made without mining ores from a mountain somewhere and changing the lives of the affected forever. So what if has been for the better in recent years elsewhere?

If the bauxite had remained in the mountains, how would Roy have travelled to get her Booker? Now that she has discovered , like a certain Gandhi did nearly a century ago, that to keep her and 'neo-colonialists' like us motoring and flying and connected to the whole world, the tribals of India will have to pay a price that she finds unacceptable, why does she not walk the Gandhi talk? Why does she not begin by making a personal sacrifice to reduce the burgeoning demand for metals and minerals worth trillions of dollars that lie inside the mountains? Will she, or anyone else, like to go back to the lives their ancestors led a few hundred years ago, to save the environment and to effectively ensure that those who have missed the progress bus do not catch it ever? Or would she rather live in a country that follows the development model of, and is run by, the likes of Lenin, Mao and Pol Pot? Does it matter to her that China, not the one that Maoists want to emulate, produces 10 times more steel than India? Have China's tribals paid a heavy price or are they happier, wealthier and better fed than ever before?

Roy is not going to do either. There is a big difference between genuinely wanting to do something for others out of empathy and deliberately provoking some others to attract attention to ones own self. No? Why is she not unequivocally denouncing the violence unleashed by Maoists and others? Why is she cleverly hiding behind selected views of others to mask Maoists and convey her support for what they are doing? Why is she not talking about the fact that arms and ammunition that Maoists have require money which tribals don’t have, as she herself admits? Why is she silent about the manner in which Maoists are extorting money from the very corporate houses and mining companies that they are supposed to be fighting against? She will, of course turn around and say that all reports pointing to this are false and that the latest CNN-IBN report to this effect is another manifestation of the state unleashing its most potent weapon, the 'embedded media'; Maoists can do little wrong.

Why is Roy focusing selectively on castigating the state for the force it is belatedly using to reclaim its writ, however faulty? Why is she craftily picking faults with any and everything that the state is doing and has done, knowing fully well that will not help set things right for the people whose cause she has picked up? Why is she deviously casting aspersions on everyone's integrity, Prime Minister downwards, only because India's mineral wealth has to be exploited to support the needs and improving lifestyles of millions, Roy included? Why does she want the state out of the forests where people are living sub-human lives and leave them at the mercy of armed thugs? What is it that makes her hate and oppose the state so much that she can see little wrong with those who oppose it, whether it is in the vast jungles of Dandkaranya or in the 'tiny valley of Kashmir'?

It is not love for the environment or the poorest of the poor - or anyone else - that resides in Roy's heart. That there is no space in it for anything except for hatred, particularly for the institution called the state, is evident from the fact that she has a problem even with the setting up of 'a brigade headquarters in Bilaspur (which will displace nine villages) and an airbase in Rajnandgaon (which will displace seven)'. As far as she is concerned, the state is always against the people, never for it; armed forces of the state only kill its people, not defend them - only those who fight against them do! To prove this to even herself, she sometimes lapses into imagining and inventing simplistic, childish scenarios. Sample this nursery story: "Kashmir used to have a Hindu king and a largely Muslim population, which was very, very backward and so on at the time, because at the time, you know, Muslims were discriminated against by that princely—in that princely state."

Arundhati Roy may have divorced the Indian state and seceded. But that unpleasant parting has evidently neither satisfied her, nor given her peace. On the contrary it seems to have left her even more embittered. There is violence inside her, not love. She wants the big world to believe that violence was done to her and that she did, and is doing, right. That is perhaps why she will not speak up against the Maoists; for her the only violence that is unacceptable is that of the state. Her war is against it. It is not for the poor she is talking about; they just happen to be on her side of the international border.

She does not want the state to correct its many flaws and empower and enrich its forgotten poor; she wants it to abdicate.

She says provocatively that the state needs a war, that the Maoists are to the Congress what Muslims were to the BJP. That may or may not be correct. But one thing is certain: Ms Roy doesn't want any war to end. As long as her luminous prose - that beautiful body that lacks a soul - helps her fight her personal wars from afar, as long as there are non-state actors across the world telling her from the sidelines that she is right, the poorest of the poor can remain just where they are - clothed by the forests that they have been living in long before there was a country called India.

INDIA AND AMERICA: MORALITY AND 'KRISHNA-SUDAMA' SYNDROME

The outrage that some informed Indians are expressing over America's handling of the David Headley case, its arming of Pakistan, its re-tuning of the Af-Pak policy to sideline India etc is, at one level, deeply disturbing because it flows out of faulty premises. I am sure there is not even a whisper of disapproval either in the American media or among ordinary American citizens over the manner in which the US is working to protect its own interest by getting the double-agent to plead guilty so that he cannot be extradited to India. Similarly, there is broad approval of President Obama's other policies that directly affect India as being in America's best interest.

That is the way it should be, but we don't seem to have understood that even though history has tried its best to teach us otherwise.

Mature and sensible nations don't hobble national interest and foreign policy objectives just to seek meaningless "moral" approval of others and appear "nice". On the contrary, great nations display a wholesome degree of morality and honesty in their internal political and administrative processes, and pragmatic immorality in external dealings, when required, in national interest.

India, on the other hand, has a few basic tenets totally inverted.

National interest, it appears, is a bad word, if it does not measure up to the yardsticks of democracy and morality. This fanciful and, in my view, utterly ridiculous positing is a legacy inherited from Nehru. Unfortunately, protecting the legacy has taken precedence over protecting national interest. This has prevented this huge country from looking at itself as a strong, confident nation which should matter and command respect proportionately at the global stage. That is why, to give one example, even a small country like Bangladesh, which we helped create, can disdainfully show us the middle finger and blatantly permit anti-India activities on its soil. Let us not even talk Pakistan. Will any other large country allow such nonsense in its backyard? But for Independent India, morality has almost always been more important than anything else, no matter what price the nation has had to pay and continues to.

Where morality should really be the lodestone for our politicians, we have gutter fights instead. Petty political power is what really energises them. So desperate they are to physically experience and enjoy it as individuals and parties, like spoils of war are in a foreign land, that they are willing to got to any extent to grab it in "supreme personal interest". Morality is not even a factor as they willingly rip apart every single norm of civilized behavior in their unbridled greed and lust for perverse personal power. Hypocrisy, corruption and falsehoods have become so pervasive that they are not issues that disturb any longer or discussed any more except when politicians are throwing blame at each other and scoring pathetic political points in TV studios.

Equally disturbing, if not more, is the somewhat sentimental expectation from the US that it owes something to India just because some Indians believe that the American Dream is their dream too and spare no effort to tell fellow Indians and the world that they - and therefore India - do not aspire to be anything more than America's fiercely loyal "poor friends", happy to glow in the reflection of that nation's light. The latest clamour for getting American universities to India is just another manifestation of that "second-best" mindset; there is not even a thought being given to creating educational institutions that will better the best that the US has; it is as if those who matter have managed to convince themselves that Harvard and Stanford are more Indian than American just because they have been there!

The modern Sudama, happy being where he is, expects that the US will play King Krishna and honour him for his "loyalty" and "friendship". He refuses to realise that America, like any other nation, will act only in its national interest; there is no space for compromising it in any manner, no matter how much someone genuflects disregarding his own dignity and pride. The pain that some of us are experiencing is due to this lack of understanding, this "Krishna-Sudama Syndrome", more than anything else.

Morality is the talk of the weak and the meek. And of those who lack historical perspective and future vision of the practical world that man has lived in since time immemorial.

A nation which bases its policies and responses primarily on such irrelevant considerations cannot realise it full potential. In any case it cannot claim its rightful place in the world based on its size, resources and population. I do not see any other nation being stymied by such juvenile talk and debate.

The meek shall not inherit the earth, if past and present experience is anything to go by. The sooner some of us understand it, the better.

Related reading: Go India: got to be the best, not second

TWITTER WARS: OLD MEDIA VS NEW

There is a new watch dog in town. Its bark may be small but its bite is big. 140 characters can and do pack a real punch, particularly when both sides are at each other at the same time, in near real-time.

India's old media, the traditional watch dog that many believe has become the pet dog of at least some of those it is meant to watch, is under scrutiny like it has never been. Journalists, long used to writing columns in isolation or imperiously holding centre stage in studios, with those invited taking great care to not annoy them by holding a mirror, have been hit by the unforgiving Twitter gale that has rattled some of them so much that they, the loudest proponents of freedom of speech, the staunchest opponents of any code of conduct for themselves, have begun to cry that the unfettered freedom that the net provides to everyone should be restrained.

There is no doubt that, as is to be naturally expected in any genuinely free environment, there are some individuals on Twitter and the net who tend to get more than abusive or create mischief. That is a hazard that has to be accepted by those who volunteer to be on Twitter to enrich themselves by engaging in a two-way interaction with thousands of others from a wide spectrum of the society. Here they cannot herd in a carefully chosen audience or abruptly shut out or ignore those who change the terms of debate and uproot them from their comfort zones. This is not proving to be easy for some of India's leading journalists who have been rattled by strident criticism, day in and out, 24/7.

For the first time ever, not only have they become subjects of microscopic public scrutiny, but are also not in a position to hide from the whole world the unrestrained views of those who find them wanting, even dishonest. This new experience, dramatically different from the ones they face in real life, where no one wants to put his hand into their beehives, is making them mad.

The first journalist who vented his frustration was the pompous Vir Sanghvi who, in his characteristic abusive style, branded many bloggers and tweeters as "sad losers who escape their pathetic little lives by abusing other people on the net." Soon, rattled perhaps by criticism of what many believe are demeaning, obsequious pro-Family views that he tries to sell as objective analysis, he accused them of being pro-BJP while lamenting the fact that there were few pro-Congress bloggers to respond to them with equal ferocity. Sagarika Ghose, to everyone's surprise, then set Twitter on fire, not with her much practiced smile, but by vitriol of the worst kind that exposed the ugly canines behind the charming façade, the class condescension beneath the egalitarian pretence. Twitter-world had got its Queen of Hate, the queen bee who attracted swarms of bees to deliver not honey but venom of the kind she thought she alone had the right to spew from her perch as the wife of perhaps India's wealthiest and most ambitious corporate journalist.

Corporatisation of the media has created a new breed of journalists who have become immensely rich in double-quick time. The jhola wallas have become 'suitcase' wallas. Rajdeep Sardesai, for example, has already made himself worth a few hundred crore rupees legally (See pages 51/370 and 112/370). One can imagine how some others might be doing. Let us not even get into the vast ocean of paid news that had probably once prompted Kapil Sibal, if I remember correctly, to tell a journalist on TV that some of his tribe too had stashed money in Swiss banks. That is why, while they all shout that judges and politicians should declare their legally declared 'white' assets, none of them wants the same disclosure norms applied to them. Perhaps they know what that will do to their hollow claims of objectivity, impartiality and honesty, and middle class pretensions.

The new Sultans and Spouses of the media - arrogant, intolerant, patronising - are fuming because they are being questioned, interrogated, probed, exposed, by ordinary guys who they want to summarily dismiss just because they are much below their material station, but cannot. So, they are hitting back in the only manner they have been employing successfully in sanitised studios and out-of-reach news offices: put their attackers on the defensive by accusing and abusing them viciously, and showering praise on members of their own fraternity who are groveling for crumbs.

The liberal mask has been violently thrown away along with the much quoted Voltaire; they were meant to be used only to justify their own right to offend and insult. Now that they are on the receiving end, they are discovering that the bite is actually unbearable. Now had this pain led to some sort of a realisation that they need to first exercise restraint and treat people with dignity, the ongoing Twitter war would have ended. But, the arrogance of money, power and reach has seeped into their very souls. They are not going to back off just because a few unseen guys on Twitter are forcing them to look within; there are far too many known and powerful faces in the real world who are going to keep them from falling off their fake pedestals.

That is why this call for some sort of code of conduct to be imposed - they won't use the word - on those who follow them on Twitter and say what they feel and not what they get paid to vomit. I hope that does not happen. Just as readers of news papers and viewers of TV do not have to read and watch what they don't want, those on the net, including Twitter, have the same freedom. If some journalists of the old media can't take the heat, too bad; they should get off Twitter, stop browsing the net and get back into their bubbles, professional and social. The new media, growing bigger and more powerful with every passing day, will not miss them at all.

For those interested in checking out Twitter Wars themselves, a look at the tweets on the pages of the following individuals (in alphabetical order) will make for a good start:

• Barkha Dutt
  
• Kanchan Gupta
• Rajdeep Sardesai
• Sagarika Ghose (w/o Rajdeep, for those who don't know)
• Swapan Dasgupta
• Vinod Sharma (that's me)

Related reading: New media: is the Congress really a 'loser' already?

HUSAIN'S 'RAPE OF INDIA'

The terror attack in Mumbai by Pakistani terrorists on November 26, 2008, angered MF Husain who felt as if India had been raped. "A writer or journalist can express his/her feelings by writing, but I can express them only through my paintings. I have already started work on the theme 'Rape of India' to condemn the terror attack, as the incident was as unpleasant and brutal as rape."

The painting that you see here is the result. Now I am no connoisseur of art; in fact I can appreciate it no better than the average man on the street. That does not necessarily mean that what I see is not what the artist wanted to convey, even though it may be at variance with the interpretations of those who claim to be more knowledgeable.

This is what I see in this Husain painting.

• A young raging bull, tail up in victory, has forced himself into, and is biting, a frightened (holy) cow. Husain is known for his horses but here he has shown a bull and a cow (you can't miss their horns).
• India is shown as a helpless Hindu (vermilion on the head) nautch girl (ghungroo on one leg). Some may see her as an extension of the cow that is being raped.
• The Indian (Hindu? - Brahmin tuft on the head of child) man is shown as a child who is not only not capable of defending and protecting himself but as one who needs to be carried and protected by his Mother India, even as she is being raped.
• The painting is on two canvases, with the word 'India' being split across them.

Is Husain's pain against the terror attack that he has likened to India's rape visible in the painting?

What do you see in this creation?
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Related reading: Freedom of expression: No difference between Husain and Westergaard
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FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HUSAIN AND WESTERGAARD

Often the question asked pompously by self-designated "liberals" is: where does "freedom of expression" end and religious sentiment start? Some ask, is religious sentiment the greater of the two and who is to decide? Then comes the killer: can 'goons' - offended believers - be allowed to take that decision? That option is, naturally, summarily dismissed as obnoxious. That done, they quickly appropriate the authority of deciding to themselves and a tiny band of similarly cocooned and rootless - at least pretending to be - individuals, and swiftly proceed to intolerantly thrash anyone who differs with them.

Nowhere has this stance and attitude been more shrill and black-and-white than in the case of MF Husain who left India because some Hindus protested against his right to paint Hindu Goddesses in the nude, by filing cases against him in court and vandalising a couple of his exhibitions to vent their anger. Ironically, the man who walked away because his freedom was fettered in India, has become a citizen of Qatar, a theocratic state that does not allow even a creative breath in matters related to religion, and says he is "honoured" by it.

In this paper, I will attempt to address the issue of artistic/creative freedom that has been much bandied about for years in defence of Husain's paintings that have hurt the religious sentiments of many believing and practicing Hindus.

There is little doubt that in olden times, Hindu Gods and Goddesses were painted/sculpted in the nude, mostly above the waist. Why was it so? During those days, in most parts of India, women did not cover their breasts; that is how they dressed. In 1892, for example, Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky wrote that when the wife of the British Governor of Madras had first wanted a law to "induce native women to cover their breasts, the place was actually threatened with a revolution." Blavatsky also mentioned that in 1470, Athanusius, a Russian traveller to India, observed that "women walk about with their hair spread and their breasts naked." Nude paintings and sculptures during those days were, therefore, accurate reflections of the prevalent customs.

But what is of the greatest significance is that these depictions were not manifestations of "freedom of expression" in the sense that these so-called liberals are trying to distort them in to. They were always created by believers with a great sense of devotion, love and reverence for the deities. These creations were also always meant for worship and/or veneration. They were never meant to be mere art for art's sake, as is the practice in the Western world at present, or to show any disrespect to either the religion or its followers.

Today, the way people dress has changed. That is why Raja Ravi Verma painted gods and goddesses in clothes that conform to the sensibilities of our times. That is how other artists paint them too now. That is why even though the artists who create thousands of statues of Goddess Durga with great reverence for Durga Puja each year, do so in their natural state, the Goddess is no longer shown without clothes to the public. The only Goddess who continues to be shown naked is Kali, because her manifestation, as per religion and legend, is in that state. The copy-pasted concept of creative freedom of expression is not even in the frame.

It is not in Hinduism alone that gods and goddesses have been depicted nude. Those who have some knowledge of the Tantric Buddhism followed in Tibet, Ladakh, Sikkim, Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh are aware that in many temples and paintings, gods and goddesses are depicted not only nude but in sexual union, in some cases very graphically. That, again, has nothing whatsoever to do with "freedom of expression". It has everything to do with the esoteric belief and practice that spiritual enlightenment can be attained through tantric sexual practices. These depictions, it needs to be repeated, are made with utmost devotion and an understanding of, and belief in, the sacredness of it. This does not automatically entitle anyone, particularly one who does not follow and respect their faith, to "creatively" and "artistically" reinterpret them in a manner that appears to be disrespectful and insulting to the deities who are living gods for their believers.

Let us come back to Husain. Something must be said here which most avoid saying in public but for which the sentiment is very strong. Husain is not a believer. On the contrary - it doesn't matter whether he is "secular" or not - he follows a religion that professes that there is only one God, Allah, and that all other gods are false and must not be respected or venerated. Therefore, when he paints Lakshmi and Durga not only nude but in a manner that seems to suggest sex with animals, no Hindu can believe that he has done so with any respect or veneration in his heart, like artists of olden times used to. It cannot also be a meaningless coincidence that perhaps the only other person he has taken the creative liberty of painting nude is Adolf Hitler. These paintings can be seen here. (Update: I have just discovered that Husain has painted some more offensive paintings that, if published in newspapers, may start violence on an unprecedented scale. Nude Ram and Sita having sex while Hanuman watches, Nude Sita clinging on to Hanuman's tail etc. Even that nude Lakshmi painting where everyone thinks she is sitting with her vagina resting on the head of her son Ganesh is actually her sitting on an elephant - body is not human. This guy is obviously a serial offender.)

Let us now draw the only real parallel that there is to what Husain has done: the famous Danish cartoons that had the whole Muslim world up in arms in 2005. Here too, an artist has used his creative freedom to depict the Prophet based on his understanding - however faulty - of the genesis of Islamic terrorism that is afflicting the world. Yes, many Muslims say that, as per their understanding, Islam is a religion of peace. But, who can deny that the extremists who have picked up the gun also claim that they are waging a holy war, a jihad, against those who do not follow Islam, as per their understanding of the teachings of the Prophet? Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist, manifestly drew inspiration from the claims of the latter to draw the cartoons in question.

Can Westergaard's right of creative freedom to do so be justified, just as Husain's has been and is being very vociferously? Keeping aside the manner of depiction of the Prophet for a moment, it needs to be remembered that the basic argument of Muslims is that any pictorial depiction of the Prophet is prohibited in Islam. No compromise is acceptable to them on this score and, afraid of dangerous and violent backlash, almost all Indian "liberals" have made peace with this stance and meekly surrendered the right of a non-Muslim who does not believe either in the Prophet or in Islam, to exercise his right of "freedom of expression" and paint the Prophet.

But there is a twist here. The Prophet was actually painted by Muslims for centuries. Many old paintings showing him are available in a number of museums and other places places in the world. Some of these can be seen here. In fact, as per some accounts, the ban on so depicting him was not laid down in the Quran but was put in place a few hundred years later.

Be that as it may. What is of real relevance is the view that is dominant at present. The real question, therefore, is whether this view is to be respected and accepted. Or are we to get into endless debates to make a case that since paintings of Prophets were permitted a few centuries back, artists have a right to paint him today too in that manner? And, following from that stance are we then to accuse Muslims opposing it in the same manner as some of us are berating Hindus who are, comparatively peacefully, protesting against nude paintings of Hindu Goddesses by Husain?

If we are to accept one argument, as many so-called liberals cleverly have, for very practical reasons, then how can we reject the other unless we are dishonest in our souls? Unfortunately, some of us are. That is why they can, in one breath, demand in righteous rage that Husain be brought back to India, wish that Taslima Nasreen is sent out of India, and keep totally quiet about the banning of the making of a film on Nehru and Edwina due to pressure of Nehru's descendants and the banning of the telecast of 'The Lost Tomb of Jesus' by Discovery channel due to pressure by Christian groups? There are many more such examples.

The liberal agenda, let it be said, is not only shallow and dishonest but is also manifestly a political one, pursued vigorously by a tiny but vocal and powerful group driven by greed for grants, appointments, approval of the West and free jaunts to it, 'blessings' of the Family etc. It is also constrained by fear of business losses that some journalists-turned-big-businessmen might be made to suffer if they apply uniform yardsticks in all cases. Also, as two liberals have revealed on Twitter, it additionally gives them a brainless high as they believe it sets them apart from, and places them above, those belonging to what in their view is the lowly lower middle class.

No surprise that they can live comfortably with calls to kill Westergaard and still manage to shout that India must get back Husain and honour him with a Bharat Ratna.

Related reading: Tirupati and The 'Tomb of Jesus'


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INTERLOCUTOR SHASHI - MALLU SUPERMAN

Shashi Tharoor 'talks out of turn and can't help but tweet'. That has landed him in trouble on more occasion than one but, amazingly, each time, he has emerged victorious, with not a scar on his pretty face, much like Muhammad Ali, the legendary heavy weight boxer, who, they said, 'floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee', and was invincible at his peak.

After he became Minister of State in the External Affairs Ministry, Tharoor chose to stay in a five star hotel rather than in the Kerala Bhawan because, he said, the latter did not have a gymnasium and did not provide the privacy he needed. To conduct affairs of the state on Twitter, was it? The Congress High Command, then in the throes of an austerity-attack, asked him to move out and he was next seen having his meals, one at least, smile intact, in the Kerala Bhawan canteen, much like the aam aadmi whose clothes he wears there days. Perfect combination.

Forced to travel in economy class, Shashi then enraged The Holy Cow of the Congress by referring to it as 'cattle class' in a tweet to Kanchan Gupta. There was a lot of noise, both from the Left that does not associate anything holy with the cow, the Centre (Congress) that believes that only their Kamdhenu cow is holy and the Right that has patented its claim on the Hindu belief that all cows are holy. A private audience with Sonia Gandhi apart, Tharoor emerged unscathed, even stronger, from that controversy which had then inspired me to write a limerick and poem:

Feel sorry for minister-tweeter Shashi Tharoor
Who tweeted austerity was a "cattle class" rule
The enraged holy cow
Shoved a horn and how
That indiscretion in searing pain he does rue!
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There was this smart guy called Tharoor
Who came to India ready to say 'Huzoor'
Not knowing then that for first class
He would soon lose his long held pass

Now no more than chattel
He has to suffer class cattle
And to the wishes of the holy cow
Morning and evening humbly bow

In December 2009, he stoked another row by using Twitter, again, to openly question his ministry's decision to tighten visa rules in the light of the David Hadley case, saying "26/11 killers had no visas." His boss, Foreign Minister did feebly assert his seniority by asking everyine in his ministry to be on the same page, but the net result was that some visa norms were actually eased. Tharoor had won again.

Within a few days, Tharoor was once again in the cross-hairs of the media that played a clipping of his speech that showed him crossing the criticising the founder of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty:“foreign policy of Nehru and Gandhi was more like a moralistic running commentary.” That was the Lakshman Rekha that should have cost Tharoor his job. Or so the media thought. Instead, the very next day he blasted them for "inaccurate, dishonest, irresponsible and tendentious reporting" and clarified that he was only quoting Lord Parekh's points and not offering his own. A neat KO punch!

A couple of day back, Tharoor kicked up another storm when he told Indian journalists in Riyadh: “We feel Saudi Arabia has a long and close relationship with Pakistan and that makes Saudi Arabia even a more valuable interlocutor for us,” Everyone thought that Tharoor was signaling a radical departure from India's long-held position that talks between Indian and Pakistan had to be bilateral and that there was no room for any third-party involvement. Predictably, the lifeless BJP, desperately looking for issues to embarrass the government, was up in arms, as was the 24/7 Indian media whose very survival depends upon some inane political controversy or another that keeps the focus of news in Delhi and in TV studios. But Tharoor not only neutralised them in a hurry, he gave them and his lakhs of Twitter followers lessons in the English language too: "If I speak to u,u are my interlocutor!I mentioned the Saudis as OUR interlocutors, ie the people we are here to speak to. Some misinterpretn"! Go nurse your wounds.

Today, for no apparent reason, an old song, "Muhammad Ali, the black superman," wormed into my head. Suddenly, its lyrics started changing to fit the story of Shashi Tharoor who is beginning to look more and more like a Mallu (Malyaali) superman who is constantly taunting, daring, teasing others to "catch me if you can." In less than an effortless hour "Interlocuter Shashi - the Mallu Superman" emerged.

Those who may not have heard the original song can listen to the embedded You Tube video while reading the lyrics:

This here's the story of Shashi Tharoor
Who changed his name to Inter-locutor Shashi
He knows how to talk and he knows how to tweet
And with clarifications his opponents he does beat

Sing (Inter)Locutor, Locutor Shashi
He talks out of turn and he can't help but tweet
Locutor, the Mallu superman
Who calls to the cattle guy I'm Shashi, catch me if you can

Now all you twitter fans, you've got to agree
There ain't no flies on Locutor Shashi
He confuses the arena wherever he goes
And everyone gets what they asked for

Locutor is known to have said
You hear me waffle and I'll muddle your head
He yaps like the Mallu superman
And calls to the media guy I'm Shashi, catch me if you can

He says I'm the greatest India's ever seen
The tweet-weight champion who's come back again
My lexicon is so baffling you can't ever mar
Which proves I'm the king of chatter ring by far

Sing Locutor, Locutor Shashi
He talks out of turn and he can't help but tweet
Locutor, the Mallu superman
Who calls to every other guy I'm Shashi, catch me if you can
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