India Retold

It is time for the mild Dr Manmohan Singh to realise that when, as the leader of a nation you try too hard to earn a place for yourself in the pages of history, you often wind up doing things that you would have not even thought of if your faculties had not been clouded by that desire. Nehru tried it in Kashmir and then with China - possibly with both eyes on the Nobel - and left behind a humiliated nation and a mess that has only got messier, no solution in sight. Vajpayee attempted something similar with Kashmir via Pakistan, but the bus which he thought would take him to Oslo landed up in Kargil instead. Fortunately for India, both he and Musharraf, the commando who almost got him to sign the lease deed effectively handing over Kashmir to Pakistan, were removed from the scene before India's interests could be sold for a piece of Scandinavian metal.

'Summit' meetings between Indian and Pakistani leaders always generate a frenzy in India, with much talk of pappis and jhappis etc Unfortunately, they always also have little to do either with substance or reality. All that they do is provide an opportunity to blokes in the Foreign Office to be in the limelight for a few days and pretend that they are working hard to earn their salaries, so what if they have managed to not move forward even an inch in decades to secure India's interests and cut Pakistan to its real size. As far as the media is concerned, it provides them with an easy story, the worn out script of which they know by heart but can keep re-selling to Indians, without putting in any effort, as a new one that is almost as exciting as the IPL and its scandals.

Part of the problem that India is unsuccessfully grappling with arises from the fact that a lot of influential Indians, led by Mani Shankar Aiyar and including my namesake from Hindustan Times, and many more, seem to be afflicted by the 'Madhuri Gupta syndrome' in varying degrees. Focused Pakistanis have learnt that being terrific hosts and talking with a forked tongue works wonders in winning over some Indians who are ever ready to trust Pakistan - even when the guns are blazing - with the same intensity that they despise and mistrust Indian politicians whose views are not aligned with theirs. Then there are those who simply say and write what they are told to; the old trick has got them into positions of power, with a Padma thrown in as a reward.

The net result is that instead of getting Pakistan to yield even a micron - semantics apart - from any of its known positions, every time this lot of Indians - sounding all warm and friendly and honest - manages to generate breaking pressure on a weak Prime Minister who may be a good economist but has manifestly little clue about matters concerning the nuts and bolts of the strategy, military and civil, that is needed to deal with a nation that, in conception and subsequent actions, remains ideologically hostile to India on the basis of religion alone.

India also tends to forget that Pakistan is not Britain. The strategy of non-violence that Mahatma Gandhi employed with success against the British succeeded only because he rightly calculated that as a nation they would not, given the state of civilisational development they were in then, respond to non-violent and passive resistance with wanton violence or go to the extent of physically eliminating him without a thought. Pakistan is a different beast altogether. As the Taliban experience in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the sometimes inhuman treatment meted out to captured Indian soldiers has shown again and again, if an opportunity presents itself, a Gandhi of today will most likely not be given time to re-tune his non-violent strategy against Pakistan; he will probably meet a fate similar to the one that Guru Teg Bahadur did, before he gets a second chance. Dr Manmohan Singh, of all the people, should know that better than anyone else. But it seems that he believes that Pakistan has moved on.

Then there is the Pakistan military, the institution that runs Pakistan and that has successfully prevented it from dissolving into history. If there were no India, there would be virtually no Pakistani military. Its power, both military and political, comes from the fact that 'enemy' India is a neighbour. Pakistan's civilian leadership, as I and some others never tire of saying, is no more than a proxy as far as Pakistan's India policy is concerned. When the media wax eloquently, with a generous touch of heart-tugging sentiment, about Indian and Pakistan Prime Ministers walking together into the sunset, all I see is a Prime Minister taking a walk with a poodle whose leash is held by someone India's leaders neither understand nor have a desire to talk to. That is one reason why, cadre jealousies apart, there is no one in the top rung of the hierarchy who understands their language. Walking with and talking to a poodle may excite the media, but is of little significance and cannot benefit India in any manner.

There is talk of talk again. Dr Manmohan Singh appears determined to yield some more - Sharm-el-Sheikh has been forgotten already, its chief drafter is the NSA now - so that before he demits office, he has some sort of an accord to show. Pakistan is dexterously blowing hot and cold, even taunting the PM by calling him a good man and asking the Congress party to support him, smelling as it does a real opportunity to get a non-retractable and fatal-for-India concession from him, the soft Sardar who knows his economics but is now playing with and trying to shape history without having studied it.

India has been unilaterally offering olive branches to Pakistan for decades. How many more decades and lives is it going to take for it to realise that the only olive branch that Pakistan has is Olive Green? And that, as everyone knows, will remain implacably hostile to India as long as Pakistan remains in its present political shape. So, as India gets ready to go through another round of talks - its non-strategy to defeat Pakistan's proxy war tragically begins and ends there - it will be good to view them as little more than chai-pakora gup-shups from which nothing will emerge.

When one guy is unarmed and the other puts an AK47 on the table and says 'it's a non-state actor, let's talk', an agreement is possible only if the former yields serious ground to his nation's detriment. That, as history tells us, breeds not durable peace but war and destruction. Any individual prize of the moment, no matter how prestigious, that anyone gets because of it, eventually gets stained with blood.

Hope the Nobel does not corrupt your noble thoughts, Dr Manmohan Singh. The destiny of an ancient nation and a billion plus citizens is in your hands.
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Related reading:
1. No price is too high, just 'love Pakistan'
2. A year after 26/11, calls for a strong Pakistan
3. Don't " beggar-my-buggering-neighbour"; strengthen him
4. Musharraf's shockers on terror, Kashmir and Indian Muslims
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Can someone explain this? How can the IPL be the "finest new brand of global value", as Shekhar Gupta calls it, when it is also being alleged by him and many others in the same breath that that the one man who created it and ran it single-handedly for three seasons seemingly perfectly, is actually a villain who has corrupted the very innards of the organisation he heads?

Thanks to one tweet that felled the fox-clever, arrogant and avaricious Shashi Tharoor, Lalit Modi has instantly become a ruthless dictator, a corrupt administrator, a money launderer, an inveterate philanderer - add expletives of your choice without a care - who, through a complex web of financial crookery and dubious deals involving ownership of various teams, broadcasting rights etc, has enriched himself enormously and brought disrepute to the game. Suddenly, people have discovered that, thanks to the IPL, he owns a yacht, a fleet of S Class Mercedes cars, a jet and havelis, is into orgies, has been rubbing people the wrong way, has been running the show as his private empire etc. In short, what we are being told by and through the media is that the man needs to be thrown out immediately from his job as IPL commissioner. The sub-text is that once he goes all will be well again.

Lalit Modi would perhaps not have expected that exposing Shashi Tharoor would generate the kind of Tsunami it has. He should have known that the Congress party has always successfully used/bought/arm-twisted people into hastily burying any scam, no matter how big, if it even as much as singes a powerful Congress leader. Shashi Tharoor was no ordinary Congressman. He was one of the star members of the new club of 'educated' and elitist Indians that Rahul Gandhi was crafting to get himself projected by the English media as the Great New And Only Hope for India, before the 2014 general elections .

By stripping Tharoor of the veneer that had made him very popular among English-speaking Indians and revealing his ugly, dishonest innards that were indistinguishable from those of the many dehati thieves that our flawed systems have thrown up as leaders, Lalit Modi committed an unpardonable crime. How could he dare to, when no else did, tell the world that Tharoor should actually be spelled 'Thugroor'?

It is nobody's case that Lalit Modi is a saint. By all available accounts - there is an avalanche now - particularly from those who proudly claimed, till that famous tweet, that Lalit Modi was "my friend", it appears that he did as much wrong as right as IPL commissioner. It is also being projected through selective leaks by India's infamous Raiders of the Income Tax Department that Modi is not the only one who stinks: the whole architecture does. Many team-owners and administrators, even cricket legends, who have been merrily enjoying the IPL windfall for three years are, we are being told, all guilty of sullying the 'fair' name of the game of cricket and that the rot is deep indeed.

In the middle of all this muck, we are also being shown a pristine lotus, the IPL brand, which we are being asked to unquestioningly accept is still a good product, an outstanding Indian global brand that we must be proud of. Is that possible? If the one guy who gave birth to it and has built it up as a one-man brand is the Devil himself, if the other administrators headed by the omniscient Sharad Pawar of many a 'fame', including the rot in the ministry he currently heads, if many of those who own IPL teams, are all dirty guys in the game to maximise their own earnings by every dubious instrument available, then is it possible to believe that the players who have been bought by them and are in their employ are not being used by them or others with the same objective?

How can we believe that there is no match fixing, that the 'integrity of the sport' has not been lost, if the rot is really as deep as is currently being made out to be?

Something does not strike one as being right here. Sure, a lot needs to be fixed in the IPL. But, either things are not as rotten as they appear now or, if they indeed are as bad, then one has to logically accept that the sport too has been fatally compromised. That very few are willing to accept. Which can only mean that it is a mean campaign that has been launched by the government solely to punish Modi for unmasking Tharoor and to politically weaken Sharad Pawar who is a painful thorn that cannot be removed by the Congress because the survival of the government in Maharashtra, even the Centre, depends on his considerable weight, pun intended. This may also be with a view to make Tharoor's crime look relatively benign so that he can be rehabilitated quickly.

Lalit Modi, despite massive pressure, has refused to resign as IPL commissioner. On April 26, a meeting of the governing council of the IPL has been called to remove him from the post. He has not only called the meeting illegal, as he says only he can call for it, but has also refused to attend it. To add fuel to the raging fire, he has launched a counter attack on, yes, Twitter again: "Wait for the ipl to finish - I will reveal the men who have tried to bring disrepute to the game and how we stopped them from doing it."

Modi, let us accept it, is no ordinary fly-by-night swindler or conman. He is proud of the product he has developed with a lot of hard work and also seems to have covered his flanks well. He probably had a fair idea that taking out Tharoor would unleash the might of the state against him. Which means he also calculated that, given the knowledge he has about every aspect of IPL and the men involved in it, at the end of it he would come out relatively unscathed and, more importantly, the brand would remain untarnished.

There is going to be serious egg on some faces over the next few days. But, there is hope that brand IPL will not only not take a hit but will also grow bigger and stronger. This hope has arisen not because of what people have been writing and speaking while keeping the brand distinct from Modi and others, but because of the manner in which Modi is taking on the state and its instruments, including the media, which suggests that he guarded at least the brand zealously.

If, however, everything been as putrid as the hysterical reaction to 'Thugroorgate' is making it out to be, then the muck is not going to go out with Modi. Then, no matter who replaces him, everything will, away from public gaze, slide back to where it was. And who knows, Tharoor the Mentor - fixer in plain language - might quietly get his ministership and IPL team back too.

Related reading: Shashi Tharoor: making a 'difference'
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Shashi Tharoor is hitting the headlines again. Just over a month back, I had written a post about how, despite landing in trouble repeatedly due to his tweets, he had 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." At that time, an old song, "Muhammad Ali, the black superman," had wormed into my head. Suddenly, its lyrics started changing to fit the story of Shashi Tharoor who had begun to look more and more like a Mallu (Malyaali) superman who was constantly taunting, daring, teasing others to "catch me if you can", and "Interlocutor Shashi - the Mallu Superman" emerged.

The Mallu Superman has, alas, fallen. And he has no one to blame but his own arrogance and what appears to be his avarice and tearing hurry to get into the 'bad' world of glamour, cricket and big bucks by getting for his lady love, Sunanda Pushkar, an undilutable and perpetually increasing sweat equity worth an initial Rs 70 crores, in a new IPL team for Kochi that Tharoor wanted the world to believe he 'mentored' due to his love for Kerala and not Sunanda or manna. But IPL Chairman Lalit Modi proved too smart for him and it took no more than one tweet from him to fell Tharoor, who has lost his job as Minister of State for External Affairs for starters, while Sunanda has 'voluntarily' surrendered her "sweetheart" equity. Those interested may read my previous post for more details.

The dramatic sudden and dramatic transformation of 'Interlocutor Shashi - Mallu Superman' into 'Mentor Shashi - Mallu Suckerman' has made me re-write the lyrics I had written earlier.

The You Tube video of the original song has also been embedded below. Read the lyrics as you listen to the song.

This here's the story of Shashi Tharoor
Who changed his name to Mentor Shashi
He knew how to talk and he knew how to tweet
And all the opponents he always did beat

Sing Mentor, Mentor Shashi
He talked out of turn and he couldn't help but tweet
Mentor, the Mallu superman
Who called to that Modi guy I'm Shashi, catch me if you can

Now all you Kerala fans, you've got to agree
There got to be flies on Mentor Shashi
He batted to net Sue free 70 crores
And everyone got what they asked for!

Mentor is known to have said
Lalit take my call and I'll 'Kochi' your head
He yapped like the Mallu superman
And called to the IPL guy I'm Shashi, beat me if you can

He said I'm the greatest India's ever seen
The mentoring champion who came back again
But my tricks were so juvenile just one tweet did mar
Which proves I'm no king of mentoring by far

Sing Mentor, Mentor Shashi
He stole out of turn and he couldn't help but bleat
Mentor, the Mallu suckerman
Who cried to Manmohan guy I'm Shashi, keep me if you can
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Let me say what mainstream media would have screamed had the man involved had not been a Congressman and, more importantly, one of the many PLUs (People Like Us - the media that is) who thrive and prosper, some at India's expense, primarily because of the manner in which the media protects, promotes and, in some cases, pays them to lead the good life when they should actually be looking for a hole to bury themselves in: the familiar stench of corruption is emanating from Shashi Tharoor, India's Minister of State for External Affairs.

As per records quoted by Indian Premier League (IPL) boss Lalit Modi, it is more than evident that Tharoor is no innocent, selfless 'mentor' who has put Kerala on the cricket map by helping a consortium buy a new IPL team for Kochi. At least one individual whom Tharoor admits to 'knowing well', Sunanda Pushkar, has been given undilutable sweat equity worth approximately a whopping Rs 75 crore. As per reports doing the rounds, based primarily on Tharoor's very public appearances as minister with Ms Pushkar, she is his lady love and is set to marry him. She has, quite expectedly, denied that she is acting as a front for Tharoor, as has he, feigning righteous rage. Only the very naïve believe that she is the only one through whom Tharoor will benefit; others involved too may have coughed up what is a straightforward 'cut' for services rendered by him to get their bid through.

Shashi Tharoor, a Stephanian, may have left Delhi and India when he was 19 and acquired impressive credentials in the US and UN. But, to take off from a cliché, the crafty desi politician - in the mould of the nearby badlands of Haryana and UP - could not be taken out of him. Still an infant in Indian politics, given what he has manifestly so cleverly 'achieved' in an absolutely 'dry' ministry in so short a time, one can only wonder what he would have done had he been given a 'wet' one. Even Dilip Cherian, a fellow Keralite, has been forced to admit that Tharoor has displayed political naiveté in the sordid Kochi IPL franchisee saga.

In 2005, the then Foreign Minister Natwar Singh was exposed for being a petty thief for helping his son make around Rs 75 lakhs through a dubious oil deal with Iraq. Natwar too was one of media's PLUs. Initially he stoutly denied any wrong doing whatsoever on his part, just as Tharoor is now doing. But soon, despite his best efforts, he found himself thrown out of the government because it was impossible to cover the trail.

During those days, Vir Sanghvi had jumped to his defence. Natwar, Sanghvi wanted the nation to believe, was an honourable man because he was well-read, had a well stocked library, had devoured a large number of books, even authored some, and also had an 'outstanding' career in the Foreign Service. It was almost like saying that the real crime was not what Natwar had done but the fact that it had been alleged that an Oxbridge was corrupt, exposing the uncomfortable truth that, shorn of the sophistry that enabled guys like him to remain distant from and above Bharat, as far as integrity was concerned, the Natwars of the world were no different from the Laloos and Reddys. Sanghvi is at it again, a bit mildly this time, though. He has tweeted that if Tharoor goes, so should Modi! See how cleverly the spotlight is being shifted from Tharoor, and his offense sought to be obfuscated, by all kinds of hyphenations? The latest is that Lalit Modi and Narendra Modi are working together! No wonder many believe that, as far as corruption at the very top is concerned, journalists and politicians are like Siamese twins.

When the Tharoor story first broke, the reaction of Rajdeep Sardesai was almost similar. The manner in which he questioned Lalit Modi on CNN IBN made Modi, not Tharoor, look like the villain for exposing the latter! How is Modi's motive even relevant here? The stark issue is that a minister of the Union government has manifestly done something that can only be described as disgraceful and unacceptable. Journalists should have been focusing on that and asking for Tharoor's resignation. Instead, some of them are still trying to make it appear as if nothing really serious has happened. What is new that Tharoor has done, they ask, that other politicians have not been doing? Who knows, may be some guys from the media too have done a Tharoor-Sunanda, or are planning to, to get their teeth into the very lucrative IPL or similar circuit!

It is more than evident from the interview that Shashi Tharoor gave to Barkha Dutt that when he got into the 'mentor' game, he figured that his real role would remain under wraps because of the confidentiality clause about the identity of the owners of a team; since no details of the ownership of other teams had been made public till then, Tharoor reckoned that the 'hamam' effect would ensure that the extent of his involvement and the 'pay-off' of Rs 75 crore worth of sweat equity to his girl friend and possibly future wife would not become public. That, and not naiveté, emboldened Tharoor to misuse public office.

Can anyone believe that Tharoor did not know why those guys approached him to be their 'mentor' (notice also how he has re-defined the meaning of yet another word!)? Would they have looked his way had he not been minister? As per his own admission, in the consortium that includes Sunanda Pushkar, there are some people "I haven't even met or am aware of". Why, then, did he agree to 'mentor' a lot whose identities, much less credentials, were not known to him? Was it because Sunanda was from the beginning a part of the consortium or was it only after they agreed to bring her on board on Tharoor's 'suggestion'?

What exactly did Tharoor's 'mentoring' translate into in a competitive bidding process? Modi's allegations and Tharoor's own admissions make it clear that he used the weight of his appointment during the bidding process to influence its outcome. That was his only real role to help a group of people, most from outside Kerala, who wanted a slice of the IPL pie. And as it turns out, Tharoor's lady love was rewarded obscenely for the value she is supposedly going to bring to the franchisee with her unheard-of-even-till-now expertise in event management etc!

Ah! Tharoor must surely love Kerala, a state that he probably would not have even looked at had he not been compelled to return to and seek respectable resettlement in India following his failure to become UN Secretary General.

Surely, Tharoor, with his vast experience in the UN, will know only too well how lobbying and influence works, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, like it happened with his own bid to head the organisation. Did he write that almost demeaning piece in Time magazine in praise of Sonia Gandhi because he actually worships her or was it to win her favour and himself a ministerial berth? Just before he formally joined politics, he also wrote columns in The Times of India, some of which were skillful exercises to further his own political goals by projecting how India needed more politicians with his kind of background, his in-depth, though distant, knowledge of this country, his type of accomplishments etc, and not the groin-scratching, nose-digging, non-English-speaking, corrupt lot that India has in plenty. He never was a naïve babe in the woods, as he wants us to believe now.

Tharoor may have perfected the art of saying in 140 words or more of sometimes convoluted prose what can and should be expressed in 140 characters or less. But his skill with words, his command over the English language - the master key that still opens many locks in India - his 'erudition' and his Natwar-like arrogance cannot wash off what he has been caught with on his hands this time.

A couple of months back, in response to questions on Twitter about why he had joined politics, he had tweeted, briefly for once, that he had done it "to make a difference". BRP Bhaskar had then tweeted back asking, "difference to whom?" Tharoor has not yet answered that question. Unfortunately for him and fortunately for India, Lalit Modi has.
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Readers may also like to read:
1. Politics and media: a new nadir
2. Interlocutor Shashi - Mallu superman
3. ND Tiwari: much more than a sex scandal

I will not be blogging for some time. At this point of time, I cannot say when this break will get over. There are other pressing commitments that need my undivided attention and time.

Have been writing here since August 2007 and this is the 436th post. The experience has been rewarding and enriching in a manner I had never even dreamed of when I discovered the wonderful, exciting world of blogging.

I take this opportunity to thank all those who have spent time to read all that I have been writing and to those who have added soul to the contents with their often illuminating comments from which I have learned a lot. Without your support, India Retold would not have been what it is.

The blog stays, at least for now, for those who wish to read something about India from a 'different' perspective based on my limited experience and understanding of this vast and mysterious country that many claim to know but that does not reveal itself so easily to anyone. The only thing I wish to say to those who choose to open other pages here is that whatever they find there has been written with an honesty that has not been corrupted either by money or ideology or pressure from any quarter.