35 YEARS ON, EMERGENCY MINDSET IS ALIVE

On June 25, 1975, the people of India had their first brush with dictatorship. Ironically, this 'coup' was executed by the very person who had sworn to protect democracy and the constitution. Indira Gandhi, the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, stunned by an Allahabad High Court verdict that found her guilty of violation of electoral laws, decided that she was bigger than the the law of the land. So, she staged a bloodless coup against the democratically elected Prime Minister that she was, and became India's first dictator.

Much credit has been given to her for holding elections in 1977 and then smoothly handing over power after she was voted out by the people. Perhaps some of it is deserved. But, it needs to be remembered that she went in for elections only after she was reportedly assured by the IB and others that she would win. However, when defeat shocked her, she was reluctant to hand over power to the Janata Party; that was her arrogance. She reportedly turned to Army Chief, Gen TN Raina, a fellow Kahmir Pandit, who she had chosen over the senior and much more distinguished Lt Gen PS Bhagat for the top job, and asked him to take over. Nehru's daughter asking the Army to take over India so that another politician did not! Couldn't be worse, could it? Fortunately for India, Raina refused. The rest, as everyone says, is history.

The Emergency was also India's first brush with the tyranny of the Nehru-Gandhi family. Indira Gandhi drafted her younger son, Sanjay Gandhi, who later died when the plane he was flying crashed into a tree, to help her run India with an iron fist and, boy, the duo took over the country and the Congress party completely. Their power was near absolute. Within the Congress, no one had the courage to utter a word against them; opposition leaders who did were put in jail; the media simply crawled.

As a result of the terror that the mother-son duo unleashed, and as often happens with despots, they were told by sycophants just what they wanted to hear. But in 1977, the people told them what they should have been hearing: how hateful their rule, their excesses had been, and how unacceptable. The tidal wave of public anger, particularly in North India where the Emergency really hit hard, was so huge that Indira Gandhi was defeated in her own constituency by a midget called Raj Narain.

Much has been written about what happened during the two dark years that the Emergency remained in force, and little purpose will be served by repeating it here. What is of real relevance now is whether the right lessons have been learnt and whether there is any danger of another politician placing himself/herself above everything else in the manner that Indira Gandhi did.

How much has really changed in the last 35 years? Is the Congress party more democratic now after that painful experience? Have its leaders developed a spine or are they still supine? Has the media, now free and more powerful than ever, learnt at at last to walk or has the gangrene that had set in then led to amputation of vitals? Have political opponents of the Congress learnt their lessons or has the experience of power corrupted them too and turned them into poor clones of the Congress, no longer real alternatives that can give a new direction and purpose to governance and to the nation?

The answers to the above questions are reasonably clear. In fact Family tyranny has got even stronger; don’t let the soft edges and the media spin fool you. Consider the following:

• Then the Congress was run by Indira Gandhi her son Sanjay Gandhi; today it is by Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi.
• Sonia Gandhi has already been Congress President longer than Nehru and Indira ever were. To make matters worse, there is not even a whisper of a demand either in the party or in the media to revive democracy in the party and give other leaders a chance to rise to the top. Sonia is now effectively Congress President for life. This is something unheard of in any political party in any democracy in the world. If this is the example that the GOP is setting, democracy is sure headed to death.
• Sonia Gandhi may not be PM but she is far more powerful than the PM whose authority has been even further eroded -- manifestly to ward of any threat or challenge to her -- by a magical instrument known as the Group of Ministers (GOM) that is routinely tasked to take major decisions, shielding her from criticism but not credit, to ensure that only what she wants is done, but without being held accountable should anything go wrong.
  
• Sonia Gandhi is the Supreme Commander of a government democratically elected by the people but she does not speak to them directly or even through the press. Natives of the party are left to do all the explaining and blame-taking. Even Indira Gandhi was never so arrogant and aloof.
• No one in the Congress party can utter a word against any member of the Family, living or dead, out of fear. It is above and beyond criticism. Like God.
• Surprisingly, almost no one in the opposition too criticises the Family. Manifestly that too is out of fear. The Congress has blatantly misused the CBI and other state instruments to tap phones and use other means to ferret out incriminating information about political leaders. That was apparently the sole achievement of the previous NSA. With corruption having reached unprecedented proportions and honest political leaders nearing extinction, most know that they are vulnerable. Blackmail, or the threat of it, is the new password that seals everyone's lips. Of course, everyone is allowed to hammer and make fun of Dr Manmohan Singh; that keeps everyone happy and undamaged. Even Nehru and Indira, tall leaders, were never so exalted.
• The media crawls without having to be even told, eagerly. The rules of the game are clear, crossing of the Lakshman Rekha means swift and silent banishment to obscurity. Media is now big business with big money at stake. Makes eminent sense to keep the government on the right side and put the Family in the Pulpit. With corruption levels in the media now at par with those in the political class, vulnerability to blackmail and harassment is also as high. So, the Family has to be out of bounds for everything except reverence. No surprise that the anniversary of the Emergency has been blacked out. The new generation should not get ideas hostile to the Congress even in short attention span it has.
  

The the manner in which the furore over the duping of the victims of the Bhopal Gas disaster of 1984 has been handled by the government has dramatically underscored yet again the harsh truth that the Family is now totally beyond the pale of criticism. What started off as one $15 billion compensation suit in the US -- more to follow -- was turned into a paltry $475 million deal by the Rajiv Government with Union Carbide, Rs 30,000 for the dead and Rs 8000 for the injured. Billions would undoubtedly have been paid as bribe to top Congress leaders by Union Carbide for being let off the hook so unbelievably cheaply, over the dead and dying. But this scam, many times bigger than the Bofors one that brought Rajiv down in 1989, has been buried with exceptional haste. Rajiv Gandhi has been swiftly proved innocent of any wrongdoing in the gas disaster, not only by a pliant Group of Ministers who real job was to do that, but by almost the whole mainstream media, with leading journalists resorting to disgraceful tricks to successfully achieve this 'Mission Impossible'. The opposition too is silent; we know why.

The Emergency mindset is, thus, not only alive in the Congress, it is now even stronger than it was during the Emergency. The aam admi remains largely unaware because his testicles are not physically on the line now. But, there is enough evidence to suggest that he is no longer as relevant as he should be in a vibrant democracy. The Congress has sorted out the arithmetic of elections in a manner that has made him almost irrelevant, bar a sop here and there before elections to prevent a large swing. The opposition has also understood this game of numbers and has learnt to live with it, and make the best out of it wherever and whenever it can, even if means that some key leaders have to risk selling out to the Congress directly or via the CBI etc.

That is why there is zero possibility of any politician imposing the kind of Emergency that Indira Gandhi did again. But that is not because democracy has taken deep roots or is vibrant. That is primarily because there is no need for any politician to do with a hatchet what he/she can with a fake smile, except to set the occasional example. The corruption pie is now humongous, and there is enough for everyone to get something out of it. No one wants to spoil the party; keeping the mouth shut and treating the Family above all is a small price to pay. As long as the going is good. As of now, the highway ahead is paved with gold; there is no need or time to look on the side where the poor reside.
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May also like to read:
1. Politics and media: a new Nadir
2. Khaoists: Plundering India's future

SECULARISM: FROM 16 ANNAS TO 16 PERCENT

Secularism, the ideal, was adopted as the "official religion" of free India. The idea behind it was as simple as it was profound: every Indian, irrespective of personal faith, was an equal stakeholder of the new state. Unlike the breakaway Pakistan that chose to count only Muslims annas -- a rupee had 16 annas those days, not 100 paise -- as primary citizens with full rights in all walks of life, India chose the 16-anna model.

63 years down the road, in Pakistan not only have the 'khota' annas (non-Muslims and heretic Muslims) all but disappeared, the prized annas too are in danger. The new coins being minted do not have Jinnah's face on them. Laden, Hafiz Sayeed, Jihad and the like are already the new and only legal tender across vast swathes of that country, poised to either take it over or perish in spectacular flames.

In India, the anna has yielded to the paisa, both literally and metaphorically. Particularly in politics. No political party thinks or talks of 16 annas any longer except in vague generalities which mean absolutely nothing. When it comes to doing or getting something tangible -- and that to a politician means power and money -- the paisa takes over. Now 100 is a lot more than 16 and, therefore, much easier to "cut". And that is precisely what has happened. So, whether it is a business deal, a contract, a licence, or some such instrument created to enrich the politician (and the babu), percentages determine decisions and outcomes, rare exceptions apart.

Pecuniary corruption exists in every nation, though it is not quite so pervasive as in India and some other countries growing large banana plantations. While that is a disease that needs to be urgently attended to in India, the real, the one that should be ringing alarm bells, but is chiming instead, is political corruption that strikes at the very foundations of secularism.

Admittedly, our founding fathers were somewhat guilty of taking the SC/ST chavanni out of the 16 Annas. It is they who started what has become the mess of reservations, the abdication of responsibility of the rulers for their failures to deliver what they had promised when India became free. Of course, no one can accuse them of dividing society for petty political gains, and that too when they did it temporarily to right a historical injustice. They also can't be fully blamed if their less than worthy successors converted the chavanni into 25% on a permanent basis and then set in motion a dynamic that has already cut the original 16 Annas into percentages ranging from one to 27, the latter being the OBC cut that a certain VP Singh inflicted on an unsuspecting India purely for petty political gain. That did not materialise for him but it gave his fellow politicians many more percentages to divide the Indian rupee into and reduce India's secularism and democracy into the farce that it has become now except, ironically, for those who have seceded from it and organised their lives in comfortable cocoons.

These days, the hottest prize that politicians are salivating over is Bihar. To be more precise, the prize their gaze is fixed on is the 16% Muslim vote, a "bank" that they see as the difference between victory and defeat, between political wilderness and the untold riches that power promises and delivers. We are not talking only of regional parties with extremely limited interests and vision but extremely large expectations and ambitions. We are talking of national parties, including those whose historical appeal was the 16-anna one of the rupee before 1947 and what remained of it thereafter.

Much of the remaining 84% politicians have already cut up divided into small parts among themselves, giving the likes of Laloo Yadav, for example, disproportionate power and leverage, and the heady arrogance that they are above and beyond the law and the land. The 16% in focus now is not just defined by religion: it is most amenable to bulk voting based on religious dictat. Now this makes the division starkly communal by whichever definition you look at it. But, that does not daunt our politicians. They have managed to secularise even this exclusive piece by calling it "inclusive". No lessons have been learnt from the manner in which secularism has been hijacked by political parties and leaders who have gained power solely on the basis of votes of certain castes and communities, and who have blatantly corrupted all instruments that they can to unfairly 'reward' those of their castes/communities in return.

Now the game is to create even more, even smaller, pieces from the remaining general pie. That is the real reason for the demand for a caste census, reservation for Muslims and, at one level, women in Parliament. Let us face one simple truth: no piece can be termed to be "inclusive". The moment you lavish attention on one and give it an entitlement for anything, it has to be at the expense of another. Worse, the moment you appease one, you set in motion social dynamics that can have disastrous consequences even after and for decades. But who cares? The ones who should have protected themselves from its effects; they are not going to be personally impacted by any social or communal churning and violence except if and when it reaches the 'Bastille'. Since there is still no evidence of that happening -- the Indian cake being so hopelessly divided and weakened -- nothing is going to stop them from doing what they are.

The business of politics is now about grabbing and retaining power. All means fair. That is why secularism has slid from the 16-anna avatar it was conceived as to the 16% one we are seeing today and the 1.6% plutocracy that our politicians are in the process of turning it into, to ensure that India passes again into the hands of less than a thousand families and dynasties. Secularism is now little more than a political condom.

NITISH RETURNS MODI CHEQUE, ASKS FOR MUCH MORE

Nitish Kumar has done what the BJP must have been dreading, what it should have anticipated long back and been ready with an immediate response to.

The storm clouds have been gathering for long. During the last Lok Sabha elections, Nitish Kumar had made it clear that Narendra Modi was not welcome to campaign in Bihar because he did not want to lose Muslim votes. The BJP then meekly obliged probably because it anticipated a very close fight and did not want to lose even a single MP, particularly after Naveen Patnaik had surprised the party and dealt a body blow to it by breaking off the alliance in Odisha.

A few days back, when the BJP held its National Executive meeting in Patna, all seemed well initially, with Nitish Kumar even agreeing to host a dinner for BJP leaders, including Modi. But something was brewing under the surface. And it took just one advertisement with a old photograph of Nitish and Modi holding hands to unleash the tensions in the alliance, and fears of Nitish over Muslim votes erupted to the surface again. So enraged was he by the advertisement that he called off the dinner and even threatened to return the money that Modi had sent for flood relief to Bihar in 2008.

The situation was, however, quickly salvaged by JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav who said that the differences were minor and that alliance was as strong as ever. Then at the rally held by the BJP in Patna, Narendra Modi eased into the national stage as naturally as only real leaders do, and no one in the BJP was left in any doubt that he was the party's tallest leader by far. The unspoken sub-text was that he was most likely to be the party's Prime Ministerial candidate for the 2014 general elections.

While that possibility may have caused some discomfiture to Nitish, what must have really unnerved him was that for the forthcoming Assembly elections in the state, Modi would campaign for the the BJP. No party can allow its most promising potential Prime Ministerial to be kept away from a state by an alliance partner. To Nitish, that reality was evidently not acceptable. He reckoned that he would not be able to successfully sell his alliance with the BJP to his Muslim voters if Narendra Modi loomed larger than life in the state during the elections. So, for Nitish too, there was little choice. He had to unequivocally convey to Muslim voters that as far as Bihar was concerned, BJP was not Modi.

Today, Nitish Kumar has done the almost unthinkable. He has executed his threat and returned Rs 5 crore that Narendra Modi had sent on his request for flood relief. The message is blunt: Modi is his Enemy No.1; Modi is persona non-grata in Bihar; Modi will not be allowed to campaign in Bihar and use it as a stepping stone to the national centre stage. The BJP has been humiliatingly put in place again and told in no uncertain terms that it is the junior partner in alliance and has no choice but to accept the terms that he sets. And the first one is that Modi is unacceptable.

Nitish has returned a cheque but is asking for much more. This is perhaps a defining moment not only for the BJP but, to some extent, also for Indian politics as a whole.

"Inclusive" politics is the new mantra that is being liberally used -- pun intended -- to ensure that Congress and like-minded parties can keep capturing power in the Centre as well as in certain demographically vulnerable states. Notwithstanding the secular cloak under which it is being concealed, let no one be in any doubt that this is communal politics which is potentially extremely dangerous and incendiary. Simply put, it seeks to leverage the disproportionate block voting power of Muslims to ensure the defeat of parties whose primary appeal is to the non-existent majority that never has voted as a block in most parts of India and probably never will under normal circumstances.

For now, the appeal is primarily to the insecurities and fears of the Muslim block by projecting BJP as an anti-Muslim party. Crumbs are also being thrown so that other 'secular' claimants don't make a dent that significantly reduces the advantage of the Congress. For now, the demands of the block are not such as to arouse the insecurity of a majority of the majority in a manner that awakens it to the realisation that the power it can command as a block can totally nullify that of the Muslim block. But that will inevitably happen if "inclusive" politics yields rich dividends over a period of time and more 'secular' parties fight over the Muslim pie, increasing its bargaining power enormously. Political dividends as a result of this strategy will come at a steep social price. How steep will that be one cannot say now. But a quick look over the shoulder at what has happened in the last less than hundred years should be enough to make anyone shudder and never wish it, much less cause it, again for the people of India.

For the BJP, surrender to Nitish Kumar is the most attractive short-term option as it will secure power for it in Bihar. It has already shown that it is now as bad as, if not worse than, the Congress as far as ethics, morality and principles are concerned. In Jharkhand, it left no one in any doubt that unbridled lust for power and pelf is what drives it too. Nothing else matters. Since on that one major plane which at one stage distinguished it from the corrupt Congress, it now the latter's clone, there is really nothing else it has to offer to the voter that is better than what the Congress can. Add to that its extremely limited appeal to Muslim voters which too the Congress is busy buying in bulk, and you come to the inevitable conclusion that on this track, at best it can be no more than a distant second best.

By choosing Nitish over Modi, the BJP will also send a clear signal to the people that it too considers Modi guilty for 2002. If Modi is going to be projected as the next Prime Minister based on his stellar and unmatched performance as Chief Minister, then the party simply cannot afford to create such an impression and also swallow such humiliation, which may be repeated in other states too if Nitish gets away in Bihar. There is no surer way of ensuring defeat. It is possible that Modi's paper tiger opponents within the BJP are harbouring ambitions of getting the top job with the help of the media in whose comfort zone they are. They will undoubtedly pitch for Nitish and may even swing it for him.

The dilemma for the BJP is, thus, not limited only to its only leader who can mount a devastating campaign against the Congress on governance, vision, probity, lifestyle and exemplary leadership by example. It also involves the challenge that the party needs to mount to defeat insidious reverse communalism that the Congress is employing as its winning plank in the absence of a leader who can sway and carry people of all denominations along with him. Arithmetic is the new leader of the Congress. It is personality and ability proof across a large band of non-performance, thanks to a captive media that is doing a terrific paint job. Therefore, if the BJP falls prey to temptation in Bihar, it will mean that it has no answer to the Muslim strategy of the Congress except to play a defensive second fiddle where the arithmetic is challenging. Its capitulation in Bihar will also mean that it has not even thought of a counter strategy that can consolidate a big chunk of the majority vote to nullify the efforts of the Congress, without sounding anti-Muslim. The Congress doesn't utter an anti-Hindu word. It lets the media do that dirty work while it cleverly works to win over Muslims by talking for them, not against Hindus, except those belonging to the Sangh Parivar, a definition that now includes anyone who speaks for Hindus.

There is no doubt that if the BJP dumps Nitish now, the Congress will gain, at least in short term. At the same time, it will not only help reveal the actual strength of the BJP in Bihar, but may also open up a way for it to improve its position and enter into an alliance on different terms in 2014. But, if it dumps Modi instead, then it will be committing a double blunder, a hara kiri, that will only benefit the Congress at a deeper and more enduring level.

ANDERSON'S ARREST, RELEASE STAGE-MANAGED?

Warren Anderson, the then Chairman of Union Carbide Corp, was arrested on arrival at Bhopal airport at 10:10 AM on December 07, 1984, along with Keshub Mahindra, Chairman Union Carbide India Ltd and Vijay Kumar Gokhale, senior official of the company, under various sections of the IPC including 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), a non-bailable offence.

Moti Singh, the then District Collector of Bhopal has revealed that Chief Minister Arjun Singh had called him and the Superintendent of Police, Swaraj Puri, to his house in the morning, gave their arrival details and ordered that they be arrested on arrival. The duo then went to the airport, took them into custody and put them in Union Carbide guest house. RC Jain, who was Agriculture Secretary in the MP government at the time, has further revealed that Chief Secretary Brahma Swaroop came to know about the arrests only around 10:30 when the DC and the SP rushed into his office while he was holding his daily meeting of the core group on the Bhopal tragedy. In the meantime, Arjun Singh had left for an election rally which, according to what Swaroop shared with his colleagues, was also attended by Rajiv Gandhi.

As per Jain, during the meeting Swaroop received a call from Arjun Singh at around 11:30 AM, less than 90 minutes after Anderson had been arrested, who told him that Anderson had to be released. On being told that it was impossible to do so, he was asked "to find a way to do so". To cut the story short, a little after 2 PM, within four hours of being arrested, Anderson was not only released, with the IPC 304 charge deleted, on a $ 2000 bond furnished without appearing before a magistrate, he was even put on a government plane and escorted like a VIP to Delhi.

The official line given by Arjun Singh then, and reiterated by Pranab Mukherjee after 25 years, was that Anderson had to be sent out of Bhopal because people's tempers were running high and the law and order situation was getting out of hand. Could this have happened within one and a half hours of Anderson's quiet arrival about which virtually no one knew, and his detention in the Union Carbide guest house? Would those affected by the disaster have even known who Anderson was? Would the anger of the people not been directed more against the local management and even Keshub Mahindra? And who informed Arjun Singh that such a situation has erupted? If the DC and the SP who were personally asked by the CM to arrest Anderson were not aware of any such development then who was?

Furthermore, if there really was such a difficult situation -- an impossibility due to reasons explained above -- any democratic government, and that too in the middle of an election campaign, would have taken pains to assuage the pain and anger of the people by making a Anderson's arrest a very public affair. Also, if law and order in Bhopal was the real concern, Anderson should have been moved to another city in Madhya Pradesh or elsewhere in India and kept under arrest, not released so quickly.

So this whole story is not only an illogical lie and an afterthought to conceal the truth, it also proves beyond doubt that Arjun Singh did not order Anderson's release from an election rally on his own.

On of the theories doing the rounds is that Anderson was released so quickly because Rajiv Gandhi received a call from Ronald Regan and that since India was then a weak country that could not stand up to the pressure of the US, Rajiv had no choice. But there is something seriously wrong in this argument. Arjun Singh ordered Anderson's release in less than an hour and a half of his arrest. Rajiv Gandhi -- and this can be verified by media hounds -- was at an election rally somewhere in MP then. What are the odds that in this small window of time -- there were no mobile phones those days -- Anderson made a call to the US President who in turn made a call to Rajiv who, without asking for any inputs from the Foreign Ministry that he then headed or anyone else, took no more than a couple of minutes to ask Arjun Singh to release him?

Was, then, this whole arrest-release drama stage-managed by Rajiv Gandhi, with Arjun Singh its unsuspecting/willing executor? If you read on, this theory might appear to be not only possible but the only possible one.

Gordon Streeb, formed deputy chief of mission of US embassy in Delhi has said that Anderson sought and was given guarantee of safe return to the US, with the Indian government giving an assurance that no steps would be taken against him during his visit. After Anderson was arrested, Streed spoke to MK Rasgotra, his "chief interlocuter during this period" and was assured that India would honour its commitment. A report in the Pittsburg Post Gazette of December 7, 1984, link posted on Twitter and made available by Offstumped, confirms that the government had indeed promised a safe passage. It also says that Anderson's release on $2000 bond was secured after delicate negotiations between the US and Indian governments. Mysteriously, John Dean, the then US ambassador to India substantiates the argument that something serious was afoot. He says he was kept out of the loop and told to "stay out of this legal confrontation" (page 20/81). Note the expression.

How could there have been any "delicate negotiations" and "legal confrontation" between the governments of India and the US if Arjun Singh had acted on his own in ordering the release of Anderson within 90 minutes of his arrest, and reported completion to Rajiv Gandhi as reported in sections of the media? In fact, given the guarantees that the government of India had given, could Arjun Singh have even dared to arrest Anderson on his own and that too in the surreptitious manner that he did, involving no one other than the DC and SP of Bhopal city? This also means that there was either no call from Regan to Rajiv after the arrest or that Rajiv did not capitulate immediately, as some are suggesting. If indeed negotiations did place, as is evident they did, then what could have been the "confrontation" about? At that level, it had to be serious, really serious, either at the national or personal level. That means a deal was struck to let Anderson fly back.

There is undoubtedly something really dirty here that is being hidden. Anderson's arrest and freedom was manifestly traded over the dead and dying. But what it is that he was traded for?

Formed bureaucrat BS Raghavan believes that Rajiv bargained Anderson for Adil Shariyar, son of Muhammad Yunus who was "almost a part of the Indira Gandhi family, and a mentor of both Rajiv Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi". Shariyar was convicted by US court in 1982 on charges that included trying to blow up a ship, illegal possession of firearms and carrying them across State borders and drug trafficking, and sentenced to 35 years in prison. Yunus left no stone unturned to get his release but failed. But, miraculously, seven months after Anderson was released, Shahriyar was granted presidential pardon “as a goodwill gesture” and “for reasons of state”. Good will gesture to whom and what reasons of state for a person convicted of such dangerous crimes and with no connection to the state except the one mentioned above?

Anderson may have been traded for money too, in addition to Shahriyar. The money, big money, in any case did come in later.

Consider this: As per Free Lance Star of December 10, 1984, San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli had filed a $15 billion class action suit in the US on behalf of two Bhopal survivors. Lawyers from Washington were also preparing anther suit on behalf of the victims. Any government in the world would have assisted in efforts to ensure that the victims of what was clearly criminal negligence got the maximum possible compensation. But what did the Rajiv government do? It hurriedly passed the Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster (Processing of Complaints) Act, effective from February 25, 1985 to ensure that exactly the opposite happened.

The Act denied victims the right to go to court individually and made the state their sole representative. And what did it do as their sole representative? It sold them cheap. Dirt cheap. To begin with, it filed a law suit for only $3 billion. In turn, the UCC proposed a settlement figure of $350 million. Nudged by the Supreme court -- something here too? -- an out of court settlement was reached in 1989, with the UCC agreeing to pay a paltry $ 475 million. This is less than 3% of just one claim that was filed in a US court and only 15% of what even the government had claimed.

The government quietly allowed the to UCC get away clean by paying a pittance, a humiliating $2000 to the family of the dead. That is, yes, Rs 30,000 only at the then average exchange rate of around Rs 15 a dollar. Anyone know why?

It appears that the mass massacre of the Sikhs in 1984 and the Bofors scam that felled Rajiv Gandhi's government are not the biggest skeletons resting in the cabinet. The Bhopal Gas tragedy is probably bigger than both combined. But given the manner in which many other scandals in the recent past have disappeared with almost no trace, only a die hard optimist will believe that this one will tumble out, involving as it does, the only Family of the country.
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CHINA: RELIGION RETURNS

We have forgotten but the Chinese have not. Thanks primarily to our history written from a alien perspective designed to propagate the myth of colonial superiority to perpetuate colonial rule, we no longer remember that India once dominated much of the world, not by sword or by force, but by its intellectual, cultural and spiritual prowess. But the Chinese, despite decades of communist rule during which atheism has been aggressively promoted and religion frowned upon, still remember their ancient, living civilisation and the enormous contribution that India has made to it.

In 1978, Deng Xiaoping effectively discarded the Marxist model of economic development and replaced it not by a capitalist one copy pasted from the West, but by one unique to that country, one designed to rapidly improve the living standards of its people and close the gap between China and industrialised nations. Although the "China Model" is still under development and the country still considers itself to be a "learning state," the stunning fact is that in almost the blink of a historical eye, it "has created an economic miracle, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty - a record unparalleled in world history."

Three decades after communism was effectively dumped in the economic sphere, China's leaders are rediscovering their religious roots and are quietly facilitating and calliberating their nation's return to it.

On Thursday, The Great Hall of the People, where communist laws and rules on atheism have been framed for five decades, saw a dance drama 'Cosmos' that featured themes like nirvana, karma and rebirth. That this was done in close with the Communist Party at various levels is evident by the fact that China's best names in choreography, dancing, music and stage craft were involved in it. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said the show gave an "Oriental cosmic view" about life's dimensions on earth and celestial premiers in heaven. The Beijing Municipality, which organized the event, described it as a human quest "to find answer in the eyes of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism".

In 2008, Chinese archaeologists had unearthed a four storey miniature pagoda, commissioned by India's Emperor Ashoka the Great in second century BC to house the remains of Buddha. The pagoda found in Nanjing is crafted from wood, gilded with silver and inlaid with gold, coloured glass and amber and contains the only known part of Sakyamuni's skull. According to Buddhist records, Ashoka collected all the sariras that had earlier been retrieved from Buddha's cremation and sent them to different parts of the world, China is believed to have received 19 of them. The pagoda was initially displayed in a museum.

It is important for Buddhism as a religion to have these sarira to be shown to its followers. In a significant departure from practice, the government has now allowed the relic to be enshrined in the Qixia Temple in Nanjing on June 12, 2010. Phoenix TV and Nanjing TV will broadcast the entire event live. The archaeologists who discovered it are also being allowed to take part in the enshrining ceremony and hold a news conference to exhibit photographs of the process of discovery and why they believe it belongs to Buddha.

India's contacts with China are older than history. The first recorded one is of around 265 BCE, when Emperor Ashoka sent a monk there to spread Buddhism. According to one account, around in 67 CE, two monks brought Buddhist sutras containing 600,000 Sanskrit words from India, and these were translated into Chinese. Other Indian Tantric and Buddhist masters also subsequently went to China and imparted knowledge. Most of us know that there are four Vedas. According to an age-old legend, there are actually five: the fifth esoteric Veda is with the Chinese. Very few Indian yogis have knowledge of its contents.

Chinese philosopher Hu Shi aptly expressed the abiding truth about the extent of India's influence on that country when he said "India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border." Lin Yutang in his excellent, 1100 page book, "The Wisdom of China and India", echoes the sentiment when he observes that the average reader does not suspect that "India was China's teacher in religion and imaginative literature, and the world's teacher in trigonometry, quadratic equations, grammar, phonetics, Arabian Nights, animal fables, chess, as well as in philosophy, and that she inspired Booccacio, Goethe, Herder, Schopenhauer, Emerson, and probably also old Aesop."

China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao had that long history in mind when, in 2003, he told India's visiting Defence Minister George Fernandes: “Friendliness accounts for 99.99 per cent of the 2,200-year-old Sino-Indian exchanges and misunderstanding merely 0.01 per cent. It’s high time we buried that 0.01 per cent and re-established the 99.9 per cent.” More recently, during his annual press conference, Jiabao told PTI's Beijing correspondent to convey to the Indian people that China and India are not competitors but friends and quoted from an Upanishad "written more than 3000 years ago in Sanskrit" to ask God to nourish both India and China and to let peace prevail between them.

The return of religion to communist China is a significant development. It may well be the beginning of a new, deeper revolution with which China will lead the world in the 21st century. Ironically, India, the land that China has always looked up to for cultural leadership and guidance, is undergoing a serious crisis of self-confidence and, in some sections of its deracinated society, even identity. Perhaps that is one reason why it has not yet been energised with the pride and fire needed to get into a leadership position. Perhaps that is one reason why those who are in a position to steer the nation into such a position are content to keep playing second best to the West, happy that they are lording over the masses who continue to suffer shaming poverty and deprivation.

It is time for India to shift its gaze from the West whose story is over to China who is writing the next one. Even if we are not yet ready to cast away yokes that have choked our minds and spirit, it will be better if the Guru becomes the shishya, the student, of one who has for long been his own shishya, so that he can remember and reclaim his respect and his leadership role, and enrich his people and the world once again.

DEALING WITH PAKISTAN: LESSONS FROM HISTORY

The recent attack on a mosque in Lahore belonging to Ahmediyas, a Muslim sect that has been declared heretic, by Punjabi Taliban, has once again brought to fore serious questions about the shape Pakistan has taken, the direction in which it is headed and the manner in which India should deal with it. At stake is the future and shape of not only India but the whole subcontinent. Dr Manmohan Singh is right when he says that India cannot not achieve its full potential unless it solves its problems with Pakistan. But can it really do so on the path that Dr Singh has chosen, or is that going to lead India into just the abyss that Pakistan wants?

I am no historian but I do know that history is rarely written objectively, particularly about events, personalities and ideologies that are not only alive but can also impact future events. When it comes to the history of medieval India, a continuing story that led to the Partition of India in 1947 and that is shaping developments even today, this is all the more glaring. One only has to do a comparative analysis of the versions that India and Pakistan have officially adopted to understand how politics on both sides of the divide has corrupted and distorted India's history to create a political future desired by those who control the state.

In Pakistan, history as taught to children in schools is designed to generate hatred towards India. Little is taught about Pakistan's long pre-Islamic history; the focus is on the glories of Islam and Mughal rule in India. As per a detailed study carried out by the Sustainable Policy Development Institution (SDPI) of Pakistan, history text books "are "full" of material "encouraging or justifying discrimination against women, religious and ethnic minorities and other nations," and four themes emerge from the curricula: 1. Pakistan is for Muslims alone; 2. that Islamic teachings, including a compulsory reading and memorization of Qur’an, are to be included in all the subjects, hence to be forcibly taught to all the students, whatever their faith; 3. that Ideology of Pakistan is to be internalized as faith, and that hate be created against Hindus and India; and 4. students are to be urged to take the path of Jehad and Shahadat."

Now this is not the handiwork of some illiterate Mullahs steeped in Wahhabi or Deobandhi-inspired extremism and intolerance. This is the deliberate creation of educated Pakistanis who believe that their nation has to be defined by Islam, sustained by implacable hatred towards India, and kept energised by the objective of claiming Kashmir and the rest of India for Islam. Out of this basic mindset has flown the hatred towards the rest of the non-Muslim world, with Pakistan appropriating for itself the role of the leader of the Islamic world and becoming the breeding ground for global terrorist outfits like the Al Qaida and local terror groups with global ambitions. It is easy to blame the Pakistani military establishment, particularly Zia-ul-Haq, for this slide into violent extremism. But, one would do well to remember that almost the entire Pakistani elite, including its civilian political leadership, is equally responsible for shaping Pakistan into the dangerous disaster that it has become today, one that has, to cite one example, produced educated, affluent terrorists like Shahzad, the Times Square bomber.

Pakistan, according to reports, is now producing 10,000 potential jihadis annually out of 500,000 graduates from 11,000 madrassas. These nurseries of terror have not sprung up on their own. They have been assiduously planted and nurtured to provide extremely motivated fodder to the establishment in the furtherance of its strategic objectives. Although the situation appears to have gone out of control in some cases after 9/11, if the Americans leave Afghanistan without tying every loose end up, a near impossibility, it will be pulled right back with use of brutal force, if necessary, by Pakistan's military.

Free India's Hindu rulers, on the other hand, have consciously de-linked religion from the state, despite the trauma of Partition on the basis of religion and the developments in Pakistan thereafter, to create a secular nation. It is largely due to their vision that Indians can be proud of, that a modern India is almost ready to claim its place among the great nations of the world. This political decision has had another fall out. It has seen the emergence of a rare unanimity in one political objective that is dear to both liberals and Marxists: to prevent "Hindus" from gaining political power. What better tool than history to push this through, to influence minds of Indians born after Independence? The net result is that the colonial view of history has not only continued to prevail but has been distorted even further by 'de-Hinduising' and sanitising it, the latter by purging history text books of nearly all negative aspects of Muslim conquest and rule. This unwritten censorship imposed by historians and intellectuals is so effective that, as Jacob De Roover notes, not only are disparaging beliefs about India's Hindu past being propagated but that "if one makes positive noises about the contribution of Indian culture to humanity, one runs the risk of being associated with Hindu nationalism."

This has created a small but powerful group of men and women who have almost completely severed their ties with and belief in the religion of their birth. It is this elite that is driving India's Pakistan policy, that is convinced that a strong and stable Pakistan is in India's supreme national interest, that wants India to make concessions to that nation in the hope that genuine friendship will be possible thereafter, that believes that Indians and Pakistanis are same people divided by the "accident of Partition" which we must put behind and move beyond. In short, it is this elite that, thanks in no small measure to the history it has taught and been taught, is simply unable to look at the challenge that Pakistan has posed since Independence in the manner that India needs to, to develop a winning response.

That is primarily why 63 years after Pakistan was born in blood, India finds itself in the reactive, fumbling mess that it is in despite four wars and an ongoing two-decade old proxy war.

It is, therefore, important that a very basic reality is understood once and for all by the deracinated elite that is steering India to nowhere with respect to Pakistan and due to whose blinkers lives of Indian soldiers and civilians may continue to be lost for decades, even centuries. No matter how allergic some of us may be at being called a Hindu nation - and rightly so too - Pakistan has always seen India as a Hindu country only. Pakistan, when looking at India, does not see its constitution or secular structures of the state; its only sees that Red Fort, from where the Mughal Emperors once ruled India, is now under the control of much-hated Hindus. We can keep saying the ours is a composite culture with influences of all religions; the likes of Barkha Dutt who can be found in significant numbers in most media houses, can keep saying they are atheists: as far as Pakistan is concerned, they are not Muslims, they have Hindu names, they are Hindus. Period. Sonia Gandhi may have been born a Christian but to them she too is the bearer of the Hindu flag.

It is, therefore, vital to understand that when it comes to developing a response to the state of Pakistan as it exists today, what you think of yourself or your country is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is what view Pakistan has of you, what that view is going to make it do to you and what you need to do as nation to defeat and decimate instruments being and likely to be employed against you to achieve objectives that flow from such a view.

If we look at Mughal history briefly, the reins of two emperors stand out. Akbar and Aurangzeb both ruled for 50 years. During Akbar's time there was communal harmony and peace. Around this period the Bhakti movement also flourished, with the likes of Guru Nanak, Kabir, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu etc, preaching love and devotion for God, violence nowhere in their teachings. Aurangzeb, on the other hand, abandoned the liberal religious viewpoints of his predecessors and attempted to impose Sharia law with the aim of converting India into a land of Islam. Destruction of many temples, forcible conversion if Hindus to Islam, imposition of jazia on them, blanket ban on music etc followed, as did many wars to expand the empire. It was on his orders that Sikh Guru Teg Bahadur was beheaded in Chandni Chowk (Sis Ganj Gurudwara) for refusing to convert to Islam even after he was mercilessly tortured. It was Aurangzeb's atrocities that compelled Guru Gobind Singh, the Tenth Sikh Guru to add shakti to bhakti and demonstrate that a few fearless persons under proper spiritual guidance can act as force multipliers and re-energise a peaceful but hapless society reeling under terror unleashed by an intolerant state.

The present state of Pakistan can be said to be the inheritor of the legacy and ideology of Aurangzeb. Had it been an Akbar inspired creation, as perhaps Jinnah wanted it to be, the history of the sub continent and the condition of religious minorities in Pakistan would have been completely different. There would have been peace today and the sub continent would possibly have overtaken China with ease as the economic and military superpower of the future What we have instead is an increasingly intolerant and radicalised Pakistan that cannot see beyond the prism of a frozen-in-time version of Islam that sees itself as the end, the objective to be achieved to the exclusion of everything else.

The Indian state, on the other hand, can be said to be the inheritor of the ideology of the peaceful Bhakti movement with Mahatma Gandhi as its inspiration. That ideology worked against the British whose Empire was driven by loot and not religion. Would it have succeeded against religious extremism and violence? That question was again answered in 1946 itself when Jinnah called for 'Direct Action' to get Pakistan for Muslims. The resultant massacres in Kolkata forced Gandhi and Nehru to concede defeat; passive resistance could not on its own make the desired impact on the hearts and minds of leaders who employed religious intolerance to achieve political objectives.

Unfortunately, the lessons of 1946, followed by those of Partition and developments thereafter have again been conveniently forgotten. Liberals and Marxists who seized control of India's mind-space after Independence have retained the outer trapping of Gandhi's secularism but have taken out the spiritual devotion and truth in which it was steeped. Nothing wrong with that, one may argue, but the problem is that due to this surgery, what remains now is a passive, reactive state that has lost its connect with its own past, that is trying to find meaning for everything that it needs to do from examples in the totally different societal and religious settings of the West of the present, its past too conveniently forgotten.

Had those asking for a strong Pakistan looked for lessons from Mughal history, they would probably have adopted a completely different view.

Aurangzeb was the centripetal force, the power under which forces of religious intolerance flourished and acquired disproportionate strength, courage and power. They also unleashed strong reactive energies that met force with force. There was no other state then big enough to challenge Aurangzeb. Small and uncoordinated resistances could, therefore, do no more than wear him down by keeping him engaged in wars and thereby neglect the important task of running and maintaining the empire. But what happened after his death is the real story that is relevant in today's context. There were no worthy successors and the mighty Mughal Empire, then the greatest in the world, collapsed fairly dramatically and quickly. More importantly, that collapse also saw the quick death of the all-powerful conversion and destruction squads that wreaked havoc under Aurangzeb's protective umbrella.

Pakistan is the modern day Aurangzeb with ambitions that exceed his. This Aurangzeb has a problem not just with Hindu India but with the entire non-Muslim world. It believes that a few nukes, an Army and thousands of brainwashed young boys, all guided, controlled and inspired by it can achieve more than Aurangzeb ever could. This belief has been strengthened by the fact that a much bigger and united India has not been able to do to it what was done to Aurangzeb by much smaller kings, all acting on their own. That has emboldened it to become increasingly aggressive even during negotiations while continuing to prosecute its agenda vigorously, though with more circumspection than before due to the presence of the Americans.

Secular India is substantially in Akbar's mould. A Pakistan that believes in that ideology is presently an impossibility; it would, in fact, not have been carved out of India in the first place had Akbar got into the DNA of Muslim leaders. A strong Pakistan in that mould is what India wants. I suspect that is precisely what those involved in negotiations with Pakistan and most of those in the media believe Pakistan substantially is. Or will become if India strengthens its democratic government and institutions. They also want to make-believe that the the extremist lobby in Pakistanis is a tiny fringe and that the majority of those who constitute the state are moderates who want to live in peace and harmony with India. The reverse is probably true, given the dope children in not just the madrassas but even mainstream schools are being brought up on. (Read this illuminating article by Nadeem F. Paracha in The Dawn) Often we like to see others in our mould because of the false security that our comfort zones provide and the paralysis that grips some of us when we step out of it. Pakistanis know this weakness too. Sure way of protecting our individual selves at the expense of the nation on whose behalf we are interlocuting.

Today, the Al Qaida, the Taliban, Let, JuD etc appear to be formidable instruments of terror. More than anything else, they owe their strength and, in many cases, their very existence to the state of Pakistan. As even the Americans have discovered by now, Pakistan has no interest in dismantling the vast infrastructure of terror -- except where its interests are directly affected -- despite intense American pressure. It is playing the waiting game knowing well that a weakening US will have to get out of Afghanistan in the near future, give or take a couple of years. Once that happens, terror elements that are of use to it against India in Kashmir and the rest of the country, will be tasked to take the proxy war to the next level. No agreement with India, no matter what concessions India gives, is going to change that strategy.

Since a Pakistan driven by values that Akbar embodied cannot emerge from the poison that it has consumed, a strong Pakistan that mirrors the ideology employed by Aurangzeb and worse can be nothing but bad news for India, particularly after the Americans leave the region. In fact it cannot be good news for even America and the rest of the West. The situation will become almost intractable if the state, including the army, is taken over by extremist elements totally, nuke button ready to be pressed at the slightest provocation. That may well happen if things continue to drift the way they are.

Fears that if Pakistan breaks up India will have to contend with fiver rogue states and uncontrollable jihadis are completely unfounded. Deprived of the patronage and direction of a powerful, ideological state, they will quickly dissolve into the countryside just as similar elements and ideologues did after the death of Aurangzeb. This is the most important lesson that should have been learnt from our history long back. It is not too late even now and offers the only visible solution to the danger that Pakistan in its present shape is going to keep posing to India.
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