Can Someone Pull Congress Out Of The Gandhi Gas Chamber?

More than 10 years too late, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have finally been forced to look at the writing on the proverbial wall. The Congress president has formally taken responsibility for his failure to lift the grand old party, even marginally, above the shocking and humiliating bottom it hit in 2014, and resigned.

Unfortunately, not even a whiff of contrition or respect for the will and wisdom of the people emanates from Rahul Gandhi's resignation letter. Instead, it reeks of an undiminished sense of entitlement, hatred for the majority, fake love for Muslims and Dalits, and an almost missionary assertion that he will keep pushing the Congress party to strangle itself with his ‘Idea of India’.

It matters not to him that this so-called idea, alien to even his own father, has been so vehemently rejected by the people of India, that they have not only reduced his party to a once unthinkable 23 seats in all of India outside Tamil Nadu and Kerala, but also handed him a humiliating personal defeat in the family bastion of Amethi.

Sonia Gandhi too continues, overtly unfazed, as the chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), and together the duo have evidently no intention of gracefully stepping aside and giving the Congress, gasping for fresh air, a chance to rise and reclaim its place as the premier national political party of India.

Although the duo ruled India for 10 long years, a closer examination of all the elections that they have been actively involved in, especially the two verdicts that gave and kept them in power, reveals that, despite their power surname, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have not won a single election for the Congress party, and should have quit in or before 2009.

In 2004, only eight seats separated the Congress (145) and Bharatiya Janata Party (137). That was a verdict against the government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and not, by any stretch of imagination, a vote for Sonia Gandhi. Between 2004 and 2009, even though no scam had yet come to light, neither she nor Rahul Gandhi was able to enthuse Indians to come out and vote them in again. On the contrary, they lost a string of states during this period — Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh and Jammu and Kashmir. Their victory in Delhi was due to Sheila Dikshit, and in Rajasthan, they won only 96 seats to BJP’s 78, despite the fact that the latter had 60 rebel candidates out of whom as many as 27 won.

Their 2009 ‘victory’, thus, not only came as a surprise to many, but it also led even BJP leaders to hastily conclude that their party was past its peak, and Sonia and Rahul Gandhi would rule India, unchallenged, for decades. In hindsight, it is evident that nothing could have been farther from the truth.

What should have been an easy victory for the BJP in 2009 turned into a big shock defeat for two main reasons.

One, Sonia Gandhi, sensing that there was no enthusiasm for her and Rahul Gandhi among the people, played a masterstroke by making Prime Minister Manmohan Singh — "Singh is King” — the face of the Congress party. Singh, who had a clean image, had caught the imagination of the people with the manner in which he pushed the nuclear deal; in that act of his, they saw in him a patriot who had stood up to Sonia Gandhi, to protect India’s national interest. That solitary display of spine and intent by the prime minister led the people to believe that India was safe in his trustworthy hands.

Two, just a year after the 2004 debacle, causes for which he evidently misread, Lal Krishna Advani went to Karachi and called Jinnah secular. With that one blunder, he lost forever the trust of many of BJP’s core voters and destroyed his political career. To make things worse, in 2008 he blundered by not only opposing Singh’s nuclear deal, but in also trying to bring down his government and installing Mulayam Singh Yadav as prime minister, in a clumsy and shady manner. That killed whatever little enthusiasm there still was among core and potential BJP voters, and they showed their anger by staying at home on voting day.

So when a crafty Sonia Gandhi surprised everyone by projecting Manmohan Singh, and not her own unpopular son, as the prime ministerial candidate, Advani, imagining that the mild Singh was no match to him, played right into her hands. He made the contest presidential, which effectively put Sonia and Rahul Gandhi out of the contest. The rest is history. In that direct battle of trust, people made Singh the king and knocked Advani out.

Unfortunately, everyone, docile Singh included, soon forgot that people had voted for the prime minister, and that the Gandhis were undeserving beneficiaries of the faith that people had reposed in Singh who, as it appeared then, had also got the economy roaring. Instead, even though the Congress won just 206 seats, the family ecosystem built an aura of invincibility around Sonia Gandhi and put her on a pedestal above all, and beyond any criticism by anyone, BJP leaders included.

It took five more years and Narendra Modi — not to forget social media that ‘routed’ embedded mainstream media in a parallel battle — to shatter that myth of invincibility. And it has taken another five years, and an even more humiliating defeat, to ram home the truth that Rahul Gandhi and his mother never could, and never will, win the trust of the people of India.

Perhaps, Rahul Gandhi too had sensed the mood of the people in the run up to 2019; that is why he allegedly struck a Faustian bargain with Indian Union Muslim League to enter India’s Parliament. Who would have imagined in 1947 that 72 years after a bloody, communal Partition, the president of the Congress party would be reduced to such communal beggary, in India?

Unfortunately, going by the cringe-worthy sycophancy displayed by senior Congress leaders, many much older, and all certainly wiser, than Rahul Gandhi, there is little hope that the Congress party will break free from the shackles of the Gandhis, despite the fact that they have not been able to win a single national election for the Congress since the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

After 18 years of failure and a disconnect with the people that is almost surreal, it is unbelievable that, in an arrogant display of sheer contempt for voters whose trust they never could win and have now irretrievably lost, they are still marketing themselves as the last and only hope for the Congress.

The grand old party is in the agonising throes of death. It is gasping for fresh air and not more of the family gas that is choking it.

The BJP faced a somewhat similar situation after its tally dropped to 116 in 2009. That party too had an entrenched cabal that did not want to give up its power and perch, party’s fate notwithstanding. Had its key leaders not made the inspired choice they did in 2013, it would probably have found itself staring at 44 seats in 2014 and irrelevance in 2019.

Captain Amarinder Singh, Jyotiradiya Scindia and Sachin Pilot, to name just three, are all capable of reviving the Congress. They can all do what Manmohan Singh did for the Congress in 2009, and more, sans the Gandhis. The family ecosystem never tires of praising them and the huge talent pool that they say the Congress has. But at this most critical moment in its history, it continues to peddle the lie that the Gandhis are the irreplaceable glue that is holding the 183-year-old party together.

Does the Congress have a Rajnath Singh who can pull the party out of the Gandhi gas chamber before it is too late, and oversee a smooth and complete transition of power?

First published in Swarajya https://swarajyamag.com/politics/will-the-congress-step-out-of-the-gandhi-gas-chamber

AFGHAN WAR DIARY: TIME TO GET REAL ABOUT PAKISTAN

When I wrote on July 22, 2010 that the audacity of a small country like Pakistan to take on two much bigger countries for such a painful ride for so long with barely concealed disdain and deceit needed to be admired, I had no way of knowing that within a week, a mountain of explosive US military classified data would appear on Wikileaks as Afghan War Diary 2004-10. At that time, to some what I was saying looked to be just another conspiracy theory. No fault of theirs; for decades they had been fed on poppycock drenched in criminal denial and vain hope that their poorly informed and strategy-blind leaders had it in them to move Pakistan to give up its violent, congenital agenda on the strength of the calls of their weak hearts alone.

A few weeks back, Headley's disclosures that Pakistan's outstanding covert operations outfit, the ISI, controlled and directed the 26/11 attack on Mumbai right from the beginning, had rocked the Indian establishment. The revelations not only raised very serious questions about the credibility and competence of India's spy agency, RAW, but also about the role of India's national security apparatus that is clearly not organised, structured and staffed to deal with and respond to an adversary who is not only waging war but is also determined to settle all matters in its favour, all means fair.

As subsequent developments showed, deeply entrenched interests and ossified experts who have made a living out of leading India down the wrong road, were not going to throw in the towel so quickly and admit that they had screwed up and screwed up real bad. Some, quite predictably, questioned the veracity of Headley's disclosures; such was their abiding love for and faith in Pakistan.

Wikileaks, notwithstanding doubts about the manner in which so much of information has been leaked, leave no room for doubt that Pakistan has been using the ISI, whose DG Kiyani was before he became Army Chief and real ruler of Pakistan, to defeat the Americans in Afghanistan through the Taliban, and also get the Indians out of there. All this has been known to the US for long. But it has chosen to look the other way primarily because 70% of the supplies to the 1,50,000 troops in Afghanistan go through Pakistan and because an open war with it is not yet a practical option for many reasons, including the fact that it will not be easy to sell such an idea to the American people unless there is another 9/11 type attack.

As far as India is concerned, the damning evidence that has come out is that the ISI paid the Haqqani network to attack Indian consulates and road construction teams more than two dozen times and that the Taliban attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul in 2008 was also organised with the help of the ISI. In isolation, this may not appear very grave. In fact some die hard Pakistan-loving Indians will still refuse to shed their blinkers and, as always, dismiss it by saying that Pakistan has legitimate concerns about India's intentions in Afghanistan and is, therefore, entitled to take steps to safeguard its interests in it backyard where India has no business to be. And, having done that, they will restart the usual clamour about talking to and trusting Pakistan.

As I had written earlier, we need to understand clearly that the Pakistanis see the ISI as their first line of defence and that for them Pakistan includes Afghanistan and Kashmir. If the ISI is doing what it has been right under American noses in Afghanistan to evict the Indians, can there be any room for doubt, even without the mountain of evidence that has been collected in the Valley over decades, that it has been doing and will continue to do worse in Kashmir which "flows in it blood", till it succeeds in throwing the Indians out?

Even Fareed Zakaria, who has for long been saying that a solution in Afghanistan will have to be coupled with concessions on Kashmir by India, and who only a few months back said that the tide was turning for the better in Afghanistan, has been forced to do a rethink. Taking part in a discussion on Face the Nation program on CNN IBN on July 27, he acknowledged something that the Indian establishment and intelligentsia have been deliberately glossing over for decades. Pakistani terrorism, said Zakaria, was the result of "forty years of bad habits entrenched and institutionalised...this is an existential problem for Pakistan: what does the Pakistan Army do if it does not engage in this kind of business?" It is worth adding that even Pakistan's civil establishment faces the same problem: the military-civil divide is ideologically artificial, and is cleverly played up to deny culpability and fake hope.

Are we to believe that those who run our national security apparatus and those responsible for gathering intelligence about a neighbouring country that is culturally very similar have for years failed to collate the mass of information being virtually slapped into their faces every single day, to fail to arrive at this elementary conclusion that one can barely escape even if one tries to? Or is it that they have for long been in the know but have been willfully misleading the country, with the help of the media and intelligentsia, about the war that India is fighting and the serious threat that it faces from a rogue army waging a deniable war? Why have they been doing so? Is India paying an unacceptable price of turning its national security machinery into another committee of secretaries, babus who have little knowledge of and interest in anything else except capturing all power turfs no matter what the cost to the nation? In which other big nation, forget one which has been at war for two decades, are generalist civilian bureaucrats in near-total control of national security? How long are we going to keep paying the price of political apathy and bureaucratic empire-building? How long are we going to keep selectively picking and ignoring developments to fool ourselves?

Would there have been an Indian surrender at Sharm-el Sheikh after 26/11 had Dr Manmohan Singh received honest, professional advice about the extent of involvement of Pakistan's military in that attack and others? Would he, an economist, been parroting the defeatist no-option-but-talk mantra had hard facts and available options been placed before him in no uncertain terms? Would Pakistan's nonsense about non-state actors have ever been bought if RAW had done its job properly and the then NSA been interested in and competent enough to do anything more than tapping phones and worrying about security of the Gandhis? Would paid journalists have been asked after 26/11 by vested interests to sell to Indians the preposterous idea that it was in India's supreme national interest to strengthen Pakistan, and not weaken/destroy its ability to continue to wage war against India? Would the Islamabad fiasco have taken place had diplomats unschooled in strategy and security not been allowed to let their craft take precedence over the result that India should have demanded from Pakistan after the Headley disclosures that put their ruler in the dock? Would Vajpayee have been allowed to fall into Musharraf's trap, despite the enormity of Kargil, to virtually surrender Kashmir had he too been properly briefed directly and daily by upright professionals and not sycophants who gave wind to his vision but failed to ask him look at the slippery slope that he was standing on, on very weak knees?

Headley's disclosures and Wikileaks are, in a way, heaven-sent blessings for India. They will force India's inept leaders to get real about Pakistan. Hopefully they will also compel them to do what they should have done much earlier to make India more secure had they not been advised by generalists who have been repeatedly exposed to be blind amateurs who cannot see even what is placed in front of their eyes. It is not that these guys would not have been warned by multiple agencies that Pakistan is playing a dangerous game of such high stakes that not only can it never be seen to be defeated on the negotiating table but that it is well past the point of rolling in its terror network or reining in the ISI. They would probably have been inundated with such warnings. But, the fact that they have deliberately chosen to ignore them for many years and put the nation on a path that has left it with no option but to become helplessly dependent on the goodwill of a much smaller nation that is soaked in hostility, is a damning indictment of frightening proportions. One cannot but have serious apprehensions that the ISI has powerful moles deep inside India's babudom as also in its intelligentsia and media. It is simply not possible that otherwise intelligent individuals could have been innocently getting it so wrong for so long, to the detriment of India's national interest and to the furtherance of Pakistan's.

The Americans are not going to be in Afghanistan forever. The hearts-and-minds strategy that they are talking about with usual swagger is going to be a bigger failure than their military one: they only have to look at Kashmir to understand that with Pakistan in business, that is doomed. Notwithstanding the Wikileaks, it is also unlikely that Obama will order any punitive action against Pakistan or degrade the combat potential of its military. The reverse may well happen to enable the US to cut its losses and pull out. What Pakistan will do in Afghanistan after that is something that the Americans need to worry about. What Pakistan will do to India then is what should give Manmohan Singh sleepless nights. It is not going to be pretty and it is not going to be short. If anything, it is going to to be far worse than the PM's advisors have been leading him to believe. The only way to counter it is to prepare for it resolutely on ground, defensively and offensively, and bring about radical, sweeping changes in the national security structures to make them contemporary, professional, and, above all, apolitical.

It is time to shed the idiotic notion that India can win on the table what it has not in war. You win on the table when you have a clear upper hand on the ground and the other party can see defeat on that path. India, as I said earlier too, has lessons to learn from history if it wants to get Pakistan to walk. Let us not continue to delude ourselves into believing that Nobel-seeking midgets can achieve what Mahatma Gandhi, undivided India's tallest leader, a man of impeccable moral strength and courage, failed to.

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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'RAHUL IS STILL NOT READY': WILL HE EVER BE?

"Rahul is still not ready." This is the only headline that emerged from yesterday's press conference called by Dr Manmohan Singh himself after four long years. All the rest that he said had already been read and heard before; it was like a 78 rpm record being played on an old handle-driven HMV -- pun intended -- player. Yet, not one of the channels or newspapers or experts who dissected the Prime Minister's words and body language had the courage and, in some cases, the honesty to acknowledge this plain truth in plain words.

"I have been given this task (Prime Ministership). It is still unfinished. Till I finish the tasks there is no question of retirement." This statement of the PM has been widely quoted. Seen in isolation, it indicates that age and a heart surgery have not in any way diminished Dr Singh's enthusiasm for both his chair and his job. But, the moment you juxtapose it with how he responded to the inevitable question about vacating the seat for the known heir, it takes on a different meaning altogether. On the question of Rahul Gandhi joining the cabinet so that he can get some sorely needed on-the-job experience before he ascends the throne, this is what the PM said: “Rahul is very qualified to hold a cabinet post. I have discussed it with him on a number of occasions. He has always been reluctant to give a positive answer. He says he has duties to perform in reviving the Congress party. He is doing a good job. As and when (he is) ready, he will be a very appropriate addition to the cabinet."

Is there any doubt about what Dr Manmohan Singh told the nation as straight as he could? Rahul is not ready even now to take up ministerial responsibilities. Reason? He has party duties to perform! Is that not crap? It has been a tradition with the dynasty to hold on to the posts of the PM and President of the Congress party since the times of Indira Gandhi. Currently, Rahul's mother holds the latter post. With the party securely in the hands of the Family, surely handling a ministry and certain party responsibilities should not be a daunting task, particularly for someone who does not face competition from any one else within the Congress. But, after nearly a decade in active politics he still can't multi-task?

What about Rahul taking over as PM? Even the normally dour Prime Minister could not conceal a chuckle: "Let me say I sometimes feel that younger people should take over. As and when the Congress party makes that judgement, I will be happy to make place for anybody chosen by the party."

These three statements read together have given to the general public, for the first time perhaps, a couple of extremely significant answers. First, Dr Manmohan Singh is not going to step down for any pretenders who might be harbouring secret ambitions to become PM. Second, he will make way for Rahul Gandhi whenever Sonia Gandhi asks him to, but is dead sure that there is no danger of that happening: Rahul is simply not ready to take over as the Prime Minister of India.

Does this surprise you? It would only if you have been buying into gushing praises that some leading journalists, particularly those familiar with the fine art of lobbying, have been showering on him for virtually no fathomable reason except perhaps the benefits and threats that they perceive/receive from the Gandhi name. In the history of independent India no one has been built up so intensively for so long by the media which is now more powerful than ever before as far as influencing, even distorting, public opinion is concerned. Despite that, if the desired effect has not been achieved, there is a problem that is being concealed from India.

It has been forgotten that there was an orchestrated campaign to project Rahul Gandhi as PM even during the last Lok Sabha elections. But, in the end, Sonia Gandhi chose Dr Manmohan Singh again and he led the party to victory. Why did that happen? Rahul himself backed out saying that he was not yet ready for the top slot. A year down the line, the situation remains unchanged.

What will happen in 2014? Dr Manmohan Singh will, in all likelihood, not opt for another term. So, Rahul has to get ready before that, or Sonia will have to find another Manmohan who will allow the Family to rule by proxy - have the cake and eat it too - without being accountable for what the government does. Another Manmohan is not visible and the experience of the banished PV Narasimha Rao is still fresh in memory.

That is why the 2012 elections of UP are going to prove to be a watershed in more ways than one in the history of free India. Not only will they impact the future of Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party but, he way things are unfolding, will create new social fissures and re-open old wounds. Sonia Gandhi, as we all know, cannot have as good an understanding of the history, the rhythm, the pain and the soul of India as, say, her mother-in-law did. In her isolated castle, she has manifestly been led to believe by her handlers/advisors that the only way for the Congress to conquer UP again is by polarising Muslim votes in its favour and ensuring that Hindu votes remains divided; many Hindus will vote Congress in any case.

This naked communal agenda is being clothed and sold as 'inclusive politics' by the party and its troopers in the media. The details of this strategy will unfold over the next two years and will be addressed separately. For, now you must read two previous posts, "Akbar turns Jinnah, asks for Muslim state" and "Who can protect India's secularism, Congress or BJP?" to get an idea of where we are headed on this path. In addition, expect an all-out political war to be unleashed by the Congress on its opponents. Mayawati and Mulayam may suddenly find CBI cases against them coming back to life; the latter might even be compelled to enter into an alliance with the Congress on demeaning terms to ensure that victory does not elude Rahul.

If the Congress manages to win or even nearly win UP based on this strategy, the credit will all be given to Rahul Gandhi and he will then either take over as PM or, as I suspect, will be still kept off the spotlight of scrutiny, and projected as the party's untested Prime Ministerial candidate in 2014. If the Congress wins that election, he will get at least five years in office and the Congress an uninterrupted 15. That appears to be the game plan.

In 2009, Rahul said was not ready to be PM. In 2010, the PM says he is not. These are not insignificant statements to be ignored. There is obviously a real fear that Rahul has a serious ability gap that cannot be concealed by dimples, fair skin, the English language so worshipped by some, the stamp of royalty and fake praises of obsequious courtiers in the party and the media. If after all these years he is not ready to take on the responsibility -- the power and perks he has -- that is his to take, the question that begs to be asked is: will he ever be? What do you think?
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Related reading: Rahul: from dud to genius in two hours
'

KASHMIR DEAL: SOLUTION OR SURRENDER?

When two nations attempt to settle through talks a six decade old dispute over a territory that one of them says "runs in the blood" of its citizens, that they have fought wars over and with a proxy war still on, a fair and enduring outcome is possible only if both remain equally grounded to the core realities that have determined claims and responses till now and that will continue to shape them in future too.

Unfortunately, on the Indian side there is a certain loss of focus accompanied by an almost escapist romanticism, a refusal to see the dark clouds that have always been circling the sun that they can see now. Perhaps the pressure generated by decades of terrorism is telling. Whatever be the reason, it cannot be denied that that many of India's analysts and policy makers are now increasingly inclined to take the easy, early, least disruptive way out of the many problems that confront India, without allowing possible long term repercussions to trouble them unduly.

Some of us clearly seem to have have forgotten that Pakistan was created solely on the basis of religion and that its claim over J&K is also based on religion alone, as is the demand for merger of the whole state with Pakistan/independence that ethnic Kashmiris living in the tiny valley of Kashmir have been making for decades. Secular India has somehow collectively moulded itself to pretend that the problem is primarily political in nature and that, as far as India is concerned, it should not view any solution through the prism of religion.

It is largely due to this elitist, even rootless, aversion to accepting and facing the communal soul of the problem, that Pakistan is well on its way to getting India to agree to a camel-in-the-tent deal that is not only not going to lead to peace but is, without doubt, going to create serious difficulties for India in the long run.

As far as Pakistan is concerned, the Line of Control (LOC) in Kashmir is the problem. It is not satisfied with the part of the state that it already has. It wants the whole of it and has repeatedly demonstrated its unshakable resolve by trying to take it by use of force. Recognising that, under the present circumstances, it is not in a position to accomplish the objective that has driven it and its people for so many years by waging war, Pakistan now wants to achieve it through negotiations that are aimed at getting India to allow it to start making inroads into the Indian part of Kashmir. The logic is straightforward: once the basic principle of Pakistan's claim over the whole state is formally accepted in this manner by India, and a door opened by it that cannot subsequently be shut, Pakistan will then force India to yield more and more till it is all but evicted from the whole state.

Former Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri claimed recently that India and Pakistan were just a signature away from an accord on Kashmir in 2007. Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, on the other hand, in an interview to Karan Thapar last year, had revealed that a number of critical of details had still to be worked on before it could be concluded that an agreement was ready. Be that as it may, it is generally accepted that the deal involved demilitarisation along the LOC and within the state on both sides, maximum self-governance, free movement of Kashmiris within the whole state with their IDs, and some sort of joint mechanism comprising Indians, Pakistanis and Kashmiris on both sides of the LOC to oversee self-governance and other issues.

The “somewhat artificial in composition” princely state of Jammu and Kashmir came into existence in 1846 when the British sold most of the area included in the state to Gulab Singh for Rs 75 lakhs. In 1947, the then Maharaja of the state, with the support of the ethnic Kashmiri Muslim leader Sheikh Abdullah, decided to join India rather than Pakistan. The price that Abdullah successfully extracted from Pandit Nehru for this decision was the holding of a plebiscite and inclusion of Article 370 in the Indian constitution. These two steps, among many others, converted the state into a virtual Sheikhdom of the Abdullahs and ethnic Kashmiri Muslims.

In 1956, India was reorganised on a linguistic basis and all erstwhile princely states ceased to exist. Had the same principle been extended to J&K, it would have been reorganised into at least three states/union territories: Kashmiri speaking Kashmir Valley, Dogri, Rajasthani and Punjabi speaking Jammu, and Ladakh. But this was not done because such a reorganisation would have also been broadly along religious lines and, most significantly, left just the tiny Kashmir Valley under the control of Kashmiri Muslims who have nothing in common with people living in other parts of the only remaining unnatural state of India.

Paradoxically, Pakistan did exactly the opposite, giving precedence to ethnicity over religion to completely reshape the portion of the state that it had captured in 1948, and slice it surgically into three parts. The 72,496 sq km Gilgit-Baltistan area, the largest part of the state that was always administered directly by Pakistan, was was officially granted full autonomy in 2009. It is not a part of the original state. In 1963, Pakistan also unilaterally ceded the 5,800 sq km Shaksgam tract to China.

What Pakistan now calls Azad Kashmir (AK) is a narrow 13,297 sq km strip that is 400 km long, with a width varying from 16 to 64 km. What is extremely significant is that AK has 99 per cent ethnic Punjabi population comprising of Gujjars, Rajputs, Jats etc. These people have no linguistic, cultural or genetic affinity to the few ethnic Kashmiris, who are of Dardic origin, living there or in the Valley. AK, therefore, has as little claim to being called part of Kashmir as the parts that Pakistan has severed from the part of the original state under its control. It takes little intelligence to deduce that Pakistan has chosen to name this tiny tract Azad Kashmir only so that it can use it to pursue its claim over the part of the original princely state of Jammu and Kashmir that is with India.

With this background, we can better look at some of the implications and ramifications of the agreement that India and Pakistan were close to signing in 2007, and that might be almost identical to the one that Manmohan Singh seems to be in a hurry to sign to 'create history' in his lifetime, unmindful of the fact that history will be created but not of the type he has in mind.

• What constitutes J&K? Considering what Pakistan has done to its part of the state, will an agreement between India and Pakistan apply only to the almost microscopic AK part? Will Pakistan revert to Azad Kashmir the Northern Areas that it has amalgamated into Pakistan, or has India meekly resigned to this decapitation? Will an agreement also not tantamount to India giving de facto recognition to Pakistan's ceding of Shaksgam to China? No answers to these important questions can be traced in the public domain. But what is even more disturbing is that virtually no one is even asking them in India. This could well mean that India has tacitly accepted Pakistan's position. If so, that in itself is such a huge surrender that it is beyond understanding that India has so quietly lost forever even the pretence of a bargaining position over a huge area, not to mention the right to reclaim it for India should an opportune moment present itself, as it just might at some point of time. Who knows?
  
• Making LOC irrelevant. Given the different ethnicities of various regions of the state, there can be little doubt that the so-called free movement across the LOC will eventually be a predominantly one-way movement from tiny AK into not only the slightly bigger Valley but the whole of the huge state. Considering what happened to Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley, non-Muslims from the Indian side will not only feel discouraged to travel to the Pakistan side of the LOC, but will also, one way or another, be prevented from doing so by fundamentalists there. Movement across LOC will be permitted on ID cards. India has Article 370 in place, so there will be almost no cases of false ID cards being issued to non-state subjects by the state government. On the Pakistani side, however, there is no similar restriction and Punjabis who dominate AK are little different from those from Punjab province, from where many more many have settled there after 1947. Given that Pakistan's real objective is to amalgamate J&K into Pakistan, what we will see is planned settlement over time of such people in parts of Jammu province where they can relatively easily merge with locals. Non-Muslims in the state will become even more marginalised than they are now. Terrorists will also drive them out from more and more far flung areas and close in on towns and cities over time.
  
• Joint Control.This is a misnomer. It will be nothing less than ceding control to Pakistan. On ground, control of Kashmir Valley has already been ceded involuntarily along many significant dimensions by India. The joint control mechanism will spread that span to Jammu and Ladakh regions too. Representatives of AK, Indian Kashmir, Pakistan and India will form part of this mechanism. Effectively, three out of four of these groups will be under Pakistan control ab initio. India will also, undoubtedly, be pressured to place religion-blind, 'secular' representatives in the body from its side. Need more be said? With such a body monitoring self-government, one can be sure that demands for more and more areas of governance to be liberated of Indian (notionally Pakistani too) control will be made, militants on call to drive home the point: that is how Pakistan will complete creeping acquisition of not just the Muslim majority Kashmir Valley but the rest of the state too.
• Demilitarisation. Demilitarisation of AK is virtually meaningless from the Indian point of view as there will no gain to India there along any dimension. It is the demilitarisation of the Indian side that will have devastating short and long term consequences. Almost immediately, thanks partly to joint control, the writ of the Indian state will become less than notional in the Muslim Kashmir Valley. Without a bullet being fired, the situation will become worse than it was in the early Nineties when Pakistani currency was openly used in parts of the Valley, and people had set their watches to Pakistan Time. The writ of militants - non-state actors if you like - will run unchecked over vast swathes. Coupled with free trans-LOC movement, it will also result in more and more areas being cleansed of Hindus with ease, often undetected, in a re-run of what happened to Kashmiri Pandits. After 20 years of fighting terrorists and after losing the lives of thousands of sons of India, its leaders will have done no more than quietly lay down arms and set the clock back to 1989, worse to follow.
  

Whichever way one looks at it, there is little doubt that Musharraf, the focused commando who never lost sight of his objective, nearly achieved on the negotiating table what he failed to in Kargil, what his proxy warriors failed to in the Valley. His successors have taken off from there and are driving a willing Manmohan Singh to sign where he could not in 2007.

Make no mistake: there is going to be no gain to India whatsoever from an agreement of the kind that Musharraf almost ambushed Indian leaders into signing. If 2010 is the result of the blunder that Indira Gandhi was lulled into making by a clever ZA Bhutto in 1972, be sure that 40 years down the line, the Musharraf trap is going to create an even more dangerous and intractable situation for India, unless of course, the matter is settled by a war before that.

Let us not be carried away by voices in India imagining that after the deal is through, the LOC will be magically converted into something like the non-existent borders in the European Community, with people moving freely and happily across as civilised human beings who are nicely settled and at peace with each other and the world. We must know that such voices are either ignorant of the realities of religion and history or are pretending to be so, to lull Indians into believing that once the LOC goes, Kashmir will become Europe. If such trust and love is absent across the settled international border that divides India and Pakistan, how can it blossom in an area that one desperately wants to snatch from the other? Put another way, if the two countries can make their borders like the European ones, will the LOC not dissolve on its own? Why has that not happened till now? Why is Pakistan arm twisting India into starting the other way round?

Does everyone in India's establishment not know the answers to these questions?

Is there anything, anything at all, to suggest that the establishment that controls Pakistan has abandoned its long-term objective of bleeding India through a thousand cuts, of waging a thousand year war against India? Have we already forgotten what happened in Mumbai in November 2008? Have not Pakistan's leaders, not militants, spoken subsequently of LeT's role beyond Kashmir, in the rest of India? Are we so dumb as to believe that the moment an agreement is signed over Kashmir, LeT and other terror outfits will disappear and not, in fact, claim victory and, aided by Pakistan's military, take terror to the next dimension to tell the world that Kashmiris are not satisfied with the concessions India has made and want more?

Most of us do not believe that as a nation we can be that dumb. But the direction in which things are moving and the almost total absence of public debate, even outrage, at the above proposals suggests that while some of us may be feigning blindness, some actually are, while most of the remaining are, if anything, apathetic. If that is correct, then we deserve the surrender that our leaders are pushing to get for us in the garb of a solution. That is not going to get us peace. Or honour.
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Related reading:
1. Indo-Pak talks: 'Nobel' thoughts
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", make him bigger
4. Musharraf's shockers on terror, Kashmir and Indian Muslims
5. The world is changing; Talibani mindset is not
'

INDO-PAK TALKS: 'NOBEL' THOUGHTS

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
'

CAN INDIA REMAIN A FUCTIONING DEMOCRACY?

India's democracy is ill. This is a reality that no one can deny. But just how serious is this illness? Is it curable or is it only question of time?

Dr Manmohan Singh, an economist who became a politician by accident, is not known to make loose statements, much less dramatic ones. So, when he says something his inimitable manner, attention needs to be paid to it. Speaking to Fareed Zakaria of CNN a few days back, Dr Manmohan Singh's response to a single question about a lesson that a democratic India has to teach the world, has perhaps not got the attention it should have. In his brief answer, he qualified his answer by saying as many as three times, "if we do succeed" in remaining a functioning democracy.

Seen in isolation, one can be accused of reading too much in too little. But this is not the first time the Prime Minister, a man of spotless personal integrity, has voice his concern about the shape our experiment with democracy has taken. Two years back, he had spoken openly about the ills of the model of multi-party democracy that India has adopted, the model that has almost castrated the nation and rendered effective governance virtually impossible.

Shedding his characteristic soft stance, he had then candidly questioned whether "a multi-party model where parties with varying national reach and many with a limited sub-national reach is capable of providing the unity of purpose that nation states often have to demonstrate." The problem, he elucidated, is that “Sometimes the resolution of problems acquires an excessively political hue, and narrow political considerations, based on regional or sectional loyalties and ideologies can distort the national vision and sense of collective purpose”.

That was not all. Dr Manmohan Singh actually went to extent of favouring a single party system. "A single party state has many advantages in managing Centre-state relations smoothly as opposed to a multi-party system, or is a multi-party model, with national parties dominating the political scene, superior, where one can hope that all of them will take a national view on policy issues and help to reinforce the unity of the federation?"

Two years later, Dr Manmohan Singh remains as skeptical of India's success as a functioning democracy as he was then, and as many right-thinking individuals have been for a long time.

That a damning criticism of our democracy and apprehension about its success have come from the Prime Minister himself, is a serious indictment of not only the political class as a whole, but also of the analysts and commentators hogging prime media space and singing praises of what is increasingly appearing to be a sham that has only widened the gulf between the rulers and the ruled. No one can place his hand on his heart and say that our model truly gives us a government of, by and for the people. While politicians may have forgotten the real purpose of democratic politics, thanks to the dynasties and the muck they have created, others have no justifiable reason to feign such amnesia and blindness. Unfortunately, many of them have been so corrupted by the very politicians they are supposed to keep a watch on, that the dividing line between the two has, ethically and practically, all but ceased to exist. The cancer of a fearless and shameless politician-bureaucrat-criminal-police-media nexus has spread deep into all institutions that define any state.

Parliament has become such a joke, nay, a national shame, that even former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee had, on more than one occasion, to tell MPs that they were working overtime to finish democracy. Elections are now held at various levels almost nonstop around the year. As a direct result, proceedings of Parliament have started to look like more like 24/7 news channels, as all political parties expend their energies in scoring sensational political points over their opponents as part of preparations for the next elections. They have neither any time nor inclination to talk about governance and the many very serious issues facing the country, in a responsible, bipartisan manner. The focus remains on petty politics of the worst kind, no matter what.

Ironically, to the poor voter, the real 'sovereign' on whose behalf his so-called representatives shame the nation again and again, this democracy means little more than the freedom to cast a vote once in five years; sometimes even that small freedom of choice is usurped by his 'leaders'. For 850 million Indians still living a sub-human existence on Rs 20 a day, it has not had any meaning whatsoever for 63 long years.

The only thing that really energizes our politicians are gutter fights for the petty political power they are desperate to physically experience and enjoy as individuals and parties, just as spoils of war are in a foreign land. Morality is not even a factor any more as politicians of all parties willingly rip apart every single norm of civilized behavior in their unbridled greed and lust for perverse, personal political 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 or scoring pathetic political points in TV studios. Regional and sectional ideologies and aspirations are little more than convenient tools exploited without a care for the larger societal and national consequences, just for the sake of getting power in the next elections or to vent frustration at having lost the last one.

Our founding fathers had adopted the Parliamentary form of democracy of England, where this system suited for governing a tiny island had evolved over a number of centuries to suit its specific requirements. Many of India’s states are larger than that Atlantic island, and the diversities are enormous. Unfortunately, just freed from the yoke of colonial rule which influenced them deeply, our founding fathers failed to realise then that in this country comprising of many ‘Englands’, democracy would not develop into the comfortable two-party avatar that they had seen there.

With numerous regional, sectarian and ideological strains at work, governance has become incidental, an unpleasant chore that has per force to be performed as the byproduct of power, getting which is increasingly becoming unpredictable and slippery. Ironically, in this model of democracy, a party or a group does not even need to get the mandate of the country to come to power. Even when the nation or a state collectively finds none of them fit to rule, a hobbling arrangement can be cobbled up with quite disgraceful methods and compromises to run a virtually non-functional government, blackmailed at every breath.

Democracy is no more than a system of governance, a means to take a nation and its people forward. It is not an end in itself, as many romantically believe, to be placed above national interest, which they don’t understand. It can, and should be, discarded for a better system, if it does not remain responsive to the ever changing internal and external dynamics that a nation has to deal with.

The multi-dimensional failure of our multi-party democracy is something that should be of concern to not just our Prime Minister. Unfortunately, there is little evidence to suggest that others who are happily enjoying the fruits of its many failures and distortions are willing to make even small personal sacrifices for the common good of all. That is why with every passing day, we hear of more and more things going from bad to worse. Those who should be having sleepless nights about the direction in which things are going, are having sleepless nights alright, but partying.

That is perhaps why Dr Manmohan Singh is worried that India will not remain a functioning democracy for long, unless radical changes are ushered in, in time. He also knows that our leaders will not make even a small change that is crying to be made till they are pushed into a corner from where there is no way out. He was brought in to save India's almost sunk economy only after India had to pawn 47 tons of gold to stay afloat and had absolutely no idea about how to get out of the deep shit hole that its leaders and bureaucrats had put it into.

Then the failure was uni-dimensional and could be rectified by a brilliant economist. Now the failure is along nearly every dimension and goes well beyond just the fatally flawed model of democracy. An isolated fix here and there is not going to help anymore. Since there is no effort to attempt even that as of now, one wonders whether Dr Manmohan Singh, who has the best view in town, is actually seeing it failing in the foreseeable future. I certainly am.
'

INDIA HAS MUCH TO LEARN FROM CHINA, AND MUST

China's dramatic transformation into an economic power house in virtually the blink of a sleepy Indian eye has shaken some Indian leaders out of their misplaced slumber. It is beginning to dawn on them that India has to get out of the self-congratulatory mindset that it has got stuck in following a few years of relatively rapid economic growth on a small base, because that is not going to get it anywhere close to what China has achieved. But, as always, this reactive response is very limited, and is destined to fail.

It has taken Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh to ask the lethargic Planning Commission to wake up to what China has done to its railways and prepare a road map to reform Indian Railways. Two decades back, Chinese railways was behind its Indian counterpart. Today, it carries four times more freight and is expanding three times faster. Since 1992, the Chinese have added 1,000 km of tracks every year as against 100 km by the Indians. But it was India's Railway Minister Laloo Yadav who, at the behest of his bureaucrats no doubt, pompously made a fool of himself by showing off his 'management skills' to students of Harvard, Wharton, IIMs etc.

This is precisely the kind of political and bureaucratic deception that has kept India in darkness even while our biggest neighbour has flooded its almost 1.5 billion citizens with the light of progress and prosperity. The media has helped in this failure too. It has remained completely focused on the West, which is its reference point, and has continuously dismissed China, with which it is unfamiliar, in one line by saying that it has a totalitarian regime while India has democracy. 77% Indians who continue to live in darkness on Rs 20 a day must feel as blessed by democracy as the few who have millions to splurge.

We have gone horribly wrong somewhere. What makes this worse is that we could and should have done much better. This self-inflicted failure is best exemplified by the fact that the two areas in which India has excelled at a scorching pace are those where the shackles put by the government are the weakest. From a situation when there was a waiting period of 10 years to get a telephone from the government - and unaffordable long distance tariffs - to becoming the second largest mobile telephone market in the world with the lowest tariffs, in a little over a decade, is an astounding achievement. Same is the case with the software industry where India has been able to become a global player from nowhere, thanks to a few visionaries and the near-complete absence of bureaucratic interference.

There is little doubt that the whole process of governance and its framework needs to be overhauled. But, there is not even a thought in that direction. That is primarily because those who are benefitting the most by the existing system are the ones who have the power to decide on the changes to be put in place. And they know better than all of us that any real change will render them almost completely irrelevant. That is why no one looks towards China, and that is why everyone keeps going on learning tours to the West - where their kids live/study - only to come back and do nothing.

The Prime Minister must know that piecemeal directions like the one that he has given are not going to make the Indian Railways get ahead of, or even close to, the Chinese, ever. Their railways has not steamed ahead in isolation by accident. Nor has ours failed to get any real move on vital national projects like the two dedicated freight corridors, among many others, by chance or due to bad luck. Or because India is a democracy.

Something has to be done about the sloth and the lack of purpose and pride that afflicts every government department. Something has to be done to put a sense of time and urgency into decision-making and enforce accountability. Something has to be done to end the colonial disconnect between arms of the government and the people, and involve the latter more meaningfully in governance.

Even the Russians, recently 'blessed' by democracy, are not letting that model of governance blind them to the needs of their country. In 1949, the People's Republic of China was born with an ideology it had aped primarily from the erstwhile Soviet Union. Exactly 60 years later, the balance of economic and ideological power has reversed. But Russia is not sitting either on false pride or the idea of democracy. As per a report in The New York Times, it is openly looking at China as a role model. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is examining how his country can emulate China which has used a one-party system to not only keep the country well-governed but also drive unparalleled economic growth. The Russians are keen to learn lessons from the divergent paths taken by the two countries in the last couple of decades in which Russia has had to endure dark days while China has carried out a similar shift smoothly and powerfully. We should have been doing the same too.

Many living Chinese nationals have seen their country change three times almost completely. A feudal and backward nation of opium eaters became a communist state in 1949. That change turned the society on its head and lead to millions of deaths as Mao Zedong tried to put communism into practice at every level. That also resulted in a famine that saw around 35 million Chinese die. Such disasters made it evident that there was an unbridgeable and unacceptable gap between the theory and application of communism. Rapid economic growth required to catch up with West and usher all round prosperity was simply not possible with that ideology. That is why after Mao, Deng Xiaoping wisely dumped communism before if could throw the country into chaos again, and evolved a new brand of capitalism with a one-party rule. China also did not allow dynastic politics to take root, as was attempted by the Gang of Four led by Mao's widow.

In contrast, what have many living Indians seen? As far as governance is concerned, no one can tell when colonial rule ended and free India began; the only visible change that Independence ushered in was that the leaders elected by the people stopped reporting to the Governor General and the British Crown. Thanks to a couple of visits to the the Soviet Union that impressed him, Nehru tried to marry socialism with a colonial government structure, only to gave birth to the licence permit raj, unbridled corruption and many other ills that almost choked India to death. It was only after India had to pawn 47 tons of gold in the early nineties to stay afloat that some regulatory chains were loosened. That one step, forced by extreme circumstance mind you, is what saved India and allowed it to register faster economic growth. But when seen in the light of what China has achieved, our many failures easily swamp our few achievements.

Thus, if there is one nation from which India can learn the lessons it needs to about the whole business of governance and economic upliftment, it is China. The copied model that we have stuck to without daring to change some things laid down around 150 years back, has done nothing at all to give the taste of freedom and economic empowerment to nearly 80% of India's citizens even after 63 years. China, on the other hand, has continuously experimented heavily, from the individual upwards, to evolve a system that works like no other, and become a super power.

What is it in their system of governance, planning and implementation that allows the Chinese, for example, to pro-actively think of and then build the kind of railway system that they have, to construct a railway line into Tibet through permafrost conditions and heights of 16,000 feet? What are the structures of governance, revenue and expenditure in villages and towns that ensure that benefits of economic progress reach the last citizen and do not remain confined to the top 15-20%? What is their unique national security and strategy apparatus that is always ahead of the curve and on course to actualising the power and strength that is required to protect the economic and security interests of a nation of 1.5 billion people?

Answers to these and many other questions are urgently required by India. Piecemeal, reactive efforts to replicate what the Chinese have achieved are not going to take India where it should reach with its enormous and as yet unexploited strengths and capabilities. The Chinese have not reached where they have is so short a time by such reactive and disjointed efforts. Had they adopted that approach, they would surely have still been behind India in most fields, forget about going past America.

India and Bharat have to be united without further delay. And that, as should be evident to everyone by now, is not possible through the use of the very instruments of state that have created them in the first place. To this end, there is much that we can learn from China, more than we can from any other country.

A task force or commission needs to be set up without delay to study in detail every single instrument of governance, from the bottom to the top, in every single field, that China has evolved and put in place based on its experience and cultural genius. The task force should not include a single politician or bureaucrat or anyone vulnerable to them because that will make it a non-starter and ensure that only cosmetic changes that increase their power and authority are implemented. Only a completely honest and open-minded approach that has India, including Bharat, in focus will unshackle the genius of this nation and enable a vast majority of its people to experience the glow of freedom for the first time.
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Readers may also read:
1. Conspicuous consumption and conspicuous poverty
2. Focused China powers ahead of shackled India
3. China and India: competition of civilisations
4. Bharat and India: armed rebellion and mental secession
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IT'S THE "INDEPENDENT KASHMIR" GUN TO INDIA'S HEAD NOW

"Give up Kashmir or face increasing terror". This is the sum of the blunt message that Pakistan has now delivered to Indian leaders who have been trying to cover up the Sharm-el- Sheikh surrender by telling Indians that they had scored a victory because there was no mention of Kashmir in the joint statement that was put out by Dr Manmohan Singh and Pakistan PM Yousaf Raza Gilani.

This time, however, there is a significant twist to what Pakistan has been saying till now. Musharraf's sophisticated and dangerous three-point Deal that visualised the LoC becoming irrelvant, maximum autonomy being given to the whole state, and a joint mechanism consisting of Kashmiris, Indians and Pakistanis being set up to oversee all aspects of the agreement, has been overtly jettisoned by the present leadership. It is a foregone conclusion that this could not have been done without being approved by Army Chief Pervez Kiyani.

The successful ambush at Sharm-el-Sheikh has clearly emboldened Pakistan to take a few additional steps in quick time to start calling for an "independent" Kashmir already.

It is widely known that the Pakistani side of Kashmir does not have the equivalent of Article 370 of India's constitution. As a result, over the last 62 years, the demography of that part of Kashmir has been completely altered by settlers from Pakistan. So, in effect, the independence that Pakistan is calling for is of the Kashmir, including Jammu and Ladakh, that is with India.

If you see this in conjunction with the loads of Pakistani statements over the years that Kashmir runs in the blood of Pakistanis, Kashmir is the unfinished agenda of India's partition on a communal basis, terrorist outfits like the LeT have sprung up to force India to give Kashmir to Pakistan etc, there cannot be even an iota of doubt that what this independence mantra is about. It is certainly not to make the whole of Kashmir, including the Northern Regions that Pakistan unilaterally severed from Kashmir and amalgamated into Pakistan in 1970 as a separate administrative unit, independent of Pakistan at all.

General Musharraf nearly trapped India into ceding some control of its Kashmir to Pakistan, in the back channel discussions that he had with the Vajpayee and Manmohan governments. He was intelligent enough to understand that India would never hand over Kashmir on a platter to Pakistan unless it was militarily defeated. Having realised after his costly misadventure in Kargil that it was Pakistan that would face defeat again, he completely overhauled his strategy. But, when a nation has brainwashed its citizens for six decades into believing that Pakistan is incomplete without Kashmir and that India has to be thrown out of there completely, it is not easy to suddenly sell to them a sophisticated way of getting the job done gradually in a manner that will eventually leave India with no choice but to walk away. For that, suitable preparation and time are required, which Musharraf did not have.

That is probably why after the victory at Sharm-el-Sheikh, Pakistan is now upping the ante on Kashmir by calling for its independence, a call that is designed to resonate with Kashmiri Muslims in the Valley. It will, therefore, not be surprising if there is a fresh round of agitation for "azadi" by the marginalised Hurriyat Conference and other separatist elements, coupled with stepped up violence through terror attacks, to draw the attention of the world and, at the same time, create more pressure on a what appears to be a weak and confused Indian government that is so desperate for "peace" that it is blind to the cost that India is paying and will have to pay to get only an illusion of it.

Real peace, let us be honest enough to admit, will only reign when Pakistan knows without a doubt that the violence that it has used as a coercive tool till now for free, is going to cost it heavily in future. Let us not be under any illusion that peace and calm will prevail if a trusting India hands over Kashmir to Pakistan in a manner that satisfies the latter completely. There will then be peace in Kashmir, no doubt, helped by massive migration of Punjabis and others to the Valley. But the barrels of the AK47s that the terrorists are being trained to hold and use with intense hatred against a secular India will not get embellished with flowers; they will get pointed with even greater intensity towards the rest of India. And there will be many more Mumbai 26/11s, with more and more demands for and on behalf of Indian Muslims.

Talk India must, though, but without any expectation of a fruitful result. If a much smaller and weaker Pakistan can bully Indian leaders by saying that peace is not possible till Kashmir is given to Pakistan, what prevents India from saying that no meaningful talks are possible till Pakistan destroys its terror infrastructure totally and peace prevails? What prevents India from treating armed infiltration into Kashmir as a violation of the LoC and from reacting suitably across it so that Pakistan is compelled to put a stop to it? Who should be scared about an Indian reaction across the LoC turning into a full fledged war? Why should India be really worried about a nuke attack if, in the event of a war, it decides to limit its objective to the destruction of Pakistan's military machine rather than the capture of such vital territory or cities as will make Pakistan press the nuke button?

I am not suggesting that India should go to war. I am only trying to drive home the point that Pakistan must not be allowed to continue to hold the gun to India's head and fool India's leaders by faking friendship and/or sincerity indefinitely. A durable peace in the region is possible only when Pakistan puts away that gun. India's leaders should first work towards achieving that objective. Once the gun is removed and the bullets in it taken out, a lot will quickly fall into place on its own.

Till that happens, peace will remain a mirage and more Indian blood will flow needlessly.
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Readers may also like to read:
1. India to Pak: you keep shooting, we'll keep talking
2. Musharraf's shockers on terror, Kashmir and Indian Muslims
3. India, learn how to get Pakistan to walk