MBS, in case you didn’t know, is shorthand for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, the ambitious de facto ruler of the desert kingdom, whose apparent romance with modernity left the mainstream western media a trifled bewitched, bothered and bewildered amidst the initial enthusiasm for a perceived new dawn. The gruesome murder of Saudi dissident journalist Mohammed Khassaoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul shocked the civilized world, of which India, along with the US, the UK, the EU and et al, claim to be members As the murder by handpicked Saudi assassins occurred on Turkish soil, an outraged President Erdoga demanded that perpetrators be brought to justice in a Turkish court. The Turkish government through surveillance possessed damning evidence of the assassination and assassins, which was passed on to the Trump administration including the Director of the CIA in person, when she visited Ankara. There was the obligatory breast-beating and handwringing in Washington, then justification of America’s close embrace of the Saudi regime, made explicit by the billions of dollars of arms contracts for the Saudi military. A similar sequel was repeated in London. Both the US,UK and the abominable Macron regime in France are fattening on the blood money of the ghastly Saudi war in Yemen, the world’s greatest human catastrophe, according to UN and International Red Cross reports. Washington is more bothered by its efforts at regime change in Venezuela, and the organ-grinder’s tune has the monkeys in Europe dancing to its beat.
MBS made a hugely publicized red carpet visit to Pakistan, where he dispensed billions of dollars to the cash-starved Imran Khan government. Years ago, Prince Turki al Faisal, the Saudi Intelligence chief, told the Financial Times in London, that Pakistan was Riyadh’s closest ally, the truth evidenced in Saudi funds to bankroll Islamabad’s nuclear bomb and jihadi mosques to preach Salafi-Wahabbi doctrine in the country. The Pakistan Army, FOR ITS PART, was the Saudi Monarchy’s Praetorian Guard, just as it was for the Hashemite dynasty IN Jordan. The involvement of Saudi and Pakistani jihadis in 9/11 bombing of New York and Washington are well known as is the subsequent cover-up in the US. Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda mastermind, was given refuge in Pakistan and was run to ground and killed on Pakistani soil by US Navy Seals.
As part of his exercise to project his international profile, Mohammed bin Salman embarked on an Asian tour of Pakistan, India and China. In Beijing he proclaimed his satisfaction with the Saudi Kingdom’s ties with China, whatever be its oppression of the Muslim Uigher population in Xinjiang. As China’s is Pakistan’s ‘all-weather friend,’ the strategic dimension of such diplomacy must surely be self evident. With all this in mind, the wisdom behind the bear-hug welcome accorded to Prince Mohammed bin Salman in New Delhi appears to be as mysterious as the proverbial Indian rope trick. Yes, Saudi investment in the Indian economy is a good thing, but this is as much in the Saudi national interest as it is in the Indian. A firm handshake, as protocol demanded, plus the standard communiqué would have sufficed. Two Indian English-language broadsheets went overboard, claiming the Saudi guest had condemned Pakistani terrorism, when he had done no such thing. One of these papers reported that President Trump had criticized China for the terror attack in Kashmir, when he clearly had not done so either. Fake news is taking off in India. Press freedom is translating into press licence, licence to invent and distort in the interests of external powers. Its significance must make the citizens of India meditate on the world order touted indefatigably in certain world capitals. All men are equal but some are more equal than others. They have to be tranquillized and force-fed for their own good, such being the opening injunction of the New Gospel of divine right and might.
Tinkering with History a perilous exercise
Manicuring history or turning History on its head never pays, because it leaves a poisonous residue of grieving victimhood. The T.E. Lawrence classic, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, acclaimed by such diverse individuals as Winston Churchill, E.M Forster and George Bernard Shaw as work of genius, but debunked by the Arab historian Aziz al-Azmeh.
Archaeologist, classical Greek scholar, Arabist, fluent in French, German and Italian, this warrior of the desert led the victorious Arab force that defeated the ruling Ottoman Army. It evidently riled Azmeh that an Englishman did what no Arab leader at the time (or since) could do – lamentable, maybe, but emphatically true, nevertheless.
Lawrence had an abiding friendship with the Arab leader Prince Faisal, whom Britain and France persuaded, during the First World War, to lead the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, with the false promise, as it turned out, of a fully independent and sovereign Arab state. Lawrence, an intelligence officer, kept Faisal abreast of the game; discovery would have meant imprisonment, disgrace and possible death.
Lawrence entered Damascus at the head of his motley Arab force and witnessed at first hand the Anglo-French betrayal of their promise and subsequent carve-up of Arab lands. After returning to England, he was offered a knighthood; he was to ‘refuse rewards for being a successful trickster.’ As Aircraftsman Shaw, Lawrence preferred the alibi Aircraftsman Shaw, dying in an accident in June 1935.
Azmeh’s Indian counterpart, Shashi Tharoor’s polemic, An Era of Darkness, on the alleged impact of the British presence in the Indian subcontinent is a similar work bargain basement anti-colonialism, among the most worthless of this genre.
Jadunath Sarkar, India’s greatest historian of the Mughal Empire, in a summary of British rule, warts and all, wrote: ‘But these will all pass away…Then England’s marvellous achievement in India will be appraised in a just balance, in peace of mind all passion spent.’
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Bengali novelist and Sanskrit scholar, composer of Bande Mataram, perceived the Pax Britannica as a restorative era after the nightmare of the eighteenth century, of loot, invasion, rapine, massacre and every excess known to man or beast. The leadership of India’s Reform movement, from Rammohun Roy, Ishvar Chandra Vidyasagar to M.G. Raydive and Gopal Krishna Gokhale, like Bankim Chandra, saw the British era as one of seedtime and remedy, for such it was, said C.R. Rajagopalachari, the greatest intellect in modern Indian nationalism. Rabindranath Tagore declared that India would have been incomplete without the British experience.
Victimhood is a form of self pity, a cancerous growth that stunts the mind and spirit and leaves the victim open to delusional fantasies from whose walls and watch towers escape become hazardous. Switching continents, Poland, with its Anglo-French and American patrons have long sought to present as a bulwark of western civilization against the implied barbarian hordes of the East – shorthand for Russia - the source of warped Polish nationalism. The pre-war Polish regime grabbed a piece of Czech territory as Hitler’s Nazi legions invaded the country with the connivance of Britain and France in March 1939. Joseph Beck, the infamous face of the Warsaw regime did a deal with Hitler, unaware that his country was next on the Nazi hit list. During the Nazi occupation significant numbers of Poles collaborated with the Nazi occupiers in oppressing their fellow Jewish citizenry, most of whom were consigned to the notorious Nazi gas chambers of Auschwitz in Poland. Accusations of such collaboration are punishable under present-day Polish law. Israel’s Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, drilled the point of Polish culpability into the heads of his Polish hosts. Truth will out.
Rage is best controlled
India is angry, angrier than it has been within living memory. The cold blooded murder in Kashmir of 40 of its solders by the terrorist-Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed operative has incensed the nation.. Calls for an Indian boycott of the ODI Cricket World Cup due to be held this summer in England will be counter-productive. The International Cricket Council (ICC) and its other members are unlikely to respond positively to the call, hence the result will impact negatively on India’s cricketing aspirations, while the ostensible target, Pakistan, will escape justice, in this realm, at least. The required Indian vengeance is best served cold.
