Lessons from Armistice centenary
The backdrop to the commemoration of the Centenary of the Great War was convulsed with confusion. The Brexit crisis in Britain loomed large, with Prime Minister Theresa May struggling to convince her Conservative party, Parliament and the country at large that her plan for the UK’s divorce from the European Union would safeguard British interests and also maintain a workable relationship with Europe. With the Conservatives riven by discord over the issue, it is doubtful if she can carry the House when it comes to the vote.
Over in France, President Emanuel Macron had troubles of his own. His ratings with the French public are at an all-time low in keeping with the record of his discredited predecessor Francois Holland. M. Macron didn’t help matters by projecting the possibility of raising a European army to meeting alleged military threats from Russia and China. This provoked US President Donald Trump’s ire. He saw this as an attempt to erode Nato and America’s global role. His thunderous scowl told of his deep displeasure, which no amount of patting on the knee by his French host could obscure. President Trump made an abrupt departure from Paris. Meanwhile President Vladimir Putin arrived in the French capital, his unflappable presence a contrast to what had gone on before. He seemed unaffected by the description of Russia as a potential aggressor against France and French allies.
The Allies’ Eastern Front in the First World War, manned by the Tsarist army was drew off a sizeable force of Germans. Otherwise, as the eminent English historian A.J.P Taylor wrote, ‘France might have been defeated in 1914’. Likewise, the intervention of around 250,000 US troops in 2017 was an invaluable aid to an exhausted British army. It was Germany in the end who sued for peace. Taylor’s broader argument was that the American and Soviet Russian participation in the Second World War finally crushed Germany, and with it ended Europe’s global pre-eminence.
President Macron would have done better meditating on the past and its lessons. He might have displayed a little more tact in his dealings with President Trump. What is Nato without the US? The recent Nato Baltic exercise saw Norwegian troops relieving themselves near Norwegian houses and gardens. Human excrement was deeply shocking to the inhabitants. Predators in the jungle are prone to mark out their territory through such methods!
President Macron may have forgotten the French record at Munich in 1938, when Czech Sudetenland was served up to Hitler; the road from Munich led to Vichy and active collaboration with the Nazis. Talking peace and bombing present-day Libya and Syria does France little credit. The intoxicant of great power delusions led to Waterloo and the perilous retreat of the Grand Army from Moscow.
One must turn to the convulsions in Colombo, where a ruling government headed by Prime Minister Ranil Wickersinghe was dismissed peremptorily from office by the country’s President Maithripala Sirsena and a new prime minister, Mahinder Rajapaksa appointed to replace him without recourse to Parliament. Sri Lanka is a parliamentary democracy with a written Constitution. The Speaker in Parliament declared that the Presidential decision was illegal, MPs came to blows, and the country has a power vacuum, with no government presently in sight. This is little short of a tragedy. Sri Lanka has been among Asia’s most stable democracies. Hopefully time of troubles will blow over within a reasonable timeline.
The shocking case of Pakistani Christian housewife Asia Bibi, sentenced to death for alleged blasphemy against the Prophet Mohammed based on the accusation of a Muslim neighbor and languished in prison for 10 years before being released by the country’s Supreme Court provoked nationwide mob violence. Her lawyer fled the country for refuge in the Netherlands. Asia Bibi and her husband and their five children are in hiding, awaiting asylum in the West. One of Pakistan’s foremost scientists Pervez Ali Hoodbhoy wrote thus: ‘Pakistan once had a violent, rabidly religious lunatic fringe. This fringe has morphed into the majority. We are now a nation of butchers and primitive savages.’ For decades past, the West has indulged the two bastions of jihadi global terrorism, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Having sown the wind, it is now reaping whirlwind.
India, US in productive dialogue
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US Vice President Mike Pence had a fruitful conversation on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in Singapore. Their conversation was not confined to bilateral trade India’s Hindu newspaper anodyne report suggested, but covered other issues of interest to both sides including freedom of trade and security in the Indo-Pacific region, H-1B visas for Indian IT professionals, counter terrorism cooperation. The Indian Premier drew attention to the jihadi assault on Mumbai in November 2008 from across the border in which 167 innocent people died. The mastermind Hafeez Saeed, was free in Pakistan to engage in politics.
While there were differences over trade, the two countries are working towards a bilateral trade deal. ‘We are trying very hard to make better trade deals with India. But they are very good traders. They are very good negotiators. The best. So we’re working. So it’s moving along.’ said President Trump in Washington.. According to Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale, who was with Prime Minister Modi in Singapore, ‘there was a sense of convergence both on bilateral issues and on global issues and we look forward to taking forward in the coming months and in 2019’..
Mr Modi reminded the US Vice President that during the last two years, since the Trump Administration had taken office, US exports to India had risen by 50 per cent and is one of the top 10 countries where the US trade deficit in on the decrease.
On the broader trade front, Indian exports in October grew 17.86 per cent to $26.9 billion. Imports for the same period grew 17. 62 per cent, a growth of 44 per cent., of which crude and petroleum products garnered the largest share. Readymade garments, gems & jewellery, spices, electronics, leather goods, plastics and handicrafts dominated the export list. Total Indian exports from April to October 2018 rose by 13. 27 per cent over a similar period in 2017. Exports worth $191.02 billion were sold in foreign markets, a 16.7 per cent rise over a similar period of the previous year. There is a long hard road ahead before exports and imports are brought into a broadly parallel alignment.
Cambridge honours its Indian son
Cambridge University has renamed its 1702 chair in chemistry after Mumbai-born Yusuf Hamied, Chairman of the Indian pharmaceutical firm Cipla, founded in 1935 by Bombay-based father Dr Hamied, who was encouraged in his endeavours by Mahatma Gandhi to help out the city’s poor. He approached Alexander Todd, the distinguished Cambridge scientist [later a Chemistry Nobel laureate in 1957], on a visit to Bombay, whether his son, lacking an A level school certificate] could apply for a place at Todd’s Christ College. Having sized up the young man Lord Todd did so. In 1954, the youthful Yusuf Hamied entered Christ College and never looked back, graduating with a coveted First in the Tripos and staying on for his PhD.
Cambridge University stated that the 1702 Chair in Chemistry would be renamed after Yusuf Hamied: ‘Dr Hamied worked to provide low-cost generic antiretroviral drugs to people with HIV and AIDS in developing countries, reducing the cost of the drugs to less than a dollar day.’
The previous holder of the 1702 chair, John Pyle, said: ‘I’m delighted with the name change. Yusuf has done so much for the department and he’s a wonderful person who has done great things. His mentor Lord Alexander Todd held the chair.’
Now a fit, debonair, mellow 82, Dr Hamied spoke of his ‘close bond’ with Cambridge, and especially its Chemistry department. He explained: ‘In recent years we have set up the the Todd-Hamied Seminar Room, the Todd-Hamied Laboratory and the Hamied Laboratory in the department. Now I am delighted that I am leaving behind a legacy for the future. I am not taking my money with me, so this is a good thing.’ A Life fulfilled as the evening shadows fall with ebbing tide.
