The report by the Sir John Chilcot on the British Government’s decision to join the United States in its projected war with Iraq in 2003 has been seven years in the making. The report is 2.5 million words long and covers 13 volumes. Its core is a damning indictment of then Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair’s judgment and conduct in the initiation of hostilities, based on faulty intelligence and the deceits practiced by him and his government in presenting the need for war to the British public, which was overwhelmingly opposed to any such conflict, as the million-strong monster demonstration in London amply demonstrated. Other protest occurred the country.
The Chilcot report alludes to the catastrophic consequences of the Anglo-American intervention in Iraq; to the thousands of Iraqi lives lost. of hideous injuries inflicted, the millions displaced and, not least, the yawning sectarian divide that that continues to claim the lives of Iraqi citizens. Amidst this carnage 179 British lives were lost, families were bereaved. Many of the servicemen and women who escaped death carry the horrific wounds whose scars they bear, their lives blighted forever. Chilcot refers to the cynical way in which the United Nations was bypassed and the authority of the Security Council eroded. The peaceful avenues to achieve a possible peace were not sufficiently explored, while the Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction – the excuse for war – turned out to be a blatant falsehood.
It is on the whole a chilling document over which Parliament and the British people must now ruminate. There is a serious trust deficit among the people about the honesty and conduct of their country’s politicians and the workings of its institutions. Britain can no longer live in a state of denial about a national, regional and global tragedy. Those responsible for it must surely be brought to justice. The erring Tony Blair admitted to faulty intelligence and failures of judgment down the line, perversely holding to the view that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was right and that Iraq was on the painful walk to democracy. The enterprise was nothing less than a crime against Iraqi humanity, a fact never acknowledged with an appeal for God’s mercy, such as a religious man like Blair would be expected to do. It is part of the arrogance of the Anglo-American leadership to refrain from apologizing, whether it be for the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the carpet bombing and chemical defoliation of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
Let us proceed to examine the awful consequences of the Iraq war and the colonial occupation of the country and the total destruction of its infrastructure. The recent explosions in the heart of Baghdad by Islamic State suicide bombers have claimed 300 lives at the time of writing. Lebanon. Syria, Turkey and now Saudi Arabia face IS violence, whether it be in Istanbul, Mosul or Medina, the second holiest site in the Islamic world. There appears to no end to the agonies of Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and now Bangladesh; also the biblical exodus to Europe. It is blowback, for sure.
America, Britain, France must bear the burden of the cross of predatory policies that refracted Cold War realpolitik. The Polish American Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, boasted how the US, Saudi Arabia, Pakistani and China monetized jihad in a bid to assist the Soviet Union’s demise. .
However, there is another deeper truth to consider. The terrorism that haunts democratic, secular societies today was conceived in a messianic holy writ, a magnet for thousands of young people from every Islamic community to take up arms against unbelievers. The reform that is required to deal with the poison must come mainly from within the global Islamic body politic.
Fear of being branded Islamophobic or racist must no longer induce enforced silence. The voices of brave and resolute Muslim-born women, such as Taslima Nasreen and Ayan Hirsi Ali, who live abroad as exiles, have highlighted the abuses prevalent in Muslim societies. Reared in these societies, they have first-hand experiences of their workings. Listen carefully to what they have to say. Chilcot has opened a can of worms.
Narendra Modi: Stellar politician and CEO
No Indian politician has dominated Indian politics since Indira Gandhi in her prime as Narendra Modi. He burst upon the national firmament in 2013, fought a brilliant election campaign and brought the BJP to power almost singlehandedly, with an absolute majority in Parliament. His mission is simple in its audacity: it is to remake India into a modern country with a dynamic economy. This requires intuition and a strategic vision; in other words, the mindset of a determined visionary and CEO. Without his leadership and administrative skills, the BJP and RSS would have foundered, as they had for decades. Now, they carry the deportment and weight of a governing national party. It is Congress that looks forlorn and rudderless and utterly unelectable.
The Indian people have been drawn to the unfolded reality: the Modi sarkar is here to stay for the foreseeable future, with Narendra Modi at the helm.
Nothing his demonstrated his strength and resolution as the Cabinet reshuffle. The calibration reflects thought and calculation. HRD Minister Smriti Irani was packed off to the Textile Ministry because her personality was coming in the way of its performance and goals. Implementating policy was key, not controversies and standoffs with intellectual heavyweights like nuclear scientist Anil Kakodkar. Away from the limelight, she make get down to unobtrusive work. Moving Jayant Sinha as Minister of State in the Finance Ministry to Civil Aviation was done for broadly similar reasons. Sinha was superbly qualified for the job with his critical experience in the world of international finance, but his frequent unauthorized statements on policy cut across the authority of the Finance Minister. The CEO in Modi decided that enough was enough; Sinha was shunted to more tranquil pastures. Rudi Prasad was relieved of his IT responsibilities and moved to the Law and Justice Ministry, where he would be comfortable being a lawyer by profession. IT needed a more visionary focus, hence it was transferred to Manoj Sinha, an IIT and BHU graduate, better equipped to take things forward from the platform created by Prasad. As captain of the ship, Modi is adroitly navigating it through choppy waters into calmer seas. With turbulence in global markets following Britain’s exit from the European Union, leading India in multiple fields of endeavour will be no easy task. Prime Minister Modi has shown that he is up to the challenge.
India Shakespeare’s natural home
Speaking at the recent Hay Literary Festival in Wales (which has Tata as one of its sponsors), British author and journalist, Dr Andrew Dickson said that, after extensive research and travel to ‘six countries – Poland, Germany, South Africa the US, China and India - in four continents,’ he had concluded that William Shakespeare was more relevant to India than anywhere else on the planet.
Dickson has written an acclaimed book, ‘Worlds Elsewhere: Journeys Around Shakespeare’s Globe’. Pages 175-258 are devoted to India; Sohrab Modi’s film Khoon ka Khoon, produced in 1935, was based on Hamlet. Dickson showed a slide of Vishal Bhardwaj film Omkara, a Hindi take on Othello. Bhardwaj saw Shakespeare as a fellow producer, much to Dickson delight. Dickson met Bhardwaj in Mumbai; also Mala Sinha, a star of the 1950s, who played Ophelia in Kishore Sahu’s production of Hamlet in 1954.
‘In Calcutta I met the Shakespeare Society of Eastern India’s Amitava Roy….The interesting thing, I thought again and again in India, is how Shakespeare was exported as a sort of colonial spear carrier in a way but so quickly becomes translated and adapted and altered and you have this very, very vivid engagement with Shakespeare: he is very, very alive,’ was how he summed it up.
‘In terms of engagement with Shakespeare and thinking of Shakespeare and understanding and reimagining Shakespeare, Indian cinema is by far the most interesting in the world…there are now several hundred adaptations of Shakespeare into all of India’s twenty-plus languages and more versions of Shakespeare in Indian cinema than anywhere else in the world.’
Shakespeare, the English language and cricket, were the greatest British gifts to India, pronounced Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, once India’s eminent philosopher-president. How right he was.
