The outbreak of mob violence in Tripura resulting in the pulling down of Lenin’s statue met with retaliation in West Bengal with the defacing of Shyma Prasad Mookerjee’s statue in Kolkata, he being the founder of the Jana Sangh, the parent of the present-day BJP. A BJP vandal defaced the statue of Periyar, an iconic Dravidian leader in Tamil Nadu, leading to widespread protests across the State, while similar treatment was meted out to the busts of Dalit leader and icon B.R. Ambedkar, at four sites in Uttar Pradesh.
Subramaniam Swamy, justified the destruction of Lenin’s statue with the egregious remark that the architect of the October Revolution in 1917 was a ‘terrorist.’ The founder of modern, post-apartheid South Africa, the revered Nelson Mandela, was perceived as a ‘terrorist’ by the Central Intelligence Agency (CI A) and successive administrations of the United States, as the country ritually projects itself as ‘the land of the free’ despite a century of black slavery. Swamy, no doubt, would call Abraham Lincoln a ‘terrorist’ too, and hail his assassin John Wilkes Booth as the true liberator.
The Thatcher government in the United Kingdom, always in step with the United States, initially branded Mandela a ‘terrorist’.
Before the situation plumbed the depths of national disgrace, Prime Minister Naendra Modi denunced such behavior and, in consultation with Home Minister Rajnath Singh, demanded that the State authorities take stern action against the vandals. The new Chief Minister of Tripura, Biplab Kumar Deb, undertook to do so and promptly redeemed his promise. Three thugs were held by the police.
Ironically, Swamy and the BJP’s voice on Television, Nalin Kohli, both of whom were enthusiasts for destroying statues of ‘foreigners’ as a seasonal sport, have suddenly gone silent. The Talibanization of India evokes deep disgust and revulsion; the vandals clearly share the Taliban spirit. The BJP President Amit Shah proclaimed that the ‘golden era, for the party would only arrive when West Bengal, Odisha and Kerala fell into its lap. That is likely to be a tough call.
Chief Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress is deeply entrenched in West Bengal and will be difficult to shift anytime soon. Navin Patnaik’s party in Odisha was once a BJP coalition partner, as was the Trinamool Congress. The parting of ways in Odisha occurred after an anti-Christian riot in the tribal belt engineered by RSS cadres who accused local Christians of murdering a Hindu leader. It subsequently transpired that it was the Maoists who were the guilty ones. A shaken and disillusioned Patnaik broke ranks with the BJP. Mr Shah would do well to mull over these facts.
Mr Modi was truly prime ministerial when he walked over to the erstwhile Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar and escorted him to the dais where the top BJP leadership were seated. He was warmly welcomed by one and all. They recognized the selflessness of the man, who has no private house and a pittance in the bank to his name. He made the Communist-Left Front electable in six elections over 25 years, and had done for Tripura what his comrades in West Bengal had signally failed to do. Mr Modi’s gesture to Manik Sarcar caught the public eye. ‘Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and little minds and a great empire go ill together,’ pronounced the philosopher Edmund Burke two and a half centuries ago.
India is a deeply polarized society. Its political life is more fractious than anyone can remember. Reasoned debate in Parliament has been subsumed by unseemly brawls and scrimmages. Public esteem for this institution is at an all-time low. This is not as it should be. Democracy and the rule of law are brought into ridicule. Nothing could be more dangerous for India’s future, going forward.
Self-flagellating posturing flavor of the season
Sudheendra Kulkarni, a Sinbad-like voyager from far left to far right, to confected lunacy from both spectrums, went into special pleading mode for a conjuncture of India, Pakistan and China, in an Alice in Wonderland fantasy of a novel regional nirvana. The Mumbai bombing of March 1993, which claimed over 300 innocent lives, the Pakistan-incubated jihadi assault on the city in November 2008, in which 167 people perished, and numerous terror attacks betwixt and between were silently brushed aside with forgiving solicitude to an ethical cause as densely complicated as the String Theory in modern physics.
If this were not enough, the Hindu piled on a disquisition (on its editorial page) by its Diplomatic Correspondent, Suhasini Haider, whose latest offering includes the following pearl of wisdom: ‘India is sliding towards a situation where it is neither feared nor loved by other South Asian countries.’ Hyperbole, more often than not, misses obscures reality. For a start, effective diplomacy should neither be predicated on fear nor on love in the haystacks, but on multiple areas of national interest, where convergence affords a bridge of concord. These include trade, commerce, investment, science, technology and layers of soft power.
Ms Haider cites the cases of Nepal, a familiar fall-back for breast-beating and handwringing, Maldives, Afghanistan and Pakistan. As Nepal has been dealt with before, let us pass to the Maldives: India has issued a statement deploring the present Islamist regime’s coup and suspension of constitutional government, as have a number of other nations and the UN and EU. If China wishes to snuggle up to the regime, so be it. China’s mediation in Afghanistan, so admired by Ms Haider has brought few tangible results on the ground. The Afghan government’s peace initiative to the Taliban looks promising with a positive Taliban response, and the peace process going forward must be awaited with hope and expectation.The sticking point for Ms Haider is Pakistan: India’s surgical strikes have been met with a truculent response from Islamabad: more firing from across the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. True enough. Cricket, lovey-dovey talk, briyani dinners, joint pie-in-the sky statements of good neighbourly ties, the Vajpayee acclaimed peace journey to Lahore and its Kargil war byproduct, coupled with the serial bombings of Mumbai by Pakistani-sponsored jihadis bombings across Mumbai, and other attacks in different parts of India constitute the India’s Pakistan experience over past decades.
The international terror watchlist on Pakistan includes its ‘all-weather friend China’, in addition to the US, Russia, the UK, France and Germany. Islamabad is on three months’ notice to cease aiding and abutting terrorism across its borders or face telling economic sanctions – loss of US aid, suspension of loans by the World Bank, IMF and other such dispensers. With Pakistan’s fragile economy, and the prospect of such international sanctions don’t bode well for the country’s future development.
The unconventional conflict with Pakistan is a long game. Suhasini Haider would well to display patience before rushing to judgement.
US Senators call for nuclear weapons accord
A group of US Senators, in a belated display of sanity, have called on President Trump to open negotiations on new nuclear arms accords with Russia, as the ones previously reached will lapse 2021. They pointed to the increasingly dangerous levels of tensions between US and its allies and Russia. The possibility of miscalculation or error could lead to a global holocaust, they opined. During the Cold War and its vicissitudes both the US and the Soviet Union were aware of the other’s red lines and limits of tolerace. That is no longer the case, as anti-Russian hysteria in the US, UK, and certain East European countries have reached a pitch of intensity not seen since the days of Hitler, Goebbels and the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg.
‘Facts are sacred, comment is free,’ was an ideal proclaimed many moons ago by a distinguished English newspaper editor. Pressing forward from that principle, President Putin’s State of the Nation speech to Russian Federation lawmakers should be subjected to close scrutiny. He said Russia had no aggressive intent against any country and never did; second, that Russia was a nuclear power, with whom none of its western counterparts were prepared to sit down and talk seriously; that Russia, too, had security interests, which it was prepared to defend.
Having set out his stall, President Putin informed his audience and Russia’s adversaries abroad that Russia possessed a range of fearsome nuclear weapons and delivery systems that could penetrate any current defensive shield, the statement accompanied by telling video graphics which bore no denial, as a the subsequent US reaction told of awareness of these developments of Russian technologies.
There was no ‘boasting,’ no ‘threats’ as the Anglo-American media and the Reuters news agency spuriously proclaimed. Instead of rattling the NATO sabre, why not negotiate sensibly and rationally. Accustomed to wield the big stick with the perceived lesser breeds of the Third World, the West might be better served by offering the Russian bear a carrot.
