March 22, 2016

Tuesday, 22 March, 2016
Changing J-K youth
Security forces including para-military contingents in Jammu and
Kashmir besides Army at the international border and Line of Control
(LoC) are doing yeoman’s job to thwart the ill-designs of Pakistan
trained militants. The militant training camps in Pakistan occupied
Kashmir (POK) being aided and encouraged by ISI since Independence
have created havoc in the valley and succeeded in creating
ill-will among some hardcore sections of people with sympathetic
attitude towards Pakistan and anti-national elements. Such
people have proved to be thorns in India’s body politic. The multidirectional
groups like those launching Safar-i-Azadi for independent
Kashmir, pro-Pakistani elements and the silent section sitting
on the fence can slide to any convenient side that keeps them in
peace and profit. The adverse effect of all such activities has left the
state disrupted and under-developed. Without blaming any dispensation
in the past, certain decisions and apathetic attitude towards
the Jammu and Kashmir tangle, many problems have cropped
up which have led to communal disturbances leading to Kashmiri
Pandits’ exodus from the valley in the 90s. Such situations misled
the youth who grew up in an atmosphere which made them biased
against India. The militancy, under such circumstances, got entrenched
in the Valley which succeeded in creating anti-national
feelings among them against the country. Despite all these pressures,
India has shown enough patience while dealing with the prevalent
situation in that state. Security forces including the state police
have exhibited enough maturity in handling the anger among youth
of the state which have been incited by the inimical elements. Today,
by and by, the youth in the Valley have started realising the
real situation in relation to their future and prosperity of the state.
Militancy, despite repeated efforts of the militant groups from across
the border and LoC to create dissension in Jammu and Kashmir, is
on the wane. A large number of youth from the state are getting
recruited in Army, para-military forces besides being in the state
police. CRPF Director General K Durga Prasad while reviewing the
passing out parade of 514 cadets of 96 and 97 batch of the paramilitary
force at Recruit Training Centre (RTC) at Humhama said, “There
will be attempts to provoke the youth but we will continue to try to
get them into mainstream.” Since its inception in 1990, the RTC has
trained 22,179 recruits by imparting intensive training on subjects
concerned besides conditioning them to operate in different internal
security situations. He was very positive while reviewing the
situation, ‘‘We will counter militants’ attempts to provoke Kashmiri
youths.’’ “We are working hand-in-hand with J&K police and we
will control this problem,” Prasad said. He promised strong action
against those crossing the Line of Control (LoC) and trying to disturb
the unity of the country. There may be any situation in the
state but terrorism has to end in the state and the youth of the state
will realise their worth as a part of the Union.
Dharamshala fallout
India won in Kolkata but
Himachal Pradesh lost it at
Dharamshala.The shifting of T20
World Cup match between India
and Pakistan, slated for March 19,
from Dhauladhar Stadium of
Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh
to Kolkata, may not be a big incident
for some people in power but
it was a big loss to the state in terms
of credibility for maintaining law
and order and providing security
to the visitors. The assumed phantoms
of protests by ex-servicemen
and other anti-Pakistan elements,
as if they are as great in numbers
as the militant-incited stone-pelting
crowds of valley, are lame excuses.
If no violence took place in
Kolkata, it would not have taken
place in Dharamshala also as the
Chief Minister has always been
claiming that Himachalis are peaceloving
people. Even the families of
martyred soldiers would have liked
to see the Pakistani team vanquished
in their home ground.
The Home Minister of India had
offered to send Central forces to
help the state law and order machinery
maintain security there but
the Chief Minister had declined it.
No doubt, it’s the Chief Minister’s
prerogative to take decision on
SCRIPSI
such situation to see what is good
for the state and what is not. But the
youth of that state have their own
ideas on this decision which will certainly
get reflected during the fastapproaching
state assembly elections.
There is no problem if it is an administrative
decision. There may be
some loss to the tourism sector and
denial of possibilities to further exposure
of the scenic beauty of the
Kangra valley. But people can’t be
stopped from smelling the political
rate. There is possibility that shifting
of the venue of India- Pakistan match
from Dharamshala to Kolkata may
prove to be a disadvantage to this
ground and the decision-makers, and
the IPL matches, as there were reports
also, may not be held there, it will be
a big monetary loss to the tourism
and non-use of infrastructure created
for this purpose. Apart from the political
rivalry, Anurag Thakur is the
BCCI secretary besides being a Lok
Sabha MP from Hamirpur, and despite
different opinions and arguments,
he has played a major role in
bringing cricket to the state in a big
way. In such a situation who is going
to gain may be a question of conjecture,
but the situation will have its
fallout.
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real
tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
- PLATO
India seems to be in the middle of a counter-reformation
The burden of proof
Citizenship is a birthright; patriotism is an
acquired attribute. None of us bawled "Bharat
Mata ki jai" or "Jai Hind" in our cribs but we
were, unconditionally, citizens of this country
before we were continent and well before we
learnt to think or act or walk or speak. This
shouldn't need saying but in the present political
climate, underlining the bl***ing obvious
becomes a duty. Citizenship, in the jargon of
medical insurance companies, is a pre-existing
condition. Our rights as citizens cannot, should
not, be taken away from us unless we break our
republic's laws. It follows from this that citizenship
and its attendant promise of life and liberty,
cannot be subject to litmus tests of patriotism
devised by political parties, celebrity nationalists,
bureaucrats and gau rakshaks. But increasingly
they are. Just the past week produced four
examples of the way in which this birthright is
being challenged by people who would argue
that being law-abiding is not enough; Indians
have to demonstrate that they are good citizens.
The implication in each case is that if we aren't
able or willing to perform designated patriotic
exercises (or distance ourselves from unpatriotic
ones) our standing as citizens, our rights, our
liberties can legitimately be taken away from us.
Let's discuss these four challenges in ascending
order of awfulness. Anupam Kher, a distinguished
actor who has recently acquired a reputation
as the roving scourge of the politically
correct, visited the Jawaharlal Nehru University's
campus earlier this week to challenge the
legitimacy of the post-bail political narrative first
set out by Kanhaiya Kumar in his celebrated
speech. In the question and answer session that
followed Kher's speech, someone argued, in defence
of JNU's student community, that the slogans
shouted on that fateful evening, celebrating
the imminent disintegration of India and denouncing
those who had a hand in executing
Afzal Guru, had been raised by outsiders. Kher's
response was revealing. Did you, he asked, referring
to JNU students in general, tear down the
posters that celebrated Afzal Guru? No, you
didn't. They remained stuck to the walls of university
buildings for days. It was for Kher, a
'gotcha' moment and it tells you everything that
is important about the sarkari narrative on JNU.
To be physically proximate to unpatriotic utterance
calls your Indian bona fides into question.
So the fact that JNU's students let those posters
stay on JNU's walls was culpable in itself. For
Kher, the university's students had been found
wanting in Indianness. Instead of scraping the
posters off the buildings as any passionate patriot
would have done, they had lived with them.
This inertness, was a kind of complicity. Citizens
have to prove themselves. Citizenship, in Kher's
view of the world, isn't a birthright; it's a kind of
probation and you only truly belong when you
learn to perform your patriotism. But Kher, despite
his proximity to the ruling dispensation, is a
private citizen. His opinions don't formally represent
the view of the State. It's a much more serious
business when the National Council for Promotion
of Urdu Language circulates a form to writers
in Urdu, asking them to certify that their books -
novels, short stories, plays, poems, memoirs etc -
contain nothing that is critical of the policies of the
government or the interest of the nation. The
NCPUL encourages literary production in Urdu by
buying books in bulk, and according to the Indian
Express, this new form is meant to put Urdu writers
on notice "...that in case of a breach, the NCPUL
can take legal action against the author and take
back the monetary assistance". The NCPUL is a
government organization and it answers to the
ministry of human resource development. The decision
to get Urdu writers to sign on to this form
was taken last year. It is, on the face of it, extraordinary
that the government of India should ask writers
to guarantee that their books contain nothing
that is against "the policies of the government" or
"the interest of the nation" or that is likely to cause
"disharmony of any sort between different classes
of the country". It is bad enough that a government
should ask writers to self-attest that their
novels and poems and essays are utterly conformist
and docile, but it is particularly worrying when
writers in a particular language, Urdu, who happen
to be overwhelmingly Muslim, are singled out to
sign this humiliating undertaking. The NCPUL director's
justification is breathtaking in its candour.
"Since we do not have the manpower to scrutinise
every single line of each book, this form helps us
place the onus on the authors." The onus for
what? Are Urdu writers, in the opinion of the
NCPUL and the HRD ministry, in the habit of cobbling
anti-national and communally inflammatory
material into their work? Curiously, the equivalent
policy of the National Council for Promotion
of Sindhi Language contains no such stipulation.
The lesson to take away from this seems to be
that some citizens are allowed to take their patriotism
for granted while the patriotism of others
(in this case, writers in Urdu) needs formal selfattestation.
This bullying enthusiasm for applying
loyalty tests to law abiding citizens reached a
new low when the Maharashtra assembly unanimously
voted to suspend Waris Pathan, on the
charge of disrespecting the country. Pathan's
'crime' was refusing to say "Bharat Mata ki jai"
when a Bharatiya Janata Party member of parliament
insisted that he recite this slogan. The Nationalist
Congress Party and the Congress joined
the BJP in asking for Pathan's suspension and
the Speaker caved in to their demand despite
the fact that Pathan had done nothing to warrant
suspension in terms of the assembly's own
rules. Pathan's willingness to say "Jai Hind" as
an alternative invocation of the nation was disregarded.
Pathan was following the lead of his
party leader, Asaduddin Owaisi, who had announced
a few days earlier that nothing would
make him say "Bharat Mata ki jai" It is one thing
to criticize Owaisi's declaration as a form of political
grandstanding (as Javed Akhtar did in
Parliament); it is quite another to suspend a
democratically elected member of the legislative
assembly for refusing to jump through
political hoops at the behest of hostile fellow
legislators. In a country in which MLAs have
been known to hold up proceedings, throw furniture
about and even assault each other, to
punish an MLA for not saying something, for
refusing to mouth a slogan that he felt was contrary
to his religious principles, is truly
Kafkaesque. The rights of citizenship, the rules
of representative government are being cynically
bent to accommodate a bullying jingoism.
My last example is a hideous tragedy. A man
and a 12-year-old boy taking oxen to a cattle
market were lynched in a village in Jharkhand
and hung from a tree. They happen to be Muslim.
The five men arrested in connection with
these murders happen to be Hindus. One of
the five happens to be connected to a cowprotection
society. The superintendent of police
in charge of the case thinks that, prima facie,
this is a case of cattle looting gone wrong, but
he is also investigating other possibilities including
ideological motives related to gau
raksha. On social media some right-wing commentators
favour 'personal enmity' as the likelier
explanation. They could be right but all of
us should be deeply worried about the manner
of this lynching. If this was a violent robbery
that just happened to end in murder, why were
the victims, one of them just a boy, left hanging
on a tree? A hanging isn't just a murder, it is
a kind of execution. When two Muslims in the
cattle trade are lynched in this demonstrative
way, it is reasonable to wonder if a message is
intended. Jharkhand is a state ruled by the BJP.
Unlike the lynching in Dadri, this one happened
on its watch. This doesn't mean that Mohammad
Majloom and Inayatullah Khan are exhibits A
and B in some indictment of the BJP's Jharkhand
government. We don't have to argue complicity
to point out that Narendra Modi's regime, which
Arun Shourie mocked as the UPA plus a cow,
has consistently dog-whistled about cow protection.
Local party workers, MLAs, MPs, ministers,
chief ministers said vile and temporising
things after the Dadri lynching. The BJP has
consistently equivocated in the aftermath of gaurakshak
violence; it should surprise no one if it
turns out that Mohammad Majloom and
Inayatullah Khan were lynched because their
killers felt a sense of ideological impunity.
Real progress or display ?
Many people feel that Chandigarh life is better than Patiala life. Some of our friends
have advised us to move to Chandigarh, or at least buy a small house or flat there.
Sometimes I feel that we are creating more
showpieces for display rather than having real
development. I think real development takes
into consideration priorities of the society and
it tries to address needs of the majority of the
population. On the other hand, showpieces
serve the interests for small elite; those are
mainly for showing off and really do not serve
any other purpose for the majority of the
population. For clarifying my point, I will give
two examples; developing Chandigarh and
opting for a bullet train. First, I want to clarify
my feelings about Chandigarh. I really like to
go to Chandigarh and I have to go to
Chandigarh very frequently whenever I get a
chance to visit Chandigarh. I have many
friends there. Still, I always question myself if
developing a city like Chandigarh shows that
we are following a model of centralised development
rather than decentralising the development?
One sees so much construction going
about Chandigarh (Mohali, Zirakpur, Kharar,
Landran, Dera Bassi, and even up to Banur)
that it looks more than the rest of Punjab
combined. On the top of that we are developing
a new city, New Chandigarh. Compared to
Chandigarh, the other cities of Punjab like
Amritsar, Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Patiala are
falling behind, particularly Amritsar. One may
say that Ludhiana was just declared a smart city
and Chandigarh was not. I feel that the main
reason for this is that Ludhiana has still some
accumulated capital left from the days when its
industry was booming. Probably, Ludhiana still
has more money than the other cities of Punjab. I
also want to make it clear that I think that for all
practical purposes, Chandigarh is still a part of
Punjab even though it is different politically and
administratively. Whenever I am in Chandigarh, I
do not feel that I am not in Punjab. Amritsar used
to be the biggest city of Punjab (after Lahore). In
1947, Amritsar had the largest population in
Punjab, followed by Jalandhar and Ludhiana.
Now, Ludhiana is the largest city of Punjab. I am
not sure if Jalandhar has more population than
Amritsar now. Amritsar can be called the religious
and the
spiritual centre of Punjab. Even today, more
tourists come to Amritsar than any other city in
Punjab. Amritsar has been developed to provide
some facilities to the tourists yet, overall,
Amritsar seems to be lagging behind in development
and its infrastructure is outdated. I feel very
sad about this. Patiala is another important
traditional city of Punjab. Patiala is often called
the cultural hub of Punjab. However, compared to
Chandigarh, Patiala seems to be also losing its
old glory. I have vivid memories of Patiala when I
was 5-7 years old. I felt Patiala was better than
any other city in Punjab or even in India wherever
I had a chance to go. One of my doctor friends,
who just died and who was born in Patiala and
lived all his life here, maintained a strong
feeling that Patiala was the best city to live in
the world. I can give you the example of how
the people of Patiala used to feel about their
city compared to Chandigarh. In 1956, PEPSU
(Patiala and the East Punjab State Union) was
merged with Punjab. The capitol shifted from
Patiala to Punjab. Most of the employees
whose offices were shifted to Chandigarh
continued to live in Patiala and used to
commute from Patiala to Chandigarh. Even in
1971, when I went to the US, the majority of
people of Patiala continued to have the feeling
that their city was better than Chandigarh.
However, everything has changed now. Many
people feel that Chandigarh life is better than
Patiala life. Some people have shifted from
Patiala to Chandigarh. Some of our friends
have advised us to move to Chandigarh, or at
least buy a small house or flat (condominium)
there. It is not just the big cities, but the quality
of life has deteriorated even in the smaller
cities. Last month, I went to Barnala to present
a paper. The venue was in the heart of the city.
This part of the city is very congested. On the
top of that, the railway crossing was closed
because a train was passing. It made the bad
situation worse and showed the poor and
outdated infrastructure of our cities. I felt that
instead of developing Chandigarh and New
Chandigarh, maybe we would have been better
off by improving the existing cities of Punjab.
Starting a bullet train is a similar issue of
developing for the sake of prestige and
showing off rather than meeting the needs of
the society. We are going to have bullet train
connecting Mumbai to Ahmedabad. The
Japanese are going to help us in this project. I
heard that the Chinese were also approached
for this project. However, they advised us that
we will be better off spending that money in
upgrading the existing railway infrastructure in
India. This can increase the average speed of
our trains from about 100 km an hour to about
200 km an hour; computerise all of our stations,
signals and crossings; and make our trains
safer and better. Instead of that, we chose to
have literally one track where the bullet train
train can run at the speed of 300 km per hour.
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