Comrades look to the 19th century, not the 21st (Organiser)

M.D. Nalapat

WITHIN the constellation of cultures that comprise the glory that is India, the people of Bengal have a special place. For centuries, they have been the trendsetters in societal reforms and in educational progress. From Vivekananda to Ramakrishna, RC Dutt to Rabindranath Tagore, from Aurobindo to Raja Ram Mohan Roy, this noble culture has been responsible for much of India's finest minds.

Even in the present century-which began less than a dozen years ago-it is historians from Bengal who have recently exposed the ugly underbelly of British rule, such as the famine in Bengal and Bihar caused by the genocidal reluctance of Winston Churchill to ensure that grain reached these provinces during World War II. Others from Bengal have written about the chicanery of the Mountbatten staff that resulted in the loss of more than a third of Kashmir to Pakistan. Together with recent gems, such as the diary of a survivor of the 1857 War of Liberation that has been translated into English from Marathi by an eminent journalist, the truth about the colonial era is getting known. Of course, because of the near-total control of Nehruvian ideology on school and college curricula, little of this knowledge is as yet taught to our young.

Punjabi Power and Zardari (UPI)

M.D. Nalapat


MANIPAL, India, March 18 (UPI) -- Regular readers of this column will not have been surprised at recent developments in Pakistan, in which army chief Ashfaq Kayani enforced the surrender of the Pakistan Peoples Party-led government to the demands of the Pakistan Muslim League-N chief, Nawaz Sharif.

The core purpose of Kayani's institution is to ensure the continued supremacy of Wahhabi Punjabis over all other groups in Pakistan, a mission that it has fulfilled thus far.

Uppity non-Punjabis, such as assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, were shown their place for daring to talk of a genuinely federal structure for the country. Now it is the turn of her husband, President Asif Ali Zardari, to be at the business end of Kayani's swagger stick.

The "honest" former -- and soon to be reinstated -- chief justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Chaudhry, has been a member in good standing of the Punjabi supremacist brigade since his years as a lawyer. He detests Zardari and has only kind words about his champion and fellow Punjabi, Nawaz Sharif. This despite the fact that the Sharif family has acquired an asset base of close to $2 billion, entirely because of its proximity to the military and other levers of patronage in Pakistan.

hy India is silent on Myanmar (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Over the past weeks, there has been a rising drumbeat of criticism from both sides of the Atlantic about the generals in Myanmar. After considerable behind-the-scenes U.S.-EU pressure, there have been bleats from the two biggest neighbors of that country, India and China, about the need for the generals to rein themselves in. However, neither they nor ASEAN is likely to adopt the U.S.-EU policy of isolation and sanctions.

While China and ASEAN each have their own special reasons for restraint, they also share several in common with India, including the belief that the Gordon Brown style of moral declamation has more than a trace of hypocrisy in it.

For starters, Myanmar is hardly the only military dictatorship in the vicinity. Both Bangladesh and Pakistan are ruled by generals who have assumed total power through coups against elected governments. Why the people of Myanmar alone should have freedom from military rule and not those of Pakistan and Bangladesh remains a mystery.

Few would fault the oft-expressed wish of Western capitals that the people of Myanmar should be given the government of their choice. Yet why such a preference is not made with equal emphasis -- or indeed any visible emphasis -- in the case of, for example, the 1.3 billion people of China or the Myanmar-sized population of Saudi Arabia, remains obscure, except to foreign policy experts in the NATO capitals.

Only Free Elections Can Save Nepal (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — A year ago, when the government of India invited all major political formations in Nepal to an "offer you can't refuse" conference in New Delhi, a sympathetic New Delhi forced through a "democratic" alliance of eight parties that would take over effective power from King Gyanendra, widely regarded as leaning too close to China.

A short while back, the king had destroyed what little support he had within India's ruling United Progressive Alliance government by sponsoring a resolution at the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation summit in Dacca, calling for China's entry into SAARC as an "observer." Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka backed the move enthusiastically.

Had the previous National Democratic Alliance regime not lost power in the 2004 general elections, India at this stage would have exercised a quiet veto, thus returning the suggestion to cold storage. However, the Congress-led UPA depends for its parliamentary majority on the communist parties, and hence could not oppose a move backed by the majority of SAARC countries.

After the summit, however, immediate steps were taken to neuter the king of Nepal's powers by installing a "democratic" government in place of the Gyanendra-led "autocracy." Such was the headline. The reality was that the very Nepali Parliament that had been dissolved by the king in 2002 was brought back to life, in the opinion of constitutional experts, illegally. The members of this "elected" legislature last faced an election in 1999.

Once revived, the Parliament expanded its strength by a third, nominating the additional members mostly from the ranks of the Maoists. It had been this armed group that had stymied repeated efforts to hold elections since former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba dissolved Parliament in 2002 to head off certain defeat in a no-confidence motion brought against him. Since then, Nepal had seen a succession of nominated prime ministers, each chosen by King Gyandendra after the previous incumbent finally admitted defeat in his efforts at holding elections in a country where the Maoists killed any candidate not sympathetic to them.

America's China Blindness (UPI)

M.D. Nalapat

NEW DELHI, June 21 (UPI) -- Hard times are tough, but good times can be even worse. Since the Vietnam defeat in 1975, the United States has not suffered a serious overt blow to its military power, with the result there has been no serious effort at reconfiguring strategies in a context in which India and China displace Europe as the geopolitical pivot of the Eurasian landmass.

Over the coming decade, the "European premium" that has enabled the countries of the West to enjoy a standard of life far in excess of their productive capacities, or future potential, will gradually erode. Only the countries of East Asia and West Asia are victims to this premium now. For the most part, both Arab and Sinic societies are in a time warp. They are unwilling to accept that the center of excellence is shifting from Europe to Asia and North America.

However even they are changing slowly so a secular decline in the standard of living within Europe seems inevitable.

Due of the momentum created by its size, the United States has been able to shrug off the effect of mistakes in policy, creating for itself the illusion it still has time on its side. The fact is 2005 is the equivalent of 1905. The world is about a decade from a possible major international conflagration, one that is likely to be centered in East Asia.