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.

President Hu Shows Who's Boss (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Four years before Chinese President Hu Jintao took over as both head of state and, more importantly in China, head of the Communist Party, this observer of his country had deduced that he was on a steady ascent to full power. Even in 1998 it was clear that the mild-mannered, ever-courteous lifelong Party member was a deadly player on the chessboard of power.

Over the preceding years he had avoided much entanglement with the reigning hierarchies in the only parts of China that President Jiang Zemin was interested in, the high-growth centers along the coast and Beijing. Instead, he used the anti-corruption machinery of the state and Party to prise away those who were less than completely loyal to Deng Xiaoping's personal choice to replace Jiang in 2002.

Barring a handful of provinces, by 1999 Hu had put into position individuals that he could relate to and that were far removed from the glitzy and immensely wealthy Jiang cohort. Over the next couple of years, he interacted extensively with senior military and civilian cadres, almost always leaving the impression of a thoughtful individual whose objective was to ensure the continuation of China's ascent begun under Mao and Deng.