Kashmiri hospitality on display at G20-Srinagar (The Sunday Guardian)

 

From 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sought to bring back Kashmir to the prosperity it once enjoyed.

Among the most beautiful locations on the globe, Kashmir has suffered from 1947 onwards as a consequence of the obsession by the rulers of Pakistan to reaffirm the two-nation theory by snatching away by subterfuge mixed with violence a Muslim-majority state from India. The 1965 war between India and Pakistan would have been very different, had the then Chief of Army Staff been replaced by one of his juniors who had more spine. Had the COAS at the time been able to, he would have countermanded the decision made by Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri to take the pressure away from Kashmir by attacking across a broad front. As is the norm in India, where nothing succeeds as much as failure, despite his poor leadership, the then COAS was rewarded by a diplomatic assignment while the Lt General, who was the actual hero of the 1965 war, went unacknowledged. At the Tashkent conference, what slivers of Pakistan territory captured by India was given back, as also the most effective gateway for terrorists to cross into that part of Kashmir that was rescued by India in the 1947 war, the Haji Pir pass. An even bigger gesture of making futile unilateral concessions at Shimla in 1972 brought no respite from the overt and covert war that the Pakistan military establishment was conducting against India. Indeed, it was during the 1980s that several schools were set up in Liberated Kashmir that indoctrinated the youth attending them to hate their own country and back its secession. Worse, several individuals who were not even covertly opposed to India were allowed to cross over from the other side of the Line of Control and settle in Liberated Kashmir. It was from this influx that the human seeds of the asymmetric warfare that ravaged the Valley in particular for much of the 1990s came from. Worse still, political parties that were plainly opposed to the 1947 integration of Kashmir into the Union of India were wooed by national parties and made part of the machinery of the government of the state. Small wonder that the wound inflicted on the wellbeing of the people of Kashmir by GHQ Rawalpindi and its proxies continued to fester. A state that ought to have been among the top ten tourist destinations of the world, that ought to have been the location of the best educational and health facilities in India, slipped into the abyss of insurgency.
And it was not only in Kashmir that the Pakistan army showed its gratitude-in-reverse for the incredibly generous concessions made by the Indian side at Shimla, including the effective pardoning of the many officers of the Pakistan army that had been guilty of rape, lool and genocide in Bangladesh during the years preceding the 1971 war that ended in the Indian armed forces and the Mukti Bahini liberating Bangladesh. Soon after Shimla, planning began at GHQ Rawalpindi to convert Punjab into an inferno through the Khalistan movement, which is now going largely as a consequence of funds handed over the purpose to GHQ Rawalpindi by the military that is its master in all but name. Together with the military and police, the people of Punjab defeated that conspiracy to melt down the state. The Sikh community in particular once again showed its patriotism and commitment to the Tricolour. The G20 meeting on tourism that has just taken place in Srinagar has demonstrated that the people of Kashmir too have stepped forward to support not those from across the western and northern borders of India that want the Union Territory to plunge into chaos and violence, but those who seek to ensure that Kashmir reaches its potential as a peaceful and prosperous part of India. From 2014, Prime Minister Modi has sought to bring back Kashmir to the prosperity it once enjoyed before Sheikh Abdullah was brought back to power in the state during 1975 by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. From 2014 onwards, Modi worked towards this objective, and there can be no better evidence of the confidence that the Prime Minister has in the Kashmiri people than in his decision to hold the G20 meeting on tourism in Srinagar. The intention was to once again make Kashmir an international destination for tourism and investment, and the people of Kashmir lived up to his expectations by showing the warmth and hospitality that had long been the defining characteristic of the people of Kashmir, and which GHQ Rawalpindi and its external masters have long been seeking to replace with a mixture of intolerance and mayhem.
President Erdogan of Turkey repaid India for the unstinted assistance given to his country by India during the 6 February earthquake by refusing to send any delegate from his country to the G20 summit. China naturally absented itself, as seeing the placid atmosphere in Kashmir despite pumping in so much assistance to the Pakistan military would have resulted in a nervous breakdown among many in its delegation. As for the Saudi absence, it is clear that the modernising hand of Crown Prince Mohamad bin Salman is not all-powerful in the Kingdom, else the Saudis would have followed the Indonesians, the Europeans, Brazil, South Africa and the big European economies in attending the meeting. Perhaps it was simply fear that kept the Egyptian and Saudi delegations away, given that both are modernising rather than slipping back into medievalism in the way some other countries are. Riyadh and Cairo may have taken seriously the informal warning given by Beijing that the Srinagar meet was hopelessly unsafe, and not to risk their lives by going. Unfortunately for them, the overwhelming majority of countries in the G20 attended. As for Turkey under Erdogan, Ankara has followed the example of Islamabad and Beijing in repaying help given by India with a contrary action that brings harm. The Turkish absence serves as a warning to those in the Lutyens Zone who never learn that unilateral concessions beget only a demand for more concessions rather than cause a change in established behaviour patterns of hostility

Kashmiri hospitality on display at G20-Srinagar

G7 needs to ensure a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire (The Sunday Guardian)

 

It is fitting that Hiroshima was chosen as the location for the G7 meeting, for the chances that the ongoing proxy war between Russia and NATO will enter a nuclear dimension are not zero, or even close to zero.

Once, on a visit to Japan. I was asked by my courteous Japanese hosts if I wanted to visit Hiroshima, which is thus far the scene of one of the only two cities bombed by atomic weapons in human history. They were surprised when the offer was refused and instead, a request was made by me to visit a Buddhist temple. At the temple, it was not the usual time for prayers, but in a gesture exemplifying the best of the teachings of the Buddha, the monks prayed in my presence. With eyes closed, I sought to better understand why President Harry S. Truman had deemed it necessary to use the newly created atom bomb to force the leadership of a proud nation to surrender. Had the war not been cut short by the catastrophe that fell from the skies onto Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, it is certain that the Japanese forces would have fought on long after the surrender of Germany on 7 and 9 May 1945. Imbued with the samurai spirit, the Japanese military would have fought on, bringing upon themselves an unprecedented hail of explosives from the skies and the seas as a consequence of the domination by the US Air Force and the US Navy by that stage of the war. This would be apart from the US soldiers, sailors and airmen who would have paid with their lives to defeat Japan. Many hundred thousand more Japanese than perished at Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have died as a consequence of the prolongation of a war that Japan had already lost, but whose military rulers were refusing to accept the inevitable until forced to Emperor Hirohito, who was devastated by images of those who perished in the two cities bombed by the US Air Force. This columnist had come across photographs, written accounts and newsreels of the nuclear carnage, and had no desire to have the embers of the emotions stirred by such knowledge, feelings that would once again have burst into flame as a consequence of walking on the same ground that had been the receptacle of “Little Boy”, the nickname given to the first atom bomb dropped on a human target on 6 August 1945. Instead, the alternative chosen was to search for the inner calm, the inner confidence that humanity as a species is inherently kind and not cruel, and this was found in the soothing chanting of the Buddhist monks in a temple in Tokyo that unforgettable day.
Passing up the chance to visit Hiroshima was the memory which bubbled up when it was announced that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida had decided to host the G7 summit at Hiroshima, a summit to which he invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India as well as Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, so that at the least an informal meeting of the four members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue could take place. Such a summit not taking place at all would have conveyed a signal of unconcern that would be welcomed only by those powers who were opposed to a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific, especially a superpower who was intent on making large parts of those vast water spaces a private lake.
Given the stakes involved in ensuring a resolution of the debt ceiling standoff between the Republicans and the White House, it was understandable that President Biden had to cut short his overseas tour to return to Washington for meetings aimed at finding common ground with Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his party before the month was up. US Senators and Presidents fly far fewer times to locations in Asia than they do to locations in Europe, and this has been particularly true of Biden, who therefore ought to make a visit to Papua New Guinea and Australia soonest, not to forget a long-delayed visit to India. Much of the media in the West is behaving the way “embedded media” did during the 2003 war launched by George W. Bush on Saddam Hussein, and is writing less about the security of the Indo-Pacific than Ukraine as being the centrepoint of attention at the summit. Since last year, NATO began a jihad against the Russian Federation, pouring men and resources into Ukraine for the purpose. All this is in order for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to continue his quixotic mission of recovering the territories lost since 2014 to the Russian-speaking Ukrainians who since 2012 were being treated not just as second-class citizens by Kiev but as outcasts. Given the reality of the Ukraine focus of the leadership of the G7 (barring perhaps Prime Ministers Fumio Kishida and Giorgia Meloni of Italy, who however have been keeping their more pragmatic views to themselves whenever Ursula von der Leyen and others at the table have fulminated about needing to make “ever greater sacrifices for saving European civilisation”). And how better than by assisting Kiev to humiliate Russia on the battlefield? The longer such an effort drags on, the greater the risk that the authoritarian superpower would seize the chance to try and extinguish the sovereignty of some of the countries in the Indo-Pacific either wholly or partially. This would ensue once the public in the West turns against any kinetic involvement in any theatre by their governments as a consequence of the blowback of the impact on their lives of the Ukraine jihad. If George W. Bush had Tony Blair to cheer him on and join in the evisceration of Saddam’s forces in 2003, Joe Biden had Boris Johnson joining him fifteen months ago in launching a course of action in Ukraine that has already created misery worldwide and may yet turn into an indescribable catastrophe. Apart perhaps from Meloni and Kishida, it is unlikely that the other five leaders at the G7 summit will even realize the risk to overall security of their obsession with Russia. This fixation has come at the precise time when the superpower that is the actual threat has been revealing (and using) its claws more and more often. In part because western media these days resembles outlets in authoritarian states in their uniformity of opinion and coverage, as yet most citizens of G7 member countries do not understand that much of their recent travails have been caused by the actions since the start of 2022 of their leaders. They will, most probably soon.
It is fitting that Hiroshima was chosen as the location for the G7 meeting, for the risk that the ongoing proxy war between Russia and NATO enters a nuclear dimension is not zero, or even close to zero. Perhaps this was the message being sought to be conveyed to his G7 partners by Prime Minister Kishida. In the words of Prime Minister Modi, this is “not an era of war”. Backing an immediate cease-fire in Ukraine would be the best gift that the G7 could give to a world that many believe to be on the edge of a free fall into catastrophe.

G7 needs to ensure a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire

GHQ Rawalpindi has no good options on Imran (The Sunday Guardian)

 

If Imran once again becomes an instrument of the generals, Pakistanis are unlikely to follow him, which is what makes any softening of Imran’s stand unlikely.

If ever any additional proof was needed that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif serves at the pleasure not of the people of Pakistan but of the star officers of GHQ Rawalpindi, it was provided in his nervous press appearance on 12 May. In a somewhat tremulous voice, the younger of the Sharif brothers appealed to the public to turn away from Imran because his supporters had “attacked the military”. There had been attacks and even torching (Sri Lanka style) of the private homes of the Sharifs brothers, but these were minor acts of violence in comparison with what had apparently horrified the Prime Minister of Pakistan the most, which was that high-ranking officers of the Pakistan Army were attacked, including the official homes of some Corps Commanders. The Corps Commanders were the electoral college that deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1999 and installed the dismissed Chief of Army Staff ex-General Pervez Musharraf as the Chief Martial Law Administrator. The senior Sharif was serially appointed and deposed (and lastly exiled) by the Pakistan military, and this has engendered in the mind of Shehbaz Sharif a fear of the military, the emotion that made the Corps Commanders in GHQ Rawalpindi catapult him to his present job. Equally, it had been the Army generals who had chosen Imran Khan as the next Prime Minister and got him installed in August 2018, only to turf him out in April 2022. The generals had by then made the Pakistan Army an auxiliary of the PLA, but were anxious to protect their assets and relatives located in Europe and in the US. They had calculated that Imran Khan, who had a long list of admirers in those parts of the world (not to mention in India), would be able to camouflage the sellout of the military to the CCP and once again prise open the cornucopia of benefits that western countries, the US in particular, had once showered on GHQ Rawalpindi. Unfortunately, perhaps because of age or because wiser counsel had begun to prevail in Washington and Berlin, the flow of assistance from both sides of the Atlantic to Pakistan’s uniformed services failed to approach past levels of abundance. A decision was taken by the generals (the admirals and air marshals being of less consequence in military headquarters) to toss out Imran and bring in the younger Sharif, who was a full-blooded Punjabi and more importantly, had in the course of amassing his fortune, acquired as a by-product a host of legal vulnerabilities that made him the acquiescent Prime Minister that the generals sought.
Unlike the Zardaris and the Sharifs, Imran Khan Niazi does not come from a family whose members have become billionaires as a consequence of growing their businesses under the patronage of those that count in Pakistan, the uniformed services and the religious zealots. The deposed Prime Minister did not vanish into the shadows and shortly thereafter appeared at the doors of the generals begging to be given a second chance in the manner that some of his predecessors had done Rather than wasting time on puppets, he went after the masters themselves, directing his ire at the military. Earlier, both Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif while in power had challenged the military hierarchy by seeking to install puppets of their own at the apex of the Pakistan Army. The first was executed with help from a compliant judiciary, while the other was sent into exile. Imran Khan has challenged the military not while he was in high office but after having been removed from it. He has stripped away the camouflage netting of the country’s civilian interface and exposed the involvement of the generals in his overthrow and subsequent harassment through multiple cases filed against him. And rather than lose public support as a consequence, Imran has picked up much more backing from the people of Pakistan than he had ever enjoyed earlier. Finally, it would appear, even in the Punjab province the people of Pakistan understand that they have been taken for a ride by the generals. That they have been victims of a confidence trick designed to keep them in poverty, religious fanaticism and illiteracy by an army leadership that had long made a career out of serving as a mercenary force, initially for the US and later on, to China. Throughout the 21st century, Chinese Communist Party functionaries have visited Pakistan in much the way that US servicemen used to visit the Philippines in the years prior to World War II, as overlords. They have provided generous assistance to GHQ Rawalpindi in the latter’s efforts to inflict a thousand cuts on India. At the same time, the men in khaki have covered up the reality of their parasitical existence by pointing to an imaginary threat from India as the reason why the military should be allowed to reign supreme over Pakistan while itself functioning under its Liege Lord, the CCP.
If the National Accountability Bureau of Pakistan were serious about accountability for the many charges that have been flung in the direction of Imran Khan Niazi, they would have arrested most of the higher ranks of the Pakistan Army as well as civilian officials, not to mention politicians. When those who have swindled hundreds of billions of dollars accuse Imran of illegally benefitting from much smaller sums, such accusations carry little credibility in the public mind. GHQ Rawalpindi is as frightened of holding fresh elections as are the Sharif brothers or the Zardaris. They can of course be sure that the men in khaki can assure them a comfortable victory when the ballot boxes are emptied, but are aware that this time around, the public reaction will be what it was when Bilawal Zardari’s grandfather Z.A. Bhutto rigged the 1977 polls and ignited a furious public reaction that gave cover to General Zia to depose and later on hang him. This time around, the cry of the public is that the generals themselves be punished for what they have done to the future of Pakistan. If Imran reverses his stance and once again becomes an instrument of the generals, the people of Pakistan are unlikely to follow him in such a betrayal, which is what makes any softening of Imran’s stand unlikely. Will he go the way of Benazir Bhutto and die in an explosion or through a bullet? Will he be locked up and the key thrown away in the hope that he loses his spine? None of the available options are without grave risks for the generals. As for the Chinese, the reality is that Imran Khan Niazi would not have been thrown out of power unless Beijing had given the nod to GHQ Rawalpindi. This is a truth that the most popular, the most endangered, the most dangerous, politician in Pakistan must be mulling over.

GHQ Rawalpindi has no good options on Imran

President Biden, catch up on reality (The Sunday Guardian)

 

The day Xi Jinping believes that there will not be a proportionate and kinetic response from the US, and Japan, to an armed attack on Taiwan, an invasion would be imminent.

TINA, “There is no alternative”. This is the conviction that has underpinned much of US policy and action over several years. After Operation Desert Storm was successfully concluded against Saddam Hussein in 1991, President George H.W. Bush encouraged Kurds and Shias in particular to revolt against the weakened Iraqi dictator, only to stand by and do nothing when Saddam Hussein brutally extinguished such sparks of resistance. Indeed, the Bush I administration helpfully withdrew its “No Fly Zone” across Northern Iraq so as to enable the sending of helicopters by Saddam to kill Kurdish villagers. The trusting Kurds were slaughtered from the air, including in major population centres, without a twitch from the White House. Those US officials who had directly prompted the Kurds in particular to challenge Saddam broke off contact from those who were being chopped to pieces because they had believed in the promises of US support freely handed out after Desert Storm. Despite such a betrayal, it was again the Kurds whose ground forces were instrumental in using US logistical help to defeat the ISIS in Syria and Iraq by 2014
President Trump rewarded this ally in the Global War on Terror by handing over control of Kurdish territory in 2019 to the very leader who had for long openly called for the extinguishing of the same Kurdish groups that had, with US help, battled and bested ISIS. A public record of the dealings between Turkish intelligence and ISIS has yet to emerge that may explain why the most deadly foes of Daesh were repeatedly labelled as “terrorists” by Erdogan. But such a display of US unreliability as an ally was eclipsed by what President Biden did in 2021. Without a twinge of conscience, Biden abandoned to their sworn enemies hundreds of thousands of Afghans who had assisted US forces since 2001 in dealing with the Taliban. Western media routinely interviews Taliban officials and tosses queries at them, the answer to which is obvious to the whole world (such as whether the present rulers of Afghanistan have no interest in educating women). At the same time, western journalists in Afghanistan do not find the time to investigate the hundreds of families where the Taliban has executed individuals named in the lists of Afghans who cooperated with the US during 2001-14. Lists that were handed over to the Taliban by US authorities in 2021 ostensibly to protect them, but in effect, to seal their doom at the hands of a foe that neither forgets nor forgives .
Given such a record, it comes as no surprise that fewer and fewer policymakers in those parts of Asia most threatened by PRC expansionism place much trust in promises handed out by the White House of providing backing against that threat. India and Taiwan are two countries that are on the receiving end of PLA aggression. In India, land and cyber space has been sought to be taken over, while in the case of Taiwan, aggression routinely takes place against that island nation’s air, sea and cyber space, coupled with almost daily threats from some CCP outlet or the other of an impending land assault. No less a personage than Morris Chang, the founder of TSMC, the world’s leading maker of computer chips, said in a public meeting in Taiwan on 16 March that the US does not consider Taiwan to be a friend where “friendshoring” is concerned. Rather than seeking to decouple from China, the US President has said that what he seeks is not decoupling (from China) but “de-risking”. Add that to the many comments expressed in public and private by US officials of the “risks” in investing and operating in Taiwan, and it will be clear that the present US administration is reacting in the way Jawaharlal Nehru did when told of the extent of the Chinese advance in the Northeast, that his heart “went out to the people” of the region but not it his military aircraft and fresh tanks and artillery. The day Xi Jinping believes that there will not be a proportionate and kinetic response from the US (and therefore Japan) to an armed attack on Taiwan, an invasion would be imminent. And the longer and more deadly the proxy war between Russia and Ukraine becomes, the greater will be the chance of that day arriving. Ukraine has been given free of cost more weapons and other military assistance during the past fifteen months than the weapons that Taiwan has been sold by the US during the past fifteen years. Not only has the country that is essential to the defence of the Indo-Pacific been sold rather than gifted weapons in the manner Ukraine has, but not just the quantity but the quality of such equipment is vastly inferior to that handed over to the Kiev regime. A man is judged not by words but by deeds. Why Taiwan matters so little in substantive action (as distinct from words) to Joe Biden and to his other partners in NATO, and Ukraine so much more is a question that folks in Asia, Africa and South America believe has an obvious answer., although hopefully they are wrong They point to divergence in ethnicity between Taiwan and Ukraine combined with what they regard as a palpable fear of China. If there is to be a deterrent in the form of security assistance to the target countries facing Xi’s expansionism, this has to be provided now and not when it is too late to prevent the PLA from launching a comprehensive assault on targets such as India, Vietnam, the Philippines or Taiwan. It’s Cold War 2.0, President Biden, Cold War 1.0 got over in 1991. Catch up on reality before it is too late.

President Biden, catch up on reality

Elite capture behind the chaos in Sudan (The Sunday Guardian)

 

The competing power elites have long made money, and expect to make more with the prolonging of the conflict.

In days past, colonialism paraded in plain sight. Even then, elites were groomed to take on the responsibilities that those belonging to the colonising country did not want to themselves do. The flag of the colonising country and the emblems of its authority were everywhere, reminding local populations which country it was that they had been colonised by. While textbooks in those parts of the world that were the most proficient in capturing other countries and ruling them talk of how civilisation and other attributes considered desirable were brought over to the countries that were colonised, the reality was that it was the hunger, the greed, for securing control of human and other resources that was behind the colonial project. Elites that were favoured (or in many situations expressly created) to act as the accomplices of the colonisers saw to it that the country that ruled over them was able to transfer resources of multiple kinds from the colonised to the colonising country. Even as the countries that were conquered saw their populations descend into hellish conditions, the conquerors witnessed a renaissance of the arts and the clambering up from poverty to relative prosperity of several citizens. The colonies provided a destination to which young people could go and build their careers. Large fortunes were made in inverse proportion to the suffering of those enslaved in that process. As for the elites whose task it was to facilitate such exploitation, their riches grew as well, but not to a level that could pose a challenge to enterprises in the colonising power. The riches came out of serving as middlemen funnelling in human and other resources for the benefit of the conquering power. All that was of course in the big, bad past. Fast forward to the present, only to discover that “the more things change, the more they remain the same”. There are parts of the world where populations have been kept away from quality education and occupation, where the bulk of the population is on the borders of subsistence and focused obsessively only on survival, Interestingly, these are often the very parts that have plentiful mineral and other natural resources, the benefit of which remains either unexploited or unavailable to the vast majority of the local citizenry.
Keeping hopes alive in Ukraine that the central government may be able to get back the territory that was lost to it in 2014 and afterwards will not result in such an outcome, although it does have the consequence of the country being enmeshed in a war that appears to be unwinnable unless one of two miracles takes place. Either NATO enters the war directly on the side of the Kiev regime, or the Russian Federation falls apart and its soldiers flee the territory of Ukraine in the manner that Soviet troops fled Afghanistan in 1988 or US forces abandoned their weapons and positions in 2021. This was done by President Biden for much the same reason that his predecessor had consented to a surrender agreement at Doha the previous year, which was to ensure his re-election. The complete US pullout from Afghanistan was the first indication that Joe Biden had made up his mind to be a two-term President, defying age and other issues. In the case of Afghanistan, it was the Afghan people, especially moderates and women, who have suffered as a consequence of the Trump-Biden pullout. In Ukraine, citizens in the US are themselves feeling the aftershocks of the turbocharging of the war against Russia by Biden. The US President joined his European counterparts in misreading the effects of their flooding of weapons into Ukraine and imposing sanctions that have caused much of the non-Atlanticist world to re-examine their traditional policy of seeing the US dollar as a safe asset to buy and keep. The US dollar, the euro, the British pound and the Swiss franc are safe only as long as the governments controlling these currencies act sensibly. Confiscatory sanctions and the disappearance of the treasure troves of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and many other targets of western kinetic action have convinced many outside the West that trusting in these countries or their currencies is the mark of a fool. It is akin to the trust of Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi in the promises of the US and its European allies that they would be safe from retaliation once they handed over their WMD, when in fact, it was that very decision which later cost them their lives, as it almost did that of Bashar Assad, once he let go of his small stockpile of chemical weapons. As trust gets lost in western currencies, the desire to hold gold becomes more pronounced. And it is because parts of Sudan are awash in gold deposits and other minerals that Russia (with China operating behind Moscow’s shadow) is backing the Rapid Action Force in Sudan against the regular army. Russia and China do not want that gold to go to countries that may be at war with the duo in a few years’ time, and are making sure that the more West-friendly Sudanese military government is on the receiving end of the attacks of the other side. As in Ukraine, as in so many other countries that are being torn apart by more powerful geopolitical rivals assisting rival sides, the natural riches of Sudan are what is causing an intensification of the ongoing contest between two generals (each in a different geopolitical camp) to gain control of the entire country.
As in the other countries ravaged by such proxy battles, all but a few of the Sudanese people will be the losers in this conflict. The competing power elites have long made money, and expect to make more with the prolonging of the conflict. Peace clearly does not generate the profits that accrue in wartime. Check with the oil producers and weapons manufacturers in the US, who will be expected by the backers of a second term for President Biden to make sure that his electoral coffers overflow by the time the Presidential polls come by.

Elite capture behind the chaos in Sudan

Caste by birth should not spread but disappear (The Sunday Guardian)

 

It is a matter of surprise that some born into faiths whose scriptures make no mention of caste are seeking to bring caste into their theologies.

The caste system now still practised in India differs from the practices that were followed in the ancient past. In essence, the caste system divides society into four equally important branches of activity. The dissemination of knowledge and the conduct of rituals in places of worship was held to be the responsibility of Brahmins. The acquiring of wealth through individual enterprise was the dominion of the Vaisyas, while the protection of the state and its people was the duty of the Kshatriyas. Other work was the province of the Shudras. It was not at birth that caste identity had been formed, no matter who the parents were, or the family that a child was born into. Caste denotes occupation and expertise. It is illogical therefore to affix caste at birth. After all, simply because a child is born to a doctor or an engineer couple does not endow the infant with the skills needed in those professions. It is only later that skills are picked up and mastered. While in many cases, a child would in later years follow the profession of his or her parents, that was not necessarily the case. As the tradition set in ancient India went, the child of a Shudra could in the course of years, evolve into a practitioner of medicine or engineering, or get immersed in the acquisition and expansion of knowledge, including those relating to places of worship. In Kerala, the present writer, who edited a mass circulation newspaper at the time, was among the protagonists who ensured that an academy of priesthood was set up. Irrespective of birth, young minds could study in the academy and master spiritual philosophy and rituals, ultimately becoming priests in a temple. It was in Kerala that Sri Narayana Guru was born. The Guru consecrated a Shiva temple but met with opposition from hereditary priests, who said that they alone had the right to consecrate temples. Sri Narayana Guru smiled and replied that they were welcome to go to any temple they wished, and that he would be satisfied with those who came and prayed at the temple consecrated by him. Initially, almost all the worshippers were from the “backward class” Ezhava community that the Guru was born into, but soon afterwards, all manner of devotees began visiting the temple consecrated by him. In ancient times, before the mist of wars and conquests clouded the belief systems and practices that had been in vogue for millennia, the Guru would have instantly been accepted as a Brahmin, given the philosophical and priestly qualities he acquired.
Judged not by the accidental yardstick of birth but the standard of subsequent attainment, there is no doubt that one of the founding fathers of the Republic, Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, was a scholar from an early age, a fact that his writings subsequently confirmed. Consequently, he too could be said to acquire the characteristics of the scholar caste. Subsequently, he became a fighter for causes dear to his heart and mind, thereby moving into the fighter caste whose duty is to protect our country and its citizens. It remains a matter of regret in many that Dr Ambedkar was not chosen as the first Prime Minister of India, for had he been given that responsibility, the country would have evolved in a manner very different from the way it did. Caste ought not to come from birth but from experience and study. Unfortunately, the notion of caste by birth within a particular faith has become embedded in our society, with as yet no sign of the actual system staging a revival. In a context where caste by birth needs to be replaced by caste through learning and experience, it is a matter of surprise that some born into faiths whose scriptures make no mention of caste are seeking to bring caste into their theologies. Those who seek to bring hierarchy by birth into theologies that acknowledge all humanity to be born equal in merit need to ask themselves whether they are being true to the Founders and the Revealers of such faiths by seeking to bring into them a concept alien to the foundational principles of such faiths. The doctrines of Sanatan Dharma, the Bible and the Quran teach about the equality of humankind. As was said during a period of the history of India that appears to have been forgotten, Janmana Jayate Shudra, Karmana Jayate Bahuda. Each is born into the same “caste”, and only subsequently moves on to another. It is said that man and woman do not live by bread alone, so it could be affirmed that society cannot function through just one, any one, of the four castes. Each is needed, each is equal in importance to the others. The “caste” (profession) of an individual, if defined solely by the accident of birth, is akin to the children of a doctor being assumed to be doctors, irrespective of whether they are trained and proficient in that discipline or not. Rather than the doctrine of caste by birth being spread to other faiths, what is needed in the faith where caste still remains is to return to the system of affixing an individual’s caste through his or her learning and experience.

Caste by birth should not spread but disappear

A Karnataka win is key to Rahul’s 2024 dreams (The Sunday Guardian)

 

A BJP defeat in Karnataka would echo around the world, for the state is the southern fortress of the BJP, and losing it would convey an impression of vulnerability in 2024.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee was a much loved Prime Minister, and overall growth rates during his tenure were good. Even the Opposition was resigned to another five years of the NDA government. And then, in 2004 the voting figures resulted in a Congress-led coalition forming the Union Government. As things stand, it seems an impossibility for the BJP led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to be bested in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, but memories of 2004 are driving Rahul’s efforts at an encore through a united front against the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. A still disunited Opposition is raising their poll planks of economic hardship and Chinese belligerence on the border. In order to wipe away memories of the corruption associated with past governments, the Congress Party in particular has been trying to tar the BJP with the same charge of corruption that was so successfully brought against the UPA in 2014. Congress rule implies that once again it will be the writ of 10 Janpath that prevails in South Block. After all, in effect the Congress high command comprises just Sonia Gandhi, Rahul and Priyanka, although their hold has been weakened by the post-2014 lack of access to power at the Centre. In Rajasthan, most Congress MLAs had refused to obey the apparent desire of the party high command to replace Gehlot with Sachin Pilot. The Sonia-Rahul-Priyanka triumvirate had then accepted that if nominated Chief Minister, Pilot would lack the numbers needed to get anywhere near a majority within the state Congress Legislature Party. However, the soft corner that Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka have for Pilot remains, which is why he has once again been tacitly permitted to rebel against Gehlot, despite the harm that such a reopening of wounds not yet healed would do to the party’s prospects for a repeat victory in Rajasthan.
The focus of the triumvirate is less on Jaipur than on Bangalore. Inserting himself into a position of leadership over the other parties opposed to the BJP is a priority for Rahul Gandhi. In such a task, defeating the BJP in next month’s Assembly polls in Karnataka is essential. The calculation is that a victory in Karnataka would diminish the view within anti-BJP voters in several states that a vote for the Congress would be wasted, as it was considered too weak in all but a very few states to seriously challenge the BJP. A win in Karnataka, those around the triumvirate believe, would once again tempt the minorities into the Congress basket and away from the attraction of regional or sectarian parties.
After Gehlot’s “closet revolt”, were the Congress to secure a majority in Karnataka, there is speculation that AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge may become the Chief Minister of Karnataka, leaving Siddaramaiah to decide whether he should serve under Kharge or remain outside what A.K. Antony calls “the cool shades of power”. D.K. Shivakumar, who heads the state unit of the Congress, has already gone on record that he would be happy to serve under Kharge. Rather than say that a shift by him from central to state politics was out of the question, Kharge has remained silent, as has the Congress high command. In a party which Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka dominate, being the AICC president is to have responsibility without power. Meanwhile, although the hold of Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains strong over the national electorate, the Opposition is calculating that economic conditions will worsen as the Lok Sabha elections approach, and that the dagger thrusts from China on the border would multiply. In the meantime, they plan to intensify their efforts at pinning corruption charges on the BJP leadership.
Whether corruption charges gain traction or the economy and the China factor follow the dismal trajectory mapped out by the Opposition, only the future will tell. Rahul, Mamata and Kejriwal are each looking to the economic situation to unlock votes for themselves. In Karnataka, the BJP leadership gave an unexpected promotion to Basavaraj Bommai, and the present Chief Minister’s political fortunes depend on what voters decide in a month. A BJP defeat in Karnataka would echo around the world, for the state is the southern fortress of the BJP, and losing it would convey an impression of vulnerability in 2024. The same international newspapers and television channels that for years have claimed that “democracy is dead” in India will forget having ever said so, and celebrate the defeat of the BJP in its southern citadel as a triumph of the very same democracy that they have so often declared to be extinct. A Congress victory in Karnataka would assist Rahul Gandhi in his efforts at overtaking Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal as the acknowledged leader of an anti-BJP opposition alliance during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Not so much for the Prime Minister, but for the ex-MP from Kalpetta, a lot rides on the May 2023 Karnataka Assembly results. Rahul clearly shares the view of Jairam Ramesh that the Congress Party ought to be the leader of the opposition alliance, and is looking to a win in Karnataka to make the leaders of other anti-BJP parties accept that logic. Were he to face a disaster in the form of a BJP victory in Karnataka, or a googly in the shape of the AAP seat tally nearing double digits, Rahul’s quest for leadership of the opposition space may continue to be an impossible

A Karnataka win is key to Rahul’s 2024 dreams

Not prosecution but persecution of Trump (The Sunday Guardian)

 

Before District Attorney Bragg stepped into the frame, it would have been easier for a competitor to defeat Trump.

New York has slipped several notches down the safety ladder since Rudy Giuliani was Mayor during 1994-2001. Although a well-regarded former police officer is now holding Giuliani’s old job, robberies and murders have shot up in New York despite his efforts. New York, once an iconic city, is sliding to the depths reached by Los Angeles, a city that has become unlivable for those not wealthy. Indeed, New York is closing in on the title of the most crime-prone metropolis in the US, if the many crimes that are by custom ignored by the police get added on to the tally. Given such a situation, it would have been reasonable to assume that District Attorney (DA) Alvin Bragg should have been spending much time on the waves of crime that are visible in New York, but the DA’s attention is instead on former President Donald J. Trump. He has thrown almost three dozen indictments against Trump. One, details of which was leaked with the ferocity of a thunderstorm, was a payment made to an adult movie star to remain silent about her relationship with Trump during the 2016 Presidential election. Incidentally, President Biden, is still seething that Hillary Clinton lost the sprint to the Oval Office to Trump, an individual both consider to be a buffoon. For this, Biden pinned the responsibility on Vladimir Putin, and in 2022, he finally got what he thought was a chance to humiliate the Russian leader. With the same emotionalism and lack of foresight that made President George W. Bush go after “Sad-Dam” Hussein in Iraq in 2003, Biden has turbocharged NATO’s military offensive against Putin, especially since the President of the Russian Federation launched a war against Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
Only the most gullible would believe that Putin kept information about his impending attack from Xi Jinping when the two embraced each other in Beijing just days before the Russian attack began. That list seemingly includes many of the leaders of Europe, who have been queuing up since the war started to implore Xi to get Putin to reverse course. This when the CCP supremo is the major, some would say the only, beneficiary of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The latest pair of European leaders to make the pilgrimage to Beijing for the honour of the privilege of being ushered into the presence of Xi were Emmanuel Macron and Ursula von der Leyen. It had been assumed within the councils of NATO that the economic havoc caused by the prolonging of the Ukraine war would affect not the West but only the poorer countries, as also Russia itself. Instead, the way the war has developed has also hit consumers in the US and Europe.
Interestingly, China is visibly ensuring that Russia continues to be able to fight a long war that drains NATO of weapons, armaments the alliance may need in a future conflict in the Indo-Pacific. During World War II, the US ensured that the USSR was enabled to fight on until the German Wehrmacht got drained and defeated. Now China is assisting Russia to continue the war until NATO gets exhausted. This would give the PLA the respite it needs to launch its plan of taking control of Taiwan. Given that Biden is paying vastly more attention to Ukraine than he is to Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Libya and the South China Sea put together, the calculation within the CMC is that the point when NATO is exhausted as a consequence of the Russia-Ukraine war will come during the third term of CCP General Secretary Xi, thereby enabling him to forcibly occupy Taiwan.
District Attorney Bragg’s team seems to have leaked information copiously about Trump and Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress. Given the conservative nature of several Republicans, it may have been assumed by Democrats that a financial transaction of the sort that the 45th President’s then lawyer Michael Cohen had with Stormy Daniels may turn several voters away from Trump and into the Biden camp. The problem behind such reasoning is that almost nobody in Trump’s support base believes their hero to be anything other than what he has openly been all his adult life, a playboy. The Stormy Daniels indictment has instead ensured that Trump has gained on his competitors. As the Republican nominee, Trump may even choose a feisty lady of colour as his Vice-Presidential candidate, such as Nikki Haley. The DA’s indictment has forced all his Republican competitors to revert to their pre-2021 stance of abasing themselves before Trump, a list that includes a man Trump’s backers had marked out for the hangman’s noose on 6 January 2021, Mike Pence. Over the decades, Trump had evaded prosecution for the many actions that his subordinates carried out, and it is improbable that Bragg would be able to prove in court the felony charges that he has flung at Trump . Even if the ex-President were to be sent to prison for a while on charges that a neutral jury would be hard put to unanimously endorse beyond reasonable doubt, such travail could assure Trump’s victory in the 2024 Presidential polls. Meanwhile, his appeals would wend their way through a legal system that has been transformed in its chemistry during his four years in the White House. Before District Attorney Bragg stepped into the frame, it would have been easier for a competitor to defeat Trump. But that was before the halo of victimhood descended atop his scowling countenance.

Not prosecution but persecution of Trump

India needs greater VVIP accountability, not less (The Sunday Guardian)

 

How many colonial-era laws will the present critics of such laws discard if they return to high office, when in the past, they held on to each such law and used (or rather, misused) them with zest?

Pratap Bhanu Mehta is a greatly respected thinker. He has (in the Indian Express) penned an op ed to the effect that there are traces of vindictiveness within the high echelons of the BJP. An example cited is the manner in which the colonial-era law relating to criminal defamation was used by a little-known complainant to allege that an entire backward caste community was defamed by a remark made by Rahul Gandhi. The Congress leader’s subsequent ouster from Parliament has come in handy for foes of Prime Minister Modi, as they have been touring the world warning that democracy is being made extinct in India. Their argument is that the Prime Minister, assisted by his closest associates, has systematically drained the governance system in India of the effectiveness of the checks and balances designed within the constitutional framework to ensure the absence of authoritarian tendencies within the executive branch. That the BJP has lost several state Assembly elections since 2014 and is looking at an uphill Assembly contest in the party’s southern citadel of Karnataka seem at odds with the picturisation of a rampaging ruling party that subdues all other parties by whatever means that comes to hand.
The maximum sentence the Surat court passed on the criminal defamation suit brought against Rahul Gandhi was a surprise. The complainant portrayed remarks made about the likes of Nirav Modi and Lalit Modi as an attack on OBCs, which implies that both are from that politically consequential segment of Indian society. Neither Lalit nor Nirav Modi are OBCs. For another, such complaints fail to take account of the fact that parliamentary democracy as a process is usually noisy, sometimes even rising to the level of cacophony, yet is infinitely preferable to the absence of jousting narratives in an authoritarian state. Given the Surat precedent, a blizzard of similar cases can be expected against a multitude of politicians, including several in the BJP.
Although triggered by a court verdict that in turn was based on the laws of the land (much of which continues to date back to the British era), Rahul Gandhi’s removal from the rolls of the Lok Sabha has only added abundant fuel to the multiplying number of claims being made that India is no longer a democracy. The most affected by the perception of such an extreme view of the state of Indian democracy is Narendra Modi himself. Despite this being the case, it has been assumed without any substantiation that the events preceding the removal of Rahul from the Lok Sabha’s list of MPs were choreographed by the Prime Minister himself. It is illogical to place responsibility for the Surat complaint and its after-effects on the shoulders of the very individual who is at the greatest risk of reputational damage from the disqualification of Rahul Gandhi. It has become the fashion for critics of Modi to have everything that goes right in India pass unmentioned by them, but to assert that anything going wrong is because of PM Modi. All the blame for problems real and imagined are pinned on a single individual. The Prime Ministers of the UK or India, or the President of the US, does not have the overarching power within a country that a genuinely authoritarian leader such as CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping has. India is a democracy that has numerous elected authorities, many competing against and opposing the BJP itself. Witness the astringent manner being resorted to by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal when he talks about PM Modi. Which is the authoritarian state where such public criticisms are a commonplace against the Head of Government? Calling India and its contentious, clamorous democracy “fascist” is to be unfair to the people of our country, who have kept the flame of democracy alight for 75 years and counting.
Shakespeare asked “What’s in a name?” According to those objecting to his remarks, the implication made by Rahul Gandhi was that those having a particular surname shared the same proven traits (including presumably the ability to charm bank managers into handing over unsecured loans worth hundreds of crores of rupees) of Nirav Modi and Lalit Modi. There may be a few citizens in India having “Gandhi” as a surname, and yet whose moral character may be the opposite of the saintly example set by the Mahatma. Would it be correct to assume that because of his surname, Rahul Gandhi exhibits the same behavioral patterns as any other individual who has the same surname? Obviously not. Rahul’s quip about the Modi surname must have caused some of the members of his own party to wince.
There is the charge of “persecution of political opponents” that is repeatedly levied against PM Modi. Nine years after Modi became PM, the only charge of criminal conduct brought against Rahul related to him and his mother acquiring controlling shares in the company owning the National Herald. And this charge was initiated not by the Government of India but by Subramanian Swamy, who had nothing to do with the BJP when he first brought the National Herald matter to court. Whether it be in the case of the National Herald matter or in the very few cases lodged by the present government against VVIPs who held prominent governmental positions during the UPA period, these have not even been fast-tracked. The cases linger on and on, in the way usual in this country. Several matters that took place during 2004-14, such as manipulations in price of essential commodities and equity stocks, or in the running and ruining of several PSUs, have yet to witness punishment of the actual VVIP perpetrators. These were those who during the UPA era bore responsibility for departments that exhibited several examples of misgovernance. During the UPA decade, among many other matters of concern, there was the data co-location scam in the NSE, the sudden death of reports of petroleum discoveries in Indian coastal waters, and the way in which Air India and other PSUs became basket cases. Yet who are the UPA-era VVIPs directly or indirectly responsible for such situations that have been punished for such actions? None. A strange definition of “vindictiveness”, indeed.
This may come as a surprise to the New York Times, the Manchester Guardian or other media outlets that claim that all was brightness in India until 2014 but became dark thereafter, but there are many among Modi’s admirers who believe not that the Prime Minister has been excessively harsh with his principal political opponents, but who instead wish that the broomstick of accountability be wielded more vigorously by him. Those who have bulldozed into the dust and dirt of poverty and death countless citizens through wilful misfeasance, those who have terrorized many for decades through goons and guns, need to be held to account, and watch their ill-gotten gains vanish in a cloud of bulldozer-created dust. Their ill-gotten constructions need to either be transferred to public use or face the consequences of the breaking of the law by their owners.
How many colonial-era laws will the present critics of such laws discard if they return to high office, when in the past, they held on to each such law and used (or rather, misused) them with zest?

India needs greater VVIP accountability, not less

PM Modi is fashioning a post-colonial India (The Sunday Guardian)

 

Criminal defamation ought to be removed from the statute books forthwith, and hopefully Prime Minister Narendra Modi will get this done in his drive to cleanse the IPC and the Criminal Code of colonial-era practices.

The British, being colonial masters who were engaged in the suppression of the population, left behind several laws that have no place in the 21st century, nor indeed in any country where the government is elected by the people. In matters relating to industry, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao removed some of the most irksome regressive laws, such as the IDRA regulations providing for the prosecution of officials in a company, were that entity to function efficiently and in the process, produce beyond its government-mandated capacity. A major culling of colonial era laws has taken place only since Narendra Modi took charge as Prime Minister in 2014. So entrenched is the opposition to such removal of colonial laws within the political and bureaucratic structures that the process has encountered roadblock upon roadblock, each needing to be painstakingly removed. There are several Victorian individuals in India, and among them was a group from a Karnataka town. A week ago, they disrupted and stopped a group of ladies from holding a get-together in a hotel in Doddapete, where there would have been dancing accompanied by disco music. Clearly, having a good time was not saintly. It must be admitted that to those not aficionados of disco music, the decibel level is unpleasantly high. Perhaps a regulation needs to be put in place that permits disco music and dancing to take place only in soundproof portals, as otherwise the noise is less than bearable to those not enjoying the fun. However, was the holding of such an event reason enough to try and use the bludgeon of the law to stop it and seek to shame the ladies who were participating in behaviour that the Bajrang Dal regards as inadmissible? With such moral policing spreading in Karnataka, securing investment from outside or inside the country would get difficult. Fortunately, the local Superintendent of Police did not see anything heinous in a get-together organised by the ladies, and refused to book either them or the hotel management. Unfortunately, far too many SPs act differently, and who therefore wield the lash of colonial-era laws and regulations with zest.
Since his party was ousted from power in 2014, Rahul Gandhi has been talking in locations across continents about the effects of colonial era laws in India, but during the UPA period, he did nothing to protect citizens from them. Now he has been found guilty by a court for defamation relating to a surname. His comments were indeed in bad taste, but is the concept of criminal defamation justified in a democracy? Had some individuals having the same surname that Rahul seems intensely to dislike brought forward a suit of civil defamation and asked for Rahul to pay a fixed sum in compensation to persons with that surname, that may have been a better course to adopt than the criminal route. As this columnist has been pointing out for years, criminal defamation ought to be removed from the statute books forthwith, and hopefully Prime Minister Narendra Modi will get this done in his drive to cleanse the criminal code of colonial-era practices. Talking about the police, there are more than a few former members of the Indian Police Service in the BJP, and many of them have had distinguished careers. The point about recruiting an IPS or IAS retired official into a national political party was to ensure that the vision even of its state leaders remains centred around national needs. So far as the BJP is concerned, securing a third term for Prime Minister Modi in 2024 is essential if the mission he began in 2014 is to be accomplished. In every state, those in the BJP placed in charge of state units need to act in accordance with what is needed in terms of not just that state but the entire country. It was therefore a surprise when a former IPS officer, Tamil Nadu BJP chief K. Annamalai, has been saying that he would quit his post were the BJP to not go solo in next year’s Lok Sabha polls. In particular, he was opposed to an alliance with the AIADMK. Once such in-house criticism of an allied party becomes public, it harms relations between that party and the BJP. Given that the DMK under Chief Minister Stalin is steadfast in his support for the Congress Party, the only significant alliance that the BJP has access to in Tamil Nadu is with the AIADMK. Does BJP state president Annamalai believe that the BJP would be able to secure more seats in the Lok Sabha polls solo? If so, his view of the situation in the state is different from that of many others. In 2004, the BJP lost to the Congress party because both its southern allies, the Telugu Desam and the AIADMK were trounced in the Lok Sabha polls. Given the drift of the public mood in Andhra Pradesh, it seems likely that the TDP would this time around get a fair number of seats in 2024 if allied to the BJP. The BJP leadership will need to take a hard look at what is on offer by prospective allies, for in Andhra Pradesh—unlike in Telangana, where going solo may be a better option—an alliance with one of the two principal regional parties in that state is essential. Every Lok Sabha seat will count in the next Lok Sabha, and state leaders in the BJP need to factor in that reality while discussing options, especially in a manner that becomes public. While Annamalai is justifiably proud of being selected as an IPS officer, he needs to remember that the IPS post-Independence is not expected to behave in the same way as they did while serving a foreign power.
TN BJP chief Annamalai needs to win over his team through his behaviour, and not rely on the fact that he was once in uniform. Next, he needs to understand the national ground realities of the 2024 contest, and frame his responses to possible alliances accordingly. Abusing a friendly party in public weakens the bond with that party and affects both the BJP and the other party at the hustings, as numerous elections have shown. PM Narendra Modi is seeking to fashion a post-colonial India. Every institution, every individual, concerned with governance needs to help rather than hinder this super-heavy task.

PM Modi is fashioning a post-colonial India

Modi and Kishida must supercharge India-Japan ties (The Sunday Guardian)

 

Few remember that in 1868, once the reforms consequent to the Meiji Restoration got under way, India was the largest source of raw materials to Japan.

When Fumio Kishida took over as the Prime Minister of Japan in 2021, a widespread perception both in Japan and elsewhere was that he was much less aware of the present-day threats facing Japan than was his predecessor, Shinzo Abe. Since then, Kishida has shown through many of his actions that he too is focused on the manner in which the PRC under CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping is leveraging the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in order to wrest concessions from several countries while threatening others. Abe made good relations with India a high priority, and gave precedence to the Indo-Pacific rather than to the primary theatre of the 20th century, the Atlantic. While mostly going along with his western partners in the way they have sought to use Ukraine in their longstanding quest to weaken Russia, Kishida has continued with the Sakhalin 1 project, in which Japanese and Indian companies are partnering with each other. As a consequence, not only is Japan getting the benefit of oil from the project, but Tokyo refused to join in the initial chorus of loud disapproval that emanated from Washington, London and Berlin in particular (not to mention Kiev) at India’s realistic stance that a cutting off of purchases from a country that comprises half of the land area of the Eurasian continent was an exercise in self-harm. In this, Japan is different from Taiwan and South Korea, both being countries that have joined with Germany and other NATO powers in seeking a complete cutoff of purchases from Russia. It was clear to the Japanese that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was acting in the national self-interest by ramping up rather than shutting down oil imports from the Russian Federation since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war in early 2022. The way in which western nations are dealing with the war is not just harming their economic futures, but their goodwill in the Global South in particular, no matter what the voting figures in the UN General Assembly show.
It is a sign of the times that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ostentatiously chose Beijing as the capital in which to sign a peace agreement with Iran. Had Riyadh sought to do so in Washington, policymakers in that capital of inflated egos would have made the acceptance by Iran of conditions plainly unacceptable to its government as the price for the privilege of signing the Saudi-Iranian accord in Camp David. A lot has changed since the 1990s, but it appears as though the hangover of that unipolar decade in world history is continuing in the US and in some of its Atlanticist partners. This when fewer and fewer countries regard good relations with the US in particular to be a priority, a situation caused not only by many of the self-goals made by successive Atlanticist capitals but by efforts (many very much in the open) by the Sino-Russian alliance to wean away as many countries as they can from partnering with the US and its allies. In Asia, not a small continent, only South Korea, Taiwan and Japan have adopted the NATO policy of shunning Russia, and among these three, Japan has made pragmatic exceptions such as the refusal to walk away from the Sakhalin 1 project.
India and Japan have long been partners. Few remember that in 1868, once the reforms consequent to the Meiji Restoration got under way, India was the largest source of raw materials to Japan. In 1883, there was an active shipping route from Mumbai to Kobe, while in 1915, the primary export market of Japan was India. Since Prime Minister Narasimha Rao brought in economic reforms in 1992, South Korea has far outpaced Japan in establishing commercial linkages with India, although under Prime Ministers Modi and Abe, the Japanese appeared to be catching up. Were restrictions on the use of human resources from India reduced in Japan, that country would be able to price Chinese ships in particular out of most markets. Another field where India could be helpful would be in the provision of carers for the elderly in Japan, a demographic that is rising substantially. A promising field is that of nuclear power, where both countries could collaborate in safer, cheaper alternatives to present nuclear power systems. Another is cooperation in setting up cyber defences, and in developing Artificial Intelligence in ways that could blunt the use of AI in non-conventional warfare by a power hostile to both the leading democracies of Asia. What is needed by Japan is the spirit and ambition of Shinzo Abe, and Fumio Kishida. The Japanese PM could, together with Narendra Modi, bring back India-Japan commercial relations to the level they attained a century ago, before World War II and later Cold War 1.0 blighted such progress.

Modi and Kishida must supercharge India-Japan ties

Rahul, please do not trash the India Story (The Sunday Guardian)

 

On his annual sojourns to other countries in the 21st century Anglosphere, Rahul ought not to come across as having a visible and visceral dislike not just for Prime Minister Narendra Modi but for the Republic of India itself.

This columnist confesses to a bias in favour of the two children of one of the nicest individuals he has ever encountered, Rajiv Ratan Birjees Gandhi. Before his mindspace being taken over by both the Congress Party as well as the official bureaucracy that began during 1983 and was complete by 1985, Rajiv sought to free India from a rut that dated back not just to the British period but even sooner. Among the achievements of this interlude of relative freedom from control by the politico-official machine, Rajiv sought to adopt Mani Shankar Aiyar’s plan to broadbase governance in India by strengthening the panchayat system, a move that the Mahatma would have approved of. Satyen Pitroda helped ensure that our country’s first steps towards a communications revolution took place, and there were a few other transformative moves as well. In a way, Rajiv’s backing away through the Muslim Women’s Bill from Arif Mohammad Khan’s desire that the Supreme Court verdict giving justice to Shah Bano be affirmed marked the moment when things started going sour for him. No longer was Rajiv seen as a harbinger of change, instead he was seen as having been co-opted into the pit of the status quo. The tragically shortened political and administrative career of Rajiv Gandhi, which began with another tragedy, the death of his brother Sanjay in an air crash in 1980, ought to have been the foundation of the political education of Rahul Gandhi, who is clearly the choice of Congress supremo Sonia Gandhi for the role of Prime Minister of India, to form for the family a quartet together with his great-grandfather, grandmother and father.
The advice given to Rahul seems not to include the imbibing the lessons from the trajectory of the three Nehru family Prime Ministers of India mentioned earlier. On his annual sojourns to other countries in the 21st century Anglosphere such as the UK and the US, Rahul ought not to come across as having a visible and visceral dislike not just for Prime Minister Narendra Modi but for the Republic of India itself. It is for him not just Modi who needs to change, but the whole of India. It’s always the refrain of India being in a deep moral, even existential, crisis because voters in 2014 chose the BJP led by Narendra Modi rather than the Congress led by Sonia Gandhi to rule. Even in a matter as consequential for a country that our leaders in 1947 allowed to be partitioned on the grounds of faith, Rahul appears to many to question the very meaning of the Union of India by giving the impression of believing that the model he favours for the country is that of the European Union, where independent countries have formed a loose confederation. To Rahul, present-day India appears as a dystopian hell, ruled by an all-powerful autocrat who was presumably therefore responsible even for ordering that the BJP lose 17 state elections and counting since 2014. A Prime Minister who in Rahul’s words has choked to suffocation democracy in India, such that the country has become what Italy or Spain was in the first half of the previous century, a fascist state. Certainly the BJP has overreacted in some matters, such as in its blocking of a tawdry cut and paste BBC hit job on not just Modi but the whole of India, or in the way in which punitive laws capable of being applied in myriad ways to deprive a citizen of his or her liberty continue being used by officials in the manner they have been for the past 75 years. However, India is very far from being what Rahul daily describes it to be during sojourns in countries where the well-heeled send their children to study and themselves to settle down in.
Rahul needs to get a tutorial from the maestro in the use of colonial-era penal laws, Palaniappan Chidambaram, the Home Minister who sent Anna Hazare to jail in 2011 and whose tenure, among other things, saw the wrecking of a thriving domestic exchange that had gone global, to the relief of another exchange familiar to Chidambaram that was feeling the heat of competition from the felled rival. Not to mention the energetic use during successive governments including the UPA of the very agencies that Rahul claims are being used solely to harass individuals that include Abhishek Banerjee, Lalu Yadav and others, most of whom remain unknown. Does Rahul believe that none of the HNI targets of the CBI or the ED have made a rupee more than what they get as salaries. Of course, he would be aware that some of his relatives in Italy saw massive changes in their lifestyle beginning with the 1980s although of course, this must have been a phenomenon entirely unrelated to a hugely influential relative of theirs long resident in India. Unlike Modi, who as PM has eliminated more than half of colonial era restrictive laws, the ten years of the UPA saw the frequent use of such laws without any discernible request emanating from Rahul that such laws and practices be abandoned. There definitely remain more than a few dystopian features to the post-colonial structure of governance in India, but almost all of them were around during 2004-14, the period when Rahul Gandhi had a somewhat greater influence over the workings of government than he does these days.
In 2014, and then in 2019, his family would have been delighted to see Rahul ascend to the Prime Ministership, a view of his capabilities that he does not appear to strongly disagree with. Which is probably why he is working so hard to challenge Mamata Banerjee, Arvind Kejriwal, KCR and Tejashwi Yadav in being the politician who is the most vocally dismissive of Modi’s achievements. Unlike Rahul, however, the others have not so far thrown out the baby that is their country from the bathwater that is their differences with Prime Minister Modi. In an era where India bids fair to drain away a lot of the investment flowing away from China, the verbal interventions of Rahul Gandhi seem aimed, perhaps inadvertently, to prevent tens of billions of dollars of investment needed for jobs and higher incomes from relocating from China into India, rather than going only to Vietnam, Indonesia or Thailand. Fortunately, while his audiences enjoy the repartee and the barbs so frequently flung by Rahul at not just Modi but in effect the country of which both the Prime Minister and the MP from Kalpetta are citizens, much fewer take his opinions as gospel. Many know India better, and despite (or perhaps because of) the clearly Hinduphobic hysteria spewed by the BBC, CNN, NYT or the Manchester Guardian about India, people across the globe sense that this is India’s time. Please don’t try and stop that bus, Rahul, but hop onto it. The India Story is real.

Rahul, please do not trash the India Story