Sunday Posts

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh upheld the death sentences of the five ex-soldiers in the murder case of Sheikh Mujib, the first President of the country. Mujib was assassinated , along with most of the rest of his family, in a coup on 15 Th August 1975. The coup plotters accused Mujib of various misdeeds, including nepotism, corruption, dictatorship and selling out to India. Mujib, the enormously popular leader who played a part in starting the liberation struggle of East Pakistan, which eventually become Bangladesh, clearly lost control of his country by then: The coup plotters simply marched out of the Dhaka Cantonment, surrounded his house with tanks and armoured cars and shot him, along with his wife, sons, daughters-in-laws and nephew, dead. To start with, it was a grizzly murder and needed to be punished. It was long viewed as a political act. The subsequent governments of Bangladesh actually granted amnesty to the coup leaders, including those directly involved in ...

In India, China is the country we don't want to think about. They are our neighbours, right, but they seem to be from a different planet altogether. We don't understand them. We feel much closer to the British and the Americans - don't we have a shared culture and a penchant for all things English - than the Chinese. The Chinese are strange people anyway - their language undecipherable, their food unpalatable and their politics unacceptable - to us. Just that, we can't wish them away. They share thousands of miles of borders with us, most of which is hotly disputed. We fought an war in 1962 and badly lost, which bruised our ego and made us afraid of them forever. Yes, there was a time when we extended our hand of friendship and talked about permanent peace in Asia based on Panchasheel , the five principles of Civilized behaviour. We counted the Chinese to be friendly because they were a poor nation trying to develop as we were doing at the time, and both of us had legit...

In a year full of bad news, the ending of war in Sri Lanka was a rare good news. While the end of the war was bloody and full of appalling atrocities, the rest of the world was wary of the vicious tactics of the Tamil leadership and saw no other alternative to end the long-standing conflict. I must admit that despite the agony of my many Tamil and Sri Lankan friends, it seemed the best way out of the crisis, as Mr. Prabhakaran , the Tamil leader, was exceptionally cruel and had demonstrated that he had no interest in pursuing a peaceful solution. Besides, Sri Lanka is a democratic country and despite the system's many faults, one always expect democracies to encourage moderation - and hence, almost everyone watched and waited for Prabhakan to finally surrender. However, it is only now, after the death of Prabhakaran and the elimination of entire Tamil Eelam leadership, the true cost of the war is becoming apparent. It is not just the scale of human atrocities and the fact ...

In India, the most distant country in the world is Pakistan. The country we always watch with the corners of our eyes, the one whose mention makes us cringe and the one we almost always wish should never have been. We share a long border, similar food and culture. Pakistanis use a language, Urdu, which originated in an Indian court, Lucknow, and our histories were identical up to 1947. Indians have a strange feeling about Pakistan - most of us believe that we should drive all our Muslim citizens out of India and into Pakistan, and also that we should conquer Pakistan and undo the partition. Also, the ultimate blasphemy in India is to state the obvious - India can not conquer Pakistan, as it is a strong country with plenty of nuclear weapons and missiles, which can wipe out most Indian cities if an invasion was ever attempted. Because of Pakistan, India has a seize within. We remain a country in fear. We always see the world conspiring against us. We have created a permanent schism wi...

I was in India last couple of weeks and noticed the debate around 'selling out' of India following Hillary Clinton's visit to Mumbai and Delhi last week. The principal debate is focused on the End Use Monitoring Agreement that the Indian government agreed to sign with the United States, allowing, theoretically , Americans access to monitor all dual-use and military technology bought from them. The opposition parties immediately conjured up the image of US inspectors, mostly CIA operatives, roaming around freely inside our most secret and sensitive military facilities and Indian government having to ask the US bosses before they use an weapon. Much of this is indeed nonsense, as India has been signing such agreements in every high technology deal entered into since 1998 and this umbrella arrangement will actually eliminate the need of negotiating such arrangements for every deal. Besides, United States is only one of the suppliers, and there is indeed an open and competitiv...

If one is to sum up the affairs of South Asia so far this year, it will read like this: (A) Pakistan resumed its civil war, after attempting to reach, and then aborting, a peace deal in the Swat valley. Currently, Pakistani Armed Forces are engaged in a civil war and they claim that the extremists are pushing back, at least from the main towns. (B) Sri Lanka claimed victory in its two decade long civil war, after the LTTE Chief, Prabhakaran's body was recovered. This victory, however, comes at a great cost - the final phase of the battle saw brutal tactics employed by both sides. Cornered LTTE used Tamil civilians as a human shield, and the Sri Lankan government, emboldened by the silence of all major powers, bombarded the civilian positions without any humanitarian considerations. Peace holds, for now, though thousands of Tamils live in refugee camps, and despite the military victory, the society remains deeply divided. (C) Bangladesh put down a bloody mutiny earlier this year, wh...

The news reads like this - Amitabh Bachchan has turned down a Ph D degree from Queensland University of Technology , Brisbane, on the wake of racist attacks on Indian students in Australia. In a statement on his blog, Mr. Bachchan said : "I have been witnessing, with great dismay and shock, the recent violent attacks on Indian students in Australia, on the electronic media the entire day. I mean no disrespect to the institution that honours me, but under the present circumstances, where citizens of my own country are subjected to such acts of inhuman horror, my conscience does not permit me to accept this decoration from a country that perpetrates such indignity to my fellow countrymen." This is indeed a grand gesture, sure to get some media attention. But in my view, a rather meaningless, and possibly a dangerous one. Obviously, the racist attacks are obnoxious , and need to be nipped in the bud by Australian authorities. However, this should not elicit, at least at this...

Over the last week, the shape of the new Indian administration has become clearer. It did emerge that the leadership of the Congress party is ready to do some fresh thinking, and they are fully using their mandate to take some strong decisions which were long overdue. Unlike the recent fresh faced administrations in the United States, Bangladesh or Pakistan, the new Indian administration does not start with a burden of a huge expectation. So far, they have used this to an advantage and delivered, or at least appeared to be delivering, more than what was expected, booting out the incompetent and the corrupt, reigning in undisciplined allies, projecting a national agenda over regional populism, and instilling a sense of new initiative and direction. Next few months will affirm how much of this will hold the momentum and make a difference. For the moment, however, it seems okay to enjoy a sense of new urgency. We have already seen that in Finance, where, if rumours are true, the governme...

India's electorate continues to spring surprises. A largely illiterate, prejudiced electorate - what do they know of governance and democracy one would think - defies the political pundits and vote maturely and with great judgement. I am so delighted to be proved wrong regarding my fear that this election will have disastrous consequences and I hope my delight will be shared by many across the country. We did think that the terrorists attacks on Mumbai and Varun Gandhi's antics will create an wave of hatred in India towards minority communities and carry the election. We thought Prakash Karat's private revenge will play spoilsport. We also thought that the royalists in Congress will jump in with Rahul Gandhi's candidature and undermine the strong record of competence of Manmohan Singh. Everyone predicted that this will be a fractured mandate and the real game will be played after the election, and various end-of-shelf-life politicians propositioned and postured ...

We are more or less 12 hours away from the results of the Indian election. The exit polls are out now, and there is a huge swirl of speculation around at this time. I am trying to follow NDTV, though they are now mostly showing footage of 2004 because there is actually nothing to be shown. This wait is most agonising, especially because this is a watershed election and the results will have a long standing impact on our country. This is also the perfect time to indulge in a little speculation. In a private blog like this, there is no fear of being off the mark - in fact, that indeed is the point about this freedom. So far, the exit poll data and all the commentators are pointing to one obvious thing, which we indeed knew much before all this had started - that the Third Front, a so called opportunistic amalgamation of self-important parties led by the communists will wither away even before the results are announced. So far, various parties, who allied with the communists, have already...

Two people forced me to write this post about India's Caste system. First, Narayana Murthy , the famed founder of Infosys , who said in a recent interview that India is not a nation of doers and pointed to our Brahminical tradition of undermining physical work as the reason. And, then I met Dr. William Boyd, a Kiwi banker who worked for Natwest in London and now resident in Malaysia, in Manila, who turned to be surprisingly well informed about India's culture and tradition and we had an enlightening conversation about caste over lunch. Dr. Boyd, unlike others, were deeply respectful about India's culture and that made me feel good. Talking about the caste system is always an embarrassment, as most Westerners I know look at it as a terrible social practise which makes India a really backward place. Dr. Boyd was different - he was speaking my language.- and was telling everyone else at the lunch table how caste was actually a system of division of labour that helped India ...

We are now in the final week of India's General Election, and we shall know the results by the end of this week. The political maneuvers are already on and one can see possibilities of coalition, including some impossible ones like a Congress- BJP coalition, emerging suddenly. This is going to be interesting to watch, indeed. That said, this is a crucial election. May be one of the most crucial ones. I am no expert in Indian politics, so can not really say where it will rank in significance. One can possibly argue that this is as important as the one in early 90s, when India needed to get its economic policy right rather desperately , and needed a stable and decisive government therefore. Or, one can also say that this is as important as the one in 1977, which was watershed in the sense that it dawned a new era in Indian politics. I am tempted to go even further and compare this with India's first election in 1951, which tested the idea of the republic and was crucial for the...