Sunday, April 18, 2010

The Double Deuce - The Sania-Shoaib-Ayesha affair had the nation transfixed. How did old-world Hyderabad take to the whole mess?

IS INDIA'S STATE, INCLUDING EXECUTIVE, LEGISLATIVE, JUDICIARY AS WELL AS MEDIA, ARE ALL WORKING IN TANDEM TO SUBVERT THE INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE? 

THE STEP BY STEP EROSION OF THE OLD TRADITIONS APPEARS TO PROCEED WITH DELIBERATE PLANNING TO BRING AN ALIEN CIVILIZATIONAL CHANGE TO THE IDEA OF INDIA. THE ARRAY OF WOMEN'S RIGHTS ARE GETTING SO OVERWHELMINGLY BIASED THAT WOMEN CAN GET AWAY WITH MURDER AND RAPE, WITHOUT ANYBODY GETTING ANY WISER. 

TIME FOR A MORE EVEN-HANDED LOOK ON WHAT CHANGES WOMEN DEMAND AND HOW IT CAN BE ACCOMMODATED WITHOUT ENCROACHING ON MEN'S RIGHTS!

GHULAM MUHAMMED, MUMBAI

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------






P. ANIL KUMAR
Game on Sania, Shoaib address the media outside her house in Hyderabad
HYDERABAD: SANIA-SHOAIB AFFAIR
The Double Deuce
The Sania-Shoaib-Ayesha affair had the nation transfixed. How did old-world Hyderabad take to the whole mess?

ALSO IN THIS STORY   
As the star reporter of Hyderabad’s leading Urdu paper Siasat begins recounting the developments on Day Six of our most closely-watched love triangle drama in recent times, his ageing editor, Zahid Ali Khan, is looking anything but pleased. One would think it’s the stuff of every newspaper editor’s dream: young, attractive tennis star Sania Mirza—the scion of Hyderabad’s shrinking aristocracy and the darling of its modernising Muslim youth—announces her engagement to Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik months after breaking off her engagement to local boy Sohrab Mirza. A day later, a mysterious girl with two names—Ayesha and Maha Siddiqui—surfaces with an old story of a messy marriage with Shoaib. Threats of legal action fly and the Pakistani cricketer scurries ahead of his baraat to his fiancee’s home in an attempt to clear his name. Instead, he gets embroiled in police charges of cheating, cruelty and harassment, with the “wronged woman” threatening to produce his semen-stained clothes in court and the man claiming to be his father-in-law, Ahmed Siddiqui, urging that Malik be stoned to death for having illegal sex with his daughter.

Ayesha Siddiqui
But there is growing distaste on Khan’s face as he hears his reporter out. “These two girls are making a mockery of the entire community...saare Mussalman ko nanga kar diya (they have shamed all the Muslims).”

Community elders, right, get together at Ikram Kaleem’s apartment to discuss the Sania-Shoaib snafu
There is the same consternation reflected on the faces of half-a-dozen Muslim “elders” gathered in the plush drawing room of businessman Ikram Kaleem’s luxury apartment on Tuesday evening. For two days now, they have been trying to work out a “compromise” between the Siddiquis and Malik, but with no success. “The Mirza family has been stonewalling us,” confesses Kaleem, who like his assembled friends, has little influence with the Mirzas, an old and respected family whose forebears served under the Nizam as high officials. All of them, however, are well acquainted with Maha Siddiqui from her childhood days spent in a gated community in Saudi Arabia where her father worked for the same airline company as they did. But that is not why they are so anxious to resolve the embarrassing melodrama. It’s because the Siddiquis seemed willing—even intent—on dragging not only their own daughter, but the entire community, through the muck. All of them concur that the Siddiquis were “different” from the other families in the airline colony. The Siddiquis’ two daughters were allowed to run “wild”, and according to them, were “spoilt brats” who flirted with strangers, Maha even changing her voice to make anonymous calls and playing cards with a gang of Pakistani boys living in the same colony. The elder daughter, Naghma, apparently went through two divorces and is now married for the third time. Maha, on the other hand, was “bold” but couldn’t catch a man because of her obesity.

So now they have roped in a minister, Mohammed Ahmadullah, who is willing to play mediator. “I have been getting calls from all over India asking me what’s going on and why we are letting a private dispute besmirch an entire community,” he explains. Soon, the Siddiquis’ close friend and confidant, Dr Shams Babur, is summoned, and in closed-door negotiations—eight sessions with the Siddiquis and 12 sessions with Shoaib and the Mirzas, by means of cajoling, threats and intimidation that go on all night—they eventually get both sides to finally see reason. Shoaib agrees to sign the divorce papers that the Siddiquis have been urging him from the start to sign, and Ayesha withdraws her police complaint.

VHP activists burn a Sania poster in Bhopal
So who won? No one knows as yet but there’s no doubt about who lost. “The major casualty has been the Muslim community,” one of the leading Urdu dailies said in its editorial. Unlike the English media that went to town about Shoaib “the liar”, the Urdu press has blamed both the Mirzas and the Siddiquis for dragging their private affairs into the media glare. “When they knew that the Siddiquis may pose a problem to Sania and Shoaib’s marriage, why couldn’t they have conducted the wedding quietly somewhere else, in Dubai or Delhi?” wonders Siasat’s news editor and the proprietor’s son, Amer Ali Khan. Compromise or no compromise, the controversy has caused lasting damage to Muslims, says Amer. “Both the Siddiquis and Mirzas played with religion, raking up things like phone nikaah which are not there in Islam.”
Advertising professional Arif Khan agrees, “Not many Muslim girls would have handled their lives like Sania did, but what people forget is that she’s more celebrity than Muslim. If you call yourself a Muslim, you have certain obligations: you can’t get engaged and break it off just because you don’t like the lifestyle being Muslim involves, you can’t bring in the personal law only when it suits you, and you certainly can’t live with your fiance under the same roof.”

The Siddiqui camp at a press conference, Ayesha’s mother Farisa Siddiqui at right
Even the more laid-back, upper-middle-class Muslims like Ismat Lateef Mehdi, a college lecturer, admit to being embarrassed by the whole controversy. But for Mehdi it’s not just to do with Islam, but with the ‘mismatch’ that an icon like Sania is proposing for herself with someone who is “simply not on par with her”. First, there is the Pakistani angle: according to Mehdi, young Hyderabadis today are uncomfortable marrying Pakistanis. “There are all the practical problems of phones being tapped, not getting visas, and the huge difference in culture. We fear we won’t be able to adjust.” Worse, there is the class issue: “Shoaib hasn’t even passed his tenth, nor does he have a bright career ahead of him.”
Nor is the messy second marriage business in any way helping Hyderabadis reconcile to the fact that their shining star, “who could have married anyone in India she chose to”, is saddling herself with a has-been like Shoaib. “It’s a letdown,” admits Mehdi.

 
 
Worse is the class issue. “Shoaib hasn’t even passed 10th, nor does he have a bright career ahead of him.”
 
 
Then there are those like Hasanuddin Ahmed, former chairman of the Minorities Commission, who see in last week’s melodrama the breakdown of Hyderabadi culture. When Sania broke her engagement with Sohrab Mirza, Ahmed points out, both displayed Hyderabadi culture at its best: refusing to wash their dirty linen in public, and parting with great civility, as is expected of the old families they come from. Ayesha’s extraordinary behaviour, on the other hand, invites the old man’s finest disapprobation. “She kept quiet for eight years, then suddenly woke up when his marriage was announced, raked up dirty things in the media—it’s a get-rich mentality that is against Hyderabad’s old culture.”
One reason why the old culture has been in near-terminal decline is because most elite Muslims were persecuted and fled the city in the wake of the police action in 1948, explains Ahmed. The divide between old money and new is creating a social tension in the community that wasn’t there before. As Amer Khan says, “Many Muslims have minted money thanks to the real estate boom. It’s creating a dangerous trend where people believe they can get away with anything if they have money.”

Net control Muslim girls working in an IT office in Hyderabad
It’s a sentiment that Anees Khan, the founder-principal of Nasser, the premier public school for Muslim girls, shares. There’s a big difference between the students who hail from the old families and the nouveau riche ones, according to her. “The value system among upper-middle-class Muslims is still very strong, while the others seem to be letting their children run wild.”
“It’s a society in transition,” agrees Mehdi. “Some families are realistic enough to be aware of changes and adjust accordingly, while others have become ultra-conservative,  putting their daughters behind purdah—a phenomenon we had never heard of earlier.”
But what was perhaps most saddening for those Muslims who stayed riveted to last week’s melodrama was the loss of yet another Hyderabadi Muslim icon. They have watched helplessly as first Azharuddin and now Sania have plummeted from grace. But it could be a good thing, as Arif Khan points out. “Once you stop relying on icons, you grow up and realise that a good Muslim and a good player are not necessarily the same thing.”

By Sheela Reddy and Madhavi Tata in Hyderabad

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Letter to the Editor: Sharad Pawar calls for Muslim quota in public housing


Saturday, April 17, 2010

Letter to the Editor: Sharad Pawar calls for Muslim quota in public housing

Last week, Sharad Pawar, the Union minister for Agriculture and the President of National Congress Party, which is a partner with Indian National Congress ruling coalition in Maharashtra, had called for a Muslim quota in government built housing in Mumbai.

Sharad Pawar is not known for any special soft corner for Muslims, in as much he is infamous for being one of the two Congress leaders that were the cause of prolongation of Bombay Riots in the aftermath of Babri Demolition. He, as the then Union Defence Minister, stationed at Bombay, had forces under his command to instantly organise a show of force to stop rioters going berserk in the city. He failed in his public duty by playing one-upmanship game with the then Congress Chief Minister.

Only this week, under Sharad Pawar's home minister, R. R. Patel, the state prosecution had failed to properly present its case against a batch of Bombay rioters and the court has set them free. It merely followed an old pattern of being soft on Bombay rioters by deliberately diluting their cases.

Sharad Pawar is also widely believed to have been instrumental in ordering direct firing on a grand peaceful Muslim rally taken out to protest against Israeli incursion in Al Aqsa Masjid --- a firing in which 12 Muslim protestors died. It was wanton murder of innocents.

On the positive side, he did allot a good sized plot for Muslim community housing, through one of his close Muslim party man, Late Maulana Ziauddin Bukhari, who completed the project of Millat Nagar that houses. Mumbai's first government approved Masjid is built within the colony. Maulana Ziauddin Bukhari was later gunned down supposedly over being more vocal than politically correct in speaking for Muslims caught in Bombay riots.

Sharad Pawar has a knack to court Muslims through co-opting Muslim politicians from other political parties and showing them off as decoration pieces for electoral propaganda exercises.

His call for separate quota for Muslims is nothing but an attempt to ingratiate himself with Mumbai's sizable Muslim population, which is about 3 million in the total of 13.5 million and which forms a big percent chunk of Congress/NCP vote bank in the city. Out of 3 million Muslims, about 2 million (20 lakhs) live in slum areas.

Still it should be noted that in comparison with Sharad Pawar, the Sonia’s Indian National Congress has never bothered to 'appease' Muslims by even justified affirmative actions to give them a fair share in public housing. (75% of Singapore population resides in public housing).

An ongoing campaign of demonization of Muslims keeps them in check from demanding any share in public pie, be that education, employment, health, housing, banking finances, trade opportunities. The continuous hauling of innocent Muslims following several bomb blast events gives media a god-sent opportunity to put ninety nine percent of Indian Muslims on the defensive through collective guilt innuendo.

Besides, it is anybody's guess how sincere and bureaucratically feasible is Sharad Pawar's call to do justice with Muslim population of Mumbai and Maharashtra.

Recently, NCP has benefited through overwhelming Muslim votes in its recent electoral successes. Muslims will have to see how Sharad Pawar's call translates into real term accommodations for Muslims in Mumbai and Maharashtra where NCP has ambitions to take over the government by defeating Indian National Congress, as well as Shiv Sena and BJP. Will Sharad Pawar resort to housing or rioting? Only time will tell.


Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

Thursday, April 15, 2010


Thursday, April 15, 2010

Comments posted on Daniel Pipes website over his Book Review of Jeffery Herb’s “Nazi propaganda for the Arab World”.

“More has been done by the Zionist occupation after 1948 to hurt and antagonize not only the Palestinians but the entire Arab and Muslim world than any propaganda by the Nazis. Writers and propagandists have to earn their bread and butter to whip up fresh line of Islamic phobias merely to detract the world attention from the atrocities and war crimes committed by IDF in occupied lands. The world is not blind to the virulent nature of Israeli policies to wipe out Palestinians from the lands that they rightly or wrongly claim as their own. Those middle age brutalities are no longer tenable in modern times of globalization and free democracies. While time has come to focus on the peace moves to solve the problem, it is sad to find that propagandists are hard at work to prolong the enmity between Israeland the Muslim world at large. Nobody knows how the events unfold in the near future. If peace arrives, all such bogus propaganda will be thrown in the dust bins.”

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai



Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World

by Jeffrey Herf
Yale University Press, 2009, 352 pages
Reviewed by Daniel Pipes
Commentary
April 2010

[Differs slightly from the published version]

The impact of National Socialism in the Middle East used to appear brief and superficial. Unlike with Communism, whose local parties and outside influence through the Soviet bloc lasted over many decades, the Nazis' moment lasted about six years, 1939-45, and they had little regional presence beyond Rommel's armies in North Africa and a fleeting pro-Nazi regime in Iraq.


But two powerful, important books have set the record straight. Djihad und Judenhass (2002) by Matthias Küntzel, translated into English in 2007 as Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11, shows the continuing influence of Nazi ideas on Islamists. Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World by Jeffrey Herf focuses on an earlier time, the 1930s-40s, and the major effort by Hitler and his minions to transmit their ideas to the Middle East. After reading Küntzel and Herf, I realize that my education about the modern Middle East was lacking a vital ingredient, the Nazi one.


A specialist in modern German history at the University of Maryland, Herf brings a new corpus of information to light: summary accounts of Nazi shortwave radio broadcasts in the Arabic language that were generated over three years by the U.S. embassy in Cairo. This cache reveals fully, for the first time, what Berlin told the Arabs (and to a lesser extent, the Iranians). As page after page of Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World establishes in mind-numbing but necessary detail, the Germans above all pursued two themes: stopping Zionism and promoting Islamism. Each deserves close consideration.


Nazi propaganda in Arabic portrayed World War II, history's largest and most destructive war, as focused primarily on the sliver of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. This interpretation both flattered Arabs and extended Hitler's grand theory that Jews wanted to take over the Arab countries and eventually the whole world, that the Allied powers were but pawns in this Zionist conspiracy, and that Germany was leading the resistance to them.
Palestine was the key, according to these broadcasts. If Zionists took it over, they would "control the three continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa. Thus they will be able to rule the whole world and spread Jewish capitalism." Such an eventuality would lead to Arabs oppressed and Islam defunct. "Should Bolshevism and Democracy be victorious," announced Nazi radio, "the Arabs will be dominated forever and all traces of Islam will be wiped out." To avoid this fate, Arabs had to join with the Axis.


As the war progressed, Berlin's incitement became ever more furious. "You must kill the Jews before they open fire on you. Kill the Jews" went a July 1942 broadcast. Herf notes the bitter irony: "At this moment of complete Jewish powerlessness, the Arabic broadcasts from Berlin skillfully adapted the general Nazi propaganda line about Jewish domination of the anti-Hitler coalition to a radical Arab and Islamic view."


At the same time, the Nazi regime developed an approach to Muslims that largely ignored the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Mein Kampf, and other European sources in favor of selected passages from the Koran.


Hitler's propagandists assured Muslims, first, that Axis countries "respect the Koran, sanctify the mosques, and glorify the prophet of Islam." It cited the respectful work of German Orientalists as an important sign of goodwill. Second, it argued for what Heinrich Himmler called the "shared goals and shared ideals" of Islam and National Socialism. These included monotheism, piety, obedience, discipline, self-sacrifice, courage, honor, generosity, community, unity, anti-capitalism, and a celebration of labor and warfare.


In addition, Muslims were told that they and the Nazis were purportedly both fighting a "great struggle for freedom" against the British, the most important colonial power in the Middle East. The regime drew a parallel between Muhammad and Hitler and presented the umma as roughly analogous to its own notion of a totalitarian Volksgemeinschaft ("people's community").


Nazis portrayed Islam as an ally and, accordingly, called for its revival while urging Muslims to act piously and emulate Muhammad. Radio Berlin in Arabic went so far as to declare "Allahu akbar! Glory to the Arabs, Glory to Islam." The Germans held that Muslims who were not righteous enough (i.e., not following the Nazi ideological model) were causing the umma to languish: "Muslims, you are now backward because you have not shown God the proper piety and do not fear him." And not just backward, but also "invaded by merciless tyrants." Specifically for Shi'ites, the Nazis hinted at Hitler being the awaited Twelfth Imam or the Muslim eschatological figure of Jesus, who will fight the anti-Christ (namely, the Jews) and bring on the end of days.


The Nazis noted the parallel between sayings from the Koran (Sura 5:82, "You will meet no greater enemy of the believers than the Jews") and the words of Hitler ("By resisting the Jews everywhere, I am fighting for the Lord's work") and turned the Koran into an anti-Semitic tract whose primary purpose was to call for eternal hatred of Jews. They even falsely claimed that Muhammad ordered Muslims to fight the Jews "until they are extinct."


In the Nazi telling, Jewish-Muslim enmity dated back to the 7th century. "Since the days of Mohamed, the Jews have been hostile to Islam" went one broadcast. "Every Moslem knows that Jewish animosity to the Arabs dates back to the dawn of Islam" declared another. "Enmity has always existed between Arab and Jew since ancient times" insisted a third. The Nazis built on this premise to establish the basis for a Final Solution in the Middle East, instructing Arabs to "make every effort possible so that not a single Jew … remains in Arab countries."


Herf emphasizes the remarkable symbiosis of German and Middle Eastern elements: "As a result of their shared passions and interests, they produced texts and broadcasts that each group could not have produced on its own." Specifically, Arabs learned "the finer points of anti-Semitic conspiracy thinking," while Nazis learned the value of focusing on Palestine. He describes the coming together of Nazi and Islamic themes in Berlin as "one of the most important cultural exchanges of the twentieth century."


Having detailed Nazi propaganda in Arabic, Herf then traces its impact. He begins by documenting the great energy and expense devoted to these messages—the quality of the personnel devoted to it, their high-level Nazi patronage, the thousands of hours of radio transmissions, and the millions of pamphlets.
He then rounds up assessments of the Axis impact, all pointing to its success. Allied estimates from 1942, for example, found that "the people were saturated with Axis talk," that "upwards of three-fourths of the Moslem world are in favor of the Axis" and that "90% of the Egyptians, including their government, believe that the Jews are mainly responsible for shortages and high prices of essentials." A report from 1944 found that "practically all Arabs who have radios … listen to Berlin."
Allied reluctance to contradict Nazi propaganda also points to Axis success.


Fearful of alienating Middle Easterners, the Allies stayed humiliatingly silent about the genocide taking place against the Jews; failed to refute allegations about Jews dominating London, Washington, and Moscow; did not dispute the distorted Koranic interpretations; and shied away from endorsing Zionism. Merely to dispute Nazi accusations, the Allies worried, would only confirm Nazi claims about Britain, America, and Russia being stooges of Jewish power. An internal U.S. directive in late 1942 acknowledged that "the subject of Zionist aspirations cannot be mentioned, inasmuch as … [this] would jeopardize our strategy in the Eastern Mediterranean."


Thus, when two leading U.S. senators, Robert Taft of Ohio and Robert Wagner of New York, proposed a resolution in 1944 endorsing a Jewish national home in Palestine, Berlin radio in Arabic called this an attempt "to erase Islamic civilization" and "to eradicate the Koran." Panicked, the entire weight of the Executive Branch came down on the senators, who felt compelled to withdraw their resolution. Clearly, Nazi offerings resonated deeply in the Middle East.


They continued to do well after the Nazi collapse and the war's conclusion. The defeat of Nazi General Erwin Rommel's aggressive push into North Africa meant that Nazi ambitions in the Middle East, in particular the Final Solution to annihilate its million or so Jews, were never implemented. But years of hate from radio and pamphlets and the repetitive, grotesque, ambitious, anti-Semitic, and Islam-based message detailed by Herf had taken root. Not only did the Middle East's Nazis emerge nearly invulnerable to prosecution, but they also prospered and were feted. An example: in 1946, Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brethren, lavished praise on Hitler's favorite Arab, Haj Amin el-Husseini, calling him "a hero … a miracle of a man." Banna added for good measure: "Germany and Hitler are gone, but Amin el-Husseini will continue the struggle." Acknowledging el-Husseini's exalted status, a British officer in 1948 described him as "the one hero in the Arab world."


Ideas the Nazis spread in the Middle East have had an enduring twofold legacy. First, as in Europe, they built on existing prejudices against Jews to transform that prejudice into something far more paranoid, aggressive, and murderous. One U.S. intelligence report from 1944 estimated that anti-Jewish materials constituted fully half of German propaganda directed to the Middle East. The Nazis saw virtually all developments in the region through the Jewish prism and exported this obsession.
The fruits of this effort are seen not only in decades of furious Muslim anti-Zionism, personified by Arafat and Ahmadinejad, but also in the persecution of ancient Jewish communities in countries like Egypt and Iraq, which have now shriveled to near-extinction, plus the employment of Nazis such as Johann van Leers and Aloïs Brunner in important government positions. Thus did the Nazi legacy oppress Jewry in the Middle East post-1945.


Second, Islamism took on a Nazi quality. As someone who has criticized the term Islamofascism on the grounds that it gratuitously conflates two distinct phenomena, I have to report that Herf's evidence now leads me to acknowledge deep fascist influences on Islamism. This includes the Islamist hatred of democracy and liberalism and its contempt for multiple political parties, preference for unity over division, cult of youth and militarism, authoritarian moralism, cultural repression, and illiberal economics.


Beyond specifics, that influence extends to what Herf calls an "ability to introduce a radical message in ways that resonated with, yet deepened and radicalized, already existing sentiments." Although a scholar of Europe by training, Herf's detective work in the U.S. archives has opened a new vista on the Arab-Israeli conflict and Islamism, as well as made a landmark contribution more broadly to an understanding of the modern Middle East.

Monday, April 12, 2010

To achieve Mideast peace, Obama must make a bold Mideast trip - By Zbigniew Brzezinski and Stephen Solarz - The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/09/AR2010040903263.html


washingtonpost.com

To achieve Mideast peace, Obama must make a bold Mideast trip


By Zbigniew Brzezinski and Stephen Solarz

Sunday, April 11, 2010

More than three decades ago, Israeli statesman Moshe Dayan, speaking about an Egyptian town that controlled Israel's only outlet to the Red Sea, declared that he would rather have Sharm el-Sheikh without peace than peace without Sharm el-Sheikh. Had his views prevailed, Israel and Egypt would still be in a state of war. Today, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, with his pronouncements about the eternal and undivided capital of Israel, is conveying an updated version of Dayan's credo -- that he would rather have all of Jerusalem without peace than peace without all of Jerusalem.
This is unfortunate, because a comprehensive peace agreement is in the interest of all parties. It is in the U.S. national interest because the occupation of the West Bank and the enforced isolation of the Gaza Strip increases Muslim resentment toward the United States, making it harder for the Obama administration to pursue its diplomatic and military objectives in the region. Peace is in the interest of Israel; its own defense minister, Ehud Barak, recently said that the absence of a two-state solution is the greatest threat to Israel's future, greater even than an Iranian bomb. And an agreement is in the interest of the Palestinians, who deserve to live in peace and with the dignity of statehood.


However, a routine unveiling of a U.S. peace proposal,as is reportedly under consideration, will not suffice. Only a bold and dramatic gesture in a historically significant setting can generate the political and psychological momentum needed for a major breakthrough. Anwar Sadat's courageous journey to Jerusalem three decades ago accomplished just that, paving the way for the Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt.


Similarly, President Obama should travel to the Knesset in Jerusalem and the Palestinian Legislative Council in Ramallah to call upon both sides to negotiate a final status agreement based on a specific framework for peace. He should do so in the company of Arab leaders and members of the Quartet, the diplomatic grouping of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations that is involved in the peace process. A subsequent speech by Obama in Jerusalem's Old City, addressed to all the people in the region and evocative of hisCairo speech to the Muslim world in June 2009, could be the culminating event in this journey for peace.


Such an effort would play to Obama's strengths: He personalizes politics and seeks to exploit rhetoric and dramatic settings to shatter impasses, project a compelling vision of the future and infuse confidence in his audience.


The basic outlines of a durable and comprehensive peace plan that Obama could propose are known to all:


First, a solution to the refugee problem involving compensation and resettlement in the Palestinian state but not in Israel. This is a bitter pill for the Palestinians, but Israel cannot be expected to commit political suicide for the sake of peace.


Second, genuine sharing of Jerusalem as the capital of each state, and some international arrangement for the Old City. This is a bitter pill for the Israelis, for it means accepting that the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem will become the capital of Palestine.


Third, a territorial settlement based on the 1967 borders, with mutual and equal adjustments to allow the incorporation of the largest West Bank settlements into Israel.
And fourth, a demilitarized Palestinian state with U.S. or NATO troops along the Jordan River to provide Israel greater security.


Most of these parameters have been endorsed in the Arab peace plan of 2002 and by the Quartet. And the essential elements have also been embraced by Barak and another former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert.


For the Israelis, who are skeptical about the willingness of the Palestinians and Arabs to make peace with them, such a bold initiative by Obama would provide a dramatic demonstration of the prospects for real peace, making it easier for Israel's political leadership to make the necessary compromises.

For the Palestinians, it would provide political cover to accept a resolution precluding the return of any appreciable number of refugees to Israel. Palestinian leaders surely know that no peace agreement will be possible without forgoing what many of their people have come to regard as a sacred principle: the right of return. The leadership can only make such a shift in the context of an overall pact that creates a viable Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital -- and that is supported by other Arab countries.


For the Arabs, it would legitimize their own diplomatic initiative, embodied in the peace plan put forward by the Arab League eight years ago. Moreover, their support for Obama in the effort would be a vital contribution to the resolution of the conflict.
Finally, for Obama himself, such a move would be a diplomatic and political triumph. Bringing Arab leaders and the Quartet with him to Jerusalem and Ramallah to endorse his plan would be seen as a powerful example of leadership in coping with the protracted conflict. Since it is inconceivable that the Israeli government would refuse Obama's offer to bring Arab leaders and the Quartet to its capital, most of the American friends of Israel could be expected to welcome the move as well.


Of course, the proposal could be rejected out of hand. If the Israelis or the Palestinians refuse to accept this basic formula as the point of departure for negotiations, the Obama administration must be prepared to pursue its initiative by different means -- it cannot be caught flat-footed, as it was when Netanyahurejected Obama's demands for a settlement freeze and the Arabs evaded his proposals for confidence-building initiatives.


Accordingly, the administration must convey to the parties that if the offer is rejected by either or both, the United States will seek the U.N. Security Council's endorsement of this framework for peace, thus generating worldwide pressure on the recalcitrant party.

It is time, though almost too late, for all parties -- Israelis, Palestinians, Americans -- to make a historic decision to turn the two-state solution into a two-state reality. But for that to happen, Obama must pursue a far-sighted strategy with historic audacity.
Fortunately, public opinion polls in Israel have indicated that while most Israelis would like to keep a united Jerusalem, they would rather have peace without all of Jerusalem than a united Jerusalem without peace. Similarly, although the Palestinians are divided and the extremists of Hamas control the Gaza Strip, the majority of Palestinians favor a two-state solution, and their leadership in Ramallah is publicly committed to such an outcome.



Zbigniew Brzezinski served as national security adviser for President Jimmy Carter and is a trustee at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Stephen Solarz, a former U.S. congressman from New York, is a member of the board of the International Crisis Group.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Dantewada: Militarization of the Media and the Second Dimension - By Amaresh Misra


Dantewada:  Militarization of the Media and the Second Dimension
                                                         
                                                                      By Amaresh Misra


          Sample this: in the aftermath of the Dantewada massacre, with calls for blood, revenge and military action emanating from the extremely right wing section of the Indian political class, the army and air force chief call press conferences. They refuse openly to allow their forces into Chattisgarh, the new, subaltern `ground zero’.
At the same time, the fourth estate of the world’s most populous democracy—editors and columnists of a media that prides itself for being liberal, independent of the political class and a free speech champion—goes bonkers. In near full page articles, senior journalists call for military action. They also rationalize it by presenting a totally out of context and unfair review of post-Independence Indian history of dealing with insurgencies.
          So what are we witnessing—a militarization of the media or ademocratization of the army? Never before in the history of Independent India has the army called a press conference to defy civilian authority. In this case, democrats cannot but side with the army, for what it is saying makes more democratic sense than what so-called elected leaders of a democracy are saying.
Things get more interesting as the political dimension of the army’s unprecedented action unfolds. The army top brass would not have spoken out thus without the backing of the Defense Minister. Unlike P Chidambaram, the Home Minister, who at best has been a lawyer and a technocrat, AK Antony, the Defense Minister has run a state as a chief minister. The Defense Minister knows that politics in a democracy does not revolve around bluster and a technocratic-bureaucratic approach. In short, the Defense Minister is a political man, while P Chidambaram is clearly apolitical.
The Prime Minister, who started his political career as a technocrat has wizened up over the years—that is why he has been at best cagey and guarded about any `final solution to the Naxalite problem’ kind of talk. Unlike the HM, the PM probably realizes the political implications of `war’ in India’s tribal heartland and how little support he will get from real, rooted politicians in the Congress or outside for such a move. In fact, it is very likely that the PM’s own Cabinet will shoot down the move.
It is unfortunate, that a party like Congress, known for hardboiled politicians, has to send apolitical individuals to key government posts.
Today, Congress can be divided clearly into two sections: the techno-bureaucrats who represent multinational lobbies and corporate interests and hardboiled politicians like Digvijay Singh, Ashok Gehlot, Vilasrao Deshmukh, Verappa Moiley and others who have been elected from their constituencies, have long experience in dealing politically with various sectors of the Indian population, and above all, are sensitive to public opinion and different caste-tribal and minority issues.   
A senor journalist in an edit page piece has compared the actions of Jawahar Lal Nehru, Vallabhai Patel and Indira Gandhi in similar situations, to the present post-Dantewada scenario. He has explained how after Dantewada type incidents in Mizoram, Assam and Punjab, Mrs. Gandhi responded with tough police-military actions. How both Patel and Jawahar Lal Nehru used the army in Hyderabad and Goa and called it `police action’.
The `gentleman’-editor quoted these instances to press for a strong military response. This particular journalist is known to be more sensitive to the politics of democracy than his counterparts, who have started behaving as if Bollywood, fashion, glamour, stock market, technology and economics can be substituted for hard issues. But he forgot completely that unlike Chidambaram, Patel, Nehru and Indira Gandhi were political personalities. To compare the greats with the present HM is like comparing Tata and Birla with Vedanta, the mining company which Chidambaram represented as a lawyer. Incidentally, this company is said to be behind much of the anti-tribal havoc in Chattisgarh, something feeding directly the Maoist support base.
While tackling the Mizo or the Assam problem, Mrs. Gandhi relied on political personalities and political solutions. The Mizo accord was preceded by several packages to the Mizo populace the results of which started showing by the 1980s and the 1990s. The army presence did not prevent the emergence of a significant section of Mizo and Assamese liberals, who were rarely, touched even when they showed distinct signs of rebellious alienation. Above all, Mrs. Gandhi never allowed economics or the logic of `internal affairs’, armed intervention, and managerial approach to tower above the demands of politics.
The Mizo and Assamese rebels were never presented with an option of being against the nation. There was no `you are either with them or with the nation’ kind of dangerous fascist talk. The armed might of the Mizos or any other rebel group was not exaggerated. In fact, the idea was to go on with politics as usual, to use the right kind of political language, even the right kind of rhetoric, even as the socio-economic-politico-military dynamics swirled in motion.
That is the reason why, Mrs Gandhi, except during the Emergency never lost the support of liberals. Patel and Nehru of course were able to take action in Hyderabad and Goa, only because they had the support of leftists, socialists and liberals. In fact, it was through the right political language and behavior, that Patel and Nehru ensured support.
In the current situation, the Maoist threat has been exaggerated. Thus the fundamentals of politics—that you do not call rebels in a low intensity conflict Enemy No. 1—has been violated. The fact remains that over years Maoists have not been able to achieve their stated goal of building liberated zones. The propaganda that they are running parallel governments is the biggest lie of the past decade. The RSS in Gujarat and the mafia in Mumbai have more parallel power than Maoists. 80% of the firepower which Maoists possess has been looted from Indian security forces.
The fact of the matter is that the Indian Home Ministry has never really trained forces for true guerilla warfare—why? Not because of inefficiency, but because there is no real guerilla war going on. The Maoist violence is political. The rights of people backing Maoist have been violated and they are an exploited lot.
The stunning dimension of the picture however is that whenever activists come out to articulate politically the demands of the Adivasis, they are brutally hounded—what happened to Medha Patekar, Swami Agnivesh and Arundhati Roy? The first two are persona non grata for the media and the establishment. Roy and Vinod Mehta, the Outlook editor who published her article on Maoism in his magazine, have been threatened openly with arrest on news channels.
Such scenes were never witnessed during the Nehru-Indira Gandhi era—barring exceptions, intellectuals were not targeted like this even at the peak of the Naxalite movement in the early 1970s. It has to be remembered that till the Nehru-Gandhis were in power, the J&K insurgency did not assume the level it has now—the pre-1991 Indian establishment made several mistakes as far J&K is concerned but alienating the liberals and middle forces fully, and using non-political, insensitive, communal language, was not one of them. This happened during the Narsimha Rao Government and reached a peak during NDA rule.
The fight against Maoists cannot be won by alienating the middle ground, by suppressing mass movements. Today four elements can broadly counter Maoists effectively: Medha Patkar-Swami Agnivesh type liberal forces, the socialists, the left-democratic currents and Independent activists. However, all these elements are opposed also to the role of mining companies and their exploitation of mineral resources and tribal populace in the Adivasi-Maoist belt.
After 1991, to preserve the interest of the mining companies, government after government has repressed these middle forces. Devoid of a democratic space, people have had no option but to support the Maoists passively—this is all the Maoists have got—hesitant, passive support, born more out of helplessness and lack of an alternative.
In such a situation, is it wise to talk of a military solution to the problem? Shouldn’t senior journalists be more circumspect in what they say? Point out one article written by a top editor against the mining companies of the Chattisgarh belt—such an article, does not exist.
 In democracy, the establishment is supposed to provide space for political dissent. The media is supposed to provide space for intellectual dissent. The establishment however has emasculated political dissent. Whereas the media has stopped publishing articles written by people who do not toe the `official’ editorial line—this is a direct subversion of the ideals Times of India, Hindustan Times and Indian Express once stood for. \
Today, democratic participation has been reduced to electoral participation—whereas intellectual participation has been reduced to some stray `letter to the editor’. A functioning democracy does not mean just successive elections. Freedom of the press does not mean freedom of the editors to suppress dissenting viewpoints.
Take the case of Muslims—after a long gap, they have again started supporting the Congress. Does this mean the Congress has won over their hearts and minds? No—the Congress has yet to concede a simple demand of enquiry into the Batala House encounter. Congressmen can go on winning from Muslim dominated pockets—does that mean that Muslims in their hearts have forgotten the Batala House issue or Babari Masjid demolition?  
Politicians in the Congress like Digvijay Singh always supported the demand for an enquiry into the Batala House encounter—they never acceded to the view that an enquiry will damage the morale of the Police—why? Because arguments like the `morale of the Police will be hurt’ are incompatible with politics in a democracy—these are arguments of a Police, not a democratic state. In a democracy, a demand which voters feel strongly about, which is prima facie just and in keeping with the law of the land has to be met. Otherwise the state is violating its social contract with citizens.             
In India, while the Congress is trying to revive a pluralist, inclusive- umbrella coalition, the BJP is still sticking to the one nation-one culture, authoritarian policy. Dissent, in BJP’s view is suspect and alien. BJP-RSS brand of thinking loves creating the image of the `other’—an entity standing outside the realm of the culture and ethos of the body politic. The BJP-RSS thinking brought the nation to the brink of disaster when they tried portraying Muslims as the `other’; now the same `other’ tag is being applied to Adivasis.
PC Chidambaran and his likes in Congress, BJP and the media are violating India’s pluralist ethos. There are plenty of right wing takers of BJP’s `other’, fascist thinking in Times of India, Indian Express, and Hindustan Times. When the time comes, people of India will give them a befitting reply.
For now, all secular-democratic forces ought to put pressure on the Congress President as to why people against her brand of inclusive, umbrella type, pro-poor politics, who have the full backing of the BJP, are being allowed to stay in office? The pro-mining, pro-multinational, BJP-minded technocrats—many of whom like the present Home Minister are not even Congressmen of standing—are committed to the overthrow of the pro-poor, pro-people politics of the Nehru-Gandhi family. One must understand this.       
                                               

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: DANTEWADA


Saturday, April 10, 2010

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: DANTEWADA

In an NDTV interview, Air Chief P. V. Naik touched Muslim hearts when he did not hesitate to express his feelings that he leaves it to ‘Allah Malik’ after completing his mission.

However, the way he kept comparing Dantewada area with J&K, as what can be done by Air force in J&K and what cannot be carried out in Naxalite area, as ‘ it is our own country, our own people’, it openly exposed that for all practical purposes, J&K is an enemy territory for the services.

It is tribute to the quick repartee of the interviewer, that he instantly questioned the repeated use of J&K, when it is not in the discussion. Air Chief agreed.

People of India, however, cannot help comparing the two insurgencies. In all of its continued entanglement with Indian forces in J&K, it has never suffered such a scale of savage and brutal elimination of such a large number of Indian forces. Naxalites are again and again being announced and being treated as Indian citizens and therefore never to be treated as enemies. Air Chief clearly ruled out any Air Force role in Indian Territory, as he felt, the collateral damage to civilians will be too great and unacceptable to be suitable for an attack from the skies. He mentioned how US forces in Afghanistan have been inflicting collateral damage on civilian population. It would appear that it was OK for US forces to resort to aerial bombings, as the area under their attack is supposedly an enemy territory. That according to Air Chief is not the case with Naxalite area. He however, added that since Air attack is too lethal and destructive of entire population of the target area, it cannot be used in Indian states. An aside takes Air Chief once again to J&K where he feels, clearing an area of civilian population, could afford the opportunity for air force to use aerial bombing.

In fact, the subject of aerial bombing after the carnage in Dantewada, seems to fall back on the supposed illegal use of  fighter planes and drones Israelis and Americans, respectively in Gaza andAfghanistan to take out supposed enemy elements ensconced in thickly populated civilian areas. The very mention of the alternative of using aerial bombing would not have come up in Indian security circles, without the apparent deep penetration of Israeli and American warmongering brainwashing on Indian forces. This is an alarming situation and goes directly against the very ethos of Indian polity. India values human lives too much to indulge in the like of carnage that unfortunately had visited Europe and East Asian countries in the past. We are so thickly populated that any retaliatory attack on our territory would wipe out millions ---- more than world had ever witnessed in two world wars. India’s pacifist past as envisaged by sages from Buddha to Gandhi, cannot be allowed to be trampled over by warmongers from the US and IsraelIndia’s security forces should be fully sanitized about the essential defensive role that is the only spirit that should guide its motivation to engage an adversary.


Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Indian Justice via US and British courts By Ghulam Muhammed


Thursday, April 08, 2010



Indian Justice via US and British courts


When Times of India carried the news about a process served on Kamal Nath, India’s Union minister, by a US court at the instance of a New York based organisation: Sikhs for Justice, for alleged involvement in 84 riot crimes, the signal has gone out to 150 million Muslims too, that there is a new route to get justice  for crimes in India committed against them in communal riots, if they too could move relevant courts in US and UK, seeking relief under Alien Torts Claims Act, through proper representations, to seek ‘compensatory and punitive damages for several allegations, including crimes against humanity, degrading treatment and wrongful killing.’ The trend seems to have started with Palestinian organisations in UK, filing court cases in UK against Israeli government for its invasion of Gaza and war crimes committed by its forces. The first celebrity to face the prospect of arrest was Israel’s former Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, who cancelled her planned visit to UK, at the eleventh hour, after being informed of the process issued against her by a London court. There have been rumours in various circles about leaders from India’s extremist political organisations being under threat of court proceedings against their role in communal riots. Bollywood Music director Nadeem Saifee was saved by British courts, who were not sympathetic to Indian government’s record in treatment of its Muslim minority. Nadeem filed for huge compensations and India government had to make the payment in UK. Recently, a move is being discussed against Rediff web service, for posting highly inflammable and defamatory articles on its site. The parent company of Rediff is listed in the US and may be liable to the jurisdiction of US courts on defamation and hate crimes. It will be a sad day for Indian judiciary, if cases may be filed with International Court of Justice, for crimes committed in India addressing to human rights and genocide. India government has still to move against perpetrators of murders, arson, loot during the Mumbai riots even after 20 years. The majority of victims had been Indian Muslims and the prepatrator of the crimes are roaming free, even though formally identified by a government appointed Sri Krishna Commission.



Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai


---------------------------------------------------------------------

 84 riots: US court summons Kamal

New York: A US federal district court has summoned road transport and highways minister Kamal Nath for his alleged role in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots based on a case filed by a Sikh outfit.

    In the civil case filed under the Alien Torts Claims Act, the petitioners sought compensatory and punitive damages for several allegations, including crimes against humanity, degrading treatment and wrongful killing.


    Nath, who is incidentally here on a visit, said he was “surprised and appalled’’ as the case has been filed 25 years after the anti-Sikh riots in India.


    “I really have no clue about it. I don’t have a basis and I don’t know the authenticity. I don’t know the validity. It was for the first time that I saw it,’’ Nath said. He has been served a notice and has to respond within 21 days, failing which the court will give a default judgment on the matter.

    “A piece of paper was given to me. I will have to see what the piece of paper is all about,’’ he said. Nath stressed that he had never been charged in any court. “Nobody has ever charged me in India. But if the US charges me 25 years later for something that has happened in India... well it just reflects on the authenticity,’’ he said.

    “For the last 25 years I wasn’t involved...suddenly in 2010 I get involved...There was nobody who stood up and said that he was a victim or that I was in any way connected. So I’m surprised and appalled.’’

    The case was filed by two Sikhs, Jasbir Singh and Mahinder Singh, on behalf of New York-based organisation Sikhs for Justice.

    Their attorney Gurpatwant Pannun claimed Jasbir lost 24 members of his family and Mahinder, who was two years-old then, lost his father.

    “In India it is impossible to hold human rights violators,’’ Pannun said. The Sikh group said that they are acting now because they have given up hope for action to be taken in India. “We waited for all these years because commissions were being set up...there was hope but because of his position Kamal Nath has successfully avoided justice for 25 years,’’ said Pannun. --- AGENCIES