Our Lobbying Journalists

Some time back, before his death, industrialist, media baron and AICC member K K Birla published his memoirs. He described an incident where Sonia G was peeved at the appearance of some unfriendly articles in the Hindustan Times. In order to quell her anger K K had to dispatch Vir Sanghvi, his Editor, to her place to explain to her why as an independent newspaper HT cannot but publish articles of all views, including even those uncharitable to the Congress party or the Gandhi family.

This was, and is, our Vir Sanghvi. I suppose he did not find any violation of journalistic ethics in having to meet and explain editorial principles to the head of a political party. I wonder if he would have done the same with equal ease in respect of, say, the BJP.

V S is a shrewd man. A very shrewd one. When it comes to Sonia G, he uses the proverbial oil, but very subtly. He leaves no opportunity to call Narasimha Rao a ‘crook’, in spite of knowing very well that if bribing JMM in order to save his Govt was his wrongdoing then Manmohan Singh is no less guilty of the same crime. V S knows one thing very well -- to please the Madam, calling Rao names is the most effective way. Another reason behind his hatred towards Rao, I suppose, is more personal. Perhaps he wanted some favours which Rao did not grant (we know how these journalists are).

All this makes me more than happy that V S is now in the dock.

Coming to Barkha Dutt, I always felt she is just a mediocre journalist, with no great insights. Pronoy Roy gave her more importance than is her due, and coming from a person like Pronoy Roy, an undeserved greatness has been thrust upon her. Her offering to lobby is not an aberration, it rather manifests her natural traits.

I am not sure if Prabhu Chawla is also an accused; the media has hushed up the matter in such a way that it is difficult for an ordinary person to know the details. In any case, he is a most ordinary journalist. Now, if he is a co-accused, dishonesty will just be an added feather to his cap.

One point journalist Paronjoy Guha Thakurta makes is very pertinent: “What makes journalists easy targets is the delusion of grandeur that many of them suffer from. Proximity to people in positions of power or wealth feeds the ego of certain journalists, and they feel as powerful and influential as the people they are with." This applies to all the three above.

Another Crusade in the Making?

There is an inherent danger on writing on a subject like Islam when you do not know much about its history. But, as somebody whose land and times are directly influenced by Islam, I still must attempt.

As we see Islam today, everywhere it is in conflict with the others – with non-Muslims with whom the Muslims come into contact. An in-depth study of the Islamic history may explain why this happens, but even without doing so, two major reasons can be assumed.

One, an inherent trait of intolerance that is present in all Semitic religions must have found its way into Islam in the times of the Prophet himself. From the very beginning, it has been perceived as a duty of the Muslim to proselytize and bring the others into its fold – even if that necessitated the use of force.

Two, something that happened later, and happened over and again. In the first half of its history, Islam witnessed at least two golden phases, when science and free thinking flourished. But over time, an urge to go back to the ‘roots’ overtook it – urge to go back to its original, pristine form as is perceived to be revealed to the Prophet. Since Muhammad was declared as the last prophet, all later-day evolutions were considered as deviations and corrupt practices and so were to be rejected.

There are also tolerant streams in Islam, spread from Turkey to Indonesia. We see them in the forms of the Sufis, the Pirs and Fakirs. Interestingly, their influence is more in countries in the periphery and away from the centre (the Arab world -- the birth place of Islam). Unfortunately, the voive of the followers of these softer, accommodating versions is muted and they do not determine the future intercourse of Islam with the rest of the world. Also, though the Shias too do not show much inclination towards tolerance and modern democratic practices, they actively do not go into conflict with the rest of the world. But again, they are a minority.

The majority is the Sunnis, and the strident voice we hear all around is that of the fundamentalist. Not only voice, but the clamour of arms. This stream is gaining in strength ieach passing day. There is no place for pluralism or modern democracy in this version of Islam. I am sure this not to be the real path revealed to the Prophet by the All-compassionate and All-merciful Allah – it cannot be. But, unfortunately, that is how things have taken shape over the ages. The voices of compassion and tolerance are throttled. He who thinks differently cannot speak out of fear. Brainwashing is so absolute that the vast majority in the Muslim world believes 9/11 was a conspiracy by the Jews and similarly 26/11 by the Indians. The duty and goal of Muslims have been defined in very clear terms, and that is, to subdue/convert the non-Muslim world outside its folds (and also the minority sects in Islam) into the Islamic faith and to bring the whole world under Islamic rule.

Sounds incredible? Too fantastic? But there are hordes of people, the soldiers of Jihad, who, from their childhood, have been so indoctrinated in such a belief that they totally believe in the possibility, in the inevitability, in the imminence of this happening.

Ironically, the technological advances of the modern times have helped them. These have produced sophisticated weapons that have come in very handy in the hands of these regressive thinker-soldiers.

If we do a bit of crystal-gazing, the future looks very bleak. The Americans, with their myopic views, have treated the war on terror as a war on the US, and are more than happy in the fact that another attack on their own citizen, on their own soil, so far have either not taken place, or been thwarted. In their complacency, or out of fatigue of fighting a clueless war, they are going to desert Afghanistan soon. Taliban is going to come back in Afghanistan and there mentors/brethren to grow stronger in Pakistan, with all the hidden support they enjoy.

The problem with some vocations like prostitution, militancy, etc, is that you cannot come out of them. You are not accustomed to another form of living and even if you are offered another way, you soon reject that and come back to the old way of life. So, the disincentive to do so must be very strong and extremely punitive. That, unfortunately, is not happening in the present world politics.

In case the fundamentalists seize power back in the Af-Pak region, and partly in Iraq, will they sit back peacefully and restrict themselves to activities within their own countries? Hardly so. This will not satisfy their hunger for Jihad. They will start hatching plots of more attacks against the Western/Hindu/Jew/Christian world outside. Their will be more 9/11’s and 26/11’s. This can be said for certain. That will be the second wave of global terrorism.

If by that time, by a stroke of chance, the US gets a leader more courageous, more farsighted, and less oratorical than Obama, we may see a more focused fight against this menace. Even otherwise, fight the world must, for mere survival. Initially the steps will be tottering, the fights small, localized, half-hearted and indecisive. But a time will come when there must be a very decisive fight, to wipe out this evil of fundamentalism.

I can foresee a protracted, world-war like situation, and if I live another thirty years, maybe some of it I’ll see with my own eyes.

Daktarda -- Part Two (concluded)

Very little was known of Daktarda's past or his background. He would not talk much about them. As it happens in such circumstances, rumours flew thick and fast. One among them that gained much acceptance was that he had been a Naxalite during his college days. The Naxalite movement was just past its prime in Bengal then. It was quite normal for many among the student community of that time to still feel sympathetic towards the ultra left ideology and Daktarda being one such was no great revelation. However much I tried, though, I personally could not associate the soft, kind and accommodating persona of Daktarda with the dogma and anarchy intrinsic to the ultra leftist ideology. In my opinion, he might have voted for the ultras in the college elections or taken part in a couple of their rallies (we all did that), but a wholesome party activist? I doubted.

Another topic of much speculation was his unknown love life. Being a mouth-watering topic, it took but a little time for all to conclude that at some point of time, Daktarda had been ditched in love. There was no way to know, but to me he did not look or behave at all like one who had received a half-sole the other day and was recuperating from it. Rather, the hint of impishness that always accompanied his smile, accentuated by his lustrous crop of mustache, negated such a notion.

* * *

As I was saying, we split and went our different ways. Since that day, the world had taken at least half a dozen spins around the Sun when our family decided that life was becoming too much of a drudgery, the sun was blazing too hot, and that all these pointed that we might well take a vacation (by 'family' I mean me, my younger sister and the parents, Mr Cat excluded). We zeroed on my maternal aunt's place at Kalaikunda, a major Air Force base located in the Midnapore district of West Bengal, where her husband, a Lt-colonel with the army, was posted at that time (it is another matter that the sun blazed even harder there, but when could the sun and such things really deter the determined holidayers?).

Life at an army base moves leisurely, except of course for the men in uniform who must sprint and bark commands and all that. It goes without saying that we the vacationers, for the first few days of our vacation, had completely devoted ourselves in indulging in Mashi's divine cooking, forgetting everything else; the mid-day meals were diligently followed by afternoon siestas and evening trips to the main market of the nearby town of Kharagpur, ostensibly for shopping but actually for flogging up our sluggish and overworked digestion so that we could do justice to the delicacies that were to turn up at the dinner table.

A visit to Kalalikunda usually includes at least one trip to the airfield. That concluded, we ventured a bit further, to nearby places and even to Calcutta on Sundays to meet our relatives there and also to break the monotony.

On one return trip from Calcutta via the suburban train, somebody tapped at my shoulder and exclaimed:

"Oh my my, isn't that Shome?"

I am among those who find it a wee bit difficult to recognise even a close friend if taken out of context, and it was no surprise that I needed a few squints and a supersonic session of brainstorming before I could place him right.

"Arre, daktarda na?", I babbled, leaving the onlookers of the party in a bit of disarray. Naturally they looked askance at both of us.

In a few minutes the introduction part was over, and since Daktarda was also returning by the same train, we had all the time in the world at our disposal to exchange notes. It turned up that Daktarda had since married and was now the medical officer in charge of a primary health centre at Binpur, an obscure place tucked somewhere in the tribal belt of west Midnapore. He extended a warm invitation to all of us to his place, and the same was accepted by all, needless to say, with utmost pleasure.

It was sooner rather than later that we landed up at Daktarda's place, riding an army jonga jeep. "This stretch is full of bandits", warned our worried soldier-driver. "Do they even attack army jeeps?", I sounded incredulous. "Yes, they do... it happens sometimes... they throw logs on the road and then loot the passengers."

Fortunately nothing of that sort happened, and soon our jeep left the jungle tracks behind and entered the limits of Binpur. Being never in a Santhal village before, the sight of beautifully decorated mud walls of the huts and their sloping thatched roofs left us spellbound. The inhabitants were very poor, but amidst all that poverty the thing that stood out was the spotlessly clean tone of the surroundings.

Before long our jeep entered the gates of a large hospital compound surrounded by brick walls on all sides. It was not only large but had the signs of functionality all over it unlike the usual village Primary Health Centres. To greet us, Daktarda and his very sweet wife (to be Boudi to me) waited in the courtyard, with their only son, a little toddler, perched on its mother's lap. We were taken inside their nice little quarter and it was a sweet surprise to us to learn that Boudi was also of east Bengal origin (known as "Bangals") like us, unlike Daktarda who was a proper "Ghoti" (from the western part of Bengal). This ensured at least one good thing -- that good culinary skills could be expected in Daktarda's kitchen.

Daktartda addressed his mother as 'Tui' (equivalent of Hindi 'Tu') but his father as 'Aapni' (Hindi 'Aap'), something uncommon in a Bengali Bhadralok family but common in the interiors of Midnapore. This sounded very sweet to my ears... it showed the closeness to one's mother that naturally exists in human bonding.

As time went by, I came to know the details of the missing years. To cut a long story short, soon after our split, Daktarda joined the state health service and voluntarily opted for this posting others were unwilling to take. After coming here, he started building his health centre from the scratches. Providence too, at this juncture, lent him a hand. The brother of the local CPM leader (a tribal himself and member of the state cabinet of Ministers of that time) had no child. Daktarda treated his wife (mind you, he was no Gynecologist) and they were soon blessed with a son. Pleased, the Minister wanted to reward him. Daktarda asked of him a proper hospital to be built at Binpur, complete with operation facilities... did not ask for a single thing for himself. The Minister was overjoyed; perhaps he saw electoral benefits in that. An instance when a politician's interest converged with the interest of the common men.

We were now standing on the compound of that very hospital, taking a trip around its compound. For some reason my own bosom swelled with pride.

* * *

I have not met him again. A google search might help. But I have not done so yet. My heart remains peaceful in the knowledge that wherever he is, my Daktarda would be spreading joy and health in the truly needy people, among my poor countrymen.

(It is ironical that the same Binpur now lies amidst hotbeds of Maoist activities... hope that the family, if still there, is not caught in the crossfire.)

Daktarda -- Part One

Jangalmahal, Binpur, Shalboni, Jhargram -- picturesque dots in the periphery of Bengal that in our early youth seemed to surface in our consciousness only during the occasional flights we undertook to escape from our bored existence in the city. Not any more. As I take sips from my morning’s cuppa and sift hurriedly through the pages of the newspaper, news of violence and terror in these places unfailingly catches my eyes, making me wonder how the times have changed. And amidst the dark thoughts that cloud my mind, there floats in, in sharp contrast, the smiling, kind face of Daktarda, someone I was lucky enough to know once.


It was some time in the early eighties… I was just out of college and had landed a job in Calcutta. Being a migrant in the city, I needed a place to stay. My childhood friend Sajal, at that time staying in a guest house at College Street, had arranged for my lodging with him and I had moved in there just a month ago. Besides the two of us, Daktarda was the third occupant of the room. A darkish, bespectacled person, three or four years senior to us, a bachelor; his warm smile seemed to spread across his cheeks to his kind eyes. Armed with a medical degree from a reputed college of Calcutta, he ran a modest practice in the suburban town of Hind Motors. Most of his clients came from the labour force of that industrial ghetto. Many could not even pay the very modest fee that he charged, and it was quite common that he would return with a pumpkin or gourd under his arms which would go into the common kitchen of the guest house. On the days he earned more than the usual, I and Sajal (and sometimes a couple of others) were treated with a movie in the night show and then dinner at Dilkhoosh or Nizam’s.

Guest houses like the one we occupied, more known as Mess-baris, used to serve a great purpose in the city’s life in those days (and still do, I guess). An assortment of lower middle and middle class immigrants in search of cheap boarding and lodging in the city – students and clerks, aspiring professionals and unhappy executives, plain vagabonds – would flock to such spots to find an affordable shelter. Put a harassed and grumpy looking owner-cum-manager on top of the boarders and you get the complete picture. Ours Mess, too, was no exception to this general description.

* * *

It was only seven in the morning and the ever-busy College Street that had woken up as early as four with the first truckload of vegetables and bananas arriving at the wholesale market lying within a stone’s throw had fully shaken off its slumber and was bustling with life. Just below our window on the first floor, trams and double-decker buses packed with the early morning passengers rambled along; the chaawallas in the side lanes were doing a brisk business. The weather was humid but pleasant; it had rained in the early hours and now the sky wore a bright blue hue, with white puffs drifting across it – the perfect picture of an autumn morning. It seemed as if a whisper rose from everywhere around – Durga Puja not far away, not far away!

Such a morning would usually find a young man leisurely getting up and preparing for the day, but alas, not so in my case. I was huffing and puffing, to the delight of a sizeable audience that had assembled in our room to witness the daily fun.

Three forty-one, three forty-two, …. my tired feet protested and my mind felt dumb as my spot jogging progressed painfully in front of half a dozen of watchful and highly critical eyes. Comments flew thick and fast from all sides:

“No, no, not like that, you must raise the knees more… bring some spring into your steps … come on, old boy, it’s not that tough, in our time we had had to run ten rounds around the field before we were even allowed to kick the ball. ..”

It seemed when it came to physical activity, there were undoubtedly more experts than practitioners, especially in Bengal!

* * *

It had all started on a Sunday evening a few days back. While on a stroll with Daktarda around the College Square grounds, I had casually mentioned about my asthma and he had promised to cure it. He had seen one of his senior professors doing it successfully on a patient and was sure the same principles would apply on me. (The principle, in short, is that asthma cannot be cured but the threshold of an attack can be pushed out gradually by taking up incremental aerobic exercising. A time comes when one does not get out of breath under normal exertions or triggers.)

“You’ll have to chuck smoking”, D-da began (knew this was coming). “But no need to despair. You can occasionally indulge in something more pleasurable, like drinking,” he comforted me putting his arm around my shoulder.

Well, at least he was being honest and straightforward with me, and deep down I knew there was no other way.

And thus my drill started from the following morning.

* * *

Things went nicely for another three months. The treatment was showing some results already. Other than that, nothing spectacular happened except that my first month’s salary was picked by a bunch of gentlemen, a grief that were to be partially offset by D-da and Sajal by treating me generously to a series of night shows and dine-outs. Then I changed my job and moved far, far away. Life got tough, the time was fully occupied, and since I knew only one way of writing letters (which was long mails), soon the thread of friendship ruptured. Daktarda too, I assumed, must have left the place and gone somewhere else. The smiling face of him were to remain in my memory, and that was, as I thought, the end of a very pleasant association.

Development vs Insurgency

(Blog on the make …more will be added and what has already been written will be edited ...)

This is a debate as ancient as the other famous one: egg or chicken -- which comes first. The recent Maoist violence has again brought into fore the debate, from the jungles to the media rooms.

I have followed some of the debates. There are two contradictory lines of arguments:

One says, development ruins the tribal way of life. It does not benefit the indigenous tribal people, they do not want it. When we forcibly develop their land (in our perceived way), we antagonize them and force them to the path of insurgency.

The other says that it is actually the lack of development that is what frustrates the indigenous people and fuels insurgency. So develop the area fast which in turn will dowse the insurgent flames.

Let us take up the first argument first. I have seen the tribals of the North East of India. The youth there, and this I have seen even 20-30 years back, do not intend to be in their loincloths like their grandfathers did. In fact they do not wear even the desi jeans; nothing short of designer American jeans will satisfy them. For that matter, not only the NE tribes, ask any youth of any tribal region and you will be surprised to find that contrary to what the activist would make us believe, the tribal youth do hunger for the good life that modern civilisation brings (particularly the western way of life) – perhaps hunger more for it than a youth from the plains (who is more likely to be entrapped in traditions) would do. I am not saying this in a sneering manner… rather I find this yearning quite appreciable. Is not it why people became civilised in the first place? Deliverance from danger and hunger to safety and comfort, from diseases to health, from constant struggle for existence to leisure and luxury – is not this the motivation behind all kinds of human civilisation?

Nothing remains constant if we look at the annals of history -- civilisations rise and decline, races intermingle and new races are born… even faiths do not remain stationary. Today’s thriving race becomes tomorrow’s extinct one (example, the mighty Romans) and vice versa. There is nothing sacrosanct in a people’s present identity that should not change and must be preserved at its pristine quality. To attempt to do so will be actually a disservice to the tribal community for whose so-called benefit such an endevour will be made. Will the Medha Patkars and Arundhati Roys ever understand this?

But a politician is a different species altogether. Outwardly they may toe the line of not violating the tribal way of life. Keeping people backward actually suits them in a perverted sense. But at the same time, they understand the need to fulfill some of the aspirations of the people, and the easy way out to achieve this is to throw asunder some money. Don’t develop, don’t create job opportunities, just give money to grab and spend. This way they create a corrupt system of patronage to some which is perhaps the worst thing that can happen to a people. When I say politicians, I not only mean the ruling class, but also the radicals who supposedly fight for these people. Take the case of Maoists/ULFA/NSCN. Have to ever touched Madhu Koda or people like him? They would rather impose a ‘tax’ from each lorry, from each business transaction, even a fixed cut from the salaries of people. They are part of the vested interest. They use their force to perpetuate the tyranny of the politics of backwardness.

I have always strongly believed in the essence of the second theory that says tribal people also aspire for and need development like anyone else. But I have disagreement with the simplistic solution that just bringing in huge investment would solve all problems. First, in most cases the indigenous people neither have the skills nor the drive to take up the job of development upon their own shoulders. In my experience in many of such regions they are bone lazy (one reason for their remaining backward) and hardly fit for any work above the menial ones (there too the migrant workforce work much harder and are more productive). But the greatest hurdle is, in most of the places, the culture of anarchy –insurgency, the local vs outsider tussle, extortion, indiscipline. Surely an entrepreneur cannot be expected to tackle such situations? This is the duty of the administration first to establish the rule of law there… to come down upon the trouble-makers with an iron feast.

More another day…

Islam

In the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, some time in December, 2008, I received an excellent 'forward' from a person whom I hold in high regard. The forward was actually a long mail. Without going into it I would rather state it's essence, which is: Religion has nothing to do with terror or brutality.

Islam was the context.

The incidents narrated in the mail's account were touching and the underlying theme convincing. For a long time, the subject continued to resonate in my mind, surfacing and resurfacing at odd moments, prodding me all the while to jot down my own thoughts about it. This, finally, is my effort in that direction.

My own view is, there do exist certain fundamental issues within each religion that weaken them from within over time. These issues, or notions, though when incorporated in the first place had had the best of intentions behind them, had also carried the seeds of future discontent, strife and suffering.

Each great religion has two broad aspects. The main one is esentially to show the path (or paths) towards Ishwar-Darshan, or vision (realisation) of God. Saints/Prophets/Avatars are people who have achieved this highest goal. To look at it another way, a religion is alive and kicking, and useful to humankind, as long as it produces People who have been alleviated to such level.

Hardly is there any scope of conflict in the above aspect.

Problems arise with the other side, where it deals with the social issues. What is a sound practice today, it can be said with near certainty, may cease to be so, even prove regressive and stumbling, a few centuries down the line. Here comes the need to continually change, to evolve with the demands of the times. And here exactly lies the problem with Islam. It fights reforms. It wants to remain in its form as it was at the beginning. Reform within a religion is always brought about by its saints, and not by other bearer of religion, the priestdom, that usually resists change. In Islam, the latter -- the Maulanas -- historically got precedence over the saints (the Pirs, Fakirs, Sufis), unless a saint had been given patronage by a powerful ruler. This unwillingness and inability to change with times has given rise to the various conflicts Islam has with other religions and cultures, even with people within its own fold.

Why has this great religion that preached equality of all before God and absolute surrender to Him like nobody else, shown so much inflexibility towards reforming? Obviously the social rules that were good and necessary for the wild tribes of the Arabian land 1400 years back could not be equally applicable in a today's totally changed world?

The reason that comes to my mind (and I may be totally wrong there) can be found in a fundamental proclamation in Islam: "I (Prophet Muhammad) am the last prophet". It effectively put a fullstop to all future chances of reform. Anybody attempting reform would be perceived to be doing an act of sacrilege. Islam does not acknowledge any prophets even from other religions who came after Prophet Muhammad.

No doubt the above was uttered with the best of intentions. God is absolute, truth is absolute. So where lies the need for change? -- must have been the idea. Also, such an embargo helped blocking emergence of fake prophets, a mallady that plagues Hinduism.

But on the flip side, it also stagnated this great, vibrant, energetic, equitable religion once and for all. I sincerely hope that I am wrong and God will restore this religion to it's true, intended purpose.

Cairo Talks -- Our PM Buckles again

I cannot forget what Michael Corleone once told Tom Hagen, the family lawyer and Consigliere, when the latter offered to take charge of the affairs during a war-like situation. Michael said something like this: Tom, you are a peace-time consigliere: you are not meant for wars.

Whenever I look at the way our PM Dr Manmohan acts vis-a-vis Pakistan, I am struck by the similarities with the above situation. Here we have a man at the helm of our affairs who would have made a good Finance Minister, but not the Prime Minister, especially with adverseries like Pakistan and China and 'allies' like the US who have designs of their own on us. The country badly needs somebody with more spine.

But the country obviously is in love with the doctor... so who am I to wail?