Thursday, June 24, 2010

Iran – A nation seen from the different angles, biases and prejudices



What would be your feeling while entering a territory or a country which the world’s superpowers think as being a hot bed of extremism or for that matter where the women’s freedom is curtailed and they are confined to remain inside their homes? Fear, psychosis, hesitation, isn’t it?

But most of the things which the western backed media shows about Iran are either biased or full of prejudice and fabricated. While on a trip to Teheran to participate the death anniversary of the Islamic Republic’s late founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini I found so many things which are in total contradiction with what we in this part of the world are fed up or forced to believe about Iran.

Upon arriving at the Teheran’s Imam Khomeini International airport it seemed as if we have reached some European capital. Teheran can compete with any other Western capital in infrastructure, beauty and so many other things. The women there are as fashion conscious (while being in hijab) as any other progressive society.

The six lane dirt-less roads between the airport on Qom – Teheran highway and Teharn give you an impression that you are in either Europe or America. Many flyovers, tall skyscrapers, Green Mausoleums (The most beautiful is the one of Ayatollah Khomeini) increase the beauty of the city to many a folds. One cannot even think that this very nation is going through continuous international sanction since past 30 years.

One can find more fashionable hijab as anywhere else in Iran. Women there enjoy lots of freedom while choosing their career options. ‘’ The professional freedom of the Iranian women have never been curtailed after the revolution. Before the revolution the Iranian women were regarded as a sex object, but Khomeini made us to realize our self respect by encouraging us to excel in nearly all professional fields’’, said a a woman security official at the Teheran’s Imam Khomeini international airport. The literacy of women there is higher than India and many other developing nations. On nearly each and every counter I found women wearing hijab as receptionists.

The politics in Iran revolves around the Vali e Faqeeh i.e. Ayatollah Khamenei who is the most powerful person in Iran. He is the supreme commander who heads all the three wings of the armed forces and has a last say on nuclear related issues. Vili e Faqeeh is a post created by Late Ayatollah Khomeini for the person who can keep a tag on the activities of the president and the armed forces. It’s compulsory for a Vali e Faqeeh to be a cleric while the President can be a non cleric also like the present President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who is a non cleric having a P.hd in traffic management from Teheran University.

Looking at the infrastructure of the country one could not imagine that this is the sane nation which had cut the teeth in an imposed eight year long war against Iraq then ruled by the western backed dictator Saddam Hussan. While speaking with the taxi driver on way to the Holy city of Qom I asked him how the continuous sanctions have affected the progress of the nation. His reply was that in fact these sanctions have made the country self reliant and the feeling of self respect in the Iranians have increased many a folds

There is no doubt that there are difference in the regime which is itself a good sign for a democracy but the support base of the present president comes from the class which has been kept marginalized by many years. They see hope in Ahmadinejad and his pro poor policies. ‘’ The President is a hope for we people who can get heard our voices heard ‘’, said a street vendor in Teheran.

Iranian nationalism is one of the most powerful nationalism in the world which is much deep rooted than any other nation. Apart from the Islamic revolution it’s the Iranian Nationalism only because of which Iran has remained defiant against all the pressures from the West in the form of Iran – Iraq war and various other sanctions and pressures.
If one really wants know Iran then he must go there and have a first hand account rather than relying on the biased western news reports.

There are really some sections which are totally against Ahmadinejad and his policies the proof of which has been the last year’s post elections turmoil in which the factions led by the runner up to the election Mir Hussain Mousavi claimed that the elections have been forged.

I also visited the cities of Qom and Mashhad. Mashhad is a city full of life where the shrine of Imam e Raza . the 8th Imam of the Shias is situated. This shrine has its name in the Guinese book of worlds record for getting the highest number of pilgrims on a daily basis for the whole year. Mashhad is the capital of Khorasaan province. Khorasaan is the only province of Iran which finances the Iranian government by the donations collected by the Imam e Raza trust(Aastana e Ghods e Razavi). Every day, 24/7, millions of people visit this holy shrine of Imam e Raza.

Qom is the virtual power center of Iran because of its being spiritual centre. Most of the experts of the most powerful guardian council live in Qom only. Qom has many seminaries in which thousands of students from across the world come to get religious education. The founder of the Islamic revolution late Ayatollah Khomeini also studied from this city apart from Najaf in Iraq.

As a whole Iran is a nation which can give you many surprises at a single time. A nation waiting to hit the table hard if the sanctions are removed. When I asked an Iranian diplomat , does he think America can attack on Iran, his reply was , ‘’ The only thing which has stopped America till now from Attacking Iran is it’s not being sure about the Iranian response to any possible American blitzkrieg.

Apart from all the above mentioned things, there are some sectors where one can easily see the effects of continous sanctions. The aviations section is one of them which has been badly affected by the sanctions by the international community. Inflation is also very high which is the main reason behind the dissatisfaction of the masses sometimes against the government but as a whole the situation is normal and the Iranian nation has much more to achieve.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Family Matters - The life and Times of Bhuttos


''The life and times of the Bhuttos is seen afresh in a passionately partisan but well-constructed memoir. William Dalrymple reviews it in context.''

The Bhuttos’ acrimonious family squabbles have long resembled one of the bloody succession disputes that habitually plagued South Asia during the time of the Great Mughals. In the case of the Bhuttos, they date back to the moment when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was arrested on July 5, 1977.

Unsure how to defend their father and his legacy, his children had reacted in different ways. Benazir believed the struggle should be peaceful and political. Her brothers initially tried the same approach, forming al-Nusrat, the Save Bhutto committee; but after two futile years they decided in 1979 to turn to the armed struggle.
Murtaza was 23 and had just left Harvard where he got a top first, and where he was taught by, among others, Samuel Huntington. Forbidden by his father from returning to Zia’s Pakistan, he flew from the US first to London, then on to Beirut, where he and his younger brother Shahnawaz were adopted by Yasser Arafat. Under his guidance they received the arms and training necessary to form the Pakistan Liberation Army, later renamed Al-Zulfiquar or The Sword.
Just before his daughter Fatima was born, Murtaza and his brother had found shelter in Kabul as guests of the pro-Soviet government. There the boys had married a pair of Afghan sisters, Fauzia and Rehana Fasihudin, the beautiful daughters of a senior Afghan official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Fatima’s mother was Fauzia.
For all its PLO training in camps in Syria, Afghanistan and Libya, Al-Zulfiquar achieved little except for two failed assassination attempts on Zia and the hijacking of a Pakistan International Airways flight in 1981. This was diverted from Karachi to Kabul and secured the release of some 55 political prisoners; but it also resulted in the death of an innocent passenger, a young army officer. Zia used the hijacking as a means of cracking down on the Pakistan Peoples Party, and got the two boys placed on the Federal Investigation Agency’s most-wanted list. Benazir was forced to distance herself from her two brothers even though they subsequently denied sanctioning the hijack, and claimed only to have acted as negotiators once the plane landed in Kabul. While much about the details of the hijacking remains mysterious, Murtaza was posthumously acquitted of hijacking in 2003.
I first encountered the family in 1994 when, as a young foreign correspondent on assignment for the Sunday Times, I was sent to Pakistan to write a long magazine piece on the Bhutto dynasty. I met Benazir in the giddy pseudo-Mexican Prime Minister’s House that she had built in the middle of Islamabad.
It was the beginning of Benazir’s second term as Prime Minister, and she was at her most imperial. She both walked and talked in a deliberately measured and regal manner, and frequently used the royal “we”. During my interview, she took a full three minutes to float down the hundred yards of lawns separating the Prime Minister’s House from the chairs where I had been told to wait for her. There followed an interlude when Benazir found the sun was not shining in quite the way she wanted it to: “The sun is in the wrong direction,” she announced. Her hair was arranged in a sort of baroque beehive topped by white gauze dupatta like one of those Roman princesses in Caligula or Rome.
A couple of days later in Karachi, I met Benazir’s brother Murtaza in very different circumstances. Murtaza was on trial in Karachi for his alleged terrorist offences. A one hundred rupee bribe got me through the police cordon, and I soon found Murtaza with his mother — Begum Bhutto — in an annexe beside the courtroom. Murtaza looked strikingly like his father, Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto. He was handsome, very tall — well over six feet — with a deep voice and, like his father, exuded an air of self-confidence, bonhomie and charisma. He invited me to sit down: “Benazir doesn’t care what the local press says about her,” he said, “but she’s very sensitive to what her friends in London and New York get to read about her.”
“Has your sister got in touch with you since you returned to Pakistan?” I asked.
“No. Nothing. Not one note.”
“Did you expect her to intervene and get you off the hook?” I asked. “What kind of reception did you hope she would lay on for you when you returned from Damascus?”
“I didn’t want any favours,” replied Murtaza. “I just wanted her to let justice take its course, and for her not to interfere in the legal process. As it is, she has instructed the prosecution to use delaying tactics to keep me in confinement as long as possible. This trial has been going on for three months now and they still haven’t finished examining the first witness. She’s become paranoid and is convinced I’m trying to topple her.”
Murtaza went on to describe an incident the previous week when the police had opened fire on Begum Bhutto as she left her house to visit her husband’s grave. When the Begum ordered the gates of the compound to be opened and made ready to set off, the police opened fire. One person was killed immediately and two others succumbed to their injuries after the police refused to let the ambulances through. That night as three family retainers lay bleeding to death, 15 kilometres away in her new farmhouse, Benazir celebrated her father’s birthday with singing and dancing:
“After three deaths, she and her husband danced!” said the Begum now near to tears. “They must have known the police were firing at Al-Murtaza. Would all this have happened if she didn’t order it? But the worst crime was that they refused to let the ambulances through. If only they had let the ambulances through those two boys would be alive now: those two boys who used to love Benazir, who used to run in front of her car.”
The Begum was weeping now. “I kept ringing Benazir saying ‘for God sake stop the siege’, but her people just repeated: ‘Madam is not available’. She wouldn’t even take my call. One call from her walkie-talkie would have got the wounded through. Even General Zia...” The sentence trailed away. “What’s that saying in England?” asked the Begum: “Power corrupts, more power corrupts even more. Is that it?”
Two years later, to no one’s great surprise, Murtaza was himself shot dead in similar and equally suspicious circumstances.
Murtaza had been campaigning with his bodyguards in a remote suburb of Karachi. As his convoy neared his home at 70 Clifton, the street lights were abruptly turned off.
It was September 20, 1996, and Murtaza’s decision to take on Benazir had put him into direct conflict not only with his sister, but also with her husband Asif Ali Zardari. Murtaza had an animus against Zardari, who he believed was not just a nakedly and riotously corrupt polo-playing playboy, but had pushed Benazir to abandon the PPP’s once-radical agenda — fighting for social justice. Few believed the rivalry was likely to end peacefully. Both men had reputations for being trigger-happy. Murtaza’s bodyguards were notoriously rough, and Murtaza was alleged to have sentenced to death several former associates, including his future biographer, Raja Anwar, author of an unflattering portrait, The Terrorist Prince. Zardari’s reputation was worse still.
So insistent had the rumours become that Zardari had ordered the killing of Murtaza at 3 pm that afternoon, that Murtaza had given a press conference saying he had learnt that an assassination attempt on him was being planned, and he named some of the police officers he claimed were involved in the plot. Several of the officers were among those now waiting, guns cocked, outside his house. According to witnesses, when the leading car drew up at the roadblock, there was a single shot from the police, followed by two more shots, one of which hit the foremost of Murtaza’s armed bodyguards. Murtaza immediately got out of his car and urged his men to hold their fire. As he stood there with his hands raised above his head, urging calm, the police opened fire on the whole party with automatic weapons. The firing went on for nearly 10 minutes.
Two hundred yards down the road, inside the compound of 70 Clifton, the house where Benazir Bhutto had spent her childhood, was Murtaza’s wife Ghinwa, his daughter, the 12-year-old Fatima, and the couple’s young son Zulfikar, then aged six. When the first shot rang out, Fatima was in Zulfikar’s bedroom, helping put him to bed. She immediately ran with him into his windowless dressing room, and threw him onto the floor, protecting him by covering his body with her own.
After 45 minutes, Fatima called the Prime Minister’s House and asked to speak to her aunt. Zardari took her call:
Fatima: “I wish to speak to my aunt, please.”
Zardari: “It’s not possible.”
Fatima: “Why?” [At this point, Fatima says, she heard loud, stagy-sounding wailing.]
Zardari: “She’s hysterical, can’t you hear?”
Fatima: “Why?”
Zardari: “Don’t you know? Your father’s been shot.”
Fatima and Ghinwa immediately left the house and demanded to be taken to see Murtaza. By now there were no bodies in the street. It had all been swept and cleaned up: there was no blood, no glass, or indeed any sign of any violence at all. Each of the seven wounded had been taken to a different location, though none was taken to emergency units of any the different Karachi hospitals. The street was completely empty.
“They had taken my father to the Mideast, a dispensary,” says Fatima. “It wasn’t an emergency facility and had no facilities for treating a wounded man. We climbed the stairs, and there was my father lying hooked up to a drip. He was covered in blood and unconscious. You could see he had been shot several times. One of those shots had blown away part of his face. I kissed him and moved aside. He never recovered consciousness. We lost him just after midnight.”
The two bereaved women went straight to a police station to register a report, but the police refused to take it down. Benazir Bhutto was then the Prime Minister, and one might have expected the assassins would have faced the most extreme measures of the state for killing the Prime Minister’s brother. Instead, it was the witnesses and survivors who were arrested. They were kept incommunicado and intimidated. Two died soon afterwards in police custody.
“There were never any criminal proceedings,” says Fatima. “Benazir claimed in the West to be the queen of democracy, but at that time there were so many like us who had lost family to premeditated police killings. We were just one among thousands.”
Benazir always protested her innocence in the death of Murtaza, and claimed that the killing was an attempt to frame her by the army’s intelligence services: “Kill a Bhutto to get a Bhutto,” as she used to put it. But Murtaza was, after all, clearly a direct threat to Benazir’s future, and she gained the most from the murder. For this reason her complicity was widely suspected well beyond the immediate family: when Benazir and Zardari attempted to attend Murtaza’s funeral, their car was stoned by villagers who believed them responsible.
The judiciary took the same view, and the tribunal set up to investigate the killing concluded that Benazir’s administration was “probably complicit” in the assassination. Six weeks later, when Benazir fell from power, partly as a result of public outrage at the killings, Zardari was charged with Murtaza’s murder.
Fourteen years on, however, the situation is rather different. Benazir is dead, assassinated, maybe by the military, but equally possibly by some splinter group of the Taliban. Fatima is now a strikingly beautiful 28-year-old, fresh from a university education in New York and London. She has a razor-sharp mind and a forceful, determined personality. Meanwhile, the man Fatima Bhutto holds responsible for her father’s death is not only out of prison, but President of the country. The bravery of writing a memoir taking on such a man is self-evident, but Fatima seems remarkably calm about the dangers she has taken on.
As for the book itself, Songs of Blood and Sword is moving, witty and well-written. It is also passionately partisan: this is not, and does not pretend to be, an objective account of Murtaza Bhutto so much as a love letter from a grieving daughter and an act of literary vengeance and account-settling by a niece who believed her aunt had her father murdered.
Future historians will decide whether Murtaza really does deserve to be vindicated for the hijacking in Kabul and will weigh up whether or not Murtaza, who even Fatima describes as “impulsive” and “honourable and foolish”, would have made a better leader than his deeply flawed sister; or indeed whether the equally inconsistent Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto deserves the adulation heaped on him by his granddaughter. But where the book is unquestionably important is the reminder it gives the world as to Benazir’s flaws. Since her death, Benazir has come to be regarded, especially in the US, as something of a martyr for democracy. Yet the brutality of Benazir’s untimely end should not blind anyone to her as astonishingly weak record as a politician. Benazir was no Aung San Suu Kyi, and it is misleading as well as simplistic to depict her as having died for freedom; in reality, Benazir’s instincts were not so much democratic as highly autocratic.
Within her own party, she declared herself the lifetime president of the PPP, and refused to let her brother Murtaza challenge her for its leadership; his death was an extreme version of the fate of many who opposed her. Benazir also colluded in wider human rights abuses and extra-judicial killings, and during her tenure government death squads murdered hundreds of her opponents. Amnesty International accused her government of having one of the world's worst records of custodial deaths, abductions, killings and torture.
Far from reforming herself in exile, Benazir kept a studied distance from the pioneering lawyers’ movement which led the civil protests against President Musharraf’s unconstitutional attempts to manipulate the Supreme Court. She also sidelined those in her party who did support the lawyers. Later she said nothing to stop President Musharraf ordering the US-brokered “rendition” of her rival Nawaz Sharif to Saudi Arabia, so removing from the election her most formidable democratic opponent. Many of her supporters regarded her deal with Musharraf as a betrayal of all that her party stood for. Her final act in her will was to hand the inappropriately named Pakistan People’s Party over to her teenage son as if it were her personal family fiefdom.
Worse still, Benazir was a notably inept administrator. During her first 20-month-long premiership, she failed to pass a single piece of major legislation, and during her two periods in power she did almost nothing to help the liberal causes she espoused so enthusiastically to the Western media.
Instead, it was under her watch that Pakistan’s secret service, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), helped install the Taliban in Pakistan, and she did nothing to rein in the agency’s disastrous policy of training up Islamist jihadis from the country’s madrasas to do the ISI’s dirty work in Kashmir and Afghanistan. As a young correspondent covering the conflict in Kashmir in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I saw how during her premiership, Pakistan sidelined the Kashmiris’ own secular resistance movement, the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, and instead gave aid and training to the brutal Islamist outfits it created and controlled, such as Lashkar-e-Toiba and Harkat ul-Mujahedin. Benazir’s administration, in other words, helped train the very assassins who are most likely to have shot her.
Benazir was, above all, a feudal landowner, whose family owned great tracts of Sindh, and with the sense of entitlement this produced. Democracy has never thrived in Pakistan in part because landowning remains the base from which politicians emerge. In this sense, Pakistani democracy in Pakistan is really a form of “elective feudalism”: the Bhuttos’ feudal friends and allies were nominated for seats by Benazir, and these landowners made sure their peasants voted them in.
Behind Pakistan’s swings between military government and democracy lies a surprising continuity of elitist interests: to some extent, Pakistan’s industrial, military and landowning classes are all interrelated, and they look after each other. They do not, however, do much to look after the poor. The government education system barely functions in Pakistan, and for the poor, justice is almost impossible to come by. According to the political scientist Ayesha Siddiqa, “Both the military and the political parties have all failed to create an environment where the poor can get what they need from the state. So the poor have begun to look for alternatives. In the long term, these flaws in the system will create more room for the fundamentalists.”
Many right-wing commentators on the Islamic world tend to see political Islam as an anti-liberal and irrational form of “Islamo-fascism”. Yet much of the success of the Islamists in countries such as Pakistan comes from the Islamists’ ability to portray themselves as champions of social justice, fighting people like Benazir Bhutto from the corrupt Westernised elite that rules most of the Muslim world from Karachi to Riyadh, Ramallah and Algiers.
Benazir’s reputation for massive corruption was gold dust to these Islamic revolutionaries, just as the excesses of the Shah were to their counterparts in Iran 30 years earlier: during her government, Pakistan was declared one of the three most corrupt countries in the world, and Bhutto and her husband, Asif Zardari — widely known as “Mr 10%” — faced allegations of plundering the country; charges were filed in Pakistan, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States to investigate their various bank accounts, and they stood accused of jointly looting no less than $1.4 billion from the state.
When I interviewed Abdul Rashid Ghazi in the Islamabad Red Mosque shortly before his death in Musharraf’s July attack on the complex, he returned time and again to these issues: “We want our rulers to be honest people,” he repeated. “But now the rulers are living a life of luxury while thousands of innocent children have empty stomachs and can’t even get basic necessities.”
This is the principal reason for the rise of the Islamists in Pakistan, and why so many people support them: they are the only force capable of taking on the country’s landowners and their military cousins. Benazir Bhutto may have been a brave, gutsy, secular and liberal woman. But sadness at the demise of this courageous fighter should not mask the fact that as a corrupt feudal who did nothing for the poor, she was a central part of Pakistan’s problems, rather than any solution to them. Songs of Blood and Sword is a timely and forceful reminder of this.
Certainly, readers of Fatima’s book have ahead of them a wonderfully close-focussed and well-constructed memoir from the heart of the most violent and Borgia-like of the South Asian dynasties to savour. They also, most likely, have further instalments to come. During a recent interview, I asked Fatima whether she would consider entering politics herself: “I am political,” she replied, “but there are many ways to be political. I don’t think that becoming an MP is necessarily the best way to influence people. For the time being, I want to be a writer. But who knows? If in the future there was a way I could serve my country, one that did not involve becoming yet another part of dynastic birthright politics, maybe I could envisage putting my name forward.” Watch this space.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Not just Naxalism


After the deadly attack on the CRPF jawans in Dantewada by the Naxalites, the whole nation seems to have turned their angst against the Maoists and the tribals and everyone wants them to be bombed out. Be it the high profile Editors of so called national media or the politicians from the BJP and Congress everyone is acting as if they are the only ones who make the policies for the welfare of the nation state as a whole. Honestly speaking no one is interested in discussing about the root causes which generate or have been generating sympathy for the Maoists and their movement among the tribals. Neither the government not the so called free media seem to be interested to explore the flip side. Unless the root causes behind the growing dissatisfaction of the tribals and the poor as a whole are addressed each and every measure by the government will boomerang.

In fact the main reason behind the surge of Naxalism is the exploitation meted out to the people living in our mineral rich tribal areas due to the anti poor policies of the successive incumbents of 7 RCR. It's the lack of faith towards the governments which lure the poor towards Naxalites. Just bombing out the Naxal hide outs and encounter of the Maoist is not going to solve the problem unless there is an apt redressal of the grievances of our have-nots who have always been kept marginalized by very system.
The rampant corruption and exploitation carried out by the civil servants, government officials, police, forest employees, politicians etc at the village level should and must stop. Otherwise all the measures taken to uplift the socio-economic condition in naxal hinterlands will be nothing but like taking pain killer which may have an instant effect but not the cure.

These so called policy makers or the ministers who thrive on the money of businessmen and corporate tycoons like Tatas, Mittals, Ambanis and Vedanta need to have an honest approach in resolving the issue. Unless the corruption prevailing at each and every level of our society doesn’t come to an end and the grievances of our 40% of the population addressed to their satisfaction, the change we are hoping about will remain a distant dream.

Shoma Choudhary once wrote in Tehelka that ''At the heart of the Naxal riddle, there are three primary questions: Who is a Naxal? What is one’s position on violence as a tool of struggle? And why is Naxalism on the rise across the country? At a political level, they do not believe in parliamentary democracy (where they see power still concentrated in the hands of the feudal upper class) and their long-term objective is to seize State power for the people through armed struggle. In this back ground can Naxalism really be wiped out by brute counter force? If that were so, Siddhartha Shankar Ray’s crackdown in Bengal in the 70s should have nailed it for all time. But the fact is, while stories of their own coercions are true, Naxal leaders enjoy wide support because they also espouse socio-economic causes and empower people that the successive governments (either BJP or Congress or whatever) has ignored strategically for 60 years.

Once, In a FaceBook discussion a person asked me a very interesting question, ''Why is that Maoists are gaining ground only in Mining belt?'' My reply was that, It's only because the mining belts are one of the most poor parts of our country (but unfortunately it's because of these parts only the Tatas, Ambanis and many other Businessmen became rich) These areas have always been exploited either by the government or the MNCs backed by them. Every time the resources from these places have been extracted (but these places haven’t seen any type of development since ages). If the corrupt corporate tycoons and politicians can use the wealth of these mining lands for their personal gains then what’s wrong is there if someone or any other organization comes forward(having whatever intention) to increase the sense of security among the people living on the margins. It's a fact and we have to accept that in the villages of our hinterlands there is a very strong support for Naxalism, and the main reason behind this support is the successive governments (whether it is state or the central Government) step motherly behavior towards the problems of the villagers, and hence the sense of insecurity in their hearts and minds.

Just behaviour like an ostrich in the sand is not going to solve any problem. The government needs to address this issues related to the Maoist surge on an urgent basis.

In fact, the State's duty is not only to uphold the law by force but also to ensure the equal distribution of wealth and opportunities.

It doesn’t need for someone to be an economist to understand about the prevailing injustice and inequality in our so called civilized society. It needs common sense. If we get annoyed when someone tries to snatch our valued belongings from us then the poor of the poor have also the same right. The difference is we the neo rich because of our power and money can buy what ever we want, but what about the ones who could even manage the meal of even a single time. They too earn their money by doing hard work (but not sitting in Air conditioned offices).

It’s really dis-heartening when most of the people who are killed in the war between the state and non state actors are poor whether they are the soldiers of the state or the fighters of the non state actors. Most of the soldiers killed were the only bread earners for their family and it's a fact that when the dust of the Dantewada attack settles the people who are sitting at the top will forget these poor Jawans and their family and they will be only remembered at the time of elections to garner votes .

There is a similarity between the soldiers and the tribals which is: ''Both, the Soldiers from Uttar Pradesh and the tribals form Jharkhand are desperately poor and on the same side of the big divide which is getting wider with the passing of every single day. In essence, what the state is doing is making the poor fight with the poor.''

The aftermath of Dantewada has opened up the ugly truth that ‘poor pitted against poor’. At the backdrop of politico-editor-activist brain storming sessions the sooner we understand this reality the better.

Monday, January 25, 2010

A republic at 60 – Where we have reached


Three days back on the 22nd of January, I saw a soul steering scene at the New Delhi railway station which can make everyone stop and think about the condition of inequality and the apathy through which we are passing in the present era. I had been there to see my brother off who was going to our home in Bihar. Because of the fog conditions all the trains and flights in and out of the capital either are cancelled or running late and hence leading to a chaotic condition at the railway stations.

When we were waiting for the train, suddenly a train came from the other end. There was chaos due to the rush of the people to catch trains and suddenly a person was also standing near the train was pushed by the crowd and fell on the track and one of his legs was chopped away from his body. These accidents are a regular occurrence on the railway stations in our country, but the thing which is more appalling and disgusting is the irresponsibility and ignorance of the officials there towards the apathy of a common man. There I saw the whole machinery collapsing when there was not even a single stretcher to carry that almost dead man to the hospital. And after 40 minutes of that accident that person was carried to some hospital by some GRP personnel on a Thela (a local form of Cycle Rickshaw).

And now as we are going to celebrate the 60th anniversary of our Republic, we should stop and think, are we really ready to accept the challenges which would test our will as a nation in future?

Indian democratic experiment has always been regarded as being one of the most successful systems in the world but with some serious flaws. There is need of a serious self head scratching. First of all we have to think about the principles on which the Idea of our republic was based. Are those ideals still valid? Yes they are absolutely valid, but are their implementation upto the mark. These are some of the questions whose answers are needed most at this hour.

It’s really an achievement of our nation to remain united as a nation instead of such diversity within its fold but there are so many other things which we need to think about.

There is a sense of being ignored or being left behind in our North Eastern states and their complaints are really valid and the government cannot behave like an ostrich in sand for long. The Human rights violence by our security forces in the guise of the laws like AFPSA is a reality which cannot be ignored. Down the South we have an agitation of a separate state of Telengana. In the West we have goons like Raj Thackeray who are always in a hurry to exploit regional biases and issues to score their political brownie points and even the state fears to take him by his horn. The goons associated with his MNS never miss a chance to make the mockery of the state and its principle. Sometimes the North Indians are beaten up or sometimes the Muslims are made target. Sometimes it seems that the ruling congress is using him to keep his uncle at bay. The Kashmiris are being exploited since independence, sometimes through the Human Rights violation by our security forces, sometimes by both the Governments of India and Pakistan.

At the political front the level of politics has drastically gone down as compared to the politicians of the yester years. Sycophancy is at their peak. Ramchandra Guha rightly says that, ‘’India is more a Darbari democracy rather than a Dynastic democracy’’. For our politicians the importance of the “Aam Admi’’ is only till election and after that no one cares about the will of the common Man. With our metropolitans gleaming with small cities of shopping malls the difference between the have-nots and haves has increased manifold.

The dalits and tribals are still being exploited and their lands snatched by the greedy MNCs and business tycoons and as a result they are being forced to get into confrontation with the system. How can we expect a person whose children are malnourished or dying out of hunger to understand the royal intricacies of constitution and law? We cannot expect the Naxalite Movement to come down by exploiting the native tribals of their wealth and natural resources.

Are we really a rising world power which can become a super power in coming 20- 25 years? With the situation like this we cannot expect to be world powers in future and it’s a fact and reality. There is a wide gap between ‘Chamakta Bharat’ and ‘Tadapta Bharat’, and unless this gap is filled nothing is going to happen. With a 3rd rate education and 5th rate health system how can we think of becoming world power? The condition of the government hospitals keeps getting worse day by day. Even the hospitals of our metros don’t have state of art facilities needed to deal with emergency. As far as private hospitals are concerned they have become a totally business ventures where a poor person cannot even think to get himself treated.

There have been some black spots in the history of our republic. The emergency, The Babri Masjid demolition, The 84 anti Sikh riots, so many other communal riots, the Gujarat post Godhra anti – Muslim communal pogrom and so many other terrorist attacks like the Mumbai blasts and attacks are some of them. During the 84 riots and Gujarat pogrom the whole state machinery was well behind the marauders and criminals who with the help of police and administration having political backing went on tearing apart our secular credentials and it’s a shame that the criminals who were responsible are still roaming free while thumping their chest. Narender Modi is still there, the Congress politicians responsible for the 84 anti- Sikh riots are still free also.

Nearly most of the schemes and issues which should have played a great role in the upliftment of the underprivileged have been either hijacked or being use to score electoral points. Corruption at the Government places has played a great negative role of undermining the ideals on which our Republic has been based. The delayed justice delivery system sometimes becomes very much exploiting for the victims. The best example being the Ruchika Girhotra case in which after being exploited by a Corrupt and hypocrite Police that promising Tennis player was forced to cut short her life. Ruchika is just a tip of an ice berg. These type of cases keep on happening in our hinterlands on a daily basis.

Apart from all these negative aspects our democracy has been a success story where the people have every right to dismiss or reject some one whom they do not want to rule. The best examples are the post emergency defeat of Indira Gandhi and the defeat of the NDA govt in 2004 elections. It’s in itself a success story.

As a whole I would rather say that the Idea of India has prevailed but their so many problems which should and must be seen in their eyes directly. Otherwise the condition will get worse. It would not be bad to say that, our republic is an Orange Republic (Divided from within but looks united from outside), rather than a Banana one.

In short if we really want ourselves to become a world power we have to get empowered ideally (having a sense of ideology on which our republic is based) from within. We have to give the have-nots their rights which they deserve more than any one else. Glittering shopping Malls will look good only when a labourer from our hinterlands who worked day and night in the construction of that Mall or building feels free to go and buy something from that Mall also. They have their kids also who really want to live a life of the ones living in posh colonies of our Metropolis.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

JASHN E AAZADI - By Allama Jameel Mazhari


After 62 years of Independence of both India and Pakistan, there are millions of our fellow citizens who live in abject poverty and are denied socio-economic rights. On the one hand, it is said that India’s economy is booming, but on the other hand the scenario in the rural areas is deplorable. The poor have become poorer and the benefits of a ‘booming’ economy haven’t translated into development. If the divide between the rich and poor is not addressed, our dream will remain unfulfilled. This Independence has brought a lot of change for the upper strata of the society but for the lower strata its just a freedom from the British rule,because they are still ensalved by the socio-economic problems due to the anti-poor policies of the government which has a direct effect on their livelihood. The lower strata is still trapped under the vicious circle of poverty.

My heartiest wishes to all my dear fellow Indian citizens and my Pakistani friends on the 62nd year of our Independence from the British rule . Here I would like to share with you a favourite poem from my Grandfather Late Allama Jameel Mazhari which he recited in The Bihar Assembly at Patna in the year 1950.

'' JASHN E AAZAADI''


Jashn matamkada e Hind mein aazadi ka
Kucch thikaana hai tumhari sitam ijaadi ka?

Aaj duniya mein na ahmaq koi tum sa hoga
Is andhere mein chiraagon se ujala hoga?

Kya andhere ko dikhate ho tamasha e sahar
Noor shammon ka hai ya khoon e tamanna e sahar

Tum ne muflis ke shabistaan ki bhi dekhi hai bahar
Us ke seene mein chiraaghaan ki bhi dekhi hai bahaar

Yeh bilakte hue bacche inhien dekho, idhar aao
Bashariyat ke kaleje key eh riste hue ghao

Jinki lalchayi nazar faqa kashi ki maari
Jinko roti hai khilone se bhi zyada pyari

‘’Nauhakhwan aaj na kis tarah hon aazaadi ke
Khelein kya khud hi khilone hain yeh barbaadi ke’’

Jashn e aazaadi e jamhoor Mubarak ho tumhein
Raunaq e khana e mazdoor Mubarak ho tumhein

Haandiyan shaam se aundhi hui qismat ki tarah
Chup hai dil maan ka chiraag e sar e turbat ki tarah

Aag chulhe mein ek ummeed ki kujhlayi hui
Jaise seene mein tamanna koi murjhayi hui

Ahl e beenash ko Mubarak ho yeh samaan e nishaat
Khoon e muflis se yeh gulkaari e damaan e nishaat

Fikr e aflaas se dhoye hue chehron ki qasam
Jin ko kajal nahin milta un aankhon ki qasam

Qasam us jism ki uryaani hi chaadar ho jise
Qasam us maang ki sindoor na muyassar ho jise

Rang e mehfil ki qasam raunaq e manzar ki qasam
Jis mein mitti ka diya bhi nahin us ghar ki qasam

Qasam us shahr ki jis mein ke diwali hai aaj
Qasam us raat ki jo aur bhi kaali hai aaj

‘’ Key eh marghat ka ujala hai, chita hai yeh jashn
Ek toote hue dholak ki sada hai yeh jashn’’

Aye dil e zaar e watan , ae lab e faryaadi e qaum
Aake hum aaj karein maatam e aazaadi e qaum

Khwaab e aazaadi ki sad haif yeh tabeer ae dost
Ban gayi saanp yeh tooti hui zanjeer ae dost

Toot kar rengne phirne lagi lehraane lagi
Das gayi rooh ko is tarah ke neend aane lagi

‘’ Hue aazaad to kya gardish e dauraan hai wahi
Hasrat ae subah e watan shaam e ghareebaan hai wahi’’

Friday, June 12, 2009

Look who is discriminating




In the city of predictable prejudices, Iram Rizvi had run into a surprise.
The 25-year-old woman from Kashmir was being asked by the landlord to leave the house because she was a Kashmiri. But the landlord was no Muslim-hater. He was a Muslim himself.
“I have always faced remarks like ‘Kashmiris cannot be trusted’ and ‘all the Kashmiris are opportunists’. Who is not an opportunist?” asks Iram, sitting in a car in front of Jamia Millia Islamia University, as it rains incessantly outside.
“I have left Srinagar to do something good for myself and secure my family’s future. Is there any opportunism in that?” she says.
Rizvi says she faced discrimination and prejudice in an excruciating search for accommodation after she moved from Srinagar to the national capital in 2006.
She stayed for some time with a distant relative in Malviya Nagar, in a rented apartment owned by a Muslim. But just because of her Kashmiri identity, the landlord objected to Rizvi’s staying with her relative, and she had to leave.
It was much later that she could find a hostel in the university.
Rizvi worked as a journalist in Kashmir before moving to New Delhi to pursue her PhD in Mass Communication from Jamia Millia Islamia’s Mass Communication Research Centre. In Srinagar, she worked for local newspapers Daily Etalaat and the Greater Kashmir.
At Jamia, her topic of research is ‘The coverage of Kashmir conflict by newspapers’.
Breaking generations-old conventions in conflict-ridden Kashmir, hundreds of Kashmiri youth like her are beginning to travel outside the region to study and work, unlike even five years earlier when most remained cocooned in the Valley.
“I am an Indian but in Delhi it is very tough for a Kashmiri to stick to his or her identity, and if you are a girl it gets tougher,” says Rizvi, as traffic whizzes by on the rain-soaked street.
“For a girl from a small town like Srinagar it’s very tough to get accustomed to the lifestyle of a cosmopolitan city like Delhi,” she says.
And then, there are the slurs.
“Once I met a person in train. And when he came to know about my Kashmiri origin he said ‘These Kashmiris eat in India and sing about Pakistan’.”
Rizvi, who veils her face with a scarf in public, says “the veil makes me feel secure and look decent”, and adds that the only consolation is that she has not been subjected to taunts like many others for her scarf.
But stereotypes do play up often, like the day when her non-Muslim friend said of her visits to beauty parlours: “How can a girl wearing a veil go to the beauty parlour?”

Following is the lilnk to this article in Hindustan Times:-

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=IndiaSectionPage&id=a2ffb9d6-e2c7-4279-9da3-e0ed7a2b87e7&Headline=Look+who+is+discriminating

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

In the memory of a dear friend who left us crying...





Jaate hue kehte ho qayamat mein milenge
Kya khoob qayamat ka hai dooja koi din aur
Haan ae falak e peer jawaan tha abhi ‘’Aarif’’
Kya tera guzarta jo na marta koi din aur

Legendary poet Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib wrote the above quartet on the sad demise of his nephew Aarif. The same thing happened with me on 29th March ,2009 when I lost one of my best friend Qasim Ali , who used to regard me as his elder brother. I have known Qasim since last one and a half year and still cannot believe that things can come to such a passé within a short span of just 20 days between 8th March and 29th March. He was just like a normal, gym going athletic handsome guy on 7th March and on the 8th he was diagnosed with suffering from the deadly disease of Leukaemia. I will always miss the days of our working together in Hindustan Times when we used to crack jokes and play pranks. I could not ever think of writing an obituary for him.
Qasim, now you have left us grieving I cannot and won’t ever forget the things and memories associated with you. The day when you died was the 12th death anniversary of my late father. How can I forget that cold night of January when you brought dinner for me on the birthday of your sweet niece Irmish while I was working in the office. I kept you waiting for 20 mins because of the hectic schedule that day. I will also miss your brotherly affection towards me. Qasim, you suffered immense pain during the 20 days of your ailment. These 20 days made the world upside down for your grieving family. Our sadness and remorse stands nowhere in front of the scar which your death left on the heart of your mother. While you were battling for your life in AIIMS she kept reading The Holy Qur’an beside you day and night. Once she told me: ‘’Hassan mera dil kehta hai mera beta bach jayega’’. I don’t have words to pay condolence to her. Your parents and brother couldn’t gather the courage to ask the doctor about your condition. Whenever I asked the doctor about your condition he gave negative feedback and each and every time I kept lying to your family members that your condition is stable and will improve within few days.

Sometimes I ask myself, why did this happen with a young and energetic guy like you. But these are the questions whose answers are not possible for anyone to give. You seemed to be always in a hurry as if you know that you are here just for few days. Qasim, do u remember the day when you told me , ''Hassan bhai we will launch a News Channel together''. All those dreams have been shattered.

My dear Qasim, : ‘’Tanha gaye kyun ab raho tanha koi din aur.’’ Lets see when do I join you there.

Zamane ne dekhe jawaan kaise kaise
Zameen kha gayi aasmaan kaise kaise


God bless you my brother. Stay happy wherever you are. May your soul rest in peace.

Yours ever
Hassan Bhai