Urban Naxals - The Making of Buddha in a Traffic Jam - Review

"Because there is no space for alternative narrative"

Urban Naxals - The Making of Buddha In A Traffic Jam, by Vivek Agnohotri

S
ince the beginning of civilization, the favoured method of barbarians out to destroy great civilizations was to destroy their places of learning. Most Mayan writings of the Aztecs were destroyed by Bishop Landa of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Yucatán, while other Catholic priests burned the great Aztec library of Netza Hualcoyotl in Mexico City in the sixteenth century. Pope Gregory the Great ordered the library of Palatine Apollo burned in the late sixth century. The great library of Alexandria, perhaps the greatest library in the western world, was burned at the urging of Christian Bishop Theophilos. The largest library in the world at the time, at Nalanda, which contained an estimated hundreds of thousands of manuscripts, was destroyed by Bakhtiyar Khilji's hordes in 1193 CE. During the twentieth century, thousands of books were burned by the German Student Union in Nazi Germany in 1933.

Tinderbox, by MJ Akbar

Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan, by M.J. Akbar

"One good section, two okay parts, and several instances of selective interpretations."


(Flipkart, Flipkart ebook, Amazon US / CA / UK, Kindle US / UK, CA, Powell's)

One-line review: Two books, three parts, and some parts confusion and obfuscation.

Durbar, by Tavleen Singh

Durbar, by Tavleen Singh

"A Lucid First Draft of History"
   
(Amazon US, Amazon IN, Kindle, Flipkart, Flipkart e-book, my review on Amazon, Powell's)
This very readable book by Tavleen Singh provides a delectable mix of first-person accounts of some of the pivotal episodes in India's political and social history with just the right amount of seasoning and spice in the form of gossip and an insider's peek at the cloistered club that goes by the book's eponymous title, "Durbar".

The author's first-person account begins with the imposition of Emergency in India, and takes us through to 1991, when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. These seventeen odd years, from 1974 to 1991, saw India deprived of its Fundamental Rights, for the first time, a non-Congress government at the center, another first, dynastic succession firmly establish itself, the rise of the Hindu Right and the pandering to the Muslim bloc, two assassinations, multiple internal strifes - in Kashmir and Punjab most prominently, external problems, and more. The shadows cast by these events have been long and dark, and the author feels that the "possibility of an Indian renaissance ... recedes further and further away." (pg xii) This was not always the case. In the first couple of decades after Independence, "India was still a dilapidated, unsure sort of place but it had about it the innocence of a country that believed in its dream of democracy and freedom." [page 10]

In a book as short and as long as this one - some 300 pages long, there are bound to be omissions. I will leave those out, omissions on my part if you will, and focus on some of the highlights of this book. A "public school", or "convent" as it is often called in India, education did not turn the author into a "professional India". Rather, a chance encounter on a train with some young men trying to get fresh with some girls travelling with a young Tavleen Singh left a lifelong impression on her - "...it saddens me that I never learned Sanskrit. ..This language that is the key to India's civilization.. and her ancient texts was mocked in the little English world in which I grew up." It is a reflection of our unchanging attitudes that half a century of supposed independence has not dented these prejudices.

[Paragraph added Dec 9, 2012]
One of the more remarkable things about this book, and the fact that it will come as a surprise is in itself disappointing, is the author's travel experiences. Of traveling in stone-cold trains without a blanket, of having to sleep in mosquito and bat-infested rooms, of toilets that were too filthy to even sh*t in. Of editors who looked askance at reporters who wanted to travel out of Delhi - they were suspected of basically wanting to push off on a holiday. Of waiting for hours and hours on end, waiting for a story to break. Part of it was of course before the era of cell-phones, of the Internet, of 24x7 cable television, before the advent of social media, and before journalists who didn't like criticism could bludgeon critics into legal silence or get them banned using the might of the government. What is undeniable is that to build your cred as a journalist one had to get down and literally get one's feet dirty travelling the length and breadth of the country. If nothing else, what should come out in this book is the kind of work that needed to be put in to become a journalist who was taken seriously.

The book follows mostly a linear narrative, and the author's extensive first-person experiences form the backbone of the book - whether it was traveling to Kashmir before a rigged and thoroughly discredited election plunged the state into the darkness of insurgency and external-sponsored terrorism, or her fearlessness in Punjab during the 1980s. No, she did not parachute herself into the state, microphone in hand, videographer in tow, and a carefully selected phalanx of protesters to serve as a backdrop. No sir. She met Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, where she realized only later that "I had witnessed the Sant ordering an execution." - a Hindu police constable who had allegedly beaten up a Sikh was called out by name, and who turned up dead, shot, a few days later. After Operation Blue Star, the complete fustercluck of a military operation to clear the holy shrine of the Sikhs of terrorists barricaded there, the borders of the entire state of Punjab were ordered closed, and the city of Amritsar itself under curfew. She and Sandeep made it to Amritsar, carrying a letter from her father, Brigadier Amarjeet Singh, as the sabre to rattle soldiers into letting them pass through every road barricade they came across, and met up with General Brar (Lt Gen Kuldip Singh Brar, who commanded Operation Blue Star).
Some of the conversation she had went like this:

" "Is the temple badly damaged?"
"Yes. And what is sad is that it needn't have been if we had been allowed to spend a month using military intelligence to find out what was going on. We were forced to depend on those bastards in civilian intelligence and they couldn't even tells us how many entrances there were to the temple."
...
Had we known how many entrances there were we would never have gone in through the main entrance which was so heavily fortified. We lost more than a hundred men in the first few minutes."" [page 167-68]

Note that "more than a hundred men" were lost in the first few minutes. More than a thousand soldiers of the Indian Army were killed in that operation. That alone should have been cause for an inquiry and consequences, both bureaucratic and political. There were none. The reasons were all too clear.

"What I did find out soon enough was that the general view in Rajiv's circle of friends was that Operation Blue Star had been a resounding success and any criticism of it amounted to treason. It took me a while to discover that the reason for this hyper-sensitivity was that Rajiv and his friends had been personally involved in advising a military assault on the Golden Temple. Mrs Gandhis's 'south Indian advisors' had gone along with the plan, but from all accounts were not the ones who initiated it." [page 172]

There is considerable commentary, based on first-hand accounts, of the Emergency, of the riots at Turkman Gate, of the forced sterilization of the poor - in the name of population control, that allows us a glimpse into an India that was brutalized by an arrogant political dynasty and a pliant bureaucracy. More on that later, but after Emergency was lifted, elections announced, and political opponents freed (Rajmata Vijayraje Scindia for one had been imprisoned in a prison cell meant for prisoners on death row, and several other political prisoners lost their mental balance as a result of the solitary confinement they were subject to), a massive rally organized by the opposition political parties is worth recounting in some detail here.

While people today can listen to and watch practiced orators like Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley, it is easy to forget, especially for people who have become politically conscious only in the last ten of fifteen years or so, that perhaps India's best orator was none other than Atal Behari Vajpayee. He may have become the butt of jokes on account of his prolonged pauses towards the end of his career, but I, for one, who has watched him on television in the 1990s cannot forget the mesmerizing spell he could cast over listeners. So the following excerpt should come as no surprise. It was the second week of January, 1977. Emergency had been lifted a few weeks back by Indira Gandhi and elections announced. Political leaders imprisoned by the Congress government had been freed, and a massive rally had been announced at the Ram Lila grounds in New Delhi. If you have not been to Delhi in the winters, the evenings and nights can get bitterly cold. Add to it rain, and yet, that night in 1977, the crowds waited. The last speaker was to be Atal Behari Vajpayee.

""It was past 9 p.m. and the night had got colder although the rain had stopped." ... [A colleague from the Hindustan Times remarked,] "nobody will leave until Atalji speaks."...
"Why?"
"Because he is the best orator in India. Have you never heard him speak?"
"No. I've only been in journalism since he went to jail."
"Well, you're in for a treat. And to hear him for the first time today will really be something." [pg 60]
...
He acknowledged the slogans with hands joined in a namaste and a faint smile. Then, raising both arms to silence the crowd and closing his eyes in the manner of a practiced orator, he said, "baad muddat ke mile hain deewane." (बाद मुददत के मिले हैं दीवाने )... He paused. The crowd went wild.
When the applause died he closed his eyes again and allowed himself another long pause before saying, "Kehne sunne ko bahut hain afsane."(कहने सुनने को बहुत हैं अफ़साने ) ... The cheering was more prolonged, and when it stopped he paused again with his eyes closed before delivering the last line of a verse that he told me later he had composed on the spur of the moment. "Khuli hawa mein zara saans to le lain, kab tak rahegi aazadi kaun jaane." (ख़ुली हवा में सांस तो ले लें, कब तक रहेगी आज़ादी कौन जाने )
The crowd was now hysterical." [page 60]

He then went on to deliver a speech decrying the excesses of emergency, especially the bundling of the poor like cattle into trucks, taken away to be forcibly sterilized.

"The clapping this remark evoked went on and on and on and it would be only on election day that I would understand why." [pg 61]

The author drops a tantalizing hint that Atal Behari Vajpayee could have become prime minister instead of the rather spartan and strict Morarji Desai. Perhaps India's destiny would have been different, perhaps for the better. As we know, things turned out different. Incidentally, it was Atal Bihari Vajpayee who had admonished Rajiv Gandhi on his incredibly insensitive and appalling statement on the earth shaking when a tree falls, who said that "it is when the earth shakes that trees fall."

And incidentally, when people launch into a harangue on the Yamuna River and its filth, remember that massive numbers of people living in slums in Delhi - lakhs - were forcibly evicted from their homes and forced to live in even more squalid conditions by the Yamuna. Lakhs of these people added to the pollution of the Yamuna. Sanjay Gandhi truly believed in removing the poor and signs of poverty, not really removing poverty. Nameless, faceless, clueless bureaucrats took over the design and planning of Indian cities.

The book is no endless commentary on the political intrigues and escapades of the political class. For instance, the author managed to get permission and time to do an interview of the then Hindi cinema superstar (heck, he is even today, thirty-five years later, the reigning superstar of Hindi cinema).

"By the time he dropped me home at 4 a.m. we had become friends. As for me, I had fallen in love." [pg 108]

Then there is her travel to the Kumbh Mela and the truly heartbreaking sight of seeing little girls at the lost-and-found camp, where she learns that these girls had been deliberately "lost" by parents who did not want girls. Or an even more heartbreaking travel to the drought-stricken district of Kalahandi in Orissa, where entire villages had been wiped out, with people dying a slow death, watching their children dying an even more painful death, distended bellies, vacant eyes, and the existence of a drought being denied by a heartless Chief Minister and a clueless Prime Minister.

But what about Sonia? After all, a disproportionate number of readers are going to pick the book up in the hopes of finding juicy tidbits of gossip on the Empress of India, Mrs. Sonia Gandhi. Even some of the book's excerpts published on news portals have tended to fixate on those pieces that talk about Sonia Gandhi. Well, the book does have its share of anecdotes about Sonia Gandhi, but Sonia Gandhi is not the object of this book, yet these glimpses provide us with sufficient material to form some sort of an opinion about the politician who would shape India's destiny for a decade, or more. There is also subtext that is there, and words not written that need to be read, between the lines. The author came to become friends with Sonia and Rajiv Gandhi, a friendship that did not last more than a decade. The words, or at least some of the words, used are deliberate, and will leave the reader in no doubt that Tavleen Singh is most certainly not a member of the "durbar". Tavleen Singh first noticed Sonia Gandhi, at Mapu's house. Mapu was Arun Singh's brother, and the party had Romi Chopra and Naveen Patnaik, among others. "She was small and slim, with a prominent, sulky mouth and thick brown hair that hung loose down to her waist." [page 20]

The friendship between the author and Sonia Gandhi, that lasted for about a decade, did see moments of closeness and tenderness, in which Sonia Gandhi went out of her way to arrange an interview with Rajiv Gandhi, to help a desperate Tavleen Singh keep her job. The interview made her boss, M.J. Akbar, even more irritated with the author, for reasons that become all too clear later. Sonia Gandhi would often provide the author with Rahul Gandhi's clothes, or clothes gifted to Rahul, for her son, Aatish Taseer - a close and personal friendship. The friendship frayed beyond repair after Tavleen Singh worked on a profile on Sonia Gandhi, after Rajiv Gandhi had become Prime Minister, that was published in India Today, and which though "balanced", did ask some questions about Sonia Gandhi's influence on Rajiv Gandhi and the fact that she controlled access to Rajiv Gandhi and his coterie. This relationship did not revive even after Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, an event that saw no other politician lose his or her life - much is said and still left unsaid by the author here.

"Sonia, her daughter and other ladies of the family sat in white saris on the floor. Sonia's dark brown hair was tied back and covered with her cotton sari and her face was carefully made up. Even the lower eyelashes she painted on to make her eyes look bigger were in place. I reached out and held her hand, but she pretended to greet someone else. When our eyes met, she looked at me as if I were a total stranger." [pg 7 - after Rajiv Gandhi's assassination]

And let us not forget that the author makes it clear just how the cozy and close the relationship was between Sonia Gandhi and the infamous Ottavio Quattrochi:

"Then there were the foreign friends with whom Sonia seemed most comfortable and relaxed. Ottavio and Maria Quattrochi were the ones who were nearly always invited where Rajiv and Sonia went. ... Sonia's parents stayed with them when they came to Delhi." [page 23]

The author does not explain, or attempt to explain, how Sonia Gandhi's absolute contempt for politics could be reconciled with her late decision to not only enter politics herself, but also push her son and her daughter into politics.

"I would rather my children begged in the streets than went into politics." - Sonia Gandhi. [page 102]

Perhaps the most scathing pieces in the book are reserved for those who form part of this incestuous clique of power-brokers, the power-wielders, and the plain power-hungry. This power circle resides in Delhi, and operates out of Delhi.

"It is my conviction that the dynasty's real power comes from the support they get from the bureaucracy in Delhi. High officials in India are famous for the disdain with which they treat the representatives of the people but put almost any of them in the presence of a member of the Gandhi family and they behave like humble employees. ... If they ever make it to the inner circles of the court around the family, their obsequiousness knows no bounds... ... but on the edge of their courts have always lurked senior bureaucrats dripping with servility they rarely show anyone else. The most sycophantic are those who went to Oxford and Cambridge and who appear to have developed from this British experience a genetic memory of serving colonial masters." [page 97]

Just how servile the Delhi bureaucracy could get is best described in the behavior of a senior bureaucrat that she leaves unnamed, and who "... lived in a particularly beautiful colonial bungalow on Aurangzeb Road" and who, at a party, came up to Akbar Ahmed (and Tavleen Singh) "with an obsequious smile on his face, and bowed deeply before Akbar, who looked embarrassed and unsure of how to react." [page 97]

Perhaps the only thing that has changed in the thirty intervening years, for the worse, is that the media has got itself entwined, comfortably and willingly so, with this durbar.

This book is also a compilation of the ineptness, cluelessness, and painful missteps of Rajiv Gandhi. Whether it was Kashmir, or Punjab, or Sri Lanka, or Nepal, or the famine in Kalahandi, or the scandal of the Bofors deal, or even foisting on the nation remarkably irritable characters like Mani Shankar Aiyar - the gentleman who went to Pakistan and referred to Hafiz Saeed as "Hafiz saab" in a TV interview. "Hafiz Saab", of course, being the gentlemanly terrorist mastermind behind the Mumbai terrorists attack of November 26, 2010 - or the pandering to the Muslim fundamentalists in the Shah Bano case and then the banning of Salman Rushdie's book, "The Satanic Verses", or the equally disastrous attempt at balancing one bad act with another inexplicable act of idiocy - this time by allowing the gates of the locked temple at Ayodhya to be opened. If there are lamentations on the rise of the so-called "Hindutva" right, its path begins from these actions of Rajiv Gandhi.

And what about the conspiracies? The unsaid conspiracies? You won't find much by way of conspiracy theories being bandied around in this book. So, I took it upon myself to dig, and to read between the lines, and to see gossamer threads of conspiracies and spin from them an entire fabric of paranoia. When Sanjay Gandhi died in a plane crash in 1981, his friend Madhavrao Scindia survived. "The first thing I heard, from either Vasundhra or Madhavrao himself, was that the only reason the young Maharaja of Gwalior had not been on the plane with Sanjay was that he was late that morning." [page 126] Why was Madhavrao late? Who was he meeting that he got delayed? Was the delay arranged by someone? And it is a remarkable coincidence, or probability, or otherwise, that the titular Maharaja of Gwalior would die in a plane crash, some thirty years later. Another tidbit is no more than a passing mention that after Indira Gandhi had been shot, Sonia Gandhi took her mother-in-law in her own Ambassador car to the hospital. Not in the designated ambulance, because the driver had gone off for a cup of tea. After Indira Gandhi's assassination, the author was interviewed, no - questioned is the more appropriate word here - by some bureaucrat from the Intelligence Bureau(?) The author stepped outside her office, only to run into Sonia Gandhi, in her white ambassador.

This book is fast-paced, lucidly narrated, and well-organized chapters. It provides a fascinating glimpse into what was undoubtedly a pivotal period in Independent India's history. It is a most laudable first draft of history.

And a special mention of the publisher, Hachette (@HachetteIndia). Call it sloppiness, call it cost-cutting, call it anything for that matter - it doesn't really matter - but for some reason, they think non-fiction books without indexes are the way to go. They did this with Shishir Gupta's "Indian Mujahideen" - an email requesting an online or PDF version of an index from them has been unanswered for over a year now, and no - I am no longer holding my breath for either a response or an index, and they have done the same with this book.

Let me say that out loud - THIS BOOK, PUBLISHED BY HACHETTE INDIA, HAS NO INDEX.

So, for example, if I were to ask you if Bal Thackeray finds a mention in the book, would you know the answer? And if I were to tell you the answer is "yes", would you which page? And if I told you, it's on page 142, would you know in what context? It is in a statement made by Sant Bhindranwale. Or how many times? Once. Or if I were to ask you if Barkha Dutt (of the Nira Radia 2010 scandal, where she was caught on tape in conversation(s) with Nira Radia, a corporate lobbyist, to allegedly fix cabinet ministerial berths in the UPA government), finds a mention in the book, the answer would be yes. Of course, without an index, you have to take my word for it, or read the book. Producing an index takes time, effort, and therefore money, not to mention a commitment to certain publishing standards.

Kindle Excerpt:

http://tavleensingh.com/
http://hachetteindia.com/TitleDetails.aspx?titleId=32060
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavleen_Singh

Classification : Biography & Memoir
Pub Date : Nov 15, 2012
Imprint : Hachette India
Page Extent : 324
Binding : HB
ISBN : 9789350094440
Price : 599

Political and Incorrect

© 2012, Abhinav Agarwal (अभिनव अग्रवाल). All rights reserved.

Londonistan, By Melanie Phillips - Review

Londonistan, By Melanie Phillips

"Right-Wing Leanings Aside, Some Serious Questions."
 
Review in short: The author casts a critical eye on the direction British society and the nation have taken that seem to have resulted in a radicalization of the Islamic community in the country. Substantial documentation of the foibles of the British polity, intellectuals, judiciary adds heft to the message. An important and trenchant, if somewhat disturbing and critique. Many of the questions and context are eerily applicable in the Indian context too.

Longer Review.
As Britain becomes more multi-cultural and more heterogeneous a society, it has also had to face a most unfortunate consequence of this intermingling. People - immigrants - who have turned against their motherland. The London terrorist attacks of 2005 brought this problem to the forefront for much of Britain - "The realization that British boys would want to murder their fellow citizens was bad enough." What some have perceived as a lax and permissive attitude among the intelligentsia to the sprouting of Islamic fundamentalism has led to the coinage of a pejoration: "Londinistan" - "a mocking play on the names of such state sponsors of terrorism as Afghanistan", and the despair that London itself has become "the major European center for the promotion, recruitment and financing of Islamic terror and extremism." This book, then, is a scathing look at the players that have led to, in the author’s view, a surrender to the forces of Islamic fundamentalism in Britain.

In the author’s view, and backed by considerable data, such a pejoration - the term ‘Londonistan’ - may not be without merit, especially if one considers the vast numbers of Britons engaged in nefarious activities. "According to British officials, up to sixteen thousand British Muslims either are actively engaged in or support terrorist activity, while up to three thousand are estimated to have passed through al-Qaeda training camps, with several hundred thought to be primed to attack the United Kingdom."

The author has tackled different aspects of this issue in a separate chapter each. Therefore, in chapter two, for instance, she takes on the lax immigration system for the uncontrolled influx of people claiming persecution in their home countries, so much so that "many Islamist terrorists and extremists found Britain to be such a delightful and agreeable destination." She harshly condemns "Ministers and officials in charge of the asylum system" as being "among the least likely to possess either the intellectual or the political clout to tackle the problem". She also pillories the European Court of Human Rights for extending "the scope of the provision in the European Convention on Human Rights that prohibits torture or degrading treatment" as it became "impossible to deport illegal immigrants - including suspected terrorists - to any place where the judges thought such abuses might be practiced." Worse was the British judiciary, while "independent of political control", came to "see themselves, rather than the democratically elected politicians, as the true guardians of the country’s values."

To take a more detailed look at some of the arguments put forth in the book, let us start with the evidence that points to a radicalization of Muslims in the UK itself. To that end there is an impressive array of facts the author marshals to argue the point that, to begin with, UK has played host to terrorists and organizations with terror-links, unequivocally.

"UK-based terrorists have carried out operations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, Morocco, Russia, Spain and the United States."
"And the number of terrorists who have come roaring out of these polluted British waters is startling. UK-based terrorists have carried out operations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, Morocco, Russia, Spain and the United States. The roll call includes Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, killer of the journalist Daniel Pearl and disaffected, brilliant son of Pakistani immigrants; Dhiren Barot, Nadeem Tarmohammed and Qaisar Shaffi, British citizens and al-Qaeda members who plotted to attack major financial centers in the United States; Mohammad Bilal from Birmingham, who drove a truck loaded with explosives into a police barracks in Kashmir; the "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid, who was converted to Islam at Brixton Mosque in south London; Sajid Badat from Gloucester, a putative second shoe-bomber but who was also caught and is now in jail; and Omar Khan Sharif and Asif Mohammed Hanif, the British boys who helped bomb a Tel Aviv bar in 2003 and killed three Israeli civilians. And let’s not forget Azahari Husin or the "Demolition Man," the Malaysian engineer who belonged to the al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah ( JI). He had studied at Reading University in the 1980s, honed his bomb-making skills in Afghanistan in the 1990s, helped mastermind the terrorist attacks in Bali (twice) and finally blew himself up in a gun battle with Indonesian police in November 2005."

"One of the world’s most radical Islamist organizations, Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is banned in many countries where it is considered a major threat, has its headquarters in Britain."

"Scarcely less significant is the European headquarters of the radical proselytizing movement Tablighi Jamaat at Dewsbury in Yorkshire."

"Al-Sunnah, the Islamist magazine that calls repeatedly for human-bomb terror operations against the United States, is published from London,"

"Indeed, one could say that it was in Britain that al-Qaeda was actually formed as a movement."

"Many of Osama bin Laden’s fatwas were first published in London."

"The foiled millennium plots of 1999 and 2000, when al-Qaeda planned a series of attacks in Europe, the United States and the Middle East, all led back to London."

You know things were bad when Egypt "denounced Britain as a hotbed for radicals" after "Abu Hamza welcomed the massacre of fifty-eight European tourists at Luxor in October 1997".  Abu Hamza was "an Egyptian-born former engineering student and nightclub bouncer, who had lost an eye and an arm in Afghanistan and sported a hook instead of a hand", and was allowed to live and preach in Britain for several years, till he was finally jailed in "February 2006 for soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred"

It is useful to describe the term Islamism itself as it is used extensively in the book. "Islamism is the term given to the extreme form of politicized Islam that has become dominant in much of the Muslim world and is the ideological source of global Islamic terrorism." The author states "It derives from a number of radical organizations", prominent among them being the Tablighi Jamaat in India/Pakistan, the Muslim Brotherhood ("which was founded in Egypt by Hassan al-Banna with Sayed Qutb its leading ideologue. Its creed is known as Salafism and is deeply antisemitic; this is virtually indistinguishable from Saudi Arabian Wahhabism"), and "the Jamaat al-Islami, founded by Sayed Abu’l Ala Maududi in India/Pakistan"

So how did such a radicalization came to happen? And why wasn't anything done about it? Were the Muslims residing in Britain, all 1.6 million out of a population of 60 million, siding with the terrorists? Were they sympathizing with these Islamists? No, not quite, argues the author, and there is nuance to the "no".

"In Britain, hundreds of thousands of Muslims lead law-abiding lives" However, and this is where the nuance appears, in the author’s opinion, the majority of the pacifists need to be more vocal about their abhorrence for Islamist violence, and more disturbingly, moderation among them is relative, "considering their widespread hostility towards Israel and the Jews, for example, or the way in which the very concept of Islamic terrorism or other wrongdoing is automatically denied."

More disturbingly, for Britain, there has also been this barely hidden desire within the British Islamic community to see more Islamization in society in general. Consider this:

"A poll conducted by the Guardian newspaper found that 61 percent of British Muslims wanted to be governed by Islamic law, operating on Sharia principles - "so long as the penalties did not contravene British law." A clear majority wanted Islamic law introduced into Britain in civil cases relating to their own community. In addition, 88 percent wanted to see British schools and workplaces accommodating Muslim prayer times as part of their normal working day."

This is perhaps by no means unsurprising - if a community wants more elements of its traditional jurisprudence to be integrated into their adopted country. Perhaps. But what about taking offence at the slightest pretext? What about self-censorship because of fear of causing offence to the easily-offended by vocal minority among Muslims?

"Novelty pig calendars and toys were banned from a council office in case they offended Muslim staff. Ice creams were withdrawn from the Burger King chain after complaints from Muslims that a whorl design on the lid looked like the word "Allah." Various councils banned the concept of Christmas, on the grounds that it was "too Christian" and therefore "offensive" to peoples of other faiths"

Or

"There are now more than 140 housing associations in England catering to ethnic minorities; one of them, the Aashyana in Bristol, provides special apartments for Muslims with the toilets facing away from Mecca."

So, why not debate this issue? After all, these are fairly existential questions for British society, one would assume. But here one has to tread carefully. It is easy for such debates to get hijacked by extremists on both sides, and for stereotype-driven accusations to fly fast and furious.

 "One of the reasons why people shy away from acknowledging the religious aspect of this problem is, first, the very proper respect that should be afforded to people’s beliefs and, second, the equally proper fear of demonizing an entire community. There is indeed a risk of such a discussion exposing innocent Muslims to attack."

If the majority of Muslims in Britain do not agree with or subscribe to the extremist views of those within their community, then they need to be more vocal about it. Which they are not. "If "moderation" includes reasonableness, truthfulness and fairness, the reaction by British Muslims to the London bombings was not moderate at all. Yes, they condemned the atrocities. But in the next breath they denied that these had had anything to do with Islam. Thus they not only washed their hands of (sic) any communal responsibility but - in denying what was a patently obvious truth that these attacks were carried out by adherents of Islam in the name of Islam - also indicated that they would do nothing to address the roots of the problem so as to prevent such a thing from happening again."

It is not as if there is no one speaking out against the Islamists from within the Muslim community. The most eloquent case for the Muslim community to speak against terrorism perhaps comes from Mansoor Ijaz, who wrote in the Financial Times, "It is hypocritical for Muslims living in western societies to demand civil rights enshrined by the state and then excuse their inaction against terrorists hiding among them on grounds of belonging to a borderless Islamic community. It is time to stand up and be counted as model citizens before the terror consumes us all."

Dissenting voices are often either silenced or threatened into submission. "Reda Hussaine is an Algerian journalist who started inquiring into Algerian radicals in London after his Paris office, where he was trying to start up an independent Algerian newspaper, was ransacked in 1993. The French police told him that the attack had been organized from London, that the group responsible was sending money to terrorists in Algeria, and that Abu Qatada was behind it."

What about representatives of the Muslims in Britain? You know you may have a problem of sorts when Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, "regarded by the British establishment as the most reliable mainstream voice of the Muslim community", compares "Hamas suicide bombers to Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Ghandi (sic)."

Or take the words of Tariq Ramadan, who, according to "researcher Caroline Fourest", "speaks with two voices". When "asked whether he approved of the killing of an eight-year-old Israeli child who would grow up to be a soldier, he replied: ‘That act in itself is morally condemnable but contextually explicable,'"

A piece in the middle of the book is very illuminating in shedding some light on the topic of Islamopobia. She quotes Kenan Malik, ""antiracist" Asian writer", who suggests that "Islamophobia is a myth and is being exaggerated to suit politicians' needs and silence the critics of Islam: The more the threat of Islamophobia is exaggerated, the more ordinary Muslims believe that they are under constant attack. It helps create a siege mentality, it stokes up anger and resentment, and it makes Muslims more inward looking and more open to religious extremism. It also creates a climate of censorship in which any criticism of Islam can be dismissed as Islamophobic. The people who suffer most from such censorship are those struggling to defend basic rights within Muslim communities"

Islamic theologians are not to be left behind in strengthening the needle of suspicion that some harbor against Islam.

"In 1980, the Islamic Council of Europe published a book called Muslim Communities in Non-Muslim States, which explained the Islamic Agenda in Europe. When Muslims lived as a minority, it said, they faced theological problems, because classical Islamic teaching always presupposed a context of Islamic dominance. The book told Muslims to organize themselves with the aim of establishing a viable Muslim community, to set up mosques, community centers and Islamic schools. The ultimate goal of this strategy was that the Muslims should become a majority and the entire nation be governed according to Islam." 

This is a deliberately and dangerously confrontationalist approach to take, and its effects can be seen even in the beliefs slowly gaining ground among Muslims in Britain.

In all this, it would be awfully remiss to not take a look at politicians and politics. It is a universally acknowledged truth that an amoral politician in need of electoral safety will seek refuge in divisions in society. This has been true with Indian politicians for over half a century, and it should be of no surprise to people that Britain is no different.

"Labour was traditionally the party that appealed most to new immigrants, and Britain’s Muslims were no exception. Many Labour MPs, including the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, found themselves representing constituencies with significant Muslim populations. This had a number of consequences, one of which was that some Labour politicians allowed Pakistani politics to influence British politics." And thus you come across the concept of "vote-banks" in Britain. " 

On the day of the 2005 British general election, Faisal Bodi wrote in the Guardian: "Labour politicians have cultivated the "community leader", the modern-day equivalent of the village chief, whose unique selling point is that he can bring in the vote of the particular ethnic sub-category he belongs to, be it by fair means or rigged postal votes." This seeking of votes goes beyond the shores of the island nation. "According to the bishop of Rochester, Dr. Michael Nazir-Ali, himself of Pakistani origin, a number of Labour MPs with large numbers of Muslim voters need the support of various Islamic leaders in Pakistan who tell their followers in Britain how to vote."

It is a reasonable expectation that the media engender debate on topics that are of interest and of importance to society. In the author’s opinion, when it comes to discussing Islamism in Britain, the media has practiced self-censorship at best, if not outright intellectual dishonesty. Two incidents cited are the murder of "Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker who was killed for questioning Islamic attitudes to women", or the protests "over the publication in Denmark of a batch of cartoons linking the Prophet Mohammed with violence".

If Muslims, even those born and raised in Britain, were to take up terrorism, surely the fault could not be all lain at the door of either Islam, or radical Islam, or the Muslim community. That is only a very reasonable position to take. The author is also on board with this position. So the fault must be shared with Britain also, right? Yes, sort of. The author seizes upon the ‘liberal’ ethos and casts an accusatory finger upon it. Things get wider in scope from here. But let’s look at the author’s articulation. The author believes that the process of radicalizing started more than three decades ago, in the 1970s, when Muslim immigrants arrived in large numbers from "Pakistan, Bangladesh and India" to "work in the cotton mills in England’s northern industrial towns such as Bradford and Burnley, Oldham and Rotherham." These immigrants' faith was "largely influenced by introspective, gentle Sufism and was thus passive and quiescent." But all that changed in "in the space of a few years" and "it became an increasingly activist faith centered on the mosques, which were transmitting a highly radicalized ideology."  "Such young men, stranded between the mores of Mirpur village life on the one hand and the degraded nihilism of British "liberal" society on the other, are thus easy prey for the puppet-masters of terror."

Ok, if she says so. And then there is a roadhouse punch at Islamic society itself:

"What makes these fragile egos yet more vulnerable still, moreover, is the pathological inferiority complex that afflicts Muslim society, the exaggerated notions of shame and honor which mean that every slight turns into a major grievance, disadvantage morphs into paranoia, and Islam itself is perceived to be under siege everywhere."

One gets the impression that she really wanted to take a sledgehammer at all of Asian Third World, but perhaps thought it more politically correct, in a manner of speaking, to direct this broadside against Muslim society, obligatory refrains of avoiding stereotyping notwithstanding.

So why are liberals to blame for this? Well, if I understand the line of thinking taken by the author, and this is a simplification, it is because liberals hate capitalism and capitalists. The United States is the embodiment of capitalism. Preconceived notions and stereotypes of Jews mean that Jews are associated with capitalism. Hence the liberal hatred of Jews. Fundamental Christians have, on their part, believed, and have been taught, that Jews murdered Jesus. Hence Jews are evil, and hence Jews need to be eliminated. There is an actual theological doctrine that exists to justify this. Known as ""replacement theology," or "supercessionism,", it goes like this: "going back to the early Church Fathers and stating that all God’s promises to the Jews - including the land of Israel - were forfeit because the Jews had denied the divinity of Christ. This doctrine lay behind centuries of Christian anti-Jewish hatred until the Holocaust drove it underground." Islamists, on their part, have bought into the wholesale portrayal of of Jews as evil - "Drawing on a theological animosity, it is based on the belief that the Jews are a Satanic force and a conspiracy to destroy Islam and rule the world; and that, since the Jews control Western society, it follows that Israel is the forward flank of the West's attempt to subjugate Muslims everywhere ... Fixating upon the early conflict between the Prophet Mohammed and the Jewish tribes of seventh-century Arabia, the Islamists became obsessed with the archetype of a universal Jew, treacherous by nature, whose perfidy threatened not only Islam but all humanity."

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and hence the liberal’s chumminess with Islamists. One can see strong traces of this line of thinking on the part of liberals also manifest itself in India, where there is a strong aversion to criticism of Islamic terrorism, or to ask searching questions of Islamists in India who covertly or overtly broadcast messages of hate against non-believers.

Conclusion:
The book has what I would call a definite right-wing, nationalist, Christian conservative slant.  The author herself does not shy away from it. She argues that these are in fact required for the maintenance of peace in British society. If, however, it was just that, the book could have been easily dismissed. However, what elevates the book from the ranks of a xenophobic screed is the fact that it is well-researched, disturbing, and thought-provoking. Yes, there is a selective cherry-picking of facts and a selective interpretation too, but even taking both into account, this book still raises several questions about the direction the nation of Britain is taking, the culpability of its politicians, and whether its Muslim clergy and intellectuals wants their community to be held hostage to the philosophy of its fringe fundamentalists.

The  other issue that people may find with the book is its sweeping pronouncements heralding the end of Britain and of Western society in general. Consider this, "What if, instead of holding the line for Western culture against the Islamic jihad, Britain is sleepwalking into the arms of the enemy?" Or "In the United States, at least there are wars over culture; in Britain, there has been a rout."

In some cases the flowery prose is outright bizarre. Like where she writes, "helping sow the dragon’s teeth from which would spring the killers". I stopped counting how many metaphors had been mixed and mangled.

For Indians this book should hold an added element of interest. The reason should not be difficult to find. Terrorism, especially terrorism inflicted in the name of and by radical Islamists, has been borne by India for over twenty years. Many of the topics that the book dwells upon are equally germane in India too. Any and all attempts to debate the theological basis for such radicalism are quickly shouted down by equally radicalized voices.

Lastly, it is somewhat ironic that Britain today stands at the junction of trying to assimilate heterogeneous cultures, religions, and identities, while still providing enough space for these identities to preserve their uniqueness. It is after all Britain that pursued a considered policy of racial and religious divisiveness in the Indian subcontinent for two centuries. Whether it was to make caste the sole differentiating factor among Hindus, or using a manufactured Aryan Invasion theory to divide North and South Indians, or pitting Hindus vs. Muslims, it was all part of what Lord Elphinstone called a "divide et impera" policy. One is tempted, almost, to use the phrase that the chickens have come home to roost, or the other phrase that stings even more - "as you sow, so shall you reap".

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Londonistan_(term)
www.melaniephillips.com/londonistan

The Duel by Tariq Ali - Review

The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power, by Tariq Ali

History, Analysis, Commentary, Opinion. Of massages, midnight romps, horrible examples, and of boiling water at the right temperature

(Kindle, Flipkart, Flipkart e-book, Infibeam, Junglee, This Ya That, IndiaPlaza)

This is a sweeping and often trenchant look at Pakistan, its leaders, its geo-politics, the role of the US, and the challenges facing the nation. It is not a comprehensive account, nor is it altogether impartial, but it is a jolly entertaining and at the same time  educational read.


I was interested in this book for several reasons. For one, it promised to provide a different perspective on Pakistan. Different from the western perspective, and different from the Indian perspective, and the two can be very different. As the author writes, “The West prefers to view Pakistan through a single optic.” The same could well be said for much of Indian analysis, or what passes for analysis of Pakistan, exceptions notwithstanding - the optic continues to be either religious, partition, or the four wars India and Pakistan have fought in the last 65 years.

The Kaoboys of RAW

THE KAOBOYS OF RANDAW: Down Memory Lane
Lancer's (Publisher) Book page

(Amazon US / CA / UK, Kindle US / UK / CA, Flipkart)
Bahukutumbi Raman is a former head of the counter-terrorism division of India's external intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW). He retired from service on August 31, 1994, and his first article appeared in a newspaper on Sep 1, 1994! He has been a prolific writer since, with his columns appearing regularly in newspapers and on online sites like Rediff.com.

He has written several books, but this one captured the most attention in the public.

This book is a reminisce of B Raman's time in the R&AW. The book traces the origins of RAW from its inception, and is divided into chapters, each of which covers a broad topic, such as the Indo-Pak war of 1971 and the creation of Bangladesh, the terrorism in Punjab, terrorism in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, as well as political leaders like Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, VP Singh, Chandrashekhar, and political events like the Bofors scandal, assassinations of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. Interspersed are accounts of both the development and decline of India's intelligence gathering capabilities, corruption and nepotism within the intelligence community, counter-espionage, the role of the ISI, and brief bios of some of the luminaries of RAW, like RN Kao, Sunook, Girish Saxena.

B Raman measures his words carefully. He does not drop names, except on a couple of occasions - to either settle score or to make a point or two, nor makes any strong political statements. His opinions about some luminaries nonetheless come across on occasion. Like his dim view of the former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. He believes that Vajpayee was not very interested in building up India's counter-intelligence capabilities, often delegating communications with the RAW to his National Security Adviser. B Raman is also critical of Vajpayee and the BJP for the after-effects of the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992, which he states led to the alienation of the Muslims in India from the mainstream, thereby providing an opportunity to to the ISI to infiltrate into India. B Raman is full of admiration for the handson approach of Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi. And his grief and pain at their assassinations is there to read:

Since 1947, no other Prime Minister had taken more interest and done more to improve their conditions of service than Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. What a shocking tragedy that these agencies, which owed them so much, so miserably failed to protect them. Every officer, who had served in our agencies at that time - in whatever capacity - should hang his or her head in shame. We failed them. [page 243]

It is somewhat sad and disappointing that the RAW, formed in 1968 by the Prime Minister of Indira Gandhi, reached its zenith in a very short time, during the 1971 War, but rapidly fell into decline soon thereafter, to the point where its efficacy even in Bangladesh was close to zero. It has been infiltrated by foreign intelligence agencies over the years, repeatedly, its cadre often nepotist, corrupt, and incompetent, its failures many, and its successes far and few inbetween, and where they do occur, hidden from the public eye.

Failure to diversify contacts in Bangladesh, pockets of hostility in its security forces and intelligence community towards India and the R&AW, suspicion in the non-Awami League political circles over what was perceived as Indian favoritism towards certain sections of the political spectrum and a lack of objectivity in the Bangladesh analysis branch contributed to the decline in the R&AW's performance in Bangladesh during the Emergency. This has continued since then. [page 53]

Jihadi Terrorism, Pakistan, and the War on Terror
Most Indians have known that the epicenter of jihadi terrorism has been Pakistan, something which is now public knowledge the world over, and roots of this jihadi terrorism can be traced to the times of its military dictator Gen. Zia Ul-Haq, who is credited with accelerating Pakistan's drive to acquire nuclear weapons capability and of hurtling the Pakistani Army into Islamic radicalization. Pakistan's support, military, economic, logistical, and diplomatic, of terrorism in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, is well known to Indians, but was for long denied and un-acknowledged or its impact minimized by the Western World. This has been sore point with Indians, and B Raman minces no words when he takes the West to task for this perceived duplicity.

Jihadi terrorism, which has been causing so much havoc across the world, including India, is this the product of two minds in the world of intelligence - William Casey and Le Comte Alexandre de Marenches. During his secret visits to the terrorist training camps and madrassas in Pakistan in the 1980s, Casey used to address the trainees as "My sons". He died of cancer during the second term of Reagan, and therefore, did not live long enough to see the thousands killed by "his sons" and their associates, including 3,000 of his own countrymen on 9/11. Some of the retired CIA officers of those days, who are now parading themselves around the world and making money as the leading Al Qaeda watchers, were the original creators of Al Qaeda. [pages 81, 82]

This is something some in the West may well disagree with. Lawrence Wright, for example, in his excellent book, The Looming Tower, argues, with a lot of documentation, that the creation of Al Qaeda was very much an organic creation of the likes of Al Zawahiri and later Osama Bin Laden. Lawrence Wright's book however skirts the entire episode and ramifications of of US participation and involvement in the training, arming, and creation of the terrorists that first fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, then the Indians in Kashmir, and now pretty much the entire Western World.

Raman reveals more, later in the same chapter, referring to the hijacking of an Indian Airlines aircraft in 1984:

The revolver given by the ISI to the hijackers at Lahore before the aircraft was taken to Dubai was of West German make. ... the West German intelligence intimated that the revolver was part of a consignment sold by the company to the Pakistan Army. The Government of India immediately shared the information with US officials and pointed that it was a fit case for declaring Pakistan a State-sponsor of international terrorism. ... But, the US authorities were not prepared to accept this oral evidence as conclusive proof against Pakistan. [page 92]

And further on:

It was this protection extended to Pakistan by the State Department ever since the days of the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan and it was their practice of closing their eyes to the spawning of jihadi terrorists in Pakistani territory, that led to the emergence of the Pakistan-Afghanistan region as a breeding ground of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and numerous other jihadi terrorist organizations. [page 281]

...

Even before his (Jagjit Singh Chauhan, one of the major proponents and self-styled leader of the terrorist movement for the separate Sikh state of Khalistan) arrival in the UK, the Pakistani High Commission and the US Embassy in London were in touch with the activists of the Sikh Home Rule Movement. They established contact with Chauhan after his arrival and started encouraging his propaganda against the Government of India in order to embarrass Indira Gandhi. [page 85]

The law of Karma cannot be escaped from. B Raman essentially states that the spectre of terrorism that haunts the West is more or less a creation of the West. Terrorism, grown and nurtured by Pakistan in the hopes that it would destroy its arch enemy, India, now threatens the very existence of Pakistan itself and threatens to render the fabric of its society. Jihadi terrorism, trained and financed by the CIA, in the hopes that it would bleed and defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan, and nurtured by Pakistan, in the hopes that it would bleed India, did just that, but then turned on its creators.

Benazir Bhutto was the daughter of the late Zulfikar Ali Bhtto, the Prime Minister of Pakistan during the war of 1971, when Bangladesh won independence from (West) Pakistan. This terrible loss at the hands of India left a deep and permanent psychological scar on Benazir Bhutto, and was responsible for her antagonistic policy towards of India, especially when it came to the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, parts of which have been under Pakistan occupation since 1948. She desperately wanted to be the daughter that won back from the enemy what her father had lost.

According to the source, Lt. Gen. Gul replied: "Madam, keeping Indian Punjab destabilized is equivalent to the Pakistan Army having two extra Divisions at no cost. If you want me to drop the Sikh card, you have to sanction the creation of two new Divisions." She found this argument compelling and kept quiet. [page 160]
...
While Benazir tried to cut down, if not totally stop, the assistance to the Khalistanis, she wanted to go down in Pakistan's history as the Prime Minister who succeeded in annexing J&K. [page 162]
...
The situation became worse in J&K after she returned to power. Even though she had tried to stop the ISI's assistance to the Khalistani terrorists during her first tenure as the Prime Minister between 1988 and 1990, it was under her that the ISI started helping the Kashmiri terrorist organizations in a big way in 1989. She was the most virulent towards India so far as J&K was concerned and gave the ISI total freedom and the required funds to do whatever it wanted in J&K. [page 260]

B Raman also reserves some stinging criticism for the late Gen Sunderji, who retired as Chief of Army Staff, and considered by many as a "scholar warrior".

Lt. Gen. Sunderji, who co-ordinated the Operation (Bluestar), blamed the intelligence agencies for the untidy operation. ... Over-confidence in his ability to score easy success before launching difficult and sensitive operations and a tendency to blame the intelligence agencies when over-confidence was found to have been misplaced were the defining characteristics of Gen. Sunderji. [page 97]
...
One was told that an over-confident and over-enthusiastic Gen. Sunderji, the then Chief of Army Staff, told Rajiv Gandhi that the IPKF would be able to accomplish its mission within a month. When this did not happen and the IPKF got involved in a quagmire, he put the blame on the intelligence agencies - particularly on the R&AW - for not warning him in advance of the capabilities, strength and motivation of the LTTE. [page 209]

Some points that could be made after reading the book:
Provides a fairly good and broad overview of RAW and some historical perspective on the challenges faced by India.
This book feels very "skimmy". No one topic is covered in much depth. This may be by design, but it does feel like a deficiency of the book. Some of the chapters, like the one on the 1971 India-Pakistan war, or on the terrorism in Kashmir and Punjab, are deserving of entire books for just the intelligence and counter-intelligence aspects.
The style of writing is very much declarative - statements are made, but without much by way of reasoning or backing up with references. Part of this may be because of the nature of the disclosures, but a more academic and rigorous approach would have benefited the book and given it more credibility.


The book, for some reason, and surprising even given the fact it is a hardcover edition, is printed on glossy, art-like paper. An overkill surely.

Some other well known defence and strategic analysts in this space are Brahma Chellaney (Wikipedia link, Blog), Maj. Gen. (retd.) Ashok Mehta, Colonel Anil A Athale (retd.).




© 2010, Abhinav Agarwal. All rights reserved.