The Human DNA

As the violence in Jammu and Kashmir escalates beyond what bounces of our television screens, the vibrations are also cascading across our borders. Pakistan has of course reacted harshly to the “excessive use of force” to control the civil unrest there and in a typical knee jerk response, the Indian government has condemned the comments from the Pakistani Foreign Minister as an interference in India’s internal affairs.

Of course there is this much to be said in that all countries in the sub continent are from the same genetic make up very literally and all can be blackened with the same brush. A lot can be perhaps said about Pakistan or any other country around making pious statements about human rights considering the overall record of every one here. But still the question begs to be asked – when do political boundaries blur and our human identity begins asserting itself?

When do we feel free and are given the freedom to express a genuine agony and anguish at the violence, broken and bereaved families that every unplanned funeral brings in its wake? This is not about fishing in troubled waters or scoring political brownie points at all. But I wonder - does it become treason to mourn the loss and grief of another because they live across a border that is not even a century old when cultural and ethnic bonds go back a thousand years or more?

When a lament from a neighboring country at the violence that is prevailing here and is flashing globally across television channels and internet news sites is understood to be interference, then the question arises for Indians as to what should they do. People with ethnic backgrounds and languages spoken in India live in all countries that surround us – Bengalis – even Bengali Hindus (for those whom this distinction matters) in Bangladesh, Tamils in Sri Lanka being the most prominent but by no means the only ones.

It seems easier to reach out across borders when natural disasters strike – like tsunamis or earthquakes or cyclones; but some how there is an insurmountable barrier when it comes to even making statements of empathy and condolence when the tragedy is manmade.  Even a word can impute a motive when at least at the level of the common man or woman, none is intended,

Most of us are it the political establishment or those who are part of civil society will find it well nigh difficult to look the other way in the guise of non interference in the internal affairs of another country. If Tamils were to be in the midst of widely publicized media footage be subjected to violence or the Bengalis were, it would be politically inexpedient to sit back and do nothing.

If non interference in the affairs of others is the norm, then nobody in the international community should be speaking into what is happening in Zimbabwe, or Sudan, and India itself should not have moved resolutions in the United Nations when South Africa was still practicing racism. But it is good at times, indeed necessary for people to speak up, take note and make a point in the international communities and forums so that what would otherwise have gone unnoticed and remained hidden in shadows

Of course there is such a thing as undue interest in the affairs of another country; as perhaps best exemplified by the US invasion of Iraq. But there is also such a thing as too little of an interest in the affairs of the world. After all, it is only those who live in glass houses who are scared of stones and so they do not throw any. The world’s largest democracy should not be fighting shy of facing criticism when there are plenty within the country’s own borders who are concerned. Let us own up to the fact there is a common human DNA that makes us all speak up.

Minority Speak

After reading from Tehelka and Aaj Tak about the way we treat our minorities in some parts of the country and then gloat about it, I watched this TV news feed where a Sikh cadet was just commissioned into the Pakistan Army. Till that newscast, the only other minority I had heard of who was holding some post of distinction in Pakistan was a Hindu, Justice Bhagwan Das, who was officiating as the Supreme Court chief justice. Of course, I am sure there must be more at other levels like for Danesh Kaneria in their cricket team but we don’t hear of them much
In a sense there is nothing unusual about this – Pakistan is an Islamic state but inspite of the many attempts at Islamization, strands of other original vision of a secular state do survive and find utterance through such instances. But I wonder if people like this, religious minorities in an avowedly religious state at least officially lead a schizophrenic existence with an identity that only complicates life in many situations. Partly it is complicated because Pakistan itself seems some times to be a confused identity – not quite an Islamic state like the Taliban’s Afghanistan or even theocratic Iran where minorities know their place (next to nothing!) or a avowedly secular state where religious identity does not mater – most of Europe at perhaps!

I wonder what goes through the minorities’ mind. The thought of a Sikh soldier shouting Jo Bole Sonehal and charging at an Indian soldier seems to be a little incomprehensible. Try to picture this mentally. A large number of the Sikh Gurus lost their lives at the hands of the Mughal emperors and the Sikh war cry was coined in the battlefields fighting Muslims. The turban that Harcharan Singh wears is a symbol of the Khalsa, a military style brotherhood created when the initially pacifist community established by Guru Nanak was under threat of annihilation by the Muslims. Yet the Sikh officer Harcharan Singh shortly after the passing out parade has to assure his countrymen that if and when the time comes, the Sikhs would prove no less loyal than their Muslim brothers.

Who was the enemy in mind when Harcharan Singh made the statement? The pro Taliban militia that the Pakistan Army is fighting on the Eastern borders? Unlikely. No one’s heart in Muslim Pakistan would have wanted to hear that a Sikh officer would go the extra mile in fighting a battle which a large section of the Pakistan Army believes to be fratricidal in nature and which they are carrying out largely out of political and other compulsions. It is obvious that the young Sikh officer was making these comments alluding to India as the shadow enemy. But the fact that he had to make such a statement is significant.

The minorities have this peculiar need that they need to deal with; the perennial need to make known that they are loyal and though the article in Indian Express was the one that caught my attention and the article referred to Pakistan, the same holds true in India as well. Much like the medieval serf from whom nothing was explicitly demanded but a tribute was always expected, minorities, not only are often expected to cough up the tribute to the mai baap majority but deliver it up front the at the first instance or be taught a lesson by the likes of Narendra Modi and this appears to be true as much as in theocratic Pakistan ruled by the blasphemy laws as much as in secular India with its Freedom of Religion Laws

The New Blue Star

Lal Masjid has become Pakistan’s Akal Takht of the 80s, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the Bhindaranwale and the Musharraf campaign to cleanse the mosque, today’s Operation Blue Star. The question is that Operation Blue Star was a well documented event that has many lessons that could be learnt from it. One wonders though, if any one is. It is eminently macho that arm generals should holler out blood curdling howls. So Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf told Islamists besieged at an Islamabad mosque to surrender or face being killed.’ They should not prolong. They should surrender and hand over their weapons, otherwise they risk being killed,' Musharraf told reporters in his first public comment on the confrontation.

India ’s leader at the time of the Operation Blue Star, Mrs. Indira Gandhi was often described as the only man in the cabinet. Bu she was a woman after all and so she was perhaps more discreet in her challenge to Sant Bhindaranwale and his cohorts holed up inside the Golden Temple but her generals went n and did pretty much what Musharraf’s generals were doing, using copy book military textbook strategies to take on fanatics driven more by passion and vision than by tactics or territory. A few months after the siege, Mrs. Gandhi was dead shot by her body guards who cared more about heir faith than her person. Pakistan’s President Musharraf has already escaped one rocket attack hours after the Lal Masjid siege. Is any one in Pakistan listening at all or is that it has been a long time since a head of state died in office there?

India has its share of hawks who would say that the jackboot is the solution to every problem that the country has be it floods in Rajasthan, or communal riots in Aligarh, insurgency in Manipur or the Naxalites in Chattisgarh. There is little attempt to understand, why these movements arose, why they continue to thrive and prosper, what ideological props they possess and why they hold appeal here. Instead, the thinking of the establishment is that the army can go any where, do any thing, kill and suppress any one--- veni, vidi, vici in the true style of Julius Caesar. Well the truth is that it is an incomplete truth. Army boots and flag marches can bully people into submission for a time, for a season but not for ever. Popular movements and beliefs can not be subdued easily… or else there would be no shriveled up monarch in Nepal, no moth eaten Pakistan and no hemorrhaging democracy in Sri Lanka, no to mention India’s own numerous bleeding spots.

There is a lot of talk in India about winning over the hearts and minds of discontented people but no attempt is made to listen to the beating of the heart. Army doctors going and tending to wounds that other soldiers have inflicted or repairing huts and mosques and temples can feel the throbbing pulse but not the bleeding heart. When that effort is made and attempts made to listen, one can have some very pleasantly unexpected results. In a recent development, The Asom Sahitya Sabha, the apex literary body of Assam, has urged the ULFA and other insurgent groups to give up their demand for secession and sit for unconditional talks with the government. President of the literary body Kanak Sen Deka told reporters that the Asam Sahitya Sabha did not support any secessionist activities and was of the firm opinion that Assam was an integral part of India. The Sabha said the allegation made by secessionist organizations that colonial rule was imposed on Assam through the Constitution was only a conspiracy detrimental to Assam's interest. Moderate voices like this which speak with authority and credibility and challenge the voices of violence, no matter where it comes from are to be welcomed. Amongst Muslims, among Hindus, among Christians, among every one. For instance , many of us would find the policies , programs and ideologies of the leftists in India archaic. But given the fact that there is a leftist space in the political sphere and that space has to be occupied by some one, who you would rather prefer – Sitaram Yechury and the sedate Prakash Karat or some masked underground comrade screaming lal salaam as he kidnaps you for ransom or hold you on trial in a Peoples’ Court. It is time that we encourage the State to think in terms of policies ands initiatives that are not derived form the Mosaic eye for eye policy but encourage moderate and peace loving voices to rise, speak up and isolate violence as is beginning to happen in Assam. Or else a long and silent night will soon descend accompanying an unending winter.

The Stigma of Labels

For years, we have labeled our fellow country men. Post partition, the Muslim has always been the traitor with his body in India and his soul in Pakistan. And if he had a long henna dyed beard; he cut a more sinister figure. For most of the 80s, the Sikhs were terrorists with a turbaned scalp. The Christians were out there only to seduce and harvest your souls and set up a Christian home land with its ethos and currency firmly pegged to the dollar by seceding from India at some point. To the liberal Indian, the saffron tilak sporting Hindu was probably a member of the Bajrang Dal with the welfare of cows on his lips and the murder of Muslims in his heart. Thus we have divided and thus we have classified.

Then there are the ethnic boxes the chinky eyed North Easterners, the dark Madrasis, the wily Malayali, the lazy Bengali, the money hungry Marwari and so on – we have boxes and labels for every one and every one fits—or so we think. We judge and evaluate people on the basis of these labels we have pasted on them and if need be, we crucify people based on those stereotyped pictures and some times very unjustly. In the political boundaries of the country it happens all the time and so subliminally that we do not even notice them for what they are. The Santa Banta jokes are good fun to share in parties but what does it say about the community it portrays? As dumb clods, right?

Some times the genie escapes out of the box we have locked him in and it gives the nation sleepless nights as it did Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently. When after the involvement of two Indian doctors in the Glasgow airport car bomb attack, it looks that the whole nation might be labeled. Although the UK does not have a system like the US where the State Department after thorough interpretation and analysis of the information available to it can recommend to the President to label a particular nation a terrorist state that is by itself, more discouraging than encouraging. Formal labels can be removed- as for instance Libya, once a terrorist state in American eyes but now no longer. But who is to remove the stigma and the shame that no one formally pasted? They tend to stick and stay on longer than one would wish.

Even as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced ominous background checks on doctors, particularly the ones choosing to enter the National Health Service and it was ominously clear as to what kind of background would be particularly taken up for screening, Manmohan Singh invoked his own Sikh identity to say that as a Sikh, he had seen the trauma of labeling any community or country (as a terrorist)…true enough. He went on to say that “Terrorists are terrorists. They have no particular religion or community. Labels are best avoided because if you do that you create a new set of grievances.” Also true enough. Except that all these messages sound a bit pedantic considering the amount of labeling and classification of communities that goes on in our own country.

Next month is Independence Day. When the Prime Minister is required to give us a speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort. I guess that is the closest we have to a State of the Union speech spiked with lots of populism. May be in his speech this year, he can remind us all of what he has been telling the world. That labeling and classifying a human being is wrong. It does more harm than help. Always. Every time.