Shaheed Bhagat Sngh .... The Terrorist

Later this year the nation will celebrate the birth centenary of Sardar Bhagat Singh and as a curtain raise, the revolutionary hero is getting a great deal more attention that he would otherwise get. It is also a good time to study his ideology. But even though, I started off trying to read up about a man of who I had read about only in history books, I ended up admiring the man. I am learning to admire Bhagat Singh not necessarily for his ideological convictions which I do not agree with but for the sheer amount of content that hi short life of only 23 years produced. Bhagat Singh, born in 1907 was hanged on March 23^rd, 1931 having avenged the lathi charge on his hero ands mentor, Lala Lajpat Rai who died shortly after the lathi charge.

Bollywood has of course done well to capture the influence his life had through Rang De Basanti as well as through at least 5 other biopics on his life. They might or might not have done him justice. But it is amazing as to how what we would think to be a callow youth developed strong convictions, lived by them and died for them. Bhagat singh was an atheist, considered to be one of the earliest Marxist in India and in line with hi thinking, he renamed the Hindustan Republican Party and called it the Hindustan Socialist Revolutionary Party. Bhagat Finally, awaiting his own execution for the murder of Saunders, Bhagat Singh at the young age of 24 studied Marxism thoroughly and wrote a profound pamphlet “Why I am an Atheist. ” which is an ideological statement in itself.

The circumstances of his death and execution are worth recounting. Although, Bhagat Singh had assassinated Saunders, the Assistant Superintendent of Police at Lahore as a means of avenging Lala Lajpat Rai’s death, he was not arrested then. It was later, when he along with his co patriots threw a bomb in Delhi’s Central Legislative Assembly, that he was captured though escape could have been possible as he wanted to embrace martyrdom. Consequent to that, once sentenced to death, he made no further appeals to the higher courts or the Privy Council in the House of Lords.

There is some controversy about the role of Mahatma Gandhi in the attempts that were otherwise made to save him from the gallows. The Gandhi – Irwin talks were going on at the time and it was felt that a word from Gandhi could have made a difference. Other leaders like Motilal Nehru made public appeals , but it seems that Gandhiji kept away , ostensibly because he believed in non violence but according to some historians, because he perceived Bhagat Singh to be a threat like Netaji to his own stranglehold over the Nationalist movement.

As I said in the beginning, I set out to debate it out whether Bhagat Singh was an terrorist or a freedom fighter but like the actors in Aamir Khan’s Rang De Basanti who are happy go lucky folks whose lives are transformed as they read about the characters they play, I find myself challenged. When we all see and read about are Vikas Yadav , Anand Jon , Amardeep Singh Gill, and the many politically active Bahu Balis of Uttar Pradesh is it really possible that a man like Bhagat Singh achieved all that he did and left behind a lasting revolutionary legacy that lasts till this day and all that in a short span of 24 years? Well may be Bhagat singh was a terrorist and may be he wasn’t. But he surely lived a full life in the short span of time he was alive. And that by itself is no mean thing!

Revisiting 1857 -- Was it a war at all ?

When I first was introduced to Indian history, the events of 1857 were still described as the Sepoy Mutiny. For long years after India attained independence, history was taught thus. Mangal Pandey, Tantia Tope, the Rani of Jhansi were all applauded for their patriotism and bravery, but the central act of Mangal Pandey was still called the “Sepoy Mutiny”. It was not yet “The Rising” or the “First war of Independence” as it has come to be known now and whose one hundred and fiftieth anniversary we are now observing. Obsessed as we are rewriting and re interpreting history in every generation, I wonder what would have happened if we had continued to refer to the “Sepoy Mutiny” by its older and original name? Would the patriotism of its protagonists have dimmed? Incidentally if the events of 1857 constituted the first war of independence, which was the second? We do not find any reference to a second war of independence in any of our history books.

Why do we try to obliterate history instead of understanding it in its context? In military vocabulary he word mutiny connotes organized acts of insubordination and frowned upon and therefore the word mutiny was sought to be disassociated from what Mangal Pandey and his colleagues initiated. However, it might have been better to retain the word “mutiny” and examine the context in which such an act of disobedience was carried out and draw lessons from it. If the British understanding of history painted the Indian soldiers as all black, the Indian understanding of it has also stood history on its head by calling a series of regional skirmishes, which had little in common except to install a hedonist Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar at the head of a largely ceremonial throne by the grandiose title of “war”.

Strictly speaking, the events of 1857, if at all a war, was not so much a war for independence of any kind as an attempt by petty feudal lords, both Hindu and Muslim to put a dummy emperor on the Delhi throne to whom they would give token allegiance and shake off the British hegemony which was oppressive all right, but still provided some order of governance compared to the no holds barred exploitation of most Rajas and Nawabs. Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi was one of the important leaders of the uprising of 1857 against the British. The uprising, despite its nationalistic overtones, was in its essence, a fight of the Indian feudal classes of kings and princes, against the new incoming imperial power of the British.

The mass participation that characterized the freedom movement was to come in much later with Lokmanya Tilak and Mahatma Gandhi. To take the case of Jhansi, the Raja of Jhansi had maintained a pro-British stance throughout his reign. Jhansi had been pro-British ever since his grandfather had signed a treaty with the British in 1817 granting Jhansi to his heirs and successors in perpetuity. Gangadhar Rao, Laxmibai’s husband made explicit reference to his loyalty and that of his predecessors in his will. The British had a policy of 'lapse' whereby when an Indian ruler died without an heir the principality would be annexed and come under direct British administration. Under Dalhousie adopted children were not considered as heirs. When, the Rani of Jhansi made the oft quoted statement “"Mera Jhansi nahin dengee", she was effectively underlining her feudal underpinning and ownership of the Jhansi state and its revenue.

Taking several such examples and putting them together , it becomes very clear that the first war of independence whose anniversary we are celebrating today was nothing more than a glorified property dispute of petty kings whose source of revenue and income was being annexed and it could even be argued that the post 1857 events were the ones that effectively brought the whole country under British administration , directly or through the British Resident and eventually laid the foundation for some form of unified governance. Sure the British were exploitative and imperialistic and all that ; but 50 years after independence , which Indian can stand up and say that our leaders today are any less exploitative. So, were the events of 1857 a war at all, or an attempt by a bunch of rich idlers to protect the family silver ?

Anil Kumle : A gentleman moves on

Two Sports headlines, both pertaining to cricket caught my headlines his morning. One pertained to Anil Kumble announcing his retirement from one day cricket. And the other was Ian Chappel’s call to Sachin Tendulkar to retire. Ian’s comment, especially barbed was that Tendulkar was that “At the moment he (Tendulkar) looks like a player trying to eke out a career built on a glittering array of statistics”. Kumble called “The Bashful Hero” by BBC, also among the world’s cricketing elite, albeit less glamorous has gracefully withdrawn from the scene attracting glowing tributes from one and all.

In the late sixties, when I first began listening to cricket commentaries (No TV in those days!), one quote from the late Cricketer, Vijay Merchant was often cited. Merchant, who had announced his retirement when in top form was often asked about the correctness of his departure as he perhaps had some years of cricket left. His inevitable reply was that one should leave in a setting where those left behind would mournfully ask “ Why” and not fretfully ask” Why Not ?”.

Till now, I used to think that such words were perhaps the eccentric notions from a by gone era. But no, some wisdom is eternal and Vijay Merchant’s words will perhaps haunt Sachin as he increasingly hears the jeers that will follow Chappel’s bold statement that Tendulkar was playing more for his own interests than the team’s. So will Kumble’s statement at his Bangalore press conference echo that he was to give chance to the younger lot.

Anil Kumble , never the glamour boy of Indian cricket , even if a legend in his own right , has shown by his gesture that it is important not just to begin well and be consistent , but also finish well. Though his fellow leg spinner Shane Warne , whose career graph closely matched Kumble, left in disgrace having tested positive for drugs, not a whiff of scandal ever touched Kumble. No match fixing, no drugs, no fancy advertisements , no streaked hair, no glitzy BMWs with customs duty exemption requested , nothing.

Whether on the cricket field , or off it, knowing when to walk off ,even if there are dreams unfulfilled and a chock full of regrets that will never go away is invaluable. In Anil Kumble’s own words, this wasn’t the way he wanted to leave. He made it to the team but was not played in the matches against Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and his last memory of the World Cup that he longed so much to be part of , would be his three wicket haul against Bermuda , a forgettable team by all accounts. Kumble said. In his press conference that “I wanted to go with the ball in my hand. It did not happen in the last World Cup. It's always nice to finish on a high note. Unfortunately, it does not seem to happen.” There is not always a fairytale end. ……” Anil Kumble , the bashful hero with the disarming smile was always admired as a cricketer. Now , he will be admired and respected as a man and a model ….. A different kind of model than those shallow men who often walk our ramps.

Geelani's Human Rights

The Indian Express reports that Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani was denied US visa to visit US for medical treatment. The US has reportedly denied visa to Geelani for his failure to renounce violence as a means for achieving his political goal in Kashmir. In a statement issued here today, Hurriyat Conference termed the denial of visa as a “human rights violation”. Geelani’s purpose of visit to the US was not political but medical. It was a humanitarian issue which deserved sympathetic consideration,” Hurriyat spokesman Ayaz Akber told Indian Express.

The irony here is hard to miss. Geelani has not denied even once that the US contention that he believed in violence as a legitimate way to achieve his ends was a false one and that he believed in non violent means of protest and dissent. Geelani has thus tacitly accepted the fact that in his world view, it is OK to kill people who come in the way of his political and ideological objectives, even if terrorism is denounced by a large majority of the global community.

The ideological freedom to act according to the dictates of his conscience that he has claimed, even if abhorrent to most of us, is not some thing that he is willing to grant the United States government however. Ever since 9/11, the US government has taken a consistent stand to try and root out terrorism, which in itself is a laudable thing, though we may not agree with all of their methods. And consistent with their stated position, they have denied him a visa. And in response, the Hurriyat conference in a statement that is difficult to assimilate or fathom terms it a human rights violation.

I do not know what the current data looks like but as far back as in 2002, the Tribune had reported that nearly 10,000 innocent civilians were among the 28,000 who lost their lives and property worth millions of rupees was destroyed. There are certainly many players fishing in Kashmir’s muddy waters, but Geelani’s group and those with similar ideologies were responsible for a part of this colossal human misery. Geelani and his cohorts didn’t care much to ensure the human rights of all those who had to leave their homes and hearths for ever and for all the widows and orphans that they and their actions have created. But when Geelani’s only remaining kidney turns malignant and treatment is needed in the US, suddenly human rights become important.

The irony extends further. India is a country that the Hurriyat conference loves to hate. Pakistan is the land of destiny for them. Yet after the US visa refusal, when Imran Khan offered free treatment to Geelani at his fairly well equipped cancer hospital, then offer was declined and alternative treatment was arranged at Mumbai’s Tata Memorial Hospital. In comment, the Hurriyat spokesman had this to say “ We were told that after the US, the treatment in India ranks among the best in the world.” It is unfair to take digs at the plight of a seriously ailing man but clearly human rights looks and feel different from a hospital bed when one’s own survival is at stake and expediency prevails over reasoning and ideology. And kudos for once to the United States for not bending , though they could well have used the visa as a bargaining tool in the Kashmir chess game.

Playing Cards in an iPod Generation

As I move around the city of Delhi, I come across two kinds of people. In the seedy Nehru Place area of Delhi, where I have my office the lunch break sees every empty space occupied by groups of men squatting on newspapers. They are laughing and chatting among themselves as they play cards and exchange easy gossip in n atmosphere of easy and effortless camaraderie. The sight of people crowding out narrow aisles by squatting and idling away their time is by playing cards is not pleasant one, especially as the lunch breaks look rather extended at the expense of the stated working hours. Besides, I was brought up in a culture which considers playing cards an abomination and a hobby fit only for the dissolute... Besides, cards games were considered in my family, just a whisker’s leap away from the practically unforgivable sin of gambling. Although I don’t relish several things about card games and that is probably ingrained in me, I cannot but notice the fellowship and friendship that it generates and sustains.

In the evening, I meet an altogether group of people as I travel back home in my chartered bus. This is a different crowd and a wired crowd , in the sense that all or most of the passengers in the bus have a pair of wires sticking out of their ears which disappear some where into their clothes. No the passengers are not all wearing hearing aids or appliances; they are just immersed in their own private world , the wires discreetly disappearing into discreetly or indiscreetly kept mobile phones or music players. Most have mobile phones which have at least an FM Radio in built and many have an mp3 player built in too. Most of the affluent ones do not use chartered buses but a few who do flash their snazzy Apple iPods or Sony Mp3 walkmans or their garish Chinese imitations.

The difference between the people who I see in the afternoon and the ones I travel back with could not b starker. The first lot is mostly people, who are in their late forties or fifties. Most appear not to be gizmo savvy, and indeed if this crowd has mobile phones which are possible, they are obviously not hopelessly in love with it. No wires follow them around as they hunker down with their worn out playing cards on stair cases and aisles. Theirs is a parallel universe where companionship, friendship and camaraderie are every thing and the fulcrum around which their lives revolve. Even though card playing is not the healthiest of pastimes, it certainly provides human connectedness among people. The evening crowd is self immersed. Each one is tuned in – to the Radio Mirchi or the Radio City or their Himesh Reshammiya music track. It is a self contained, atomized universe devoid of any neighborly conversation.

The FM channels are all full of call in programs and the telephone lines seem to be chock full of callers wanting to hat up the anonymous Radio Jockeys but there is no conversation happening across people. The medium of diversion in the middle aged crowd of the afternoon is a cheap pack of cards; in the passengers of the evening bus, it is the ubiquitous mp3 player. Neither an addiction to a pack of cards nor an addiction to a radio channel can be termed healthy. But whereas cards seem to allow for bonding, comradeship and companionship to develop and flourish, the FM radios and the iPod develop isolationism , individualism and an atomization leading to an increasing culture of independence and of having little use or sensitivity to the other , to he neighbor whom I am called to love. A pack of cards or an iPod dangling from the neck – the jury is sill out on which is more damaging of the two.

Missing Friends….

I just finished reading a book with the quaint title “ Clive Avenue” written by a guy called T.S.Tirumurti and published by Penguin.. the book is about a quaint cul de sac street by the name of Clive Avenue, which is so obscure that even after Madras became Chennai and Mount Road became Anna Salai , the tiny Clive Avenue remained as it was, too obscure to rename. In its confines live a few assorted families – friends , more than neighbors, who love and live out their lives together and living together for decades , actually grow old together. There is a certain bonding, a certain closeness and tenderness that one can not but envy , especially people like me , who are perpetual migrants and have no one to bond with.

There are many disadvantages in being a perpetual migrant, even though it seems that I have lived in Delhi for almost all except a small piece of my life. When I first stepped into Delhi, I was a son of a bureaucrat and so were all my friends from school, drifting through Delhi because their dads happened to be also in the service of the government of India. We finished school and drifted off into our different careers and courses and for all practical purposes for ever lost track of each other. Till today, I do Google searches for some whose names and faces I remember, but no batchmates.com and classmates.com has helped me to trace out anything. Even if I did turn up with any thing , I am not sure what we would be able to talk any thing meaningfully as we would have drifted apart , not having grown up together now for decades.

Although most of us chase after urbanization and come and live in the metros, there is some thing to be said for living in the smaller towns, where your immediate neighbor is not a total stranger, friends are not people you meet at weddings, birthdays or funerals but people you have known all your lives and have grown up with. To know that speeches need not be made or bouquets delivered to drive any point home because you are always home.

Orkut, Friendster and their many clones express the modern yuppie’s yearning for communion and look for the elusive human touch through the tap of the key board and the flick of the mouse. While on line sites and hubs do provide the theoretical opportunity to meet with people one might otherwise never meet , relationships and friendships carved out over the net are at best shallow and meaningless and and at worst abusive and exploitative.

The cloak of anonymity that the net provides may be a platform for sharing thoughts and emotions that one would be hesitant to do in real life but if one is looking for support, love and concern from merely an online “friendship” , then more often than not one is headed for disappointment. Encouragement and empathy can be expressed when all is said and done and when all the emoticon buttons and avatars exhausted , not by instant messaging but by looking a friend in the eye and asking for and receiving love and support and giving it in turn. True friendships take a life time to cultivate and nurture. Friends cultivated over instant messaging and chats and networking sites can certainly be the springboard for meaningful friendships provided we recognize the limitations- that when the browser window is closed and the cache cleared , we would have nothing left but the memories of a chat session – not an anchor that we can rely on in the storms and sun shines of life.

Killing me Softly.....

Major multi national drug companies are killing us softly and surely even as debates about TRIPS, intellectual property rights , the Mashlekar committee report and other such concerns sail over our head. These and other hens will come home to roost when their implications hit us in real life. Let me share an instance:

A few weeks ago, I got an e mail from some one practising medicine in China. He had come to know of me through a mutual friend. This doctor in china had a patient who was suffering from chronic myeloid leukaemia and needed a drug called Imatinib. The drug was a product of the Swiss drug giant (Glivec) and at the price at which it was available in China, it was going to cost his patient a whopping Rs. One Lakh per month for an indefinite period, given the nature of cancer treatment. But the doctor had heard that in India, generic versions of the drug were available which were available at much lower prices and could I please check about the actual cost and availability.

I did some background research on the net as I had not been acquainted with the drug before though it would be in the news soon enough. My surfing revealed that Indian firms like Ranbaxy, CIPLA and others were indeed manufacturing it although the prices could not be discerned. So to get specific information, I went along to the near by chemist and found that generic versions were indeed available and the prices wee negotiable. But at Rs. 70 per capsule of Imatinib 100mg, though not exactly cheap, the price gap between the Novartis product and the Indian variants was yawning. Glivec is priced at Rs 1, 20,000 per month by Novartis when generic versions manufactured by Indian companies are available for Rs 8,000.

Although the drugs were eventually procured and found their way to my friend’s patient in China, one wonders how long such life saving drugs will be even relatively accessible to the common man. For it is in respect of this drug Glivec, that Novartis has filed a suit alleging violation of the patent laws and the TRIPS agreement in the Chennai High Court. As a life saving drug, it is important that the product be available at prices that one can consider affordable.

The campaign against cheaper access to drugs, initially highlighted by the high cost of anti retro virals has now spread to look at other drugs with global religious leaders having joined worldwide demands that the company withdraw the case in India. These include Nobel Prize winner, Desmond Tutu, Bishop Yvon Ambroise of the Commission for Justice and Peace of the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of India, Prawate Khidharn, General Secretary of the Christian Conference of Asia, Bishop Mark Hanson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Charitable associations see Novartis’ challenge as one against the right of worldwide poor patients for affordable drugs.

Drug companies have long argued that huge funding is required to research and carry out clinical trials for new drugs and they need to recover the costs by pricing them high in the initial years when they hold exclusive patents. If that alone were the case , the reasoning might still hold good for the phenomena of ever greening of molecules that large companies indulge in and which will prevent the manufacture of generic versions ever. Ever greening allows companies to make slight changes in off patent molecules and patent those again arguing it has improved efficiency and is in that sense a never ending cycle.

Even as drug companies see their only loyalty to the share holder and there is and will be a perennial clash between private profit and public interest , the only way out seems to be to break the gird lock of private funding in the research of new drugs and encourage, publicise and encourage initiatives like the Neglected Diseases Foundation whose vision it is to improve the quality of life & the health of people suffering from neglected diseases by developing new drugs or new formulations of existing drugs for patients suffering from these diseases. The foundation has broken new ground by launching ASAQ, a none patented, once a day, fixed dose anti malarial, the first new anti malarial drug in decades. Even as drug companies for the most part treat the sick as vulnerable milking cows, initiatives like the Neglected Diseases Foundation deserve all the publicity; encouragement and funding that they need to expand their portfolio.