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Exit America 49

What people say 96

Uncertain stand 114

Remembering TAGORE
On his 150th birth anniversary

VOLUME 28

NUMBER 27

TH E STAT E S
Fiery trap in Kolkata

41

SC IE NCE
Higgs signal?

44

WOR L D A F F A I R S
Iraq: Exit America
War crimes in the trash
Russia:
December Revolution
Pakistan:
Volatile state
India & China:
Troubled equations

C O V ER S T O RY

49
52

85

H ISTOR Y
Of Quit India, Nehru
& Communist split

89

CONTR OV E R S Y
Mullaperiyar dispute:
Deep distrust
Fallout of fear
OBITU A R Y
Humble genius:
Mario Miranda
Koreas Kim Jong-il
COL U M N
Bhaskar Ghose:
Looking back
Praful Bidwai:
Durban greenwash

As an activist, thinker, poet and rural reconstructionist, Rabindranath Tagore continues to be relevant. A tribute on the 150th
anniversary of his birth. 4

Jayati Ghosh:
Mess in eurozone
R.K. Raghavan:
A lost battle?

108
118

BOOKS
LE TTE R S

73
127

61

AR T
Achuthan Kudallurs
journey

CL IM A TE C H A N G E
Uncertain stand
in Durban

Timeless Tagore

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57

64

E CONOM Y
Losing momentum
Interview: C. Rangarajan,
Chairman, PMEAC

ISSN 0970-1710

54

TR AVE L
Jungles of Borneo

FOOD SEC UR I T Y
Understanding the PDS
Kerala:
Power of literacy
Bihar:
Coupon asco
Jharkhand:
Strong revival
Chhattisgarh:
Loud no to cash

DECEMBER 31, 2011 - JANUARY 13, 2012

96
98
101
104
106

RELA T ED S TOR I E S

Language
barrier 14
Poet of the Padma17

The other Tagore 22

Unique landlord 29
Man of science 37

110
112

114

120
124

129
132

83
94

W O RLD A F F A I RS
The American occupation
troops withdraw from Iraq
after waging a dumb war
which claimed the lives of a
million Iraqis. 49

On the Cover
Rabindranath Tagore.
PHOTOGRAPH: THE HINDU ARCHIVES
COVER DESIGN: U. UDAYA SHANKAR
Published by N. RAM, Kasturi Buildings,

F O O D S EC U RI T Y
A survey in nine States
shows that they have
quietly revived and
expanded their public
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C LI M A T E C H A N GE
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F R O N T L I N E

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Cover Story

JANUARY 13, 2012

As an activist, thinker, poet and rural reconstructionist,

Rabindranath Tagore continues to be relevant.
A tribute on the 150th anniversary of his birth.

TIMELESS TAGORE
There is hope that the new appreciation of Tagore as a thinker will in the long run

OLKATA, Santiniketan, Hyderabad,

Mumbai, Delhi and Ahmedabad; Marbach, Copenhagen, Lund, Zagreb and
Rijeka; London, Dartington, Cambridge, Birmingham and Hull; Stockholm, Leiden, Salamanca, Barcelona and Valladolid;
Washington and Chicago; Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.Who would have thought when I started
learning Bengali in 1972 that Bengali and Rabindranath Tagore would take me all over the world? The
150th anniversary of his birth has kept me and other
Tagore specialists exceptionally busy in 2011, and
the celebrations seem likely to continue, culminating
with the centenary in 2013 of his Nobel Prize.
This interest worldwide is both unsurprising and
surprising. It is unsurprising, given that after winning the Nobel Prize Tagore became, in the 1920s
and 30s, the most famous poet in the world. Fame
brought him many opportunities to travel, and he
seized them eagerly, globetrotting in a way that was
unprecedented before the age of air travel. Through
his English translations and their secondary translations, through his lectures and his extraordinary
dress and charisma, he left pieces of his legacy wherever he went, and it is not surprising that many of the
events I have attended have been linked to his own
visits and travels. But the enthusiasm and commitment of the organisers of these events is quite surprising, given that Tagore except in Bengal is
hardly a household name. Many people have never

heard of him, and some of the events have had tiny

audiences. Tagore alone is not now a crowdpuller,
and organisers have had to be ingenious in nding
ways of lling halls or seminar-rooms.
What has been gained? Perhaps it is too early to
say. But I think it is possible to draw some initial
conclusions about Tagores standing compared to
what it was 40 years ago, and what trends relating to
it can be expected in the future.
Tagore has attracted a good number of quips and
sneers over the years, which are routinely trotted out
by those who wish to make fun of him. One such quip
is Jorge Luis Borges comment referring to the
Nobel Prize that Tagore was a hoaxer of good faith,
or, if you prefer, a Swedish invention. Another is less
well known:
If only Tagore
Wouldnt draw!
His literary stuff
Is tedious enough.
Quoted to me many years ago by an uncle who
had been in the Indian Civil Service, these lines will
be useful to those who wish to pour scorn on the
roving exhibition of Tagores paintings (December
12 to March 4) in the Victoria and Albert Museum in
London. I myself enjoy these quips when I am in the
mood, and I suspect that Tagore would himself have

F R O N T L I N E

( FACI N G P A G E ) R A BI N D R A N ATH

February 1931.

Tagore in

PICTURES: THE HINDU ARCHIVES

enhance the understanding of his creative achievements. B Y W I L L I A M R A D I C E

JANUARY 13, 2012

F R O N T L I N E

JANUARY 13, 2012

found them amusing. They also carry the bleak truth that
for many non-Bengalis there is, with Tagore, a credibility
gap. Contributors to commemorative events or volumes are
convinced of his greatness, but there is a cold, harsh world
outside full of people who are not so convinced.
Maybe as an Englishman I have been more acutely
aware of this gap than admirers of Tagore from other
cultures and countries. The British literary establishment
has always been resistant to Tagore. Read Bikash Chakravartys introduction to his collection of letters to Tagore
from literary gures (Poets to a Poet, 1912-1940), and you
will learn that even at the height of his success with Gitanjali, his circle of friends and admirers in Britain was small and
eccentric. Mainstream gures such as W.B. Yeats and Ezra
Pound who were enthusiastic to begin with quite rapidly
lost interest. Despite all the work done since the 1980s to
put Tagores reputation on a new footing, there are in
Britain entrenched views that have proved extremely hard
to shift. Tagore is vaguely remembered for Gitanjali and
other English translations that enjoyed an initial vogue, but
which failed in the end to convince most mainstream writers and critics that he was a great and signicant poet.
The resilience of this attitude was demonstrated by an
article in The Guardian on May 7 by the veteran journalist
Ian Jack (who has a longstanding interest in India). It
asked: Is his poetry any good? The answer for anyone who
6

cant read Bengali must be: dont know. No translation is up

to the job. The article concluded that perhaps the time has
come for us to forget Tagore was ever a poet, and think of his
more intelligible achievements. No doubt Jack was being
deliberately provocative, and the urry of comment and
protest that his article provoked was not a bad thing: it did
at least get Tagore into the pages of one of our major
newspapers. It appeared the day after Jack had chaired a
lecture by Amartya Sen at the British Museum, which essentially argued the same: that Tagore the poet was inaccessible to non-Bengalis and the best thing to do was to
learn from his valuable ideas about nationalism, universalism and history.
UNITY, INTERNATIONALISM AND FREEDOM

Amartya Sens authority as a Nobel laureate himself may

have pushed Tagores reputation as a thinker up a few
notches. This will not, of course, satisfy those who care
passionately about his poetry, his songs, his plays, his ction, or his paintings. I myself have argued in lectures and
articles that to focus on Tagores ideas and ideals can not
only be a distraction from his profound achievements as a
creative artist but can also be misleading. Take any of his
creative works, from a single song to a magnicent poem
such as Tapobhanga (The Wakening of Siva), or a full-scale
novel like Gora, and you will nd that they cannot be

F R O N T L I N E

JANUARY 13, 2012

TA G O R E W I T H J A W AH A RLA L Nehru, who took time

off from a Calcutta trip in 1936 to visit Santiniketan
for a day. No record of the conversation exists. That
was also the year when Nehru lost his wife, for
whom Tagore had held a condolence meeting at his
ashram. Nehru shared a special relationship with
Tagore and sent his daughter, Indira, to study at
Visva-Bharati. As its Chancellor from 1951 to 1964,
he visited Santiniketan regularly for its convocation
ceremony. He took rides on the ferris wheel with the
students at Poush Mela, ate khichri with them in the
students canteen, ran around and played with
children. (Facing page) Tagore felicitating Gandhi and
Kasturba at the mango grove in Santiniketan. Tagore
and Gandhi held different views on the charkha, on
the politics of non-violent non-cooperation, on
modern science and birth control and celibacy. Yet
they shared a deep personal friendship and mutual
respect. There is a moving story of how Tagore
slipped a note in Gandhis hands at the end of the
1940 visit, asking him to accept this institution
[Visva-Bharati] under your protection. Gandhi
immediately responded, setting the poets mind at
rest. Nehrus government made good that promise in
1951 when Visva-Bharati was made a Central
university through an Act of Parliament.

reduced to a philosophy: they have the complexity, manysidedness, paradox and ambiguity that we expect to nd in
any great work of art.
Nevertheless, a number of publications and conference
papers in 2011 have given me hope that this new-found
appreciation of Tagore as a thinker will in the long run
enhance the understanding of his creative achievements.
Particularly signicant is Michael Collins new book for
Routledge: Empire, Nationalism and the Postcolonial
World: Rabindranath Tagores Writings on History, Politics and Society. Dr Collins is a historian teaching at University College London and his book derives from his
Oxford D.Phil thesis. It is a highly academic work and will
not be read much outside academic circles. But works of
scholarship can spread ripples, and I foresee a considerable
ripple effect from Dr Collins painstaking pursuit of unity
amidst the often bafing contradictions of Tagores discursive writings. Was Tagore pro- or anti-West? Was he
pro- or anti-modern? Scholars at Tagore conferences argue
endlessly about such issues.
Through carefully reading Tagores English lectures and
essays, Dr Collins has arrived at a conception similar to my
own, that in everything he did he strove for purnata, wholeness or completeness. He could be deeply critical of imperialism or the nation-state or the dehumanising effects of
capitalism and industrial production. But his belief in histo-

F R O N T L I N E

JANUARY 13, 2012

ry as an unfolding revelation and in his own creative work

as an expression of a unifying jivan-devata made him also
see the spirit of the age that spawned imperialist expansion or scientic advance as tending towards unity, internationalism and freedom. He believed this because, in
Dr Collins words, his monistic spiritual perspective derived largely from the Upanishadic insistence on the essential oneness of the universe provided the basis for his
philosophy of history.
The marginalisation of Tagore is the fragmentation of
Tagore. If we can move even one aspect of him to the centre,
as Dr Collins has successfully done with Tagores discursive
writings in English, then his diverse achievements as a poet,
composer, novelist, playwright and painter will cohere,
make sense, join forces at the centre of the stage. This will
not in any way diminish their radicalism, their subversive
challenge to orthodoxy, whether in education, economic
development, or man-woman relations. When really great
writers or thinkers become central, as Shakespeare has
done for so long, they have a tendency to seem more and
more radical, not tame or respectable.
SHIFTS IN PERCEPTION

Let me now consider some other shifts that have started to

occur during this anniversary year, in the perception and
8

S P E AKI N G AT B E R LI N University. Tagore spoke to

packed halls during his rst visit to war-ravaged
Germany in 1921. He revisited Germany in 1926 and
1930. Despite the adulation he received, the German
reaction to him was mixed and sometimes hostile.

use of several aspects of Tagores creativity. They are shifts

to a position that is both more central, but also more radical,
and have real potential for the future. The rst is an the
awareness of the activist Tagore. One of the biggest triumphs of the anniversary year was the Tagore festival held
in Dartington in Devon, May 1-7, inspired and masterminded by Satish Kumar. Three different venues at Dartington
Hall (founded by Leonard K. Elmhurst with money from his
American wife Dorothy, after he had worked with Tagore at
Sriniketan) were lled from morning to night with very well
attended events: lectures, recitals, dance performances and
poetry readings. Satish Kumar commands a considerable
following in Britain through his editorship of the ecological
magazine Resurgence. He is also the guiding light behind
Schumacher College at Dartington and the Small School at
Hartland, and he acknowledges Tagore as a major inuence
on his life and work. Through his wide network of international contacts, he was able to attract as speakers big
names such as the conservationist Jane Goodall, the new

F R O N T L I N E

JANUARY 13, 2012

WI T H H E L E N K E L LER,

when he visited New York in 1930.

1 0

F R O N T L I N E

JANUARY 13, 2012

age guru Deepak Chopra, the environmentalist Jonathan

Porrit, the educationist Anthony Seldon, and many prominent poets, dancers and musicians. Many who attended or
spoke at the festival did not know much about Tagore, but
all were committed to his values. With our world now facing
unprecedented challenges from overpopulation, global
warming and environmental degradation, Tagore is likely
to seem an increasingly compelling voice.
I thought of Dartington at the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) conference on Tagores vision of
the contemporary world at Azad Bhavan, in New Delhi,
October 10-12, especially when I heard Ananda Lal saying
dryly about the exploitative dam in Muktadhara or the
digging for gold in Raktakarabi, If that is not topical, what
is? I also thought of Dartington when I heard, at the same
conference, Eiko Ohira speaking so movingly about the
devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan on April 21
telling us how cherry blossoms continued to bloom amidst
the rubble. She quoted Eliot April is the cruellest month
but took strength and comfort from Tagore. Listening to
my friend Dr Martin Kmpchen, speaking both in Delhi
and at the seminar My Tagore; why Tagore in Ahmedabad
on October 15, and hearing about his Tagore-inspired work
as a community activist in Santali villages close to Santiniketan, I again reected on how vital it is always to keep this
aspect of Tagores vision in mind. It is a major reason for
remembering him, and it attracts many people worldwide.
RABINDRASANGEET

A second major area where there has been a shift one that
is particularly close to my heart is in Rabindrasangeet, the
unique and marvellous songs of Tagore. For Bengalis, and
for Tagore himself, the songs are absolutely central, but for
non-Bengalis worldwide, his songs have remained the least
known, least understood aspect of his creative genius. The
reasons for this have nothing to do with the songs themselves or the fact that they are composed in a language that
very few non-Bengalis know. The main obstacle has been in
their domestication, their dare I say it ghettoisation.
The conventional way of performing them, with harmonium and other instruments, metronomic tabla-rhythm, and
excessive amplication; the ubiquity of Rabindrasangeet at
every kind of Bengali celebration or social occasion; have
made them as alien to non-Bengalis as British Christmas
pantomime is to non-Britons, or Spanish bullghts are to
non-Spaniards (or were before the recent Catalan bullghting ban). In my experience, even in India outside Bengal,
Rabindrasangeet has had the effect of separating Tagore
from others, not bringing him closer to them.
It has long been a dream of mine to persuade singers of
Rabindrasangeet to perform without the clutter of harmonium, tabla and other instruments. At Dartington, my
friend Debashish Raychaudhuri and his daughter Rohini
gave a wonderful performance of Rabindrasangeet, set free,
so to speak, from performance conventions. Sung khali
golay (with naked voice), and combined with an explana-

tory conversation, they were immediately made as moving

to a foreign audience as the songs of Schubert are to audiences who may not know a word of German. In Ahmedabad, we repeated the experiment, to a Gujarati audience
who, because of a well-established interest in Gujarat in
Tagore and his songs, are normally quite happy to listen to
Rabindrasangeet sung in the conventional way. But for
them, too, when they heard the songs sung with this new
directness and simplicity, the experience was revelatory.
The ovations that Debashish and Rohini received in both
Dartington and Ahmedabad will remain with me as high
spots of the anniversary year.

Once it is understood what

Tagores songs actually are,
then the door is wide open
for all sorts of imaginative
fusion experiments.
I believe that this new way of performing Rabindrasangeet, which is largely a matter of bringing it up to global
standards of performance, will have an increasingly powerful effect. Another manifestation of this sea change is the
recent recording by Swagatalakshmi Dasgupta of the complete Gitabitan (collected songs of Tagore) with only tanpura as accompaniment. Hearing Rabindrasangeet sung in
this way is like seeing an old master painting after layers of
grime and varnish have been removed. Alongside this revolution in performance comes scholarly work by musicologists, especially Dr Lars Koch in Berlin, who gave a
fascinating presentation at the The Many Worlds of Rabindranath Tagore, an international conference at the University of Chicago, October 27-28. Dr Koch has completed a
major study in German of the songs of Tagore, published by
LIT Verlag, and his presentation implied that in this book
he argues that corruption in the performance of Rabindrasangeet set in very early on because the writing down of
the songs in akarmatrik notation, and the control of their
performance by the Visva-Bharati Music Board, led to a
rhythmic rigidity that was absent in recordings of the songs
by Tagore himself, or by disciples such as Sahana Devi.
QUALITY, INSIGHT AND FEELING

Once it is understood what Tagores songs actually are, then

the door is wide open for all sorts of imaginative fusion
experiments. When I hear the best of these experiments, I
feel that they take us closer to the spirit of the songs than the
conventional way of performing them. In Ahmedabad, Professor Partha Ghose, whose knowledge of Tagores songs is
as deep as his appreciation of Tagores scientic interests,

F R O N T L I N E

1 1

JANUARY 13, 2012

Maurice Gwyer (right) and

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan after a special convocation
held by Oxford University at Santiniketan on August 7,
1940, to confer on Tagore the degree of D.Litt.

FL AN K E D B Y S I R

played us beautiful arrangements of Rabindrasangeet that

he has recorded in Kolkata with a string quartet. Recently,
in the town in Hexham near where I live in Northumberland, two ne local musicians performed arrangements of
Tagore songs by the French musicologist Alain Danilou
(1907-1994), who translated the words into French and
English so that they tted the melody, and added subtle
1 2

piano accompaniments that bring out the latent harmonies as perceptively as Partha Ghoses string quartet versions. What matters above all in Rabindrasangeet, as in any
great music, is quality, insight and feeling. This can be
achieved in any number of ways so long as ones starting
point is the song as conceived and imagined by Tagore
himself.
Rabindrasangeet brings me to the third area where I feel
exciting changes are afoot and where there is real potential
for the future. Many of the best events in 2011 have been
performances involving actors, dancers and musicians.
Flying Man (pakshi-manab): Poems for the 21st century

F R O N T L I N E

JANUARY 13, 2012

by Rabindranath Tagore at the British Library on May 17

was one of them. Some of the greatest poems of Tagore, with
a special relevance to the anxieties and concerns of the 21st
century, were read by me and two Bengali readers, in translation and in the original Bengali. Music was provided by
Zoe Rahman (piano) and her brother Idris Rahman (clarinet), two of Britains nest young jazz musicians. They
showed that deeply felt jazz improvisations, combined with
recitation, can give amazing new life and meaning to Tagores poetry. On August 5-6, Akademi, the Centre for
South Asian Dance, produced Song of the City, a radically
innovative dance production based on Tagore. The dank
and mysterious Southwark Playhouse Vaults in London
were the venue, the choreographer was Ash Mukherjee,
who is trained in both Bharatanatyam and Western ballet,
and the part-live, part-recorded soundtrack combined Rabindrasangeet, recitation, and improvisations by another
outstanding British jazz clarinettist, Arun Ghosh.

What matters in
Rabindrasangeet is
quality, insight and
feeling. This can be
achieved in a number of
ways as long as the
starting point is the song
as conceived by Tagore
himself.

Chicago on October 28, and in Hexham, Northumberland,

on November 27. Everyone absolutely everyone is
moved by this recording as soon as they understand the
words.
Among the things that I hope my own work in this
anniversary year has given, especially in my translation of
Gitanjali for Penguin India, has been a new and transferable way of translating Tagores songs. In Spain, my translation of Tobu mone rekho was readily translated into
Spanish, and I think it will not be long before Spanish
musicians turn this into a song of their own. Tagore wrote
the song in 1887, and may not have been thinking of himself
or his future legacy at all. But it is impossible to hear it now
without thinking of the song as prophetic, and when I hear
Tagore sing it himself, with the rhythmic exibility that is
such a feature of his poetry, prose and paintings, and with a
heartrending catch in his voice in the last line, which suggests that he had a lump in his throat and was scarcely able
to get through it, I know in the core of my being that Tagore
was one of those creative geniuses who make one feel privileged to be human. For as long as we walk this planet, and
maybe one day other planets too, he will be remembered,
and those who have participated in the commemorations in
2011, and have travelled so far in his globetrotting footsteps,
can take pride in what we have done to ensure that he will be
remembered.
Remember me, still remember me,
if I go far away,
still remember me
If old love gets covered by the mesh of new love,
remember me
still remember me
If I stay close by,
yet you cannot see whether, like a shadow,
I am present or not,
remember me
still remember me
If tears come to your eyelids
If tears come to your eyelids
If play ceases one day, one spring night,
still remember me
If work is stopped one day, one autumn dawn,
remember me
If I come to your mind,
yet heavy tears no longer brim
in the corners of your eyes
still remember me
Remember me, still remember me

In Valladolid in Spain on October 4, the three city

Tagore en Espaa festival coordinated by Indranil Chakravarty reached a stunning climax with a performance that
combined Rabindrasangeet from Paramita Biswas, dance
from Ananya Chatterjea, and amenco from Jos Salinas
and Ral Olivar. It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life: to stand and compre a complex programme in Spanish, to a large and rapturous audience, in a
spirit of freedom, creativity and international cooperation
that went right to the heart of what Rabindranath Tagore
was all about.
REMEMBER ME

Let me end with Tagores own voice. I cannot do that

physically in a magazine article, but it is not difcult now to
nd on the Internet Tagores own rendering of his song
Tobu mone rekho. The recording was played at a number of
the events this year: in Rijeka in Croatia on May 21, in

William Radice is a British poet, writer, and translator.

His translations of Tagores poems and stories are widely
acclaimed. In August 2011, he retired from SOAS, London
University, where he used to teach Bengali language and
literature. His latest book is a new English translation of
Gitanjali for Penguin India.

F R O N T L I N E

1 3

Cover Story

JANUARY 13, 2012

Language barrier
The bulk of Tagores poetry is available in translation in different languages, but
the ambience of the original fails to come through in translation. B Y A S H O K M I T R A
IS songs will endure. Here lies the tragedy, for they will endure only for those
who are not only born in the language,
but also continue to be faithful to it. Any
scope for hope for Tagore and his songs
to be more than a totem rests with the Bangladeshis,
who have clung to Tagores language.
A quantum of cynicism is in order. The year 2011
happens to be 150 years since Rabindranath Tagores
birth. A spate of commemoratory celebrations, under both ofcial and other auspices, is taking place.
Some courteous gestures are forthcoming from foreign embassies and consulates too. In quite a few
countries, either the Indian diaspora or this or that
international body is organising events to offer homage to Tagores memory. Why not be candid; much of
all this is pure ritual. And it is particularly so in our
own neighbourhood. This nation is currently in an
obsessively globalised mood; its priorities and concerns have turned topsy-turvy.
When the man once hailed as the Father of the
Nation is now little more than a half-forgotten totem, Tagore could hardly expect a better treatment.
He, in any case, never had the same emotive appeal
across the entire nation as Gandhi had, and is at most
a regional icon. Still he was the rst Indian to be
awarded the Nobel Prize. That fact cannot be passed
over; the colonial hangover is uber alles. After all, the
ethereal beauty and intense spiritualism embedded
in Tagores poetry came to be recognised in the
country only after the nod arrived from the West. He

1 4

was immediately rendered into a deity. That status

continues. Deities have dates when they are to be
dusted and feted. Tagore is being duly feted this year:
obeisance to a ritual.
Indians, however, love to convert every ritual
into a carnival. The Tagore anniversary has been
reduced to a potpourri of songs, plays, dances, dance
dramas, seminars, workshops, learned-sounding
discourses, exhibitions of his paintings and manuscripts, lms on him or based on his themes, and
whatever else can be thought of. At the end of the
year, the sum total of all these events could well be a
grand confusion. Carnivals, besides, have a magnetic
attraction for racketeers. The Tagore season is proving to be no exception. Globalisation has imparted
the lesson that the cardinal objective in life is to make
money whatever the means; so what is the harm if a
few fast bucks are made by way of pretending to pay
homage to Tagore too?
Such frivolities apart, there is one big difculty
for the world at large to appreciate Tagores creativity or his message that enriched humanity. He
wrote almost exclusively in Bengali, which is not an
easy language to enter into. The language has a

F R O N T L I N E

TA G OR E A S BA LM I KI (facing page) in his

dance drama "Balmiki Pratibha". He enjoyed
directing, and acting in, his plays and did so
quite late into his life. During the struggle to
put Visva-Bharati on its feet, he went on tours
staging performances to raise funds for it.

VISVA-BHARATI ARCHIVES

JANUARY 13, 2012

mixed-up heredity with derivatives from Sanskrit, Pali, Persian, Arabic and, later, Portuguese and English. No matter,
it has acquired a structural maturity and a specic identity
and has built a climate for itself which is doggedly insular
with its subjective symbols and codes. For those aspiring to
familiarise themselves with Bengali, it is therefore a case of
hit or miss: should one be lucky, one might succeed in
breaking the barrier and going inside the language, but
most of the time one remains the frustrated outsider. Learning the script, the grammar, the vocabulary and the syntactical idiosyncrasies may not be enough; the totality of the
sectarian mystique could still be beyond grasp.

The 2,000-odd songs he

composed are to be enjoyed,
savoured, played with,
prayed with; they are often
guiding stars to negotiate the
tortuous course of existence.
Perhaps, Tagores humanistic passages get faithfully
transmitted through renderings in other languages. The
philosophy of eternal quest buried in his works also had,
once, a clientele in the West. Most of that is now pass;
mystic thoughts do not grip the West any more. Maybe
some of Tagores short stories, despite their roots in the
Bengal milieu of the times, have a certain ubiquitous appeal. His novels mostly deal with contemporary problems
and are generally reckoned to be no longer of any relevance.
The great bulk of his poetry is, of course, available in translation in different languages. But the ambience of the original poetry fails to come through in translation. The delicate
whisper of thought, the depths of passion or devotion and
the cadence in the crafted texture refuse to get transplanted
in other languages. No fault lies with those who do the
translations, the problem is an organic one that even a
linguist can only mull over but cannot resolve.
The passage of time has bared another harsh truth:
most of Tagores poems appear to be overwritten; to state it
more plainly, they talk too much. The language of words
and the architectural arrangements enchant; the sonorous
expression of thoughts and ideas ows on and on, but we are
stuck at a still point of cognosis. The absence of rigour,
Tagore was acute enough to realise, made poetry vulnerable
to the moodiness of seasonality. It was a dilemma. He had
beauty to convey and ideas to unload. He could, he was
sanguine, reach out to the unarticulated yearnings of the
human soul, and he had total command of the language
which was his medium. The greater challenge, though, was
of compression of what he desired to convey. Whether it was
1 6

spirituality or passion or any other instinct that nudges the

poet, its expression has to be within the bounds of restraint.
Tagore discovered his salvation. He took to composing
songs. In this genre, it is important to surrender to the
sovereignty of discipline, collect ones ideas within a limited
ambit of words, and simultaneously marry the poetry with
the appropriate music. There is no question that his songs
have a magnicence that reduces the worth of all his other
works. He himself was condent that this was indeed so.
The 2,000-odd songs he composed are to be enjoyed, savoured, played with, prayed with; they are often guiding
stars to negotiate the tortuous course of daily existence, or
otherwise solace at the moment of crisis and sufferings.
They take one along the meandering trajectory of feelings
and emotions, via a fusion of language.
The themes range from passion to counter-passion,
blind faith to threadbare reasoning, soul searching to revelry, love of nature to love of women. The music embellishing
them is wondrously freewheeling, derived from classical
Indian ragas, Irish lullabies, Scottish ballads, the otherworldly chant of Bengali bauls, the bhajans chanted by
Rajasthani damsels while fetching water from distant villages, the deep resonance of Carnatic music, and, on occasion, even pickings from haughty military bands. Tagore
plays the great innovator, he turns odds into evens, the
assorted refrains are frequently made to coalesce and merge
into one another and something devastatingly original,
quintessentially Tagore, reveals itself.
His songs will endure. Here lies the tragedy, for they will
endure only for those who are not only born in the language
but also continue to be faithful to it. As of this moment,
Bengalis in India are in general keen to walk away from
their native tongue. The reference here is to the Bengali
middle class, who really matter in the polity and the economy. They are sure of what they want; they are in a scampering hurry to swim in worldly prosperity. The Bengali
language offers no help towards attaining that goal; why
waste time on it, better shift to foreign languages valued in
global transactions and, above all, the language of information technology. Tagore, for this money-xated species, is a
dispensable embarrassment. They do not mind participating in carnivals organised on the pretext of Tagore as long
as such involvement has commercial possibilities; that is all.
The story is different in Bangladesh. They have shed
blood to win their war of liberation. One of the passions at
the root of their revolt against Pakistan was their erce love
for their mother tongue, from which the authorities wanted
to detach them by rman. Nothing doing; they clung to
Tagores language and wrested their freedom. Tagore is an
integral part of their ethos. Not that the blight of globalisation is not affecting them either, but if there is any hope
for Tagore and his songs to be more than a totem, that hope
rests with the Bangladeshis. For the rest of the human race,
they will be polite towards Tagore, but sorry, he will remain
hugely irrelevant.

As told to Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay

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JANUARY 13, 2012

Poet of the Padma

How Tagore, once disowned as a Hindu poet by Bengali Muslims, became part of
Bangladeshs freedom movement is fascinating history. B Y G H U L A M M U R S H I D
ENGALI-SPEAKING people were and,
still are, sharply divided into two religious communities of nearly equal sizes,
Hindus and Muslims. Coupled with economic inequality as well as social hierarchy and a rigorous caste system, there was little
communal harmony between them, particularly between the dominant upper class Hindus and Muslims in general. Inspired by the rising tide of
religious nationalism in the 1940s, Muslims chose to
form a separate country of their own, which came to
be known as East Pakistan. Despite the fact that
Rabindranath Tagore was one of the greatest geniuses ever born, and the only Asian until then to have
received the Nobel Prize, he was hardly identied by
the Bengali Muslim community to be one of their
own. Instead, he was branded by them as a Hindu
poet. Therefore, it seemed almost unbelievable
when, a quarter of a century later, in 1971, the predominantly Muslim Bangladesh chose one of the
songs written and set to music by Tagore as its
national anthem. How the once disowned and neglected Tagore became part of the freedom movement of Bangladesh is, indeed, a fascinating history.

MUSLIM DISSATISFACTION

Traditionally, more than 97 per cent of Bengali Muslims, like the low caste Hindus, lived in villages and
were mainly farmers and artisans. For generations,
they adhered to their caste occupations and hardly
had any interest in having any formal education. On
F R O N T L I N E

the contrary, upper caste Hindus eagerly accepted

English education and engaged in commercial activities with the English. Thousands of them also
bought landed properties and became zamindars, or
landlords. These caste Hindus, about 10 per cent of
the entire Hindu population, formed the upper and
middle classes in Bengali society and contributed to
as well as beneted from the so-called Bengali Renaissance. Muslims lagged miles and decades behind them socially, culturally and economically. As a
result, the Bengali Muslims, mostly poor farmers,
were resentful of Hindu dominance and exploitation
by zamindars, and identied themselves as not belonging to Bengal.
Apart from this, the English rulers used this
Muslim dissatisfaction to divide the two communities and pursue the advantageous policy of Divide
and Rule. However, as a growing number of Muslims gradually came to have some education in the
beginning of the 20th century and became more
aware of their inferior status in society, the alienation between Hindus and Muslims increased.
This alienation was so strong that in the early
20th century, Muslims, who were very much sons of
the soil and spoke Bengali for centuries, underwent
an identity crisis and even raised the question
whether their mother tongue was Bengali. Although
the debate died down by the early 1930s, politics
took a sharp turn and saw the growth of a movement
for an independent Muslim land in the early 1940s.
After the creation of Pakistan, a unique state
1 7

JANUARY 13, 2012

with its two wings separated by more than a thousand miles,

its leaders realised that there was little in common between
the people of West Pakistan and those of the East, except the
unity of religion. Therefore, they planned to develop another element which they hoped would bond the two parts,
namely, having a single ofcial language. This they wanted
to achieve by reducing the use of Bengali, importing as
much of Arabic and Persian elements into Bengali as possible, and by making Urdu the only ofcial language for
both wings. In short, they wanted to discard Bengali, the
mother tongue of the majority of the population of Pakistan. It was a well-calculated plan to destroy the Bengali
identity of the people of East Pakistan and draw a dividing
line between Hindu West Bengal and Muslim East Pakistan. Part of this plan was to replace Tagore, rst with Allama
Iqbal, and then with Nazrul Islam, by projecting them as
alternatives to Tagore. In short, they wanted the Bengalispeaking people in East Bengal to lose sense of their linguistic identity and cultural heritage.
Despite their indifference until then towards the Bengali language, Bengali Muslims resented this concerted assault by Pakistani leaders on Bengali and, soon after
Partition, started a political agitation demanding that Bengali be recognised as one of the ofcial languages of Pakistan. In 1947-48, however, this movement remained
conned among the teachers and students of Dhaka, particularly of the University of Dhaka. Police repression in
March 1948 turned it into an emotional issue and as time
passed the movement gathered momentum and gradually
spread throughout the province. It culminated in a bloody
political movement on February 21, 1952, when the police
opened re on protesters, mainly students, and killed more
than 10 people. The following day, more people were killed.
This brutal police repression, along with enormous disparity, particularly in the eld of economy and participation
in governance gave birth to a movement for democratic
rights.
It had an even more profound inuence on their linguistic identity. Badruddin Umar calls it the return of the
Bengali Muslims to their own land. Until then, mentally
and sentimentally, they lived in the Middle East (West
Asia), but soon after the language movement in the 1950s,
they increasingly started to identify themselves with Bengal
along with its language, literature, music and culture. It was
during this time that they came to love Tagore. To them, he
became the symbol of secular Bengali nationalism and
someone who they could be immensely proud of. They could
no longer ignore Tagore as a Hindu poet.
SECULAR BENGALI NATIONALISM

The language movement, emotional as it was, had a tremendous effect on the politics of East Pakistan and resulted in
all but depleting the Muslim League as a political party in
the 1954 elections. It was a very signicant development
because the Muslim League had created Pakistan. In fact,
the language movement heralded the rise of a strong secular
1 8

and regional movement for more autonomy, which eventually led to the independence of Bangladesh. Thus the language movement was the beginning of the end of Pakistan.
The rise of this secular Bengali nationalism, replacing
the very foundation of Pakistan, that is, Muslim nationalism, was reected through small but important symbolic
developments, such as giving children Bengali names, writing number plates of motor vehicles and names of houses in
Bengali, putting ones signature in Bengali, celebrating the
birth anniversaries of Tagore, Nazrul Islam and Sukanta
Bhattacharji (a promising poet who died very young) as well
as celebrating seasonal festivals such as spring, monsoon
and autumn. Tagore was, for the rst time, loved by Bengali
Muslims as their own.
This tide of secular Bengali nationalism developed fast
in the midst of a favourable atmosphere of the politics of
discontent in East Pakistan. Utterly frustrated by the unequal treatment by West Pakistan in governance and economy, East Pakistan simmered in disgruntlement and
looked for friends elsewhere. It was soon after the elections
of 1954 that the demand for a country called Bangladesh
was, for the rst time, pronounced by Fazlul Huq, the Chief
Minister of East Pakistan. Even though he was soon silenced, the dream survived in the minds of young leaders
such as Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. In fact, there is evidence
that the latter went secretly to the neighbouring Indian
State of Tripura in 1962 to explore the possibility of getting
help for freeing East Pakistan from the bondage of West
Pakistan.
TAGORES EAST BENGAL YEARS

Tagore had strong ties with East Bengal. In order to manage

his fathers large zamindaris in East Bengal, he lived in
Shilaidaha in the district of Kustia from 1890 to 1901. Apart
from this, he lived temporarily in East Bengal on many an
occasion. He was born and brought up in the seclusion of
the aristocratic Tagore family in the city of Calcutta and had
never been exposed to either rural Bengal or the inhabitants
thereof. He has himself narrated how East Bengal broadened his vision and made him aware of what Bengali society
was really like. In more than 200 letters he wrote to his
niece, Indira Devi, during this time, which were later collected into a volume called Glimpses of Bengal, he describes
passionately how he was stimulated vigorously both by the
beauty of the landscape and the simplicity of the people he
saw around him.
As a result, he encountered an explosion of creativity in
different branches of literature and music. More significantly, he wrote his rst short story almost immediately
after he settled in Shilaidaha and went on writing many
more. Out of a total of 119 stories, he wrote 59 while he lived
in East Bengal between 1890 and 1901. Inspired by the
scenic beauty of rural Bengal and the simple lifestyle of the
people, he also wrote many poems and songs while there. In
many of these poems, included mainly in Sonar Tari, Chitra
and Chaitali, we nd references to the exquisite beauty of

F R O N T L I N E

PICTURES COURTESY: VISVA-BHARATI ARCHIVES

JANUARY 13, 2012

WITH V I C T O R I A O C A M P O , whose guest he was in

Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1924 for a couple of
months. He called her Bijaya, Bengali for Victoria.
Much of "Purabi", the book of poems named after
an evening raga, was written here. She encouraged
him to draw after she chanced upon a manuscript
that had drawings in it. Rathindranath says in his
memoirs that she also organised and funded the
rst exhibition of his paintings in Paris in 1930.

golden Bengal. Indeed, East Bengal played a signicant role

in shaping his mind. Even though he moved away from East
Bengal to Santiniketan, East Bengal left a permanent impression on him and occupied a very important place in his
world.
It was during the period of the post-language movement
that the people of East Pakistan started to sing his patriotic
songs and use his poems, during the anniversary of the

language movement and on other occasions. They also

made good use of patriotic songs and poetry by Hindu poets
such as Atulprasad Sen and Dwijendralal Ray. This was a
clear shift on the part of Bengali Muslims from their earlier
stance of creating a Muslim Bengal and crafting a Bengali
language puried with Muslim elements.
DEFYING GOVERNMENT & CELEBRATING TAGORE

Tagore continued to reinforce his position among Bengalis

in East Pakistan in this environment. The government
could do little to stop this process. However, as the Tagore
centenary in 1961 approached, it took denite steps to
undermine the occasion by discouraging everyone, particularly government ofcials, from celebrating the occasion.
The largest circulated daily, Azad, joined hands with the
government and started a propaganda war, claiming that
Tagore was a sectarian poet. There was not a single day
before and during the celebrations when articles vilifying

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JANUARY 13, 2012

Tagore did not appear on its editorial page. This was not
surprising in view of the fact that Azad was a staunch
nationalist newspaper. However, what was more signicant
was that the dailies Ittefak and Sambad defended Tagore
equally vocally, quoting what he had written about and in
support of Muslims. This was important because it showed
a denite shift in the tide towards and development of a
secular linguistic nationalism. It also enhanced interest in
the Bengali language and literature.
Tagore was remembered not just by these dailies or the
people in Dhaka, but also by hundreds of educational institutions and cultural organisations all over the province,
including those in villages, which celebrated the occasion
with as much enthusiasm as they could. They perceived it as
a protest against the governments ban on Tagore and the
suppression of Bengali culture. Hence, they observed it with
grandeur. Whatever the quality of the celebrations, there
was a revival of interest in Tagore among the people of East
Pakistan. The study of Tagore, the spread of his songs and a
keen interest in lms based on his stories and novels received an enormous boost from that time on.
The governments efforts to discourage Tagore, however, continued unabated. One of the steps it took was to ban
Tagore songs on government-controlled TV and radio during the war between India and Pakistan in early September
1965. The ban continued until the anniversary of Tagores
birth in May 1966. Harsher was the decision by the government in 1967 to stop Tagore songs from being broadcast on
radio and television. The decision was announced in Parliament by the Information Minister.
The intelligentsia in Dhaka, particularly teachers and
students, protested angrily against this announcement and
2 0

P AG E S FR OM THE manuscript of "Purabi", with the

poems "Bipasha" (left) and "Baitarini". The poems of
"Purabi" are poems of love, where the object of love
is ultimately unknowable. A rough translation of the
last two lines of "Bipasha": "Let me not grasp for you
in my yearning/Let your song come to me from the
open skies, not from the cage of my heart."

asked the government to withdraw the decision immediately. The government initially ignored the agitation but when
people from all over the country joined in a chorus of
protests it withdrew the embargo.
The earlier ban on Tagore songs, in 1965, saw the establishment of a cultural organisation called Chhayanot. Its
inuence was unprecedented. It did not conne itself to just
cultural activities, and soon took the form of a protest
movement. It is said that the celebration of Rabindra Jayanti, that is, the anniversary of the birth of Tagore, in 1966,
which Chhayanot had organised, was attended by tens of
thousands of people. It goes without saying that all these
people were not connoisseurs of Tagore songs and dances;
they attended the open-air festivals and assemblies to protest against the governments repression of their culture.
Chhayanot also began celebrating Bengali New Years Day,
which has now, in the post-independence period, become
the second largest celebration after the Language Movement Day. Indeed, it has developed into a cultural movement rather than just being a cultural event.
Several educational and cultural organisations took
Chhayanots lead to celebrate Rabindra Jayanti defying the
governments attempts to discourage them. Thus Tagore,
who had so long been limited mainly to textbooks, came

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JANUARY 13, 2012

M A NU SC R I PT O F H I S

English aphorisms,
collected as
"Fireies", published
by Macmillan in New
York in 1928.
Translations of nearly
all these brief poems
can be found in
William Radices
book "The Jewel That
Is Best" (Penguin
India).

back to life in East Pakistan. East Pakistanis earned him

through a political and cultural movement. The study of
Tagore certainly received a lift in Bangladesh. Articles and
books on Tagore started to come out and performances of
his plays and dance dramas became popular. Educated
middle-class Bengali Muslims began to buy discs of Tagore
songs, whether they really appreciated the songs or not. It
was fashionable to be identied as Tagoreans. The people
who did not show any interest in Tagore were considered by
others to be less than cultured. The celebration of hardly
any cultural event was regarded as complete without the
rendering of Tagore songs. Gradually even East Pakistani
lms started to use them. This growing popularity of Tagores songs encouraged Chhayanot to release a set of discs
in 1969. Tagores patriotic songs, in particular, were considered to be both inspiring and appealing.
NATIONAL ANTHEM

It was during this process that his songs, such as Amar

sonar Bangla ami tomay bhalobasi (My golden Bengal, I
love you) and Sarthak janam amar janmechhi ei deshe (My
life has been fullled as I was born in this country) and
dozens of others, won the hearts of the people. These songs
became so integral to their lives that people started to use
them to boost their political and cultural movements. Amar
sonar Bangla was seen to be the national anthem of the
future Bangladesh even before Bangladesh was created.
The song Dhana-dhanya-pushpa-bhara (Full of wealth,
rice and owers, this country of ours) by Dwijendralal Ray
also became extremely popular (now it is Bangladeshs
ofcial patriotic song). A song by Atulprasad Sen Moder
garob, moder asha/A mori Bangla bhasha (Our pride, our

hope/Oh, this Bangla language of ours) became a widely

used slogan for banners. During the late 1950s and the
entire 1960s, the people of East Bengal, who were once
unmoved by Tagore, came to love him as their own and thus
earned him through a struggle in the face of strong opposition. He came out of textbooks and was transformed into a
living entity.
However, the attitude towards Tagore in Bangladesh,
after its independence, has changed to a large extent. Although the government gave him due recognition, the perception of the people towards him has changed. He is now
no longer seen as their companion in their struggle for an
independent Bangladesh, as the struggle itself has become
redundant with no one to repress it. Moreover, at the instance of the rise of a global Islamic nationalism and with
the monetary help of the Middle Eastern countries, especially of Saudi Arabia, there has been a revival of Islam in
Bangladesh. This attitude has also been enhanced by popular anti-Indian fear. Indias big brotherly attitude towards
Bangladesh has also contributed to it. Tagore is now no
longer as inspiring and alive as he was 40 years ago.
However, he still symbolises the spirit of a secular Bengali
culture and Tagore songs are increasingly becoming popular and fashionable. The study of Tagore continues unabated as well, despite the fact that he has lost some of the
ground he gained during the 1960s and the early 1970s.
Ghulam Murshid is a British writer of Bangladeshi origin,
best known in India for his biography of the poet Michael
Madhusudan Datta (Ashar Chhalane Bhuli or Lured By
Hope) and his writings on Bengali literature and culture.
He is a Senior Research fellow at SOAS, London University.

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2 1

Cover Story

JANUARY 13, 2012

The Other Tagore

The sage of Santiniketan was rebellious and courted controversy sometimes
to espouse a cause that mattered to him. B Y S A B Y A S A C H I B H A T T A C H A R Y A
HE Tagore we usually get to know is the
icon of the sage of Santiniketan, the
widely respected author resting on his laurels from 1913 up to his death in 1941 as the
rst non-European to get the Nobel Prize,
an ideologue of the freedom struggle admired by
leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose a image of a pillar of the establishment.
Arguably, there was another Tagore who was rebellious, courting unpopularity at some turning points
of his life, reviled by his countrymen as an apostate
and a traitor, and acutely conscious of his conspicuous isolation due to his frequent failure to connect
with prevailing public opinion. That other Rabindranath Tagore is hidden in his letters, most of which
still remain unpublished, in his quiet self-reections
in some isolated and infrequently noticed writings,
and in the events of his quotidian life in the years
before he attained fame.

THE SCHOOL DROPOUT

The rst rebellion in Tagores life occurred before he

reached his teens. As a child he rebelled against the
system of schooling his generation suffered. He refused to go to school. He was successively transferred
to four different schools by the elders of his family,
and yet each time his non-cooperation defeated the
elders. I rebelled, young though I was. Of course,
this was an awful thing for a child to do the child of
a respectable family! .When I was thirteen I nished going to school. So long as I was forced to do so,
2 2

I felt the torture of going to school insupportable.1

Tagore said he had used the freedom thus gained
to educate himself. However, he soon found himself
to be a literary outlaw because he was without the
kind of education that gentlefolk in British India
underwent. It was his good fortune to escape the
prevalent colonial education system but he had to
pay a price for it. My ignorance combined with my
heresy turned me into a literary outlaw.I had neither the protective armour of mature age, nor that of
a respectable English education. Thus he suffered
castigation upon me from critics who were learned,
but in his seclusion of contempt he had a kind of
freedom. Tagore felt that as he persisted in producing one book of poems after another through his
youth, he obtained blame and praise in the proportion of land and water on our earth, and eventually
he gained a reputation in my country, but a strong
current of antagonism in a large section of my countrymen persisted. He felt that I have never had
complete acceptance from my own people.2
Tagores perception that he was isolated was enhanced when he emerged from his shelter of the
enchanted solitude of a poet into the public sphere.
He became a public intellectual in the Swadeshi
movement against the partition of Bengal from
1905. In this phase, for the rst time he made a
conscious effort to connect with public sentiment
against the vivisection of the Bengali people. However, very soon Tagores mind rebelled against the turn
towards individual violence in the form of militant

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THE HINDU ARCHIVES

JANUARY 13, 2012

nationalist action through political assassinations. In 1908,

his writings, especially a long tract entitled Ends and
Means3, abundantly signied a break with his compatriots
who supported militant activism. Another thing that worried him was a feature of the anti-partition movement in
Bengal: the enforcement of diktats of the caste-Hindu upper-class leaders on Bengalis peasantry, among whom
Muslims formed the majority. In the stance of the main
protagonist Nikhilesh, in the novel The Home and the
World4, one can get a glimpse of Tagores tendency to rebel
against the predominant cast of mind of the elite in Bengal
in the days of the anti-partition agitation.
When Mahatma Gandhi appeared on the national scene
with the mantra of non-cooperation, once again Tagore
found himself in the lonely path of a pursuit of an ideal that
he perceived as unattainable in terms of the strategy of the
Indian National Congress. From the beginning of the
1920s, Tagore found himself at odds with the line of action
chosen by the Indian National Congress. Tagores relationship with Mahatma Gandhi was cordial and although they

TA G OR E P R E S I D I N G OVE R the foundation-stonelaying ceremony of Mahajati Sadan in Calcutta in 1939

at the invitation of Subhas Chandra Bose. He hailed
Bose as "deshnayak" or leader of the nation in the
speech he gave on the occasion.

debated many issues they remained constant in their

friendship.5 However, the same cannot be said of many in
the ranks of the Gandhians. Tagores critique of the Gandhian approach in the 1920s was deeply resented by the
followers of Gandhi. Even in Bengal, where Tagore was on
the way to attaining the status of an icon, the Gandhians
were not prepared to tolerate any criticism of the Mahatma.
This, for example, was the reaction in a leading Bengali
newspaper to Tagores scepticism about the efcacy of the
charkha as a means of political and economic struggle. The
charkha movement has been revealed to the poets intelligence as a hoax. Only an extraordinary genius can say
such an extraordinary thing. The ludicrous opinions of the
poet may appeal to those who live in a dream world, but

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THE HINDU ARCHIVES

JANUARY 13, 2012

at the opening of
the Santiniketan Arts and Crafts Exhibition at
Congress House, Royapettah, Madras. At extreme
right is freedom ghter and Congress leader
S. Satyamurthi.

WI T H R A D H A B A I S U B B A RA Y A N

those who are grounded in the soil of this country will feel
that the poets useless labours are sad and pitiful.6 Scurrilous canards and spoofs lampooning the poet were published in Bengali newspapers. Tagores opponents were of the
view that the poets emotionalism was too much in evidence and that his criticism of Gandhi was devoid of
reasoning.7
Apart from specic issues such as Tagores doubts about
the charkha as the panacea, or his warning against the
boycott of educational institutions without creating a nationalist alternative to the colonial education system, there
was a deeper-seated cause of potential conict. This arose in
the context of Tagores intellectual evolution from his position as a leader of the anti-partition Swadeshi agitation in
Bengal from 1905 to 1908, towards a world outlook that can
be best described as a kind of humanist universalism. I nd
myself obliged to separate myself from my own people with
whom I have been working, and my soul cries out: The
2 4

complete man must not be sacriced to the patriotic man, or

even to the merely moral man. To me humanity is rich and
large and many-sided. As Tagore developed his own philosophy of humanist universalism, he felt compelled to
condemn the curtailment of humanityoften advocated in
our country under the name of patriotism.8 Although Mahatma Gandhi shared that philosophy of universalism, to
the large majority of people in the nationalist ranks Tagores
stance was no more than a pose and a cover for an unpatriotic ambiguity. Tagores differences with the nationalist enthusiasts in the Congress became obvious, even though his
reputation as a litterateur kept growing.
Tagores break with the section of nationalists who were
called biplabi, or revolutionary, in Bengal was even sharper.
From his political essays in 1908, questioning the strategy of
the biplabi leadership, to the novel published in 1934, Four
Chapters (Char Adhayay), Tagore consistently expressed
on the one hand his deep admiration for the militant nationalists courage of conviction and, on the other, his criticism of the path of individual violence chosen by them. The
novel is remarkable for its ruthlessness in thinking through
judgments about the ethics and strategic possibilities of
political violence and the novel is, at the same time,
tenderly sensitive to human values. The revolutionary na-

F R O N T L I N E

Guru at his ashram in

Sivagiri near Thiruvananthapuram, in November
1922. "I have never come across one who is
spiritually greater than Swami Narayana Guru or a
person who is at par with him in spiritual
attainment," Tagore said after the meeting.

W I TH S R E E N AR A YA N A

VISVA-BHARATI ARCHIVES

tionalists were deeply shocked because Tagore had been

and remained in the forefront of the movement for the
release of political prisoners, mostly biplabis, who were
imprisoned without trial. Many of the militant activists
were his admirers. Nevertheless Tagore did not allow his
judgment to be clouded by the sentiment that prevailed in
Bengal, a sentiment that amounted to unthinking enthusiasm for militant action by secret societies without preparation for a wider popular base. This novel of 1934 was in a
sense Tagores last major engagement with the issues posed
by militant nationalism. The reaction was so adverse that
Tagore felt compelled to offer an explanation of his position in the editions after 1934.
Another schism Tagore recurrently refers to in his writings in the late 1920s and the 1930s is connected with his
role as an institution builder from 1901 when he founded his
school in Santiniketan until his death. He perceived an
unsympathetic attitude in Bengal towards his effort to innovate a new pattern of education. He found the response
from Bengal particularly disappointing in the crucially important early phase of his school at Santiniketan. Reecting
on his experience, he wrote in 1933: I received no help from
my own people; their opposition and animosity without
reason impeded this school, but I ignored that and carried
on my effort regardless.9 Seven years later, shortly before
his death, he spoke again in the same vein: I remember the
long and arduous path that led to this ashram. No one will
ever know the intolerably woeful history of that struggle
against unrelenting adversity.10 Unlike in other contexts
there is bitterness in these and many similar statements he
made about absence of support from his own people.
These bitter remarks are directed mainly against the Bengali middle classes. Apropos of that one also recalls his rudely
frank response to representatives of this class on a wellknown occasion. When they ocked to felicitate Tagore
soon after the award of the Nobel Prize was announced, he
chose that moment to recall the insult and discouragement
it has been my fate to receive from my countrymen. The
felicitations which came after recognition from abroad, he
said, were no more than a part of a momentary excitement
which might soon disappear because only a few in the
celebratory gathering truly appreciated Tagores writings.
Thus Tagore, on this and some other occasions, conspicuously distanced himself from the middle class, or the
bhadralok, although they constituted the head and front of
his audience as an author.
Tagores alienation from such people can be contrasted
with his perception that among the rural peasantry there
was a touch of humanity.11 Undeniably, Tagore was a
landlord in relation to the peasantry he was acquainted with
in the familys estates. He was acutely aware of that. He
writes to his son in 1930: The whole business of zamindari
makes me ashamed.I feel sad to think that from childhood
we have been raised as parasites.12 However, beyond the
bounds of the landlord-tenant relationship there were
many other spheres of Tagores activities that created a

THE HINDU ARCHIVES

JANUARY 13, 2012

at Villeneuve, Switzerland,
near the Geneva Lake. Tagore cut short a trip to Italy
in 1926 because he felt suffocated in the political
atmosphere there and spent some time with Rolland.

W I TH R OM A I N R OLLA N D

sympathetic bond. There is plenty of evidence that he invested a good part of his inexhaustible energy and meagre
nancial resources to address issues of importance to the
rural poor, for instance, the supply of potable water to the
village people, prevention of malaria which was rampant in
his villages which are in present-day Bangladesh, the absence of schools for children in rural areas, or the need for
cooperative credit system for farmers (a major part of the
Nobel Prize money was put by Tagore in a cooperative bank
for this purpose; it was from the worldly point of view a bad
decision, for the capital melted way without a trace). It
seems unlikely that Tagore was merely attitudinising when

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JANUARY 13, 2012

with his wife, Mrinalini. She was

barely 11 when they were married, and he around 22.
It was with her support that he founded his school in
1901, and she handed over all her jewellery to raise
funds for it. She died in 1902 when she was just
under 30, from a mysterious illness that her elder
son, Rathindranath, later speculated might have been
appendicitis. Tagore nursed her himself, refusing to
hire help, and was at her bedside day and night. She
left behind ve young children, three of whom were
to predecease Tagore.

A YO UN G T A G O R E

2 6

he asserted that he felt in his bones a bond with the peasantry. Moreover, that style of attitudinising was not yet
fashionable in those times.
In the 1930s, the last decade of Tagores life, once again
he felt besieged by apprehensions of being isolated and
attacked because he had launched his debut as a painter
towards the end of his life. Tagore was particularly despondent about the reception of his paintings among his
own people. I have no wish to acquaint the people of my
province with my work as an artist.Alive or dead, I have no
desire to make this creation of mine public here. My pictures will not be allowed to commit the same offence as my
other creations.13 Thus Tagore conded to a correspondent
in Bengal his apprehensions that his artistic work would be
rejected by his people. Indeed, he rst exhibited his paintings in Calcutta towards the end of his life, long after
numerous exhibitions in Europe and North America. In
part this was due to his general conviction that India was
not ready for styles of painting other than what was popular
and usually known as Oriental art. He surmised that
artists were browbeaten to toe the line laid down by persons
who were not creative and he urged artists to vehemently
deny their obligation carefully to produce something that
can be labelled as Indian art.14 His was a strident call for
rebellion against stereotyped art labelled as Oriental art,
and many years later Mulk Raj Anand used this essay by
Tagore as an agenda statement of modern art in India.
Perhaps Tagores last act of rebellion was against the
tradition of the European Enlightenment, which he looked
up to for inspiration throughout his life. This was when he
famously uttered, a few weeks before his death, his judgment on the crisis of civilisation as he perceived it in 1941. In
the beginning of his intellectual life he had looked upon
European civilisation as the pace-setter in bringing about a
change in the mindset of the world with its message of
rationality and science, democratic institutions, an agenda
of abolishing slavery, and other analogous progressive values. Looking at the world in the throes of the Second World
War as a result of the imperialist aggrandisement of the
European powers, Tagore forcefully expressed his disillusionment. As I look around I see the crumbling ruins of a
vast civilisation strewn like a vast heap of futility. And yet I
shall not commit the grievous sin of losing faith in Man.15
Needless to say, in the heat and stress of the World War,
Tagores last judgment did not please the West.
It is interesting to reect upon these and many other
instances of Tagores tendency of mind to court unpopularity to espouse a cause that mattered to him. History
knows of many other great minds, in advance of their times,
striving against the prevailing current. The unusual poignancy in Tagores life was his loneliness. He often stood
alone in the face of adversity. Since he rarely spoke of it
except in private letters to a few condants, this aspect of his
life has received little attention in numerous biographies
focussing on his external life. In his inner life the poet sang
to himself ekla chalo re, walk alone, walk alone.16

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PAINTINGS: THE HINDU ARCHIVES

JANUARY 13, 2012

Tagore was well into his sixties when he took up painting and drawing
as a serious pursuit. Below, at left, is a self-portrait and, at right, the artist at work.

THE HINDU ARCHIVES

PA I N T I N G S B Y T A GO RE.

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JANUARY 13, 2012

Pratima Devi, and

C.F. Andrews (right) at Travancore in 1922. Andrews gave up his teaching job
at St. Stephens College, Delhi, in 1914 and remained a dedicated partner in all
Tagores projects until his death in 1940.

W I T H RA T H I N D RA N A T H , D A U G HTE R - I N - LAW

END NOTES

13. Tagore, letter to Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, December 20, 1929.

1. Autobiographical, in Talks in China, 1925. In writing this essay I have

drawn upon citations in the following forthcoming book: Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Rabindranath Tagore: An Interpretation (Viking/Penguin, 2011).
2. Talks in China, 1925.
3. Path O Patheya (Ends and Means), 1908.
4. Ghare Baire (The Home and the World) 1916.
5. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, ed., The Mahatma and the Poet: Letters and
Debates between Gandhi and Tagore (New Delhi, 2009).
6. Ananda Bazar Patrika, August 19, 1929.
7. e.g. Editorial in Bombay Chronicle, September 9, 1925.
8. Tagore, letter to C.F. Andrews, January 14, 1921.
9. Tagore, Visva-Bharati, in Rabindra Rachanavali, Vol. IV, page 280.
10. Tagore, Visva-Bharati, in Rabindra Rachanavali, Vol. IV, page 290.
11. Tagore, letter to C.F. Andrews, July 23, 1915.
12. Tagore, letter to Rathindranath Tagore, October 31, 1930.

14. Meaning of Art, Lecture at Dhaka University, February 1926, in S.K.

Das, ed., English Works of Rabindranath Tagore (Sahitya Akademi), Vol. III,
page 586.

2 8

15. Crisis in Civilization, 1941, page 21.

16. Jodi tor dak sune keu na ashe tabe ekla chalo re, translation by Tagore,
unpublished until his death, If they answer not thy call, walk alone, in
Krishna Kripalani ed., Tagores Poems, 1942.

Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, formerly Vice-Chancellor,

Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, and
Professor of History, Jawaharlal Nehru University,
is the author of Talking Back: The Idea of Civilization
in the Indian Nationalist Discourse (Oxford
University Press); Vande-Mataram: The Biography
of a Song (Penguin).

F R O N T L I N E

Cover Story

JANUARY 13, 2012

Unique landlord
The heart of the country, Tagore repeatedly said, lay in its villages and no real
progress could be achieved without alleviating rural poverty. B Y S A R B A R I S I N H A
N attempting to write on Rabindranath Tagore
as a landlord, it is hard to resist the temptation
to start with that often-told story, a favourite of
all biographers of the poet the day in 1891
when the newly anointed zamindar attended
his rst Punyah, the rent collection ceremony, at
Shilaidaha in undivided Nadia district, now a part of
Kustia district in Bangladesh. Most descriptions are
cinematic: the tall, handsome, young man, dressed
in dhoti, kurta and shawl, arriving for the function
amid ululation, the blowing of conch shells, ceremonial gunshots, and music. The programme includes a
Brahmo prayer service and a Hindu worship, at the
end of which the priest smears sandalwood paste on
the landlords forehead and receives his priestly dues
of new clothes, curd, sh and money. And then
begins the rent collection.
That is the script, except that Rabindranath
throws it out of the window. He declares that the
Punyah cannot start unless the seating arrangement
is changed.
The traditional arrangement, in place since the
days of the poets grandfather Prince Dwarkanath
Tagore, marked out seating areas on the basis of
caste and religion. The ryots sat on the oor, Hindus
on a part of the mat covered with a white sheet, with a
separate space for Brahmins, while Muslims sat on
the bare mat. There were seats for the estate managers and other employees, all demarcated according
to rank. Babumashai, the landlord, sat on a richly
upholstered throne-like chair.

F R O N T L I N E

At Tagores behest, the ryots, both Hindus and

Muslims, enthusiastically removed all the chairs and
the white sheets, and everyone in the room sat on the
oor, clustered around the young landlord. The estate manager and other senior employees, mostly
Hindus, walked out and threatened to resign unless
the old arrangement was restored, but Tagore was
unmoved. In the end, he persuaded them not to
resign and to join the function.
The seating arrangement for rent collection was
not the only thing that Tagore changed about the
zamindari he inherited. It is important to remember this story because it is symbolic of much of the
work that he did during the long years he spent
supervising the family estate. But rst, a word about
where this zamindari was located.
Dwarkanath and his father had invested heavily
in land in eastern Bengal (now in Bangladesh) and
Orissa. In eastern Bengal, the Tagores were the rentcollecting landlords under the Permanent Settlement in large chunks of land in Birahimpur Pargana
of Kustia, with the rent ofce in Shilaidaha; Sajadpur Pargana in Pabna district, with the rent ofce at
Sajadpur; Kaligram Pargana in Rajshahi district,
with the rent ofce at Patisar. They also owned land
in Hooghly, Jessore (now in Bangladesh) and Rangpur (also in Bangladesh) districts, and in Cuttack
district in Orissa. Under Debendranath Tagores last
will made in 1899, the property in Orissa went to his
son Hemendranath, while three other brothers,
Dwijendranath, Satyendranath and Rabindranath,
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JANUARY 13, 2012

together got the property in Birahimpur and Kaligram. The

Sajadpur property in Pabna had gone to the descendants of
Debendranaths brother Girindranath.
Rabindranath was under 30 and already an established
poet when he rst found himself in charge of this jointly
held family estate. He was directly engaged in managing it
from 1890 to 1922, though his son Rathindranath shouldered much of the responsibility from 1910 onwards. The
poet was initially also responsible for the property in Sajadpur and Cuttack, but these two estates subsequently went
out of his supervision. In the end, after Satyendranaths son,
Surendranath, chose Birahimpur, Rabindranath was responsible only for Patisar, the supervision of which was
eventually taken over entirely by Rathindranath.
Tagores creative ow was uninterrupted through this
phase of his life; indeed, this was the period when he came
into his own as a poet and story-teller. The countryside, with
its joys and sorrows and its own inimitable conversations
and songs, inspired poems and lyrics and many of his
unforgettable short stories. The world now remembers him
for the way he changed Bengali literature forever. But in this
age of strife and ever-conicting interests, it is no less
important to remember what he did as a landlord.
An indication of what he intended to do came on that
very rst day, when he radicalised the seating for the rent
collection. He declared, his biographers (see Jamidar Rabindranath by Amitava Choudhury) record, that it was his
mission as a landlord to save the Sheikhs from the Sahas.
Pramatha Choudhury, who was married to Rabindranaths
niece Indira and worked on the Tagore estate for many
years, has also written that one of the major duties for those
entrusted with the running of the property was to save the
Sheikhs from the Sahas (Ryoter Katha, or Story of the
Ryots). Amitava Choudhury has explained that Rabindra-

or Kuthibari, at
Shilaidaha, built in 1892. The ground oor was used
as the revenue ofce. This was where Tagore took
direct charge of his childrens education, trying out
ideas that he would later put to use at his school. The
house is a protected building now in Bangladesh.

THE T A G O R E R E S I D EN C E,

3 0

nath did not refer to a particular caste or racial group as

Sahas or Sheikhs. Most of the wealthy and powerful
moneylenders in his zamindari were Sahas, a Hindu caste of
the lower middle order, but most of the poorest peasants
were Muslims. What Rabindranath meant, says Choudhury, was that his priority as landlord was to save the
poorest peasants from sinking into an endless cycle of debt
that made a certain section rich.
Yet, this statement confronts us with a reality that culminated in the 1947 partition of Bengal. As historians have
pointed out, the land relations of this province were such
that what was in essence a conict of classes and economic

F R O N T L I N E

VISVA-BHARATI ARCHIVES

JANUARY 13, 2012

L U NC H A T T H E Kuthibari at Shilaidaha with family

members. Tagores wife and children moved to
Shilaidaha in 1899, and the family lived there
until Tagore moved to Santiniketan to found his
school in 1901.

interests became a conict between cultures and communities, between Muslim peasants and Hindu landlords/moneylenders. Tagores own nancial interests lay with the
landowning class, yet he was one of the rst to uninchingly
point to this truth and sound a warning that history has
justied.

Tagore was also one of the rst to point to the coinciding

of interests of Muslims and the Scheduled Castes in rural
Bengal. This was another prediction that came all too true
in the years immediately preceding Partition, when S.C.
peasants in eastern Bengal overwhelmingly supported the
Muslim League (only to be horribly betrayed, of course, by
the new regime in East Pakistan).
Tagores thoughts on this separation of interests began
to crystallise even during the heady days of 1905 when he
briey plunged into the movement against the rst partition of Bengal and wrote for it some of his most memorable
songs. The songs survive in popular memory, but the poets

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JANUARY 13, 2012

WI T H K A L I M O H A N GH O S H , a swadeshi activist
whom Tagore drafted into his rural reconstruction
mission in 1908. Ghosh also taught at Santiniketan
and from 1922 was intimately involved with the
building up of Sriniketan, Tagores project for
imparting vocational training in various crafts to help
rural reconstruction. Ghosh died in 1940.

doubts and anxieties lie buried in his largely ignored essays,

letters and that wonderful and now almost forgotten novel,
Ghare Baire (Home and Beyond, written in 1916). Yet these
prescient doubts, which explain his eventual withdrawal
from that movement and what he himself described as his
ight to Santiniketan, need to be rescued from the cloistered world of scholarship.
In a 1907 article titled Byadhi O Pratikar (The disease
and its remedy), Tagore wrote about a meeting organised in
Calcutta in October 1905, where the nationalist leader Bipinchandra Pal was among the speakers. The audience
comprised mostly Muslims. Roughly translated, this is what
he wrote: The benets of the Hindu and Muslim communities coming together were being explained to the Muslim
audience. I could not at that time resist saying that this
was not the occasion to talk about benets and interests. It
might make good nancial sense for two brothers to live
under the same roof, but that should not be the chief reason
3 2

for their staying together. The most important thing is that

we share the same land, and we are human beings. If we
cannot live with each other, then that is shameful and
immoral. We are both children of the same land, and if that
divinely ordained tie does not impel us to not only pursue
our mutual interests jointly but also be prepared to face all
adversities together, then shame on our humanity. It is not
our mutual interests that should bind us, but love and the
ideal of seless service. Only if we can do this will we be able
to use all opportunities for progress and face all adversities
successfully.
Indeed, few Bengali bhadralok intellectuals in the rst
decade of the 20th century were more aware than Tagore of
the way mutual interests did not, in fact, bind the two
communities. A large section of Bengali Muslims welcomed
the partition of the province and were persuaded by the
colonial administrations promise of more efcient administration, improved roads and connectivity, more schools
and better health care and greater opportunities that would
follow.
Some historians in recent years have shown how the
partition did indeed result in improved literacy rates and
other indices of progress among Bengali Muslims in eastern
Bengal (Jahirul Hassan, Banglai Mussalmaner Aatsho
Bachhar, or Muslims in Bengal Over Eight Hundred
Years). As a landlord deeply involved in the welfare of the

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JANUARY 13, 2012

poor in rural Bengal, Tagore could not help being aware of

this.
Ghare Baire, written some 10 years after the partition of
Bengal, reects this conict of interest. It is now an accepted
generalisation that Nikhilesh is the kind of landlord that
Tagore himself was. Nikhilesh cannot bring himself to support the swadeshi movement against the partition of the
province because he knows that his Muslim ryots do not
stand to gain anything from that movement led by the
Hindu landed gentry and intellectuals. The novel also eetingly touches upon the greater acceptance that puritan
Muslim maulvis were beginning to enjoy in the villages of
eastern Bengal by this time.
Amid the heady days of the movement, before and after
1905, Tagore repeatedly made known his objection to the
politics of boycott, especially in relation to education and
universities. His observations did not cut much ice in a
political environment dominated by Surendranath Banerjea. Tagore did not also approve of the way swadeshi gangs
led by zealous Hindu youth looted shops and terrorised the
countryside to enforce their political agenda of boycotting
British-made goods (see Desh-heet, or For the good of
the country, an essay he wrote in 1908). Indeed, Tagore was
clearly able to see the movement as one motivated by the
nancial interests of the Hindu landowning class and was
justiably alarmed by the prospect of the communal animosities it could inspire. Ghare Baire touches upon the
problem of Hindu communalism provoking a Muslim
response.
In Byadhi O Pratikar he had written: That Muslims
can be used against Hindus is worth a thought. Who might
use them is not so important. The devil cannot gain an entry
unless the door is kept open for it. It is better to be concerned more about the open door than about the devil.
For a community that builds its religious practices on a
culture of hate, for people who believe themselves to be
damned if they so much as drink water offered by a neighbour, who preserve their caste purity by humiliating others,
the fate of being humbled in turn is inescapable. We [Hindus] have prepared the way for our own damnation, created
hurdles that prevent progress, and once we have fathomed
this truth beyond a shadow of doubt, we must resolve to save
ourselves and our country. Save from whom? From the
consequences of our own sins. Is it only by the strength of
their own might that the British dominate the country so
completely today? It is our own weaknesses that provide
them their strength (a rough translation).
Taunts about the bourgeois poet notwithstanding, few
of the intellectuals of Tagores time were as familiar with the
heart of the country as he was, and this familiarity came
from his years as a landlord, years during which he came
in intimate contact with the countryside, spent long hours
with farmers discussing seeds, fertilizers and insecticides,
installed a sugarcane-processing mill, experimented with
the cultivation of potatoes, tomatoes, corn and silkworms,
introduced tractors in a land tilled only by ploughshare

until then, tried out the latest ndings of agricultural science, fought civil suits to protect the boundaries of the
property, ran a rural bank for 20 years that made available
loans to peasant entrepreneurs at reasonable rates, and did
his best to encourage cottage industries to alleviate poverty
in the countryside.
Researchers nd it hard to reconstruct those years in
detail because there are so few records. Records of the
Tagore estate did not survive the 1947 Partition, and there is
very little original material available, says Amitava Choudhury in his book. Yet, Tagores biographers have a fair idea
of those years from Tagores own letters, essays and reminiscences by people associated with his work, including a
book of memories by his son Rathindranath (Pitrismriti or
Memories of My Father).
THE MANDAL SYSTEM

The most revolutionary of all Tagores initiatives, says Amitava Choudhury, was the mandal system he introduced in
1908. It was bound to fail, and so it did in the long run,
because it sought to undermine too many vested interests.
The Permanent Settlement had over the years built up a
network of exploitation in rural Bengal, comprising landlords, wealthy farmers, moneylenders and managers and
accountants working for the landlords, and this network
had a stake in the perpetuation of rural poverty. The mandal system sought to carve out an independent economic
and social space for poor, rent-paying peasants that would
allow them, with constructive help from the landlord, to
take charge of their lives in a meaningful way.
The Birahimpur Pargana was divided into ve mandals,
while the Kaligram Pargana was divided into three. Each
mandal had an adhyaksh, or manager, who was entrusted
with the task of engaging the people of the mandal to repair
roads, ensure continuous supply of potable water, resolve
disputes without resorting to litigation, establish schools,
clear out jungles, and set up a granary as a buffer for
famines. Each mandal had a committee of four members,
two Hindus and two Muslims, apart from the manager.
Half of the funds for these works were raised from the
people, the other half was provided by the estate. Each
mandal made its own budget and kept track of how much
money was being spent.

Taunts about the bourgeois

poet notwithstanding,
few of the intellectuals of
Tagores time were as
familiar with the heart of
the country as he was.

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JANUARY 13, 2012

Madhurilata, born in 1886, and eldest son, Rathindranath, born in 1888. Madhurilata
died of tuberculosis when only 31. Rathindranath was among the rst ve boys at Tagores school. He went on to
teach genetics at Visva-Bharati and was its rst Vice-Chancellor when it became a Central university in 1951.

WI T H E L D E S T D A U GH T ER,

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JANUARY 13, 2012

It was the cooperative principle that led him to found a

rural bank in Patisar in 1905 with money borrowed from
friends. The Nobel Prize money was sunk in this bank. The
objective was to free peasants from the clutches of moneylenders, without which, Tagore realised, they would never
have the means to invest in cottage industries or in better
seeds and fertilizers. Rathindranath has said in his memoirs
that the bank was so successful in its initial years that
moneylenders in Patisar wound up their business and left in
search of greener pastures. The bank failed in 1925, sinking
the ageing poet in debt.
Tagore also tried to protect the poor from the cost of
litigation. Peasants in the Tagore estate did not take their
disputes to courts of law. The residents of every village chose
a gram pradhan, who formed a committee of ve men, or
pancha pradhan. All disputes were referred to the pancha
pradhan, while nal appeals were made to the poet himself.
Amitava Choudhury says the system continued in Kaligram
even after Tagores death and ended only with Partition.

VISVA-BHARATI ARCHIVES

The effect was spectacular in Patisar, which largely

welcomed the initiative. Shilaidaha, immortalised in Tagores work, did not take it too well. (Shilaidaha, incidentally, was the place where the poet set up home in 1899 with his
wife and young children, living sometimes at the famous
kuthibari, now a protected building in Bangladesh, sometimes on his boat on the Padma, giving rise to the lasting,
and misleading, image of the rich poet writing his poems
and stories in innite leisure while sailing on the river.) But
in Patisar, the system soon resulted in new roads, a free
dispensary, schools and madrasas, and the ourishing of
cottage industry initiatives.
In both Shilaidaha and Patisar, however, estate managers and other senior employees, mostly Hindus, were unhappy with the system. So were large landholders and
moneylenders, the section that thrived on the endless cycle
of poverty and debt. The peasants who stood to gain from
his initiatives were also sometimes distrustful and wary,
which meant that Tagore had to ght a battle for hearts
before he could achieve anything. A large section of the
Muslim peasants in the Tagore estate, especially in Patisar,
were cooperative because they stood to gain the most.
Tagore, however, did have a few dedicated workers who
tried to give concrete shape to his vision of a prosperous
countryside. The two men most often mentioned by his
biographers were Kalimohan Ghosh in Shilaidaha and Atul
Sen in Kaligram. The obstacles and hostilities they encountered were formidable, but they received constant encouragement from Tagore, who kept himself abreast of all
developments in his estate and went through the books and
accounts regularly. His letters to them give an idea of what
he expected of them. In a letter to Atul Sen, quoted by
Amitava Choudhury, he said: Put all your heart and mind
into the effort to win over peoples hearts, you will see all
hurdles will disappear. It is not of course possible to have
everyone on your side when you are trying to do your duty,
but the people should be made to understand that you
completely deserve their respect, that all your efforts are
dedicated to their service. If you can achieve this, then all
obstacles are bound to recede.
Tagore had a keen interest in cooperative farming. He
realised that the hopelessly fragmented landholdings did
not provide the best conditions for modern methods of
farming and the creation of wealth. He tried to talk his
peasants into setting up a cooperative model of farming, but
the initiative did not make much headway. Suspicions
about such a model were too strong. What he saw in Soviet
Russia in 1930 revived his old regrets about the situation:
It had been my objective to make the peasant strong
through his own initiative. Two things keep playing on my
mind all the time the land does not rightfully belong to the
landlord, it is the peasants. Secondly, if landholdings cannot be brought together under cooperative farming, there
can be no progress in agriculture. Trying to farm fragmented holdings with the ancient ploughshare is like pouring
water into a leaky pot. (Letters from Russia)

F R O N T L I N E

TE ACHI N G AT S AN TI N I KE TA N . In 1901, when

Tagore founded the school, his mind was immersed
in the so-called glory of ancient India, with its
varnashram and its Upanishadic monotheism. His
poetry of this period, notably Naibedya (1901),
reects this. The school was started on the ideal of
the ancient Indian "tapovan" and was known as
"Brahmacharyashram". Over the years, as Tagore
increasingly embraced internationalism and a
humanist universalism, the vision of the school also
changed. In 1916, he wrote to Rathindranath from
Chicago that Santiniketan must become Indias link
with the world. In the 1920s, when he founded VisvaBharati and travelled widely with the message of
global cooperation in the realm of thought, he
stressed that schools in India should be the meeting
ground of the East and the West.
3 5

THE HINDU ARCHIVES

JANUARY 13, 2012

B R I K S H A R O PA N , O R T REE- P LA N T I N G ceremony,
at a village near Santiniketan in 1928. Three
generations of the Tagores had turned green the arid
landscape around Santiniketan through a project of
afforestation, resulting in the famous mango grove
and the sal wood. In 1928, Rabindranath turned the
tree-planting ceremony into a festival to be observed
every year. He described the event in a letter to his
daughter-in-law, telling her that he had used one of
her potted plants for the ceremony.

Schools, hospitals, roads, drinking water, cottage industries, scientic methods of farming, a rural bank for loans at
reasonable rates no aspect of rural development was
absent in the vision of this unique zamindar. No work was
too mundane for him, there was nothing that he could not
set his mind to. He scrutinised the books of accounts with
innite care and personally supervised all the civil suits that
his estate had to ght, becoming in the process an expert in
the ner points of law. Unlike the absentee landlord described by Amitav Ghosh in Sea of Poppies, the zamindari
was not for him an avenue to create wealth to be spent on
luxuries in the city, but an opportunity for service. In his
letters and essays, Tagore repeatedly said that the heart of
the country lay in its villages and that no real progress could
3 6

be possible without the development of agriculture and

alleviation of poverty in the countryside.
In a speech towards the end of his life, in 1938, he said:
My duties once drew me into close intimacy with rural
Bengal. I witnessed the lack of drinking water in villages, I
observed the havoc that disease and hunger played on
human bodies. Time and again, I came across proof of the
way the lack of education and mental stagnation led to
endless exploitation and oppression. The city-bred, English-educated sections who were trying to steer the ship of
national progress did not spare a thought on the way the
cumulative helplessness of the people in villages was one
day bound to drown that ship (rough translation).
And to the landlords he said at the Pabna Provincial
Conference in 1907: This is what I am saying to the landlords: if you do not empower the unfortunate ryots and
allow them to be independent and able to save themselves
from your own clutches and those of others, no laws, however good, and no government, however friendly, will be able
to save them. The tongues of the greedy start watering the
moment they see these people. If the majority of the people
are forever exposed to the machinations of landlords, moneylenders, policemen and court ofcials, how do you expect
them to take charge of their own destinies?
A hundred years later, those words remain relevant.

F R O N T L I N E

Cover Story

JANUARY 13, 2012

Man of science
Tagore: I am not a scientist, but from childhood my strong desire to enjoy the
rasa of science knew no bounds. B Y P A R T H A G H O S E
ABINDRANATH TAGORE was a quintessential poet-philosopher with a deeply rational and enquiring mind who
strove for freedom (mukti) from every
possible limitation of the human mind.
He broke away from a life of contemplation of the
other-worldly philosophy of the Upanishads to
which he was initiated in childhood by his father,
Maharshi Debendranath, into the enchanting real
world of forms, colours, sounds and movements
revealed by his senses. He declared in Gitanjali (73):
Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel
the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of
delight.
And again (96):
When I go from hence let this be my parting
word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable.
Rabindranaths song akash bhara soorjo tara
expresses a sense of deep wonder in the universe.
All creative geniuses have this sense of insatiable
wonder at the mysteries of the universe. Charles
Darwin wrote in The Origin of Species:
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its
several powers, having been originally breathed into
a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet
has gone cycling on according to the xed law of
gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms
most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and
are being, evolved.
Einstein admitted (in Ideas and Opinions):
A knowledge of the existence of something we

F R O N T L I N E

cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest

reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in
their most primitive forms are accessible to our
minds it is this knowledge and this emotion that
constitutes true religiosity; in this sense, and this
alone, I am a deeply religious man.
In the preface to his only book on science, Visva
Parichay, dedicated to the scientist Satyendranath
Bose, Rabindranath wrote about his fascination for
science from his childhood how his teacher Sitanath Datta used to thrill him with simple demonstrations like making the convection currents in a glass
of water visible with the help of sawdust. The differences between layers of a continuous mass of water
made obvious by the movements of the sawdust lled
him with a sense of wonder that never left him.
According to him, this was the rst time he realised
that things that we thoughtlessly take for granted as
natural and simple are, in fact, not so, and this set
him wondering.
The next wonder came when he went with his
father to the hills of Dalhousie in the Himalayas. As
the sky became dark in the evenings and the stars
came out in their splendour and appeared to hang
low, Maharshi Debendranath would point out to
him the constellations and the planets and tell him
about their distances from the sun, their periods of
revolution round the sun and many other properties.
Rabindranath found this so fascinating that he began to write down what he heard from his father.
Thus, his rst long essay in serial form was on sci3 7

THE HINDU ARCHIVES

JANUARY 13, 2012

in Berlin in 1930. The

scientist asked: "Do you believe in the Divine as
isolated from the world?" Poet: "Not isolated. The
innite personality of Man comprehends the
Universe.... [T]he truth of the Universe is human
truth." The scientist said: "Then I am more
religious than you are."

WI T H A L B E R T E I N S T EI N

ence. When he grew older and could read English, he

started reading every book on astronomy that he could lay
his hands on. Sometimes the mathematics made it difcult
for him to understand what he was reading, but he laboured
through them and tried to absorb their gist. Sir Robert
Boyles book he liked the most. Then he started reading
Aldous Huxleys essays on biology. He writes in the preface
to Visva Parichay (1937):
The universe has hidden its micro-self, reduced its
macro-self or shelved it out of sight behind the curtain. It
has dressed itself up and revealed itself to us in a form that
man can perceive within the structure of his simple power.
But man is anything but simple. Man is the only creature
3 8

that has suspected its own simple perception, opposed it and

has been delighted to defeat it. To transcend the limits of
simple perception man has brought near what was distant,
made the invisible visible, and has given expression to what
is hard to understand. He is ever trying to probe into the
unmanifest world that lies behind the manifest world in
order to unravel the fundamental mysteries of the
universe.
It is needless to say that I am not a scientist, but from
childhood my strong desire to enjoy the rasa of science
knew no bounds. My mind was exercised only with astronomy and life science. That cannot be called proper
knowledge, in other words, it does not have the sound
foundation of scholarship. But constant reading created a
natural scientic temper in my mind. My lack of respect for
the stupidity of blind faith has, I hope, saved me from the
extravagance of cleverness to a large measure. Nevertheless,
I have never felt that it hurt my poetry or imagination in any
way.
Today, at the end of my life, my mind is overwhelmed
with the new theory of nature scientic mayavada. What I

F R O N T L I N E

JANUARY 13, 2012

read earlier I did not understand fully, but I kept on reading.

Today also it is impossible for me to understand everything
of what I read, as it is for many specialist pundits too
(translation by author; emphasis added).

His lifelong and intimate friendship with Acharya Jagadish

Chandra Bose must have also helped him no end to develop
a reverence for science. The Acharyas life was devoted to
the search for reason in the workings of nature, for a unity in
the diversity of nature, a synergism between spiritualism
and reason. This search did not remain conned to philosophical speculation alone but led him to invent instruments of unprecedented precision and sensitivity for
collecting direct evidence from nature. This must have
greatly inuenced Rabindranath who also searched for a
synergism between spiritualism and reason in the Indian
tradition. Not only did Rabindranath help his friend with
money to carry on his pathbreaking experiments in England, he also wrote extensively about them and made them
known to the public at large in Bengal.
He also had extensive conversations with other leading
scientists of his time, such as Albert Einstein, on the nature
of reality and causality in Germany in 1930, and with
Werner Heisenberg, the discoverer of the famous Uncertainty Principle of quantum physics, who came to Calcutta
in 1928 to meet him. Fritjof Capra has this to say about what
transpired between Heisenberg and Rabindranath (Uncommon Wisdom, 1989):
In 1929 [1928] Heisenberg spent some time in India as
the guest of the celebrated Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, with whom he had long conversations about science
and Indian philosophy. This introduction to Indian thought
brought Heisenberg great comfort, he told me. He began to
see that the recognition of relativity, incommensurability,
interconnectedness and impermanence as fundamental aspects of physical reality, which had been so difcult for
himself and his fellow physicists, was the very basis of
Indian spiritual traditions. After these conversations with
Tagore, he said, some of the ideas that had seemed so crazy
suddenly made much more sense. That was a great help for
me. (parenthesis added; the year quoted by D.M. Bose was
1928.)
This understanding of science and empathy with science helped him develop his own interpretation of the
Upanishadic philosophy of Nature. It engrossed his mind
when he delivered the Hibbert lectures in Oxford in 1930.
These lectures were later published as the Religion of Man
(1931) in which he writes, The idea of the humanity of our
God, or the divinity of Man the Eternal, is the main subject
of this book.
Although he was critical of technology dominating over
man in some of his plays (Muktadhara, Raktakarabi), he
readily embraced its benecial effects. In Sriniketan, where
the emphasis was on rural reconstruction, he introduced
many technologies like weaving, carpentry, leather work

VISVA-BHARATI ARCHIVES

REVERENCE FOR SCIENCE

F R O N T L I N E

TA G OR E A N D THE scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose

were close friends. During Tagores years as a
landlord at Shilaidaha, Bose visited him at his
residence every weekend and demanded a new
story. Tagore wrote feverishly during the week to get
a story ready for his weekend friend, his son
Rathindranath has written in his memoirs.
3 9

Cover Story

THE HINDU ARCHIVES

JANUARY 13, 2012

TAG O R E S L A S T D A Y S were darkened by the

shadow of the Second World War. His faith in the
European Enlightenment seemed shaken in "Crisis
of Civilisation", the essay he wrote a few weeks
before his death in August 1941. Yet, he did not lose
faith in humanity and declared that it would be a sin
to do so. Here, on a train in 1940.

and so on. In Personality (1917) he wrote: Science is at the

beginning of the invasion of the material world and there
goes on a furious scramble for plunder. Often things look
hideously materialistic, and shamelessly belie mans own
nature. But the day will come when some of the great
powers of nature will be at the beck and call of every
individual, and at least the prime necessaries of life will be
supplied to all with very little care and cost. To live will be as
easy to man as to breathe, and his spirit will be free to create
his own world.
To Rabindranath scientic truths were not mere abstractions and formulas but concrete living truths that inspired him to write great poems and compose wonderful
songs. He assimilated and internalised the scientic spirit
and weaved it into the very fabric of his philosophy and his
artistic creations. So complete was the fusion that the songs
and poems appear to stand by themselves as great artistic
creations far removed from the world of science.
Let me end with a poem that he wrote on creation on
February 3, 1941, just a few months before his death.
4 0

This gigantic creation

Is a reworks display of
Suns and stars across the skies
On a cosmic time scale.
I too have come from the eternal
and the imperceptible
Like a spark in a tiny remote corner
of space and time.
Today as I enter the nal Act of
departure,
The ame weakens,
The shadows reveal the illusory
character of the play,
And the costumes of grief and hap
piness begin to slacken.
I see the colourful costumes
Left over by hundreds of actors and
actresses across the ages
Outside the arena of the theatre.
I look up only to nd
Beyond the backdrop of hundreds
of extinguished stars
Nataraj, silent and lonely.
(The authors translation of Birat srishtir kshetre atash
bajir khela akashe akashe, Arogya.)

Professor Partha Ghose is Senior Scientist Platinum

Jubilee Fellow, National Academy of Sciences, India.

F R O N T L I N E

JANUARY 13, 2012

The States/West Bengal

A P A TI E N T B E I N G

rescued from the

AMRI Hospitals in
Kolkata when a
re broke out
there.

PTI

Fiery trap
Criminal negligence and agrant violation of re safety norms cause more than
90 deaths in a private hospital in West Bengal. B Y S U H R I D S A N K A R C H A T T O P A D H Y A Y

According to the Fire Department,

combustible materials kept in the
basement, which was used to house
a pharmacy and a storeroom, added
to the toxicity of the smoke.
F R O N T L I N E

DEATH came stealing in the wee hours of December 9 to AMRI Hospitals, Dhakuria, a prestigious private hospital in south Kolkata, and claimed
more than 90 lives in a major re disaster. There
were 164 patients in the annexe building of the hospital when a re broke out in its upper basement. The
toxic smoke rose rapidly up the six-storeyed building. As the windows of the centrally air-conditioned
building were sealed, there was no exit for the smoke
to escape. This left the inmates completely helpless.
4 1

JANUARY 13, 2012

Local youth, alerted by the cries and

desperate signals from patients, tried
to help, but they were turned away by
hospital staff who claimed that the situation was under control. It was a disaster that was precipitated by the
negligence and callousness of the hospital authorities.
The re apparently broke out a little before 3-00 a.m., but the Fire Department was alerted only at 4-10 a.m.,
and that, too, by a relative of one of
those trapped in the building. According to police sources, hospital staff
wasted more than 90 precious minutes
by trying to douse the re on their own.
By then thick smoke had spread, killing trapped invalids and convalescents.
The staff, it appears, were reluctant
to call the re brigade immediately because in an earlier instance an employee of the hospital had been suspended
for calling the re brigade without authorisation from the higher authorities
when a minor re broke out in the
hospital precincts. Police sources said
that the higher authorities of the hospital had been alerted by the staff long
before the re services were called.
There was complete violation of
all re safety norms in the building,
said D.P. Biswas, Additional Director
General, Fire Services. The basement,
which was meant for car parking, was
used for various purposes, including
housing a pharmacy, a biomedical department and a storeroom. According
to the preliminary report prepared by
the Fire Department, combustible materials kept in the basement prolonged
the re and added to the toxicity of the
smoke.
Subsequent investigations showed
that a disaster of this scale could have
been averted had a mandatory precaution been followed and a vertical fire
stop installed in the building. In centrally air-conditioned buildings, the
vertical fire stop seals off the maintenance shaft at every other oor to prevent air from passing through and
spreading to the other oors.
According to Damyanti Sen, Joint
Commissioner (Crime) of the Kolkata
Police, smoke and fumes went up the

shaft to the upper oors as these vertical stops were not in place. Moreover,
the re also prompted the authorities
to switch off the mains, which stopped
the air-conditioning. Lack of air circulation in the sealed building hastened
the death of those inside. Police sources also suspect that the smoke alarms
in the hospital had been switched off;
it is not known why.
ACTIVE OMISSION

Investigations have revealed what the

police called active omission on the
part of the hospital authorities. On
September 5, the hospital had given an
undertaking to the Fire Department
that hazardous materials would be removed from the basement. We have
found that in a board meeting held
sometime in November, after the hospital had given an undertaking to the
Fire Department, a resolution was taken to look into the issue of safety measures, said Damyanti Sen. However,
the issue of safety continued to remain
ignored.

Investigations
have revealed
active
omission on
the part of the
hospital
authorities.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who holds the Health
portfolio, said, It is a criminal offence.
It is a crime. The police arrested seven
directors who were allegedly involved
in the day-to-day functioning of the
hospital: Shrachi Group chairman
S.K. Todi, Shrachi director Ravi Todi,
Emami vice-chairman R.S. Goenka
and Emami directors Prashant Goenka and Manish Goenka, AMRI director R.S. Agarwal and its executive
director Dayanand Agarwal. S. Upad4 2

F R O N T L I N E

hyay, senior vice-president and the

hospitals safety committee chairperson, and Sanjib Pal, administrative ofcer, have also been arrested.
Mamata Banerjee cancelled the
hospitals trade licence. The patients in
the other buildings were shifted to various other hospitals.
UNNAMED HEROES

The death toll would have been lower

had the authorities and the hospital
security staff not refused the aid volunteered by the youth of the nearby slum
who came rushing to the hospital the
moment they heard of the re. My
friends and I rushed to the hospital
around 3-00 a.m. There were people
screaming inside and ashing the light
on their mobile phones and banging
desperately on the windows, signalling
for help, Biswajit Chakraborty, a local
resident, told Frontline.
He and four other youth then approached the security guards, only to
be turned away. Meanwhile the
screams from inside were getting louder and it was impossible for us to remain mute spectators. So we climbed
up the building from the back side with
bamboo ladders, said Biswajit. Risking their own lives, they saved ve people. One of those who came forward to
help, Shankar Maity, had to be hospitalised soon after, having inhaled the
deadly fumes.
It was terrifying inside. It was
pitch dark with suffocating smoke everywhere, and we could see people lying around and heard others gasping
from unseen corners, said Biswajit.
He said many more lives could have
been saved had more youth from the
neighbourhood been allowed to enter
the building. Biswajit, a construction
worker, is at present unemployed.
A SURVIVORS TALE

Biswajits words are borne out by 77year-old Anjali Mitra, a patient on the
third oor of the hospital and one of
the survivors. It was the people from
the slums who saved me and many
others. We received no help from the
hospital staff, she told Frontline. She
said that when the local people told the

JANUARY 13, 2012

ARUNANGSU ROY CHOWDHURY

L OCA L Y O UT H S UC H as the one in the picture came rushing to the hospital when they heard of the re and began
rescue operations. The toll would have been lower had the hospital authorities and security staff let them in earlier.

trapped victims that they were not being allowed to come in, some of the
patients pleaded with them to enter
forcibly.
As we were choking, the hospital
staff kept telling us not to worry and
that everything was under control; at
the same time we could hear screams
of the people from the oors below,
she said.
She and the other patients on her
oor managed to break one of the thick
glass windows, and it was perhaps that
little opening which kept them alive. It
was past 4 a.m. when the local rescuers
carried her down to safety.
Among those who died that day
were two nurses, Remya Rajappan and
P.K. Vinita, who hailed from Kerala.
They lost their lives while saving eight
patients in the womens ward.
All other staff members, curiously,
were unscathed in the tragedy. Most of

them, according to reports, ed the

scene as soon as they sensed danger.
The scene outside the hospital was
also traumatic. The trapped patients
had called their near and dear ones on
their mobile phones and hundreds of
them had gathered in the narrow lane
leading to the hospital. They were
helpless as they could not get in or get
any information on those inside. One
by one, their phone calls to those inside
went unanswered, and their plea to
evacuate the patients fell on deaf ears.
The police estimated that more
than 3,000 people had gathered outside AMRI that morning. Their apprehension turned to grief and anger as
the bodies began to be brought out.
People scrambled among the corpses
to look for their loved ones. Among
those frantically searching was Paritosh Sen from Tripura, whose brother
Santosh had been admitted in the hosF R O N T L I N E

4 3

pital. Nine days after the incident, on

December 18, Sen had still not traced
his brother.
As the morning progressed, the situation turned more and more chaotic
until the Chief Minister herself arrived
on the scene and took charge of crowd
control.
The tragic irony is that many of the
victims had fought off serious aliments
and were on their way to recovery.
Krishna Chakraborty, 62, had undergone a successful brain operation and
had practically recovered when the accident claimed her life. I had spoken
to my mother just the day before and
she was ne, and then this happened,
said her son Bhaskar Chakraborty.
Then there were those who had come
with very minor problems. Criminal
negligence turned an institution designed to save lives into one that destroyed lives instead.

Science

JANUARY 13, 2012

Higgs signal?
Physicists hope that they are closing in on Higgs boson, the crucial missing link in
the subatomic world of elementary particles. B Y R . R A M A C H A N D R A N

In early December, rumours

abounded in physics blogs that a
Higgs signal at a mass-energy of
125 GeV had been seen in the CERN
experiment. But CERN said much
more work had to be done to know
whether it was the same as Higgs.
JUST four months ago, at the International Lepton Photon Symposium in Mumbai (LP2011), the
widely held expectation that new data from the highenergy proton-proton collision experiments with the
Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the Europe-

an Organisation for Nuclear Research in Geneva,

would reveal the existence of Higgs boson, a particle
that has been sought after by physicists for over three
decades, had been belied. Although the data did not
rule out its existence, the general feeling that prevailed at the end of the conference was that the
particle perhaps did not exist (Frontline, September
23).
Higgs is the crucial missing piece in the otherwise highly successful theoretical framework that
describes the subatomic world of elementary particles. Higgs, which can be likened to an ether-like
all-pervading force-eld in the universe, is postulated to exist by this theory, which is known as the
Standard Model (SM), as particles in the theory can
acquire mass (as they should to describe correctly the
real world) only through their interaction with the
Higgs eld. The Higgs boson is the particle associated with such an all-pervading force-eld. The aim

director-general,
anked by Fabiola Gianotti (left),
ATLAS experiment spokesperson,
and Guido Tonelli, CMS experiment
spokesperson, at a news conference
at CERN at Meyrin, near Geneva,
on December 13.

CMS WEBSITE

R OLF HE UE R , C E R N

4 4

F R O N T L I N E

JANUARY 13, 2012

with the Large Electron-Positron Col- that a Higgs signal at a mass-energy of

lider (LEP) at CERN itself and, more 125 GeV had been seen. That is, Higgs
recently, the Tevatron accelerator ex- is 125 times heavier than a proton,
periments at Fermilab, United States, which has a mass of about 1 GeV enerhad ruled out the region 156-177 GeV. gy equivalent. The evidence, the ruThough Tevatron scientists felt that mours said, was based on a slight
they had a chance of seeing Higgs by excess of events (over a zero signal)
doing an intense data analysis in the seen in the search for Higgs by both the
region 115-155 GeV, the U.S. Depart- experiments in the channel in which
ment of Energy decided in September Higgs decayed into two photons.
Higgs, according to the SM, is a
to shut down the machine for ever
Vivek Sharma, a physicist from the very short-lived particle with a eeting
University of California at San Diego lifetime of about 10-22 second; that is,
(UCSD) associated with the experi- ten-thousandth of a billionth of a bilment CMS, had said at the time of lionth of a second. Once created, it
LP2011: We will triple the data set by would immediately decay into several
end of October. And if you combine channels. The experiments analyse
both CMS and ATLAS datawe will these different channels that the SM
know if Higgs doesnt exist. We will allows Higgs to decay into. In this parknow if [Higgs] was indeed science ticular channel, in which two photons
ction by the end of the
y apart in opposite direcyear. In principle, of course,
tions, there is a clean signal
from an experimentalists
for clear identication in the
perspective, the experiment
debris of a multitude of parshould also search in the
ticles that high-energy prorange beyond 450 GeV for a
ton-proton collisions in
non-SM Higgs.
particle colliders produce
In the rst week of De(Figure 1a & 1b). For examHI G G S
cember, rumours abounded
ple, in this decay mode, the
D E CA YI N G
in physics blogs that these
CMS experiment will detect
experiments had found evi- I N TO two
these photons by its detector
dence for Higgs. They claimed photons.
called the Electromagnetic
FIGURE 1b

CMS WEBSITE

of particle physicists in the last nearly

four decades has been to nd evidence
for its existence even as experiments
have veried all predictions to great
precision made with the SM with the
assumption of the existence of Higgs.
The model itself does not predict a
value for the mass of Higgs; there are
indirect constraints on the Higgs mass
from phenomenological considerations based on other processes governed by the SM. These constrain its mass
to be less than 161 gigaelectronvolt
(GeV) of energy (in accordance with
Einsteins E=mc2 relation). A proton
has a mass-energy of about 1 GeV.
Such a Higgs is termed as low mass
Higgs because there are other theoretical models which allow Higgs to be
much heavier, up to 600 GeV. This
low mass Higgs is, in fact, referred to
as the Standard Model Higgs Boson.
But the SM Higgs has eluded searches
in experiments at various accelerators
so far.
The LHC is designed to explore the
new energy domain in the teraelectronvolt (TeV) scale and is expected to
show up such a low-mass Higgs, if it
exists. The LHC is currently operating
at a peak energy of 3.5 TeV per beam,
which means a total of 7 TeV is available in every collision event for particle
production. The high expectations in
summer 2011 that evidence for Higgs,
one way or the other, would soon be
found arose with the high rate of data
gathering, much higher than the target
that had been set for 2011 during the
early months of the LHCs operation.
By excluding its existence in vast
regions of energy, the data presented
at the Mumbai conference by the two
CERN experiments, ATLAS and CMS,
had narrowed the limits for the Higgs
mass to a small window of 115 GeV-140
GeV. ATLAS and CMS are nearly identical multipurpose experiments with
the search for Higgs as one of their
primary objectives. Earlier, at the European High Energy Conference at
Grenoble, the two experiments had already excluded Higgs from existing in
the range 150-450 GeV. Higgs with
mass below 115 GeV had already been
ruled out by the earlier experiments

A T Y P I C A L C A N DI D A TE event including two high-energy photons whose

energy (depicted by red towers) is measured in the CMS electromagnetic
calorimetre (ECAL). The yellow lines are the measure tracks of other
particles produced in the collision.
F R O N T L I N E

4 5

JANUARY 13, 2012

Calorimeter (ECAL). The ECAL, ac- nal. A signal for Higgs (or any new
cording to the CMS website, is able to particle) among such data means that
tell the mass of the particle to better in a plot of events observed in the exthan 1 per cent if the Higgs is relatively periment, a peak clearly sticks out over
light, below about 140 GeV. The most the background from other particle
distinctive signature for Higgs in a processes governed by the SM that
lightly higher mass range, between 150 mimic the decay of Higgs into two
and 180 GeV, would have been its de- photons. But such excess of events
cay into two W bosons, the carriers of should be statistically signicant to be
the weak nuclear force, which then de- ascribed to a new entity such as Higgs.
That is, it has to be ensured
cay into two leptons (partithat the excess seen is not
cles like the electron that
due to statistical uctuinclude the muon and the
ation in the background
tau) and two neutrinos. So
and are indeed events asyou do not see Higgs itself
cribable to processes inbut detect the particles it
volving Higgs.
decays into and see if the
Perhaps prompted by
decay parameters are in acthese rumours, on Decemcordance with the SM preber 6, CERN announced a
dictions and such decays
public seminar to be held
are in sufcient numbers to
on December 13 in which
be statistically signicant H I GGS D EC A Y I N G
ATLAS and CMS would
for it to be reckoned as a I N T O two Z bosons
present the status of their
discovery.
(carriers of weak
searches for the SM Higgs.
The task is to sift data force) which in turn
In any case such a seminar
from trillions of collisions decay into four
was due as, even in its norand look for the Higgs sig- muons.

ATLAS WEBSITE

FIGURE 2b

four muons. This event is consistent with

coming from two Z particles decaying. Both Zs decay into two muons each.
This view is a zoom into the central part of the detector. The four muons are
shown as red tracks. Other tracks and deposits of energy in the calorimetres
are shown in yellow.

A TL A S E V E N T C O N T A I N I N G

4 6

F R O N T L I N E

mal course of operation, the LHC was

scheduled for a maintenance shutdown for a few months after Christmas. A CERN press release of
December 6 said: These results will be
based on the analyses of considerably
more data than presented at the summer conferences [at Grenoble and
Mumbai] sufcient to make signicant progress in the search for the
Higgs boson, but not enough to make
any conclusive statement on the existence or non-existence of the Higgs
(emphasis added). The data analysed
included the entire data sample of proton-proton collisions collected up to
the end of 2011 run.
To put the increased data in perspective, at the Mumbai conference
the analyses were based on a technical
parameter of one inverse-femtobarn
(fb-1) required for being able to see
statistically signicant physics results
at 7 TeV. This is equivalent to data of
70 trillion proton-proton collisions
events. This means that the LHC recorded this much of data since it began
operations in March 2010. In fact, this
was the target that had been set for the
end of 2011. But because of extremely
good performance of the machine, increase in the intensity of the beams
attained by the machine has been
much faster and hence a higher event
rate. As of end-2011, the total data
amount to 4.7 fb-1. This means nearly
ve times the data gathered until summer. That is indeed fantastic performance. According to the CMS group,
with this amount of data the experiment can study Higgs production in
almost the entire mass range above the
LEP limit of 114 GeV and up to 600
GeV and, as we shall see, the CMS has
set limits on the non-existence of
Higgs in that high-mass region.
The italicised part in the CERN
release was clearly to scotch the rumours that were ying all around of
Higgs having been discovered. But given the claims made in the rumours,
there was considerable excitement all
around and the seminar naturally got
all the media hype. Indeed, it was a big
draw even within the physics community as well, with physicists around the

JANUARY 13, 2012

front, which was a tighter limit on the

real estate now available for Higgs to
be present. As against the window of
115-140 GeV set at Mumbai, the main
conclusion was that the SM Higgs bo-

CMS WEBSITE

CMS WEBSITE

ATLAS WEBSITE AT CERN

world catching the presentation live

on the video streaming from the overowing large auditorium at CERN.
A release from CERN after the
seminar stated the main nding up

F R O N T L I N E

4 7

son, if it exists, is most likely to have a

mass in the range 115-130 GeV. But,
more signicantly, it added the following: Tantalising hints have been seen
by both experiments in the same mass
region, but these are yet not strong
enough to claim a discovery. This
marked a clear change in tone from the
Mumbai conference. It was a positive
statement. It also added a more specific statement.
Both ATLAS and CMS had analysed several decay channels not just
the two photon channel as the rumours had said and the experiments
see small excesses in the low mass region in the past few weeks that has not
yet been excluded. Taken individually, the CERN release said, none of
these excesses is any more statistically
signicant than rolling a die and coming up with two sixes in a row. What is
interesting is that there are multiple
independent measurements pointing
to the region of 124 to 126 GeV. It also
quoted the ATLAS spokesperson Fabioal Gianotti as saying, This excess
may be due to a statistical uctuation,
but it could also be something more
interesting. We cannot conclude anything at this stage. We need more
study and more data. Given the outstanding performance of LHC this
year, we will not need to wait long for
enough data and can look forward to
resolving this puzzle in 2012.
The CMS spokesman echoed similar views. We cannot exclude the presence of the SM of the SM Higgs boson
between 115 and 127 GeV because of a
modest excess of events in this mass
region that appears quite consistently
in ve independent channels, said
Guido Tonelli. The excess, he added,
is most compatible with a SM Higgs
in the vicinity of 124 GeV and below
but the statistical signicance is not
large enough to say anything conclusive. As of today, what we see is consistent either with a background
uctuation or with the presence of a
boson.
The slightly more detailed press release from the CMS group said: Our
results were achieved by combining results in a number of predicted Higgs

Science

BLOG.VIXRA.ORG/2011/12/13/AUTHRO:PHILIP GIBBS

JANUARY 13, 2012

C OMB I N A T I O N O F L EP (phase II) + Tevatron + CMS + ATLAS data. Peak sits

at a Higgs mass of about 125 GeV.

decay channels including pairs of W

or Z [another carrier of the weak force
besides the W], which decay into four
leptons, pairs of heavy quarks, pairs of
tau leptons and pairs of photons (Figures 2a & 2b)
In June 2011, the LHC attained the
key data milestone one inverse-femtobarn (fb-1) required for being able to
see statistically signicant physics results at 7 TeV, which is equal to 70
trillion
proton-proton
collisions
events. This was the target that the
LHC had set in 2010 for the entire
2011 runs but this was achieved within
a record time of just three-four
months. The CMS experiment excludes the existence of Higgs in the
mass range 128-525 GeV at 99 per cent
condence level (CL). A mass is said
to be excluded at 95 per cent CL if the
chance of SM Higgs boson showing up
in the excluded mass range is 5 per cent
of the time in a set of repeated experiments. That means their exclusion of
Higgs beyond 128 GeV is now far more
stringent than it was in Mumbai. What
CMS does not exclude now is the region 115-127 GeV as Tonelli had said.
If we explore the hypothesis that
our observed excesses could be the rst
hint of the presence of SM Higgs, we
nd the production rate (cross section

in high-energy physics terminology

relative to the SM prediction) for each
decay channel is consistent with expectations, albeit with large uncertainties. However, the low statistical
signicances mean that these excesses
can reasonably be interpreted as uctuations in the background. More data, to be collected in 2012, will help
ascertain the origin of this excess.
Statistical signicance is measured
in terms of what is called standard
deviation (called sigma). For any discovery in particle physics, the signal
should be at least at 5 sigma () level
over the background, which is equivalent to a CL of being wrong only one
part in about 30 million. Current levels
of excesses in both the experiments are
still in the region of 2.4-3.6 , which is
still far from the Golden Rule for a
discovery in particle physics (Figures
3a, 3b and 3c). The statistical significance, particularly in this tantalising
region of around 125 GeV where both
experiments seem to see an excess of
events, would be greatly improved if a
completely statistical analysis is done
using the data sets of both the experiments together for each individual
channel.
However, such a detailed exercise
would take considerable amount of
4 8

F R O N T L I N E

time, and probably one can expect

such an analysis carried out during the
period of LHC shutdown for a couple
of months from now.
However, the physics community
outside the experimental groups is not
waiting. One theoretical physicist,
Philip Gibbs, has already carried out
an approximate analysis of this kind in
his blog and he sees a clear signal for a
Higgs with mass at around 125 GeV
with sufciently improved statistical
signicance (3). Gibbs has combined
the results of LEP, Tevatron, CMS and
ATLAS where the signal strength ts
neatly on 125 GeV (Figure 4). Indeed,
some would like to believe that Higgs
has already been seen with this new
data. The higher the number of sigma,
the more incompatible the data are
with having only background and no
Higgs. In his blog, Tommaso Dorigo of
the CMS group has even ventured to
term it as rm evidence for Higgs. The
general physics community will, of
course, wait until it hits the bar of 5 to
say that Higgs has been found. According to Gibbs, the experiments would
need to achieve data mark of 25 fb-1,
which means ve times more collisions. This should be achievable by the
LHC in 2012, and that is precisely why
the statements have been cautious in
making claims and have said that a
conclusive picture should emerge by
2012.
So the wait for its clear evidence,
despite the fact that its discovery appears now more imminent than ever
before, has to continue, until the end of
2012. In case a signal does show up
with sufcient statistical signicance,
what we can say is, yes, there is a new
particle, which looks like the SM
Higgs. But is it the SM Higgs? Much
more work will have to be done to
check if that particle has exactly the
same characteristics of the SM Higgs.
That will take many more years of data
from the LHC. It could also happen
that it does not turn out to be an SM
Higgs. But there are non-SM Higgs
models which would open doors to
new physics beyond the SM. Either
way there is exciting particle physics in
store in the years to come.

JANUARY 13, 2012

world affairs

Exit America
The American occupation troops withdraw from Iraq after waging a dumb war

REUTERS

which claimed the lives of a million Iraqis.

of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, board a C-17 transport plane at Camp Adder,
now known as Imam Ali Base, near Nasiriyah on December 17.

DE P A R TI N G U. S . S O L D I E RS

Once the invasion phase morphed

into the occupation of Iraq, it
became clear that the reasons given
for the war were false: no WMDs
were found and there was no proof
of Saddam Husseins link with Al
Qaeda or his plan to attack the U.S.
ON December 16, the United States armed forces
handed over Camp Adder to the Iraqi government. It
was the last base to be ofcially handed over, as the
troops boarded their trucks for the convoy ride to
Kuwait. We have turned the last page of the occupaF R O N T L I N E

tion, Hussein al-Asadi told the assembled crowd at

the base. Al-Asadi represented Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who had spent some time with President
Barack Obama earlier in the week and received assurances that the U.S. would remain engaged with
Iraq. Several thousand U.S. forces are garrisoned in
Iraq even after the withdrawal, and the U.S. will
continue to maintain its sprawling embassy compound in Baghdad. The bases in general have come
to resemble ghost towns, with plans for the construction of a luxury hotel being executed inside the former Green Zone.
Sections of the country that saw the greatest

Letter from America

VIJAY PRASHAD
4 9

JANUARY 13, 2012

DRUMS OF WAR

By late 2001, it was clear that the Bush

administration wished to extend the
battleeld in its Global War on Terror
from Afghanistan to Iraq. Hours after
9/11 itself, Defence Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld scrawled, Hit S.H. @ same
time not only UBL, which is to say
hit Saddam Hussein (Iraq) at the same
time, not only Osama bin Laden (Afghanistan).
The drums of war beat louder and
louder into 2002. By the end of the
summer, it appeared as if war would be
inevitable with pressure on the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) and on the European partners
moving in one direction alone. By the
summer of 2002, President George W.
Bush had been making noises about
the need to strike Iraq before it completed production of an array of biochemical weapons. Bush went to the
United Nations in September, warning: Iraq is expanding and improving
facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons. A few
weeks later, in his weekly radio address, Bush said: Saddam Hussein recently
authorised
Iraqi
eld
commanders to use chemical weapons
the very weapons the dictator tells us
he does not have. The narrative from
the White House was simple: Iraq had
chemical weapons, and if the U.S. does
not act in some way (preferably militarily) then Saddam Hussein would
use those weapons in a replay of 9/11.
Washingtons narrative was thin.
There was no evidence that Iraq had
anything to do with 9/11, and less that
it had the capability or investment in a
strike on the U.S. The IAEAs then
Director-General Mohamed ElBara-

dei cautioned the U.N. on the authenticity of the U.S. claims (the IAEA and
ElBaradei won the Nobel Prize for
Peace in 2005). Nothing seemed to
add up. In 2007, ElBaradei told Le
Monde that the run-up to the invasion
of Iraq was a glaring example of how,
in many cases, the use of force exacerbates the problem rather than solves
it.
U.N. Secretary-General Ko Annan, otherwise quite amenable to
Washington, brought back the Swedish politician Hans Blix to run a U.N.
study team of Iraqs weapons programme. Blix, who was quite outspoken about Iraqs obduracy in the
1990s, was nonetheless cautious in
2002. There was simply no evidence
that required the international community (namely the U.S.) to go to war.
I have detractors in Washington, Blix
told The Guardian. There are bastards who spread things around, of
course, who planted nasty things in the
media, not that I cared very much.
Blix is not known for such colourful
language. He had, however, run up
against a massive media blitz orches-

YURI GRIPAS /AFP

resistance to the U.S. occupation remained unbending. In Fallujah, a

thousand protesters burned American
ags, and in Sadr City, protests welcomed the withdrawal of the U.S.
troops. The Americans are leaving behind them a destroyed country. The
Americans did not leave modern
schools or big factories behind them,
said Mariam Khazim. They left thousands of widows and orphans.

P RES I D EN T BAR A C K OB AM A . The

war was not perfect, he accepted,
but its outcome was good, with the
troops leaving behind a sovereign,
stable and self-reliant Iraq.
5 0

F R O N T L I N E

trated by the White House and conducted enthusiastically by the

Murdoch machine. (At Davos in 2007,
Charlie Rose asked Murdoch if News
Corp. had shaped the agenda for the
Iraq War. No I dont think so, replied
Murdoch. We tried. We basically supported the Bush policy in the Middle
East [West Asia].)
As debates continued in the U.N.,
with the White House eager for Security Council sanction for its new war, the
anti-war movement germinated in the
U.S. and elsewhere. It would come to a
head when 10 million people marched
against the impending war on Iraq in
February 2003, perhaps the largest coordinated protests of all time (some
estimate that the number is closer to
30 million). Three million people took
to the streets of Rome, while about a
million staggered through the very
cold avenues of New York City.
The alliance against the war was
vast: it included those who were generally anti-war to those who were against
what they saw as an unnecessary war.
Among the latter was a State Senator
from Illinois, Barack Obama, who gave
a well-regarded anti-war speech in
Chicago in October 2002. I dont oppose all wars, Obama told the crowd.
What I am opposed to is a dumb war.
What I am opposed to is a rash war.
What I am opposed to is the cynical
attempt by Richard Perle and Paul
Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to
shove their own ideological agendas
down our throats, irrespective of the
costs in lives lost and in hardships
borne. What I am opposed to is the
attempt by political hacks like Karl
Rove to distract us from a rise in the
uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a
drop in the median income, to distract
us from corporate scandals and a stock
market that has just gone through the
worst month since the Great Depression. Thats what Im opposed to. A
dumb war. A rash war. A war based not
on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.
The war nonetheless began on
March 19, with a campaign known as
Shock and Awe. Saddam Husseins

AFP

JANUARY 13, 2012

FAL L U JA H R E S I D E N T S A T

a rally to celebrate the departure of U.S. troops,

on December 14.
military collapsed. Resistance to the
U.S. forces came not from the organised units of the Iraqi military but
from new guerilla ghters, some
Baathists, but mostly Iraqi nationalists
of various stripes. Even as Bush declared that combat operations ended
in May, this was far from the case.
Combat operations would continue into 2010, with more U.S. personnel
killed in Iraq (over 4,000) than Americans in the attacks on 9/11. The death
toll of Iraqis is too horrendous to comprehend (some count a million dead,
with The Lancet offering a slightly
smaller number near 700,000).
Soon after the invasion phase
morphed into a U.S. occupation of
Iraq, it became clear that all the reasons for the war had been false. As U.S.
troops withdraw from Iraq, there is
little discussion about this particular
problem: that no chemical or biological weapons, or weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), were found, that
no link between Saddam Hussein and
Al Qaeda could be established, and
that Saddam Hussein had no plans to
attack the U.S.

In the past few years, memoirs by

the main players in the Bush administration have appeared, with Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence
Secretary Rumsfeld defending their
roles and State Department head Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice putting the
onus on Cheney and Rumsfeld. Few
recall the lies that led to war. Part of
the problem for the Bush team is that
despite the outcome, when the war was
being planned they were all in agreement. On one major issue, Rice, Cheney and Rumsfeld were in total
agreement the war in Iraq, writes
Elisabeth Bumiller in her biography of
Rice. Rice helped conceive it and was
one of its chief advocates, and when
the President nally asked her if he
should take the country to war, she
said yes. No one has taken responsibility for the Iraqi asco. At most the
former managers of the country simply
blame each other for poor execution of
the war (too little planning, say some,
too few troops, say others).
Obama, who had made his own
position clear in 2002, could not reviF R O N T L I N E

5 1

sit them in 2011: he is now the Commander in Chief and would nd it

awkward to belittle the sacrices of
troops who were sent to ght a false
war. At most Obama could acknowledge the debate before the war, with
the lead-up a source of great controversy here at home, with patriots on
both sides of the debate. The Iraq war
was not perfect, he accepted, but its
outcome was good, with the troops
leaving behind a sovereign, stable and
self-reliant Iraq, with a representative
government that was elected by its
people. American liberalism is not capable of any more than that.
To go beyond this is to accept that
Iraq was not a dumb war but the
outcome of a system premised on militarism and one that is capable of the
harshest violence against its enemies.
During the week of the pull-out, a reporter for The New York Times found
400 pages of U.S. military investigations on the 2005 massacres at Haditha, where U.S. marines killed 24
Iraqis (including a 76-year-old man in
a wheelchair, children and toddlers).
Most of the U.S. troops had been acquitted by their justice system, leaving
a bad taste in the Iraqi body politic. As
Michael Schmidt put it in The Times,
That sense of American impunity ultimately poisoned any chance for American forces to remain in Iraq, because
the Iraqis would not let them stay
without being subject to Iraqi laws and
courts, a condition the White House
could not accept.
It was the aftermath of Haditha
that forced the Iraqi government to no
longer give a carte blanche to the U. S.
troops (with the Sadrites, a parliamentary partner of Malikis government,
putting pressure on the Prime Minister not to allow U.S. troops to continue
on such terms that allow Iraqis to be
humiliated). The Iraqi Parliament, in a
sense, ejected the U.S. because Washington would not allow its troops to
come under Iraqi jurisdiction.
No one mentioned Haditha, nor
did they remember Abu Ghraib, now
renamed the Baghdad Central Prison.
The same week as the withdrawal, the
U.S. will nally bring Private First

AFP

JANUARY 13, 2012

stands guard at
the Abu Ghraib prison as prisoners
are released. The prison, which
was built by British contractors in
the 1960s, was a centre of torture
for the occupation forces. It was
renamed the "Baghdad
Correctional Facility" by the U.S.,
and was eventually transfered to
Iraqi control in September 2006.

A U .S. SO L D I E R

result of the war with Iraq was worth

the loss of American lives and other
costs of attacking Iraq, or not? (67
per cent no, 24 per cent yes). The cost
to Iraqis simply does not feature.
It is the end for the Americans
only, wrote Emad Risn, an Iraqi columnist, in a government-funded
newspaper. Nobody knows if the
war will end for Iraqis too.
And few Americans seem to care.
It has been some time since Iraq featured at all on the nations priorities,
let alone high. Rightly, Americans
fret about the fate of veterans returning to a depressed economy with a
range of both physical and mental
disabilities. But Iraqi civilians barely
get a look-in.
According to The New York
Times report, among the discarded

testimony was an interview with Sergeant Major Edward Sax. I had marines shoot children in cars, and deal
with the marines individually, one on
one, about it because they have a hard
time dealing with that. When they
told him they didnt know there were
children on board he told them they
were not to blame, claiming killing
would impose a life-long burden on
them. Progressives, seeking to link
the economic collapse to military
misadventure, often argue that nation building should begin at home,
not in Iraq, thereby wittingly or not
transforming Iraqis in the public
imagination from victims of illegal
warfare to recipients of illicit welfare.
Without any apparent irony,
Obama marked the end of the occupation by calling on others not to
meddle in Iraqs internal affairs. The
combined effect of all of this is like
breaking someones jaw with your st
only to bemoan the excruciating pain
that has been visited on your hand.
The U.S. is not alone in this. Amnesia and indifference are the privileges of the powerful. It is for the
Kenyans and Algerians to recall the
atrocities committed by the British
and the French under colonialism
while the colonisers remain in ight
from their history. The essential
characteristic of a nation is that all its
individuals must have many things in
common, wrote the 19th-century
French philosopher Ernest Renan,
and must have forgotten many
things as well.
No wonder then that a recent
Pew poll found that despite all the
evidence to the contrary, 56 per cent
of Americans said they thought the
invasion had succeeded in its goals
while the number of those who think
the invasion was the right decision
stands at its highest in ve years. The
cost of doing business always seems
more reasonable when someone else
is paying the price.
Gary Younge
Guardian News & Media 2011

F R O N T L I N E

5 3

Class Bradley Manning to court. Manning is accused of handing over secret

les to WikiLeaks. Among those les
lay a secret video that documented the
2007 killing in cold blood of Reuters
photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen
and his driver Saeed Chmagh. Like
Haditha, the impunity towards the
Apache helicopter pilots rankled the
Iraqis.
The U.N. High Commissioner for
Refugees counts about two million
Iraqis as displaced. That is a conservative estimate. Others would like to see
the gure doubled. Either way, this is
the largest displacement in West Asia,
and it is entirely a product of the war.
Instead of a discussion on how the war
created this massive and ongoing refugee crisis, the U.S. tightened its own
policy towards allowing in asylum
seekers (when the Vietnam War went
badly, the U.S. allowed its allies in
Vietnam to seek entry into the U.S.
not such an open policy for its Iraqi
allies).
The Bush war cost at least $1 trillion, if not more. It was to make Iraq a
model private-sector country. All this
failed as the Iraqis refused to be utterly
pliant. The U.S. miscalculated the
neighbourhood. The assumption was
that the U.S. forces would be able to
create a satellite in the area that could
checkmate Irans ambitions in the region and provide some relief to Israel.
Instead, the wave of democracy that
swept the region was not inclined to
U.S. power but was against it. Even
Iraqs government was not as docile as
hoped.
The costs of war suggest the law of
intended consequences. The anti-war
movement suggested that the bloodshed would not welcome U.S. troops
into Iraq with sweets and owers,
but it would open up sectarian ssures
and create far more human suffering
than imagined. Iraq has been resilient
enough to demand more than a public
relations withdrawal. Having Iraq exercise its sovereignty is not sufcient to
justify the war in the rst place. Eight
years after the war, no justications
remain. It was a dumb war, and it
remains so.

World Affairs/Russia

JANUARY 13, 2012

December
Revolution
Protests triggered by the alleged mass
rigging of the parliamentary election
result in a groundswell of opinion
against the ruling party.
B Y V L A D I M I R R A D Y U H I N IN MOSCOW

The protesters demand cancellation

of the tainted election and the
overhaul of the election legislation.
Former Soviet President Mikhail
Gorbachev has supported the calls
for annulling the rigged vote.
IT has already been called the Great December
Revolution, an allusion to the Great October Revolution that changed the political system in Russia and
brought to power the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir
Lenin. Almost a century later, tens of thousands of
Russians again took to the streets in Moscow and
other Russian cities to demand political change.
The protests were triggered by the alleged mass
rigging of the December 4 parliamentary election,
which was won by the ruling party, United Russia.
The ofcial tally gave United Russia 49.3 per cent of
the votes, a loss of 15 per cent compared with the last
election four years ago but enough to guarantee it an
absolute majority in the State Duma, the lower house
of the Russian Parliament. Independent monitors
said the partys real support hovered around 30 per
cent. Russian Internet overowed with amateur videos of ballot-box stufng, carousel multiple voting,
and rewriting of nal protocols.
The scale of protests took everyone by surprise,
including its organisers. Two weeks before the election, when an opposition group applied for permission to hold a post-election rally, it cited the likely
attendance of up to 300 people. Three days before
5 4

the event, the organisers raised the estimate to

30,000 and the authorities had to change the venue
as it was thought too small for such a crowd. In the
end, up to 100,000 people turned up on Bolotnaya
Square in central Moscow on December 10. On the
same day, rallies rolled across dozens of cities from
Vladivostok in the far east to Kaliningrad in the west.
It was a striking display of civic activism unheard of
in Russia for almost 20 years.
The protests immediately became enmeshed in
symbols and parallels that were not necessarily accurate. As in the Arab Spring revolutions, the Internet
served as a crucial medium in mobilising Russian
protesters. State-controlled television totally ignored the election controversy and initial protests,
but people used social networking sites and Twitter
to inform each other of planned rallies. With more
than 50 million Russians having access to the Web,
more than anywhere else in Europe, the Internet
played the role of what Lenin called collective organiser and collective propagandist. The authorities
pressured Russias largest social network provider,
vKontakte, to close opposition groups on the site, but
it refused.
As in Tunisia and Egypt, protests in Russia were
driven by the middle classes, but in Russia they were
not the disgruntled unemployed youth but reasonably well-off educated professionals and ofce workers. Artists, writers and musicians joined the protests
for the rst time since the early 1990s.
The protests were by no means violent. The most
resonating plea on Facebook and Twitter was for the
protests to be peaceful. As one blogger wrote, We
had our Tahrir 20 years ago. In 1993, hundreds died
when President Boris Yeltsin sent tanks to suppress
an armed revolt led by the pro-Communist legislature. Demonstrators in Bolotnaya Square gave owers to the police in a gesture of peace and solidarity as

F R O N T L I N E

R U SSIAN C O M MUN I S T P A RT Y

supporters protesting against the

ofcial results of the parliamentary
elections, in Manezh Square in
Moscow on December 18.
the authorities backed away from the
rough handling and detention of protesters during the rst post-election
rallies.
The Russian authorities saw
haunting similarities with the colour
revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine
several years ago. Colour revolutions
are special schemes to destabilise society, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
said during a traditional televised callin show after the rst wave of protest
rallies. Earlier he accused the U.S. of
inciting the protests and nancing the
opposition.
The government, however, did not
produce any proof of a foreign hand
apart from pointing the nger at GOLOS, a Russian vote monitoring organisation partially funded from the U.S,
which played a key role in exposing the
election fraud.
The Russian protests have entirely
domestic roots. Those who thronged
the streets of Moscow and other cities
revolted against the Russian system of
managed democracy based on the socalled Putin contract. After the
chaotic 1990s, Russians treasured the
stability and increased living standards during Putins presidency. Putin
was genuinely popular. People took

denying them registration under various pretexts and harassing businessmen who dared support them.
Characteristically, none of the ofcial opposition parties played any role
in the protests even though they all
complained of election fraud. According to media reports, the Kremlin
asked the opposition parties to stay
away. A few party members took part
in protest rallies, but were booed with
cries give up your Duma mandate.

pride in the resurgence of Russia and

its global clout and were prepared to
put up with the authoritarian political
system dominated by one man, national leader Putin.
However, resentment built up
gradually as corruption grew to staggering proportions, bureaucratic hurdles strangled small businesses, courts
served the rich and the powerful, and
the economy remained critically dependent on the export of hydrocarbons
and metals. Meanwhile, people could
not change the system through elections.
The opposition parties sitting in
Parliament Communists, left-leaning Just Russia and the Liberal Democrats of the clownish Vladimir
Zhirinovsky are fully integrated into
the establishment and manipulated by
the Kremlin.
The authorities have rmly put
down attempts to set up new parties,

SURGE IN ACTIVISM

YURI KOCHETKOV/REUTERS

MIKHAIL METZEL/AP

JANUARY 13, 2012

P RI M E M I N I S T ER VLAD I M I R Putin
(foreground) and President Dmitry
Medvedev at the United Russia party
headquarters after voting closed in
the parliamentary elections, in
Moscow on December 4.
F R O N T L I N E

5 5

Many of those who took to the streets

in December had not bothered to vote
earlier because they saw little election
choice. In this years election, political
apathy gave way to a sudden surge in
activism. Vote for any party but United Russia was the most compelling
campaign slogan. Russians played by
the Kremlin rules and won. Their overwhelming vote against the ruling party
headed by Putin forced the Kremlin to
resort to glaring falsications in order
to avoid a humiliating defeat. This
sparked mass protests.
People felt cheated, just as they
were two months earlier when Putin
and President Dmitry Medvedev announced their decision to swap roles in
the presidential election in March
2012. Many in Russia were shocked by
what one commentator called a cynical private deal that traded the institution of the presidency like a piece
of furniture.
Medvedev, ironically called Twitter President for his childish fascination with electronic gadgets, may have
been pathetically weak as Putins successor, but he generated hopes of
change with the promise of political
and economic modernisation, a vibrant multiparty system, an independent judiciary, and anti-corruption
drive. So when he suddenly abdicated
power even before his reforms gained
traction, people felt robbed of their
hopes.
Putins decision to reclaim presidency was seen as a step backward, not
forward, especially since he downplayed economic modernisation and
political liberalisation and emphasised

World Affairs/Russia
stability, which many read as stagnation. The prospect of 12 more years of
Putin, who is 59, at the helm (the presidential term was extended from four to
six years two years ago) has put off
many. Popularity ratings of Putin and
Medvedev, as well as United Russia,
went down after the job-swap announcement. A post-election poll by the
Public Opinion Foundation showed
that only 44 per cent of Russians had
complete trust in Putin, his lowest support level in a decade.
While it was the complaints
against election fraud that brought
people out to the streets, the real target
of their anger was Putin: some of the
most popular slogans were Putin the
Thief and Russia without Putin.
The big question now is, what happens next? The protesters have demanded the cancellation of the tainted
election and the overhaul of the election legislation. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who had
pioneered democratic reforms in Russia, has supported the calls for annulling the rigged vote.
With each passing day, more and
more Russians refuse to believe that
the election was honest, said Gorbachev. The countrys leaders must admit there were numerous falsications
and rigging and the results do not reect the peoples will.
However, these demands are unacceptable for the Kremlin. They would
amount to the dismantling of the system of managed democracy and undermine Putins grip on power.
TWO-PRONGED STRATEGY

The Kremlin appears to have settled

for a two-pronged strategy. It has
sought to discredit the protest movement while at the same time promise
political concessions to show that the
protesters voice has been heard. Putin
claimed people were paid money to
attend the rallies.
There are people who have Russian passports but work for the interests of a foreign state, for foreign
money, he said during the call-in session on December 15.
In a calculated slight, he went as

JANUARY 13, 2012

far as to compare the white ribbons

demonstrators wore as a symbol of
peaceful protests to unwrapped
condoms.
To be perfectly honest, he said,
when I saw something on some peoples chests I thought that this was
part of an anti-AIDS campaign, that
these were, pardon me, condoms.
Putin was clearly addressing his
more conservative constituencies, including low-earning industrial labourers and old-age pensioners, who could
probably like this rude joke, but if he
hoped to dampen protests, the tactics
backred. Within hours of his remarks
thousands signed up in social networks for new protest rallies and the
Internet exploded with photoshopped
pictures of Putin wearing an unravelled contraceptive pinned to his coat.
On another track, Putin promised
that betterment of the political system would be one of the priorities of
his third presidential agenda. We
need to expand the basis of democracy
in Russia. We ought to re-establish the
link between the people and the powers that be at all levels (local, regional,
and federal). It will restore trust in the
powers that be, he said.
Putin said he was ready to consider
the possibility of restoring direct elections for regional governors and the
upper house of Parliament, which he
cancelled seven years ago, and easing
the registration procedure for new
parties.
The Kremlin has replaced State
Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov, best
known for a notorious remark attributed to him that the Duma is no
place for discussions and let the opposition parties control more parliamentary committees.
But it has so far refused to meet the
protesters main demands a revote
and reform of the electoral system to
allow real political pluralism and to
remove government control over the
election process. To ensure transparency, Putin ordered that web cameras
linked to Internet be installed in all
ballot stations, but experts dismissed
the move as a publicity stunt.
As of now the Russian protests are
5 6

F R O N T L I N E

unlikely to derail Putins re-election as

President next March as none of the
opposition leaders who have registered to run can put up a challenge.
But the Putin magic is gone and he
may need a second round run-off to
win.
New opposition leaders thrown up
by the burgeoning protest movement
need time to set up a political base and
gain nationwide popularity. They include 35-year-old lawyer and blogger
Alexei Navalny, who shot to prominence by exposing corruption in leading state companies and who coined
the now famous nickname for United
Russia the party of thieves and
crooks and social activist Yevgeniya
Chirikova, a 34-year-old mother of
two, who has stood up in fearless defence of an age-old Moscow forest condemned to cutting down under a
Kremlin-backed multi-billion project
to build a new highway.
One thing is clear: tectonic shifts
are under way in Russian society as it
has woken up from slumber. The December protests were largely conned
to the urban middle class, but in the
new year they may be joined by wider
working class masses who will be hurt
by the post-election budget hangover.
The government will have to adopt very painful cost-cutting measures after
it tripled military salaries, raised pensions and steeply hiked national security spending in the run-up to
parliamentary and presidential elections. Russia may need an average oil
price of $126 a barrel to balance its
budget next year, compared with an
earlier forecast for $118.
The Russian leaders should stop
clinging to power and embark on democratic reforms to open the system to
grass-roots political forces, experts
warned.
The authorities must begin building institutions for rejuvenation of the
polity while they still have some reserves of strength left, said Tatyana
Stanovaya of the Political Technologies Centre. If they do not do it in an
evolutionary way from the top, the
process will start revolutionary from
the bottom.

JANUARY 13, 2012

World Affairs/Pakistan

Volatile state
Pakistan, a country buffeted by mysterious if not entirely holy forces, seems to

ATHAR HUSSAIN/REUTERS

have surrendered to its fate. B Y D E C L A N W A L S H

Viewed from the outside, Pakistan looms as the

Fukushima of fundamentalism: a volatile,
treacherous place lled with frothing Islamists
and double-dealing generals.
EVEN before you reach Pakistan there is reason
to fret. Ladies and gentlemen, we will be landing
shortly, inshallah, says the Pakistan International
Airlines pilot, 10 minutes outside Islamabad. To the
Western ear this ancient invocation literally God
willing can be disconcerting: you pray the crew are
relying on more than divine providence to set down
safely. But these days it is about right Pakistan, a
country buffeted by mysterious if not entirely holy
forces, seems to have surrendered to its fate.
Viewed from the outside, Pakistan looms as the
Fukushima of fundamentalism: a volatile, treacherous place lled with frothing Islamists and doubledealing generals, leaking plutonium-grade terrorist
trouble. Forget the worlds most dangerous country moniker, by now old hat. Look to recent coverage: Hornets Nest declares this weeks
Economist; The Ally from Hell proclaims The Atlantic.
Western condemnation has a moral quality, the
tinge of wounded betrayal. Much of it is rooted in
Afghanistan, where many blame Pakistan for the
Taliban resurgence. Some years ago a senior United
Nations ofcial in Kabul warned me the United
States could launch unilateral air strikes if Pakistan
did not get into line. Surely it would be unwise to
destabilise a nuclear-armed country of 170 million
people, I said. Well, he shot back grimly. Maybe
they deserve it. Yet for all the stone-throwing, hard
facts are elusive. Did the powerful Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) spy agency really shelter Osama
bin Laden? Does it control the notorious Haqqani
network? Did it play a role in the 2008 Mumbai
attacks? If smoking guns abound, the Pakistanis are
remarkably good at wiping their ngerprints from
the trigger. Instead, we are left with a murky stew of
allegations, coincidences and the steamy whispers of
Western spies.
F R O N T L I N E

Perhaps the embodiment of this conundrum is

Pervez Musharraf, the former military ruler once
beloved of the West. In a recent interview, the BBCs
Stephen Sackur harangued him about Pakistani perdy. What of the Taliban safe havens? Sackur demanded. Or the Quetta Shura? Or reports that the
monocular Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, resides
happily in Pakistani suburbia? Musharraf sat
through the mauling, visibly bristling, then shot
back: You say it is true. I say it is all nonsense, he
said, wearing his trademark wounded-puppy face.
This is a mirage. This is what people say. This is
what you think.
But what should we think conspiracy, cock-up
or thinly veiled chaos? Puzzling out the answers to
that question has been central to my seven years
reporting from Pakistan for The Guardian. Much of
it was dominated by the banner dramas: bombs and
political heaves, spy scandals and shootings. But
there were also, I discovered, truths to be gleaned
from the smaller things such as the way people
drive.
Pakistanis swerve into heavy trafc without looking, do not stick to their lane or indicate, which
makes it hard to predict where they are coming from
or going to. Social graces are rare horns honk,
headlights are impatiently ashed but social hierarchy is observed: hulking four-wheel drives (increasingly armour-plated) barge through the
swarms of matchbox cars. Off to the side, the police
are taking bribes.
But pull off the road and everything changes.
Pakistanis are welcoming, generous and voluble.
They insist you stay for tea, or the night. They love to
gab, often with glorious indiscretion national politics and local tattle, cricket scandals, movie stars and
conspiracy theories. This is fun, and good for the
business of journalism.
5 7

While Islam is technically the glue

of society, you learn, the real bonds are
forged around clans, tribes, personal
contacts. To get anything done, the
ofcial route is often pointless the
key is sifarish, the reference of an inuential friend. Journalists use sifarish a lot; occasionally they are called on
to dispense it too.
Late one night, shortly after the
last election, I got a surprise phone call
from a ruling party ofcial. Previously
chatty and relaxed, he spoke in a loud
and oddly deliberate voice. Do you
remember that place you mentioned
last night the Cat House? he said. I
remembered no such thing. Well, the
police have turned up, he continued.
And I was hoping you might have a
word with them. Seconds later the
line dropped; I didnt call back.
Two days later the papers carried
reports of a police raid on a speakeasycum-brothel in a smart part of Islamabad, called the Cathouse. They seized
dozens of bottles of liquor and arrested
Russian and Chinese women, and a
number of punters including a newly
elected ruling party Member of Parliament and his entourage, including my
friend. But they were released without
charge, the reports noted, after a
phone call from a higher-up in government.
I thought that was the end of the
matter until a police video of the raid
surfaced on the Internet some months
later. It showed ofcers storming into
the Cathouse, arguing with Russian
women and, at one point, a middleaged man in a crowded corridor,
shouting into his phone. Do you remember that place you mentioned last
night? says my friend, The Cathouse?
Such laughs have been regrettably
rare. When I arrived in 2004, Islamabad was a somnolent, reliably dull city.
By night, the sons of the rich dragraced their daddys cars along deserted
streets, swerving to avoid wild boars
ambling from the bushes. Foreigners
mocked the capital for its provincial
feel. Islamabad half the size of a
New York graveyard but twice as dead
went the diplomats tired gag as white-

FAROOQ NAEEM /AFP

JANUARY 13, 2012

gloved waiters served gin and tonic on

manicured lawns.
Then the Taliban came to town. It
started with the bloody siege of the
Red Mosque complex in July 2007,
just before Pakistans 60th birthday.
Bullets zipped through the leafy
streets; I dusted off my ak jacket.
Then came the bombs: at markets,
check posts, the naval headquarters,
U.N. ofces, the ve-star Marriott Hotel. Up the street from my house, Benazir Bhutto gave speeches from behind
barbed wire, during a brief-lived house
arrest. Weeks later she drove out to
Rawalpindi,
where
she
was
assassinated.
Today the blasts have stopped,
mostly, but the city is cloistered in concrete. Fortied walls rise over the
streets, vehicles slalom through elaborate check posts, hotel entrances resemble prisons with gold-buttoned
guards. Embassies are retreating into a
sandbagged, Green Zone-style enclave; the presidency and even the ISI
headquarters are similarly isolated.
That, however, is just the cosseted
capital the real pain has been felt
elsewhere. Pakistan has paid a high
5 8

F R O N T L I N E

blood price for what my colleague Jason Burke calls the 9/11 wars. Since
2001, up to 5,000 Pakistanis have died
in more that 300 suicide attacks; the
victims range from toddlers to threestar generals. Another 13,000 have
been wounded.
This is partly the legacy from the
militarys decades-old dabbling in Islamist extremism, but for most Pakistanis the culprit is America.
Television shows zz with antiAmerican anger; many say the Ally
from Hell epithet applies to the U.S.,
not them. Things have never been
worse: outrage at the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers in a murky border incident triggered a blockade on North
Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)
supplies, the closure of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) drone base
and the boycott of a conference on the
future of Afghanistan and that is just
in the last fortnight.
Washington, meanwhile, is moving to restrict $700 million in aid. The
relationship is beset by frustrations
and misunderstandings on both sides,
but the net effect is that Pakistanis are
more profoundly isolated from the

JANUARY 13, 2012

WH E N A PO W E R F UL

bomb blast devastated the ve-star Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on September 20, 2008.

outside world than they have been in

decades. This cannot be good.
Many Pakistanis educated, ambitious, modern resent being lumped
in with the terrorists. Why dont you
write about the other Pakistan? is a
frequent refrain other being the
country of software companies, pizza
dinners, effervescent art shows and
quality literature. When I could, I did,
with a tendency towards the counterintuitive: the booming brewery across
the street from military headquarters;
the transvestite civil rights movement,
the punk rock bands and oxygen bars
and rambunctious polo tournaments
in the heights of the Hindu Kush. But
perhaps the most memorable experiences were rooted in the rich cultural
and religious heritage. One of my best
trips was in Sehwan Sharif in Sindh, a
glorious Su festival on the banks of
the Indus with a mesmeric mix of party
and prayer a spectacle to make the
head spin and the heart sing.
Still, there is no getting around it:
Pakistan is beset with problems that
no amount of jolly beer stories or whir-

ling dervishes can remedy. It is, as a

psychologist might say, a country with
serious issues. Most are decades old
the overweening army, the confused
place of Islam, the covert support for
jehad, deep-rooted corruption, the
poisoned bond with America. Resolving them has never been so urgent.
One reason is Afghanistan. As
Western troops draw down by 2014,
Pakistan can help construct a stable
future for the war-ravaged country or
spoil a deal it dislikes. But beyond that,
it is the internal stability of Pakistan
that is more worrying. It is riven by
ethnic, tribal and political fault lines,
which, in turn, are being exacerbated
by galloping population growth and
deepening poverty. Turmoil in a country with at least 120 nuclear warheads
and a projected population of 300 million people by 2030 could make Afghanistan look like a walk in the park.
Talk of a nuclear Somalia is overstated, but you get the point.
Yet there is little sign of revolution.
As the Arab spring swept the Arab nations, Pakistan was quiet because, in a
F R O N T L I N E

5 9

sense, it already has what others are

demanding: elections. The problem is
that few like the results. Asif Ali Zardari, the accidental President, suffers a
crippling legitimacy decit driven by
perceptions of corruption and a more
fundamental struggle for supremacy.
Just a few years ago the Army chief,
General Ashfaq Kayani, mused to the
U.S. Ambassador about the possibility
of a coup. In early December, Zardari
suddenly ew to Dubai, triggering
fresh speculation that such an upset
was about to happen. The hype seems
unfounded, and Zardari says he will
soon return. But few doubt Kayani is
the real power.
Will ordinary Pakistanis tire of this
power game? While there is no sign of
a spring tide, millions of tiny waves are
lapping the shores of despair. In October, Raja Khan, an unemployed man
from Sindh province, travelled hundreds of miles to Islamabad. Standing
outside Parliament he doused himself
in kerosene, then struck a match.
Hours later, racked with pain, the 23year-old died. Poverty had ground him

World Affairs/Pakistan
down, Khan said in a farewell note. As
his cofn was nailed shut, his wife gave
birth to their third son. His elderly
father cried out: Oh, Zardari, where
are you?
It is not just Pakistan over the
seven years foreign correspondence
changed drastically, too. In 2004, The
Guardian focussed on U.K. readers;
today, through the Internet, our audience is at once global and intensely
local. Pakistanis leap on every story,
scrutinising and commenting, particularly on Twitter, a medium many
have embraced with gusto. It helps to
project less obvious stories, such as a
feature on the appalling wave of alleged state-sponsored killings in Balochistan earlier in 2011. But the
intriguing feedback I received came in
the form of an old-fashioned letter.
Charles Burman was 92 years old, a
former British Army signals sergeant
who had fought a long-forgotten colonial campaign in the tribal belt in the
1930s and 1940s. In wobbly handwriting, he sent a fascinating account of his
experiences; Waziristan was pretty
dangerous back then, too, it turns out.
Not everyone liked the coverage.
Fatima Bhutto, niece of the assassinated Benazir Bhutto, once suggested I
was on the PPP payroll, referring to
the government party; pro-government blogs suggested I was peddling
the ISI line; the ISI-monitored my
phone calls and occasionally rang to
voice its own displeasure. The U.S.
military in Afghanistan blacklisted me
briey; the Taliban called with a ransom demand for a kidnapped hostage;
Pervez Musharraf threatened to sue.
That was all ne multi-directional
criticism is a compliment but sometimes the story came a little too close.
In 2008 a Guardian xer was abducted and tortured while investigating a story on intelligence agency
abduction and torture. In 2010, for a
few nail-biting hours, a close friends
father was caught up in a brutal gun
attack on a mosque belonging to the
minority Ahmadi community in Lahore. He survived but more than 100
others died. The bombings took a toll.
A few minutes after the 2008 suicide

bombing of the Marriott, a hotel where

I got my hair cut and had coffee with
contacts, I found myself standing in
the rubble, dazed by the enormity of
the atrocity. A giant crater occupied
the park, staff in bloodstained uniforms stumbled through the lobby,
hunting for survivors, orange ames
licked the ash-laden sky. Blood
squelched underfoot.
Retreating outside I found a preppy looking young man sitting on the
verge, staring numbly into the inferno.
His name was Ehsan Peerzada and he
was 19 years old, articulate and educated, the son of a senior civil servant. In
other circumstances, I might have interviewed him for a story on savvy,
westernised Pakistanis. Now he railed
in a stream of invective against everyone Islamist extremists, Americans,
drone strikes struggling to make
sense of it all. Its not fair, he mumbled. Its not fair.
It is not all darkness; away from
the bang-bang, life in Pakistan can be
richly rewarding. Ive been humbled by
inspiring gures, traversed jaw-dropping landscapes and attended some
wild parties, on one occasion with a
roomful of transvestites. Where else
can you nd yourself with a bearded,
joint-rolling character, as I once did in
Peshawar,
nicknamed
Mullah
Omar? Even the news can be fun.
Some years ago the cricket board issued a press release detailing genital
warts of its errant star, Shoaib Akhtar.
These days, bomb stories vie for space
with Veena Malik, a daring actress
who appeared topless wearing nothing
but a tattoo that read ISI. Veena Malik has denounced the pictures, claiming but of course that they are the
product of conspiracy.
RICH COMPLEXITY

I hoped that my reporting portrayed

the rich complexity of a society that,
below the surface, dees its stereotypes. But on some occasions there was
just nothing to be said. A few months
ago I visited a house in Rawalpindi
with a giant poster over the windows,
depicting a heroic warrior on a gallant
white steed. The warrior was Mumtaz
6 0

F R O N T L I N E

JANUARY 13, 2012

Qadri, the police bodyguard who

gunned down the Punjab Governor
Salmaan Taseer in January 2011, and
this was his house.
Outside, young children shouted
slogans for Qadri, a curly bearded extremist who killed Taseer because he
championed the case of a poor Christian woman who had been prosecuted
under the countrys notorious blasphemy laws. Others joined them, protesting against Qadris prosecution for
murder. The air was thick with talk of
persecution. Qadri is a great martyr,
said one man. What he did is permitted by Islam. Then the crowd poured
through the streets and on to the highway leading to Islamabad. The police
closed the road and watched.
The celebration of Qadri, a deluded fanatic, was deeply depressing. So
was the fact that nobody dared raise
their voice against his supporters, not
even the government. Instead, the
judge who sentenced Qadri has ed
Pakistan. Aasia Bibi, the Christian at
the heart of the furore, remains in jail.
And Taseers son, Shahbaz, has been
kidnapped probably by Qadri sympathisers. An ugly spectacle, it betrays
questions about something deeply unhealthy at the core of Pakistani society.
Still, many Pakistanis have similar
doubts. There is a striking amount of
national introspection in a hearteningly vibrant press. But which way out of
the quagmire? Imran Khan, the cricket-star-turned political sensation, says
he has the answers. He exudes the condence of a man who believes his time
has come. But his ideas are controversial and, critics say, naive.
People often ask the most basic
question about Pakistan: will it survive? The question has been going
round for decades; the naysayers inevitably silenced. Is the current situation
any more precarious? The country has
deep stores of resilience, but is more
vulnerable to external shocks than ever
before. One thing, however, is clear:
inshallah may have worked until now,
but it is no longer enough.

Note: Declan Walshs book Inshallah

Nation is out next year.
Guardian News & Media 2011

India & China

JANUARY 13, 2012

Troubled equations
The postponement of the latest round of India-China border talks does not mean
that all is not well with the bilateral relations. B Y J O H N C H E R I A N

THE eleventh-hour decision by Beijing to postpone the India-China border talks, which were
scheduled for November 28, seems to have caught
New Delhi off guard. Dai Bingguo, the senior-most
ofcial of the State Council of the Peoples Republic
of China, was to head the Chinese delegation to New
Delhi that was to hold talks with Indias National
Security Adviser, Shiv Shankar Menon. Both of them
are the designated Special Representatives of their
respective governments tasked with nding a solution to the long-running border row.
Indias Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said
that China had objected to the holding of the Global
Buddhist Congregation 2011 in which the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, was to give the
concluding speech. New Delhi had insisted that the
Buddhist meet was a purely spiritual event and had
no political connotations. The MEAs Public Diplomacy Division was the co-sponsor of the conference.
Scholars and religious leaders from 31 countries
attended the conference held from November 27 to
30. The star of the show was the Dalai Lama. It was
the rst time that leaders representing the three
main branches of Buddhism came together for such
a high-prole international event.
Although the Indian government formally continues to treat the Dalai Lama as a spiritual leader,
the Chinese side views him purely as the leader of the
Tibetan exile movement out to divide the country.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, speaking
after the postponement of the border talks, reitF R O N T L I N E

V.K. SINGH /AFP

Chinas unhappiness over Tibetan

spiritual leader the Dalai Lamas
speech at a Buddhist meet in India
was behind the decision. But Indias
External Affairs Ministry ofcials
insist that bilateral relations were on
a good footing until recently.
Indias Chiefs of Staff
Committee and Chief of Naval Staff, with General
Ma Xiaotian, Deputy Chief of General Staff of
Chinas PLA, during the fourth India-China Annual
Defence Dialogue in New Delhi on December 9.

ADMIRAL NIRMAL VERMA,

erated that Beijing considered the Dalai Lama as

one who has been engaged in separatist activities for
a long time under the pretext of religion. An article
put out by the Chinese news agency Xinhua blamed
the Dalai Lama for inciting the suicides by 11 Tibetan
monks in the past few weeks. The monks had, in
separate incidents, carried out self-immolation protests in the western Chinese province of Sichuan.
The Dalai Lamas statement last year that Arunachal Pradesh and the town of Tawang there are
integral parts of India had also angered Beijing. The
Tawang monastery is among the most sacred places
of worship for Tibetan Buddhists. New Delhi has so
far been careful not to allow the Tibetan leader to
question directly Chinese sovereignty over the Tibetan Autonomous Region. The Chinese government
has also been signalling its unhappiness to the Indian government at the deferential treatment being
accorded to the Dalai Lama. Beijing has objected to
the meeting of the Tibetan spiritual leader with the
Indian Prime Minister and other senior ofcials.
The indenite postponement of the border talks
has indicated that the Chinese side is toughening its
diplomatic posture towards New Delhi. Beijings decision came only a week after Prime Minister Man6 1

JANUARY 13, 2012

ADNAN ABIDI /REUTERS

RITU RAJ KONWAR

an ofcial. Reports appearing in the

Indian media about regular border incursions were not based on facts on the
ground, said highly placed Indian ofcials. They added that effective mechanisms are in place to prevent
untoward incidents happening on the
LAC. The ofcials also denied that the
two countries were competing for inuence in the region and insisted that
India was not interested in raising tensions at the behest of outside powers.
They pointed out that bilateral trade
had grown signicantly this year. China is already Indias biggest trading
ON THE I N D I A - C H I N A border, Indian troops at a location situated at a height
partner. Ofcials admit that Chinese
of 4,800 metres, 35 km from Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh. A le picture.
companies are very competitive and
The two governments were busy are deservedly active in many key secmohan Singh met with his Chinese
counterpart Wen Jiabao at the Associ- preparing a Working Mechanism for tors of the Indian economy.
Though there are differing strateation of Southeast Asian Nations Consultation and Coordination on
(ASEAN) summit in Bali, Indonesia. Border Affairs, when the border talks gic perceptions on neighbouring counThe last round of border talks was held got postponed. However, the high-lev- tries especially regarding Pakistan
a year ago on the sidelines of the last el defence and security dialogue be- India and China have been cooperatASEAN summit in Hanoi, Vietnam. At tween the two countries continues to ing on key issues in various internathat time, the two Prime Ministers had be on track. The Deputy Chief of the tional forums such as the World Trade
asked their Special Representatives to Peoples Liberation Army (PLA), Ma Organisation (WTO) and the United
press ahead with the framework ne- Xiaotian, led the Chinese military del- Nations. The two countries are part of
the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South
gotiations. The two sides had agreed egation for talks on December 9.
Indian ofcials admit that resolv- Africa (BRICS) grouping, which is
on the political parameters and guiding principles that would provide the ing the border issue is going to be a emerging as a counterweight to the
framework for the talks during Pre- long-drawn-out affair. Large sectors of West in international affairs. There are
mier Wens visit to India in 2005. Al- the Line of Actual Control (LAC) re- ongoing consultations on issues affectready, 14 meetings have taken place main undelineated. According to of- ing the West Asian region. Both counbetween the Special Representatives cials in New Delhi, differences in tries depend on oil from the region to
of the two countries on the border is- perception will persist on large areas of keep their economies running. Indian
sue. Chinas top expert on India, Ma disputed territory until the LAC is de- ofcials blame the West for hyping up
Jiali, has said that the border dispute lineated and it is unrealistic to expect a the so-called rivalry between the two
countries. As an illustration, they cite
was the most important issue between breakthrough at this juncture.
the Western media reUntil recently, MEA
the two countries, surpassing issues
portage on an incident in
such as maritime and economic ofcials were insisting
the South China Sea inthat bilateral relations
competition.
volving an Indian naval
In March this year, Prime Minister were on a good footing.
ship and the Chinese naManmohan Singh and Chinese Presi- This was contrary to the
val authorities. A leading
dent Hu Jintao announced the re- overblown reportage in
U.S. newspaper had resumption of high-level defence sections of the Indian
ported that there was a
interaction and the starting of a high- media about worsening
confrontation after the
level economic dialogue. India sus- ties. The ofcials played
Indian ship was told to
pended defence exchanges in 2010 af- down stories of border inleave the disputed water the Chinese government issued a cursions and noted that
ters. No such confrontastapled visa to a senior Indian Army military patrols from both
tion took place, aver
ofcer serving in Kashmir. For some sides inadvertently crossIndian ofcials.
years now, China has been issuing sta- ed the unmarked borders.
There was also a conpled visas to citizens hailing from Jam- Not a single bullet has THE D ALA I LAM A at
troversy of sorts regardmu and Kashmir and Arunachal been red in the past 30 the Global Buddhist
ing the contract signed
Pradesh. China views both the Indian years along the LAC by ei- Congregation 2011, in
by the Indian oil compather side, noted an Indi- New Delhi.
States as disputed territories.
6 2

F R O N T L I N E

HWEE YOUNG HOW/POOL /VIA BLOOMBERG

JANUARY 13, 2012

(FR OM L E F T ) PR I ME Minister Manmohan Singh, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Chinese President Hu Jintao,
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, and South African President Jacob Zuma during the BRICS summit in Sanya,
China, on April 14. The group is emerging as a counterweight to the West in international affairs.

ny ONGC-Videsh and Vietnam to explore jointly two blocks off the disputed Spratly Islands in the South
China Sea. The area is claimed by both
Vietnam and China. China had objected to the deal. The Chinese Foreign
Ministry spokesman had stressed on
the indisputable sovereignty of his
country over the South China Sea and
expressed the hope that foreign countries would not get involved in the dispute. For countries outside the
region, we hope they will respect and
support countries in the region to solve
this dispute through bilateral channels, the spokesman had said. The
Chinese Communist Party newspaper,
in an editorial, accused India and Vietnam of reckless attempts in confronting China. Indian ofcials deny that
China had presented a diplomatic demarche that oil exploration in the
South China Sea be stopped. At the
Bali ASEAN summit, Manmohan
Singh had said that it was Indias
commercial right to explore for oil
and gas in the South China Sea.
China is warily watching the recent
Indian and American moves along its
borders. India is being increasingly
viewed as a de facto ally of the West
after the signing of the India-U.S. nuclear deal. The U.S., India and Japan
are to hold a trilateral summit in
Washington soon. China feels threatened by the heightened level of activity
in the South China Sea and around its
borders. The Western media are talking about a new great game unfold-

ing in the region. The Barack Obama

administration in the U.S. is encouraging India to follow a more aggressive
Look East policy. Beijing feels that
there is some amount of coordination
between Washington and New Delhi
on East Asia.
The Peoples Daily recently warned
India about the price to be paid for
taking what America offers. The recent statement of Australian Foreign
Minister Kevin Rudd backing a trilateral military pact between his country,
the U.S. and India is indicative of the
new contours of alliances that are
emerging in the region. Australia also
announced that it had removed the
ban on exporting uranium to India.
Australia until now had insisted on
India signing the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) before it could
sell uranium for the latters nuclear
reactors. China is helping Pakistan
build new nuclear reactors.
The message sent by Malabar
2007, the joint military exercise involving the navies of the U.S., India,
Australia, Singapore and Japan in the
Bay of Bengal, has not been lost on
China. At the 2011 ASEAN summit,
the U.S. led the chorus against the
emerging China threat. Interestingly,
U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta
had earlier described both India and
China as potential rivals who challenged American interests in the region. Before he reached Bali for the
summit, President Obama had loudly
declared in Canberra (Australia) that
F R O N T L I N E

6 3

the U.S. was a Pacic power and was

here to stay. His administration also
announced plans to station 2,500 U.S.
marines in Australia to assist U.S. allies and their interests in the region.
Around the same time, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on a visit
to the region, was busy assuring allies
such as the Philippines that her country supported their territorial claims in
the disputed waters of the South China
Sea. The U.S. has huge military bases
in Japan and Korea. China may be
viewing Indias foray into the South
China Sea as part of the Western stratagem to needle it. Its fears have a basis.
The U.S. Defence Departments report
to the Congress in August notes that
China would face great difculty if
threats arose to the U.S. shipping
through the South China Sea and the
Straits of Malacca. Chinese commentators have been saying that the U.S.
should not treat the South China Sea
as an American lake.
China feels further threatened by
the fast pace of the events unfolding in
Myanmar. The sudden thaw in the relations between the military-dominated government and Washington has
made Beijings antennae go up. China
is Myanmars biggest trading partner,
but there are signs that the relationship is fraying a bit. Recently, the
Myanmar government suspended the
$3.6-billion China-funded Myitsone
dam project. China does not want another unfriendly country along its long
borders.

Travel

JANUARY 13, 2012

Gloriously wild
Canoeing down the Kapuas river in the
deep jungles of Indonesian Borneo.
TEXT & PHOTOGRAPHS BY SUDHA MAHALINGAM

Even as your eyes take in chlorophyll

that comes in a range of shades and
shapes, your ears are tuned to the
irresistible cacophony that rules
the rainforest. It either pours
or drips and you are perpetually
drenched to the bone.
THE Kapuas may not be as well known as the
Cauvery river, but is as wide and impressive. Its delta
is a tangle of tributaries, each as wide as the parent
river itself, and spreads over several kilometres. At
1,143 km, the Kapuas, originating in the highlands of
central Kalimantan and owing west into the South
China Sea, is the longest and biggest river on the
island of Borneo, Indonesia. Unlike the Cauvery or
the myriad other great rivers that ow through our
planet, the Kapuas seems to support few human
settlements, at least in this part of Indonesian Borneo called Kalimantan Barat (or West Kalimantan.
The entire Indonesian portion of the Borneo island is
referred to as Kalimantan in Indonesia). No ourishing civilisations have ever been found on its banks,
no ancient ruins, no archaeological nds to challenge
historians, and not even such modern townships that
one finds in almost every corner of the earth. Could it
be that the Kapuas holds brackish water, which can
support little more than mangroves? I bend over the
side of my tiny boat and scoop up a handful of water
to taste it. It tastes different, but not brackish.

Series

I N TE LUK M E LAN O village,

where the speedboat ride
to the Kubang hill begins.

This is the rst part of

a two-part article.
6 4

F R O N T L I N E

JANUARY 13, 2012

F R O N T L I N E

6 5

JANUARY 13, 2012

Our motorised canoe splices the

tranquil water like an arrow and
speeds merrily, riding the crest like a
graceful swan, creating nary a ripple.
And, of course, there is absolutely no
trafc on this river. Every 10 miles or
so, an occasional village perched on
stilts eets past. Even these villages are
recessed and away from the river and
have no more than a dozen houses, all
thatched and oating on water. You
know there is a village only by a rudimentary jetty with logs bobbing up
and down next to a oating platform
made of bamboo and thatch. We stop
over in one such village. We have to be
hauled over a oating log and virtually
pick our way through oating platforms. Now I know why there are not
many settlements in this part of Kalimantan. There is hardly any land here
on the banks of the river. Huts are
perched on oating and shifting land.
Fishing is the sole sustenance of these
villages. They do not even have regular
transport to go to towns down the riv6 6

F R O N T L I N E

JANUARY 13, 2012

A K A LI M A N T A N VI LLA G E

by the Kapuas.

Huts stand on stilts.

There
is hardly any land on the banks
of the river.

A FLOA TI N G VI LLAG E .

F R O N T L I N E

6 7

the Borneo rainforest

from the top of the Kubang hill.

A VIEW OF

JANUARY 13, 2012

A COLONY OF

proboscis monkeys frolicking on the Kubang hill. (Below) The nest of the orang-utan.

er, only an occasional one like ours

which would give them a ride. That
means they are self-sustaining enough
to remain isolated. We realise we are in
the true wilderness.
Lush mangroves of a unique variety, some with fronds like tropical
palms and others laden with fruits that
look like mangoes but are inedible,
wave a cheery welcome. The horizon is
a perfect arc, splattered by a setting
sun carelessly dripping resplendent
ochre across the rmament. That skies
like this still exist gives you an exhilarating sensation. The setting is tranquil to the point of being surreal. Cool

winds caress your face and transport

you into another world sublime and
primordial. If ever there is something
called bliss, this must be it.
We are on our way back from the
Kubang hill, where we had been, primarily to spot wild orang-utans and
proboscis monkeys. The Kubang hill is
somewhere in the deep jungles of Indonesian Borneo, reached only by the
determined, persistent and hardy traveller. Ours is a motley group of two
teenagers, two seniors and a middleaged woman, all from India. We had
own from Jakarta to Pontianak, a
West Kalimantan town perched right
on the Equator, taken a seven-hour
ferry to Ketapong along the shores of
the South China Sea, driven a couple of
hours in a sports utility vehicle to Sukhadana at the mouth of the Kapuas,
and made it our pit stop to explore the
wilderness around the region.
To get to the Kubang hill, the only
hill for miles around in this at plateau, dense with primordial jungles,
you need to rst drive to a village called
Teluk Melano and from there hire two
speedboats each can take no more
than three, and we are ve. The rst
couple of hours are a peaceful sail
7 0

F R O N T L I N E

through the Kapuas, the only sound

being that of your outboard motor,
with the fronds waving a ceremonial
welcome and the expansive horizon receding further as you move towards it.
At some point you take a right turn
into a mangrove creek where you
transfer to two paddle canoes.
Canoeing in the creeks of the Bornean jungles is an experience of a lifetime. The creek is narrow not more
than eight feet wide in most places
with sticky red residue oating along
the edges, suggesting the presence of
oil. The vegetation overhead is so low
that in many places you have to crouch
on the oor of the canoe to avoid getting tangled in the creepers and
branches. They form a continuous canopy overhead all along the way. The
reections offer a kaleidoscope of
unique designs that no graphic designer can hope to reproduce. There is
deafening silence all around, occasionally rent by the helicopter-like sound
of a hovering hornbill in search of its
dinner or the strident calls of gibbons
feuding over territory. The two young
boys who paddle our canoe avoid making any sound so that we do not scare
away game.

JANUARY 13, 2012

P A DDL IN G T H R O UG H A

mangrove-canopied creek off Teluk Melano.

The setting is straight out of a

ghost movie. Monster roots of mangroves jut out of the water in scary
shapes; they appear double since the
placid waters reect them faithfully.
Even the tree trunks seem to take on a
erce demeanour like the forest in
Noddy books. The overhanging
branches have all but blocked out any
sunlight. We paddle gently and very
slowly looking for movement on the
banks. Ali, one of the paddlers, points
to snakes dangling from the branches
overhead. We can see only their pinkish underbelly. We deftly avoid the
snake-laden branch to paddle deeper
and deeper into the jungle. Occasionally a branch swings violently, testifying to the presence of a primate
perhaps, but we can hardly see anything through the dense foliage. A rotting log felled by a tropical storm
blocks our passage. The two boys climb
down into the knee-deep water and
heave it away from our path. Dar, our

guide, tells us how the previous year a

crocodile had swallowed a local villager. That is when we realise how courageous the two village lads have been,
rolling up their trousers and plunging
into the waters.
After about two hours of paddling,
we reach the Kubang hill camp, a halfbuilt shelter on one bank of the creek.
The Kalimantan forest department
has put up this shelter but has not
completed it yet. It still lacks a roof. It
is most basic with absolutely no amenities, not even water. The bank is all
clay; it is slippery and there are no
steps or even a ladder. We have to
heave ourselves up the slope to reach
this partial shelter.
Earlier in the day, at Sukhadana,
Dar had been resourceful enough to
pick up rice and vegetable stew wrapped in the local Bahasa newspapers.
We perch on fallen logs sprouting iridescent woodchips to savour our
lunch. Butteries in psychedelic colF R O N T L I N E

7 1

ours provide a fetching distraction.

And then begins our ordeal. We
have to reach the top of the hill where
there are massive durian trees bursting
with fruit. Not that spotting durian
takes any effort, your olfactory nerves
sense their presence long before you
spot them. Just follow your nose, as
they say. Easier said than done though.
Each of us has two sticks to help us
navigate this treacherous stretch
through pristine jungle. There is kneedeep water throughout, left behind by
the rains of the supposedly dry season.
No one minds getting wet, especially if
you choose to come to Kalimantan, but
here, at Kubang hill, you do not know
what you are stepping on.
Often it could be a tree-stump that
cuts your toes or tries to throw you off
balance. But more often than not, you
are the target of scores of leeches that
latch themselves on to every part of
your anatomy. We had to take off our
shoes and wade barefoot and almost at

Travel

L U SH M A N G R O V E S W I T H

JANUARY 13, 2012

fronds like tropical palms.

every three metres or so, we would stop

to pick out leeches from between our
toes or from various parts of our feet
and legs. Sometimes they manage to
leap and settle on the neck or hand.
You pluck all those you notice, but
what about all those you did not, especially because their bites are quite
painless? Only the bloody clothes reveal how you have been outwitted by a
mere leech that has had its ll and left
its mark.
But leeches were the lesser of our
problems on the Kubang hill. We
could be stepping on snakes, venomous insects or plain thorny shrubs that
could lacerate your feet. There is nary a
dry spot throughout this trek. Many a
time you step on a pile of metre-deep
sodden leaves with insects lurking underneath. The trees in the jungle are so
tall that you can hardly see the canopy
unless you crane your neck. Finally,
Dar stops and points to a fruiting durian tree. The tree in the wild grows to a
height of over 30 metres and its fruit is
the favourite of orang-utans, gibbons

and macaques. But all you can see on

top is a hairy blur and a eeting ash of
fur which Dar says is an orang-utan.
Despite tiptoeing to the spot, the big
ape seems to have sensed our presence
and with one swing of the branch, vanishes. All we are left with, after all this
effort, is a violently shaking branch
and a few durian peels, spiky and
mushy, on the ground.
But orang-utan or no orang-utan,
this forest is gloriously wild, a true
feast for the senses. Even as your eyes
take in chlorophyll that comes in a
range of shades and shapes, your ears
are tuned to the irresistible cacophony
that rules the rainforest. Strange bird
calls resound at sunset while insects
set up their own orchestra. It either
pours or drips, and you are perpetually
drenched to the bone. Almost every
other tree seems to sport an orangutan nest a leafy pile that the primates make every night to lie on, but
we cannot sight the beast. We spot
quite a few gibbons. Soon it is time for
us to turn back since the forest shelter
7 2

F R O N T L I N E

is not yet ready and there is no way of

camping in this waterlogged jungle. So
we reluctantly hop on to our canoes
and paddle our way back through the
same vine-festooned creek with its
weird and varied ora and fauna. Once
we reach the Kapuas river, we have a
riot of proboscis monkeys darting from
branch to branch, in an effort to catch
the last of their supper before nightfall.
Our hotel in Sukhadana is a traditional Kalimantan structure perched
on stilts and jutting out into the sea. Its
walls are decorated with colourful and
intricate rush mats woven by villagers
in isolated hamlets. The hotel is surrounded by green expanse on three
sides and an inscrutable grey sea on
the fourth. We dine by moonlight on a
wooden deck that overlooks the sea. In
the morning, the low tide leaves behind sea snakes and scores of mud
skippers; the latter entertain us with
their mesmerising courtship dance.
Mudskippers are amphibians that use
their pectoral n on land and are quite
at ease swimming in and out of slush.

books

JANUARY 13, 2012

Morals and progress

The author applies Gandhian principles in his collection of essays to show why
ethics should become the basis for economic development. B Y C . T . K U R I E N
OOKS on ethics are rare
to come by. Books on ethics by economists are still
rarer. Apart from Amartya Sens On Ethics and
Economics (1987) there is not any that
comes to mind immediately. This is
not the only reason for the signicance
of M.V. Nadkarnis book. Nadkarni the
economist is a philosopher too, well
acquainted with both Western and Indian philosophy. Writing from a
Gandhian perspective, Nadkarni is
more rooted in Indian philosophy.
Even those who are not familiar
with ethics as a eld of inquiry will
know that it is related to how one orders ones life. Sen, writing on ethics
and economics, had pointed out that
for Socrates and Aristotle as well as for
Kautilya the basic ethical question
was, How should one live? That is a
broad enough question indeed and
hence, as Nadkarni points out, will
deal not only with specic issues such
as economic development and environment, but also with broader ones
such as humanism and religion.
But Nadkarni goes a step further.
He takes the position that both in the
Indian concept of dharma and in the
Western approach to ethics as moral
philosophy, ethics is much more than a
guide to good conduct. Ethics as a eld
of inquiry, he points out, is the quest
for determining what is virtuous. It is
in this sense that Bertrand Russell
considered it a science. But since life
consists of relationships, Nadkarni
prefers to call ethics a social science
which may not have the kind of precision that physical sciences claim to

IN REVIEW

Ethics for Our Times: Essays

in Gandhian Perspective by
M.V. Nadkarni; Oxford
University Press, 2011;
pages 262, Rs.650.
have, but is very much an ordered line
of reasoning and inquiry leading to
propositions that can be generalised.
As the Gandhian perspective informs Nadkarnis essays, his treatment
of Gandhis position deserves special
attention. Truth and non-violence
were the guiding principles of Gandhis life and hence the essential principles of his ethics. He practised these
twin principles in his personal life and
put them forward as the basis for social
life. The connection between truth as
the principle for living and as the foundation for ethics can be seen from its
Sanskrit equivalent satya, which is derived from the verb sat, which means
to exist. It is in this sense that truth is
F R O N T L I N E

7 3

the essence of being and of ethics. Ethics as moral truth is inclusive of nonviolence, honesty, simplicity, self-control, equity and justice. Truth is also
the basis of knowledge. Says the German philosopher Herbert Marcuse: If
a man has learned to see and know
what really is, he will act in accordance
with truth. It is this commitment to
truth that made every aspect of Gandhis life an experiment with truth.
Satya led Gandhi to ahimsa as its
practical or applied principle. Ahimsa
for him was not merely abjuring violence, but represented the positive virtues of kindness, compassion and care.
In this sense ahimsa was complementary to truth, the two becoming two
sides of the same coin. Because of this
intimate link between truth and ahimsa, for Gandhi there was also an organic unity between ends and means.
Nadkarni applies these Gandhian
principles to indicate why ethics
should become the basis for economic
development. From this perspective,
economic development cannot be
merely technological progress or the
increase in things though both these
may be necessary. To be meaningful
and lasting, it will have to be the development of people, or human development in the broadest sense. Gandhi
would have endorsed Amartya Sens
view that development must aim at
enabling all people, including (and especially) the weak and the differently
abled, to achieve the fullness of their
capabilities. For this to become a reality, much more than increases in income or even provision for individual
advancement is required. There has to

JANUARY 13, 2012

be a collective effort, for in its absence

the very process of development would
become distorted with the few becoming acquisitive and the many being left
untouched or even being pushed into
adverse conditions. While Nadkarni
emphasises this, he does not go into
the necessary collective conditions.
Gandhi on moral grounds urged those
with excess resources to treat these as
trust being held for the common good,
but there is hardly any historical evidence to prove that this would become
effective either through individual decisions (though there are some noble
exceptions) or on the basis of public
appeals alone.
It is being recognised that in the
process of economic development special consideration will have to be given
to the environment. That indiscriminate use of natural resources can lead
to depletion and damage is now widely
accepted as a matter of global concern.
And even though there are no clear
specic measures to avoid future catastrophes, there have been several
rounds of discussions and negotiations
to move forward with caution.
But there is a more basic question:
is the only or even the most important
reason to take nature seriously the fact
that it is becoming limitational? We
have the cultural tradition of referring
to the earth as Mother Earth. Is this
just a matter of reverence or is there a
robust ethical basis for the respectful
treatment of nature? To pose the question more sharply: human beings, of
course, are dependent on nature and
animals for their survival and well-being, but is that the only reason to respect nature and animals, or do they
have rights of their own just as humans
have their rights? To Nadkarni, that is
the ethical question and his answer is
clearly in the afrmative. If the basic
aspect of ethical concerns is the transcendence of narrow self-interest and
taking the interest of others also into
account, these others must include
the animal kingdom and nature as
well. That is Nadkarnis position and
he nds support both from Gandhi
and the Bhagwad Gita. The reach of
ones caring for others in thought and

Commitment to
truth made
every aspect of
Gandhis life
an experiment
with truth.
action becomes the measuring rod of
ones moral standing, says Nadkarni.
There are bound to be situations
where decision-making will become
difcult if this approach is taken seriously, admits Nadkarni. What must be
ones approach to forests, for instance?
Should it favour nature as was shown
in the decision regarding the Silent
Valley, or is it legitimate to destroy a
part of nature for the sake of human
welfare? Should rivers be let to take
their course, or is it acceptable to divert
their course, again to benet human
beings? In such instances, the ethical
question is not merely nature versus
humans but who among the humans
must have priority: the urban dwellers
who will have assured water supply, or
the humans upstream whose dwellings will have to be uprooted?
Another dilemma that Nadkarni
poses is that we who claim to have a
rich cultural heritage which is ecofriendly do not seem to have any hesitation in polluting our rivers, including the ones considered to be sacred,
and in callously piling up garbage in
public places in urban areas.
One of the essays in the collection
is a discourse on justice, taking off
from Amartya Sens The Idea of Justice. Indicating that while ethics includes
compassion,
courtesy,
generosity, tolerance, forgiveness and
equanimity, it is chiey justice because
justice is the basis of collective life. A
moral order or dharma is necessary to
sustain society. That is why justice has
received the attention of philosophers
of the East as well as the West. As a
background to a critical appraisal of
Sens position, Nadkarni pays special
7 4

F R O N T L I N E

attention to the philosophers Immanuel Kant and John Rawls. Sen admittedly builds on Rawls emphasis on
rights, but Nadkarni brings into the
discourse the traditional Indian concern for duty, especially Krishnas advice to Arjuna in the Bhagwad Gita
about the importance of doing ones
duty irrespective of the consequences.
Sen would not accept this position especially if it is raised to the status of
niti, or absolute standard of justice.
Sens emphasis is on nyaya, or realisable justice. Nadkarni nds the sense
of duty a more reliable guide for action
as duties are more directly enforceable
than rights.
To show that the concern for ethics
is not conned to some higher realm
removed from the ordinary pursuits of
life, Nadkarni moves to its application
in social science research. Understandably research in general, and social
science research in particular, is on
specic topics. Narrowing down the
scope of inquiry is a standard procedure in research. But Nadkarni points
out that unless one keeps the larger
domain in mind, inquiry into restricted aspects will tend to get distorted.
He emphasises the need for a holistic
approach in social science research.
Nadkarni quotes Tagore: When we
see the wholeness of a thing from afar
that is true seeing: in the near view
trivial details engage the mind and
prevent us from seeing the whole, for
our powers are limited. In fact, this
emphasis on wholeness can be traced
back to the Gita. According to the Gita,
knowledge that synthesises, which
views the object of knowledge holistically, and nds what is unifying,
common or universal from the diversity of particulars, and sees how different parts relate to each other is the
highest form of knowledge. Meaningful research is totalising in essence.
Nadkarni deals with other issues
also, conceptual as well as practical,
thus demonstrating that ethics must
be considered not as the exclusive domain of philosophers and savants, but
as a guide to thought and action for all
who take life seriously. Therein lies the
value of this collection of essays.

books/review

JANUARY 13, 2012

Response & riposte

The Indian discourse on civilisation was not produced as a parallel to the
discourse of nationhood, but as part of it. B Y B . S U R E N D R A R A O
HE colonial experience of
India has been, among other
things, excitingly or sometimes sickeningly wordy.
The British conquered India
as much and as often with words as
with swords. They had much to say
about the land and the people that
came under their rule, to tell them
what they had been before and what
they would be under their rule. For the
best part of the 19th century they had
the rostrum all for themselves and had
their monologue going, but thereafter,
to the accompaniment of stirring nationalism, Indians began to talk
back. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, in
this brilliant exploratory book, traces
the patterns and rhythms of the Indian
response, which produced a good harvest, both sentimental and intellectual.
If they did not quite trigger a dialogue,
they could at least produce an alternative discourse that increasingly grew
more assured as Indian nationalism
gathered strength.
But the initial British evaluation of
Indian civilisation was polyphonic.
There were curious explorers, critical
missionaries, enthusiastic Orientalists, serious scholars, swaggering dilettantes and a whole lot of people who
wanted to make sense of India. There
was both Indomania and Indophobia,
the former represented by Orientalists
such as Sir William Jones, Charles
Wilkins, H.H. Wilson and their ilk,
and the latter by missionaries who
hoped their gospel would exorcise the
primitive cults and religions of India,
as also the philosophical historian
James Mill, who hoped to order the
British administration differently.
Mills History of British India (1817)
had imperiously evaluated the Indian

IN REVIEW

Talking Back: The Idea of

Civilization in the Indian
Nationalist Discourse by
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya;
Oxford University Press, 2011;
pages 182, Rs.495.
civilisation, both Hindu and Muslim,
and did so censoriously, declaring that
Indians were merely crawling pathetically at the lowest rung. Mills inferences were impudent and he did not
seem to have any serious knowledge of,
or familiarity with, India. Since his
History received ofcial recognition at
the Haileybury College and he himself
got an inuential position in the East
India Company, his judgments
seemed to out-shout the ndings and
views of romantic Orientalists or even
the occasionally sympathetic administrator-historians such as Mounstuart
Elphinstone and Sir Alfred Lyall. They
formed the basis of the imperial theme
of the white mans burden of civilising
Indians.
It was in the tness of things that
F R O N T L I N E

7 5

the earliest graduates from Indian universities should respond to the British
reproaches against Indian civilisation.
Bankimchandra Chatterjee and R.G.
Bhandarkar indeed did so. Inuenced
by the writings of Buckle, Lecky,
Comte, Herbert Spencer and others,
Bankim found that a drive for material
betterment, which propelled Europe
to the pursuit of rationalism and the
cultivation of the natural sciences, was
missing in Indian civilisation. Bankims early writings tended to excoriate
Brahminism
for
this
backwardness, although his later writings contained several tomes on religion and philosophy. While he was
intensely patriotic, he did not nd ancient Indian civilisation an ideal inspiration; he was sure India had many
things to borrow from the West, particularly lessons in modern science
and nationalism.
Bhandarkar was an assiduous Indologist who admired the Rankean
ideal of critical scholarship. He was no
blind admirer of ancient Indian civilisation, or of European scholarship
on it. Reecting the reformist mood of
19th century India, he believed that
without a reform of our social institution real political advance is impossible. He was also happy that some
competent Europeans, the apostles of
a higher and progressive civilisation
had come out to rouse the mind and
conscience of India
The mood, however, did not last
long. Though history had but a feeble
presence among the welter of interests
of Mahatma Gandhi, his iconic little
book Hind Swaraj (1909), written in
10 days while on a ship on his return
from England to South Africa, has
much to say on the theme of civilisa-

JANUARY 13, 2012

tion. Written in the form of a dialogue,

it berates the materialistic, acquisitive
Western civilisation for trampling the
rest of the world under its heels. Indian
civilisation is projected as its antonym,
as it were. The Mahatma owes his debt
to Western thinkers like Ruskin, Thoreau, Tolstoy, Schlegel and others and
yet indulges in gross simplication of
a complex European culture. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya rightly thinks that
here the Mahatma was using the West
as a metaphor for the culture of materialism, of the conquerors. He would
much rather dene civilisation in moral terms.
Rabindranath Tagores engagement with the theme was, however,
much more tortuous, nuanced and
tension-ridden. Melding history with
patriotism, he began with history as
hero worship, but after 1902 increasingly came to contrast the aggrandising propensity of the state-centred
civilisation of Europe with the assimilative genius of India. His famous critique of nationalism (1917) that it
reeked of power and conquest was
made against the backdrop of the First
World War. He declared that India
has never had a real sense of nationalism and though brought up on the
teaching that idolatry of Nation is almost better than reverence for God
and humanity, I believe I have outgrown that teaching. He was critical
of the nationalist adulation of Indias
past, particularly of the caste system,
whose immutability had become an anachronism, for mutability is the law
of life. His ideas of Indias syncretism
underwent changes in the last phase of
his life, and he became increasingly
sceptical of the role of religion. The
forces of casteism, communalism and
purblind traditionalism that stalked
the country were too great for him to
retain faith in the syncretism to which
he was so fondly attached earlier.
In the nationalist perspective, Indian civilisation was often shown to
possess a strong adhesive in Hindu
culture, as may be seen in Radha Kumud Mookerjis The Fundamental
Unity of India (1914) or even Vincent
Smiths Oxford History of India

(1919), though neither was impressed

with the idea of the assimilative chemistry of its civilisation. V.D. Savarkars
notion of Hindutva, on the other hand,
sought to set apart the timeless glory of
Hinduism from the intrusive diversities that beset the country, depriving
the civilisation of its precious exclusivity a wrong screaming out for redress. There were also scholarly
responses to the phenomenon of diversity in the nationalist context, and
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya reminds us
of the archival movement in Maharashtra with which the names of M.G.
Ranade and V.K. Rajwade are associated, as also of the work of Akshay
Kumar Maitreya in Bengal.
SPIRITUAL AND MATERIAL

But mostly the association of Indian

civilisation with spirituality seemed
mulishly insistent, which could be slippery in the context of nationalist activism. Swami Vivekananda, who
interpreted India to the West in nationalist idioms, sought to strike a balance between the spiritual and the
material. For, mere reective spirituality could be a recipe for retreat; what
Indians needed was nerves of steel;
and if Indians needed to learn from the
West, the West too had much to learn
from the East. It was a striking riposte
to the familiar colonial prose. Aurobindo, a revolutionary who turned a
philosopher-sage, developed the same
idea, though at a more abstract level,
and highlighted the difference between the East and the West without
conceding the inferiority of the former.
The most well-known nationalist
portrait of Indian civilisation appeared in Jawaharlal Nehrus Discovery of India (1946), which seemed to
orchestrate the familiar idea of unity in
diversity with occasional poetic exuberance, as if to mask the harsher realities outside the Ahmedabad Fort Jail
in which he wrote the book. But he was
aware of its setbacks. He was aware
that if the caste system had given the
civilisation its continuity, it had also
produced stasis and degeneration.
History for him was not a mirror of
Narcissus but a school of learning. Yet
7 6

F R O N T L I N E

syncretism remained a refrain in many

of the reective histories written on
India after Independence, by Abul Kalam Azad, Sardar K.M. Panikkar, M.
Mujeeb, S. Abid Hussain and others,
carrying the debt of Nehrus Discovery.
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya also follows the trails of evaluation of civilisation in India after Independence, in
terms of its material basis, as D.D. Kosambi had done, or on synchronic
lines, which sociologists like G.S. Ghurye and Nirmal Kumar Bose preferred.
He takes notice of the burgeoning literature on nationalism, guring such
scholars as Ernest Gellner, Benedict
Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm, which
have sought to see nations as civilisations, reaching its reduction absurdum
in Samuel Huntingtons Clash of Civilisations. Edward Saids Orientalism
(1978) highlighted the hegemonic Euro-centrism stalking the world of
knowledge and it has triggered a whole
lot of debate in the post-colonial contexts and thinking. Once dismissed as
a history-less culture, India is now
shown as possessing her own historical
sense and literature by Romila Thapar,
A.K. Warder, David Schulman, Sanjay
Subrahmanyam and others. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya also looks at the critical evaluation of European master
narratives by Dipesh Chakrabarty and
the India-centred thinking that has
gone into it in the writings of Ashish
Nandy and Amartya Sen.
The Indian discourse on civilisation was not produced as a parallel to
the discourse of nationhood, but as
part of it. Civilisation does not suo moto describe itself; it does so only when
it is inspired or provoked by an evaluation from outside. Indias nationhood was also similarly argued out as a
response to its denials. The nationalist
discourse of Indian civilisation was
thus a response-discourse. It had accommodated many facts and hopes,
navet and wish-fullments. They all
go into the making of the nation. Their
real test lies not in their truth value
but in the dynamic forces they released. Talking Back brilliantly brings
out the complex terrain in which history speaks while making it.

books/review

JANUARY 13, 2012

Black and white

A posthumous compilation of Howard Zinns writings that challenge the ingrained
opinions on racial matters. B Y S H E L L E Y W A L I A
OWARD ZINN, an important dissident voice in
America for half a century and one of the most
prominent anti-racist essayists, educators and activists, has
challenged racial inequities as a community organiser, public speaker, and
writer. Having begun his career as the
Chairperson of the History Department in Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia, he came to an early
understanding of upheavals in history
seen in revolutionary movements
which had behind them as impetus not
leaders but people who forced upon
the state the imperative of justice and
responsibility. It being the oldest college for black girls, Zinns early views
of the problem are framed within a
location deeply volatile in its racial discriminatory culture. Incidentally, the
writer and activist Alice Walker was
his student here and spoke highly of
Zinns classroom lectures, which always remained relevant to the outside
world and the demands of freedom
and equality by Southern blacks
soaked in a bloody history. Zinn
writes: I did not see how I could teach
about liberty and democracy in the
classroom and remain silent about
their absence outside the classroom.
He was pained to see around him no
justice and no reason except the air
lled with blood and bullets exploding around the heads of sleeping
children.
Harking back to the Russian civil
war, Zinn remembers Tolstoys words:
To make the individual sacred we
must destroy the social order which
crucies him. His passionate stand
against racial discrimination brought
him close to Martin Luther King and
spurred him to initiate the Student

IN REVIEW

Howard Zinn on Race; Seven

Stories Press, New York;
pages 239, $14.95.
Movement Coordinating Committee
(SMCC). He was dismissed from the
college after seven years for insubordination, a dismissal that became the
impelling force behind his unshakable
pursuit of fundamental humanitarian
principles and rm commitment to
equality. Alice Walker, who also left
the college later, expressed her admiration for Zinn: What can I say that
will in any way convey the love, respect, and admiration I feel for this
unassuming hero who was my teacher
and mentor.
Professor Cornel West writes in the
introduction to the book under review
thus: Zinn looked at history and soF R O N T L I N E

7 7

ciety through the lens of those Frantz

Fanon called the wretched of the earth
poor and working people, women,
gays, lesbians, indigenous people, Latinos, Asians, Jews, Arabs, and especially black people. An activist
throughout, he moved smoothly from
the library to the street, from the ofce
to the jail, from the lecture room to the
political rally.
Standing up against the institutional and structural racism that pervades American society, Zinn, in his
famous book A Peoples History of the
United States, had drawn attention to
history from below, a history where no
one is a bystander but a participant:
History looked at under the surface,
in the streets and on the farms, in GI
barracks and trailer camps, in factories
and ofces, tells a different story.
Whenever injustices have been remedied, wars halted, women and
blacks and native Americans given
their due, it has been because unimportant people spoke up, protested
and brought democracy alive. The
subaltern, thus, can speak, and speak
to powers so as to make a difference.
Therefore, to the question Does history have meaning?, the French philosopher Paul Ricoeurs ambiguous
answer would be quite valid: Yes, insofar as we are able to approach universality and systems; no, insofar as
this universality does violence to the
life of individuals whose singularity always remains invincible.
In this singularity lie the voices of
struggle of the marginalised in America which is mostly absent from history
books. It is this absence that is given
place in Zinns recent book, a compilation of his shorter writings and lectures, in which he gives his readers the
experience of the key moments in his-

JANUARY 13, 2012

tory when some of the bravest and

most effective political acts were the
sounds of the human voice itself. The
collection draws our attention to the
major movements from the periphery
that are not just imbued with words
but raise vital issues concerning racism and class conict.
At the heart of his writings is his
ideology of democratic socialism,
which he describes as socialism that
uses resources for human needs of production based on need rather than on
prot, a roughly equal distribution of
the countrys wealth; there should be
no person without adequate health
care, housing, employment. And there
should be no control of thought or
speech.
HISTORY OF SLAVERY

Examining the history of slavery, it becomes clear that the Declaration of Independence made on July 4, 1776,
upholding the notions of equality, life,
liberty and happiness, has been more
or less a rhetoric that obliterates the
right of the people to alter or abolish
anti-racist, draconian practices. In
spite of the constant dread of the lash,
slaves could not be prevented from
composing their own religious songs of
resistance implying their disagreement with the sermon: If you disobey
your earthly master, you offend your
heavenly Master.
Fugitive slave author Harriet Jacobs has written on the relationship
between the church and slavery and
how religion was used as a tool to prevent slave rebellion. Zinn uses an advertisement which appeared in a
Runaway Slave Newspaper in 1835 to
show how a reward of $100 for Harriet
Jacobs apprehension was one of the
many such announcements intended
for the perpetuation of slavery and blatantly opposed to the idea of freedom
that the American leadership was so
proud of.
Zinn takes up in this hard-hitting
work the bitterness of the contemporary debate over racially charged issues
and racial justice and the general nature and implications of liberalism in a
nation which faces the worrying prob-

lem of intolerance. He maintains that

social justice can be achieved only
through fairness and not through the
principle of colour blindness. It cannot
be denied that people and institutions
mete out treatment to individuals according to their colour though he realises that once the superciality of the
physical is penetrated and seen for
what it is, the puzzle of race loses itself
in whatever puzzle there is to human
behaviour in general. Once you begin
to look, in human clash, for explanation other than race, they suddenly become visible, and even where they
remain out of sight, it is comforting to
know that these non-racial explanations exist, as disease began to lose its
eeriness with the discovery of bacteria,
although the specic problem of identifying
each
bacterial
group
remained.
To evolve an unbiased action plan
for the rights of the minorities, this
paradox of universalism and cultural
autonomy must be taken into account
so that the politics of recognition and
difference forms the basis of a critical
frame that can counter any kind of
cultural imperialism that fails to recognise both marginalised groups and
particular identities. One way out of
this impasse can nudge us towards a
more accommodating liberalism
which cuts down a little on the universalism aspect and gives concessions
for the recognition of cultural groups.
UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS

The concept of universal human rights

has been criticised by some who argue
that these rights reect the anti-communitarian, self-centred individualism
of
the
West
with
a
disproportionate focus on individual
autonomy. It can instead be posited
that communities can exist in modern
Western societies which protect not
only the civil and political rights but
the whole spectrum of individual human rights, including economic rights.
To my question whether he could
elaborate on his becoming class-conscious at an early stage in life, Zinn had
replied, I grew up in a working class
family, saw how hard my father
7 8

F R O N T L I N E

worked, how hard my mother worked,

without becoming prosperous. On the
other hand, I saw in newspapers and
magazines the photos of the rich, and I
could not tell whether they did any
work or not, and when I found out
what kind of work some of them did it
seemed to me dangerous for society.
When I went to work in the shipyard,
long hours, hard work, at little pay I
realised that most of the people on the
planet work hard, with very little
compensation.
The essays in this collection are
interesting although, in many ways,
unsettling as they challenge the ingrained opinions on race matters. The
inuence of race on life in America
cannot be denied. Provocatively and
engagingly put, Zinns arguments and
rst-hand experience compel Americans to take serious cognisance of the
Declaration of Independence as well
as the long tragic history of blood and
bullets inicted on their fellow citizens without any provocation.
The pervasiveness of racism even
when a black occupies the White
House has a subconscious effect on
Americans that can only be altered by
forcing the issue into the open. Zinn
emphasises that white Americans
themselves must be at the vanguard of
the policy shifts essential to remedy
the nations racial discrimination in
crime, health, wealth, education and
more.
Zinn would like individuals to be
treated fairly, and to achieve this, it
would be important to enact colourconscious policies. In a post-racial society, race-bound problems require
race-conscious remedies. The compilation of his writings, though posthumous, indeed makes a heartfelt plea
for true equality, driving out the myth
of racial transcendence in post-Obama
America, with emphasis on the ongoing need for civil rights action in this
century. Zinn sends out a clear admonishment of his countrys rulers:
Men who have no respect for human
life or for freedom or justice have taken
over this beautiful country of ours. It
will be up to the American people to
take it back.

books/in brief

JANUARY 13, 2012

Srinagars grandeur
The two volumes document the built and natural heritage of the historic city of
Srinagar, which was founded over 1,500 years ago. B Y A . G . N O O R A N I
N a sense India has been more
alienated from Kashmir than
Kashmir has been from India.
During the Raj there were some
superb books on Kashmirs beauty by men like Cecil Earl Tyndale-Biscoe, Arthur Neve, Frederick Drew and
others. A small work published in 1888
ranks as a collectors prize. It is Inces
Kashmir Handbook: A Guide for Visitors by Joshua Duke, who had served
as Civil Surgeon in Gilgit and Srinagar.
It was a rewrite of Dr Inces book and
deserves to be reprinted.
These two excellently produced

BOOK FACTS

Shehar-i-Kashmir: Cultural
Resource Mapping of
Srinagar City (2004-05),
Volumes 1 and 2; Indian
National Trust for Art and
Cultural Heritage, J&K
Chapter; pages 888,
Rs.3,500 for the set.
volumes are to be welcomed warmly.
They document and list the built and
natural heritage of the historic city of
Srinagar, which was founded by King
Pravarasena II over 1,500 years ago.
Its history dates back at least to the 3rd
century B.C.

NISSAR AHMAD

INFORMATIVE INTRODUCTION

Srinagar city from the

Hari Parbat Fort built in A.D. 1808.

A VIE W O F

Volume I has an informative introduction by M. Saleem Beg, Convener, Indian National Trust for Art and
Cultural Heritage (INTACH), J & K
Chapter, the moving spirit behind this
project. A former civil servant, the Director General of Tourism, he is steeped in the States cultural history. It is a
treat visiting historic sites in his company listening to his comments on
their signicance. There is a brief survey of history by Prof. R.L. Hangloo;
an essay by Hakeem Sameer Hamdani
on Srinagar; a description of the rich
and varied architectural styles, followed by the meticulous cultural resource mapping spread over both
volumes.
The project began with Romi
Khoslas report: Identication of Architectural Heritage Zone in Srinagar
City in 1989. The process was started
in 2004. Four zones were identied.
The methodology is described clearly.
The results of this prodigious labour
F R O N T L I N E

7 9

are these most informative and excellently illustrated volumes. No such

work exists on any other city of the
entire subcontinent. But then, Srinagar is unlike any other city; it is the
repository of varied inuences.
Saleem Beg and his colleagues
wisely associated the United Nations
Educational, Scientic and Cultural
Organisation (UNESCO) in the work.
It presents in rich authentic detail the
mapping of the architectural and cultural assets of the city of Srinagar, capturing its medieval-world charm. The
work covers the geographic and sociocultural history of Kashmir; the evolution of Srinagar city, settlement pattern and city life; the monumental,
colonial and vernacular architectural
traditions of the region along with various building typologies; the decorative and architectural elements that
dene Kashmiri architecture, along
with pictures; and the architectural
and historical description, condition
assessment and grading of more than
800 listed properties and precincts
with photographs of religious, residential, civic, public, natural and manmade sites, including the historic
Mughal gardens.
The book also includes tables on
major socio-cultural events of the city,
man-made and natural disasters, and
residential neighbourhoods associated
with different arts and crafts of Kashmir. The properties listed in the book
have been mapped on a heritage map
for 130 sq km of the historic city of
Srinagar and its colonial extensions.
The two volumes are more than a
feast for the eyes. They promote
thought. This is a historically and culturally rich city. Time has not served it
well.

books/interview

JANUARY 13, 2012

Biographer of cancer
In conversation with Siddhartha Mukherjee, who won the Guardian First Book
award for The Emperor of All Maladies. B Y D E C C A A I T K E N H E A D
T is the convention of awardsceremony etiquette for the winner to perform a convincing impression of bashful disbelief. The
man I met just hours before he
was awarded the Guardian First Book
award on December 1 has just stepped
off a ight from New York, however,
only an hour ago, and his bearing does
not say What, little old me? Wow! so
much as So what time is it here
anyway?
In fact, he conveys that precise
blend of exhaustion, distraction and
authority instantly recognisable from
any hospital ward in the world. This
should come as no surprise, for he is a
senior oncologist assistant professor
of medicine at Columbia University,
and staff cancer physician at Columbia
University Medical Centre. And yet,
until we met it had seemed scarcely
possible that the author of The Emperor of All Maladies (Scribner, New
York; pages 592) could really be an
actual doctor and not a writer, so exquisitely is his book crafted and paced.
Published a year ago, The Emperor
of All Maladies has won the Pulitzer
Prize for non-ction, been shortlisted
for the National Book Critics Circle
award, and named one of the Top 10
Books of the Year by The New York
Times, Time magazine and Oprah
Winfrey; the sort of success that soars
beyond the wildest heights of literary
ambition into the stratosphere of fantasy. Yet when Siddhartha Mukherjee
talks about his book, it is with a striking air of uninterested detachment. At
rst I put it down to jet lag.
Then I think, no, of course, the
poor man must just be so accustomed
by now to the carousel of plaudits and
prizes and media demands, he has re-

ached the glaze of autopilot. Soon,

though, I realise that is not it either.
Mukherjees impression of reluctant ownership of his own success is, I
suspect, down to a profound sense of
personal insignicance in the face of
his subjects enormity. Mukherjee decided to write a history of cancer when
a terminally ill patient asked him a
simple question: could he explain exactly what it is Im battling? But as
Mukherjee immersed himself in research, the disease quickly began to
assume the characteristics of a personality, and so cancers historian became
its biographer.
He takes us from the earliest records of cancer in 2,500 BC, through
medieval theories of black bile and
bloodletting, on to the surgical butchery of 19th-century mastectomies, performed with no anaesthetic or
penicillin but reckless condence, be8 0

F R O N T L I N E

fore reaching the rollercoaster of 20thcentury medical politics, which swung

between indifference, euphoria and
despair, each wild lurch owing more to
socio-economic fashion than to anything resembling solid science. Mukherjee brings every new medical plot
twist alive by populating the pages
with a vivid cast patients, physicians,
politicians and, at times, himself
whose humanity and fallibility elevate
what might have been a dry medical
textbook into a thriller, thus presenting the publishing world with quite a
category challenge.
I couldnt write a book proposal,
Mukherjee explains, because it was
impossible to explain. How do you explain that therell be a thread of memoir in it, which is small, and then the
backdrop, which is much, much
larger? One of the things about the
book is that the scale shifts very dramatically; youre in a very narrow pinhole an individuals story and
then in something much larger, and
you go back and forth.
The book lives in its seams, it lives
in the connections in the shifts between scale, so it was really like writing
a jigsaw puzzle. How do you t all these
moving parts together? You cant explain that in a book proposal. So the
doctor had another idea. I thought:
you know what, Im just going to write
the book.
After 250 pages, he showed it to
publishers. Their response was very
bipolar, very two-sided. Either publishers said: No ones going to read
about cancer or they said: My God,
why hasnt this book been written before? Some were worried cancer
would scare readers off. To me that
was the wrong response, because if

people are scared, then thats all the

more reason to talk about it.
I confess that when I rst heard
about the book, it struck me as a marketing stroke of commercial genius
for what reader exists in the world who
is unaffected by cancer? Yes, Mukherjee concedes. But its not a feelgood memoir. Its not your plucky,
feelgood cancer memoir.
Instead, he wanted to write an intelligent examination of a complex and
highly technical subject, and yet accessible enough for a total novice to nd it
readable. But Mukherjee knew next to
nothing about the discipline of writing.
So I invented rules, such as you
wont go through two chapters without
meeting a real human character. How
does one write the history of the epidemiology of cigarette smoking, for example which is so abstract, and a
story we all know supercially how
can one write that as if its a discovery,
so that you feel its a discovery? It was
very important to me to write this book
not as an expert. Because writing anything as an expert is really poisonous to
the writing process, because you lose
the quality of discovery. So every time I
felt I knew something particularly well
I tried to unlearn it, and learn new
things.
But how did a literary novice, with
a full-time job and a young family,
teach himself to write so beautifully? I
think the cardinal rule of learning to
write is learning to read rst. I learned
to write by learning to read. He read
everyone from Susan Sontag to Primo
Levi and Mary Shelley, but wrote the
book in 15-minute bursts, snatched
from scrag ends of his working day.
But the book was also a conversation
going on in my head, he quickly adds,
so Id write after thinking for ve
hours.
One of its most arresting observations was inspired by a conversation
between Mukherjee and a friend many
years earlier about the nature of interior and exterior, which returned to
him as he was working on the book.
Every era, it suddenly struck him,
casts cancer in its own image.

The United States in the 1970s was

haunted by Cold War fears of the enemy within and so the big bomb was
replaced by the big C. Human immunodeciency virus (HIV) overshadowed the following decade, and then
the search for cancer-causing viruses
became oncologys new obsession.
Now that we are obsessed with genetics, the focus of research has moved on
to hereditary causes. When a disease
insinuates itself so potently into the
imagination of an era, he writes, it is
often because it impinges on an anxiety latent within that imagination.
If the book has one pre-eminent
message, it is simple: Cancer is not
one disease, but many diseases. A silver bullet that could cure all forms is a
fallacy, he argues, because every cancer is a different disease, demanding
different treatment. We have to stop
talking about cancer, and think about
cancers.
Other central themes are more nuanced. The war on cancer declared by
U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1971,
a convert to the populist campaign of
pressure conducted by a socialite lobbyist called Mary Lasker, was supposed to represent a victory. In fact,
Mukherjee argues, it became responsible for propagating the scientically
baseless delusion that government
money could cure cancer as easily as it
had landed men on the moon. The
simplistic hubris of Laskers slogan
Lets nd a cure for America for its
200th birthday. What a great gift that
would be draws a wry smile from
Mukherjee. But was it all useless hubris? he reects. Absolutely not. This
kind of rhetoric also swept away the
cobweb of nihilism that had so deeply
surrounded cancer.
He is similarly ambivalent about
the impact of Nixons war on cancer on
research methods and funding. Until
then, scientists had been largely free to
pursue their own theories, however
outlandish but the war on cancer
would now be won by bureaucrats demanding goal-orientated research dened by strict parameters.
Nixons war had no place for the
colourful, constitutionally ungovernF R O N T L I N E

8 1

DEBORAH FEINGOLD/AP

JANUARY 13, 2012

S I D D HA R THA M UKHE R J E E . I T

was very important to me to write

this book not as an expert. Because
writing anything as an expert is
really poisonous to the writing
process.
able and haphazardly qualied experimentalists who had dominated the
eld of cancer research until then, and
Mukherjees respect for those earlier
pioneers is palpable throughout his
book.
Does a part of him wish he had
been born earlier, into the early 20thcentury generation working in the wild
west of research? Yes, absolutely. The
National Cancer Institute was literally
called the wild west of cancer, because
they did all these things that would
have been impermissible today. The
professionalisation and specialisation
of medical training today has come at
the cost of inspired idiosyncrasy, he
suspects. We have lost something.
Mukherjee himself belongs to an
altogether different era less amboyantly anarchic, more cautiously
measured. Born to middle-class Indi-

books/interview
an parents in New Delhi in 1970, he
studied at Stanford before winning a
Rhodes scholarship to Oxford, and fell
almost by accident into oncology while
at Harvard. He has that impenetrable
sheen of the Ivy League star effortlessly sophisticated and erudite, but
ultimately rather unknowable but
his aversion to medical dogma is clear.
Still, I cannot help asking for a ruling
on some of the questions most of us
wonder about today. Can a positive
mental attitude, for example, really
cure cancer?
I think it does a nasty disservice to
patients. A woman with breast cancer
already has her plate full, and you want
to go and tell her that the reason youre
not getting better is because youre not
thinking positively? Put yourself in
that womans position and think what
it feels like to be told your attitude is to
blame for why youre not getting better. I think its nasty. But is it true?
No, I think its not true. Its not true.
In a spiritual sense, a positive attitude
may help you get through chemotherapy and surgery and radiation and
what have you. But a positive mental
attitude does not cure cancer any
more than a negative mental attitude
causes cancer.
A lot of my friends worry that stress
is going to give them cancer. I dont
think so. I dont think its true. Theres
a role of the immune system in cancer,
but its not as simple as people make
out. Its not as if you get stressed, your
immune system gets depressed, and all
of a sudden you get cancer. Some cancers are more affected by it, such as
lymphomas. But others for example
breast cancer have very little to do
with the immune system. Theres no
evidence that stress gives you breast
cancer.
And yet we particularly women
have been encouraged to blame ourselves for cancer. Mukherjee cites a
study which found that women with
breast cancer recalled eating a high-fat
diet, whereas women without cancer
did not. But the very same study had
asked both sets of women about their
diets long before any of them developed cancer, and the diet of those who

JANUARY 13, 2012

now had breast cancer had been no

more fatty than the rest. In other
words, women with breast cancer recalled I suspect in an attempt to
essentially blame themselves having
diets high in fat. It tells you how biased
recollection is but also how stigmatised the idea is, even today, because
women think I must be to blame for
something, I must have done something to myself.
When people ask Mukherjee to
name the ve things they should do to
prevent cancer, he tells them: Give up
smoking, give up smoking, give up
smoking, give up smoking, give up
smoking. Like most of us, Ive often
been told that oncologists smoke more
than anyone else but when I ask how
many of his colleagues smoke, he looks
surprised. Now? None. Zero. It used
to be true. But not now.

A positive
mental attitude
does not cure
cancer any
more than a
negative attitude
causes cancer.
What does he make of that other
popular claim that people have cured
themselves of cancer with a diet of fruit
juice and wheatgrass? More power to
them, he shrugs, reaching for his coffee. How does he explain their claims?
We know there are spontaneous
remissions in cancer, its very well documented. Many cancers are chronic
remitting relapsing diseases thats
their very nature. And human beings
are pattern-recognising apes. Its the
secret of our success; we recognise patterns. So we induce patterns; we have
an unbelievably inductive imagination, and we say to ourselves, if the sun
rose in the east for the last 365 days it
must rise in the east tomorrow. So we
8 2

F R O N T L I N E

typically indulge in inductive rather

than deductive reasoning. Its very successful. But the problem with pattern
recognition in this context is that it can
become awed. You might have a
chronic remitting relapsing cancer
and imagine its remitting because
youre drinking apple juice. But I dont
think its true. I think youre having a
chronic remitting relapsing cancer
and thats the nature of your cancer.
Maybe there are miracle substances out there that change the behaviour of particular cancers, he adds
diplomatically. But history suggests
to us that we have to be sceptics here. If
it was so simple then it would have
been solved a long time ago.
Mukherjee could scarcely be less
like the medical zealots he writes about
in the early years of cancer research,
who come across as frankly raving egomaniacs. The question that elicits by
far his most unqualied response concerns the other books on the Guardian
prize shortlist. I read many of them.
Amy Waldman is a very good friend,
and Id have given the prize to Amy
its an amazing book, a transformative
book, its riveting and smart, and its
contemporary without being like a
schtick. I loved it.
In fact, he mentions, chuckling,
my wife [the artist Sarah Sze] and I
are both in the credits. I think Amys in
my credits too. How many times has
there been a book prize in which two
shortlisted books have actually been
critiqued and edited by other shortlisted authors?
The self-effacement makes me
wonder how he has coped with his
transformation from a jobbing oncologist to an international literary star.
Ive tried to take it in my stride, he
says. And the research grounds you
because of the uncertainty 99 per
cent of what we do in the laboratory is
going to fail. So you deal with failure in
a very fundamental way. And I was on
call last weekend, the Thanksgiving
weekend and that grounds you. All of
a sudden you come into hospital, and it
grounds you in a way thats essential.

Guardian News & Media 2011

Column

JANUARY 13, 2012

Looking back
In the new year let there be more transparency in decision-making and
discussions, unlike 2011, which had more than its fair share of crises.
HIS essay is being written in
the last days of 2011, a year
that had more than its fair
share of crises and traumas,
and is being read in the early
days of 2012, a time of expectation and
anticipation about the new year and
what it may bring. That makes it, possibly, the most pleasant part of the
year, of any year.
But the sense of anticipation
should not make us forget what happened in the past year or in the years
before that; pleasant or unpleasant,
the experiences of previous years have
a bearing on events in a new year. They
may be events that begin in the new
year or the planning for events that
may begin in the years to come.
One should not, for example, forget the United Progressive Alliance
(UPA) governments mindlessness in
taking a decision to allow foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand
retail when Parliament was in session.
Such a decision, entirely within the
remit of the government, could have
been taken at another time that would
have allowed for some consequent action, even if it was only in the stock
market. It would have also gone down
these decisions are known far more
quickly now than they were a generation ago to the level of the farmers
and one would have been able to gauge
their reaction to it.
Instead, someone was being too
clever by half when he/she counselled
that the decision be taken when Parliament was in session, obviously under
the harebrained belief that it would
either be barely noticed because of
Parliaments preoccupation with the
2G spectrum scam and the Lokpal Bill,
or that it would divert attention from

Point of View
BHASKAR GHOSE
these issues. Either result, so the clever
cuts thought, would give the government some breathing time. Neither of
the two happened; Parliament was
stalled for days on end, and the government had, in the end, to back-track
and agree to defer the decision on FDI
in retail. Nor did the hammering the
government received on the Lokpal
Bill or the 2G spectrum scam ease; if
anything, the 2G spectrum scams ambit spread to the Union Home Minister.
Perhaps in the new year the government will learn to be wiser in timing its decisions; as the opposition may
also do. L.K. Advanis yatra achieved
nothing except the fanning of speculation on who the prime ministerial
candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was going to be. The trouble
with the BJP is that it seems to think
elections are imminent and has already started jockeying for positions in
a government it fancies it will form.
F R O N T L I N E

8 3

However, these are just instances

of public decisions that have proved to
be hopelessly ill-timed; one is not really talking about those but about the
host of other decisions taken by individuals, groups, corporates, associations and, of course, governments.
Too often we go ahead with the here
and now, and only rarely look back at
past decisions to identify mistakes or
successes and use them to make present decisions more practical and valuable.
It conforms uncannily with a ne
poem written by the American poet
John Crowe Ransom, which I must
reproduce to make the point:
I am a gentleman in a dustcoat
trying
To make you hear. Your ears are
soft and small
And listen to an old man not at all,
They want the young mens
whispering and sighing,
But see the roses on your trellis
dying
And hear the spectral singing of the
moon;
For I must have my lovely lady
soon,
I am a gentleman in a dustcoat
trying.
I am a lady young in beauty
waiting
Until my truelove comes, and then
we kiss.
But what grey man among the
vines is this
Whose words are dry and faint as
in a dream?
Back from my trellis, Sir, before I
scream!
I am a lady young in beauty
waiting.
If one takes the old man to be the

Column

SUBIR ROY

JANUARY 13, 2012

FDI in Lucknow on December 1. The UPA government decided to allow FDI in

multi-brand retail when Parliament was in session.

TR A D E R S PR O T E S T IN G A GA I N S T

past year, and the young woman to be

the new one, the relevance is apt. The
words of the old man are dry and
faint as indeed are, to many in high
places, the experiences of the last year.
And thus what the past is trying to tell
the present is not really heard that
the present too will wither like the
roses on the trellis dying and become
what he, the old man, is. The arch of
time, the poet says, and says with
truth, is too often forgotten in the magic of the present.
What one is trying to underscore is
that in major policy decisions, at the
level of the state and individually in
ones personal life, the consciousness
of the past, particularly the immediate
past, needs to be a major factor. It is, in
many cases; equally it is not in some.
And quite often this indifference to
what has gone before, just before, can
have grave consequences.
If nothing else, the Commonwealth Games and 2G spectrum scams
revealed how imperative transparency
is in all public decisions; and yet many

decisions will be taken under a shroud

of secrecy in the new year.
We tend, particularly in administrative matters, to use the bogey of
security to quell any questioning, any
demand to know the facts. But what is
security? What is it that makes it possible for some people, who may be academically third class or mediocre
second class at best, to decide that others, who are far more intelligent than
them, are not supposed to know? It

The CWG and

2G spectrum
scams revealed
how imperative
transparency is
in all public
decisions.
8 4

F R O N T L I N E

leads to a general conviction that secrecy is a cloak for thievery, for making
money. If it is not, as is loudly claimed,
then let people know that without the
ludicrous excuse of security. Everyone
except a complete fool knows that
those we consider as having interests
inimical to ours know all there is to
know about us; technology and plain
bribery are effective enough. The only
ones who are kept in the dark are the
people.
Which is why one makes this plea:
for goodness sake, let there be more
transparency in our decision-making
and discussions. Let us not make the
mistakes we made in the past and then
have the media burrow into les and
records and drag out the real state of
affairs. That only makes the state look
silly; and it is left with such comic
excuses as drafting errors and someone forgetting something, and so on.
If we can do that in all walks of life,
we will make the new year a more
open, free and less oppressive one than
it might otherwise be.

Art

JANUARY 13, 2012

Achuthans journey
Achuthan Kudallur, the reputed abstractionist, is one of those artists who get
their teeth into their idiom through sheer intuition. B Y T H E O D O R E B A S K A R A N

WHEN the artist Achuthan Kudallur, along with

the poet Manushyaputhiran, appeared on a Tamil
television show and talked on the Mullaperiyar dam
issue a few weeks ago, he established that sensitive
artists, with their concern for the external world and
people, can play a critical role in society. The Chennai-based Achuthan has been active on the national
art scene for the past 30 years and has emerged as an
internationally reputed abstractionist.
The art historian Ernst W. Koelnsperger of Munich records: You have the impression that his pictures are breathing, that they can be recognised like
pulsars from a faraway colourful yet always systematic world nearby. Kudallur denitely is one of the
few international artists who have retained in their
pictures the colourful vivacity of the cosmos and
cosmos being the Greek word for gem in the sense
of diversity. The luminous power of his absolute
colours gives an almost mythical power to his pictures, which seem to come from inside, and we here
very clearly see the relationship with the term cosmos as medieval philosophers used it.
Except for the evening classes Achuthan attended at the Government College of Fine Arts in Madras
(now Chennai), he has had no formal education in
art. (The Madras Art Club, which functioned until
1980, conducted evening classes for aspiring artists
and also prepared those who wanted to join the
institute for regular courses.) Clearly, Achuthan is
one of those artists who get their teeth into the idiom
they handle through sheer intuition. In 1972, K.C.S.
F R O N T L I N E

PHOTOGRAPHS: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

He has an important place in

the development of an abstract
idiom in India though he had
no formal education in art except
for the evening classes he attended
at the Government College of Fine
Arts in Chennai.

ACHUTHA N KUD ALLUR . LI KE most painters, he

began his artistic journey with gurative works,
including line drawings.

Panikkar and Sultan Ali were selecting paintings of

members of the Madras Arts Club to be exhibited in
the annual show conducted by the British Council.
Two works of Achuthan were chosen, a watercolour
and a drawing in crayon. That was his rst show.
Like most painters Achuthan began his artistic
journey with gurative works, including line drawings. He did many illustrations for magazines and
book covers, which incidentally brought modern art
closer to readers unfamiliar with the idiom. It was a
time when he was nursing a desire to be a writer in
Malayalam. In fact, his short stories appeared in
Malayalam magazines such as Kalakaumudi, Anveshanam and Sameeksha. He would often think of
the pictorial possibilities of what he read. When he
read Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis, one of
his favourite authors, the scene in which Zorba is
holding on to a window, digging his nails into the sill
and looking at the hills beyond and then just dropping dead made a big impact on Achuthan. He won8 5

JANUARY 13, 2012

6 0 X 120

acrylic on canvas. In the collection of the Airports Authority of India, Mumbai International Airport.

dered whether he could capture that

moment on canvas, but he could not
think of ways to bring out visually the
emotional dimensions of the scene.
Many modern artists have experienced this sense of slippage between
word and feeling. But Achuthan did
produce many works that captured the
spirit of the subject. I recall the cover
drawing titled Dark Interiors he did
for a government report on job opportunities for visually handicapped people. India Today (Malayalam) carried
drawings of well-known artists to illustrate short stories. Achuthans
drawings illustrated stories by Paul
Zachariah and Vaikom Muhammad
Basheer.
During this gurative phase, he
produced some disturbing images of
alienation and fear. One such memorable work is an oil painting titled The
Song for the Dead, now in the collection of Neville Tully. It has been used
on the cover of the English translation
of M.T. Vasudevan Nairs anthology of
short stories titled The Demon Seed
and Other Writings. The English version of Asokamithrans famed novel
The Eighteenth Parallel had Achuthans drawing on the cover.
But in a few years, he got bored

with gurative work. He found painting a gure or two and then balancing
the background as the space demanded monotonous. He termed it objectspace paradigm and found that it was
becoming formulaic. This realisation
pushed him away from the world of
gures and towards abstraction. This
was a turning point in his artistic career. However, he points out that abstraction is a natural extension of
gurative work. The general sense of
ferment that prevailed in the south in
those years in art and literature facilitated this transition on the part of
Achuthan.
COLOUR DOMINATES

In the rst one-man show he held, in

1977 at the Max Mueller Bhavan in
Chennai, he exhibited a few gurative
paintings but the others were abstract
works through which his mature art
began appearing. When he moved to
abstraction from gurative paintings,
colour was his primary concern. In
each of his paintings, one colour dominates, particularly red. Gita Hudson, a
Chennai-based artist and lm-maker,
made a 35-minute documentary on
Achuthan titled Red Symphony.
When he moved from gurative to
8 6

F R O N T L I N E

abstract work, he was not clear about

the possibilities. For him it was uncharted territory, where more challenges awaited him in terms of colour
and space. During this early phase,
some of his paintings were reminiscent of certain aspects of nature, such
as the bark of a tree or a rocky surface.
He found it difcult to get rid of this
likeness at rst, but was able to achieve
that in time. Now he condently states
that his kind of abstraction does not try
to report nature and that it has an
autonomous existence of its own, in
colour. For him, it is not a mutilated
version of nature but something that
comes from within. Even his gurative
works are not from nature. He would
describe them as expressionistic.
Achuthan has an important place
in the development of an abstract idiom in India. When abstractionism
blossomed in the Madras Art Movement in the 1970s, through the works
of Achuthan, K.M. Adimoolam and V.
Viswanathan, critics did not notice it
much as the vocabulary to deal with
abstract art did not exist in Madras at
that time. Achuthan was one of the
early painters, along with V.S. Gaitonde and S.H. Raza, to show the rest
of the world, particularly in the 1970s,

JANUARY 13, 2012

that there was indeed a vibrant abstract school in India. Critics outside
India were surprised by these paintings and the modernism and contemporariness that they represented.
Achuthan points out that it is not correct to say that abstraction was
brought in from the West. There has
always been a streak of abstraction in
Indian painting, and he cites examples
from Ajanta and the Sittannavasal
frescos. He says he sees an element of
abstraction controlling these murals,
not in thematic content but in the placing of shapes and in breaking the picture plane.
Born in 1945 in Kudallur in Palakkad district in Kerala where his father
was a schoolteacher, Achuthan grew
up in a village where the rivers Bharathapuzha and Kunthipuzha meet.
Electricity came to the village only in
1960. But there was a lot of light owing
to the vast expanse of sky over the river.
While in school, Achuthan started
drawing, and some of his pictures were
exhibited on school day. Although he
secured the rst rank in the school, the
family could not afford to send him to
college. The erosion created by the river had caused losses to the family property. He got a diploma in civil
engineering and moved to Chennai in
1964. Achuthan realised that it would
be a dead-end career and so joined
evening classes to get an AMIE (Associate Member of the Institution of Engineers) certicate. He could not nish
that course and joined the Railways
where he worked for nine months.
Then a regular job in the Public Works
Department of the Tamil Nadu government came his way. Assured of a
regular income, Achuthan continued
his inner search. The opportunities
Chennai offered to be in touch with
artists, watch lms and go to concerts
made him give up promotions and stay
on in the city.
Sitting on the terrace of his Neelankarai house, not far from the seafront, I have had many interesting
conversations with Achuthan. Although rather taciturn, he is fascinating when he gets talking. He has
remained single not by default; he has

"H O M A G E TO HUS A I N " , 48 x 48 acrylic on canvas.

"Y ELLO W 2", 24

F R O N T L I N E

x 24 oil on canvas.

8 7

Art

JANUARY 13, 2012

"BLUE AB S TR ACT", 48

x 48 acrylic on

canvas.

4 6 X 33

acrylic on canvas, untitled.

well-thought-out reasons for the life

he has chosen. He says: Most of them
[marriages] exist on the anxiety of tomorrow. I am not against that kind of
life but I could not t into that
routine.
Achuthan responds intensely to literature, music and lms. He can talk
comfortably about contemporary Tamil and Malayalam writers in addition
to his English favourites. At one stage
in his life, he was deeply engaged with
the subject of suicide. But one reading
of Albert Camus Rebel changed his
life. Now he believes that what is important is the intensity of life. It is a
great experience to watch lms with
him and discuss them later. His participation in the Film Appreciation

"G R E E N ", 24 X

course at the Pune Film Institute has

honed his perception of cinema. He is
familiar with the works of masters, in
India and abroad. After seeing a great
lm, you are not the same person, he
says. Such a lm creates a new awareness in you of life and the world.
He often discusses music in the
context of abstract painting. It is not
literature, he points out, but music
that he would compare with abstract
art. Artists handle colour in an abstract
work the same way musicians handle
sound. We have two musical traditions
Hindustani and Carnatic that are
very abstract. We enjoy this music not
so much for the lyrics as for the patterns of the sound created.
After nearly 10 years, Achuthan
8 8

F R O N T L I N E

24 oil on canvas.

will hold a one-man show at the Vinnyasa Premier Art Gallery, Chennai,
from January 5 to 15, 2012. Since his
rst show in Chennai in 1977, he has
held 23 one-man exhibitions all over
the country, the last being in Kochi in
2010. This is in addition to the several
group exhibitions he has participated
in, in India and other countries.
Awards have come his way: the Tamil Nadu Lalit Kala Akademi award in
1982, the National Academy Award in
1988 and nomination as a commissioner for the 10th Indian International Triennial in 2001. His works are
sold at Sothebys and Christies (both
in London), and he maintains his stature as an internationally respected abstract artist, prolic and fecund.

History

JANUARY 13, 2012

Of Quit India,
Nehru & CPI split
Stalin upbraided CPI leaders for not supporting the Congress on the Quit India
Movement. B Y A . G . N O O R A N I

OF all the Communist leaders interviewed in the

Oral History Programme of the Nehru Memorial
Museum & Library in New Delhi, Makineni Basavapunniah was the most outspoken. The armed struggle in Telangana, which began in 1946, was directed
against the Nizams government. But from September 1948 onwards it was regular armed invasion. It
was not a police action. Either the special armed
police or the Malabar Police or the army, nearly
50,000 were employed for three full years to suppress the movement. Indian Army was not more
than one and a half lakh or two lakhs in those days. A
good part of it was locked up in Kashmir. Other part
had to remain somewhere stationary. Then to spare
as nearly 40,000-50,000 armed forces at one spot
was not a small thing. So they concentrated their best
and did their worst. Ten thousand people were put as
detenus for three-four years; nearly a lakh of people
were put in concentration camps for months on end;

Series
This is the last part of a
three-part article.
F R O N T L I N E

THE HINDU ARCHIVES

Stalin also cautioned the CPI

leaders that the Nehru government
was not a puppet government. It had
a social base and mass support and
could not be overthrown easily. He
asked the leaders to... work together,
save the party and take it forward.

was a member of the

Communist delegation that met Stalin in Moscow.
Here, he is giving a talk on "My visit to Russia" in
the weekly BBC Marathi magazine programme
"Radio Jhankar". The others in the delegation
were Ajoy Ghosh, M. Basavapunniah and
C. Rajeswara Rao.

S . A. D AN G E . HE

thousands of women were raped. Dr Hari Dev Sharma asked: By the military? Basavapunniah replied:
Of course, military and the other armed forces, like
Central Reserve Police, Malabar Police, Special Police, like that so many.
He added: Particularly after September 1948
when the Government of India intervened, as I said
earlier, it intervened with very big armed forces. The
entire modern military technique was used against
us. General J.N. Chaudhuri, who intervened there on
8 9

JANUARY 13, 2012

behalf of the Government of India,

took hardly half a dozen days to manage the army of the Nizam and the
Razakars, etc. After that the main direction was against the Communist
Party which was leading the struggle.
He explained why he developed
reservations over the Ranadive thesis
adopted by the Second Party Congress
at Calcutta in February 1948. Experience in Telangana ew against the thesis. The Andhra document was
submitted in the month of May 1948.
The Politburo was keeping its discussions conned to it till the month of
November 1948. So it was only in the
month of November and December
1948 that this reached all the State
units. The whole of the year 1949,
there was an inner party discussion
going on. By March 1950 the whole
cycle was complete and the line that
was adopted at Calcutta was proved
wrong and we were asked to take the
responsibility of the Central Committee leadership. Then came the question
of going and meeting Stalin, and then
working out all the lines. The Communist Party of India unit in Andhra
disagreed with the leadership. In the
earlier articles, we have Basavapunniahs account of the Moscow meeting,
which was arranged to avert a split.
Like his colleagues, P. Sundarayya
also dilated on the alliance with the
Congress Socialist Party in the 1930s
and how the Kerala, Andhra and Madras units of the CSP went over to the
CPI. Conict was inherent in the alliance. Right from the beginning, from
1934 itself, this conict had been there.
Because in the earlier period, some of
our writings [aid] that Congress Socialism was contradictory in words
and would pave way to fascism. Such
kind of articles were written. The
[Congress] Socialist Party leadership
also attacked [saying] that the communists were responsible for fascism
coming in Germany by not having a
united front. They had their own ideology; Gandhian ideology also inuenced [sic] that the communists were
anti-national. They also used to say all
these things. Similarly, Sajjad Zaheer, Dr K.M. Ashraf, Dr Z.A. Ahmed,

Dange was a
fascinating
character, a
brilliant orator,
pamphleteer
and a supple
tactician.
[Soli] Batliwala were all big Congress
leaders; they were all leftists and were
in the Congress Socialist Party. They
were all pro [communists]; some of
them were party members also. So,
this struggle went on till they found
that they could not function in a united
way. Then they decided to remove us
and we also found that it was difcult
to convince a good chunk of them. We
had to function more and more independently than through the Congress
Socialist party. That phase came towards the end of 1938.
DANGES ROLE

Sadly, S.A. Danges recorded Interview

ends abruptly before the crises of the
1940s. He was a fascinating character,
a brilliant pamphleteer, orator and a
supple tactician. He was known to be
close to the mill owner Sir David Sassoon. On March 7, 1964, Current, a
Bombay [now Mumbai] tabloid, edited by D.F. Karaka, published a letter
from Dange to the Governor-General
of India dated July 28, 1924, from Sitapur jail in the United Provinces (U.P.)
where he was serving a four-year sentence in the Kanpur Conspiracy Case.
It said: Exactly one year back, the
Deputy Commissioner of Police of
Bombay, Mr Stewart, was having a
conversation with me, in his ofce regarding my relations with M.N. Roy
and an anticipated visit to me of certain persons from abroad. During the
course of the conversation the Honourable ofcer let drop a hint in the
following words, the full import of
which I failed to catch at that moment.
9 0

F R O N T L I N E

Mr Stewart said, You hold an exceptionally inuential position in certain

circles here and abroad. Government
would be glad if this position would be
of some use to them. I think I still hold
that position. Rather it has been enhanced by the prosecution. If Your Excellency is pleased to think that I
should use that position for the good of
Your Excellencys government and the
country, I should be glad to do so, if I
am given the opportunity by Your Excellency granting my prayer for
release.
I am given the punishment of four
years rigorous imprisonment in order
that those years may bring a salutary
change in my attitude towards the
King Emperors sovereignty in India. I
beg to inform Your Excellency that
those years are unnecessary, as I have
never been positively disloyal towards
His Majesty in my writings or speeches
nor do I intend to be so in future.
Hoping this respectful undertaking will satisfy and move Your Excellency to grant my prayer and awaiting
anxiously a reply.
I beg to remain,
Your Excellencys Most
Obedient Servant,
Shripat Amrit Dange.
Written this day 28th July, 1924
Endorsement No. 1048, dated
31-7-1924.
Forwarded in original to I.G. [Inspector General] of prisons U.P. for
disposal.
Sd/- W.P. Cook
Col. I.M.S.
Superintendent of Jail.
Seal of I.G. Prisons
13070 Dated 1-8-1924.
On March 16, Basavapunniah and
P. Ramamurthi went to the National
Archives in New Delhi and again on
March 17 and 19. What they found was
set out in a pamphlet published by the
Communist Party of India (Marxist)
after the split later in the year. It was
entitled Dange Unmasked (for a detailed analysis of the texts of the documents, including comments by the
formidable Lt Col Cecil Kaye, Director
of the Intelligence Bureau, perhaps its
most able he is personally, a mere

JANUARY 13, 2012

RAJEEV BHATT

worm vide the writers article Stalin. Like Dange, Mohit Sen supDange Letters; Survey (London) ported the Emergency. Both left the
CPI, But Mohit Sens memoir is of abSpring 1979; pages 160-174).
Years later I sought an interview sorbing interest. Sadly, it did not rewith Dange. What he said of the fa- ceive the review it deserved (A
mous meeting with Stalin rang true. Traveller and the Road: The Journey of
Stalin upbraided the CPI leaders for an Indian Communist; Rupa & Co.;
not supporting the Congress on the 2003). The two remained close.
Quit India Movement when they mentioned that their stand had cost them M O H I T S E N S A C C O U N T
dear. Why didnt you support it? Do Mohit Sen wrote: I was to have the
you think we won the war because of privilege of carrying the China path
the 100 ries you sent us? Stalin was document to China. The CPI leaderinformality itself. Dange sat on the ship hoped and expected that the leadarmrest of his chair when Stalin pored ership of the CPC would endorse this
over the map of India he had sent for. understanding and back it....
Is this your Yenan? he asked with
At that time, I did not know that
unconcealed contempt. It lay at the this line had been challenged by an
very heart of India. What followed the important section of the CPI leadermeetings is well recorded but not com- ship headed by Ajoy Ghosh, S.A.
pletely in a single volume.
Dange and S.V. Ghate. They had proSignicantly, later Soviet writers duced a joint document which had
also criticised the CPIs 1942 decision. gone down in the history of the party as
Dr Alexander I. Chicherov, Head of the the Three Ps document.
International Relations
This
document
Research
Department
shared the viewpoint that
and Institute of Oriental
India had not won indeStudies, Academy of Scipendence and that the
ences USSR in Moscow,
Nehru government upwas an erudite scholar.
held the interests of BritHe found in the archives
ish
imperialism,
a letter from Bal Gangadlandlords and those sechar Tilak to the Russian
tions of the bourgeoisie
Consulate in Bombay in
that collaborated with
1905 outlining his plans
imperialism. The docufor intensifying the freement also held the view
M O H I T S EN . H E wrote:
dom struggle. He adthat armed revolution
I was to have the
mired Tilak.
privilege of carrying the was the only path of adOn a visit to Bombay,
China path document vance. It differed from
Chicherov told Indian
both the Ranadive line
to China.
Express that the CPIs deand the China path line
cision to keep out of the Quit India [the Andhra thesis] on its insistence
Movement was tragic (October 15, that Indian conditions differed in the
1982).
1950s from both Russia and China.
One question arises. One of the in- The strategy of the CPI should, thereterviewers said that they had no direct fore, be that of the Indian path. The
contact with Moscow, only with the armed revolution in our country would
Communist Party of Great Britain, be a combination of peasant guerrilla
that is, with Rajani Palme Dutt and actions in the countryside with workHarry Pollit. Was it Palme Dutt, then, ing class insurrections in the urban
who instructed the switch in 1942?
areas. This was an updated version of
Basavapunniahs interview men- what S.A. Dange had advocated dections the disagreement between the ades ago in Gandhi vs. Lenin publishAndhra thesis and the thesis of the ed in 1920, which had caught the
Central leadership. The party was on attention of Lenin himself.
the verge of a split. It was averted by
The other point of difference of
F R O N T L I N E

9 1

the three Ps document was its realistic

appraisal of the actual situation of the
CPI. It was on the verge of annihilation. Its mass organisations were shattered and the party itself almost totally
disintegrated. The rst task was to save
the party itself and to reforge its ties
with the masses, taking into account
the existing civil liberties.
The proponents of the Chinese
path led by Comrade C. Rajeswara
Rao and those of the Indian path led
by Comrade Ajoy Ghosh had set up
their own centres and the CPI was on
the verge of a split. It was then that the
Soviet Communists intervened.
Four leaders, two from each centre, were brought to Moscow. They
travelled, incognito as manual workers
on a Soviet ship from Calcutta. They
were Comrades Ajoy Ghosh, S.A.
Dange, C. Rajeswara Rao and M. Basavapunniah. None of them divulged any
details of how they were contacted and
what their exact itinerary was. Nikhil
Chakravartty, who attended to all the
technical details of planning the journey, has also not said anything.
S.A. Dange and C. Rajeswara Rao
have both told me about the meeting
with the leaders of the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union]. The
rst meeting was attended from the
Soviet side by Comrades [Mikhail Andreyevich] Suslov, [Georgy] Malenkov and [Vyacheslav Mikhailovich]
Molotov. It was on the third day that it
was announced that Comrade Stalin
would attend. So he did for the subsequent days. Dange and Rajeswara
Rao said that he was an attentive listener though he rarely sat at the table
but kept pacing up and down smoking
a pipe. But he intervened subtly to turn
the discussion beyond dogmatic disputes to assessments of the existing
situation and immediate tactical tasks.
STALINS VIEW ON
NEHRU GOVERNMENT

Stalins view also was that India was

not an independent country but ruled
indirectly by British colonialists. He
also agreed that the Communists could
eventually advance only by heading an
armed revolution. But it would not be

BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

JANUARY 13, 2012

Telangana ghters. "[Stalin] strongly advised that the armed

struggle being conducted in various areas, especially the Telangana region of
Andhra Pradesh, should be ended."

P . SU N D A R A YYA A N D

BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

A G R O UP O F

Basavapunniah in the 1950s.

of the Chinese type. His view on this

point coincided with that of the three
Ps. He also agreed with their appraisal
of the concrete situation in which the
party was placed. He strongly advised
that the armed struggle being conducted in various areas, especially the
Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh,
should be ended. He said that it was
Comrade Rajeswara Rao who should

travel to the different camps and see

that the arms were surrendered. This
would be difcult but it was he alone
who could do it. That, in fact, was done
and Rajeswara Rao later told me that
this was the most difcult task he had
ever performed for the party.
Stalin also cautioned the CPI
leaders that the Nehru government
was not a puppet government. It had a
9 2

F R O N T L I N E

social base and mass support and

could not be overthrown easily. He
asked the leaders to unite, work together, save the party and take it forward. He strongly advised them to
make the CPI participate in the general elections (pages 80-81).
The record has him say: I cannot
consider the government of Nehru as a
puppet. All his roots are in the people.
He was polite to the visitors, but they
did not win his respect. His interpreter
and the diplomat Nikolai Adyrkhayevs memoirs, released on Stalins
118th birth anniversary (December 21,
1879), reveal that later in the year Stalin scolded a delegation of the Japanese Communist Party: In India they
have wrecked the party and there is
something similar with you.
As it happens some interesting
documents have surfaced in the pages
of a journal, Revolutionary Democracy, published by Vijay Singh. The issue
of April 2011 published documents
from the papers of Rajani Palme Dutt
in the archives of the Communist Party
of Great Britain, which are deposited
in the Labour Archive and Library,
Manchester.
One was a letter dated November 1,
1962, from B.N. Datar, Minister of
State for Home, to P.K. Sawant, Home
Minister, Maharashtra. It read : I am
enclosing herewith in original a list
handed over personally by Shri S.A.
Dange, to Home Minister recently giving the names and addresses of CPI
persons in Bombay and other individuals who in the opinion of Shri S.A.
Dange are pro-Chinese. I would request your immediate comments and
action in the matter under advice to
me. The other letter contains charges
too scandalous to be reproduced, still
less vouched for.
AUTHENTIC MATERIAL
ON MOSCOW TALKS

Three other issues contain authentic

material on the Moscow talks from the
Russian State Archive of Social and
Political History translated from the
Russian by Vijay Singh. There is a stenographic record of the discussions between the two delegations on February

BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

JANUARY 13, 2012

of the rst Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) after the 1964 split in the
Communist movement: (standing, from left) P. Ramamurthi, Basavapunniah, E.M.S. Namboodiripad and Harkishan
Singh Surjeet; (sitting, from left) Promode Dasgupta, Jyoti Basu, Sundarayya, B.T. Ranadive and A.K. Gopalan.

TH E NINE M E M B E R S

4, 6 and 9, 1951 (September 2006;

pages 162-200). As one might expect,
the Indians did most of the talking on
the rst two days, explaining internal
differences and replying to pointed
questions by the hosts. Stalin spoke at
great length on February 9 (pages
186-200).
The issue of April 2007 published a
record of the discussions with Malenkov and Suslov on February 21 (pages
126-130). The issue of April 2010 has
three letters by the CPI leaders; Stalin
underlined parts of the letters and gave
his comments in the margin. All these
documents merit detailed analysis in
the light of the CPIs internal debates
in 1948-51.
Postscript: Aloke Banerjee of Hindustan Times reported from Kolkata

on November 26, 2005: Marxist Patriarch Jyoti Basu had been against a
split in the CPI and had urged all his
comrades to keep the party united.
This was in 1963, a year before some
CPI leaders left the party and formed
the CPI(M).
Documents portraying the nal
days before the CPI split have been
made public with the CPI(M) publishing the fourth volume of Communist
Movement in Bengal: Documents and
Related Facts. The book contains a letter Basu wrote from the Dum Dum Jail
on October 9, 1963, titled Save the
party from revisionists and dogmatic
extremists. We must stay within the
party and continue our ideological
struggle against Danges revisionism.
It will not be right to split the party,
F R O N T L I N E

9 3

Basu had said in the letter. Yet, the

reckless dogmatists seem to be determined to break up the party.
Four decades on, Basu cannot remember having written such a letter.
Informed that his party had published
his letter, Basu told HT on Friday, I
dont remember having written such a
letter. But its true that I had tried till
the last moments to stop the imminent
split. I was of the opinion that it would
be incorrect to break the CPI and form
a new party. But I failed. There were
many differences. We could not stay
together any longer. The CPI(M)s
book also contains the minutes of a
crucial meeting of the partys working
committee. Unfortunately, the book
is in Bengali. An English translation is
overdue.

Column

JANUARY 13, 2012

Durban greenwash
The Durban Platform postpones climate actions to 2020, beyond which global
emissions must not rise if the world is to avert irreversible climate change.
UCH is the disconnect between Durban climate conference realities and the
greenwash-style spin put
on them by the Indian government and its uncritical supporters
in the bubble-world of non-governmental organisations and the media
that one is left speechless. Going by
media reports, a rm India forced a
climate breakthrough and took centre stage as a force to reckon with and
regained its position as the leader and
moral voice of the developing world,
forcing the European Union and the
United States to address its demands. The principle of equity found
its place back on the table and life was
infused into the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012, when its rst phase ends.
At Durban, parties to the United
Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreed to
negotiate a new global regime with
binding commitments on all, unlike in
the past when these were limited to the
industrialised northern countries. According to the spin doctors, The decision came after the E.U. was forced to
go into a huddle with India and address its concerns even as the developing world, including China, backed
India on its demand for an equitable
future deal.
The spin doctors approvingly quoted Environment Minister Jayanthi
Natarajan: After intense negotiations, we got the extension of Kyoto
Protocol... and restored equity as a
central dimension of the debate. We
rmly reiterated the right of India and
other developing countries to their
growth under the principle of common
but differentiated responsibilities
[CBDR]....

Beyond the
Obvious
PRAFUL BIDWAI
Now consider the facts. The reiteration nds no reection in the conference outcome. The key resolution to
launch the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action to develop a new climate agreement by 2015 with legal
commitments for all states, to be implemented from 2020 onwards, does
not even mention equity or CBDR.
This elision was no aberration. The
northern countries were emphatic that
they wanted to move to an altogether
different regime from the past order
dened by the original 1992 climate
convention, the Kyoto Protocol (effective 2005) and the Bali Action Plan, or
BAP (2007), which further explicated
CBDR by erecting a rewall between
the Norths climate obligations and the
Souths voluntary actions, which the
North must support. Any mention of
CBDR would be qualied by a statement mandating its interpretation
9 4

F R O N T L I N E

based on contemporary economic realities, including recent North-toSouth power shifts and the emergence
of China and India as major drivers of
global growth and among the worlds
current top ve greenhouse gas emitters. This would have opened a Pandoras box.
At Durban, the Kyoto Protocol did
not get its second commitment period (CP2), or legally effective phase
beyond 2012. The decision was postponed to the next climate conference,
without clarity on the Norths commitments to higher ambition or equity.
Such commitments seem highly unlikely given the past record and the
Great Recession. Pablo Solon, Bolivias former lead negotiator and a formidable critic of the Norths
manipulative tactics, said the arrangement would turn the Kyoto Protocol
into a soulless zombie until it is replaced by a new agreement that will be
even weaker. Solon was proved dead
right at both Copenhagen (2009) and
Cancun (2010).
At Durban, the developing countries did not forge new bonds of unity
or solidarity, with emerging India
becoming their moral voice. They got
demoralised, divided and further split,
with a majority, especially the Alliance
of Small Island States (AOSIS) and the
least developed countries (LDCs), allying with the E.U. Some of them expressed their resentment at the
insistence of the two-year-old BASIC
(Brazil, South Africa, India, China)
grouping on hiding behind the rest of
the (non-emerging) South and harping on the right to develop. While
they develop, we die, Grenadas ambassador said.
Whether such resentment is justi-

JANUARY 13, 2012

ed or not is beside the point. India

failed to anticipate or quell it. The developing country bloc, G-77+China,
long splintered into subgroups, found
itself in utter disarray. Indian negotiators, preoccupied with evading a legally binding commitment in keeping
with their mandate, painted themselves into a corner and failed to address the concerns of small, vulnerable
southern countries or to maintain BASICs coherence. More crucially, they
accepted a text which is silent on equity and the polluter pays principle.
Jayanthi Natarajan may go on
claiming that the Durban Platforms
decision to negotiate a protocol, another legal instrument, or an agreed
outcome with legal force under the
Convention applicable to all does not
imply that India has to take binding
commitments to reduce its emissions
in absolute terms in 2020. She may
read the conventions principles into
the text and pretend that it does not
explicitly mention emissions cuts, only
the highest possible mitigation efforts
by all parties; and hence Indias voluntary offer to reduce the emissions
intensity of its economy by 20-25 per
cent by 2020 is adequately compatible
with it. However, the texts references
to levels of ambition and closure of
the ambition gap, the interpretation
put on it by Indias own partners in
BASIC and, above all, Durbans political context belie this fanciful Panglossian interpretation.
The context was duplicitously set
by the E.U. when it shifted from unconditional support for a Kyoto CP2
some weeks ago to making support
contingent upon an agreement at Durban to negotiate by 2015 an altogether
new climate deal with binding commitments for all major economies, not
just developed northern countries.
The E.U. cynically exploited the
circumstance that the South had made
a second commitment period the
touchstone of success at Durban and
began systematically to erode the principles of equity and CBDR. In this, it
was joined by the U.S., which has always been hostile to the idea of topdown obligations on the North based

on science and equity and in favour of

an arbitrary pledge and review approach in which nations make emissions-reduction promises unrelated to
their contribution to climate change.
The U.S. probably overcame its
long-known distaste for binding obligations for itself only because it saw
the nal stages of the Durban talks as
the last chance to draw China into the
binding obligations net. So a de facto
alliance emerged between the E.U.
and the U.S., in which Indias insertion
of the awkward phrase agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention suited the latter.
The U.S. also led the Norths successful attack on the BAP, which provides a road map for a fair, ambitious
and binding climate deal through a
Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action. Durban effectively
killed BAP. The Bali process and the
Working Group will be terminated in
2012, and a new process will begin,
with a considerable dilution, if not de
facto abandonment, of North-South
differentiation. So much for equity!
NOT A GOOD BEGINNING

Was the Durban outcome at least a

good beginning, if not the best possible
result, as some apologists of the Indian
government plead? Certainly not, for
at least three powerful reasons. First, it
postpones all signicant climate action, in particular drastic emissions reductions by the North, to 2020 and
beyond. But global emissions must
peak by 2020 if the world is to avert
irreversible and catastrophic climate
change, with global warming way, way
beyond the 1.5-2 C that the earth can
tolerate. The Durban arrangements
will probably raise global warming to
4 C, with unspeakable consequences
for humankind, including Indians
who comprise a vulnerable one-sixth
of it. African climate activists have
called it a death sentence for Africa.
Second, the outcome prolongs at
least until 2020 many grossly unjust
anomalies in the post-Copenhagen climate order, including much higher
emissions-reduction pledges by the
South than the North. This inverts the
F R O N T L I N E

9 5

elementary ethical principle that those

most responsible for climate change
should take the lead and accept higher
obligations than those with a marginal
contribution to it. The loopholes in the
Norths pledges, besides their paltriness, will continue.
Third, the might is right norm
will prevail in the UNFCCC process,
further vitiating the negotiations and
wiping out past gains for the sake of
expediency and the narrow short-term
self-interests of a few powerful states.
The process began some time ago, with
Copenhagen as its low point, where
India too acted deplorably. It will now
descend to even more abysmal levels.
We need to situate this in the history of what an extremely perceptive observer (Susan George) has called the
most important negotiations ever undertaken in the history of humankind,
which began at Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
These produced some signicant gains
and many hopes until 2007. Since
then, things have gone downhill, with
setback after setback since Copenhagen and further weakening of the will
of the Norths leadership, pusillanimous as it is in the face of corporate
power, to ght climate change sincerely by giving up its fossil-fuel addiction.
This only highlights the inseparable
links between climate change and neoliberal economic policies and the global developmental crisis that these
aggravate, with terrible implications
for the Souths poor and the Norths
vulnerable people.
Was another, better, outcome possible? At the risk of being branded unrealistic, I believe India could have
better prepared for Durban with coalition-building focussed on the AOSIS
and the LDCs, by offering them generous need-based nancial and technological assistance, especially in climate
change adaptation, and also by strengthening G-77. It could then have
pressed the E.U. hard for supporting a
Kyoto CP2. This could have isolated
northern recalcitrants and become a
game-changer. But that would have
needed both policy independence and
imaginative strategising, now scarce
here.

Food Security

JANUARY 13, 2012

Understanding
A survey in nine States shows that they have quietly revived and expanded their

NAGARA GOPAL

public distribution system. B Y J E A N D R Z E A N D R E E T I K A K H E R A

in Patel Nagar in Hyderabad. A large number of the poor are excluded from the public
distribution system. The PDS tends to work better where it is more inclusive targeting is divisive and
undermines public pressure for a functional PDS.

AT A SLUM

9 6

F R O N T L I N E

JANUARY 13, 2012

the PDS
AT a time when the Union Cabinet
cleared the draft of the national food
security Bill after dilly-dallying over it
comes a compelling piece of information: many State governments have
quietly revived and expanded the public distribution system in their States.
That, at any rate, is one of the main
ndings of a recent survey of the PDS
in nine States: Andhra Pradesh, Bihar,
Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh,
Jharkhand, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar
Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The survey,
initiated by the Indian Institute of
Technology Delhi, covered about
1,200 randomly selected below-poverty-line (and Antyodaya) households in
110 villages.
One sign of revival is that the sample households had received 85 per
cent of their ofcial quota of PDS
grain during the preceding three
months. This contrasts with the common perception that most of the grain
meant for poor households ends up in
the open market. Further, with market
prices shooting up and PDS issue prices coming down, the implicit value of
PDS transfers is now quite substantial.
In many States, BPL households get as
much from the PDS every month as
they would after a whole week of employment under the National Rural
Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) without having to work.
The health of the PDS, of course,
varies widely among States. Some, like
Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu,
have a well-functioning universal
PDS, which provides not only foodgrains but also other essential commodities such as pulses and oil. At the
other extreme are States like Bihar and
Jharkhand where PDS reforms have
barely begun. The PDS tends to work
better where it is more inclusive targeting is divisive and undermines public pressure for a functional PDS.

Aside from expanding coverage

and lowering issue prices, many State
governments have launched other
PDS reforms such as de-privatisation
of fair price shops, doorstep delivery
of grain to fair price shops, computerisation of records, and a range of
transparency measures. An important
lesson of recent experience is not only
that the PDS can be improved, but also
that we have a reasonably good idea of
how to do it. Much depends on the
political value of the PDS. That is perhaps the biggest recent change: with
market prices shooting up, the PDS
now means a lot for poor people, and
State governments had to respond to
the clamour for a functional PDS.
It would be a tragedy if the NationF R O N T L I N E

9 7

al Food Security Act ended up undermining instead of consolidating this

revival of the PDS. There is a real danger of this happening, not only because
of the continued obsession of the Central government with targeting but
also because of the illusion that cash
transfers are an easy alternative. A
large majority of the sample households were opposed to the PDS being
replaced with cash transfers, and the
reasons they gave for this were enlightening.
A sample of the survey ndings is
presented in this issue of Frontline,
including four articles written by some
of the student volunteers who conducted this investigation. A more detailed report was published in a recent
issue of Economic and Political Weekly. We hope this material contributes
to a better understanding of the PDS,
and to a more enlightened debate on
these vital issues.

Food Security

JANUARY 13, 2012

Power of literacy
Most of the respondents in Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Kerala prefer
an effective PDS to cash transfer. B Y A L E E S H A M A R Y J O S E P H
THE survey of the public distribution system
(PDS) in nine States, of which I was a part in Himachal Pradesh (Sirmaur district), Uttar Pradesh
(Jaunpur district) and Kerala (Wayanad district),
came as an eye-opener to me on many counts. If
Himachal Pradesh stood out for the innocence of its
people, Uttar Pradesh was full of scary realities.
Our main goal was to nd out how the PDS
functioned in rural areas and what the people
thought about the idea of replacing it with a cashtransfer system. Economic theory might tell us that
cash transfers put the consumer on a higher indifference curve than subsidising the prices. However, the

ANUROOP SUNNY

The major problem is the lack of

awareness among people about
their rights. A foundation of
literacy has to be laid for the
effective culmination of all welfareoriented policies and programmes
in rural India.

9 8

F R O N T L I N E

JANUARY 13, 2012

survey found that the reality is quite

different from the theory.
The PDS in Himachal Pradesh, for
instance, worked quite smoothly except for the fact that the ration shops
opened only for a certain number of
days. The majority of the respondents
all below-poverty-line (BPL) or Antyodaya cardholders said they got
their full quota of rice and wheat regularly. Most of them owned a piece of
farmland, which gave them just
enough for their sustenance. They
rarely bought foodgrain from the market; the reasons cited were the harsh
hilly terrain and inadequate transport
services. No wonder people here were
averse to the idea of cash transfers as
banks and markets were quite far from
the villages.
One of the respondents was so
scared about the idea that she pleaded
with us with folded hands: We are
poor and illiterate. You people are edu-

cated. Please do not put us into trouble. We just want our ration and
nothing else. It was hard to convince
her that we were just students and not
government ofcials. When they had a
ration shop in their own village, which
gave them much of what they needed
(rice, wheat, pulses, kerosene and edible oil), an alternative arrangement
was unthinkable.
THE KERALA EXPERIENCE

High literacy is an important feature of

Himachal Pradesh, akin to Kerala but
in sharp contrast to Uttar Pradesh.
Most of the respondents in Himachal
Pradesh had studied at least up to
Class 5. In Kerala, as expected, the
proportion of literates was high and
the education level of the respondents
was rarely below Class 8. The people
were ever watchful and voiced their
opinions freely, which meant a comparatively less corrupt PDS.
In Kerala, unlike in other States,
rations are distributed on a weekly basis and ration shops remain open on all
weekdays for nearly eight hours. Rice
is given at the rate of Rs.2 a kg to all
BPL and Antyodaya cardholders. This
ensured that even the poorest of the
poor got foodgrains even in the worst
of nancial conditions. The shops are
well maintained and have adequate
storage facilities, electronic weighing
machines and complete information
boards displaying the entitlements to
different cardholders (above poverty
line or APL, BPL and Antyodaya) and
the respective price lists. The majority
of those surveyed in Kerala preferred
rations over cash transfers, thanks to
food security ensured through ration
shops. Frittering away of money on
alcohol was a common objection that
respondents (especially tribal women
in Wayanad) raised against the cashtransfer system.
PDS dealers have a strong association but make only meagre prots.
The main complaint that most of them
voiced was that the commission was
I N T ERA C T I O N WI TH KUN J I at a
Paniya colony in Ponkuzhi, Wayanad
district, Kerala.
F R O N T L I N E

9 9

not indexed to transportation cost and

that often they had to pay it out of their
pockets. Regular inspections and alert
villagers left no opportunity for corrupt practices.
UTTAR PRADESHS POOR

Kerala, a recent article stated, was 25

years ahead of many other States in
India. The stark contrast in the condition of Antyodaya families in Kerala
vis--vis other States illustrates this. A
majority of the Antyodaya families
surveyed in Kerala had pucca houses
with two or three rooms, while in Uttar
Pradesh, people and cattle sometimes
shared living spaces. The small, dingy
huts were inhabited by eight to ten
people. Open-eld toilets added to the
unhygienic nature of the villages. Illiteracy was widespread, and on being
asked their age, women would cover
their blushing faces with their pallus
and say, Ham kya jaane hamara umer! Aap hi andaze se bataaiye! (What
would we know about our age? You
make a guess and tell us.)
The illiteracy of the people was often exploited by the pradhan (headman) and the dealer. In one village,
almost all the residents had deposited
their ration cards with the dealer believing that it was mandatory to do so
in order to get their rations. One woman narrated how the pradhan used to
bribe the ofcers who were deputed for
inspection and how the injustice done
to them remained unknown to the
world outside. Some of the residents
even mistook us for government ofcers who had come to solve their problems. It was disappointing to tell them
that we were just students and that we
could only write about them.
But one optimistic woman told us,
Aap likh do, taaki duniya dekh sake,
taaki koi to hamare madad ke liye aa
jaaye. (Write, so that the world knows
and someone comes to our help.) I was
too dumbstruck to reply. Though an
illiterate, she believed in the power of
the written word. The power of education was demonstrated again in another instance, where a man who had
studied up to Class 8 (which was rare
in our Uttar Pradesh sample), raised

REETIKA KHERA

JANUARY 13, 2012

A R AT I O N S H O P

in Chail Chowk gram panchayat, Mandi district, Himachal Pradesh.

his voice against a corrupt dealer for

cancelling his ration card. He motivated his fellow residents who were subjected to the same injustice to
approach the Subdivisional Magistrate (SDM) for redress. His efforts resulted in the dismissal of the corrupt
dealer.
Illiteracy was one of the main reasons why people in Uttar Pradesh did
not prefer any dealings with banks.
They knew they could easily be cheated
by anyone. Moreover, the PDS would
at least ensure food security and prevent them from slipping into destitution. Bad as the condition of villages in
Uttar Pradesh was, grain leakages
from the PDS were relatively low. Corruption mainly affected the distribution of commodities such as sugar and
kerosene. Though the ration shop
opens only for two or three days in the
State, rarely did the people miss a
chance to procure their foodgrain
quotas.
The major problem was the peo-

ples lack of awareness about their

rights. They did not know that they
were entitled to an unemployment allowance if they did not get work within
15 days of applying for work under the
National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). They do go to the
pradhan and ask for work, but they do
not get any written acknowledgement
and hence the promise of work remains just verbal.
In one case, the pradhan himself
did not know how to go about imple-

An alternative
arrangement to
PDS, like cash
transfer, is
unthinkable to
most people.
1 0 0

F R O N T L I N E

menting the NREGA scheme. In another village, the pradhan, an illiterate

a woman, was just a puppet in her
husbands hands. From all this, one
can conclude that the root cause of
many of our policies failing in rural
areas in States like Uttar Pradesh is the
widespread illiteracy. Unless people
are able to read and write and are
made aware of their rights, they will
not be able to raise their voice against
the injustices done to them.
Though all the respondents in all
the States were categorised as BPL or
Antyodaya, there was a stark contrast
in the way villagers in Uttar Pradesh
and Kerala responded to their needs.
The poor in Kerala were not scared of
raising their voices before anyone and
knew how to secure their rights. In
Uttar Pradesh, the poor were scared
and meek.
Hence, the foundation of literacy
has to be laid for the effective culmination of all welfare-oriented policies
and programmes in rural India.

Food Security

JANUARY 13, 2012

Coupon asco
In Bihar, the coupon system to distribute PDS grain fails to prevent corruption.
BY SAKINA DHORAJIWALA AND AASHISH GUPTA

AT the Jamaluddin gram panchayat in Patna

district on January 26, 2007, Chief Minister Nitish
Kumar launched an ambitious reform of the public
distribution system (PDS) in Bihar: a coupon system. He claimed that it would empower the poor
and stop black-marketeering and that it was not a
simple coupon but a powerful weapon in the hands
of the poor.
Under the coupon system, families below poverty
line (BPL) receive 12 food coupons every year, one for
each month. They are distributed to cardholders in
May and June in public by panchayati raj and government functionaries. Every month, the household
exchanges one coupon for foodgrain (wheat and rice)
with any licensed PDS dealer in their district. The
dealer deposits the coupons with the administration
and gets back the quantity of grain distributed by
him, and the cycle continues.
Nitish Kumar claimed that the coupon system
would stop black-marketeering because a dealer
who sold grain in the open market would not get any
coupons, and therefore, no grain for the next month.
Further, if BPL households found that a dealer was
not supplying grain or cheating them (say, by charging more, giving less, or mixing stones with the
grain), they could go to another dealer. In other
words, coupons would help track the ow of grain
and create competition among dealers.
However, a survey of the PDS conducted in 12
villages of Katihar and Nalanda districts in MayJune 2011 found that the perceived power of couF R O N T L I N E

pons to combat corruption had been undermined

severely. Sometimes government ofcers were responsible for this, at other times the dealers were,
and quite often, they were hand in glove with each
other. In village after village, respondents hurled
abuses at the dealers and complained that the PDS
was not working.
In Mansahi block of Katihar district, the survey
showed, dealers delivered between 21 and 23 kg of
grain against coupons that entitled BPL households
to 25 kg of grain. Antyodaya households got only 31
kg out of their entitled 35 kg. Dealers also overcharged them for the grain even though the coupons

MANISH KUMAR

Government ofcials can still divert

grain from godowns instead of
delivering it to dealers. Dealers can
also sell grain in the open market
after forcibly collecting the coupons
or giving cardholders a part of their
entitlements and charging more.

PDS dealer for

Singhaul village, in possession of 180 coupons for
the months of April and May, which he managed
to collect from BPL households in February 2011.

S UR E N D R A KUM A R P A S W A N ,

1 0 1

JANUARY 13, 2012

mentioned the price and quantity

clearly. Many of the respondents said
they were helpless and had to pay what
the dealers demanded and take whatever they gave. Sab chor hain, paisa
jyada lete hain aur anaaj kam dete
hain (They are all thieves, all of them
overcharge and give less grain), said a
respondent. The competition process
obviously had its limits.
In Barsoi block, also in Katihar,
grain was distributed for just a few
months in a year. Residents still had
coupons for the months gone by, with
the number ranging from a low of four
to a high of 10. Some people had received their PDS rations only twice in
the preceding year. Others showed us,
often with anger and disgust, coupons
dating back to 2007.
This does not appear to be the dealers fault, though. Dealers in Barsoi
complained that they had not been given grain in exchange for the coupons
they had submitted. They were sure
that grain had been siphoned off by
marketing ofcers and district managers who controlled the godowns. In
short, the powerful weapon in the
hands of the poor had failed to empower them.
In Nalanda district, the survey
team found, dealers had found a simple way of undermining the coupon
system: they collected the coupons but

Despite
considerable
efforts by the
State, the BPL
list has large
exclusion
errors.
did not deliver grain. In several villages, dealers would take coupons for two
months and give grain for one.
One dealer had taken coupons for
four months (February to May) in February itself. When confronted with
proof of this, he said he had done this
under pressure from the Block Marketing Ofcer. It turned out that they
had sold in the open market the grain
meant for March. The option of going
to a dealer other than the designated
one was not available in Nalanda:
dealers refused grain if someone who
was not allotted to them turned up.
Here again, coupons had failed to create competition.
The survey found that dealers were
involved actively in spreading misinformation. In one village, the dealer

1 0 2

F R O N T L I N E

had told BPL cardholders that they

were no longer entitled to grain and
that it was for Antyodaya households
only. In another case, there was a rumour that Bihar was sending kerosene
to Japan for earthquake relief, making
it scarce in ration shops: A nuclear
plant has been destroyed there, so they
need kerosene desperately.
These tricks work partly because of
Bihars failure in other critical domains, such as basic education: 84 per
cent of the respondents were illiterate.
While people were often aware of the
quantity they were entitled to (perhaps
because they were printed on the coupons in big size), they were not clear
about the prices they were supposed to
pay (also printed on the coupon, but in
small size). Being illiterate and powerless, they could not use their coupons
to demand their full entitlements from
the dealers. Nor could they get the
dealers licences revoked easily.
Consequently, the overall survey
ndings from Bihar are depressing
(especially when contrasted with other
survey States). The monthly PDS purchase of BPL households in Bihar was
on average just 11.2 kg compared with
the entitlement of 25 kg. Even this
appears to be an improvement: according to Reetika Kheras analysis of
the National Sample Survey data, 90
per cent of the PDS grain was di-

JITEN PASWAN

JANUARY 13, 2012

AB DU L K UD D US O F Barsoi, Katihar, shows the coupons for the months for

which grain was not delivered in the village. Each coupon corresponds to one
month of undelivered grain.

verted in Bihar in 2004-05; it was

down to 75 per cent in 2009-10.
In at least one of the ve blocks we
visited (Mansahi in Katihar), respondents felt that the system had improved. Their testimonies suggest that
Mansahi used to be much like the other sample blocks where nothing got
delivered for months. Now they get at
least something every month, even if it
is not the full entitlement.
However, the general situation in
Bihar is still abysmal, though not irredeemably so. Indeed, Bihar would do
well to learn from the experiences of

Chhattisgarh and Orissa, where the

PDS has achieved a remarkable turnaround in recent years, as well as from
Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh and
Andhra Pradesh where the PDS has
been in good shape for a long time. The
survey, which was carried out in these
States as well, showed a well-functioning PDS there, with most BPL households getting their full entitlements
regularly.
Bihars coupon system fails to prevent corruption for at least three reasons. First, government ofcials can
still divert grain from godowns instead
F R O N T L I N E

1 0 3

of delivering it to dealers. Secondly,

dealers can sell grain in the open market after forcibly collecting the coupons. Finally, it is easy for dealers to
give cardholders only a part of their
entitlements while charging more.
Thus, the coupon system is not the
solution it was envisaged to be at
best, it is a safeguard, but it does not
obviate the need to do the homework
that many States have done to streamline their PDS.
The lessons for a State like Bihar
from other performing States include
initiating de-privatisation of PDS
shops, computerisation of records and
regular monitoring, establishing effective grievance redress mechanisms,
and reducing the prices of commodities provided through the PDS. Bihar
currently focusses on targeting effectively, but despite considerable efforts
by the State, the BPL list is unreliable,
with large exclusion errors. These can
be avoided only with a much expanded
BPL list.
There are also important lessons
for policymakers and politicians gungho about the ability of coupons, food
stamps, smart cards or the unique
identication number (UID) to root
out corruption. In a context like Bihars, it is easy for a PDS dealer to take
coupons while delivering partial entitlements, or for that matter to get a
thumb impression on a biometric device without delivering any grain.
Bihars current PDS based on coupons seems to show signs of life for a
few months in a year and in a few
places for the rest, it is as good as
dead. As mentioned earlier, it is easy to
nd respondents who have preserved
coupons from 2007, perhaps hoping
that they will be able to get grain
against them or perhaps hoping that
this will serve as evidence of a nonfunctioning system. After all, Nalanda
is the electoral constituency of Nitish
Kumar, who brought good governance to Bihar. However, the Chief
Minister seems to have given up on the
PDS, going by the claims he is making
about cash transfers, which are similar
to those he made about coupons four
years ago.

Food Security

JANUARY 13, 2012

Strong revival
In Jharkhand, an assertive populace is making sure that the dealers do not hijack
the PDS. B Y A N I N D I T A A D H I K A R I

Dealers followed a chain system

whereby each months rice quota
was lifted later from the Food
Corporation of India godown.
Ending this ensured the timely
distribution of grain each month.

MANOB CHOWDHURY

UNTIL a few years ago, the public distribution

system (PDS) in Jharkhand appeared broken and
beyond repair. The National Sample Survey data for
2004-05 suggest that more than 80 per cent of the
PDS grain was sold in the open market at that time. A
eld survey in Ranchi and Dumka districts from
June 4 to 18, part of a larger study of the PDS in nine
States conducted by student volunteers, has found
signs of a signicant revival of the PDS in the State.

This account is based on the rst phase of the survey

among BPL and Antyodaya households in Angara
and Khunti blocks of (undivided) Ranchi district.
In Jharkhand, both BPL and Antyodaya families
are entitled to 35 kg of rice a month at Re.1 a kg. This
is better than in any other State except Tamil Nadu.
Though only about one-fourth of the sample households got their full entitlements regularly, the shortfall that most of them reported was only two or three
kilos. The extent of shortfall too had reduced considerably in the past two years.
After the issue price was reduced to Re.1 a kg
(rice was even distributed free of cost for some time
after drought was declared in August 2009), the
peoples stake in getting their full entitlements increased dramatically. PDS dealers themselves said
the ration card dhaariyo mein jagrukta (new
awareness of cardholders) and system mein sudhar
(improvement of the PDS) had made the distribution of free or nearly free grain effective.
There were interesting examples of this in-

I N A N G A RA B LO C K in Ranchi on June 20, villagers complaining to the district authorities at a meeting

about their quota of PDS grain not being distributed for the past two months.
1 0 4

F R O N T L I N E

JANUARY 13, 2012

creased assertiveness of people in demanding their due from the PDS dealer. In Sursu village (Singari gram
panchayat), for instance, when residents found out that their quota of
grain for November had been sold in
the open market, they raised the issue
in the gram sabha and the dealer was
taken to task. Finally, the dealer
agreed to compensate all the families
the lost amount of rice over the next
three months. A few families we interviewed had in fact received 40 kg of
rice in the previous month.
The de-privatisation of ration
shops, successfully accomplished in
neighbouring Chhattisgarh, is yet to
happen in Jharkhand. Most of the ration shops are still run by private dealers. However, the system of paying
commissions to the dealer for transporting grain from the godown to the
ration shop has been replaced with
doorstep delivery to the ration shop.
This acts as a safeguard against the
diversion of grain by dealers when they
lift their quota from the godown. However, because of low rates that transport contractors are paid and
non-reimbursement of unloading
costs, dealers are still charged some
delivery costs. They compensate for
this by under-weighing grain at the
time of distribution.
EXCLUSION ERRORS

The survey found major exclusion errors in the BPL list. In one village in
Angara, the BPL list had only 82 families from one of the nine tolas (hamlets). When residents of the villages
themselves conducted a survey last
year, they came up with more than 350
families to be added to the list. However, the distribution of ration cards in
the village is still based on the old list,
which dates back to 1997. In many
cases, the ration cards had practically
disintegrated, and with no blank pages
left the records were kept in makeshift
notebooks. Those who had applied for
new ration cards over a year ago had
still not received them.
In trying to determine the regularity of supply, households were asked
to recall the quantity of grain pur-

chased over the past three months and

whether their quota for any of these
months was still pending. In Angara,
household after household responded
in the negative.
However, the records of PDS dealers had a different story to tell. What
dealers followed was an ad hoc system
of lifting and distribution of grain (described locally as the chain system)
whereby each months rice quota was
lifted from the Food Corporation of
India (FCI) the following month.
Sometimes the chain stretched to two
months instead of one, as had happened in Angara just before the survey.
Apparently, there were no xed dates
for distribution. As a result, households were unable to keep track of
which months ration they had purchased. The administration nally decided to put an end to this chain
system from June 2011 and insisted on
timely distribution of grain each
month. Most villages in Angara lost
their quotas for April and May because
the administration insisted on distributing the June quota in June itself
and starting afresh. The lapse in supply went undetected.
When these facts were highlighted
in public meetings held in various villages across Angara, agitated residents
began to mobilise themselves to demand the quota that the district administration claimed had lapsed. A
complaint was sent to the Deputy
Commissioner of Ranchi, followed by
a one-day dharna at the Angara block
ofce. The dharnas main slogan was
Anaaj do, jawaab do (Give grain, give
answers).
The same day, district ofcials
promised to distribute grain for April
and May. They explained that from
June onwards there would be increased vigilance and timely lifting of
grain from the FCI, every month.
Tightening the process and terminating the chain system, they said, had
already ensured that 75 per cent of the
quota for June had been lifted by the
9th of the month, well before the deadline of the 20th. Later the bulk of grain
distribution for July and August in Angara block was also completed within
F R O N T L I N E

1 0 5

the rst week of the month. However,

three months after the dharna, the
missing quotas were yet to be distributed. This shows that public pressure
alone cannot ensure the success of the
PDS unless the system responds and
delivers on its promises.
NO TO CASH TRANSFERS

The survey also included detailed discussions with sample households

about cash transfers as a possible alternative to the PDS. Contrary to expectations, most people preferred food
over cash. The reasons cited for their
preference were food security, the convenience of the local ration shop, fear
of money being frittered away, transaction costs, and the disheartening experience (including long delays) of
bank payments under the National
Rural Employment Guarantee Act
(NREGA). Food lasts, money gets
spent in a day or two was a common
refrain.
The PDS is the lifeline for families
living on the edge of subsistence, just
eating noon-bhaat (rice and salt) once
or twice a day. On an average, the families we spoke to consumed about 70
kg of rice a month. Many households
felt that, by covering about half of their
grain requirements, the PDS was a
critical source of food security.
The irregularities in foodgrain
supply in Angara are not difcult to x
if there is political will. Streamlining
the doorstep delivery system, placing
ration shops in the hands of community institutions (such as gram panchayats and self-help groups),
redesigning ration cards, and introducing other transparency and accountability measures such as social
audits and computerisation of records
are some of the obvious steps waiting
to be taken. A harder task is to improve
the selection of BPL households and
expand the coverage of the PDS to
avoid exclusion errors. As for cash
transfers, the cash vs food debate
seems premature as far as Jharkhand
is concerned. The need of the hour is to
make the PDS work. Only then will it
make sense to discuss whether cash
transfers can do even better.

Food Security

JANUARY 13, 2012

Loud no to cash
In Chhattisgarh, people swear by the PDS, which has witnessed a revival since
2004 when the government revamped it. B Y R A G H A V P U R I

RAGHAV PURI

The Mukhyamantri Khadya

Sahayata Yojna has added two
million households to the existing
1.3 million getting subsidised
rations. This has ensured
near-universal PDS coverage.

N A N K I B EN , 6 4 , A widow from Binkara panchayat

in Sarguja, followed the surveyors up to the end of
the village asking them to promise that they
would not replace the PDS with cash.
1 0 6

IN Chhattisgarh, as part of the survey on public

distribution system (PDS) versus cash transfers, a
team of student volunteers visited 12 villages spread
across Mahasamund and Sarguja districts. The State
may have been in the news for all the wrong reasons
in recent times, but the way its PDS worked came as a
big surprise.
A large number of the respondents strongly opposed any move to introduce cash transfers. This was
understandable, considering that 96 per cent of the
144 households that were interviewed got their full
entitlement of 35 kg of foodgrain at Rs.2 a kg every
month from the ration shop.
The PDS in the State has witnessed a revival
since 2004 when the government took radical steps
to revamp it. First among these was the shifting of
the management of ration shops from private dealers to cooperative societies, gram panchayats and
womens self-help groups (SHGs). This not only
helped plug leakages but also led to greater accountability and transparency.
Second, to address the problem of fake ration
cards the government computerised all ration card
records and followed this up with verication drives
at the gram panchayat level. All households that
were surveyed had ration cards with an imprint of
the most recent verication conducted last year.
Chhattisgarh also has a functioning PDS helpline
number where complaints can be lodged.
Finally, the Mukhyamantri Khadya Sahayata
Yojna (MKSY, the Chief Ministers Food Assistance
Scheme) provided ration cards to poor households
that were excluded from the PDS because they were
not on the BPL list. While 1.3 million households
were already getting subsidised rations from the
PDS, the MKSY added another two million households at the States expense. This has helped attain a
near-universal PDS; in rural areas, as much as 80 per
cent of the population now have ration cards. More
than half of the households that were interviewed
were getting rations under the MKSY.
For the majority of PDS users, cash transfer was
not a viable alternative; 93 per cent of the respondents preferred food rations from the local PDS shop
to cash transfers to their bank or post-ofce accounts. There were many reasons for this: remote-

F R O N T L I N E

JANUARY 13, 2012

backs is better than making a trip to

the bank and then a longer trek from
the market to their village. The sarpanch of Chipparkaya told us that soon
an extension counter of the ration shop
would be constructed in the Pahari
Korba settlement, making it easier for
them to purchase foodgrains, particularly in the dry season.

RAGHAV PURI

FOR AN IMPROVED PDS

AT TH E LK O D D A D A R G R A M panchayat in Mahasamund district, people

returning home with their rations.

ness of markets, risk of misuse of money, and, most importantly, food

security. If we get cash we will spend
one day at the bank and one day at the
market. When are we going to work?
said Chatru of Damodara panchayat in
Mahasamund district. His concerns
are valid considering that the bank and
the closest market selling rice throughout the year are both located at the
block headquarters 18 km from his
village.
Many respondents, particularly
women, expressed their concern over
the possible misuse of money. With
alcoholism being a major problem in
these areas, many women were afraid
of losing control over the household
budget. According to Nyali Koshy
from Badetemri panchayat in Mahasamund, If we get cash then all decisions will be made by the men and we
cannot keep an eye on them the entire
day. If our men withdraw the cash and
spend it, what will we do?
Interestingly, even men were worried that cash would be spent on nonfood items. Many of them said they did
NREGA work for a day or borrowed
from neighbours to make Rs.70 for the
monthly rice quota of 35 kg. With cash
transfers, they feared, this would

change as their spending on food (at

much higher prices) would be decided
on a day-to-day basis after taking other
expenses into account.
Finally, food security itself was the
prime concern of most households.
Mirabai of Aarangi panchayat in Pithora block aptly summed it up: Will I
eat the money? Who will ensure that I
can nd rice in the market? Nidra
from Damodara panchayat said: Currently the government takes the trouble of ensuring that rice is available in
the village but if we get cash then we
will have to go looking around for rice.
For us, the ration shop is better.
As paddy cultivation is seasonal,
the supply of rice in the local markets is
erratic. This leads to times when rice is
not available and prices shoot up. The
PDS, however, ensures a regular supply of rice at subsidised rates to these
families and also saves them a trip to
the market, which often takes up an
entire day.
In the remote panchayats of Chipparkaya and Teerang in Sarguja district, the Pahari Korba, a hill tribe,
make a monthly trek to their ration
shop located nearly 6 km away, in the
plains. According to them, the uphill
trek with 35 kg of foodgrains on their
F R O N T L I N E

1 0 7

Many of the respondents would rather

see the government further improve
the PDS than give them cash. Other
than making the ration shops more
accessible by opening extension counters in remote villages, the provision of
subsidised dal (lentil) and cooking oil
was high on their wish list. Large
households complained that entitlements should be adjusted to the household size as 35 kg of foodgrains a
month was just not enough for them.
Others wanted the wheat component
of the PDS quota to be replaced with
rice, as often they had to sell the wheat
to buy the staple cereal, rice. It is hoped
that these issues will be addressed in
future discussions of the National
Food Security Bill, to be tabled soon in
Parliament.
As a student of public policy, I remember studying the success stories of
cash transfers in South America a
favourite among proponents of cash
transfers in India and wondering
why India was not promoting this
model. However, this visit to Chhattisgarh was a much-needed reminder
that context matters. While cash
transfers may be a possible alternative
to the PDS in areas where markets and
banking services are functional and
easily accessible, the large majority of
Indias poor live in villages like those in
Chhattisgarh. Cash transfers in these
areas will not only make it more difcult for the rural poor to get foodgrains
but also threaten food security.
An image that will remain with us
is that of Nankiben, a 64-year-old widow from Binkara panchayat in Sarguja. She followed us up to the end of the
village asking us to promise that we
would not replace the PDS with cash
transfers.

Column

JANUARY 13, 2012

Mess in eurozone
The European lemmings are now leading the pack of the rest of us into the sea of
the next big global economic crisis.
S it nally the endgame for the
euro? Certainly the crisis has unfolded more rapidly in that economic union than most observers
anticipated. Many people in positions of responsibility are already voicing what would have been thought
unthinkable even a few months ago,
talking about the real possibility of a
break-up of the eurozone or at the very
least the exit of one or more members.
Why and how has it reached this
point so quickly? This reects two major failings: rst in the general understanding of the underpinnings of the
economic problems in the eurozone;
and second, in the insufcient and often misplaced attempts to deal with it
by eurozone policymakers and indeed
also by the International Monetary
Fund.
First, consider the nature of the
problem. This is often presented as a
problem of excessive public debt and
government proigacy. But nothing
could be further from the truth. It is
true that in the case of Greece, public
decits turned out to be much larger
than they were declared to be in the
previous decade (as the then government was assisted by the nancier
Goldman Sachs in concealing the true
extent of the gap). In most of the eurozone, as in the developed world generally, it was the nancial crisis of
2008 that led to the emergence of very
large government decits.
The crisis meant that automatic
stabilisers (which are more advanced
in rich countries) and scal stimulus
packages came into play. Public bailouts accounted for a large part of the
decit, as private bad debts were taken
into public hands. The median public
debt to gross domestic product (GDP)
ratio in developed countries almost

Preoccupations
JAYATI GHOSH
doubled (to more than 60 per cent of
GDP) between 2007 and 2010. This
process was particularly evident in
Spain and Ireland, both of which had
followed extremely prudent scal
policies in the run-up to the crisis, and
even ran government surpluses. The
subsequent shift to large decits was
because the governments took up the
burden of dealing with the crisis,
which was almost entirely a reection
of private sector imbalances.
Even now, the behaviour of bond
markets appears to be inexplicable in
relation to the so-called fundamentals of public debts and decits. For
example, as a percentage of GDP
Spains government debt is smaller
than that of Germany. Yet Germany is
seen as a safe bet, with German bonds
trading at very low yields, while Spain
has a very high risk premium on its
public debt. In general, the eurozone
countries that are being punished by
the bond markets and whose sovereign debts currently have very high in1 0 8

F R O N T L I N E

terest rate spreads over Germanys

are not really characterised by high
scal decit to GDP ratios or high public debt. Rather, they are countries
with signicant current account
decits.
This provides a clue as to the basic
source of the crisis: the current account imbalances between eurozone
countries, which have now become unsustainable, as private nance reacts
by withholding capital ows. This happens to be expressed in the form of low
prices and high yields on sovereign
bonds, but the truth is that these peripheral countries are not in trouble
because of scal imbalances but because capital inows in the previous
decade were associated with a rapid
build-up of current account imbalances generated by the private sector.
So, this is essentially a banking crisis
brought about by private capital inows that then led to divergences in
real exchange rates and trade balances.
Developing countries (or emerging
markets as they are now called) are
familiar with this kind of crisis we
have been there, done that and lost our
T shirts many times over. The question
is what allowed such imbalances in
real exchange rates (which is the same
as saying, different price levels in different eurozone countries) to persist
despite the claims of the European
Single Market, which was supposed to
equalise goods and factor prices across
the region. This failure of the Single
Market to deliver is at least one of the
deeper roots of the current crisis.
Since the European Union as a
whole has a current account that is
broadly in balance, it follows that the
decits and surpluses within the region are broadly equal. So the decits
of countries such as Greece, Italy,

LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP

JANUARY 13, 2012

A P R OTE S T A G A I N S T pension cuts and new taxes in Athens. The decit

countries are being asked to generate export surpluses through wage
compression and suppression of consumption. The surplus countries,
especially Germany, are equally intent on preserving their own model of
generating export surpluses by suppressing domestic consumption.

Spain and so on are counterbalanced

by the surpluses of countries such as
Germany, which has clearly been
among the most signicant beneciaries of the process of economic integration by being able to run export
surpluses that are often supported by
capital ows to nance importing
countries. Within Europe, Germany
and other capital exporting countries
have been doing what China has been
doing vis-a-vis the United States: providing capital ows that enable continued expansion of its own exports.
FACT AND FICTION

This reality is very far from the way

matters are generally presented in the
European press, with austere Germans
supposedly having to work hard to pay
for the lazy Greeks lying in the sun
drinking ouzo after retiring at 45 years.
In fact, Greeks on average have longer
working hours and lower pay than
Germans, and since the bulk of them
are self-employed or work in very
small enterprises, many never really
retire at all. The higher productivity
levels in Germany are a reection of
the continued monopoly of intellectual
property rights that prevent productivity-enhancing technologies from
being spread to other countries. And

the greater competitiveness of Germany results from the fact that the benets of this productivity growth have
not been passed on to workers.
The misreading of the nature of the
crisis is then naturally reected in the
misguided and therefore continuously
ineffectual attempts at solution. Much
is made of the fact that European leaders keep meeting (with lesser or greater degrees of acrimony) and
promising speedy resolution, yet
things keep getting worse. Even the
proposed moves towards scal union,
necessary though they are, will at best
correct the stock aspect of the problem, of dealing with what are now unsustainable debt situations. The ow
correction of addressing the external
imbalances within the eurozone is
still unlikely to evolve within this
framework.
WRONG MEDICINE

A very major reason for this is the assumption that government austerity
measures in the decit countries can
correct the situation. In the absence of
any possibility of exchange rate devaluation for countries in the eurozone,
these countries are being asked to undergo major internal devaluations in
the form of falling wages and conF R O N T L I N E

1 0 9

sumption, thereby severely contracting their economies. Everywhere the

emphasis is on reduced spending rather than economic growth as the means
out of the crisis. Even the much-vaunted new prudential regulations on nance the Basel III norms will do
precious little to reduce the irresponsibility and moral hazards of big banks,
but they will cause credit ows to small
businesses to dry up even more, thus
further reducing growth prospects.
Wrong diagnosis means that the
wrong medicine is being prescribed.
The countries in decit are being asked
to generate export surpluses through
internal wage compression and suppression of domestic consumption.
But where are they to export to? The
surplus countries in the eurozone, especially Germany, are equally intent
on preserving their own model of generating export surpluses by suppressing domestic consumption. This is a
recipe for Europe-wide recession if not
depression. The problem is compounded by the uncertain growth in
the U.S. Other growing economies
such as China, Brazil and India are
simply not large enough in the aggregate to take up the slack and in any
case are also adversely affected by the
European slowdown.
All this would be bad news in itself,
but everything is rendered more urgent by the behaviour of nancial markets, which have accelerated the
processes of decline and added to the
confusion. The stated goals of scal
union will take time, a complicated
political procedure that cannot be simply pushed through despite the best
will of individual leaders.
Meanwhile, a major drop in condence and movement of capital out of
any one country can, indeed will, precipitate a liquidity crisis so severe that
some default will be inevitable. The
consequences, as developing countries
know so well, are contagion to other
markets, bank failures, and credit
crunch.
No doubt about it, the European
lemmings are now leading the pack of
the rest of us into the sea of the next big
global economic crisis.

Economy

JANUARY 13, 2012

Losing
momentum
Economists caution that unless the
authorities come up with an agenda of
action, the incipient slowdown can get
entrenched. B Y G . S R I N I V A S A N

IN NEW DELHI

The governments silence on policy

reforms like putting in place a GST
and pruning subsidies has unnerved
investors. The muddle over the
move to allow FDI in multi-brand
retail without ensuring stakeholders
consent has added to their jitters.
IN the trajectory from the euphoric statement in
the pre-Budget Economic Survey in early 2011 that
the economy would continue its dream run of 9 per
cent growth in the nal year of the Eleventh FiveYear Plan (2007-12) to the recent reality check that it
would only be in the 7 to 7.3 per cent range lies a twist
in the Indian growth story. The reasons for the
changing fortunes of the domestic economy are not
far to seek. Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee himself said at the Delhi Economics Conclave in
mid-December that the struggle against ination
and tightening interest rate regime has contributed
to lowering of growth in demand and investment.
The economy today is in the grip of a host of
difculties: high energy prices, halting pace of recovery in advanced economies, strained government
nances partly because of a slowing economy that
nds no meaningful alternatives to huge consumption expenditure, and no major relief from high
ination.
Ofcial gures show that the GDP growth
dipped below 7 per cent in the second quarter (JulySeptember) of the current scal. It moderated to 6.9
per cent in the second quarter of 2011-12 from 7.7 per
1 1 0

cent in the rst quarter and 8.8 per cent in the

corresponding quarter a year ago. The monetary
policy review of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)
announced on December 16 attributed the deceleration in economic activity mainly to a sharp moderation in industrial growth. The RBI also saw a
signicant slowdown in investment. As a consequence, during the rst half (April-September) of
2011-12, GDP growth slowed down to 7.3 per cent
from 8.6 per cent last year.
The contraction in the index of industrial production (IIP) during October 2011, the latest gure,
bears out the worst performance since March 2009.
The RBI said the dip in industrial output was mainly
because of contraction in manufacturing and mining
activities. The contraction was particularly pronounced in capital goods with a year on year (y-o-y)
decline of 25.5 per cent, reinforcing the investment
decline story.
INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT

It may be noted that the countrys industrial output

steadily increased during the last three years, after
the global nancial meltdown in 2008, from 2.5 per
cent in 2008-09 to 5.3 per cent in 2009-10 and to a
relatively robust 8.2 per cent in the last scal. In the
current scal, it became tepid during April to October by logging a measly 3.5 per cent growth com-

F R O N T L I N E

JANUARY 13, 2012

fuel issues such as ensuring due availability of coal to thermal power stations
and
natural
gas
to
user-industries such as fertilizer and
power, is another factor contributing
to the low industrial output.

RAFIQ MAQBOOL/AP

EXPORT SECTOR

AT A SMA L L production unit in

Mumbai. In the current scal, Indias
industrial output became tepid
during April to October by logging a
measly 3.5 per cent growth
compared with 8.7 per cent in the
corresponding months of the
previous year.

pared with 8.7 per cent in the corresponding months of the previous year.
In a labour-surplus country with an
army of employable people who are
either under-employed or unemployed, a slowdown in industrial growth
provokes particular concern as it impacts employment, for skilled, semiskilled and unskilled people alike.
Economists are also worried over
the marked decline of the capital goods
sector within the IIP, which points to
the insipid investment scenario that is
in the rst instance ascribable to the
continuation of astronomical interest
rates and elevated levels of ination in
the domestic economy. The persistent
deceleration in the mining output,
partly due to policy inertia to resolve

The slowdown has spread, as a logical

corollary, from the industrial segment
to the export sector. Merchandise exports growth fell sharply to an average
of 13.6 per cent y-o-y in October-November 2011 from an average of 40.6
per cent in the rst half of 2011-12.
This conrms the worst fear expressed
even in ofcial circles that the splendid
show on the export front during the
rst half would be daunting to repeat
in the second half.
Even as imports moderated less
than exports, the trade decit threatened to go beyond $150 billion for the
whole scal. In this context, Ramu S.
Deora, president of the Federation of
Indian Export Organisations (FIEO),
rued that despite the negative numbers in industrial output and deceleration in export growth, the badly
needed reduction in interest rates
could not come about even as the RBI
did not tinker with policy rates in its
incessant ght against ination. He requested the authorities to ensure export nance at a concessional rate not
more than 7 per cent for medium,
small and micro enterprises and 9 per
cent for large businesses to boost exports and stem the whopping trade
decit.
The escalating trade decit in the
face of dwindling capital ows from
abroad meant putting pressure on the
current account, which threatens to go
up. No wonder, the RBI rightly put
that this combined with rebalancing
of global portfolios by foreign institutional investors and the tendency of
exporters to defer repatriating their
export earnings has led to signicant
pressure on the rupee.
As of mid-December 2011, the rupee had depreciated by about 17 per
cent against the dollar over its level on
August 5, 2011, the day on which the
U.S. debt downgrade happened, the
F R O N T L I N E

1 1 1

RBI cryptically put it. The rupee plummeted in value from Rs.45 to Rs.54 to
the dollar before recovering slightly to
Rs.52.80 on December 16, evoking
considerable clamour from the corporates and the political dispensation for
the RBI to intervene in the currency
market to arrest the fast depreciating
value of the rupee. But critics of any
interventionist approach by the central bank cautioned the authorities not
to fall into such a trap as this would run
down forex reserves even when such
reserves at $308 billion would warrant
no worry.
Fortunately, the RBI did not underpin intervention as it made its
stance clear on December 15 by issuing
new rules circumscribing the net open
positions of banks in foreign exchange,
limiting some forms of currency speculations and reducing the ability of importers and exporters to bet on the
future of the rupee. But this move too
was construed as the tendency of the
central bank to micromanage the market, giving wrong signals to investors,
particularly overseas ones.
SILENCE ON POLICY REFORMS

In the eventual analysis, the governments profound silence on moving

ahead with policy reforms in crucial
areas, like putting in place a goods and
services tax (GST) and pruning the
bloating subsidies, have unnerved the
sentiments of investors, both domestic
and overseas. The recent muddle over
opening up foreign direct investment
in multi-brand retail without ensuring
stakeholders due consent has only
added to the jitters of investors.
To this must be added the woes of
domestic companies of working under
the unconscionable burden of a highcost economy which drain them of any
energy to focus their attention on the
core issue of managing their affairs in a
hassle-free fashion.
Economists caution that unless the
authorities bestir themselves with purposeful programme and an agenda of
action to complement their best intentions, the incipient slowdown of the
economy can get entrenched before
long.

Economy

JANUARY 13, 2012

Primary concern is
to control ination
Interview with C. Rangarajan, Chairman of the Prime Ministers Economic
Advisory Council. B Y G . S R I N I V A S A N

If the subsidy to support food

security goes up, we must be willing
to make necessary downward
adjustment in petroleum and
fertilizer subsidies.

M. SUBHASH

expected to take advantage of it. The services sector

is also growing at a reasonably high level. It is only
with respect to industrial production one notes a
slackening in growth. The reasons for the decline in
the industrial growth rate can be traced to tighter
monetary policy, rise in ination and weak sentiments in the markets.
The xed capital investment has come down
from the pre-crisis levels of 33 per cent of GDP. Some
of the areas in which decline in production has been
noted include coal and electricity. Coal
AS Indias economic growth is in
production has declined for three
slowdown mode, the authorities are
months in a row, but there was some
putting on a brave face on what in their
improvement in November. But the
view is a transitory phenomenon. In
decline in the output of some of the
order to get a proper understanding of
infrastructure areas has affected overthe underlying weaknesses in the econall growth.
omy and their fallout in terms of the
To some extent the rise in interest
prevalent pessimism, Frontline spoke
rates may also have affected the into Dr C. Rangarajan, the ace economist
centive to reinvest. It might have led to
and Chairman of the Prime Ministers
the postponement of investment in the
Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC),
hope that the interest rates will come
at his Vigyan Bhawan Annex ofce in
down later. To this must be added the
New Delhi. Known for demystifying
sentiments within the corporate sector
jargons to make even complex issues
which might have been affected by a
easy to understand, Rangarajan is san- C. R AN G A R AJ A N :
variety of factors that happened in the
guine about the prospects of the econo- I N D I A is one country
last one or two years in the polity.
my, both in the short term and over the where the growth rate
Now, what can be done in order to
long haul. Excerpts from an interview is still high, above
7 per cent.
reverse the trend that has been seen?
with him:
First, investment-output targets set
What is your forecast on the gross domestic product for the various public enterprises must be fullled.
(GDP) growth for the current scal, given the
There has been a shortfall in meeting coal output.
distinct slowdown of the economy?
Capacity creation in electricity has fallen short of the
It is my estimate that the Indian economy will target. Hence, a strong growth in public investment
grow between 7 and 7.25 per cent. We have lowered can be the driving force for the revival of sentiment
the growth estimate from the earlier level of 8.2 per and for pushing the economy forward.
cent. The factors responsible for the decline in
growth rate are many. One, the external factors have Are you suggesting another bout of scal stimulus
not been very hospitable for a faster growth of the after the ones we have had since 2008?
No, the scal space available now for any stimueconomy. In the current scal, agriculture will do
well as the monsoon has been good, and farmers are lus has narrowed since 2008. A scal stimulus is not
1 1 2

F R O N T L I N E

JANUARY 13, 2012

possible, but the fullment of the targets set for the various entities in the
public sector in the areas of road, railways, ports and electricity can act as a
big force for reviving the economy.
Second, as ination is coming
down, there can be a reversal in the
stance of monetary policy as well.
Is the trade-off between ghting
ination and promoting growth telling
upon itself in the slowdown?
People talk of trade-off between ination and growth but this is not a
genuine trade-off. A low level of ination is most conducive to economic
growth in the medium-term. One
should therefore look at the efforts to
tame ination as a move to maintain
the appropriate environment for medium-term growth. Therefore, to some
extent, the tightening of monetary policy may have had some effect on the
growth of the economy in the shortterm. Investors might postpone taking
on new projects in the hope that the
interest rate will come down later.
Nevertheless, taking action to control ination has become increasingly
important because ination rates had
touched very high levels. Since January of this year until November the
ination rate has remained above 9 per
cent. The primary concern of the monetary authority is to control ination.
But there are signs of ination
coming down. Food ination showed a
sharp decline in the rst week of December. Unlike last year, when food
prices, including vegetable prices, rose
sharply during winter, this may not
happen in the current year. Therefore
in the rst quarter of the calendar year
2012, we will see a very sharp decline
in food prices. I expect that by March
2012 the ination rate will go down to
7 per cent or even below that.
Is there any worry over the
soundness of the countrys banking
industry as the overseas rating
agencies had questioned their asset
quality in recent times?
The
non-performing
assets
(NPAs) as a proportion of total advances have shown some increases in

the recent period. Nevertheless it remains at a low level. The borrowing

programmes of the government have
been enhanced slightly, but this is
partly because the collections from
small savings have come down. Therefore it is really a compensatory effort.
On the whole, the demands on the
banking system by the government
will not be much higher than what was
originally envisaged. The banking industry needs to watch its lending programmes so that the NPA as a
proportion of total advances is kept at
the current level.
Well, when rating agencies talk
about asset quality, they talk in terms
of lending by the commercial banks to
priority sectors. In one sense, when the
economy is not growing fast, there is
always a tendency for the NPAs to rise
because the investments had been
made on certain expectations of
growth and if growth comes down below the expected level, there is always
some problem. But if growth picks up,
this problem will be resolved. Therefore I think the problem being faced by
the banking industry may be temporary in nature. Once growth picks up,
this problem should go. I do expect
that in the next scal 2012-13, the
economy will grow closer to 8 per cent.
What is your view on the rapid
depreciation in the exchange value of
the rupee and the sustainability of the
current account decit?
The current account decit in the
current year may be higher than 2.5
per cent of GDP, which we had indicated in our last report. But the
problem on the rupee has developed
because of a mismatch between the
current account decit and capital
ows which are required to nance the
decit. Last year our current account
decit was 2.6 per cent of GDP, but the
capital ows were adequate to cover
the current account decit and to add
$15 billion to the reserves.
In the current scal, the capital
ows have not been adequate and consequently the pressure on the rupee
has developed. If capital ows revive in
the course of the rst three months of
F R O N T L I N E

1 1 3

2012, the pressure on the rupee will

ease.
Are policy inertia and reversal of
reform such as opening up multibrand retail to FDI responsible for
investors reluctance to bet on India
with their money?
Capital ows are dependent factors that operate in the rest of the
world. Capital ows diminish towards
the end of the year. December is not a
month when one nds large capital
ows. Since most of the companies
work on the basis of the calendar year,
the allocations to India will pick up in
the rst quarter of calendar year 2012
and that is the reason why I expect the
capital ows to improve after the onset
of 2012. No doubt, investors are inuenced both by external and domestic
factors. To the extent to which growth
has been below expectations, it will
affect the sentiments of foreign investors. The high level of ination and
decline in industrial output might
have had some effect upon the investors attitude. As India still maintains a
high growth of over 7 per cent, India
may still rank high when foreign investors are allocating funds among different countries.
Are the rights-based approaches to
development by the United
Progressive Alliance (UPA) and
mounting subsidies out of sync with
scal health?
I think it has to be managed. Obviously, if the food security Bill covers a
much larger segment of the population, the subsidy will go up. What is
therefore really required is prioritising
the subsidies one might give more
subsidies under food security but some
other subsidies have to be adjusted
downwards in order to accommodate
that. Therefore what is really relevant
is the total amount of subsidy provided
in the Budget. Perhaps we are now
providing large subsidies for petroleum products and fertilizers. If the
subsidy to support food security goes
up, we must be willing to make necessary downward adjustment in petroleum and fertilizer subsidies.

Climate Change

JANUARY 13, 2012

Uncertain stand
India fails to extract emission cut commitments from Annex I countries in return
for agreeing to the Durban Mandate at the climate talks. B Y R . R A M A C H A N D R A N
and Cooperation, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, at an
informal late-night plenary on December 10, long
after the scheduled closure of the summit on the
evening of December 9. It has been delivered as part
of a package the Durban Package of four decisions on a take-it-or-leave-it basis with no time for
the negotiating teams to study and discuss it before
endorsing it.
The elements of the Durban Package are : (i) the
Second Commitment Period (SCP) for emissions
reduction by Annex I countries under the Kyoto
Protocol (as negotiated under the Ad Hoc Working
Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties
under KP (AWG-KP)); (ii) a decision on the work of
the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooper-

Having introduced equity with

sustainable development as part
of the three new items that it wanted
included in the provisional agenda
of COP discussions, India failed to
force it when it actually mattered.

MI N I S T E RS H U D D LED D U RI N G a plenary
session at the United Nations Climate Change
Conference (COP17) in Durban December 11,
when they reached an agreement to extend the
Kyoto Protocol.
1 1 4

AGNIESZKA FLAK/REUTERS

INDIAN negotiators perhaps lost the wood for

the trees at the two-week-long 17th Conference of
the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in
Durban, South Africa, by agreeing to the text of the
nal decision. The key component of this decision
call it the Durban Mandate is the launching of a
new round of negotiations known as the Durban
Platform for Enhanced Action (DPEA) aimed at a
new climate control agreement under the UNFCCC
involving all countries.
The legal nature of this new agreement has been
left undened it could be a protocol, another legal
instrument, or an agreed outcome with legal force.
The last phrase in quotes, whose meaning is not
quite clear, was incorporated after prolonged wrangling as a compromise to Indias insistence on including legal outcome as the third option.
The exact form of this new agreement is to be
developed by an Ad Hoc Working Group on the
Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, which will
begin work in the rst half of 2012 itself. The body
has been mandated by the decision to formalise the
regime not later than 2015 so that it can be adopted
at COP21 that year and brought into effect in 2020.
The nal draft document containing this decision was proposed by the COP17 President, the
South African Minister for International Relations

F R O N T L I N E

ative Action (AWG-LCA); (iii) a decision on the Green Climate Fund

(GCF); and (iv) an agreement on the
Durban Platform.
Developing (or non-Annex I)
countries initially resisted this vigorous and concerted move by developed
(Annex I) countries to put in place a
new legally binding climate agreement
involving all countries right from the
start of the talks. The developing countries instead wanted a denitive decision to have the KP under which only
Annex I countries had to meet emission reduction targets extended for
the SCP beginning 2013, with more
ambitious targets so as to prevent
global warming beyond the guardrail
of 20Celsius that can otherwise lead to
catastrophic climatic consequences for
the world. That resistance could not be
sustained as in the end the European
Union (E.U.) presented the new legal
regime as a quid pro quo for the KPs
SCP.

To recall, the AWG-KP was established in 2005 and mandated to arrive

at commitments for Annex I countries
beyond 2012 in aggregate and individually. The AWG-LCA was instituted in
2007 as part of the Bali Action Plan
(BAP) for a shared vision for long-term
cooperative action, including global
goal for emission reductions. The BAP
was premised on four key elements
national and international action on
mitigation (which brought the United
States, a KP non-signatory, on board
to take actions comparable to other
Annex I countries under the KP); adaptation, technology development and
transfer to support mitigation and adaptation by developing countries, nancing to support mitigation and
adaptation and technology cooperation. Since then, negotiations have followed this twin-tracks approach
although since COP15, with the Copenhagen Accord, there has been a
consistent attempt by developed coun-

RAJESH JANTILAL/AFP

JANUARY 13, 2012

S OUTH AFR I C AN FOR E I G N Affairs

Minister and President of COP17
Maite Nkoana-Mashabane and
COP17 Executive Director Christiana
Figueres on the nal day of
negotiations.

tries to dismantle it and impose obligations for mitigation on developing

countries under some mechanism that
involves all countries.
Most developed countries were not
interested in having this KP-mandated top-down approach extended. This
has been in evidence since COP15 and
the attempts since then have been to
replace it with a far weaker bottom-up
pledge and review mechanism based
on a laissez-faire approach of voluntary emission cuts by each country that
will include non-Annex I countries as
well a mechanism that would remove
the distinction between developing
and developed countries and merge
the twin-tracks approach. The developed countries argument has been
that developing countries now contributed to over 60 per cent of current
emissions, with China and India being
among the major carbon emitters in
the world, and that any international
treaty to restrict emissions made sense
only if it included the major non-Annex I emitters as well.
Only the E.U., with its already legF R O N T L I N E

1 1 5

JANUARY 13, 2012

islated commitment to reduce emissions to 20 per cent below 1990 levels

by 2020 and its offer of 30 per cent
reduction conditioned upon other developed countries committing themselves to comparable emission
reductions and developing countries
contributing adequately according to
their responsibilities and respective
capabilities, was willing to accept an
SCP but only if a new legally binding
agreement aimed at mitigation targets
for all countries was put in place by
2020 that would bring all Annex I
and non-Annex I countries under it.
Indeed, in a statement released on
November 24 from Brussels, the E.U.
had stated: The U.N. climate change
conferencemust agree on a road map
and deadline for nalising an ambitious, comprehensive and legally binding global framework for climate
action by all major economies. Agreement on this road map is of the reassurances the E.U. requires for entering
into a second commitment period of
the Kyoto Protocol. With developing
countries not wanting Durban to be
the burial ground for the KP, the E.U.
was able to carry many developing
countries with it and, of course, developed countries, in particular the U.S.,
had always wanted a treaty that maintained a symmetry between developed countries and other major
emitters, India and China. Indeed, Para 7 of the Durban Mandate states this
explicitly by requiring the launching of
a work plan on enhancing mitigation
ambition to identify and to explore options for a range of actions that can
close the ambition gap with a view to
ensuring the highest possible mitigation efforts by all parties.
The KP has survived through the
adoption of the outcome report of the
AWG-KP by the President on the
morning of December 11 though at this
stage this would seem only notional
because the AWG-KP has not yet arrived at any emission reduction targets
(through amendment to Annex B of
the Protocol) that the science of climate change calls for and the SCP has
not been spelt out. But it still remains
to be seen what these numbers will be

given that the pledged targets following the Copenhagen Accord fall well
short of what climate change demands
as pointed out by the 2010 UNEP report (Frontline, July 16, 2010), the ambition gap and whether these are
translated into actual legally binding
commitments under the Protocol. India should have extracted emission cut
commitments of the Annex 1 countries
in return for agreeing to the Durban
Mandate, especially when what form
this new agreement is likely to take
remains unknown. More signicantly,
what could have serious consequences
in future negotiations is that the Durban Mandate makes no mention at all
of equity, or common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR).
The draft decision that the President proposed was apparently the result of a series of closed-door talks over
a few days among 20-30 countries.
When the E.U. and other European
countries and several developing
countries (including the Alliance of
Small Island States, AOSIS) insisted
on a legally binding regime, which was
a red line for India and China, both the
countries baulked and wanted to add
the third option, legal outcome. This
was included in the Presidents nal
draft that was circulated at the late
night plenary. Although NkoanaMashabane appealed to the texts of the
four decisions as a whole, the chief
climate negotiator of E.U., Connie Hedegaard, asked for reopening the Durban Mandate and demanded deletion
of the third option. The E.U. had perceived legal outcome as weaker than a
treaty or a legally enforceable instrument for emission cuts. This set in motion prolonged discussion on the issue.
In response, the Indian Minister,
Jayanthi Natarajan, argued that equity and the CBDR were central to the
debate on climate change and asked
the parties not to push aside these issues. She asked how she could sign
away the livelihoods of the poor when
she did not know what the agreement
would contain. She said the Durban
Platform was the product of six days of
talking and all ideas had been put forth
but the nal document was only the
1 1 6

F R O N T L I N E

sense of the chair. The issue of equity,

she said, could not be held hostage and
it could not be pushed aside by the
Durban process. However, these pleas
did not pass muster with the developed
countries, and notably the AOSIS
group, as there had not been until then
any sustained campaign by India to
present equity as the core demand of
developing countries to be met by the
negotiation process under the COP,
backed by well-researched numbers
and arguments.
According to reports, India offered
to withdraw the words legal outcome
if the principles of equity and the
CBDR were incorporated in the document. While the E.U. was willing to
accept this, the U.S. chief negotiator,
Todd Stern, who apparently put pressure on the President to remove this
from the draft document in the rst
place, rejected it, saying that his country would not accept it. Eventually, a
compromise was struck with the words
legal outcome being replaced by
agreed outcome with legal force as
apparently suggested by Brazils chief
negotiator, Ambassador Luis Figueiredo Machado.
Having introduced equity with

MIKE HUTCHINGS/REUTERS

JANUARY 13, 2012

E NVIR ON M E N T A L A C T I V I S T S
DE M ONS T R A T E outside the

conference venue on December 2.

sustainable development as part of
the three new items that India wanted
included in the provisional agenda of
COP discussions (items 11, 12 and 13),
India failed to force it when it actually
mattered. In fact, Jayanthi Natarajan
commented at the plenary that the issue had been pushed somewhere else
and did not form part of the main
AWG-LCA document. Indeed, when
she raised the equity issue, China and
many other developing countries supported her and, with the E.U. willing to
go along, if India had stuck to the demand for its inclusion in the draft, the
U.S. would have been isolated. Ground
was yielded too easily by India perhaps
out of fear of being called a deal breaker. It is unlikely that the third option is
likely to y in the negotiations to follow. Instead, if India had agreed to the
other two options in return for a document inclusive of equity and the
CBDR, India could have assumed a
leadership role among the developing
countries in the ensuing negotiations
on Durban Platform. Considering that

a legally binding commitment would

have come into force in 2020 only by
when India will necessarily have to
take serious mitigatory measures any
way, by playing a central role in the
negotiations, India could have ensured
that its architecture did not seriously
constrain development and harm the
interests of developing countries. By
being too concerned about giving in to
a legally binding treaty, India did not
see the broader issue of equity to be
important enough to take a tough negotiating stand on it.
But this lost ground can be regained because even though the phrases of concern have not been stated
explicitly, the draft decision states that
it will be a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with
legal force under the convention applicable to all parties (emphasis added). Since equity and the CBDR are
intrinsic to the convention, the italicised phrase can be appropriately exploited to bring back that paradigm
into the negotiations. But that requires
hard-nosed negotiations backed by
solid homework on how equity can be
built in and operationalised through
such a treaty. Preparing a wellthought-out strategy along with China
for future negotiations and proactively
taking into condence other developing countries who can rally behind Indias stand when the crunch comes
need to be high on Indias agenda. And
this has to be done quickly because the
mandate requires parties to submit
their views by February 28, 2012. But
this is not going to be easy as the U.S.,
having rejected its inclusion, would in
the nal decision try to interpret strictly by the text, which makes no reference to equity or the CBDR.
In fact, the report of the AWF-LCA
was pushed through by the Chair, Daniel Reifsnyder of the U.S., even as
developing countries raised concerns
over many specic issues contained
therein, in particular its lack of balance
in relation to mitigatory actions by developed and developing countries.
Several developing countries pointed
out the absence of any reference to
historical responsibility and the prinF R O N T L I N E

1 1 7

ciple of the CBDR. Many countries expressed unhappiness over the fact that
the document did not talk about the
level of mitigation ambition needed by
developed countries and that there
was no provision for the comparability
of mitigation efforts between KP parties and non-KP parties. Clearly, this
has reference to the U.S., but the U.S.
was fundamentally opposed to any attempt at Durban to review its pledge or
on how to raise the ambition of GHG
emission reductions. It had also rejected the idea of a common accounting
framework or rules or compliance regime, which many developing countries and the E.U. called for. Referring
to the Cancun Agreements, it said that
it had given no mandate for such a
review or establishing common rules.
There was also a demand from developing countries for working on the
report to restore the balance. They
were not in favour of adoption of the
outcome document at Durban and
proposed that this be done next year.
But the chair, in an unprecedented
move, transmitted the report to the
COP under his own authority. However, he also submitted a note (Conference Room Paper 39), in which he
stated that ideas and proposals made
in informal groups would be carried
forward in discussions next year. What
these proposals are is unclear.
The Durban Mandate thus also includes the decision to extend AWGLCA under the convention for one year
and reach the agreed outcome pursuant to [Bali Action Plan] through
decisions adopted by the 16th, 17th
and 18th sessions of the COP, at which
time AWG-LCA will be terminated.
The two tracks have got a life of one
more year but they will end with
COP18 at Doha. Whether the AWGKP succeeds with an effective SCP and
more ambitious targets for Annex 1
countries remains to be seen. But the
AWG-LCA will just end as mandated
at Durban without any substantive
movement forward on any of the four
key elements of the BAP, which could
have a serious impact on developing
countries efforts at mitigation and adaptation.

Column

JANUARY 13, 2012

A lost battle?
Any conclusion of the current exercise in favour of probity in public life without
the CBI being taken out of the purview of the government will be unfortunate.
HE impasse over the Lokpal
Bill continues. The inability
to arrive at a consensus on
the subject even after a longdrawn-out all-party meeting
convened by the United Progressive
Alliance (UPA) government on December 14 came as no surprise. It conrmed the widely held view that
political parties across the spectrum
were not exactly interested in entrusting the ght against graft to more convincing and autonomous centres of
authority.
The concept of a new and powerful
ombudsman or an autonomous Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) does
not excite them. It actually scares a few
of our legislators. Driven to a corner by
strident public opinion, they could at
best accept the Lokpal as a necessary
evil. Nothing more. I am not for a moment suggesting that all law-makers in
our country are dishonest. This is the
mistake I believe Team Anna has
made. Branding all politicians corrupt
and lacking in integrity is not only erroneous and unfair, it actually earns
Team Anna more enemies.
In fact, it works to the unintended
advantage of those venal elements who
somehow want to scuttle the movement against the current shockingly
low standards in public life. What we
are now witness to is simply a case of
many politicians wanting to let sleeping dogs lie.
Indifference suits the majority in
the polity, who want to just drift in the
hope that Team Anna, unable to sustain itself for too long, will just vanish
very soon. They are possibly right, because the odds are weighted heavily
against Anna succeeding. This is especially because Anna has somehow given the feeling, wittingly or unwittingly,

Law and Order

R.K. RAGHAVAN
that he is acting at the behest of those
who are opposed to the current establishment. Also, some of the language
employed by a few in his camp has
been excessively vitriolic.
After 40 years in government I
have realised that a sense of balance
and the ability to restrain oneself
even when one is outraged and provoked by calumny poured by vested
interests and to doggedly focus on
ones objective earns one rich dividends. This is the test one faces almost
ceaselessly in public life. If you succeed
in facing up to the mud thrown at you,
there is an even chance of your succeeding. Or else you will come to grief
or just vanish. Anna and his admirers
should remember this.
It is, however, unfortunate that the
momentum built against corruption
by Anna is being frittered away. This is
not only because of the wrong tactics of
Team Anna, it is also the result of the
ganging up of a wide range of forces for
whom venality is part of their lives and
1 1 8

F R O N T L I N E

the expression anti-corruption is

anathema. And such forces dominate
every government.
These are, therefore, critical times
for those who want to see a transformation of India into a low-corruption
country. If a strong and autonomous
Lokpal (read the CBI) is not created
now, it will never be. For, it would take
decades for another phenomenon like
Team Anna to arrive on the scene. This
is real tragedy, especially when even a
contentious issue regarding the Prime
Minister has reportedly been sorted
out, with the government agreeing to
bow down to the popular sentiment
that no one should be above the law.
Incidentally, I am amused by the
amount of misinformation that envelops the matter. Whoever said that the
Prime Minister was now above the
law? He enjoys no immunity, in power
or out of it. There is nothing in the law
that at present prevents the CBI (under a maverick Director) or a private
individual from taking the Prime Minister to the court of law on a charge of
misconduct. This is one example of
how ignorance of law or pretence of it
distorts the exercise seeking to bring
about greater accountability of a public servant. In my view the debate over
the Prime Minister is frivolous and
inane.
The draft legislation approved by
the Union Cabinet will be taken up by
Parliament on December 27. The Lokpal Bill is said to be categorical that the
CBI will be out of the purview of the
Lokpal. Two major concessions the
Bill is believed to make are: the Prime
Minister will be within the ambit of the
Lokpal, and the legal requirement of a
mandatory government sanction of
prosecution to proceed against a corrupt public servant will be done away

M. VEDHAN

JANUARY 13, 2012

ANNA H A Z A R E A T

a recent public rally against corruption in Chennai.

with. The major bone of contention

remains the status of the CBI, and the
Lokpals control over it. The government seems to be clear that the Lokpal
will have little to do with the CBI. This
has incensed Team Anna who is determined to take this issue to the streets.
Pitched battles in many centres are a
distinct possibility.
The Lokpal will perhaps have its
own small investigative wing that
could at best launch a preliminary enquiry, and then pass on the ndings to
the CBI for appropriate action. This is
what the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) does under the present dispensation. So, will the Lokpal be
duplicating the CVCs role? This is a
ludicrous situation, to say the least. If
this is going to be the ultimate outcome of the exercise forced on the government by Team Anna, we have
denitely lost the battle.
There is overwhelming public
opinion that the CBI, as presently
placed in the government hierarchy,
will remain a tool in the governments
hands, either to protect one who is part
of the establishment, or to frame
someone who is against the government of the day. This popular perception may be a slightly exaggerated
assessment of the readiness of the CBI
to bend to its political masters.
People who assail the CBI on this
count tend to forget that the organisation is accountable to the judiciary in

every sense of the term. A charge sheet

against an accused is scrutinised by a
magistrate and then the trial court before the latter frames charges. Any irregularity or dishonesty is easily
detected at this stage by these two levels of judicial authority.
There is also the additional safeguard that anyone who has been
wrongly excluded from a charge sheet
can still be made to face trial at the
initiative of a private individual or the
court acting suo motu. This is why it is
not all that easy for the CBI to protect
any wrongdoer, however highly placed
he or she may be. The CBIs accountability to the law and the judiciary is
not a myth. It is real. The 2G spectrum
case is an instant example.
Fundamental to the demand for
total autonomy of the CBI is the fact
that our jurisprudence does not permit
any executive interference in the process of setting the criminal law in motion. There is no way any authority can
tinker with the right of an investigating ofcer to le his own conclusions
before a competent court. Courts in
India have recognised this. Please recall the Supreme Court refusing to vet
the charge sheet in the 2G spectrum
case. Courts generally refrain from ordering who should be arrested and
when a rst information report (FIR)
should be registered. Act as per law is
the dictum that they usually commend
to an investigating agency. This is why
F R O N T L I N E

1 1 9

I have always held the view that the

public prosecutor has no authority to
prevent an investigator from placing
all his facts in a court. The PP, if he
does not agree with the investigator,
can at best convey his views in as many
words to the judge concerned.
Fortunately, such an unseemly situation is usually avoided by a judicious
investigator, who does not want to
weaken a case so assiduously probed
by him through engaging in a ght
with the PP. A Superintendent of Police or Director of the CBI can overrule
his legal adviser or PP and act on lines
he considers most appropriate.
Any conclusion of the current exercise in favour of probity in public life
without the CBI being taken out of the
purview of the government will be unfortunate. It is a victory for dishonest
elements in the polity. Remember,
their numbers are not insignicant.
In my view the CBI, despite all its
faults (slow pace of investigation, poor
infrastructure, inadequate legal support and lack of incentives to its personnel), is the best bet to bring about
greater fear of the law among those
who enjoy enormous money power.
The latter tribe is burgeoning at an
alarming pace. There should be no objection to the CBI being taken out of
the CVCs ambit and transferred to be
part of the Lokpal establishment. But
this will be only to give the kind of
administrative support that is now lent
to the CBI by the Department of Personnel of the Government of India and
the CVC. Beyond this, the Lokpal
should have no say on how the CBI will
conduct its inquiries/investigation.
The Lokpal can, of course, send
complaints received by it directly from
the public to the CBI for further action.
But the Lokpal cannot dictate how the
CBI should dispose of such complaints. This is analogous to the role of
superintendence of the CVC over the
CBI that the CVC Act permits now.
Let us hope some good sense prevails among both members of Parliament and Team Anna. Posterity will
not forgive them if they do not reach a
consensus quickly in favour of honesty
in public life.

Controversy

JANUARY 13, 2012

Deep distrust
In Tamil Nadu, protests and rallies mark peoples opposition to the Kerala
governments stand on the Mullaperiyar dam. B Y T . S . S U B R A M A N I A N

S. JAMES

Be it farmers association leaders,

retired PWD chief engineers, small
peasants or businessmen, nobody
believes that Kerala will provide
water to Tamil Nadu from the new
dam it proposes.

cardamom estates in
Udumbancholai in Idukki district of Kerala who
trekked the hilly slopes of the Western Ghats to
reach Thevaram in Theni on December 15.

T A MI L S W O RK I N G I N

KUDIRAI PANCHA PARAI is a craggy hill on

the Tamil Nadu side of the border with Kerala. At a
distance is the narrow bed of a dry stream, lined with
scrub jungles on both sides, and barren landscape
thereafter. Driving along it from Thevaram village in
Theni district, one could see a group of people carefully climbing down the hill ranges of the Western
Ghats on December 15. One of them was Kasammal,
1 2 0

IN THENI & MADURAI

a physically challenged woman in her thirties. She

used a stick to support her weight and was helped by
her mother, Chinnathai, to negotiate the downhill
slope. We left Udumbancholai in Kerala around 11
a.m. We crossed two hills and thick jungles and
walked for more than four hours to reach this place,
said Kasammal. At Kudirai Pancha Parai, Sub-Inspector P. Sounderarajan and his men from Thevaram police station waited to receive them and drive
them to the village, 6 km away.
Kasammal and family were among the group of
23 Tamils, including 11 women, working in a cardamom estate in Udumbancholai in Idukki district of
Kerala and eeing their homes there after violence
broke out over the Mullaperiyar dam dispute between Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Vehicular movement
across the border on either side through Kumily had
been blocked for more than 10 days, and they had to
trek 16 km to reach Tamil Nadu.
All of us belong to the Kamakshi Vilasam estate, said Mayakka, an elderly woman. Although
we were safe within the estate, which is 2 km from
Udumbancholai town, Tamils were being attacked
in the neighbouring area. Buses are not plying between the two States. So we walked for four hours to
reach this place, she said.
There have been spontaneous rallies in several
towns in Theni district to protest against the Kerala
governments stand on the safety of the Mullaperiyar
dam ever since the stand-off between Tamil Nadu
and Kerala over the dam erupted again this November. The Mullaperiyar dam, fed by the Periyar river,
is situated in Kerala, and its waters irrigate the ve
districts of Theni, Dindigul, Madurai, Sivaganga and
Ramanathapuram in Tamil Nadu. Using the dams
waters that ow through a main canal and 18 subcanals into Tamil Nadu, farmers in the ve districts
cultivate paddy, sugarcane, banana, grapes, coconut,
vegetables, a variety of pulses and cotton. The dam
also supplies drinking water to people in these districts.
Rallies held every day in Theni, Upparpatti,
Chinnamanur, Uthamapalayam, Cumbum, Thevaram, Kombai, Gudalur, Lower Camp, Bodinaickanur, all situated in Theni district, were attended by

F R O N T L I N E

JANUARY 13, 2012

20,000 to 80,000 people. Their

demands were that the Kerala government should give up its proposal to
build a new dam downstream and demolish the Mullaperiyar dam; the
Centre should deploy the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel to provide security to the dam;
Kerala should allow the Tamil Nadu
government to raise the water level in
the dam from the current 136 feet
(41.45 metres) to 142 feet (43 m) according to the Supreme Courts ruling
on February 27, 2006; the Centre
should attach the Peerumedu taluk in
Kerala, where the dam is situated, and
the nearby Devikulam taluk to Tamil
Nadu; and that the State government
should impose an economic embargo
on Kerala.
The Tamil Nadu police lathicharged the rallyists on December 12
and 13 near the Lower Camp area to
prevent them from storming Kerala
territory as prohibitory orders were in
force on the Kerala side.
Political parties in Tamil Nadu organised protests against the Kerala
governments stand. The Dravida
Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) organised a human chain on December 14
at Theni. Its leader and former Deputy
Chief Minister M.K. Stalin wanted the
Centre to intervene in the Mullaperiyar issue without being lethargic as it
was, according to him, on other issues.
At a demonstration in the town the
same day, Desiya Murpokku Dravida
Kazhagam founder Vijayakant demanded that the Centre take control of
the dam and hand it over to the Army
for protection. He warned that the
Centres silence will ultimately ruin
the countrys integrity.
On December 15, Congress workers led by J.M. Haroon, Lok Sabha
member representing the Theni constituency, took out a rally in Theni
town. On December 16, D. Pandian,
State secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the partys cadre
went on a day-long fast in Theni. The
same day, defying prohibitory orders,
volunteers of the Viduthalai Siruthaigal Katchi (Dalit Panthers) led by
Thol. Thirumavalavan took out a rally

in Theni town. An estimated 50,000

people took out a three-kilometre rally, from Nandagopala Swamy temple
to the General Hospital, in Cumbum
town. About 20,000 people organised
another rally from Kombai to Lower
Camp.
On December 21, responding to a
call given by Vaiko, general secretary
of the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK), for an economic blockade of Kerala by sealing 13
roads that led to Kerala from Tamil
Nadu in Theni, Tirunelveli and Kanyakumari districts, thousands of people
gathered in Cumbum and Gudalur. As
the crowd tried to march towards Kumily and violence erupted, the police
red tear-gas canisters and used lathis to disperse them.

Jayalalithaa
has dismissed
Keralas offer
of water from
the new dam
as an act of
deception.
MDMK cadre blocked trafc in Tirunelveli and Kanyakumari districts at
the entry points to Kerala. Lorries,
trucks and autorickshaws kept off the
roads, and lawyers struck work in
many towns. On December 22, all
business and trade establishments in
the ve districts remained closed. Vaiko said the Kerala government should
realise that the agitation had transformed into a peoples movement.
Meanwhile, on December 20, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa wrote a letter to Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh, asking him to withdraw an ofce memorandum of the
National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) led by him, dated December 12, setting up a team of experts
to prepare a contingency response
F R O N T L I N E

1 2 1

plan for the Mullaperiyar dam in case

of earthquakes and oods. This
amounted to succumbing to the subterfuge of the Kerala government and
presenting a fait accompli to the Supreme Court and the Empowered
Committee set up by it to go into the
dams safety, she said. In February
2006, the Supreme Court, after considering the reports of various experts,
had said that the dam was safe and
permitted the Tamil Nadu government to initially raise the dams water
level to 142 feet.
LIVELIHOOD CONCERNS

Mullaperiyar dam is our lifeline and

we will not allow Kerala to demolish it
has become the refrain of the people in
the ve districts. It is a do-or-die battle for us, said M. Bojarajan, a landowner from Upparpatti Vilakku
village, who was taking part in a daylong fast organised by its residents on
December 15 on the Theni-Uthamapalayam highway. People including
wealthy landlords, mill workers, women farm workers and schoolchildren
attended the fast. Bojarajan added:
The Periyar river is jeevaadharam
[what sustains life] of the people of
Theni, Dindi, Madurai, Sivaganga and
Ramanathapuram districts. The Kerala government is playing with the
livelihood of the people of these districts.
B. Thilagar, an elderly landowner,
said they would ght till the last for
justice. It is a question of existence for
us, he said. P. Rajathi, president of the
Upparpatti village panchayat, wanted
the Kerala government to implement
the Supreme Courts order to raise the
water level in the Mullaperiyar dam.
S. Mariappan, superviser of Tamil
Nadu State Marketing Corporation
(TASMAC) at Cumbum, asserted, We
will not give up our ght till we get a
favourable ruling in the Mullaperiyar
issue. We cannot exist without water.
N. Murugan, who owns a tailoring
shop in Cumbum, said all the shops in
the town were closed from December 2
to December 16. This is Christmas
season and business has been affected.
There are 50 units in the Cumbum

region making readymade clothes,

which are sold in Kottayam and Ernakulam [where a lot of Christians
live]. They are closed, he said.
S. Ramamurthy is a farmer who
owns coconut and banana groves at
Kottur between Veeravandi and Theni. Without the Mullaperiyar dam,
nobody can subsist here, he said.
If Theni presents a picture of lush
green elds, it is in full measure due to
the water from the dam and the incessant hard work of the people of the
district. People here virtually worship
Major John Pennycuick of the Madras
Regiment, who sold his property in
England to build the Mullaperiyar
dam in 1895, which changed their lives
for the better. In the main street of the
Cumbum town is Velavan Iddli Shop,
whose proprietor K. Paramasivam has
got a portrait of Pennycuick painted on
the name board. Inside, there is a
hoarding with the picture of the Mullaperiyar dam and a portrait of Pennycuick. There are several Pennycuick
Nagars and Pennycuick Colonies in
the district. Infants are named Pennycuick in the region.
ARGUMENTS,
COUNTER-ARGUMENTS

At the heart of the current conict between Tamil Nadu and Kerala is the
safety of the Mullaperiyar dam. The
Kerala government says that the Mullaperiyar dam is weak and will collapse
if a powerful temblor rocks Idukki district, but the Tamil Nadu government
argues that the dam is strong. In support of its contention, Tamil Nadu
cites the Supreme Court ruling of February 2006 that there is no report to
suggest that the safety of the dam
would be jeopardised if the water level
is raised for the present to 142 feet. The
report is to the contrary.
Kerala says it will provide the same
quantity of water to Tamil Nadu as
now from the new dam it proposes to
build downstream of the existing one.
But Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa has
dismissed Keralas offer of water from
the new dam as an act of deception.
She told the State Assembly on December 15 that the Kerala government,

in its detailed project report (DPR) on

the new dam, had said that its full
reservoir level (FRL) was 136 feet and
that 1.1 tmc ft of water would be used as
ecological ows. So the claim that the
Mullaperiyar dam has become weak is
only a step aimed at not providing water to Tamil Nadu, she said.
The Assembly unanimously passed
a resolution on December 15 asking
the Kerala government to amend the
Kerala Irrigation and Water Conservation (Amendment) Act, 2006, to enable the water level in the dam to be
raised to 142 feet. (The Act prohibited
raising the water level in the Mullaperiyar dam beyond 136 feet by placing it
in the Schedule of Endangered Dams.)
The resolution, moved by the Chief
Minister, wanted the Kerala government not to create hurdles for Tamil
Nadu for doing the remaining strengthening measures of the dam to eventually raise its water level to 152 feet
(FRL).
Jayalalithaa said there was a suspicion that the Kerala government was
doing a mischievous propaganda
about the dams safety for generating
electricity from the Idukki dam, situated 50 km downstream of the Mullaperiyar dam. About 780 MWe was to be
generated from the Idukki hydel reservoir. It could not be done because the
reservoir did not get enough water. If
there is no Mullaperiyar dam, the entire water will reach Idukki, she said.
Be it farmers association leaders,
retired Tamil Nadu PWD chief engineers, small peasants or businessmen,
nobody believes that Kerala will provide water to Tamil Nadu from the
new dam. K.M. Abbas, former president of the Periyar-Vaigai Farmers
Association, said that not a drop of
water will ow to Tamil Nadu from the
new dam that Kerala proposes to
build. The total height of the Mullaperiyar dam is 155 feet (47.24m) and it is
situated 2,889 feet (880.57 m) above
mean sea level, he said. Its dead storage is 104 feet (31.7 m).
The tunnel, which brings water to
Tamil Nadu, is situated at a height of
104 feet. If the water level goes below
that, water will not ow to Tamil Na1 2 2

F R O N T L I N E

S. JAMES

JANUARY 13, 2012

du. But the proposed dams FRL is 136

feet and it will come up at 2,229 feet
(679.4 m) above MSL. The new dam
will be built 336 metres below the centre of the existing dam. So the new
dams dead storage will be around 120
to 126 feet and there will be no room
for a drop of water to ow from there to
Tamil Nadu, argued 77-year-old Abbas, who has been ghting Tamil Nadus cause for the past 30 years in the
Mullaperiyar issue.
He pointed to the Supreme Courts
observation in its ruling on February
27, 2006, which says, It is the case of
State of Kerala that despite the copious rain, the Idukki reservoir is not
lled to its capacity [and] while the
capacity of the reservoir is 70.500 tmc,
it was lled only to the extent of 57.365
tmc. So the water from the new dam
will ow only to the Idukki reservoir
for electricity generation and not to
Tamil Nadu, Abbas asserted.
According to him, water from the
Mullaperiyar dam catered for the cultivation of a variety of crops on more
than 13 lakh acres and not an ayacut of
2.20 lakh acres as claimed by the Tamil
Nadu government. Paddy alone was
raised on 2.20 lakh acres twice a year,
he said. Besides, sugarcane, banana,

JANUARY 13, 2012

Veerapandi village in Theni district. The dams waters that ow through a main canal and
18 sub-canals irrigate ve districts in Tamil Nadu. The dam also supplies drinking water to these districts.

P A DDY F I E L D S A T

coconut, vegetables and pulses were

grown in several lakhs of acres.
Abbas refuted the Kerala governments claim that 35 lakh people in the
ve districts of Idukki, Kottayam, Ernakulam, Alappuzha and Pathanamthitta would be affected if the dam
were to burst. Other than Idukki, the
other four districts have nothing to do
with the Mullaperiyar dam, he said.
The villages or towns that lay between the Mullaperiyar dam and the
Idukki reservoir are Pulmedu, Vallakadavu,
Vandiperiyar,
Sengarai,
Thengaikal, Upputhurai, Chappathu,
Marykulam and Idukki. Of these, only
Upputhurai and Chappathu settlements, with about 450 dwellings,
would be affected if the dam were to
burst, he said. Besides, Keralas Advocate-General had gone on record before the Division Bench of the Kerala
High Court that in case of any eventuality, the Idukki reservoir and the Kulamavu and Cheruthoni dams would
receive the waters from the Mullaperiyar dam, Abbas pointed out.
M. Puthisigamani, president of the
Periyar-Vaigai Water Users Associ-

ation, Madurai, also argued that since

the new dams FRL would be only 136
feet, Tamil Nadu will not denitely
receive any water. On the suggestions
of the Central Water Commission
(CWC) in 1979, Tamil Nadu had
strengthened the dam, using modern
technology, at a cost of more than
Rs.26 crore. All the strengthening
measures were done from 1980 to
1994. So it is a young dam of 17 years.
It is not a 116-year-old dam, said
Puthisigamani, who is also the joint
secretary of the Consortium of Indian
Farmers Associations, Tamil Nadu.
Bojarajan said there was no need to
build a new dam when the Mullaperiyar dam had been strengthened already and the CWC, a neutral party,
had testied to the dams safety and
the Supreme Court had given a ruling
that it was safe. Why does the Kerala
government not understand all this?
he asked. The Centre is keeping quiet
on the issue. This is politics. They are
playing with the livelihood of the people of ve districts.
What infuriated people in Theni
district was also reports of humiliation
F R O N T L I N E

1 2 3

of Ayyappa devotees from Tamil Nadu

and women workers from the State in
cardamom estates in Kerala. More violence erupted in Kerala against Tamils
there after the Supreme Court ruled on
December 13 that there is nothing serious, grave or emergent about the
safety of the Mullaperiyar dam, warranting our interference at this stage.
A ve-member Constitution Bench
dismissed as not pressed Keralas application for reducing the water level
in the dam from the current 136 feet to
120 feet.
The Empowered Committee,
headed by former Chief Justice of India A.S. Anand, was looking into various aspects of the dams safety and no
order was necessary at this stage, observed the Bench, comprising Justices
D.K. Jain, R.M. Lodha, C.K. Prasad,
Deepak Varma and Anil R. Dave. The
Bench, however, said Keralas apprehensions over the dams safety could
not be brushed aside since the water
level in the dam had gone up beyond
136 feet on four days from November
26 to December 2 and there were
earthquakes.

Controversy

JANUARY 13, 2012

Fallout of fear
Fringe elements get a free rein in the border areas near the Mullaperiyar dam.
B Y R . K R I S H N A K U M A R IN THIRUVANANTHAPURAM

But for isolated incidents near the

border areas, other parts of Kerala
remained peaceful. Newspaper
campaigns were a novel facet of the
water dispute between the two
States which the media promptly
termed an ad war.
BELLIGERENCE and one-upmanship over a
sensitive problem affecting millions of people is an
assured way to invite trouble, which then shifts the
focus from core issues of public concern, as some
parties of the ruling coalition in Kerala demonstrated in early December.
A series of mild tremors and heavy rain in Idukki
district from mid-November had given rise to widespread fears in the State about a possible failure of
the 116-year-old Mullaperiyar dam. It also generated
much anxiety in Kerala about the forthcoming case
in the Supreme Court, in which Tamil Nadu had
been maintaining that the reinforced dam was fully safe and that the reservoir storage level should in
fact be raised from 136 feet (41.45 metres) to 142 ft
(43 m) so that more water would be available for
irrigation (and power generation) in ve of its southern districts.
All it took for wild rumours to spread were an
initial attempt by a regional party, the Kerala Congress (M), to stir up passions over the issue, and, in
turn, by other mainstream parties in Kerala, including the Congress, to consolidate public opinion
around it; and a few stray instances of provocation by
their regional cadre, such as stone-throwing and
attempts to march into structures regulating water
ow from the reservoir to Tamil Nadu.
There were reports that people from Tamil Nadu, including hundreds of Sabarimala pilgrims, were
being targeted in Kerala and that Tamil labourers
were being forced to ee plantations in Idukki district and women among them were ill-treated. Such
1 2 4

reports though immediately denied by the Kerala

government along with unprecedented demonstrations in Kerala, including silent marches, hunger
strikes, hartals and human walls expressing alarm
at the state of the dam and demanding that the
storage level be reduced to 120 ft, invariably proved
to be a potent mix for rousing passions in Tamil
Nadu too.
The result: across the border, the concerns regarding the dam, as leaders in Kerala sought to
explain them, were brushed aside as mere propaganda, and statements made by Chief Minister Oommen
Chandy, scotching provocative rumours, were treated with incredulity.
For several days from December 6, prohibitory
orders were imposed at the border towns of Kumily
and Kambamettu, following stone-throwing and
provocative posturing by groups of people on the two
sides of the inter-State check post and nearby areas.
Several groups of people under the banner of various
Tamil organisations were prevented from marching
up to the Kerala border by the Tamil Nadu Police,
also adding to the tension.
A grave situation ensued, with fringe elements
getting a free rein in the border areas near the dam,
where rumours had spread that Keralas proposal for
a new dam was but part of a strategy to deny water to
Tamil Nadu. (Heightened tensions and related stories, Frontline, December 30.)
With mainstream parties in Tamil Nadu also
unable to keep away from such a sensitive and passionate regional issue with livelihood implications
for farmers, it was easy for fringe groups to create
trouble by indulging in retaliatory attacks against
farms, shops, hotels and other business establishments and vehicles owned by people from Kerala
and blocking the movement of goods and vegetables
into Kerala. Normal life was disrupted for days in the
border areas in Idukki, especially after unidentied
groups of people initially sought to cross over to
Kerala through forest routes, and isolated attacks
against residents and subsequent combined action
by police forces of the two States were reported.
Hartals, human walls and other demonstrations
demanding that the water level at Mullaperiyar dam
should in fact be raised to 142 ft as per an earlier

F R O N T L I N E

H. VIBHU

JANUARY 13, 2012

Nadu walking past the Kerala-Kumily check post on December 9 as vehicular movement
across the border came to a standstill.

P IL G R IM S F R O M T A MI L

Supreme Court order were organised

in Tamil Nadu. And, in the wake of
some MPs from Tamil Nadu meeting
the Prime Minister with a demand for
merging Keralas Idukki district with
Tamil Nadu, a group of nearly 150 people, reportedly of Tamil origin, took
out a march at Munnar town in the
district, raising slogans supporting the
claim. The event served to rekindle interest in repeated police and intelligence reports about the activities of
cadre of terrorist/extremist groups
among the Tamil population in Idukki
district and their potential for stoking
chauvinistic fervour using such controversies as a pretext.
PEOPLES PLIGHT

Ultimately, ordinary people of the two

States who had been living in symbiotic harmony suffered. In the rst fortnight since the troubles began, there
had been reports of extensive damage
to vehicles and property in Tamil Nadu, a drastic fall in tourist arrivals in
both the States, loss of revenue of several crores of rupees from tea and cardamom estates in Idukki that
experienced a severe shortage of daily
labourers from Tamil Nadu, loss of

wages because of lack of work, blockade of goods and vegetables moving

into Kerala, and consequent losses to
farmers and traders in Tamil Nadu.
Interestingly, a large number of such
plantations in Idukki are owned by
natives of Tamil Nadu. There are reports that many such owners have abstained from coming across to Kerala.
Movement of vehicles across the
check post at Walayar in Palakkad district to Tirupur, Coimbatore and
Erode and beyond in Tamil Nadu, too,
was disrupted on several occasions after incidents of stone-throwing, damage to transport buses and road
blockades. State transport buses plied
only up to certain points near the border from where passengers (including
students from Kerala studying in a
string of self-nancing institutions in
Tamil Nadu) had to walk across to the
other side to continue their journey.
However, but for isolated incidents
near the border areas, other parts of
Kerala remained peaceful throughout,
with free movement of pilgrims, tourists, vehicles and goods from Tamil
Nadu, and no incident of attack or intimidation being reported from anywhere else. Fortunately, better sense
F R O N T L I N E

1 2 5

prevailed and before rumour mongering and retaliation based on perceived

threats could lead to counter attacks in
Kerala, political parties decided to
tone down or suspend their agitations.
An appeal made by Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh to an all-party delegation from the State that met him in
New Delhi also helped.
In a letter written to his counterpart in Tamil Nadu J. Jayalalithaa on
December 18, Chief Minister Oommen
Chandy, whose restrained statements
proved to be a big help in defusing the
initial tense atmosphere in Kerala,
said: There are highly disturbing
news about several instances of attacks
on Keralites in Tamil Nadu.... Instances of vandalism and attacks have also
been reported. In Kerala we have taken every possible step to ensure that no
person from Tamil Nadu is attacked.
Police presence at Kumily and other
sensitive areas have been strengthened. However, there is a widespread
misinformation campaign which
needs to be addressed immediately. A
report about Tamil labourers eeing
Kerala and a camp being opened for
them in Theni is one such case of misinformation. Tamil labourers work in

JANUARY 13, 2012

Kerala in large numbers, particularly

in the plantation sector, and their contribution to Keralas economy is valuable. Other stories like women
labourers being molested are also being falsely circulated to iname passion among the people of Tamil Nadu.
Labourers and women from Tamil Nadu are safe in Kerala and we shall ensure their protection.
Seeking Jayalalithaas intervention in providing a sense of protection
and condence to the people of both
the States, and expressing his willingness to issue a joint statement with her
in this regard, Chandy further said:
You will share with me the concern
and consequences of such misleading
campaigns. The sense of insecurity
that false information could spread
needs to be curbed urgently. Certain
sections of the media in Tamil Nadu
are whipping up passions by repeatedly projecting totally irrelevant and
misleading images. I request you to
kindly intervene and take possible corrective action to prevent the propagation
of
such
calculated
misinformation.
In an appeal titled Water for Tamil Nadu and Safety for Kerala, published in several newspapers in Tamil
Nadu on the same day, Chandy also
sought to dispel the allegation that his
State was trying to deny water to Tamil
Nadu. Among other things, he said in
the appeal: Mullaperiyar Dam and its
safety is a cause of concern for Kerala.
It is also the source of water to ve
districts of Tamil Nadu. The Kerala
Legislative Assembly in its Resolution
on 9th December, 2011, has unanimously resolved that Tamil Nadu will
continue to receive the same quantity
of water from the new Dam as it receives today. Kerala has always reiterated the stand that we are
committed to provide water from Mullaperiyar to Tamil Nadu. This stand
has been unambiguously conveyed to
the Honoble Supreme Court, The
Honble Empowered Committee (of
the Supreme Court), Government of
Tamil Nadu and Government of India.
There need not be any apprehension
about our intention. A new Dam is the

only solution by which continued supply of water to Tamil Nadu can be

ensured and the safety concerns of
Kerala could be addressed. It is a solution where both sides win. It ensures
water for Tamil Nadu and safety for
Kerala.
Nearly a week earlier, full-page advertisements were published in major
newspapers in Kerala, by the
AIADMK government as an appeal to
the people of Kerala by Jayalalithaa,
and by the opposition DMK as a resolution, which, it said, was provoked by
the unjustiable efforts of Kerala government to reduce water level and construct a new dam and actions of
workers of political parties and certain anti-social elements of Kerala
who have been indulging in violence
for the last few days, attacking vehicles
going from Tamil Nadu.
In her appeal, explaining Tamil
Nadus arguments, especially on the
concerns about the dams safety, Jayalalithaa said: There is no valid reason
to believe that the Mullai Periyar Dam
is unsafe. It is unfortunate that a fear
psychosis among the people of Kerala
is being built up. As the Mullai Periyar
Dam is fully safe and as good as new,
the people of Kerala should see
through the machinations of vested interests and should feel secure that the
retrotted Mullai Periyar Dam is as
good as new and therefore not a threat
to the lives and properties of the people
of the region. I appeal to the People of
Kerala not to succumb to any divisive
forces in the interest of both the States
as we are both committed to maintaining and cherishing cordial relations.
NEWSPAPER CAMPAIGNS

Such newspaper campaigns too were a

novel facet of the water dispute between the two States, which the media
promptly termed as an ad war. But,
all through, it was clear that the real
war was being fought not in the streets
or the newspapers, but in the Supreme
Court, with the ve-member Empowered Committee appointed by the
court expected to submit its report only by February 2012. The committee
headed by the former Chief Justice of
1 2 6

F R O N T L I N E

India, A.S. Anand, was appointed by

the court in February 2010 to study all
issues relating to the Mullaperiyar
dam, including technical details and
claims raised by the two States about
its safety and safe storage level.
Even though Kerala was pressing
for a meeting of the two States to be
convened by the Centre to explore the
possibility of a negotiated settlement
in the context of earthquakes posing
an immediate threat to the dam, Tamil Nadu refused to agree to a discussion on the issue with Kerala.
During a series of hearings before the
Supreme Court it stuck to its stand
that a discussion was possible only after the Empowered Committee submitted its report.
The technical members of the committee, C.D. Thatte, former Secretary
to the Ministry of Water Sources, and
D.K. Mehta, a retired Chief Engineer
of the Central Water Commission,
were scheduled to start their inspection of the Mullaperiyar and Idukki
dams on December 22, even though
Kerala had requested that all the ve
members of the committee be involved
in the inspection process.
Kerala had also led an application
before the Empowered Committee
seeking a direction to the Tamil Nadu
government to lower the storage level
from 136 ft to 120 ft as it had become
absolutely necessary in the wake of
over 26 tremors in the vicinity of the
dam and heavy rains in the catchment
areas that saw the water level rising
beyond 136 ft a demand which was,
no doubt, challenged by Tamil Nadu.
(Tamil Nadu had been insisting
that there were only four tremors in
the region this year. Scientists at the
Centre for Earth Science Studies in
Thiruvananthapuram, however, told
Frontline that all the 26 low-intensity
tremors recorded in and around Idukki would not have been recorded by
instruments located elsewhere.)
The technical members are expected to submit their report to the Empowered Committee chairman on
December 26 and the ve-member
committee is to start hearing arguments of the two States in January.

letters

JANUARY 13, 2012

FDI in retail
ALTHOUGH allowing foreign multinational corporations
to
invest
in
multi-brand and singlebrand retail may be good for
customers in the beginning,
MNCs will establish a monopoly in this area in the
course of time (Cover Story,
December 30). This will
eventually hit small-scale
retailers and reduce customers range of choices. India has a large population of
small-scale retailers. It is
the governments responsibility to protect them.
SANTHOSH MATHEW
VERANANI
PUDUCHERRY

THE ignominious retreat of

the government on the FDI
issue in retail could have
been averted if the Congress
had consulted its allies before it brought the issue to
Parliament. There are some
who argue that a rollback of
the retail policy will only expose the utter weakness of
the government in pushing
through economic reforms.
Before Pepsi, Coca-Cola
and others began their operations in India, well-known
local soft-drink brands such
as Vincent and Kali Mark
were doing good business.
Now these have sunk into
oblivion. Obviously, corporate giants were able to wipe
out small businesses by offering huge discounts to
customers, which they could
afford as they procure materials on a large scale and at
cheaper rates.
V. KRISHNAMOORTHY
MADURAI

Goa
SPECIAL thanks for the article on Goa, 50
years after its liberation (Looking back, December 30). Frontline is the only national
magazine to have commemorated this historic occasion with a special article. Unfortunately, the nationalist movements in
Pondicherry against French colonialism and
in Goa against oppressive Portuguese colonialism have not found pride of place in the
pages of the Indian freedom struggle. If not
for Nehrus go-slow attitude, India could very
easily have liberated Goa as early as in the
1950s, soon after another Portuguese colony,
Dadra and Nagar Haveli, was liberated by the
civilian population. Hardly any freedom
ghter from these places has been honoured
with a postage stamp. The lone postage
stamp released on December 19, 2011, was
unimpressive. The efforts and moral support
rendered by Pakistani Goans is also
forgotten.
G. ANUPLAL
BANGALORE

THERE were times when

the capitalist countries had
to invent sea routes, colonise nations and set up armies to protect their trade
interests. Thanks to neoliberalism, markets in gullible countries are being
captured in the name of
free trade. It is time we recalled how agriculture was
paralysed after quantitative
restrictions were removed
in the sector. Those who do
not want to learn from history are doomed to relive it.
SYED SULTAN MOHIDDIN
KADAPA, A.P.

IT seems the government

has forgotten its duty tobridge the gap between the

have-nots and the have-lots.
In the 1760s and 1770s,
the East India Company
found it tough to ensure a
regular supply of textiles for
export. So, it eliminated the
existing traders and brokers
connected with the cloth
trade and established direct
control over the weavers. It
appointed its own middlemen, who harassed the poor
weavers, sometimes nancially, and forced them to
sell their cloth only to the
English and that too at a very low price. Since the new

F R O N T L I N E

1 2 7

middlemen were outsiders

with little insight into the
weavers lives, they acted arrogantly, sometimes marching with sepoys into the
houses and workshops of
the weavers and often punishing them for delays or
shortfalls in supply.
MNCs such as Walmart
and Carrefour will do precisely what the East India
Company did appoint
their own middlemen, in
three-piece suits and ties.
Instead of eliminating
hawkers and middlemen,
they will just replace them
with their own network.
RITVIK CHATURVEDI
NEW DELHI

THE government has only

suspended, and not withdrawn, its decision to roll
out FDI in the retail sector.
Rahul Gandhi unequivocally declaring his commitment to bring FDI in retail
sector implies that the retreat on retail is only temporary, and the aam admi
should take note of this. His
stand only conrms again
how far the present leadership of the Congress has
strayed from the Gandhian
path and the principles of
Swadeshi. What is required
for the Indian farming community is not FDI in the retail sector but good
patronage, proactive support and other facilities
such as cold storage and a
good support price from the
government.
ETTIRANKANDATH
KRISHNADAS
PALAKKAD, KERALA

THE good news is that India has become the number

letters
one hotspot for global retailers for the fourth time in the
past ve years. According to
global consulting rm A. T.
Kearneys eighth annual
Global Retail Development
Index, India clinched the
rst slot as the best retail
destination, followed by
Russia and China.
There have been protests against the entry into
India of the private retail giant Walmart. In this era of
globalisation, the entry of
such MNCs should be welcomed. Traders protesting
against FDI should focus on
improving their services.
Let there be a healthy
competition.
P. SENTHIL SARAVANA
DURAI
VAZHAVALLAN, T. N.

Mullaperiyar
THE fear psychosis created
by politicians and the innumerable rallies held by various organisations will not
solve the real problems that
will arise if the Mullaperiyar
dam is destroyed by an
earthquake (Heightened
tensions, December 30).
Even if Kerala constructs a new dam on a war
footing, it will take at least
three years for it to be completed. What would happen
if there was an earthquake
near the dam in the mean
time?
The only immediate solution is to decrease the water level in the reservoir to
not just 120 feet but to as
low a level as possible so that
any possible damage can be
kept to a minimum.
The people and politicians of Kerala and Tamil
Nadu act as if they belong to
two enemy countries. We
are dependent on each oth-

JANUARY 13, 2012

er. If the States cooperate, a

new dam can be constructed
in record time.
S. RAGHUNATHA PRABHU
ALAPPUZHA, KERALA

THE controversy over the

Mullaperiyar dam issue is
unfortunate. Experts should
play a more proactive role
without further delay. People need to be educated on
the realities.
JACOB SAHAYAM
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM

Dev Anand
NO words are sufcient to
mourn the death of Dev
Anand, a star who charmed
innumerable
Indians
through his acting (Eternal
romantic, December 30).
He shaped the careers of
many stars of yesteryear and
raised the fortunes of veteran musicians such as S.D.
Burman, Mohammed Ra,
Hemant Kumar and Kishore Kumar. In the article,
the song Hai apna dil to
awara from the lm Solva
Sal was wrongly written as
Hai ana dil to awara.

to face the coming elections

(Dividing game, December 16). Strategies to win
votes may be the only thing
that matters now for the
States political parties. The
proposal of the Mayawatiled Bahujan Samaj Party to
divide the State has won accolades from a section of the
political and social spectrum and met with sheer indifference
from
other
groups and complete rejection by the opposition Samajwadi Party and some
sections of the people in the
State.
Ease of governance following the division is a plus
point but the altruistic nature of the proposition is
questionable. There are
grass-roots level problems
such as sharing of land and
water resources that must
not be overlooked.
Furthermore, Uttar Pradesh is culturally diverse
and has places of historical
value. While dividing this
one big State, one will have
to maintain its cultural and
ethnic diversity.

JAYANT MUKKHERJEE

A.P. NIRMAL

KOLKATA

CHENNAI

DEV ANAND was an extraordinary artist who enriched Indian lms. While
his passionate side came to
the fore in all his lms, his
secret spiritual side came
out in the climax scene of
the lm Guide. His spiritual
discourse brought out the
essence of the Gita in an excellent way. Why has no one
ever talked about it with the
intensity it deserves?
TISH MALHOTRA
DELHI

Uttar Pradesh
POLITICAL parties in Uttar Pradesh are gearing up
1 2 8

Eurozone
THE article Tyranny of nance (December 16)
brought to the surface the
clout that nancial capitalism has come to acquire. It
is in this context that the
recent announcement by
France and Germany to
move towards a scal union
for the entire eurozone has
to be seen. We are being told
that such a move will help
usher in an era of scal discipline for the zone and prevent the common currency
from losing favour with investors. But what is clear is

F R O N T L I N E

that such a move will also

rule out the possibility of an
economy undertaking scal
stimulus in times of a slowdown. Policymakers always
appease the nancial markets by adopting conservative scal policies. The move
towards a scal union will
only institutionalise this
tendency, thereby making it
clear that the state has always been an agent of the
nance capital. This comes
at a time when the welfare
state as it existed in Europe
is practically dead.
ANKUR ANKESH
DARBHANGA, BIHAR

Yesudas
THE write-up on Yesudas
could not have been better
crafted (Celestial singer,
December 16). However,
some errors were made
while referring to his famous Hindi songs. It is Gori tera gaanv (not gav), zid
(not sid ) na karo, and Ka
karoon (not karo) sajni.
ANIL JOSHI
NAINITAL

Syria
CORRECTION: In the article Looming civil war (December 30), a
quote about the Free Syrian Army
being dominated by ghters owing
allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood and armed by the U.S., Israel
and Turkey was inadvertently attributed to Emille Hokayem, Senior
Fellow at the Institute of Strategic
Studies, London. Hokayem in his report does not talk about the Free
Syrian Army being dominated by the
Muslim Brothers or being nanced
by the U.S., Israel and Turkey. The
quote was taken from an article by
Tony Cartalucci, which appeared on
the web-based The Middle-East
Magazine in the rst week of December. The error is regretted.
ANNOUNCEMENT
Letters, whether by surface mail or
e-mail, must carry the full postal
address and the full name, or the
name with initials.

Obituary

JANUARY 13, 2012

Humble genius
Sharp wit and the ability to sketch fellow humans with humour, compassion and
verve made Mario Miranda (1926-2011) exceptional. B Y P A M E L A D M E L L O

His cartoons in The Illustrated

Weekly and his trademark
characters such as the politician
Bundaldass and his sidekick
Moonswamy, Ms Rajni Nimbupani
and her actor partner Balraj Balram
all became popular in their own way.
ANYONE who lived in 1970s India and had access to English magazines would have found it hard
to miss the work of Mario Miranda. As illustrator for
the iconic The Illustrated Weekly of India, his work
occupied quite a few of its pages, signed simply
Mario. And that became the name by which much of
India knew him though he was born Mario Joao
Carlos do Rosario de Britto a Miranda.
R.K. Laxman was the political cartoonist for The
Times of India and occupied its front pages, but it
was Marios signature illustrations and his many
social cartoons in Times Group publications that
became incredibly popular and amazingly pervasive.
His cartoons and sketches in The Weekly; the pompous politician Bundaldass and his sidekick Moonswamy; the lissom Ms Rajni Nimbupani and her
actor partner Balraj Balram that he created for Filmfare; and the embarrassingly buxom secretary Miss
Fonseca that he created for The Economic Times all
publications in The Times stable became popular
in their own way. And who can ever forget the Sardarji in a light bulb that Mario created for Khushwant Singh in The Illustrated Weekly? As children,
we would gaze at it in fascination, the concept of a
man sitting and writing inside a bulb utterly magical.
In truth, Marios work touched a whole generation of
us, 1970s children, as no other artist did.
It was not until I visited an incredible Panjim
exhibition, which previewed the 8,000 cartoons and
illustrations his publisher had painstakingly collected, that I realised that Mario had illustrated the
F R O N T L I N E

M AR I O M I R A N D A . I T has been said that Goa gave

Mario to the world, and Mario gave Goa to the
world.

Balbharati books of the Pune Board, with their memorable Tim and Mini characters. That meant that
children from the Bombay (now Mumbai) and Goa
areas got to know his work from the early age of ve.
Gerard da Cunha, the architect and publisher
who also became Marios chronicler by putting all his
work together, says Marios best period as an artist
were the years of his second stint at The Weekly. A
three-year sabbatical in Lisbon and London had
exposed Mario to the worlds best illustrators and
cartoonists, and he had returned with his art, and
1 2 9

JANUARY 13, 2012

wit, considerably sharpened. He

joined The Times Group in 1953, and
sketches from that period show the
evolution of his style, the early simple
straight lines taking on a new complexity and vitality, a new curvaceousness, fullness and exuberance post his
return from London. He had found his
signature style, something that had
been eluding him, like it does all artists
who begin by imitating those they admire.
Manohar Malgonkars biography
of Mario tells us that in Marios case it
was the cartoonist Ronald Searle he
admired the most, and it was on Searles advice that Mario began to search
for his own style, something he slowly
came upon in his years living and
working in the arty environs of Hampstead, sharing time and space with fellow Goan artist Francis Newton Souza.
Marios new style was in full ow
by the time he came out with one of his
important books in 1964, Goa with
Love, shortly after the liberation of the
State. In it, Mario lovingly and humorously sketched all the wonderful old
customs and practices that had endured over centuries: the village
church feast procession, with its lumbering double lines of altar boys and
candlestick bearers, overdressed women, and suited men, wilting in the sweltering Goa heat, led by a frumpy old
priest; and an elaborate Goa funeral
and the church choirmaster trying to
coax music from his bunch of young
Sunday school pupils.
Writers were to later say that Goa
gave Mario to the world, and Mario
gave Goa to the world. And it was true
because each trip he made back to his
native land and his 300-year-old ancestral mansion in Loutolim, he
chronicled and captured wonderful
sketches that transported his viewers
to a land of swaying palms, majestic
churches and mystical temples, steamer journeys and hippies on the beach.
By 1974, Mario was at his peak. His
Sketchbook on Bombay is a masterpiece that captures all of the citys travails, its myriad people, the crowded
marketplaces, the BEST buses, its
monsoon oods and leaking old

houses. His humorous takes on the

politics of that time the garibi hatao
campaign, the union strikes, the potbellied politician in his Ambassador
car were brilliant social comments,
delivered with style and class. A man of
few words, Mario, his contemporaries
say, liked to stand back and observe,
and like the wise owl, the more he saw,
the less he spoke. What he saw was
obviously fodder for his work, but the
interesting thing is that Marios seeing
was a gentle act, a non-malicious and
empathetic seeing that took nothing
away from his sharp wit.
FEEL FOR ARCHITECTURE

But while his cartoons are captivating,

Marios illustrations reveal the true
artist he was. The illustrations he did
for The Weekly were indication
enough as were some of the line portraits he did of people. But it was not
until he was sent by the United States
Information Service (USIS) to the U.S.
in 1973 and came back with a sketchbook of incredible artwork, enough to
hold an exhibition, that Marios fame
as an artist shot up tremendously. It
was not entirely unknown though. In
the diaries and sketchbooks Mario had
kept as a teenager and young man are
some incredibly good ink portraits of
Jesus Christ and others. It is actually
regrettable though understandable
that while the popularity of his cartoons made him known as a cartoonist,
his gift as an illustrator remained conned to the art gallery circuit.
Consulates were soon inviting him
to visit their countries to sketch; he
was able to produce a body of work
that revealed his great feel for architecture and atmosphere. Fortunately, copies of all of the works are on
permanent exhibition at the Mario
Gallery in Goa.
In 1977, Mario left The Times
Group, to join his friend Behram Contractor in Mid Day and later proceeded to Afternoon Despatch & Courier,
retaining his freedom to continue his
travels and take on independent commissions, which came ooding in. He
always, however, remained grateful
and never failed to mention his early
1 3 0

F R O N T L I N E

debt to D.F. Karakka, who gave him

his rst break in his newspaper The
Current, where Mario worked as staff
cartoonist in 1952, and C.R. Mandy,
who gave him his break in The Illustrated Weekly of India.
As a freelancer years later, Mario
was never short of work and did book
covers, restaurant panels and calendars, working continuously until his
ailments prevented him from doing so.
Five years ago, at 81, Mario went to
Spain and returned with works that
are amazingly good though they may
not be his best. His best, he had said,
was the book he did on his German
trip, Germany in Wintertime, a book
he dearly wanted to see republished.
From 2008, several of his books have
come into the market. Each of them
gave him a new high, and da Cunha
says Mario was particularly looking
forward to an exhibition that was to
open in the Reis Magos Fort in north
Goa that he helped restore.
Returning to live in Goa in 1996,
Mario kept busy with his commissions
but also began a new phase of engagement with Goas heritage monuments
as part of the conservation body the
Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH). If it wasnt
for Marios determination, the Museum of Christian Art would never
have come into existence, says Victor
Gomes, the museums former curator.
Mario would have liked to have taken
up several other projects but inevitably
ran into bureaucratic hassles, something he took with grace. In 2003, Mario was awarded the Padma Bhushan;
just a few years earlier, he had been
conferred the Padma Shri.
If imitation is the best form of attery, then one doubts there is a cartoonist more copied in India than Mario.
There are dozens of artists churning
out characters that look similar to
those sketched by Mario. Did he mind
this, I had asked him earlier this year
in an interview only to get an answer
that was quintessentially Mario. Not at
all, he had informed me, though it annoyed him a bit if the humour was
poor. Some of them even improve on
my drawing. These young people now-

M.A. SRIRAM

JANUARY 13, 2012

ONE OF T H E exhibits at the Impressions of Paris, an exhibition of cartoons by Mario which was organised by the
Mysore chapter of the Alliance de Francaise de Bangalore in 2010.

adays are very good, he had added. A

razor-sharp wit and an ability to sketch
his fellow humans with a combination
of humour, compassion and verve
made Mario stand out among his
peers. On the cover of a book published
in his honour in 2008 is a cartoon that
captures Marios genius in the cartoon
genre. Even in the crowded ballroom
scene he had sketched, heaving with
dozens of couples, each man and woman is imbued with individual personality quirks that make every character
in the crowded scene stand out and
become noteworthy.
The point is that Mario seems to
have truly believed that everybody was
noteworthy. He loved people and liked
being among people, he had said, ex-

plaining why he and his wife, Habiba,

made incredibly long journeys from
their colonial-era mansion to any
event or gathering despite their failing
health in recent years. The musician
Remo Fernandes said he last met the
Mirandas dining at a speciality Goan
restaurant just a couple of days before
Mario passed away on December 11.
To his friends, Mario was loyal and
very good company. Goans like to stick
together in a strange place, and in
Mumbai, Mario was always willing to
help Goan newcomers to the city. The
musician Emiliano da Cruz remembers the many evenings he spent at
Marios apartment in south Mumbai.
Mario was constantly trying to help
me with contacts he knew since he and
F R O N T L I N E

1 3 1

Habiba were quite in with the embassy

and party crowd in Bombay.
Gerard da Cunha, who worked
with him for the past 10 years, described Mario as a humble genius, the
kind who was equally kind to the peon
and the driver. He would tip people
generously and would generally agree
to what people said, with the result
that people would walk into his house
and orally seek permissions to reproduce this and that drawing, and he
would willingly agree with no consideration whatsoever. His family learnt
to be a little more protective after that.
It was this same openness that caused
the loss of much of his original works
but for a few treasured by those who
managed to get hold of them.

Obituary

JANUARY 13, 2012

Koreas loss
Although caricatured in the West, Kim Jong-il, who died on December17, was an
astute statesman well aware of global developments. B Y J O H N C H E R I A N

Kim never took the title of President.

His father had been designated the
Eternal President of North Korea.
The son dutifully implemented his
fathers military rst policy.
THE sudden demise of Kim Jong-il, the leader of
the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK,
or North Korea), took the international community
by surprise. Scenes of mass grieving were witnessed
in North Korea.
The country known as the hermit kingdom
became independent in 1948. The Korean Workers
Party, which was led by the resistance hero Kim
Il-sung, has been in power since then. After President Kim Il-sung died in 1994, he was succeeded by
his only son, Kim Jong-il. Despite widespread scepticism about his political longevity, Kim Jong-il remained the unquestioned leader of the country,
piloting it through tense times. Technically, North
Korea and the United States are still at war. The U.S.
had intervened militarily in the Korean peninsula to
stop Korean reunication under the leadership of
Kim Il-sung. The Korean War, which lasted from
1950-53, also saw the Chinese army intervening on
behalf of the north. Three million Koreans died in
the war. The scars from that war are yet to heal.
Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, North
Koreas main trading partner at the time, North
Koreas economy was doing quite well. The countrys
juche (self-reliance) policy had helped it make big
strides in many elds, including agriculture and science. North Korea is a highly militarised society
because of its history and the unremitting hostility
from the West. The U.S. has its biggest military bases
in South Korea and holds massive annual war games
on North Koreas borders along with the now muscular South Korean army. For that matter, South Ko-

rea, too, until the mid-1990s was a highly

authoritarian society, with U.S.-backed military dictators ruling the roost.
When Kim Jong-il took over from his father,
things were looking slightly better for the beleaguered communist country. Former U.S. President
Jimmy Carter had made a visit to the capital, Pyongyang, the rst by an American leader after military
tensions had risen alarmingly in the Korean peninsula. The Bill Clinton administration alleged at the
time that North Korea was using its experimental
reactor in Yongbyon to produce plutonium for a
nuclear bomb. There were reports that the U.S. was
readying cruise missiles to attack nuclear reactors
and missile bases in North Korea. The Korean penin-

A N UN D A T ED P H O T O GRA P H showing Kim Jongil (left) and his father, Kim Il-sung, while on a visit
to the site of the Nampho dam in North Korea.
1 3 2

F R O N T L I N E

JANUARY 13, 2012

North Korea has historically followed an independent foreign policy,

keeping a distance from both the Soviet Union and China when the socialist
bloc was a powerful force. North Korea
never joined the Comecon (the common market of the East Bloc). In 1956,
the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics) and China jointly tried to
replace Kim Il-sung with a more accommodating collective leadership.
After the Cold War ended, Pyongyang,
in view of the new realities, wanted to
open independent lines of communications with the West but was contin-

sula seemed to be on the verge of a

nuclear holocaust. During the Carter
visit, an agreement was signed whereby North Korea pledged to give up its
quest for a nuclear deterrent in exchange for two U.S.-supplied nuclear
reactors that would provide energy for
the power-decient country. Both the
U.S. and South Korea had also pledged
to supply fuel oil and end the diplomatic and trade embargo imposed on
the country.
Soon after the Carter visit, Kim Ilsung passed away. Kim Jong-il would
have liked the thaw with the West to
have continued. North Korea, suffering from a series of natural disasters,
including oods and drought, was desperately in need of a helping hand.
But the U.S. and South Korea
started demanding more concessions.
At the same time the work on the reactors was proceeding at a snails pace.
No substantial economic aid from
Washington and Seoul materialised.

uously rebuffed by Washington. The

last straw, from Pyongyangs point of
view, was when President George W.
Bush clubbed North Korea along with
Iraq and Iran in the so-called axis of
evil.
The hardening of the U.S. position
came immediately after Bush assumed
ofce in 2001. At the fag end of the
Clinton term, his Secretary of State,
Madeleine Albright, made an ofcial
visit to Pyongyang, where she was given a high-prole welcome. The North
Korean leadership has made no secret
of its desire to engage in direct negotia-

AP//KOREAN CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY VIA KOREA NEWS SERVICE

The Kim Jong-il saga

KIM JONG-IL was born on February 16, 1942, in Mount Paektu, a
place revered by all Koreans. The
North Korean media unfailingly reports that his birth was accompanied by the sighting of a bright star
in the bright sky and the appearance of a double rainbow. His father, Kim Il-sung, was at the time
leading a guerilla struggle against
the Japanese occupation forces. Very little is known about Kim Jongils early life. He graduated from the
Kim Il-sung University in Pyongyang in 1964 where he had specialised on the works of communist
thinkers and military affairs. In his
early political life, Kim focussed on
cultural issues. He had a special
fondness for cinema and wanted to
make the North Korean lm industry a world-class one. He authored a
book on world cinema in the 1980s.
He believed that good cinema had
the potential to inuence more people than the written word.
Kim Jong-il rst came into the
public gaze in the 1970s. He was
elected to the politburo of the
Workers Party in 1974 when he was
32. On December 1991, he was
named the supreme commander of
the North Korean Army. This was a
key position as it is the North Ko-

F R O N T L I N E

1 3 3

rean army that calls the shots in the

politics of the country. In 1992, Kim
Il-sung publicly stated that his son
was in charge of the internal affairs
of the country. The South Korean
government has charged Kim Jongil for being responsible for the attack in Rangoon (Yangon) in 1983,
which killed 17 of its ofcials, and
for the bombing of a South Korean
passenger plane in 1987, which
claimed 117 lives.
The son lacked the fathers charisma. He was short, obese and prematurely balding. Kim Jong-il also
had a distinctive dress style. The
North Korean media said in 2010
that his style had set a worldwide
trend. Kim was ofcially designated
the successor in 1980 but formally
took power only in 1997, three years
after his fathers death. His elevation to the leadership of the Workers Party was the rst and so far the
only case of a communist party embracing dynastic succession. Many
analysts and observers of the Korean scene were sceptical about
Kims ability to survive long at the
helm. But the reclusive Kim quickly
consolidated his grip on power, aided by the top military leadership his
father had handpicked.
John Cherian

AFP/KOREAN CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY VIA KOREA NEWS SERVICE

JANUARY 13, 2012

A H AN D O UT PI C T UR E from North Koreas ofcial Korean Central News

Agency showing members of the Korean Peoples Army crying for their
late leader.

tions with Washington, bypassing

Beijing and Seoul. Kim Jong-ils efforts were aimed at establishing diplomatic relations with Washington and
normalising relations with the West.
Although caricatured in the West,
Kim Jong-il was, from available evidence, an astute statesman, well aware
of what was happening in the rest of
the world. Kim Dae-jung, who was
elected President of South Korea in
1998 on a platform which included establishing normal relations with
North Korea, had taken the rst step to
normalise relations between Seoul and
Pyongyang. The South Korean President made a path-breaking visit to the
North Korean capital in 2000, ushering in the Sunshine Policy of rapprochement between the two Koreas.
His successor Roh Moo-hyun, who
continued with the Sunshine Policy
despite hostility from Washington,
had described Kim Jong-il as very
outspoken and the most exible man
in North Korea. Roh, too, had made a
state visit to Pyongyang. The North
Korean leader never visited the south.
The only countries he visited were China and Russia and that too in his customised train. Kim, like his father,
preferred trains to planes.
The North and South Korean leaderships swear by reunication. In reality, the southern leadership is alarmed
by the prospect. It feels that the high
levels of prosperity the country has
achieved will be impacted adversely if
there is a sudden inux of people from
the north. The high cost of German

reunication is not lost on the South

Korean ruling elite.
The Bush administration was not
enamoured with the Sunshine Policy
of the South Korean government, especially after bracketing North Korea
in the axis of evil. Washington raised
the stakes in 2002 by accusing Pyongyang of secretly enriching uranium.
The North Korean government responded by walking out of the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty in January
2003 and then expelling United Nations nuclear inspectors. It also
promptly restarted work on building a
nuclear deterrent.
The Bush administration had
clearly marked out North Korea for
regime change along with Iraq and
Iran. But with the U.S. caught in the
Iraqi quagmire and Pyongyang increasing its nuclear and missile capabilities, the Bush administration
agreed to participate in six-party
talks initiated under the leadership of
China to defuse the military tensions
in the Korean peninsula. The rst
North Korean nuclear test took place
in 2006. The last nuclear test was in
2009. This led to tough U.N. sanctions
being imposed on the country. To
prove that it could deliver nuclear warheads, North Korea successfully testred accurate long- and short-range
missiles. The ultimate goal of the sixparty talks is to achieve denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.
Under President Barack Obama,
Washington has tried to further ratchet up the pressure on Pyongyang. Pres1 3 4

F R O N T L I N E

ident Lee Myung-bak of South Korea

ended the Sunshine Policy and has cut
off most diplomatic and trade contacts
with the north. Food aid has been curtailed drastically. The U.S. and South
Korean armies held large-scale military exercises adjacent to the North
Korean border in 2011.
China, which ended its one Korea
policy in 1994 by recognising the
south, today provides invaluable help
to shore up the North Korean economy. It is the biggest aid giver and food
provider. North Korea also appreciates Chinas policy of not interfering
in its internal affairs. The strong relations between the two countries were
forged during the Korean war. Together they withstood the military might of
the U.S. Beijing wants stability on its
border. If North Korea implodes, U.S.
troops could be soon stationed along
the Chinese border. Many of Chinas
neighbours, led by Japan, are trying to
form an anti-China alliance under the
tutelage of Washington. In the past 18
months, Kim made four trips to China.
Pyongyang seems to be making the
rst moves to replicate the Chinese
model of development.
The 69-year-old Kim seemed to
have made a recovery of sorts after
reportedly suffering a stroke more
than three years ago. He was evidently
following a busy work schedule. Kim
never took the title of President. His
father had been designated the Eternal President of North Korea. The son
dutifully implemented his fathers
military rst policy. North Korea has
a disciplined and well-armed millionstrong army. A few days before he died
of a heart attack while travelling on his
train, he was photographed with soldiers at a military base.
The Dear Leader, the term used
for Kim in the North Korean media,
however, had intimations of his mortality. Starting from 2010, he brought
his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, into
the political limelight. The young Kim
was promoted recently to the rank of a
four-star general. Reports emanating
from Pyongyang hint at a collective
leadership emerging to guide the
young Kim Jong-un.

Published on alternate Saturdays.WPP No.CPMG/AP/SD-15/WPP/11-13 & MH/MR/South-180/2009-11.Postal Regn. No.TN/ARD/22/09-11. RNI No.42591/84