Odds And Ends

And the rain is back. Just when I thought the misery was finally over.
In a place where the mood swings with the weather, that can’t be good news. And as if to confirm my theory of an evil conspiracy out to get me, came serious problems at work and bad news from my doctor last week. Suffice to say that I’m no longer the invincible superhero I thought I was. Which, according to conventional wisdom, should have put a lot of things in perspective. But no such thing happened. I was more pissed than anything else. I mean, to be told with finality that you can no longer so much as take a whiff of that ghee-drenched mutton biriyani, or bite into that scrumptious burger with the two layers of cheese, is not just nasty and mean, but patently unfair. And apparently it’s all because of my genes. People I know can wolf down all the butter, pizza, and cheeze in the world, and a couple of rare steaks over the weekend for good measure, and *still* have healthy cholesterol levels?? Is there any justice in this world? And to think I put in the fight of my life to quit smoking a year ago!

Plenty happening back home. Our man, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Ji is kicking up a storm of potentially historic proportions in Punjab. A quasi-religious organization set up in the early half of the twentieth century, the Dera Sacha Sauda has been a feature of the Punjab social structure for decades. From what I learnt over the last week, it mostly caters to ‘lower caste’ Sikhs, which in itself was a revelation, since I had no idea that Sikhism, which was started as a socially progressive offshoot of Hinduism, till today had inherent discrimination based on caste, of all parameters. The current leader of the sect, Ram Raheem Singh, took charge in 1990. And since then, the fortunes, following, political clout, and scandals within the organization just kept growing. For an organization that attracts members of all religions, and is known for its dedication to social causes (disaster relief, campaigns against illiteracy, female infanticide), it is indeed a strange state of affairs that its leader has allegations of murder and rape against him and is currently being investigated by the CBI. Still more startling, and murky, are the links of the sect to the Congress Party.

Many analysts are of the view that this entire so-called controversy is a manufactured one, and is just a political game between the Congress and the Akali Dal. It bears mentioning that whenever the Akali Dal has been in power in Punjab and Congress has been in power at the center, the state government has never been allowed to complete its full tenure. It has either been dismissed by the federal government or brought down by other nefarious tactics. This time too the uncomfortably close links between the Dera leadership and the Congress are beginning to remind us of the all too familiar Congress ‘hand’ behind most such unrest. After all, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh has gone on record asking his followers to vote for Congress in the Vidhan Sabha elections. But the Akalis are not above any blame either, The state government sat back and let the violence escalate. Polarization of Punjabi society on religious lines can only benefit political parties with huge religion-based vote banks. The scary thought here is the possibility of this degenerating into another situation like the late 70s and 80s. Then too Sikhs were on the warpath against the Nirankaris, yet another sect in Punjab. That unrest marked the beginnings of Sikh nationalism and exploded with the rise of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, yet another Congress creation (an interesting take here). If the fanatic fringe of Sikh clergy continue to call the shots in Punjab, as they seem to be doing today, the Indian government may just have the makings of another monster on its hands.

Meanwhile, the are-we-there-yet tour of Bangladesh rambles on. Where were we…one-days? Tests? Oh…there was a century? Two? You don’t say…! The oldies are out to prove a few points. But getting out on 101 and 100? Man, they could have made it a little less obvious! Anyway, Tendulkar found his voice after the runs, Claims the team should have a say in selecting the new coach. Sounds like a pretty reasonable sentiment on the face of it. After all, they are the interested party, and who better than the ‘coachees’ themselves to decide who should be coach. But I’d be interested in knowing whether this has any precedent in professional sport. I mean, does any professional sports team actually empower its players to select their coach by a democratic process (presumably)? Think football (real football, soccer to ignoramuses), basketball, hockey, American football, baseball, anything. I always thought that professionally managed teams had their coach selected for them by their management. Not that we cannot *set* a precedent, of course, but I’m just curious. Of course, tennis players mostly select their own coaches, but we’re talking about team sports.

This side of the world, CNN decided that it was time to pay tribute to Asian Americans. So we have an ongoing ‘Asian and Pacific American Heritage Month‘ to contend with. By some strange twist of geography, Indians are also included in this rather generic demographic. One question being tackled is the real or perceived ‘pressure to achieve’ in Asian culture. So you have stories like this or this. Now, is ‘pressure to achieve’ necessarily a bad thing? In the United States of America, the birthplace of Individualism, it apparently is. So, in this land of freedom, if you want to be a bum, your parents should just stop ‘pressurizing’ you and allow you to be just that. And judging from the average American teen, they’re doing a pretty good job of it too.

I think what the Americans have really cracked is higher education. No one does it better than them. And no one earns more money off it either. And that’s part of the reason why the system is so successful. But they are way off the mark with primary and secondary education. Call me a cultural conservative, but I think the formative years in education are for absorbing knowledge, rather than questioning concepts at every step. Realistic, intelligent questions cannot be asked with half-baked knowldege. But that is the exact opposite of what seems to be the conventional wisdom in (American) schools these days. I think this is where Asians differ culturally from their western counterparts. They are culturally more deferential to elders, teachers, even more so during their childhood and early teenage years. The byproduct of this is a readiness to ‘absorb’ knowledge during those crucial years as a student, and analyze, raise questions much later, during higher education, much more closer to adulthood, when there is enough confidence in the knowledge learnt during the early years. I have not stepped into a high-school classroom in the United States. But the impression I have is that ‘attitude’ takes a very central stage there. So, I have a problem when this wonderful cultural trait of Asians in general is dismissed as ‘parental pressure’.
Respect for elders, making your family proud, academic excellence are traits that are given a lot of importance to by Indians, and Asians in general. If the fear of disappointing your parents can drive you to work twice as hard to get those grades and crack those exams, I say, more power to the parents!

Contrary to popular American belief (as evident from some of the comments to the above stories on CNN), countries like India are not filled with docile brain-washed dorks cramming to save themselves from potential mental and physical abuse by domineering and success-demanding parents. I see well-rounded successful, intelligent individuals. If there are people with permanent scars caused by extreme parental pressure, I’m yet to meet them in the last 33 years of my life. Instead what I see in the United States are 10-year olds beating up homeless people and pea-brained teenagers going on shooting sprees in schools. These are extreme examples, yes. There are lunatics in all cultures. But I’d rather live in a society with demanding parents and the resultant intelligent people, than in one with slacking individualistic parents and juvenile delinquents.

A friend recently admitted his three-year old daughter to pre-school here. As he proudly pointed out to the teacher how his child could recite the alphabet and count till 10, he was mildly reprimanded for putting ‘undue pressure’ on the child and lectured that this was not how it was done ‘here’. She almost made it sound like abuse! I got a very good feel of this attitude when I read some of the comments in response to this cute YouTube video.

It looks like rain again. So much for my long weekend.

A Piece of Rock ‘N’ Roll History

A few things are worth staying awake for, even till 2 AM on a Sunday night. The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, on public television last night, was definitely one of them.

I had no idea it was on. And I had no idea what it was. While casually flipping channels before calling it a night, suddenly there was this dated looking concert going on with a guitarist with a faint resemblence to a very young Pete Townshend in white bell-bottoms and platform heels going absolutely nuts on what looked like an in-studio soundstage. I kept watching, fascinated. And what followed was an absolute blinder of a performance by The Who…tight, spunky and with enough power and intensity to give me a buzz on nothing but some after-dinner orange juice…! The song was their rock-opera’ish medley ‘A Quick One While He’s Away’. It went on for about 10 minutes, and I couldn’t bat an eyelid.

It was only during a commercial break that I found out what I was watching. It was ‘The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus’, an event put together by the Rolling Stones way back in 1968 for television. Performed in front of a small invited audience, and it was shot inside a set resembling a circus tent with the audience outfitted in colorful cloaks and hats. And wait till you hear who else was on stage! Jethro Tull, Clapton, John Lennon, Taj Mahal, Mitch Mitchell from the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and of course, The Rolling Stones themselves! That all these legends got together for a single concert and the fact that two bands of the stature of The Who and The Rolling Stones played at the same concert is just fascinating. And while the Stones performed, among the audience, getting drunk and going wild, Taj Mahal, Lennon (with Yoko Ono tagging along all the time) and Townshend…an unbelievable scene straight out of rock and roll history! Legend has it that Mick Jagger had requested Brigette Bardot, and later, Johnny Cash, to host the show…but both declined, probably not inclined to associate themselves with a bunch of social misfits, who, back in 1968, were not really the type of characters you would want your children to emulate.

What is even more fascinating is the history of the film itself. It was organized by the Rolling Stones, but never saw the light of day. The recording went on for almost 20 hours, supposedly. The bands were exhausted and the cameras kept on breaking down. The Who were fresh back from a concert tour and set the stage on fire with their electrifying performance. But the Stones were a bit out of form, as it were, and were the last band to take stage, early in the morning. They felt it was not their finest performance. Added to that was the indignity of being upstaged by The Who at their own event. But that’s all conjecture and rock and roll intrigue. The fact remains that the movie was canned and never released. It was finally released in 1996, though The Who had used their performance footage in a later album.

All in all, a very entertaining piece of history, though surely not the best that these set of musicians ever put out. Besides the performance by The Who, another incredible set of the concert was by a ficticious band called ‘The Dirty Mac’ (so named, apparently as a nod to Fleetwood Mac, the most popular band of the time)…ficticious because it comprised of Eric Clapton, John Lennon, Keith Richards and Mitch Michell (whew !!). They turned out a ripping version of Lennon’s ‘Yer Blues’. Yoko Ono played the spoiler, as usual, when she came on in the next track and completey ruined it by some kind of wailing or mournful shrieking that she continued throughout the song, completely riding over Clapton and Keith Richards, who really looked like they wished she would go away. Never liked Yoko, never understood her so-called ‘art’…I think she was the biggest fake of 60s pop culture. The Stones looked and sounded great to me…though apparently Mick Jagger didn’t think so himself. Fans and they themselves probably compared it to their standard level of live performances. They breezed through Jumping Jack Flash, You Can’t Always Get What You Want, Sympathy For the Devil and Salt Of The Earth, which was done sitting among the exhausted audience, with a completely drunk (or stoned?) Pete Townshend visible in the background, swaying with the song with a seat cushion on his head (!?).

This DVD is surely a collector’s item. I don’t really understand the Rolling Stones decision to withhold the release of it for 30 years, but they hold themselves to a high standard. Maybe they were right. It seems like a collector’s item now, but back in 1968 it may have looked like an extremely amateurish attempt at avant-garde rock ‘n’ roll art.

But on Sunday night, it surely gave me a high, making me wonder whether I was born in the wrong generation, rather that at a time when there was a certan earnestness and honesty in music (we’re, of course, not referring to Yoko Ono) in contrast to the manufactured lip-synching synchronized-dancing tv superstars of today.
 

Bangladesh – Which Path Will It Take?

Sheikh Hasina made a triumphant return to Dhaka today. After almost two months of jostling, the caretaker government finally gave up its clumsy efforts of trying to keep her out of the country permanently.

So just what is going on in Bangladesh?
Recent events have an eerie similarity with those in Pakistan over the last few decades. The euphoric return to democracy after decades of military rule, the gradual souring of the dream as elected governments ruined the country through rampant corruption, ineptitude and political violence, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, and coming back full circle, the relief when the military took over the reins of government again (in the garb of a caretaker government). There was no coup, of course. The caretaker government is in place according to a unique feature of the Bangladeshi constitution which requires the outgoing government to hand over power to an interim one that oversees a free and fair election. That they have the strong backing of the army is an added bonus.

Khaleda Zia handed over power to the interim government, headed by the President at the appropriate time. But the latter was seen as being biased and unreliable, leading to violence on the streets. A reconstituted caretaker government assumed power, backed by the muscle of the army. It took upon itself to ‘clean up’ the country’s politics and root out endemic corruption. It took the unprecendented step of indefinitely postponing elections, and riding on a wave of popular support, it went about arresting high profile people, such as Prime Minister Zia’s son, on charges of corruption and misuse of power. But then it’s rather botched effort at sending outgoing Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, into exile in Saudi Arabia, caused it much embarrassment and loss of face. It’s futile attempt at keeping her arch rival Sheikh Hasina stranded in London now seems to have backfired badly too. On the face of it, the country seems to be falling into a downward spiral that it cannot pull itself out of.

Bangladesh is one of the most politically polarized countries in the world. The reason for that lies in the personal history of the two women who dominate Bangladeshi politics today. Sheikh Hasina is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s first President and ‘father of the nation’. She is one of the just two family members alive today, after Mujib’s entire family was gunned down in the bloody coup of 1975. One of the primary beneficiaries of that political murder? Ziaur Rahman, appointed chief of army staff after the assassination, and self-declared president two years and a coup and counter-coup later. Zia was founder of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). His widow, Begum Khaleda Zia, chief of BNP and three time Prime Minister of Bangladesh, is the other prima donna of Bangladeshi politics, and loathed, arch-rival of Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League party. It was never proved, of course, that Ziaur Rahman had anything to do with Mujib’s assassination, but the insinuation was always there.This historical baggage carried by these two rivals permeates every aspect of Bangladeshi politics. Their, and by extension, their party workers’, hatred for each other is legendary. The policies of the two parties may be almost indistinguishable, but to their supporters, that hardly matters. This is the time-warp that Bangladeshis seem to be living in since 1991.

Why is a nation that was born from the flames of ethnic, linguistic and cultural pride determined to hitch itself to the yoke of Islamic fundamentalism? It should be understood that Bangladesh’s so-called slide into Islamic fundamentalism is not a new phenomenon. The process can be traced all the way back to the partition of Bengal in 1905 and the gradual disconnect that grew between the predominantly Hindu educated class (the Babus) and the Muslim peasants. The horrific communcal violence and formation of East Pakistan in 1947 only cemented that divide. But still there was a thread of secularism and Bengali nationalism that existed in the fabric of East Bengali society. This was given a voice by Mujibur Rahman and his Awami League, culminating in the formation of the Mukti Bahini, and with political and military backing from India, the birth of the nation of Bangaldesh.

Not surprisingly, Mujib was an avowed friend of India and a committed socialist. He was also highly regarded in the civil society of West Bengal. This rattled many in the new nation, who did not take kindly to the watering down of the Islamic identity of the state in favour of a more Bengali identity. This section of Bangladeshi society, having experienced the blood-letting and communal hatred of partition, viewed India with deep suspicion and regarded it as a scheming Hindu state. In fact, the Jamaat-e-Islami openly collaborated with the Pakistan army against the formation of Bangladesh. This is worth remembering when we in India tend to over-simplify present-day Bangladeshi attitude towards us as ungrateful and selfish.

After Mujib’s assassination, Ziaur Rahman, exploited these feelings to the hilt and created the right-wing BNP, which still dominates political thought in Bangladesh. The word ’secularism’ in the preamble to the Constitution was replaced with ‘Bismillahir-Rahmaanir-Rahim’, Shariat and Sunnah gained in social and legal importance. Islamic education became compulsory in schools. The parallel with the other Zia (ul-Haq) on our western border is almost surreal. And he was overwhelmingly popular among the masses of Bangladesh. He played to the nationalists by moving further and further away from India and the Soviets. When seen in this context, it is not surprising at all that the BNP, under Khaleda Zia came to power with the help of an alliance with Islamist parties, and has maintained a public show of almost disdain towards India from the beginning of her three terms in office.

As a result of the changing nature of the India-Bangladesh relationship over the decades, the new generation of Bangladeshis, disconnected from the bloody events of their nation’s birth, have been brought up in an environment that is increasingly anti-India. Many of them harbour an intense dislike for their mammoth neighbour, though for different, and more confused, reasons than that  of their earlier generations. Perhaps it has more to do with the wave of Islamism that is sweeping through much of Islamic South Asia and the perception of India as an overbearing anti-Islam state, that is uncomfortably closely aligned with the United States of America. This is a situation that is ripe for picking by Islamic radicals. Mujib’s secular socialist Bengali nation has remained the People’s Republic of Bangladesh in name only. For all practical purposes it is today the Islamic Republic of Bangladesh. Political outfits like Islamic Unity Front (Islami Oikya Jote), Bangladesh Islamic Assembly (Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh), and even Hizb ut-Tahrir, a Sunni Islamist political party founded in Jerusalem (!), have exploited the situation. B Raman opines in Rediff that groups aligned to the International Islamic Front formed by Osama Bin Laden are active in Bangladesh today.

I have myself witnessed the growing radicalization of Muslims living on the border areas of Assam, thanks to mushrooming madrasas funded by Arab petrodollars and staffed by fundamentalist wahabi fire-and-brimstone preachers from across the border. Hailakandi, a once-idyllic district town in southern Assam where my father’s family hailed from, is now overrun with illegal immigrants and is dotted with unregulated madrasas, the changes having taken place just within the last decade. Assam is a sad case really. Ignored by the center for decades, exploited for its oil and tea, and finally getting some recognition after the All Assam Students Union (AASU) agitation of the 70s and 80s (and the accompanying violence…who can forget the Nellie Massacre?), only to be lost to radicals like the ULFA once again, due to a government hopelessly out of its depth and playing the only game it knew…vote bank politics. The ULFA, of course, has changed colours almost completely, turning from a violent organization based on an ideology of Assamese nationalism to one that has become a pawn in the hands of the ISI and Bangladeshi intelligence agency, the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) (link). Paresh Baruah, the head of ULFA, and other self-styled senior leaders like Arabinda Rajkhowa and Anup Chetia continue to be harboured and sheltered by Bangladeshi intelligence, helping them raise funds, travel around the world and maintain camps in Bangladesh. ULFA is also said to be intimately involved in Bangaldeshi political violence, with the finger of suspicion for an attempt on the life of Sheikh Hasina in 2004 pointing towards them. It is safe to say that the organization has completely lost grass roots support in Assam, with more and more people becoming tired and fearful of of its terrorist tactics, its pandering to the very Islamic radicals and Bangladeshi infiltrators that it used to speak out against earlier.

The caretaker government of Bangladesh has promised India that it will cooperate in the fight against insurgent outfits that take shelter in their territory. This itself is a step up from the standard denial tactics of the previous Khaleda Zia government, a trick it seems to have learnt from Pakistan – deny everything…keep denying till the world gets tired of the questions. And this trick works, because unlike aggressive western powers, India keeps asking the same questions in the face of repeated denials and blatant lies, and never takes affirmative action. India just does not know how to take the next decisive step. When, defying all odds, it does take some action, the results are usually spectacular…case in point – the ULFA being smoked out of the jungles of Bhutan by the Special Frontier Force with help from the Royal Bhutan Army, their camps demolished, their cadres killed or on the run. 

India is keeping its fingers crossed about the future of Bangladesh, naturally. But it should probably do more than that. A return of Sheikh Hasina and her secular Awami League party will be the ideal situation as far India is concerned, and may be the best path for Bangladesh itself to go down. I still have faith in the inherent ability of the average Bengali to favour good governance over fanaticism, cultural pride over religious dogma, but who knows? Times have changed and entire societies have changed in character. Bangladesh is at the crossroads. Which path will it take?