The American Wild West

WHAT shame we felt at the infra dig antics of Rajniti Prasad when he blew the Lokpal Bill in the last session of Parliament. Indeed every time we see our legislators get physical in our halls of democracy we feel the shame magnified many times over. But guess it’s a phase every democratic system passes through.

The nineteenth century America of the Wild West genre had duels as a system of settling disputes – even corruption charges, as also beatings and drunkenness as part of regular Parliamentary conduct.

During much of the 1850s that coincided with Abraham Lincoln’s rise through the Whig and Republican ranks to presidency, debates were marked by personal attacks – both verbal and physical. In the 1854 Senate debate on the pro-slavery Kansas-Nebraska Act (that lasted for over 24-hours on the trot), many of the senators were observed to be “beastly drunk.”

An argument on the Senate floor between Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri and Senator Henry Foote of Mississippi gave what would be called dramatic visuals for present day TV to be run over 20 bulletins. Benton called Foote a coward with the latter retaliating with similar complements. This was enough provocation for Benton to charge towards Foote menacingly, who ducked and brought out a pistol cocking at his attacker! The melodrama was brought to a peaceful close only after Foote was persuaded to handover his pistol to a fellow senator and Benton returned to his chair.

Senators got into fights not only on attacks of personal nature, but even on issues of policy. During the same period, South Carolina’s Preston Brooks savagely bludgeoned fellow Congressman Charles Sumner on Senate floor with a cane in return for Sumner’s incendiary antislavery speech.

Similarly, an argument between Edward Bates and Congressman George McDuffie of South Carolina on the floor of the House turned ugly as McDuffie ridiculed Bates personally. Bates impulsively challenged the South Carolinian to a duel which might have led to loss of life but for McDuffie preferring to decline and agreeing to apologize for his offensive language.

But it was not rare for the duels to indeed take place. Bates’ partner Joshua Barton found proof of corruption in the office of Missouri land surveyor-general William Rector. Rector challenged Barton to a duel in which Barton was killed. An equivalent of this perhaps would be A Raja challenging and then killing CAG Vinod Rai in a duel! But it happened in America. In fact people thought that as the practice subsided, vulgar public behaviour increase in absence of restraint, or fear!

But then those were interesting times. It was just before the American civil war and America had annexed much of south from Mexico declaring war with no United Nations present to mediate. The battle itch was so great that against a call for 50,000 men by the Congress, 300,000 volunteers poured intro recruiting centers. That included practicing politicians! John Hardin, a Lincoln rival for example, enlisted from Illinois and was elected colonel of his regiment. He would die a hero at the Battle of Buena Vista. Edward Baker, still retaining his seat in Congress, would raise a regiment of his own for the fight. The question is can we expect any of our Rajniti Prasads to enlist and pick up arms for a border clash. The answer is a no brainer.

Refresh@10 - VI

THE flow of time can leave the past unrecognizable. The same Modi who left rally dais at Vadodara in a huff as Vajpayee began speaking, would in Lucknow dash and dart for an opportunity just to get the stalwart’s eye. This must have been mid 1990’s. According to a senior hanger on in the Lucknow BJP, a bunch of whom I interacted with during recent Assembly verdict (March 2012), Modi would find out where Vajpayee was headed or stationed and then reach that place just to get his face registered with the old man. Mid-1990s was the exact time of Vajpayee’s ascendance in the BJP and across the country, just ahead of his premiership. Just a nod of the aging war horse was enough to change careers in the party. The ever ambitious Modi already on a Vanvaas from Gujarat knew all the difference it could make. Advani was still in the shadow of Hawala. There was no Modi clique in Delhi at that time like it was in 2002 led by Jaitley. Modi himself was a mere General Secretary.

Refresh @10 - V

THIS must have been immediately after the BJP Mumbai national executive where Vajpayee almost got Modi removed before buckling to combined might of the Advani camp in the party. It was 2002 Gujarat Assembly elections end of the year. Relations between Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Narendra Modi were frosty. Vajpayee attended just two rallies – at Vadodara and Jamnagar – in support of Modi. As Vajpayee began speaking at Vadodara, little wobbly, Modi got up from his chair to leave. As the PM looked on, Modi blabbered something like he would reach Jamnagar ahead of him for a welcome. This was clearest sign of frostiness in the relationship. Modi did not even wish to travel with the PM in the same aircraft. More importantly, he was confident he would get away with it. Vajpayee began by saying that he was there to advocate for Modi. Devil’s Advocate was an expected headline, quipped one Delhi journo. It came as – PM means Praise Modi. Modi of course cared little.

Refresh@10 - IV

MY second Laloo experience happened at his residence in Patna. It was the results day for the 2009 General elections in May that year. Around 11.30 am results had started coming in, first as a trickle, then, in sometime, in a wave. It became clear that it was a Nitish sweep. Laloo himself trailed from both Chapra and Patna. As media presence built up and it became clear that there was no escaping it, the doors of Laloo – technically Rabri’s – residence were thrown open to waiting journos. There sat laloo in the open courtyard under a tin shade, in his white sleeves-with-pocket vest and a pajama as rustic as he has always been. Despite a politician’s practiced control of emotions, it was clearly not Laloo’s day. “Sab humko hate karta hai,” he lamented, almost womanly in his complaint to the present media persons. “All have ganged up against him,” was his theme thru the day. The trail in Chapra turned to a lead bringing some cheer amid general gloom, and once it became clear that Laloo would scrape through, a cavalcade was readied, and out he came in the finest white to leave for Chapra. Clutching at something was better than taking media’s barbs at home. His RJD managed three seats. From being a possible king-maker, he was reduced to an eager onlooker in a matter of hours. He was allowed on board the UPA-2 but without the freedom to choose aisle or window seats.

Refresh@10 - III

GENERALLY it was believed that Modi would ride back to power on a Hindutva wave in December 2002. Yet Secularism branded leaders from across the country were flying into Gujarat to make their presence felt. And how could Lalu Prasad Yadav be not on the list. So he landed in Surat and carried a three day tour through Baroda and Ahmedabad. In his inimitable style, he would regale the audience with his EVM histrionics, making the beep sound – peeeeeeeen – as he pressed the button on a dummy machine. I had my run-in with him at Baroda during his press meet. Picking up on Modi's pet theme of terrorism that election, Lalu made a statement that as Bihar CM, he too handled terror situation from across the border in Bangladesh but never resorted to riots or encounters. It just hit me that Bihar never touched Bangladesh. I ventured only to hate my naivete and asked him in the open presser, "but lalu-ji Bihar does not touch Bangladesh". "It does," he hit back, before rubbing it in. "Is ladke ka bhoogol gol hai," This boy's geography is not proper, to a general laughter in the hall. I was non-plussed. A little embarrassed. Came back to office and checked the map. Bihar did not touch Bangladesh anywhere. Called up all friends in the fraternity as an exercise in salvage. To this day when I meet a Bihari, or a friend from Bengal, I ask whether Bihar touches Bangladesh. The answer is always no. But then that Lalu moment was not coming back again.

Caste versus Class

MUCH reviled, our caste system – Jati pratha – finds its echo in many forms across societies, not only new and old but also modern and advanced. Am reading a book on Abraham Lincoln’s presidency years called Team of Rivals – The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln authored by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

In sociology literature, particularly the left leaning, the caste system is shown with a negative slant, of it being a regressive social more that over time degenerated into a rigid, moribund organism that has stifled individual growth.

Now here is Salmon Portland Chase, a Republican competitor of Abraham Lincoln for the Presidency of Civil war America. The author, through him, narrates how the United States of nineteenth century lived by its own caste system – calling it class system instead. Not to be missed is the equivalence of each class with the corresponding level of our castes.

As Chase recounts describing the Washington D.C. life as he saw it to his friend Hamilton Smith, the classes were very brahmanically arranged. As the author narrates, “There were distinct classes of society in Washington”, Chase told Hamilton Smith. The first, to which he aspired, included the high government officials; the second, to which he was relegated, included teachers and physicians; and the third mechanics and artisans. There was, of course, still lower class comprised of slaves and labourers.

Now would not the high government officials, much envied for their status, correspond to the Brahmins, the policy makers? Or the lowest slaves and labourers to the Shudras? Societies might have devised different ways of tackling with the negative consequences of this hierarchy but it almost seems like a pan-cultures phenomenon. What say?

Why the coup could not have happened, can’t happen.

AMID the intended or unintended sensation around attempted/threatened coup by the Indian Army one factual point was totally missed. It was brought to my notice by a friend in one of the forces that proudly shoulder the responsibility of defending the country in peace time with the Army. A coup in India is as much of a possibility as a sky-flower or a hare’s horn, due to the counterweight provided by the paramilitary forces.

How? Here goes the explanation. The Indian Army is about a million strong. So two battalions, even if they were moved with the intent to occupy/displace Delhi administration, only means a drop in the ocean. As our experience with 1984 shows it would have max amounted to a mutiny rather than a coup. But, for a moment lets assume all corps commanders stood unanimously behind the general (unlikely in the Amartya Sen calculus of an argumentative Indian!). That’s where the paramilitary forces, firmly in civilian control, come in the picture.

Let’s begin with the Border Security Force (BSF). The peace-time frontier keepers have 189 battalions with total force strength of three lakh jawans guarding 7,000 kms land border with Pakistan and Bangladesh. Take the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) that has over 3.5 lakh men and add to it the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) with another 50 battalions. Other sundry agencies like the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), and NSG – the civilian counterpart of the special forces – complete a total available strength of over a million. Add to it the state police forces and the number of men available under civilian command goes to over 3.5 million!

Which means each Army jawan is outnumbered one-is-to-three. My friend explains that this is how the whole national security architecture is based on a system of checks and balances. The Army has been trying for long now to gain administrative control of the BSF but to no avail with civilian masters proving much too smarter. No wonder that except for the precaution of calling back the Defence Secretary, the only other order the Home Ministry gave to counter an “Express” coup was to ask Delhi police to do nakabandi! Berate a stick – exactly what you do to get a cow out of your compound. Only this time it was a holy cow called the Indian Army.

Refresh @10 - II

IT was time for the 2002 Gujarat Assembly elections in the back drop of the Godhra episode. I was assigned an interview on the economic costs of riots with Manu Shroff, a former editor of The Economic Times who was then retired and residing in Vadodara. It so happened that his neighbour was IG Patel, former Governor of Reserve Bank of India, former IIM-A Principal, former Director London School of Economics and much more. Fondly called IG by his near and dear ones, Patel too was spending his retirement years in the calmer confines of Vadodara, his home town. As I sat with Shroff, almost taking dictations on his analysis of riots’ impact, IG walked in. The two were thick friends. IG almost looked rural in a white half sleeves out-shirt and a dark pants. As I was introduced the duo got more talkative. It was tea time. So the interview became a long winding three way conversation with my inputs limited to stories of the scale of riots. As the focus shifted from Shroff to IG, he came into story telling narration mode and landed a scoop of memoirs in my lap. 

One fine evening of 1991, IG sat over dinner with a guest from Delhi – a former friend from his Cambridge days. It was incidentally IG's birthday as well. Just then his phone rang. It was PMO on the other side. The voice told IG that Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao wanted to talk to him and he was connected. Now this is as told by IG – “…Rao wanted me to take over as the Finance Minister in his cabinet. He was looking for a technocrat as the nation’s economy was in doldrums. He even offered that I take the next day’s flight and land in Delhi. But I was already in retirement mode. I knew what life in Delhi can be. The bureaucracy can be stifling. Then this thought stuck me. My guest was familiar with Finance ministry bureaucracy in and out. He had been in RBI. He was a noted economist. I suggested why not him?...” Rest as they say is history. The guest of IG that fateful day was Sardar Manmohan Singh – now India’s longest serving non-Gandhi Prime Minister!

Refresh @10 - I

IT was the peak of campaign for the 2004 general election in Vadodara. A gung-ho "India Shining" BJP presented quite a contrast with a brooding Vajpayee. A directionless Congress was behaving as a reluctant participant having mentally conceded the poll. Senior reporters were busy in covering more important events of the campaign – the trails and the Vajpayee-Sonia rallies. Cubs like me would do smaller side stories like press conferences and the stuff. One fine day, the chief reporter gave an assignment. Please go and meet Manmohan Singh. He would meet select journalists at Welcomgroup Hotel. It was my first assignment to cover a national leader. I sauntered excited to find only one more reporter - the PTI stringer waiting in the lobby. 

Moments later a Congress Seva Dal attendant ushered us into a suite. At the centre of the room just around the sofa stood our subject. In a fawning white Kurta and his trademark blue turban Sardar Manmohan Singh greeted the duo with a submissive Namskar both hands folded. Even a city neta's casual confidence was yet to arrive in the man.

Singh had the demeanor of a candidate out for his first interview. The PTI man shot off a question on what would be priorities of Congress if it came to power. I perhaps asked him what he thought of country's present economic situation given he was an Economist himself. That was rather patronising. The answers are difficult to recall now, but I do remember that we both had to strain ourselves really hard to get a word of what MMS spoke. Unassuming to the extent of being self effacing, one came out unimpressed from the meeting. Understandably, only one newspaper and one agency thought of covering him, dismissed in two columns next day. And not even a Municipal level Congress leader was present to escort someone who would be India's Prime Minister a fortnight later!

Arab Spring A Process

It began with the Palestine, and has gone on to replicate itself in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, and now Syria. The Arab Spring is turning out to be a movement from friendly tyrants to an unfriendly Islamist democracy. But should it be a surprise? Afterall, as early as 1970s the secular Shah of Iran was replaced by a theocracy that now talks of obliterating Israel from the face of Earth.

In mid-1990’s controversial scholar Samuel Huntington in his now famous book “The Clash of Civilizations” – the title itself borrowed from Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis – had written that in the Muslim world, in almost every country, the most likely successor regime waiting in the wings was an Islamic one. A decade and a half later it’s coming true to the chagrin or otherwise of the rest of the world.

So, essentially, what we are seeing now is the product of an Islamic Resurgence that began on the back of the Oil boom of 1970s. From its earlier stage Islamization of the social and cultural space it is now at a vantage of occupying the political space in nation after nation. The economic surge and a youth bulge gave the Muslim world a movement akin to the Christian Reformation. Long before we even heard of it, the Muslim Brotherhood had created a charity supra-structure with schools, colleges, hospitals, and other charities – a sort of religious-welfare-state-within-the-secular-state – which is now being leveraged for attaining political power.

As terror group Indian Mujahideen broke on the national stage in 2008 a disturbing pattern emerged. That of well off and well educated youth involved in these activities. This rather out-of-context mention is actually connected with what has happened in much of the Muslim world as part of the Resurgence. Huntington calls it a revolution, and like all revolutions it’s driven by the youth and the intellectuals. It is not for nothing that the Islamist appeal is particularly strong in technical institutes, engineering faculties, and scientific departments. In Iran, for example, literacy was 15 per cent in 1953 when the Shah ruled. It was 49 per cent when the Shah was overthrown in 1970s.

Understandably thus, it is not for nothing that our own IM boys come from similar well educated and well off backgrounds. So is it worrisome for us? Well Huntington would want us to take heart. The Oil boom and the youth bulge peaked in mid-90s and would taper off over the next decade, he avers. Bringing down with it the rabidity and the accompanying violence as the ageing Islamists possibly jaw-jaw over war-war. Amen is only what one can say.

Where's India's Ward?

WHEN polls are nigh, can the issue of Muslim reservations be far behind? In that context, I recall a chance meeting I had with Ward Connerly, America’s self styled equality neo-con who believes in, and works for, a color blind society in the United States. I bumped into him at a university campus in the mid-west down south of Chicago where I was on a short term study visit in 2006.

It was a wet snowy morning making a visit to the library look like a taxing effort. A Connerly lecture was planned in the next building. It sounded interesting so I went. In the auditorium was a multi-racial, vocal, and energetic crowd with eagerness writ large. Another five minutes and a rather short and stocky black man walked in, a coffee cup in hand. Without waiting for the house to get in order, or the formalities to be introduced, the man started shooting from the hip, as they say in America. It turned out to be a story telling session.

Much like our reservations for the depressed classes, America has the policy of affirmative action mainly for its black population. It provides for a certain percentage of preferential allotments to them in government jobs and college admissions. Connerly wants this policy to be done away with, because he believes that minus the crutches also, the blacks can survive and succeed in the system.

He gives his own example in each talk he holds. Once while flying to a destination, a white man sat next to him with an air of superiority till they opened a chat. The conversation led to realization between the two that Connerly was in fact economically much more successful than his white co-passenger. The dynamics changed immediately. The air of superiority in the white male went missing totally by the time they had landed. He recalled other anecdotes from his life emphasizing how it was not what he was given (shit) but what he took out of it (success and determination) that was important.

The reaction of the crowd was to be seen. As Connerly chided the students to be proud rather than apologetic of the black culture - “black culture my ass” came a loud riposte from a black girl - tears in her eyes. Others showed varied degree of frustration and anger. A section of whites, Hispanics, and the Asian crowd showed approval. It was a stark introduction to the true realities of American society. Never ever have I seen such open expression of hostility even by our dalits here!

But despite such reactions, Connerly has succeeded in bringing about anti-affirmative legislations in two states – Michigan and California. Both are in the nature of amendments that have prohibited government institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, specifically in the areas of public employment, public contracting or public education. Something akin to that would be removal of the reservations clause from our Constitution. After the talk, I rushed to him and asked how difficult it was to sustain his philosophy given this opposition. In his characteristic style he waved it off saying, “my supporters are growing.” 

That brings me to my proposition for this post. India needs a Connerly now. The only question for us to sort out is that whether first we find a Connerly for the Muslims or the Scheduled Castes. I would here stick my neck out it better be Muslims. Even if we fully endorse the present predominant political wisdom that they have faced institutionalized discrimination, its history does not go further than 1947. So, unlike the SCs, where the grudges go millennia behind, Muslim perception of hurt is fairly recent. Seems rather impossible in the present scenario when the clamour for more reservations for more categories is growing rather than diminishing in our polity.

So who would bell the proverbial cat? Indian left seriously believes that Muslims have been reduced to second rate citizens as a Hindu conspiracy. Congress, though pays lip service, is the lead implementer of Muslim reservations (beginning with Andhra?). Connerly is a self-confessed Republican. So it seems that an Indian avatar of him should come ideally from the BJP. He openly supports segregation and maintains that it does not come in the way of his belief in the equality of races. BJP would be too comfortable with the idea. Connerly argues that positive discrimination for some amounts to negative discrimination to those who lose out despite being in merit. An argument that is echoed in the demand for example of our own economically weaker sections among Brahmins, for which, ironically, even Mayawati has supported the idea of reservation!

And if it has to be BJP, who would it be in the present set up? As Connerly is married to a white woman, Shahnawaz Husain comes closest to that prescription, but falls woefully short on other departments needed in a proselytizer. Narendra Modi fits the bill of a mass proselytizer, but he is no Muslim or Dalit. His case would be that of adding fuel to fire on the issue, even post-Sadbhavna. BJP might have to ponder on this. The nation waits till then.

Disclosure: I write this under the spell of my upper caste, middle-class belief that if all reservations need to be done away with in the long run the beginning time is now. There is no empirical support to the belief.

NoGAP cracks-open a new window to Indian history.

PERHAPS it’s too early to wager. But its tantalizingly close. Agriculture possibly pre-existed the Indus Valley Civilization – IVC – in Gujarat by at least three millennia! A joint Indo-Spanish study, though still in the works, has come close to this thought, thus pushing Gujarat’s imprint on Indian civilizational history by 3,000 years.

North Gujarat – Anarta in archaeology – has been traditionally seen as the backwater of its more illustrious contemporary IVC. While IVC is historically represented as the refined, urban, and technologically advanced civilizational benchmark in the subcontinent, others like Anarta or Sorath are seen as inferior Chalcolithic settlements.

For example, as of this day, the existing model of agriculture is that food production started in the middle of Indus plains in the sixth millennium BC with Mehargadh – now in Pakistan – as its earliest manifestation and then it spread across the Indo-Gangetic plains towards south and east.

The Indus Valley Civilization

But latest ongoing excavation at Vaharvo Timbo near Ranod village in Patan district of north Gujarat has given clear indications that some form of farming and cattle herding was available to settlers here as far back as seventh millennium BC! This takes the history of Gujarat to nine thousand years from the present. Its significance lies in the fact that till date settlements have been dated only upto fourth millennia BC only.

All this is part of the North Gujarat Archaeology Project (NoGAP) – jointly being carried out by the M S University of Baroda and Spain’s National Research Council through their respective archaeology departments. While professor P Ajithprasad is leading from MSU, Marco Madella is the principal investigator on the Spanish side.

Now coming to the inferences. While most other sites excavated till date are typically multi-culture settlements, Vaharvo has consistently proven to be a single culture site, with no evidence on the surface of chalcolithic period, explains Ajithprasad.

What it means is that though hunting and gathering along with early farming is not new to that period, till now it was believed that it might not be more than 5000 years old in Gujarat. The latest discovery however takes it back to 9000 years from the present – seven millennia B.C. – putting it firmly ahead of the IVC.

While IVC goes back to 2500 BC, Anarta took Gujarat’s history to 3600 BC. Against this Vaharvo, if confirmed, would put north Gujarat’s farming and cattle rearing traditions to 7000 BC. No wonder the Dudhsagar dairy in Mehsana is the largest in Asia. Its all in the genes as they say.

“We have collected plant and animal remains and are analyzing their structures in our labs. Also, a plethora of grinding instruments has been found thus indicating that food processing was prevalent. We need to explore more in that direction,” says the professor.

The project would take at least one more year before the conclusions get concretized. Some preliminary analyses have already been published in professional archaeology publications like the Antiquity journal, but nothing as yet in the popular domain.

So what would be its political significance? Well, it would surely come as a candy for the ruling party and its top man in Gujarat. For one, if the project successfully proves that there was an indigenous attempt by hunters and gatherers of north Gujarat to become a farming community, without any incentive from Indus, its one more feather in the cap of Aapno Aagvo Vibrant Gujarat. Isn’t it?
Let’s watch!