Outlook TruePDF 18 february 2019

Kishorechandra, 39, could have been doing precisely that when, on November 19 last year, he uploaded a video on HAPPIER TIMES Kishorechandra Wangkhem with wife Ranjita and their daughter

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Volume LIX, No 6

EDITOR Ruben Banerjee

MANAGING EDITOR Sunil Menon

EXECUTIVE EDITOR Satish Padmanabhan

CHIEF OF BUREAU Pranay Sharma

POLITICAL EDITOR Bhavna Vij-Aurora

BUSINESS EDITOR Arindam Mukherjee

SENIOR EDITOR Giridhar Jha

CHIEF ART DIRECTOR Deepak Sharma

WRITERS Lola Nayar, Qaiser Mohammad Ali

(Senior Associate Editors), G.C Shekhar

(Associate Editor), Jeevan Prakash Sharma

(Senior Assistant Editor), Prachi

Pinglay-Plumber, Ushinor Majumdar, Ajay Sukumaran,

Probir Pramanik (Assistant Editors), Naseer

Ganai (Senior Special Correspondent), Preetha

Nair, Neel Shah (Special Correspondents),

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Correspondents), Arshia Dhar (Correspondent)

COPY DESK Rituparna Kakoty (Senior Associate

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14 Vindictive Beyond Sense

It was a mere Facebook post that has left a Manipur journalist languishing in jail for two months now What exactly irked the state government so grievously?

24 The Intelligence’s Rejects

They would get a hero’s welcome in a typical film script, but a number of Indian spies,

back from jail in Pakistan, find themselves abandoned by the State

The pulse of a nation is anxious as widespread unemployment makes it difficult for the youth to concieve of positive futures How did we get here and who’s responsible?

54 Expand the Class

Some of the various challenges disabled children face in current education scenarios

58 The Curio First Cut

We now know them as successful examples from their respective fields, but they started off in the most unusual of places A profile of their first jobs.

HOPE TRICKLE Applicants at a job fair organised by an NGO in Mumbai

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DEHRADUN Rakesh Agrawal: I’m

in agreement with the idea that the

nat ion’s building blocks are truly its

dance, music, art, fabrics, architecture,

food and films (The Invention of India,

Feb 4) But this plural, composite and

all-accepting culture, the essence of

India is threatened today, so is our

Constitution as most of its institutions

are under attack and this treatise of

governance, amended 124 times so far,

in its short existence of 69 years

The very invention of India and the

Republic of India are both being

att-acked today, and If not addressed

immediately, it will be too late

PUNE Anil S.: This refers to the

arti-cle The Expired Lightness of Being It’s

an eye opener how institutionalisation

for the new republic changed

intangi-ble heritage forever for the citizens So,

what we know of our dance forms and

other arts has been carefully filtered

and moderated to suit complexes of

nationalists arising from Victorian

morality! How different things would

have been before these interventions, I

wonder The article firmly illustrates

how the sanitisation of India’s dance

cultures had an impact on our

essen-tial way of thinking itself—a way that

came out of generations of imbibed

spontaneity It’s come to a point where

we can never go back to that time And

most of us know nothing of that time

The writer has exposed a big sham for

this reader

Didi United

Didi’s March to Dilli (Feb 4) What

Mamata Banerjee has achieved in her

show of strength in Kolkata by having

as many as 20-odd opposition leaders

on a single platform is to send a

clear-cut message that she could be the one

unifying force against the BJP But the

million-dollar question is whether just standing together on a podium and joining hands with each other will suf-fice Just by criticising Modi left, right and centre will not fetch opposition leaders desired results They need to come out with a clear alternate narra-tive and also declare a PM candidate for the public to be able to put in trust

in them But Rahul and Sonia Gandhi were not present at the rally, which leaves questions about a united oppo-sition alliance unanswered The next few months will tell what equations get formed but one thing is for sure—

we are heading into very interesting and intensely fought elections

Chandamama Eclipse

refers to Price Of The Moon in In &

Around (Feb 4) I have read the English

and Bengali editions of Chandamama

regularly for ten years: from 1975 to

1986, my childhood and teens I lowed the magazine in later years as

fol-well In 2008, I subscribed to Junior

Chandamama (English) for my

daugh-ter But since the end of 2012, the delivery of the copies had been erratic Later, they’d send copies only after rep eated requests from our side Finally, from mid-2013, we stopped getting the magazines altogether I sent many e-mails to their circulation/subscription department and also sent many letters by post, but did not rec-eive any reply While reading the mag-azines (which were actually meant for

my daughter) during 2008-2012, I used to cherish the memories of my childhood Now, I wish to thank you for the update on this renowned publi-cation house We are happy that its owners are now in jail because they took our money

Poll Scheme Farm

with reference to Come All Who Tilled

Land (Feb 4) Political parties are

woo-ing distraught farmers through loan waiver schemes, which have proved a most viable political instrument But they have been subjected to severe criticism because of the adverse impact on the government exchequer Now, political parties are in fierce competition with each other to evolve inventive schemes The KALIA Yojna

of the Odisha government is a scheme launched in this sequence, to check-mate the generalised loan waiver schemes already prevalent in several states New in concept and a lesser burden on the state treasury, the scheme is designed to be criti-cism-proof The existing loan waiver scheme incentivises the defaulters even if they are in a position to repay the loan, sending a wrong signal to borrowers in general Such trends have cumulatively resulted in a sharp inc-rease in the volumes of NPAs for the

letters

A Republic’s Ideas

Presently, our leaders are trying hard to carve a newer idea of India, one that’s intolerant.

one-liner

February 04, 2019

banks causing constant erosion in

cap-ital of base, requiring frequent

rec-apitalisation of these banks There has

been a constant decline in the image of

PSBs for which all parties in or out of

power are res ponsible The pertinent

question is whether political parties

are empowered to publicly announce

& commit such concessions or reliefs

for farmers which have direct bearing

on depletion of capital of the banks

Quitting Time

Narasimhan: To be or not to be—that’s

the question on the mind of the aging

Rajnikanth (Rajni can, Rajni can’t, Deep

Throat, January 28) The huge box-

office success of his film Petta, instead of

egging him on to politics, has pushed

him deeper into filmdom But, for the

first time, Rajni faces a tough challenge

from another superstar, Ajith, whose

film Viswasam has done equally well at

the box-office I think Rajni must quit

films now, at the height of his popularity,

as cricketers Sachin Tendulkar and

Rahul Dravid had done If Rajni bides

his time until the assembly elections in

Tamil Nadu, his stock among voters and

his fan clubs could go down It is

unc-lear, however, whether Rajni is simply

hoodwinking Tamils by promoting his

films in the guise of entering politics On

the flip side, Tamil movie-addicts could

be getting more mature and may no

longer be enamoured of celluloid heroes

desperate to make it to Fort St George

Remake the Cop

GOA M.N Bhartiya: This refers to

Prakash Singh’s column Still Loading…

Police Reforms (January 21) The

British founded India’s police system

to keep a tight surveillance over the

natives and nip in the bud any tion to the Raj, and for enforcing the law and maintaining order by regulat-ing the community to strengthen colo-nial rule The police continue to have the same attitude They continue to be loyal to the politicians in power, while doing little to earn people’s trust

opposi-Many committees and commissions have been appointed in the past 70 years to study and make recommenda-tions for police reforms, but their rep-orts are always put in cold storage

Their political bosses don’t want to make them a professional force by modernising their functioning and ins-ulating them from extraneous influ-ences The police are also understaffed, with service conditions not commen-surate to the workload Everybody wants to misuse them to keep oppo-nents subdued It’s also well-known that the police manipulate evidence, which brings disgrace upon the entire criminal justice system and makes a mockery of democracy and rule of law, putting the life, liberty and other human rights of citizens at risk No one except us, the people are responsi-ble for such a pitiable condition of the largest democracy

Don’t Overshoot It

ref-ers to Shoot Madi (Jan 28) on

shoot-outs in Bangalore The pictures shown

in the magazine are only of smaller

incidents which can happen in other cities of the world too Bangalore cops have made it a point not to injure criminals fatally Cops have only shot

at the criminals’ legs You can’t even remotely compare this to the police encounters in UP, which is a chilling bloodbath I think you have made a mountain out of a molehill

Same Old

to Not a Place to Breathe (January 21),

your story on the use of tear-gas in Kashmir Kashmir is witnessing the extremes of police atrocity, more ruth-less than the British were with Indians during the Raj It goes without saying that Kashmir has been mishandled for quite a while now, devastating the lives

of large numbers of Kashmiris Kashmiri people want to live in peace without having to face police atrocities and torture on a daily basis Every problem has a solution, but it cannot

be known through the same method of thinking that caused the problem in the first place Trying to silencing pro-tests by using tear-gas and other rep-ressive methods cannot be part of the solution—we have seen enough of how this is only exacerbating the problem The imbroglio can be solved only through inclusive dialogue and debate, which must be done before more inno-cent Kashmiris fall prey to the govern-ment’s attempts to curb the protests

New G-Card

Chatterjee: This refers to your story

on the appointment of Priyanka Gandhi

as general secretary in charge of the Congress campaign in eastern Uttar

Pradesh (The Queen Gambit, February 4)

Priyanka is not only charismatic, but also has a natural connect with ordinary peo-ple Her fluency in Hindi and the unmis-takable resemblance with her illustrious grandmother Indira Gandhi would be her strengths in UP This is bound to enthuse Congress workers across the country and dampen the enthusiasm of BJP cadre JD(U) vice-president Prashant Kishor aptly described her appointment as “one of the most awaited entries in Indian politics”

Perhaps, she could have made a difference in the 2017 UP elections if she had decided to take the plunge three years ago Her path won’t be smooth

as she has been given charge of a region that has not been a Congress bastion of late, and she would have to take on the BJP’s star campaigner,

UP CM Yogi Adityanath, on his home turf

social-innovation.hitachi

BOLLY HINDI

FOR puritans of Hindi,

Bollywood has murdered the heartland’s tongue many times over in its potboilers Huh! When did pop weasels carry culture on their backs? What about those arthouse acts and was it not tinsel town that makes Hindi thrive in places where it is as good as Greek?

So, can Bollywood teach Hindi

to our lawmakers in Parliament whose native tongue does a reverse sweep when the language

confronts it? Rajya Sabha chairman

M Venkaiah Naidu thinks so He wants Hindi movies—starting

with Mother India, the 1957 epic

screened at the G.M.C Balayogi auditorium in Parliament—to promote the language among

‘non-Hindi speaking’ lawmakers and staff That reminds us of a line

from the film: “Bina murga bane

vidya nahi aati.” Ah, the dreaded

corporal punishment murga of the schooldays—squat, loop arms behind knees, hold ears firmly!

THE SUBCONTINENTAL MENU

I N & A R O U N D

FOREST FORENSICS

POIROT and Holmes scanning a

crime scene for fingerprints is so last century What we have today is DNA—the building blocks of organic matters that even the most elusive criminal is made of A strand of hair,

a fragment of skin, or a tiny pinch of body fluid left behind is enough to trace it back to the person it belonged

THE KITE RUN

FOR all the kite-flying stories taking off from Pakistan, this one is straining

to be airborne The Pakistan Muslim League government had banned kites from the skies on Basant Panchami, the day Pakistani minorities

in the other Punjab, like the rest of northern India, mark the arrival of spring by flying the rhombus toy at a string’s end The alibi was that the pastime was causing deaths:

careless kite-flyers falling off rooftops The country now has a new government with Imran Khan as its captain, and his administration is proving more sporting The prohibition is gone and people are encouraged to fill the skies again with colourful kites Why? Because the tourists love it; and mullahs don’t complain when moolah jingles in.

Illustrations by MANJUL; Text by ALKA GUPTA

MONEY-BACK VOTES

CASH-for-vote has its

trickle-down effect No matter how

much we frown upon it, this is a

copper-bottomed guarantee But

then, what if the voters disrespect

their share of the quid pro quo?

Go get a refund Uppu Prabhakar,

55, husband of Hymavathi, did

precisely that after he paid each

voter—Rs 800, a bottle of alcohol

and a plastic jug—in his village to

vote his wife in the gram panchayat

elections at Jajireddygudem village

in Telangana’s Suryapet district

this January Mrs got only 24 of the

ward’s 269 votes A miffed Prabhakar

made at least 110 voters swear by the

holy mantra biyyam—a raw rice and

turmeric mix—if they voted for his

wife If not, he demanded his cash

returned No folk will invoke the

curse of the mantra biyyam Many

paid back Our advice: vote wisely

this Lok Sabha polls

to No wonder, this piece of genetic forensics is what foresters of Naura-dehi Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh are relying on to catch sandalwood and teak smugglers They call it ‘wood mapping’—gathering samples from trees smugglers bark

up for the high-value skin and then matching them with the DNA of repeat offenders The technique, a first in India, is a baby step but a giant leap in forest conservation

UN-TIBETISING TIBET

L ANGUAGE, they say, is the torso

support-ing conjoined twins

Expression-Impres-sion That explains why Chinese supremacists

don’t want monasteries to teach Tibetan to

young Tibetans during their school holidays

They fear Tibetan monks can use the Tibetan

language to ‘impress’ Tibetan young minds to

‘express’ their unfreedom The informal

class-es go against the pushy policy to sinicise the

land and people Hence, these are banned in

Nangchen; and monks caught imparting such

education risk being blacklisted They could

lose their identity as ‘religious professionals’.

THE stars are aligning

to bring something

special for you, more than a

month after the chief priest

of Yadadri temple certified

an ‘auspicious’ day and you

took oath as chief

minister for a

sec-ond term You will

10, the day goddess wati is worshipped

Saras-February 6 can be

an option too since six is your lucky number

Expect to get appreciated for your hard work

DARWIN discovered

evolution studying

turtles, among other

spe-cies, in Galapagos And

the last-known specimen,

Lonesome George, is long

dead Similar sad stories

of extinction are rampant

around the world but

kindly intervention is

holding out hope A case

in point is the revered

temple turtles of

Ass-am—a black softshell,

one of the rarest of the 28 species found in India

Hunted for their meat, they are said to be extinct

in the wild without the protection of the temple pond where they have been thriving for gener-ations as Vishnu’s kurma avatar Their progeny will now populate the wet-lands again; 35 hatchlings were recently released in Pobitora sanctuary

REPORTS on rape and hapless victims are routine

in newspapers around the world, but rarely does a serial killer of alleged rapists makes the headlines It has happened in Bangladesh Bodies of three young men were recently found in capital Dhaka and districts around it The men had handwritten notes around their necks in which they allegedly confessed to their crime Kind of reminds us

of the popular 1970s Hollywood series Death Wish.

The elusive vigilante killer has now become a sensation

in Bangladesh According to local media, the unidentified punisher—nicknamed Hercules—has been targeting and killing people suspected of committing rape Over the past two weeks, police have recovered three corpses with sim- ilar death notes from the Jhalakathi and Dhaka districts, the Daily Star reported Police are investigating the mur- ders, but have remained clueless so far about Hercules—a lone wolf, or a group.

The killings are linked to rising cases of rape A madarsa student

in Pirojpur district’s Bhandaria area reported that two men gang-raped her on January 14

on her way to her grandparents’

house The Daily Star said her father registered a case on Jan- uary 17 against two suspects—

Rakib and Sajal.

On January 24, the body of Sajal with bullet wounds was discovered in Kathalia sub-dis- trict of Jhalakathi Then on Feb- ruary 1, police recovered the body of Rakib, a 20-year-old law student, from the Rajapur sub-district of Jhalakathi

He was shot in the head early in the morning, police said The body was sent for an autopsy A note in Bengali—

undersigned Hercules —hanging around his neck read: “I am Rakib I am the rapist of a madarsa girl of Bhandaria This

is the consequence of a rapist Be wary rapists.” A similar note was found on Sajal’s body too.

In another case on January 7, an 18-year-old garment factory worker was found dead in her home in Ashulia,

on the outskirts of Dhaka, hours after she had filed a rape complaint against a suspect named Ripon and three more men On January 17, Ripon’s body was found near Ashulia Opinion is divided over the street justice Human rights group Ain-o-Salish has raised concern and its executive director, Sheepa Hafiza, said such extra-judicial action

is unacceptable Others view the vigilantism as the result

of a “weak and apathetic judiciary” Hercules is riveting the Bangladeshis, whichever side of the ethical debate they may be on.

Hercules, the Rapist Killer

After a spate

of rapes, an unidentified vigilante assailant is shooting dead the accused and leaving a warning note around their necks

TURTLE UNTURNED

STAR-STUCK CABINET

TWICE BITTEN

Patna University’s teachers and students should have jumped for joy when Congress president Rahul Gandhi, at a recent rally in Bihar, promised central university status to the institution But they didn’t Central status has been

an old demand of the university, the seventh oldest in the country, once known as the Oxbridge

of the East But successive governments have ignored the plea despite its alumni list containing such prominent names such as chief minister Nitish Kumar, Laoo Prasad Yadav, Sushil Kumar Modi, Yashwant Sinha, and Shatrughan Sinha Then again, when the UPA government (2004-2014) established two new central universities, in Motihari and Gaya, the institution in Patna, founded in 1917, was conveniently overlooked.

RING A BELL

Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi last week rang up Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Syed Ali Geelani to discuss “human rights” in Kashmir After the call to the Mirwaiz, a Hurriyat moderate, New Delhi summoned Islamabad’s envoy to protest the “brazen attempt by Pakistan to subvert India’s unity” The Pakistanis fol-lowed it up by calling the hawkish Geelani The separa-tists hope the calls may trans-late into a bilateral dialogue between the neighbours—now that arch-enemies Taliban and the US are talking in Doha on American troop withdrawal in Afghanistan Wishful thinking, security analysts say

SEAT CHARADE

Election season throws up all

kinds of arithmetic and

chemis-try Take urban Bangalore’s two

Lok Sabha seats Bangalore

South was held by the late H.N

Ananth Kumar consecutively

since 1996 and it’s not clear who

the BJP will choose this time

In Bangalore North, there’s

been speculation about Janata

Dal (Secular) supremo H.D

Deve Gowda shifting there

Union minister D.V Sadananda

Gowda is the MP from this seat

But it was former Karnataka

chief minister S.M Krishna —

not much in the public eye

since joining the BJP two years

ago—who piqued curiosity last

week Is a high-voltage battle

between Gowda and Krishna

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ZERO TOLERANCE

by Preetha Nair in Delhi and

Abdul Gani in Guwahati

FOR more than a month now, Ran­

jita Elangbam has been getting

hundreds of phone calls from

unkn own numbers and strangers

speaking in “strange languages”

She also gets the feeling of being foll­

owed—the creepy sensation of unseen

people watching her from the shad­

ows, vehicles pulling up besides her on

the road and then zipping away And

all these started after her husband,

journalist Kishorechandra Wangk­

hem, was arrested under the draco­

nian Nati onal Security Act (NSA) for

criticising chief minister N Biren

Singh in a Facebook post He has since been sentenced to jail for a year as the government considers him a “threat to the security of the state” Critics and activists say it is yet another attempt

by the BJP governments—in Manipur and in Delhi—to stifle dissent and free speech But the unfazed state govern­

ment has refused to back off

Beyond the obvious is what many see as the right-wing’s attempt to push its own version of nationalism in the Northeast, a sliver of a landmass in India’s far-east where many identify their Indianness in the context of their own tribe or commu-nity Kishorechandra, 39, could have been doing precisely that when, on November

19 last year, he uploaded a video on

HAPPIER TIMES Kishorechandra Wangkhem with wife Ranjita and their daughters

Facebook, calling the chief minister a

“puppet” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi Using expletives in this video, Kishorechandra went on to criticise Biren Singh for organising a function to commemorate Laxmibai, the queen of Jhansi, who, the journalist said, had no role in the freedom movement of Manipur Kishorechandra, a father of two girls, was working as an anchor -reporter with ISTV, a local news channel

He was charged with sedition on November 21 but was granted bail on November 25 by a local court which said that there was nothing seditious in his post “…The said words, gestures made by the accused person cannot be termed as seditious It appears to be mere expres-sion of opinion against the public conduct

of a public figure in a street language,” the chief judicial magistrate of Imphal said Two days later, Kishorechandra was re-arrested, this time under the NSA, which allows the state to put an accused

in jail for a year without trial There was

no explanation how Kishorechandra was

a threat to the nation

BJP’s state spokesperson Tikendra Singh defends the crackdown saying that Kishorechandra was a serial offender who

A Journalist as

Breaking News

Manipur scribe in jail for over two months Charge

is sedition, his Facebook post called CM a 'puppet'.

had “crossed all limits” in the name of

freedom of speech “Every Indian should

try to follow the Constitution strictly but

that particular person crossed the limit

And this is not the first time This is the

third time and he had started doing it

habitually Under such circumstances,

the government shouldn’t be silent,”

Singh says Kishorechandra was earlier

arrested briefly in August for calling the

BJP the “Buddhu Joker Party”

The chief minister gave a more clear

interpretation “I have no problem with

criticism I can tolerate it However, I

cannot tolerate the humiliation of my

leaders He (Kishorechandra) was both

abusing and humiliating national heroes

like the Rani of Jhansi and Prime Minister

Narendra Modi What he said was beyond

the freedom of expression,” Singh said at

a public function on December 24

Lawyers say the government is trying

to scuttle his efforts for bail by delaying

court proceedings in the Manipur High

Court The court had asked the state and

Centre to furnish documents by February

1 “The government failed to furnish the

documents Now the court has postponed

the hearing to February 22,” says Shreeji

Bhavsar, advocate at Human Rights

Law Network Kishorechandra’s lawyer

N Victor sees it as a “rarest of the rare

cases” in India “It involves Article 19(A),

the right to freedom of expression It’s

got nothing to do with communal

harmony or anything else It’s against the

rights of the journalist.”

ACTIVISTS also see a pattern in the

use of such stringent laws against

dissenters in BJP-ruled states in

the region, where the party is in

power in six of the seven states Last

month, three people of

Assam—intel-lectual-writer Hiren Gohain, journalist

Manjit Mahanta and activist Akhil

Gogoi—were charged with sedition

over their opposition to the citizenship

amendment bill Since 2016, when the

BJP came to power in Assam for the first

time, police have slapped at least 245

sedition cases, though most of them are

against militants

Human Rights Alert director Babloo

Loitongbam, who briefed the UN special

rapporteur on the issue, says the space for

dissent is shrinking in India In the

Northeast, he sees another agenda

“There is a strong feeling in the Northeast

that the right-wing is trying to create an

ideology of Hindi, Hindu, Hindutva

Suddenly, Jhansi Rani has been eulogised and compared with freedom fighters here, which has absolutely no historical connection Kishorechandra’s reaction is

a reflection of it,” Loitongbam adds

What surprised many in the episode

is the role played by two journalist groups—the All Manipur Working Journalists' Union and Editors Guild, Manipur—which refused to help Kish-

o rechandra Though the journalists’

union later changed its stand, it was disturbing for Ranjita “The Indian Journalists’ Union and Press Council

of India have been helpful Two media houses and journalists have been help-ing at their personal level in Manipur but I think there should have been more voice in protest against the arrest,” says Ranjita, who works as an occupational therapist in a district hospital “Today, it’s him, tomorrow it will be someone else There is a fear among the people for expression But I want everyone to join this battle so that freedom of exp-ression remains intact in our country.”

The journalist’s arrest has sparked widespread protests, raising questions

on freedom of expression and fuelling

the debate on the need to scrap nian laws like the NSA Senior lawyer Colin Gonsalves says Kishorechandra’s case doesn’t hold water “Sedition law is applicable only when words are coupled with strong actions When the Balwant Singh case came to the Supreme Court for sedition, the judge asked only one question to the state prosecutor ‘what did he do after raising the slogan Khalistan zindabad? Did he throw a bomb or anything? If he didn’t, that’s not sedition’,” says Gonsalves, who is also the founder of the Human Rights Law Network The lawyer points out the case

draco-of a Uttarakhand journalist who was also charged under the sedition law for put-ting a poster with ‘inquilab zindabad’ written on it

Ranjita knows it could be a long haul

“It’s tough, very tough to fight the battle all alone But I’m not tired I will fight and emerge victorious,” she says

In his cell at the Sajiwa Central Jail in Imphal East, Kishorechandra waits for

“justice” He had refused to apologise

to the government “Wake up everyone, don’t be afraid”—that’s what Kishore-chandra has been saying all along, acc -

o rding to his wife O

“I have no problem with criticism I can tolerate it

However, I can't tolerate the humiliation of

my leaders."

N Biren SinghChief minister, Manipur

THE year was 2000 Nongthombam Biren

Singh was the editor of an Imphal-based vernacular daily Naharolgi Thoudang After his newspaper published the speech of an acti- vist, Biren Singh was jailed on charges of sedi- tion, allegedly for supporting militant groups.

“…We campaigned very hard to release him Now he has started using NSA We thought he would be lenient towards a journalist commit- ting the same mistake,” says Babloo Loitongbam, director of Human Rights Alert.

A hardcore nationalist, Biren Singh often cites mythology to underline Manipur and the Northeast’s historic links with Hinduism and Bharat Last year, he said that the Northeast was one entity during god Krishna's time

“In the time of Lord Krishna, there was no separate Arunachal Pradesh or Assam or Manipur The entire Northeast was one entity Now, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland are on the border of China But Lord Krishna made them part of India during his time”, he said at a public rally in Gujarat’s Madhavpura village.

Singh was earlier with the Congress and joined the BJP in 2016.O

A ‘seditious’ past

MANIPUR OPINION

THE controversy over the arrest of TV anchor,

Kishorechandra Wangkhem, and his subsequent jail

sentence is a festering sore in the reputation of the BJP

government in Manipur Wangkhem was booked under

the National Security Act, just because he posted a

Facebook video in which he called chief minister N Biren

Singh a puppet of Prime Minister Narendra Modi The

govern-ment has come to be known for being oversensitive to criticism,

clamping down on anyone making adverse remarks against it,

even on social media Kishorechandra is the latest case but

there have been similar outlandish arrests before him

Kishorechandra was booked twice for the same Facebook

post The first was on November 20 on sedition

charges but was set free on November 25 after a

chief judicial magistrate’s court ruled that the

post was just an “expression of private opinion

in street language” Then, in what was seen as

vengeful overkill, the government re-arrested

him on November 27, overruling the court’s

verdict, this time under the NSA How a man’s

criticism of the government and his foul

lan-guage are a threat to national security has not

been explained

This is, however, not the first time this

journal-ist invited the ire of the government In August,

he had been detained by the police, again for a

Facebook post in which he translated BJP as the

“‘Buddhu Joker Party’ high on animal urine”

On that occasion, the editor of the cable TV

network he worked for apologised to the chief

minister and negotiated his release How a chief

minister, and not the court, can have people

arrested or released is again a mystery

Before him, in October, Popilal Ningthoujam, an activist of a

new political party, People’s Resurgence and Justice Alliance,

to which the iconic hunger-striker Irom Sharmila once

belon-ged, was arrested for a similar show of alleged disrespect to the

BJP government Following an outrageous midnight police raid

inside the Manipur University campus to break a paralysing

strike by teachers and students, which ended in the arrest of six

teachers and 21 students, Popilal and others staged a protest in

which they threw eggs on photographs of BJP leaders, including

the CM and PM, and then uploaded a video of it on Facebook

Popilal, in defiance, did not avail bail for nearly a month, but

finally took wiser counsel and was released

What is disturbing in all these is the manner in which the

judic iary is being progressively dwarfed by the executive Alongside this, other developments point to a similar erosion of yet another pillar of democracy The Manipur Legislative Assembly is increasingly being made irrelevant There are eight defector MLAs, one of them a minister, who left their original party, the Congress, to join the BJP and give the latter a majority

at the time of the government formation in March 2017 In that elections, in the House of 60, the Congress won 28 seats, the BJP

21 and smaller parties together accounted for the rest Almost two years later, the Congress defectors continue to sit on the Opposition benches and vote with the ruling party, making a farce of the anti-defection law

The diminishing importance of the Manipur Legislative Assembly was again evident when its winter session this year lasted just two days, December 20 and 21 The first day passed com-pleting formalities and obituary references, and

on the last day, three important bills were rushed through, including one that pertained to prohibition of mob violence, the penalty for which can be as severe as life imprisonment The idea of public policies forged on the hot anvil of assembly debates is now becoming a receding memory

The controversy over Kishorechandra’s arrest also mauled the state of the media in Manipur,

in particular the two important journalist ies, the All Manipur Working Journalists’ Union and Editors Guild, Manipur For an entire month after the controversy broke out, leaders

bod-of the organisations showed little or no concern, saying the arrested journalist is a serial offender One of them even officially disowned him as a journalist, forgetting that the issue was not so much about Kishorechandra the person, but of vindictive and vengeful misuse of power by those in power Later, thankfully a general body meeting of the AMSJU corrected this perspective.Probably, all these have a lot to do with desensitisation by years of living in a conflict situation, but also co-option by the establishment The casualty expectedly has been a general confusion, if not a decay, of faith amongst its practitioners in the mandate of the journalistic profession as an interrogator and adversary of power O

(The writer is Editor of Imphal Free Press and author of The

Northeast Question: Conflicts and Frontiers and Shadow and

Light: A Kaleidoscope of Manipur)

SENSE AND SENSITIVITY

Biren Singh government’s reaction to a critical Facebook post is over the top

PRADIP

PHANJOUBAM

Sadly, the judic iary

is being progressively dwarfed by the executive

in Manipur

CABINET BLUES

by K.S Shaini in Bhopal

hain Hamne yeh sarkaar

banayee hai (Ministers

are nothing before me I

have made this

govern-ment),” declared Rambai,

the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)

legis-lator from Patharia constituency in

Madhya Pradesh And none of the

ministers of the Kamal Nath

govern-ment dared to deny her claim Next,

Rambai padlocked a ministerial-level

B-type bungalow in the posh 74

Bun-galows locality of Bhopal, saying it

had been allotted to her The lock was

broken by the Public Works

Depart-ment (PWD), but instead of getting

the MLA booked for trespass, PWD

minister Sajjan Singh Verma merely

described her as a “bit impatient”

Rambai, on her part, was unrelenting

“I was told by the chief minister, the

Speaker and the PWD minister that I

can have whichever bungalow I want

They said I have to just lock a bungalow

and it would be mine,” the MLA said

It’s not difficult to guess why the

government is being so accom mo­

dative with Rambai and even taking

insults from her She is one of the

six ‘outsiders’ on whom depends the

continuation of the Congress in office

Surviving on a razor­thin majority, the

Kamal Nath government has become

vulnerable to all sorts of pulls and

pressures His party has 114 MLAs in

the 230­ member assembly, and has the

support of four Independents, an MLA

from the Samajwadi Party (SP) and two

from the BSP The SP and BSP MLAs

are demanding their pound of flesh in

the form of ministerial berths Rambai

had said she would settle for nothing

less than a cabinet berth, and so has

the SP MLA

In fact, immediately after Kamal Nath

was sworn in as CM on November 17,

2018, BSP supremo Mayawati dem an­

ded that the ‘political’ cases against her

party workers be withdrawn And the

new government complied Those in

the know say it is almost certain that

the SP, BSP and Independent MLAs

would be rewarded soon—either with

ministerial assignments, or with chair­

manship of state­run boards and cor­

porations They know the government

can be blackmailed easily

Mr CM’s Pricey ‘Outsiders’

How six MLAs in the 230-member MP assembly keep the Congress government on a tight leash

The Congress says the MLAs were not given ministerial posts as they had off­

ered ‘unconditional’ support to the government However, its claim was belied immediately after the formation

of the council of ministers, when SP chief Akhilesh Yadav mockingly

‘thanked’ the Congress for not includ­

ing its MLA in the ministry Signi­

ficantly, Akhilesh and Mayawati were not among the galaxy of leaders from across the country and the political spectrum who attended Kamal Nath’s swearing­in ceremony

This situation has also translated into the BJP constantly trying to give the impression that the government won’t last long “This government would fall even if the national leadership of the BJP sneezes,” said party national gen­

eral secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya

“Before the painting of the bungalows allotted to the new ministers is com­

plete, the government would collapse,”

added Gopal Bhargava, leader of Opposition in the Vidhan Sabha Many BJP leaders, who requested not to be named, say their party is just waiting for the Lok Sabha polls “If the NDA rides back to power, we will pull the rug from under the government’s feet within days,” one of them said Obvi­ously, the BJP does not want to go into the general elections with the charge of toppling an elected government stick­ing to it

On the other hand, Congress leaders are persistently alleging that the BJP was trying to buy out its MLAs After the election of the Speaker, former CM Digvijaya Singh accused three senior BJP leaders of trying to purchase the loyalty of a Congress MLA “BJP MLA Narayan Tripathi contacted Sabalgarh (Morena district) MLA Baijnath Kush­waha (of the Congress) and took him to

a dhaba, where former ministers Naro­ttam Mishra and Vishwas Sarang (both

A TIGHT BALANCE

MP CM Kamal Nath

JITENDER GUPTA

from the BJP) met him

(Kushwaha) They off­

ered Rs 100 crore to

Kushwaha to topple the

government He was also

crore was too high a

price for an MLA

Realising that the

government is likely to

buckle under pressure,

even the Congress MLAs

are mounting pressure

for inclusion in the cabi­

net Bisahulal Singh, five­

time MLA from Shahdol,

and KP Singh, who was

elected from Shivpuri

for the fifth time, have been kept out

of the ministry Dilip Gurjar, four­

time MLA from Nagda in Ujjain, and

Natiraja from Khajuraho feel sidelined

Natiraja says he had even got call from

the Governor House before the swear­

ing­in ceremony, but later his name

was dropped Surendra Chaudhary

and Ramniwas Rawat, who claim to have been promised the deputy chief minister’s post bef­

ore the elections, were also ignored

Digvijaya Singh’s bro­

ther Laxman Singh too could not find his name

in the list of ministers

After Imarti Devi, a cabinet minister, fum­

bled while reading the CM’s message at the Republic Day function

in Gwalior and the dis­

trict collector had to read it out, Laxman’s wife Rubina Singh tweeted, “Our respected minister struggles to read a few lines of a speech, makes someone else take over!

How embarrassing!” She added that

“an illiterate” had been preferred over her husband Later, when the comment started making the rounds on social media, she tweeted an explanation saying, “Media has blown my tweet out

of proportion—what a surprise!!! Yes,

we are hurt and surprised that Laxman­ji was not given a ministry Somebody who has won eight elections and has worked so hard for over 30 years has been treated like this.”Referring to the level of sycophancy

in the party, a senior Congress leader sarcastically quips, “The broom has an important place in the party Before the elections, Imarti Devi said, ‘I am ready to even sweep the floors of maha­raja Scindia’s house.’ In return, she was rewarded with a ministerial post, while deserving ones were sidelined.” Realising that its own MLAs may feel tempted to cross over, the Congress is claiming that eight to 10 BJP MLAs are waiting to join the grand old party

“About five­six BJP MLAs are in touch with me But I don’t need them as of now,” Kamal Nath said recently, adding there are many MLAs who see no fut­ure for themselves in the BJP

A political storm may erupt in the state soon after the Lok Sabha elec­tions Kamal Nath has not bent much

to pacify the disgruntled MLAs of the party and those who are supporting from outside But he would be hard put keeping them happy O

“The CM, Speaker and PWD minister had told me any bungalow

I lock would

be mine.”

RambaiBSP MLA, Patharia

FAMILY AFFAIR

by Ajay Sukumaran in Bangalore

AT a cinema in Mandya, the sugar

bowl of southern Karnataka, the

audience bursts into whistles

when Nikhil Gowda delivers a

line about a farmer—how he is

the real innovator A family entertai­

ner with the usual commercial tropes,

Seetharama Kalyana is the 29­year­

old’s second Kannada film in the lead

role The buzz, however, is over wheth­

er Nikhil, son of Karnataka chief mini­

ster H.D Kumaraswamy, will make his

political debut in Mandya in this sum­

mer’s Lok Sabha elections

Indications that the third generation

of H.D Deve Gowda’s family were being

groomed for a political career have been

there for a while So, speculation about

Nikhil is swirling in Mandya There’s an

equal amount of curiosity about cousin

Prajwal Revanna debuting from

neigh-bouring Hassan, the family stronghold

Movies and politics go hand in hand in

Mandya, locals say Quite fittingly,

therefore, there’s a bit of a ‘filmy’ turn

building up as coalition partners Janata

Dal (Secular) and Congress get down to

negotiating a seat-sharing pact Mandya

was the home base for popular film

star-Congressman M.H Ambareesh

who died three months ago Now there’s

a call for his wife, Sumalatha, also a film star, to contest the seat her husband once held, potentially queering the pitch for the JD(S) because Ambareesh has a strong fan following

Mandya, which lies in between Bangalore and Mysore, is a Vokkaliga bastion where the two parties have a long-running rivalry, like they do in other parts of the Old Mysore region

“There are squabbles between the party workers here all the time,” says a local journalist Leave alone inter-party rivalry, there have been tussles within the Congress’s ranks in the past between workers loyal to Ambareesh and Congress social media head Divya Spandana, also a former actress, who had stood for elections here previously

Since May, when the JD(S) swept all the seven assembly seats in the district, there’s been worry in the Congress ranks over ceding space to its rival-turned-ally To be sure, the Congress did agree to a joint candidate—local JD(S) leader L.R Shivaramegowda—in the November parliamentary bypolls but now it appears a there’s a hard bar-gain for the seat “We have to think about future elections too If we give up our claim, they will take it as granted in three to four districts We have to sus-tain our party,” says a Congress leader

Besides, there’s concern that the BJP, which does not have much of a presence

in these parts, could find more room for itself if there’s a straight fight In the November bypolls in Mandya, the BJP managed about 2.4 lakh votes

Neither partner in the coalition has officially commented on the details of seat-sharing, a tricky task because of undercurrents in each constituency—the JD(S), it is understood, wants to contest in at least 10 of the state’s 28 parliamentary seats

A similar tussle is evident in Hassan, which party patriarch Deve Gowda represents For some time now, there’s been talk that Prajwal Revanna, son of H.D Revanna—he’s Kumaraswamy’s elder brother and currently state minis-ter—will take over the seat from his grandfather In fact, Gowda had hinted

as much last year when Prajwal was a pparently upset for being passed over for an assembly ticket from the party

“We have no objection if Deve Gowda contests from Hassan, we will support him But if he doesn’t wish to contest here, we would like a Congress candi-date here,” says Congressman A Manju, who is from the district

There’s no official word yet from the JD(S) which looks to party boss Deve Gowda to take the final call O

Politics beckons the latest from the Deve Gowda genepool

Grandpa’s Greenhorns

Speculation is swirling about Karnataka

CM Kumaraswamy’s actor-son making his

political debut from Mandya

There is also curiosity about Prajwal, Deve Gowda’s grandson from his other son, debuting from stronghold Hassan.

Mandya would turn interesting if the Congress decides to field the late Ambareesh’s wife, given his popularity

THE BROOD (From left) Nikhil, son of Kumaraswamy; and Prajwal, the CM’s nephew

ONCE A SPY

by Naseer Ganai in Jammu

IT is in the nature of their job that

spies are talked about more in the

country they are deployed than

the one they work for It’s common

practice for intelligence agencies

to disown their men when they are

captured in a foreign country Do-and-

deny is indeed the No 1 mantra of

esp-ionage So Indians would hear more

often about Pakistani spies working

for ISI and getting arrested in India,

than about India’s spies in Pakistan

Few have heard of Jammu-based

Vinod Sawhney, for example, who was

an Indian spy in Pakistan Now he

heads Jammu Ex-sleuths, a registered

NGO that the 65-year-old founded for

rehabilitating former spies

“Both my grown-up sons complain

that I have done nothing great in my life

Neither do they like what I do now I

don’t mind as I know we did good things

for our country It is another matter

that the country has forgotten us,” says

Sawhney, who lives in a one-storey

house on a narrow lane near Shaheed

Baghat Singh Chowk in Jammu’s Bakshi

Nagar area He often quotes Pakistani

poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz in chaste Urdu

while narrating his struggle as an

Indian spy caught in Pakistan, followed

by his efforts to rehabilitate former

spies back in India He learnt reading

and writing in the language during his

incarceration in Pakistani jails That

was the time of General Zia-ul-Haq’s

military rule, and he remembers the

names of many Pakistan Army officers

and politicians whom he met as fellow

inmates in various jails

Sawhney says it was patriotism that

drew him into spying in Pakistan at a

very young age He was making a living

as a taxi driver when an intelligence

agency hired him In 1977, he crossed

the Suchetgarh-Sialkot border and travelled through Rawalpindi, Faisala-bad, Gujranwala and Sialkot bef ore being arrested a few weeks later at the border on his way back to India The next 12 years were spent in various Pakistani jails “I was on remand for the first six months,” he says, recalling the time he was held in police lockups and army interrogation centres “My family had no idea where I was until I started writing to them from jail.”

On the intervention of the Indian government, Sawhney was released and sent back to India on March 24, 1988 He doesn’t give away details of the spying

he did, revealing only that he made a list

of Indian prisoners of war held in Pakistani jails since the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war “I don’t know what hap-pened to the list I fulfilled my duty by handing it over to the Indian govern-ment at the highest level,” he says

When he and other spies who returned

to India after imprisonment in Pakistan were all disowned by Indian intelligence agencies they worked for, the former spy took it as an affront to his patriotism and went on to launch Jammu Ex-sleuths on April 4, 1993, with an indefinite fast by its four founding members The others—all former spies—were Krishan Lal Bali, Suram Singh and late Vinod Gupta They asked for complete rehabilitation of all the spies who returned from Pakistani jails, and were immediately arrested

They were released in the evening

Earlier, on September 3, 1991, the then Jammu and Kashmir DGP had recom-mended Sawhney’s ‘re-employment’ in the police department, but he refused the offer, insisting that all former spies

be rehabilitated That’s when he started looking for others like him—a process that led to the formation of Jammu Ex-sleuths “There are policies for the rehabilitation of former militants, so

why is there nothing for former spies?”

he asks “In other countries, spies caught

in foreign lands are rehabilitated after they come back At least their families are given support, not abandoned like

we are Here, we have to protest to make ourselves heard.”

The last to join Jammu Ex-sleuths is a former spy from Kashmir Speaking to

Outlook on the condition of anonymity,

he says he was just 22 when the Indian Army’s intelligence wing trained him in the Valley and sent him across the border from Jammu on August 11, 2004 He worked undercover in Pakistan for about three years, first as a driver, then a fash-ion designer and, finally, a property dealer During these years, the army used

to transfer his payment to his father’s account in the Valley The money stopped coming once he was arrested

“I was held for a year in Pakistan Army’s interrogation cells Then I spent years in jail My conviction and sentencing by the

Pakistani court is proof of what I have done for my country,” he says When he returned to India on June 23, 2017, he was questioned by all the agencies at the Joint Interrogation Centre in Jammu, including the agency that had hired him

“When I came back to the Valley and met those who had sent me across, they said they didn’t even know me,” he adds Exasperated, he eventually ended up in Sawhney’s association

Saifullah Gujjar of Uchhad, Mendhar,

in Poonch district is another member of Jammu Ex-sleuths He was 23, married and had three children when he crossed the border from Poonch in 2004 and was immediately arrested in Pakistan He says the agency that had sent him across has been ignoring him since his return two years ago “The police were asked to register a case against me I was also threatened and told not to talk to report-ers We put our lives on the line for India

Cost of a RAW Deal Former spies back from jail in Pakistan wage a lonely battle for recognition

18 February 2019 OUTLOOK 25

Now the country must acknowledge our existence and rehabilitate us,” he adds Torture in Pakistan has damaged his hands, making it difficult for him to fend for his three children and parents

Pankaj Kumar Gupta, who returned

on July 1, 2016, recounts a similar story, though his active stint in Pakistan was longer—10 years In 2010, the Punjab State Human Rights Commission asked the state government to examine his case after his family filed a petition saying they received a letter from him in January that year, and that he was imprisoned in Pakistan because of spying for the Indian int elligence agency RAW According to the petition, Gupta had left his house in Pathankot for Mumbai in 1994, and since then there had been no trace of him until that letter from Pakistan

Gupta tells Outlook that he was

rec-ruited by RAW in 1994 after training in languages and Islam, both in Jammu and Delhi In Pakistan, he started work as a

truck driver “I was very young We have

to start slowly without causing any doubt,” he says “I even acquired a Pakistani passport I was arrested in

2004 by the ISI when they traced one of

my Switzerland numbers.”

Recalling the torture he faced, Gupta says he had hoped to be greeted like a hero on his return “But I was simply disowned When I uploaded a video on YouTube to explain myself, the agency called me to ask why I did it I said this is what I felt and that I wished to share my experiences with others so they could learn a lesson At one point, I had even considered suicide,” he adds

In 2010, the Jammu Municipal oration offered Sawhney a licence for selling cold drinks and confectionery as

Corp-a hCorp-awker in BCorp-akshi NCorp-agCorp-ar He rejected it

“We have suffered for a patriotic cause and they think they can silence us with these petty sops,” says Sawhney O

“We put our lives on the line for India Now the country must accept we exist and rehabilitate us,” says a former spy.

Illustration by MANJUL

Known for her roles

surgery and is cancer

free now Her memoir

Healed is her personal

story of a battle

against ovarian cancer

Cricketer Yuvraj Singh

was diagnosed with

Stage 1 Lung Cancer in

2012 and underwent

chemotherapy

Model-actress Lisa Ray was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells in the bone marrow, in

2009 and is cancer free now

Critically acclaimed actor of both Hindi film industry and Hollywood, Irrfan Khan, was diagnosed with neuroendocrine tumour He is presently undergoing treatment in London

Yester-year actor and successful director and producer, Rakesh Roshan, recently diagnosed with throat cancer underwent a surgery His actor son Hrithik Roshan even posted his father’s post-surgery pics on Instagram

Veteran actress Mumtaz was diagnosed with Breast Cancer in 2000 and following series of chemotherapies and radiations sessions is cancer free

Academy Award-winning actor Michael Douglas was diagnosed with throat cancer in August

2010 and is presently cancer free

South Indian actress Gautami, known for her role in Iruvar and Papanasam, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005 and has since recovered.

Anurag Basu, the Barfi director, was diagnosed with Blood Cancer in 2004 when doctors told him that he had only 50% chance of survival but he fought the disease bravely

Mexican actress, model, producer and writer Barbara Mori, was diagnosed with early stage

of breast cancer Starring opposite Hrithik Roshan in the movie Kites Brabara is a proud cancer survivor Besides her work she does a lot of cancer awareness programme, speaks extensively about her treatment and how one should go for regular checkups for an early detection for better chances of survival

The bubbly actor of many hit

Hindi films, Sonali Bendre

was diagnosed with an

aggressive form of cancer

for which she underwent

treatment in USA and is now

back in Mumbai She says, ``

I will fight cancer head on I

won’t allow it to win.’’

Known for his role as Wolverine in the X man series Hugh Jackman was diagnosed with skin cancer in 2013 and has had several procedures since then

He has used his fame

to raise awareness about skin protection

Actress Kylie Minogue was diagnosed with breast cancer in

2005 and after chemo and surgery, eight months later she was cancer-free

Seven-time winner

of Tour de France bicycle race, Lance Armstrong, was diagnosed with testicular cancer in October 1996 and learned that it had already spread to his brain, lungs, and abdomen In February

1997, he was declared cancer-free

Hollywood actor Mark Ruffalo, known for his role as Hulk in the Avenger series was diagnosed with a brain tumour

in 2001 and had a successful surgery to remove it

Journalist and activist

Gloria Steinem

was diagnosed with breast cancer in September 1986 and

is a cancer survivor

Compiled by Surekha Kadapa Bose and Hiren Kumar Bose

Veteran actor Robert

De Niro was diagnosed with prostate cancer in October 2003, received a prostatectomy, a surgical procedure that involves either the partial or complete removal of the

prostate gland

28 OUTLOOK 18 February 2019

THEN & NOW OPINION

FORTY years ago, the dawn of the year 1979

inaugurated a series of events in West Asia

the consequences of which continue to

reverberate at a global level in contemporary

competitions and conflicts

On January 15, the Shah of Iran and his

queen left Tehran airport and went into exile,

ending two years of protests and street clashes

which saw the mobilisation of millions of disg r­

untled youth ranged against the powerful war

machinery of the monarch The Shah’s autocracy

had destroyed every avenue for secular protest in

the country, leaving the field open to the clerics of

the land to lead the opposition and assume power

after the ruler’s departure

Within just two weeks of the shah commencing

his exile, the same airport would witness the

arrival of a very different personality—a bearded

cleric, in long traditional robes and a black turban

sign ifying his descent from the Prophet—

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

Khomeini had been in exile in Iraq and then

Paris since 1965 But, from outside his national

home, he continued his relentless opposition to

Iran’s monarch, condemning him for his secular

rule, the corruption that imbued every aspect of

his government, his neglect of the poor, and above

all, his subservience to the United States

Khomeini described monarchy as un­Islamic

and as “one of the most shameful and disgraceful

reactionary manifestations” As early as 1942, he

had called for government based on God’s law,

the Sharia, and the need for religious scholars

to supervise it This evolved later into the idea

of the ‘vilayet­e­faqih’, the “Rule of the Just

Jurisprudent” at the head of the state order

This concept was later inscribed into the con­

stitution of the ‘Islamic Republic’ of Iran that

came into being on April 1, 1979, with Khomeini as

the leader of the revolution

But the revolution was not done: on November 4

that year, student activists stormed the US

Embassy in Tehran and took fifty­two American

diplomats as hostages This was a “second revolu­

tion”, an effort to rid the country of American

influence Recalling the CIA’s role in the over­

throw of a democratic government in 1953 and the

restoration of the shah, the students described the embassy as a “nest of spies” The diplomats remained in custody for 444 days

The hostage­taking and the public humiliation

of the US has left behind a legacy of deep hostility

to the revolution and the Iranian people in large sections of the US political establishment and public opinion This anger and revulsion have ensured that US­Iran relations be marked by mutual distrust and animosity Sporadic attempts

at a thaw have been quickly overturned by one side

or the other US President Donald Trump’s animosity for Iran is in line with this legacy

The Islamic revolution had an immediate impact

on its principal neighbour: Saudi Arabia, the guardian of Islam’s two holiest sites, Mecca and Madina, and the accepted leader of the Arab and Islamic world, sensed a direct challenge There was its own restive Shia population that saw in the revolution the possibility of Shia empowerment

THE SPIRIT UNL EASHED SINCE 1979

From that dawn in November, 1979, that would set into motion a se ries of cataclysms in West Asia and, eventually, the world, changing geopolitics forever

TALMIZ AHMAD

The hostage crisis from

’79 left behind a legacy of deep hostility by the US towards Iran.

18 February 2019 OUTLOOK 29

Arab youth viewed the revolution—its republican­

ism, its democratic elections and its anti­West discourse—as a welcome change from the stultify­

ing paternal rule of their monarchs and were allured by its exciting promise

But what was of concern to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia most was the strident anti­ monarchic position that Ayatollah Khomeini held, particu­

larly his criticism of the wastage of oil revenues

on defence contracts and denial of political participation to the population

A new development, the second seminal event of that year, exerted fresh pressure on the belea­

guered kingdom: a group of Islamic zealots from within its own Wahhabi establishment took over the Grand Mosque in Mecca in November The former Saudi soldier and religious student Juheyman al Oteibi had a record of condemning the Saudi royal family for its avarice and corrup­

tion, its deviation from Islamic precepts and asso­

ciation with Western unbelievers He saw his brother­in­law, Mohmmed bin Abdullah al

Qahtani as the promised messiah, the mujaddid

(the renewer) who would appear at the com­mencement of the new Islamic century

Accordingly, as the new century dawned on November 20 according to the Islamic calendar, Juheyman and his followers, who had earlier stocked the mosque complex with weapons and food, forcibly occupied the mosque It took Saudi forces, backed by US and French specialists, nearly two weeks to end the occupation; those captured, including Juheyman himself, were publicly exe­cuted in different parts of the country

This shocking domestic challenge to the royal order, taking place within a few months of the Islamic revolution across the Gulf, compelled the kin gdom to review its domestic scenario and regional security interests

AT home, Saudi Arabia vigorously described

the Islamic revolution as “Shia” and a product

of unique Iranian traditions It also now enforced norms of ‘Islamic’ conduct—modest clothing for women, restrictions on women’s movement (including the ban on driving), strict gender segregation which limited women’s employment, and above all, the obnoxious ‘vilayet’ system that placed women under the “guardian­ship” of male relatives throughout their life.The kingdom then sought to stem the tide of the Islamic revolution by encouraging the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, to launch a military assault on the nation in disarray and generously funded this initiative What Saddam had imagined would be a quick capture of large chunks of Iranian territory and dictation of terms that would bring down the Islamic regime became an eight­year nightmare

It saw a to­and­fro movement of large armies across the border, missile attacks on cities, use of chemical weapons by Iraq and child soldiers by Iran, tanker warfare in the Gulf waters, and the shooting down of an Iranian passenger airplane

by the US It left nearly a million people dead But there was no change on the ground as the traditional border was re­affirmed and the Islamic revolution was consolidated

THE SPIRIT UNL EASHED SINCE 1979

From that dawn in November, 1979, that would set into motion a se ries of cataclysms in West Asia and, eventually, the world, changing geopolitics forever

TO COME

A protester holds Ayatollah Khomeini’s poster in Tehran, 1978

S Arabia sought to stem the tide of the Islamic revolution

by funding Saddam Hussein militarily.

THEN & NOW OPINION

What changed came a little later when Saddam

Hussein sought a “reward” for his nation’s sacri­

fices through the occupation of Kuwait, making it

into an Iraqi province This brought together a

million­strong international coalition of Western,

Arab and Islamic forces that liberated Kuwait,

devastated his country and permanently crippled

his regime It also made the US a permanent mili­

tary fixture in the Gulf, able to intervene militarily

in support of US interests when required

But, for Saudi Arabia, the ‘Islamic’ challenge

from the Iranian revolution also needed an

Islamic response, one that would burnish its cre­

dentials as the guardian of the holy cities and the

leader of the Islamic world The kingdom found

this opportunity in the third important event that

occurred in December that year—the Soviet inva­

sion of Afghanistan

It was not enough that the Afghan

populace was already robustly resisting

the Soviet occupation; the kingdom

allied with Pakistan and the US to shape

this resistance as a “global jihad” that

would mobi lise Muslims from across

the world in a divinely­sanctioned

enterprise About a hundred thousand

Muslims responded to this call, half of

them from Pakistan itself, a quarter

from the Arab world and the rest from

other Muslim communities

This state­sponsored jihad was the result of

short­sighted thinking, not a grand vision For the

US it was just one more front in the ongoing Cold

War; for Pakistan it provided an opportunity for

its military leader General Zia ul Haq to project

his adherence to Islam and gain some credibility

among his sullen countrymen, while for the king­

dom it was a fitting riposte to Iran’s revolution

THE jihad, funded by the US and the kingdom

and managed on the ground by Pakistan

through its Inter­Services Intelligence (ISI),

was led by a charismatic scion of a leading

Saudi merchant family, Osama bin Laden, who

used his own and state and donors’ resources to

organise a committed cadre of Islamic zealots in

Al Qaeda, that was trained in war and subversion

and given battlefield experience, with some even

enjoying the sweet taste of martyrdom

What none of the state­sponsors anticipated was

that the jihad would be so remarkably successful

The Soviet forces withdrew in defeat and soon

thereafter the Soviet empire itself collapsed, giv­

ing Muslim forces their first major victory over a

western foe in a few hundred years Surely, this

signalled that Allah was pleased with the faithful

for they at last had joined His path

Following this “victory”, the Afghan jihad again

became “global” in that its veterans now led

Islamic struggles in other violent theatres—Chechnya, Bosnia, Egypt and Algeria The jihad also turned on its fathers, attacking targets in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and finally the US itself

on September 11, 2001

The attack on the US homeland unleashed the wrath of the American state and its people Not recalling their own country’s role in the organisa­tion of this global scourge, they sanctioned their president’s murderous attack on Afghanistan through carpet­bombing, and then, their blood­lust not assuaged, they allowed the might of their nation’s guns and bombs to turn on Iraq

A hundred thousand Iraqis were killed in the military assault and perhaps a million died during the US occupation A new incarnation of trans­ national jihad emerged from this carnage, the

Islamic State, more murderous than its predecessor and motivated as much by sectarian hatred as by opposition to Western occupation

All this death and destruction can be linked to events that took place forty years ago But regional stability has not advanced even an iota: Saudi Arabia saw

in Shia empowerment in Iraq the stran­gling of its order by the Iran­led “Shia Crescent” and is now combating Iran in Syria, Yemen and Iraq, proxy conflicts that have left half a million dead, mil­lions displaced and civic life devastated

The events of 1979 have placed political Islam at the heart of West Asia politics as its different exp ressions—Wahhabiyya of Saudi Arabia, the Muslim Brotherhood represented by Turkey and Qatar, the Iranian revolution and trans­national jihad—compete for space and influence These contests have injected a deep sense of insecurity

in the region, impelling the nations to mobilise support domestically and regionally on religious, sectarian and ethnic basis

US policies under Trump have promoted further disruption through the shaping of a military coa­lition of itself, Israel and the kingdom to effect regime change in Iran

But at the heart of these contentions is the regional leaders’ resistance to reform—the refusal

to allow popular participation in governance when economies are under stress amidst oil price uncertainties and existing national institutions and leaderships are weary and incapable of reflecting the aspirations of their citizens This aversion to change will ensure that contentions in West Asia will continue to remain conflicted and volatile in the fortieth anniversary of that ext­raordinary year—1979 O

(The author is a former diplomat and holds the Ram Sathe Chair in International Studies, Symbiosis International University, Pune.)

Trump’s policies have caused further disruption through the military coalition of Israel, Saudi and the US.

Photo Courtesy: Jour

RSVP: +91 9711034203 responsibletourism@outlookindia.com

the West Bengal CM—and now

Nab anna, the temporary seat of

gove rnance, had gone through

the corridors of rail Bhavan

Una pologetic about using her two

stints as railway minister for her state,

new trains, railway lines and projects

for Bengal went into the making of her

highly emotive ‘Ma, Maati, Maanush’

campaign that ended the 34-year Left

Front rule Eight years since, as she

takes on the Narendra Modi

govern-ment to “save the Constitution”, she

seems to be looking at catapulting

herself to the PMo in Delhi from

Esp-lanade in Calcutta—site of her

three-day sit-in against CBI

“highhanded-ness” and a “saffron attack” on Bengal

Claiming moral victory, she called off

the protest after the Supreme Court

forbade the CBI from arresting Calcutta

police commissioner Rajeev Kumar

and ordered him instead to be available

for questioning regarding the chit fund

scam The scam that involved Sharada,

Rose Valley and some other players

broke in 2013 and the CBI took over the

probe in 2014 Coming just months

ahead of the general elections, the

timing of the CBI push against Rajeev

Kumar, who had headed the Bengal

police probe into the scam, has given

Mamata enough fodder to raise the cry

of political vendetta But her move also

means a breather to her partymen

already in the dock for the scam that

defrauded millions of people Citing

vendetta, those accused too could well

play victim now

The sit-in may be over, but Mamata’s

next stop is New Delhi Before getting off

the stage, she announced the next protest

would be in the national capital on

Feb-ruary 13 and 14 “We are not stopping the

fight We are taking it to Delhi,” she said,

while Andhra Pradesh CM N Chan

dra-babu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party

stood beside her Naidu had walked out

of the NDA last year, alleging PM Modi

had no time for allies “The BJP wants to

block the development of all

opposi-tion-ruled states like Bengal, And hra and

Delhi But together we will fight,” said

Naidu from the Calcutta stage All

oppo-sition parties, comprising the emer ging

mahagathbandhan, are exp ected to join

the agitation against the “attack on the federal structure by the undemocratic BJP government”

Except the Telangana Rashtra Samiti, all opposition parties across the country had extended support to Mamata’s sit-in

Several leaders called her up, tweeted

and sent messages of solidarity Naidu, Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader Kanimozhi were among those who reached Calcutta to stand beside Mamata Earlier, on January 19, the opp-osition had put up a show of strength in

Mamata’s stand against the CBI’s Calcutta foray brought anti-BJP parties a platform of fire and fury

Centre Stage Esplanade

18 February 2019 OutlOOk 33

the city with the Bengal CM holding fort

So has Mamata managed to position

herself as the first among equals in the

grand alliance? Outlook spoke to leaders

of several opposition parties, who laud

her for taking on the Modi government,

but insist she is not the

mahagathband-han’s leader yet The refrain is that it

would fin ally come down to the seats the

parties bag in the forthcoming elections

Political analyst Rajat Roy says the

turn of events has made Mamata a

major contender for the PM’s post

“Though Rahul Gandhi too is taking on

Modi on issues like Rafale, the fact that

Mamata holds a constitutional position

does make a difference She has

estab-lished herself ahead of others in the

grand alliance, and her experience of

governance sets her apart,” adds Roy, revealing Mamata has hinted in her circle of friends that she is in a better position as a seven-time parliamentar-ian and two-time CM, who has also been a Union minister twice

RoY believes that since all regional

parties are supporting her, she may be in a position to cobble up

a coalition without the Congress

“Mamata is cultivating all regional leaders like Arvind Kejriwal, Akhilesh Yadav, Naidu and some small parties from the Northeast Her ultimate aim

is definitely the PM’s post,” he says A Congress leader concurs that Didi

is trying to show she is the only one who can challenge Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah, but that doesn’t make her the leader “Rahul Gandhi has worked harder, chipping away at Modi’s image, also by raising the Rafale

issue,” says the leader “If the Congress gets 120-140 seats, who can deny the party a leadership role?”

Bengal, with 42 seats, may

be an important slice of the pie, but not big enough to push Mamata to the front

The entire opposition will stand ther and def eat these fascist forces.”

toge-Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera says support for Mamata was for the issue she raised “The CBI is not follow-ing procedure It cannot function in a ham-handed manner It cannot decide not to file an appeal in the Justice Loya and Sohrabuddin cases, and go after political rivals of the ruling party,” he

tells Outlook.

JD(S) general secretary Danish Ali says the grand alliance has no leader and that all the parties are going to fight the BJP collectively “We will not fall into the BJP-RSS trap and declare the alliance leader before the elections

our common resolve is to remove Modi’s BJP, which is demolishing the federal structure,” he says His party leader, former PM H.D Deve Gowda, was among the first leaders to extend support to Mamata

National Conference president Farooq Abdullah is all praise for Mam ata “She

is fighting for democracy and the federal structure, for farmers and the unemployed, exactly what this nat ion needs at this hour,” he says, adding that the Centre has been ext ending the jurisdiction of central agencies like the NIA to the states, inc luding Jammu and Kashmir, which is dest roying the federal structure Asked whether her fight has poised her to head the grand alliance, Abdullah says, “It’s not about her becom-ing the leading figure, but a fight for the people and their rights.”

The BJP, having emerged as the Trinamool Congress’s main challenger, ahead of both the Congress and the Left,

is convinced Mamata is manipulating the

entire opposition to accept her as leader—and also that her actual gameplan is to keep the saffron party out of Bengal She didn’t allow Amit Shah’s rath yatra in the state and has also been stopping choppers from using public grounds during rallies by BJP leaders

BJP leaders also blame Mamata for Modi having to wind up his speech too soon

at Thakurnagar earlier this month “We were denied permission to use the mela ground for the PM’s rally, forcing us to shift the venue to a nearby open field,” says a BJP leader involved in organising the rally “When around one lakh people turned up, there was a lot of jostling, and fearing a stampede, the PM quickly ended his speech.”

In his blog, senior BJP leader and former FM Arun Jaitley called the opp-osition a“Kleptocrat’s Club” and opined that Mamata’s “disproportionate reac-tion” to the CBI was “to project herself

as the nucleus of India’s opposition Her speeches attack PM Modi, but her strategy is aimed to defocus some of her other colleagues in the opposition and hog the centrestage,” he wrote O

Inputs from Preetha Nair

and Naseer Ganai

didi says no Mamata pitched her fight as one to ‘save the Constitution’

Several opposition leaders laud Mamata for taking on Modi, but insist she isn’t leader

of a grand alliance yet.

pti

Modi, Mamata in

a Matua Matrix

BJP and Trinamool sprint to catch a largely immigrant but influential community’s vote

by Probir Pramanik in Calcutta

It was a surging sea of heads from

atop, pushing forward and

crouch-ing low in the downwash from the

helicopter hovering over them

“Taratari koro, Modi eshe gechhe

(Move fast, Modi’s here).” the

crowd goes out of control—everyone

in the tens of thousands gathered on a

dusty ground and outside in

thakur-nagar wants to see and hear Narendra

Modi from close And why not? they

can’t recall when a prime minister

came to address the Matuas before—

though they are a tight-knit Hindu

scheduled-caste community of more

than 4.7 million and their votes can

sway the outcome in about 74

assem-bly and seven parliamentary

constit-uencies in West Bengal

The stats are not lost as Prime Minister

Modi chose the Matua stronghold of

Thakurnagar, 30 km from the

India-Bangladesh border, to launch the BJP’s

Lok Sabha election campaign in

Ben-gal—a state where the party is looking

for a putsch this summer to unseat its

ent renched bugbear, the Trinamool

Cong ress of Mamata Banerjee In his

speech, interrupted by appeals to the

crowd to keep calm, he underscored his

government’s citizenship amendment

bill that will guarantee Indian

nationality to Hindus from Bangladesh He tou

-ched a chord as the Matua community,

which is also a religious sect that has

matriarch Boroma at the helm, consists

almost exc lusively of Nama shudra Dalit

immigrants from East Bengal after

Par-tition and Bangladesh after 1971 And

many of them are said to be fighting for

Indian citizenship

Modi, however, had to cut short his

speech and leave as the crowd—more

than double the ground’s capacity—

breached the barricades The BJP isn’t

complaining, though The turnout

indi-cates the party has made inroads into

the Matua community In Thakurnagar,

Modi prayed at the temple of Harichand

Thakur, who founded the Matua

Maha-sangha in East Bengal in the mid-1800s

It was Harichand’s grandson P.R

Tha-kur who established ThaTha-kurnagar as the

sect’s headquarters after 1947 Modi

also met Binapani Devi, or Bor oma, who

belongs to the Thakur family, and

sou-ght her blessings

For their part, the Matuas are politically

divided They were initially behind the Congress and then with the Left from

1977 until Mamata wooed them away in the 2008 panchayat polls, when the Tri-namool tasted its first electoral success in the state In the 2011 assembly polls, Mamata endorsed the Mahasangha—a key factor that ended the Left Front’s 34-year reign in the state Boroma celebrated her 100th birthday last year in the pres-ence of Mamata One of her daughters-in-law, Mamata Thakur, is a Trinamool MP

One of her sons, Manjul Krishna Tha kur, has been a minister in

Mamata’s cabinet, but his sons are with the BJP The youngest, Santanu Thakur, invited Modi to the Feb-ruary 2 rally

Citizenship is an issue that could make many Matuas lean towards the BJP A sizeable chunk who

came after Bangladesh was formed says the current cut-off date of March 25,

1971, for Indian citizenship doesn’t help because people were forced to leave the country years after its independence Besides, the Mahasangha—the struc-tured apex body of the sect—has been demanding post-Partition citizenship rights for every community member The community, according to analysts, makes up more than a third of all Hindu immigrants from Bangladesh

But Mamata opposes the Centre’s

bill—a point Modi didn’t forget to mention during his 17-minute speech in Thakurnagar He asked the chief minister to end-orse the proposed legisla-tion, which was passed in the Lok Sabha and pend-ing clearance from the Rajya Sabha, where it was

The BJP is trying to win the Matuas away from the Trinamool with the citizenship bill buckstop bengal

yet to be tabled Mamata says the bill discriminates between immigrants on religious grounds “The Centre will have

to withdraw the citizenship bill and there is no question of supporting it We will not let Modi succeed,” she told a Bengali news channel Mamata knows all too well the influence of the Matuas and so, to keep the sect on her side, her government gave land rights to people living in 94 refugee colonies in the state irrespective of their faith last week.The Mahasangha, a powerful political bloc along the border belt, is one that every party in Bengal would want on its side, says senior journalist Subir Bhau-mik “The Matuas vote as a block and are playing both the Trinamool and the BJP.” The BJP, which made noticeable inroads in the 2018 panchayat polls, is trying to woo the Matuas, especially in the districts bordering Bangladesh, poli tical analyst Subharanjan Dasgupta says The BJP’s tone, timing and content have set the stage for a battle that pro-mises a hard-fought outcome O

BLESSED BY tHE MOtHER Matriarch Boroma with Modi, and Mamata

getty images

empty naukri

fair

Leaked data says unemployment is at a 45-year high Will the damning numbers put the BJP government’s

job on the line?

Cover Story

Illustration by MANJUL

by Lola Nayar in Delhi, Sandeep Sahu in Bhubaneswar, Probir Pramanik in Calcutta, Naseer Ganai in Srinagar and M S Shanker in Hyderabad

archana, a native of Telan­

gana’s Medak district, gradua­ted in 2017 in the science stream with distinction, which the 22­year­old thought was good enough to land her a moderately well­paying job a few months later she was working as a

“domestic help”, her dreams long broken by the harsh reality of India’s dismal job scenario her brother, four years older and also a graduate, was also into odd jobs—a delivery boy for Swiggy or part­time driver archana hopes to complete her post­gradua­tion which she feels could give her a better chance at landing a job any job

An individual is not representative

of job-seekers in a country where there are millions But held against recently leaked data on the number of unem-ployed, Archana beco mes a stark reminder of a growing crisis—India’s unemployment rate in the year ending June 2018 supposedly rose to 6.1 per

cent, the highest in 45 years (see

graphic) What it means is that the

available jobs can provide employment

to hardly 10-15 per cent of the millions

of young Indians ready to enter the labour force each year

The data, which the government says

is unauth enticated, becomes even more pronounced when viewed in the political context in an election year; in

2014, India’s aspirational youth voted overwhelmingly in favour of Narendra Modi who had promised to address the

Cover Story

UPA era of “jobless growth” and

cre-ate 20 million jobs every year Nearly

five years later and close to the next

general elections, Modi himself is

fending off criticism from political

adversaries over the unemployment

data his government allegedly tried to

bury The leak of the unemployment

data followed the resignation of the

top official and another member of

the National Statistical Commission—

an advisory group that checks

auth-enticity of official data— to protest

the government’s failure to release

the report in December, as scheduled

the NITI Aayog, a government

think tank formed in 2015 by

Modi replacing the Nehru-era

Planning Commission, has

dismissed the leaked report as a

“draft” but there are other numbers

that are equally damning Last month,

the Centre for Monitoring Indian

economy (CMIe), an independent

think tank, said India lost an

esti-mated 11 million jobs in 2018 The All

India Manufacturers’ Organisation

also said in December that the sector

alone lost 3.5 million jobs since 2016,

citing demo netisation and roll-out

of the Goods and Services Tax (GST)

as the two main reasons for the crisis

Dr Pronab Sen, a former chief

stat-istician of India, says that the leaked

data is not surprising “I was certainly

expecting the numbers to go up as

we know that the MSMe sector has

The government, however, does not see any crisis, pointing to the more-than-seven per cent growth—the fast-est among major economies—of the Indian economy Dharmendra Pradhan, Union minister for skill dev-elopment and entre preneurship, too rubbishes the leaked National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) data

“There is no authenticity to this mation If some people have cooked

infor-up some repo rt and they put their ima gination, I do not have any ans-

wer,” he tells Outlook, blaming

“nega-tivity in a micro scopic group” of people behind what he claims is a smear campaign against Modi (See interview…) For the record, since the NSSO started collating job data, the earlier highest unemployed percent-age was in the range of four-and-a-half to five per cent The labou r ministry releases jobs data once in five years and the last official report pegged unemployment at 5 per cent

in 2015-16 Last year, the government relea sed data from the pension fund body, employees’ Provident Fund Organisation, to claim that 7-10 mil-lions jobs were created in 2017-18 Critics have, however, accused the government of using ePFO data to inflate job growth

Dr Vinoj Abraham of the Centre for Development Studies, for one, is sur-prised by the latest numbers as he was not expecting “so much” unem-ployment he, however, adds that the final numbers, if and when released officially, could vary While a higher number of youth below 25 are enter-ing the work force, it cannot be the real reason for the rise in unemploy-ment rate as the young ones entering the labour market today are unlike those who entered the job scene in the previous decades, he says “Today, most of the youngsters are moving out from the agriculture sector with

Banking, teaching, marketing, I tried everywhere after completing graduation in 2014 I’ll be satisfied with a job that pays me Rs 10,000 In addition, I also have to repay

my father’s debt of Rs 5 lakh.”

getty IMAges

been hurting for a while The ployment number is consistent with that particular nar rative,” he tells

unem-Outlook Reuters quoted a survey by

the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) in July last year as saying that “a fifth of India’s 63 million small businesses—contributing 32 per cent to the economy and employing

111 million people—faced a 20 per cent fall in profits since the GST rollout, and had to sack hundreds of thousands of workers”

.

.

.