rapa
08-16-2006, 10:56 AM
INDEPENDENCE: Around this mid-August, the South Asian countries complete their 59 years of independence. I am reminded of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's warning when the transfer of power was taking place.
He said that the leaders who would head the freed countries are "men of straw of whom no trace will be found after a few years." How wrong he was. The founders of independent countries will always stay in the minds of their nations: Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru in India, Qauid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan in Pakistan. Sheikh Mujib-ur Rahman and Tajuddin were the guiding spirit during the liberation struggle; their names will remain in the annals of Bangladesh.
Time will not lessen B.P. Koirala's fight against the monarch of Nepal. Similarly, SWRD Bandaranaike will be remembered whenever Sri Lanka's sovereignty is discussed. They were all tall men, the product of freedom struggles. As the days go by, their names will shine more resplendently. It is the crop of new leaders which is proving Churchill right. They are either Zeroes or Neros. With mediocre qualities and unbounded greed, they have made their country pay for their miss-performance. They have no commitment, no value system, no sensitivity.
Indeed, they are men of straw going with the wind in whichever direction it blows. It was a Karachi-based bureaucrat-turned-politician, then the Governor General of Pakistan, who handed over power to the army which, like Sindbad the Sailor, is still riding the nation's shoulders. Its 45-year-long governance is there for all to see. Like every military junta, the present one is determined to pull down even the small edifice of normalcy which has been coming up with India.
The mess at the diplomatic level is Islamabad's first onslaught after two years. No doubt, India has its democracy intact but the increasing say of religion and caste in the country's affairs is reducing the system to a farce. The nation has more temples and mosques than schools and hospitals put together. Electoral politics is ousting every bit of decency from public life. Even Parliament has been made a point of ridicule. Pakistan is a convenient whipping boy for all that fails in India.
The story of Bangladesh is far more tragic. A child born out of liberation struggle is being enslaved by jingo nationalists and religious fundamentalists. Their hobby horse is hatred towards India and they want to out do the Pakistan of the sixties when the hate campaign against Delhi was at its peak.
Really speaking, the South Asian is littered with small men whose vision ends where power begins. They are arrogant, having no substance. Look at the Indian scene. The two former Union ministers, Jaswant Singh and Natwar Singh, have most attention on themselves. Self-righteous as they are in their tone and tenor, they are telling lies to cover up the truth coming out against them. One is talking about a non-existent mole in PMO and the other about the Oil-for-food report indicting him and his son.
In this category comes LTTE leader V. Prabhakaran. He is more dangerous because he has no scruples. The reason why such people have come into prominence is the devaluation of norms. Men with values have been pushed into the background or their number has dwindled. Probably, the region is paying the price of tall leaders not allowing the young to come into their own because of rulers' dynastic consideration.
Today in South Asia it is not the survival of the fittest but of the filthiest. No method is considered bad enough to get what one wants. There is no segment of activity which does not reek with corruption, crime or callousness. Where does 'the good of all' figure when practically all eyes are focused on how to grab office or assignment?
India, an apostle of democracy, beats other countries when it legislates that MPs and MLAs can also occupy any public office without inviting disqualification. We talk of our spiritual heritage but what we mean is fundamentalism. A subcontinent divided on the basis of religion is once again facing the resurgence of religious identity. Besides these drawbacks, South Asia started its journey with a disadvantage. It was nowhere near industrially advanced countries of the West because the latter had enjoyed a continuous and steady economic development. It had spread _ though in varying degrees _ to all classes.
Another problem in the region was that independence came before the industrialisation, unlike the West where the industrial revolution had taken place long before. In addition, Southeast Asia suffered from undemocratic traditions and communal divide. The church helped the West unite. But our temples and mosques have built a wall which we find difficult to demolish. This has got extended to nations. Because of religious and ethnic differences, they waste their resources on building war machines. Thus there is very little left for the poor whose number is increasing at an alarming pace.
The fact is that we have failed to find solution to our problems because we have gone the wrong way to solve them. We still have not learnt any lesson. On the one hand, we have mixed religion with politics and, on the other, we have not built confidence in one another. Whatever name we may give to our disputes, they are essentially the fallout of the age-old suspicion and religious bias which even partition has not resolved. India was initially a well-knit pluralistic State. But then the RSS was making no headway till it began raising Hinudtva slogan.
The Pakistani rulers could not rationalise their anti-India stance without raising the cry of jihad. The LTTE had found itself stuck without creating hiatus between the Tamils and the Sinhalese. The region has never been able to overcome its feuds. They have stayed in one form or the other. To think that by sorting out Kashmir the whole region can sit pretty is to delude ourselves. Some other issue would become a Kashmir. The real problem is how to build trust between India and Pakistan.
A wider people-to-people contact may break the crust of misunderstanding. But the hawkish bureaucracy and prejudiced intelligence services have their own agenda. The military junta at Islamabad has yet another consideration: how to heighten the fear of India before the 2007 election so that the Pakistanis see in the military their saviour.
It is a tragedy that nations in South Asia have not sunk their differences, even superficially. If they want progress, they have to hurry for the time at their disposal is limited. Their pace of development depends on how soon they can become an economic union. People will remain true Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans and Nepalese. But they will also become South Asians and world citizens.
He said that the leaders who would head the freed countries are "men of straw of whom no trace will be found after a few years." How wrong he was. The founders of independent countries will always stay in the minds of their nations: Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru in India, Qauid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan in Pakistan. Sheikh Mujib-ur Rahman and Tajuddin were the guiding spirit during the liberation struggle; their names will remain in the annals of Bangladesh.
Time will not lessen B.P. Koirala's fight against the monarch of Nepal. Similarly, SWRD Bandaranaike will be remembered whenever Sri Lanka's sovereignty is discussed. They were all tall men, the product of freedom struggles. As the days go by, their names will shine more resplendently. It is the crop of new leaders which is proving Churchill right. They are either Zeroes or Neros. With mediocre qualities and unbounded greed, they have made their country pay for their miss-performance. They have no commitment, no value system, no sensitivity.
Indeed, they are men of straw going with the wind in whichever direction it blows. It was a Karachi-based bureaucrat-turned-politician, then the Governor General of Pakistan, who handed over power to the army which, like Sindbad the Sailor, is still riding the nation's shoulders. Its 45-year-long governance is there for all to see. Like every military junta, the present one is determined to pull down even the small edifice of normalcy which has been coming up with India.
The mess at the diplomatic level is Islamabad's first onslaught after two years. No doubt, India has its democracy intact but the increasing say of religion and caste in the country's affairs is reducing the system to a farce. The nation has more temples and mosques than schools and hospitals put together. Electoral politics is ousting every bit of decency from public life. Even Parliament has been made a point of ridicule. Pakistan is a convenient whipping boy for all that fails in India.
The story of Bangladesh is far more tragic. A child born out of liberation struggle is being enslaved by jingo nationalists and religious fundamentalists. Their hobby horse is hatred towards India and they want to out do the Pakistan of the sixties when the hate campaign against Delhi was at its peak.
Really speaking, the South Asian is littered with small men whose vision ends where power begins. They are arrogant, having no substance. Look at the Indian scene. The two former Union ministers, Jaswant Singh and Natwar Singh, have most attention on themselves. Self-righteous as they are in their tone and tenor, they are telling lies to cover up the truth coming out against them. One is talking about a non-existent mole in PMO and the other about the Oil-for-food report indicting him and his son.
In this category comes LTTE leader V. Prabhakaran. He is more dangerous because he has no scruples. The reason why such people have come into prominence is the devaluation of norms. Men with values have been pushed into the background or their number has dwindled. Probably, the region is paying the price of tall leaders not allowing the young to come into their own because of rulers' dynastic consideration.
Today in South Asia it is not the survival of the fittest but of the filthiest. No method is considered bad enough to get what one wants. There is no segment of activity which does not reek with corruption, crime or callousness. Where does 'the good of all' figure when practically all eyes are focused on how to grab office or assignment?
India, an apostle of democracy, beats other countries when it legislates that MPs and MLAs can also occupy any public office without inviting disqualification. We talk of our spiritual heritage but what we mean is fundamentalism. A subcontinent divided on the basis of religion is once again facing the resurgence of religious identity. Besides these drawbacks, South Asia started its journey with a disadvantage. It was nowhere near industrially advanced countries of the West because the latter had enjoyed a continuous and steady economic development. It had spread _ though in varying degrees _ to all classes.
Another problem in the region was that independence came before the industrialisation, unlike the West where the industrial revolution had taken place long before. In addition, Southeast Asia suffered from undemocratic traditions and communal divide. The church helped the West unite. But our temples and mosques have built a wall which we find difficult to demolish. This has got extended to nations. Because of religious and ethnic differences, they waste their resources on building war machines. Thus there is very little left for the poor whose number is increasing at an alarming pace.
The fact is that we have failed to find solution to our problems because we have gone the wrong way to solve them. We still have not learnt any lesson. On the one hand, we have mixed religion with politics and, on the other, we have not built confidence in one another. Whatever name we may give to our disputes, they are essentially the fallout of the age-old suspicion and religious bias which even partition has not resolved. India was initially a well-knit pluralistic State. But then the RSS was making no headway till it began raising Hinudtva slogan.
The Pakistani rulers could not rationalise their anti-India stance without raising the cry of jihad. The LTTE had found itself stuck without creating hiatus between the Tamils and the Sinhalese. The region has never been able to overcome its feuds. They have stayed in one form or the other. To think that by sorting out Kashmir the whole region can sit pretty is to delude ourselves. Some other issue would become a Kashmir. The real problem is how to build trust between India and Pakistan.
A wider people-to-people contact may break the crust of misunderstanding. But the hawkish bureaucracy and prejudiced intelligence services have their own agenda. The military junta at Islamabad has yet another consideration: how to heighten the fear of India before the 2007 election so that the Pakistanis see in the military their saviour.
It is a tragedy that nations in South Asia have not sunk their differences, even superficially. If they want progress, they have to hurry for the time at their disposal is limited. Their pace of development depends on how soon they can become an economic union. People will remain true Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans and Nepalese. But they will also become South Asians and world citizens.