Daily Excelsior... Editorial

EDITORIAL

Pak's ‘Indian hand’ in
Parliament attack
Men, Matters and Memories

By M L Kotru
To accuse Gen Pervez Musharraf's principal spokesman Gen Rashid Qureshi of perversity would be understanding the case. As can be seen the word suggests in the immediate context a grotesque or hideous transformation of facts. Gen Rashid has gone even beyond that. The terrorist attack on ......more

Pak may compel Delhi
to shoot

From B L Kak
With the anti-Pak talk having been encouraged almost everywhere in India following the suicide attack on Parliament House by five Pak terrorist on December 13,the talk of fresh round of armed conflict between India and Pakistan has begun across the country. That the ...more

Ayurveda! Welcome
home via Europe!!............
Yours Randomly,

Dr. R L Bhat
A little known fact of Darwins life is that he was a chronically ill person. Charles ...more

EDITORIAL

Municipal clearing

Jammu is a hugely congested city. That congestion is visible in the milling crowds that keep its main roads and lanes filled during all the hours of the day. The intra-city traffic has assumed the form of one long ribbon that keeps moving all the time without break. The population has nearly doubled over the past decade. Add to all this, the fact that the roads especially in the old city are the old-time single-lanes that would not admit many of the wide-bodied cars that the new affluence shows on the roads now. When even these slender conduits are encroached upon, the city becomes a near nightmare. In fact, the main city in the rush hours is a virtual nightmare that is hard to negotiate. The security compulsions have added their own bit.. nay, huge burden, making easy transit through the city a difficult task. The efforts of Jammu Municipality to clear the encroachments in one of the most crowded areas namely Purani Mandi, Raj Tilak Road and Parade are, therefore, much commendable beginnings that need to be enforced and extended all over the city to make the city negotiable, livable, why even viable.

Encroachments, in fact, are a rule rather than an exception in this small place that has grown to be a huge city. There is hardly any area of the city that is free from encroachments. In many places the illegal encroachers have even built concrete structures over what had been intended as a free area alongside the roads. From Purani Mandi to Gandhinagar on to the Kaluchak Chowk, the illegal extension of shop-fronts, the permanent rehris and makeshift vendors are crowding the roads out. City Chowk and Shalamar may be taken as places that would easily get jammed. They do remain practically jammed all the twelve hours of the day. So does Kachi Chawni, Jewel, Ambphalla.. name any part of the city and you have a traffic jam there. You also have the spectacle of every bit of free space taken over by encroachers. The lack of parking space in the areas has, of course, compounded the problems. Whatever space is left is taken up by the vehicles for parking because the density of the vehicles in the city has increased many times over. All that needs to be set right if the whole city is not to become one interminable traffic jam.

One welcome feature of the JM-clearing is that it was effected without any use of force. The shopkeepers cooperated in a most commendable manner asking their fellow vendors to clear the encroachments and leave the spaces that are meant to be open spaces, free. There was no evidence of the bulldozers or the clashes that had been seen when a similar drive was taken up in Nagrota town sometime ago. But then the municipality has not yet headed for the more chronic areas. Like, say, BC Road where there is need for huge demolitions to free the public space from the private appropriation. A few years ago some clearance had been effected here but was practically restored within a short while. Possibly the cooperation seen in yesterday's clearance would be evident here, too. The clearance in Parade areas may have been motivated by the closure of some roads due to security considerations. And, the authorities may just let the encroachers in other places to lie. That would be a travesty that would see even these clearings retaken in a short while. The trouble with the implementation of the rules is that they are more often applied selectively,patchily and by fits and starts. The municipality has to get real serious about the job and systemic too, too make Jammu a livable place. Isn't that the job it is there for ?

'Common man'

For a near half century Laxman's 'common man' greeted the common men and women of this country from the front of what was once called 'the old lady of Boribunder'. It sipped the morning tea with you and told you about how it had been jostled around by the growing politicos of the country and jettisoned around by the burgeoning officialdom. Its wry sense of humor bordering on cynicism echoed the frustrations of the real common man as a mirror on the high national wall. It may not be wrong to say that the wide cynicism prevailing in the literate-educated circles is largely funded if not founded by R K Laxman's cartoon character. Also there has been no better articulation of the collective feeling of the nation over these decades than this 'common man'. It has been with the people all along the path of freedom and has traversed all the pitfalls of development and toured all the national monuments of this present history in those deft lines that is Laxman's forte as a cartoonist of note. Changeless, ageless without any dimming of the acuity.

Now that changeless visage will stand in the portals of one of the better known biz schools of the country in Pune to gaze at the coming generations of the biz-professionals in hard stand and stance possibly to remind them that there is a 'common man' too beyond the board room polish that must not be forgotten in the shine and gloss of the new culture. For the 'common man' is also an insignia of the past, which is fast getting eroded in the global village. When the cartoon character was created fifty years ago, it had the dress of the man, rather the babu-on-the-street on its body. Today nobody, except this 'old man' puts on that dress. It was always with the daily paper tucked under its arm. Now, though the readership of the news has definitely increased and people common and uncommon do read more newspapers, few would be seen with the paper under the arm. Probably, that depicted a reverence, a respect for the news and the paper that is no longer there. Today it is a utility like toilet paper. But not to the 'common man'. Common man still looks upon the scribe as a model in many things. This old chap should be a reminder to the new generations of that golden ethos where honesty was real, integrity natural and propriety the model of thought and deed.

Pak's ‘Indian hand’ in Parliament attack
Men, Matters and Memories

By M L Kotru

To accuse Gen Pervez Musharraf's principal spokesman Gen Rashid Qureshi of perversity would be understanding the case. As can be seen the word suggests in the immediate context a grotesque or hideous transformation of facts. Gen Rashid has gone even beyond that. The terrorist attack on Parliament House on December 13, the silly spokesman has the gall to tell, was an "insider" job, a terrorist act mounted by the Indians themselves to sully Pakistan's fair image at a time when it is busy earning brownie points from the Americans by back-stabbing its own creation, the Taliban, in Afghanistan. Only a sick and perverse mind could allow itself to mouth an absurdity of the Qureshi type. Perhaps, not surprising for a propaganda machine that didn't hesitate to pronounce that the Chittisinghpura massacre of Sikhs in Kashmir valley was the handiwork of Indians themselves to show up Pakistan in bad light the day the then U.S. President, Bill Clinton had landed in the Indian capital. Or, that the Amarnath Yatris were killed by Indian Security Forces themselves to besmirch Pakistan's "shining" image as a State at peace with itself and its neighbours, Afghanistan included.

Only this time over Gen. Pervez Musharraf himself has gone a step further. Four days after Qureshi accused New Delhi of having stage-managed the Parliament attack, Pakistan's military dictator wants New Delhi to hold a joint inquiry into the incident. Perhaps that will help him cart away the Pakistani suspects to his home ground, just as he did with the hijackers of the Indian Airlines aircraft at Kandahar. In Kandahar he simply had the criminals delivered to their Pakistani homes, one of those rescued, being none other than, Maulana Masood Azhar, the founder of the Jaish-e-Mohammed and a cohort of Mullah Mohammad Omar, The Taliban chief currently on the run, dodging the Afghans and Americans alike, on his way to anonymity, at least for the present.

One can understand American counsel to New Delhi to exercise restraint, the attack on Parliament House notwithstanding. U.S. Concerns just now are different and they do need Pakistan if they have to stop Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden from taking the Pakistani excape route and, more importantly, for the Americans, to continue to have access to Pakistani military bases. Unsurprisingly, the Pakistani drum-beaters of the Hurriyat Conference in Kashmir have also been quick to demand an inquiry into the Parliament House incident, as if New Delhi needs their permission. The Hurriyat Chief, Abdul Ghandi Bhat has in fact had a hard time of it explaining what exactly he meant with that ominous statement that "you wait for the next 12 hours" to see things happening. What exactly was Bhat expecting to happen? We have had some explanations from him but given his twisted logic one cannot make much of whatever he has said.

This raises the question whether this is the right time for New Delhi to reopen the dialogue in Kashmir. The first impulse would be to say a big "No" but that would not be in the large interests of the State. To what extent I still believe that Prime Minister Vajpayee did well (before December 13) to offer talks to the various political parties in the State, including the secessionist Hurriyat Conference. The Kashmiri separatists would one hopes, by now have understood the implications of the debacle of the fundamentalist Taliban in Afghanistan. For starters, the separatists must take note of the unalloyed joy with which the average Afghan welcomed the departure of the Taliban and their ways. Never mind the misery of the past six years see how joyously they celebrated Eid on Monday. The Afghans it seemed could not believe their good luck, sans Taliban.

For the talks between the Vajpayee Government and the Kashmiri parties to lead to any meaningful result it is important for New Delhi not to give undue weightage to any party or grouping in coming to a determination about the future course of events in the State. Why should, for instance, New Delhi appear to be keen to talk first to the separatists, as if those opposed to secession do not exist or as if they accept all that has befallen the State in the past. You can't take them for granted. Among the anti-secessionist parties are those who have sharp disagreements with New Delhi over its handling of the State's affairs over the past half century and more.

The loudest of the anti-secessionists, Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah himself has a few bones to pick with the Centre over has call for greater autonomy although he uses it only as a weapon of convenience. It is one thing for Prime Minister Vajpayee to warn Pakistan not to interfere in the elections to the State Assembly due next year but how does the Government address the concerns of those Kashmiris who have come to doubt the genuineness of the electoral process in the State? You cannot repeat the mistake of the rigged 1987 election which actually caused many Kashmiri Muslim youth to rebel, many turning to the gun. Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, Shafi Qureshi, respectively of the People's Democratic Party and the Congress and Shabir Shah, the most moderate of the separatists, have all warned against not allowing next year's elections to be a repeat of 1987. Legally it may not be possible to ask Farooq Abdullah to keep away from the conduct of the next polls but nothing prevents the Centre and the Chief Election Commissioner from taking direct charge of the elections in the State. It would not be an exaggeration to say that there are very few politically conscious Kashmiris who trust Farooq Abdullah to permit a free and fair election.

I am sure at some stage the word from New Delhi to the Hurriyat - the more moderate elements within it will be to participate in the electoral process but one can be sure that even if they were to agree, they will, under no circumstances, leave the conduct of the polls to the discredited Farooq Government. In the popular eye there is hardly any single organ of the civil-administration headed by Farooq that is not severely tainted and not tied to the apron-strings of the Chief Minister and his coterie. All this needs to be said if next year's election or the build up to is to make any sense to the people in the State.

The crushing reversals faced by the ISI and the Taliban in Afghanistan, one feels confident, would have convinced the average Muslim in the Valley about the futility of carrying the Pakistani flag any more. The Taliban, the Al-Qaeda in the end have shown that they are no more than petty short-sighted self-seekers who used obscurantist ideas and religious anti-Western rhetoric to bolster their political designs. In the end the religious bigots got only ruin and misery to their people , tarnished the fair image of their faith. Their script has been a sure recipe for self destruction. No wonder one hears of indigenous Kashmiri militant youth having second thoughts about the future of the violent movement of which they have willy nilly become a part. The removal of Abdul Majid Dar, the former Hizbul Mujahideen Commander in the Valley, by his Pakistan - based chief, Salahuddin, does, if anything, confirm the growing schism between the local and the Pakistan based militants. The Kashmiri militants are convinced that it would be unacceptable to the local populaion if Pakistan were to divert foreign mercenaries to Kashmir following the Afghan debacle. Not that they have any special love for Farooq Abdullah or the Security Forces, or the BJP for that matter, but they surely would not like to see mercenaries, even "guest" mercenaries, taking charge.

K.C. Pant and the bunch of so-called Kashmir experts (mostly from the intelligence agencies) assisting him, must, even before they start on their fresh round of talks, make up their mind about who they are going to talk to. Predominantly Muslim Kashmir valley is only one part of problem and any reasonable man would tell you that Muslims generally haven't fared badly in the matter of Government jobs, businesses, bank loans etc even under the despised Farooq regime. There are other regions and other communities like the Ladakhis, the Jammuites, the exiled Kashmiri Pandits, not to speak of the oppressed in "Azad" Kashmir or the so-called Northern Territories of Pakistan all part of the former princely State of Jammu and Kashmir - whose future is as much involved in the exercise as that of the Valley Muslims.

If that be the case how come the first indications from New Delhi suggest that the proposed dialogue will initially be directed at the Hurriyat. Why should it be the Government's business to talk only to avowed pro-Pakistanis who are only acting as the above-ground face of the terrorist movement? Why should we be wasting our time talking to a Syed Ali Shah Geelani who is convinced that the Valley's future is inextricably linked with that of Pakistan? Or, who believes that what is happening in Jammu and Kashmir is an Islamic jihad, very much like Mullah Omar of Taliban ill-fame believed that he was only executing Allah's mission in his battered homeland.

Any dialogue in Kashmir cannot be restricted to the Valley or its self-appointed champions in the Hurriyat Conference. True, the Valley has in many senses embodied the spirit of mutual tolerance as pronounced by sufi saints like Lal Ded and Sheikh Nuruddin (Nund Reshi) but it is a badly dented spirit now, thanks to men like Geelani.

Yet it is not as if all is lost. Bold initiatives, rather than wishy washy haggling, which one fears might be K.C. Pant's style of negotiating, is what is needed. Pant would be serving nobody's cause if he tries the well-worn sub-continental way of settling arguments or disputes by talking endlessly or by hoping wear the opposition out. He should take the initiative and set upon an unambigious agenda.

With the framework thus outlined he can ask his interlocutors to clearly set out the kind of adjustments they would like to be made, the basic assumption being that India is not going to surrender any territory. Rather belatedly, Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistan Prime Minister, may already have provided a clue to a future settlement. After all it was her father the late Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who promised Mrs Indira Gandhi at Simla to convert the cease-fire line in Jammu & Kashmir into the international border.

Pak may compel Delhi to shoot

From B L Kak

With the anti-Pak talk having been encouraged almost everywhere in India following the suicide attack on Parliament House by five Pak terrorist on December 13,the talk of fresh round of armed conflict between India and Pakistan has begun across the country. That the talk of India-Pakistan war will not peter out in the immediate future can be borne out by further deterioration in the bilateral relations between the two countries.

MEN AND MATTERS

Happily for the Vajpayee Government, Washington and London, for instance, are reported to have reckoned the fact that India cannot be prevented from taking on Pakistan if the latter continued to aid and abet the cross-border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir and elsewhere in India. Clearly, fears of Washington and London have been generated by the movement of Pakistani troops to the frontlines.

As a spinoff of the troop mobilisation, India has conveyed to the industrialised world, particularly the United States, that it has the political will to act to terminate Pakistan-sponsored cross-border terrorism in case other means fail.

India cannot be faulted for the steady posturing of forces on this side of the India-Pakistan border, particularly along the Line of Control (LoC) and International Border (IB) in Jammu and Kashmir. This development has come after Pakistan pushed its troops close to the LoC and the IB.

There is sufficient evidence to show that additional Pak troops have been pushed to the border zones apart from the forces that Islamabad had accumulated as part of its routine winter military exercises. Can anyone, including America, deny that the Pakistani military posture remains ‘India-centric’ ?

Even as diplomacy remains a top priority for the Government headed by Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, the Indian side is prepared for combat, if it becomes unavoidable in the context of Pakistan’s threatening signals close to the Indo-Pak border in J&K, Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat. Significantly, a signal has just gone out from New Delhi making it plain that India will be compelled to act decisively if Pakistan does not shut down the operations of the terrorist outfits on its soil.

With the attack on India’s most prestigious installation, namely, Parliament House, enough signals have emerged making it clear that the internal warfare India has been confronted with for nearly 20 years is far from over. It has also been sproved that militants are not going to give up trying to attempt a hit at the most vulnerable points in India.

The attack on Parliament House was repulsed and defeated by vigilant security personnel. However, the victory is not of the security personnel alone; the militant organisations too will claim their own victory in the attack. How? The fact that it was a killer squad that had no intention of coming out alive after barging into Parliament indicated that their mission,too,was accomplished.

The identity of militant groups is less important than the fact that the security forces are now faced with an even more determined and well-equipped enemy. Worst still, the enemy is not going to make an attempt to escape. Here the task becomes deadlier for police and other security agencies.

The Government of India had to rush an additional team of experts to Srinagar, the capital city of Kashmir, following information unscrambled from the little terrorist laptop computer that Delhi Police seized from arrested militants after the Parliament House attack. Apart from information on terrorist safe houses and contact persons, the laptop has hitmap pictures of a large number of persons who as of now have gone unidentified.

Copies of these prints have been made and forwarded to all districts in Delhi for local police to launch a quiet hunt for supporters and contact-men of militant groups. Print-outs of the pictures have also been dashed across to Srinagar and Jammu for confirmation and identification.

The laptop also contains some maps of vital installations in Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir. All information is in coded language, and deciphering may take several days of patient effort. Decodaing teams are facing problems in unscrambling files in the laptop that are in continuation with earlier files. Connectivity of information is, therefore, causing some problems since stray pieces of information in some sections have been left incomplete—probably deliberately—and added on elsewhere in the laptop computer’s hard disc.

What ended in New Delhi on December 16 with the entire conspiracy being cracked open by Delhi police with the help of the J&K Police is only the first phase of the turbulent times ahead. There are many other phases still waiting to unfold. The battle is going to be continuous. It is not going to be enough to say that if a country as advanced as USA could not ward off a determined militant hit, what can India do? Technically, India did a lot better in terms of repulsing the attack. The kind of arsenal the members of the suicide squad carried would certainly have filled the hospitals with dead and wounded. And Indian security personnel did better than Americans did in foiling militants. Indeed, if the conspiracy had not been cracked open in such a short time, the main players would have tried again elsewhere. And with deadlier results!

For the ultras to try again would mean starting from scratch. That could take time and that is all the advantage the police and security forces have as of now. And without doubt another attempt would certainly be made. POTO (Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance) or anything else that can help or that appears to be helpful will have to be tried.

This battle is harder than the one fought on the borders. There the enemy is known and identified and has to be simply eliminated. Here, the enemy is unseen. He could be around you and still unnoticed. All the more reason for Delhi and other places in the country to stand back and applaud a good deed and then ask how they can help. After all this is a battle where coordination is the answer to the questions.

Ayurveda! Welcome home via Europe!!............
Yours Randomly,

Dr. R L Bhat

A little known fact of Darwins life is that he was a chronically ill person. Charles Darwin came from a family of physicians who had enjoyed a modicum of repute in the healing community of 19th century England. Both he and his brother had been initially trained in medicine before they wandered into other arenas. Darwin was also a frightfully seasick man. It was his father's special potions and powders, not to speak of the assortment of raisins and condiments mixed by the elderly physician, which saw him through the four-year long ordeal of Beagle voyoge. After his return as he settled down to unsettle the man's presumed knowledge of his origin and descent, he continued to suffer from one ailment or the other. In fact, death was a palpable fear that constantly hounded him. And he would try every new and innovative treatment regimen that caught the fancy of the island nation that was an empire. From hydropathy to spas, to psychotherapies and treatment with walks and gymnastics, Charles Darwin tried almost everything to keep fit and live long. Fit or unfit, he did live long and long enough to cure man of many notions of unfounded grandeur.

With that tradition it is easy to comprehend the continued love affair of the British and Europeans with innovative therapies and exotic treatments. Of course, the modern allopathy can be called European innovation that has taken deep hold of the medical mind. Its systemic approach and deep founding in anatomy and physiology have ensured that it took a rational look at man and his aliments and has definitely ensured that greatest numbers of men and women are cured all over the world. Probably, it was this actual demonstration of allopathic that has been instrumental in getting science as a whole as wide a constituency and acceptance as it enjoys today. But allopathy does leave a lot untouched. Cancer and AIDS are defying it. A vast literature on adverse reactions, after-effects and side-effects tells that all is not well there. Experts have talked of a harmony that is lacking in the whole approach of allopathy, which sees the human organism as one efficient biological machine and nothing more.

Homeopathy, another of European innovations tried to address some of the patent holes in the allopathic treatment. Characteristically homeopathy was short on theory. Only recently has a report on the 'abnormal behavior' of chemicals in high solution promised to give some basis to the well known homeopathic concepts of 'dilutions' and 'potencies'. Ayurveda and the Chinese system of medicine are other systems that cannot compete with allopathy in its immediacy or in theoretical backing. They were seen more as traditional lores rather than rational therapies and got pushed to the back in the Science-dominated world of the last century. However their appeal continued and bits and pieces from their repertoire were used and prescribed. While the Chinese did largely remain loyal to their medicine while adopting the allopathy for its directness of approach, India very nearly gave up Ayurveda for allopathy .

That however has not prevented its popularity increasing in the foreign lands. Over the last two decades, it has being steadily gaining ground in Europe and America. The sale of herbal drugs has increased and today India is earning large sums from the sale of Ayurvedic remedies to these developed countries. It has gained popularity as a system of choice in sports medicine. Its acceptance in the growing legions of health conscious foreigners is steadily rising. There is also an effort to incorporate principles of Ayurveda in the food, and other life activities. That includes corporate culture too where it is seen as the ideal way to keep the over-worked executive fiddle-fit. As an ironic consequence this 'acceptability', appeal of Ayurveda has also increased in India over the past decade or so. The Ayurvedic physician is not a virtual 'quark' but a respectable medicine man today. And now comes the news that Hungary has adopted Ayurveda as its healthcare system. It is the most signal development in the thousands of years of history of Ayurveda; one that even India would not do. But of course, India would not do that. Today, probably the greatest opposition to Ayurveda is from the Indian Medical establishment!

And that tells a tale that is becoming all too familiar in other field. Indians are reluctant to accept anything Indian as true and appreciable unless it is 'certified' by the others, preferably, European authorities to whom they look to ...oh, so slavishly. A full century ago, Gokhale had made a strong case for an Indian origin of the Aryans but Indians rejected the theory outrightly. Now that western historians have realised the correctness of Gokhale's formulation, the Indian historians are beginning to come round, though all are not there yet. Two centuries ago, the whole Europe was agog with the wisdom in the Indian scriptures. Schopenhaur was profusely impressed with the greatest treatise of Indian law, Manu Smriti and called it the greatest law book. But then, some missionary agenda ridiculed it and Indians lapped that ridicule up so deeply that the most enlightened lawgiver of the world is yet to see rehabilitation in India.

Max Muller's discovery' of India scriptures particularly Vedas was taken up by the Indians not for the wealth of wisdom and enlightenment he saw in them, but for the criticisms he made. Today analysts the world over, see big flaws in that Mullerian reasoning, particularly in the all-important observations he made about their chronology, and Indian chronology following from it. But the Indian historians not only adhere to his conclusions religiously but also continue to make other interpretations on their basis. That is now a known malady of the Indian intellectual. And the modern Indian doctor to suffers from it. He/she would not accept Ayurveda or the wholesome principles contained in the practice. He needs 'approval' from the phoren authorities. Thankfully, that approval has begun to come. Soon, India may come unto her own. Via Europe, of course!