EDITORIAL
Resurrecting
separatists!
All comparisons
between the Pak elections and the one that would
be getting completed in this State in a week's
time are irrelevant at the root. There are
contrasts, however, that must have become
apparent to the luckless people living in that
area of willed darkness. The graphic way in which
India tried to coax even the separatists to put
their viewpoints or public arbitration by
participating in the elections and the sly and
slanted manner in which the authorities there
tied legal and illegal means to prevent former
Pak Prime Ministers from entering the elections
is not something that can be easily missed. The
whole Election Commission camped in Jammu and
Kashmir to see that there shouldn't be even a
minor lapse while even courts are not ready to
listen to the plaint of rejected nominees in the
'Land of the Pure' (manipulators!). Indeed, the
people there are silently contrasting their State
of affairs and may be ruing their lot even more
secretly. For, they cannot even express their
inmost ideas and feeling openly.
All because a
clique of people has appointed itself the sole
arbitrator there. And, wouldn't allow it. Those
self appointed guardians of the destinies of
people are trying to shoo the people of this
State too, away from elections, away from law and
order, away from rights and freedoms into a
totalitarianism where they would lord over
everything. Armed with guns and grenades they
have been terrorizing people against
participation in elections, killing political
activists and candidates and attacking everything
that goes for election. Their other arm dictated
a boycott and then a hartal to give the inhuman
coercion a humane excuse. And they both failed.
The people with their active participation showed
that they did not approve of these marauders,
their causes or their tactics. Their very
presence loaded with the terror and guns is
because they know the people do not accept their
ways or wants, and hope to force them into
submission. Now that terror too has been
rejected. Of course, that would not make them go
away. They have to be fought out and forced out
of the system of this State. One aspect of that
fight is the action of police and security to
throw them out. The other is the duty of the
people and the politicians of this State to shoo
their apologists out of the political mainstream
where they have trespassed on the strength of the
terrorists' guns.
At the very least
they should not be allowed inside the political
dispensations of this State. That would be
rejecting the people's verdict and rewarding the
forces who tried their best to prevent the
political process from taking off in this State.
With their sights focused on the places and
people who have no democratic rights, they may
not understand the importance of the electoral
verdicts nor respect them. Their mentors, dead
and alive, flagrantly disregarded those verdicts
to setup their personal rules. But this State and
its people would not be left at the mercy of
those very forces. This wholesome elections with
the hundreds of sacrifices made by the people
both commoners and the elite to make it a
success, would not be ransomed to the forces who
dared not enter the fray and did their utmost to
sabotage and kill it. That would be a travesty of
the sacred will of the people. Let no one try to
bring the separatists in from the backdoor, after
they have been rejected by the people.
Unequal
treatments
All men, and women
too, are not equal. They are different in make
and composition, potential and ability, capacity
and caliber. That inequality may never by
eradicated. Nor, may it be desirable to make this
world one identical body of men and women as if
derived from the same clone. That variation-less
population may not be able to survive the
vicissitudes of life and may die out quickly. But
there are certain areas where equality is not
only possible and enforceable but must be
observed to guarantee that the human society with
its variations and urges for equality would live.
There is law, for example. All must be treated as
equals before law, or else the very promise of
law is defeated. If the law fails to apply to all
in equal measure, it becomes lawlessness - an
ordered disorder. The only criterion is the crime
and not the position of the person who commits
it. A thief and a murder are not the same, but
all thieves and all murderers are in the same
class, to be treated in the same manner and
offered similar facilities or denied these
equally as laid down by the law and the
procedure. Deviate here and you disobey the law
itself.
Yet, the whole
nation saw the equality of law flagrantly mauled
these past days when it caught up with two star
offenders, Salman Khan and R K Sharma, Salman
Khan allegedly under the influence of liquor ran
his car into a bakery and killed a person there
and injured four others. Far from acting with
alacrity, the police leisurely went about
apprehending the offender though the full
identity and address of the person was known.
Then it politely, rather reverently, allowed him
to go home after obliging the police with a test
sample. As the protestors in Mumbai asked, would
the police have acted in this manner if an
ordinary taxi driver has caused the accident and
death? The same question must be asked in case of
Sharma. He was an absconder in whose search the
police of two states wandered round at least four
States. When he surrendered, the police took him
to Delhi in a cavalcade that stopped at a motel
because Mr Sharma takes his lunch at one! The
police is yet to summon up nerve to interrogate
him. And, the man stands accused of murder. Did
it proceed the same way with the other persons
accused in the same crime? If not, why this
difference, rather deference to power and
position? Is this law equal, acting without fear
and favour?
|
 |
Feast
of St Francis Oct, 3
Saint
Francis of Assisi
By P K
Joseph Dhar
We are
living in an age that seems to be
described by the Bible Verse:'' When I
speak of peace they are for war.'' (Psalm
120). But there is a way by which man's
awareness can open up to the possibility
of peace and it lies in the clear and
unwavering affirmation of a meaning for
human life. This is the exhortative power
of the world peace: it can give emphasis
to the whole human feeling of life
itself: whoever cries this word feels it
to be the ultimate motivation behind the
factors that determine his or her social,
family and personal life. The meaning of
the word peace never fails to engage
every one of life's sentiments; it
implicates these sentiments in adherence
to a sense of Justice, Justice in the
face of destiny, whether written with a
small or Capital D.
''If any
word defines this ''pondus'' charged with
the human sentiment of peace, it is
religiosity, religiosity as a dimension
of life. This word pervades any formula
one can come up with and implies an
ultimate purpose for which a person
accepts the fact of his or her existence
and then acts. What makes us feel the
need to live relationships of any kind is
a pre-sentiment of ultimate positivity.
And the way this pre-sentiment which in
itself is present in everyone more often
than not-judges everyday life can even be
a reflection of the cynicism so plentiful
in our present day society. This is what
the Saint of Saints Francis of Assisi all
through his life prayed. ''Lord, make
me an instrument of your peace, Where
there is hatred, let me sow love, Where
there is injury, pardon, Where there is
doubt, faith, Where there is discord,
unity, Where there is despair, hope,
Where there is darkness, light. Where
there is sadness, Joy.
Francis of
Assisi continues to fascinate. Jacques Le
Goff, the great French historian
confesses: ''I am enthralled by the
character of Saint Francis, the rebel who
was no nihilist. ''Saint Francis is a man
who, in identifying himself completely
with the figure of Jesus Christ, unites
in himself simplicity and impressiveness,
humility and charisma, commonplace
physique and exceptional splendour.
The
attraction exerted by Saint Francis
depends essentially on two factors:
realism and joy. The expressions realism
and joy find their achieved expression in
''The canticle of brother sun'' that
Francis had sung on the very day of his
death on October 3, 1226 in which, apart
from the symbolism of the Sun, image of
God, the stars, the wind, the clouds, the
sky, fire, flowers, the grass are seen
and loved above all in their perceptible
being, in their material beauty. The love
that he bore them influenced painters who
from then on aimed at portraying them
faithfully, without deforming them or
over- burdening them with the weight of
off-putting symbols''.
His
tenderness for finite things was
primarily expressed in the consideration
for the corporeal. Francis of Assisi did
not seek systematically to humiliate his
body, a body that was racked in the final
years, by almost total blindness and
excruciating headaches. His attitude
towards it was ambivalent. The body was
certainly an instrument of Sin but it was
also the material image of God and more
particularly of Christ Jesus. We find in
his ''Admonitions'' : ''Be attentive Man,
to how many excellent things the Lord God
has placed in you, since He created and
formed you to the image of His own
Beloved Son, according to the body, and
to his own likeness according to the
spirit.'' The body, shaped in the image
of the Son, is ''Brother body full of
pains'' for the relief of which, during
his stay in Rieti, east of Rome, when he
was entrusted to the care of the Papal
doctors, Francis asked a friend to play a
lute the body which, with death looming
asked a final comfort in a letter to
Giacomina of the Settessogli,'' in those
cakes you used to give me in Rome when I
fell ill.''
This
respect for the body reached its peak
when the object was the ''Body of
Christ'', the Eucharist. Wondering about
Francis' resistance to the temptations of
the heresy it can be safely remarked that
Francis was neither a millenarian nor an
apocalyptic. He never interposed an
eternal Gospel, a mystical golden age,
between the earthly world in which he
lived and beyond of Christianity. He was
not the Angel of the Sixth Seal of the
Apocalypse which some Spirituals
mistakenly saw in him.'' Their heretical
eschatological notions came from
Gipacchino da Fiore, not from Francis.''
''writes J Le Goff in Saint Francois d'
Assise page 95.
Now a
pertinent question warrants an answer.
What was it that kept him within the
Church with the steadfast intention of
staying there, in spite of opposition and
incomprehension? The answer to this
question is not far to seek. He did not
want to break up the unity, the community
to which he was so attached. But, above
all, because of his viscernal need of the
Sacraments. Almost all the mdieval
upheavals were against the Sacraments.
Now Francis had a deep inward need of the
Sacraments and especially of the first of
them. The Eucharist . Here to quote the
French historical J Le Goff shall be
apt.'' For the administration of the
Sacraments a Clergy, a Church, is
required. Hence- though one may find it
surprising- Francis was willing to
forgive the clergy a good deal in
exchange for his office''. This claim
made by the writer find confirmation in
the episode narrated by the Dominician
Etienne de Bourbon in which, when
questioned by a heretic on what attitude
to take toward a priest ''who sullied his
hands by going with a whore.'' Francis
knelt before the priest and proclaimed to
the people of the Parish: ''I don't know
if this man's hands are as they are said
to be by him; but even if they were I
know and believe that it will not weaken
the force and effectiveness of the Divine
Sacraments-through these hands that God
pours out benefits and gifts on his
people. Therefore I kiss these hands of
his out of reverence for the Sacraments
that they administer and out of the
holiness of Him who bestowed such power
on them.' (Quoted in Seeing and Believing
: The Christian Experience of Francis of
Assisi by Edizioni Glossa Milano 2000
page 18).
The centre
of Francis' Christian realism was
sensible presence of the Eucharist
Christ. If we take the theme of
Admonition. In this Francis shows full
acceptance of Saint John's
seeing/believing couplet by establishing
a rigorous parallelism between the
perceptual-spiritual experience of the
historical Christ and the actual, equally
perceptual-spiritual one of the
Eucharistic body.'' Behold, every day He
humbles Himself, Just as when from royal
throne He came into the womb of the
Virgin; every day He comes to us Himself
humbly appearing; every day He descends
from the bosom of the Father upon the
alter in the hands of the priest. As just
to the holy apostles in true flesh, so
even now He shows Himself to us in the
sacred bread. And just as one they gazed
at His very own flesh they saw only His
flesh, but contemplating with the bread
and the wine with bodily eyes, are to see
and firmly believe, that they are His
Most Holy Body and Blood, living and
true. And in such a manner Lord is always
with His faithful, just as He Himself
says:'' Behold, I am with you even to the
consummation of the age.'' (Quoted from
the writings of Saint Assissi by C.
Frugoni Page : 20)
''Spiritual
eyes'' can recognize the great lord who,
in humility, conceals himself in beggar's
garb, which are no the Platonic eyes of
the soul but the theological gaze
illuminated by the Sprit. Here it shall
be appropriate to refer to Vaiani who
says on page 84-84 of his book
''Christian experience of Francis of
Assissi ''Francis does not suggest a
hasty and simplistic passage from seen to
believing; his writings carefully repeat
the term seeing in the second phase,
indicating a more intelligent passage
from seeing to seeing and believing in
which seeing continues to subsist in the
second moment, but is now capable of
embracing a new dimension that does not
cancel the preceding one. It amplifies
and goes beyond it. The believer, in
fact, is not a person who no longer sees,
as if faith where to overwhelm and
illuminate seeing; the believer continues
to see, exactly like the non believer
but, differently form the latter, he sees
and believes.''
Francis
faith with Eucharistic presence at its
centre, thus also entails seeing as sense
perception. Testimony to this is the live
representation of the Nativity of the
night of December 25, 1223, the Ggreccio
crib, which fulfilled Francis' wish to
recall the memory of that child who was
born in Bethlehen, to see with bodily
eyes the inconveniences of his infancy,
Christian realism is nurtured on memory.
We are told in the book of Thomas of
Celano; (First and Second lives of
Francis: translated by David Burr). ''He
remembered Christs' words through
constant meditation and recalled his
actions (before his eyes) through wise
consideration. The humility of the
incarnation and the love of the Passion
so occupied his memory that he scarcely
wished to think of any thing else.'' It
kept on evoking the events narrated in
the New Testament without yielding to the
temptation, so common in the Middle Ages
of diluting them by symbolic
interpretation. It shall be safe to say
that Francis' culture was very different
from that of the clerics or the monks. It
kept him from the allegorical
lucubrations then in fashion. It led him
in the opposite direction to an immediate
realistic perception of the meaning of
the term. It is a view that clashes with
some recent scholars of the Fraciscan
Movement who tend to see Francis' as part
of the neo-platonic, mystico, idealizing
current of the Middle Ages.
After
saying this all we have the Pauline
theology which is sensitive in the mind
of Saint Francis of Assisi : '' All
belong to you, and you belong to Christ
and Christ belongs to God''. (I
Corinthians 22-23) In this simple yet
dense expression we can perceive all
created reality in a coral relationship.
All things belong to us. But, how does it
belong to us? As a possession? Through
exploitation? No. Everything belongs to
us just like we belong to Christ and
Christ belongs to God. This type of
vision is truly wonderful and suggestive.
But like the Commandment of Love , either
it is unreachable or it clashes with
concrete human behaviour. Let we go with
Saint Francis of Assisi who is love
personified.
|
Pakistan
unvaled
By M J
Akbar
An opinion
poll informs; more important, it
indicates. Figures configure trends; text
expands towards context. The opinion poll
conducted by AC Nielsen for The Asian Age
and Deccan Chronicle in Jammu and Kashmir
in the middle of the current elections is
remarkable for it destroys some
fondly-held myths.
President
Pervez Musharraf used two important
occasions (Pakistan's independence day
and his speech at the United Nations) to
dismiss these elections as a farce. He
was either ill-served by his officials or
just a victim of wishful thinking.
Pakistan has always assumed that given
half a chance Kashmiri Muslims would opt
for Pakistan. Facts have travelled a
different route.
As
elsewhere, opinions in Jammu and Kashmir
vary. The only thing that Muslims, Hindus
and Sikhs agree upon is that no one wants
Kashmir, or any part of it, to merge with
Pakistan. Hindus and Sikhs are expected
to hold this view. The story is that
every Kashmiri Muslim agrees. Some 99% of
the respondents, including those Muslims
who sought independence, were clear that
Pakistan was not an option.
The
two-nation theory is dead. In 55 years
Pakistan has destroyed itself as an idea.
This is
not a sudden fact. It cannot be. The
proof of any idea lies in its evolution.
The success or the failure of a state is
often measured in terms of its economy,
but this is a misleading yardstick. For
the idea behind a nation to hold it must
sustain itself through time, and it must
have the ability to find a polity based
on free will and social justice. Pakistan
was unable to find the strength that
comes from shared nation-building.
The three
strongest reasons for disenchantment with
the Pakistan that has emerged are
autocracy, theocracy, and, in the case of
Kashmiri Muslims, distrust.
Army rule
has seen many phases in Pakistan. When
Ayub Khan seized power, there was a sense
of relief that the marauding politicians
had been thrown out. A decade later, when
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto restored the
credibility of politicians with a display
of national street power, he became a
hero. A pattern formed. When the people
got tired of irresponsible politicians
they yearned for the Army. When they
found that the generals had become
equally irresponsible they wanted
civilians. In a democratic polity, people
want a ruling party and an opposition to
alternate with each other. In Pakistan,
civilian rule and military dictatorship
became the point and counterpoint of the
polity.
But the
Musharraf phase is a further, and
radical, departure from this syndrome.
The balance has stopped shifting.
Musharraf has declared Pakistan a
permanent autocracy. The armed forces
cannot now be excised from the power
structure and civilians, however
sumptuous the disguise, must in reality
either accept subservience or expect
exile. Obviously the military will cloak
this dictatorship with a veneer of
benevolence, particularly towards the
elite. The press for instance will be
permitted space. It is easier to face the
front page when you know that it cannot
really change the fundamental power
equations. Politics in Pakistan has
become a command performance. The country
has become the antithesis of self-rule
that Jinnah demanded. Pakistanis may or
may not realize the implications, but
others certainly do. Kashmiri Muslims may
have their troubles with Indian
democracy, but that is no reason for them
to want to join a Pakistani dictatorship.
Nor are
they ready to accept a society in which
hardline mullahs play a critical role. It
is often argued that the unpopularity of
theocrats is proved in every Pakistan
election. Parties like the
Jamaat-e-Islami never get more than two
or three per cent of the vote. But it is
equally true that theocrats and
fundamentalists in Pakistan always fight
above their weight. The legacy of General
Zia ul Haq, who institutionalized the
place of Islamists in the judiciary and
social structure in his effort to create
a Nizam-e-Mustafa, has not been
challenged to any substantive degree, if
it has been challenged at all, even by
his civilian successors.
Kashmiri
Muslims have not lost their Kashmiriyat.
That is why 96% of the respondents in
Srinagar and 89% in Anantnag said that it
was absolutely wrong to drive out
Kashmiri Pandits from the valley and send
them into refugee camps in Jammu and
Delhi. Pak-sustained Jihadis targeted the
Pandits in a deliberate exercise in
ethnic-cleansing that was not without an
ulterior purpose. The valley was being
''cleansed'' of Hindus to make it more
amenable to acquisition by Pakistan.
Paradoxically, it only served to make
Kashmiri Muslims less trustful of
Pakistan.
Distrust
is a result of experience. No one now
believes that Pakistan places the
Kashmiri interest above its own. In other
words, Pakistan is not a disinterested,
humanitarian player. Its principal
objective is to weaken India, and Kashmir
becomes the perfect excuse for a
comparatively low-cost war that can
extract a high price from India. The flaw
is that the blood that is flowing to
serve Pakistani interests is Kashmiri
blood. There is widespread and growing
weariness with the culture of the gun. A
sense of futility hangs over Kashmir, as
it lives were lost in a nightmare rather
than in the pursuit of a dream.
And so a
majority of Muslims in Srinagar (57%) and
Anantnag (54%) are willing to assert that
Pakistan is sponsoring terrorism in the
State. ( I refer to these cities in
particular precisely because this is
where the anger against Delhi is the
highest). This is akin to condemnation.
An even higher number (83% in Srinagar
and 78% in Anantnag) are convinced that
militant violence is not the way towards
a solution.
Violence
was never the preferred option for the
Kashmiri. Why then did he pick up the
gun, for the first time, in the early
Nineties? One critical reason was the
regional environment.
A Jihad
had just defeated the mighty Soviet
military machine in Afghanistan. The
victory lent romance to the Jihadi gun,
particularly when the Muslim nations of
central Asia obtained their freedom from
the colonial clutch of the Russian bear.
Images of victory were brought to every
home by television, which was just
discovering international news. If Moscow
could be brought down by a Jihad, how
long before puny little Delhi went down
on its knees ?
The
credibility of Pakistan's ISI was also at
a peak among the growing bands of
insurgents in the valley and across the
Line of Control and inside Pakistan. If
the ISI could strategize and manage the
victory against the Soviet Union, then it
could only be a matter of time-- and not
that much time either- before it
demolished the weaker ''Hindu'' Indian
Army. The ISI also had at its disposal
thousands of trained fighters returned
from the Jihad in Afghanistan, not all of
them willing to go home. These Jihadis
became the nucleus for the operational
units that were trained in terrorist
warfare.
All of
them made one mistake. They seriously
underestimated India's will, and Delhi's
ability, to protect India's national
integrity. At one level, there was the
simple logic of a state using its
resources to beat back an insurgency that
threatened to divide the country. When a
state seeks to protect its unity, it does
not consult the recommendations of human
rights organizations. (Did Lincoln worry
about human rights in the American civil
war) But there was anoter factor in the
Indian response.
Kashmir is
not an isolated geographical tumor that
can be operated out of India's body
politic. It is linked integrally to
India's sense of itself as a secular
nation. The fact that secularism itself
is under threat from communalists in
India, makes the commitment of those who
would protect the concept that much
fiercer. Kashmir is also linked to the
fate of some 150 million Indian Muslims,
for they would be the ones who would have
to pay the price for another partition of
the country. Conversely the only force
that would gain out of an Indian debacle
in Kashmir would be of those who want
India to become a ''Hindu'' nation in
answer to ''Islamic'' Pakistan and
Bangladesh.
Far from
being a farce (and the turnout has
already proven the fallacy of such a
charge) these elections in Jammu and
Kashmir represent an opportunity. This is
a moment for Delhi to reach out to the
valley and see it there is a chance to
put tragedy behind us, and find a way
towards an honourable settlement of a
long dispute that has destroyed two
generations of the past and could yet
wipe out the future. A dialogue is the
only alternative to the gun.
The
starkest solution to the Kashmir problem
would be war between India and Pakistan.
Since such a war in all likelihood could
turn nuclear, there would be no Kashmir
left after such a war (and not much else
in both countries either). No Kashmir; no
problem.
I presume
that there is a destiny in our
subcontinent apart from suicide.
(21st
Century Media)
|
|
|
| |
|
|
