The rise of a political alternative

By B K Karkra

At Independence, none of our national leaders had obviously any experience of governance in a sovereign ethos. Over the years, our political system has not only survived its birth pangs, but has also adequately matured. Initially, we had a lone political super power—the Congress. There was no opposition to the ruling party worth the name. Thus, we stood saddled with a system having all the seeds of autocracy within it. The things came to a head in 1975 when a national emergency was slapped on us for flimsiest of reasons. Nonetheless, the things were never to be the same again. First, a number of political contraptions came up around some splinter groups of the Congress itself to challenge its monopoly over political power. Lately, however, a proper political alternative has arisen on our horizon in the form of the B.J.P. If at all there were any illusions about the permanence of this phenomenon, the election results of Gujarat must have dispelled these. The Indian politics has finally polarised around two entities--- the Congress and the B.J.P. This, on all counts, seems to be a healthy and heartening development.

Mahatma Gandhi’s idea was to disband theIndian National Congress party as soon as the goal of the country’s independence was achieved. The advice, if taken, would have made the organisation immortal. The nation could have summoned this pre-Independence spirit in every hour of its crises in future. However, this was not to be. There are always some hidden hands out to collect the spoils greedily in all such situations. They could not let such stupendous achievement go without being thoroughly encashed. The Congress had not only thrown an imperial power off the country’s back, but had sounded a death knell of colonialism on this good earth. So, they could not be denied their reward.

Sadly, however, the Congress that had done it died with Gandhi, Nehru, Shastri or at best with Morarjee Desai. With the ouster of Desai and death of the last conscience-keeper of the nation, J.P.Narayan all lingering traces of the spirit of the Independence days finally oozed out of our soil. An entirely new mundane era of the Machiavelli’s " The Prince" variety descended on our political scene. Anybody, marginalised in his political outfit formed a party of his own. Thus, many bargaining counters were opened in the country and some political leaders hardly fit to be a Sarpanch nearly rose to the highest executive office of the state. Some so poor calibre persons were pushed to the Chief Ministerial chairs that people started believing that just anybody was fit enough to become a Chief Minister. However, our polity at least always had the horse-sense to keep the key posts of the Prime Minister, Finance Minister and Foreign Minister etc. in capable hands and that is how we are still afloat.

Our Communists could have filled in the vacant slot of the opposition. There are quite a few men of character, conviction and even capability in their ranks. However, their ideology had already started losing the steam completely. At the global level, the Communism proved to be just a corrective wind that passed off doing its duty by the humanity. The Western world, in fact, defeated it by joining it. All the positive features of the ideology were promptly incorporated in their social systems and the unworkable part of it was left to flop elsewhere. At our national level, the communist ideas do not mix well with the chemistry of our masses at all. The reason for it is that we have problems far bigger than the uneven distribution of wealth that the Communists are mainly worried about. We are face to face with a problem highly revolting to the human conscience. A large section of us are not regarded even as proper human beings. The question of rich and poor would rise only after this caste-ridden reality is satisfactorily dealt with. Thus, communism failed to get a foothold in India and we had to look for some other alternatives.

This alternative has at long last appeared with the rise of the B.J.P. Those allergic to saffron would certainly say that the remedy is worse than the disease. But, how would they deal with the fact that election after election the Congress was riding to power on the strength of the scheduled caste, scheduled tribe and the Muslim minority vote? When this vote bank appeared to be drying up for the Congress, even Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi had started thinking in terms of wooing the Hindu majority in the form of the ‘shilanyas’ at Ayodhaya and the Ganga cleaning etc. Similarly, the B.J.P. readily agreed to hold back the most salient features of its agenda to take its N.D.A. partners along. In fact, the various Hindu communal contraptions, collectively dubbed as ‘Sangh Parivar’, are no more than a reactionary phenomenon generated by the Islamic aggressiveness in the subcontinent. When our Muslim brethren stop looking westward, get rid of the hang over that they were once the rulers and realise that the ‘Bharat Mata’ of the Hindus happens to be their ‘Madr-e-watan’ also, all these Hindu outfits would vanish in thin air. It already goes to the credit of our Muslims that they have never let down our country in any of our wars and border skirmishes with Pakistan.

Viewed in this context, the rise of the B.J.P. is in the nature of a silver lining to the dark clouds that still hang on our political horizon. If we have some six hundred political parties, we now just have two political poles. All the regional formations and splinter groups would in future be forced to polarise around one of these entities. The only thing unhealthy about this development is that polarisation has taken place on the wrong lines. In the process, secularism that is a situational necessity and a matter of just a wise choice for us, has been raised to the level of a national ideal, as if so many of our neighbours not professing secularism are sinners. We did not have to project ourselves as the secular fanatics.

Islamic radicalism in Central Asia

By M Rama Rao

Islamic radicalism is posing a serious threat to the stability of Central Asia Republics (CARs), which are finding the going tough in the transition from proletarian dictatorship to free market economies. In fact, erstwhile communists are as of now controlling the levers of power and have unleashed a terror rein to check dissidence. Islamic radicals are exploiting the situation to further their cause. Groups like Hiz-ut-Tahrir are acknowledgely more dangerous than the Taliban and appeared on the scene in the region around the time the student militia marched into Kandahar on the props provided by Benazir Bhutto's PPP government in Pakistan. They enjoyed the patronage of Taliban and the ISI and forged links with other groups operating in the area and in the adjoining Muslim majority province of China.

The CAR countries have virtual open borders. The guards on duty are mostly underpaid and ill-equipped Russians. So, the radicals have no difficulty to move freely unhindered in the mountainous region. When chased by law enforcing authorities, the Islamists simply disappear into the neighbouring region and avoid detection.

Neither the post 9/11 global concern over terrorism nor the installation of Hamid Karzai Government in Kabul has brought a change in the CAR situation. What is worse while the United States has set up its air and army bases on Pamirs, the American presence in no way minimised the danger from Islamists. The Dubyaman is a symbol of hate here too. While in the rest of the Muslim world, like for instance in Yemen, Sudan, Pakistan and Indonesia, the anti-American sentiment is primarily because of the perception that the US is targeting the Muslims and Islamic culture, in the CAR countries, American support to the local regimes has resulted in people turning cold towards the US. Like in Afghanistan, in the CAR, the US is working in spelndid isolation.

Surprisingly, in its single minded pursuit of Al Qaeda and Osama-Omar combine, the United States is oblivious to the danger posed by other lesser known but more radical groups like Hiz-ut-Tahrir. Both the state department and various American agencies are not hesitating, nevertheless, to arm-twist local regimes on Human Rights.

Admittedly, it is nobody's case, much less of this writer, that the CAR regimes are shining angels in lily white. They are not. By the present reckoning they can never be. But should that be the ground enough to ignore the emergence of new Talibans on the scene with the agenda which is far more dangerous than the original Taliban's. Hiz-ut-Tahrir, for instance, is cut in the evangelist mould. Its concern is creation of Caliphate, by making a beginning with Uzbekistan, the seat of Islamic learning. (The Bukhari family, who are by tradition the Shahi Imams of Delhi's Jama Masjid, come from Uzbekistan. They came to India at the invitation of the Moghul ruler Shah Jehan).

Tashkent has been requesting Washington to include Hizb-ut-Tahrir on the international blacklist of extremist organisations prepared in the wake of the September 11 attacks on America. Till date, the appeal has met with no response. Frankly , there is no clarity in the American priorities in the region. Undoubtedly, Washington has long term stakes in Central Asia with an eye on the untapped oil wealth. It cashed in on the post 9/11 scenario and the Afghan war to quietly move into area.

Thus it has been able to scuttle the influence of Russians on the one hand, and put road blocks in the way of China emerging as a major player in CAR. It is too early to say that the policy has succeeded. Some analysts rightly doubt the American ability to checkmate the Russian and Chinese hegemony in their own back yard. Be that what it may, the fact of the matter is, just as it has been ignoring Indian cocnerns vis-a-vis ISI of Pakistan, the US is refusing to be moved by the Islamist upsurge in the CAR. Not to look beyond the nose is a trait the US will rue one day.

At the regional security conference held in the Uzbek capital in December, Uzbek foreign affairs representative Bakhtier Islomov articulated his country's concerns as never before. He said Hizb-ut-Tahrir is being used as a recruiting ground by Islamic militants outside the region. Hizb-ut-Tahrir has spread its extremist activities in most Central Asian countries and is a threat to political order, he pointed out. Uzbek security officials aver that many Hizb-ut-Tahrir members join more widely known international extremist organisations after a couple of years' stint in Central Asia.

The group, established in the Middle East 50 years ago, first appeared in the former Soviet republics after they gained their independence in 1991, taking root in Uzbekistan's traditionally Islamic areas of Namangan, Fergana and Tashkent. Within a year, cells had been established in the Tajik border region of Sogdiy and some areas of Kyrgyzstan. It has forged close links with the Islamist groups in the neighbouring Chinese province. Interestingly, however, Communist China has cordial equations with the Hizb, as they had once with the Taliban of Afghanistan. It has been providing material assistance from time to time, obviously as a part of state policy of cultivating new friends and of not putting all the eggs in one basket like New Delhi did in pre-Karzai Afghanistan.

Tajikistan, like Uzbekistan, is concerned over the Hizb factor. The Dushanbe authorities have been cracking on the Islamic radicals adopting a no-nonsense approach to the problem. Deputy Security Minister Mukhtor Sharipov has been speaking about the ''indisputable evidence'' linking Hizb-ut-Tahrir members to the dreaded al-Qaeda network, which, even according to the Americans themselves, is still intact.

Kyrgyzstan is also a victim of Islamist radicalism. But, unlike Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, it has been lenient towards them. There was no significant crackdown and hardly any arrests have taken place even though their strength has been officially estimated at around four thousand. The reasons advanced for this apparent inaction in the face of an admitted threat to peace and security is rather weird: persecuting Hizb-ur-Tahrir may make it more extreme.

A IWPR report quotes Natalya Shadrova, deputy chairperson, Krygeyzstan's governmental commission on religious affairs, as saying that blacklisting the group would only boost its stature among Muslims and attract more of them into its ranks. Svante Cornell, professor at John Hopkins University, Washington, shares her view. Prof Cornell, who publishes the Central Asia Analyst journal is even critical of the ban on Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). In an interview, he said the blacklisting had resulted in a huge increase in the IMU's exposure. ''That is why I do not support the inclusion of Hizb-ut-Tahrir on the blacklist, as this may lead to more youth joining their ranks,'' observed the learned professor.

Human Rights groups are delighted at the Kyrgyz stand. And they with some support, tacit and not so tacit from the United States, are mounting a campaign against Uzbekistan and Tajkistan. Saidajakhon Zainabitdinov of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, for instance, who is in the forefront of the campaign, claims Hizb-ut-Tahrir associates have received unfair trials and questionable convictions, and that the authorities often persecute their relatives.

His complaint may be valid. As we have witnessed in India in our fight against cross border terrorism in Punjab and Kashmir, anti-insurgency drive in the North-east, and the campaign against naxalites in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, there could have been excesses on the innocents in Uzbekistan too. But the question is: shall we approach the issue in isolation of the main concern of the society. Also relevant is do the perpetrators of human rights abuses deserve the sympathy of the civilised world. Neither of the two questions has received the attention; an approach conditioned by a mindset that looks at the police with suspicion has been allowed to dominate the proceedings.

In the light of what is happening in our own country, in Central Asia and in the Middle East, time has come to go back to the drawing board to come up with new approaches that take a comprehensive view of the phenomenon. The lead has to come from, yes, the Dubyaman, since he is donning the mantle of global sheriff.

The million dollar question is Will he? I have my doubts. Never in the past has the White House covered itself with glory when confronted with limited choices; it always opted for quick fix solutions projecting them as the manna for the world, as it did in Afghanistan after the Soviet army marched into Kabul, and again now after the 'disappearance' of Taliban from Kandahar belt.

(Syndicate Features)