Daily Excelsior... Editorial

EDITORIAL

Maharaja Hari Singh's brushes with the British

By Dr Brahma Singh

Bangla Desh comes close to China, Pakistan

By Maj Gen V K Madhok (Retired)

Four issues need careful consider ation in view of the grenade attack on Pro-India Shaikh Hasina Wajed's rally on Aug 21, 2004 at Dacca in which 15 people were killed and nearly 150 injured. And in the past, the Indo-Bangla Desh clash over Pyrdiwah (in Indian territory east of Bangla Desh) in Apr 2001......more

Russian school
carnage

By Cecil Victor

In many ways international terrorism, as we see its manifestations today, is a throwback to the very successful policy of the British empire to "divide and rule". The British used religion as a divisive tool but its successor imperialists, the US and its minions like Pakistan, have dug deeper into the social architecture to make the tribe the centerpiece of "nationhood". The . ........more

EDITORIAL

Credibility test

It is to be welcomed that Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed is seeking election to the State Assembly from the Pahalgam constituency. This is in keeping with a healthy democratic tradition that an elected leader should head the ruling dispensation. The Chief Minister is a direct representative of the ordinary citizens and it looks extremely irregular that he should have assumed the office as a nominated member of the Legislative Council. In the Mufti’s case, this oddity had arisen because he was not a member of the either House when his party won a close contest with the Congress to bag the coveted post on the strength of his People’s Democratic Party’s better showing in the politically-important Kashmir region. He entered the Upper House which had a few vacancies at that time. His rather long wait for a suitable Assembly constituency has ended with his daughter Mehbooba Mufti leaving the Pahalgam seat following her election to the Lok Sabha from the Anantnag constituency. Undoubtedly his participation would make the Pahalgam the most prestigious of the four Assembly by-elections the polling for which is scheduled on October 13. He has thus got a chance to break a jinx. This would be perhaps his best ever opportunity to clinch an Assembly election in the Valley. It is part of history that his only victory in an Assembly poll has been from the Ranbir Singh Pura seat in the Jammu region. He can’t be unaware of the stakes involved for him both personally and politically. One can imagine that the National Conference, which is his principal opponent, will not spare any effort to score an upset. NC’s candidate Rafi Ahmad Mir had lost to Ms Mehbooba Mufti in 2002 but he knows the terrain well having won from Pahalgam in the past. Anyway keeping in view their track record against each other it is clear that the father-and-son team of the Abdullahs of the NC will fight by proxy Mr Mir’s battle against the father-and-daughter duo of the PDP. The NC knows fully well that it has come across a sudden opening the like of which it would not get for some more time to prove who is the real boss in the Valley specially.

The other by-election in the Kashmir region is in the Batmaloo constituency that will pit PDP’s Tariq Hamid Karra against NC’s Irfan Shah. Mr Karra is nephew of the late Ghulam Mohiuddin Karra, the legendary hero of the ‘Quit Kashmir’ movement who had later fallen out with Sheikh Abdullah. Mr Shah, on the other hand, is son of the late NC stalwart Ghulam Mohiuddin Shah whose death has resulted in the by-election. Both the Karras and the Shahs have extensive influence in this constituency. Ever since 1947 Batmaloo has been a big centre of politics as well as militancy. The candidature of Mr Shah has caused some commotion in his outfit with one of its office-bearers switching allegiance to the PDP in protest. As is well known the Congress too has fielded the close relatives of Chaudhary Lal Singh and Mr Madan Lal Sharma as its candidates in the two by-elections in the Jammu region in Basohali and Akhnoor constituencies, which are being held to fill up the vacancies caused by their election to the Lok Sabha. A senior functionary, Mr Govind Ram Sharma, has quit the organisation in disgust and joined the battle in Akhnoor as an independent. It would hardly be surprising if he gets the tacit support of the despondent party loyalists. More than anything else the mistimed statement of their State president Peerzada Mohammad Sayeed that the Wazir Commission report is an ancient history must be worrying the Congress contestants. The report provides for the formation of three more districts in the Jammu region and is thus an emotive subject with the Congress time and again declaring its commitment to implement it. One wonders if any amount of damage-control exercise on the Congress’s part can undo the initial damage it has suffered. While the Congress and the PDP are backing each other, the Bharatiya Janata Party is set to undergo another popularity test: it has fielded experienced Jagdish Raj Sapolia and Ram Swaroop in Basohali and Akhnoor, respectively, and hopes to profit from the anger within the ruling camp.

Undoubtedly the Chief Minister’s entry gives a distinct edge to these by-elections. Their outcome will point to the Mufti’s current popular rating. It would also indicate all that political organisations have gained or lost since 2002: the ruling coalition as a unified entity, the Congress and the PDP in their separate capacities, and the NC and the BJP as main opposition parties in Kashmir and Jammu, respectively.

Listen, don’t learn

How should one respond when a top Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yashwant Sinha describes Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as Shikhandi? Is it a derogatory comparison or is the former Union minister completely in the dark about the role played by the fabled Mahabharata character? Of course, the former Union minister will not shower praise on the Prime Minister and he may have meant that Dr Singh is simply a bendable tool in the hands of Ms Sonia Gandhi or that he is shielding a ‘foreigner’. On all these counts, he is totally wrong. He needs to recall that Shikhandi has not been a pliant instrument but a willing participant in an exercise to extract what many say was a justified revenge even though against one of the most well-regarded figures of all times. Moreover, the warrior was acting as a cover for Arjuna, of all heroes of the epic battle. In his zeal to undermine the top Congress leadership Mr Singh has gone completely haywire. Perhaps he would have done better had he taken a crash course from Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee in how to make subtle observations. He may have tried but found to his dismay the BJP’s Bhishma busy warding off arrows from his own party colleagues rather than from Arjuna hiding behind Shikhandi. Such is the decline in the political debate and discourse these days that the leaders don’t reflect twice about the meaning of their utterances.

In fact it does not surprise anybody more that the out-and-out abuse has become part of our political idiom. Ideological adversaries attack one another as if they are engaged in street fights. The expressions like ‘Ulloo ka pattha’ and ‘Chirkut’ have been used on the political theatre much to the torment of a stunned audience. Of course, ‘Dalal’ is so freely used in a manner that gives the idea as if the entire political class is engaged in dubious transactions on behalf of one industrial house or the other. There has been an outrageous instance of a late deputy prime minister vomiting a nine-letter unadorned abuse which at once became a talking-point in none-too-distant past. Bihar Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav has been called a joker. He has also been the victim of a filthy propaganda for having a large number of children. On his part, Mr Yadav is unsparing in aiming his rivals on the other end of the political spectrum. Younger politicians are obviously listening but let’s hope they are not learning.

Maharaja Hari Singh's brushes with the British

By Dr Brahma Singh

Although, as per records, the British appear to have been quite satisfied with Hari Singh's performance as a ruler, the brushes that he had begun to have with the British authority, nearly as soon as he ascended the gaddi, seem to have caused them quite a bit of disappointment and discomfort. Evidently the British hopes of having another puppet Ruler in Kashmir after the death of Maharaja Pratap Singh had been belied with the occurrence of a series of incidents in which Hari Singh had asserted himself much more than what they expected.

In November 1927 occurred, what came to be known as, Colonel Ward's case. Apparently, soon after ascending the gaddi in 1926 the Maharaja ordered the retirement of all service personnel who had crossed the age of retirement as laid down in service rules. One person affected was Colonel Ward who was still in State service at the age of eighty. On being retired from service in 1927 as per the latest orders of the Maharaja, he was asked to vacate his Government quarters. The Viceroy and the Secretary of state for India pressed the Maharaja to make an exception to the rule in the case of Colonel Ward as they thought that the action amounted to ''throwing a British subject to the dogs''. The pressure on the Maharaja was kept up for more than one year but he refused to relent. The last letter from the Maharaja to the Secretary of States that finally sealed the fate of Colonel Ward is reproduced below in parts, to show how firmly the Maharaja dealt with the case in spite of pressure from the highest authority.

''In the face of these facts I cannot see on what grounds Colonel Ward deserves any special treatment.. In principle I do my best to avoid making exceptions to rules and regulations governing service in the State.. It is well known that Colonel Ward has approached several high officers of the Imperial Government to bring pressure to bear upon me and my Government in regard to this case. In these circumstances any leniency displayed would be open to serious misconception as having been extracted by force and against all rules and regulations.. In conclusion I would add that it has been my unfortunate experience that officers whose services I have been compelled to dispense with for incompetence or inutility, have misrepresented my motive and I have in several such cases been charged with anti-British tendencies. I dare say that similar remarks have been passed against me in connection with the case of Colonel Ward also. I have not thought fit to take notice of such slanderous allegations.''

The Viceroy and the Secretary of State, however, rather than appreciating the principled stand taken by the Maharaja looked upon his action with disdain and contempt. While the Viceroy thought that the Maharaja had acted ''harshly and unwisely'', the Secretary of State considered his finally reply was ''typically disingenuous''.

Meanwhile, in about March 1928, yet another incident took place over which the Maharaja must have earned a good amount of British ill will. While the Resident was out of station the Maharaja ordered the removal of the Residency flagstaff in Srinagar on which the Union Jack was flown. What the Maharaja's motive was in taking such a drastic action is not exactly known. People who lived through this period, (and my father was one), believed that the Maharaja had found evidence to the effect that the British were not allowed to fly the Union Jack in the State during his great grand father and grand father's time and he was only trying to regain for the State its semi-independent status. The Maharaja had, however, missed out on the changes that had taken place in this regard during his uncle, Maharaja Pratap Singh's period. After confronting the Maharaja with the latest on the subject, the Viceroy had compelled him to restore the flagstaff at the Residency in its original place. The official line that the Viceroy, however, took in reporting the matter to the Secretary of State for India was that the Maharaja had acted under the impression that in other Residencies of the country the flagstaffs were situated on the building and not on the ground. The Viceroy, Lord Irwin, who seems to have had a soft corner for Hari Singh--his ''intransigent'' attitude notwithstanding- had evidently taken this plea in order to save him from landing in serious trouble for his action. The Secretary of State, nevertheless, took a serious note of the Maharaja's action, which he considered ''so pointed an insult to the suzerain'' that could not be condoned ''till he has done enough to discount so grave a lapse''. There is nothing on record to show that Maharaja Hari Singh made any effort to have his action, pertaining to the ''insult to the suzerain'', condoned.

It is surprising but true that the Viceroy was quite used to asking the Indian Princes for 'favours for serving British interests in India. In 1930 when the Civil Disobedience Movement was in full swing, the Viceroy asked the Maharaja to monetarily favour one Mr R S Sarma, editor of the Bangalee just because he was espousing the British cause through his newspaper. The Viceroy must have felt terribly humiliated on receiving from the Maharaja in reply to his request, a sermon on good governance to explain his inability to pay any subsidy to Mr Sarma. While regretting his inability to help Mr Sarma the Maharaja wrote that ''on principle (he had) always set (his) face against subsidising any newspaper on any account whatsoever.. because that fact is at once construed into a desire to secure a white washing organ''. It may be mentioned here that in contrast to the manner in which Maharaja Hari Singh had disposed off the Viceroy's request for such a favour, most of the Princes at that time were vying with each other to fulfill every wish of the Crown Representative.

Indeed it was not only in small matters that Maharaja Hari Singh rubbing the British on the wrong side. Bigger issues were involved too. One of the major ones was Gilgit. At the death of Maharaja Pratap Singh the British were worried about how the new Maharaja would view the existing arrangements in Gilgit. As a matter of fact the question of obtaining an assurance from Hari Singh regarding the retention of British control over Gilgit as a pre-condition to the recognition of his claim to the gaddi, was hotly debated within Government circles for nearly two weeks before his appointment was approved.

The Viceroy had then ruled that no such pre-condition be made and instead a wait and see policy be adopted-- waiting to see his attitude towards Gilgit on becoming the Maharaja and then acting accordingly. The worst British fears came out true when immediately on assuming rajgi, Maharaja Singh started pressing for the abolition of the Gilgit Agency and restoration of its control to the State. This was totally unacceptable to the British because apparently, the Russian threat in the region had not diminished in any way since the Panjdeh affair in 1885.

The last straw on the back of the camel of British patience came in the form of Maharaja's stand on Indian Independence at the Round Table Conference in 1930. The fact that Maharaja Hari Singh paid dearly for his stand over Gilgit and Indian Independence does not make his action less noble. As a matter of fact annals of history show him up as the tallest among the Indian Princes of yore.

Bangla Desh comes close to China, Pakistan

By Maj Gen V K Madhok (Retired)

Firstly, the commotion over infiltration and Bangladeshi immigrants, inability of the biannual sector commander's meeting of BDR (Bangla Desh Rifles) and BSF to maintain a working relationship to sort out border issues. Secondly, lack of political vision including failure of intelligence coupled with absence of a sense of urgency and purpose to sort out pending issues. Thirdly, a clear signal that the BSF training and operational fitness are out of date. Finally, the inability to realise the importance which Bangla Desh has acquired now in the perception of US and China. Besides, what initiatives Pakistan is contemplating to avenge its dismemberment in 1971 and to weld the conglomerate of secessionist movements in India's north East (NE). But first a few fact:

There is a visible and pronounced anti-India feeling in Bangla Desh. Right from the time of demolition of Babri Masjid that hatred has been increasing. There is a feeling that Shaikh Hasina sold the country to India and the US during her tenure as the PM. A major fall-out from this has been that the present Government of Khalida Zia would not sell gas either to India or the US.

With Shaikh Hasina failing to win elections in 2001, India now has an alliance of Gen Ershad's Jatiya Party, Begum Zia's BNP (Bangla Desh Nationalist Party) and the Jamate Islami in power next door. All Anti-India and inclined towards China and Pakistan. They are making every effort to fuel the separatist movements in India's NE, increase clandestine supply of arms and explosives to the insurgents, ask for transit facilities to Bhutan and Nepal besides opening up markets for Chinese goods and military hardware.

Further, with the non-renewal of the 25 year Indo-Bangla Desh Friendship Treaty which expired in Mar 1997, a number of options are open to Dacca which can pose serious problems to India. The salient contents of this Treaty focussed on security issues. In that, Bangla Desh would not enter into any foreign alliance or let its territory be used for hostile purposes against India. But that is what has been happening because Dacca is now free to enter into any agreement with any country, on any issue, even that be detrimental to India's interests. The first signs of this appeared with the signing of a Sino-Bangladesh defence cooperation agreement in Nov 2002.

In addition, both China and Pakistan are wooing an anti-India Bangla Desh. While President Musharraf after his visit to Dacca in July 2002 has twice regretted the excesses committed by Pakistan troops in 1971, Khalida Zia went to China in Nov 2002. She signed a large number of agreements primarily focussed on defence cooperation, training and induction of Chinese military hardware in Bangla Desh armed forces. A question arises why these agreements have not been signed with India? Concurrently, Shaikh Hasina has been in and out of house arrest with a number of graft and other charges slapped on Her.

As regards the US, Washington has been trying to sign SOFA; (Status of Forces Agreement) which would permit US forces to land and exit without visas and checks of its personnel and equipment from Bangladesh. The signing of this agreement was deferred during Shaikh Hasina's time due to stiff opposition from Begum Zia and her alliance. Now that the opposition alliance is in power. There is every reason to predict that Zia will enter into a strategic alliance with China and Pakistan and totally ignore the US.

As regards the BDR incursion at Pyrdiwah on the night of Apr 15-16, 2001 and the retaliatory mission by four companies of BSF to Boaribari and ruimari on the night of Apr 17-18, 2001, there should be no doubt that such missions were cleared on both sides, at the highest political levels. Both Governments were fully aware as to what was happening. The irony is, that with nearly ten BSF battalions permanently deployed-the year around, on the 4000 km Indo-Bangla Desh border, with nearly six to seven infantry divisions in support in depth areas, three battalions of BDR managed to cross into Indian territory and take over Pyrdiwah. The BSF was caught napping.

Therefore, at the ground level, the BSF and the Home Ministry have just no excuse for their failure to anticipate or detect BDR intentions and actions. Like Kargil, a small country managed to inflict humiliation on its sovereign neighbour.

Therefore, with China seeking a market in Bangla Desh, US wanting a base and Pakistan wanting to use the country to assist insurgency in the NE and avenge its past defeat, what should India do? Before it is too late Dr Man Mohan Singh should call for an urgent meeting with Begum Zia to resolve four critical issues. Firstly, she should be confronted with the recent cases of arms smuggling and other military hardware for the insurgents through Coxs Bazar and Chittagong in July 2004. This is a conclusion arrived by RAW. Secondary, Bangla Desh should be asked once again to give a formal confirmation that no anti-India insurgent training camps are being run by ULFA, NSCN or the ATTF inside their country. Thirdly, considering that nearly two crore illegal Bangladesh immigrants are already in India, Of which nearly 50 lacs are in Assam, a joint Indo-Bangla Desh operation must be launched to identify and then to send these immigrants back to Bangla Desh.

Finally, it is high time that Bangla Desh is told in clear terms that India suffered 14,000 casualities (nearly 3,700 dead) in the Indo-Pak war of 1971 to create Bangla Desh. Therefore, is it fair for Bangla Desh to side with India's adversaries and to ignore India? These then are the minimum actions to start with. If no action is taken, Begum Zia will be calling the shots with support from China and Pakistan in the future. While Al Qaeda and ISI, backed by the fundamentalist Jamate Islami will ensure that there is no respite for India in the NE.

Russian school carnage

By Cecil Victor

The final act of the twentieth century was the winding down of the Cold War with the destruction of the former Soviet Union. It began with the secession of the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from the Soviet Union using Gorbachev’s perestroika to wrest nationhood based on race with considerable direct involvement of the US Navy.

Soon attention was turned to Yugoslavia (one of the bastions of Nonalignment) where Tito managed to hold together a nationhood in which constituent races like the Croats and the Serbs enjoyed control of the prime ministership by rotation. NATO in its expansionist exuberance set Croats against the Serbs unleashing a bloodbath that remains unsated to this day, the US-brokered Dayton Peace Accord notwithstanding. Out of the pieces of Yugoslavia a Muslim nation was created which like Pakistan and Northern Ireland before it, is an oxymoron by any standards.

With the end of the Cold War and only one Super Power left standing the only peace in Yugoslavia is that in the many graveyards that dot the landscape. From race and religion the parameters for nationhood have rapidly deteriorated to tribalism as is evident from such nomenclatures as Chechnya, Ossetia, Ingushetia, etc. The only nation in Europe that split but its components decided to live in peace with each other were the Czechs and the Slovaks of the former Czechoslovakia.

After the Afghan experiment of using Islamic fundamentalism as a Cold War weapon the US created a set of modern-day "khalifas" with laissez faire to use Islam as a tool for social engineering. Pakistan, because of its status as a "frontline State" vis-à-vis Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, used all the money and weapons that the US and its NATO allies pumped into it to expand its "sphere of influence" into the Muslim Ummah and set about "Talibanising" the tribes of Afghanistan. Central to this policy was the lebensraum provided to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Saudi Arabian oil wealth and Pakistani military genius were melded under US tutelage to create the Islamic terrorist echelons that took on the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. When the Soviets withdrew Washington allowed the fractured structure of tribalism, on which both Saudi and Pakistani societies are constructed, to be projected as the cornerstone of the Islamic nation-state.

The US was comfortable with the fractured nature of tribalism because it had learned early in its foray into imperialism and colonialism (when it set about "filling the vacuum" created by a receding British Raj) that it assists the process of penetration and propagation. Small was manageable and the steppingstones in US imperialism were islands like Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, Okinawa and Guam in the Pacific were good launching pads for power projection because of their small, controllable populations.

But it was in its failure to curb the ambitions of its minions, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, to use Islamic fundamentalism for their own ends that saw the expansion of the creed of terror beyond Afghanistan into the former Central Asian Republics of the Soviet Union. Thus Arabs and Pakistanis organized training camps in which young men and women from Islamic tribes in Europe were invited to learn the fine art of murder and mayhem and indoctrinated in a philosophy of being awarded in the afterlife with ministrations by fairies. Chechens were among the most numerous attendants.

These cohorts fanned out into Europe, Kashmir, South East Asia and the Philippines but the US refused to see the danger posed by the Al Qaeda, whose leader Osama bin Laden, had been quite vociferous in his hatred of the US for its presence in Saudi Arabia and the lands holy to Islam. And when Al Qaeda struck on 9/11 the world changed for the Americans.

They put pressure on Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to dismantle the networks they had created but, and this is significant because it is the contributory factor to the massacre of the children in the Russian school, NATO was allowed to turn a blind eye to the armed Islamic gangs in Europe because they facilitated NATO expansion eastwards into the former Soviet Union.

In Europe the Cold War mindset is still predominant and it was evident in the "in your face" style of the electronic media which persistently sought to inject into its coverage an element of accusation of the Russian handling of both the theatre episode of 2002 and the recent school carnage and thereby giving credence to the terrorists and their aims and objectives.

In the case of the school carnage it is now abundantly clear, because of the video footage made by the terrorists, that the gang was not homogenous, was riven with factions, and its murderous intent was not confined to the Russian children. They were not averse to killing each other and that was what caused the premature disintegration of the mission.

This is a phenomenon that Europeans in particular need to be wary about because there is still within the European conclave a tendency to equate terrorism with "self determination". Not long ago the European Union gave advice to India on how to handle the Kashmir situation. It reeked of the same attitude that allows terrorism a role in "self-determination".

The lesson of the Russian school carnage is that the War on Terrorism cannot be confined to specific geographic compartments. Chechen terrorism cannot be fine if it is directed against the Soviet Union because Chechens are found in many of the disparate modules that have been scattered around the world. Ditto with Pakistani terrorists whose global reach was imprinted on 9/11. The Saudi government has learned to its dismay that the little Frankensteins it so gleefully financed for action around the globe have come home to roost with deadly intent.

The very existence of "modules" in a terrorist superstructure indicates a proclivity to tribalism and if the US thought that "small was beautiful" when it set off on its global imperialism beginning from East of Suez; Islamic fundamentalists have taken a leaf out of its book. — (ADNI)