Vishwaroopam protesters, irritants without a cause

So I went and heard what Kamal Haasan had to say, and watched his film Vishwaroopam. After watching it, I think the protests against the film were complete rubbish, and entirely unwarranted.

The film is an action thriller on the theme of international terrorism. It is set in New York and the region now known as AfPak, meaning the badlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan.Both the main villain in the movie, played by Rahul Bose, and the hero, played by Kamal Haasan, are shown to be Muslims. This Good Muslim vs Bad Muslim formulation itself is perhaps not very imaginative, but that is the worst that can reasonably be said against it.

As mainstream entertainment cinema, it does what it is supposed to do, which is entertain. There is plenty of action, a bit of song and dance, and a dash of suspense.
It cannot reasonably be considered more offensive than plenty of other films that have been made on the subject of terrorism in recent years, including many that played to packed halls in India. For example, Aamir Khan's Fanaa had him playing a Kashmiri terrorist, which is certainly closer to home than Rahul Bose playing an Afghan terrorist.

We also see similar stories playing out in the daily news with rather alarming frequency, and have, for at least the past 13 years. It's been on TV, there are enough and more clips online, and those who are especially unfortunate have seen some of it live, in places like Mumbai, for example. Those acts have been perpetrated by terrorist groups that operate in the name of Islam. It is known around the world as Islamist terrorism (and if there are terrorist acts by Hindu extremists in the name of Hinduism, it should be called Hindutva terrorism. Denial never changes truths).

As Javed Akhtar pointed out, those fringe elements from the Muslim community who are protesting the film now for showing a certain kind of terrorism in fiction did not come out in protest when there was actual terrorism in the name of Islam in fact. They are accusing Kamal Haasan of projecting Islam in a bad light, but what light do the real actions of Al Qaeda, Taliban and the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba and their ilk project Islam in? People's impressions of Islam have been formed, and ruined, by the actions of those groups, not the cinema of Kamal Haasan.

The kind of people who are protesting now are the ones who give their community a bad name. They should be told to shut up, because they are annoying and silly.

9/11: The long shadow in South Asia

Today is 9/11. It’s a date charged with meaning and history. Few of us who were old enough to remember the day will ever forget what we were doing when the two hijacked planes hit the twin towers in New York a decade ago. 

I used to work for India Today newsmagazine at the time. I remember hearing of the first plane hitting the towers, and heading towards the TV a floor below to see it. By the time I got there the second plane had hit. My hair stood on end, because I realised this could not be coincidence. 

Half an hour later, the Pentagon took a hit. The US president was rushed to a bomb shelter somewhere because the Americans realised they were under attack from an unidentified foe. They scrambled their fighter jets, but the jets didn’t really know what to shoot at.

In days that followed, it became clear that the attacks had been coordinated by a group named Al Qaeda, and the name of Osama bin Laden became synonymous with terrorism throughout the world.

In the decade that followed, a lot happened. The Americans invaded Afghanistan and found themselves battling Mujahideen forces they had helped arm and train. Pakistan was quickly drawn into the conflict, and had to choose between supporting the Americans or going to war against them, and possibly India. General Pervez Musharraf quickly decided that this was a losing proposition, and so Pakistan began a painful turnaround to confront its former protégés, including the Taliban, which was then in government in Kabul.

The Americans and their western allies have managed to knock the Taliban out of government. They eventually killed Osama bin Laden too, only a few months ago. They have used targeted assassination of key figures as part of the strategy to eliminate terror attacks directed against them. 

However, Afghanistan remains a mess, and its president Hamid Karzai is by all accounts little more than the mayor of Kabul. His control does not extend beyond the borders of the capital. The American plans to withdraw from Afghanistan have come to nought. They are stuck there in an expensive and apparently endless conflict, much as the Russians before them.

The American decision to stay on for another decade in Afghanistan may have come as something of a surprise to the Taliban. 

Friends visiting from there had mentioned that the Taliban were already wondering if China would be the next to attack them. They had written off the Americans as goners.

The Americans on their part were keen to depart, because they figured they could continue the war through drones and cruise missiles. No one can actually run a government in Kabul, or Baghdad, or anywhere else, unless they have the military hardware to stop cruise missiles and drones. 

The calculation was simple: the Taliban could either strike a deal with them, and share power in Afghanistan, or continue the fight and stew.

The Taliban have apparently chosen to stew, and keep the Americans in the pot with them. 

The other folks who feel the heat from this conflict are the Pakistanis, and to a lesser extent, the Indians. Pakistan suffers more than we do because they are the frontline state in this conflict. They’ve had a proper war going on in various parts of their country these last 10 years. Their internal convulsions from this war are continuing.

Both India and Pakistan have suffered grievously from terrorism. Yet there is an element of irony in the terror tragedies that befell Pakistan. 

Their military headquarters were attacked, a naval base in Karachi was attacked, the Marriott hotel in Islamabad was attacked, to name only a few. The attackers in every instance had earlier found shelter, and even support, from elements in the Pakistani state establishment.

A lot of the monsters they created have turned on them now. And yet, elements in the Pakistani state continue to harbour and protect many of these characters. The raid that got Osama proved this beyond any reasonable doubt.

Pakistani hawks keep their pet terrorists in their protection as weapons to be used as and when needed. Osama, of course, was also a blank cheque because in the name of the ‘war on terror’ the Pakistanis got billions of dollars from the Americans. 

The weapons are used to ensure that Pakistan has leverage in bargaining with India or Afghanistan or the US.

The strategic goals of Pakistan are at odds with those of the other countries. India will not give them all of Kashmir, however much they may want it. Nor will the Afghans and Americans give Pakistan’s cronies the keys to Kabul. 

The Pakistani state is therefore going to find itself in a bind as long as it continues to desire what it cannot realistically expect to get. 

Terrorism has escaped from the camps and spread through the country. The genie is out of the bottle, and will not hesitate to bite the hand that fed it.

India, which is a close neighbour, suffers along because of the conflicting ambitions of Pakistani hardliners. The problem for India is Kashmir. Indian ‘nationalists’ and Pakistani hawks both demand the entire state for themselves. Kashmiris from the valley generally demand freedom, azadi. They have a strong sense of a unique history and identity separate from that of India or Pakistan.

The situation is complicated because the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir was not ethnically homogenous. There’s Jammu, with its largely Hindu Dogra population, the valley of Kashmir with its Kashmiri Muslim population, and Ladakh with its Tibetan Buddhist population. 

On the other side of the Line of Control, too, there are various peoples in the Pakistani administered part of Kashmir and in Gilgit-Baltiststan. Jats, Rajputs and various tribal groups speaking different languages live in those areas. 

It is unlikely that all of these peoples would choose to live under the rule of Kashmiris from the valley. The demand for a united and independent Kashmir must take this fact into account. Kashmiris have to recognise that Jammu & Kashmir is also a mini India in itself.

Pakistan’s demand for all of Kashmir is even more untenable. India cannot, and is not, going to hand Kashmir over, and that should be apparent by now. Nor does the Kashmiri demand for azadi translate into Pakistani rule. Freedom is presumably not the same as bondage under a different master. 

India is the status quoist power in the equation. The Indian government and people would, in all likelihood, settle for a peaceful and democratic administration in the part of Jammu and Kashmir now under Indian control. 

The only dispute here is over the extent of autonomy, and that is negotiable, as long as it stops short of secession. 

An honourable solution can be found that would end or diminish terror attacks in India, and the painful conflict in Kashmir, if all sides back away from their maximalist positions. 

The attack on Lanka's team

The question is: Que bono. Who benefits?
Not India, who gain nothing from strengthening hardliners opposed to it in Pakistan or Sri Lanka. Nor the Pakistan or Lanka governments.
Sometimes the most likely suspects are really the ones whodunit. In this case, that would be Lashkar+Taliban. If intelligence agencies can cooperate, so can terrorists and insurgents.

After Mumbai

As suspected, it has turned out to be LeT terrorists with backing from the ISI and al Qaeda who carried out the Mumbai Nov 26 attacks. As expected, Pakistan's military has prevented all attempts at cooperation in bringing to justice the perpetrators of these attacks.
The arrests of these terrorists and their detention in Pakistan can be expected to yield no benefits for India. This is just a sham, and meaningless. Criminals run operations from their jail cells even here, without state patronage. Surely they can do so from jail there, with a little help from their friends.
The US and UK will not help India any more than they are. Like true romantics, they are unable to give up hoping against hope that the Pakistan ISI will somehow have a change of heart, someday, and really start fighting against terrorists instead of training and arming them.
India must therefore learn once again to help itself.
A first step in this regard would be the launch of a trade contest versus Pakistan. The products they mainly export - garments, textiles, yarn, petroleum products - are items India also does business in. The areas they export to are also our markets.
We must therefore suspend trade with Pakistan immediately and attempt to replace their goods with ours everywhere.
Pakistan government officials have already admitted that the attackers were Pakistani and said they had camps inside Pakistan. International economic sanctions against the key individuals and organisations named for involvement in the attack must be pushed through.
If UN sanctions could be imposed against Col Gadaffi's Libya (over handing over of two terror suspects), why can't they be imposed against at least the individuals and organisations in Pakistan who are known supporters of terror?
All this eventually is also in the world's, and Pakistan's, interest. A Talibanised Pakistan wouldn't be very good to Sherry Rehman, for example - or to anyone who prefers the 21st Century to the 16th.

Why they attacked Mumbai...

The attack on Mumbai is having its political fallout at this moment. It will continue till at least the general elections around March 2009. Perhaps I should worry about that, but frankly, both the BJP and the Congress have proved to be bunches of dickheads when it comes to matters of national security. There's little to choose between the two. The only difference is in the noises they make.
So my concern is more about who launched this attack and why. Several observers are saying it was Lashkar-e-Toiba with al Qaeda strategising. A few are saying ISI and Pak army - their SSG commandos. On Thursday and Friday, I was telling folks in office it's the former, but today, in light of more information, I'm more inclined to think it's the latter or an amalgamation of both. This was most likely strategised by elements in the Pakistan establishment. Training was excellent, Pak army. Execution - we'll know soon, for sure.
My initial hunch was this was done to ease pressure from the al Qaeda on the Pak-Afghan border, besides hurting India, and other countries hated by Pak extremists, like USA, UK, Israel. However there are other strategic factors that also may have played into this.
The Pakistan military is worried about the possible balkanisation of the country, and those fears have grown since the appearance of maps put out by US agencies showing exactly this. The US's recent National Intelligence Committee report questioning whether Pakistan would hold together until 2025, and talking of the erasure of the Durand Line, can't have done much to ease the worries of those chaps. In early November, maps also appeared on billboards in NWFP that showed a free Pashtunistan. Wonder who put those up - the moderate, nationalist Pashtuns or friends of the Taliban?
The Taliban is looking for a homeland, but in whose interest is it to give it to them? Is Mumbai the first point on a trajectory that will lead to a war which will see either the creation of a new country between Afghanistan and Pakistan or the fall of Kabul?
I have no access to information to be able to analyse this properly, and no time after my day job to give it a proper go. However, those who do may perhaps ponder deeper into the matter. And do let me know what your thoughts on this are.

Watch out for more trouble

It doesn't take a genius to point out that this country, like much of the world, is living once again through troubled times. Perhaps we do need to take proper stock, however, of the size and number of problems facing the country at present.

There's the so-called 'meltdown'. It is apparently quite bad, the Sensex is down to less than half its highest-ever peak of a year ago. It is making some people - about 3-4 per cent of the population, at most - less rich.

There's the Marathi vs 'North Indian' in Mumbai. This is more serious and has greater long-term consequences. It affects more people directly; it also spreads and hardens sentiments of regionalism and parochialism around the country. The Bihari who is beaten up in Mumbai goes back and attacks trains in Bihar. Marathis there are no longer safe. The virus can easily spread further afield, as chauvinists everywhere learn by example and apply the same methods in their own areas of influence. So Bangalore and Chennai and even Ahmedabad could see similar movements. Similar things have of course happened in Assam and across Northeast India in the past, and it will be no surprise if they recur. In fact the Gorkhaland movement in Bengal owes a lot to the anti-outsider movement in Meghalaya. Nepali-speakers who were displaced from Shillong went to Darjeeling and helped fuel the fires for a homeland there.

There's home-grown Muslim terrorism, and now, home-grown Hindu terrorism. This is cause for major concern, because it has the potential to do serious harm to the country and the region. The hard Right among Hindus is growing in strength again, across the country. It's riots in Orissa and Karnataka and bomb blasts in Gujarat and Maharashtra, but it's bad news all around. Since every extremism always strengthens its opposite pole, it is natural to expect the Muslim and Christian Right to gain in influence too. One can argue about who started it, but the end is likely to be bloody. By sheer force of numbers the majority would expect to survive. However the inability of military means to subdue large groups is by now evident around the globe. India itself has failed in Kashmir, Manipur, Nagaland and Sri Lanka. The only success - in Punjab - came because of Sikh officers leading a Sikh force. It stands to reason that the rise of the Right needs to be defeated if the country is to be saved.

There's the growth of the Maoist Left. This is a group that commands support in rural pockets from the Nepal border down to the Arabian Sea coast of Karnataka. It is bound to gain support given the kind of unfair and unequal development the world, and our country, has witnessed. The 'middle class' here is much glorified, but largely mythical. It is defined as people whose earnings are between two and four times the poverty line, which is $1.25 a day in purchasing power parity terms. That's about Rs 15-20 in real terms. Does Rs 1,200 a month buy a 'middle class' living? I'd think not. So I expect further violence and bloodshed as the deprived poor struggle for their place in the Indian sun.
Wait for it, and watch out.

No denying responsibility for terror

I've always liked all the Pakistanis I've met, but clearly the people I've met are not the people launching terrorist attacks.
Yesterday, The New York Times ran a story saying:
"American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials."
The story went on to quote a US State Department official as saying there was finally 'direct proof' of ISI involvement in aiding a terrorist attack, specifically the one on the Indian embassy in Kabul.
The ISI is supposedly this 'state within a state' that goes off on its own and helps the Taliban, Al Qaeda, pretty much every terrorist group operating in Kashmir, Dawood Ibrahim, and anyone else in this part of the world who wants to start their own terror franchise.
The Pakistani state denies knowledge of all this.
It works just fine for the Pakistani state, but it's not so hunky dory for the people who come in at the receiving end of the terror.
Since the Pakistani state has proved incapable of locking up its loonies, shouldn't someone else go in and do it for them - maybe someone who's bearing the brunt of their incapacity? The Pakistan government can't really talk about sovereignty if it's not in sovereign control of its own spy agency. I wonder if the Pakistan government would believe it if an Indian missile were to land in downtown Karachi, and Mr Singh were to adjust his spectacles and say, "Er, sorry, I don't know who did it."
That wouldn't make everything all right, would it?