A few lessons

Source: Indian Express
Wednesday, Sep 16, 2009 at 0232 hrs

“Arun Shourie has attacked the Chief Minister, A.R. Antulay because the latter has opposed America’s decision to give arms to Pakistan... Arun Shourie’s well-known connections with the American CIA... He was got a job at the World Bank... Since his return to India, he has been using the pretext of his son’s illness to regularly visit his bosses abroad. . .”

Across the top of the page was a photograph of our helpless little son laughing away in my arms.

Though twenty-seven years have gone by, I still remember the smear that a glossy magazine put out when I wrote the series that led Mrs Gandhi to eventually have Antulay resign. That was a load of nonsense, of course. It constituted no answer to the facts that had been printed. Even that bit about the CIA was of no consequence. After all, it was a conventional slur in those days — Mrs Gandhi herself had insinuated that a “foreign hand” had been behind even as saintly a person as JP and his movement. It was that bit about “using the pretext of his son’s illness to regularly visit his bosses abroad” that infuriated me no end. The least of it was that I had scarcely been abroad since I had returned during the Emergency — only once after our child had been reduced to a handkerchief by the sedatives he was fed by doctors here and we were told to urgently take him to London. It was the pretext business.

Pretext? PRETEXT? My head screamed. Our son could not walk: thirty-four now, he still cannot. He could not stand: he still cannot. He could not use his right hand and arm: he still cannot. He could see only as if through a tunnel: that is still the limit of his vision today. He could barely speak: he still speaks syllable by syllable. And here were some swine who said his illness was a pretext that I was using.

I sued the magazine for defamation. Through its lawyer — quite a famous man in Bombay at the time, and, I am sure, a very highly priced one — the magazine ensured one adjournment after another. Eventually, it filed an affidavit: through this sworn document and its famous lawyer, the magazine said we hold Arun Shourie in the highest esteem; indeed, he has blazed new trails in Indian journalism; far from having proof for what we published, we do not believe a word of what was printed, it swore; we only wanted to alert our readers to the kind of things that are being said even about such a person in our society. . .

“They can drag the case on forever. . .” I was advised. “In the end, you will have to settle for an apology. . . They are prepared to print straightaway the apology you draft. . . Why not settle the matter? Why not draft the apology you want printed? They will print it promptly. . .”

I drafted an abject text for the apology. They printed it — conspicuously. For all I know, gleefully. That I succumbed to the advice burns my heart to this day.

This time round also, there has been the usual crop. “These have been the pampered boys of the BJP. . . They came to the party only for cream. As the party, having lost the elections, cannot give them any cream now, they are hurling these accusations. . . He is doing this only for publicity. He wants to be a political martyr. We will give him the opportunity. . . He is saying all this only because he got to know that he will not be given a third-term in the Rajya Sabha. . .”

Nor was I the only one who had such pejoratives flung at him. Jaswant Singh had written a letter asking the party leadership to hold those who had been responsible for the electoral campaign and defeat “only because he was upset that he would be losing a room in Parliament”! Yashwant Sinha too had demanded that the party make an honest and open assessment of the shortcomings that had led to its defeat. He had himself won the Lok Sabha poll, and handsomely. But he was dubbed “a frustrated politician” in the stories that were planted.

Mr Advani had been maintaining that he had not known about various aspects of the Kandahar exchange of terrorists for hostages. Jaswant Singh disclosed facts that put Mr Advani’s account in question. Brajesh Mishra set out further facts. Yashwant Sinha endorsed what Mishra had stated. With these statements, four members of the cabinet committee on security, excluding Mr Vajpayee all four other than Mr Advani, had called Mr Advani’s version in question — for George Fernandes had already said that Mr Advani had perhaps forgotten that he had been in, and participated in, the meetings at which each of the decisions had been taken. There must have been a way to set the doubts at rest. But what did the spokesman do?

“Mr Mishra’s statements are unfounded, unfortunate and politically motivated,” declared one of the current spokesmen of the BJP. “He is not a member of the BJP.”

What had the veracity or otherwise of Mishra’s statements to do with his being or not being a member of the BJP? He was the national security advisor at the time as well as the principal secretary to the prime minister. He had participated in every single meeting and decision relating to Kandahar. Neither the spokesman-of-the-moment nor others holding party offices at the time could claim to have known first hand anything at all about what had transpired then. Nor were they producing or even pointing towards any documentary record to show that Mishra was wrong. Did those formulaic words — “unfounded, unfortunate” — prove the facts to be otherwise?

Just as important is another question, indeed from the point of view of the media, an even more important one: Is there another country in which such words are taken to be ‘“refutations”? Is there one in which they are even reported as they are here?

As for “politically motivated”, not one, but two things stand out each time the words are flung. Everyone has a motive, it seems, except them! Second, in the reckoning of our politicians, the most devastating abuse is that the other fellow is “politically motivated”!

(To be continued)

The writer is a Rajya Sabha MP from the BJP

Bringing India’s money back to Indian shores

Source: Indian Express

Tuesday , Apr 21, 2009 at 1531 hrs

Stupefied by the string of endorsements across the country of the demand that the money looted from India must be brought back, the Congress has tied itself in knots. Its spokesmen — led, as will be clear from the arguments they have advanced, by four lawyers — have given five reactions:

• •Why is Advani taking up this matter now, on the eve of elections?

• •The G-20 meeting was not the proper forum for taking up the issue.

• There is doubt about the figures.

• •Why did the BJP government replace FERA with FEMA, and thereby make the offences compoundable?

• •Is Advani not unwittingly alerting those with illegal money abroad to spirit it away from Switzerland to other tax havens?

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• •What was the NDA doing when it was in office? In any case there is doubt about the figures.

•The reactions betray panic as even the littlest reflection would have shown the “arguments” to be indefensible. Let us consider them one by one.

•Why is Advani taking up this matter now, on the eve of elections?

The fact, of course, is that Advani took up the matter with the prime minister in April last year. He wrote to Manmohan Singh soon after it became known that the German government had obtained names of persons who had stashed money in the LGT Bank in Lichtenstein. The reply from the then-finance minister P. Chidambram showed that the government intended to do little except go through the pretence of taking some steps. Soon thereafter, we were alarmed to learn that a senior official of the finance ministry had written to the then Indian ambassador in Germany not to press the Germans for release of the names of Indians in the list that they had obtained from Lichtenstein — lest the Germans take offence and conclude that they were being pressurised and their bona fides were being questioned! [This information was later confirmed by the report filed by Amitabh Ranjan in The Indian Express of March 31, 2009]. Subsequently, we took up the matter in Parliament too. And yet the evasion, “Why now?”

•The G-20 meeting was not the proper forum for taking up the issue.

This customarily self-serving rationalisation was put out by one of the Congress party’s lawyers and spokesmen. At this very time the party was trying to insinuate that, actually, the PM had taken up the matter at the G-20 summit. As its spokesmen could not point to any statement he made either at the summit or the subsequent press meet, they drew solace from a passing reference he had made at Gordon Brown’s dinner.

In any case, if the G-20 summit was not the right forum for taking up this matter, how is it that in the communiqué that the G-20 leaders issued on April 2, 2009, in paragraph 15, entitled, “Strengthening the Financial System,” they pledged”to take action against non-cooperative jurisdictions, including tax havens. We stand ready to deploy sanctions to protect our public finances and financial systems. The era of banking secrecy is over. We note that the OECD has today published a list of countries assessed by the Global Forum against the international standard for exchange of tax information”? Were they also, in the view of the Congress party, acting inappropriately when they made such a strong commitment in their communiqué at the summit?

And recall that no sooner had they issued the threat of imposing sanctions that countries which had been blacklisted by the OECD that very day began declaring that they would indeed sign up on the agreement to exchange tax information, and that includes evasion.

•In any case, there is doubt about the figures.

As is its custom, the Congress is trying to cover up the basic question of the money which has been looted from India and is lying in tax havens, by raising questions about the precision of figures and estimates. This is exactly the kind of legalisms with which persons like P. Chidambaram and other legitimisers were fielded to cover up the loot from Bofors. In its paper, “Overview of the OECD’s Work on International Tax Evasion,” the OECD itself lists studies that state that there are $1.7 trillion to $11.5 trillion which are today parked in tax havens. This OECD paper has been widely reported in the Indian press. The basic point is: even if the amounts are just a few scores of billion dollars and not one and a half trillion dollars, why should they not be brought back to India? And the fact is that other countries, much smaller countries with no superpower pretensions, have succeeded in getting their money back. Even as of last October, when the OECD released its paper, little Ireland had succeeded in recovering almost a billion Euros through an investigation into offshore banks.

Given that even small countries like Ireland have got money back, is it not a shame, is it not an outrage that, as of yesterday, 18 April, 2009, The Times of India, should be quoting the Swiss ambassador to India saying that so far, the Swiss government has received no request — not even a request — from the Indian government?

The real question is different: can the money looted from India be brought back to the country when the attitude of the government continues to be as determinedly inactive?

Can the government which allowed Ottavio Quattrochi to take his money out of banks —where it was lying frozen on court orders — be trusted to bring back the loot that is lying in Swiss banks and other tax havens? Can the government which prostituted the CBI so that he may get away from Argentina be trusted to bring the loot back?

n Why did the BJP government replace FERA with FEMA, and thereby make the offences compoundable?

Again, the Congress is relying on the short memory of its audience. The fact of the matter is that no one had been pressing more for the replacement of the harsh provisions of FERA than the Congress itself. The changes were being contemplated since 1996. The demand for doing away with the harsh provisions came to a crescendo during the VP Singh government when FERA came to be used for interrogating captains of industry — like Mr. S.L. Kirloskar — under harsh circumstances. As news reports of that period themselves indicate, FEMA which was approved by the government in July 1998, was on the lines of a draft which had been prepared under the leadership of the preceding finance minister, P. Chidambaram. Even today, if you go to the Rediff website and turn to their dispatch of 25 July, 1998, on “FEMA, Money Bills: Cabinet nods, Parliament’s turn next,” you will read, “The Bills were broadly on the lines of a draft prepared under the leadership of then Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambram.”

In any event, there is no mystery about the reasons on account of which the law was changed. They are well set out in the following passage:

“Until recently, we had a law known as the Foreign Exchange (Regulation) Act. Its object was to conserve and augment the forex reserves of the country. The way to hell, it is said, is paved with good intentions. Like many well-intentioned laws, FERA paved the way to disaster. FERA created a flourishing black market in foreign exchange. It brought into the economic lexicon the word ‘Hawala’. Illegal forex transactions became the fuel for the growth of crime syndicates with trans-border connections...FERA also became a tool of oppression. Successive governments persisted with FERA and added COFFEPOSA and SAFEMA. International markets do not respect draconian laws that run counter to common sense. India’s reserves, far from being augmented, dwindled at an alarming rate...Mercifully, FERA was buried finally on May 31, 2000.”

When and where was this written? In an article that appeared The Indian Express on 25 August 2002. Who wrote the article? None other than P. Chidambaram!

•Is Advani not unwittingly alerting those with illegal money abroad to spirit it away from Switzerland to other tax havens?

Another clever little statement by yet another clever lawyer of the Congress party! Would the looters who have stashed away money in tax havens from India still need to be alerted after Germany got the names from Lichtenstein as long ago as last year? Would they still need to be alerted after Germany offered to furnish the names to governments that asked for the names? Would they still need to be alerted after the United States got the names from the leading bank of Switzerland, UBS in February this year, and got it to submit to paying a fine of $ 800 million to boot? Would they still need to be alerted after the G-20 leaders, including Manmohan Singh as the Congress would like to remind us, declared their determination to get the tax havens to disgorge the names? But such is the confusion in the Congress party and such the brilliance of its lawyers that all it can do is to seek to deflect the nation-wide demand for getting the loot back from tax havens by such witticisms!

•What was the NDA doing when it was in office? In any case there is doubt about the figures.

Leaders of the Congress party would be better advised to ask, “During that very period, what was the Congress party doing, what were its lawyers and leaders doing, to thwart the efforts of the NDA Government to uncover the names of persons who had looted the country even on defence deals like Bofors?” But even if the NDA had done nothing — whether on terrorism or money abroad — is that any reason for not hurrying to avail of the unique opportunity that has arisen now?

Even while replacing FERA with FEMA, the NDA government made sure that it would have an additional two years to file prosecutions under FERA. And it filed as many as 2000 cases against those who were under investigation before FERA lapsed. The reason for doing so, a reason that is well known to lawyers in the Congress party, was that, when a prosecution is filed it is adjudicated according to the law which prevailed at the time at which the case was filed. These are the very cases which the Congress did not pursue later.

The fact is that it is now that the unique opportunity has arisen to get the loot back: Germany has succeeded in getting the names; the US has succeeded in getting the names; the G-20 leaders have pledged themselves to ensure the end of bank secrecy; countries that had hitherto refused to share the requisite information are pledging to do so — within a week of their names being published by OECD in the list of countries that were dragging their feet on the question, Costa Rica, Malaysia, Philippines and Uruguay pledged to enter into the relevant agreements.

Conclusion

There is a real fight ahead: a fight in the national interest, a fight that will have to be waged doggedly to get the names from the tax havens and to get the amounts back to India — as tax havens will not easily part with their route to lucre. And not all countries will be eager to wage the fight — so many rulers in Africa, in Latin America, to say nothing of the princelings of China — will be loath to see the fight succeed. So, determination and leadership will be required of India, and persistence, and forging alliances with civil society in Europe and elsewhere.

Nor are bilateral agreements any substitute to multilateral pressure. With close to seventy tax havens, decades will pass before agreements are concluded with each haven, even as money is spirited from the haven that has signed up to the one that is holding out. As has been correctly emphasised, a consensus is already emerging across the country. Leaders outside the political realm, parties such as the CPM, SP, BSP, JD(U), AIADMK have all demanded that the government act energetically to get the names from the tax havens and to get back the amounts. Instead of quibbling, the Congress would be well-advised to endorse the consensus, and act on it. Not joining secular forces on even so secular an issue?!

The writer is a BJP MP in the Rajya Sabha

The Lunatic Mainstream Vs A Slender Fringe

Arun Shourie






"Aap log jis jazbe aur walwalese Jihad karten hain, vo Bharati kutton, muaf kijiye, faujiyon ko apni bandookein uthane ka mauka bhi nahin milta'' -- the passion and fervour with which you wage Jihad does not leave the opportunity for these Bharati dogs, pardon us, these Bharati militarymen to even pick up their rifles. ''Agar aap isi tareh Bharati faujiyon ko makhi macchar ki tareh jahanum ki vaadiyon mein dhakelte rahe, to ankareeb Bharat ka koi bhi kutta muazarat fauji Kashmir ka rukh nahin karega'' -- if you continue to push them into hell in this way, like flies and mosquitoes, no Indian dog, begging you pardon, no Indian militaryman will dare look towards Kashmir. ''Phir aapke paas karne ko kuch nahin rahega'' -- and then nothing will be left for you to do. ''Doosri taraf yeh bhi khadsha hai ki jahanum ke daroga sahib aap se khafa ho jain, ki yeh kya gandagi aur gilazat ke anbaar meri taraf bhijwaye ja rahe ho'' -- on the other hand, there is the apprehension that the daroga of hell may get infuriated at you, and demand, ''What is this filth you are going on dispatching to me ?'' ''Kahin aisa na ho ki in gande keedon, muaf kije phir bhool ho gayi, Bharati faujiyon ka dakhila jahanum mein bhi band kar diya jaye'' -- and it should not come to pass, that the entry of these filthy worms into hell too gets stopped.

Serious analysis in Khabarein, a leading paper of Lahore, of 10 July, laced with the ''wit'' and ''sarcasm'' that is typical of Pakistan's Urdu press. The author proceeds to dissect the use of the word ''infiltrators'' by ''Indian beasts, beg your pardon, politicians'' to describe the mujahideen. These beasts were angry with Sonia Gandhi, he explains. She is more beautiful than Indian women, speaks good English, and is going to become the Indian Prime Minister in a short while, he says. Alarmed, the Indian politicians started saying that she was an ''infiltrator'' into the family of Jawaharlal Nehru. That is how the term came into wide use. When India's crippled and temporary Prime Minister, Vajpayee, found his chair and dhoti slipping, the author explains, he started using this term for the mujahideen. But people know the reality. They know that the real infiltrators into Kashmir are Hindu banias, and Bharati dogs -- the militarymen -- who want to bark and bite like any dog...

Vajpayee comes in most for this kind of ''wit'' -- bar-e-sagheer ke do number shayaron ka dada, the second-rate don of petty poets... And Advani -- neem Pakistani aur adha Hindustani Kaliya... But since the ''Washington declaration'' of July 4, they are left far behind: Clinton is way ahead-- that almi shoharat yafta zani, that internationally notorious rapist, as the analyst of Ausaf refers to him in the issue of 19 July, or more frquently as that Shaitan Clinton, as Clinton the devil.

Indian forces are invariably referred to as Bharati kutte, as Indian dogs, as the darinda-sift Bharati afwaz, as the beast-like Indian forces... India continues to be pictured as a country on the verge of disintegration, as a country in the grip of Hindu banias, who are hell-bent on pursuing Brahmin imperialism.

When the Washington statement came out, at first several English-language papers tried to put a brave face on it. Some even pasted victory and statesmanship on it! The mujahideen have already achieved their objectives, they said: they have internationalized the Kashmir issue, and they have humiliated and demoralized the Indian Army and given it a bloody nose. And now with this declaration, Pakistan comes out looking flexible, in sharp contrast to India whose obduracy, whose ''totally rigid and purblind stand,'' whose ''dogmatism'' are now manifest to all. Nawaz Sharief was sought to be projected as the one who had saved the sub-continent, and therefore the world from a nuclear holocaust.

That phase passed swiftly. By now the refrain in Pakistan's English press is that the country must do ''serious introspection''. Why did we embark on this adventure in the first place? If we had a clear objective, why did we abandon it so abruptly? If the Pakistan Army and Government had nothing to do with it, why did we start holding daily briefings by spokesmen of Pakistani defence forces? Why did we start projecting and celebrating the victories of the mujahideen as if these were of our forces? Why did we send our diplomats and ministers all over the world to argue their case? As the mujahideen rejected the Washington declaration outright, how come we were able to ensure that they vacated the positions they had conquered? What have our leaders accomplished except the total isolation of Pakistan?

We must as a country think whether we can ever wrest Kashmir out of India's grip without a total war, analysts in the English press write, and we must seriously assess whether we can wage an all-out war. Can a country so weak economically, can a country so much in debt that it is vulnerable to every tug from the IMF etc, launch and sustain such a war?, the country should ask, they counsel. Whether international media, whether governments the world over are biased against us or not, should we not be worried that our ranking on ''the credibility index'' has fallen as low as our ranking on ''the human development index''?, they asked.

Analyses of this kind are what our papers reproduce, and our secularists are forever hectoring us to take them to be representative of Pakistani opinion. Alas!, they represent just the fringe. And even this fringe has enough who are able to read triumph into the thrashing Pakistan has received. Enough who believe that Pakistan scored a resounding victory and that it is only ''diplomatic sluggishness'' of the Pakistan Foreign Office which squandered it, that it is only Hindu-cunning which enabled India to ''mislead international opinion'' into taking a ''one-sided stand''. Enough who are ready to convince their countrymen that the mujahideen ''have inflicted the worst ever humiliation and casualties on the arrogant Indian armed forces,'' that ''they have done the whole Muslim ummah proud by their spirit of Jihad and that flame will burn undiminished by the vagaris of politics''. Enough who believe that the Clinton-Nawaz meeting ''marks the pinnacle of internationalization of the Kashmir issue ever achieved at any time in the past,'' that the mujahideen ''achieved the pinnacle of glory with an unmatched success in drawing world attention to the cause of freedom in Kashmir''. Enough who declare that Washington has asked India to respect the Line of Control. Enough who seriously argue that there were ''three objectives Pakistan wanted to achieve from the Kargil situation, namely internationalization of the Kashmir problem, attracting attention of the US President and averting full-fledged war with India,'' and that of these ''all have been achieved''. Enough to forecast that to ''assuage the grievously hurt Indian ego,'' Indians would pounce on the withdrawing mujahideen and cause a ''bloodbath'', that India could not but do so as the Government has stoked an unimaginable ''war hysteria'' all across India...

Enough who believe, to use the words of General Javed Nasir, that Kargil was a brilliant idea brilliantly executed, and that it could not succeed only because ''it lacked the will of Allah.'' Enough who don't just go on parroting self-deluding nonsense. A typical example is the editorial of the Pakistan Observer of July 3: there is a revival of the Khalistan movement, it declares, and for good reason. The Khalistan movement leaders who have been compelled to take refuge in Europe remain concerned about the ''sufferings of the Sikh community''. More important, ''Concern has also been voiced about Hindu military command's decision to deploy Sikh jawans and officers in the forward positions of Kargil in Kashmir to be the first target of the rot (sic) from across the Line of Control. Press reports indicate growing frustration among members of the Sikh community in the Indian society including the armed forces over the second class citizens' treatment being meted out to them. The revival of the Khalistan movement is, therefore, not only understandable but also justified, for the realisation of their just rights...'' And the outcome is certain: ''History bears testimony to the fact that no amount of suppression and repression can deprive individuals and communities determined to retrieve their rights. Sikhs too are, therefore, bound to be triumphant ultimately, irrespective of the excesses to which they are being subjected by the Hindu majority of India''. [These representative propositions and observations are taken from the issues of Dawn, News, Frontier Post, Pakistan Observer, and Nation from the last week of June and the first half of July.]

It isn't just that there are enough even among the sensible fringe who believe this kind of nonsense, they urge it in their writings, they build plans on it. But the more important point is that the ones advancing this rubbish constitute the saner lot.

The mainstream is maniacal. Even a fortnight after the Pakistani forces began withdrawing even as the papers of the terrorist organizations themselves were denouncing Nawaz Sharief for selling out to that ''internationally notorious rapist'', speaker after speaker at the rallies was declaring that ''caravans of mujahideen are proceeding to Kargil at this very time.'' Ten days into the withdrawal the analyst of Ausaf is telling his readers. ''The kafirs are being subjugated. Siachin is slipping out of India's occupation. Siachin and the kafirs are in danger Muslims and Islam are dominating...''' The next day another analyst writes, ''The Hindu bania understands only the language of force'', that, therefore, they must prepare themselves for a decisive war against India, that without such a war the Hindu bania will not withdraw from Kashmir till the day of kayamat. ''One should know that the Hindu understands the language of force. The Kashmiri mujahideen have disabled this cunning and wicked enemy with courage, and it is high time that the heinous mask of so-called democracy and peace should be removed from his face to expose the reality...''

A Jihad-e-Kashmir conference is held in Islamabad on 15 July. Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, head of the Markaz Dawa wal Irshad, the parent organization of the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, declares that Sharif can go on giving assurances but he cannot make the mujahideen withdraw from Kargil. He announces that they will continue to occupy the positions they hold in Kargil and will devise a new strategy to move further. The Amir of Al Badr Mujahideen, Punjab, Ahmed Hamzah, declares that no one can dare ask them to vacate the heights, and challenges anyone who dares to try and enforce the Clinton-Nawaz agreement. Amir Hamza, the editor of the terrorist organization's publication, Al Dawa, tells the conference that they do not need a coward for a Prime Minister -- one who does not even know the map of Kashmir. Hafiz Abdus Salam Bhatvi, leader of the Marakaz Dawa wal Irshad, declares that Jihad has become a flashpoint throughout the world, that they have rejected the Washington, Lahore and Tashkent declarations, that they do not recognise the Security Council, and that they will continue the Jihad. That being the case, the map of India is set to shrink, and that of Pakistan is set to expand. Abdul Aziz Alvi, Amir of the Markaz in PoK, declares that the Jihad will continue till Kashmir is liberated, that it will continue till the day of kayamat... Commander Bakht Zamin of Al Badr speaks over the wireless-- so the audience is told -- from Kargil. He announces that they are going to open new fronts soon...

Jang, Nawa-e-Waqt, Ausaf and other papers carry reports of a massive Sajjad-e-Shahid Conference held at Rawalkot on 17 July. They reproduce the posters: the war will continue till the destruction of India,'' "Harkat ka ek ek mujahid, Atom Bomb, Atom Bomb." Each mujahid of the Harkat is an Atom Bomb, an Atom Bomb, ''Kal Roos bikharte dekha tha, ab India toot-te dekhenge", We saw Russia disintegrate yesterday, we shall see India breaking up now; "Ham barq-e-Jihad ke sholon mein America jalte dekhenge," we shall see America burn in the lightning of Jihad.. Kargil has become the battlefield of Karbala, the speakers shout. The mujahideen are following the path of the Prophet while Nawaz is following the path of Clinton, they proclaim. If the ruling elites do not give up their ways, they warn, the passions which have been unleashed against India can turn against Pakistan as well. Ten thousand or so are reported to have been present. To a man, woman and child they take a pledge to wage Jihad, they take the pledge of martyrdom. When thousands of children, youth and elderly persons begin taking the pledge of martyrdom, writes Hamid Mir about this event in Ausaf of July 19, efforts to block them are nothing but foolishness...

The Jang of that very day, July 19, reports that the Jihad organizations have decided to form a ''Kashmir Liberation Army to carry forward the Kargil experiment. The KLA will oust the Indian Army from Kashmir through a better organised, better coordinated, better equipped operation, it reports. It will aim at maximum self-reliance like the Kosovo Liberation Army. Affluent Kashmiris living abroad will happily provide the necessary funds. Arms and ammunition requirements will be met by different agencies throughout the world...

And there is the other symptom of paranoia: Pakistan must have more conspiracy-theorists per square inch than most countries in the world. Even the English press, that saner fringe, is studded with them. ''The US silence over the continued atrocities in the Kashmir slaughter house and denial of Kashmiri's right to self-determination seems to be part of a bigger game,'' writes an analyst in the Frontier Post of 29 June, and asks, ''Who knows that the USA is not waiting for a full-scale war between India and Pakistan so that it could eventually turn Kashmir into another Kosovo for stationing US forces under the banner of NATO?'

''Had not the powers intervened to the disadvantage of the mujahideen, the intelligently planned operations by the Islamic militants and their victories in the Kargil-Drass sector might have catapulted India into an abyss of ignominy and darkness,'' declares the editorial of the Pakistan Times' of July 6. ''It is indeed painful to see the mujahideen's cause suffering such a massive setback courtesy the malicious thinking of some leading countries of the world. At the heart of the entire situation lies the prejudice of the industrialized world that holds the freedom-fighters, rather the entire Muslim community as fundamentalists identifying them as enemies of modernization, or even civilization...''

The Urdu press is of course more fertile in imagining conspiracies. The Nawa-e-Waqt widens the objectives of the conspiracy. What the USA has done is in furtherance of its ''anti-Islam, anti-Pakistan and anti-China designs,'' it states in its editorial of 26 June...

The Jasarat in its Friday Special of 9 July informs its readers that what has been done is an American conspiracy directed in the first instance to alienate the Pakistan Government and the mujahideen from each other, and then, in the second round, to confront each other. Another article sketches an even more intricate conspiracy. Nawaz and Vajpayee are the tools the USA is using. Its objective is to have Pakistan and India sign the agreement on Kashmir which it wants. For this reason the USA first allowed Nawaz to acquire autocratic powers by neutralizing all other institutions. Vajpayee was floundering. Therefore, the drama of Jayalalitha withdrawing support was staged. That ensured elections. Now withdrawal from Kargil has been forced. This will help Vajpayee win the elections. The two leaders in the saddle, USA will get them to sign the agreement it wants, on the ground that unless that agreement is signed nuclear war will break out...

The Jang of 11 July invents yet another conspiracy. Ever since Pakistan exploded its nuclear bombs, the USA wanted to punish not just Nawaz Sharief but the people of Pakistan. It has settled the score this time with the Nawaz-Clinton talks... The Ausaf of the next day informs its readers that Nawaz Sharief, Benazir Bhutto and other politicians are acting to the plans of Zanjari, the International Organization of Jewish Leaders. The objective of Zanjari is to carve out a new State comprising Ladakh, Gilgit and the Northern Areas of Pakistan. Once formed, it will be headed by the Aga Khan or some puppet nominated by him... By 19 July, the conspiracy has widened to encompass Nawaz Sharief! Ausaf declares that Nawaz Sharief is about to hand over a list of mujahideen fighting in Kashmir to the Indian Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee...

A society saturated with poison against India, a society that is convinced that it had once again won a splendid victory and was cheated out of it, a society that is convinced that the world is conspiring against it, that all its problems flow from this fact, that, therefore, Jihad is the answer...

Can a minuscule fringe hold out against this -- the lunatic mainstream?

Daily Excelsior
July 30, 1999

Kargil: Who and What is Responsible?

Arun Shourie

To attribute the occupation by Pakistanis of such extended stretches in Kargil to "an intelligence failure" is too facile. It is an evasion -- an evasion of the basic cause, an evasion of responsibility.

The basic reason why we are always taken by surprise lies in the notions of political correctness in which we have imprisoned discourse, and through that policy. Anyone who talks of the plans of Pakistan, its single-point programme to harm India, indeed anyone who talks about anything to do with our security is dubbed a war-monger. Agencies like RAW are routinely traduced. Hurling allegations at our security forces -- fabrications about human rights violations by them, and the rest -- is de rigueur. When persons who have put their lives on the line to save the country are encoiled in false cases -- as officers and men of the Punjab police have been encoiled -- not a soul raises a finger to support them.

You can do a little exercise. Look up papers or Parliamentary proceedings of the last year, and find out what happened each time Mr L K Advani drew attention to the continuing murderous activities of the ISI, and what they portended for the country, he was set upon -- in Parliament, in newspapers, in public meetings. War-monger, right-wing Hindu chauvinist, alarmist, deliberately embarrassing the Prime Minister who is trying to improve relations with our neighbour...

At my own minuscule level I have had this experience first-hand. I have had occasion to write about the way Pakistan perceives itself -- as "the not-India"; about the sway that fundamentalism has acquired there; about how this is drilled into the populace -- from quaidas to history books; about what organizations like the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba are openly proclaiming as their agenda -- to break India, to kill Hindu kafirs; about the vast resources and facilities which Pakistan's ruling establishment is channeling to them.

Each of those write-ups has been based entirely on published material, on material published in Pakistan. But each time I have written on these things, I have invariably been set upon. He is pursuing an anti-Islam agenda, he is just using Pakistan as a device to malign Muslims and Islam, he is out to create disharmony between communities...

Consider a recurring example. Today we are very exercised about occupation of some spots in Kargil by Pakistani forces and mercenaries. They are a few hundred -- assume a figure higher than anything anyone has mentioned as yet, say they are a thousand. The peaks where they have dug in are isolated, uninhabited. Recall now that on the estimates put together by the Home Ministry -- not now, but in 1992 -- over two crore Bangladeshis have made their way into India. As a result of this demographic invasion, large tracts of our country -- for instance, in Assam -- are such that the state police does not dare to even enter them. But the moment the matter is raised, the shout, "Anti-Bengali," "Anti-Muslim"...

This shutting of eyes is being made worse by the new ideology. Take out the newspapers of the last three weeks, the period during which the enemy has been killing our soldiers, during which, diplomatese apart, we have been invaded and have been at war. Total up the relative space that these papers devoted to the cricket World Cup and to the fighting in Kargil. Now, it is not the case that the country has suddenly become sports-minded during the last five years. It is just that corporations invested vast amounts to make use of the event to advertise their products. Papers have reported figures ranging up to eight hundred crores. These amounts having been invested, a hype about it was created.

One part is the obscenity of it, I can think of no other word: that our soldiers should be laying down their lives, and our papers should be whipping up lather about matches in England. The other thing is the effect such hype has on, literally, the ability of a country to prosecute a war. Ridding an area so remote, an area with terrain of the type Kargil has is not a one-day match. Every inch has to be fought for, with lives. The engagement is bound to take long. And, given the singular aim of a country like Pakistan, wresting the area back is not going to be the end of the matter by any means: ensuring that Pakistan will not get an opportunity to reoccupy the place will require protracted, arduous, meticulous work. A people who hear about Kargil for three-four minutes in the evening news, and then settle down to watch the day's match for four-five hours will never have the staying power that defence against a focused, indoctrinated enemy requires.

It is this atmosphere -- not just the failure of some one agency -- which paves the way for an enemy. Mental habits are fatal by themselves But so feeble has our State and our society become that we will not be able to put even crass self-interest away for the defence of our land, certainly not in any substantial way, certainly not for more than a moment. Take the failure to detect the occupation in Kargil itself. To prevent intrusion in that kind of area requires continuous physical presence. It requires sophisticated equipment. Maintaining a presence in Siachin costs the country Rs 3.5 crores a day. Armymen say that maintaining an equivalent presence in the entire Kargil area will cost three to four times that amount. That would amount to 10 to 12 crores a day. A person like me certainly believes that as such amounts are required, they must be provided, that the way we are placed leaves us no option. And the amounts can be found: half the total amount can be found by cutting just one boondoggle -- just eliminate the 2 crores which is placed at the disposal of every Member of Parliament to spend on "development projects" in his constituency. You will get sixteen hundred crores by doing just that little thing.

But here is an exercise. Find the MPs who will agree to abolish this largesse they have conferred on themselves. Or find a group which will accept a reduction in the subsidy which it has wrested from the State.

So, when we say there has been an "intelligence failure" we are stating an important fact, but we are also just using a phrase. By it we are evading the basic cause. We are diverting attention from our own responsibility in the matter.

I have already dealt with what happens when, even on such a matter, we deal with our ministers and governments as if they were the enemy who is to be trapped, and made a fool of. That itself is just the symptom -- it results from the basic mental fashion: not to be finding fault with those defending our country, not to be denouncing those who are speaking up for it is seen as being a primitive. The release of the Parvez Musharraf tapes holds another lesson. At least on occasion we should have faith in what our governments are saying. Repeatedly, the Prime Minister and the Defence Minister hinted that what they had said about who had known what in Pakistan was based on evidence. But pressmen and politicians were so intent on finding fault that they paid no attention. And now?

A sense of priorities, a little faith, and an even more elementary thing: a little work. Pakistan, like all countries in our neighbourhood, is important for our future. But how many of us take the trouble to read even the newspapers of Pakistan? I will give an example of what we would have learnt if we had been glancing at those papers, and make a forecast based on them. The first has a dual advantage: it shows what we would have been alerted to, and it also nails what Pakistan has been trying to cover up.

In reading what follows please bear in mind that while small, stray news items had been appearing earlier, it was only on the 27th of May, the day after air-strikes were launched, that Kargil became big news in our papers.

On 9 April, 1999, The Nation of Pakistan carried an interview with Zakiu Rehman Lakhvi, the Amir of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, one of the most rabid organizations which has been spawned by Pakistan's intelligence agencies. "We are extending our network inside India," he declared, "and have carried out various attacks on Indian installations successfully in Himachal Pradesh last year." An open, unambiguous claim. Also a revealing one, for it gives us a glimpse into the mentality of this kind: the "installations" they annihilated were poor workers constructing a road -- such is their concept of jihad in the cause of Allah! But I am on another allusion in the interview: the paper reported him as saying, "the task to hit specially the Indian artillery targeting Azad Kashmir's border population has been given."

On 7 May, apropos nothing, The Nation suddenly reported a huge attack from India, and claimed that it had been repulsed. It said that Indian forces had launched an unprovoked attack in the Shyok sector, and that "valiant Pakistani troops, displaying traditional courage and determination to defend every inch of the country's territory, thwarted the attack in which a large number of intruders were killed and several others injured. The Indian Army withdrew in disarray and even failed to retrieve the bodies of its soldiers..." India denied any such attack, saying the Pakistanis had fired at a routine forward patrol. But the patriotic reporting told the tale: a case was being prepared.

On 15 May, successes of the Pakistani Army were being claimed on the authority of "a senior Indian official"! "A senior Indian official," The Nation claimed in a dispatch datelined New Delhi, "confirmed that the Army Headquarters and the Ministry of Home Affairs received a message on May 13 evening that Pakistani troops had advanced in Kargil and wrested five posts in a 5 km radius from the township...." Could a Pakistani correspondent really have access of that kind? Would "a senior official" in New Delhi be sharing such information with him?

The News of 16th May was more specific. It reported -- ostensibly from Srinagar! --that there had been intense shelling and deployment by Indians, and said that these had come "amid reports that Pakistani troops on May 14th captured a village after bombarding the frontier town of Drass, some 160 km southwest of Srinagar." "Some 40 shells pounded snow-covered Drass and adjoining areas before Pakistani troops took control of the village located on the Line of Control."

By the 17th of May, several papers were proclaiming triumphs, and attributing them -- not to some ghostly mujahidin but -- to the Pakistani Army. "With shelling and firing between Pakistani and Indian troops on the LoC continuing for the last seven days," The Nation observed in its editorial, "our forces have captured another seven Indian posts in the Kargil sector..., captured a village after bombarding the frontier town of Drass..., and severely disrupted the Indian Army's logistics by taking control of important passes in the Kargil sector, choking off the Jammu-Kargil highway. The Indian troops in the Ladakh region too are facing pressure from the Pakistani forces as well as Kashmiri freedom fighters... It is gratifying that the state of preparedness and capability of our armed forces have prevented Indian adventurism on the LoC from making any gains..."

That very day, that is on 17 May, The Frontier Post reported, "Indian troops after having been defeated in the Kargil sector where the Pakistan Army seized five very important Indian posts with a radius of more than 28 km, have opened fire in almost all the sectors of the LoC... The gain of the Pakistan Army at Siachin has disrupted the communication system of the Indian troops..."

"War between India and Pakistan has started in the Kargil sector," proclaimed the Jasarat of 17 May. "According to Army sources, in this war some special units of the Pakistan Army are participating as they are full of martyrdom sentiments for the country..."

The paper from Lahore, Khabrain, reported on 18 May, "Twelve Indian Army posts have come under the control of Pakistani forces. The Indian Army movement on the Ladakh-Srinagar road has completely stopped..."

In its editorial the next day, the Nawai Waqt said, "Clashes are continuing between the Indian and Pakistani forces along the Line of Control in the Kargil sector..."

Reviewing developments over the preceding days, on 27 May, The Nation observed, " ...The concentration of Indian troops in the Kargil sector started taking place after they suffered heavy losses at the hands of the Pakistani troops..."

No circumlocution about who had scored the victories, is there? As countries began blaming Pakistan more and more, references to the Pakistan Army disappeared, and were replaced by acclaim for the so-called mujahideen!

Our Government had the Parvez Musharraf transcripts all the while. Their statements were in part based on these. Had our papers been keeping us posted about what was appearing in Pakistani papers we would have been quite up-to-date on our own.

Nor would we have needed any confidential briefings about what the objective of the Pakistan Army has been. In prescribing what should be done, General Hamid Gul, the pir and ideologue of fundamentalism within the Pakistan Army, revealed what the aim has been. Speaking to Nawai Waqt he said that Pakistani men who had occupied the heights in Kargil must at all costs be enabled to continue there for four or five months. The area would become totally inaccessible after that. They would then be able to choke off the Indian highway completely. India would have to vacate Siachin, and after that it would lose Ladakh...

And now for the forecast. Look around Tamil Nadu. It is at peace. There are no communal clashes. There are no caste clashes. But listen to the former head of the ISI, Lt. General (retd.) Javed Nasir. The Jang of 23 April reported his talk to the Jang Forum. "Gen. Javed also said that if the Kashmir issue goes on for three years more, then Tamils will also rise against India and the country would disintegrate within three years...." That is not an astrologer's forecast. It reveals one of the key areas that ISI is concentrating on. Surprised at the explosives that keep turning up in the state?

In a word, a sense of proportion, some faith in our agencies and authorities, and a little work -- don't wait to get hold of some secret document, read what is being published. Specially what is being proclaimed over loudspeakers by the opponent.

Intelligence is too important to be left to intelligence agencies.

India Connect
June 14, 1999