List of Ignominious

Time Magazine’s Top 10 and Top 100 lists have a long tradition. Carefully analysed and collated, they have an international standing today and are eagerly sought by the people of all walks. Weren’t we thrilled when we saw Nayagan on the list of 100 best films? Weren’t we immensely proud when we saw Gandhi topping the 100 most influential people of the century? And felt a tad disappointed when we were told that Ramanujan missed that list by a few points?

Now another illustrious person from India has got into one of their lists. Andimuthu Raja from Tamilnadu is in Time list. Well not the lists that Gandhi or Mani Ratnam adorn. In fact most of us actually didn’t know such a list existed until Raja got in. It’s Time’s Top 10 Abuses of Power where Raja is at number 2, next only to Richard Nixon.

This is the reach of Karunanidhi’s ruinous politics. When DMK won the elections in 1967, the outgoing Congress Chief Minister Bakthavatsalam grieved that ‘a poisonous seed has been planted’. Almost half-decade later, the seed has taken strong roots, grown into a sprawling tree with its branches reaching out like tentacles far across the length and breadth of Tamilnadu. So much so that it has now gained international popularity.

The brief description about Raja in Time also indicates that he is currently languishing in Jail and his party has been defeated in the elections. These are the only consoling aspects in this episode. The ones that make people like Ramachandra Guha gloat about our democracy. How much ever faulty it is, whatever may be their outward display of fanfare and pageantry. at the end of the day we exercise our vote cautiously. It’s a weak lament that we don’t have tall leaders anymore. We aren’t a tall society either. As a society we are petty, squabbling, opportunistic, unscrupulous and undisciplined. The fact is we have leaders and they have to listen to us, however feeble our voice may be, is enough. And also we jail our thieving leaders and oust erring parties.

And send them to rub shoulders with Nixon.

A Building,.. And Some Nostalgia

A Commons’ Committee, investigating on the delay caused in construction, called British Library’s new building ‘one of the ugliest buildings in the world’. Obviously none of the members had ever been to India or else the library would have met some serious contenders. Worse still, if they had seen the new secretariat complex built under the supervision of Karunanidhi, British Library would have lost its undeserved title.

Built at the ‘record’ speed and equally ‘record’ budget, the new assembly building is a testament to the destruction of aesthetics. Standing like a cancerous tissue that’s just grown out of the body, the concrete dome with glass panelled facade is a vandalism of the fragile Chennai skyline. Besides complaints related to aesthetic and administrative blunders, I have a personal grouse as well.

I grew up around what used to be called the MLA Hostels and Rajaji Hall. This part was full of trees and the quietude of the foliage was almost like a delightful aberration in the middle of the noisy, ancient streets of Triplicane and the dreadful motors honking past the Mount Road. There was a small but graceful Gandhi Museum inside the woods. Not far from the museum there was a ‘suyambu’ Ganesh temple, a natural Ganesha-like formation on the trunk of a dense banyan tree that was converted into a makeshift temple had a few but steady patrons. I used stand in pious attention at the splendorous testimony to the 'presence of god’. I used to cycle through the tiny, spiralling stretch inside the campus just to enjoy the greenery, a luxury commodity in Madras. It was like a tiny Theosophical Society campus in Triplicane. I had seen a dead snake near the temple. I had seen a gay couple behind a cosy shrubbery.

When Karunanidhi decided to erect the assembly building I considered it as personal slander and violation of my nostalgia. He has always been a ‘builder’. During all his tenures, he had focused on erecting buildings and flyovers. Perhaps that was the only way he knew to swindle money. It was a time before he learned about better methods such as telecommunication signals. But what ends up with a looted signal is only loss to the exchequer and swelling of Keelakkarai havalas, but with such construction projects, unbearable sights laugh at you in ridicule.

I’m glad that Jayalalitha decided not to operate out of the new building. However might her current tenure turn out to be, I’d be grateful for this shared despise. I’m not sure if it’s possible to demolish this structure. Already minnows such as PMK and MDMK are up in arms against returning to St. George’s Fort. Demolition may not bring back the lost space and the lovely foliage but that will prevent subsequent governments, including the present one, from making hasty relocation decisions. Also, I’ll have had my revenge.

And the British Library could claim back its title.

Let there be a winner

Karunanidhi, the present Chief Minister of Tamilnadu is a self-proclaimed atheist. But once in a while, the mask slips and the superstitious, sentimental, god-fearing – as in literally ‘fearing’ – face pops up, only for a brief moment before he notices and adjusts the mask again.

In those slippery moments, he prays to god. Since it will be below his dignity to seek unbelieving divinity, he prays to ‘Nature’, because nature is universal and yet can be seen, the later quality that god cannot claim.

Jayalalitha, the present opposition leader is openly devout, religious, superstitious and a practicing Hindu.

That’s probably about the only difference we could claim between the two dominant leaders of Tamilnadu. The rest are only seasonal and cannot be considered a lasting trait. For instance, Jayalalitha was a despicable, autocratic, narcissistic and corrupt-to-the-core CM in 1996. Karunanidhi was a soft, tolerant, democratic leader.

Come 2011, the tables have turned. Karunanidhi is nepotistic, tinpot, demagogic and corrupt-to-the-core. Jayalalitha is an uncorrupt and deterministic administrator.

We, the people of India, have seen so much water flow under the bridge that we won’t be surprised to see the tide turn around again. However, in the current scenario we couldn’t help see a pattern. Why was Karunandhi a tolerant democrat in 1996? Because he saw what happened to Jayalalitha in the elections and he was eager to paint a pleasing picture. Why did Jayalalitha turn quieter in 2001? Because she still carried the wounds of 1996.

So what should happen now in this election? Karunandhi should go. Not in a meagre loss but in a total washout. The loss so devastating that the wounds shouldn’t heal for another five years. That will teach him a lesson when his party comes back to seek votes again. Probably Jayalalitha would have turned autocratic again. But we’ll have a humbler alternative then.

What’s worrying is that some of the post-poll results are predicting closer to hung-assembly. THAT would be a disaster. Nobody would have learned any lesson and everybody would jump into the fray kicking up the dirt and making the real mockery of our democracy. Our democracy is indeed a mockery, but let’s not say it out loudly or see it in papers. Let one party win decisively so that we know where our people’s loyalty lies. If Karunanidhi were to come back, so be it. But let them not trade horses.

I pray to god, sorry, I pray to Nature that there shouldn’t be a hung-assembly in Tamilnadu. Let there be a clear winner. May the Nature grant my wish.

A Letter to Mr Gandhi

Dear Mr Gandhi

I saw the news today and felt immensely overwhelmed at your proclamation. Speaking to the farmers affected by the land acquisition of the UP government, you commented that you felt ‘ashamed to be an Indian’. I fully understand your anguish. In fact, I stand next to you in sharing your shame and embarrassment of our nationality. As we are standing together in the sweltering Delhi heat, and not knowing what else to do but to wait for the police to arrive for the token arrest, I thought I’ll share a few more historic nuggets. Actually, there are several instances in the past that made us – you, me and other Indians – feel astoundingly shameful.

Those historic instances are far too many to note in one blog post so I shall only narrate a few significant ones.

Not long ago, India ventured to conduct one of the prestigious international sport events called Common Wealth Games. We all felt proud of our achievement in winning the bid. Very soon, somebody scratched the surface and out came huge sacks of ugly muck. News of corruption, mismanagement, unprecedented expenses and appalling infrastructure adorned the headlines across the world. Seeing those dirty toilets in the front pages of the UK newspapers, I hung my head in shame. Did you?

Bofors, the first major corruption scam to ever surface in the history of Indian politics took its toll a government and cost several hundred crores in fighting the case in our courts. This scam involved an Italian broker who apparently acted on the behest of a person very close to the then Prime Minister. Soon after investigations began, the Italian broker began playing cat and mouse with our agencies. This went on for a while and then the agency gave up. They released his frozen bank accounts and when he was arrested in Brazil they went all the way there to get him released. They fought hard in the court to close all the cases on him and for that received recrimination from the Supreme Court. Seeing the deplorable condition of our anti-corruption drive and how a foreigner could collude with powers-that-be to make a mockery of our legal system, I hung my head in shame. Did you?

There was a lady from abroad who married a Prime Minister’s son and came to India. She loved her husband but not his country. Perhaps she foresaw the farmers’ agitation so she already felt ashamed of India long before you and I did. Then after a lot of pressure, from the courts and her mother-in-law, she reluctantly became our citizen. When her turn came to become a PM, our then President pointed out the seedy circumstances of her citizenship and nudged her to withdraw her claim. Guess what she did? Apart from going onto become a ‘saint who renounced her throne’, she took her revenge by denying a second term for that illustrious person and demeaned the post by making an unknown Rajasthani lady as the President, whose only claim to fame was forging bank loan documents. I hung my head in shame. Did you?

I see the dust kicking up in the distance, so I'll go quickly. Did Emergency embarrass you? Did Shah Bano episode embarrass you? What about the historic 2G scam? The money-for-votes scheme in Tamil Nadu? Farmers suicide, the largest being from the Congress-ruled Maharashtra?

Oh, the police have arrived. You are being apprehended, but we both know that you’re going to be let off within half-hour and there will be heated debates about your ‘arrest’ in CNN IBN, NDTV, etc. There’s no point in me being there because my arrest will be the real one and the police may take all their anger on me. So I’ll quietly sneak out.

We’ll meet again. Talk. Perhaps I can reminisce on some more history.

With best regards
Another Shameful Citizen

Osama

As we woke up on Monday, feeling a little depressed that the next day we would have to get back to work and the ‘royal gift’ of long weekend was almost over, we saw the news that we thought we’d never hear. Osama bin Laden is dead. Once the most dangerous man on Earth, now a frail, ailing, middle-aged man was killed by a small team of US Navy SEALS, who descended on the roof of his residence – unbeknownst of Pakistani Military – killed him, took his body away onboard their naval ship stationed at Arabian Sea and ‘buried him at sea’.

Pakistani Army didn’t know his whereabouts. ISI, which perhaps knows about every terrorist cell in Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Delhi, and even Coimbatore, did not know Osama was ‘hiding’ 800 metres away from a military academy near their capital. Rushdie wrote that such ‘flimflam’ excuses won’t wash. They are not washing. It’s a bit difficult to believe Pakistan really cared about it. They cared neither about the countries whom they call ‘allies’ from whom they milked billions of dollars nor about the terrorists whom they tried to protect. Least of all about their own sovereignty, because until Imran Khan made a hue and cry about it, the political and military leadership didn’t bother about somebody violating their national boundaries. What it means to Pakistani people’s self-esteem can’t be measured. We can only voice our sympathies.

Osama bin Laden ceased to be the world’s most dangerous man long ago but his value as the symbol of Islamic terror cannot be overestimated. As Michael Burleigh noted, he is to Islamic terror what Che Guevara was to pop-leftism. (He actually used the word ‘juvenile-left’ but since I also own a Che t-shirt, I’m diluting it!) Regardless of whether his body is available or whether there’s a shrine, the world cannot prevent him becoming a poster-boy. Capturing him alive and conducting an international trial would have actually prevented that but apparently U.S. didn’t have time or inclination for all that. Barack Obama decided to violate another nation’s (however rogue they are) sovereignty, killed two women (however complicit they are) and shot an unarmed middle-aged man (however dangerous, elusive he was). And also decided to throw the body bag in the sea (however weighted the bag was). And then he announced ‘Justice has been done’!

So much for the Nobel Peace Prize.

More than Osama, more than Obama, more than anything else in this drama, two things were quite glaring in my focus.

First was the literal violation of Pakistan’s modesty. Having made to stand naked in front of the entire world, Pakistan had to pick either one of the embarrassments, complicit or incompetence. They picked incompetence, which is actually ‘not washing’, as Rushdie pointed out. Each member of the establishment kept saying different things, effectively contradicting and thus exposing themselves. What does it say about Pakistani society, what future does the political leadership and the military establishment have are questions that are hanging in the air and will get answers in the near future. They will become even more pronounced if the funds tap runs dry.

Second was the way the U.S. decided to celebrate it. Some used Wizard of the Oz reference, some called it the first miracle of (St.) John Paul, which means they picked out from their culture and religion. They congregated in public places and wrote obscene words on placards and printed obscene words on paper. Pretty much like seeing a public square in a fundamentalist Islamic nation.

And now I’m only waiting for Arundhati Roy to write a 20-page piece about the shady circumstance in which Osama was killed.

p.s. I particularly liked the column by Robert Fisk which guided my thought process for this blog. Read here.