What’s in a name!

Sanjay Dutt has stated in an interview that girls who retain their maiden surnames after marriage insult their husbands. He also questioned their commitment to the matrimonial home. The immediate provocation for this statement, of course, was the adverse comment made by his sister, Priya Dutt, a Congress MP over his joining the Samajwadi Party. Though Sanjay pleaded that his relationship with his sister remained in tact and there was no feud in the family despite reservations about his new wife, Manyata, yet his statement would surely ruffle feathers. A question will be tossed at him to explain why only girls are obliged to change not just their surnames but often even their first names in deference to the wishes of their husbands or their families. This happens when, for instance, the first letters of those tying the knot do not earn the approbation of the astrologers and the solution lies in giving a new name to the bride to be. Girls marrying outside their religion too end up with names commonly used in the religion of their grooms. It is strange that the girl child faces a gender bias right from the first day of her life. While the parents of a baby boy are felicitated, those producing a girl earn sympathetic comments. If your second child is a female and follows a male child, the usual comment is that your family is now complete implying that a female only plays a complimentary role.

The Indian society has been trying to rid itself of gender biases over some time. This has partly happened due to more and more girls acquiring professional education and becoming economically independent. They have often outshone boys as the results of school leaving examinations reveal. Though glass ceilings still exist, yet they have made significant inroads into traditional male bastions. The challenge posed by the new Indian girl, who asserts her individuality and independence creates shockwaves in society. The male-centric society, in turn, faults them for conduct at variance with traditions and culture. Girls are targeted before marriage for refusing the male advances and afterwards for not showing enough respect to the matrimonial home and its occupants. Sanjay Dutt’s comments, though provoked by his personal differences with his sister, fit into this slot. He has done a great disservice to the cause of empowerment of women while settling a personal score with Priya Dutt.

There is a dishonourable exception to the practice of only girls being made to change their names. Married men who are not sure about getting a divorce and wishing to marry the second time willingly embrace Islam and assume a new (sur) name. But in Sanjay’s case, it was Manyata who was marrying outside her religion. Besides, when you are marrying a celebrity like Sanjay, what’s truly in a name?

Middle Class and 2009

Vir Sanghvi, in The dream lives (Counterpoint,Hindustan Times, January 4), is obviously optimistic. He does not see the gloom in the same way as many of us do as the new year begins. We may be wiser with hindsight about what went wrong during 2007, but we still seem to be clueless about the way ahead. We still do not know how to neutralise the terror machine operating from Pakistan and are knocking at the door of the US to bail us out. On the economy, thanks to our healthy habit of saving, there is no shortage of liquidity. But small-scale industries have been inundated by cheap imports from China and have largely taken to trading, resulting in a drop in exports. Sanghvi has been very careful not to suggest remedial measures. An awakened middle class is not enough in itself. The government needs to act responsibly on the economic and security fronts to restore public confidence. Whether it has the courage and foresight to do so ahead of the polls is the million-dollar question.

The Mumbai Massacre

The dastardly terror strike in Mumbai has shaken the entire nation. It is not just the scale of fatalities with 195 killed in cold blood and nearly 300 injured that hurt the people. The reputation of the nation has been damaged globally with the English cricket team refusing to play any more matches and predictions about a drop in future investments in Indian economy. What is curious is that after a brief consensus against terror among mainstream political parties, the blame game has again resurfaced. While the parties like BJP has found the Karachi connection useful in blaming the Muslims for all the mayhem caused across the financial capital, those opposed to it criticise it for politicising terror for electoral gains. The fact is that there is some truth in both the claims. BJP, which rightly faults Congress on not hanging Afzal Guru despite his conviction on terror charge for appeasing Muslims cannot explain why its foreign minister Jaswant Singh escorted the three notorious terrorists Maulana Masood Azhar, Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar and Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh to Kandhar to secure the release of Indian hostages. Nor does it condone why PM Manmohan Singh, while claiming that the neighbouring country will have to take the cost for allowing terror strike from its territory, fails to extract any cost from his own cabinet and allows the Home minister to continue in office. To spread disaffection against the govt., Narendra Modi offers a crore of rupees against the official Rs. 5 lacs, to late ATS chief Karkare’s family by way of compensation. He conveniently forgets that his party was demanding a Narco test on the same IPS officer over the Malegaon terror case, which allegedly involved people aligned to his party. Karkare’s family rejected the offer the same way as Sharma’s family had done when SP leader Amar Singh had sent them a cheque of Rs. 10 lacs following the death of Inspector Sharma of Delhi police after voicing doubts about Batla House encounter. Politicians do not learn and are bent upon dividing the people.

What is more disappointing is that terror strikes have been taking place recurrently and evoking similar responses. A tough statement and compensation for victims followed by inaction till a fresh strike takes place. While the investigating agencies usually unearth all the information and reconstruct the sequence of events, yet they can neither act effectively on intelligence inputs nor pre-empt or prevent future attacks. The columns and blogs are full of comparisons with US, which has not allowed a single terror attack on its soil post 9/11. There are suggestions that the present strike was meant primarily to target US interests on the Thanksgiving Day along with British and Israelis. The choice of the financial capital of India proved handy logistically. The global intelligence inputs pointing out a spectacular strike before Obama is sworn in have been proved right and we have paid dearly since we were complacent enough to believe that the strike will be in US. Nor did our agencies take into account the possibility that with airports and railways better guarded, the terrorists may take the sea route. One wishes the choppers of Indian coastguards had mounted surveillance sooner and averted the loss of innocent lives in the most barbaric strikes.

A question that is being hotly discussed over the net relates to India tackling terror. How can we do it? What needs to be done? It is clear that all of us need to change. First of all we need to treat the issue of security seriously. When Delhi’s LG wanted all citizens to carry some kind of ID proof, politicians pounced upon him and accused him of harassing migrants from places like Bihar. Does it make any sense? When you cannot tell a Bangladeshi from a Bihari or a Bangali, how do you screen potential terrorists? It is a pity none of the local leaders supported the order, which was legitimate and reasonable. Nor did any one support Delhi’s CM, at least publically, when she talked about increasing migration to Delhi exerting pressure on its infrastructure. She was made to withdraw the statement and tender an apology. Do our leaders even understand that such unchecked migration has a security angle too?

There is lack of professionalism among the police as well. One wonders how the terror suspects manage to evade its eye while the street vendors and petty criminals cannot avoid being on its pay-roll. And how does one accept Sharma not wearing a bullet proof jacket at Batla House or Karkare and his men taking them off before the terrorists had been neutralised? It is not just a matter of losing lives but valiant and trained officers. Does one need to explain the advantages of wearing a helmet over an ordinary P-cap to the cops and commandos? The terrorist are far better equipped than those expected to take them head on and the disastrous results are before us. 19 killed and 275 injured by ten terrorists plus the carnage they left behind.

After every terror strike, there is tough talk, a high alert and more frisking till we sink into complacency again and become a sitting duck for terrorists. Let us hope that things will be different this time and the nation will be better prepared to face them in future-from wherever they come.

Abu Abraham, Cartoonist & Abdul Hamid, PVC

On Hindu terror

L.K. Advani, Prime minister-designate of BJP protested during the course of Hindustan Times Leadership Summit today at the use of the term “Hindu terror”. Speaking like the pseudo-secularists his party ridicules everyday; he declared that terrorists have no religion. This must sound like music to many and some may regret that he had to issue such a clarification at all. Rajnath Singh, the President of BJP had similarly protested at the use of the term stating that a Hindu can never be a terrorist. One is reminded of a claim that PM Manmohan Singh made a couple of years ago that no Indian Muslim was involved in acts of terror worldwide. As if to prove him wrong, many indigenous name and organizations sprang up forcing him to eat his words. The latest being the tech-savvy Indian Mujahidin (IM), which not only took responsibility for several serial blasts across Indian cities but also revealed shockingly that those driving the engine of Muslim hate were not products of some non-descript madrassa but a highly educated and well-paid executive of an MNC. One can only hope that Advani and his likes do not have to face the same fate as more and more skeletons toss out of cupboards of Hindu terror every day. The Hindu hate machine has even penetrated the army, which prided itself on its secular values and sense of discipline. Remember the photographs of Abdul Hamid, who martyred himself in the service of India, splashed across newspapers in the wake of Indo-Pakistan war of 1965 and won the highest bravery award, Param Vir Chakra?

Most Hindus also thought that violence was inimical to Hindu ethos. When you had saints who walked barefoot for fear of hurting insects and renounced materialism in all its forms in order to attain nirvana, how could they even think violence, leave alone preaching it? And it was not just Hindus who thought of our faith in such glorious terms. I still recollect interviewing for our college magazine, Stavak, the noted cartoonist of Indian Express, Abu Abraham, at his residence in early seventies. During the course of the interview recorded on a bulky spool tape recorder lying in ruins with me, Abu, a conservative Christian revealed that he had not baptised his two daughters. They were given Muslim and Hindu names, Aysha and Janaki, and the parents read over different scriptures to them. The idea was not to burden them with the faith of their parents but to give them a choice of choosing a faith that gave them maximum solace. Abu went on to say that he had not come across a more liberal faith than Hinduism. After I had clicked a few photographs of Abu with my Russian Zorky camera, I and my friend from AIR, O.P. Dutta left his place in a bit of daze wondering whether we in our twenties could even conceive of such values. I just checked on the net and learnt with dismay that Abu passed away in his native Kerala in the winter of 2002. R.I.P. May his ideals continue to inspire our nation!

The overwhelming question is how is it that the liberalism of the same faith that evoked the envy of several non-Hindus created men who could torch people alive, rape women and destroy mosques and churches? There is a school of thought that violence by Hindus is retaliatory and caused by relentless appeasement of minorities for electoral gains. This is not an invalid assumption. Critics of post-Godhra riots rarely if ever referred to the torching Hindu karsevaks in the coaches of a train. Political parties like the SP rake up the Batla House encounter case with an eye on Muslim votes. Not to be undone, Congress indulges in the same kind of double-speak it accuses others, especially the BJP of, when it also demands a probe into it. Did the BJP ever sought justice for hundreds of innocent men and women hounded out of buses, segregated and shot at point blank range in the fields of Punjab? Isn’t it also guilty of appeasing Sikhs and Akalis? Is pseudo-secularism of Congress and the Left being matched by BJP’s pseudo-communalism? And what about attacking Christians, burning their homes and destroying churches? Haven’t the self-appointed guardians of Hinduism negated the provisions of our Constitution, which guarantees freedom of faith? If the argument is that missionaries are inducing tribals in order to convert them, which may be true, the rites of purification and home-coming being performed by Hindu groups as a pre-condition for allowing the victims to return to their hearth and homes are also involuntary. In any case, most Indian Muslims, Christians and Buddhists are converts from Hinduism. How many can one possibly re-convert back and with what benefit? The only gain can be electoral since such a drive is meant to consolidate Hindu votes. It is clear that using brute force against minorities is a political and not a religious agenda. Has Advani ever taken up the cause of Muslims accused of being terrorists and tortured to extract confessions?
Several Hindu groups of various hues and colours no longer feel shy of embracing violence in thought and action. What is unfortunate is that it is being done in the name of a religion, which has been universally acknowledged as the most liberal faith. One may call it by any name but the repercussions for the country’s unity and diversity will be tragic. Therefore it is important that we, as a nation, learn to respect the rule of law. India must come first and remain foremost.
***

Defending Terror Accused

When the Vice Chancellor of Jamia Millia University offered financial assistance to some of its students accused of masterminding bomb blasts in Delhi, there was a hue and cry. Jamia is a central university, which receives funding from the central government through the UGC. In other words, the tax payers’ money was proposed to be used to defend terror suspects. The matter assumed political overtones when the Minister of HRD after a meeting with Jamia’s VC supported his stand. The VC claimed that law assumed everyone to be innocent till proven guilty. Therefore Jamia was not wrong in arranging the legal defence of its students.

This raises interesting questions. If the arrested students did not belong to the minority community, would Jamia and the politicians who swarmed the campus in their support after the encounter of Batla House have still adopted the same stand? Is the real motive to help the so-called innocents or to appease the sentiments of minority community with an eye on their votes? When an employee of a university is arrested even on a petty criminal charge and held in detention for more than 48 hours, the service rules prescribe his suspension. When Jamia’s students have been arrested on a serious charge of promoting terror and are in custody, they are being glorified and offered legal aid by those who are responsible for maintaining discipline in the university.

In a reprehensible bid to encash Muslim votes, the politicians have not only questioned the police action in which a senior police officer was himself shot dead, but also demanded a probe even before the investigation is complete. There was a ludicrous suggestion that the police officer may have been shot dead by his own colleagues to justify a fake encounter. Such absurdities call for a willing suspension of disbelief. The underlying assumption is that Muslims are under attack and whenever a terror attack takes place, only Muslim names crop us. What do the critics expect? A combination of Hindu, Sikh, Jain and Christian names to prove our multi- religious society with perhaps a Parsi name to garnish the recipe? Which names came up when Punjab was on the boil in the eighties? Muslim or Sikh? Similar stories of repression of Sikhs were floated by the vested interests while hundreds of poor Hindus who were dragged out of buses in Punjab and shot dead in cold blood.


The approach belies a lack of seriousness in tackling terror. Almost as a re-run, an ex-Major of Indian Army accused of training those involved in Malegaon blasts in which Muslims were on the receiving end, is being offered legal help by VHP. This is equally condemnable. In a civil society, which respects the rule of law, it is tantamount to indirectly funding terrorism. If the only concern is that the accused may not go undefended, let those keen to act as “Good Samaritans” like the Minister of HRD, the VC of Jamia and the VHP know that the courts are required to appoint amicus curie or friends of court to defend those who lack the means to do so. The powers that be are expected to let law take its own course. If we want India to survive as a democratic, secular and unified nation, we will have to learn to respect the law.

Aiyer-from a Leftist to a Marxist

Every one knows that Mani Shanker Aiyer is a brilliant and articulate man. But that's not a qualification for getting an important portfolio. When he was moved from Petroleum to Panchayti Raj, he felt demoted and marginalised. It was reported that he complained to Sonia Gandhi that he knew nothing about Panchayati Raj. She is believed to have retorted that he knew nothing about petroleum too when he was given that portfolio. The point is you are given a job and you have to excel at it or quit. He claims in his address that he was always a Leftist. So are most people in their teens when they dream of an equal world. But on growing up, they realize that equality does not even exist in the Communist parties’ politburos. He further claims that the economic reforms made him a Marxist. He should honestly admit that it is his dislike for PM, who didn't let him continue and moved him to Panchayati Raj that makes him question why credit for economic reforms should be given to Manmohan Singh. Either way, it amounts to a confession that Economic reforms are not to be discredited. Marxism only created utopian states, which either collapsed (U.S.S.R., for instance) or embraced capitalism like China. Statistics apart, the fact remains that China has recorded phenomenal growth and exceeded India in every part of the economic game. Aiyer for all his frustration should remember that you need to produce more goods and services for every one to have them and social justice does not mean taking away from some to give to others. Can one deny a communication revolution in the country with ordinary masons, plumbers, carpenters and vendors not just flashing mobile phones but using them to get custom? The answer to inequalities lies in finding ways and means to end them and delivering sermons at the CII is surely not the ideal way.