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Foreign funding of parties
It’s a fetter on an elected government
by Kuldip Nayar
The ruling Congress has asked the Government of India to look into the funds received by different political parties from abroad. This query before the general elections, due in 2014 or earlier, conveys two thoughts. One, the Congress is not getting as much money from abroad as it used to in the past. Two, the party has the impression that its counterparts are flushed with funds which could have come only from foreign sources. Whatever the truth, the Congress has betrayed nervousness by posing such a query. In fact, the foreign funding of parties became such an irritant some years ago that the then government, again the Congress, ordered an inquiry. The report was revealing. It showed that all political parties received funds from abroad and that there was no country worth the name which did not send money. Since all were naked in the bath, there was no furore. All parties felt embarrassed but stopped attacking one another. The Home Ministry, which examined the report submitted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), observed that “financial assistance from Russian and American sources has been more sustained and much larger as compared to such assistance from other countries. The main objection against some instances of such overt assistance has been that funds had been provided with ulterior motives. Thus, in the case of some American assistance it was found that the ultimate source of funds was the CIA.” The government did not leave things at that. The action report said: “Two courses of action were considered appropriate in regard to the various forms of overt assistance. One was that foreign foundations and organisations which had received funds reasonably suspected to have originated from intelligence agencies, such as the CIA, should not be permitted to continue their activities or extent any further financial assistance to institutions, organisations or individuals in this country, irrespective of the purpose for which such assistance may have been extended in the past. This was on the analogy of the decision taken by the government in case of the Asia Foundation (which was stopped from functioning). The second course of action considered appropriate was that receipt of donations and other forms of financial assistance from foreign sources should be subject to fresh legislation to more rigorous control and scrutiny.” It took many years for a follow-up action. After some time, the report came in handy to put the shackles on the activities of the NGOs getting foreign funding. In fact, it was made impossible for them to get funds from abroad even for the humanitarian work. Receipt of funds without prior permission was declared illegal. With the result that even genuine NGOs are having a hard time in keeping their activities going. No amount of argument with the government that the genuine NGOs should be exempted from seeking prior permission and fulfilling other bureaucratic demands did not convince the authorities. It is, indeed, the determination of some of these NGOs that has sustained them and their field activities. In comparison, however, political parties face no difficulty in getting funds despite the CBI report. The bulk of funding comes to the Congress, followed by the BJP and the CPM in that order. Agents of foreign powers have sprouted all over to supply funds to the parties. But the agents have also become power brokers in the bargain. The ruling parties at the Centre and in the states are finding it hard to resist pressure in not accommodating the hands that are providing the funding. But then the political parties feel more comfortable in dealing with agents than the foreign governments which are, at times, going beyond the Lakshmam Rekha for concessions. Come to think of it, foreign funding is a fetter for an elected government. Chanceries of different embassies have come into the picture. There have been embarrassing situations when the same representative of an embassy giving funds need to be ticked off for some diplomatic violations. Compromises have been reached which do not speak well of the Indian bureaucracy. Yet the political parties are quiet because the expenditure in elections is increasing much to their chagrin and difficulties. True, the Congress has benefited from the scams which have come to light. But somehow the party is under the impression that money will count the most in the next general election. Other parties have also used all kinds of methods to collect money and, if revealed, they may be a scam of sorts. Under the circumstances, the demand by political parties to bring back the money stashed abroad become significant. But foreign governments must be more comfortable to give money through sources abroad. The account holders must be the best sources because the parties do not have to deal with the governments. Some $2000 billion is said to be with Swiss banks. Whether some funds have come from such sources is difficult to say. Yet the hawala transactions that have come to the open reveal that foreign accounts abroad have also been tapped. The question that Indian political parties have to pose to themselves is whether the taint of foreign funds which they induct into free and fair elections in a democratic polity do not tell upon the country’s sovereignty and independence. And what about the quid pro quo? Leave morality apart, it is not possible for a nation to stay clean or self-reliant if foreign funding becomes an integral part of election
campaigns.
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Cavalier with a lion’s heart
by Maj-Gen Raj Mehta (retd)
What can you say of an iconic officer who died young at 70? That he was a sterling embodiment of an old world, true-blue Cavalier? That he was Mai-Baap to a generation of officers and soldiers —- a transformational leader? That he was a great father, husband, CO and mentor? That he was one of the handsomest men seen in uniform; and handsome within, in soorat and seerat? That, true to form, he passed away unobtrusively on October 16, 2012, in a Mumbai hospital, slipping away into after-life, leaving behind his loved ones numbed and shocked.“Ejected” from 16 Light Cavalry (India’s oldest Cavalry Regiment) into a “newly raised” Regiment 83 —- my immature interpretation —- I was furious. “I am not coming; do what you like, sir”, I wrote in pique to its CO, Colonel Raj Ahlawat. Young blood can be so hot-headed and irrational sometimes. His healing reply was my first exposure to Raj Ahlawat’s charisma. “I am fourth generation Skinners Horse, Raj,” he wrote. “I cried when they posted me out. I adjusted. You will too.” I did. The years I spent with him as my CO remain a halcyon recall for me. The Ahlawats unreservedly adopted the Regiment as “family”; at a time when the bonding between officers and men pooled in from disparate units, each with their own work ethic, was a critical “work in progress”. He drove us hard, very hard. New regiments receive all sorts; fiercely-driven young Turks; quiet workers, mediocre officers, shirkers; Raj handled all ranks with prescient, even transformational skills aided by a gracious “first lady” who was the Regiment’s pressure relief valve. She would intuitively sense stress levels and diplomatically inveigle a “letting off steam” session from her hubby for hyper-ventilated, passionate officers and their consorts to chill; unwind. The couple thus ensured that they together bonded the unit into a combative “One for All, All for One” outfit – a credo that became the much envied byline of this new raising in word and deed. Raj was a great Regimental soldier; a rapidly disappearing breed whose terminal ambition was to command with honour, then happily ride into the sunset. “Regimental soldiers” often did not qualify in the competitive Staff College examination; a critical upward-mobility stamp for career advancement. They did averagely at courses; did not “illuminate” sand-model discussions on war fighting. However, when push came to shove, these officers knew how to handle men and weapons in manoeuvre and in war. They lived for Naam, Namak and Nishan, the Army’s legacy DNA. Such men were/are the real Army, it’s eternal soul. In later years, Raj was staff officer to the Cavalry’s living legend, General Hanut Singh, who brilliantly commanded The Poona Horse, Faqr-e-Hind as the Pakistanis termed it, in the killing battlefields of Basantar in 1971. Raj Ahlawat found a soul-mate in Hanut who not just shared his values but also took ace soldiering and essential humanity for soldiers to uncharted levels. Raj remained Mai-Baap; the Ahlawats’ keeping open house and heart for all. His Grecian looks, rugged health and infectious bonhomie hid the consciously undisclosed reality that he was combating cancer. Raj died in the manner in which he lived life; selfless, ignited and fearless. They don’t make deathless soldiers like Raj, the lion-heart person,
anymore.
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Knowledge of yoga travelled to the countries in the Middle East by the beginning of the 14th century, when treatises on
yoga were translated and adapted by Islamic intellectuals and Sufi mystics alike
Yoga and the Arab connection
Vandana Shukla
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Courtesty of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
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About
700 years back, when the advent of information technology was beyond human comprehension, knowledge systems were exchanged, adapted and applied, propelled by a desire to improve the lot of humanity. Yoga travelled to Islamic countries where mantras and breathing techniques of the yogis were adapted without reservation for their religious basis. Compare this to the efforts of a commercially successful yoga practitioner who tried to get copyright for a sequence of yoga postures in the USA, few years back. In contrast, the translator of “The Pool of Nectar”, one of the earliest books on yoga translated into Persian postulates that famous Indian yogis are the equivalents for Elijah, Jonah, and Khidr (revered figures in Islam).When the Italian traveller Pietro della Valle stopped at the western Indian city of Cambay in 1624, he took the opportunity to visit a temple outside of town which was the resort of many yogis. After describing them in detail in his memoirs, he added a long account of their practices. Strangely, long before Della set foot in India, he was familiar with yogis. Perhaps, he received this knowledge from a Persian treatise “The Kamarupa Seed Syllables” on yogic breathing and divination techniques, which was circulating independently in the intellectual circles of Iran, prior to the translation of “The Pool of Nectar”, since it was quoted in a fourteenth-century Persian encyclopaedia (the Nafa'is al-funun of Amuli). Della acquired a copy of “Kamarupa Seed Syllables” for himself during his stay in Iran, prior to his India visit. Della decided to translate the book into Italian. He was fluent in Turkish, Arabic, and Persian, so his plan to translate the work from Persian into his native Italian might have yielded the first European study of an Islamic interpretation of yoga. But, it never materialised. In the list of his oriental manuscripts, donated to the Vatican in 1718 by della Valle's heir Rinaldo de Bufalo, it was described as "a book on magic, translated from the Indian into the Persian language." This work is still preserved in the Vatican library.
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Lady Feeding Parrot. Bijapur, ca. 1603–4. Opaque watercolor.
Courtesy, Chester Beatty Library, Dublin.
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It is remarkable that, despite his theological criticism of the yogis, Della found their divination and breathing practices to be effective and practised them. In today’s globalized world, when knowledge is offered at the click of a button, one is forced to wonder, how would a translator prepare a Persian-reading audience for this kind of subject, and what kind of Islamicate categories would be used to present material such as yoga and feminine deities (yoginis)? By accounts available from the memoirs and travel documents of the period, one learns, the world welcomed and embraced knowledge systems irrespective of their religious origin back then. As a result, yoga was a well known word to the Arab world long before the advent of communication and even printing technology.
Process of amalgamation In fact, scholars say, the extent of amalgamation of these knowledge systems in the Arab world is so complete it makes one wonder, where and how did yoga originate. Prof Carl W Ernst, Kenan Distinguished Professor of Islamic studies at the Department of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina, who has researched the subject for over two decades says, “It is safe to say that yoga originated in India, but texts on yoga began to be available in Arabic and Persian as early as the 14th century. The main text on yoga translated into Arabic was "The Pool of Nectar," supposedly translated from the Sanskrit “Amritakunda”, though we have not been able to find any such Sanskrit work with this title still in existence. The Arabic text was translated from Arabic into Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and Urdu.” Though, history played its little tricks with the origins of yoga in the Arabic world. The Arabic translation of "The Pool of Nectar" travelled to the Ottoman Empire, where for some reason it became ascribed to the authorship of a famous Sufi, Ibn `Arabi. There are numerous copies of the manuscripts of this text in Istanbul. And, there is a Sufi Shaikh in Damascus who still teaches this text, which he firmly understands in terms of Sufi metaphysics, and not yoga. This brings one to the obvious question, if there are different approaches to yoga-- as practiced in India and the Arab world, despite both carrying the common thread of spiritualism? According to Dr Ernst Muslim readers such as Sufis and philosophers, who became interested in texts on yoga, tended to understand it in terms of familiar categories of spiritual practice, such as zikr as the equivalent of mantra. “Sometimes the Arabic and Persian accounts of yoga do not look very Indian at all, because they have been rather familiarized in terms of Islamic references, including such things as Arabic "translations" of mantras. There was some ambivalence about these texts, which were sometimes considered to be magical and sometimes spiritual,” he adds. Arabic accounts of yoga too emphasize on ascetic practices such as fasting. The miraculous or magical techniques of yogis caused much curiosity among travelers. The postures described in Arabic and Persian texts on yoga are not the same in name or detail as those practiced today, which reflects important historical differences in the development of yoga.
And the stream of time Evidently, this confluence of knowledge was not limited to a certain time frame. There are practitioners of yoga in countries like Egypt, Turkey, and Iran even now. Though, often hatha yoga is presented more or less like physical exercise and relaxation rather than an esoteric spiritual technique. Recent publications on yoga by popular authors like Richard Hittleman and Swami Satyananda Saraswati have been translated into Arabic and Persian. In India, it has been believed that Patanjali Yoga Sutra is the original and the oldest treatise on yoga, it is interesting to know how scholars in the Arab world took to the original source of yoga. Al-Biruni (d. 1048) translated Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras into Arabic from Sanskrit, including in the text an unidentified commentary. But this translation was not widely read, and it exists in only a single manuscript, now located in Heidelberg. Nearly a thousand years later, in 2010 Dr. Abdul Wahab Al Maqaleh from the Republic of Yemen translated an English version of Patanjali (by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood) into Arabic, and it has been published by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH). Interestingly, the Lebanese Druze leader, Kamal Jumblatt (d. 1977), was very dedicated to yoga both as practice and philosophy. In recent years, the International Yoga Festival in Egypt has become a popular event. There are numerous yoga classes available in Turkey, Iran, and other Middle Eastern countries.
A YoginiA rare 10th century granite sculpture, a gift of Arthur M. Sackler, to be exhibited for “ Yoga: The Art of Transformation”
The oldest Persian text on yoga is called in Hindi the Kamrubijaksa, or “Kamarupa Seed Syllables.” It was discussed in a Persian encyclopedia dated 1350, and a complete version was obtained by the Italian traveller Pietro della Valle in the 17th century, which is now in the Vatican Library. The most important text, the Arabic version of “The Pool of Nectar,” was translated into Persian by the famous Shattari Sufi, Muhammad Ghaus Gwaliyari.
“Their scholars and sages observe their breath; if their breath goes well, they perform their tasks, but if the breath goes ill, they do no work, but strenuously avoid it. They have taken this subject to the height of perfection. The common people of India know nothing of this, and they are not privy to this secret, nor do they know anything. They call this the science of [reading] thought (Arabic damir).” — The translator of “The Kamarupa Seed Syllables”
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