P A G E
Saturday, September 12, 1998
today's calendar
|
E D I T O R I A L P A G E |
Saturday, September 12, 1998 |
| weather n
spotlight today's calendar |
||
|
Russia
finds a PM
INADEQUATE
POLICING Controversies
over
|
 |
BOTH Hindus and Mussalmans are generally ignorant as to the attitude adopted by Mohammedan kings in India towards the slaughter of cows and the extent to which they respected the feelings of Hindus in this respect. |
||||||||||||||||
 |
|
 |
Russia finds a PM BEHIND the effusive approval of Mr Yevgeny Primakov as Russia’s Prime Minister lurk layers of foreboding and distrust. His real battle lies in infusing some life into the prostrate economy but first he should assemble an army of political and financial warriors for the job. In the second campaign he would find detractors waiting in ambush. His troubles have started within hours of securing the nod of the State Duma when he sat down to select his team. President Yeltsin has his favourites and will press on even if his total hold on power has been wounded. The Communists, accounting for a third of the Duma’s 450 seats, are now eager to join the ministry, particularly to guide economic affairs. But this will fly in the face of Mr Primakov’s repeated assurance to western leaders that he will push ahead with reforms. Then there is his known ideological orientation; a former member of the politburo of the Soviet Communist Party and an ardent champion of Russian interests, he now goes about as a radical democrat. He enjoys support among wide segments of Russian society, but can he come up with an economic reconstruction plan and also retain this support? The health of his ministry and that of his country’s economy rests on bringing this off. Mr Primakov’s formal
installation as Prime Minister ends the political
standoff, but that in itself was a minor and wanton
offshoot of the grave economic crisis. Though a Ph.D. in
that subject, he has never held any post in economic
ministries and hence has to rely on advisers and foreign
financial institutions. He starts off with a minor
advantage. The rouble, which had lost nearly 80 per cent
of its value in 20 days, is recovering against the dollar
— from 21 to a dollar three days back to 17 now. He
has a vast circle of friends in the West and that should
help him soften the hard feelings of bankers. The
restructuring of the economy itself is a long and
excruciatingly painful haul. That is because the collapse
during the past seven years has been unbelievable. To
quote from a report, “its GDP has fallen by one
half, capital investments by nine-tenths, industrial
production by more than a half and meat and dairy output
by three-fourths. Today, around three-fourths of the
population lives around the subsistence level.” What
has worsened the situation is the steep fall in commodity
prices in the world market. Russia’s oil revenue has
slumped. It is a herculean task to put the system back on
the rails and keep the free market mafia at bay so that
it does not run away with the benefits. |
“Crime-free” Haryana! RAPE is the most heinous crime against humanity and it becomes all the more reprehensible when the victims are children. A satanical man has been on the prowl in Bahadurgarh for the past three years and has molested and killed 11 girls in the age group of 5 to 10. The latest victim of the “baby killer” has been a 10-year-old girl whose body was found on a vacant plot the other day. This has happened despite round-the-clock patrolling by the police which was started following a similar incident in October last year. The fear in the minds of the people is palpable. They do not allow their children to stir out of the houses after dusk. Some have even stopped sending their children to schools. The police has no clue about the serial killer. No one is sure whether there is only one man behind all the crime or more than one. The police did arrest some people earlier but the continuance of the crimes has shaken the people’s faith in the department. The trouble is that it is not only Bahadurgarh which is suffering thus. There has been an alarming increase in the incidence of violent crimes all over the State. Be it Panchkula or Rohtak, there is no sense of security among the people. If many houses have been burgled in the former, the latter has witnessed several dacoities and murders. While it is easy to blame
the police, the attitude of the government defies logic.
The strangest thing is the reaction of the Chief
Minister, Mr Bansi Lal. When it was brought to his notice
at Rohtak recently that many people had been deprived of
their Maruti Zen cars, he stunned everybody by saying
that the people of Haryana should not buy this car
because it had become a threat to their lives. He himself
went on to narrate how two persons had been robbed and
their cars taken away in Faridabad and one near Kalanaur.
It does not behove a Chief Minister to trivialise the
worsening law and order situation. One wonders what
advice he would give to the people if there were too many
robberies. Stop earning anything? If antisocial elements
start (rather increase) kidnapping women, would Mr Bansi
Lal ask everyone to make sure that women do not stir out
of their houses? Such statements not only show how
insensitive the government is towards the situation but
also send a wrong signal to the law-enforcement agencies.
Mind you, when Mr Bansi Lal was going from village to
village seeking votes, his refrain was that if he was
voted to power, he would make the State totally
crime-free. In typical Haryanavi, he used to say that he
would ensure that a jewel-bedecked woman would be able to
move about without fear at midnight. The least he can do
to redeem his words is to ensure that the innocent girls
do not fall prey to sex maniacs as in Bahadurgarh. |
Wrong number THE suggestions of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India for the upward revision of the rates and rentals of a wide variety of telecom services need careful scrutiny. TRAI deserves to be complimented for inviting a public debate on its proposals to help it offer a rational pricing structure for the services already available in the fast expanding telecom sector. The commercial users of the services have vast resources at their disposal, both in terms of men and money, for them to be able to make a meaningful contribution to the debate on TRAI proposals. However, the average subscriber may now be well-informed but is still not well organised for putting across his case for across-the-board improvement in the level of service as an essential condition for increase in the existing pricing structure. If he were to take his complaint of deficiency in service to TRAI, he would be told to seek the help of the local consumer court. However, the debate on “Telecom Pricing” — the title of the concept paper released for public debate by TRAI Chairman S.S. Sodhi — would be incomplete without taking into account the grievances of the average subscriber. One way of looking at the problem is to refer to the latest UNDP report which states that 20 per cent of the world’s people in the highest income group corner 74 per cent of the telephone lines while the poorest fifth have to make do with 1.5 per cent. In the case of India these figures may be irrelevant because the poorest fifth in this country may not even have seen a telephone instrument. Therefore, it can always be argued that the debate on “Telecom Pricing” is essentially between the haves and TRAI and is of little consequence to the common man. This line of argument would run into difficulty if someone were to insist that the massive investment for expanding the telecom sector should be diverted for meeting the basic needs of the poorest among the poor in India. However, a country which
has set for itself the goal of rapid economic expansion
cannot do so without expanding the telecom sector.
Besides, the redressal of the grievances of the
burgeoning middle class is as important as providing
state-of-the-art telecom services to the expanding
corporate sector to help it integrate with the global
economy. It is in this context that TRAI proposals fall
short of the expectations of the average telephone
subscriber who has still not graduated to e-mail and the
internet. All he expects of the area telephone exchange
is hassle-free service before the proposal for raising
the rates and rentals for telecom services are cleared by
TRAI. The regulatory authority should expand its area of
“regulation” to include the monitoring of the
grievances of ordinary telephone subscribers either
directly or by taking note of the letters published in
most newspapers. Such an exercise would help TRAI
understand that even after impressive technological
improvement in the telecom sector the basic flaws in the
quality of telephone service have not been removed. Most
subscribers still have to put up with the rude behaviour
of the linesmen to get the telephone connection in
working order. Besides, they have to pay the rental even
for the period for which the phone remains dead. The
various consumer forums and the indefatigable champion of
“Common Cause”, Mr H.D. Shourie, should accept
the invitation from TRAI for a public debate on
“Telecom Pricing” on behalf of the ordinary
subscribers. Must the middle class be made to bear the
burden of telecom tariff reforms? |
INADEQUATE POLICING DURING the medieval period, only the urban areas were policed. The rural and hinterlands were left to be managed by landlords. However, during British rule, with the enactment of the Police Act, an effort was made to extend policing all over the country. Yet, the policing was sparse in rural areas. It continues to be so even now. Society is under considerable pressure due to people’s awareness of their rights and privileges. Moreover, law and order problems and expression of dissent through morchas and processions arise frequently in the state and national capitals and other metropolitan towns. Metropolitan towns have a lot of floating population. The conditions become ripe over a time for crime like cheating, confidence trick, racketeering, drugs, drinks and flesh trade. Under the Cr PC, an area with a population of over one million is defined as metropolitan. The National Capital, Delhi, has been in the news for a spate of robberies, thefts and other crimes affecting the confidence of the citizen in the local police. As per the census of 1991, the population of the Capital was 94,20,644. It can be safely assumed that now the figure would be well over 12 million. 1.11% of India’s population lives in Delhi. The density of population in Delhi being 7928.52 per cent square kilometre, it is the third most populous city in the country after Calcutta and Bombay. Delhi had 106 police stations last year with a civil police strength of 40,697, armed police 10,516 and women police strength of 1,351. It had 451 policemen for 1,00,000 population. The Government spent on
the Delhi Police Rs 284.76 crore in 1996-97. Each
policeman on an average cost the Government Rs 55,603 per
annum (pre-revised before the 5th Pay Commission
recommendations were accepted). A total of 606.86 cases
of crimes, including dacoities, murders, robberies,
thefts and other acts under the Indian Penal Code were
registered in Delhi in 1997. About 13,600 cases under
local and special laws were taken up as well as 2734
cases against women in the same year. There has been a spate of grave crimes causing concern. Taking advantage of the anonymity, amidst the huge population, there have been reported kidnappings where rescue cost the victims crores of rupees. There have been professional gangs specialising in any kind of crime where a fast buck can be made. In the general perception of the people policing in Delhi is far from adequate. People living in non-VIP areas feel unsafe and insecure. It will be worthwhile to examine what has led to this situation and what remedy can be there to solve the problem. No trade or commerce can flourish unless there is a safe and secure environment. The entire blame for the situation does lie only with the police. The police accountability and authority have been vitally undermined. Prof David H. Bailey says: “In India today a dual system of criminal justice has grown up — the one of law, the other of politics. With respect at least to the police, decisions made by the police officials about the application of law are frequently subject to partisan review.... People accused of crimes have grown into the habit of appealing to political figures for remission from the sanctions of law. Police officers throughout India have grown accustomed to calculating the likely political effect of any enforcement action they contemplate. Fearing for their careers and especially their postings, they have become anxious and cynical.... But everywhere officers expect to be held personally accountable by politicians even more than by superior officers for any enforcement action taken in the course of duty.... Altogether, then, the rule of law in modern India, the frame upon which justice hangs, has been undermined by the rule of politics”. The other factors that inhibit the public cooperation are the overbearing attitude bordering on insolence of the police towards the common man as well as non-registration of complaints. People also believe, rightly or wrongly, that deliberately no action is taken against the goondas and anti-social elements, as the police is either in league with them or indifferent. This fact is borne out by the fact that a number of police functionaries have been caught either extorting money or committing robberies or even accepting bribes. The action taken, if any, is not revealed to the public. People believe that most senior officers, in the name of maintaining the morale of the force, often shield, support and protect their subordinates by covering up their mistakes and by not taking action or delaying action. Some factors can be
controlled or rectified by the departmental officers,
whereas the most important ones are within the purview of
the political masters. Ultimately, it is the political
will that matters. The pendency of over three lakh cases
under the Indian Penal Code is not something about which
the police can do anything. The court trials under the
existing law and the general attitude shown by legal
counsel tend to delay the court proceedings. Apart from
the delays at the stage of investigation, which are
attributable to the deficiencies in the police, further
delay at the stage of trial results in considerable
harassment to the victims of crime, while at the same
time, the effect of deterrence of quick case disposal and
punishment is lost on the offender himself. The disposal of a case can take between one and 10 years. The present position and all these laws satisfy nobody. They are archaic. Many powers of the police are unduly wide. At the same time the police do not have certain powers, which are essential for the performance of their duties. By these standards, police and its performance fall short of public expectations. It is high time the Government implemented the recommendations of the 1977-1981 National Police Commission headed by Dharam Vira for improvement of the Indian Police. The earlier (1902-1993) Police Commission had observed: “There can be no doubt that the police force throughout the country is in a most unsatisfactory condition, that abuses are common everywhere, that this involves great injury to the people and discredit to the government, and that radical reforms are urgently necessary. These efforts will cost much, because the department had hitherto been starved, but they must be effected. The Dharam Vira Commission (1977-81) observed: “What the Police Commission said in 1903 appears more or less equally applicable to the conditions obtaining in the police force today”. Improving policing in the Capital and the country is the crying need not only of the hour, but also of the citizens. How long will various committees examine the reports and sub-committees are the bane of the country. Whenever a problem dogs us, we try to solve it either by putting it under wrap or toss it for examination. This has gone on for too long. The setting up of a criminal justice commission, which will constantly monitor and review the entire gamut, that is, the disposal of court cases, police performance, need for new laws in the changing times and acting as a watchdog will go a long way in meeting the expectations of the people. Citizens’
expectations were aptly described by a Norwegian police
chief, who said: “The citizen expects police officer
to have the wisdom of Solomon, the courage of David, the
strength of Samson, the patience of Job, the leadership
of Moses, the kindness of good Samaritan, the strategical
training of Alexander, the faith of Daniel, the diplomacy
of Lincoln, the tolerance of the carpenter of Nazareth
(Jesus Christ) and finally the intimate knowledge of
every branch of biological and social sciences. If he had
all these qualities he might be a good policeman”. |
Controversies over places of worship PLACES of worship in India, as in many other democratic countries, are entitled to certain rights and privileges under law and regulations. Among them, the rule prohibiting licence for opening liquor shops in the vicinity of places of worship has provoked a heated controversy in the Union Capital. The BJP Government in Delhi was at one stage considering a proposal to open a wine shop near a church in Karol Bagh on the contention that since wine is served as a sacrament in the church, the church does not fall in the definition of place of worship under the excise policy. It was an ingenious argument nevertheless missing knowingly or unknowingly the essential difference between drops of wine served to the devotees within the church as symbolic of the blood of Lord Jesus and the bottles sold at wine shops outside. The Chief Minister of Delhi has since denied that there was any proposal to delete churches from the list of places of worship. The episode has helped to
open a mud-slinging campaign over the use of religious
places. A press report revealed that despite an order of
the then Lt. Governor of Delhi to seal the premises of
the Sanatan Dharma Temple complex in Greater Kailash in
New Delhi for engaging in business activities, the temple
was still being used to carry on commercial activities.
It was complained that a banquet hall and a guest house
were constructed in the temple complex and used for
conducting conferences and marriages and as hotels for
guests. These reports, which are reflections of the current socio-political frictions in the nation, also point to the need for cleansing places of worship. Whether the place belongs to the Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh or of any other religion, the practices therein must conform to the legal prescriptions and socially accepted code of conduct and cannot blindly follow centuries-old rituals inconsistent with public order and morality. Places of worship are human creations and social institutions, and have to fit well with the changing social attitudes and national needs Those who take pleasure in digging at wine and church may well pause for a moment to ponder over the role of some temples where in the garb of worship, worst forms of vices are conserved and glorified. The instances may be few and far between, considering the size of the country, but even a semblance of unholy nexus between an evil and illegal social practice at a place of worship deserves to be firmly cut down. Unfortunately, this is not happening, and as a result, dedication of young girls to the Goddess Yellamma at Saundatti in Karnataka goes on in hundreds; and yagnas at the Rani Sati temple in Jhunjhunu are conducted without any effective protest. Underneath the worship are blatant crimes committed and or glorified — a form of naked exploitation of religious superstitions and faith in worship by vested interests concealing the true intention of making money in the name of God. The devadasi system, once prevalent in many places in the country has been banned by law in many States but is said to be thriving in some places and even patronised by some temples as an ancient practice with religious sanctity. Another shameful incident that raises the question of patronising places of worship was the Chandi Mahayagna organised in October, 1996, in the Rani Sati temple at Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Rani Sati. Arguments that it was to be conducted outside the temple and it was just a havan and did not include glorification of sati are meaningless. It is said that there are about 120 sati temples spread all over the country patronised by some communities. There seems to be a need for reviewing the role of places of worship. Equally despicable is the
practice of animal sacrifice going on clandestinely in
many village temples despite a legal ban. Reforming
places of worship is an arduous task and has to be
handled with care. The reformist governments of the DMK
in Tamil Nadu have taken many measures to eradicate all
vestiges of caste discriminations within places of
worship but still face resistance at times. (INFA) |
A rewarding recipe
GRADUALLY, I had graduated. Even in law. I was now eligible to be enrolled as an advocate. And then to wear the robes ordained as the insignia of the profession — the butterfly collars, the bands, the black and grey striped trousers, the black jacket and the gown. It has been said that a
“man with a good coat on his back meets with a
better reception”. Believing this to be so, I had
scraped through all my savings and bought myself a decent
though not an extravagantly expensive dress. After some
days, I was even enrolled as an advocate. But, that was
all. I had nothing more. No office. No books. No staff.
And yet, I hoped to set up a legal practice. With what? I
had no idea. With patience to wait? With a will,
determination and the overwhelming need to succeed? One day, a middle-aged man walked in. He opened his worn out bag and took out the paper-book. Apparently, the man had waited for years. Though, posthumous awards are no longer the sole monopoly of the services, yet, he had hoped that he would get justice in his life time. The papers were partly moth-eaten. They had gone yellow with years. Just 300 typed pages. It is still called a brief. In spite of need, I was hesitant to accept the brief. My daughter had high fever. I was anxious. However, the man was not ready to take a No. He undertook to sit by her bedside and pray. He was confident that she would be fine by the morning. He prayed. I prepared. At three in the morning, I finished reading the paper-book. He was still with the beads. I felt the child’s pulse. The fever had gone. His prayers had been answered. Shall my effort bear any fruit? As the case started, it was evident that it would not be a smooth sailing. In strictly legal terms, I did not have much to complain about. However, in equity, the claim appeared to be fair. But, the Bench was not receptive. Regardless, I persisted. In between, while their lordships were conferring, I whispered to a senior colleague: “Shall I be able to ‘secure’ my client’s job?” “Only for as long as you keep talking” was the terse reply. The response was not encouraging. Especially for a beginner. Yet, I persisted. I was able to do so primarily for the reason that I was morally convinced about the innocence of my client — the justice of his cause. I had faith and confidence in the efficacy of prayer. Equally, I had the belief that in court as much as before God, the truth must triumph. Still more, I needed to make a good beginning. It was necessary. I had nothing else to fall back upon. A rewarding recipe! The persistence paid. Their lordships examined the file, conferred for a while, and pronounced the judgement in favour of my client. The truth triumphed. Justice was done. Not entirely because of me. There is an invisible force that guides the destiny of us all. But, one is related to the other. His success was mine too. We, both needed success to survive. And, we did. Thirty years and more have
passed since then. Lots of things have happened. Once, I
even made bold to boast: “I am a self made
man.” And without batting an eyelid a friend
remarked: “Does it not save God of a lot of
blame?” |
The ultimate urban nightmare
A funny thing happened to me last week in Mumbai. An incident that began with a morning jog made me realise why India has the filthiest cities in the world with Mumbai almost certainly at the top of the list. When I am in this city I go for my morning jog on Marine Drive. I usually start at Nariman Point and go all the way down almost to Chowpatty. Having jogged in many cities in the world I can tell you that Marine Drive offers one of the best, most panoramic of running tracks. If you go early enough you see the sea and sky change from sapphire to tourquoise to pale grey in the course of minutes and bobbing on the water, all the way into the distance, you see the lights of little fishing boats which make the landscape look as if it has been decorated for Divali. The only thing that mars this heavenly experience is the filth. Any other city with a promenade as beautiful as this would make sure that it was kept in the best possible condition. Not Mumbai. Here, early morning joggers and walkers, have to dodge their way through mounds of excrement, both human and animal, and through heaps of uncollected garbage. Not to mention the stench. The garbage usually comes from restaurants and food stalls that spring up on the promenade every evening and disappear with the night. Technically, Mumbai’s municipal authorities have ensured that the leftover food, the plastic bags, cigarette packets, rotting banana skins and other junk is cleared before dawn. You can see the sweepers with their long-handled brooms at it from the early hours but, in typical Indian fashion, they do their job so indifferently that the promenade often looks as bad before as after. On this morning a civic-minded friend stopped and demanded to know from a particularly negligent sweeper why he was doing such a bad job and an altercation resulted. What gave him the right to tell him how to do his job, the sweeper demanded, and my friend replied angrily that he had the right that any other citizen did. This did not go down well with the sweeper. He started a lament at the top of his voice as if he were being abused or assaulted and this drew the attention of everyone in the vicinity. Other sweepers and municipal employees gathered round to defend their man and other joggers and walkers gathered round to defend my friend. A supervisor arrived from somewhere but instead of improving the situation he made it worse by making it clear that it did not matter what anyone said or did they would continue to work in the way they wished and if anyone had any complaints they should take them to the municipality. I decided to do exactly this and let me tell you what happened. I rang the Municipal Commissioner, Girish Gokhale. He was, as most officials usually are, “in a meeting”. His office asked me to get in touch with the Additional Municipal Commissioner, Mr Gaekwad. He was also in a meeting. His office asked me to get in touch with the Deputy Municipal Commissioner, Mr Achrekar who, wonder of wonders, came on the line. I told him that I was doing an article on Mumbai being the filthiest city in the world and wanted to check with him some information that a former Chief Minister of Maharashtra had given me. He had said that one of the biggest problems in the city was that sweeper unions prevented garbage-collecting machines from being used and that these unions were so powerful that half of the city’s 25,000 sweepers did not even bother to report for work. Mr Achrekar said:
“Well that is how it must have been in his days,
that isn’t how it is now. We have 35,000 sweepers
and they all come to work every day”. At this point he either disconnected the phone or it went dead. I called back five times which, since I was calling from Delhi was an expensive business, but Mr Achrekar’s secretary no longer put me through. I then called the Chief Engineer, M.R. Shaha, whose name I had also been given, but he was not in the office. Finally, I called the Municipal Commissioner’s office back again and left a message saying that I was doing story on the municipality and needed a comment. He never got back, nor did anyone else. You probably do not even need me to spell it out for you, dear readers, since most of you would have had similar experiences with some municipal functionary or other but I will spell it out. The main reason why we have the filthiest cities in the world is because municipal employees, from top to bottom, consider themselves masters of the people and not their servants. They have, quite simply, not even begun to understand that we pay for the services they are supposed to provide. The other problem is that since most of our cities are run by state governments or the Central Government, as in the case of Delhi, municipalities have not been given either the responsibility or the accountability that they have in other countries. Without it there is no hope of our cities ever improving and if they do not improve urban India could turn into the ultimate urban nightmare in the next few years. Delhi and Mumbai are already showing signs, in their more suburban parts, of turning into vast breeding grounds of disease and death. Conditions in some parts of Chembur (Mumbai) where thousands of people live in hovels built on the edge of an open sewer are the worst living conditions I have seen anywhere. Effluents from the sewer seep into the dirt floors of the hovels and it is on these floors that whole families sleep and eat. During one election campaign I remember asking residents of this colony whether the municipality had ever attempted to clean the sewer or cover it and they said they had never seen a municipal official in all the years they had lived there. So, can things ever
change? Yes. They will change as soon as we realise that
cities must govern themselves through a single elected
body, headed by an elected Mayor. If and when this ever
happens then the promenade that I began this story with
will one day be a place of beautiful parks, cafes and
entertainment arcades which will probably earn enough for
the city to enable it to never having any more places
like the slum in Chembur. The only other alternative is
for our cities to privatise all their municipal services.
It’s a nice thought, is it not, to think of all
those arrogant municipal officials being made redundant. |
Enduring joys of sport
EVERY time a world sporting event crops up, Indian viewers tremble with fear in case DD brandishes its still sarkari danda and gets exclusive rights by pressure through the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union or whoever. Last time it also had some private sector allies and the World Cup football became an abiding mess, as did Wimbledon. It always works out that way. Because as in most things international, DD simply isn’t equipped enough to sustain a continuing sport event. It still does not have a sport channel (Deputy Minister Mukhtar Naqvi would be better occupied chasing this up than MTV and Lata Mangeshkar). The result is that the sporting event moves from channel to channel, the relay is discontinued for news bulletins, which usually occur at the most exciting moments of a match and the viewer is left tearing his hair. One outstanding Wimbledon match was interrupted at match-point with the lofty announcement that a recording of the match would be carried two hours later. That Indian viewers turned to Pakistan TV, Indonesian TV, Spanish TV and other channels to get uninterrupted viewing of World Cup football matches is the biggest humiliation to which Indian TV and Indian viewers could be subjected. But armed with a very thick skin, DD soldiers on, nevertheless. Some people will never learn. Perhaps it is time that sports bodies in India and angry viewers complained to ABU about how ineptly DD handles international sporting events and put a stop to its patronage. I would like to emphasise once again that since DD is the only refuge of those without cable TV they should confine themselves to terrestrial coverage and leave the discriminating viewer his choice of a good satellite channel. But then, that would mean competition, about which DD had always been a coward and taken refuge in its official clout. So, for a glorious week, we have been watching Star Sports carry the US Open live, uninterrupted and with repeats at convenient times. They have even bent over backwards to give us long snatches of the Paes-Bhupathi doubles matches, although singles usually gets priority in TV relays. We have again had the pleasure of our very own Vijay Amrithraj as commentator. We even had a little chat between Sunil Gavaskar and Vijay Amrithraj at Flushing Meadows as Gavaskar made a brief halt on his way to Toronto as commentator for the India-Pakistan encounter. He is also lost to Indian TV, for obvious reasons. So we can sit back and enjoy the excellent coverage of the Commonwealth Games from Malaysia, courtesy Star Sports. Meanwhile, another national disaster, the floods, is getting top treatment on TV, as it should. It was most enterprising of Bano Haralu, Star TV’s North-East correspondent, to do spot coverage of the distressed animals at Kaziranga from a motor boat and show us the afflicted rhinos and wild buffaloes battling the fury of the flood waters. With such awesome natural events, the Congress session at Pachmarhi and Jayalalitha’s tantrums took second place. Our politics has become so monotonously petty and uninspiring, that one wonders at the Indian media’s obsession with it at the expense of far more important developments in our social and economic life. For some strange reason, not all newspapers in Delhi carry the Sony programmes and perhaps the fact that it is based in Mumbai makes its publicity too long-distance. So at last I got around to viewing one episode in its series Bhanwar, based on real life court cases. The one I saw was the familiar one of Kamala, the woman who was bought by an enterprising reporter of the Indian Express to demonstrate how such women are bought and sold like commodities. It was a good reconstruction, had some competent acting by the reporter, although I am not sure Kamala was such a hysterical person. Inspired by a foreign serial, Bhanwar has attempted something new on the Indian scene and I shall look forward to other episodes. Tailpiece:
I have high respect for Dr Partho Ghosh but must point
out respectfully that it is Eu-reeka and not Eu-rekka.
And I must inform Jennifer Arul that to my personal
knowledge Ms Leela Shukla of Delhi was a tourist guide
before 1950 and had a whole team of young women to
conduct tourists round North India. So the lady from
Chennai, who has been a tourist guide for 45 years was
not India’s first woman tourist guide but possibly
South India’s. And she has my good wishes. |
BOTH Hindus and Mussalmans are generally ignorant as to the attitude adopted by Mohammedan kings in India towards the slaughter of cows and the extent to which they respected the feelings of Hindus in this respect. I want to throw some light on this vexed question and cite historical facts to show to the Mussalmans how liberal-minded and magnanimous their forefathers were in this respect; and to what extent they respected the religious sentiments of the Hindu community at a time when they had full control over the country. The same problem which has now become so complex and perplexing owing to our narrow prejudices did not present any difficulty to them. The Mussalmans were the rulers of the country, and had they regarded it as a religious question there was nothing to prevent their disregarding or treating with contempt the religious feelings of the Hindus. But instead of considering the Hindus to be a subject race and their slaves, they treated them as fellow countrymen and accorded a treatment of equality to them. My Hindu brethren should
also fully recognise the fact that Mohammedan kings
respected and honoured their religious views and
sentiments and treated them as partners in the government
of the country. How the Mussalmans treated the Hindus
during their rule and to what extent they allowed the
Hindus to share the responsibilities and right of
government is a historical subject of perennial
importance on which I have written a book in English. In
that book I have attempted to show that the Mohammedan
rule in India was national and not foreign in its
character. — A reader |
 |
 |
| Nation
| Punjab | Haryana | Himachal Pradesh | Jammu & Kashmir | | Chandigarh | Business | Stocks | Sport | | Mailbag | Spotlight | World | 50 years of Independence | Weather | | Search | Subscribe | Archive | Suggestion | Home | E-mail | |
