SGPC: convincing win
THE re-election of Bibi Jagir Kaur as the president of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) is welcome for several reasons.

Fresh AIDS alert
THE fact that the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has for the first time released an update on the number of AIDS cases in the country should be seen as a positive development.

BHUBANESWAR TO BADAMIBAGH
A shameful trail of incompetence
by Inder Malhotra
FROM the super-cyclone of Orissa to the super-security lapse at the headquarters of the 15 Corps of the Army at Badamibagh near Srinagar, it has been egregiously tragic trail that has darkened this year’s festival of lights and driven sensitive Indians to hang their heads in shame.

Flaws in ‘no first use’ policy
by Rakesh Datta
THE Vajpayee government, during the last days of its second innings put up for public debate the proposed nuclear doctrine for the country. It was with the affirmation that in the coming years there would be need for a meaningful and reliable nuclear weapon force for India.

Human rights: the new mantra
By M.S.N. Menon
IT was globalisation not long ago. Now it is “human rights”. America know how to lead the world by the nose. It was in the name of freedom and democracy that the West brought down the Soviet Union. Is Russia any better today? Hardly. In fact, it is much worse.

Is this justice?
by Garima Singh
I STILL remember the day my sister was born. An atmosphere of shock and unhappiness pervaded the house. Relatives and friends poured in not to congratulate but to console my mother. My sister was such a chubby and lovely child with rosy cheeks and attractive eyes that I wondered why everybody was so shocked. I concluded that something must be really wrong with her which perhaps I was unable to understand. But today I fully understand what was wrong with her. Well, she was the second daughter in the family.

75 Years Ago

Nov 12, 1924
Communal Representation
A QUESTION which has caused a good deal of interest in connection with the Reforms Enquiry is the question of communal representation.

SGPC: convincing win

THE re-election of Bibi Jagir Kaur as the president of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) is welcome for several reasons. The election has been democratically conducted. The ability of the incumbent to run the "mini-parliament of the Sikhs" smoothly has been recognised. The margin of her victory is convincing—77 votes. The set-up she presides over now has an 11-member executive committee which includes three "opposition" members—two from the Gurcharan Singh Tohra camp and one from Simranjit Singh Mann’s Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar). Thus, she has the benefit of the advice of those also who did not endorse her candidature. Mr Surjit Singh Cheema, her opponent and an SGPC member from Jalandhar, got 49 votes against 126 votes cast in her favour. (As many as 177 members used their electing right; the total number of the electors is 183.) Groupism did raise its head. Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and the veteran SGPC figure, Mr Tohra, are inevitably seen as rivals. Mr Mann has his own calculations without much consequential clout. Bibi Jagir Kaur's victory was expected; so was the activity marked by wrangling, vitriol and bitterness shown by those who surprisingly got for their candidate at least three votes from the winning camp. The new SGPC chief has shown her determination to work methodically for the temporal wellbeing of the Panth, which is not entirely separable from the religious aspects of life. Politics is an avoidable element in religio-temporal matters but to make things ideal, one needs the elevation of politics to metapolitics like the development of physics into metaphysics.

Bibi Jagir Kaur has, fortunately, strong personal respect and a sound base at the grassroots level. She had done Punjab's womanhood proud with her services to the community before taking up her present challenging task. It would be wrong to think of her merely as a "nominee" of Mr Badal. Her hands are full like the coffers of the SGPC. She can change the face of Punjab by strengthening the weak educational and infrastructural framework. The SGPC can do what the state government is not able to accomplish. Scientific and technical education is the need of the hour and her leadership can bring the Chandrababu Naidu model of development for emulation to her state. Health is another field. Here she can begin with a sustained de-addiction drive and move on to the structuring of a pervasive primary health-care network. Many endeavours of this kind can prove to be employment-generating opportunities. The Punjabis are forward-looking people but Punjab is not a forward-marching state. The dichotomy can be ended by providing funds and guidance to the composite community. The Gurus and saints have shown the path. The new SGPC leadership is in an enviable position. It can lead the people on to the path of progress by keeping groups and coteries away from dissensions. The 74-year-old organisation has onerous tasks ahead.

Fresh AIDS alert

THE fact that the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has for the first time released an update on the number of AIDS cases in the country should be seen as a positive development. Such an initiative was long overdue because misleading reports based on micro studies in the media were adding to the confusion about the seriousness of the problem. According to the first official estimate ever since the AIDS alert was sounded in the eighties India had close to 35,00,000 positive cases till the middle of 1998. Given the current rate of the spread of the killer disease the figure of HIV positive cases and full blown AIDS may now be close to 40,00,000. It is not a happy picture. There is no indication that a concerted effort is being made to prove wrong the prophets of doom, who say that India at the current rate of growth would become home to the largest number of AIDS sufferers in the world. The current exercise of taking "direct charge" of the situation may help the Union Ministry for Health and Family Welfare chalk up a more focused programme for creating AIDS awareness among the sections of society most at risk. It is evident that the main purpose of the Central initiative is to evolve programmes for arresting the trend through a more efficient support and care mechanism. The study has put Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in the high risk category. It is just as well that the ministry has realised the importance of involving non-government organisations for creating an AIDS-free India. The number of NGOs already engaged in the task of creating AIDS as of today is inadequate.

Nevertheless some of the NGOs are doing much more than was expected of them by putting up what can be called "AIDS protection shield" with the help of the members of the community most at risk. For instance in Karnataka, included among the high risk states in the study, a number of NGOs have set up special STD { sexually transmitted diseases} clinics for truck drivers and cleaners. The decision to set up clinics for truckers was taken after a survey showed that nearly 25 per cent of them suffered from one or the other form of STD "and without proper medical care they could turn into full blown AIDS cases". The NGOs have also created a welfare trust for the tuckers. Most of them are illiterate and have no social status and the nature of their job makes them more vulnerable than most other categories of workers. The Karnataka initiative should be replicated across the country for stopping the dreaded disease from claiming fresh victims. The NGOs in Karnataka have adopted a simple strategy for creating the AIDS prevention shield. Their members actually mingle with the truckers at their favourite halting points on the national and state highways and educate them about how to practise safe sex. As a spokesman of one of the NGOs engaged in the task of creating AIDS awareness put it: "By educating one trucker we save at least 50 boys and women with whom he has sex on a single inter-state route". Since Karnataka alone has about 1.5 lakh truckers operating from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, as it were, the importance of the role of the STD clinics should be self-evident.

BHUBANESWAR TO BADAMIBAGH
A shameful trail of incompetence
by Inder Malhotra

FROM the super-cyclone of Orissa to the super-security lapse at the headquarters of the 15 Corps of the Army at Badamibagh near Srinagar, it has been egregiously tragic trail that has darkened this year’s festival of lights and driven sensitive Indians to hang their heads in shame.

For, in both cases, the Indian State, instead of rising to the occasion and combating nature’s mind-boggling fury in the eastern state and the Pakistan-backed militants’ unbelievably audacious outrage at Badamibagh with requisite determination, skill and despatch, has displayed a degree of incompetence that wasn’t thought possible and must now bode ill for the future.

Let us deal with Badamibagh first before turning to Bhubaneswar, if only because the former is less of a national disgrace than the ghastly goings-on in Orissa in the face of what Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee has called a “national calamity”. Even so, the alarming implications of the storming of the Army’s nerve-centre in terrorist-infested Kashmir must not be underestimated.

There is no doubt that the 15 Corps Headquarters has its entrance on a public highway. It is also true that the office of the PRO, the late lamented Major Purushottam, is close to the entrance and rather far from the office of the Corps Commander and the “Ops. Room”. But how does this diminish the enormity of the fact that precisely three terrorists of Lashkar-e-Toiyaba could blast their way in with apparent ease?

What is even more frightening is that it took the Army’s Quick Reaction Team (QRT) nearly 10 hours to get the better of the intruders who were armed heavily enough to engage the QRT all this while. This is not quick reaction by any means. And the escape of one of the three invaders, who remains at large, despite the proclaimed “massive manhunt” speaks for itself.

Much worse than all this is the Army’s unbecoming attempt to play down the outrage, and to pretend that nothing had happened about which the country should worry. To describe the office of the luckless PRO, located within the “highest security” parameters, a “soft target” may be good spin doctoring but is unsoldierly behaviour.

Nor is the situation improved by the Defence Minister’s belated and mealy-mouthed announcement of a vague probe. Nobody knows who is conducting the probe. It is being conducted by those who are themselves responsible for the unspeakable state of affairs.

Strangely, no one, neither a soldier nor a civilian, has spared a thought for the obvious political and psychological fallout of the shame of Badamibagh. The infamy coincided with the huge congregation of the Lashkar at Muridke in Pakistan, with the full backing of the present military regime, at which jehad was being declared against this country in any case. Almost simultaneously, the GOC of 15 Corps, Lieut-enant-Gen Krishan Pal, chose to proclaim that “militancy in Kashmir was now under control”.

The audacious attack on the Corps. Headquarters came within hours of this claim. And is it any surprise that after this outrage, which has sent shockwaves not just across the valley but throughout the country, the Lashkar chief in Muridke is able to announce gleefully that the “next target” will be “Vajpayee’s office”?

Having said this, one must add that while the Army must be held accountable for its lapses and shortcomings, it is usually more sinned against than sinning. As it so magnificently demonstrated in Kargil, it can do wonders even against the heaviest of odds. But while it can take on the enemy, its problems are aggravated by friends at home, about whom it is virtually helpless.

Typical of the situation that obtains is the brave announcement in New Delhi, on the heels of the Badamibagh episode, that the Union Home Ministry and the Defence Ministry would henceforth fight the militancy in Kashmir “jointly”. The fact is that a Joint Action Plan by the two ministries was brought into force soon after the formation of the previous Vajpayee government. This was done, moreover, amidst the fanfare masterminded by Mr L.K. Advani who went on talking about a “provocative”, rather than “reactive”, policy.

The result, however, was bizarre. The J & K government of Dr Farooq Abdullah interpreted the plan to mean that the responsibility of dealing with murder and mayhem by the Pakistan-backed militants, including heavily armed infiltrators from across the LoC, was entirely that of the Army, and the civilian administration could, therefore, wash its hands of it. Ironically, even the bug of complacency began with the civilian government, primarily in Kashmir. The Army now seems to have caught it, despite the Army Chief, Gen V.P. Malik’s repeated warnings after the victory in Kargil that the war was still on.

Dr Abdullah is a partner in the ruling coalition at the Centre. His son, Omar, is a junior member of Mr Vajpayee’s Council of Ministers. Yet coordination between Delhi and Srinagar is conspicuous by its absence. Civilian-military relations on the ground in J & K also leave much to be desired. Corrective action, however, is sadly lacking.

All this pales into insignificance compared with the monumental inefficiency, nay inhumanity, so cruelly on display in Orissa well over a week after the end of the most nightmarish natural disaster in memory.

Horrific and heart-rending details of the stupendous deaths, destruction, destitution and despair are much too well-known. They have indeed been televised round the globe. There is, therefore, no need to go over them.

But the horror of horrors is that long after elemental fury had exhausted itself, there are large areas with vast populations where, after the indescribable ravages of the cyclone, not a grain of food has been reached by the Indian State and society. Why? To say that for want of roads and other communications the areas are inaccessible is ridiculous. If TV crews carrying heavy cameras and equipment can get there, why can’t officials, political leaders, activists and social workers? The Army, the Navy and the Air Force alone are expected to bear the brunt.

Similarly, it is meaningless to go on bemoaning that the fury of the cyclone was unprecedented and not fully foreseen or that warnings, when given, were ignored by the people concerned. All that is in the past. The present reality, unimaginably grim and sickening, is that thousands and thousands of carcasses of both human and cattle are still lying around without any attempt to collect and cremate them.

The inevitable consequence of this has been cholera and other epidemics on a colossal scale. These were at first denied by officials at Bhubaneswar, the state capital. The same officials are now wringing their hands and declaring helplessness. TV showed a typical hospital, heavily deficient in medical supplies, where precisely two doctors were expected to cope with thousands of traumatised sufferers crowding in.

Only 11 of Orissa’s 24 districts have been flattened out by the mother of all cyclones. Strange thought it may seem but it is being said that even senior officers in these districts have gone off to fend for their kith and kin, forsaking their responsibility of looking after the people under their charge. But, in heaven’s name, what has happened to officials in the remaining 13 districts? Why haven’t they been rushed or air-dropped to offer some succour to suffering humanity?

Hungry and abandoned people are bound to be angry people. It is no surprise, therefore, that the helicopter in which Mr George Fernandes, Mr Navin Patnaik and another minister had embarked on an “aerial” survey of the misery was attacked.

At no stage during the seemingly unending misery had anyone at any level — village mukhia, sarpanch, subdivisional officer, local MLA and so on — shown the slightest enterprise. The state and the Centre are engaged in an unseemly wrangle over money. It seems that in Orissa the State has well and truly withered away. Gunnar Myrdal, the celebrated Swedish economist, had called India a “soft State”. Judging by the disgraceful and comprehensive failure in Orissa, this would seem an understatement.

Flaws in ‘no first use’ policy
by Rakesh Datta

THE Vajpayee government, during the last days of its second innings put up for public debate the proposed nuclear doctrine for the country. It was with the affirmation that in the coming years there would be need for a meaningful and reliable nuclear weapon force for India. To safeguard its national interests and security, India must develop a credible minimum deterrence, according to the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) document on the nuclear doctrine.

In fact, it was for the first time that India had thrown open to its citizens a responsibility to opine on one of the most sensitive issues concerning its defence. No other nuclear country has framed its nuclear doctrine in this manner. Perhaps, it was the absence of elected representatives in Parliament that compelled the government at the Centre to take this matter to the people.

Definitely, there appeared to be some hurry in the government’s attempt to give shape to its nuclear doctrine in order to gain extra political mileage as the elections at that time were round the corner. Since the same government has come to power at the Centre with a clear majority, it should ensure that certain inherent contradictions, the most significant being the “no first use” pledge, are removed from an otherwise appreciable nuclear policy so that it offers an effective deterrent to our adversaries.

However, looking at the past record of India’s preparations on military matters, it has always been a half-hearted effort. But for China and Pakistan, India would not have attained the massive fire power it enjoys today, possessing the fourth largest army in the world. But despite this superior conventional armoury, India has failed to deter both China and Pakistan from trying to grab its territory time and again. Pakistan has attacked India nearly four times, launching an open war against it. Pakistan has also unleashed proxy war for the last several years.

China, which attacked India in 1962, has never missed an opportunity to create trouble at our frontiers. We have lost to Pakistan one-fourth of Kashmir, and China is in possession of 10,600 sq miles of Indian territory. While Sino-Pak intimacy is mainly strategic in nature, our relationship with the two countries has been fluctuating from being irreconcilable to unfriendly to antagonistic. A slight shift in the Chinese posture has been witnessed, but that too is more Chinese-compulsive than for any genuine feelings towards India.

At the same time, the recent happenings in Pakistan leading to its abrupt shift to military rule (in fact, democracy in Pakistan has never been independent of military control) and its support to hostile activities such as fanning terrorism in India have been a matter of great concern for New Delhi.

India spends Rs 45,000 crore on defence, which is nearly 17 per cent of its total Central Budget. India has a population touching one billion mark. This vast sea of humanity has to be fed, clothed and provided all the basic amenities which requires a massive infrastructure. This demands that the country has a foolproof security mechanism capable of deterring any impending threat.

Beginning in 1945, at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, India’s nuclear programme has travelled a long way. Even though India is far behind the USA and Russia, its atomic energy programme is more advanced than that of most other countries. The difference is that the other nations having nuclear technology started with weapons first, and later diverted their programme for peaceful purposes. India moved in a reverse direction. The report of the Department of Atomic Energy way back in the late fifties had stated that India was in a unique position of being the only underdeveloped country with an important atomic energy programme. Later, the peaceful nuclear explosion of 1974 made India as the sixth member of the so-called nuclear club. In 1998 India conducted five more nuclear tests, including a thermo-nuclear test, and finally declared that the country possessed sufficient data to go ahead with its planned nuclear programme.

Closer to the advances in developing a bomb, India has also made a big stride in the area of the delivery system. Apart from an array of military aircraft, India has developed Agni and Prithvi missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads.

But despite this stark reality with regard to the Indian strategic force level, there are no clear details on nuclear bombs excepting the proposed nuclear doctrine with a “no first strike” declaration.

According to Clauswitz, “War cannot be fought in abstraction but in reality”. Perhaps, this is the reason why India is finding it hard to repel Pakistan on the military front while the latter is drawing sustenance from its nuclear weapon capability for its continued belligerency in Kashmir.

It may be mentioned here that the basic factor which brought the end of direct hostility between the USA and the erstwhile Soviet Union was the mutual assured destruction capability (MAD) arising out of their nuclear weapon power. Anon has rightly said that the only complete mistake is the mistake from which we learn nothing.

India has taken a long time in exercising its option to use nuclear energy for making a bomb and in the process allowed itself to bleed by its adversaries. It is high time our policy-makers showed pragmatism and built a strong nuclear India with its full deterrent potential.

Why this “no first use”? Does this mean that it is only after we have been partially destroyed or have suffered limited damage when we will retaliate? Again, what will be the level of destruction which will force us to use the bomb? Does one draw the inference that it is only after a particular city or place is destroyed when we will use the nuclear weapon?

“No first strike”, on the face of it, appears a healthy pronouncement, but does it imply ruling out completely a pre-emptive strike? Alternatively, we have to gear up our intelligence-gathering network to alert us about the use of nuclear weapons by the enemy. However, the failure on the intelligence front during the last conflict with Pakistan is still fresh in the minds of the people. India has always pursued a policy of retaliation, but with conventional weapons things have been different. One should remember that the nuclear holocaust of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had broken the back of the Japanese.

By saying that we will have the bomb but will not use it first, we are giving the impression of feeling ashamed of developing a nuclear bomb. On the contrary, after developing this capability we should have moved ahead and taken into consideration the threats being faced by India. It is not only China and Pakistan which matter for us but there are also Diego Garcia in the South and Kremlim in the North. And a nuclear threat is not always intentional — it can be accidental also. The need to have a nuclear bomb is mostly to create panic in the mind of the enemy on the strength of mutual assured destruction so that it thinks twice before deciding to threaten our national interests.

(The author is Head, Department of Defence and Strategic Studies, Punjabi University, Patiala.)

Is this justice?
by Garima Singh

I STILL remember the day my sister was born. An atmosphere of shock and unhappiness pervaded the house. Relatives and friends poured in not to congratulate but to console my mother. My sister was such a chubby and lovely child with rosy cheeks and attractive eyes that I wondered why everybody was so shocked. I concluded that something must be really wrong with her which perhaps I was unable to understand. But today I fully understand what was wrong with her. Well, she was the second daughter in the family.

I was a naughty and daring child. Being the leader of all the neighbourhood children, I virtually dictated terms to everybody. I used to protect my younger brother from the elder boys as he was very shy and quiet whereas I was not scared of anybody. Instead I used to tell stories of ghosts to other children at night. They would start crying and I would have the last laugh. But this did not last long. As I grew up, my younger brother was given the responsibility of looking after me. Whenever my mother went out I was allowed to stay back only if he was there, otherwise I had to go with her even against my wishes. I was told that it was not safe for girls to stay alone.

It was Raksha-bandhan and I was very excited. I was told to tie rakhi on my brother’s hand so that he could protect me. I protested that I did not need his protection. Besides, I had been protecting him. Why should he not tie rakhi on my hand? I was reprimanded and told that it was the brother who protected the sister and not vice versa. But I persisted and tied rakhi only when he tied one on my hand.

Gradually, I understood that he was indeed different. He could go out anywhere he wanted and could come late at night. Whereas I could not step out without an escort, and going out alone at night was just impossible. I was told that good girls don’t go out alone. My predicament was that what had goodness to do with going out alone. And even if it was so then my brother must be a very very bad boy as not only did he go out alone but also many times came back at night. But to my utmost surprise he was never scolded, rather he was loved and respected by everybody. I was totally bewildered and hated all this.

Indeed, I was born different from a man both physically and temperamentally. Yet, I was strong enough to stand alone. But at every stage I was told that I was weak and needed protection. Slowly I started believing this myself. I started becoming dependent. My independence was being killed brutally but without any bloodshed. It was dying such a subtle and slow death that even I didn’t realise it. I had stopped questioning and protesting so much. I started accepting things as they were. My socialisation was complete. I grew up and the remnants of independence pushed me aside. I dared to compete in spite of odds. I went through the same hard work, pain and examination as the man and reached the same level. I was happy that at last I was able to prove that I was as competent and capable as any man was. I joined office and worked very hard. I started enjoying my work and performed well. I had a sense of satisfaction and success. I thought that at last the battle was over and I had won. But it was not to be. One day I heard my boss telling somebody that she was doing reasonably well and he couldn’t expect more from a woman. I was shocked!

The truth dawned on me that the trial was still not over and perhaps it would never be over. Everyday I would have to keep proving that even I-a-woman-could be competent. But how would I do this? I was ready to go through the trial but the question was: would the trial be fair?

Well this is my story — the story of every woman. Since the day she is born she is made to feel weak. She is told that she can’t stand alone. She is made insecure, dependent and weak and then blamed for these very traits. Is this justice? I pray to society to let me stand and walk. Don’t give me sympathy. Let me walk. Let me walk without crutches. I will reach my destination.

Human rights: the new mantra
By M.S.N. Menon

IT was globalisation not long ago. Now it is “human rights”. America know how to lead the world by the nose.

It was in the name of freedom and democracy that the West brought down the Soviet Union. Is Russia any better today? Hardly. In fact, it is much worse.

Surely, the West must have had deep conviction in freedom and democracy. This was by no means the case. It was the patron of all dictatorships throughout the cold war. Even now.

What then was the issue? The issue was the struggle for supreme power — for hegemony over the world. “Freedom and democracy” was a ruse, a shibboleth, a camouflage to hide the real intention. America has really mastered this technique of hiding its real objectives.

Today the USA is the supreme power in the world. It can get away with murder. The 1991 war against Iraq showed that the USA could ruin a country with minimal damage to itself. In Yugoslavia, it has perfected its war-fighting capacity. And the world stood by petrified. There was no protest from anywhere.

There is no balance of power today, no countervailing factor to resist excesses of American power. It was a jump from frying pan into fire. Did the world anticipate this prospect two decades ago? No. It lacked the intelligence to see ahead. Neither Moscow nor the rest of the world saw the need to maintain a balance of power-multipolarity in today’s parlance — as an absolute necessity in a world of arbitrariness and national aggrandisement.

Today, it is in the name of economic freedom that America is trying to deprive the peoples of the world of their economic sovereignty. Ironical? But most peoples are yet to see it this way. They see globalisation as a panacea. They cannot see that globalisation is taking away the freedom to choose, the autonomy that nations need to organise their destiny. They do not see that economic power has passed into the hands of a few MNCs and the Wall Street.

Globalisation is not just economics. It also means changes in the nature of governance, changes in the moral commitments of peoples and changes in cultural values. In short, globalisation eliminates many other freedoms.

They say that globalisation increases individualisation, that people become more autonomous, more so women. But where is it taking us? Women need more autonomy. This is not disputed.

“Globalisation is like a giant wave that can either capsize nations or carry them forward,” says the chief economist of the World Bank. Interesting. But who is going to help the capsized? Are they to perish?

We are told now that a man must have the right to choose his religion, that it is his human right. We know who is at the back of this theory. It is the Christian church, which has set before it the task of converting Asia in the 21st century. But may we ask: Is it his right to settle down where he wants in the next century? By no means, no. That is not suitable to the West. The West has serious objection to such liberties.

So, the scenario is clear in the name of human rights, the West will destroy all the rights that we in the developing world still have. The family is an impediment to conversion. So it must be destroyed. Hence this emphasis on the individual’s “human rights” to choose his religion.

It used to be said that a man is born to the religion of his parents. Parents and children have mutual rights and obligations. But no more. Now the sons have no obligation to look after their old parents. Perhaps, the right of parents are to be extinguished because the unity of the family stands in the way of Western designs. It is, therefore, necessary to make the individual rootless.

Individualism, which is a product of the Reformation, has broken up the family in the West. Today the West has nuclear families. Children have no obligation to look after the parents, who generally end up in old age homes to be looked after at state expense. In what way is this an improvement on the joint family system? It deprives man of his emotions. It drains him of his love and affection. In India, as in Asia in general, the family is the basic unit of society. America pays lipservice to family. But it is like a fetish — America has lost interest and faith in family.

Family has its advantages and disadvantages. More of advantages. The stress is on the collective good. No wonder, men and women in the West refuse to bring out new human beings into this world. They see no purpose in rearing up a new generation. “What for?” they ask.

Tens of thousands of women in England refuse to be mothers today. Why go through the pain and drudgery? There will be millions to follow them. The trend is catching. Where family has no role to play, there will be no need for children.

Is this the final goal that the West is seeking? Is it a death-wish? But why drag the East into this doom?

Ever since the early sixties, Amnesty International has been bringing out an annual report on the observance of human rights by other countries. Not of America. Shows what was the real purpose in it. It was to provide a handle to America. And no one published a report on US violations of human rights. So, when Amnesty brought out a study of US violations, after continuous criticism, it was a revelation. In a 153-page report it documented the “Persistent and widespread pattern of human rights violations” in the USA. The USA has a prison population of 1.7 million, one of the highest. In some republics, they still chain the prisoners, a violation of international law. Both men and women are subjected to sexual abuse. Prison authorities resort to cruel and degrading methods, and much of these are linked to racism. The USA continues its discriminating practices against minorities — a basic flaw of its democracy. One third of the blacks (men) are in prison or on parole. And the USA continues to deny primacy to international law. There is still death penalty against juveniles. It has not ratified the rights of children, and yet the USA denounces child labour in developing countries. There is a whole list of abuses by the police. As for US double standards, these are now legendary.

There is, of course, total confusion in US objectives. Prof Samuel Huntington says the conflict of the future is between “the “West and the rest” because “Western ideals of individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, rule of law, democracy, free market, separation of church and state often have little resonance in Islamic, Confucian, Japanese, Hindu, Buddhist or orthodox cultures.” If this is so, why not let the diversity prevail? But the West is determined to extinguish the diversity. The Catholic Church believes that salvation is possible only through Jesus Christ. And America is exporting its way of life in order to extinguish the world’s diversity. It exports the products of its mass culture — the lowest denomination. One religion, one way of life, one entertainment — this is the US objective. Todd Gitlin, the sociologist, calls it “the latest in the long succession of bidders for global unification.” And MTV’s President says: “Today’s young people have passports to two different worlds — to their own culture and to ours.” The fact is: the young have abandoned their own culture.

Of course, there are other views of US culture. They say that it is the work of the Great Satan, which undermines the values of traditional societies and encourages wickedness.

The time has come for India, for Asia and the “rest of the world” to ponder over the world’s drift towards anarchy and doom. It is largely driven by the needs of commerce and dominance. The challenge of the West must be met. We need many changes from this doomed vision of an ungoverned world order.

75 YEARS AGO

Nov 12, 1924
Communal Representation

A QUESTION which has caused a good deal of interest in connection with the Reforms Enquiry is the question of communal representation.

Some witnesses have urged the Muddiman Committee to recommend its abolition while others have considered it very necessary.

Mr C.R. Das said: “I leave it entirely to the Mohammedans to decide whether they want communal electorates or not.

My experience of the last election is that separate electorates for Mohammedans proved very successful. The Mohammedans helped us to a great extent and we could help them in the same way. There was thus no friction.”

****

Retrocession of Berar

We have good reason to believe that the question of retrocession of Berar to the Nezam was considered, along with the report of Mr. J.P. Thompson, Political Secretary on the subject, at a recent meeting of the Executive Council of the Governor-General, and that the decision arrived at by the Governor-General-in-Council was against in the Nizam’s claims.