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Monday,
November 5, 2001,
Chandigarh, India  
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A POTO start Lashkar, Jaish in dragnet
From NAM giant to a client |
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Bridge promise
Anupam Gupta
Get the best out of meetings
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A POTO start INDIA
has been forced to sit on the bench (where non-players sit in a football match) in the ongoing global battle against terrorism, and the BJP does not like it at all. So it has decided to step up its own fight against terrorism. It will not launch fighter jets or heavy bombers as the USA is doing in Afghanistan but wield the recently designed POTO (Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance) partly to contain militants but mostly to corner rival political parties in the run-up to the Assembly elections in four states, including Punjab. This came out loud and clear during the two-day meeting of the party’s national executive at Amritsar. The deliberations and the political resolution reflected the party’s tough line, occasionally peppered with calls for restraint. Take the unabated violence in Jammu and Kashmir. The latest buzz word in the party circles is “hot pursuit”, chasing militants into the Pakistan-occupied areas to liquidate them and their bases. Home Minister Advani opened this theme and the dangerous thought finds an indirect mention in the decision of the party’s policy making body. It goads the government to take all action in the national interest but preceding this was a spirited discussion on hot pursuit. Many media men have concluded that the BJP-led government may engage Pakistan in a short and localised skirmish just before the state polls in February-March next. Prime Minister Vajpayee softened the approach by saying it called for “careful thinking”, without ruling it out. In tandem with hot pursuit, POTO will figure dominantly in the BJP’s election fighting strategy. Mr Vajpayee has sought a consensus, knowing full well that he cannot get it. All opposition parties have denounced it. Even NDA members like the DMK, the TDP and the Samata have profound reservations. A staunch supporter of the BJP, the Akali Dal, has declined to comment, meaning that it is not very supportive. The media is very angry. Newspapers are full of highly critical articles. Using POTO as an election issue will be a double-edged weapon. If it misfires, the BJP will be in deep trouble. It can misfire if respected human rights activists start an open campaign and the media joins it. That will create an atmosphere against the draconian legislation and the urban middle class, the power base of the BJP, will develop second thoughts. Mr Advani revealed the party’s stand when he said those who oppose the ordinance are “wittingly or unwittingly appeasing terrorists”. Mr Vajpayee’s milder approach (seeking a consensus) has not mollified the opponents of the legislative move. The BJP is going to the electoral battlefield fighting terrorists with POTO with no assured chance of success. |
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Lashkar, Jaish in dragnet IF
a demand is not accepted for long, it becomes almost an obsession. The clamour for US action against the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) was one such plea of India. Now that these two have been branded foreign terrorist organisations (FTO), realisation will perhaps dawn on everybody that the gesture is mainly symbolic. The FTO designation does provide the authority to act against individuals and organisations associated with them. But these dreaded terrorist organisations have only low-key presence in the USA. Individuals and organisations that provide support to such bodies do so in such a circuitous manner that it is almost impossible to follow their trail. As such, it will be futile to expect any downturn in the activities of these groups that have been behind some of the most gruesome attacks in the Kashmir valley in the recent times. However, as a psychological gesture, the naming of the organisations is a big morale booster for India, particularly since it comes on the eve of the US visit of the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee. Also, it is a major embarrassment for Pakistan, considering that the Lashkar-e-Toiba is not only Lahore-based but also enjoys almost open support of that government. That is why both the Pakistani Government and the Lashkar-e-Toiba have delayed their comments on the US action. In its own way, the USA has tried to play even with traditional rivals India and Pakistan. While it has been showering aid and weaponry on the latter, it has tried to please India with this particular "concession". In the valley, there appears to be smug confidence among the backers of the terrorists that the US action would not have any effect on their operations. What must be realised is that such shadowy groups have to only change their name to remain active. That is what many of them have done in the past. The USA has gone out of its way to underline the fact that the list of affected organisations and individuals is a living document. By that the State Department means that it will continue to expand it as it identifies and confirms additional entities that provide financial and other support to terrorist organisations. That is one part of the story. If the fight against terrorism has to be won, three other steps are mandatory. One, Washington must make sure that the terrorist groups do not hoodwink it by changing their names. Two, the action against them should come about in real time. India has been clamouring for a ban on the Lashkar-e-Toiba and similar organisations for long. And most important, it should pursue all such groups with the same single-minded determination that it is showing towards Al-Qaida. If it is not in a position to do so on its own, it has to extend whole-hearted support to India in rooting them out. Of course, Pakistan will rail against such firmness, but terrorism is terrorism whether it is by an enemy of the USA or a friend. |
From NAM giant to a client CALL it exquisite irony or what you will, even as the Prime Minister’s special envoy Brajesh Mishra was in Dhaka on “a goodwill mission”, conveying his boss’s “greetings” to the new government and talking of “further strengthening” bilateral relations — that very day more than 100 heavily-armed Bangladeshis crossed into India, plundered Pakhria village in Meghalaya and dragged a young tribal back across the line, decapitated him and threw the body near the international border. So, did India do anything about it? Forget about punitive action, three days after the event one has not seen even an official protest. And why should there be any protest? After all, what happened at Pakhria is not only not unprecedented but rather a small affair compared to the capture and murder by Bangladesh Rifles of 16 BSF soldiers, their bodies later strung on poles like hunted animals, in Pyrdiwah last April. We swallowed that barbarism reportedly because, in our eternal naivette, we believed that retaliation would jeopardise the re-election prospects of “the pro-India government” of Sheikh Hasina. It did not occur to these strategic brains in our Ministry of External Affairs to ponder why and how such provocative atrocity could take place under the supposedly friendly dispensation in Dhaka. As it happened, our hare-brained generosity did not help the Awami League at the hustings, and we now have ensconsed in Dhaka Begum Khaleda Zia of the avowedly none-too-friendly Bangladesh Nationalist Party with three fundamentalist anti-India outfits as her cohabitees in power. Is Pokhria, then, the proverbial shadow of coming events? It is not only the border areas. And not only the BNP. The likely politics of the new government vis-a-vis India is portended by the vicious and concerted attacks by the coalition supporters on Hindu Bangladeshis, already reduced over the years by nearly half to just 10 per cent of the population. Tens of hundreds of them have fled to India in recent days, and many more will in the coming days and months. And needless to say, we will accept them, and the situation, as we have millions of Muslim Bangladeshis over the years, most of whom have come for dubious reasons and a large number, courtesy Pakistan’s ISI, for reasons demonstrably dangerous for our internal security. Did the National Security Adviser raise the issue of the illegal immigrants in his talks in Dhaka? If he did, as he ought to have, nobody is telling. But did he at least raise the issue of the post-election atrocities on the Hindus of Bangladesh? Doordarshan News clearly said that he would convey “India’s concerns” (sic). Did he? We have no word on this from either the MEA or the PMO. According to the Bangladesh Foreign Secretary, Mr Mobin Chowdhury, “No such issue was discussed”! I must say here that while it could be perfectly in order for India to impress on Bangladesh the unhappy impact of anti-Hindu atrocities there on the communal harmony in India, we should not protest simply because the targets are Hindus. I do not believe in transnational concern on religious grounds, but what one cannot understand, let alone uphold, is India’s apologetic stance when it comes to our minorities. Mr Chowdhury has been quoted as saying that Mr Brajesh Mishra had during the talks simply emphasised the need for “more cooperation between India and Bangladesh at all levels”. What effect this pious exhortation will have on India-Bangladesh relations remains to be seen. But judging by the post-election events as well as Begum Zia’s policies and postures in the past and by the undisguised anti-India creed of her alliance partners, we are likely to have a troublesome neighbour in the east. An aggressive and pathologically anti-India neighbour in the west and now, to put it no differently, a potentially hostile neighbour in the east: And to our south and north? An ambiguous and by and large indifferent Sri Lanka, and a powerful and unpredictable China sitting pretty on huge chunks of Indian territory (and periodically claiming more of it), and for years now missiles and other weapons provider to Pakistan. Also to the north, tiny Nepal, a Hindu kingdom which erupts in anti-India demonstrations at the drop of a hat, as it were, and which has apparently no qualms about becoming a goodly haven for Pakistan’s ISI network. So much for our immediate neighbourhood. The picture is no better further afield. Be it West Asia, Africa or the rest of the developing world, we do not count. Even the UAE has once again cocked a snook at us regarding gangster Abu Salem. To think that it was not too long ago that the entire Third World looked up to India and respected and supported our worldview! That was when our foreign policy was based on solid principles and when we made common cause with all developing countries on matters of common interest. Seems aeons ago. The India of today is virtually friendless. We have many cordial acquaintances but none we can call a staunch friend — friends we can rely on and who can rely on us. The slide began some two decades ago but took the form of a plummet when Mr Jaswant Singh assumed the reins of the foreign office and decided to woo the USA at all costs and to the exclusion of our friends, past and potential. The fact that this has been a one-sided passion was clear even earlier but became amply evident after September 11. No matter how we obeyed their advice, applauded everything they did or did not do, wailed over the terrorist attack on them and offered them all help in their revenge war — no matter all this, they have made it clear that we don’t matter to them, that while we have embraced their concerns as ours, our concerns are not theirs, but we should nevertheless continue to do their bidding — on economic policies, on security matters, on Kashmir, on how to deal with Pakistan, et al. That the USA should so treat us is in character with its tradition of arrogance of power, domination and exploitation. That the Indian government should accept this quietly and completely and in a total miscalculation of national interests and unmindful of public sentiment actually celebrate this client status is the supreme tragedy of present-day India. |
Bridge promise AT a recent sangat darshan the Punjab Chief Minister promised to get a bridge built between Gharota and Mirthal spanning the unruly Chakki that I crossed every time with a sense of trepidation. That was 50 years ago when I studied in the middle school at Gharota and occasionally thought of meeting my sister married in a village across the treacherous river. Whenever I heard from someone in the class that the river was fordable I would straightway dash to the trail leading to the river-bed from where I could see stretches of sand, gravel, stones, boulders and then the ominous waterway. With the school bag fastened to the head, and shoes and shirt and pyjamas stacked across my neck, I would wade through the current and some time swim to get to the dry patch on the other side. As I said that was more than 50 years ago, maybe 55. Sounds like prehistoric times when my village had no electricity and only one primary school called madrassa. No post office. Mirthal had been our only lifeline, our post office for generations. In the absence of a bridge between Mirthal and Gharota the postman had to walk for miles towards Pathankot where the river was narrow. After crossing it he would meander to Dera to deliver the mail to a cluster of hamlets before emerging in our village girdled by two canals. Everyone remarked that Mianjee had been our mailman all along. A spartan in sturdiness, though diminutive, Mianjee was my first contact with the outside world. Twice a week he would appear, after that odyssey, trailing a bludgeon in one hand, an umbrella in the other, with the bloated mailbag strapped to his back. After the school I invariably loitered around the canal and anxiously awaited him. I could spot him from a distance since he was the only person I ever saw in our region who wore a khaki uniform and a khaki turban. And what a pleasure it was to receive him and ask him over to our baithak and offer him first some water and later a glass of milk. Five decades ago in our Pathanti village no one drank tea unless suggested by our local physician. And of course the guest always had something for me — either a letter from my brother studying in a city college, or a query about some addressee who was constantly receiving Soviet Land or moneyorders from some metro. Later, he would tell me in confidence that Communism was on the way and I should be prepared to launch a revolution for social justice. In the same breath, however, he would advise me to first excel in studies and think of slogans and struggles later. What I vividly recall about Mianjee was his work ethic, his total dedication to the job. Neat and orderly he ever was in the assortment of mail, though most of the letters for our village he would leave with me for distribution. After a little rest he would pick up his gear and move on to the next village to connect it to the wider world. A wandering facilitator, he would some time tarry to read letters for those who couldn’t read and also write a few for those who knew no alphabet. During his mass contact programme in the district of Gurdaspur the Chief Minister remarked that meeting the people was “no picnic.” Through his sangat darshans he was trying to expedite the development work in the villages. Building the bridge between Gharota and Mirthal would be a tribute to his vision. The former is the birthplace of Dev Anand, the evergreen cine star, while the latter is the home of several decorated soldiers of the Indian army. I wish Mianjee were around to witness this upcoming miracle. I hope I live to see it though I don’t know how long it takes to turn a political promise into a ground reality. For me it would be akin to a trip to the moon since it would save me at least one hour to get to the place where once in early childhood I balled, brawled, cried and laughed in the company of cronies and cowherds. |
POTO, what it does not say and what it says PROMULGATED late evening on October 24, the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance, 2001 — known popularly by its highly pronounceable acronym, POTO — is already bristling with controversy. Even as liberal Muslim opinion in India, exemplified by Prof Mushirul Hasan’s open letter to the Shahi Imam — “let the cameras stop clicking and let the tape-recorders be switched off at the Jama Masjid” — has started conspicuously to surface, POTO has begun officially to be promoted as a benchmark of Indian nationalism in the war against terror. Leading the anti-terrorist jehad are two of the ablest legal minds of the BJP, Union Law Minister Arun Jaitly and Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie. “POTO is a must to win this bloody war, says Shourie”, headlined The Hindustan Times on November 2, reporting his forceful presentation at a three-day seminar on Global Terrorism organised by Mr K.P.S. Gill’s Institute of Conflict Management in New Delhi. Close to 53,000 lives, said Mr Shourie, had been lost in terrorist acts since the early eighties. And yet, anti-terrorism laws are blocked and exploited by politicians to serve their own interests. Terrorists tend to use the instruments of democracy to subvert democracy, he said. Sadly, they get help from “so-called liberals” who become unwilling supporters and advocates of human rights without telling the complete truth surrounding the issue. “There is no humane way to conduct a war,” he said. “War is a bloody business. Use of minimum force has never won a war. It has only been won when you overwhelm your enemy with force.” As for misuse of POTO, he asked: “Even the IPC and the CrPC are being misused in certain states. Should we do away with them also? Standards for normal times in normal places cannot be applied to areas that are affected by terrorism.” Then comes the punchline. The worst factor that impedes the fight against terrorism, said Mr Shourie, is a “weak and flabby” state. “You cannot protect a country as long as ‘nationalism’ is a dirty word.” That is an absolutely unexceptionable statement per se, and I know that Mr Shourie believes in it with every fibre of his being, but he overlooks the danger of too frequent, or indiscriminate, an use of the term “nationalism” in a country where Hinduism is the religion of the majority and the distinction between “nationalism”, on the one hand, and “Hindu nationalism”, on the other, may often prove too fine for ordinary comprehension. No majority must ever be punished for being secular and no minority ever rewarded for being communal, but more than that any attempt to package the war against terror in a ‘nationalist’ wrapping in communally combustible, pluralist societies is fraught with grave risk. Law Minister Arun Jaitly’s loud defence of POTO on Star News channel, lawyer-friend but political rival Kapil Sibal locking horns with him, anticipated by almost a week the BJP’s Amritsar strategy of questioning the bona fides of any one who dares to express any reservations about the Ordinance. “For the BJP,” wrote Smita Gupta in The Times of India on November 4, reporting from Amritsar, “the controversial Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (POTO) has become the perfect vehicle to carry its creed of ‘nationalism’ ..... in the run-up to Assembly elections in UP, Uttaranchal, Punjab, Manipur and Jammu and Kashmir, all slated for 2002.” If a message emanated from the two-day meeting of the BJP’s national executive which concluded at Amritsar on Saturday, she said, it was that party workers should fan out across the country, “raise the temperature on the terrorism issue” and create public opinion for the passage of POTO by posing the line given to party members by Home Minister L.K. Advani on Friday: “Those who are opposing POTO are appeasing terrorists.” That then is the latest slogan in a country which never tires of celebrating its commitment to democracy every few years: those who are opposing POTO are appeasing terrorists. Never mind the irony of the BJP government at the Centre caving in to release three of the most dreaded “Islamic” terrorists the sub-continent has seen in recent years, and External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh personally escorting them to safety in Taliban-ruled Kandahar, not very long ago. Forget the past, the elections are now round the corner and those who are opposing POTO today are appeasing terrorists. It is apparent, as Neerja Chowdhury put it in The Indian Express on November 4, that the BJP is viewing POTO as a potent weapon in its armoury to polarise the ground situation in its favour. If the Congress and other Opposition parties support POTO, she says, analysing the strategy, it will be a feather in the BJP’s cap. And if they oppose it, and the Ordinance lapses in January (for want of sufficient parliamentary backing), it will polarise the situation in the BJP’s favour in the Hindi heartland in the run-up to the elections. And the more they oppose, the greater will be the polarisation. Quite independently of such strategy, however, and the shrewdly calculated expectations underlying it, the most important and fateful innovation brought about by POTO in the Indian legal landscape needs carefully to be examined on its merits with an open mind. That is the introduction of the concept of “terrorist organisation”, a concept hitherto unknown to Indian criminal law including TADA or the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, 1987, which lapsed on May 23, 1995. For the purposes of this Ordinance, reads Section 18 of POTO — the first of five Sections, 18 to 22, grouped under Chapter III titled “Terrorist Organisations” — an organisation is a terrorist organisation if it is listed in the Schedule or operates under the same name as an organisation listed therein. Twenty-three organisations stand listed in the Schedule to POTO as notified in the Gazette of India on October 24. These include the Babbar Khalsa International, the Khalistan Commando Force and the International Sikh Youth Federation (engaged in terrorist activities in Punjab); the Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen or Harkat-ul-Ansar, the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen and the J&K Islamic Front (engaged in terrorist activities in Kashmir); ten organisations operating in the North-East including the ULFA; the LTTE or Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam; and the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and the Deendar Anjuman. The Central Government, says Section 18(3), may “add” an organisation to the Schedule “only if it believes that it is involved in terrorism”. An organisation, says the next sub-section of Section 18, shall be “deemed” to be involved in terrorism if it (a) commits or participates in acts of terrorism, (b) prepares for terrorism, (c) promotes or encourages terrorism, or (d) is otherwise involved in terrorism. A person who “belongs” to, or “professes to belong” to, a terrorist organisation is guilty of an offence under Section 20 punishable with imprisonment upto 10 years or with fine or both, unless he proves that he became a member prior to its declaration as a terrorist organisation and has not taken part in its activities. A person who “invites support” for a terrorist organisation, or a person who “arranges, manages, or assists in arranging or managing” a meeting to support or further the activities of a terrorist organisation or to be addressed by a person who belongs thereto, or a person who addresses such a meeting himself by way of support, is guilty of an offence under Section 21 also punishable with upto 10 years imprisonment or fine or both. Fund-raising for a terrorist organisation is an offence under Section 22 punishable with upto 14 years in jail or fine or both. Quite apart, therefore, from individual “terrorist acts” punishable under Section 3, the declaration of an organisation as a terrorist organisation by way of its inclusion in the Schedule entails sweeping penal consequences for its members and supporters. More next week on this quantum jump in Indian anti-terrorist law. |
The Elphinstone Theatre will screen the "Blue-Beard's Eighth Wife," which is one of the most amazing romances ever exhibited on the screen. The hero of the story scoured the world for his wives; first wife was a fugitive daughter of Russia; his second was a tempestuous beauty of Spain; his fourth was a devil-may-care Irish queen; and his eighth was a gorgeous French girl — a composite of all seven — beautiful, ingenious, and a volcano when aroused, the only wife who was her husband's master. Gloria Swanson plays the part of the eighth wife. From all reports the picture is a remarkable photoplay. |
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Get the best out of meetings
1. Recognise that most meetings will be chaotic and unproductive without a good chair and an agenda. If your aim is to be productive, skip most of these meetings. If you work in a large organisation where productivity is unimportant, you may prefer this way of whiling away the time to sitting at your desk. 2. Bring your own informal agenda if the meetings you attend are badly run but you want results. In poorly organised environments, few people think far enough ahead to turn up with papers to hand out. If you are the only person who has a handout, you will usually find that discussion centres on the points you make on these sheets. 3. Watch for operators in political organisations: you need to match their tactics. `Do some lobbying beforehand so you can count your allies,’ says John, a regular at company meetings. `Be prepared for all outcomes. Keep a new strategy or idea up your sleeve for the meeting so you can announce it there, keeping your opposition on the back foot.’ 4. Understand, however, that well-run meetings can produce better results than would come from the smartest people in the group. Three things are needed for good collective decision-making, says Phillips: an impartial facilitator or chair; a clear structure for the discussions; and the necessary IT to model possible alternatives there and then. `Information will be treated as a neutral commodity,’ he adds. `And everybody will have their say.’ 5.Try to avoid major confrontations in meetings. This is an old-fashioned, macho way of doing things, and one or both of you will probably end up looking silly. Explore serious disagreements outside the meeting room. 6. Follow up all decisions. An easy way to look a fool is to spend time in discussions but then neglect implementation. You can also put your own twist on agreements reached if you are the one taking the initiative.
The Observer
UP ministers may not file returns
Defying moves towards greater accountability and transparency in public affairs, Uttar Pradesh is set to scrap a law requiring ministers to file details of their income. The Uttar Pradesh Law Commission has recommended the repeal of the State Ministers and Legislators (Assets and Duties) Act, which was enforced in 1975. The commission’s recommendation for repeal has brought smiles to the faces of ministers and legislators who have regularly defaulted on the filing of their income returns. There is an urgent move on how to ensure that the commission’s recommendation is implemented at the earliest.
IANS |
The world lives in deception. The one half deceives the other while those of the other half deceive themselves. Men are determined to be starved before they are hungry. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. — Swami Ramatirtha, In Woods of God Realisation, Vol. II, Notebook V * * * God is a friend to those whose generosity is like that of the river whose benevolence is like that of the sun and whose hospitality is like that of the earth. — Hazarat Khwaja, Akhbar-ul-Akhyar * * * One the day of Judgement when I would be questioned as to what I have brought from the world, I would reply - the flame of tenderness which burns in the heart of this Turk. — Safinat-ul-Auliya * * * If you render some service to another, do not feel proud that you have done him a good turn. Know it for certain that the gratification derived by him through your act of service is unmistakably the result of some meritorious deed performed by him in the past and that you have only served as an instrument in bringing him that gratification. Thank God that He made you an instrument in dealing out happiness to one of His creatures, and be grateful to the persons who accepted your service. — Hanumanprasad Poddar, Wavelets of Bliss * * * I have seen Him whom all may see, I am feeling the presence Of his Divine chariot above earth, His activity around us, I am sure He had accepted my devotional songs. — Rigveda, 1.25.18 * * * By nature I am sublime serenity, May the thirst of my soul for knowledge be eternal And may my soul be never restless. — Atharvaveda, 16.3.6 |
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