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Can we move on, please? |
Aijaz Zaka Syed
THE more things change for India’s Muslims, the more they remain the same thanks to their leaders who are forever stuck in a time warp. It’s more than six decades since the country earned independence from the British. Meanwhile the world has dramatically changed. India is incredibly different today from what it had been 62 monsoons ago.
Its priorities and concerns have changed. Its people have changed and their attitude to life has undergone a watershed transformation. And India has truly arrived in every sense of ?the word.
If anything hasn’t changed in this land of mindboggling contradictions, it is the Indian Muslim. He remains where he had been in 1947. His concerns, issues and priorities remain what they had been at the time of Independence. Apparently, his religious freedom is perpetually threatened. One day, he sees his Sharia under attack. At other times, either his religious places are threatened or there’s a clear and present danger to his religious sensitivities. And when he gets some time to breathe after all this, he has to fight for protection and justice. Most of these issues are recurring in nature. They fade away from time to time only to come back with a vengeance, like a mutating deadly disease. Look at this Vande Mataram business. This is not the first time we are debating it. It has been there since as long as I can remember. In fact, it precedes the Partition and goes right back to the early years of the independence struggle, which once had the Hindus and Muslims fighting the British together—shoulder to shoulder.
Bengal’s militant nationalist poet Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s song celebrating Mother India has been around for over a century. And controversy surrounding it is almost as old as the song. The all-embracing, magnanimous Hindu who sees the divine in every manifestation of Nature easily identifies with Vande Mataram. Originally part of a novel and play, Anand Math (1882) by the same author, the song has the poet addressing India as the divine mother or mother goddess and bowing his head in total submission before it.
Look at this stanza from the popular English translation by Sri Aurobindo:
Thou art Durga, Lady and Queen,
With her hands that strike and her
swords of sheen,
Thou art Lakshmi lotus-throned,
And the Muse a hundred-toned,
Pure and perfect without peer,
Mother lend thine ear,
Rich with thy hurrying streams,
Bright with thy orchard gleams,
Dark of hue O candid-fair
While this makes perfect sense to the liberal Hindu majority, who find this marriage of the divine and the temporal in the motherland rather appropriate and convenient, Muslims have always baulked at treating the motherland as a divine power.
This does not mean they love their country any less than fellow Indians. It’s just that their faith doesn’t allow them to replace God with the motherland. Perhaps no monotheistic religion emphasises and celebrates the unity and oneness of God as Islam does. It doesn’t tolerate any imitation of God. It strictly forbids visual portrayal of the Prophet and even images of his disciples, lest they are deified by overzealous followers. This is something that Muslims have always found hard to explain to their Hindu brethren. This is a predicament that has always been there. The issue over Vande Mataram was ostensibly resolved after the Independence. In view of the Muslim sensitivities, India’s founding fathers decided to adopt ‘Jana Gana Mana,’ another great song by another Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore, as the national anthem. Vande Mataram, however, was designated a national song and remains widely popular.
(Personally, I believe nothing can beat Iqbal’s Saare Jahan se Achcha Hindustan hamara! It brings out goose bumps all over, especially when played by the army band on special occasions. Ironically, it was penned by someone who’s been adopted by Pakistan as its national poet. But visionaries like Iqbal can’t be imprisoned by the fragile walls of nation states. They are the collective heritage of the mankind.)
That decision on the national anthem by the Constituent Assembly should have put an end to the controversy. But it didn’t. Given the cynical, exploitative nature of our politics, the issue continues to pop up from time to time. The politics of patriotism has been the bane of this great country.
The Supreme Court ruled long ago that singing Vande Mataram is totally optional and that nobody can be compelled to join in the collective crooning. However, desperate politicians being what they are continue to flog this dead horse whenever they run out of more original ideas. And Muslims have always played into their hands. Predictably, they get all worked up and come out on the streets—only to walk, eyes wide shut, into the trap laid by their enemies. Look at this new fatwa issued by the Jamiatul Ulema-e-Hind at its convention at Darul Uloom Deoband. JUH is an organisation of eminent religious scholars that had been in the forefront of India’s independence movement ?and vehemently opposed the Partition. And Darul Uloom Deoband is arguably the most respected and influential Islamic university in the world after Al Azhar in Egypt.
The 30th convention of the Jamiat during which the fatwa was issued had been attended by federal interior minister Chidambaram, where he emphasised that protection of minorities was the duty of the majority and the first golden rule of democracy.
So what was the need for this fatwa, especially when there already exists one, issued by Darul Uloom Deoband in 2006, which argues that parts of Vande Mataram go against Islam’s monotheistic philosophy?
Although I understand why most Muslims have qualms in saying, Vande Mataram, what really beats me is why Muslim leadership—if there’s such a thing—is constantly obsessing over frivolous, non-issues at the cost of far bigger problems and serious challenges facing the community.
I mean this is not a life-and-death issue. Why do we have to get bogged down in such never-ending controversies and debates that haven’t solved anything over the past hundred years?
I have great respect for our Ulema and religious leaders. But is there no way of ignoring such stupid, totally irrelevant nonsense such as this to focus on the real concerns and problems of India’s Muslims?
My generation grew up in the 1980’s and 1990’s on a heavy dose of the oppressive, all-consuming mosque-temple politics. The Muslim leaders played right into the hands of the Hindu extremists throughout those turbulent years, helping the very forces they claimed to fight. And they continue to play the same game of nihilistic reaction politics. They haven’t learnt a damn thing all these years!
Is it any wonder then this new fatwa has given a new lease of life to the saffron clan, which had been licking its wounds sustained during the recent electoral battles with Sonia Gandhi’s Congress? Suddenly, all sorts of nuts are crawling out of the woodwork threatening to drive over 200 million Muslims into Pakistan.
Who should we thank for this? As if Indian Muslims do not already have enough problems, our leaders and Ulema are bent on inventing new ones. India’s Muslims are, according to the findings of a government appointed commission led by Justice Rajinder Sachar, worse placed than the lowest of the low caste in every respect. From education to employment to representation in power, the world’s largest minority is right at the lowest rung of social-political-economic hierarchy.
What are our leaders doing to change this shameful state of affairs? How long will they keep us the prisoner of our past? Isn’t it time for India’s Muslims to move on? Khaleej Times
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Milk money |
Liu Xinlian
A combined financial venture between China's largest agricultural trading and processing company and a private equity firm formed to milk profits from the dairy business has led to the biggest share acquisition in the Chinese food industry. China National Cereals, Oils & Foodstuffs Import and Export Corp. (COFCO), based in Beijing, and Hopu Investment Management Co. agreed to buy a 20-percent stake in China Mengniu Dairy Co. Ltd. on July 6 in a deal valued at HK$6.12 billion ($784 million).
The two companies co-established a special investment vehicle that is 70 percent owned by COFCO and 30 percent by Hopu. It will become the largest shareholder of the Chinese milk producer.
As early as 2006, COFCO initiated a development strategy of forging itself into a whole-industry-chain grain and oil producer.
Acquiring Mengniu provides an excellent opportunity for COFCO to gain ground in the dairy industry, said Ning Gaoning, President of COFCO, at a press conference held on July 7.
In choosing Mengniu, one of China's biggest dairy producers and suppliers, as COFCO's strategic partner, COFCO is able to expand its "whole foodstuff industry" territory on a mature platform, Ning added.
Mengniu in crisis
Founded in Inner Mongolia in 1999 by Niu Gensheng, a former employee of Yili, another Inner Mongolian dairy giant that is now Mengniu's largest competitor, Mengniu has grown into one of the country's leading manufacturers of milk, yoghurt and other dairy products.
Starting business with a team of only nine people and 9 million yuan ($1.32 million), Mengniu managed to sustain itself and expand after a short time. In 2004 Mengniu got listed on the Hong Kong stock market, and its total value amounted to HK$4 billion ($516 million), an average annual growth rate of 365 percent.
But the soaring profits and rapid strides were suddenly halted by the melamine scandal in the second half of 2008. After its products were found to be contaminated, Mengniu's share, sales volume, as well as reputation fell dramatically.
Mengniu's mid-year report gave a net profit of 583 million yuan ($85.7 million) in June 2008. But the total loss caused by the melamine scandal amounted to 1.5 billion yuan ($220.6 million).
In 2008, Mengniu posted a net loss of 949 million yuan ($139.6 million), according to its annual report released in April 2009, a dramatic decline compared to its 936-million-yuan ($137.6-million) net profit in 2007.
The matter was further complicated by the controversy surrounding the safety of using osteoblast milk protein (OMP) in Mengniu's Milk Deluxe in February 2009. China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine banned Mengniu from adding OMP to its high-end milk product, Milk Deluxe, in February.
Larger losses may be inevitable, some insiders said. Since Milk Deluxe was the pillar product for Mengniu to fight against the negative effect of the melamine scandal, sales may continue to plummet, negating profits.
Meanwhile, owing to its atomized ownership structure, Mengniu has been plagued by hostile takeovers in recent years. According to international common practice, when major shareholder's stock is less than 25 percent, the company may face potential risk of hostile takeover, said Niu at the press conference.
"Mengniu is exposed to this danger," he added.
With COFCO becoming the biggest shareholder and promising not to sell its share in three years, Mengniu's crisis is averted.
From field to table
While it used to be a monopolistic, state-owned foodstuff import and export company, COFCO has successfully transformed itself into a diversified enterprise through a series of mergers and acquisitions.
In 2007, it merged Sifang Sugar and Suozhou Sugar into COFCO Xinjiang Tunhe Co. Ltd., making that company China's biggest beet sugar producer. In March 2006, COFCO acquired China Grains and Oils Group Corp. and turned it into the country's largest food and oil distributor with total assets of more than 60 billion yuan ($8.8 billion).
COFCO's current business covers five areas, including foodstuffs and oil trading, agriculture and food processing, biomass energy production, real estate development and financial services.
Building a complete industry chain has always been COFCO's first and foremost task and will continue to be so in the near future, Ning said. The purpose of COFCO's industry chain is to turn the corn harvested in Jilin Province in northeast China into ham on the table for Shanghai residents, Ning added. The food industry chain comprises foodstuff manufacturing, cultivation, processing, marketing, packing and logistics.
COFCO's investment in Mengniu is a natural extension of its industry, as it strives to build the whole foodstuff industry chain, said Ning.
By taking advantage of Mengniu's low stock prices, COFCO was able to march into the dairy industry, said Zheng Qi, a food industry analyst at China Securities Co. Ltd.
A sweet marriage?
The new buy is being referred to as a "public-private partnership," Ning said. But will the marriage of the two companies turn out to be a sweet one?
The key factor to the successful cooperation of the two companies lies in the two parties' ability to function together and eliminate the major differences in their spirit and team culture, said Wei Sanshui, a financial writer who has published two books on COFCO.
The merger of the two companies may be a success, since state-owned companies are rich in resources, but have difficulties in their own reform, while private companies have well-functioned incentive mechanisms, but lack resources for potential development, according to Wang Yu, a stock analyst at aastocks.com.cn, a financial website based in Shanghai.
As Mengniu's new long-term strategic investor, COFCO will place three non-executive directors on Mengniu's board of 11 directors. COFCO says it will not interfere in Mengniu's day-to-day management, nor will it try to alter the dairy producer's current management team or business strategy.
(The Daily Mail-Beijing Review Articles Exchange Item)
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China’s ‘strategic reassurance’ that isn’t |
Robert Kagan
THE Obama administration’s worldview is still emerging, but its policies toward Russia and China are already revealing. Its Russia policy consists of trying to accommodate Moscow’s sense of global entitlement. So far that has meant ignoring the continued presence of Russian forces on Georgian territory, negotiating arms-control agreements that Moscow needs more than Washington does and acquiescing to Russian objections to new NATO installations — such as missile interceptors — in former Warsaw Pact countries. An aggrieved Russia demands that the West respect a sphere of influence in its old imperial domain. The Obama administration rhetorically rejects the legitimacy of any such sphere, but its actions raise doubts for those who live in Russia’s shadow.
The administration has announced a similar accommodating approach to China. Dubbed “strategic reassurance,” the policy aims to convince the Chinese that the United States has no intention of containing their rising power. Details remain to be seen, but as with the Russia “reset,” it is bound to make American allies nervous.
Administration officials seem to believe that the era of great-power competition is over. The pursuit of power, President Barack Obama declared during a July speech about China, “must no longer be seen as a zero-sum game.”
Unfortunately, that is not the reality in Asia. Contrary to optimistic predictions just a decade ago, China is behaving exactly as one would expect a great power to behave. As it has grown richer, China has used its wealth to build a stronger and more capable military. As its military power has grown, so have its ambitions.
This is especially true of its naval ambitions. Not so long ago, the China experts in the US believed it was absurd for China to aspire to a “blue-water” navy capable of operating far from its shores.
Yet the new head of the US Pacific Command, Adm. Robert Willard, noted last month that “in the past decade or so, China has exceeded most of our intelligence estimates of their military capability. ... They’ve grown at an unprecedented rate.” Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently warned that China’s military modernization program could undermine US military power in the Pacific.
It is hardly surprising that China wants to supplant US power in the region. To the Chinese, the reign of “the middle kingdom” is the natural state of affairs and the past 200 years of Western dominance an aberration. Nor is it surprising that China wants to reshape international security arrangements that the United States established after World War II, when China was too weak to have a say.
What is surprising is the Obama administration’s apparent willingness to accommodate these ambitions. This worries US allies from New Delhi to Seoul. Those nations are under no illusion about great-power competition. India is engaged in strategic competition with China, especially in the Indian Ocean, which both see as their sphere of influence. Japan’s government wants to improve relations with Beijing, but many in Japan fear an increasingly hegemonic China. The nations of Southeast Asia do business with China but look to the United States for strategic support against their giant neighbor.
For decades, US strategy toward China has had two complementary elements. The first was to bring China into the “family of nations” through engagement. The second was to make sure China did not become too dominant, through balancing. The Clinton administration pushed for China’s accession to the World Trade Organization and normalized trade but also strengthened the US military alliance with Japan. The Bush administration fostered close economic ties and improved strategic cooperation with China. But the United States also forged a strategic partnership with India and enhanced its relations with Japan, Singapore and Vietnam. The strategy has been to give China a greater stake in peace, while maintaining a balance of power in the region favorable to democratic allies and American interests.
“Strategic reassurance” seems to chart a different course. Senior officials liken the policy to the British accommodation of a rising United States at the end of the 19th century, which entailed ceding the Western Hemisphere to American hegemony. Lingering behind this concept is an assumption of America’s inevitable decline.
Yet nothing would do more to hasten decline than to follow this path. The British accommodation of America’s rise was based on close ideological kinship. British leaders recognized the United States as a strategic ally in a dangerous world — as proved true throughout the 20th century. No serious person would imagine a similar grand alliance and “special relationship” between an autocratic China and a democratic United States. For the Chinese — true realists — the competition with the United States in East Asia is very much a zero-sum game.
For that reason, “strategic reassurance” is likely to fail. The Obama administration cannot back out of the region any time soon; Obama’s trip this week, in fact, seems designed to demonstrate American staying power. Nor is China likely to end or slow its efforts to militarily and economically dominate the region. So it will quickly become obvious that no one on either side feels reassured.
Unfortunately, the only result will be to make American allies nervous. For an administration that has announced “we are back” after years of alleged Bush administration neglect in Asia, this is not an auspicious beginning. Arab News
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