Indian Left and Muslims
M. J. Akbar

TRUST a Calcuttan to come up with the perfect political metaphor. We were chatting about the political mood of Muslims over tea and savories on Eid, and the conversation turned inevitably to the fate of Rizwanur Rehman, the young man whose death in suspicious circumstances has set off a firestorm in Bengal. The Muslim vote, my Calcuttan friend said bitterly, had become like an item number in Hindi films. It was used to pump up the box office, and then dumped completely from the script.
For the very, very few of you out there who still do not know what an item number is in a Hindi movie: This is the generally raunchy song that is planted into the sequence without any pretence of reason, and with absolutely no consequence on the narrative. The Muslim voter feels similarly used by the political parties he supports. As my friend pointed out, at least those in the item number get paid for their contribution.
The best way to prevent disillusionment, of course, is to avoid the trap of illusion. And yet, the left, spearheaded by the CPI(M), has given Indian Muslims cause for some comfort. Three decades of communal peace in Bengal during the reign of the Left Front have erased memories of what Bengal once was. Bengal is a border state that has been partitioned, and embers from 1947 raged till the mid-1970s. In a sense the Marxist generation of Biman Bose, the present head of the party in Bengal, won its spurs during the frequent riots in Calcutta during the 1960s when it mobilized its cadre and stood on street corners, preventing hired goons from entering the city’s Muslim mohallas. Ever since the Left Front came to power in 1977, and Jyoti Basu became chief minister, a deft combination of political and administrative management has kept this particular beast out of people’s lives.
But over three decades, the left in Bengal has slipped, unconsciously perhaps, into another trap: “Soft secularism”. Because it has prevented riots, it tends to believe that it has done enough for the community. There is an element of patronage in this attitude, as if providing protection to the lives of Muslims is a special favor rather than a government’s duty. One statistic, available in the seminal report on minorities prepared by Justice Rajender Sachar, should be enough to make the point. Muslims constitute 25.2 percent of the population of West Bengal, but have only 2.1 percent of state government jobs. Kerala, which has almost the same percentage of Muslims (24.7 percent), has given 10.4 percent of state government jobs to the community. Assam’s ratio is similar: 30.9 percent and 11.2 percent. Bihar does better: It gives 7.6 percent of state jobs to Muslims, who add up to 16.5 percent of the population. Andhra Pradesh has the best record: 9.2 percent of the population and 8.8 percent of jobs. Uttar Pradesh, despite leaders who claim to be more-secular-than-thou has given only 5.1 percent of state government jobs to an 18.5 percent population. The situation is no better when it comes to health and education indices. The anger in Bengal therefore is much greater than the appalling mismanagement of one incident would warrant.
Muslim disenchantment with the Congress, the other party that received its enthusiastic vote in 2004, is more widespread and deeper. The cause is the same, a perception of injustice. Maharashtra’s Muslims are still waiting for the Congress to take action against those named in the Srikrishna report for fomenting riots in the wake of the demolition of the Babri Mosque. The Congress and its ally, Sharad Pawar’s NCP, have been in power in the state for eight years. They have no alibis left. A second reason is the treatment of Muslim suspects after the recent blasts by the Andhra Pradesh police. Torture was pervasive. This was the finding of the Andhra Pradesh State Minorities Commission, which sent its report to the government — which, till date, has opted for familiar silence. The street has its own means of forming an opinion, through what it sees. It notes police indifference in the investigation of the bomb blasts at Makkah Masjid, where only Muslims died and the zeal displayed elsewhere. A voter does not make up his (and more important, her) mind in one eureka moment. It is a slow accretion of evidence that takes the voter in one direction or the other when his moment comes, on polling day. And then of course there is George Bush, the omnipresent ghost hovering over Dr. Manmohan “Hamlet” Singh. The Muslim voter may not understand the finer points of the 123 Agreement, or the hammer blows of the Hyde Act, but he can see the headlong rush of Manmohan Singh into the embrace of the man who has wrought unprecedented havoc on Iraq, whose record is stained with the blood of perhaps half a million Iraqis, who has turned four million Iraqis into refugees and talks of permanent bases in a nation that wants his troops out yesterday.
Hamlet’s fatal flaw was not sleaze but indecision. The iron law of public life is clear: People will accept a wrong decision, but they have no respect for indecision. Dr. Hamlet Singh’s sudden waffle on the nuclear deal has done the worse possible damage. It has made him look silly, and Bush look clueless. The latter may not cause too much damage to the American president’s reputation, since this is not the first time he has looked clueless. But for the Indian prime minister to slip from super savior to Hiccup Hamlet is not good electoral news for the Congress. Dr Hamlet Singh is also probably beginning to appreciate the unpleasant fact that the admirers who basked in his kindness and favor for three years, were supporters of the deal, not supporters of the prime minister. The moment he suggested that life could go on beyond the deal, they began to demand his resignation. Hero worship is a merciless profession. Nor has the foreign policy story played out. Russia’s snub to External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who was not permitted the customary call on President Vladimir Putin, and Defense Minister A.K. Antony, who could not even get an appointment with his counterpart Sergei Lavrov, is a reminder that those who have stood by India with both military hardware and nuclear fuel have their own views on Manmohan Singh’s lurch toward Bush.
It is already evident that while Muslims will still prefer Congress to the BJP in a straight contest in next year’s general election, Congress governments in the states and the center have done enough in three years to halve their support from this crucial minority. How badly will the Left Front be affected in Bengal? There is one important difference between the left and the Congress: While Muslims still expect some redress from the left, they are cynical about the Congress. The Congress has habitually been long on rhetoric and short on delivery when it comes to affirmative action. The left has a chance to cut its losses in Bengal but it needs to get its act in place fast.
What is beyond dispute is that Muslims are tired of being the item number of a general election, flashed out for five minutes and sent back to political purgatory when the elections are over. The elections of 2008 will probably be the last time that they will stick to their traditional anchors. If the only reward for their support is indifference, the item girl will write her own script for a movie in which she will be the star.

—Arab News

After blast: 10 questions for Benazir Bhutto
Ahmed Quraishi

BENAZIR Bhutto’s husband Asif Zardari accuses our intelligence agencies from his home in Dubai of orchestrating the attack on his wife, while Mrs. Bhutto, sitting in Karachi, pointedly refuses to blame the spooks even when reporters mention her husband’s statement. This contradiction is just one of several questions that ordinary Pakistanis need to ask Mrs. Bhutto after the nation’s worst political violence in our modern history.
Far from the argument of her supporters that Mrs. Bhutto’s return to Pakistan will help ease political tensions, her first day on our soil has confirmed fears she is very much part of political friction. Her recent brand of politics has further divided Pakistanis instead of uniting them.
In the interest of removing misunderstandings, the following ten questions must be posed to the leader of Pakistan Peoples Party:
1. Why didn’t you ask your supporters to avoid a mass rally when even your own friends in the Pakistani and foreign governments warned you about information that terrorists were planning an attack? 2. Why did you refuse Pakistani government’s offer of providing you a helicopter to take you to your destination and insisted on leading a street procession, knowing that scores of innocent supporters will bear the brunt of any attack? 3. Why did vanity have the best of you? Why wasn’t saving lives more important to you than showing the world that you’re still a populist leader?
4. Why did you remove the bullet proof glass on your secured truck that was supposed to protect everyone in case of an attack? At least three senior party members sustained injuries because of this oversight. 5. Why an important segment of the Pakistani public opinion believes that you have returned to Pakistan as an ‘American agent’? 6. Why didn’t you bring your husband and at least two of your three children [one is studying in Europe] along with you to Pakistan to underscore your commitment to our nation and to silence your critics who insist you came here alone to test the waters? 7. Why did you break the national consensus and announce you will allow foreign investigators access to our national hero Dr. A. Q. Khan?
8. Why did you inform an American audience that you will allow foreign forces to conduct military operations on Pakistani soil? 9. Why do you refuse to treat us Pakistanis as intelligent people who by now are fully aware that you and your husband have been found involved in scandalous corruption incidents? Why can’t you come clean on your alleged wealth of $ 1.5 billion dollars? 10. How come you have joined India, Hamid Karzai, and the usual bunch of Pakistan-bashers in targeting and attempting to eliminate Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, which are an asset for any nation and a bulwark against saboteurs and criminals?
My one last observation is the distasteful way in which Mrs. Bhutto cracked a joke with foreign reporters at the end of the press conference she held at her house on the Karachi carnage. Over 600 people were killed and injured because of her and she had the gall to stand there in front of rolling cameras to laugh and chuckle at what happened. Somehow this and the questions above reinforce the widespread skepticism across Pakistan about the quality of leadership that Mrs. Bhutto and the other power contenders will bring to the nation.

(Mr. Quraishi heads the Pakistan Project at FurmaanRealpolitik, an independent think tank based in Islamabad. He also hosts a foreign policy show on state run PTV Network.)





Nanjing: Two pasts, one future
Michael Standaert

ON A hill overlooking the Yangtze River stands Yuejiang Tower. Though it could be easily mistaken as hundreds of years old, it was in fact completed in 2001, more than 600 years after the Ming Dynasty’s founding emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang, had first envisioned building a tower here that would embody the dynasty’s grandeur and aspirations.
The city of Nanjing accomplished what the emperor did not, but the significance of the tower lies perhaps less in its magnificent view of the Yangtze than in the tiled mural housed inside depicting the travels of Zheng He, the eunuch who sailed to India, Arabia and Africa for the Ming Emperor Yongle in the 15th century. This outward-looking enterprise of exploration and connection with the wider world is an apt symbol for Nanjing, where Zheng’s voyage commenced.
There are a number of ways that Zheng could be symbolic for Nanjing. Each has to do with how the past can direct the future of the city, and to a larger extent, the direction of China. When most foreigners, and just as likely many Chinese, hear the word “Nanjing,” they first think of the massacre committed by Japanese troops in 1937, resulting in the slaughter of some 300,000 men, women and children. Movies, documentaries, articles and books constantly replay this event before the Chinese national psyche. This grand tower over the Yangtze never witnessed those events nearly 70 years ago. Like the generations that have grown up in China since the massacre, this tower is a fresh and untarnished monument to a city and country growing in cultural and economic confidence. It is with that confidence that Nanjing goes forward in the world. In late September, the city held its 18th annual Golden Autumn Economic and Trade Fair, this year focusing on service outsourcing as its major goal. At a press conference during the event, a representative of the mayor said Nanjing would like to become known as “the office of the world” in reverse of the name China has long held as the “factory of the world.”
With its growing IT industry, its solid manufacturing base, its surging software industry and attractive tourist sites, Nanjing is a cornerstone for the Yangtze Delta region. Besides these, Nanjing’s greatest asset is probably its highly educated workforce and low cost of labor, especially when compared to Beijing and Shanghai. With 560,000 university students (60,000 postgraduates), Nanjing could make significant inroads into the service outsourcing sector in the coming years. Though the sector is just starting in Nanjing, ITO (IT outsourcing) and business process outsourcing (BPO) profits have jumped from $380 million in 2006 to $550 million so far in 2007. By the looks of it, service outsourcing is ready to boom in Nanjing.
What is interesting in this push to build the service outsourcing industry in Nanjing and make it into an “office of the world” is the fact that one of the countries most targeted for this type of business is, considering Nanjing’s history, the very one you might least expect—Japan.
Could business ties reverse the years of mistrust, suspicion and antagonism Chinese feel toward the Japanese? It is difficult to tell how far doing business goes in repairing cultural ties, though they certainly can’t hurt.
This December marks the 70th anniversary of the massacre in Nanjing. By no means should the Chinese forget what happened in their war against the imperial Japanese invasion. Yet there are various ways to remember the past and these often dictate how the future unfolds. The symbol of the famous mariner Zheng He is one of openness, curiosity, adventure and exploration—it is an outward looking, open-minded embracing of the world. Nanjing seems to be moving beyond those dark memories to a bright future more in line with the symbolism Zheng He provides. For China, in the creation of a national mythology, one path of history points toward an embrace of the world, while the other points toward a mistrust of it. China’s larger quest for a harmonious society and a peaceful world can take a cue from Nanjing’s aspirations.

(The Daily Mail-Beijing Review Articles Exchange Item)