South Asia Daily

A short reminder about life before the current era

A ring stone from the Mauryan period (Pic: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2000.284.10)

Ancient Indian emperor Chandragupta Maurya has been on my mind for no fathomable reason, which is just as well because it reminds us that there was so much more history before the current era.

Chandragupta’s empire stretched from Patliputra (modern day Patna, the capital Indian state of Bihar) to the border of Persia, some 2000 miles to the west by the time he starved himself to death at 42 as a renunciate in 298 or 297 BCE as part of the Jain end-of-life ritual. The Maurya empire was eventually extended by his grandson Asoka to cover the southern parts of India. At its height the Murya kingdom was probably 2000 miles east to west and over 1000 miles north to south. At a time when the population of the region was about 50 million Chandragupta had an infantry of 600,000, a cavalry of 30,000 and some 9,000 elephants. That would be like if India had an army of over 12 million today.

A contemporary of Alexander, whom according to many historians he met as a young man, Chandragupta died a Jain. I mention this only because his grandson Asoka died a Buddhist. Both, who led a life of often gratuitous violence that always attends empire building, were, in the end, shaken by it and embraced avowedly pacifist philosophies.

Bindusara, Chandragupta’s son and Asoka’s father, was a relatively laidback royal who had a weakness for figs and raisin wine. The Maurya period is regarded as India’s most defining and not in the least because of the overarching presence and influence of the philosopher/economist/strategist Kautilya, also known as Chanakya, who mentored Chandragupta.

The creator of economics of the day known as the Arthashastra as well as statecraft, Kautilya/Chanakya left a profound mark on the period and well beyond. So detailed was the statecraft developed then that even the quantity of liquor that could be sold and to whom was clearly laid down. It had to be such that it would not cause pramada (intoxication) maryadatikrama (boorishness) utsaha (recklessness) bhaya (fear). Even the designs of taverns and the fixtures inside it were incorporated into the building code to ensure  both safety and comfort. Scents and garlands were required to enhance the pleasure of those who came to drink.

Something tells me though that a lot of these regulations, other than luxurious trimmings, did not apply to the one who loved figs and raisin wine.

I write this post on the last day of 2011 if only to underscore that so much more happened before the current era whose annual landmark we celebrate as if nothing else preceded it.

The biggest regret of 2011

Of all the enduring regrets of 2011, now in its fading last hours, the most galling for me would be not having cleared the Level 11 of Angry Birds’ ‘Season’s Greedings.’

There has to be some hidden message in three birds, two yellow and one white, not being able to pulverize seven pigs hiding in various corners of a wooden scaffold. I have tried dozens of assault techniques, trajectories and angles but failed to kill all the pigs. The best I managed was smashing six of them. The one on the extreme right of the frame invariably managed to survive unscathed.

I think I am asking the wrong question. Rather than asking “Why am I failing at this?” the question should be “Why is a man hurtling towards the twilight of his life catapulting flightless birds into an assortment of wood, concrete and glass blocks?”

I suspect there is a commercial conspiracy behind my failure because after every third or fourth attempt the game’s creators offer me ways to beat the level for just 99 cents. So far I have resisted the temptation because I figure I can pay down some of my debts using the 99 cents saved on the game.

In many ways Angry Birds is emblematic of what we have become as a civilization. We have been reduced to hurling virtual birds at virtual pigs, causing virtual death of either or both because virtual eggs were stolen. For those of you who may not be familiar with the basic plot of Angry Birds, the birds are angry because the pigs have stolen their eggs.

More than anything else, it is the easy and hassle-free cruelty and violence of this game that are deeply worrisome. Because it is fictional, animated and virtual, players do not think about the serious underlying problem with such games. I am a classic example of that because I have played this game too.

So my resolution for 2012 is not to play Angry Birds.

P.S.: For those not as resolute as I am when you chuck the white bird, I would recommend that you let it crash on the structure. It is more destructive than the massive egg drop that it does midflight by clicking your mouse once. The egg drop is more dramatic but less effective.

P.P.S.: The biggest draw for me is the sound that the pigs make when attacked. It sounds like “Hulll.”

Swinging from vine to vine in the forest of hyperbole

I have several questions for television blowhards in India.

Do they exist outside of the electronically transmitted world?

If they do, do they actually go home or go to work? Or do they just rush from studio to studio?

If they do indeed rush from studio to studio in a 24/7 blather cycle, do they carry fresh pairs of clothes and underwear?

Also, do they freshly manufacture outrage for every panel they appear on or recycle some of the same they felt on the previous show?

There are many more but let us begin by getting these answered.

Now to the broader point of today’s sermon… I mean post.

Anna Hazare, the 75-year-old village reformer turned anti-corruption emblem in India, has spent the better part of the past six months or so on a pedestal obligingly erected for him by the broadcast media. The pedestal is high enough to give Hazare the kind of national prominence I suspect he never thought he would gain. In recent weeks, he had begun to resemble demigods of the kind that abound across India.

The broadcast media loved and nurtured India’s John Doe into either a messiah or monster, depending on your point of view. Somewhere along the line Hazare might have taken his near mythical status as a slayer of all corruption in public life rather seriously.

That was until Tuesday when the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament, passed a potentially significant Lokpal or public ombudsman bill, some of whose provisions came from Hazare and his team. The passage coinciding with a rather thin response in Mumbai to Hazare’s hunger fast number 3 made the media sit up and launch part 2 of the Hazarenama under the charitably worded “Is the Anna Hazare movement finished?”

The Hazare movement members are probably discovering that the media is an unreliable mistress that can both pleasure and torment alternatively in such rapid succession that it is hard to tell one from the other. The pedestal has been pulled from under Hazare’s feet and the resultant fall is bound to cause some image fractures. (Excuse the trite imagery).

The transition from a demigod to just another poor sod can be painful but this is the time when Hazare’s resolve will be tested. He has announced his intention to be a partisan hack in the aftermath of what he calls a “betrayal” of his cause by the ruling Congress Party. In the upcoming state assembly elections Hazare and his movement’s supporters will campaign against the Congress Party.

No matter how strenuously he denies it his is a partisan political movement motivated by its antipathies towards a particular political party. That is a perfectly legitimate activity in a democracy. But the problem is Hazare and his supporters have so far cast themselves as a lofty movement driven entirely by the moral imperative of eliminating corruption in public life. In so many words they have tried to convince India that they are not a partisan political uprising but that they represent a much deeper churning among the ordinary people of the country beyond party lines. Now it turns out they are just another political pressure group with an ambiguously defined political ideology.

The problem with dismounting a moral pedestal is that one gets exposed to all the dust and grime of ground level existence. Or in other words, the realm inhabited and mastered by crafty politicians of the kind asserting the supremacy of parliament and legislature.

In this flux what seems to remain constant for now are the television blowhards and analysts who would be required to break down every twist and turn into easily digestible sound bites. Right now the question is “Is the Anna Hazare movement finished?” Very soon it would be “Can the Anna Hazare movement be revived?” followed by “Should the Anna Hazare movement be revived?”

P.S.: The latest television ubiquity is a young Hazare acolyte called Abhinandan Sekhri whom the channels use as a sort of earnest and fresh, albeit somewhat out of depth, counterweight to the more jaded but well-oiled talking head such as Congress Party lawmaker Mani Shankar Aiyar. As someone just introduced to the forest of hyperbole Abhinandan, which literally means congratulation, is still discovering his rhythm. Since he has to appear on many panels, my sense is that he cannot decide whether to mint fresh outrage at the skullduggery called the politics-broadcast media nexus on every show or carry over the remnants from the last and refashion them. I am sure he will learn to harmonize what he really feels with the way he says he feels it on television. Congratulations are nevertheless in order.

In the mean time Aiyar, whom I consider by and large a sincere, serious man, continues to swing from a giant vine to a giant vine in the forest of hyperbole with the practiced ease of a Tarzan.

“Baith jaiye, Baith jaiye”

Speaker Meira Kumar

Watching Indian lawmakers yesterday debate the pros and cons of a bill to create a Lokpal or a public ombudsman against corruption, the one predominant thought on my mind was Broadway.

I could picture three starring roles to play the speaker of the house, Meira Kumar, the leader of the opposition, Sushma Swaraj and the most assertive proponent of parliamentary supremacy, Lalu Prasad Yadav.

All three characters have immense histrionic as well as musical possibilities. Meira Kumar’s singsong manner of speaking gives her character a natural flair that is so suitable for a Broadway production. A command/instruction/plea that she most frequently uses bilingually is “Baith jaiye, baith jaiye” “Please sit down, please sit down.” Coming from her ‘Baith jaiye, baith jaiye” sounds so melodious that even those wanting to sit down to maintain the dignity of the house stand and sway.

Swaraj, with her chaste Hindi delivered in impeccably rehearsed tones, brings a touch of the magisterial. Yadav, in sharp contrast, brings uninhibited rusticity and easy humor that can reduce or elevate any debate depending on your perspective. Apart from these three main characters there are at least a dozen others who together make for a powerful Broadway play. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with his sullen monotone has his own unique character.

The play opens with the speaker standing and Members of Parliament thumping the benches in unison—“thak, thak, thak.” The speaker then starts singing the theme song of the play that goes something like this:

“Baith jaiye…” thak thak thak

“Baith jaiye..” thak thak thak

“Kripya karke” thak thak thak

“Baith jaiye.” thak thak thak

The more I think about this the more I am convinced I should write this as a Broadway play.

A few thousand versus 675 million

Let me do what television news channels do everywhere—use a small survey sample to make a large political, cultural or social point. It may not make for accuracy but it sure does make for good television.

To coincide with the three-day parliamentary debate over what, if any, kind of Lokpal or ombudsman should be created to counter raging public corruption in India, NDTV, reputedly a leading television news channel, is asking its viewers to rate lawmakers as they make their own argument for or against.

I have reproduced here two visuals from NDTV’s website that are striking for what they reveal in terms of political trends. It is amazing to see how political interests of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) align so closely with a vociferous urban middle-class movement led by Anna Hazare that is demanding a virtually parallel law enforcement, arrest and prosecution system.

 

If you study the voting pattern you would notice a couple of striking results. Every political grouping except the BJP and the Hazare group has been rated less than five on a scale of ten with India’s once much heralded Prime Minister of unimpeachable personal integrity, Manmohan Singh, at 4. In sharp contrast, both the BJP members who spoke during the debate, Sushma Swaraj and Yashwant Singh scored a solid 8. Now both scoring 8 may be taken as a coincidence but if you look at Hazare and his two closest supporters, Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi, they too have scored a solid 8. If that is a coincidence, it is a bloody good one.

If there is more incontrovertible evidence of how the Hazare-led movement is not just political but political with a distinct hue, I cannot find. This is me talking the way television channels make snap political judgments merely because they reflect a trend based on a few thousand votes in a country whose total number of registered voters is 675 million.

I fear that it is this ability to hijack and control the public discourse merely because a section of Indian society is urban, tech savvy and with 24/7 access to the broadcast instruments that inordinately influence the legislative process and public policy making, a few thousand clickers in a few major cities might be able to overwhelm 675 million others. One can argue that but that’s how democracy works. Well, then that’s how it should not work.

Tintin on sugar candy rush

Captain Haddock, left, and Tintin (All images from http://www.us.movie.tintin.com/)

I have found my dream job. It is the one that Tintin has. He is a reporter with an unlimited expense account, gets to travel the world in search of stories which he never files for a newspaper that does not exist and whose editor he never gets in touch with. Naturally, he has no deadlines.

I have also found a place where I want to be posted. It is called Bagghar, somewhere in Morocco. It is a North African sultanate by what looks like the sparkling blue Mediterranean Sea. There are other fringe benefits to being Tintin. Although he is 83, he does not look a day over 18. He has a perfect quiff that never collapses. Also, he does not seem to have a bank account or a credit card. He receives no threatening letters from the income tax or internal revenue authorities. And finally, he does not ever have to shave.

Watching Steven Spielberg’s “The Adventures of Tintin” yesterday was one thrilling ride but largely in an unmanageably frenetic manner. It would be somewhat akin to taking every single crazy ride at both Disney and Universal Studios theme parks in a span of about 24 minutes. Having been freed from the laws of physics, and particularly gravity, that govern the traditional filmmaking, Spielberg does go a bit crazy with the swinging action.

Don’t get me wrong, the film is a breathtaking example of motion capture brilliantly married with animation that is so real you want to inhabit every corner of every frame. But for some reason that I do not fully comprehend Spielberg makes the pace so hurried and hyper that one finds no time to savor the visual feast that the movie is. It is almost as if both Spielberg and his producer Peter Jackson are two boys on a sugar candy rush who want to showcase every little trick and toy that they possess in a limited time that they have you as their captive audience.

Early on though as the plot develops there is a moment, the kind of which one wishes one had more of. Tintin (Jamie Bell) is getting a portrait of his done by a sidewalk sketch artist. After the portrait is done the motion capture, animated 21st century Tintin turns towards his fox terrier Snowy holding his own early 20th century drawing as conceived by his creator, Belgian cartoonist Hergé (Georges Prosper Remi-1907-1983) and asks “What do you think Snowy?” That’s a charming and cheeky little moment.

Then there is the sequence (see the image below) in the Sahara, where Captain Haddock (played by the motion capture legend Andy Serkis of the Gollum fame) is so disoriented by the heat that not only does he see a mirage, he imagines a whole sea break out of the horizon with a medieval ship that one of his Haddock ancestors commanded. That scene is magical.

One major reason why the movie seems to move at such a frenzied speed could be because the director uses many long continuous shots to recreate the feel of Hergé’s panels in the comic book. This continuous movement can be taxing at times.

These are just minor quibbles in what is otherwise a very high benchmark entertainment in animation. Being a technology aficionado I would be very interested to find out in some detail how the final effects of the movie are achieved. It seems so real that one could see the pores on Tintin’s cheeks or Haddock’s nasal hair. And yet, Spielberg and his special effects and animation designer team of Joe Latteri, Jamie Beard and Paul Story make sure that it still retains all of its comic book charms. (See a typical frame below)

Since I do not like 3D I watched the regular version of the film but I can imagine how effective it would be for those who enjoy 3D.

The way the movie ends it is obvious that this is going to be a franchise. For future Tintin movies Spielberg might want to slow down the pace a bit. The first installment has showcased all that he and Jackson can accomplish in terms of action. Hopefully, the next one will be a little more deliberate.

Mohammed Rafi, Manohari Singh, O P Nayyar and Dr. Charles Langs

Dr. Charles E Langs (Pic: http://www.med.nyu.edu/biosketch/langsc01)

My mind routinely flies off on a million tangents. It is a good thing nature does not require me to file my flight plan.

As in life, one of the things I like to do on this blog is connect seemingly unconnected dots or create reasons to connect them. Today’s post is one example of that reflex.

Let me start with Dr. Charles E Langs, a New York nephrologist with whom I had a chance meeting on a flight from Chicago in September. I had a debilitating migraine attack on a full Southwest flight and was assigned the middle seat (5B). One may be able to manage either a migraine attack or a middle airline seat but doing both must qualify as a nightmare of epic proportions  peculiar to modern life.

As I kept clutching my head in my hands and at one point even detached it from my torso and held it like a helmet, Dr. Langs’s doctorly instincts sharpened. At that point he did not really need his medical degree to tell that I had a severe migraine attack. So he began chatting me up with the easy empathy of an accomplished family doctor. That conversation continued throughout the nearly two-hour flight during which we discussed literature and classical music and everything in between. It struck me instantly that Dr. Langs was an enormously well-read man. As it turned out his friend Christopher Hitchens thought so as well.

In fact, Hitchens asked Charles if there was anything that he had not read. Apparently there was not much. Not much of consequence anyway. Charles gently mentioned his passion for Western classical music and how he was learning to play the piano. It was obvious to me that he was not learning to strike a few notes at a party where everyone was drunk. He was learning it seriously.

To cut the short story shorter, by the time the captain announced that we were landing my migraine had subsided significantly. I mean significantly enough for me to face New York. It turned out that Dr. Langs had deliberately engaged me to distract me from my intense pain. The other consequence of the conversation was that we became friends.

That story ends tangent one. Tangent two is about the great Indian saxophonist Manohari Singh who died recently. No single piece of instrumental music has endured in my mind for close to four decades and revitalized itself every time I have heard it as much as one played by Singh for the 1964 Hindi movie ‘Kashmir ki Kali’ composed by the ever melodious O P Nayyar.

I found this remarkable clip of Singh playing to a handful of his admirers the song ‘Yeh duniya usiki zamana usika”. There is a lot I can say on the enchanting little performance but instead I chose to send it to Dr. Langs, someone totally unconnected with Hindi cinema music. I sought his comments  to see what he thought of it as someone learning Western classical music.

“Although I am woefully ignorant when it comes to the music of the sax, I truly was moved by his playing,” Charles says. He then adds something that I could have said but did not. “Mournful, melancholic, achingly beautiful. Goes right to the soul. He had that exceptional gift of eliminating the barrier between instrument and player. He, in effect, became the instrument.” Singh does indeed become the saxophone.

This brings me to my third and final tangent. Mohammed Rafi, by most reckoning India’s greatest playback singer, would have turned 87 yesterday. Although he died in 1980, the passage of three decades has done nothing to diminish his dulcet genius. While he sang a few thousand songs and most with uncompromising brilliance, I am choosing this one merely because it fits my post. Pay attention to the opening of the song and how effortless he is. This has to be one of Nayyar’s best compositions.

 

P.S.: Just before the onset of another migraine headache, I played Singh’s impromptu riff. The migraine disappeared.

P.P.S.: I am very likely wrong on this one but the saxophonist in the movie clip may have been Singh himself. If so, that would be neat.

Republic of Ferment

Pakistan’s army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani (U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 1st Class William John Kipp Jr.taken from Wikipedia)

Pakistan’s army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani’s denial of rumors of a coup are perfectly credible. That’s because in order to seize power the military has to give it up first. Here is a country where the civilians have to stage a coup from time to time just so that they remember what it feels like to be in control.

Explanations of why Pakistan is in a permanent state of ferment and why its military and political ruling elites are at daggers drawn no longer add up. They all make sense individually and yet together they fail to explain why it is so inexorably drawn to its own destruction.

Contrary to the strenuous denials by the civilian government there appears to be something to the allegations that a secret unsigned memo written at the instance of President Asif Ali Zardari and others asking the United States to rein in the military. Even if the memo does not exist or was not allegedly  written by former Pakistani Ambassador to the US Hussain Haqqani at the behest of the elected government, the broader issue of intensifying tensions at the top remain. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani too has spoken of a conspiracy to overthrow the government. Calling that military a “state within state” is the farthest a civilian leader in Pakistan can go as Gilani did.

It is possible that the drumbeat of an impending coup is a calculated political strategy by the elected government to preempt it from actually happening. After all what could be worse for a rumor than be confirmed? Raising a ruckus seems to have helped because Kayani told troops in the tribal areas of Pakistan’s northwest, “The army will continue to support democratic process in the country.” Gilani was quick to jump at the clarification saying, “The clarification from the army chief yesterday is extremely well taken in the democratic circles. There will definitely be an improvement because of it.”

If the whole purpose of the memo by the elected government, whether real or imaginary, was to thwart the military from contemplating any drastic action it may be succeeding for now. General Kayani is astute enough not to deny the rumors of a coup and then stage it anyway. Or at least I hope he is. It has been my longstanding view that in Pakistan one must expect the expected. If that is really the case, a coup should happen sooner or later, in some form or the other. On the other hand if the military is already a state within a state, then it makes no material difference whether it makes it formal.

From the looks of it the talk of the memo followed by Gilani’s public remonstrations are a form of civilian coup. Let’s see how long this hold because someone somewhere in the military must be pissed.

For now I am choosing to go by the official profile of General Kayani on the Pakistani army’s website which describes him thus: “Imbued with the qualities of head and heart, General is perceived to be a purposeful and pragmatic Commander and embodiment of professionalism. Excellence and perfection remain the hallmark of his personality.”

Since he is imbued with the qualities of head and heart and is purposeful and pragmatic, he may not yet dislodge the elected government. But then excellence and perfection are also the hallmark of his personality, neither of which the elected government is loaded with. So there.

In India, a rustic defender of parliament’s supremacy

My very approximate approximation of Lalu Prasad Yadav

It is his carefully untrimmed ear hair, defiantly spiking out on both sides, that gives Lalu Prasad Yadav that satirically menacing look. As the most vocal and colorful defender of the supremacy of India’s parliament in the face of an increasingly assertive section of civil society seeking to legislate, Yadav is characteristically effective.

Lalu Prasad Yadav, TV grab from www.ndtv.com

There is a veritable turf war going on in India these days between parliamentarians and an unquantifiable but significantly loud section of civil society over whose right it is to draft bills and enact them into laws. At issue is the Lokpal (Ombudsman) Bill and the extent of powers that should be enshrined in the proposed new institution to fight and redress massive corruption in public life at all levels.

If India were a forest, politicians would have marked the whole country as their territory. Seasoned old predators have been on the prowl for decades but now new, much younger, wildlife is intruding. The confrontation is expectedly brutal. What is ironic is that leading the pack of new intruders is a 74-year-old former army truck driver consumed by the utter moral righteousness of anything and everything he does. The man, Anna Hazare has now been tormenting the political establishment for the past six months or so by going on hunger fasts until his way prevails.

Television shows are full of representatives from both sides with their own loads of braggadocios about who gets to draft a bill as far reaching as the Lokpal Bill. Yadav has very vociferously cast his lot behind his own crowd of federal legislators saying that parliament is both competent and supreme.

What makes this 64-year-old former chief minister of the state of Bihar as well as former Railway Minister compelling is his unrestrained rusticity and unselfconscious sense of humor. It is also his ability to go off on a tangent that entertains in parliament. For instance, yesterday during a nearly 25-minute speech, studded with colloquialisms straight out of the hinterland of Bihar, he said it was his misfortune that he was born in 1948 because the British “fled” before he was born.(The British left India in 1947). It had nothing to do with the debate but then he is like an improv comic who often just wings it.

Despite his manners and language shorn of urban finesse, his purpose is deadly serious. He is telling this agitated section of India’s civil society that laws cannot be enacted from the sidewalks and streets. For a man who has built a whole career out of removing political filters from his rhetoric, for once that gift is coming in particularly handy. At one point during the speech he even spoke how much politicians have to grovel in order to get elected to parliament. His implication being that there was no way that he was going to let the street protestors led by Hazare hijack lawmaking.

Yadav’s style may be rough-hewn but there is no mistaking his passion for the political establishment. During the speech he also spoke about how under the proposed Lokpal Bill it would easy to file frivolous cases against the country’s prime minister and how it would lower the prestige of the office when the prime minister travels abroad. Yadav has obviously thought through the major consequences of the bill as and for a politician.

In a sense he said everything that other Members of Parliament would have loved to say but were inhibited by their natural filters of political circumspection. For someone who wears his ear hair with the conviction of a wolverine, circumspection does not come naturally to Yadav.

India's charges against Headley may make no material difference

Lest you think that I am all about caprice and conceit and everything in between, here is a piece I wrote for the IANS wire last night and out all over the world today.

By Mayank Chhaya,Indo-Asian News Service

Chicago, December 22 (IANS): The decision by India's National Investigation Agency (NIA) to formally file charges against David Coleman Headley is unlikely to be of any material consequence for the convicted key Mumbai terror plotter is lodged in an undisclosed US prison.

Headley's extradition to face charges and stand trial in India was an option that US federal prosecutors had taken off the table as part of a deal in exchange for which he has already pleaded guilty on all 12 counts. He is currently awaiting formal sentencing which is expected to be handed down by a court in the US sometime in spring. Another plea deal condition that won the prosecutors a full guilty plea is that he will be spared the death sentence.

There are next to no prospects of Headley's plea deal being revoked to facilitate his extradition, particularly because he was seen to have met the condition of full cooperation during the trial and helped the prosecutors win the eventual conviction of his childhood friend and fellow accused Tahawwur Hussain Rana.

Although Rana survived conviction in connection with his alleged role in facilitating Headley's travels to Mumbai to scout targets, he was found guilty of helping a plot to attack a Danish newspaper's offices.

While official sources would not publicly comment on whether India can do anything to compel the US government to revoke the non-extradition condition, it is clear that the chances of that happening are practically non-existent.

Although the fact is that Rana was not found guilty of any involvement in the Mumbai terror strike case, something the prosecutors were rather unhappy about, it was hard to lay the blame for that failure solely on Headley. From all indications, Headley did cooperate with the authorities to the extent he was required to but in the end the prosecutors could not convince the jury.

There are no compelling grounds at this stage for the US authorities to renege on the plea deal that spared Headley his worst nightmare scenario of facing Indian investigators in India. While an NIA team did interrogate him in Chicago in June 2010, it was conducted in US controlled conditions and under many ground rules. Headley ought to be aware what it might mean to be lodged in Indian judicial custody and be subjected to interrogation by Indian investigators.

Another factor that may discourage US authorities from considering Headley's extradition may have to do with strong suspicions in India of his possible role as an informer of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) who went rogue. There is no predicting what Headley might tell Indian investigators about his life as a DEA informer in order to talk his way out of tight corners.

On balance, the perception in the US seems to be that the Headley case has run its course with him awaiting sentencing along with Rana. There is no particular interest in sending him to India to face the justice system there.

The death of six US citizens in the Mumbai attacks gave the US prosecutors enough legal leverage to subject him to the law of the land in the US rather than handing him over to India under the extradition treaty between the two countries. In any case, extradition of US citizens is a rare occurrence and is almost always discouraged.

With this as the backdrop, it is anybody's guess what Indian investigators might gain by formally charging Headley along with others, including the shadowy Major Iqbal, a suspected operative of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to whom Headley has admitted to have been reporting.
Perhaps the only person the NIA might be able to lay their hands on is Rana, who after pleading not guilty, was convicted earlier this year. There is no plea deal in place for Rana that precludes his extradition. However, the fact that he is a Canadian citizen, who is also a permanent citizen of the US, now waiting to be handed down his sentence which could be anywhere between 15 and 30 years, could complicate matters.

All others that the NIA seeks to charge are based in Pakistan and they were also named in the US indictment. If the US has been unable to bring them to justice here, it is unlikely that India would be able to compel Pakistan to send them there.

Unless the NIA is working out of some undisclosed arrangement with US authorities about Headley, the formal charges could turn out to be more symbolic than consequential.

--Indo-Asian News Service