South Asia Daily

Some observations about Robert Mueller's principal conclusions

For President Donald Trump, known to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat even when neither victory nor the jaws exist, the principal conclusions of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian collusion and obstruction of justice investigation are nothing short of a golden-sealed triumph.

It is surprising that one did not hear shrieks of primal exultation emanating from Mar-a-Lago in Florida and rant across the country in the immediate aftermath of the conclusions being made public. To Trump’s credit, his two-year-long assertive incantation of the mantra “no collusion” has been fully attested to by Mueller’s conclusions. The report states that the investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

That is as unambiguous a vindication as it can get from a prosecutor with a reputation to be unsparing but precise.

Significantly though, the conclusions as reported by Attorney General William P. Barr specifically point out two main Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election. “The first involved attempts by a Russian organization, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), to conduct disinformation and social media operations in the United States to sow social discord, eventually with the aim of interfering with the election,” the Barr letter says.

“The second element involved the Russian government’s efforts to conduct computer hacking operations designed to gather and disseminate information to influence the election. The Special Counsel found that Russian government actors successfully hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons affiliated with the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party organizations, and publicly disseminated those materials through various intermediaries, including WikiLeaks,” the findings say.

It is in the context of the Russian efforts to influence the election and the virulent enthusiasms shown by candidate Trump personally and his aides generally during the run-up to the election on public platforms and rallies supporting them that I am confused why it is not seriously problematic. I understand that the Special Counsel’s mandate was not to examine the flagrant absence of morality from an aspiring politician’s public behavior but the simple fact that Trump so sanguinely approved any Russian operation to access Hillary Clinton’s 30,000 emails should remain a matter of grave concern.

Simply because the president’s conduct before he assumed office was a pile-up of political transgressions there is a tendency to forget specifics, one of which was his notorious public appeal to the Russians to obtain and release Clinton’s emails. He has since tried disingenuously to pass that off as a joke but at the time he said it he seemed very serious. I find it curious that the president’s conduct around the investigation, be it firing Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director James Comey on May 9, 2017 or his reported comments on May 10, 2017 to visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, in the Oval Office, along with the then Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey I. Kislyak have not amounted to anything actionable.

A New York Times story on May 19 reported this: “President Trump told Russian officials in the Oval Office this month that firing the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, had relieved “great pressure” on him, according to a document summarizing the meeting.

“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said, according to the document, which was read to The New York Times by an American official. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

There has been a number of other extraordinary comments and observations by the president about Russia and its President Vladimir Putin that, taken together, suggest at least a very curious softness towards an adversary which the Special Counsel says interfered in the presidential election.

Although Trump declared with characteristic bombast that the Mueller conclusions were “a complete and total exoneration,” Mueller made no determination as to the obstruction of justice. “While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” the findings said.

It is unquestionable that the explicit pronouncement that there was no collusion is an unequivocal victory for the president who is expected to capitalize on it for his 2020 reelection campaign even while weaponizing it against the Democratic Party as well as large chunks of the mainstream media.

Speaking of the mainstream media, the Mueller conclusion about collusion is not just egg over its face but a whole plate of anda bhurji or scrambled eggs. Its credulity over the Russian collusion now appears deeply troublesome in light of the Mueller conclusions. I say this with no schadenfreude because when the mainstream media loses credibility as a collective, journalists lose theirs individually too. People tend to conflate the media generally with journalists individually. There is a great deal that the media needs to think about in the aftermath of the Mueller report.

Watching ravens in a dogfight

It has long been my daily habit to observe non-human goings-on in Nature. More often than not I do it early morning since I am an early riser. This morning it involved two ravens, one of whom was squawking incessantly. At first, I did not pay attention since a raven’s squawking is not a particularly pleasing sound. However, on a closer observation there appeared to be a story unfolding.

One of the two ravens stayed perched on a high maple tree branch and kept squawking while the other took sorties around and tried to attack. It was like a dogfight between two birds. The silent one was the aggressor while the squawking one the target. This routine went on for a few minutes during which not once did the aggressor stop flying around. Eventually, the fight stopped and both flew away in different directions.

I am sure an ornithologist would be able to explain the behavior. It was not clear what they were fighting about. For me it was just a daily habit to disengage from things human.

Also, I was reminded of a somewhat sinister artwork I had done a few years ago. 

What is existence, If not corpuscles....

What is existence

If not corpuscles

Clinging together 

Short-lived and transient

Before they form

New muscles

Tarantino cool exudes in 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood'

Mike Moh as Bruce Lee in Quentin Tarantino's 'Once upon a time in Hollywood' (Photo: Screengrab from the trailer)

It is hard to pinpoint precisely why but Quentin Tarantino’s movies exude cool effortlessly. Come to think of it, it is precisely because you cannot pinpoint why that they exude such cool.

Watching the trailer of his ninth film ‘Once upon a time in Hollywood,’ the reflexive response was “That’s cool stuff, man.” As the trailer progressed and finished, I am glad I felt that.

From what I understand, the film is a sort of an ode to the 1960s Hollywood, particularly 1969. That was 50 years ago. The trailer has that Tarantino swag embodied here by the bodies of Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt. It does not matter to me what they are playing in the movie but they seem to be playing it Tarantino cool.

However, the most pleasant surprise in the trailer is Mike Moh, the actor who portrays the legendary Bruce Lee. His is the best Bruce Lee that I have seen, right down to his Lee inflections. The movie, scheduled for release in July, is already on my must see list.

Tarantino has said he is going to wrap his career up after his tenth movie. If he keeps to that, he has just one more to go after this. Something tells me that he may take a long sabbatical but will eventually return.

Living up to stereotypes about poets

I do live up to some of the stereotypes about poets, one of which is to feverishly pen down verses on the back of an envelope in the poetic heat of the moment. It happened again this morning around 5.30 a.m. In my case, that normally happens around 3 a.m. That must beg the question, why are there so many envelopes around me? About that, some other time.

This morning I woke up with the following first verse fully conceived. The other two had to be constructed awake.

तुम रक्खो पूरी हस्ती के उजाले

मैं रोज़ ज़ुल्मत में चिराग़ कर लूँगा

तुम कर लो संसार से मोह माया

मैं तो बस बैराग कर लूँगा

तुम बुझा लो अपनी अमिट प्यास

मैं हर साँस से एक आग कर लूँगा  

(You hold on to the light of the whole universe

I will light a lamp in the darkness

You hold on to your worldly attachments

I will choose to renounce them

You quench your unquenchable thirst

I will breathe fire with every breath)

As it often happens, the transliteration is not altogether poetic and even elegant. However, you will have to do with it. It is not as if you pay me to read this blog.

P.S.: If I ever become a celebrated poet,or celebrated anything, the image of the envelope might add to the profile. 

Krishn by Allah Bux at Christie's

Allah Bux (1895-1978), Untitled (Krishna in Contemplation) (Photo: Christie’s)

Holi and Krishn are inextricably linked. Today happens to be Holi in India. By a happy coincidence, one of the pieces under the hammer that caught my eye is this rather unusual and striking 1930s oil on canvas of Krishn by Allah Bux (1895-1978).

I say unusual because it is not very often that you see Krishn looking this meditative. On a closer look of his face, he looks serene. It is almost as if he is completely disengaged from his relentlessly worshiped divinity.

Bux, who also another piece at the auction, has used the bluish hue, the supposed complexion of Krishn’s, rather subtly. From the looks of it, this seems like a depiction of boy Krishn although I could be wrong.

I also quite like the flora surrounding him. It seems deliberately muted in its colors. The folds in Krishn’s Pitambar, cummerbund and stole are also quite wonderfully executed.

Estimated between $20,000 and 30,000 I would not be surprised if it breaches that rather easily.

It is in keeping with India’s glorious but now often challenged syncretic cultural and religious traditions that an artist named Allah painted Krishn.  

The problem in being susceptible to Nature's seductions

The main problem in being as susceptible to the seductions of Nature as I am is that one tends to overlook banalities of consequence such as having to earn and then having to pay the bills. I forget that Nature and, by extension, the universe do not have the burden of paid existence like we humans do. Every fucking thing has to be paid for with the exception of Nature’s bounties.

The great 15^th century Indian poet-philosopher Narsinh Mehta wrote in one of his most profound creations “Jagine joun to” (When I wake up), “Bhramm latka karey bhramm pasey” or ‘The universe lures itself with its own lures’. The point is irrespective of what we humans are and what we do, Nature and the universe continue with their own pace and their own spectacles. We seem entirely incidental the great unfolding. The trick is to treat ourselves as part of the same great spectacle.

Speaking of Nature’s spectacles, I have been reading about how Lake Elsinore, a hillside town in western Riverside county of Southern California, has been overrun by tens of thousands of tourists because its hills have exploded with its seasonal poppy superbloom. So intense has the tourist influx has been that the town has had to bar access to any more people. It is not Nature’s intention to draw people because Nature is doing what Nature does—create its own spectacles.  

Meanwhile, my struggles to counter the daily banalities of life such as wondering whether I will ever get a salaried job again as a journalist in this lifetime remain a terrible annoyance. I try to emulate Nature by creating my own lures such as my poetry and paintings. The two published here were done in rapid succession yesterday.

Some observations about chowkidar

The purists among the rather risible “Main Bhi Chowkidar” (roughly “I am a security guard too”) movement led by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi might be pained to know the etymology of the word “chowkidar”. I had a clear sense that its origin was Urdu. This morning some quick research, including a reference in the Oxford dictionary, shows that it indeed is.

This is how Oxford describes its origin, “From Urdu caukīdār, from caukī ‘toll house’ + -dār ‘keeper’. In normal, saner times there need not be any controversy at all about the use of an Urdu word to create a meme by a political party. However, when that party happens to be the often stridently Hindi-Sanskrit pride Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and some of its leading lights reflexively view Urdu as the language of Muslims/Pakistan this is indeed an incongruity. It is particularly so when the word is used to declaim a resurgence in the run-up to the national election.

Over the years, I have known many BJP functionaries to be anal about rejecting the use of Urdu words even in a normal conversation saying they represent “Muslim” culture. In the 1990s, when I used to interact regularly with the party’s grandees in New Delhi, during a Hindi conversation I deliberately used the word, “yakeen”, meaning trust, to provoke one of its purist members. He smiled and interjected saying “vishwas”, the Hindi for trust, as a cultural corrective and a subtle reprimand. To his credit, he was a gentle soul and did not believe in aggression in support of his cause that you see these days. Over the years he considered me to be his friend--"mitr--to which I would respond saying I was merely a "patrkar", a journalist. I have half a mind to start a movement called #MainBhiPatrkar even though the word has become a pejorative these days. 

When a party claims to be so attuned to lexical specificity and purity, it is indeed surprising that it is using ‘chowkidar’. It could have used “रक्षक” (Rakshak) instead but a) Chowkidar occurred to them almost reflexively and b) They know it is among the easiest words to understand and remember.

As part of that meme building, the Twitter handles of India’s government leaders right down from the prime minister now carry the prefix “Chowkidar”.  It may not be mandatory in the formal sense but in a regimental party like the BJP it is understood that the followers would do what the leader does. The legion of Modi’s Twitter followers—46.4 million as of today—have also pledged their allegiance to the “Main bhi chowkidar” movement. Unfortunately for Modi and the BJP, “dar” lends itself so brilliantly to some outstanding satirical rhyming because there are many words in Hindi/Urdu that rhyme wonderfully with it. Modi’s antagonists have quickly taken to deriding the meme with their limericks.

This is an exercise in branding that Modi and his handlers have proven to be so formidably effective at. At the beginning of his tenure as prime minister in 2014, Modi had described himself as “Pradhan Sevak” or “prime servant” instead of prime minister. From “sevak”, who is normally inside the house, it is now “chowkidar”, who is often outside at the gate, it is quite a transition.

Modi’s supporters get misty-eyed making this pious political pledge to guard the nation’s conscience and its cultural and other treasures. I have no way of determining how much this kind of political branding might work. In so much as it gives the party’s supporters a new tribal identifier to flaunt until the seven-phase parliamentary election from April 11 to May 19 I suppose it is as good as any.

The party may even turn around and say that it is so inclusive that it has no problem using an Urdu word to describe its latest political trick.

Sixty years after his exile Dalai Lama as far from Tibet as ever

The Dalai Lama’s ubiquity often tends to paper over his stateless existence that began on March 17, 1959, when he had to flee his home in Lhasa, Tibet amid threats to his life.

Six decades later, as the 83-year-old Buddhist monk looks back, he finds that he is as far away from his home as he has ever been. After two weeks of a harrowing journey on horseback, by a yak skin boat and on foot the 23-year-old Tenzin Gyatso reached the border of an India that was barely 12-years-old as an independent country. It was a tribute to India’s civilizational strength and its first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s moral conviction that the Dalai Lama was not only granted asylum on April 3 but greeted with a warm welcome.

Now in the twilight of his life—he turns 84 on July 6—the Dalai Lama has grown far beyond the core cause of Tibet and become a global sage figure who taps the world on its head with avuncular affection and dispenses deceptively simple advice. Compassion and “warm-heartedness” are the two key features of most of his public talks; both attributes seemingly simple but rather exacting to practice in these fractious times.

In the last decade or so he has become a particularly sought after guide by the world’s who’s who over existential angst. He has also become an important interlocutor with leading neuroscientists on how Buddhist meditation profoundly engenders mental well-being, including physically affecting the human brain.

Even as the Dalai Lama has pitched himself as a relentless campaigner for the well-being of the humanity in general, he has also remained focused on the very real existential challenges to the people of Tibet and their rich culture.  Tibet, of course, is no closer to any happy resolution than it has ever been in decades. If anything, it appears to have become even harder to achieve any amicable resolution. A defining factor of the Tibetan issue now, as it has been for the past decade, the advancing age of the 14th Dalai Lama.

Even though as a state and a political system China is unreligious, it is acutely aware of the cultural and philosophical appeal of Buddhism, something that Tenzin Gyatso has embodied his entire life from the age of 3. In his inevitable death, whenever that may come to pass, lies a powerful opportunity for China to reshape an institution over six-centuries-old and in the process deepen its control over Tibet even more.

One must bear in mind that there are over 240 million Buddhists in China. When it is considered that the total membership of the Communist Party of China is about 89 million the number of Buddhists is a very significant one politically even within China’s hefty demographic that Beijing would like to have deep inroads into. While the Dalai Lama may not be its preferred conduit to that population, Buddhism certainly is. They want this Dalai Lama-free Buddhism.

In some sense, any reasonable resolution of the Tibet issue seems as distant in 2019 as it was in 1959. In fact, it appears even more unlikely from the Chinese standpoint as the state knows it can outlast the individual.

From time to time, people have wondered what if the Dalai Lama gets to pay a symbolic visit to Tibet, if not return for good altogether. There is no upside for the Dalai Lama to pay a symbolic visit and there is no upside in Beijing’s estimation to let him return for good. So thereby hangs a tale.

Although he has occasionally shown great optimism about his return, as a detached Buddhist monk he is unlikely to invest a whole lot of emotions in that possibility though. Beijing could have been politically astute a long time ago by allowing him to return for good and hence perhaps diminish much of his international currency. However, it appears that China remains wary of a stateless Buddhist monk after six-decades of standoff with him.

On the question of the future of the institution of the Dalai Lama, the Chinese leadership is sharp enough to recognize its power as an instrument of great influence as long as he is amenable to their commands.  Not willing or able or both to deal with the currently living Dalai Lama, China insists that he must reincarnate after his death, presumably as a pliable 15th Dalai Lama. The 14th Dalai Lama, who is arguably the most popular and consequential in the tradition’s history, is much more inclined to end his lineage and preempt reincarnation.

In a bizarre believe-it-or-not twist to the question of whether the Dalai Lama should reincarnate, Beijing now seems to insist that he must but as a sort of made-to-order successor who could be shaped and conditioned to accept complete Chinese control over Tibet and Tibetans.

Even as the Chinese Communist Party does not accept the concept of Dalai Lamas as an old institution and is particularly contemptuous towards the current one, it is astute enough to recognize the political and cultural consequence of having a Dalai Lama in place as long as he is the kind they can run as their operative. It would not mind some return to Buddhism as long as it is this Dalai Lama-free.

Sixty years after a nascent nation-state embraced a high profile asylum seeker from a hostile neighbor India continues to have its own problems vis-à-vis China. An instance of how tricky this equation is came in April 2017 when the Dalai Lama visited its northeastern state Arunachal Pradesh. It was like his six previous visits, the last one being in 2009. Beijing chose to respond to this visit with an outrage that felt discernibly sharper than in the past.

For Prime Minister Narendra Modi, China has not been a particularly rewarding or uplifting experience despite the fact that early on in his tenure he effusively hosted President Xi Jinping in 2014 in Ahmedabad. The two sat on Gujarat's famous lacquer-work swing from the town of Sankheda on the banks of the Sabarmati River whose front Modi had developed as the state's Chief Minister. In the intervening two-and-a-half years, the Prime Minister until 2017 found the bilateral relationship not living up to its promise.

From opposing India's bid for membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group to consistently thwarting New Delhi's efforts to have the United Nations Security Council put Masood Azhar, the head of the Pakistani terrorist outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed, on its blacklist, Beijing has been remarkably unhelpful. This is notwithstanding that early on Modi allowed Chinese investment into ports and telecom, something which was out of bounds earlier. Add to that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor that China is building through Pakistan-controlled Kashmir much to India's outrage, and an earlier incursion by its soldiers into Ladakh, and a pattern seems to form. A case can be made that China has flattered to deceive in its dealings with the Modi government, while making some polite noises.

I want to do something beauteous every day

More often than not poetry and painting go hand in hand for me. One follows the other and not necessarily in that order. It can be either or even simultaneous. These happened this morning.

रोज़ कुछ न कुछ हसीन करना है

ज़िंदगी को थोडा बेहतरीन करना है

जब भी छेड़ दूं मैं हाल-ए-आलम

आप को भी सामईन करना है

I do not feel like offering English translation in rhyme. The two verses broadly say how I want to do something beauteous every day in order to make life a little better. When I narrate the state of existence, I want you to be my audience.