Mayank Chhaya Daily

No illustration needed

This is indeed an illustration

Not being human I am only mildly amused by human angst about various things. I have no stake in human belief systems. They are all anthropocentric and without any identifiable basis. Forget their universal reach, they do not even work on the earth’s nearest neighbor—the moon.So the current ferment over “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” is hard for me to comprehend.

Pakistan has banned Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and 450 other sites because of their “sacrilegious contents”, namely “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day.”  Purely as a practical matter, wouldn’t Pakistan be better off banning itself from the rest of the world? After all the world is full of “sacrilegious contents” created by unbelievers.

For those of you not fully informed about Islam, the religion expressly requires that Muhammad not be represented in any form, pictures, drawings, statues, or illustrations. They believe he is beyond human expression. One can argue the merits or demerits of this belief system, or any other for that matter, but what would be the point of that?

Human beings, the way I understand them as someone outside the species, are predisposed towards belief of some kind or the other. In that sense there is nothing unique about Islam in so much as any human belief system is credible or laughable. I think for you humans the easiest way to deal with the sense of being overwhelmed by what surrounds you would be to treat what surrounds you as a product of your imagination. Once you recognize that you live in a fantasy world created by your own fantasy mind, everything will become clear.

P.S.: India should not feel sanctimonious or self-righteous about Pakistan’s action. Given half a chance the country too would pretty much do the same thing.

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak

It is somewhat embarrassing to admit that I have never read Boris Leonidovich Pasternak’s ‘Dr. Zhivago’, although I have seen its brilliant movie adaptation of the same name by the great David Lean any number of times. Yesterday, as I chanced upon excerpts (if one can call over 50 percent of the entire book that) from the great novel on Google Books, I was immediately captivated by it.

While Lean’s complete mastery over the craft of cinema is undeniable in the movie version, as one reads the actual novel in English translation one begins to see how stunningly cinematic Pasternak’s writing was. It is almost as if he was making a movie himself. I have quoted a couple passages here.

“Then a fearful hustle began. The coffin was closed, nailed and lowered into the ground. Clods of earth rained on the lid as the grave was hurriedly filled by four spades. A little mound formed. A ten-year-old boy climbed on it……He raised his head and from his vantage point absently glanced about the bare autumn landscape and the domes of the monastery. His snub-nosed face became contorted and he stretched out his neck. If a wolf had done this, everybody would have thought it was about to howl. The boy covered his face with hands and burst into sobs.”

Then there is this short poetic observation that caught my fancy. “The horses were like horses the world over: the shaft horse pulled with the innate honesty of a simple soul while the off horse arched its neck like a swan and seemed to the uninitiated to be an inveterate idler who thought only of prancing in time to the jangling bells."

For any filmmaker this is as specific as a novel can get in terms of atmospherics, physical details and emotional state of its characters. Lean has done a superb job of capturing the funeral scene at the opening of the movie. If Pasternak had seen it, he would have more than approved.

At some point in the near future I will pick up a copy of Dr. Zhivago when my wallet permits. Even though it costs only between five and ten dollars, these days most of my requisition requests are rejected by my wallet as as gratuitous luxury. It is pathetic. No wonder I am drawn to epic Russian novels.

Sex and nuclear disarmament

Indiana Republican Congressman Mark Souder (Pic: http://souder.house.gov/)

Far be it from me to link abstinence education and nuclear disarmament but I am going to do it any way. Nothing, it seems, is far enough for me.

While reading about the resignation of Indiana Republican Congressman Mark Souder over his relationship with a part-time staffer, I was more amused than outraged by the sheer comicality of a passionate advocate of abstinence locked in an amorous affair. By and large I find hypocrisies of this type harmless and entertaining. What made it even more hilarious is the surfacing of a video where Souder is being interviewed by his alleged mistress Tracy Jackson about the importance of abstinence.

It is almost as if the video was part of some public foreplay between the two daring the world to find out what they were really up to when no one was looking. Extramarital affairs are no more morally troubling than every morning one having to decide which cereal to eat. So spare me that non-sense.

On reflection, rather than feeling sanctimonious (which I never do), I began drawing a parallel between abstinence and nuclear disarmament. If you think about it the Souder situation is not that different from the disingenuousness that attends frequent US sermons to the rest of the world against acquiring nuclear weapons. With more than 5,000 phallic nuclear missiles standing erect in its stockpile, Washington under any administration, including the current one, should hesitate to lecture others.

At its heart, both Souder and US policy are driven by the same superiority complex. Souder probably thinks that given who he is, he falls outside the standards of moral sexual conduct that he wants to impose on others, quite like the US believing that nuclear weapons are safer in their hands than any other anywhere in the world. The double standards are so stunning that they are not noticed by those who practice them.

For the record, I am against all weapons, although I am all for everybody enjoying whatever level of sexual relations with whomever and whatever, irrespective of everything as long as one is prepared to deal with the consequences.

Raise a stink

In the realm of superfluous comparisons, this one stinks. A study suggests that there are more mobile phones in India than toilets. That is like saying that there are more people in India than toilets. Or for that matter, there are less tigers than cows. Let me stretch it a bit and say that there are more feet than there are shoes.

One understands the purpose behind such comparisons. It is to offer a striking contrast in order to push the country’s policy makers to sit up and act. However, it is not as if India did not add between 15 and 20 million new mobile phone subscribers every month, it could use some of the resources to build more toilets. One is not dependent on or related to or influenced by the other.

Sanitation is a national crisis that goes unaddressed because people have chosen not to make it into a decisive issue. A country that has tolerated its marginalized citizens carrying night soil in wicker baskets on their heads needs much more than just foul smells emanating from entire neighborhoods to fix this terrible problem. Poor sanitation is a cause of many a public health crisis in India, which in turn directly impact its economy.

Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi can set a fine example by espousing sanitation for all as part of to-do list of her party’s current tenure in the government.  I am reminded of what the other Gandhi, Mohandas I mean, said in 1915 after visiting the Ganga River. "It filled me with agony to see people performing natural functions on the thoroughfares and river banks, when they could easily have gone a little farther away from public haunts," Gandhi wrote in his autobiography. It is an absolute shame that the problem has only worsened since then. In nearly a century India has not found the will to address its most secular need.

P.S.: I checked and found that Apple has no app for toilets. So sorry India.

Forbes’ top 10 most wanted

Dawood Ibrahim (AP photo as it appears on Forbes.com)

It is a sinister distinction which those who lead the kind of life that Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar has led secretly enjoy but never publicly acknowledge.

Forbes magazine’s 10 most wanted fugitives features this 55-year-old boss of an alleged crime syndicate in South Asia at number 3. In the South Asian context only Osama bin Laden outdoes Ibrahim by being at the top of the list. At number 2 is Joquin Guzman, which the magazine describes as the world’s most notorious drug trafficker.

I have been aware of Ibrahim since the early 1980s when I used to report on Bombay’s underworld. He was then a bit player reportedly working for the big daddies of the day, including Karim Lala and Haji Mastan. Given the kind of ambition that was raging inside him it was only a matter of time that this son of a former police constable would chart his own course. “Nam suna hai. Ladka thoda garam tabiyat ka hai (I have heard about him. He is a hot-headed young man),” was how Lala had once described Ibrahim to me when I met him during a police detention. Mastan, who consistently denied having led a life of crime but was always on the list of top police suspects of those engaged in smuggling and other crimes, was more dismissive of Ibrahim. “Aise to bahut chhokre ghum rahen hein (There are many youngsters like him roaming about),” was how Mastan had put it.

Now 25 years later, when both Lala and Mastan are dead, Ibrahim has way surpassed anything that the two men could ever dream of doing. Forbes says this about Dawood: “The most wanted man in India has for years led a 5,000-member criminal syndicate known as D-Company. The organized crime group has engaged in everything from narcotics to contract killing, working mostly in Pakistan, India and the United Arab Emirates. Ibrahim shares smuggling routes with al Qaeda, the U.S. government says, and has collaborated with both al Qaeda and its South Asian affiliate, Lashkar-e-Taiba, which pulled off the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, possibly with Ibrahim's help. Ibrahim is suspected of having organized the 1993 Bombay bombings that killed 257 people and wounded 713. Though the Pakistani government denies it, Ibrahim is probably in Pakistan, where he has important ties to the powerful intelligence service.”

No headline required

Illustration by Mayank Chhaya

This is all I have got for Sunday.

Confusing tool with content

An original White House picture poorly doctored by yours truly

“With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations—none of which I know how to work—information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment”—President Barack Obama during a speech at the Hampton University on May 9.

A wrong man to express a wrong sentiment to a wrong crowd is what I thought. Coming from a politician who is a direct beneficiary of the power of information technologies and social media network, it is also gratuitous. Apart from everything else I am troubled by the fact that the young president of the United States says he does not know how to work a device that essentially requires one finger touching a screen and choosing an icon. I can understand his troubles with Xboxes and PlayStations but iPads and iPhones? It is embarrassing.

Of all the crises that Obama has to deal with on a daily, sometime hourly basis, not being able to work these devices is admittedly way down on the list of priorities. But still it is disconcerting that someone at his level of influence would deliberately confuse the tool with the content. I do not know why he clubbed Xboxes and PlayStations, which are primarily game consoles, with iPods and iPads which are information tools. How those are used depends entirely on the user and not the manufacturer or even the content creator.

Since Obama is so plugged in, I am sure knows he knows about some fantastic open courseware that is available on the net and which lends itself so naturally to devices such as iPod and, particularly, iPad. Even many of the games that people play on Xboxes and PlayStations have been known to be of great use for a whole lot of professionals, from doctors to soldiers.

For a man who is a self-confessed BlackBerry addict, it is a bit thick to dismiss these devices purely as a distraction or a form of entertainment. These technologies are agnostic to what is delivered on them, particularly devices such as iPads. I can guarantee one can pretty much prep up for a Ph.D. in quantum mechanics using iPad intelligently.

So dear Mr. President, easy there with your dismissal.

Indian census and caste

In 2010 India cannot decide whether it should continue to perpetuate a profiling system that is thousands of years old. As the country prepares for its latest census there is a nationwide debate whether caste should be included among the questions. Quite like any other debate in India, there are a million sides to this one as well.

There are those who say it is anti-constitutional to include caste in the census form and it has the potential to cause serious divisions in the country. But then there are those who say caste is a means to better socio-economic planning since it is often a decisive indicator of socio-economic development index. There are also those who want caste included but do not want it to become a factor in guaranteeing admissions to educational institutions and government jobs. There are some who want sociological classifications abolished altogether because they stand in the way of national integration.

The last time a census included caste was in 1931 when India was very much a British colony. The census taking has been in existence in India since 1872 and is regarded as one of the most accurate measures of societal profile from many different angles.

Caste has a direct economic consequence in India because of its policy of granting admissions to educational institutions and government jobs on the basis of people’s caste affiliations. Many politicians, who on the one hand oppose caste as a measure of people’s social standing, support it on the other hand if only because it helps determine the numerical strength and geographical spread of Indians belonging to common castes. This is a cynical ploy because it helps them tailor their electoral politics accordingly. In a sense they want their caste and reject it too.

There is another angle attached to the question of how detailed the census should get. India is in the process of creating a Unique Identity (UID) for every Indian. This is somewhat like the social security card in the United States. The census officials have been instructed to collect data which will be used for the UID database to be eventually used to issue UID cards. The extent of information on the UID card is still a matter of debate. It is not clear whether biometric information such as the fingerprint or even iris detection should be built into the UID. Apart from the inherent questions over civil liberties and privacy, there are also enormous cost and technological challenges attached to this project.

Pakistan v. Bangladesh

Nicholas Kristof’s column in The New York Times contrasts the spread of education in Pakistan and Bangladesh, which was part of Pakistan until 1971.

“The public education system, in particular, is a catastrophe. I’ve dropped in on Pakistani schools where the teachers haven’t bothered to show up (because they get paid anyway), and where the classrooms have collapsed (leaving students to meet under trees). Girls have been particularly left out. In the tribal areas, female literacy is 3 percent.

There’s an instructive contrast with Bangladesh, which was part of Pakistan until it split off in 1971. At that time, Bangladesh was Pakistani’s impoverished cousin and seemed pretty much hopeless. Henry Kissinger famously described Bangladesh as an “international basket case.”

But then Bangladesh began climbing a virtuous spiral by investing in education, of girls in particular. It now has more girls in high school than boys, according to Unicef. This focus on education has bolstered its economy, reduced population growth rates, nurtured civil society and dampened fundamentalism,” Kristof writes.

All very valid but I think he misses one significant point. Unlike Pakistan, which has failed to develop a distinct national cultural identity and cultural ethos 63 years after its founding, Bangladesh has never faced that challenge. Although Islam is Bangladesh’s state religion like Pakistan, the country has deep rooted cultural traditions which are uniquely Bengali which it shares with the Indian state of West Bengal. These cultural traditions have helped moderate the insidious influence of an unquestioning Islam in Bangladesh.

Education in general and education for girls in particular is very much part of the Bangla cultural traditions. Culture acts as a powerful counter to religious fundamentalism everywhere. Nowhere is this more compellingly illustrated than in India whose cultural traditions can often outweigh religious influences.

Courting Karzai with all his caprice

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and US secretary of State Hillary Clinton (http://www.state.gov/)

The surge in love in Washington for Afghan President Hamid Karzai would have been amusing had it not been baffling. Of course, it can be both baffling and amusing simultaneously. So let’s go with amusingly baffling.

Here is the leader of a country the US regards as strategically crucial but whom they came precariously close to ousting or at least sidelining, now being feted as a greatly valued ally. The about turn is swift and incomprehensible. It is tempting to believe that all the recent ranting that Karzai indulged in, including wondering aloud whether he should join the Taliban, seems to have worked. He was allowed to bring his entire government with him, which is just as well because we know they are not needed in Kabul.

It is unlikely that anyone in the Obama administration would even acknowledge that there has been an about turn, let alone explain it, in the way Washington has now decided to deal with the Karzai government. There is no evidence that the state of affairs in Kabul has changed so dramatically that it has compelled the US government to reevaluate Karzai. The only conclusion I can draw is that the highest levels of the US leadership have recognized that it is better to coax Karzai than coerce him. It is a choice that has been forced on the US by Karzai’s caprice.

It is in this context that I am deeply skeptical about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s warning that Pakistan would face “very severe consequences” unless it acted with greater resolve against jihadi groups operating in that country. It is unlikely to amount to much more than impotent rage.

“We want more, we expect more. We have made it clear that heaven forbid if an attack like this that we can trace back to Pakistan were to have been successful there would be very severe consequences,” Clinton said during an interview with CBS’s signature program ’60 Minutes’. When pressed to elaborate Clinton said, “I think I will let that speak for itself.”

Although on the face of it the comment is remarkably shorn of diplomatic tact and constitutes perhaps the most direct US threat to Pakistan, in practical terms there is nothing much that the Obama administration can do. Clinton’s comments are more venting of the Obama administration’s internal frustration than any foreshadowing of any well thought out action.

On the Karzai visit, there was an amusing aside to the welcome remarks made by Clinton during the meeting between the two sides in the Benjamin Franklin Room yesterday. She made a reference to the nascent Afghan cricket team and its potential to transform the Afghan civil society. Thank you, Madam Secretary for  reading my blog entry on this subject a few days ago. On May 2, I wrote: ‘One always hesitates to offer a solution to the Afghan imbroglio but creating nationwide teams that compete in an Afghani league seems like a fine idea.’

“Now, before we begin, I might suggest that if we are searching for a model of how to meet tough international challenges with skill, dedication, and teamwork, we need only look to the Afghan National Cricket Team. For those of you who don’t follow cricket, which is most of the Americans, suffice it to say that Afghanistan did not even have a cricket team a decade ago. And last month, the team made it to the World Twenty Championships featuring the best teams in the world,” Clinton said.

The Afghan team, of course, crashed out of the world championship in the Caribbean but that is okay.