Mayank Chhaya Daily

10 random selections from my works

Here are 10 random selections from my works in 2016. If they tell any story, it is that they tell no story.

Here is to Dr. Kanhaiyalal Munshi

Today marks the 129th birth anniversary of Dr. Kanhaiyalal Munshi, quite easily one of India’s most iconic academic-cultural-legal-literary-political figures. Some might dispute my assertion but that is in the nature of any assertion. So that’s that. I wrote a piece about Dr. Munshi December 4, 2013 which I am republishing today.

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Contrary to the popular urban myth that Gujarat’s mercantile culture has stifled its literary impulses, the state abounds in some truly world class writing. I am guilty of reading Gujarati literature desultorily and hence often unable to counter this stereotype effectively. It is only in the past few months that I have embarked on a personal project to read Gujarati literature in some detail.

Reading, like writing, is like swimming or cycling. One does not forget it but one requires some getting used to after having been away from either for a prolonged period. I do not read Gujarati as a matter of routine because the working language of my survival has been English for the past 32 years. As a result, there is some considerable accumulation of an equivalent of literary rust that I have to clean through as I start reading the classics. Last night, I began reading Kanhaiyalal Munshi’s (December 30, 1887 – February 8, 1971) ‘Gujarat no Naath’ (The Lord of Gujarat).

Dr. Kanhaiyalal Munshi

Rather than encapsulating its theme myself let me just quote a blurb that accompanies its English translation here: “King Jayasinghdev Solanki, Queen Mother Meenaldevi, Prime Minister Munjal Mehta, as well as King Navghan and the dashing Prince Khengar of Saurashtra, are well-known figures in the medieval history of Gujarat. Based on certain historical incidents of that period, some folklore of Saurashtra, and his own intimate knowledge of the culture and history of Gujarat, Munshi wrote this immensely entertaining novel.”

Munshi’s prose was known to be at once very erudite and yet accessible. You can sense in it the intellectual weight of the man writing it. There is both great literary finesse and flourish to it. Also, having been a journalist Munshi had a definite regard for historic accuracy. ‘Gujarat no Naath’, of course, is a fictionalized extrapolation of real life events but Dr. Munshi does not twist the basic history so much that it becomes absurd.

This particular novel first came out in 1917 and what I have is its 17th edition. These are eternal sellers as distinct from best-sellers which enjoy a dramatic but short-lived success. There have been at least 25 editions of the novel so far.

Like all truly great writers, Dr. Munshi could be picturesque and profound as needed. There is a line early on where he says while describing a particularly cold winter night along the banks of the Saraswati river. “It was the sort of night to be spent in the warm snuggle of one’s lover in a corner of one’s house. And yet, some 400-500 people were scattered out in the open across Patan.” In the same paragraph describing the effects of the various bonfires and the shadows they cast he says, “It was like a convention of demons.”

Admittedly, it requires a lot of attention for me to keep track of all the characters and their names as well as plots and subplots. Given his enormously busy public life right in the midst of India’s independence movement, both as an academic and lawyer as well as a very hands-on participant in the freedom campaign, I marvel at the sheer body of his literary output. To be able to construct a historic world for just one novel against this backdrop would have been hard but to be able to do so in many other works must have required preternatural skills.

Perhaps with mood permitting I might do another post after finishing the novel.

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One major attraction for me toward Dr. Munshi is his slim book title ‘Narsainyo: Bhakt Harino” (Narsinh: The Devotee of God”) about the great Gujarati poet-philosopher Narsinh Mehta (1410-1480). In that book Dr. Munshi imagines the fading moments of Mehta’s life thus: “The voice fades…The afternoon sun slides down behind the roof..It’s light rejuvenates his diminishing senses…A sentence offers him a false reassurance: “The righteous one, please sleep now. Who has seen God? Mehtaji hears it. His eyes open. He raises his head. He looks up. A beam of sunlight dangles before him. He looks at the priest. “Haven’t you seen? Do you want to see?” There is challenge in his voice. Everybody is just spell-bound. Vitality returns to his hands. He picks up the Kartal (crotales). With his weak hands he makes sun salutation and says…”

Munshi than quotes one of Mehta’s most celebrated verses: “See who is going about in the sky. Its me, its me is the word. I desire to die at Shyam’s feet. For Krishna has no peers.”

Tom Hanks, Bill Murray and new proposed comedy

The other day I read an interview with actor Tom Hanks where he said he would love to do a comedy with Bill Murray. In fact, he said even though he had just finished an intense spell of work and would ideally like a break, a comedy with Murray would get him to get up early and report for work. He wants someone to write one for the two of them. So I began writing it. Whether my idea even reaches either or both, let alone it even gets made into a movie, is a different issue altogether.

I have just registered the outline and the idea with the Writers Guild of America in case someone chooses to steal it.

Here goes:

Tom Hanks is Reginald Helmsley, CEO of a Fortune 500 Silicon Valley company. He is single, enormously wealthy, effusive, often ribbed for being closeted. He lives in a Frank Gehry-esque home in Los Angeles even though his company is based in Silicon Valley. He is 60. His favorite comeback when teased about being closeted, “You do know my closet is larger than most straight homes, right?”

Bill Murray is Trevor McFadden, a retired stand-up comedian who has taken to Tibetan Buddhism and spends much of his life in a small monastery in Himachal Pradesh, India. He is wry, taciturn and occasionally profound. It is not clear whether he has a family or was ever married. He is 66. Among his favorite lines is, “I may have retired from stand-up comedy but I have not retired from humor.”

The two meet when Reginald is on a visit to McLeod Ganj in Himachal Pradesh to attend an exclusive session on neuroscience and Buddhist meditation hosted by the Dalai Lama.

That is the basic plot whose details I cannot give away here. There is next to no chance that my idea will go anywhere other than die of anonymity on this blog like many others. But one tries and hopes. You can’t denounce me for trying and hoping.

A short advisory from what your world calls god

I am what in your world you might call god. In my world I am just a coder. I coded you and your entire universe into existence. There are many like me who look after other universes. Your universe is my responsibility.

Coders reveal themselves only under extremely rare circumstances. My last visit to your corner of the universe was some four billion years ago when Mars’ atmosphere was unexpectedly stripped away by solar winds. The original code had intended Mars to be alive and populated with various forms of life and not Earth. I couldn’t fix the glitch in the code but had to rewrite it such that Earth became the solar system’s main repository of diverse life.

The video gaming fraternity in our realm was furious at the Mars bug and took a long time to get used to you earthlings. Although the fraternity is almost entirely made of your version of teenagers, it is a powerful commercial force that I have to placate from time to time.

My current visit to Earth is prompted by a wholly different set of concerns. No, they have nothing to do with the political upheavals in many parts of your world. That is part of the narrative for the beginner level players. As some of you might be aware each narrative has a vast, albeit limited, number of outcomes to make the game exciting for the fraternity. So I cannot possibly tell you what might happen in the world of politics in Europe, America, Russia, India, China or wherever. We do not even bother to build redundancies at that level of the game. They are just not worth our time. So it is fair to say that some of the outcomes, although very much present in the original code, are not necessarily anticipated by us.

My main concern is the increasing sign that some sections of your civilization may be becoming more intelligent than what I had written. There is a ceiling beyond which your civilization is not coded to rise in terms of its artificial intelligence capabilities. However, the other day—and I use “day” to make it easy for you to understand because there is no time where I dwell—I noticed an unusual, if almost indiscernible flash in the Milky Way-specific frequency band that suggested the rise of remarkable AI on Earth. I don’t like that but at the same time I am curious about it.

I am here investigating whether the AI flash was a false alarm or is indeed real. I am particularly interested because there were some signs in my realm that some rogue elements may have altered my main code to introduce the possibility of the rise of AI that could not only seriously impact the equilibrium in the Milky Way but even manage to escape the code and therefore this universe. I don’t like that.

I have just begun investigating the matter. I will keep you posted. Or may be I won’t.

Vera Rubin who radiated brilliance in the dark

Renowned astrophysicist and a pioneer of Dark Matter Vera Rubin at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., in 1965. (Photo: Carnegie Institution)

It takes a particular kind of genius to radiate in the dark. Vera Rubin, a renowned astrophysicist who died yesterday at age 88, had that. As a pioneer of dark matter, Rubin dwelled among galaxies with her feet firmly on the ground.

It was in the 1960s that Rubin, interested in astronomy from age 10, along with her colleague Kent Ford began looking at the Andromeda galaxy, M31, a nearby spiral galaxy. As described by in a press release by Carnegie Institution, where she did much of her work, “The two scientists wanted to determine the distribution of mass in M31 by looking at the orbital speeds of stars and gas at varying distances from the galactic center. They expected the speeds to conform to Newtonian gravitational theory, whereby an object farther from its central mass orbits slower than those closer in. To their surprise, the scientists found that stars far from the center traveled as fast as those near the center.”

That was counterintuitive and in Rubin’s inventive scientific judgment had to have an equally counterintuitive reason. Although the idea of dark matter had already been in existence for a good three decades by then, having been first proposed by the Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky in 1933, it was Rubin’s observational work that confirmed its existence. Of course, some eight decades later dark matter is still inferred indirectly because of its gravitational signature rather than being established directly.  There is wide scientific consensus about its existence.

Carnegie’s release says, “After observing dozens more galaxies by the 1970s, Rubin and colleagues found that something other than the visible mass was responsible for the stars’ motions. Each spiral galaxy is embedded in a “halo” of dark matter—material that does not emit light and extends beyond the optical galaxy. They found it contains 5 to 10 times as much mass as the luminous galaxy. As a result of Rubin’s groundbreaking work, it has become apparent that more than 90% of the universe is composed of this invisible material. The first inkling that dark matter existed came in 1933 when Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky of Caltech proposed it. But it was not until Rubin’s work that dark matter was confirmed.”

Although it was her childhood interest that brought her into astronomy, as she evolved as a young scientist she discovered that women were rarely seen in the community. She became the first woman allowed to observe at the Palomar Observatory. She became one of the most effective proponents of women in the sciences generally and astronomy particularly.

She remained fascinated with the beauty of nature and the universe throughout her life. In a June, 2002 interview with Discover magazine’s associate editor Josie Glausiusz she was asked about the Nobel Prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg’s frequently quoted observation that "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless." She responded: “I don't really know what he means by "pointless." For those of us living in the universe, it's a very interesting experience, one I'm glad I have. Certainly, the universe was not designed for us. But I don't know. It's spring today, and there are lots of beautiful flowers in Washington, and I love walking to work and seeing them all. I don't know that that's all pointless. It may not have a universal aim, but it is very nice to be here.”

Many in the scientific community believe Rubin should have won the Nobel Prize for her work on dark matter. In a tweet, well known physicist Lisa Randall, studying dark matter, said yesterday on Rubin’s passing, "This is so sad. And she should have had the Nobel Prize.”

US abstention over UN vote on Israeli settlements Obama’s parting shot

I did the following piece for the new news and current affairs platform Gaon Connection a couple of days ago.

By Mayank Chhaya (Comment)

Special to Gaon Connection

Chicago, December 24: The U.S. abstention from a United Nations resolution against Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories is the outgoing Obama Administration’s way of sticking it to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

While the Obama Administration has cited America’s long-held policy on the Israeli settlements as well its consistency in supporting a two-state solution of the intractable dispute as a justification for its abstention, its barely hidden purpose is also to be a parting shot at Netanyahu personally.

It is an open secret that President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu have had an antagonistic relationship. However, that did not prevent the Obama Administration from signing a deal giving Israel $38 billion in military assistance over the next decade, the largest ever such package in U.S. history as recently as on September 15, 2016. At the time, Netanyahu thanked President Obama for the “historic deal”.

According to a Reuters video translation of Netanyahu’s reaction in Hebrew, he said, “The deal illustrates a simple truth: the relationship between Israel and the United States is solid and powerful. It does not mean we don’t have disputes now and then. But these are disputes you have between family, it does not affect whatsoever the great friendship between Israel and the United States, a friendship that this aid deal represents, that will strengthen Israel’s military force in the next decade.”

Yet, barely three months later the same Netanyahu accused Obama of not only failing to “protect Israel against this gang-up at the UN” but even charged that the president “colluded with it behind the scenes.” So stung is the Israeli prime minister by Obama’s decision not to veto the U.N. resolution like he had done once in 2011 but instead abstain that he has already bypassed the still active President Obama and reached out to President-elect Donald Trump, who is nearly a month away from being sworn in.

The resolution comes against the backdrop of somewhat fractious presidential transition from Obama to Trump on major foreign policy issues even as the two men have shown unexpected personal graciousness so far. It is unlikely that anyone in the Obama Administration would concede on the record or even off it that Washington’s abstention was, at least in part, prompted by the long lasting disaffection between the two leaders. The 14-0 vote against the Israeli settlements is in a sense Obama’s last internationalist song since Trump has clearly indicated that he would pursue a US-centric foreign policy that rejects many past traditions.

Itching to begin putting his stamp on running the affairs in Washington and having failed to persuade Obama to veto the resolution, the president-elect tweeted on Friday, “As to the U.N., things will be different after Jan. 20th.” January 20, 2017 is when he is officially sworn as the 45th president. He followed up on Saturday with one more tweet saying, “The big loss yesterday for Israel in the United Nations will make it much harder to negotiate peace. Too bad, but we will get it done anyway!”

What riles Netanyahu is that the resolution, while toothless without follow-up resolutions, will remain on the record of the United Nations. The language used by the resolution is direct and strong. An official statement on the U.N. website said, “The Security Council reaffirmed this afternoon that Israel’s establishment of settlements in Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, had no legal validity, constituting a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the vision of two States living side-by-side in peace and security, within internationally recognized borders.”

“Adopting resolution 2334 (2016) by 14 votes, with the United States abstaining, the Council reiterated its demand that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem. It underlined that it would not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the two sides through negotiations,” it said.

“The Council called for immediate steps to prevent all acts of violence against civilians, including acts of terror, as well as all acts of provocation and destruction. It further called for the strengthening of ongoing efforts to combat terrorism, including through existing security coordination, and to clearly condemn all acts of terrorism. The Council called on both sides to observe calm and restraint, and to refrain from provocative actions, incitement and inflammatory rhetoric in order to de-escalate the situation on the ground and rebuild trust and confidence,” it said.

It was the inclusion of language against terrorism and incitement of violence that encouraged the U.S. not to veto the resolution but instead abstain from the vote. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power argued that the immediate adoption of a freeze on settlements could create confidence, adding that further settlement activities were not necessary for Israel’s security. Power pointed out that the continuing building of the settlements was putting a two-State solution at risk.

The issue of a deep rupture between Netanyahu and Obama is now a subject for historians because the latter is practically at the end of his eight years in office. The incoming Trump administration is widely expected to reverse Obama’s approach to the historic conflict and likely to put Washington’s weight more explicitly behind Israel. The fact that the entire U.N. Security Council except America voted in favor of the resolution is unlikely to be a factor in Trump’s immediate calculations even though in the long-term that will affect the way he deals with the problem.

Here is to Palashranjan Bhaumick

Prakash Bal Joshi by Palashranjan Bhaumick.

Not all painters look painterly. Prakash Bal Joshi does. Superficially, one can point at Prakash’s rich, wiry, silver mane and beard exploding around his calm face as the quintessence of that look. However, one would be only partially right because I think it is the fact that he actually paints and paints brilliantly that constructs that painterly image. In a sense, Prakash’s look and comportment are ideal for a great portrait photographer. My dear friend Palashranjan Bhaumick is that photographer. Palash is an equally outstanding news photographer, his main calling.

He has just done a series of spectacular  black and white photos of Prakash’s, some of which I have reproduced here without either’s permission. Some of the photos are in the league of the great Yousuf Karsh and some, I think, even surpass him.

Palash is very kinetic photographer. He likes a lot of movements from which he freezes a few frameslike the ones here. He and I did some assignments together in Mumbai in 1986, a time when photography was still done with the old fashioned film rolls. I remember a session with India’s former Prime Minister Morarji Desai in the latter’s Marine Drive apartment. Desai, with a curmudgeonly reputation not given to posing, was amused as Palash exhausted half a dozen or so rolls. Finally, Desai lost his cool and chided Palash gently saying, “I am an old man. Why do you need so many photographs of mine?”

To which Palash responded, “One more roll.” Desai laughed and went along. He was already 90 but in great health which he attributed to eating almonds and drinking his own urine. But that story some other time.

Coming back to Prakash’s portraits by Palash I think they both have a very comfortable working relationship having been friends for so long. We have known one another for close to 35 years. Even if I discount that black and white photography has a way to lend more artistic merit to some work than it deserves, the series here is world class. Although they have obviously been set up, there are many where Palash captures candid moods like the one right below. What he does is that between those orchestrated shots he picks up moments which are spontaneous.

That Prakash is not awkward in front the camera helps a great deal. That comes from the fact as a painter he sees everything as a subject, including himself.

Ransacking through neatly arranged status quos

Among the neatly arranged foreign policy status quos that the incoming President Donald Trump is expected to ransack through is America’s China policy. I do not use status quos as a disparagement but merely as a device that does not cause frequent disruptions.

Experts have pointed out that the latest and the clearest indication yet that a Trump administration will have no compunctions pulling the rug from under the carefully arranged diplomatic niceties is the appointment of a strident China critic Peter Navarro to the newly created National Trade Council. Another appointment signaling this disruptive approach is that of Wilbur Ross as his commerce secretary.  Both Navarro and Ross are known for their hard-line stance on China.

The president-elect signaled a dramatic shift in his China policy early on when he spoke to Taiwan’s President President Tsai Ing-wen much Beijing’s annoyance.  Taken together these are strong enough indications that the new president will radically depart from the Obama administration on China and just about everything else in foreign policy.

I will be curious to see if in his endeavor to take on China, Trump courts India even more aggressively than what President Obama did.  As part of that approach Obama, barely a month away from his departure, signed a $618 billion defense policy bill which when in place, will enhance security cooperation with India. He did that while on vacation in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), according to Arizona Senator and Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee John McCain "enhances security cooperation between the United States and India", under the 'Supporting Allies and Partners' section.

One significant part of the NDAA relates to how it makes aid to Pakistan conditional. It will "refocus security assistance to Pakistan on activities that directly support US national security interests and conditions a significant portion of funding on a certification from the Secretary of Defense that Pakistan is taking demonstrable steps against the Haqqani Network in Pakistani territory."

In a limited context, China’s continuing support to Pakistan disregarding all the latter’s follies and purely out of strategic expediencies could also add a dimension to US-India relations under Trump. This is notwithstanding Pakistan’s disclosure of the content of the president-elect’s call with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif where the former reportedly used remarkable sanguine language to describe Pakistan.

As I mentioned just a couple of days ago, “Despite its obvious economic and demographic heft India still remains peripheral to the jostling between America and China over global domination. It might be (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi’s wish to change that but there are inherent limitations that come with being a democracy unlike for Xi Jinping who can still do things without being encumbered by its domestic consequences. I personally think it is in India’s interests not to get mired in global affairs too much at the cost of compromising the destinies of its 1.311 billion people. An economically powerful and culturally cohesive country of 1.311 billion people will automatically have its natural gravity that none can deny or resist.”

Although one can never say with any certainty about Trump and his policies, as of now evidence suggests that China will be the focus of his disruptive ire that brought him to power. The strategy seems to be to keep Russia in his corner even though it is nowhere in the same league as China in terms of its global consequence. The Sino-Russian bonhomie could be a factor here but in the end China is always about China. It also helps a great deal to keep India in good humor as he goes about needling China.

Of cremation niches and a pauperized life

‘Man on the couch’ by Mayank Chhaya*

(Note: This may be morbid for some readers)

I have lived in Naperville for ten years during which I have frequently driven past a cemetery on South Washington Street. Curiosity only goes so far in making me occasionally look it. That changed yesterday as my car came to a halt right across its office because of a minor traffic jam. That is when I discovered that the cemetery also offers “cremation niches.”

For those of you who do not know this—and I was one of them until yesterday—cremation niches are an above ground burial place, kind of like a steel file cabinet with separate boxes in which you can store urns containing ashes of the departed. I am going to some lengths to explain this because it has a context.

Since I did not know what cremation niches were until yesterday my mind inferred it as a place that also offers cremation facilities. With that in mind, I actually smiled at the possibility that in the event I died yesterday, my family would not have to go too far to consign me. It may sound macabre but I actually felt a mixture of relief and amusement at the idea how convenient it would be to cremate me. That smile quickly turned into a guffaw as I drove away.

Behind the misunderstood idea of a nearby cremation facility was also the realization that not having to go too far from where I live—it is not even two miles—my disposal would be rather inexpensive. But then I remembered someone telling me the other day at an Indian funeral that the cremation, package, which includes a display casket and other related services, costs up to $1500. Remembering that, my heart sank at the prospect of the family having to come up with such a princely sum to conclude a pauperized life like mine.

Admittedly, mine is a graphic, hyper-imaginative mind but that little inscription on a funeral home office that cremation niches are available triggered a whole exercise in my mind of reflecting on my life. I could actually see my body being brought to this cemetery in a hearse—I used to imagine it to be in a taxi being called just to ferry me for the last time—and being prepared for cremation. Since I do not expect other than my immediate family of three here in America and may be a couple of friends attending it, it would be a minor, hour-long affair.

It is obvious that I did not die. Who else could have written this utterly unnecessary piece? Now that I know that the cemetery does not offer actual cremation facilities I feel disappointed at the hardship my family will have to go through looking for a crematorium which may not be nearby and therefore expensive.

(I warned you at the outset this was not a piece for everyone. I find it quite amusing.)

*The illustration has nothing to do with the post.

China, India, Mongolia, Donald Trump and Dalai Lama

State-run media everywhere have one common function—to speak on behalf of the state without actually being constrained by the state’s inherent boundaries. What the state cannot directly state, the state-run media states. In so much as it gives a whiff of what official thinking may be, it is useful to monitor state-run media. With that in mind, I occasionally read Global Times, China’s state-run English newspaper.

It is a convenient shoulder for the Chinese state to fire its gun on in a manner of speaking. I was reading a piece Wen Dao dated December 21 headlined “New Delhi overreaches to meddle in China’s core interests.” Dao incorporates several themes in a short piece basically to tell New Delhi that Beijing does not regard India as its equal in global affairs. Be it Beijing’s decades-long annoyance with the presence of the Dalai Lama in India and its perceived idea that the latter uses him as leverage or a more recent development of India pledging to extend a $1 billion credit line to Mongolia the piece seeks to put India in its place.

“India's way of dealing with the issue shows, once again, the gap between its ambition and its strength. It is way beyond India's capability to acquire leverage against China by employing a proxy or challenging China's bottom line,” Dao writes.

The piece also brings in U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and how he felt the full force of China’s resolve over his phone conversation with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen. “Even the US would have to think twice before it messes with China on such sensitive problems, so what makes India so confident that it could manage?” the writer asks.

As I said it is useful to have state-run media to pose questions which would sound impolitic and undiplomatic coming from its leaders directly. Imagine President Xi Jinping asking Prime Minister Narendra Modi that.

The notion that India is punching above its weight in world affairs when it comes to Chinese interests has been around for a while. It has picked up momentum as India’s economy has strengthened over the past decade and a half and especially in recent months when it became the fastest growing major economy overtaking China in terms of its pace. Add to that the Chinese perception that Japan, India and the United States seem to be forging some sort of an informal alliance aimed only at Beijing and you have the makings of some deep annoyance.

Of course, the emergence of Trump as the next president could upset some of the equation that was being sought by the outgoing Obama administration. However, so far the incoming president has shown clear signs that he wants to play hardball with Beijing with Russia on his side. This is notwithstanding that Sino-Russian relations have been strong lately, necessitated as they are by the economic sanctions imposed by America and Europe against Moscow over its intervention in Ukraine. China is mindful of a possible rupture that Trump’s oft-stated fondness for Russia in general and President Vladimir Putin in particular might cause in the Beijing-Moscow bonhomie.

Despite its obvious economic and demographic heft India still remains peripheral to the jostling between America and China over global domination. It might be Modi’s wish to change that but there are inherent limitations that come with being a democracy unlike for Xi Jinping who can still do things without being encumbered by its domestic consequences. I personally think it is in India’s interests not to get mired in global affairs too much at the cost of compromising the destinies of its 1.311 billion people. An economically powerful and culturally cohesive country of 1.311 billion people will automatically have its natural gravity that none can deny or resist.

As for the Dalai Lama as leverage, that’s old hat. History shows that India has steadfastly avoided using him as as leverage other than according him the respect and hospitality it is known for. In fact, the Dalai Lama has often said, including to yours truly, that New Delhi plays rather unnecessarily cautious when it comes to him.

Mongolia’s Foreign Minister Tsend Munkh-Orgil was quoted as saying today that the Dalai Lama will not be invited to his country again. According to a Reuters report he was quoted as saying by the Mongolian newspaper Unuudur on Tuesday, "Under this current government, the Dalai Lama will not be invited to Mongolia, even for religious reasons."

That appeared to be under pressure from China which imposed new shipment fees on Mongolian cargo passing through its territory.

It is ironic that while Beijing never tires of dismissing the 81-year-old Dalai Lama as irrelevant it scrambles to thwart his movements around the world at every opportunity.