DEATH OF HANUMANTHAPPA IS TRAGEDY AND THE OTHER NINE ARE MERE STATISTICS

Arnab Goswami is not a journalist. He is a part of a dangerous propaganda machinery that creates binaries, "double binds" to induce schizophrenia in society.

On the JNU issue he created the Hanumanthappa-Afzal Guru binary, where the channel asked “If Afzal guru is a martyr then who is Hanumanthappa”.

On 3 February 10 Indian Army Soldiers at a post (20,000 feet high) on the Siachen glacier were reported missing after an avalanche buried their post. The army launched rescue operations but for some reason the Northern Army Command declared all ten to be dead after 24 hrs of search. And on the same day, 4 February 2016, Prime Minister Modi offered his condolences through a tweet. All this while the army’s operation to dig out the bodies of the dead soldiers was on.  

Five days later on 9 February 2016, the media reported that one soldier, Lance Naik Hanumanthappa was found to be miraculously alive after being buried under 25 feet of snow for six days. The news of his rescue and survival went viral. Some sections of the media credited his regular practice of Yoga as the reasons for his survival. The nation was urged to pray for Hanumanthappa’s health. He was brought to Army’s Research and Referral hospital at Delhi.

On 9 February 2016 (same date on which anti-India slogans are raised in JNU), the Prime Minister visited Hanumanthappa in the Army hospital in Delhi. There are videos that show the PM standing next to the dying patient in the intensive care unit. Inside the ICU, PM was without a mask and is chatting with doctors and the Army chief.

Hanumanthappa suddenly becomes the symbol of extreme sacrifice and grit. Arnab Goswami and others anchors yell at JNU students calling them anti-national for raising pro-Pakistan slogans, especially when Hanumanthappa was fighting for his life.

On 11 February Hanumanthappa is declared dead. Incidentally, on the same day there is another protest rally in JNU where JNSU President Kanahiya Kumar raises slogans for freedom from capitalism, poverty, casteism and exploitation. This video is then doctored; the slogan of ‘azadi-azadi’ from his earlier speech is juxtaposed against the backdrop of anti-national slogans.

Hanumanthappa’s funeral is televised live. Nobody bothers about the names of the other 09 soldiers killed by the avalanche. No TV channel tracks their grieving families. These 09 unknown soldiers simply fade away (as have others since independence) because the propaganda machinery had no use of them. Death of Hanumanthappa is converted into a tragedy while the other nine are mere statistics.  

The selective use and appropriation of Lance Naik Hanumanthappa and complete obliteration of the other 09 Soldiers from public memory only goes to show how one body-bag was used for political propaganda aimed at polarizing society. 

"REASON IS TREASON" IN RSS RAJ

India has a RSS problem. Its stand against the cult of violence is ambiguous. This Janus-faced, cultural-politico outfit is the wounded-remnant of the British divide-and-rule policy that juxtaposed nationalism with religion. Its primary interest is to preserve the wealth of the few upper caste Indians.  In order to sustain the inequalities in society and preserve class and caste privileges of the rich it uses the religious card. It is for this reason that RSS hates Dalits who challenge caste hierarchies. Its agenda is to convince Hindus to believe - cow is bigger than country - India is Hindutva and Hindutva is India. 

Emboldened by BJP’s massive victory in 2014 Lok Sabha polls, RSS launched a ‘cultural war’ in the country. The Sangh parivaar ideologues have used the term ‘war’ to describe the current atmosphere of intolerance in the country for two reasons. One, war conjures up feelings of patriotism and makes it simpler to insist, “once at war, reason is treason.”  Secondly, makes it simpler to dub doubters and dissenters as enemies and thus violence against them is justified. The idea is to instil fear in the minds of ordinary citizens, make them feel obliged to Hindu Gods for their existence in India. 

A systematic propaganda machinery operates 24X7 to vilify the ‘lifestyles’ of Sangh’s main enemies - minorities and Liberals. Labelled unpatriotic, public opinion is turned against them with tales of their irreverence to the cow or for their identity that embraces humanism and dignity for each life. The vicious vilification campaign against the voice of reason does not even spare prestigious national educational institutions.

Indian Navy’s New Strategy Fails to Track the Oceanic Decline

In less than a decade, the Indian Navy has revised its strategic outlook. The latest vision statement, Ensuring Secure Seas: Indian Maritime Security Strategy was released on October 26, 2015. Besides internal communication there are two reasons that the capital-intensive navy has to periodically justify its role and mission. First, to address the controllers of the national purse strings and secondly to cater to the changing international security environment. The budgetary authorities find the history of European navies that brought colonialism to Asian shores an inadequate justification for a strong Navy. Therefore, the latest document attempts to educate the defense bureaucracy that the Indian Navy needs multi-billion dollar investments in modern naval platforms because it is all set to assume its pan-oceanic role and is no longer confined to performing coastal and constabulary functions.

The second palpable reason for publication of the strategy is geo-political changes since the publication of Freedom to Use the Seas: India’s Maritime Strategy in 2007. The growing Chinese challenge to American hegemony in Asia; the repositioning of US naval assets to Asia-Pacific; Japan’s metamorphosis from a pacifist to a ‘normal’ aggressive power and India’s ambition to pop out of the strategic closet, to make security of oceanic trade lanes the dominant discourse.

The strength of the strategic document is the clarity with which it articulates the Indian Navy’s need to grow in tune with the government’s ‘Act East’ policy and the desire to play a larger role in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and beyond. It balances Navy’s obligations in coastal waters with its customary zeal to perform ‘out of area’ while remaining rooted to ‘principles of self-defense and the tenets of Panchsheel’.

Navies and trade are Siamese twins. The US Office of Naval Intelligence reiterated this reality in its 1922 document - The US Navy as an Industrial Asset that articulated the Navy’s role in protecting and furthering overseas investments for US business leaders. The ‘way points’ – the guiding principles in the latest strategic outline refer to navy-business association in terms of ‘Navy for National Development’. However, it explicitly states that its primary role is to play a decisive role in ‘preventing war and conflict’ and ‘bringing it to conclusion’. The document does not shy away from acknowledging the centrality of ‘sea control’ during conflict as a prerequisite for most naval operations’. The earlier documents refrained from talking about this aspect primarily because establishing ‘hostile zones’ and being a net security provider is a difficult proposition.

The document makes nuanced distinction between coastal security and coastal defense. Coast Guard is one of the main stakeholder in coastal security however, defending the coast against external aggression and invasion falls within the naval purview. This is important because a stream of post-Cold war invasions by the US Navy in the Middle East have shown that small and medium navies are incapable of offering resistance against assault by big navies. The total paralysis of Iraqi and Libyan navies in the wake of the US invasion informs that coastal defense strategy should be the lynchpin of any naval strategy rooted in defending the nation. Traditional ways are grossly inadequate. Medium navies must focus on devising innovative technologies to tackle invasions.

The recent Indian Maritime Security Strategy doesn’t skirt the issue of new technologies and grants it adequate space. However, there is much more ground that needs to be covered. Take for example, LOCUST- Low-Cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Swarming Technology program, the latest technology that the US navy is on the verge of perfecting. LOCUST systems are designed to launch a number of networked autonomous, surface, subsurface and aerial drone’s in offensive mode. A simpler analogy is to visualize the coordinated attack by ‘Tidi Dal’ on cotton crops in India. The US started research on these technologies about fifteen years ago and is now experimenting with 3-D printers to build these swarm drones on board ships. By now these concepts should be a part Indian Navy’s strategic lexicon.

The strategy-blue print sends important signals to two important maritime stakeholders. Emphasis on future naval warfare informs design and technical institutes in the country to imagine the possibilities of using civilian technologies like 3-D printers for naval use. It also forewarns naval architects to be prepared to face the challenges of integrating newer technologies with old platforms that are likely to be in operation till at least 2035.

Like most strategic discourses, Indian Maritime Security Strategy adheres to the concept of ‘fixity’ that hinges on rigidity and repetition. One disagrees with the basic premise of the document that ‘the 21st century will be the century of the seas for India and that the seas will remain a key enabler in her global resurgence’. Both technology and shifting power balance in the global political economy is challenging the Western ‘Command of the Commons’. Cyber technologies, and changes in oil economy are denting the importance of Sea Lanes of Communication. However, the biggest threat that sea power faces today is from the Chinese ‘Belt and Road’ initiative that envisages providing alternative routes for international trade. The Eurasian rail and road links, extending from China to Europe through central Asia and Russia are designed to attract a huge amount of international trade away from the Oceans. In a few years’ time it may become factually incorrect to say that 90 per cent of the global trade flows through the Oceans. Once Oceans are not the first choice for international trade, the relevance of the Western navies will be challenged. This could be the biggest blow to Western hegemony that has sustained itself for past centuries by commanding the service sector – the insurance and re-insurance regimes- on the global commons. This aspect needs to be included in all our strategies because our alliances and force levels will be largely determined by changes in the global political economy.

Kejriwal, visit Cuba: Learn Urban Farming to Reduce Delhi’s Pollution

In 1946, India was hit by acute food shortages. ‘Grow More’ campaign was launched by the British government. Army released a lot of its machinery for digging wells, leveling ground etc. Viceroy’s private secretary, G.E.B. Abbey, wrote to Mahatma Gandhi to inform him that ‘in Delhi a considerable part of the central vista’ was to be ploughed up and the gardens of bungalows were to be used for growing vegetables on a large scale. 

Gandhi’s, 21 February 1946, letter to the Viceroy further suggested that that small and medium sized vessels of the Royal Indian Navy, which were on patrol or guard duty during the war, be converted for the purpose of fishing to provide an additional source of food. Gandhi also suggested that a law be passed to convert all public gardens into fields growing vegetables.

After the demise of Soviet Union when Cuba was faced with acute food shortages it turned to urban farming to collectively meet its growing food needs. Today in Cuba more than 35,000 acres of urban gardens produced 3.4 million tons of food. In Havana, 90% of the city's fresh produce came from local urban farms and gardens, all organic. More than 200,000 Cubans worked in the expanding urban agriculture sector.

We need to trigger our minds and think as to why we grow only grass in most of the urban towns and cities. Why don’t we grow the much needed organic vegetables and wheat on India gate lawns? Actually during the industrial revolution there was strong economic logic in switching land use. Growing grass curtailed agricultural activity and ensured the movement of labour from farms to factories. But fields could not be completely abandoned because there was a lurking fear that industry may fail and economy may have to revert to agriculture. Thus lush-green lawns became a part of a hedging strategy that eventually created the rural-urban binary. Today, we are culturally conditioned to think of green grass lawns as beautiful and the thought of interspersed crops and concrete as ugly as well as unacceptable.

The radical solutions offered in 1946, to ‘grow more’ are more valid in twenty first century Delhi or any metropolitan town that is struggling with ‘pollute less’ strategies. The idea of converting gardens into farms is as relevant as it was seven decades ago. Today, urban households are not just subjected to soaring food prices but also to vegetables that stale and chemically treated. The lack of organic farming coupled with unhygienic transportation is an urban nightmare. The trucks carrying vegetables add enormously to polluting the city. Total green area under Delhi Development Authority (DDA) is in the range of 5000 hectares (12,350 acre). In Lutyens Bungalow zone (LBZ) 5,600 acres of land grows only grass. To maintain manicured grass in LBZ gardens the government spends Rs.70, 000/acre, every month. If only total grasslands of Delhi could be used to grow organic vegetables, it could meet Delhi’s vegetable needs locally. Not only will it help Delhi have fresh, organic vegetables it will also reduce the number of trucks that bring vegetable to Delhi from other states, reducing the pollution levels considerably.

WHEN US MILITARY AIRCRAFT SMUGGLED GOLD INTO INDIA

In 1950s, India, a gold guzzler had banned import of gold. In sharp contrast, the bullion markets in Hong Kong and Macau were free of government controls, incentivising the Chinese syndicates to smuggle gold into India where the price of yellow metal was highest in Asia. Normally, gold entered India hidden in boats and the bulkheads of ships and was smuggled in through the dock gates by the ship’s crew concealing gold ingots in their bodily cavities. 

In June 1954, Custom House, Calcutta (now Kolkata) confiscated 560 bars of gold worth £61,000 from Eastern Queen, a vessel owned by the Hong Kong based Indo-China Steam Navigation Company. Almost six months later, on 29 December 1954, at about 8.30 a.m. near the crossroad of Canning Street and Clive Street in Calcutta, the customs team intercepted the courier, a ‘respectable’ person hired by the smugglers. This was an intriguing catch, because “an entirely different racket unconnected with the Chinese traffic” emerged after the case unravelled. The new players neither belonged to the Hong Kong-Macau network, nor were they using the sea route to smuggle in the yellow metal. 

The carrier was W.B. Zadkar, a 37 year-old, ground engineer of the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), Calcutta, where he had been working since the mid-1940s. Prior to joining BOAC, he was in the Indian Air Force. 

Zadkar was apprehended when he was about to reach his destination at 164, Cotton Street, Calcutta, the house of the president of Bullion Merchants Association of India, to deliver two tin boxes that had landed on Christmas night in a KLM flight.

One box contained 10 bars weighing approximately 50 tolas (583.20 grams) each, and the other had 42 bars of smaller size, each weighing approximately 10 tolas (116.63 grams). The custom official reported that rough illustrations on the small bars read: “NM Rothscheld (Rothschild) & Sons RMR” and “10 tolas 999.0”. 

Zadkar was initiated into the gold smuggling racket by an unknown person who used to call up at his office phone using different names. The mysterious man, who looked like an “Arab or a Westerner but not a Chinese” had first met Zadkar at Grant Hotel, Calcutta. Five months prior to being apprehended, Zadkar had got a cable from London that stated “Shipped two carpets on Thai”, which meant that two boxes of gold had been dispatched on their plane. 

During his five-month-old association with the smuggling gang, Zadkar handled gold worth £31,000. For three-and-a-half months Zadkar’s job was confined to take over the stuff from the plane parked at the tarmac and deliver it to people waiting outside the gate in a car. Later, he was asked to deliver the stuff directly to various locations in Calcutta. 

The most intriguing revelation in Zadkar’s testimony was that on at least six occasions he had picked up gold from the “chokes” in the USA Air Force planes, MATS Skymaster”. India had an agreement with the US government that permitted Military Air Transport Services (MATS) planes night halt facilities at New Delhi and Calcutta airports. The customs’ report corroborated that in the period between the months of August and December, 1954, nine US Air Force Douglas C-54 Skymaster planes and two Thai Airways aircraft night stopped at Dum Dum airport. These planes were prohibited from carrying arms, ammunition and military personnel in uniform; however, they often violated these guidelines.

Zadkar’s revelation about the involvement of US military aircraft in the smuggling net led the customs collector, Calcutta to seek Ministry of External Affairs’ (MEA) permission to rummage the US army aircraft. The MEA was reluctant to give a blanket clearance to search military aircraft because such flights could be searched only on confirmed suspicion that they were carrying arms, ammunitions and other military hardware. This particular incident triggered an inter-departmental debate within the government at New Delhi. The customs department argued that the immunity accorded to military aircraft was invalid if it indulged in smuggling of contraband goods, because such acts violated the customs regulations. Customs department wanted explicit permission to rummage foreign military planes, without having to wait for permissions from New Delhi. 

Finally, on 1 February 1955, the Ministry of Finance (Revenue Division) passed an order stating that “if the customs authorities have a definite suspicion that any article (including those other than arms) are being smuggled into or from India in military aircraft, they will be perfectly within their right to search such aircraft and their personnel.” Incidentally, with effect from the first of July 1955, the Indian government levied handling and housing charges on all US military aircraft using civil airports in India. 

This article is based on a secret Ministry of external affair file of 1955 at the National Archives of India, New Delhi

Of Strategic Suckers...

This Review essay is published in Economic and Political Weekly

http://www.epw.in/book-reviews/cuckoo-strategy-china.html

In a vintage warship, the crow’s nest is the topmost spot on the ship’s mast from where a “lookout” scans the seas for incoming danger. In a modern warship this vantage point has been replaced by the radar. However, for students of strategy, the story of the cuckoo surreptitiously laying eggs in the crows’ nest continues to be relevant. The wise crow is lured out of his nest into a chase when provoked by the continuously jarring sounds produced by the male cuckoo. While the crow is busy in hot pursuit, the female cuckoo quietly moves into the crow’s nest, throws out some of the crow’s eggs, thereby making place to lay her eggs. Unknowingly, the crow warms all the eggs and nurtures the babies when the eggs hatch.

The crow is a perfect example of a strategic sucker. In the secular world too, there are nations who are suckered to provide their military manpower to fight someone else’s war. The first question to ask vis-à-vis China is whether the 1962 conflict was India’s own war? The lack of dispassionate analysis of the period has led Indian strategic thought to shy away from identifying and naming the cuckoo that clandestinely came and laid its egg in the Indian nest.

Foreign Strategy of India

According to K M Panikkar, America and Apa Pant were the twin factors responsible for a sudden deterioration in Sino-Indian relations in the mid-1950s (Gupta 1982: 14). A powerful American lobby having deep links with all political parties in India, barring the Communist Party of India, pushed the Indian establishment on an escalatory path vis-à-vis China that eventually resulted in a border war. Apa Pant, India’s political officer in Sikkim (1955-61), was instrumental in building a Tibet lobby within India. He convinced many “senior Indian political leaders like Jai Prakash Narain, G B Pant and the ex-president Rajendra Prasad to take up the Tibetan cause as their own” (Gupta 1982: 15). Purshottam Das Trikamdas, an old associate of Apa Pant, inspired the international commission of jurists to publish two reports on Tibet in 1959 and 1960 with an aim to establish that Tibet enjoyed de facto sovereignty between 1912 and 1951.

In 1959, India entered the game of brinkmanship vis-à-vis China and kept climbing up the escalation ladder. India was gullible enough to follow western instructions both on Tibet and its boundary with China and ended up fighting a frivolous war. By allowing asylum to Dalai Lama, India acted like a foolish crow that hatched American strategic eggs. The United States (US) actions in Tibet provoked the Sino-Indian war that fulfilled the American goal of preventing any possibility of Soviet Union, China and India forming a progressive joint front against western imperialism. The 1962 war was used to widen the wedge in the communist bloc and inch closer towards making Mao Zedong, a “Chinese Tito”, who could speak openly against the Soviets (Xiang 1992: 319). The conflict shook Jawaharlal Nehru’s belief in non-alignment, teaching him an unforgettable lesson on the relevance of empires in the postcolonial world.

Some argue that recent scientific studies have revealed that not all varieties of cuckoos are cunning. In some cases, the pungent juices secreted by the newlyhatched baby cuckoos protect the nest from being attacked by predators, thereby ensuring that the left-behind baby crows are also nurtured in a protected environment. According to this logic, America was not a cunning cuckoo since the war proved beneficial for some in India too. The US, by instigating India to take on China, helped the capitalist-driven Indian state to stem the growth of the left movement in India. The venom spewed against the communists during and in the wake of the 1962 war was enough to cause a three-way divide in the Communist Party of India and push the leftist forces on the defensive for times to come.

Imperial Intrigues in Tibet and the invalidity of 1914 Simla Conference

ONE hundred years ago, in July 1914, a tripartite convention, involving Great Britain, China and Tibet, culminated in Simla (now Shimla). The conference, which began on October 13, 1913, was held at Wheatfield, a property of the Maharaja of Darbhanga. Apart from the large conference chamber, separate meeting and retiring rooms were provided for the respective plenipotentiaries and their staff. The refreshment room on the third floor catered to the needs of the delegates. The Tibetan delegation was lodged at a place called Mythe. The Chinese party was put up at Okover. The residence of Sir Henry McMahon, the British plenipotentiary, was called Konckdrin.

Despite elaborate plans and preparations, the six-month-long conference was a failure. However, it produced a secret bilateral accord between Tibet and Great Britain, which was signed in Delhi, away from the conference venue. The dubious agreement was disavowed by all the three parties to the convention.

This is an article published in Frontline Magazine

http://www.frontline.in/world-affairs/british-wiles-in-tibet/article6412659.ece