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“I met Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravishankar who has just returned from the war-zone in the Vanni. He gave me CDs and photographs of the atrocities. My heart boils when I looked at it,” the AIADMK leader said. If this pathetic situation of the Tamil people has to be removed, if the problems of the Lankan Tamils has to come to an end, an independent Eelam is the only solution, she added

“When Ravishankar met President (Mahinda Rajapaksa) after visiting the IDP camps he said it was one of the best camps he has ever seen in the world,” the powerful official, who is the brother of the President, said.

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While handing over Afghanistan to Taliban looked like a bad idea after 9/11, we are now back to early 90s thought process again. The American plan calls for negotiating with “moderate” Taliban, through a combination of “political accommodation, financial rewards and astute exploitation of inter-tribal rivalries.” Thus the same entities against which a war was fought and is still being fought, by a simple switch, are going to be rewarded with power.

In Mudrarakshasa, Vishakhadutta’s 4th century novel about the battle of wits between Chanakya and the deposed minister Amatya Rakshasa, a question arises about reinstating people who were thrown out.

In Act III, there is a heated conversation between Chakakya and Chandragupta Maurya on why certain people switched allegiance to the enemy camp. Among them there are, Bhadrabahata, the superintendent of elephants and Purushadatta, the superintendent of horse. Chanakya explains that these two superintendents were given over to women, drinking and hunting. They neglected their duties and hence were removed from their posts.

Chanakya explains that two kinds of action can be taken against subjects who have grievances; they can be rewarded or they can be punished. In the case of Bhadrabahata or Purushadatta rewarding them would mean giving them their jobs back. To reinstate people who have been dismissed for incompetence, Chanakya explains, would be to strike at the very foundation of government.

The question in Mudrarakshasa is domestic politics while it is international terrorism in Afghanistan and the Taliban were removed from power, not exactly for incompetence. One point is moot though: you do not forget why they were dismissed in the first place; you do not give them an opportunity to commit the same crimes again.

Turning friend into foe, foe into friend
on grounds of practical advantages
Politics takes a man while he still lives
Into another birth where earlier memories are lost

Bhagurayana’s lament is true about geo-politics as well. There is no excuse, if a decade later, we look back at 2009 and repent like the 2007 Benazir.

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In 1999, Nawaz Sharif cut a sorry figure. He was like the resident of Tokyo trapped in front of Godzilla, but indecisive. Prince Bandar bin Sultan who picked Sharif at Washington airport told the Americans that Sharif was in mental pain about the crisis and scared about the reaction from the Pakistani Army, especially Musharraf.

There could be one explanation that this was an isolated incident. But in fact, always fearful and manipulated by Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz and Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmad, Sharif was like like Rajesh Kuthrapalli on The Big Bang Theory. In 1998, Strobe Talbott, Bruce Riedel, Tom Simmons and Gen. Anthony Zinni met Nawaz Sharif to dissuade him from conducting a tit-for-tat nuclear test and Sharif, “seemed nearly paralysed with exhaustion, anguish and fear.”^[1]

While many join Toastmasters to boost their confidence, conquer their fears and express ideas, nothing can match the fear of death and an exile in Saudi Arabia. On the day Yousaf Raza Gillani was sworn in as the Prime Minister, two American diplomats visited Pakistan and they saw Nawaz Sharif in a completely new avatar.

The leader of the second biggest party in the new Parliament, Nawaz Sharif, said after meeting the two American diplomats that it was unacceptable that Pakistan had become a “killing field.”“If America wants tosee itself clean of terrorists, we also want that our villages and towns should not be bombed,” he said at a news conference here. Mr. Sharif, a former prime minister, added he was unable to give Mr. Negroponte “a commitment” on fighting terrorism. The statements by Mr. Sharif, and the cool body language in the televised portions of his encounter with Mr. Negroponte, were just part of the sea change in Pakistan’s domestic politics that is likely to impose new limits on how Washington fights militants within Pakistan’s borders. [

The 16th century Malayalam poet Poonthanam wrote in Jnanappana, a treasury of transcendental knowledge, “In a day or two, it is He, who makes them ride on the royal chair.” Poonthanam was writing, of course, about the lilas of Guruvayoorappan, but impermanence as elucidated by ancient bhakti poets seem to predict the affairs in our neighboring country quite accurately.

Poonthanam also wrote, “People who is seen by all; you are the one who makes them disappear. On the shoulder of the king; you are He, who places a tattered heap.” If only President Musharraf could read Malayalam.

1. Strobe Talbott, Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy, And the Bomb: Revised Edition, (Brookings Institution Press, 2006).

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“In our country also we have problems of separatism. Those who want the chorus of independent Tibet will be doing a disservice to India,” the CPI chief said reminding that we also had secessionist demands in Nagaland, Jammu and Kashmir and other places.[CPI goes hammer & sickle on Tibet]

B. Raman replies (well actually to Aamir Khan)

9. You and others, who have written on this subject, are correct in their references to Kashmir, our North-East, the grievances and anger of our Khalistanis and Muslims etc. We too have been having problems with our religious and ethnic minorities just as the Chinese are having problems with their minorities in Tibet, Sichuan, Gansu, Qinghai, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. No country in the world has been free of such problems.

10.The question to be asked is not whether we have the same problems as the Chinese, but what has been our approach to these probelms. Do we deal with these problems in the same way as the Chinese do or do we follow a different approach?

17. The leaders of Kashmiri and other separatist organisations freely interact with our media. They are interviewed by our print and electronic media and invited to participate in our TV talk shows. You recently attended the World Leadership Summit of “India Today”. I read in the media that one of those, who was invited to address the summit, was Yasin Malik, the leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front. Can you mention a single instance since 1949 when Beijing has allowed a single dissident leader to similarly interact with the media and foreign diplomats? Have you ever seen a single interview of His Holiness in the Chinese media? Have you ever seen a single statement of his ever published in the Chinese media?

Read the entire post. Now that the moral equivalence between India and Pakistan has vanished, it is time to establish the hyphenation between India and China and treat a democracy and dictatorship the same way in term of human rights violations. Communists have been parroting those lines and now Aamir Khan has joined in. If someone stands up for India, call him a nationalist (add the word pseudo for more effect). Rinse and Repeat.

See Also: ‘Citizen’ Khan’?.Bravo Bhaichung, Whoring Aamir Khan Style

Technorati Tags: Tibet, China,

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In San Francisco, the only North American city hosting the torch, officials shortened the April 9 route through the city and have abbreviated the ceremonies. Mayor Gavin Newsom has said no one will be prevented from expressing his views, but permits are required to gather near the torch.[Drama as torch arrival set for Tiananmen, though protests not expected]

The Chinese Ambassador to United States did not summon Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco to his office at 2 A.M. Instead the ambassador made his way to the Mayor’s office in San Francisco to discuss the Olympic torch relay through the city.

Contrast it with this:

A sign of the nature of a relationship between countries is the manner in which they officially communicate displeasure. So when the Chinese government calls in the Indian ambassador at 2am, to hand her details of plans by Tibetan protesters to disrupt the movement of the Olympic torch in India, you know what the Chinese think about the nature of bilateral relationship. China might have reason to be angry. That it chose to be demonstrate unfriendliness reveals that it believes the proper way to handle India is through overreaction and bullying[Doing it at ungodly hours]

The editor of the People’s Daily of Chennai must be upset that Mayor Newsom was not summoned.

Technorati Tags: Gavin Newsom, Olympics, San Francisco, India

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“There was no such thing as crackdown. It is the duty of the government to protect its citizens. These measures are totally in line with the law and truly supported by the people at the grass roots,” he read from a prepared statement at a press meet.

Another Lhasa resident, who also refused to be identified, said the Drepung monastery was encircled by “three layers” of army personnel while the Sera monastery had been surrounded by more than 2,000 police.

The resident said more than 10 trucks filled with soldiers, nearly a dozen police cars and also ambulances were seen heading to the area.

See Also: Episode 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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It will take a lot of will and hard thinking from the Pakistani people to stop this and not allow their nation to become the next battle ground between terrorism and the US. And neither can India now stand by and watch.

…. It is time for India to go out and actively extend our help to the people of Pakistan to move to a more stable democracy. It is time to forget the past and help Pakistan develop economically. [Bush expands his 'war on terror' to inlude all of Pakistan]

A similar surge in sympathy towards Pakistan was seen when Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. While the news was tragic, some Indians were commenting that Benazir was India’s best hope and Karan Thapar wrote a warm and personal article in which she manifested as Saint Bhutto. According to Mr. Thapar she was a warm, understanding and caring person, which might be true, but  secondary if you care about India’s national interests.

She was also the prime minister who gave the ISI the go-ahead to wage jihad on India. She was the one who exhorted the Pakistan trained and financed terrorists to ‘jag-jag mo-mo han-han’ Jagmohan the then governor of Jammu and Kashmir with an explicit chopping motion of the right hand across the open left palm. She was the one who shrieked ‘Azadi-azadi’ from across the LOC and extended Zia-ul-Haq’s doctrine of death by a thousand cuts to Kashmir[Remembering the truth about Benazir]

Zulfikar Bhutto proudly announced, “Pakistanis would eat grass”, referring to their nuclear program.  Pakistan is facing a shortage of wheat, sugar and cooking oil and the ongoing energy shortages and hoarding of wheat have worsened the wheat flour crisis.  Still the American money contributed for the war on terror has been used for developing weapon systems to counter India. Even if Benazir, who Henry Kissinger thought was more intimidating than Zulfikar is dead, the anti-India stand espoused by her is alive under the baleful influence of  Musharraf, ISI and the Pakistani Army.

Also, we have bitten many times before. On February 20, 1999 around 4:10 PM, Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee crossed to Pakistan in the Delhi-Lahore bus and he was  greeted by the Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. They pledged to “open the gates of friendship and demolish the wall of hatred.” Few months later,  in May 1999, the the elite Special Services Group as well as four to seven battalions of Pakistan Army backed by Kashmiri guerrillas and Afghan mercenaries covertly occupied vantage points in Kargil inside India. Finally Indian Army with Israeli and American support regained the territory. Who is going to guarantee that such state sponsored tourism won’t happen again?

Unless there is an attitude change across the border (which will happen when David Dhawan starts making Pather Panchali type movies), any talk about forgetting the pasting is a stultifying discussion.

Technorati Tags: shekhar kapur, karan thapar, pakistan, terrorism, benazir bhutto

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Looks like investigators from Kollam and Godhra are now in Pakistan. According to some theories Benazir died because she had struck her head on a metal lever on the sun-roof of her armoured Toyota Land Cruiser, resulting in a fatal skull fracture. Another theory is that she was killed by a laser gun. If the plan is to come up with an outrageous theory, they should go with the indigestion one.

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