Re: NATIONAL INTEREST COLUMN

[Rakhal DAVE]

Hi Shekhar,

I like all your articles but this one was so close to
my thinking that I wanted to specifically congratulate you for it.
I will forward it to our local group of Indians in Zurich.
(most of us are socially liberal fiscally conservative)
Warm regards -Rakhal

Regards -Rakhal

On Sat, 5 Mar 2016, Shekhar Gupta - Mediascape wrote:

>
> Headline: Student of the year
>
>
>
> Strapline: One question for Kanhaiya Kumar, but a bigger, more vital one for the honourable judge
>
>
>
>
>
> Since this is the season of showering avuncular advice on "bachchas" whether "bhatke huye" (gone astray, our HRD minister's usage in Parliament) or not,
> there is no reason I should deny myself the pleasure. If anything I'm qualified to do so from a higher pedestal of age, and I won't complain if somebody
> calls me an uncle in a newspaper headline for it. So here I am, lecturing Kanhaiya Kumar. All your other Azaadi stuff is fine, young fellow, but why from
> "poonjivad" (Capitalism)? What is your problem, bhatke huye bachche? It is capitalism that will make more of us equal and generate taxes to build a dozen
> public universities like JNU.
>
> Having been done with this, I will move on to joining issue with some of the others proffering advice to our chosenstudent of the year. But I have a
> problem arguing with three most eminent counsellors.
>
> Mr Bhim Sain Bassi, our most articulate and imaginative sleuth since Vividh Bharati's Inspector Eagle, has scared the hell out of me by enunciating a
> Stalinist view of jurisprudence: guilty until proven innocent. And frankly, much as I feel for the "bachchas" locked up by him, beaten by lawyers under
> his watch and thus subjected to instant, T-20 style re-education, as a journalist I also have to be grateful to him for the headlines and prime time
> theatre he created and the laughs he gave us in these depressing times of broken politics. I mean, show me another police chief of the capital of a
> nuclear-weapons power mistaking a parody for the Twitter handle of a global terrorist (and India's most wanted man, with a $10-million bounty), warning
> the entire country's police about his "threat" and even walking his trusting home minister into it. What followed, is the good old
> Heartland-style khisiyani billi khamba noche (an embarrassed cat scratches the pole in anger). Take one look, Bollywood. This isn't the son, but
> grandmother of Wag the Dog and JNU - with condoms, bones and female majority, is more interesting and even more communist than Albania. I am, therefore,
> not fighting with Mr Bassi.
>
> These are my reasons for not fighting with Mr Bassi. The problem with the second one, the formidable HRD minister, is a simpler one. I simply do not have
> the articulation, vocabulary or the intellect to match hers. So a walkover is called for.
>
> That leaves me just one. And the problem in this case is, how to argue with an honourable judge. But since judges always say their shoulders should be
> broad enough to tolerate some sincerely journalistic indiscretion, I am seeking their indulgence. I am emboldened also by venerable old lawyer and
> constitutionalist Fali Nariman making the same point to me in a Walk the Talk recording this morning: it is good that the judge advised the student to
> not indulge in such activities. But why drag in our soldiers on the borders and say they protect our freedoms? Of course, our gallant soldiers do a great
> job, but our Constitution protects our freedoms with our institutions, judiciary, Parliament. It would be more convenient for me to simply fire this from
> his formidable shoulder - but let me dare to widen his argument.
>
> Of course, the judge took a wonderfully liberal decision to use just a shot of antibiotic instead of the scalpel on Mr Kumar. She has also been fair
> enough to say that the investigation is at a nascent stage and therefore no finding on guilt can be made out. But you'd be foxed by the line that says
> time in jail would have given Mr Kumar time to introspect? Over what, if he has done nothing wrong? Again, I won't dare to claim yet he is innocent. But
> only as much as he is not guilty yet. Why should he be denied his liberty to introspect as a mere suspect? Are we running thought prisons? Our own
> Gulags, I humbly ask? Most certainly not. We do not send mere suspects to jail, get them beaten by lawyer mobs "until they wet their pants" and have the
> police interrogate them for days to make them introspect if they are not yet guilty. Surely our judiciary does not accept the Bassi formulation: guilty
> until proven innocent.
>
> The next is the point that Mr Nariman highlighted and a point I dared to raise too: who protects our constitutional freedoms - our institutions including
> the judiciary, or our armies? That is the argument I am joining with the greatest humility.
>
> I am also daring to do so because Google tells me that the honourable judge and I are about the same generation, one whose nationalism was defined by
> Manoj Kumar's Mr Bharat singing in Mahendra Kapur's macho voice for almost a decade, and one that probably saw the film Upkarfrom where she quotes the
> famous patriotic song, "Mere desh ki dharti" at the same impressionable age, in class six or seven. I am a child of the stormy, insecure 1960s when we
> also sang in school, "Nanha munna rahi hoon, desh ka sipahi hoon," and, that awful one, "Aati hai awaz yehi mandir, masjid, gurudwaron se; sambhal ke
> rehna apne ghar mein chhupe huye gaddaron se" (the call from all places of worship is to watch out for traitors hiding in your own home). So my second
> argument is that we thought we had left that suspicious, traitor-my-neighbour mindset far, far behind. Indian nationalism has evolved from the '60s and
> we are an enormously more confident nation. Diverse thoughts cannot subvert us.
>
> I must confess I am also terminally influenced by long years of covering Pakistan, where the army is central to the ideology that defines its
> nationalism. The essential argument that gives its army a central position in the power structure is that it guards the ideology of Pakistan which hasn't
> had a stable constitution until recently. I was in Pakistan in the summer of 1990 when Benazir Bhutto, the prime minister, raised a question nobody
> should dare to in Pakistan: is the army the guardian of Pakistan's ideological frontiers or territorial ones? Remember, this was just after the
> unravelling of the Soviet Bloc. If armies could protect ideologies, she asked, why would the Soviet Union disintegrate? A small point to add: she said it
> in a speech to her armed forces' staff college in Quetta.
>
> Better informed Pakistanis told me she wouldn't last more than a few days or weeks. There is no way an elected prime minister could get away raising this
> in Pakistan. Particularly as she rubbed her finger in her generals' eyes in their own institution. I thought this was exaggerated. But indeed she did not
> last more than a few weeks. Among the allegations made by the Fauji Establishment against her was sedition/treason, of being pro-India and so on.
>
> India has never needed this debate. Our brilliant, valiant armies protect our territorial frontiers and the civilian state, constitutionally elected and
> duly established by law. Freedoms and rights of citizens are the responsibility of Parliament, judiciary, civil society. In fact, even when a soldier, a
> jawan or a general feels a sense of injustice, he goes to our brilliant judiciary. That's where, as they say in a courtroom, I rest my case, Your
> Lordship.
>
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> _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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> Twitter: @ShekharGupta
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>
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> Facebook: www.facebook.com/shekharguptaofficial
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>
> Business Standard: http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/shekhar-gupta-student-of-the-year-116030401563_1.html
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>

[Rakhal DAVE]

[I will try and organise an evening with Shekhar
the next time he is in Zurich ... probably WEF 2017]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2016 23:13:36 +0530
From: Shekhar <shekha...@mediascape.in>
To: Rakhal DAVE <rak...@olsen.ch>
Cc: new-liberal-p...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: NATIONAL INTEREST COLUMN

Thank you v much indeed....and yes, the next time I am there...

Sent from my iPad

[Anand Pareek]

Nice to hear on ongoing issues from Barkha during the The Telegraph event in Kolkata. Last 3-4 mins she talks about the absence of Liberal Party and idea in India.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFDlUPcvTFc

Anand Pareek

[Rakhal DAVE]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFDlUPcvTFc

Great speech ... Thank you Anand!

-Rakhal

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