To describe Sri Lanka as Sri Rajapaksa may be just apt for the leader who changed the destiny of the island country. There are few international leaders in the contemporary global polity that have successfully changed the war-torn country in a vibrant progressive democracy in their lifetime. The charismatic leader accelerated the pace of development of the island country by pushing various infrastructure projects that transformed the growth rate and GDP of the country from 2009 onwards. Mahinda Rajapaksa served as the sixth President of Sri Lanka from 19 November 2005 to 9 January 2015. A learned lawyer by profession, Rajapaksa was first elected to the Parliament of Sri Lanka in 1970, and he served as Prime Minister from 6 April 2004 until his victory in the 2005 presidential election. He was sworn in for his first six-year term as president on 19 November 2005. He was re-elected for a second term on 27 January 2010. However, due to international and domestic reasons, he was defeated in his bid for a third term in the 2015 presidential election by Maithripala Sirisena and left office on 9 January 2015. Several months after leaving office, Rajapaksa unsuccessfully sought to become prime minister in the 2015 parliamentary election, where the United People’s Freedom Alliance was defeated. He was, however, elected as a Member of Parliament for Kurunegala District. On 5 August 2020, the Rajapaksa brothers emerged as the island nation’s most powerful duo making Sri Lanka a “Family state”. Sri Lanka People’s Front, the party led by the Rajapaksa brothers, won 145 seats in the 225-MEMBER parliament in the election. The victory brought the Rajapaksa brothers very close to the two-thirds majority required to make constitutional changes that could strengthen dynastic rule in the country, Mahinda Rajapaksa is presently serving as Prime Minister of Sri Lanka.
After becoming Prime Minister of Sri Lanka for the fourth time, Mahinda Rajapaksa has focused on the 2015 constitutional amendment that made the prime minister of Sri Lanka more powerful than the president. Rajapaksa reshuffled the cabinet tightening his grip over the small nation, PM Mahinda Rajapaksa 75, brought two relatives to the Sri Lankan Cabinet, which means there are four Rajapaksas in the 26 member Cabinet now. Mahinda will be in charge of the Ministries of Finance, Urban Development and Buddhist Affairs, Gotabaya will retain the portfolio of Defence Minister. Additionally, eldest brother Chamal Rajapaksa has been named the Irrigation Minister and Mahinda scion Namal Rajapaksa is the new youth and Sports Minister.
The most challenging phase of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s political career arrived after he took the Prime Minister of the country. After all, it was PM Rajapaksa who, as Sri Lanka’s president, began to obtain heavy loans from China, paving the way for Beijing to take control of the strategic Hambantota Port in December 2018 by then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. Unable to pay off the debt to the Chinese, the previous Sri Lankan government handed over the Hambantota Port on a 99-year lease in lieu of about $1.1 billion, keeping at stake the country’s sovereignty. The fiscal challenges will test the political skills and experience of the newly elected Prime Minister in the coming days.
Historical perspective: Rajapaksa's political skills, diplomacy, willpower and military acumen were tested by the most horrific ethnic conflict that his country had witnessed. Although styling himself as a man of peace and a willing negotiator, Rajapaksa signaled his intention to end the peace process once in power by forging an alliance with the Sinhalese nationalist Janatha vimukthi Peramuna and the Jathika Hela Urumaya. The JVP had opposed the original 2002 peace process as treasonous. The agreement made with Rajapaksa included provisions that called for a revision of the ceasefire agreement to give the military broader powers against the LTTE, as well as ruling out any devolution of power to the Tamil people.
Immediately following his election victory, a series of mine blasts blamed on the LTTE in the country claimed the lives of many off-duty servicemen and civilians, pushing the country back to the brink of war. Following the closure by the LTTE of a reservoir supplying water to 15,000 people named “Mavil Aru” in government-controlled areas on 21 July 2006, the Sri Lankan military launched an offensive against the LTTE, bringing the entire reservoir under government control. Further military engagements have led to the LTTE being driven out of the entire Eastern Province of Sri Lanka and the loss of 95% of the territory they controlled. The Sri Lanka government declared total victory on 18 May 2009. On 19 May 2009 President Mahinda Rajapaksa delivered a victory address to the Parliament and declared that Sri Lanka is liberated from terrorism. It was a near miracle achieved by the Rajapaksa-led team and instantly he became a national hero and darling of the masses in Sri Lanka.
His presidency after ending the Civil War in 2009 is known for initiating large-scale infrastructure projects. Sri Lanka also made it into the “high” category of the Human Development Index during this time. Initiating, completing and developing many Highways, Roads, Colombo beautification projects, and rural infrastructure development projects are several major projects. However, the roadways are known for extremely high costs and are suspected of corruption and the large amount of Chinese loans tripled the country’s foreign debt and created an economic crisis. But Rajapaksa claimed that under him Sri Lanka started to experience rapid economic growth and the GDP growth rate reached over 7%. However, this has been disputed and after his fall the successor government revealed that GDP growth was inflated by using the year 2002 as the base year; which is usually revised once in five years. GDP growth for 2013 and 2014 which was 7.2% and 7.4% using 2002 as the base year was reduced to 3.4 and 4.5 percent respectively.
Capitalising on the end of the Sri Lankan Civil War in May 2009 and coming off an election win in January 2010 and with the near-collapse of the opposition United National Party, President Mahinda Rajapaksa rallied more than the two- thirds majority in Parliament necessary to pass an amendment to the constitution removing presidential term limits. On the 9th September 2010 the Parliament passed the amendment to remove presidential term limits from the Constitution. This amendment allowed Rajapaksa to run for a third term and cement his grip on power. The move came just a day after the Supreme Court ruled that a referendum was not required to make the change. The amendment had even more far-reaching consequences than just term limits, including provisions that increased the president’s power to act without oversight removing an independent advisory council that the president currently must consult before appointing people to important nonpartisan posts, like Supreme Court judges and members of the human rights and electoral commissions. A Parliamentary Council without veto power and with only two opposition members was created in its place.
The domestic politics of India in Tamil Nadu has compelled India to take an arms-distance approach with Rajapaksa that forced Rajapaksa to tilt toward China during his second term of Presidency. In fact, the Sri Lanka government did offer preferential infra projects to India but it received a lukewarm response from the Indian side. It was alleged that President Rajapaksa, during the 2015 presidential campaign and elections received large payments from the Chinese port construction fund that flowed directly into campaign aides and activities. The perception was created that Rajapaksa had agreed to Chinese terms and was seen as an important ally in China’s efforts to tilt influence away from India in South Asia. It is after his unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 2015: Rajapaksa adopted a more anti-China policy opposing major development projects such as the Southern Economic Development Zone in which China planned to invest over 5 billion USD. During the opening ceremony, protesters led by Joint opposition MPs ignored a court order banning protests in the area and violently opposed the projects at the event in which the Chinese envoy claimed that China will ignore “Negative forces”.
But the road to recovery for Rajaspksa has started with his proxy Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna winning a landslide victory in the 2018 local authority elections. They were able to secure staggering 239 Local Government bodies out of 340. The SLPP has called for the resignation of the government and for fresh general elections to be held. Mahinda Rajapaksa has realized that his Chinese misadventure was the principle cause of the electoral debacle and he is gradually tilting toward India for the subsequent political lineup. The people of Sri Lanka have realized that without Rajaspaska in power, the prestige and economic development of the country are not possible. And finally in 2019-20: the son of soil secured the victory that brought the Rajapaksa brothers very close to the two-thirds majority required to make constitutional changes that could strengthen dynastic rule in the country has secured power to serve his countrymen. Activists, already alarmed by the diminishing space for dissent and criticism in the island nation, fear such a move could lead to authoritarianism.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the first foreign leader to call his Sri Lankan counterpart Mahinda Rajapaksa, followed by Dr. Subramanium Swamy and a host of world leaders and statesmen.
Here is the excerpt from the interview given to Prashant Tewari recently wherein he unveiled his vision for the future island country.
Q&A:
H.E. Your election for a second term of office in the Presidential election, held on January 26, 2010, saw the Sri Lankan electorate freely participating in elections after more than two decades of turbulence of unrest and war; you are termed as the messiah who liberated the country from the terrorism of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and set the country on the path to peace, a stronger democracy and rapid economic development. There is no leader worshiped by the native population more than you in the recent past, but what went wrong in 2015?
It was an international conspiracy against my government that was successfully implemented by certain political opponents to capture power in 2015. I will not reveal the name of the countries involved but I will be cautious in the future. The opponents have successfully alienated the minority community from SLFP to facilitate consolidation against us. However, everyone has realized the bad governance of the current government and the gimmicks played by them. I am sure the trends of the local elections clearly indicate that SLFP is on its way back to power in the next general elections.
H.E. The rare criticism that can be made out of your political career is that you promoted nepotism, appointing three brothers to run important ministries and other political positions for relatives, regardless of their merit. Your brother Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, who was given the post of defense secretary, controlled the armed forces, the police, the Coast Guard and immigration and emigration. You appointed your brother Basil Rajapaksa as minister of economic development. Your oldest brother, Chamal Rajapaksa, was appointed the Speaker of the Parliament of Sri Lanka from 2010 to 2015, and has held many other posts before. Others include your nephew, Shashindra Rajapaksa, who served as the Chief Minister of Uva from 2009 to 2015. Some of his cousins were given ambassadorial positions: Jaliya Wickramasuriya was appointed as Sri Lanka's ambassador to the United States, as well as udayanga Weeratunga, who was appointed the ambassador to Russia. daily Telegraph UK has published a story ‘Sri Lanka: a country ruled as a family business by four brothers, how did you react to it?
I think the narrative build is completely false, all of the above are elected by popular votes in their respective constituencies and all of them have won the elections by the largest margins in various elections. Surely if the people like them, how can they be ignored? However, I had appointed Gotabhaya Rajapaksa by executive order because I thought he was the right person to deliver what we wanted at that time. And my stand is vindicated when he displayed tremendous skills to eliminate terrorism during our arm struggle against LTTE.
H.E. You won the Presidency of Sri Lanka on a wide-ranging policy, which was largely people-oriented and was laid out in the “Mahinda Chinthana” – The Concepts of Mahinda – which promised, among others, the defeat of terrorism and the advance of democracy. It also offered social democratic approaches to economic and social issues, the continuance of social welfare policies such as free education and free health, an end to privatization of the State sector, a huge commitment to infrastructure development, strengthening of the rural sector of the economy, protection of the environment and the upholding of traditional values such as the humane treatment of animals. You almost achieved every promise made to the people, how satisfying has been your experience of governance?
Mahinda Chinthana means good governance for all. We have drafted it to incorporate the desire of every section of society in the political mainstream so that nobody is left unattended. Our concept is rooted in the soil, the governance that springs from the bottom of the pyramid. Yes, we have achieved most of our promises but we have to travel miles ahead to fulfill the aspiration of our native people.
H.E. You went through a most trying period during the first five months of your Presidency, from barely two weeks after his election, with the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) launching attacks on the security forces and civilians. From early December 2005 until mid-April 2006, you showed considerable patience and forbearance, for which you won international admiration, in the face of provocative violence by the LTTE that killed nearly 600 people. You allowed limited attacks on LTTE positions only after it carried out a failed suicide bomb attack to assassinate the Army Commander in April 2006. You demonstrated commitment to peace and negotiation by reopening talks with the LTTE, which it had unilaterally walked away from in April 2003. But the LTTE did not reciprocate your moves for peace. How difficult it was to push for the military offense knowing the importance of defeating the LTTE and its terrorism, taking a firm stand against Western powers and international institutions that pressured you to have a ceasefire with the LTTE during the last stages of the battle. You rejected those pressures as interference in the sovereignty of Sri Lanka, and were not swayed by threats of economic and other reprisals by Western forces that were supportive of pro-LTTE expatriate Sri Lankans in those countries? Please narrate the experience of dealing with the international community in an emergency situation so that many countries battling terror can be inspired by your story?
To be honest, we knew that wiping out terror will take tremendous pain and stress for us but we wanted to live in peace permanently. The main issue was India because Tamil Nadu is an important state for India and the sentiments were flared up by certain vested interests against the probable action. We created TRIOKA plan wherein three high officials of each side were deputed for regular exchange of information to facilitate proper coordination. And it worked because it removed the chances of any wrong information dissemination on either side. Finally, we offered the peace option to LTTE or face a war and they opted for the latter. We did face tremendous pressure from all UN organizations, certain pockets of Tamil influence countries and local pressures but we were resolute to solve the terror issue permanently. Many European countries and their leaders visited our country to mediate in between the war but I have made it a point to stick to my original decision of wiping out terror from the soil of Sri Lanka. Today, we are one of the most peaceful democratic countries in the world and I can take immense pride to say that I was always right in the conflict that was forced on us by LTTE.
H.E. You are one of the few exceptional leaders in the modern era who have successfully transformed a war-torn country into a vibrant democracy in his lifetime. Speedy action was taken to restore democracy to the region with the holding of Local Government elections there and elections to the first Eastern Provincial Council, all within one year of clearing the region of terrorism. The Provincial Council elections saw the emergence of a former child soldier of the LTTE, Mr. Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan, as the Chief Minister of the Province. The process of democratization was further enhanced when the former leader of the breakaway group from the LTTE, Mr. Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan, whose nom-de-guerre was Karuna Amman, was sworn in as the Minster for National Integration and Reconciliation. The remarkable transition from a war-torn country to a peaceful nation was achieved by you within no time, we have seen many Middle Eastern countries going through a similar trauma but ending up as failed states after the war but Sri Lanka and Rajaspaska did the impossible, we would be keen to know – how?
Thanks for informing me about this remarkable fact of history that even I have not realized during my fight against terror. It is now after talking to you I do agree with the fact that the entire effort by me and my team was exceptional. We have taken huge risks in the process like releasing twelve thousand prisoners in 2009 immediately after the war was over. It could have gone wrong but we fought the war with a humanitarian approach. We realized that the people fighting are misguided by vested interests and they are our own people. The entire war was fought keeping our country’s interest first. The Defence forces of the country must be commended for the most remarkable job done in recent war history anywhere in the world. They cleaned up the land mines in the north within one year after the war was over to facilitate an immediate popular election process in the entire country. This brought confidence in the native population that we are humanitarian in approach and beliefs in rule of law. And if you have people's confidence in you, then anything is possible in a democracy. We invested over a billion dollars in the northern part of the country to build infrastructure and better living conditions for our countrymen so their love and affection were reciprocated in my next presidential elections of 2010 I won by huge margins.
H.E. At the young age of just 24, you were elected to Parliament as an SLFP member from the Beliatta electorate in 1970. Even after five decades, your political journey continues unabated. Off course, it has taken many decades of service to the people, demonstrating an unfailing loyalty to your political party and leadership, and boldly facing the rough and tumble of politics. Today when you look back to history, you are satisfied with the efforts put up by you to serve your country or there are some unfulfilled dreams left?
Yes, till 2015: the direction of the country and the pace of development were fantastic but I was forced out of the office due to international conspiracy. I want to bring the country back on track so that the people of my country can live in peace and prosperity.
How do you see the present state of India Sri Lanka's relationship?
All is good but we have to strengthen it further. We have to continue the dialogue with the Indian government on a regular basis on economic, fisheries, free trade agreements, etc to build a more focused mutual relationship. I appreciate the efforts made in an individual capacity by Dr. Subramanium Swamy to improve the bilateral relationship between the two friendly countries. An effort must be made from both G2G and P2P levels in consolidating the relationship.
From: Prashant Tewari for Opinion Express & The Pioneer: CONTACT - prashant.tewari@opinionexpress.in
* This interview is from our Achieve store.
Let us know about China occupied Jammu and Kashmir that is equivalent to the state of Haryana
Jammu and Kashmir is the 15th state of India that acceded to India on October 26, 1947 and a geographical area of approximately 2, 22,236 SQ. km became an integral part of it. In 1962, China has illegally occupied 37,555 sq. km. area of Aksai Chin of Jammu and Kashmir. Later in 1963 Pakistan ceded around 5,180SQ. km. area of Shaksgam valley to China though Pakistan was not legally permitted for it because this land was part of Jammu and Kashmir and it belonged to India. So, this combined area of Aksai Chin, Minsar and Shaksgam valley (42,735SQ.km.) collectively called Chinese occupied Jammu and Kashmir. Both Pakistan and China rejected India’s claim with citing their own logics. But a provision was added in the agreement that the settlement would be provisional, pending a solution of the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir between India and Pakistan. on March 2, 1963 Sino-Pakistan frontier agreement was signed in Beijing by Pakistan Foreign Minister Bhutto and Chinese Foreign Minister Chen yi but the China considered it a disputed area between India and Pakistan. Hence, it added a clause in the agreement in this regard, the Article 6 of the 1963 China- Pakistan agreement mentions that “after the settlement of the Kashmir dispute between Pakistan and India”, and the final agreement would replace this agreement. The Shakasgam valley was provisionally ceded to China by Pakistan under the March 1963 Sino - Pak Boundary agreement. Hence, China has occupied an area of 42,735SQ. km. that comprised of Aksai Chin, Minsar and Shaksgam valley of Indian territory. Under first schedule of the constitution of India, Jammu and Kashmir is the 15TH state of India. According to section 3 of Jammu and Kashmir Constitution, the state of J&K is an integral part of India and section 147 states that the state government cannot change section 3 of J&K constitution. The accession of the state was complete and irrevocable, which cement the claims of India over the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir. Therefore, the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir including China occupied Jammu and Kashmir belongs to India. China occupied Jammu and Kashmir that is equivalent to the state of Haryana and it have 4057 km LAC boarder line that separates India and China and it travels through three areas viz. Western (Ladakh, Kashmir), middle (Uttarakhand, Himachal) and eastern (Sikkim, Arunachal) which is sparsely populated.
The Hunzaand Nagar states annexed by the British in 1891-92 and the rulers of these regions paid tribute to Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir. Though Chinese have always maintained that there was some kind of boundary between Hunzaand Chinese Turkistan but China has never administered the area, even then the Communist Government in 1959 showed some 15,540sq. km. area of Hunzaand Gilgit as theirs. China had also done some military excursion in these areas since 1953. By 1962, China had illegally occupied around 37,244 square km soft land of Aksai Chin, which is sparsely populated. Though war was ensued between India and China in 1962 but the areas could not be retrieved. Minsar, an Indian principality has been a home to Ladakhi and Kashmiri traders and pilgrims. Minsar though surrounded by Tibet paid taxes to the Kingdom of Ladakh. During 19TH century, when Ladakh was annexed in the state of Maharaja Gulab Singh, Minsar automatically became part of it. In 1953, when the then PM Nehru was willing to sign the Panchseel Agreement, he expressed his wish to renounce the right of Minsar as goodwill gesture towards Communist China but his wish should have the sanction of Indian Parliament, as ceding a territory comes in the domain of Indian Parliament. This sanction was never taken and no agreement, treaty or convention was signed in this regard. Therefore, Minsar was never given to China and any claim of latter on it remains illegal and invalid. Pakistan ceded Sakshgam valley to China and India’s protest against it after illegal occupation of its large part of land mass.
In May 1962, Beijing announced officially that the Governments of China and Pakistan are entering into negotiation of boundary dispute. India strongly objected to this agreement for the land that belongs to India. India expressed its displeasure into the agreement and the Indian Defence Minister Krishna Menon called this agreement illegal and said in United Nation Security Council in May and June 1962: “over and above all this then has occurred the situation in which Pakistan today not for any good reason, but merely nuisance values and its instrument to put pressure on us has entered negotiations and, I believe, has concluded agreements with central Government of the People’s Republic of China. That agreement is in total violation of any rights or authority Pakistan may possess, for Pakistan has no sovereignty over this State. Secondly, it was not necessary even for considerations relating to Pakistan own security. More- over, it has been done on a basis that we cannot accept. Our position in regard to China and Chinese claims, which is not under discussion before the Security Council remains clear”.
The protest note of Government of India was also sent to China and Pakistan on May 10, 1962 stating: “In lodging an empathic protest with the Government of People’s Republic of China for this interference with the sovereignty of India over the State of Jammu and Kashmir, the Government of India solemnly warns the Government of China that any change, provisional or otherwise, in the status of the State of Jammu and Kashmir brought about by third parties which seek to submit certain parts of Indian territory to foreign jurisdiction will not be binding on the Government of India firmly repudiate any agreements, provisional or otherwise, regarding her own territories arrived at between third parties who have absolutely no legal rights and moral standing to do so.
In the recent time, India’s construction of a feeder road that would connect with the road built last year from Darbuk-Shyok in Galwan valley to Daulat Begholdi was a trigger to Chinese officials who saw this as an aggressive tilt in India’s border strategy. This road strategically connects Leh to the Daulat Begholdi military airbase allowing expedient mobility of troops and equipment to the LAC. Control over this road requires a control of the Galwan valley ridgeline where the June 15 clashes took place. More importantly, control of the valley would provide India access to Aksai-Chin, which holds the Tibet- Xinjiang highway. West of Daulat Begh-oldi is Gilgit-Baltistan, part of the PoK (Pakistan occupied Kashmir) region and part of CPEC (China Pakistan Economic Corridor). China is apprehensive of India’s strategic leverage in the region to compromise the CPEC. This could have a disastrous impact on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and China’s socio-economic and political stability. BRI also links to China’s own security concerns in Xinjiang and therefore any threat to the CPEC may be viewed as a threat to China’s unity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity. This road also raises China’s trepidations regarding Aksai-Chin which it occupied after the 1962 WAR.
Additionally, the remarks of Indian Union Minister, Amit Shah, in 2019, claiming the Chinese-occupied Aksai Chin to be within the territory of India had served China’s geopolitical and nationalistic insecurity no better. The Chinese establishment is nervous of the fact that India may team up with USA to target China with regional allies of America hence it has adopted an aggressive posture to scare off the India threat and its long term strategy to topple China in taking back Aksai Chin back. The events in 2020 are likely to alter major territorial boundaries of the region.
With COVID-19 infecting millions worldwide, China is faced with an unprecedented global backlash that could destabilize its reign as the factory of choice for the world. Its neighbor India has felt a chance and is keen to make inroads into a vacuum that China expects will vacate sooner rather than later. In a recent interview, Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari said that China’s weakening global position is a “blessing in disguise” for India to draw further investment. Uttar Pradesh‘s northern province, which has a population of Brazil’s size, is now developing an economic task force to lure businesses willing to leave China. India is also planning a pool of land twice Luxembourg‘s size to sell companies that want to move production out of China, approaching 1,000 American multinationals, Bloomberg said. “This outreach has been an ongoing operation,” Deepak Bagla, Invest India chief executive, the BBC‘s national investment promotion agency, told the government. “For many of those firms, Covid would only accelerate the cycle of de-risking from China.”
The U.S.-India Business Council (USIBC), an influential advocacy organization seeking to improve investment flows between India and the U.S., has said India has stepped up its pitch considerably. “We see India prioritizing efforts to draw supply chains, both at the central and state levels of government,” Nisha Biswal, USIBC President and former US Department of State Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia, told the BBC. “Companies that already have some manufacturing in India could be earlier movers in the reduction of output in Chinese plants and the rise in demand in India.” But we are still at an assessment stage and it is unlikely that decisions will be taken in haste, she said. In an environment where global balance sheets are fractured, it’s easier said than done to relocate entire supply chains. “Because of the pandemic, many of these companies face severe cash and capital constraints, and will therefore be very cautious before making swift moves,” said independent economist Rupa Subramanya.
According to Rahul Jacob, a long- time China watcher and former head of the Hong Kong Financial Times office, the Indian government setting up land banks is a step in the right direction, but it is unlikely that large corporations will move their operations only because land is made available. “Production lines and supply chains are much more complex than most people tend to realize, and tearing them apart overnight is very hard,” he said. “China offers integrated infrastructure such as large ports and highways, high-quality labor and sophisticated logistics, all of which are critical factors in meeting the stringent deadlines operated by international companies.” India matches the integrated capacities of China’s infrastructure? For large multinationals, another reason India may not be the obvious option is because it is not well integrated with major global supply chains.
Last year, after seven years of negotiation, Delhi pulled out of a key multilateral trade deal with 12 other Asian nations, collectively known as the Global Comprehensive Economic Partnership ( RCEP). Such decisions make it difficult for Indian exporters to benefit from tariff-free access to the destination markets or offer their trading partners reciprocity. “Why would I make something I would like to sell to Singapore in India? Institutionally connecting in trade agreements is as important as offering competitive prices,” Parag Khanna, author of The Future is Asian, told the BBC. He believes that regional integration is especially important, as global trade continues to adopt the “sale where you make” paradigm in which businesses are called “near-source” rather than out-source manufacturing, and bring it closer to demand. The unpredictable relationship between India and foreign direct investment (FDI) and inconsistent regulation is also something that continues to worry global firms.
The fear is that India has used the pandemic to build protectionist walls around itself, from banning e-commerce companies from selling non-essential items and tweaking FDI rules to disallow easier flows of capital from neighboring countries. In a recent address to the country, Indian Premier Narendra Modi made his rallying cry “to be vocal for the local.” Moreover, new policy plans have increased rates for international companies that bid for Indian contracts. “The more that India can strengthen regulatory stability, the better its chances of persuading more global companies to create hubs in India,” Mr. Biswal says. And who else, If not India? Vietnam, Bangladesh, South Korea and Taiwan tend to be favorites to benefit from the backlash against China as things stand. According to Mr. Jacob, the latter two at the “high-tech end of the spectrum” and Vietnam and Bangladesh at the bottom have blamed China for not doing enough to stop coronavirus spread. Owing to rising labor and environmental costs, multinationals started transferring production from China to these countries almost a decade ago.
The slow migration has only gathered speed in recent years as trade tensions between the US and China has increased. U.S. imports of goods from Vietnam have increased by more than 50 per cent since June 2018, a month before the trade war started, and those from Taiwan by 30 per cent, according to South China Morning Post newspaper estimates. India is seen as losing out because it failed to establish conditions that would allow multinationals not only to supply the local market, but also to use the country as a production base for exporting to the world. Several states have started to make moves in recent weeks to address some concerns about the ease of doing business-among them making contentious changes to the archaic labor laws of India, put in place to reduce exploitation. For example, the states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have abolished substantial labor protections that exempt factories from even maintaining basic standards such as cleanliness, ventilation, lighting, and toilets. The aim is to improve the environment of investment and to attract global capital. Yet these decisions may be harmful and harm rather than support, says Mr. Jacob: “” International companies would be very wary about this. They have strict codes of conduct on labor, environment and safety standards for suppliers.”
A turning point was the collapse of the garment factory Rana Plaza in Bangladesh in 2013 which supplied retailers including Walmart. He cautions that it forced Bangladesh to dramatically upgrade factory infrastructure and protection in order to win further investment. “India must follow better standards. These are whiteboard ideas drafted by bureaucrats on Powerpoint that are completely divorced from the reality of global trade.” Yet with the US considering punitive measures against China, Japan charging its companies to move out of the country and UK lawmakers coming under pressure to rethink their decision to enable the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei to play a part in building the country’s new 5 G data network, the global anti-China sentiment is growing. The time is ripe for India to pursue broad-based structural reforms and use these dramatic geopolitical changes to change its worldwide trading relationship.
Ahuti Singh is assistant professor in department of economics in DAV, Banaras hindu university
Politician and chairman of All India Anti-Terrorist Front (AIATF), MS Bitta has come down heavily on the legal advisor of Sikhs for Justice (SJF), Gurpatwant Singh Pannu, alleging him for bringing disgrace to the Sikhs. US based Pannu, who runs a pro-Khalistan campaign called ‘Referendum 2020’, is engaged in radicalizing, funding and motivating gullible youths of Punjab into committing acts of arson and violence. He is alleged to be backed by Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Bitta accused Pannu of collecting funds at the behest of Islamabad and using it for spreading venom amongst the Sikh Diaspora. He, however, said that all of their anti-India agenda had suffered a massive failure. “They could not manage to gather even a thousand people (at Trafalgar Square) while I demonstrated outside their embassy with 12,000-13,000 Sikh youths. I dare you to come to India. You are an ISI agent collecting fund from them. He is misleading innocent people there. People like him are bringing disgrace to Sikhs across the world,” he said. on being asked about Pakistan’s agenda on Kartarpur corridor, Bitta said that Islamabad cannot indoctrinate loyal Sikhs of Punjab and no pure devout can be lured into its sinister designs. “If you are sincerely devoted to Guru Kartarpur, then you will never get enticed by Pakistan and the pro-Khalistan leaders and will never provoke the people of Punjab. You will never betray your devotion towards the Guru,” he remarked. “There are no Khalistanis in Pakistan but they are the agents of ISI. Today, Punjab is in a very good state. There are no signs of disturbance in the state. Punjab police have been phenomenal in their work. There are no elements of terrorism,” Bitta stressed. Pakistan-sponsored militancy in the late 1980S and early 1990S claimed hundreds of innocent lives in Punjab. However, extraordinary efforts of government and security forces succeeded in restoring peace in the state. Since then, it is on the path of development and has become one of the most prosperous states of India.
Report filed OECEL News Services
Sikh community yet to have a true leader after Ranjit Singh
The tragedy of Sikhs is that they have not found a leader worthy of carrying forward the legacy of their illustrious Gurus since Maharaja Ranjit Singh. We are still trying to get over the fall-out from the lack of vision and leadership of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, now another “visionary”, Gurpatwant Singh Pannu, has appeared from America. He now wishes to lead the Sikhs by carrying forward the legacy of Bhindranwale. No one has divided Sikhs more than Bhindrawalaand also poisoned the minds of our youth who have limited understanding of our faith and history but feel angry due to the attack on the Golden Temple. Sadly, the attack led to the assassination of the then Prime Minister of India, Mrs. Indira Gandhi and her death followed anti-Sikhs riots in India. Thousand innocent Sikhs were massacred in the communal riots. It is unfortunate that a so-called ‘Saint’ a man of peace and harmony could inflict massive damage to the image of Sikhs in India by considering himself to be over and above the rule of law.
Ironically, Mr. Pannu, unlike Bhindrawale, carries an American Passport and Citizenship, and yet he feels for the Sikhs of Punjab. Should he not come to Punjab and lead the Sikhs personally as our Gurus did when they were fighting against the tyranny of Mughals? I am sure he will find out that the Sikhs of Punjab do not have the appetite to once again bring lawlessness into Punjab. They are still suffering the consequence of an unelected, self-appointed leader who claimed to get the Sikhs more rights than the elected Chief Minister of Punjab and what Sikhs were entitled to in a secular and democratic country, India.
Mr. Pannu’s vision is to go against that of the Sikh Gurus by contradicting their philosophy. Where the Sikh Gurus believed in the oneness of the human race, Mr. Pannu believes that the Sikhs are a different race and also have a different DNA to that of the rest of Indians. Sikh Gurus dedicated their lives and paid supreme sacrifices to unite us with the rest of humankind, there Mr. Pannu is trying to divide us by paddling hatred against non-Sikhs of Punjab. Sikh Gurus gave us a faith which is based on interfaith teachings to demonstrate that we are all equal. Mr. Pannu’s ideology is to deny non Sikhs of Punjab equality by proclaiming that Punjab only belongs to the Sikhs. In other words, he wishes to repeat what the Muslims of India did in 1947 by declaring Hindus, Sikhs and Christians second class in the country of their birth and that of their forefathers. We all know the death and destruction that this caused in the country where people once lived side by side in perfect harmony regardless of religion. They had shared history, heritage, folklore, food, language, etc. The same people have become arch enemies and have had four bloody wars since their division with further loss of precious lives. Who knows if the area becomes a nuclear flashpoint someday such is the hatred that religious disharmony can cause.
Our illustrious father Shaheed Nanak Singh www.shaheednanaksingh.com was a visionary and could foretell the consequences of religious disharmony. He pleaded with the then Muslim leaders not to cut and run and fall for the British policy of ‘Divide & Rule’. He said that after independence, India would be a secular and democratic country with one person one vote, and as a result, together we would make our destiny. He further warned that a country created artificially with the help of bloodshed would continue to generate more hatred for its very survival. In the words of our father, “India’s diversity is like the colours of a rainbow, its charm will diminish if one is removed”.
Mr. Pannu does not believe in learning from history and would like to repeat the mistakes of the past. He seems content to see the death and destruction of 1947 happen once again in Punjab and Sikhs massacred outside Punjab just as we witnessed in 1984. He also does not seem to care what happens to the Sikh holy shrines outside Punjab as, according to him, the Sikhs should be confined to Punjab only. Does he think there will be no reaction in the rest of India against the poisonous ideology of the Khalistanis in Punjab?
It is worth remembering that the Sikh Gurus never stood for any single community not even for the Sikhs as Mr. Pannu does. The Sikh Gurus always stood for humanity and as a result, are revered by the people of every faith. Guru TegBhadur Ji paid the ultimate sacrifice to uphold the religious freedom of Hindus in India, and Guru Gobind Singh Ji established the Brotherhood of Khalsa to defend the religious freedom of every Indian. According to Guru Gobind Singh Ji, “diversity must be accepted, respected and if need be, defended”.
Mr. Pannu believes in destroying the diversity of Punjab by making Sikhs superior to the rest of the Punjabis just because they follow a different faith. He will one day advocate the removal of teachings from the Granth Sahib of non-Sikhs to make it written by only the Sikhs. He cannot imagine how people abandoned Pakistan when the majority population of Muslims made them second class to Muslims. People left their every possession to move to India, where the constitution gave them equality. Mr. Pannu thinks no Hindu in business or Industry will leave Punjab when he arrives with his team of lackluster Sikhs to proclaim Khalistan and to make them inferior. Once there is an exodus of people leaving Punjab for Rajasthan, Haryana or UP, then what will remain in Punjab? Sikhs will be treated as second class in the rest of India, the very country their Gurus and followers help to preserve as we see it today. I hate to imagine if Sikhs are thrown out of the rest of India, how Mr. Pannu and his gang will accommodate displaced Sikhs in Punjab and provide them suitable jobs. How will he be able to look after the Sikhs from the Indian Army, Air Force, Navy, Police, etc.?
I can guarantee that Mr Pannu can expect to be arrested the minute he lands in India. Instead of ruling Khalistan, he will end up spending the rest of his life in a prison somewhere in India. He will be lynched by the Sikhs who are suffering because of his anti-India rhetoric. As they say, “common sense is not so common”, and Mr. Pannu certainly has no common sense to realise that he has become a foolish friend of the Sikhs; a friend we rather not have. He does not appreciate how less than 2% of Sikhs have given India, with a population of over a billion, a President, Prime Minister, Army, Air Force and Navy Chiefs; how Sikhs have businesses across India and how Sikh farmers are in UP, Gujarat, Tamil Naidu, Haryana and Rajasthan and how Sikhs have transport and freight businesses across India.
I hope and pray that a good sense will prevail and Mr. Pannu apologises to the Sikhs Gurus for embarrassing them along with their followers for pursuing an agenda alien to them.
(Writer is chairman of The British Sikh Associations) www.britishsikhassociation.org
It’s going to be a long haul with periodic flare-ups as China is not going to back down from strategic heights in Ladakh
Its Foreign Ministry statement following a fresh flare-up at Pangong-Tso, where the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) once again tried to cross the border, is indication enough that China is never going to back down. And it is going to provoke and exasperate India till it extracts something in return. It said its troops “never cross the Line of Actual Control (LAC)”, a familiar trope to justify its border claims — considering it is unmarked on the ground — and appropriate geological features to redefine it time and again according to its convenience. In its book, salami-slicing is a perfect geo-political art where it plays on perceptional differences of what is implied and gets its way by heaving down militarily. Is the latest attempt to change the status quo at Pangong Tso the result of India quietly sending warships in the South China Sea post-Galwan, along with those of the US, to flex some muscle? So far, China had stared India down but now that there is a robustness of response from our side, the tension is only expected to aggravate. India should be prepared for the long haul. And though a Siachenisation at the heights would mean a waste of man and resources on both sides, China seems to be preparing for a stakeout this winter and beyond. For all the diplomacy around eastern Ladakh, it is just a diversionary tactic as the Chinese will not forfeit what they have gained in Pangong Lake and Depsang areas. That’s because this geographical wedge between Gilgit-Baltistan in the west (Pakistan-occupied Kashmir), where China is heavily invested in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and Aksai Chin in the east, is an irritant to its regional supremacy, strategically and economically. And it wants an unhindered run of the highway from Xinjiang to Tibet, 179 km of which is under Indian shadow. So far, its contiguous hold on Central Asia, Pakistan and beyond was a low-cost, undemanding exercise, playing as it did on interpreting its version of the LAC on the ground. But now that we have ramped up our border infrastructure, China is extremely uncomfortable about the proximity of the Daulat Beg Oldie (DBO) Road to sensitive areas and strategic highways to the north of the Karakoram Pass. And as Galwan has shown, our troops are more than capable in high altitude warfare. So China simply won’t give up the spurs it has now because it doesn’t want to compromise its edge in the Karakoram. Already, it has browbeaten India at the talks table by calling for a buffer zone, which means our forces cannot patrol up to the points they used to because of the Chinese insistence of a no man’s land. This would allow it to build resources on its side unmonitored and reverse any disengagement move at a short notice. This clause also makes Indian vigilance difficult besides stretching our alertness at all times. China is hoping that it will be able to renegotiate the status quo on Pangong Tso by wearing out our troops and patience, particularly during a long, hard winter. We should be wary of the fact that the PLA, which has been pitching tents, building roads and marking territories since 2013 and which takes orders from Chinese President Xi Jinping himself, may lie low but not go silent.
India, which has now empowered troops to counteract any infringement on the LAC, has to focus on a multi-pronged approach to hold off the dragon’s territorial and economic imperialism. It can challenge China in the Indian Ocean region, get more active in the Quad initiative with US and Japan and use its international goodwill as a nation that respects “rule-based order” to build a case against China’s “wolf warrior” tactics. And it must now confront the boundary question, insist on marking the LAC. For years of denial and yielding to the Chinese template of working around the boundary dispute have only left us with trade dependencies and a deficit. Today, it is eastern Ladakh but if the territorial push in Bhutan is any indication, China may very well push its claim lines in Arunachal Pradesh now. Fortunately, we have begun ramping up the naval strategy around the Malacca Straits, which happens to be China’s trade and strategic corridor. India has deployed its vessels to keep a check on any activity of the Chinese Navy and is planning to maintain hawkish patrols through autonomous underwater vessels, unmanned systems and sensors. Diplomatically, India should be transactional in its approach to China and lay down in no uncertain terms that the latter’s avarice for global domination would not come at the cost of the second largest Asian entity tilting towards the US. In fact, we have to be overt about our strategic partnership with the US. At the same time, we must use every multi-national forum, alliance and bilateral ties to make enough noise about the asymmetric relationship with China. And reclaim our neighbourhood which China has debt-trapped into subservience.
Courtesy: The Pioneer
The demand for collective leadership is an indictment of the opaque micro-management that has distanced the leadership from the party and public opinion on a range of issues
A split in the Congress party seems inevitable. Despite formal genuflections before the Rae Bareli MP, Sonia Gandhi is now only an interim president and neither offspring is acceptable as future president. Indeed, the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting of August 24, 2020, called to address an explosive letter by 23 top leaders, could not quash the dissent. The shareholders announced that the Congress will not be allowed to run like a family firm.
Far from urging the Wayanad MP to return to the helm, the seven-hour debate declared temporary status quo over interim president. The Gandhi family exposed its reluctance to relinquish control of the party but could not deflect the charge that is has lost appeal with voters. The process of electing a non-Gandhi president may trigger a split as the Gandhis will not work with, or under, a non-protégé.
The situation is vastly different from May 1999 when Sharad Pawar, PA Sangma and Tariq Anwar questioned Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origins and her plan to stake claim to the Prime Minister’s office without discussion within the party. Although the trio quit, their contention that a foreigner would not be able to head a coalition was vindicated when Gandhi selected Manmohan Singh in 2004. For a decade, she wielded enormous power over the Government via her unelected National Advisory Council, but Narendra Modi’s victory in 2014 and 2019 convinced even die-hard loyalists that the present leadership is a political liability. Rahul Gandhi’s flight to Wayanad, Kerala, and Priyanka Gandhi’s failure to make a dent in Uttar Pradesh exposed the futility of banking on non-charismatic heirs. Even Rahul Gandhi’s re-election from Wayanad seems difficult in 2024.
Having spoken up because of the Congress’s descent to electoral irrelevance, the veterans will not tolerate the imposition of effete leaders (read Manmohan Singh or AK Antony). They are demanding elections to the CWC and the party’s parliamentary board. There is anger that the party is run by a tiny coterie comprising the Gandhi family, general secretary KC Venugopal and national spokesperson Randeep Surjewala. The unilateral appointments of Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury (leader, Lok Sabha), Ajay Maken (general secretary, Rajasthan in-charge), Rajya Sabha nomination for Mallikarjun Kharge and Hardik Patel as working president of the Gujarat unit shocked the rank and file.
Former spokesperson Sanjay Jha, whose analyses of the rot in the party brought the crisis into the open, tweeted that under Art 18 (H) of the party constitution, “only a freshly elected AICC can elect the next Congress President. The CWC has already discharged its responsibilities by appointing an Interim Congress President last year.”
As the veterans reiterated their concerns in the media, Sonia Gandhi opted for confrontation. On August 27, former Union Minister Jairam Ramesh was appointed chief whip (Rajya Sabha), Gaurav Gogoi deputy leader and Ravneet Singh Bittu whip (Lok Sabha), sidelining seniors like Shashi Tharoor and Manish Tewari. The inclusion of Ahmad Patel and KC Venugopal in the 10-member committee appointed to decide the party’s stand on key issues in Parliament was a snub to veterans like Ghulam Nabi Azad and Anand Sharma. Now the battle is joined and there is no going back for either side.
Sonia Gandhi must have been enraged by the demand for unity with Opposition parties headed by those who had left the Congress in the past. This obviously alludes to a certain strongman whom some believe has choreographed the current revolt. If true, this suggests that the epistle was planned with leaders outside Congress, with the aim of dislodging the once unchallengeable Gandhis.
At the CWC, the Gandhi siblings antagonised the seniors instead of discussing the issues raised by them. The Wayanad MP said the letter was sent to Sonia Gandhi at a time when she was unwell and the “party is fighting the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan”. This false emotionalism reflected lack of political gravitas. Moreover, the BJP had seized Madhya Pradesh in March itself and Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot had saved his government by August 7, when the letter was written.
Worse, Rahul Gandhi accused the seniors of penning the missive in collusion with the ruling BJP. Taken aback, Ghulam Nabi Azad, leader of Opposition, Rajya Sabha, offered to resign his post if he was “in any manner doing this to help the BJP or doing it at its behest”, only to be rebuked by Priyanka Vadra. “What you are saying is opposite of what you have written,” she countered. Later, former Union minister and senior advocate Kapil Sibal said he had defended the party in the Rajasthan High Court and helped it bring down the BJP government in Manipur, and yet “we are colluding with the BJP.” The sharp and articulate Sibal has become the face of the dissidents.
Currently, the strongest support for Gandhi leadership comes from Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh (who needs them against rival Partap Singh Bajwa), former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (who has never fought an election in his life), and former Union minister AK Antony (who cannot bring Kerala back to the Congress kitty). Madhya Pradesh stalwart Kamal Nath has been silent; he could emerge as the rebels’ choice of leader.
It is undeniable that all the dissidents owe their political ascent to Gandhi family patronage: former Union ministers Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma, Kapil Sibal, Manish Tewari, Shashi Tharoor, Mukul Wasnik, Renuka Chaudhary, Milind Deora and Jitin Prasada; former Chief Ministers Bhupinder Singh Hooda (Haryana), Rajender Kaur Bhattal (Punjab), M Veerappa Moily (Karnataka), and Prithviraj Chavan (Maharashtra); PJ Kurian (former deputy chairman, Rajya Sabha), MP Vivek Tankha; former PCC chiefs Raj Babbar (UP), Arvinder Singh Lovely (Delhi) and Kaul Singh Thakur (Himachal); current Bihar campaign chief Akhilesh Prasad Singh, former Haryana Speaker Kuldeep Sharma; former Delhi Speaker Yoganand Shastri and former MP Sandeep Dixit.
Few of them have an assured electoral base. But the issues they have raised are a political audit of the leadership and suggest wider consultations within and outside the Congress. The high command is being held responsible for the party’s downfall in State after State. The demand for collective leadership is an indictment of the opaque micro-management that has distanced the leadership from the party and public opinion on a range of issues. The quest for an “effective” leader suggests the compulsory retirement of the reigning dynasty – a bloodless coup.
(The author is a senior journalist. Views are personal.)
The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a plea of fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya seeking review of its 2017 order holding him guilty of contempt of court for transferring USD 40 million to his children.
A bench comprising justices U U Lalit and Ashok Bhushan said, "We do not find any merits. Review petition dismissed."
The apex court had reserved its verdict on the review plea on August 27 after hearing arguments from both sides.
Mallya had filed the petition seeking review of the apex court's May 9, 2017 order by which he was held guilty of contempt of court for transferring USD 40 million to his children in violation of the order.
The fugitive businessman, who is an accused in a bank loan default case of over Rs 9,000 crore involving his defunct Kingfisher Airlines, is presently in the United Kingdom.
The apex court's 2017 order had come on a plea by consortium of banks led by the State Bank of India (SBI), which had said that Mallya had allegedly transferred USD 40 million received from British firm Diageo, to his children in "flagrant violation" of various judicial orders.
Courtesy: Pioneer
Actress Rhea Chakraborty reached the DRDO guest house here on Monday for questioning by the CBI for the fourth consecutive day in the case of death of her boyfriend and actor Sushant Singh Rajput, a police official said.
Chakraborty is accused of abetting the suicide of Rajput (34), who was found hanging in his flat in suburban Bandra on June 14.
The 28-year-old actress along with her brother Showik Chakraborty arrived at the guest house located at Kalina in Santacruz, where the probe team is stationed, around 11 am in a car which was escorted by a Mumbai Police vehicle, the official said.
Rajput's cook Neeraj Singh also reached the guest house in the morning, he said.
On Sunday, Rhea Chakraborty was questioned by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) team for about nine hours. She was quizzed for nearly seven hours on Saturday and around 10 hours on Friday.
Her brother is being questioned by the CBI since last Thursday.
The actress was earlier questioned by the Mumbai Police in the case. The Enforcement Directorate has also quizzed her in a related money laundering case.
The Supreme Court last week upheld the transfer of an FIR, lodged by Rajput's father in Patna against the actress and others for allegedly abetting his son's suicide and misappropriating his money, to the CBI.
Courtesy: Pioneer
Challenged by Turkey’s ‘neo-Ottomanism’, Saudi Arabia is trying to revive King Faisal’s reformist ideas. The goal, as before, is the leadership of the Sunni world
In 1924, a year after declaring Turkey a republic and becoming its President, the former commander in the army of the shrinking Ottoman Empire, and a hero of World War-I, Mustafa Kemal Pasha, abolished the centuries-old office of the caliphate and drove the last Ottoman Caliph into exile.
With this act, not only did Kemal launch his ambitious republican and secularisation project in Turkey, but he also triggered a race between Muslim leaders and monarchs to become recognised as the new leaders of the Muslim world.
Various Muslim groups around the world had agitated against European powers, who were at war with the Ottomans during World War-I. But after the defeat of the Ottomans, many Muslim political leaders and intellectuals hailed Kemal’s coming into power and saw him as a modern redeemer of Islam.
The British historian, E Kedourie, in a 1963 essay for the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain, writes that Kemal was conscious of the fact that the idea of the caliphate was deeply embedded in the minds of Muslims. According to Kedourie, at one point, Kemal actually wanted to name himself as the new Caliph. But since this would have contradicted and complicated his secularisation and republican project, he didn’t.
However, Kedourie adds that Kemal then offered a much-weakened version of the caliphate to Shaikh Ahmad al-Sanusi, an Arab head of a Sufi order, as long as he would remain outside Turkey.
This suggests that, despite launching an aggressive project to secularise Turkey, Kemal was still interested in retaining the country’s role as the “spiritual and political leader of the Muslim world.” But after the abolition of the Ottoman caliphate, two contenders rushed in to claim the title. King Fuad of Egypt (that was still being ruled by the British) and the Wahabi Arab tribal leader, Ibn Saud, who, with the help of the British, had conquered former Ottoman territories in what would become Saudi Arabia in 1932. In 1926, Fuad organised an international Muslim conference in Cairo. It was not attended by Saud. Weeks later, Saud held a similar conference in Mecca. Turkey did not attend any of the two events and neither did the Shia-majority Iran.
In 1947, a much smaller player emerged in this race. It called itself Pakistan. It was founded in August 1947 by Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s Muslim League. The party’s roots lay in an evolving idea which emerged in the 19th century. It took a modernist approach to understanding Islam. This then progressed as a Muslim nationalism, which was remoulded as Pakistani nationalism. According to the French political scientist, Christophe Jaffrelot, this approach relegated Islamic rituals to the private sphere and brought into public space Islam as a political-cultural identity marker.
Inspired by the writings of Muslim reformers such as Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and the poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal, Jinnah and his party imagined a sovereign Muslim-majority country untainted by, what Iqbal had lamented, tribalism inherent in Arabian polities. Iqbal pleaded for a faith understood and articulated according to the needs of modern times.
Jinnah and his colleagues needed to greatly trim the pan-Islamic aspects of Muslim nationalism to root it more in the realities of South-Asian Muslims.
But this did not deter Pakistan’s first Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, from declaring that Pakistan was a lot more than just another Muslim country. According to M Razvi, in the 1981 issue of the Journal of Pakistan Institute of International Affairs, Pakistan held a World Muslim Conference in 1951 in Karachi. During the event, Liaquat highlighted the importance of retaining pan-Islamic ideas.
This did not please Saudi Arabia, which suspected that Pakistan was trying to undermine the kingdom’s (self-appointed) role as the leader of the post-Colonial Muslim world. But this role was dramatically snatched away by Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian President who came to power through a coup in 1952. Charismatic and articulate, Nasser was hailed as a hero by Muslims around the world when, in 1956, he managed to keep at bay an attack by British and Israeli forces on Egypt.
With his displays of Arab socialism and a modernity suited to the needs of the evolving Muslim polities, Nasser mocked Saudi Arabia of being retrogressive and rigid. For a decade after 1956, Nasser’s Egypt was the undisputed leader of the Muslim world, inspiring large numbers of Muslims in Arab and non-Arab regions alike.
Stung by Nasser’s status in this context, and also by his criticism of Saudi Arabia, the Saudi monarch King Faisal (who came to the throne in 1964) unfolded a hectic modernisation process in Saudi Arabia. However, Nasser’s mystique and influence began to rapidly recede when Egyptian and Syrian forces were decimated by their Israeli counterparts in 1967.
In 1970, Nasser passed away, and Saudi Arabia once again rushed in to pick up the status of the leader of the Muslim world. A windfall of profits made during (and because of) the 1973 oil crisis enhanced the influence of what became known as the “petro-dollar.” And Saudi Arabia had the most.
Faisal cleverly used these to subdue (and win over) Nasser’s successor Anwar Sadat. Faisal was also aware of the ambitions of Pakistani Prime Minister ZA Bhutto, who fancied himself as a champion of the modern Muslim world. But since Pakistan had lost a war in 1971 and its economy was weak, Faisal brought Pakistan fully into the ever-expanding Saudi orbit.
By the 1980s, flush with petro-dollars and with a surge in the popularity of “political Islam” in Muslim countries, Saudi political and religious influence witnessed a manifold increase. It was only challenged by the radical Shia theocracy in Iran. Both countries fought a brutal war of influence through sectarian proxies in countries such as Pakistan and Lebanon.
However, in the new century, events such as the Arab Spring, the fall of dictatorships in Libya, Iraq and Tunisia, civil wars in Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, the emergence of multiple violent anti-State Islamist outfits in most Muslim countries, along with the retreat of the US and the rise of China, began to make various Muslim countries reconsider their strategic priorities and even reinvent their ideological character to strike new alliances. Turkey, which had dropped out of the game of Muslim leadership decades ago, entered the fray again and is trying to lure non-Arab Muslim regions to break away from the Saudi orbit. It is an orbit that had already begun to decay.
This is one reason why the new Saudi monarchs are trying to revive King Faisal’s initial reformist ideas. Whereas the conservative aspect of Saudi ideology was castigated by Nasser’s Egypt in the past, this time it is being challenged by Erdogan’s “neo-Ottomanism”, which is critical of Saudi Arabia for squandering the influence it had enjoyed for decades as the leader of the Muslim world.
Turkey sees itself as a more natural candidate for this role. This title once again is up for grabs.
(Courtesy: Dawn)
A uniform database may be reformatory but as a build-up to simultaneous polls, there’s a political agenda
In what could signal the first step towards changing the electoral apparatus of the country and holding simultaneous polls, top officials at the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) have discussed drawing up a common voters’ list. This means there would be a combined database that would be applicable to local body, Assembly and parliamentary elections. On the face of it, and taken in isolation, this is a favourable move. In fact, as far back as 1999, the Election Commission (EC) had argued for a uniform voters’ list, saying a multiplicity of rolls not only created confusion among voters but led to manipulation by political parties as well. Truth be told, there have been many cases where voters may have figured on the national rolls but not on the local list, simply because different mechanisms handle them. Often the inclusion of voters’ names for local body polls is heavily dependent on volunteers of local parties and, therefore, prone to fudging. Besides, a single voters’ list could also streamline processes and avoid duplication of effort and expenditure. But it is the political implications of the move that may well stall a consensus on what seems expedient. For the ruling BJP, it would mean ticking off another agenda it had promised in its manifesto and centralising control over voters’ lists, and by extension the electoral process in each State. This would be seen as a maximalist move on federalism by regional parties. As of now, the State Election Commissions (SECs) are bound by State laws, are autonomous and empowered to prepare their own electoral rolls for local body elections without coordinating with the EC. If the EC becomes the superintending authority, State Governments wouldn’t want to cede their territorial right to oversee local polls. They wouldn’t want their SECs defanged or their own political stake in Assembly formation compromised by a big-brotherly overlordship. Even the minutest roll revision, factoring in local dynamics, would have to be done through Central intervention. Even if the Centre pushes a constitutional amendment to Articles 243K and 243ZA, that currently give the power of superintendence, direction and control of preparation of electoral rolls and the conduct of local body elections to SECs, States wouldn’t correspondingly change their own laws and could place hurdles in implementation. Besides, one cannot deny this as a run-up to the “one nation one poll” proposal.
This, too, needs careful deliberation and has to be fully compliant with Constitutional checks and balances than just being a talking point. The high-sounding argument is that with States in India’s federal structure going to polls at varied points of time within the Central government’s mandated period of governance, no visionary or decisive steps can be taken or implemented as they would be subservient to electoral politics, which in this country tends to be overtly populist in nature. Besides, it would rid the country from being in a continuous poll mode and instead go in for a performance mode. But it is in the subtext of the Westminster system we have adopted that questions arise about whether a unitary system works best for our federal structure. And in the current political context, whether it threatens the very idea of regionalism itself, considering that in a single election, national issues tend to take centrestage and drown out or at least blur pertinent issues of localised interest, something that regional parties are usually in better command of and base their political relevance on. Although many argue that the Indian voter is evolved enough to make a distinction between the larger national interest and those of his periphery, there is always a possibility that the overarching aura of the former could swamp the judgment call of the voter at the State level, if the prevailing party seeking mandate happens to be of a centrist party. And as the Lok Sabha results have shown, the centrist surge helped the ruling NDA regain its footprint in States, where it had been hit badly in the Assembly elections. Of course, this, too, will require a substantive number of Constitutional amendments to the Representation of People’s Act 1951, the anti-defection law and others relating to rules of procedure with two-thirds majority in both Houses. Besides, such a move does not factor in mid-term situations where a State government may choose to dissolve itself or fall because of a loss of majority. Would the Governor then not call fresh polls or hold on to a moribund Assembly till the dates of the next round of general elections are announced? What if the Central Government falls before the term of the Assemblies ends? As it is, though we call ourselves a federal state, in reality we are a more centralised union of states. The “One nation, one election” formula would further strengthen this idea of a monolithic State. And given the state of disarray the Opposition is in, the BJP is making a loaded move.
Courtesy: The Pioneer
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