By New Age Islam Edit
Bureau
29
September 2020
• A Day before Verdict In Babri Masjid
Demolition Case, A Message From The Epics
By Nalini Singh
• Pakistan’s Opposition, Public Increasingly
Irked by the Military’s Role in Politics
By TCA Raghavan
• UN Must Go Back To Its Original Mandate
By Shyam Saran
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A Day before Verdict in Babri Masjid Demolition
Case, A Message From The Epics
By Nalini Singh
September
29, 2020
The BJP’s
veteran leaders LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Kalyan Singh, Uma Bharati and
28 others, including Sangh Parivar worthies, have been asked to be present in
Lucknow on Wednesday, as Special CBI Judge S K Yadav delivers the judgment on
the criminal conspiracies in the demolition of the “disputed structure” of the
Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, on December 6, 1992. Will the verdict be guilty or
innocent? It is difficult to fathom what some of these notable accused are
thinking today about the destruction of the mosque, since few have spoken
publicly. Uma Bharati is one of the few who has claimed that it does not matter
to her what the judgment will be: “If I am sent to the gallows, I will be
blessed.”
Some of the
prominent accused have denied all charges of conspiracy. Yet today, 24 hours
before the verdict, do some of the accused wish silently that the mosque had
not been flattened, or are they steadfast in their belief that the bruised
Hindu faith was avenged only when the domes of the 500-year old Babri Masjid
crumbled at their feet 28 years ago?
The Supreme
Court has already recognised that the “polestar of faith and belief” among the
Hindus is that the disputed mosque was built on the very temple which was made
sacred by Lord Ram’s birth. Of course, since Ram was yuvraj, son of King
Dashrath, he was doubtless born in the king’s palace, not in a temple (which
would have been built later to consecrate the sacred place).
M R Shamshad writes: Ayodhya — History will be
the judge
Based on
astronomical information on the constellation of stars and eclipses
corresponding to events in the Ramayana, scholars have conjectured that the
events described in the Ramayana took place 7,000 years ago, and that this
sweeping epic was first composed and recited in Sanskrit by sage Valmiki, and
written manuscripts of his compositions have been traced to BCE 200 — that is,
to 2,200 years ago.
Tomorrow’s
judgment on the criminal conspiracy to demolish the 500-year old masjid in
Ayodhya, refers to a relatively recent event in the 7,000-year old belief in
Ram’s birthplace being at the exact spot where the mosque was located.
Thousands of years prior to this demolition, the chronicler of Ram’s life, sage
Valmiki had pointed to two astonishing and complex truths manifested by Ram and
Sita after their return to Ayodhya.
After their
victorious reception in Ayodhya, Sita, who was pregnant, was again faced with a
clamour for proof of her marital fidelity and innocence. Rather than submit to
this ominous demand, Sita took shelter in Valmiki’s ashram where Ram’s twin
sons, Luv and Kush were born. Later, after Ram acknowledged the twins as his
progeny, Sita asked the goddess Earth “to open wide for me” (Sarga 88, verse
11) whereupon “from the surface of the earth there arose an unsurpassed
heavenly throne (verse 12) and Dharini, who was on the throne, took Maithili
(Sita) in her arms…” and they descended below the earth’s surface as Sita
re-entombed herself. Ram ruled Ayodhya benignly for 10,000 years (the cosmic equivalent
of the blinking of an eye) during which Luv and Kush learnt statecraft. But the
Valmiki Ramayan notes in the Uttar Kand (Sarga 99-100), that one day Ram set
forth from the palace on foot to the river Sarayu, with his brothers Bharat and
Shatrughan (Lakshman had died), and when they reached the river, Ram “bodily
entered the sacred water of the Sarayu” and immersed himself fully, as did his
brothers, amid “a blazing energy proper to Vishnu”. Victorious Ram immersed
himself in the river.
Irena Akbar writes: SC’s offer of five-acre
plot to compensate for Babri demolition is charity by privileged to the
underprivileged
Victory did
not tether Ram and Sita to the indulgence of perpetual triumph, and in their
disappearance from the apron of life, they affirmed, one, that there are no
victors in life and, two, that there are no survivors. And this is the
sparkling tissue with which the great Hindu faith is woven. But does the other
Hindu epic, the more recent 5,000-year old Mahabharata affirm this interpretation
of victory and extinction, or does it valorise eternal triumph? Guru Ved Vyas’
epic describes an 18-day war between two sets of cousins, the Pandavas (five in
number) and the Kauravas (numbering 100). The Pandavas swept up a conclusive
victory under the sharp guidance of Lord Krishna through his dialogue with
Arjun, the third Pandava. This dialogue nestles as the invaluable Gita in the
heart of the Mahabharata.
Various
narratives suggest that after vanquishing and killing the Kauravas, the
Pandavas ruled for 36 years over Hastinapur and Indraprastha. But this land had
been laid waste, with most young men killed in the war. The victorious Pandavas
were exhausted, and despite winning all they desired, they were unhappy with
conflicts in the concept of life and living.
Eventually,
bestowing the kingdom upon Parikshit (Arjun’s grandson), the Pandava brothers
and wife Draupadi walked away from the land they had conquered and set off for
the Himalayas. But each of the Pandavas, and Draupadi, died on the way. Only
Yudhishtir reached heaven’s portal with Yama, the god of Death, in the form of
a dog, and yet even he could not enter until he had performed a long penance
for his sins. In essence, the Mahabharata confirms the boundless truths of the
Valmiki Ramayana — about triumph and survival.
Anand
Patwardhan writes: A lesser-known narrative of Ayodhya from 1857 — and the
dispute
So, before
the CBI court’s verdict tomorrow, are the 32 accused of the conspiracy of the
demolition of Babri Masjid asking themselves if they are victors because the
domes were pulverised, or is the “Muslim side” asking itself if a guilty
verdict will be their victory?
For
answers, look back in awe at the great Hindu epic-savants who held that in life
there are no victors and no survivors.
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Nalini Singh is a senior journalist
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/babri-masjid-demolition-case-hearing-supreme-court-lk-advani-murli-manohar-joshi-6621216/
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Pakistan’s Opposition, Public Increasingly
Irked by the Military’s Role in Politics
By TCA Raghavan
Sep 28,
2020
Former
Pakistan prime minister (PM), Nawaz Sharif’s, defiant roar summarises both his
biography and Pakistan’s history over the past three decades. The occasion was
an opposition conference on video on September 20. Quite apart from what the
former PM said, the occasion was significant. The conference was hosted by the
Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). It brought together all the major opposition
parties and leaders. The Pakistan Muslim League (N) — Nawaz Sharif’s party —
coordinating action with the PPP has not been seen for some time. These two
together make up a large chunk of the political spectrum and both are now
increasingly led by charismatic next generation leaders — Nawaz Sharif’s
daughter Maryam Nawaz and Benazir Bhutto’s son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. What is
common to both is that they attach to their names that of a parent who was the
political face of Pakistan for long periods of its history — Nawaz Sharif and
Benazir Bhutto. This is dynastic politics, of course, but it is also real
politics.
What made
the news most was Nawaz Sharif’s broadside against Prime Minister Imran Khan
and his government, of course, but more against those “who installed Imran Khan
and who manipulated elections to bring an incapable man like him into power and
thus, destroyed the country”. Khan’s failures of economic and foreign policy,
on Kashmir, Pakistan’s international isolation, alienation from Saudi Arabia
and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the stagnation of the
China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), thus formed one aspect of the speech.
The real firepower was in the references to the erosion and throttling of
democracy, that “every child knows that no prime minister has been allowed to
complete five years in power”, of a “state above the state”.
All this
refers to the role of the military — euphemistically called the establishment —
in politics. What has been less reported than his references to the military
and the generals were the comments about the judiciary and how it acts in
concert with the military.
Nawaz
Sharif has been PM longer than anyone else — in all over nine years but spread
over three terms in which the first (November 1990-July 1993) and the third
(June 2013-July 2017) are separated by a quarter of a century. While the
military, or at least certain generals, had much to do with his meteoric rise
through the 1980s, once PM, Nawaz Sharif acted as if he was in charge. His
first tenure ended, therefore, with a bitter feud with the president; the second
with a coup after General Pervez Musharraf’s Kargil misadventure; the third with what
amounted to a judicial coup – or so at least many in Pakistan felt. In each
of the three terms, his party had a majority but this was no defence against
the forces arrayed against him.
The third
term was marked by near constant friction with the military on a whole range of
issues. A close political associate and astute observer, former foreign
minister Sartaj Aziz, has recently written: “Nawaz Sharif’s transition away
from the military establishment grew incrementally when his core political
interests or stakes were threatened by the absence of real democracy”. Nawaz
Sharif’s second and third terms stand out for his willingness to walk
Pakistan’s most dangerous minefield — relations with India. That story is well
known. The point, however, is that Nawaz Sharif understood intuitively that his
authority as PM could be cemented only by limiting the role of the military and
for this to happen some improvement of relations, if not normalisation with
India, was essential. Sartaj Aziz also notes, “Fundamentally, Nawaz Sharif did
not fully comprehend the depth and strength of de facto forces and also ignored
the importance of a broader coalition of political forces for establishing the
supremacy of democratic institutions.”
Whether
this present front of opposition unity and better atmospherics between the
leaders of the PML-(N) and the PPP, therefore, heralds something new happening
in Pakistan is too early to say. Nawaz Sharif stands disqualified from politics
for life and effectively in exile. Most Pakistani politicians in the opposition
are fearful of the skeletons in their cupboards and the risk of jail or worse
is real. Yet for all this both the PML-(N) and the PPP have remained largely
intact with no major desertions or breakaways in the past two years. Khan’s
problems, on the other hand, are mounting — not the least of which is managing
the growing clamour in public discourse that the military is too involved in
national affairs. Nawaz Sharif’s speech is designed clearly at advancing this
discourse. Certainly he knows that what displeases the military more than
anything else is an open discussion of its political role. Possibly he believes
that agitation on this front will increase pressure — both on Khan and the
military — and mistakes happen under pressure. The September speech may well mark
Nawaz Sharif’s fourth foray into Pakistan’s murky terrain of curbing the
military. If that is so, then describing Nawaz Sharif as epitomising a man with
his future behind him may well sum up his biography as also Pakistan’s
political history.
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T C A Raghavan is a former high commissioner to
Pakistan. He is currently director-general, Indian Council of World Affairs
https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/pakistan-s-opposition-public-increasingly-irked-by-the-military-s-role-in-politics/story-M46BvE5zUDfqBfIg426xgM.html
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UN Must Go Back To Its Original Mandate
By Shyam Saran
Sep 28,
2020
The
reality is that the original and uplifting vision, which underlay the
establishment of the UN, has lost its focus. (AFP)
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The United
Nations (UN) is observing the 75th anniversary of its founding amid the Covid-19
pandemic. Heads of States/governments marked the occasion with speeches
delivered through the digital medium. They applauded the UN and the role it has
played in the maintenance of international peace and security and in addressing
major social and economic challenges.
The reality
is that the original and uplifting vision, which underlay the establishment of
the UN, has lost its focus. The UN faces a crisis of credibility at the root of
which is the enfeeblement of the spirit of internationalism and related to
that, the diminishing role of multilateral processes in addressing
cross-cutting and global challenges. This is evident in the marginal role that
the UN is playing in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic and the doubts
expressed over the credibility and effectiveness of the World Health
Organization (WHO) in mobilising the international community in the fight
against the virus. Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of the concerns of
countries like India and the need for reform in his address to the UN.
Despite the
pandemic being a global crisis, it is being tackled as a public health
emergency mostly at the national level. The results are suboptimal as is to be
expected. The pandemic has spawned a major economic crisis, but countries are
held in thrall by the growing confrontation between the largest and the
second-largest economies of the world: The United States (US) and China.
Without a minimal agreement between them on supporting the recovery of the
global economy and trade, it is impossible to recreate the G-20 collaboration
which dealt successfully with the global financial and economic crisis of
2007-08.
The World
Trade Organization has been rendered irrelevant by the growing salience of large
multi-nation regional trade and investment arrangements such as the Regional
Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and the increasing recourse to
bilateral deals. Both global economy and trade flows are becoming fragmented
and the international economic environment is less conducive to the development
of countries like India.
Multilateralism
is more important to emerging countries whose bargaining clout is still
limited. But India, too, appears to have adopted the current preference among
major countries to deal with issues through a narrower and more self-centred
nationalism prism. The UN today is a depleted version of its founding ideals
and there are several reasons for this. Its original democratic impulse,
limited though it was by the institution of the UN Security Council with five
permanent members with veto power, is now weak. Resolutions of the UN General
Assembly are rarely taken seriously. Its agenda is limited by the narrow
sensitivities of its most powerful members.
A major
problem relates to finance. The assessed contributions to the UN, based on the
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of its members, is barely enough to support the UN
establishment leaving virtually nothing for its wide range of activities,
including peace-keeping. The UN and its specialised agencies are able to engage
in their mandated activities only through project funding from major donor
countries. They determine where and how these funds will be spent. It should
come as no surprise, therefore, that the activities of the UN are heavily
oriented towards the preferences of the donors and not the priorities of its
larger membership.
Developing
countries who are in the category of middle powers, such as India, Indonesia,
Brazil, South Africa and Mexico, for example, could prevent the capture of the
UN by a small cluster of richer countries, China now among them, through larger
contributions to the general budget. However, even among these countries the
tendency is to mimic the behaviour of the affluent countries. They, too, would
rather seek to influence the activities of the UN to pursue their own foreign
policy aims rather than serve the larger purpose of a relatively more
autonomous UN.
It is now
apparent that in key areas of technology and public health, large multinational
corporations are playing an increasingly influential role. The turnover of five
big tech companies, Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook together
exceeds the GDP of some of the largest economies of the world at over $5
trillion. They run large philanthropic foundations and agencies but it would be
naïve to think that their activities are de-linked from their business
interests. When the UN becomes a partner of these foundations and receives
funds from them, then it is unlikely to encourage any questioning of their
activities. The credibility of the UN is further undermined through these
associations.
The major
powers and more affluent nations have no interest in leading the UN back to its
original vision and mandate. They are comfortable with its current role as
their handmaiden and its collaboration with big business. It is the large
constituency of developing countries, including middle powers like India, whose
interests would be served by a UN which in its role and activities, truly
reflects the interests of its larger membership. I recall my experience as
India’s Alternate Representative to the Committee on Disarmament (CD) in the
early 1980s. The Disarmament Secretariat led by Ambassador Rikhi Jaipal, played
the role of adviser and counsellor to the Non-aligned and Neutral Countries in
the CD, helping them set the agenda, marshal their arguments and acquaint them
with procedural issues. If such secretarial positions are financed by project
funds, independence of action by UN functionaries is impossible. It is these
fundamental issues which need to be addressed by the UN at 75 if it is to
regain its credibility and effectiveness.
----
Shyam Saran is a former foreign secretary and
senior fellow, CPR
https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/un-must-go-back-to-its-original-mandate/story-xICJGY0B40huYjYtTOuLlL.html
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