Why don’t you name it “a corporate, Hindu, satellite state”?

In her interview with Mr.Karan Thapar’s Devil's Advocates Ms.Roy reveals her views on The State and the Naxlites movement etc.

One has to read the full interview. Its quite interesting. Some excerpts:

Karan Thapar: That I understand but do you support any attempt to overthrow the Indian state?

Arundhati Roy: Well, I can't say I do because they will lead me from here, in chains.

Karan Thapar: That technicality apart, it sounds as if you do.

Arundhati Roy: However, I believe that the Indian state has abdicated its responsibility to the people. I believe that. I believe that when a state is no longer bound, neither legally nor morally by the Indian Constitution, either we should rephrase the preamble of the Indian Constitution which says...

Karan Thapar: Or?

Arundhati Roy: Which says we are a sovereign, democratic, secular republic. We should rephrase it and say we are a corporate, Hindu, satellite state.

Karan Thapar: Or?

Arundhati Roy: Or we have to have a government which respects the Constitution or we change the Constitution.

Karan Thapar: Let me be blunt. It sounds very much to the audience as if you are trying to find a clever, subtle way of saying that you do support the Maoists commitment to overthrow the state but you are scared to say it upfront because you are scared that you would be whisked away to jail.

Arundhati Roy: If I say that I support the Maoists' desire to overthrow the Indian State, I would be saying that I am a Maoist. But I am not a Maoist.

Karan Thapar: But you sympathise with them.

Arundhati Roy: I do sympathise with all the movements. I am on this side of the line with a group of people who are saying that here is a State that is willing to bring out the Army against the poorest people not just in the country but in the world. I cannot support that.

Karan Thapar: Let me put this to you. You sympathise with the Maoist cause, but what about the tactics that the Maoists use? The problem is that the Maoists want to trade a new democratic order not by persuading people, not by winning legitimate elections but by armed liberation struggle. To many, that is tantamount to civil war. Do you go that far with them?

Arundhati Roy: There is already a civil war. I don't believe that a resistance movement that believes only in violence will lead to a new democracy. I don't believe that. Neither do I believe that if you doctrinally say you must only be non-violent, I believe that is a twisted way of supporting the status quo. I believe that has to be a bandwidth of resistance and I certainly believe that when your village is surrounded by 800 CRPF men who are raping and burning and looting, you can't say I am going on a hunger strike. Then, I support people's right to resist that.

Karan Thapar: But put this to me. If you support, no matter what qualifications you add, the right of the Maoists to resist with violence: whether you call it armed liberation struggle or whatever.

Arundhati Roy: You keep on going to these Maoists.

Karan Thapar: If you support that, no matter with what qualification, how then can you deny the State the right to resort to arms to defend itself?

Arundhati Roy: The State doesn't have to defend itself. The State is supposed to represent the people and defend the people.

Karan Thapar: But if the State is under attack, it is the people that are under attack and...

Arundhati Roy: It is not under attack. The State is perpetrating the attack. That is what I am

trying to say. The State is going in violation of its own Constitution and perpetrating an attack. If you look at the recent report, the censured chapter in a recent report by the Panchayati Raj, it says so clearly: the State is being completely illegal in its actions. What do you suggest people should do when an army, a police, a paramilitary, an air force is going to start making war on the poor? Do you suggest that they should leave and live in camps and allow the rich and the corporates and the mining sector to take over?

Karan Thapar: So you are saying that the Maoists and all the other resistance fighters are left with no option but to fight back?

Arundhati Roy: What I am saying is that if a State respects non-violent resistance as has been the case in years, but if you ignore non-violence, by default you privilege violence.

Economically died but politically alive-III

Coomi Kapoor has a piece in today's Indian Express on Mrs. G, but this one, she has subsumed views of few who have commented very gregariously. “To give a cross-section of views by prominent journalists on India's controversial iron lady:” She writes.

Some excerpts:

• "Vir Sanghvi praises Indira for her strength and leadership. He says her critics attack her mainly for her dynastic ambitions and her Left-wing economic policies. The Emergency she imposed, he believes, has been forgotten. Sanghvi credits Indira for keeping India together and gives her high marks for strengthening the electoral process and for her foreign policy.
• MJ Akbar believes that India welcomed the realism of Indira Gandhi after the travails of Nehru's idealism. He applauds her for calling elections in 1977 rather than following the example of so many post-colonial dictatorships in Africa and Asia.
• Karan Thapar opines that Indira Gandhi's imprint is not just resilient, but perhaps indelible. "She is not only the best remembered of our politicians, but also, I suspect, the most misunderstood," he says. He recalls his personal interaction with the Gandhi family and recounts an incident when as Prime Minister, Gandhi wanted to make sure that she was not later than the President in arriving for a screening of the film "The Pink Panther". Thapar's sister remarked in amazement, "She is virtually a dictator, yet she's so particular about protocol and politeness."
• Shekhar Gupta, with a more balanced view, feels that Indira was a different Prime Minister in each of her three spells in office. "She changed and evolved, often for the better, sometimes not quite so. She was "insecure about losing power. The extreme leftward swing in her politics came not from any genuine commitment to socialism, but as an ideological camouflage for a series of dictatorial and subversive blunders which she was to regret later."
• Pratap Bhanu Mehta argues that during her tenure, Indira willfully assaulted every single institution: the judiciary, federalism, the police. She tolerated and created a style of politics that was lumpen at its core; an odd combination of corruption, violence and the use of arbitrary power. Her economic policies were largely a disaster. He adds, however, that she was the last leader who truly belonged to the whole of India. The reverence and nostalgia for her has survived, in part because her personal qualities seem to transcend her politics.
• Tavleen Singh notes that Indira Gandhi was a charismatic politician with an amazing ability to convince ordinary Indians that she was their one and only benefactress. But "when I try to remember anything good she did for India from an economic or political point of view, I come up with a very short list. By 1984, when she had ruled India for over 16 years, she succeeded in turning India into a country in which everything was in short supply and everything second-rate."
• My own assessment of India's iron lady comes closest to those of Tavleen and Mehta."

A love that dares speak its name

A love that dares speak its name by Karan Thapar

October 20, 2009First Published: 22:47 IST(20/10/2009)

Last Updated: 22:54 IST(20/10/2009)

• Were Jawaharlal Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten in love? Her daughter, Pamela Hicks, says “the answer undoubtedly is yes”. His sister, Vijayalakshmi Pandit, agreed. How do I know? Her daughter, Nayantara Sahgal, is my mami. She told me.
• Did Jawaharlal Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten make love? Pamela Hicks thinks not but can’t be sure. “Panditji was a widower,” I asked her in 2007, “he needed female affection and he must have wanted it. Your mother was alluring and beautiful. They were so close together. It would be natural for the emotional to become sexual.” This was her reply: “It could be and maybe everybody will think I’m being very naive… but I don’t believe it.”
• Nayantara Sahgal tells me her mother always hoped the answer was yes. Speaking for herself: “I won’t know for sure. It was between two people in private. How can one know?”
• Given that Jawaharlal and Edwina loved each other deeply — and Edwina left behind suitcases of his letters; indeed, several were found on her bedside table — the answer could be yes.
• Of course, none of this is clinching. The truth is we can only make intelligent guesses. We don’t know for sure. But what is beyond doubt is that none of Nehru’s heirs — including Sonia Gandhi, who never ever met him — or any historian can speak definitively on the subject.
• So objections to Joe Wright’s proposed film on Edwina and Nehru, based on Alex Von Tunzelmann’s book Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire, on the grounds that this romance is not proven by historical facts, are themselves patently and verifiably wrong. For the government to deny permission to the producers to film in India unless they amend the script and delete kisses or declarations of love flies in the face of what Edwina’s and Nehru’s own relatives would accept as fact.
• Here’s proof. This is what Pamela Hicks told me in a formal interview: “I believe that they loved being together… they might like to hold hands or to hug or something like that.”
• It’s also, I would add, not the business of government to ‘protect’ the image of Jawaharlal Nehru and to do so in this way is nothing short of censorship.
• First, this business of protection. Nehru was a public figure and he was not ashamed of his love for, or relationship with, Edwina. For his heirs or this government today to demand ‘suitable’ changes would suggest there was something improper, even morally unacceptable. That’s an insult to both Nehru and Edwina.
• Second, is it the business of governments in a democracy to determine or approve how film directors treat historical relationships? The answer is an unequivocal no and both Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi know this. They wouldn’t dare stop biographers — Stanley Wolpert, for example — suggesting Nehru experimented with a homosexual relationship during a holiday in Scandinavia. The only reason they feel they can tamper with Wright’s film is because he wants to make it in India. But isn’t that an abuse of their power to grant permission?
• Instead, the government should focus on what Edwina and Jawaharlal meant to each other. As Nehru wrote in his letters: “I realise that there was a deeper attachment between us, that some uncontrollable force drew us to one another.” Lord Mountbatten confirms this. As he told his other daughter, Patricia: “She [Edwina] and Jawaharlal are so sweet together. They really dote on each other.”

1.5 lakh crore ID project: Relevant and Risk

Some excerpts from Karan Thapar CNN-IBN interview with Nandan Nilekani

• “…the London School of Economics did an analysis and survey of a similar project that was being considered by the British Government and this is the conclusion that they have come to: “The technology envisioned for this scheme is to a large extent untested and unreliable. No scheme on this scale has been undertaken anywhere in the world. Smaller and less ambitious systems have encountered substantial technological and operational problems that are likely to be amplified in a large scale national system”.
• The second problem inherent is the problem of cost. Once again, the London School of Economics (LSE) did an analysis of a similar project that the British government was thinking of, and that remember is a country which is one-twentieth the size of India and the LSE concluded that the probable cost for Britain would be between 10 to 20 billion pounds.
• ‘Frontline’ magazine believes that the government in India has a guesstimate of somewhere around Rs 1.5 lakh crore. Is it worth it at that cost?
• ..the LSE came to when they reviewed a potential British concept along the lines of what you are doing in India: "The success of a national identity system depends on a sensitive cautious and cooperative approach involving all key stakeholders, including an independent and rolling assessment and regular review of management practices," and the LSE concluded that did not exist in the UK.”

The coming months will be more interesting to see what happens with UID and Mr Nandan Nilekani.

How do you corroborate Nandan’s risk with IG Patel’s when he was Director of LSE?

Why? Who are we? How do we fit into this cosmic process? I don’t know --- explain!

Amit Mitra said:

“It was a centre for inquiry. It was a very stern one though, and the Principal was known for caning as much as for his staunch anti-Communism. When he learnt I was reading Marx, I was put under coventry, meaning I could not talk to any one, for a total of eight months. As a reward for my stubbornness and capacity to stand up to him, he made me principal monitor! And over time I became a committed non Marxist. This was mostly due to my uncle’s influence. He belonged to the Democratic Socialists, typically the most anti-Communists in India, because they read Marx and deferred with him. He introduced me to Arthur Koestler’s “God that Failed” and I began to think. He would constantly feed me with books as a counterforce to a regimented undemocratic society.”

Karan Thapar said in a interview to the Indian Express:

“Charley gave me all the confidence because he saw some spark in me which he was prepared to risk and nurture. I did not get everything right, but he covered up, supported me and helped me. Though many people viewed him as arrogant, extremely opinionated, with aristocratic airs, I saw him as someone tremendously inspirational. And I told myself that if I ever am a boss with younger people working with me, I should do the same three things: spot talent, nurture it, and have the courage to stand by that person when he or she is making mistakes.”