The Mary Of Economics Politics Defence Strategy Philosophy Semantics Intellect Itself

Analysing a nursery rhyme is probably a mistake. Analysing the sayings of a person who might be thinking as deeply as the least of nursery rhymes, is probably even more fraught. But both drip with hidden meaning. Code. Social commentary. It is another thing that time divests them of context and nursery rhymes revert to being just a child’s delight at playtime.

When people fell down in Ringa-Ringa-Roses, they were apparently being picked off by the Plague that seized London in 1665-1666 and killed 100,000 people. Hence, Atishoo Atishoo/We all fall down. Who knew this as children when we were all busy falling down most happily?

The one that comes to mind today in context of ‘Thus Spake Rahul Gandhi’, not Zarathustra or Superman, with due apologies to Friedrich Nietzsche, the syphilitic, and eventually insane German political scientist, is Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary. Her garden is still populated with Silver Bells and Cockleshells/And Pretty Maids all in a row.

In the 18^th century rhyme, first seen in 1744, Mary, referred to the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, from the 16^th century. The Silver Bells were Church bells. The Cockleshells were heraldic badges associated with pilgrims off to a Spanish shrine dedicated to St. James, and the Pretty Maids were Catholic nuns.

Mary had to be Contrary because it is a Protestant nursery rhyme. There are other interpretations, involving progeny or lack thereof, infidelity, ladies-in-waiting, the other Queen, Mary Tudor, also from the 16^th century. Complicated code, certainly.

Why does the Mary nursery rhyme suit Rahul Gandhi as an echo on his most recent foreign sojourn? The Gandhi scion has been working on his alternate reality for quite some time now. He likes being contrary because he knows it teases, and provokes media coverage. It fits in with his burning desire to upset the Modi thela, even the entire Indian applecart.

To wit, Rashtra, Sanskrit for Nation, mentioned long ago by Chanakya, and Nation, the word itself, mentioned in the Preamble to the Constitution, translates as Kingdom to Rahul Gandhi, and not Nation.

This, when challenged by a young Indian student at Cambridge who asserted that an ancient people, with a sense of nationhood, created a constitutional republic for themselves in 1950. Not that the long-winded Indian Constitution gave birth to the concept of nation, or the sense of nationhood, or even the ‘Union of States’. The Indian Constitution is a document that has been much amended in the last 75 years, mostly during the Congress years.

Nation is a Western concept, insisted Rahul Gandhi. As if, the notion could not have occurred to a genetic Indian at all, before, during, or after independence.

But please notice, apart from this interrupting student Siddhartha Verma, the format of all his interactions was that there was no questioning what he said. The carefully chosen and fawning interviewer, saw to it, whether in London or Cambridge. The outrage he caused however is all over the Indian media, with the more salty interpretations visible on social media.

Nobody in Britain outside his band of wannabe Che Guevaras, (Some in need of an English-Hindi dictionary, others in need of assistance to walk, yet others looking for stocks of adult diapers), seemed to notice or care.

It is strange that none of the others in Rahul Gandhi’s retinue, including the normally Machine-gun Kelly Mohua Moitra, seemed to speak at all, or if they did, nobody bothered to report what they said.

Not even the forlorn figure that the Labour Party disgrace Jeremy Corbyn cuts these days. He looked crestfallen, embarrassed, quite apologetic in the photo standing between Rahul Gandhi and Sam Pitroda. He wanted to distance himself from his earlier anti-India pronouncements. The road-roller of official opinion on India from the Tory government has been over his person at least once or twice from the looks of it.

As we know, Britain is about to sign a defence technology transfer pact with India, and is rapidly approaching the completion of a Free Trade Agreement draft that Boris Johnson hopes to sign with Narendra Modi ‘By Diwali’, Party-Gate willing.

India is a union of states born of a strenuous negotiation, said Rahul Gandhi, implying it is free to secede at any time. This is the man’s essential wet dream, because to call it an agenda gives it more credit than it can muster. It is a tantrum, translatable as, if I can’t rule India, I want to see it break up.

Rahul Gandhi had been practising some of his ideas even while in India. He suddenly called Modi a ‘King’ in one of his expressions a little while back. Perhaps, the public thought, it was his comeback for Modi calling him Yuvraj, and Dynast and Sahebzada.

This was juxtaposed with ‘he does not listen’, like a piqued housewife. Nor do the institutions of government, he said. Of course, Gandhi was hoping to project Modi’s alleged dictatorial tendencies, but few can compete with him when he works to seriously seem ridiculous.

Rahul Gandhi frequently used his ‘Union of States’ line, the Brahmastra in his repertoire. He had used it earlier in parliament. It was out of any present context, but how does that bother him? Most of the public could not have cared less about his semantic hair-splitting. The idea that he was promoting the breaking-up of India into little pieces has never been taken seriously or taken root. It is a fantasy like Rahul Gandhi’s intellectualism. It is propped up by his out-of-power coterie of hangers-on. Who are they? Malevolent anti-nation, any nation, Communists. And  ‘Limousine Liberals’. Those who urgently ask for chicken sandwiches in vegetarian Gujarat, rather than the to-do list. Leftist theorists, dreaming of being the next Marx. The Bollywoodian supporter. The Rangeen Sapne brigade of Mungari Lal, brought on by indigestion. Plus, the mythical but ever loyal people who inhabit Jhumri Talliya.

Rahul Gandhi said, to an incredulous, saucer-eyed interviewer in Cambridge, trying to keep up with his acute logic, and not ‘stump’ him with anything at all, that China had promised ‘Prosperity’. They’ve given $100 billion to Pakistan, he said, with assurance. So why is India working on a defence pact with America to prevent China from making India prosperous? He actually looked pleased with himself after this sally.

Psst… Rahul, we run significant bilateral trade deficits with both China and America, as it happens. So, we are helping to make both prosperous, struggle as they might to return the compliment. China has contributed money to your Party and the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, but the rest of us should be so lucky. You cannot go around saying let them eat cake quite so blatantly, don’t you think?

Rahul Gandhi has apparently not heard of the terms on which China lends, not gives, money. Besides which $100 billion is he speaking of? Nowhere near as much has been disbursed on the CPEC so far, and China is currently very cross with Pakistani payback. This kind of potato to gold money is only paid in the alternate universe Rahul Gandhi inhabits. I am resisting further comparisons out of Alice in Wonderland here, or this entire article will turn into mush.

Stumped he was, despite the best efforts of the interviewer to give/throw him baby easy balls, on the question of a ‘compact between violence and non-violence in Indian society’ (if any). After an interminable pause, when perhaps he could find no connection, Rahul Gandhi finally said ‘forgiveness,’ like a good Christian who is nevertheless a Janeudhari Brahmin. But this was Corpus Christi College after all.

Not bad, actually. If you are advocating ‘mass movements’ and speaking of a kerosene sprinkled landscape waiting for a spark, you are likely to be in need of forgiveness. That is for sure. But only after you’ve been through a cleansing ritual involving a drink of gaumutra and dung, on return from your sojourn over the black water.

(1,317 words)

May 25^th, 2022

For: Firstpost

Gautam Mukherjee

 

Abandoned Mocked Powerless Scion Cries Out For Western  Approval

When Napoleon lost to a coalescing of rival Western powers, in 1814, after failing to conquer Russia, he was forced to abdicate. The erstwhile Emperor was banished to the close-by island of Elba, from where he was able to make a comeback. When he lost again, after a brief season of 100 days in power, this time at the bloody battle of Waterloo, he was exiled to Saint Helena, a remote island in the Southern Atlantic. Napoleon Bonaparte could never leave Saint Helena. It was where he eventually died, at the age of 52.

The year 1815, when Napoleon fell for the last time, marked the end of French domination of Europe. 

In a very real sense, 2014 marked the end of Congress domination of electoral politics in India. But it consoles itself by saying you may have the government but we have the system. While this was largely true in 2014, it is less so in 2022, and if things go according to present indications, it will be quite untrue in 2029.

Subsequently, after May 2014, there was further decline. Congress lost power in most of the states, union territories and municipalities. It even lost most local body and panchayat elections. It lost the next general election in 2019 as well.

It has lost in all five states that went to the polls in 2022, and has bleak prospects for those going to the hustings in 2023. It is in no shape to challenge the BJP/NDA at the general elections in 2024.

If the Hindu Nationalist BJP wins in 2024, it will be for the third consecutive term of five years at the Centre.

There is a reason for the erosion of Congress credibility. It runs a narrative that suits itself. For example, it denies all culpability for China capturing large tracts of Indian territory under its watch. This, even while criticising the present government’s efforts at resisting further salami-slicing. Criticism of the handling of Covid stands in sharp contrast to most nations standing in admiration of India’s work on it. It has called Modi a thief, when its own corruption is legion.

The economic challenges being faced post-Covid and due to the pressures generated by the Ukraine war are again sharply criticised by Rahul Gandhi and Congress in a very selective manner.

Even an inflation attacking cut in excise duty by the centre on fuel, subsidy on fertilizer and cut in cooking gas prices for the poor, is seen as too little too late.

Rahul Gandhi, an improbable prime minister-in-waiting, will be 52 on the 19^th of June 2022. It has been eight years since the Congress Party lost power, reduced to a little over 40 seats in parliament.

Out of it since, unloved, mocked, powerless, Rahul Gandhi must feel enervated, betrayed by the people, wounded.  He is even challenged for fitness to lead by other contenders in the Opposition.

Though he has never held any public office other than that of Congress President, Rahul Gandhi, a probable Roman Catholic, is in a kind of purgatory even as he lives and breathes.

He is widely regarded as the politically incompetent scion of a storied ruling dynasty with no future in politics. But since Rahul Gandhi is unable to walk away from the politics, which is, after all, his inheritance, his public suffering is continuous. This, even as he makes do with his immense if mysterious prosperity, frequent holidays, a shadowy private life, and lapses into imperial remoteness. As an ostensible bachelor at 52, people sometimes speculate on a hidden family abroad. But again, if true, why hidden?

This being put out in political limbo without end, not just by opposing politicians, but the voting public of India, would tend to addle the most sophisticated of brains. But for a person of the calibre of Rahul Gandhi with his sheltered upbringing and early age loss traumas, it must be doubly difficult. The street-smarts and mass contact that is so much a part of democratic politics is alien to him.

The scion therefore seems to operate from a set script prepared by his handlers. They in turn cite extensive research but seem out of touch themselves. Take for instance, his sporting of a bandgala suit in sober grey-brown this time. It is an echo of his father from more than 30 years ago. Rahul may look uncomfortable playing this dress-up, but his handlers have prescribed it. They did likewise when they essayed his sister Priyanka Gandhi in Uttar Pradesh for the elections. They dressed her up to remind people of Indira Gandhi. It proved useless. Most of the present electorate has no first-hand recollection of Rajiv Gandhi or Indira Gandhi.

When you have old men who run your political image, this is what happens.

 But why do they put such terrible things in his mouth, or is some of it a requirement from a prescribed play book when you take money from Pakistan and China?

He called the IFS arrogant on the basis of his conversation with a few foreign diplomats. The foreign diplomats in question probably don’t like India’s neutral stance on the conflict in Ukraine. Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar reacted to Rahul Gandhi’s criticism by saying Indian diplomats look out for Indian interests and are confident, not arrogant. Others pointed out that diplomats today work for India, and not to arrange college admission in Oxbridge for undeserving candidates from the Gandhi family.

He then spoke of how the BJP has sprinkled kerosene all over the country and all it takes is a spark. He said the situation is not good in India. He called for a mass movement to oppose the Modi government. He said the government does not brook any criticism nor allow anyone to speak. What he might be trying to say is that he speaks and speaks and still nobody listens.

Rahul Gandhi is often called stupid. But this time the commentary on his pronouncements called him dangerous. Some even called for punishment.

Once again, Rahul Gandhi, sitting in London, trotted out the semantic cue card he had first used in parliament, the one on India not being a nation, but a ‘union of states’.

All this runs tonally to the script of joining hands with Leftist, Islamic, Anti-India forces that want to see it crash and burn. The cheerleader meanwhile wears a grey-brown bandgala like his dear dead dad, whose death anniversary was on the 21^st of May. Rahul pointedly called Rajiv Gandhi a great visionary.

Home Minister Amit Shah, a little exasperated with all the erratic babbling, suggested Rahul Gandhi take off his Italian glasses, at least when he is abroad.

This kind of attention-seeking jamboree, in different foreign venues, one recalls Singapore from a few years ago, has become a trademark of Rahul Gandhi’s time in the political wilderness. What has it achieved so far? Greater marginalisation of the Congress Party certainly, and contempt for his thoughts. He cannot be an intellectual using cue cards written by others.

The rest of the line-up for the portrait photos in England, were also mostly dressed in throwback sarkari gear.

They included former Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid (Oxbridge), Communist supremo Sitaram Yechury, who goes to London every summer anyway, familiar Rahul Gandhi handler Sam Pitroda, from the Gujarati end of Chicago, Trinamool Congress’ fluent English speaker Mahua Moitra, former deputy Chief Minister of Bihar Tejaswi Yadav, Telangana Minister KT Rama Rao, and a collection of other, not directly political, odds and sods.

Amongst the others was the desi CEO of British charity Oxfam’s India operation. Several Indians connected to Amnesty and its subsidiaries, recently discredited for money laundering and FCRA violations, with over rupees 17.66 crores in seized assets. A junior partner from the Congress promoting digital publication Newslaundry. The Congress-backing Samruddha Bharat, with several of its trustees/members who are direct beneficiaries of the Grand Old Party.

It was possibly an effort to mimic the very successful events routinely organised around Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s official visits abroad. But those are force multipliers, for both Modi’s image and that of India.

Here it is an annual (Covid disruption apart), facile, anti-national bad-mouthing of not only the Narendra Modi administration, via audacious lies, unsubtle euphemisms and blunt inuendo, but a trashing of the country as well.

The United Kingdom, on its part, seemed to officially ignore the events, first in London, the ‘Ideas for India’, and then at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, for ‘India @ 75’.

On May 23^rd Rahul spoke to one Dr Shruti Kapila, a Congress favouring Associate Professor of Indian History and Global Political Thought there, in a closed-door ticketed event for Cambridge members and students only. In addition, Rahul interacted with members of the Indian diaspora, bandhgala style, both in London and Cambridge.

The invites went out from an outfit called Bridge India, a non-profit think-tank, again with strong links to Oxfam, Amnesty, Congress, and others. 

Meanwhile, back home, in Congress, there is dissidence and abandonment, empty coffers, and a broken election machine, that a recent Chintan Shivir at Udaipur did little to fix.

But it was not always like this. It almost reads like a soap opera. Rahul’s mother, the Italian born Sonia Gandhi, widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, had been ruling via remote control. There was a highly biddable Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, nominated by her to the gaddi, for the decade from 2004-2014. 

While it lasted, the Gandhi dynasty could do no wrong. Ranging from Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, Indira Gandhi, Rahul’s grandmother, father Rajiv, it had directly and collectively ruled for four decades. Include the Sonia remote control years, and it is nearly 50 years out of India’s 75 years since independence.

Meanwhile, on May 23^rd- 24^th, on the other side of the world, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is attending the in-person QUAD Summit in Tokyo and has been holding the requisite bilateral meetings as also quite a few with Japanese business and industry.

(1,667 words)

May 23^rd, 2022

For: Firstpost

Gautam Mukherjee

 

Why Are Sweden And Finland Likely To Apply For Full NATO Membership

 The fog of war and the plumes of acrid smoke when you are close enough, has some heading for the exits. It gives you wings. It is the panic of hope.  But how will it be safer outside when the missiles are striking? Is outside really outside when those borders are still exactly where they were? Is the fear that Russia could invade (again), before the all-for-one-and-one-for-all NATO cover comes about?

Alexandre Dumas, the amazing 19^th century Black Frenchman wrote The Three Musketeers, which was actually about four, after you count the essential D’Artagnan. The story was a thrill a minute saga about loyalty and brotherhood, rather than politics or humiliating Cardinal Richelieu’s private militia. 

It does not have a lot in common with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), a prosaic and blunt military hardware-cum-boots-on-the-ground style insurance policy, originally to take on the Soviet Communists behind the Iron Curtain. But, this hoary insurance policy, will it pay out when the claim is presented in the ongoing 21^st century, with 32 countries on the bus?

Every day that NATO grows bigger, with more dependants than actors, this becomes the $64 billion dollar question. Incidentally, $63 billion is what America has spent or committed to the Ukraine war, in under three months, even as institutional bankers warn of a hard American recession to come. Is NATO as panacea even as formidable as it is made out to be?

Is the much-touted Article 5 of the NATO founding treaty, which enshrines the principle of collective defence, really effective in practice. NATO has attacked countries such as Kosovo and Libya unilaterally. After 9/11 it was more or less a US operation against Afghanistan, with only token participation of a few NATO allies. Most NATO allies, as President Donald Trump complained, didn’t pay their bills or pull their weight. Has Ukraine changed all this? For how long?

 For Ukraine, America’s Raytheon Missile Systems is struggling to resurrect the Soviet era Stinger missile, a shoulder-held man-portable air defense system (MANPADS), still very useful today for taking out Russian tanks and helicopters. But the 1980s parts are out-of-production today. The Stingers, and Javelin anti tank weapon, in service since 1996, need constant upgrading.  And the manufacturers, probably interested in selling far more expensive weapons systems, are scrambling to meet demand.

Then, there are the several kinds of attack drones from various NATO countries. Tanks, armoured cars, bombs, helicopters, fighter planes, much of the expensive stuff that ruled yesteryear wars, are still great for bombing, strafing and taking over non-nuclear countries in Africa, Arabia or Asia. Otherwise, they seem to be obsolete. 

It’s the age of missiles of many kinds, sometimes fired far away from the target, others out of a backpack; some a bit bigger, handy soldier-carried loitering drones, anti-tank weapons, and the like.

The implication is small powers can make them quickly and at no great cost. Quad bikes with shoot ‘em up gadgetry atop are doing better in all terrain situations.

As for nuclear weapons, it is a zero-sum game. Even tactical nukes cannot be used. Besides, Russia, mostly unloved in Europe now, is still the opposite number in a new Cold War, and the world’s second deadliest nuclear power.

 So why are Sweden and Finland likely to apply for full NATO membership circa 2022? Sweden has been a member of the EU since 1995, is already a NATO partner country, and is, of course, in the UN. Finland has been in the Organisation For Economic Cooperation (OECD) since 1969, and joined the NATO Partnership for Peace in 1994, the EU in 1995, the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council in 1997, the Eurozone in 1999, and likewise is a member of the UN. Both are already entwined with NATO and the EU in protection treaties. The neutrality that they profess is therefore partial.  This is really a last step in a growing embrace.

Besides, their recent experiences with the Soviet Union during WWII, being brutally conquered and dominated thereafter, have caused Sweden to maintain a good level of arms manufacturing and an impressive Navy in the Baltic Sea. Finland has not relented on developing crack troops for 30 years, to take on Russia should the day ever come back again.

The moot point is that a rampant Russia scares them, and revives old genetic memories as well as relatively new ones. Besides public opinion polls in both countries now want them to join NATO with around 50%  to 70% saying so, up from around 25%.

It was Tsar Peter the Great, after his period of tutelage incognito in Europe, who returned to a feudal Russia, modernised his armed forces, his own attitudes, and indeed his court practices to an extent.

Then, he promptly attacked Sweden, a shock in early 1700, and conquered Finland, then the Eastern part of Sweden. Tsar Peter’s troops and Cossacks kept rampaging through the Swedish countryside till the peace treaty of Nystad in 1721, made Finland, Estonia and Latvia, all part of the Russian Empire. It also ended Sweden’s great power status.

During WWII however, Sweden ostensibly neutral, first leaned to facilitate the actions of the Germans, and later did the same for the Allies. In Ukraine, both countries have already sent in armaments and humanitarian aid.

This outing of Tsar Peter also gave landlocked Russia a relatively warm water port on the Baltic Sea, and the chance to build a Baltic fleet. Tsar Peter built a new capital at St. Petersburg, on the site of the old Swedish town of Nyen, later Leningrad, then Stalingrad, and now once again, St Petersburg.

Turkey, a NATO member sitting opposite Russia on the Black Sea, has already raised objections based on long standing Swedish and Finnish support to Kurdish rebels in Syria. As many as 33 extradition requests to release the Kurdish rebels to Ankara have been denied over a decade.

To admit Sweden and Finland, the existing NATO members must agree unanimously. Western media is talking of American pressure, even sanctions, to force an economically savaged Turkey, with 70% inflation, to fall in line. NATO itself expects to smooth things over with Ankara so that they don’t stand in the way.

 It is hoping for a fast tracking that could see both countries as NATO members within this year.

With all the cracks and strains in the NATO alliance that have surfaced, just in the last three months, the chances of its long term cohesion are in doubt.

Likewise the EU, propped up by the economies of Germany and France, neither very happy with the America forced sanctions on Russia.

Switzerland, normally very discreet, has suggested America get out of Europe forthwith.

There are food shortages – wheat, bread, cooking oil, inflation, spiking fuel and gas prices. Slovakia won’t share its food. Hungary wont sanction Russia. Germany can’t do without Russian piped gas. Serbia staunchly backs Russia even though it has applied for EU membership.

In fact, Russia has gained handsomely over the last three months from its oil and gas exports to Europe. Its insistence on being paid in Roubles pegged to the price of Gold, after being excluded from the SWIFT mechanism has worked. This has lifted the value of the Rouble to unprecedented levels even as the US dollar and the Euro are tanking.

American gas prices have risen as it tankers in the LPG to Europe, and this has  begun to starve American industry. 

Turkey is fighting the Kurds in Syria. The Russians are fighting in Syria too, along with Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah in support of the durable President Assad and his regime.

In support of the rebel groups are the Israelis, the Americans, the Germans, the British, the French, the Dutch, Qatar, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and sundry others. The Kurdish and ISIS seem to be fighting their own war within a war. All participants and logistical supporters are jostling together in a very complicated militia ridden war without end. It has already been over a decade.

Could the war in Ukraine, very young yet, become as much of a convolution as Syria, if not as prolonged? It also has multiple proxies in the theatre, ‘contractors’, mercenary groups, a wide variety of heavy and light armaments, some of them being tested for the first time in a real war.

Russia has stuck to its own weaponry so far, but in terms of fighting men it too has its favourite imports from Syria, in addition to the fierce Chechen. Apparently, Turkey, getting high marks for the performance of its Bayraktar TB2 drones, does as well.

But Russia, vast as it is, will have to consolidate its relations with Central Asia, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia-Pacific, India, China.

There have been 16 new NATO members since the fall of the Berlin Wall. This addition will make it a massive 32. Many had to adapt from former Soviet ways to suit the NATO alliance. Sweden and Finland have been semi-NATO members for some time now, sitting in on NATO meetings, military exercising with it, going on peace-keeping missions. 

What will happen next is dependent on the military equipment and infrastructure placed in Finland, Sweden, in the Baltic Sea and the Arctic. Russia will have to respond with counter-measures.

(1539 words)

May 17^th, 2022

For; Firstpost

Gautam Mukherjee

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Singapore Is Not Happy With India At Red China’s Behest

Why did Singapore ban the Kashmir Files to the gleeful delight of a senior member of our own Indian National Congress Party? That the Congress point of view increasingly concurs with that of China and Pakistan and Islamic radicals is an important, if worrisome part of the public discourse.

Ostensibly, Singapore banned it because the film seemed to portray Kashmiri Muslims in a ‘one-sided’ bad light. It had also banned, years ago, ‘The Last Temptation of Christ,’ presumably because it portrayed the ancient Romans in a bad light.

Singapore said, under its film classification guidelines, ‘any material that is denigrating to racial or religious communities in Singapore’ will be refused classification.

While Buddhism accounts for 31.1% of the population of Singapore, added to by Taoism and other Chinese religions at 8.8%, Islam is represented by 15.6% and Hinduism by a mere 5%. Even the Catholics count for more at 7%. But the religions practiced by the majority ethnic Chinese account for 40%.

Singapore has a nice deep-water port from which it has gained its significance. It is the maritime capital of the world, as of 2015, with the second busiest port in terms of tonnage handled. It is also the world’s busiest transshipment port, handling amongst other things, 50% of the world’s annual supply of crude oil. It used to be the world’s No.1 port in terms of tonnage handled, till, you guessed it, Shanghai overtook it in 2005.

Singapore is located at the extreme tip of the Malay Peninsula. The colonial British, who arrived as early as 1819, established a Crown Colony in 1867. In 1963 Singapore became part of independent Malaysia, but was expelled by the former for its fractiousness, and became independent in 1965.

The British had used Singapore for an entrepot trade, and brought in a large number of ethnic Chinese, who are also represented in lesser number in Malaysia. Ethnic Chinese form the bulk of the population of Singapore to this day. Some ethnic Indians, largely from South India, mostly descendants of the erstwhile rubber plantation indented labourers, also found their own way in from Malaysia.

Still, the Chinese part of the population, some 75.9% of the total, accounts for over  4.5 million of about 6 million. It is the Chinese that dominate business and politics. Ethnic Malays account for 15% of the rest, and ethnic Indians for 7.5%. The rest have Eurasian blood, alongside a significant expatriate European, American and Indian presence.

All this in the thumb-nail sized city state of just 700 sq.km, with a population density of nearly 8,500 people per square kilometre.  

The Singapore authorities told Channel News Asia about the Kashmir Files, ‘The film will be refused classification for its provocative and one-sided portrayal of Muslims and the depictions of Hindus being persecuted in the on-going conflict in Kashmir’.

Not a word about the factual portrayal of Kashmiri Pandit genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forcible expulsion by Kashmir Valley Sunnis, 30 years ago, which is the actual subject of the film. That, and the complicit role played by the Valley politicians, in cahoots with the Congress Party and its government at the Centre.

No, the Singapore authorities emphasise the ‘on-going conflict’, and the ‘provocative and one-sided portrayal’.  

They added ‘These representations have the potential to cause enmity between different communities, and disrupt social cohesion and religious harmony in our multiracial and multi-religious society’. Pretty unctuous, but also angry with India. But why?

As movie review it wouldn’t pass muster, given that the film, directed by Vivek Agnihotri, has been received rapturously in multiple multiracial and multi-religious countries around the world. UAE banned it briefly before lifting it. New Zealand gave it a more restricted classification, from R 16 to R 18.

So, is this hostile over reaction, or just the political stance of a Singapore allying itself to the Chinese and Pakistani position?

Red China of course, has its reasons and vested interests. With increased business interaction with tiny Singapore as sanctions are imposed on it, Singapore is more than a little beholden.

China has illegally built a road through Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) as part of the embattled China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), linking Xinkiang in China to Gwadar Port in Balochistan. It is very concerned at the rapid and positive changes being wrought by India in its Jammu and Kashmir Union Territory (J&K), with an increasing possibility that India could make a move, military, political, and diplomatic, to reclaim its territory in PoK, as well as Gilgit Baltistan before long.

Singapore is simply playing along. But there is also a recent history that is not just club loyalty.

 The first salvo fired by none other than the Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsein Loong, was after India banned a Chinese app rolled over via Singapore- Sea Ltd.’s Free Fire’ gaming app. This caused it $ 16 billion in losses in a day. Earlier India had already banned as many as 54 Chinese Apps with major losses accruing to it, because of continued Chinese bellicosity along the Line of Actual Control (LaC).

In this instance, Sea Ltd. stock, listed in New York, fell 18% overnight. The shareholders of Sea Ltd. which still have other wares operating in India besides the Sea Fire App, such as its e-commerce arm Shopee, are overwhelmingly Red Chinese via TenCent. Shopee, while not yet banned, has seen a decline in interest.

Soon after this, Prime Minister Lee Hsein Loong criticised the ‘decline of Nehru’s India’ in a marked attack against the Modi government. He said, nearly 50% of the members of the Indian parliament today are facing criminal charges including rape and murder, in a gratuitous set of remarks on India’s internal affairs. They were made at the Singapore parliament in mid-February 2022 and promptly objected to by India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).

Singapore has business to protect with Red China. It has made its choice despite its Indian ethnic minority and other presence.

The hypocrisy with regard to the Kashmir Files film is glaring because it is just the latest veiled attack on India. This is a consequence of the company Singapore now keeps. But with a population of a mere 6 million it is unlikely to make a dent in the film’s box office.

Meanwhile, film maker Vivek Agnihotri called the wordy Congressman who was clapping at the ban a  ‘fopdoodle’, meaning stupid, and a ‘gnashnab’, meaning a habitual complainer. Good dictionary mining that.

Agnihotri also called the Singapore censor one of the most ‘regressive in the world’, and listed 48 films banned by Singapore that did well around the world.

 

(1,098 words)

May 11^th, 2022

For :Firstpost

Gautam Mukherjee

 

The Indian Diaspora Is A Diplomatic Force Multiplier

Before Narendra Modi became prime minister in May 2014, the ruling Congress, at the head of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), painted him out to be a communal demagogue with blood on his hands. 

It urged the United States and most of the Western embassies along the Shanti Path in New Delhi to not even speak to the man, let alone invite him to their countries, or grant him a visitor’s visa.

They were fairly convinced that Modi, sneeringly called a ‘chai-wala’ by a senior Congress leader, could never become prime minister.

They did not reckon with the discipline of the RSS karyakarta Modi was for many a obscure year before being sent into electoral politics and governance. The Congress also ignored Modi’s elected popularity as a three-term Chief Minister of Gujarat. 

Nevertheless, Narendra Modi, who Sonia Gandhi called ‘Maut ka Saudagar’ was for a time something of a persona non grata, and was actually not granted a US visitor visa.

However, when he won at the head of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the first thumping majority in thirty years, President Barack Obama immediately despatched the US Ambassador in India from New Delhi to Ahmedabad with an invitation to come to America on a state visit at the earliest.

Narendra Modi has an easy familiarity with other heads of state and government. He carries himself with dignity, and gets along famously with most, replete with his propensity to hug them. His early friend ‘Barack’ for example, soon after becoming prime minister, was hugged. And they poured tea for each other.

Much water has flowed down the Ganga since.

Modi has demonstrated how to fill vast Stadiums abroad with his erstwhile countrymen and women. Fill them with ticket-buying, cheering, patriotic, ethnic Indians.  This is a feat on this scale not matched by other politicians or heads of government in the 21^st century.

The shift in the diaspora’s attitude towards India and Narendra Modi was engineered at the ministerial level by the former Foreign Minister the late Sushma Swaraj, responding with succour and action to tweets of any Indian in trouble abroad, however humble he may be.

And at the top, Modi’s unprecedented mobilisation of the diaspora juggernaut for long taken for granted by earlier Indian prime ministers. Occasionally, if an ethnic Indian was awarded the Nobel Prize or a literary prize, there was a brief flurry of excitement. The government however saw Indians abroad, the useful NRI as well as the Indians who were now foreign citizens and PIOs, as a source of massive inward remittances, the largest in the world. But they were not acknowledged or thanked as people by the head of government.

Modi was the first to see the diaspora as allies, benefactors, and unofficial ambassadors. And if some were Muslim, all the better. Fact is, there is no place on earth where you can’t find an ethnic Indian.

Indian diplomacy developed two new dimensions under him that not only improved the image and prestige of every ethnic Indian on the planet, but changed international diplomacy itself. The Indian prime minister stretched it beyond what was earlier thought possible or proper.

Even the Chinese, numerous and influential as they are, could never match it in terms of amiability, though their money diplomacy has captured much of the Western media, the UN, and a number of other institutions and officials.

The ‘Swaraj spirit’ has seen Indians and other stranded nationalities of civilians, nurses, students, hostages, being rescued from battle zones and disaster areas by Indian civilian and military aircraft, mostly free of charge, sometimes after organising facilitation and assistance from rival groups and third countries.

This shift in response policy towards Indian citizens abroad has been carried forward not only by her successor, current EAM S. Jaishankar, but by Prime Minister Modi himself, in a major departure from the practices of the past.

Earlier, Indian lives were thought perhaps to be cheap and dispensable, unless those who needed assistance were important, connected, and from the upper echelons of society. This despite India’s long standing socialist pretensions.

As for mobilising the Indian diaspora as a diplomatic force-multiplier, a demonstrator of the usefulness of Indians living in any country, their contribution, their law-abiding nature, their intelligence and culture, Narendra Modi put his personal stamp on it.

 The implementation began as soon as he became prime minister and immaculate it was too. Modi did his part. He brought gifts, often craft and textile items, books, projections of our history and culture, figurines, from different parts of India, for his counterparts. He started speaking almost exclusively in Hindi instead of his more laboured English. He always dressed in Indian style clothes. He showed off gorgeous shawls. He projected both the old and the new, yoga and pharmaceuticals,  aatmanirbhar manufacturing, digital India, our growth rate, climate awareness, our responsible ‘rules based’ attitude .

In turn, the diaspora, both in an organised and spontaneous manner, lauded, feted and lionised Modi as the prime minister amongst prime ministers, and India as a unique nation on the move, with a huge domestic market and appetite for all kinds of goods and services from around the world.

The popularity of this prime minister was there for all to see, and put paid to Opposition, hostile leftist media and enemy country attempts to besmirch his image and that of India. 

India is now seen to have arrived. The diaspora amplifies Modi’s own message. India is well worth associating with says Modi. Come invest in India. See how useful and worthwhile the Indians are in your own country, but remember they come from India, the land of opportunity. You don’t want to miss the bus. No other Indian prime minister had the bottle and the charisma to even attempt such a combination before.

Of course, the excellent organisers from the diaspora wherever Modi has been over the last eight years as prime minister deserve solid credit. They also lobby their governments and put forward Indian concerns. Some have electoral power and cannot be ignored.

There has never been a damp squib in terms of a response during scores of  Modi visits, some to countries where no Indian prime minister has been, others visited after decades, covering more countries, cities, places, than any of his predecessors.

It is a truism that the Indian diaspora tends to be dramatically patriotic, romanticising the connection out of nostalgia. Still, there is no gainsaying that Prime Minister Modi evokes the love and adulation of the ethnic Indian population abroad to an unprecedented degree.

India’s standing in the global community has grown substantially, new alliances have been forged. At home, infrastructure modernisation, welfare initiatives for the poor, growth initiatives for business, industry, investment are all seen as very creditable. The handling of the Covid pandemic in a country of 1.4 billion people has been extremely good and the production of vaccines, their disbursement and immunisation of millions, exports to other countries, sometimes free-of-charge, quickly, is much admired. India is being called the pharmacy to the world. In defence matters, the Modi administration standing up to and containing Chinese aggression on our borders is noted by the whole world.

The Madison Square Garden event in New York by himself a few years ago, the 50,000 capacity crowd at the ‘Howdy Modi’ event at the NRG Houston Stadium in Houston, Texas, with President Trump, deserve solid credit. Of course, when  Donald Trump came to India, Modi treated him to a crowd of over 100,000 at a massive brand new stadium in Ahmedabad. Trump had never seen so many people at a political rally before.

But it is Prime Minister Modi himself who has woven in the globally accessible televised interactions with the Indian diaspora, sometimes with just one or two people, with children, from all parts of India originally, and not just his native Gujarat. This is the leitmotif of every visit abroad in between the bilateral meetings, the multilateral summits, and the statecraft.

These are Indians who are now citizens of their new countries, some with a few thousand Indian origin people, others with significantly higher populations, educated, managerial, professional, entrepreneurial, from various disciplines. T

They seem to be everywhere, from the time the prime minister lands at each new destination, children with songs, flowers, classical Indian dancers in their gorgeous Banarasi sarees, Dhols, kettle drums, shehnais, lately both Bhagwa and Indian flags. Priests who apply tilaks.

On the street, outside his hotel, inside auditoria, in large open-air venues, stadiums. Their message, enthusiastic as it is, is not lost on the host countries and their leaders either.

Wembley Stadium in London holds 60,000 people. A galaxy of Soccer or Rock/Pop Stars are generally necessary to fill it. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, held its attention in 2015, at the ‘Namaste Wembley’ event, the crowd whistling, clapping, cheering, Modi, Modi, Modi, through his long speech. They came to it as to a celebration, with Modi themed scarves, hats, plastic masks, taking selfies, family portraits.

His counterpart, then British Prime Minister David Cameron, wondered aloud if he could have attracted such a crowd by himself.

In small countries such as Denmark, a crowd of 1,000 Indians in an auditorium saw the Danish prime minister in attendance, glad to be associated with India, its charismatic prime minister, in company with the Danish Indians.

 (1,553 words)

May 7^th, 2022

For: Firstpost

Gautam Mukherjee

 

 Narendra Modi Visits An Emerging 21^st Century Concert of Europe

The 19^th century version of the Concert of Europe existed intermittently between 1815 up to the beginning of WWI in 2014, lasting for an entire century. Its purpose was to ensure stability by general consensus, maintain the European balance of power, its political boundaries, and spheres of influence.

The first phase of the Concert, up to 1848, was sometimes referred to as the Age of Metternich, the conservative Austrian Chancellor with great influence over the relatively newly formed German Confederation.

Notably, and in the present context, Tsar Alexander 1^st of Russia was very much part of the Concert. It was a kind of EU of its times, given to breakdowns and resurrections, till it gave up the ghost with the challenges posed by the Great War.

Curiously today, almost eight decades after WWII which the Soviet Union helped to win, and thirty years after the end of the Warsaw Pact, Russia was not invited to join NATO. It was not seen as part of Europe even as many of the former Soviet satellites, Slavic states like Russia, have been lapped up.

Instead, as Pope Francis made bold to say to an Italian publication recently, ‘NATO’s barking at Russia’s door might have resulted in Vladimir Putin launching a military offensive in Ukraine’.

While the situation in Ukraine, was very much part of the discussions in every capital visited by the Indian prime minister, India’s position is one of neutrality between the warring sides, with calls for an end to hostilities and a return to negotiations and dialogue.

India is seen as a friend of both sides, and indeed an important global presence now, part of QUAD, and an invitee to the G-7. This even as it has existential problems with China, arraigned for thousands of kilometres along the Line of Actual Control (LaC), on what was not so long ago, an independent Tibet.

Despite this, are India and China slowly but surely pulling away at the balance of power from Europe and America?

Could China and India possibly unite someday, if a union amongst unequals can work? Can Russia maintain its independence in its alliance with China on the strength of its military prowess alone?

Between India and China, is it the story of the hare and the tortoise? China with its attempts to encircle and intimidate India, finally falling short because of financial inability, and client states that have gone bankrupt. India making its gradual but sure-footed progress towards a kind of invincibility against Chinese designs, as well as other big power menaces?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first three-day visit abroad in 2022 began with him touching down in Berlin to meet with the new Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, from the centre-left Social Democratic Party, at the head of a coalition with the environmentalist Green Party and the neo-liberal Free Democrats.

It is perhaps no surprise that the one solid announcement from the German leg of the tour was about a Euro 10 billion German fund to be disbursed by 2030 to support green projects in India.

It has long been a plank of the latter-day economies like India and China that the responsibility for global warming falls unequally upon the West. This is because it is largely due to reckless exploitation of natural resources and the environment during their earlier Industrial Revolution. Therefore, there is a demand from the new economies that it should be financially supported in making expensive changes to a more green format. India showed its willingness to make deep cuts in its carbon footprint at the last Paris based Climate Talks. China was less forthcoming.

The German announcement was possibly in this context, and set the theme for  Prime Minister Modi’s visit next to Denmark where he was very warmly received, and where he also attended the Nordic Conference with Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Finland and Norway.

Green technologies, techniques, and experience from Denmark and the countries of the Nordic Conference were high on the agenda for discussions and early initiatives in areas such as reforestation and environmental restoration. Other areas that featured were renewables, waste water management, digitisation and innovations. In the latter, India, despite its 1.4 billion population has made impressive gains.  Still there is a lot to learn from the neat and orderly Scandinavians and Nordics, not least in value-added and processed food technology, which strangely has not found a mention.

India’s spectacular tackling of the Covid Pandemic, its production and administration of tens of millions of doses of Indian vaccines, came up for admiring comments. India is increasingly seen as the pharmacy to the world, not least of all due to its affordable vaccine exports on an emergency basis to many countries.

In Germany, seven more MOUs were signed, some with an eye to greater trade between the two countries, easier exchange of personnel, solar power and hydrogen power initiatives, greater trade, in the context of seeking diversification of supply channels away from too much dependence on China. India, on its part, invited investment from Germany in its bid to further its Aatmanirbhar aspirations.

 Prime Minister Modi was accompanied on this trip by the External Affairs Minister and the National Security Adviser amongst others in his high-powered delegation.

Germany, that Prime Minister Modi visited first, and France, the last stop on his tour, are the mainstays of the European Union, and its biggest economies.  The visit bracketed the solvent, even rich, and important Nordic and Scandanavian countries in between, not all of them members of the EU, or, as yet, NATO. The Indian diaspora in each country accorded the prime minister a most effusive welcome, sometimes complete with Hindu motifs.

What is perhaps most significant about this trip is the growing importance accorded to India in world affairs, and a growing desire for many countries in Europe going through hard economic times, to engage with it.

The immediate causatives are both the pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine which has inflated costs, occasioned shortages of all kinds including food, fuel and other goods. These challenges have come on top of slowed economies, high defence costs suddenly thrust on them by the situation in Ukraine, and potential increases in tensions with China, now allied with Russia.

China may not be doing anything to annoy the Europeans or Americans at present, unless one counts its solid purchases of Russian oil and gas and the support it is providing to Russia’s financial systems. But the future, given the  European dependencies, is not certain.

The Ukraine conflict has also revived the spectre of a second Cold War, this time involving a pugnacious Russia versus all the Western European states. A Cold War with no end unless the EU and NATO rolls back from its Eastern expansionism. But that will open up a new can of worms from the countries divested of the NATO umbrella. 

The Ukraine conflict has distracted both the Europeans and the Americans from the challenges posed by China in the Asia-Pacific region, opening up new strategic possibilities for the strengthening Russo-Chinese Axis. Orders of howitzers from Taiwan has seen America push back the delivery timelines by three years!

The clumsy and hurried sanctions applied on Russia may have resulted in a closer embrace between the Bear and the Dragon even as they have failed to constrain Russia from prosecuting its military offensive in Ukraine. The world order, including its reliance on the US dollar and the Euro as principal reserve currencies is changing. The return to a possible Gold Standard is a real possibility, at least in Russia.

Germany however is willing to cut fuel imports from Russia even at considerable expense to itself as announced during Modi’s visit. Is this wise or the fog of war? Still, it may not be any of India’s business.

Most glaringly, the failure of America and NATO to bring the Russian invasion of Ukraine to a close, despite pouring in millions of dollars worth of armaments, mercenary fighters, and NATO trainers, will have a major long term impact.

There are divisions and cracks emerging in the Western alliance. Hungary is not on board. Neither is Serbia. Belarus is firmly in the Russian camp. Poland is eyeing the territory it lost to Ukraine after WWII. Moldova, not yet part of NATO, is on the Russian radar. Other Russian supporters include Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Cuba, most of Africa and the Middle East.  Already Ukraine is cut off from the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, making it very difficult for its oil and other imports.

Prime Minister Modi’s last stop in Paris was to congratulate Emmanuel Macron on his consecutive second term victory as President, and to reaffirm ties with the only country in Europe cooperating militarily with India.

France has also supported India, over its going nuclear, over Kashmir, to be made a permanent member of the UNSC, in the collaboration on Safran fighter jet engines, in jointly building the Scorpene class diesel-electric submarines, in supplying the Rafale fighter jets, missile suites. 

We have Russia in our armaments radar at some 45% today, down from 80%, but France is picking up quite a bit of the difference, alongside America, Israel, South Korea. We surely look forward to more military collaboration with France.

The Concert of Europe in the 19^th century tried to preserve the world of monarchs against a rising tide of republicanism. It went under several times only to surface and try again. But in those days, the rest of the world, Asia, Africa, the Middle East were just so many colonial resources.

Today, while the Europeans and Americans fight with Russia, it is countries like China and India that will inherit the earth. More so, because their economies are under immense pressure owing to the old-world politics they still pursue. Even the survival of EU and NATO is not certain in the medium term.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has held and continues to hold his ground against Western pressure in this knowledge. And the West, coming in a stream to India, one after the other, partly to trade, occasionally to threaten or hold out a carrot, have realised the need to shift gears to achieve a fairer, more equitable basis, for its dealings with India.

(1,702 words)

May 4^th, 2022

For: Firstpost

Gautam Mukherjee