The BBC in India

The BBC ran a special series of programming on India recently, and I caught two pretty awesome episodes of HardTalk. First Stephen Sackur drilled my erstwhile schoolmate [Feroze] Varun Gandhi, who came off as genial and well-meaning, but not ready or suitable for politics. Sackur later took the Communist Party's Brinda Karat to task in what was more like a wrestling rumble than an interview. Good stuff.

I didn't catch his interview with Narayan Murthy, but thankfully, the Indian Express carries the transcript (link from Amit Varma).

Money 'graf:

India will continue to lead as long as our politicians, bureaucrats, corporate leaders and academicians realise that we have to work harder and smarter need to do things with a sense of alacrity, we need to create better physical infrastructure, better education infrastructure.

I wonder who he was referring to? As they say, read the whole thing.

Deve Gowda Must Go

The Times of India sounds the clarion call. Read this from Shekhar Gupta as well. Ever since Gowda has exercised power as the leader of the junior partner in the governing coalition in Karnataka, good governance has taken a major beating. He insisted on a light-weight puppet to be the Chief Minister. He has called for scrapping the Metro rail project. He has thrown a wrench into the Airport plans. He has picked fights with the former Chief Minister, his own deputy, Siddaramaiah, the IT industry, and now personally with Narayan Murthy. Where does he think he gets off?

His only motivation seems to be a pathetic desire to remain relevant, even if his relevance is actually the notoriety of the continual spoiler. A former Prime Minister, Deve Gowda is ashamed (with good reason) that all he can muster now is a minor say in the governance of one state. Furthermore, his power in this state is also eroding, and he is trying his damndest to hold on to some of it. Money, land, infrastructure, entrepreneurship, talent - all these sources of power are eluding Deve Gowda, and his helplessness is palpable.

It's time we got rid of this weak good for nothing. It's time the people of Bangalore and Karnataka demanded good governance as opposed to lunatic, egotistic posturing. How do we do this? Keep this discussion going. Narayan Murthy's resignation from the Airport authority is the pebble that can start an avalanche. Industry leaders and opinion makers need to discuss this on a daily basis. Narayan Murthy must be defended from baseless, idiotic accusations. Gowda's misrule must be on the front pages of newspapers everyday for the next few months. Pressure must be exercised in Delhi to bring Krishna back and to dump Gowda's JD(S). Siddaramaiah can be encouraged to pull the rug out from under Gowda in rural constituencies.

Keep in mind, that Deve Gowda's own worst enemy is his mouth, backed by his shrivelling brain. Keep him in the news, and you force him to put his ugly mug on the front pages. Keep his enemies talking and you force him to open his trap. He does these things, and he'll bury himself. All we need to do is to continue to stress his weaknesses and to tout the relative strengths of his adversaries. He will do the rest, with a little help from Sonia.

Madam, a fresh set of elections in Karnataka will rid you of this troublesome pest.

Gods, Myths and Women

Amit Varma links to this interview with Mallika Sarabhai where she says that Draupadi "is the epitome of the 21st century woman." In the same post, Amit Varma also links to this blogger who disagrees with the above quote and instead says that Draupadi "comes out like she has no personality and personality is what defines a 21st century woman... That was then; this is now."

Personally, I prefer to view these people as literary characters rather than historical figures. I find it's easier to discover the divinity in them that way. And, I have to agree with Mallika Sarabhai when she says:

"I have always felt that our mythological women and historical women got a
raw patriarchal deal. The writers of history were men: the priests were men, the
storytellers were men, the historians were mostly men. And they ended up by
reducing all the women into cardboard cutouts – wimps, in fact."

I had a similar feeling when I read the Ramayana and pondered the problem of Sita. Mallika Sarabhai follows up the previous statement with this:

"And yet they (the women) could not have been so. Think of this -- why are
all the men identified by their women? Radheshyam -- Radha's Shyam; Umashankar -- Uma's Shankar; Sitaram -- Sita's Ram etc?"

Alternatively, couldn't one argue that the women are defined by their men? In fact, that's exactly the case with the women of the Ramayana. Here's what I wrote last year about that epic (after reading R.K. Narayan's adaptation):

"The female is treated very unfairly (from a modern and feminist persepective)
in the entire 'Ramayana', and Sita's trial [by fire] is just the culmination of
that sentiment, developped through the epic. The major female characters in the
story are Sita, Kaikeyi, Manthara (Kooni in this version), Soorpanaka and Tara
(Sugreeva's wife). None are given their full due as independent characters, and
all seem to exist solely for the men in their lives. Sita's sense of dharma
compels her to follow Rama into exile. Had she chosen otherwise, it is clear
that the moral judgement would be negative. Kaikeyi's disobedience of Dasaratha
forms part of the ethical charges made against her. Kooni's evil nature is made
clear by her attempt to interfere in the male-centric ritual of succession.
Soorpanaka, the one independent female in the story is given a very unflattering
portrayal, and even she ends up with a Rama-centered identity. Tara is flung
from one husband to the next with no concern for her preferences. Even Ahalya,
is forced to live an eternity as a rock for being raped by Indra.

All the classic feminist critiques apply to the Ramayana. While stacked with
powerful male characters like Rama, Ravana, Hanuman and Vali, the Ramayana lacks strong female characters. Sita's greatness lies not in her independence or
strength, but devotion to Rama. Given all this, it is easy to see why Sita's
trial by fire fits in with the general narrative of the Ramayana and with Rama's
own code of ethics...

This is not to say that Sita's trial by fire is excusable. In fact modern re-tellings of the tale can quite easily skip the sordid chapter and not lose any of the narrative. Sita's trial by fire, like Vali's killing is inexcusable and indefensible, but the latter is also inexplicable."

I wrote this as part of a larger essay on "Rama's Moral Lapses". The main focus of the piece was Rama's killing of Vali, but as mentioned above, Sita's trial by fire is just as revealing, if not more so, about Rama's character. I'll post the full piece on this site one of these days. Today I just wanted to add my two cents to the issue of women in our epics.

The Damned and the Saved

Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Tsunamis and War: is the end of days here? Has your soul been saved?

Well, to help you on your way, you can check out the guys mentioned here by Sepia Mutiny's Manish. Don't miss the discussion in the comments section - very interesting stuff.

Anyone familiar with the issue knows that there is a problem regarding Christian missionaries in India (for that matter there's a problem regarding Muslim preachers too, but let's table that one for another day shall we?). Upper class and upper caste hindus find Christian missionaries offensive and intrusive, Christian missionaries see themselves on a holy crusade and fascist Bajrang Dal thugs see all this as a good opportunity to burn people alive.

Now for the history: Christian missionaries have been coming to India for a long time and have done their fair share of good and bad. They set up schools and hospitals for the poor (and the rich - the top schools and colleges in the major metropolitan cities in India were invariably set up by Christian missionaries). They brought the ideas of equality of individuals, the benign nature of Divinity, and the notion of helping your fellow man regardless of social station. They also rubbished our traditions, undermined our social harmony, dismissed off-hand any wisdom in Indian religious traditions and acted as handmaidens of our imperial overlords, providing theological justifications for our continued subjugation.

So where does that leave us today? Well, India is a free country, so people have the right to proselytize and to convert. There's nothing really that the government should do to stop them. Our society however, should act like a mature one and adapt to a new situation. Christian missionaries today are backed by a lot of cash, zeal and infrastructure (television channels, global networks etc.). Just like the quality of clothing produced in India is expected to get better by competing with foreign brands, the quality of our ideas should be honed by the constant challenge brought by missionaries.

Defend your beliefs and you will understand them better. Also, accept whatever wisdom is provided by the new ideas and reject the baggage. I like that - there's something essentially Hindu to such a response.

The (Un)Thinking Indian?

In an interesting op-ed in today's Indian Express, Ananya Vajpeyi engages V.S. Naipaul's recent assertion that "there are no thinkers in India," and William Dalrymple's recent comment that good Indian writing in English will "increasingly come to be the preserve of the diaspora." Vajpeyi's article is an important and necessary contribution to what needs to be an ongoing discussion, and she makes some good points, particularly towards the end when she says:

"The fact is, whether in Hindi or in English or in any other major Indian language, we are patently not in the midst of a cultural renaissance, or on the brink of a revolution in ideas. It will not do to dismiss Naipaul and Dalrymple as “outsiders” who cannot appreciate the thought or writing of at least a handful of people in a billion-strong nation. They are talented men who have spent their respective literary careers engaging India with a degree of seriousness that not many native intellectuals or creative writers can match."

But I can't help chuckling when she follows this up with:

"If they are both pointing to a paucity of quality intellection, a scarcity of creative self-expression, a lack of thinkers looking 50 years ahead and anticipating a changed world, then we need to take stock of the Indian mindscape."

or earlier in the piece, when she says:

"Who can say that our leaders stand head and shoulders above the tumult of the times, and look out into futurity?"

Umm... What's with the esoteric, SAT words?

Anyway, there's something slightly more problematic with Ananya Vajpeyi's piece than just words that appear to be made up. Here is the central question she poses:

"We return, then, to a perennial search: the search for a philosopher-statesman."

Now, if she had read her Lilla, she would know that this is exactly the wrong kind of search for us to engage in. Philosophers make terrible statesmen precisely because they are philosophers. This has been true ever since Plato first went to Syracuse. In fact, I would argue that a lot of India's current misfortune stems from the fact that India was led by such philosopher-statesmen during the nation's infancy.

To be fair to Vajpeyi though, she may get the question wrong, but she does get the answer right:

"A clamorous cabal of squabbling schoolmen, shrill ideologues and paid consultants will not steer this ship out to the high seas of growth, stability and equity."

Amen to that.

Did you catch this?

An asian country forces European powers to accept the goods it wishes to trade. The irony is too delicious!

Link

Indian History Education: An email conversation

A friend in America recently wrote to me and asked:
"yo, what is desaffronisation? taking hinduism out of public ed? is that a big deal right now?"


My response:

There's a major controversy regarding the education curriculum in India. Essentially, Indian history has been written by a bunch of leftists and unreconstructed marxists since Indian independence. School textbooks reflected this bias, and the curriculum writers were supported by the left-leaning Indian government. In the 1990s, Indian rightists took over government, and began introducing textbooks that reflected their historical biases. Now usually I'd be in favor of this, but I have many problems with Indian rightists. They're mostly cultural rightists, and I'm essentially an economic rightist. Being cultural rightists, many of them are Hindu chauvinists, and the most hidebound and reactionary people were put in charge of revising the curriculum. So, their changes to the educational system were characterized by the leftist academic elite as "Saffronisation".

Now, the left parties are back in power, and they're going about dismantling the saffronisation of education and reinstating the old texts and theories. This is called "Desaffronisation". My personal opinion tends towards a plague on both your houses attitude. Indian leftists are some of the most idiotic people on the planet, and Indian hindu chauvinists are some of the silliest. Neither should be in charge of dictating the History curriculum in Indian schools. Furthermore, India is a very ahistorical country, in that the Indian people largely don't have a mature sense of history. There isn't a long tradition of recording, analyzing and arguing about our history, as there is in most of the rest of the world, so much of our historical thinking is extremely simplistic.

So, on the one hand you have a bunch of leftist academics, learning and teaching all the wrong lessons from Indian history, usually in inaccessible jargon, and on the other hand you have a group of simplistic charlatans who have no idea how to appoach the study of history in the first place. As you can see, it's a tough one. The biggest casualty of all this nonsense, of course, is the Indian student. Children in India, already discouraged from studying history by a society enamored with science and engineering, are taught faulty history in an extremely boring way. Not only do they end up not knowing anything of their history, they end up being turned off to it. Instead of educating India's children about India's history, India's history teachers are contributing to the continued historical ignorance of the people of India.

Mangal Pandey

I saw the film last week and was going to write something on it, but Ashok Malik says everything I wanted to in today's Indian Express, and he puts it in a much better way than I possibly could.

"Mangal Pandey is eminently watchable. True, it is not short of anomalies and anachronisms — Barrackpore looks beautiful, but is not usually overlooked by the Sahyadris; Lord Canning refers to the white man’s burden a half-century before Kipling coined the phrase; the real Mangal Pandey almost certainly never met Azimullah Khan and Tatya Tope.

Nevertheless, as a mix of history, folk tradition, legend and cinematic licence, the film is worth the price of the ticket. It is visually extremely rich, some of the sets are straight out of Company-era watercolours.

The drama and vibrancy of mid-19th century India is well brought out — snakes and painted elephants, glass bangles and throbbing music. Some of these are cliches, of course, to appeal to the overseas viewer, but in much the same manner as Indian novelists now seem to write only for literary agents in London."

As someone once said, read the whole thing (link).

Links

1. Went to Pondi last weekend. Abhi has the goods here (with pics).

2. This is really pissing me off.

3. A British former leftist, turned American "neo-con stooge" fawns over Jyoti Basu and, in the same article, says this:

"I have come to hope very devoutly that India ceases to think of itself as a 'Third World' nation, and that it makes a strength of its former weaknesses. In practice, this ought to mean an across-the-board alliance with the United States."

Link here.

4. William Dalrymple:

"If the last few years are anything to go by, I suspect that in the years ahead the main competition Indian writers aspiring to win the Booker will face will not be the Alan Hollinghursts or the AS Byatts, so much as their own cousins born and brought up in the west."

Very interesting. Link here (via kitabkhana).

5. And finally, in the humor department: apparently, you can outsource just about anything. (link via Amit Varma).

Rushdie, Naipaul and Hampi

First off, this guy is wrong. Rushdie is brilliant (previous praise for Rushdie on this blog here). I can't wait to read his new book.

(link to Amitava Kumar's article via this very interesting post by Amardeep Singh on the amazing Sepia Mutiny)

In the same post, Prof. Singh also talks about V.S. Naipaul's recent interview with the New York Times. This leads to a discussion (in the comments) of Naipaul's attitude towards Muslims, and more specifically, his reactions when he visited Hampi. Here is Prof. Singh's take on the issue, and here is William Dalrymple's. I'm a big Dalrymple fan, and everything I've read by Prof. Singh has been insightful and informative, but here I have to disagree with both of them, particularly Dalrymple.

Dalrymple writes:
"The fall of Vijayanagar is a subject Naipaul keeps returning to: in an interview shortly after being awarded the Nobel Prize in 2001, he talked about how the destruction of the city meant an end to its traditions: "When Vijayanagar was laid low, all the creative talent would also have been destroyed. The current has been broken."

Yet there is considerable documentary and artistic evidence that the very opposite was true, and that while some of the city's craftsmen went on to to work at the Meenakshi temple of Madurai, others transferred to the patronage of the sultans of Bijapur where the result was a significant artistic renaissance."

The latter point may be true, but Dalrymple is down-playing the impact of the destruction in Hampi. This actually makes for a good segue for me to discuss some stuff that's been happening in my life recently. I visited Hampi last weekend, and my reaction is much closer to Naipaul's than Dalrymple's.

Naipaul's basic contention is that the discontinuity that resulted with the destruction of Vijayanagar resulted in a major loss of creative energies in the Hindu South. I couldn't agree more. To take one example, Hampi's ruined Vitthala Temple is an architectural and engineering marvel. The temple is famous for being the Vitthala temple where the great Vitthala bhakta, and father of Carnatic music, Purandara Dasa sang the praises of his patron god. It is also famous for the design of the stone pillars, 56 of which are designed to be used as a musical instrument.

Most of these pillars have now been destroyed, but the ones that remain are fascinating. Each one of these pillars is designed to be used as a percussion instrument, and each is tuned to a different note. On festival days temple musicians would strike these pillars with specially designed drum-sticks, producing a comprehensive sound that could be heard nearly a mile away. Keep in mind, that this temple was constructed in the 15th century, a near contemporary of the magnificent Gothic cathedrals of Europe with their amazing pipe organs.

Now, my cousin and I have been having an ongoing discussion for a few years now. The question he posed to me was, given the melodic beauty and complexity of the Indian music system with its ragas, and deep understanding of the musical scale, why were Indian musicians unable to discover (invent?) harmonics? Europeans started with church organs and choirs, and around the 15th century, Monteverdi (a near contemporary of Purandara Dasa) played around with what he was listening to to come up with a harmonic system that would be perfected a few hundred years later by geniuses like Mozart and Beethoven.

It isn't outrageous to imagine that if Vijayanagar had exported its temple construction technology and acoustics to other temples that such a system could even have been stumbled upon by a Purandara Dasa, to be perfected a few hundred years later by a Thyagaraja (a near contemporary of Mozart). But, because of the discontinuity caused by the city's destruction, we will never know.

Ok, this is pretty far-fetched you say, but the point stands. The destruction of the city of Vijayanagar, beyond just being a humanitarian catastrophe, was a cultural disaster. A lot of the artistic knowledge and achievement gained by the Vijayanagar civilization was lost. To downplay this tragedy is tasteless, to say the least.

And that's my biggest problem with Dalrymple's analysis. Sure, some of these artists gained occupation under the Bijapur Sultanate, but shouldn't we also acknowledge the extent of the loss, as Naipaul does?

Furthermore, some of the damage done to these statues and monuments speak to the determination and audacity with which the conquering Muslim armies went about their jobs. One nine foot high Ganesha idol, built of granite, and at the time the tallest Ganesha idol in India, took weeks to disfigure. The conquering army first drilled holes into the trunk and belly of the statue, then inserted metal and wood pieces into those holes, and over a period of a few weeks, systematically poured water into those holes. The water caused the wood and metal to expand and thereby shatter the trunk and belly of the idol. That level of calculated destruction must be clearly reported and discussed.

Think about the hue and cry raised over the destruction of one architecturally insignificant, and unused mosque in Ayodhya (an action I deplore, by the way), and consider the lack of outrage at the tragedy of Vijayanagar. Or, for another historical example, compare Dalrymple's description of the destruction of Vijayanagar with this account of the expulsion of the Moors from Spain. It appears that polite opinion allows for outrage over historical acts of injustice done to Muslims, but not for those done by Muslims.

Let me end by saying that the ruins of Hampi are a marvel. If you ever get the chance, make the trip. You won't regret it.

General Musings on a Saturday

1. Check out this Blog Mela - great format showcasing some great posts from bloggers.

2. I've been in India a little over a month now. It's exciting and interesting, but I'm a little worried that the work I'm doing might be a little over my head. Otherwise, the social scene here is really awesome, except for the fact that some police comissioner guy thinks everything needs to shut by 11pm. Yeah, you read that correctly - 11 o'clock at night and the partying's done! Just absurd.

3. I have a set of Tablas at home - awesome! Mom had them at home in Bombay all these years, but for some reason didn't tell me. Anyway, they're with me now, and I try to play a few times every week. I'm hoping to play with some other musicians in Bangalore - should be fun!

4. I've been told I should post more on this site, so I'll try.

My quarterly post

So it looks like I only post once every quarter. I'll try and fix that. Not much I want to blog about today though. I've moved back to India; more on that (probably) later.

And radical, totalitalitarian Islamists have struck again, this time in London. Were you surprised by the fact that they had a Pakistani connection? Yeah, me neither.

Modi

Narendra Modi is a thug and a bigot and should not be encouraged.

Harvard: Free Speech anyone?

I can't help feeling that Larry Summers is sunk. He told a group of academics in a closed-door meeting that maybe, part of the reason why there are fewer women research scientists at top universities than men is innate gender differences. Naturally, this started off a fire-storm. Now, I don't know if I agree or disagree with Summers. It's an unproven hypothesis. But you see, such talk doesn't really matter to scientists and professors. All kinds of high and righteous people have now called for Summers to step down as President of Harvard.

Wow! Even the President of Harvard University cannot speak his mind. How can we then expect students and professors to enjoy the rights of free speech? Either way though, Summers is done (I think). I don't really know too much about him, other than he was the Treasury Secretary at a time when I was too young to care about stuff like that, and that he fired Cornel West (for which he gets points in my book). I think that conservatives latched on to Summers as the perfect person to reverse the tide in academia. Summers was an ex-Cabinet member for a Democrat President, yet because of his economic background had a results-oriented approach to the problems facing universities. Summers was also able to gamble on the Harvard brand name to start making changes (like supporting ROTC). Conservatives were really rooting for him to pull off an academic sea-change.

But, with the present flap, it doesn't seem likely that Summers will succeed in that goal. I wish he had just been dismissive of the whole gender bias charge, instead of being profusely apologetic for having made his comments. When asked to apologize, Summers should have just said, "don't be absurd," and been done with it. He could then have made some point about how Harvard professors need to spend more time teaching their students and less time chasing politically correct red herrings. Aah - too bad he didn't. Well, I hope he makes it through this current flap and remains Harvard President. Otherwise, they might hire some crapweasel like Lee Bollinger or Jim Wright.

Don't worry, we're still losing

I've stopped reading the New York Times, so I didn't see this op-ed by a couple of Dartmouth Professors until Oxblog linked to it. The article is by International Relations Professors Daryl Press and Benjamin Valentino. I don't know Prof. Valentino, but back in my undergrad days I took an introductory IR course with Prof. Press. It was a lot of theory and I ended up deciding that I preferred fact to theory, so I became a History major. But I remember an interesting discussion from that course.

This was before 9/11, and on the first day of class, Prof. Press brought up the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Chicken Game, two staples of simplified game theory. The idea was to describe the security situation, with particular attention to the issue of nuclear weapons. Prof. Press wanted to demonstrate that (to some IR theorists) the idea of nuclear proliferation was not a bad one because it brought about mutually assured destruction. We were introduced to the "Rationality Principle" and were told that since states are rational actors in the international system, a state possessing nuclear weapons will not use them because of MAD.

Well, at the time I was a little skeptical, but I accepted some of the logic behind it. However, my first thought after the initial shock of 9/11 was to think back to that lecture and conclude that the "Rationality Principle" is dead. There's no way that in a world where people are willing to fly planes into buildings, they'd be unwilling to use nukes. A lot of people reached similar conclusions, because today most people agree that terrorists with nukes constitute the greatest threat to America.

So, I was quite interested to see what my old professor now had to say. The article is about Falluja, and the headline says it all: "A Victory, But Little Is Gained." I am really bothered by the Professors' pessimism, so here's what I think. They start out by saying that the taking of Falluja "has not brought the United States appreciably closer to achieving its political objectives in Iraq." Really? If our political objectives include improving the security situation, then isn't cleaning up a terrorist hell-hole bringing us closer to that objective? I guess not. The Profs go on to say that "history suggests that America has slim hopes of defeating the insurgency, and that our best chance for 'success' depends on redefining what we would consider a victory." Wow. So, we can't win but let's just say that we intended to not win all along.

The article is filled with this gloomy outlook. "While major operations like the attack on Falluja create the appearance of progress [only the appearance? not actual progress?]... there is virtually no connection between seizing territory and defeating an insurgency." None? So then why sacrifice close to fifty soldiers? We might as well have left Falluja the way it was since capturing it brought us no material advantage, right? And here's another blooper: "Insurgents do not seek victory on the battlefield." So, what do they seek?

To be fair, the Profs do make some interesting points. By the above statement they actually mean that insurgents have different battle plans when compared to regular armies. But, we already know that. Tell us something we don't know. "Guerrillas do not depend on vulnerable lines of supply and communication, so counter insurgents must target them directly." Isn't that what the American military did in Falluja?

The Profs then talk about the history of insurgency, and conclude that nobody has defeated one since WWII. That is, except for Britain in Malaya and a couple of strong men here and there. They then tell us that these examples do not apply, especially the example of Malaysia.

"Many counter insurgency theorists have tried to model operations on teh British effort in Malaya, particularly the emphasis on winning hearts and minds of the local population through public improvements. They have not succeeded. [Really?] Victory in Malaysia, it appears in retrospect, has less to do with British tactical innovations than with the weaknesses and isolation of the insurgents. The guerrillas were not ehtnic Malays." Like in Iraq, right? I mean, Zarqawi et al are foreigners in Iraq, and the insurgents themselves only have a following with a minority of the Iraqi population. Shias and Kurds are on America's side in this conflict, as are most Sunnis. So doesn't this model apply?

I would also add that the Indian experience in Punjab is instructive. Sure, some strong tactics were used, but the methods were primarily liberal - elevating a Sikh to the position of President (an appointed position) and so on, to the point where we ended up with a Sikh Prime Minister. Not bad, as far as counterinsurgency goes.

The Profs continue to astonish: "as long as the insurgency rages, it is unlikely that America will achieve the political goals it set for itself - a unified, democratic Iraq as the first building block in the broader democratization of the Middle East." This is spot-on. The implication is that we should change our goals. I would contend that this means we should be even more determined to defeat the raging insurgency. They go on: "perhaps we should set our goals more realistically, and focus on the achievable." In other words, since we can't win, let's just re-define losing to mean winning, so that we can at least win rhetorically.

The Profs suggest "a new secular strongman," arguing that cohesion and stability are more important. "Saddam Hussein was able to keep his politically, ethnically and religiously divided state together only through nearly constant repression; it seems unlikely that any successor could rule with a velvet glove." This is a misnomer, and one I'd like to address. Saddam Hussein did not maintain cohesion through repression - he maintained his tyranny through repression. The implication is not that constant repression is the only means of maintaining Iraqi unity. Arguably liberalism, freedom and democracy will achieve that goal. In fact, that is exactly what the American government is arguing today.

So what's going on? Why are two Government Professors at Dartmouth arguing that we should redefine our understanding of victory in Iraq? Well, there are two reasons. First, they are arguing for an easy out. By redefining failure to mean success, we can fail and still claim success. That way, we won't need to put in the hard work necessary for success. But, there is also something a little more sinister going on here. Here's the kicker: "These are depressing prospects. The fact that we must now consider them underscores the caution that should be employed before deciding to go to war." Aah! So there it is! In the last paragraph of this Op-Ed, we finally see what they are getting at. We should have known this was going to be difficult from the start, and therefore we shouldn't even have gone in the first place! But don't worry, just because you are seeing victorious marines and soldiers in Falluja today, it doesn't mean that we're winning. And, rest assured, even if it does we'll spin it so that America sees it as a loss and will shy away from force projection in the future. This isn't an argument about Falluja or insurgencies, but a re-opening of the pre-war debate. This strikes me as a note to the faithful not to lose heart - the warmongers may appear vindicated now, but don't worry - we'll still lose!

I ran a search on the NY Times website and found that Prof. Press has written an Op-Ed for them in the past, on March 26, 2003 titled "How to Take Baghdad". You have to pay for it, and I'm not particularly interested in doing so, but here are the first fifty words. They say a lot about Prof. Press' prophetic powers.

"American and British ground forces are approaching Baghdad, but the war has not gone as smoothly as the Bush administration had hoped. Neither intense psychological operations nor precision missile strikes has toppled Saddam Hussein's government. The Republican Guard is standing by its man. And the Iraqi security forces appear willing... "

The Election

So it's over, and (as they say) the good guys won. I have to admit, I was pretty nervous while watching the returns, despite the fact that I was in a room full of Kerry supporters and they seemed to be getting more and more depressed as the night wore on. But, the result is pretty unambiguous. George W. Bush won a majority of the popular vote and increased his party's share in Congress.

This was an election unlike any other I've seen (which really isn't saying much). It was the first election since the attacks of September 11th, and foreign policy was on the ballot. A lot is being made of the fact that "moral values" seemed to be the defining issue of the election, but I don't think that holds a lot of water. "Moral values" is a vague and meaningless term. Also, this was the first election in which values were listed on the exit polls. That might have had something to do with why the exit polls suggested that people voted based on values. Of course, as we found out, the exit polls themselves were pretty useless, so I really don't buy the moral values argument at all. Furthermore, I don't buy that moral values is code for gay rights. Yes, all eleven states that had a gay rights initiative on the ballot voted overwhelmingly for those initiatives, but the fact is that the unpopularity of extending the term marriage to include gay couples is a bi-partisan phenomenon in the U.S. In fact, Kerry won two of the states that passed such initiatives. Bush is a strong, principled leader, and in times of war, these qualities are more important than any particular policy. Maybe that explains the whole moral values red herring.

No, this election was about the war and Bush's leadership. The fact is, for the last four years we've seen a lot of vitriol and hate directed at the Bush administration, and the average person was sick of it. The American people have given the Bush Doctrine their seal of approval, and it will be interesting to see where Bush goes with it. Like I've been saying throughout this campaign, the election was a referendum on Bush's war leadership. Unless you believed that Bush was further endangering the American people, you would be irresponsible in voting against him. It's pretty clear that people were voting either for or against President Bush, and the against argument just seemed too angry and unseemly.

As for Kerry, I don't think he made any particular mistake that cost him the election (except perhaps picking Edwards as his running mate). From when the campaign began Kerry had a lot to prove, and he consistently met and exceeded expectations. During the primaries he had to prove to Democrats that he would be an electable candidate, and by the Iowa caucases he had done that. His next job was to prove to the rest of the American people that he had the ability to be the Commander-in-Chief. After his convention, that doubt was put to rest (for the most part). His next task was to prove that he could be an effective counter to Bush, and during the debates he did just that. At the end of the day though, I think the Democrats just did not have the numbers. I don't think a decidedly more anti-war campaign would have helped him. In fact, I'm certain that such a course of action would have led to a thumping Bush victory. The Democrats did everything right, and what they needed was a major screw-up from the Bush camp if they were to win. Since this was a referendum on Bush, Kerry had to hope that there were enough people in the country who wanted to fire Bush. It now looks like those numbers were just not there.

I find this fact very encouraging. Despite the bad news coming out of Iraq, and the gravity of the times we live in, America has opted for strength and resolve over vacillation and paralysis. It was a little too close for my liking, but then I would have liked a landslide. The thing to do now is to focus like a laser-beam on moving us along to victory in the war. I think Bush is right. He has earned political capital, and now he should spend it pursuing the radical, totalitarian Islamists. His Presidency has received the vote of confidence it badly needed. Time to pull out all the stops.

Nana Sahib: Terrorist?

NRO has an article up by James Robbins discussing the growing irrelevance of Osama bin Laden. Robbins says, "If he is alive, he will have to prove it soon or suffer the same slow descent to obscurity as his predecessor, Nana Sahib."

Money 'graf:

"Who was Nana Sahib, you ask? Surely, for some he was the Osama of his times, a well educated, Hindu radical who was instrumental in the Sepoy revolt of 1857. In June of that year he seized the town of Cawnpore and proclaimed himself the Peshwa. After a three-week siege of the redoubt the British garrison and citizens surrendered, almost 1,000 in number, having been promised safe passage down the Ganges to Allahabad. Yet, for reasons unclear, the promise was not kept. Most of the men were shot down outright. The women and children were imprisoned and later methodically hacked to pieces over the course of one evening, their body parts thrown down a well. These gruesome events shocked the conscience of the British people, and sparked bloody retaliation. "Cawnpore!" became the rallying cry of the British soldiers, and Nana Sahib's forces soon were routed. He fled over the mountains to Nepal, his name having become a byword for brutal, pitiless mass murder. A search commenced. A bounty was placed on his head. Letters periodically appeared supposedly authored by Nana Sahib. There were occasional sightings, and rumors abounded. However, the leading terrorist of his day remained elusive. He had some impact on popular culture; Nana Sahib was brought to the stage by 19th century sensationalist Dion Boucicault who, in his role as the archvillain, dared the audience to throw things at him. Jules Verne wrote a novel about him. An Indian magician toured the U.S. under his name, "whose exhibition of occultism is said to be beyond belief," the Washington Post noted. Then, 17 years after the events at Cawnpore, Britain thrilled to news of the capture of Nana Sahib, only to find out later the man was an imposter. His true fate is unknown. One report had him dying soon after fleeing India, another that he passed away in 1926 at the age of 102. By then he was mostly forgotten in the West. However, true to the adage, Nana Sahib was another man's freedom fighter, and after independence, the government of India honored him with a stamp."

Now, none of this is untrue, but it does rankle Indian sentiment to think of the 1857 conflict as terrorist activity, especially given the peaceful way in which India did end up winning Independence. There's a lot of talk of 1857 being the "First War for Indian Independence." Hogwash, of course. Nana Sahib's primary grievance was the Doctrine of Lapse, or the way in which the British stopped recognizing adopted heirs (interestingly, the legendary Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi fought for the same reason). Because he was only the adopted son of the Peshwa Baji Rao II, upon the Peshwa's death (or rather former Peshwa, since he had lost the Third Maratha war and was by then a pensioner) the British authorities, under the Doctrine of Lapse did not recognize Nana Sahib's claim to the title and the pension (paid for of course, by the British). Nana Sahib was pissed off that the East India Company was not giving him an annual stipend. Talk about desire for Independence!

Furthermore, the Rebellion of 1857 happened only in the Ganga-Jamuna Doab, with major engagements taking place at Meerut, Delhi, Kanpur, Lucknow and (a stretch) Gwalior. Indian soldiers were among those trapped in the seige of Lucknow, and were also among those who fought against the rebellion in each of those engagements. Furthermore, the Sepoy Mutiny only took place within the Bengal Army. The Bombay and Madras armies were actually called in to relieve the Company's forces in the north. There was no All-India National Princes League fighting for the various principalities (later called 'Princely State') across the nation. In fact, the vast majority of Princes remained loyal to the British, and were given the rights and benefits of Princely State status as a direct result of that loyalty.

Nana Sahib himself was insignificant. According to John Keay, Nana Sahib "owed his celebrity less to his exploits and more to the British need for scapegoats plus Indian nationalism's later need for heroes." But, Robbins has a point. Nana Sahib's forces engaged in barbaric activity at Kanpur. Even if you believe his cause was just (and I'm not sure if fighting to re-establish a feudal order is a just cause), it is impossible to condone the means he used. People have argued that Nana Sahib did not know about the massacres (as he later claimed). I don't think Nana Sahib was cruel or bloodthirsty. He appears to be more of a bumbling oaf who couldn't control his soldiers. Regardless, he was in charge, and the actions of his subordinates tainted the entire sub-continent's people (much like a certain global figure is doing for his community today). Let us hope that Robbins is right and that bin Laden has been rendered irrelevant, just like Nana Sahib was only two years after his capture of Kanpur.

And now I'm depressed again

It looks like things are going badly for the Bush campaign again. Man, this is really depressing and nerve-racking. I don't think I can take a few more weeks of this.

This is a war election, so essentially it is a referendum on how the incumbent is conducting the war. The question on the ballot this year is the Bush Doctrine of pre-emting gathering threats and promoting democracy and liberalism in Muslim countries. It looks like both parties agree on these pillars of the Bush Doctrine, although with Kerry it is sometimes hard to tell. However, there is a sizeable group of people in this country (read: Michael Moore) who disagree entirely with the Bush Doctrine (probably because they dislike the author of that doctrine). A Bush loss might be interpreted as a rejection of his doctrine.

Another interpretation though is that the doctrine itself is not being repudiated, just its application in Iraq. I feel though that if you are going to enumerate a doctrine of militarily pre-empting a potential threat, and replacing hostile dictatorships with liberalizing governments, then you need to put your money where your mouth is. Just saying that we believe in this doctrine is not going to be enough when faced with such audacious enemies as Osama bin Laden. And, if this doctrine is inapplicable to Iraq, then where exactly is it applicable? Baathist Iraq was about as abominable a tyranny imaginable. Not to pre-empt the Saddam regime and attempt to replace it with a decent one would be a rejection of our own doctrine.

So, a Bush loss is certainly a step back from his agressive stance in the new war. That the American electorate is seriously considering this is just too depressing.

Bose and the Nazis

Interesting. Newly released documents show that Subas Chandra Bose recruited Indian soldiers from German POW camps before he did from Japanese ones. They were of course betrayed and became wretched tools of Himmler's SS during the retreat from France.

One can make a parallel analogy to what's going on today - people may dislike America, but perhaps we should identify the greater evil in the world and work to end that. History will harshly judge our actions if we fail to do so.

What, me worry?

Ok, so close to two months have passed since my last post. This week saw the Republican National Convention, and let me just say, that the President is finally playing ball. The Repubs showed what we're capable of, and we've finally started defending our position with vigour. Zell Miller's critique of the modern leftists is spot on - they're uselessly trying to fight old wars in order to prove some kind of street cred that is completely counter-productive to our current mission. I'm a lot more heartened now, and am finally beginning to feel like the good guys have got this election in the bag. Of course, it ain't over yet (some charming southernisms in honor of our President!), and the Bush campaign needs to continue fighting this one. But, from the way they ran the convention (especially when compared with the Democrats) it looks like the Republican party officials intend to continue with the intense fighting all the way to November.

An interesting point is the grass-roots efforts. I've been reading a little bit about the Republican strategy, and what I gather is that the lesson George W. Bush took away from the 2000 campaign is that grass-roots mobilization is absolutely critical. Apparently his campaign has been spending a lot of time building that infrastructure, and according to Ralph Reed (who I saw on CNN), that is going to be the key to electoral victory this year. I certainly hope so. I still feel that we should be taking this fight to where the Democrats are safe. California and New York have some extremely popular Republican politicians (as was show-cased this past week), and there's no reason we shouldn't try to rebuild our party in these extremely important states. The Republican ascendancy of the 80s relied heavily on the support of California, and it's silly to think that we can continue with Republican dominance in the country without the largest state or the largest city behind us.

I recently read The Right Nation by a couple of writers for The Economist, and they argue that a victory this year can seal the deal for Republican domination of American politics for at least another decade. I don't disagree, but of the four largest states in the country (think electoral votes) the Dems have two in the bag (CA and NY), we have one (TX) and the fourth is a complete toss-up (FL). Sure, the Carolinas, Dakotas and the rest of the slew of small states makes up for this, but I don't see a successful long-term electoral strategy without at least two of the big four squarely in our column. In fact, until recently both Texas and Florida were solidly Republican, and the fight was in places like CA. The tables have turned, and not in a way that's beneficial to Republicans. We need to change that.