The Terrorist Attack at Pulwana

The attack on the CRPF convoy by a Kashmiri youth who drove his Scorpio packed with 350 kilograms of explosives into a bus carrying soldiers resulted in the massacre of 40 soldiers. The pictures circulated on social media show lifeless mass of flesh strewn all over the national highway. It makes shocking visuals. The Nation was shocked and numb with pain that is now turning to anger. The Pakistani terrorist organization, Jaish-i-Mohammad has claimed responsibility and there is growing clamour for resolute action. The Prime Minister, Narendra Modi speaking on behalf of the Nation has stated that this attack will not go unpunished. The immediate withdrawal of the Most Favoured Nation Status for Pakistan seems to be the beginning and it is likely that the River Waters Treaty which guarantees the flow of water into Pakistan will be invoked to reduce or curtail the waters. The support for the militancy in Baluchistan will be stepped up and the long standing demand that the Pahstuns who are divided by the Durand Line be freed from the tyranny of Pakistan will also see some traction. However all these measure lie in the future. What are the realistic options to Punish Pakistan? After the attack on the Indian Army e at URI, India launched a series of attacks against Pakistani militant targets across the Line of Control. Unfortunately the Congress Party and its allies politicized the reprisal attacks so thoroughly that is now unlikely to be used. The major attack on the Prime Minister was that he chose to launch the surgical strikes across the Line of Control in order to bolster his political image. This line of criticism is wrong because it attributes a political motive of a rather crass kind to a major decision. The objective behind the surgical strike was two fold: firstly, to demonstrate India's willingness to cross the LOC in hot pursuit and secondly to demonstrate Indian military and tactical capability. For tha past few years Indian special operation forces are being trained in the Negev Desert by Israel and the success of the surgical strikes proves that Israel has been helping India in every respect. As a long term policy India may try to develop the ability to strike first at known militant targets in Pakistan but as of now does not have the ability. Training troops such operations across the border is not an easy venture because the fractious nature of India's social fabric and also the lack of a unified political opinion across the spectrum. Paries like the Congress, the regional dynastic parties, the communist factions will start attacking the policy of defense through offense and thereby compromise Indian policy. Indeed the degradation of Indian Intelligence assets in Pakistan started with I K Gujral who was Prime Minister for a brief time. The 2019 General Elections must ensure a strong and stable Government if India has to deal with pakistani challenge successfully. The most disheartening aspect of the present crisis is the senseless and tragic politicization of the tragedy. The former Hom,e Minister of India who served under the dynastic fascists, one Sushil; Shinde even blamed the Prime Minister's surgical strike as the provocation for the attack. In order to protect their vote banks in India the dynastic Fascists are even willing to give aid and comfort to the enemy. A resolute response can be expected but it will not happen immediately. India I think is finally opening its eyes to the fact that if Pakistan survives as a nation it is a threat to India and the fact that the Islamic identity has not prevented Pakistan from falling apart in the past is now being given some traction. Pakistan is a highly militarized state armed with nuclear weapons. This fact alone atays India. But now, the time seems to be running out and gradually a political consensus which eluded India for long is emerging.

The Buckingham Canal Needs to be revived: Environment and Water Management after the Floodsr

The recent devastation caused by the phenomenal floods in the city of Madras caused large scale loss of life and property. The entire city was almost submerged by the surging waters and parts of the city, particularly along the watercourses were significantly inundated. To make matters worse nearly 34,000 cu secs of water was released from the Chennambbakam Tank without prior warning as the storage capacity of the tank was reaching the high-water mark. There was a fear of the tank breaching and so water was released and the nearby Puzhal Tank breached leading to flooding in Madipakkam and Pallikaranai. Only people living in high rise buildings were comparatively safe as the ground floor was completely submerged in large swathes of the city. Out of the nearly 3000 water bodies documented in the City of Chennai, more than half have been encroached by builders and the rapid unplanned urbanization of Chennai has led to the decline of the environment and the recent floods had demonstrated that Chennai was living on borrowed time. It must be clear to everyone that had the Buckingham Canal been allowed to function the large scale floods could have been avoided. The rulers of Independent India deliberately neglected the Buckingham Canal because they were enamored of dams which were considered the "temples of modern India". The blind rush toawrds industrialization resulted in the Buckingham canal being neglected and the 786 km canal has all but disappeared. Even in the 2004 Tsunami the vestige of the one kilometer wide canal which stretched from Markanam to Kakinada in the East Godavari District absorbed the shock of the waves and thereby protected part of the coastline. The worst damage was in the areas south of the canal. The history of the canal began in 1817 when a 11 kilomwter canal was constructed from Madras to Ennore. Gradually the canal was extended to Pulicat and during the devastating famine of 1877-79 the canal was constructed as famine relief work. Historical documents show that in the late 19th century rice was sent from Godavari region to Madras along the canal. As the cost of transportation by water was always cheaper, Madras as Chennai was then known, received its grain due to the canal. The canal was a life line for the people of the region. Independence meant that the administrative jurisdiction of the canal was fragmented and the whole project was allowed to decay. The canal was joined to the Adyar River and thereby a natural system of drainage came into existence. Had the Adyar River been dredged and the flow of water kept without major impediment, the damage in the recent floods could have been avoided. The Buckingham Canal took nearly a century of effort and Independent India as a nation run by corrupt people without wisdom allowed this great feat of engineering to decay. The Buckingham Canal ran parallel to the coast and it connected all the important waterways and at one point in time even the Kosatalaiyar and the Kuvam were connected to this Canal. Long before the BJP Government came up with the concept of Inter Linkling of Rivers, the Buckingham Canal linked 7 rivers and countless streams. In the interset of human security, it is time to revie this ancient waterway.

Narendar Modi and his message for Asia

The conceit Jawarharlal Nehru and his brand of ideologically driven politics encouraged was the notion that India had a role in transmitting Western "values" and "institutions" to an Asia that was stagnant, despotic and cruel in every sense of the word. His Discovery of India was little more than a celebration of two thousand years of Indian humiliation and a wanton denial of the grand civilizational role that India had played in world history. The denial of the civilizational ethos of India was not accidental: Nehru's skewered view of Nation State demanded such an approach. The nation state and the quest for a "state centric" history has kept historians of India engaged for nearly six decades and there is little to show except the rumbustious noise over "secular history" versus "communal history".Nehru's ghost haunts the Historiography of modern India like Banco's ghost, a farce turning into a tragedy. There have been several changes in historiographical approaches but Indian historians prefer to embrace the colonial or the post colonial perspectives and while the latter with its dense fog of meaningless jargon finds a receptive audience in Indian academia, the colonial approaches are still the norm among professional historians. Manufacturing a "national history" to justify India's trnasition into a "modern" "democratic" and "socialist" republic became the sine qua non for Indian historians. The turgid prose of Upinder Singh's successful foray into text book market does little to put India on the map of world civilizations. The message that Narendra Modi was constantly engaged in making public is that China and India had a common Asian and civilizational history stretching over 2,500 years. Even the Communist Party dominated State had to accept the view that Buddhism was a strong and enduring link between the two countries. Nehru in his utter folly allowed the problem of Tibet and the border issue inherited from the infamous Younghusband expedition to cloud his understanding of China. Modi's vision of an Asia led by China and India is more appropriate to the history that links these two countries. The spread of Buddhism from India along the famed Silk Route is just one inductance of the civilizational links. Further, the role of Vajranandi who went from Kanchipuram to China and spent his entire life in China in the 7th century AD needs to be researched from Indian perspective. Vajranandi is said to have translated several Pali and Sanskrit texts into the Chinese language and these texts are preserved in the monasteries distributed all over the land. China and India had remained peaceful neighbor until the British for their own reasons stirred up the controversy over the status of Tibet. Indian interests were not at all involved in the Western sponsored rebellion that shook Lahsa in 1958 which eventually forced the Dalai Lama ouit of Tibet Narendra Modi throughout his 3 day visit stresses the revival of the old relationship which had been the backbone of Asian history for two thousand years.

POLICE BRUTALITY ON USA; BARACK OBAMA HAS MADE LIFE DIFFICULT FOR THE BLACKS IN USA

Horror stories emanating from USA do not shock us anymore. We have come to expect drive by shootings, mall massacres, school yard killings and the like. In India we have our own share of horrors so there is no comparison. However, the Police in India in spite of the occasional instance of violence is much better behaved than in USA. The cases of "fake encounters"that spring up from time to time are due to the inherent flaws in the judicial system with its dependence on procedure and witnesses, that sometime the Law and Order Machinery takes recourse to eliminating the violent criminals. It stands to reason that no one would like to give evidence in a court of law about the violent acts committed by a dreaded gangster. The police in India are now armed only with a fiberglass truncheons and are issued weapons only on the direct order of the Superintendent of Police and he too can issue weapons only on the instructions of the District Collector. I am not saying that the police are totally under the control of the civil district administration, but I can state with some authority that it would be impossible for the Police to getaway with the kind of violence which was visited upon the town of Ferguson, Missouri, USA. Darren Wilson, a white policeman shot and killed Michael Brown a young black man who was apparently walking with his friend Johnson. The attack seems to have been unprovoked as Michael Brown raised his hand the moment Darren Wilson asked him to surrender. The police officer kept firing at the young unarmed youth and he died after being hit by 3 bullets on his chest. It is surprising that the policeman shot the youth on his chest when in most parts of the world the police are asked to shoot at the lege to prevent the fugitive from escaping. In this particular instance, the young man was not a fugitive and was unarmed. The pictures that I have placed on the side of this blog may appear to be a picture from a war zone. Men in body armour,. armed with 5.56 mm short barreled rifles which are both automatic and semi automatic depending on the configuration used, and with a few pouched of ammunition around their waist. We can also see a sniper armed with a telescope keeping an eye from a building. All these men have the authority to kill and the American establishment does not order judicial probes as do our government. I remember that a great scholar of South east Asian Archaeology, Dr Roxanne Brown was killed in prison solely on the unfounded suspicion of being involved in a art case. I am giving these examples only to show that in spite of the situation in India with its crude theatrics and corrupt officialdom, something like what happened in Ferguson, USA is well near impossible. Arming the police with military equipment is against any principle of civilian governance. The police can carry weapons but its use must be strictly controlled. In USA the police carry arms and can open fire in self defence. And if self defence is claimed, there is no argument because it is assumed that everyone is armed and dangerous. The police are expected to open fire first and then engage. This kind of training has led to the unavoidable tragedy in Missouri. Like their counterparts in India, the US police are not above inventing a "narrative" to justify the deed. In the case of the killing of Michael Brown, the Ferguson Police Department has released video footage to suggest that Brown was involved in a hold up in a convenience store. What did he allegedly steal, : a few cigars. In any even, the Officer Wilson was unaware of the hold up when he shot the young man dead. A few months back the Trayvom Martin killing took place and Barack Obama made a grand statement that he could have been Trayon and the hooded jacket became for a brief moment in time the preferred attire of protest. I have a larger issue at hand. The election of Barack Obama in which blacks voted overwhelmningly for Obama is the real reason for the violence against Blacks/. Now White Liberals feel that they have moved to a "post racial" society and no longer feel embarassed by the fact that USA os deeply dividded on racial grounds. The recession has seen the household income of Balcks decline and added to that is the structural discrimination faced by balck men in particular. Obama has done nothing to help his own folks.

ISRAEL'S WAR CRIMES IN THE GAZA STRIP; THE WORLD MUST TAKE NOTE AND CONDEMN THE KILLINGS

The State of Israel owes its origin to the crimes of the Europeans, the Germans who massacred around 6 million Jews during the last two years of the Second World War. Of course this horrendous crime had to be expiated and the Americans and the British made the Palestinians pay for the crimes of their fellow white men. Israel is fast losing the sympathy it has rightly won for its several outstanding achievements: its civic programme, its educational institutions, its fairly successful practice of democracy. However, in its treatment of the displaced Palestinians, Israel is showing its true colours. Even John Kerry, the US Secretary of State in an unguarded moment called Israel an Apartheid State. one in which racial discrimination is legally enforced. The Arabs living in the territories are treated as second class citizens with limited access to education, employment or health. And the Right Wing parties like the Likud are further aggravating the situation by opposing the two state solution. The cycles of violence unleashed by Israel as retaliation for the kidnapping and killing of three Jewish teenagers from one of the settlements that has sprung up in the occupied territories is both disproportionate and beyond the limits of civilized state conduct. Without unleashing such fire power against the people of the Gaza Strip, Israel could have dealt with the crisis in a more balanced manner. In any event, the Israelis too extracted their revenge when they killed a young boy, by beating him and burying him alive. The silence from the Nobel Peace Prize Winner, the President of USA, Barack Obama is disquieting. Both Obama and Kerry are not willing to even condemn  the aerial attacks on Palestinian civilians.

The Hamas has been firing rockets into Israel and the Israeli media justifies the full blooded attack on unarmed civilians by saying that Hamas deserves to be punished for firing rockets. It must be stated that Hamas rockets have not caused a single casualty in Israel while in the current round of bloodletting, the Israelis have killed 166 Palestinians and wounded more than 1000 civilians. It appears that the motive behind this state sponsored massacre is to weaken the resolve of the Palestinians in the Gaza strip who are supporters of the Hamas. Therefore the killing of civilians is part of a strategy pursued by Israel and if the Bosnian Serbs can be tried for killing Muslims during the Balkan Crisis of the 1990s. by the same logic the Israeli political leadership is also culpable. The Arab League, the organization of autocratic Oil Rich state which legitimized the invasion of Iraq and Libya are keeping quiet. Saudi Arabia which is usually very eloquent on issues dealing with Muslim affairs is keeping a deathly silence over this entire issue. It appears that the Arab world has decided to allow Israel to solve the Palestinian Question like Hitler solved or attempted to solve the Jewish Question. The UN has lost its legitimacy before the entire world due to its inability to prevent USA from invading Iraq in 2003 and most people now believe that UN is just a facade behind which the white nations hide to carry out their atrocities on non white people. Unfortunately the discourse on Palestine centers around the muslim identity of the people forgetting the fact that a considerable number of them are Christians.

In 2009 when Israel invaded Gaza Strip it killed more than  hundred people and wounded around 1, 500. With this kind of violence unfolding can the World be silent.  

"The Case for Books": Reading in the Digital Age

Reading has become increasingly dependent on technology. The book under review by the celebrated historian Professor Robert Darnton is an interesting analysis of the ways in which the advent of digital technology has changed the reading practices of people. The joy of reading the printed book cannot be experienced by one reading the most thrilling novel on kindle. The sight and smell of a book is a delightful experience and only those who savour the joy of reading can understand what we lose by shifting to the digital mode.


Robert Darnton, the historian who gave us such classics of Cultural History as The Business of the Enlightenment, The Great Cat Massacre and other Episodes in French Cultural History, has been a prolificwriter who has published extensively on topics such as Censorship in the Ancien Regime and the attempts made by the Bourbons to police the literary world on the eve of the French Revolution. His approach to the subject essentially derived from the pioneering work of Lucien Febvre who wrote the Coming of the Book, an early attempt at book history. Since then, thanks largely to the efforts of Robert Darnton and Elizabeth Eisenstein, the history of print and the cultural impact of print has emerged as an important area of study, Robert Chartier contributed to the field and he brought "reading practices" to the fore. In a printed book, the codex, the eye is trained to move from left to right and the page is taken in as a unit. In the case of the Old Scrolls which had to be held in the left hand and unscrolled by the right, reading was limited to at best a short paragraph or so. The emergence of Printing made possible a rapid and almost instantaneous dissemination of texts creating the first pre digital Information Revolution. Ann Blair has been writing about how the scholars in the early modern age coped with the explosion of information brought about by print technology. In Too Much to Know Blair has documented the difficult beginning of scholarly apparatus which culminated in the humanists of the sixteenth century inventing the Footnote as a central metaphor of critical historiography as Anthony Grafton has documented in an interesting book.

The Case for Books is an excellent study of the importance of books in the cultural landscape of the civilized world.

Narendra Modi: India's New Prime Minister Leadership and Vision

For the first time in India's electoral history, a single individual has been able to overcome the inherent contradictions of a complex electoral system which makes it difficult for any one candidate to emerge victorious as the first past the winning post system imposes its own conditions. And for Narendra Modi to prevail in the face of this hugely complex electoral system and surge toward the 285+ mark makes us stop to think, ponder and reflect. He has clocked 300,000 kilometers of travel by road, rail and air. He has addressed nearly 500 rallies all over the country and had participated in over 4600 gatherings called "chai pe chercha". An Indian version of a Tea Party. The hard work has paid off and the BJP and its Allies in the NDA are poised to form the next Government in India. Narendra Modi was born on 17th September 1950 in a family which belonged to the OBC section of Indian society. Modi himself did not present himself as an OBC leader as his strategy involved the emphasis on development rather than identity. It was only when the Congress party insulted his politics by calling it "low level" politics (neech rajniti) that Modi decided to hit back and turned a barb into an emphatic endorsement of his vision. Priyanka Gandhi made sweeping and rather crude remarks against Modi and that turned the tide in his favor into a flood.Having shot her mouth about Modi's "low politics", Priyanka and the dynastic fascists tried to mend the damage but it was too late. She came across as an arrogant woman insulting a self made man. Narendra Modi spent his formative years in the RSS . The RSS, a nationalist and patriotic organization has always remained the bete noire of the Indian establishment because it was the only politcal force which opposed the Nehruvian Plan of Partition of India. The Congress made ,made what Nehru called the "tryst with destiny" but that tryst was predicated upon the unity of India not division. Because the RSS opposed Partition, Nehru and his cohorts labelled it "communal" and when Gandhi was murdered in January 1948, Jawarlal Nehru tried his best to implicate the RSS in the killing. Three National Commissions of Inquiry have exonerated the RSS and yet the Congress and its allies always rake up the past in order to undermine the organization. Narendra Modi came under the influence of Vakil Sahib and owes his world view and personality to him. It was Inamdar who encouraged Modi to study and he graduated with a B A degree in political science from the University of Delhi and later took his M A again in political science from South Gujarat University. Right form an early age Narendra Modi has remained a voracious reader with a formidable memory. During his long years as Prachark of the RSS, Narendra Modi stunned people by his accurate recall of names and events from times past. An incredible capacity to juggle with the nitty gritty of organizational details and a dedicationto the mission and vision of the RSS ensured Narendra Modi's transition from a Pracharak to the General Secretary of the BJP during the years when L K Advani was the President. As General Secretary of the Party, Narendra Modi realised the importance of the newly emergent technologies, particularly the Computer and has always shown a willing ness to harness technology for political purposes. In the recently concluded Parliamentary Polls, Narendra Modi successfully integrated Information Technology, GIS and the Internet to propel the BJP forward. All his meeting and rallies took place well within the limits of the Code of Conduct of the Election Commission of India.He adhered to the time limit and there were days when he addressed a rally in North East India in the morning, a rally in South India in the afternoon and another in Western India all on the same day,. Few politicians have put themselves through such a grueling task. Even before setting off in the morning his Research Staff would have prepared the dossier for the next days rally. Even Generals planning a campaign or war hardly show such dedication to detail. The new Government will have a completely new policy on almost all the important social and economic issues of the country. Massive funding on projects like the MNREGA, the flag ship scheme of the UPA will not be undertaken and the emphasis will shift to infrastructure. Investment in Roads, Ports and Railways can be expected to increase together with greater emphasis on Primary Education. Social Welfare will be targeted keeping real poverty levels in view and there will be less salience on identity issues. The hyped statements of the Congress that a Modi victory will lead to chaos will prove to be empty rhetoric. Even with the Muslim population, the Modi Governemnt will be fair. Since the narrative has changed from identity to development, social temperature will remain normal. I would not be surprised if new high speed trains are introduced between the different major metros. On the foreign policy front, the strategic embrace of the USA will be reconsidered as it is not in India's interest. Modi has always been an admirer of China and will try to bring about good relations with China. The confrontational policy will not continue and Modi will walk the extra mile to remain on friendly terms with China. With USA the relationship will remain normal, but the special bond between UPA leaders and USA will not be there.India under Modi will not strut about on the international stage as there are great challenges here in India. With Israel there will be excellent ties and normal relations will continue with the Middle Eastern countries. With Iran, the stalled Gas Pipe Line project will be revived. As far as the neighborhood is concerned, India will retain its predominance and will not follow a policy of letting the tail wag the dog. On the economic front, the Current Account Deficit will engage the attention of the Government. Investment climate will certainly improve. Corruption will not be totally eliminated, but Narendra Modi is known for his integrity and his zero tolerance for mis government and corruption. After 10 years of stagnation< India will at last have a Government

which will work.

Thse pictures show the different facets of Narendra Modi.