Cameron and Shinde: Poles apart, same tactics, different results

VIEWPOINT

AMITABH SHUKLA

What is the difference between an apology and expressing regret? The question came to dominate after British Prime Minister David Cameron expressed regret for what had happened at Jallianwala Bagh 94 years ago and Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde too took refuge in the same word for his remarks on “Hindu terror”.

Most of us use both the words interchangeably and hardly see a difference except the hard core grammar and literature enthusiasts and the purists. Even the Oxford dictionary uses the word apology for regret seamlessly.

The core of the issue is the message delivered and not the actual meaning, more so when diplomacy and politics are involved rather than a literary expression in a fiction.

Cameron clearly wanted the message to go home in his country, at Amritsar, Punjab and in India that Britain indeed was sorry for what happened in Jallianwala Bagh on the day of Baisakhi in 1919 in which over 1000 people who had assembled for a peaceful protest, died after the troops under General Reginald Dyer fired without any provocation. He might not have used the word apology anywhere in the Visitor’s Book at the memorial in Jallianwala Bagh but by and large it acted as a soothing balm in the holy city where the memories of that day are still vivid amongst the older generation through first hand tales and the younger generation through stories, history books and the physical existence of the memorial and the place where t he tragedy took place.

Cameron was guided by diplomacy and officials of the British foreign office must have advised him to do so and could even have prompted the exact words he chose. But more importantly, it was obviously politics back home which led the British Prime Minister to visit Jallianwala Bagh and also the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) in Amritsar. Punjabis constitute an influential and politically active section in countries like Britain, Canada and United States and with this move, Cameron is sure to get a sizeable per cent of their votes when he seeks re-election for the House of Commons in the May 2015 election in his country.

This is precisely what guided the non-gazetted police officer turned Home Minister Shinde when he used the word “Hindu terror” during the Jaipur conclave of the party and how the BJP was running terror camps or so. Cameron faces elections in May 2015, Shinde and his party will have to face it exactly a year earlier, in May 2014. Obviously, the remarks of Shinde were not an innocent one which just slipped out of his mouth but is loaded with meaning. With one stroke, he tried to consolidate the minority vote bank, never mind it helped the terror machines in Pakistan absolve themselves of all responsibilities for the serial terror attacks on India, the latest at Hyderabad. Being the Home Minister of the country, Shinde is supposed to know what he is speaking when the matter pertains to terrorism.

But expressing an apology or regret or whatever you call it for his remarks, clearly shows that politics was writ large on the “Hindu terror” comments of the Home Minister. Why apologise or express regret when you have the facts along with all the investigating and intelligence agencies at your command which can bring out those facts? Once the purpose was served — of playing the so called secular card, the statement was conveniently taken back.

Mr Shinde, please don’t play politics with terrorism. It has no colour or religion. It is simply terror. Punish all those who indulge in terror — Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian or whoever it is whether he or she is an atheist or practices primitive animism. It doesn’t matter. Such crude attempts of classifying terror would boomerang. And it has already boomeranged in a way. Despite the hanging of Afzal Guru, no message has gone to the terrorists as they continue with their attacks and Hyderabad is the latest in the series of attacks which the country had to face in the last two decades or so. Mr Shinde, how would you classify the Hyderabad terror attack? Which colour or religion does this belong to? Obviously you would not answer as you have burnt your fingers and you cannot derive political mileage out of it.

Don’t compromise with the paramount consideration of fighting terror with all the command and force you have. Politicising it is not the solution and after tendering an apology, you have made it clear that the use of “Hindu terror” was political in nature with an eye on the vote bank. Remember, the country comes first and then Congress, BJP or vote bank politics. Don’t put the party and vote bank before the country. This is precisely what you did with the “Hindu terror” comments.

But the problem here is bigger. Congress is so huge and diverse that even if Shinde says something, someone else would disassociate himself or herself from the remarks to pander to another set of vote bank. More or less, this is a calculated exercise. One Shinde or Digvijay Singh says something to pander to a communal interest and one Janardan Dwivedi or Manish Tiwari says something else to pander to another set of vote bank and assuage the feelings of that section which apparently felt hurt by a comment.

Just after Shinde apologised or for that matter said sorry for his “Hindu terror” remarks, you now have Union Minister Kamal Nath saying that Shinde had not apologised for his controversial remarks but only expressed regret. Now, some other leader would say something and the process would continue. Grow out of this habit. For how long would you continue to use the same set of tactics which you have been using for the last 60 years to get votes?

Post Script:  Cameron’s note on the Visitor’s Book would ensure him a place in the history books as the first British Prime Minister who was sorry and expressed regret, almost apologised for a historical blunder which a fellow British citizen committed in 1919.  It would help him get votes of the Punjabis and the Indians living in Britain. What Shinde said and apologised for would neither earn him any accolades or votes for his party. This only showed how immature a politician he is and how the statement was calculated to cater to vote bank politics.  (February 25, 2013)

http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/chandigarh/129367-cameron-and-shinde-poles-apart-same-tactics-different-results.html

http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/dehradun/129396-cameron-and-shinde-poles-apart-same-tactics-different-results-.html

Cameron Apology: Next time maybe something more unequivocal

There is hardly a house in old Amritsar without a connection with that day in Britain’s infamy and for them David Cameron’s equivocity over a true ‘sorry’ was something of a mixed message — chalega, but definitely not the real thing

Amitabh Shukla

British Prime Minister David Cameron was not fulfilling a diplomatic role as Prime Minister of Britain at the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial this week. He was just upholding a tradition of wooing the ethnic vote back home by making solemn declarations of correcting the wrongs of history. Last November, Cameron’s Canadian counterpart, Stephen Harper, visited Takht Keshgarh Sahib and then had dinner at a Punjabi dhaba in Chandigarh in November. The message conveyed by both the Prime Ministers to their expatriate Punjabi voters was simple — “We care for your feelings, so please…your vote.”

Cameron’s message to the half-a-million-strong Punjabi community back home would not be lost when he seeks re-election in May 2015. He did all it required to win their support two years before the polls to the House of Commons — he sported a blue scarf to cover his head; visited the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple); went to the community kitchen (langar) to see food being prepared where he tried his hand at making a roti; took blessings at the sanctum sanctorum by standing for a while at the Akal Takht and finally took a parikarma (round) of the marbled perimeter of the temple like any other devout.

But people of the city, almost everyone who remembers the Jallianwala Bagh tragedy through tales of their grandparents and elders, folklore and history, wanted more than what he wrote in the Visitor’s Book at the memorial which witnessed the greatest tragedy during the freedom struggle of the country. “Britain apologizes” — this is what the people wanted written there for perpetuity. They nearly got it but not exactly. “This was a deeply shameful event in British history,” Cameron wrote, adding, “One that Winston Churchill rightly described at that time as monstrous. We must never forget what happened here and we must ensure that the UK stands up for the right of peaceful protests around the world”.

“We have waited for an apology for the last 94 years,” said Bhushan Behl, grandson of Lala Hari Ram Behl, a martyr of that infamous act on the day of Baishakhi in 1919 in the holy city. Behl heads an organisation called the Jallianwala Bagh Shahid Parivar Samiti to keep the memory of the martyrs alive and bring together the descendants of the martyrs.

As the tragedy is etched in the collective memory of the people, the organisation still remains relevant in the city. The members of the organisation had sought a meeting with the visiting British PM, but they were simply not allowed free movement for an hour when Cameron was in the walled city.

But the voice of Behl and many others, who wanted an outright apology without mixing the words in diplomatic nuance, was drowned because of the gesture of Cameron in visiting the holiest Sikh shrine. Even the Sikh hardliners and the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee did not demand an outright apology.

“After Winston Churchill in 1920, this is for the first time that a high ranking elected leader of Britain has used words like shameful and monstrous. We are satisfied,” an Akali leader said, adding, “this would help heal the collective psyche of the Amritsar residents”.

Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, who received Cameron at the Golden Temple, was satisfied with the visit and the homage paid to the martyrs. He considered it as a ‘sort of an apology’ for which the people of the country, especially Punjab had been waiting for long.

The caretaker of the Jallianwala Bagh memorial, Sukumar Mukherjee, whose grandfather SC Mukherjee shifted to Amritsar in 1910 and took up the cause of the memorial soon after the tragedy in 1920 with national leaders, was satisfied too. “The British PM was apologetic. A word here or there does not matter, the intent does. Homage has been paid to the martyrs,” Mukherjee said, whose family has not left the city ever since they became the caretakers of the memorial in the early 1920s.

Though the demographic profile of Amritsar has changed like any other city over the past hundred years, what stands out here is the fact that in the walled city almost every family either lost an ancestor or has information of somebody with a forebear killed on the orders of General Reginald Dyer. So the pain associated with the Jallianwala Bagh lingers, even though the mayhem of that afternoon 94 years ago was subsequently overtaken by one of the greatest man-made tragedies in world history — the partition of the sub-continent in 1947 — where the volume of Punjab’s pain was tremendously profound and still overwhelms the national policy on a variety of issues.

Cameron, despite his vote-bank oriented intentions, ended up making a beginning of recognising a historical tragedy during colonial rule and perhaps this was the right way to move forward. Residents believe that the near future could see another Prime Minister, King or Queen of Britain who would not only bow his head before the martyrs’ column, but express something more unequivocal than “regret” so that Britain’s bad name is cleansed. (February 23, 2013) 

http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/item/53476-next-time-maybe-something-more-unequivocal.html

Bofors gets a new avatar in AgustaWestland

VIEWPOINT

AMITABH SHUKLA

 The VVIP helicopter deal and the associated kickback are set to become a political thriller in the days to come. More so, as it precedes a series of Assembly elections this year and then the Lok Sabha elections in April-May next year.

Could this deal gone horribly wrong become the Bofors of the Manmohan Singh Government? This is precisely what the Congress is thinking and the party managers are correct in their assessment that fire fighting efforts have to be doubled and even trebled. They cannot leave anything to chance as BJP is pressing the accelerator and wants to convert the helicopter deal into the Bofors of UPA-II. You don’t have to be a student of history to recall that VP Singh felled the mighty Rajiv Gandhi Government in 1989, largely on Defence kickbacks and Bofors had become a household name, a name synonymous with high-end corruption in which the big and mighty were involved.

Many in the countryside at that time did not know what Bofors exactly was when the issue rocked the nation. But the way election campaign was run and the issue used, they knew one thing for sure that the word meant that the ruling Congress Government was involved in some murky dealing and had to be taught a lesson for the wrongdoing. This is what they did when the Congress with 400 plus seats was reduced to a figure below 200 in the polls, sending Rajiv Gandhi packing to the Opposition benches of Lok Sabha.

A quarter of a century later, AgustaWestland could be a tongue twister and a difficult name to remember as compared to Bofors, but by and large, the message which VP Singh then conveyed through a series of rallies, has been conveyed instantly by the 24x7 news channels now. The vertical and parallel links, explored so far, point out towards the involvement of ruling political bigwigs apart from those in the command of the Air Force. As the entire plot of the helicopter deal is yet to be unearthed, more skeletons from the cupboard of the ruling party would tumble in the coming days and weeks to come. You cannot keep saying for eternity that the case has been handed over to the CBI for investigations and action would be taken once the investigations are complete. People now know from their experience of high value corruption involving politicians that it is a diversionary tactics, meant to delay and manipulate inconvenient facts.

AgustaWestland is not the last one has heard of big ticket corruption which became a hallmark of the ruling UPA in its second term. More could tumble out in the remaining 14 months of the Government. The Commonwealth Games scandal, 2G Spectrum scam, Coalgate — all saw serious acts of omission and commission by the UPA-led Central Government in which the amount of money involved was astronomical.

Then, there were a host of other cases where a case was made out of misuse of power and authority like the land bought by Robert Vadra in Gurgaon and diverting the funds of the Congress for National Herald.

In fact, people would be wondering how many scams of UPA-II remain “unexposed” as of now. They are wary of anything which the Government purchases or schemes it spends on simply saying that wherever there is money involved, there is invariably a leakage. If the money is big, the leakage is traced to the big and mighty like in the AgustaWestland deal or the 2G and Commonwealth Games scam, if the money involved is small, the leakage is traced to junior officials — lower level revenue and civic officials, clerks, section officers, Under Secretaries and IAS officers.

One could criticise Anna Hazare’s concept of Jan Lokpal as a guardian of checking corruption terming it dictatorial, but the support it got suggests what people genuinely feel about all pervasive corruption and inaction of the Government.

Clearly, there has been a governance deficit in the second term of Manmohan Singh as the economist turned Prime Minister has simply looked the other way even when one issue of corruption to the other rocked the Government for the better part of his tenure. What is the use of hiding behind the guise of “integrity and honesty” when you cannot control colossus corruption all around you? This is what people are asking now at the fag end of the political career of Singh when he is about to complete nine years at the helm. It will indeed be difficult for Rahul Gandhi, Congress vice president and the Number two to carry the legacy of Singh — “tolerance to corruption” — on his soldiers as and when the situation warrants.

CPI (M) politburo member Sitaram Yechury says that UPA-II is the most corrupt regime since Independence. Obviously, Congress would not agree to it. But get a calculator and do a simple sum of adding the amount involved in all the scams which took place in the last 45 months and you would start believing Yechury even if you do not agree with the policies of his party.

By going slow on the helicopter deal, the Congress Government has already triggered speculations that it has a lot to hide and the links could go right up to the top.

BJP has a valid point when it asks that when the bribe giver has been arrested, why can’t the investigating agency arrest the bribe taker in India. As per Indian law, both bribe giver and taker are guilty but everyone knows who carries the bigger guilt in the eyes of the people who vote in elections.

Obviously, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and heir apparent Rahul Gandhi would not take the blame saying that the onus of governance lies at the doors of Manmohan Singh and they never held any Government office.

Last year in May, when UPA completed three years in office, the Congress president said tough action will be taken against all those who are found to be involved in corruption. Does the party believe that transferring a case to CBI is indeed a “tough action”?

I wonder what the Congress would sell in the next election. It has run out of issues to highlight and instead bogged down by a series of corruption at all levels of governance.

Cash transfer of subsidy, being billed as the “game changer” has so many loopholes ingrained in it that it would be foolhardy to believe that it would pay electoral dividends the way NAREGA did in the last tenure of UPA. Bribing the voters work, but not always. (February 18, 2013) 

http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/dehradun/128393-bofors-gets-a-new-avatar-in-agustawestland.html

http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/chandigarh/128245-bofors-gets-a-new-avatar-in-agustawestland.html

Afzal Guru, Congress, Rahul and Modi

VIEWPOINT

AMITABH SHUKLA

Politics leads to Government. Every action which the Government takes or intends to take has political overtones and the benefit-loss analysis is carefully calculated to the last electorate.

As that is the case, only the naïve would think that the hanging of Afzal Guru has nothing to do with electoral politics. I am sure the way this is going to play out in the next few months in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections would have been worked out to the minutest details before the Government took a call on hanging Guru after the President rejected the mercy plea of the Parliament House attack convict.

After procrastination and indecision for several years, the execution of Guru comes at a time when national politics is entering a crucial phase in the second month of 2013 with several Assembly elections lined up followed by the battle royale of 2014. As the hanging followed that of the Mumbai butcher Ajmal Kasab, with two strokes, the Congress Government has successfully removed the disgraceful tag of being "soft on terror".

It has also sought to remove the tag of being a "soft state" which could have been an electoral disaster in the long run after Pakistani intruders killed two Indian soldiers and beheaded one of them, leading to a flashpoint on the Line of Control and a diplomatic row.

Its rival BJP will no longer be able to target Congress on the issue of Guru and will lose a vital issue to score brownie points during election campaign. Also, it will be difficult for the opposition party to use the beheading incident of January 8 in election campaign even though the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj wanted India to get at least 10 heads from the other side for that of martyred soldier Hemraj.

Though Congress won in 2009, it was very difficult for the party to answer the questions of BJP on Afzal Guru who had practically become a symbol of "soft state" in that election campaign.

Finally, the Congress had to dig out the Kandahar hijacking case and the release of terrorists in lieu of Indian Airlines passengers to blunt the BJP line of attack. It no longer will have to answer any questions on Guru now in any election. In 2009, Congress used to say "law will take its own course" on Kasab, now it conveniently says "law has taken the full course".

With this move, the Government also silenced the right wing groups who had been baying first for Kasab's blood and then for Guru.

It has also silenced a series of campaigns on the social networking sites for hanging Kasab and Guru, several of which had predicted that both the terrorists would die of old age when they are in their 90s. Now, the campaign of the laptop and Smart Phone generation would end and they will have to find some new cause to rally behind.

The Congress and the Government must also have calculated that they would not lose any minority vote on this count as no Muslim would ever sympathise with Guru.

There could be some sympathies for the hanged terrorist in Kashmir valley but in any case the state is hardly significant for the Congress in the bigger scheme of things when it comes to electoral politics.

Now, we can understand the context of the use of the word "saffron terror" of Home Minister Shushilkumar Shinde during the Jaipur conclave of the Congress aptly. It was not an innocent statement out of nowhere. He obviously wanted to win over the minorities with the slur.

The comment was made in the interregnum after Kasab was hanged and Guru was yet to be hanged. Shinde must be aware what was in fate for Guru in the second week of February and obviously wanted to win over both the Hindus and Muslims.

Though no one would admit it, I suspect that Congress played the communal card deftly here. With the hanging, it wanted to endear itself to a section of the right wing Hindus and with the use of the calculated word "saffron terror", it wanted to pander to the sentiments of naïve Muslims.

How far the party succeeds would be visible only in the polls results, first in a series of Assembly polls this year which would obviously be the semi-final before the battle of 2014. Political observers and senior journalists who have seen the Congress functioning for the last over four decades say

that earlier attempts of the party playing the communal and caste card was quite "crude" and was too obvious even for the common man but now there is a lot more "sophistication" to the exercise.

Also, Congress clearly wants to give leverage to its newly appointed vice president Rahul Gandhi and remove the obstacles in front of him so that he does not face the barbs, likely from Narendra Modi and BJP in the race for prime ministership in 2014.

I am sure, Rahul would never comment on the hanging of the Parliament House convict as he has not spoken on any issue of significance in the last several months. His flag bearers would have to do that on his behalf.

The last he spoke was at Jaipur and it was a "sob story" how his family sacrificed for the country and how as a young child and a teenager he faced the deaths of his grandmother and father.

A few days later after the Jaipur conclave of the Congress, Modi, likely to be his main opponent in 2014, tried to build the India story, show optimism and gave a way forward during his talk at the SRCC, Delhi University.

While Gandhi went back to the past to the days of his grandmother and father, Modi went ahead with a vision of what the country could be in the next few years. In fact, Modi was speaking the language of Rahul's father Rajiv Gandhi when he talked of computers, electronics and the new century when he became the Prime Minister in 1984. It is a different matter that Rajiv could not build on the vision and platform even after getting 4/5th of majority in Parliament, the biggest ever since the country became a Republic.

Rahul will be addressing four public meetings on Monday, February 11 in Tripura. It would be interesting to note the national or the local issues he takes up in the State.

He will have to fight the "voter fatigue" against him which is fast becoming a reality and invent new jargons and methodology to counter Modi amongst the You Tube and Smartphone generation. The party cannot depend on Afzal Guru's hanging to get votes. In any case, the law has taken its own course on the issue. 

(February 11, 2013)

 http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/chandigarh/126815-afzal-guru-congress-rahul-and-modi.html

DSGMC results: Implication in Punjab and Delhi

VIEWPOINT 

AMITABH SHUKLA

The victory of the Shiromani Akali Dal in the Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Management Committee (DSGMC) polls sends several political messages loud and clear. The hegemony of the SAD amongst the Sikhs beyond Punjab is no longer a matter of conjecture. It is a reality which the Congress cannot brush aside, however hard it tries and whatever logic it invents.

The process of the dominance of the SAD in elections which are largely religious in nature started with the landslide it got in the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) elections in September 2011. In that election, the SAD wiped out the faction of Haryana SGPC led by Jagdish Singh Jhinda which wanted a separate body to manage the elections in Haryana. Obviously, this group too was aligned to the Congress. By winning most of the SGPC seats in Haryana, the SAD and the Sikhs sent a clear message that there was no need for a separate management committee for the Gurudwaras based in Haryana and the present arrangement was good enough.

With the victory in the DSGMC polls, SAD has emerged as the sole spokesperson of the Sikh community in matters related to religion as well as politics. Remember, miri (politics and political power) and piri (religion or spiritual power) are a part of the Sikh idiom from time immemorial. Also, in between the two elections for the religious bodies, SAD-BJP won Punjab Assembly polls for the second time in a row in March 2012.

Obviously it was the Congress which was at the receiving end more than the SAD (Delhi) of the Sarna brothers – Paramjit Singh and Harvinder Singh – in the DSGMC polls. Though the Congress officially does not participate in the elections of the DSGMC or any religious body, it is an open secret that it was backing the Sarnas with whatever possible way it could. Delhi Minister Arvinder Singh Lovely was the key political strategist of the Sarnas like he was in the last elections in 2007. At that time, Lovely took credit for the victory of the Sarnas, this time he must take the blame too for the defeat. Punjab Congress President Capt Amarinder Singh too campaigned for the SAD (Delhi) and obviously the party cannot claim that it was “neutral” or does not dabble in elections which are religious in nature. If the SAD (Delhi) had won, both Lovely and the Captain would have been the first to claim credit.

So the verdict is as clear as daylight and there is hardly any confusion. It was a Congress backed SAD (Delhi) which lost the polls to the BJP backed SAD (Badal).

The timing of the victory is significant for the father-son duo of Parkash Singh Badal and Sukhbir Singh Badal as it comes 10 months before the Delhi Assembly polls and 15 months before the Lok Sabha elections. The Badals could well get their first MLA in Delhi Assembly later this year and may also bargain for the West Delhi or South Delhi Lok Sabha seat in the 2014 Parliamentary  polls from the BJP. A positive outcome in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls for the BJP-SAD combine could also encourage the senior Badal to move to central politics in a big way, leaving the state to his son Sukhbir. As SAD President, Sukhbir has not lost the habit of winning and his political hegemony within the party remains unchallenged.

Moga bye-poll, scheduled for February 23 is next on the agenda of the Akali Dal. It is indeed a tough election as the entire Congress has united for the first time in recent months, forgetting the turf war of their leaders. A turncoat, Joginder Pal Jain has been fielded as Akali nominee and even the mood amongst the voters, forced for a second election within a year, is not encouraging. If SAD wins it, there is nothing which could stop its juggernaut and the winning habit could continue till the Lok Sabha elections and beyond.

The loss in the DSGMC polls is also a setback and an ominous sign for Sheila Dikshit’s Congress government in Delhi which has been in power for over 14 years and faces Assembly polls later this year in November-December. This is the second successive loss for the Congress in a year in the national Capital after it lost elections to all the three municipal corporations in Delhi in April 2012. The two elections reflected the public mood of the national Capital and definitely it is not pro-Congress at this point of time.

Dikshit is the longest serving woman chief minister, having won three consecutive elections. However, over a period, she has lost her appeal amongst the middle class voters of Delhi. Voter fatigue is evident and the DSGMC result is a harsh wake-up call for the Delhi Chief Minister. 

Anti incumbency of three terms, mega corruption, price rise, scam in the Commonwealth Games—all have now combined and come to haunt the Dikshit government along with repeated onslaught of  BJP, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Arvind Kejriwal against the government. If the AAP contests all the seats and walks away with even a small per cent of votes, the beneficiary would obviously be the BJP. Dikshit now has nothing new to offer to the people of Delhi and the administration and government has been rather lackluster in her third term.

DSGMC result could well be the pointer to the larger political battle in Punjab as well as Delhi. It has given enough indications and the direction in which political wind is blowing.