India-US Security Cooperation in Eastern Indian Ocean & Pacific Must be Extended to Western Frontiers
US President Donald Trump is set to make his first official visit to India and briefing Prime Minister Narendra Modi about his plans for the Afghan-Pak and the Gulf regions is expected to be on his agenda, C Raja Mohan writes for his column for The Indian Express.
The question is, he writes, whether India can expand its role in the subcontinent as Trump cuts down US’ military commitments in the Middle East and Africa and eventually in Afghanistan as well.
“Delhi’s focus should, instead, be on expanding its own security cooperation with the US in the troubled lands to the west of India…Second, Delhi needs to prepare itself for a larger security role in Afghanistan. Trump has been asking a simple question: If India is next door to Afghanistan, should it not be doing more for Afghan security?…Third, Delhi has already stepped up its naval activity within the Gulf and beyond as part of its emergence as a regional security provider. It knows that its effectiveness will rise manifold if it acts in concert with the US and other partners.”C Raja Mohan in The Indian Express
What Women Can, and Cannot Do, in The Army, Writes Karan Thapar
The Supreme Court’s ruling on women’s permanent commission in the Indian Army was a landmark judgment, but the assumption that the Army will treat women officers as equal to men “is only partially incorrect”, writes Karan Thapar on Hindustan Times.
In his column Thapar writes that there might be a surge in women brigadiers, major generals and lieutenant generals after the judgment. But the army “has a sharply narrowing structure and just as an increasingly diminishing proportion of men rise upwards so, too, will be the case with women.” However, he feels that the reservations of army officers may have some validity.
“It’s not just that our jawans come from conservative rural backgrounds where acceptance of women as superiors or commanders is absent, if not resisted; you also have to bear in mind the actual conditions which jawans and officers experience during war. For instance, they sleep under tanks and armoured cars or huddle together in trenches. Their objections can be questioned on moral grounds but you can’t overrule them in a way that risks efficacy in battle, particularly when India faces threats on two borders. This is why the Army wants to make haste slowly.”Karan Thapar on Hindustan Times
Fifth Column: Dissent is Not Sedition
While delivering the 15th Justice P D Desai Memorial Lecture at the Gujarat High Court, Justice DY Chandrachud described dissent as the ‘safety valve’ of democracy. Lauding him for his words, Tavleen Singh says that what Justice Chandrachud said “comes as a warning”.
In Fifth Column on The Indian Express, Singh writes about how dissent has often been thwarted on the streets where people are protesting against the NRC and the CAA. She raises the issue of students being charged with sedition, and how actresses and poets are being detained for being seen at protests.
She adds that “the infrastructure for this kind of repression has existed since India became a modern nation”, as the Congress carried on the tradition of repressive colonial strategies.
“Once more it is important to remember that the machinery to destroy businesses through raids and regulations was created under ‘liberal’ Congress prime ministers. It should have been dismantled when the licence raj was dismantled but somehow never was. Since Narendra Modi likes to repeat that he wants to create an economic atmosphere in which there is ‘ease of doing business’, he needs to ask himself why he has taken no steps to end the raids and regulations that strangle private enterprise. If totalitarian, communist China can dismantle these things, why not democratic India?”Tavleen Singh on The Indian Express
Rising Divorces a Sign of Justice, Not Arrogance
RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat recently made headlines for his remark where he claimed that divorce is more common in educated families because “with education and affluence comes arrogance, as a result of which families fall apart.”
And with that statement, SA Aiyar writes in Swaminomics — his column for Times of India, Bhagwat entails that India so far had affluent, educated men and not women. Without any rights and education, he says, divorce was not an option for women and it is education that makes people “demand rights, and this outrages those with power”.
He cites the subjugation of women in every faith and tradition, such as, Hinduism, where men had ownership to property and power over all family matters. Or in Islam, which requires a raped woman to produce four witnesses, making it almost impossible for her to complain. Or in Christianity, which has a history of men having the sole monopoly of rights.
“Bhagwat should celebrate the fact that such terrible gender inequality is now forbidden by the Indian Constitution. This declares there can be no discrimination on the grounds of religion, caste, race, sex, or place of birth.Fortunately, women are getting educated and affluent, and are no longer helpless pawns. They can think and act for themselves, including shedding undesirable husbands. Rising divorces are a sign that male tyranny is finally getting contested and punished. This is justice, not arrogance.”SA Aiyar in Times of India
Across The Aisle: All in The National Interest
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been taking a lot of decisions based on “national interest” lately. “National interest”, P Chidambaram writes in Across the Aisle, his column for The Indian Express, are magic words because PM Modi expects “all criticism should cease and all debate should end” when decisions are taken on this basis.
Chidambaram goes on to list and analyse the outcome of several actions taken by the Central government on grounds of national interest — demonetisation, GST, Article 370 and NRC-CAA to name a few.
“Demonetisation was in national interest, the government asserted repeatedly. Critics said it was a monumental blunder and had disastrous consequences: cash was sucked out of the system, crippling cash-driven sectors of the economy such as agriculture, construction, retail trade and self-employment…Nearly two years later, GST collections are below estimates, GST compensation cess is insufficient to compensate the states as promised, and refund has become a major bone of contention between the government and business.”P Chidambaram on The Indian Express
“Constructing a National Register of Citizens for Assam was in national interest, the government claimed. Identifying 19,06,657 persons as foreigners or illegal migrants was in national interest. Calling them ‘termites’ and vowing to throw them out by 2024 was to advance national interest. Finding that over 12 lakh among the so-called foreigners were Hindus and striking upon the diabolical idea of amending the Citizenship Act, 1955, was a ‘solution’ devised in national interest,” he continues.
He writies that, “These national interest decisions have thrown the whole country into unprecedented turmoil.”
Harappan Meat-Eaters, Lutyens’ Vegetarians
Recently, the National Museum barred all non-vegetarian dishes from being served at the ongoing ‘Historical Gastronomica - The Indus Dining Experience’, an event on culinary history. The official reason behind this move was the “sensitivities” around the fact that the museum preserves “many idols of gods and goddesses and a relic of Lord Buddha”.
However, the “sensitivities” that matter lie in Lutyens’ Delhi”, Tony Jospeh writes in The Indian Express.
In his column, he lays out the history of the mingling of populations that happened in the Indian subcontinent including a wave of migration from Central Asian Steppe as the Harappan valley civilisation disintegrated towards the North and South of India.
“The idea of vegetarianism slowly spread and was adopted by some communities including dominant groups in areas in the heartland of the Vedic culture — though the vast majority of Indians always remained meat-eaters like their Harappan ancestors.”Tony Joseph in The Indian Express
Although there’s a stress to uphold Aryan culture as the dominant one, Joseph points out that research shows Harappan Civilisation is the common heritage of all.
“What the modern discomfort of Lutyens’ Delhi with the eating habits of the Harappans should tell us is that some of us have forgotten the essential, exhilarating nature of our common civilisation, forged by four major migrations that happened in prehistory: A unity that is at home with its multi-layered, multi-hued diversity.”Tony Joseph in The Indian Express
Litmus Test for a Judicial Clean-Up Order
The Supreme Court judgment, on 13 February, made it obligatory for all candidates to provide self-sworn affidavits of criminal cases pending against them in any court. By doing so, it has also managed to shift part of the onus on political parties to publicise criminal antecedents.
In his column for The Hindu, Navin Chawla, India’s 16th Chief Election Commissioner opines that this judgment alone may not suffice from restricting politicians with a criminal record, as voter behaviour “is often conditioned by their own immediate needs”.
“With our criminal justice system clogged with cases and lawyers fees often far beyond what many can afford, the local “don” standing for elections, who promises delivery of rough and ready justice, is often seen as the messiah on hand. All too often these cases involve bread and butter issues, from land and irrigation dispute resolution, to matters involving family honour. In such cases this “Robin Hood’ contestant is actually a preferred choice, which helps to explain that where muscle and money get combined in the rural landscape, they often win by large margins.”Navin Chawla on The Hindu
He says the real test of the judgment would be in the upcoming Assembly elections in Bihar and West Bengal. “No doubt the political parties will once again bat for the “winnability” factor in the selections,” Chawla writes.
Why Jailing Kashmir’s Leaders is Wrong, Undemocratic and Unwise, Writes Barkha Dutt
It’s been six months since the arrest of Kashmiri opposition leaders Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah, and Mehbooba Mufti. In her column for Hindustan Times, Barkha Dutt writes, that the PSA dossiers against them are “unconvincing and seem hastily put together.” She also points out, that there is little mass outrage on the streets of Srinagar.
“Most ordinary Kashmiris now believe that elected representatives in the Valley have no authority— and worse — no dignity or standing in India’s political hierarchy. Even those who were once lauded by the BJP, like former civil service exam topper Shah Faesal, have been booked under the PSA. Sajad Lone, who called Narendra Modi his brother, and whose party has been an electoral ally of the BJP, was also locked away.”Barkha Dutt writes for Hindustan Times
Although the Modi government wants to foster a new Kashmir policy, Dutt cautions that this political vacuum in the valley has only emboldened the separatists.
Not a River, But a Pulse of Being
In his column for The Telegraph, Gopalkrishna Gandhi inquires into the origins of the people of Sindh. “Our country is named after the river Sindhu. The Greeks and later the Romans called it Indus”, Gandhi begins his column with how a class on India’s geography would begin.
“First, in India, when we say ‘Sindhi’, we are thinking of Sindhi Hindus. That is not wrong, it is only natural, only right. But when we do that, we slide over the fact that of the nearly 70 million Sindhis in the world, by which I mean those belonging to or descended from persons hailing from the province of Sindh now in Pakistan, the majority are Muslim, not Hindu.”Gopalkrishna Gandhi writes in The Telegraph
Upon listing out the names of prominent Hindu and Muslim Sindhis in both India and Pakistan, he goes on to write that even the Dancing Girl of Mohenjodaro — one of the world’s most prized bronze statues that is nearly 5,000 year old, is also Sindhi. Where was she born? What is her religion? Nobody knows anything about that but that she was found from the Sindh Province of Pakistan.
“A province in Pakistan, it is a presence in India,” he writes.
“It is people, it is jana. A jana without a territory, a people without land. Being Sindhi, in India, is not about belonging to a state but about a state of belonging, of relating. It is about a state of being that does not depend on the physicality of origins or the verifiability of domicile. It is about having been descended from one of the greatest civilizations humanity has known, the Indus Valley Civilization cradled in the basin of that river.”Gopalkrishna Gandhi writes in The Telegraph
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