India and Australia: The end of estrangement? April 4, 2012
Posted by nishankmotwani in : India, Kumar, Vikas , CommentVikas Kumar
Reprinted from Clingendael Asia Forum at the Clingendael Asia Studies, 9 December 2011. Read the full story.
On the eve of the visit of US President Barack Obama, Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard declared that Australia is willing to reconsider its ban on uranium exports to India. The ban is widely believed to be a major obstacle to a stronger India—Australia relationship, which has so far remained weak despite numerous, and shared maritime security concerns. While estrangement during the Cold War was understandable, Australia’s and India’s subsequent inability to forge a closer relationship is not. Gillard’s latest move is being seen as a game changer that will end strategic discrimination against India and signal Australia’s willingness to shed its Cold War blinkers and come to terms with the end of India’s nuclear isolation. It is unfair, however, to expect a dramatic improvement in the India-Australia relationship as a consequence of lifting the ban.
2012 Uttar Pradesh Assembly election and the future of UPA January 13, 2012
Posted by southasiamasala in : India, Kumar, Vikas , 1 comment so farVikas Kumar
The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has been paralyzed among other things due to the populist politics of Mamata Banerjee, the leader of All India Trinamool Congress (Trinamool). Dr Manmohan Singh’s historic Bangladesh visit was almost derailed, when mercurial Mamata vetoed the agreement on water sharing. The list of domestic legislations and policy initiatives that have been delayed or even mothballed to keep Mamata in good humour is long: Lokpal Bill, FDI in retail sector, disinvestment of public sector undertakings, and rail fare rationalization. To add insult to injury, Mamata now seems to be keen to get rid of Congress. There can be four reasons why Trinamool may want to change course. First, it does not make sense to contest the next local and parliamentary elections as an ally of a corruption-tainted party. Second, Trinamool is trying to monopolize the non-Left vote in West Bengal. Third, Trinamool now faces a weakened Left Front in West Bengal and is no longer critically dependent on the support of a national party. Fourth, Trinamool is trying to strike roots in other provinces like Uttar Pradesh and Manipur. But Trinamool may postpone its exit from UPA in order to get extra-financial support from the centre for West Bengal and even continue to ‘support’ UPA if an utterly humiliated Congress continues to tolerate Mamata’s populism at the expense of the central exchequer.
Ironically, Congress has no one to blame but itself. Mamata’s assembly election campaign should have alerted Congress long ago that Trinamool will out-left the Left Front. But to get rid of the Left Front, a key ally of UPA-I (2005–2009), Congress promoted Trinamool at the cost of national security. For instance, in the run-up to West Bengal assembly election (2011), the central government extended half-hearted support to the Left Front government’s police campaign against Maoist extremism, the biggest internal security threat according to Dr Singh. Dr Singh also overlooked the misuse of the Railway ministry by Trinamool’s campaign machinery. More importantly, as I have argued earlier, Congress has ignored its long term interests in its single-minded quest to weaken the Left.
Will Buddhism lose its “special position” in democratic Myanmar? December 17, 2011
Posted by southasiamasala in : Kumar, Vikas, South Asia - General , CommentVikas Kumar
The British disestablished Buddhism in Myanmar after abolishing the monarchy and the Burmese nationalists in turn projected the British rule, among other things, as a threat to Buddhism. After decolonization, Buddhism slowly reclaimed the public space. To begin with the Union of Burma’s Constitution (1947) recognized the “special position of Buddhism” (Art 21). The Sixth (Theravada) Buddhist Council (1954-56), which concluded on the 2500th Anniversary of Buddha’s nirvana, was organized in Myanmar under the patronage of Prime Minister U Nu. Then in 1961 Buddhism was formally adopted as the state religion. This, however, did little to secure U Nu’s political position. He was deposed soon after in 1962. The nominal changes introduced by the subsequent governments did not alter the relationship between Buddhism and the state, which marginalizes Christian tribes and Muslims.
Post-colonial Myanmar dominated by the Burmese Buddhists has, in fact, been fighting insurgent ethno-linguistic and religious minorities right from the day of its inauguration. However, a number of developments in the last few months have generated optimism about the long impending democratization of Myanmar, which in turn is expected to lead to secularization and de-ethnicization of the state. A comparative survey of histories and constitutions of countries closely related to Myanmar – Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand – where Theravada Buddhism is the dominant faith would help deciphering the future of the “special position” of Buddhism in Myanmar. (more…)
2012 Uttar Pradesh Assembly Election: Samajwadi Party’s Waterloo? November 29, 2011
Posted by southasiamasala in : India, Kumar, Vikas , 4commentsVikas Kumar
The forthcoming assembly election in Uttar Pradesh (UP), the world’s most populous sub-national administrative unit, marks the beginning of the long campaign for India’s 2014 General Election. In an earlier post, I have argued that the outcome of UP’s election will influence the choice of prime ministerial candidates and the strategies of political parties for the next general election. In this post I will discuss the existential crisis facing Samajwadi Party (SP), an important regional party based in UP.
The rise of SP in the early 1990s was propelled by the insecurity and aspirations of the middle castes (also known as the Other Backward Castes, OBCs) and Muslims. This was the time when sections of upper castes were supporting Hindu nationalism and economic liberalization to rejuvenate their hegemony that was collapsing in the aftermath of the Shah Bano case, which encouraged radical Islamists, and the implementation of Mandal Commission’s recommendations, which empowered the lower and middle castes. In this atmosphere, SP’s secular socialist manifesto targeted lower and middle caste and Muslim voters with mixed success. On the one hand, its bitter clash with its ally Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) deprived SP of lower caste support. On the other, the decline of Congress in UP and rise of Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) allowed SP to consolidate Muslim votes. In the late 1990s marginalization of BJP’s OBC leader Kalyan Singh buttressed SP’s OBC credentials. As a result SP came to be identified with OBCs, particularly the Yadavs, and Muslims. The Yadav–Muslim combination worked electoral wonders in UP between 1993 and 2007, when SP secured between 17 and 26 per cent of the votes cast in elections and its leader Mulayam Singh Yadav served as the chief minister for six years (1993–95, 2003–07). (The Yadav–Muslim alliance was more effective in neighbouring Bihar, where it helped Lalu Prasad Yadav stay in power for 15 years between 1990 and 2005.) SP also managed to leverage its position in UP to emerge as a national player. Mulayam Singh served as the defence minister (1996–98) in the Third Front government and was also considered for the position of prime minister.
Understanding China’s South Asia policy November 24, 2011
Posted by southasiamasala in : Kumar, Vikas, South Asia - General , 1 comment so farVikas Kumar
China’s aggressive posturing in recent boundary disputes with Japan, India, Vietnam, and the Philippines caused widespread concern in the Asia-Pacific. But sensing growing opposition, China renewed cooperation with neighbours to calm tensions. Still policy-makers across the region are panicking at the prospect of China’s premature rise as the regional hegemon. The combination of aggressive and peaceful moves that characterize China’s foreign policy, therefore, bears closer scrutiny.
At least, four competing, but not mutually exclusive, explanations can be offered to explain China’s foreign policy in South Asia, which relate to different understandings of intentions and compulsions of the Chinese leaders and, by implication, different ways of engaging with a rising China. A fuller understanding of different explanations and their inter-relationship is, therefore, indispensable. (more…)
India’s feet of clay October 16, 2011
Posted by southasiamasala in : India, Kumar, Vikas , CommentVikas Kumar
India is gradually emerging as a major economy and defence power. But it faces numerous hurdles in its quest for regional ascendance. On the one hand, structural disabilities constrain its ambitions. On the other, a vision deficit limits its ability to overcome structural disabilities. One of the most significant hurdles is its inability to manage, let alone legitimately lead, South Asia, its own neighbourhood. A number of structural factors have gridlocked its attempts to overcome this hurdle.
First, India is much larger than all its neighbours put together, accounting for more than two thirds of its neighbourhood’s area, population, economic output, foreign exchange and gold reserves, and armed forces. The consequent power differentials translate into a sense of insecurity in its neighbourhood.
Second, given its central location within its neighbourhood and enormous geographical expanse, India shares land and maritime borders with almost all its neighbours. This is a perennial source of conflicts because international borders in South Asia remain unsettled and multilateral fora like SAARC that could arbitrate territorial disputes are weak. The possibility of territorial conflict accentuates the aforesaid sense of insecurity.
Third, Bangladesh and Pakistan, the next largest countries in India’s neighbourhood, are not small and, in fact, are among the seven most populous countries of the world. This fosters polarization in South Asia and constrains India’s regional leadership ambitions. The presence of an erstwhile global power (Russia) and a number of nuclear powers (China, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia) in the wider neighbourhood further constrain India’s ambitions. (more…)
Is China repeating the mistakes of the United States in Pakistan? October 5, 2011
Posted by southasiamasala in : Kumar, Vikas, Pakistan , CommentVikas Kumar
The web security company McAfee’s recently concluded investigations seem to confirm the widely held belief that China is engaged in extensive cyber intelligence operations targeting other countries, particularly, the United States. And yet remarkably, China refuses to learn from common knowledge about the United States’ experience as the reigning global power.
It is well-known that the United States’ foreign policy of using extremist Islamic regimes as proxies against the Soviet Union has boomeranged and has also caused extensive damage to the political economies of a number of countries in the Middle East and South Asia. Unfortunately, China refuses to learn from the United States’ experience in this regard. In its quest for greater power in the global arena, China is supporting regimes it would love to disappear when it reaches the summit. For instance, China is using Pakistan as a force multiplier in South Asia and in the process it is supporting a regime that will not turn law-abiding after China achieves its strategic goals.
The South Asian Qurans September 21, 2011
Posted by southasiamasala in : Kumar, Vikas, South Asia - General , 3commentsVikas Kumar
The Quran has been translated from Arabic into about 100 languages, roughly 1 per cent of the known living languages of the world, whereas Islam is the religion of more than 20 per cent people in the world (and Arabic is the mother tongue of less than one-fifth of the Muslims). In contrast, partial or complete translations of the Bible are available in more than a third of the known languages. Furthermore, most of the translations of the Quran are relatively recent whereas the Bible was the first printed text in a number of languages. In fact, a great majority of the extant translations of the Quran into South Asian languages appeared after the formal disestablishment of Islam in 1858 CE, roughly a thousand years after the arrival of Islam in South Asia. The few translations that pre-date 1858 CE appeared before the establishment of Islamic power in South Asia or only after the British emerged as the de facto rulers in North and East India in the late 18th century. A similar trend can be seen in other parts of the world. In the Ottoman Europe, the Quran was translated into the Balkan languages in the 19th and 20th centuries, that is, at the very end of the centuries-long Turkish rule.
One wonders why the Mughals, Akbar and Dara, who promoted large-scale translations from Sanskrit to Persian, and the Pathan rulers of Bengal and the Bahamani rulers of Deccan, who promoted local languages, overlooked the need for South Asian language Qurans. (A Deccani translation seems to have been carried out in the 16th century, which is now unavailable.) Explanations that invoke the intrinsic untranslatability of the Quran or the theological undesirability of translation will satisfy only those committed to theo-linguistic exclusivism. In fact, there are numerous Quranic verses, which can be cited in support of the need for translation (e.g., Abraham 14.4, Marium 19.97, Ha Mim 41.44, The Smoke 44.58, and Yusuf 12.2).
Aarakshan’s Deepak Kumar: A new beginning? September 9, 2011
Posted by southasiamasala in : India, Kumar, Vikas , 2commentsVikas Kumar
Prakash Jha’s Aarakshan (Reservation), which faced bans in three provinces and political censorship in a number of others, has been rightly slammed as bad art: a tame, predictable script made worse by bad direction. The movie opens with the failure of Deepak Kumar (played by Saif Ali Khan), a bright student and college Principal Dr Prabhakar Anand’s (played by Amitabh Bachchan) favourite, to get a job because of his lower caste-class background. This and other developments following the Supreme Court’s judgment favouring affirmative action lead Deepak Kumar and Dr Anand to question the historical injustice meted out to the lower castes. They also give a sympathetic hearing to those who allege that affirmative action policies are being misused and hurting the poor among the upper castes. That is roughly the first half of the movie. In the second half, which seems to be another movie, Dr Anand and Deepak Kumar forget history and focus on the present and try to provide free access to good education in face of rampant commercialisation of education, personified by the character of Mithilesh Singh (a highly corrupt, upper caste teacher, played by Manoj Bajpai in his inimitable style). In short, the movie simply catalogues legitimate grievances of all parties to the conflict and then conveniently forgets the conflict.
But the rate at which Aarakshan attracted controversies is only surpassed by the rate at which it was forgotten. This is surprising because it is not only the first mainstream Hindi movie that has explored the contentious issue of affirmative action but also one of the very few movies in which (one of) the hero(es) is a confident educated Dalit. In the midst of the controversies most of us have forgotten the new ground broken by Aarakshan’s Deepak Kumar. And Bachchan, who played the role of Dr Anand, partly modelled after the founder of Patna’s Super-30 that has successfully groomed hundreds of poor students for leading engineering colleges of India, has stolen the limelight. But the role played by Saif Ali Khan was at the centre of controversies and demands for censorship. The primary objection of those demanding bans or edits concerned the scene where Mithlesh Singh taunts Deepak Kumar about the unwillingness of the lower castes to work hard. The latter responds by cataloguing the large variety of manual works his community has been doing for the upper castes for ages. Deepak Kumar’s catalogue, which includes manual scavenging, has drawn the ire of protestors and governments sympathetic to them. Ironically, governments that have not made any serious effort to end manual scavenging were eager to ban the movie. A secondary objection, based on a questionable assumption linking caste and skin complexion, relates to the choice of a fair-skinned, upper caste-class actor for the role of Deepak Kumar.
Whither goest thou, Saleem Shahzad’s Pakistan June 3, 2011
Posted by southasiamasala in : Kumar, Vikas, Pakistan , 2commentsVikas Kumar
In January, when Ahmed Rashid commented on “Pakistan’s very unhappy new year” little did we know that Osama bin Laden would be found “hiding in plain sight” in a safe house in a garrison town close to Islamabad. Osama’s death, the subsequent “revenge” attacks, and the ongoing trial of Tahawwur Rana in the United States have put Pakistan under the spotlight like never before. But public debate has focussed entirely on the international implications of terrorist camps in Pakistan and what the international community can do to save a failing nuclear power from itself. There is hardly any discussion on whether Pakistan can save itself. And if we ignore apologists for extremists, who believe that the world rather than Pakistan has to change, then even domestic debate within Pakistan has only highlighted the impossibility of change or at least change from within. Honestly speaking, one cannot be blamed for being pessimistic about Pakistan, particularly after the gruesome murder of Syed Saleem Shahzad, an investigative journalist who was probing the relationship between the state and extremists.
The prospect of Deobandi-Wahhabi extremists taking over the Pakistani state is now giving sleepless nights to policy-makers across the world. But is it indeed time to conclude that domestic resistance to international terrorism and Islamic extremism breeding within Pakistan is impossible and the feared takeover is inevitable? Not yet, because the demographic mosaic of Pakistan rules out the possibility of countrywide dominance of extremists. Let us begin with religion. The Shias account for about a fifth of Pakistan’s population and a bewildering variety of small, heterodox Islamic communities dots the south-western, western, and northern borders of Pakistan. But even among Sunnis, the Deobandis and related Wahhabi extremists have a smaller following than their arch rivals, the Barelvis, and other traditionalist Sunni communities that are at home with Sufism.