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Thursday, January 29, 2004
Bird Flu Crisis: Travel and Danger in a Mixing World
By Sandip Roy
Usually the dour official at the Kolkata airport barks, "Any gold? Electronics? Computer?" But this time, when I landed in India from America via Singapore, he was more interested in the food I was carrying. Cooked food from abroad, especially from Southeast Asia, is now suspect. In the age of the bird flu, I have been upgraded from potential electronics smuggler to a disease vector.
In a world of collapsing boundaries, as flights from every corner of the globe disgorged passengers into the transit lounge of Singapore's Changi International Airport, alarmed officials try desperately to guard their borders against diseases that spread at Boeing speed. The duty free shop in San Francisco warned that beef jerky purchased there had to be consumed before landing in Seoul, since South Korea had just banned American beef products. At Hong Kong, large signs asked passengers if they had a persistent cough and flu-like symptoms. In Singapore, airport officials peered into a monitor as each deplaning passenger passed through what looked like an X-ray machine.
But the flu rages through Southeast Asia, claiming another six-year-old in Bangkok and 4 million chickens in Karachi, Pakistan, making mincemeat of the governments' efforts to corner it. For the anti-globalization activists, departing from the recently concluded World Social Forum in Mumbai, the bird flu is another potent reminder of how difficult it is to de-globalize the world once the genie has left the bottle.
India, however, is trying to seal its boundaries against the flu, which is front-page news, topping upcoming India-Pakistan peace talks in February. In fact, the bird flu has brought a bit of a chill in the recent thaw between the two prickly neighbors. Even as Indian and Pakistani bureaucrats plan talks on everything from Kashmir to drug trafficking and the countries resume air flights between each other, New Delhi is contemplating a ban on all poultry from Pakistan, where a strain of the flu killed the chickens. Indian newspapers are already dubbing it the Karachi flu.
In an age where terrorism is conducted by stateless actors like Al Qaeda, the bird flu has proved just as elusive. Governments are trying to counter it on a war footing. The Animal Resources Development Minister in India has just announced a "massive hunt" for evidence of any suspected case. In Thailand, soldiers and prisoners have been pressed into service, culling chickens in the 13 provinces where the flu has been detected. But even as Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra claimed that almost all the chickens in the outbreak areas have been slaughtered, neighboring Laos confirmed that the flu had spread to that country.
Globalization, which had greased the path for the free movement of goods across borders, whether pirated copies of "The Lord of the Rings" or Big Macs, now finds that diseases like SARS and the bird flu come in their wake. The World Health Organization is holding its breath, warning that if the Asian bird flu meets and mates with another human influenza virus moving toward the region, it could trigger a global pandemic that could kill millions of people.
Faced with that possibility, governments are reduced to literally counting their chickens after they are hatched. In India, health officials are trying to force hatcheries to maintain a daily record of dying birds and clinically establish the cause of death of each one. It's the poultry equivalent of cleaning the Augean stables in a country as vast as India. Meanwhile, the ritzy Taj Hotel in Kolkata is trying to reassure its foreign patrons by having a microbiologist examine each chicken. In Vietnam, Kentucky Fried Chicken, a popular hangout for foreigners, is offering fried fish instead of chicken. Singapore is banning the public from its seven poultry farms.
As confidence-building measures, they seem puny and bureaucratic. India, which had been largely sanguine through the mad cow scare because its millions of Hindus don't eat beef anyway, is not yet hysterical about the chicken flu. But Arambag Hatcheries, a popular purveyor of chicken parts, is reporting a dip in sales.
Arambag had pioneered western-supermarket style sales of chicken parts -- boneless thighs separate from chicken breasts. But customers are going back to more traditional sources for chicken, ones where they know for sure the bird didn't die of some mysterious illness. At the market next to my family's home in Kolkata, white chickens squished against each other in wire-mesh cages peck at their feed, while shoppers point out the one they want. The chicken seller hauls one squawking bird out and with one swift stroke chops off its head. "Look, it's so fresh it's still kicking. No flu here," he says, as the headless bird jerks and twitches in a pool of blood and feathers.
By Sandip Roy
Usually the dour official at the Kolkata airport barks, "Any gold? Electronics? Computer?" But this time, when I landed in India from America via Singapore, he was more interested in the food I was carrying. Cooked food from abroad, especially from Southeast Asia, is now suspect. In the age of the bird flu, I have been upgraded from potential electronics smuggler to a disease vector.
In a world of collapsing boundaries, as flights from every corner of the globe disgorged passengers into the transit lounge of Singapore's Changi International Airport, alarmed officials try desperately to guard their borders against diseases that spread at Boeing speed. The duty free shop in San Francisco warned that beef jerky purchased there had to be consumed before landing in Seoul, since South Korea had just banned American beef products. At Hong Kong, large signs asked passengers if they had a persistent cough and flu-like symptoms. In Singapore, airport officials peered into a monitor as each deplaning passenger passed through what looked like an X-ray machine.
But the flu rages through Southeast Asia, claiming another six-year-old in Bangkok and 4 million chickens in Karachi, Pakistan, making mincemeat of the governments' efforts to corner it. For the anti-globalization activists, departing from the recently concluded World Social Forum in Mumbai, the bird flu is another potent reminder of how difficult it is to de-globalize the world once the genie has left the bottle.
India, however, is trying to seal its boundaries against the flu, which is front-page news, topping upcoming India-Pakistan peace talks in February. In fact, the bird flu has brought a bit of a chill in the recent thaw between the two prickly neighbors. Even as Indian and Pakistani bureaucrats plan talks on everything from Kashmir to drug trafficking and the countries resume air flights between each other, New Delhi is contemplating a ban on all poultry from Pakistan, where a strain of the flu killed the chickens. Indian newspapers are already dubbing it the Karachi flu.
In an age where terrorism is conducted by stateless actors like Al Qaeda, the bird flu has proved just as elusive. Governments are trying to counter it on a war footing. The Animal Resources Development Minister in India has just announced a "massive hunt" for evidence of any suspected case. In Thailand, soldiers and prisoners have been pressed into service, culling chickens in the 13 provinces where the flu has been detected. But even as Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra claimed that almost all the chickens in the outbreak areas have been slaughtered, neighboring Laos confirmed that the flu had spread to that country.
Globalization, which had greased the path for the free movement of goods across borders, whether pirated copies of "The Lord of the Rings" or Big Macs, now finds that diseases like SARS and the bird flu come in their wake. The World Health Organization is holding its breath, warning that if the Asian bird flu meets and mates with another human influenza virus moving toward the region, it could trigger a global pandemic that could kill millions of people.
Faced with that possibility, governments are reduced to literally counting their chickens after they are hatched. In India, health officials are trying to force hatcheries to maintain a daily record of dying birds and clinically establish the cause of death of each one. It's the poultry equivalent of cleaning the Augean stables in a country as vast as India. Meanwhile, the ritzy Taj Hotel in Kolkata is trying to reassure its foreign patrons by having a microbiologist examine each chicken. In Vietnam, Kentucky Fried Chicken, a popular hangout for foreigners, is offering fried fish instead of chicken. Singapore is banning the public from its seven poultry farms.
As confidence-building measures, they seem puny and bureaucratic. India, which had been largely sanguine through the mad cow scare because its millions of Hindus don't eat beef anyway, is not yet hysterical about the chicken flu. But Arambag Hatcheries, a popular purveyor of chicken parts, is reporting a dip in sales.
Arambag had pioneered western-supermarket style sales of chicken parts -- boneless thighs separate from chicken breasts. But customers are going back to more traditional sources for chicken, ones where they know for sure the bird didn't die of some mysterious illness. At the market next to my family's home in Kolkata, white chickens squished against each other in wire-mesh cages peck at their feed, while shoppers point out the one they want. The chicken seller hauls one squawking bird out and with one swift stroke chops off its head. "Look, it's so fresh it's still kicking. No flu here," he says, as the headless bird jerks and twitches in a pool of blood and feathers.
Super Bowl fuels gambling sites' extortion fears
By Dhamaka News Team
In recent years, online sports betting parlors or "sports books" have fast supplanted the shadowy world of "bookies," or professional bet takers in the U.S., Canada and Europe, growing into a multibillion dollar industry, despite official disapproval from Washington, D.C. lawmakers and U.S. religious conservatives.
But with the biggest sports-wagering event of the year, the U.S. National Football League's (NFL's) Super Bowl, just days away, proprietors of many online sports books are worried more about their bandwidth than betting patterns, and wondering whether their biggest day of the year will also be their last day in business.
With little notice by law enforcement or the outside world, online sports betting parlors, or sports books, have suffered a plague of sustained distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks in recent months that have knocked some Web sites offline for days or weeks. Other sites have been forced to pay protection money to keep their gambling operations online, and criminals are turning up the heat in preparation for the NFL's biggest game of the season on Sunday, according to interviews with those familiar with the problem.
"I expect that on Sunday, during the Super Bowl, you're going to see a lot of (sports betting) Web sites down. I know it for a fact. Everybody's scared." said Ido Raviv, company manager at Netgames Inc. of Belize City, Belize, which runs the Yahoops.com online sports book.
The trouble usually starts with an ominous e-mail and a sudden and unmanageable surge in Internet traffic, according to Amran Pena, an information technology consultant in San Jose, Costa Rica, who works with online sports books to secure their networks.
"Your site is under an attack and will be for this entire weekend. You have a flaw in your network that allows this to take place," according to a copy of such an e-mail provided to IDG News Service.
For sports book Web site operators, the e-mail messages offer stark choices:
"You can ignore this email and try to keep your site up, which will cost you tens of thousands of dollars in lost wagers and customers, or you can send us $40k by Western Union to make sure that your site experiences no problems," the message continues.
"They know that if they just send the e-mail, you won't think it's real. You'll trust in your servers and bandwidth. But when you're already down, the effect of the e-mail is much bigger and maybe you'll be more willing to pay," Yahoops' Raviv said.
The amount demanded varies on the sports book's size, ranging from US$10,000 for small sites to $40,000 or more for larger operations, Pena said.
Typically, those behind the attacks offer "insurance" for a set period of time to companies that pay the extortion, he said.
For companies that ignore the threats, the online attackers wait for weekends and other high volume betting days to launch DDoS attacks, using thousands of compromised computers on the Internet to flood the target site with traffic, according to Pena, Raviv and others.
"This is almost identical to a Mafia protection racket," said Dave Matthews, site administrator of Las Vegas Advisor, an online publication serving the gaming industry. (See: http://www.lasvegasadvisor.com.) "It's the same as going into the store and saying 'pay me and I'll guarantee your store won't burn down for a year.' It's just more high tech."
The DDoS attacks plaguing online sports books began over a year ago, with intermittent attacks against larger sports book operations such as Pinnaclesports.com and Caribsports.com, Raviv said.
"At first it seemed like every week they chose one target and you'd hear about a sports book going down," he said.
In the last four months, however, the volume of attacks and the number of sports books attacked have both increased. DDoS attacks are now an almost daily occurrence against at least one online sports book, and pressure is mounting as Super Bowl Sunday approaches, Matthews said.
"Just this weekend there were six or seven books attacked at the same time," he said.
Those targets included www.bluegrasssports.com and www.betcascade.com, a reputable sports book that is used by many professional gamblers, Matthews said.
Bluegrasssports.com could not immediately respond to questions, and a spokesperson at Betcascade.com declined to comment.
However, many online sports books' home pages show evidence of the attacks. Some now highlight toll-free numbers for placing bets and offer advice to bettors who cannot place wagers using their Web browser.
"Both phone and Internet traffic will be at a maximum on Sunday and we still do not know what the Internet Pirates next move will be," reads a message on the homepage of Betcascade.com. The site lists phone numbers for wagering "if for what ever reason the Internet connection is un-available."
These attacks are part of a new trend of e-commerce business extortion, including financial services companies as well as online gaming sites, according to Paul Lawrence, general manager at Top Layer Networks Inc. of Westboro, Massachusetts, which sells technology to thwart DDoS attacks.
The problem was unheard of a year ago, said Felicity Bull, a spokeswoman for the U.K.'s National High Tech Crime Unit. Now the agency is investigating several extortion attempts against U.K. companies, all involving sports betting.
Online sports books have borne the brunt of the DDoS attacks and extortion attempts in recent months because the sites are attractive targets, Lawrence said.
Unlike large financial services companies, most online sports books are small operations that often lack technical expertise. They are also flush with cash. Larger sites might keep anywhere from $300 million to $400 million on hand to cover bets, Las Vegas Advisor's Matthews said.
The extortionists are also aided by the fuzzy legal status surrounding online sports betting operations, which are often located in Central America or the Caribbean to escape U.S. laws against sports betting, Matthews said.
Because they are located outside U.S. jurisdiction, the companies have little legal recourse against the extortion attempts, Matthews claimed.
"Do you think (U.S. Attorney General) John Ashcroft is going to come to the aid of some sports books that are being attacked? They could give a 'you know what' about them," Matthews said.
Worsening the situation, some prominent sports books initially paid off the attackers to keep their sites online, encouraging more attacks, Matthews said.
Calls to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation regarding the DDoS attacks were not returned.
There is widespread belief among bookmakers and gamblers that those responsible for the attack are located in Russia or Eastern Europe, beyond Western law enforcement's reach, according Lawrence, Pena and others.
To stop the attacks, larger and more sophisticated sports books are using technology to fight back.
Lawrence said that the DDoS attacks have been a boon for Top Layer, which installed eight to 10 of their Attack Mitigator hardware appliances in the last month.
"I just received three new inquiries this morning that are urgent and need to be done now because of the Super Bowl," Lawrence said.
Top Layer even offers emergency service for companies under attack.
"We send guys out on a plane with an (Attack Mitigator) box under their arm and they install it mid-flow," he said.
At Yahoops.com, technical staff responded to attacks by working with their Web hosting provider to increase the bandwidth to their site to make it harder to knock offline, Raviv said.
The company also developed an internal solution called a "dispatcher," which is modeled on technology used by distributed computing company Akamai Technologies Inc. and dynamically moves the Yahoops.com Web site between different IP (Internet Protocol) addresses to sidestep attacks, he said.
If nothing else, the sustained attacks might force collaboration in an industry long characterized by fierce competitiveness and mutual suspicion, according to Matthews.
"Companies are going to have to work hard and spend money to upgrade their computers. And they're going to have to share information. They have a common goal and they have to help each other to find a solution," he said.
By Dhamaka News Team
In recent years, online sports betting parlors or "sports books" have fast supplanted the shadowy world of "bookies," or professional bet takers in the U.S., Canada and Europe, growing into a multibillion dollar industry, despite official disapproval from Washington, D.C. lawmakers and U.S. religious conservatives.
But with the biggest sports-wagering event of the year, the U.S. National Football League's (NFL's) Super Bowl, just days away, proprietors of many online sports books are worried more about their bandwidth than betting patterns, and wondering whether their biggest day of the year will also be their last day in business.
With little notice by law enforcement or the outside world, online sports betting parlors, or sports books, have suffered a plague of sustained distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks in recent months that have knocked some Web sites offline for days or weeks. Other sites have been forced to pay protection money to keep their gambling operations online, and criminals are turning up the heat in preparation for the NFL's biggest game of the season on Sunday, according to interviews with those familiar with the problem.
"I expect that on Sunday, during the Super Bowl, you're going to see a lot of (sports betting) Web sites down. I know it for a fact. Everybody's scared." said Ido Raviv, company manager at Netgames Inc. of Belize City, Belize, which runs the Yahoops.com online sports book.
The trouble usually starts with an ominous e-mail and a sudden and unmanageable surge in Internet traffic, according to Amran Pena, an information technology consultant in San Jose, Costa Rica, who works with online sports books to secure their networks.
"Your site is under an attack and will be for this entire weekend. You have a flaw in your network that allows this to take place," according to a copy of such an e-mail provided to IDG News Service.
For sports book Web site operators, the e-mail messages offer stark choices:
"You can ignore this email and try to keep your site up, which will cost you tens of thousands of dollars in lost wagers and customers, or you can send us $40k by Western Union to make sure that your site experiences no problems," the message continues.
"They know that if they just send the e-mail, you won't think it's real. You'll trust in your servers and bandwidth. But when you're already down, the effect of the e-mail is much bigger and maybe you'll be more willing to pay," Yahoops' Raviv said.
The amount demanded varies on the sports book's size, ranging from US$10,000 for small sites to $40,000 or more for larger operations, Pena said.
Typically, those behind the attacks offer "insurance" for a set period of time to companies that pay the extortion, he said.
For companies that ignore the threats, the online attackers wait for weekends and other high volume betting days to launch DDoS attacks, using thousands of compromised computers on the Internet to flood the target site with traffic, according to Pena, Raviv and others.
"This is almost identical to a Mafia protection racket," said Dave Matthews, site administrator of Las Vegas Advisor, an online publication serving the gaming industry. (See: http://www.lasvegasadvisor.com.) "It's the same as going into the store and saying 'pay me and I'll guarantee your store won't burn down for a year.' It's just more high tech."
The DDoS attacks plaguing online sports books began over a year ago, with intermittent attacks against larger sports book operations such as Pinnaclesports.com and Caribsports.com, Raviv said.
"At first it seemed like every week they chose one target and you'd hear about a sports book going down," he said.
In the last four months, however, the volume of attacks and the number of sports books attacked have both increased. DDoS attacks are now an almost daily occurrence against at least one online sports book, and pressure is mounting as Super Bowl Sunday approaches, Matthews said.
"Just this weekend there were six or seven books attacked at the same time," he said.
Those targets included www.bluegrasssports.com and www.betcascade.com, a reputable sports book that is used by many professional gamblers, Matthews said.
Bluegrasssports.com could not immediately respond to questions, and a spokesperson at Betcascade.com declined to comment.
However, many online sports books' home pages show evidence of the attacks. Some now highlight toll-free numbers for placing bets and offer advice to bettors who cannot place wagers using their Web browser.
"Both phone and Internet traffic will be at a maximum on Sunday and we still do not know what the Internet Pirates next move will be," reads a message on the homepage of Betcascade.com. The site lists phone numbers for wagering "if for what ever reason the Internet connection is un-available."
These attacks are part of a new trend of e-commerce business extortion, including financial services companies as well as online gaming sites, according to Paul Lawrence, general manager at Top Layer Networks Inc. of Westboro, Massachusetts, which sells technology to thwart DDoS attacks.
The problem was unheard of a year ago, said Felicity Bull, a spokeswoman for the U.K.'s National High Tech Crime Unit. Now the agency is investigating several extortion attempts against U.K. companies, all involving sports betting.
Online sports books have borne the brunt of the DDoS attacks and extortion attempts in recent months because the sites are attractive targets, Lawrence said.
Unlike large financial services companies, most online sports books are small operations that often lack technical expertise. They are also flush with cash. Larger sites might keep anywhere from $300 million to $400 million on hand to cover bets, Las Vegas Advisor's Matthews said.
The extortionists are also aided by the fuzzy legal status surrounding online sports betting operations, which are often located in Central America or the Caribbean to escape U.S. laws against sports betting, Matthews said.
Because they are located outside U.S. jurisdiction, the companies have little legal recourse against the extortion attempts, Matthews claimed.
"Do you think (U.S. Attorney General) John Ashcroft is going to come to the aid of some sports books that are being attacked? They could give a 'you know what' about them," Matthews said.
Worsening the situation, some prominent sports books initially paid off the attackers to keep their sites online, encouraging more attacks, Matthews said.
Calls to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation regarding the DDoS attacks were not returned.
There is widespread belief among bookmakers and gamblers that those responsible for the attack are located in Russia or Eastern Europe, beyond Western law enforcement's reach, according Lawrence, Pena and others.
To stop the attacks, larger and more sophisticated sports books are using technology to fight back.
Lawrence said that the DDoS attacks have been a boon for Top Layer, which installed eight to 10 of their Attack Mitigator hardware appliances in the last month.
"I just received three new inquiries this morning that are urgent and need to be done now because of the Super Bowl," Lawrence said.
Top Layer even offers emergency service for companies under attack.
"We send guys out on a plane with an (Attack Mitigator) box under their arm and they install it mid-flow," he said.
At Yahoops.com, technical staff responded to attacks by working with their Web hosting provider to increase the bandwidth to their site to make it harder to knock offline, Raviv said.
The company also developed an internal solution called a "dispatcher," which is modeled on technology used by distributed computing company Akamai Technologies Inc. and dynamically moves the Yahoops.com Web site between different IP (Internet Protocol) addresses to sidestep attacks, he said.
If nothing else, the sustained attacks might force collaboration in an industry long characterized by fierce competitiveness and mutual suspicion, according to Matthews.
"Companies are going to have to work hard and spend money to upgrade their computers. And they're going to have to share information. They have a common goal and they have to help each other to find a solution," he said.
Thursday, May 29, 2003
'I had protected our country...I will protect your money too'
By Mujahed Azam
MUMBAI: The big shot of the Calcutta Stock Exchange flicked the Harshad Mehta scam like a piece of lint off his shoulder. By early 1997 Vinod Baid, a chartered accountant by training, became a leading merchant banker. And he made a complete mockery of the regulators.
"He made his mark as a merchant banker, broker and a finance company promoter through a clutch of shady deals," says one of his former agents, who refused to be named.
Baid has 61 companies registered with the prefix Prudential. There are half a dozen companies each with the prefix Asia Pacific, Mercury, AMI, Global, Prime, Pioneer and Discovery.
To get investors to invest, he roped in people like Air Chief Marshal N C Suri, former CBI chief Vijay Karan, stockbroker Vivek Mahajan, Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw and United Bank of India's K L Roy as directors.
Most of them resigned in 1997-98; but by then Baid had exploited their names to float new companies, raised fixed deposits through 60 branches in different states and diverted the money to fund other businesses.
After his businesses started folding up one by one, Baid ran off to Hyderabad. He had been living there for the last three years before he was picked up by the CBI this January.
Vinod Baid, the promoter of Prudential Capital Markets (PCM), is currently lodged in a Kolkata jail for siphoning funds from Bank of Rajasthan.
* Money raised from investors: Rs 136 crore
* Money raised from financial institutions: Rs 14 crore
* When the company was delisted: 2000
* Where the promoters are today: Baid is cooling his heels in a Kolkata jail
Meet Mr Soparivala, one of the 40,000 investors
For Nerwan Byramji Soparivala, an ex-LIC employee, Maneckshaw's words were all the assurance he needed to put his retirement egg in the company's fixed deposit basket. So Soparivala invested a total of Rs 30,000, a part of his retirement money, in various schemes of the company in 1997-98.
"The interest rates offered by them were just too good and I wanted to spend my retirement days in peace."
Today, Soparivala looks anything but peaceful. "I did not get anything of the principal amount back," he says.
Next to him, on his able lie copies of the letters that he wrote to Prudential in Mumbai and in Kolkata, to which he never got any reply.
A desperate Soparivala also tried getting in touch with the official liquidator appointed by the Company Law Board in Kolkata. No use.
Baid blames it on an earlier Loot and Scoot
MUMBAI : Six year later, Field Marshal Manekshaw says he has no connection with Prudential. ‘‘Field Marshal Manekshaw, Air Chief Marshal NC Suri, Vijay Karan, Ratan Singh Chowdhury and J C Luther resigned as directors of the company on or abut June 13, 1997.
As non-executive directors, they had no role in the day-to-day functioning of the company, its financial transactions or conduct of the business,’’ reads a public notice issued by their attorney Sushil Bajaj.
With his former directors washing their hands of the matter of Rs 140 crore and Baid himself in jail, investors don’t know where to begin.
Baid, the country’s foremost merchant banker
Baid, who was earlier an accountant with the Kanorias, became famous during the bull run initiated by Harshad Mehta in 1991. However he got away lightly. Prudential Capital Market Limited (PCML) was incorporated in March 1987 in West Bengal. The company was based out of its registered office at Tobacco House, Old Court House Corner, in Kolkata.
PCML had many branches all over the country as well as some subsidiaries including an office at Embassy Centre in Mumbai’s Nariman Point.
The audited balance sheet of the company for the year ended March 31, 1997, states the net worth
By Mujahed Azam
MUMBAI: The big shot of the Calcutta Stock Exchange flicked the Harshad Mehta scam like a piece of lint off his shoulder. By early 1997 Vinod Baid, a chartered accountant by training, became a leading merchant banker. And he made a complete mockery of the regulators.
"He made his mark as a merchant banker, broker and a finance company promoter through a clutch of shady deals," says one of his former agents, who refused to be named.
Baid has 61 companies registered with the prefix Prudential. There are half a dozen companies each with the prefix Asia Pacific, Mercury, AMI, Global, Prime, Pioneer and Discovery.
To get investors to invest, he roped in people like Air Chief Marshal N C Suri, former CBI chief Vijay Karan, stockbroker Vivek Mahajan, Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw and United Bank of India's K L Roy as directors.
Most of them resigned in 1997-98; but by then Baid had exploited their names to float new companies, raised fixed deposits through 60 branches in different states and diverted the money to fund other businesses.
After his businesses started folding up one by one, Baid ran off to Hyderabad. He had been living there for the last three years before he was picked up by the CBI this January.
Vinod Baid, the promoter of Prudential Capital Markets (PCM), is currently lodged in a Kolkata jail for siphoning funds from Bank of Rajasthan.
* Money raised from investors: Rs 136 crore
* Money raised from financial institutions: Rs 14 crore
* When the company was delisted: 2000
* Where the promoters are today: Baid is cooling his heels in a Kolkata jail
Meet Mr Soparivala, one of the 40,000 investors
For Nerwan Byramji Soparivala, an ex-LIC employee, Maneckshaw's words were all the assurance he needed to put his retirement egg in the company's fixed deposit basket. So Soparivala invested a total of Rs 30,000, a part of his retirement money, in various schemes of the company in 1997-98.
"The interest rates offered by them were just too good and I wanted to spend my retirement days in peace."
Today, Soparivala looks anything but peaceful. "I did not get anything of the principal amount back," he says.
Next to him, on his able lie copies of the letters that he wrote to Prudential in Mumbai and in Kolkata, to which he never got any reply.
A desperate Soparivala also tried getting in touch with the official liquidator appointed by the Company Law Board in Kolkata. No use.
Baid blames it on an earlier Loot and Scoot
MUMBAI : Six year later, Field Marshal Manekshaw says he has no connection with Prudential. ‘‘Field Marshal Manekshaw, Air Chief Marshal NC Suri, Vijay Karan, Ratan Singh Chowdhury and J C Luther resigned as directors of the company on or abut June 13, 1997.
As non-executive directors, they had no role in the day-to-day functioning of the company, its financial transactions or conduct of the business,’’ reads a public notice issued by their attorney Sushil Bajaj.
With his former directors washing their hands of the matter of Rs 140 crore and Baid himself in jail, investors don’t know where to begin.
Baid, the country’s foremost merchant banker
Baid, who was earlier an accountant with the Kanorias, became famous during the bull run initiated by Harshad Mehta in 1991. However he got away lightly. Prudential Capital Market Limited (PCML) was incorporated in March 1987 in West Bengal. The company was based out of its registered office at Tobacco House, Old Court House Corner, in Kolkata.
PCML had many branches all over the country as well as some subsidiaries including an office at Embassy Centre in Mumbai’s Nariman Point.
The audited balance sheet of the company for the year ended March 31, 1997, states the net worth
'I had protected our country...I will protect your money too'
By Mujahed Azam
MUMBAI: The big shot of the Calcutta Stock Exchange flicked the Harshad Mehta scam like a piece of lint off his shoulder. By early 1997 Vinod Baid, a chartered accountant by training, became a leading merchant banker. And he made a complete mockery of the regulators.
"He made his mark as a merchant banker, broker and a finance company promoter through a clutch of shady deals," says one of his former agents, who refused to be named.
Baid has 61 companies registered with the prefix Prudential. There are half a dozen companies each with the prefix Asia Pacific, Mercury, AMI, Global, Prime, Pioneer and Discovery.
To get investors to invest, he roped in people like Air Chief Marshal N C Suri, former CBI chief Vijay Karan, stockbroker Vivek Mahajan, Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw and United Bank of India's K L Roy as directors.
Most of them resigned in 1997-98; but by then Baid had exploited their names to float new companies, raised fixed deposits through 60 branches in different states and diverted the money to fund other businesses.
After his businesses started folding up one by one, Baid ran off to Hyderabad. He had been living there for the last three years before he was picked up by the CBI this January.
Vinod Baid, the promoter of Prudential Capital Markets (PCM), is currently lodged in a Kolkata jail for siphoning funds from Bank of Rajasthan.
* Money raised from investors: Rs 136 crore
* Money raised from financial institutions: Rs 14 crore
* When the company was delisted: 2000
* Where the promoters are today: Baid is cooling his heels in a Kolkata jail
Meet Mr Soparivala, one of the 40,000 investors
For Nerwan Byramji Soparivala, an ex-LIC employee, Maneckshaw's words were all the assurance he needed to put his retirement egg in the company's fixed deposit basket. So Soparivala invested a total of Rs 30,000, a part of his retirement money, in various schemes of the company in 1997-98.
"The interest rates offered by them were just too good and I wanted to spend my retirement days in peace."
Today, Soparivala looks anything but peaceful. "I did not get anything of the principal amount back," he says.
Next to him, on his able lie copies of the letters that he wrote to Prudential in Mumbai and in Kolkata, to which he never got any reply.
A desperate Soparivala also tried getting in touch with the official liquidator appointed by the Company Law Board in Kolkata. No use.
Baid blames it on an earlier Loot and Scoot
MUMBAI : Six year later, Field Marshal Manekshaw says he has no connection with Prudential. ‘‘Field Marshal Manekshaw, Air Chief Marshal NC Suri, Vijay Karan, Ratan Singh Chowdhury and J C Luther resigned as directors of the company on or abut June 13, 1997.
As non-executive directors, they had no role in the day-to-day functioning of the company, its financial transactions or conduct of the business,’’ reads a public notice issued by their attorney Sushil Bajaj.
With his former directors washing their hands of the matter of Rs 140 crore and Baid himself in jail, investors don’t know where to begin.
Baid, the country’s foremost merchant banker
Baid, who was earlier an accountant with the Kanorias, became famous during the bull run initiated by Harshad Mehta in 1991. However he got away lightly. Prudential Capital Market Limited (PCML) was incorporated in March 1987 in West Bengal. The company was based out of its registered office at Tobacco House, Old Court House Corner, in Kolkata.
PCML had many branches all over the country as well as some subsidiaries including an office at Embassy Centre in Mumbai’s Nariman Point.
The audited balance sheet of the company for the year ended March 31, 1997, states the net worth of the company as Rs 201 crore. He raised nearly Rs 150 crore from investors and banks.
Prudential made its first public issue in 1994. In 1995, Prudential Capital Market Limited launched a slew of fixed deposit schemes like, Prudential Monthly Income Scheme, Prudential Certificate, Prudential Quarterly Income Scheme and Prudential Cumulative Scheme.
‘‘Besides raising money through FDs and its own public issue, Baid was instrumental in flooding the market with IPOs of a number of shady promoters. In 1995-1996, he was the top merchant banker in India,’’ says a former associate refusing to be named.
As a merchant banker, he introduced the maximum number of shady companies in the 1984-1987 period. Most of these companies have disappeared after collecting funds from the public.
For Baid, trouble didn’t rain, it poured
Trouble first knocked in the winter of 1997. The Company Law Board (CLB) Eastern Region in Kolkata started receiving complaints of non-payment of deposits from July 1997. They got a total of 2,350 complaints by April 30, 1998.
In a letter to CLB, Baid said Prudential had faced a severe financial crunch due to the CRB Capital Markets scam. As CRB Capital Markets Limited was put up for liquidation, he reasoned that investors and the depositors had become suspicious about the credibility of non-banking finance companies (NBFCs).
Due to the CRB Capital Market episode, State Bank of India withdrew the ‘at par’ cheque facility extended to the company. As a direct result, post-dated cheques issued by the company on SBI bounced on being presented to the bank. PCML, by end of March 1997, had also invested about Rs 66.71 crore in various stocks which, Baid claimed, became illiquid due to adverse market conditions.
Neck deep in trouble, Baid continued to bluff that the company was fully solvent. He kept claiming the company had paid all its deposit holders till June 1997 and had also been remitting interest under monthly and quarterly schemes on all its deposits.
The depositors, however, streaming into CLB offices had a different story to tell. A special officer appointed by the Kolkata High Court, meanwhile, is busy untangling the Prudential puzzle.
What regulators should have done
• The Reserve Bank of India did not check his deposit mobilisation and fund use. • Sebi allowed the company to introduce shady IPOs in the market • CLB failed to come out with any workable scheme for investors. • The Department of Company Affairs (DCA) should have stopped fund diversion through several shell companies • The Registrar of Companies and DCA should have restricted the creation of dummy companies For Arund Gaikwad, when the private company in which he worked shut shop, his retirement money was all he had. He invested it all in Prudential’s fixed deposit. ‘‘I never went to the company’s office... my agent suggested the investment,’’ he says. Currently unemployed Gaikwad, a father of two, still dreams of getting his money back.
By Mujahed Azam
MUMBAI: The big shot of the Calcutta Stock Exchange flicked the Harshad Mehta scam like a piece of lint off his shoulder. By early 1997 Vinod Baid, a chartered accountant by training, became a leading merchant banker. And he made a complete mockery of the regulators.
"He made his mark as a merchant banker, broker and a finance company promoter through a clutch of shady deals," says one of his former agents, who refused to be named.
Baid has 61 companies registered with the prefix Prudential. There are half a dozen companies each with the prefix Asia Pacific, Mercury, AMI, Global, Prime, Pioneer and Discovery.
To get investors to invest, he roped in people like Air Chief Marshal N C Suri, former CBI chief Vijay Karan, stockbroker Vivek Mahajan, Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw and United Bank of India's K L Roy as directors.
Most of them resigned in 1997-98; but by then Baid had exploited their names to float new companies, raised fixed deposits through 60 branches in different states and diverted the money to fund other businesses.
After his businesses started folding up one by one, Baid ran off to Hyderabad. He had been living there for the last three years before he was picked up by the CBI this January.
Vinod Baid, the promoter of Prudential Capital Markets (PCM), is currently lodged in a Kolkata jail for siphoning funds from Bank of Rajasthan.
* Money raised from investors: Rs 136 crore
* Money raised from financial institutions: Rs 14 crore
* When the company was delisted: 2000
* Where the promoters are today: Baid is cooling his heels in a Kolkata jail
Meet Mr Soparivala, one of the 40,000 investors
For Nerwan Byramji Soparivala, an ex-LIC employee, Maneckshaw's words were all the assurance he needed to put his retirement egg in the company's fixed deposit basket. So Soparivala invested a total of Rs 30,000, a part of his retirement money, in various schemes of the company in 1997-98.
"The interest rates offered by them were just too good and I wanted to spend my retirement days in peace."
Today, Soparivala looks anything but peaceful. "I did not get anything of the principal amount back," he says.
Next to him, on his able lie copies of the letters that he wrote to Prudential in Mumbai and in Kolkata, to which he never got any reply.
A desperate Soparivala also tried getting in touch with the official liquidator appointed by the Company Law Board in Kolkata. No use.
Baid blames it on an earlier Loot and Scoot
MUMBAI : Six year later, Field Marshal Manekshaw says he has no connection with Prudential. ‘‘Field Marshal Manekshaw, Air Chief Marshal NC Suri, Vijay Karan, Ratan Singh Chowdhury and J C Luther resigned as directors of the company on or abut June 13, 1997.
As non-executive directors, they had no role in the day-to-day functioning of the company, its financial transactions or conduct of the business,’’ reads a public notice issued by their attorney Sushil Bajaj.
With his former directors washing their hands of the matter of Rs 140 crore and Baid himself in jail, investors don’t know where to begin.
Baid, the country’s foremost merchant banker
Baid, who was earlier an accountant with the Kanorias, became famous during the bull run initiated by Harshad Mehta in 1991. However he got away lightly. Prudential Capital Market Limited (PCML) was incorporated in March 1987 in West Bengal. The company was based out of its registered office at Tobacco House, Old Court House Corner, in Kolkata.
PCML had many branches all over the country as well as some subsidiaries including an office at Embassy Centre in Mumbai’s Nariman Point.
The audited balance sheet of the company for the year ended March 31, 1997, states the net worth of the company as Rs 201 crore. He raised nearly Rs 150 crore from investors and banks.
Prudential made its first public issue in 1994. In 1995, Prudential Capital Market Limited launched a slew of fixed deposit schemes like, Prudential Monthly Income Scheme, Prudential Certificate, Prudential Quarterly Income Scheme and Prudential Cumulative Scheme.
‘‘Besides raising money through FDs and its own public issue, Baid was instrumental in flooding the market with IPOs of a number of shady promoters. In 1995-1996, he was the top merchant banker in India,’’ says a former associate refusing to be named.
As a merchant banker, he introduced the maximum number of shady companies in the 1984-1987 period. Most of these companies have disappeared after collecting funds from the public.
For Baid, trouble didn’t rain, it poured
Trouble first knocked in the winter of 1997. The Company Law Board (CLB) Eastern Region in Kolkata started receiving complaints of non-payment of deposits from July 1997. They got a total of 2,350 complaints by April 30, 1998.
In a letter to CLB, Baid said Prudential had faced a severe financial crunch due to the CRB Capital Markets scam. As CRB Capital Markets Limited was put up for liquidation, he reasoned that investors and the depositors had become suspicious about the credibility of non-banking finance companies (NBFCs).
Due to the CRB Capital Market episode, State Bank of India withdrew the ‘at par’ cheque facility extended to the company. As a direct result, post-dated cheques issued by the company on SBI bounced on being presented to the bank. PCML, by end of March 1997, had also invested about Rs 66.71 crore in various stocks which, Baid claimed, became illiquid due to adverse market conditions.
Neck deep in trouble, Baid continued to bluff that the company was fully solvent. He kept claiming the company had paid all its deposit holders till June 1997 and had also been remitting interest under monthly and quarterly schemes on all its deposits.
The depositors, however, streaming into CLB offices had a different story to tell. A special officer appointed by the Kolkata High Court, meanwhile, is busy untangling the Prudential puzzle.
What regulators should have done
• The Reserve Bank of India did not check his deposit mobilisation and fund use. • Sebi allowed the company to introduce shady IPOs in the market • CLB failed to come out with any workable scheme for investors. • The Department of Company Affairs (DCA) should have stopped fund diversion through several shell companies • The Registrar of Companies and DCA should have restricted the creation of dummy companies For Arund Gaikwad, when the private company in which he worked shut shop, his retirement money was all he had. He invested it all in Prudential’s fixed deposit. ‘‘I never went to the company’s office... my agent suggested the investment,’’ he says. Currently unemployed Gaikwad, a father of two, still dreams of getting his money back.
Jehadi diaries: Money, medicine and how they got rid of 'spies'
By M H Ahsan
Diaries recovered from the Pakistani militants killed by the Indian Army during Operation Sarpvinash in the Hill Kaka area in Surankote reveal their links with Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hikmetayar's Hizbe-Islami and operations in the Tora Bora mountains.
Documents recovered from the 62 militants killed suggest that a majority of the jehadis in Surankote were Pakistani Punjabis from Islamabad, Karachi, Attock and Rawalpindi and not from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).
Apart from a sprinkling of Quranic verses, the dairies contain detailed accounts of jehadi operations south of Pir Panjal in Surankote.
The name of Engineer Gulbuddin Hekmetayar features in a diary and it follows a couplet.
It says: "Agar hamare khoon se Islam jinda hota hain, to hum sau bar sar kata sakte hain, Engineer Gulbuddin Hikmetayar, Hizb-e-Islami, Afghanistan." And then the author warns "bagear izzazat dairy padna mana hain (without permission you cannot read the diary)."
It is this document that contain coded names of militants such as Ghazi, Butshikan, Khalil and Khair with Tora Bora written against three of them.
This document also lists 10 "spies" from Poonch whose throats were slit between May 1999 and July 2002 after they "betrayed" the jehadis to the Indian security forces.
The first entry from this list, that includes two women and three children called "bacchiya" as victims, says Chaudhary Ghani, caste Gujjar, village Hadi _ "who got Khalid and Umar of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen killed" _ was cut to pieces in June 1999. Abdullah, who was killed in 2001 from the same village, has been blamed for getting 11 jehadis killed.
The diary has a list of codes that need to be followed for communicating with fellow jehadis during operations.
For instance, Antenna band kar ke baat karo has 149.79 written against it and channel change karo code is 121.20. There are specific codes for individuals: Ahad is s, Hussain is HB, Khyber is S and Tabuk is M.
One of the seized dairies, maintained by Harkat-ul-Jehad-el-Islami's Mohmmad Amin Sajid aka Abu Saeed, is actually a day-to-day cash register which gives logistic details of militant operations in Hill Kaka for the past three years. It reveals the linkages between various jehadi groups such as Lashkar-e-Toiba, Al Badar and Jaish-e-Mohammed and suggest that these jehadis share heavy-calibre arms and ammunition.
Barely 21 years old, Abu Saeed is a resident of Ward no 7, Ali Colony, Madarasa Jamia Ashrfia, district Okara in Pakistan and belongs to 313 brigade of the Harkat.
Saeed's diary lists the inter-jehadi financial transactions that runs into several lakhs of rupees. It indicates that Pakistani groups were paying huge sums of money for staying, training and launching jehadis from ramshackle transit camps at Hill Kaka.
On June 1, 2002, the cash register records JeM's contribution of Rs 4 lakh, while on September 10, 2002, Rs five lakh was recovered (paisa wasool) from LeT group. Al Badar's Hafiz Tayab Hamir group 1 paid Rs 90,000, while Al Badar group 2 and 3 paid Rs 12,000 on October 5, 2001.
The Harkat jehadi's diary is not limited to names, arms and ammunition. It also lists 45 medicines for ailments ranging from sore throat to treating injuries. Saeed's diary has various drugs like Dizapam for insomnia, Perinom for nausea, Ampicillin for infections and Norfloxim for kidney problems.
By M H Ahsan
Diaries recovered from the Pakistani militants killed by the Indian Army during Operation Sarpvinash in the Hill Kaka area in Surankote reveal their links with Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hikmetayar's Hizbe-Islami and operations in the Tora Bora mountains.
Documents recovered from the 62 militants killed suggest that a majority of the jehadis in Surankote were Pakistani Punjabis from Islamabad, Karachi, Attock and Rawalpindi and not from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).
Apart from a sprinkling of Quranic verses, the dairies contain detailed accounts of jehadi operations south of Pir Panjal in Surankote.
The name of Engineer Gulbuddin Hekmetayar features in a diary and it follows a couplet.
It says: "Agar hamare khoon se Islam jinda hota hain, to hum sau bar sar kata sakte hain, Engineer Gulbuddin Hikmetayar, Hizb-e-Islami, Afghanistan." And then the author warns "bagear izzazat dairy padna mana hain (without permission you cannot read the diary)."
It is this document that contain coded names of militants such as Ghazi, Butshikan, Khalil and Khair with Tora Bora written against three of them.
This document also lists 10 "spies" from Poonch whose throats were slit between May 1999 and July 2002 after they "betrayed" the jehadis to the Indian security forces.
The first entry from this list, that includes two women and three children called "bacchiya" as victims, says Chaudhary Ghani, caste Gujjar, village Hadi _ "who got Khalid and Umar of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen killed" _ was cut to pieces in June 1999. Abdullah, who was killed in 2001 from the same village, has been blamed for getting 11 jehadis killed.
The diary has a list of codes that need to be followed for communicating with fellow jehadis during operations.
For instance, Antenna band kar ke baat karo has 149.79 written against it and channel change karo code is 121.20. There are specific codes for individuals: Ahad is s, Hussain is HB, Khyber is S and Tabuk is M.
One of the seized dairies, maintained by Harkat-ul-Jehad-el-Islami's Mohmmad Amin Sajid aka Abu Saeed, is actually a day-to-day cash register which gives logistic details of militant operations in Hill Kaka for the past three years. It reveals the linkages between various jehadi groups such as Lashkar-e-Toiba, Al Badar and Jaish-e-Mohammed and suggest that these jehadis share heavy-calibre arms and ammunition.
Barely 21 years old, Abu Saeed is a resident of Ward no 7, Ali Colony, Madarasa Jamia Ashrfia, district Okara in Pakistan and belongs to 313 brigade of the Harkat.
Saeed's diary lists the inter-jehadi financial transactions that runs into several lakhs of rupees. It indicates that Pakistani groups were paying huge sums of money for staying, training and launching jehadis from ramshackle transit camps at Hill Kaka.
On June 1, 2002, the cash register records JeM's contribution of Rs 4 lakh, while on September 10, 2002, Rs five lakh was recovered (paisa wasool) from LeT group. Al Badar's Hafiz Tayab Hamir group 1 paid Rs 90,000, while Al Badar group 2 and 3 paid Rs 12,000 on October 5, 2001.
The Harkat jehadi's diary is not limited to names, arms and ammunition. It also lists 45 medicines for ailments ranging from sore throat to treating injuries. Saeed's diary has various drugs like Dizapam for insomnia, Perinom for nausea, Ampicillin for infections and Norfloxim for kidney problems.
Thursday, May 22, 2003
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Editor in Chief : M H Ahsan
U.S. Says al-Qaida Still Poses Threat
Al-Qaida is out to prove it is still a force, U.S. counterterrorism officials said Friday, suggesting the bombings in Saudi Arabia and terrorist threats in Africa and Asia are part of a coordinated effort to strike lightly defended targets.
At this point, those targets do not appear to include places within the United States, officials said. While acknowledging the network is capable of U.S. strikes, they said intelligence points toward attacks overseas, where al-Qaida operatives are more numerous and security measures less effective.
"We have no credible, specific intelligence information that indicates similar attacks are planned to take place in this country," said Department of Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roehrkasse. "We will not raise the threat level at home at this time."
U.S. and British authorities have warned of threats in East Africa, particularly Kenya, and in southeast Asia, particularly Malaysia. And the group that conducted this week's attack in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, remains at large and could strike again.
U.S. officials also have received an unconfirmed report that a possible terrorist attack may occur in the western Saudi city of Jiddah.
The State Department said it could not judge the credibility of the threat, but diplomatic families living in Jiddah's Alhamra district were moving out, according to the warning report.
After Monday's attacks, U.S. officials said some intelligence warned of a series of strikes.
While deadly and well-coordinated, the Riyadh strike lacked some of al-Qaida's trademarks — particularly its usual attempt to hit a well-defended or highly visible target in an attempt to create massive casualties.
This may reflect directives from Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaida leaders — thought to be hiding in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran — to conduct a successful strike to let the world know the network still exists, American officials said.
This would counter a growing perception al-Qaida has been largely dismantled, officials said.
President Bush, meanwhile, called Monday's suicide bombings "a wake-up call to many that the war on terror continues."
"No one should be complacent in the 21st century, the early stages of the 21st century, so long as al-Qaida moves," he said. "I've told the country that we've brought to justice about half of the al-Qaida network — operatives, key operatives. And so the other half still lives. And we'll find them, one at a time."
The increase in terrorism threats in several countries at once suggests a coordinated effort, directed by senior leadership, officials said.
Al-Qaida had suffered some serious blows in recent months, particularly the capture of alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Two alleged senior planners of the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen were also captured.
Adel al-Jubeir, foreign policy adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah, told reporters Friday the Saudi government will undertake its own unilateral efforts to bring down al-Qaida and will share information with U.S. investigators "almost in real time."
"We're both in the crosshairs of this organization," al-Jubeir said. "We have never had as close or as strong a cooperative effort between our two countries as we have now. Have we failed? Yes. On Monday, we failed. We will learn from this mistake, we will ensure it never happens again."
An FBI assessment team has visited the bombing sites and is satisfied with the Saudi efforts to secure the crime scenes and recover and preserve evidence, said a senior law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity.
The new warnings also extend to U.S. military personnel serving overseas. Pentagon officials say troops asking for leave to visit countries under a State Department travel warning are discouraged from doing so but are only banned if the military is under "threat condition Delta," its highest state of alert, in the area.
India: US daisy-cutters or olive branch?
By M H Ahsan
Monday night's coordinated suicide attacks on residential complexes for foreigners in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, appears to have altered the Indian view of the post-Iraq world order: It may have helped Delhi make up its mind on whether or not to send troops to Iraq as part of a "stabilization force" on the request of the United States.
Well-placed sources in the government have told that now the answer is going to be an unambiguous "no": India does not want to get stuck in the Middle East quagmire aggravated by the US-led invasion of Iraq, particularly as the Indian parliament has unanimously deplored that action. It may continue to hide behind the need for a United Nations resolution though, as it doesn't want to incur US displeasure.
A strong and determined pro-US lobby in the government led by National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra is, however, still at work and due to his closeness to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, it may still succeed. But the Riyadh bombing has clearly strengthened the naysayers as it has exposed the many vulnerabilities of the US presence in the Middle East, as well as the striking power of al-Qaeda that is only likely to grow with the passage of time.
India has been under tremendous pressure for the past fortnight to accede to the US request over troops, as the latter is interested in sending as many of its soldiers as possible back home from Iraq as early as possible. The US and British proposal for India to send a division-level force is believed to have been made at the highest levels in government, both in New Delhi and in Washington, two weeks ago. It is also said to have come up in the talks between Mishra and US officials in Washington last week.
Before the Riyadh blasts, India was almost ready to participate in a US-led stabilization force for Iraq, according to news emanating from Poland, the one country other than Albania that has so far shown readiness to send its troops to Iraq. India has participated in humanitarian campaigns before, and given the chaotic law-and-order situation in Iraq, the contemplated force could be considered a humanitarian gesture for the people of Iraq.
India's participation in the United Nations-led relief effort in Iraq was already under way, with the government organizing a field hospital to be sent there. External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha was expected to offer military assistance for Iraq to his US counterpart, Secretary of State Colin Powell, when they met in Moscow on Wednesday. The US request did come up for discussion in Moscow, but apparently Sinha did not give any categorical reply to the request formally made by US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage during his Delhi visit last week.
The Indian government is split down the middle on the issue for these reasons. One, the request was being made not by a legitimate Iraqi government, but by an "occupying power". Two, India had opposed the invasion of Iraq, and now sending troops to work under US command without a UN resolution could be construed as supporting the invasion itself.
Indian mandarins were able to work out a compromise. India was urging the Americans to amend its resolution somewhat in the United Nations, the argument being that if the UN could be involved, even in some vague way, in the formation of the interim government in Iraq, it would be far easier for India and other countries such as Pakistan and Malaysia to participate in the US-led stabilization force.
But the blasts in Riyadh have changed all this. Given the meticulous planning and execution involved, as Powell put it, the bombing has "all the fingerprints of an al-Qaeda operation". According to the daily newspaper The Pioneer, which often reflects Indian government thinking, the blasts clearly had a twofold purpose: First, to show that far from being crippled, al-Qaeda has retained its ability to strike at any place and time of its choosing. Second, the timing - the eve of Powell's visit to the country in the course of his tour of West Asia to explain US policies in the region after Saddam Hussein's ouster - was meant to show that US supremacy in this part of the globe could hardly be taken for granted and that its allies were in peril.
The Riyadh attack has come at a time when the Indian mind, as reflected in talks with officials as well comments in the media, is full of apprehensions and misgivings about the real US intentions in South Asia. Vajpayee's invocation of the US invasion of Iraq in parliament last week as an "example" of how powerful nations can render the UN a toothless body can be seen in this context. He is also said to have been furious with Yashwant Sinha's earlier statement in parliament calling for "preemptive strikes" against Pakistan on the lines of what the US did in Iraq, as it amounted to supporting the US theory of preemptive strikes against countries that did not and could not pose any threat.
In Vajpayee's view India's case against Pakistan is different. India may have a right to strike preemptively as Pakistan is a real and present danger to this country. This neighboring country has already fought four wars with India and has also been engaged in a low-intensity proxy war for the past two decades, first in the state of Punjab, supporting a Sikh fundamentalist movement for independent Khalistan, and then in the state of Jammu and Kashmir in aid of Kashmiri separatists. Pakistan also supports separatists in the northeast of India.
Indian suspicions of US intentions in South Asia are revealed in private comments by senior officials as well as comments in the media. Newspapers have taken to giving headlines such as "Daisy-cutters or olive branch", meaning that if India doesn't make peace with Pakistan, as the US desires and probably on US terms, it may have to face an invasion in the manner of Iraq and Afghanistan.
These misgivings have been enhanced by the fact that while making his now-famous hand-of-friendship speech at Srinagar, capital of the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir, on April 18, the prime minister himself mentioned the changed world scenario after the invasion of Iraq as the reason for his offer of an olive branch to Pakistan.
A senior official of the main opposition Congress party and a former diplomat refers to these widely felt grievances and deep suspicions about the United States in his inimitable, combative style, while giving his version of how things have gone so wrong that India has to face US bullying: "When the Vajpayee lot found that their bluster [against Pakistan] was not impressing anyone, they mobilized the bulk of our armed forces, at enormous cost to the nation and enormous damage to morale, to go man the outer perimeter of our borders on full alert for 10 long months in a meaningless eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation, which quite failed to cow down the Pakistanis but thoroughly alarmed the world at this display of brinkmanship by two neo-nuclear powers.
"That is when the Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads since June 6, 1998, was unsheathed: UN Security Council Resolution 1172, which revived for the first time since the 1965 war the dreaded K-word, Kashmir. As punishment for Pokhran II, the axis of evil - the five permanent members of the Security Council, all of whom are nuclear weapon powers - threatened India and Pakistan, settle Kashmir or our wrath will descend on you. That is how Vajpayee at Srinagar made the connection between Iraq and Kashmir. The Iraq resolutions were twice as old as Resolution 1172 - but kept in storage till [George W Bush] decided he needed another war on yet another defenseless enemy to win his 2004 elections. Sorting out India and Pakistan would go down extraordinarily well with the American voter.
"Vajpayee has made the connection only now. Jaswant Singh [former external affairs minister, now finance minister] made it much earlier. Hence his chasing Strobe Talbott [deputy secretary of state in former US president Bill Clinton's administration] the world over, 10 times around, begging redemption for Pokhran II by abject surrender to the United States. The US, of course, won the day. The Vajpayee government first credited the US president, not the Indian armed forces, with ending the Pakistani incursion in Kargil [in 1999]; then they let Bill Clinton get away with describing Kashmir as a 'dispute' in the sacred precincts of Central Hall; then rushed in after September 11 with an offer of territory which the Americans feared to tread; then bit their tongue as neither America nor the world bought our story about 13/12 [terrorist attack on the Indian parliament]; and have now abjectly dismantled the entire response to 13/12. It is a groveling confession of wasted years."
Thus, while India had reacted to the events of September 11, 2001, with a fervent hope that now the US will see the need to tame Pakistan - a demand reiterated for the umpteenth time last week by Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishan Advani - it has reacted to the Riyadh blasts merely with a hand-wringing that the US did not have the good sense to continue its so-called "war on terror" in the manner India had advised.
One typical example of the Indian response is provided by an editorial in the pro-government Pioneer: "Ironically, it is the US itself which is primarily responsible, albeit indirectly, for the fact that the al-Qaeda was still able to do so. It should have waged its war against terrorism with single-minded zeal until the al-Qaeda's organizational infrastructure, the global reach and efficiency which was strikingly underlined by the events of 9/11, had been fully destroyed. Instead of doing that, it invaded Iraq. Though it did so at the head of a coalition of a large number of countries, it had to provide almost the whole of the military effort involved - with Britain playing a critical supporting role. As a result, al-Qaeda retains a significant part of its infrastructure, and its leaders like Osama bin Laden and Ayman-al-Zawahiri are alive and plotting."
Indians have, of course, not suddenly become supportive of anti-American terrorism. And there has been pro forma condemnation of terrorism in some circles as well. But what should perhaps worry Washington is that more and more people are beginning to see bin Laden as a legitimate opponent of the United States. Indeed, Indians are not alone in thinking that if there were free and fair elections in Saudi Arabia today, bin Laden would win hands down.
Even more worrisome, perhaps, are reports in the Indian media, including the government-controlled TV channel Doordarshan, that despite the discovery of mass graves in Iraq, at least some people are beginning to miss Saddam Hussein, and even wanting him to come back, merely weeks after his fall. As one American observer remarked, if there is real democracy in Iraq, the government that gets elected is bound to be anti-American.
There is disenchantment with the United States at every level in India. Former foreign secretary M K Rasgotra, for instance, characterizes the US attitude toward Pakistan as "dishonorable ambivalence" and a "great disgrace". He said, "Richard Haas, one of Armitage's important colleagues, publicly acknowledged last month Washington's failure to hold [President General Pervez] Musharraf to his commitments. In the same breath, he proceeded to suggest that India, nevertheless, resume dialogue with Pakistan. Is Armitage here to exert his weight in support of that kind of dishonorable ambivalence? What greater disgrace could there be on democracy that one great democracy, engaged in war on terror, should propose to another that it bargain for peace under threat of continuing terrorism by its self-declared adversary! The bitter truth is that Washington has not bothered much about Pakistan's campaign of terror in Kashmir. Even the great Colin Powell seems overawed by the Pakistan military regime's nuclear blackmail."
Another former foreign secretary whose views carry a lot of weight with the Hindu fundamentalist-led government, even though he joined the secular opposition Congress party after the massacres of Muslims in Gujarat, J N Dixit, remarks that a fruitful Indian-US relationship is not possible until the United States allays some Indian concerns.
What are these widely felt concerns? Among several other things, Dixit pointed out, "Interventionist US assertiveness will create incipient tensions in Indo-US relations. Going by the assessment that South Asia is the most dangerous place, what would [the United States'] policies be in dealing with the nuclear weaponization of Pakistan and India? Will it be preemptive or will it be aimed at stabilizing the existing security environment? These questions are pertinent because the Iraq war unequivocally underlined the US's will to take any action required to safeguard its national interests unilaterally. The implications of such action create new security concerns for nations like India, which need to be addressed. America's policies have the additional impetus towards supremacy. The very process of globalization is becoming an instrumentality of US foreign and security policies."
One fallout of the US-led war on Iraq has been that the Indian perception of US capability has changed. Even those who opposed US policies admired its efficiency and professionalism. Now even ordinary Indians are aghast at statements like the one made by the US official in charge of central Iraq, Barbara Bodine: "We didn't know what we were walking into."
Don't Americans even read newspapers, people are asking? It is common knowledge that many Middle East watchers and statesmen had warned the US against opening a Pandora's box. Powell had himself warned in his autobiography of the dangers of opening hundreds of years-old wounds in the Arab world. How can they now feign ignorance of the dangers of invading Iraq? The whole world had asked them to stay away from Iraq.
Even before Riyadh, senior journalists, like senior officials, were making strong cases against India "succumbing to the US demand to send troops to Iraq to function under US command". After Riyadh, these voices are only getting louder.
In the wake of September 11, India had offered its full-fledged support in fighting Islamic terrorism, whose hub, it was thought, lay in Pakistan. After Riyadh, it may start dealing with the United States in the same way other countries, Pakistan, for instance, or now Syria and Iran, do - appearing to cooperate but in reality merely trying to avoid the rain of daisy-cutters.
US and India : A dangerous alliance : In the wake of the Iraq War, growing tensions with Iran, and a possible confrontation with North Korea, it would be easy to miss the formation of yet another Washington think tank. But the freshly minted US-India Institute for Strategic Policy is an organization to watch and one that may help reveal the next target of American power: containing China.
The institute, closely aligned with the ultra-conservative Center for Security Policy, is the outcome of a series of quiet meetings and low-profile joint military operations between the US and the government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, dominated by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
In May of last year, Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and one of the most hawkish members of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's inner circle, hosted a meeting of the US-India Defense Policy Group to map out joint defense strategies for the two countries. These included planning joint naval patrols of the strategic Malacca Strait, workshops on ballistic missile defense, and cooperation in defense technology. While the goal, according to conference documents, was to build "stability and security in Asia and beyond", according to P R Chari of the New Delhi-based Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, "stabilization" is a code: "What they really mean is how to deal with China."
China is certainly on the minds of administration-linked think tanks. As Lloyd Richardson of the Hudson Institute told the Financial Times, India has the "economic and military strength to counter the adverse effects of China's rise as a regional and world power. India is the most overlooked of our potential allies in a strategy to contain China."
That analysis was paralleled in a recent, classified US Department of Defense document revealed by Jane's Foreign Report. The document argues that "China represents the most significant threat to both countries' [India and the US] security in the future as an economic and military competitor." The document also quoted an unnamed US admiral as saying that both the US and India view China as a strategic threat "though we do not discuss this publicly". The document goes on to observe that US relations with its "traditional" allies in Asia - South Korea and Japan - have become "fragile" and concludes that "India should emerge as a vital component of US strategy".
Military ties between the two nations have blossomed, culminating in the recent Malabar IV exercises, which coordinated the efforts of Indian and US battle groups, including cruisers, destroyers, frigates, submarines, aircraft and several thousand personal. The Indian navy has launched a 30-year program to construct a fleet capable of projecting power into the South China Sea. According to the Financial Times, India plans to parlay its military cooperation with the US into beefing up its arms industry and supplementing China as a major regional arms supplier.
Relations between the two nations have been tense since India lost a 1962 border war with China, and the Vajpayee government regularly accuses China of aiding Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. "Reliable and widespread reports of Chinese nuclear and missile proliferation to Pakistan cause deep concern," Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha said in January, adding that he was disappointed "over the pace of improvement in the relationship between India and China".
That relationship is not likely to improve if the Chinese think that the Indians are ganging up with the White House to "contain" China. Almost as soon as the Bush administration took office, it altered China's status from "strategic partner" under Bill Clinton to "strategic competitor". The administration's US-China Security Review Commission argued that China is "in direct competition with us for influence in Asia and beyond" and that in "the worst case this could lead to war". When President George W Bush threatened North Korea with nuclear weapons last year, he leveled the same threat at China in the advent of a China-Taiwan war.
The administration lifted sanctions against India for its 1998 violation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and resumed arms sales. Even the White House's choice for ambassador to India, Robert Blackwell, must have set off alarm bells in Beijing. Blackwell was a member of the Vulcans - candidate George W Bush's team of foreign policy advisers - most of whom opposed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) and supported deployment of an ABM system. The Chinese have long felt the ABM system now being assembled in Alaska is aimed at them.
Joining up with the Bush administration's strategy to "contain" China may not be a path India wants to follow. China is indeed a growing power in Asia, with the sixth-largest economy in the world. But there is no evidence it is particularly aggressive. It has certainly played a peacemaker role on the Korean peninsula.
And military competition with China will be painful for the average Indian. India spends $14 billion a year on its military, while half of its children are malnourished, and 350 million people go to bed hungry. One third of India's one billion people are illiterate, and the country spends only 1.9 percent of its Gross Domestic Product on education, about half of what most East Asian countries spend.
The burdens of poverty and illiteracy are likely to be far more destabilizing to India than Chinese influence in Asia, and India should have no illusions that a military alliance with the US will open the aid spigots. American foreign aid has been declining for decades, and US economic difficulties, coupled with the Iraq War, will undoubtedly accelerate that trend.
The burdens of empire eventually outweigh the benefits.
India's startling change of axis : Having preempted the efforts of the United States for peace in South Asia by its own offer of normalization of relations with Pakistan, India has renewed its bid for an axis with Washington and Israel to counter Pakistan, which Delhi describes as the hub of Islamic fundamentalism and international terrorism. The terminology being officially used for this proposed axis is rather innocuous - democratic alliance against terrorism.
While Washington's response is not known, this has created a storm in Indian politics itself, forcing the main opposition Congress party, which ruled India for its first 45 years of independence, to deplore the Hindu fundamentalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition government for its "obsession with Israel" even at the cost of national interests.
India's national security adviser Brajesh Mishra outlined the proposal for a US-Israel-India axis against Islamic fundamentalism in Washington last Thursday. Mishra is perhaps the most trusted aide of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and served for several years as the head of the BJP's foreign affairs cell before the party came to power five years ago.
In an address to a meeting of the American Jewish Committee, Mishra argued that democratic countries that are the prime targets of international terrorism should form a "viable alliance" and develop multilateral mechanisms to counter the menace. He identified India, the US and Israel as countries fitting that description. "Such an alliance would have the political will and moral authority to take bold decisions in extreme cases of terrorist provocation. It would not get bogged down in definitional and causal arguments about terrorism," he maintained.
Speaking after a meeting with his American counterpart Condoleezza Rice, Mishra hit out at the Pakistani bid to characterize Kashmiri militants as freedom fighters. The talk that terrorism can be eradicated only by addressing its root causes is "nonsense" he said amid applause. He said that preventive measures like blocking financial supplies, disrupting networks, sharing intelligence and simplifying extradition procedures can be effective only through international cooperation "based on trust and shared values".
At his meeting with Rice, Mishra is understood to have rebutted the claim of Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf that "nothing is happening across the Line of Control" that divides the Indian and Pakistani-administered areas of Kashmir. He acquainted her with an Indian perspective on the continuing incidents of terrorist violence in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). His meeting with Rice came within hours of Musharraf making the assertion to Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage in Islamabad.
Mishra gave Rice an update on the peace moves made by India. He also touched on some of the outstanding bilateral issues. He sought early US action on the "trinity" of issues: high-technology commerce, civilian nuclear energy cooperation and collaboration in space. India believes that early action on these issues could take the India-US relationship to a qualitatively new level of partnership. He pointed out in his address to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Wednesday that he hoped the decks will be cleared for the flow of dual-use technologies between the countries since India has consistently followed responsible policies.
While the US has not come up with any response yet, Indian opposition parties have attacked the ruling coalition for its "strange and perverse" obsession with Israel. The most vocal among these has been the Congress. It attacked the BJP-led government on Saturday. "Obsession with Israel on the part of the coalition government is strange and perverse ... when Israel is facing international isolation. It shows the intellectual insolvency of the government," party spokesman S Jaipal Reddy said.
Reddy said that Mishra's statement was "not inadvertent" as Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani had also put forward a similar formulation after September 11, 2001. Noting that strategic partnership with Israel was "qualitatively different" from that between India and the US, he said that Mishra would not have pleaded for such an alliance without prior clearance from the prime minister. The Congress warned that a strategic partnership with Israel could upset the consensus built around India's "time-tested" foreign policy.
Reddy said that such a tie-up "defies intelligence", given the ideological dissonance between India and Israel. "There are fundamental [ideological] dissimilarities between India and Israel. The problem faced by Israel is qualitatively different from India. We've held the view that Palestinians have been denied their due. There has to be a minimum ideological similarity for a strategic partnership," Reddy said.
The BJP-led government has indeed shown a great keenness in trying to convince the US for such a strategic alliance since it came to power. It has not let any opportunity go to repeat its interest in such an axis. Whether it was the issue of national missile defense (NMD) mooted by President George W Bush or the terrorist strikes of September 11, India was the first to offer its total support and cooperation, even without being asked for it.
The reasons are not difficult to see. The ideologues of Hindutva (the philosophy of Hindu domination of the sub-continent), had lost no time in justifying their support for NMD on ideological grounds. One such ideologue, Sandhya Jain, for instance, explained this in her column in the daily Pioneer by pointing out that threatened as they both are from Muslim fundamentalism, India and the US are civilizational allies.
She gave voice to India's high hopes from a strategic alliance with the US and Israel and the NMD regime: "A defensive umbrella in which a tracking satellite can find and neutralize enemy missiles in mid-air is no small protection for a country physically surrounded by civilizationally hostile forces. The opposition assertion that this would reduce India to a US satellite is jejune, and merits contempt. India would no more be a satellite than France or Germany was under NATO. But she would be allied to the most powerful country of the free world, a country that is fiercely loyal towards its friends, as witnessed by its abiding relationship with Israel."
Similarly, September 11 found India in the same mood as Britain after Pearl Harbor. British columnist William Rees-Mogg recalled that his country's reaction to Pearl Harbor was one of "horror, but also a huge sense of relief that the USA was now involved in World War II". India, too, hoped that the US would now be involved in the war against terrorism that India has been fighting for the past two decades, first in the state of Punjab and then in J&K, not to speak of the seven states in its Northeast and the Maoist insurgency in the eastern state of Bihar and the western state of Andhra Pradesh.
The Japanese action at Pearl Harbor had, in the words of Rees-Mogg, "started a new process of history; before it was complete, that process led to the destruction of the Japanese empire, the dropping of the first nuclear bombs, the occupation of Japan and eventually to American support for the post-war institutions of NATO, the UN and international peacekeeping". India, too, hoped that the US treating the latest attacks as a declaration of war by the terrorist groups would herald a new historical process that would lead to a new strategic axis of India-US and Israel fighting against Islamic fundamentalism.
Calling for the redoubling of efforts to defeat the "great threat" of terrorism, Vajpayee wrote to Bush assuring him of India's full cooperation in investigations into the terrorist strikes. Condemning the events in the strongest terms, Vajpayee said, "The people of India and my government share the sense of outrage with the American people. We stand ready to cooperate with you in the investigations into this crime and to strengthen our partnership in leading international efforts to ensure that terrorism never succeeds again."
The prime minister brought in the civilizatonal angle as well. He observed that this dark hour was a stark reminder of the power and reach of the terrorists to destroy innocent lives and challenge the civilized order in this world. "It sends a strong message to democracies to redouble our efforts to defeat this great threat to our people, our values and our way of life."
US behavior since September 11 has, however, belied Indian hopes of a strategic US-Israel-India axis fighting Pakistan. The US instead made Pakistan a front-line ally in its fight against the Taliban menace in Afghanistan. Bush and other US officials have often praised India's bug-bear, Musharraf, as a stalwart ally and helped him bring Pakistan back on the path of economic prosperity.
Most observers of the Indian political scene believed that events since September 11 had put cold water on Indian hopes of a civilizational axis - Hindu-Jewish-Christian versus Islam and Confucianism. Vajpayee's hand-of-friendship speech directed at Pakistan from the capital of the state of Jammu and Kashmir last month was also seen as an indication that India now understood the need for coming to terms with its nuclear-armed neighbor Pakistan. This is why Vajpayee government's renewal of this bid for a civilizational axis has surprised many.
But it shouldn't really surprise anyone. There are deep ideological factors impelling Hindu fundamentalist leaders to hope against hope that a civilizational clash will take place, and that they would be on the winning side of it.
The clash of civilization theory is attributed to Samuel Huntington. But few people know, as a Hindutva ideologue Devendra Swaroop Aggarwal pointed out recently, that it had actually been put forward by well-known Hindutva icon Bipin Chandra Pal almost a century ago. Pal had the insight to even foresee that, even though India was at that time engaged in fighting for its independence from the Christian British, in this impending clash Hindus would be on the side of the Judeo-Christian civilization and Islam would be supported by the Confucian Chinese civilization.
This may also be one reason why Hindu fundamentalists never participated in the freedom struggle, and have supported the West throughout the period since independence in 1947 at a time that India was struggling with its foreign policy of non-alignment in a bid to remain neutral between the West and the Soviet Union.
The opportunities offered by September 11 were too good to be missed. India under the BJP may be unable to believe that it has missed them and that nothing can be done to revive those hopes. Before having to join Pakistan in a serious effort to find a peace formula, therefore, it may have felt like making a last-ditch effort.
There is also speculation that the Vajpayee government could not have renewed its offer of a civilizatonal axis without some encouragement from Israel and the US. As for Israel, there can be no doubt that it would love India to be a part of such an axis, and thus be further isolated from the Islamic world.
The evolving situation, particularly the US response, will thus be watched with keen interest. Whether or not the proposed peace talks between India and Pakistan move forward will largely depend on the US response to the Indian proposal for a strategic axis. The last time that India and Pakistan come close to blowing each other up in a nuclear holocaust, the US used determined and coercive diplomacy in the form of travel advisories against its citizens visiting India to bring the two to their senses.
It seems doubtful that the US will join hands with India to destroy Pakistan or even tame it, as Advani demanded on Sunday, particularly as it already virtually owns that country. It is possible that Indian leaders with their single-point agenda of fighting a civilizational battle with Islam are unable to understand the complex games that the US plays.
Visiting US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has in fact left no one in doubt that India is expected to engage in dialogue with Pakistan, while the US is not going to be the one to ensure that the Pakistani leadership lives up to its commitment made in June last year to end cross-border infiltration permanently.
Armitage told Indian leaders on Sunday that he was not in the business of giving assurances. This amounts to the US washing its hands of the assurances given last year. India officials are also expressing resentment over reported remarks by some US officials that the Kashmir issue should be resolved first to bring an end to cross-border infiltration.
Copyright 2003 Dhamaka News Network . All Rights Reserved.
By M H Ahsan
Monday night's coordinated suicide attacks on residential complexes for foreigners in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, appears to have altered the Indian view of the post-Iraq world order: It may have helped Delhi make up its mind on whether or not to send troops to Iraq as part of a "stabilization force" on the request of the United States.
Well-placed sources in the government have told that now the answer is going to be an unambiguous "no": India does not want to get stuck in the Middle East quagmire aggravated by the US-led invasion of Iraq, particularly as the Indian parliament has unanimously deplored that action. It may continue to hide behind the need for a United Nations resolution though, as it doesn't want to incur US displeasure.
A strong and determined pro-US lobby in the government led by National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra is, however, still at work and due to his closeness to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, it may still succeed. But the Riyadh bombing has clearly strengthened the naysayers as it has exposed the many vulnerabilities of the US presence in the Middle East, as well as the striking power of al-Qaeda that is only likely to grow with the passage of time.
India has been under tremendous pressure for the past fortnight to accede to the US request over troops, as the latter is interested in sending as many of its soldiers as possible back home from Iraq as early as possible. The US and British proposal for India to send a division-level force is believed to have been made at the highest levels in government, both in New Delhi and in Washington, two weeks ago. It is also said to have come up in the talks between Mishra and US officials in Washington last week.
Before the Riyadh blasts, India was almost ready to participate in a US-led stabilization force for Iraq, according to news emanating from Poland, the one country other than Albania that has so far shown readiness to send its troops to Iraq. India has participated in humanitarian campaigns before, and given the chaotic law-and-order situation in Iraq, the contemplated force could be considered a humanitarian gesture for the people of Iraq.
India's participation in the United Nations-led relief effort in Iraq was already under way, with the government organizing a field hospital to be sent there. External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha was expected to offer military assistance for Iraq to his US counterpart, Secretary of State Colin Powell, when they met in Moscow on Wednesday. The US request did come up for discussion in Moscow, but apparently Sinha did not give any categorical reply to the request formally made by US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage during his Delhi visit last week.
The Indian government is split down the middle on the issue for these reasons. One, the request was being made not by a legitimate Iraqi government, but by an "occupying power". Two, India had opposed the invasion of Iraq, and now sending troops to work under US command without a UN resolution could be construed as supporting the invasion itself.
Indian mandarins were able to work out a compromise. India was urging the Americans to amend its resolution somewhat in the United Nations, the argument being that if the UN could be involved, even in some vague way, in the formation of the interim government in Iraq, it would be far easier for India and other countries such as Pakistan and Malaysia to participate in the US-led stabilization force.
But the blasts in Riyadh have changed all this. Given the meticulous planning and execution involved, as Powell put it, the bombing has "all the fingerprints of an al-Qaeda operation". According to the daily newspaper The Pioneer, which often reflects Indian government thinking, the blasts clearly had a twofold purpose: First, to show that far from being crippled, al-Qaeda has retained its ability to strike at any place and time of its choosing. Second, the timing - the eve of Powell's visit to the country in the course of his tour of West Asia to explain US policies in the region after Saddam Hussein's ouster - was meant to show that US supremacy in this part of the globe could hardly be taken for granted and that its allies were in peril.
The Riyadh attack has come at a time when the Indian mind, as reflected in talks with officials as well comments in the media, is full of apprehensions and misgivings about the real US intentions in South Asia. Vajpayee's invocation of the US invasion of Iraq in parliament last week as an "example" of how powerful nations can render the UN a toothless body can be seen in this context. He is also said to have been furious with Yashwant Sinha's earlier statement in parliament calling for "preemptive strikes" against Pakistan on the lines of what the US did in Iraq, as it amounted to supporting the US theory of preemptive strikes against countries that did not and could not pose any threat.
In Vajpayee's view India's case against Pakistan is different. India may have a right to strike preemptively as Pakistan is a real and present danger to this country. This neighboring country has already fought four wars with India and has also been engaged in a low-intensity proxy war for the past two decades, first in the state of Punjab, supporting a Sikh fundamentalist movement for independent Khalistan, and then in the state of Jammu and Kashmir in aid of Kashmiri separatists. Pakistan also supports separatists in the northeast of India.
Indian suspicions of US intentions in South Asia are revealed in private comments by senior officials as well as comments in the media. Newspapers have taken to giving headlines such as "Daisy-cutters or olive branch", meaning that if India doesn't make peace with Pakistan, as the US desires and probably on US terms, it may have to face an invasion in the manner of Iraq and Afghanistan.
These misgivings have been enhanced by the fact that while making his now-famous hand-of-friendship speech at Srinagar, capital of the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir, on April 18, the prime minister himself mentioned the changed world scenario after the invasion of Iraq as the reason for his offer of an olive branch to Pakistan.
A senior official of the main opposition Congress party and a former diplomat refers to these widely felt grievances and deep suspicions about the United States in his inimitable, combative style, while giving his version of how things have gone so wrong that India has to face US bullying: "When the Vajpayee lot found that their bluster [against Pakistan] was not impressing anyone, they mobilized the bulk of our armed forces, at enormous cost to the nation and enormous damage to morale, to go man the outer perimeter of our borders on full alert for 10 long months in a meaningless eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation, which quite failed to cow down the Pakistanis but thoroughly alarmed the world at this display of brinkmanship by two neo-nuclear powers.
"That is when the Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads since June 6, 1998, was unsheathed: UN Security Council Resolution 1172, which revived for the first time since the 1965 war the dreaded K-word, Kashmir. As punishment for Pokhran II, the axis of evil - the five permanent members of the Security Council, all of whom are nuclear weapon powers - threatened India and Pakistan, settle Kashmir or our wrath will descend on you. That is how Vajpayee at Srinagar made the connection between Iraq and Kashmir. The Iraq resolutions were twice as old as Resolution 1172 - but kept in storage till [George W Bush] decided he needed another war on yet another defenseless enemy to win his 2004 elections. Sorting out India and Pakistan would go down extraordinarily well with the American voter.
"Vajpayee has made the connection only now. Jaswant Singh [former external affairs minister, now finance minister] made it much earlier. Hence his chasing Strobe Talbott [deputy secretary of state in former US president Bill Clinton's administration] the world over, 10 times around, begging redemption for Pokhran II by abject surrender to the United States. The US, of course, won the day. The Vajpayee government first credited the US president, not the Indian armed forces, with ending the Pakistani incursion in Kargil [in 1999]; then they let Bill Clinton get away with describing Kashmir as a 'dispute' in the sacred precincts of Central Hall; then rushed in after September 11 with an offer of territory which the Americans feared to tread; then bit their tongue as neither America nor the world bought our story about 13/12 [terrorist attack on the Indian parliament]; and have now abjectly dismantled the entire response to 13/12. It is a groveling confession of wasted years."
Thus, while India had reacted to the events of September 11, 2001, with a fervent hope that now the US will see the need to tame Pakistan - a demand reiterated for the umpteenth time last week by Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishan Advani - it has reacted to the Riyadh blasts merely with a hand-wringing that the US did not have the good sense to continue its so-called "war on terror" in the manner India had advised.
One typical example of the Indian response is provided by an editorial in the pro-government Pioneer: "Ironically, it is the US itself which is primarily responsible, albeit indirectly, for the fact that the al-Qaeda was still able to do so. It should have waged its war against terrorism with single-minded zeal until the al-Qaeda's organizational infrastructure, the global reach and efficiency which was strikingly underlined by the events of 9/11, had been fully destroyed. Instead of doing that, it invaded Iraq. Though it did so at the head of a coalition of a large number of countries, it had to provide almost the whole of the military effort involved - with Britain playing a critical supporting role. As a result, al-Qaeda retains a significant part of its infrastructure, and its leaders like Osama bin Laden and Ayman-al-Zawahiri are alive and plotting."
Indians have, of course, not suddenly become supportive of anti-American terrorism. And there has been pro forma condemnation of terrorism in some circles as well. But what should perhaps worry Washington is that more and more people are beginning to see bin Laden as a legitimate opponent of the United States. Indeed, Indians are not alone in thinking that if there were free and fair elections in Saudi Arabia today, bin Laden would win hands down.
Even more worrisome, perhaps, are reports in the Indian media, including the government-controlled TV channel Doordarshan, that despite the discovery of mass graves in Iraq, at least some people are beginning to miss Saddam Hussein, and even wanting him to come back, merely weeks after his fall. As one American observer remarked, if there is real democracy in Iraq, the government that gets elected is bound to be anti-American.
There is disenchantment with the United States at every level in India. Former foreign secretary M K Rasgotra, for instance, characterizes the US attitude toward Pakistan as "dishonorable ambivalence" and a "great disgrace". He said, "Richard Haas, one of Armitage's important colleagues, publicly acknowledged last month Washington's failure to hold [President General Pervez] Musharraf to his commitments. In the same breath, he proceeded to suggest that India, nevertheless, resume dialogue with Pakistan. Is Armitage here to exert his weight in support of that kind of dishonorable ambivalence? What greater disgrace could there be on democracy that one great democracy, engaged in war on terror, should propose to another that it bargain for peace under threat of continuing terrorism by its self-declared adversary! The bitter truth is that Washington has not bothered much about Pakistan's campaign of terror in Kashmir. Even the great Colin Powell seems overawed by the Pakistan military regime's nuclear blackmail."
Another former foreign secretary whose views carry a lot of weight with the Hindu fundamentalist-led government, even though he joined the secular opposition Congress party after the massacres of Muslims in Gujarat, J N Dixit, remarks that a fruitful Indian-US relationship is not possible until the United States allays some Indian concerns.
What are these widely felt concerns? Among several other things, Dixit pointed out, "Interventionist US assertiveness will create incipient tensions in Indo-US relations. Going by the assessment that South Asia is the most dangerous place, what would [the United States'] policies be in dealing with the nuclear weaponization of Pakistan and India? Will it be preemptive or will it be aimed at stabilizing the existing security environment? These questions are pertinent because the Iraq war unequivocally underlined the US's will to take any action required to safeguard its national interests unilaterally. The implications of such action create new security concerns for nations like India, which need to be addressed. America's policies have the additional impetus towards supremacy. The very process of globalization is becoming an instrumentality of US foreign and security policies."
One fallout of the US-led war on Iraq has been that the Indian perception of US capability has changed. Even those who opposed US policies admired its efficiency and professionalism. Now even ordinary Indians are aghast at statements like the one made by the US official in charge of central Iraq, Barbara Bodine: "We didn't know what we were walking into."
Don't Americans even read newspapers, people are asking? It is common knowledge that many Middle East watchers and statesmen had warned the US against opening a Pandora's box. Powell had himself warned in his autobiography of the dangers of opening hundreds of years-old wounds in the Arab world. How can they now feign ignorance of the dangers of invading Iraq? The whole world had asked them to stay away from Iraq.
Even before Riyadh, senior journalists, like senior officials, were making strong cases against India "succumbing to the US demand to send troops to Iraq to function under US command". After Riyadh, these voices are only getting louder.
In the wake of September 11, India had offered its full-fledged support in fighting Islamic terrorism, whose hub, it was thought, lay in Pakistan. After Riyadh, it may start dealing with the United States in the same way other countries, Pakistan, for instance, or now Syria and Iran, do - appearing to cooperate but in reality merely trying to avoid the rain of daisy-cutters.
US and India : A dangerous alliance : In the wake of the Iraq War, growing tensions with Iran, and a possible confrontation with North Korea, it would be easy to miss the formation of yet another Washington think tank. But the freshly minted US-India Institute for Strategic Policy is an organization to watch and one that may help reveal the next target of American power: containing China.
The institute, closely aligned with the ultra-conservative Center for Security Policy, is the outcome of a series of quiet meetings and low-profile joint military operations between the US and the government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, dominated by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
In May of last year, Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and one of the most hawkish members of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's inner circle, hosted a meeting of the US-India Defense Policy Group to map out joint defense strategies for the two countries. These included planning joint naval patrols of the strategic Malacca Strait, workshops on ballistic missile defense, and cooperation in defense technology. While the goal, according to conference documents, was to build "stability and security in Asia and beyond", according to P R Chari of the New Delhi-based Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, "stabilization" is a code: "What they really mean is how to deal with China."
China is certainly on the minds of administration-linked think tanks. As Lloyd Richardson of the Hudson Institute told the Financial Times, India has the "economic and military strength to counter the adverse effects of China's rise as a regional and world power. India is the most overlooked of our potential allies in a strategy to contain China."
That analysis was paralleled in a recent, classified US Department of Defense document revealed by Jane's Foreign Report. The document argues that "China represents the most significant threat to both countries' [India and the US] security in the future as an economic and military competitor." The document also quoted an unnamed US admiral as saying that both the US and India view China as a strategic threat "though we do not discuss this publicly". The document goes on to observe that US relations with its "traditional" allies in Asia - South Korea and Japan - have become "fragile" and concludes that "India should emerge as a vital component of US strategy".
Military ties between the two nations have blossomed, culminating in the recent Malabar IV exercises, which coordinated the efforts of Indian and US battle groups, including cruisers, destroyers, frigates, submarines, aircraft and several thousand personal. The Indian navy has launched a 30-year program to construct a fleet capable of projecting power into the South China Sea. According to the Financial Times, India plans to parlay its military cooperation with the US into beefing up its arms industry and supplementing China as a major regional arms supplier.
Relations between the two nations have been tense since India lost a 1962 border war with China, and the Vajpayee government regularly accuses China of aiding Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. "Reliable and widespread reports of Chinese nuclear and missile proliferation to Pakistan cause deep concern," Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha said in January, adding that he was disappointed "over the pace of improvement in the relationship between India and China".
That relationship is not likely to improve if the Chinese think that the Indians are ganging up with the White House to "contain" China. Almost as soon as the Bush administration took office, it altered China's status from "strategic partner" under Bill Clinton to "strategic competitor". The administration's US-China Security Review Commission argued that China is "in direct competition with us for influence in Asia and beyond" and that in "the worst case this could lead to war". When President George W Bush threatened North Korea with nuclear weapons last year, he leveled the same threat at China in the advent of a China-Taiwan war.
The administration lifted sanctions against India for its 1998 violation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and resumed arms sales. Even the White House's choice for ambassador to India, Robert Blackwell, must have set off alarm bells in Beijing. Blackwell was a member of the Vulcans - candidate George W Bush's team of foreign policy advisers - most of whom opposed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) and supported deployment of an ABM system. The Chinese have long felt the ABM system now being assembled in Alaska is aimed at them.
Joining up with the Bush administration's strategy to "contain" China may not be a path India wants to follow. China is indeed a growing power in Asia, with the sixth-largest economy in the world. But there is no evidence it is particularly aggressive. It has certainly played a peacemaker role on the Korean peninsula.
And military competition with China will be painful for the average Indian. India spends $14 billion a year on its military, while half of its children are malnourished, and 350 million people go to bed hungry. One third of India's one billion people are illiterate, and the country spends only 1.9 percent of its Gross Domestic Product on education, about half of what most East Asian countries spend.
The burdens of poverty and illiteracy are likely to be far more destabilizing to India than Chinese influence in Asia, and India should have no illusions that a military alliance with the US will open the aid spigots. American foreign aid has been declining for decades, and US economic difficulties, coupled with the Iraq War, will undoubtedly accelerate that trend.
The burdens of empire eventually outweigh the benefits.
India's startling change of axis : Having preempted the efforts of the United States for peace in South Asia by its own offer of normalization of relations with Pakistan, India has renewed its bid for an axis with Washington and Israel to counter Pakistan, which Delhi describes as the hub of Islamic fundamentalism and international terrorism. The terminology being officially used for this proposed axis is rather innocuous - democratic alliance against terrorism.
While Washington's response is not known, this has created a storm in Indian politics itself, forcing the main opposition Congress party, which ruled India for its first 45 years of independence, to deplore the Hindu fundamentalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition government for its "obsession with Israel" even at the cost of national interests.
India's national security adviser Brajesh Mishra outlined the proposal for a US-Israel-India axis against Islamic fundamentalism in Washington last Thursday. Mishra is perhaps the most trusted aide of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and served for several years as the head of the BJP's foreign affairs cell before the party came to power five years ago.
In an address to a meeting of the American Jewish Committee, Mishra argued that democratic countries that are the prime targets of international terrorism should form a "viable alliance" and develop multilateral mechanisms to counter the menace. He identified India, the US and Israel as countries fitting that description. "Such an alliance would have the political will and moral authority to take bold decisions in extreme cases of terrorist provocation. It would not get bogged down in definitional and causal arguments about terrorism," he maintained.
Speaking after a meeting with his American counterpart Condoleezza Rice, Mishra hit out at the Pakistani bid to characterize Kashmiri militants as freedom fighters. The talk that terrorism can be eradicated only by addressing its root causes is "nonsense" he said amid applause. He said that preventive measures like blocking financial supplies, disrupting networks, sharing intelligence and simplifying extradition procedures can be effective only through international cooperation "based on trust and shared values".
At his meeting with Rice, Mishra is understood to have rebutted the claim of Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf that "nothing is happening across the Line of Control" that divides the Indian and Pakistani-administered areas of Kashmir. He acquainted her with an Indian perspective on the continuing incidents of terrorist violence in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). His meeting with Rice came within hours of Musharraf making the assertion to Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage in Islamabad.
Mishra gave Rice an update on the peace moves made by India. He also touched on some of the outstanding bilateral issues. He sought early US action on the "trinity" of issues: high-technology commerce, civilian nuclear energy cooperation and collaboration in space. India believes that early action on these issues could take the India-US relationship to a qualitatively new level of partnership. He pointed out in his address to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Wednesday that he hoped the decks will be cleared for the flow of dual-use technologies between the countries since India has consistently followed responsible policies.
While the US has not come up with any response yet, Indian opposition parties have attacked the ruling coalition for its "strange and perverse" obsession with Israel. The most vocal among these has been the Congress. It attacked the BJP-led government on Saturday. "Obsession with Israel on the part of the coalition government is strange and perverse ... when Israel is facing international isolation. It shows the intellectual insolvency of the government," party spokesman S Jaipal Reddy said.
Reddy said that Mishra's statement was "not inadvertent" as Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani had also put forward a similar formulation after September 11, 2001. Noting that strategic partnership with Israel was "qualitatively different" from that between India and the US, he said that Mishra would not have pleaded for such an alliance without prior clearance from the prime minister. The Congress warned that a strategic partnership with Israel could upset the consensus built around India's "time-tested" foreign policy.
Reddy said that such a tie-up "defies intelligence", given the ideological dissonance between India and Israel. "There are fundamental [ideological] dissimilarities between India and Israel. The problem faced by Israel is qualitatively different from India. We've held the view that Palestinians have been denied their due. There has to be a minimum ideological similarity for a strategic partnership," Reddy said.
The BJP-led government has indeed shown a great keenness in trying to convince the US for such a strategic alliance since it came to power. It has not let any opportunity go to repeat its interest in such an axis. Whether it was the issue of national missile defense (NMD) mooted by President George W Bush or the terrorist strikes of September 11, India was the first to offer its total support and cooperation, even without being asked for it.
The reasons are not difficult to see. The ideologues of Hindutva (the philosophy of Hindu domination of the sub-continent), had lost no time in justifying their support for NMD on ideological grounds. One such ideologue, Sandhya Jain, for instance, explained this in her column in the daily Pioneer by pointing out that threatened as they both are from Muslim fundamentalism, India and the US are civilizational allies.
She gave voice to India's high hopes from a strategic alliance with the US and Israel and the NMD regime: "A defensive umbrella in which a tracking satellite can find and neutralize enemy missiles in mid-air is no small protection for a country physically surrounded by civilizationally hostile forces. The opposition assertion that this would reduce India to a US satellite is jejune, and merits contempt. India would no more be a satellite than France or Germany was under NATO. But she would be allied to the most powerful country of the free world, a country that is fiercely loyal towards its friends, as witnessed by its abiding relationship with Israel."
Similarly, September 11 found India in the same mood as Britain after Pearl Harbor. British columnist William Rees-Mogg recalled that his country's reaction to Pearl Harbor was one of "horror, but also a huge sense of relief that the USA was now involved in World War II". India, too, hoped that the US would now be involved in the war against terrorism that India has been fighting for the past two decades, first in the state of Punjab and then in J&K, not to speak of the seven states in its Northeast and the Maoist insurgency in the eastern state of Bihar and the western state of Andhra Pradesh.
The Japanese action at Pearl Harbor had, in the words of Rees-Mogg, "started a new process of history; before it was complete, that process led to the destruction of the Japanese empire, the dropping of the first nuclear bombs, the occupation of Japan and eventually to American support for the post-war institutions of NATO, the UN and international peacekeeping". India, too, hoped that the US treating the latest attacks as a declaration of war by the terrorist groups would herald a new historical process that would lead to a new strategic axis of India-US and Israel fighting against Islamic fundamentalism.
Calling for the redoubling of efforts to defeat the "great threat" of terrorism, Vajpayee wrote to Bush assuring him of India's full cooperation in investigations into the terrorist strikes. Condemning the events in the strongest terms, Vajpayee said, "The people of India and my government share the sense of outrage with the American people. We stand ready to cooperate with you in the investigations into this crime and to strengthen our partnership in leading international efforts to ensure that terrorism never succeeds again."
The prime minister brought in the civilizatonal angle as well. He observed that this dark hour was a stark reminder of the power and reach of the terrorists to destroy innocent lives and challenge the civilized order in this world. "It sends a strong message to democracies to redouble our efforts to defeat this great threat to our people, our values and our way of life."
US behavior since September 11 has, however, belied Indian hopes of a strategic US-Israel-India axis fighting Pakistan. The US instead made Pakistan a front-line ally in its fight against the Taliban menace in Afghanistan. Bush and other US officials have often praised India's bug-bear, Musharraf, as a stalwart ally and helped him bring Pakistan back on the path of economic prosperity.
Most observers of the Indian political scene believed that events since September 11 had put cold water on Indian hopes of a civilizational axis - Hindu-Jewish-Christian versus Islam and Confucianism. Vajpayee's hand-of-friendship speech directed at Pakistan from the capital of the state of Jammu and Kashmir last month was also seen as an indication that India now understood the need for coming to terms with its nuclear-armed neighbor Pakistan. This is why Vajpayee government's renewal of this bid for a civilizational axis has surprised many.
But it shouldn't really surprise anyone. There are deep ideological factors impelling Hindu fundamentalist leaders to hope against hope that a civilizational clash will take place, and that they would be on the winning side of it.
The clash of civilization theory is attributed to Samuel Huntington. But few people know, as a Hindutva ideologue Devendra Swaroop Aggarwal pointed out recently, that it had actually been put forward by well-known Hindutva icon Bipin Chandra Pal almost a century ago. Pal had the insight to even foresee that, even though India was at that time engaged in fighting for its independence from the Christian British, in this impending clash Hindus would be on the side of the Judeo-Christian civilization and Islam would be supported by the Confucian Chinese civilization.
This may also be one reason why Hindu fundamentalists never participated in the freedom struggle, and have supported the West throughout the period since independence in 1947 at a time that India was struggling with its foreign policy of non-alignment in a bid to remain neutral between the West and the Soviet Union.
The opportunities offered by September 11 were too good to be missed. India under the BJP may be unable to believe that it has missed them and that nothing can be done to revive those hopes. Before having to join Pakistan in a serious effort to find a peace formula, therefore, it may have felt like making a last-ditch effort.
There is also speculation that the Vajpayee government could not have renewed its offer of a civilizatonal axis without some encouragement from Israel and the US. As for Israel, there can be no doubt that it would love India to be a part of such an axis, and thus be further isolated from the Islamic world.
The evolving situation, particularly the US response, will thus be watched with keen interest. Whether or not the proposed peace talks between India and Pakistan move forward will largely depend on the US response to the Indian proposal for a strategic axis. The last time that India and Pakistan come close to blowing each other up in a nuclear holocaust, the US used determined and coercive diplomacy in the form of travel advisories against its citizens visiting India to bring the two to their senses.
It seems doubtful that the US will join hands with India to destroy Pakistan or even tame it, as Advani demanded on Sunday, particularly as it already virtually owns that country. It is possible that Indian leaders with their single-point agenda of fighting a civilizational battle with Islam are unable to understand the complex games that the US plays.
Visiting US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has in fact left no one in doubt that India is expected to engage in dialogue with Pakistan, while the US is not going to be the one to ensure that the Pakistani leadership lives up to its commitment made in June last year to end cross-border infiltration permanently.
Armitage told Indian leaders on Sunday that he was not in the business of giving assurances. This amounts to the US washing its hands of the assurances given last year. India officials are also expressing resentment over reported remarks by some US officials that the Kashmir issue should be resolved first to bring an end to cross-border infiltration.
Copyright 2003 Dhamaka News Network . All Rights Reserved.
Sunday, May 11, 2003
Is Islam Against Science?
By Habib Siddiqui
It is chic nowadays to berate Islam not only as the source of problems faced by Muslims, but also of ALL problems. According to the proponents of this absurdity, Islam must be abandoned and replaced by secular humanism in order for Muslims to survive. A recent posting in an e-forum stated: "Muslims saw the light of science and glory exactly when they were living under liberal and progressive rulers like those Abbasid kings, i.e. when Muslims were away from the Islamic bondage and were allowed to think freely. Likewise, Christian Europe saw the light of science and modernity when they came out of the bondage of orthodox Christianity (through renaissance) and were allowed to think freely. And Muslims lost its science and glory when Muslims entered again in the bondage of religion Islam and lost the power of free thinking."
How accurate are such assertions? Is Islam against science? Is it responsible for the current sad state of affairs prevalent in many Muslim nation-states?
Before answering these questions, let me state at the outset that science, as the totality of human knowledge regarding natural phenomena, is as old as human civilization. However, as an organized body of systematic knowledge, based consciously on certain principles, it is a recent phenomenon. Modern science is based on the assumptions that (i) Nature is a self-contained system and for it to work, the principle of Godhead is not to be invoked (Nietzsche even proclaimed 'God is dead'), and that (ii) natural process exhibits universal laws of uniform behavior.
Without going into a detailed discussion about the philosophy of science and the divergent opinions around its building blocks, the underlying hypothesis of modern science had been the belief in universal causation, viz., the belief that there is a cause and effect relationship. That is certain phenomena are the effect of certain other phenomena that are the causes of the former, and that the same cause produces the same effect. Philosophers, in general, and philosophers of science, in particular, have been busy explaining the notion of 'cause.'
The Muslim Scripture and Science:
The Quran - is not a book of science, and this, in spite of so many verses that incite people to think, to observe, to rationalize, to use sound mind. Nor is it a book of philosophy. It does not propound the Theory of Relativity or Quantum Mechanics, or other scientific facts that are recently discovered. To look for scientific treatises in the Quran, or indeed in any Scripture, is futile. As rightly pointed out by Professor Shamsi in his lecture at the International Conference on Science in Islamic Polity in Islamabad (1983), Quran is not even a book in the ordinary sense of the word, for it is not meant to be read as one would read al-Bairouni's Qanun al-Masudi or Newton's Principia, nor is it meant to adorn the bookshelves. [1]
The Quran embodies an open talk between man and his creator. It suggests a cause and effect relationship, that a law of requital is at work at every sphere of life, and that he has only to keep it in view if he has to avoid the pitfalls of life, and live in peace with his own self and at peace with his world of external relations. [2] In other words, the Quran's main purpose is to tell us about the relationships between: God and man, man and man, and man and his subconscious. It is a Book that guides us to conduct our lives in this world. Its ideology instills the spirit of humanism into man and protects him from every form of exclusiveness, as is summed up in the directive, 'Believe and act righteously.'
The Quran provides a basis for the development of philosophy of nature, and thus a perspective to the philosophy of science. It awakens human curiosity and instills a spirit of inquiry in all those who adopt Islam as their way of life (see, e.g., the verses 2:164, 6:99, 10:101, 3:190, 21:22). Deductively, then, the Quran encourages mankind to engage in the pursuit of science. It inculcates a scientific mind-set, plainly indicating that false beliefs must be abandoned if facts and/or valid arguments lead to contrary conclusions. The Quran contrasts the perceptible with the imperceptible, and tells us that mankind's knowledge is limited to the perceptible but God's knowledge extends to what for mankind is imperceptible and as such incomprehensible (see, e.g., the verses 27:65, 59:22 and 36:6). The Quran says very categorically that Allah (God) is the sole cause of whatever has happened in the past or will happen in the future, in the sense that His will is the underlying cause of everything, including the apparent causal worth of the phenomenal things.
Having said that, let me now comment on the statement made in the e-forum. It is true, liberal and progressive Muslim rulers helped to provide an atmosphere for independent thinking, education, research and development that fostered growth and prosperity of their respective societies. But there has never been a schism between Islam and science as we have seen between Christianity and science.
1. Galileo was persecuted by the Papal church for his scientific finding that the earth moves, which was against the commonly held Christian belief that the earth was immovably fixed. The learned Filippo Bruno was burnt at a slow fire by the Inquisition for upholding the Copernican theory of revolution of the earth. Columbus was forced by persecution to recant that the earth was round. Christians destroyed the learning of the ancients in the name of Christ. They murdered many philosophers including Hypatia. Learning, in those days, was for them a devil's snare. These are horrid images of religion. However, religion does not necessarily have to be against independent thinking and pursuit of knowledge. It can be a boon for such activities. From the very first word (Iqra meaning read) revealed to Muhammad to the many Prophetic Traditions, and statements by followers and successors there are sufficient proofs to show that Muslims were encouraged to seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave.
Here below are some Prophetic Traditions regarding the importance of learning [3]:
To seek knowledge is a religious duty for every Muslim man and woman.
The best treasure is the pursuit of knowledge, the prayers of worthy men, and the friendship of agreeable brothers.
Knowledge of God is my capital. Reason is the root of my faith.
Knowledge is a treasure house whose keys are queries.
One who treads a path in search of knowledge has his path to Paradise made easy by Allah thereby.
A person who goes (out of his house) in search of knowledge, he is on Allah's way and he remains so till he returns.
To seek knowledge for one hour at night is better than keeping it (night) awake.
A Muslim is never satiated in his quest for good (knowledge) till it ends in paradise.
A learned person is superior to a worshipper as the full moon is superior to all the stars. The scholars are heirs of the prophets and the prophets do not leave any inheritance in the shape of dirhams and dinars (wealth), but they do leave knowledge as their legacy. As such a person who acquires knowledge acquires his full share.
A scholar who is asked about something (about the religion) and he conceals it, such a person will be bridled on the Day of Judgment with a bridle of fire
The word of wisdom is [like] the lost property of a wise man. So wherever he finds it, he is entitled to it.
When the prophetic mission of Muhammad started, there were only a handful of Arabs who could read and write. But within a short period of time, following the Prophetic encouragement, many Arabs became literate. Universal education for men and women thus became the Sacred Law of Islam thirteen centuries before it was adopted by the civilization of the West. [4] (The educated prisoners of wars from the opposing camp could buy their freedom from imprisonment by educating Muslim children.) The caliphs that followed were all literate men, some even literary men of distinction, who were munificent patrons of education. The process did not stop there, it continued even during the Umayyad and Abbasid periods and then to those who came later, ending with the Ottomans. Without state sponsorship, Muslim scientists and philosophers probably could not have succeeded to the level they did. To believe otherwise would only reflect one's prejudice or ignorance.
2. Wherever the pursuit of knowledge or education was discouraged, it had more to do with authoritarian regimes than to the ideologies they seemed to espouse or propound. The case of Soviet Union under the Bolsheviks in the early days of the October Revolution and that of China during the Cultural Revolution can be cited as two glaring examples from the last century. In these two (anti-religious) countries, hundreds of thousands of intellectuals were imprisoned and killed, or forced into doing manual labor in factories and fields. Note that these regimes were highly secular who adopted the principle of 'religion being an opiate for the masses.' Organized religion was banned and replaced by secular ideals of Marxism and Leninism. Anyone with a comfortable level of education was considered a villain, an obnoxious bourgeois. So, in this regard, a close resemblance can be seen in the experience of people in (erstwhile) USSR and China with that in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, while the determining factor, i.e., the authoritarian regimes that ruled those territories, was different - Marxist/Leninist and religious Talibans (lit. students, not scholars). What the Taliban did in discouraging education, especially, of the women, is offensive and repugnant to the spirit of Islam and is highly deplorable.
3. In the life of a nation, social or national priorities often shift. There are periods when education takes precedence over defense, and then there are periods when defense is more important than education. In the early days of Islam, e.g., defending the community of believers from the marauding attacks of Makkan idolaters was of highest importance. Yet, the pursuit of knowledge or its encouragement was never abandoned. Within a short period of time, Makkah, Madinah, Kufa, Basra, Damascus (not to mention the conquered cities) became major centers of learning. It was because of such a positive attitude towards education that Islamic civilization was unrivalled for several centuries. The Muslim universities of those days led the world in learning and research where students came from far and beyond.
We see a similar pattern of advancement in many areas of learning (except religious sciences) within the USSR and China shortly after their revolutionary days. The Soviets even outperformed the Brits and Americans in aerospace engineering by being able to send their rockets first into the outer space. And with enough governmental funding and right resources, the US was later able to land the first man on to moon.
4. Although it may seem very strange to many of our so-called rationalist friends, most founders of many disciplines of learning, including modern science, were believing people, i.e., belonged to one religion or another. Yes, Charles Darwin himself had faith in the supernatural. Contrary to assertions in some 'rationalist' quarters, Abu Rayhan al-Bairouni, who could be called the father of unified field theory,[2] never became a murtad (apostate). The same is also true for Abul Walid Muhammad ibn Rushd al-Qurtubi (popularly known in the West as Averroes) and Bu Ali Sina (Avicenna) and many others.
5. To think that, of all the Muslim rulers who had ruled the Islamic empire in the early centuries, only the Abbasids encouraged independent-thinking and material progress or national and social prosperity is wrong. It is equally wrong to think that the Abbasids had abandoned (or to use the cliche 'bondage of religion') Islam. All the Abbasids (including Caliph al-Mamun) were Muslims, none had abandoned Islam. The development of the science of Kalam, like many other branches of religion, may take a long time to mature (look at how many centuries it took for mainstream Christianity), and it was no different for Islam, either. Among the Muslim scholars of the first few centuries, deliberation was not limited to theology alone, but such discourses encompassed every branch of learning. Islam has proved that faith in God is compatible with independent thinking.
Truly, reason and insight were never tabooed in Islam. Were it so, all study of the Quranic thought would seem futile, for the Quran openly invites its readers to express reason in their approach to it, and ponder on what it states (see, e.g., the verse 47:24). It is because such an open-ended invitation from the Quran that during the first few centuries of Islamic empire, philosophical discussion became a favorite pastime in many Muslim quarters. (It is even argued that preponderance of such discourses was responsible for the downfall of the last Abbasid monarch when the Mongols invaded Baghdad.)
It is because of such an open embrace of independent-thinking that so many schools of jurisprudence and religious thoughts emerged in Islam and that these days Tafsir-bir-rai (commentary of the Quran, which lets the text to be subservient to one's own personal opinion on any subject) has been pushed forth by zealous followers to explain away more recent scientific discoveries. So, truly the door of independent thinking in Islam was never closed. As is common anywhere in the world, however, sometimes the rulers preferred one set of ideas or views to others. Thus, we find that during Caliph Mamun's time, the Mutazilite thoughts were preferred over more traditional orthodoxy.
Nominally the Abbasid Khilafat of Baghdad lasted for full five hundred years, but for the last three hundred and fifty years of its nominal duration, the real sovereign power had passed on to others - Seljuks, Zanghis, Ayyubis and Fatimids. There was change of rulers, but Islamic civilization remained the same. Indeed it hardly, if at all, deteriorated, and the condition of the common people throughout the Muslim Empire remained superior to that of any other people in the world in education, general liberty, public security and sanitation. Its material prosperity was the envy of the West, whose merchant corporations competed with one another for the privilege of trading with it. No man in the cities of the Muslim Empire ever died of hunger or exposure at his neighbor's gate. [4]
The glory of Islamic civilization did not begin and end with the Abbasid. The Muslim creative power continued beyond the sack of Baghdad by Halagu Khan as can be verified through many brilliant works in arts, science, architecture, engineering and philosophy. The beginning of the process of decline must be sought not within but outside Islam. To quote Professor Alam, "It wasn't Islam that stumbled. Rather, Europe gathered speed and moved ahead, in gunnery and shipping, starting in the sixteenth century. Europe employed its maritime strength to plunder the gold and silver of the Americas, create an Atlantic economy, and dominate the commerce of the Indian Ocean. This deepened Europe's commercial and financial capital, while squeezing the trading profits of the major Islamic empires as well as the smaller trading states in the Indian Ocean. Over time, Europe's military advantage became decisive. And by the beginning of the nineteenth century - in India even before that - Europe started its project of dismantling the Islamic polities in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean." [5]
The Quran, as we submitted above, offered a great impetus to learning, especially in the field of natural science; and if, as some scholars have declared, the inductive method, to which all the practical modern discoveries primarily owe, can be traced to it, then it may be called the foundation of modern scientific and material progress. The Prophet of Islam, to whom the Quran was revealed, was a great patron of learning and so were those Muslims who ruled later the vast territories of Islam.
Islam is neither against science nor against progress. As much as ecclesiastical Christianity cannot be praised for the present material progress of Christendom, Islam cannot be blamed for the current pitiable state of Muslim nation-states. The causes for decline lie elsewhere.
By Habib Siddiqui
It is chic nowadays to berate Islam not only as the source of problems faced by Muslims, but also of ALL problems. According to the proponents of this absurdity, Islam must be abandoned and replaced by secular humanism in order for Muslims to survive. A recent posting in an e-forum stated: "Muslims saw the light of science and glory exactly when they were living under liberal and progressive rulers like those Abbasid kings, i.e. when Muslims were away from the Islamic bondage and were allowed to think freely. Likewise, Christian Europe saw the light of science and modernity when they came out of the bondage of orthodox Christianity (through renaissance) and were allowed to think freely. And Muslims lost its science and glory when Muslims entered again in the bondage of religion Islam and lost the power of free thinking."
How accurate are such assertions? Is Islam against science? Is it responsible for the current sad state of affairs prevalent in many Muslim nation-states?
Before answering these questions, let me state at the outset that science, as the totality of human knowledge regarding natural phenomena, is as old as human civilization. However, as an organized body of systematic knowledge, based consciously on certain principles, it is a recent phenomenon. Modern science is based on the assumptions that (i) Nature is a self-contained system and for it to work, the principle of Godhead is not to be invoked (Nietzsche even proclaimed 'God is dead'), and that (ii) natural process exhibits universal laws of uniform behavior.
Without going into a detailed discussion about the philosophy of science and the divergent opinions around its building blocks, the underlying hypothesis of modern science had been the belief in universal causation, viz., the belief that there is a cause and effect relationship. That is certain phenomena are the effect of certain other phenomena that are the causes of the former, and that the same cause produces the same effect. Philosophers, in general, and philosophers of science, in particular, have been busy explaining the notion of 'cause.'
The Muslim Scripture and Science:
The Quran - is not a book of science, and this, in spite of so many verses that incite people to think, to observe, to rationalize, to use sound mind. Nor is it a book of philosophy. It does not propound the Theory of Relativity or Quantum Mechanics, or other scientific facts that are recently discovered. To look for scientific treatises in the Quran, or indeed in any Scripture, is futile. As rightly pointed out by Professor Shamsi in his lecture at the International Conference on Science in Islamic Polity in Islamabad (1983), Quran is not even a book in the ordinary sense of the word, for it is not meant to be read as one would read al-Bairouni's Qanun al-Masudi or Newton's Principia, nor is it meant to adorn the bookshelves. [1]
The Quran embodies an open talk between man and his creator. It suggests a cause and effect relationship, that a law of requital is at work at every sphere of life, and that he has only to keep it in view if he has to avoid the pitfalls of life, and live in peace with his own self and at peace with his world of external relations. [2] In other words, the Quran's main purpose is to tell us about the relationships between: God and man, man and man, and man and his subconscious. It is a Book that guides us to conduct our lives in this world. Its ideology instills the spirit of humanism into man and protects him from every form of exclusiveness, as is summed up in the directive, 'Believe and act righteously.'
The Quran provides a basis for the development of philosophy of nature, and thus a perspective to the philosophy of science. It awakens human curiosity and instills a spirit of inquiry in all those who adopt Islam as their way of life (see, e.g., the verses 2:164, 6:99, 10:101, 3:190, 21:22). Deductively, then, the Quran encourages mankind to engage in the pursuit of science. It inculcates a scientific mind-set, plainly indicating that false beliefs must be abandoned if facts and/or valid arguments lead to contrary conclusions. The Quran contrasts the perceptible with the imperceptible, and tells us that mankind's knowledge is limited to the perceptible but God's knowledge extends to what for mankind is imperceptible and as such incomprehensible (see, e.g., the verses 27:65, 59:22 and 36:6). The Quran says very categorically that Allah (God) is the sole cause of whatever has happened in the past or will happen in the future, in the sense that His will is the underlying cause of everything, including the apparent causal worth of the phenomenal things.
Having said that, let me now comment on the statement made in the e-forum. It is true, liberal and progressive Muslim rulers helped to provide an atmosphere for independent thinking, education, research and development that fostered growth and prosperity of their respective societies. But there has never been a schism between Islam and science as we have seen between Christianity and science.
1. Galileo was persecuted by the Papal church for his scientific finding that the earth moves, which was against the commonly held Christian belief that the earth was immovably fixed. The learned Filippo Bruno was burnt at a slow fire by the Inquisition for upholding the Copernican theory of revolution of the earth. Columbus was forced by persecution to recant that the earth was round. Christians destroyed the learning of the ancients in the name of Christ. They murdered many philosophers including Hypatia. Learning, in those days, was for them a devil's snare. These are horrid images of religion. However, religion does not necessarily have to be against independent thinking and pursuit of knowledge. It can be a boon for such activities. From the very first word (Iqra meaning read) revealed to Muhammad to the many Prophetic Traditions, and statements by followers and successors there are sufficient proofs to show that Muslims were encouraged to seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave.
Here below are some Prophetic Traditions regarding the importance of learning [3]:
To seek knowledge is a religious duty for every Muslim man and woman.
The best treasure is the pursuit of knowledge, the prayers of worthy men, and the friendship of agreeable brothers.
Knowledge of God is my capital. Reason is the root of my faith.
Knowledge is a treasure house whose keys are queries.
One who treads a path in search of knowledge has his path to Paradise made easy by Allah thereby.
A person who goes (out of his house) in search of knowledge, he is on Allah's way and he remains so till he returns.
To seek knowledge for one hour at night is better than keeping it (night) awake.
A Muslim is never satiated in his quest for good (knowledge) till it ends in paradise.
A learned person is superior to a worshipper as the full moon is superior to all the stars. The scholars are heirs of the prophets and the prophets do not leave any inheritance in the shape of dirhams and dinars (wealth), but they do leave knowledge as their legacy. As such a person who acquires knowledge acquires his full share.
A scholar who is asked about something (about the religion) and he conceals it, such a person will be bridled on the Day of Judgment with a bridle of fire
The word of wisdom is [like] the lost property of a wise man. So wherever he finds it, he is entitled to it.
When the prophetic mission of Muhammad started, there were only a handful of Arabs who could read and write. But within a short period of time, following the Prophetic encouragement, many Arabs became literate. Universal education for men and women thus became the Sacred Law of Islam thirteen centuries before it was adopted by the civilization of the West. [4] (The educated prisoners of wars from the opposing camp could buy their freedom from imprisonment by educating Muslim children.) The caliphs that followed were all literate men, some even literary men of distinction, who were munificent patrons of education. The process did not stop there, it continued even during the Umayyad and Abbasid periods and then to those who came later, ending with the Ottomans. Without state sponsorship, Muslim scientists and philosophers probably could not have succeeded to the level they did. To believe otherwise would only reflect one's prejudice or ignorance.
2. Wherever the pursuit of knowledge or education was discouraged, it had more to do with authoritarian regimes than to the ideologies they seemed to espouse or propound. The case of Soviet Union under the Bolsheviks in the early days of the October Revolution and that of China during the Cultural Revolution can be cited as two glaring examples from the last century. In these two (anti-religious) countries, hundreds of thousands of intellectuals were imprisoned and killed, or forced into doing manual labor in factories and fields. Note that these regimes were highly secular who adopted the principle of 'religion being an opiate for the masses.' Organized religion was banned and replaced by secular ideals of Marxism and Leninism. Anyone with a comfortable level of education was considered a villain, an obnoxious bourgeois. So, in this regard, a close resemblance can be seen in the experience of people in (erstwhile) USSR and China with that in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, while the determining factor, i.e., the authoritarian regimes that ruled those territories, was different - Marxist/Leninist and religious Talibans (lit. students, not scholars). What the Taliban did in discouraging education, especially, of the women, is offensive and repugnant to the spirit of Islam and is highly deplorable.
3. In the life of a nation, social or national priorities often shift. There are periods when education takes precedence over defense, and then there are periods when defense is more important than education. In the early days of Islam, e.g., defending the community of believers from the marauding attacks of Makkan idolaters was of highest importance. Yet, the pursuit of knowledge or its encouragement was never abandoned. Within a short period of time, Makkah, Madinah, Kufa, Basra, Damascus (not to mention the conquered cities) became major centers of learning. It was because of such a positive attitude towards education that Islamic civilization was unrivalled for several centuries. The Muslim universities of those days led the world in learning and research where students came from far and beyond.
We see a similar pattern of advancement in many areas of learning (except religious sciences) within the USSR and China shortly after their revolutionary days. The Soviets even outperformed the Brits and Americans in aerospace engineering by being able to send their rockets first into the outer space. And with enough governmental funding and right resources, the US was later able to land the first man on to moon.
4. Although it may seem very strange to many of our so-called rationalist friends, most founders of many disciplines of learning, including modern science, were believing people, i.e., belonged to one religion or another. Yes, Charles Darwin himself had faith in the supernatural. Contrary to assertions in some 'rationalist' quarters, Abu Rayhan al-Bairouni, who could be called the father of unified field theory,[2] never became a murtad (apostate). The same is also true for Abul Walid Muhammad ibn Rushd al-Qurtubi (popularly known in the West as Averroes) and Bu Ali Sina (Avicenna) and many others.
5. To think that, of all the Muslim rulers who had ruled the Islamic empire in the early centuries, only the Abbasids encouraged independent-thinking and material progress or national and social prosperity is wrong. It is equally wrong to think that the Abbasids had abandoned (or to use the cliche 'bondage of religion') Islam. All the Abbasids (including Caliph al-Mamun) were Muslims, none had abandoned Islam. The development of the science of Kalam, like many other branches of religion, may take a long time to mature (look at how many centuries it took for mainstream Christianity), and it was no different for Islam, either. Among the Muslim scholars of the first few centuries, deliberation was not limited to theology alone, but such discourses encompassed every branch of learning. Islam has proved that faith in God is compatible with independent thinking.
Truly, reason and insight were never tabooed in Islam. Were it so, all study of the Quranic thought would seem futile, for the Quran openly invites its readers to express reason in their approach to it, and ponder on what it states (see, e.g., the verse 47:24). It is because such an open-ended invitation from the Quran that during the first few centuries of Islamic empire, philosophical discussion became a favorite pastime in many Muslim quarters. (It is even argued that preponderance of such discourses was responsible for the downfall of the last Abbasid monarch when the Mongols invaded Baghdad.)
It is because of such an open embrace of independent-thinking that so many schools of jurisprudence and religious thoughts emerged in Islam and that these days Tafsir-bir-rai (commentary of the Quran, which lets the text to be subservient to one's own personal opinion on any subject) has been pushed forth by zealous followers to explain away more recent scientific discoveries. So, truly the door of independent thinking in Islam was never closed. As is common anywhere in the world, however, sometimes the rulers preferred one set of ideas or views to others. Thus, we find that during Caliph Mamun's time, the Mutazilite thoughts were preferred over more traditional orthodoxy.
Nominally the Abbasid Khilafat of Baghdad lasted for full five hundred years, but for the last three hundred and fifty years of its nominal duration, the real sovereign power had passed on to others - Seljuks, Zanghis, Ayyubis and Fatimids. There was change of rulers, but Islamic civilization remained the same. Indeed it hardly, if at all, deteriorated, and the condition of the common people throughout the Muslim Empire remained superior to that of any other people in the world in education, general liberty, public security and sanitation. Its material prosperity was the envy of the West, whose merchant corporations competed with one another for the privilege of trading with it. No man in the cities of the Muslim Empire ever died of hunger or exposure at his neighbor's gate. [4]
The glory of Islamic civilization did not begin and end with the Abbasid. The Muslim creative power continued beyond the sack of Baghdad by Halagu Khan as can be verified through many brilliant works in arts, science, architecture, engineering and philosophy. The beginning of the process of decline must be sought not within but outside Islam. To quote Professor Alam, "It wasn't Islam that stumbled. Rather, Europe gathered speed and moved ahead, in gunnery and shipping, starting in the sixteenth century. Europe employed its maritime strength to plunder the gold and silver of the Americas, create an Atlantic economy, and dominate the commerce of the Indian Ocean. This deepened Europe's commercial and financial capital, while squeezing the trading profits of the major Islamic empires as well as the smaller trading states in the Indian Ocean. Over time, Europe's military advantage became decisive. And by the beginning of the nineteenth century - in India even before that - Europe started its project of dismantling the Islamic polities in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean." [5]
The Quran, as we submitted above, offered a great impetus to learning, especially in the field of natural science; and if, as some scholars have declared, the inductive method, to which all the practical modern discoveries primarily owe, can be traced to it, then it may be called the foundation of modern scientific and material progress. The Prophet of Islam, to whom the Quran was revealed, was a great patron of learning and so were those Muslims who ruled later the vast territories of Islam.
Islam is neither against science nor against progress. As much as ecclesiastical Christianity cannot be praised for the present material progress of Christendom, Islam cannot be blamed for the current pitiable state of Muslim nation-states. The causes for decline lie elsewhere.
Development is not possible with smaller States, says Chandrababu
By Srinivas Raju
NEW DELHI: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and Telugu Desam Party supremo Chandrababu Naidu on Saturday strongly advocated against the formation of smaller States in the country.
Talking to newsmen, Naidu rediculed the argument that development can take place easily in smaller States. He cautioned about the political instability factor in such States, which can be detrimental to development. Is there any guarantee that development is ensured in smaller States , he questioned. He pointed out that big States like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are developing. He said that Andhra Pradesh is the best performing State in the last decade.
Chandrababu stated that good governance is the need of the hour. He said that his government is taking several measures to remove regional imbalances. He indicated that district-wise development reviews will take place soon to check imbalances. He also added that the Government is concentrating on the development of backward areas.
To a number of questions on the padayatra of Congress Legislature Party leader Dr Rajashekhar Reddy in the State, he replied that Dr Reddy has started now. "I have been doing this for the last seven and half years", he said.
Chandrababu Naidu, who was here specially to participate in the Chief Minister's conclave organised by India Today, received the "Most Improved State" award to Andhra Pradesh from the Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani.
Making a computer presentation, Naidu said that inspite of many experiments with populism in the country, people are backing performing Governments. He said that peoplism is needed, not populism. He said that India should compare and compete with China as far as development is concerned. He stated that though we have initiated reforms a decade ago, we could not achieve the desired results. He said that populism is creating miseries in Indian Politics.
Indirectly hitting out at the Congress party, Chandrababu said that some political parties are favouring reforms when they are in power. But the same parties were opposing reforms while in opposition. Naidu enlisted the ongoing economic reforms in various sectors in the State.
Chief Minister denied allegations that the Centre is helping the State out of turn. He said that the State Government is fighting with the Centre to get its due share. He pointed out that the performing States were suffering and non-performing States were getting funds from the Centre. He suggested that there should be some time limit for eradicating poverty and achieving literacy, family planning to control the population. He wanted a national level debate on this.
Referring to the ranking and evaluation of the performance of States by "India Today", Naidu said that this is a good beginning. He said that private agency is evaluating all States. He said that the States should take it with a competitive spirit and work together for a better India.
Chandrababu Naidu met Deputy Prime Minister L K advani and discussed on drought relief to Andhra Pradesh. Andhra Pradesh Finance Minister Ynamala Ramakrishunudu, Telugu Desam Parliamentary Party leader Yerran Naidu, leader of the party in the Rajya Sabha C Ramachandraiah and several TDP MPs participated in the meeting.
By Srinivas Raju
NEW DELHI: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and Telugu Desam Party supremo Chandrababu Naidu on Saturday strongly advocated against the formation of smaller States in the country.
Talking to newsmen, Naidu rediculed the argument that development can take place easily in smaller States. He cautioned about the political instability factor in such States, which can be detrimental to development. Is there any guarantee that development is ensured in smaller States , he questioned. He pointed out that big States like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are developing. He said that Andhra Pradesh is the best performing State in the last decade.
Chandrababu stated that good governance is the need of the hour. He said that his government is taking several measures to remove regional imbalances. He indicated that district-wise development reviews will take place soon to check imbalances. He also added that the Government is concentrating on the development of backward areas.
To a number of questions on the padayatra of Congress Legislature Party leader Dr Rajashekhar Reddy in the State, he replied that Dr Reddy has started now. "I have been doing this for the last seven and half years", he said.
Chandrababu Naidu, who was here specially to participate in the Chief Minister's conclave organised by India Today, received the "Most Improved State" award to Andhra Pradesh from the Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani.
Making a computer presentation, Naidu said that inspite of many experiments with populism in the country, people are backing performing Governments. He said that peoplism is needed, not populism. He said that India should compare and compete with China as far as development is concerned. He stated that though we have initiated reforms a decade ago, we could not achieve the desired results. He said that populism is creating miseries in Indian Politics.
Indirectly hitting out at the Congress party, Chandrababu said that some political parties are favouring reforms when they are in power. But the same parties were opposing reforms while in opposition. Naidu enlisted the ongoing economic reforms in various sectors in the State.
Chief Minister denied allegations that the Centre is helping the State out of turn. He said that the State Government is fighting with the Centre to get its due share. He pointed out that the performing States were suffering and non-performing States were getting funds from the Centre. He suggested that there should be some time limit for eradicating poverty and achieving literacy, family planning to control the population. He wanted a national level debate on this.
Referring to the ranking and evaluation of the performance of States by "India Today", Naidu said that this is a good beginning. He said that private agency is evaluating all States. He said that the States should take it with a competitive spirit and work together for a better India.
Chandrababu Naidu met Deputy Prime Minister L K advani and discussed on drought relief to Andhra Pradesh. Andhra Pradesh Finance Minister Ynamala Ramakrishunudu, Telugu Desam Parliamentary Party leader Yerran Naidu, leader of the party in the Rajya Sabha C Ramachandraiah and several TDP MPs participated in the meeting.
Kerala elephants, houseboats for Dubai festival
By ASHRAF PADANNA
KOCHI (Kerala) : Tourist attractions of southern Indian state of Kerala like caparisoned elephants, houseboats, snakeboats and traditional art forms will form part of the charms at the Dubai Shopping Festival (DSF) in January next year.
Kerala Tourism Minister Prof KV Thomas signed an agreement last week in Dubai as a partner state of India Fair 2004 to be held as part of DSF.
?We will be having a big presence there during the month-long festival and we hope to sell Kerala tourism in a big way in the Gulf,? Prof KV Thomas told Dhamakanews here on his arrival from UAE Saturday.
Listed as one of the 50 must-see places of a lifetime by National Geographic, Kerala tourism posted one of the highest growth rates in the world last year at 27 percent. Looking more eastwards, the global meltdown had little effect on the tourist arrivals in Kerala this season. The state had gained much in domestic tourism as well. ?Our beaches, backwaters and Ayurveda are much in demand among the Middle East tourists. Increasing shift from modern and chemical medicines to alternative therapies also augur well for the health tourism,? he said. ?Most of the people I met in UAE are eager to know about our famous rejuvenation therapy?.
The minister, who admitted that the mushrooming massage parlours had given a bad name to Kerala, said the government had introduced a licensing scheme for the massage centres and licenses are being issued only for registered doctors of the traditional system of medicine. The ayurveda centres are classified as Green Leaf and Olive Leaf to differentiating the level of quality of facilities and services provided.
The minister said the culture, art forms and lifestyle of the state would be on display at the India Fair, organised by Indian Association Dubai (IAD) at the Global Village of DSF. Shipping of elephants and houseboats would not be a problem as the organisers had taken the responsibility. An elephant can be ferried in a ship in about five days from Kerala on the Arabian Sea coast. The snake boats could be lugged in containers. Performing artists of Kathakali, Theyyam and Mohiniyattom would be flown in and laid out at the Indian pavilion. The details are being worked out.
Andhra Pradesh was the partner state of India Fair in 2002 and Rajasthan occupied the space this year. Though the partnership would put a huge financial burden on Kerala, it will get high visibility at the Global Village, visited by millions of people from across the globe during the month-long festival. Keralites constitute half of the million-strong Indian expatriates in the UAE.
The traditional bond between the Arabs and Kerala, dating back to ninth century, would also be highlighted at the pavilion. ?Many don?t know that India?s oldest mosque is situated in Kerala,? the minister pointed out.
Some 30,000 tourists from the Gulf visit Kerala every year. ?We hope to double the figure this year with various Gulf-based airlines promoting traffic to Kerala. There?s a phenomenal increase in tourists from the Middle East after September 11,? he said. Presence of three international airports, landing points of almost all Gulf carriers, also comes to the advantage of the state.
The number of foreign tourists and domestic tourists visiting the state has crossed two hundred thousand and five million respectively in 2001-02. The revenue generated in the economy was estimated to be Rs 40 billion, 6.29 percent of the State?s GDP, creating 700,000 jobs. The state, which has recently announced an action plan for 25 years, has set a target of 10 percent growth in revenue and 10000 additional jobs annually.
Fighting in Jammu Kashmir has helped Kerala emerge as the most sought-after tourist destination in India and World Travel and Tourism Council has selected India?s most literate state as a partner.
The state considers its unparalleled houseboat holidays and Ayurvedic rejuvenation as its USPs. It has almost 600 Kms long shoreline consisting of beach resorts of Kovalam, Varkala, Kappad, Muzhappilangad and Bekal. Besides hill stations, it has 14 wildlife sanctuaries and National Parks.
It also boasts of the excellent healthcare systems, the lowest infant mortality rates, highest life expectancy rates and an excellent quality of life.
By ASHRAF PADANNA
KOCHI (Kerala) : Tourist attractions of southern Indian state of Kerala like caparisoned elephants, houseboats, snakeboats and traditional art forms will form part of the charms at the Dubai Shopping Festival (DSF) in January next year.
Kerala Tourism Minister Prof KV Thomas signed an agreement last week in Dubai as a partner state of India Fair 2004 to be held as part of DSF.
?We will be having a big presence there during the month-long festival and we hope to sell Kerala tourism in a big way in the Gulf,? Prof KV Thomas told Dhamakanews here on his arrival from UAE Saturday.
Listed as one of the 50 must-see places of a lifetime by National Geographic, Kerala tourism posted one of the highest growth rates in the world last year at 27 percent. Looking more eastwards, the global meltdown had little effect on the tourist arrivals in Kerala this season. The state had gained much in domestic tourism as well. ?Our beaches, backwaters and Ayurveda are much in demand among the Middle East tourists. Increasing shift from modern and chemical medicines to alternative therapies also augur well for the health tourism,? he said. ?Most of the people I met in UAE are eager to know about our famous rejuvenation therapy?.
The minister, who admitted that the mushrooming massage parlours had given a bad name to Kerala, said the government had introduced a licensing scheme for the massage centres and licenses are being issued only for registered doctors of the traditional system of medicine. The ayurveda centres are classified as Green Leaf and Olive Leaf to differentiating the level of quality of facilities and services provided.
The minister said the culture, art forms and lifestyle of the state would be on display at the India Fair, organised by Indian Association Dubai (IAD) at the Global Village of DSF. Shipping of elephants and houseboats would not be a problem as the organisers had taken the responsibility. An elephant can be ferried in a ship in about five days from Kerala on the Arabian Sea coast. The snake boats could be lugged in containers. Performing artists of Kathakali, Theyyam and Mohiniyattom would be flown in and laid out at the Indian pavilion. The details are being worked out.
Andhra Pradesh was the partner state of India Fair in 2002 and Rajasthan occupied the space this year. Though the partnership would put a huge financial burden on Kerala, it will get high visibility at the Global Village, visited by millions of people from across the globe during the month-long festival. Keralites constitute half of the million-strong Indian expatriates in the UAE.
The traditional bond between the Arabs and Kerala, dating back to ninth century, would also be highlighted at the pavilion. ?Many don?t know that India?s oldest mosque is situated in Kerala,? the minister pointed out.
Some 30,000 tourists from the Gulf visit Kerala every year. ?We hope to double the figure this year with various Gulf-based airlines promoting traffic to Kerala. There?s a phenomenal increase in tourists from the Middle East after September 11,? he said. Presence of three international airports, landing points of almost all Gulf carriers, also comes to the advantage of the state.
The number of foreign tourists and domestic tourists visiting the state has crossed two hundred thousand and five million respectively in 2001-02. The revenue generated in the economy was estimated to be Rs 40 billion, 6.29 percent of the State?s GDP, creating 700,000 jobs. The state, which has recently announced an action plan for 25 years, has set a target of 10 percent growth in revenue and 10000 additional jobs annually.
Fighting in Jammu Kashmir has helped Kerala emerge as the most sought-after tourist destination in India and World Travel and Tourism Council has selected India?s most literate state as a partner.
The state considers its unparalleled houseboat holidays and Ayurvedic rejuvenation as its USPs. It has almost 600 Kms long shoreline consisting of beach resorts of Kovalam, Varkala, Kappad, Muzhappilangad and Bekal. Besides hill stations, it has 14 wildlife sanctuaries and National Parks.
It also boasts of the excellent healthcare systems, the lowest infant mortality rates, highest life expectancy rates and an excellent quality of life.
Goa is India's best State, Bihar the worst: Survey
By Prateek Trivedi
NEW DELHI: Goa is more than just a tourist paradise. It is India's best State in every way, according to a survey of states by top economists commissioned by a newsmagazine.
Goa ranks highest in a list of 19 states evaluated on 46 parameters including prosperity, law and order, health, education, infrastructure, agriculture and investment.
The survey, commissioned by India Today, traced the performance of states between 1991 and 2001.
Delhi comes second in the list ahead of Punjab, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, Rajastan, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa and Bihar.
Bihar was the poorest in law and order, education, infrastructure, investments and consumer markets. It was described as a state with "a population the size of Germany's and living standards on par with Burundi's."
The dismal ranking of Bihar made its former Chief Minister Laloo Yadav see red and threaten to burn issues of the magazine.
Economists Bibek Debroy and Laveesh Bhandari, who conducted the survey, said they used data drawn from federal sources rather than public responses.
The survey found a widening wedge between the living standards of different states.
The findings indicated that smaller states were doing better than their larger counterparts, possibly because their investment environment and infrastructure were more accessible to new investment.
The report, however, said: "Big or small, governance matters more than the size of a state. The degree of improvement depends almost entirely on the quality of governance."
In prosperity and budget, Delhi ranked first and Goa came second. Orissa was at the bottom of the list, even below Bihar.
In law and order, Kerala bagged top honours, ahead of Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat. Bihar was the worst, much more so than even Jammu and Kashmir that was 15th out of 19 states.
West Bengal (16), Uttar Pradesh (17) and Assam (18) also ranked poorly on this count.
Goa was found to have the best education as well. Himachal Pradesh followed, and the most literate state of Kerala came third. Kerala was noted as having slipped somewhat.
Again, the worst was Bihar -- the seat of ancient Indian learning and home to Nalanda University that attracted scholars from far and wide.
Punjab ranked first in agriculture, ahead of Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. The Northeastern State of Assam was the lowest.
In health, Goa ranked topmost, Delhi second and Jammu and Kashmir came third. The most populous State of Uttar Pradesh was judged worst on this count.
It was observed that Bihar spent a meagre Rs 60 a year on the healthcare of every person living in the State.
In terms of infrastructure, it was again tiny Goa that stole a march over others. Delhi came second again, and Bihar was the last.
Goa was also attracting the most investment followed by Delhi, Haryana, Gujarat and Punjab. Bihar again fared the worst.
By Prateek Trivedi
NEW DELHI: Goa is more than just a tourist paradise. It is India's best State in every way, according to a survey of states by top economists commissioned by a newsmagazine.
Goa ranks highest in a list of 19 states evaluated on 46 parameters including prosperity, law and order, health, education, infrastructure, agriculture and investment.
The survey, commissioned by India Today, traced the performance of states between 1991 and 2001.
Delhi comes second in the list ahead of Punjab, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, Rajastan, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa and Bihar.
Bihar was the poorest in law and order, education, infrastructure, investments and consumer markets. It was described as a state with "a population the size of Germany's and living standards on par with Burundi's."
The dismal ranking of Bihar made its former Chief Minister Laloo Yadav see red and threaten to burn issues of the magazine.
Economists Bibek Debroy and Laveesh Bhandari, who conducted the survey, said they used data drawn from federal sources rather than public responses.
The survey found a widening wedge between the living standards of different states.
The findings indicated that smaller states were doing better than their larger counterparts, possibly because their investment environment and infrastructure were more accessible to new investment.
The report, however, said: "Big or small, governance matters more than the size of a state. The degree of improvement depends almost entirely on the quality of governance."
In prosperity and budget, Delhi ranked first and Goa came second. Orissa was at the bottom of the list, even below Bihar.
In law and order, Kerala bagged top honours, ahead of Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat. Bihar was the worst, much more so than even Jammu and Kashmir that was 15th out of 19 states.
West Bengal (16), Uttar Pradesh (17) and Assam (18) also ranked poorly on this count.
Goa was found to have the best education as well. Himachal Pradesh followed, and the most literate state of Kerala came third. Kerala was noted as having slipped somewhat.
Again, the worst was Bihar -- the seat of ancient Indian learning and home to Nalanda University that attracted scholars from far and wide.
Punjab ranked first in agriculture, ahead of Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. The Northeastern State of Assam was the lowest.
In health, Goa ranked topmost, Delhi second and Jammu and Kashmir came third. The most populous State of Uttar Pradesh was judged worst on this count.
It was observed that Bihar spent a meagre Rs 60 a year on the healthcare of every person living in the State.
In terms of infrastructure, it was again tiny Goa that stole a march over others. Delhi came second again, and Bihar was the last.
Goa was also attracting the most investment followed by Delhi, Haryana, Gujarat and Punjab. Bihar again fared the worst.
Inside story: How India's MIT deal fell apart
By Nalini Mehra
NEW DELHI: The story of India's most high-profile tech deal _ with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is, in fact, more bizarre than the way it ended.
The trouble perhaps began with the price tag. MIT wanted India to shell out $5 million (around Rs 25 crore) just to use the name Media Lab Asia for 10 years. If the country chipped in with another $1 million a year, it could call the project MIT Media Lab.
That was not all. Another $3 million was sought as an annual 'programme fee' at the end of the first year of operations _ which was exploratory _ that saw little progress and no private investment.
It wasn't as if MIT wasn't willing to negotiate. In a letter, MIT offered to settle with a payment of $1 million per year if $5 million seemed to high, but this would mean that the `exclusivity' of the contract could be called off any moment.
When legal opinion was sought, it turned out that the word 'scope' would determine whether the tie-up was exclusive or not. According to the opinion given by solicitors Marchland Magnolias to the government, if the 'scope' of the tie-up with any other country was changed, a Media Lab (China) could come up.
Also, MIT was reportedly in talks with Singapore and Korea despite commitment to India for exclusivity of the Media Lab for Asia.
Another problem was the area of research. According to documents available with this website's newspaper, several programmes earlier listed for research work had nothing to do to benefit the rural Indian masses.
These were dropped within the first few months. These included 'Interactive Table Teacher', 'Cultural Computing Centre', 'Digital Walkthrough', 'Art castings', 'Informants', 'Virtual Collaborative Workplaces' and 'Heat Pump-assisted Chillier Cum Dryer.'
At the end of the first year, the Its _ which incidentally have a budget of Rs 1 crore each _ felt they had got no substantial inputs from MIT and hence wanted a more diverse cooperation with other foreign universities.
IIT Bombay's Shook Mira wrote to the government, saying "no specific interactions with any researcher or faculty from Media Labs of MIT " were held "nor had inputs from them added significant value to the projects."
He stated that while the Government was paying for the research work carried out mainly by the Its, "Intellectual property is to be shared with Media Lab, MIT."
"We gained nothing from the tie-up which was expected to help carry out research in a non-governmental atmosphere and bring in private investment," says Communications and IT Minister Arum Shore.
"But nothing of the sort happened and, in fact, IIT professors were in any case doing all the work."
The project was originally set up to develop commercially viable information and communication technologies which would enable rural prosperity. The five Indian Its with help from MIT were supposed to come up with cost-effective and commercially viable technologies. The original cost was estimated to be Rs 65 crore for the year, of which Rs 35 crore was spent.
The Cabinet will now decide on a new leaner Media Lab minus MIT. The Its will have a larger role to play. The funds required for the project have also been scaled down from Rs 1,535 crore for five years (Rs 455 crore as contributions from the government and the remaining from private sources o Rs 227 crore from Government funds and Rs 45 crore from private investments.
By Nalini Mehra
NEW DELHI: The story of India's most high-profile tech deal _ with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is, in fact, more bizarre than the way it ended.
The trouble perhaps began with the price tag. MIT wanted India to shell out $5 million (around Rs 25 crore) just to use the name Media Lab Asia for 10 years. If the country chipped in with another $1 million a year, it could call the project MIT Media Lab.
That was not all. Another $3 million was sought as an annual 'programme fee' at the end of the first year of operations _ which was exploratory _ that saw little progress and no private investment.
It wasn't as if MIT wasn't willing to negotiate. In a letter, MIT offered to settle with a payment of $1 million per year if $5 million seemed to high, but this would mean that the `exclusivity' of the contract could be called off any moment.
When legal opinion was sought, it turned out that the word 'scope' would determine whether the tie-up was exclusive or not. According to the opinion given by solicitors Marchland Magnolias to the government, if the 'scope' of the tie-up with any other country was changed, a Media Lab (China) could come up.
Also, MIT was reportedly in talks with Singapore and Korea despite commitment to India for exclusivity of the Media Lab for Asia.
Another problem was the area of research. According to documents available with this website's newspaper, several programmes earlier listed for research work had nothing to do to benefit the rural Indian masses.
These were dropped within the first few months. These included 'Interactive Table Teacher', 'Cultural Computing Centre', 'Digital Walkthrough', 'Art castings', 'Informants', 'Virtual Collaborative Workplaces' and 'Heat Pump-assisted Chillier Cum Dryer.'
At the end of the first year, the Its _ which incidentally have a budget of Rs 1 crore each _ felt they had got no substantial inputs from MIT and hence wanted a more diverse cooperation with other foreign universities.
IIT Bombay's Shook Mira wrote to the government, saying "no specific interactions with any researcher or faculty from Media Labs of MIT " were held "nor had inputs from them added significant value to the projects."
He stated that while the Government was paying for the research work carried out mainly by the Its, "Intellectual property is to be shared with Media Lab, MIT."
"We gained nothing from the tie-up which was expected to help carry out research in a non-governmental atmosphere and bring in private investment," says Communications and IT Minister Arum Shore.
"But nothing of the sort happened and, in fact, IIT professors were in any case doing all the work."
The project was originally set up to develop commercially viable information and communication technologies which would enable rural prosperity. The five Indian Its with help from MIT were supposed to come up with cost-effective and commercially viable technologies. The original cost was estimated to be Rs 65 crore for the year, of which Rs 35 crore was spent.
The Cabinet will now decide on a new leaner Media Lab minus MIT. The Its will have a larger role to play. The funds required for the project have also been scaled down from Rs 1,535 crore for five years (Rs 455 crore as contributions from the government and the remaining from private sources o Rs 227 crore from Government funds and Rs 45 crore from private investments.
