Editorial

Should They Go?

After Anna Hazare it is now the turn of Ramdev to make some noises about black money and corruption in high places. Estimates of black money stashed away in foreign banks vary from Rs 10 lakh crore to Rs 25 lakh crore and the government white paper on black money is said to have ‘concealed more than it has revealed’. It’s not that easy to defeat enormous power this hidden money exerts on the Indian polity. Whether Ramdev’s move or ‘big revolution’ as he dubbed it, could galvanise the most vocal section of the society—the middle class—is open to question. His anti-corruption stance is mainly aimed at grilling the Congress Party and ousting it from power in the next general election. Should they stay, or should they go? is the moot question before him. But opposition parties too are ruling parties and they are no less corrupt than the Congress Party. The prospects of repetition of post-emergency scenario where all opposition parties got united irrespective of their different ideological and political stance, seem remote.

The persons in power know well how to divert public attention. Now ‘Jundal’ story, not Ramdev’s yoga therapy, gets wide currency, albeit everybody knows nothing will come out from the 26/11 Mumbai attack case. They are discovering new twists and turns in the involvement of LeT in Mumbai terror attack, only to keep the people anxious about the conspiratorial exercises carried by India’s traditional enemy Pakistan across the border. Pakistan’s strategy is to harass India by way of promoting and sponsoring jihadi groups while allowing them to utilise Pakistani soil as rear. They will protect them at any cost. What they say in the public is pure diplomacy. The whole world knows it. Also, it is a fact of life that nothing concrete will emerge from the 26/11 Mumbai terror trial. It may linger for years giving some kind of leverage in propaganda blitz against Pakistan. In truth the so-called international community won’t do much other than condemning terror and black-listing some terror outfits though today’s villains were heroes in American perception when they utilised their services against the Soviets a few years back.

If anything these jihadi groups are able to resort to daring acts because they have social base in India. So long as the Kashmir question remains unresolved this jihadi terror will recur in one form or another. The union government’s attempt to pacify the people of Kashmir through the formation of a team of interlocutors comprising Dileep Padgaonkar, M M Ansari and Radha Kumar has failed for all practical purposes as the people of Jammu and Kashmir see the report of the group as a ploy to bypass the real issue—the issue of self-determination for 17 million people of J&K. The group was appointed as a direct consequence of massive street demonstrations and uprisings which began in 2007 and extended through the hot summer of 2010. LeT and other jihadi outfits, Pakistan-sponsored or indigenous, get sustenance from these mass upheavals.

They cannot resolve the most pressing issues of the day—black economy, refugee problem, Kashmir and all that because it will affect vested interests. Also, a policy of discrimination against certain people has been the hall-mark of Delhi rulers, no matter whether they don the Congress-jersey or anti-Congress jacket, since the days of Nehru.

How the refugee problem has been compounded over the years in the east and north-east is a glaring example of their time-tested art of evading the thorny questions even if there lies potential of mass unrest in them. Those who came as refugees in the east and north-east after the bloody partition in 1947 are still refugees, notwithstanding three generations of naturalisation. They have not been granted citizenship rights till date. They are stateless for ever.

Refugee problem has acquired a new dimension in post-partitioned India for reasons other than external causes. As internally displaced persons (DPs) are increasing in numbers with every passing year this refugee problem is no longer confined to Bengal and north-eastern states only. They are systematically creating new refugees while old refugees continue to fight to lead a life of dignity and honour.

Internationally, this refugee problem is again a special feature of South Asia otherwise teeming with impoverished billions. There are Tamil refugees in Sri Lanka and Tibetan refugees in India. Now DMK, a key partner in the Congress-led UPA, is accusing the union government of remaining silent to the sufferings of Tamil refugees in Sri Lanka. Better late than never! Maybe, this DMK, otherwise thriving on parochialism and opportunism, is talking of the plight of Sri Lankan Tamils, because the parliamentary poll of 2014, the time table for which, may be advanced, is not far away. As for the Tibetan refugees, they live in a tragic situation. They have a government-in-exile in India but the government of India doesn’t officially recognise it. Nor does any country in the world notice the on-going self-immolations of Tibetan Buddhist monks, nuns and lay people as a revolt against the Chinese occupation and tyranny—almost an identical Kashmir scenario.

Very recently the Chinese embassy in India came down heavily on the Dalai Lama as he declined to call self-immolation wrong in an interview published by the Hindu on July 9. The Chinese saw in his prayers for those self-immolations amounting to encouragement of the violent act. True the Dalai Lama’s views totally contradict the Chinese constitution. But that doesn’t mean the Tibetans cannot demand right to self-determination in their own way. Suicide is considered as one of the greatest sins in Buddhism. They have no option but to resort to self-destruction to attract the world attention to their plight. Earlier Vietnamese Buddhist monks too performed these ‘non-Buddhist acts’ to protest against American barbarism and the Chinese didn’t react the way they are reacting now.

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 7, Aug 26-Sep1, 2012