By Yasser Latif Hamdani

I first came across Paul Robeson at Rutgers University in the 100th year of his birth. His image was all pervasive for he was possibly the most well known Rutgers College graduate around the world.  The Paul Robeson centre on Busch Campus was dedicated to art, culture and African American fight for equality in America. Robeson was an extraordinary man; an all American Football Player, a concert singer, actor, communist, international citizen. What I later discovered was his intimate connection to the subcontinent through Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India.  The two men had a lot in common including Lady Edwina Mountbatten, that sultry seductress and the wife of the Last Viceroy of India,  who both men had at different times been smitten by.  There was more to it. Nehru the rising star of the non-aligned movement with his own brand of socialism and Paul Robeson the great African American communist were natural allies in a world gone mad. 

In 1958, Nehru came up with the idea of an all India celebration of Paul Robeson. To this end he entrusted M C Chagla, the Chief Justice of Bombay High Court. (Even though Chagla was Jinnah’s most famous associate in law, that is not where the Jinnah connection comes up) to head the celebration committee. This created quite a rift between the US and India which is well documented. America strongly objected what it called the “communist inspired anti-Americanism” of the Indian Government. Later relations between Nehru and Robeson were also estranged when the former dismissed the Communist government of West Bengal.

Now to the Jinnah connection. This review had this very interesting snippet of information that caught my eye:

At the Karachi Club a night later, Ken Mac’s band played a special request by Muhammad Ali Jinnah — Paul Robeson’s ‘The End’, which the Quaid-e-Azam apparently used to hum while visiting his wife’s grave in Mazagaon, Bombay.

I tried then to find the the said song on youtube. It turns out that the song was “the end of perfect day” sung by Paul Robeson.

Paul Robeson sings \”The End of a Perfect Day\”

That Jinnah enjoyed the finer things in life is well known.  His suits, cars, dogs etc are a testament to that. However nothing at all has ever been written about Jinnah’s taste in music.  He was after all an avid theatre goer who enjoyed Shakespeare and Milton in literature.  Yet the caricature of Jinnah that has been created is one of a monosyllabic lawyer engrossed in his law books. This song which he allegedly hummed while visiting his wife’s grave shows an intimate side that has not been revealed before. The lyrics are:

 When you come to the end of a perfect day, 
And you sit alone with your thought, 
While the chimes ring out with a carol gay, 
For the joy that the day has brought, 
Do you think what the end of a perfect day 
Can mean to tired heart, 
When the sun goes down with a flaming ray, 
And the dear hearts have to part? 
Well, this is the end of a perfect day, 
Near the end of a journey, too, 
But it leaves a thought that is big and strong, 
With a wish that is kind and true. 
For mem’ry has painted this perfect day 
With colors that never fade, 
And we find at the end of a perfect day, 
The soul of a friend we’ve made.

Why is it that the wretched state that imposes its ideology on us also tries to stifle any semblance of humanity in our heroes?

After the Nuclear Threat Initiative released its Nuclear Materials Security Index, the Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis in New Delhi posted a rebuke of sorts by Dr. Ch. Viyyanna Sastry, a Research Fellow, and Rajiv Nayan, a Senior Research Associate, both at the IDSA. In it, Sastry and Nayan allege that the NTI index was released as part of a “hidden agenda” related to the Global threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI), that NTI’s decision not to include radiological materials was arbitrary, refers to its methodology as faulty, and contends that the index reflects a political and Western bias.

Okay.  Fair enough.  In the spirit of democracy, the IDSA and any other think tank or analyst is welcome to comment on, deconstruct or otherwise dissect the NTI’s work.  However, I have a sneaking suspicion it actually comes down to this sentence in the IDSA piece: “It is surprising that the Report places India at the 28th spot in the first list with Vietnam, Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea below it.”

NTI took the time to respond to the IDSA piece, countering that it did indeed consider including radiological materials, but that “While a real threat, radiological sources vary widely in terms of type of materials, nature of application (used by a diverse set of actors and facilities for medical, industrial and research purposes), and the consequences and impact of a dirty bomb attack. As such, they require a substantially different set of security requirements. Because the dirty bomb concern is an analytically different problem, we chose to focus on how to prevent a nuclear terrorism attack using a catastrophic nuclear yield-producing device fueled by dangerous weapons-usable nuclear materials.”

As for the charge of political and Western bias, NTI countered that relied on an independent panel of experts which had “more representation from the non-Western and developing world (e.g., Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, and South Africa) than any other sector to ensure the Index reflected an international point of view. The panel provided extensive input into the framework before data was gathered to ensure its objectivity.”

A little anecdote:  In the mid-1990s, a team from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission traveled to India under the helm of then-Chairman Ivan Selin.  At the time, the technical team found the safety and physical conditions of the nuclear facilities they visited strongly lacking.  Not wanting to offend their hosts, the team held their opinions.  However, Dr. Selin was so alarmed at the condition of the plants that he strongly pressed the head of the technical team to speak candidly about the condition of the nuclear facilities.  Needless to say, the Indian government was not pleased and vowed never again to allow the U.S. government to visit any of their nuclear facilities again. (Sidenote: The rift was not permanent and, after the 1998 test sanctions were lifted, the NRC again visited India and was able to gain access to the unsafeguarded nuclear plant at Chennai, as well as BARC. Yours truly was part of that visit.)

Now, the Indian government is by no means alone in showing technological pride in its innovations – after all, the Indians were cut off from Western nuclear cooperation after 1974 and, as a result, were forced to improvise, creating their own “INDU” reactor, a riff on the Canadian-Deuterium. or CANDU, Reactor given to them by Canada before the weapons test. However, as NTI rightly points out, the Index was created to instigate “a broad and deep conversation about the role of transparency in nuclear materials security…” NTI also adds that “…India and other states can take steps to make public its security regulations (absent sensitive information) and invite meaningful peer reviews.” I would add here that, of the Member States of the IAEA with nuclear power programs, one notable country has never requested a safety review of its facilities. Guess which one?

Google is now redirecting all blogspot.com blogs in India to a different blogspot.in address.

The change is live in India but Google, according to this support page, is planning to take a similar approach in other countries as well. So a blog like abc.blogspot.com could redirect to abc.blogspot.com.pk for a visitor in Pakistan or to abc.blogspot.sg when viewed from Singapore.

Selective Censorship

So why is Google switching to country-specific blogspot.com URLs? The answer is simple – this gives them the ability to censor (or remove) content hosted on Blogger country-wise.

By utilizing ccTLDs, content removals can be managed on a per country basis, which will limit their impact to the smallest number of readers. Content removed due to a specific country’s law will only be removed from the relevant ccTLD.

For instance, if the Indian government (or court) orders Google India to remove offensive content from a blog hosted at abc.blogspot.com, Google can simply block those pages in India while they’ll continue to be available in other parts of the world.

This looks like a good approach though I wonder if the recent demands from Indian ministers to pre-screen content have forced Google to implement such a solution.

The courts and the other law enforcement agencies in India sent Blogger a total of 39 content removal requests in the first half on 2011 according to Google’s transparency report.

This story, Okay, Here’s Why Google is Redirecting your Blogger Blogs, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 31/01/2012 under Censorship, Google, Internet.

You may also like:

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Foremost among these is the raging controversy surrounding Salman Rushdie’s scheduled appearance at the Jaipur Literature Festival, a saga that neatly encapsulates both the virtues and vices of the Indian polity. The gathering has fast emerged as the largest and most prestigious literary event in Asia, and it is a fine example of the soft power strengths India brings to the competition with China for influence in the region. This year’s installment attracted some 250 writers from South Asia and beyond (including talk show maven Oprah Winfrey, new age guru Deepak Chopra and Joseph Lelyveld, whose book on Mahatma Gandhi was greeted with a blast of invective from the Indian political class last year) as well as 70,000 visitors. Yet the imbroglio over Rushdie, who was supposed to be the main attraction at this year’s festival, has tarnished India’s credentials as emerging Asia’s brightest exemplar of democratic freedoms.

Rushdie, who was born in Mumbai to a Muslim family of Kashmiri descent, is the author of the 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses, which inflamed Muslim sentiment throughout the world and lead Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s supreme leader, to issue a notorious fatwa against his life. Concerned about the potential for upheaval among its sizeable Muslim population, the Indian government quickly banned the book, part of its familiar but disgraceful ritual of proscribing books that touch on sensitive issues or arouse passions in certain quarters. Rushdie, who continues to live under the threat of death, has traveled to India without incident numerous times in the years since, including an unannounced 2007 visit to the Jaipur gathering that is credited with putting it on the world’s cultural map.

But his headline participation at this year’s event brought forth a torrent of umbrage and threats. Muslim clerics started things off, including those at Darul Uloom Deoband, an influential Islamic seminary in Uttar Predesh, India’s most populous state which will hold legislative elections next month that many believe are critical to the survival of the Congress Party-led national government in New Delhi. Another seminary issued a fatwa calling for protests against the visit and a number of Muslim groups warned of “unprecedented protests” and burned Rushdie’s effigy.

Predictably enough, politicians soon took up the cudgels, many of them Congress Party leaders fearful of losing the allegiance of Uttar Pradesh’s large bloc of Muslim voters, who formed about a fifth of the state’s electorate. Ashok Gehlot, chief minister of Rajasthan, the northwestern state where the festival takes place, and a former general secretary of the All India Congress Committee, reportedly pressed the organizers to rescind their invitation to Rushdie and appeared indifferent to the threats being made against Rushdie’s safety. Chandrabhan Singh, head of the Congress Party’s Rajasthan unit, declared that “Rushdie has hurt the sentiments of many Indians. He must not be allowed to come to India.” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, the party’s national leader, maintained a studious silence, while one of Singh’s Cabinet members pronounced that Rushdie’s “presence is not desirable.”

In contrast to the poltroon instincts of the political class, India’s boisterous media leapt to Rushdie’s defense. The Times of India accused the Congress Party of playing identity politics and argued that “by catering to such intolerance, the Congress has further contributed to creating an increasingly illiberal atmosphere in the country.” The Hindu called the affair “a national shame” and charged that “India has again betrayed its heritage of providing sanctuary to persecuted individuals and ideas, not to speak of its Constitution.”

If the saga had ended at this point, it would have amounted to an embarassment to the country’s reputation. Instead it unexpectedly morphed into an outrage against free expression. On the eve of the festival’s opening, Rushdie suddenly withdrew when the Rajasthan police warned him of an assassination plot being hatched by a Mumbai underworld boss who has close ties to the Pakistani security establishment. Media outlets, however, soon reported that the death threat was concocted by authorities to scare him away. When Rushdie made plans to address the gathering via video link, Rajasthan officials attempted to throw up new impediments. In the end, the video conference was abruptly cancelled by the venue’s owner following police warnings about violent protests.

In solidarity with Rushdie, four Indian writers at the gathering staged an impromptu reading of passages from The Satanic Verses, a prohibited act that drew quick police notice. Advised by legal counsel that they had unwittingly opened themselves up to criminal charges, the writers hastily departed Jaipur and, in some cases, the country.

Unfortunately, the Rushdie affair stands out for its prominence but not its singularity. Currently, the Delhi High Court is considering a petition that seeks to hold Google and Facebook liable for not censoring content that might offend the sensibilities of Hindus, Muslims and Christians. The judge overseeing the matter ominously warned that if the companies could not police their own sites, “like China we may be forced to pass orders banning all such websites.” Prime Minister Singh’s government has lent its imprimatur to the petitioner’s cause.

Late last year, Kapil Sibal, a Harvard-educated lawyer who serves as Mr. Singh’s telecommunications minister, likewise threatened to censor social networking sites for objectionable content (here and here).  Similar to the rhetoric directed at Rushdie, he argued that “religious sentiments of many communities and of any reasonable person is [sic] being hurt because of content which is on the sites.” Last June’s death of M. F. Husain, the most acclaimed painter of modern India, also recalled how he had been hounded into self-exile by Hindu nationalist groups incensed at his nude depictions of Hindu deities. Prime Minister Singh called Husain’s passing in a London hospital “a national loss” but he did nothing to dampen the mob culture that caused Husain to spend the last years of his life outside of India.

Indeed, over the last two years, India’s illiberal tendencies have been in particular bloom:

• A fictionalized biography of Congress Party supreme Sonia Gandhi was banned;
• Government officials helped put the kibosh on plans to make a movie based on Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire, a non-fiction book that sheds light on Jawaharlal Nehru’s furtive relationship with the wife of the British Raj’s last viceroy;
• An outcry organized by the family of Bal Thackeray, a Hindu nationalist politician, forced the University of Mumbai to drop Rohinton Mistry’s novel, Such a Long Journey, a finalist for the prestigious Man Booker Prize, from its English-language syllabus;
• And Arundhati Roy, a perennial bete noire to the political establishment and a Man Booker Prize-winner for her 1997 novel, The God of Small Things, was charged with sedition for her remarks on the Kashmir dispute.

All democracies are continuous works in progress. But this year’s Republic Day reveals just how far India still remains from the ideals of free expression.

Last week, I discussed the breaking news of an emerging strain of “totally drug resistant” tuberculosis (TDR-TB)* in Mumbai.  This week, the Indian government denied the findings, arguing that the twelve cases were in fact extensively drug resistant (XDR, not “extremely,” as I wrote previously).  The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare stated that nine of the twelve patients were responding to treatment, while the other three had died.  Furthermore, the Ministry said that the diagnostics lab at the Hinduja National Hospital, where the twelve patients were treated, was not accredited to diagnose XDR or TDR cases.

The Ministry also pointed out that the World Health Organization (WHO) does not recognize the classification of “TDR” at this time.  In an article written this month, the WHO explains that current drug susceptibility tests cannot determine with enough certainty whether a strain is XDR or TDR to make a solid conclusion.  The WHO will meet in March to discuss TB drug susceptibility diagnostics and whether, or how, to define TDR-TB.  The author of the study claiming the emergence of TDR in India, Dr. Zarir Udwadia, argued that this was not the time to parse words, saying: “Let them call it what they want.  For physician and patient, it’s not just a question of semantics–it’s a question of survival and mortality.”  In more concerning news, Business Week published an article today detailing that ten more possible cases of TDR (or XDR) TB have emerged 250 miles (400 kilometers) south of Mumbai.  Indian and WHO officials are meeting to discuss what to do, including the possibility of mandatory quarantines.

Whether or not it’s fair to use the TDR moniker, drug resistance is a serious, emerging issue that may very well define the next stage of global health.  The appearance of multi-drug resistant (MDR) and XDR TB, MRSA strains, and other drug resistant pathogens in the past couple of decades or so, has shown that despite the great strides we have made since the discovery of penicillin in the last century, life will find a way around the miracle drugs we have developed (about which I wrote in September 2011, including Dr. Fleming’s concerns in 1945).  More aggressive quarantine protocols and drug adherence strategies must be discussed, for a start.  This in itself is a fraught notion, as it raises questions about patients’ rights and freedoms, stigma of and discrimination against people diagnosed with drug resistant pathogens, and similar issues.  Better diagnostic tools must be developed and rolled out globally, with particular attention paid to developing nations, where need, disease burdens, and non-adherence are often greatest.  More efforts must be made to strengthen overburdened and underfunded health systems, particularly in the developing world, and to effectively train health care workers to diagnose, treat, and support patients with pathogens that may become, or are, drug resistant.  Finally, pharmaceutical companies must make new drugs more widely available and affordable, while stepping up development of new drugs.  These last three points, of course, have been sticking points for almost every global health issue for a long time and continue to plague disease prevention, treatment, and eradication efforts worldwide.  We are reaching a turning point, one at which some drug resistant pathogens are on the cusp of shifting from a handful of cases, an endemic, to a bigger, epidemic or even pandemic problem.  Now is the time to initiate discussions on what the global community will do to stem drug resistance.

*If you want a bit more information on TDR-TB, take a look at the WHO’s page on TDR, or check out The Los Angeles Times‘ interview with Dr. Otto Yang of the UCLA medical school.  Discussions of (and mild panic about) drug resistance, especially for TB, have been around for years–check out John Le Carré’s novel The Constant Gardener or its excellent film adaptation for a little MDR-TB/Big Pharma/international conspiracy thriller on the topic.  

Header photo of hand-stitched lung art available here, by Spec-ta-cles, CC BY 2.0.

Part 2 – Mood on the Ground

Also Read: Part 1: Many Barrels of a Gun

“There’s this contagion of protest,” Richard Stengel, managing editor of TIME, told NBC television as he discussed the naming of “The protester” as Time magazine’s person of the year, 2011. “These are folks who are changing history already and they will change history in the future.”

People across the SAARC region took to streets to protest against administrations failing to deliver governance

While he was referring largely to the people on streets in the Arab world, from Tunisia to Syria, who are shaking the plates of autocratic regimes in the region, the one story from the SAARC region that captured the imagination of the world in much the same way was the anti-corruption movement in India led by veteran social activist Anna Hazare and his team, known together as Team Anna.

In a protest that replicated the span and fervour of the Tahrir Square protest in Egypt, Team Anna’s agitation at Ramlila Maidan in India’s capital city of New Delhi towards a strong anti-corruption law drew not just tens of thousands of supporters (largely from the middle class) to the venue, but also inspired hundreds of simultaneous mirror agitations across the nation of 1.2 billion.

With more than 100 Indian news channels in over 20 languages and thousands of newspapers and magazines from across the globe providing saturation coverage to the movement, the Indian political class was forced to call an unscheduled debate on the subject in the parliament. It was an unprecedented instance of people power prevailing over the mighty political class in the nation’s 60-year-old parliamentary history.

There has yet not been any conclusion of the debate, both inside and outside the parliament, but what has now been established beyond doubt that people’s pressure in a nation that is home to the world’s fastest growing middle class may set the tone for future government-civilian dynamics.

Already, the Indian government is facing unrelenting resistance on ground over issues ranging from environmental and health impact of nuclear power plants to prices of essential items like food and fuel.

Clearly, the tone for the future is now set in India. People’s pressure would increasingly ensure that governance delivery becomes one of the prerequisites for electoral victories.

The thread carries through neighbouring Pakistan too. Hundreds of thousands of people have been flocking the political rallies of one of the nation’s favourite sons, Imran Khan. The only reason that can describe the massive surge in support for a person whose party has never, in the 15 years of its existence, won a single election is the unprecedented levels of public frustration in the nation about the current state of affairs.

Social media savvy middle and upper class youth are flocking Khan’s rallies across Pakistan in the hope that the charismatic personality would turn around things in the poverty and terrorism-stricken nation.

Sweeping one city after another by his present crowd pulling charisma, Khan has sent both the current ruling coalition and the principal opposition in a tizzy at the same time. Out of nowhere, Khan is now seen as a serious prime ministerial choice by an increasing number of people in the country.

Most of the support group of Khan see him not just as an alternative, but also as an extension of their own belief. In other words, Khan is just a representative of the present mood, which may just as easily turn against him should he compromise on any of the urgent expectations of the man on the street on the subject of transparent and corruption free government.

It is a thread that seems to be running across the SAARC region.

Bhutan, which famously talks of Gross National Happiness in place of Gross Domestic Product, saw an unprecedented Facebook campaign in February that challenged the government’s decision to ban smoking at public places. Though most of the supporters of the Facebook group had attacked the government from behind hidden identities, the rise of people’s voice in an otherwise serene kingdom did not go unnoticed. What also brought into sharp focus was the opportunity for administrative corruption in the process of the implementation of the law.

Three months later, thousands of people protested in Male, Asia’s smallest city and the capital of Maldives, against what they dubbed as corruption of unacceptable proportions in the government.

All of the above instances are significant as they belong to a region that is traditionally identified with corruption. A recent report by Transparency International on corruption in daily lives and public opinion in South Asia, based upon a survey of 7500 persons in six countries—India, Nepal, Pakistan, Maldives, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, revealed that more than one in three people in the SAARC region who dealt in public services said they paid bribes to get things done.

The report further said that people in the SAARC region see political parties and police as the most corrupt institutions. The two Ps are closely followed by further two Ps—parliament and public officials.

In such an environment of near pathological acceptance of corruption as a part of the society, rise of masses against corruption is not only a welcome sign, but might also signify the fight back of an extremely aggressive beast that feels itself to be cornered from all sides.

And therein lay SAARC region’s sunshine story of the year 2011.

End of Part 2

PIPFPD 7th Joint Convention, New Delhi 2005: Pakistani ghazal queen Farida Khanum with then Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran at a reception at Hyderabad House. Photo: Beena Sarwar

My curtain raiser on the Eighth Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) Joint Convention being held in Allahabad, India, Dec 29, 2011-Jan 1, 2012 (slightly shorter version published as an op-ed in The News). When the name was being decided, the Indians insisted that Pakistan should be mentioned first, rather than the usual formulation that places India’s name first. This apparently trivial gesture typifies the PIPFPD’s cooperative spirit.

People for peace | By Beena Sarwar

The Indian government’s clearance of visas for 237 Pakistanis to attend a major peace convention in Allahabad, Dec 29, 2011 to Jan 1, 2012, is a welcome step, allowing the much-delayed Eighth Joint Convention of the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) to finally be held.

The PIPFPD is the largest people-to-people organisation between the two countries, formed in 1994 by eminent intellectuals, academics and activists from both sides. Discussions at the Joint Conventions revolve around issues ranging from ‘war, de-militarization, peace and peace dividends’, to ‘Democratic solution to Kashmir problem’, ‘Democratic Governance’ and ‘Religious intolerance in India and Pakistan’. ‘Globalization and Regional co-operation’ was added at the 5^th Joint Convention in 2000 at Bangalore.

The principles laid out in the initial PIPFPD Declaration of 1994 are even more relevant today than they were then: that the “politics of confrontation between India and Pakistan has failed to achieve benefits of any kind for the people of both countries”, and that the respective governments should honour the wishes of their people who “increasingly want genuine peace and friendship”.

Better relations, said the Declaration, “will help in reducing communal and ethnic tension” and “will help the South Asian region to progress economically and socially”. The Declaration urged the Governments of Pakistan and India to “agree to an unconditional no-war pact immediately” and to recognise that “a democratic solution to the Kashmir dispute is essential”.

Over 200 Pakistani and Indian delegates participated in the groundbreaking First Joint Convention in New Delhi, 1995. For the first time, Indians and Pakistanis sat together to freely discuss the contentious issues of Kashmir, demilitarization, and the politics of religious intolerance. PIPFPD’s formulation about Kashmir is now part of public discourse: that Kashmir should not be viewed merely as a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan but as a matter of the lives and aspirations of the Kashmiri people, who must be involved in any discussion about their future.

The seven joint Conventions held since in various cities across the region, alternating between both countries, have involved hundreds of ordinary citizens. Delegates pay for their own travel expenses, while the hosts arrange inexpensive board and lodging. These Conventions have yielded not only lasting relations between individuals but also spawned dozens of Indo-Pak organisations and meetings between different ‘sectors’ – fisherfolk, teachers, students, journalists, doctors, lawyers, labour unions, rights groups and others.

It was PIPFPD’s First Joint Convention in New Delhi in 1995 that led to the first regular column by an Indian journalist in a Pakistani newspaper (The News on Sunday) since the 1960s. Today, most newspapers and TV channels in Pakistan have correspondents, stringers and resource persons in India, and vice versa.

Initial delays to the Eighth Joint Convention came from Pakistan, where it was supposed to be held in Peshawar in 2007, after the Seventh Joint Convention in New Delhi in 2005. The political situation provided justifications to deny the necessary permission: escalation in the ‘war on terror’, the lawyers’ movement, the return and then the tragic assassination of Benazir Bhutto, and escalating violence in Pakistan as the new government tried to tackle the militants unambiguously.

When it became clear that trying to hold the Convention in Pakistan would add to more delay, the organisers decided to move it to India. That took over a year and much negotiation. Conditions were verbally set out and apprehensions voiced about the possibility of ‘wrong speeches’ being made – not just by the Pakistanis but by Indians.  However, those raising the objections were unwilling to spell out their apprehensions in writing.

In the end, persistence and people pressure paid off. Several Indo-Pak events have been held over the past two years, including by Aman ki Asha. Many were initiated by Indians, contrary to the perception that “Indians don’t care about peace with Pakistan”.

Significantly, some of the most inspiring initiatives have come from Mumbai, a city still reeling from the horrific attacks of Nov 26-28, 2008 that many Indians squarely blame Pakistan for. However, many Indians, including Mumbaikars, argue that all Pakistanis should not be held responsible for the actions of a few.

An extraordinary expression of this spirit was the 50-kilometre long ‘human chain for peace’ formed by some 60,000 Mumbaikars on Dec 12, 2008, urging the Government of India to show restraint in dealing with Pakistan — just days after the attacks that claimed 164 lives and left over 300 wounded. This hugely impressive event was overshadowed by the jingoism amplified by the media, but the Indian government did not (for several reasons) pander to those baying for action against Pakistan.

Earlier this year, students from Mumbai came up with a pioneering initiative they called ‘Ummeed-e-Milaap’ (hope for unity), a platform for Indian and Pakistani students to connect, in over 30 colleges in Mumbai, Lahore and Karachi. Last month, a 22-member delegation of journalists from The Press Club of Mumbai travelled to Pakistan to connect with colleagues in Karachi and Hyderabad, culminating in a joint Declaration of Cooperation.

The world is changing. The old paradigms and policies based on paranoia and hatred must give way to a realisation that it is only with cooperation with each other that India that Pakistan can fulfil their respective potentials. The Seventh Joint Convention articulated some visionary steps that both governments can take towards this end (see www.pipfpd.org). The Allahabad Convention will take forward these demands, foremost among which is easing the current restrictive visa regime.

We have seen what happens when thousands of cricket fans are given visas to attend matches across the border: nothing, except for goodwill and a reaffirmation that the people are ready for good relations and personal contacts. As the Allahabad Convention gets under way, do our governments have the political will and vision to follow the people to peace or will they remain mired in outdated security state paradigms?

(ends)

Why is Anna Hazare​ shy of acknowledging RSS support? The wily old man knows he is damned if he does, and he is damned if he doesn’t.