Does one have to be a victim of something to really have empathy for it. My partner is European, and of course, it needn’t be said that she is hardly someone who holds any candle for any thought that race is a factor in anything. This morning, we were watching the news, or rather, I wanted to a glimpse of Manmohan unfurling the flag or something at Red Fort, when the news started flashing that Shahrukh Khan had been detained for about two hours at Newark Airport.
Now, lets get the usual caveats out of the way – our rhetoric of secularism and equality is often just that – Indian private society is supremely racist towards Muslims, and Indian government is officially not, but in practice ends up being so. This does not excuse bad behaviour elsewhere. And our officialdom can be arbitrarily mean to anyone – not that this compares, but I was once threatened, with all seriousness, with 14 days quarantine at Bombay airport because my yellow fever certificate did not have my name filled in twice – for which there was bizarrely space. I had travelled on that yellow fever card since 2001, this happened this year – so I was actually flabbergasted.
But, as always, I digress! My partner said – they must have had some information on someone named Khan! My reaction was pure indignation. Information on Khan? How poor is their information? That’s like saying there is a Muslim terrorist out there, likely, but not a reasonable justification for questioning every Muslim out there. Are we to depend on the arbitrary and ill-informed discretion of a frontline immigration officer. I hope not. It is unjust, because its underlying premise is racist. After Timothy McVeigh, all white men from the Midwest were not subject to any additional scrutiny. And it betrays the shocking poverty on Indian intelligence – if they can’t tell one of the biggest movie stars in the world, and I believe a Muslim whose name recognition matches Osama Bin Laden, then I think they should just give up on targeted questioning, and throw darts at boarding passes on the board to determine who to question. Any potential terrorist with a modicum of intelligence and capacity would show up with a innocuous passport and a non-Muslim name.
And here is a lesson for India – do not complain about profiling abroad, and do it at home! It smacks of hypocrisy, and makes us humbugs!

An Unflatering Comparison...

An Unflattering Comparison
As the 6th anniversary of the Gujarat carnage, progrom, violence (in search of a neutral word approaches), the criminal justice system in India does not stand even superficial scrutiny well. First, the positive – there has been some convictions, thanks to the interventions of the Supreme Court, the National Human Rights Commission, and yeoman work done by Nyayagrah, Harsh Mander’s organisation in Gujarat that courageously impleads itself into cases on behalf of victims to act in locus for a recklessly colluding, or just negligent, state. However, no leader of any political party, extremist organisation, criminal organisation have been tried. No investigation or charges have been brought as to who financed the people wielding the trishul, lathi or sword. No police officer has been charged, let alone sentenced, even with ample evidence of collusion with perpetrators of violence, and often, perpetration of the violence, itself. Where the Railways inquiry led by Justice Banerjee sought to shed some light on events recognised by all sides as the provocation, whether real or imagined, of the carnage, that followed, the subsequent Justice Nanavati –Shah Commission Report challenges it. What is more, even before publishing its analysis of the voluminous evidence received by it, the Report exonerates the state of any misfeasance. Put, simply, the Indian state (executive, legislature, judiciary) has simply failed to protect the most basic right guaranteed by the Constitution – the Right to Life, and then failed to investigate and punish those who were responsible for it.
These events are not even explainable when one compares it to events not in countries with advanced criminal justice system, and the lack of primal ethnic or tribal differences, but Kenya, a country that is merely a decade into democracy, and where last year’s general elections results led to open tribal warfare that was only put to rest through a power sharing agreement between the competing political parties brokered by the African Union. Riots, ethnic cleansing, police firing, neighbourhoods being set aflame – the country saw it all. After the power-sharing agreement was put into effect, the government, again in a procedure that we should be familiar with, and as Commonwealth countries, comes to us from British practice, put into place a judicial commission, chaired by Justice Phillip Waki, to inquire into the poll violence. However, unlike the plethora of commissions that have been ineffective in challenging those in, and those close to power, in our country, J. Waki was not content merely to pass recommendations, to be filed in parliamentary records, and then slip back into judicial obscurity.
His report used Kenya’s accession to the International Criminal Court (ICC) through ratification of the Rome Statute as a weapon, and the legal concept of complementarity as a tool, to force and blackmail the country’s political leaders into more effectual action. Complementarity, beyond being a tongue twister, if you will forgive the digression into legal concept, is the ICC philosophy, which should have been termed subsidiary, of ceding jurisdiction to domestic jurisdictions where there is credible investigations and / or prosecutions. (To be sure, the Rome Statute is troublesome for many reasons, but the concession of sovereignity is not one of them) The Waki Commission report stipulated that a sealed list of people deserving prosecution would be handed over the ICC by March unless the Kenyan Government convened a special tribunal, with international involvement, to try the ringleaders, said to include powerful politicians and businessmen. On 21 January 2009, it was reported that Kenyan Parliament was convening two months earlier to consider a bill for this very purpose.
We too often look to the West or China for comparison and validation, and assuage the obvious economic differences and apathy on the part of state institutions on the comforting thought that as a developing democracies, our exigencies necessitate compromise and a gap between our promise and reality. However, there is no excuse, as the Waki Commission is now demonstrating, for the all too real culture of impunity that has developed around political violence, for riots in Gujarat or Bombay are nothing less. Whether political partisans support those who order, instigate, or abet political violence should not be a factor in putting together a mechanism whereby they can be tried, under the existing substantive laws in India, for their criminal culpability.

Completing Partition

I am sitting here reading Galbraith interview in Rediff, and it says "There should be no doubt about the fact that one of the great failures of the 20th century was the division of what would have been a truly great country into three different parcels." The division of India happened on a physical level. Pakistan became another country, and then further splintered into Bangladesh. Partition, however, never happened on a philosophical level. India never agreed or acquiesced to the two (or is it three) nation theory. India may not have had the borders to justify it, but it retained its commitment to a pluralistic and multicultural India. Taken to its logical extreme, in its ideal, it was what every Pakistani and Bangladeshi aspiring to a secular, democratic country could aspire to. Pakistan's nationalism, in principle, was never territorial. The fact that it was filtered through Punjabi chauvinism was not its intent. So, India and Pakistan were two very opposite ideas for what India should be. The territory they acquired were the arbitrary consequences of an ill-thought out deal. What made predominantly Hindu Lahore have more affinity for a religious state than predominantly Muslim Lukhnow. A civil war, as threatened, may have settled these territorial claims just as arbitrarily.

The fatal flaw for progressive Indians was to relinquish our claim to represent that territory. Pakistan may have been bequeathed a territory to implement its retrograde philosophy, and it may have done so passionately, but there was no reason for us to agree with that consequence. One of the great anomalies of post-Independence India is our reluctance to recognize Israel, a religious state, while recognizing and doing business with a religious state that undermined the Indianness of India. Without threat of violence, progressives could have disagreed with the idea of Pakistan, while recognizing its de facto existence. We could even do business with it, and we did, without relinquishing our philosophy that a multicultural and secular democracy was the ideal that all people of the Indian subcontinent must practice. There was no need to ask the ideals that informed our independence movement to screech to a halt at Wagah.

Doing so allowed the idea of Pakistan to acquire moral equivalency to the idea of India. We recognized and accepted Pakistan's idea of what a nation is, and asked only to be left alone. Pakistan, to its credit, never accepted our ideal. Not content to disagree in the abstract, it has backed its idea of a nation with a foreign and defense policy that follows no rules. All we ask is to be left alone. Have we ever asked the people of Lahore, Karachi, or Rawalpindi, whether they would like to live in a multicultural society? In our haste to make peace, we forgot that we must make the peace of the brave. For me, the idea of India remains the only road to peace. There is no alternative to a multicultural democracy. Having forfeited the ability to influence the territory of Pakistan, we must actively push the idea across the Radcliffe line, and hope for a day where Pakistan can establish a multicultural society. What is needed is not a better understanding between ordinary Pakistanis and Indians, but more confidence in what the ideal of India is, and what that ideal offers the people of Pakistan. In doing that, we must refuse to recognize the moral equivalency of a religious state.

But…yes, no question of it, the idea of India and the reality of India are starkly different. While this dichotomy is present in every country, it can be particularly glaring in India. While India can be amazingly multicultural at times, it has also at times failed to guarantee even the most basic right to life of its citizens based on their religious differences. These failures can only strengthen our resolve to move closer to the ideal. Recently, however, a greater danger has emerged. The Sangh Parivar threatens the very idea of India. The logical conclusion of the Hindutva ideology is an India that is a religious republic – the mirror image of Pakistan. While the Sangh Parivan pays lip service to the Indian ideal, its actions point to a different interpretation. India equals Hindu. Secularism, commonly the separation of church and state, and at the very least equality of all religions in the polity, for the BJP means mere tolerance for minorities. While publicly committed to the ideal of India, their interpretation of that ideal rejects secularism and multiculturalism wholly. Their practice of that ideal is merely the belated completion of partition, in theory and in practice.

For an Indian committed to secularism, the enemy within, and the enemy without, are equally challenging. The Sangh Parivar has joined the minds of the hearts and minds of Indians earnestly, and we have been found wanting. Pakistan has challenged our territory while rejecting the basis of our ideals, and we have pled "live and let live." Our answer to both must be the same – our founding father got it right – Indians want a multicultural, secular democracy, and we must forcefully reject all alternatives. This is the battle we must take to the people of the Indian sub-continent.

Woody Allen and the California Bar

Nihilism may be the way to go...

If you have seen Woody Allen's new movie, Matchpoint, one of the themes of the movie, besides the fall of the net ball, is that we don't have to believe in anything in. I am going to stretch this, and talk about the current cesspool that I am experiences. That's right folks - I am preparing to give the California Bar Exam - the most difficult dog trick in the dog and pony show, jump through the hoops experience that is law school.

Now, no one will allow me the poetic license of claiming that I did law school straight and narrow. I don't think I have attended an entire class, or been on time for anything. I did, however, have some love for the little nuances of law, the finer points that one must navigate, if only to wallow in self-indulgent patting on back on the cleverness of self and chosen future profession.

And then you get to law school. Here - they actually tell you - be a sheep. Forget the nuances - they don't want that in lawyers. Learn the blackletter law, learn how to apply it. Self indulgent fantasy of brainy self comes crashing through the door. Another intellectual fake. Its all been mostly meaningless. Eire doctrine - took up months in first law school - here is half a page on it. Move on!!!

So, for future law school folks! First, if you don't really want to be a lawyer for the love or the money, get out!!! Second, take Barbri the summer before the lawschool. This will achieve the following.

1. You can see nervous, twitchy, J.D.-holders reaching new lows of neurosis with questions such as "how many flash cards did you do today," take snapshots liberally, seal them in an envelope with a promise to open it after you have graduated, and include a flashcard with giant lettering - I WILL NOT BECOME THIS PERSON!
2. This is the only useful suggestion - get the Barbri outline - keep it for every class and relearn it - and do nothing else - I will make you a personal promise redeemable with a beer (I am not stupid!) that you will graduate with a 3.0 even if you don't read any other books in law school, or go to any class, and you breeze through the bar.*
(You think this is silly, imagine how I feel after going to half the classes, and sort of reading, and now think of the poor sods who actually did the reading before every class.)
3. I can only write in point form.


*This is not a contract, or anything actually enforceable.

boycott amsterdam? what an absurd idea

Capital flows like rivers from melting ice, skies are opened, borders continue to become less meaningful, but not if you carry an Indian passport. I was doing a 4 month study course in Netherlands this spring, and I think I spent more time dealing with bureaucracies than school work. I shall spare people the details - but it involved getting a new birth certificate, getting it stamped by the Chandigarh authorities and the Ministry of External Affairs, and the Dutch embassy. Of course, once I got there, I was asked to apply for a resident card, wait two months for an appointment, asked to pay 500 euros and told that the card would take 6 months, and forbidden to leave Netherlands or travel in other European countries while my resident card was processed. I must apologise to the Dutch, but I was quite happy to leave Netherlands after my course was over - and ask them to stop processing my resident card. I know I am not special - the U.S. is now granting visa appointments in January for people applying now, and myriad other rules. Kafka would have been amused.

Europeans and Americans will probably offer their consistent arguments - security and illegal immigration - as underlying causes for a travelling Indian's predicaments. While I can argue credibly with the effectiveness of strict policies in keeping out people wanting to travel - lets grant the West the benefit of the doubt. I could argue, for example, that though I don't know better, I will bet my next bottle of Black Label that a Saudi, the nation of most 9/11 residents, can get an appointment with the U.S. Embassy faster. But such arguments would be churlish. They must be stringent on who they grant visas for entry. They must be watchful for undesirables entering the country. But do they have to make us practice the Great Indian Rope Trick while they do it. What if we asked Americans in India to go to Nepal to renew an Indian work visa? Rightly, one would laugh at the stupidity of such an enterprise. Last I remember, the U.S. government used to ask Indians working in the U.S. to do so.

Veterans of embassies will accuse me of flogging a dead horse. We all know what is happening, but there is nothing we can do about it. And they are mostly right. If one have to travel for education, visiting relatives, or business - one just has to suck it up. But what if one has a choice. Indians are increasingly major penders of tourist dollars or Euros. The Indian film industry is wooed by one and all for their production budgets. While I was running to pillar to post, the Dutch Prime Minister was at Schipol Airport welcoming Shahrukh Khan to the Indian International Film Awards (IIFA) being held in Amsterdam.

So here is what I propose, and only half in wit. We practice the Great Indian Boycott (a truly Indian invention), against countries who refuse to rationalise the process of granting visas to Indians. We recognize the need for scrutiny - but let it be reasonable and humane. Till it is not, we will not travel for pleasure (or hold film festivals) in the Netherands, in the United States (Readers can add to this list from their own Kafkeskian experiences).

So what if an Indian with means gets the urge for a vacation across seas and national borders. Well, there are plenty of countries less arbitrary and reasonable in their countries. Some even let Indians in without prior visas. Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong in South East Asia (plenty of shopping and beaches); Tanzania and Kenya (nice safaris); Jamaica and Cuba (very nice beaches) comes immediately to mind. (Readers can add to this list).

Any takers?