Varanasi in the time of terror

This is an edited piece of “Varanasi in the time of terror”, written by Ms. Vidya Subrahmaniam for The Hindu; it appeared in the July 26, 2006 online edition of the news paper. For the full article, go to http://www.hindu.com/2006/07/26/stories/2006072602271000.htm

State action against terrorism will succeed if Muslims have the confidence that the community as a whole will not be called to account for terror executed by a few. Communal harmony is not a pseudo-secular cliché, it is a necessity in the aftermath of terror, and for proof there is Varanasi.

Calm returned to Varanasi…within hours of the March 7 bomb blasts. The primary target was the outlying Sankat Mochan temple — a quaintly uplifting shrine, large of heart and eclectic in spirit, much like Varanasi itself. The strike on the temple was intended to inflame passions, to pit injured Hindu religious sentiment against perceived Muslim savagery. But Varanasi rose so superbly to the occasion that columnists doffed their hats to its indomitable strength, marvelling at a people who said they were nothing without their composite culture. Kashi Nagri, of the conjoined Vishwanath temple and Gyanvapi mosque, of Hindus and Muslims as silken in manner and speech as the beautiful Banarasi saree, and as interlinked as its warp and weft, became a byword for peace and harmony.


The Varanasi example

This is not political correctness, and for proof there is Varanasi, where two men of religion, one Hindu, the other Muslim, showed the way to mutual trust, the amazing spin-off from which includes voluntary Muslim action to regulate the functioning of madrassas, searching questions within the community on the place of terrorism in Islam, and, above all, the ringing denunciation of terrorism by Islamic scholars belonging to different schools

The process was started by Veer Bhadra Misra, the learned Mahant of the Sankat Mochan temple, who today commands an iconic following among Muslims for his expert management of the post-blast fallout. Having reopened the temple within hours of the blast and resumed puja and aarti, the Mahant did the one thing that needed to be done — eviction from the complex of those looking to start trouble, among them the volatile Vinay Katiyar.

The return to normality was essential to prevent communal distrust. The Mahant was to find a friend in Abdul Batin Nomani, Mufti-e-Benaras and Imam of the Gyanvapi mosque. The first Sunday after the blast, the young Muslim priest was in the temple, receiving ganga jal from the Mahant. The Mahant and the Mufti jointly visited hospitals and attended to the comfort of the injured. Inspired by them, leaders from both communities, including a dozen or so Muslim clerics, followed suit.

Four months after the Mahant and the Mufti joined hands in an affirmation of Hindu-Muslim solidarity, the tentative "reaching out" has flowered into a movement the impact of which is plain to see. Joint campaigns, composite music festivals, seminars on communal amity, invitations to the Mahant from Muslims and to the Mufti from Hindus, and the incredible sight of burqa-clad women reciting the Hanuman Chalisa at the Sankat Mochan temple — it is competitive secularism of a kind rarely seen, wonderfully elevating, and all the more special for daring to take root on holy soil defiled by terrorists intending to spread doubt and disharmony.

Is this merely showcase cohabitation? How long will it be before another bomb blast, or a deliberate provocation from a disgruntled element from either side, disrupts this joyous celebration of unity? Communal harmony is easier extolled in seminars than achieved on the ground, and to pretend that Varanasi's unique experiment has no detractors would be to oversimplify the achievement.

The Mufti received flak from orthodox Muslims for his foray into the temple to accept ganga jal as did the Muslim women who recited the Hanuman Chalisa. The Mahant is a disliked figure among Hindu extremists. But as the Mufti told The Hindu, "terrorism, fundamentalism, are all threats to communal harmony. The important thing is that we have understood and defeated that design. We have emerged stronger from terrorism. Today Varanasi is a model of communal amity. Let other cities follow our example."

Faced with terror, Kashi Nagri showed courage, returned to normal, and embraced peace. It does not matter to Varanasi's Muslims that the state pursues Islamist militants. Spunk and harmony may not foil terrorism, but they do foil the design to divide and disrupt.

Activesync 4.2 is here

Microsoft has posted a new version of Activesync on its web site. Changes in ActiveSync 4.2 help solve connectivity-related problems with Microsoft Outlook, proxies, partnerships, and connectivity.

For more details, or to download ActiveSync 4.2, visit Microsoft's web site. This is a free update.


For Windows Mobile 5.0 Only

Microsoft suggests that only those using Windows Mobile 5.0 handhelds and smartphones use the latest version of this software.

Those with handhelds or smartphones running earlier versions of this operating system might be happier with ActiveSync 3.8, as the newer versions lack several features some people may have become accustomed to.

For security reasons, it is no longer possible to synchronize over a Wi-Fi connection, for example. It still allows users to synchronize via Bluetooth, though.
Despite the drawbacks, there are some advantages to ActiveSync 4.2, like integration with Windows Media Player on the desktop.

Those running Windows Mobile 5.0 must use ActiveSync 4.0 or above.

Upsetting the apple cart?

In a June 14 op-ed article in the Washington Post, “Rethinking Nuclear Safeguards”, Mohamed ElBaradei, the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has stated that “…under the NPT, there is no such thing as a "legitimate" or "illegitimate" nuclear weapons state. The fact that five states are recognized in the treaty as holders of nuclear weapons was regarded as a matter of transition; the treaty does not in any sense confer permanent status on those states as weapons holders.”

Mr. ElBaradei points out that the three states outside the NPT who have weapons (India, Pakistan and Israel) are not going to give them up and therefore suggests to the international community that “Either we begin finding creative, outside-the-box solutions or the international nuclear safeguards regime [NPT] will become obsolete.”


(Since its creation, the five Nuclear Weapons States (NWS) have touted the NPT as litmus. If you weren’t a NWS by 1968, when this treaty was formalized, you could not have any nuclear weapons. Other countries were coaxed to sign it, which meant that they agreed not to build any nuclear weapons, and, in return, they were given means to run civilian nuclear programs.

The basic premise of the NPT was, and is, that since nuclear power is lethal and dangerous, and not every Tom, Dick and Harry should be allowed to have one. It can be argued that the five NWS wanted to have this nuclear edge in power, and found a way, through NPT, to refuse any more members to this exclusive club. In that sense, the NPT is discriminatory.

This was pointed out by India (and therefore Pakistan too, of course), and it refused to sign the NPT (as did Pakistan, no wonder!). Consequently, after the first nuclear test by India in 1974, the US congress enacted laws that punished India, by refusing it access to nuclear fuel or technology. After the second test in 1998, further restrictions were imposed, and Pakistan joined the sanctions after in followed India in testing its own device.

The fact that the existing NWS were supposed to have progressively reduced their nuclear armaments under the treaty has been overlooked.)


The article tackles the necessity of the US-India nuclear cooperation deal. Under this deal, the United States will amend its laws that will provide waiver specifically to India to exchange nuclear technology.

In addition, the US will lobby the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) to export nuclear fuel to India. Further, since India is not a signatory to the NPT, the IAEA will have to come up with India specific safeguards that will allow it to inspect the civilian Indian nuclear reactors.

Mr. ElBaradei is well respected as the head of the IAEA, and enjoys the confidence of all the major powers, including that of the US Administration. He is a qualified international lawyer and an expert in public international law; he and the agency won the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize. Whatever he says carries a lot of weight.

Under the NPT, India and Pakistan are treated as illegitimate NWS. Even though Mr. ElBaradei is correct under the international law, why would he make such a radial statement and not let the illusion legitimacy under the NPT continue? Why would he permit a new interpretation of the NPT?


Especially now, with concerns of proliferation ever higher, the fear of ‘dirty’ bombs getting in the hands of non-state actors soaring, and the reality of ‘dangerous’ countries like North Korea and Iran either already being a NWS or aspiring to become one?

I would very much doubt that he made these statements without the nod of some of the major players. The arguments in the article support the position of the Indian government and the Bush Administration.

Of the five major NWS, only China is the one to lose from India becoming a de facto ‘legitimate’ NWS, because it would dilute its regional supremacy. This, in itself, could be one reason why the other four (UK, France, Russia and US) may want the Indo-US nuclear deal to go through.

Besides, there is a lot of money to be made by private corporations and the governments of the NWS and NSG by transferring technology, selling fuel and building nuclear plants in India. Does Halliburton deal with this stuff too?

The Indo-US deal is now before Congress. It is interesting to note that the Administration is pulling all punches to get it through, despite some early reservations by many representatives of both parties.

Either Mr. Bush wants to be remembered as the President who opened the gateway to India (like Nixon’s China legacy) or he is finally recognizing what the US should have had, a long time ago.

Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka?

Is it the 21st century in India yet? India may be shining, but not in Kerala. According to the newindpress.com, “The Travancore Devaswom Board, which manages the hill shrine of Lord Ayyappa at Sabarimala, on Monday informed the Kerala High Court that it proposed to order a vigilance enquiry into the alleged defilement of the temple idol by Kannada actress Jaimala.”

This is because “The revelation by the actress that she had visited the temple when she was in her late twenties and touched the idol has sparked off a row, as women devotees between 10-50 age group are barred from offering worship at the shrine.”

It will be interesting to see what the reaction Indians in general and of the BJP (the Hindu Nationalist party) in particular, will be to this news.

This gender discrimination is not limited to this temple alone. According to the Hindustan Times, “Harking back to the same ‘traditional’ not-for-women-for-their-own-good argument, women pilots in the Indian Air Force are denied the right to operate/fly fighter aircraft. Reasons cited include ‘concerns’ that in the event of being captured as PoW[s], women will receive a worse deal than their male counterparts. The message is clear: women can storm male bastions only to the extent that they are ‘allowed to’.”

If Indians are anxious to be a global force of significance, they have to shed this thinking. They have to treat their Constitution, which allows equal opportunity for all, more than a piece of paper.

Not all Justices are lapdogs of Bush

On June 30 2006, the Financial Times ran a headline: “Justices prove to be no lapdogs of Bush”. It said so because “The US Supreme Court that dealt a historic blow this week to the executive powers of the Bush administration was, ironically, a court dominated by Republicans, and headed by a brand new chief justice hand-picked by President George W. Bush.”

Well, not quite.

As could be predicted, the arch conservatives of the Court (Justices Alito, Scalia and Thomas), voted in dissent of the judgment that the military commissions that the Bush Administration planned to use to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay Naval base in Cuba, were unauthorized by statute and violated a provision of the Geneva Convention.

Chief Justice Roberts (the fourth arch conservative) did not participate in the case as he had heard it in a lower court, where he had voted to uphold the legality of military commissions. However, even if he would have voted, it would not have made a difference in the outcome.

Four moderate-liberal or liberal justices (Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter and Stevens) were the ones who voted for the ruling, which became the majority opinion because of Justice Kennedy, a moderate-conservative, also voted for it.

The headline should have read: “Some Justices prove to be no lapdogs of Bush”, or "Only some Justices prove to be lapdogs of Bush". I am surprised that the Brits can make such errors in the English language!