Unceremonious exits - Leftist media last days...

Sagarika Ghosh and Rajdeep resigned from CNN-IBN in July 2014, both went on to publish books.

Barkha Dutt left  NDTV January 2017, also published a book in 2016.

Karan Thapar left India Today Television in 2017, published a book this year.

Punya Prasoon Bajpai out of ABP this year, will he get into book writing cum BJP bashing business?

Whats common? Rant against Modi, un-viability of traditional TV NEWS business/not able to manage TRP/Profit, emergence of Social media, irrelevance of left/liberal narrative ??? 

Rome & Rebellions

For more than six centuries, Roman empire was able to crush all rebellions and maintained territorial integrity. Almost all rebellions met with same destiny- Defeat.

Though initially successful and  got a decisive victory against three Roman legions in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, Arminius was murdered by opponents within his own tribe.

Illyrian revolt was crushed after 4 years of blockade and counter-insurgency operations.

Boudica poisoned herself in England. Gildo committed suicide by hanging. Jacob and Simon were executed. Mariccus  thrown to the wild animals.

Most successful of them all, Viriatus even forced Romans to acknowledge his independence under a treaty, Romans ultimately got him assassinated. Romans understood te value of treachery rather than open confrontation to defeat rebels. Chinese had the same understanding regarding their barbarian opponents.

Gallic rebel Vercingetorix was imprisoned, publicly paraded in Caesar's triumph and executed after the triumph, probably by strangulation. 

Slave rebellion under Spartacus was successful in its first phase,  Crassus got Six thousand survivors of the revolt crucified, lining the Appian Way from Rome to Capua.

Half a million Jews perished during Bar Kokhba revolt.

Rome always won. Entirely ruthless in achieving their objectives which was always to destroy enemy's ability to resist completely. To eliminate anyone who got into their way.

Buddhist Decline and Islamic Sword

Liberals love Buddhism, Ambedkar became one, its seen as a revolution that challenged Brahminic Hinduism, supposedly more egalitarian, emancipated Dalits (Not proven) etc etc. Why then was it displaced in Central Asia, Afghanistan & medieval India and who displaced them? 

An expanding Islam under Arab leadership drove Buddhism out of Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Let's take case of Nava Vihara- It was a Buddhist monastery near the ancient city of Balkh in northern Afghanistan. Arabs conquered it from Turkisahis around 663 AD. Most of the non-muslims accepted Dhimmi status while one Abbott converted to Islam. In 708 AD, Turkmen king Nazaktar Khan with his Tibetan allies expelled Arabs from Bactria and established a fanatic Buddhist rule there. Arabs wrested Bactria by 715 AD and inflicted heavy damage on Nava Vihara for their role in insurrection.

Mainland India: The main centres of Buddhism had remained in Magadha and Northwest India, were finally destroyed when the Muslims took power in last decade of 12th century, thus destroying great monastic universities in Bihar (Nalanda and Vikramasila) and Bengal.

Khotan continued as one of the centres of Buddhism in Chinese Turkestan till first decade of 11th century. Khotan and Kashgar were considered the gate for all Indian influences in Central Asia. Karakhanid Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan converted to Islam in 934 AD, thus started a long struggle between Islamic Kashgar and Buddhist Khotan. In 1006 AD,KaraKhanid ruler Yusuf Kadir Khan of Kashgar conquered Khotan, ending Khotan's existence as an independent Buddhist state.

Anti-Buddhist sentiment is well-captured in a Kashgari folk song-

....We came down on them like a flood, We went out among their cities, We tore down the idol-temples, We sat on the Buddha's head..

So Balkh, Khotan, Nalanda all lost to sword of Islam, never recovered. Now, why would Hindus be blamed for their destruction?

Today’s excerpt- The Command of the Ocean by N. A. M. Rodger

History of British navy that mastered the oceans, controlled global trade and became world ruler. On India (Comments in red are mine)-

.....The favourite hunting-ground of these Anglo-American pirates was the Indian Ocean, where trade was rich and European warships scarce. Basing themselves in Madagascar or other islands, they preyed especially on Indian ships. The ‘Great Mughul’ Aurangzeb, emperor of India, naturally complained to the English East India Company, which depended entirely on his licences to trade; while the VOC maliciously encouraged the Mughals to think that all pirates were English, and all Englishmen were pirates. In 1690 the company’s trade was stopped in retaliation for English piracy. In 1695 the pirate Henry Avery took the Great Mughal’s own ship the Ganj-i-Salwai, carrying pilgrims to Mecca, whom the pirates raped and killed. (Great Mughals had no naval deterrence, English were pirates operating in Indian ocean lured by the treasure fleets of the Indian Moghul rulers)

This time the company had to undertake to escort Mughal shipping to get its privileges restored. Then three East Indiamen mutinied and turned pirate, and in January 1698 Captain William Kidd took the Indian ship Quedah Merchant (whose cargo belonged partly to a Mughal minister) off Cochin. By 1701 the East India Company was on the verge of destruction, but at home the political tide was turning against the Whigs, and the activities of men like Kidd were becoming an embarrassment. Arrested on his return to New York, he was hanged in London in May 1701.

The English domestic economy still depended overwhelmingly on agriculture and woollen cloth, but English (and now Scottish) merchants imported, and in large measure re-exported to Europe, greater and greater quantities of sugar and tobacco from the West Indian and American colonies, cotton from India and silk from China. These were long-distance ‘rich trades’, earning large profits but requiring large capital and advanced skills in banking, insurance and the management of shipping. (Yes, Navy & Financial markets are two innovation that we could have learnt from British, not Democracy/Secularism/Tea/Cricket as many fiberals peddle)

...To a greater and greater extent, Britain’s real wealth was generated, and seen to be generated, from a maritime system in which overseas trade created the income which paid for the Navy, merchant shipping trained the seamen which manned it, so that the Navy in turn could protect trade and the country. Much was still to be learned about how best to do both, but few informed observers in 1714 would have disputed Lord Haversham’s judgement that ‘Your trade is the mother and nurse of your seamen; your seamen are the life of your fleet; and your fleet is the security and protection of your trade: and both together are the wealth, strength, security and glory of Britain.’

...Sulphur was imported from Italy, while saltpetre, still scarce in the 1650s, was imported from India by the East India Company. (The British Empire owed much of its strength to ready supplies of saltpeter obtained from India, an important raw material for Gun Powder, this part have not got as much attention as cotton/Opium)

......When RearAdmiral Charles Watson arrived at Bombay in 1755 his first task was to second the East India Company’s own little navy, the ‘Bombay Marine’, in a campaign against Mahratta sea power on the Malabar Coast, where Angria (the Mahratta admiral) was a standing threat to coasting trade, and sometimes even to the big East Indiamen. The Company’s ships had already taken the Mahratta port of Severndroog in 1755; in February 1756 Watson and Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Clive launched an amphibious assault on Angria’s main base of Gheria. This succeeded, where all previous assaults had failed, because Watson had adequate charts, surveyed especially for the operation, which allowed him to work his big ships through the shoals and alongside Angria’s fortifications. (Angrias resisted British Navy from the time of Shivaji and were successful to some extent)

The only British dry dock overseas did not belong to the Navy (though warships freely used it), but to the East India Company at Bombay, where the tidal range was just sufficient to dock ships of the line. Opened in 1754, made double during the Seven Years’ War and triple in 1773, it was an essential support of British naval supremacy in the Indian Ocean. (We could not learn this from British..still struggling to build ships, Chinese are already here, anyway we learnt secular/liberal values)

The third was the hope of establishing bases useful in wartime, particularly those from which expeditions could be despatched to open up Spanish South America, whose unproductive wealth and neglected commercial opportunities were an article of faith among British policy-makers. In pursuit of one or more of these ideas, surveys of the Indian Ocean were set in motion which identified harbours of potential importance in Diego Garcia in the Chagos Archipelago (midway between Mauritius and India), the Andaman Islands and Nancowry Island in the Nicobars (both on the windward side of the Bay of Bengal in winter-time).

..the great conquests of Marquis Wellesley (and his brother Sir Arthur Wellesley) as Governor-General of India from 1798 to 1805, which (at the cost of almost bankrupting the East India Company) had created a new British Indian empire and a British Indian army. By persuading their Indian troops that they might make sea voyages without losing caste, the British acquired in the East what they never had in Europe: a major field army available for overseas operations....

...Besides, Britain had acquired a new overseas empire, but not from its European enemies. It was in India that the conquests of Cornwallis and Wellesley carved out a new empire for the East India Company, which by 1818 had annual tax revenues of £18 million (one-third of Britain’s) and an army of 180,000 men. This empire was self-supporting, though its trade and connection with Britain of course depended entirely on command of the sea.

Lalu Prasad Yadav- Ruin of Bihar Economy

In 1980s, Bihar failed to grow fast enough to keep up with the rest of the country. Bihar’s recorded a growth rate of 2.3%, while India’s averaged 3.2% during 1980s. Then Lalu Yadav came to power in 1990 which coincided with the onset of the Economic liberalization. Bihar continued to decline, bottoming out at 32% in 2005. Since then, there has been a recovery, the recovery was coincided with onset of Chief Ministership of Nitish Kumar supported by BJP.

Bihar’s NDP per capita relative to India’s                                                                            

Economic Ruin of India by Nehru-Gandhi Dynasty

Average Annual Percentage Rates of Growth in Per Capita Income (1950-80)

Indian grew the lowest among all major Asian economies consistently for 30 years. Yes, we had wars, droughts and economic paralysis thanks to British rule. Then, same can be said about Japan, Korea and China who went through worst of World War 2, Korean War, or Nuclear holocaust in case of Japan. That's two generations wasted due to faulty economic policies.

Indian Critiques of Gandhi

I recently read Indian Critiques of Gandhi (State University of New York Press, 2003). I loved this book, especially the following chapters:

-Gandhi, Ambedkar, and Untouchability

-Sri Aurobindo’s Dismissal of Gandhi and His Nonviolence

-The Hindu Mahasabha and Gandhi

-Indian Muslim Critiques of Gandhi,

That said, here are some of my favorite quotes from the chapter- Indian Muslim Critiques of Gandhi by Roland E. Miller (Author of Mappila Muslims Of Kerala).

… Indian Muslim views of Gandhi were marked by a “stutter-step,” even a “flip-flop” quality, rather than by an even flow.

“I consider the satyagraha movement to be practically impossible and wholly unprofitable. . . . Except some isolated people, I consider Mussalmans generally absolutely unfit to act on the principles of satyagraha.” MukhtarAhmad Ansari

...P. C. Chaudhury summarizes Ansari’s influence in these words: “It was practically through Dr. Ansari and Hakim Ajmal Khan that Gandhiji could get into the inner enclave of the orthodox and cultured Muslims of Delhi, and through them of Northern India.

...Yet we know that Azad disagreed with Gandhi, most notably in the final acceptance of India’s division, a moment when Azad’s silence spoke louder than words.

....Azad did not accept Gandhi’s ahilsa as “an absolute value.” He held to the validity of defensive force and the idea of just war, and believed that the Prophet Muhammad provided the true example for the appropriate use of force.

…when I interviewed a revered leader of the Mappila intellectual renaissance and a former university vice chancellor he stated that there were three things that bothered Kerala Muslims about Gandhi: his stubbornness, his religious revivalism, and his virtual abandonment of the Mappilas.

Before coming to Calicut, in a speech at Shajahanpur on May 5, 1920, Shaukat Ali stated, “I tell you that to kill and to be killed in the way of God are both satyagraha. To lay down our lives in the way of God for righteousness and to destroy the life of the tyrant who stands in the way of righteousness, are both very great service to God. But we have promised to co-operate with Mr.Gandhi who is with us. . . . If this fails, the Mussalmans will decide what to do.”

Shivaji's Utsav by Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath composed the poem “Shivaji’s Utsav”, inspired by the Shivaji festival introduced by Balgangadhar Tilak in Bengal. In Shivaji’s Utsav, he glorified Shivaji’s aim and ideal as eternal truth of freedom and priceless heritage of India. 

Shivaji has been a favorite of Vishwaguru. In 1897, he wrote a poem “Pratinidhi” where he sand paean to the idealized form of kingship which was preached by saint Ramdas to his disciple Shivaji.

In the introduction to “Shivaji o Maratha jati” (1908) written by Sarat kumar Roy, Rabindranth wrote, “the whole Maharashtra was deeply plunged in intense religious fervor and Shivaji emerged out of that movement. For this reason while he was blessed by the united power of his nation, it becomes true in viceversa. If shivaji was a mere genius in robbery and used his powers  for his self-interest, it  could never unite the whole Maratha nation."

Following  are the excerpts from the poem Sivaji's Utsav:

In what far away century on what unmarked day

I no longer know today

Upon what mountain peak, in darkened forests,

Oh King Shivaji,

Did this thought light up your brow as a touch of lightning

As it came to thee –

“The scattered parts of this land with one religion

‘ Shall I bind for eternity.”

Bengal did not stir that day in the midst of a dream,

It had not received the word –

It did not answer thy call, nor heralded it

With the blowing of the sacred conch –

Instead it spread its shielding veil

Its robes of verdant green

Over the slumbering village folk at night

Gathering them to her breast.

Then one day from the fields of Mahrattha

Your thunderous flame

Painted the horizons all about with flames of violent change

Imbued with a great clarion call.

The crown upon the Mughal’s brow was shaken by storm

As is a ripening leaf –

Even that day Bengal did not hear that thunderous Marattha call

Nor heed the message within.

After that in the midst of turbulent darkness

The palace of Delhi was emptied –

In each of their great halls ravenous night

Began engulfing the brilliance of light.

The corpse craving vultures cackled in hideous tones

As the glory of the Mughals

Finally succumbed to the pyre- in handfuls of ashes

Are their remains retained.

That day in this Bengal by the side of the traders route

Upon silent steps

The merchants secretly smuggled in perfidy

The throne that had once housed kings.

And Bengal anointed that very same seat with the water of its own Ganges

In secretive silence –

The weighing scales that had once measured profit refashioned through that dark night

Till at dawn a sceptre was held in the hands of a new king.

Where were you that day, Oh thoughtful brave Mahrattha,

Why did we not hear thy name!

Where lay your saffron flag crushed to dust –

What a terrible end!

The foreigner tells your story laughing you off as a bandit king

Roaring with mirth at your fall –

Your devoted effort now seen as a thief’s fruitless quest,

This is how they know you today.

Silence your garrulous words, false account

Thou art filled with lies,

Your writ shall be erased by the truth the Creator scribes

That alone shall prevail.

For how will the truth that is for immortality bound

Be disguised by the avarice of your tongue?

The prayers that are true will never be stalled

In the three worlds this I know to be true.

Oh brave royal penitent, the greatness of thought

That you have left for fate to treasure

Not one grain of that will

Be lost to the undeserving.

The sacrifice you made at the altar of the goddess who guards our land

The truth that you strove for relentless,

Who would have thought that it will grace till the end of days

The coffers of this land of ours.

For long did you remain unknown to the world, ascetic king of mine,

Among the peaks

Just as a stream breaks through the rocks to awaken with rain

In full spate,

You too emerged – to the surprise of the world who thought,

This pennant that

Hides the skies, what shape had it sought

Where was it secreted away for so long.

Strategic Depth

How to define Strategic depth- the space a combatant can exploit beyond its core territories or the internal distance within a state from the frontline to its centre of gravity or Heartland, its core population areas or important cities or industrial installations.

For Russia, Caspian Sea could be about strategic depth as its launched long-range Kalibr cruise missiles from the sea to targets in Syria (more than 1000 miles away).

After World war II, the Soviet Union created the strategic depth it needed to guard against a western invasion by occupying Poland and the Baltic states. Fast forward to 2017, Sweden and Finland are coming together to create their own strategic depth to counter Russia. The Swedish Air Force could allow Finland to use its bases in case Finland have to withdraw its forces in the face of an invasion by Russia. 

Iran and activities of its proxies is another case of cultivation of strategic depth. The Iranian regime sees Syria and Lebanon as its strategic depth. It is funding a plethora of paramilitary proxies, which have become the primary agents of regional instability in countries like Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Take Pakistan for example, well-known for its strategic depth play. For Pakistan, Afghanistan represents strategic depth against its enemy number one India. Pakistan thinks it must ensure a friendly government on its western border in the event of a military clash against India to gain space for retreat and reorganization. 

But Afghanistan has no such notion, to Quote former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, "India provides emotional strategic depth to the Afghan people".

In Africa Sudan and Eritrea are cases of strategic depth for Egypt. In the words of Ahmoud Diaa, national security counsellor (Egypt), "Sudan is an important country for Egypt and represents an important strategic depth for Egypt, and we are one nation". Eritrea is important player for security of the Red Sea.

Arab countries, historically a guarantor of strategic depth for Palestinian rejectionist forces while lack of strategic depth is a dominant narrative in Israel. 

Mr Ahmet Davutoglu in his book, “Strategic Depth”, advocates a new policy of rebuilding ties round the former Ottoman empire.

So Geography, no less than History, is equally important for prospects of viable peace.

Case of two Évolués

Wikipedia defines Évolué as a French label used during the colonial era to refer to a native African or Asian who had "evolved" by becoming Europeanised through education or assimilation and had accepted European values and patterns of behavior. Anglicized in case of Indians.

Patricia Crone in "The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran" talks about two Évolués- 1.Non-Arabs like Iranians or Berbers (conquered and ruled by Arabs in seventh and early eighth centuries) and 2. Indians (ruled by British, a proxy for Europeans). She raises  a pertinent question:

 "Why did the Arab and European expansions have such different effects on the conquered peoples? Both provoked nativist revolts, but the frequency seems to have been greater on the European than the Muslim side. Also both had to cope with angry évolués, but it was only on the European side that these évolués aimed at secession with reference to their own separate identity.

Non-Arab évolués accepted Islam and the political unity it had brought while évolués of the European empires accepted the secular culture brought by the Europeans, but not the political unity they had established. Why this difference?"

Firstly, Arabs propounded Imamate while Europeans offered Nation State. Nationalism links political organisation with people’s separate identities, emphasizing ethnic or racial differences. On the contrary, the Imamate links political organisation with shared convictions, emphasizing faith that transcends such distinctions, having supranational connotation. For example, Muslim rulers continued to get the certificate, banner and robe of honour from Caliphs which sanctified their rule over infidels unlike British who viewed Indian as a distinct nation; albeit an inferior one.

Secondly, unlike the converts to the secular culture of the Europeans the many who converted to Islam became members of the same political and moral community as the conquerors (ummah). A non-Arab Muslim was not just an évolué but also a citizen. Conversion admitted vanquished natives to the ranks of the imperial elite more or less at will. Say a convert could found a Islamic kingdom and get certificate from Caliph. Say a Bahmani Kingdom and or a Malik Kafur.

As the Author says- "Westernisation did not confer membership of the conquerors’ polity. Nehru may have been the last Englishman to rule India, as he told Galbraith with reference to his thoroughly English culture; but he ruled India precisely because he had participated in the eviction of the British, not because he had received British citizenship or appointment as viceroy of India from them. Westernisation never amounted to membership of the imperial elite."

Évolués like Nehru (or most of the Indian Middle class for that matter) did not belong anywhere; they were politically homeless.