Jawaharlal, do you want Kashmir, or do you want to give it away?

This eye witness account by Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw M C, of the accession of Kashmir and the subsequent half way cease fire, before the objective was acheived, (the root cause of the Kashmir problem, ever since ) will interest you a great deal. Sam Manekshaw, the first field marshal in the Indian army, was at the ringside of events when Independent India was being formed. Then a colonel, he was chosen to accompany V. P. Menon on his historic mission to Kashmir. This is his version of that journey and its aftermath, as recorded in an interview with Prem Shankar Jha*.

‘Jawaharlal, do you want Kashmir, or do you want to give it away?’

“At about 2.30 in the afternoon, General Sir Roy Bucher walked into my room and said, ‘Eh, you, go and pick up your toothbrush. You are going to Srinagar with V. P. Menon. The flight will take off at about 4 o’clock’.

I said, ‘why me, sir?’

‘Because we are worried about the military situation..’

‘V. P. Menon was going there to get the accession from the Maharaja and Mahajan. I flew in with V. P. Menon in a Dakota. Wing Commander Dewan, who was then Squadron Leader Dewan, was also there. But his job did not have anything to do with assessing the military situation. He was sent by the Air Force because it was the Air Force which was flying us in. Since I was in the Directorate of Military Operations, and was responsible for current operations all over India, West Frontier, the Punjab, and elsewhere, I knew what the situation in Kashmir was. I knew that the tribesmen had come in – initially only the tribesmen – supported by the Pakistanis.’

‘Fortunately for us, and for Kashmir, they were busy raiding, raping all along. In Baramulla, they killed Colonel D. O. T. Dykes. Dykes and I were of the same seniority. We did our first year’s attachment with the Royal Scots in Lahore, way back in 1934-5. Tom went to the Sikh Regiment. I went to the Frontier Force Regiment. We’d lost contact with each other. He’d become a Lieutenant Colonel. I’d become a full Colonel.’

‘Tom and his wife were holidaying in Baramulla when the tribesmen killed them. The Maharaja’s forces were 50 per cent Muslim and 50 per cent Dogra. The Muslim elements had revolted and joined the Pakistani forces. This was the broad military situation. The tribesmen were believed to be about 7 to 9 kilometers from Srinagar. I was sent into get the precise military situation. The Army knew that if we had to send soldiers, we would have to fly them in. Therefore, a few days before, we had made arrangements for aircraft and for soldiers to be ready.’

‘But we couldn’t fly them in until the state of Kashmir had acceded to India. From the political side, Sardar Patel and V. P. Menon had been dealing with Mahajan and the Maharaja, and the idea was that V. P. Menon would get the Accession, I would bring back the military appreciation and report to the government. The troops were already at the airport, ready to be flown in.’

‘Air Chief Marshall Elmhurst was the Air Chief and he had made arrangements for the aircraft from civil and military sources. Anyway, we were flown in. We went to Srinagar. We went to the palace. I have never seen such disorganisation in my life. The Maharaja was running about from one room to the other. I have never seen so much jewellery in my life – pearl necklaces, ruby things, lying in one room; packing here, there, everywhere. There was a convoy of vehicles.’

‘The Maharaja was coming out of one room, and going into another saying, Alright, if India doesn’t help, I will go and join my troops and fight (it) out’. I couldn’t restrain myself, and said, That will raise their morale sir. Eventually, I also got the military situation from everybody around us, asking what the hell was happening, and discovered that the tribesmen were about 7 or 9 kilometres from what was then that horrible little airfield.

‘V. P. Menon was in the meantime discussing with Mahajan and the Maharaja. Eventually the Maharaja signed the accession papers and we flew back in the Dakota late at night. There were no night facilities, and the people who were helping us to fly back, to light the airfield, were Sheikh Abdullah, Kasim Sahib, Sadiq Sahib, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed, D P Dhar with pine torches, and we flew back to Delhi. I can’t remember the exact time. It must have been 3 o’clock or 4 o’clock in the morning.’

‘On arriving at Delhi the first thing I did was to go and report to Sir Roy Bucher. He said, ‘Eh, you, go and shave and clean up. There is a cabinet meeting at 9 o’clock. I will pick you up and take you there.’ So I went home, shaved, dressed, etc. and Roy Bucher picked me up, and we went to the cabinet meeting. The cabinet meeting was presided by Mountbatten. There was Jawaharlal Nehru, there was Sardar Patel, there was Sardar Baldev Singh. There were other Ministers whom I did not know and did not want to know, because I had nothing to do with them. Sardar Baldev Singh I knew because he was the Minister for Defence, and I knew Sardar Patel, because Patel would insist that V. P. Menon take me with him to the various states.’

‘Almost every morning the Sardar would sent for V. P., H. M. Patel and Myself. While Maniben (Patel’s daughter and de- facto secretary) would sit cross-legged with a Parker fountain pen taking notes, Patel would say, V. P., I want Baroda. Take him with you. I was the bogeyman. So I got to know the Sardar very well.’

‘At the morning meeting he handed over the (Accession) thing. Mountbatten turned around and said, ‘Come on Manekji (He called me Manekji instead of Manekshaw), what is the Military situation?’ I gave him the Military situation, and told him that unless we flew in troops immediately, we would have lost Srinagar, because going by road would take days, and once the tribesmen got to the airport and Srinagar, we couldn’t fly troops in. Everything was ready at the airport.’

‘As usual Nehru talked about the United Nations, Russia, Africa, God almighty, everybody, until Sardar Patel lost his temper. He said, ‘Jawaharlal, do you want Kashmir, or do you want to give it away’. He (Nehru) said, ‘ Of course, I want Kashmir (emphasis in original). Then he (Patel) said ‘Please give your orders’. And before he could say anything Sardar Patel turned to me and said, ‘You have got your orders’.’

‘I walked out, and we started flying in troops at about 11 o’clock or 12 o’clock. I think it was the Sikh regiment under Ranjit Rai that was the first lot to be flown in. And then we continued flying troops in. That is all I know about what happened. Then all the fighting took place. I became a brigadier, and became director of military operations and also if you will see the first signal to be signed ordering the cease-fire on 1 January (1949) had been signed by Colonel Manekshaw on behalf of C-in-C India, General Sir Roy Bucher. That must be lying in the Military Operations Directorate.

*Excerpted from Kashmir 1947, Rival Versions of History, by Prem Shankar Jha, Oxford University Press, 1996, Rs 275*

Iran, Obama & Controversy…

Poor Barack Obama. He must be wondering what he ever did to face these extreme levels of scrutiny in anything & everything that he does or doesn’t. Given that his campaign was tech savvy, he still wouldn’t have been ready for this kind of an onslaught.

A fly flies into his face during and interview on prime time national television – he shoos it away, but the fly (much like his problems) keeps zooming back into his face until he kills it in a swift stroke of his hand. And immediately, as if on cue, PETA swoops in on their next victim for their share of 15 minutes on prime time television. God, just leave him alone – we all do it! Well, in India (and in several 3rd world countries) mosquitoes actually kill humans!! Guess that’s beyond PETA’s Focus Areas.

Why Nathuram Godse killed M. K. Gandhi…

The statement that you are about to read is the last made by Godse before the Court on the 5th of May 1949. Such was the power and eloquence of this statement that one of the judges, G. D. Khosla, later wrote, “I have, however, no doudt that had the audience of that day been constituted into a jury and entrusted with the task of deciding Godse’s appeal, they would have brought a verdict of ‘not Guilty’ by an overwhelming majority”

“Born in a devotional Brahmin family, I instinctively came to revere Hindu religion, Hindu history and Hindu culture. I had, therefore, been intensely proud of Hinduism as a whole. As I grew up I developed a tendency to free thinking unfettered by any superstitious allegiance to any isms, political or religious. That is why I worked actively for the eradication of untouchability and the caste system based on birth alone. I openly joined anti-caste movements and maintained that all Hindus were of equal status as to rights, social and religious and should be considered high or low on merit alone and not through the accident of birth in a particular caste or profession. I used publicly to take part in organized anti-caste dinners in which thousands of Hindus, Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, Chamars and Bhangis participated. We broke the caste rules and dined in the company of each other. I have read the speeches and writings of Dadabhai Naoroji, Vivekanand, Gokhale, Tilak, along with the books of ancient and modern history of India and some prominent countries like England, France, America and Russia. Moreover I studied the tenets of Socialism and Marxism. But above all I studied very closely whatever Veer Savarkar and Gandhiji had written and spoken, as to my mind these two ideologies have contributed more to the moulding of the thought and action of the Indian people during the last thirty years or so, than any other single factor has done.“

 ”All this reading and thinking led me to believe it was my first duty to serve Hindudom and Hindus both as a patriot and as a world citizen. To secure the freedom and to safeguard the just interests of some thirty crores (300 million) of Hindus would automatically constitute the freedom and the well-being of all India, one fifth of human race. This conviction led me naturally to devote myself to the Hindu Sanghtanist ideology and programme, which alone, I came to believe, could win and preserve the national Independence of Hindustan, my Motherland, and enable her to render true service to humanity as well.“

“Since the year 1920, that is, after the demise of Lokamanya Tilak, Gandhiji’s influence in the Congress first increased and then became supreme. His activities for public awakening were phenomenal in their intensity and were reinforced by the slogan of truth and non-violence which he paraded ostentatiously before the country. No sensible or enlightened person could object to those slogans. In fact there is nothing new or original in them. They are implicit in every constitutional public movement. But it is nothing but a mere dream if you imagine that the bulk of mankind is, or can ever become, capable of scrupulous adherence to these lofty principles in its normal life from day to day.” 

“In fact, honour, duty and love of one’s own kith and kin and country might often compel us to disregard non-violence and to use force. I could never conceive that an armed resistance to an aggression is unjust. I would consider it a religious and moral duty to resist and, if possible, to overpower such an enemy by use of force. [In the Ramayana] Rama killed Ravana in a tumultuous fight and relieved Sita.. [In the Mahabharata] , Krishna killed Kansa to end his wickedness; and Arjuna had to fight and slay quite a number of his friends and relations including the revered Bhishma because the latter was on the side of the aggressor. It is my firm belief that in dubbing Rama, Krishna and Arjuna as guilty of violence, the Mahatma betrayed a total ignorance of the springs of human action. In more recent history, it was the heroic fight put up by Chhatrapati Shivaji that first checked and eventually destroyed the Muslim tyranny in India. It was absolutely essentially for Shivaji to overpower and kill an aggressive Afzal Khan, failing which he would have lost his own life. In condemning history’s towering warriors like Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Guru Gobind Singh as misguided patriots, Gandhiji has merely exposed his self-conceit. He was, paradoxical as it may appear, a violent pacifist who brought untold calamities on the country in the name of truth and non-violence, while Rana Pratap, Shivaji and the Guru will remain enshrined in the hearts of their countrymen for ever for the freedom they brought to them.”

“The accumulating provocation of thirty-two years, culminating in his last pro-Muslim fast, at last goaded me to the conclusion that the existence of Gandhi should be brought to an end immediately. Gandhi had done very good in South Africa to uphold the rights and well-being of the Indian community there. But when he finally returned to India he developed a subjective mentality under which he alone was to be the final judge of what was right or wrong. If the country wanted his leadership, it had to accept his infallibility; if it did not, he would stand aloof from the Congress and carry on his own way. Against such an attitude there can be no halfway house. Either Congress had to surrender its will to his and had to be content with playing second fiddle to all his eccentricity, whimsicality, metaphysics and primitive vision, or it had to carry on without him. He alone was the Judge of everyone and every thing; he was the master brain guiding the civil disobedience movement; no other could know the technique of that movement.The most dictatorial He alone knew when to begin and when to withdraw it. The movement might succeed or fail, it might bring untold disaster and political reverses but that could make no difference to the Mahatma’s infallibility. ‘A Satyagrahi can never fail’ was his formula for declaring his own infallibility and nobody except himself knew what a Satyagrahi is. Thus, the Mahatma became the judge and jury in his own cause. These childish insanities and obstinacies, coupled with a most severe austerity of life, ceaseless work and lofty character made Gandhi formidable and irresistible. Many people thought that his politics were irrational but they had either to withdraw from the Congress or place their intelligence at his feet to do with as he liked. In a position of such absolute irresponsibility Gandhi was guilty of blunder after blunder, failure after failure, disaster after disaster. Gandhi’s pro-Muslim policy is blatantly in his perverse attitude on the question of the national language of India. It is quite obvious that Hindi has the most prior claim to be accepted as the premier language. In the beginning of his career in India, Gandhi gave a great impetus to Hindi but as he found that the Muslims did not like it, he became a champion of what is called Hindustani.. Everybody in India knows that there is no language called Hindustani; it has no grammar; it has no vocabulary. It is a mere dialect, it is spoken, but not written. It is a bastard tongue and cross-breed between Hindi and Urdu, and not even the Mahatma’s sophistry could make it popular. But in his desire to please the Muslims he insisted that Hindustani alone should be the national language of India. His blind followers, of course, supported him and the so-called hybrid language began to be used.”

“The charm and purity of the Hindi language was to be prostituted to please the Muslims. All his experiments were at the expense of the Hindus. From August 1946 onwards the private armies of the Muslim League began a massacre of the Hindus. The then Viceroy, Lord Wavell, though distressed at what was happening, would not use his powers under the Government of India Act of 1935 to prevent the rape, murder and arson. The Hindu blood began to flow from Bengal to Karachi with some retaliation by the Hindus. The Interim Government formed in September was sabotaged by its Muslim League members right from its inception, but the more they became disloyal and treasonable to the government of which they were a part, the greater was Gandhi’s infatuation for them. Lord Wavell had to resign as he could not bring about a settlement and he was succeeded by Lord Mountbatten. King Log was followed by King Stork. The Congress which had boasted of its nationalism and socialism secretly accepted Pakistan literally at the point of the bayonet and abjectly surrendered to Jinnah. India was vivisected and one-third of the Indian territory became foreign land to us from August 15, 1947.”

“Lord Mountbatten came to be described in Congress circles as the greatest Viceroy and Governor-General this country ever had. The official date for handing over power was fixed for June 30, 1948, but Mountbatten with his ruthless surgery gave us a gift of vivisected India ten months in advance. This is what Gandhi had achieved after thirty years of undisputed dictatorship and this is what Congress party calls ‘freedom’ and ‘peaceful transfer of power’. The Hindu-Muslim unity bubble was finally burst and a theocratic state was established with the consent of Nehru and his crowd and they have called ‘freedom won by them with sacrifice’ – whose sacrifice? When top leaders of Congress, with the consent of Gandhi, divided and tore the country – which we consider a deity of worship – my mind was filled with direful anger.”

“One of the conditions imposed by Gandhi for his breaking of the fast unto death related to the mosques in Delhi occupied by the Hindu refugees. But when Hindus in Pakistan were subjected to violent attacks he did not so much as utter a single word to protest and censure the Pakistan Government or the Muslims concerned. How many such Mahatma’s we have even today in the country who value the support of religious lots more than the need to create a sense of one nation.The PM still continues to divide the nation by addressing the people and Hindu Muslim Sikh Issaye during his address from the Lal Quila.Look how the power in Delhi is being distributed based on all kind of consideration other than ability to built a nation.A school drop out becomes a Cabinet Minister due his hierarchy. Gandhi was shrewd enough to know that while undertaking a fast unto death, had he imposed for its break some condition on the Muslims in Pakistan, there would have been found hardly any Muslims who could have shown some grief if the fast had ended in his death. It was for this reason that he purposely avoided imposing any condition on the Muslims. He was fully aware of from the experience that Jinnah was not at all perturbed or influenced by his fast and the Muslim League hardly attached any value to the inner voice of Gandhi. Gandhi is being referred to as the Father of the Nation. But if that is so, he had failed his paternal duty inasmuch as he has acted very treacherously to the nation by his consenting to the partitioning of it. I stoutly maintain that Gandhi has failed in his duty. He has proved to be the Father of Pakistan. His inner-voice, his spiritual power and his doctrine of non-violence of which so much is made of, all crumbled before Jinnah’s iron will and proved to be powerless. Briefly speaking, I thought to myself and foresaw I shall be totally ruined, and the only thing I could expect from the people would be nothing but hatred and that I shall have lost all my honour, even more valuable than my life, if I were to kill Gandhiji. But at the same time I felt that the Indian politics in the absence of Gandhiji would surely be proved practical, able to retaliate, and would be powerful with armed forces. No doubt, my own future would be totally ruined, but the nation would be saved from the inroads of Pakistan. People may even call me and dub me as devoid of any sense or foolish, but the nation would be free to follow the course founded on the reason which I consider to be necessary for sound nation-building. After having fully considered the question, I took the final decision in the matter, but I did not speak about it to anyone whatsoever. I took courage in both my hands and I did fire the shots at Gandhiji on 30th January 1948, on the prayer-grounds of Birla House. I do say that my shots were fired at the person whose policy and action had brought rack and ruin and destruction to millions of Hindus. There was no legal machinery by which such an offender could be brought to book and for this reason I fired those fatal shots. I bear no ill will towards anyone individually but I do say that I had no respect for the present government owing to their policy which was unfairly favourable towards the Muslims. But at the same time I could clearly see that the policy was entirely due to the presence of Gandhi.”

“I have to say with great regret that Prime Minister Nehru quite forgets that his preachings and deeds are at times at variances with each other when he talks about India as a secular state in season and out of season, because it is significant to note that Nehru has played a leading role in the establishment of the theocratic state of Pakistan, and his job was made easier by Gandhi’s persistent policy of appeasement towards the Muslims. I now stand before the court to accept the full share of my responsibility for what I have done and the judge would, of course, pass against me such orders of sentence as may be considered proper. But I would like to add that I do not desire any mercy to be shown to me, nor do I wish that anyone else should beg for mercy on my behalf. My confidence about the moral side of my action has not been shaken even by the criticism levelled against it on all sides. I have no doubt that honest writers of history will weigh my act and find the true value thereof some day in future.”

Obama’s Rhetoric & Realities about Tax Dodging…

A good analysis by the popular Robert J. Samuelson in the Washington Post. Is Obama really the “one”? Or is he a smooth talking trickster, with selfish & preset agendas no better than his predecessor? Click here to read from the source or read the juice below.

Myth: Aided by those overpaid lobbyists, American multinationals are taxed lightly — less so than their foreign counterparts.

Reality: Just the opposite. Most countries don’t tax the foreign profits of their multinational firms at all. Take a Swiss multinational with operations in South Korea. It pays a 27.5 percent Korean corporate tax on its profits and can bring home the rest tax-free. By contrast, a U.S. firm in Korea pays the Korean tax and, if it returns the profits to the United States, faces the 35 percent U.S. corporate tax rate. American companies can defer the U.S. tax by keeping the profits abroad (naturally, many do), and when repatriated, companies get a credit for foreign taxes paid. In this case, they’d pay the difference between the Korean rate (27.5 percent) and the U.S. rate (35 percent).

Myth: When U.S. multinationals invest abroad, they destroy American jobs.

Reality: Not so. Sure, many U.S. firms have shut American factories and opened plants elsewhere. But most overseas investments by U.S. multinationals serve local markets. Only 10 percent of their foreign output is exported back to the United States, says Harvard economist Fritz Foley. When Wal-Mart opens a store in China, it doesn’t close one in California. On balance, all the extra foreign sales create U.S. jobs for management, research and development (almost 90 percent of American multinationals’ R&D occurs in the United States), and the export of components. A study by Foley and economists Mihir Desai of Harvard and James Hines of the University of Michigan estimates that for every 10 percent increase in U.S. multinationals’ overseas payrolls, their American payrolls increase almost 4 percent.

Myth: Plugging overseas corporate tax loopholes will dramatically improve the budget outlook as multinationals pay their “fair” share.

Reality: Dream on. The estimated $210 billion revenue gain over 10 years — money already included in Obama’s budget — represents only six-tenths of 1 percent of the decade’s tax revenue of $32 trillion, as projected by the Congressional Budget Office. Worse, the CBO reckons that Obama’s endless deficits over the decade will total a gut-wrenching $9.3 trillion.

Whether Obama’s proposals would create any jobs in the United States is an open question. In highly technical ways, Obama would increase the taxes on the foreign profits of U.S. multinationals by limiting the use of today’s deferral and foreign tax credit. Taxing overseas investment more heavily, the theory goes, would favor investment in the United States.

But many experts believe his proposals would actually destroy U.S. jobs. Being more heavily taxed, American multinational firms would have more trouble competing with European and Asian rivals. Some U.S. foreign operations might be sold to tax-advantaged foreign firms. Either way, supporting operations in the United States would suffer. “You lose some of those good management and professional jobs in places like Chicago and New York,” says Gary Hufbauer of the Peterson Institute.

Including state taxes, America’s top corporate tax rate exceeds 39 percent; among wealthy nations, only Japan’s is higher (slightly). However, the effective U.S. tax rate is reduced by preferences — mostly domestic, not foreign — that also make the system complex and expensive. As Hufbauer suggests, Obama would have been better advised to cut the top rate and pay for it by simultaneously ending many preferences. That would lower compliance costs and involve fewer distortions. But this sort of proposal would have been harder to sell. Obama sacrificed substance for grandstanding.

Torturegate…

President Obama wouldn’t have imagined this in his wildest dreams. Some action yes, but this is triggering not just national outrage but even the international community is showing clear signs of unhappiness. And you know what? They are making their displeasure known very well. Reminds me of a saying that when an elephant falls, even the monkes dance on it.

So what is Torturegate? As Mark Danner writes in this brilliant article “…today’s scandal emerges not from a shocking revelation of wrongdoing but from a long process of disclosure during which Americans have stared at blatant lawbreaking with apparent equanimity.” The memos released by Obama’s administration (after a lot of delibration) have stirred the proverbial bee’s nest and America stands divided on opinion.

But the question is a difficult one. What do you choose between getting information that could probably save thousands of lives and compromising ideals and trying to get every & any information from a terrorist? Ok, so somebody comes and says that “look I want to cover my a**” and declares that torture may not eventually lead to worthwhile information. Agreed. But what do you do? Ask a jehadi for information? And what if he spits on your face? Play Mahatma Gandhi with him? Who are we talking about here? A terrorist who works on the single motive called violence and officers who follow orders, jeopardising their & their loved one’s lives & peace apart from sacrificing any possible social life.

So what if the powers deemed torture to be a method of extracting information? Aren’t they the ones who get rapped when they can’t prevent an attack? Is arguing about the life of a mass murderer when thousands of innocents are at stake even worth it?

But what are the pitfalls? Do innocents get tortured just so that officers can show some information and feel that they earn their salaries? Do they use such tactics for personal gratification? Have they become sadists? Are such harsh techniques rampant? What about the “martyr” tag that a jehadi earns after being captured? Are the fundamentalist terrorists using it to motivate more terrorists? Is torture of a captured prisoner a reason for more anger to be directed towards America? These are just the questions answered here, though very very vaguely.

The bigger problem is these questions were neither asked nor answered at the right time. Even now, the right people aren’t speaking about it. But as public outrage grows, America will have to come up with some serious answers. I am impressed by Obama’s decision – understand, this is no “my predecessor was a bad guy” move. It is a clear preference for truth and humanity. It is good governance. But he will now have to take the next correct steps, else, the path is as much slippery as it has grip. I really am not able to understand why he doesn’t want the proverbial “truth panel“. He has come under some potent fire here and am sure many more will follow. Has the change man lost the plot here? Did he really miscalculate and has put his theory before the world’s realism? Though, until now, he has certainly kept the world guessing about him.

But anyways, the CIA and its officers seems to be safe. Unless, as mentioned here, the powers once again make them the scapegoats. But this shouldn’t be new to them and they should have taken enough “cover my a**” precautions. So you can actually blame them – in their jobs, it is not allowed to make mistakes.

Anyways, Torturegate is gaining in stature by the hour. At the end of it, we can be sure that there will be a conclusive settlement. Just wait to see on who’s favour.