shashitharoor
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Opening Remarks at “Names Not Numbers” Conference
Nov 26th
Today we bow our heads to commemorate a time of terror and death in a city that throbs with life and hope.
There is a savage irony to the fact that the horror in Mumbai began with terrorists docking near the Gateway of India. The magnificent arch, built in 1911 to welcome the King-Emperor, has ever since stood as a symbol of the openness of the city.
Crowds flock around it, made up of foreign tourists and local yokels; touts hawk their wares; boats bob in the waters, offering cruises out to the open sea. The teeming throngs around it daily reflect India’s diversity, with Parsi gentlemen out for their evening constitutionals, Muslim women in burqas taking the sea air, Goan Catholic waiters enjoying a break from their duties at the stately Taj Mahal Hotel, Hindus from every corner of the country chatting in a multitude of tongues.
Three years ago today, ringed by police barricades, the Gateway of India – the gateway not just of India but to India, and to India’s soul – was barred, mute testimony to that criminal assault on this country’s pluralist democracy.
The terrorists who heaved their bags laden with weapons up the steps of the wharf to begin their assault on the Taj, like their cohorts at a dozen other locations around the city, knew exactly what they were doing. Theirs was an attack on India’s financial nerve-centre and commercial capital, a city emblematic of the country’s energetic thrust into the 21st century.
They struck at symbols of the prosperity that was making the Indian model so attractive to the globalizing world – luxury hotels, a swish café, an apartment house favoured by foreigners. The terrorists also sought to polarize Indian society by claiming to be acting to redress the grievances, real and imagined, of India’s Muslims.
And by singling out Britons, Americans and Israelis for special attention, they demonstrated that their brand of Islamist fanaticism is anchored less in the absolutism of pure faith than in the geopolitics of hate. Terrorists’ are not respecters of faith: dozens of Mualims were amongst the 166 people who perished on 26/11 three years ago.
The attack on Nariman House and the killing of its residents was particularly sad, since India is justifiably proud of the fact that it is the only country in the world with a Jewish disapora going back 2500 years where there has never been a single instance of anti-Semitism. This is the first time that it has been unsafe to be Jewish in India – just as it is the first time it has been unsafe to be dining in a 5-star hotel, to be buying a train ticket, or to be chatting at a café: the banality of evil destroying the tranquillity of ordinary life.
The terrorists hit multiple targets in Mumbai, both literally and figuratively. They caused death and destruction to Indians with near-impunity, searing India’s psyche, showing up the limitations of its security apparatus and humiliating its authorities. They dented the worldwide image of India as an emerging economic giant, a success story of the era of globalization and an increasing magnet for investors and tourists. Instead the world was made to see an insecure and vulnerable India, a “soft state” bedevilled by enemies who could strike it at will.
Today, as happened three years ago, the platitudes will flow like blood. Terrorism is unacceptable; the terrorists are cowards; the world stands united in unreserved condemnation of this atrocity. Commentators in America tripped over themselves to pronounce this night and day of carnage India’s 9/11.
But India has endured many attempted 9/11s, notably a ferocious assault on its national Parliament in December 2001 that nearly led to all-out war against the assailants’ presumed sponsors, Pakistan. The year of 26/11 alone, 2008, was one in which terrorist bombs had already taken lives in Jaipur, in Ahmedabad, in Delhi and (in an eerie dress-rehearsal for the effectiveness of synchronicity) several different places on one searing day in the state of Assam.
Mumbai combined all the elements of its precursors: by attacking it, the terrorists hit India’s economy, its tourism, and its internationalism, and they took advantage of the city’s openness to the world. A grand slam.
Indians have learned to endure the unspeakable horrors of terrorist violence ever since malign men in Pakistan concluded it was cheaper and more effective to bleed India to death than to attempt to defeat it in conventional war. Attack after attack has been proven to have been financed, equipped and guided from across the border, the most recent before 26/11 being the suicide-bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, an action publicly traced by American intelligence to elements in Islamabad’s dreaded military special-ops agency, the ISI. In its meticulous planning, sophisticated co-ordination and military precision, as well as its choice of targets, the assault on Mumbai bore no trace of what its promoters tried to suggest it was — a spontaneous eruption by angry young Indian Muslims. This horror was not homegrown.
The Islamist extremism nurtured by a succession of military rulers of Pakistan has now come to haunt its well-intentioned but lamentably weak elected civilian government. The bombing of Islamabad’s Marriott Hotel and various military installations in Pakistan since have proved that Frankenstein’s monster is now well and truly out of that government’s control.
The militancy once sponsored by its predecessors now threatens to abort Pakistan’s sputtering democracy and seeks to engulf India in its flames. There has never been a stronger case for firm and united action by the governments of both India and Pakistan to cauterize the cancer in their midst. This is why Prime Minister Manmohan Singh persists in his determined pursuit of peace.
Today we live in hope that the latest peace initiative between India and Pakistan will take wings and end the narrative of death and despair that has bedevilled our relationship.
Three years ago it became conclusively clear that India had become the theatre of action for a global battle, one which threatens Indian lives, it is true, but one whose world-wide objectives also mean that we are not alone in this fight. Indeed, Pakistan should be on the same side as us in what for them is an existential struggle. That is also part of the solidarity we are all expressing this morning.
Holding this event in Mumbai today is a fitting reminder that India has recovered from the physical assaults against it. It is a land of great resilience that has learned, over arduous millennia, to cope with tragedy. Bombs and bullets alone cannot destroy India, because Indians will pick their way through the rubble and carry on as they have done throughout history.
But what can destroy India is a change in the spirit of its people, away from the pluralism and co-existence that has been our greatest strength. The Prime Minister’s call for calm and restraint in the face of this murderous rampage was vital. His efforts to build peace on the ashes of this horror are courageous.
If these tragic events lead to the demonization of any group in India, if they permanently end our hopes of peaceful co-existence on the subcontinent, the terrorists will have won. For India to be India, its gateway – to the multiple Indias within, and the heaving seas without — must always remain open. That is the spirit of Mumbai. May it always endure.
We bowed our heads in mourning. Today, let us raise them again in hope.
Jai Hind.
Shashi Tharoor’s take on the Lokpal Bill
Aug 25th
As one who has long urged an end to public apathy about politics, I’m inspired by seeing the passion of Annaji’s followers. I share their passion against corruption, and I have no doubt that he has touched a chord amongst millions of Indians.
But we must remember that the supporters of the Jan Lokpal Bill are not the only Indians who are disgusted by corruption. So are many who are not part of the movement. It is important for both sides to accept that there are patriotic and principled Indians amongst their critics, and that we must reach out to each other in good faith.
One may have legitimate disagreement with some aspects of the authorities’ handling of the entire issue, and in particular of the temporary arrest of Shri Anna Hazare and his associates. Annaji’s brief detention by the Delhi police was unwise, which is why he was swiftly released. Our Government does realize that ideas can’t be arrested.
A strong Lokpal is part of the answer. Given the importance it has acquired in the public mind, I share the view that a suitable Lokpal Bill must be passed as a matter of urgent priority. It should create a strong anti-corruption ombudsman, with genuine autonomy and authority and substantial powers of action.
That said, there is room for honest disagreement with the details of Anna Hazareji’s proposals in the so-called Jan Lokpal Bill. In particular, some of the provisions insisted upon by Annaji risk creating a large, omnipotent and unaccountable supra-institution that could not be challenged, reformed or removed. If the current governmental bodies tasked with investigation, vigilance, and audit are deemed to be insufficiently impervious to corruption, it is worth asking what guarantee there is that the new institution of Jan Lokpal could not be infected by the same virus — and if so, what could be done about it, since it would literally be a law unto itself.
These are matters that merit serious debate in Parliament when the proposed legislation reaches the floor. I am sure the Government’s bill can be improved, and that elements favoured by Annaji could be considered. Everyone claims to be against corruption; the debate is on the means to be used to tackle it. For it would be dangerous to reduce the entire issue to a simplistic solution which won’t end corruption by itself. Inspectors and prosecutors can only catch some criminals; we need to change the system so that fewer crimes are committed.
The problem of corruption runs far broader and deeper than the headlines suggest. Every time a poor pregnant woman has to bribe to get a hospital bed to which she is entitled, or a widow the pension that should be hers by right and not by the favour of a clerk, or a son his own father’s death certificate, we know our system has failed us. Corruption isn’t only high-level governmental malfeasance as typified by the 2G and CWG scandals. Overcoming it requires nothing short of a change in our society’s mindset.
A number of related steps need to be taken to tackle corruption at its source. Campaign finance reform, simplification of laws and regulations, administrative transparency, and the reduction of discretionary powers enjoyed by officials and ministers, are all of the highest priority too. The Right to Information Act (RTI) enacted by the first UPA Government was in fact the first step in this direction. A credible Lokpal will be another.
We must build in safeguards to ensure that a new institution of Lokpal doesn’t itself fall prey to corruption. One way might well be to create a Lokpal quickly, in response to the current public demand, but to limit its existence to, say, seven years, so that any flaws in its functioning can be examined in the cold light of experience before it is renewed by a fresh Act of Parliament.
As an elected politician, I am conscious that Anna Hazareji’s campaign has ignited the imaginations and sparked the enthusiasm of many young people in our country, and in my constituency. That does not mean, however, that MPs should accept an all-or-nothing approach to the Lokpal Bill. There is room for discussion and some possibility of compromise, and I shall seek to work towards this on the floor of the House.
I look forward to Parliament debating all the options available. It is important that we must not betray public expectations, but nor must we act irresponsibly.
We must do the right thing but we must do the thing right. With good faith and compromise, I am confident we can reach a consensus.
Shashi Tharoor is a Lok Sabha MP
