During World War II, Gandhi penned an open letter to the British people, urging them to surrender to the Nazis. Later, when the extent of the holocaust was known, he criticized Jews who had tried to escape or fight for their lives as they did in Warsaw and Treblinka. “The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife,” he said. “They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.” “Collective suicide,” he told his biographer, “would have been heroism.”

The so-called peace movement certainly has the right to make Gandhi’s way their way, but their efforts to make collective suicide American foreign policy just won’t cut it in this country. When American’s think of heroism, we think of the young American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, risking their lives to prevent another Adolph Hitler or Saddam Hussein.

We should really send Rang De Basanti’s Oscar nomination again if Fred makes it.

It is encouraging to note that the Plachimada community is undeterred after the recent court ruling that undermines their 3-year struggle. They are now contemplating to make an appeal to Supreme Court. If you wish to support their campaign, you may register it online, here.

To me this is another shameless instance of MNCs openly arm-twisting local interests using the crutches of law. Imagine someone digging a bore well in your backyard, dumping the waste in your area, draining your own water resources and then selling you their bottled products to you. People have been crying foul on these biggies polluting the groundwater resources and soil since years. When V.R. Krishna Iyer, a former Supreme Court judge accuses Coke of 'bench shopping' a favorable judgment, it is not as simple as it seems.

Analysts such as Dileep Padgaonkar say that Musharaff has progressed from an “obdurate soldier” at Agra Summit to an “astute politician” of today, with a vision. We hope this is true. Nobody can deny his efforts at projecting Pakistan as a moderate forward-looking nation (whether he is actually working towards that, Khuda only knows).

More than anything, I was taken aback by the unwarranted hype. The prior visit of Chinese Premier, probably more significant, attracted no buzz. First, there is no comparing the current visit with the Agra one. This one was no summit! There was nothing that could have emerged. With no diplomatic homework being done at all, this was just not the right occasion. It was no wonder that both the sides were so flexible. Watching the press briefings even a layman could have seen that the outcome was cipher. “We achieved much more that I expected”, said the General with a dim face. As if he had come here with the belief that Kashmir will be handed over to him in a platter.

The only positive steps taken IMHO are the efforts on restoring the two Ts, trade and travel, between the nations. The best way to coerce a misbehaved child is either thrashing or making him busy and happy. The former has not worked, so we must try the latter. Though, it?s difficult to view such steps without wariness; we have been brought up to hate Pakistan. Atanu worries that projects such as the Indo-Iranian pipeline would only let Pakistan arm-twist us later, I don?t fully subscribe to this. An economically progressive and politically stable Pakistan certainly means less trouble for us.

Swaminathan Aiyar has no faith in the summits and the bus-diplomacy either, which he says, “creates an illusion that Pakistan is a key player in the issue”. He raises another valid question on the way Kashmir problem was dealt with right from the beginning (“it was New Delhi and not Islamabad that created the problem”). He cites the example of Punjab Terrorism that was successfully tackled by the local Police rather than the Army, the latter he rightfully says, “is simply not suited to tackle civil militancy”. Hello! Is anybody listening?

There was the much trumpeted bus journey of Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee to Pakistan in 1998 and my supposed refusal as the Army Chief to meet or shake hands with him. Then came the Kargil Operation with all its reality and distortions. It proved a lesson to the Indians and a rude awakening to the world of the reality of Kashmir. Heightened temperatures were tried to be cooled by me through my famous handshake with PM Vajpayee at the Katmandu SAARC Summit. The Agra summit saw a great breakthrough but ended up in a disappointing failure under the negative influence of some radical Indian Government functionaries in particular Mr. Advani. Later accusing Pakistan of involvement in an unfortunate terrorist attack on Indian Parliament, India decided to mobilize and amass its entire Army and Air Force on Pakistan's borders in a mass show of strength to coerce Pakistan. We moved forward our forces also and stood our ground firmly. I made sure that clear indications were sent across that any misadventure by India would be replied with resolute force by Pakistan.

An occupying contradiction is entailed in Maloy Krishna Dhar's book. Maloy, a former IB Joint Director, does not agree that the incident was a spontaneous misadventure of the mob. He maintains that it was engineered months in advance by top leaders of RSS, BJP and VHP, a choreographed pralaya nritya with the vandalism handled by the Shiv Sena while Sangh leaders added fuel with their “irresponsible rhetoric”. Another occupying observation made by the author is about the late Prime Minister P.V.Narsimha Rao's piteous handling of the issue, who, according to the author, “had regained some jest for life and had started dreaming of short-circuiting the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.”

Interestingly, many analysts interpret this as a clever move of the Himalayan nation to put India and China in a tug of war, for example analystRaja Mohan says,

Gyanendra has also sought to play the China card. After all no one can ignore the reality that Nepal is the geopolitical fulcrum of the Himalayas. Being the bridge between China's Tibet and India's Gangetic plains, Nepal has often sought to play India and China against each other.

Indeed it is difficult to rule outKing Gyanendra doing a MusharaffI still believe that it's early days to predict Nepal's future. As long as the monarch promises basic civic rights and stays on his agenda, I see no problem in the nation retreating to a democratic regime in a year's time, hopefully the Maoist nuisance that was wrecking the country would be gone by then.

Indian politics has had a long history of dependency on one kind of vote bank or other. The game remains the same as the theme changes every election. Supporting such petitions, whom do we debar from voting next then, the SC/STs, the Minorities, Women?

Encroachments are the illegitimate bye-products of unplanned development, lack of infrastructure and petty politics. First their goons would enact the encroachments, hand in gloves with the local civic administration. Then they provide them with ration cards, let them feel at home and provide then all kind of amenities they can expect, voila they have a vote-flow ready on their investments. We all know this, yet we allow these buggers to contest elections year after year. If we should debar anyone, they are these gangsters and frauds turned politicians, debar them from contesting any election, if they ever promise anything to such “banks” in their manifesto or speeches. Set some example and you would see the results. But who's going to bell the cat?

Making the “right to vote” a “duty to vote” might be beneficial in several ways. An increase in voting percentage can at least assure of, if not guarantee, a clear mandate. Who knows, it might provide a respite from these coalition-jokes arising out of hung-parliaments and hazy mandates. But the fact remains that applying such a rule in a nation- where civic sense is extinct - wouldn't be easy, unless you accompany it with some kind of punishment on defiance, lest it goes the “Pulse-polio” way. Who can pursue me to vote mandatorily unless my employer tells me categorically that I would lose my days' salary if I don't. Another good suggestion that Puri made here is that the electoral officer might provide some kind of a receipt or a certificate to an individual to declare that he has indeed voted.

And why stop at compulsory primary education and voting, I am for compulsory rights and duties in the following areas too:

• Right to get a universally acceptable identity card (akin to the Social Security number concept of the US) that replaces all other forms of identification documents such as Ration cards, Voter ID and so on.
• Duty to get a compulsory Aids Test

Easier said than done, eh.

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[ Hindi version of this post is available here.]