Your grandpa spat on my grandpa

While googling about the 'siege of Lucknow' I came across this entry. My comments in blue.

"Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold" - W.B. Yeats. "We're doomed !" - Private Frazer. "Like scrolling through a decade's worth of Daily Mail editorials in 20 minutes" - TheLoonyFromCatford

Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Siege of Lucknow 2007 
Once again, 150 years after the previous unpleasantness, a gallant band of Brits again defend themselves against violent racists.

A group of British veterans are barricaded inside an Indian hotel this evening after they were attacked by a violent group of Indian nationalists during a trip to pay homage to British soldiers killed during the 1857 Indian Mutiny. Indian authorities have told Britons in India to stay away from the historic site due to protests.

Dozens of retired British soldiers and civilians were holed up in a hotel behind a police cordon today in Lucknow. They had had planned to visit the site of a siege that was a key event of what is known in India as the First War of Independence and in Britain as the Sepoy Mutiny. During the siege, hundreds of British soldiers and their families defended the Residency of Lucknow against thousands of Indian soldiers - or sepoys - rebelling against the colonial occupiers. Hundreds died in the fighting.

Small but vocal protests have been led by local members of India's Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party. Some protesters pelted the visitors' bus with rubbish and a bottle filled with dirty water when they arrived in the city on yesterday. "A thick security net around them saved the situation from taking any ugly turn," said district magistrate Chandra Bhanu. "Though we have no objection to their visit as ordinary tourists, we cannot take any chances and expose them to any kind of risk under the prevailing volatile circumstances" he said. 

May they show the same courage and unity as their forebears, and may their country succour them as it did then.

The 1857 mutiny was commemorated a month or two back in India with much ceremony as a "shining example of national unity". As the BBC put it : "It is known in India as the first war of India's independence, while in the UK it is usually called a mutiny. So we'll call it an uprising."

Now you can't really blame the Indian government for playing the national unity card for all it's worth. After all, theirs is what the BBCs Jim Muir would call an ethnic and confessional patchwork, with all the potential for lack of unity that implies. Not only that, but before the Raj there was no nation of India, although the Mughal Empire had at one stage encompassed almost the whole subcontinent. You get your national myths where you find them and as you need them - and India, always struggling to keep a vastly diverse nation intact (and succeeding remarkably well) - needs a national narrative more than most. 

There was no India before the Raj, in the sense that there was no single administration from Kashmir to Kanya Kumari. Very true. 

But which modern nation was born in its present state. Was there a USA before the 13 initial states broke off from British rule? What was Germany after WW2? Or China during the first half of the 20th century? Is UK the founder of USA, the Allies of Germany and Japan of China?

Ideas have often come long before boundaries, and administrative unity does not always translate into nationhood (see Yugoslavia, USSR, the former Japanese Empire). It's high time apologists for the Raj took off their blinkers, and stopped apologising. The Raj is over. Dead. Gone. Let's move on.

In Britain however we can take a more clear eyed view of the Mutiny, which was an uprising not solely against the forces of the British Empire, the soldiers and administrators, but a vast racist pogrom against all Europeans, the 'Feringhees' or 'gora log', without distinction of age, sex or employment, although Indian Christians were also killed. While for obvious reasons it was necessary to strike down British military resistance where found, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed men, women and children took place wherever the mutineers had gained control, although there are many instances of Indians saving lives at the risk of their own. The testimonies of massacre from Meerut, Delhi, Lucknow, Cawnpore are many and vivid.

"Gough came in. He is a pensioner. He was in the 19th Regiment and directly after landing in England after the Crimea War volunteered to go to India at the time of the Indian Mutiny. He landed in Calcutta and his regiment marched through Cawnpore 48 hours after the Massacre. He said the scene was horrible, so horrible, shocking and disgusting that it could not be explained or described. Women's breasts had been chopped and sliced off and were still lying about with their other parts. Women had been cut to pieces and mutilated in a vile and shocking manner. The most devilish and beastly ingenuity had been at work in mutilating the persons and violating and dishonouring the parts of the poor creatures. A child's head had been cut off and was lying on the ground with the lips placed by a devilish jest as if sucking the breast of a woman which had also been chopped off. Numbers of the poor women had jumped down the great well with their children to avoid the horrors which were being perpetrated on the bodies of women all over the place.

The soldiers were furious, almost ungovernable, as they marched through Cawnpore and saw those shameful sights." Francis Kilvert's Diary, Wednesday, 22nd January 1873 

"Captain Orr, before allowing the sepoys to accompany them, as well as himself and his family, first made them swear on the head of a Brahmin jemadar, or native officer, the most sacred oath a Hindoo can take, that they would not touch a hair of their heads. They had scarcely set out a short distance, however, when the sepoys obliged the ladies and children to leave their carriages and to walk. The gentlemen, fourteen in number, were murdered one by one, near Mithowly, and the whole of the ladies and children, certain of their coming fate, assembling together in one body, were shot down while kneeling and singing a hymn."
- A personal narrative of the siege of Lucknow By L E Ruutz Rees (1858)

"They knew that stabbing was inefficient, that hacking at their victim's necks would be the quickest way of accomplishing their mission. If the ladies protected their necks with their arms, then their arms would simply be severed as well; the effect was the same, they would bleed to death. Slashing right and left at all who were standing, chopping downward at the fallen with their heavy blades, the five proceeded methodically, spreading a pool of blood ... The few defiant boys were cut down quickly, as was every child who tried to make a run for it through the phalanx of swordsmen. Mothers kept pulling their children close to them and pushing them back into the corners of the building, and in the sweltering heat and the crush of bodies, children suffocated to death under their dying mothers' skirts." Andrew Ward - Our Bones Are Scattered - Cawnpore Massacres and the Indian Mutiny of 1857.

Mrs Captain McDonald, Mrs Captain Chambers, Mrs Dawson and two children, Mrs Courtenay and two children, Mr. V. Tregear, Pensioners McKinley and Blanco, Corporals Mortimer (Rifles), Edwards and Fitzpatrick and wives, Mr Newland (Photographer), Overseers Segeants Law and two children, McPhee, Binglee, Grant, Brooks and wives, Gunners Donohoe, Connolly, Benson and Cairns (Horse Artillery), Riding Master Langdale's child - some of the dead from the first day at Meerut - Robert Dunlop - Service and Adventure with the Meerut Volunteer Horse (1858)

You can also see why this kind of stuff gets passed by in India. No nation likes to be reminded of its bad deeds, England excepted, but in India stuff about massacring innocents strikes a bit too close to home. The slaughter of defenceless people isn't exactly something that stopped in 1857. While 1947 set a standard that (God willing) is unlikely to be surpassed in the immediate future, the events of 1984 and 2002 remind us that it hasn't gone away. And those are only the ones we hear about. I was surprised when googling 'Meerut Massacre' to find that it's the '87 rather than the '57 massacre at the top. That's 1987.

Of course Delhi could never have been recaptured and the Mutiny suppressed without the soldiers from the Punjab and elsewhere who remained loyal. The force which retook Delhi contained Punjabis of all faiths, Baluchis, Gurkhas, Pashtuns - something else that the Indian Government and nationalist historians would rather forget. And while the rebel defenders of Delhi were killed to a man, the reactions of the British forces, memories of the dead innocents fresh in their minds, to their orders stand in stark contrast to the shameful barbarities of the rebels. 

"By the light of a lantern the orders for the assault were then read to the men. They were to the following purport: any man who might be wounded was to be left where he fell; no one was to step from the ranks to help him, as there were no men to spare... no prisoners were to be made, as we had no one to guard them, and care was to be taken that no women or children were injured. To this the men answered at once, by 'No fear, Sir'. The officers now pledged their honours on their swords to abide by these orders and the men then promised to follow their example." 

Would this idiot please read his history before he writes! And he doesn’t have to read Indians’ history. White men’s writing will do. Every account I have come across lists instances of beasts on both sides, of whole villages being torched for no reason, of natives hung for just being there, of revenge visiting the innocent, during and after the mutiny. He completely neglects to mention any of that. 

He has no idea of what really happened in Delhi, the massacre of the princes, the exile of the Muslims, the digging for gold, the raging of the Red Fort – all of which are available in any standard history. 

He picks one unsubstantiated quote instead. And creates a criminally false picture.

He nicely forgets concentration camps during the Boer War, Jallianwala Bag, incendiary bombs during WW2, and the criminal haste and irresponsibility of the last days of the Raj. If he has a problem with bad history – and all of us do – he should plead guilty first.  

Equally bad, he condemns Indian historians without reading any, because his nonsense would not have been possible had he read even one. Surely there are Indian propagandists who write garbage like our friend here does. But not even we ignorant Indians think of them as historians.

What I find perhaps more shocking are the comments to his article. Except for a few, they are all anti-Indian in the most disgusting way. The lay Englishman just can't distinguish between fairy tale and religion, propaganda and history, illiterate Indians and Indian intellectuals. He only sees Indians. (Reminds you of 'A good Indian is a dead Indian.') 

(One chap says, "My knowledge about the Mutity comes from the well-researched Flashman novels. Well, I picked up one ages ago. It had Rani Laxmibai seducing Flashman to her bed! I couldn't read any more after that. Where did Flashman's author research that from!)

Now, governments, with all their limitations, are expected to tell and uphold the truth as objectively as possible, more so when the truth is old. Indians who want their country’s good want their government to defend the truth. A shameful past is made more shameful by lying. 

Yet, it can be no government’s duty to allow slander. Did soldiers from regiments who fought at Lucknow come here to slander India’s past or to remember the dead? On the face of it, they came for the latter, though reminding Indians of their ancestors’ barbarism would be an inescapable consequence of such remembrance. Obviously, that is not slander, even if the definition is stretched.

Nonetheless, anyone who has access to data and can write, even if he is not a certified intellectual, has the responsibility of explaining – to the soldiers, that their predecessors were not the only ones wronged; and to us silly Indians – that while our forefathers suffered, they were quite mahatmas either.

To get a bit lofty here, while lies and half-truths will keep us entrapped in bitterness for ever, a joint search for what really happened can help ensure it doesn’t happen again. It’s for us to decide whether we want to fight yesterday’s battles or tomorrow’s. 

Obama lost?

Obama says, "In no other country on earth is my story even possible." What does he mean? Does he mean that in no country can a person from a previously enslaved minority reach its highest office? Will he please look at his backyard? 

So many countries in South America and the Caribbean have Indians, formally indentured labour, in high places, not to mention native Indians and mulattoes. Of course, blacks have moved up in politics throughout that region, but they are the majority in most cases. Nonetheless, these nations have undergone equal, if not more, change in race relations as the US. 

Let him recall Justice Marshall too, who rose to the US Supreme Court from segregation Here i assume 'country' is as much a function of geography as it is of history (When Obama says 'country', he means USA here and now.)

The moot point is somewhat deeper than a particular misstating of history by a person who should have known better, and who presumably knowing better, chooses to deliberately misinform. Americans surely have enough to be proud of in fact to need myths, especially when these myths can easily turn counterproductive by pushing pride to vanity. 

Minority is ok

Many tears are shed for callous citizens who never vote. Someone gets elected in spite of only 60% or so voting. Worse, he may have the support of the minority of those voters.

I can't understand what the hullaballoo is all about, because a little thought shows that the damage, if any, is only to the losing contenders. For the citizens, both non-participation and election with minority support are immaterial.

For why do we need to know each voter's preference when a representative, random sample should give us a very good idea of what people want? In a populous country like ours, even the voters in a municipal election will yield a sample size that's large enough to give a truthful picture of the population's preferences.

It may be argued that the voters do not usually constitute a representative sample. For instance, poor people are more likely to vote. So the richer classes would be underrepresented.

However, it can just as easily be argued that those who stay away have reasons for doing so. If an electorate (those who can vote) is 1% rich and 99% poor, does it really matter if its electors (those who do vote) are 0.75% rich and 99.25% poor? Is it unreasonable for the rich to believe that their concerns won't count in the elected body? Or that they will have to use something other than votes to make themselves heard?

In fact, it is the insistence on making every vote count that keeps many away from politics. Let me explain. Let's say the poor decide to vote en block for a certain candidate (and agenda). They vastly outnumber the rich. So some lazy poor decide to stay at home believing, rightly, that their absence will make no difference, more so because the rich will be underrepresented.

The rich, on the other hand, know that for their votes to count, they must turn out in full force. They are, to begin with, marginal. Now, let's say Rich Guy A says, "What is the probability that my neighbour will vote? 15%. That's slim. And the chances of my other neighbour's voting? Well, 20%. That's bad. I wanted to vote, and I know it's my duty, but thanks to the callousness of my class, my vote won't count. So, why should I waste my time? Let me watch a movie instead."

His neighbours have more or less the same thoughts and stay away, not just from the polling booth but also from the entire election process. In short, they are doubly damned: first, for being a minority; second, for thinking cynically.

Of course, you cannot have election an electorate formally divided by class, religion, caste, and the rest. That would divide our already fragmented society even more, and we'd forever be at each other's throats. So, we better not insist on representative sampling. But we can insist on random sampling, hoping, again very reasonably, that the sample that yields will be representative as well.

This may, who knows, bring the added benefit of improving overall interest in politics among the previously 'doubly damned', who should get rid of their cynical reasoning (for staying away) once they don't have to bother about 100% turnouts any more.

Let's look at the problem of getting elected by a minority. This is slightly complex. But let's take an imaginary situation where there are 5 candidates; 3 get 20% each; 1 gets 19% and the winner gets through with 21%. Only about 1 in 5 voted for him; 4 in 5 didn't want him. Bad? Yes, if you want a simplistic answer. However, if you take a step back, it hardly looks horrible.

The split of the vote says that while none of the candidates was very good, none were very bad either ('good' and 'bad' merely being measures of ability to align oneself with the electorates' preferences). So, how does it matter to the voters who won!

Perhaps no important legislation was to be decided in parliament. So the choice of legislator became a popularity contest. While who proves most likable matters to the contestants, it makes little difference to the public.

Perhaps the legislation was important, but debating it wasn't. For example, let's say a bill proposes, "No person can be executed without proper trial." It's critical, but scarcely debatable.

Or take a verdict that goes thus: Winner-31%, runner up-30%, spoilers-29%. Wouldn't we like voters to have indicated their second and third preferences in such cases? Such methods are actually followed in quite a few elections. But it may be quite unnecessary.

Because the moot question for the voters is not Who won? Instead, it's What happened because he won?

If you got through by the narrowest of margins, and wanted to improve your (or at least your party's) chances next time around, what would you do (Only a mad electorate will elect someone who doesn't want to be re-elected)? Would you become very biased? Not unless you can indulge in some large scale ethical cleansing. If you can't, you'll look after everyone's interests. In either case - can or cannot commit mass murder – your getting a minority vote is, by itself, no major tragedy. (If the winner can commit mass murder, elections and elected bodies have long ceased to make any difference.)

The complacency about winners with a minority of the votes becomes more justifiable these days because many of our governments are post-election alliances. The very fact that politicians can get into bed after blooding each other's noses in public shows that they were fighting for power (which concerns them) and not principles (which concerns us).

Actually, in a democracy with a diverse population, it's high turnouts and overwhelming majorities that we should be worried about.

When everyone turns out to vote, they are probably worked up about something. Either riot is in the air, or revolution. And an overwhelming majority can only be a goon's. 

Hang Kasab

He’s a terrorist. We have enough evidence, tapes and eyewitnesses, who have seen him kill. Why do we need a trial? As Bal Thackeray has suggested, he should be hung before the Taj, and the world be invited to watch and learn how we deal with terrorists. One noted lawyer, Masjid Menon, has said that he won’t defend Kasab because he’s indefensible. His guilt is beyond any doubt. A Muslim organisation has argued that executing him is in line with the divine law of an eye for an eye.  

Other voices argue that we should have due process precisely because we are not barbarians like Kasab and his ilk are. 

What both sides miss is that trying him is not necessarily to just affix his guilt and punish him – his guilt doesn’t need more proof; nor his punishment much debate – but to find out who else was involved and how. 

A trial is a logical end of an investigation. This devil was trained, equipped and financed. Those behind him are just as guilty as he is. Their names need to come out in a court of law, unless there are deep and indisputable reasons for keeping their identities and involvement secret. 

(Of course, we know who’s responsible. Pakistan is. So? Imprison the whole country? Hang the lot? Can we? No wonder those suave Pakistani diplomats snigger at us, adding insult to injury.)  

Also, some guilt needs to affixed, again in a court, on those who let him through (though I am far less sure than the rest of my countrymen that he was stoppable in the first place). Or is all that talk about accountability just gas? 

Hang terrorists by all means, even if it makes them martyrs for a batty fringe. However, make sure you try them first, to find out who else was behind the terror. (There is no record of Hitler killing anyone with his own hands, is there?)

Suppose you were to be 10 feet tall...

10-feet tall men have no place outside fables. However, they sometimes get into bad science fiction, forcing saner writers to point out that such giants are biologically impossible. 

I get a sense of déjà vu while reading books on the stock market. “Suppose you were to hold such and such a set of stocks over such and such a period...” a guru would begin, then go on to show what a silly fool you’d be if you did that. 

Now, how many actual investors get into the situations illustrated in these books? If not may do, why talk about these? Are these to be taken solely as constructs for instruction? Well, there is merit in that, more so when you consider how far science has come with theoretical models that grossly simplify the natural world. 

Yet... it somehow doesn’t jell. The scientist is well aware that he’s approximating within the limits of computing power and perception (the greatest mind would burst if it was to have a handle on every gory detail). Does the stock market guru? More importantly, does his reader? 

Why 40:40:20 is 40:40:20

The 40:40:20 rule says that 40% of the ‘success of direct mailer’ depends on the list, another 40% on the offer and only 20% on the creative (all inclusive, copy, layout, plain Jane or 3-D, bells & whistles). 

So creative is less important than list and offer.

I never understood what this rule really means or how it came about. It probably means that ‘40% of the variation can be explained by the list’ and so on. 

Anyway, let’s take the somewhat vague meaning given in the first paragraph. Can it lead to the conclusion that creative is relatively unimportant? Actually, it can’t. Because the creative is never randomly selected in a test! Each competing piece is produced by a competent team, judged, revised and, within the limits of practicality, perfected. Why on earth should you expect creative to make much difference?  

To draw a parallel, take basketball players. All of them are giants. Naturally, height and muscles cease to make any difference.  

The simple economics of frightening Uncle Sam and his nephews

 I am listening to a series of lectures on international affairs by a Stanford professor. His analysis offers a simple explanation on why America should find the 'war on terror' very hard to win, and should it emerge victorious, the victory will almost certainly be a Pyrrhic one.

In war, the Americans have always emphasised materials over men. (Cynics may add myths to materials, but that's not the point; in fact, myth-making may be democratic necessity.) Most of America's wars were against weak powers, both relatively and absolutely, like Mexico, Spain, the tiny Caribbean islands, Iraq, and, lest we forget, Vietnam (They killed far more than they lost, never gave up territory, and pushed back all attacks, including the famous Tet Offensive. Yet, the body bags had them losing the war, first in their minds, and then at the conference table). In the Second World War, the preponderance of material in the American contribution becomes easily apparent when one compares the blood split by America to that lost by Germany, Japan and Russians. Americans believe, reasonably, that they came out tops in the Cold War because they outspent the USSR.

All this, plus the geographical isolation of mainland USA, gives the American citizen almost the god-given right to expect bloodless victory. The first Iraq War demonstrated that this presumption was not misplaced.

However, crushing your enemy with the quantity and quality (technological superiority) of weapons is expensive, more so for a government described as a 'retirement fund which happens to have an army'.

Now, the terrorist strikes, mostly at client states and accomplices, sometimes at embassies and tourists, and once, with devastating effect, at symbols (churches?) of American (big) business and military.

The staggering military might of the American state renders inadmissible anything less than complete, fail-safe and deathless security. Providing such security to voters requires wars of propaganda (for morale), denial of certain values (liberties) that they assume essential, perhaps unique, to their particular civilisation and, above all, lots of money.

The terrorists' main cost, on the other hand, is time and lives, both of which they have in plenty. 

What makes matters worse for the US is that its juniors, like Pakistan, India and Israel, demand that it protect them – at any rate, their elites – from terror too. Unfortunately, the Americans can't colonise these places (in the sense that they could take over, say, a Pacific island inhabited by some aborigines during WW2), yet need them for bases and cannon fodder. Worse, these juniors are often at each other's throats and justifiably or not, like to trace their problems to Uncle Sam. An expensive and complicated war becomes more of both. 

In a nutshell, America must maintain perfect Pax America. It must be the world's sole army and main police. And the terrorist needs to only keep up a steady stream of suicidees to bleed America dry. 

Terror script

The other day we had a filmmaker over to talk about her experiences in Kashmir during the riots about the Amarnath shrine. She was scared, of course. And felt very odd at the way Kashmiris thought of themselves as different from other Indians. But she also talked about mass murder, mass rape and mass terror by the Indian army. The national shame made more credible by admissions to personal, normal (Just like you) fear and bewilderment (“They don't think like we do. Which becomes understandable when you consider the circumstance they have lived under for the last sixty years.”) And by putting faces and places to the suffering (“Her husband has been missing for the last 16 years. He was picked up at the bazaar.”)

And she's going to turn her observations into a feature film about these poor women.

There's something not quite right here. Can I stay with a Muslim family for a fortnight and understand enough about the 'Muslim problem' to write even an essay on it? If not, are two visits and an abiding interest enough for a script? What does one have to do to write a script? How long must a man walk in others' shoes to talk about them? How many different shoes must he wear? Can you write anything if you have to tell everything? Valid questions. And they do need answers.

Why USA is in recession

My brother and sister-in-law went to Wal Mart to pick up some gifts for her office, and couldn't find a shopping cart. He was bewildered that there were no carts when the American economy was in recession. She replied saying that it was in recession beause all the carts at Wal Mart were taken, that too during recession. That's telling.  

Who will take care of poor us?

Down with the politician. 

Fair enough. They are all fat and ugly. But who will rule us?

Why, we. You and me. The educated middle class.

We! We can't even run a housing society. Every housing society president acts as if he's god. While the rest of us simply refuse to follow any rule that our own society may make. We even make the security guard run personal errands, security be damned. 

Just see the sports page of any newspaper and you'll be nauseated the extraordinary amount of mudslinging and underhand deals that go around every sports body election. Who populate these bodies? There may be a politician at the top, but the voters are largely middle class fellows. (Not the economic middle class, but the self-declared real middle class, because class is perception that decides reality.)

We can't run a company without flouting laws and rules. Of course, we know that all laws that make us pay bribes were framed for the express purpose of collecting those bribes. But why begrudge the politician the same cynicism. He can just as well argue that conventional morality exists merely to turn him into a convenient scapegoat.  

Ok. Then let's outsource then. We'll get Israel for internal security, USA for external security, Chidambaram can run the economy, Narayan Murti will be made benevolent dictator to run the rest. 

Don't know about the last two gentlemen, but how is a country bogged down in two silly wars, and sundry even stupider civil wars qualified to look after us? What's their record? Ok, mainland USA hasn't been attacked since 9/11, but just too many people under US safeguard - in Europe, Iraq and Afghanistan - have been killed for any sane man to seek such safeguard. 

Moreover, if one looks at the cost of wars, and the stuff that money could have otherwise bought for the American voters, their government looks even worse. Can we afford such expensive security? At least, let them get rid of those Hummers, which, incidentally, didn't save GM from begging, before we say yes. Perhaps careful analysis would show them to be the best among alternatives, but lets at least look at China before choosing.

As for Israel, here's a police state with suicide bombings every month. This in spite of almost all their prime ministers being ex-generals. They may give the Palestinians a hiding from time to time, with helicopters, tanks and rockets (That's what we want to do to our minorities, don't we?) but they haven't been able to stop the killing of their own people, in spite of winning the War on Terror over the last six decades. 

Now, we are clever people. We don't care about hollow honour, do we? We think profit? So, do the Israelis run a profitable show in terms of protecting Israeli lives? For sure, we're buying lots of weapons and security systems from them, but should we give them charge to run our show as well? 

Again, we need some cost-benefit analysis. Reportedly, some Israeli security expert (and who isn't an expert these days) was quick to announce that hadn't Indian commandos blotched up, the rabbi family at Nariman House would have been saved. Now, how did he know they blotched up? Who told him what happened there?