Ananth Venkatesh

The slaying of the international terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, and the liquidation of his confederates by the American Special Forces have ceased a gory chapter of Islamic terrorism. Osama was a vile terrorist, whose ideology was responsible for the engenderment of a slew of young Muslim terrorists globally. One interesting facet of Osama is that his blood-spattered fundamentalism disseminated through the Muslim world because of his monetary assets and apparent charismatic persona.

The American military intervention in Afghanistan in the 1980s to uproot the Communist Soviet forces stationed there led to the arrival of militant Islamists and their prominence. The Crescentic extremists such as Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Osama and others were backed by America monetarily and militarily to oust the Soviet troops from Afghan territory.

Whether the Soviet occupation of Afghan land was illegitimate or lawful depends on your ideological leanings. I, for one, deem that Afghanistan was politically wobbly and ripe for foreign intervention in the 1970s. Such was Afghan administrative brittleness then. I believe that the Soviet Union had valid arguments to justify its military intervention in Afghanistan as a military pact was formalized between the Afghan government and the Soviets in 1978, which allowed the Afghans to request Soviet military assistance to maintain stability in the country.

America had ideological and strategic reasons to oppose the Soviet presence in Afghan areas as America feared that the Soviets would undercut American influence in the Persian Gulf and would acquire access to the Indian Ocean by subduing a weaker Pakistan. Therefore, military and fiscal aid was offered to the Afghan religious rebels by the U.S. to topple the Soviet lordship in Afghanistan.

Pakistan, it needs to be remembered, enacted a crucial role in funding the operations of these Islamic rebels in Afghanistan. Pakistan, then governed dictatorially by General Zia, also coached the Afghan insurrectionists about the usage of lethal weaponry supplied by America and its friends.

However, no one had thought then that these anti communist Afghans would convert themselves into venomous terrorists opposed to global tranquillity. Osama, Zawahiri and several others, who were subsidized by America and Pakistan in the 1980s, entrenched themselves during the Afghan Civil War in the 1990s and became sadistic masters of Afghanistan under Taliban headship.

America should have stayed put in Afghanistan even subsequent to the Soviet withdrawal and ensured a proper governmental transition that would have thwarted the utter chaos that engulfed Afghan life during the ghoulish Civil War in the 1990s, which led to the macabre slaughter of President Najibullah in 1996. Hence, it is imperative that America stays the course in Afghanistan this time and not depart from the country in a hurry. One doesn’t need the reinstatement of the terroristic Taliban in Kabul.

Also, let us not forget that America didn’t implement a 9/11 or 26/11 in Afghanistan during the reign of the Taliban. It was the Al-Qaeda, sheltered by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and its chief, Osama, who plotted and executed the carnage that occurred on 9/11. America was attacked savagely by Osama and the Al-Qaeda. It is only natural that a self-respecting country like America would act decisively and determinedly to bump off an implacable enemy like Osama.

On a personal note, copious credit needs to be showered upon the American soldiers, who assassinated Osama and his henchmen in Abbotabad in Pakistan. They have served the world well. Never forget that Al-Qaeda and its fraternal terrorist entities such as Lashkar, Jaish, etc. have vowed to carry out ceaseless destruction in the non-Muslim world. Their objective is the Islamization of the world, which would involve the decimation of the non-Muslim way of life. Certainly, their version of Islamic is barbaric. Barbaric is an understatement.

Kartikey Sehgal

Victory is not always important. The sense of victory, is.

The confidence that you have won, whether you really have or not. Symbolism matters.

So America lost on 9/11. When some countries celebrated the attacks and America raged. Americans cheered when America got back at the Al-Qaeda but then they were stopped. America was not expected to be unreasonable. Though only a symbolic victory was needed, in the eyes of critics, the actual victory became important. It was important to bring results. The attackers were left off…

Nothing was expected from the attackers. They need not prove anything because they are, not America. Not America = they don’t have American qualities in any case, so don’t bother about what they do. Don’t expect from them, at all. They are not under scrutiny. Only America is.

So America was criticized for attacking. They needed to provide receipts for their actions. Not the attackers.

Subsequently, when asked why the attackers go away scot free, it was alleged that America deserves the attacks and that they must have done something bad to deserve these attacks. In time, the ones calling for a strong show, a symbolic show of strength backed down and their place within the population was taken by the meekly peaceful ones. The ones who like to reprimand. The ones who may have never heard of the Middle-east or Asian countries but now want to make friends with them.

So even symbolism has taken a backseat. American politicians are apologising to the world for having power. Have the other nations apologised to America for murdering American citizens? It’s not required. They are stupid in any case, so why be like them. If they attack us again, it will be because we haven’t satisfied them.

America was paying the pass for being civilised and educated. You must have better ways if not them.

Ananth Venkatesh

Employees and guests of the Taj Mahal hotel, site of one of the shootouts with terrorists, are recued by firefighters as fire engulfs the top floor on late November 26, 2008. (LORENZO TUGNOLI/AFP/Getty Images)

Terrorism, a poison that has historically maimed a plenteous number of blameless Indians, rocked India once more for nearly 3 days. Mumbai’s Taj Hotel, a legendary symbol of architectural splendour, was targeted by Islamic bigots. The Oberoi-Trident was also brutalised by the bloody insaneness of the terrorists. Mumbai, familiar with such bigotry, had to endure the chilling ramifications of another intelligence blunder and the ineptitude of the law-enforcement machinery. Nariman House, mostly inhabited by Hasidic Jews, was also in the line of fire. The frequency of terror in India, with its inherent demoralisation, must alarm even the most optimistic Indian.

The terrorists, with a plenitude of deadly ammunition, journeyed through the sea to Mumbai. The inability of the police personnel and the Coast Guard members to hunt down these merchants of death before the formalisation of their devious designs is another addition to the lengthy list of incompetence of our security system.

The meticulous terrorists had eyed overseas nationals as well and their murder provides an international dimension to this issue. The attack on Jews in Nariman House is another lugubrious facet of this tragic episode of terrorism perpetrated against India. It only demonstrates the necessity of solidifying the Indo-Israeli alliance to forge a more efficient co-operation between the two sides, especially on the issue of counter-terrorism measures. The military relationship with Israel also needs to be deepened determinedly.

Indigenisation of terrorism is a mournful reality, which needs to be countered with fierceness since these venomous terrorists only understand the language of forcefulness.

Our political category has abysmally failed to supply relief to the Indian citizenry. The relentlessly inane squabbling between the political parties has enfeebled this federal government diametrically. A severe counter-terrorism law needs to be passed legislatively, which will serve as an appropriate counter to the evilness of terrorists. The notion of stringent laws to corner terror is always deemed as unacceptable by the pseudo-secular branches of the media and the polity. The rationale for the rejection of such legislative decrees is the possible brutalisation of the minority community. It is such small-minded politics–which refuses to understand the meanness of the temperament of terrorism–that is constricting India from confronting terrorism.

The ire of the citizenry has steadily expanded over the past four years during which several terrorist punches have bled India. The inaction of the national and provincial governments on the issue of terrorism could result in an electoral downslide for the governing coalition. The politicians have been incapable of acknowledging the indigestible facets of the terror hitting India 

Pakistan, which has mastered the art of disingenuousness, is the basis of all the terrorism directed against India. The mendacity of Pakistan has been divulged in the past. The joint anti-terror mechanism between India and Pakistan, an irksomely romantic vision, has become dysfunctional.

The barbaric ISI, which has provided schooling to the youthful terrorists, will never allow the instalment of trustworthiness in the Indo-Pakistan association. Pakistan, while adopting an aggressive stance on the matter of confronting Al-Qaeda and its ghastly cronies in the tribal areas of Western Pakistan bordering Afghanistan, has treated the primarily anti- India terrorist outfits such as Luhshker Tayyaba, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen weakly.

The stratagem of Pakistan and its espionage machinery remains the same, which is the terrorization of the Indian populace. India must call off the peace course that it has travelled on with Pakistan since 2003. As long as terrorism continues to be used as a weapon against India, India must not engage with Pakistan in any way.

India must interestedly consider the possibility of obliterating terror companies in PoK. This might seem an outrageous suggestion but India has been abused by Pak-endorsed terrorism for too long. Pictographic evidence along with material evidence exists with the national military and the central Home Ministry, which unmistakably determine the connivance of Pakistan’s infamous ISI with the anti-India malefactors.

Finally, the empathy of most of the globe will be on the side of India. India must strengthen its union with America in order to be able to tackle Pakistan and its terror zones aggressively. 

Timeline of Mumbai Terror Attacks 

Ananth Venkatesh

Education: Not in Waste

It is indeed paradoxical that the 232-year old America , the oldest democratic nation in the globe and the most muscular country on the face of the earth, which always espouses the virtues of a tolerant and inclusive democracy, has had a history ridden with prejudices, based on either race or gender.

This wealthy land, procreated as a mighty nation by the entrepreneurship of European immigrants, which encompassed barbarousness in its treatment of black slaves, has historically been intolerant towards white females in the cultural, social, economic and political compartments of society. It is an indicator of the regressiveness of the otherwise judicious and commendable founding personalities of America that they deemed the bequeathment of the right to vote to women unnecessary. For all its enhancement and marvelous accomplishments in innumerable vocational segments, America has culturally and politically been not as forward thinking as some of the other less privileged nations on earth.

America has not elected even one female President in the copious years of its prosperous existence, with the closest it came to witnessing a female occupying a politically pivotal post was in 1984 when Geraldine Ferraro was the Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee.

In the light of the resistance in the psyche of many white American males towards observing women holding publicly significant posts, the high-voltage campaign of Hillary Clinton on the hustings with the aspiration of winning the Democratic nomination for the Presidency is a momentously crucial phase in America . It is a reflection of the progressive alteration of the mindsets of Americans, who were for so long devoured by the cultural injustive prevailing in the Western world.

• The mindset which viewed women as incapable of governing.
• The idea of women as a category that needed to stay at home to execute the virtuous commissions of motherhood and wifehood.

Victims of Religion

The reasons of the victimisation of American women due to such blatant unfairness can be traced back to the early years of Christianity, when an unequivocally flagrant approach was embraced by the influential components of the Christian Church, who referred to womanhood as having the ability to assume monstrous appearances if ‘unchecked and untamed’.

The injustice-ridden convictions possessed by males associated with the Churches in the Western world inflicted massive destructions on the morale of females and their capability to think independently. Females were considered as harbingers of cosmic monstrosity and disillusionment, as is evidenced by the description of women by an eminent Latin Father of the Christian Church in the 4th century, St .Jerome, who inconceivably conveyed, “Woman is the gate of the devil, the path of wickedness, the sting of the serpent, in a word a perilous object.”

Women were referred to as childlike, who always had to be directed by men. The dubbing of females as fonts of seduction and sexual debauchment, who could pervert the “social order” if not confined to the homes, was proof positive of the sexist stereotyping of womanliness in the West. Such generalisations contributed to brutally assaulting the mentality of generations of women thereby rendering them with emotions of being useless and inept.

Domestication

Females were indoctrinated from a very malleable age of the splendidness of domestication and of the immanence of docility in the structure of womanhood. Marriage at a youthful age and subsequent procreation of progeny coupled with dutiful service of their spouses were considered intrinsic to a glorious womanhood and the requisites to successfulness in a woman’s life. Married women in the West had to succumb to the dictums of their husbands and were piteously handicapped as a consequence of legal and judicial prejudice of the nations which they inhabited. Husbands literally were custodians of their wives, who had to surrender everything on entering into matrimonial alliances, ranging from their names to chattels owned by them. These gigantically biased perceptions of women prevailed throughout much of America , right from its commencement as a State, well in to the late 19th century.

Women were regarded as being unsuitable and misfits’ vis-à-vis their capacity to work in professions involving harsh labour, since women were for ages labelled the ‘delicate and frail sex’, unable to do demanding jobs, which were considered to be the domain of men. This was patently untrue since subsequent researches and analyses have unambiguously illustrated the intrinsic powerfulness of women and their ability to endure more physical and mental excruciation than males. In colonial and post-independence nations, women were legally fractured just like their sisters in other European countries. The predilection of a majority of white American males to categorise females as incompetent thinkers not possessing the intellectual perspicaciouness indispensable to reign over a vast country like America severely suppressed the already latent talents of many American females, black and white. The tragedy of black females was on account of their skin colour and race, which was markedly dissimilar to the whites. Ironically, the maltreatment of black females made them subjects of empathies of white females, who also experienced subjugation by males on account of the aforementioned reasons.

It is a measure of the matureness of American democracy and its steady evolution that a woman had a wonderful chance of becoming the first woman President of the land. Irrespective of the meritoriousness of her schemes and the course of action she could have journeyed on as a President, the very actuality of her enacting such a paramount role is a glorious accomplishment of American democracy.

Jobs and Education

The suffocation of white females was aggravated by the societal impediments preventing women from procuring employments in areas of their likings. Some segments in the world of professions in America were out of bounds for women. The professions of engineering and medicine until the final stages of the 19th century had exiguous space for women, being, almost exclusively, territories reserved for males, who were classified as worthy of belonging to these two vocations. Vocations that consisted of many women, like teaching, and vocations where women were scarce, earned them the same meagre income in comparison to the stipends accumulated by the males. Only by the mid-20th century did the scenario look vibrant as America passed a series of laws stipulating that payment of equal salaries for the same amount of work to women is mandatory.

In education, higher priority was provided to boys thereby diminishing the significance of schooling for girls. Most American girls were not even undergraduates during the first few years of the 20th century. Women obtained just 19 percent of all undergraduate college degrees around the beginning of the 20th century, a figure which grew exponentially as the century neared its completion. Only due to the indefatigably astute efforts of several American females, namely, Elizabeth Stanton, Susan Anthony, Carrie Catt and some others, all associated with the American feminist movement, was a climate created which paved the way for the passage of laws respectful of the authentic status of women, with these laws being congenial to the demand of equal rights for women.

Conclusion

Considering this divisive and horridly uncivilised past where American females, of dissimilar colours, had to bear the terrible brunt of unfairness and overbearing incorrectness from men in the name of religious mores and racism, the sight of Hillary Clinton competitively contesting against her contenders for securing the nomination of her party to campaign for the Presidential election is a terrifically symbolic moment. It sends a message to the rest of the world, including to American chauvinists, who still exist exiguously, about the attitudinal transformation regarding such issues in America.

Execrable sexism has regrettably raised its head even this time around. Hillary Clinton was jeered, while addressing an audience, by some white American parochialists, who uttered that ‘she go to her home and iron clothes’, a reference to the conventional perception of womanliness in America .

Nonetheless, it is a measure of the matureness of American democracy and its steady evolution that a woman had a wonderful chance of becoming the first woman President of the land. Irrespective of the meritoriousness of her schemes and the course of action she could have journeyed on as a President, the very actuality of her enacting such a paramount role is a glorious accomplishment of American democracy.

“Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks in it”

Hillary Clinton

Article: An interesting read

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Ananth Venkatesh

The heinous assassination of Benazir Bhutto represents a demoralising defeat for the advocates of democracy in Pakistan. The murder, whether regime-sponsored or otherwise, is:
• a pertinent yet sorrowful reminder of the brittle security situation in Pakistan,
• it’s pitiable inability and helplessness to ruthlessly tackle the forces of bigotry,
• and the repercussions of befriending terrorists to further one’s goals.

Rise to Power

Benazir, who was democratically elected as the PM of Pakistan in November 1988, was a pleasurably different personality that India had to contend with. After having lost her father in April 1979, Benazir was imprisoned by the military junta for nearly five years, which she spent in solitary confinement. Being released in 1984 on medical grounds, she left for London, where she rose to prominence, became the liberal identity and the head of the PPP. General Zia-Ul-Haq’s evaporation from the Pakistani political scene, in mysterious circumstances, due to his death in a plane crash in 1988, led to national elections, which saw Benazir’s party being voted to power by most of her country’s people.

Her appointment as PM, at an unimaginably young age of 35, was unsurprising, given the wealth of admiration and popularity that the Bhutto family is showered with. Her occupation of the seat of the PM served as a great uplift for all the women of Pakistan and she was soon engulfed by the innumerable aspirations of the people. She was an extremely educated female, whose debating skills had won her numerous laurels during her days at Oxford. Chauvinistic elements of the military found the prospect of dealing with a female PM unpalatable.

Disillusionment of the people

The source of the disillusionment with her, which seeped into the mindsets of many Pakistanis, a few months into her tenure, was her incapacity to deliver on many of her promises. Her assurance, on the hustings, to transform Pakistan into a symbol of modernity and egalitarianism, could not be implemented. However, on the vexed issue of J & K, Benazir was sagacious enough to ride along with the military’s standpoint. She acceded to the military’s ploy of wounding India incessantly through the implementation of the plan of intrusion of terrorists into J & K and subsequently wreaking it through bombings and lobbing of grenades.

Bhutto, Terrorism and leaving Pakistan

Bhutto would not have been able to absolutely abdicate herself from shouldering responsibility for granting her consent to such uncontrollably senseless mayhem. Whether she herself believed in the efficacy of nurturing jehadis to terrorise J & K or she was coerced into surrendering to the military’s wishes, one will not be able to ascertain positively. She needs to be bequeathed some plaudits for making efforts to eradicate Sikh terrorism in Punjab, which was receiving gleeful help from the ISI.

Irrespective of how committed she was to giving birth to a peaceful Indo-Pak relationship, she could not embrace audacious steps to prove her desire. Her famous and well-remembered meeting in 1988 with PM Rajiv Gandhi during the SAARC summit, in which Rajiv had promised to withdraw Indian troops from Siachen, only to renege on it later due to electoral compulsions, at least epitomized freshness and forward-thinking in the approaches of the two countries towards resolving their undying disputes. Her advocacy for the maintenance of diplomatic ties with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan despite the gruesomeness associated with their treatment of Afghani women, bewildered many. Pakistan was one of the three nations in the globe to continue to share diplomatic relations with Afghanistan, during the reign of the Taliban, when the rest of the world had boycotted Afghanistan and had segregated themselves from the Taliban. Anti-India terrorists were trained and determinedly indoctrinated in Taliban land by the Pakistani military along with the ISI’s workforce. Taliban’s Afghanistan was hugged by Benazir’s Pakistan to paralyse and victimise India.

The charges of allowing the dissemination of corruption and nepotism during her Prime Ministerial reign and of herself being a recipient, along with her husband, Asif Zardari, of kickbacks tarnished her integrity and moral fabric indubitably. Her husband had a pejorative nickname coined for him, ‘Mr. 10 %’, the reference being obvious. She displayed powerlessness when it came to enforcing her cherished objectives pertaining to the erasing of gender bias in Pakistan and the dismantlement of oppressive and throttling laws that curtailed equality for women in the nation. Hence, she was excoriated by her detractors.

Back to Pakistan

Benazir, after nearly eight and a half years in voluntary exile, had arrived victoriously in Pakistan in October 2007 to enact her role in the establishment of democracy in Pakistan, a process which was being backed by much of the world, including, most crucially, the United States. A majority of Pakistanis, who had been under the grip of their powerful military since the coup d’état in October 1999 that led to the then PM Nawaz Sharif being illegitimately deposed, had been yearning to witness the authentic birth of democracy again in their country. The elections organised in 2002 were considered rigged and, therefore, were severely discredited.

The United States, which had been enacting a significant role in the affairs of Pakistan ever since the tragedy of 9/11, had tried to assiduously broker a power-sharing agreement between Benazir’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Musharraf Government. But the deal for allotment of power fell by the wayside due to obstinate divisions between the two parties on key issues like the elimination of the prevention on two-time PMs from contesting for the third time and the balance of power between the President and the PM. Musharraf, as President, was zealously desirous of retaining the right to dissolve any Pakistani Parliament, which was vociferously opposed by Bhutto.

Benazir with her husband Asif Zardari and children

Accepting her mistakes and a new vision for India-Pakistan ties

The Benazir that the world got to witness was remarkably different. She, in interviews to the western and the Indian media, creditably railed against the monstrousness of fanaticism that had brought such disrepute and dishonour to her land. She vehemently supported the merciless uprooting of bigots from her soil who were indulging, in the name of Islam, in bloodletting. Benazir, to the surprise of some, backed Musharraf’s decision to bombard the Red Mosque to flush out the militants hiding there holding innocents as hostage.

She commendably and candidly confessed to the Indian media that she might have made blunders in the past vis-à-vis her giving the green signal to strategically befriending Afghanistan to combat India. Forthrightness was an innate constituent of her persona when quizzed about her views on the presence of anti-India terrorists on Pakistani territory i.e. Dawood Ibrahim, Maulana Azhar, etc. She was probably the lone Pakistani politician to confess about their existence on Pakistani soil since the Pakistani ruling establishment has always denied accusations of sheltering these criminals.

She also exhibited courageousness in promising to hand over those terrorists to India if elected as PM. It is an extremely rare sight to hear a Pakistani politician admit the clandestine assistance given to these extremists let alone assure their deliverance to India. On the subject of J & K, she expressed that the territorial squabble alone must not define the Indo-Pak association and must not be the lone focus of the peace process between the two countries. Her unsparing backing for the U.S.’s ‘War against Terrorism’ made her a loveable figure in the West, especially America. Her being a target of the fundamentalist outfits was inevitable. Even in her last election rally, while addressing the huge audience, Bhutto spoke of the need to counter the forces of bigotry, who were zestfully dedicated to destroying her country.

One needs to possess plentiful gumption to vociferously voice disapproval of ferociously intolerant elements in Pakistan and Benazir had that.

Benazir was a Sindhi Muslim woman, which was a justifiable reason, according to some Pakistanis, for her disqualification from Pakistani politics. Given the predominance of Punjabis in Pakistan in governmental departments and the fractious relationship between the Karachiites and the Lahoris, this attitude came as no surprise.

Benazir righteously denounced these opponents of civility, liberalism, fairness and tranquility. Due to her disappearance from the Pakistani political landscape as a consequence of this assassination, Pakistan has been deprived of witnessing an tolerant, democratic and moderate leader who stood for the aforementioned principles, which ideally should form the basis of any 21st century nation-state. She deserved another opportunity to govern her birthplace.