A time for Gujarat, again

Togadia dumped the onus of quelling the violence against Muslims on the Muslims. ‘‘Until they do something to calm Hindu sentiment’’, he warned, ‘‘things will get more and more violent. You can impose a curfew in one place, but there will be an incident somewhere else … The Hindu mood has changed now’’.

The tone of the accompanying story was unsurprisingly grim. It’s a different kind of hate this time in Gujarat, said the magazine, and it is spreading.

It’s not just the fanatics, ‘‘murder has gone middle class’’. And then the sweeping exaggeration: ‘‘Across the country, in the cities and out in the villages, Hindu ‘self defence’ groups are ransacking Muslims’ shops and burning their homes’’.

This was also the week when sections of the international media remarked on the belatedness of Vajpayee’s visit to Ahmedabad, where ‘‘more than 100,000 people — mostly Muslims — now languish in squalid relief camps after being burned out of their homes’’.

The NEW YORK TIMES was acerbic in its assessment of the day-long trip. It pointed out what the PM didn’t say. ‘‘Sounding like a stern father mortified by the misdeeds of his own children … but Mr Vajpayee did not chastise Mr Modi … If the prime minister, a crafty politician, was willing to offer any criticism, it was done in a very oblique way’’.

Queen Mum’s the word

BRITAIN was underwhelmed by the death of the Queen Mother this week. The mourning was muted. The story was kept going, though, by a loud media spat — the venerable BBC vs the royalist tabloid, the DAILY MAIL.

Despite receiving more than 2,000 complaints from viewers who believed the BBC was going overboard, the corporation filled its schedules with special Queen Mother programming. But that didn’t satisfy the DAILY MAIL.

The BBC has lost the right to call itself the national broadcaster after its ‘scant’ coverage of the Queen Mother’s death, it said. It lashed out at BBC newscaster Peter Sissons for wearing a burgundy tie to deliver the news of the death.

Away from the commotion, Jackie Ashley pointed out in THE GUARDIAN that both the government and the BBC have a problem. They have to speak in public as if the entire country thinks alike about the Queen Mother. Both are expected to speak for a single ‘Britishness’ that has disappeared.

It is partly a generational split, said the columnist. At 101, the Queen had outlasted her Britain — ‘‘that hymn-singing, cake baking, God-fearing, white, dutiful and patriotic Britishness which culminated in the authority of the royal family’’. It could be the impact of immigration. Or Europe, or devolution. ‘‘Surely the single biggest reason is the market. A global making-and-selling culture has seized the imaginations of people everywhere … The royal family will not, therefore, disappear but it is clearly suffering the indignity of Britishness more generally’’, she wrote.

Today, the monarchy is ‘‘‘cute’ not powerful, a useful lure for tourists rather than the apex of political authority.’’

Nation on the edge

THE final rules for the Loya Jirga, the nation-wide assembly in mid-June, were announced in Afghanistan. It will be virtually the first attempt in the country’s modern history to choose a representative government.

In the US media, the announcement revived an older debate: Should the US involve itself in nation-building in Afghanistan? How much?

What’s wrong with nation-building anyway? Richard Holbrooke, US ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton administration, took that question head-on in THE WASHINGTON POST.

He dismissed the talk of exit strategies for the US in Afghanistan. Somewhere along the road from Vietnam to Somalia, he pointed out, ‘nation-building’ became a dirty word. Euphemisms were substituted —‘‘post-conflict reconstruction’’, for instance.

It may be long and costly, he argued, but if Afghanistan is important enough to wage war over, it is equally important to ‘‘stabilise and rebuild, not only as a humanitarian goal but in our own vital national interest…’’ That debate rages on.

POTA, elsewhere

AS President Meg-awati Soekarnoputri toured India on the last leg of an Asian trip, the Indonesian version of Pota was being debated back home. The Indonesian government hasn’t won the debate yet.

From THE JAKARTA POST, some echoes of a familiar controversy: In recent months the Indonesian government has cited its ‘‘lack of such a powerful law’’ as grounds for ‘‘not acting against terrorist elements in the country’’ … There are fears the ‘‘definition of terrorism currently being promoted by the government’’ in its antiterrorism bill ‘‘opens the door to abuse through the potential labelling of any political activity considered a threat by the state as terrorism’’ … Noted rights activist Abdul Hakim Garuda Nusantara urged further clarification on ‘‘the roles of the primary perpetrators, the accomplices, supporters and funders’’ … Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono conceded there was a debate over ‘‘security interests versus civil liberties’’ but ‘‘we must be careful not to place human rights in the context of drafting this bill as an absolute’’.

Some have suggested Indonesia should compare its law with similar laws in other democratic nations like India. The Pota experience may actually yield some helpful tips for the Indonesian government.

Just one question: when the arguments fail to carry the day, does the Indonesian constitution also permit the government to force the law through by calling a special session?

Crisis of state

AS the US dispatches Secretary of State Colin Powell to the Middle East, the question is: can the initiative be wrested from the suicide bomber and the soldier?

Many have lost hope.‘‘‘The situation’ is what everyone calls the state we’re in’’ write Israeli psychiatrist Ilan Kutz and American-born psychotherapist Sue Kutz in TIME. A depersonalised term that reflects the feeling that no one is responsible, and no control is possible.