A time for magnanimity

And, juxtapose this with Maureen Dowd’s brilliant column in the New York Times. “Franklin Graham, the Christian evangelist who has branded Islam a ‘very wicked and evil’ religion, was the honoured speaker at the Pentagon’s Good Friday Service.” We now have the breast beaters of Karbala as the new American pin-ups and Franklin Graham, son of the more famous Billy Graham, pouring venom on the breast-beaters’ faith, all in one jumbled frame. And President Bush says of Billy Graham “he planted a seed in my heart” to stop drinking and embrace Jesus. His father, President Bush senior, knelt with Billy Graham in prayer all night before starting operation Desert Storm.

Iraq, Iran and Syria are all described as the axis of evil deserving, presumably, the same punishment. Then a deal is struck with Iran to persuade Ayatullah Baqar al Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, exiled in Tehran for two decades, to send out word on the 21st day of the war to the Shias in Saddam City in Baghdad and Southern Iraq, to come out on the streets against Saddam Hussein. Then the Pentagon threatens Syria which the British have been cultivating and which country was visited on 18 occasions by Warren Christopher who, as Clinton’s first secretary of state, was trying to put some life into the Middle East peace process.

A journalist asks Colin Powell if France will be made to pay a price for having stood upto the US in the Security Council. Powell looks the journalist straight in the eye. Then without batting an eyelid: “Yes.”

It is frightening not because of American power but because of its inelegant demonstration. Moreover, we are not yet certain whether what we are witnessing is American power or limits to this power. Let this Iraqi thing run itself out. If it goes badly, take my word, other regimes will be hit.

When “Rummy” Rumsfeld is asked about the ransacking of the Baghdad Museum and library, which even Halaku had spared during his sack of Baghdad, he scowls. “One man carrying a vase, shown again and again on TV”.

At such a moment, Vajpayee has stood up as a South Asian statesman. There are limits to how far he can go. There has to be total realisation in Islamabad that sustaining a quarrel on old terms is an invitation to unpredictable forces.

Of course, there will be those among us who will raise their eyebrows. Does he mean what he says? Will he switch his stance as he did in Goa after the Gujarat progrom? You can send the prime minister out of the RSS but you cannot send the RSS out of him. Nearly 60 years of training in the sangh is an organic part of him. But only a part. Five decades in Parliament as a national leader, foreign minister, prime minister, a man of introspection, has informed his evolution as a statesman. How else do you explain his almost lyrical enunciation of India’s composite culture, the juxtaposition of Lalded and Lalleshwari, during that convocation in Srinagar.

A statesman is also a politician. As Vajpayee chooses the moment to shift Indian and subcontinental politics from the margins to the middle ground, he deserves support. Hold his hand as he stretches it out. Otherwise the dynamics of Indian politics, all very democratic, may coerce him to revert to a politics of survival. His instincts on this count too are sharp. Just look how deftly he has survived a full five year term, carrying a bulky coalition with him.

This is a defining moment for the world, region and the country. Muslims too must disengage themselves from old, inflexible positions. 9/11 tended to divide the world in terms of Muslim-non Muslim categories. The war on Iraq has united the people of the world against a common danger. The Gujarat pogrom divided us as a nation. Then some balance was restored in Himachal Pradesh. And look at the miracle of Indian democracy: Togadia is an embarrassment to the sangh parivar and the mayor of Ahmedabad is a Muslim woman!

Indian Muslims need to break out in revolutionary new ways. Did you see Ahmad Kazmi’s reports on Doordarshan from Najaf and Karbala? The first thing the Muslims did on being freed of the Baathist yoke was to remove Saddam Hussein’s photograph from the shrines of Ali, Hussain and Abbas. Saddam’s pictures on the holy shrines bruised Muslim sensibility.

Now travel with me to the Kashi Vishwanath temple in Varanasi. At an insulting height, abutting the holiest of Hindu temples is the controversial mosque build in medieval times representing the custom of those days. That cannot be the custom today. The sight should hurt us because it hurts a fellow Hindu.

There is no time for legal bargains. Have the courage to be sensitive on this issue. Have the magnanimity to overlook a thousand wrongs that have been heaped upon you. Of course I am being carried away but, believe me, only this way lies salvation in a world which Vajpayee has rightly diagnosed as a very dangerous place.