Frontline

Jan- Feb 2002 
Editorial


 

Needed: A peacetime hero

In times past, wartime leaders, if their acts led to ‘victory’, always emerged as heroes to their people, their words remembered, their actions hailed, their personalities and thoughts penned by sympathisers and detractors alike. It is a measure of the complexity of our times that while the age-old valorising of the powerful and the rich remain our major paradigm; a critical legacy of the last century has been the critique of this rather crude aspect of human priority and vision.

Man’s experiments with science, knowledge and power in the last century led him to both create deadly weapons of mass destruction — beginning with the atom bomb — and justify mass killing and annihilation in the name of superiority of race. Replace race with faith and interchange caste, tribe or class with either and the root of the brutal conflicts that we witness today become clear.

Post-September 11, in a world clearly consumed by the US-driven ‘War Against Terrorism’, we have seen some attempts at temperance in the otherwise aggressive rhetoric against terror. Unfortunately, however, these have been accompanied by a curtailment of basic human freedoms. Mass hunger and deprivation, that is killing the people of Afghanistan even as US action there continues, has today vanished from the global and Indian television channels and news pages.

It is as if with the fate of Osama Bin Laden, that of the hapless Afghan people, abused by outsiders for decades, has also been sealed. Meanwhile, what we are left with on a volatile Indian sub-continent is a heavy US military presence in the region and a permanent FBI office in our Capital. Uncle Sam is not only watching closely, but is also conveniently positioned to do much more.

In India, post 9/11 and 12/13, the sense of moral outrage against the action of agents of hatred who attacked the Indian Parliament has become a useful tool to target sections of our own population. Our report from Rajasthan in this issue closely examines the impact of these processes on the ground while providing reason for hope. Through their dynamic demonstration for peace and sanity, village youth are today posing a successful challenge to communal forces in the Shekhavati region of the state.

Since virtually it’s inception, but especially over the past four years or so, the editorial vision of CC has expanded to address the shameful, basic reality of Indian society — the existence of caste. We have tried to reflect the basic denials and deprivations caused by this stratification, sanctioned by the scriptures. In the last year, we have recorded and analysed the evolving campaign by Dalit groups to force a discussion on caste as a form of discrimination at the United Nation’s World Conference. Last month, as a significant follow-up to this campaign and the continuing struggle of Dalit groups, the Madhya Pradesh government hosted a national conference of Dalit activists and intellectuals at which the Bhopal Declaration with its ‘21-Point Action Agenda for the 21st Century’ was adopted. We draw attention of our readers to this important event with the hope that the vision reflected at this conference and the document adopted will, in the not too distant future, chart for 25 per cent of our people a life of equal opportunities and basic human dignity.

The dogged determination of the NCERT, under hard-liner Murli Manohar Joshi, is evidence if any were needed what the real agenda of the present political regime is – doctoring of historical truths and control of the mind.

It is tragic that a country that gave to the world intellectual visionaries like Gandhi and Ambedkar heralds the present century with a leadership that is driven by base considerations like the marketing of hatred and venom. The NCERT’s syllabus released last month reflects this narrow mind-set.

On January 12, as the world watched a Pakistani general who sits in the presidential chair, Pervez Musharraf, responding to the pressure of the times, delivering a historic address. Whether or not this marks ‘half-a-revolution’, as popular columnist Praful Bidwai opines in our cover story this month, Indian Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee’s response, "We are in a state of national emergency", proved a pathetic anti-climax. Just as his government’s New Year ‘gift’ to the people of Jammu and Kashmir — severing of all telephonic STD/ISD links — revealed. Symptoms of a country ill at ease with itself or its people?

— Editors

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