THE TAXIDRIVER; Obituary FOR SAM WE THE INDIAN MUSLIM HAVE SUFFERED ENOUGH GOODBYE SAM UNNALE UNNALE

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TAXI2DRIVER WE THE INDIAN MUSLIM HAVE SUFFERED ENOUGH GOODBYE SAM UNNALE UNNALE

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Let’s start with the facts. Rosmah is a known fixer. She has been around for two decades now, fixing deals READMOREDehumanising ANWAR ZIONIST APCO HAS LANDED IN PARLIAMENT HOUSE BARISAN undressed and unveiled.

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Irom Sharmila is Gandhism personified. So is Aung Sang Suu kyi. In an era when a person is judged by his or her success no matter how it is achieved, the two iron ladies have proved that the power of sacrifice is divine and unparalleled. Both the non-violent crusaders have unrelenting faith in the righteousness of the action to aim for what they believe is just and true. On November 2, Sharmila completed 10 years of unbroken fast and on November 13, Suu Kyi was released after 15 years of house arrest. Sharmila’s herculean struggle is against Indian army’s alleged atrocities in Manipur while Suu Kyi is fighting for the freedom of Myanmar from decades of oppression by the junta. They may not have been able to achieve their goals so far but have moved the world with their satyagraha.

But the unfortunate part is that the Indian State continues to ignore Sharmila and has ditched Suu Kyi. When the heads of all the prominent countries in the world hailed Suu Kyi’s release with strongest possible words, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh chose to keep mum and left it on external affairs minister SM Krishna to do the formality and that too in a highly guarded manner.

The response of the Indian State in both the cases is shocking and deplorable. The two extraordinary souls are symbol of moral force. Both derive strength from Indian tradition and philosophy. Sharmila’s inspiration is the holy Gita and Suu Kui is Buddhist to the core. The common factor to them is Mahatma Gandhi, who took inspiration from the Gita as well as Lord Buddha and evolved satyagraha, which became the common man’s tool to defeat the mighty British empire.

Another factor common to the two cases is the fear of China in the Indian government’s mind. The fear of the China-backed insurgency gaining ground in the northeast is preventing the Indian state from considering Sharmila’s demand to withdraw the Armed Forces Special Powers Act 1959 imposed on Manipur to check violent insurgency. And the fear of China cornering India by influencing Myanmar has made the Indian government shift its stand from supporting a non-violent pro-democracy movement led by Suu kyi to a docile one favouring the military government. Ironically, by ignoring Sharmila, the Indian government has ended up promoting violence and by ditching Suu Kyi, it has compromised principles framed by our founding fathers, who provided India a unique status in the world — the status which US President Barack Obama saluted in his recent trip to India.

Sharmila started her fast unto death on November 2, 2000, after she saw the killing of 10 villagers in Malon in an indiscriminate firing allegedly by Army personnel. Since then she has been in police custody on charges of trying to commit suicide and is being forcibly fed through a nasal tube. But she carries on with firm resolution. She has not met her mother since the start of the fast because she thinks that will make her weak. Sharmila is not throwing stones or hurling bombs. Nor has she delivered any seditious speech. She is only voicing the concerns of the peace-loving ‘aam adami’ of Manipur, who sees the Armed Forces Special Powers Act as a tool of oppression. Sharmila’s self-imposed suffering represents all those have-nots of the country who still have faith in the Gandhian way of struggle. The lady is trying to prick the conscience of the Indian State.
Had Sharmila taken up arms, the government would have invited her for ‘conditional’ talks. This explains why we see mob frenzy and violence so often on the streets. The popular perception is that the government pays attention only when there is a violent upheaval. Road blockades, burning vehicles, brick-batting, clashes with police and rioting have become a routine affair today in agitations be it against a reckless driver running over a school child, power cuts, water crisis and garbage removal or a demand for separate statehood, demonstration against reservation policy, better prices for agricultural produce and protest against land acquisition. The grievances of the masses are not addressed so long as people are peaceful. The worst hit by the government apathy and denial of justice are mainly poor and lower classes, constituting 70% of the population.

Suu Kyi, daughter of Myanmar’s father of the nation general U Aung San, spent most of her youth outside her country and came back in 1989 to nurse her ailing mother. She also realised that her motherland required her services. People looked up to her as a liberator from military tyranny. Her party won in the 1990 elections but the military government put her under house arrest and annulled the elections. But she did not compromise. She even could not take part in the funeral of her British husband as she feared that once out of the country, the junta would not allow her to come back and fight for the people. Even after her release she said: “My people are not free and so I am not free.” India supported Suu kyi’s cause for sometime but later diluted its stand with the excuse that it needs to keep Myanmar’s military regime in good humour to counter Chinese diplomacy.

The Indian State does not realise (or perhaps it does but is deliberately not following) that the strength of a nation lies in its people. It would be much easy to defeat insurgency in Manipur by winning over the people of the state. And that could be done by reaching out to Sharmila and peace-loving people like her. Similarly, the Indian State should focus on strengthening the country internally to counter the Chinese threat rather than diluting the moral principles which governed our foreign policy since independence. If all the public money devoured by corruption would have been actually spent on development, India would have been in a much better position compared with China. The change in the pro-democracy stand with regard to Myanmar in the name of ‘strategic diplomacy to check China’ has only exposed our weakness and lack of will power.

In a civilised democratic society, the challenge lies in tackling insurgency while upholding human rights, otherwise it would be difficult to distinguish between democracy and autocracy. Similarly, facing the Chinese threat while upholding Indian traditions would make India’s position stronger in the world.

If the government is not listening, the privileged lot who can influence the policies are also to be blamed. We have failed to live up to the expectations of the freedom fighters who dreamt of a just and equitable India based on the principles of non-violence, truth, and sarvodaya. From a collective force which defeated the mightiest empire in the world, today we have been reduced to a nation of selfish individuals and hypocrites. If all the Indians rise in support of Sharmila and observe at least a day’s fast, no government will be able to overlook it. Similarly, if we all exert moral pressure on the government, it will have to change its Myanmar policy. But our Page 3 sensitivities don’t seem to feel and see beyond Big Boss and Rakhi Ka Insaf. And, our conscience is dictated by market sentiments which only allows us to think “how to earn and where to spend”.

As far as Sharmila and Suu Kyi are concerned, it hardly matters whether they will succeed in their missions or not, because success lies in making an honest and righteous effort and not in results. The two satyagrahis will always inspire millions of have-nots in the world because they represent HOPE — the strongest thing in the world, which keeps the human spirit and will alive even in the toughest of circumstances and eventually triumphs.

Terence Netto@www.malaysiakini.com

COMMENT Not with a bang but with a whimper did S Samy Vellu end yesterday his 31-year reign as MIC supremo.

Someone who has lasted this long without expiring in office is usually accorded a send-off reserved for deceased monarchs. Instead Samy Vellu exited stage left in a hush that tended to cast doubt on whether the departure was for real.

The man was nothing if not a great survivor, able to overcome any calamity that befell him.

Someone who could outlast the gravitational pull of scandals – think of Maika’s failure and the Telecom shares scam – could be expected to tough out the death knell sounded by his defeat as MP for Sungai Siput in the tsunami of March 2008.

But even Samy Vellu, who ruled the MIC for three decades like some force of nature, had to accede to the reality that survivors, however durable, ultimately wind up as bores, insufferable when they persist in not knowing that the joke is on them.

That Samy Vellu had difficulty knowing the difference between reality and its fictive renditions in movies was illustrated by an incident that happened at an annual dinner of the Malaysian Hindu Sangam in the late 1990s.

‘All Hindus are thugs’

He was guest of honour and spoke in English. This was at a time when the shooting deaths of Indian Malaysians in encounters with the police were beginning to deeply distress the community.

Eleven deaths, including that of a pregnant woman, in one encounter in Puchong accentuated an already beleaguered sense of isolation, specially felt in the lower reaches of that society. (Hindraf’s demonstration of November of 2007 was already in gestation.)

In the late 1990s the MIC president was under pressure to assuage things. Instead, at the Hindu Sangam dinner, Samy Vellu shocked his audience with this utterance: “All Hindus are thugs.” The remark was spoken in a nonchalant manner, leaving a hushed audience wondering, at first blush, if indeed they had correctly heard what was said.

Now, most sentient people know that even the most enlightened of persons give vent to wild notions. The question is whether such idle fancies reflect the speaker’s true feelings or just momentary excess.

Within five minutes of his initial utterance of the slur against Hindus on an occasion hosted by their grandees, Samy Vellu repeated the insult: “All Hindus are thugs.”

At this a youngish member of the audience approached the stage on which Samy Vellu was speaking, in an apparent attempt at robust remonstrance. Samy’s security detail interposed. When the MIC president was leaving the gathering, the young man, this time shouting his protestations, moved in the direction of the departing guest. Security personnel once again tamped down the threat.

UMNO’s point man

What had prompted Samy Vellu to utter and repeat the slur, at a time when the community was feeling keenly the enormity of the shooting deaths of its younger set, was explicable only in relation to what had passed for muster from time to time among some BN component leaders.

Think of former Gerakan president Lim Keng Yaik’s musings in public over what Indian tappers did behind rubber trees, remarks he was forced to retract and apologise for. Or of Keng Yaik’s gratuitous insult to the Hainanese community at whose community dinner one year in Kuala Terengganu he said in Mandarin that they don’t seem to be like humans and neither like devils.

This sort of gibberish would, in the more mature democracies of the world, see the speaker withdraw from public life in penitential disgrace. But public life in Malaysia is more forgiving and offers hamsters plenty of second acts.

And so Samy Vellu survived the threat of being hoist with his own petard against the Hindus, a community he nominally would represent as the MIC leader.

The main reason for this was that he was a useful subaltern to UMNO’s plutocratic elite as works minister in the era of Malaysia’s infrastructure boom when there were construction contracts aplenty to be handed out.

Barring one or two shaky overpasses and a leaky roof in Parliament, this overseer’s job that Samy Vellu assayed for UMNO’s elite was seen to be effectively done. It helped the public charade of deception that the point man was from MIC, not UMNO.

If the subaltern helped himself to the pickings, and the community he represented suffered as a result, well that, as they say in the military, was so much collateral damage.–www.malaysiakini.com