Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran | Independent Indian: Work & Life of Professor Subroto Roy

Subroto Roy regrets getting the sisters’ names wrong earlier; they were not Kulsooma and Yasmin but Akhtara, 19, and Arifa, 17. Their killings by terrorists in Sopore, and that of young Manzoor Ahmad Magray, 22, by the Army in Handwara within the week, mark a tipping point, for myself at least.

Subroto Roy reflecting on the Lashkar-e-Toiba killing of the teenage Sopore sisters and the Indian Army killing of Manzoor Ahmad Magray in Handwara, all in one week, is reminded only of: *Where be these enemies?… See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,…all are punish’d.*

From Facebook:

Subroto Roy says at Seema Mustafa’s Wall “Some of these comments seem to be addressed to me in a somewhat ill-mannered way. I am due to speak in Lahore next month on Kashmir and Pakistan, and have published quite extensively over 20 years perhaps on the subject, apropos the University of Hawaii volume *Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s* etc.

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=247284116125&id=632437284

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=171926377284&set=a.136688412284.112038.632437284

I am quite happy to engage in any conversation with any shade of opinion from the leader of the United Jehad Council onwards. But discussion needs to be in English not pidgin English or slang, it needs to be polite and well-mannered, and it needs to be as well thought out and well-informed as possible. I may be addressed as Dr Roy or Mr Roy by people I do not know.

Subroto Roy says to Mr Changal, Apropos your “@mr roy…. i hope u carry a message that KASHMIRIS WIL NEVER LIKE TO B A PART OF INDIA”, I am given to understand that you as an individual have no wish to be an Indian national, which to me is fair enough. A lot of Indian nationals have travelled after all to the USA, Britain etc and there have gone about freely renouncing their Indian nationality and accepting that of another country. May I assume that if you, as an individual, were given such a choice by the Govt of India to formally renounce, on paper, in a private decision with full security and no fear of repercussions, your Indian nationality, you would do so? You may then become stateless in international law, following which the Govt of India could assist you as an individual to accept the nationality of some other country for which you were eligible, e.g. the Islamic Republic of Iran or the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan or the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. If that went through properly, the Govt of India could also give you full “Green Card” or PIO status vis a vis the Indian territory you may wish to live or work etc in.

Ajmal Nazir ‎@ subroto sir…..I personally appreciate the kind of efforts you are putting to highlight the meseries that kashmiris are going through. May God succeed you in your efforts . However there are lot of realities that one need to understand before talking about Kashmir.This issue is not a demographical or political issue. This is an human issue where kashmiris suffer. Before going into any discussion , both Pakistan and India should understand that this problems is taking its toll on common kashmiri who is getting killed everyday. Kashmir is like a beautiful prison where one can survive but cannot live freely. It looks completely normal from outside. But unfortunately you cannot see the fear that is inside the hearts of common people. You cannot see the uncertainty in the minds of those people.I wish you could have feel the fear in the mind of mothers when their kids are outside. I wish you could have feel the fear in the eyes of kids, when they see these indian forces roaming in their fields. There is a check post in every corner of the street, where it is obligatory for us to go through checking. We have to prove our identity in our own homes. It is not happening only on 26th Jan (like it happens in your states ]. It happening everyday, every-hour and every-time.I wish you could feel the fear when we have to go through these checking. Everyday, we have to make sure that we come home before 6:00 pm otherwise you will be picked up and your name will get added into hundrends and thousands of disappeared people. There are so many fake encounters happening in valley that nobody from outside world knows. Try to listen to local news here and there is a separate sections which tells you about the number of people that got killed every 24 hours. In 90’s that list was always above 20 and there was no such news outside kashmir. There is no such family in kashmir that hasn’t suffer I am not talking about mental suffering, I am talking about where somebody got killed.I wish you could have seen the pain of those mothers who lost their innocent sons, I wish you could seen the hopelessness in the minds of those fathers, who lost their only sons. There are so many half widows in kashmir, whose husbands were picked by forces and they never came back. they are still waiting for their husbands to return. In every community , there is an orphanage, where you will find the so many orphan kids. i believe you will find the most numbers orphans in kashmir than in any other state. These suffering are not visible from outside.We need to feel like kashmiris to understand these problems You need to take little pain to find the actual realities in kashmir. Every kashmir including our pandiths brothers suffer. KAshmir issue is not the political issue, neither is it regional issue. This is a human issue . This issue is not related to the geographical demographies, it is related with the people who live there.These boundaries are of no meaning for those mothers and fathers, who suffer everyday. If Indian wants kashmir, you have to win the hearts of kashmiris, Treat us like humans, Give us basic human rights . Release kashmiris from this militarized prison. Let us decide what is good for us.. Give us the freedom to express our problems. Let us bring kashmiris youth in your national media and let them discuss this issue. India is a democratic country so i believe everybody has a right to express their feelings.Highlight our miseries and punish the culprits who have killed innocent kashmiris. How can you justify the killing of those small kids who pelt stones on the streets. Does indian constitution allow killings of kids if they pelt stones. If they damage property, arrest them but how can we kill those small kids.Even some where beaten to death.What about Tufail Matoo who got killed when he was going to tuition classes. He didn;t damage any property. There are so many untold stories in kashmir that nobody knows.

Subroto Roy says to Mr Nazir, Thank you for the lengthy and pertinent statement which clearly reflects your experience as well as your hopes and fears. I have no hesitation in accepting your saying the situation in recent times has become intolerable for ordinary people. I believe it is the outcome of a process which has evolved over decades in which the peoples and Governments of India, the peoples and Governments of Pakistan, and the peoples and Governments of J&K too, have all contributed. It is something for which *everyone* is responsible, no single person or country or community can be said to be exempt (other than perhaps the gentle people of Laddakh). And all the facts of history and the present have to be understood, and yes felt as well — each and every clear fact. I hope to show how this may be done during my Lahore lectures next month. Cordial regards and thanking you once more.

Subroto Roy says to Mr Changal, Thank you for the reply though you may have made a mistake with my identity: I am not Mr Subroto who has been a senior minister in Indonesia, but rather Dr Roy or Mr Roy as you please. No I do not think I am or would want to be blind to any atrocities by armed forces on civilians in any country, my own included. Apropos your statement “we reject the illegal n forceful occupation of kashmir by the cruel hindu india”, I shall be glad to hear the basis of your opinion. Re Hindus and Muslims and my opinion thereof, there is a lot of material to be found at my site and among my Notes. Cordially, SR

Sajad Malik I just wud humbly like to ask you a question sir, Do you deny the disputed nature of kashmir?

Subroto Roy Mr Malik, Thank you for the question. I think it was I who said *twenty years ago*, when I was almost as young as some of you are now “The core of the continuing dispute between Pakistan and India has been Kashmir, where vast resources have been drained from the budgets of both countries by two large armies facing one another for decades over a disputed boundary”. I do not think the Govt of Pakistan had used the word “core” until that time. Please see p 15 of the book

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=171926377284&set=a.136688412284.112038.632437284

Subroto Roy says to Mr Changal, I cannot know but perhaps you speak from terrible personal experiences as an individual at the hands of governmental machinery; I know what that can be like.

I would agree it is important in this grave and mortal matter to go into the whole history piece by piece, frankly and candidly, with scientific honesty and freedom of inquiry and thought. That is the only real way to aim for complete agreement across the political spectrum in the subcontinent. Such an agreement is possible too, and the only real way forward for all, especially the people of J&K, your generation and the future. I am sure my Lahore lectures will be public immediately after they are delivered next month, which you may find of interest.

Clearly we have a number of factual questions for one another whose answers may emerge in time. Rape is an evil thing, and I find what you mention is discussed here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunan_Poshpora_incident

Thank you for your comment and suggestion. The solution I have proposed since 2005 is far better than the plebiscite idea you mention. But I am afraid you will have to make a study of my publications here at FB or at my site or in my books, or wait until the Lahore lectures. I also wonder if you are aware that Sheikh Abdullah and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad *offered a plebiscite* when it was first mentioned in 1948 during the Pashtun tribal invasion from Pakistan but Pakistan balked.

Subroto Roy says the solution he has proposed since 2005 is far better than the plebiscite idea often mentioned. Many are also unaware that Sheikh Abdullah and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad *offered a plebiscite* when it was first mentioned in 1948 during the Pashtun tribal invasion from Pakistan but Pakistan balked.

Ganai Danish: It was pandit nehru,who in 1952 addressed the public gathering in lal chowk sgr,promised that the people of jk will be given a chance to decide their future whether they want to be part of india or accede with pakistan.It is worth mentioning that it was india itself who took the case of disputed nature of kashmir to UN by passing a resolution in 1948.But 63 years passed, india is yet to fulfull its promise and has mulishly held on to the uncompromising stance that jk is an integral part of india.

Subroto Roy: Mr Danish, Thank you for the comment. Pandit Nehru’s Lal Chowk speech may have been 1947/48 during the Pashtun invasion. There is a small pic at my site here https://independentindian.com/2009/03/28/india-is-not-a-monarchy-and-urgently-needs-to-universalize-the-french-concept-of-citoyen-some-personal-thoughts/

By 1952, Sheikh Abdullah had pioneered the J&K Constitution

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=244956301112

Ganai Danish Respected Dr Roy,1952 or 1948,that isn’t the question.The question is why india uses its military might to crush our movement.By calling itself the world’s largest democrac<z>y,its democracy is buried in kashmir.Our movement is indegenious,peaceful,genuine,and non violent and we will take it to its conclusion

Subroto Roy Mr Danish, Thank you for the comment. The difference between 1948 and 1952 is vital because that is the time Kashmir *made its decision*, and it was a *democratic* decision led by Sheikh-Sahib who had — practically single-handedly — awoken the Muslim masses from their slumber and oppression under the Dogras. Sheikh Abdullah paid the penalty for that most heavily– being jailed by the Dogras numerous times because of it. But even so I think you have raised a critically important question — which is how it is that your generation has become so utterly alienated and disaffected with their political experience of repression, war, terrorism etc that they want to free themselves of it.

Ganai Danish It is very true that late sheikh abdullah traitor fought against dogra rule but he did such a blunder that whatever happened in kashmir since 1989 to 2010,sheikh is responsible for this.He sold kashmir to india and sold the blood of martyrs that were in favour of accession to pakistan.It was the same traitor’s son farooq abdullah who signed noozle to Shaheed Maqbool bhat,the first martyr of kashmir.It was the same farooq abdullah’s leadership in 1989 who killed 1 lac kashmiris and brought POTA,AFSPA,PSA and so on in kashmir.It was the same traitors son omer abdullah who killed 112 innocents in kashmir in just 4 months.So far as the imprisonment is concerned.,It is Syed Ali shah geelani,a vetern leader of kashmir,who spent more than 22 years in jail and is still under house arrest.

Subroto Roy says to Mr Danish, Thanks for this point of view of which I know less than I should. I am glad we have reached a stage so quickly where we may discuss different interpretations of factual events. I reaoet what I have said to Mr Nazir, that I have no hesitation in accepting your saying the situation in recent times has become intolerable for ordinary people. I believe it is the outcome of a process which has evolved over decades in which the peoples and Governments of India, the peoples and Governments of Pakistan, and the peoples and Governments of J&K too, have all contributed. It is something for which *everyone* is responsible, no single person or country or community can be said to be exempt (other than perhaps the gentle people of Laddakh). And all the facts of history and the present have to be understood, and yes felt as well — each and every clear fact. I hope to show how this may be done during my Lahore lectures next month. Cordial regards and thanking you once more.

Sajad Malik ‎@ Mr. Roy, you mean Sheikh Abdullah “offered” Plebiscite? well this is a news to me; as i am wondering on what authority wud they do that? All i have been knowing till now is, Plebiscite was in the offing, had Nehru not insisted that the tribes men from NWFP leave Kashmir and at the same time Jinnah insisting that for the plebiscite to happen, Indian forces need to be out of kashmir first.

Subroto Roy says to Mr Malik, Yes, Sheikh Abdullah and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad *offered* a plebiscite when it was first mentioned and it was the Pakistanis who balked.

Re. “disputed territory” and “core issue”, as I said yesterday, I do not have to *admit* it because I may have been the first to say so *twenty years ago* when I was almost as young as some of you are now “The core of the continuing dispute between Pakistan and India has been Kashmir, where vast resources have been drained from the budgets of both countries by two large armies facing one another for decades over a disputed boundary”. I do not think the Govt of Pakistan had used the word “core” until that time. Please see p 15 of the book

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=171926377284&set=a.136688412284.112038.632437284

You may perhaps see that it is a leap of logic from saying Pakistan and India have a disputed boundary to saying as you suggest “So what is the problem if a Kashmiri asks Azadi sir?”. 🙂

Subroto Roy says to Mr Malik: Mr Malik, Indeed as I have said Sheikh-Sahib and Bakshi did so; you would have to know how ghastly and vicious the tribal invasion from Pakistan was starting on October 22 1947, and how the Rape of Baramulla had proceeded (with Kashmiri women of all communities, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu, being abducted by lorry en masse to be sold in markets in Peshawar etc), to know that Sheikh Abdullah and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad could confidently predict the outcome at the time of any such plebiscite, which would explain why Liaquat Ali Khan (who had condemned Sheikh as a “Quisling of India”) would have ignored it. I say this having read reports from the original newspapers at the time, and have today asked the editor of that national newspaper to produce a set of reprints of all articles published from, say, the 1946 Cabinet Mission to the Jan-Feb 1949 ceasefire, since all this material is unknown by all the parties, and making it known would contribute to resolving this grave and mortal problem. Do please explain what you mean or Sheikh meant by “Siyasi Awaragardi”; also I would certainly be grateful to learn of your view and that of your friends on the history of J&K between, say, 1952 and the 1965 War.

Sajad Malik: Mr Roy, I have been lately reading a piece done by Haroon Rashid. He pens down all that Kashmiri’s suffered at the hands of tribesmen..looting and arson, even killing of a lady running a convent. He outrightly rejects rape, (anyway thats altogether a diffrent debate). Sheikh Abdullah, wen released from the prison (Imprisoned by Nehru,for taking the plebscite front) scorned his ownself for taking up Plebscite front and termed it as “Siyasi-Awaragardi” (Political Intrigue). For your further enlightment here Mr. Roy;- 1951: Indian holds elections and tries to impose its democratic institution in Kashmir. It is opposed by the United Nations. They pass a resolution to declare elections void and stress on plebiscite. India ignores the opposition blatantly. Sheikh Abdullah wins unopposed and rumors of election rigging plague Kashmiri politics. 1952: Sheikh Abdullah signs the Delhi Agreement on July, 1952. It chalks out state-centre sharing of power and gives abidance to Kashmir to have its own flag. Sheikh Abdullah creates Kashmir centric land reforms which create resentment among the people of Jammu and Ladakh. Delhi Agreement provides the first genuine erosion in international resolution of Kashmir. Nehru’s Speech: ”On August1952, Jawahar Lal Nehru gives a negating speech contradicting the settlement provided in the Delhi Agreement: “Ultimately – I say this with all deference to this Parliament – the decision will be made in the hearts and minds of the men and women of Kashmir; neither in this Parliament, nor in the United Nations nor by anybody else” 1953-1954: Sheikh Abdullah takes U turns and procrastinates in conforming the accession of Kashmir to India. Sheikh Abdullah is jailed. In August, Bakhshi Ghulam Muhammad is installed in place of Sheikh Abdullah. He officially ratifies Kashmir’s accession with India. On April, 1954, India & Pakistan both agree in appointment of a Plebiscite Administrator. 1956-1957: On 30th October, 1956, J&K Constituent Assembly adopts a fresh constitution, and dissolves the Constituent Assembly, which further defines the relationship of Kashmir with the Indian Dominion. UN strongly condemns the developments and passes a resolution stating such attempts will not result in any final resolution. On 26th January, 1957, the new constitution is made enforceable. Kashmir is now a Republican-Democratic state under Indian Union. 1964: Sheikh Abdullah is released from jail. Jawahar Lal Nehru sends Sheikh Abdullah with a delegation to Pakistan in an effort to find a resolution discourse for Kashmir. In the meantime, masses in Kashmir protest against the implementation of Article 356 & 357, which allows Indian central authority over constituting legislative powers in Kashmir. The special status of Kashmir continues to get eroded. 1965-1971: The nomenclature is changed from ‘Sadr-e-Riyasat’ to Governor and from Prime Minister to Chief Minister. The Governor is now no longer elected locally, and is installed as per the orders of the President of India. This amendment lightens off Kashmir from its special titles. Free & fair elections in the guise of democracy are championed as just causes, and Indian mainstream parties are allowed to contest in the elections. However, these elections aren’t well received by the public. In many cases, international watchdogs accuse India of rigging elections. In 1967, Jammu Autonomy Forum is constituted with the aim of institutionalizing regional autonomy. Excerpts, “chronology of Kashmir conflict” by Naveed Qazi”

Subroto Roy says to Mr Sajad Malik: thank you for this brief chronology which I shall certainly study more carefully. Am I to understand that you and perhaps others with you deny the Rape of Baramullah? Perhaps you mean that the thousands, but thousands, of Kashmiri women of all three communities who were abducted against their will by the tribesmen in lorries and later sold in Peshawar and other markets were not raped but taken in matrimony at their new destinations?

Sajad Malik: Mr Roy, I am not denying anything. All I am saying is that Haroon Rashid (BBC) is rejecting it and that I maintain, its a separate debate. The thing which we are discussing here is that India has no legitimate authority over Kashmir. It’s military might, deciept, savagery has not been able to turn a leaf in Kashmir, despite tens of thousands been killed, despite all the laws it sought from the “once wicked” Britian. I am not a political analyst nor a strategist but with full conviction Mr. Roy, m telling you Kashmir can never be India. Smell our land it smells saffron, m not sure what it smells in India. Comment not intended to hurt your or any Indian’s emotions Mr. Roy. If it inadvertently does, I apologise.

Subroto Roy: Mr Malik, Thank you; no not at all, there is *absolutely* no need for you to apologise in this discussion for anything. Clearly there are many factual disagreements here, as to what happened precisely, who said and did what precisely, and so on, and an exchange of views and references is always constructive. From what you say, you may find of interest these two articles of mine from 2006; the former is “History of J&K” and the latter contains a Brief History of Gilgit too:

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=152343836125

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=152345826125

You may also like to see my FB Note giving Sheikh Abdullah in his own words for you and others to judge, here

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=244956301125

and also Sheikh-Sahib, and Dr Zakir Hussain and Maulana Azad and others here:

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=153977181125

Your statement “Kashmir can never be India” is perhaps intended to be controversial as it appears to beg the question, though of course you may agree *some* Kashmiris are Indians and wish to be Indians, and I may agree *some* Kashmiris are not Indians and do not wish to be Indians and also *some* Kashmiris are Indians and do not wish to be Indians; there may also be *some* Kashmiris who are not Indians but who wish to be Indians. Cordially.

Subroto Roy

Mr Malik, you are quoting from perhaps Dr Zakir Hussain or Sheikh Abdullah, not from my words. Secondly, are you saying Pakistan did not invade J&K in 1947? Britain did? I would agree there was a British-induced coup d’etat in Gilgit, but I trust you do not deny the whole history of the (then new) Pakistan’s military and political forces causing the vicious and ghastly Pashtun invasion along the Nowshera Road commencing October 22 1947. Modern Pakistan’s most eminent historians may agree with me I am afraid as to what happened as a matter of fact! You and I may not be able to progress much with conversation at this rate if our factual histories are so far apart as at present.. 🙂 But rest assured, all may become clear after my Lahore lectures next month, or at least all of my analysis and assessment of what happened and prescription of what may be best done now for everyone. I shall try to comment further on your statement later in the day.

Sajad Malik Sir, I am not saying Britian carried out the invasion *laughs*. All, m saying is, General Gracey was heading the Pak army at the time of invasion and there has been no evidence so far, to establish a link b/n Pak army and the tribes men. I can furnish to you the reference of what I assert. shall inshallah pray for your lahore lecture, and hope our thinking and understanding converge as per the aspirations of me, the prime stake holder..and a kashmiri. (smiles)

Subroto Roy Mr Malik, I am grateful for the clarification 🙂 — though as I have said, there *was* a British-induced coup in Gilgit, and you may also find my article “Pakistan’s Allies” of interest about the US and UK seeing themselves in battle against the old USSR etc.

Suppose I said to you and your friends that in fact Sheikh-Sahib (and his mentor at the time Jawaharlal Nehru) were influenced by socialism and, at one remove perhaps by Soviet communism — and *that* is why they were against the Dogra regime? While the Hurriyat’s predecessor, Muslim Conference, were *opposed* to Sheikh Abdullah, and because the Dogras were also opposed to Sheikh-Sahib, the Muslim Conference’s Hamidullah Khan as of May 22-24 1947 said they wanted to not only preserve the Dogra regime but make him an international sovereign so he could be called “Your Majesty” instead of merely “Your Highness”? :)! And in that they were, oddly enough, joined by many in the Hindu and Sikh minorities who saw the Dogras as protecting them from Sheikh Sahib’s secular majoritarianism, as well as by perhaps British Conservatives like Churchill as well as Mr Jinnah…. History yields some unusual and paradoxical things…. 🙂 Re your offer to furnish a reference that “there has been no evidence so far, to establish a link b/n Pak army and the tribesmen” I would be most grateful for this. The classic work on it has been by the late General Akbar Khan of the Pakistan Army who was an author of the invasion, http://openlibrary.org/books/OL15997912M/Raiders_in_Kashmir.

I have yet to own a copy of this book though am aware of its contents. I am most grateful for your good wishes for Lahore! I certainly need them, and I assure you, if you send me an email at my site, I shall send you a copy of what I say there as soon as possible after it is said. And indeed, I *completely* agree with you that the ordinary people of J&K of all communities have suffered most from this terrible and awful state of affairs, and their material and moral wellbeing needs most important and urgent relief. Cordially.

I wrote & publicized a document “An Economic Solution to Kashmir” in Washington back in 1993, which referred for the first time to ideas of a condominium, an Andorra solution etc….This seemed at the time a logical result of the UH Manoa Pakistan project. But in retrospect it has seemed naive and uninformed. I’m afraid I think Mr Kasuri has been overoptimistic about the robustness of the near-agreement he suggests was reached some years ago. .

On Pakistan and the Theory & Practice of the Islamic State: An Excerpt from the Munir Report of 1954

January 15, 2011 — drsubrotoroy

On Pakistan and the Theory & Practice of the Islamic State: An Excerpt from the Munir Report of 1954

From REPORT of THE COURT OF INQUIRY constituted under PUNJAB ACT II OF 1954 to enquire into the PUNJAB DISTURBANCES OF 1953 “Munir Report”

“ISLAMIC STATE
It has been repeatedly said before us that implicit in the demand for Pakistan was the demand for an Islamic State. Some speeches of important leaders who were striving for Pakistan undoubtedly lend themselves to this construction. These leaders while referring to an Islamic State or to a State governed by Islamic laws perhaps had in their minds the pattern of a legal structure based on or mixed up with Islamic dogma, personal law, ethics and institutions. No one who has given serious thought to the introduction of a religious State in Pakistan has failed to notice the tremendous difficulties with which any such scheme must be confronted. Even Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, who must be considered to be the first thinker who conceived of the possibility of a consolidated North Western Indian Muslim State, in the course of his presidential address to the Muslim League in 1930 said:

“Nor should the Hindus fear that the creation of autonomous Muslim States will mean the introduction of a kind of religious rule in such States. The principle that each group is entitled to free development on its own lines is not inspired by any feeling of narrow communalism”.

When we come to deal with the question of responsibility we shall have the occasion to point out that the most important of the parties who are now clamouring for the enforcement of the three demands on religious grounds were all against the idea of an Islamic State. Even Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi of Jama’at-i-Islami was of the view that the form of Government in the new Muslim State, if it ever came into existence, could only be secular.

Before the Partition, the first public picture of Pakistan that the Quaid-i-Azam gave to the world was in the course of an interview in New Delhi with Mr. Doon Campbell, Reuter’s Correspondent. The Quaid-i-Azam said that the new State would be a modern democratic State, with sovereignty resting in the people and the members of the new nation having equal rights of citizenship regardless of their religion, caste or creed. When Pakistan formally appeared on the map, the Quaid-i-Azam in his memorable speech of 11th August 1947 to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, while stating the principle on which the new State was to be founded, said:—

“All the same, in this division it was impossible to avoid the question of minorities being in one Dominion or the other. Now that was unavoidable. There is no other solution. Now what shall we do? Now, if we want to make this great State of Pakistan happy and prosperous we should wholly and solely concentrate on the well-being of the people, and specially of the masses and the poor. If you will work in co-operation, forgetting the past, burying the hatchet, you are bound to succeed. If you change your past and work together in a spirit that every one of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what is his colour, caste or creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges and obligations., there will be no end to the progress you will make. “I cannot emphasise it too much. We should begin to work in that spirit and in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities—the Hindu community and the Muslim community— because even as regards Muslims you have Pathana, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vashnavas, Khatris, also Bengalis, Madrasis and so on—will vanish. Indeed if you ask me this has been the biggest hindrance in the way of India to attain its freedom and independence and but for this we would have been free peoples long long ago. No power can hold another nation, and specially a nation of 400 million souls in subjection; nobody could have conquered you, and even if it had happened, nobody could have continued its hold on you for any length of time but for this (Applause). Therefore, we must learn a lesson from this. You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed— that has nothing to do with the business of the State (Hear, hear). As you know, history shows that in England conditions sometime ago were much worse than those prevailing in India today. The Roman Catholics and the Protestants persecuted each other. Even now there are some States in existence where there are discriminations made and bars imposed against a particular class. Thank God we are not starting in those days. We are starting in the days when there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State (Loud applause). The people of England in course of time had to face the realities of the situation and had to discharge the responsibilities and burdens placed upon them by the Government of their country and they went through that fire step by step. Today you might say with justice that Roman Catholics and Protestants do not exist: what exists now is that every man is a citizen, an equal citizen, of Great Britain and they are all members of the nation. “Now, I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State”.

The Quaid-i-Azam was the founder of Pakistan and the occasion on which he thus spoke was the first landmark in the history of Pakistan. The speech was intended both for his own people including non-Muslims and the world, and its object was to define as clearly as possible the ideal to the attainment of which the new State was to devote all its energies. There are repeated references in this speech to the bitterness of the past and an appeal to forget and change the past and to bury the hatchet. The future subject of the State is to be a citizen with equal rights, privileges and obligations, irrespective of colour, caste, creed or community. The word ‘nation’ is used more than once and religion is stated to have nothing to do with the business of the State and to be merely a matter of personal faith for the individual.

We asked the ulama whether this conception of a State was acceptable to them and everyone of them replied in an unhesitating negative, including the Ahrar and erstwhile Congressites with whom before the Partition this conception was almost a part of their faith.

If Maulana Amin Ahsan Islahi’s evidence correctly represents the view of Jama’at-i-Islami, a State based on this idea is the creature of the devil, and he is confirmed in this by several writings of his chief, Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, the founder of the jama’at. None of the ulama can tolerate a State which is based on nationalism and all that it implies; with them millat and all that it connotes can alone be the determining factor in State activity.

The Quaid-i-Azam’s conception of a modern national State, it is alleged, became obsolete with the passing of the Objectives Resolution on 12th March 1949; but it has been freely admitted that this Resolution, though grandiloquent in words, phrases and clauses, is nothing but a hoax and that not only does it not contain even a semblance of the embryo of an Islamic State but its provisions, particularly those relating to fundamental rights, are directly opposed to the principles of an Islamic State.

FOUNDATIONS OF ISLAMIC STATE

What is then the Islamic State of which everybody talks but nobody thinks? Before we seek to discover an answer to this question, we must have a clear conception of the scope and function of the State.

The ulama were divided in their opinions when they were asked to cite some precedent of an Islamic State in Muslim history. Thus, though Hafiz Kifayat Husain, the Shia divine, held out as his ideal the form of Government during the Holy Prophet’s time, Maulana Daud Ghaznavi also included in his precedent the days of the Islamic Republic, of Umar bin Abdul Aziz, Salah-ud-Din Ayyubi of Damascus, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, Muhammad Tughlaq and Aurangzeb and the present regime in Saudi Arabia. Most of them, however, relied on the form of Government during the Islamic Republic from 632 to 661 A. D., a period of less than thirty years, though some of them also added the very short period of Umar bin Abdul Aziz.

Maulana Abdul Haamid Badayuni stated that the details of the ideal State would be worked out by the ulama while Master Taj-ud-Din Ansari’s confused notion of an Islamic State may be gathered from the following portion of his interrogation :—

“Q.—Were you also in the Khilafat movement ?
A.—Yes.
Q.—When did the Khilafat movement stop in India ?
A.—In 1923. This was after the Turks had declared their country to be a secular State.
Q.—If you are told that the Khilafat movement continued long after the Turks had abolished Khilafat, will that be correct?
A.—As far as I remember, the Khilafat movement finished with the abolition of the Khilafat by the Turks.
Q.—You are reported to have been a member of the Khilafat movement and having made speeches. Is it correct ?
A.—It could not be correct.
Q.—Was the Congress interested in Khilafat ?
A.— Yes.
Q.—Was Khilafat with you a matter of religious conviction or just a political movement ?
A.— It was purely a religious movement.
Q.— Did the Khilafat movement have the support of Mr Gandhi ?
A.—Yes.
Q.— What was the object of the Khilafat movement ?
A.— The Britisher was injuring the Khilafat institution in Turkey and the Musalman was aggrieved by this attitude of the Britisher.
Q.— Was not the object of the movement to resuscitate the Khilafat among the Musalmans ?
A.—No.
Q.— Is Khilafat with you a necessary part of Muslim form of Government ?
A.—Yes.
Q.— Are you, therefore, in favour of having a Khilafat in Pakistan ?
A.—Yes.
Q.— Can there be more than one Khalifa of the Muslims ?
A.— No.
Q.— Will the Khalifa of Pakistan be the Khalifa of all the Muslims of the world ?
A.— He should be but cannot be.”

Throughout the three thousand years over which political thought extends, and such thought in its early stages cannot be separated from religion, two questions have invariably presented themselves for consideration : —

(1) what are the precise functions of the State ? and
(2) who shall control the State ?

If the true scope of the activities of the State is the welfare, temporal or spiritual or both of the individual, then the first question directly gives rise to the bigger question:

What is the object of human life and the ultimate destiny of man? On this, widely divergent views have prevailed, not at different times but at one and the same time. The pygmies of equatorial West Africa still believe that their God Komba has sent them into the forest to hunt and dance and sing. The Epicureans meant very much the same when they said that the object of human life is to drink and eat and be merry, for death denies such pleasures. The utilitarians base their institutions on the assumption that the object of human life is to experience pleasant sensations of mind and body, irrespective of what is to come hereafter. The Stoics believed in curbing and reducing all physical desires, and Diogenes found a tub good enough to live in. German philosophers think that the individual lives for the State and that therefore the object of life is service of the State in all that it might decide to undertake and achieve. Ancient Hindu philosophers believed in the logic of the fist with its natural consequence, the law of natural selection and the struggle for survival. The Semitic theory of State, whether Jewish, Christian or Islamic, has always held that the object of human life is to prepare ourselves for the next life and that, therefore, prayer and good works are the only object of life. Greek philosophers beginning with Socrates thought that the object of human life was to engage in philosophical meditation with a view to discovering the great truths that lie in nature and that the business of the others is to feed the philosophers engaged in that undertaking.

Islam emphasises the doctrine that life in this world is not the only life given to man but that eternal life begins after the present existence comes to an end, and that the status of a human being in the next world will depend upon his beliefs and actions in this world. As the present life is not an end in itself but merely a means to an end, not only the individual but also the State, as opposed to the secular theory which bases all political and economic institutions on a disregard of their consequences on the next life, should strive for human conduct which ensures for a person better status in the next world.

According to this theory Islam is the religion which seeks to attain that object. Therefore the question immediately arises : What is Islam and who is a momin or a Muslim ? We put this question to the ulama and we shall presently refer to their answers to this question. But we cannot refrain from saying here that it was a matter of infinite regret to us that the ulama whose first duty should be to have settled views on this subject, were hopelessly disagreed among themselves.

Apart from how these learned divines have expressed themselves, we conceive of Islam as a system that covers, as every systematic religion must, the following five topics :—
(1) the dogma, namely, the essentials of belief ;
(2) the cult, namely, religious rites and observances which a person must
perform ;
(3) ethics, i. e. rules of moral conduct ;
(4) institutions, social, economic and political ; and
(5) law proper.

The essential basis of the rules on all these subjects is revelation and not reason, though both may coincide. This coincidence, however, is accidental because human reasoning may be faulty and ultimate reason is known only to God, Who sends His message to humanity through His chosen messengers for the direction and guidance of the people. One must, therefore, accept the dogma, observe the cult, follow the ethics, obey the law and establish institutions which God has revealed, though their reason may not be apparent—nay even if they be opposed to human reason. Since an error by God is an impossibility, anything that God has revealed, whether its subject be something occult or preternatural, history, finance, law, worship or something which according to human thought admits of scientific treatment as for instance, birth of man, evolution, cosmology, or astronomy, has got to be accepted as absolute truth. The test of reason is not the acid test and a denial of this amounts to a denial of the supreme wisdom and designs of Allah—it is kufr. Now God has revealed Himself from time to time to His favoured people of whom our Holy Prophet was the last. That revelation is contained in the Qur’an and covers the five topics mentioned above. The true business of a person who believes in Islam is therefore to understand, believe in and act upon that revelation. The people whom God chooses as medium for the transmission of His messages are rasuls (messengers) or nabis (prophets). Since every action or saying of a prophet is, in the case of our own Holy Prophet it certainly was, prompted by Allah, it has the same degree of inerrancy as the formal revelation itself, because prophets are ma’sum, incapable of doing or saying something which is opposed to Divine wishes. These sayings and actions are sunna having the same infallibility as the Qur’an. The record of this sunna is hadith which is to be found in several books which were compiled by Muslim scholars after long, laborious and careful research extending over several generations.

The word hadith means a record of actions or sayings of the Prophet and his companions. At first the sahaba. i. e. people who had lived in the society of the Prophet, were the best authority for a knowledge of the sunna. Later people had to be content with the communications of the tabi’un, i. e. successors, people of the first generation after the Holy Prophet who had received their information from the sahaba, and then in the following generations with the accounts of the so-called successors of the successors (tabi’ul-tabi’un), i.e. people of the second generation after the Holy Prophet, who had concerted with the successors. Marfu’ is a tradition which contains a statement about the Prophet ; mawquf, a tradition that refers only to the sayings or doings of the sahaba ; and maqtu’ a tradition which does not at most go further back than the first generation after the Holy Prophet and deals only with sayings or doings of tabi’un. In some of the ahadith the actual word of God is to be found. Any such tradition is designated Hadith-i-Qudsi or Ilahi as distinguished from an ordinary Hadith-i-Nabvi.

A very large portion of sayings ascribed to the Prophet deals with the ahkam (legal professions), religious obligations, halal and haram (what is allowed and forbidden), with ritual purity, laws regarding food and criminal and civil law. Further they deal with dogma, retribution at the Last Judgment, hell and paradise, angels, creation, revelations, the earlier prophets. Many traditions also contain edifying sayings and moral teachings by the Holy Prophet. The importance of ahadith was realised from the very beginning and they were not only committed to memory but in some cases were reduced to writing. The work of compilation of hadith began in the third century after the Hijra and the Sihah Sitta were all compiled in that century. These are the musannifs of —
(1) Al-Bukhari, died 256/870,
(2) Muslim, died 261/875,
(3) Abu Dawud, died 275/888,
(4) Al-Tirmizi, died 279/892,
(5) All Nasa’i, died 303/915, and
(6) Ibn-i-Maja, died 273/886.

According to modern laws of evidence, including our own, the ahadith are inadmissible evidence of sunna because each of them contains several links of hearsay, but as authority on law they are admissible pro prio vigore. The merit of these collections lies not so much in the fact that (as is often wrongly stated) their authors decided for the first time which of the numerous traditions in circulation were genuine and which false but rather in the fact that they brought together everything that was recognised as genuine in orthodox circles in those days.

The Shias judge hadith from their own stand-point and only consider such traditions reliable as are based on the authority of Ali and his adherents. They have, therefore, their own works on the subject and hold the following five works in particularly high esteem—
(1) Al-Kafi of Muhammad b. Yaqub Al-Kulini, died 328/939,
(2) Man La Yastahdiruhu’ul-Fakih of Muhammad b. Ali b. Babuya Al-Kummi,
died 381/991,
(3) Tahdib Al-Ahkam,
(4) Al-Istibsar Fi-Ma’khtalafa Fihi’l-Akhbar (extract from the preceding) of
Muhammad Altusi, died 459/1067, and
(5) Nahj Al-Balagha (alleged sayings of Ali) of Ali b. Tahir Al-Sharif Al-Murtaza, died 436/1044 (or of his brother Radi Al-Din Al-Baghdadi.)

After the ritual, the dogma and the most important political and social institutions had taken definite shape in the second and third centuries, there arose a certain communis opinio regarding the reliability of most transmitters of tradition and the value of their statement. The main principles of doctrine had already been established in the writings of Malik b. Anas, Al-Shafi’i and other scholars regarded as authoritative in different circles and mainly on the authority of traditional sayings of the Holy Prophet. In the long run no one dared to doubt the truth of these traditions and this almost conclusive presumption of truth has since continued to be attached to the ahadith compiled in the Sihah Sitta.

We have so far arrived at this result that any rule on any subject that may be derived from the Qur’an or the sunna of the Holy Prophet is binding on every Musalman. But since the only evidence of sunna is the hadith, the words sunna and hadith have become mixed up with, and indistinguishable from, each other with the result that the expression Qur’an and hadith is not infrequently employed where the intention is to refer to Qur’an and sunna.

At this stage another principle, equally basic, comes into operation, and that is that Islam is the final religion revealed by God, complete and exhaustive in all respects, and that God will not abrogate, detract from or add to this religion (din) any more than He will send a fresh messenger. The din having been perfected (Akmalto lakum dinokum, Sura V, verse 3), there remains no need for any new code repealing, modifying or amplifying the original code; nor for any fresh messenger or message. In this sense, therefore, prophethood ceased with the Holy Prophet and revelation stopped for ever. This is the doctrine of the cessation of wahi-i-nubuwwat.

If the proposition that Muslim dogma, ethics and institutions, etc., are all based on the doctrine of inerrancy, whether such inerrancy lies in the Qur’an, the sunna, ijma’ or ijtihad-i-mutlaq, is fully comprehended, the various deductions that follow from it will be easily understandable. As the ultimate test of truth, whether the matter be one of a ritual or political or social or economic nature, is revelation and revelation has to be gathered from the Qur’an, and the sunna carries almost the same degree of inerrancy as revelation and the only evidence of sunna is hadith, the first duty of those who desire to establish an Islamic State will be to discover the precise rule applicable to the existing circumstances whether that rule is to be found in the Qur’an or hadith. Obviously the persons most suited for the purpose would be those who have made the Qur’an and hadith their lifelong study, namely, among the Sunnies, the ulama, and among the Shias, the mujtahids who are the spokesmen of the hidden Imam, the ruler de jure divino. The function of these divines would be to engage themselves in discovering rules applicable to particular situations and they will be engaged in a task similar to that in which Greek philosophers were engaged, with only this difference that whereas the latter thought that all truth lay in nature which had merely to be discovered by individual effort, the ulama and the mujtahids will have to get at the truth that lies in the holy Book and the books of hadith.

The ulama Board which was recommended by the Basic Principles Committee was a logical recognition of this principle, and the true objection against that Board should indeed have been that the Board was too inadequate a mechanism to implement the principle which had brought that body into existence.

Ijma’ means concurrence of the mujtahids of the people, i.e., of those who have a right, in virtue of knowledge, to form a judgment of their own, after the death of the Holy Prophet. The authority of ijma’ rests on the principle of a divine protection against error and is founded on a basal tradition of the Holy Prophet, “My people will never agree in error”, reported in Ibn Maja, By this procedure points which had been in dispute were fixed, and when fixed, they became an essential part of the faith and disbelief in them an act of unbelief (kufr). The essential point to remember about ijma’ is that it represents the agreement of the mujtahids and that the agreement of the masses is especially excluded.

Thus ijma’ has not only fixed unsettled points but has changed settled doctrines of the greatest importance.

The distinction between ijma’ and ijtihad is that whereas the former is collective, the latter is individual. Ijtihad means the exerting of one’s self to the utmost degree to form an opinion in a case or as to a rule of law. This is done by applying analogy to the Qur’an and the sunna. Ijtihad did not originally involve inerrancy, its result being always zann or fallible opinion. Only combined ijtihad led to ijma, and was inerrant. But this broad ijtihad soon passed into special ijtihad of those who had a peculiar right to form judgments. When later doctors looked back to the founding of the four legal schools, they assigned to their founders an ijtihad of the first rank (ijtihad-i-mutlaq). But from time to time individuals appeared who returned to the earliest meaning of ijtihad and claimed for themselves the right to form their own opinion from first principles. One of these was the Hanbalite Ibn Taimiya (died 728). Another was Suyuti (died 911) in whom the claim to ijtihad unites with one to be the mujaddid or renewer of religion in his century. At every time there must exist at least one mujtahid, was his contention, just as in every century there must come a mujaddid.

In Shia Islam there are still absolute mujtahids because they are regarded as the spokesmen of the hidden Imam. Thus collective ijtihad leads to ijma’, and the basis of ijma’ is divine protection against error—inerrancy.

ESSENTIALS OF ISLAMIC STATE
Since the basis of Islamic law is the principle of inerrancy of revelation and of the Holy Prophet, the law to be found in the Qur’an and the sunna is above all man-made laws, and in case of conflict between the two, the latter, irrespective of its nature, must yield to the former. Thus, provided there be a rule in the Qur’an or the sunna on a matter which according to our conceptions falls within the region of Constitutional Law or International Law, the rule must be given effect to unless that rule itself permits a departure from it. Thus no distinction exists in Islamic law between Constitutional Law and other law, the whole law to be found in the Qur’an and the sunna being a part of the law of the land for Muslim subjects of the State. Similarly if there be a rule in the Qur’an or the sunna relating to the State’s relations with other States or to the relations of Muslim subjects of the State with other States or the subjects of those States, the rule will have the same superiority of sanction as any other law to be found in the Qur’an or the sunna.

Therefore if Pakistan is or is intended to be converted into an Islamic State in the true sense of the word, its Constitution must contain the following five provisions:—

(1) that all laws to be found in the Qur’an or the sunna shall be deemed to be a part of the law of the land for Muslims and shall be enforced accordingly;
(2) that unless the Constitution itself is framed by ijma’-i-ummat, namely, by the agreement of the ulama and mujtahids of acknowledged status, any provision in the Constitution which is repugnant to the Qur’an or sunna shall to the extent of the repugnancy be void;
(3) that unless the existing laws of Pakistan are adapted by ijma’-i-ummat of the kind mentioned above, any provision in the existing law which is contrary to the Qur’an or sunna shall to the extent of the repugnancy be void;
(4) that any provision in any future law which is repugnant to Qur’an or sunna shall be void;
(5) that no rule of International Law and no provision in any convention or treaty to which Pakistan is a party, which is contrary to the Qur’an or the sunna shall be binding on any Muslim in Pakistan.

SOVEREIGNTY AND DEMOCRACY IN ISLAMIC STATE
That the form of Government in Pakistan, if that form is to comply with the principles of Islam, will not be democratic is conceded by the ulama. We have already explained the doctrine of sovereignty of the Qur’an and the sunna. The Objectives Resolution rightly recognised this position when it recited that all sovereignty rests with God Almighty alone. But the authors of that Resolution misused the words ‘sovereign’ and ‘democracy’ when they recited that the Constitution to be framed was for a sovereign State in which principles of democracy as enunciated by Islam shall be fully observed.

It may be that in the context in which they were used, these words could not be misunderstood by those who are well versed in Islamic principles, but both these words were borrowed from western political philosophy and in that sense they were both wrongly used in the Resolution. When it is said that a country is sovereign, the implication is that its people or any other group of persons in it are entitled to conduct the affairs of that country in any way they like and untrammelled by any considerations except those of expediency and policy. An Islamic State, however, cannot in this sense be sovereign, because it will not be competent to abrogate, repeal or do away with any law in the Qur’an or the sunna. Absolute restriction on the legislative power of a State is a restriction on the sovereignty of the people of that State and if the origin of this restriction lies elsewhere than in the will of the people, then to the extent of that restriction the sovereignty of the State and its people is necessarily taken away. In an Islamic State, sovereignty, in its essentially juristic sense, can only rest with Allah. In the same way, democracy means the rule of the demos, namely, the people, directly by them as in ancient Greece and Rome, or indirectly through chosen representatives as in modern democracies. If the power of the people in the framing of the Constitution or in the framing of the laws or in the sphere of executive action is subject to certain immutable rules, it cannot be said that they can pass any law that they like, or, in the exercise of executive functions, do whatever they like. Indeed if the legislature in an Islamic State is a sort of ijma’, the masses are expressly disqualified from taking part in it because ijma’-i-ummat in Islamic jurisprudence is restricted to ulama and mujtahids of acknowledged status and does not at all extend, as in democracy, to the populace.

OTHER INCIDENTS OF ISLAMIC STATE ACCORDING TO ULAMA

In the preceding pages we have attempted to state as clearly as we could the principles on which a religious State must be built if it is to be called an Islamic State. We now proceed to state some incidents of such State, with particular reference to the ulamas’ conception of it.

LEGISLATURE AND LEGISLATION

Legislature in its present sense is unknown to the Islamic system. The religiopolitical system which is called din-i-Islam is a complete system which contains in itself the mechanism for discovering and applying law to any situation that may arise. During the Islamic Republic there was no legislature in its modern sense and for every situation or emergency that arose law could be discovered and applied by the ulama. The law had been made and was not to be made, the only function of those entrusted with the administration of law being to discover the law for the purposes of the particular case, though when enunciated and applied it formed a precedent for others to follow. It is wholly incorrect, as has been suggested from certain quarters, that in a country like Pakistan, which consists of different communities, Muslim and non-Muslim, and where representation is allowed to non-Muslims with a right to vote on every subject that comes up, the legislature is a form of ijma’ or ijtihad, the reason being that ijtihad is not collective but only individual, and though ijma’ is collective, there is no place in it for those who are not experts in the knowledge of the law. This principle at once rules out the infidels (kuffar) whether they be people of Scriptures (ahl-i-kitab) or idolators (mushrikeen).

Since Islam is a perfect religion containing laws, express or derivable by ijma’ or ijtihad, governing the whole field of human activity, there is in it no sanction for what may, in the modern sense, be called legislation.

Questioned on this point Maulana Abul Hasanat, President, Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Pakistan says :—

“Q.—Is the institution of legislature as distinguished from the institution of a person or body of persons entrusted with the interpretation of law, an integral part of an Islamic State?
A.—No. Our law is complete and merely requires interpretation by those who are experts in it. According to my belief no question can arise the law relating to which cannot be discovered from the Qur’an or the hadith.
Q.—Who were Sahib-ul-hall-i-wal-aqd
A.—They were the distinguished ulama of the time. These persons attained their status by reason of the knowledge of the law. They were not in any way analogous or similar to the legislature in modern democracy.”

The same view was expressed by Amir-i-Shari’at Sayyad Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari in one of his speeches reported in the ‘Azad’ of 22nd April, 1947, in the course of which he said that our din is complete and perfect and that it amounts to kufr to make more laws.

Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, however, is of the opinion that legislation in the true sense is possible in an Islamic State on matters which are not covered by the Qur’an, the sunna, or previous ijma’ and he has attempted to explain his point by reference to the institution of a body of persons whom the Holy Prophet, and after him the khulafa consulted on all matters relating to affairs of State. The question is one of some difficulty and great importance because any institution of legislature will have to be reconciled with the claim put forward by Maulana Abul Hasanat and some other religious divines that Islam is a perfect and exhaustive code wide enough to furnish an answer to any question that may arise relating to any human activity, and that it does not know of any “unoccupied field” to be filled by fresh legislation. There is no doubt that Islam enjoins consultation and that not only the Holy Prophet but also the first four caliphs and even their successors resorted to consultation with the leading men of the time, who for their knowledge of the law and piety could well be relied upon.

In the inquiry not much has been disclosed about the Majlis-i-Shura except what is contained in Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi’s written statement which he supplied to the Court at its request. That there was a body of men who were consulted is true, but whether this was a standing body and whether its advice had any legal or binding force, seems somewhat doubtful. These men were certainly not elected in the modern way, though their representative character cannot be disputed. Their advice was certainly asked ad hoc, but that they were competent to make law as the modern legislatures make laws is certainly not correct. The decisions taken by them undoubtedly served as precedents and were in the nature of ijma’, which is not legislation but the application of an existing law to a particular case. When consulted in affairs of State, their functions were truly in the nature of an advice given by a modern cabinet but such advice is not law but only a decision.

Nor can the legislature in a modern State correspond to ijma’ because as we have already pointed out, the legislature legislates while the ulama of Majlis-i-Shura who were called upon to determine what should be the decision on a particular point which was not covered by the Qur’an and the sunna, merely sought to discover and apply the law and not to promulgate the law, though the decision when taken had to be taken not only for the purposes of the particular case but for subsequent occasions as a binding precedent.

An intriguing situation might arise if the Constitution Act provided that any provision of it, if it was inconsistent with the Qur’an or the sunna, would be void, and the intra vires of a law made by the legislature were questioned before the Supreme Court on the ground that the institution of legislature itself was contrary to the Qur’an and the sunna.

POSITION OF NON-MUSLIMS

The ground on which the removal of Chaudhri Zafrullah Khan and other Ahmadis occupying key positions in the State is demanded is that the Ahmadis are non-Muslims and that therefore like zimmies in an Islamic State they are not eligible for appointment to higher offices in the State. This aspect of the demands has directly raised a question about the position of non-Muslims in Pakistan if we are to have an Islamic Constitution.

According to the leading ulama the position of non-Muslims in the Islamic State of Pakistan will be that of zimmies and they will not be full citizens of Pakistan because they will not have the same rights as Muslims They will have no voice in the making of the law, no right to administer the law and no right to hold public offices.

A full statement of this position will be found in the evidence of Maulana Abul Hasanat Sayyad Muhammad Ahmad Qadri, Maulana Ahmad Ali, Mian Tufail Muhammad and Maulana Abdul Haamid Badayuni. Maulana Abul Hasanat on being questioned on the subject stated as follows :—

“Q.—If we were to have an Islamic State in Pakistan, what will be the position of the kuffar (non-Muslims)? Will they have a voice in the making of laws, the right of administering the law and the right to hold public offices?
A.—Their position will be that of zimmies. They will have no voice in the making of laws, no right to administer the law and no right to hold public offices.
Q.—In an Islamic State can the head of the State delegate any part of his powers to kuffar?
A.—No.”

Maulana Ahmad Ali, when questioned, said:—
“Q.—if we were to have an Islamic State in Pakistan, what will be the position of the kuffar? Will they have a hand in the making of the law, the right to administer the law and the right to hold public offices ?
A.—Their position will be that of zimmies. They will have no say in the making of law and no right to administer the law. Government may, however, permit them to hold any public office”.

Mian Tufail Muhammad stated as follows :—
“Q.—Read the article on minorities’ rights in the ‘Civil and Military Gazette’ of 13th October, 1953, and say whether it correctly represents your view of an Islamic State? (It was stated in the articles that minorities would have the same rights as Muslims).
A.—I have read this article and do not acknowledge these rights for the Christians or other non-Muslims in Pakistan if the State is founded on the ideology of the Jama’at”.

The confusion on this point in the mind of Maulana Abdul Haamid Badayuni, President, Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Pakistan, is apparent from the following: —

“Q.—Have you ever read the aforesaid speech (the speech of the Quaid-i-Azam to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on 11th August, 1947)?
A.—Yes, I have read that speech.
Q.—Do you still agree with the conception of Pakistan that the Quaid-i-Azam presented to the Constituent Assembly in this speech in which he said that thereafter there would be only one Pakistan nation, consisting of Muslims and non-Muslims, having equal civic rights, without any distinction of race, religion or creed and that religion would be merely a private affair of the individual ?
A.—I accept the principle that all communities, whether Muslims or non-Muslims, should have, according to their population, proper representation in the administration of the State and legislation, except that non-Muslims cannot be taken in the army or the judiciary or be appointed as Ministers or to other posts involving the reposing of confidence.
Q.—Are you suggesting that the position of non-Muslims would be that of zimmies or any better ?
A.—No. By zimmies are meant non-Muslim people of lands which have been conquered by an Islamic State, and the word is not applicable to non-Muslim minorities already living in an Islamic State. Such minorities are called mu’ahids, i.e. those people with whom some agreement has been made.
Q.—What will be their status if there is no agreement with them ?
A.—In that case such communities cannot have any rights of citizenship.
Q.—Will the non-Muslim communities inhabiting Pakistan be called by you as mu’ahids?
A.—No, not in the absence of an agreement with them. To my knowledge there is no such agreement with such communities in Pakistan.”

So, according to the evidence of this learned divine, the non-Muslims of Pakistan will neither be citizens nor will they have the status of zimmies or of mu’ahids. During the Islamic Republic, the head of the State, the khalifa, was chosen by a system of election, which was wholly different from the present system of election based on adult or any other form of popular suffrage. The oath of allegiance (ba’it) rendered to him possessed a sacramental virtue, and on his being chosen by the consensus of the people (ijma’-ul-ummat) he became the source of all channels of legitimate Government. He and he alone then was competent to rule, though he could delegate his powers to deputies and collect around him a body of men of outstanding piety and learning, called Majlis-i-Shura or Ahl-ul-Hall-i-wal-Aqd. The principal feature of this system was that the kuffar, for reasons which are too obvious and need not be stated, could not be admitted to this majlis and the power which had vested in the khalifa could not be delegated to the kuffar. The khalifa was the real head of the State, all power vesting in him and not a powerless individual like the President of a modern democratic State who is merely to sign the record of decisions taken by the Prime Minister and his Cabinet. He could not appoint non-Muslims to important posts, and could give them no place either in the interpretation or the administration of the law, the making of the law by them, as already pointed out, being a legal impossibility.

This being the position, the State will have to devise some machinery by which the distinction between a Muslim and a non-Muslim may be determined and its consequences enforced. The question, therefore, whether a person is or is not a Muslim will be of fundamental importance, and it was for this reason that we asked most of the leading ulama, to give their definition of a Muslim, the point being that if the ulama of the various sects believed the Ahmadis to be kafirs, they must have been quite clear in their minds not only about the grounds of such belief but also about the definition of a Muslim because the claim that a certain person or community is not within the pale of Islam implies on the part of the claimant an exact conception of what a Muslim is. The result of this part of the inquiry, however, has been anything but satisfactory, and if considerable confusion exists in the minds of our ulama on such a simple matter, one can easily imagine what the differences on more complicated matters will be. Below we reproduce the definition of a Muslim given by each alim in his own words. This definition was asked after it had been clearly explained to each witness that he was required to give the irreducible minimum conditions which, a person must satisfy to be entitled to be called a Muslim and that the definition was to be on the principle on which a term in grammar is defined.

Here is the result : —

Maulana Abul Hasanat Muhammad Ahmad Qadri, President, Jami’at-ul-Ulamai-
Pakistan —
“Q.— What is the definition of a Muslim ?
A — (1) He must believe in the Unity of God.
(2) He must believe in the prophet of Islam to be a true prophet as well as in all other prophets who have preceded him,
(3) He must believe in the Holy Prophet of Islam as the last of the prophets (khatam-un-nabiyin).
(4) He must believe in the Qur’an as it was revealed by God to the Holy
Prophet of Islam.
(5) He must believe as binding on him the injunctions of the Prophet of
Islam.
(6) He must believe in the qiyamat.
Q.—Is a tarik-us-salat a Muslim ?
A.—Yes, but not a munkir-us-salat”

Maulana Ahmad Ali, President, Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Islam, Maghribi Pakistan —
“Q.— Please define a Muslim ?
A.—A person is a Muslim if he believes (1) in the Qur’an and (2) what has been said by the prophet. Any person who possesses these two qualifications is entitled to be called a Muslim without his being required to believe in anything more or to do anything more.”

Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, Amir Jama’at-i-Islami —
“Q.—Please define a Muslim ?
A.—A person is a Muslim if he believes (1) in tauheed, (2) in all the prophets (ambiya), (3) all the books revealed by God, (4) in mala’ika (angels), and (5) yaum-ul-akhira (the Day of Judgment).
Q.—Is a mere profession of belief in these articles sufficient to entitle a man
to call himself a Musalman and to be treated as a Musalman in an Islamic State ?
A.—Yes.
Q.—If a person says that he believes in all these things, does any one have a right to question the existence of his belief ?
A.—The five requisites that I have mentioned above are fundamental and any alteration in anyone of these articles will take him out of the pale of Islam.”

Ghazi Siraj-ud-Din Munir—
“Q.—Please define a Muslim ?
A.—I consider a man to be a Muslim if he professes his belief in the kalima, namely, La Ilaha Illalah-o-Muhammad-ur-Rasulullah, and leads a life in the footsteps of the Holy Prophet.”

Mufti Muhammad Idris, Jamia Ashrafia, Nila Gumbad, Lahore—
“Q.—Please give the definition of a Musalman ?
A.—The word ‘Musalman’ is a Persian one. There is a distinction between the word ‘Musalman’ which is a Persian word for Muslim and the word ‘momin’. It is impossible for me to give a complete definition of the word ‘momin’. I would require pages and pages to describe what a momin is. A person is a Muslim who professes to be obedient to Allah. He should believe in the Unity of God, prophethood of the ambiya and in the Day of Judgment. A person who does not believe in the azan or in the qurbani goes outside the pale of Islam. Similarly, there are a large number of other things which have been received by tavatir from our prophet. In order to be a Muslim, he must believe in all these things. It is almost impossible for me to give a complete list of such things.”

Hafiz Kifayat Hussain, Idara-i-Haquq-i-Tahaffuz-i-Shia—
“Q.—Who is a Musalman?
A.—A person is entitled to be called a Musalman if he believes in (1) tauheed, (2) nubuwwat and (3) qiyamat. These are the three fundamental beliefs which a person must profess to be called a Musalman. In regard to these three basic doctrines there is no difference between the Shias and the Sunnies. Besides the belief in these three doctrines, there are other things called ‘zarooriyat-i-din’ which a person must comply with in order to be entitled to be called a Musalman. These will take me two days to define and enumerate. But as an illustration I might state that the respect for the Holy Book, wajoob-i-nimaz, wajoob-i-roza, wajoob-i-hajj-ma’a-sharait, and other things too numerous to mention, are among the ‘zarooriyat-i-din’ ”

Maulana Abdul Hamid Badayuni, President, Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Pakistan :
“Q.—Who is a Musalman according to you ?
A.—A person who believes in the zarooriyat-i-din is called a momin and every momin is entitled to be called a Musalman.
Q.—What are these zarooriyat-i-din ?
A.—A person who believes in the five pillars of Islam and who believes in the rasalat of our Holy Prophet fulfils the zarooriyat-i-din.
Q.—Have other actions, apart from the five arakan, anything to do with a man being a Muslim or being outside the pale of Islam?
(Note—Witness has been explained that by actions are meant those rules of moral conduct which in modern society are accepted as correct.)
A.—Certainly.
Q.—Then you will not call a person a Muslim who believes in arakan-ikhamsa and the rasalat of the prophet but who steals other peoples’ things, embezzles property entrusted to him, has an evil eye on his neighbour’s wife and is guilty of the grossest ingratitude to his benefector?
A.—Such a person, if he has the belief already indicated, will be a Muslim despite all this”.

Maulana Muhammad Ali Kandhalvi, Darush-Shahabia, Sialkot —
“Q.—Please define a Musalman?
A.—A person who in obedience to the commands of the prophet performs all the zarooriyat-i-din is a Musalman.
Q.—Can you define zarooriyat-i-din ?
A.—Zarooriyat-i-din are those requirements which are known to every Muslim irrespective of his religious knowledge.
Q.—Can you enumerate zarooriyat-i-din ?
A.—These are too numerous to be mentioned. I myself cannot enumerate these zarooriyat. Some of the zarooriyat-i-din may be mentioned as salat, saum, etc.”

Maulana Amin Ahsan Islahi —
“Q.—Who is a Musalman?
A.—There are two kinds of Musalmans, a political (siyasi) Musalman and a real (haqiqi) Musalman. In order to be called a political Musalman, a person must:
(1) believe in the Unity of God,
(2) believe in our Holy Prophet being khatam-un-nabiyin, i.e., ‘final
authority’ in all matters relating to the life of that person,
(3) believe that all good and evil comes from Allah,
(4) believe in the Day of Judgment,
(5) believe in the Qur’an to be the last book revealed by Allah,
(6) perform the annual pilgrimage to Mecca,
(7) pay the zaka’at,
(8) say his prayers like the Musalmans,
(9) observe all apparent rules of Islami mu’ashira, and
(10) observe the fast (saum).

If a person satisfies all these conditions he is entitled to the rights of a full citizen of an Islamic State. If any one of these conditions is not satisfied, the person concerned will not be a political Musalman. (Again said) It would be enough for a person to be a Musalman if he merely professes his belief in these ten matters irrespective of whether he puts them into practice or not. In order to be a real Musalman, a person must believe in and act on all the injunctions by Allah and his prophet in the manner in which they have been enjoined upon him.
Q.—Will you say that only the real Musalman is ‘mard-i-saleh’ ?
A.—Yes.
Q.—do we understand you aright that in the case of what you have called a political (siyasi) Musalman, belief alone is necessary, while in the case of a haqiqi Musalman there must not only be belief but also action?
A.—No, you have not understood me aright. Even in the case of a political (siyasi) Musalman action is necessary but what I mean to say is that if a person does not act upon the belief that is necessary in the case of such a Musalman, he will not be outside the pale of a political (siyasi) Musalman.
Q.—If a political (siyasi) Musalman does not believe in things which you
have stated to be necessary, will you call such a person be-din ?
A.—No, I will call him merely be-amal”.

The definition by the Sadr Anjuman Ahmadiya, Rabwah, in its written statement
is that a Muslim is a person who belongs to the ummat of the Holy Prophet and professes belief in kalima-i-tayyaba.

Keeping in view the several definitions given by the ulama, need we make any comment except that no two learned divines are agreed on this fundamental. If we attempt our own definition as each learned divine has done and that definition differs from that given by all others, we unanimously go out of the fold of Islam. And if we adopt the definition given by any one of the ulama, we remain Muslims according to the view of that alim but kafirs according to the definition of every one else.

APOSTASY

Apostasy in an Islamic State is punishable with death. On this the ulama are practically unanimous (vide the evidence of Maulana Abul Hasanat Sayyad Muhammad Ahmad Qadri, President, Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Pakistan, Punjab; Maulana Ahmad Ali, Sadr Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Islam, West Pakistan; Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, founder and ex-Amir-i-Jama’at-i-Islami, Pakistan; Mufti Muhammad Idris, Jami’Ashrafia, Lahore, and Member, Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Pakistan; Maulana Daud Ghaznavi, President, Jami’at-i-Ahl-i-Hadith, Maghribi Pakistan; Maulana Abdul Haleem Qasimi, Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Islam, Punjab; and Mr. Ibrahim Ali Chishti). According to this doctrine, Chaudhri Zafrullah Khan, if he has not inherited his present religious beliefs but has voluntarily elected to be an Ahmadi, must be put to death. And the same fate should befall Deobandis and Wahabis, including Maulana Muhammad Shafi Deobandi, Member, Board of Talimat-i-Islami attached to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, and Maulana Daud Ghaznavi, if Maulana Abul Hasanat Sayyad Muhammad Ahmad Qadri or Mirza Raza Ahmad Khan Barelvi, or any one of the numerous ulama who are shown perched on every leaf of a beautiful tree in the fatwa, Ex. D. E. 14, were the head of such Islamic State. And if Maulana Muhammad Shafi Deobandi were the head of the State, he would exclude those who have pronounced Deobandis as kafirs from the pale of Islam and inflict on them the death penalty if they come within the definition of murtadd, namely, if they have changed and not inherited their religious views.

The genuineness of the fatwa, Ex. D. E. 13, by the Deobandis which says that Asna Ashari Shias are kafirs and murtadds, was questioned in the course of enquiry, but Maulana Muhammad Shafi made an inquiry on the subject from Deoband, and received from the records of that institution the copy of a fatwa signed by all the teachers of the Darul Uloom including Maulana Muhammad Shafi himself which is to the effect that those who do not believe in the sahabiyyat of Hazrat Siddiq Akbar and who are qazif of Hazrat Aisha Siddiqa and have been guilty of tehrif of Qur’an are kafirs. This opinion is also supported by Mr. Ibrahim Ali Chishti who has studied and knows his subject. He thinks the Shias are kafirs because they believe that Hazrat Ali shared the prophethood with our Holy Prophet. He refused to answer the question whether a person who being a Sunni changes his view and agrees with the Shia view would be guilty of irtidad so as to deserve the death penalty. According to the Shias all Sunnis are kafirs, and Ahl-i-Qur’an; namely, persons who consider hadith to be unreliable and therefore not binding, are unanimously kafirs and so are all independent thinkers. The net result of all this is that neither Shias nor Sunnis nor Deobandis nor Ahl-i-Hadith nor Barelvis are Muslims and any change from one view to the other must be accompanied in an Islamic State with the penalty of death if the Government of the State is in the hands of the party which considers the other party to be kafirs. And it does not require much imagination to judge of the consequences of this doctrine when it is remembered that no two ulama have agreed before us as to the definition of a Muslim. If the constituents of each of the definitions given by the ulama are given effect to, and subjected to the rule of ‘combination and permutation’ and the form of charge in the Inquisition’s sentence on Galileo is adopted mutatis mutandis as a model, the grounds on which a person may be indicted for apostasy will be too numerous to count.

In an earlier part of the report we have referred to the proscription of the ‘Ashshahab’, a pamphlet written by Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani who later became Sheikh-ul-Islam-i-Pakistan. In that pamphlet the Maulana had attempted to show from the Qur’an, the sunna, the ijma’ and qayas that in Islam the punishment for apostasy (irtidad) simpliciter is death. After propounding the theological doctrine the Maulana had made in that document a statement of fact that in the time of the Caliph Siddiq-i-Akbar and the subsequent Caliphs vast areas of Arabia became repeatedly red with the blood of apostates. We are not called upon to express any opinion as to the correctness or otherwise of this doctrine but knowing that the suggestion to the Punjab Government to proscribe this pamphlet had come from the Minister for the Interior we have attempted to inquire of ourselves the reasons for Government’s taking a step which ex hypothesi amounted to condemning a doctrine which the Maulana had professed to derive from the Qur’an and the sunna. The death penalty for irtidad has implications of a far-reaching character and stamps Islam as a religion of fanatics, which punishes all independent thinking. The Qur’an again and again lays emphasis on reason and thought, advises toleration and preaches against compulsion in religious matters but the doctrine of irtidad as enunciated in this pamphlet strikes at the very root of independent thinking when it propounds the view that anyone who, being born a Muslim or having embraced Islam, attempts to think on the subject of religion with a view, if he comes to that conclusion, to choose for himself any religion he likes, has the capital penalty in store for him. With this implication Islam becomes an embodiment of complete intellectual paralysis. And the statement in the pamphlet that vast areas of Arabia were repeatedly bespattered with human blood, if true, could only lend itself to this inference that even when Islam was at the height of its splendour and held absolute sway in Arabia there were in that country a large number of people who turned away from that religion and preferred to die than to remain in that system. It must have been some such reaction of this pamphlet on the mind of the Minister for the Interior which prompted him to advise the Punjab Government to proscribe the pamphlet. Further the Minister who was himself well-versed in religious matters must have thought that the conclusion drawn by the author of the pamphlet which was principally based on the precedent mentioned in paras. 26, 27 and 28 of the Old Testament and which is only partially referred to in the Qur’an in the 54th verse of the Second Sura, could not be applicable to apostasy from Islam and that therefore the author’s opinion was in fact incorrect, there being no express text in the Qur’an for the death penalty for apostasy. On the contrary each of the two ideas, one underlying the six brief verses of Surat-ul-Kafiroon and the other the La Ikrah verse of the second Sura, has merely to be understood to reject as erroneous the view propounded in the ‘Ash-Shahab’. Each of the verses in Surat-ul-Kafiroon which contains thirty words and no verse of which exceeds six words, brings out a fundamental trait in man engrained in him since his creation while the La Ikrah verse, the relevant portion of which contains only nine words, states the rule of responsibility of the mind with a precision that cannot be surpassed. Both of these texts which are an early part of the Revelation are, individually and collectively, the foundation of that principle which human society, after centuries of conflict, hatred and bloodshed, has adopted in defining one of the most important fundamental rights of man. But our doctors would never dissociate chauvinism from Islam.

PROPAGATION OF OTHER RELIGIONS

Closely allied to the punishment for apostasy is the right of non-Muslims publicly to preach their religion. The principle which punishes an apostate with death must be applicable to public preaching of kufr and it is admitted by Maulana Abul Hasanat, Ghazi Siraj-ud-Din Munir and Master Taj-ud-Din Ansari, though the last subordinates his opinion to the opinion of the ulama, that any faith other than Islam will not be permitted publicly to be preached in the State. And Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, as will appear from his pamphlet ‘Punishment in Islam for an apostate’, has the same views on the subject.

Ghazi Siraj-ud-Din Munir, when questioned on this point, replied :—
“Q.—What will you do with them (Ahmadis) if you were the head of the
Pakistan State ?
A.—I would tolerate them as human beings but will not allow them the right
to preach their religion”.

The prohibition against public preaching of any non-Muslim religion must logically follow from the proposition that apostasy will be punished with death and that any attack on, or danger to Islam will be treated as treason and punished in the same way as apostasy.

JIHAD
Earlier we have pointed out that one of the doctrines on which the Musalmans and Ahmadis are at variance is that of jihad. This doctrine at once raises a host of other allied matters such as the meanings of ghazi, shahid, jihad-bis-saif, jihad fi sabili’llah, dar-ul-Islam, dar-ul-harb, hijrat, ghanima, khums and slavery, and the conflict or reconciliation of these conceptions with modern international problems such as aggression, genocide, international criminal jurisdiction, international conventions and rules of public international law.

An Islamic State is dar-ul-Islam, namely, a country where ordinances of Islam are established and which is under the rule of a Muslim sovereign. Its inhabitants are Muslims and also non-Muslims who have submitted to Muslim control and who under certain restrictions and without the possibility of full citizenship are guaranteed their lives and property by the Muslim State. They must, however, be people of Scriptures and may not be idolaters. An Islamic State is in theory perpetually at war with the neighbouring non-Muslim country, which at any time may become dar-ul-harb, in which case it is the duty of the Muslims of that country to leave it and to come over to the country of their brethren in faith. We put this aspect to Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi and reproduce his views :—

“Q.—is a country on the border of dar-ul-Islam always qua an Islamic State in the position of dar-ul-harb ?
A.—No. In the absence of an agreement to the contrary, the Islamic State will be potentially at war with the non-Muslim neighbouring country. The non-Muslim country acquires the status of dar-ul-harb only after the Islamic State declares a formal war against it”.

According to Ghias-ul-Lughat, dar-ul-harb is a country belonging to infidels which has not been subdued by Islam, and the consequences of a country becoming darul-harb are thus stated in the Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam :—

“When a country does become a dar-ul-harb, it is the duty of all Muslims to withdraw from it, and a wife who refuses to accompany her husband in this, is ipso facto divorced”.

Thus in case of a war between India and Pakistan, if the latter is an Islamic State, we must be prepared to receive forty million Muslims from across the border into Pakistan.

In fact, Maulana Abdul Haamid Badayuni, President, Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i- Pakistan, thinks that a case for hijrat already exists for the Musalmans of India. The following is his view on this subject :—
“Q.—Do yon call your migration to Pakistan as hijrat in the religious sense ?
A.—Yes”.

We shall presently point out why Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s version of the doctrine of jihad is relied on as a ground for his and his community’s kufr, but before we do that it is necessary first to state how jihad has been or is understood by the Musalmans. There are various theories about jihad which vary from the crude notion of a megalomaniac moved by religious frenzy going out armed with sword and indiscriminately slaughtering non-Muslims in the belief that if he dies in the combat he becomes a shahid and if he succeeds in killing attains the status of a ghazi, to the conception that a Musalman throughout his life is pitted against kufr, kufr here being used in the sense of evil and wrong, and that his principal activity in life is to strive by argument a where necessary by force to spread Islam until it becomes a world religion. In the latter case he fights not for any personal end but because he considers such strife as a duty and an obligation which he owes to Allah and the only recompense for which is the pleasure of Allah. The Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam contains the following brief article on djihad :—
“DJIHAD (A), holy war. The spread of Islam by arms is a religious duty upon Muslims in general. It narrowly escaped being a sixth rukn, or fundamental duty, and is indeed still so regarded by the descendants of the Kharidjis. This position was reached gradually but quickly. In the Meccan Suras of the Qur’an patience under attack is taught ; no other attitude was possible. But at Medina the right to repel attack appears, and gradually it became a prescribed duty to fight against and subdue the hostile Meccans.

Whether Muhammad himself recognised that his position implied steady and unprovoked war against the unbelieving world until it was subdued to Islam may be in doubt. Traditions are explicit on the point ; but the Qur’anic passages speak always of the unbelievers who are to be subdued as dangerous or faithless. Still, the story of his writing to the powers around him shows that such a universal position was implicit in his mind, and it certainly developed immediately after his death, when the Muslim armies advanced out of Arabia. It is now a fard ala’l-kifaya, a duty in general on all male, free, adult Muslims, sane in mind and body and having means enough to reach the Muslim army, yet not a duty necessarily incumbent on every individual but sufficiently performed when done by a certain number. So it must continue to be done until the whole world is under the rule of Islam. It must be controlled or headed by a Muslim sovereign or imam. As the imam of the Shias is now invisible, they cannot have a djihad until he reappears. Further, the requirement will be met if such a sovereign makes an expedition once a year, or, even, in the later view, if he makes annual preparation for one. The people against whom the djihad is directed must first be invited to embrace Islam. On refusal they have another choice. They may submit to Muslim rule, become dhimmis (q. v.) and pay djizya and kharadj (q. v.) or fight. In the first case, their lives, families and property are assured to them, but they have a definitely inferior status, with no technical citizenship, and a standing only as protected wards. If they fight, they and their families may be enslaved and all their property seized as booty, four-fifths of which goes to the conquering army. If they embrace Islam, and it is open to them to do so even when the armies are face to face, they become part of the Muslim community with all its rights and duties. Apostates must be put to death. But if a Muslim country is invaded by unbelievers, the imam may issue a general summons calling all Muslims there to arms, and as the danger grows so may be the width of the summons until the whole Muslim world is involved. A Muslim who dies fighting in the path of Allah (fi sabil Allah) is martyr (shahid) and is assured of Paradise and of peculiar privileges there. Such a death was, in the early generations, regarded as the peculiar crown of a pious life. It is still, on occasions, a strong incitement, but when Islam ceased to conquer it lost its supreme value. Even yet, however, any war between Muslims and non-Muslims must be a djihad with its incitements and rewards. Of course, such modern movements as the so-called Mu’tazili in India and the Young Turk in Turkey reject this and endeavour to explain away its basis; but the Muslim masses still follow the unanimous voice of the canon lawyers. Islam must be completely made over before the doctrine of djihad can be eliminated”.

The generally accepted view is that the fifth verse to Sura-i-Tauba (Sura IX) abrogated the earlier verses revealed in Mecca which permitted the killing of kuffar only in self-defence. As against this the Ahmadis believe that no verso in the Qur’an was abrogated by another verse and that both sets of verses, namely, the Meccan verses and the relative verses in Sura-i-Tauba have different scopes and can stand together. This introduces the difficult controversy of nasikh and mansukh, with all its implications. It is argued on behalf of the Ahmadis that the doctrine of nasikh and mansukh is opposed to the belief in the existence of an original Scripture in Heaven, and that implicit in this doctrine is the admission that unless the verse alleged to be repealed was meant for a specific occasion and by the coming of that occasion fulfilled its purpose and thus spent itself, God did not know of the subsequent circumstances which would make the earlier verse inapplicable or lead to an undesired result.

The third result of this doctrine, it is pointed out, cuts at the very root of the claim that laws of Islam are immutable and inflexible because if changed circumstances made a new revelation necessary, any change in the circumstances subsequent to the completion of the revelation would make most of the revelation otiose or obsolete.

We are wholly incompetent to pronounce on the merits of this controversy but what has to be pointed out is the result to which the doctrine of jihad will lead if, as appears from the article in the Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam and other writings produced before us including one by Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi and another by Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, it involves the spread of Islam by arms and conquest. ‘Aggression’ and ‘genocide’ are now offences against humanity for which under sentences pronounced by different International tribunals at Nuremburg and Tokio the war lords of Germany and Japan had to forfeit their lives, and there is hardly any difference between the offences of aggression and genocide on the one hand and the doctrine of spread of Islam by arms and conquest on the other. An International Convention on genocide is about to be concluded but if the view of jihad presented to us is correct, Pakistan cannot be a party to it. And while the following verses in the Mecca Suras :—

Sura II, verses 190 and 193 :190. “Fight in the Cause of God Those who fight you,
But do not transgress limits ;
For God loveth not transgressors”.
193. “And fight them on
Until there is no more
Tumult or oppression,
And there prevail
Justice and faith in God ;
But if they cease,
Let there be no hostility
Except to those
Who practise oppression”.
Sura XXII, verses 39 and 40:
39. “To those against whom
War is made, permission
Is given (to fight) because
They are wronged;— and verily,
God is most Powerful
For their aid;—”
40. “(They are) those who have
Been expelled from their homes
In defiance of right,—
(For no cause) except
That they say, ‘Our Lord
Is God.’ Did not God
Check one set of people
By means of another,
There would surely have been
Pulled down monasteries, churches,
Synagogues, and mosques, in which
The name of God is commemorated
In abundant measure. God will
Certainly aid those who
Aid His (cause);—for verily
God is Full of Strength,
Exalted in Might,
(Able to enforce His Will),”

contain in them the sublime principle which international jurists have only faintly begun to discover, we must go on preaching that aggression is the chief characteristic of Islam. The law relating to prisoners of war is another branch of Islamic law which is bound to come in conflict with International Law.

As for instance, in matters relating to the treatment of prisoners of war, we shall have to be governed by Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi’s view, assuming that view is based on the Qur’an and the sunna, which is as follows :—

“Q.—Is there a law of war in Islam?
A.—Yes.
Q.—Does it differ fundamentally from the modern International Law of war?
A.—These two systems are based on a fundamental difference.
Q.—What rights have non-Muslims who are taken prisoners of war in a jihad?
A.—The Islamic law on the point is that if the country of which these prisoners are nationals pays ransom, they will be released. An exchange of prisoners is also permitted. If neither of these alternatives is possible, the prisoners will be converted into slaves for ever. If any such person makes an offer to pay his ransom out of his own earnings, he will be permitted to collect the money necessary for the fidya (ransom).
Q.—Are you of the view that unless a Government assumes the form of an Islamic Government, any war declared by it is not a jihad?
A.—No. A war may be declared to be a jihad if it is declared by a national Government of Muslims in the legitimate interests of the State. I never expressed the opinion attributed to me in Ex. D. E. 12:—
“Raha yeh masala keh agar hukumat-i-Pakisten apni maujuda shukl-o-surat ke sath Indian Union ke sath apne mu’ahadat khatm kar-ke i’lan-i-jang bar bhi de to kya us-ki yeh jang jihad ke hukam men a-ja’egi ? Ap ne is bare men jo rae zahir ki hai woh bilkul darust hai – Jab-tak hukumat Islami nizam ko ikhtiyar kar-ke Islami nah ho jae us waqt tak us-ki kisi jang ko jihad kehna aisa hi hai jaisa kisi ghair Muslim ke Azad Kashmir ki fauj men bharti ho-kar larne ko jihad aur us-ki maut ko shahadat ka nam dediya jae – Maulana ka jo mudd’a hai woh yeh hai keh mu’ahadat ki maujudgi men to hukumat ya us-ke shehriyon ka is jang men sharik hona shar’-an ja’iz hi nahin – Agar hukumat mu’ahadat khatm kar-ke jang ka
i’lan kar-de to hukumat ki jang to jihad phir bhi nahin hogi ta-an keh hukumat Islami nah ho jae.’

(translation)

‘The question remains whether, even if the Government of Pakistan, in its present form and structure, terminates her treaties with the Indian Union and declares war against her, this war would fall under the definition of jihad? The opinion expressed by him in this behalf is quite correct. Until such time as the Government becomes Islamic by adopting the Islamic form of Government, to call any of its wars a jihad would be tantamount to describing the enlistment and fighting of a non-Muslim on the side of the Azad Kashmir forces jihad and his death martyrdom. What the Maulana means is that, in the presence of treaties, it is against Shari’at, if the Government or its people participate in such a war. If the Government terminates the treaties and declares war, even then the war started by Government would not be termed jihad unless the Government becomes Islamic’.

About the view expressed in this letter being that of Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, there is the evidence of Mian Tufail Muhammad, the writer of the letter, who states: “Ex. D. E. 12 is a photostat copy of a letter which I wrote to someone whose name I do not now remember.”

Maulana Abul Hasanat Muhammad Ahmad Qadri’s view on this point is as
follows:—
“Q.—Is there a law of war in Islam?
A.—Yes.
Q.—Does it differ in fundamentals from the present International Law?
A.—Yes.
Q.—What are the rights of a person taken prisoner in war?
A.—He can embrace Islam or ask for aman, in which case he will be treated as a musta’min. If he does not ask for aman, he would be made a slave”.
Similar is the opinion expressed by Mian Tufail Muhammad of Jam’at-i-Islami who says:—
“Q.—Is there any law of war in Islamic laws?
A.—Yes.
Q.—If that comes into conflict with International Law, which will you follow?
A.—Islamic law.
Q.—Then please state what will be the status of prisoners of war captured by your
forces?
A.—I cannot reply to this off hand. I will have to study the point.”
Of course ghanima (plunder) and khums (one-fifth) if treated as a necessary incident of
jihad will be treated by international society as a mere act of brigandage.

REACTION ON MUSLIMS OF NON-MUSLIM STATES
The ideology on which an Islamic State is desired to be founded in Pakistan must have certain consequences for the Musalmans who are living in countries under non-Muslim sovereigns.

We asked Amir-i-Shari’at Sayyad Ataullah Shah Bukhari whether a Muslim could be a faithful subject of a non-Muslim State and reproduce his answer:—
“Q.—In your opinion is a Musalman bound to obey orders of a kafir Government?
A.—It is not possible that a Musalman should be faithful citizen of a non-Muslim Government.
Q.—Will it be possible for the four crore of Indian Muslims to be faithful citizens of their State?
A—No.”

The answer is quite consistent with the ideology which has been pressed before us, but then if Pakistan is entitled to base its Constitution on religion, the same right must be conceded to other countries where Musalmans are in substantial minorities or if they constitute a preponderating majority in a country where sovereignty rests with a non-Muslim community. We, therefore, asked the various ulama whether, if non-Muslims in Pakistan were to be subjected to this discrimination in matters of citizenship, the ulama would have any objection to Muslims in other countries being subjected to a similar discrimination. Their reactions to this suggestion are reproduced below:—

Maulana Abul Hasanat Sayyed Muhammad Ahmad Qadri, President, Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Pakistan:—
“Q.—You will admit for the Hindus, who are in a majority in India, the right to have a Hindu religious State?
A.—Yes.
Q.—Will you have any objection if the Muslims are treated under that form of Government as malishes or shudras under the law of Manu?
A.— No.”

Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi :—
“Q.—If we have this form of Islamic Government in Pakistan, will you permit Hindus to base their Constitution on the basis of their own religion?
A—Certainly. I should have no objection even if the Muslims of India are treated in that form of Government as shudras and malishes and Manu’s laws are applied to them, depriving them of all share in the Government and the rights of a citizen. In fact such a state of affairs already exists in India.”

Amir-i-Shari’at Sayyad Ata Ullah Skak Bukhari :—
“Q.—How many crores of Muslims are there in India?
A.—Four crores.
Q.—Have you any objection to the law of Manu being applied to them according to which they will have no civil right and will be treated as malishes and shudras?
A.—I am in Pakistan and I cannot advise them.”

Mian Tufail Muhammad of Jama’at-i-Islami :—
“Q.—What is the population of Muslims in the world?
A.—Fifty crores.
Q.—If the total population of Muslims of the world is 50 crores, as you say, and the number of Muslims living in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Indonesia, Egypt, Persia, Syria, Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, Turkey and Iraq does not exceed 20 crores, will not the result of your ideology beto convert 30 crores of Muslims in the world into hewers of wood anddrawers of water?
A.—My ideology should not affect their position.
Q.—Even if they are subjected to discrimination on religious grounds and denied ordinary rights of citizenship ?
A.—Yes.”
This witness goes to the extent of asserting that even if a non-Muslim Government were to offer posts to Muslims in the public services of the country, it will be their duty to refuse such posts.

Ghazi Siraj-ud-Din Munir :—
“Q.—Do you want an Islamic State in Pakistan?
A.—Surely.
Q.—What will be your reaction if the neighbouring country was to found
their political system on their own religion?
A.—They can do it if they like.
Q.—Do you admit for them the right to declare that all Muslims in India, are shudras and malishes with no civil rights whatsoever?
A.—We will do our best to see that before they do it their political
sovereignty is gone. We are too strong for India. We will be strong enough to prevent India from doing this.
Q.—Is it a part of the religious obligations of Muslims to preach their religion?
A—Yes.
Q.—Is it a part of the duty of Muslims in India publicly to preach their religion?
A.—They should have that right.
Q.—What if the Indian State is founded on a religious basis and the right to preach religion is disallowed to its Muslim nationals?
A —If India makes any such law, believer in the Expansionist movement as I am, I will march on India and conquer her.”

So this is the reply to the reciprocity of discrimination on religious grounds.

Master Taj-ud-Din Ansari :—
“Q.—Would you like to have the same ideology for the four crores of Muslims in India as you are impressing upon the Muslims of
Pakistan?
A.—That ideology will not let them remain in India for one minute.
Q.—Does the ideology of a Muslim change from place to place and from time to time?
A.—No.
Q.—Then why should not the Muslims of India have the same ideology as you have?
A.—They should answer that question.”

The ideology advocated before us, if adopted by Indian Muslims, will completely
disqualify them for public offices in the State, not only in India but in other countries also which are under a non-Muslim Government. Muslims will become perpetual suspects everywhere and will not be enrolled in the army because according to this ideology, in case of war between a Muslim country and a non-Muslim country, Muslim soldiers of the non-Muslim country must either side with the Muslim country or surrender their posts.

The following is the view expressed by two divines whom we questioned on this point:—

Maulana Abul Hasanat Sayyed Muhammad Ahmad Qadri, President, Jami’at-ul-
Ulama-i-Pakistan :—
“Q.—What will be the duty of Muslims in India in case of war between India
and Pakistan?
A.—Their duty is obvious, namely, to side with us and not to fight against us
on behalf of India.”

Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi : —
“Q.—What will be the duty of the Muslims in India in case of war between
India and Pakistan?
A.—Their duty is obvious, and that is not to fight against Pakistan or to do
anything injurious to the safety of Pakistan.”

OTHER INCIDENTS

Other incidents of an Islamic State are that all sculpture, playing of cards, portrait
painting, photographing human beings, music, dancing, mixed acting, cinemas and
theatres will have to be closed.

Thus says Maulana Abdul Haleem Qasimi, representative of Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Pakistan: —

“Q.—What are your views on tashbih and tamseel ?
A.—You should ask me a concrete question.
Q.—What are your views on lahw-o-la’b?
A.—The same is my reply to this question.
Q.—What are your views about portrait painting?
A.—There is nothing against it if any such painting becomes necessary.
Q.—What about photography?
A.—My reply to it is the same as the reply regarding portrait painting.
Q.—What about sculpture as an art?
A.—It is prohibited by our religion.
Q.—Will you bring playing of cards in lohw-o-la’b?
A.—Yes, it will amount to lahw-o-la’b.
Q.—What about music and dancing?
A.—It is all forbidden by our religion.
Q.—What about drama and acting?
A —It all depends on what kind of acting you mean. If it involves immodesty
and intermixture of sexes, the Islamic law is against it.
Q.—If the State is founded on your ideals, will you make a law stopping
portrait painting, photographing of human beings, sculpture, playing
of cards, music, dancing, acting and all cinemas and theatres?
A.—Keeping in view the present form of these activities, my answer is in the affirmative.”

Maulana Abdul Haamid Badayuni considers it to be a sin (ma’siyat) on the part of
professors of anatomy to dissect dead bodies of Muslims to explain points of anatomy to the students.

The soldier or the policeman will have the right, on grounds of religion, to disobey a command by a superior authority. Maulana Abul Hasanat’s view on this is as follows :—

“I believe that if a policeman is required to do something which we consider to be contrary to our religion, it should be the duty of the policeman to disobey the authority. The same would be my answer if ‘army’ were substituted for ‘police’.

Q.—You stated yesterday that if a policeman or a soldier was required by a
superior authority to do what you considered to be contrary to religion, it would be the duty of that policeman or the soldier to disobey such authority. Will you give the policeman or the soldier the right of himself determining whether the command he is given by his superior authority is contrary to religion ?
A.—Most certainly.
Q.—Suppose there is war between Pakistan and another Muslim country and the soldier feels that Pakistan is in the wrong; and that to shoot a soldier of other country is contrary to religion. Do you think he would be justified in disobeying his commanding officer ?
A.—In such a contingency the soldier should take a fatwa of the ‘ulama’.”

We have dwelt at some length on the subject of Islamic State not because we intended to write a thesis against or in favour of such State but merely with a view to presenting a clear picture of the numerous possibilities that may in future arise if true causes of the ideological confusion which contributed to the spread and intensity of the disturbances are not precisely located. That such confusion did exist is obvious because otherwise Muslim Leaguers, whose own Government was in office, would not have risen against it; sense of loyalty and public duty would not have departed from public officials who went about like maniacs howling against their own Government and officers; respect for property and human life would not have disappeared in the common man who with no scruple or compunction began freely to indulge in loot, arson and murder; politicians would not have shirked facing the men who had installed them in their offices; and administrators would not have felt hesitant or diffident in performing what was their obvious duty. If there is one thing which has been conclusively demonstrated in this inquiry, it is that provided you can persuade the masses to believe that something they are asked to do is religiously right or enjoined by religion, you can set them to any course of action, regardless of all considerations of discipline, loyalty, decency, morality or civic sense.

Pakistan is being taken by the common man, though it is not, as an Islamic State. This belief has been encouraged by the ceaseless clamour for Islam and Islamic State that is being heard from all quarters since the establishment of Pakistan. The phantom of an Islamic State has haunted the Musalman throughout the ages and is a result of the memory of the glorious past when Islam rising like a storm from the least expected quarter of the world—wilds of Arabia—instantly enveloped the world, pulling down from their high pedestal gods who had ruled over man since the creation, uprooting centuries old institutions and superstitions and supplanting all civilisations that had been built on an enslaved humanity. What is 125 years in human history, nay in the history of a people, and yet during this brief period Islam spread from the Indus to the Atlantic and Spain, and from the borders of China to Egypt, and the sons of the desert installed themselves in all old centres of civilisation—in Ctesiphon, Damascus, Alexandria, India and all places associated with the names of the Sumerian and the Assyrian civilisations. Historians have often posed the question : what would have been the state of the world today if Muawiya’s siege of Constantinople had succeeded or if the proverbial Arab instinct for plunder had not suddenly seized the mujahids of Abdur Rahman in their fight against Charles Martel on the plains of Tours in Southern France. May be Muslims would have discovered America long before Columbus did and the entire world would have been Moslemised; may be Islam itself would have been Europeanised. It is this brilliant achievement of the Arabian nomads, the like of which the world had never seen before, that makes the Musalman of today live in the past and yearn for the return of the glory that was Islam. He finds himself standing on the crossroads, wrapped in the mantle of the past and with the dead weight of centuries on his back, frustrated and bewildered and hesitant to turn one corner or the other. The freshness and the simplicity of the faith, which gave determination to his mind and spring to his muscle, is now denied to him. He has neither the means nor the ability to conquer and there are no countries to conquer. Little does he understand that the forces, which are pitted against him, are entirely different from those against which early Islam, had to fight, and that on the clues given by his own ancestors human mind has achieved results which he cannot understand. He therefore finds himself in a state of helplessness, waiting for some one to come and help him out of this morass of uncertainty and confusion. And he will go on waiting like this without anything happening. Nothing but a bold re-orientation of Islam to separate the vital from the lifeless can preserve it as a World Idea and convert the Musalman into a citizen of the present and the future world from the archaic in congruity that he is today. It is this lack of bold and clear thinking, the inability to understand and take decisions which has brought about in Pakistan a confusion which will persist and repeatedly create situations of the kind we have been inquiring into until our leaders have a clear conception of the goal and of the means to reach it. It requires no imagination to realise that irreconcilables remain irreconcilable even if you believe or wish to the contrary. Opposing principles, if left to themselves, can only produce confusion and disorder, and the application of a neutralising agency to them can only produce a dead result. Unless, in case of conflict between two ideologies, our leaders have the desire and the ability to elect, uncertainty must continue. And as long as we rely on the hammer when a file is needed and press Islam into service to solve situations it was never intended to solve, frustration and disappointment must dog our steps. The sublime faith called Islam will live even if our leaders are not there to enforce it. It lives in the individual, in his soul and outlook, in all his relations with God and men, from the cradle to the grave, and our politicians should understand that if Divine commands cannot make or keep a man a Musalman, their statutes will not….

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India has never, not once, initiated hostilities against Pakistan: A Note to Mr Clemons

December 3, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

From Facebook:

Mr Clemons,

Apropos your statement:

“The U.S. has an awkward problem with Pakistan in that substantial parts of its government actually favor the Afghan Taliban achieving political primacy in Afghanistan as a buffer against incursions by India” (italics added):

the US makes a mistake by accepting at face-value the psychotic delusion of the Pakistan military that it has faced or faces now a threat from India.

As I have said before, the last place on earth that New Delhi’s nomenclatura would like to extend its misgovernance would be Pakistan.

And the historical record is clear that India has never initiated hostilities against Pakistan, not once.

In Oct 1947, the new Pakistan started with an armed attack against the old “princely” State of Jammu & Kashmir with whom it had signed a “Standstill Agreement”. That State came into existence in international law in 1846.

In Sep 1965, Ayub Khan’s Pakistan, armed with Patton tanks and F-104s and F-86s, started an inflitration and then a war hoping to drive tanks all the way to Delhi but did not succeed.

In 1971, East Pakistan seceded from West Pakistan, and though India made it militarily possible it was not something that India conspired to bring about but was something caused by West Pakistanis lording it over their own compatriots. The Richard Sisson-Leo Rose book “War and Secession” is quite a definitive history. 90,000 Pakistanis surrendered as POWs whom India protected from Bangladeshi revenge.

In 1999, Musharraf had his Kargil misadventure. Other than the ghastly mutilation and murder of Lieutenant Saurabh Kalia and his platoon as POWs by the Pakistan Army and its Taliban friends,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saurabh_Kalia
Musharraf achieved nothing. He then sought to stay on in power unlawfully for almost a decade despite his civillian boss trying to sack him.

And then there was the 2008 attack on Mumbai by ten youthful terrorists from Pakistan who were trained by elements of the Pakistan military.

Where has there ever been an Indian “incursion”?

To the contrary, India had proposed the name of Pakistan as a new member of the UNO back in 1947 — and Zahir Shah’s Afghanistan was the only country to oppose it, for precisely the same unresolved problem as continues today, namely, the destiny of the Pashtuns.

Cordially

Suby Roy

Annals of Diplomacy & International Relations

November 29, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

From Facebook:

Subroto Roy finds it odd in diplomatic law and protocol that two American Presidents in succession have said respectively to the same Indian Prime Minister “You’re a good man” and a person of “honesty and integrity”.

Subroto Roy thinks Asia (from Israel-Palestine to Japan & Indonesia) needs its own Metternich and Congress of Vienna, but won’t get it and hence may remain many many decades behind Europe in political development. (And why Asia won’t get what Europe did may be because Europe did what it did.)

Subroto Roy agrees with Professor Juan Cole’s summary position: “India and Russia want an Obama ‘surge’ in Afghanistan because they are afraid that if Muslim extremists take over the country, that development could threaten their own security. China is more or less bankrolling the Afghanistan War…In contrast, Pakistan does not seem… eager for the further foreign troops, in part because it wants to project power and influence into Afghanistan itself”. But he would add Russia, China, India and Iran too are free-riders from the military standpoint (though India has built power-stations, roads etc for civilian economic development), while Pakistan remains schizophrenic as to whether it wishes to define itself by the lights of Iqbal and Jinnah or by the lunacy of Rahmat Ali.

Did civil-military conflict contribute to the 26/11 destruction?

November 26, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

From Facebook:

Subroto Roy repeats what he said in Jan 2009 that Mumbai policemen showed exemplary bravery and no cowardice; the problem was civil-military conflict, e.g. the refusal of the Army contingent sent to the Taj hotel to go inside without Army orders though the police demanded it and DCP Patil had long identified where the terrorists were and had been pleading for reinforcements.

Posted in India's Military Defence, Mumbai massacres, Mumbai terrorist Kasab, Mumbai's Police, Mumbai/Bombay, Nariman House massacre, Pakistan's terrorist masterminds, Pakistan's terrorist training institutes, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistani expansionism. Leave a Comment »

MK Gandhi and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan “Frontier Gandhi”

November 11, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

Following my 2006 article “The Greatest Pashtun: Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan”, I have today posted at Facebook this photograph from a book in my Library :

scan0057

Posted in Abdul Ghaffar Khan, India's History, MK Gandhi, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pashtuns. 3 Comments »

Afghanistan should become a major manufacturer of morphine using its poppy

October 29, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

From Facebook:

Subroto Roy thinks the Senlis Council’s advice on regulating and licensing Afghanistan’s poppy market may be more important than trying to ham-handedly fight “drug wars” there…. Poppy may be best-suited to grow in that arid country which may not be otherwise able to feed itself.

Postcript: This report on regulating India’s poppy market for phramaceutical uses seems a good model.

Posted in Afghanistan, Agriculture, Food and agriculture, Government of Afghanistan, Government of India, India's agriculture, India's Agriculture & Food, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Poppy and morphine, Senlis Council. Leave a Comment »

Map of Afghanistan-Pakistan border (Durand Line area)

October 20, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

A US Government map from the 1980s now in the public domain showing the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier (Durand Line area) and seeming to indicate Pashtun areas.

AFGHAN~1

Posted in Afghanistan, Balochistan, Durand Line, Pakistan's history, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pashtuns. 10 Comments »

On the Existence of a Unique and Stable Solution to the Jammu & Kashmir Problem that is Lawful, Just and Economically Efficient

October 15, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

P Chidambaram may recall our brief interaction at the residence of the late Shri Rajiv Gandhi in September-October 1990, and also my visit in July 1995 when he was a member of Narasimha Rao’s Government.

I am delighted to read in today’s paper that he believes a “unique solution” exists to the grave mortal problem of Jammu & Kashmir. Almost four years ago, I published in The Statesman my discovery of the existence of precisely such a unique solution in the three-part article “Solving Kashmir”.

This came to be followed by “Law, Justice and J&K”, “History of Jammu & Kashmir”, “Pakistan’s Allies”, “What to tell Musharraf” and a few others. The purpose of this open letter is to describe that solution which provides, I believe, the only just and lawful path available to the resolution of what has been known universally as the Kashmir problem.

Very briefly, it involves recognizing that the question of lawful territorial sovereignty in J&K is logically distinct from the question of the choice of nationality by individual inhabitants. The solution requires

(a) acknowledging that the original legal entity in the world system of nations known as Jammu & Kashmir arose on March 16 1846 and ceased to exist on or about October 22 1947; that the military contest that commenced on the latter date has in fact resulted, given all particular circumstances of history, in the lawful and just outcome in international law;

(b) offering all who may be Indian nationals or stateless and who presently live under Article 370, a formal choice of nationality between the Republics of India, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan: citizen-by-citizen, without fear or favour, under conditions of full information, individual privacy and security; any persons who voluntarily choose to renounce Indian nationality in such private individual decisions would be nevertheless granted lawful permanent residence in the Indian Republic and J&K in particular.

In other words, the dismemberment of the original J&K State and annexation of its territories by the entities known today as the Republic of Pakistan and Republic of India that occurred since October 22 1947, as represented first by the 1949 Ceasefire Line and then by the 1972 Line of Control, is indeed the just and lawful outcome prevailing in respect of the question of territorial sovereignty and jurisdiction. The remaining democratic question has to do with free individual choice of nationality by inhabitants, under conditions of full information and privacy, citizen-by-citizen, with the grant of permanent residency rights by the Indian Republic to persons under its jurisdiction in J&K who might wish to choose, for deeply personal individual reasons, not to remain Indian nationals but become Afghan, Iranian or Pakistani nationals instead (or remain stateless). Pakistan has said frequently its sole concern has been the freedom of Muslims of J&K under Indian rule, and any such genuine concern shall have been thereby fully met by India. Indeed if Pakistan agreed to act similarly this entire complex mortal problem of decades shall have begun to be resolved most appropriately. Pakistan and India are both wracked by corruption, poverty and bad governance, and would be able to mutually draw down military forces pit against one another everywhere, so as to begin to repair the grave damage to their fiscal health caused over decades by the deleterious draining away of vast public resources.

The full reasoning underlying this, which I believe to be the only lawful, just, efficient and stable solution that exists, is thoroughly explained in the following six articles. The first five, “Solving Kashmir”, “Law, Justice & J&K”, “History of J&K”, and “Pakistan’s Allies”, “What to Tell Musharraf” were published in The Statesman in 2005-2006 and are marked ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR and FIVE below, and are also available elsewhere here. The sixth “An Indian Reply to President Zardari”, marked SIX, was published for the first time here following the Mumbai massacres.

I believe careful reflection upon this entire body of reasoning may lead all reasonable men and women to a practically unanimous consensus about this as the appropriate course of action; if such a consensus happened to arise, the implementation of the solution shall only be a matter of (relatively) uncomplicated procedural detail.

Subroto Roy
October 15 2009

“ONE
SOLVING KASHMIR: ON AN APPLICATION OF REASON by Subroto Roy First published in three parts in The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, December 1,2,3 2005, http://www.thestatesman.net

(This article has its origins in a paper “Towards an Economic Solution for Kashmir” which circulated in Washington DC in 1992-1995, including at the Indian and Pakistani embassies and the Carnegie Endowment, and was given as an invited lecture at the Heritage Foundation on June 23 1998. It should be read along with other articles also republished here, especially “History of J&K”, “Law, Justice and J&K” , “Understanding Pakistan”, “Pakistan’s Allies” and “What to Tell Musharraf”. The Washington paper and lecture itself originated from my ideas in the Introduction to Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy, edited by WE James and myself in the University of Hawaii project on Pakistan 1986-1992.)

I. Give Indian `Green Cards’ to the Hurriyat et al

India, being a liberal democracy in its constitutional law, cannot do in Jammu & Kashmir what Czechoslovakia did to the “Sudeten Germans” after World War II. On June 18 1945 the new Czechoslovakia announced those Germans and Magyars within their borders who could not prove they had been actively anti-fascist before or during the War would be expelled — the burden of proof was placed on the individual, not the State. Czechoslovakia “transferring” this population was approved by the Heads of the USA, UK and USSR Governments at Potsdam on August 2 1945. By the end of 1946, upto two million Sudeten Germans were forced to flee their homes; thousands may have died by massacre or otherwise; 165,000 remained who were absorbed as Czechoslovak citizens. Among those expelled were doubtless many who had supported Germany and many others who had not — the latter to this day seek justice or even an apology in vain. Czechoslovakia punished none of its nationals for atrocities, saying it had been revenge for Hitler’s evil (”badla” in Bollywood terms) and the post Cold War Czech Government too has declined to render an apology. Revenge is a wild kind of justice (while justice may be a civilised kind of revenge).

India cannot follow this savage precedent in international law. Yet we must recognise there are several hundred and up to several hundred thousand persons on our side of the boundary in the State of Jammu & Kashmir who do not wish to be Indian nationals. These people are presently our nationals ius soli, having been born in territory of the Indian Republic, and/or ius sanguinis, having been born of parents who are Indian nationals; or they may be “stateless” whom we must treat in accordance with the 1954 Convention on Stateless Persons. The fact is they may not wish to carry Indian passports or be Indian nationals.

In this respect their juridical persons resemble the few million “elite” Indians who have in the last few decades freely placed their hands on their hearts and solemnly renounced their Indian nationality, declaring instead their individual fidelity to other nation-states — becoming American, Canadian or Australian citizens, or British subjects or nationals of other countries. Such people include tens of thousands of the adult children of India’s metropolitan “elite”, who are annually visited abroad in the hot summer months by their Indian parents and relatives. They are daughters and sons of New Delhi’s Government and Opposition, of retired generals, air marshals, admirals, ambassadors, cabinet secretaries, public sector bureaucrats, private sector businessmen, university professors, journalists, doctors and many others. India’s most popular film-actress exemplified this “elite” capital-flight when, after a tireless search, she chose a foreign husband and moved to California.

The difference in Jammu & Kashmir would be that those wishing to renounce Indian nationality do not wish to move to any other place but to stay as and where they are, which is in Kashmir Valley or Jammu. Furthermore, they may wish, for whatever reason, to adopt, if they are eligible to do so, the nationality of e.g. the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan or the Islamic Republic of Iran or the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

They may believe themselves descended from Ahmad Shah Abdali whose Afghans ruled or mis-ruled Kashmir Valley before being defeated by Ranjit Singh’s Sikhs in 1819. Or they may believe themselves of Iranian descent as, for example, are the Kashmiri cousins of the late Ayatollah Khomeini. Or they may simply have wished to be, or are descended from persons who had wished to be on October 26 1947, citizens of the then-new British Dominion of Pakistan — but who came to be prevented from properly expressing such a desire because of the war-like conditions that have prevailed ever since between India and Pakistan. There may be even a few persons in Laddakh who are today Indian nationals but who wish to be considered Tibetans instead; there is, however, no Tibetan Republic and it does not appear there is going to be one.

India, being a free and self-confident country, should allow, in a systematic lawful manner, all such persons to fulfil their desires, and furthermore, should ensure they are not penalised for having expressed such “anti-national” desires or for having acted upon them. Sir Mark Tully, the British journalist, is an example of someone who has been a foreign national who has chosen to reside permanently in the Republic of India — indeed he has been an exemplary permanent resident of our country. There are many others like him. There is no logical reason why all those persons in Jammu & Kashmir who do wish not to be Indians by nationality cannot receive the same legal status from the Indian Republic as has been granted to Sir Mark Tully. There are already thousands of Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi and Nepalese nationals who are lawful permanent residents in the Indian Republic, and who travel back and forth between India and their home countries. There is no logical reason why the same could not be extended to several hundred or numerous thousand people in Jammu & Kashmir who may wish to not accept or to renounce their Indian nationality (for whatever personal reason) and instead become nationals, if they are so eligible, of the Islamic Republics of Afghanistan, Iran or Pakistan, or, for that matter, to remain stateless. On the one hand, their renunciation of Indian nationality is logically equivalent to the renunciation of Indian nationality by the adult children of India’s “elite” settled in North America and Western Europe. On the other hand, their wish to adopt, if they are eligible, a foreign nationality, such as that of Afghanistan, Iran or Pakistan, and yet remain domiciled in Indian territory is logically equivalent to that of many foreign nationals domiciled in India already like Sir Mark Tully.

Now if you are a permanent resident of some country, you may legally have many, perhaps most, but certainly not all the rights and duties of nationals of that country. e.g., though you will have to pay all the same taxes, you may not be allowed to (or be required to) vote in national or provincial elections but you may in local municipal elections. At the same time, permanently residing foreign nationals are supposed to be equal under the law and have equal access to all processes of civil and criminal justice. (As may be expected though from human frailty, even the federal courts of the USA can be notorious in their injustice and racism towards “Green Card” holders relative to “full” American citizens.) Then again, as a permanently resident foreigner, while you will be free to work in any lawful trade or profession, you may not be allowed to work in some or perhaps any Government agencies, certainly not the armed forces or the police. Many Indians in the USA were engineering graduates, and because many engineering jobs or contracts in the USA are related to the US armed forces and require US citizens only, it is commonplace for Indian engineers to renounce their Indian nationality and become Americans because of this. Many Indian-American families have one member who is American, another Indian, a third maybe Canadian, a fourth Fijian or British etc.

The same can happen in the Indian State of Jammu & Kashmir if it evolves peacefully and correctly in the future. It is quite possible to imagine a productive family in a peaceful Kashmir Valley of the future where one brother is an officer in the Indian Armed Forces, another brother a civil servant and a sister a police officer of the J&K State Government, another sister being a Pakistani doctor, while cousins are Afghan or Iranian or “stateless” businessmen. Each family-member would have made his/her choice of nationality as an individual given the circumstances of his/her life, his/her personal comprehension of the facts of history, his/her personal political and/or religious persuasions, and similar deeply private considerations. All would have their children going to Indian schools and being Indian citizens ius soli and/or ius sanguinis. When the children grow up, they would be free to join, if they wished, the existing capital flight of other Indian adult children abroad and there renounce their Indian nationality as many have come to do.

II Revealing Choices Privately with Full Information
For India to implement such a proposal would be to provide an opportunity for all those domiciled in Kashmir Valley, Jammu and Laddakh to express freely and privately as individuals their deepest wishes about their own identities, in a confidential manner, citizen by citizen, case by case. This would thereby solve the fundamental democratic problem that has been faced ever since the Pakistani attack on the original State of Jammu & Kashmir commenced on October 22 1947, which came to be followed by the Rape of Baramulla — causing the formal accession of the State to the then-new Dominion of India on October 26 1947.

A period of, say, 30 months may be announced by the Government of India during which full information would be provided to all citizens affected by this change, i.e. all those presently governed by Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. The condition of full information may include, for example, easy access to Afghan, Iranian and Pakistani newspapers in addition to access to Indian media. Each such person wishing to either remain with Indian nationality (by explicitly requesting an Indian passport if he/she does not have one already — and such passports can be printed in Kashmiri and Urdu too), or to renounce Indian nationality and either remain stateless or adopt, if he/she is so eligible, the nationality of e.g. Afghanistan, Iran, or Pakistan, should be administratively assisted by the Government of India to make that choice.

In particular, he/she should be individually, confidentially, and without fear or favour assured and informed of his/her new rights and responsibilities. For example, a resident of Kashmir Valley who chooses to become a Pakistani citizen, such as Mr Geelani, would now enjoy the same rights and responsibilities in the Indian Republic that Mr Tully enjoys, and at the same time no longer require a visa to visit Pakistan just as Mr Tully needs no visa to enter Britain. In case individual participants in the Hurriyat choose to renounce Indian nationality and adopt some other, they would no longer be able to legally participate in Indian national elections or J&K’s State elections. That is something which they say they do not wish to do in any case. Those members of the Hurriyat who chose e.g. Pakistani nationality while still residing in Jammu & Kashmir, would be free to send postal ballots or cross the border and vote in Pakistan’s elections if and when these occur. There are many Canadians who live permanently in the USA who cross home to Canada in order to cast a ballot.

After the period of 30 months, every person presently under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution would have received a full and fair opportunity to privately and confidentially reveal his/her preference or choice under conditions of full information. “Partition”, “Plebiscite”, and “Military Decision” have been the three alternatives under discussion ever since the National Conference of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and his then-loyal Deputy, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, helped the Indian Army and Air Force in 1947-1948 fight off the savage attack against Jammu & Kashmir State that had commenced from Pakistan on October 22 1947. When, during the Pakistani attack, the Sheikh and Bakshi agreed to the Muslim Conference’s demand for a plebiscite among the people, the Pakistanis balked — the Sheikh and Bakshi then withdrew their offer and decisively and irrevocably chose to accede to the Indian Union. The people of Jammu & Kashmir, like any other, are now bound by the sovereign political commitments made by their forebears. Even so, given the painful mortal facts of the several decades since, the solution here proposed if properly implemented would be an incomparably more thorough democratic exercise than any conceivable plebiscite could ever have been.

Furthermore, regardless of the outcome, it would not entail any further “Partition” or population “transfer” which inevitably would degenerate into a savage balkanization, and has been ruled out as an unacceptable “deal-breaker” by the Indian Republic. Instead, every individual person would have been required, in a private and confidential decision-making process, to have chosen a nationality or to remain stateless — resulting in a multitude of cosmopolitan families in Jammu & Kashmir. But that is something commonplace in the modern world. Properly understood and properly implemented, we shall have resolved the great mortal problem we have faced for more than half a century, and Jammu & Kashmir can finally settle into a period of peace and prosperity. The boundary between India and Pakistan would have been settled by the third alternative mentioned at the time, namely, “Military Decision”.

III. Of Flags and Consulates in Srinagar and Gilgit
Pakistan has demanded its flag fly in Srinagar. This too can happen though not in the way Pakistan has been wishing to see it happen. A Pakistan flag might fly in the Valley just as might an Afghan and Iranian flag as well. Pakistan has wished its flag to fly as the sovereign over Jammu & Kashmir. That is not possible. The best and most just outcome is for the Pakistani flag to fly over a recognised Pakistani consular or visa office in Srinagar, Jammu and Leh. In diplomatic exchange, the Indian tricolour would have to fly over a recognised Indian consular or visa office in Muzaffarabad, Gilgit and Skardu.

Pakistan also may have to act equivalently with respect to the original inhabitants of the territory of Jammu & Kashmir that it has been controlling — allowing those people to become Indian nationals if they so chose to do in free private decisions under conditions of full information. In other words, the “Military Decision” that defines the present boundary between sovereign states must be recognised by Pakistan sincerely and permanently in a Treaty relationship with India — and all of Pakistan’s official and unofficial protégés like the Hurriyat and the “United Jehad Council” would have to do the same. Without such a sovereign commitment from the Government of Pakistan, as shown by decisive actions of lack of aggressive intent (e.g. as came to be implemented between the USA and USSR), the Government of India has no need to involve the Government of Pakistan in implementing the solution of enhancing free individual choice of nationality with regard to all persons on our side of the boundary.

The “Military Decision” regarding the sovereign boundary in Jammu & Kashmir will be so recognised by all only if it is the universally just outcome in international law. And that in fact is what it is.

The original Jammu & Kashmir State began its existence as an entity in international law long before the present Republics of India and Pakistan ever did. Pakistan commences as an entity on August 14 1947; India commences as an entity of international law with its signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 20 1918. Jammu & Kashmir began as an entity on March 16 1846 — when the Treaty of Amritsar was signed between Gulab Singh Dogra and the British, one week after the Treaty of Lahore between the British and the defeated Sikh regency of the child Daleep Singh.

Liaquat Ali Khan and Zafrullah Khan both formally challenged on Pakistan’s behalf the legitimacy of Dogra rule in Jammu & Kashmir since the Treaty of Amritsar. The Pakistani Mission to the UN does so even today. The Pakistanis were following Sheikh Abdullah and Jawaharlal Nehru himself, who too had at one point challenged Dogra legitimacy in the past. But though the form of words of the Pakistan Government and the Nehru-Abdullah position were similar in their attacks on the Treaty of Amritsar, their underlying substantive reasons were as different as chalk from cheese. The Pakistanis attacked the Dogra dynasty for being Dogra — i.e. because they were Hindus and not Muslims governing a Muslim majority. Nehru and Abdullah denounced monarchic autocracy in favour of mass democracy, and so attacked the Dogra dynasty for being a dynasty. All were wrong to think the Treaty of Amritsar anything but a lawful treaty in international law.

Furthermore, in this sombre political game of great mortal consequence, there were also two other parties who were, or appeared to be, in favour of the dynasty: one because the dynasty was non-Muslim, the other, despite it being so. Non-Muslim minorities like many Hindus and Sikhs in the business and governmental classes, saw the Dogra dynasty as their protector against a feared communalist tyranny arising from the Sunni Muslim masses of Srinagar Valley, whom Abdullah’s rhetoric at Friday prayer-meetings had been inciting or at least awakening from slumber. At the same time, the communalists of the Muslim Conference who had broken away from Abdullah’s secular National Conference, sought political advantage over Abdullah by declaring themselves in favour of keeping the dynasty — even elevating it to become an international sovereign, thus flattering the already pretentious potentate that he would be called “His Majesty” instead of merely “His Highness”. The ancestry of today’s Hurriyat’s demands for an independent Jammu & Kashmir may be traced precisely to those May 21-22 1947 declarations of the Muslim Conference leader, Hamidullah Khan.

Into this game stumbled the British with all the mix of cunning, indifference, good will, impatience, arrogance and pomposity that marked their rule in India. At the behest of the so-called “Native Princes”, the 1929 Butler Commission had hinted that the relationship of “Indian India” to the British sovereign was conceptually different from that of “British India” to the British sovereign. This view was adopted in the Cabinet Mission’s 12 May 1946 Memorandum which in turn came to be applied by Attlee and Mountbatten in their unseemly rush to “Divide and Quit” India in the summer of 1947.

It created the pure legal illusion that there was such a thing as “Lapse of Paramountcy” at which Jammu & Kashmir or any other “Native State” of “Indian India” could conceivably, even for a moment, become a sovereign enjoying the comity of nations — contradicting Britain’s own position that only two Dominions, India and Pakistan, could ever be members of the British Commonwealth and hence members of the newly created UN. British pusillanimity towards Jammu & Kashmir’s Ruler had even extended to making him a nominal member of Churchill’s War Cabinet because he had sent troops to fight in Burma. But the legal illusion had come about because of a catastrophic misunderstanding on the part of the British of their own constitutional law.

The only legal scholar who saw this was B R Ambedkar in a lonely and brilliant technical analysis released to the press on June 17 1947. No “Lapse of Paramountcy” over the “Native Princes” of Indian India could occur in constitutional law. Paramountcy over Indian India would be automatically inherited by the successor state of British India at the Transfer of Power. That successor state was the new British Dominion of India as well as (when it came to be finalised by Partition from India) the new British Dominion of Pakistan (Postscript: the deleted words represent a mistake made in the original paper, corrected in “Law, Justice & J&K” in view of the fact the UN in 1947 deemed India alone the successor state of British India and Pakistan a new state in the world system). A former “Native Prince” could only choose to which Dominion he would go. No other alternative existed even for a single logical moment. Because the British had catastrophically failed to comprehend this aspect of their own constitutional law, they created a legal vacuum whereby between August 15 and October 22-26 1947, Jammu & Kashmir became a local and temporary sovereign recognised only by the Dominion of Pakistan (until October 22) and the Dominion of India (until October 26). But it was not a globally recognised sovereign and was never going to be such in international law. This was further proved by Attlee refusing to answer the J&K Prime Minister’s October 18 1947 telegram.

All ambiguity came to end with the Pakistani attack of October 22 1947, the Rape of Baramulla, the secession of an “Azad Kashmir”declared by Sardar Ibrahim, and the Pakistani coup détat in Gilgit on October 31 1947 followed by the massacre of Sikh soldiers of the J&K Army at Bunji. With those Pakistani actions, Gulab Singh’s Jammu & Kashmir State, founded on March 16 1846 by the Treaty of Amritsar, ceased to logically exist as an entity in international law and fell into a state of ownerless anarchy. The conflict between Ibrahim’s Muslim communalists backed by the new Dominion of Pakistan and Abdullah’s secularists backed by the new Dominion of India had become a civil war within a larger intra-Commonwealth war that itself was almost a civil war between forces of the same military.

Jammu & Kashmir territory had become ownerless. The Roman Law which is at the root of all municipal and international law in the world today would declare that in the ownership of such an ownerless entity, a “Military Decision” was indeed the just outcome. Sovereignty over the land, waters, forests and other actual and potential resources of the erstwhile State of Jammu & Kashmir has become divided by “Military Decision” between the modern Republics of India and Pakistan. By the proposal made herein, the people and their descendants shall have chosen their nationality and their domicile freely across the sovereign boundary that has come to result.

TWO
LAW, JUSTICE AND J&K by Subroto Roy First published in two parts in The Sunday Statesman, July 2 2006 and The Statesman July 3 2006 http://www.thestatesman.net Editorial Page Special Article

I.
For a solution to J&K to be universally acceptable it must be seen by all as being lawful and just. Political opinion in Pakistan and India as well as all people and parties in J&K ~ those loyal to India, those loyal to Pakistan, and any others ~ will have to agree that, all things considered, such is the right course of action for everyone today in the 21st Century, which means too that the solution must be consistent with the facts of history as well as account reasonably for all moral considerations.

On August 14, 1947, the legal entity known as “British India”, as one of its final acts, and based on a sovereign British decision made only two months earlier, created out of some of its territory a new State defined in international law as the “Dominion of Pakistan”. British India extinguished itself the very next day, and the newly independent “Dominion of India” succeeded to all its rights and obligations in international law. As the legal successor of the “India” which had signed the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and the San Francisco Declaration of 1945, the Dominion of India was already a member of the new UN as well as a signatory to many international treaties. By contrast, the Dominion of Pakistan had to apply afresh to sign treaties and become a member of international organisations. The theory put forward by Argentina that two new States, India and Pakistan, had been created ab initio, came to be rejected and was withdrawn by Argentina. Instead, Pakistan with the wholehearted backing of India was made a member of the UN, with all except Afghanistan voting in favour. (Afghanistan’s exceptional vote signalled presence of conflict over the Durand Line and idea of a Pashtunistan; Dr Khan Sahib and Abdul Ghaffar Khan were imprisoned by the Muslim League regime of NWFP which later supported the tribesmen who attacked J&K starting October 22, 1947; that conflict remains unresolved to this day, even after the American attack on the Taliban, the restart of a constitutional process in Afghanistan, and the purported mediation of US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.)

Zafrullah Khan, Pakistan’s distinguished first ambassador to the UN, claimed in September 1947: “Pakistan is not a new member of UNO but a successor to a member State which was one of the founders of the Organisation.” He noted that he himself had led India to the final session of the League of Nations in Geneva in 1939, and he wished to say that Pakistan had been present “as part of India… under the latter name” as a signatory to the Treaty of Versailles. This was, however, logically impossible. The Treaty of Versailles long predated (1) Mohammad Iqbal’s Allahabad Address which conceptualised for the first time in the 20th Century a Muslim State in Northwest India; (2) Rahmat Ali’s invention of the word “PAKSTAN” on the top floor of a London omnibus; (3) M. A. Jinnah and Fazlul Haq’s Lahore Resolution; and (4) the final British decision of June 3, 1947 to create by Partition out of “British India” a Dominion named Pakistan. Pakistan could not have acted in international law prior to having come into being or been created or even conceived itself. Zafrullah Khan would have been more accurate to say that the history of Pakistanis until August 14, 1947 had been one in common with that of their Indian cousins ~ or indeed their Indian brothers, since innumerable North Indian Muslim families came to be literally partitioned, with some brothers remaining Indians while other brothers became Pakistanis.

Pakistan was created at the behest of Jinnah’s Muslim League though with eventual agreement of the Indian National Congress (a distant ancestor of the political party going by the same name today). Pakistan arose not because Jinnah said Hindus and Muslims were “two nations” but because he and his League wished for a State where Muslims would find themselves ruled by fellow-Muslims and feel themselves part of a pan-Islamic culture. Yet Pakistan was intended to be a secular polity with Muslim-majority governance, not an Islamic theocracy. That Pakistan failed to become secular was exemplified most poignantly in the persecution Zafrullah himself later faced in his personal life as an Ahmadiya, even while he was Pakistan’s Foreign Minister. (The same happened later to Pakistan’s Nobel-winning physicist Abdus Salaam.) Pakistan was supposed to allow the genius of Indo-Muslim culture to flourish, transplanted from places like Lucknow and Aligarh which would never be part of it. In fact, the areas that are Pakistan today had in the 1937 provincial elections shown scant popular Muslim support for Jinnah’s League. The NWFP had a Congress Government in the 1946 elections, and its supporters boycotted the pro-Pakistan referendum in 1947. The imposition of Urdu culture as Pakistan’s dominant ethos might have come to be accepted later in West Punjab, Sindh and NWFP but it was not acceptable in East Bengal, and led inevitably to the Pakistani civil war and creation of Bangladesh by Sheikh Mujib in 1971.

In August 1947, the new Dominions of India and Pakistan were each supposed to protect their respective minority populations as their first political duty. Yet both palpably failed in this, and were reduced to making joint declarations pleading for peace and an end to communal killings and the abduction of women. The Karachi Government, lacking the wherewithal and administrative machinery of being a nation-state at all, and with only Liaquat and an ailing Jinnah as noted leaders, may have failed more conspicuously, and West Punjab, the Frontier and Sindh were soon emptied of almost all their many Sikhs and Hindus. Instead, the first act of the new Pakistan Government in the weeks after August 14, 1947 was to arrange for the speedy and safe transfer of the North Indian Muslim elite by air from Delhi using chartered British aeroplanes. The ordinary Muslim masses of UP, Delhi and East Punjab were left in danger from or were subjected to Sikh and Hindu mob attacks, especially as news and rumours spread of similar outrages against Pakistan’s departing minorities.

In this spiral of revenge attacks and counter-attacks, bloodshed inevitably spilled over from West and East Punjab into the northern Punjabi plains of Jammu, though Kashmir Valley remained conspicuously peaceful. Zafrullah and Liaquat would later claim it was this communal civil war which had caused thousands of newly decommissioned Mirpuri soldiers of the British Army, and thousands of Afridi and other Frontier tribesmen, to spontaneously act to “liberate” J&K’s Muslims from alleged tyranny under the Hindu Ruler or an allegedly illegal Indian occupation.

But the main attack on J&K State that began from Pakistan along the Manshera-Muzaffarabad road on October 22, 1947 was admittedly far too well-organised, well-armed, well-planned and well-executed to have been merely a spontaneous uprising of tribesmen and former soldiers. In all but name, it was an act of undeclared war of the new Dominion of Pakistan first upon the State of J&K and then upon the Indian Dominion. This became obvious to Field Marshall Auchinlek, who, as Supreme Commander of the armed forces of both India and Pakistan, promptly resigned and abolished the Supreme Command in face of the fact that two parts of his own forces were now at war with one another.

The invaders failed to take Srinagar solely because they lost their military purpose while indulging in the Rape of Baramula. Thousands of Kashmiri women of all communities ~ Muslim, Sikh and Hindu ~ were violated and transported back to be sold in markets in Peshawar and elsewhere. Such was standard practice in Central Asian tribal wars from long before the advent of Islam, and the invading tribesmen shared that culture. India’s Army and Air Force along with the militias of the secular democratic movement led by Sheikh Abdullah and those remaining loyal units of J&K forces, fought off the invasion, and liberated Baramula, Naushera, Uri, Poonch etc. Gilgit had a British-led coup détat against it bringing it under Pakistan’s control. Kargil was initially taken by the Pakistanis and then lost by them. Leh could have been but was not taken by Pakistani forces. But in seeking to protect Leh and to retake Kargil, the Indian Army lost the siege of Skardu ~ which ended reputedly with the infamous communication from the Pakistani commander to his HQ: “All Sikhs killed; all women raped.”

Legal theory
Now, in this grave mortal conflict, the legal theory to which both the Indian and Pakistani Governments have been wedded for sixty years is one that had been endorsed by the British Cabinet Mission in 1946 and originated with the Butler Commission of 1929. Namely, that “Lapse of Paramountcy” over the “Indian India” of the “Native States” could and did occur with the extinction of British India on August 15, 1947. By this theory, Hyderabad, J&K, Junagadh and the several other States which had not acceded to either Dominion were no longer subject to the Crown’s suzerainty as of that date. Both Dominions drew up “Instruments of Accession” for Rulers to sign upon the supposed “Lapse” of Paramountcy that was to occur with the end of British India.

Ever since, the Pakistan Government has argued that Junagadh’s Ruler acceded to Pakistan and Hyderabad’s had wished to do so but both were forcibly prevented by India. Pakistan has also argued the accession to India by J&K’s Ruler was “fraudulent” and unacceptable, and Sheikh Abdullah was a “Quisling” of India and it was not his National Conference but the Muslim Conference of Ibrahim, Abbas and the Mirwaiz (precursor of the Hurriyat) which represented J&K’s Muslims.

India argued that Junagadh’s accession to Pakistan or Hyderabad’s independence were legal and practical impossibilities contradicting the wills of their peoples, and that their integration into the Indian Dominion was carried out in an entirely legitimate manner in the circumstances prevailing.

On J&K, India has argued that not only had the Ruler requested Indian forces to fight off the Pakistani attack, and he acceded formally before Indian forces were sent, but also that democratic principles were fully adhered to in the unequivocal endorsement of the accession by Sheikh Abdullah and the National Conference and further by a duly called and elected J&K Constituent Assembly, as well as generations of Kashmiris since. In the Indian view, it is Pakistan which has been in illegal occupation of Indian territory from Mirpur, Muzaffarabad and Gilgit to Skardu all the way to the Khunjerab Pass, Siachen Glacier and K2, some of which it illegally ceded to its Communist Chinese ally, and furthermore that it has denied the peoples of these areas any democratic voice.

Roman law
In June 1947, it was uniquely and brilliantly argued by BR Ambedkar in a statement to the Press that the British had made a catastrophic error in comprehending their own constitutional law, that no such thing as “Lapse” of Paramountcy existed, and that suzerainty over the “Native States” of “Indian India” would be automatically transferred in international law to the successor State of British India. It was a legal illusion to think any Native State could be sovereign even for a single logical moment. On this theory, if the Dominion of India was the sole successor State in international law while Pakistan was a new legal entity, then a Native State which acceded to Pakistan after August 15, 1947 would have had to do so with the consent of the suzerain power, namely, India, as may be said to have happened implicitly in case of Chitral and a few others. Equally, India’s behaviour in integrating (or annexing) Junagadh and Hyderabad, would become fully explicable ~ as would the statements of Mountbatten, Nehru and Patel before October 1947 that they would accept J&K going to Pakistan if that was what the Ruler and his people desired. Pakistan unilaterally and by surprise went to war against J&K on October 22, declared the accession to India “fraudulent”, and to this day has claimed the territory of the original State of J&K is “disputed”. Certainly, even if the Ambedkar doctrine is applied that no “Lapse” was possible under British law, Pakistan did not recognise India’s jurisdiction there as the suzerain power as of August 15, 1947. Altogether, Pakistan’s sovereign actions from October 22 onwards amounted to acting to annex J&K to itself by military force ~ acts which came to be militarily resisted (with partial success) by India allied with Sheikh Abdullah’s National Conference and the remaining forces of J&K. By these military actions, Pakistan revealed that it considered J&K territory to have descended into a legal state of anarchy as of October 22, 1947, and hence open to resolution by “Military Decision” ~ as is indeed the just outcome under Roman Law, the root of all municipal and international law today, when there is a contest between claimants over an ownerless entity.

Choice of nationality
Hence, the present author concluded (“Solving Kashmir”, The Statesman December 1-3, 2005) that the dismemberment of the original J&K State and annexation of its territories by India and Pakistan that has occurred since 1947, as represented first by the 1949 Ceasefire Line and then by the 1972 Line of Control, is indeed the just and lawful outcome prevailing in respect of the question of territorial sovereignty and jurisdiction. The remaining “democratic” question described has to do with free individual choice of nationality by the inhabitants, under conditions of full information and privacy, citizen-by-citizen, with the grant of permanent residency rights by the Indian Republic to persons under its jurisdiction in J&K who may choose not to remain Indian nationals but become Afghan, Iranian or Pakistani nationals instead. Pakistan has said frequently its sole concern has been the freedom of the Muslims of J&K under Indian rule, and any such genuine concern shall have been thereby fully met by India. Indeed, if Pakistan agreed to act similarly, this entire complex mortal problem of decades shall have begun to be peacefully resolved. Both countries are wracked by corruption, poverty and bad governance, and would be able to mutually draw down military forces pit against one another everywhere, so as to begin to repair the grave damage to their fiscal health caused by the deleterious draining away of vast public resources.

THREE
HISTORY OF JAMMU & KASHMIR by Subroto Roy First published in two parts in The Sunday Statesman, Oct 29 2006 and The Statesman Oct 30 2006, Editorial Page Special Article, http://www.thestatesman.net

At the advent of Islam in distant Arabia, India and Kashmir in particular were being visited by Chinese Buddhist pilgrims during Harsha’s reign. The great “Master of Law” Hiuen Tsiang visited between 629-645 and spent 631-633 in Kashmir (”Kia-chi-mi-lo”), describing it to include Punjab, Kabul and Kandahar. Over the next dozen centuries, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and again Hindu monarchs came to rule the 85 mile long 40 mile wide territory on the River Jhelum’s upper course known as Srinagar Valley, as well as its adjoining Jammu in the upper plains of the Punjab and “Little Tibet” consisting of Laddakh, Baltistan and Gilgit.

In 1344, a Persian adventurer from Swat or Khorasan by name of Amir or Mirza, who had “found his way into the Valley and in time gained great influence at the Raja’s court”, proclaimed himself Sultan Shamsuddin after the death of the last Hindu monarchs of medieval Kashmir. Twelve of his descendants formed the Shamiri dynasty including the notorious Sikander and the just and tolerant Zainulabidin. Sikander who ruled 1386-1410 “submitted himself” to the Uzbek Taimur the Lame when he approached Kashmir in 1398 “and thus saved the country from invasion”. Otherwise, “Sikander was a gloomy ferocious bigot, and his zeal in destroying temples and idols was so intense that he is remembered as the Idol-Breaker. He freely used the sword to propagate Islam and succeeded in forcing the bulk of the population to conform outwardly to the Muslim religion. Most of the Brahmins refused to apostatise, and many of them paid with their lives the penalty for their steadfastness. Many others were exiled, and only a few conformed.”

Zainulabidin who ruled 1417-1467 “was a man of very different type”. “He adopted the policy of universal toleration, recalled the exiled Brahmins, repealed the jizya or poll-tax on Hindus, and even permitted new temples to be built. He abstained from eating flesh, prohibited the slaughter of kine, and was justly venerated as a saint. He encouraged literature, painting and music, and caused many translations to be made of works composed in Sanskrit, Arabic and other languages.” During his “long and prosperous reign”, he “constructed canals and built many mosques; he was just and tolerant”.

The Shamiri dynasty ended in 1541 when “some fugitive chiefs of the two local factions of the Makri and the Chakk invited Mirza Haidar Dughlat, a relation of Babar, to invade Kashmir. The country was conquered and the Mirza held it (nominally in name of Humayan) till 1551, when he was killed in a skirmish. The line… was restored for a few years, until in 1559 a Chakk leader, Ghazi Shah, usurped the throne; and in the possession of his descendants it remained for nearly thirty years.” This dynasty marks the origins of Shia Islam in Srinagar though Shia influence in Gilgit, Baltistan and Laddakh was of longer standing. Constant dissensions weakened the Chakks, and in 1586, Akbar, then at Attock on the Indus, sent an army under Raja Bhagwan Das into Srinagar Valley and easily made it part of his Empire.

Shivaism and Islam both flourished, and Hindu ascetics and Sufi saints were revered by all. Far from Muslims and Hindus forming distinct nations, here they were genetically related kinsmen living in proximity in a small isolated area for centuries. Indeed Zainulabidin may have had a vast unspoken influence on the history of all India insofar as Akbar sought to attempt in his empire what Zainulabidin achieved in the Valley. Like Zainulabidin, Akbar’s governance of India had as its “constant aim” “to conciliate the Hindus and to repress Muslim bigotry” which in modern political parlance may be seen as the principle of secular governance ~ of conciliating the powerless (whether majority or minority) and repressing the bigotry of the powerful (whether minority or majority). Akbar had made the Valley the summer residence of the Mughals, and it was Jahangir, seeing the Valley for the first time, who apparently said the words agar behest baushad, hamee in hast, hamee in hast, hamee in hast: “if Heaven exists, it is here, it is here, it is here”. Yet like other isolated paradises (such as the idyllic islands of the Pacific Ocean) an accursed mental ether can accompany the magnificent beauty of people’s surroundings. As the historian put it: “The Kashmiris remained secure in their inaccessible Valley; but they were given up to internal weakness and discord, their political importance was gone…”

After the Mughals collapsed, Iran’s Turkish ruler Nadir Shah sacked Delhi in 1739 but the Iranian court fell in disarray upon his death. In 1747 a jirga of Pashtun tribes at Kandahar “broke normal tradition” and asked an old Punjabi holy man and shrine-keeper to choose between two leaders; this man placed young wheat in the hand of the 25 year old Ahmed Shah Saddozai of the Abdali tribe, and titled him “Durrani”. Five years later, Durrani took Kashmir and for the next 67 years the Valley was under Pashtun rule, a time of “unmitigated brutality and widespread distress”. Durrani himself “was wise, prudent and simple”, never declared himself king and wore no crown, instead keeping a stick of young wheat in his turban. Leaving India, he famously recited: “The Delhi throne is beautiful indeed, but does it compare with the mountains of Kandahar?”

Kashmir’s modern history begins with Ranjit Singh of the Sikhs who became a soldier at 12, and in 1799 at age 19 was made Lahore’s Governor by Kabul’s Zaman Shah. Three years later “he made himself master of Amritsar”, and in 1806 crossed the River Sutlej and took Ludhiana. He created a fine Sikh infantry and cavalry under former officers of Napoleon, and with 80,000 trained men and 500 guns took Multan and Peshawar, defeated the Pashtuns and overran Kashmir in 1819. The “cruel rule” of the Pashtuns ended “to the great relief of Kashmir’s inhabitants”.

The British Governor-General Minto (ancestor of the later Viceroy), seeing advantage in the Sikhs staying north of the Sutlej, sent Charles Metcalfe, “a clever young civilian”, to persuade the Khalsa; in 1809, Ranjit Singh and the British in the first Treaty of Amritsar agreed to establish “perpetual amity”: the British would “have no concern” north of the Sutlej and Ranjit Singh would keep only minor personnel south of it. In 1834 and 1838 Ranjit Singh was struck by paralysis and died in 1839, leaving no competent heir. The Sikh polity collapsed, “their power exploded, disappearing in fierce but fast flames”. It was “a period of storm and anarchy in which assassination was the rule” and the legitimate line of his son and grandson, Kharak Singh and Nao Nihal Singh was quickly extinguished. In 1845 the Queen Regent, mother of the five-year old Dalip Singh, agreed to the Khalsa ending the 1809 Treaty. After bitter battles that might have gone either way, the Khalsa lost at Sobraon on 10 February 1846, and accepted terms of surrender in the 9 March 1846 Treaty of Lahore. The kingdom had not long survived its founder: “created by the military and administrative genius of one man, it crumbled into powder when the spirit which gave it life was withdrawn; and the inheritance of the Khalsa passed into the hands of the English.”

Ranjit Singh’s influence on modern J&K was even greater through his having mentored the Rajput Gulab Singh Dogra (1792-1857) and his brothers Dhyan Singh and Suchet Singh. Jammu had been ruled by Ranjit Deo until 1780 when the Sikhs made it tributary to the Lahore Court. Gulab Singh, a great grand nephew of Ranjit Deo, had left home at age 17 in search of a soldierly fortune, and ended up in 1809 in Ranjit Singh’s army, just when Ranjit Singh had acquired for himself a free hand to expand his domains north of the River Sutlej.

Gulab Singh, an intrepid soldier, by 1820 had Jammu conferred upon him by Ranjit Singh with the title of Raja, while Bhimber, Chibal, Poonch and Ramnagar went to his brothers. Gulab Singh, “often unscrupulous and cruel, was a man of considerable ability and efficiency”; he “found his small kingdom a troublesome charge but after ten years of constant struggles he and his two brothers became masters of most of the country between Kashmir and the Punjab”, though Srinagar Valley itself remained under a separate Governor appointed by the Lahore Court. Gulab Singh extended Jammu’s rule from Rawalpindi, Bhimber, Rajouri, Bhadarwah and Kishtwar, across Laddakh and into Tibet. His General Zorawar Singh led six expeditions into Laddakh between 1834 and 1841 through Kishtwar, Padar and Zanskar. In May 1841, Zorawar left Leh with an army of 5000 Dogras and Laddakhis and advanced on Tibet. Defeating the Tibetans at Rudok and Tashigong, he reached Minsar near Lake Mansarovar from where he advanced to Taklakot (Purang), 15 miles from the borders of Nepal and Kumaon, and built a fort stopping for the winter. Lhasa sent large re-inforcements to meet him. Zorawar, deciding to take the offensive, was killed in the Battle of Toyu, on 11-12 December 1841 at 16,000 feet.

A Laddakhi rebellion resulted against Jammu, aided now by the advancing Tibetans. A new army was sent under Hari Chand suppressing the rebellion and throwing back the Tibetans, leading to a peace treaty between Lhasa and Jammu signed on 17 September 1842: “We have agreed that we have no ill-feelings because of the past war. The two kings will henceforth remain friends forever. The relationship between Maharajah Gulab Singh of Kashmir and the Lama Guru of Lhasa (Dalai Lama) is now established. The Maharajah Sahib, with God (Kunchok) as his witness, promises to recognise ancient boundaries, which should be looked after by each side without resorting to warfare. When the descendants of the early kings, who fled from Laddakh to Tibet, now return they will not be stopped by Shri Maharajah. Trade between Laddakh and Tibet will continue as usual. Tibetan government traders coming into Laddakh will receive free transport and accommodations as before, and the Laddakhi envoy will, in turn, receive the same facilities in Lhasa. The Laddakhis take an oath before God (Kunchok) that they will not intrigue or create new troubles in Tibetan territory. We have agreed, with God as witness, that Shri Maharajah Sahib and the Lama Guru of Lhasa will live together as members of the same household.” The traditional boundary between Laddakh and Tibet “as recognised by both sides since olden times” was accepted by the envoys of Gulab Singh and the Dalai Lama.

An earlier 1684 treaty between Laddakh and Lhasa had said that while Laddakh would send tribute to Lhasa every three years, “the king of Laddakh reserves to himself the village of Minsar in Ngarees-khor-sum, that he may be independent there; and he sets aside its revenue for the purpose of meeting the expense involved in keeping up the sacrificial lights at Kangree (Kailas), and the Holy Lakes of Mansarovar and Rakas Tal”. The area around Minsar village near Lake Mansarovar, held by the rulers of Laddakh since 1583, was retained by Jammu in the 1842 peace-treaty, and its revenue was received by J&K State until 1948.

After Ranjit Singh’s death in 1839, Gulab Singh was alienated from the Lahore Court where the rise of his brothers and a nephew aroused enough Khalsa jealousy to see them assassinated in palace intrigues. While the Sikhs imploded, Gulab Singh had expanded his own dominion from Rawalpindi to Minsar ~ everywhere except Srinagar Valley itself. He had apparently advised the Sikhs not to attack the British in breach of the 1809 Treaty, and when they did so he had not joined them, though had he done so British power in North India might have been broken. The British were grateful for his neutrality and also his help in their first misbegotten adventure in Afghanistan. It was Gulab Singh who was now encouraged by both the British and the Sikhs to mediate between them, indeed “to take a leading part in arranging conditions of peace”, and he formally represented the Sikh regency in the negotiations. The 9 March 1846 Treaty of Lahore “set forth that the British Government having demanded in addition to a certain assignment of territory, a payment of a crore and a half of rupees, and the Sikh Government being unable to pay the whole”, Dalip Singh “should cede as equivalent to one crore the hill country belonging to the Punjab between the Beas and the Indus including Kashmir and the Hazara”.

For the British to occupy the whole of this mountainous territory was judged unwise on economic and military grounds; it was not feasible to occupy from a military standpoint and the area “with the exception of the small Valley of Kashmir” was “for the most part unproductive”. “On the other hand, the ceded tracts comprised the whole of the hereditary possessions of Gulab Singh, who, being eager to obtain an indefeasible title to them, came forward and offered to pay the war indemnity on condition that he was made the independent ruler of Jammu & Kashmir.

A separate treaty embodying this arrangement was thus concluded between the British and Gulab Singh at Amritsar on 16 March 1846.” Gulab Singh acknowledged the British Government’s supremacy, and in token of it agreed to present annually to the British Government “one horse, twelve shawl goats of approved breed and three pairs of Kashmir shawls. This arrangement was later altered; the annual presentation made by the Kashmir State was confined to two Kashmir shawls and three romals (handkerchiefs).” The Treaty of Amritsar “put Gulab Singh, as Maharaja, in possession of all the hill country between the Indus and the Ravi, including Kashmir, Jammu, Laddakh and Gilgit; but excluding Lahoul, Kulu and some areas including Chamba which for strategic purposes, it was considered advisable (by the British) to retain and for which a remission of Rs 25 lakhs was made from the crore demanded, leaving Rs 75 lakhs as the final amount to be paid by Gulab Singh.” The British retained Hazara which in 1918 was included into NWFP. Through an intrigue emanating from Prime Minister Lal Singh in Lahore, Imamuddin, the last Sikh-appointed Governor of Kashmir, sought to prevent Gulab Singh taking possession of the Valley in accordance with the Treaty’s terms. By December 1846 Gulab Singh had done so, though only with help of a British force which included 17,000 Sikh troops “who had been fighting in the campaign just concluded”. (Contemporary British opinion even predicted Sikhism like Buddhism “would become extinct in a short time if it were not kept alive by the esprit de corps of the Sikh regiments”.)

The British in 1846 may have been glad enough to allow Gulab Singh take independent charge of the new entity that came to be now known as the “State of Jammu & Kashmir”. Later, however. they and their American allies would grow keen to control or influence the region vis-à-vis their new interests against the Russian and Soviet Empires.

FOUR
PAKISTAN’S ALLIES by Subroto Roy First published in two parts in The Sunday Statesman, June 4 2006, The Statesman June 5 2006, Editorial Page Special Article, http://www.thestatesman.net

From the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar creating the State of Jammu & Kashmir until the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Britain and later the USA became increasingly interested in the subcontinent’s Northwest. The British came to India by sea to trade. Barren, splendid, landlocked Afghanistan held no interest except as a home of fierce tribes; but it was the source of invasions into the Indian plains and prompted a British misadventure to install Shah Shuja in place of Dost Mohammad Khan leading to ignominious defeat. Later, Afghanistan was seen as the underbelly of the Russian and Soviet empires, and hence a location of interest to British and American strategic causes.

In November 1954, US President Dwight Eisenhower authorized 30 U-2 spy aircraft to be produced for deployment against America’s perceived enemies, especially to investigate Soviet nuclear missiles which could reach the USA. Reconnaissance balloons had been unsuccessful, and numerous Western pilots had been shot down taking photographs from ordinary military aircraft. By June 1956, U-2 were making clandestine flights over the USSR and China. But on May 1 1960, one was shot or forced down over Sverdlovsk, 1,000 miles within Soviet territory. The Americans prevaricated that it had taken off from Turkey on a weather-mission, and been lost due to oxygen problems. Nikita Kruschev then produced the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, who was convicted of spying, though was exchanged later for a Soviet spy. Powers had been headed towards Norway, his task to photograph Soviet missiles from 70,000 ft, his point of origin had been an American base 20 miles from Peshawar.

America needed clandestine “forward bases” from which to fly U-2 aircraft, and Pakistan’s ingratiating military and diplomatic establishment was more than willing to offer such cooperation, fervently wishing to be seen as a “frontline state” against the USSR. “We will help you defeat the USSR and we are hopeful you will help us defeat India” became their constant refrain. By 1986, the Americans had been permitted to build air-bases in Balochistan and also use Mauripur air-base near Karachi.

Jammu & Kashmir and especially Gilgit-Baltistan adjoins the Pashtun regions whose capital has been Peshawar. In August-November 1947, a British coup d’etat against J&K State secured Gilgit-Baltistan for the new British Dominion of Pakistan.

The Treaty of Amritsar had nowhere required Gulab Singh’s dynasty to accept British political control in J&K as came to be exercised by British “Residents” in all other Indian “Native States”. Despite this, Delhi throughout the late 19th Century relentlessly pressed Gulab Singh’s successors Ranbir Singh and Partab Singh to accept political control. The Dogras acquiesced eventually. Delhi’s desire for control had less to do with the welfare of J&K’s people than with protection of increasing British interests in the area, like European migration to Srinagar Valley and guarding against Russian or German moves in Afghanistan. “Sargin” or “Sargin Gilit”, later corrupted by the Sikhs and Dogras into “Gilgit”, had an ancient people who spoke an archaic Dardic language “intermediate between the Iranian and the Sanskritic”. “The Dards were located by Ptolemy with surprising accuracy on the West of the Upper Indus, beyond the headwaters of the Swat River (Greek: Soastus) and north of the Gandarae (i.e. Kandahar), who occupied Peshawar and the country north of it. This region was traversed by two Chinese pilgrims, Fa-Hsien, coming from the north about AD 400 and Hsuan Tsiang, ascending from Swat in AD 629, and both left records of their journeys.”

Gilgit had been historically ruled by a Hindu dynasty called Trakane; when they became extinct, Gilgit Valley “was desolated by successive invasions of neighbouring rulers, and in the 20 or 30 years ending with 1842 there had been five dynastic revolutions. The Sikhs entered Gilgit about 1842 and kept a garrison there.” When J&K came under Gulab Singh, “the Gilgit claims were transferred with it, and a boundary commission was sent” by the British. In 1852 the Dogras were driven out with 2,000 dead. In 1860 under Ranbir Singh, the Dogras “returned to Gilgit and took Yasin twice, but did not hold it. They also in 1866 invaded Darel, one of the most secluded Dard states, to the south of the Gilgit basin but withdrew again.”

The British appointed a Political Agent in Gilgit in 1877 but he was withdrawn in 1881. “In 1889, in order to guard against the advance of Russia, the British Government, acting as the suzerain power of Kashmir, established the Gilgit Agency”. The Agency was re-established under control of the British Resident in Jammu & Kashmir. “It comprised the Gilgit Wazarat; the State of Hunza and Nagar; the Punial Jagir; the Governorships of Yasin, Kuh-Ghizr and Ishkoman, and Chilas”. In 1935, the British demanded J&K lease to them for 60 years Gilgit town plus most of the Gilgit Agency and the hill-states Hunza, Nagar, Yasin and Ishkuman. Hari Singh had no choice but to acquiesce. The leased region was then treated as part of British India, administered by a Political Agent at Gilgit responsible to Delhi, first through the Resident in J& K and later a British Agent in Peshawar. J& K State no longer kept troops in Gilgit and a mercenary force, the Gilgit Scouts, was recruited with British officers and paid for by Delhi. In April 1947, Delhi decided to formally retrocede the leased areas to Hari Singh’s J& K State as of 15 August 1947. The transfer was to formally take place on 1 August.

On 31 July, Hari Singh’s Governor arrived to find “all the officers of the British Government had opted for service in Pakistan”. The Gilgit Scouts’ commander, a Major William Brown aged 25, and his adjutant, a Captain Mathieson, planned openly to engineer a coup détat against Hari Singh’s Government. Between August and October, Gilgit was in uneasy calm. At midnight on 31 October 1947, the Governor was surrounded by the Scouts and the next day he was “arrested” and a provisional government declared.

Hari Singh’s nearest forces were at Bunji, 34 miles from Gilgit, a few miles downstream from where the Indus is joined by Gilgit River. The 6th J& K Infantry Battalion there was a mixed Sikh-Muslim unit, typical of the State’s Army, commanded by a Lt Col. Majid Khan. Bunji controlled the road to Srinagar. Further upstream was Skardu, capital of Baltistan, part of Laddakh District where there was a small garrison. Following Brown’s coup in Gilgit, Muslim soldiers of the 6th Infantry massacred their Sikh brothers-at-arms at Bunji. The few Sikhs who survived escaped to the hills and from there found their way to the garrison at Skardu.

On 4 November 1947, Brown raised the new Pakistani flag in the Scouts’ lines, and by the third week of November a Political Agent from Pakistan had established himself at Gilgit. Brown had engineered Gilgit and its adjoining states to first secede from J&K, and, after some talk of being independent, had promptly acceded to Pakistan. His commander in Peshawar, a Col. Bacon, as well as Col. Iskander Mirza, Defence Secretary in the new Pakistan and later to lead the first military coup détat and become President of Pakistan, were pleased enough. In July 1948, Brown was awarded an MBE (Military) and the British Governor of the NWFP got him a civilian job with ICI~ which however sent him to Calcutta, where he came to be attacked and left for dead on the streets by Sikhs avenging the Bunji massacre. Brown survived, returned to England, started a riding school, and died in 1984. In March 1994, Pakistan awarded his widow the Sitara-I-Pakistan in recognition of his coup détat.

Gilgit’s ordinary people had not participated in Brown’s coup which carried their fortunes into the new Pakistan, and to this day appear to remain without legislative representation. It was merely assumed that since they were mostly Muslim in number they would wish to be part of Pakistan ~ which also became Liaquat Ali Khan’s assumption about J&K State as a whole in his 1950 statements in North America. What the Gilgit case demonstrates is that J&K State’s descent into a legal condition of ownerless anarchy open to “Military Decision” had begun even before the Pakistani invasion of 22 October 1947 (viz. “Solving Kashmir”, The Statesman, 1-3 December 2005). Also, whatever else the British said or did with respect to J & K, they were closely allied to the new Pakistan on the matter of Gilgit.

The peak of Pakistan’s Anglo-American alliance came with the enormous support in the 1980s to guerrilla forces created and headquartered in Peshawar, to battle the USSR and Afghan communists directly across the Durand Line. It was this guerrilla war which became a proximate cause of the collapse of the USSR as a political entity in 1991. President Ronald Reagan’s CIA chief William J. Casey sent vast sums in 1985-1988 to supply and train these guerrillas. The Washington Post and New Yorker reported the CIA training guerrillas “in the use of mortars, rocket grenades, ground-to-air missiles”. 200 hand-held Stinger missiles were supplied for the first time in 1986 and the New Yorker reported Gulbudin Hikmatyar’s “Hizbe Islami” guerrillas being trained to bring down Soviet aircraft. “Mujahideen had been promised two Stingers for every Soviet aircraft brought down. Operators who failed to aim correctly were given additional training… By 1986, the United States was so deeply involved in the Afghan war that Soviet aircraft were being brought down under the supervision of American experts”. (Raja Anwar, The Tragedy of Afghanistan, 1988, p. 234).

The budding US-China détente brokered by Pakistan came into full bloom here. NBC News on 7 January 1980 said “for the first time in history (a senior State Department official) publicly admitted the possibility of concluding a military alliance between the United States and China”. London’s Daily Telegraph reported on 5 January 1980 “China is flying large supplies of arms and ammunition to the insurgents in Afghanistan. According to diplomatic reports, supplies have arrived in Pakistan from China via the Karakoram Highway…. A major build-up of Chinese involvement is underway ~ in the past few days. Scores of Chinese instructors have arrived at the Shola-e-Javed camps.”

Afghan reports in 1983-1985 said “there were eight training camps near the Afghan border operated by the Chinese in Sinkiang province” and that China had supplied the guerrillas “with a variety of weapons including 40,000 RPG-7 and 20,000 RPG-II anti tank rocket launchers.” Like Pakistan, “China did not publicly admit its involvement in the Afghan conflict: in 1985 the Chinese Mission at the UN distributed a letter denying that China was extending any kind of help to the Afghan rebels” (Anwar, ibid. p. 234). Support extended deep and wide across the Arab world. “The Saudi and Gulf rulers … became the financial patrons of the Afghan rebels from the very start of the conflict”. Anwar Sadat, having won the Nobel Peace Prize, was “keen to claim credit for his role in Afghanistan…. by joining the Afghanistan jihad, Sadat could re-establish his Islamic credentials, or so he believed. He could thus not only please the Muslim nations but also place the USA and Israel in his debt.” Sadat’s Defence Minister said in January 1980: “Army camps have been opened for the training of Afghan rebels; they are being supplied with weapons from Egypt” and Sadat told NBC News on 22 September 1981 “that for the last twenty-one months, the USA had been buying arms from Egypt for the Afghan rebels. He said he had been approached by the USA in December 1979 and he had decided to `open my stores’. He further disclosed that these arms were being flown to Pakistan from Egypt by American aircraft. Egypt had vast supplies of SAM-7 and RPG-7 anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons which Sadat agreed to supply to Afghanistan in exchange for new American arms. The Soviet weapons, being light, were ideally suited to guerrilla warfare. … the Mujahideen could easily claim to have captured them from Soviet and Afghan troops in battle.… Khomeini’s Iran got embroiled in war (against Iraq) otherwise Kabul would also have had to contend with the full might of the Islamic revolutionaries.” (Anwar ibid. p. 235).

Afghanistan had been occupied on 26-27 December 1979 by Soviet forces sent by the decrepit Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov to carry out a putsch replacing one communist, Hafizullah Amin, with a rival communist and Soviet protégé, Babrak Karmal. By 1985 Brezhnev and Andropov were dead and Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev had begun his attempts to reform the Soviet system, usher in openness, end the Cold War and in particular withdraw from Afghanistan, which by 1986 he had termed “a bleeding wound”. Gorbachev replaced Karmal with a new protégé Najibullah Khan, who was assigned the impossible task of bringing about national reconciliation with the Pakistan-based guerrillas and form a national government. Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan in February 1989 having lost 14,500 dead, while more than a million Afghans had been killed since the invasion a decade earlier.

Not long after Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution, Gregory Zinoviev had said that international communism “turns today to the peoples of the East and says to them, `Brothers, we summon you to a Holy War first of all against British imperialism!’ At this there were cries of Jehad! Jehad! And much brandishing of picturesque Oriental weapons.” (Treadgold, Twentieth Century Russia, 1990, p. 213). Now instead, the Afghan misadventure had contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Empire itself, the USSR ceasing to be a political entity by 1991, and even Gorbachev being displaced by Boris Yeltsin and later Vladimir Putin in a new Russia.

What resulted for the people of the USA and Britain and the West in general was that they no longer had to live under threat of hostile Soviet tanks and missiles, while the people of Russia, Ukraine and the other erstwhile Soviet republics as well as Eastern Europe were able to throw off the yoke of communism that had oppressed them since the Bolshevik Revolution and instead to breathe the air of freedom.

What happened to the people of Afghanistan, however, was that they were plunged into further ghastly civil war for more than ten years. And what happened to the people of Pakistan was that their country was left resembling a gigantic Islamist military camp, awash with airfields, arms, ammunition and trained guerrillas, as well as a military establishment enlivened as always by perpetual hope that these supplies, provisions and personnel of war might find alternative use in attacks against India over J& K. “We helped you when you wished to see the Soviet Union defeated and withdrawing in Afghanistan”, Pakistan’s generals and diplomats pleaded with the Americans and British, “now you must help us in our wish to see India defeated and withdrawing in Kashmir”. Pakistan’s leaders even believed that just as the Soviet Union had disintegrated afterwards, the Indian Union perhaps might be made to do the same. Not only were the two cases as different as chalk from cheese, Palmerstone’s dictum there are no permanent allies in the politics of nations could not have found more apt use than in what actually came to take place next.

Pakistan’s generals and diplomats felt betrayed by the loss of Anglo-American paternalism towards them after 1989.

Modern Pakistanis had never felt they subscribed to the Indian nationalist movement culminating in independence in August 1947. The Pakistani state now finally declared its independence in the world by exploding bombs in a nuclear arsenal secretly created with help purchased from China and North Korea. Pakistan’s leaders thus came to feel in some control of Pakistan’s destiny as a nation-state for the first time, more than fifty years after Pakistan’s formal creation in 1947. If nothing else, at least they had the Bomb.

Secondly, America and its allies would not be safe for long since the civil war they had left behind in Afghanistan while trying to defeat the USSR now became a brew from which arose a new threat of violent Islamism. Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, whom Pakistan’s military and the USA had promoted, now encouraged unprecedented attacks on the American mainland on September 11 2001 ~ causing physical and psychological damage which no Soviet, Chinese or Cuban missiles ever had been allowed to do. In response, America attacked and removed the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, once again receiving the cooperative use of Pakistani manpower and real estate ~ except now there was no longer any truck with the Pakistani establishment’s wish for a quid pro quo of Anglo-American support against India on J&K. Pakistan’s generals and diplomats soon realised their Anglo-American alliance of more than a half-century ended on September 11 2001. Their new cooperation was in killing or arresting and handing over fellow-Muslims and necessarily lacked their earlier feelings of subservience and ingratiation towards the Americans and British, and came to be done instead under at least some duress. No benefit could be reaped any more in the fight against India over Jammu & Kashmir. An era had ended in the subcontinent.

FIVE

WHAT TO TELL MUSHARRAF: PEACE IS IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT NON-AGGRESSIVE PAKISTANI INTENTIONS by Subroto Roy, First published in The Statesman December 15 2006 Editorial Page Special Article, www.thestatesman.net

In June 1989 a project at an American university involving Pakistani and other scholars, including one Indian, led to the book Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s published in Karachi, New Delhi and elsewhere. The book reached Nawaz Sharif and the Islamabad elite, and General Musharraf’s current proposal on J&K, endorsed warmly by the US State Department last week, derives from the last paragraph of its editorial introduction: “Kashmir… must be demilitarised and unified by both countries sooner or later, and it must be done without force. There has been enough needless bloodshed on the subcontinent… Modern Pakistanis and Indians are free peoples who can voluntarily agree in their own interests to alter the terms set hurriedly by Attlee or Mountbatten in the Indian Independence Act 1947. Nobody but we ourselves keeps us prisoners of superficial definitions of who we are or might be. The subcontinent could evolve its political identity over a period of time on the pattern of Western Europe, with open borders and (common) tariffs to the outside world, with the free movement of people, capital, ideas and culture. Large armed forces could be reduced and transformed in a manner that would enhance the security of each nation. The real and peaceful economic revolution of the masses of the subcontinent would then be able to begin.”

The editors as economists decried the waste of resources involved in the Pakistan-India confrontation, saying it had “greatly impoverished the general budgets of both Pakistan and India. If it has benefited important sections of the political and military elites of both countries, it has done so only at the expense of the general welfare of the masses.”

International law

Such words may have been bold in the early 1990s but today, a decade and a half later, they seem incomplete and rather naïve even to their author, who was myself, the only Indian in that project. Most significantly, the position in international law in the context of historical facts had been wholly neglected. So had been the manifest nature of the contemporary Pakistani state.

Jammu & Kashmir became an entity in international law when the Treaty of Amritsar was signed between Gulab Singh and the British on March 16 1846. British India itself became an entity in international law much later, possibly as late as June 1919 when it signed the Treaty of Versailles. As for Pakistan, it had no existence in world history or international law until August 14 1947, when the British created it as a new entity out of certain demarcated areas of British India and gave it the status of a Dominion. British India dissolved itself on August 15 1947 and the Dominion of India became its successor-state in international law on that date. As BR Ambedkar pointed out at the time, the new India automatically inherited British India’s suzerainty over any and all remaining “princely” states of so-called “Indian India”. In case of J&K in particular, there never was any question of it being recognised as an independent entity in global international law.

The new Pakistan, by entering a Standstill Agreement with J&K as of August 15 1947, did locally recognise J&K’s sovereignty over its decision whether to join Pakistan or India. But this Pakistani recognition lasted only until the attack on J&K that commenced from Pakistani territory as of October 22 1947, an attack in which Pakistani forces were complicit (something which, in different and mutating senses, has continued ever since). The Dominion of India had indicated it might have consented if J&K’s Ruler had decided to accede to Pakistan in the weeks following the dissolution of British India. But no such thing happened: what did happen was the descent of J&K into a condition of legal anarchy.

Beginning with the Pakistani attack on J&K as of October 22 upto and including the Rape of Baramulla and the British-led Pakistani coup détat in Gilgit on one side, and the arrival of Indian forces as well as mobilization by Sheikh Abdullah and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad of J&K’s civilians to repel the Pakistani invaders on the other side, the State of Jammu & Kashmir became an ownerless entity in international law. In Roman Law, from which all modern international and municipal law ultimately derives, the ownership of an ownerless entity is open to be determined by “military decision”. The January 1949 Ceasefire Line that came to be renamed the Line of Control after the 1971 Bangladesh War, demarcates the respective territories that the then-Dominions and later Republics of India and Pakistan acquired by “military decision” of the erstwhile State of J&K which had come to cease to exist.

What the Republic of India means by saying today that boundaries cannot be redrawn nor any populations forcibly transferred is quite simply that the division of erstwhile J&K territory is permanent, and that sovereignty over it is indivisible. It is only sheer ignorance on the part of General Musharraf’s Indian interviewer the other day which caused it to be said that Pakistan was willing to “give up” its claim on erstwhile J&K State territory which India has held: Pakistan has never had nor even made such a claim in international law. What Pakistan has claimed is that India has been an occupier and that there are many people inhabiting the Indian area who may not wish to be Indian nationals and who are being compelled against their will to remain so ~ forgetting to add that precisely the same could be said likewise of the Pakistani-held area.

Accordingly, the lawful solution proposed in these pages a year ago to resolve that matter, serious as it is, has been that the Republic of India invite every person covered under Article 370, citizen-by- citizen, under a condition of full information, to privately and without fear decide, if he/she has not done so already, between possible Indian, Iranian, Afghan or Pakistani nationalities ~ granting rights and obligations of permanent residents to any of those persons who may choose for whatever private reason not to remain Indian nationals. If Pakistan acted likewise, the problem of J&K would indeed come to be resolved. The Americans, as self- appointed mediators, have said they wish “the people of the region to have a voice” in a solution: there can be no better expression of such voice than allowing individuals to privately choose their own nationalities and their rights and responsibilities accordingly. The issue of territorial sovereignty is logically distinct from that of the choice of nationality by individual inhabitants.

Military de-escalation

Equally significant though in assessing whether General Musharraf’s proposal is an anachronism, is Pakistan’s history since 1947: through Ayub’s 1965 attack, the civil war and secession of Bangladesh, the Afghan war and growth of the ISI, the Kargil incursion, the 1999 coup détat, and, once or twice removed, the 9/11 attacks against America. It is not a history that allows any confidence to arise in Indians that we are not dealing with a country misgoverned by a tiny arrogant exploitative military elite who remain hell-bent on aggression against us. Like the USA and USSR twenty years ago, what we need to negotiate about, and negotiate hard about, is an overall mutual military drawdown and de-escalation appropriate to lack of aggressive intent on both sides. Is General Musharraf willing to discuss that? It would involve reciprocal verifiable assessment of one another’s reasonable military requirements on the assumption that each was not a threatening enemy of the other. That was how the USA-USSR drawdown and de-escalation occurred successfully. If General Musharraf is unwilling to enter such a discussion, there is hardly anything to talk about with him. We should wait for democracy to return.

SIX

“AN INDIAN REPLY TO PRESIDENT ZARDARI: REWARDING PAKISTAN FOR BAD BEHAVIOUR LEADS TO SCHIZOPHRENIC RELATIONSHIPS”

by Subroto Roy, December 17 2008

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari’s recent argument in the New York Times resembles closely the well-known publications of his ambassador to the United States, Mr Husain Haqqani. Unfortunately, this Zardari-Haqqani thesis about Pakistan’s current predicament in the world and the world’s predicament with Pakistan is shot through with clear factual and logical errors. These need to be aired because true or useful conclusions cannot be reached from mistaken premises or faulty reasoning.

1. Origins of Pakistan, India, J&K, and their mutual problems

Mr Zardari makes the following seemingly innocuous statement:

“…. the two great nations of Pakistan and India, born together from the same revolution and mandate in 1947, must continue to move forward with the peace process.”

Now as a matter of simple historical fact, the current entities in the world system known as India and Pakistan were not “born together from the same revolution and mandate in 1947”. It is palpably false to suppose they were and Pakistanis indulge in wishful thinking and self-deception about their own political history if they suppose this.

India’s Republic arose out of the British Dominion known as “India” which was the legal successor of the entity known previously in international law as “British India”. British India had had secular governance and so has had the Indian Republic.

By contrast, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan arose out of a newly created state in international law known as the British Dominion of Pakistan, consisting of designated territory carved out of British India by a British decision and coming into existence one day before British India extinguished itself. (Another new state, Bangladesh, later seceded from Pakistan.)

The British decision to create territory designated “Pakistan” had nothing to do with any anti-British “revolution” or “mandate” supported by any Pakistani nationalism because there was none. (Rahmat Ali’s anti-Hindu pamphleteering in London could be hardly considered Pakistani nationalism against British rule. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s Pashtun patriots saw themselves as Indian, not Pakistani.)

To the contrary, the British decision had to do with a small number of elite Pakistanis — MA Jinnah foremost among them — demanding not to be part of the general Indian nationalist movement that had been demanding a British departure from power in the subcontinent. Jinnah’s separatist party, the Muslim League, was trounced in the 1937 provincial elections in all the Muslim-majority areas of British India that would eventually become Pakistan. Despite this, in September 1939, Britain, at war with Nazi Germany, chose to elevate the political power of Jinnah and his League to parity with the general Indian nationalist movement led by MK Gandhi. (See, Francis Robinson, in William James and Subroto Roy (eds), Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s.) Britain needed India’s mostly Muslim infantry-divisions — the progenitors of the present-day Pakistan Army — and if that meant tilting towards a risky political idea of “Pakistan” in due course, so it would be. The thesis that Pakistan arose from any kind of “revolution” or “mandate” in 1947 is fantasy — the Muslim super-elite that invented and endorsed the Pakistan idea flew from Delhi to Karachi in chartered BOAC Dakotas, caring not a hoot about the vulnerability of ordinary Muslim masses to Sikh and Hindu majority wrath and retaliation on the ground.

Modern India succeeded to the rights and obligations of British India in international law, and has had a recognized existence as a state since at least the signing of the Armistice and Treaty of Versailles in 1918-1919. India was a founding member of the United Nations, being a signatory of the 1945 San Francisco Declaration, and an original member of the Bretton Woods institutions. An idea put forward by Argentina that as of 1947 India and Pakistan were both successor states of British India was rejected by the UN (Argentina withdrew its own suggestion), and it was universally acknowledged India was already a member of the UN while Pakistan would have to (and did) apply afresh for membership as a newly created state in the UN. Pakistan’s entry into the UN had the enthusiastic backing of India and was opposed by only one existing UN member, Afghanistan, due to a conflict that continues to this day over the legitimacy of the Durand Line that bifurcated the Pashtun areas.

Such a review of elementary historical facts and the position in law of Pakistan and India is far from being of merely pedantic interest today. Rather, it goes directly to the logical roots of the conflict over the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) — a state that itself originated as an entity in the world system a full century before Pakistan was to do so and more than half a century before British India did, but which would collapse into anarchy and civil war in 1947-1949.

Britain (or England) had been a major nation-state in the world system recognized since Grotius first outlined modern international law. On March 16 1846, Britain entered into a treaty, the Treaty of Amritsar, with one Gulab Singh, and the “State of Jammu & Kashmir” came to arise as a recognizable entity in international law for the first time. (See my “History of Jammu and Kashmir” published in The Statesman, Oct 29-30 2006, available elsewhere here.)

Jammu & Kashmir continued in orderly existence as a state until it crashed into legal and political anarchy and civil war a century later. The new Pakistan had entered into a “Standstill Agreement” with the State of Jammu & Kashmir as of August 15 1947. On or about October 22 1947, Pakistan unilaterally ended that Standstill Agreement and instead caused military forces from its territory to attack the State of Jammu & Kashmir along the Mansehra Road towards Baramula and Srinagar, coinciding too with an Anglo-Pakistani coup d’etat in Gilgit and Baltistan (see my “Solving Kashmir”; “Law, Justice & J&K”; “Pakistan’s Allies”, all published in The Statesman in 2005-2006 and available elsewhere here).

The new Pakistan had chosen, in all deliberation, to forswear law, politics and diplomacy and to resort to force of arms instead in trying to acquire J&K for itself via a military decision. It succeeded only partially. Its forces took and then lost both Baramula and Kargil; they may have threatened Leh but did not attempt to take it; they did take and retain Muzaffarabad and Skardu; they were never near taking the summer capital, Srinagar, though might have threatened the winter capital, Jammu.

All in all, a Ceasefire Line came to be demarcated on the military positions as of February 1 1949. After a war in 1971 that accompanied the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan, that Ceasefire Line came to be renamed the “Line of Control” between Pakistan and India. An ownerless entity may be acquired by force of arms — the erstwhile State of Jammu & Kashmir in 1947-1949 had become an ownerless entity that had been dismembered and divided according to military decision following an armed conflict between Pakistan and India. The entity in the world system known as the “State of Jammu & Kashmir” created on March 16 1846 by Gulab Singh’s treaty with the British ceased to exist as of October 22 1947. Pakistan had started the fight over J&K but there is a general rule of conflicts that he who starts a fight does not get to finish it.

Such is the simplest and most practical statement of the history of the current problem. The British, through their own compulsions and imperial pretensions, raised all the talk about a “Lapse of Paramountcy” of the British Crown over the “Native Princes” of “Indian India”, and of how, the “Native Princes” were required to “accede” to either India or Pakistan. This ignored Britain’s own constitutional law. BR Ambedkar pointed out with unsurpassed clarity that no “Lapse of Paramountcy” was possible even for a single logical moment since “Paramountcy” over any “Native Princes” who had not joined India or Pakistan as of August 15 1947, automatically passed from British India to its legal successor, namely, the Dominion of India. It followed that India’s acquiescence was required for any subsequent accession to Pakistan – an acquiescence granted in case of Chitral and denied in case of Junagadh.

What the Republic of India means by saying today that boundaries cannot be redrawn nor any populations forcibly transferred is quite simply that the division of erstwhile J&K territory is permanent, and that sovereignty over it is indivisible. What Pakistan has claimed is that India has been an occupier and that there are many people inhabiting the Indian area who may not wish to be Indian nationals and who are being compelled against their will to remain so ~ forgetting to add that precisely the same could be said likewise of the Pakistani-held area. The lawful solution I proposed in “Solving Kashmir, “Law, Justice and J&K” and other works has been that the Republic of India invite every person covered under its Article 370, citizen-by-citizen, under a condition of full information, to privately and without fear decide, if he/she has not done so already, between possible Indian, Iranian, Afghan or Pakistani nationalities ~ granting rights and obligations of permanent residents to any of those persons who may choose for whatever private reason not to remain Indian nationals. If Pakistan acted likewise, the problem of J&K would indeed come to be resolved. The Americans, as self-appointed mediators, have said they wish “the people of the region to have a voice” in a solution: there can be no better expression of such voice than allowing individuals to privately choose their own nationalities and their rights and responsibilities accordingly. The issue of territorial sovereignty is logically distinct from that of the choice of nationality by individual inhabitants.

2. Benazir’s assassination falsely compared to the Mumbai massacres
Secondly, President Zardari draws a mistaken comparison between the assassination last year of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, and the Mumbai massacres a few weeks ago. Ms Bhutto’s assassination may resemble more closely the assassinations in India of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

Indira Gandhi died in “blowback” from the unrest she and her younger son and others in their party had opportunistically fomented among Sikh fundamentalists and sectarians since the late 1970s. Rajiv Gandhi died in “blowback” from an erroneous imperialistic foreign policy that he, as Prime Minister, had been induced to make by jingoistic Indian diplomats, a move that got India’s military needlessly involved in the then-nascent Sri Lankan civil war. Benazir Bhutto similarly may be seen to have died in “blowback” from her own political activity as prime minister and opposition leader since the late 1980s, including her own encouragement of Muslim fundamentalist forces. Certainly in all three cases, as in all assassinations, there were lapses of security too and imprudent political judgments made that contributed to the tragic outcomes.

Ms Bhutto’s assassination has next to nothing to do with the Mumbai massacres, besides the fact the perpetrators in both cases were Pakistani terrorists. President Zardari saying he himself has lost his wife to terrorism is true but not relevant to the proper diagnosis of the Mumbai massacres or to Pakistan-India relations in general. Rather, it serves to deflect criticism and condemnation of the Pakistani state’s pampered handing of Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds, as well as the gross irresponsibility of Pakistan’s military scientists (not AQ Khan) who have been recently advocating a nuclear first strike against India in the event of war.

3. Can any religious nation-state be viable in the modern world?

President Zardari’s article says:

“The world worked to exploit religion against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan by empowering the most fanatic extremists as an instrument of destruction of a superpower. The strategy worked, but its legacy was the creation of an extremist militia with its own dynamic.”

This may be overly simplistic. As pointed out in my article “Pakistan’s Allies”, Gregory Zinoviev himself after the Bolshevik Revolution had declared that international communism “turns today to the peoples of the East and says to them, ‘Brothers, we summon you to a Holy War first of all against British imperialism!’ At this there were cries of Jehad! Jehad! And much brandishing of picturesque Oriental weapons.” (Treadgold, Twentieth Century Russia, 1990, p. 213). For more than half of the 20th century, orthodox Muslims had been used by Soviet communists against British imperialism, then by the British and Americans (through Pakistan) against Soviet communism. Touché! Blowback and counter-blowback! The real question that arises from this today may be why orthodox Muslims have allowed themselves to be used either way by outside forces and have failed in developing a modern nation-state and political culture of their own. Europe and America only settled down politically after their religious wars were over. Perhaps no religious nation-state is viable in the modern world.

4. Pakistan’s behaviour leads to schizophrenia in international relations

President Zardari pleads for, or perhaps demands, resources from the world:

“the best response to the Mumbai carnage is to coordinate in counteracting the scourge of terrorism. The world must act to strengthen Pakistan’s economy and democracy, help us build civil society and provide us with the law enforcement and counterterrorism capacities that will enable us to fight the terrorists effectively.”

Six million pounds from Mr Gordon Brown, so much from here or there etc – President Zardari has apparently demanded 100 billion dollars from America and that is the price being talked about for Pakistan to dismantle its nuclear weapons and be brought under an American “nuclear umbrella” instead.

I have pointed out elsewhere that what Pakistan seems to have been doing in international relations for decades is send out “mixed messages” – i.e. contradictory signals, whether in thought, word or deed. Clinical psychologists following the work of Gregory Bateson would say this leads to confusion among Pakistan’s interlocutors (a “double bind”) and the symptoms arise of what may be found in schizophrenic relationships. (See my article “Do President-elect Obama’s Pakistan specialists believe…”; on the “double bind” theory, an article I chanced to publish in the Journal of Genetic Psychology, 1986, may be of interest).

Here are a typical set of “mixed messages” emanating from Pakistan’s government and opinion-makers:

“We have nuclear weapons
“We keep our nuclear weapons safe from any misuse or unauthorized use
“We are willing to use nuclear weapons in a first strike against India
“We do not comprehend the lessons of Hiroshima-Nagasaki
“We do not comprehend the destruction India will visit upon us if we strike them
“We are dangerous so we must not be threatened in any way
“We are peace-loving and want to live in peace with India and Afghanistan
“We love to play cricket with India and watch Bollywood movies
“We love our Pakistan Army as it is one public institution that works
“We know the Pakistan Army has backed armed militias against India in the past
“We know these militias have caused terrorist attacks
“We are not responsible for any terrorist attacks
“We do not harbour any terrorists
“We believe the world should pay us to not use or sell our nuclear weapons
“We believe the world should pay us to not encourage the terrorists in our country
“We believe the world should pay us to prevent terrorists from using our nuclear weapons
“We hate India and do not want to become like India
“We love India and want to become like India
“We are India and we are not India…”

Etc.

A mature rational responsible and self-confident Pakistan would have said instead:

“We apologise to India and other countries for the outrageous murders our nationals have committed in Mumbai and elsewhere
“We ask the world to watch how our professional army is deployed to disarm civilian and all “non-state” actors of unauthorized firearms and explosives
“We do not need and will not demand or accept a dollar in any sort of foreign aid, military or civilian, to solve our problems
“We realize our economic and political institutions are a mess and we must clean them up
“We will strive to build a society imbued with what Iqbal described as the spirit of modern times..”

As someone who created at great personal cost at an American university twenty years ago the book Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s, I have a special interest in hoping that Pakistan shall find the path of wisdom.”

Posted in Academic economics, Academic research, Asia and the West, asymmetric information, Britain in India, Dogras, Economic Theory, Freedom, Governance, Government of India, Government of Pakistan, Imperialism, India's Constitution, India's Democracy, India's Diplomacy, India's Jurisprudence, India's Muslims, India's Partition, India's Polity, India's Rule of Law, India's secularism, India's Union-State relations, India-Pakistan peace process, International diplomacy, International Law, Jammu & Kashmir, Jammu & Kashmir in international law, Law, Liberalism/Libertarianism, Pakistan in international law, Pakistan's origins, Pakistan's psychology, Pakistan's military, Pakistan's terrorist masterminds, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistani expansionism, Pervez Musharraf, Political legitimacy, Political Philosophy, Political Science, Regional cooperation, Roman Law, Secular governance, Secularism in practice, Sheikh Abdullah, Sikhs, Sunnis and Shias, War, World History, Zafrullah Khan, Zainulabidin. Leave a Comment »

Comment on Mr Clemons’ note on the Pakistan military after the Rawalpindi attack

October 12, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

From Facebook:

Mr Clemons has made interesting and astute observations on Pakistan’s military following the Rawalpindi attack of the last few days.

But some political history is important. Pakistan’s military between 1947 and 1971 had built up an illusion that it could, with help from Patton tanks and Sabre jets and Starfighters, defeat India (one Pakistani is equivalent to 9 Indians etc etc).

In Dec 1971, despite the machinations of Nixon and Kissinger with the Pakistani strongman Yahya Khan, a free Bangladesh came to be born from the old colonized East Pakistan. 90,000 Pakistani POWS languished in Indian camps for more than a year (after being protected by India from Bangladeshi revenge).

The debacle led to some candid soul-searching and the official Pakistani inquiry commission squarely blamed debauchery and corruption in the Army from Yahya Khan downwards for bad generalship. Bangladesh seceded from West Pakistan essentially because of internal political contradictions, e.g. the imposition of Urdu on Bengali-speakers etc. Certainly Indian military help proved vital at the end but India did not cause the secession. (I was personally helping at a refugee camp as a schoolboy volunteer, when Ted Kennedy flew in to visit etc… stories for another time).

The Pakistan military has maintained a self-delusion that India caused the break-up of the original Pakistan and that India harbours similar designs to this day. India neither does nor has the capacity or motivation to do so.

The second factor was that Zia, who succeeded Yahya as military strongman and US ally, brought in Islamisation of the officer-corps as a counterweight to the trends of debauchery and corruption. These might be two crucial subjects for discussion if US discussants decide to go on a reflective retreat with Pakistan’s top military brass.

Posted in Bangladesh, India's military doctrine, India's Army, India's Bangladesh liberation war, India's Military Defence, India-Pakistan peace process, Pakistan in international law, Pakistan's history, Pakistan's military, Pakistan's terrorist training institutes, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistani expansionism, War, World History. Leave a Comment »

Seventy Years Today Since the British Government Politically Empowered MA Jinnah (2009)

September 4, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

Seventy Years Today Since the British Government Politically Empowered MA Jinnah

by

Subroto Roy

The bloated armies of Indian and Pakistani historians and pseudo-historians have failed to recognize the significance of the precise start of the Second World War upon the fortunes of the subcontinent. Yet, twenty years ago, in the book I and WE James created at an American university, Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s (now in pdf), one of our authors, Professor Francis Robinson of the University of London, had set out the principal facts most clearly as to what flowed from the September 4 1939 empowerment of MA Jinnah by the British Government.

Germany invaded Poland on September 1 1939 and Britain declared war on Germany on September 3. The next day, Linlithgow, the British Viceroy in India, started to treat MA Jinnah’s Muslim League on par with the Congress’s nationalist movement led by MK Gandhi. Until September 4 1939, the British “had had little time for Jinnah and his League. The Government’s declaration of war on Germany on 3 September, however, transformed the situation. A large part of the army was Muslim, much of the war effort was likely to rest on the two Muslim majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal. The following day, the Viceroy invited Jinnah for talks on an equal footing with Gandhi” (Robinson, in James & Roy (eds) Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy 1989, 1992).

Jinnah himself was amazed by the new British attitude towards him: “suddenly there was a change in the attitude towards me. I was treated on the same basis as Mr Gandhi. I was wonderstruck why all of a sudden I was promoted and given a place side by side with Mr Gandhi.”

Jinnah’s political weakness had been made obvious by the electoral defeats the Muslim League had suffered in the 1937 elections in the very provinces which more or less came to constitute West Pakistan and today constitute modern Pakistan. Britain, at war with Germany and soon Japan, was faced with the intransigence of the Congress leadership. It was unsurprising this would contribute to the British tilt empowering Congress’s declared adversary, Jinnah and the Muslim League, and hence make credible the possibility of the Pakistan that they had demanded:

“As the Congress began to demand immediate independence, the Viceroy took to reassuring Jinnah that Muslim interests would be safeguarded in any constitutional change. Within a few months, he was urging the League to declare a constructive policy for the future, which was of course presented in the Lahore Resolution. In their August 1940 offer, the British confirmed for the benefit of Muslims that power would not be transferred against the will of any significant element in Indian life. And much the same confirmation was given in the Cripps offer nearly two years later…. Throughout the years 1940 to 1945, the British made no attempt to tease out the contradictions between the League’s two-nation theory, which asserted that Hindus and Muslims came from two different civilisations and therefore were two different nations, and the Lahore Resolution, which demanded that ‘Independent States’ should be constituted from the Muslim majority provinces of the NE and NW, thereby suggesting that Indian Muslims formed not just one nation but two. When in 1944 the governors of Punjab and Bengal urged such a move on the Viceroy, Wavell ignored them, pressing ahead instead with his own plan for an all-India conference at Simla. The result was to confirm, as never before in the eyes of leading Muslims in the majority provinces, the standing of Jinnah and the League. Thus, because the British found it convenient to take the League seriously, everyone had to as well—Congressmen, Unionists, Bengalis, and so on….”(Robinson in James & Roy (eds) Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy, pp. 43-44).

Even British socialists who were sympathetic to Indian aspirations, would grow cold when the Congress seemed to abjectly fail to appreciate Britain’s predicament during war with Germany and Japan (Gandhi, for example, dismissing the 1942 Cripps offer as a “post-dated cheque on a failing bank”).

By the 1946 elections, Muslim mass opinion had changed drastically to seem to be strongly in favour of the creation of a Pakistan. The intervening years were the ones when urban mobs all over India could be found shouting the League’s slogans: “Larke lenge Pakistan; Marke lenge Pakistan, Khun se lenge Pakistan; Dena hoga Pakistan; Leke rahenge Pakistan” (We will spill blood to take Pakistan, you will have to yield a Pakistan.)

Events remote from India’s history and geography, namely, the rise of Hitler and the Second World War, had contributed between 1937 and 1947 to the change of fortunes of the Muslim League and hence of all the people of the subcontinent.

The British had long discovered that the mutual antipathy between Muslims and Hindus could be utilised in fashioning their rule; specifically that the organisation and mobilisation of Muslim communal opinion in the subcontinent was a useful counterweight to any pan-Indian nationalism which might emerge to compete with British authority. As early as 1874, well before Allan Octavian Hume, ICS, had conceived the Indian National Congress, John Strachey, ICS, was to observe “The existence side by side of these (Hindu and Muslim) hostile creeds is one of the strong points in our political position in India. The better classes of Mohammedans are a source of strength to us and not of weakness. They constitute a comparatively small but an energetic minority of the population whose political interests are identical with ours.” By 1906, when a deputation of Muslims headed by the Aga Khan first approached the British pleading for communal representation, Minto the Viceroy replied: “I am as firmly convinced as I believe you to be that any electoral representation in India would be doomed to mischievous failure which aimed at granting a personal enfranchisement, regardless of the beliefs and traditions of the communities composing the population of this Continent.” Minto’s wife wrote in her diary that the effect was “nothing less than the pulling back of sixty two millions of (Muslims) from joining the ranks of the seditious opposition.” (The true significance of MAK Azad may have been that he, precisely at the same time, did indeed feel within himself the nationalist’s desire for freedom strongly enough to want to join the ranks of that seditious opposition.)

If a pattern emerges as to the nature of the behaviour of the British political state with respect to the peoples of this or similar regions, it is precisely the economic one of rewarding those loyal to them who had protected or advanced their interests, and penalising those perceived to be acting against their will. It is wishful to think of members of the British political state as benevolent paternalists, who met with matching deeds their often philanthropic words about promoting the general welfare of their colonial wards or subordinate allies. The slogan “If you are not with us you are against us” that has come to be used by many from the Shining Path Maoists of Peru to President George W. Bush, had been widely applied already by the British in India, especially in the form “If you dare not to be with us, we will be certainly with your adversaries”. It came to be used with greatest impact on the subcontinent’s fortunes in 1939 when Britain found itself reluctantly at war with Hitler’s Germany.

British loyalties lay with those who had been loyal to them.

Hence in the “Indian India” of the puppet princes, Hari Singh and other “Native Princes” who had sent troops to fight as part of the British armies would be treated with a pusillanimity and grandeur so as to flatter their vanities, Sheikh Abdullah’s rebellion representing the Muslim masses of the Kashmir Valley would be ignored. And in British India, Jinnah the conservative Anglophile and his elitist Muslim League would be backed, while the radicalised masses of the Gandhi-Bose-Nehru Congress would have to be suppressed as a nuisance.

(Similarly, much later, Pakistan’s bemedalled army generals would be backed by the United States against Mujibur Rehman’s impoverished student-rebels, and India’s support frowned upon regardless of how just the Bangladeshi cause.)

Altruism is a limited quality in all human affairs, never more scarce than in relations between nations. In “Pakistan’s Allies”, I showed how the strategic interests of Britain, and later Britain’s American ally, came to evolve in the Northwest of the subcontinent ever since the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar as long as a Russian and later a Soviet empire had existed. A similar evolution of British domestic interests in India is distinctly observable in British support for the Pakistan Movement itself, leading on August 14 1947 to the creation of the new Dominion of Pakistan.

Sheikh Abdullah’s democratic urges or Nehru’s Indian nationalism or the general welfare of the subcontinent’s people had no appeal as such to the small and brittle administrative machinery in charge of Britain’s Indian Empire — even though individual Britons had come to love, understand and explain India for the permanent benefit of her people. This may help to explain how Britain’s own long democratic traditions at home could often be found so wonderful by Indians yet the actions of the British state abroad so incongruent with them.

Posted in Bangladesh, Britain, Britain in India, British foreign policy, British history, British imperialism, British military doctrine and traditions, Democracy, European history, European politics, FCR Robinson, Freedom, Germany, Governance, Government of India, Government of Pakistan, Hitler, Imperialism, India's religions, India's Bangladesh liberation war, India's History, India's independence, India's Nationalism, India's Partition, India's secularism, India-Pakistan peace process, Indian National Congress Origins, International diplomacy, International Law, International politics, Jammu & Kashmir, Jammu & Kashmir in international law, Jawaharlal Nehru, Liberalism/Libertarianism, Life and death, MA Jinnah, Maulana Azad, Military doctrine, MK Gandhi, Mujibur Rahman, Muslim and Hindu communalism, Pakistan in international law, Pakistan's origins, Pakistan's history, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Poland, Serendipity and international relations, Sheikh Abdullah, University of Hawaii, US Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Espionage, US Pakistan policy, War, World History, World War. 7 Comments »

On the curious pre-9/11 quaintness of current criticism of India’s 1998 nuclear tests

August 28, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

I said towards the end of my June 4-5 2006 article in The Statesman “Pakistan’s Allies”

“…America and its allies would not be safe for long since the civil war they had left behind in Afghanistan while trying to defeat the USSR now became a brew from which arose a new threat of violent Islamism. Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, whom Pakistan’s military and the USA had promoted, now encouraged unprecedented attacks on the American mainland on September 11 2001 ~ causing physical and psychological damage which no Soviet, Chinese or Cuban missiles ever had been allowed to do….”

Earlier, in The Statesman of October 26 2005, I had outlined a series of recent US espionage failures

“There have been three or four enormous failures of American espionage (i.e. intelligence and counter-intelligence) in the last 20 years. The collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of Soviet communism were salubrious events but they had not been foreseen by the United States which was caught unawares by the speed and nature of the developments that took place. Other failures have been catastrophic.

First, there was the failure to prevent the attack that took place on the American mainland on September 11 2001. It killed several thousand civilians and caused vast, perhaps irreparable, psychological and physical destruction to the United States. The attack was without precedent. The December 7 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in Hawaii, though a surprise, was carried out by one military against another military and did not affect very many civilians (except that thousands of American civilians of Japanese ancestry came to be persecuted and placed in concentration camps for years by the US Government). And the last time the American mainland had been attacked before 2001 was in 1814 when British troops marched south from Canada and burnt down the Capitol and the US President’s house in Washington.

Secondly, there has been a failure to discover any reasonable justification for the American-led attack on Iraq and its invasion and occupation. Without any doubt, America has lost, at the very least, an incalculable amount of international goodwill as a result of this, let aside suffering two thousand young soldiers killed, fifteen thousand wounded, and an unending cost in terms of prestige and resources in return for the thinnest of tangible gains. India at great cost liberated East Pakistan from the brutal military tyranny of Yahya Khan and Tikka Khan in December 1971 but the average Bangladeshi today could hardly care less. Regardless of what form of government emerges in Iraq now, there is no doubt the mass of the Iraqi people will cheer the departure of the bulk of foreign troops and tanks from their country (even if a permanent set of a dozen hermetically sealed American bases remain there for ever, as appears to have been planned).

When things go wrong in any democracy, it is natural and healthy to set up a committee to investigate, and America has done that several times now. For such committees to have any use at all they must be as candid as possible and perhaps the most candid of the American committees has been the US Government’s 9/11 Commission. But it too has appeared no closer to finding out who was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks or who financed it and who, precisely, executed it. Osama Bin Laden may have been the ideological head of a movement allied to the perpetrators, and Bin Laden undoubtedly expressed his glee afterwards, but it beggars the imagination that Bin Laden could have been executive president in charge of this operation while crawling around Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan. If not him, then whom? Mossad the Israeli spy agency was supposed to have pointed to a super-secret invisible Lebanese terrorist but nobody really knows. The biggest modern mass murder remains unsolved.

As for solutions, the American 9/11 Commission went into the same politically correct formulae that came to be followed in 2005 by British PM Tony Blair’s New Labour Cabinet, namely, that “moderate” peace-loving Muslims must be encouraged and bribed not to turn to terrorism (indeed to expose those among them who do), while “extremist” Muslims must be stamped out with brute force. This rests on a mistaken premise that an economic carrot-and-stick policy can work in creating a set of external incentives and disincentives for Muslims, when in fact believing Muslims, like many other religious believers, are people who feel the power of their religion deep within themselves and so are unlikely to be significantly affected by external incentives or disincentives offered by non-believers. Another committee has been the United States Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence which reported in July 2004, and from whose findings have stemmed as an offshoot the current matter about whether high government officials broke the law that is being investigated by Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

Bertrand Russell said in his obituary of Ludwig Wittgenstein that he had once gone about looking under all the tables and chairs to prove to Wittgenstein that there was not a hippopotamus present in the room. In the present case, however, there is in fact a very large hippopotamus present in the room yet the entire American foreign policy establishment has seemed to refuse to wish to see it. Saddam Hussain and OBL are undoubtedly certifiable members of the international gallery of rogues – but the central fact remains they were rogues who were in alliance with America’s defined strategic interests in the 1980s. Saddam Hussain’s Iraq invaded Iran in 1980 and gassed the Kurds in 1986; an Iraqi Mirage on May 17 1987 fired two Exocet missiles at the USS Stark killing 37 American sailors and injuring 21. The Americans did nothing. The reason was that Saddam was still in favour at the time and had not yet become a demon in the political mythology of the American state, and it was expedient for nothing to be done. Indeed Saddam’s Iraq was explicitly removed in 1982 from the US Government’s list of states sponsoring terrorism because, according to the State Department’s Patterns of Global Terrorism, it had “moved closer to the policies of its moderate Arab neighbours”.

The very large hippopotamus that is present in the room at the moment is April Glaspie, the highly regarded professional career diplomat and American Ambassador to Iraq at the time of the 1990 Gulf War. Saddam Hussein as President had a famous meeting with her on July 25 1990, eight days before he invaded Kuwait. The place was the Presidential Palace in Baghdad and the Iraqis videotaped the meeting:

U.S. Ambassador Glaspie – “I have direct instructions from President (George Herbert Walker) Bush to improve our relations with Iraq. We have considerable sympathy for your quest for higher oil prices, the immediate cause of your confrontation with Kuwait. (pause) As you know, I lived here for years and admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. We know you need funds. We understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. (pause) We can see that you have deployed massive numbers of troops in the south. Normally that would be none of our business, but when this happens in the context of your threats against Kuwait, then it would be reasonable for us to be concerned. For this reason, I have received an instruction to ask you, in the spirit of friendship – not confrontation – regarding your intentions: Why are your troops massed so very close to Kuwait’s borders?

Saddam Hussein – As you know, for years now I have made every effort to reach a settlement on our dispute with Kuwait. There is to be a meeting in two days; I am prepared to give negotiations only this one more brief chance. (pause) When we (the Iraqis) meet (with the Kuwaitis) and we see there is hope, then nothing will happen. But if we are unable to find a solution, then it will be natural that Iraq will not accept death.

U. S. Ambassador Glaspie – What solutions would be acceptable?

Saddam Hussein – If we could keep the whole of the Shatt al Arab – our strategic goal in our war with Iran – we will make concessions (to the Kuwaitis). But, if we are forced to choose between keeping half of the Shatt and the whole of Iraq (i.e., in Saddam’ s view, including Kuwait ) then we will give up all of the Shatt to defend our claims on Kuwait to keep the whole of Iraq in the shape we wish it to be. (pause) What is the United States’ opinion on this?

U.S. Ambassador Glaspie – We have no opinion on your Arab – Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960’s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America. (Saddam smiles)

Saddam had seen himself fighting Islamic Iran on behalf of the Kuwaitis, Saudis and other Arabs, and Islamic Iran was of course the sworn adversary of the USA at least since Khomeini had deposed America’s ally, the Shah. Therefore Saddam could not be all bad in the eyes of the State Department. On August 2 1990, the Iraqi troops seen by American satellites amassed on the border, invaded and occupied Kuwait. On September 2 1990, the Iraqis released the videotape and transcript of the July 29 Saddam-Glaspie meeting and Glaspie was confronted by British journalists as she left the Embassy:

Journalist 1 – Are the transcripts (holding them up) correct, Madam Ambassador? (No answer from Glaspie)

Journalist 2 – You knew Saddam was going to invade (Kuwait ) but you didn’t warn him not to. You didn’t tell him America would defend Kuwait. You told him the opposite – that America was not associated with Kuwait.

Journalist 1 – You encouraged this aggression – his invasion. What were you thinking?

U.S. Ambassador Glaspie – Obviously, I didn’t think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait.

Journalist 1 – You thought he was just going to take some of it? But, how could you? Saddam told you that, if negotiations failed , he would give up his Iran(Shatt al Arab waterway) goal for the whole of Iraq, in the shape we wish it to be. You know that includes Kuwait, which the Iraqis have always viewed as a historic part of their country!

Journalist 1 – America green-lighted the invasion. At a minimum, you admit signalling Saddam that some aggression was okay – that the U.S. would not oppose a grab of the al-Rumeilah oil field, the disputed border strip and the Gulf Islands (including Bubiyan) – the territories claimed by Iraq?

Glaspie said nothing, the car door closed behind her, the car drove off. Nothing has been apparently heard from Glaspie ever since, and we may have to wait for her memoirs in 25 years when they are declassified to come to know what happened. It is astonishing, however, that the 521 page report of the US Senate’s Select Committee on espionage about Iraq before the 2003 war finds no cause whatsoever to mention Glaspie at all (at least in its public censored version). It is almost as if Glaspie has never existed and her conversation with Saddam never happened. Glaspie has disappeared down an Orwellian memory-hole. Yet her conversation with Saddam was the last official, recorded conversation between the Americans and Saddam while they were still on friendly terms.

There may be many causes explaining how such serious failures have come to occur in a country where billions of dollars have been annually spent on espionage. Among them must be that while America’s great strengths have included creation of the finest advanced scientific and technological base on earth, America’s great intellectual weaknesses in recent decades have included an impatience with historical and philosophical reflection of all sorts, and that includes reflection about her own as well as other cultures. This is exemplified too in the third palpable failure of intelligence of the last 20 years, which has been to have not foreseen or prevented atomic weapons from being developed by America and Britain’s Islamist ally and client-state, Pakistan, and thence to have failed to prevent the proliferation of such weapons in general. The consequences of that may yet turn out to be the most grave.”

Now as it happens, a couple of days ago, eleven years after the Government of India’s May 1998 underground nuclear tests at Pokhran, an Indian scientist who had something to do with them has engaged in a general discussion about the tests’ efficacy. Indian newspapers duly reported this as part of an ongoing domestic discussion about nuclear policy.

Oddly enough, there has been an instantaneous reaction from American critics of India’s nuclear activities – beginning with Dr Jeffrey Lewis:

“Yes, Virginia, India’s H-bomb fizzled. K Santhanam (who was director of test site preparations for India’s 1998 nuclear tests… has admitted what everyone else has known for a long time — that India’s 1998 test of a thermonuclear device was unsuccessful.…”

Followed by Mark Hibbs:

“Is this cool or what? I remember what happened when I wrote that article in the fall of 1998 saying in the headline that the US had concluded that the Indian “H-Bomb failed.” Almost overnight after the article was published I got a huge bundle of papers from BARC and DAE sent to me by diplomatic pouch from Mumbai informing me with all kinds of numbers that I was wrong. I gave the papers to laboratory geoscientists at several European countries and the US. One main CTBTO monitoring scientist told me explicitly: “Nope. The stuff in these papers is shitty science. They haven’t shown that you are wrong.” That having been said, please note however that, as PK Iyengar had made the case to me back a decade ago, once again this “news” is surfacing in India because their bomb makers want to keep testing. Some things in India are changing fast. Other things aren’t.”

Followed by Charles Mead:

“I got into a huge pissing match with the Indians on this issue as I was the principal author of Barker et. al. 1998 which had the yield estimates far below the Indian press releases. A number of Indian scientists tried to submit a comment to Science rebutting our analysis. We asked them to provide the in-country seismic data on which they based their analysis, but they refused. Luckily, in the end, their comment was rejected and never published. On a related note, I saw the other day that wikipedia has a glowing description of the Indian 1998 tests, citing the inflated yields and saying the tests were a huge technical accomplishment. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokhran-II In the next day or so, I plan to submit a corrected analysis.”

Mark Hibbs:

“Charles, I recall one of your co-authors back then explained to me in nitty-gritty detail your frustration on this with these guys. Please do correct the record for posterity.”

Charles Meade:

“Their arguments at the time were quite remarkable. They said that our seismic data didn’t reflect the true yield because of a complex interference pattern caused by the simultaneous tests. Under these circumstances, they said that one could only obtain the correct yield from near field data. We said, “fine, show it to us”. They refused and that was the end of their paper.”

Yale Simkin:

“The Indian argument: ‘For us to have a nuclear deterrent we must weaponise. For this, we must have fusion weapons, because these are smaller, lighter, and more efficient than fission weapons.’ is a lot of hooey. They claim to be building a deterrent force, not a war-fighting arsenal with a counter-force capability. For the size and mass of their likely early-generation fusion designs, they can instead use basic fission bombs yielding in the multi-dekakiloton range – multiples of the hell weapons that incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That should be sufficient to deter any rational adversary. And if they aren’t rational, then you have no deterrent.”

Hmmm. The choice of terminology even within such a brief discussion might reveal a little of the mind-set: “shitty science”, “pissing match”, “a lot of hooey”…

Rather uncool, really.

Specifically:

“A number of Indian scientists tried to submit a comment to Science rebutting our analysis. We asked them to provide the in-country seismic data on which they based their analysis, but they refused. Luckily, in the end, their comment was rejected and never published…. Their arguments at the time were quite remarkable. They said that our seismic data didn’t reflect the true yield because of a complex interference pattern caused by the simultaneous tests. Under these circumstances, they said that one could only obtain the correct yield from near field data. We said, “fine, show it to us”. They refused and that was the end of their paper.

Hmmm — once more. The words that I have placed in bold above might be prima facie evidence of incorrect and hence unfair editorial procedures having been followed at Science (distinguished as its general reputation may be as a journal). Why were these here-unnamed “Indian scientists” not allowed to speak for themselves, rather than have their now-unknown statements be bowdlerised out of their critics’ memories a decade later (when these critics themselves had been the subject of the rebuttal)? Perhaps the rebuttal should not have been refused publication even if it came with an editorial caveat that all the data deemed necessary had not been provided (which may have been the case, for example, due to a Government gag-order). Readers today would have been able to judge for themselves.

I am happy to claim zero expertise in the field known rather sweetly as “Crater Morphology”; but post 9/11, post-Iraq war, it does seem to me a rather quaint form of prejudice to be using such words as those quoted above in discussing the precise tonnage of the Indian explosions and how, really, India’s scientists were not up to it. Perhaps, when matters of public policy or international diplomacy become involved, science everywhere is too important to be left to the scientists.

Are all the available data out there in the public domain on which to judge whether the Indian explosions in 1998 were or were not what was precisely claimed at the time? Apparently not.

Does it matter to anything today? Hardly. Not even to the credibility of the Government of India (something on which I have had a lot to say over decades).

Do Governments lie? Yes Virginia, they do.

Governments the world over, whether Indian, American, Russian, Chinese, British, French, Israeli, Arab, Pakistani or whatever, let aside inter-Governmental bodies constituted by these Governments, are prone to exaggeration, propaganda, self-delusion, self-deception as well as deliberate mendacity, perhaps routinely on a daily basis.

(For myself as an individual, I have had to battle the demonstrated and deliberate mendacity of the government of one of the fifty States in the US federal courts for two decades now, as told of elsewhere…)

An Age of Government Mendacity has seemed to descend upon the world — which makes the smugness expressed so quickly today by the critics of India’s 1998 explosions seem, as I have said, quaint.

Is the current Indian debate indicating something about keeping open the possibility of more tests and isn’t this related to the Indo-US civil nuclear deal? It may well be, I do not know. My position for what it is worth has been clear and described in several articles in The Statesman in recent years e.g.

1) Atoms for Peace (or War) (March 5 2006)

“Atoms for Peace” was Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1953 speech to the UN (presided over by Jawaharlal Nehru’s sister) from which arose the IAEA. Eisenhower was the warrior par excellence, having led the Allies to victory over Hitler a few years earlier.

Yet he was the first to see “no sane member of the human race” can discover victory in the “desolation, degradation and destruction” of nuclear war. “Occasional pages of history do record the faces of the ‘great destroyers’, but the whole book of history reveals mankind’s never-ending quest for peace and mankind’s God-given capacity to build.” Speaking of the atomic capacity of America’s communist adversary at the time, he said: “We never have, and never will, propose or suggest that the Soviet Union surrender what rightly belongs to it. We will never say that the peoples of the USSR are an enemy with whom we have no desire ever to deal or mingle in friendly and fruitful relationship.” Rather, “if the fearful trend of atomic military build-up can be reversed, this greatest of destructive forces can be developed into a great boon, for the benefit of all mankind…. if the entire body of the world’s scientists and engineers had adequate amounts of fissionable material… this capability would rapidly be transformed into universal, efficient and economic usage”. Eisenhower’s IAEA would receive contributions from national “stockpiles of normal uranium and fissionable materials”, and also impound, store and protect these and devise “methods whereby this fissionable material would be allocated to serve the peaceful pursuits of mankind.…to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world… to serve the needs rather than the fears of mankind.” When Eisenhower visited India he was greeted as the “Prince of Peace” and a vast multitude threw rose petals as he drove by in an open limousine.

Now, half a century later, Dr Manmohan Singh read a speech in Parliament on February 27 relating to our nuclear discussions with America. But it seems unclear even his speech-writers or technical advisers knew how far it was rhetoric and how far grounded in factual realities. There is also tremendous naivete among India’s media anchors and political leaders as to what exactly has been agreed by the Americans on March 2.

Churchill once asked what might have happened if Lloyd George and Clemenceau told Woodrow Wilson: “Is it not true that nothing but your fixed and expiring tenure of office prevents you from being thrown out of power?” The same holds for George W. Bush today. Wilson made many promises to the world that came to be hit for a six by US legislators. In December 2005, Edward Markey (Democrat) and Fred Upton (Republican) promised to scuttle Bush’s agreements with India, and once the pleasant memories of his India visit fade, Bush may quite easily forget most things about us. All the Americans have actually agreed to do is to keep talking.

It needs to be understood that submarine-launched ballistic missiles are the only ultimate military deterrent. Land and air forces are all vulnerable to a massive first-strike. Only submarines lurking silently for long periods in waters near their target, to launch nuclear warheads upon learning their homeland had been hit by the enemy, act as a deterrent preventing that same enemy from making his attack at all. Indeed, the problem becomes how a submarine commander will receive such information and his instructions during such a war. (For India to acquire an ICBM capability beyond the MRBM Agni rockets is to possess an expensive backward technology — as retrograde as the idea India should spend scarce resources sending manned moon missions half a century after it has already been done. The secret is to do something new and beneficial for mankind, not repeat what others did long ago merely to show we can now do it too.) A nuclear-armed submarine needs to be submerged for long periods and also voyage long distances at sea, and hence needs to be nuclear-powered with a miniature version of a civilian nuclear reactor aboard in which, e.g. rods of enriched uranium are bombarded to release enough energy to run hydroelectric turbines to generate power. Patently, no complete separation of the use of atomic power for peace and war may be practically possible. If India creates e.g. its own thorium reactors for civilian power (and we have vast thorium reserves, the nuclear fuel of the future), and then miniaturised these somehow to manufacture reactors for submarines, the use would be both civilian and military. In 1988 the old USSR leased India a nuclear-powered submarine for “training” purposes, and the Americans did not like it at all. In January 2002, Russia’s Naval Chief announced India was paying to build and then lease from 2004 until 2009 two nuclear-powered Akula-class attack submarines, and Jaswant Singh reportedly said we were paying $1 thousand crore ($10 bn) for such a defence package. Whether the transaction has happened is not known. Once we have nuclear submarines permanently, that would be more than enough of the minimum deterrent sought.

Indeed, India’s public has been barely informed of civilian nuclear energy policy as well, and an opportunity now exists for a mature national debate to take place — both on what and why the military planning has been and what it costs (and whether any bribes have been paid), and also on the cost, efficiency and safety of the plans for greater civilian use of nuclear energy. Government behaviour after the Bhopal gas tragedy does not inspire confidence about Indian responses to a Three Mile Island/Chernobyl kind of catastrophic meltdown.

That being said, the central question remains why India or anyone else needs to be nuclear-armed at all. With Britain, France or Russia, there is no war though all three are always keen to sell India weapons. Indeed it has been a perennial question why France and Britain need their own deterrents. They have not fought one another for more than 100 years and play rugby instead. If Russia was an enemy, could they not count on America? Or could America itself conceivably become an enemy of Britain and France? America owes her origins to both, and though the Americans did fight the British until the early 1800s, they have never fought the French and love the City of Paris too much ever to do so.

Between China and India, regardless of what happened half a century ago, nuclear or any war other than border skirmishes in sparse barren lands is unlikely. Ever since Sun Yat-sen, China has been going through a complex process of self-discovery and self-definition. An ancient nation where Maoism despoiled the traditional culture and destroyed Tibet, China causes others to fear it because of its inscrutability. But it has not been aggressive in recent decades except with Taiwan. It has threatened nuclear war on America if the Americans stand up for Taiwan, but that is not a quarrel in which India has a cogent role. China (for seemingly commercial reasons) did join hands with Pakistan against India, but there is every indication the Chinese are quite bored with what Pakistan has become. With Pakistan, our situation is well-known, and there has been an implicit equilibrium since Pokhran II finally flushed out their capacity. Had India ever any ambition of using conventional war to knock out and occupy Pakistan as a country? Of course not. We are barely able to govern ourselves, let aside try to rule an ideologically hostile Muslim colony in the NorthWest. Pakistan’s purported reasons for acquiring nuclear bombs are spurious, and cruelly so in view of the abject failures of Pakistan’s domestic political economy. Could Pakistan’s Government use its bombs against India arising from its own self-delusions over J&K? Gohar Ayub Khan in 1998-1999 threatened to do so when he said the next war would be over in two hours with an Indian surrender. He thereby became the exception to Eisenhower’s rule requiring sanity. An India-Pakistan nuclear exchange is, unfortunately, not impossible, leaving J&K as Hell where Jahangir had once described it as Heaven on Earth.

America needs to end her recent jingoism and instead rediscover the legacy of Eisenhower. America can lead everyone in the world today including Russia, China, Israel, Iran and North Korea. But she can do so only by example. America can decommission many of her own nuclear weapons and then lead everyone else to the conference table to do at least some of the same. Like the UN, the IAEA (and its NPT) needs urgent reform itself. It is the right time for serious and new world parleys towards the safe use of atoms for peace and their abolition in war. But are there any Eisenhowers or Churchills to lead them?

2) Our energy interests ( Aug 27-28 2006)

Americans are shrewd and practical people in commercial matters, and expect the same of people they do business with. Caveat emptor, “let the buyer beware”, is the motto they expect those on the other side of the table to be using. Let us not think they are doing us favours in the nuclear deal ~ they are grown-ups looking after their interests and naturally expect we shall look after our own and not expect charity while doing business. Equally, let us not blame the Americans if we find in later years (long after Manmohan Singh and Montek Ahluwalia have exited from India’s stage) that the deal has been implemented in a bad way for our masses of ordinary people.

That said, there is a remarkable disjoint between India’s national energy interests (nuclear interests in particular), and the manner in which the nuclear deal is being perceived and taken to implementation by the two sides. There may be a fundamental gap between the genuine positive benefits the Government of India says the deal contains, and the motivations American businessmen and through them Indian businessmen have had for lobbying American and Indian politicians to support it. An atmosphere of being at cross-purposes has been created, where for example Manmohan Singh is giving answers to questions different from the questions we may want to be asking Montek Ahluwalia. The fundamental gap between what is being said by our Government and what may be intended by the businessmen is something anyone can grasp, though first we shall need some elementary facts.

In 2004, the International Energy Agency estimated the new energy capacity required by rising economic growth in 2020 will derive 1400 GW from burning coal (half of it in China and India), 470 GW from burning oil, 430GW from hydro, and 400 GW from renewable sources like solar or wind power. Because gas prices are expected to remain low worldwide, construction of new nuclear reactors for electricity will be unprofitable. By 2030, new energy expected to be required worldwide is 4700GW, of which only 150GW is expected from new nuclear plants, which will be in any case replacing existing plants due to be retired. Rational choice between different energy sources depends on costs determined by history and geography. Out of some 441 civilian reactors worldwide, France has 59 and these generate 78 per cent of its electricity, the rest coming from hydro. Japan has 54 reactors, generating 34% of its electricity from them. The USA has 104 reactors but generates only 20 per cent of its electricity from them, given its vast alternative sources of power like hydro. In India as of 2003, installed power generating capacity was 107,533.3MW, of which 71 per cent came from burning fuels. Among India’s energy sources, the largest growth-potential is hydroelectric, which does not involve burning fuels ~ gravity moves water from the mountains to the oceans, and this force is harnessed for generation. Our hydro potential, mostly in the North and North-East, is some 150,000MW but our total installed hydro capacity with utilities was only 26,910MW (about 18 per cent of potential). Our 14 civilian nuclear reactors produced merely 4 per cent or less of the electricity being consumed in the country. Those 14 plants will come under “international safeguards” by 2014 under the nuclear deal.

It is extremely likely the international restrictions our existing nuclear plants have been under since the 1970s have hindered if not crippled their functioning and efficiency. At the same time, the restrictions may have caused us to be innovative too. Nuclear power arises from fission of radioactive uranium, plutonium or thorium. India has some 8 million tonnes of monazite deposits along the seacoast of which half may be mined, to yield 225,000 tonnes of thorium metal; we have one innovatively designed thorium reactor under construction. Almost all nuclear energy worldwide today arises from uranium of which there are practically unlimited reserves. Fission of a uranium atom produces 10 million times the energy produced by combustion of an atom of carbon from coal. Gas and fossil fuels may be cheap and in plentiful supply worldwide for generations to come but potential for cheap nuclear energy seems practically infinite. The uranium in seawater can satisfy mankind’s total electricity needs for 7 million years. There is more energy in the uranium impurity present in coal than can arise from actually burning the coal. There is plenty of uranium in granite. None of these become profitable for centuries because there is so much cheap uranium extractable from conventional ores. Design improvements in reactors will also improve productivity; e.g. “fast breeder” reactors “breed” more fissile material than they use, and may get 100 times as much energy from a kilogram of uranium as existing reactors do. India has about 95,000 tonnes of uranium metal that may be mined to yield about 61,000 tonnes net for power generation. Natural uranium is 99.3 per cent of the U-238 isotope and 0.7 per cent of the radioactive U-235 isotope. Nuclear power generation requires “enriched uranium” or “yellow cake” to be created in which U-235 has been increased from 0.7 per cent to 4 to 5 percent. (Nuclear bombs require highly enriched uranium with more than 90 per cent of U-235.) Yellow cake is broken into small pieces, put in metal rods placed in bundles, which are then bombarded by neutrons causing fission. In a reactor, the energy released turns water into steam, which moves turbines generating electricity. While there is no carbon dioxide “waste” as in burning fossil fuels, the “spent” rods of nuclear fuel and other products constitute grave radioactive waste, almost impossible to dispose of.

The plausible part of the Government of India’s official line on the Indo-US nuclear deal is that removing the international restrictions will ~ through importation of new technologies, inputs, fuel etc ~ improve functioning of our 14 existing civilian plants. That is a good thing. Essentially, the price being paid for that improvement is our willingness to commit that those 14 plants will not be used for military purposes. Fair enough: even if we might become less innovative as a result, the overall efficiency gains as a result of the deal will add something to India’s productivity. However, those purchasing decisions involved in enhancing India’s efficiency gains must be made by the Government’s nuclear scientists on technical grounds of improving the working of our existing nuclear infrastructure.

It is a different animal altogether to be purchasing new nuclear reactors on a turn-key basis from American or any other foreign businessmen in a purported attempt to improve India’s “energy security”. (Lalu Yadav has requested a new reactor for Bihar, plus of course Delhi will want one, etc.) The central question over such massive foreign purchases would no longer be the technical one of using the Indo-US deal to improve efficiency or productivity of our existing nuclear infrastructure. Instead it would become a question of calculating social costs and benefits of our investing in nuclear power relative to other sources like hydroelectric power. Even if all other sources of electricity remained constant, and our civilian nuclear capacity alone was made to grow by 100 per cent under the Manmohan-Montek deal-making, that would mean less than 8% of total Indian electricity produced.

This is where the oddities arise and a disjoint becomes apparent between what the Government of India is saying and what American and Indian businessmen have been doing. A “US-India Business Council” has existed for thirty years in Washington as “the premier business advocacy organization promoting US commercial interests in India.… the voice of the American private sector investing in India”. Before the nuclear or any other deals could be contemplated with American business, the USIBC insisted we pay up for Dabhol contracted by a previous Congress Government. The Maharashtra State Electricity Board ~ or rather, its sovereign guarantor the Government of India ~ duly paid out at least $140-$160 million each to General Electric and Bechtel Corporations in “an amicable settlement” of the Dabhol affair. Afterwards, General Electric’s CEO for India was kind enough to say “India is an important country to GE’s global growth. We look forward to working with our partners, customers, and State and Central Governments in helping India continue to develop into a leading world economy”.

Also, a new “US-India CEO Forum” then came about. For two Governments to sponsor private business via such a Forum was “unprecedented”, as noted by Washington’s press during Manmohan Singh’s visit in July 2005. America’s foreign ministry announced it saying: “Both our governments have agreed that we should create a high-level private sector forum to exchange business community views on key economic priorities…” The American side includes heads of AES Corporation, Cargill Inc., Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Honeywell, McGraw-Hill, Parsons Brinckerhoff Ltd, PepsiCo, Visa International and Xerox Corporation. The Indian side includes heads of Tata Group, Apollo Hospitals Group, Bharat Forge Ltd, Biocon India Group, HDFC, ICICI One Source, Infosys, ITC Ltd, Max India Group and Reliance Industries. Presiding over the Indian side has been Montek Ahluwalia, Manmohan’s trusted aide ~ and let it be remembered too that the Ahluwalias were Manmohan’s strongest backers in his failed South Delhi Lok Sabha bid. (Indeed it is not clear if the Ahluwalias have been US or Indian residents in recent years, and if it is the former, the onus is on them to clear any perception of conflict of interest arising in regard to roles regarding the nuclear deal or any other official Indo-US business.)

Also, before the Manmohan visit, the Confederation of Indian Industry registered as an official lobbyist in Washington, and went about spending half a million dollars lobbying American politicians for the nuclear deal. After the Manmohan visit, the US Foreign Commercial Service reportedly said American engineering firms, equipment suppliers and contractors faced a $1,000 billion (1 bn =100 crore) opportunity in India. Before President Bush’s visit to India in March 2006, Manmohan Singh signed vast purchases of commercial aircraft from Boeing and Airbus, as well as large weapons’ deals with France and Russia. After the Bush visit, the US Chamber of Commerce said the nuclear deal can cause $100 billion worth of new American business in India’s energy-sector alone. What is going on?

Finally, the main aspect of Manmohan Singh’s address to America’s legislature had to do with agreeing with President Bush “to enhance Indo-US cooperation in the field of civilian nuclear technology”. What precisely does this mean? If it means the Indo-US nuclear deal will help India improve or maintain its existing nuclear infrastructure, well and good. There may be legitimate business for American and other foreign companies in that cause, which also helps India make the efficiency and productivity gains mentioned. Or has the real motivation for the American businessmen driving the deal (with the help of the “CEO Forum” etc) been to sell India nuclear reactors on a turn-key basis (in collaboration with private Indian businessmen) at a time when building new nuclear reactors is unprofitable elsewhere in the world because of low gas prices? India’s citizens may demand to know from the Government whether the Manmohan-Montek deal-making is going to cause importation of new nuclear reactors, and if so, why such an expensive alternative is being considered (relative to e.g. India’s abundant hydroelectric potential) when it will have scant effect in satisfying the country’s energy needs and lead merely to a worsening of our macroeconomic problems. Both Manmohan Singh and Montek Ahluwalia have been already among those to preside over the growth of India’s macroeconomic problems through the 1980s and 1990s.

Lastly, an irrelevant distraction should be gotten out of the way. Are we a “nuclear weapons” state? Of course we are, but does it matter to anything but our vanity? Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev had control over vastly more nuclear weapons and they declared together twenty years ago: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must not be fought”, which is how the Cold War started to come to an end. We need to remind ourselves that India and Pakistan are large, populous countries with hundreds of millions of materially poor, ill-informed citizens, weak tax-bases, humongous internal and external public debts (i.e. debt owed by the Government to domestic and foreign creditors), non-investment grade credit- ratings in world financial markets, massive annual fiscal deficits, inconvertible currencies, nationalized banks, and runaway printing of paper-money. Discussing nuclear or other weapon-systems to attack one other with is mostly a pastime of our cowardly, irresponsible and yes, corrupt, elites.

3) Need for Clarity A poorly drafted treaty driven by business motives is a recipe for international misunderstanding (August 19 2007)

Confusion prevails over the Indo-US Nuclear Deal. Businessmen, bureaucrats, politicians, diplomats, scientists and now the public at large have all joined in the cacophony in the last two years. On Wednesday August 15, America’s foreign ministry made the clearest most unequivocal statement possible as to the official American Government interpretation of the Indo-US nuclear deal: “The proposed 123 agreement has provisions in it that in an event of a nuclear test by India, then all nuclear co-operation is terminated, as well as there is provision for return of all materials, including reprocessed material covered by the agreement” (Sean McCormack). Yet our Prime Minister had told Parliament two days earlier: “The agreement does not in any way affect India’s right to undertake future nuclear tests, if it is necessary”. What is going on? Our politics are in uproar, and it has been suggested in these pages that the country go to a General Election to allow the people to speak on the matter. Clearly, we need some clarity.

Let us start at the beginning. How did it all originate? The private US nuclear industry prevailed upon India’s government bureaucrats and businessmen over several years that nuclear power is the way forward to solving India’s “infrastructure” problems. They would sell us, in words of the Manmohan-Montek Planning Commission’s energy adviser, “six to eight lightwater reactors” (especially as they may not be able to sell these anywhere else). Our usual prominent self-seeking retired bureaucrats started their waffling about the importance of “infrastructure”.

Then Manmohan Singh felt his foreign travels as PM could be hardly complete without a fife-and-drum visit to the White House. But before he could do so, Dabhol would have to be cleared up since American business in India was on a self-moratorium until GE and Bechtel were paid settlements of some $140-160 million each by the Governments of India and Maharashtra. GE’s CEO for India kindly said afterwards “India is an important country to GE’s global growth. We look forward to working with our partners, customers, and State and Central Governments in helping India continue to develop into a leading world economy”.

Also, before Manmohan’s USA trip, the Confederation of Indian Industry registered as an official Washington lobbyist and spent half a million dollars lobbying American politicians for the deal. (”Why?” would be a good question.)

So Dr Singh was able to make his White House visit, accompanied by US business lobbies saying the nuclear deal can generate $100 billion worth of new American business in India’s energy-sector alone. It is only when business has lubricated politics in America that so much agreement about the India-deal could arise. The “bottom-line” is that six to eight reactors must be sold to India, whatever politics and diplomacy it takes.

Now Dr Singh is not a PM who is a Member of the Lower House of Parliament commanding its confidence. He says his Government constitutes the Executive and can sign treaties on India’s behalf. This is unwise. If he signs a treaty and then the Congress Party loses the next General Election, a new Executive Government can use his same words to rescind the same treaty. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. One reason we are so confused is that India has not signed very many bilateral treaties, and there is barely a noted specialist in international law anywhere in the country. Dr Singh’s original mentor, PN Haksar, had gone about getting a treaty signed with the USSR back in 1971 which tided us over a war, though the USSR itself collapsed before that treaty ended.

Signing a treaty is much more than signing an international MOU. It requires a national consensus or a least a wide and deep understanding on the part of the public and the political class as to what necessitates the treaty. That plainly does not exist at present. Most people in India do not even know how nuclear power is generated, nor how small and insignificant nuclear power has been in India.

Natural uranium is 99.3 per cent of the U-238 isotope and 0.7 per cent the radioactive U-235 isotope. Nuclear power generation requires “enriched uranium” or “yellow cake” to be created in which U-235 has been increased from 0.7 per cent to 4 to 5 percent. (Nuclear bombs require “highly enriched” uranium with more than 90 per cent of U-235.) Yellow cake is broken into small pieces, put in metal rods placed in bundles, which are then bombarded by neutrons causing fission. In a reactor, the energy released turns water into steam, which moves turbines generating electricity. While there is no carbon dioxide “waste” as in burning fossil fuels, the “spent” rods of nuclear fuel and other products constitute grave radioactive waste, almost impossible to dispose of.

India’s 14 “civilian” nuclear reactors presently produce less than 4% of our total power. 70% of our power arises from burning fossil fuels, mainly coal. Much of the rest arises from hydro. We have vast hydroelectric potential in the North and Northeast but it would take a lot of serious political, administrative and civil engineering effort to organise all that, and there would not be any nice visits to Washington or Paris involved for politicians and bureaucrats.

Simple arithmetic says that even if all our principal energy sources stayed constant and only our tiny nuclear power sector grew by 100%, that would still hardly increase by very much our energy output overall. Placing a couple of expensive modern lightwater reactors around Delhi, a couple around Mumbai and a few other metros will, however, butter already buttered bread quite nicely and keep all those lifts and ACs running.

The agreed text of the “treaty” looks, from a legal standpoint, quite sloppily and hurriedly written ~ almost as if each side has cut and paste its own preferred terms in different places with a nod to the other side. For example, there is mention of “WMD” initially which is repeated as “weapons of mass destruction” just a little later. There is solemn mention of the “Government of India” and “Government of the United States of America” as the “Parties”, but this suddenly becomes merely “United States” and “India” in the middle and then reverts again to the formal usage.

Through the sloppiness comes scope for different interpretations. The Americans have said: try not to test, you don’t need to, we don’t test any more, and you have to know that if you do test, this deal is over, in fact it gets reversed. We have said, okay, we won’t test, and if we do test we know it is over with you but that does not mean it is over with others. Given such sloppy diplomacy and treaty-making, the scope for mutual misunderstanding, even war, remains immense long after all the public Indian moneys have found their way into private pockets worldwide. Will a future President Jeb Bush or Chelsea Clinton send F-22 bombers to bomb India’s nuclear facilities because India has carried out a test yet declined to return American equipment? Riding a tiger is not something generally to be recommended.

The answer to our present conundrum must be patience and the fullest transparency. What is the rush? If it is good or bad for us to buy six or eight new American reactors now, it will remain good or bad to do so a year or two from now after everyone has had a thorough think about everything that is involved. What the Manmohan-Montek Planning Commission needed to do first of all was a thorough cost-benefit analysis of India’s energy requirements but such elementary professionalism has been sorely lacking among our economists for decades.”

Subroto Roy

Excuse me but young Kasab in fact confessed many months ago, immediately after he was captured – he deserves 20 or 30 years in an Indian prison, and a chance to become a model prisoner who will stand against the very terrorists who sent him on his vile mission

July 20, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

I have almost stopped being amazed by the near-imbecility that our English-language TV and print media seem so often to be capable of. Oui mes enfants, Kasab did confess to mass-murder and other crimes in open court today but please do not feign such surprise for commercial reasons — if you had done your homework diligently you would have known that Kasab had confessed quite as fully as he did today many months ago, in fact as soon as he was physically able to do so after being treated in hospital following his capture by Mumbai police. (The BBC proved again it has no institutional memory left by failing to remember these facts too and instead relying on the Indian TV media today. Or, alternatively, the BBC’s dual national Pakistani staffers were quick to get the BBC to veer towards the official GoP line — and the GoP certainly has not wanted to remember the fact Kasab was being truthful from day one of his capture.)

Why was Kasab’s court-appointed lawyer silent and bewildered today? Because Kasab (with his Class 4 schooling) had somehow thought things through on his own during this existential experience and effectively sacked the lawyer peremptorily as was his right to do. It was the lawyer who had chalked out the faulty legal strategy of starting off by pleading not-guilty instead of plea-bargaining on the basis of Kasab’s initial confessions being the primary source of evidence for the Government of India to be able to indict Pakistan in the Mumbai massacres.

(To the lawyer’s credit though, at least he had taken the case when no one else would and furthermore, he had clearly acted in good faith.)

Had Kasab been killed along with his 9 compatriot fellow-terrorists (and he was the youngest and least experienced which is probably why he was teamed with Ishmael who was the team leader), India would have had almost no hard evidence in creating the dossier that we were able to confront Pakistan with.

Kasab’s correct legal strategy was to accept his guilt and plead for mercy on the basis of having turned State’s evidence, indeed the Government of India’s star witness for the prosecution. There is absolutely no jurisprudential benefit in seeing a tiny pawn like him– the very tiniest of all pawns –hang for his evil deeds. That is why I said back in November-December that if I was the judge sentencing him, I would send him to jail for 20-30 years, for his 20 or 30 victims at CST station, and get him to become a model prisoner who could become a prime spokesman against the terrorists who had sent him.

The right way for India and Pakistan to cooperate against the perpetrators of the Mumbai massacres was via a prompt application of common maritime law and the Law of the Sea Treaty’s provisions against piracy, murder etc on the high seas, followed by some well-publicised hangings at sea, on a Pakistan Navy vessel, of the masterminds. Here is a complete list of what I said here between November 28 2008 and March 18 2009 on all this:

1. November 28, 2008 Jews have never been killed in India for being Jews until this sad day

Jews have never been killed in India for being Jews until today. For two thousand years, in fact perhaps as long as there have ever been Jews in the world, there had been Jews living peacefully in India. I used to say that proudly to my Jewish friends, adding that the Indian Army had even had a Jewish general. Today, November 28 2008, or perhaps yesterday November 27 2008, that changed. Five Hasidic Jews who had been peaceful residents of Nariman House in Mumbai, came to be murdered by terrorists, merely for being Jews, or died in explosions or in the cross-fire between the terrorists and Indian security forces. The Israeli Government had offered India their well-known technical expertise in trying to save their fellow-nationals. I believe the Government of India made a tragic mistake by not accepting it. Yes certainly our national prestige would have taken the slightest of blows if Israeli commandos had helped to release Israeli hostages in India. But our national prestige has taken a much vaster and more permanent blow instead, now that we can no longer say that Jews have never in history been killed for being Jews in India. I am especially sad on this already very sad day to see that proud record destroyed.

2. November 30, 2008 In international law, Pakistan has been the perpetrator, India the victim of aggression in Mumbai

In international law, the attacks on Mumbai would probably reveal Pakistan to have been the aggressor state, India the victim of aggression. It is standard law that a “master” is responsible for the misdeeds of his “servant”. E.g., “Where the relation of master and servant clearly exists, the employer is responsible for injury occasioned by the negligent conduct of the servant in carrying out his orders. And this rule is so extensive as to make the master liable for the careless, reckless and wanton conduct of his servant, provided it be within the scope of his employment”. President Zardari and Prime Minister Gillani may declare truthfully they had no prior knowledge of the attacks on Mumbai, that these were not in any way authorized by them or their Government. But it seems likely on the basis of current evidence that the young terrorists who attacked Mumbai were still in a “master-servant” relationship with elements of the Pakistani state and had been financed, trained, motivated and supplied by resources arising, directly or indirectly, from the Pakistani exchequer. Public moneys in Pakistan came to be used or misused to pay for aggression against India – in a quite similar pattern to the October 1947 attack on Kashmir, Ayub Khan’s 1965 “Operation Grand Slam”, and Pervez Musharraf’s 1999 attack on Kargil. And to think that these youth who were made into becoming terroristic mass murderers were toddlers when the USSR withdrew from Afghanistan, in primary school when the 1993 WTC bombing happened and adolescents at the time of the 9/11 attacks.

3. December 3, 2008 Habeas Corpus: a captured terrorist mass-murderer tells a magistrate he is not being mistreated by Indian police

A youth who had been a petty thief in Multan, was induced by Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds to train to become a mass murderer with an assault rifle and grenades in the Mumbai massacres last week. He was shot and arrested by India’s police and is now in custody. He has already been produced before a magistrate who asked him if he was being mistreated, to which he said he was not. This redounds to India’s credit in view of the vast (and yes, probably racist) mistreatment over years of those held e.g. at Guantanamo Bay. (The argument that the US Constitution and the laws associated with habeas corpus did not apply to the US Government because Guantanamo Bay was not American territory, was always specious.)

4. December 4, 2008 India’s Muslim Voices (Or, Let us be clear the Pakistan-India or Kashmir conflicts have not been Muslim-Hindu conflicts so much as intra-Muslim conflicts about Muslim identity and self-knowledge on the Indian subcontinent) bySubroto Roy

Ill-informed Western observers, especially at purported “think tanks” and news-portals, frequently proclaim the Pakistan-India confrontation and Jammu & Kashmir conflict to represent some kind of savage irreconcilable division between Islamic and Hindu cultures. For example, the BBC, among its many prevarications on the matter (like lopping off J&K entirely from its recently broadcasted maps of India, perhaps under influence of its Pakistani staffers), frequently speaks of “Hindu-majority India” and “Indian-administered Kashmir” being confronted by Muslim Pakistan. And two days ago from California’s Bay Area arose into the Internet Cloud the following profundity: “What we’re dealing with now, in the Pakistani-Indian rivalry, is a true war of civilizations, pitting Muslims against Hindus…. the unfathomable depths of the Muslim-Hindu divide….”. Even President-elect Obama’s top Pakistan-specialists have fallen for the line of Washington’s extremely strong Pakistan lobby: “Pakistan… sees itself as the political home for the subcontinent’s Muslim population and believes India’s continued control over the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley and denial of a plebiscite for its inhabitants represent a lingering desire on India’s part to undo the legacy of partition, which divided the British Indian Empire into India and Pakistan.”

The truth on record is completely different and really rather simple: for more than a century and a half, Muslims qua Muslims on the Indian subcontinent have struggled with the question of their most appropriate cultural and political identity. The starkest contrast may be found in their trying to come to terms with their partly Arabic and partly Hindu or Indian parentage (the words Hindu, Sindhu, Indus, Indian, Sindhi, Hindi etc all clearly have the same Hellenistic root). For example, there was Wali Allah (1703-1762) declaring “We are an Arab people whose fathers have fallen in exile in the country of Hindustan, and Arabic genealogy and Arabic language are our pride”. But here has been Mohammad Iqbal (1877-1938), in his 1930 Allahabad speech to the Muslim League, conceiving today’s Pakistan as a wish to become free of precisely that Arab influence: “I would like to see the Punjab, NWFP, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single state… The life of Islam as a cultural force in this living country very largely depends on its centralisation in a specified territory… For India it means security and peace resulting from an internal balance of power, for Islam an opportunity to rid itself of the stamp that Arabian Imperialism was forced to give it, to mobilise its law, its education, its culture, and to bring them into closer contact with its own original spirit and the spirit of modern times.” In an article “Saving Pakistan” published last year in The Statesman and available elsewhere here, it was suggested Iqbal’s “spirit of modern times” may be represented most prominently today by the physicist/political philosopher Pervez Hoodbhoy: in a December 2006 speech Hoodbhoy suggested a new alternative to MA Jinnah’s “Faith, Unity, Discipline” slogan: “First, I wish for minds that can deal with the complex nature of truth…. My second wish is for many more Pakistanis who accept diversity as a virtue… My third, and last, wish is that Pakistanis learn to value and nurture creativity.” He has spoken too of bringing “economic justice to Pakistan”, of the “fight to give Pakistan’s women the freedom which is their birthright”, and of people to “wake up” and engage politically. But Pakistan’s Iqbalian liberals like Hoodbhoy still have to square off with those of their compatriots who sent the youthful squad into Mumbai last week with assault rifles, grenades and heroic Arabic code-names, as well as orders to attack civilians with the ferocity of the original Muslims attacking caravans and settlements in ancient Arabia.

What the extremely strong Pakistan lobbies within the British and American political systems have suppressed in order to paint a picture of eternal Muslim-Hindu conflict is the voice of India’s nationalist Muslims, who historically have had no wish to have any truck with any idea of a “Pakistan” at all. Most eminent among them was undoubtedly Jinnah’s fiercest critic: Maulana Abul Kalam Azad whose classic 1946 statement on Pakistan is available in his India Wins Freedom, the final version published only in 1988……

5. December 6, 2008 A Quick Comparison Between the September 11 2001 NYC-Washington attacks and the November 26-28 2008 Mumbai Massacres (An Application of the Case-by-Case Philosophical Technique of Wittgenstein, Wisdom and Bambrough) bySubroto Roy

In my book Philosophy of Economics (Routledge, 1989) and in my August 24 2004 public lecture in England “Science, Religion, Art and the Necessity of Freedom”, both available elsewhere here, I described the “case-by-case” philosophical technique recommended by Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Wisdom and Renford Bambrough. (Bambrough had also shown a common root in the work of the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce.) Herewith an application of the technique to a contemporary problem that shows the “family resemblance” between two modern terrorist attacks, the September 11 2001 attack on New York and Washington and the Mumbai massacres last week.

Similarity: In both, a gang of motivated youthful terrorists acted as a team against multiple targets; their willingness to accept suicide while indulging in mass-murder may have, bizarrely enough, brought a sense of adventure and meaning to otherwise empty lives.

Difference: In the 9/11 attacks, Mohammad Atta seemed to have been a single predominant leader while each of the others also had complex active roles requiring decisions, like piloting and navigating hijacked jumbo-jets. In the Mumbai massacres, the training and leadership apparently came from outside the team before and even during the operation – almost as if the team were acting like brainwashed robots under long-distance control.

Similarity: Both attacks required a long prior period of training and planning.

Difference: The 9/11 attacks did not require commando-training imparted by military-style trainers; the Mumbai massacres did.

Difference: In the 9/11 attacks, the actual weapons used initially were primitive, like box-cutters; in the Mumbai massacres, assault rifles and grenades were used along with sophisticated telecommunications equipment.

Difference: In 9/11, the initial targets, the hijacked aircraft, were themselves made into weapons against the ultimate targets, namely the buildings, in a way not seen before. In the Mumbai massacres, mass-shooting of terrorized civilians was hardly something original; besides theatres of war, the Baader-Meinhof gang and the Japanese Red Army used these in the 1970s as terrorist techniques (e.g. at Rome Airport Lod Airport; Postscript January 26 2009: I make this correction after reading and commenting on the RAND study which unfortunately did not have the courtesy of acknowledging my December 6 2008 analysis) plus there were, more recently, the Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres.

Similarity: In both cases, Hollywood and other movie scripts could have inspired the initial ideas of techniques to be used.

Similarity: In both cases, the weapons used were appropriate to the anticipated state of defence: nothing more than box-cutters could be expected to get by normal airport security; assault rifles etc could come in by the unguarded sea and attack soft targets in Mumbai. (Incidentally, even this elementary example of strategic thinking in a practical situation may be beyond the analytical capacity contained in the tons of waste paper produced at American and other modern university Economics departments under the rubric of “game theory”.)

Similarity: In both cases, a high-level of widespread fear was induced for several days or more within a targeted nation-state by a small number of people.

Similarity: No ransom-like demands were made by the terrorists in either case.

Similarity: Had the single terrorist not been captured alive in the Mumbai massacres, there would have been little trace left by the attackers.

Difference: The 9/11 attackers knew definitely they were on suicide-missions; the Mumbai attackers may not have done and may have imagined an escape route.

6. December 10, 2008 Congratulations to Mumbai’s Police: capturing a terrorist, affording him his Habeas Corpus rights, getting him to confess within the Rule of Law, sets a new world standard

The full statement to police of the single captured terrorist perpetrator of the Mumbai massacres is now available. It tells a grim story. But Mumbai’s Police, from ordinary beat constables and junior officers to the anti-terrorism top brass, come off very well both with their heroism and their commitment to the Rule of Law. In comparison to the disastrous failures of the Rule of Law in the United States and Britain since 9/11 in fighting terrorism, Mumbai’s Police may have set a new world standard.

The prisoner was several days ago afforded Habeas Corpus rights and produced before a magistrate who asked him if he was being mistreated to which he replied he was not – though there might not be any Indian equivalent of America’s “Miranda” law.

7. December 12, 2008 Kasab was a stupid, ignorant, misguided youth, manufactured by Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds into becoming a mass-murdering robot: Mahatma Gandhi’s India should punish him, get him to repent if he wishes, then perhaps rehabilitate him as a potent weapon against Pakistani terrorism

The crime of murder is that of deliberate homicide, that of mass-murder is the murder of a mass of people. There is no doubt the lone captured Mumbai terrorist, “Kasab”, has committed mass-murder, being personally responsible for the murder of probably 20 or 30 wholly innocent people he had never met. He killed them by machine-gun fire and grenades at CST/VT railway station on November 26 2008 before being shot and captured by police. He is also a co-conspirator in the mass-murders carried out by his associate at the railway station and those elsewhere in Mumbai. There is no doubt he should serve rigorous imprisonment for life in an Indian prison for his crimes.

And yet…. And yet…

If the Government of India is sensible, it needs to describe and comprehend the moral subtleties of the circumstances surrounding Kasab’s life, especially during the last year. Here was a stupid, ignorant, rather primitive youth misguided by others first into becoming a petty robber, later into becoming a terrorist-trainee in hope of advancing his career in thievery!

Bakri-Id 2008 has just occurred – it is on Bakri-Id a year ago in 2007 that Kasab reportedly first ventured into volunteering for terrorist training as a way of learning how to use firearms! It is almost certain he had never met a Hindu or an Indian in his life before then, that he knew absolutely nothing about the subcontinent’s history or politics, that he would be ignorant about who, say, Iqbal or Jinnah or Maulana Azad or Sheikh Abdullah or Mahatma Gandhi ever were. Within less than a year, that same youth had been brainwashed and trained adequately enough by Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds to become a robotic mass-murderer in Mumbai’s railway station. Now having been caught and treated humanely by his captors, he has confessed everything and even expressed a wish to write a letter to his father in Pakistan expressing remorse for his deeds.

If I was the judge trying him, I would sentence him to a minimum of twenty or thirty years rigorous imprisonment in an Indian prison. But I would add that he should be visited in jail by a few of India’s Muslim leaders, and indeed he should be very occasionally allowed out of the prison (under police supervision) in a structured program to offer Namaz with India’s Muslims in our grandest mosques. He should learn firsthand a little of the lives of India’s Muslims and of India’s people as a whole. Perhaps he will become a model prisoner, perhaps he may even want to become in due course a potent weapon against the terrorist masterminds who ruined his life by sending him to murder people in India.

It bears to be remembered that in an incredible act of Christian forgiveness, the widow of the Australian missionary Graham Staines forgave the cold-blooded murderers who burnt alive her husband and her young sons as they slept in a jeep in Orissa. The family of Rajiv Gandhi may have done the same of those who assassinated or conspired to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi. This is the land of Mahatma Gandhi, who had woven a remarkable moral and political theory out of the Jain-Buddhist-Hindu doctrine of ahimsa as well as Christian notions from Tolstoy and Thoreau of forgiving the sinner.

Of course there cannot be forgiveness where there is no remorse. Kasab’s behaviour thus far suggests he will be remorseful and repentant; there are many other thieves and murderers in the world who are not.

Subroto Roy

Reported statement of Mohammad Ajmal Amir ‘Kasab’, 21, to police after arrest: “I have resided in Faridkot, Dinalpur tehsil, Ukada district, Suba Punjab state, Pakistan since my birth. I studied up to class IV in a government school. After leaving school in 2000, I went to stay with my brother in Tohit Abad mohalla, near Yadgar Minar in Lahore. I worked as a labourer at various places till 2005, visiting my native once in a while. In 2005, I had a quarrel with my father. I left home and went to Ali Hajveri Darbar in Lahore, where boys who run away from home are given shelter. The boys are sent to different places for employment. One day a person named Shafiq came there and took me with him. He was from Zhelam and had a catering business. I started working for him for Rs120 per day. Later, my salary was increased to Rs200 per day. I worked with him till 2007. While working with Shafiq, I came in contact with one Muzzafar Lal Khan, 22. He was from Romaiya village in Alak district in Sarhad, Pakistan. Since we were not getting enough money, we decided to carry out robbery/dacoity to make big money. So we left the job.

We went to Rawalpindi, where we rented a flat. Afzal had located a house for us to loot… We required some firearms for our mission… While we were in search of firearms, we saw some LeT stalls at Raja Bazaar in Rawalpindi on the day of Bakri-id. We then realised that even if we procured firearms, we would not be able to operate them. Therefore, we decided to join LeT for weapons training. We reached the LeT office and told a person that we wanted to join LeT. He noted down our names and address and told us to come the next day. The next day, there was another person with him. He gave us Rs200 and some receipts. Then he gave us the address of a place called Marqas Taiyyaba, Muridke, and told us to go to there. It was an LeT training camp. We went to the place by bus. We showed the receipts at the gate of the camp. We were allowed inside… Then we were taken to the actual camp area. Initially, we were selected for a 21 days’ training regimen called Daura Sufa. From the next day, our training started.

The daily programme was as follows: 4.15 am — Wake-up call and thereafter Namaz; 8 am — Breakfast; 8.30 am to 10 am — Lecture on Hadis and Quran by Mufti Sayyed; 10 am to noon – Rest; Noon to 1 pm – Lunch break; 1 pm to 4 pm – Rest; 4 pm to 6 pm – PT; instructor: Fadulla; 6 pm to 8 pm – Namaz and other work; 8 pm to 9 pm – Dinner

After Daura Sufa, we were selected for another training programme called Daura Ama. This was also for 21 days. We were taken to Mansera in Buttal village, where we were trained in handling weapons. The daily programme was as follows: 4.15 am to 5 am – Wake-up call and thereafter Namaz; 5 am to 6 am – PT; instructor: Abu Anas; 8 am – Breakfast; 8.30 am to 11.30 am – Weapons training; trainer: Abdul Rehman; weapons: AK-47, Green-O, SKS, Uzi gun, pistol, revolver; 11.30 am to Noon – rest; Noon to 1 pm – Lunch break; 1 pm to 2 pm – Namaz; 2 pm to 4 pm – Rest; 4 pm to 6 pm – PT; 6 pm to 8 pm – Namaz and other work; 8 pm to 9 pm – Dinner.

After the training, we were told that we will begin the next stage involving advanced training. But for that, we were told, we had to do some khidmat for two months (khidmat is a sort of service in the camp as per trainees’ liking). We agreed. After two months, I was allowed to go to meet my parents. I stayed with my parents for a month. Then I went to an LeT camp in Shaiwainala, Muzaffarabad, for advanced training… We were taken to Chelabandi pahadi area for a training programme, called Daura Khas, of three months. It involved handling weapons, using hand grenade, rocket launchers and mortars.

The daily programme was as follows: 4.15 am to 5 am – Wake-up call and thereafter Namaz; 5 am to 6 am – PT; instructor: Abu Mawiya; 8 am – Breakfast; 8.30 am to 11.30 am – Weapons training, handling of all weapons and firing practices with the weapons, training on handling hand grenade, rocket-launchers and mortars, Green-O, SKS, Uzi gun, pistol, revolver; trainer: Abu Mawiya; 11.30 am to 12 noon – rest; Noon to 1 pm – Lunch break; 1 pm to 2 pm – Namaz; 2 pm to 4 pm – Weapons training and firing practice; lecture on Indian security agencies; 4 pm to 6 pm – PT; 6 pm to 8 pm – Namaz and other work; 8 pm to 9 pm – Dinner

There were 32 trainees in the camp. Sixteen were selected for a confidential operation by one Zaki-ur-Rehman, alias Chacha, but three of them ran away from the camp. Chacha sent the remaining 13 with a person called Kafa to the Muridke camp again. At Muridke, we were taught swimming and made familiar with the life of fishermen at sea… We were given lectures on the working of Indian security agencies. We were shown clippings highlighting atrocities on Muslims in India. After the training, we were allowed to go to our native places. I stayed with my family for seven days. I then went to the LeT camp at Muzaffarabad. The 13 of us were present for training. Then, on Zaki-ur-Rehman’s instructions, Kafa took us to the Muridke camp. The training continued for a month. We were given lectures on India and its security agencies, including RAW. We were also trained to evade security personnel. We were instructed not to make phone calls to Pakistan after reaching India.

The names of the persons present for the training are: n Mohd Azmal, alias Abu Muzahid n Ismail, alias Abu Umar n Abu Ali n Abu Aksha n Abu Umer n Abu Shoeb n Abdul Rehman (Bada) n Abdul Rehman (Chhota) n Afadulla n Abu Umar. After the training, Chacha selected 10 of us and formed five teams of two people each on September 15. I and Ismail formed a team; its codename was VTS. We were shown Azad Maidan in Mumbai on Google Earth’s site on the internet… We were shown a film on VT railway station. The film showed commuters during rush hours. We were instructed to carry out firing during rush hours — between 7 am and 11 am and between 7 pm and 11 pm. Then we were to take some people hostage, take them to the roof of some nearby building and contact Chacha, who would have given us numbers to contact media people and make demands. This was the strategy decided upon by our trainers. The date fixed for the operation was September 27. However, the operation was cancelled for some reason. We stayed in Karachi till November 23. The other teams were: 2nd team: a) Abu Aksha; b) Abu Umar; 3rd team: a) Abdul Rehman (Bada); b) Abu Ali; 4th team: a) Abdul Rehman (Chotta); b) Afadulla; 5th team: a) Abu Shoeb; b) Abu Umer.

On November 23, the teams left from Azizabad in Karachi, along with Zaki-ur-Rehman and Kafa. We were taken to the nearby seashore… We boarded a launch. After travelling for 22 to 25 nautical miles we boarded a bigger launch. Again, after a journey of an hour, we boarded a ship, Al-Huseini, in the deep sea. While boarding the ship, each of us was given a sack containing eight grenades, an AK-47 rifle, 200 cartridges, two magazines and a cellphone. Then we started towards the Indian coast. When we reached Indian waters, the crew members of Al-Huseini hijacked an Indian launch. The crew of the launch was shifted to Al-Huseini. We then boarded the launch. An Indian seaman was made to accompany us at gunpoint; he was made to bring us to the Indian coast. After a journey of three days, we reached near Mumbai’s shore. While we were still some distance away from the shore, Ismail and Afadulla killed the Indian seaman (Tandel) in the basement of the launch. Then we boarded an inflatable dinghy and reached Badhwar Park jetty. I then went along with Ismail to VT station by taxi. After reaching the hall of the station, we went to the toilet, took out the weapons from our sacks, loaded them, came out of the toilet and started firing indiscriminately at passengers. Suddenly, a police officer opened fire at us. We threw hand grenades towards him and also opened fire at him. Then we went inside the railway station threatening the commuters and randomly firing at them. We then came out of the railway station searching for a building with a roof. But we did not find one. Therefore, we entered a lane. We entered a building and went upstairs. On the third and fourth floors we searched for hostages but we found that the building was a hospital and not a residential building. We started to come down. That is when policemen started firing at us. We threw grenades at them.

While coming out of the hospital premises, we saw a police vehicle passing. We took shelter behind a bush. Another vehicle passed us and stopped some distance away. A police officer got off from the vehicle and started firing at us. A bullet hit my hand and my AK-47 fell out of my hand. When I bent to pick it up another bullet hit me on the same hand. Ismail opened fire at the officers in the vehicle. They got injured and firing from their side stopped. We waited for a while and went towards the vehicle. There were three bodies in the vehicle. Ismail removed the bodies and drove the vehicle. I sat next to him. Some policemen tried to stop us. Ismail opened fire at them. The vehicle had a flat tyre near a big ground by the side of road. Ismail got down from the vehicle, stopped a car at gunpoint and removed the three lady passengers from the car. Since I was injured, Ismail carried me to the car. He then drove the car. We were stopped by policemen on the road near the seashore. Ismail fired at them, injuring some policemen. The police also opened fire at us. Ismail was injured in the firing. The police removed us from the vehicle and took us to the same hospital. In the hospital, I came to know that Ismail had succumbed to injuries. My statement has been read to me and explained in Hindi, and it has been correctly recorded.”

8. December 13, 2008 Pakistan’s New Delhi Embassy should ask for “Consular Access” to nine dead terrorists in a Mumbai morgue before asking to meet Kasab

After two weeks of pointblank denials that Pakistan had anything to do with the Mumbai massacres (”the Mumbai incident”, “the Bombay event” as Pakistan’s social butterflies put it), Pakistan’s diplomats are now asking for Consular Access to Kasab, the lone captured terrorist! The cheek of it! Would they please request Consular Access instead to the nine dead terrorists who were Kasab’s companions, and who are presumably in a Mumbai morgue at present because India’s Muslims have denied them a burial? It is certain the Government of India would be relieved and delighted to hand over full custody of the mortal remains of these nine Pakistanis to representatives of His Excellency the High Commissioner of Pakistan to New Delhi for transfer back home to Pakistan.

As for Consular Access to Kasab, the Government of India will doubtless inform His Excellency that His Excellency may appreciate that in present circumstances in which the individual Kasab, not to put too fine a point on it, is singing like a canary, the Government of India deems the security of India could be jeopardised by any possibility of such a song becoming jeopardised. The Government of India will however doubtless assure His Excellency that Kasab is being well cared for in custody and has reported as such to the magistrate.

9. December 19, 2008 An Indian Reply to President Zardari: Rewarding Pakistan for bad behaviour leads to schizophrenic relationshipsbySubroto Roy

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari’s recent argument in the New York Times resembles closely the well-known publications of his ambassador to the United States, Mr Husain Haqqani. Unfortunately, this Zardari-Haqqani thesis about Pakistan’s current predicament in the world and the world’s predicament with Pakistan is shot through with clear factual and logical errors. These need to be aired because true or useful conclusions cannot be reached from mistaken premises or faulty reasoning.

i. Origins of Pakistan, India, J&K, and their mutual problems

Mr Zardari makes the following seemingly innocuous statement:

“…. the two great nations of Pakistan and India, born together from the same revolution and mandate in 1947, must continue to move forward with the peace process.”

Now as a matter of simple historical fact, the current entities in the world system known as India and Pakistan were not “born together from the same revolution and mandate in 1947”. It is palpably false to suppose they were and Pakistanis indulge in wishful thinking and self-deception about their own political history if they suppose this.

India’s Republic arose out of the British Dominion known as “India” which was the legal successor of the entity known previously in international law as “British India”. British India had had secular governance and so has had the Indian Republic.

By contrast, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan arose out of a newly created state in international law known as the British Dominion of Pakistan, consisting of designated territory carved out of British India by a British decision and coming into existence one day before British India extinguished itself. (Another new state, Bangladesh, later seceded from Pakistan.)

The British decision to create territory designated “Pakistan” had nothing to do with any anti-British “revolution” or “mandate” supported by any Pakistani nationalism because there was none. (Rahmat Ali’s anti-Hindu pamphleteering in London could be hardly considered Pakistani nationalism against British rule. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s Pashtun patriots saw themselves as Indian, not Pakistani.)

To the contrary, the British decision had to do with a small number of elite Pakistanis — MA Jinnah foremost among them — demanding not to be part of the general Indian nationalist movement that had been demanding a British departure from power in the subcontinent. Jinnah’s separatist party, the Muslim League, was trounced in the 1937 provincial elections in all the Muslim-majority areas of British India that would eventually become Pakistan. Despite this, in September 1939, Britain, at war with Nazi Germany, chose to elevate the political power of Jinnah and his League to parity with the general Indian nationalist movement led by MK Gandhi. (See, Francis Robinson, in William James and Subroto Roy (eds), Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s.) Britain needed India’s mostly Muslim infantry-divisions — the progenitors of the present-day Pakistan Army — and if that meant tilting towards a risky political idea of “Pakistan” in due course, so it would be. The thesis that Pakistan arose from any kind of “revolution” or “mandate” in 1947 is fantasy — the Muslim super-elite that invented and endorsed the Pakistan idea flew from Delhi to Karachi in chartered BOAC Dakotas, caring not a hoot about the vulnerability of ordinary Muslim masses to Sikh and Hindu majority wrath and retaliation on the ground.

Modern India succeeded to the rights and obligations of British India in international law, and has had a recognized existence as a state since at least the signing of the Armistice and Treaty of Versailles in 1918-1919. India was a founding member of the United Nations, being a signatory of the 1945 San Francisco Declaration, and an original member of the Bretton Woods institutions. An idea put forward by Argentina that as of 1947 India and Pakistan were both successor states of British India was rejected by the UN (Argentina withdrew its own suggestion), and it was universally acknowledged India was already a member of the UN while Pakistan would have to (and did) apply afresh for membership as a newly created state in the UN. Pakistan’s entry into the UN had the enthusiastic backing of India and was opposed by only one existing UN member, Afghanistan, due to a conflict that continues to this day over the legitimacy of the Durand Line that bifurcated the Pashtun areas.

Such a review of elementary historical facts and the position in law of Pakistan and India is far from being of merely pedantic interest today. Rather, it goes directly to the logical roots of the conflict over the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) — a state that itself originated as an entity in the world system a full century before Pakistan was to do so and more than half a century before British India did, but which would collapse into anarchy and civil war in 1947-1949.

Britain (or England) had been a major nation-state in the world system recognized since Grotius first outlined modern international law. On March 16 1846, Britain entered into a treaty, the Treaty of Amritsar, with one Gulab Singh, and the “State of Jammu & Kashmir” came to arise as a recognizable entity in international law for the first time. (See my “History of Jammu and Kashmir” published in The Statesman, Oct 29-30 2006, available elsewhere here.)

Jammu & Kashmir continued in orderly existence as a state until it crashed into legal and political anarchy and civil war a century later. The new Pakistan had entered into a “Standstill Agreement” with the State of Jammu & Kashmir as of August 15 1947. On or about October 22 1947, Pakistan unilaterally ended that Standstill Agreement and instead caused military forces from its territory to attack the State of Jammu & Kashmir along the Mansehra Road towards Baramula and Srinagar, coinciding too with an Anglo-Pakistani coup d’etat in Gilgit and Baltistan (see my “Solving Kashmir”; “Law, Justice & J&K”; “Pakistan’s Allies”, all published in The Statesman in 2005-2006 and available elsewhere here).

The new Pakistan had chosen, in all deliberation, to forswear law, politics and diplomacy and to resort to force of arms instead in trying to acquire J&K for itself via a military decision. It succeeded only partially. Its forces took and then lost both Baramula and Kargil; they may have threatened Leh but did not attempt to take it; they did take and retain Muzaffarabad and Skardu; they were never near taking the summer capital, Srinagar, though might have threatened the winter capital, Jammu.

All in all, a Ceasefire Line came to be demarcated on the military positions as of February 1 1949. After a war in 1971 that accompanied the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan, that Ceasefire Line came to be renamed the “Line of Control” between Pakistan and India. An ownerless entity may be acquired by force of arms — the erstwhile State of Jammu & Kashmir in 1947-1949 had become an ownerless entity that had been dismembered and divided according to military decision following an armed conflict between Pakistan and India. The entity in the world system known as the “State of Jammu & Kashmir” created on March 16 1846 by Gulab Singh’s treaty with the British ceased to exist as of October 22 1947. Pakistan had started the fight over J&K but there is a general rule of conflicts that he who starts a fight does not get to finish it.

Such is the simplest and most practical statement of the history of the current problem. The British, through their own compulsions and imperial pretensions, raised all the talk about a “Lapse of Paramountcy” of the British Crown over the “Native Princes” of “Indian India”, and of how, the “Native Princes” were required to “accede” to either India or Pakistan. This ignored Britain’s own constitutional law. BR Ambedkar pointed out with unsurpassed clarity that no “Lapse of Paramountcy” was possible even for a single logical moment since “Paramountcy” over any “Native Princes” who had not joined India or Pakistan as of August 15 1947, automatically passed from British India to its legal successor, namely, the Dominion of India. It followed that India’s acquiescence was required for any subsequent accession to Pakistan – an acquiescence granted in case of Chitral and denied in case of Junagadh.

What the Republic of India means by saying today that boundaries cannot be redrawn nor any populations forcibly transferred is quite simply that the division of erstwhile J&K territory is permanent, and that sovereignty over it is indivisible. What Pakistan has claimed is that India has been an occupier and that there are many people inhabiting the Indian area who may not wish to be Indian nationals and who are being compelled against their will to remain so ~ forgetting to add that precisely the same could be said likewise of the Pakistani-held area. The lawful solution I proposed in “Solving Kashmir, “Law, Justice and J&K” and other works has been that the Republic of India invite every person covered under its Article 370, citizen-by-citizen, under a condition of full information, to privately and without fear decide, if he/she has not done so already, between possible Indian, Iranian, Afghan or Pakistani nationalities ~ granting rights and obligations of permanent residents to any of those persons who may choose for whatever private reason not to remain Indian nationals. If Pakistan acted likewise, the problem of J&K would indeed come to be resolved. The Americans, as self-appointed mediators, have said they wish “the people of the region to have a voice” in a solution: there can be no better expression of such voice than allowing individuals to privately choose their own nationalities and their rights and responsibilities accordingly. The issue of territorial sovereignty is logically distinct from that of the choice of nationality by individual inhabitants.

ii. Benazir’s assassination falsely compared to the Mumbai massacres

Secondly, President Zardari draws a mistaken comparison between the assassination last year of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, and the Mumbai massacres a few weeks ago. Ms Bhutto’s assassination may resemble more closely the assassinations in India of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

Indira Gandhi died in “blowback” from the unrest she and her younger son and others in their party had opportunistically fomented among Sikh fundamentalists and sectarians since the late 1970s. Rajiv Gandhi died in “blowback” from an erroneous imperialistic foreign policy that he, as Prime Minister, had been induced to make by jingoistic Indian diplomats, a move that got India’s military needlessly involved in the then-nascent Sri Lankan civil war. Benazir Bhutto similarly may be seen to have died in “blowback” from her own political activity as prime minister and opposition leader since the late 1980s, including her own encouragement of Muslim fundamentalist forces. Certainly in all three cases, as in all assassinations, there were lapses of security too and imprudent political judgments made that contributed to the tragic outcomes.

Ms Bhutto’s assassination has next to nothing to do with the Mumbai massacres, besides the fact the perpetrators in both cases were Pakistani terrorists. President Zardari saying he himself has lost his wife to terrorism is true but not relevant to the proper diagnosis of the Mumbai massacres or to Pakistan-India relations in general. Rather, it serves to deflect criticism and condemnation of the Pakistani state’s pampered handing of Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds, as well as the gross irresponsibility of Pakistan’s military scientists (not AQ Khan) who have been recently advocating a nuclear first strike against India in the event of war.

iii. Can any religious nation-state be viable in the modern world?

President Zardari’s article says:

“The world worked to exploit religion against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan by empowering the most fanatic extremists as an instrument of destruction of a superpower. The strategy worked, but its legacy was the creation of an extremist militia with its own dynamic.”

This may be overly simplistic. As pointed out in my article “Pakistan’s Allies”, Gregory Zinoviev himself after the Bolshevik Revolution had declared that international communism “turns today to the peoples of the East and says to them, ‘Brothers, we summon you to a Holy War first of all against British imperialism!’ At this there were cries of Jehad! Jehad! And much brandishing of picturesque Oriental weapons.” (Treadgold, Twentieth Century Russia, 1990, p. 213). For more than half of the 20th century, orthodox Muslims had been used by Soviet communists against British imperialism, then by the British and Americans (through Pakistan) against Soviet communism. Touché! Blowback and counter-blowback! The real question that arises from this today may be why orthodox Muslims have allowed themselves to be used either way by outside forces and have failed in developing a modern nation-state and political culture of their own. Europe and America only settled down politically after their religious wars were over. Perhaps no religious nation-state is viable in the modern world.

iv. Pakistan’s behaviour leads to schizophrenia in international relations

President Zardari pleads for, or perhaps demands, resources from the world:

“the best response to the Mumbai carnage is to coordinate in counteracting the scourge of terrorism. The world must act to strengthen Pakistan’s economy and democracy, help us build civil society and provide us with the law enforcement and counterterrorism capacities that will enable us to fight the terrorists effectively.”

Six million pounds from Mr Gordon Brown, so much from here or there etc – President Zardari has apparently demanded 100 billion dollars from America and that is the price being talked about for Pakistan to dismantle its nuclear weapons and be brought under an American “nuclear umbrella” instead.

I have pointed out elsewhere that what Pakistan seems to have been doing in international relations for decades is send out “mixed messages” – i.e. contradictory signals, whether in thought, word or deed. Clinical psychologists following the work of Gregory Bateson would say this leads to confusion among Pakistan’s interlocutors (a “double bind”) and the symptoms arise of what may be found in schizophrenic relationships. (See my article “Do President-elect Obama’s Pakistan specialists believe…”; on the “double bind” theory, an article I chanced to publish in the Journal of Genetic Psychology, 1986, may be of interest).

Here are a typical set of “mixed messages” emanating from Pakistan’s government and opinion-makers:

“We have nuclear weapons

“We keep our nuclear weapons safe from any misuse or unauthorized use

“We are willing to use nuclear weapons in a first strike against India

“We do not comprehend the lessons of Hiroshima-Nagasaki

“We do not comprehend the destruction India will visit upon us if we strike them

“We are dangerous so we must not be threatened in any way

“We are peace-loving and want to live in peace with India and Afghanistan

“We love to play cricket with India and watch Bollywood movies

“We love our Pakistan Army as it is one public institution that works

“We know the Pakistan Army has backed armed militias against India in the past

“We know these militias have caused terrorist attacks

“We are not responsible for any terrorist attacks

“We do not harbour any terrorists

“We believe the world should pay us to not use or sell our nuclear weapons

“We believe the world should pay us to not encourage the terrorists in our country

“We believe the world should pay us to prevent terrorists from using our nuclear weapons

“We hate India and do not want to become like India

“We love India and want to become like India

“We are India and we are not India…”

Etc.

A mature rational responsible and self-confident Pakistan would have said instead:

“We apologise to India and other countries for the outrageous murders our nationals have committed in Mumbai and elsewhere

“We ask the world to watch how our professional army is deployed to disarm civilian and all “non-state” actors of unauthorized firearms and explosives

“We do not need and will not demand or accept a dollar in any sort of foreign aid, military or civilian, to solve our problems

“We realize our economic and political institutions are a mess and we must clean them up

“We will strive to build a society imbued with what Iqbal described as the spirit of modern times..”

As someone who created at great personal cost at an American university twenty years ago the book Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s, I have a special interest in hoping that Pakistan shall find the path of wisdom.

10. January 1, 2009 A basis of India-Pakistan cooperation on the Mumbai massacres: the ten Pakistani terrorists started off as pirates and the Al-Huseini is a pirate ship

One of my finest teachers at the London School of Economics many years ago had been Professor DHN Johnson, a pioneer of the Law of the Sea Treaty; reflecting upon the aftermath of the Mumbai massacres, it occurs to me that the Law of the Sea Treaty may provide the most expedient and lawful recourse in present circumstances, as well as a proper and clear basis for cooperation between the Government of India and the Government of Pakistan in the matter.

Both India and Pakistan have signed and ratified the Law of the Sea Treaty which reads at Article 101

“Definition of piracy

Piracy consists of any of the following acts:

(a) any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation, committed for private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship or a private aircraft, and directed:

(i) on the high seas, against another ship or aircraft, or against persons or property on board such ship or aircraft;

(ii) against a ship, aircraft, persons or property in a place outside the jurisdiction of any State;

(b) any act of voluntary participation in the operation of a ship or of an aircraft with knowledge of facts making it a pirate ship or aircraft;

(c) any act of inciting or of intentionally facilitating an act described in subparagraph (a) or (b).”

From the captured Kasab’s confession, it is clear he and his companions began their criminal activities within Pakistan (by training as terrorists and engaging in a conspiracy to commit mass-murder) and this continued outside Pakistan at sea:

“On November 23, the teams left from Azizabad in Karachi, along with Zaki-ur-Rehman and Kafa. We were taken to the nearby seashore… We boarded a launch. After travelling for 22 to 25 nautical miles we boarded a bigger launch. Again, after a journey of an hour, we boarded a ship, Al-Huseini, in the deep sea. While boarding the ship, each of us was given a sack containing eight grenades, an AK-47 rifle, 200 cartridges, two magazines and a cellphone. Then we started towards the Indian coast. When we reached Indian waters, the crew members of Al-Huseini hijacked an Indian launch. The crew of the launch was shifted to Al-Huseini. We then boarded the launch. An Indian seaman was made to accompany us at gunpoint; he was made to bring us to the Indian coast. After a journey of three days, we reached near Mumbai’s shore. While we were still some distance away from the shore, Ismail and Afadulla killed the Indian seaman (Tandel) in the basement of the launch.”

Pirates in law are Hostis humani generis or “enemies of mankind”. As signatories to the Law of the Sea Treaty, India and Pakistan may act jointly against the Al-Huseini and others associated with the acts of piracy including the maritime murders of the Indian fishermen that preceded the Mumbai massacres, thus solving the question of jurisdiction before it arises. The remains of the nine dead Pakistani terrorists presently in a Mumbai morgue can be buried at sea in international waters by whatever funeral procedure is due to dishonourable sailors and pirates. (The fish will not refuse them.) Kasab can be tried as a pirate too — though he really needs an American defence attorney to plea-bargain for him as he turns State’s evidence against the real masterminds of the plot, some of whom may be presently in the custody of the Pakistan Government.

Subroto Roy

11. January 2 2009 How to solve the jurisdiction problem in prosecuting perpetrators of the Mumbai massacres: let the Pakistan and Indian Navies try them (and hang them) at sea as pirates

Should Pakistan hand over the terrorist masterminds now in its custody to India for trial for mass murder? Should India hand over the captured Mumbai terrorist Kasab to Pakistan for trial as a mass murderer? Such questions can lead to endless legal wrangling, no action, and no justice for all the many victims of the Mumbai massacres. It is far more expeditious for both countries to instead hand over all these characters in their custody to their respective navies for trial and punishment as pirates who have violated the Law of the Sea. The Pakistan Navy Chief and the Indian Navy Chief can agree to have their admirals meet with their respective prisoners for a rendezvous at sea in international waters. A joint trial under maritime law can be conducted on board, say, a Pakistan naval vessel in international waters. Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds can be hanged at sea on a scaffold aboard a Pakistan Navy vessel in international waters for crimes of piracy, murder and conspiracy. Kasab, if he turns State’s evidence, can plea-bargain for a lesser sentence; if he does not turn State’s evidence, he can join his handlers on the scaffold (assuming he is of adult age and sane). Pakistan’s terrorist training institutes, incidentally, will see a rapid decline in their admissions and recruitment figures once there are some well-televised hangings at sea.

Subroto Roy

12. January 16, 2009 Memo to the Hon’ble Attorneys General of Pakistan & India: How to jointly prosecute the Mumbai massacre perpetrators most expeditiously

A criminal conspiracy was hatched within the Pakistan Republic by persons known and unknown affiliated with an unlawful organization. The plot was to commit kidnapping, murder, robbery and piracy on the high seas, to be followed by illegal entry, criminal trespass, mass-murder, kidnapping, grievous bodily harm, arson, robbery, dacoity and multiple similarly heinous crimes in the Indian Republic, amounting to waging war against the Indian Republic and the Indian people. The conspirators commissioned services of at least 10 identified persons to be trained and indoctrinated as willing instruments in these multiple crimes, inducing them with money and other incentives.

Nine of these 10 persons came to be killed by Indian law enforcement authorities during the execution of their crimes; their mortal remains have remained in a Mumbai morgue now for more than one month and a half.

The tenth person, one Kasab, was captured alive and is in custody. He has been a willing witness for the prosecution of these multiple crimes and it is principally due to his testimony that the precise sequence of events in the commission of these crimes has been able to be reconstructed by law enforcement authorities (as contained e.g. in the “dossier” submitted by the Indian Republic to the Pakistan Republic.)

Both the Pakistan Republic and the Indian Republic have jurisdiction to prosecute these crimes. The jurisdiction of the Indian Republic is obvious.

Pakistan’s jurisdiction arises from the Pakistan Penal Code which states

2. Punishment of offences committed within Pakistan: Every person shall be liable to punishment under this Code and not otherwise for every act or omission contrary to the provisions thereof, of which he shall be guilty within Pakistan.3. Punishment of offences committed beyond, but which by law may be tried within Pakistan: Any person liable, by any Pakistani Law, to be tried for an offence committed beyond Pakistan shall be dealt with according to the provision of this Code for any act committed beyond Pakistan in the same manner as if such act had been committed within Pakistan. 4. Extension of Code for extra-territorial offences: The provisions of this Code apply also to any offence committed by “[(1) any citizen of Pakistan or any person in the service of Pakistan in any place without and beyond Pakistan];…. (4) any person on any ship or aircraft registered in Pakistan wherever it may be. Explanation: In this section the word “offence” includes every act committed outside Pakistan which, if committed in Pakistan, would be punishable under this Code…”.

Furthermore, both the Pakistan Republic and the Indian Republic have jurisdiction from the Law of the Sea Treaty which both have signed and ratified and which states at Article 101

“Definition of piracy(b) any act of voluntary participation in the operation of a ship or of an aircraft with knowledge of facts making it a pirate ship or aircraft;

Piracy consists of any of the following acts: (a) any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation, committed for private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship or a private aircraft, and directed:

(i) on the high seas, against another ship or aircraft, or against persons or property on board such ship or aircraft;

(ii) against a ship, aircraft, persons or property in a place outside the jurisdiction of any State;

(c) any act of inciting or of intentionally facilitating an act described in subparagraph (a) or (b).”

From Kasab’s testimony, it is clear he and his companions began their criminal activities within Pakistan (by training as terrorists and engaging in the conspiracy to commit mass-murder in India) and this continued outside Pakistan at sea:

“On November 23, the teams left from Azizabad in Karachi, along with Zaki-ur-Rehman and Kafa. We were taken to the nearby seashore… We boarded a launch. After travelling for 22 to 25 nautical miles we boarded a bigger launch. Again, after a journey of an hour, we boarded a ship, Al-Huseini, in the deep sea. While boarding the ship, each of us was given a sack containing eight grenades, an AK-47 rifle, 200 cartridges, two magazines and a cellphone. Then we started towards the Indian coast. When we reached Indian waters, the crew members of Al-Huseini hijacked an Indian launch. The crew of the launch was shifted to Al-Huseini. We then boarded the launch. An Indian seaman was made to accompany us at gunpoint; he was made to bring us to the Indian coast. After a journey of three days, we reached near Mumbai’s shore. While we were still some distance away from the shore, Ismail and Afadulla killed the Indian seaman … in the basement of the launch.”

Traditionally, pirates are Hostis humani generis or “enemies of mankind” in law (as are international terrorists).

In view of the competing jurisdictions to try and punish all these crimes, as well as in view of the regrettable historical circumstances of grave conflict and deep misunderstanding and mistrust between the Pakistan Republic and the Indian Republic, it may be most expeditious for there to be a joint investigation and prosecution under maritime law by the Pakistan Navy and Indian Navy of this entire set of crimes, assisted by civilian legal authorities in both countries. As signatories to the Law of the Sea Treaty, the Pakistan Republic and the Indian Republic may act jointly against the vessel Al-Huseini and all the others associated with the whole conspiracy including the acts of piracy and maritime murder of the Indian fishermen and the trawler-skipper Solanki preceding the massacres in Mumbai.

Both countries would hand over all the accused in their custody to their respective navies for trial and punishment as pirates who have or have conspired to violate the Law of the Sea. The Pakistan Navy Chief and the Indian Navy Chief can agree to have their admirals meet with their respective prisoners for a rendezvous at sea in international waters. A joint trial under maritime law can be conducted on board, say, a Pakistan naval vessel in international waters. The masterminds who conceived and plotted these crimes and who are presently in the custody of the Pakistan Republic can be hanged at sea on a scaffold aboard a Pakistan Navy vessel in international waters for piracy, murder and conspiracy. Kasab, if he turns State’s evidence, can plea-bargain for a lesser sentence; if he does not turn State’s evidence, he can join his handlers on the scaffold. The remains of the nine dead criminals presently in a Mumbai morgue can be buried at sea in international waters by whatever funeral procedure is due to dishonourable sailors and pirates.

Incidental consequences may be that future admissions and recruitment figures of terrorist training institutes would decline, and of course Pakistan-India tensions would be reduced once clear justice is seen to have been done expeditiously in this complex case.

Subroto Roy

13. January 25, 2009 RAND’s study of the Mumbai attacks by Subroto Roy Kolkata

The conspicuously good thing that can be said about the RAND Corporation’s study of the Mumbai massacres (”The Lessons of Mumbai”, RAND January 2009) is that there is no sign of it having been affected by the powerful Pakistan lobby. Far too many purported studies emerging from American or British “thinktanks” cannot say the same.

If anything, the ten American authors of the 25-pages of the RAND text have among them two prominent advocates of better US-India relations. This is helpful to truthfulness because of the simple fact India has been in this case a victim of aggression that originated in Pakistan. Whether elements of the Pakistan Government were involved is almost the wrong question – if some retired underemployed former soldier drawing a Pakistan Army pension helped the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s commando training of the Mumbai terrorists, the existence of Pakistani state involvement is proved. Commando training requires technical skills of a sort that can only originate with a military.

In Pakistan as in any other large populous country including India, the state tends to be a hydra-headed monster and it may be foolish to imagine instead a rational, unified, well-informed or even a benevolent political entity. State involvement in Pakistan, India, China or elsewhere is something hard to isolate when there is so much mixing of private and public property or misuse of resources arising from the public exchequer.

What Pakistan’s PR campaign has done after Mumbai is not so much raise the Kashmir dispute as to obfuscate things by shedding crocodile tears and pretending to share victimhood saying, oh we sympathise with you but please sympathise with us too as we have been victims of even bigger terrorist attacks by the same kind of people, we have lost Benazir, we have lost many more people than you have, therefore cooperate with us and we will try to do what we can to help you in this matter. English-speaking liberals educated at places like Karachi Grammar School have then appeared on Indian TV stations (owned by Delhi people from places like Doon School) purporting to represent Pakistan on “the Mumbai incident”; none of them can have much credibility because the real India-haters in Pakistan might cheerfully make them murder victims too given half a chance.

The RAND study deserves credit for avoiding all misleading Pakistani rhetoric about the Mumbai massacres and at least intending to try to get to the bottom of things in a systematic manner. Beyond that, unfortunately, it has made logical and factual and methodological errors which cause it to fail to do so.

The key logical error made by the RAND authors arises from combining a central front-page statement

“Evidence suggests Lashkar-e-Taiba, a terrorist group based in Pakistan, was responsible for the attack”

with assertive suggestions about Mumbai’s police being backward, incompetent, cowardly etc (”passive”). Yet how precisely did evidence about LeT culpability come to light? Only because Mumbai’s police and the Railway police engaged, injured and then captured Kasab using their antiquated equipment the best they could. There is no evidence of police cowardice at CST Station; to the contrary, it took courage to aim .303’s at adversaries firing back with assault rifles. Kasab received his first hand injury there. ATS Chief Karkare and his fellow-officers may seem foolhardy in hindsight to have been driving in the same vehicle but they did engage their unknown enemy immediately they could and died doing so, crippling Kasab badly enough that he could be captured in due course at Chowpatty. [Correction: it appears that though Kasab was fired upon by the police at CST Station he received both his hand injuries from the firing by the ATS squad.] And the Chowpatty police action showed obvious bravery in absorbing injury and death in order to kill Ishmail and capture Kasab. (Kasab, among the youngest, had been paired with Ishmail, the apparent leader of the group.)

Furthermore, Kasab upon capture was treated humanely and lawfully. His injuries were treated, he was produced before a magistrate within a week who asked him if he was being mistreated to which he said no. Slumdog millionaire may get undeserved Oscars portraying torture of a British actor by Mumbai police but it is ridiculous fiction – Kasab the captured Pakistani terrorist mass murderer was not tortured by Mumbai’s police.

Contrast such Indian police behaviour with the “enhanced interrogation techniques” the Bush Administration used with negative results in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib – which President Obama has now started to end. Kasab, an ignorant misguided youth, was grateful enough for the humane and civilized treatment to start singing like the proverbial canary. The result of that has been precisely all the evidence the Government of India has now presented to the world and Pakistan about the LeT’s culpability.

As for the anti-terrorist actions of the Indian Army, Navy and NSG, the RAND study is right to point to multitudinous errors and it is useful to have these listed in orderly fashion. But many of these errors were obvious to millions of lay Indian citizens who watched events on TV. The central fault was the scarcity of trained NSG officers and men, and the failure to apply standard emergency management protocols.

The RAND study, by relying overly on government sources, has failed to point to what ordinary Indian citizens already know – the NSG is being utterly wasted protecting our politicians. India has no proper equivalent of the US “Secret Service”, and even if we did, we would probably waste that by spreading it too thinly among politicians. As it happens if almost any politician in India today did happen to be unfortunately assassinated, the main mourners would be family-members and not the general Indian public. Despite politicians constituting rather “low-value targets” for terrorists, India’s scarce anti-terrorist and police resources have been misallocated to protecting them.

Finally, the RAND study makes the lazy-man’s methodological error of supposing outfits like the LeT think and behave in a manner explicable by American political science textbooks, or ought to do so. What Western analysts may need to do instead is learn from the old Arabist and Orientalist traditions of how to think and see the world from Eastern points of view. But that may require greater self-knowledge than the modern world tends to permit.

Postscript:

My December 6 2008 analysis here titled “A Quick Comparison Between the September 11 2001 NYC-Washington attacks and the November 26-28 2008 Mumbai Massacres (An Application of the Case-by-Case Philosophical Technique of Wittgenstein, Wisdom and Bambrough)” is republished below. I have corrected “Rome Airport” with “Lod Airport” on the basis of reading the RAND report, though may not have received the courtesy of acknowledgment for the reminder of the Japanese Red Army attack….

14. February 9 2009, Pakistani expansionism: India and the world need to beware of “Non-Resident Pakistanis” ruled by Rahmat Ali’s ghost

The Government of Pakistan is said to be due to release its initial report on the involvement of Pakistanis in the Mumbai massacres. It is reportedly expected that the G o P will partly if not mainly or wholly attribute responsibility for the planning of the massacres to expatriate Pakistanis in other countries, perhaps in Europe and Britain. If so, a fact the Government of India might find prudent to recall is that the Government of Pakistan in bygone decades did deny citizenship to Rahmat Ali himself (who invented the acronym “P, A, K, I, S, T, A, N” ) and even deported him back to Britain from where he had carried out his vituperative and bigoted campaign against Hindus.

Rahmat Ali’s British grave has become a site of pilgrimage for expatriate Pakistani extremists and his ignorant hate-filled ideology from the 1930s has been inspiring their modern manifestos. I said this in an article published in Karachi’s Dawn newspaper in 2005, which also pointed to Iqbal and Jinnah’s disdain for Rahmat Ali’s views (see “Iqbal and Jinnah vs Rahmat Ali” republished here). American nationals and British subjects of Pakistani origin inspired by Rahmat Ali’s ghost are spreading theories of Pakistani territorial expansionism at the cost of the destruction of the Indian Republic and many other countries.

The fact that at one such website recently I myself, presumably because of my Hindu name and Indian nationality, have been referred to as a “monkey- or donkey-worshipper” may speak to the somewhat rabid nature of such ideologies. (Drat! And there I was expecting some elementary Pakistani courtesy and acknowledgment let alone gratitude for having created, at great personal cost at an American university twenty years ago, the volume with WE James titled Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s with its mundane chapters on agriculture, macroeconomics, education etc!)

Incidentally, British newspapers are reporting today that America’s CIA has been deeply concerned about British subjects of Pakistani origin being a source of international terrorism. It may be pertinent to recall that terrorism in India’s Punjab had much support among numerous Sikh expatriates and immigrants in North America and Britain, and the same kind of thing may be true of Tamil expatriates from Sri Lanka. Being isolated and alienated as immigrants in a foreign country may lead to psychological conditions that contribute to such phenomena, whereby political and other events in the faraway country-of-origin take on exaggerated proportions in an individual’s mental make-up. Certainly Rahmat Ali himself was a rather tragic lonely figure who wasted his own potential to properly contribute to Pakistan’s political history through his own self-blinding hatred of Hindus.

SR

15. February 11, 2009 Kasab, the young misguided Pakistani mass-murdering terrorist, needs to be given political asylum in India! (Matt Damon, Will Smith: here’s a real-life case!)

Life imitates art or rather Hollywood again as young Kasab, the misguided primary-school dropout Pakistani mass-murdering terrorist caught by Indian police after the Mumbai massacres, becomes a kind of Jason-Bourne/Enemy-of-the-State character who is said to be being targeted now by Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds for not being dead already! There have been all kinds of weird assassinations by and of government agents using poisoned umbrellas and radioactive pills etc in real life, and who is to say that young Kasab is not going to be given a small cyanide capsule along with a letter of farewell from his parents when His Excellency the High Commissioner’s consular agents receive access to him?

Shortly after Kasab’s remorseful confessions (which flowed from his natural gratitude at having survived and having been treated humanely by Mumbai’s police), I said here that if I was the judge trying him, I would send him to an Indian prison for 20 or 30 years (given his 20 or 30 murder victims), but I would add that he should be occasionally, say once a year, permitted to offer namaz at India’s grandest mosques. He could become a model prisoner, possibly a potent weapon against Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds who have ruined his life and now wish him dead.

(Message to Matt Damon, Will Smith and assorted Hollywood cinematic personalities: there is a confessed, remorseful mass-murdering 20-year old Pakistani terrorist in an Indian prison who is being targeted by the very people who sent him on his vile mission.)

In present circumstances, young Kasab needs to seek political asylum in the Indian Republic as his life in his own Pakistan Republic is as good as over for political reasons. He would become the first person ever in history to receive political asylum in a country that he attacked despite being a confessed terrorist mass-murderer. But Mahatma Gandhi would have approved and smiled at the irony of it all! Ahimsa paramo dharmaha in practice.

SR

16. February 12 2009, Thanks and well done Minister Rehman Malik and the Government of Pakistan

The Hon’ble Rehman Malik and the Government of Pakistan have done very well, all things considered, in taking forward the criminal investigation into the Mumbai massacres, based on the evidence provided by Indian authorities that arose from the cooperation and testimony of young Kasab, the captured Pakistani terrorist. I am hopeful the Government of India will provide a serious well-considered response too, though our private TV channels continue frequently to be rather juvenile, sensationalist and inflammatory caused by their overall lack of editorial competence.

As foreseen here over the last two months, a very serious problem of international law still arises due to the competing jurisdictions in the prosecution of this complex case, since both the Indian Republic and the Pakistan Republic have jurisdiction. I continue to believe that a joint prosecution by the Pakistan Navy and the Indian Navy under the Law of the Sea in international waters (conducted on board, say, a Pakistan Navy vessel) may be the most expeditious way to bring this whole tragic and awful matter to proper closure.

In the meantime, the Government of Pakistan has done well and deserves Indian thanks. Recall, by way of contrast, that investigations of many of Pakistan’s major political assassinations, from Liaquat Ali Khan and Dr Khan Sahib to Zia ul Haq and Nawab Bugti and Benazir Bhutto herself, still remain in the dark. We in India tend to solve our political assassinations better but in recent times our police have failed woefully to solve several ghastly and notorious personal murders.

Subroto Roy, Kolkata

17. March 18 2009. Pakistan’s progress

Nine months ago, on June 9 2008, I wrote but did not publish the op-ed article below “Pakistan’s progress” intended for an Indian newspaper. When the Mumbai massacres took place, I was rather glad I had not come to do so because its cheer and optimism contrasted too starkly with the vileness and viciousness of the massacres. Instead I turned to the legal, moral and political implications of the massacres, and several articles are to be found here on Kasab, competing jurisdictions in international law in prosecuting the crimes, and application of the Law of the Sea Treaty (which both countries have ratified) to jointly try and hang the masterminds at sea in international waters. Pakistan’s initial criminal investigation into the massacres received praise here, and I can only trust that both the Government of India and the Government of Pakistan will remain forensically focussed on that case of mass-murder and other heinous crimes until its appropriate conclusion.

Meanwhile, recent political events in Pakistan have made the article below relevant again; when it was written Pervez Musharraf had still not departed from office but the more abstract constitutional question raised in the article had to do with the relative powers of the Head of State and Head of Government in the new Pakistan. With the peaceful restoration of the Chief Justice to his high office, I am glad to say that the question I raised but did not publish nine months ago, namely, “A rare constitutional consensus might be developing – can it last long enough?”, seems to be headed at present to being answered in the affirmative.

Subroto Roy, Kolkata, India

“Pakistan’s progress: A rare constitutional consensus might be developing – can it last long enough? Subroto Roy, dated June 9 2008

The dynamic evolution of politics in Pakistan should be judged not against Indian politics (rotten or exemplary as our politics can be at different times) but against its own initial conditions. It is an unimaginable luxury that Pakistanis in recent months have been discussing such sweet constitutional questions as how to restore judges unseated by soldiers having entered the Supreme Court, what to do with judges who took an oath despite such an abomination, how to maintain diplomatic relations between the PPP and PML(N), and most important of all, whether the military with its nuclear assets should report to the PM or President – in other words, is the Head of Government or Head of State the Chief Executive? It is a luxury too that Pervez Musharraf has become almost a distraction in Pakistani politics, that he himself indicates he may be running out of dramatic lines and may be getting ready to exit his country’s political stage, that the Pakistan Army is shocked by its realisation of its loss of prestige in society, that the Ex-Servicemen’s Society thinks Musharraf deserves punishment for having caused such a state of affairs. Dr Ayesha Siddiqa has pointed out that every Pakistani military strongman has been eventually removed, and has been removed not by democratic forces alone but by intra-military pressure.

It is likely we are at present witnessing such a critical moment, and it is naturally fraught with danger for any civilian prime minister and parliament because any intra-military conflict can descend into mutiny or worse. Pakistan Army officers have been deeply divided for years over Islamicisation already — onto which is now compounded the issue of loyalty to Musharraf (mostly paid for in American dollars) versus the urge to remove him in the best future interests of the military. Musharraf himself, with his usual braggadocio, has been claiming fealty to constitutional principles as well; so at least there is agreement on all sides that matters should proceed in an orderly and dignified manner and not by nefarious means.

The relevant comparison of the present situation is with the recent past. Let us look back just a few years, say to the autumn of 2005 when the initial post 9/11 Western backlash against Pakistan had been renewed after the London Underground bombings. On 1 September 2005, during the scheduled Islamabad visit of the Indian Foreign Secretary, the PAF launched massive month-long war-games against an assumed Indian enemy. It involved “the entire fleet, including US-made F-16s, French Mirage fighter aircraft and Chinese-built jets” and “using all assets” in an exercise “closest to war you can get in peacetime”; from the Hindu Kush to the Arabian Sea “8,200 operational sorties” would be flown, Shaukat Aziz witnessing the start, Musharraf the finish. Hardly had this orgy of militarism concluded when northern Pakistan and parts of J&K were hit by the devastating earthquake; Musharraf visited quake-hit areas still dressed in battle gear down to his para wings.

Pakistanis of all classes were appalled at the ineptitude of their government in face of the earthquake and it was inevitable the military would be held responsible. What had been the opportunity cost in fungible resources of those “8,200 operational sorties”? The military’s extremely expensive “assets” were designed for war with India and had bankrupted the country but ordinary people had been left utterly helpless in a natural calamity. Future historians of Pakistan may well see the 2005 earthquake as a critical turning point in their political development just as the 12 November 1970 cyclone was in the history of Bangladesh.

A modern war between Pakistan and India, even a non-nuclear one, would be like a hundred earthquakes. Indians have not been so jingoistic as to contemplate such an exchange of destruction but less than a decade ago Gohar Ayub Khan, as Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, was boasting how India would surrender within a few hours in the next war – which was presumably a threat to unleash missiles, even non-nuclear ones, as a first resort against Indian cities and civilian populations. That such abominable Pakistan-India tension has today come to vanish might have been indicated during the recent IPL cricket final when Kamran Akmal jumped onto Yusuf Pathan or crashed into Mohammad Kaif as commercially driven team-mates led by an Australian captain and associated with what used to be Hindu Rajputana. So much for the “Two Nations Theory” in the 21st Century. Maulana Azad seems to have been proven right and MA Jinnah proven wrong after all.

The Pakistani state had become an oppressive war-machine solely guided by anti-Indian paranoia even while ordinary Pakistanis, through modern communications and technology, knew fully well India and Indians were not nearly as bad as the Pakistan Government was making them out to be. From an official Pakistani point of view, a nuclear bomb (even a purchased and assembled one) was needed out of fear India intended to destroy what remained of West Pakistan – a theory that could arise only from the delusion that Bangladesh had been caused by Indian intrigues. The Pakistan Army has been reluctant for more than a generation to face up to the reality of its behaviour in East Pakistan and the consequences that resulted; it has been far easier to blame India instead.

Yet Pakistan’s national hero, AQ Khan himself, born in Bhopal and extremely bitter at modern India as many former Indian nationals tend to be, has now said “Never! Never!” will there be an exchange of destruction in nuclear warfare between India and Pakistan. It may be a wise Indian diplomatic move to invite Dr Khan, stricken with cancer as he is said to be, to make a quiet private visit to his place of birth if he wished to (perhaps followed by a courtesy luncheon at BARC on the way home).

Of course Indians cannot forget the destruction that has been wrought in this country in recent years by our old Bogeyman, the ISI. Yet it is a fair bet that not only do we not comprehend the workings of that particular bureaucracy, nor do Pakistanis themselves, indeed the ISI itself may not comprehend itself in the sense that different ISI sections have been and may remain at cross-purposes or conflict with each other as has become apparent in the ongoing official attempts to suppress the new “Taliban”. Proper civilian control of the ISI is part of the same process as the proper civilian control of the Pakistan military as a whole, and what we are witnessing is nothing less than the first serious constitutional attempt in Pakistan’s history for that to take place. The whole subcontinent is hopeful and watching Pakistan’s transition. In the meantime, a milestone was certainly reached on 25 May when Pakistan’s young and brilliant sufi rock band Junoon performed in beautiful Srinagar to the delight of thousands of Kashmiris. The “United Jehad Council” and Syed Ali Shah Geelani had denounced them; in reply the band’s lead guitarist Salman Ahmed had the courage to say: “I want them to join us in the musical jehad for peace and ring the bells of harmony.” For peace to break out will of course require India’s participation and willingness as well.”…

Posted in Ahimsa, BBC, Benazir Bhutto, Government of India, Government of Pakistan, India in international law, India's Land, India's Military Defence, India's Muslims, India's Rule of Law, Jews in India, Law, Law of the Sea, Law of the Sea applied to international terrorists, Laws of war applied to international terrorists, Life and death, Master and Servant Law, Mumbai massacres, Mumbai terrorist Kasab, Mumbai's Police, Mumbai/Bombay, Nariman House massacre, Pakistan in international law, Pakistan's psychology, Pakistan's constitutional politics, Pakistan's history, Pakistan's military, Pakistan's murder of Indian POWs, Pakistan's nuclear weapons, Pakistan's politics, Pakistan's terrorist masterminds, Pakistan's terrorist training institutes, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistani expansionism, RAND study of Mumbai attacks, Schizophrenia in international relations, Terrorist techniques. 2 Comments »

A Dozen Grown-Up Questions for Indian Politicians Dreaming of Becoming/Deciding India’s PM After the 2009 General Elections

April 28, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

The 2009 General Election campaign is supposed to elect a Parliament and a Head of Government for the Republic of India, not a Head Boy/Head Girl at an urban middle-class high school or the karta of a joint family. Unfortunately, our comprador national-level media seem to be docile and juvenile enough in face of power and privilege to want to ask only touchy-feely koochi-woochi pretty baby questions of the “candidates” for PM (several of whom are not even running as candidates for the Lok Sabha but still seem to want to be PM). Rival candidates themselves seem to want to hurl invective and innuendo at one another, as if all this was merely some public squabble between Delhi middle-class families.

So here are a set of grown-up adult questions instead:

1. Pakistan is politically and strategically our most important neighbour. Can you assure the country that a government headed by you will have a coherent policy on both war and peace with Pakistan? How would you achieve it?

2. Do you agree with the Reagan-Gorbachev opinion that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”? If so, what would your Government do about it?

3. If there are Indian citizens in Jammu & Kashmir presently governed by Article 370 who wish to renounce Indian nationality and remain stateless or become Pakistani/Afghan/Iranian citizens instead, would you consider letting them do so and giving them Indian “green cards” for peaceful permanent residence in J&K and India as a whole?

4. Do you know where Chumbi Valley is? If so, would your Government consider reviving the decades-old idea with China to mutually exchange permanent leases to Aksai Chin and Chumbi Valley respectively?

5. Nuclear power presently accounts as a source of about 4% of total Indian electricity; do you agree that even if nuclear power capacity alone increased by 100% over the next ten years and all other sources of electricity remained constant, nuclear power would still account for less than 8% of the total?

6. The public debt of the country may now amount to something like Rs 30 lakh crore (Rs 30 trillion); do you find that worrisome? If so, why so? If not, why not?

7. The Government of India may be paying something like Rs 3 lakh crore (Rs 3 trillion) annually on interest payments on its debt; do you agree that tends to suck dry every public budget even before it can try to do something worthwhile?

8. If our money supply growth is near 22% per annum, and the rate of growth of real income is near 7% per annum, would you agree the decline in the value of money (i.e., the rate of inflation) could be as high as 15% per annum?

9. Do you agree that giving poor people direct income subsidies is a far better way to help them than by distorting market prices for everybody? If not, why not?

10. How would you seek to improve the working of (and reduce the corruption in) the following public institutions: (1) the Army and paramilitary; (2) the Judiciary and Police; (3) Universities and technical institutes?

11. There has never been a Prime Minister in any parliamentary democracy in the world throughout the 20th Century who was also not an elected member of the Lower House; do you agree BR Ambedkar and Jawaharlal Nehru intended that for the Republic of India as well and thought it something so obvious as not necessary to specify in the 1950 Constitution? What will your Government do to improve the working of the Presidency, the Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha and State Assemblies?

12. What, personally, is your vision for India after a five-year period of a Government led by you?

Subroto Roy,

Citizen & Voter

Posted in 15th Lok Sabha, Academic research, Afghanistan, Air warfare, Aksai Chin, BR Ambedkar, China's expansionism, China-India Relations, Chumbi Valley, India's 2009 General Election, India's Army, India's Banking, India's Budget, India's bureaucracy, India's Constitution, India's constitutional politics, India's Democracy, India's Diplomacy, India's Economy, India's education, India's Election Commission, India's Electorate, India's Foreign Policy, India's Government Budget Constraint, India's Government Expenditure, India's higher education, India's History, India's inflation, India's Judiciary, India's Lok Sabha, India's Macroeconomics, India's Monetary & Fiscal Policy, India's nomenclatura, India's Personality Cults, India's political lobbyists, India's political parties, India's Politics, India's Polity, India's pork-barrel politics, India's poverty, India's Presidency, India's private TV channels, India's Public Finance, India's Rajya Sabha, India's Reserve Bank, India's Rule of Law, India's State Finances, India's Supreme Court, India's Union-State relations, India-China relations, India-Pakistan cooperation against terrorism, India-Pakistan naval cooperation, India-Pakistan peace process, India-Tibet Border, India-United States business, India-US Nuclear Deal, International diplomacy, Iran, Jammu & Kashmir, Jammu & Kashmir in international law, Jawaharlal Nehru, Just war, Laddakh, Land and political economy, LK Advani, Manmohan Singh, Pakistan's murder of Indian POWs, Pakistan's terrorist masterminds, Pakistan's terrorist training institutes, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistani expansionism, Press and Media, Sonia Gandhi, Stonewalling in politics, Voting, War. Leave a Comment »

What is Christine Fair referring to? Would the MEA kindly seek to address what she has claimed asap?

April 27, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

Almost three years ago when the Baloch leader Nawab Bugti was killed by bombardment during the Musharraf-regime, I was moved to research and write a short analysis of Balochistan for the first time. I said inter alia

“because there are two million Balochis in Iranian Balochistan, Pakistan’s Balochi nationalists have had a declared enemy to their west in the Iranian Government ~ the Pahlevi regime even provided Italian-made American Huey helicopter gunships with Iranian pilots to help Bhutto crush the Baloch rebellions of the early 1970s. In fact, Balochi rebels have had no military allies except the pre-communist Government of Afghanistan under Daud, who ‘ordered the establishment of a training camp at Qandahar for Baloch liberation fighters. Between 10,000 and 15,000 Baloch youths were trained and armed there’ (R Anwar, The Tragedy of Afghanistan 1988, p. 78). The Governments of India or the United States lack motivation or capability to help, and Balochistan may be doomed to becoming a large human rights/genocidal disaster of the next decade. An independent Balochistan may be unviable, being overwhelmed by its riches while having too small, uneducated and backward a population of its own, and powerful greedy neighbours on either side… Today, the Pashtun of Pakistan and Afghanistan (as well as perhaps Sindhis of Baloch origin) may be the only interlocutors who can prevent a genocide and mediate a peace between Balochi nationalists and Musharraf’s ruthless Punjabi military-businessmen determined to colonize Balochistan completely with Chinese help, effectively subsidising their misgovernance elsewhere with Balochistan’s riches…”

Raja Anwar had been a close friend and associate of ZA Bhutto, the founder of Pakistan’s ruling party, and his book on Afghanistan published 20 years ago is required reading.

The wonders of the Internet sent me back to this subject a few days ago when a Pakistani website claimed that the American analyst Dr Christine Fair of RAND said she had visited an Indian consulate in Zahedan, Iran, and alleged to her interlocutors that the consulate was “not issuing visas as the main activity” .

Dr Fair’s reported words seemed to me to be surprising, so I wrote to her seeking a confirmation that she had been quoted correctly, when the Pakistani website very kindly sent me the link to her words at a recent gathering of American and British observers discussing Pakistan. This is what Dr Fair said at that gathering on this topic (emphasis added):

“I think it would be a mistake to completely disregard Pakistan’s regional perceptions due to doubts about Indian competence in executing covert operations. That misses the point entirely. And I think it is unfair to dismiss the notion that Pakistan’s apprehensions about Afghanistan stem in part from its security competition with India. Having visited the Indian mission in Zahedan, Iran, I can assure you they are not issuing visas as the main activity! Moreover, India has run operations from its mission in Mazar (through which it supported the Northern Alliance) and is likely doing so from the other consulates it has reopened in Jalalabad and Qandahar along the border. Indian officials have told me privately that they are pumping money into Baluchistan. Kabul has encouraged India to engage in provocative activities such as using the Border Roads Organization to build sensitive parts of the Ring Road and use the Indo-Tibetan police force for security. It is also building schools on a sensitive part of the border in Kunar–across from Bajaur. Kabul’s motivations for encouraging these activities are as obvious as India’s interest in engaging in them. Even if by some act of miraculous diplomacy the territorial issues were to be resolved, Pakistan would remain an insecure state. Given the realities of the subcontinent (e.g., India’s rise and its more effective foreign relations with all of Pakistan’s near and far neighbors), these fears are bound to grow, not lessen. This suggests that without some means of compelling Pakistan to abandon its reliance upon militancy, it will become ever more interested in using it — and the militants will likely continue to proliferate beyond Pakistan’s control.”

Now I have nothing to do with the Government of India and have no idea about the evidence relating to the precise facts being alleged here. But I do have some circumstantial evidence as well as a personal reason to be curious, as my father was an Indian diplomat in Tehran during 1954-1957 and I was in fact born there.

I recalled him having told me he had travelled in that region and today he confirmed that he had in fact, from the Tehran Embassy as part of his official duties as Commercial Secretary and Consul, visited what was then an Indian Vice-Consulate at Zahedan, peopled by a single Indian Vice-Consul with whom he had spent two days.

That was more than 50 years ago — so the “Indian mission” that Dr Fair said she visited in Zahedan is far from being anything new whatsoever. In fact, I would predict it was probably something that existed during British India too and that it was precisely an outpost of British India issuing visas for anyone headed towards Quetta in what was then British Baluchistan.

Could the Consulate be upto anything else? Hmmm, let’s see, how about assisting in the complex overall discussions, now apparently stalled or aborted, between Iran, Pakistan and India over the gas pipeline perhaps?

In other words, there might be any number of perfectly legitimate reasons for India to be represented in Zahedan as it has been for more than half a century — the allegation contained in the American discussion of India fomenting trouble for Pakistan in Balochistan may be entirely baseless.

Did India once support the Northern Alliance? Of course, as did Iran too, but that was all pre 9/11 during the extended Afghan civil war before the toppling of the Mullah Umar Government by the Northern Alliance allied with the United States! That is wholly a separate thing from any claim that India from Iranian soil has caused trouble in Balochistan.

Such an aspersion coming from such a source would be easily and delightedly picked up by those in Pakistan looking for exogenous explanations of their problems. For example, if you watch the video of the ghastly murder of the Polish engineer Piotr Stanczak by the Pakistani Taliban, you will find a demented Pakistani commentator in the background disclaiming any Pakistani responsibility for it saying instead it was all India’s fault and India has been financing the Pakistani Taliban with “billions”! (Postcript June 8 2009: Jemima Khan reported a few days ago: “Pakistan pulsates with conspiracy theories. One, which has made it into the local newspapers, is that the Taliban when caught and stripped were revealed to have been “intact, not Muslims”, a euphemism for uncircumcised. (Pakistanis are big on euphemisms.) Their beards were stuck on with glue. “Foreign elements” (India) are suspected.”)

Such is the extent of the psychosis. “Delta Dawn, what’s that flower you have on…?”

The Government of India obviously needs to address Dr Fair’s claim and seek to squarely refute what she has said in these remarks.

Subroto Roy, Kolkata

Posted in Balochistan, Britain in India, Government of India, Government of Pakistan, India's Diplomacy, India's Foreign Policy, India's Foreign Service, India-Pakistan cooperation against terrorism, India-Pakistan peace process, Iran, Jemima Khan, Pakistan's psychology, Pakistan's terrorist masterminds, Pakistan's terrorist training institutes, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Poland, Psychology, US Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Espionage. 2 Comments »

Alfred Lyall on Christians, Muslims, India, China, Etc, 1908

April 6, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

“THE STATE IN ITS RELATION TO EASTERN AND WESTERN RELIGIONS”

By Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall (1835-1911)

Delivered as President of the Congress for the History of Religions, September 1908.—Fortnightly Review, November 1908.

“In considering the subject of my address, I have been confronted by this difficulty—that in the sections which regulate the order of our proceedings, we have a list of papers that range over all the principal religions, ancient and modern, that have existed and still exist in the world. They are to be treated and discussed by experts whose scholarship, particular studies, and close research entitle them all to address you authoritatively. I have no such special qualifications; and in any case it would be most presumptuous in me to trespass upon their ground. All that I can venture to do, therefore, in the remarks which I propose to address to you to-day, is to attempt a brief general survey of the history of religions from a standpoint which may possibly not fall within the scope of these separate papers.

The four great religions now prevailing in the world, which are historical in the sense that they have been long known to history, I take to be—Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. Having regard to their origin and derivation, to their history and character, I may be permitted, for my present purpose only, to class the two former as the Religions of the West, and the two latter as the Religions of the East. These are the faiths which still maintain a mighty influence over the minds of mankind. And my object is to compare the political relations, the attitude, maintained toward them, from time to time, by the States and rulers of the people over which these religions have established their spiritual dominion.

The religion of the Jews is not included, though its influence has been incalculable, because it has been caught up, so to speak, into Christianity and Islam, and cannot therefore be counted among those which have made a partition of the religious world. For this reason, perhaps, it has retained to this day its ancient denomination, derived from the tribe or country of its origin; whereas the others are named from a Faith or a Founder. The word Nazarene, denoting the birthplace of Christianity, which is said to be still used in that region, was, as we know, very speedily superseded by its wider title, as the Creed broke out of local limits and was proclaimed universal. There has evidently been a foretime, though it is prehistorical, when, so far as we know, mankind was universally polytheistic; when innumerable rites and worships prevailed without restraint, springing up and contending with each other like the trees in a primeval forest, reflecting a primitive and precarious condition of human society.

I take polytheism to have been, in this earliest stage, the wild growth of superstitious imagination, varied indefinitely by the pressure of circumstance, by accident, by popular caprice, or by the good or evil fortunes of the community. In this stage it can now be seen among barbarous tribes—as, for instance, in Central Africa. And some traces of it still survive, under different pretexts and disguises, in the lowest strata of civilised nations, where it may be said to represent the natural reluctance of the vagrant human fancy to be satisfied with higher forms and purer conceptions that are always imperfectly assimilated by the multitude. Among primitive societies the spheres of human and divine affairs were intermixed and identical; they could not be disentangled. But with the growth of political institutions came gradual separation, or at any rate the subordination of religion to the practical necessities of orderly government and public morals.

That polytheism can exist and flourish in the midst of a highly intellectual and civilised society, we know from the history of Greece and Rome. But in ancient Greece its direct influence upon political affairs seems to have been slight; though it touched at some points upon morality. The function of the State, according to Greek ideas, was to legislate for all the departments of human life and to uphold the moral standard. The law prohibited sacrilege and profanity; it punished open impiety that might bring down divine wrath upon the people at large. The philosophers taught rational ethics; they regarded the popular superstitions with indulgent contempt; but they inculcated the duty of honouring the gods, and the observance of public ceremonial. Beyond these limits the practice of local and customary worship was, I think, free and unrestrained; though I need hardly add that toleration, as understood by the States of antiquity, was a very different thing from the modern principle of religious neutrality. Under the Roman government the connection between the State and religion was much closer, as the dominion of Rome expanded and its power became centralised. The Roman State maintained a strict control and superintendence over the official rituals and worships, which were regulated as a department of the administration, to bind the people together by established rites and worships, in order to cement political and social unity. It is true that the usages of the tribes and principalities that were conquered and annexed were left undisturbed; for the Roman policy, like that of the English in India, was to avoid giving offence to religion; and undoubtedly this policy, in both instances, materially facilitated the rapid building up of a wide dominion. Nevertheless, there was a tendency to draw in the worship toward a common centre. The deities of the conquered provinces were respected and conciliated; the Roman generals even appealed to them for protection and favour, yet they became absorbed and assimilated under Roman names; they were often identified with the gods of the Roman pantheon, and were frequently superseded by the victorious divinities of the new rulers—the strange deities, in fact, were Romanised as well as the foreign tribes and cities. After this manner the Roman empire combined the tolerance of great religious diversity with the supremacy of a centralised government. Political amalgamation brought about a fusion of divine attributes; and latterly the emperor was adored as the symbol of manifest power, ruler and pontiff; he was the visible image of supreme authority. This régime was easily accepted by the simple unsophisticated paganism of Europe. The Romans, with all their statecraft, had as yet no experience of a high religious temperature, of enthusiastic devotion and divine mysteries. But as their conquest and commerce spread eastward, the invasion of Asia let in upon Europe a flood of Oriental divinities, and thus Rome came into contact with much stronger and deeper spiritual forces. The European polytheism might be utilised and administered, the Asiatic deities could not be domesticated and subjected to regulation; the Oriental orgies and strange rites broke in upon the organised State worship; the new ideas and practices came backed by a profound and fervid spiritualism. Nevertheless the Roman policy of bringing religion under authoritative control was more or less successful even in the Asiatic provinces of the empire; the privileges of the temples were restricted; the priesthoods were placed under the general superintendence of the proconsular officials; and Roman divinities gradually found their way into the Asiatic pantheon. But we all know that the religion of the Roman empire was falling into multitudinous confusion when Christianity arose—an austere exclusive faith, with its army of saints, ascetics, and unflinching martyrs, proclaiming worship to be due to one God only, and sternly refusing to acknowledge the divinity of the emperor. Against such a faith an incoherent disorderly polytheism could make no better stand than tribal levies against a disciplined army. The new religion struck directly at the sacrifices that symbolised imperial unity; the passive resistance of Christians was necessarily treated as rebellion, the State made implacable war upon them. Yet the spiritual and moral forces won the victory, and Christianity established itself throughout the empire. Universal religion, following upon universal civil dominion, completed the levelling of local and national distinctions. The Churches rapidly grew into authority superior to the State within their own jurisdiction; they called in the temporal government to enforce theological decisions and to put down heresies; they founded a powerful hierarchy. The earlier Roman constitution had made religion an instrument of administration. When one religion became universal, the churches enlisted the civil ruler into the service of orthodoxy; they converted the State into an instrument for enforcing religion. The pagan empire had issued edicts against Christianity and had suppressed Christian assemblies as tainted with disaffection; the Christian emperors enacted laws against the rites and worships of paganism, and closed temples. It was by the supreme authority of Constantine that, for the first time in the religious history of the world, uniformity of belief was defined by a creed, and sanctioned by the ruler’s assent.

Then came, in Western Europe, the time when the empire at Rome was rent asunder by the inrush of barbarians; but upon its ruins was erected the great Catholic Church of the Papacy, which preserved in the ecclesiastical domain the autocratic imperial tradition. The primacy of the Roman Church, according to Harnack, is essentially the transference to her of Rome’s central position in the religions of the heathen world; the Church united the western races, disunited politically, under the common denomination of Christianity. Yet Christianity had not long established itself throughout all the lands, in Europe and Asia, which had once been under the Roman sovereignty, when the violent irruptions of Islam upset not only the temporal but also the spiritual dominion throughout Western Asia, and along the southern shores of the Mediterranean. The Eastern empire at Constantinople had been weakened by bitter theological dissensions and heresies among the Christians; the votaries of the new, simple, unswerving faith of Mohammed were ardent and unanimous.

In Egypt and Syria the Mohammedans were speedily victorious; the Latin Church and even the Latin language were swept out of North Africa. In Persia the Sassanian dynasty was overthrown, and although there was no immediate and total conversion of the people, Mohammedanism gradually superseded the ancient Zoroastrian cultus as the religion of the Persian State. It was not long before the armies of Islam had triumphed from the Atlantic coast to the Jaxartes river in Central Asia; and conversion followed, speedily or slowly, as the direct result of conquest. Moreover, the Mohammedans invaded Europe. In the south-west they subdued almost all Spain; and in the south-east they destroyed, some centuries later, the Greek empire, though not the Greek Church, and consolidated a mighty rulership at Constantinople. With this prolonged conflict between Islam and Christianity along the borderlands of Europe and Asia began the era of those religious wars that have darkened the history of the Western nations, and have perpetuated the inveterate antipathy between Asiatic and European races, which the spread of Christianity into both continents had softened and might have healed. In the end Christianity has fixed itself permanently in Europe, while Islam is strongly established throughout half Asia. But the sharp collision between the two faiths, the clash of armies bearing the cross and the crescent, generated fierce fanaticism on both sides. The Crusades kindled a fiery militant and missionary spirit previously unknown to religions, whereby religious propagation became the mainspring and declared object of conquest and colonisation.

Finally, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the great secession from the Roman Church divided the nations of Western Europe into hostile camps, and throughout the long wars of that period political jealousies and ambitions were inflamed by religious animosities. In Eastern Europe the Greek Church fell under almost complete subordination to the State. The history of Europe and Western Asia records, therefore, a close connection and community of interests between the States and the orthodox faiths; a combination which has had a very potent influence, during many centuries, upon the course of civil affairs, upon the fortunes, or misfortunes, of nations.

Up to the sixteenth century, at least, it was universally held, by Christianity and by Islam, that the State was bound to enforce orthodoxy; conversion and the suppression or expulsion of heretics were public duties. Unity of creed was thought necessary for national unity—a government could not undertake to maintain authority, or preserve the allegiance of its subjects, in a realm divided and distracted by sectarian controversies. On these principles Christianity and Islam were consolidated, in union with the States or in close alliance with them; and the geographical boundaries of these two faiths, and of their internal divisions respectively, have not materially changed up to the present day.

Let me now turn to the history of religion in those countries of further Asia, which were never reached by Greek or Roman conquest or civilisation, where the ancient forms of worship and conceptions of divinity, which existed before Christianity and Islam, still flourish. And here I shall only deal with the relations of the State to religion in India and China and their dependencies, because these vast and populous empires contain the two great religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, of purely Asiatic origin and character, which have assimilated to a large extent, and in a certain degree elevated, the indigenous polytheism, and which still exercise a mighty influence over the spiritual and moral condition of many millions. We know what a tremendous power religion has been in the wars and politics of the West. I submit that in Eastern Asia, beyond the pale of Islam, the history of religion has been very different. Religious wars—I mean wars caused by the conflict of militant faiths contending for superiority—were, I believe, unknown on any great scale to the ancient civilisations. It seems to me that until Islam invaded India the great religious movements and changes in that region had seldom or never been the consequence of, nor had been materially affected by, wars, conquests, or political revolutions. Throughout Europe and Mohammedan Asia the indigenous deities and their temples have disappeared centuries ago; they have been swept away by the forces of Church and State combined to exterminate them; they have all yielded to the lofty overruling ideal of monotheism.

But the tide of Mohammedanism reached its limit in India; the people, though conquered, were but partly converted, and eastward of India there have been no important Mohammedan rulerships. On this side of Asia, therefore, two great religions, Buddhism and Brahmanism, have held their ground from times far anterior to Christianity; they have retained the elastic comprehensive character of polytheism, purified and elevated by higher conceptions, developed by the persistent competition of diverse ideas and forms among the people, unrestrained by attempts of superior organised faiths to obliterate the lower and weaker species. In that region political despotism has prevailed immemorially; religious despotism, in the sense of the legal establishment of one faith or worship to the exclusion of all others, of uniformity imposed by coercion, of proselytism by persecution, is unknown to history: the governments have been absolute and personal; the religions have been popular and democratic. They have never been identified so closely with the ruling power as to share its fortunes, or to be used for the consolidation of successful conquest. Nor, on the other hand, has a ruler ever found it necessary, for the security of his throne, to conform to the religion of his subjects, and to abjure all others. The political maxim, that the sovereign and his subjects should be of one and the same religion, ‘Cujus regio ejus religio’, has never prevailed in this part of the world.

And although in India, the land of their common origin, Buddhism widely displaced and overlaid Brahmanism, while it was in its turn, after several centuries, overcome and ejected by a Brahmanic revival, yet I believe that history records no violent contests or collisions between them; nor do we know that the armed force of the State played any decisive part in these spiritual revolutions. I do not maintain that Buddhism has owed nothing to State influence. It represents certain doctrines of the ancient Indian theosophy, incarnate, as one might say, in the figure of a spiritual Master, the Indian prince, Sakya Gautama, who was the type and example of ascetic quietism; it embodies the idea of salvation, or emancipation attainable by man’s own efforts, without aid from priests or divinities. Buddhism is the earliest, by many centuries, of the faiths that claim descent from a personal founder. It emerges into authentic history with the empire of Asoka, who ruled over the greater part of India some 250 years before Christ, and its propagation over his realm and the countries adjacent is undoubtedly due to the influence, example, and authority of that devout monarch.

According to Mr. Vincent Smith, from whose valuable work on the Early History of India I take the description of Asoka’s religious policy, the king, renouncing after one necessary war all further military conquest, made it the business of his life to employ his autocratic power in directing the preaching and teaching of the Law of Piety, which he had learnt from his Buddhist priesthood. All his high officers were commanded to instruct the people in the way of salvation; he sent missions to foreign countries; he issued edicts promulgating ethical doctrines, and the rules of a devout life; he made pilgrimages to the sacred places; and finally he assumed the yellow robe of a Buddhist monk.

Asoka elevated, so Mr. Smith has said, a sect of Hinduism to the rank of a world-religion. Nevertheless, I think it may be affirmed that the emperor consistently refrained from the forcible conversion of his subjects, and indeed the use of compulsion would have apparently been a breach of his own edicts, which insist on the principle of toleration, and declare the propagation of the Law of Piety to be his sole object. Asoka made no attempt to persecute Brahmanism; and it seems clear that the extraordinary success of Buddhism in India cannot be attributed to war or to conquest. To imperial influence and example much must be ascribed, yet I think Buddhism owed much more to its spiritual potency, to its superior faculty of transmuting and assimilating, instead of abolishing, the elementary instincts and worships, endowing them with a higher significance, attracting and stimulating devotion by impressive rites and ceremonies, impressing upon the people the dogma of the soul’s transmigration and its escape from the miseries of sentient existence by the operation of merits. And of all great religions it is the least political, for the practice of asceticism and quietism, of monastic seclusion from the working world, is necessarily adverse to any active connection with mundane affairs.

I do not know that the mysterious disappearance of Buddhism from India can be accounted for by any great political revolution, like that which brought Islam into India. It seems to have vanished before the Mohammedans had gained any footing in the country.

Meanwhile Buddhism is said to have penetrated into the Chinese empire by the first century of the Christian era. Before that time the doctrines of Confucius and Laotze were the dominant philosophies; rather moral than religious, though ancestral worship and the propitiation of spirits were not disallowed, and were to a certain extent enjoined. Laotze, the apostle of Taoism, appears to have preached a kind of Stoicism—the observance of the order of Nature in searching for the right way of salvation, the abhorrence of vicious sensuality—and the cultivation of humility, self-sacrifice, and simplicity of life. He condemned altogether the use of force in the sphere of religion or morality; though he admitted that it might be necessary for the purposes of civil government. The system of Confucius inculcated justice, benevolence, self-control, obedience and loyalty to the sovereign—all the civic virtues; it was a moral code without a metaphysical background; the popular worships were tolerated, reverence for ancestors conduced to edification; the gods were to be honoured, though it was well to keep aloof from them; he disliked religious fervour, and of things beyond experience he had nothing to say.

Buddhism, with its contempt for temporal affairs, treating life as a mere burden, and the soul’s liberation from existence as the end and object of meditative devotion, must have imported a new and disturbing element into the utilitarian philosophies of ancient China. For many centuries Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism are said to have contended for the patronage and recognition of the Chinese emperors. Buddhism was alternately persecuted and protected, expelled and restored by imperial decree. Priesthoods and monastic orders are institutions of which governments are naturally jealous; the monasteries were destroyed or rebuilt, sacerdotal orders and celibacy suppressed or encouraged by imperial decrees, according to the views and prepossessions of successive dynasties or emperors. Nevertheless the general policy of Chinese rulers and ministers seems not to have varied essentially. Their administrative principle was that religion must be prevented from interfering with affairs of State, that abuses and superstitious extravagances are not so much offences against orthodoxy as matters for the police, and as such must be put down by the secular arm. Upon this policy successive dynasties appear to have acted continuously up to the present day in China, where the relations of the State to religions are, I think, without parallel elsewhere in the modern world. One may find some resemblance to the attitude of the Roman emperors towards rites and worships among the population, in the Chinese emperor’s reverent observance and regulation of the rites and ceremonies performed by him as the religious chief and representative before Heaven of the great national interests. The deification of deceased emperors is a solemn rite ordained by proclamation. As the Ius sacrum, the body of rights and duties in the matter of religion, was regarded in Rome as a department of the Ius publicum, belonging to the fundamental constitution of the State, so in China the ritual code was incorporated into the statute books, and promulgated with imperial sanction. Now we know that in Rome the established ritual was legally prescribed, though otherwise strange deities and their worships were admitted indiscriminately. But the Chinese Government goes much further. It appears to regard all novel superstitions, and especially foreign worships, as the hotbed of sedition and disloyalty. Unlicensed deities and sects are put down by the police; magicians and sorcerers are arrested; and the peculiar Chinese practice of canonising deceased officials and paying sacrificial honours to local celebrities after death is strictly reserved by the Board of Ceremonies for imperial consideration and approval. The Censor, to whom any proposal of this kind must be entrusted, is admonished that he must satisfy himself by inquiry of its validity. An official who performs sacred rites in honour of a spirit or holy personage not recognised by the Ritual Code, was liable, under laws that may be still in force, to corporal punishment; and the adoration by private families of spirits whose worship is reserved for public ceremonial was a heinous offence. No such rigorous control over the multiplication of rites and deities has been instituted elsewhere. On the other hand, while in other countries the State has recognised no more than one established religion, the Chinese Government formally recognises three denominations. Buddhism has been sanctioned by various edicts and endowments, yet the State divinities belong to the Taoist pantheon, and their worship is regulated by public ordinances; while Confucianism represents official orthodoxy, and its precepts embody the latitudinarian spirit of the intellectual classes. We know that the Chinese people make use, so to speak, of all three religions indiscriminately, according to their individual whims, needs, or experience of results. So also a politic administration countenances these divisions and probably finds some interest in maintaining them. The morality of the people requires some religious sanction; and it is this element with which the State professes its chief concern. We are told on good authority that one of the functions of high officials is to deliver public lectures freely criticising and discouraging indolent monasticism and idolatry from the standpoint of rational ethics, as follies that are reluctantly tolerated. Yet the Government has never been able to keep down the fanatics, mystics, and heretical sects that are incessantly springing up in China, as elsewhere in Asia; though they are treated as pestilent rebels and law-breakers, to be exterminated by massacre and cruel punishments; and bloody repression of this kind has been the cause of serious insurrections. It is to be observed that all religious persecution is by the direct action of the State, not instigated or insisted upon by a powerful orthodox priesthood. But a despotic administration which undertakes to control and circumscribe all forms and manifestations of superstition in a vast polytheistic multitude of its subjects, is inevitably driven to repressive measures of the utmost severity. Neither Christianity nor Islam attempted to regulate polytheism, their mission was to exterminate it, and they succeeded mainly because in those countries the State was acting with the support and under the uncompromising pressure of a dominant church or faith. Some writers have noticed a certain degree of resemblance between the policy of the Roman empire and that of the Chinese empire toward religion. We may read in Gibbon that the Roman magistrates regarded the various modes of worship as equally useful, that sages and heroes were exalted to immortality and entitled to reverence and adoration, and that philosophic officials, viewing with indulgence the superstitions of the multitude, diligently practised the ceremonies of their fathers. So far, indeed, his description of the attitude of the State toward polytheism may be applicable to China; but although the Roman and Chinese emperors both assumed the rank of divinity, and were supreme in the department of worships, the Roman administration never attempted to regulate and restrain polytheism at large on the Chinese system. The religion of the Gentiles, said Hobbes, is a part of their policy; and it may be said that this is still the policy of Oriental monarchies, who admit no separation between the secular and the ecclesiastic jurisdiction. They would agree with Hobbes that temporal and spiritual government are but two words brought into the world to make men see double and mistake their lawful sovereign. But while in Mohammedan Asia the State upholds orthodox uniformity, in China and Japan the mainspring of all such administrative action is political expediency. It may be suggested that in the mind of these far-Eastern people religion has never been conceived as something quite apart from human experience and the affairs of the visible world; for Buddhism, with its metaphysical doctrines, is a foreign importation, corrupted and materialised in China and Japan. And we may observe that from among the Mongolian races, which have produced mighty conquerors and founded famous dynasties from Constantinople to Pekin, no mighty prophet, no profound spiritual teacher, has arisen. Yet in China, as throughout all the countries of the Asiatic mainland, an enthusiast may still gather together ardent proselytes, and fresh revelations may create among the people unrest that may ferment and become heated up to the degree of fanaticism, and explode against attempts made to suppress it. The Taeping insurrection, which devastated cities and provinces in China, and nearly overthrew the Manchu dynasty, is a striking example of the volcanic fires that underlie the surface of Asiatic societies. It was quenched in torrents of blood after lasting some ten years. And very recently there has been a determined revolt of the Lamas in Eastern Tibet, where the provincial administration is, as we know, sacerdotal.

The imperial troops are said to be crushing it with unrelenting severity. These are the perilous experiences of a philosophic Government that assumes charge and control over the religions of some three hundred millions of Asiatics.

I can only make a hasty reference to Japan. In that country the relations of the State to religions appear to have followed the Chinese model. Buddhism, Confucianism, Shintoism, are impartially recognised. The emperor presides over official worship as high priest of his people; the liturgical ordinances are issued by imperial rescripts not differing in form from other public edicts. The dominant article of faith is the divinity of Japan and its emperor; and Shinto, the worship of the gods of nature, is understood to be patronised chiefly with the motive of preserving the national traditions. But in Japan the advance of modern science and enlightened scepticism may have diminished the importance of the religious department. Shinto, says a recent writer, still embodies the religion of the people; yet in 1877 a decree was issued declaring it to be no more than a convenient system of State ceremonial.[ The Development of Religion in Japan, G. W. Knox, 1907] And in 1889 an article of the constitution granted freedom of belief and worship to all Japanese subjects, without prejudice to peace, order, and loyalty.

In India the religious situation is quite different. I think it is without parallel elsewhere in the world. Here we are at the fountainhead of metaphysical theology, of ideas that have flowed eastward and westward across Asia. And here, also, we find every species of primitive polytheism, unlimited and multitudinous; we can survey a confused medley of divinities, of rites and worships incessantly varied by popular whim and fancy, by accidents, and by the pressure of changing circumstances. Hinduism permits any doctrine to be taught, any sort of theory to be held regarding the divine attributes and manifestations, the forces of nature, or the mysterious functions of mind or body. Its tenets have never been circumscribed by a creed; its free play has never been checked or regulated by State authority. Now, at first sight, this is not unlike the popular polytheism of the ancient world, before the triumph of Christianity. There are passages in St. Augustine’s Civitas Dei, describing the worship of the unconverted pagans among whom he lived, that might have been written yesterday by a Christian bishop in India. And we might ask why all this polytheism was not swept out from among such a highly intellectual people as the Indians, with their restless pursuit of divine knowledge, by some superior faith, by some central idea. Undoubtedly the material and moral conditions, and the course of events which combine to stamp a particular form of religion upon any great people, are complex and manifold; but into this inquiry I cannot go. I can only point out that the institution of caste has riveted down Hindu society into innumerable divisions upon a general religious basis, and that the sacred books separated the Hindu theologians into different schools, preventing uniformity of worship or of creed. And it is to be observed that these books are not historical; they give no account of the rise and spread of a faith. The Hindu theologian would say, in the words of an early Christian father, that the objects of divine knowledge are not historical, that they can only be apprehended intellectually, that within experience there is no reality. And the fact that Brahmanism has no authentic inspired narrative, that it is the only great religion not concentrated round the life and teachings of a person, may be one reason why it has remained diffuse and incoherent. All ways of salvation are still open to the Hindus; the canon of their scripture has never been authoritatively closed. New doctrines, new sects, fresh theological controversies, are incessantly modifying and superseding the old scholastic interpretations of the mysteries, for Hindus, like Asiatics everywhere, are still in that condition of mind when a fresh spiritual message is eagerly received. Vishnu and Siva are the realistic abstractions of the understanding from objects of sense, from observation of the destructive and reproductive operations of nature; they represent among educated men separate systems of worship which, again, are parted into different schools or theories regarding the proper ways and methods of attaining to spiritual emancipation. Yet the higher philosophy and the lower polytheism are not mutually antagonistic; on the contrary, they support each other; for Brahmanism accepts and allies itself with the popular forms of idolatry, treating them as outward visible signs of an inner truth, as indications of all-pervading pantheism. The peasant and the philosopher reverence the same deity, perform the same rite; they do not mean the same thing, but they do not quarrel on this account. Nevertheless, it is certainly remarkable that this inorganic medley of ideas and worships should have resisted for so many ages the invasion and influence of the coherent faiths that have won ascendancy, complete or dominant, on either side of India, the west and the east; it has thrown off Buddhism, it has withstood the triumphant advance of Islam, it has as yet been little affected by Christianity. Probably the political history of India may account in some degree for its religious disorganisation. I may propound the theory that no religion has obtained supremacy, or at any rate definite establishment, in any great country except with the active co-operation, by force or favour, of the rulers, whether by conquest, as in Western Asia, or by patronage and protection, as in China. The direct influence and recognition of the State has been an indispensable instrument of religious consolidation. But until the nineteenth century the whole of India, from the mountains to the sea, had never been united under one stable government; the country was for ages parcelled out into separate principalities, incessantly contending for territory. And even the Moghul empire, which was always at war upon its frontiers, never acquired universal dominion. The Moghul emperors, except Aurungzeb, were by no means bigoted Mohammedans; and their obvious interest was to abstain from meddling with Hinduism. Yet the irruption of Islam into India seems rather to have stimulated religious activity among the Hindus, for during the Mohammedan period various spiritual teachers arose, new sects were formed, and theological controversies divided the intellectual classes. To these movements the Mohammedan governments must have been for a long time indifferent; and among the new sects the principle of mutual toleration was universal. Towards the close of the Moghul empire, however, Hinduism, provoked by the bigotry of the Emperor Aurungzeb, became a serious element of political disturbance. Attempts to suppress forcibly the followers of Nanak Guru, and the execution of one spiritual leader of the Sikhs, turned the Sikhs from inoffensive quietists into fanatical warriors; and by the eighteenth century they were in open revolt against the empire. They were, I think, the most formidable embodiment of militant Hinduism known to Indian history. By that time, also, the Marathas in South-West India were declaring themselves the champions of the Hindu religion against the Mohammedan oppression; and to the Sikhs and Marathas the dislocation of the Moghul empire may be very largely attributed. We have here a notable example of the dynamic power upon politics of revolts that are generated by religious fermentation, and a proof of the strength that can be exerted by a pacific inorganic polytheism in self-defence, when ambitious rebels proclaim themselves defenders of a faith. The Marathas and the Sikhs founded the only rulerships whose armies could give the English serious trouble in the field during the nineteenth century. On the whole, however, when we survey the history of India, and compare it with that of Western Asia, we may say that although the Hindus are perhaps the most intensely religious people in the world, Hinduism has never been, like Christianity, Islam, and to some extent Buddhism, a religion established by the State. Nor has it suffered much from the State’s power. It seems strange, indeed, that Mohammedanism, a compact proselytising faith, closely united with the civil rulership, should have so slightly modified, during seven centuries of dominion, this infinitely divided polytheism. Of course, Mohammedanism made many converts, and annexed a considerable number of the population—yet the effect was rather to stiffen than to loosen the bonds that held the mass of the people to their traditional divinities, and to the institution of castes. Moreover the antagonism of the two religions, the popular and the dynastic, was a perpetual element of weakness in a Mohammedan empire. In India polytheism could not be crushed, as in Western Asia, by Islam; neither could it be controlled and administered, as in Eastern Asia; yet the Moghul emperors managed to keep on good terms with it, so long as they adhered to a policy of toleration. To the Mohammedan empire has succeeded another foreign dominion, which practises not merely tolerance but complete religious neutrality.

Looking back over the period of a hundred years, from 1757 to 1857, during which the British dominion was gradually extended over India, we find that the British empire, like the Roman, met with little or no opposition from religion. Hindus and Mohammedans, divided against each other, were equally willing to form alliances with, and to fight on the side of, the foreigner who kept religion entirely outside politics. And the British Government, when established, has so carefully avoided offence to caste or creed that on one great occasion only, the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, have the smouldering fires of credulous fanaticism broken out against our rule. I believe the British-Indian position of complete religious neutrality to be unique among Asiatic governments, and almost unknown in Europe. The Anglo-Indian sovereignty does not identify itself with the interests of a single faith, as in Mohammedan kingdoms, nor does it recognise a definite ecclesiastical jurisdiction in things spiritual, as in Catholic Europe. Still less has our Government adopted the Chinese system of placing the State at the head of different rituals for the purpose of controlling them all, and proclaiming an ethical code to be binding on all denominations. The British ruler, while avowedly Christian, ignores all religions administratively, interfering only to suppress barbarous or indecent practices when the advance of civilisation has rendered them obsolete. Public instruction, so far as the State is concerned, is entirely secular; the universal law is the only authorised guardian of morals; to expound moral duties officially, as things apart from religion, has been found possible in China, but not in India. But the Chinese Government can issue edicts enjoining public morality and rationalism because the State takes part in the authorised worship of the people, and the emperor assumes pontifical office. The British Government in India, on the other hand, disowns official connection with any religion. It places all its measures on the sole ground of reasonable expediency, of efficient administration; it seeks to promote industry and commerce, and material civilisation generally; it carefully avoids giving any religious colour whatever to its public acts; and the result is that our Government, notwithstanding its sincere professions of absolute neutrality, is sometimes suspected of regarding all religion with cynical indifference, possibly even with hostility. Moreover, religious neutrality, though it is right, just, and the only policy which the English in India could possibly adopt, has certain political disadvantages. The two most potent influences which still unite and divide the Asiatic peoples, are race and religion; a Government which represents both these forces, as, for instance, in Afghanistan, has deep roots in a country. A dynasty that can rely on the support of an organised religion, and stands forth as the champion of a dominant faith, has a powerful political power at its command. The Turkish empire, weak, ill-governed, repeatedly threatened with dismemberment, embarrassed internally by the conflict of races, has been preserved for the last hundred years by its incorporation with the faith of Islam, by the Sultan’s claim to the Caliphate. To attack it is to assault a religious citadel; it is the bulwark on the west of Mohammedan Asia, as Afghanistan is the frontier fortress of Islam on the east. A leading Turkish politician has very recently said: ‘It is in Islam pure and simple that lies the strength of Turkey as an independent State; and if the Sultan’s position as religious chief were encroached upon by constitutional reforms, the whole Ottoman empire would be in danger.’ We have to remember that for ages religious enthusiasm has been, and still is in some parts of Asia, one of the strongest incentives to military ardour and fidelity to a standard on the battlefield. Identity of creed has often proved more effective, in war, than territorial patriotism; it has surmounted racial and tribal antipathies; while religious antagonism is still in many countries a standing impediment to political consolidation. When, therefore, we survey the history of religions, though this sketch is necessarily very imperfect and inadequate, we find Mohammedanism still identified with the fortunes of Mohammedan rulers; and we know that for many centuries the relations of Christianity to European States have been very close. In Europe the ardent perseverance and intellectual superiority of great theologians, of ecclesiastical statesmen supported by autocratic rulers, have hardened and beat out into form doctrines and liturgies that it was at one time criminal to disregard or deny, dogmatic articles of faith that were enforced by law. By these processes orthodoxy emerged compact, sharply defined, irresistible, out of the strife and confusion of heresies; the early record of the churches has pages spotted with tears and stained with blood. But at the present time European States seem inclined to dissolve their alliance with the churches, and to arrange a kind of judicial separation between the altar and the throne, though in very few cases has a divorce been made absolute. No State, in civilised countries, now assists in the propagation of doctrine; and ecclesiastical influence is of very little service to a Government. The civil law, indeed, makes continual encroachments on the ecclesiastical domain, questions its authority, and usurps its jurisdiction. Modern erudition criticises the historical authenticity of the scriptures, philosophy tries to undermine the foundations of belief; the governments find small interest in propping up edifices that are shaken by internal controversies. In Mohammedan Asia, on the other hand, the connection between the orthodox faith and the States is firmly maintained, for the solidarity is so close that disruptions would be dangerous, and a Mohammedan rulership over a majority of unbelievers would still be perilously unstable. I have thus endeavoured to show that the historical relations of Buddhism and Hinduism to the State have been in the past, and are still in the present time, very different from the situation in the West. There has always existed, I submit, one essential distinction of principle. Religious propagation, forcible conversion, aided and abetted by the executive power of the State, and by laws against heresy or dissent, have been defended in the West by the doctors of Islam, and formerly by Christian theologians, by the axiom that all means are justifiable for extirpating false teachers who draw souls to perdition. The right and duty of the civil magistrate to maintain truth, in regard to which Bossuet declared all Christians to be unanimous, and which is still affirmed in the Litany of our Church, is a principle from which no Government, three centuries ago, dissented in theory, though in practice it needed cautious handling. I do not think that this principle ever found its way into Hinduism or Buddhism; I doubt, that is to say, whether the civil government was at any time called in to undertake or assist propagation of those religions as part of its duty. Nor do I know that the States of Eastern Asia, beyond the pale of Islam, claim or exercise the right of insisting on conformance to particular doctrines, because they are true. The erratic manifestations of the religious spirit throughout Asia, constantly breaking out in various forms and figures, in thaumaturgy, mystical inspiration, in orgies and secret societies, have always disquieted these Asiatic States, yet, so far as I can ascertain, the employment of force to repress them has always been justified on administrative or political grounds, as distinguishable from theological motives pure and simple. Sceptics and agnostics have been often marked out for persecution in the West, but I do not think that they have been molested in India, China, or Japan, where they abound, because they seldom meddle with politics.[ ‘Atheism did never disturb States’ (Bacon)]. It may perhaps be admitted, however, that a Government which undertakes to regulate impartially all rites and worship among its subjects is at a disadvantage by comparison with a Government that acts as the representative of a great church or an exclusive faith. It bears the sole undivided responsibility for measures of repression; it cannot allege divine command or even the obligation of punishing impiety for the public good. To conclude. In Asiatic States the superintendence of religious affairs is an integral attribute of the sovereignty, which no Government, except the English in India, has yet ventured to relinquish; and even in India this is not done without some risk, for religion and politics are still intermingled throughout the world; they act and react upon each other everywhere. They are still far from being disentangled in our own country, where the theory that a Government in its collective character must profess and even propagate some religion has not been very long obsolete. It was maintained seventy years ago by a great statesman who was already rising into prominence, by Mr. Gladstone. The text of Mr. Gladstone’s argument, in his book on the relations of the State with the Church, was Hooker’s saying, that the religious duty of kings is the weightiest part of their sovereignty; while Macaulay, in criticising this position, insisted that the main, if not the only, duty of a Government, to which all other objects must be subordinate, was the protection of persons and property. These two eminent politicians were, in fact, the champions of the ancient and the modern ideas of sovereignty; for the theory that a State is bound to propagate the religion that it professes was for many centuries the accepted theory of all Christian rulerships, though I think it now survives only in Mohammedan kingdoms. As the influence of religion in the sphere of politics declines, the State becomes naturally less concerned with the superintendence of religion; and the tendency of constitutional Governments seems to be towards abandoning it. The States that have completely dissolved connection with ecclesiastical institutions are the two great republics, the United States of America and France. We can discern at this moment a movement towards constitutional reforms in Mohammedan Asia, in Turkey, and Persia, and if they succeed it will be most interesting to observe the effect which liberal reforms will produce upon the relation of Mohammedan Governments with the dominant faith, and on which side the religious teachers will be arrayed. It is certain, at any rate, that for a long time to come religion will continue to be a potent factor in Asiatic politics; and I may add that the reconciliation of civil with religious liberty is one of the most arduous of the many problems to be solved by the promoters of national unity.”

The BBC needs to determine exactly where it thinks Pakistan is!

April 5, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

I have made clear my objections to the confusion the BBC has been sowing over months if not years through its purported maps of India and Jammu & Kashmir in particular — maps which have a subliminal effect as they are shown only for a split second before the start of some little reportage. As I said a few days ago there seems to have been progress in recent days in the BBC acknowledging the official UK Government/EU position that the Republic of India is de facto and de jure sovereign in J&K on the Indian sides of the LOC and LAC at least. I have said the dual national Pakistani moles who may have been pushing the hardline Pakistani viewpoint within the organisation may have found some opposition at last.

But today’s 0730 Indian Standard Time broadcast of the BBC’s purported “World News” should get Pakistanis perturbed as well! (Indians would be largely indifferent.)

In two separate reports from Pakistan during the same broadcast, two different maps of Pakistan were shown! The first map showed Pakistan to include Muzaffarabad, Gilgit, Skardu etc up to the LOC, while the second excluded these!

The organisation seems to be in process of thinking out the history and geography of the subcontinent and BBC staff may like to consult my articles “Solving Kashmir”, “Law, Justice & J&K”, “History of Jammu & Kashmir” , “Pakistan’s Allies”, “A Brief History of Gilgit”, etc available elsewhere here for enlightenment.

Subroto Roy

Posted in BBC, Diplomatic recognition, Gilgit and Baltistan, India in international law, Jammu & Kashmir, Jammu & Kashmir in international law, Pakistan in international law, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistani expansionism. Leave a Comment »

Progress! The BBC retracts its prevarication!

March 30, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

I have over several months had to severely criticize an institution I would much rather have not, namely the BBC. This had to do with pointing out that the BBC, probably under influence of its Pakistani staffers, had been deliberately distorting the history and geography of the subcontinent by portraying maps of India with Jammu & Kashmir entirely lopped off.

Imagine my surprise some minutes ago to see there seems to have been some real impact!

A few days ago, in a Damian Gramaticas story from a Gurgaon shopping-mall, a map of India was shown again with J&K lopped off — these people are hopeless, I felt. But then, wait, the next day there was a map of Pakistan too shown by the same BBC, with areas of Pakistani Jammu & Kashmir also not shown as part of it. Hmmmm, I thought, something’s going on at least within the BBC and some little bureaucratic debate must be taking place across a table somewhere by which some bureaucratic committee has finally decided that Jammu & Kashmir is going to be lopped off all BBC maps of both India and Pakistan in the BBC’s own new version of history and geography. At least that meant the Pakistani moles within the organisation were not going wholly unanswered (or that they were left satisfied with some kind of JKLF ideology).

And finally this morning, twenty minutes ago, success! There was another report by the same Mr Gramaticas allowing an Indian politician to get on with some spin, but wait, what preceded all this waffle? A map of India with J&K on the Indian side of the Line of Control within India — and perhaps even Aksai Chin on the other side of the Line of Actual Control with China too!

Hurray!

I had sent an email about all this to the nice man who is presently the UK’s diplomat in Kolkata (far nicer than his immediate predecessors). Perhaps someone at the British Foreign Office had finally picked up the phone and said to the bureaucrats at the BBC “Now now, look ye here, if the UK Government and the European Union recognize Indian de facto and de jure sovereignty in a certain manner in Jammu & Kashmir, corresponding to the LOC and LAC, you had better do so too, it seems to us, as you are a public British broadcaster and cannot really go about inventing your own history and geography as you please, no matter how badly you might want to. We don’t want to see you being asked by the Indians to pack your bags and leave after all, do we? Indians are rather sensitive about this whole Kashmir thing, or didn’t you know?”.

Anyway, BBC, however this has happened, well done with your progress, may you maintain it consistently and not retrogress backwards.

Subroto Roy

Posted in BBC, Britain, Britain in India, British foreign policy, India in international law, India's History, India's Land, International Law, Jammu & Kashmir, Jammu & Kashmir in international law, Mendacity, Pakistan in international law, Pakistan's history, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistani expansionism. Leave a Comment »

India is not a monarchy! We urgently need to universalize the French concept of “citoyen”! (2009)

March 28, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

Each of the two sons of Feroze and Indira Gandhi died tragically in his prime, years ago, and it is unbecoming to see their family successors squabble today. Everyone may need to be constantly reminded that this handful of persons are in fact ordinary citizens in our democratic polity, deserving India’s attention principally in such a capacity.

What did, indeed, Feroze Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sanjay Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi “live and die for”? It was not any one identifiable thing or any set of common things, that seems certain.

Feroze Gandhi from all accounts stood for integrity in Indian politics and journalism; it is not impossible his premature death was related to his wife’s negligence because she had returned to her father’s side instead. Jawaharlal Nehru did not do well as a father to promote his daughter so blatantly as his assistant either before 1947

or after.

Nehru did not achieve political power until well into middle age; his catastrophic misjudgment of communist ideology and intentions, especially Chinese communist ideology and intentions, contributed to an Indian defeat at war, and led soon thereafter to his health collapsing and his death. He and Indira somewhat nonchalantly made a visit to Ceylon even as the Chinese attack was commencing; a high point of my own childhood was saying namaste on October 13 1962 at Colombo airport when they arrived.

nehru

Feroze and Indira’s younger son evidently came to die in a self-inflicted aeronautical mishap of some sort. What did Sanjay Gandhi “live for”? The book Foundations of India’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s created twenty years ago in America

indvol

has a chapter titled “The State of Governance” by the political scientist James Manor which says:

“After 1973 or so, personal loyalty tended increasingly to become the main criterion for advancement in the Congress Party. People who appeared to be loyal often replaced skilled political managers who seemed too independent. Many of these new arrivals did not worry, as an earlier generation of Congress officials had done, that excessive private profiteering might earn the wrath of party leaders. In 1975, Sanjay Gandhi suddenly became the second most powerful figure in Indian politics. He saw that the parties of the left and right had strong organizations that could put large numbers of militants into the streets for demonstrations while Congress had no such capacity. In the belief that Congress should also have this kind of muscle, he began recruiting elements from urban centres including the criminal underworld. The problem of corruption was exacerbated by demands that State-level Congress leaders place large sums of money at the disposal not of the national party but of the persons who presided over it. Congress chief ministers realized that a fulsome response to these demands went a long way toward insulating them from interference from New Delhi, and a monumental system of fund-raising sprang up. When so many people were being drawn into semi-institutionalized malfeasance, which seemed to be condoned by higher authorities, it was inevitable many would skim off portions of the funds raised for personal benefit. Corruption soared. The problem was compounded by the tendency for people to be dismissed from public and party offices abruptly, leading many Congress politicians to fear that their time in power might be quite short.”

I do not have reason to disagree with this opinion contained in the book that I and WE James created at the University of Hawaii twenty years ago. If anything, Sanjay’s political model may have spread itself across other Indian political parties in one way or another.

What does strike me as odd in light of current political controversy is that several of Sanjay’s friends and colleagues are now part-and-parcel of the Sonia Congress – one must ask, were they such fair-weather friends that they never lent a hand or a shoulder to his young widow and her infant son especially against the cruelties Sanjay’s mother bestowed upon them? Did they offer help or guidance to Sanjay’s son, have they tried to guide him away from becoming the bigoted young politician he seems to wish to be today?

Indira’s major faults included playing favourites among her bahus and her grandchildren with as much gusto as any mother-in-law portrayed on the tackiest TV-serial today.

What were her good deeds? There was one, and it was an enormously large one, of paramount significance for the country and our subcontinent as a whole: her statesmanship before, during and to some extent after the war that created Bangladesh. My father has preserved a classic photograph over the years of Indira’s finest period as an international stateswoman, when she visited Paris and other foreign capitals including Washington in the autumn of 1971.

scan0024

She tried to prevent the Yahya Khan/Tikka Khan genocide in Bangladesh when many Bangladeshis came to be sacrificed at the altar of the Nixon-Kissinger visits to Mao and Zhou. She made a major diplomatic effort in world capitals to avert war with West Pakistan over its atrocities in East Pakistan. But war could not be averted, and within a few weeks, in December 1971, Bangladesh was born.

“Indira Gandhi’s one and paramount good deed as India’s leader and indeed as a world leader of her time was to have fought a war that was so rare in international law for having been unambiguously just. And she fought it flawlessly. The cause had been thrust upon her by an evil enemy’s behaviour against his own people, an enemy supported by the world’s strongest military power with pretensions to global leadership. Victims of the enemy’s wickedness were scores of millions of utterly defenceless, penniless human beings. Indira Gandhi did everything right. She practised patient but firm diplomacy on the world’s stage to avert war if it was at all possible to do. She chose her military generals well and took their professional judgment seriously as to when to go to war and how to win it. Finally, in victory she was magnanimous to the enemy that had been defeated. Children’s history-books in India should remember her as the stateswoman who freed a fraternal nation from tyranny, at great expense to our own people. As a war-leader, Indira Gandhi displayed extraordinary bravery, courage and good sense.” (From my review article of Inder Malhotra’s Indira Gandhi, first published in The Statesman May 7 2006.)

“She had indeed fought that rarest of things in international law: the just war. Supported by the world’s strongest military, an evil enemy had made victims of his own people. Indira tried patiently on the international stage to avert war, but also chose her military generals well and took their professional judgment seriously as to when to fight if it was inevitable and how to win. Finally she was magnanimous (to a fault) towards the enemy ~ who was not some stranger to us but our own estranged brother and cousin. It seemed to be her and independent India’s finest hour. A fevered nation was thus ready to forgive and forget her catastrophic misdeeds until that time….” (From “Unhealthy Delhi” first published in The Statesman June 11 2007).

What did Indira die for? I have said it was “blowback” from domestic and/or international politics, similar to what happened to Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto in later years.

“Indira Gandhi died in “blowback” from the unrest she and her younger son and others in their party had opportunistically fomented among Sikh fundamentalists and sectarians since the late 1970s. Rajiv Gandhi died in “blowback” from an erroneous imperialistic foreign policy that he, as Prime Minister, had been induced to make by jingoistic Indian diplomats, a move that got India’s military needlessly involved in the then-nascent Sri Lankan civil war. Benazir Bhutto similarly may be seen to have died in “blowback” from her own political activity as prime minister and opposition leader since the late 1980s, including her own encouragement of Muslim fundamentalist forces. Certainly in all three cases, as in all assassinations, there were lapses of security too and imprudent political judgments made that contributed to the tragic outcomes.” From “An Indian Reply to President Zardari”.

And then there was Rajiv. He did not know me except in his last eight months. It has now emerged that Dr Manmohan Singh’s first bypass operation was in 1990-1991, coinciding precisely with the time I gave Rajiv the results of the perestroika-for-India project that I had led at the University of Hawaii since 1986, an encounter that sparked the 1991 economic reform as has been told elsewhere. Dr Singh was simply not in that loop, nor has he himself ever claimed to have been in it — regardless of what innumerable flatterers, sycophants and other straightforwardly mendacious characters in Delhi’s high power circles have been making out over the years since. Facts are rather stubborn things.

As a 35-year old newcomer to Delhi and a complete layman on security issues, I did what little I knew how to try to reduce the vulnerability that I felt Rajiv faced from unknown lists of assassins.

“That night KR dropped me at Tughlak Road where I used to stay with friends. In the car I told him, as he was a military man with heavy security cover for himself as a former Governor of J&K, that it seemed to me Rajiv’s security was being unprofessionally handled, that he was vulnerable to a professional assassin. KR asked me if I had seen anything specific by way of vulnerability. With John Kennedy and De Gaulle in mind, I said I feared Rajiv was open to a long-distance sniper, especially when he was on his campaign trips around the country. This was one of several attempts I made since October 1990 to convey my clear impression to whomever I thought might have an effect that Rajiv seemed to me extremely vulnerable. Rajiv had been on sadhbhavana journeys, back and forth into and out of Delhi. I had heard he was fed up with his security apparatus, and I was not surprised given it seemed at the time rather bureaucratized. It would not have been appropriate for me to tell him directly that he seemed to me to be vulnerable, since I was a newcomer and a complete amateur about security issues, and besides if he agreed he might seem to himself to be cowardly or have to get even closer to his security apparatus. Instead I pressed the subject relentlessly with whomever I could. I suggested specifically two things: (a) that the system in place at Rajiv’s residence and on his itineraries be tested, preferably by some internationally recognized specialists in counter-terrorism; (b) that Rajiv be encouraged to announce a shadow-cabinet. The first would increase the cost of terrorism, the second would reduce the potential political benefit expected by terrorists out to kill him. On the former, it was pleaded that security was a matter being run by the V. P. Singh and then Chandrashekhar Governments at the time. On the latter, it was said that appointing a shadow cabinet might give the appointees the wrong idea, and lead to a challenge to Rajiv’s leadership. This seemed to me wrong, as there was nothing to fear from healthy internal contests for power so long as they were conducted in a structured democratic framework. I pressed to know how public Rajiv’s itinerary was when he travelled. I was told it was known to everyone and that was the only way it could be since Rajiv wanted to be close to the people waiting to see him and had been criticized for being too aloof. This seemed to me totally wrong and I suggested that if Rajiv wanted to be seen as meeting the crowds waiting for him then that should be done by planning to make random stops on the road that his entourage would take. This would at least add some confusion to the planning of potential terrorists out to kill him. When I pressed relentlessly, it was said I should probably speak to “Madame”, i.e. to Mrs. Rajiv Gandhi. That seemed to me highly inappropriate, as I could not be said to be known to her and I should not want to unduly concern her in the event it was I who was completely wrong in my assessment of the danger. The response that it was not in Congress’s hands, that it was the responsibility of the V. P. Singh and later the Chandrashekhar Governments, seemed to me completely irrelevant since Congress in its own interests had a grave responsibility to protect Rajiv Gandhi irrespective of what the Government’s security people were doing or not doing. Rajiv was at the apex of the power structure of the party, and a key symbol of secularism and progress for the entire country. Losing him would be quite irreparable to the party and the country. It shocked me that the assumption was not being made that there were almost certainly professional killers actively out to kill Rajiv Gandhi — this loving family man and hapless pilot of India’s ship of state who did not seem to have wished to make enemies among India’s terrorists but whom the fates had conspired to make a target. The most bizarre and frustrating response I got from several respondents was that I should not mention the matter at all as otherwise the threat would become enlarged and the prospect made more likely! This I later realized was a primitive superstitious response of the same sort as wearing amulets and believing in Ptolemaic astrological charts that assume the Sun goes around the Earth — centuries after Kepler and Copernicus. Perhaps the entry of scientific causality and rationality is where we must begin in the reform of India’s governance and economy. What was especially repugnant after Rajiv’s assassination was to hear it said by his enemies that it marked an end to “dynastic” politics in India. This struck me as being devoid of all sense because the unanswerable reason for protecting Rajiv Gandhi was that we in India, if we are to have any pretensions at all to being a civilized and open democratic society, cannot tolerate terrorism and assassination as means of political change. Either we are constitutional democrats willing to fight for the privileges of a liberal social order, or ours is truly a primitive and savage anarchy concealed beneath a veneer of fake Westernization….. the news suddenly said Rajiv Gandhi had been killed. All India wept. What killed him was not merely a singular act of criminal terrorism, but the system of humbug, incompetence and sycophancy that surrounds politics in India and elsewhere. I was numbed by rage and sorrow, and did not return to Delhi. Eleven years later, on 25 May 2002, press reports said “P. V. Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh lost their place in Congress history as architects of economic reforms as the Congress High command sponsored an amendment to a resolution that had laid credit at the duo’s door. The motion was moved by…. Digvijay Singh asserting that the reforms were a brainchild of the late Rajiv Gandhi and that the Rao-Singh combine had simply nudged the process forward.” Rajiv’s years in Government, like those of Indira Gandhi, were in fact marked by profligacy and the resource cost of poor macroeconomic policy since bank-nationalisation may be as high as Rs. 125 trillion measured in 1994 rupees. Certainly though it was Rajiv Gandhi as Leader of the Opposition in his last months who was the principal architect of the economic reform that came to begin after his passing.”

(I have had to say that I do not think the policies pursued by Dr Singh thus far have been consistent with the direction I believe Rajiv, in a second term as PM, would have wished to take. See, for example, “India’s Macroeconomics”, “Fallacious Finance”, “Against Quackery”, “Mistaken Macroeconomics”, and other articles listed and linked at “Memo to Dr Kaushik Basu”. See also https://independentindian.com/2006/05/21/the-politics-of-dr-singh/ https://independentindian.com/2008/04/25/assessing-manmohan-the-doctor-of-deficit-finance-should-realise-the-currency-is-at-stake/ https://independentindian.com/2013/08/23/did-jagdish-bhagwati-originate-pioneer-intellectually-father-indias-1991-economic-reform-did-manmohan-singh-or-did-i-through-my-encounter-with-rajiv-gandhi-just-as-siddhartha-shan/)

The treatment of Indira or Rajiv or Sanjay or their family successors as royalty of any kind whatsoever in India was, is, and remains absurd, reflecting stunted growth of Indian democracy. I remember well the obsequiousness I witnessed on the part of old men in the presence of Rajiv Gandhi.

Tribal and mansabdari political cultures still dominate Northern and Western regions of the Indian subcontinent (descending from the Sikhs, Muslims, Rajputs, Mahrattas etc).

Nehru in his younger days was an exemplary democrat, and he had an outstanding democratically-minded young friend in Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah.

But Nehru and Abdullah as Westernized political liberals were exceptions in the autocratic/monarchical political cultures of north India (and Pakistan) which continue today and stunt the growth of any democratic mindset.

What we may urgently need is some French Liberté, égalité, fraternité ! to create a simple ordinary citoyen universally in the country and the subcontinent as a whole! May we please import a Marquis de Lafayette?

Bengal and parts of Dravidian India have long lost fondness for monarchy and autocracy — Western political liberalism began to reach Kolkata almost two centuries ago after all (see e.g. Tapan Raychaudhuri’s fine study Europe Reconsidered). Both Nepal and Pakistan have been undergoing radical transformation towards democracy in recent months, as Bengali Pakistanis had done 40 years earlier under Sheikh Mujib. I said last year and say again that there may be a dangerous intellectual vacuum around the throne of Delhi.

Subroto Roy

Posted in 1962 War, Bangladesh, Benazir Bhutto, Blowback, Democracy, Feroze Gandhi, France, India's 1991 Economic Reform, India's Bangladesh liberation war, India's corruption, India's Democracy, India's Families, India's mob violence, India's Nationalism, India's nomenclatura, India's Personality Cults, India's political lobbyists, India's Politics, India's Polity, India's pork-barrel politics, Indira Gandhi, Indira Gandhi's assassination, Jawaharlal Nehru, Liberalism/Libertarianism, Life and death, Mao Zedong, Monarchy vs Republicanism, Mujibur Rahman, Nepal, New Delhi, Pakistan's history, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Political assassinations, Political corruption, Political cynicism, Political Economy, Political mendacity, Political Philosophy, Politics, Power-elites and nomenclatura, Rajiv Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, Sheikh Abdullah, Sonia Gandhi, US Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Espionage, War, Zhou Enlai. 1 Comment »

Pakistan’s progress (June 2008)

March 18, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

Nine months ago, on June 9 2008, I wrote but did not publish the op-ed article below “Pakistan’s progress” intended for an Indian newspaper. When the Mumbai massacres took place, I was rather glad I had not come to do so because its cheer and optimism contrasted too starkly with the vileness and viciousness of the massacres. Instead I turned to the legal, moral and political implications of the massacres, and several articles are to be found here on Kasab, competing jurisdictions in international law in prosecuting the crimes, and application of the Law of the Sea Treaty (which both countries have ratified) to jointly try and hang the masterminds at sea in international waters. Pakistan’s initial criminal investigation into the massacres received praise here, and I can only trust that both the Government of India and the Government of Pakistan will remain forensically focussed on that case of mass-murder and other heinous crimes until its appropriate conclusion.

Meanwhile, recent political events in Pakistan have made the article below relevant again; when it was written Pervez Musharraf had still not departed from office but the more abstract constitutional question raised in the article had to do with the relative powers of the Head of State and Head of Government in the new Pakistan. With the peaceful restoration of the Chief Justice to his high office, I am glad to say that the question I raised but did not publish nine months ago, namely, “A rare constitutional consensus might be developing – can it last long enough?”, seems to be headed at present to being answered in the affirmative.

Subroto Roy
March 18, 2009

Pakistan’s progress: A rare constitutional consensus might be developing – can it last long enough? Subroto Roy, dated June 9 2008

The dynamic evolution of politics in Pakistan should be judged not against Indian politics (rotten or exemplary as our politics can be at different times) but against its own initial conditions. It is an unimaginable luxury that Pakistanis in recent months have been discussing such sweet constitutional questions as how to restore judges unseated by soldiers having entered the Supreme Court, what to do with judges who took an oath despite such an abomination, how to maintain diplomatic relations between the PPP and PML(N), and most important of all, whether the military with its nuclear assets should report to the PM or President – in other words, is the Head of Government or Head of State the Chief Executive? It is a luxury too that Pervez Musharraf has become almost a distraction in Pakistani politics, that he himself indicates he may be running out of dramatic lines and may be getting ready to exit his country’s political stage, that the Pakistan Army is shocked by its realisation of its loss of prestige in society, that the Ex-Servicemen’s Society thinks Musharraf deserves punishment for having caused such a state of affairs. Dr Ayesha Siddiqa has pointed out that every Pakistani military strongman has been eventually removed, and has been removed not by democratic forces alone but by intra-military pressure.

It is likely we are at present witnessing such a critical moment, and it is naturally fraught with danger for any civilian prime minister and parliament because any intra-military conflict can descend into mutiny or worse. Pakistan Army officers have been deeply divided for years over Islamicisation already — onto which is now compounded the issue of loyalty to Musharraf (mostly paid for in American dollars) versus the urge to remove him in the best future interests of the military. Musharraf himself, with his usual braggadocio, has been claiming fealty to constitutional principles as well; so at least there is agreement on all sides that matters should proceed in an orderly and dignified manner and not by nefarious means.

The relevant comparison of the present situation is with the recent past. Let us look back just a few years, say to the autumn of 2005 when the initial post 9/11 Western backlash against Pakistan had been renewed after the London Underground bombings. On 1 September 2005, during the scheduled Islamabad visit of the Indian Foreign Secretary, the PAF launched massive month-long war-games against an assumed Indian enemy. It involved “the entire fleet, including US-made F-16s, French Mirage fighter aircraft and Chinese-built jets” and “using all assets” in an exercise “closest to war you can get in peacetime”; from the Hindu Kush to the Arabian Sea “8,200 operational sorties” would be flown, Shaukat Aziz witnessing the start, Musharraf the finish. Hardly had this orgy of militarism concluded when northern Pakistan and parts of J&K were hit by the devastating earthquake; Musharraf visited quake-hit areas still dressed in battle gear down to his para wings.

Pakistanis of all classes were appalled at the ineptitude of their government in face of the earthquake and it was inevitable the military would be held responsible. What had been the opportunity cost in fungible resources of those “8,200 operational sorties”? The military’s extremely expensive “assets” were designed for war with India and had bankrupted the country but ordinary people had been left utterly helpless in a natural calamity. Future historians of Pakistan may well see the 2005 earthquake as a critical turning point in their political development just as the 12 November 1970 cyclone was in the history of Bangladesh.

A modern war between Pakistan and India, even a non-nuclear one, would be like a hundred earthquakes. Indians have not been so jingoistic as to contemplate such an exchange of destruction but less than a decade ago Gohar Ayub Khan, as Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, was boasting how India would surrender within a few hours in the next war – which was presumably a threat to unleash missiles, even non-nuclear ones, as a first resort against Indian cities and civilian populations. That such abominable Pakistan-India tension has today come to vanish might have been indicated during the recent IPL cricket final when Kamran Akmal jumped onto Yusuf Pathan or crashed into Mohammad Kaif as commercially driven team-mates led by an Australian captain and associated with what used to be Hindu Rajputana. So much for the “Two Nations Theory” in the 21st Century. Maulana Azad seems to have been proven right and MA Jinnah proven wrong after all.

The Pakistani state had become an oppressive war-machine solely guided by anti-Indian paranoia even while ordinary Pakistanis, through modern communications and technology, knew fully well India and Indians were not nearly as bad as the Pakistan Government was making them out to be. From an official Pakistani point of view, a nuclear bomb (even a purchased and assembled one) was needed out of fear India intended to destroy what remained of West Pakistan – a theory that could arise only from the delusion that Bangladesh had been caused by Indian intrigues. The Pakistan Army has been reluctant for more than a generation to face up to the reality of its behaviour in East Pakistan and the consequences that resulted; it has been far easier to blame India instead.

Yet Pakistan’s national hero, AQ Khan himself, born in Bhopal and extremely bitter at modern India as many former Indian nationals tend to be, has now said “Never! Never!” will there be an exchange of destruction in nuclear warfare between India and Pakistan. It may be a wise Indian diplomatic move to invite Dr Khan, stricken with cancer as he is said to be, to make a quiet private visit to his place of birth if he wished to (perhaps followed by a courtesy luncheon at BARC on the way home).

Of course Indians cannot forget the destruction that has been wrought in this country in recent years by our old Bogeyman, the ISI. Yet it is a fair bet that not only do we not comprehend the workings of that particular bureaucracy, nor do Pakistanis themselves, indeed the ISI itself may not comprehend itself in the sense that different ISI sections have been and may remain at cross-purposes or conflict with each other as has become apparent in the ongoing official attempts to suppress the new “Taliban”. Proper civilian control of the ISI is part of the same process as the proper civilian control of the Pakistan military as a whole, and what we are witnessing is nothing less than the first serious constitutional attempt in Pakistan’s history for that to take place. The whole subcontinent is hopeful and watching Pakistan’s transition. In the meantime, a milestone was certainly reached on 25 May when Pakistan’s young and brilliant sufi rock band Junoon performed in beautiful Srinagar to the delight of thousands of Kashmiris. The “United Jehad Council” and Syed Ali Shah Geelani had denounced them; in reply the band’s lead guitarist Salman Ahmed had the courage to say: “I want them to join us in the musical jehad for peace and ring the bells of harmony.” For peace to break out will of course require India’s participation and willingness as well.

Posted in Afghanistan, Air warfare, anarchy and governance, Bangladesh, Constitutional law, Constitutional Politics, Good and Evil, Government of India, Government of Pakistan, India's Bangladesh liberation war, India-Pakistan cooperation against terrorism, India-Pakistan naval cooperation, India-Pakistan peace process, Jammu & Kashmir, Law, Law of the Sea, Law of the Sea applied to international terrorists, Laws of war applied to international terrorists, MA Jinnah, Maulana Azad, Mumbai massacres, Mumbai terrorist Kasab, Pakistan in international law, Pakistan's 2005 earthquake, Pakistan's constitutional politics, Pakistan's diplomacy, Pakistan's history, Pakistan's judiciary, Pakistan's military, Pakistan's nuclear weapons, Pakistan's politics, Pakistan's Rule of Law, Pakistan's terrorist masterminds, Pakistan's terrorist training institutes, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pervez Musharraf, RAND study of Mumbai attacks, September 11 attacks, War. Leave a Comment »

An Academic Database of Doctoral & Other Postgraduate Research Done at UK Universities on India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Other Asian Countries Over 100 Years

March 13, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

British universities have in the last one hundred years produced a vast and unsurpassable body of doctoral and other postgraduate research relating to India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Burma, Afghanistan, Malaysia and other Asian countries.

The first table below contains almost 3,300 entries, each beginning with the date of award and the degree, followed by the University (and College), followed by the title of the thesis, followed by the AUTHOR in capital letters, followed by the name of the thesis supervisor where provided.

NB: There is a second table that follows containing a further 78 77 entries — these latter are, however, incomplete in that either the year or the degree appears not to be available.

If you are an author or thesis-supervisor or other academic representative and you are able to correct any inadvertent error or omission, please feel free to write to me promptly by email and I shall seek to account for it. For omissions, please also identify yourself clearly and send a comment to the post along with the necessary data that you believe should be accounted for. Numerous typos existed in the original transcription, several of which have been corrected though many might remain. In several cases, it is not impossible the original transcription has mis-spelt a name but authentication could require the original thesis to be checked.

This database has been created from public data and is published below with the aim of encouraging further research and reflection. It may be of special interest to notice the choice and quality of subjects in the context of particular times.

Subroto Roy

Postscript: More than one grateful reader has called this document someone’s “labour of love”. I agree though I have to say it was not mine — my contribution has been merely to transform a confused spreadsheet into HTML, editing it very slightly, removing some but not all typos yet, and publishing it. The spreadsheet was one of a million files on my computer, which must mean I downloaded it from some public source at some time though I am afraid I have no record where, most probably in British academia.

Degree University & College Title AUTHOR Supervisor

1909   MA   Liverpool   The interaction of England and India during the early years of George III   Dorothy DUDLEY
1917   BLitt   Oxford   The history of the occupation and rural administration of Bengal by the English Company from the time of Clive to the permanent settlement under Cornwallis   W K FIRMINGER
1917   MA   Liverpool   The constitutional relations of the Marquess Wellesley with the home authorities   Beatrice L FRAZER
1917   BLitt   Oxford   Agricultural cooperation in British India   J MATTHAI
1921   BA   Cambridge   Relations between the Bombay government and the Marathi powers up to the year 1774   W S DESI
1921   MA   Manchester   The movement of opinion in England as regards Indian affairs, 1757-1773   E EMMETT   Prof Muir
1921   MA   Manchester   The relations of the Mahrattas with the British power   I Kathleen WALKER   Prof Muir
1922   BLitt   Oxford   The history of Burma to 1824   G E HARVEY
1922   PhD   London   Commercial relations between India and England, 1600-1757   B KRISHNA
1922   MSc   London   Agricultural problems and conditions in the Bombay Presidency, 1870-1914   M A TATA
1922   BLitt   Oxford   The Indian calico trade and its influence on English history   P J THOMAS
1922   MSc   London   The cotton industry in India to 1757   J N VARMA   Prof Sargeant
1922   PhD   Manchester   The administration of Bengal under Warren Hastings   Sophia WEITZMAN   Prof Muir
1923   MA   Manchester   The administrative and judicial reforms of Lord Cornwallis in Bengal (excluding the permanent settlement)   A ASPINALL   Mr Higham
1923   MA   Manchester   The Residency of Oudh during the administration of Warren Hastings   C C BRACEWELL   Prof Davis
1923   MLitt   Cambridge   Industrial evolution of India in recent times   D R GADGIL
1923   PhD   London   The Punjab as a sovereign state, 1799-1839   GULSHAM LALL   Prof Dodwell
1924   BLitt   Oxford   Development of the cotton industry in Indian from the early 19th century   S DESOUANDE
1925   MA   Liverpool   Henry Dundas and the government of India, 1784-1800   Dorothy THORNTON   Prof Veitch
1926   PhD   Cambridge   The North West Frontier of India, 1890-1909, with a survey of policy since 1849   C C DAVIES
1927   PhD   Leeds   A study of the development of agriculture in the Punjab and its economic effects   K S BAJWA
1927   BLitt   Oxford   The military system of the Mahrattas: its origin and development from the time of the Shivaji to the fall of the Mahratta empire   S SEN
1928   MA   Birmingham   The East India Company crisis, 1770-1773   R BEARD
1928   PhD   Edinburgh   A comparative study of the woollen industry in Scotland and the Punjab   J W SIRAJUDDIN   Dr Rankin
1929   PhD   London   The relations of the Governor-General and council with the Governor and council of Madras under the Regulating Act of 1773   A Das GUPTA   Prof Dodwell
1929   PhD   London, LSE   The evolution of Indian income tax, 1860-1922: a historical, critical and comparative study   J P NIYOGI
1929   PhD   London   Development of Indian ralways, 1842-1928   N SANYAL   Prof Foxwell; Dr Slater
1930   PhD   London   Financial history of Mysore, 1799-1831   M H GOPAL   Dr Slater; Prof Dodwell
1930   BLitt   Oxford, St Cath’s Soc   The development of political institutions in the state of Travancore, 1885-1924   V M ITTYERAH
1930   BLitt   Oxford   Sir Charles Crosthwaite and the consolidation of Burma   Mys J MAY-OUNG
1930   PhD   London, SOAS   Revenue administration of the Sirkars under the East India Company down to 1802   Lanka SUNDERAM
1930   PhD   London, LSE   Hastings’ experiments in the judicial administration   N J M YUSUF
1931   PhD   London   State policy and economic development in Mysore State since 1881   UDAYAM ABHAYAMBAL   Miss Anstey
1931   PhD   London   The origin and early history of public debt in India   P DATTA   Prof Coatman
1931   MA   London   Lord Macaulay and the Indian Legislative Council   C D DHARKAR   Prof Dodwell
1931   MA   London   The bilingual problem in Ceylon   T D JAYASURIYA
1931   PhD   London; LSE   Study of agricultural cooperation in India based upon foreign experience   H L PASRICHA   Prof Gregory
1931   PhD   London, UC   The administration of Mysore under Sir Mark Cubbon. 1834-1861   K N V SASTRI   Prof Dodwell

1931 PhD London, SOAS Administrative beginnings in British Burma, 1826-1843 Barbara J STEWART

1931/32    PhD    Cambridge, St Cath’s    English social life in India in the 18th century    T G P SPEAR
1932    PhD    London    The growth and development of the Indian tea industry and trade    S M AKHTAR    Dr Anstey
1932    PhD    London    Anglo-Sikh relations, 1839-1849    K C KHANNA    Prof Dodwell
1932    PhD    London, LSE    Indian commodity market speculation    L N MISRA    Prof Coatman
1932    PhD    London, LSE    Indian foreign trade, 1870-1930    Parimal RAY    Prof Sargent
1932    PhD    London, King’s    Ceylon under the British occupation: its political and economic development, 1795-1833    C R de SILVA    Prof Newton
1932    PhD    London    Post-war labour legislation in India – a comparison with Japan    Sasadhar SINHA    Dr Anstey
1932    PhD    London    Local finance in India    G C VARMA    Prof Coatman
1933    PhD    Leeds    Historical survey of the financial policy of the government of India from 1857 to 1900 and of its economic and other consequences    H S BHAI
1933    PhD    London    The relations between the Board of Commissioners for the affairs of India and the Court of Directors, 1784-1816    P CHANDRA    Prof Coatman
1934    PhD    London    The influence of the home government on land revenue and judicial administration in the Presidency of Fort William in Bengal from 1807-1822    B S BALIGA    Prof Dodwell
1934    MSc    Leeds    A survey of the resources of tanning materials and the leather industry of Bhopal State, India    G W DOUGLAS
1934    PhD    Edinburgh    Human geography of Bengal    Arthur GEDDES
1934    BLitt    Oxford, Somerville    A study of the legal and administrative records of Dacca as illustrating the policy of Warren Hastings in East Bengal    F M SACHSE
1934    BLitt    Oxford    Biography of Maharaja DalipSingh    K S THAPER
1935    DPhil    Oxford    The development of the Indian administrative and financial system, 1858-1905, with special reference to the relations    F J THOMAS
1936    MSc    London    British Indian administration: a historical study    K R Ramaswami AIYANGAR
1936    MA    London    Lord Ellenborough’s ideas on Indian policy    Kathleen I GARRETT    Dr Morrell
1936    MA    London    British public opinion regarding Indian policy at the time of the mutiny    Jessie HOLMES    Dr Morrell
1936    PhD    London, SOAS    The rise and fall of the Rohilla power in Hindustan, 1707-1774 AD    A F M K RAHMAN
1936/37    PhD    Edinburgh    Indian foreign trade, 1900-1931, and its economic background: a study    W B RAGHAVIAH
1937    PhD    Cambridge, Gonville    The national income of British India, 1931-1932    V K R V RAO
1937    PhD    London, LSE    Culture change in South-Western India    A AIYAPPAN
1937    PhD    London, UC    Banks and industrial finance in India    R BAGCHI
1937    PhD    London    Development of social and political ideas in Bengal, 1858-1884    B C BHATTACHARYA    Prof Dodwell
1937    MSc    Leeds    An interpretation of the distribution of the population within the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh    Nora Y BOYDELL
1937    PhD    London, LSE    Rise and growth of Indian liberalism    M A BUCH
1937    PhD    London, LSE    Industrial finance and management in India    N DAS
1937    MSc    London, LSE    The effect of the breakdown of the international gold standard on India    R DORAISWAMY
1937    PhD    London, LSE    The problem of rural indebtedness in Indian economic life    B G GHATE
1937    MSc    London, LSE    Indian coal trade    J GUHATHAKURTA
1937    PhD    London SOAS    Reorganisation of the Punjab government (1847-1857)    R C LAI

1937   PhD   London, External   An economic and regional geography of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh   S M T RIZVI
1937   PhD   Wales   Purposes and methods of recording and accounting as applied to agriculture, with special reference to provision and use of economic data relating to agriculture in India   Arjan SINGH
1938   PhD   London, SOAS   The relations between Oudh and the East India Company from 1785-1801   P BASU
1938   PhD   London, SOAS   East India Company’s relations with Assam, 1771-1826   S K BHUYAN
1938   PhD   London, LSE   Discretionary powers in the Indian Government with special reference to district administration   B CHAND
1938   MA   London, SOAS   The British conquest of Sind   K A CHISHTI
1938   PhD   Cambridge, Christ’s   The working of the Bengal legislative council under the Government of India Act, 1919   J G DRUMMOND
1938   MA   London   British relations with the Sikhs and Afghans, July 1823 to March 1840   E R KAPADIA
1938   PhD   London, SOAS   The East India interest and the British government, 1784-1833   C H PHILIPS
1938   PhD   London, LSE   The position of the Viceroy and Governor General of India   A RUDRA
1938   MA   London   British relations with the Sikhs and Afghans, July 1823 to March 1840   Charles WADE
1938/39   PhD   Edinburgh   Agricultural geography of the United Provinces   B N MUKERJI
1939   PhD   London, LSE   Industrial development of Mysore   R BALAKRISHNA
1939   MA   London, LSE   A general geographical account of the North West Frontier Province of India   M A K DURRANI
1939   PhD   Wales   The international production and exchange of rice with special reference to the production, market demand and consumption of rice in India and Burma   Ahmas KHAN
1939   BLitt   Oxford, St Cath’s Soc   The Governor-Generalship of Sir John Shore, 1793-1798   A W MAHMOOD
1939   PhD   London, LSE   Indian provincial finance (1919-1937) with special reference to the United Provinces   B R MISRA
1940   PhD   London, LSE   Recent economic depression in India with reference to agriculture and rural life   R K BHAN
1940   PhD   Wales   The future of agricultural cooperation in the United Provinces (with an examination of the cooperative experience)with special reference to the problems of agricultural cooperation in the United Provinces, India   H R CHATURVEDI
1940   PhD   London, LSE   An administrative study of the development of the civil service in India during the Company’s regime   A K GHOSAL
1940   PhD   Wales   The production, marketing and consumption of the chief oilseeds in India and the supply and use of oilseeds in the United Kingdom   A S KHAN
1940   PhD   Wales   Principles of agricultural planning with reference to relationships of natural resources, populations and dietaries in India and with further reference to rural development in certain provinces of India   Jaswant SINGH
1941   PhD   London, LSE   Financing of local authorities in British India   A N BANERJI
1941   PhD   London   The political and cultural history of the Punjab including the North West Frontier Province in its earliest period   L CHANDRA   Prof Barnett
1941   PhD   London, LSE   Capital development of India, 1860-1913   A KRISHNASAWMI
1941   PhD   London, LSE   Influence of European political doctrines upon the evolution of the Indian governmental institutions and practice, 1858-1938   G PRASAD
1942   MLitt   Cambridge, Fitzwilliam   Economic and political relations of India with Iran and Afghanistan since 1900   T BASU
1942   PhD   Edinburgh   A study of missionary policy and methods in Bengal from 1793 to 1905   W B S DAVIS   Prof Watt; Prof Buleigh
1943   PhD   London, LSE   Development of large scale industries in India and their localisation   N S SASTRI
1944   BLitt   Oxford, St Cath’s   Communal representation and Indian self-government   I J BAHADOORSINGH
1944   MA   London, External   The physiographic evolution of Ceylon   K KULARATNAM
1946   MA   London, SOAS   The origins and development to 1892 of the Indian National Congress   Iris M JONES
1947   PhD   London, LSE   The agricultural geography of Bihar   P DAYAL
1947   PhD   Cambridge, King’s   Consumer expenditure in India, 1931/32 to 1940/41   R L DESAI
1947   MA   London, LSE   Power resources and utilisation in the United Provinces   P K DUTT
1947   PhD   London, LSE   Cultural change with special reference to the hill tribes of Burma and Assam   Edmund Ronald LEACH
1947   PhD   London, SOAS   The judicial administration of the East India Company in Bengal, 1765-1982   B B MISRA
1947   PhD   London, LSE   The monetary policy of the Reserve Bank of India with special reference to the structural and institutional factors in the economy   K N RAJ
1948   PhD   Wales   The principles and practice of health insurance as applied to India   J AGRAWALA
1948   MSc   London, LSE   International monetary policy since 1919 with special reference to India   D C GHOSE
1948   DPhil   Oxford, Balliol   British policy on the North East Frontier of India, 1826-1886   S GUPTA
1948   DPhil   Oxford, St Cath’s   Local self-government in the Madras Presidency, 1850-1919   K K PILLAY
1948   PhD   London, LSE   The problem of the standards of the Indian currency   A SADEQUE
1948   DPhil   Oxford, Exeter   The social function of religion in a south India community   Mysore Narasimhashar SRINIVAS
1948   BLitt   Oxford, St Cath’s Society   Some aspects of agricultural marketing in India with reference to developments in western marketing systems   R S SRIVASTAVA
1948   PhD   London,. SOAS   Muslims in India: a political analysis (from 1885-906)   Rafiq ZAKARIA
1949   PhD   London, LSE   Settlements in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh   E AHMAD
1949   PhD   London, SOAS   The growth of self-government in Assam, 1984-1919   A K BARKAKOTY
1949   PhD   London, SOAS   British administration in Assam (1825-1845)with special reference to the hill tribes on the frontier   H BARPUJARI
1949   MA   London   An enquiry into the development of training of teachers in the Punjab during the British period   Aquila B BERLAS
1949   PhD   London, LSE   The problem of federation in India with special reference to economic relations   J N BHAN
1949   PhD   London, LSE   A study of methods of national income measurements with special reference to the problems of India   V K CHOPRA
1949   PhD   London, LSE   An analysis of the Indian price structure from 1861   A K GHOSH
1949   DPhil   Oxford, Keble   The achievement of Christian missionaries in India, 1794-1833   Kenneth INGHAM
1949   PhD   Wales   The organization and methods of agricultural cooperation in the British Isles and the possibility of their application in the Central Province of India   N Y KHER
1949   PhD   London, LSE   Industrial geography of Bihar   S A MAJID
1949   PhD   London, LSE   Development of Indian public finance during the war, April 1939-March 1946   S MISRA
1949   PhD   London, LSE   A study of the methods of state regulation of wages with special reference to their possible applications in India   S B L NIGAM
1949   PhD   London, SOAS   The development of marriage in ancient India   B C PAUL
1949   PhD   St Andrews   The social and administrative reforms of Lord William Bentinck   G SEED
1950   PhD   London, LSE   Jails and borstals with special reference to West Bengal   B BHATTACHARYYA   Dr Mannheim
1950   PhD   London   The growth of local self-government in Assam, 1874-1919   A K BORKAKOTY   Prof C R Philips; Prof Hall
1950   DPhil   Oxford, Lady Margaret Hall   The problem of the Indian immigrant in British colonial policy after 1834   I Mary CUMPSTON
1950   PhD   London, LSE   Underemployment and industrialisation: a study of the basic problems with special reference to India   B DATTA
1950   PhD   London, UC   The agriculture of Mysore   G K GHORI
1950   PhD   London, SOAS   The influence of western, particularly English, political ideas on Indian political thought, with special reference to the political ideas of the Indian National Congress, 1885-1919   Sailesh C GHOSH
1950   PhD   London, LSE   Principles of unemployment insurance and assistance with special reference to their application to India   D GUPTA
1950   PhD   Newcastle   Anglo-Afghan relations, 1798-1878, with particular reference to British policy in Central Asia and on the North West Frontier of India   M KHAN
1950   PhD   London, LSE   The social consequences of imperialism with special reference to Ceylon   P R PIERIS
1950   PhD   London, LSE   An experiment in the estimation of national income and the in the construction of social accounts of India, 1945-1946   D N SAXENA   Mr Booker
1950   PhD   London, SOAS   The relations between the home and Indian governments, 1858-1870   Zahinuddin Husain ZOBERI
1951   PhD   London, External   Memoir of the geology and mineral resources of the neighbourhood of Bentong, Pahang and adjoining portions of Selangor and Negri Sembilan, incorporating an account of the prospecting and mining activities of the Bentong District   J B ALEXANDER
1951   BLitt   Oxford, Exeter   The political organization of the plains Indians   Frederick George BAILEY
1951   BLitt   Oxford, Corpus   Southern India under Wellesley, 1798-1805   A S BENNELL   Mr C C Davies
1951   PhD   London, LSE   Problems of the Indian foreign exchanges since 1927   D GHOSH
1951   DPhil   Oxford, Balliol   The Viceroyalty of Lord Ripon, 1880-1884   S GOPAL   Mr R C Davies
1951   MA   Wales   The problem of the Straits, 1896-1936   E W GRIFFITHS
1951   PhD   London, LSE   Sources of Indian official statistics relating to production   O P GUPTA   Dr Rhodes
1951   MA   Manchester   The administration and financial control of municipalities and district boards in the UP   N K KATHIA
1951   PhD   Glasgow   The legal and constitutional implications of the evolution of Indian independence   R KEMAL
1951   PhD   Cambridge, Jesus   An analysis of the Hindu caste system in its interactions with the total social structure in certain parts of the Malabar coast   E J MILLER   Prof Hutton
1951   PhD   Cambridge, Girton   Changes in matrilineal kinship on th Malabar coast   E K MILLER   Prof Hutton
1951   PhD   Bristol   Agriculture and horticulture in India – sundry papers   K C NAIK
1951   MA   Manchester   An economic survey of West Pakistan   A SHARIF
1951   PhD   Cambridge   The interpretation of legislative powers under the Government of India Act, 1935   S D SHARMA
1951   BLitt   Oxford, St Cath’s Society   Religion and society among some of the tribes of Chota Nagpur   H N C STEVENSON
1951       London, SOAS   The political development of Burma during the period 1918-1935   OHN TIN
1951   PhD   London, LSE   The working of the Donoughmore constitution of Ceylon, 1931-1947: a study of a colonial central government by executive committees   Irripitwebadalge don Samaradasa WEERAWARDANA   Mr W H Morris-Jones
1952   PhD   London SOAS   The career of Mir Jafar Khan, 1757-1765 AD   Raya ATULA-CHANDRA   Prof C H Philips
1952   PhD   London, LSE   The development of Calcutta: a study in urban geography   M GUHA   Prof L D Stamp; Prof O H K Spate
1952   PhD   London, LSE   The East India Company’s land policy and management in Bengal from 1698 to 1784   Mazharul HUQ   Dr Anstey
1952   MA   Leeds   The social accounts relating to Ceylon   E L P JAYTILAKA
1952   MSc   London, LSE   Rural industries in India: a study in rural economic development with special reference to Madras   C K KAUSUKUTTY   Dr Anstey
1952   MSc   London, LSE   India’s balance of international payments with special reference to her food and agricultural conditions   G B KULKARNI   Dr Anstey; Dr Raeburn
1952   PhD   Cambridge   Utilitarian influence and the formation of Indian policy, 1820-1840   E T STOKES
1952   PhD   London, SOAS   Local government in India and Burma, 1908-1937: a comparative study of the evolution and working of local authorities in Bombay, the United Provinces and Burma   Hugh R TINKER   Prof Hall
1953   PhD   London, LSE   Economic geography of East Pakistan   N AHMAD   Prof Stamp
1953   MSc   London, UC   the changing pattern of India’s foreign trade, with special reference to the impact of large scale industrial development since 1919   A ALAGAPPAN
1953   PhD   London, SOAS   The East India Company and the economy of Bengal from 1704 to 1740   Sukumar BHATTACHARYYA   Prof C H Philips
1953   MA   Wales   National income of Pakistan for the year 1948-49   Z ul H CHAUDRI
1953   MLitt   Cambridge, Fitzwilliam   The influence of Western thought on social, educational, political and cultural development of India, 1818-1840   V DATTA   Dr T G P Spear
1953   MSc   Belfast   The growth of trade unions in India   S DAYAL
1953   PhD   London   The establishment of Dutch power in Ceylon, 1638-1658    K W GOONEWARDENA   Prof Hall
1953   PhD   London, LSE   The submontane region of North West Pakistan: a geographical study of its economic development   Maryam KARAM-ELAHI   Prof Buchanan; Prof Stamp
1953   PhD   London, LSE   A study of rhe measurement of national product and its distribution, with special reference to Pakistan   A H KHANDKER
1953   PhD   Edinburgh   A regional study of survival, mortality and disease in British India in relation to the geographic factors, 1921-1940   A T A LEARMONTH
1953   PhD   London, SOAS   Development of the Muslims of Bengal and Bihar, 1819-1856, with special reference to their education   A R MAALICK   Prof Philips
1953   DPhil   Oxford, Jesus   The study of the economy of self-subsisting rural communities: the methods of investigation, economic conditions and economic relations, with specific reference to India   P K MUKHOPADHYAY
1953   PhD   London, LSE   The relationship of land tenure to the economic modernization of Uttar Pradesh   W C NEALE
1953   PhD   London, Bedford   Social status of women during the past fifty years (1900=1950)   T N PATEL   Mrs B Wootton
1953   PhD   London, LSE   The state in relation to trade unions and trade disputes in India   Anand PRAKASH   Mr W H Morris-Jones; Mr Roberts
1953   MA   London, SOAS   The tribal village in Bihar   SACHCHIDANANDA   Prof C Haimendorf
1953   PhD   London, UC   Delegated legislation in India   V N SHULKA   Prof Keeton
1953   PhD   London, SOAS   The internal policy of the Indian government, 1885-1898   H L SINGH   Prof C H Philips
1953   PhD   London, SOAS   The internal policy of Lord Auckland in British India, 1836-1842, with special reference to education   D P SINHA   Prof C H Philips
1953/54   MA   Leeds   Demand for certain exports of Ceylon   K THARMARATNAM
1954   MA   London   The administration of Sir Henry Ward,Governor of Ceylon, 1855-1860   S V BALASINGHAM   Prof Graham
1954   PhD   London, SOAS   Social policy and social change in Western India, 1817-1830   Kenneth A BALLHATCHET   Prof C H Philips
1954   Dphil   Oxford, St Hilda’s   Lord William Bentinck in Bengal, 1828-1835   C E BARRETT   Dr C C Davies
1954   MA   London   A historical survey of the training of teachers in Bengal in the 19th and 20th centuries   S BHATTACHARYA
1954   MA   London, SOAS   Evolution of representative government in India, 1884-1909   Sasadhar CHAKRAVARTY   Prof C H Philips

1954    PhD    London, LSE    Consumption levels in India    T P CHAUDHURI
1954    PhD    London, LSE    The forests of Assam: a study in economic geography    H DAS
1954    MSc    Leeds    A study of price fixing for agricultural products with special reference to milk in Great Britain and Bombay    N K DESAI
1954    BLitt    St Andrews    Eldred Pottinger and the North West Frontier, 1838-1842    D W F GOURLAY    Sir C Ogilvie
1954    PhD    London, LSE    The Korean crisis and the Indian Union    K GUPTA
1954    MA    Manchester    Some aspects of the development of Pakistan’s financial structure    M HOSSAIN
1954    MSc    London, LSE    Financing economic development in Ceylon    A T JAYAKODDY    Prof Paish; Dr Anstey
1954    PhD    London, LSE    Measurement of profits: a study of methods with special reference to India    R K NIGAM
1954    DPhil    Oxford, St Antony’s    A study of communal representation in constitutional systems of the British Commonwealth with specific reference to Ceylon, Kenya and Fiji    Carl Gustav ROSBERG    Mr K E Robinson
1954    PhD    London, LSE    Land utilization in Eastern Uttar Pradesh (comprising the districts of Jaunpur, Banares, Guezipur, Azamgarh and Baldea)    M SHAFI    Prof Stamp; Mr R R Rawson
1954    PhD    London, LSE    Representation and representative government in the Indian Republic    Irene C TINKER    Mr W H Morris-Jones
1954    PhD    London, SOAS    Trade and finance in the Bengal Presidency, 1793-1833    Amales TRIPATHY    Prof C H Phillips
1954    PhD    London, LSE    Some aspects of the history of the coffee industry in Ceylon with specific reference to 1823-1885    I H VAN DEN DRIESEN    Mr Fisher
1954    PhD    London, LSE    The Manning constitution of Ceylon, 1924-1931    Alfred Jeyaretnam WILSON    Mr R Bassett; Mr W H Morris-Jones
1955    MSC    London, LSE    Some aspects of the history of British investments in the private sector of the Indian economy, 1876-1914    N Z AHMED    Dr Ashworth; F J Fisher
1955    PhD    Manchester    The social organisation of a village on the Hindu frontier of Orissa    Frederick George BAILEY
1955    LLM    London, LSE    Recognition and enforcement of foreign judgements in India: a comparative study    B N BANERJEE
1955    PhD    London    The administration of criminal justice in Bengal from 1773 to 1861    T K BANERJEE    S A de Smith; Prof A Gledhill
1955    MA    London    The East India Company in Madras, 1707-1744    R N BANERJI
1955    PhD    London    The factory of the English East India Company at bantam, 1602-1682    D K BASSETT    Prof D G E Hall
1955    PhD    London, LSSE    Pressure of population on land in India: a regional approach    B S BHIR
1955    MA    London, SOAS    The economic policy of the Government of India, 1898-1905    Edna BONNER    Prof C R Philips
1955    DPhil    Oxford, St Antony’s    The educational policy of the East India Company, 1781-1854    J G BOWEN    Mr C C Davies
1955    BLitt    Oxford, Magdalen    Indian labour migration to Malaya, 1867-1910    D A CALMAN    Dr A F Madden
1955    PhD    London, LSE    Consumption levels in India    T P CHOUDHURY
1955    PhD    London, LSE    The Malay family in Singapore    J DJAMOUR
1955    PhD    Edinburgh    The abolition of the East India Company’s monopoly, 1833    D EYLES    Prof Pares
1955    MLitt    Cambridge. Fitzwilliam House    The mongoloids and their contributions to the growth of Assamese culture    M C GOSWAMI    Dr J E Lindgren
1955    PhD    London, SOAS    The administration of the Delhi Territory, 1803-1832    Jessie HOLMES    Prof C H Philips
1955    MSc (Econ)    London, LSE    Taxation and saving in India    D JHA
1955    MSc    London, LSE    A comparison of the federal aspects of the Government of India Act, 1935, and the constitution of 1950    S KHAN
1955    MA    London, SOAS    Some aspects of the social history of Bengal with special reference to the Muslims, 1854-1884    L KHATOON    Prof Philips
1955    PhD    Aberdeen    Ports of the Indian ocean: an historical geography    W KIRK    A C O’Dell
1955    PhD    Cambridge, Peterhouse    British investment in Indian guaranteed railways, 1845-1875    W J MACPHERSON    Mr K E Berrill
1955    PhD    London, UC    Fundamental freedoms, with particular reference to the Indian constitution    J C MEHDI    Prof G W Keeton
1955    PhD    Birmingham    The educational ideas of Mahatma Gandhi    N P PILLAI
1955    MA    Manchester    Cottage industries in Bihar    S B SAXENA
1955    PhD    London, LSE    The Indian jute industry: a study of agricultural geography    P SENGUPTA
1955    PhD    London, LSE    The political philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi in relation to the English liberal tradition    Bishan Sarup SHARMA
1955    LLM    London, SOAS    Distribution of legislative power under the India constitution    R P SHARMA
1955    PhD    London , SOAS    The Council of India, 1858-1919    S SINGH    Prof C H Philips
1955    PhD    London LSE    The origin and development of left wing movements and ideas in India, 1919-1947    Lalan Prasad SINHA    R Mikband; W H Morris-Jones
1955    PhD    London; SOAS    British interest in trans-Burma trade routes to China, 1826-1876    Ma THAUNG
1955    MA    London    The training of teachers in the Bombay Presidency during the British period: a historical survey    N L VAIDYA
1955    PhD    Edinburgh    Save there, eat here: a cultural study of labour migration from a Pakhtun village    Francis Philip WATKINS
1955    PhD    London, LSE    The southeast quadrant of Ceylon: a study of the geographical aspects of land use    W A R WIKKRAMATILEKE
1956    PhD    London, SOAS    The Dutch power in Ceylon, 1658-1687    S ARASARATNAM    Prof D Hall
1956    PhD    London, LSE    Land use and soil erosion problems of Bist Jullundur Doab, Punjab, India    O P BHARDWAJA
1956    PhD    London, SOAS    British rule in Assam, 1845-1858    B CHAUDHURI    Prof C R Philips
1956    PhD    London, SOAS    Sir Josiah Child and the East India Company at the end of the 17th century    A L CROWE    Prof C Philips
1956    MSc    London, LSE    Scope and method of agricultural economic surveys in India    N Y Z FARUQI    Dr Raeburn
1956    PhD    London, LSE    A study of capital taxation and its scope in India    I S GULATI
1956    PhD    London, LSE    An analysis of the monetary experience of Ceylon    H A de S GUNASEKERA    Prof Sayers; Mr Wilson
1956    PhD    London, LSE    Federal finance and economic development with special reference to Pakistan    M HOSSAIN
1956    PhD    London, LSE    The demand for Indian exports and imports: an econometric study of selected commodities    A K MUKERJI    Prof Allen; Dr Norton
1956    PhD    London, LSE    Capital development in India with special reference to recent trends in investments    Dinanath Kashinath RANGNEKAR    Prof Paish; Dr Anstey
1956    PhD    Cambridge, St John’s    A study of India’s balance of payments, 1901-1913 and 1924-1936    B S RAO    Prof E A G Robinson
1956    MA    London, SOAS    The relations between the Indian central and provincial governments with special reference to the Presidencies of Madras and Bombay, 1858-1882    D N SINGH    Prof C H Philips
1957    MA    Birmingham    An examination in disposal and treatment of juvenile delinquents in Bombay State in relation to practice in England    A D ATTAR
1957    MA    London    The development and reconstruction of university education in Pakistan since 1854    S M A AZIZ
1957    PhD    Cambridge, Trinity    Social organisation of the Jaffna Tamils of North Ceylon with special reference to kinship, marriage and inheritance    M Y BANKS    Mr E R Leach
1957    PhD    London, LSE    West Midnapore: a study of land use    S C CHAKRABORTI
1957    BLitt    Oxford, St Cath’s    The place of agricultural development in India’s first two Five-Year Plans    A CORREIA-AFONSO
1957    PhD    London, SOAS    Studies in the economic and social development of Inida, 1848-1856    M N DAS    Prof C Philips
1957    MA    London, LSE    The population of Chota Nagpur    H P DEVI    Prof L D Stamp
1957    MSc    London, LSE    Small scale and cottage industries as a means of providing better opportunities for labour in India    Q H FAROOQUEE    Prof A Plant; Mr Foldes
1957    PhD    London, LSE    Fiscal policy and inflation in post-war India, 1945-1954    K V G GOWDA
1957    DPhil    Oxford    Anglo Sikh relations, 1799-1849    B J HASRAT    C C Davies
1957    MLitt    Cambridge, Girton    Indian constitutional development, 1927-1935    M B HASSEN    Dr T G P Spear
1957    PhD    London, LSE    The commitee system in British and Indian local authorities    C JHA    Prof W A Robbins
1957    DPhil    Oxford, St Cath’s    The development of money and banking in Ceylon    J B KELEGAMA
1957    PhD    London, LSE    The civil service in independent India: the All India and Union Civil Services    B S KHANNA    Prof W A Robson
1957    PhD    London, LSE    Urbanization in West Pakistan    K KURESHY
1957    PhD    London, LSE    Hinduism and economic growth: a study of the nature of the impact of Hinduism on India’s economic growth with special emphasis on theperiod since the mid 18th century    B B MISHRA    Dr Anstey
1957    PhD    London, External    Large scale sampling surveys in agriculture in the Punjab (Pakistan)    D M QURESHI
1957    PhD    London, SOAS    British land policy in Oudh    j RAJ    Prof C H Philips
1957    DPhil    Oxford    The Dutch in Coromandel, 1605-1690    Tapan RAYCHAUDHURI
1957    PhD    London, LSE    Geomorphological evolution of the highaland of Chota Nagpur and the adjoining districts of Bihar    R P SINGH
1957    PhD    London, LSE    Credit problems of small farmers in Ceylon    Wijetunga Mudianselagadera TILAKARATNA    Mr A D Knox
1957    PhD    London    The urban geography of Agra    A R TIWARI    Prof A E Smailes
1957/58    PhD    London, SOAS    The life and career of Jonathan Duncan, 1756-1795    V NARAIN
1957/58    PhD    Manchester    A comparative study of informal relationships in a Chinese village in Malaya and north India    W H NEWELL
1957/58    PhD    Manchester    The history of the Arghuns and Tarkhans of Sind    M H SIDDIQI
1957/58    PhD    Manchester    An analysis of the demand for, and the supply of, food in India    R P SINHA
1958    MA    London, Inst Ed    The missionary activities of the CMS and CZEMS in Kashmir during the second half of the 19th century    S Z AHMED SAH    Prof J A Lauwerys
1958    PhD    Cambridge, King’s    The political organisation of the Swat Pathans    T F W BARTH    Mr E R Leach
1958    MA    London, Inst Ed    A historical survey of the languages problem in Bengal from the Muslim period to the end of the British period    K BHATTACHARYYA
1958    MSc    Cambridge, Fitzwilliam    The financing of planned economic development in India    S R DATTA GUPTA    Dr A R Prest
1958    MA    London, LSE    Sociology of marriage rituals in India: a study of Sanskritisation and de-Sanskritisation    B DATTAGUPTA
1958    MSc    Londond, LSE    Some aspects of Indo-British trade during the 20th century with special reference to capital goods    V P DHITAL
1958    MA    London, SOAS    The political system of the Rajputs    Sylvia J DUTRA    Dr Bauley; Prof C von Furer-Haimendorf
1958    MSc    London, LSE    The economics of the tea industry in Ceylon    J M F G FERNANDO    Dr V Anstey
1958    PhD    London    The development of the Indian National Congress, 1892-1909    Pansy C GHOSH    Dr K Balhatchet
1958    PhD    London, LSE    Inflation in India, 1939-1952: a study of inflation in an underdeveloped economy    S K GHOSH    Dr Anstey; Mr Day
1958    PhD    London,SOAS    The internal administration of Lord Lytton, with special reference to social and economic policy, 1876-1880    L M GUJRAL
1958    MLitt    Cambridge, King’s    Sir Richard Jenkins and the Residency at Nagpur, 1807-1818    F A HAGAR    Dr T G P Spear
1958    PhD    London, LSE    Agrarian problems in Bihar based, primarily, on surveys in five villages    F Tomasson JANNUZI    Dr V Anstey
1958    BLitt    Oxford, Campion Hall    An economic and historical study of food grain controls in India during the second world war and after    S C JOSEPH
1958    MSc    London, LSE    Union-state administrative cooperation in India (1937-1952)    M KAMAL    Prof W A Robson
1958    MSc    London, LSE    Problems of the agricultural labourers in India    R P KAMAT
1958    MSc    Cambridge, Newnham    The employment problem in Ceylon    I KANNANGARA    Mrs J V Robinson
1958    PhD    Cambridge, Trinity    The commercial and diplomatic relations between India and Tibet in the nineteenth century    H A LAMB    Dr V W W S Purcell
1958    PhD    Cambridge, St Catharine’s    The Dutch East India Company and Mysore, 1762-1790    J van LOHUIZEN    Dr T G P Spear
1958    MA    London, LSE    Social and economic geography of the Mathura District (western Uttar Pradash)    S D MISRA    Mr R R Rawson
1958    PhD    London, LSE    Economics of nutritional problems in India    R N MITRA    Dr Raeburn
1958    PhD    Cambridge, Peterhouse    The analysis of Kandyan marriage: landlords, labourers and aristocrats    OSMAN YALMAN NUR
1958    PhD    London, SOAS    Sir Elijah Impey in India, 1774-1783    Bishwa Nath PANDEY    Prof C H Philips
1958    MA    London, LSE    A geography of the Peshawar region    M Z SAHIBZADA
1958    PhD    London, LSE    Indian monetary policy and debt management since 1939    J C D SETHI    Dr V Anstey; Mr R Turvey
1958    PhD    London, LSE    Strategic aspects of India’s foreign policy    V B L SHARMA
1958    BLitt    Oxford, St Antony’s    The rise and growth of the Praja Socialist Party of India (1934-1935)    H K SINGH    Mr F G Carnell
1958    PhD    London, LSE    Allahabad: a study in urban geography    Ujaqir SINGH    Prof D L Stamp

1958 PhD London, SOAS Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas Romila THAPAR Prof A.L.Basham [viz., note from Prof Thapar dated 4 March 2016]

1958    MA    London, SOAS    History of the development of Rangoon    TUN THET    Prof Hall
1958    PhD    London, LSE    India’s membership of the sterling area    Jai Dev VARMA
1958    PhD    Cambridge    The present situation and the probably future of cotton in West Pakistan’s economy    S B WHITEHILL
1958    PhD    Edinburgh    The economic geography of Madhya Pradesh (formerly Central Provinces and Behar)    R H ZAIDI
1959    MSc(Econ)    London, LSE    The industrial worker in East Pakistan: a study in the adaptation of an industrial labour force    A K AHMADULLAH    Prof Phelps
1959    MA    Manchester    The recruitment of Indians into the covenanted civil service, 1853-1892    M R ANWAR
1959    PhD    Manchester    Britain and Muslim India: a study of British public opinion vis-a-vis the development of Muslim nationalism in India, 1905-1947    K K AZIZ
1959    MSc    London, LSE    Problems in corporation taxation with special reference to India    M P BHATT    Mr Turvey
1959    PhD    London, LSE    Applications of linear programming to the development plans of India    B BHATTACHARYYA
1959    MA    London    Trincocmalee and the East Indies Squadron, 1746-1844    H A COLGATE    Prof Graham
1959    PhD    London, LSE    Economic development of Assam with special reference to the 20th century    P GOSWAMI    Dr Anstey
1959    PhD    London    The nationalist movement in Ceylon betweem 1910 and 1931, with special reference to communal and elective problems    D K GREENSTREET    Dr Miliband
1959    BLitt    Oxford, St Cath’s    Land tenure in the Kandyan provinces of Ceylon    U A GUNASEKERA    Dr D F Pocock
1959    BLitt    Oxford, St Anne’s    The analysis of external trade and economic structure of Ceylon, 1900-1955    O E B GUNEWARDENA    Miss P H Ady
1959    PhD    London, LSE    Some problems of the organisation and administration of public enterprise with special reference to India    L N GUPTA    Prof Robson; Dr Anstey
1959    PhD    Edinburgh    The collection of agricultural statistics and the use of data in the United Kingdom and Pakistan: an objective study to explore possibilities of improvement in Pakistan    Muhammed Altaf HUSSAIN
1959    MA    London, SOAS    Social and administrative policy of the Government of Bengal, 1877-1890    Rokeya KABEER    Prof Basham
1959    PhD    London, External    Industrial relations in India    C B KUMAR
1959    PhD    London, LSE    Some aspects of the problem of implementing agricultural planning in India    Gouri NAG    Mr Knox; Mr Lancaster
1959    PhD    Edinburgh    Early English travellers in India. A study in the travel literature of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods with particular reference to India    R C PRASAD    Prof W L Renwick; Mr G A Shepperson
1959    PhD    London, LSE    Judicial review in India: a study in constitutional theory and judicial practice    V R RAVIKANTI    Mr S de Smith
1959    MA    London, LSE    The position of women in Hinayana Buddhist countries (Burma, Ceylon, Thailand)    S SEIN    Mr F Freedman
1959    PhD    London , LSE    British opinion and Indian neutralism: an analysis of India’s foreign policy in the light of British public reactions, 1947-1957    Shri Ram SHARMA    Prof Manning
1959/60    PhD    Cambridge, Fitzwilliam    The cottage industries of India: an enquiry into their economics with special reference to developmental planning    Kedarnath PRASAD
1959/60    PhD    Cambridge, Queen’s    The role of transport and foreign trade in the economic development of Burma under British rule, 1885-1914    Maung SHEIN
1959/60    PhD    London, External    North east Baluchistan, Quetta Division: a critical evaluation of the land and its resources    A H SIDDIQI
1959/60    MA    Manchester    An analysis of the principal factors affecting India’s policy toward her Himalayan border    J TOOMRE
1960    PhD    London, SOAS    Some aspects of the history of the Muslim community in Bengal, 1884-1912    Sufia AHMED    Prof C H Philips
1960    MA    London    Aspects of the economic development of the Assam valley, 1858-1884    A C BARUA    Dr K Ballhatchet
1960    PhD    Cambridge    Thomas Munro and the development of administrative policy in Madras, 1791-1818: the origins of “the Munro system”    T H BEAGLEHOLE    Dr K Ballhatchet
1960    PhD    London, LSE    Measurements of production and productivity in Indian industry with special reference to methodological aspects    G C BERI
1960    PhD    London, SOAS    The state and the cooperative movement in the Bombay Presidency, 1880-1930    I J CATANACH    Dr K Ballhatchet
1960    PhD    London, LSE    The centrally recruited services in Pakistan    M A CHAUDHURI    Prof P Robson
1960    DPhil    Oxford, Lincoln    Portuguese society in India in the sixteenth and seveteenth centuries    K J CROWTHER
1960    PhD    Cambridge, St Cath’s    Cottage industries of Ceylon    H D DIAS    Mr B H Farmer
1960    MSc (Econ)    London    Someproblems of agriculture in the Vale of Peshawar (West Pakistan)    Lloyd Suttor EDMONDS
1960    PhD    Cambridge, Fitzwilliam    Malabar in Asian trade, 1740-1800    Asin Ranjan Das GUPTA

1960   MA   Wales, Swansea   Indian international transactions 1948 to 1958   C GURUPRASAD
1960   PhD   London, SOAS   British policy on the North West Frontier Province of India, 1889-1901   L HARRIS   Prof K Ballhatchet
1960   PhD   London, External   Agricultural geography of East Pakistan   B L C JOHNSON
1960   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   The Indian National Congress, 1918-1923   G KKRISHNA   Dr G F Hudson
1960   PhD   London   The growth of the idea of Commonwealth in India. 1900-1929   S R MEHROTRA   Prof Philips
1960   PhD   London   The Burma-China boundary since 1886   Khin Maung NYUNT
1960   PhD   London, Birkbeck   Colombo: a study in urban geography   D B L PANDITARATNA   Prof A L Basham
1960   PhD   London, LSE   The law and the banker in Ceylon   M J L RAJANAYAGAM   Prof Gower
1960   PhD   London, LSE   Land reforms and some allied agrarian problems in Madras State since independence   Arungiri RAMASWAMI
1960   PhD   London LSE   Economic aspects of the sugar industry in India   Saraswathi RAU   Dr Raeburn
1960   PhD   London, LSE   Industrial injuries schemes in India and Britain: a comparative study   B RAYCHAUDHURI
1960   MSc   London, LSE   Wage boards in British and the application of their proceedings in India   C J N SAXENA   Prof Phelps Brown
1960   PhD   London, LSE   Recent changes in land use in the Upper Damodar Basin, India   A SHARAN   Mr Rawson
1960   PhD   London, SOAS   English relations with Haidar Ali, 1760-1782   B SHEIK ALI
1960   MA   London, Inst Ed   A comparative study of the language problem at the university level in India   R K YADAVA
1960   PhD   London, SOAS   Anglo-Chinese diplomacy regarding Burma, 1885-1897   Nancy Iu YAN-KIT
1960/61   PhD   Cambridge, King’s   Surplus manpower in agriculture and economic development with special reference to India   P S SANGHVI   Dr M R Fisher
1960/61   PhD   Cambridge, Newnham   A critique of surplus labour doctrine as applied to the Pakistan in 1947-1957   Rehana TANWIR
1961   PhD   London   Constitutional and political aspects of the public corporation in Britain and India   R S ARORA
1961   BLitt   Oxford, Exeter   Some aspects of change in the structure of the Muslim family in the Punjab under British rule   T ASAD   Dr D F Pocock
1961   PhD   London, SOAS   The structure and organisatioin of the Bengal Native Infantry with special reference to the problems of discipline (1796-1852)   Amiya BARAT   Dr K Ballhatchet
1961   PhD   London, LSE   Howrah: an urban study   A CHATTOPADHYAY   Dr E Jones
1961   PhD   Leeds   India, Britain and Russia: a study of British opinion   V K CHAVDA   Prof Briggs
1961   DPhil   Oxford, Magdalen   Muslim politics in the Indo-Pakistan sub-continent, 1858-1916   M CHUGHTAI   Dr C C Davies
1961   DPhil   Oxford, Nuffield   Henry Dundas and the government of India, 1773-1801   B DE   Mr Davies
1961   PhD   London, SOAS   Some aspects of the development of social policy in Ceylon, 1840-1955 with special reference to the influence of missionary organisations   K M DE SILVA   Dr K Ballhatchet
1961   MSc   London   The economics, organisation and administration of the Indian paper industry   B N DHAR
1961   PhD   London   The administration of Guntur District with special reference to local influences on revenue policy, 1837-1848   Robert Eric FRYKENBERG   Dr K Ballhatchet
1961   PhD   Cambridge   Sir Richard Temple and the government of India 1868-1880: some trends in Indian administrative policy   G R G HAMBLY
1961   PhD   London, SOAS   Tribal unrest on the south-west frontier of the Bengal Presidency, 1831-1833   J C JHA
1961   MA   London, SOAS   Changing values in the Naga Hills and Manipur State   M KALABOVA   Prof C Von Furer Haimerdorf
1961   PhD   London, External   Financial administration in Ceylon since independence   V KANESALINGHAM
1961   MSc   London, LSE   Government of India policy towards Portuguese possessions in India from 1947 to 1957   R A KHAN
1961   PhD   London, SOAS   The development of nationalist ideas and tactics and the policies of the government of India   J R McLANE
1961   PhD   London, SOAS   The Kurumas of Malabar   Richard Lionel ROOKSBY
1961   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity Hall   The Ceylon economy, 1920-1938: a national accounts study   M R P SALGADO   Dr B B Das Gupta
1961   MA   London, SOAS   The social and political organisation of the Kandyan Kingdom (Ceylon)   S B W WICKREMASEKERA
1961/62   PhD   Cambridge, Newnham   The growth of agricultural labour in the Madras Presidency in the nineteenth century   Dharma KUMAR   Mr J Gallagher
1962   MA   London, LSE   Population changes in West Bengal, 1872-1951   A BHATTACHARYYA   Prof Jones
1962   MA   London, Inst Ed   Policies regarding higher education in Ceylon during the 19th and 20th centuries with special reference to the establishment of the University of Ceylon   P CHANDRASEGARAM   Mr B Holmes
1962   PhD   London   The development of the English East India Company with special reference to its trade and organization, 1600-1640   K N CHAUDHURI
1962   PhD   Edinburgh   The control of public expenditure in less-developed countries with special reference to India   usha DAR
1962   PhD   London, LSE   Investment and economic growth in Ceylon   S B D DE SILVA   Prof Paish
1962   PhD   Londond, Birkbeck   The North West frontier of West Pakistan: a study in regional geography   D DICHTER   Prof East
1962   PhD   London   Social institutions in Ceylon 5th century BC to 4th century AD   H ELLAWALLA   Prof Basham; Dr de Casparia
1962   MLitt   Durham   The political ideas of Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall   P HASSAN   Prof W H Morris Jones
1962   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   Some aspects of the social and political thought of Mahatma Gandhi   Raghavan Narasimhan IYER   Mr J P Plamenatz
1962   PhD   London, SOAS   Murshid Quli Khan and his times   Abdul KARIM   Mr Harrison
1962   PhD   London   Indo-Ceylon relations since independence   Shelton Upatissa KODIKARA
1962   PhD   London   The fiscal policy of the central government of India since independence and its economic effects   J MADHAB
1962   DPhil   Oxford, Wadham   The impeachment of Warren Hastings   Peter James MARSHALL   Principal of Lady Margeret Hall
1962   PhD   London, External   Social geography of Himachal Pradesh   S D MISRA
1962   PhD   London, LSE   Public administration aspects of community development in India (with special reference to Rajasthan)   D C POTTER
1962   PhD   London, LSE   The development of the Indian capital market with special reference to the managing agent system   B PRASAD   Dr Paish; Dr Anstey
1962   PhD   London, LSE   A study of productivity problems in the cotton textile industries of the UK (Lancashire) and India (Bombay and Ahmedabad) since the Second World War   S P S PRUTHI   Mr Roberts
1962   PhD   London   The political and constitutional evolution of Burma from 1923-1936   Asha RAM
1962   PhD   London, Inst Ed   Education in colonial Ceylon, being a research study on the history of education in Ceylon for the period 1796 to 1834    T R A RUBERU
1962   PhD   Edinburgh   Scottish experience in the impact of farm mechanisation on the employment and use of man labour with observatioins on possible Indian problems in this field   Kalyan Kumar SARKAR
1962   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity Hall   The emergence of Indian nationalism, 1885-1915   A SEAL   Mr J Gallagher
1962   PhD   Manchester   A comparative study of the central administrative organisation in India and in some other Commonwealth countries   S C SETH
1962   DPhil   Oxford, Nuffield   India’s export performance, 1951-1960, export prospects and policy implications   M V SINGH   Dr I M D Little
1962   PhD   Manchester   Some aspects of the administration of community projects in India   T N SRIVASTAVA
1962   PhD   London, QMC   Aspects of the urban geography of new Delhi   M P THAKORE   Prof Smailes
1962   PhD   London   Family planning in India: a field study of attitudes and behaviour in a population of Delhi compared with results of existing research in India and elsewhere   S THAPER
1962   PhD    London, SOAS   Lord Minto and the Indian nationalist movement with special reference to the political activities of the Indian Muslims, 1905-1910   S R WASTI
1962   DPhil   Oxford, New   The formation of policy in the India Office, 1858-1866, with special reference to the Political, Judicial, Revenue and Public Works Departments   D WILLIAMS   Mr C C Davies
1962/63   MA   London, Inst Ed   Education in the Roman Catholic missions in Ceylon in the second half of the 19th century (1842-1905)   C N V FERNANDO   Dr Weitzman
1962/63   PhD   London, External   Sterling tea and rubber companies in Ceylon, 1889-1958   N RAMACHANDRAN
1963   DPhil   Oxford, St Cath’s   Land systems in the Punjab (including North West Frontier Province)as affected by British rule between 1849 and 1901   R AHMAD   Mrs U K Hicks
1963   PhD   London, SOAS   The Bengali reaction to Christian missionary activities, 1833-1957   M M ALI
1963   PhD   Manchester   Economic ideas and Indian economic policies in the nineteenth century   S AMBIRAJAN
1963   PhD   London, UC   The development of the constitution of Jammu and Kashmir   A S ANAND   Mr Holland
1963   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   Private investment and partial planning in India   Amiya Kumar BAGCHI
1963   PhD   London   The law of parliamentary elections in India and the United Kingdom   R K BAHL
1963   PhD   London, SOAS   British policy towards the Panjab, 1844-1849   S S BAL   Dr K Ballhatchet
1963   PhD   London   Estimates of the current and capital accounts of the balance of payments of India, 1921/22 to 1938/39, incorporating also the estimates of the government of India   A K BANERJI
1963   MS   London   The governorship of Sir William Gregory in Ceylon   B E St J BASTIAMPILLAI   Prof G S Graham
1963   PhD   Manchester   The industrial growth and technological pluralism in India with special reference to the cotton textile industry   AS BHALLA
1963   PhD   London, LSE   Financial administration of nationalised industries in UK and India   G S BHALLA
1963   MA   London, Inst Ed   A cross-cultural study of interests and attitudes of British and Indian university students   J K BHATNAGAR
1963   MSc   London, LSE   American attitudes towards foreign aid with special reference to the Indian sub continent   E I BRODKIN   Mr Chambers
1963   PhD   London, SOAS   Lord Curzon and the Indian states. 1899-1905   I A BUTT   Dr K A Ballhatchet

1963    MsC    London, UC    A comparative study of the nature and effectiveness of selective credit controls in the UK, India and Australia since 1951    J G CHAPATWALA    Dr Cramp
1963    PhD    London, SOAS    Slavery in the Bengal Presidency under East India Company rule, 1772-1843    A K CHATTOPADHYAY    Major Harrison
1963    PhD    London, SOAS    The rice industry of Burma, 1852-1940    Siok-hwa CHENG    Prof C D Cowan
1963    MA    London, Inst Ed    The effects of diarchy upon educational developments in Bengal, 1919-1953    S K DUTTA GUPTA
1963    PhD    London, LSE    Colonisation of the dry zone of Ceylon    H N C FONSECA
1963    PhD    London    British relations with Kashmir, 1885-1893    D K GHOSE    Dr K Ballhatchet
1963    PhD    Sheffield    The Marquis of Dalhousie and education in India, 1848-1956    Kamala GHOSH
1963    PhD    Manchester    The British Conservative Party and Indian problems. 1927-1935    S C GHOSH
1963    PhD    London, SOAS    British historical writing from Alexander Dow to Mountstuart Elphinstone on Muslim India    J S GREWAL    Dr Hardy
1963    PhD    London, SOAS    Indian politics and the British right, 1914-1922    M R HASSAN    Dr K Ballhatchet
1963    PhD    London, LSE    Ritual pollution and social structure in Hindu Assam    T T S HAYLEY
1963    MSc    London, LSE    English, German, Spanish relations in the Sulu question, 1987-1877    S C HUNTER
1963    PhD    London, LSE    Rainfall, rice fields and irrigation needs in West Bengal    P HUR    Mr Rawson
1963    MSc    London, LSE    Ideological influences in the foreign policy of Pakistan    A HUSSAIN    Dr Manning
1963    MA    Sheffield    The industrial geography of Madras State    Iyer Balasubramanyan HYMA
1963    PhD    Cambridge, King’s    The supply of Sinhalese labour to Ceylon plantations, 1830-1930: a study of imperial policy in a peasant society    L R U JAYAWARDENA    Mr K E Berrill
1963    PhD    London, External    Caste and class in pre-Muslim Bengal: studies in social history of Bengal    N KUNDU
1963    DPhil    Oxford, Jesus    The role and limits of state authority in northern India in the early historical period: an empirical examination of the administration of government    Ian W MABBETT    Prof T Borrow
1963    DPhil    Oxford, Lady Margaret    Lord Minto’s administration in India (1807-1813)with special reference to his foreign policy    Amita MAJUMDAR    Mr C C Davies
1963    DPhil    Oxford, St Hugh’s    Imperial policy in India, 1905-1910    V MAZUMDAR    Dr C C Davies
1963    PhD    London, LSE    The origin, development and problems of village (“community”) projects in India    Vindhyeshwari Prasad PANDE
1963    PhD    London, LSE    Constitutional protection of property in India: a critical and comparative study    P P PANDIT
1963    DPhil    Oxford, Regent’s Park    British Baptist missions and missionaries in India, 1793-1837    E D POTTS    Mr C C Davis
1963    DPhil    Oxford, Somerville    Land revenue administration in the ceded and conquered provinces and its economic background, 1819-1833    Asiya SIDDIQI    Mr C C Davis
1963    MA    London, SOAS    British administration in Upper Burma, 1885-1897    Jagjit Singh SIDHU
1963    BLitt    Oxford, St Cath’s    The Jats: an ethnographic survey    Gunter TIEMANN    Dr D F Pocock
1963    DPhil    Oxford, Balliol    The development and significance of transport in India (1834-1882)    K E VERGHESE    Mr C C Davies
1963    PhD    London, SOAS    Some aspects of Indian society as depicted in the Pali Canon    N K WAGLE
1963    MA    London, LSE    Magic in Malaya    W D WILDER
1963    PhD    London, UC    Basic democracies in Pakistan    M S K YOUSUFZAI    Prof Holland
1964    LlM    London, UC    The origin and nature of presidential powers in Pakistan    M ARIF    Mr Holland
1964    PhD    London, SOAS    The ideological differences between moderates and extremists in the Indian national movement with special reference to Surendranath Banerjea and Lajpat Rai, 1882-1919    D ATGOV    Prof H Tinker
1964    DPhil    Oxford, St Antony’s    The Indian Constituent Assembly and the framing of the Indian constitution    G S AUSTIN    Mr F G Carnell
1964    PhD    London, SOAS    The role of Shaikh Ahmad of Sarhind in Islam in India    M Q BAIG    Prof Basham
1964    PhD    London, SOAS    David Scott on the North East Frontier of India and in Assam    N K BAROOAH    Mr Harrison
1964    BLitt    Oxford, Somerville    An examination of marriage ritual among selected groups in South India    B E F BECK
1964    PhD    London, LSE    The mobilisation of savings and the role of financial institutions with special reference to India    M Q M S DALVI    Dr Anstey
1964    PhD    London, LSE    Producers’ rationality and technical changes in agriculture with special reference to India    S DASGUPTA    Dr Anstey; Mr Joy
1964    PhD    London, SOAS    British policy towards the Pathans and Pindaris in central India, 1805-1818    B GHOSH    Dr K Ballhatchet
1964    PhD    Cambridge. Newnham    Service centres in Southern Ceylon    K A GUNAWARDENA    Mr B H Farmer

1964 PhD London, UCL, A Comparative Study of Pakistani Bilingual and Monoglot School Children’s Performance in Verbal and Non Verbal Tests Rafia HASAN Dr Charlotte Banks (added thanks to information of Naveed Hasan Henderson, PhD London 1995, in a comment below, and confirmed by the University of London Library)

1964    PhD    London, External    An appraisal of public investment policy in India, 1951-1961    J M HEALEY
1964    PhD    London    The formation of British land revenue policy in the ceded and conquered provinces of northern India. 1801-1833    M I HUSAIN    Dr K A Ballhatchet
1964    PhD    London, LSE    Soviet Russia’s policy towards India and its effect on Anglo-Soviet relations, 1917-1928    Z IMAM    Mr Schapiro
1964    PhD    London, Wye    Efficiency in agricultural production; its meaning, measurement and improvement in peasant agriculture with special reference to Pakistan    M S ISLAM
1964    PhD    London, LSE    The urban labour movement in Ceylon with reference to political factors, 1893-1947    V K JAYAWARDENA    Prof Roberts
1964    PhD    London, External    A study of the current trends in the industrial development of Ceylon    V KANAPATHY
1964    PhD    London, LSE    The modern Muslim political elite in Bengal    Abdul Khair Nazmul KARIM
1964    PhD    London, LSE    Iron and steel prices in India since independence    S S MENSINKAI
1964    PhD    London, SOAS    Sir Charles Wood’s Indian policy, 1953-1866    R J MOORE    Prof Basham
1964    PhD    London, SOAS    Lord Northwood’s Indian administration, 1872-1876    E C MOULTON    Dr K Ballhatchet
1964    PhD    London, LSE    Some aspects of agrarian reorganizationin India with special reference to size of holding    B MUKHERJEE    D Anstey
1964    PhD    Cambridge, Newnham    British commercial interests and the expansion of the Bombay Presidency, 1784-1806    P NIGHTINGALE    Dr T G P Spear
1964    PhD    London, SOAS    The rise of the Muslim middle class as a political factor in India and Pakistan    A H M NOORUZZAMAN    Prof H Tinker
1964    PhD    London, SOAS    The rev. James Long and Protestant missionary policy in Bengal, 1840-1872    G A ODDIE    Prof K Ballhatchet
1964    PhD    London, Inst Ed    Some issues between the church and state in Ceylon in the education of the people from 1870 to 1901    A RAJAINDRAN    Dr Holmes
1964    PhD    London, LSE    Rural development in India with special reference to agriculture, education and administration    K RAJARATNAM    Dr Anstey
1964    PhD    Durham    The central legislature in British India, 1921-1947    Md RASHIDUZZAMAN    Prof W H Morris-Jones
1964    PhD    London, LSE    Land tenure as related to agricultural efficiency and rural welfare in India    Paramahansa RAY    Dr Anstey; Mr Joy
1964    PhD    London    The revenue administration of Chittagong from 1761 to1784    Alamgir Muhammad SERAJUDDIN    Mr Harrison
1964    BLitt    Oxford, St Hilda’s    A study of representation in multi-lateral communities with special reference to Ceylon and Trinidad from 1946-1961    A SPACKMAN    Dr A F Madden
1964    MSc    London, LSE    Trends in the pattern of distribution of consumer goods in India    B K VADEHRA
1964    PhD    London, SOAS    British administration in the maritime provinces of Ceylon, 1796-1802    U C WICKREMERATNE    Prof K A Ballhatchet
1964    MA    Nottingham    British policy and the defence of Asia, 1903-1905: with special reference to China and India    B WILLCOCK    Dr J A S Grenville
1964/65    PhD    Manchester    Revolution and counter-revolution: a study of British colonial policy as a factor in the growth and disintegration of national liberation movements in Burma and Malaya    F NEMENZO
1964/65    PhD    Nottingham    Impact of the size of the organization on the personnel management function: a comparative study of personnel departments in some British and Indian industrial firms    B P SINGH
1965    DPhil    Oxford, New College    Life and conditions of the people of Bengal (1765-1785)    Z AHMA    Mr C C Davies
1965    PhD    London, External    The commercial progress and administrative development of the East India company on the Coromandel coast during the first half of the 18th century    R N BANERJI
1965    PhD    London, SOAS    The minorities of Southern Asia and public policy with special reference to India (mainly since 1919)    J H BEAGLEHOLE    Prof H Tinker
1965    PhD    Manchester    Urban unemployment in India    RC BHARDWAJ
1965    DPhl    Oxford, Balliol    The governor-generalship of the Marquess of Hastings, 1813-1823, with special reference to the Supreme Council and Secretariat…Palmer Company    Richard J BINGLE    Mr C C Davies
1965    MSc    London, SOAS    Ministerial government under the dyarchical reforms with special reference to Bengal and Madras    K A CHOWDHURY
1965    PhD    London, SOAS    The idea of freedom in the political thought of Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Gandhi and Tagore    D G DALTON
1965    MA    London, LSE    Irrigation and winter crops in East Pakistan    O HUQ    Mr Rawson
1965    PhD    London, SOAS    Conditions of employment and industrial disputes in Pakistan    A HUSAIN    Prof A Gledhill
1965    PhD    London, LSE    Democratic decentralization and planning in rural India    A C S ILCHMAN    Dr Anstey; Prof Self
1965    MSc    London, King’s    A social geography of Chitral State    ISRAR-UD-DIN    Prof Jones
1965    MSc (Econ)    London, LSE    Economic problems and organisation of public enterprise in Ceylon, 1931-1963    A S JAYAWARDENE    Mr Foldes
1965    PhD    London, SOAS    The rights and liabilities of the Bengal raiyats under tenancy legislation from 1885 to 1947    L KABIR
1965    MA    Manchester    The failure of parliamentary system of government in Pakistan    M A KHAN
1965    PhD    London, SOAS    Curzon, Kitchener and the problem of India army administration, 1899-1909    J E LYDGATE    Prof Robinson
1965    PhD    London, SOAS    A study of urban centres and industries in the central provinces of the Mughal Empire between 1556 and 1803    H K NAQVI    Mr Harrison
1965    PhD    London, SOAS    Sir Charles Metcalfe’s administration and administrative ideas in India, 1806-1835    D N PANIGRAHI    Prof C H Philips
1965    PhD    Birmingham    Peasant farming past and present in the wet zone of Ceylon    P D A PERERA    Prof H Thorpe; Dr W B Morgan
1965    DPhil    Oxford, Merton    Some aspects of British economic and social policy in Ceylon, 1840-1871    M W ROBERTS    Prof J A Gallagher
1965    PhD    London    The rise of business corporations in India and their development during 1851-1900    R S RUNGTA    Prof Paish; Dr V Ansty
1965    PhF    London, SOAS    The Sultanate of Jaunpur    Mian Muhhammad SAEED    Prof Basham
1965    BLitt    Oxford, Lady Margaret    Agricultural policy and economic development in India    K N V SASTRI    Mr G R Allen
1965    PhD    London, SOAS    A comparative study of the traditional political organisation of Kerala and Punjab    S J SHAHANI    Dr Mayer
1965    PhD    London, SOAS    The joint Hindiu family: its evolution as a legal institution    Gunther-Dietz SONTHEIMER    Dr Derrett
1965    PhD    London, SOAS    Nullity of marriage in modern Hindu law    S K TEWARI    Dr J D M Derrett
1965    MA    London, Inst Ed    The social and political significance of Anglo-Indian schools in India    Rosalind TIWARI    Dr King
1965    MA    Manchester    Federalism in south-East Asia with special reference to Burma    Margaret YIYI
1965    PhD    London, SOAS    The partition of Bengal and its annulment: a survey of the schemes of territorial redistribution of Bengal, 1902-1911    S Z H ZAIDI    Prof Basham
1965/66    PhD    Cambridge, St John’s    Economic geography of rubber production in Ceylon    G H PEIRIS    Mr B H Farmer
1965/66    PhD    Leeds    Impact of money supply on the Indian economy, 1950/51 – 1963/64    K PRASAD
1965/66    PhD    Cambridge, Newnham    The structure and working of the commercial banking system in Ceylon, 1945-1963    A J A N SILVA    Miss P M Deane
1965/66    PhD    Durham    Aspects of hte administration of the Punjab, judicial, revenue and political, 1849-1858    S K SONI
1965/66    PhD    Cambridge, Trinity House    The public finances of Ceylon, 1948-1961    G USWATTE-ARATCHI    Dr A R Prest

1966 PhD Manchester University Ramgopal AGARWALA An econometric model of India, 1948-49 to 1960-61 Mr R.J. Ball

1966    PhD    London, LSE    Expenditure classification and investment planning with special reference to Pakistan    K U AHMAD    Dr Anstey
1966    PhD    London, LSE    The methodology of studying fertility differentials with reference to East Pakistan    M AHMAD    Prof Glass; Mr Carrier
1966    PhD    Bristol    The role of a higher civil service in Pakistan    A AHMED
1966    PhD    London, SOAS    Conditions of employment and industrial disputed in Pakistan    H AHMED
1966    MScEcon    London, SOAS    Political parties and the Labour Movement in India in the 1920s    N BEGAM
1966    MLitt    Edinburgh    Patronage and education in the East India Company civil service, 1800-1857    J T BEYER
1966    PhD    Cambridge, Churchill    Regional cooperation for development in South Asia with special reference to India and Pakistan    S R BOSE    Mr W B Reddaway
1966    PhD    London    The constitutional history of Malaya with special reference toe Malay states of Perak, Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Pahong, 1874-1914    P L BURNS    Prof C D Cowan
1966    PhD    Cambridge, Girton    The impact of planning upon federalism in India, 1951-1964    A CHATTERJI    Prof Sir Ivor Jennings
1966    PhD    London, UC    Industrial conciliation and arbitration in India    R L CHAUDHARY
1966    PhD    London, UC    Lahore: a geographical study    M M CHAUDHURY
1966    PhD    Manchester    The approach to planning in Pakistan    M K CHOWDHURY
1966    PhD    London, LSE    Jamshedpur – the growth of the city and its region    M DUTT    Prof Jones
1966    DPhil    Oxford, Campion Hall    The Tana Bhagats:a study in social change    P EKKA    Mr K O L Burridge
1966    PhD    London, LSE    The scope for wage policy as an instrument of planning in early stages of national economic development: a comparative study of the USSR, India and the UAR    M A ELLEISI    Prof Phelps Brown; Dr Ozga
1966    PhD    London, SOAS    The social condition of the British community in Bengal, 1757-1800    S C GHOSH    Prof A L Basham
1966    PhD    Cambridge, Girton    The transfer of power to Pakistan and its consequences (1946-1951)    M HASAN    Prof N Mansergh
1966    PhD    London, UC    The Indian Supreme Court and the constitution    M IMAM    Dr D C Holland
1966    PhD    London, LSE    Cotton futures markets in India: some economic studies    T ISLAM    Prof Yamey
1966    PhD    London, LSE    The extensions of the franchise in Ceylon with some consideration of the their political and social consequences    K H JAYASINGHE    Mr Pickles
1966    MA    London, External    The control of education in Ceylon: the last fifty years of British rule and after (1900-1962)    C S V JAYAWAWEERA
1966    PhD    London, External    A comparative study of British and American colonial educational policy in Ceylon and the Philippines from 1900 to 1948]    S JAYAWEERA
1966    PhD    Manchester    Import substitution in relations to industrial growth and balance of payments iof Pakistan, 1965-1970    A H KADRI
1966    PhD    London, SOAS    Origins of Indian foreign policy: a study of Indian nationalist attitudes to foreign affairs, 1927-1939    T A KEENLEYSIDE    Prof H Tinker
1966    PhD    London, SOAS    The transition in Bengal, 1756-1775: a study of Muhammad Reza Khan    Abdul Majed KHAN    Mr Harrison
1966    PhD    London, SOAS    The British administration of Sind between 1843 and 1865: a study in social and economic development    Hamida KHUHRO    Mr Harrison
1966    PhD    London, SOAS    The internal administration of Lord Elgin in India, 1984-1898    P L MALHOTRA    Mr Harrison
1966    PhD    London, SOAS    A study of Murshidabad Distrrict, 1765-1793    K M MOHSIN    Mr Harrison
1966    PhD    London, SOAS    The new province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, 1905-1911    M K U MOLLA    Dr Hardy; Dr Pandey
1966    PhD    London, SOAS    The early history of the East Indian Railways, 1845-1879    Hena MUKHERJEE    Dr Chaudhuri
1966    PhD    London, King’s    British military policy and the defence of India: a study of British military policy, plans and preparations during the Russian crisis, 1876-1880    A W PRESTON    Prof M E Howard
1966    PhD    London, LSE    Changes in caste in rural Kumaon    R D SANWAL    Dr Freedman
1966    PhD    London, SOAS    The Christian missionaries in Bengal. 1793-1833    K SENGUPTA    Prof Basham
1966    PhD    London, LSE    Central control and supervision of capital expenditure in the public sector in the UK and India    Ram Parkash SETH    Prof Greaves; Prof Self
1966    PhD    London, King’s    Surveying and charting the Indian Ocean    W A SPRAY    Prof G S Graham
1966    PhD    London, SOAS    Politics and change in the Madras Presidency, 1884-1894: a regional study of Indian nationalism    R SUNTHARALINGAM    Prof H R Tinker
1966    PhD    London, External    The law relating to directors and managing agents of companies limited by shares in Pakistan    Muhammad ZAHIR    Prof Gledhill
1966/67    PhD    Cambridge, Trinity    Planning and regional development: the application of a multi-sectoral programming model to inter-regional planning in Pakistan    A R KHAN    Dr J A Mirrlees
1966/67    MPhil    London, Inst Ed    The impact of the creation of Pakistan on Muslim education in Pakistan    G NABI
1966/67    PhD    Manchester    A study of fiscal policy in Pakistan, 1950-51, with special reference to its contribution to economic development    M NAYIMUDDIN
1966/67    PhD    Edinburgh    The fisheries of Pakistan: their present position and potentialities    R NIAZI
1966/67    PhD    Leeds    An evaluation of the human impact on the nature and distribution of wild plant communities in the Ceylon Highlands    N P PERERA
1966/67    PhD    Reading    Intra-party relationships and federalism: a comparative study of the Indian Congress Party and the Australian political parties    Y A RAFEEK
1966/67    PhD    Cambridge, St Cath’s    The share of labour in value added during the inflation in the modern sector in under-developed economies: a comparative study of the experience of India, Peru and Turkey between 1939 and 1958    W M WARREN    Mr J A C Bowen
1967    LLM    Queen’s, Belfast    A comparative study of the provisions for emergency powers in the constitutions of the Indian, Australian, Nigerian and Malaysian federations with special emphasis on the Malaysian constitution    A ABIDIN
1967    PhD    Edinburgh    The peasant family and social status in East Pakistan    Nizam Uddin AHMED
1967    BLitt    Glasgow    Foreign trade policy of India    N M AMIN
1967    PhD    London, SOAS    English educated Ceylonese in the official life of Ceylon from 1865 to 1883    W M D D ANDRADI    Mr J B Harrison
1967    PhD    London, SOAS    Some aspects of the relationship of political and constitutional theories to the constitutional evolution of India and Pakistan with special reference to the period 1919-1956    B P BARUA    Prof H Tinker
1967    PhD    Cambridge, Newnham    Indian education and politics,1898-1920    A BASU    Prof J A Gallagher

1967   MA   Sussex   Choice of technique: an activity analysis approach with special reference to the Indian cotton textiles industry   C L BELL
1967   PhD   Cambridge, Selwyn   Anglo-Afghan relations, 1870-1880   S CHAKRAVARTY   Dr T G Spear
1967   PhD   Cambridge, Clare   The relations of the Court of Directors, the India Board, the India Office and the Government of India, 1853-1865   P K CHATTARJI   Dr T G Spear
1967   MA   Sussex   The regulation of communal disturbances in West Bengal and East Pakistan in 1950   M CHAUDHURY
1967   MSc   London, SOAS   Political parties in the Bombay Presidency, 1920-1929   D S CHAVDA   Prof H Tinker
1967   PhD   London, SOAS   Oil prices and the Indian market, 1886-1964   Biplab Kumar DASGUPTA   Prof Penrose
1967   MPhil   London, LSE   Some aspects of stratificatioin in Indian rural communities   K S DASGUPTA   Prof Glass
1967   DPhil   Oxford, Lady Margaret   The growth of urban leadership n Western India with special reference to Bombay City, 1845-1885   C E DOBBIN   Prof J A Gallagher
1967   DPhil   Oxford, Balliol   Judicial control of administrative action in India and Pakistan   A FAZAL   Prof H W R Wade
1967   DPhil   Oxford, Linacre House   Patterns of investment, political stability and rates of growth: an analysis of central government expenditure of Ceylon, 1930-1963   S T G FERNANDO   Lady Hicks
1967   MA   Sussex   Development administration and Calcutta metropolitan government   R FOGEL
1967   PhD   London, QMC   Peasant production of tea in Sri Lanka   R S GUNAWARDENA   Dr Hodder; Prof Smailes
1967   PhD   London, SOAS   The policy of Sir James Fergusson as Governor of Bombay Presidency, 1880-1885   A GUPTA   Prof K Ballhatchet
1967   PhD   Cambridge, Sidney   The effect of a change in the terms of trade on the economic growth of Pakistan: a study of the third five year plan   I U HAQUE   Mr W B Reddaway
1967   PhD   London, LSE   Agricultural taxation in a newly developing country: the case of Pakistan   A HASHEM   Prof Peston
1967   PhD   London, SOAS   A price stabilisation model for Pakistan: jute   A K M S HUQ   Prof Penrose
1967   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   The failure of parliamenary politics in Pakistan, 1953-1958   I HUSAIN   Prof M Beloff
1967   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   The development of Indian politics, 1888-1909   G JOHNSON   Dr A Seal
1967   MA   Sussex   Language as an issue in Indian politics   J KABANGO
1967   MA   London, LSE   The changing distribution of cash crops in East Pakistan, 1945-1962   A K M KALIMULLAH   Dr Board
1967   PhD   Aberdeen   The development of transport in East Pakistan   Abul Fazal Muhammed KAMALUDDIN
1967   MPhil   London, SOAS   The advent of the British in Ceylon, 1762-1803   V L B MENDIS   Dr Bastin
1967   MPhil   Leeds   The linguistic world of Anglo-India   K MUSA
1967   MPhil   London, SOAS   Some aspects of the Hindu-Muslim relationship in India, 1876-1892   Shamsun NAHAR   Dr B N Pandey
1967   PhD   Edinburgh   The contribution of Scottish missions to the rise and growth of responsible churches in India   James McMichael ORR   Dr H Watt; Prof A C Cheyne
1967   PhD   London, LSE   The impact of industrialisation on urban growth: a case study of Chotanagpur   P PANDEYA   Prof Jones
1967   DPhil   Oxford, Jesus   British relations with Pakistan, 1947-1962: a study of British policy towards Pakistan   M A QURESHI   Mr G Wint
1967   PhD   London   The evolution for civil procedure in Bengal from 1772 to 1806   Z RAHMAN
1967   PhD   London, SOAS   Local government services in India: a case study of Punjab, 1860-1960   D R SACHDEVA   Prof H Tinker
1967   PhD   London, UC   Judicial interpretation of the Government of India Act, 1935   H SAHARAY
1967   MA   London, SOAS   Political conflict in selected villages of India, Pakistan and Ceylon   M J SHEPPERSDSON   Prof Mayer
1967   PhD   Leicester   Some early tertiary ostracods from West Pakistan   Qadeer Ahmad SIDDIQUI
1967   PhD   London, SOAS   Evolution of the structure of civil judiciary in Bengal, 1800-1831   C SINHA   Dr Pandey
1967   PhD   London, External   The social structure of an Indian-Jewish community   S STRIZOWER
1967   MPhil   London, Inst Ed   Education and international understanding between the East and the West with special reference to the UK and Pakistan   Q J SURI   Prof Lauwery; Mr Goodings
1967   MPhil   London, Inst Ed   Education in Kerala and the missionary contribtion to it during the first half of the nineteenth century   Joseph THAIKOODAN
1967   PhD   London, SOAS   Customs and institutions connected with the domestic life of the Sinhalese in the Kandyan period:   Miniwan P TILLAKARATNE
1967   PhD   London, SOAS   Trends in and prospectsof Pakistan’s exports to the UK and the European Economic Community, 1951-1970   Z A VAINCE   Prof Penrose
1967   DPhil   Oxford, Merton   The policies of the government of Ceylon concerning education and religion, 1865-1885   L A WICKREMERATNE   Mr K A Ballhatchet
1967   BLitt   Oxford, Somerville   The sociological implications of educational policies in Ceylon since 1947   C K WICKREMESINGHE   Dr D F Pocock
1967   BLitt   Oxford, St Hilda’s   Henry Russell’s activities in Hyderabad, 1811-1820   Z YAZDANI   Mr K A Ballhatchet
1967/68   PhD   Cambridge, Corpus   The causes and consequence of trade fluctuations in Ceylon, 1948-1960   M A FERNANDO   Mr H H Leisner
1967/68   PhD   London, External   British relations with Tanjore (1748-1799)   C S RAMANUJAM
1967/68   PhD   Edinburgh   The agricultural geography of Hissar District   Jasbur SINGH
1967-68   PhD   Cambridge, Christ’s   Anglo-Mughal relations in western India and the development of Bombay, 1662-1690   G Z REFAI
1968   MA   Durham   The influence of religion on politics in Pakistan, 1947-1956   S R AHMAD
1968   PhD   London, SOAS   The administration of the North West Frontier,1901-1919   L BAHA   Dr Hardy
1968   MSc   Cambridge, Christ’s   Industrial expansion and regional cooperation in South Asia: a study of selected industries   Peter Douglas BALACS
1968   MLitt   Cambridge, Trinity Hall   The working of the supreme government of India and its constitutional relations with the home authorities, 1833-1853   A G BANERJEE   Dr T G P Spear
1968   PhD   Cambridge, Newnham   On price relationships in Indian agriculture   K BARDHAN   P M Deane
1968   DPhil   Oxford, Somerville   Social and conceptual order in Kongu: a region of South India   B E F BECK   Dr R K Jain
1968   PhD   London   The urban geography of Lyallpur   M H BOKHARI   Prof A E Smailes
1968   PhD   Cambridge   Rohilkhand from conquest to revolt, 1774-1858: a study in the origins of the Indian Mutiny uprising   E I BRODKIN   Dr E T Stokes
1968   PhD   Cam,bridge, Girton   Gandhi in India, 1915-1920: his emergence as a leader and the transformation of politics   J M BROWN   Dr A Seal
1968   MPhil   London   The development of education in India under Lord Curzon, 1899-1905   Hamida I BUTT
1968   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   Bengali political unrest (1905-1918)with special reference to terrorism   H CHAKRABARTI   Prof K Ballhatchet
1968   MPhil   London, King’s   The development of mountain warfare in India in the 19th century   S CHANDRA   Prof M E Howard
1968   DPhil   Oxford, St Cath’s   American policy towards India, 1941-1947, with emphasis on the Phillips mission to India, 1943   F L CHASE   Prof J A Gallagher
1968   DPHil   Oxford, Linacre   The agrarian economy and agrarian relations in Bengal, 1859-1885   B B CHAUDHURI   Dr K A Ballhatchet
1968   BLitt   Oxford, Linacre   Some aspects of English Protestant missionary activities in Bengal, 1857-1885   T CHAUDHURI   Dr S Gopal
1968   DPhil   Oxford, University   British government and society in the residency of Bengal, 1858-1880: an examination of certain aspects of British policy in relation to the changing nature of society   J M COMPTON   Mr K A Ballhatchet
1968   DPhil   Oxford, Magdalen   British reform policy and Indian politics on the eve of the rise of Gandhi   R J DANZIG   Dr S Gopal
1968   PhD   Cambridge, Magdalen   Optimum investment decisions with special reference to the Indian fertilizer industry   A K DAS GUPTA   Dr J A Mirrlees
1968   DPhil   Oxford, Somerville   Public opinion and Indian policy, 1872-1880   U DAS GUPTA   Dr S Gopal
1968   MPhil   London, Inst Ed   The contribution of the Wesleyan missionaries to southern India   P W DE SILVA
1968   PhD   York   The verbal piece in spoken Hindi: a morpho-syntactic study   Hans DUA
1968   MPhil   London, Inst Ed   An enquiry into the purpose and development of Catholic education in Madras. 1850-1950   M A DUNNE   Prof Lauwerys
1968   PhD   London, LSE   Some political aspects of foreign aid in India, 1947-1966   P J ELDRIDGE   Prof Goodwin
1968   DPhil   Oxford, Linacre House   The development of a new elite in Ceylon with special reference to educational and occupational background, 1910-1931   P T M FERNANDO   Dr A H Halsey
1968   BLitt   Oxford, Exeter   An historical survey and assessment of the ecclesiastical and missionary policy of the East India Company   I J GASH   Mr C C Davies
1968   MLitt   Bristol   The civil servant and contemporary government in India   B GIRI
1968   PhD   Birmingham   Consumption patterns in India: a regional analysis   D B GUPTA
1968   DPhil   Oxford, St Edmund Hall   The debts of the Nawab of Arcot, 1763-1776   J D GURNEY   Dame L Sutherland
1968   PhD   London, LSE   Econometrics of import planning in India (1947-1965): a case study of selected commodities   M L HANDA   Prof Sargan; De Desai
1968   DPhil   Oxford, Nuffield   Moral and religious changes in an urban village of Bangalore, South India   M N HOLSTROM   Dr D P Pocock
1968   MPhil   London SOAS   Lord Mayo’s Viceroyalty (1869-1872) with special reference to problems of external security and internal stability   M A HOSSAIN   Dr Zaidi
1968   PhD   London, LSE   British policy towards Persia and the defence of British India, 1798-1807   R INGRAM ELLIS   Miss H Lee
1968   PhD   London, LSE   Karachi: a pre-industrial city in transition   M Z KHAN   Prof Jones
1968   PhD   London, SOAS   The Dutch in Ceylon, 1743-1766   D A KOTELAWEL   Dr Bastin
1968   PhD   London, SOAS   The contribution of Christian missionaries to education in Bengal, 1793-1837   M A LAIRD   Prof K Ballhatchet

1968   PhD   London, LSE   Socio-economic determinants of infant and child mortality in Sri Lanka: an analysis of post-war experience    S A MEEGAMA   Prof Glass
1968   MPhil   London, UC   Higher judiciary in Pakistan   M Y MIRZA   Mr Holland
1968   BLitt   Oxford, St Cath’s   Funeral ritual in South India   M M MOFFATT   Dr R K Jain
1968   MPhil   London, LSE   Land use and nutrition in Lucknow District   I MOHIUDDIN   Mr R Rawson
1968   PhD   London, SOAS   Political relations between India and Nepal, 1877-1923   K MOJUMDAR   Prof K Ballhatchet
1968   MPhil   London, Bedford   The cities of Hyderabad-Secunderabad with special reference to their industrial development   K B MUSTAFA   Mr Mountjoy
1968   MPhil   London, LSE   Concepts of purity and pollution in Indian religion   Judith Ann OSTROW
1968   PhD   Lancaster   The evolution and history of the Buddhist monastic order with special reference to the Sangha in Ceylon   Gunaratne PANABOKKE
1968   PhD   London, SOAS   The invasion of Nepal: John Company at war, 1814-1816   J C PEMBLE   Dr Moore
1968   PhD   London, SOAS   The All-India Muslim League in Indian politics, 1906-1912   M RAHMAN   Dr Moore
1968   MPhil   London, SOAS   The reform of local self-government in India under Lord Ripon, 1880-1884: a study in the formation of policy   Q RAHMAN
1968   PhD   Wales, Bangor   An economic appraisal of agricultural marketing in Pakistan   Abdur RASHID
1968   PhD   Edinburgh   A geographical analysis of the historical development of towns in Ceylon   L K RATNAYAKE   Prof J W Watson; Dr R Jones
1968   MA   Sussex   Constitutional change and the depressed classes: the representations from the depressed classes in the United Provinces to the Indian Statutory Commission, 1928, and their outcome   L SEN-GUPTA
1968   PhD   London, External   The role of railway transport in Ceylon: present problems and future prospects   K SUNDERALINGAM
1968   PhD   London, Inst Ed   A critical study of the history and development of university education in modern India, with special reference to problems and patterns of growth since 1847   C TICKOO
1968   DPhil   Oxford, St Cath’s   Kinship and marriage among the Jat of Haryana in northern India   Gunter TIEMANN   Dr R K Jain
1968   PhD   Edinburgh   The strategy of Christian missions to the Muslims: Anglican and reformed contributions in India and the Near East from Henry Martyn to Samuel Zwemmer, 1800-1938   Lyle L VANDER WERFF   Prof M Watt; Prof AC Cheyne
1968   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   Indian historical writing in English, 1870-1920, with special reference to the influence of nationalism   Johannes H VOIGT   Mr K A Ballhatchet
1968   MPhil   London, LSE   The hierarchy of towns in Vidarbha, India, and its significance for regional planning   Sudhir Vyankatesh WANMALI. Prof MJ Wise
1968   MA   Manchester   The relevance of land reform to economic progress in Pakistan   M A ZAMAN
1968/69   PhD   Glasgow   Planning for economic development: a comparative case study of Indian and Egyptian experience, 1946-1966, with special reference to planning strategy and effectiveness   A El- H H EL-GHAZALI
1968/69   PhD   Cambridge, Girton   Muslim politics and government policy: studies in the development of Muslim organisation and its social background in North India and Bengal, 1885-1917   Janetr Mary RIZVI
1969   PhD   Durham   The working of district administration in Pakistan, 1947-1964   N ABEDIN   Prof W H Morris-Jones
1969   PhD   Cambridge, Fitzwilliam   The formation of the Government of India Act, 1935   W AHMAD   Dr T G P Sper
1969   MPhil   London, SOAS   Ideological factors in selected fields of policy making in India   Zoe F ALLEN
1969   PhD   London, SOAS   British famine and agricultural policies in India with special reference to the administration of Lord George Hamilton   S K BANDYOPADHYAY   Dr R J Moore
1969   PhD   London, SOAS   The political and economic conditions of Indians in Burma, 1900-1941   N R CHAKRAVARTI
1969   PhD   London, SOAS   The amending process in the Indian constitution   H CHAND
1969   PhD   London   Trade and commercial organisation in Bengal with special reference to the English East India Company, 1650-1720   S CHAUDHURY   Dr K N Chaudhuri
1969   DPhil   Oxford, Balliol   The Bombay political service, 1863-1924   I F S COPLAND   Prof J A Gallagher
1969   PhD   London, Birkbeck   The Colonial Office and political problems in Ceylon and Mauritius, 1907-1921   L B L CROOK   Dr I M Cumpston
1969   DPhil   Oxford, Nuffield   British defence policy in the Indian Ocean region between the Indian Independence Act, 1947, and the British defence review, 1966   P G C DARBY   Prof N H Gibbs
1969   DPhil   Oxford   An evaluation of the Eastern bloc assistance to India (1956-57 to 1965-66)   DATARHA
1969   PhD   London, LSE   The effect of international labour migration on trade and real income: a case study of Ceylon, 1920 to 1938   A DUTTA   Prof Johnson
1969   PhD   London, Bedford   The development of the sugar industry in Nizamabad, Andhra Pradesh   A H FAROOQI
1969   PhD   London   Lord William Bentinck in Madras, 1803-1807   M GUPTA   Dr B M Pandey
1969   PhD   London, External   A study of the planning techniques in India: India’s five year plans   S GUPTA
1969   PhD   Manchester   A typical support structure of leadership in Punjab – the faction   J J M HAUDHRI
1969   PhD   Manchester   A structural study of Pakistan’s monetary sector   K A IMAN
1969   PhD   London, LSE   Regional development in Pakistan with special reference to the effects of import licensing and exchange control   A I A ISLAM
1969   PhD   London   Social aspects of the historical geography of East Pakistan, 1608-1857   Bilquis JAHAN   Miss E M J Campbell
1969   PhD   London, External   The sources and development of the customary laws of the Sinhalese up to 1835   M L S JAYASEKERA
1969   MSocSc   Birmingham   Industrial development and organization in Ceylon – a case study of the Ceylon cement industry   G W JAYSURIYA
1969   PhD   London   Dutch rule in maritime Ceylon, 1766-1796   V KAMAPATHYPILLAI   Dr J S Bastin
1969   PhD   London, LSE   Domestic instability as a factor in Pakistan’s foreign policy, 1952-1958   M KAMLIN   Dr Lyon
1969   PhD   London, LSE   A study of import control, with special reference to India   H KUSARI
1969   PhD   London, LSE   Britain and the termination of the India-China opium trade, 1905-1913   Margaret J B-C LIM   Prof Medlicott; Mr Dilks
1969   BLitt   Oxford, Linacre   Financing agricultural development with special reference to the place of agricultural credit in West Pakistan after 1947   A M MALIK   Mr R G Opie
1969   PhD   London, SOAS   Election laws in Pakistan   M D MALIK
1969   PhD   London, SOAS   The development of the jurisdiction and powers of the superior courts in Pakistan   M A MANNAN   Prof Gledhill
1969   MA   Sussex   Th Krishak Praja Party and the Bengal provincial elections, 1937   H MOMEN
1969   BPhil   St Andrews   Muslim politics in India, 1858-1918   S NAZ   D G Seed
1969   PhD   London, SOAS   Jury and police reform during the Indian Vice-Royalty of Lord Lansdowne, 1888-1894   R RAHMAN   Dr P Hardy
1969   PhD   London, LSE   Frontier problems in Pakistan’s foreign policy   S M M RAZVI   Dr P H Lyon
1969   DPhil   Oxford, Merton   The Commission of Eastern Inquiry in Ceylon, 1829-1837: a study of a Royal Commission of Colonial Inquiry   V K SAMARAWEERA   Dr A F Madden
1969   PhD   London, SOAS   Hinduism in a Kangra village   U M SHARMA   Pror Mayer
1969   PhD   London, SOAS   The reorganization of the Indian armies, 1858-1879   A H SHIBLEY   Dr Moore
1969   PhD   London, SOAS   Land resumption in Bengal, 1819-1846   A M WAHEEDUZZAMA   Dr Zaidi
1969   PhD   London, External   Methodism in north Ceylon: its history and influences, 1814-1890   D K WILSON
1969/70   PhD   Bristol   On the construction and implementation of a planning model for Ceylon   S NARAPALASINGAM
1969/70   PhD   Durham   Some aspects of central banking in Pakistan, 1948-1966   A K NIAZI
1969/70   PhD   Edinburgh   Settlement geography of the Indian desert (Rajasthan area)   Ram C SHARMA
1969/70   PhD   Bristol   The relations between central and provincial governments in Pakistan   M A TAYYEB   Prof Bromhead
1969/70   PhD   London, SOAS   Some legal aspects of agrarian reform in India   Namgi Lal UPADHYAYA
1970   MPhil   London, LSE   Production and trade in the raw cotton and cotton textile industries of Pakistan,1948-1966   Q K AHMAD   Prof H Myint
1970   PhD   Edinburgh   Regionalism and political integration in Pakistan: a case study in political geography   Masood ALI
1970   MPhil   London, SOAS   The urban geography of Kanpur   S A ALI
1970   MPhil   London, LSE   Peasant agriculture in Ceylon, 1933-1893   A C L AMEER ALI   Prof F J Fisher
1970   PhD   Edinburgh   Possible developments in building technology in relations to low cost housing in Pakistan   Mohammed M BAJWA
1970   DPhil   Oxford, St Anthony’s   The growth of political organization inthe Allahabad locality, 1880-1925   C A BAYLY   Prof J A Gallgher
1970   PhD   Cambridge, Gonville     Spatial organizationof some villages in Northern India   P M BLAIKIE   Mr B H Farmer
1970   PhD   Cambridge   British impact on the Indian cotton textile industry, 1757-1865   J G BORPUJARI   Dr W J Macpherson
1970   MPhil   London, UC   Some problems of physical planning in Ceylon   S W P BULANKULAME
1970   PhD   London, LSE   The behaviour of prices in India, 1952-1966: an empirical study   S K CHAKRABARTI   Prof Walters
1970   MSc   Bristol   The long-term outlook for the consumption of tea in India – a quantitative analysis   B M CHAMBERS
1970   MA   Manchester   Social change in Indian towns   M K CHATERJEE
1970   PhD   Cambridge, St Cath’s   Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall: a study of the Anglo-Indian official mind   E C T CHEW   Dr E T Stokes
1970   PhD   London, SOAS   British policy on the North East frontier of India, 1865-1914   D P CHOUDHURY   Prof K Ballhatchet
1970   MA   Kent   Recent trends in Indian federalism   S DAS
1970   MPhil   London, Inst Ed   Development of adult education in India since independence with special reference to rural reconstruction   B DUTTA
1970   BLitt   Oxford, Keble   Identity amongst Muslims in West Bengal, India, and its relationship with political, social and economic change   P J K EADE   Dr R K Jain
1970   BLitt   Oxford, St Edmund Hall   Aspects of history of the Indian National Congress with special reference to the Swarajya Party, 1919-1927   R A GORDON   Prof J A Gallagher
1970   PhD   Wales, Swansea   A study of the social and economic geography of the coastal fishing industry of Ceylon   Suniti Danissari GUNASEKERA
1970   PhD   London, SOAS   British policy and Baluchistan, 1854-1876   T A HEATHCOTE   Dr M E Yapp
1970   MPhil   London, King’s   Selected aspects of agricultural development in West Pakistan   J HUSSAIN
1970   PhD   London, SOAS   Social and political change in Ceylon, 1900-1919 with special reference to the disturbances of 1915    p v i JAYASEKERA   Prof K A Ballhatchet
1970   MSc   Edinburgh   Language and politics in modern India   P KARAT
1970   PhD   London, SOAS   Protection of minority interests under the Indian constitution   G T LUIS   Prof Derrett
1970   DPhil   Oxford, Wadham   Sociological aspects of revival and change in Buddhism in nineteenth century Ceylon   Kitsiri MALALGODA   Mr B R Wilson
1970   PhD   London, SOAS   The administration of British Burma, 1852-1885   J A MILLS   Prof C D Cowan
1970   DPhil   Oxford, St John’s   Renewable natural resources planning for regional development with special reference to Kashmir   Maharaj K MUTHOO   Mr J J Macgregor
1970   DPhil   Sussex   Labour organisation in the Bombay textile industry, 1918-1929   R NEWMAN   Dr Reeves
1970   PhD   London, QMC   Land development in the Sinharaja foothill of Ceylon   M P PERERA   Mr B W Hodder
1970   PhD   London, SOAS   Shareholders’ control of public companies in Pakistan   A K RANJHA
1970   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   The politics of U.P. Muslims   Francis Christopher Rowland ROBINSON   Dr Seal
1970   MPhil   London, Inst Ed   Urbanisation – its educational implications in India   P SAJNANI
1970   PhD   York   Predicate complement constructions in Hindi and English   Anil SINHA
1970   PhD   London, LSE   Water supply and irrigation in the dry zone of Ceylon   K U SIRINANDA   Mr P Rawson; Dr Chandler
1970   PhD   Cambridge, Jesus   Ceylon’s export trends and prospects   M P S SURIAARACHCHI   Mr H Leisner
1970   MA   London, Inst Ed   The t rainingof teachers in Bombay Province (including Gujerat) since 1947   M N UPADHYAYA
1970   MSc   Wales   Britain’s forgotten war: the British role in the confrontation of Malaysia by Indonesia   Michael R WAGSTAFF
1970   MPhil   London, SOAS   A structural analysis of myths from the North east frontier of India   James Mackie WILSON
1970   PhD   Leeds   The role of the Ceylon civil service before and after independence   Watareke Aratchchige WISWA WARNAPALA
1970/71   PhD   St Andrews   The theory, practice and administration of Waqf with special reference to the Malayan state of Kadah   M Z B H OTHMAN   Dr J Burton
1970/71   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   The politics of U P muslims   M A ROWLANDS
1970/71   PhD   London, LSHTM   Dynamics of malaria in Ceylon   C SIVAGNANASUNDRAM
1971   MPhil   London, SOAS   A comparative study of social heirarchies in selected areas of India and Pakistan   Makhdum Tasadduq AHMAD   Dr Mayer
1971   PhD   Lancaster   Technical change and economic development of agriculture: the case of Bangladesh   M ALAMGIR
1971   MPhil   London, UC   A select bibliography of periodical literature published in English, German, French, Sanskrit, Hindi, Pali and Bengali during 1951-1966 on some aspects of Indian culture (philosophy, religion, linguistics, literature)from the post-Vedic to the pre-Kalidasa era   P BISWAS
1971   MPhil   London, SOAS   Symbolic and material aspects of institutions in political process: analysis of two North Indian villages   Bengt-Erik Per Gustaf BORGSTROM
1971   MLitt   Cambridge, Firtzwilliam   Metropolitan dominance in South India   R W BRADNOCK   Mr B H Farmer
1971   PhD   London, SOAS   Social change of marriage patterns in the North Western Himalayas (Churah, Pangi and Ladakh)   Bharpur Singh BRAR
1971   PhD   Cambridge, King’s   Political alliances in rural Western Maharashtra   Anthony Thomas CARTER
1971   PhD   London, External   Culture conflicts and education in Ceylon after independence   Ida W DESILVA
1971   PhD   London, SOAS   The internal politics of the Kandyan kingdom, 1707-1760   Lorna S DEWARAJA
1971   PhD   Durham   Patterns of population structure and growth in East Pakistan   K Maudood ELAHI
1971   PhD   London, LSE   An econometric growth model for Pakistan   A FAROOQUI   Mr J M Desai
1971   DPhil   Sussex   Municipal politics in Calcutta: elite groups and the Calcutta corporation, 1875-1900    C P M FUREDY   Prof A Low
1971   BLitt   Oxford, St John’s   Statutory provisions for the settlement of collective industrial disputes in England and Australia and India   S T GOH
1971   MA   Exeter   A study of the authority structure of an industrial organisation in a transitional setting: case study of a Ceylon industrial plant   S GOONATILAKE
1971   MSc   Hull   The impact of foreign aid on India’s international trade, 1951-1965   C P HALLWOOD
1971   PhD   Nottingham   Pakistan’s external relations   A K M A HAQUE   Prof Pear
1971   PhD   Durham   The working of parliamentary government in Pakistan, 1947-1958   S C HARUN
1971   MLitt   Glasgow   Government expenditure: a study with reference to economic development in Pakistan   M HUQ
1971   PhD   London, King’s   Freedom of interstate trade in India   C K M JARIWALA
1971   DPhil   Oxford, St Hilda’s   Government policy and economic and social change in western India,1850-1875   J F M JHIRAD   Prof K A Ballhatchet
1971   MSc   Strathclyde   Administrative aspects of social security programmes for factory labourers in East Pakistan   M KABIR
1971   DPhil   Oxford, Balliol   Nationalism n Bengal, 1903-1911: a study of Bengali reactions to the partition of the province with special reference to the social groups involved   A P KANNANGARA   Prof K A Ballhatchet
1971   PhD   London, SOAS   Some aspects of society and politics in Bengal, 1927 to 1936   B R KHAN   Mr J B Harrison
1971   MPhil   London, SOAS   The tripartite countries [Iran, Pakistan and Turkey]of the regional cooperation for development: a geographical study of a regional grouping   Durray S KURESHI
1971   DPhil   Sussex   Administrative structures, economic change and problems of rural development in Aligarh District, Uttar Pradesh, India   Bismarck U MWANSASU
1971   PhD   London, King’s   A comparative study of the executive in Australia and India   J D OJO
1971   PhD   London, SOAS   Some aspects of the Indian Viceroyalty of Lord Elgin, 1862-1863   J A RAHMAN   Dr Harrison
1971   PhD   London, SOAS   Legal aspects of the “doctrine of pleasure” in relation to public servants in India   U R RAI
1971   MPhil   London, LSE   A comparative study of manpower in selected industries with similar technologies in India and the UK   S F RICHARDS   Prof Wise
1971   MPhil   Leeds   The military in politics in India and Pakistan since 1947   A H RIZVI   Prof Hanson; Dr O A Hartley
1971   PhD   London, SOAS   The government of India under Lord Chelmsford, 1916-1921, with special reference to the policies adopted towards constitutional change and political agitation in British India   P G ROBB   Prof K A Ballhatchet
1971   PhD   York   A generative semantic treatment of some aspects of English and Hindigrammar   Prajapati SAH
1971   PhD   London, LSE   The problem of economic holdings in the peasant agriculture of the dry zone of Ceylon   Somasundaram SELVANAYAGAM
1971   PhD   London, SOAS   Status, power and resources: the study of a Sinhalese village   S P F SENATATNE
1971   MPhil   London. LSE   British opinion and Indian independence: a study of some British pressure groups which advanced the cause of Indian independence   Kumar Indra VIJAY
1971   MLitt   Edinburgh   David Livingstone and India   rOSINA g VISRAM   Prof G A Shepperson
1971   PhD   Cambridge, Newnham   Employment incomes in Ceylon: an inquiry into the structure and determination of wage and salary earnings in Ceylon, 1949-1969   Pabawathie C WICKREMASINGHE
1971   MPhil   London, Inst Ed   A critical analysis of the problems of higher education in Pakistan since independence (1947) with special reference to student unrest   U S ZAMAN
1971/72   PhD   Liverpool   British opinion and Indian reform, 1858-1876   Nilima SAHA   Mr P J N Tuck
1972   DPhil   Oxford, Christ Church   Economic aspects of some peasant colonizations in Ceylon   G M ABAYARATNA   Miss M R Haswell
1972   PhD   Leeds   Economic, political and administrative aspects of planning for development in a divided country: a study of relationships between East Bengal and West Pakistan, 1947-1971   Shaikh Magsood ALI
1972   MSc   Bristol   Capital finance in a developing economy – Ceylon   Bernard V ANTHONISZ
1972   PhD   Cambridge, Clare Hall   Communal conflict in Ceylon politics and the advance towards self-government   Rupasinghe A ARIYARATNE
1972   MPhil   London, Inst Ed   A comparative study of language policies and problems in Ceylon and India since independence   V ARUMUGAM
1972   MPhil   London, SOAS   Judicial control of the machinery of government in Pakistan   Chaudhary M Y ASIM
1972   PhD   Cambridge, Queens   Politics in South India. 1917-1947   Christopher J BAKER
1972   PhD   Durham   The hierarchy of central places in Northern Ceylon   P BALASUNDARAMPILLAI
1972   PhD   London, LSE   Some aspects of the strains and stresses in Indo-British relations, 1947-1965: an analysis of the causes and course of gradual decline in Britain’s importance to India   A R BANERJI   Mr J B L Mayall
1972   PhD   London, QMC   Fiscal policy in India (with reference to taxation)over three five year plans   S BHADURI   Prof M H Peston
1972   DPhil   Sussex   Political change in Rohilkhand, 1932-1952: a study of the rleationships between provincial and district level politicans   L BRENNAN
1972   PhD   London, SOAS   An examination of the development and structure of the legal profession at Allahabad, 1866-1935   Gilliam F BUCKEE
1972   MPhil   Sussex   Educational administration in Bombay Presidency, 1913-1937   J L BUTLER
1972   PhD   London, SOAS   Extra-constitutional actions in Pakistan   Z I CHOUDHURY
1972   PhD   London, SOAS   The politics and functioning of the East Bengal legislature, 1947-1958   Najma CHOWDHURY
1972   MEd   Manchester   The social and educational changes brought about in some South Indian villages by the Saruodaya movement   A G CLARK
1972   DPhil   Oxford   Decentralisation and political change in the United Provinces, 1880-1921   W F CRAWLEY
1972   PhD   Aberdeen   The development and influence of British missionary movements toward India, 1786-1830   Allan K DAVIDSON   Mr A F Walls
1972   PhD   Cambridge, Emmanuel   The official mind and the problem of agrarian indebtedness in India, 1870-1910   Clive J DEWEY
1972   PhD   London, SOAS   Juristic techniques in the Supreme Court of India (195-1971)in some selected areas of public and personal law   Rajeev DHAVAN

1972   MA   Hull   Resource allocation in the public sector in Malaysia with special reference to the Muda River irrigation scheme   CHEW CHAI DOAN
1972   PhD   Hull   Some aspects of private foreign enterprise in Ceylon   L E N FERNANDO
1972   PhD   London, SOAS   Rural money markets in India   Subrata GHATAK
1972   MA   Manchester   Traditional India and the meaning of caste   Beth GOLDBLATT
1972   DPhil   Sussex   Optimum location of paddy improvement schemes in Ceylon   J M GUNADESA
1972   MA    Exeter   Industrialization and protective tariffs in Pakistan   A M A HAKIM
1972   PhD   Cambridge,St John’s   The place of India in the strategic and political consideration of the Axis powers, 1939-1942   Milan HAUNER   Prof F H Hinsley
1972   MA   Exeter   Foreign capital and economic development: the case of Pakistan   M E HOSSAIN
1972   PhD   London, LSE   Rural society and leadership in Malaya with special reference to three selected communities   Syed HUSIN ALI
1972   BLitt   Oxford, Lady Margaret   Some aspects of religion and culture in Bengal   H K ION
1972   PhD   London, SOAS   Agricultural development of Bengal: a quantitative study, 1920-1946   M M ISLAM   Dr Chaudhuri
1972   PhD   London, SOAS   Bengali Moslem public opinion as reflected in the vernacular press between 1901 and 1930   Mustafa N ISLAM
1972   PhD   London, SOAS   The permanent settlement and the landed interests in Bengal from 1793 to 1819   M S ISLAM   Mr G B Harrison
1972   BLitt   Oxford, Somerville   A social anthropological study of Jainism in Northern India   S JAIN   Dr R G Leinhardt
1972   DPhil   Sussex   Techno-economic survey of industrial potential in Sri Lanka   N D KARUNARATNE
1972   PhD   London, SOAS   Constitutional protection of the freedom of association in Pakistan   Hamiduddin KHAN
1972   PhD   London, UC   Kowloon: a factorial study of urban land use and retail structure   Chi-sen LIANG   Prof P Wood
1972   PhD   London, SOAS   The rajas and nawabs of Bengal, 1911-1919   Pronoy Chand MEHTAB
1972   PhD   Cambridge, Fitzwilliam   Income distribution and savings in Pakistan: an appraisal of development strategy   T E NULTY   Prof W B Reddaway
1972   DPhil   Oxford   The organisational basis of Indian agriculture with special reference to the development of capitalistic farming (ie based on wage-labour and following economic criteria for investment) in selected regions in recent years   U PATNAIK
1972   PhD   York   A systematic treatment of certain aspects of Telugu phonology   Vennelakanti PRAKASAM
1972   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   Regional disparities in the growth of incomes and population in India, 1951-1965   Siripurapu Kesava RAO   Dr A K Bagchi
1972   PhD   Exeter   The impact of devaluation on prices and production in Pakistan   M M SHAIKH
1972   PhD   London, SOAS   The study of inflation in Pakistan, 1955-1968   Qamarul H SIDDIQI   Prof E Penrose
1972   PhD   London, UC   Functions of international conflict: a case study of Pakistan   K SIDDIQUI   Dr J W Burton
1972   PhD   London   The home government of India, 1834-1853   Robert F S TATE   Mr Harrison
1972   PhD   London, SOAS   Indian politics and the elections of 1937   D D TAYLOR   Prof H Tinker
1972   PhD   Wales, Aberystwyth   Economic integration and development with special reference to four Asian countries [India, Ceylon, Burma and Malaysia]   Ransit Corneille WANIGATUNGA   Prof G L Rees
1972   PhD   Cambridge, Newnham   The development and function of the transport system in Ceylon: a network analysis   Poonanulkarange C H WEERASURIYA   Dr B T Robson
1972   MPhil   London, SOAS   Tribal identity among the Santals, 1770-1857   Michael Piers YORKE
1972/73   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   Social conflict and political unrest in Bengal, 1875-1908   Rajat K RAY
1972/73   PhD   Reading   The applicability of linear programming to resource allocation in an irrigated agriculture with special reference to the Punjab of Pakistan   T U REHMAN
1973   BLitt   Oxford, Balliol   A study of Bengal peasants, 1765-1812   S U AHMED   Dr C C Davies
1973   PhD   London   The role of the Zamindars in Bengal, 1707-1772   Shirin AKHTAR   J B Harrison
1973   DPhil   Sussex   Political structure and economic development in rural West Pakistan   H ALAVI
1973   MPhil   London, Inst Ed   The impact of British educational thought onthe concept of university education in Sri Lanka   Chandra Lilian AMARASEKERA
1973   PhD   London, Wye   A study of economic resource use and production possibilities on settlement schemes in Sri Lanka (with special reference to the Minipe Colonisation Scheme)   Nihal St Michael Aloysius AMERASINGHE
1973   DPhil   Sussex   Nationalism and the regional politics: Tamiland, India, 1920-1937   D J ARNOLD   Prof D A Low
1973   PhD   London, QMC   Functions and status of urban settlement in West Bengal   Mira DAS
1973   DPhil   Sussex   Peasant movements in India,c.1920-1950   D N DHANAGARE
1973   PhD   London, LSE   The development of the port of Colombo, 1860-1939   K DHARMASENA   Prof F J Fisher
1973   MPhil   York   Male nurses in Ceylon: a study of the career problems of male nurses in the Ceylon health service, 1972   Malsiri K DIAS
1973   BLitt   Oxford, Campion Hall   Some aspects of agricultural policy in Ceylon since independence with special reference to youth resettlement schemes   B W DISSANAYAKE   Miss M R Haswell
1973   PhD   Exeter   Orgnisational forms in post traditional society with special reference to South Asia   P D S GOONATILAKE
1973   PhD   London, SOAS   A study of the revenue administration of Sylhet District in Bengal, 1765-1792   Kusha HARAKSINGH   Prof K A Ballhatchet
1973   DPhil   Sussex   Revolutionary networks in Northern Indian politics, 1907-1935: a case study of the terrorist movement in Delhi, the Punjab, the United Provinces and adjacent princely states   M HARCOURT
1973   PhD   London, LSE   Indian population policy and the family planning programme   Edward C HARRIMAN
1973   BLitt   Oxford, Jesus   The role of law in the politics of Pakistan from 1947 to 1956   S F A HASSAN   Prof H W R Wade
1973   DPhil   Oxford, St Catharine’s   Foreign aid in the economic development of Ceylon   W HETTIARACHI   Miss P H Ady
1973   MSc   Lancaster   Monetary management, commercial bank credit expansion and economic development in Pakistan   Rafiqul ISLAM
1973   PhD   London, External   Economic development in Ceylon   Halwalage N S KARUNATILAKE
1973   MSocSc   Birmingham   Distribution of rate of suicide according to age and sex on the basis on caste in Gujerat State   H KAZI
1973   PhD   Hull   Some economic aspects of the oil palm industry of West Malaysia   Hacharan Singh KHERA
1973   DPhil   Oxford   Terms of trade, public policy and economic development of Ceylon, 1948-1958   W D LAKSHMAN
1973   PhD   Wales   An economic analysis of recent developments in the production and marketing of jute with particular reference to their implications for the economy of Pakistan   Saidur R LASKER
1973   PhD   London, LSE   Local government and administration in Ceylon   Genevieve R LEITAN
1973   PhD   York   Some aspects of Bhartrhari’s linguistic theory as represented in the Vakyapadiya   Kaluwachchimule MAHANAMA
1973   PhD   London, SOAS   The changing position and functions of the Rajahs and Nawabs of Bengal, 1911-1919   P C MAHTAB   Prof K Ballhatchet
1973   DPhil   Oxford, Nuffield   Private corporate industrial investment in India, 1947/1967: factors affecting its size, fluctuations and sectoral distribution   P PATNAIK   Mr P P Streeten
1973   PhD   London, King’s   The legal framework for the settlement of industrial disputes in Ceylon   Stanislaus Edward PULLE   Mr A Hughes
1973       London, SOAS   The minorities of Ceylon,, 1926-1931 with special reference to the Donoughmore Commission   G QUINTUS
1973   PhD   London, SOAS   The covenanted civil servant and the government of India, 1858-1883: a study of his part in the decision-making and decision implementing process in India   Muhammad A RAHIM   Mr J B Harrison
1973   MPhil   London, QMC   The markets of Calcutta: an analysis of the evolution of indigenous marketing systems and shopping facilities   Mondira Sinha RAY
1973   DPhil   Sussex   Poverty and policy: the impact of rural public works in the Kosi area of Bihar, India   Gerry RODGERS   L Joy
1973   PhD   Cambridge, Lucy    Polarization on Colombo in the economic geography of Ceylon   Liyanage Kundali Vidyamali SAMARASINGHE   Mr B H Farmer
1973   PhD   Birmingham   A quantitative analysis of the patterns of export: a case study of India   M L SETH
1973   MA   Sussex   A multisectoral model of production for Sri Lanka   Paran SIRISENA
1973   MSc   Cambridge, Girton   Underutilized industrial capacity in India   Nancy SLOCUM
1973   MPhil   London, QMC   External aspects of Pakistan’s political geography   A H SYED
1973   PhD   London, SOAS   Extradition in the light of the Indian constitution   Madan M TEWARI
1973   DPhil   Oxford, Balliol   The Vice-royalty of Lord Irwin in 1926/31 with special reference to political and constitutional developments   James Frederick Caleb WATTS   Dr A F Madden
1973   PhD   Cambridge, Clare Hall   Some aspects of prodcution and market surplus in the rice sector of Ceylon   Piyasiri WICKRAMASEKARA
1973   PhD   Exeter   A theory of multiple exchange rates and exchange rate management in Ceylon   G W P WICKRAMASINGHE
1973/74   PhD   London, Wye   The marketing of tea with special reference to India’s share of thew world market   N C NANDA
1973/74   PhD   East Anglia   Constraints on optimum resource use in an irrigated land settlement scheme in Ceylon   D H R J PERERA
1973/74   PhD   Cambridge, Newnham   Locational analysis and government sponsored large-scale industries in Ceylon   Y RASANAYAGAM

1973/74   DPhil   Sussex   A multisectoral model of production for Sri Lanka   N L SIRISENA
1973/74   PhD   Cambridge, King’s   The kinship and social organization of a Roman Catholic fishing village in Ceylon   Roderick Lennox STIRRAT
1974   PhD   Brunel   Defence expenditure and economic growth with reference to India   V AGARWAL
1974   MSc   London, LSHTM   Current patterns of food administration in the West and their application to Pakistan   A AHMED
1974   DTPH   London, LSHTM   Some problems in family planning in rural Sri Lanka   E R AMARASEKERA
1974   PhD   London, Inst Comm   Trotskyism in Ceylon: a study of the development, ideology and political role of Lanka Sama Samaja Party, 1935-1964   Y R AMARASINGHE   Prof W H Morris-Jones
1974   PhD   London, SOAS   Changes in patterns and practices of wheat farming since the introduction of the new high yielding varieties. A study of six villages in the Bulandshahr District, Uttar Pradesh, Northern India   Kathleen May BAKER
1974   PhD   London   Urban society in Bengal, 1850-1872,with special reference to Calcutta   Ranu BASU   Prof K Ballhatchet
1974   MPhil   London, Wye   Some economic aspects of rubber production in Sri Lanka   Gamlath Rallage CHADRASIRI
1974   PhD   Cambridge, Pembroke   Agrarian society and British administration in Western India, 1847-1920   Neil Rex Foster CHARLESWORTH
1974   DPhil   Sussex   Innovation, inequality and rural planning: the economics of Tubewell irrigation in the Kosi region, Bihar, India   Edward J CLAY
1974   PhD   Kent   Money and monetary policy in a lerss developed economy: the case of Ceylon (Sri Lanka)1950-1970   E CONTOGIANNIS
1974   DPhil   Sussex   A study of wages of the coal miners in India (with special reference ot the Raniganj and Jharia coalfields)   A DASGUPTA
1974   MSc   Wales, Aberystwyth   The factor shares of Indian international trade, 1947-1948 to 1967-1968   Mazumdar D DATT
1974   MPhil   Nottingham   A Marxist analysis of the economic development of India   Brian DAVEY   Prof Parkinson
1974   PhD   London   The intrigues of the German government and the Ghadr Party against British rule in India, 1914-1918   T G FRASER   Mr D N Dilks
1974   DTPH   London, LSHTM   Some public health problems of the labour force in Sri Lanka   A N HANIFFA
1974   MPhil   London, SOAS   The role of “reasonable restrictions” under the Indian constitution   Tirukattupali Kalyana Krishnamurthy IYER
1974   PhD   London   Buddhist-Christian relationships in British Ceylon, 1797-1948   C W KARUNARATNA   E G S Parrinder
1974   MSc   London, LSHTM   Growth study of the preschool children of Pakistan   M M R KHAN
1974   MPhil   Edinburgh   Implementation of development plans in Pakistan   S J KHAWAJA
1974   DPhil   Oxford, St Hugh’s   The movement towards constitutional reform in Ceylon, 1880-1910   N N LABROOY
1974   DPhil   Oxford   Social and political attitudes of British expatriates in India, 1880-1920   Margaret O MACMILLAN   Prof Gallagher
1974   PhD   Queen’s, Belfast   Allahabad: a study in social structure and urban morphology   L MALVIYA
1974   DPhil   Oxford   The Donoughmore Commission in Ceylon, 1927-1931   Tilaka Piyaseeli METHTHANANDA
1974   DPhil   Oxford, Balliol   India’s exports and export policies in the sixties   D NAYYAR   Mr P P Streeten
1974   DPhil   Oxford   Prelude to partition: all-India moslem politics, 1920-1932   D J H PAGE
1974   PhD   London, King’s   The social background, motivation and training of missionaries to India, 1789-1858   Frederic S PIGGIN
1974   PhD   York   Some aspects of the Vanni dialect of Sinhalese as contrasted with the dialect of the western region of Sri Lanka   Pushpakumara PREMARATNE
1974   PhD   Manchester   The commercial pressure on the British government policy towards Indian nationalist movement, 1919-1935   M R PREST
1974   PhD   Cambridge, Clare Hall   Change in Bengal agrarian society c.1760-1850: a study of selected districts   Ratnalekha RAY   Prof E G Stokes
1974   PhD   London, SOAS   Education and society in the Bombay Presidency, 1840-1858   A J ROBERTS   Prof K S Ballhatchet
1974   PhD   Bradford   Pakistani villages in a British city: the world of the Mirpuri villager in Bradford and in his village of origin   Verity J SAIFULLAH-KHAN
1974   DPhil   Oxford   Labour and industrial organization in the Indian coal-mining industry, 1900-1939   Colin P SIMMONS   Prof P Mathias
1974   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   Nationalism and Indian politics: the Indian National Congress, 1934-1942   B R TOMLINSON   Dr A Seal
1974   PhD   Hull   The European plantation rubber industry in South East Asia, 1876-1921   Phin Keong VOON
1974   PhD   London, SOAS   British scholarship and Muslim rule in India: the work of William Erskine, Sir Henry Elliot, John Dowson, Edwards Thomas, J Talboys Wheeler and Henry J Keene   Tripta WAHI   Dr P Hardy
1974   PhD   Cambridge, Tinity   The society and politics of the Madras Presidency, 1880-1920   D A WASHBROOK   Dr A Seal
1974   PhD   Hull   The Saribas Malays of Sarawak: their social and economic organisation and system of values   BIN kLING ZAINAL
1974/75   PhD   Cambridge, Darwin   Landlords, planters and colonial rule: a study of tensions in Bengal rural society, c. 1830-1860   Chittabrata PALIT   Prof E T Stokes
1974/75   PhD   London, SOAS   The Khilafat movement in India, 1919-1924   M Naeem QURESHI   SDr Moore
1974/75   PhD   Birmingham   A multisectoral model for manpower and educational planning in Sri Lanka   T W Y RANAWEERA
1974/75   MSc   Cambridge Trinity   The extraction and use of surplus in India and China, 1950-1960   Chiranjivi Shumshere THAPA
1975   MSc   Strathclyde   Foreign indebtedness and debt servicing capacity of Pakistan, 1955-1970   M K ACHIGZAI
1975   MSc   London, LSHTM   Mortality and fertility trends in Orissa, 1951-1972   V AHMAD
1975   PhD   Edinburgh   Industrialisation and the problems of access to finance of small and medium sized forms in Ceylon   C A BALASURIYA
1975   MA   Ulster   Bangladesh: a divided Pakistan   N J BEST
1975   PhD   Manchester   Science and politics in India: accountability of scientific research policy structures, 1952-1970   B BHANEJA
1975   MSc   Salford   Factionalism and party building in India with special reference to the State of Rajasthan   R BHARGAVA
1975   MSc   Wales, Swansea   Population planning in Bangladesh   A R BHUIYAN   Mr J Whetton
1975   PhD   Lancaster   As assessment of the economic effects of a customs union among the South Asian countries of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka   M A R BHUYAN
1975   PhD   London   The East India Company and its army, 1600-1778   G J BRYANT   Dr P J Marshall
1975   DPhil   sussex   The effects of external assistance on economic development: the case of Sri Lanka   A CHANDRA-RANDENI
1975   PhD   Leeds   The marketing of cotton in Pakistan   I U CHAUDHRY
1975   MSc   Wales, Swansea   Social welfare services in Pakistan: the integration of state and welfare activity   A CHOUDRY   Jim Whetton
1975   PhD   Londond, Wye   Factors influencing India’s exports since 1950   Kashmir Singh DHINDSA
1975   DPhil   Oxford   The journals and memoirs of British travellers and residents in India in the late 18th century and the 19th century prior to the Mutiny   Ketaki K DYSON   Dr C M Ing
1975   PhD   London, SOAS   The structure of politics in South India, 1918-1939: conflict and adjustment in Madras City   J A ELLIS
1975   MA   Sussex   The Vidhan Sabha election, Uttar Pradash, India, of February 1974   J GOODMAN
1975   MPhil   London, UC   Problems of port development in Sri Lanka, with special reference to Colombo   Daya Somalatha GUNATILLAKE
1975   DPhil   Sussex   Peasant agitations in Kheder District, Gujerat, 1917-1934   D R HARDIMAN   Mr P K Chaudhuri
1975   MSc   Wales, Swansea   Organisation and staffing needs in four state social services departments in Malaysia   Kamariah Mohd ISMAIL   Mr C Gore
1975   MScEcon   Wales   Economic development and the problem of unemployment with special reference to Bangladesh   Halim JAHANGIR
1975   PhD   Edinburgh   Public sector investment in the direct development of urban housing in Sri Lanka (Ceylon)   M E JOACHIM
1975   DPhil   Sussex   The relation between land settlement and party politics in Uttar Pradesh, India, 1950-69, with special reference to the formulation of the Bharatiya Kranti Dal   M H JOHNSON
1975   PhD   London, SOAS   Business, labour and opposition movements in the politics of Ahmedabad City, 1960-1972   Bharti KANSARA   Prof W H Morris-Jones
1975   MLitt   Aberdeen   South Asian international relations since rthe emergence of Bangladesh   A KHAN
1975   MA   Sussex   The Congress split of 1969: a study in factional and ideological conflicts   H KINASE-LEGGETT
1975   PhD   London   Legal aspects of stage carriage licensing in India   P LEELAKRISHNAN
1975   PhD   London, SOAS   Economics of higher yielding varieties of rice with special reference to a south Indian district…West Godavari (Andhra Pradesh)   S MADHAVAN   Mr T J Byres
1975   DPhil   Sussex   Political change in an Indian state: Mysore, 1910-1952   James G MANOR   Prof A Low; Dr Reeves
1975   PhD   Leeds   Financial institutions and private investment in Pakistan, 1955/56 to 1969/70   A M M MASIH   Finance
1975   MPhil   London, UC   Self-help in Hyderabad’s urban development   Catherine Anne MEDE
1975   PhD   London, LSE   An analysis of the economy and social organisation of the the Malapantara – a south Indian hunting and gathering people   Brian MORRIS
1975   DPhil   Oxford, Wolfson   The Indian National Congress and political mobilization in the United Provinces, 1926-1934   G PANDEY

Mr D K Fieldhouse
1975   PhD   Edinburgh   A prototype system for the control of land use and settlements in the planned development of Bangladesh   A M A QUAZI
1975   PhD   London, Inst Comm   The emergence of Bangladesh as a sovereign state   Mizanur RAHMAN
1975   DPhil   Oxfird, Linacre House   Some aspects of the Indian government’s policy of state railways, 1869-1884   V SHANMUGASUNDARAM   Prof K Ballhatchet
1975   PhD   Edinburgh   Changing patterns of cropland use in Bist Doab, Punjab, 1951-1968   Gurjeet SINGH
1975   PhD   London, LSE   A demographic analysis of the sterilization programme in the Indian states, 1957-1973   Veena SONI   Prof D Glass
1975   MLitt   St Andrews   Tax revenue forecasting in a developing economy with special reference to India   D K SRIVASTAVA
1975   DPhil   Sussex   The British in Malabar, 1792-1806   B S W SWAI   Prof D A Low; Dr P Reeves
1975   PhD   London, SOAS   The cotton trade and the commercial development of Bombay, 1855-1875   Antonia M VICZIANY   Dr K N Chaudhuri
1975   PhD   London, SOAS   The Moplah rebellion of 1921-1922 and its genesis   Conrad WOOD
1975/76   PhD   Birmingham   Significance of size in Indian public limited companies   N P NAYAR
1975/76   DPhil   Oxford, Trinity   British policy and the political impasse in India during the viceroyalty of Lord Linlithgow   Gowher RIZVI
1976   MPhil   London, UC   Development of printing in Urdu, 1743-1857   Nazir AHMAD   Mr R Staveley
1976   PhD   London, SOAS   The beginnings of British rule in Upper Burma: the study of British policy and Burmese reaction, 1885-1890   Muhammad S ALI   Prof C D Cowan
1976   MLitt   Glasgow   Jute in the agrarian history of Bengal, 1870-1914: a study in primary production   M W ALI   Prof S Checkland; Mr J F Munro
1976   PhD   Cambridge, Queen’s   Private industrial investment in Pakistan   Rashid AMJAD   Mr M A King
1976   PhD   London, SOAS   The Tamil renaissance and Dravidian nationalism, 1905-1944, with special reference to the works of Maraimalai Atikal   K Nambi AROORAN   Prof K Ballhatchet
1976   PhD   Lancaster   Regional dualism: a case study of Pakistan, 1947/48 to 1969/70   M AZHAR-UD-DIN
1976   PhD   London, SOAS   Patterns of rural development in Tamil Nadu   Robert Wilfred BRADNOCK
1976   DPhil   Sussex   Patterns of tractorization in the major rice growing areas of Sri Lanka   M N CARR
1976   DPhil   Oxford, St John’s   Aspects of the registration and legal control of trade unions in India with some comparative observations   B K CHANDRASHEKAR
1976   MSc   Heriot-Watt   The development of tourism in Sri Lanka(Ceylon)with special reference to Nuwara Elyia   E G DHARMASIRIWARANDE
1976   MPhil   Edinburgh   Some guidelines for a spatial framework for regional planning in Sri Lnaka   N D DICKSON
1976   PhD   London, UC   Some problems relating to constitutional amendments in India   Bhubaneswar DUTTA
1976   MA   Sheffield   An examination of the letters and papers of a Wesleyan missionary (the Rev. James John Ellis of India, 1883-1962   J ELLIS   Prof J Atkinson; Dr J C G Binfield
1976   DPhil   Sussex   Caste and Christianity: a study of the development and influence of attitudes and policies concerning caste held by Protetsant Anglo-Saxon missions in India   D B FORRESTER
1976   DPhil   Sussex   Sri Lanka and the powers: an investigation into Sri Lanka’s relations with Britain, India, US, Soviet Union and China, 1948-1974   Birty GAJAMERAGEDARA   Coral Bell
1976   PhD   Cambridge, Selwyn   Bombay city businessmen and politics, 1918-1933: the politics of indigenous colonial businessmen in relation to rising nationalism and a modernising economy   A D D GORDON   Prof J A Gallagher
1976   MSc   Wales, UWIST   The impact of the Central Freight Bureau of Sri Lanka on liner conferences and trade patterns   M H GUNARATNE
1976   PhD   Wales, Aberystwyth   Programming for a balanced development of modern industries in Bangladesh   A K Md HABIBULLAH   Prof P N Mathur
1976   MPhil   East Anglia   Techniques and management of annual planning with reference to Bangladesh   Shamsul HAQUE
1976   MSc   Wales, Swansea   Employment planning in Sri Lanka   Nimal HETTIARATCHY
1976   PhD   Cambridge, Christ’s   Agrarian structure and land productivity in Bangladesh: an analysis of farm level data   Mahabub HOSSAIN   Mrs S Paine
1976   PhD   Glasgow   Factor price distortions in Bangladesh   M M HUQ
1976   PhD   London, SOAS   A quantitative study of price movements in Bengal during the 18th and 19th centuries   A S M A HUSSAIN   Dr K N Chaudhuri
1976   MPhil   London   A study of 19th century historical work on Muslim rule in Bengal: Charles Stewart to Henry Beveridge   Muhammad D HUSSAIN   Dr P Hardy
1976   MSc   Wales   Construction and use of new system of national accounts for Sri Lanka   Siripala IPALAWATTE   Prof P N Mathur
1976   PhD   London, LSE   Factor intensity and labour absorption in manufacturing industries: the case of Bangladesh   R ISLAM   Prof A Sen; Dr Dasgupta
1976   PhD   Wales, Aberystwyth   An investigation into the effect of farm structure on resource productivitiy in selected areas of Bangladesh   Md Abdul JABBAR
1976   PhD   London, Inst Comm   India in the British Commonwealth: the problem of diplomatic representation 1917-1947   James L KEMBER   Dr T Reese
1976   PhD   Aberdeen   International relations in the South Asian sub-continent since the emergence of Bangladesh: conflict or co-operation ?   Ataur Rahman KHAN
1976   MSc   Strathclyde   Indian decision making and the Sino-Indian boundary conflict   R LOUDIS
1976   PhD   Glasgow   Regional disparities and structural change in an underdeveloped economy: a case study of India   M MAJMUDAR
1976   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   Radical nationalism in India, 1930-1942: the role of the All India Congress Socialist Party   Z M MASANI
1976   PhD   London, SOAS   Political leadership among the Hindu community in Calcutta, 1857-1885   John G McGUIRE   Prof K A Ballhatchet
1976   MPhil   Leeds   Public enterprise and the economic development of Pakistan: a study of the relationship between industrial finance corporations and the development of the private sector   I MEHDI
1976   PhD   Manchester   Marketing of social products: family planning in Bangladesh   M A MIYAN
1976   PhD   London, UC   History of printing in Bengali characters up to 1866   Hussain Khan MOFAKHKHAR
1976   PhD   Cambridge, Christ’s   An Indian rural society: aspects of the structure of rural society in the United Provinces, 1860-1920   P J MUSGRAVE   Prof E T Stokes
1976   PhD   Cambridge, St John’s   The British in India, 1740-1763: a study in imperial expansion into Bengal   J B NICHOL   Prof E T Stokes
1976   PhD   London, LSE   Education and educated manpower in Bangladesh: a study of development after the 1947 partition   M NURUZZAMAN   Dr C M Phillips
1976   PhD   Manchester   The sensitivity of the demand for Indian exports to world prices: a study of particular commodities   N G PEERA
1976   PhD   Glasgow   Some methodological aspects of the cost benefit analysis of irrigation projcts: a case study of the Telegana region of India   Gautam PINGLE   Mr E RAdo; Dr R P Sinha
1976   DPhil   Oxford, St John’s   The role of India in imperial defence beyond its frontiers and home waters, 1919-1939   J O RAWSON   Prof N H Gibbs
1976   PhD   London, LSE   Towards a spatial strategy for Indian development   L R SATIN
1976   PhD   London, SOAS   Municipal markets of Calcutta: three case studies   Mondira SINHA RAY
1976   PhD   London, SOAS   Munda religion and social structure   Hilary STANDING
1976   PhD   London, SOAS   Pakistan: a geopolitical analysis, 1947-1974   Arif Hassan SYED
1976   MSc   Wales, Swansea   Child welfare planning in India   Kalyani Sarojini THADI
1976   PhD   Aston   Techno-economic aspects of the competitive position of natural rubber with special reference to the natural rubber industry in Sri Lanka   G VARATHUNGARAJAN
1976   PhD   Cambridge, Sidney   The impact of tariff protection on Indian industrial growth, 1918-1939, with special reference to the steel, cotton mill and sugar industries   D M WAGLE   Dr W J Macpherson
1976   DPhil   Sussex   The use of project appraisal techniques in the Indian public sector: a case study of the fertiliser industry   John WEISS
1976   PhD   London, SOAS   Decisions and analogy: political structure and discourse among the Ho tribes of India   Michael Piers YORKE
1976/77   PhD   Cambridge, Darwin   Living saints and their devotees: a study of guru cults in urban Orissa   Deborah Anne SWALLOW   Prof E R Leach
1977   PhD   London, LSE   The jute manufacturing industry of Bangladesh, 1947-1974   Q K AHMAD
1977   DPhil   Oxford   The Bengal Muslims, circa 1871-1906: the re-definition of identity   R AHMED
1977   PhD   Hull   The Boria: a study of a Malay theatre in its socio-cultural context   RAHMAN AZMAN
1977   PhD   London,SOAS   Guardianship in South Asia with special reference to alienation and limitation   M BADARUDDIN
1977   PhD   Lancaster   The image of Gandhi in the Indo-Anglican nove   D CHATTERJEE
1977   PhD   Cambridge, Selwyn   Lancashire cotton trade and British policy in India, 1919-1939   Basudev CHATTERJI
1977   PhD   Aberdeen   Doctrinal and exegetical issues in the Hindu-Christian debate during the nineteenth century Bengal renaissance with special reference to St Paul’s teaching on the religions of the nations   Chee Pang CHOONG
1977   PhD   Glasgow   Technological change in agriculture: the development experience of Tamil Nadu   M D’SA
1977   PhD   Cambridge, Selwyn   Indigo plantations and agrarian society in North Bihar in the 19th and early 20th centuries   C M FISHER   Prof E Stokes
1977   PhD   Edinburgh   Some aspects of the colonial administration in Ceylon, 1855-1865   Alison C FORBES   Dr T J Barron
1977   PhD   Manchester   A model of manpower planning for India   R D GAIHA
1977   PhD   East Anglia   Paddy and rice marketing in Northern Tamil Nadu, India   Barbara HARRISS
1977   PhD   East Anglia   Technological change in agriculture and agrarian social structure in Northern Tamil Nadu   John Charles HARRISS
1977   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   Indian National congress and the Indian Muslims (1916-1928)   M HASAN   Dr A Seal
1977   MEd   Wales, Aberystwyth   Television strategies for health education in Pakistan   Muhammad Anwar HASSAN
1977   PhD   London, UC   The tax burden on Bangladeshi agriculture – a welfare economics approach   M HUQ
1977   PhD   Durham   Differentiation, polarisation and confrontation in rural Bangladesh   B K JAHANGIR
1977   DPhil   Oxford, St Hugh’s   Gangaguru: the public and private life of a Brahmin community of North India   A S JAMESON
1977   PhD   Edinburgh   A Bangladeshi town’s elite: a sociological study   F KHAN
1977   MPhil   London, King’s   South Asia Muslims and the ocncept of equality with reference to the 20th century   M LAHLOU   Dr P Hardy
1977   PhD   London, SOAS   Evaluation of integrated rural development project in Pakistan   W E LOVETT
1977   PhD   London   Depression kills more than a self: concepts of mental distress among Pakistanis   R MALIK
1977   PhD   London, SOAS   The origins and early years of the British Committee of the Indian National Congress, 1885-1907   Margot I MORROW   Prof K A Ballhatchet
1977   MPhil   London, SOAS   Caste, rituals and strategies   Rina NAYAR
1977   PhD   Edinburgh   The directors of the East India Company, 1754-1790   J G PARKER   Dr J N M Maclean; Prof V G Kiernan
1977   PhD   Hull   Anglo-Burmese relations, 1795-1826   Gandadharan Padmanabhan RAMACHANDRA
1977   PhD   Leicester   The development of local transport in Bangladesh   Abu REZA
1977   DPhil   Sussex   An analysis of the export performance and policies of Bangladesh since 1950 with special reference to the income and employment implications of trade in manufactures   S A L REZA
1977   DPhil   Sussex   A study of political elites in Bangladesh, 1947-1970   Rangalal SEN   Prof T B Bottomore
1977   PhD   Leeds   Organisation and leadership of industrial labour in Karachi, Pakistan   Z A SHAHEED
1977   PhD   Kent   A monetary macro-economic model for India, 1951/52-1965/66   M A SHAHI
1977   MLitt   Cambridge, Girton   The Congress ministry in Bombay, 1937-1939   Rani SHANKAREDASS   Prof J Gallagher
1977   mpHIL   Edinburgh   A comparative study of development policies in Pakistan, 1955-1970   S H SYED
1977   MPhil   London, Birkbeck   Differences between the UK and Indian management attitudes to organization development (OD) and manpower planning: a comparative study   M N THAKUR
1977   PhD   London, LSE   Anglo-Indian economic relations, 1913-1928: with special reference to the cotton trade   James David TOMLINSON   Mr M E Falkus; Mr D E Baines
1977/78   PhD   Cambridge, Selwyn   Thje unemployment problem and development planning in Pakistan   Ghazy bin Subh-o MUHJAHID   Mr D A S Jackson
1977/78   PhD   London, LSE   Economic inequality and group welfare: theory and application in Bangladesh   S R OSMANI   Prof A Sen
1977/78   PhD   Cambridge, King’s   The interrelation of agriculture and industry in a developing country: the case of Bangladesh   A H WAHIDUDDIN MAHMUD   Dr R M Goodwin
1978   PhD   London, SOAS   The economic and social organization of selected Mohmand Pukhtun settlements   Akbar S AHMED
1978   MPhil   Leeds   Disguised unemployment in the rural sector in Bangladesh   A H W M ALAM
1978   PhD   London, SOAS   British policy towards the Indian states, 1905-1939   S R ASHTON   Dr B N Pandey
1978   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   Lord Willington and India, 19192-1936   George W BERGSTROM   Dr A F Madden
1978   DPhl   Sussex   Inequality, demand, structures and employment: the case of India   R BERRY
1978   PhD   Edinburgh   The Kui people: changes in belief and practice   Barbara Mather BOAL
1978   MPhil   Sussex   Islam in India since the partition of the sub-continent: issues in self-definition   J A BOND
1978   PhD   Leicester   The civil and military patronage of the East India Company, 1784-1840   John Michael BOURNE
1978   PhD   London, SOAS   The history of Janakpurdham: a study of asceticism and the Hindu polity   Richard BURGHART
1978   PhD   London, SOAS   The Hindu family firm and its future in the light of Indian tax law   S C CHAKRABORTY
1978   PhD   Exeter   The production and trade of rice and cotton in Pakistan with special reference to exports to the European Community   M A CHOUDHRY
1978   DPhil   Oxford   The colonial police and anti-terrorism: Bengal 1930-1936, Palestine 1837-1947 and Cyprus 1955-1959   D J CLARK   Prof M E Howard
1978   DPhil   Oxford, Hertford   International trade and payments and economic policy in Ceylon during 1938/1953: a case study in the economics of independence   D C DOLAWATTA   Mr R W Bacon
1978   MPhil   Leicester   An econometric model of consumer behaviour in India, 1950/51-1972/73   A GHATAK
1978   PhD   Durham   Kinship and ritual in a South Indian micro-region   Anthony GOOD
1978   PhD   Cambridge, Wolfson   Pineapples from Sri Lanka: the export potential of fresh fruit in relation to some aspects of post-harvest deterioration   S J GOONERATNE   Dr P H Lowings
1978   PhD   London   The law of homicide in Pakistan   M HANIF

1978   PhD   Cranfield   Inter-urban bus operation in Bangladesh: a comparative study of the efficiency of the public and private bus sectors   M ISLAM
1978   PhD   Lancaster   Religion and moderenisation: a case study of interactions between Christianity, Hinduism and modernisation in Northern Orissa, 1947-197   A KANJAMALA
1978   PhD   Manchester   Analysis of industrial efficiency in Pakistan, 1959/60 to 1969/70   A R KEMAL
1978   PhD   Cambridge   Indian business and nationalist politics, 1931-1939: the political attitude of the indigenous capitalist class in relation to the crisis of the colonial economy   Claude MARKOVITS   Dr A Seal
1978   PhD   Lancaster   Herman Merivale and the British Empire. 1806-1874, with special reference to British North America, Southern Africa and India   D T McNAB   Dr J M MacKenzie
1978   DPhil   Oxford.    The era of civillisation: British policy for the Indians of the Canadas, 1830-1860   John Sheridan MILLOY   Dr F Madden
1978   PhD   Exeter   An analysis of the world jute economy and its implications for Bangladesh   M G MOSTAFA
1978   PhD   Surrey   Causes of educated unemployment in less developed countries: the case of Sri Lanka   T PERERA
1978   PhD   Leeds   Public expenditure growth and its role in developing countries: the case of Bangladesh   A H PRAMANIK
1978   DPhil   Sussex   Capacity utilisation and labour employment in large scale manufacturing plant in Bangladesh   Alimur RAHMAN   B Dasgupta
1978   MPhil   Liverpool   A study in some aspects of demand and supply of food in a rapidly expanding population: the case of Bangladesh   F RAHMAN
1978   PhD   Essex   Tenancy and production behaviour in agriculture: a study of Bangladesh agriculture   K M RAHMAN
1978   MPhil   Leeds   The political economy of inflation: a case study of Bangladesh, 1959-1975   Syed Z SADEQUE
1978   PhD   Wales, InstSciTech   Spatial impact of growth poles in the context of regional development planning: a case study in the Ranchi Region (Bihar), India   Suranjit Kumar SAHA
1978   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   Agrarian structure, technology and marketed surplus in the Indian economy   A SAITH
1978   MPhil   London, LSE   The Cominterm and the Communist Party of India, 1920-1929   Dushka Hyder SAIYID   Prof J Joll
1978   PhD   London, SOAS   Relations between Roman Catholics and Hindus in Jaffna, Ceylon, 1900-1926: a study of religious encounter   N M SAVERIMUTTU   Prof K A Ballhatchet
1978   PhD   London, SOAS   Legal aspects of public enterprise in India and Tanzania: a comparative study   A SEN
1978   PhD   London, SOAS   The life and writings of Sir John William Kaye, 1814-1876   Nihar Nandan Prasad SING
1978   PhD   London, SOAS   Some aspects of education and educational administration in the Madras Presidency between 1870 and 1898: a study of British educational policy in India   S SRIVASTAVA   Mr J Harrison
1978   PhD   London, SOAS   Public expenditure and state accumulation in India, 1960-1970   John F J TOTE   Mr T J Byres
1978   PhD   London, SOAS   Law and order in Oudh, 1856-1877   D B TRIVEDI   Prof K A Ballhatchet
1978   PhD   Cambridge, St John’s   Periodic markets in south Bihar, India   Sudhir Vyankatesh WANMALI    Dr GP Chapman Mr BH Farmer
1978   PhD   Brunel   Job satisfaction and labour turnover among women workers in Sri Lanka   W T WEERAKOON
1978   PhD   London, SOAS   Gandhists and socialists: the struggle for control of the Indian National Congress, 1931-1939   James Carroll WILSON
1978   MPhil   London, Insti Comm   Political conflict and regionalism: Orissa, 1938-1948   T W WOLF   Prof W H Morris-Jones
1979   MPhil   Edinburgh   National parks planning in Malaysia   A K bin ABANG MORSHIDI
1979   PhD   Cambridge   Labour market and labour utilisation in Bangladesh agriculture: an analysis of farm level data   Iqbal AHMED
1979   PhD   London, SOAS   The history of the city of Dacca, 1840-1884   S U AHMED   Mr Harrison
1979   DPhil   Oxford, Balliol   Sugar cane cultivation in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh c.1890-1940: a study in the interrelations between capitalistic enterprise and a dependent peasantry   S AMIN   Dr Raychaudhuri
1979   PhD   London, UC   Occupational and spatial mobility among shanty dwellers in Poona: a study of selected settlements and implications for housing policy   M M BAPAT
1979   MLitt   Oxford, St Antony’s   The Punjab and recruitment to the Indian Army (1846-1918)   D BRIEF
1979   PhD   Keele   UN India Pakistan Observation Mission (UNIPOM), 1965-1966   S CHAUHDRY
1979   PhD   Wales   Local government finance in Bangladesh   Amirul Islam CHOWDHURY   Mr J Eaton
1979   PhD   Warwick   Interrelationships between income redistribution and economic growth with special reference to Sri Lanka   H M A CODIPPILY
1979   MPhil   London, SOAS   The constitutional history of Sri Lanka with special reference to the judiciary   M J A COORAY
1979   PhD   London, SOAS   Local politics in Bengal, Midnapur District   Swapan DAS GUPTA
1979   PhD   Edinburgh   Government and princes: India 1918-1939   G J DOUDS
1979   PhD   Manchester   The establishment of nuclear industry in less developed countries: the cases of Argentine, Brazil and India   M DUAYER DE SOUZA
1979   DPhil   Sussex   Levels, the communication of programmes and sectional strategies in Indian politics with reference to the Bharatiya Kranti Dal and the Republican Party of India in Uttar Pradesh State and Aligarh District (UP)   R I DUNCAN
1979   DPhil   Oxford, Keble   An anthropological analysis of the identity of the educated Bengali Muslim middle class of Calcutta, India   P J K EADE   Prof M Freeman
1979   DPhil   Oxford, Balliol   Bombay peasants and Indian nationalism: a study of economic change and political activity in the Bombay countryside, 1919-1939   Simon J M EPSTEIN
1979   DPhil   Sussex   Bilateral trade and payments agreements as an instrument of trade policy in Ceylon, 1952-1971   L S FERNANDO   D Wall
1979   DPhil   Oxford   Military aid as a factor in Indo-Soviet relations, 1961-1971   P C GERHARDT
1979   PhD   Manchester   Image makers of Kumartuli: the transformation of a caste-based industry in a slum quarter of Calcutta   Beth GOLDBLATT
1979   PhD   Lancaster   Achieving national development in the Third World: a systems study [Sri Lanka and Venezuela]   P W GUNAWARDENA
1979   PhD   London, SOAS   Industrial development of Bengal, 1902-1939   A Z M IFTIKHAR-UL-AWWAL
1979   PhD   Cambridge   Afghanistan in British imperial strategy and diplomacy, 1919-1941   Lesley Margaret JACKMAN
1979   DPhil   Sussex   Changing production relations and population in Uttar Pradesh   Vinod K JAIRATH   S Epstein
1979   DPhil   Oxford, Merton   Religion and politics among the Sikhs in the Punjab, 1873-1925   R A KAPUR   Prof R E Robinson
1979   PhD   Aberdeen   Nationalism in Bangladesh   Ataur R KHAN
1979   MLitt   Oxford, Wolfson   Communities in Ceylon: an ethnic perspective on Sinhalese-Tamil relations   P LANGTON   Dr Schuyler-Jones
1979   PhD   London, Wye   An economic analyses of resource use with respect of farm size and tenure in an area of Bangladesh   Md Abdur Sattar MANDAL
1979   DPhil   Oxford   Hindu pilgrimage with particular reference to West Bengal, India   E Alan MORINIS
1979   MPhil   York   Sociolinguistics of language planning: a historical study of language planning in Sri Lanka   Abul Monsur Md Abu MUSA   Dr M W S De Silva
1979   PhD   London, SOAS   Chittagong Port: a study of its fortunes, 1892-1912   S H OSMANY   Mr J B Harrison
1979   PhD   Cambridge, St Cath’s   Punjab peasants and politics: a study of the Lower Chenab Canal, 1890-1020   B J POFF   Prof E Stokes
1979   PhD   Cambridge, Clare   Agrarian structure and capital formation: a study of Bangladesh agriculture with farm level data   Atiqur RAHMAN
1979   PhD   London, SOAS   The non-official British in India, 1883-1920   R K RENFORD
1979   PhD   Aberdeen   The soils of the central Sarawak lowlands, Malaysia   I M SCOTT
1979   PhD   Durham   The socio-cultural determinants of fertility and the population policy in India   M SEKHRI
1979   PhD   St Andrews   Macroeconmic forecasting in developing countries with special reference to fiscal policy: a case study of India   Dinesh K SRIVASTAVA   Dr GK Shaw
1979   PhD   London, SOAS   Emergency powers in the Indian constitution   Jahnavi K P SRIVASTAVA
1979   PhD   London, LSE   Democratic considerations and population policies in development planning: a survey of third world countries with case studies of Bangladesh and Pakistan   B F M STAMFORD   Prof D V Glass
1979   PhD   Edinburgh   The development of British Indology   K B SWANSON
1979   PhD   London, Royal Holloway   Anglo-French diplomacy overseas, 1935-1845, with special reference to West Africa and the Indian Ocean   Rosalind M WALLER   Prof G N Sanderson
1979/80   PhD   Cambridge, St John’s   Some aspects of the monetary and financial experience of a mixed economy: the case of Ceylon, 1950-1970   S W R D SARMARASINGHE   Mr M G Kuczynski
1980   MPhil/PhD   London, LSHTM   Sex differential mortality: a study of the status of women in Pakistan   A AHMAD
1980   DPhil   Sussex   Overseas aid and the transfer of technology – agricultural mechanisation in Sri Lanka   D F BURCH   E Brett
1980   PhD   Aberdeen   Aspects of population changes in British colonial Malacca: a study in social geography   Kok Eng CHAN
1980   PhD   London, SOAS   Rural power and debt in Sind in late 19th century, 1865-1901   David CHEESMAN   Dr Zaidi
1980   PhD   London, UC   Optimal development and various public policies: a case study of Bangladesh   Omar H CHOWDHURY   Mr Lal
1980   PhD   Cambridge   The agrarian economy of northern India, 1800-1880: aspects of growth and stagnation in the Doab   S J COMMANDER   Prof Stokes
1980   PhD   Leeds   Methodism and Sinhalese Buddhism: the Wesleyan-Methodist missionary encounter with Buddhism in Ceylon, 1814-1868, with special reference to the work of Robert Spencer Hardy   Barbara A R COPLANS   Dr E M Pye; Dr R C Towler
1980   PhD   London, King’s   British and Indian strategy and policy in Mesopotamia, November 1914-May 1916   P K DAVIS   Dr M L Dockrill
1980   MPhil   Edinburgh   Use of technology: rural industrialization in Sri Lanka   A DE WILDE
1980   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   The Indian Civil Service. 1919-1947   H A EWING   Dr A Seal
1980   PhD   Edinburgh   Devotional music in Mysore   Gordon GEEKIE
1980   MPhil   CNAA   An approach to the assessment and control by developing countries of the economic costs and benefits of their national fleets, with particular reference to Sri Lanka   M D H GUNATILLAKE
1980   DPhil   Sussex   Development of capitalism in agriculture in Pakistan with special reference to the Punjab Province   S A HUSSAIN
1980   PhD   Cambridge   Popular Christianity, caste and Hindu society in south India, 1800-1915: a study of Travancore and Tirunelveli   Susan Banks KAUFMANN
1980   PhD   Edinburgh   The cost and effictiveness of export incentive schemes in Pakistan, 1950-1970   Mohammad KHAYRAT
1980   PhD   London, SOAS   The city of Lucknow before 1856 and its buildings   Rosaleen M LLEWELLYN-JONES   Dr Chaudhuri
1980   PhD   Manchester   Domestic worship and the festival cycle in the south Indian city of Madurai   Penelope LOGAN
1980   PhD   Leeds   The policy of the government of India towards Afghanistan, 1919-1947   C MAPRAYIL   Prof D Dilks
1980   PhD   Strathclyde   Appropriate products, employment and income distribution in Bangladesh and Ghana: a case study of the soap industry   A K A MUBIN
1980   PhD   Manchester   Choice and transfer of technology: the case of modernization of dairying in India   S K MUKERJI
1980   DPhil   Oxford   The rebellion in Awadh, 1857-1858: a study in popular resistance   R MUKHERJEE
1980   DPhil   Sussex   The Muriya and Tallot Mutte: a study of the concept of the earth among the Muriya Gonds of Bastar District, India   Terrell POPOFF
1980   DPhil   Oxford   Saving in Pakistan, 1950-1977: estimation and analysis   M Z M QURESHI
1980   PhD   Durham   A study of the status of women in Islamic law and society with special reference to Pakistan   S F SAIFI
1980   PhD   London, SOAS   The political economy of rural poverty in Bangladesh   K U SIDDIQUI   Mr T J Byres
1980   DPhil   Sussex   Export led industrial development: the case of Sri Lanka   Upanda VIDANAPATHIRANA   Mr Godfrey
1980   PhD   London   Foreign investment law and policy of India: the control of private direct foreign investment   S L WATKINS
1980   PhD   Kent   The little businessman of Bukit Timah: a study of the economic, social and political organisation of traders in a market complex in Singapore   C W WONG
1981   PhD   London, External   An analysis of academic libraries in the Punjab (Pakistan)and proposals for their future development   Nazir AHMAD
1981   DPhil   Sussex   Institutional structure, income distribution and economic development: a case study of Pakistan   S E AHMAD   R Jolly; P Chaudhuri
1981   DPhil   Oxford, Wolfson   Productivity, prices and distribution in Pakistan’s manufacturing sector, 1955-1970   Meekal A AHMED   Mr Z A Silberston
1981   PhD   Birmingham   Pakistani entrepreneurs, their development, characteristics and attitudes   Zafar ALTAF
1981   MPhil   Reading   Approaches to the optimisation of calving interval in large dairy herds in Sri Lanka   V ARIYAKUMAR
1981   DPhil   Sussex   Adoption of high-yielding varieties of paddy: a case study of Bangladesh agriculture   M ASADUZZAMAN
1981   MPhil   Oxford   Alternative approaches to the analysis of Indian agriculture: an evaluation   P BALAKRISHNAN
1981   MLitt   Oxford, Balliol   The Indian state and the state of emergency   Ashis BANERJEE   Mr N Maxwell
1981   DPhil   Oxford, St Cath’s   Migration theory with special reference to Delhi   B BANERJEE   Prof I M D Little
1981   PhD   London, SOAS   Evaluation of changes brought about by resettlement scheme in Sri Lanka   G S BETTS
1981   PhD   Newcastle   Genetic variation and structure in selected populations of India   S M S CHAHAL
1981   PhD   London, LSE   Commercial policy and industrialization with special reference to India since independence   S CHATTERJEE   Prof T Scitovsky
1981   PhD   Edinburgh   The politics and technology ofsharing the Ganges   B CROW
1981   PhD   Hull   Karst water studies and environment in West Malaysia   J CROWTHER
1981   DPhil   Sussex   Land and politics in West Bengal: a sociological study of a multicaste village   A S DASGUPTA
1981   DPhil   Sussex   Population trends and changes in village organisation – Rampur revisited   M DASGUPTA   S Epstein; R Cassen
1981   MPhil   London, King’s   A study of female offenders in Sri Lanka and England   S S H DE SILVA
1981   MPhil   Oxford   Educated unemployment in India   D J DONALDSON
1981   DPhil   Sussex   Rules and transactions: some aspects of marriage among the Dhund Abbasi of North East Pakistan   H DONNAN
1981   PhD   London   India’s relations with developing countries: a study of the political economy of Indian investment, aid, overseas banking and insurance   S K DUTT
1981   DPhil   Oxford, Wolfson   Geomorphology and environmental change in South India and Sri Lanka   Rita A M GARDNER   Dr A S Goudie
1981   PhD   Aberdeen   A study of Bangladesh tea soils with particular reference to the efficiency of phosphatic fertilizers   A K M GOLAM KIBRIA
1981   MPhil   Oxford   Some early British socialists in India   N GOPAL
1981   PhD   Cambridge, Churchill   The agrarian economy of the Bombay Deccan, 1818-1941   Sumit GUHA
1981   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   Planning for growth and structural change in an under-nourished economy: the case of India   U R GUNJAL   Dr D M Nuti
1981   PhD   Manchester   Buddism, magic and society in a southern Sri Lankan town   M C HODGE
1981   PhD   Cambridge, Churchill   An investigation of the impact of British rule in India, c 1820-1860 in the context of political, social and economic continuity and change   D J HOWLETT   Dr G Johnson
1981   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   The origins of the partition of India, 1936-1947   Anita INDER SINGH
1981   PhD   Cambridge   Jinnah, the Muslim League and the demand for Pakistan   A JALAL
1981   PhD   London, Imperial   Supervisory style and work group satisfaction: an empirical study in the textile industry in Sri Lanka   N W N JAYASIRI
1981   MPhil   Sussex   The effect of proximity to urban influence on rural leadership in Sri Lanka   s JAYATILAKE   R Dore
1981   MPhil   London, LSHTM   Relations between estimation biases and response errors in the analysis of a retrospective demographic survey of Bangladesh   Mokbul Ahmed KHAN   Prof W Brass
1981   MTh   Aberdeen   Salvation in a Malaysian context   Boo Wah KHOO
1981   MPhil   Edinburgh   British and Indian post-war new towns: a comparative analysis   D KUMER
1981   PhD   London, LSE   Bhutto, the People’s Pakistan Party and political development in Pakistan,1867-1977   M LODHI
1981   PhD   Bradford   The economics of railway traction with particular reference to India   J MAJUMDAR
1981   PhD   London, SOAS   Law and development in Sri Lanka: an historical perspective, 1796-1989    M L MARASINGHE
1981   PhD   Glasgow   The techno-economic development of the Indian machine tool industry, with special emphasis on aspects affecting efficiency   Ronald G MATTHEWS
1981   PhD   Durham   Spatial patterns of population growth and agricultural change in the Punjab, Pakistan, 1901-1972   M A MIAN
1981   PhD   Cambridge   Patterns of long-run agrarian change in Bombay and Punjab, 1881-1972   S C MISHRA
1981   PhD   Edinburgh   An empirical analysis of export promotion in Pakistan, 1959-1977   K MOHAMMAD
1981   DPhil   Sussex   The state and peasantry in Sri Lanka   M P MOORE
1981   PhD   Warwick   Rural factor markets in Pakistan   I NABI   Prof Stern
1981   PhD   Wales, UCNW   Basic needs fulfillment and the evaluation of land use alternatives with special reference to forestry in Kerala State, India   C T S NAIR
1981   MPhil   Oxford   The structure of Indian society: a study of some aspects of the work of Louis Dumont   S S RANDERIA
1981   DPhil   Sussex   The historical problems of agricultural productivity with special reference to the use of modern technology inputs: a case study of Meerut district in western Uttar Pradesh   Sumit ROY   B Dasgupta
1981   PhD   London, SOAS   The thakur and the goldsmith: aspects of legitimation in an Indian village   Christopher Thomas SELWYN
1981   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity Hall   The agrarian constraint to economic development: the case of India   Abhijit SEN   Mr J A Rowthorn
1981   MPhil   London, LSE   Control and regulation of cotton marketing in India, 1950-1975   J SENGUPTA   Prof B S Yamey
1981   MPhil   Kent   Patani nationalism   O bin SHEIKH AHMAD
1981   PhD   Cambridge, St Edmund’s   Canal irrigation and agrarian change under colonial rule: a study of the UP Doab, India, 1830-1930   Ian Edward STONE
1981   PhD   London   The growth of the Muslim League in the Punjab, 1937-1946   I A TALBOT
1981   MPhil   Brunel   A study of financing of small industries in UK and India   J P TEWARI
1981   DPhil   Sussex   Population, growth and labour utilisation in a rural/urban context: a Sri Lanka case study   W TILAKARATNE
1981   PhD   London, SOAS   Determinants of change in population resource relationships at village level: a study of two south Indian villages   Christopher Louis WILDE
1981   PhD   Bath   Class formation, state intervention and rural development in South Asia   G D WOOD
1981   PhD   London, LSE   The identification of developing Soviet strategy interests in the Indian Ocean, 1968-1974   Rashna Minoo WRITER   Mr P Windsor
1981   PhD   London, SOAS   The impact of canal irrigation on the rural structuresof the Punjab: the canal colony districts, 1880 to 1940   Fareeha ZAFAR
1982   DPhil   Sussex   Capital accumulation, land productivity and agrarian structure in Bangladesh agriculture   M ALAM
1982   PhD   Warwick   Effects of taxation on business in less developed countries with special reference to Sri Lanka   P BENNETT
1982   DPhil   Sussex   Agrarian structure, economic change and poverty: the experience of central Gujerat   BHANWARSINGH
1982   PhD   London, Imperial   Development of the labour process in the Indian electrical industry   B BHUSHAN
1982   PhD   Edinburgh   Energy flows in subsistence agriculture: a study of a dry zone village in Sri Lanka   Jan Roderic BIALY
1982   PhD   Cambridge   Conjugal units and single persons: an analysis of the social system of the Naiken of the Nilgirirs (South India)   Nirut BIRD
1982   PhD   Aberdeen   A sociological study of the development of social classes and social structure of Bangladesh   B M CHODWHURY
1982   PhD   Salford   Foreign aid and economic development: a case study of Pakistan with special reference to poverty and income distribution   M K CHOUDHARY
1982   PhD   Cabridge   A study of cotton-weaving in Bangladesh: the relative advantages and disadvantages of handloom weaving and factory production   Nuimuddin CHOWDHURY
1982   DPhil   Sussex   Technological innovation in agriculture in India: an analysis of economic policy and political pressures   F C CLIFT
1982   DPhil   Sussex   Open unemployment and poverty in the rural sector in Sri Lanka   I COOMARASWAMY
1982   DPhil   Oxford, Balliol   The jute economy of Bengal, 1900-1947: unequal interaction between the industrial, trading and agricultural sectors   O GOSWAMI   Dr Raychaudhuri
1982   DPhil   Sussex   Changing socio-economic relations in a Kandyan countryside   P N GUNASINGHE   S Epstein
1982   MPhil   Leeds   Recovery of gemstones from river gravels in Sri Lanka   S M HERATH BANDA
1982   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   The changing structure of cotton textile production in Bengal under the impact of the East India Company, 1750-1813, and the textile producers of Bengal   Hameeda HOSSAIN   Dr T Raychaudhuri
1982   MPhil   Sussex   The difference between ideological planning and service performance and the problems of differential access to agricultural credit in Bangladesh: the case of the integrated rural development programme   Sajjad HUSSAIN
1982   PhD   London, LSE   Boundary problems in South Asia   K H KAIKOBAD   Prof I Brownlie
1982   DPhil   Sussex   Spring Valley: a social, anthropological and historical enquiry into the impact of the tea estates upon a Sinhalese village in the Uva Highlands of Sri Lanka   C P KEMP
1982   DPhil   Oxford, Trinity   Pakistan’s relations with the USA, the USSR, China and India from the Sino-Indian war of 1962 to the Simla Pact   Mohamed Jameelur Rehman KHAN   Dr S Rose
1982   PhD   London   Aspects of the urban history, social, administrative and insttitutional of Dacca City, 1921-1947   Nazia KHANUM   Mr J B Harrison
1982   MPhil   Cambridge, Magdalene   The British policy of withdrawal from India: in particular with reference to its impact on the subsequent political development of India   S W KIM   Mr C Barnett
1982   DPhil   Oxford, New   The Indian coal industry after nationalisation   Rajiv KUMAR   Mr S Lall
1982   PhD   Lonon, SOAS   Industrial location and regional policy in south India   James William MACKIE   Dr Bradnock
1982   PhD   Cambridge   Women’s work and economic power in the family: a study of two villages in West Bengal   Linda Catherine MAYOUX
1982   PhD   Wales, Aberystwyth   Construction of capital and labour coefficient matrices for the India economy and their use in framing a development plan   Deba Kumar Datt MAZUMDAR   Prof F N Mathur
1982   PhD   Edinburgh   Relativization in Bengali   A K M MORSHED
1982   PhD   London, LSE   India and the EEC, 1962-1973   Bishakha MUKHERJEE
1982   PhD   Keele   Social aspects of production and reproduction in Bonda society   Bikram N NANDA
1982   MPhil   Reading   The evaluation and control of constraints on the development of dairying in the Jaffna District of Sri Lanka   A NAVARATNARAJAH
1982   DPhil   Sussex   Social change and class relations in rural Sri Lanka   U L PERERA   R Dore
1982   PhD   Manchester   An evaluationof the problems of measuring the profit performance of multinational enterprise in less developed countries: a case study of Bangladesh   M Z RAHMAN
1982   DPhil   Sussex   Villagers education aspirations and their relationship to rural development: a south Indian case study   Sudha V RAO   S Epstein
1982   PhD   Cambridge, Corpus   On liberty and economic growth: preface to a philosophy for India   Subroto ROY   Prof F Hahn
1982   PhD   London, LSHTM   Education and fertility in Pakistan   Zeba A SATHAR
1982   PhD   London, LSE   Maintaining non-alignment: India’s political relations with the superpowers in the 1970s   Muhammad Azher Zafar SHAH   Mr C J Hill
1982   DPhil   Sussex   The process of rural change and its impact on income distribution in Gujerat   Bhanwar SINGH   R Cassen
1982   PhD   Leeds   Analytical techniques in agricultural development planning: a critical appraisal of a project for the modernization of an irrigation scheme in Sri Lanka   Nelson VITHANAGE   Mr I G Simpson
1982   PhD   Reading   A biological study of the benefits of intercropping in England and India   N VORASOOT
1982/83   PhD   Birmingham   Pakistan: the energy sector: a study in sector planning   Tariq RIAZ
1982/83   PhD   Cambridge   A study of the development of the sugar industry in Ahmednagar Diustrict, Maharashtra, (with particular reference to the harvesting and carting labourers employed in the industry   Joy RICHARDSON
1982/83   PhD   London, SOAS   Politics and the state in Pakistan, 1947-1975   Mohammad WASEEM
1983   PhD   London, LSHTM   Dimensions of intra-household food and nutrient allocation: a study of a Bangaldeshi village   M ABDULLAH   Ms Wheeler
1983   PhD   Aberdeen   Inter-religious controversy in India: the interpretation of Jesus in the works of Rammohun Roy and Sayyid Ahmad Khan   Muda Ismail bin AB-RAHMAN
1983   DPhil   Oxford   Emerson and India   S ACHARYA
1983   DPhil   Oxford, Wolfson   The contribution of Elphinstone College to higher education and political leadership in the Bombay Presidency. 1840-1940   Naheed AHMAD   Prof R E Robinson
1983   PhD   London, Inst Comm   The Mujib regime in Bangladesh, 1972-75: an analysis of its problems and performance   A U AHMED
1983   PhD   London, King’s   Chromite deposits of the Sakhakot-Qila ultramafic complex, Pakistan   Zulfiqar AHMED
1983   PhD   Cambridge, St Cath’s   Rural society and politics in Bengal, 1900-1950   Sugata BOSE   Prof T E Stokes
1983   PhD   City   Conflict and communication in the Third World: a study of class and ethnic bases of conflict and relationships between these and the mass media in Pakistan and Nigeria   C M BRYNIN
1983   PhD   London, SOAS   Contemporary problems in Hindu religious endowments   Nihar Ranjan CHAKRABARTI
1983   PhD   Cambridge   Labour and society in Bombay, 1918-1940: workplace, neighbourhood and social organization   R S CHANDAVARKAR   Dr A Seal
1983   MLitt   Oxford, Trinity   The Congress ministers and the Raj, 1937-1939: a style of British policy and Indian politics   Sunil CHANDER   Dr T Raychaudhuri
1983   PhD   London, King’s   Transforming a traditional agriculture: the change from subsistence to commercial cropping in a part of Hazara District, Pakistan   K L COOK
1983   PhD   London, SOAS   Family and business in a small town of Rajasthan   C COTTAM   Dr L Caplan
1983   MPhil   Edinburgh   Towards a national human settlements strategy for Pakistan   M CRAGLIA
1983   PhD   London, SOAS   The urban demography of industrialization and its economic implications, with particular reference to a region of India from 1951 to 1971   Nigel Royden CROOK
1983   PhD   Newcastle   Agricultural export diversification and earnings instability of Sri Lanka   Maxwell Peter DE SILVA
1983   PhD   London, SOAS   British firms and the economy of Burma, with special reference to the rice and teak industries   Maria Serena Icaziano DIOKNO
1983   MPhil   London, UC   Jammu and Kashmir: a selected and annotated bibliography of manuscripts, books and articles together with a survey of its history, languages and literature from Rajatarangini, 1977/8   Ramesh Chander DOGRA
1983   PhD   London, SOAS   Trade unionism in Bengal before 1922: historical origins, development and characteristics   Stephen N GOURLAY   Dr K chaudhuri
1983   PhD   Exeter   Forms of Chhou: an investigation of an Indian theatre tradition   S J HAWKES
1983   PhD   London, Wye   Food production and food entitlement in rural Bangladesh: five year outlook for a small community in an irrigated area   Walza Md Hossaine JAIM   Mr G Allanson
1983   PhD   Cambridge   The economic and social bases of political allegiance in Sri Lanka, 1947-1982   D J JAYANNATHA   Mr G P Hawthonr
1983   PhD   London, SOAS   Domestic terms of trade and agricultural taxation policy in Pakistan, 1970-1977   Shahnaz KAZI   Mr T Byres
1983   PhD   Wales   Production technology and industrial development: India’s planning period   Edward Lawrence LYNK
1983   PhD   London, SOAS   Transport systems and urban growth in Punjab, Pakistan   M K MALIK   Dr R W Bradnock
1983   PhD   Cambridge, Churchill   Peasant society and agricultural development: a case study from coastal Orissa   S MITRA   Prof J A Barnes
1983   PhD   London   A general information programme for Pakistan: some problems and prospects with special reference to the promotion of cultures in the libraries and other information centres   Rafia MOHADADALLY
1983   PhD   London, UC   A general information programme for Pakistan: some problems and prospects with special reference to the promotion of culture in the libraries and other information centres   Rafia MOHAMMADALLY
1983   PhD   Cranfield   Smallholder mechanization in Pakistan   A Q A MUGHAL
1983   DPhil   Oxford   Madrasahs, scholars and saints: Muslim response to the British presence in Delhi and the Upper Doab, 1803-1857   Farhan Ahmed NIZAMI   Dr T Raychaudhuri
1983   MPhil   Edinburgh   Social consequences of rural economic change in South Asia   O NOTE
1983   PhD   London, SOAS   A study of low caste consciousness and social protest in Western India in the later 19th century   Rosalind O’HANLON   Prof K Ballhatchet
1983   PhD   Bradford   Gandhi as a political organiser; an analysis of local and national campaigns in Inda   B OVERY
1983   PhD   London, SOAS   Contact and controversy between Islam and Christianity in northern India, 1833-1857: the relations between Muslim and Protestant missionaries in the north-western provinces and Oudh   Avril Ann POWELL   Prof K Ballhatchet
1983   DPhil   Sussex   Technological capacity and production performance in the fertilizer and the paper industries in Bangladesh   H A QUAZI
1983   PhD   London, SOAS   Differrentiation of the peasantry in Bangladesh: an empirical study with micro-level data   A RAHMAN   Mr T J Byres
1983   MPhil   Edinburgh   Planning for rural development with particular reference to Bangladesh   A H S RAHMAN   Mr J B Leonard; Prof P Johnson-Marshall
1983   PhD   Birmingham   A study of small indigenous church movements in Andra Pradesh   S RAJ
1983   PhD   London, InstiComm   Problems of organisation, policies and mobilisation in the development of the Bengal Provincial Muslim League, 1936-1947   Mohammed Harun-Or RASHID   Prof W H Morris-Jones
1983   PhD   London, UC   Commodity taxes and employment policy in developing countries (with special reference to India)   B RAYCHAUDHURI
1983   PhD   Edinburgh   Responsiveness and rules: parent-child interaction in Scotland and India   V REDDY
1983   MPhil   Sueery   Alignment in Pakistan’s foreign policy, 1954-1977   Arif H SYED   Prof C Pick
1983   MLitt   Aberdeen   The 1853 Government of India Act   Jane THOMAS   Miss R M RTyzack; Dr E C Bridges
1983   PhD   Cambridge, Corpus   Labour migration and economic development in an Indian hillarea   W WHITTAKER   Mr B H Farmer
1983   PhD   Warwick   Some experiments with a multisectoral intertemporal optimization model for Sri Lanka   D E WIJESINGHE
1984   PhD   Bristol   The socio-economic aspects of the population age structure of Uttar Pradesh, India   Mhammed ABUZAR   Dr Morgan
1984   PhD   Cambridge, Churchill   Peasant production and capitalist development: a model with reference to Bangladesh   Abu M S ADNAN
1984   PhD   London, LSE   Squatter settlements of Karachi: a comparative perspective of the culture of activism   M O L AZAM
1984   PhD   Cambridge, Sidney   Regional dependence and rural development in Central India, 1820-1930   C N BATES   Dr D A Washbrook
1984   DPhil   Oxford   Agricultural growth in Bangladesh and West Bengal   J K BOYCE
1984   PhD   Edinburgh   The Vellore Mutiny, 1806   Alan D CAMERON   Prof G Shepperson
1984   PhD   Cambridge, Jesus   Opening up the interior: the impact of railways on the north Indian economy and society, 1860-1914   Ian David DERBYSHIRE
1984   PhD   Reading   Technology, growth and distribution in Sri Lanka’s paddy sub-sector   J FARRINGTON
1984   PhD   Cambridge, Churchill   Non capitalist land rent: theories and the case of North India   J GHOSH   Mr T Byres
1984   PhD   Ulster   The 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava: Whig Ulster landlord and imperial statesman    A T HARRISON   Dr T G Fraser
1984   PhD   Edinburgh   The cultural determinants of fertility in a region of South India   Heather M JACKSON
1984   PhD   London, SOAS   Human rights – the Sri Lanka experience   N JAYAWICKRAMA
1984   PhD   London, Bedford   Urban transport problems: the case of Bombay   P JOSHI   Dr D Hilling
1984   PhD   London, LSE   Caste and temple service in a Sinhalese highland village   Andrew John KENDRICK   Dr J P Perry
1984   PhD   London, SOAS   Tribal settlement and socio-economic integration: a case study of the Bannu lowlands, Pakistan   Gul Mohammad KHAN   Dr R Bradnock
1984   MPhil   Sussex   The effects of the changing patterns of leadership on succession problems and the use of ideology: a comparative study of India (1962-1969)and Japan (1929-1936)   H KINASE-LEGGETT   B D Graham
1984   PhD   London, SOAS   The British administaration of the Kandyan provinces of Sri Lanka, 1815-1833   K M P KULASEKERA   Prof K A Ballhatchet
1984   PhD   Cambridge, Clare   Studies in the development of India’s non-traditional manufactured exports, 1957-1980   A KUMAR   Prof W B Reddaway
1984   DPhil   Sussex   Implications of international mobility of labour for trade and development with particular reference to Bangladesh   Raisul MAHMOOD   Mr Godfrey
1984   MLitt   Oxford, St Antony’s   The Communist Movement in West Bengal. 1962-1980   Ross MALLICK   Dr T Raychaudhuri
1984   PhD   London, SOAS   Role and ritual in Hindu marriage   Werner F MENSKI   Prof J D M Derrott
1984   DPhil   Oxford, Magdalen   Political mobilisation and the nationalism movement in India – a study of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, 1936-1942   Chandan S MITRA   Dr T Raychaudhuri
1984   PhD   Cambridge, Christ’s   Instability in food grain production: causes, adjustments, policies: a case study of Bangladesh   K A S MURSHID   Prof A Robinson
1984   DPhil   Sussex   Poverty and inequality in rural India: a state-wide analysis of trends since 1950   R NAYYAR   P Chaudhuri
1984   PhD   Edinburgh   Productivity and innovation in traditional agriculture: a comparative study of agricultural development in the Forth Valley, 1760-1841 and the Bengal Presidency, 1870-1914   Alastair William ORR
1984   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   Alliance and elopement: economy, social order and sexual antagonism the Kalasha (Kalash Kafirs) of Chitral   Peter S C PARKES   Dr Schuyler-Jones
1984   PhD   Leicester   The structure, petrology and geochemistry of the Kohistan batholith, Gilgit, Kashmir, North Pakistan   Michael George PETTERSON
1984   PhD   Cambridgew   Respecting power: temples, resources and authority in southern Tamilnadu, India   Gordon Darge PRAIN
1984   PhD   Cambridge, Churchill   The evolution of the agrarian economy of western India, 1860-1940: a case study of selected Gujerat and Deccan districts   S PRAKASH   Dr G Johnson
1984   PhD   London, LSE   Rural protest and politics: a study of peasant movements in Western Maharashtra, 1875-1947   Livi Nancy Mary RODRIGUES
1984   PhD   London, SOAS   Crime and society in the Sinhala speaking areas of Sri Lanka, 1865-1905   John D ROGERS   Prof K Ballhatchet
1984   MPhil   Nottingham   The right to property under the Indian independence constitution   J S SANGHIA   Prof Pear
1984   PhD   Cambridge   Rural organizations in Sri Lanka: official policy and institutional reform in the peasant agricultural sub-sector, 1948-1977   S SATHANANDAN
1984   PhD   London, SOAS   Muslim society and politics in the Punjab   P SCRAGG   Dr Zaidi
1984   MPhil   London, LSE   Bengal economic development, 1790-1830   P SEN   Mr M E Falkus
1984   PhD   Reading   Tropical forest monitoring using digital Landsat data in northeastern India   Ashbindu SINGH
1984   PhD   Cambridge   Temple “prostitution” and community reform: an examination of the ethnographic, historical and textual context of the devadasi of Tamil Nadu, south India   A SRINAVASAN

1984 PhD Edinburgh Technology transfer in the Indian and Indonesian pharmaceutical industries A J STOKER

1984 PhD London, SOAS, British Attitudes to Indian Nationalism, 1922-1935. Pillarisetti SUDHIR. Professor Kenneth A. Ballhatchet.

1984   PhD   London, SOAS   Ritual status in the life cycles of women in a village of central India   catherine S THOMPSON   Prof A Mayer
1984   DPhil   Sussex   Gender as a variable in the political process: a case study of women’s participation in state-level electoral politics, Andhra Pradesh, India   C WOLKOWITZ
1985   PhD   Strathclyde   The development of small-scale enterprises: a study of the agriculture-related engineering industry in Pakistan Punjab   K AFTAB
1985   PhD   London, Royal Holloway   The emergence of Muslim socialists in North India, 1917-1947   Khizar H ANSARI   Dr F C R Robinson
1985   PhD   Salford   The impact of farm mechanization on productivity and employment: a case study of Punjab, Pakistan   M ASHRAF
1985   PhD   Durham   Blue-green algal nitrogen fixation associated with deepwater rice in Bangladesh   A AZIZ
1985   PhD   London, SOAS   Indian opium and Sino-Indian trade relations   F BAKHALA   Prof K N Chaudhuri
1985   PhD   Cambridge   On the Srawacs or Jains: processes of division and cohesion among two Jain communities in India and England   M J BANKS
1985   PhD   London, SOAS   Martial law in Bangladesh, 1975-`979: a legal analysis   M E BARI
1985   PhD   London, SOAS   Thomas Munro: the decision making process in Madras, 1795-1830   H BREITMEYER   Prof K A Ballhatchet
1985   PhD   London, LSE   Political radicalism and middle class ideology in Bengal: a study of the politics of Subhas Chandra Bose, 1928-1940   B CHAKRABARTY
1985   PhD   Cambridge, Girton   The behaviour of industrial prices in India, 1947-1977   Ruchira CHATTERJI   Dr G Meeks
1985   PhD   Edinburgh   Lateritic soils and their managment in parts of West Bengal   Sandip K CHAUDHURI
1985   PhD   London, SOAS   Social change and the development of “modern” politics in Travancore from the late 19th century to 1938   James L CHIRIYANKANDATH   Dr P G Robb
1985   PhD   Manchester   The role of exchange rate policies in the balance of payments and adjustment process in a small open developing economy: a case study of Sri Lanka   S S COLOMBAGE
1985   DPhil   Sussex   Sharecropping and sharecroppers’ struggles in Bengal, 1930-1950   Adrienne J COOPER   Mr R Guha
1985   MSc   Stirling   The mechanism of distribution of marketed surplus in the models of dual economies through the Soviet, Chinese and Indian practice towards economic development   Z COTTI
1985   PhD   Sheffield   Vegetation and land use studies in the Udawalawe Basin, Sri Lanka   D S EPITAWATTA
1985   PhD   Newcastle   Analysis of the lactation curve of Pakistani dairy buffaloes   K Z GONDAL
1985   DPhil   Oxford, St Edmund Hall   The relations between Britian, India and Burma in the formulaton of imperial policy, 1890-1905   G P GUYER
1985   PhD   Lancaster   The continuity of Madhyamaka and Yogacara in Indian Mahayana Buddhism   I C HARRIS
1985   PhD   London, LSE   Women in the urban labour force in Pakistan: the case of Lahore   Emma HOOPER
1985   PhD   Strathclyde   The choice of technique in cotton textiles and its impact on employment in Bangladesh   M R ISLAM
1985   DPhil   Sussex   The impact of male outmigration on intra-village social relationships: a case study of Meharabad, a Punjabi village in Pakistan   Naveed-I-Rahat JAAFRI
1985   PhD   Edinburgh   Health and the state in India   Roger JEFFERY
1985   PhD   Oxford   Limites and renewals: transformations of belief in Kipling’s fiction   S KEMP
1985   PhD   Queen’s, Belfast   The traditional tabla drumming of Lucknow in its social and cultural context   J R KIPPEN
1985   MPhil   CNAA, Kingston Poly   The rubber industry in India: a vital industry in the planned economy   P A MARS
1985   PhD   Cambridge   Economic relations between a centrally planned and a developing market economy: Indo-Soviet trade (1970-1982)and technology transfer (post 1955)   Santosh Kumar MEHROTRA   Dr P Nolan
1985   DPhil   Oxford   The Bengal Muslim intelligentsia, 1937-1977: the tension between the religious and the seccular   Tazeen Mahnaz MURSHID
1985   PhD   Kent   The impact of colonial rule in Johore: a case of social and political adjustment   M S H MUSTAJAB
1985   PhD   London, LSE   The sacred city of Anuradhapura: aspect of Sinhalese Buddhism and nationhood   Elizabeth NISSAN   Dr C J Fuller; Dr J P Parry
1985   MPhil   Manchester   Land ownership and irrigation development in the Sind region of Pakistan: institutional constraints on technical change   Meherunissa M K PANWHAR
1985   PhD   Cambridge, Darwin   Social and political implications of changing land and labour relations in rural Bangladesh: a village level study   Tanyal RAHMAN VIROOMAL
1985   DPhil   Oxford, Lincoln   The Naxalites and their ideology: a study in the sociology of knowledge   Rabindra RAY   Dr F Parkin
1985   PhD   Cambridge   Honour, nurture and festivity: aspects of female religiosity amongst Jain women in Jaipur   J REYNELL
1985   PhD   Queen’s, Belfast   An analysis of the structure, conduct and performance of the date marketing system in Sind-Pakistan   Muneer Ali Shah RIZVI
1985   PhD   Brunel   The influence of the state in the industrial relations systems of third world countries with special reference to Bangladesh   S A SIDDIQ
1985   MPhil   London, LSHTM   Refugees, health and development: a case study of Tibetan refugees in India   Staphanie Pietre Pardoe SIMMONDS
1985   PhD   Durham   Ritual tradition of Berava caste of southern Sri Lanka   Robert SIMPSON   Mr D Brooks
1985   DPhil   Oxford, Christ Church   Some aspects of implementing appropriate technology with special reference to cotton textiles in India   Harsha Vardhana SINGH   Mrs F J Stewart
1985   PhD   Aston   Nations and organisations: a comparative study of English and Indian work-related values and attitudes in matched manufacturing firms   M H TAYEB
1985   PhD   London, SOAS   Planned language and Penang Hokkien: the socioeconomic effects of language planning on an urban Chinese community in West Malaysia   Diane Arnauld de TERRA
1985   PhD   London, Inst Ed   Education and rural development in India since independence in 1947: with special reference to Kerala   Joseph THAIKOODAN   Prof B holmes
1985   PhD   London, Queen Elizabeth   Class, nutrition education and growth: a class analysis of the impact on infant nutritional status of maternal education concerning early supplementation in Bangladesh   Katharine J WILSON   Dr C Greissler
1985   PhD   Edinburgh   Upholding the veil: Hindu women’s perceptions of gender and caste identity in rural Pakistan   Caroline Sara Lindsay YOUNG

1986    PhD    Bradford    Higher education in developing countries    M A ADEEB
1986    DPhil    Oxford, St Cath’s    Information, uncertainty and rural credit markets in Pakistan    Irfan ALEEM    Prof J A Mirrlees
1986    MPhil    Edinburgh    Housing and the state in Lahore, Pakistan    I U BAJWA
1986    MPhil    Edinburgh    Visual patterns and the landscape of wet zone Sri Lanka    S I BALASURIYA
1986    MPhil    Ulster    Russio-Afghan boundary demarcation. 1884-1895    Anila BALI    Dr T G Fraser
1986    PhD    London, SOAS    The devolution of government in Sri Lanka: legal aspects of the relationship between central and local government: an historical and comparative study    S A BANDARANAYAKE
1986    PhD    Keele    Migrant employment in the urban formal sector: the jute industry in Dacca, Bangladesh    Salma BANU    Prof D Dwyer
1986    PhD    Sheffield    The economic impact of a regional economy: the case of Bhilai Steel Plant (India)    S BHATARA    Mr W D Watts
1986    PhD    Open    Implementation across national boundaries: implementing the Government of India Act, 1935    V BOROOAH
1986    PhD    Wales, Aberystwyth    British politics and the East India Company, 1767-1773    H V BOWEN    Prof P D H Thomas
1986    PhD    London, LSHTM    Evaluation of a community based oral rehydration programme in rural Bangladesh    Ahmed M R CHOWDHURY
1986    PhD    Exeter    Household, kin and community in a Bangladesh village    M A M CHOWDHURY
1986    PhD    Cranfield    Rice by-product production, disposal and utilisation in Sri Lanka    S ELIAS
1986    PhD    London    Trade, kinship and Islamisation: a comparative study of the social and economic organisation of Muslim and Hindu traders in Tirunelveli District, South India    Frank Sylvester FANSELOW
1986    PhD    Aberdeen    Inter-religious conflict in India – the dynamics of Hindu-Muslim relations in North Malabar, 1498-1947    Theodore Paul Christian GABRIEL    Prof A Walls
1986    DPhil    Sussex    Rice in Bangladesh: post harvest losses, technology and employment    M T GREELEY
1986    MSc    Cambridge    The impact of Sri Lankan land reform measures, 1972-1975, on the tea sub-sector    S A P JAYATILAKA
1986    MLitt    Oxford, Trinity    The nature of Indian state: an investigation into the interrelationship between economic and political crisis (1965-75)    A K JHA
1986    PhD    London, LSE    The functions of children in the household economy and levels of fertility: a case study of a village in Bangladesh    N KABEER    Mr C M Langford
1986    MPhil    Edinburgh    The role of incentives for paddy cultivation in developing countries with reference to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka    G A M KARUNARATNE
1986    PhD    Reading    Obstacles to the adoption of modern rice cultivation practices by small farmers in Bangaldesh    Md Abul KASHEM
1986    PhD    Glasgow    Handling of industrial disputes in the public sector industries in Bangladesh    M A A KHAN
1986    DPhil    York    The state, village society and political economy of agricultural development in Bangladesh. 1960-1985    S A KHAN
1986    DPhil    Oxford, Corpus    Instability of jute prices and supplies: the impact on and implications for jute fibre production in Bangladesh    Reza KIBRIA    Mr M F G Scott
1986    MPhil    Essex    Selected aspects of India’s foreign trade in the 1970s    S LAKRA
1986    MTh    Wales, Aberystwyth    The life of the people of north Mizoram prior to and subsequent to the advent of Christianity, up the the year of the Mizo Church’s jubilee in 1944    J M LLOYD
1986    PhD    Bradford    The modelling and analysis of national development strategies for India    P MANDAL
1986    PhD    Cambridge, Emmanuel    Financial and manpower aspects of the Dominions and India’s contribution to Britain’s war effort, 1914-1919    G W MARTIN    Dr Z S Steiner
1986    PhD    Leicester    Fulfilment theology: the Aryan race theory and the work of British Protestant missionariesin Victorian India    Martin MAW
1986    PhD    London, LSHTM    Patterns of adult energy nutrition in a south Indian village    G McNEILL
1986    PhD    Dundee    Estimates of gross domestic product by provinces in Pakistan    A M MIRZA
1986    DPhil    Oxford, New    Caste, Christianity and Hinduism: a study of social organisation and religion in rural Ramnad    C MOSSE    Dr N J Allen
1986    MPhil    East Anglia    Go plough and eat: the impact of Gandhian intervention in a Bihar village between 1954 and 1974    Ivan Charles NUTBROWN
1986    PhD    Londonb, SOAS    A history of the London Missionary Scoiety in the Straits Settlements, 1815-1847    Ronnie Leona O’SULLIVAN    Prof K Ballhatchet
1986    PhD    Aston    Investigation of relationship betrween product design and production departments in manufacturing companies (India)    K PAWAR
1986    PhD    Manchester    Landed property and dynamic of instability: Bengal: the property-power nexus: state formation under colonialism and its contemporary siginificance    H Z RAHMAN
1986    PhD    Cranfield    Appropriateness of incentives for small scale enterprise location in less developed areas: the experience of the UK, Japan and India    K RAMACHANDRAN
1986    DPhil    London, St Antony’s    Exchange rate and commercial policy in a controlled trade regime: a case study of India    Narhari RAO
1986    PhD    City    The social and economic conditions of export orientated industrialisation as a strategy of development [Sri Lanka]    K RUPESINGHE
1986    PhD    City    British press coverage and the role of the Pakistan press from independence to the emergence of Bangladesh    M SHAMSUDDIN
1986    PhD    London SOAS    Vallabhbhal Patel: his role and style in Indian politics, 1928-1947    R D SHANKARDASS
1986    PhD    Sheffield    Transport and regional development in Bangladesh: a geographical study    A H M Raihan SHARIF
1986    PhD    London, SOAS    Sri Lanka: an examination of economic and social development associated with recolonisation on an irrigation scheme    Richard Paul SLATER    Dr A Turton
1986    PhD    Leeds    Pakistan’s relations with Britain, 1947-1951: with particular reference to some problems of partition    M SOHAIL
1986    DPhil    Oxford, Linacre    Tenna: peasant, state and nation in the making of a Sinhalese rural community    Jonathan R SPENCER
1986    PhD    Salford    Rural-urban population mobility in Bangladesh: its implications for rural areas with particular reference to two villages    R M TALUKDAR
1986    PhD    London, LSE    Sacrifice and divine power: Hindu temple rituals and village festivals in a fishing village, Sri Lanka    Masakazu TANAKA
1986    DPhil    Oxford, St Peter’s    India: colonialism, nationalism and perception sof develeopment    Kevin WATKINS
1986    PhD    Manchester    Agrarian change in India: a case study of Bundwan District, West Bengal    Neil Anthony WEBSTER
1986    MLitt    Oxford, Wolfson    A critical examination of Aurobindo’s contribution to the tradition of Vedanta    Yvonne WILLIAMS    Prof B K Matilal
1986    PhD    East Anglia    Cyclone vulnerability and housing policy in the Krishna Delta, South India, 1977-83    Peter WINCHESTER    Dr P M Blaikie
1986    MPhil    East Anglia    Urban unemployment in peninsular Malaysia    S R YAHYA    Dr J T Thoburn
1986    PhD    Edinburgh    The realities of life from a Hindu Sindi perspective    John Nicol YOUNG
1986    PhD    London, LSE    Sacrifice and the sacred in a Hindu “t-irtha”: the case of Pushkar, India    Sushila Jane ZEITLYN    Dr J R Parry
1986/87    PhD    Cambridge, Wolfson    Surplus appropriation and accumulation by rural households in India: a case study based on fieldwork in Uttar Pradesh    Ravi Shankar SRIVASTAVA
1987    PhD    London Royal Holloway    All India Muslim League, 1906-1919    M S AHMAD
1987    PhD    Sheffield    Formulation of design criteria for industrial architecture in Bangladesh in light of the developments made in the United Kingdom and other developed countries    N AHMED
1987    MPhil    CNAA Sheffield Poly    The effects of climate on the design and location of windows for buildings in Bangladesh    Z N AHMED
1987    PhD    Nwecastle    Housing for the lower income people of Dhaka,Bangladesh: a peri-urban development approach    S AMEEN
1987    MPhil    City    Personality, leadership and subordinate satisfaction: an empirical study in the civil service of Singapore    C T ANG
1987    PhD    London, RHBNC    The Pirs of Sind and their relationship with the British, 1843-1947    Sarah Frances Deborah ANSARI    Dr F R C Robinson
1987    MPhil    Strathclyde    The development of sugar manufacturing in Pakistan    M AURANGZEB
1987    PhD    Keele    The growth and development of trade unionism in Bangladesh, 1947-1986    M Z BADIUZZAMAN
1987    PhD    Loughborough    A strategy for the integrated development of squatter settlements: a Karachi case study    Q A BAKHTEARI
1987    PhD    Edinburgh    State and indigenous medicine in nineteenth and twentieth-century Bengal, 1800-1947    Poonam BALA
1987    PhD    Cambridge    Sectoral price determination and the inflationary process in the Indian economy, 1950-1980    P BALAKRISHNAN
1987    PhD    East Anglia    Draught animal power in Bangladesh    D BARTON    Dr D P Gibbon
1987    MPhil    Manchester    The role and contribution of the Alilgarh Muslim University in modern Indian Islam, 1877-1947    G N BUDDHANI
1987    PhD    Cambridge, Magdalene    From a pre-colonial order to a princely state: Hyderabad in tranition, c.1748-1865    S CHANDER
1987    PhD    Dundee    Financial development and agricultural development in Pakistan, 1952-1982    Mohammad Jamil CHAUDHARY
1987    PhD    Leicester    Conflict and change among the Khyber Afridis: a study of British policy and tribal society on the North-West Frontier, 1839-1947    R O CHRISTENSEN
1987    PhD    Cambridge, Sidney     State, tribe and region: policy and politics in Indiaa’s Jharkhand, 1900-1980    S E CORBRIDGE    Mr B H Farmer
1987    DPhil    Oxford, St Antony’s    Communal riots in Bengal, 1905-1947    Suranjan DAS    Dr T Raychoudhuri
1987    PhD    Cambridge    Money and finance in an underdeveloped economy: some themes from Indian economic history, 1914-1917    T DATTA    Mr M G Kuczynki
1987    PhD    London, SOAS    Images and metaphor: an analysis of Iban collective representations    J DAVISON
1987    PhD    Keele    The United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), 1948-1965, with postscript on the impact of UNMOGIP on the Indo-Pakistan war of 1971    Pauline DAWSON    Prof A M James
1987    PhD    London, SOAS    The changing role of women in Bengal, c.1890-c.1930, with special reference to British and Bengali discourse on gender    Dagmar ENGELS    Prof K Ballhatchet
1987    PhD    London, SOAS    Psychiatry and colonialism: the treatment of European lunatics in British India, 1800-1858    Waltraud ERNST    Prof K A Ballhatchet
1987    PhD    Manchester    The origins of inflation in Pakistan, 1959-1982: an evaluation of alternative hypotheses    Faiz B FIROZE
1987    PhD    Cambridge    The brick trade in India: energy use, tradition and development    S GANDHI
1987    DPhil    Oxford    Money and the real economy: a study of India, 1960-1984    S E GHANI
1987    PhD    Cranfield    Computer simulation of runoff and soil erosion from small agricultural catchments in Sri Lanka    E GUNAWARDENA
1987    PhD    Exeter    Tariqah-i-Muhammadiyah movement and its contribution to creating a separatist political consciousness among the Muslims of India, 1818-1872    Ghulam Muhammad JAFFAR
1987    PhD    Salford    Agricultural marketing and agrarian relations in Pakistan: a case study of the Nawahshak districrt, Sind    M A KAMDAR    Dr C P Simmons
1987    MLitt    Cambridge, Trinity Hall    Communal politics in the United Provinces, 1935-1947    Mukul KESAVAN    Dr C A Bayley
1987    DPhil    Oxford, Balliol    Poverty and public policy: government intervention and levels of living in Kerala, India    Bhaskar Gopalakrishna KUMAR    Prof A K Sen
1987    DPhil    Oxford, Hertford    The rise and fall of the Indian cotton mill industry, 1900-1985: the Swadeshi movement and its political legacy    Simon Robert Bough LEADBEATER    Mr G P Williams
1987    DPhil    Oxford, Oriel    British architecture in Victorian Bombay    Christopher W LONDON    Dr R A Beddard
1987    PhD    Cambridge    West Bengal government policy, 1977–1985    Ross MALLICK
1987    PhD    London, LSE    Muslims, work and status in Aligargh    Elizabeth Ashley MANN
1987    PhD    London, SOAS    Migration and the international Goan community    Stella V MASCARENHAS-KEYES
1987    MPhil    Edinburgh    Women and the housing process: observations in a Katchi Abadi in Pakistan    F McCLUNEY
1987    PhD    Leicester    The mineralogy and geochemistry of the carbonatites, syenites and fenites of North West Frontier Province, Pakistan    Ihsanullah MIAN
1987    MPhil    Sussex    Linguistic nationalism in Pakistan (with special reference to the role and history of Urdu in the Punjab)    Yameema MITHA    Dr R I Duncan
1987    PhD    Stirling    Food retailing in Malaysia: a study of supermarket use in peninsular Malaysia    K B OTHMAN
1987    DPhil    Oxford    British rule and the Konds of Orissa: a study of tribal administration and its legitimating discourse    Felix J PADEL
1987    PhD    Reading    Extension needs of a plantation industry with special reference to the tea industry in Sri Lnaka    W A PADMASIRI WANIGASUNDARA
1987    PhD    Wales, UWIST    The role of government in the administration and management of major ports in developing countries with special reference to India    Jose PAUL
1987    PhD    London, LSE    Time, work and the gods: temporal strategies and industrislisation in central India    Christopher PINNEY
1987    DPhil    York    The political dynamics of Indo-Soviet relations, 1930-1977    S S RAI
1987    PhD    London, SOAS    Islamization of laws in Pakistan with particular reference to the status of women    Abdur RASHID
1987    PhD    Aberdeen    Availability and retention of zinc, especially in relation to the soils of Bangladesh    H M RASHID
1987    DPhil    York    Indo-Soviet relations during the period 1955-1974    S S ROY
1987    PhD    Liverpool    The role of small towns in rural development: a case study of Bangaldesh    Toufiq Mohammad SERAJ
1987    PhD    Liverpool    An analysis of squatter settlements in Dhaka, Bangladesh    M T SHAKUR
1987    PhD    London, LSE    Communism in Punjab up to 1867    Gurharpal SINGH
1987    PhD    Edinburgh    The implementation of systematic nursing in selected hospsitals in India: a chronicle of the change process    Esther SIRRA
1987    DPhil    Sussex    Sri Lankan traders: a case study of credit relations and coconut marketing in a rural economy    sARAH lLEWELLYN SOUTHWOLD
1987    PhD    Leeds    The life and influence of Shapurji Saklatvala    Michael John SQUIRES
1987    PhD    Leicester    Evolution of the southern part of the Aravalli-Delhi orogen western India    Tim J SUGDEN
1987    MSc    Aberdeen    Supply response analysis of palm oil in Malaysia, 1961-1985    B A TALIB
1987    PhD    Leicester    Communication and development in South India    Pradip Ninan THOMAS
1987    PhD    Southampton    Developing a critical success factor approach to a holistic institutional evaluation for polytechnics in the states of Gujerat and Madhya Pradesh, 1977-1984    V N TRAFFORD
1987    PhD    Cranfield    The social relevance of postgraduate management education: a case study of India    S VYAKARNAM
1988    PhD    London    Breast feeding, weaning and infant growth in rural Chandpur, Bangladesh    S AHMED
1988    PhD    London, External    Islam in contemporary Bangladesh     Umne Asman Begum Razia AKEER BANU    Dr D Taylor
1988    PhD    Bradford    The impact of public policy on the poor in Sri Lnaka, 1970-1982    Pat ALAILIMA    C Dennis; S Curry
1988    PhD    Manchester    Makran and Baluchistan from the early Islamic times to the Mongol invasion    S S M AL-HUMAIDI    Prof Bosworth
1988    PhD    Birmingham    The British iron and steel industry and India, 1919-1939    H J ANDERSEN
1988    PhD    Edinburgh    Some aspects of the political and commercial history of the Muslims of Sri Lanka with special referenmce to the British period    Mahmudu Naina Marikar Kamil ASAD
1988    MPhil    Kent    The image of women in selected Malaysian novels    Rosnah BAHARUDIN
1988    PhD    Wales, UCNW    Ecology, management and conservation of Pinus roxburghii forests in Kumaun Himalaya, India    Bhagat Singh BURFAL
1988    PhD    Wales, Aberystwyth    The nineteenth-century book trade in Sind    Allah Rakhio BUTT
1988    PhD    London, King’s    Soldiers of Christ: evangelicals and India, 1784-1833    Penelope S E CARSON
1988    DPhil    Oxford, Exeter    Punjab politics, 1909-1923    Amrita CHEEMA    Dr T Raychaudhuri
1988    MSc    Wales    Economic appraisal of irrigated plantations of the Punjab, Pakistan: Changa Manga case study    Faqir Ahmad CHOUDHRY
1988    PhD    Reading    State sponsrship of investment credit to promote rural development in India    J G COPESTAKE
1988    PhD    Leicester    Leucogranites of the North West Himalaya: crust-mantle interaction beneath the Karakoram and the magmatic evolution of collisional belts    Mark B CRAWFORD
1988    MPhil    Brunel    Aspects of the development of manufacturing industries of India    Parviz DABIR-ALAI
1988    MLitt    Oxford, Keble    An ecumneical episcopate: Edwin James Palmer, seventh Bishop of Bombay and the reunion of the churches, with special reference to the church of South India    R W DAVIS
1988    PhD    Cambridge    The irrigation and water supply systems of the city of Vijayanagara    D J DAVISON-JENKINS
1988    PhD    Kent    Law, nation and cosmology in Sri Lanka: deconstructioni and the failure of closure    Rochan DE SILVA    Prof F Fitzpatrick
1988    DPhil    Oxford, St Antony’s    Application of social accounting matrix framework to agricultural policy analysis in Pakistan    Shafique DHANANI    Mr G H Peters
1988    DPhil    Sussex    Rural commerce in Sri Lanka: commercialisation and farm credit in the Uva highlands    E DUE
1988    PhD    Nottingham    Environmental upgrading and intra-urban migration in Calcutta    Margaret Sylvia FOSTER    Prof J C Moughton; Dr T Oc
1988    PhD    Southampton    Catholic education in Sri Lanka during its first century as a British colony, 1796-1901    J B GNANAPRAGASAM
1988    PhD    East Anglia    Inter- and intra-household analysis in North Bihar village: implications for agricultural research    Ruth GROSVENOR-ALSOP    Dr S D Biggs
1988    PhD    Cambridge    Conservation and colonial expansion: a study of the evolution of environmental attitudes and conservation policies on St Helena, Mauritius and in India, 1660-1860    R H GROVE
1988    DPhil    Oxford, St Antony’s    Art, artists and aesthetics in Bengal, c.1850-1920: westernising trends and nationalist concerns in the making of new “Indian” art    Tapati GUHA-THAKURTA    Dr T. Raychaudhuri
1988    MSc    Manchester    Science and technology policy in developing countries of South Asia and South East Asia    K R GUPTA
1988    PhD    Queen’s, Belfast    The sitar music of Calcutta: a study of two gharanas    J S HAMILTON
1988    PhD    London, UC    Inbreeding and fertility in a South Indian village population    Katherine Louise HANN    Dr J Landers
1988    PhD    London, Inst Ed    Education and political instability in Pakistan, 1937-1971    M HAQUE
1988    PhD    Strathclyde    Tubewell irrigation and green revolution: impact on productivity and income distribution    A IKRAMULLAH
1988    MPhil    Edinburgh    Marketing problems of farmers in Punjab, Pakistan: a case study    Qamar-ul ISLAM
1988    PhD    Edinburgh    The reawakening of Islamic consciousness in Malaysia, 1970-1987    Fadzillah bin Mohd JAMIL
1988    PhD    Cambridge, King’s    Clientelism, corruption and capitalist development: an analysis of state intervention with special reference to Bangladesh    Mushtaq Husain KHAN
1988    DPhil    Oxford, St Antony’s    External developments and policy choices facing the non-oil developing countries in the post 1973 period    Faizullah KHILJI    Mrs F J Stewart
1988    DPhil    Sussex    Political and economic organisation in a Sri Lanka market town    Colin KIRK
1988    PhD    Leicester    Media education, communications and public policy: an Indian perspective    K J KUMAR
1988    PhD    Leeds    R K Narayan and V S Naipaul: a comparative study of some Hindu aspects of their work    P LANGRAN
1988    DPhil    Oxford    Orientalism, utilitarianism and British India: James Mill’s “The history of British India” and the romantic orient    Javed MAJEED    Dr N G Shrimpton
1988    MPhil    Edinburgh    Policy issues for conservation: the case of Lahore walled city    M I MIAN
1988    PhD    Sheffield    Development of small and medium sized towns in Bangladesh: a regional planning approach    Mohammed A MOHIT
1988    DPhil    Oxford, St Antony’s    The question of nuclear weapons proliferation in the Indian sub-continent    Ziba MOSHAVER    Mr E A Roberts
1988    PhD    London, UC    The theoretical modelling and empirical measurement of the shadow economy with application to India    U MUKHERJEE
1988    MPhil    Reading    Farming systems and information needs of tea smallholders in Sri Lanka    D K NAWARATNA
1988    PhD    London, SOAS    A social history of a colonial steroetype: the “criminal tribes and castes” of Uttar Pradesh    S B L NIGAM
1988    PhD    London, LSE    Policy making in the Indian offshore oil industry with reference to the period 1974-1986    M L NORONHA    Prof D C Watt
1988    PhD    London, LSE    The Asiatic mode of production, historical materialism and Indian historiography    Denis Brendan O’LEARY
1988    PhD    Leicester    Terraces, uplift and climate, Karakoram Mountains, Northern Pakistan    Lewis Andrew OWEN
1988    MPhil    London, LSE    The tea plantation labour movement in the “Dooars” region of north Bengal, 1900-1951    Nayantara PALCHOUDHURI
1988    PhD    Oxford, St Antony’s    Decline of the Bengal zamindars: Mindapore, 1870-1920    C PANDA    Dr T Raychaudhuri
1988    PhD    London, King’s    Between Mars and Mammon: the military and the political economy of British India at the time of the first Burma war, 1824-1826    Douglas M PEERS
1988    PhD    Cambridge, Corpus    British intelligence and Indian subversion: the surveillance of Indian revolutionaries in India and abroad    R J POPPLEWELL
1988    PhD    London, SOAS    Socio-economic change in Bihar (India) in the later 19th and early 20th century    Bihdeshwar RAM    Dr P Robb
1988    PhD    Kent    Figuring Naipaul: the subject of the post-colonial world    Dulluri Venkat RAO
1988    PhD    Cambridge, Newnham    Aspects of the ethnoarchaeology of Adilabad (Andhra-Pradesh), India    Nandini Rameshwar RAO

1988   DPhil   Oxford, Wolfson   The determinants of India’s manufactured export performance: industry-level and firm-level evidence   Amit Shovon RAY
1988   DPhil   Sussex   Religion, class and function: the politics of communalism in twentieth century Punjab   Mark ROBINSON   Dr R I Duncan
1988   PhD   London, SOAS   The evolution of the printed Bengali character from 1778 -1978   Fiona Georgina Elizabeth ROSS
1988   PhD   Keele   Marginality, identity and the politicisation of the Bhangi community, Delhi   Rama SHARMA
1988   PhD   Kent   Class, kinship and ritual: Islam and the politics of change in Pakistan   S R SHERANI
1988   PhD   De Montfort   Temple architecture of the Marathas in Maharashtra   A SOHONI
1988   PhD   London, SOAS   Nalanda Mahayihara, 1812-1939: some aspects of the study of its art and archaeology   M L STEWART
1988   PhD   Wales, Cardiff   White-collar crime: a study of the nature, extent and control of income tax evasion in Pakistan   Muhammad Shoaib SUDDLE
1988   PhD   CNAA, Westminster    A critical and comparative study of the practice and theology of Christian social witness in Indonesia and India between 1974 and 1983 with special reference to the work of Wayan Mastra in the Protestant Christian Church of Bali and of Vinay Samual in the Church of South India   C M N SUGDEN
1988   PhD   Leeds   Some aspects of Muslim politics in the Pubab, 1921-1947   Qalb-i-Abid SYED   Prof D N Dilks
1988   PhD   Wales, UCNW   Utility-based social shadow pricing and its comparison with other evaluation techniques: a cost-benefit study of fuelwood plantations in Bihar, India   Satyendra Nath TRIVEDI
1988   PhD   Glasgow   Characteristics of public enterprise management in Bangladesh   Syed J UDDIN   Dr D Buchanan
1988   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity Hall   The economic and political context of Indian independence   R P WANCHOO   Dr C A Dayly
1988   PhD   Bath   In the teeth of the crocodile: class and gender in rural Bangladesh   Sarah C WHITE
1988   PhD   Nottingham   Presenting the Raj: the politics of representation in recent fiction on the British empire   R J F WILLIAMS
1988   PhD   East Anglia   Sources of growth and its beneficiaries in Pakistan’s large-scale manufacturing sector, 1955-1981   S WIZARAT
1988/89   PhD   Cambridge, Darwin   Household energy in rural Pakistan: a technical, environmental and socio-economic assessment   A N QAZI
1988/89   PhD   Cambridge, King’s   Administration, classification and knowledge:land revenue settlements in the Panjab at the start of British rule   R W SAUMAREZ-SMITH
1989   PhD   Cambridge   Sedimentology and structure of the Southern Kohat, Trans Indus Ranged, Pakistan   Iftikhar AHMED
1989   PhD   York   Pakistan since independence: the political role of the Ulama   Safir AKHTAR   Dr T V Sathyamurthy
1989   PhD   Strathclyde   Growth of tubewell irrigation and agricultural development in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan   M AKRAM
1989   PhD   London, Wye   A quantitative analysis of marketable surplus of paddy and food policy in Bangladesh   S AKTER
1989   MA   Leeds   Communication influences on the political socialisation of Bangladeshi adolescents   A M ALI   Prof J G Blumer; Dr T J Nossiter
1989   MPhil   London, LSE   The India League and the Indian reconciliation group as factors in Indo-British relations, 1930-1949   Keshava Chand ARORA   Prof I H Nish
1989   PhD   London, King’s   Pakistan crisis 1971: its political and strategic causes   F J AZIZ
1989   PhD   London, SOAS   Indian monetary policy and the international liquidity crisis during rthe inter-war years (1919-1939)   Gopalan BALACHANDRAN
1989   PhD   London, LSE   Communism in Tripura up to 1965   Harihar BHATTACHARYYA   Dr T J Nossiter
1989   DPhil   Oxford   The evolution of classical Indian dance literature: a study of the Sanskritic tradition   M BOSE
1989   PhD   Kent   An ethnographic account of the religious practice in a Tibetan Buddhist refugee monastery in Northern India   Catherine Mary CANTWELL   Dr J Endes
1989   MPhil   Reading   Cropping systems research in North West Frontier Province, Pakistan   E W CHARLES
1989   PhD   Glasgow   The inter-war depression in British India: aspects of its economic and social impact, 1929-36   P S COLLINS
1989   DPhil   Sussex   Paliamentary representation in Sri Lanka, 1931-1986   R COOMARASWAMY   Prof Lloyd
1989   PhD   London, LSE   Ideology and urban planning: the case of Hong Kong   A R CUTHBERT   Dr D R Diamond
1989   PhD   Cambridge, Sidney    Unfulfilled promises, popular protest, the Congress and the national movement in Bihar   V DAMODARAN
1989   PhD   London, LSE   Embodying spirits: village oracles and possession rituals in Ladakh, North India   Sophia Elizabeth DAY   Dr J P Parry
1989   PhD   London, SOAS   Discourses of ethnicity: the adivasis of Jharkhand   S B C DEVALLE
1989   MPhil   Wales, Cardiff   Rice leaffolders: natural enemies and management ractices in Sri Lanka   Malgaha Gamage DHANAPALA
1989   PhD   London, SOAS   The growth of Buddhist monastic institutions in Sri Lanka as depicted in the Brahmi inscriptions   K D M DIAS
1989   PhD   Cambridge   The socio-economic impact of a minor flood control project in rural Bangladesh   B J DODSON
1989   PhD   Bath   Water to the swamp ? Irrigation and patterns of accumulation and agrarian change in Bangladesh   M GLASER
1989   MPhil   Cranfield   Vocational training and self employment in developing countries: aspects of the design and approach of sucessful programmes   John Patrick GRIERSON   Prof M H Harper
1989   MPhil   CNAA, Poly NLondon   British women and the British empire in India, 1915-1947   Florence HAMILTON   Mr E Wilson; Dr D Judd
1989   MPhil   London, LSE   The problem of federalism and regional autonomy in Pakistan   Fayyaz Ahmad HUSSAIN   P Dawson
1989   PhD   Bradford   The monetary transmission mechanism in Sri Lanka, 1977-1985   Ranee JAYAMAHA   P Wilson; J Weiss
1989   DPhil   Sussex   The impact of international labour migration on the rural “Barani” areas of Northern Pakistan   A F KHAN
1989   PhD   Sheffield   The implementation of rural poor programmes in Bangladesh   T A KHAN
1989   PhD   Manchester   Perception and response to floods in Bangladesh   M S KHONDAKER
1989   PhD   Wales, Bangor,   Cost benefit analysis and sustained yield forestry in India   Periyapattanam Jayapal Dilip KUMAR
1989   DPhil   Oxford, Wolfson   Medical knowledge in rural Rajasthan: popular constructions of illness and therapeutic practice   Helen Susanna LAMBERT   Dr N J Allen
1989   MPhil   London   The expansion of the Indian Army during the Great War   I D LEASK   Prof M E Yapp
1989       Bath   Technologies and transactions: a study of the interaction between new technology and agrarian structure in Bangladesh   D J LEWIS
1989   PhD   Edinburgh   One or two sons: class, gender and fertility in north India   Andrew LYON
1989   DPhil   Sussex   Capital accumulation in agriculture in the Punjab (Pakistan)   Moazam MAHMOOD   Prof M Lipton
1989   DPhil   Oxford   The performance of selected public sector industries in Bangladesh, 1972-1985   Syed A MAHMOOD
1989   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity Hall   Missionary of the Indian Road: a study of the thought and work of E Stanley Jones between 1915 and 1948 in the light of certain issues raised by M K Gandhi for Anglo-Saxon Protestant missionaries during the period   P A J MARTIN   Dr J J Lipner
1989   PhD   Glasgow   Exchange rate regimes of less developed countries: the cxase of India   M J MELAZHAKAM
1989   PhD   London, UC   Appropriate evaluation techniques for urban planning in Sri Lanka   N S P MNEDIS
1989   PhD   Cambridge, Magdalene   The Harappan civilisation: a study in variation and regionalisssssssation in Haryana, India   V MOHAN   Dr F R Allchin
1989   PhD   Lancaster   Three Hindu philosophers: comparative philosophy and philosophy in modern India   Paul Martin MORRIS   Prof N Smart; Dr D Smith
1989   PhD   Manchester   The role of financial information in collective bargaining in a developing country: the case of Bangladesh   A J M H MURSHED
1989   PhD   East Anglia   Agrarian structure and rural poverty in Western India   Thomas PALAKUDIYIL   Dr J C Harriss
1989   PhD   Wales, Cardiff   The role of accounting in the economic development of Bangladesh   Michael John PARRY
1989   PhD   London, LSE   Household organisation and marriage in Ladakh Indian Himalaya   Maria Christina PHYLACTOU   Dr C J Fuller
1989   PhD   London, LSE   Social representations of birth control and family welfare: an Indian study   Ragini PRAKASH   Prof R Farr
1989   PhD   London, LSHTM   Household food insecurity and its implications on health, nutrition and work – a study of a dry land farming community in Sri Lanka   M K RATNAYAKE
1989   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   Colonial policy, ethnic politics and the minorities in Ceylon   Nira Konjit SAMARASINGHE   Dr T Raychaudhuri
1989   PhD   Cambridge   Administration, classification and knowledge: land revenue settlements in the Panjab at the start of British rule   R S SMITH
1989   DPhil   Oxford, Somerville   Inequality and economic mobility: an analysis of panel data from a south Indian village   Madhura SWAMINATHAN   Dr S Anand
1989   DPhil   Oxford   Art, artists and aesthetics in Bengal, c. 1850-1920: westernising trends and nationalist concerns in the making of a new “Indian” art   Tapati G THAKURTA
1989   PhD   Middlesex Polytechnic   The impact of flood control on agricultural development in India: a case study in north Bihar   P M THOMPSON   Prof E Penning-Rowsell
1989   MPhil   East Anglia   The state and the determinants of the fiscal process in India: an application of James O’Connor’s Theory of the Fiscal Crisis of the State   Sarah VARKKI
1989   PhD   Aberdeen   Some aspects of the chemistry and mineralogy of soil potassium in Sri Lanka acid tea soils and Scottish soils under a range of crops   G WIMALADASA
1989   PhD   Strathclyde   Marketing implications of intermediate technology in the textile industry in Pakistan   M ZAFARULLAH
1989   PhD   Edinburgh   Strategic planning: an exploratory study of its practice by agro-based public enterprises in Malaysia   M ZAINAL ABIDIN
1990   PhD   Cambridge, Wolfson   The politics of pollution control: the Ganges at Varanasi   Sara AHMED   Prof T O’Riordan
1990   PhD   London, LSE   The budgetary process in uncertain contexts: a study of public sector corporations in Bangladesh   Mansurai ALAM
1990   PhD   Aberdeen   Petroleum geochemistry of the tertiary sediments and oil samples from the Bengal Basin, Bangladesh   M ALAM
1990   PhD   Glasgow   Size and management characteristics in the public sector: a case of Pakistan International Airlines   A H M H H AL-ESHAIKER
1990   PhD   CNAA Birmingham Poly   The low-income housing production process in Lakore, Pakistan   M I A ALVI
1990   PhD   Aberdeen   Theological education in relation to the identificaton of the task of mission and the development of ministries in India: 1947 to 1987 with special reference to the Church of South India   Siga ARLES
1990   MPhil   London, QMW   A study of some influences on the development of Ruth Jhabvala’s Indian fiction   Jayanti BAILUR
1990   PhD   London, LSE   Pakistan and the birth of the regional pacts in Asia, 1947-1955   Farooq Naseem BAJWA   Prof I H Nish
1990   PhD   Cam,bridge, King’s   Procedural rationality in public expenditure decision making with specific reference to India   A BASU
1990   PhD   Cambridge   Inter-urban and rural-urban linkages in terms of migration and remittances   J R CHAUDHURI
1990   MPhil   Bradford   Kashmir and the partition of India: the politicians and the personalities involved in the partition of India, particularly in relation to the position of Kashmir at the moment of independence on 15th August, 1947   S CHOUDHRY   Dr M J LeLohe
1990   PhD   Aberdeen   An Indian perspective on the church in the context of poverty and religious pluralism, with special reference to the works of M M Thomas   Ashish J CHRISPAL   Prof. Terrance
1990   PhD   London, LSE   Petty-trading in Calcutta: a socio-political analysis of a third world city   Nandini DASGUPTA
1990   PhD   London, King’s   Rural Bengal: social structure and agrarian economy in the late eighteenth century   Rajat DATTA   Prof P Marshall
1990   PhD   London, SOAS   Development of Sinhala drama: a socio-cultural analysis (from Nadagama to modern theatre, up to 1922)   T R G DELA BANDARA
1990   DPhil   Oxford, Wolfson   Indian death rituals: the enactment of ambivalence   Gillian A EVISON   Prof R F Gombrich
1990   PhD   Bradford   Financial reforms in Sri Lanka, 1977-1987   D J G FERNANDO
1990   PhD   London, SOAS   Discussions of polygamy and divorce by Muslim modernists in South Asia, with special reference to their treatment in Qur’an and Sunna   Rehana FIRDOUS
1990   PhD   Kent   The six-nation initiative   C FRANGONIKOLOPOULOS   Prof A J R Groom
1990   PhD   Sheffield   Man mosquito interaction: the social context of Malaria transmisson in Sri Lanka   Jayaratne Pinnikamaha GAMAGE   Ms J M M Hoogvelt; Dr R A Dixon
1990   PhD   London, LSE   Paddy fields and jumbo jets: overseas migration and village life in Sylhet district, |Bangladesh   Katherine Jane GARDNER
1990   PhD   York   The politics of British aid policy formation: the case of Bangladesh, 1972-1986   M GUHATHAKURTA
1990   DPhil   Oxford   Exports and exchange rate policy: the case of India   B D GUPTA
1990   PhD   London, SOAS   The short story in Pakistan Panjab, 1947-1980   Salim Ullah HAIDRANI
1990   PhD   London, External   The phenomenonology of religious change in Bangladesh in relation to the theology and practice of conversion   Ian McLaurin HAWLEY
1990   PhD   London, UC   The single dominant party system and political development: case studies of India and Japan   Takako HIROSE
1990   MPhil   London, External   The economy and development of education in Bangladesh with particular reference to cost and some aspects of efficiency and effectiveness of higher education for the period 1972-1985   Mohammad Tazammul HUSSAIN
1990   PhD   London   Variations in mountain front geometry across the Potwar Plateau and Hazara/Kalachitta Hill ranges, North Pakistan   C N IZATT
1990   PhD   Open   Charnockite formation in Southern India   D H JACKSON
1990   PhD   Leeds   The effects of agrarian development on class formation and production relations in Pakistan   Muhammad Siddique JAVED   Mr J V Hillard
1990   MPhil   Manchester Poly   Ethnic identity and contemporary female costumes of Sri Lanka   V R JAYASURIYA
1990   PhD   London, UC   Transfer of private external capital to LDCs with special reference to India in comparison to Brazil   Veena JHA
1990   PhD   Salford   The impact of decentralisation on development, with special reference to the experience of Bangladesh since 1982   A K M A KALAM   Prof M B Gleave; Dr B Ingham
1990   PhD   Exeter   Some statistical aspects of child health and growth modelling in Pakistan   S KAMAL
1990   MSc   Wales, Cardiff   Analysis of the provision of sites and services schemes as a solution to low income housing in Colombo, Sri Lanka   Somas Kandarajah KANDIAH
1990   PhD   London, LSE   Gender, caste and class in rural South India   Karin KAPADIA
1990   DPhil   Oxford, St Cath’s   The consequence of economic liberalisation in Sri Lanka   Saman B KELEGAMA   Dr S Anand
1990   PhD   London, SOAS   Revenue, agriculture and warfare in North India: technical knowledge and the post-Mughal elites from the mid-18th century to the early 19th century   Iqbal Ghani KHAN
1990   PhD   Kent   Bengali elites’ perceptions of Pakistan – the road to disillusionment: uneven development or ethnicity   Alqama KHAWAJA   Prof A J R Groom
1990   PhD   Bath   Impact of irrigation upon the rural political economy in Bangladesh   David LEWIS   Dr G D Wood
1990   DPhil   Oxford, Magdalen   United States-Indian relations, 1961-1989: the pursuit and limits of accommodation   Satu P LIMAYE   Dr G Rizvi
1990   PhD   London, UC   Hydrogeology of part of South-Eastern Bangladesh   S M MAHABUB-UL-ALAM
1990   PhD   Lancaster   The atavara myth in the in the Harivamsa, the Visnupurana and the Bhagavatapurana   Freda MATCHETT   Prof N Smart; Dr D Smith
1990   PhD   Open   East India patronage and the political management of Scotland, 1720-1774   G K McGILVARY   Dr A L R Calder; Mr J Riddy
1990   PhD   London, UC   Epidemiology of coronary heart disease in Asians in Britain   Paul Matthew McKEIGUE
1990   PhD   Hull   The fiction of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: irony within a dual philosophical framework   F F MERICAN
1990   PhD   Leicester   A thermotectonic evolution for the main central thrust and higher Himalaya, Western Garhwal, India   Richard Paul METCALFE
1990   PhD   Leeds   A history of Nandyal Diocese in Andhra Pradesh, 1947-1990   Constance Mary MILLINGTON   Prof A Hastings
1990   PhD   Newcastle   Becoming bilingual: a sociolinguistic study of the communication of young mother tongue Panjabi-speaking children   S MOFFAT
1990   PhD   Wales, BBangor   Ecology and silviculture of Malamus manan in peninsular Malaysia   A B MOHAMAD
1990   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   The politics of Oriya nationalism, 1903-1936   Bishnu Narayan MOHAPATRA   Dr G Rizvi
1990   PhD   London, UC   Rural development and the problem of access: the case of the integrated rural development programme in Bangladesh   Salim MOMTAZ   Prof R J C Munton
1990   PhD   CNAA, Oxford Poly   Geology and geochemistry of the Closepet granite, Karnataka, South India   K A OAK
1990   PhD   London, SOAS   Indian Muslims and the Ottomans (1877-1914): a study of Indo Muslim attitudes to Pan-Islamism and Turkey   Azmi OZCAN
1990   PhD   London, Inst Ed   The cooperative movement in the Jaffa district of Sri Lanka from 1911 to 1970   Kanthappoo PARAMOTHAYAN
1990   PhD   Sheffield   Man-mosquito interaction: the social context of malaria transmission in Sri Lanka   J PINIKAHANAN GAMAGE
1990   PhD   London, SOAS   The mercantile community of Penang and the changing pattern of trade, 1890-1941   Chuleeporn PONGONGSUPATH   Dr I Brown
1990   PhD   Salford   Gandhi and deep ecology: experiencing the nonhuman environment   S A POWER
1990   PhD   London, External   Socio-economic and environmental aspects of under nutrition and ill health in an urban slum in Bangladesh   Jane Allison PRYER
1990   PhD   London, External   Impact of zinc supplementation on Bangladeshi children suffering from acute and persistent diarrhoea   Swapan Kumar ROY
1990   PhD   London, Wye   Persistent poverty among rice farmers in the major irrigated colonization scheme of Sri Lanka   Madar SAMAD   I Carruthers
1990   PhD   London, Wye   Persistent poverty among rice farmers in the major irrigated colonization schemes of Sri Lanka   Madar SAMAD
1990   PhD   St Andrews   Political violence in the Third World: a case study of Sri Lanka, 1971-1987   Gemini SAMARANAYAKE   Prof P Wilkinson
1990   PhD   London, QMW   The use of Hindu mythology in some novels of R K Narayan and Raja Rao   Chitra SANKARAN
1990   PhD   Liverpool   State intervention in rural development: a case study of Bangladesh   A E SARKER
1990   PhD   London, SOAS   The emergence of a Muslim “middle class” in Bengal: attitudes and rhetoric of communalism, 1880-194   Mohammad SHAH   Dr P G Robb
1990   PhD   Edinburgh   Socioeconomic planning in social forestry with particular reference to Orissa State, India   Ran Avtar SHARMA
1990   PhD   Cambridge   A “despotism of law”: a British criminal justice and public authority in north India, 1772-1837   Radhika SINGHA   Dr C A Bayley
1990   PhD   Wales, Swansea   Indian merchant communities in 19th century western India   Sheila M SMITH   Dr R K Newman
1990   PhD   London, LSHTM   The estimation of fertility from incomplete birth registration records, with application to India   Govind Singh SOMAWAT   B Brass
1990   PhD   Cranfield   The role of industrial extension for the local production of agricultural machinery in developing countries with particular reference to Sri Lanka   K-H STEINMANN   I Crawford; F Inns
1990   PhD    North London Poly   The Viceroyalty of Lord Reading, 1921-1926, with particular reference to Indian political constitutional problems and progress   Christine TURNBULL   Dr D Judd
1990   PhD   Cambridge   Constructing difference: social categories and Girahya women: social kinship and resources in south Rajasthan   Maya UNNITHAN   Dr C Humphrey
1990   MPhil   Essex   An analysis of the effects of salinity on the growth of Sri Lankan rice cultivars   S C WANIGASURIYA
1990   PhD   London, Imperial   The structure and metamorphism of the northern margin of Indian Plate, North Pakistan   Mathew Philipps WILLIAMS
1991   MPhil   Trinity College, Bristol   Identity, Islam and Christianity in rural Bangladesh   D W ABECASSSIS
1991   MPhil   London, LSHTM   Fertility trends in Pakistan: a birth order analysis   Mohamed AFZAL   J Blacker
1991   PhD   Sheffield   Intraurban residential mobility in the city of Karachi   N AHMAD
1991   PhD   Wales, Swansea   Decentralisation and the local state under peripheral capitalism: a study in the political economy of local government in Pakistan   Tofail AHMAD
1991   PhD   Newcastle upon Tyne   The effects of price and non-price factors on the production of major crops in Bangladesh   S ALAM
1991   PhD   Cambridge, St Cath’s   North Indian military culture in transition, 1770-1830   S ALAVE   Dr C A Bayly
1991   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   Inheriting then earth: Pakistan People’s Party: popular mobilisation and political conflict in Pakistan, 1967-1971   R F ALI   Mr P G Hawthorn
1991   PhD   London, LSHTM   Anti-microbial chemotherapy of leprosy: a quantitiave theoretical basis for trial regimens with particular reference to India   J E ALMEIDA
1991   PhD   London, King’s   The international arms trade: case studies of India and Pakistan, 1947-86   I ANTHONY
1991   PhD   Manchester   The role of the housing market in the development of Jaffna City and its fringe   Krishnapillai ARUMUHAM   Prof B Robson
1991   PhD   London, SOAS   Agricultural production in six selected Qasbas in eastern Rajasthan (c. 1700-1780)   Madhavi BAJAKAL
1991   PhD   LondonSOAS   Agricultural production in six selected qasbas of eastern Rajastan (c.1700-1780)   Madhavi BAJEKAL   Prof K N Chaudhuri
1991   PhD   Salford   Some environmental implications of agricultural and agro-industrial developments in rural India   S K BARAT
1991   PhD   Newcastle upon Tyne   Swami Vivekananda’s practical vedanta   Vivienne BAUMFIELD   Dr D H Killingley
1991   PhD   Wales, Swansea   The significqance of “Ostindien” in the evolution of German colonial thought, 1840-1885   Theodore Robert Maria BOSKE   Prof M E Chamberlain
1991   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   Communal politics and the partition of Bengal, 1932-1947   Joya CHATTERJI   Dr A Seal
1991   PhD   Cambridge   A study of subsistance and settlement patterns during the late prehistory of northcentral India   U C CHATTOPADHYAYA
1991   PhD   London, King’s   Indian nuclear strategy   Mohammad Zafar Iqbal CHEEMA   Prof L D Freedman
1991   MPhil   Bradford   Kashmir and the partition of India   S CHOUDRY
1991   PhD   London, UC   The social implications of thalassaemia major among Muslims of Pakistani origin: family experience and service delivery   Aamra Rashid DARR
1991   MPhil   CNAA, Architectural Assoc   The roots of power and root power: an enquiry into negotiations for the consolidation of illegal settlements in New Delhi, India   S DASAPPA
1991   PhD   London, SOAS   Strategy and structure: a case study in imperial policy and tribal society in British Baluchistan   Simanti DUTTA
1991   PhD   Loughborough   The Revd A G Fraser: his ecclesiastical, educational and political activity in Ceylon, 1904-1924   Brian EATHARD   Dr Avril Powell
1991   PhD   Cambridge, Churchill   The political culture of the urban poor: the United Provinces between the two World Wars   N GOOPTU   Dr R S Chandavarkar
1991   DPhil   Oxford, Balliol   Azariah and Indian Christianity in the late years of the Raj   S Bharper HARPER, s b
1991   DPhil   Oxford, Green College   Public health and medical research in India, c. 1860-1914   Mark HARRISON   Miss M H Pelling; Dr P J Weindling
1991   PhD   London, King’s College   Rhizolith occurrence and formation within the quartnary coastal deposits of Tamil Nadu State, South East India   Derek Albert HENDRY   Dr R Garner
1991   PhD   London, Wye   Economic analysis of production opportunities, constraints and improvement policies in coconut-based farming systems in Sri Lanka   Mudiyanselage Anura Lokubandara HERATH
1991   MPhil   Wales   Performance, problems and potential of irrigated land settlements in Sri Lanka: an analysis of past policies   Thosapala HEWAGE
1991   PhD   Cambridge   Tax reform, public pricing and trade protection in Bangladesh   S M HOSSAIN
1991   PhD   London, SOAS   The production and use of ritual terracottas in India   Stephen Porter HUYLER
1991   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   Defence production in a third world country: the case of the Indian aircraft industry 1940-1980   Shireen Karim Alimohamed JANMOHAMED   Prof E A Roberts
1991   PhD   London, LSE   Rice, work and community among the Kelabit of Sarawak, East Malaysia   Monica Rachel Hughes JANOWSKI
1991   PhD   Stirling   Fishery, population dynamics and breeding biology of Panulirus homarus (L.)on the south coast of Sri Lanka   D S JAYAKODY
1991   PhD   Stirling   The utilisation of acid sulphate on soils for shrimp (Oenaeus monodon)culture on the west coast of Sri Lanka   J JAYASINGHE
1991   PhD   Durham   Perception of, and adjustment to. drought hazard by farmers in southern Sri Lanka   N L A KARUNARATNE
1991   DPhil   Oxford, Trinity   Competing through technology and manufacturing: a study of the Indian commerical vehicles industry   Sanjay KATHURIA   Dr J L Enos
1991   PhD   Leicester   Primary geochemistry and secondary dispersion from gold prospects in the Karkoram and Hindu Kush, northern Pakistan   Abdul KHALIQ
1991   PhD   London, RHBNC   The contribution of the All India Muslim Educational Conference to the educational and cultural development of Indian Muslims, 1886-1947   Abdul Rashid KHAN   Dr F C Robinson
1991   PhD   Sheffield   Low income settlement in city fringes: a case study of eastern fringe Dhaka   R A KHAN   Dr C Choguill
1991   PhD   Edinburgh   Women’s work and rural transformation in India: a study from Gujerat   Uma KOTHARI
1991   DPhil   Sussex   The role of women in household survival strategies: a case study from an urban low-income settlement in Colombo, Sri Lanka   Chandrika KOTTEGODA   Dr K Young
1991   PhD   Warwick   Critical reflections on law and public enterprises in Bangladesh   A K MASUDAL HAQUE
1991   PhD   Sheffield   Urban services in the national cities of India: organisation, financing, planning and delivery   B MATHUR
1991   DPhil   Oxford   The ecological interaction between habitat composition, habitat quality and abundance of some wild ungulates in India   V B MATHUR
1991   PhD   Bath   Poverty and patronage: a study of credit, development and change in rural Bangladesh   James Allister McGREGOR   Dr D G Wood
1991   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   Caste, nationalism and communism in Malabar, 1900-1948   D M MENON   Dr R S Chandravarkar
1991   PhD   Southampton   Municipal finance and local self government: the Indian experience   Rajalakshmi MISHRA   Dr D M Hill
1991   PhD   Durham   Industrial water pollution in a surface water system in Colombo, Sri Lanka   S K MOHAMMED-ALI   Prof I G Simmons
1991   PhD   Warwick   The migration and racialisation of doctors fromthe Indian subcontinent   P J MOSS
1991   PhD   London, LSE   India and the Middle East: constancy of policy in the context of changing perspectives, 1947-1986   Prithvi Ram MUDIAM   Dr G Sen
1991   PhD   Surrey   The impact of industrialisation and urbanisation on Patidar women in the Khada District of Gujerat   P R NATTRESS
1991   PhD   Cambridge, Clare Hall   People and trees: gender relations and participation in social forestry in West Bengal, India   C A NESMITH   Dr T P Bayliss-Smith
1991   PhD   Nottingham   Urban lower-middle class and middle income housing: an investigation into affordability and options, Dhaka, Bangladesh   Mohammed Mahbubur RAHMAN   Prof J C Moughton; Mr S Jalloh
1991   PhD   Exeter   Location-allocation modelling for primary health provision in Bangladesh   S-U RAHMAN
1991   MSc   Kent   On the systematics and ecology of some freshwater turtles of Bangladesh   S M A RASHID
1991   PhD   London, SOAS   Structure and performance: a case study of Pakistan’s large scale manufacturing sector (1950-1987)   Shahnaz RAUF
1991   PhD   Cambridge, Newnham   Inter-urban and rural-urban linkages in terms of migration and remittances: case study – Durgapur (West Bengal)   J RAY CHAUDHURI   Prof G P Chapman
1991   PhD   London, King’s   A comparison of the diet and health of pre-menopausal Indian and Caucasian vegetarian women   Sheela REDDY
1991       Cranfield, Silsoe   A case study on training and development of cooperative managers in implementing “Irrigation management programme” of Bangladesh Rural Development Board in Hossainpur Upazila, Bangladesh   M A SADEQUE
1991   PhD   Warwick   Towards a definition of Indian literary feminism: an analysis of the novels of K Markandaya, N Sahgal and A Desai   Minola K SALGADO   Ms P Dunbar
1991   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   South Asian Muslim politics, 1937-1958   Ahmad Y SAMAD   Dr T Raychaudhuri
1991   PhD   London, SOAS   Poverty, growth and stagnation in north Indian agriculture: a comparative study in the political economy of poverty generation in western and eastern Uttar Pradash in the early 1970s   Jean Diana SARGENT
1991   PhD   CNAA, Leicester Poly   Speech in Sri Lankan cleft palate subjects with delayed palatoplasty   D A SELL
1991   DPhil   Oxford, Wadham   The biology of vitex (verbenaceae)in Sri Lanka   Balangeda M P SINGHAKUMARA   Dr C Huxley-Lambrick
1991   PhD   London, King’s   Nabob, historian and orientalist: the life and writing of Robert Orme (1728-1801)   Asora SW TAMMITA-DELGODA   Prof P J Marshall
1991   PhD   London, LSE   Donors, development and dependence: some lessons from Bangladesh, 1971-1986   Peter Graeme Rugge THOMSON   Prof M Desai
1991   PhD   East Anglia   Errant males and the divided woman: melodrana and sexual difference in the Hindi social film of the 1950s   Ravi VASUDEVAN
1991   DPhil   Oxford, Wolfson   The uplift history of the Western Ghats in India   Mike WIDDOWSON   Dr K G Cox; Prof A S Goudie
1991   PhD   Salford   The causes and processes of rural-urban migration in 19th and early 20th century India: the case of Ratnagiri district   G M YAMIN
1992   PhD   East Anglia   Models of household behaviour in subsistence agriculture: a case study of NWFP in Pakistan   Farman ALI   Prof A Parikh
1992   PhD   London, King’s   Nation-building and the nature of conflict in South Asia: a search for patterns in the use of force as a political instrument within and between the states of the region   Syed Mahmud ALI
1992   PhD   Aberdeen   Aspects of Islamic revival and consciousness in Bangladesh, 1905 AC and 1975 AC   A N M AMIN
1992   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   Colonialism and the transformation of matriliny in Malabar, 1850-1940   G ARUNIMA   Dr R S Chandavarkar
1992   LLD   Edinburgh   Dravidian studies   Ronald ASHER
1992   PhD   Kent   The political implications of migration: a study of the British Sikh community   S BALI   Mr K Webb
1992   PhD   Manchester   A study of aspects of Indian theatre and its role: consideration and strategies for developing theatre in education in India   S N BARHANPURKAR   Dr Jackson
1992   PhD   London^hUC   The temples of the interface: a study of the relation between Buddhism and Hinduism at the Munnervaram temples, Sri Lanka   Rohan Neil BASTIN
1992   PhD   London, SOAS   Poverty and power: survival strategies of the poorest in three villages of West Bengal, India   Anthony BECK   Dr R W Bradnock
1992   DPhil   Oxford, St Anne’s   The English East India Company and Hindu laws of property in Bengal, 1765-1801: appropriation and invention of tradition   Nandini BHATTACHARYYA-PANDA   Dr T Raychaudhuri
1992   MLitt   Oxford, Magdalen    South Asian women, midwives and the maternity system: the role of cultural differences in the creation of inequality   Isobel M W BOWLER   Dr R W Dingwall
1992   PhD   London, LSE   Agricultural pricing in developing countries: Pakistan 1960-1988   David Patrick COADY   Prof N H Stern
1992   PhD   St Andrews   Alexander Dalrymple (1737-1808), hydrographer to the East India Company and to the Admiralty, as publisher: a catalogue of books and charts.   Andrew COOK   Dr B P Lenman
1992   PhD   Cambridge, Selwyn   Cross cultural conflict analysis: the “reality” of British victory in the second Anglo-Maratha War, 1803-1805   Randolf G S COOPER   Dr G Johnson
1992   DPhil   Sussex   The determinants of private consumption and the impact of fiscal policy: a study of Sri Lanka   Ginige A C DE SILVA   Prof M T Sumner
1992   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   Aspects of community participation among the slum dwellers in achieving housing in Bombay   Vandana DESAI   Dr M J Banks; Dr G C K Peach
1992   DPhil   Sussex   Biomass entitlements and rural poverty in India: a village study of crop residues in south Gujerat   Priyamwada DESHINGKAR   Dr M Greeley
1992   PhD   Cambridge, Girton   Indian thought, myth and folklore in the fiction of Rudyard Kipling and E M Forster   C R DEVADAWSON   Prof J B Beer
1992   PhD   London, UC   Residential location of low-income households in Hyderabad, India   Pothuia Jonathan DHARMARAJ
1992   PhD   London, UC   Residential location of low-income households in Hyderabad, India   J P DHARMARAT
1992   PhD   Cambridge, Churchill   Religion, identity and authority among the Satnamis in colonial central India   S DUBE   Dr R O’Hanlon
1992   DPhil   Oxford, Wolfson College   Continuity and recreation in the performing arts of India: a study of two artistic traditions   Anne-Marie GASTON   Mr B R Wilson
1992   PhD   Cambridge, Wolfson   The institutional politics of gender in development policy for rural development in Bangladesh   A M M GOETZ   Mr G P Hawthorn
1992   PhD   CNAA, Central England   The “Karnata Dravida” tradition: development of Indian temple architecture in Karnataka 7th to 13th centuries   C A HARDY
1992   PhD   Open   State policy, liberalisation and the development of the Indian software industry   Richard Brendan HEEKS
1992   DPhil   Oxford   Entreprenurial decline and the end of Empire: British business in India, 1919-1949   A-M HISRA
1992   PhD   Cambridge, King’s   Music of Northern Pakistan   C E HUEHNS   Dr R F Davis
1992   PhD   London, SOAS   Female migrants’ adaptation in Dhaka: a case study of the processes of urban socio-economic change   Shahnaz HUQ-HUSSAIN   Dr R W Bradnock
1992   PhD   Bristol   Hindu Muslim inter group relations in Bangladesh: a cognitive inter group analysis   Mir R ISLAM   Prof M R C Hewstone
1992   MLitt   Cambridge, Christ’s   Medical choice in an urban village: a study of Zamrudpur, Delhi   R JALOTA
1992   MPhil   London, Wye   The economics of tea investments: an assessment of factors influencing the profitability of management and rehabilitation of tea establishments in Sri Lanka   Jayakodi Arachchige Maikanthi JAYAKODY
1992   MPhil   Liverpool   The response of democratic governments to armed resistance: India, Argentina, Peru, Colombia and Northern Ireland   J KARUMBIAH
1992   PhD   Leicester   Plume-lithosphere interaction: petrology of Rajmahal continental flood basalts and associated lamproites, Northeast India   Raymond William KENT
1992   PhD   Nottingham   Housing and landslides: a case study in Murree, Pakistan   Amir Nawaz KHAN   Prof J C Moughtin; Mr S Jalloh
1992   MPhil   Bradford   Investment in human capital in Pakistan   M N KHAN
1992   PhD   Strathclyde   Foreign aid, domestic saving and economic growth in retrospect: the case of Pakistan (1960-1988)   Naheed Zia KHAN   Dr E Rahim
1992   PhD   Strathclyde   Settlement processes and strategy in metropolitan areas: policy options for improvements of slums in Pakistan   Dost-Ali KHOWAJA   A Ramsey
1992   PhD   London, Wye   Irrigation systems management under diversified cropping in Sri Lanka: a multiple objective economic assessment on performance of main-water management   Hemesiri Bandara KOTAGAMA
1992   DPhil   Oxford, St Cath’s   A description of the trade in readers for children by Longmans to British India and by Thomas Nelson to the British West Indies (1900-1939)and an examination of the structure of motifs in the readers’ texts   Wayne Barry KUBLALSINGH   Dr T F Eagleton
1992   PhD   Cambridge, Churchill College   State power and the erosion of colonial authority in Uttar Pradesh, India, 1930-42   G KUDAISYA   Prof D A Low
1992   PhD   Cambridge   The public career of G D Birla, 1911-1947   M Mlf G S KUDAISYA   Prof D A Low
1992   PhD   London, LSE   An anthropological account of Islamic holy men in Bangladesh   Samual Peter LANDELL-MILLS   Dr A A F Gell
1992   PhD   London, LSE   Inequality, poverty and mobility: the experience of a north Indian village   Peter Frederik LANJOUW   Prof N Stern
1992   PhD   Wales, Cardiff   Planning education in small dispersed island states with particular reference to the Maldives   Mohamed LATHEEF
1992   PhD   London, LSE   The demography of Indian famines: a historical perspective   A MAHARATNA
1992   MPhil   London, King’s   The British in Bihar, 1757-81   Paramita MAHARATNA   Prof P J Marshall
1992   MPhil   London, King’s   The establishment of British rule in Bihar, 1757-1981   Paraamita MAHARATNA   Prof P J Marshall
1992   MPhil   East Anglia   Rural development in Pakistan: role and some effects of public sector   Abrar Ahmad MALIK
1992   DPhil   Sussex   A study of rural poverty in Pakistan with special reference to agricultural price policy   Shahnawaz MALIK   Mr P Chaudhuri
1992   PhD   Liverpool   Prevalence and genetics of resistance of antimicrobial agents in faecal enterobacteriaceae from children in Bangladesh   K Z MAMUM
1992   PhD   Bradford   Foreign joint ventures in Bangladesh: an empirical investigation of joint ventures in a less developed country between foreign multinational countries and local enterpirses: the case of Bangladesh   G S MAOLA   Prof P J Buckley
1992   DPhil   Oxford, St Hilda’s    Entreprenurial decline and the end of the Empire: British business in India, 1919-1949   Anna-Maria MISRA   Dr T Raychaudhuri; Dr D R Tomlinson
1992   PhD   London, Birkbeck   Languages as identity symbols: an investigation into language attitudes and behaviour amongst second-generation South Asian schoolchildren in Britain including the special case of Hindi and Urdu   M C MOBBS
1992   PhD   Cambridge, Gonville     From cattle to cane: the economic and social transformation of a Tarai village, North India   R H MONTGOMERY   Dr C Humphrey
1992   MPhil   Leicester   British newspaper coverage of Pakistan   Ahmad MUKHTAR   P Golding
1992   DPhil   Oxford, Balliol   Food Engel curves and equivalence scales in Sri Lanka   M MURTHI
1992   PhD   Glasgow   The institution of cooperation, credit and the process of of development in the Indian and Pakistan Punjabs   K MUSTAFA
1992   PhD   CNAA, Huddersfield   Hindu students in a further education college: an ethnographic enquiry   P OLIVER
1992   DPhil   Oxford , Hertford College   Distress sales and exchange relations in a rural area of Rayalaseema Andhra Pradesh   Wendy K OLSEN   Mrs J U Heyer
1992   PhD   Newcastle   Vulnerability, seasonality and the public distribution system in western India: a micro-level study   E A OUGHTON
1992   PhD   Warwick   Education and community in colonial Jallandhar, 1880-1935   Rajvinder S PAL   Dr D A Washbrook
1992   PhD   London, LSE   Electricity demand and pricing in India, 1947-1986   Kirtida Vimai PARIKH   Dr M S Morgan
1992   PhD   London, Wye   Micropropogation of the Sri Lankan anthurium cultivar “Crinkled Red” (Anthurium andreanum Lind)   Sriyani Edussuriya PEIRIS
1992   MPhil   CNAA, St John’s College, Nottingham   The extended family in spouse selection: a critical study and theological evaluation of the patterns of Christian family life in India (especially in the churches of South India)   P S C POTHAN
1992   PhD   Sheffield   A study of rainfall fluctuations in the homogeneous rainfall regimes in Sri Lanka   M PUVANESWARAN
1992   PhD   Stirling   Studies of filter feeding carps of commerical importance in Bangladesh with particular emphasis on the use of automated counting methods   S RAHMATULLAH
1992   PhD   Strathclyde   Solar radiation assessment in Pakistan   I A RAJA
1992   DPhil   Oxford, Nuffield   Forest policy in the Central Provinces, 1860-1914   Mahesh RANGARAJAN   Dr T Raychaudhuri
1992   DPhil   Oxford, Linacre College   Ecophysiology of natural regeneration of “Abies pindrow” in the moist temperate forest of Pakistan   RAZA-UL-HAQ   Mr F B Thompson; Dr P S Savill
1992   PhD   London, External   Recent Christian-Hindu dialogue with reference to Christology   Robert Arthur ROBINSON
1992   MPhil   Newcastle upon Tyne   Changing the attitudes of staff in a residential setting in India – a case study   N ROTTON
1992   PhD   Cambridge, Fitzwilliam   The effect of regular deworming on the growth, health and nutritional status of pre-school children in Bangladesh   Emily Kate ROUSHAM   Dr C G Mascie-Taylor
1992   PhD   South Bank   Effects of psycho-cultural factors on the socialization of British born Indian and indigenous British children living in England   D SACHDEV
1992   PhD   Birmingham   An ecumenical ecclesiology: an historical and systemaic theological enquiry into the Church of North India   D K SAHU
1992   PhD   Reading   A systems approach to the study of potential production of boro rice in the Haor region of Bangladesh   M U SALAM
1992   PhD   Aberdeen   Farm level approaches to tree growing in agroforestry in Haryana, India   P K SARDANA
1992   DPhil   Oxford, Green   Adoption and rejection of eucalyptus on farms in North-West India   Naresh C SAXENA   Dr B Harriss; Mr J E M Arnold
1992   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   Women workers in the Bengal jute industry, 1890-1940: migration, motherhood and militancy   S SEN   Dr R S Chandabarkar
1992   PhD   Cambridge^hTrinity   Literary representation of national identity and the rhetoric of nationalism in Raja Rao’s Kanthapura   R SETHI   Mr T J L Cribb
1992   DPhil   Sussex   The determinants of private consumption and the impact of fiscal policy: a study of Sri Lanka   G A C de SILVIA
1992   PhD   Cambridge, Gonville   A forest policy for Western India: the Dangs, 1800s-1920s   A SKARIA   Prof C A Bayly
1992   MPhil   Birmingham   The encounter between Christianity and Buddhism in Sri Lanka from the perspective of the Lausanne Movement   S F SKUCE
1992   MPhil   Birmingham   The development of Gandhi’s moral and religious philosophy from 1888-1921   G E SMITH
1992   PhD   Leicester   The geology of the roof-zone of the Kohistan Batholith, Northwestern Pakistan   Michael A SULLIVAN
1992   PhD   Cambridge, Churchill   The military and the state in colonial Punjab, 1900–1939   T Yong TAN   Prof D A Low
1992   PhD   London, SOAS   Competing identities: the problem of what to wear in late colonial and contemporary India   Emma Josephine TARLO
1992   DPhil   Oxford, St John’s College   Studies in English and European writing on India, 1600-1800   Kate ( Katherine S) TELTSCHER   Prof J Carey; Mr J B Katz
1992   PhD   London, LSE   Health attitudes and personal health care decisions in Bombay, India   Bayjool THAKKER   Dr J E Stockdale
1992   PhD   London, LSE   Personal health care decisions in Bombay, India   B THAKKER
1992   PhD   East Anglia   NGOs and rural development process in India: case studies from Rayalaseema   V UMA
1992   PhD   London, SOAS   The personal pronouns and their related clitics in six Khasi dialects: a grammatical and sociolinguistic study   B WAR
1992   PhD   CNAA, North London   Sir Walter Lawrence and India, 1879-1918   Catherine Mary WILSON   Prof D Judd; Dr P Mercer
1993   PhD   Open   Women’s home-based income generation as a strategy towards poverty survival: dynamics of the “Khannawalli” (mealmaking)activity of Bombay   D ABBOTT   Mr A Thoms
1993   PhD   Wales, Cardiff   The role of communication in the rise of the Islamic movements in the Muslim world with special reference to Egypt, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey   K ABU-ALKHAIR
1993   PhD   Cambridge, Girton   The People’s Party, the National Awami League and the political dynamics of federalism in Pakistan   S J AHMED   Mr G P Hawthorn
1993   PhD   Dundee   E M Forster at home and abroad: British and non-British elements in his fiction   A AL-HOUT
1993   PhD   Reading   Farmer-extension worker interaction and upstream information transfer in the T   V extension system in Bangladesh   Md. Mozahar ALI   Prof M J Rolls
1993   PhD   London, Ext (LSHTM)   Cultural influences on contraceptive behaviour in rural Bangaldesh   A AL-SABIR   J Simons
1993   PhD   Bradford   Agricultural credit for small farmers in Northern Pakistan: an analysis of access and productivity impact   Shehla Nasreen AMJAD   Dr Allan Low; Dr Behrooz Morvaridi
1993   PhD   East Anglia   Women’s experiences of a survival strategy: commoditisation of folk embroidery in Gujarat, India   J B ANDHARIA
1993   PhD   Liverpool   Seaweed resources in Sri Lanka: culture of Gracilaria and intertidal surveys   P ANNESTY JAYASURIYA
1993   PhD   Sheffield   A study of significant historic buildings in Lahore, leading towards the formulation of a national conservation policy for Pakistan   M Y AWAN   A Craven
1993   DPhil   York   The management of ethnic secessionist conflict with special reference to devolution of government: the external dimension and the big neighbour syndrome   Abersinghe BANDARA   Prof A Dunsire; Dr A Leftwich
1993   DPhil   Oxford, Somerville   A study of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement 1930-1947, North West Frontier Province, British India   Mukulika BANERJEE   Prof J Davis
1993   MPhil   Eales, Cardiff   A survey of the Pakistani Muslim community in Cardiff   P G BATEMAN
1993   PhD   Cambridge, Churchill   Agrarian reforms and the politics of the Left in West Bengal   D BHATTACHARYYA   Mr G P Hawthorn
1993   PhD   Leeds   Salisbury at the India Office, 1866-67 and 1874-78   Paul R BRUMPTON   Dr E D Steele
1993   PhD   London, SOAS   Contesting the resource: the politics of forest management in colonial Burma   Raymond Leslie BRYANT
1993   PhD   London, UC   The incompatability between the the needs of low-income households and the perceptions and attitudes of architects and planners: a case study of Lahore, Pakistan   Arif Qayyum BUTT
1993   PhD   Kent   Confidence building measures in South Asia   Navnita CHADHA   Prof A J R Groom
1993   DPhil   Oxford   The changing nature of the Indian hill station   A CHATERJI
1993   MLitt   Oxford, St Hilda’s   The changing nature of the Indian Hill Station   Aditi CHATTERJI   Dr D I Scargill
1993   PhD   Keele   Paul Scott’s “Raj Quartet”: historical approaches and Bakhtinian readings   P CHILDS
1993   MPhil   Sheffield   Applicability of the CDS-ISIS package in the automation of University libraries with partciular reference to India   S CHOWDHURY
1993   PhD   London, SOAS   Colonialism and cultural identity: the making of a Hindu discourse, Bengal, 1867-1905   Indira CHOWDHURY-SENGUPTA   Prof D J Arnold
1993   MPhil   London, SOAS   The rhythmic organisation of North Indian classical music: tal, lay and laykari   Martin Richard Lawson CLAYTON
1993   PhD   London, SOAS   From Bhakti to Buddhism: early Dalit literature and ideology   Philip John CONSTABLE   Prof D J Arnold
1993   PhD   London   The relevance and feasibility of community-based production of leaf concentrate as a supplement for pre-school children in Sri Lanka   David Nicholas COX
1993   PhD   Edinburgh   Size isn’t everything: an anthropologist’s view of the cook, the potter, her engineer and his donor in appropriate technology development in Sri Lanka, Kenya and UK   Emma CREWE   Dr A Good; Dr M Noble
1993   PhD   Essex   An empirical study of technical and allocative efficiency of wheat farmers in the Indian village of Palanpur   A CROPPENSTEDT
1993   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   Privilege and policy: the indigenous elite and the colonial education system in Ceylon, 1869-1948   Lakshmi K DANIEL   Dr T Raychaudhuri
1993   PhD   REading   Weed ecology studies in Sri Lanka: competition studies with maize, barley and oilseed rape   N P DISSANAYAKER
1993   M.Phil   Edinburgh   A study of the indigenous contribution to Tamil Saiva bhakti   C J EDEN
1993   PhD   Lancaster   Epic naratives inthe Hoysala temples: the Ramayana, Mahabharata and Bhagavata Purana in Halebid, Belur and Amrtapura   Kirsti Kaarina EVANS   Dr David Smith
1993   PhD   CNAA, Brighton Poly   Sport and South Asian male youth   S FLEMING
1993   PhD   Manchester   Intermarriage of Zoroastrian women in bombay   H K FRASER
1993   PhD   Brunel   TV talk in a London Punjabi peer culture   M GILLESPIE
1993   PhD   Keele   Occasions of grace: interpretations of truth in Paul Scott’s “The Raj Quartet”   P A GLOVER
1993   PhD   London, LSE   The multiplicity of agencies promoting the health of refugees, with a case study of the Afghans in Pakistan, 1978-1989   Nancy GODFREY   Prof B Abel-Smith
1993   PhD   Open   The Gujeratis of Bolton: the leaders and the led   K G HAHLO
1993   PhD   Loughborough   Acquiring foreign language materials for Pakistani libraries: a study   Syed Jalaluddin HAIDER   Prof J P Feather
1993   Phil   East Anglia   The implications of tourism for the environment: a Maldives case study   H HAMEED
1993   PhD   London, SOAS   Eurasians in British India, 1773-1833: the making of a reluctant community   Christopher John HAWES   Prof D J Arnold
1993   PhD   Aberdeen   Some aspects of the chemistry and mineralogy of soil magnesium in relation to Camellia growth on Sri Lankan acid tea soils   L HETTIARACHCHI
1993   PhD   Manchester   Management control in public sector enterprises: a case study of budgeting in the jute industry of Bangladesh   A K M Z HOQUE   Prof T Hopper
1993   PhD   Salford   Rural accessibility and agricultural development in Bangladesh   N A HUQ   Dr R D Knowles
1993   PhD   London, LSE   Decentralized resource allocation in primary health care: formal methods and their application in Britain and Pakistan   M ISHFAQ
1993   PhD   Manchester   Transnational corporations and economic development: a study of the Malaysian electronics industry   M N ISMAIL
1993   PhD   Edinburgh   Rice marketing in Pakistan: the case for liberalisation ?   Amanat Ali JALBANI
1993   DPhil   York   Language maintenance and bilingualism in Darbhanga   Shailjanand JHA   Dr C Verma
1993   PhD   Cambridge   Industrial concentration and performance: an empirical study of the structure, conduct and performance of Indian industry (1970-1985)   U S KAMBHAMPATI
1993   PhD   London   A genetic analysis of diabetes mellitus in subjects of Indian origin   Parminder Kaur KAMBO
1993   MPhil   Strathclyde   Famine and poliocy in the Central Provinces of India: the crises of 1896/97 and 1899/1900   Nicalas W KEYS   Dr P S Collins
1993   PhD   Kent   Regional conflict in South Asia: the route to intractability in the Kashmir conflict, 1947-1990   A Robert KHAN   Prof A J R Groom
1993   MPhil   Wales, Bangor   Wood production through agroforestry in Charsadda district, North West Frontier Province, Pakistan   F S KHAN
1993   DPhil   Oxford, St Hilda’s    Indian Muslim perceptions of the West during the 18th century   Gulfishan KHAN   Dr I Malik
1993   PhD   Wales, Bangor   Ex-post cost benefit analysis of village woodlots of Gujarat, India   J A KHAN
1993   PhD   London, External   The history of printing and publishing in Ceylon, with special reference to Sinhalese books, 1737-1912   Egodahettiarachchige Don Tilakapala KULARATNE
1993   MLitt   Cambridge   The security of new states, Pakistan and Singapore: a study in contrast and compulsion   A UL I LATIF
1993   MLitt   Glasgow   The imperial eye: perceptions in British photography (1850-1870)of India and the Near East   Alison J LINDSAY   Dr C A Wilson
1993   DPhil   Oxford, Somerville   The role of culture in India’s international relations   V MANI
1993   PhD   London, SOAS   Caring women: power and ritual in Gujerati households in East London   Merryle Ann McDONALD   Dr N Lindisfarne
1993   PhD   Cambridge   Governance and resistance in north Indian towns, c.1860-1900   Patrick M McGINN   Prof C A Bayly
1993   PhD   City   Gamaka and Alamkara: concepts of vocal ornamentation with reference to Bara Khayal   S M McINTOCH
1993   PhD   Aston   Management role in employee participation: a comparative study of multination enterprisei n India and the UK   Santrupt MISRA   Dr R Lumley
1993   PhD   Aston   Management role in employee participation: a comparative study of multinational enterprises in India and the UK   Santrupt MISRA   Dr R Lumley
1993   PhD   London, LSE   Inside and outside: conceptual continuities from household to region in Kumaon, North India   Joanne MOLLER   Dr C Fuller
1993   MPhil   Loughborough   Performance of concrete buried pipe distribution systems of surface irrigation under farm manager’s management in Tangail, Bangladesh   Mohammed Abdul Karim MRIDHA   Mr I K Smout
1993   PhD   London, Wye   The economic evaluation of agricultural research in Sri Lanka   Jeyaluxmy NADARAJAH
1993   PhD   Cambridge, St Edmund’s   Co-option and control: the role of the colonial army in India, 1918-47   Namrata NARAIN   Dr R S Chandavarkar
1993   PhD   London, LSE   Kinship, marriage and womanhood among the Nakarattars of South India   Yuko NISHIMURA   Dr C Fuller
1993   PhD   Guildhall   The determinants of direct overseas investment from Singapore   Samual Bassey OKPOSEN   M Cowen
1993   PhD   Hull   British policy and Chinese policy in Malaya, 1942-1955   HAK CHING OONG   C J Christie
1993   PhD   London, LSE   Making hierarchy natural: the cultural construction of gender and maturity in Kerala, India   Caroline OSELLA   Dr C Fuller; Dr J P Parry
1993   PhD   London, LSE   Caste, class, power and social mobility in Kerala, India   Filippo OSELLA   Dr C Fuller; Dr J P Parry
1993   DPhil   Oxford, Christ Church   The confusions of an imperialist inheritance: the Labour Party and the Indian problem, 1940-1947   Nicholas J OWEN   Dr J G Darwin
1993   DPhil   York   Imperialism, insularity and identity: the novels of Paul Scott   G Martin PATERSON   Mr Landig White
1993   PhD   London, UC   Effects of land use policies on land prices in middle income housing, Hyderabad, India   Padmavathi PERVAR
1993   PhD   London, UC   Sir Leonard Rogers F.R.S. (1868-1962): tropical medicine in the Indian Medical Service   Helen Joy POWER   Prof WF Bynum
1993   DPhil   Oxford, Campion Hall   Satnamis: the changing status of a scheduled caste in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradash   Gnana PRAKASAM   Dr N J Allen
1993   MPhil   Wales, Aberystwyth   The career of Robert, first baron Clive (1725-1764) with special reference to his administrative and political career   David Livett PRIOR   Prof P D G Thomas
1993   PhD   London, QMW   Belonging and not belonging: understanding India in novels by Paul Scott, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and V S Naipaul   Janet Mariana PUGH
1993   PhD   Newcastle upon Tyne   Coping strategies of domestic workers: a study of three settlements in Delhi metropolitan region, India   P RAGHURAM   Dr J D Jones
1993   MPhil   Leicester   Conceptions of health and health care among two generations of Gujerati-speaking Hindu women in Leicester   V RAJA
1993   PhD   London, LSE   The political economy of agrarian policies in Kerala: a study of state intervention in agricultural commodity markets with particular reference to dairy pmarkets   Velayudhan RAJAGOPALAN   Prof T J Nossiter
1993   PhD   Hull   Religion, politics and the secular state in India after independence   C S RANGANATHAN
1993   PhD   London, LSE   Construction of female gender in rural north India   Deborah Edith RUTTER   Dr J P Parry
1993   MPhil   Newcastle-upon-Tyne   Modelling growth of rainfed and irrigated sugarcane in the dryzone of Sri Lanka   K SANMUGANATHAN
1993   PhD   Hull   Tribes, politics and social change in India: a case study iof the Mullukurumbas of the Nilgiri Hills   S SATHIANATHAN
1993   PhD   Keele   The sources and supply of basic foods in Dhaka City   Sayeed SAYEED
1993   PhD   London, SOAS   Pollution theory and Harijan strategies among south Indian Tamils   Yasumasa SEKINE
1993   PhD   London, Inst Comm   The linkages between Pakistan’s domestic policies and its foreign policy, 1971-1991   Mehtab-Ali SHAH   Dr P H Lyon
1993   PhD   UEA   Various approaches to the measurement of inefficiency in Pakistani agriculture: an empirical investigation   M K SHAR
1993   PhD   London, SOAS   Consumer protection law in India: a socio-legal study   Gurjeet SINGH
1993   PhD   Cambridge, Darwin   Quarternary alluvial sedimentology in Bihar, India   Rajeev SINHA   Dr P F Friend
1993   PhD   Cambridge, King’s   On religion and renunciation: the case of the Raikas of western Rajahastan   Vinay Kumar SRIVASTAVA   Dr C Humphrey
1993   PhD   Leicester   The empire aggrandized, a study in commemorative portrait statuary exported from Britain to her colonies in South Asia, 1800-1939   M A STEGGIES
1993   MPhil   Warwick   South Asians and employment in Great Britain with particular reference to agriculture   R H G SUGGETT
1993   OhD   London, SOAS   Peasant agriculture and tenancy in Orissa (India): a study of three villages at different levels of development, with special reference to share tenancy   M SWAIN
1993   PhD   Warwick   The politics of homeland: a study of ethnic linkages and political mobilisation amongst Sikhs in Britain and North America   D S TALLA
1993   PhD   Edinburgh   Lakshmi in the market place: traders and farmers in a north Indian market   M S TOMAR   Dr P M Jeffrey; Dr R Jeffrey
1993   PhD   Hull   Nagas in the museum: an anthropological study of the material cculture of the Hill People of the Assam-Burnma border   Andrew OChristopher WEST   Mr L G Hill
1993   PhD   London, SOAS   The politics of moderation: Britain and the Indian Liberal Party, 1917-1923   Philip Graham WOODS   Prof D J Arnold
1993   PhD   Leeds   Afghanistan in the defence of India, 1903-1915   Christopher Mark WYATT   Dr K M Wilson
1993   PhD   Exeter   The correlates of contraceptive and fertility behaviour withon the framework of sociocultural ideology: a case study of two urban centres of Pakistan   M I ZAFAR
1994   PhD   Glasgow   The non-compliant behaviour of the small states of South Asia: Nepal and Bangladesh in relation to India   S AFROZE
1994   MPhil   Lancaster   The status of women and fertility: a case study of Pakistani women in Rochdale    Salma AHMAD   Dr Suzette Heald; Dr Sarah Franklin
1994   PhD   London, UC   The hydrogeology of the Dupi Tila sands acquifer of the Barind tract, NA Bangladesh   Kazi Matin Uddin AHMED   Dr W G Burgess
1994   PhD   Cambridge, Wolfson   Behavioural ecology of the Hoolock gibbon (Hylobates Hoolock)in Bangladesh   M F AHSAN   Dr D J Chivers
1994   PhD   Cambridge, King’s   Violence and the state in the partition of Punjab, 1947-48   Swarna AIYAR   Prof D A Low
1994   PhD   Manchester   Taxation and economic development in Bangladesh with special reference to indirect taxation   Sofia H J ALI   Ms W Olsen
1994   PhD   Salford   Environmental assessment for wetlands management in Sri Lanka   M D AMARASINGHE
1994   PhD   Cambridge, Fitzwilliam   Residential land price changes in selected peripheral colonies of Lucknow City, India, 1970-1990   F AMITABH   Dr S E Corbridge
1994   PhD   Cranfield, Silsoe   Mechanisation of grain harvesting in Pakistan   Nadeem AMJAD
1994   PhD   London, SOAS   Women’s consciousness and assertion in colonial India: gender, social reform and politics in Maharashtra, c.1870-c.1920   P ANAGOL-McGINN
1994   PhD   London, SOAS   Women’s consciousness and assertion in colonial India: gender, social reform and politics in Maharashtra, c.1870-1920   Padma ANAGOL-McGINNnagol   Prof D J Arnold
1994   PhD   Strathclyde   Tourism in developing countries: a case study of Pakistan   M I ANWAR
1994   PhD   Bradford   The understanding of truth and the human person in Gandhi’s thought   C ARBER
1994   PhD   Leicester   Mineralogy, geochemistry and stable isotope studies of the ultramafic rocks from the Swat Valley ophiolite, North Western Pakistan: implications for the genesis of emerald and nickeliferous opaque phases   Mohammad ARIF
1994   PhD   Edinburgh   The understanding of pastoral care and counselling in the Church of South India, with special reference to the work of the Christian Counselling Centre, Velore   Nalini ARLES   Prof A F Walls; Dr D Lyall
1994   PhD   Birmingham   Bangladeshi community organisations in East London: a case study analysis   M A ASGHAR
1994   PhD   London, SOAS   Naqshbandi Sufis in a western setting   A T ATAY
1994   PhD   London, LSHTM   Cost effectiveness of anti-malaria activities in Sri Lanka   A M G G N K ATTANAYAKE
1994   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   Is education beneficial ? A microeconomic analysis of the impact of education on the economic welfare of a developing country, Sri Lanka   D H C ATURUPANE   Dr P B Seabright
1994   PhD   Leicester   The Koga feldspathoidal syenite, North Western Pakistan: mineralogy and industrial applications   Iftikar Hussain BALOCH
1994   PhD   Cambridge, Darwin   Workers’ politics in Bengal, 1890-1929: mill-towns, strikes and nationalist agitations   Subho BASU   Dr R S Chandavarkar
1994   BLitt   Oxford, Lady Margaret   The famine of 1899-1900 and the government of India   M BHABA
1994   PhD   Essex   A comparative sociolinguistic study of urban and rural Sindhi   M Q BUGHIO
1994   PhD   Southampton   India, Sri Lanka and the Tamil crisis, 1976-1990   A J BULLION
1994   PhD   Cambridge, Darwin   Fluvial landforms and sediments in the North-Central Gangetic plain, India   S CHANDRA   Dr K S Richards
1994   PhD   London, LSE   Legislators in India: a comparison of MLAs in five states   Virender Kumar CHOPRA   Prof T J Nossiter
1994   PhD   London, King’s   The development of Singapore land law as influenced by English and Australian law   Panicker Alice CHRISTUDASON
1994   PhD   Cambridge, King’s    Urban texts: an interpretation of the architectural, textual and artefactual records of a Sri Lankan early historic city   R A E CONINGHAM   Dr F R Allchin
1994   PhD   Kent   Indias of the mind: the construction of post-colonial identity in Salman Rushdie’s fiction   C P CUNDY
1994   MLitt   Bristol   British Baptist missionary activity in Orissa, 1822-1914   P K DAS
1994   PhD   Cambridge, St Cath’s    The making of a Jat identity in the Southeast Punjab circa 1880-1936   Monica DATTA   Prof C A Bayly
1994   MPhil   Wales, Cardiff   An evaluation of the attractiveness to Apia cerana F. of the honeybee flora growing in the Dhaka region of Bangladesh and the socio-economic value of these plants to the local community   R J DAY
1994   DPhil   Oxford, New   Indian industry 1950-1990: growth, demand and productivity   Ranu DAYAL
1994   DPhil   Oxford, Wolfson   Technical change and efficiency in Sri Lanka’s manufacturing sector   Sonali D P DERANIYAGALA   Mrs F J Stewart
1994   PhD   Edinburgh   Energy resources and the role of mini and micro hydro power in Northern India   Alison DOIG
1994   PhD   London, Wye   Reaching the poor ? The identification and assessment of rural poverty by a non-governmental organisation (NGO)in Gujerat, India   Talib Baahadurail Karmali ESMAIL
1994   PhD   London, LSE   Defence industrialization in the NICs: case studies from Brazil and India   Carol Vervain EVANS
1994   PhD   London   Dying: death and bereavement in a British Hindu community   Shirley Jean FIRTH
1994   MPhil   Bristol   Pakistan: a power in central Asia    N GHUFRAN   Dr V Hewitt
1994   PhD   Hull   Construction of the European Union: implications for the developing countries: case study of India   D K GIRI
1994   PhD   London   Sufism and its development inthe Panjab   Shuja Ul HAQ
1994   PhD   Aberdeen   Export performance and marketing strategy for Malaysian palm oil   A HASHIM
1994   PhD   Bradford   Microenterprises in Pakistan: an efficiency and performance analysis of manufacturing microenterprises in North West Frontier Province, Pakistan   Syed Amjad Farid HASNU   Mr Michael Yaffey
1994   PhD   Birmingham   The quest of Ajneya: a theological appraisal of the search for meaning in his three Hindi novels   R H HOOKER
1994   PhD   Newcastle   Mechanisation of wheat production in Bangladesh based on a growth modelling approach   A H M S HOSSAIN
1994   PhD   Newcastle   Some factors affecting the performance of draught buffaloes in wetland rice cultivation in Sri Lanka   S M HULANGAMUWA
1994   PhD   Edinburgh   The scented garden in Deccani Muslim literature   S A A HUSAIN
1994   PhD   Durham   Rural-urban integration in Bangladesh: a study of linkages between villages and small urban centres   M N ISLAM   Dr P J Atkins
1994   PhD   Nottingham   Standards of safety in the underground coal mining industry of Pakistan   K G JADOON
1994   PhD   Bradford   Trade liberalization and performance: the impact of trade reform on manufacturing sector performance: Sri Lanka, 1977-89   Kangesu JAYANTHAKUMARAN   Prof C Kirkpatrick; Mr Michael Yaffey
1994   PhD   Reading   Changing patterns ofinformal and formal finance in a Rajasthan village   J Howard M JONES   Mr A Harrison
1994   PhD   London, SOAS   Polygamy and purdah in the royal households of Rajastan – 13th-19th centuries   Varsha JOSHI   Prof D J Arnold
1994   MPhil   Oxford, St Cath’s   Sustainability of public debt: an application to India   Alka KACKER   Dr E V K Fitzgerald
1994   PhD   Reading   Comparison of extension provision for the smallholder and estate tea sectors in Sri Lanka   H R K K KARUNADASA   Dr C J Garforth
1994   PhD   Glasgow   Factor price distortions, underutilisation of capacity and employment in the large-scale manufacturing sector of Pakistan   R KAUSER
1994   PhD   London, SOAS   Missionaries: the Hindu state and British paramountcy in Travancore and Cochin, 1858-1936   Koji KAWASHIMA   Prof D J Arnold
1994   MPhil   Strathclyde   Famine and famine policy in the central provinces of India: the crises of 1896-7 and 1899-1900   N W KEYS
1994   PhD   Wales, Lampeter   Indian Muslims in the political process   O KHALIDI
1994   PhD   Strathclyde   Poverty, uneven development, urbanisation and economic planning policies in Pakistan: a case study of Peshawar, North West Frontier Province   Assmatullah KHAN   Prof U Wannop
1994   PhD   Strathclyde   Interlinkages between land-lease and credit markets: impact on the introduction of modern technology in the North West Frontier Province (Pakistan)   H KHAN
1994   PhD   Lancaster   Saiva priests of Tamil Nadu   G LAZAR
1994   PhD   London   Fertility transition in Malaysia: an analysis by state and ethnic group   R LEETE
1994   PhD   London, Inst Ed   A comparative study of educational disadvantage in India within the Anglo-Indian community: a historical and contemporary analysis   Antoinette Iris Grace LOBO   Mr C Jones
1994   PhD   London, SOAS   The transformation of colonial perceptions into legal norms: legislating for crime and punishment in Bengal, 1790s to 1820s   Shahdeen MALIK
1994   PhD   Central England   Housing finance in developing countries: a case study of Lahore, Pakistan   T H MALIK
1994   PhD   Open   Thermal comfort for urban housing in Bangladesh   F H MALLICK
1994   PhD   London, Bedford   Consciousness and the actors: a re-assessment of Western and Indian approaches to the actor’s emotional involvement from the perspective of Vedic psychology   Daniel MEYER-DINKGRAFE
1994   DPhil   Sussex   The comprehensive crop insurance scheme in India, 1985-1991: a study of its working with special reference to Gujerat   Pramod K MISHRA   Prof M Lipton
1994   PhD   London, SOAS   From patriarchy to gender equity: family law and its impact on women in Bangladesh   Taslima MONSOOR
1994   DPhil   Sussex   Re-reading the Raj: narrative and power in British fictions of India   P G MOREY
1994   PhD   Reading   An effective communication model for the acceptance of new agricultural technology by farmers in the Punjab, Pakistan   Sher MUHAMMAD   Dr C J Garforth
1994   DPhil   Sussex   Brother, there are only two Jatis – men and women: the construction of gender identity, women, the state and personal laws in India   M MUKHOPADHYAY
1994   PhD   London, LSHTM   Visceral leishmaniasis vectors in Pakistan   Mohammad Arif MUNIR
1994   PhD   Leeds   Ramayana and Mahabharata: contemporary theatrical experiments in English with Indic oral traditions of storytelling   V NAIDU
1994   PhD   Durham   Rural-urban interaction in Bangladesh: a study of linkages between villagers and small urban centres   M N I NAZERN
1994   PhD   Queen’s, Belfast   Rukmini Devi and the Bharata Natyam – the revival of classical dance in India   K OHTANI
1994   PhD   London, SOAS   Bauls of West Bengal: with special reference to Raj Khyapa and his followers   Jeanne OPENSHAW   Dr A Cantlie
1994   DPhil    Sussex   Agrarian structure, new technology and labour absorption in Indian agriculture: an empirical investigation of Gujerat   Kirankumar Manubhai PANDYA
1994   PhD   London   Gender, discipleship and charismatic authority in the Rajneesh movement   Marie Elizabeth PUTTICK
1994   PhD   Durham   Social change and fertility transition in Sri Lanka   P PUVANARAJAN   Prof J I Clarke; Mr A R Townsend
1994   PhD   London, LSHTM   Epidemiology of visceral leishmaniasis in northern areas of Pakistan with particular reference to the reservoir(s)   Mohammed Abdur RAB
1994   PhD   Brunel   Management education and development strategies in Bangladesh   A S M M RAHMAN
1994   PhD   Wales, Swansea   Decentralisation and rural society in Bangladesh: a study of bureaucratic restraints on access in the UPAZILA structure    Mohammed Halibur RAHMAN   Dr C Gerry
1994   DPhil   Oxford, Worcester   India and the north-south politics of global environmental issues: the case of ozone depletion, climate change and loss of biodiversity   Mukund G RAJAN   Dr A J Hurrell
1994   PhD   Kent   Causal factors and transmission mechanisms of inflationary impulses in Sri Lanka, 1970-1989   Purnima RAJAPAKSE   Prof Thirlwall
1994   MPhil   London, SOAS   Remembering Burma: Tamil migrants and memories   Audrey Beatrice Stephanie RAMAMURTHY   Dr N Lindisfarne
1994   PhD   Reading   The analysis of farmer information systems for feeding dairy cattle in two villages of Kerala State, India   S N RAMKUMAR
1994   PhD   City   Perception-production in relation to fronting of velars in Hindi and Marati speaking children   M E RAO
1994   PhD   London, UC   Socio-economic status, channels of recruitment and the rural to urban migration of labour: a case study of the squatter settlements of Delhi, India   Himmat Singh RATNOO
1994   PhD   London, UC   Haemoglobin disorders among the tribal population of Madhya Pradesh, India   P H REDDY
1994   PhD   Cambridge, Sidney   Mohajir subnationalism and the Mohajir Qaumi Movement in Sindh Province, Pakistan   J J RICHARDS   Dr S Corbridge
1994   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   Conversion and catholicism in Southern Goa, India   R T ROBINSON   Dr C Humphrey
1994   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   Rural labour arrangements in West Bengal, India   Benjamin N ROGALY   Dr B Harriss
1994   PhD   Cambridge, St John’s   The politics of fiscal policy: some reflections on fiscal policy and state intervention in developing economies with special reference to India   R ROY
1994   PhD   Reading   The taxonomy and ecology of the genus Licuala (Palmae)in Malaya   L G SAW
1994   PhD   Cambridge, Clare Hall   Politics in Orissa, 1900-1956: regional identity and popular movements   Jayanta SENGUPTA   Dr R S Chandavarkar
1994   MPhil   Newcastle   Public participation in the Malaysian structure plan system practice, response and impact studies   K SHAMSUDIN
1994   PhD   Aberdeen   Attitudes of tribal people towards social forestry with reference to Madhya Pradesh, India   A SHUKLA
1994   PhD   Manchester   Decentralisation, participation and rural development in Bangladesh: an analysis pf the Upazila system   N A SIDDIQUEE   Dr D Hulme
1994   PhD   Bradford   The political economy of agricultural change in India   Kalim U SIDDIQUI   Dr Carolyn Dennis; Dr Behrooz Morvaridi
1994   PhD   Leicester   Electoral campaigns and the media: the coverage of India’s 1991 general election in the Indian and the British press   Balwinder SINGH   Ms O Linne
1994   DPhil   York   Case and agreement in Hindi: a GB approach   Joga SINGH   Mr M K Verma
1994   PhD   Manchester   Historical relations: representing collective identities. Small group portraiture in eighteenth-century England, British India and America   K S STANWORTH
1994   PhD   London, SOAS   The symbolic construction of the Sri Lankan Hindu Tamil community in Britain   D A TAYLOR
1994   PhD   Leeds   The development of the Bangladesh jute industry since 1971   F TERKELSEN
1994   PhD   Reading   Exploring media non-professionals’ participation in access television: towards a participatory production model for development broadcasting in India   Korula VARGHESE   Dr P Norrish
1994   PhD   London, Goldsmiths’   What the neighbours say: gender and power in two low-income settlemets in Madras   Penny VERA-SANSO   Prof P Caplan
1994   PhD   Queen’s, Belfast   Creation in Santal tribal religion and Christian faith: a study in comparative religion   W WALKER
1994   PhD   Manchester   Growth and adjustment after trade liberalisation: Sri Lanka, 1977-1992   D N WEERAKOON
1994   PhD   London, UC   The management of official records in Sri Lanka and its impact on public administration   Sarath Sisira Kumara WICKRAMANAYAKA
1994   PhD   REading   The solubility of rice straw silica and its use as a silicon source in paddy cultivation   D E WICKRAMASINGHE
1994   PhD   London   Effect of climatic factors on the growth of tea (“Camellia sinensis”)in the low country wet zone of Sri Lanka   Madawala Arachchillage WIJERATNE
1994   PhD   Leeds   Young British Hindu women’s interpretation of the images of womenhood in Hinduism   S M WILKINSON
1994   PhD   Bradford   Interlocking directorates in Hong Kong business organizations: a longitudinal study of their changing patterns   G Y-Y WONG
1994   PhD   London, SOAS   Mission-conversion-dialogue: the process of Christianization of the Richi in south-West Bangladesh   Cosimo ZENE   Dr A Cantlie
1995   PhD   London, King’s   The implications of the Falklands War for the defence of India’s island territories   Biju ABRAHAM   Prof G Till
1995   PhD   Exeter   An investigation into programme factors and providers and providers’ perceptions of family welfare centres in Faisalabad district of Pakistan   A AHMAD
1995   PhD   Exeter   An initiative into programme factors and providers’ perceptions at family welfare centres in Faisalbad district of Pakistan   Ashfaq AHMED
1995   PhD   Wales, Cardiff   Aspects of influence over accounting and accounting for currency devaluation in Bangladesh   J AHMED
1995   PhD   Birmingham   Social relations and migration: a study of post-war migration with particular reference to migration from Bangladesh to Britain   F ALAM
1995   PhD   Hull   Keralites in Abu Dhabi: a study of skilled and unskilled Keralite migrant workers in the city of Abu Dhabi   S A S ALKOBAISI
1995   PhD   Reading   The effect of a prolonged release formulation of bovine somatotropin (sometribove)on milk production of Bos Taurus and dairy crossbred cows in Malaysia   A AZIZAN
1995   PhD   Stirling   Scholarly publishing in Malaysia: a study of marketing environment and influences on readership behaviour   Firdaus Ahmad AZZAM
1995   PhD   Strathclyde   The role of the private sector in the provision of sites and services schemes for low income groups: a case study of Lahore, Pakistan   Ihsan-Ullah BAJWA   P Green
1995   PhD   Open   Crustal evolution and metamorphism in the high-grade terrain of South India   J M BARTLETT
1995   PhD   Lancaster   A study of continuity within the Ramakrishna Math and Mission with reference to the practice of seva, service to humanity   G T BECKERLEGGE
1995   MPhil   Wales   Population planning and its effect upon the development of agricultural policies in India since 1947   Austin BICKERS
1995   PhD   London, SOAS   An Indian cloth painting and its art worlds: perceptions of Orissan “patta” paintings   Helle BUNDGAARD   Dr C Pinney
1995   PhD   London, LSE   Gender, exchange and person in a fishing community in Kerala, South India   Cecilia Jane BUSBY   Dr Henrietta Moore
1995   PhD   Cambridge, Clare Hall   Britain, India and the genesis of the Colombo Plan, 1945-51   Philip J CHARRIER   Prof D A Low
1995   MPhil   Warwick   Such a long journey: the Anglo-Indian literary tradition: a study in duality   Mithu CHATTOPADHYAY
1995   DPhil   Oxford, Somerville   Orientalist themes and English verse in nineteenth century India   Rosinka CHAUDHURI   Dr R Young
1995   MPhil   London, King’s College   So peculiarly formed a corps: the beginnings of Gorkha service with the British    A P (Jim) COLEMAN   Prof B J Bond
1995   PhD   London   The elites of the Maldives: sociopolitical organisation and change   Elizabeth Overton COLTON
1995   PhD   Cambridge, Gonville     Origins, development and organisation of national Antarctic programmes with special reference to the United Kingdom and India   A DEY-NUTTALL
1995   PhD   London   The control of Callosobruchus maculatus (Fab.)in cowpeas in Sri Lanka: effect of varietal resistance, conventional insecticides and locally available bontanicals   C M D DHARMASENA
1995   PhD   London, SOAS   The Gujerati lyrics of Kavi Dayarambhai   R M J DWYER
1995   PhD   Edinburgh   Community health care the NGO way: an anthropological study of a maternal-child health and family planning programme in rural Bangladesh   R V EBDON   Dr A Good; Dr M C Jedrej
1995   DPhil   Oxford, Balliol   Co-option and exclusion: a study of Indian MPs   Paul C R FLATHER   Dr A F Heath
1995   PhD   Strathclyde   Solar based technology for crop drying in rural Pakistan   Mohammad GHAFFAR   Dr G Zawdie
1995   PhD   Cambridge, St Edmund’s   The enforcement of the zini ordinance by the Federal Shariat Court in the period 1980-1990 and its impact on women   E GIUNCHI   Dr B F Musallam
1995   PhD   London, SOAS   Popular resistance to Zamindari oppression in the Eastern Uttar Pradesh, Northern India, 1920-1960   Kusum GOPAL   Prof D J Arnold
1995   PhD   London, SOAS   Geology in India, 1770-1851: a study in the methods and motivations of a colonial science   Andrew GROUT   Dr P G Robb
1995   PhD   London   Carbon dioxide abatement in an empirical model of the Indian economy: an integration of micro and macro analysis   S GUPTA
1995   DPhil   Oxford   The Kishangarh school of painting, c 1680-1850   N N HAIDAR
1995   PhD   Cambridge, King’s   The implications of resettlement on Vasava identity: a study of a community displaced by the Sardar Sarovar (Narmada)Dam project   R P HAKIM   Mr G P Hawthorn
1995   PhD   Keele   Dimensions and types of Malay family interaction in Malaysia: a humanistic approach   L M H HARUN
1995   PhD   London, LSE   Management practices and business development in Pakistan, 1950-1988   Naveed HASAN   Dr G M Austin
1995   PhD   London, Wye   Factors influencing post-harvest longevity of embul bananas   K S HEWAGE
1995   PhD   Durham   Singapore’s experience in ASEAN: the nature of trade and inward investment   M A HILEY   Dr R J A Wilson
1995   PhD   East London   Women’s right to divorce in rural Bangladesh   Naima HUQ   Mr J Roche; Dr J Cooper; Dr J Eade
1995   MPhil   Wales, Lampeter   Resistance, reformation and rejection: modernity and tradition in ninteenth century Hinduism   S B JACOBS
1995   PhD   London, LSHTM   Gynaecological and mental health of low-income urban women in India   Surinda Kaur Parmar JASWAL
1995   PhD   Edinburgh   Estate Tamil: a morphosyntactic study   Nagita KADRURGAMUWE
1995   PhD   Leeds   Provision of corporate financial information in Bangladesh   A K M Waresul KARIM   Prof P Moizer; Ms H Short
1995   PhD   East London   Changing responses to child labour: the case of female children in the Bangladesh garment industry   Sumaiya KHAIR   Dr H Lim; Prof M Freeman
1995   PhD   London, Imperial   Inclincations towards enterprise – a typology of poor, enterprising and non-enterprising women in India   U E KRAUS-HARPER
1995   PhD   London, SOAS   Metropolitan encounters: a study of Indian students in Britain, 1880-1930   Shompa LAHIRI   Dr P G Robb
1995   PhD   Exeter   How to measure default risk: an empirical study on India’s operations in the loan and bond markets   Geeta LAKSHMI   Mr J Matatko; B Pearson
1995   DPhil   Oxford, Nuffield   Financial development, economic growth and the effect of financial innovation on the demand for money in an open economy: an econometric analysis for Singapore   Lamin LEIGH   Dr J Muellbauer; Prof D F Hendry
1995   PhD   Kent   Structured dependency: lone mothers and social security in Hong Kong   L C LEUNG
1995   PhD   London, RHBNC   Sufism, sufi leadership and modernisation in South Asia since c.1800   Claudia LIEBESKIND   Prof F R C Robinson
1995   PhD   Wales, Swansea   Planning for the participation of vulnerable groups in communal management of forest resources: the case of the Western Ghats forestry projects   Catherine LOCKE   Prof Alan Rew
1995   PhD   Wales, Cardiff   Aspects of urban design with special reference to image and identity in built form – case study of Kuala Lumpur   B S MAHBOB
1995   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   Pakistan’s foreign policy, 1971-1981: the search for security   Niloufer Q MAHDI   Dr G Rizvi
1995   DPhil   Oxford, St Peter’s    Impact of highland-lowland interaction on agriculture in the Hunza Valley: the socio-economic transformation of mountain societies   Arif MAHMUD   Prof G C K Peach
1995   DPhil   Oxford, Oriel   Contractual arrangements in Pakistani agriculture : a study of share tenancy in Sindh   Nomaan MAJID   Dr B Harriss
1995   MD   Manchester   Maternal and environmental factors and the development of Pakistani children (6-18 months)   S MAQBOOL
1995   PhD   Nottingham   Resource partitioning and productivity of perennial pigeonpea/groundnut agroforestry systems in India   F M MARSHALL
1995   PhD   Essex   Social factors shaping fertility behaviour in Pakistan   Rukhsana MASOOD   Dr Joan Busfield; Mr? Sullivan
1995   PhD   Kent   Toward an integral ecotheology relevant for India   MATHEW
1995   PhD   Edinburgh   Alexander Duff and the theological and philosophical background to the General Assembly’s mission in Calcutta to 1840   Ian Douglas MAXWELL   Prof A F Walls; Dr A C Ross
1995   PhD   London, SOAS   Tibet and the British Raj, 1904-47: the influence of the Indian political department officers   Alexander Colin McKAY   Dr P G Robb
1995   PhD   Cambridge, New Hall   The politics of nationalism: the cast of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh   A A MOHSIN   Mr G P Hawthorn
1995   PhD   Leicester   Media, state and political violence: the press construction of terrorism in the Indian Pubjab   Vipul MUDGAL   Anders Hansen
1995   PhD   Leicester   Media, state and political violence: the press construction of terrorism in the Indian Punjab   Vipul MUDGAL
1995   PhD   Manchester   An analysis of factors affecting farmers’ participation in two rice irrigation schemes in Sri Lanka   S H MUDIYANSELAGE
1995   PhD   Edinburgh   Evolution of the early Himalayan Foreland Basin in North West India and its relationship to orogenesis   Y M R NAJMAN
1995   PhD   Lancaster   The Mills and Boon memsahibs: women’s romantic Indian fiction, 1877-1947   Dominic OMISSI   Prof J M MacKenzie
1995   PhD   Surrey   Consumption, fiscal policy and endogenous growth: the case of India   I PATNAIK
1995   PhD   Durham   A theological reappraisal of the mission of the Christian church in Tamilnadu in the light of the challenge presented by the Dravida Kazhagam Movement (a secular humanistic)movement   R PAULRAJ
1995   PhD   Bradford   A cointegration analysis of money demand in a developing country: a case study of Pakistan   A QAYYUM
1995   PhD   Edinburgh   A comparative study of native and Pakistani geology research articles   Mujib RAHMAN
1995   PhD   Newcastle   Eco-engineering prtactices in Malaysia   N RAHMAN
1995   PhD   Edinburgh   Activating vs. resetting functional categories in second language acquisition: the acquisition of AGR and TNS in English by Sinhalese first language speakers   Hemamala Vajira RATWATTE
1995   PhD   Edinburgh   George Orwell, the BBC and India: a critical study   Abha S RODRIGUES   Mr G D Carnell; Dr R C Craig
1995   PhD   London, LSE   Socio-cultural changes in an Indian peasant society   Arild Engelsen RUUD   Dr J Harries
1995   PhD   London, UC   Public transport in Kuala Lumpur: a model based approach   A F SADULLAH
1995   MPhil   Loughborough   The macroeconomic impact of foreign capital inflows: a case study of Pakistan   T SAEED
1995   PhD   Strathclyde   The lessons from privatization experience for privatization in Pakistan: from public sector enterprises to monopolistic utilities   Mushtaq A SAJID
1995   PhD   Leicester   Mineralogy, geochemistry and possible industrial applications of illite-smectite rich clays from Karak, Northwestern Pakistan   Akhtar Ali SALEEMI
1995   PhD   Stirling   Small enterprise development in Bangladesh: a study of the nature and effectiveness of support services   J H SARDER
1995   PhD   Cambridge   Histological techniques for estimating age at death from human bone:an Indian case study   A SAXENA
1995   MPhil   Newcastle   An analysis of prices and marketing margins for potatoes and onions in Pakistan   S SHAH
1995   MPhil   Leeds   The development of an environmentally sensitive information system in the water industry in Bangladesh   Mohammad Taslim Uddin SHARIF   Prof T Moizer
1995   PhD   Open   A comparative study of Milton Keynes (UK)and Islamabad (Pakistan)   M I H SIDDIQI   Mr R Thomas; Mr J B Harison
1995   PhD   Newcastle   The reproductive biology and histology of three species of sceractinian corals from the Republic of Maldives, India Ocean   C J SIER
1995   PhD   Wales, Bangor   Economic evaluation of agroforestry, forestry and agriculture projects in Orissa, India: with particular reference to financial profitability and basic needs fulfilment   Jitendra Prasad SINGH   Mr T H Thomas
1995   DPhil   Oxford, Linacre   The impact of migration, environment and economic conditions on the biological growth and physique of Sikhs   Lakhwinder P SINGH   Prof G A Harrison
1995   PhD   London, Inst Ed   Design and standardisation of a developmental test for Indian children: the Indian picture puzzle test   R SINGHANIA
1995   DPhil   Oxford, Wolfson   The stylistic development of the sculpture of Kashmir   John E C SIUDMAK   Mr G J S Sanderson
1995   MPhil   London, LSE   Auctioning the dreams: economy, community and philanthropy in a North Indian city   Roger Graham SMEDLEY   Dr C Fuller; Dr J P Parry
1995   DPhil   Oxford, Wolfson   The stylistic development of the sculpture of Kashmir   J E C SUIDMAK
1995   PhD   Lancaster   I see all the gods in your body: a study of religious doctrine in the Mahabharata   N SUTTON
1995   PhD   Sussex   Utilisation of industrial R & D findings in Malaysia: a case study of selected public research institutions, universities and industry   K THIRUCHELVAM
1995   PhD   Middlesex   A regional power : United States policy in the Indian Ocean and the definition of national security, 1978-1980   Paul TODD   T Putnam; Prof F Halliday
1995   PhD   London, LSE   Sacred grove (kaavu): ancestral land of “landless agricultural labourers” in Kerala, India   Yasushi UCHIYAMADA   Dr C Fuller
1995   PhD   East Anglia   Employment and the small enterprise economy in India: an inquiry into its growth and significance for development   Nalini VITTAL
1995   PhD   Edinburgh   Social control and deviance in Edinburgh’s Pakistani community   Abdul Ali WARDAK
1995   MLitt   Aberdeen   From Banff to Bengal and beyond: the list, travel and writings of a remarkable north-east loon: Robert Wilson, M D. (1787-1871)   Thelma G WATT   Prof R Bridges
1995   phD   Edinburgh   Environmental effects on the growth of broad-leaved trees introduced under pine stands in Sri Lanka   N D R WEERAWARDANE
1995   DPhil   Oxford, Magdalen   Manufactured exports, outward-orientation, and the acquisition of technological capabilities in Sri Lanka, 1997-1989   Ganeshan WIGNARAJA   Dr S Lall
1995   PhD   Birmingham   A study of recent conversion to and from Christianity in the Tamil area of South India   A D C WINGATE
1995   PhD   Bradford   The economic impact of temporary migrant workers remittances on the Pakistan economy: estimates from a macro economic model   K U ZAMAN
1996   MLitt   Oxford, Exeter   The women’s movement in Pakistan in the 1980s and 1990s   Nilofer AFRIDI-QAZI   Dr M W Lau
1996   PhD   Leicester   Paleoenvironments, diagenesis and geochemical studies of the Dungan formation (Palaocene)eastern Sulaiman Range, Pakistan   Nazir AHMAD
1996   PhD   Sheffield   A study of changes occurring in valuable aspects ofthe built environment of the core areas of historic settlements in Pakistan   T AHMAD   A Craven
1996   PhD   Open   Approaches to bioclimatic urban design for the tropics with special reference to Dhaka, Bangladesh   K S AHMED
1996   DPhil   Oxford, Linacre   Oral traditions in Ladakh   Monisha AHMED   Dr R Barnes Dr N J Allen
1996   PhD   London, RHBNC   The emergence of Muslim feminism in South Asia, 1920-1960   Azra Asghar ALI   Prof F R C Robinson
1996   MPhil   Liverpool   Molecular epidemiology of human and environmental enterobacteriaceae in rural Bangladesh   K S ANWAR
1996   DPhil   Sussex   The spread of technology and the level of development: a comparative study of steel mills using electric arc furnace technology in India and Britain   S S ATHREYE
1996   PhD   Londond, SOAS   A garland of razors: the life of a traditional musician in contemporary Pakistan   Khalid Manzoor BASRA
1996   PhD   Cambridge, St John’s   Bharat versus India: peasant politics and rural-urban relations in North West India   M J R BENTALL   Dr S E Corbridge
1996   DPhil   Oxford, Wolfson   Four essays on the labour market in India   Sonia R BHALOTRA   Prof S J Nickell
1996   MPhil   York   Women writing India: a study of prose fiction by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Nayantara Sahgal and Sashi Deshpanda   Shivani BHARGAVA   Dr Joe Bristow
1996   PhD   London, SOAS   A necessary weapon of war: state policies towards propaganda and information in Eastern India, 1939-1945   Sanjoy BHATTACHARYA   Dr P G Robb
1996   PhD   Birmingham   Rich pickings ? the political economy of solid waste management in Calcutta, India   A BOSE   I C Blore
1996   PhD   Glasgow   Cultural strategies of young women of south Asian origin in Glasgow, with special reference to health   H BRADBY
1996   PhD   Cambridge, Corpus   European authority and caste disputes in South India, 1650-1850   N BRIMNES   Prof C A Bayly
1996   PhD   London, SOAS   Contemporary uses of Vastu Vidya, the traditional Indian knowledge of architecture   Vibhuti CHAKRABARTI   Dr Giles Tillotson
1996   PhD   Strathclyde   Waterlogging and salinity in the Sukkur region of Sindh: causes and remedies   Mohammed Nawaz CHAND   Prof A I Clunies Ross
1996   PhD   London, SOAS   Slavery and the household in Bengal, 1770-1880   Indrani CHATTERJEE   Prof D J Arnold

1996   PhD   Wales, Aberystwyth   A comparative analysis of centre-local relations in government with special reference to Pakistan and Britain   Ishtiaq Ahmed CHOUDHRY
1996   PhD   Dundee   Audit expectations gap in the public sector of Bangladesh   R R CHOWDHURY
1996   PhD   Cambridge, Churchill   Gujjars in Garhwal – parallel lives: situational identity and exchange   B DALAL   Dr C Humphrey
1996   PhD   Cambridge, Churchill   The Europeans of Calcutta, 1858-1883   Damayanti DATTA   Prof C A Bayley
1996   MPhil   Reading   The effectiveness of different radio programme formats for the dissemination of information on safe use of insecticides in paddy cultivation in Mahaweli system C in Sri Lanka   N DE SILVA
1996   PhD   Cranfield   Estimating groundwater recharge with limited resources with special emphasis on spatial variability: a study in the dry zone of Sri Lanka   Roshan Priyantha DE SILVA   R C Carter
1996   PhD   London, LSE   Religion and nationalism in India: the case of Punjab, 1960-1990   Harnick DEOL   Prof A Smith
1996   MPhil   London, SOAS   Love and mysticism in the Punjabi Qissas of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries   Jeevan Singh DEOL   Prof C Shackle
1996   PhD   Lancaster   The development of Bhuddist monastic education in Sri Lanka with special reference to the modern period   Naimbala DHAMMADASSI   Prof G Samuel; Dr H Kawanami
1996   PhD   Strathclyde   Solar-based technology for crop drying in Pakistan   M G DOUGGAR
1996   PhD   Lancaster   Touring the Taj: tourist practices and narratives at the Taj Mahal and in Agra   T EDENSOR
1996   PhD   London   Indian music and the west: a critical history    GJ FARRELL
1996   PhD   Hull   Standarisation versus adaptation of marketing strategies: British multinationals in Pakistan   G GHOUS
1996   PhD   Hull   The religious and political thought of Swami Vivekananda   A HARILELA
1996   PhD   Leicester   Cross cultural interpretatioins of television: a phenomenonological hermeneutic enquiry [India]   Ramaswami HARINDRANATH   Mr R Dickinson
1996   PhD   Cambridge, Corpus   Pre-cursors to post-colonialism : Leonard Woolf, E. J. Thompson, and E. M. Forster and the rhetoric of English India   R B P HARRISON   Prof J B Beer
1996   PhD   Wales, Bangor   Farmers’ knowledge and the development of complex agroforestry practices in Sri Lanka   H HITINAYAKE
1996   PhD   Aberdeen   Effects of periodic drought on Acacia magum Willd. and Acacia auriculiformis A.Cunn.ex Benth growing on sand tailings in Malaysia   A L HOE
1996   DPhil   Sussex   Replacing market with government: the Indian experience in credit control   R KOHLI
1996   DPhil   Oxford, Wadham   Indian civil servants, 1892-1937: an age of transition   Takehiko HONDA   Prof J M Brown; Dr M C Curthoys
1996   PhD   London, SOAS   Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, 1880-1932: the status of Muslim women in Bengal   H Y HOSSAIN
1996   PhD   East London   Born to be wed: Bangladeshi women and the Muslim marriage contract   Shahnaz HUDA   Dr K Green; Ms A Stewart
1996   PhD   Manchester   Social, psychological and economic factors in the growth of a small firm: a study of the small scale furniture and footwear firms in Pakistan   S A HUSSAIN
1996   PhD   Cambridge, Jesus   Fluvial sedimentology of the Kamial Formation (Miocene)Himalayan Foreland, Pakistan   J A HUTT   Dr P F Friend
1996   DPhil   York   Development through conservation: a sustainable development strategy with special reference to a heritage zone in Madras   R V ISIAH
1996   PhD   Reading   Improvement of Erythrina variegata L.: a multipurpose fast growing tree species in Bangladesh   S ISLAM
1996   PhD   East Anglia   Constraints to the adoption of modern rice varieties during the Aman season in Bangladesh   Md Abdul JABBER   Dr Richard Palmer-Jones
1996   PhD   London, UC   Modern agricultural production and the environment: the case of wheat production in the Indian Punjab, 1971-1988   Amballur Jospeh JAMES
1996   PhD   Cambridge, Newnham   Agro-ecological knowledges and forest managment in the Jharkhand, India: tribal development or populist impasse ?   S L JEWITT   Dr T P Bayliss-Smit
1996   PhD   Glasgow   A study of human rights organizations and issues in India   M JHA
1996   PhD   London, UC   Early iron and steel in Sri Lanka: a study of the Samanalawewa area   G JULEFF
1996   PhD   London, LSHTM   Areal variations in use of modern contraceptives in rural Bangladesh   Nashid KAMAL   A Sloggett
1996   PhD   Cambridge, Churchill   A longitudinal anthropometric study of mother-infants pairs in Dhaka, Bangladesh   E KARIM
1996   PhD   Southampton   Development of dietary assessment methods for use in the South Asian community   N A KARIM
1996   DPhil   Oxford, St Edmund Hall   Capital market liberalization in Pakistan: 1980-1992   Bashir A KHAN   Mr C J Cowton
1996   PhD   Bradford   Public sector accounting and financial reporting oractices in Bangladesh   M A S KHAN
1996   PhD   Leicester   Genesis of stratabound scheelite and stratiform Pb-Zn mineralisation, Chitral, Northern Pakistan, and its comparison with South West England tin-tungsten deposits   Mohammad Zahid KHAN
1996   PhD   Wales, Swansea   A political economy of forest resource use: case studies of social forestry in Bangladesh   Niaz Ahmed KHAN   Prof A Rew
1996   PhD   Loughborough   An analysis of risk sharing in Islamic finance with reference to Pakistan   T KHAN
1996   PhD   Leeds   Central-local government relations in Pakistan since 1979   T KHAN   Dr Owen Hartley
1996   PhD   London, UC   Economic values of resource depreciation and environmental degradation in Bangladesh   Fahmida Akter KHATUN
1996   PhD   Warwick   Analysis of tariff and tax policies in Bangladesh: a computable general equilibrium approach   B H KHONDKER
1996   PhD   London, UC   Subsistence and petty-capitalist landlords: an enquiry into the petty commodity production of rental housing in low-income settlements in Madras, India   S KUMAR
1996   PhD   London, LSE   Civil-military relationships in British and independent India, 1918-1962, and coup prediction theory   Apurba KUNDU   Prof T J Nossiter
1996   PhD   London, King’s   Marketing and economic development: a case study of maize marketing in Mardan District, North West Frontier Province, Pakistan   Teshome LEMMA   R Black; M Byron; M E Frost
1996   PhD   London, Imperial   The effects of ozone and nitrogen dioxide on Pakistan wheat (“Triticum aestivum”l.)and rice (“Oryza sativa”L) cultivars   R MAGGS
1996   PhD   Keele   The European Community and South Asia: development, economic cooperation and trade policies with India, Bangladesh and Bhutan, 1973-1993   M MARWAHA   Christopher Brewin
1996   PhD   Hull   Corporate management styles of Malaysian parent companies in managing their local subsidiaries in the manufacturing sector   N A MAZELAN
1996   PhD   Cambridge   Fertility and frailty: demographic change and the health and status of Indian women   K McNAY
1996   MPhil   Leicester   Constraints to professionalism in Sri Lankan newspaper journalism   Mahim MENDIS   Anders Hansen
1996   PhD   Wales, Bangor   The ecology and management of traditional home gardens in Bangladesh   M MILLAT-E-MUSTAFA
1996   PhD   East London   Land reform and landlessness in Bangaldesh   M A MOMEN
1996   PhD   London, King’s   Passing it on: the army in India and the development of frontier warfare, 1849-1947   Timothy Robert MOREMAN   Prof B J Bond
1996   MPhil   London, SOAS   Legal and penal institutions within a middle class perspective in colonial Bengal, 1854-1910   Anindita MUKHOPADHYAY   Prof D J Arnold
1996   DPhil   Oxford   Space, class and rhetoric in Lahore   R McG MURPHY
1996   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity    The crisis of the Burmese State and the foundations of British colonial rule in Upper Burma (1853-1900)   T MYINT-U   Prof C A Bayly
1996   PhD   Nottingham   Open distance learning aspects of adult basic educastion in the UK and their implications for Kerala (India)   Chandrasekharan NAIR-MADHAVEN   W J Morgan
1996   PhD   Cambridge, Churchill   Chidambaram – city and people in the Tamil tradition   V NANDA   Dr F R Allchin
1996   PhD   Cambridge, Churchill   Chidambaram: temple and city in the Tamil tradition   Vivek NANDA   Dr F R Allchin
1996   PhD   London, Inst Ed   Manpower planning in Pakistan: a study of its assumptions concerning the education-occupation relationship   H K NIAZI
1996   PhD   Southampton   Exploring a bottom up approach to networking for open learning in India   Asad Mohd NIZAM   Dr A P Hart
1996   MPhil   East Anglia   Contradictions of organisation: a case study of a rural development NGO in Rajasthan, India   Jane Elizabeth OLIVER
1996   PhD   Reading   Studies of black pepper (Piper nigrum L)virus disease in Sri Lanka   D PADMINI DE SILVA
1996   PhD   Sheffield   The role of small towns and intermediate cities in regional development in India   A PANNEERSELVAM   C L Chogull
1996   PhD   Birmingham   The word of God is not bound: the necounter of Sikhs and Christians in India and the United Kingdom   J M PARRY
1996   DPhil   Oxford, Green College   Regeneration and sucession following shifting cultivation of dry tropical deciduous forests of Sri Lanka   Gamaralalage A D PERERA   Dr N D Brown; Dr P S Savill
1996   PhD   London   Bureaucrats, development and decentralisation in India: the bureau-shaping model applied to Panchayati in Karnataka, 1987-1991   H J PERRY
1996   PhD   London, LSHTM   Linear growth retardation (stunting)in Sri Lankan children and the role of dietary calcium   Ambegoda Geekiyanage Damayanthi PIYADASA
1996   DPhil   Sussex   English studies and the articulation of the nation in India   P K PODDAR
1996   MPhil   REading   Village organisations and extension: a case study of Balochistan rural support programme   A R QAZI
1996   PhD   Cambridge   Lactational amenorrhoea, infant feeding patterns and behaviours in Bangladeshi women   M RAHMAN
1996   PhD   Cambridge   Relation between energetics, body composition and length of post-partum amenorrhoea in Bangladeshi women   M RASHID
1996   MPhil   Leicester   Thermobarometry of the garnet bearing rocks of the Jijal complex (western Himalayas, northern Pakistan)   Lucie RINGUETTE
1996   PhD   London, SOAS   The devotional poetry of Svami Haridasa   Ludmila Lupu ROSENSTEIN   Dr R Snell
1996   PhD   London, SOAS   Local perceptions of environmental change in a tropical coastal wetland: the case of Koggala Lagoon, Galle, Sri Lnaka   V N SAMARASEKARA
1996   PhD   Newcastle   The production of seed potato (Solanum tuberosum L)tubers from stem cuttings in Sri Lanka   P W S M SAMARASINGHE
1996   PhD   London, SOAS   Mangrove ecology in Sri Lanka   V SAMARESKARA   Prof P Stott
1996   PhD   London, King’s   Agrarian impacts on manufacturing expansion in the Indian Punjab   Jagpal Kaur SANGHA   Dr L Hoggart
1996   DPhil   York   A sociolinguistic study of Panjabi Hindus in Southall: language maintenance and shift   Mukul SAXENA   C Wallace
1996   PhD   Cambridge, Darwin   Political alignments, the state and industrial policy in Pakistan: a comparison of performance in the 1960s and 1980s   A U SAYEED   Dr M H Khan
1996   PhD   Manchester   The role of agriculture in the Indian economy: an analysis using a general equilibrium model based on a social accounting matrix   Sabyasachi SEN   Prof D Colman; Dr A Ozanne
1996   PhD   London, SOAS   Famine, state and society in North India, c.1800-1840   Sanjay Kumar SHARMA   Dr P G Robb
1996   PhD   Wales, Bangor   Project appraisal under risk, threat and uncertainty: a case study of the afforestation project of Bihar, India   Devendra Kumar SHUKLA   Dr C Price
1996   PhD   London   Pakistan’s arms procurement decision-making   A SIDDIQA
1996   PhD   London, SOAS   Political prisoners in India, 1920-1977   Ujjwal Kumar SINGH   Dr Taylor
1996   PhD   Liverpool   Molecular and seroepidemiological studies of rotavirus from children in Bangladesh   S TABASSUM
1996   PhD   Beradford   Environmental education and distance teaching: a case study from Pakistan   F TAHIR
1996   MPhil   Liverpool John Moores   The demand for money in Pakistan: simple-sum versis Divisia   S M TARIQ
1996   PhD   Cambridge, Corpus   Property rights and the issue of power: the case of inland fisheries in Bangladesh   Kazi Ali TOUFIQUE   Dr M H Khan
1996   MPhil   Open   Gender issues and social change: evaluating programme impact in rural Bangladesh   A M VAN SWINDEREN   Mr A Thomas
1996   PhD   Cranfield   The performance in public enterprises in a developing country: Sri Lanka’s experience in perspective   Tillaka S WEERAKOON   Prof Chris Brewster
1996   PhD   Reading   Evaluation of the effectiveness of radio and television in changing the knowledge and attitudes of cinnamon growers in Sri Lanka   J WEERASINGHE
1996   PhD   Manchester   Rationales of accounting controls in a developing context: a mode of production theory anaysis of two Sri Lankan case studies   D P WICKRAMASINGHE   Prof T Hopper
1996   PhD   Cambridge, St Cath’s   Socialist development ? Economic and political change in rural West Bengal under the Left Front   G O WILLIAMS   Dr S Corbridge
1996   PhD   Bristol   The politics of caste in India with special reference to the Dalit Christian campaign for scheduled caste reservations   Andrew K J WYATT   Dr D Turner; Dr V Hewitt
1997   PhD   Stirling   Strategic planning and strategic awareness in small enterprise: a study of small engineering firms in Bangladesh   A F M ABDUL MOYEEN
1997   PhD   Loughborough   A strategy for managing brickwork in Sri Lanka   W V K M ABEYSEKERA   Dr A Thorpe
1997   PhD   East Anglia   Sex ratio imbalances in India: a disaggregated analysis   S B AGNIHOTRI
1997   PhD   Lancaster   Gender roles and fertility: a comparative analysis of women from Britain and Pakistan   S AHMAD
1997   PhD   Nottingham   Modelling the impact of agricultural policy at the farm level in the Punjab, Pakistan   Z AHMAD
1997   PhD   London, Imperial   Particulate air pollution and respiratory morbidity in New Delhi, India   S AKBAR
1997   PhD   East London   Keeping a wife at the end of a stick: law and wife abuse in Bangladesh   Nusrat AMEEN   Dr Kate Green; Ms N Lacey
1997   PhD   Birmingham   The generation of a tool for screening the early grammatical development of Bangla-speaking children and the potential useof this instrument in classes of hearing-impaired children   N ANAM
1997   PhD   Durham   A mission for India: Dr Ellen Farrer and India, 1891-1933   Imogen S ANDERSON   A J Heesom
1997   DPhil   Sussex   Changes in poverty and inequality in Pakistan during the period of structural adjustment (1987-88 to 1990-91)   T ANWAR
1997   PhD   Cranfield   Sustainable farming systems and the role of change agents: Moneragala District, Sri Lanka   J P ATAPATTU
1997   PhD   Edinburgh   Common property resource management in Haryana State, India: analysis of the impact of participation in the management of common property resources and the relative effectiveness of common property regimes   Pasumarthy Venkata Subhash Chandra BABU
1997   MPhil   Oxford, Nuffield   Recognising minorities: a study of some aspects of the Indian Constituent Assembly debates, 1946-1949   Rochana BAJPAI   Dr N Gooptu; Prof M S Freeden
1997   PhD   London, SOAS   The transformation of domesticity as an ideology: Calcutta, 1880-1947   Sudeshna BANERJEE   Prof D J Arnold
1997   PhD   Cambridge, Darwin   Decentralising forest management in India: the case of Van Panchayats in Kumaun   P C BAUMANN   Mr G P Hawthorn
1997   PhD   London, LSE   Households, livelihoods and the urban environmental social development perspectives on solid waste management in Faisalabad, Pakistan   J D BEALL
1997   PhD   London, SOAS   Tribe and state in Waziristan, 1849-83   Hugh BEATTIE   Prof M E Yapp
1997   DPhil   Sussex   A study of small-scale community tank irrigation systems in the dry zone of Sri Lanka   Saleha BEGUM   Dr M Moore
1997   PhD   Aberdeen   The “empire of the raj:” conflict and cooperation with Britain over the shape and function of the Indian sphere in Eastern Africa and the Middle East, 1850s-1930s   Robert J BLYTH   Prof R C Bridges; Ms Rosemary M Tyzack
1997   PhD   Manchester   Comparative human resource managment: a cross national study of India and Britain   P S BUDHWAR
1997   PhD   Wales, Lampeter   Decision making and idjtihad in Islamic environments: a comparative study of Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore and the United Kingdom   G L R BUNT
1997   DPhil   Oxford, St Hilda’s   A history of the trade to South Asia of Macmillan   Co and Oxford University Press, 1875-1900   Rimi B CHATTERJEE   Mr M Turner; Mr L W St Clair
1997   PhD   East Anglia   Innovation paths in developing country agriculture: true potato seed in India, Egypt and Indonesia   a CHILVER
1997   PhD   Cambridge, Clare Hall   From nabob to sahib: the construction of the British body in India, c.1800-1914   Elizabeth M COLLINGHAM   Prof C A Bayley
1997   PhD   London, UC   Of moths and candle flames: the aesthetics of fertility and childbearing in the Northern areas of Pakistan   Teresa Mary Helen COLLINS   Dr N Redclift; Dr Murray Last
1997   PhD   London, UC   Environmental aspects of industrial location policy in India   Mala DAMODARAN
1997   PhD   Cambridge, Pembroke   A comparative analysis of sharecropping and mudaraba business in Pakistan: a study of PLS in the context of the new theory of the firm   M H A DAR   Dr A M M McFarquhar
1997   PhD   Open   Multiple realities, multiple meanings: a reception analysis of television and nationhood in India   S DAS
1997   PhD   Portsmouth   Control of mycotoxins in major food commodities in Bangladesh   M DAWLATANA
1997   PhD   Liverpool   Evidence based decision making and managerial chaos in population displacement emergencies: a case study of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, 1992-93   P M DISKETT
1997   PhD   Hull   An investigation into effective management structure for tuna resources in the West Indian Ocean   EDALY
1997   PhD   London, External   Parasitical clinical and sero-epidemiological studies of visceral leishmaniasis in Bangladesh   Md A EL-MASUM
1997   PhD   Manchester   Production, consumption and labour supply linkages of farm households in the rice-wheat zone of Punjab, Pakistan   U FAROOQ
1997   PhD   Aberdeen   An economic analysis of factors affecting the adoption of coconut-based intercropping systems in Sri Lanka   M T N FERNANDO
1997   PhD   Edinburgh   Varieties of pilgrimage experience: religious journeying in central Kerala   Alexander David Hanson GATH
1997   PhD   Warwick   Against purity, identity, Western feminism and Indian complications   I GEDALOF
1997   PhD   Oxford Brookes   Spatial setting for household income generation: The case of intermediate sized cities, Bangladesh   Shayer GHAFUR
1997   PhD   Cambridge, Clare   Literature, language and print in Bengal, c.1780-1900   Anindita GHOSH   Dr R O’Hanlon
1997   PhD   Cambridge, Darwin   Conservation ecology of primates and human impact in North East India   A K GUPTA   Dr D J Chivers
1997   DPhil   Oxford, New College   The monetary system of Mughal India   Syed N HAIDER   Dr D A Washbrook
1997   PhD   London   Diet, exercise and CHD risk: a comparison of children in the UK and Pakistan   Rubina HAKEEM
1997   PhD   London, LSE   India’s information technology industry: adapting to globalisation and policy change in the 1990s   Gopalakrishnan HARINDRANATH
1997   PhD   Cambridge, Girton   State and local power relations in the towns of Gujerat, Surat and Cambray, c.1572-1740   F HASAN   Dr G Johnson
1997   PhD   Exeter   The organisation, development and management of the population training programmes: a case study in Bangladesh   Md Akhter HOSSAIN   Dr A Ankomah; C Allison
1997   PhD   Reading   Involving women in the process of rural development: a project case study from Balochistan, Pakistan   U HUBNERR
1997   MPhil   London, Goldsmith’s   Significant other: Anglo Indian female authors, 1880-1914   Karyn Marie HUENEMANN   Dr B Moore-Gilbert
1997   PhD   Cambridge, Queens’   Public housing in Hong Kong   E C M HUI   Dr B J Pearce
1997   PhD   East London   Law as a site of resistance: recourse to the law by “garments women” in Bangladesh   Farmin ISLAM   Dr Hilary Lim; Prof J Cooper
1997   PhD   Middlesex   The impact of flooding and methods of assessment in urban areas of Bangladesh   K N ISLAM
1997   DPhil   Sussex   Democratic adjustment: explaining the political sustainability of economic reform in India    Robert S JENKINS   Prof J Manor
1997   PhD   Cambridge, Newnham   Labour and nationalism in Sholapur: conflict, confrontation and control in a Deccan city, Western India, 1918-39   M N KAMAT   Dr R S Chandavakar
1997   PhD   London, LSE   Political communication in India   Kavita KARAN   Prof T J Nossiter
1997   PhD   Cambridge, Churchill   The social history of the Rajput clans in colonial North India circa 1800-1900   Malavika KASTURI   Prof C A Bayley
1997   PhD   Aberdeen   Sustainability of small-holder sugar cane based production systems in Sri Lanka   Adhikari P KEERTHIPALA
1997   PhD   Manchester   The market for local capital for small firms in Bangladesh: loan evaluation, monitoring and contracting practices   Mohammed Hassanul Abedin KHAN   P Taylor
1997   PhD   Reading   Improving precision of agricultural field experiments in Pakistan   M I KHAN
1997   PhD   London, Wye   The mango production and marketing system in Sindh Pakistan: constraints and opprtunities   A M KHUSHK
1997   PhD   Aberdeen   Factors influencing adoption of farm level tree planting in social forestry in Orissa, India   A K MAHAPATRA
1997   PhD   Bradford   The quality of higher education in Pakistan: an exploration into the quality of curriculum taught in the universities   M J MALIK
1997   PhD   Surrey   Management consultancies in developing countries: strategies for a competetive era – the case of Pakistan   S H MALLICK
1997   PhD   Cambridge, St John’s   Non-seccessionist regionalism in India: the demand for a separate state of Uttarakhand   E E MAWDSLEY   Dr S E Corbridge
1997   PhD   Cambridge   Sadhana and salvation: soteriology in Ramanuja and John Wesley   P R MEADOWS
1997   PhD   Wales, Cardiff   The unit head nurse in Pakistani hospitals: current and desired levels of practice   G P MILLER
1997   PhD   Edinburgh   The lunatic asylum in British India, 1857-1880: colonialism, medicine and power   James Henry MILLS   Dr C N Bates; Dr P J Bailey
1997   PhD   London, SOAS   The making of a cultural identity: language, literature and gender in Orissa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries   Pragati MOHAPATRA   Dr P G Robb
1997   PhD   Leicester   Conceptualising post-colonial policing: an analysis and application of policing public order   S C MUKHOPADHYAY
1997   DPhil   Sussex   Small firm industrial districts in Pakistan   Khalid M NADVI   Dr H Schmitz
1997   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   British and American Army counterinsurgency learning during the Malaysian emergency and the Vietnam War   J A M NAGL
1997   PhD   London, External   Constitutional breakdown and the judiciary in Pakistan   M F NASEEM
1997   PhD   Sheffield   The external environment of housing in the third world: sustainability and user satisfaction in planned and unplanned low-income housing in Lahore, Pakistan   N NAZ
1997   PhD   London, UC   Dynamics of urban spatial and formal changes of old Dhaka: a developmental influence on a historical city of the Third World   Farida NILUFAR   Alan Penn
1997   PhD   London, SOAS   The Hindi public sphere, 1920-1940   Francesca ORSINI   Dr A S Kalsi
1997   PhD   London, InstChild Health   Iodine deficiency in the Northern Pujab of Pakistan   M POULTON
1997   PhD   REading   Studies on weed management during early establishment of tea in low-country of Sri Lanka   K G PREMATILAKA
1997   PhD   Reading   The effect of defoliation of vetch, barley and their mixtures on forage yield, quality and residual effects on succeeding crops in the rainfed areas of Pakistan   I A QAMAR
1997   PhD   Cambridge, Lucy    Shifting culture in the global terrain: cultural identity constructions amongst British Hindu Punjabis   D S RAJ   Dr S N Bensen
1997   PhD   Manchester   The rural poor and technological change: an enquiry into agricultural extention in Sri Lanka   T T RANASINGHE   Dr J Mullen
1997   PhD   Bradford   Environmental education and agricultural education in Pakistan   G RASUL
1997   PhD   London, SOAS   Social history of North Bengal, c.1870-1949   Rubhajyoti RAY   Dr P G Robb
1997   PhD   Cambridge, St Cath’s   Indian elites, urban space and the restructuring of Ahmedabad city, 1890-1947   Siddhartha RAYCHAUDHURI   Prof C A Bayly
1997   PhD   City   Military rule and the media: a study of Bangladesh    REZWAN-UL-ALAM
1997   PhD   London, LSE   The Kalbelias of Rajasthan: Jogi Nath snake charmers, an ethnography   Miriam ROBERTSON   Dr J Parry; Dr J Woodburn
1997   MPhil   Open   The role of caste in prostitution: culture and violence in the life histories of prostitutes in India   M R ROZARIO
1997   PhD   Hull   A socio-economic assessment of collective choices in the coastal trawl fishery of Malaysia   K H SALIM
1997   PhD   London, LSHTM   Contraception following birth in Bangladesh   S M SALWAY   Prof J Cleland
1997   PhD   Nottingham   People’s participation in community development and community work activities: a case study in a planned village settlement in Malaysia   Asnarulkhadi Abu SAMAH
1997   PhD   Bristol   A basket of resources: women’s resistence to domestic violence in Calcutta   P SEN
1997   MPhil   Reading   Evaluation of adoption levels of innovations in coffee in relation to technology transfer process in the Central Province of Sri Lanka   M A P K SENEVIRATNE
1997   PhD   Kent   Choice and collection of agricultural survey data in Punjab and its use in planning improved food supply   Javid SHABBIR   Mr G M Clarke
1997   DPhil   Sussex   Participatory village resource management: case study of Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP), India   Parmesh SHAH   Dr M T Howes
1997   PhD   London, SOAS   The formation of the Indo-European telegraph line: Britain, the Ottoman Empire and Persia, 1855-1865   Sulieman SHAHVAR   R M Burrell
1997   PhD   Cambridge, Emmanuel   The development of an Indian nuclear doctrine since 1980   W P S SIDHU   Dr I Clark
1997   PhD   Leeds   Gender and nation in selected contemporary writing from Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan   N M S SILVA
1997   PhD   York   Changing attitudes to design with nature: the urban Indian context   P SINGH
1997   PhD   Cambridge, Emmanuel   Pollution and environmental policy in the Ganga Basin: a case study of heavy metal pollution by tanneries near Kanpur, India   S SINHA   Dr K S Richards
1997   PhD   East Anglia   Framing the nation: languages of “modernity” in India   Ajanta SIRCAR
1997   PhD   London, UC   Islamic anthropology and religious practice among Muslims in a southern Sri Lankan town   Llyn Frances SMITH   Prof B Kapferer
1997   PhD   Sussex   The formal and informal sector of solid waste management in Hyderabad, India   Marielle SNEL   Dr T Binns
1997   PhD   London, UC   Urban development and the information technology industry: a study of Bangalore, India   Sampath SRINIVAS   Ms Julie Davila
1997   PhD   London   Land policies in Delhi: their contribution to unauthorised land development   K SRIRANGAN
1997   PhD   Southampton   Coronary heart disease, diabetes, serum lipid concentrations and lung function in relation to fetal growth in South India   C E STEIN
1997   PhD   Open   The involvement of the Church of Pakistan in development   P SULTAN
1997   PhD   Salford   Off-farm activities in India: a case stury of rural househlds in Rurka Kalan Development Block, Punjab, c. 1961-1993   S S SUPRI
1997   PhD   Cambridge, Robinson   Gandhara art in the Swat Valley, Pakistan: a study based on the Peshawar University collection   M F SWATI   Dr J R Knox
1997   PhD   Reading   The compound verb in Assamese   J TAMULI
1997   MPhil   Newcastle   Socio-economic problems of second genertion settelrs in Mahaweli irigation settlement in Sri Lanka   T M P B TENNAKOON
1997   PhD   London, SOAS   The political economy of Burma   TIN MAUNG MAUNG THAN   Prof R Taylor
1997   PhD   Warwick   Reconstructing the history of women’s participation in the nationalist movement in India, 1905-1945: a study of women activitists inUttar Prqdesh   Suruchi THAPAR-BJORKERT   Dr C Wolkowitz; Ms Joanna Liddle
1997   PhD   London, LSE   Spiritual communities in India   Dimitrios THEODOSSOPOULOS   Dr P Loizos
1997   DPhil   Oxford, New   Rajput painting in Mewar   A S TOPSFIELD
1997   PhD   Manchester   The role of management control systems in privatisation: a labour process analysis of a Bangladeshi case study   S N UDDIN
1997   PhD   Cambridge, Clare Hall   Distribution improving development policies for Bangladesh: applying the equilibrium framework   W J A VAN DER GEEST   Prof D M G Newbery
1997   MPhil   City   Women, gender and news values: a case study of Bangladesh   F R VEENA
1997   PhD   Kingston   Miocene-aged extension within the main mantle thrust zone, Pakistan Himalaya   K J VINCE   Dr P Treloar; Dr J Grocott
1997   PhD   London, SOAS   The development of Siraiki language in Pakistan   M A WAGHA
1997   PhD   Cambridge, King’s   Worth its weight: gold, women and value in North West India   H WARD   Dr C Humphrey
1997   PhD   London, Birkbeck   Colonialism and culture in nineteenth century British India   Caroline L WEAVER
1997   PhD   Cambridge   Hedgerow intercropping for soil improvement in Sri Lanka   S M WEERASINGHE
1997   PhD   London, LSHTM   Control of anopheline vectors in a gem mining area in Sri Lanka   A M G M YAPABANDARA
1998   PhD   Liverpool   Malaria and malarial control in Jeli Peninsular Malaysia   M R ABDULLAH
1998   PhD   Reading   The management practices and organisational culture of large Malaysian construction contractors   R ABU BAKER
1998   MPhil   Aberdeen   The determination of sheep and goat prices in the markets of Balochistan – Pakistan   M AFZAL
1998   PhD   London, SOAS   Litigating in the name of the people: stresses and strains of the development of public interest litigation in Bangladesh   Naim AHMED
1998   PhD   London, UC   An approach for the prevention of thalassaemia in Pakistan   S AHMED
1998   PhD   Leeds   Foreign direct investment in Pakistan   M AKHTAR   Hugo Radice
1998   PhD   Durham   Water rationality: mediating the Indus Waters Treaty   U Z ALAM   Dr J D Rigg
1998   PhD   Bath   Fish consumption behaviour in Bangladesh   Zulfiqar ALI   Prof Chris Heady; Dr J A McGregor
1998   DPhil   Oxford   Operationalizing Amartya Sen’s capability approach to human development: a framework for identifying valuable capabilities   Sabina ALKIRE
1998   PhD   Reading   The impact of Anand Pattern Cooperative Societies on the status of women in dairying households in Kerala, India   S S ANIL
1998   PhD   London, SOAS   The politics of time: “primitives” and the writing of history in colonial Bengal   Prathama BANERJEE   Prof D J Arnold
1998   PhD   Bristol   Scripture as empowerment for liberation and justice: the experience of Christian and Muslim women in Bangaldesh   Mukti BARTON   Prof U King
1998   PhD   Nottingham   The protection of human rights in Islamic Republic of Pakistan with special reference to Islamic Shari’ah under 1973 Constitution   A H BOKHARI
1998   PhD   Wales, Cardiff   A comparison of vocational schools and industrial training institutes in Malaysia   A BRAHIM
1998   PhD   London, SOAS   The Nayak temple complex: architecture and ritual in southern Tamilnadu, 1550-1700   Crispin Peter C BRANFOOT   Dr G Tillotson
1998   PhD   Bristol   Studies in early Indian Madhyamaka epistemology   David F BURTON   Dr P Williams; Dr R Gethin
1998   PhD   Cambridge   Agency, animacy and personification in “A passage to India”   R BUZZA
1998   MPhil   Birmingham   Identifying the requirements of a parent education programme for the primary prevention of child physical abuse in the Indian State of Maharashtra   M CAESAR
1998   PhD   Birmingham   Recent structural reforms in India: the role of the government   S CHATTERJEE
1998   PhD   Manchester   Gender implications of industrial reforms and adjustment in the manufacturing sector of Bangladesh   Salma CHAUDHURI ZOHIR   Ms D Elson
1998   PhD   Wales, Swansea   Order and diversity: representing and assisting organisational learning in non government aid organisations [Bangladesh]   Richard J DAVIES   Prof A Rew
1998   PhD   Kent   Law, nation and cosmology in Sri Lanka: deconstruction and the failure of closure   B R DE SILVE WIJEYERATNE
1998   PhD   Cambridge, Darwin   Muslim women in colonial North India, c.1920-1947: politics, law and community identity   Karin A DEUTSCH   Dr R O’Hanlon
1998   PhD   Bath   Factors influencing the growth of sustainable people’s organisations at grassroots level: the case of Caritas DEEDS and Sangathan in Bangladesh   Benedict D’ROZARIO
1998   PhD   Aberdeen   South Asia: a case study of a subordinate internaltional system approach with a speicla reference fo India’s security policy during the Cold War   B DUSADEEISARIYAWONG
1998   PhD   London   Childhood cataract in South India: aetiology, management and outcome   M B ECKSTEIN
1998   PhD   Leeds   Neighbourhood perceptiopns of health and the value placed on health care deliverers in the slums of Mumbai   Nick EMMEL   Dr Ray Bush; J Soussan
1998   PhD   Strathclyde   Patrick Geddes, education and society in colonial India   Michael EYRE   Prof B R Tomlinson
1998   PhD   London, LSE   Migrants to citizens: changing orientations among Bangladeshis of Tower Hamlets, London   K S GAVRON
1998   PhD   Bradford   Evaluating the performance of public infrastructure: the case of electric power and telecommications in Pakistan   A G GHAFOOR
1998   PhD   Bradford   Budget deficits and the economy: the macro-economic effects of budget deficits in Sri Lanka, 1978-1996   Nandana Wijesiri GOONEWARDENA   Prof C Kirkpatrick; Mr Roland Clarke
1998   MPhil   Bradford   An assessment of the survival of dairy residues associated with archaeological and ethnographic ceramics: GC and GC/MS analysis of lipid residues extracted from archaeological (Bronze Age Harappa)and ethnographic (modern Pakistan and India)ceramic vessels   S M GRAYSON
1998   PhD   Southampton   Household structure, health and mortality in three Indian states   Paula L GRIFFITHS   Dr P Hinde
1998   PhD   London, Goldsmiths   Local politics in the Suru Valley of northern India   Nicola GRIST   Dr Sophie Day
1998   PhD   London, LSHTM   The impact of peer counsellers on breast feeding practices in Dhaka, Bangladesh   Rukhsana HAIDER

1998    PhD    Oxford Brookes    Spatial setting of manufacturing activities in the metropolitan cities of developing countries: the example of Dhaka, Bangladesh    Mahmudul HASAN
1998    DPhil    Oxford, Jesus    The Hindu Kush of Pakistan: mountain range evolution from an active margin to continent-continent collision    P R HILDEBRAND    Prof J F Dewe; Dr M P Searle
1998    PhD    London, Institute of Child Health    Iodine nutrition, cognition and school achievement of Bangladeshi schoolchildren    S N HUDA
1998    PhD    Open    Education as a missionary tool: a study in Christian missionary education by English Protestant missionaries in India with special reference to cultural change    J C INGLEBY
1998    PhD    London, SOAS    Urban planning in new Bombay: physical and socio-economic growth and development of a counter-magnet in India    Alain JAQUEMIN
1998    PhD    Open    A critical and comparative study of the relationship between missionary strategy, Dalit consciousness and socio-economic transformation in the missionary work by SPG among the Nadar and Paraiya communities of Tirunelveli District between 1830 and 1930    S JAYAKUMAR
1998    PhD    Birmingham    Portfolio behaviour ofIslamic banks: case studies for Pakistan, 1974-1994, and Iran, 1984-1994    K A A KAGIGI
1998    PhD    London, SOAS    Performative politics: artworks, festival praxis and nationalism with reference to Ganipatil Utsav in western India    Raminder Kaur KAHLON    Dr C Pinney
1998    PhD    London, SOAS    The Vishnu Hindu Parishad in the rise of Hindu militancy in India    Manjari KATJA    Dr Taylor
1998    PhD    Bradford    Foreign aid as a determinant of health expenditure, life expectancy at birth and infant mortality rate in Pakistan, 1971-1990    S G H KAZMI
1998    PhD    Reading    Farmers’ objectives and the choice of new crops in the irrigated farming systems of Pakistan’s Punjab    M A KHAN
1998    PhD    Reading    Improving the potential for adoption of agricultural technology through enhanced use of the mass media and the religious community in disadvantaged environments in Pakistan    N KHAN
1998    MPhil    Salford    Pakistan’s and international textile and clothing trade regime    S M KHAN
1998    MPhil    Manchester    Women’s access to credit and gender relations in Bangladesh    Mubina KHONDKAR    Dr D Hulme; Dr U Kothari
1998    PhD    London, SOAS    Politics of mass literacy in India; a case study of two North Indian villaages under the “Total Literacy” campaign (198-1995)    Ajay KUMAR    Dr S Kaviraj
1998    PhD    London, SOAS    Contesting seclusion: the political emergence of Muslim women in Bhopal, 1901-1930    Siobhan LAMBERT-HURLEY    Dr A A Powell
1998    PhD    Cambridge, Clare    Prosodic prominence in Singapore English    E L LOW    Dr F J D Nolan
1998    PhD    London, SOAS    Pativratas and Kupattis: gender, caste and identity in Punjab, 1870-1920    Anshu MALHOTRA    Dr A A Powell
1998    PhD    Warwick    Modelling macroeconomic adjustment with growth in developing economies: the case of India    Sushanta Kumar MALLICK
1998    PhD    London, UC    Religion, ritual and the pantheon amongst the Sinhalese Buddhist traders of Kandy City, Sri Lanka    Desmond MALLIKARACHCHI    Prof Bruce Kapferer; Dr Danny Miller
1998    DPhil    Sussex    Rapid credit deepening and the joint liability of credit contract: a study of Grameen Bank borrowers in Madhupur    Imran MATIN
1998    PhD    Leeds    Spatial and temporal change in the caste system: the Punjab to Bradford    D J MEDWAY
1998    DPhil    Sussex    Contexts of scarcity: the political economy of water in Kutch, India    Lyla MEHTA    Dr M Greeley
1998    DPhil    Oxford, Balliol    Popular princes: kingship and social change in Travancore and Cochin, 1870-1930    Vikram MENON    Prof J M Brown; Dr D A Washbrook
1998    PhD    Manchester    Perception of adolescent problems by form four malay students in Sarawak, Malaysia    Z MERAWI
1998    DPhil    Sussex    The peculiar mission of Christian womanhood: the selection and preparation of women missionaries of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, 1880-1920    Jennifer MORAWIECKI    C A Dyhouse; Prof P M Thane
1998    PhD    Dundee    Approaches to the integrated management of potato cyst nematode in Pakistan    A MUNIR
1998    PhD    Wales    A study of the relation between Christianity and Khasi-Jaintia culture, 1899-1969, with particular reference to the theology and practice of the Khasi-Jaintia Presbyterian Church    L MYLLIEMNGAP
1998    PhD    London, Wye    The pineapple industry in Sri Lanka: constraints and opportunities for its future development    Arumugam NAGENDRAM
1998    PhD    Southampton    Study of rice blast fungus Magnaporthe grisea (Herbert)of Bangladesh    N S NAHAR
1998    PhD    London, LSHTM    A study of policy process and implementation of the national tuberculosis programme India    Thelma NARAYAN
1998    PhD    London, SOAS    English in the colonial university and the politics of language: the emergence of a public sphere in western India, 1830-1880    Veena NAREGAL    Dr S Kaviraj
1998    PhD    Southampton    Women in Bangladesh: a study of the effects of garment factory work on control over income and autonomy    M H NEWBY
1998    MPhil    Oxford, Hertford    Homeward bound ? the influence of the national norm on voluntary repatriation on the construction of Indian refugee policy with reference to the Bangladeshi Jumma refugees and the Sri Lanka Tamil refugees    Pia A OBEROI
1998    PhD    Southampton    Theorising nuclear weapons proliferation: understanding the nuclear policies of India, South Africa, North Korea and Ukraine    T OGILVIE-WHITE
1998    PhD    Queen’s, Belfast    Credit and women’s relative well-being: a case study of the Grameen Bank, Bangladesh    L N K OSMANI
1998    PhD    Warwick    Pakistani children in Oslo: Islamic nurture in a secular context    Sissel OSTBERG

1998    PhD    London, UC    Control of childhood epilepsy in rural India    D K PAL
1998    PhD    London, SOAS    The politics of development and identity in the Jharkhand Region of Bihar (India), 1951-1991    Amit PRAKASH
1998    PhD    Bristol    The Assam Movement and the construction of Assamese identity    G PRICE
1998    PhD    Lancaster    Social access to housing: a study of low-income settlements around the walled city of Amritsar, Punjab, India    N K PUREWAL
1998    PhD    Aberdeen    An analysis of beef and bovine marketing systems in Pothwar Plateau of Punjab, Pakistan    A H QURESHI
1998    PhD    Aberdeen    An analysis of beef and bovine marketing systems in Pothwar Plateau of Punjab, Pakistan    A H QURISHI
1998    PhD    Reading    The role of the migrant moneylenders in North East India: the Kabuliwallahs of Assam    S RAFIQUE
1998    MPhil    Newcastle    Integrated crop growth modelling system for Barind in Bangladesh    M S RAHMAN
1998    PhD    Kent    Socio legal status of Bengali women in Bangladesh: implications for development    S RAHMAN
1998    PhD    Wales, Bangor    Risk, store of wealth and land use choice: a socio-economic analysis of farmer adoption of woodlots in Karnataka, India    D RAVINDRAN
1998    PhD    London, SOAS    Idealizing motherhood: the brahmanical discourse on women in ancient India (c500 BCE-300CE)    Ujjayini RAY    Dr I J Leslie
1998    DPhil    Oxford, Somerville    British women writers on India between the mid-eighteenth century and 1857    Rosemary A RAZA    Prof J M Brown; Mr J M Prest
1998    PhD    London, LSE    Organisational identification of managers in multinational corporations: a quantitative case study in India and Pakistan    C E W READE
1998    PhD    London, RHBNC    Intense weathering regimes of Deccan basalts    Jennifer Lesley REEVES    Dr J N Walsh
1998    PhD    Leeds    Sedimentology and dynamics of mega-dunes, Jamuna River, Bangladesh    Julie Elizabeth RODEN    Prof P Ashworth
1998    PhD    Newcastle    Owner-occupiers’ transformation of public low-cost housing in Peninsular Malaysia    Azizah SALIM    Dr A G Tipple
1998    PhD    Strathclyde    A study in inter-sectoral relations of linkages, trade and technology: the case of Bangladesh (an application of input-output analysis)    Mohammed SALIMULLAH    Prof I McNicoll
1998    PhD    Wales, Swansea    Contraband trade between Sri Lanka and India    M SARVATHAN    Mr J Whetton
1998    PhD    London, SOAS    The transitional state: Congress and government in Uttar Pradesh, India, 1947-1955    Suhit Kumar SEN    Dr P G Robb
1998    PhD    Manchester    Gender implications of economic reforms in the education sector in India-care of Haryana abd Madhya Pradesh    Manju SENAPATY    Ms D Elson
1998    PhD    Cambridge, St Cath’s    The creation of religious identities in the Punjab, c,1850-1920    Anil SETHI    Prof C A Bayly
1998    PhD    Reading    Relative efficiency of crop production n the cotton-wheat cropping system of Pakistan’s Punjab    M SHAFIQ
1998    PhD    Nottingham    Educational management: an exploratory study of management roles and possibilities of management development at college level in AJK, Pakistan    Saeeda Jahan Ara SHAH    Dr M Parker-Jenkins; Dr M Griffiths
1998    DPhil    Oxford, Worcester    Muslim politics in the North West Frontier Province, 1937-1947    Sayed W A SHAH    Prof J M Brown
1998    PhD    Reading    Economic and non-economic factors that influence the adoption of no-tillage technologies at farm level in rice-wheat and cotton-wheat areas of Pakistana’s Punjab    A D SHEIKH
1998    PhD    Bradford    Project performance and the impact of official development assistance: aid to agricultural development in Pakistan    M K SHEIKH
1998    MLitt    Aberdeen    Selective evaluation of the cycle of women’s status through religious and social practices with special reference to Bengal    S K SIRKAR
1998    DPhil    Oxford, Balliol    Transplanting liberal education: higher education in 19th century Bombay Presidency, India    Anne H E SLIWKA    Prof J M Brown
1998    MPhil    Newcastle    The Permatent emergency shelter cum roofing unit for Bangladesh    David SORRILL    Dr A G Tipple
1998    PhD    Cambridge, Queens’    Colonialism and linguistic knowledge: John Gilchrist and the representation of Urdu in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries    R D STEADMAN-JONES    Dr V A Law
1998    PhD    London, LSHTM    Child work and school attendance in urban India    H TAYLOR    Prof I Timaeus; N Crook (SOAS)
1998    PhD    Edinburgh    Building Christianity on Indian foundations: the theological legacy of Brahmabandav Upadhyay (1861-1907)    Timothy Craig TENNENT
1998    PhD    Leeds    Homelands and the representation of cultural and political identity in selected South Asian texts, 1857 to the present    g f h TICKELL
1998    DPhil    Oxford, Balliol    Between two civilisations: history and self representation of Bangladeshi Buddhism    Paola G TINTI    Prof R F Gombrich
1998    PhD    Kent    Readings in the works of Michael Ondaatje (1963-1982)    Monica TURCI    Prof C L Innes
1998    PhD    Queens, Belfast    Formal and de facto states of emergency: the Indian experience, 1947-1997    K S VENKATESWARAN
1998    PhD    Wales, Cardiff    Studies on the biology and control of Tropilaelaps clareae: Asian parasitic brood mite in Apis mellifera colonies in Islamabad, Pakistan    Camphour E S WAGHCHOURE
1998    PhD    Wales, Cardiff    Studies on the biology and control or Tropilaelaps clareae: Asian parasitic brood mites in Apis mellifera colonies in Islamabad, Pakistan    Elizabeth S WAGHCHOURE-CAMPHOR
1998    PhD    London, SOAS    India’s small scale industry policy: an evaluation and a case study    Trevor L WILLIAMS
1998    PhD    Aberdeen    Studies on weed populations in sugar cane in Sri Lanka    W R G WITHARAMA
1998    PhD    Strathclyde    Industrialization and economic growth: a case study of Bangladesh    A K M ZASHEEM UDDIN AHMED    Dr M M Huq
1998    PhD    Bristol    Sangathan: the pursuit of a Hindu ideal in colonial India: the idea of organisation in the emergence of Hindu nationalism, 1870-1930    John ZAVOS    Prof U King
1998    PhD    Ulster    Groundwater pollution and its environmental impact in Karachi Region (Pakistan)    A ZUBAIR
1999    PhD    London. LSE    Banking and debt recovery: a comparative study of the law and practice in India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia    Sonil G ABEYRATNE
1999    PhD    Oxford Brookes    A micro-level view of low-income rural housing in Bangaldesh    K I AHMED
1999    PhD    Cambridge    A political economy of industrial policy and development: a comparative study of Pakistan and Malaysia    A AKHLAQUE    Industrial productivity
1999    MPhil    Newcastle    An appraisal of processes of soil degradation in the Barind Tract, Bangladesh    S M M ALAM
1999    PhD    Leeds    Urban women in households and in the labour market under structural adjustment policy and programmes: a case study of Pakistani working women    K ALI
1999    DPhil    Oxford, Magdalen    Operationalising Amartya Sen’s capability approach: a framework for identifying valuable capabilities    S M ALKIRE    Prof F J Stewart; Prof J M Finnis
1999    PhD    Manchester    Economic reform in India since 1991 with particular reference to direct foreign investment and privatisation    Thanhkom ARUN    Prof F Nixson
1999    PhD    Hull    Opium and heroin production in Pakistan    A Z ASAD
1999    DPhil    York    Biodiversity and community ecology of mangrove plants, molluscs and crustaceans in two mangrove forests in Peninsular Malaysia in relation to local management practices    E C ASHTON
1999    PhD    Southampton    A multilevel model of the impact of health services on child mortality in Bangladesh    Michael Dennis ASHTON    Dr J McDdonald
1999    PhD    Southampton    Genetic diversity of jackfruit in Bangladesh and development of propagation methods    A K AZAD
1999    PhD    London, King’s    Nuclear weapons in the Indo-Pakistan conflict    Sanjay BADRI-MAHARAJ
1999    PhD    Leicester    The growth of farm firms through production,investment and capital formation in the rice-wheat zone of the Punjab Province of Pakistan    K A BAJWA
1999    PhD    Aberdeen    An economic analysis of farm household pluriactivity in Sri Lanka    G BALASURIYA
1999    DPhil    Oxford, St Cross    This work on Oriya literature and the Jagannath cult, 1866-1936: quest for identity    Subhakanta BEHERA    Dr F A Nizami
1999    PhD    London, UC    Structure of the DP in Bangla    Tanmoy BHATTACHARYA
1999    DPhil    Oxford, Wolfson    The politics of religious identity in South Asia in the late nineteenth century     Torkel BREKKE    Prof R F Gombrich
1999    MSc    Stirling    Investigations to the biology and ecology of an unidentified isopod affecting the CARE CAGES aquaculture programme, Bangladesh    P BULCOCK
1999    DPhil    Sussex    The global and the local in the post-colonial: popular music in Calcutta (1992-1997)    R CHAKRAVARTY
1999    PhD    London, SOAS    Change and continuity in Naqshbandi Sufism: Mujaddidi branch and its Hindu environment    T W P DAHNHARDT    Prof C Shackle
1999    PhD    Ulster    Traveller acts: a critical ethngraphy of backpacker India    K J DAVIDSON
1999    PhD    London , LSE    Tamil warps and wefts: an anthropological study of urban weavers in South India    Geert Raymond DE NEVE    Prof C Fuller; Prof J Parry
1999    PhD    London, Wye    Amelioration of the physical conditions of sandy soils with organic amendments under tropical conditions    S H S A DE SILVA
1999    PhD    Cambridge, Jesus    Youth, gender and community change: a case study of Bangladeshi students in an inner city    Eva DEBNATH    Dr M M Arnot
1999    PhD    Bath    One foot in each boat: the macro politics and micro sociology of NGOs in Bangladesh    Joseph DEVINE    Dr G D Wood; Dr A McGregor
1999    PhD    London, RHUL    The image of the prophet in Bengali Muslim piety, 1850-1950    Amit DEY    Prof F C R Robinson
1999    PhD    London, RHBNC    Images of the Prophet in Bengali Muslim piety, 1850-1950    Amit DEY    Prof F R C Robinson
1999    PhD    London, LSE    Women and gold: gender and urbanisation in comtemporary Bengal    Fentje Henrike DONNER    Dr J F Parry; Dr C Fuller
1999    DPhil    Oxford, Linacre    A study of the origin, evolution and role in society of a group of chiselled steel Hindu arms and armour from Southern India, c.1400-1800 A D    Robert F W ELGOOD    Dr Schuyler Jones

1999   PhD   Cambridge, Churchill   Caste, ethnicity and nation in the politics of the Muslims of Tamil Nadu, 1930-1967   S M A K FAKHRI   Dr R S Chandravarkar
1999   PhD   Cambridge, Selwyn   The ecology and behaviour of the pig-tailed macaque (Macaca Nemestrina Leonina)in Bangladesh   M M FEEROZ
1999   PhD   Wales   At the feet of the goddess: a comparative study of local goddess worship in Khurdapur, a village settlement in Orisssa and Cholavandan, a small town in Tamil Nadu   L F FOULSTON
1999   PhD   Leeds   Socio-economic changes in the peri-urban villages in Penang, Malaysia   Suriati GHAZALI   Dr D Preston
1999   PhD   London, SOAS   The dynamics of scientific culture under a colonial state: Western India, 1823-1880   Vaswati Bidhan Chandra GHOSH   Prof P G Robb
1999   PhD   Southampton   A passage from India: British women travelling home, 1915-1947   Georgina GOWANS
1999   PhD   London, External   Solid waste management: a case study of Delhi   V I GROVER
1999   PhD   Aberdeen   A study of factors influencing participation in joint forest management in the northwest Himalayas, India   H K GUPTA
1999   PhD    Southampton   British relations with the Marathas under the Wellesley regime    William A C HALLIWELL   Dr C M Woolgar
1999   PhD   Leeds   A corpus-based study of apposition in written Malay   H A HAROON
1999   PhD   London, UC   The vulnerability of the Dupi Tila Aquifer, Daka, Bangladesh   Muhammed Kamrul HASAN   Dr W G Burgess; Dr J Dottridge
1999   PhD   London, LSHTM   The prevalence of reproductive tract infections in rural Bangladesh   Sarah Jane HAWKES
1999   PhD   Warwick   The colonial city and the challenge of modernity: urban hegemonies and civic contestations in Bombay City, 1905-1925   H HAZAREESINGH
1999   PhD   Warwick   Gandhi and the Muslim question   Sandip HAZARIESINGH   Dr D A Washbrook
1999   PhD   London   Malaria in Afghan refugee communities in North-Western Pakistan: appropriate strategies for vector control and personal protection   S E HEWITT
1999   PhD   London, SOAS   Kings, things and courtly ideal in pre-colonial south India, 1500-1800   Jennifer Anne HOWES   Dr Giles Tillitson
1999   PhD   Cambridge, Clare   The Gujerati literati and the construction of a regional identity in the late 19th century   Riho ISAKA   Dr R S Chandavarkar
1999   DPhil   Sussex   The Grameen Bank: rhetoric and reality   Sanae ITO   Dr M T Greeley
1999   PhD   Stirling   Gender and management: factors affecting career advancement of women in the federal civil service of Pakistan   N JABEEN
1999   PhD   Wales, Aberystwyth   Hindu identity, nationalism and globalization   S R JACOBS
1999   PhD   Reading   Residual effect of phosphate fertiliser measured using the Olsen method in Pakistani soils   Shahid JAVID
1999   PhD   Edinburgh   When horizons darken: the process and experience of religious conversion among Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in London   A W JEBANESAN
1999   DPhil   Oxford, Nuffield   Press and Empire: the London press, government news management and India, c.1900-1922   Chandrika KAUL   Dr J G Darwin
1999   PhD   Edinburgh   Informal Islamic leadership in a Bangladeshi village   Jeffrey William John KEMP
1999   PhD   Wales, Aberystwyth   The economics of milk production and marketing in the development of Pakistan with special reference to Peshawar District   M KHAN
1999   PhD   Essex   Narratives of rise and fall: family, memory and mobility in Jaipur City   Ajay K KHANDELWAL   Prof P Thompson
1999   PhD   Durham   The provision of infrastructure services in Rohtak and Bhiwani Districts, Haryana, India, 1981-1998: a geographical analysis   N KUMAR
1999   PhD   Edinburgh   From people’s theatre to people’s Eucharist: resources from popular theatre for Eucharist reform in the Church of South India, Kerala State.   George KURUVILLA
1999   PhD   Nottingham   Spectrohistory: new historicism and beyond in Salman Rushdie’s novels   C-H LAI
1999   PhD   London, SOAS   Institutional and social change among the Muslims of Malabar, with special refernce to Calicut, 1870-1947   Lakshminarayayanapuram R S LAKSHMI   Dr Avril A Powell
1999   PhD   London, LSE   India’s relationship with the non-resident Indians, 1947-1996: a missed opportunity ?   Marie-Carine LALL
1999   PhD   London, SOAS   The Islamic marble carving and architecture of Cambay in Gujerat between 1200 and 1350: a collection of merits from difference sources   E A LAMBOURN
1999   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   Science and related consciousness: a study of the response to modern science in colonial Bengal. c 1870-1930   John Bosco LOURDUSAMY   Dr D A Washbrook
1999   PhD   Manchester   Runoff modelling from large glacierised basins in the Karakoram Himalayas using remote sensing of the transient snowline   A LOWE
1999   MPhil   Edinburgh   The influence of light availability on attack by the mahogany shoot-borer (Hypsipyla rubusta Moore)in Sri Lanka   M R MAHROOF
1999   PhD   Kent   The interpretation of Islam and nationalism by the elite through the English language media in Pakistan   A L MAJOR
1999   PhD   Hull   Ethnicity and politics in the Kashmir Valley   I S MALIK
1999   PhD   London, LSHTM   Undernutrition and impaired functional ability amongst elderly slum dwellers in Mumbai, India   Mary C MANANDHAR
1999   PhD   East Anglia   Cotton leaf curl disease in Pakistan: molecular characterisation, diagnostics and genetically engineered virus resistance   S MANSOOR
1999   PhD   Birmingham   Some historical responses to disability in South Asia and reflections on service provision, with focus on mental retardation in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and some consideration of blindness   M MILES
1999   PhD   Kent   Sacred anthropology: a study of nondual conceptions of man in Hinduism and Christianity   J R MILNE
1999   PhD   Hull   Perception of Islam in Indian nationalist thought   A MISRA
1999   PhD   London, Inst Comm   The politics of privatisation in Bangladesh   Mobasser MONEM   Prof J Manor
1999   PhD   Cambridge, King’s   The Kisan world abd human rights: a displaced people of eastern India   Ranjit NAYAK   Dr K J Hart
1999   PhD   Salford   An analysius of information systems development across time and space: the case of outsourcing to Infia   Brian NICHOLSON
1999   MLitt   Oxford, St Anne’s   Shaikh Mohammad Abdulllah and the movement for Muslim female education in North India (1890-1945)   Farah NIZAMI   Prof J M Brown; Prof F Robinson
1999   DPhil   Oxford, Lincoln   India, parliament and the press under George III: a study of British attitudes towards the East India Company amd empire in the later 18th and early 19th centuries   Jeremy R OSBORN   Dr D A Washbrook
1999   DPhil   Oxford, Brasenose   Identity and institutions in ethnic conflict:the Muslims of Sri Lanka   Meghan L O’SULLIVAN   Dr N Gooptu
1999   PhD   Warwick   Labour and land rights of women in rural India with particular reference to Western Orissa   Reena PATEL
1999   PhD   Edinburgh   Legislating forests in colonial India, 1800-1880   Akhileshwar PATHAK
1999   DPhil   York   An environmental Leibenstein framework: population pressure, agricultural land use and and environmental change in Orissa (India)   Lopamudra PATNAIK   Prof C Perrings
1999   PhD   Edinburgh   Social and cultural processes of healing and rehabilitation in Sri Lanka   Abigail PENNY   Dr J Spencer
1999   PhD   City   Development and international business: an application to India   M RAMAN
1999   PhD   Liverpool   Fertility in Kerala: the impacts of social development policies and gender relations   Linda REICHENFELD   Prof R I Woods; Mr W T S Gould
1999   PhD   London    Paleoclimate of South Asia over the last 80 ka: luminescent ages of sediments from former glaciations in Nepal and Pakistan   B W M RICHARDS
1999   PhD   Nottingham   Fiscal response to foreign aid: applications to Pakistan and Costa Rica   S E RODRIGUEZ

2000   PhD   Cambridge, Newnham   Religion and the economics of fertility in South India   S IYER
2000   MPhil   London, Inst Ed   Privatisation and equity: the case of Pakistan urban secondary schools   B R JAMIL
2000   PhD    Exeter   The Penjdeh crisis and its impact on the Great Game and the defence of India, 1885-1897    Robert A JOHNSON   Prof J Black
2000   PhD   Cambridge, Darwin   The state and the political economy of industrial development in India: the automobile industry circa 1980-1996   Indraneel KARLEKAR   Dr S E Corbridge
2000   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   Gender, identity and development among the Wakhi of northern Pakistan   Sabrina KASSAM-JAN   Dr D Parkes; Dr N J Allen
2000   PhD   Exeter   Drug addiction syndrome among university students in Pakistan   W KAUSAR
2000   PhD   Bath   Struggle for survival: networks and relationships in a Bangladesh slum   M Iqbal Alam KHAN   Prof G Wood; Dr J A McGregor
2000   PhD   Cambridge, Queens’   An empirical study of human resource management in a developing country – the case of the banking industry of Pakistan   Shaista Ensan KHILJI   Mr C G Gill
2000   PhD   Cambridge. Queens   Human resource management in a developing country: the case of banking industry in Pakistan   S E KHILJI   Mr C G Gill
2000   PhD   Cambridge, Fitzwilliam   A study of debates on Christian conversion in India, 1947-1999 from the perspective of Christian mission   Sebastian Chang-Hwan KIM   Dr B Stanley
2000   DPhil   Oxford, St Edmund Hall   The “domestic” world of the Mughals in the reigns of Babar, Humayan and Akbar (1500-1605)   Ruby LAL   Dr D A Washbrook; Dr J D Gurney
2000   PhD   East Anglia   Perceiving disability and practising community-based rehabilitiation: a critical examination with case studies from south India   R P LANG
2000   PhD   Keele   The internationalisation of Malaysian business and its relevance to Malay entrepreneurs   A J MAHAJAR
2000   PhD   Birmingham   The administration of waqf, pious endowment in Islam: a critical study of the State Islamic Religious Councils as the sole trustees of awqaf assets and the implementation of istibdal in Malaysia with special reference to the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur   S M MAHAMOOD
2000   PhD   Strathclyde   Price competetitiveness and performance of manufactured exports: the case of Pakistan   Seema K MAKHDOOMI   Dr M Huq; Prof J Love
2000   MPhil   Nottingham   Levels of flat ownership by middle-income households in Dhaka, Bangladesh   Nasima MATIN   Mr S Jalloh; Prof J C Moughtin
2000   MPhil   London, LSE   European images of India before the rise of orientalism in the late eighteenth century   Kyoko MATSUKAWA   Dr G Wilson
2000   PhD   East London   Thermal comfort in havelis of Jaisalmer   Jane MATTHEWS
2000   DPhil   Sussex   Distress diversification or growth linkages ? Explaining rural non-farm employment variations in Andhra Pradesh, India   Prasado R MECHARIA   D M Hunt
2000   PhD   Bradford   Social policy in Malaysia: a study of social support for the elderly in a rural area   N MOHAMED
2000   PhD   Oxford Brookes   Seismic interpretation and sequence stratigraphy of the offshore Indus basin of Pakistan   S MOHAMMAD
2000   PhD   London   Nationalism, literature and ideology in colonial India and occupied Egypt   A A MONDAL
2000   MPhil   Manchester   Burma and British Cold War policy, 1946-1951   Benjamin John MORRIS   Dr P C Lowe
2000   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   Gender, work and familial ideology: women workers in the unorganised garment export industry, New Delhi, India   T MUKHOPADHYAY   Prof G P Hawthorn
2000   PhD   Newcastle   Supply reponse of major agricultural commodities in Pakistan   K MUSHTAQ
2000   MPhil   London, SOAS   Political economic dimensions of East Asian development: South Korea, India   Rajiv Chitazhi NARAYAN   Dr R H Taylor
2000   DPhil   Oxford, Christ Church   Conservation management of the tiger, Panthera Tigris Tigris, in Bandhavgarh National Park, India   Latika NATH   Dr D W MacDonald
2000   PhD   LSHTM   Epidemiological immunochemistry of Helicobacter pylori in Jessore, BBHangladesh   J NESSA
2000   PhD   Wales, Aberystwyth   An operational evaluation test of MEDLINE on CD-ROM in Malaysia with special reference to investigating practicable relevance-based perfoormance measures   Roslina OTHMAN
2000   PhD   Hull   Changing dimensions of single European Market: implications for the non-member countries – a case study on India’s textile and clothing exports   S Gnanasekara PANDIAN
2000   PhD   Cambridge, St John’s   Technology and environmental leapfrogging: three case studies from India   R M PERKINS   Dr B Vira
2000   PhD   London, LSE   Legal systems as a determinant of foreign direct investment: the case of Sri Lanka   Amanda Joan PERRY   Mr P Muchlinski
2000   PhD   Lancaster   A critical ethnography on the production of the Indian MBA discourse   E PRIYADHARSHINI
2000   PhD   Nottingham Trent   Douglarisation and the politics of Indian/African relations in Trinidad writing   Sheila RAMPERSAD
2000   PhD   Edinburgh   Another member of our family: aspects of television culture and social change in Varanasi, North India   Simon William ROBERTS   Dr A Good; Dr J Spencer
2000   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   Communal conflict in Bengal, 1930-1947: political parties, the Muslim intelligentsia and the Pakistan Movement   Sulagna ROY   Dr R S Chandavarkar
2000   PhD   Cambridge   Matrilineal comunities, patriarchial realities: female headship in eastern Sri Lanka – a feminist economic reading   K N RUWANPURA   Mrs S Fennell
2000   MPhil   Newcastle   Modelling privatised minor irrigation systems in Bangladesh: an economic analysis   F I M G W SARKER
2000   PhD   Durham   The influence of British political thought in China and India: the cases of Sun Yat-Sen, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru   N A SCOTT
2000   PhD   Wales, Bangor   The influence of farmer knowledge, shade and planting density on smallholder rubber/banana intercropping in Sri Lanka   A M W K SENEVIRATHNA
2000   DPhil   Sussex   Mother/child health and health care in Pakistan   Shafqat SHEHZAD   Mr P Chaudhuri; Dr A Wagstaff
2000   PhD   Southampton   Constitutional rights relating to criminal justice in South Asia: a comparison with the European Convention on Human Rights   Kabiniyage Buddhappriya Asola SILVA
2000   PhD   Warwick   Gendered labour process and flexibility: a study of jewellery production in India   U SONI-SINHA
2000   PhD   London, SOAS   The impact of Islamization on the Christian community of Pakistan   P SOOKHDEO
2000   PhD   Southampton   The impact of rural-urban migration on child survival in India   Robert STEPHENSON   Dr J McDdonald
2000   PhD   Open   Coproducing universal primary education in a context of social exclusion: households, community organisations and state administration in a district of Karnataka, India   R SUBRAHMANIAN
2000   PhD   Edinburgh   Development of a range management decision support system (RAMDSS)for forest planning in the Banavasi Range of the Western Ghats, India   Ramanathan SUGUMARAN
2000   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   Women’s political strategies to combat poverty: a study of a squatter settlement in Dhaka   S M SULTAN   Dr R S Chandavarkar
2000   PhD   Cambridge, Wolfson   Mapping hinduism: “Hinduism” and the study of Indian religions, 1630-1776   Barry W H SWEETMAN   Dr J Lipner
2000   PhD   Essex   The perception of social support and the experience of depression in Pakistani women   E TAREEN
2000   PhD   Southampton   Rural poverty and the role of the non-farm sector in economic development: the Indian experience   M TIWARI
2000   PhD   Portsmouth   Illiteracy in India: a multi-level analysis   S VENKATASUBRAMANIAN
2000   PhD   Warwick   The influence of culture and politics on accounting change in India from 1947 to 1998   Shradda VERMA
2000   PhD   Cambridge, Corpus   Cranial diversity and the evolutionary history of South Asians   Samanti Dineshkumari WARUSAWITHANA KULATILAKE
2000   MPhil   Wales, Aberystwyth   Britain and the Muslims: imperial perceptions of Indian Muslims, 1914-1922   R A J WHITE
2000   MPhil   Oxford, St Cross   Released on both sides ? The origin and position of formless meditation in early Indian Buddhism   Alexander WYNNE   Prof R F Gombrich
2000   PhD   Edinburgh   The forest cooks and the people eat: nature and society in Mayurbhanj, Orissa   Hannele Kirsi Aija YLO’NEN
2000   PhD   Bradford   Agriculture and pastorarlism in the late Bronze Age, North West Frontier, Pakistan   R L YOUNG
2001   MPhil   Glasgow   Colonisation and Hijab: a case study of Egypt and India   N AHMAD
2001   PhD   Stirling   Socio-economic aspects of freshwater prawn culture development in Bangladesh   N AHMED
2001   PhD   Leeds   Thalassaemia carrier testing in pregnant Pakistani women: perceptions of “information ” and “consent”   Shenaz AHMED
2001   PhD   London, SOAS   Early Indian moulded terracotta: the emergence of an iconography and variations in style, circa second century BC to first century AD   Naman Parmeshwar AHUJA
2001   PhD   Essex   Pakistan’s export performance, 1972-1998   M AKBAR
2001   PhD   Durham   Slaves of water: indigenous knowledge of fisheries on the floodplain of Bangladesh   M ALAM
2001   PhD   Aberdeen   Evaluation of environmental sustainability of forest land use policies of Bangladesh   Mohammad ALI
2001   PhD   Aberdeen   The effects of low temperature and seed quality on the germination of fifteen rice (Oryza sative L)cultivars from Bangladesh   M G ALI
2001   PhD   Portsmouth   The rise of a service class culture in India: the software industry in Bangalore   Elaine ASSAR
2001   PhD   Portsmouth   The emergence of a new culture class: the software industry in Bangalore, India   Elain Risa ASSER   Dr P Churmer-Smit
2001   PhD   Brunel   The development of India’s crafts and their implication upon Indo-European furniture   N W BAMFORTH
2001   PhD   Strathclyde   A critique of tourism development planning: a case of Sri Lanka   H M BANDARA
2001   PhD   Wales, Bangor   Developing fodder resources on the forest grassland of tribal areas in western India   Peter George BEZKOROWAJNYI
2001   PhD   Bristol   Conceptions: an exploration of infertility and assisted conception in India   A BHARADWAJ
2001   PhD   Oxford, St Antony’s   The emergence of the Bombay film industry, 1913-1937   Kaushik BHAUMIK   Dr D A Washbrook
2001   PhD   Strathclyde   Consumer preferences and public policy: a case study of water supply and waste management in Madras (Chennai), India   A P BHAYAN KARAM
2001   PhD   Strathclyde   Contingent variation in a developing metropolis: an exploration of water and waste management in Madres   Anand Prathivadi BHAYANKARAM   Mr R Perman
2001   PhD   Kingston   The initiation and magmatic evolution of a juvenile island arc: the Kohistan arc, Pakistan Himalaya   S M BIGNOLD
2001   PhD   London, LSHTM   The rational use of blood in India: intervention to promote good transfusion practice   Timothy John BRAY
2001   PhD   Aberdeen   Chipko and crofter: land movements in northern India and the Highlands of Scotland   Nandini B CHADHA   Mr W T C Brotherstone; Dr J Forster
2001   PhD   Strathclyde   The impact of trade policy on growth in India   Ramesh CHANDRA   Prof J Love
2001   PhD   Cambridge, Girton   Colonial power and agrarian politics in Kheda District (Gujarat), c.1890-1930   Vinayak CHATURVEDI   Prof C A Bayly
2001   PhD   Leeds   Appropriate disposal of sewage in urban and suburban Sri Lanka   E J H COREA
2001   PhD   London, RHUL   Faith, unity, discipline: the making of a socio-political formation in urban India, Lahore,1935-1953   Markus DAECHSEL   Prof F C R Robinson
2001   PhD   Cambridge, Sidney    Whither urban governance ? Self-help civil society, political conflicts and environmental services in Chennai, India   S L DAHIYA   Dr B J Devereux
2001   PhD   Glasgow   The Bengal Army and the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny, 1856-1857   Julian Saul Markham DAVID   Prof H F A Strachen
2001   PhD   London   Air pollution and agricultural insect pests in urban and peri-urban areas of India   C DAVIES
2001   PhD   Essex   No time to play: social, economic and legal dimensions of child labour practices in India   Rie DEBABRATA
2001   PhD   Cambridge, St John’s   Sikh discourses of community and sovereignty in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries    Jeevan S DEOL   Prof C A Bayley
2001   PhD   Exeter   The effects of marital dissolution, fertility and contraceptive behaviour among men and woimen in Addu Atoll, Maldives   Aminath Mohamed DIDI   Dr N Ford; Dr A Ankomah
2001   PhD   Cambridge, Queens’   The scars of piety: Islam and the dynamics of religious dispute on Androth Island, South India   Brian John DIDIER   Dr J A Laidlaw
2001   PhD   London, RHUL   Traditional rule and western conventions: the Maharajas of Bikaner and their partnership with the Raj, 1887-1947   Paolo DURISOTTO   Prof F C R Robinson
2001   PhD   Loughborough   Venture capital financing in India: a study of venture capitalist’s valuation, structuring and monitoring practices    Mansoor DURRANI
2001   PhD   Cambridge, Clare Hall   Commerce and diaspora: locating the business practices of Hindu Sindhis    Mark Anthony FALZON   Dr J A Laidlaw
2001   PhD   London, SOAS   Buddhist narratives in Burmese murals   Alexandra Raissa GREEN   Dr E H Moore; Dr G H R Tillitson
2001   PhD   Lancaster   A critical review of ecological impact assessment in Sri Lanka: with particular reference to the shrimp aquaculture industry   Miriya Prasanni GUNAWARDENA
2001   DrPH   London, LSHTM   Regulation of the private health care sector in Pakistan   Ajmal HAMID
2001   PhD   South Bank   Social exclusion and women’s health in Lahore, Pakistan   N A HAMID
2001   PhD   Liverpool   Identity, conflict and nationalism: the Naga and Kuki peoples of northeast India and northwest Burma   Seilen HAOKIP
2001   MPhil   London, LSE   Humanitarian assistance: the relationship between NGOs and the government of Sri Lanka   Marit HAUG   Prof C Fuller; Prof M Light
2001   PhD   Durham   The engineering behaviour of the tropical clay soils of Dhaka, Bangladesh   A S HOSSAIN
2001   PhD   London, Imperial   The nitrogen economy of rice-based cropping systems in Bangladesh   F HOSSAIN
2001   PhD   Southampton   Assessment of family planning outreach workers’ contact and contraceptive use dynamics in rural Bangladesh using multilevel modelling   M B HOSSAIN
2001   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   Essays on consumption and asset mobility in rural Pakistan: a microeconomic approach   Taimur HYAT   Prof B Harriss-White
2001   PhD   Leeds   Internet implementation and strategic subsidiary context of Malaysias subsidiaries located in the UK   Azizi Ali IBRAHIM
2001   PhD   Edinburgh   The scent of jasmine: experiencing knowledge and emotion in cross cultural contextrs of South Indian classical dance   Joanna Rose JACOBSON
2001   PhD   Stirling   Fishery biology and population dynamics of shrimps (Penaeua indicus)and Metapenaeus dobsoni)in the lagoon and coastal area of Negombo, Sri Lanka   P A A T JAYAWARDANE
2001   PhD   Birmingham   A cluster randomised controlled trial of reorganising maternal health services in Sindh, Pakistan   A H JOKHIO
2001   DPhil   Oxford, St Edmund Hall   Christian and non-Christian Angami Nagas with special reference to traditional healing practices   Vibha JOSHI   Dr N J Allen
2001   PhD   London, SOAS   The making of colonial psychiatry, Bombay Presidentcy, 1849-1940   Shruti KAPILA   Prof D J Arnold
2001   PhD   London, Inst Comm.   Security, development and political accommodation in Bangladesh   Shahnaz KARIM   Prof J Manor; Prof R F Holland
2001   PhD   Southampton   Maternal health care utilisation among the urban poor of Maharashtra, India   F KAUSAR
2001   DPhil   Oxford   Echo words in Tamil   Elinor KEANE
2001   PhD   Newcastle   Enhancement of nutritional quality of straw-based diets in Pakistan by urea treatment or suppementation with protein or energy   Muhammad Aslam KHAN
2001   PhD   Nottingham   Environmental hazards, risk perception and general environmental beliefs: a cross cultural study between UK and Pakistan   N R KHAN
2001   DPhil   Oxford, Wadham   Poverty in Pakistan: a study on health, nutrition, income and consumption   Salman H KHAN   Dr C Muller
2001   DPhil   Oxford, Wadham   State, society and labour in colonial Bombay, 1893-1918   Prashant K KIDAMBI   Dr D A Washbrook
2001   PhD   Birminghm   Mission pneumatology with special reference to the Indian theologies of the holy spirit of Stanley Samartha, Vandana and Samuel Rayan   K KIM
2001   PhD   Reading   Sociolinguistic variation in urban India: a study of Marathi-speaking adolescents in Pune   Sonal KULKARNI
2001   PhD   Birmingham   British South Asian identities and the popular cultures of British Bhangra music, Bollywod films and Zee TV in Birmringham   r KUMAR DUDRAH
2001   PhD   London, External   Sarangi style in North Indian art music   Nicolas Fairchild MAGRIEL   Dr R Widdess
2001   PhD   Lancaster   Economic reforms in India: impact on savings and productivity of the manufacturing sector   Vidya MAHAMBARE   Prof V N Balasubramanyam
2001   PhD   Stirling   Small scale multispecies demersal fishery off Negombo, Sri Lanka   R R P MALDENIYA
2001   PhD   Oxford, St Antony’s   A reluctant warrior: Hong Kong in Anglo-American interactions, 1949-1957   Chi Kwan MARK   Dr R J Foot
2001   PhD   Brunel   Rushdie’s legacy: the emergence of a radical British Muslim identity   G A McROY
2001   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   African NGOs: turning knowledge and experience into power   Sarah G MICHAEL   Dr C Elliott
2001   PhD   London, SOAS   Painting awareness: a study in the use of exotic cultural traditions by the artists of the Emperor Akbar’s Khamsa of Nizami   Gregory B MINISSALE
2001   PhD   Leeds   Weak market efficiency and the determinants of share returns: a study of the listed companies on the Dhaka Stock Exchange   Asma MOBAREK   Prof K Keasey; Dr H Short
2001   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   Love and marriage in Delhi   Perveez MODY SPENCER   Dr J A Laidlaw
2001   PhD   Wales, Aberystwyth   Dispute settlement mechanism in the ASEAN free trade area (AFTA}   Rahmat MOHAMAD
2001   PhD   Leeds   Dividend policy and behaviour and security price reaction to the announcement of dividends in an emergency market: a study of companies listed on the Dhaka Stock Exchange   A Sabur MOLLAH   Prof K Keasey
2001   PhD   Cambridge, St John’s   Writing crime, writing empire: representing the colony in nineteenth century fiction fo crime   Upamanyu Pablo MUKHERJEE   Prof C I Donaldson
2001   PhD   Kent   On the strength of a likeness: Kipling and the analogical connections between India and Ireland   Kaori NAGAI
2001   PhD   Leeds   Perceptions of empowerment and reproductive health decisions amongst rural India women   Ann Marie NICHOLS   Dr Ray Bush; Dr Z Aydin
2001   PhD   London, LSE   The Singapore entrepreneurial state in China: a sociological study of the Suzhou industrial park, 1992-1999   Alexius A PEREIRA   Dr A Power
2001   PhD   Hull   Population biology and management of hilsa shad (Tenualosa ilisha)in Bangladesh   Md Jalilur RAHMAN
2001   PhD   London, LSHTM   Utilisation of primary health care services in rural Bangladesh: the population and provider perspectives   S A RAHMAN
2001   PhD   Manchester   Modelling demand and supply in Bangladesh agriculture: a computable general equilibrium approach to public policy and economic welfare   S M Osman RAHMAN   Dr N Russell
2001   PhD   City   The evolving devi: education, employment and British Hindu Gujerati women’s identity   Hasmita RAMJI
2001   DPhil   Oxford, Christ Church   Constrictions of identity and cultural translation in relation to origin and destination: a generational comparison of South Asian expatriate and immigrant writers in Britain (1937-present)   Ruvani RANASINHA   Dr J A Mee
2001   PhD   London, QMW   Public interest environmental legislation in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh   J RAZZAQUE
2001   PhD   Manchester   Participation and protected area conservation in India: ecodevelopment theory and practice   Trevor Pritchard REES   Prof D Hulme
2001   PhD   Cambridge, Clare Hall   The making of ethnoHinduism: communalism, reservations and the Ahmedabad riot of 1985   Ornit SHANI   Dr R S Chandravarkar
2001   PhD   London, LSE   Merchants, “saints” and sailors: the social production of islamic reform in a port town of western India   Edward Lawrence SIMPSON
2001   PhD   Wales, Swansea   Gender participation and community forestry: the case of joint forest management in Madhya Pradesh, India   R SINGH
2001   PhD   Reading   International experience of plant variety protection: lessons for India   Chittur SSRINIVASAN   Prof C G Thirtle
2001   PhD   Cambridge, Sidney Sussex   Ecological institutions: joint forest management in Bihar (Jharkhand)and West Bengal, India   M TIWARY   Dr S E Corbridge
2001   PhD   Cambridge, Gonville   Contested notions of sovereignty in Bengal under British rule, 1765-1785   Thomas R TRAVERS   Prof C A Bayly
2001   MPhil   Open   The legacy of the controversies: the continuing impact on interfaith encounters in Sri Lanka of nineteenth century controversies between Buddhists and Christians    M S VASANTHAKUMAR
2001   PhD   Cambridge, Newnham   The appeal of a modern god-person in contemporary India: the case of Mata Amritanandamayi and her mission   M WARRIER   Dr S B Bayley
2001   PhD   Hertfordshire   Identifying potential barriers to business process and information systems reengineering in Sri Lanka   V WEERAKKODY
2001   PhD   Southampton   Short birth intervals and infant health in India   Alison K WHITWORTH
2001   DPhil   Oxford, St Hughes   Governing property, making law: British conceptions of agrarian society and the administration of rural Bengal, c.1785-1835   Jon E WILSON   Dr D A Washbrook
2001   DPhil   Oxford, St Cross   Process analysis of a total literacy campaign in India: a case study of Udaiput District   Rie YAGI   Dr C Brock
2001   PhD   Loughborough   The globalisation of Western advertising: a case study of the impact of imported advertising on cultural values   Azizul Halim YAHYA
2001   PhD   London, SOAS   The intertextuality of women in Urdu litterature: a study of Fahmida Riaz and Kishwar Naheed   Amina YAQIN
2002   PhD   Wales, Bangor   Basic needs analysis of social forestry participants in northwest Bangladesh   S AKHTER   Prof C Price
2002   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   Child labour in the Bombay Presidency, 1850-1920   Emma Catherine ALEXANDER   Dr R S Chandavarkar
2002   PhD   London, Imperial   Biological variation and chemical control of Rhizoctonia solani causing rice sheath blight disease in Bangladesh   Md Ansar ALI
2002   PhD   LSHTM   An analysis of private hospital markets in Bangladesh   M A AMIN
2002   PhD   Stirling   A question of “Chineseness”: the Chinese diaspora in Singapore, 1819-1950s   Lynn Ling-Yin ANG   Dr S Mishra
2002   MPhil   Newcastle   Trophy hunting and conservation: Himalayan Ibrex Capra Ibex sibirica in northern Pakistan   Masood ARSHAD
2002   PhD   London   The political economy of policy reform: labour market regulation in India   Roli ASTHANA
2002   PhD   Sheffield   Children’s drawings as research tool: establishing children’s environmental concepts and preferences with reference to urban openspace planning design in Johore Bahru, Malaysia   M S A BAKAR
2002   PhD   London, SOAS   Buddhism and shamanism in village Sikkim   A BALIKCI
2002   DPhil   Oxford, Somerville   The other side of the Raj: representation of colonial India in the writings of Edward John Thompson   Nilanjana BANERJI   Prof R J C Young
2002   PhD   London, SOAS   An investigation into the 56 Vinayakas in Banares and their origins   Isabelle O T BERMIJN
2002   DPhil   Oxford, Linacre   Biodiversity and conservation of a cultural landscape in the Western ghats of India   Shonil A BHAGWAT   Dr N D Brown; Dr P S Savill
2002   DPhil   Oxford, St Anne’s   Stylistic features of Sanskrit in the Upanisads and Pali in early Buddhist texts with special reference to prose word order   Pathompong BODHIPRASIDDHINAND   Prof R F Gombrich
2002   PhD   Cambridge, Wolfson   Archaeological science as anthropology: time, space and matreriality in rural India and the ancient past   Nicole Lise BOIVIN   Dr C A French
2002   MPhil   London, Birkbeck   Religion and the experiences of Indo-Pakistani women in the fiction of Bharati Mukherjee, Bapsi Sidhwa, Hanif Kureishi and Salmon Rushdie   N H BOWEN
2002   PhD   London, SOAS   Baloch nationalism: its origin and development up to 1980   Taj Mohammad BRESEEG
2002   PhD   London   Asakta Karman in the Bhagavadgita   Simon Pearse BRODBECK
2002   PhD   London, SOAS   Indian religions   Simon Pearse BRODBECK
2002   PhD   Newcastle   The integration of poverty-focused aquaculture in large-scale irrigation systems in South Asia   Cecile D BRUGERE
2002   PhD   London   Local governance in Calcutta: bureaucratic performance and health care delivery   Indranil CHAKRABARTI
2002   MLitt   Oxford, St Antony’s   Ashraf identity in early Urdu fiction   Shardul Kumar CHATURVEDI   Dr D A Washbrook; Dr N Gooptu
2002   PhD   Bristol   Towards the socialisation of children’s learning: pupils, parents and primary education in an Indian district – an ethnographic survey   Rita CHAWLA-DUGGAN
2002   PhD   London, UC   The influence of ethnicity and beliefs on the course and outcome of schizophrenia in Singapore   J L CHUA
2002   PhD   London, LSE   Social mobility in a Chamar community in eastern Uttar Pradesh, northern Indian   Manuela CIOTTI
2002   DPhil   Sussex   Rural poverty in Bangaldesh: a comparative study of determinants of economic well-being and inequality   Maria Jose A CORTIJO
2002   PhD   Open   Environmental impact of Deccan Trap flood basalt volcanism: assessment of regional floral responses to late Cretaceous-early Tertiary activity   Jennifer Ann CRIPPS
2002   PhD   De Montfort   Maharashtra and the cross-fertilisation of style of Brahmanical caves in India   Deepanjana DANDA
2002   PhD   London, LSHTM   The long term effect of child bearing on adult mortality in Matlab, Bangladesh   Lisa Sioned DAVIES
2002   DPhil   Oxford, Wolfson   British policy in Bengal: 1939-1954   Bikramjit DE   Prof J M Brown; Prof T Raychaudhuri
2002   PhD   London, SOAS   Institutionalizing education: colonial government, missionary and household education in British colonial Punjab   Jeffrey Mark DIAMOND   Dr A A Powell
2002   PhD   Oxford Brookes   The molecular basis of thalassaemia in Sri Lanka   Christopher A FISHER
2002   PhD   Cambridge, St John’s   Globalization and religious revival in the imperial cities of the Indian Ocean rim, 1870-1820   Mark Ravinder FROST   Dr T N Harper
2002   PhD   Durham   Indigenous knowledge, livelihood and decision -making strategies on floodplain farmers in Bangladesh   G P GHOSH
2002   PhD   Bath   Competing interests and institutional ambiguities: problems of sustainable forest management in the northern areas of Pakistan   A GOHAR
2002   PhD   Edinburgh   Untouchable citizens: an analysis of the Liberation Panthers and democratistion in Tamil Nadu   Hugh GORRINGE
2002   PhD   London, SOAS   The Sufi saints of Awrangabad: narratives, contexts and identities   Nile S GREEN
2002   PhD   Cambridge. St John’s   Mantle plumes and depositional sequences: onshore/offshore India   A R W HALKETT   Dr N J White
2002   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   Famine process and famine policy: a case study of Ahmednagar District, Bombay Presidency, 1870-84   David N J HALL-MATTHEWS   Dr D A Washbrook; Dr B Harriss
2002   PhD   Leeds   Computer misuse within the organisation: an evaluation of computer misuse legislation in Britain and Malaysia   Zaiton HAMIN
2002   PhD   London, Imperial   Characterisation of Bacillus cereus strains in Bangladeshi rice   Md Anwarul HAQUE
2002   PhD   Edinburgh   Growing gods: bidayuh processes of religious change in Sarawak, Malaysia   F M A HARRIS
2002   DPhil   Sussex   British collecting of Indian art and artifacts in the 18th and 19th centuies   Lucian G HARRIS
2002   PhD   Reading   Understanding farmers’ attitudes and behaviours towards the use of pesticides on cotton crop in Pakisdtan’s Punjab   Tariq HASSAN
2002   PhD   London   The curriculum for health education in schools: issues of definition, choice and implementation: an illuminative study based on Uganda, Zambia and India   Hubert William Richmond HAWES
2002   PhD   Strathclyde   The significance of ethnic ties and entreprenurial networks in the internationalisation of the firm: case study: the internationalisation of UK Indian enterprises   Jaswinder Singh HAYER
2002   PhD   Leeds   The expression of syntax in Sri Lankan English: speech and writing   S M F HERAT
2002   PhD   Hull   US – Pakistan partnership in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, 1979-1988: causes, dynamics and consequences   A Z A HILALI
2002   PhD   Strathclyde   An integrated performance measurement system of health care services: an empirical study of public and private hospitals in Malaysia   Abdul Razak IBRAHIM
2002   PhD   Cambridge, Churchill   Alternative methods and sources for measuring vaccination coverage in rural Bangladesh   MdD Shafiqul ISLAM   Dr C G N Mascie-Taylor
2002   DPhil   Sussex   Voice, responsiveness and collaboration: democratic decentralization and service delivery in two Indian cities   Jennifer JALAL   J P Gaventa
2002   PhD   Wales, Bangor   Drivers of land use change and policy analysis: the case of Bangladesh   Mohammed JASHIMUDDIN   Prof G Edwards-Jones
2002   PhD   Open   An investigation of teaching and learning biology at a distance: with special reference to Sri Lanka   B G JAYATILLEKE
2002   DPhil   York   Cultural construction of the “Sinhala woman” and women’s lives in post-independence Sri Lanka   J D JAYAWARDENA   Dr J de Groot
2002   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   Greeks, Saracens and Indians: imperial builders in south India, 1800-1880   Ioma Shanti JAYEWARDENE-PILLAI   Dr D A Washbrook
2002   PhD   London, RHUL   Being Sri Lankan: three cultural geographies   Tariq JAZEEL   Dr C Nash; Prof D Gower
2002   PhD   Southampton   The rhetoric and reality of gender issues in the domestic water sector: a case study from India   Deepa JOSHI
2002   PhD   Cambridge, Selwyn   Behavioural ecology of sympatric langures in Bangladesh   Md Mofizul KABIR   Dr D J Chivers
2002   MD   Leeds   Genetic and environmental determinants of cardiovascular risk factors in South Asian patients with cerebrovascular disease and their first degree relatives   K KAIN
2002   PhD   Nottingham   The categories of Hindu nationalism: a neo-structuralist analysis of the discourse of Hindutva   Christian KARNER
2002   PhD   Manchester Metropolitan   Public participation in environmental impact assessment in the developing and developed worlds: Pakistan and UK perspectives   Amjad Ali KHAN
2002   PhD   Kent   Memory, dis-location, violence and women in the partition literature of Pakistan and India    Furrukh Abbas KHAN   Dr A S Gurnah
2002   MPhil   London, UC   Vitamin A deficiency in children in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP)of Pakistan   M A KHAN
2002   PhD   Manchester   An evaluation of the performance of small and medium enterprises in Bangladesh with special reference to finance   Md Saiful Amin KHAN   Prof F Nixson
2002   PhD   Durham   Women’s voices: the presentation of women in the fiction of South Asian women   Lisa Ee Jia LAU   Dr M A Crang; Dr E E Mawdsley
2002   PhD   London   The role of Islam in the legal system of Pakistan   Martin Wilhelm LAU
2002   PhD   Kent   Power and patronage in Pakistan   Stephen M LYON   Mr R S Edmond
2002   PhD   Reading   The role of English in higher education in Pakistan   S MANSOOR
2002   PhD   Bristol   The global regulation of marine fisheries and its impact on two developing states: Namaibia and Kerala   Leonarda Enrica Camilla MARAZZI
2002   DClinPsy   Leicester   Illness representations, coping and locus of control in breast cancer: a comparative study amongst South Asian Indian women and white indigenous women   R MARTYN
2002   PhD   Durham   Sowing new ideas; an investigation of anthropology’s contribution to rural development in south east Sri Lanka   M MARZANO
2002   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   The sepoy army and colonial Madras, c1806-57   Carina Anne MONTGOMERY   Dr D A Washbrook
2002   PhD   London, SOAS   A lot of history: sexual violence, public memory and the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971   Nayanika MOOKHERJEE   Dr C Pinney; Dr C Osella
2002   PhD   London, SOAS   Hindi film songs: and the cinema   Anna Frances MORCOM   Dr R Widdess
2002   PhD   Bristol   A study of the late Madhyamaka doxography   Jundo NAGASHIMA
2002   PhD   East Anglia   Between work and school: children in rural Andhra Pradesh   Masako OTA   Prof J D Seddon; Dr R Palmer-Jones

2002    DPhil    Oxford, Wolfson    The fragile web of order: conflict avoidance and dispute resolution in Ladakh    Fernanda PIRIE    Dr M J Banks; Prof D Parkin
2002    PhD    Glasgow    Morphological and molecular systematic studies of Asian caecilians (Amphibia: Gymnophiona)    Bronwen PRESSWELL
2002    PhD    London, LSE    US foreign policy to Pakistan, 1947-1960: reconstructing strategy    Saqib Iqbal QUERESHI    Dr C Coker
2002    PhD    Essex    India in the making of liberal identities: the case of Mary Carpenter and Harrier Martineau    Brenda A QUINN    Prof C M Hall
2002    PhD    Wales, Bangor    Muslims and crime: a comparative criminological study of South Asian Muslims in Britain and Pakistan    Muzammil QURAISHI    Dr J Wardhaugh
2002    PhD    London, LSE    US foreign policy to Pakistan, 1947-1960: re-constructing strategy    Saqib Iqbal QURESHI    Dr C Coker
2002    PhD    Aberdeen    Seasonal availability and utilisation of feed resources and their impact on the nutrition of livestock in an agro pastoral system of the Hindu Kush Karakoram Himalayan region of Pakistan    Abdur RAHMAN
2002    PhD    East Anglia    Standing one’s ground: gender, land and livelihoods in the Santal Parganas, Jharkhans, India    Nitya RAO    Prof C Jackson; Dr B Rogaly
2002    PhD    Bradford    Opening up spaces: engendering protracted social conflict and conflict transformation: an analysis with special reference to Sri Lanka    C REIMANN
2002    PhD    London, LSHTM    Sustaining menstrual regulation policy: a case study of the policy process in Bangladesh    Gabrielle Catherine ROSS
2002    PhD    Aberdeen    The economic viability of shrimp farming in the coastal areas of Pakistan    Nizam SABIR
2002    PhD    Wales, Cardiff    Raj Bhakta Marg: the path of devotion to Srimad Rajcandra: a Jain community in the twenty first century    E K SALTER    Dr Johnson
2002    PhD    Edinburgh    Negotiations and contradictions: local perceptions of tourism on Langkawi Island, Malaysia    Nor Hafizah SELAMAT
2002    PhD    London, UC    A study to determine the effects of the status of women on child growth undertaken in the Mysore region of Karnataka, India    K SETHURAMAN
2002    PhD    Wales, Aberystwyth    The resolution of environmental disputes in India    D SHANNUGANATHAN
2002    PhD    Newcastle    Application of information technology to improve the design process in the construction sector in Pakistan: a case of the specification management process    B K SHAR
2002    PhD    London, SOAS    Communism in India    Shalini SHARMA    Dr S Kaviraj
2002    PhD    Cambridge, Darwin    The sacred geography of Sanchi Hill: the archaeological setting of Buddhist monasteries in central India    J SHAW    Dr D K Chakrabarti
2002    PhD    Wales, Cardiff    Metaphysical psychology: an analysis of Sri Aurobindo Ghose’s theory of psychological consciousness development with special reference to his concepts of integral Brahman and the psychic entity     Girija SHETTAR    Dr Johnson
2002    MPhil/PhD    Reading    Credit constraints on the growth of rural non-farm sector in India    Anchita SHUKLA (TRIPATHI)    Dr S L Wiggins
2002    PhD    Bath    Escape and “struggle”: routes to women’s liberation in Bihar    Indu B SINHA    Dr G Wood; Dr J A McGregor
2002    PhD    Wales, Cardiff    Representative agent modes and macroeconomic poliocy: an application to the UK    Naveen SRINIVASAN
2002    DPhil    Oxford, Trinity    Bhuvanekabahu VII and the Portuguese: temporal and spiritual encounters in Sri Lanka, 1521-1551    Alan Leiper STRATHERN    Dr P B R Carey; Prof T F Earle
2002    PhD    Cranfield, Silsoe    An evaluation of public and private groundwater irrigation systems in Bangladesh and Pakistan    David SUTHERLAND    Dr R Carter
2002    DPhil    Oxford    Clothing culture: sex, gender and transvestism with reference to UK transvestites and the hijras of India    Charlotte SUTHRELL    Prof M Banks
2002    DPhil    Oxford, Wolfson    A study of consecration ritual in Indian Buddhist tantrism: a critical and annotated transslation of selected sections of the Kriyasagrahapanjika of Kuladatta    Ryugen TANEMURA    Prof A G J Sanderson
2002    PhD    Wales, Bangor    Influence of crop profitability, market, labour and land on smallholder cropping systems in rubber-growing areas of Sri Lanka    Sunethra Pushpa Kumri Thennakoon THENNAKOON-MUDIYANSELAGE    Dr F Sinclair
2002    DPhil    Oxford, Hertford    Negotiating the boundaries of gender and empire: Lady Mary Curzon, Vicereine of India    Nicola J THOMAS    Dr P Coones; Dr J R Ryan
2002    PhD    Cambridge, Fitzwilliam    The institutional responses to the water needs of peri-urban communities in Delhi, India    Kathryn Signe TOVEY    Dr B Vira
2002    PhD    Cambridge, Christ’s    Crafting discourse: mat weaving in Pattamadai, South India    S VENKATESAN    Dr D A Swallow
2002    PhD    East Anglia    Foreign aid, power and elementary education reform in Pakistan from 1992 to 1999    Michael WARD    Dr R McBride
2002    PhD    Nottingham    Salman Rushdie: imagining the other name foe Islam    Y YACOUBI
2002    PhD    London, SOAS    The Vinaya in India and China: spirit and transformation    Jing YIN    Dr T Skorupski
2002    PhD    Reading    An application of theory of planned behaviour and logistic regression models to understand farm level tree planting and its determinants in the district of Dera Ismail of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province    Muhammad ZUBAIR
2003    PhD    Birmingham    Women empowerment and intrahousehold resource allocation through micro-finance: a comparative study of two micro-finance institutions in Bangladesh    Shahnaz Tarannum ABDULLAH
2003    PhD    Glasgow    An ethnographic study of violence experienced by Dalit Christian women in Kerala State, India, and the implications of this for feminist theology    S ABRAHAM
2003    PhD    London, LSE    Federal formation and consociational stabilisation: the politics of national identity, articulation and ethnic conflict regulation in India and Pakistan    Katharine ADENEY    Prof B O’Leary
2003    PhD    Stirling    An empirical study of employee share ownership in Malaysia    Mohmad ADNAN B ALIAS
2003    PhD    Exeter    Linking India with Britain: the Persian Gulf cable, 1864-1906    Farajollah AHMADI    Prof J Black; Dr L P Morris
2003    PhD    London, UC    Ethnicity and environment in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Bangladesh    Farid AHMED    Dr M Banerjee
2003    DPhil    Sussex    The construction of childhood in Monipur: negotiating boundaries through activities    Iftikhar AHMED
2003    PhD    Manchester    Sri Lankan export-orientated clothing manufacturing industry: a comparison of management development practices across foreign, joint venture and local companies    Vathsala AKURATIYAGAMAGE    B Cooke; A Mamman
2003    PhD    Queen’s, Belfast    We are fighting for the women’s liberation also: a comparative study of female combatants in the national conflicts in Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland    M ALISON
2003    PhD    London, SOAS    Dominant texts, subaltern performances: two tellings of the Ramayan in central India    S ANITHA
2003    PhD    Cambridge, Wolfson    A political biography of Don Stephen Senanyake, (1931-1952): the former prime minister of Sri Lanka    Drene Terana APONSO    Dr G Johnson
2003    DPhil    Oxford, St Cross    Education reform in developing countries:decentralisation with reference to India and Pakistan    Linda F C ARTHUR    Dr C Brock
2003    PhD    London, UC    Childhood epilepsy in Bangladesh: clinical profile, predictors of outcome and randomised controlled trial of efficacy and side effects of treatment    S H BANU
2003    MPhil    Birmingham    A comparative examination of critical, religious and interreligious ingredients contributing to intercommunal harmony and disharmony in Sri Lanka: Sri Lankan Tamil Hindu dynamism, British Christian evangelism and the rise of 20th century Sinhalese Buddhist militancy    A R BECKETT
2003    PhD    Manchester    Perceptions of user education in the university libraries of Pakistan    Rubina BHATTI    T Christie; G Price
2003    PhD    Oxford Brookes    Revolution, military personnel and the war of liberation in Banglaldesh    O A BIR BIKRAM
2003    MPhil    London, SOAS    Hindustani music in the reign of Aurangzeb    Katherine Ruth BROWN    Dr R Widdess
2003    PhD    London, SOAS    We Nelpalis: language, lliterature and the formation of a Nepali public sphere in India, 1914-1940    Rhoderick Alasdair MacDonald CHALMERS    Dr M Hutt
2003    PhD    Leeds    The relationship between knowledge and power in the work of Amitav Ghosh    C G CHAMBERS
2003    PhD    Cambridge, Trinity Hall    Mysore: the making and unmaking of a model state, c. 1799-1834    Nigel Hugh Mosman CHANCELLOR    Prof C A Bayly
2003    PhD    Edinburgh    Rishtas: transational Pakistani marriages    Katharine CHARSLEY
2003    PhD    Sheffield    Birth for some women in Pakistan: defining and defiling    M CHESNEY
2003    PhD    Edinburgh    Admitted truths in Muslim-Christian dialogue: a study of William Muir, Sayyid Ahmad Khan and William Goldsack in 19th century India    David Otis COFFEY
2003    DPhil    Oxford, Queen’s    Marxism and middle class intelligentsia: political ideology and culture in Bengal, 1920-1950    Rajarshi DASGUPTA    Dr N Gooptu
2003    DPhil    Oxford, St Hugh’s    Bridging educational and social divides ? private school outreach for out-of-school children in India    Laura L DAY    Dr C Brock
2003    PhD    London, SOAS    Local brokers: knowledge and trust and organisation in the practice of agricultural extension for small and marginal farmers in Rajasthan, India    Bina DESAI    Dr D Mosse
2003    PhD    Newcastle    The regulation of private schools for low-income families in Andrha Pradesh,India: an Austrian economic approach    P DIXON
2003    PhD    Cambridge, Girton    Orientalism, Sanskrit scholarship and education in colonial north India, ca 1775-1875    Michael Sinclair DODSON    Prof C A Bayley
2003    PhD    Wales, Cardiff    Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda and the Ramakrishna movement: the question of continuity    Paul W EATON    Dr Johnson
2003    PhD    London, SOAS    Jews and Judaism in modern Indian discourse    Yulia EGOROVA    Prof C Shackle
2003    PhD    Cambridge, Clare Hall    Behind the scenes at the magic house: an ethnoggraphy of the Indian Museum, Calcutta    M J ELLIOTT    Dr D A Swallow
2003    PhD    Cambridge, Jesus    A study of agricultural production at the level of household, community and region: long term trends in India and China    Shailaja FENNELL    Dr P H Nolan
2003    PhD    London, SOAS    Sinhala Buddhist nationalism from revivalism to militant political ideology: the struggle to shape public culture in Sri Lanka    Yolanda FOSTER    Dr DTaylor
2003    PhD    Gloucestershire    Exiled from glory: Anglo-Indian settlement in nineteenth century Britain with special reference to Cheltenham    S FRASER    Dr C R V More; Dr J M Bourne
2003    PhD    Gloucestershire    Exiled from glory: Anglo-Indian settlement in nineteenth century Britain with special reference to Cheltenham    Stuart J FRASER    Dr C R V More; Dr J M Bourne
2003    PhD    London, LSE    From local tensions to ethnic conflict: the emergence of Hindu nationalism in a Christian/Hindu “tribal” community in Chhattisgargh, northern India    Peggy FROERER    Dr L Sklar
2003    PhD    Cambridge, Churchill    An economic perspective on resettlement of populations displaced by large dams: the case of the Sardar Sarovar Project displaced, India    Supriya GARIKIPATI
2003    PhD    London, SOAS    The origins and early development of anthropomorphic Indian iconography    Madhuvanti GHOSE    Dr G H R Tillotson
2003    DPhil    Oxford, St Edmund Hall    Subduction-related metamorphism, structure and tectonic evolution of the Kohistan arc and main mantle thrust zone, Pakistanm Himalayas    Simon J GOUGH    Dr D J Waters; Dr M P Searle
2003    PhD    Birmingham    Islamic activism in South Asia: the reasons for the electoral under-achievement of the Jama’at Islami Party of Pakistan, 1947-1977    F HAMEED
2003    PhD    Derby    A critical analysis of policy initiatives involving small and medium enterprises in Malaysia    A B A HAMID
2003    PhD    Sunderland    Identity and the Bengal Muslims: mapping changing perspectives (1905-1971)    F HASHEM
2003    PhD    London, External    Patterns and dynamics of loan use: a study of BRAC borrowers in Bangladesh    F HASIN
2003    PhD    Durham    Arsenic toxicity in Bangladesh: health and social hazards    Md Manzarul HASSAN
2003    DPhil    Sussex    Elite public discourses of poverty and the poor in Bangladesh    Naomi T HOSSAIN    M P Moore
2003    PhD    Southampton    Quality of care in maternity services: childbirth among the urban poor of Mumbai, India    Louise A HULTON
2003    PhD    Cambridge, Churchill    Effect of weekly iron supplementation and antihelminthic treatment on the physical growth and development of Bangladeshi children    Mohammad Mushtuq HUSAIN
2003    PhD    Essex    Factors limiting productivity and adoption of rubber tea intercropping in the low country wet zone of Sri Lanka    S M M IQBAL
2003    MPhil    Birmingham    A call to Christian discipleship in a situation of conflict: a study of Christian mission in the socio-ethnic conflict of Sri Lanka, with special reference to the life witness and theoleogy of Dietrich Bonhoefer    M B JEYAKUMAR
2003    PhD    Cambridge, Queens’    Novels of the South Asian diaspora in East Africa    Stephanie Jillian JONES    Mr T L J Cribb
2003    PhD    London, LSE    Governing morals: state, marriage and householfd among the Gaddis of north India    Kriti KAPILA
2003    MPhil    London, SOAS    The power behind the throne: relations between the British and Indian states, 1870-1909    Caroline J KEEN    Dr A A Powell
2003    PhD    Cambridge, Corpus    Representing children: power, policy and the discourse on child labour in the football manufacturing industry of Sialkot    Ali KHAN    Dr D Sneath
2003    PhD    Manchester    The impact of privatisation in Pakistan    Iram Anjum KHAN    Dr P Cook
2003    PhD    Cambridge, Hughes Hall    A social and political history of the telegraph in the Indian empire, circa 1850-1920    Deep Kanta LAHIRI CHOUDHURY    Prof C A Bayley
2003    PhD    Cambridge,Fitzwillliam    Colonial governmentality: spaces of inperialism and nationalism in India’s new capital, New Delh    S I LEGG    Dr J S Duncan
2003    PhD    London, SOAS    Women, equality, autonomy: study of women’s rights in India    Sumi MADHOK    Dr S Kaviraj
2003    PhD    Aberdeen    The performance of agricultural institutions in disseminating new technologies: a case study of modern rice variety BR 32 in Bangladesh’    B MAJUMDER
2003    PhD    Reading    Vegetation mapping in the north west of Pakistan    R N MALIK
2003    DPhil    Sussex    Gendered places, transnational lives: Sikh women in Tanzania, Britain and Indian Pubjab    K P K MAND
2003    PhD    Stirling    Policy transfer and policy translation: day care for people with dementia in Kerala, India    L F M McCABE
2003    PhD    Southampton    Barriers and opportunities in effective contraceptive management in Bangladesh    Juliet McEACHRAN
2003    PhD    Wales, Aberystwyth    Federalism in Malaysia: a constitutional study of the federal institutions established by the Federal Constitution of Malaysia and their relationships with the traditional institutions in the constitution (with special reference to the Islamic religious power and bureaucracy in the states)    K A MOKHTAR
2003    PhD    Leeds    The levels of integration of people with spinal cord lesion in Bangladesh    Abdul Khair Mohammed MOMIN
2003    PhD    Loughborough    Modelling a flow of funds and policy simulation experiments in the financial sector in India    Tomoe MOORE
2003    PhD    London, LSE    Tradition and modernity: a sociological comparison between Sri Lankan women in Colombo and in London in the late 1990s    Fathima Fatheena MUBARAK
2003    PhD    London, Goldsmiths    Doing development: voluntary agencies in the Sundarbans of West Bengal    Amites MUKHOPADHYAY    Prof P Caplan
2003    PhD    London, LSHTM    Gender and reproductive health in Pakistan: a need for reconceptualisation    Z MUMTAZ
2003    PhD    London, SOAS    Romance and pleasure in a restrictive society: understanding the sexual conduct of unmarried middle class young people in Bangladesh    Lazeena MUNA    Prof J Cleland (LSHTM)
2003    PhD    London, LSE    Marxism and beyond in Indian politicval thought: J P Narayan and M N Roy’s theory of radical democrary    Eva-Maria NAG    Dr Chun Lin
2003    PhD    London, SOAS    The museum in colonial India (1770-1936): a history of collecting, exhibiting and disciplining of knowledge    Savithri Preetha NAIR    De G H R Tillotson
2003    PhD    Wales, Aberystwyth    Second World War Japanese atrocities and British minor war crimes trials: the issue of fair trial in four selected British war crimes trials in Malaysia and Singapore in 1946-1947    Arujanan NARAYANAN
2003    PhD    London, UC    The life cycle of clothing: recycling and the efficacy of materiality in contemporary urban India    Katherine Lucy NORRIS    Dr S Kuechler-Fogden
2003    DPhil    Oxford, St Antony’s    Refugees on the Indian sub-continent, 1947-1998: state policy and practice    Pia A OBEROI    Dr G S Goodwin-Gill
2003    PhD    Aberdeen    The classification and efficiency of use of forage resources under semi-arid conditions in the Hindukush, Karakoram and Himalayan region of Pakistan    R M OMER
2003    PhD    Birmingham    The echoes of a faded memory: a contribution to a history of the Tamil Coolie Mission    P J T PEIRIS
2003    PhD    London, SOAS    The formation of a divided public: print, language and literatuire in colonial Goa    R PINTO
2003    PhD    Greenwich    A tapestry of resistance: Afghan educated refugee women in Pakistan: “Agency” identity and resistance in war and displacement    N POURZAND
2003    PhD    Dundee    Quality assurance in undergraduate medical education: a multiple case study in Bangladesh, Thailand and Indonesia    Titi Savitri PRIHATININGSIH
2003    PhD    Reading    International joint ventures in developing economies: an analysis of Indo-British ventures in India    Raji RAJAN    Prof M Utton; Dr U Kambhampati
2003    PhD    London, SOAS    Law and social change in India    Gopalan RAMAN
2003    PhD    London, LSHTM    The consequences of health insurance for the informal sector: two non-governmental, non-profit schemes in Gujerat    Michael Kent RANSON
2003    PhD    Durham    A study of land transformation in Savar Upazila, Bangladesh, 1915-2001: an integrated approach using remore sensing    Md Shahedur RASHID    Dr P J Atkins
2003    PhD    Cambridge, Sidney Sussex    Auditing “development”: an anthropological study of “audit culture” within a “participatory rural development” project in eastern India    M J REW
2003    MPhil    Newcastle    Development and land relations in tribal India: a study of Chotanagpur    Richard ROBERTS    P W Kellett
2003    PhD    Edinburgh    William Roxburgh (1751-1815)the founding father of Indian botany    Timothy Francis ROBINSON
2003    DPhil    Sussex    Representing rebellion: visual aspects of counter-insurgency in colonial India    Daniel J RYCROFT
2003    PhD    Wawick    Malaysian pre-school children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in inclusive settings    S SAAD
2003    PhD    Bristol    Voices from an island: a reading of four Sri Lankan novelists in English    D SAIKIA
2003    PhD    Bradford    A social constructionist account of children’s rights under the conditions of globalisation: the issue of child labour in India    G SANGHERA
2003    PhD    Warwick    The knowledge and perspectives about Educational Management Information System (EIS/SMPP) of decision makers in the Malaysian Ministry of Education (MMOE): an enquiry into the implementation of an EMIS    M W SARWANI
2003    PhD    Manchester    Institutions and poverty reduction: a case study of rural Bangladesh    Md Golam SARWAR    Dr J Mullen
2003    PhD    London, SOAS    Woman and communal violence in India    Atreyee SEN    Dr D Mosse
2003    PhD    Manchester    Information technology and the construction industry in Pakistan    Ali SHAR    Prof S Guy
2003    PhD    Cambridge, St Cath’s    The making of modern Assam, 1826-1935    Jayeeta SHARMA    Prof C A Bayley
2003    PhD    Wales, Cardiff    Arsenic mobility in sediments and contamination of he Bengal Basin    Darren SHAW
2003    PhD    Bradford    Microfinance and social change: a case study of household finance, development and change in gender relations in rural Bangladesh    M N I SHEKH
2003    DPhil    Sussex    Resisting stigma and interventions: situating trafficked Nepali women’s struggles for self-respect, safety and security in Mumbai and Nepal    M M SHIVADAS
2003    PhD    Leicester    Violence as non communication: the news differential of Kashmir and north east conflicts in the Indian national press    Prasun SONWALKAR    Prof A Sreberny
2003    PhD    Aberdeen    Factors affecting tree growing in traditional agriforestry systems in Werstern Himalaya, India    K K SOOD
2003    PhD    Brunel    Moral continuity: Gujerati kinship, women, children and rituals    Alison SPIRO, Mary
2003    PhD    London, SOAS    Social exclusion and cohesion: the case of leprosy in South India    James STAPLES    Dr D Mosse
2003    PhD    London, LSE    Bringing the Empire back in: patterns of growth in the British imperial state, 1890-1960 (with special reference to Indian and Africa)    Gita SUBRAHMANYAM
2003    PhD    Birmingham    Imagining Hinduism: a post colonial perspective    S SUGIRTHARAJAH
2003    PhD    Manchester    A feminist analysis of “white-ness” in an Indian research context    Maria SUMMERSON    Prof L Stanley
2003    PhD    London, SOAS    Prostitution and the law in Pakistan: a case study of Lahore’s Hira Mandi    R TAK
2003    PhD    Open    South Asian women and the construction of political identity    S TAKHAR
2003    PhD    Warwick    Foreign music: linguistic estrangement and its textual effects in Joyce, Beckett, Nabokov and Rushdie    J TAYLOR
2003    DPhil    Oxford, Wadham    Monetary remedy for breach of constitutional rights in the United States, India, New Zealand and the United Kingdom    Lisa Anne TORTELL    Prof P P Craig
2003    PhD    London, SOAS    Literature and the politics of identity in Orissa    Lopamudra TRIPATHY    Dr S Kaviraj
2003    DPhil    Oxford, Nuffield    Growth empirics within a low income country: evidence from states in India,1960-1992    Kamakshya D TRIVEDI    Dr G M F Cameron
2003    PhD    London, LSE    Rebels and devotees of Jharkhand: social, religious and political transformation among the Adivasis of northern India    Barbara VERARDO
2003    PhD    Cambridge, St John’s    Institutional change and natural resource management: the case of forest policy reform in India    Bhaskar VIRA    Prof P H Nolan
2003    PhD    East Anglia    Embodied working lives: manual labouring in Maharashtra, India    Louise WAITE    Dr C Jackson; Dr R Palmer-Jones
2003    PhD    Warwick    Pakistan’s teaching hospitals: present measures quality and proposed quality improvement programmes    G WAJID
2003    DPhil    Oxford, St Cross    Bangladeshi pupils: experiences, identity and achievement    Sue WALTERS    Dr C W R Davies; Prof S Tomlinson
2003    PhD    East Anglia    The growth of the Indian software industry: a social history    Meera WARRIER    Dr K Sen
2003    PhD    Edinburgh    Stereotyped Scots: representations and realities of Scottish missionary and military experience in colonial and post-independence Pakistan    Jeremy WESTON
2003    PhD    Wales    Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922): a re-evaluation of her life and work    Keith J WHITE
2004    PhD    Cambridge, Lucy     The world is established through the work of existence: the performance of Gham-Khadi among Pukhtun Bibiane in northern Pakistan:    Amineh A AHMED    Dr S B Bayly
2004    PhD    Hull    Political regime change and local government in Bangladesh    Tariq AHMED    L Summers
2004    MPhil    Bradford    Community level conflict transformation for sustainable peace: a Barefoot University for peace education in Sri Lanka    Monica ALFRED
2004    MPhil    De Montfort    Arsenic speciation in foodstuffs from Bangladesh and a method for arsenic removal from water    Shaban W AL-RMAILLY
2004    PhD    Wales, Cardiff    The portfolio behaviour of the GCC islamic and conventional banks    Abdulaziz Mohammad N AL-SAEED
2004    DPhil    Oxford, Linacre    Just a pile of stones ! The politicization of identity , indigenous knowledge and sacred landscapes among the Lepcha and the Bhutia tribes in contemporary Sikkim, India    Vibha ARORA    Prof D Parkin; Prof M J Banks
2004    DPhil    Oxford, Campion Hall    From outcaste to caste: the use of symbols and myths in the construction of identity: a study of conflict between the Paraiyars and the Vanniyars in Tamil Nadu, South India    Chockalingam Joe ARUN    Dr M J Banks
2004    PhD    Durham    Economic and structural reforms and bank efficiency: a comparative analysis of India and Pakistan, 1990-1998    A ATAULLAH
2004    PhD    Bradford    Quality assurance in the basic nurse education programme in Pakistan: a case study aimed at improving the quality assurance practices in the basic nurse education in Pakistan    A AZIZ
2004    PhD    Greenwich    A sustainable competitiveness model for strategic alliances: a study of rural entrepreneurs and commercial organisations in Malaysia with special emphasis on Malaysian farmer’s organisations    S A BAHARUM
2004    DPhil    Oxford, Nuffield    The legisimating vocabulary of group rights in contemporary India    Rochana BAJPAI    Prof M S Freedom; Dr N Gooptu
2004    PhD    Reading    Farmers’ risk and uncertainty perceptions and their influence on farm level decision-making in the cotton-wheat zone of Pakistan’s Punjab    K A BAJWA    Dr T Rehman
2004    PhD    London, InstEd    An evaluation of the impact of school-based resource management and formula funding of schools and on the efficiency and equity of resource allocation in Sri Lanka    Balasooriya Mudiyanselage Jayantha BALASOORIYA    Prof A Little; Prof R Levacic
2004    PhD    Cambridge, Downing    Skill upgrading within informal training: lessons from the Indian auto mechanic    J C BARBER    Dr L Caley
2004    DBA    Strathclyde    The competitive advantage of Pakistan: empirical analysis of the textile/apparel industry    K M BARI
2004    PhD    London, Goldsmiths    In service in India: the ethics of rule and conduct of British administrators and army officers in late nineteenth and early twentieth century India    Jatinder BARN    N Rose
2004    MPhil    SOAS    The dispensary movement in Bombay Presidency: ideology and practice, 1800-1876    Jennifer BLAKE    Prof D Arnold
2004    PhD    Middlesex    The “divine heirarchy”: the social and institutional elements of vulnerability in South India    B BOSHER
2004    PhD    London, SOAS    Challenging development: western discourses and Rajasthan women    Tamsin Jane BRADLEY
2004    PhD    Cambridge, Queens    Tectono-metamorphic evolution of the central and western Himalayas    M CADDICK    Dr T J B Holland
2004    PhD    Coventry    Empire and authority: Curzon, collisions, character and the Raj, 1899-1906    M CARRINGTON
2004    DPhil    Sussex    Bringing citizens back in: public sector reform, service delivery performance and and accountability in an Indian state    Jonathan CASELEY    Dr A Joshi
2004    PhD    Sheffield    Site-formation studies and paleolithic investigations in the Siwalik Hill of northern India: reconsidering the Soanian history    P R CHAUHAN
2004    PhD    London, SOAS    Buddhist nuns in Sri Lanka and Taiwan    W-Y CHENG
2004    PhD    Warwick    Uncovering injustice: towards a Dalit feminist politics in Bangladesh    Shraddha CHIGATERI    C Wright
2004    PhD    London, SOAS    The Da’sanami-Samnyasis: the integration of ascetic lineages into an order    Matthew James CLARK
2004    PhD    Manchester    We are the kings: the children of Dhaka’s streets    Alessandro CONTICINI    D Hulme
2004    PhD    Anglia    Adaptation and change in a traditional society: sustainable development in the context of a Ladakhi village    Robert COOK
2004    PhD    Cambridge, Darwin    The Irish expatriate community in British India, c1750-1900    Barry James Conleth CROSBIE    Prof C A Bayley
2004    DPhil    Oxford, Balliol    Much ado about religion: a critical and annotated translation of the Agamadambara, a satirical play by the 9th century Kashmirian philosopher Bhatta Jayanta    Csaba DEZSO    Prof J A Sanderson
2004    PhD    Manchester    Marginal Indian Punjabi Sikh men; a psychotherapeutic perspective    Kamaldeep Singh DHILLON    Dr C Bates
2004    PhD    Nottingham    Inherited factors in pre-eclampsia: molecular genetic and epidemiological studies in a Sri Lankan population    V H W DISSANAYAKE
2004    PhD    Bristol    Gender and human rights: a discursive study of “violence against women” in Mexico and Pakistan    Silvie DRESSELHAUS    Dr J Weldes; Dr V Hewitt
2004    PhD    Portsmouth    The growth and applicationof Shari’ah in India: a legislative and judicial interpretation since 1947    E EHSANULLAH
2004    PhD    London, SOAS    Portugal and Portuguese India, 1870-1961    Bernard Dale ETHELL    Prof P G Robb
2004    PhD    Bradford    Ceramic specialisation and standardisation in early historic South Asia: an interdisciplinary investigation of rouletted ware, grey ware and Arikamedu Type 10    L A FORD
2004    PhD    Hull    Identity, war and the state in India: the case of the Nagas    Mr T FRANKS
2004    PhD    London, King’s    Improving the quality management systems for pharmaceutical services in developing countries: a case study in Sri Lanka    Piyadasa Galalla GAMAGE
2004    PhD    Oxford, Blackfriars    The Vedantic cosmology of Ramanuja and its western parallels    Robindra GANERI    Prof J S K Ward
2004    PhD    Nottingham    Slavery in ancient Greek poleis and ancient Sri Lanka: a comparison    W M W GEDARA
2004    PhD    Cambridge, Queens’    Of poverty and markets: the political economy of informal waste recovery and plastic recycling in Delhi    K GILL    Dr B Vira
2004    PhD    St Hugh’s    Caitanya Vaisnava Vedanta: acintyabhedabheda of Jiva Gosvani’s Catusutri Tika    Ravi Mohar GUPTA    Dr S Gupta-Gombrich; Prof J S K Ward
2004    PhD    London, SOAS    Samaj and unity: the in Bengali literati’s discourse on nationhood, 1867-1905    Swarupa GUPTA    Prof P G Robb
2004    PhD    London, SOAS    The politics of language and nation-building: the Nehruvian legacy and representations of cultural diversity in Sahgal, Rushdie and Seth    A M GUTTMAN
2004    PhD    East Anglia    Understanding gender and intra-household relations: a case study of Shaviyani Atoll, Maldives    Hala HAMEED    Prof C Jackson
2004    DPhil    Oxford, St Antony’s    The dynamics of low-caste conversion movements: rural Punjab c 1880-1935    Christopher Gerard Michael HARDING    Prof J M Brown
2004    PhD    London, SOAS    Religious mobilisation and the construction of political space in the Indian North West Frontier tribal areas in the early twentieth century    Sana HAROON
2004    MPhil    Leicester    Lord Lake of Laswaree and Delhi, 1744-1808    Roger HARRIS    Dr H V Bowen
2004    PhD    Durham    Detection, monitoring and management of small water bodies: a case study of Shahjadpur Thana, Bangladesh    Khondaker Mohammod Shariful HUDA    Dr P J Atkins; Dr D Donaghue
2004    PhD    Warwick    Problem of national identity of the middle class in Bangladesh and state-satellite television    Zeenat HUDA    Dr P Mukta
2004    PhD    Essex    Initial public offerings in Pakistan    T IMTIAZ
2004    PhD    South Bank    Parental involvement, attitudes and responsibilities in educaton: a case study of parents in Britain and Pakistan    N INAYAT
2004    PhD    Cranfield    Technology catch-up actions for manufacturing companies in Pakistan    N IQBAL

2004   PhD   London, SOAS   Protestant translations of the Bible (1714-1995) and defining a Protestant Tamil identity   Hephziba ISRAEL
2004   PhD   London, LSE   People and tigers: an anthropological study of the Sundarbans of West Belgal, India   A JALAIS
2004   PhD   Cambridge, Queens’   The agency of normal food: performing normality in contemporary urban Bengal   Manpreet Kaur JANEJA   Prof C Humphrey
2004   DPhil   Oxford, Nuffield   Bridging the digital divide: regulating universal access in India   Akash K KAPUR   Ms B Morgan
2004   PhD   Reading   Constraints and opportunities for sustainable livelihoods and forest management in the mountains of North West Frontier Province, Pakistan   Jahangir KHAN   Dr H M Jones
2004   PhD   Cambridge, Selwyn   Ecology and conservation of the Bengal tiger in the Sundarbans mangrove forest of Bangadesh   M M H KHAN   Dr D J Chivers
2004   PhD   De Montfort   Temple architecture of Bengal 9th to 16th centuries   A KHARE
2004   PhD   Keele   Reconstructing rights: an analysis of the role of rights in reconstructing gender relations in the earthquake affected area, Maharashtra, India   Jane KRISHNADAS
2004   PhD   London, SOAS   Resolution and rupture: the paradox of violence in witch accusations in Chhatisgarh, India   Helen M MACDONALD   Dr D Mosse
2004   PhD   London, SOAS   Resolution and rupture: the paradox of violence in witch accusations in Chhattisgarh, India   Helen M MacDONALD
2004   PhD   Edinburgh   Pious flames: changing Western interpretations of widow burning in India to 1860   Andrea MAJOR   Dr C Bates; Dr I Duffield
2004   PhD   Oxford, St John’s   Cricket in colonial India, 1850-1947   Boria MAJUMDAR   Dr D A Washbrook
2004   PhD   Nottingham   Land tax administration and compliance attitudes in Malaysia   N A A MANAF
2004   PhD   London, King’s   Countering hegemony: the geopolitics of agrobiotechnology and the regulatory role of the Indian state   Martin MANSKI   M Mulligan
2004   PhD   Birmingham   The interdependency and the relationship between the government and private sector and their changing role in the development of micro island tourism in the Maldives   Abdulla MAUSOOM
2004   PhD   Durham   Travelling knowledges: urban poverty and slum/shack dwellers international   Colin McFARLANE   Dr G Macleod
2004   PhD   Wales, Aberystwyth   The establishment and growth of selected pioneer tree species from disturbed tropical rainforest sites in Malaysia   H MD NOOR
2004   PhD   London, King’s   Reterritorialising transnational corporate hegemony: the geopolitics of agribiotechnology and the regulatory role of the state in India   Martin MENSKI
2004   PhD   London, SOAS   Zorastrian music   Raiomond MIRZA   Prof O Wright; Dr R Widdess
2004   PhD   London, SOAS   Space, borders and histories: identity in colonial Goalpura (India)   Sanghamitra MISRA   Prof P G Robb
2004   PhD   Cambridge, St John’s   Crystal structure of north east India and southern Tibet and a comparison with thelithosphere of the stable Indian shield   S MITRA   Dr K F Priestley
2004   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   The British in India and their domiciled brethern: race and class in the colonial context, 1858-1930   Satoshi MIZUTANI   Dr D A Washbrook
2004   MPhil   Leeds   Enabling and disabling factors of community cohesion among Pakistani Muslims in Bradford   Dominic J MOGHAL   Dr K Knott
2004   PhD   London , UC   Reworking modernity: the impact of resettlement in the Narmada valley, India   Kuheli MOOKERJEE   Dr C Dwyer; Dr A Varley
2004   PhD   London, InstArch   An examination of the spatial and temporal variation of lithic technology throughout the early Bronze Age of Pakistan   Justin Collard MORRIS   K Thomas
2004   PhD   London, UC   Lithic technology and cultural change during the late prehistoric period of northwest South Asia   J C MORRIS
2004   PhD   Cambridge, Lucy    Markets, transport and the state of Bengal economy, c.1750-1800   T MUKHERJEE   Prof C A Bayley
2004   PhD   London, SOAS   The perception of the “medieval” in Indian popular films, 1920s -1960s   Urvi MUKHOPADHYAY   Dr D Ali; Dr R Dwyer
2004   PhD   Cambridge   Impact of food supplementation on pregnancy weight gain and birth weight in rural Bangladesh   Shamsun NAHAR
2004   PhD   Cambridge. Sidney   Caught in the digital divide: transforming meanings of space, gender and identity for high tech professionals in Bangalore city, India   Roopa NAIR   Prof S E Corbridge
2004   PhD   Reading   The motivation of masons in the Sri Lankan construction industry   Leyon NANAYAKKARA
2004   PhD   Wales, Aberystwyth   Second World War Japanese atrocities and British minor war crimes trials: the issue of fair trial in the four selected British minor war crimes trials in Malaya and Singapore   A NARAYAN
2004   PhD   London, SOAS   The Gandavyuha-sutra: a study of wealth, gender and power in an Indian Buddhist narrative   Douglas Edward OSTO
2004   PhD   London, SOAS   Archaic knowledge, tradition and authenticity in colonial north India   Rakesh PANDEY   Dr D Ali
2004   PhD   West of England   Performance measurement and evaluation of supply chain: the Indian automobile industry   B PATEL
2004   PhD   Aberdeen   Emergency obstetric care: needs of poor women in Bangladesh   E PITCHFORTH
2004   PhD   London, LSE   Multinationals, local firms and economic reforms in Indian industry   Tushar PODDAR
2004   PhD   Birmingham   Mineral chemistry and metal extraction of Sri Lanka beach sands   W A P PREMARATNE
2004   PhD   London, LSE   A micro-econometric analysis of alcohol prohibition in India   L RAHMAN
2004   PhD   London, Wye   Measurement of productivity and efficiency of rice farmers in Bangladesh: an empirical study   Mohamed Mizanur RAHMAN
2004   PhD   Cambridge, Wolfson   Seismic characteristics of the southern Indian and the adjacent pan-African high grade terranes of Gondwanaland   Abhishek Kumar RAI   Dr K F Priestley
2004   PhD   Leeds   Nation, celebration and selected works of Michel Ondaatje and Carol Shields   Gillian Marie ROBERTS
2004   PhD   Cambridge, Gonville   HLA-DBQ1 – reproduction and health in consanguinous and non consanguinous families in Bangladesh   S ROY CHOUDHURY   Dr L A Knapp
2004   PhD   Leeds   The Sixteenth Landers, 1822-1846: the experience of regimental soldiering in India   J H RUMSBY
2004   PhD   Newcastle   Trade reforms: total factor productivity and profitability of manufacturing sectors in Pakistan   Naveeda SALAM
2004   PhD   Open   Psychedelic whiteness: rave tourism and the materiality of race in Goa   Joseph Johannes Arun SALDANHA   Dr J D Robinson; Prof D B Massey
2004   PhD   Manchester   The effect of globalisation on the grassroots women in Bangladesh   Nasreen SATTAR   Ms S Rowbotham
2004   PhD   London, LSE   Understanding the state: an anthropological study of rural Jharkhand, India   A SHAH
2004   PhD   London, SOAS   The Balochi verb: an etymological study   Azim SHAHBAKHSH
2004   DPhil   Oxford, Wolfson   State and society in: Gujerat, c.1200-1500: the making of a region   Samira SHEIKH   Dr D A Washbrook
2004   PhD   Edinburgh   Living with HIV/AIDS: turning points, transitions and transformations in the lives of women in Bombay and Edinburgh   Dina Pervez SIDHVA
2004   PhD   Cambridge   Exploring inclusive education in an Indian context   N SINGAL
2004   PhD   Birmingham   The question of method in Dalit theology: in search of a systematic approach of an Indian liberation theology   Charles SINGARAM
2004   MPhil   Wales, Swansea   Policy and practice of forest management through local institutions in Himachal Pradesh, India   M P SOOD
2004   PhD   South Bank   Health beliefs and health practices of South Asian and British white adults with and without myocardial infarction   Dooroowadave SOOKHOO
2004   DPhil   Oxford, Linacre   Secularism in Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s children” and Vikram Seth’s “A suitable boy”: history, nation, language   Neelam F R SRIVASTAVA   Dr J A Mee
2004   PhD   Cardiff   Crossing boundaries: an ethnography of occupational socialization of post-diploma baccalaureate nursing students in Pakistan   Grace D STANLEY
2004   PhD   Cardiff   Crossing boundaries: an ethnography of occupational socialization of post-diploma baccalaureate student nurses in Pakistan   Grace Dianne STANLEY   M Neary; G A Donald
2004   PhD   Cambridge, Downing   From “Palestine” [poem] to India: Bishop Heber’s poetic pilgrimage   I TAKAHASHI   Dr N J Leask
2004   PhD   London, SOAS   Towards a definitive grammar of Bengali: a study and critique of research on selected grammatical structures   Hanne-Ruth THOMPSON   Dr W Radice
2004   PhD   Birmingham   Support and supervision of secondary school teachers in Bangladesh   H THORNTON
2004   DPhil   Oxford, Worcester   Tectonic, metamorphic and magmatic evolution of the central Karakoram crust, northern Pakistan   aNDREW THOW   Dr D J Waters; Prof R R Parrish; Dr M P Searle
2004   DPhil   Oxford, St Cross   The grammar and poetics of Murti-Seva: Caitanya Vaisnava image worship as discourse, ritual and narrative   Kenneth R VALPEY   Dr S Gupta-Gombrich; Prof J S K Ward
2004   PhD   Birmingham   Differences in school performance between Tamil Brahmin and Malabar Muslim children in Kerala, India: a socio-cutural approach   V P VAZHALANICKAL
2004   PhD   Open   Science, technology and agency in the development of drought prone areas: a cognitive history of drought and scarcity   Linden Faith VINCENT   Prof D V Wield
2004   PhD   Coventry   Partition and locality: case studies of the impact of partition and its aftermath in the Punjab region, 1947-1961   Pritpal VIRDEE   Prof I A Talbot
2004   PhD   Cambridge, St Edmund’s   Eating and identity in the novels of V S Naipaul, Anita Desai, Timothy Mo and Salman Rushdie   Paul Matthew John VLITOS   Dr A D B Poole
2004   PhD   Cambridge, Churchill   Thuggee and the “construction” of crime in early nineteenth century India   Kim Ati WAGNER   Prof C A Bayley
2004   PhD   Cambridge, Emmanuel   Between bureaucrats and beneficiaries: the implementation of eco-development:in Pench tiger reserves, India   Jo L WOODMAN   Dr B Vira
2004   PhD   Glasgow   The analysis of human mitochondrial DNA in peninsular Malaysia   Z ZAINUDDIN
2004   PhD   London, King’s   Remote sensing and GIS based assessment of El-Nino related fire activity on Borneo, 1982-1998   Athanossios ZOUMAS
2005   PhD   Loughborough   Alternative arrangements for water supply in urban areas: case studies in Karachi, Pakistan   Noman AHMED
2005   PhD   London, UC   Through “spirits”: cosmology and landscape ecology among the Nyishi tribe of upland Arunachal Pradesh, northeast India   Alexander AISHER   Dr C Pinney; Dr M Banerjee
2005   PhD   Keele   The cultural politics of production: ethnicity, gender and the labour process in Sri Lanka tea plantations   Chandana G ALAWATTAGE
2005   PhD   London, King’s   Studies on slected Malaysian plants as antidiabetic agent   H M ALI
2005   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   Equality of educational opportunity and public policy in Bangladesh   Mohammad Niaz ASADULLAH   Dr R Kingdon; Dr S Dercon
2005   PhD   London, LSE   Structural changes in East Asia: factor accumulation, technological progress and economic geography   Shuvojit BANERJEE
2005   PhD   Manchester   The politics of market space in Calcutta, India: past and present   Martin BEATTIE   Prof S Guy
2005   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   Missionary education knowledge and and north Indian society, c 1880- 1915   Hayden John-Andrew BELLENOIT   Dr D A Washbrook
2005   PhD   London, King’s   The changing goddess: the religious lives of Hindu women in West Bengal   Cynthia BRADLEY   Prof F Hardy
2005   PhD   London, UC   Mental illness, medical pluralism and Islamism in Sylhet, Bangladesh   Alyson Fleur CALLAN   Prof R Littlewood
2005   PhD   London, SOAS   Muzaffar Ahmad, Calcutta and socialist politics, 1913-1929   Suchetana CHATTOPADYHYAY   Prof P G Robb
2005   PhD   East Anglia   Surface tension: water and agrarian change in a rainfed village, West Bengal, India   Daniel COPPARD   Dr B Lankford
2005   PhD   Edinburgh   Sri Pada: diversity and exclusion in a sacred site in Sri Lanka   Delkandura Arachchige Premakumara DE SILVA
2005   PhD   London, LSHTM   Social capital and maternal mental health: a cross cultural comparison of four developing countries [Peru, India, Ethiopia, Vietnam]   Mary Joan DE SILVA   Ms S Huttly; Prof T Harpham
2005   PhD   Cambridge. Trinity Hall   Second language acquisition of articles and plural markings by Bengali learners of Engish   Hildegunn DIRDAL   Dr T Parodi
2005   MPhil   London, UC   The servant/employer relationship in19th century England and India   Fae Ceridwen DUSSART   Prof C M Hall
2005   PhD   London, Royal Holloway   Analysing the impact of labour and education laws on child labour in Pakistan during the 1990s   T FASIH
2005   PhD   London, Inst Ed   Ways forward to achieve school effectiveness and school improvement: a case study of school leadership and teacher professional development in Sri Lanka   B N A B FERNANDO
2005   PhD   London, SOAS   Surrendering to the earth: a feminine interpretation of Dharma worship in Bengal with special reference to ‘Sunya Purana   Fabrizio FERRARI
2005   PhD   Edinburgh   Twentieth century South Asian Christian theological engagement with religious pluralism: its challenges for pentecostalism in India   Geomon Kizhakkemalayil GEORGE
2005   MPhil   Birmingham   Sikhism and violence   P GILL
2005   PhD   Cambridge, Gonville    Inverted metamorphism in the Sikkim-Darjeeling Himalay: structural, metamorphic and numerical studies   S GOSWAMI   Prof M J Bickle
2005   MPhil   West of England   A study of “enabling conditions” in primary schools in Negombo Education Zone in Sri Lanka with special reference to effective leadership and physical and material resources   Egodawatte Arachchige Don GUNAWARDENA
2005   DPhil   Oxford, St Cross   Discourses of religion and development: agency, empowerment and choices or Muslim women in Gujerat, India   Laila N HALANI   Dr M J Banks
2005   PhD   Reading   Farmers’ decision-making in rice pest management: implications for farmer field school approaches in Bangladesh   Mohammad Abdul HAMID   Dr D D Shepherd
2005   PhD   Manchester   A fire of tongues: narrative patterning in the Sanskrit Mahabharata   James Marcel HEGARTY
2005   PhD   London, Queen Mary   Intellectual property law and e-commerce in Sri Lanka: towards a jurisprudence based on consitution, Roman-Dutch law and Buddhist principles   T S K HEMARATNE
2005   PhD   Edinburgh   Rights based development: formal and process approaches in Pakistan   Shiona Mary HOOD
2005   PhD   Cambridge, Fitzwilliam   Ecology, economy and society in the eastern Bengal delta, c.1840-1943   Khondker Iftekhar IQBAL   Prof C A Bayley
2005   PhD   Plymouth   International freight transport multimodal development in developing countries: the case of Bangladesh   Dewan Mohammad Zahurul ISLAM   Dr R Gray
2005   DPhil   Sussex   Women, employment and the family: poor informal sector women workers in Dhaka city   Farzana ISLAM   Dr H Standing
2005   PhD   London, LSE   Assessing the impact of Gujerat’s resettlement and rehabilitation policy on the livelihoods of women and their empowerment post-displacement   Anupma JAIN
2005   PhD   Open   Volcanic architecture of the Deccan Traps, western Maharashtra, India: an integrated chemostratigraphic and paleomagnetic study   Anne E JAY
2005   PhD   Cambridge, Darwin   Cross cultural perspectives in contemporary Sri Lankan writing in English   Sharanya JAYAWICKRAMA   Dr P Gopal
2005   DPhil   Oxford, St Antony’s   India divided: state and society in the aftermath of partitition: the case of Uttar Pradesh, 1946-1952   Yasmin KHAN   Prof J M Brown; Prof I A Talbot
2005   PhD   London, LSE   Soldiers’ experience of war, Burma 1942-1945   Tatjana Genoveva Ursula KRALJIC   Prof M Knox
2005   MPhil   West of England   An investigation of primary teachers’ professional attitudes in Sri Lanka with special reference to Negombo Educational Zone   Nihil Tissa Kumara LOKULIYANA
2005   DPhil   Oxford   Implications of displacement and resettlement for the Gonds of central India   Preeti MANN   Dr D Chatty; Dr M J Banks
2005   PhD   Queen’s, Belfast   Women’s human rights in Islam and international human rights regime: the case of Pakistan   N MIAN
2005   PhD   London, SOAS   Merchants, markets and the monopoly of the East India Company: the salt trade in Bengal under colonial control c. 1790-1836   Sayako MIKI   Prof P G Robb
2005   PhD   London, SOAS   The transmission and performance for khyai composition in the Gwalior gharana of India vocal music   A D MORRIS
2005   PhD   Essex   A case of interest maximisation? Military-civil bureaucratic behaviour and political outcomes in Bangladesh (1975-1990)   Khairuzzaman MOZUMDER
2005   EdD   Birmingham   Exploring the potential for educational change through participatory and democratic approaches in Pakistan   N MUHAMMAD
2005   PhD   Nottingham   United Nations charter and treaty-based international human rights monitoring in relation to the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment: a study of two states, the United Kingdom and the Republic of India   A MUKHERJEE
2005   DPhil   Sussex   Knowledge, identity, place and (cyber)space: growing up male and middle class in Bangalore   N C NISBETT
2005   PhD   Edinburgh   Case study of a health-oriented NGO in Pakistan   Madeline PATTERSON
2005   PhD   Edinburgh   From medical relief to community health care: a case study of non-governmental organisation (Frontier Primary Health Care) in North Western Province, Pakistan   Margaret Madeline PATTERSON
2005   dpHIL   Oxford, Balliol   Through district eyes: local raj and the myth of the Punjab tradition in British India, 1858-1907   Dara Milnes PRICE   Dr D A Washbrook
2005   PhD   London, SOAS   The sant traditioin and community formation in the works of Guru Nanak and Dadu Dayal   Susan Elizabeth PRILL   Dr C Shackle
2005   PhD   King’s, London   Gender disadvantage as a risk factor for common mental disorder in women residing in Rawalpindi/Islamabad   F QADIR
2005   EdD   Durham   Nurse education, foreign aid and development: a case study from Bangladesh   Patricia ROBSON
2005   DPhil   Sussex   Tamil youth: the performance of hierarchical masculinities: an anthropological study of youth groups in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India   M C ROGERS
2005   PhD   London, Insti Comm   Socio-economic rights as constitutional human rights: Canada, South Africa and India compared   Desa ROSEN   Dr M Craven (SOAS); Dr P Gready
2005   PhD   London, SOAS   Early photography in India, 1850s-1870s   Stephanie S ROY
2005   PhD   Cambridge, Trinity   Sentimental imperialism: British literature and India, 1770-1830   Andrew John RUDD   Dr N J Leask
2005   PhD   Edinburgh   Conversion and communication: Christian communication and indigenous agency in conversion among the Kui people of Orissa, India, 1835-1970   Jagat Ranjan SANTRA
2005   PhD   London, SOAS   The formation of Islamic community identity in medieval north India   Nilanjan SARKAR   Dr D Ali
2005   PhD   London, SOAS   The political identity of the Delhi Sultanate, 1200-1400: a study of Zia ud-din Barani’s Fatawa-i-Jahandari   Nilanjan SARKAR   Dr D Ali
2005   PhD   London, SOAS   Globalization and identity: Sikh nationalism, diaspora and international relations   Giorgiandrea SHANI
2005   PhD   Sheffield   Structure and composition of India’s exports with speial reference to India’s post- liberalisation period   Abhijit SHARMA
2005   PhD   De Montfort   Colonial intervention and urban transformation: a case studyof Shahjahanabad, Old Delhi   J P SHARMA
2005   PhD   London, SOAS   A study of the Amaravati stupa: the chronology and social contexts of an early historic Buddhist site in the Lower Krishna Valley   Akira SHIMADA   Dr D Ali
2005   DPhil   Oxford, Green   The business of schooling:the school choice processes, markets and institutions governing low-fee provate schooling for disadvantaged groups in India   Prachi SRIVASTAVA   Dr M Birbili; Prof G Walford
2005   DPhil   Oxford   The experience of four famines in NWP & O (1837-1838, 1860- 1861; 1868-1869; 1896-1897): the gainers and the losers   Seema SRIVASTAVA
2005   MPhil   Nottingham   The effects of Asean on trade flows and assessing trade flows of the candidate country (case study: India)   Puttachat SUWANKIRI
2005   PhD   Edinburgh   Prime time and prayer time: television, religion and the practices of everyday life of Marthoma Christians in Kerala, India   Sham Padinjattethil THOMAS
2005   PhD   Strathclyde   Car dependency and traffic congestion: a case of a Malaysian city in Borneo   L TSESED KONG
2005   MPhil   Dundee   Motivation and incentives in government organisations: a study of the Income Tax Department in India   Mohanish VERMA
2005   PhD   Cambridge, Jesus   Seeking cultural safety: NGO responses to HIV/AIDS among South Asians in Delhi and London   Hannah Jill WESTON   Dr G Kearns
2005   MPhil   London, King’s   Sri Lankan perceptions of health and illness: quantitative and qualitative approaches   Yapa Mudiyanselage Charitha Gothami WIJERATNE
2005   PhD   Sunderland   Women’s ordination in Theravada Buddhism:ancient evidence and modern debates   L WILLIAMS
2005   PhD   London, SOAS   Literate networks and the production of Sgaw and Pwo Karen writing in Burma, c.1830-1930   William Burgess WOMACK   Dr M Charney Professor Ian Brown
2005   PhD   Nottingham   Predictors of language learning success in Bangladeshi secondary education institutions   Feroza YASMIN   Prof Z Dornyel
2006   PhD   London, LSHTM   Quality of care for reproductive tract morbidities by rural private practitioners in north India   Meenakshi GAUTHAM
2006   DPhil   Sussex   Poor women’s experiences of marriage and love in the city of New Delhi: every day stories of Sukh and Dukh   Shalini GROVER
2006   PhD   Newcastle   Valuation techniques of protected areas: a case study of Gir, Gujarat, India   Mohan Lal SHARMA
2006   PhD   London, Imperial   Contaminated irrigaton water and food safety in India   Kerry Vivienne SWANTON

Table 2: List of theses with incomplete data, listed alphabetically by the University and College followed by the AUTHOR (in capital letters) followed by the Supervisor(s) where available and the thesis Title. The Year and/or Degree were not available in the public database. If you are an author or supervisor or other academic representative, please write in with these details if possible.

Aberdeen   Sultan Ali ADIL       An economic analysis of energy use in irrigated agriculture of Punjab       PhD
Birmingham 0.365217391   S A KARUNANAYAKE       An evaluation of the present system of local government in Ceylon in the light of national needs for unity and economic and social development and proposals for appropriate changes       PhD
Birmingham 0.369264706   M G KANBUR       Spatial equilibrium analysis of trhe rice economy of South India   2000
BradfordCambridge, Trinity   Z KHAN       The development of overt nuclear weapon states in South Asia       PhD
Cambridge   Katherine Helen PRIOR       The British administration of Hinduism in India, 1780-1900       PhD
Cambridge   G CHAKRAVARTY       Imagining resistance: British historiography and popular fiction on the Indian Rebellion of 1857-1859       PhD
Cambridge 0.327375   Ajit Kumar GHOSE       Production organisation, markets and resource use in Indian agriculture       PhD
Cambridge 0.361285714   M J EGAN       A structural analysis of a Sinhalese healing ritual       PhD
Cambridge, King’s 0.301   J A LAIDLAW       The religion of Svetambar Jain merchants in Jaipur       PhD
Cambridge, Pembroke   H T FRY   Prof E E Rich   Alexander Dalrymple, cosmographer and servant of the East India Company       PhD
Cambridge, Trinity   Magnus Murray MARSDEN   Dr S B Bayly   Islamization and globalization in Chitral, Northern Pakistan
Cambridge, Trinity Hall   C J JEFFREY   Dr S E Corbridge   Reproducing difference: the accumulation strategies of richer Jat farmers in Western Uttar Pradesh, India   2002
Cambridge, Wolfson   Gethin REES   DrD K Chakrabarti   Buddhism and trade: rock cut caves of the Western Ghats       PhD
Cranfield, Silsoe   Ariyaratne DISSANAYAKE   J Morris   Research and development and extension for agricultural mechanisation in Sri Lanka
De Montfort   S JAIN       The havelis of Rajasthan: form and identity       PhD
Durham 0.401311475   M F A KHAN       The arid zone of West Pakistan       PhD
East Anglia   John HARISS       Technological change in agricultural and agrarian social structure in Northen Tamil Nadu, India       PhD
Edinburgh   N THIN       High spirits and heteroglossia: forest festivals of the Nilgiri Irulas       PhD
Edinburgh   AKSHAY KHANNA       Sexuality as a political object in civil society: active formations in India   2003
Edinburgh   Rebecca WALKER       Concepts of peace in conflict situations in Sri Lanka       PhD
Glasgow   Sana KHOKHAR   Dr F Noorbakhsh; Dr A Paloni   An evaluation of the structural adjustment and economic reform programme: a case study of Pakistan       MPhil
Lancaster   J A BURR       Cultural stereotypes and the diagnosis of depression: women from South Asian communities and their experience of mental distress   1980
Leeds   E K TARIN       Health sector reforms: factors influencing the policy process for government initiatives in the Punjab (Pakistan) health sector, 1993-2000       PhD
Leeds 0.35375   A P A FERNANDO       Agricultural development of Ceylon since independence (1948-1968)- an investigation into some aspects of agricultural development in Ceylon and an evaluation of major agricultural policies adopted in the peasant sector       PhD
Leeds 0.35375   M S KHAN       Policies and planning for agricultural development with a high population density: a case study of East Pakistan       PhD
London   F R M HASAN       Ecology and rural class relations in Bangladesh: a study with special reference to three villages       PhD
London   B GHOSH   Dr Anstey   The Indian salt industry, trade and taxation       PhD
London   R L HATFIELD       Management reform in a centralised environment: primary education administration in Balochistan, Pakistan, 1992-1997       MSc
London   GAYAS-UD-DIN       Medical library and information system for India       PhD
London   Sarmistha PAL       Choice of casual and regular labour contracts in Indian agriculture: a theoretical and empirical analysis   2000
London, SOAS   Pillarisetti SUDHIR   Mr Chaudhuri   British attitudes to Indian nationalism, 1922-1935   2001 (Apropos the author’s correction in the Comments section, this entry has been moved to the main list.)
London, External 0.357464789   A A KHATRI       Marriage and family relationships in Gujerati fiction       PhD
London, Imperial   Sinniah JEYALINGAWATHANI       Thr utilisation of indigenous and imported Bos indicus breeds in the dry zone of Sri Lanka   2002
London, LSE   A KUNDU   Prof Allen; Mr Booker   Statistical measures of five year plans in India   2003
London, LSE   Flora Elizabeth CORNISH   Dr C Campbell   Constructing an actionable environment: colelctive action for HIV prevention among Kolkata sex workers       MPhil
London, LSE 0.423157895   B P DUTIA       Economic aspects of production and marketing of cotton in India       PhD
London, LSHTM   Margaret J LEPPARD       Obstetric care in a Bangladeshi hospital: an organisational ethnography       PhD
London, LSHTM   Steven RUSSELL       Can households afford to be ill ? the role of the health system, maternal resources and social networks in Sri Lanka       PhD
London, LSHTM   Syed Mohd Akramuz ZAMAN       Cohort study of the effect of measles on childhood morbidity in urban Bangladesh       PhD
London, LSHTM   Mrigesh Roopchandra BHATIA       Economic evaluation od malaria control in Surat, India: bednets versus residual insecticide apray       PhD
London, SOAS   A B M MAHMOOD   Mr Harrison   The land revenue history of the Rajshahi zamindari, 1765-1793       PhD
London, SOAS   Oliver David SPRINGATE-BAGINSKY   Dr S I Jewitt   Sustainable development through particpatory forest management: an analysis of the long term role of the cooperative forest societies of Kangra District, Himachal Pradesh, India       PhD
London, SOAS   Isabella NARDI   Dr G Tillotson   The Citrasutras: the Indian theory of painting   1929?   MA
London, SOAS   Angela ATKINS   Dr R Snell   The Indian novel in English and Hindi       PhD
London, SOAS   Angela C EYRE       Land, language and literary identity: a thematic comparison of Indian novels in Hindi and English       MA
London, SOAS   Rajit Kumar MAZUMDER   Prof P G Robb   The making of Punjab: colonial power, the Indian army and recruited peasants, 1849-1939       MA
London, SOAS   Lalita Nath PANIGRAHI   Prof a l Basham   The practice of female infanticide in India and its suppression in the North Western Provinces       PhD
London, SOAS 0.318795181   Terumichi KAWAI       Freedom of religion in comparative constitutional law with special reference to the UK, US, India and Japan       MPhil
London, SOAS 0.3432   W P KINNEY   Dr M Caldwell; P C Ayre   Aspects of economic development in Malaya       MA
London, SOAS 0.35375   K D GAUR       Economic crimes relating to income tax in India: a critical analysis of tax evasion and tax avoidance       PhD
London, SOAS 0.35375   A GHAFFAR       Protection of personal liberty under the Pakistan constitution       BLitt
London, SOAS 0.35375   K P MISHRA   Dr J B Harrison   The administration and economy of the Banaras region, 1738-1795       BLitt
London, SOAS 0.382153846   K M KARIM       The provinces of Bihar and Bengal under Shabjahan   2003
Manchester   A BERADLEY   Prof Muir   Settlement of the Madras Presidency, 1765-1827       MA
Manchester   W A G HARRINGTON       The theory and practice of non-formal education in developing countries with case studies from India       PhD
Manchester   Jane HAGGIS       Professional ladies and working wives: female missionaries in the London Missionary Society and its South Travancoe District, South India, 1850-1900        MPhil
Manchester 0.401311475   S T G FERNANDO       A historical and analytical account of export taxation in Ceylon, 1802-1958       PhD
Manchester 0.411864407   R L KUMAR       India’s post-war balance of payments sincce 1945-1955       DPhil
Manchester 0.417413793   T S EPSTEIN       A comparative study of economic change and differentiation in two South Indian villages       PhD
Manchester Metropolitan   S PAREKH       Relationships between children with cerebral palsy and their siblings: an ethnography in Kolkata, India
Newcastle   Alice MALPASS   Dr P Phillimore   Hibred kala: the hybrid age of choice, dissent and imagination: contract faming and genetically modified cotton in Karnataka, South India       MSC
Newcastle 0.373432836   K K KHOSLA       Conditions of labour and labour legislation of industrial workers in India since 1947   2001
North London   Jasmin ARA   Ms R Glanville   Primary health care facilities in Bangladesh: a method of planning and design taking account of limited resources, local technology, future growth and change   2000
Oxford   W M KHAN       An economic evaluation of the alternative uses of land under state forests in Baluchistan   1999
Oxford, Campion Hall   P EKKE   Dr D F Brook   An ethnogaphic survey of the Oraons and the Mundas of Chota-Nagpur   1991
Oxford, Nuffield   Alistair McMILLAN   Dr N Gooptu; Prof A F Heath   Scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and party competition in India   1991
Oxford, St Hilda’s   H Vinita TSENG   Prof R F Gombrich   The Nidanavagga of the Saratthappakasini: the first two vaggas   1993
Oxford, Wolfson   Somadeva VASUDEVA   Prof A G J S Sanderson   The yoga of the Malinivijayottaratantra   1994
Reading 0.38671875   M A KAMAL       Balances and unbalanced growth as exemplified by a decade of planning experience in India   1994
Salford   S CHOWDHURY   Mr E K Grime   Housing in Bangladesh   1998
Sheffield   RITA SAIKIA   Prof M F Lynch   The utility of object-oriented domain specification in the context of a large organisation in India   1998
Southampton 0.369264706   Mohammad A MONDAL       A suggested approach to the solution of the profit measurement and asset valuation with reference to the developing economies of India and Pakisttan   1999
Strathclyde 0.37358209   T G GEHANI       A critical review of the work of Scottish Presbyterian missions in India, 1878-1914   1999
Sussex   R G HESELTINE       The development and impact of jute cultivation in Bengal, 1870-1930   2000
Wales   Animesh HALDER       Potential diversification in India’s export pattern   2000
Wales, Swansea   S S MUKHERJEE       Urban process in Calcutta: some planning implications   2004
Wales, Swansea   Julia CLEEVES       Gender and reproductive health: issues in hormonal contraception in India   2004
Wales, University College of Swansea 0.346621622   E A KUMARASINGHE       Information for health planning in Sri Lanka   1965

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The BBC gets its history and geography deliberately wrong again

February 21, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

Last September 27, I said here

“The BBC has unilaterally decided that Jammu & Kashmir has nothing to do with India. On its 1530 Indian Standard Time broadcast of purported “World News” today, it unilaterally lopped off all of J&K from the map of the Republic of India (shown attached to mention of a Delhi bomb-blast). Usually, the BBC at least makes pathetic reference to something it has invented called “Indian-Administered Kashmir”. There are senior BBC staff-members who are dual Pakistani/British nationals and who may be counted on to have been pushing such a line within the organisation, but lopping off all of J&K unilaterally may be a novelty. There are several “Indian-origin” staff-members too but perhaps they have renounced their Indian nationality, and apparently they have no ability to make any editorial protest. Does the Government of India have the sense, and the guts, to call in the local BBC and ask them for an explanation about their insult of history? For that matter, what is the BBC’s formal position on the J&K problem? The same as that of the UK Government? What is that of the UK Government for that matter? Has it remained constant since Clement Attlee in October 1947? BBC staff may like to refer to my articles “Solving Kashmir”, “Law, Justice and J&K”, “Pakistan’s Allies”, “History of Jammu & Kashmir”, etc for enlightenment.”

Then on December 4, I had to say again:

“Ill-informed Western observers, especially at purported “think tanks” and news-portals, frequently proclaim the Pakistan-India confrontation and Jammu & Kashmir conflict to represent some kind of savage irreconcilable division between Islamic and Hindu cultures. For example, the BBC, among its many prevarications on the matter (like lopping off J&K entirely from its recently broadcast maps of India, perhaps under influence of its Pakistani staffers), frequently speaks of “Hindu-majority India” and “Indian-administered Kashmir” being confronted by Muslim Pakistan….”

Well this morning, in its purported “World News from America” received in India in its 0530 IST broadcast (in a story about that dreadful British film Slumdog millionaire), the BBC has done it yet again, lopping off the whole of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh from its purported map of India. Clearly the powerful Pakistan lobby in Britain continues to affect British policy deeply, especially perhaps through the BBC’s dual-national Pakistani staffers.

I remain intrigued to know the official UK Government position on both J&K and the legality or otherwise of a UK public broadcaster distorting history and geography like this.

Specifically, I wonder if modern British foreign policy has, in a nutshell, taken a hardline, regardless of the facts of history, on the Israel-Arab dispute and a corresponding softline, regardless of the facts of history, with the Pakistani viewpoint on J&K. “Accept our position on Palestine and we will accept your views on Kashmir” might be the implicit trade that has been offered to the UK’s powerful Pakistani immigrant community.

Furthermore, in the event the UK Government and the European Union recognise Indian sovereignty de facto and de jure over J&K on the Indian side of the Line of Control with Pakistan and on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control with China, does the BBC, as a public British broadcaster, have any legal business to be setting that aside and instead inventing its own history and geography as it pleases?

The Government of India really needs to formally ask the UK Government what its opinion is.

The organisation that presently goes by the name BBC seems to be only very distantly related to the organisation by the same name whose radio news-broadcasts used to be definitive in my childhood.

Subroto Roy

POSTSCRIPT: But see now “Progress! The BBC retracts its prevarication!”

One I got wrong: “Memo to UCLA Geographers: Commonsense suggests Mr Bin Laden is far away from the subcontinent”

February 20, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

One I got completely wrong… I have written about why too at Facebook in 2011:

‘A new study from the UCLA Geography Department reportedly claims that the location of the elusive Mr Osama Bin Laden may be able to be pinpointed, or at least suggests a theoretical methodology for doing so. I am afraid I think such an ambition is unlikely to succeed because it neglects Aristotle’s advice “for the trained mind not to seek more precision than the subject of his study is intrinsically capable of granting to him”. (The quote is from my 1982 Cambridge doctoral thesis, p. 200; the original at Nicomachean Ethics Book 1 Chapter 3 says “it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits”.)

What I said once while chatting with a German Government official in Goa in October 2006 was this: if I had been Mr Bin Laden, I would have long ago moved to “a nice oasis in the Sahara Desert” or some similarly comfortable place in North Africa. In May 2007, I decided to publish that remark here as follows:

“Where I would have gone if I was Osama Bin Laden:

Mr Osama Bin Laden has been highly sought after for several years, against his will, yet he has thus far succeeded in maintaining his privacy. In October 2006 in Goa, I was chatting with a German Government official about this, and told him that, incidentally, I thought that how Mr Bin Laden has successfully eluded the paparazzi is by the time-honoured method of creating a red herring. He would have said his goodbyes to Mullah Omar, as Osama did in the winter of 2001, and then proceeded westward…. through Somalia towards North Africa…. all the way to a nice oasis in the Sahara Desert.”

Commonsense suggests that Mr Bin Laden would not have remained where most people would have ended up looking for him. Those who have been looking for him all these years seem not to have heard the old one about the drunk who looks for his lost car-keys under the lamp-post because that is where the light is…

Subroto Roy, Kolkata’

Posted in Africa, Aristotle, Commonsense, Indian subcontinent, Osama bin Laden, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran. Leave a Comment »

A Brief History of Gilgit (2006)

February 18, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

A Brief History of Gilgit

by Subroto Roy

This is a rather self-contained excerpt from my two-part article in The Statesman of June 4-5, 2006 titled“Pakistan’s Allies”.

“Jammu & Kashmir and especially Gilgit-Baltistan adjoins the Pashtun regions whose capital has been Peshawar. In August-November 1947, a British coup d’etat against J&K State secured Gilgit-Baltistan for the new British Dominion of Pakistan.

The Treaty of Amritsar had nowhere required Gulab Singh’s dynasty to accept British political control in J&K as came to be exercised by British “Residents” in all other Indian “Native States”. Despite this, Delhi throughout the late 19th Century relentlessly pressed Gulab Singh’s successors Ranbir Singh and Partab Singh to accept political control. The Dogras acquiesced eventually. Delhi’s desire for control had less to do with the welfare of J&K’s people than with protection of increasing British interests in the area, like European migration to Srinagar Valley and guarding against Russian or German moves in Afghanistan.

“Sargin” or “Sargin Gilit”, later corrupted by the Sikhs and Dogras into “Gilgit”, had an ancient people who spoke an archaic Dardic language “intermediate between the Iranian and the Sanskritic”. “The Dards were located by Ptolemy with surprising accuracy on the West of the Upper Indus, beyond the headwaters of the Swat River (Greek: Soastus) and north of the Gandarae (i.e. Kandahar), who occupied Peshawar and the country north of it. This region was traversed by two Chinese pilgrims, Fa-Hsien, coming from the north about AD 400 and Hsuan Tsiang, ascending from Swat in AD 629, and both left records of their journeys.”

Gilgit had been historically ruled by a Hindu dynasty called Trakane; when they became extinct, Gilgit Valley “was desolated by successive invasions of neighbouring rulers, and in the 20 or 30 years ending with 1842 there had been five dynastic revolutions. The Sikhs entered Gilgit about 1842 and kept a garrison there.” When J&K came under Gulab Singh, “the Gilgit claims were transferred with it, and a boundary commission was sent” by the British. In 1852 the Dogras were driven out with 2,000 dead. In 1860 under Ranbir Singh, the Dogras “returned to Gilgit and took Yasin twice, but did not hold it. They also in 1866 invaded Darel, one of the most secluded Dard states, to the south of the Gilgit basin but withdrew again.”

The British appointed a Political Agent in Gilgit in 1877 but he was withdrawn in 1881. “In 1889, in order to guard against the advance of Russia, the British Government, acting as the suzerain power of Kashmir, established the Gilgit Agency”. The Agency was re-established under control of the British Resident in Jammu & Kashmir. “It comprised the Gilgit Wazarat; the State of Hunza and Nagar; the Punial Jagir; the Governorships of Yasin, Kuh-Ghizr and Ishkoman, and Chilas”. In 1935, the British demanded J&K lease to them for 60 years Gilgit town plus most of the Gilgit Agency and the hill-states Hunza, Nagar, Yasin and Ishkuman. Hari Singh had no choice but to acquiesce. The leased region was then treated as part of British India, administered by a Political Agent at Gilgit responsible to Delhi, first through the Resident in J& K and later a British Agent in Peshawar. J& K State no longer kept troops in Gilgit and a mercenary force, the Gilgit Scouts, was recruited with British officers and paid for by Delhi. In April 1947, Delhi decided to formally retrocede the leased areas to Hari Singh’s J& K State as of 15 August 1947. The transfer was to formally take place on 1 August.

On 31 July, Hari Singh’s Governor arrived to find “all the officers of the British Government had opted for service in Pakistan”. The Gilgit Scouts’ commander, a Major William Brown aged 25, and his adjutant, a Captain Mathieson, planned openly to engineer a coup détat against Hari Singh’s Government. Between August and October, Gilgit was in uneasy calm. At midnight on 31 October 1947, the Governor was surrounded by the Scouts and the next day he was “arrested” and a provisional government declared.

Hari Singh’s nearest forces were at Bunji, 34 miles from Gilgit, a few miles downstream from where the Indus is joined by Gilgit River. The 6th J& K Infantry Battalion there was a mixed Sikh-Muslim unit, typical of the State’s Army, commanded by a Lt Col. Majid Khan. Bunji controlled the road to Srinagar. Further upstream was Skardu, capital of Baltistan, part of Laddakh District where there was a small garrison. Following Brown’s coup in Gilgit, Muslim soldiers of the 6th Infantry massacred their Sikh brothers-at-arms at Bunji. The few Sikhs who survived escaped to the hills and from there found their way to the garrison at Skardu.

On 4 November 1947, Brown raised the new Pakistani flag in the Scouts’ lines, and by the third week of November a Political Agent from Pakistan had established himself at Gilgit. Brown had engineered Gilgit and its adjoining states to first secede from J&K, and, after some talk of being independent, had promptly acceded to Pakistan. His commander in Peshawar, a Col. Bacon, as well as Col. Iskander Mirza, Defence Secretary in the new Pakistan and later to lead the first military coup détat and become President of Pakistan, were pleased enough. In July 1948, Brown was awarded an MBE (Military) and the British Governor of the NWFP got him a civilian job with ICI~ which however sent him to Calcutta, where he came to be attacked and left for dead on the streets by Sikhs avenging the Bunji massacre. Brown survived, returned to England, started a riding school, and died in 1984. In March 1994, Pakistan awarded his widow the Sitara-I-Pakistan in recognition of his coup détat.

Gilgit’s ordinary people had not participated in Brown’s coup which carried their fortunes into the new Pakistan, and to this day appear to remain without legislative representation. It was merely assumed that since they were mostly Muslim in number they would wish to be part of Pakistan ~ which also became Liaquat Ali Khan’s assumption about J&K State as a whole in his 1950 statements in North America. What the Gilgit case demonstrates is that J&K State’s descent into a legal condition of ownerless anarchy open to “Military Decision” had begun even before the Pakistani invasion of 22 October 1947 (viz. “Solving Kashmir”, The Statesman, 1-3 December 2005). Also, whatever else the British said or did with respect to J & K, they were closely allied to the new Pakistan on the matter of Gilgit.”

Map of India, Afghanistan, Russia, China c. 1897

February 16, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

mapofindiaafghanistanrussiachinac18972

RAND’s study of the Mumbai attacks

January 25, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

RAND’s study of the Mumbai attacks

by

Subroto Roy January 25 2009

The conspicuously good thing that can be said about the RAND Corporation’s study of the Mumbai massacres (“The Lessons of Mumbai”, RAND January 2009) is that there is no sign of it having been affected by the powerful Pakistan lobby. Far too many purported studies emerging from American or British “thinktanks” cannot say the same.

If anything, the ten American authors of the 25-pages of the RAND text have among them two prominent advocates of better US-India relations. This is helpful to truthfulness because of the simple fact India has been in this case a victim of aggression that originated in Pakistan. Whether elements of the Pakistan Government were involved is almost the wrong question – if some retired underemployed former soldier drawing a Pakistan Army pension helped the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s commando training of the Mumbai terrorists, the existence of Pakistani state involvement is proved. Commando training requires technical skills of a sort that can only originate with a military.

In Pakistan as in any other large populous country including India, the state tends to be a hydra-headed monster and it may be foolish to imagine instead a rational, unified, well-informed or even a benevolent political entity. State involvement in Pakistan, India, China or elsewhere is something hard to isolate when there is so much mixing of private and public property or misuse of resources arising from the public exchequer.

What Pakistan’s PR campaign has done after Mumbai is not so much raise the Kashmir dispute as to obfuscate things by shedding crocodile tears and pretending to share victimhood saying, oh we sympathise with you but please sympathise with us too as we have been victims of even bigger terrorist attacks by the same kind of people, we have lost Benazir, we have lost many more people than you have, therefore cooperate with us and we will try to do what we can to help you in this matter. English-speaking liberals educated at places like Karachi Grammar School have then appeared on Indian TV stations (owned by Delhi people from places like Doon School) purporting to represent Pakistan on “the Mumbai incident”; none of them can have much credibility because the real India-haters in Pakistan might cheerfully make them murder victims too given half a chance.

The RAND study deserves credit for avoiding all misleading Pakistani rhetoric about the Mumbai massacres and at least intending to try to get to the bottom of things in a systematic manner. Beyond that, unfortunately, it has made logical and factual and methodological errors which cause it to fail to do so.

The key logical error made by the RAND authors arises from combining a central front-page statement

“Evidence suggests Lashkar-e-Taiba, a terrorist group based in Pakistan, was responsible for the attack”

with assertive suggestions about Mumbai’s police being backward, incompetent, cowardly etc (“passive”). Yet how precisely did evidence about LeT culpability come to light? Only because Mumbai’s police and the Railway police engaged, injured and then captured Kasab using their antiquated equipment the best they could. There is no evidence of police cowardice at CST Station; to the contrary, it took courage to aim .303’s at adversaries firing back with assault rifles. Kasab received his first hand injury there. ATS Chief Karkare and his fellow-officers may seem foolhardy in hindsight to have been driving in the same vehicle but they did engage their unknown enemy immediately they could and died doing so, crippling Kasab badly enough that he could be captured in due course at Chowpatty. [Correction: it appears that though Kasab was fired upon by the police at CST Station he received both his hand injuries from the firing by the ATS squad.] And the Chowpatty police action showed obvious bravery in absorbing injury and death in order to kill Ishmail and capture Kasab. (Kasab, among the youngest, had been paired with Ishmail, the apparent leader of the group.)

Furthermore, Kasab upon capture was treated humanely and lawfully. His injuries were treated, he was produced before a magistrate within a week who asked him if he was being mistreated to which he said no. Slumdog millionaire may get undeserved Oscars portraying torture of a British actor by Mumbai police but it is ridiculous fiction – Kasab the captured Pakistani terrorist mass murderer was not tortured by Mumbai’s police.

Contrast such Indian police behaviour with the “enhanced interrogation techniques” the Bush Administration used with negative results in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib – which President Obama has now started to end. Kasab, an ignorant misguided youth, was grateful enough for the humane and civilized treatment to start singing like the proverbial canary. The result of that has been precisely all the evidence the Government of India has now presented to the world and Pakistan about the LeT’s culpability.

As for the anti-terrorist actions of the Indian Army, Navy and NSG, the RAND study is right to point to multitudinous errors and it is useful to have these listed in orderly fashion. But many of these errors were obvious to millions of lay Indian citizens who watched events on TV. The central fault was the scarcity of trained NSG officers and men, and the failure to apply standard emergency management protocols.

The RAND study, by relying overly on government sources, has failed to point to what ordinary Indian citizens already know – the NSG is being utterly wasted protecting our politicians. India has no proper equivalent of the US “Secret Service”, and even if we did, we would probably waste that by spreading it too thinly among politicians. As it happens if almost any politician in India today did happen to be unfortunately assassinated, the main mourners would be family-members and not the general Indian public. Despite politicians constituting rather “low-value targets” for terrorists, India’s scarce anti-terrorist and police resources have been misallocated to protecting them.

Finally, the RAND study makes the lazy-man’s methodological error of supposing outfits like the LeT think and behave in a manner explicable by American political science textbooks, or ought to do so. What Western analysts may need to do instead is learn from the old Arabist and Orientalist traditions of how to think and see the world from Eastern points of view. But that may require greater self-knowledge than the modern world tends to permit.

Postscript:

My December 6 2008 analysis here titled “A Quick Comparison Between the September 11 2001 NYC-Washington attacks and the November 26-28 2008 Mumbai Massacres (An Application of the Case-by-Case Philosophical Technique of Wittgenstein, Wisdom and Bambrough)” is republished below. I have corrected “Rome Airport” with “Lod Airport” on the basis of reading the RAND report, though may not have received the courtesy of aknowledement for the reminder of the Japanese Red Army attack.

“In my book Philosophy of Economics (Routledge, 1989) and in my August 24 2004 public lecture in England “Science, Religion, Art and the Necessity of Freedom”, both available elsewhere here, I described the “case-by-case” philosophical technique recommended by Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Wisdom and Renford Bambrough. (Bambrough had also shown a common root in the work of the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce.) Herewith an application of the technique to a contemporary problem that shows the “family resemblance” between two modern terrorist attacks, the September 11 2001 attack on New York and Washington and the Mumbai massacres last week.

Similarity: In both, a gang of motivated youthful terrorists acted as a team against multiple targets; their willingness to accept suicide while indulging in mass-murder may have, bizarrely enough, brought a sense of adventure and meaning to otherwise empty lives.

Difference: In the 9/11 attacks, Mohammad Atta seemed to have been a single predominant leader while each of the others also had complex active roles requiring decisions, like piloting and navigating hijacked jumbo-jets. In the Mumbai massacres, the training and leadership apparently came from outside the team before and even during the operation – almost as if the team were acting like brainwashed robots under long-distance control.

Similarity: Both attacks required a long prior period of training and planning.

Difference: The 9/11 attacks did not require commando-training imparted by military-style trainers; the Mumbai massacres did.

Difference: In the 9/11 attacks, the actual weapons used initially were primitive, like box-cutters; in the Mumbai massacres, assault rifles and grenades were used along with sophisticated telecommunications equipment.

Difference: In 9/11, the initial targets, the hijacked aircraft, were themselves made into weapons against the ultimate targets, namely the buildings, in a way not seen before. In the Mumbai massacres, mass-shooting of terrorized civilians was hardly something original; besides theatres of war, the Baader-Meinhof gang and the Japanese Red Army used these in the 1970s as terrorist techniques (e.g. at Rome Airport Lod Airport; Postscript January 26 2009: I make this correction after reading and commenting on the RAND study which unfortunately did not have the courtesy of acknowledging my December 6 2008 analysis) plus there were, more recently, the Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres.

Similarity: In both cases, Hollywood and other movie scripts could have inspired the initial ideas of techniques to be used.

Similarity: In both cases, the weapons used were appropriate to the anticipated state of defence: nothing more than box-cutters could be expected to get by normal airport security; assault rifles etc could come in by the unguarded sea and attack soft targets in Mumbai. (Incidentally, even this elementary example of strategic thinking in a practical situation may be beyond the analytical capacity contained in the tons of waste paper produced at American and other modern university Economics departments under the rubric of “game theory”.)

Similarity: In both cases, a high-level of widespread fear was induced for several days or more within a targeted nation-state by a small number of people.

Similarity: No ransom-like demands were made by the terrorists in either case.

Similarity: Had the single terrorist not been captured alive in the Mumbai massacres, there would have been little trace left by the attackers.

Difference: The 9/11 attackers knew definitely they were on suicide-missions; the Mumbai attackers may not have done and may have imagined an escape route.”

https://independentindian.com/2009/11/26/did-civil-military-conflict-contribute-to-the-2611-destruction/
https://independentindian.com/2009/11/26/on-decision-making-in-terrorist-hostage-situations/

Posted in Asia and the West, Counter-terrorism, Government of India, India in international law, India's crimes, India's Diplomacy, India's Foreign Policy, India's Judiciary, India's Jurisprudence, India's Military Defence, India-Pakistan cooperation against terrorism, India-Pakistan naval cooperation, India-Pakistan peace process, India-USA interests, International Law, Mumbai massacres, Mumbai terrorist Kasab, Mumbai's Police, Mumbai/Bombay, Obama Administration, Pakistan in international law, Pakistan's politics, Pakistan's terrorist masterminds, Pakistan's terrorist training institutes, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, RAND study of Mumbai attacks, Rule of Law, Slum dog millionaire, Terrorist techniques, Torture, US Federal Law & Jurisprudence, US Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Espionage, US Pakistan policy, US politics. Leave a Comment »

The “three-state solution” for the Middle East (and why has Tony Blair not resigned when Israel attacked Gaza?) 2009

January 13, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

A few thousand years ago, Moses (whom Freud identified as likely to have been a monotheistic Egyptian nobleman) led the Hebrews out of Egypt. A year ago, Hamas blew up the much-hated wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt with explosives, after secretly over months cutting heavy metal using oxyacetylene torches. Some three hundred and fifty thousand Gazans poured into Egypt’s Rafah town and market to buy food, medicine, cigarettes, petrol, cows, goats, sheep, camel, televisions, mobile phones etc. Israel’s wicked blockade of Gaza was broken. Hosni Mubarak apparently instructed Egyptian border guards not to resist the Palestinian crowds from entering Egypt, and stated that as long as they returned without weapons they were free to trade as they wished. Egypt could hardly have done anything else – Cairo had seen pro-Palestinian demonstrations and Mubarak’s police had arrested some 500 members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The official Israeli response was “the free passage of Palestinians into Egypt and back, without any supervision, significantly increases the threat coming from the Strip”. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said “it is the responsibility of Egypt to ensure that the border operates properly, according to the signed agreements. We expect the Egyptians to solve the problem. Obviously we are worried about the situation. It could potentially allow anybody to enter.” But Egypt can hardly solve this problem other than by offering to extend Egyptian sovereignty to the whole of the Gaza Strip. Something similar would have to be done with the West Bank becoming absorbed officially into Jordan. The Palestinian people would then not have their own state after all but have been divided between the formal territories of Egypt, Jordan and of course Israel itself (is not Israel technically a secular country without a state religion?). Gaza and the West Bank could be autonomous regions within Egyptian and Jordanian sovereignty respectively. The Palestinians at least would be able to buy flour and have normal lives and not have been made to live in the open-air prison that they do now. The people of Gaza would have been spared the Israeli atrocity that has been going on in the last several weeks.

There are and have been uncountable quasi-nationalities who have not had their own nation-states. Kurds are divided between Turkey, Iraq and Iran; Baloch are divided between Iran and Pakistan; Pashtuns are divided between Afghanistan and Pakistan; Kashmiris (and for that matter Punjabis and Sindhis) are divided between Pakistan and India; Bengalis are divided between India and Bangladesh; Tamils are divided between India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore; Tibetans are divided between India and China etc etc, and that is only in half of Asia. There are multitudinous cases all over Europe (and Britain), Africa and also the Americas and elsewhere. The Palestinians would have become one such. And like Poland being divided between Germany and Russia, or between Prussia, Austro-Hungary and Russia even earlier (on this see the inimitable Joseph Conrad Notes on Life and Letters), a people who have been divided without a separate identity can sometimes find themselves independent again as history progresses.

Islamic Iran has wished a “one-state” solution with the Palestinians and Israelis living together harmoniously, something that seems utopian at best, devious at worst — though recall too Martin Buber’s letter to Tagore. British foreign policy invented the “two-state” solution ever since the Balfour declaration. It has proved infeasible. Tony Blair became the so-called “Quartet envoy” or whatever immediately after being UK prime minister and was supposed to herald in the two-state solution. He palpably failed and should have resigned when Israel attacked Gaza last month but that may have been too much to expect. Israel today seems to want to impose the “zero-state” solution by extinguishing Gaza (though at one time, pre-PLO and pre-Arafat perhaps, Israel may have proposed itself the annexation of Gaza and the West Bank by Egypt and Jordan respectively).

All things considered, the “three-state” solution may be the only practical and civilized alternative in the circumstances. Palestine would indeed be remembered, as a place and a culture and a people, and at least the Palestinians would be able to live and thrive and not be attacked.

Subroto Roy

How to solve Kashmir (2009)

January 7, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

see

https://independentindian.com/2015/03/03/pakistans-indias-illusions-of-power-psychosis-vs-vanity/

https://independentindian.com/2011/10/13/my-seventy-one-notes-at-facebook-etc-on-kashmir-pakistan-and-of-course-india-listed-thanks-to-jd/

Also

from Jan 2009
It is excellent news Omar Abdullah has become the constitutionally elected Head of Government of the great Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir after a historic vote. I had the privilege of meeting his esteemed father briefly once on 23 March 1991 at the residence of the late Rajiv Gandhi though it would be understandable if he did not recall it. Farooq Abdullah’s father Sheikh Abdullah was not merely a Lion of Kashmir but a genuine hero of Indian history, a true Bharat Ratna, someone whose commitment to constitutional principles of law and politics I admire more and more as I learn more of it…

The purpose of this open letter is to describe the broad path I believe to be the only just and lawful one available to the resolution of what has been known universally as the Kashmir problem.

Very briefly, it involves recognizing that the question of lawful territorial sovereignty in J&K is logically distinct from the question of the choice of nationality by individual inhabitants. The solution requires

(a) acknowledging that the original entity in the world system known as Jammu & Kashmir arising on March 16 1846 ceased to exist on or about October 22 1947, and that the military contest that commenced on the latter date has resulted in fact, given all particular circumstances of history, in the lawful and just outcome in international law;
(b) offering all who may be Indian nationals or stateless and who presently live under Article 370, a formal choice of nationality between the Republics of India, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan: citizen-by-citizen, without fear or favour, under conditions of full information, individual privacy and security; any persons who voluntarily choose to renounce Indian nationality in such private individual decisions would be nevertheless granted lawful permanent residence in the Indian Republic and J&K in particular.

In other words, the dismemberment of the original J&K State and annexation of its territories by the entities known today as the Republic of Pakistan and Republic of India that occurred since October 22 1947, as represented first by the 1949 Ceasefire Line and then by the 1972 Line of Control, is indeed the just and lawful outcome prevailing in respect of the question of territorial sovereignty and jurisdiction. The remaining democratic question has to do with free individual choice of nationality by inhabitants, under conditions of full information and privacy, citizen-by-citizen, with the grant of permanent residency rights by the Indian Republic to persons under its jurisdiction in J&K who might wish to choose, for deeply personal individual reasons, not to remain Indian nationals but become Afghan, Iranian or Pakistani nationals instead (or remain stateless). Pakistan has said frequently its sole concern has been the freedom of Muslims of J&K under Indian rule, and any such genuine concern shall have been thereby fully met by India. Indeed if Pakistan agreed to act similarly this entire complex mortal problem of decades shall have begun to be resolved most appropriately. Pakistan and India are both wracked by corruption, poverty and bad governance, and would be able to mutually draw down military forces pit against one another everywhere, so as to begin to repair the grave damage to their fiscal health caused over decades by the deleterious draining away of vast public resources.

The full reasoning underlying this solution, which I believe to be the only lawful, just, efficient and stable solution that exists, is thoroughly explained in the following five articles. The first four, “Solving Kashmir”, “Law, Justice & J&K”, “History of J&K”, and “Pakistan’s Allies”, were published in The Statesman in 2005-2006 and are marked ONE, TWO, THREE, and FOUR below, and are also available elsewhere here. The fifth “An Indian Reply to President Zardari”, marked FIVE, was published for the first time here following the Mumbai massacres. I believe careful reflection upon this entire body of reasoning may lead all reasonable men and women to a practically unanimous consensus about this as the appropriate course of action; if such a consensus happened to arise, the implementation of the solution shall only be a matter of relatively uncomplicated procedural detail.

Subroto Roy
January 7 2009

“ONE
SOLVING KASHMIR: ON AN APPLICATION OF REASON by Subroto Roy First published in three parts in The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, December 1,2,3 2005, http://www.thestatesman.net

(This article has its origins in a paper “Towards an Economic Solution for Kashmir” which circulated in Washington DC in 1992-1995, including at the Indian and Pakistani embassies and the Carnegie Endowment, and was given as an invited lecture at the Heritage Foundation on June 23 1998. It should be read along with other articles also republished here, especially “History of J&K”, “Law, Justice and J&K” , “Understanding Pakistan”, “Pakistan’s Allies” and “What to Tell Musharraf”. The Washington paper and lecture itself originated from my ideas in the Introduction to Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy, edited by WE James and myself in the University of Hawaii project on Pakistan 1986-1992.)

I. Give Indian `Green Cards’ to the Hurriyat et al
India, being a liberal democracy in its constitutional law, cannot do in Jammu & Kashmir what Czechoslovakia did to the “Sudeten Germans” after World War II. On June 18 1945 the new Czechoslovakia announced those Germans and Magyars within their borders who could not prove they had been actively anti-fascist before or during the War would be expelled — the burden of proof was placed on the individual, not the State. Czechoslovakia “transferring” this population was approved by the Heads of the USA, UK and USSR Governments at Potsdam on August 2 1945. By the end of 1946, upto two million Sudeten Germans were forced to flee their homes; thousands may have died by massacre or otherwise; 165,000 remained who were absorbed as Czechoslovak citizens. Among those expelled were doubtless many who had supported Germany and many others who had not — the latter to this day seek justice or even an apology in vain. Czechoslovakia punished none of its nationals for atrocities, saying it had been revenge for Hitler’s evil (”badla” in Bollywood terms) and the post Cold War Czech Government too has declined to render an apology. Revenge is a wild kind of justice (while justice may be a civilised kind of revenge).

India cannot follow this savage precedent in international law. Yet we must recognise there are several hundred and up to several hundred thousand persons on our side of the boundary in the State of Jammu & Kashmir who do not wish to be Indian nationals. These people are presently our nationals ius soli, having been born in territory of the Indian Republic, and/or ius sanguinis, having been born of parents who are Indian nationals; or they may be “stateless” whom we must treat in accordance with the 1954 Convention on Stateless Persons. The fact is they may not wish to carry Indian passports or be Indian nationals.

In this respect their juridical persons resemble the few million “elite” Indians who have in the last few decades freely placed their hands on their hearts and solemnly renounced their Indian nationality, declaring instead their individual fidelity to other nation-states — becoming American, Canadian or Australian citizens, or British subjects or nationals of other countries. Such people include tens of thousands of the adult children of India’s metropolitan “elite”, who are annually visited abroad in the hot summer months by their Indian parents and relatives. They are daughters and sons of New Delhi’s Government and Opposition, of retired generals, air marshals, admirals, ambassadors, cabinet secretaries, public sector bureaucrats, private sector businessmen, university professors, journalists, doctors and many others. India’s most popular film-actress exemplified this “elite” capital-flight when, after a tireless search, she chose a foreign husband and moved to California.

The difference in Jammu & Kashmir would be that those wishing to renounce Indian nationality do not wish to move to any other place but to stay as and where they are, which is in Kashmir Valley or Jammu. Furthermore, they may wish, for whatever reason, to adopt, if they are eligible to do so, the nationality of e.g. the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan or the Islamic Republic of Iran or the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

They may believe themselves descended from Ahmad Shah Abdali whose Afghans ruled or mis-ruled Kashmir Valley before being defeated by Ranjit Singh’s Sikhs in 1819. Or they may believe themselves of Iranian descent as, for example, are the Kashmiri cousins of the late Ayatollah Khomeini. Or they may simply have wished to be, or are descended from persons who had wished to be on October 26 1947, citizens of the then-new British Dominion of Pakistan — but who came to be prevented from properly expressing such a desire because of the war-like conditions that have prevailed ever since between India and Pakistan. There may be even a few persons in Laddakh who are today Indian nationals but who wish to be considered Tibetans instead; there is, however, no Tibetan Republic and it does not appear there is going to be one.

India, being a free and self-confident country, should allow, in a systematic lawful manner, all such persons to fulfil their desires, and furthermore, should ensure they are not penalised for having expressed such “anti-national” desires or for having acted upon them. Sir Mark Tully, the British journalist, is an example of someone who has been a foreign national who has chosen to reside permanently in the Republic of India — indeed he has been an exemplary permanent resident of our country. There are many others like him. There is no logical reason why all those persons in Jammu & Kashmir who do wish not to be Indians by nationality cannot receive the same legal status from the Indian Republic as has been granted to Sir Mark Tully. There are already thousands of Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi and Nepalese nationals who are lawful permanent residents in the Indian Republic, and who travel back and forth between India and their home countries. There is no logical reason why the same could not be extended to several hundred or numerous thousand people in Jammu & Kashmir who may wish to not accept or to renounce their Indian nationality (for whatever personal reason) and instead become nationals, if they are so eligible, of the Islamic Republics of Afghanistan, Iran or Pakistan, or, for that matter, to remain stateless. On the one hand, their renunciation of Indian nationality is logically equivalent to the renunciation of Indian nationality by the adult children of India’s “elite” settled in North America and Western Europe. On the other hand, their wish to adopt, if they are eligible, a foreign nationality, such as that of Afghanistan, Iran or Pakistan, and yet remain domiciled in Indian territory is logically equivalent to that of many foreign nationals domiciled in India already like Sir Mark Tully.

Now if you are a permanent resident of some country, you may legally have many, perhaps most, but certainly not all the rights and duties of nationals of that country. e.g., though you will have to pay all the same taxes, you may not be allowed to (or be required to) vote in national or provincial elections but you may in local municipal elections. At the same time, permanently residing foreign nationals are supposed to be equal under the law and have equal access to all processes of civil and criminal justice. (As may be expected though from human frailty, even the federal courts of the USA can be notorious in their injustice and racism towards “Green Card” holders relative to “full” American citizens.) Then again, as a permanently resident foreigner, while you will be free to work in any lawful trade or profession, you may not be allowed to work in some or perhaps any Government agencies, certainly not the armed forces or the police. Many Indians in the USA were engineering graduates, and because many engineering jobs or contracts in the USA are related to the US armed forces and require US citizens only, it is commonplace for Indian engineers to renounce their Indian nationality and become Americans because of this. Many Indian-American families have one member who is American, another Indian, a third maybe Canadian, a fourth Fijian or British etc.

The same can happen in the Indian State of Jammu & Kashmir if it evolves peacefully and correctly in the future. It is quite possible to imagine a productive family in a peaceful Kashmir Valley of the future where one brother is an officer in the Indian Armed Forces, another brother a civil servant and a sister a police officer of the J&K State Government, another sister being a Pakistani doctor, while cousins are Afghan or Iranian or “stateless” businessmen. Each family-member would have made his/her choice of nationality as an individual given the circumstances of his/her life, his/her personal comprehension of the facts of history, his/her personal political and/or religious persuasions, and similar deeply private considerations. All would have their children going to Indian schools and being Indian citizens ius soli and/or ius sanguinis. When the children grow up, they would be free to join, if they wished, the existing capital flight of other Indian adult children abroad and there renounce their Indian nationality as many have come to do.

II Revealing Choices Privately with Full Information
For India to implement such a proposal would be to provide an opportunity for all those domiciled in Kashmir Valley, Jammu and Laddakh to express freely and privately as individuals their deepest wishes about their own identities, in a confidential manner, citizen by citizen, case by case. This would thereby solve the fundamental democratic problem that has been faced ever since the Pakistani attack on the original State of Jammu & Kashmir commenced on October 22 1947, which came to be followed by the Rape of Baramulla — causing the formal accession of the State to the then-new Dominion of India on October 26 1947.

A period of, say, 30 months may be announced by the Government of India during which full information would be provided to all citizens affected by this change, i.e. all those presently governed by Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. The condition of full information may include, for example, easy access to Afghan, Iranian and Pakistani newspapers in addition to access to Indian media. Each such person wishing to either remain with Indian nationality (by explicitly requesting an Indian passport if he/she does not have one already — and such passports can be printed in Kashmiri and Urdu too), or to renounce Indian nationality and either remain stateless or adopt, if he/she is so eligible, the nationality of e.g. Afghanistan, Iran, or Pakistan, should be administratively assisted by the Government of India to make that choice.

In particular, he/she should be individually, confidentially, and without fear or favour assured and informed of his/her new rights and responsibilities. For example, a resident of Kashmir Valley who chooses to become a Pakistani citizen, such as Mr Geelani, would now enjoy the same rights and responsibilities in the Indian Republic that Mr Tully enjoys, and at the same time no longer require a visa to visit Pakistan just as Mr Tully needs no visa to enter Britain. In case individual participants in the Hurriyat choose to renounce Indian nationality and adopt some other, they would no longer be able to legally participate in Indian national elections or J&K’s State elections. That is something which they say they do not wish to do in any case. Those members of the Hurriyat who chose e.g. Pakistani nationality while still residing in Jammu & Kashmir, would be free to send postal ballots or cross the border and vote in Pakistan’s elections if and when these occur. There are many Canadians who live permanently in the USA who cross home to Canada in order to cast a ballot.

After the period of 30 months, every person presently under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution would have received a full and fair opportunity to privately and confidentially reveal his/her preference or choice under conditions of full information. “Partition”, “Plebiscite”, and “Military Decision” have been the three alternatives under discussion ever since the National Conference of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and his then-loyal Deputy, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, helped the Indian Army and Air Force in 1947-1948 fight off the savage attack against Jammu & Kashmir State that had commenced from Pakistan on October 22 1947. When, during the Pakistani attack, the Sheikh and Bakshi agreed to the Muslim Conference’s demand for a plebiscite among the people, the Pakistanis balked — the Sheikh and Bakshi then withdrew their offer and decisively and irrevocably chose to accede to the Indian Union. The people of Jammu & Kashmir, like any other, are now bound by the sovereign political commitments made by their forebears. Even so, given the painful mortal facts of the several decades since, the solution here proposed if properly implemented would be an incomparably more thorough democratic exercise than any conceivable plebiscite could ever have been.

Furthermore, regardless of the outcome, it would not entail any further “Partition” or population “transfer” which inevitably would degenerate into a savage balkanization, and has been ruled out as an unacceptable “deal-breaker” by the Indian Republic. Instead, every individual person would have been required, in a private and confidential decision-making process, to have chosen a nationality or to remain stateless — resulting in a multitude of cosmopolitan families in Jammu & Kashmir. But that is something commonplace in the modern world. Properly understood and properly implemented, we shall have resolved the great mortal problem we have faced for more than half a century, and Jammu & Kashmir can finally settle into a period of peace and prosperity. The boundary between India and Pakistan would have been settled by the third alternative mentioned at the time, namely, “Military Decision”.

III. Of Flags and Consulates in Srinagar and Gilgit
Pakistan has demanded its flag fly in Srinagar. This too can happen though not in the way Pakistan has been wishing to see it happen. A Pakistan flag might fly in the Valley just as might an Afghan and Iranian flag as well. Pakistan has wished its flag to fly as the sovereign over Jammu & Kashmir. That is not possible. The best and most just outcome is for the Pakistani flag to fly over a recognised Pakistani consular or visa office in Srinagar, Jammu and Leh. In diplomatic exchange, the Indian tricolour would have to fly over a recognised Indian consular or visa office in Muzaffarabad, Gilgit and Skardu.

Pakistan also may have to act equivalently with respect to the original inhabitants of the territory of Jammu & Kashmir that it has been controlling — allowing those people to become Indian nationals if they so chose to do in free private decisions under conditions of full information. In other words, the “Military Decision” that defines the present boundary between sovereign states must be recognised by Pakistan sincerely and permanently in a Treaty relationship with India — and all of Pakistan’s official and unofficial protégés like the Hurriyat and the “United Jehad Council” would have to do the same. Without such a sovereign commitment from the Government of Pakistan, as shown by decisive actions of lack of aggressive intent (e.g. as came to be implemented between the USA and USSR), the Government of India has no need to involve the Government of Pakistan in implementing the solution of enhancing free individual choice of nationality with regard to all persons on our side of the boundary.

The “Military Decision” regarding the sovereign boundary in Jammu & Kashmir will be so recognised by all only if it is the universally just outcome in international law. And that in fact is what it is.

The original Jammu & Kashmir State began its existence as an entity in international law long before the present Republics of India and Pakistan ever did. Pakistan commences as an entity on August 14 1947; India commences as an entity of international law with its signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 20 1918. Jammu & Kashmir began as an entity on March 16 1846 — when the Treaty of Amritsar was signed between Gulab Singh Dogra and the British, one week after the Treaty of Lahore between the British and the defeated Sikh regency of the child Daleep Singh.

Liaquat Ali Khan and Zafrullah Khan both formally challenged on Pakistan’s behalf the legitimacy of Dogra rule in Jammu & Kashmir since the Treaty of Amritsar. The Pakistani Mission to the UN does so even today. The Pakistanis were following Sheikh Abdullah and Jawaharlal Nehru himself, who too had at one point challenged Dogra legitimacy in the past. But though the form of words of the Pakistan Government and the Nehru-Abdullah position were similar in their attacks on the Treaty of Amritsar, their underlying substantive reasons were as different as chalk from cheese. The Pakistanis attacked the Dogra dynasty for being Dogra — i.e. because they were Hindus and not Muslims governing a Muslim majority. Nehru and Abdullah denounced monarchic autocracy in favour of mass democracy, and so attacked the Dogra dynasty for being a dynasty. All were wrong to think the Treaty of Amritsar anything but a lawful treaty in international law.

Furthermore, in this sombre political game of great mortal consequence, there were also two other parties who were, or appeared to be, in favour of the dynasty: one because the dynasty was non-Muslim, the other, despite it being so. Non-Muslim minorities like many Hindus and Sikhs in the business and governmental classes, saw the Dogra dynasty as their protector against a feared communalist tyranny arising from the Sunni Muslim masses of Srinagar Valley, whom Abdullah’s rhetoric at Friday prayer-meetings had been inciting or at least awakening from slumber. At the same time, the communalists of the Muslim Conference who had broken away from Abdullah’s secular National Conference, sought political advantage over Abdullah by declaring themselves in favour of keeping the dynasty — even elevating it to become an international sovereign, thus flattering the already pretentious potentate that he would be called “His Majesty” instead of merely “His Highness”. The ancestry of today’s Hurriyat’s demands for an independent Jammu & Kashmir may be traced precisely to those May 21-22 1947 declarations of the Muslim Conference leader, Hamidullah Khan.

Into this game stumbled the British with all the mix of cunning, indifference, good will, impatience, arrogance and pomposity that marked their rule in India. At the behest of the so-called “Native Princes”, the 1929 Butler Commission had hinted that the relationship of “Indian India” to the British sovereign was conceptually different from that of “British India” to the British sovereign. This view was adopted in the Cabinet Mission’s 12 May 1946 Memorandum which in turn came to be applied by Attlee and Mountbatten in their unseemly rush to “Divide and Quit” India in the summer of 1947.

It created the pure legal illusion that there was such a thing as “Lapse of Paramountcy” at which Jammu & Kashmir or any other “Native State” of “Indian India” could conceivably, even for a moment, become a sovereign enjoying the comity of nations — contradicting Britain’s own position that only two Dominions, India and Pakistan, could ever be members of the British Commonwealth and hence members of the newly created UN. British pusillanimity towards Jammu & Kashmir’s Ruler had even extended to making him a nominal member of Churchill’s War Cabinet because he had sent troops to fight in Burma. But the legal illusion had come about because of a catastrophic misunderstanding on the part of the British of their own constitutional law.

The only legal scholar who saw this was B R Ambedkar in a lonely and brilliant technical analysis released to the press on June 17 1947. No “Lapse of Paramountcy” over the “Native Princes” of Indian India could occur in constitutional law. Paramountcy over Indian India would be automatically inherited by the successor state of British India at the Transfer of Power. That successor state was the new British Dominion of India as well as (when it came to be finalised by Partition from India) the new British Dominion of Pakistan (Postscript: the deleted words represent a mistake made in the original paper, corrected in “Law, Justice & J&K” in view of the fact the UN in 1947 deemed India alone the successor state of British India and Pakistan a new state in the world system). A former “Native Prince” could only choose to which Dominion he would go. No other alternative existed even for a single logical moment. Because the British had catastrophically failed to comprehend this aspect of their own constitutional law, they created a legal vacuum whereby between August 15 and October 22-26 1947, Jammu & Kashmir became a local and temporary sovereign recognised only by the Dominion of Pakistan (until October 22) and the Dominion of India (until October 26). But it was not a globally recognised sovereign and was never going to be such in international law. This was further proved by Attlee refusing to answer the J&K Prime Minister’s October 18 1947 telegram.

All ambiguity came to end with the Pakistani attack of October 22 1947, the Rape of Baramulla, the secession of an “Azad Kashmir”declared by Sardar Ibrahim, and the Pakistani coup détat in Gilgit on October 31 1947 followed by the massacre of Sikh soldiers of the J&K Army at Bunji. With those Pakistani actions, Gulab Singh’s Jammu & Kashmir State, founded on March 16 1846 by the Treaty of Amritsar, ceased to logically exist as an entity in international law and fell into a state of ownerless anarchy. The conflict between Ibrahim’s Muslim communalists backed by the new Dominion of Pakistan and Abdullah’s secularists backed by the new Dominion of India had become a civil war within a larger intra-Commonwealth war that itself was almost a civil war between forces of the same military.

Jammu & Kashmir territory had become ownerless. The Roman Law which is at the root of all municipal and international law in the world today would declare that in the ownership of such an ownerless entity, a “Military Decision” was indeed the just outcome. Sovereignty over the land, waters, forests and other actual and potential resources of the erstwhile State of Jammu & Kashmir has become divided by “Military Decision” between the modern Republics of India and Pakistan. By the proposal made herein, the people and their descendants shall have chosen their nationality and their domicile freely across the sovereign boundary that has come to result.

TWO
LAW, JUSTICE AND J&K by Subroto Roy First published in two parts in The Sunday Statesman, July 2 2006 and The Statesman July 3 2006 http://www.thestatesman.net Editorial Page Special Article

I.
For a solution to J&K to be universally acceptable it must be seen by all as being lawful and just. Political opinion in Pakistan and India as well as all people and parties in J&K ~ those loyal to India, those loyal to Pakistan, and any others ~ will have to agree that, all things considered, such is the right course of action for everyone today in the 21st Century, which means too that the solution must be consistent with the facts of history as well as account reasonably for all moral considerations.

On August 14, 1947, the legal entity known as “British India”, as one of its final acts, and based on a sovereign British decision made only two months earlier, created out of some of its territory a new State defined in international law as the “Dominion of Pakistan”. British India extinguished itself the very next day, and the newly independent “Dominion of India” succeeded to all its rights and obligations in international law. As the legal successor of the “India” which had signed the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and the San Francisco Declaration of 1945, the Dominion of India was already a member of the new UN as well as a signatory to many international treaties. By contrast, the Dominion of Pakistan had to apply afresh to sign treaties and become a member of international organisations. The theory put forward by Argentina that two new States, India and Pakistan, had been created ab initio, came to be rejected and was withdrawn by Argentina. Instead, Pakistan with the wholehearted backing of India was made a member of the UN, with all except Afghanistan voting in favour. (Afghanistan’s exceptional vote signalled presence of conflict over the Durand Line and idea of a Pashtunistan; Dr Khan Sahib and Abdul Ghaffar Khan were imprisoned by the Muslim League regime of NWFP which later supported the tribesmen who attacked J&K starting October 22, 1947; that conflict remains unresolved to this day, even after the American attack on the Taliban, the restart of a constitutional process in Afghanistan, and the purported mediation of US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.)

Zafrullah Khan, Pakistan’s distinguished first ambassador to the UN, claimed in September 1947: “Pakistan is not a new member of UNO but a successor to a member State which was one of the founders of the Organisation.” He noted that he himself had led India to the final session of the League of Nations in Geneva in 1939, and he wished to say that Pakistan had been present “as part of India… under the latter name” as a signatory to the Treaty of Versailles. This was, however, logically impossible. The Treaty of Versailles long predated (1) Mohammad Iqbal’s Allahabad Address which conceptualised for the first time in the 20th Century a Muslim State in Northwest India; (2) Rahmat Ali’s invention of the word “PAKSTAN” on the top floor of a London omnibus; (3) M. A. Jinnah and Fazlul Haq’s Lahore Resolution; and (4) the final British decision of June 3, 1947 to create by Partition out of “British India” a Dominion named Pakistan. Pakistan could not have acted in international law prior to having come into being or been created or even conceived itself. Zafrullah Khan would have been more accurate to say that the history of Pakistanis until August 14, 1947 had been one in common with that of their Indian cousins ~ or indeed their Indian brothers, since innumerable North Indian Muslim families came to be literally partitioned, with some brothers remaining Indians while other brothers became Pakistanis.

Pakistan was created at the behest of Jinnah’s Muslim League though with eventual agreement of the Indian National Congress (a distant ancestor of the political party going by the same name today). Pakistan arose not because Jinnah said Hindus and Muslims were “two nations” but because he and his League wished for a State where Muslims would find themselves ruled by fellow-Muslims and feel themselves part of a pan-Islamic culture. Yet Pakistan was intended to be a secular polity with Muslim-majority governance, not an Islamic theocracy. That Pakistan failed to become secular was exemplified most poignantly in the persecution Zafrullah himself later faced in his personal life as an Ahmadiya, even while he was Pakistan’s Foreign Minister. (The same happened later to Pakistan’s Nobel-winning physicist Abdus Salaam.) Pakistan was supposed to allow the genius of Indo-Muslim culture to flourish, transplanted from places like Lucknow and Aligarh which would never be part of it. In fact, the areas that are Pakistan today had in the 1937 provincial elections shown scant popular Muslim support for Jinnah’s League. The NWFP had a Congress Government in the 1946 elections, and its supporters boycotted the pro-Pakistan referendum in 1947. The imposition of Urdu culture as Pakistan’s dominant ethos might have come to be accepted later in West Punjab, Sindh and NWFP but it was not acceptable in East Bengal, and led inevitably to the Pakistani civil war and creation of Bangladesh by Sheikh Mujib in 1971.

In August 1947, the new Dominions of India and Pakistan were each supposed to protect their respective minority populations as their first political duty. Yet both palpably failed in this, and were reduced to making joint declarations pleading for peace and an end to communal killings and the abduction of women. The Karachi Government, lacking the wherewithal and administrative machinery of being a nation-state at all, and with only Liaquat and an ailing Jinnah as noted leaders, may have failed more conspicuously, and West Punjab, the Frontier and Sindh were soon emptied of almost all their many Sikhs and Hindus. Instead, the first act of the new Pakistan Government in the weeks after August 14, 1947 was to arrange for the speedy and safe transfer of the North Indian Muslim elite by air from Delhi using chartered British aeroplanes. The ordinary Muslim masses of UP, Delhi and East Punjab were left in danger from or were subjected to Sikh and Hindu mob attacks, especially as news and rumours spread of similar outrages against Pakistan’s departing minorities.

In this spiral of revenge attacks and counter-attacks, bloodshed inevitably spilled over from West and East Punjab into the northern Punjabi plains of Jammu, though Kashmir Valley remained conspicuously peaceful. Zafrullah and Liaquat would later claim it was this communal civil war which had caused thousands of newly decommissioned Mirpuri soldiers of the British Army, and thousands of Afridi and other Frontier tribesmen, to spontaneously act to “liberate” J&K’s Muslims from alleged tyranny under the Hindu Ruler or an allegedly illegal Indian occupation.

But the main attack on J&K State that began from Pakistan along the Manshera-Muzaffarabad road on October 22, 1947 was admittedly far too well-organised, well-armed, well-planned and well-executed to have been merely a spontaneous uprising of tribesmen and former soldiers. In all but name, it was an act of undeclared war of the new Dominion of Pakistan first upon the State of J&K and then upon the Indian Dominion. This became obvious to Field Marshall Auchinlek, who, as Supreme Commander of the armed forces of both India and Pakistan, promptly resigned and abolished the Supreme Command in face of the fact that two parts of his own forces were now at war with one another.

The invaders failed to take Srinagar solely because they lost their military purpose while indulging in the Rape of Baramula. Thousands of Kashmiri women of all communities ~ Muslim, Sikh and Hindu ~ were violated and transported back to be sold in markets in Peshawar and elsewhere. Such was standard practice in Central Asian tribal wars from long before the advent of Islam, and the invading tribesmen shared that culture. India’s Army and Air Force along with the militias of the secular democratic movement led by Sheikh Abdullah and those remaining loyal units of J&K forces, fought off the invasion, and liberated Baramula, Naushera, Uri, Poonch etc. Gilgit had a British-led coup détat against it bringing it under Pakistan’s control. Kargil was initially taken by the Pakistanis and then lost by them. Leh could have been but was not taken by Pakistani forces. But in seeking to protect Leh and to retake Kargil, the Indian Army lost the siege of Skardu ~ which ended reputedly with the infamous communication from the Pakistani commander to his HQ: “All Sikhs killed; all women raped.”

Legal theory
Now, in this grave mortal conflict, the legal theory to which both the Indian and Pakistani Governments have been wedded for sixty years is one that had been endorsed by the British Cabinet Mission in 1946 and originated with the Butler Commission of 1929. Namely, that “Lapse of Paramountcy” over the “Indian India” of the “Native States” could and did occur with the extinction of British India on August 15, 1947. By this theory, Hyderabad, J&K, Junagadh and the several other States which had not acceded to either Dominion were no longer subject to the Crown’s suzerainty as of that date. Both Dominions drew up “Instruments of Accession” for Rulers to sign upon the supposed “Lapse” of Paramountcy that was to occur with the end of British India.

Ever since, the Pakistan Government has argued that Junagadh’s Ruler acceded to Pakistan and Hyderabad’s had wished to do so but both were forcibly prevented by India. Pakistan has also argued the accession to India by J&K’s Ruler was “fraudulent” and unacceptable, and Sheikh Abdullah was a “Quisling” of India and it was not his National Conference but the Muslim Conference of Ibrahim, Abbas and the Mirwaiz (precursor of the Hurriyat) which represented J&K’s Muslims.

India argued that Junagadh’s accession to Pakistan or Hyderabad’s independence were legal and practical impossibilities contradicting the wills of their peoples, and that their integration into the Indian Dominion was carried out in an entirely legitimate manner in the circumstances prevailing.

On J&K, India has argued that not only had the Ruler requested Indian forces to fight off the Pakistani attack, and he acceded formally before Indian forces were sent, but also that democratic principles were fully adhered to in the unequivocal endorsement of the accession by Sheikh Abdullah and the National Conference and further by a duly called and elected J&K Constituent Assembly, as well as generations of Kashmiris since. In the Indian view, it is Pakistan which has been in illegal occupation of Indian territory from Mirpur, Muzaffarabad and Gilgit to Skardu all the way to the Khunjerab Pass, Siachen Glacier and K2, some of which it illegally ceded to its Communist Chinese ally, and furthermore that it has denied the peoples of these areas any democratic voice.

Roman law
In June 1947, it was uniquely and brilliantly argued by BR Ambedkar in a statement to the Press that the British had made a catastrophic error in comprehending their own constitutional law, that no such thing as “Lapse” of Paramountcy existed, and that suzerainty over the “Native States” of “Indian India” would be automatically transferred in international law to the successor State of British India. It was a legal illusion to think any Native State could be sovereign even for a single logical moment. On this theory, if the Dominion of India was the sole successor State in international law while Pakistan was a new legal entity, then a Native State which acceded to Pakistan after August 15, 1947 would have had to do so with the consent of the suzerain power, namely, India, as may be said to have happened implicitly in case of Chitral and a few others. Equally, India’s behaviour in integrating (or annexing) Junagadh and Hyderabad, would become fully explicable ~ as would the statements of Mountbatten, Nehru and Patel before October 1947 that they would accept J&K going to Pakistan if that was what the Ruler and his people desired. Pakistan unilaterally and by surprise went to war against J&K on October 22, declared the accession to India “fraudulent”, and to this day has claimed the territory of the original State of J&K is “disputed”. Certainly, even if the Ambedkar doctrine is applied that no “Lapse” was possible under British law, Pakistan did not recognise India’s jurisdiction there as the suzerain power as of August 15, 1947. Altogether, Pakistan’s sovereign actions from October 22 onwards amounted to acting to annex J&K to itself by military force ~ acts which came to be militarily resisted (with partial success) by India allied with Sheikh Abdullah’s National Conference and the remaining forces of J&K. By these military actions, Pakistan revealed that it considered J&K territory to have descended into a legal state of anarchy as of October 22, 1947, and hence open to resolution by “Military Decision” ~ as is indeed the just outcome under Roman Law, the root of all municipal and international law today, when there is a contest between claimants over an ownerless entity.

Choice of nationality
Hence, the present author concluded (“Solving Kashmir”, The Statesman December 1-3, 2005) that the dismemberment of the original J&K State and annexation of its territories by India and Pakistan that has occurred since 1947, as represented first by the 1949 Ceasefire Line and then by the 1972 Line of Control, is indeed the just and lawful outcome prevailing in respect of the question of territorial sovereignty and jurisdiction. The remaining “democratic” question described has to do with free individual choice of nationality by the inhabitants, under conditions of full information and privacy, citizen-by-citizen, with the grant of permanent residency rights by the Indian Republic to persons under its jurisdiction in J&K who may choose not to remain Indian nationals but become Afghan, Iranian or Pakistani nationals instead. Pakistan has said frequently its sole concern has been the freedom of the Muslims of J&K under Indian rule, and any such genuine concern shall have been thereby fully met by India. Indeed, if Pakistan agreed to act similarly, this entire complex mortal problem of decades shall have begun to be peacefully resolved. Both countries are wracked by corruption, poverty and bad governance, and would be able to mutually draw down military forces pit against one another everywhere, so as to begin to repair the grave damage to their fiscal health caused by the deleterious draining away of vast public resources.

THREE
HISTORY OF JAMMU & KASHMIR by Subroto Roy First published in two parts in The Sunday Statesman, Oct 29 2006 and The Statesman Oct 30 2006, Editorial Page Special Article, http://www.thestatesman.net

At the advent of Islam in distant Arabia, India and Kashmir in particular were being visited by Chinese Buddhist pilgrims during Harsha’s reign. The great “Master of Law” Hiuen Tsiang visited between 629-645 and spent 631-633 in Kashmir (”Kia-chi-mi-lo”), describing it to include Punjab, Kabul and Kandahar. Over the next dozen centuries, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and again Hindu monarchs came to rule the 85 mile long 40 mile wide territory on the River Jhelum’s upper course known as Srinagar Valley, as well as its adjoining Jammu in the upper plains of the Punjab and “Little Tibet” consisting of Laddakh, Baltistan and Gilgit.

In 1344, a Persian adventurer from Swat or Khorasan by name of Amir or Mirza, who had “found his way into the Valley and in time gained great influence at the Raja’s court”, proclaimed himself Sultan Shamsuddin after the death of the last Hindu monarchs of medieval Kashmir. Twelve of his descendants formed the Shamiri dynasty including the notorious Sikander and the just and tolerant Zainulabidin. Sikander who ruled 1386-1410 “submitted himself” to the Uzbek Taimur the Lame when he approached Kashmir in 1398 “and thus saved the country from invasion”. Otherwise, “Sikander was a gloomy ferocious bigot, and his zeal in destroying temples and idols was so intense that he is remembered as the Idol-Breaker. He freely used the sword to propagate Islam and succeeded in forcing the bulk of the population to conform outwardly to the Muslim religion. Most of the Brahmins refused to apostatise, and many of them paid with their lives the penalty for their steadfastness. Many others were exiled, and only a few conformed.”

Zainulabidin who ruled 1417-1467 “was a man of very different type”. “He adopted the policy of universal toleration, recalled the exiled Brahmins, repealed the jizya or poll-tax on Hindus, and even permitted new temples to be built. He abstained from eating flesh, prohibited the slaughter of kine, and was justly venerated as a saint. He encouraged literature, painting and music, and caused many translations to be made of works composed in Sanskrit, Arabic and other languages.” During his “long and prosperous reign”, he “constructed canals and built many mosques; he was just and tolerant”.

The Shamiri dynasty ended in 1541 when “some fugitive chiefs of the two local factions of the Makri and the Chakk invited Mirza Haidar Dughlat, a relation of Babar, to invade Kashmir. The country was conquered and the Mirza held it (nominally in name of Humayan) till 1551, when he was killed in a skirmish. The line… was restored for a few years, until in 1559 a Chakk leader, Ghazi Shah, usurped the throne; and in the possession of his descendants it remained for nearly thirty years.” This dynasty marks the origins of Shia Islam in Srinagar though Shia influence in Gilgit, Baltistan and Laddakh was of longer standing. Constant dissensions weakened the Chakks, and in 1586, Akbar, then at Attock on the Indus, sent an army under Raja Bhagwan Das into Srinagar Valley and easily made it part of his Empire.

Shivaism and Islam both flourished, and Hindu ascetics and Sufi saints were revered by all. Far from Muslims and Hindus forming distinct nations, here they were genetically related kinsmen living in proximity in a small isolated area for centuries. Indeed Zainulabidin may have had a vast unspoken influence on the history of all India insofar as Akbar sought to attempt in his empire what Zainulabidin achieved in the Valley. Like Zainulabidin, Akbar’s governance of India had as its “constant aim” “to conciliate the Hindus and to repress Muslim bigotry” which in modern political parlance may be seen as the principle of secular governance ~ of conciliating the powerless (whether majority or minority) and repressing the bigotry of the powerful (whether minority or majority). Akbar had made the Valley the summer residence of the Mughals, and it was Jahangir, seeing the Valley for the first time, who apparently said the words agar behest baushad, hamee in hast, hamee in hast, hamee in hast: “if Heaven exists, it is here, it is here, it is here”. Yet like other isolated paradises (such as the idyllic islands of the Pacific Ocean) an accursed mental ether can accompany the magnificent beauty of people’s surroundings. As the historian put it: “The Kashmiris remained secure in their inaccessible Valley; but they were given up to internal weakness and discord, their political importance was gone…”

After the Mughals collapsed, Iran’s Turkish ruler Nadir Shah sacked Delhi in 1739 but the Iranian court fell in disarray upon his death. In 1747 a jirga of Pashtun tribes at Kandahar “broke normal tradition” and asked an old Punjabi holy man and shrine-keeper to choose between two leaders; this man placed young wheat in the hand of the 25 year old Ahmed Shah Saddozai of the Abdali tribe, and titled him “Durrani”. Five years later, Durrani took Kashmir and for the next 67 years the Valley was under Pashtun rule, a time of “unmitigated brutality and widespread distress”. Durrani himself “was wise, prudent and simple”, never declared himself king and wore no crown, instead keeping a stick of young wheat in his turban. Leaving India, he famously recited: “The Delhi throne is beautiful indeed, but does it compare with the mountains of Kandahar?”

Kashmir’s modern history begins with Ranjit Singh of the Sikhs who became a soldier at 12, and in 1799 at age 19 was made Lahore’s Governor by Kabul’s Zaman Shah. Three years later “he made himself master of Amritsar”, and in 1806 crossed the River Sutlej and took Ludhiana. He created a fine Sikh infantry and cavalry under former officers of Napoleon, and with 80,000 trained men and 500 guns took Multan and Peshawar, defeated the Pashtuns and overran Kashmir in 1819. The “cruel rule” of the Pashtuns ended “to the great relief of Kashmir’s inhabitants”.

The British Governor-General Minto (ancestor of the later Viceroy), seeing advantage in the Sikhs staying north of the Sutlej, sent Charles Metcalfe, “a clever young civilian”, to persuade the Khalsa; in 1809, Ranjit Singh and the British in the first Treaty of Amritsar agreed to establish “perpetual amity”: the British would “have no concern” north of the Sutlej and Ranjit Singh would keep only minor personnel south of it. In 1834 and 1838 Ranjit Singh was struck by paralysis and died in 1839, leaving no competent heir. The Sikh polity collapsed, “their power exploded, disappearing in fierce but fast flames”. It was “a period of storm and anarchy in which assassination was the rule” and the legitimate line of his son and grandson, Kharak Singh and Nao Nihal Singh was quickly extinguished. In 1845 the Queen Regent, mother of the five-year old Dalip Singh, agreed to the Khalsa ending the 1809 Treaty. After bitter battles that might have gone either way, the Khalsa lost at Sobraon on 10 February 1846, and accepted terms of surrender in the 9 March 1846 Treaty of Lahore. The kingdom had not long survived its founder: “created by the military and administrative genius of one man, it crumbled into powder when the spirit which gave it life was withdrawn; and the inheritance of the Khalsa passed into the hands of the English.”

Ranjit Singh’s influence on modern J&K was even greater through his having mentored the Rajput Gulab Singh Dogra (1792-1857) and his brothers Dhyan Singh and Suchet Singh. Jammu had been ruled by Ranjit Deo until 1780 when the Sikhs made it tributary to the Lahore Court. Gulab Singh, a great grand nephew of Ranjit Deo, had left home at age 17 in search of a soldierly fortune, and ended up in 1809 in Ranjit Singh’s army, just when Ranjit Singh had acquired for himself a free hand to expand his domains north of the River Sutlej.

Gulab Singh, an intrepid soldier, by 1820 had Jammu conferred upon him by Ranjit Singh with the title of Raja, while Bhimber, Chibal, Poonch and Ramnagar went to his brothers. Gulab Singh, “often unscrupulous and cruel, was a man of considerable ability and efficiency”; he “found his small kingdom a troublesome charge but after ten years of constant struggles he and his two brothers became masters of most of the country between Kashmir and the Punjab”, though Srinagar Valley itself remained under a separate Governor appointed by the Lahore Court. Gulab Singh extended Jammu’s rule from Rawalpindi, Bhimber, Rajouri, Bhadarwah and Kishtwar, across Laddakh and into Tibet. His General Zorawar Singh led six expeditions into Laddakh between 1834 and 1841 through Kishtwar, Padar and Zanskar. In May 1841, Zorawar left Leh with an army of 5000 Dogras and Laddakhis and advanced on Tibet. Defeating the Tibetans at Rudok and Tashigong, he reached Minsar near Lake Mansarovar from where he advanced to Taklakot (Purang), 15 miles from the borders of Nepal and Kumaon, and built a fort stopping for the winter. Lhasa sent large re-inforcements to meet him. Zorawar, deciding to take the offensive, was killed in the Battle of Toyu, on 11-12 December 1841 at 16,000 feet.

A Laddakhi rebellion resulted against Jammu, aided now by the advancing Tibetans. A new army was sent under Hari Chand suppressing the rebellion and throwing back the Tibetans, leading to a peace treaty between Lhasa and Jammu signed on 17 September 1842: “We have agreed that we have no ill-feelings because of the past war. The two kings will henceforth remain friends forever. The relationship between Maharajah Gulab Singh of Kashmir and the Lama Guru of Lhasa (Dalai Lama) is now established. The Maharajah Sahib, with God (Kunchok) as his witness, promises to recognise ancient boundaries, which should be looked after by each side without resorting to warfare. When the descendants of the early kings, who fled from Laddakh to Tibet, now return they will not be stopped by Shri Maharajah. Trade between Laddakh and Tibet will continue as usual. Tibetan government traders coming into Laddakh will receive free transport and accommodations as before, and the Laddakhi envoy will, in turn, receive the same facilities in Lhasa. The Laddakhis take an oath before God (Kunchok) that they will not intrigue or create new troubles in Tibetan territory. We have agreed, with God as witness, that Shri Maharajah Sahib and the Lama Guru of Lhasa will live together as members of the same household.” The traditional boundary between Laddakh and Tibet “as recognised by both sides since olden times” was accepted by the envoys of Gulab Singh and the Dalai Lama.

An earlier 1684 treaty between Laddakh and Lhasa had said that while Laddakh would send tribute to Lhasa every three years, “the king of Laddakh reserves to himself the village of Minsar in Ngarees-khor-sum, that he may be independent there; and he sets aside its revenue for the purpose of meeting the expense involved in keeping up the sacrificial lights at Kangree (Kailas), and the Holy Lakes of Mansarovar and Rakas Tal”. The area around Minsar village near Lake Mansarovar, held by the rulers of Laddakh since 1583, was retained by Jammu in the 1842 peace-treaty, and its revenue was received by J&K State until 1948.

After Ranjit Singh’s death in 1839, Gulab Singh was alienated from the Lahore Court where the rise of his brothers and a nephew aroused enough Khalsa jealousy to see them assassinated in palace intrigues. While the Sikhs imploded, Gulab Singh had expanded his own dominion from Rawalpindi to Minsar ~ everywhere except Srinagar Valley itself. He had apparently advised the Sikhs not to attack the British in breach of the 1809 Treaty, and when they did so he had not joined them, though had he done so British power in North India might have been broken. The British were grateful for his neutrality and also his help in their first misbegotten adventure in Afghanistan. It was Gulab Singh who was now encouraged by both the British and the Sikhs to mediate between them, indeed “to take a leading part in arranging conditions of peace”, and he formally represented the Sikh regency in the negotiations. The 9 March 1846 Treaty of Lahore “set forth that the British Government having demanded in addition to a certain assignment of territory, a payment of a crore and a half of rupees, and the Sikh Government being unable to pay the whole”, Dalip Singh “should cede as equivalent to one crore the hill country belonging to the Punjab between the Beas and the Indus including Kashmir and the Hazara”.

For the British to occupy the whole of this mountainous territory was judged unwise on economic and military grounds; it was not feasible to occupy from a military standpoint and the area “with the exception of the small Valley of Kashmir” was “for the most part unproductive”. “On the other hand, the ceded tracts comprised the whole of the hereditary possessions of Gulab Singh, who, being eager to obtain an indefeasible title to them, came forward and offered to pay the war indemnity on condition that he was made the independent ruler of Jammu & Kashmir.

A separate treaty embodying this arrangement was thus concluded between the British and Gulab Singh at Amritsar on 16 March 1846.” Gulab Singh acknowledged the British Government’s supremacy, and in token of it agreed to present annually to the British Government “one horse, twelve shawl goats of approved breed and three pairs of Kashmir shawls. This arrangement was later altered; the annual presentation made by the Kashmir State was confined to two Kashmir shawls and three romals (handkerchiefs).” The Treaty of Amritsar “put Gulab Singh, as Maharaja, in possession of all the hill country between the Indus and the Ravi, including Kashmir, Jammu, Laddakh and Gilgit; but excluding Lahoul, Kulu and some areas including Chamba which for strategic purposes, it was considered advisable (by the British) to retain and for which a remission of Rs 25 lakhs was made from the crore demanded, leaving Rs 75 lakhs as the final amount to be paid by Gulab Singh.” The British retained Hazara which in 1918 was included into NWFP. Through an intrigue emanating from Prime Minister Lal Singh in Lahore, Imamuddin, the last Sikh-appointed Governor of Kashmir, sought to prevent Gulab Singh taking possession of the Valley in accordance with the Treaty’s terms. By December 1846 Gulab Singh had done so, though only with help of a British force which included 17,000 Sikh troops “who had been fighting in the campaign just concluded”. (Contemporary British opinion even predicted Sikhism like Buddhism “would become extinct in a short time if it were not kept alive by the esprit de corps of the Sikh regiments”.)

The British in 1846 may have been glad enough to allow Gulab Singh take independent charge of the new entity that came to be now known as the “State of Jammu & Kashmir”. Later, however. they and their American allies would grow keen to control or influence the region vis-à-vis their new interests against the Russian and Soviet Empires.

FOUR
PAKISTAN’S ALLIES by Subroto Roy First published in two parts in The Sunday Statesman, June 4 2006, The Statesman June 5 2006, Editorial Page Special Article, http://www.thestatesman.net

From the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar creating the State of Jammu & Kashmir until the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Britain and later the USA became increasingly interested in the subcontinent’s Northwest. The British came to India by sea to trade. Barren, splendid, landlocked Afghanistan held no interest except as a home of fierce tribes; but it was the source of invasions into the Indian plains and prompted a British misadventure to install Shah Shuja in place of Dost Mohammad Khan leading to ignominious defeat. Later, Afghanistan was seen as the underbelly of the Russian and Soviet empires, and hence a location of interest to British and American strategic causes.

In November 1954, US President Dwight Eisenhower authorized 30 U-2 spy aircraft to be produced for deployment against America’s perceived enemies, especially to investigate Soviet nuclear missiles which could reach the USA. Reconnaissance balloons had been unsuccessful, and numerous Western pilots had been shot down taking photographs from ordinary military aircraft. By June 1956, U-2 were making clandestine flights over the USSR and China. But on May 1 1960, one was shot or forced down over Sverdlovsk, 1,000 miles within Soviet territory. The Americans prevaricated that it had taken off from Turkey on a weather-mission, and been lost due to oxygen problems. Nikita Kruschev then produced the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, who was convicted of spying, though was exchanged later for a Soviet spy. Powers had been headed towards Norway, his task to photograph Soviet missiles from 70,000 ft, his point of origin had been an American base 20 miles from Peshawar.

America needed clandestine “forward bases” from which to fly U-2 aircraft, and Pakistan’s ingratiating military and diplomatic establishment was more than willing to offer such cooperation, fervently wishing to be seen as a “frontline state” against the USSR. “We will help you defeat the USSR and we are hopeful you will help us defeat India” became their constant refrain. By 1986, the Americans had been permitted to build air-bases in Balochistan and also use Mauripur air-base near Karachi.

Jammu & Kashmir and especially Gilgit-Baltistan adjoins the Pashtun regions whose capital has been Peshawar. In August-November 1947, a British coup d’etat against J&K State secured Gilgit-Baltistan for the new British Dominion of Pakistan.

The Treaty of Amritsar had nowhere required Gulab Singh’s dynasty to accept British political control in J&K as came to be exercised by British “Residents” in all other Indian “Native States”. Despite this, Delhi throughout the late 19th Century relentlessly pressed Gulab Singh’s successors Ranbir Singh and Partab Singh to accept political control. The Dogras acquiesced eventually. Delhi’s desire for control had less to do with the welfare of J&K’s people than with protection of increasing British interests in the area, like European migration to Srinagar Valley and guarding against Russian or German moves in Afghanistan. “Sargin” or “Sargin Gilit”, later corrupted by the Sikhs and Dogras into “Gilgit”, had an ancient people who spoke an archaic Dardic language “intermediate between the Iranian and the Sanskritic”. “The Dards were located by Ptolemy with surprising accuracy on the West of the Upper Indus, beyond the headwaters of the Swat River (Greek: Soastus) and north of the Gandarae (i.e. Kandahar), who occupied Peshawar and the country north of it. This region was traversed by two Chinese pilgrims, Fa-Hsien, coming from the north about AD 400 and Hsuan Tsiang, ascending from Swat in AD 629, and both left records of their journeys.”

Gilgit had been historically ruled by a Hindu dynasty called Trakane; when they became extinct, Gilgit Valley “was desolated by successive invasions of neighbouring rulers, and in the 20 or 30 years ending with 1842 there had been five dynastic revolutions. The Sikhs entered Gilgit about 1842 and kept a garrison there.” When J&K came under Gulab Singh, “the Gilgit claims were transferred with it, and a boundary commission was sent” by the British. In 1852 the Dogras were driven out with 2,000 dead. In 1860 under Ranbir Singh, the Dogras “returned to Gilgit and took Yasin twice, but did not hold it. They also in 1866 invaded Darel, one of the most secluded Dard states, to the south of the Gilgit basin but withdrew again.”

The British appointed a Political Agent in Gilgit in 1877 but he was withdrawn in 1881. “In 1889, in order to guard against the advance of Russia, the British Government, acting as the suzerain power of Kashmir, established the Gilgit Agency”. The Agency was re-established under control of the British Resident in Jammu & Kashmir. “It comprised the Gilgit Wazarat; the State of Hunza and Nagar; the Punial Jagir; the Governorships of Yasin, Kuh-Ghizr and Ishkoman, and Chilas”. In 1935, the British demanded J&K lease to them for 60 years Gilgit town plus most of the Gilgit Agency and the hill-states Hunza, Nagar, Yasin and Ishkuman. Hari Singh had no choice but to acquiesce. The leased region was then treated as part of British India, administered by a Political Agent at Gilgit responsible to Delhi, first through the Resident in J& K and later a British Agent in Peshawar. J& K State no longer kept troops in Gilgit and a mercenary force, the Gilgit Scouts, was recruited with British officers and paid for by Delhi. In April 1947, Delhi decided to formally retrocede the leased areas to Hari Singh’s J& K State as of 15 August 1947. The transfer was to formally take place on 1 August.

On 31 July, Hari Singh’s Governor arrived to find “all the officers of the British Government had opted for service in Pakistan”. The Gilgit Scouts’ commander, a Major William Brown aged 25, and his adjutant, a Captain Mathieson, planned openly to engineer a coup détat against Hari Singh’s Government. Between August and October, Gilgit was in uneasy calm. At midnight on 31 October 1947, the Governor was surrounded by the Scouts and the next day he was “arrested” and a provisional government declared.

Hari Singh’s nearest forces were at Bunji, 34 miles from Gilgit, a few miles downstream from where the Indus is joined by Gilgit River. The 6th J& K Infantry Battalion there was a mixed Sikh-Muslim unit, typical of the State’s Army, commanded by a Lt Col. Majid Khan. Bunji controlled the road to Srinagar. Further upstream was Skardu, capital of Baltistan, part of Laddakh District where there was a small garrison. Following Brown’s coup in Gilgit, Muslim soldiers of the 6th Infantry massacred their Sikh brothers-at-arms at Bunji. The few Sikhs who survived escaped to the hills and from there found their way to the garrison at Skardu.

On 4 November 1947, Brown raised the new Pakistani flag in the Scouts’ lines, and by the third week of November a Political Agent from Pakistan had established himself at Gilgit. Brown had engineered Gilgit and its adjoining states to first secede from J&K, and, after some talk of being independent, had promptly acceded to Pakistan. His commander in Peshawar, a Col. Bacon, as well as Col. Iskander Mirza, Defence Secretary in the new Pakistan and later to lead the first military coup détat and become President of Pakistan, were pleased enough. In July 1948, Brown was awarded an MBE (Military) and the British Governor of the NWFP got him a civilian job with ICI~ which however sent him to Calcutta, where he came to be attacked and left for dead on the streets by Sikhs avenging the Bunji massacre. Brown survived, returned to England, started a riding school, and died in 1984. In March 1994, Pakistan awarded his widow the Sitara-I-Pakistan in recognition of his coup détat.

Gilgit’s ordinary people had not participated in Brown’s coup which carried their fortunes into the new Pakistan, and to this day appear to remain without legislative representation. It was merely assumed that since they were mostly Muslim in number they would wish to be part of Pakistan ~ which also became Liaquat Ali Khan’s assumption about J&K State as a whole in his 1950 statements in North America. What the Gilgit case demonstrates is that J&K State’s descent into a legal condition of ownerless anarchy open to “Military Decision” had begun even before the Pakistani invasion of 22 October 1947 (viz. “Solving Kashmir”, The Statesman, 1-3 December 2005). Also, whatever else the British said or did with respect to J & K, they were closely allied to the new Pakistan on the matter of Gilgit.

The peak of Pakistan’s Anglo-American alliance came with the enormous support in the 1980s to guerrilla forces created and headquartered in Peshawar, to battle the USSR and Afghan communists directly across the Durand Line. It was this guerrilla war which became a proximate cause of the collapse of the USSR as a political entity in 1991. President Ronald Reagan’s CIA chief William J. Casey sent vast sums in 1985-1988 to supply and train these guerrillas. The Washington Post and New Yorker reported the CIA training guerrillas “in the use of mortars, rocket grenades, ground-to-air missiles”. 200 hand-held Stinger missiles were supplied for the first time in 1986 and the New Yorker reported Gulbudin Hikmatyar’s “Hizbe Islami” guerrillas being trained to bring down Soviet aircraft. “Mujahideen had been promised two Stingers for every Soviet aircraft brought down. Operators who failed to aim correctly were given additional training… By 1986, the United States was so deeply involved in the Afghan war that Soviet aircraft were being brought down under the supervision of American experts”. (Raja Anwar, The Tragedy of Afghanistan, 1988, p. 234).

The budding US-China détente brokered by Pakistan came into full bloom here. NBC News on 7 January 1980 said “for the first time in history (a senior State Department official) publicly admitted the possibility of concluding a military alliance between the United States and China”. London’s Daily Telegraph reported on 5 January 1980 “China is flying large supplies of arms and ammunition to the insurgents in Afghanistan. According to diplomatic reports, supplies have arrived in Pakistan from China via the Karakoram Highway…. A major build-up of Chinese involvement is underway ~ in the past few days. Scores of Chinese instructors have arrived at the Shola-e-Javed camps.”

Afghan reports in 1983-1985 said “there were eight training camps near the Afghan border operated by the Chinese in Sinkiang province” and that China had supplied the guerrillas “with a variety of weapons including 40,000 RPG-7 and 20,000 RPG-II anti tank rocket launchers.” Like Pakistan, “China did not publicly admit its involvement in the Afghan conflict: in 1985 the Chinese Mission at the UN distributed a letter denying that China was extending any kind of help to the Afghan rebels” (Anwar, ibid. p. 234). Support extended deep and wide across the Arab world. “The Saudi and Gulf rulers … became the financial patrons of the Afghan rebels from the very start of the conflict”. Anwar Sadat, having won the Nobel Peace Prize, was “keen to claim credit for his role in Afghanistan…. by joining the Afghanistan jihad, Sadat could re-establish his Islamic credentials, or so he believed. He could thus not only please the Muslim nations but also place the USA and Israel in his debt.” Sadat’s Defence Minister said in January 1980: “Army camps have been opened for the training of Afghan rebels; they are being supplied with weapons from Egypt” and Sadat told NBC News on 22 September 1981 “that for the last twenty-one months, the USA had been buying arms from Egypt for the Afghan rebels. He said he had been approached by the USA in December 1979 and he had decided to `open my stores’. He further disclosed that these arms were being flown to Pakistan from Egypt by American aircraft. Egypt had vast supplies of SAM-7 and RPG-7 anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons which Sadat agreed to supply to Afghanistan in exchange for new American arms. The Soviet weapons, being light, were ideally suited to guerrilla warfare. … the Mujahideen could easily claim to have captured them from Soviet and Afghan troops in battle.… Khomeini’s Iran got embroiled in war (against Iraq) otherwise Kabul would also have had to contend with the full might of the Islamic revolutionaries.” (Anwar ibid. p. 235).

Afghanistan had been occupied on 26-27 December 1979 by Soviet forces sent by the decrepit Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov to carry out a putsch replacing one communist, Hafizullah Amin, with a rival communist and Soviet protégé, Babrak Karmal. By 1985 Brezhnev and Andropov were dead and Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev had begun his attempts to reform the Soviet system, usher in openness, end the Cold War and in particular withdraw from Afghanistan, which by 1986 he had termed “a bleeding wound”. Gorbachev replaced Karmal with a new protégé Najibullah Khan, who was assigned the impossible task of bringing about national reconciliation with the Pakistan-based guerrillas and form a national government. Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan in February 1989 having lost 14,500 dead, while more than a million Afghans had been killed since the invasion a decade earlier.

Not long after Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution, Gregory Zinoviev had said that international communism “turns today to the peoples of the East and says to them, `Brothers, we summon you to a Holy War first of all against British imperialism!’ At this there were cries of Jehad! Jehad! And much brandishing of picturesque Oriental weapons.” (Treadgold, Twentieth Century Russia, 1990, p. 213). Now instead, the Afghan misadventure had contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Empire itself, the USSR ceasing to be a political entity by 1991, and even Gorbachev being displaced by Boris Yeltsin and later Vladimir Putin in a new Russia.

What resulted for the people of the USA and Britain and the West in general was that they no longer had to live under threat of hostile Soviet tanks and missiles, while the people of Russia, Ukraine and the other erstwhile Soviet republics as well as Eastern Europe were able to throw off the yoke of communism that had oppressed them since the Bolshevik Revolution and instead to breathe the air of freedom.

What happened to the people of Afghanistan, however, was that they were plunged into further ghastly civil war for more than ten years. And what happened to the people of Pakistan was that their country was left resembling a gigantic Islamist military camp, awash with airfields, arms, ammunition and trained guerrillas, as well as a military establishment enlivened as always by perpetual hope that these supplies, provisions and personnel of war might find alternative use in attacks against India over J& K. “We helped you when you wished to see the Soviet Union defeated and withdrawing in Afghanistan”, Pakistan’s generals and diplomats pleaded with the Americans and British, “now you must help us in our wish to see India defeated and withdrawing in Kashmir”. Pakistan’s leaders even believed that just as the Soviet Union had disintegrated afterwards, the Indian Union perhaps might be made to do the same. Not only were the two cases as different as chalk from cheese, Palmerstone’s dictum there are no permanent allies in the politics of nations could not have found more apt use than in what actually came to take place next.

Pakistan’s generals and diplomats felt betrayed by the loss of Anglo-American paternalism towards them after 1989.

Modern Pakistanis had never felt they subscribed to the Indian nationalist movement culminating in independence in August 1947. The Pakistani state now finally declared its independence in the world by exploding bombs in a nuclear arsenal secretly created with help purchased from China and North Korea. Pakistan’s leaders thus came to feel in some control of Pakistan’s destiny as a nation-state for the first time, more than fifty years after Pakistan’s formal creation in 1947. If nothing else, at least they had the Bomb.

Secondly, America and its allies would not be safe for long since the civil war they had left behind in Afghanistan while trying to defeat the USSR now became a brew from which arose a new threat of violent Islamism. Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, whom Pakistan’s military and the USA had promoted, now encouraged unprecedented attacks on the American mainland on September 11 2001 ~ causing physical and psychological damage which no Soviet, Chinese or Cuban missiles ever had been allowed to do. In response, America attacked and removed the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, once again receiving the cooperative use of Pakistani manpower and real estate ~ except now there was no longer any truck with the Pakistani establishment’s wish for a quid pro quo of Anglo-American support against India on J&K. Pakistan’s generals and diplomats soon realised their Anglo-American alliance of more than a half-century ended on September 11 2001. Their new cooperation was in killing or arresting and handing over fellow-Muslims and necessarily lacked their earlier feelings of subservience and ingratiation towards the Americans and British, and came to be done instead under at least some duress. No benefit could be reaped any more in the fight against India over Jammu & Kashmir. An era had ended in the subcontinent.

FIVE

“AN INDIAN REPLY TO PRESIDENT ZARDARI: REWARDING PAKISTAN FOR BAD BEHAVIOUR LEADS TO SCHIZOPHRENIC RELATIONSHIPS” by Subroto Roy, December 17 2008

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari’s recent argument in the New York Times resembles closely the well-known publications of his ambassador to the United States, Mr Husain Haqqani. Unfortunately, this Zardari-Haqqani thesis about Pakistan’s current predicament in the world and the world’s predicament with Pakistan is shot through with clear factual and logical errors. These need to be aired because true or useful conclusions cannot be reached from mistaken premises or faulty reasoning.

1. Origins of Pakistan, India, J&K, and their mutual problems

Mr Zardari makes the following seemingly innocuous statement:

“…. the two great nations of Pakistan and India, born together from the same revolution and mandate in 1947, must continue to move forward with the peace process.”

Now as a matter of simple historical fact, the current entities in the world system known as India and Pakistan were not “born together from the same revolution and mandate in 1947”. It is palpably false to suppose they were and Pakistanis indulge in wishful thinking and self-deception about their own political history if they suppose this.

India’s Republic arose out of the British Dominion known as “India” which was the legal successor of the entity known previously in international law as “British India”. British India had had secular governance and so has had the Indian Republic.

By contrast, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan arose out of a newly created state in international law known as the British Dominion of Pakistan, consisting of designated territory carved out of British India by a British decision and coming into existence one day before British India extinguished itself. (Another new state, Bangladesh, later seceded from Pakistan.)

The British decision to create territory designated “Pakistan” had nothing to do with any anti-British “revolution” or “mandate” supported by any Pakistani nationalism because there was none. (Rahmat Ali’s anti-Hindu pamphleteering in London could be hardly considered Pakistani nationalism against British rule. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s Pashtun patriots saw themselves as Indian, not Pakistani.)

To the contrary, the British decision had to do with a small number of elite Pakistanis — MA Jinnah foremost among them — demanding not to be part of the general Indian nationalist movement that had been demanding a British departure from power in the subcontinent. Jinnah’s separatist party, the Muslim League, was trounced in the 1937 provincial elections in all the Muslim-majority areas of British India that would eventually become Pakistan. Despite this, in September 1939, Britain, at war with Nazi Germany, chose to elevate the political power of Jinnah and his League to parity with the general Indian nationalist movement led by MK Gandhi. (See, Francis Robinson, in William James and Subroto Roy (eds), Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s.) Britain needed India’s mostly Muslim infantry-divisions — the progenitors of the present-day Pakistan Army — and if that meant tilting towards a risky political idea of “Pakistan” in due course, so it would be. The thesis that Pakistan arose from any kind of “revolution” or “mandate” in 1947 is fantasy — the Muslim super-elite that invented and endorsed the Pakistan idea flew from Delhi to Karachi in chartered BOAC Dakotas, caring not a hoot about the vulnerability of ordinary Muslim masses to Sikh and Hindu majority wrath and retaliation on the ground.

Modern India succeeded to the rights and obligations of British India in international law, and has had a recognized existence as a state since at least the signing of the Armistice and Treaty of Versailles in 1918-1919. India was a founding member of the United Nations, being a signatory of the 1945 San Francisco Declaration, and an original member of the Bretton Woods institutions. An idea put forward by Argentina that as of 1947 India and Pakistan were both successor states of British India was rejected by the UN (Argentina withdrew its own suggestion), and it was universally acknowledged India was already a member of the UN while Pakistan would have to (and did) apply afresh for membership as a newly created state in the UN. Pakistan’s entry into the UN had the enthusiastic backing of India and was opposed by only one existing UN member, Afghanistan, due to a conflict that continues to this day over the legitimacy of the Durand Line that bifurcated the Pashtun areas.

Such a review of elementary historical facts and the position in law of Pakistan and India is far from being of merely pedantic interest today. Rather, it goes directly to the logical roots of the conflict over the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) — a state that itself originated as an entity in the world system a full century before Pakistan was to do so and more than half a century before British India did, but which would collapse into anarchy and civil war in 1947-1949.

Britain (or England) had been a major nation-state in the world system recognized since Grotius first outlined modern international law. On March 16 1846, Britain entered into a treaty, the Treaty of Amritsar, with one Gulab Singh, and the “State of Jammu & Kashmir” came to arise as a recognizable entity in international law for the first time. (See my “History of Jammu and Kashmir” published in The Statesman, Oct 29-30 2006, available elsewhere here.)

Jammu & Kashmir continued in orderly existence as a state until it crashed into legal and political anarchy and civil war a century later. The new Pakistan had entered into a “Standstill Agreement” with the State of Jammu & Kashmir as of August 15 1947. On or about October 22 1947, Pakistan unilaterally ended that Standstill Agreement and instead caused military forces from its territory to attack the State of Jammu & Kashmir along the Mansehra Road towards Baramula and Srinagar, coinciding too with an Anglo-Pakistani coup d’etat in Gilgit and Baltistan (see my “Solving Kashmir”; “Law, Justice & J&K”; “Pakistan’s Allies”, all published in The Statesman in 2005-2006 and available elsewhere here).

The new Pakistan had chosen, in all deliberation, to forswear law, politics and diplomacy and to resort to force of arms instead in trying to acquire J&K for itself via a military decision. It succeeded only partially. Its forces took and then lost both Baramula and Kargil; they may have threatened Leh but did not attempt to take it; they did take and retain Muzaffarabad and Skardu; they were never near taking the summer capital, Srinagar, though might have threatened the winter capital, Jammu.

All in all, a Ceasefire Line came to be demarcated on the military positions as of February 1 1949. After a war in 1971 that accompanied the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan, that Ceasefire Line came to be renamed the “Line of Control” between Pakistan and India. An ownerless entity may be acquired by force of arms — the erstwhile State of Jammu & Kashmir in 1947-1949 had become an ownerless entity that had been dismembered and divided according to military decision following an armed conflict between Pakistan and India. The entity in the world system known as the “State of Jammu & Kashmir” created on March 16 1846 by Gulab Singh’s treaty with the British ceased to exist as of October 22 1947. Pakistan had started the fight over J&K but there is a general rule of conflicts that he who starts a fight does not get to finish it.

Such is the simplest and most practical statement of the history of the current problem. The British, through their own compulsions and imperial pretensions, raised all the talk about a “Lapse of Paramountcy” of the British Crown over the “Native Princes” of “Indian India”, and of how, the “Native Princes” were required to “accede” to either India or Pakistan. This ignored Britain’s own constitutional law. BR Ambedkar pointed out with unsurpassed clarity that no “Lapse of Paramountcy” was possible even for a single logical moment since “Paramountcy” over any “Native Princes” who had not joined India or Pakistan as of August 15 1947, automatically passed from British India to its legal successor, namely, the Dominion of India. It followed that India’s acquiescence was required for any subsequent accession to Pakistan – an acquiescence granted in case of Chitral and denied in case of Junagadh.

What the Republic of India means by saying today that boundaries cannot be redrawn nor any populations forcibly transferred is quite simply that the division of erstwhile J&K territory is permanent, and that sovereignty over it is indivisible. What Pakistan has claimed is that India has been an occupier and that there are many people inhabiting the Indian area who may not wish to be Indian nationals and who are being compelled against their will to remain so ~ forgetting to add that precisely the same could be said likewise of the Pakistani-held area. The lawful solution I proposed in “Solving Kashmir, “Law, Justice and J&K” and other works has been that the Republic of India invite every person covered under its Article 370, citizen-by-citizen, under a condition of full information, to privately and without fear decide, if he/she has not done so already, between possible Indian, Iranian, Afghan or Pakistani nationalities ~ granting rights and obligations of permanent residents to any of those persons who may choose for whatever private reason not to remain Indian nationals. If Pakistan acted likewise, the problem of J&K would indeed come to be resolved. The Americans, as self-appointed mediators, have said they wish “the people of the region to have a voice” in a solution: there can be no better expression of such voice than allowing individuals to privately choose their own nationalities and their rights and responsibilities accordingly. The issue of territorial sovereignty is logically distinct from that of the choice of nationality by individual inhabitants.

2. Benazir’s assassination falsely compared to the Mumbai massacres
Secondly, President Zardari draws a mistaken comparison between the assassination last year of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, and the Mumbai massacres a few weeks ago. Ms Bhutto’s assassination may resemble more closely the assassinations in India of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

Indira Gandhi died in “blowback” from the unrest she and her younger son and others in their party had opportunistically fomented among Sikh fundamentalists and sectarians since the late 1970s. Rajiv Gandhi died in “blowback” from an erroneous imperialistic foreign policy that he, as Prime Minister, had been induced to make by jingoistic Indian diplomats, a move that got India’s military needlessly involved in the then-nascent Sri Lankan civil war. Benazir Bhutto similarly may be seen to have died in “blowback” from her own political activity as prime minister and opposition leader since the late 1980s, including her own encouragement of Muslim fundamentalist forces. Certainly in all three cases, as in all assassinations, there were lapses of security too and imprudent political judgments made that contributed to the tragic outcomes.

Ms Bhutto’s assassination has next to nothing to do with the Mumbai massacres, besides the fact the perpetrators in both cases were Pakistani terrorists. President Zardari saying he himself has lost his wife to terrorism is true but not relevant to the proper diagnosis of the Mumbai massacres or to Pakistan-India relations in general. Rather, it serves to deflect criticism and condemnation of the Pakistani state’s pampered handing of Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds, as well as the gross irresponsibility of Pakistan’s military scientists (not AQ Khan) who have been recently advocating a nuclear first strike against India in the event of war.

3. Can any religious nation-state be viable in the modern world?

President Zardari’s article says:

“The world worked to exploit religion against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan by empowering the most fanatic extremists as an instrument of destruction of a superpower. The strategy worked, but its legacy was the creation of an extremist militia with its own dynamic.”

This may be overly simplistic. As pointed out in my article “Pakistan’s Allies”, Gregory Zinoviev himself after the Bolshevik Revolution had declared that international communism “turns today to the peoples of the East and says to them, ‘Brothers, we summon you to a Holy War first of all against British imperialism!’ At this there were cries of Jehad! Jehad! And much brandishing of picturesque Oriental weapons.” (Treadgold, Twentieth Century Russia, 1990, p. 213). For more than half of the 20th century, orthodox Muslims had been used by Soviet communists against British imperialism, then by the British and Americans (through Pakistan) against Soviet communism. Touché! Blowback and counter-blowback! The real question that arises from this today may be why orthodox Muslims have allowed themselves to be used either way by outside forces and have failed in developing a modern nation-state and political culture of their own. Europe and America only settled down politically after their religious wars were over. Perhaps no religious nation-state is viable in the modern world.

4. Pakistan’s behaviour leads to schizophrenia in international relations

President Zardari pleads for, or perhaps demands, resources from the world:

“the best response to the Mumbai carnage is to coordinate in counteracting the scourge of terrorism. The world must act to strengthen Pakistan’s economy and democracy, help us build civil society and provide us with the law enforcement and counterterrorism capacities that will enable us to fight the terrorists effectively.”

Six million pounds from Mr Gordon Brown, so much from here or there etc – President Zardari has apparently demanded 100 billion dollars from America and that is the price being talked about for Pakistan to dismantle its nuclear weapons and be brought under an American “nuclear umbrella” instead.

I have pointed out elsewhere that what Pakistan seems to have been doing in international relations for decades is send out “mixed messages” – i.e. contradictory signals, whether in thought, word or deed. Clinical psychologists following the work of Gregory Bateson would say this leads to confusion among Pakistan’s interlocutors (a “double bind”) and the symptoms arise of what may be found in schizophrenic relationships. (See my article “Do President-elect Obama’s Pakistan specialists believe…”; on the “double bind” theory, an article I chanced to publish in the Journal of Genetic Psychology, 1986, may be of interest).

Here are a typical set of “mixed messages” emanating from Pakistan’s government and opinion-makers:

“We have nuclear weapons
“We keep our nuclear weapons safe from any misuse or unauthorized use
“We are willing to use nuclear weapons in a first strike against India
“We do not comprehend the lessons of Hiroshima-Nagasaki
“We do not comprehend the destruction India will visit upon us if we strike them
“We are dangerous so we must not be threatened in any way
“We are peace-loving and want to live in peace with India and Afghanistan
“We love to play cricket with India and watch Bollywood movies
“We love our Pakistan Army as it is one public institution that works
“We know the Pakistan Army has backed armed militias against India in the past
“We know these militias have caused terrorist attacks
“We are not responsible for any terrorist attacks
“We do not harbour any terrorists
“We believe the world should pay us to not use or sell our nuclear weapons
“We believe the world should pay us to not encourage the terrorists in our country
“We believe the world should pay us to prevent terrorists from using our nuclear weapons
“We hate India and do not want to become like India
“We love India and want to become like India
“We are India and we are not India…”

Etc.

A mature rational responsible and self-confident Pakistan would have said instead:

“We apologise to India and other countries for the outrageous murders our nationals have committed in Mumbai and elsewhere
“We ask the world to watch how our professional army is deployed to disarm civilian and all “non-state” actors of unauthorized firearms and explosives
“We do not need and will not demand or accept a dollar in any sort of foreign aid, military or civilian, to solve our problems
“We realize our economic and political institutions are a mess and we must clean them up
“We will strive to build a society imbued with what Iqbal described as the spirit of modern times..”

As someone who created at great personal cost at an American university twenty years ago the book Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s, I have a special interest in hoping that Pakistan shall find the path of wisdom.”

Posted in Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Afghanistan, Akbar, anarchy and governance, Anglo-Russian Treaty 1907, Asia and the West, Balochistan, Bolsheviks, Britain, Britain in India, Britain's monarchy, British history, China-India Relations, China-Tibet problem, Constitutional law, Constitutional Politics, Diplomacy, Diplomatic recognition, Freedom, Gilgit and Baltistan, Himalayas, India in international law, India's Army, India's constitutional politics, India's Democracy, India's Diplomacy, India's History, India's independence, India's Land, India's Military Defence, India's Muslims, India's Nationalism, India's Partition, India's Polity, India's Rule of Law, India's secularism, India's Union-State relations, India-China relations, India-Pakistan cooperation against terrorism, India-Pakistan peace process, India-Tibet Border, International diplomacy, International Law, International politics, Iqbal, Iran, Islam, Jahangir, Jammu & Kashmir, Karakorum Pass, Laddakh, Land and political economy, Laws of war, Laws of war applied to international terrorists, Life and death, MA Jinnah, Mumbai massacres, Muslim and Hindu communalism, Natural Justice, Nobel Prizes, Pakistan in international law, Pakistan's diplomacy, Pakistan's nuclear weapons, Pakistan's politics, Pakistan's terrorist masterminds, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pashtuns, Persia, Political Philosophy, Rajiv Gandhi, Regional cooperation, Roman Law, Russia, Schizophrenia in international relations, Secular governance, Secularism in practice, Sheikh Abdullah, Sinkiang, Sino-Indian Border, Srinagar, Sunnis and Shias, Tibet, US Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Espionage, US Pakistan policy, USA, United States, USSR, War, World History, Zafrullah Khan. 4 Comments »

My (armchair) experience of the 1999 Kargil war (Or, “Actionable Intelligence” in the Internet age: How the Kargil effort got a little help from a desktop)

January 5, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

My (armchair) experience of the 1999 Kargil war
(Or, “Actionable Intelligence” in the Internet age: How the Kargil effort got a little help from a desktop)

by Subroto Roy
First drafted July 20 1999,
revised and published January 5 2009

“The pilots who launched the strike and recce missions have caught the public eye but the backroom boys worked equally hard. Even in IAF stations far away from the action, the officers held brain-storming sessions and sent in their suggestions.” — Air Chief Marshall AY Tipnis, Indian Air Force press conference July 15 1999.

On the night of June 1/2 1999, I had been looking on the Internet for a good map of Jammu & Kashmir for use in a research paper. I was in my office as a “full professor” at an “Institution of National Importance”. A year earlier, on June 23 1998, I had been in the United States and given a talk at Washington DC’s Heritage Foundation titled “Towards an Economic Solution for Kashmir” based on my research originating in the late 1980s with the academic volume that WE James and I created, Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s. Now again there was a plan to talk and I needed a proper map. We had lost two fighter aircraft and a helicopter in the Kargil fighting, and the Indian Army seemed to be facing reverses. The country seemed despondent and tense yet in a trance too over the ongoing cricket World Cup. Neither the Army nor the IAF seemed to quite know where the enemy had entrenched himself or in what strength. Television and newspapers were showing crude schoolboy sketches of the battlefield. Could the Internet be of help in finding a better map, I asked myself? I had been an early enthusiast of Google since its launch some months earlier and the Internet was still a wild and untutored place.

Imagine my surprise when before my eyes that night came to be unveiled the American CIA’s own detailed declassified contour maps, or “Tactical Pilotage Charts”, of Kargil, Drass, Srinagar and the Line of Control; then to the west Muzaffarabad, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Kahuta etc., and to the east, Ladakh, Aksai Chin and the Line of Actual Control with the Chinese. Produced by the US Government’s Defense Intelligence Agency for the CIA, there they were now available to me at my desk thanks to the Internet! The Pakistan map stated in bold letters that all aircraft planning to enter Pak airspace must request permission with at least 15 minutes notice.

Did our folks have these maps, was my first thought. Perhaps we didn’t, we had been caught unawares after all by the Pakistani attack, even if we had the maps somewhere perhaps they were unavailable right now, we had just lost aircraft and Squadron Leader Ahuja had been killed, our artillery fire at the time somehow seemed not as accurate as theirs; after years of close military collaboration with the West, Pakistan surely had all these maps in the original while we did not — that was an advantage that needed to be neutralized. Such were the thoughts that rushed through as the maps downloaded slowly (very slowly, excruciatingly slowly) before me that night.

Yet here I was in my distant office just before midnight; how could these maps reach those they ought to reach? I had not even a direct phone line outside campus or a phone directory. Thinking aloud, I woke up the campus security chief who was a friend and a retired soldier; could he please phone the commander of a nearby IAF station, a Group Captain, and ask him to call me on campus straightaway because I had just downloaded American “Tactical Pilotage Charts” of Kargil and Drass onto my desktop computer?

The Group Captain knew me because he happened to be a distant cousin; he not only called back but responded to my plea to drive over at once to take a look at the maps. He was a fighter pilot by training and I thought he, if anyone, would be able to assess their usefulness. I did not wish to know from him if he thought we had them or did not but I was happy to give them to him anyway. He taciturnly said these might be useful, so we printed out all the maps right then at 2 am, which he would send on first thing in the morning.

Campus bureaucrats later objected to Air Force officers having visited my office in the middle of the night and used computer-equipment (to print the maps) without higher bureaucratic authorization; I was told faculty-members ought not to meddle in such matters unless and until a formal inter-Ministry request had been received and approved. This seemed to me bizarre if not absurd in the circumstances. I replied that I was acting as a citizen and a professor in an area of my published research, and besides our government academic institution was supposedly “dedicated” to the national interest and, excuse me, but there just happened to be a war going on up north in Kargil right then!

Over the next several days, the Internet began to freely reveal all sorts of things which in years gone by would surely have been top secret – pure James Bond stuff. Here from the Federation of American Scientists, maps included, were nuclear and missile facilities: Chagai, Chashma, Dera Ghazi, Dera Nawab, Fateh Jung, Golra, Gujranwala, Isa, Islamabad, Jhang, Kahuta, Karachi, Kundian, Lahore, Lakki, Malute, Multan, Okara, Quetta, Rawalpindi, Sargodha, Sinhala, Wah. Here was the Southern California supplier saying that Pakistan had gone about buying and manufacturing under license more than sixteen hundred armoured personnel carriers; why would you buy so many APCs? Because you wanted a very large strike force in an attack on India. Here were details of the latest submarine they had bought from France – a highly lethal machine that could play havoc. Here too was information that their naval officers had been jailed for accepting bribes in the deal, on which the French Embassy in Islamabad had no comment to make. Here was the yet-to-be-produced Chinese FC-1 fighter-bomber – which was going to be sold to Pakistan but whose production was stalled by apparent lack of funds. Here were Pakistan’s own military providing news and propaganda — from whose mixed pronouncements it became clear Squadron Leader Ahuja had been captured alive by Pakistani border guards and then shot dead in cold blood as a surrendered POW.

Air HQ responded quickly enough, and on the evening of June 10th, with four young officers in my office, I sent on all this publicly available material by email. In the meantime, on June 6, I released the contour map of Kargil to all faculty-members with a request to try to send it up to in any way they might know how to. I figured that our adversary already had the map in the original, so it would only be to the good if every jawan and airman on our side did too. I also went to see a well-known computer science specialist on campus. Connections had been established with the Air Force, I told him; now how do we get it to the Army? He grasped the problem quickly and established a firm connection with an officer in the appropriate location who once had been a student of his. On June 11, that officer wrote to me:

Dear Sir,
It is very heartening to note the kind of interest that you and Prof C are generating. I have done full justice to the info that you have sent me by sending them to the people to whom they matter. We really do appreciate your efforts in this regard. I am sure as a true patriot of our country, you will continue your valuable efforts and keep us posted… …(we) may lack a proper ‘actionable intelligence’ in terrains like Kargil and Dras simply because of the nature of the terrain and the inhospitable climatic conditions that prevail at such heights. And our countrymen are braving all these and fighting tooth and nail to give back a suitable reply to the infiltrators. What peps us is the solid backing that is given by the citizens of our country who come out in all forms to help assist us in overcoming such a crisis, such as your invaluable contribution. …. the quality of the maps that I had forwarded greatly help in interpreting things more clearly….

I wrote back on June 12:

Dear G,
.… We are very happy to know they are proving useful… It is all in the public domain…There is nothing clandestine about it. ……. there is definite if circumstantial evidence on the basis of Pakistani admissions that Squadron Leader Ahuja was captured alive by the Pakistan Army and then shot dead by them. This evidence consists of Pakistan admitting in the initial moments that they did not know his name but believed it to be UHJA of 6 Squadron out of Srinigar. Ask yourself, how did they make that mistake instead of AHUJA? They could not have made the mistake if they had read the name AHUJA from his flying suit after he had crashed dead, as they claim. The only way they can make that mistake is if they asked him personally what his name and squadron was; he told them, then they shot him. It is an international war crime which our government should take up immediately with the International War Crimes Tribunal. With regards

In creating the Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy book in the 1980s and 1990s while in America, I had been a most sympathetic student of Pakistan. Writing in Hawaii in 1989-1990, I had said in the Introduction to the book that “the arms race and elite rivalry has greatly impoverished the general budgets of both Pakistan and India. If it has benefited important sections of the political and military elites of both countries, it has done so only at the expense of the general welfare of the masses. So long as the arms-race continues, the economies of both countries are likely to remain severely distorted…” Some of this appeared too in my work for Rajiv Gandhi, as published in July 31-August 2 1991 of The Statesman‘s editorial pages. A few years later in 1993 in Washington DC, I articulated “An Economic Solution to Kashmir”. About 1997 or 1998, the then-Pakistani envoy to India at a luncheon in Calcutta where I was not present, received a copy of the book gifted by me through a colleague who had been at the lunch. The book had been published in Karachi and Delhi in 1992-93, and had been quite intensely reviewed both in Pakistan and in India at the time. But all my optimism about a peace process with Pakistan vanished during their Kargil aggression in the summer of 1999, and I was totally appalled and horrified by their sadistic torture and murder of Lt. Saurabh Kalia and his platoon, and their cold-blooded murder of Squadron Leader Ajay Ahuja while POWs.

In the July 1999 Kargil issue of New Delhi’s Security and Political Risk Analysis Bulletin, I published an article titled “Was a Pakistani Grand Strategy Discerned in time by India?”. A longer analysis and prescription dated June 11 1999 had been sent by me to the Vajpayee Government. I began my analysis with the sentence: “When Pakistani military and political men make statements as they have done recently like (a)they can win a war against India (Pak COAS),(b) they can hit any target in India and inflict unacceptable losses on us (Pak nuclear and missile chief), (c) they are prepared to use any weapon (Pak foreign secretary), (d) a fourth war with India is imminent (“Prime Minister” POK),(e) Pakistan will be a responsible nuclear weapons’ country (Pak information minister), these should be taken seriously….” I ended my analysis with the sentence: “If the Pakistani military insists on plunging the entire subcontinent into an abyss of destruction and chaos for generations, then so be it. There will be no Indian defeat in either Delhi or Kashmir because it will have been preceded by the end of Pakistan’s physical existence…. We must wake up immediately and go to battle-stations at once. There is no time to lose.”

Now in 2009, as war clouds still linger after the Mumbai massacres, I am reminded of all this experience ten years ago. If my proposal gets followed of a trial of the terrorist masterminds for piracy, murder and conspiracy, held by the Pakistan and Indian Navies jointly in international waters under maritime law, my hopes for civil government in Pakistan and peaceful cooperative relations may become restored.

January 2009

Posted in Atal Behari Vajpayee, Gilgit and Baltistan, Government of India, India in international law, India's airforce, India's Army, India's History, India's Land, India's Military Defence, India-Pakistan cooperation against terrorism, India-Pakistan naval cooperation, India-Pakistan peace process, International diplomacy, International Law, Jammu & Kashmir, Just war, Kargil war 1999, Law, Law of the Sea applied to international terrorists, Laws of war, Laws of war applied to international terrorists, Mumbai massacres, Nuclear conflict, Pakistan in international law, Pakistan's murder of Indian POWs, Pakistan's nuclear weapons, Pakistan's terrorist masterminds, Pakistan's terrorist training institutes, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Technological progress, US Pakistan policy, War, War crimes, World History. Leave a Comment »

How to solve the jurisdiction problem in prosecuting perpetrators of the Mumbai massacres: let the Pakistan and Indian Navies try them (and hang them) at sea as pirates

January 2, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

Should Pakistan hand over the terrorist masterminds now in its custody to India for trial for mass murder? Should India hand over the captured Mumbai terrorist Kasab to Pakistan for trial as a mass murderer? Such questions can lead to endless legal wrangling, no action, and no justice for all the many victims of the Mumbai massacres. It is far more expeditious for both countries to instead hand over all these characters in their custody to their respective navies for trial and punishment as pirates who have violated the Law of the Sea. The Pakistan Navy Chief and the Indian Navy Chief can agree to have their admirals meet with their respective prisoners for a rendezvous at sea in international waters. A joint trial under maritime law can be conducted on board, say, a Pakistan naval vessel in international waters. Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds can be hanged at sea on a scaffold aboard a Pakistan Navy vessel in international waters for crimes of piracy, murder and conspiracy. Kasab, if he turns State’s evidence, can plea-bargain for a lesser sentence; if he does not turn State’s evidence, he can join his handlers on the scaffold (assuming he is of adult age and sane). Pakistan’s terrorist training institutes, incidentally, will see a rapid decline in their admissions and recruitment figures once there are some well-televised hangings at sea.

Subroto Roy

A basis of India-Pakistan cooperation on the Mumbai massacres: the ten Pakistani terrorists started off as pirates and the Al-Huseini is a pirate ship

January 1, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

One of my finest teachers at the London School of Economics many years ago had been Professor DHN Johnson, a pioneer of the Law of the Sea Treaty; reflecting upon the aftermath of the Mumbai massacres, it occurs to me that the Law of the Sea Treaty may provide the most expedient and lawful recourse in present circumstances, as well as a proper and clear basis for cooperation between the Government of India and the Government of Pakistan in the matter.

Both India and Pakistan have signed and ratified the Law of the Sea Treaty which reads at Article 101

“Definition of piracy
Piracy consists of any of the following acts:
(a) any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation, committed for private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship or a private aircraft, and directed:
(i) on the high seas, against another ship or aircraft, or against persons or property on board such ship or aircraft;
(ii) against a ship, aircraft, persons or property in a place outside the jurisdiction of any State;
(b) any act of voluntary participation in the operation of a ship or of an aircraft with knowledge of facts making it a pirate ship or aircraft;
(c) any act of inciting or of intentionally facilitating an act described in subparagraph (a) or (b).”

From the captured Kasab’s confession, it is clear he and his companions began their criminal activities within Pakistan (by training as terrorists and engaging in a conspiracy to commit mass-murder) and this continued outside Pakistan at sea:

“On November 23, the teams left from Azizabad in Karachi, along with Zaki-ur-Rehman and Kafa. We were taken to the nearby seashore… We boarded a launch. After travelling for 22 to 25 nautical miles we boarded a bigger launch. Again, after a journey of an hour, we boarded a ship, Al-Huseini, in the deep sea. While boarding the ship, each of us was given a sack containing eight grenades, an AK-47 rifle, 200 cartridges, two magazines and a cellphone. Then we started towards the Indian coast. When we reached Indian waters, the crew members of Al-Huseini hijacked an Indian launch. The crew of the launch was shifted to Al-Huseini. We then boarded the launch. An Indian seaman was made to accompany us at gunpoint; he was made to bring us to the Indian coast. After a journey of three days, we reached near Mumbai’s shore. While we were still some distance away from the shore, Ismail and Afadulla killed the Indian seaman (Tandel) in the basement of the launch.”

Pirates in law are Hostis humani generis or “enemies of mankind”. As signatories to the Law of the Sea Treaty, India and Pakistan may act jointly against the Al-Huseini and others associated with the acts of piracy including the maritime murders of the Indian fishermen that preceded the Mumbai massacres, thus solving the question of jurisdiction before it arises. The remains of the nine dead Pakistani terrorists presently in a Mumbai morgue can be buried at sea in international waters by whatever funeral procedure is due to dishonourable sailors and pirates. (The fish will not refuse them.) Kasab can be tried as a pirate too — though he really needs an American defence attorney to plea-bargain for him as he turns State’s evidence against the real masterminds of the plot, some of whom may be presently in the custody of the Pakistan Government.

Subroto Roy

Posted in DHN Johnson, India-Pakistan cooperation against terrorism, International Law, Law of the Sea, London School of Economics, Mumbai massacres, Mumbai terrorist Kasab, Mumbai's Police, Mumbai/Bombay, Pakistan's exports, Pakistan's terrorist masterminds, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Piracy, Terrorist techniques. Leave a Comment »

An Indian Reply to President Zardari: Rewarding Pakistan for bad behaviour leads to schizophrenic relationships

December 19, 2008 — drsubrotoroy

An Indian Reply to President Zardari:

Rewarding Pakistan for bad behaviour leads to schizophrenic relationships

by

Subroto Roy

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari’s recent argument in the New York Times resembles closely the well-known publications of his ambassador to the United States, Mr Husain Haqqani. Unfortunately, this Zardari-Haqqani thesis about Pakistan’s current predicament in the world and the world’s predicament with Pakistan is shot through with clear factual and logical errors. These need to be aired because true or useful conclusions cannot be reached from mistaken premises or faulty reasoning.

1. Origins of Pakistan, India, J&K, and their mutual problems

Mr Zardari makes the following seemingly innocuous statement:

“…. the two great nations of Pakistan and India, born together from the same revolution and mandate in 1947, must continue to move forward with the peace process.”

Now as a matter of simple historical fact, the current entities in the world system known as India and Pakistan were not “born together from the same revolution and mandate in 1947”. It is palpably false to suppose they were and Pakistanis indulge in wishful thinking and self-deception about their own political history if they suppose this.

India’s Republic arose out of the British Dominion known as “India” which was the legal successor of the entity known previously in international law as “British India”. British India had had secular governance and so has had the Indian Republic.

By contrast, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan arose out of a newly created state in international law known as the British Dominion of Pakistan, consisting of designated territory carved out of British India by a British decision and coming into existence one day before British India extinguished itself. (Another new state, Bangladesh, later seceded from Pakistan.)

The British decision to create territory designated “Pakistan” had nothing to do with any anti-British “revolution” or “mandate” supported by any Pakistani nationalism because there was none. (Rahmat Ali’s anti-Hindu pamphleteering in London could be hardly considered Pakistani nationalism against British rule. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s Pashtun patriots saw themselves as Indian, not Pakistani.)

To the contrary, the British decision had to do with a small number of elite Pakistanis — MA Jinnah foremost among them — demanding not to be part of the general Indian nationalist movement that had been demanding a British departure from power in the subcontinent. Jinnah’s separatist party, the Muslim League, was trounced in the 1937 provincial elections in all the Muslim-majority areas of British India that would eventually become Pakistan. Despite this, in September 1939, Britain, at war with Nazi Germany, chose to elevate the political power of Jinnah and his League to parity with the general Indian nationalist movement led by MK Gandhi. (See, Francis Robinson, in William James and Subroto Roy (eds), Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s.) Britain needed India’s mostly Muslim infantry-divisions — the progenitors of the present-day Pakistan Army — and if that meant tilting towards a risky political idea of “Pakistan” in due course, so it would be. The thesis that Pakistan arose from any kind of “revolution” or “mandate” in 1947 is fantasy — the Muslim super-elite that invented and endorsed the Pakistan idea flew from Delhi to Karachi in chartered BOAC Dakotas, caring not a hoot about the vulnerability of ordinary Muslim masses to Sikh and Hindu majority wrath and retaliation on the ground.

Modern India succeeded to the rights and obligations of British India in international law, and has had a recognized existence as a state since at least the signing of the Armistice and Treaty of Versailles in 1918-1919. India was a founding member of the United Nations, being a signatory of the 1945 San Francisco Declaration, and an original member of the Bretton Woods institutions. An idea put forward by Argentina that as of 1947 India and Pakistan were both successor states of British India was rejected by the UN (Argentina withdrew its own suggestion), and it was universally acknowledged India was already a member of the UN while Pakistan would have to (and did) apply afresh for membership as a newly created state in the UN. Pakistan’s entry into the UN had the enthusiastic backing of India and was opposed by only one existing UN member, Afghanistan, due to a conflict that continues to this day over the legitimacy of the Durand Line that bifurcated the Pashtun areas.

Such a review of elementary historical facts and the position in law of Pakistan and India is far from being of merely pedantic interest today. Rather, it goes directly to the logical roots of the conflict over the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) — a state that itself originated as an entity in the world system a full century before Pakistan was to do so and more than half a century before British India did, but which would collapse into anarchy and civil war in 1947-1949.

Britain (or England) had been a major nation-state in the world system recognized since Grotius first outlined modern international law. On March 16 1846, Britain entered into a treaty, the Treaty of Amritsar, with one Gulab Singh, and the “State of Jammu & Kashmir” came to arise as a recognizable entity in international law for the first time. (See my “History of Jammu and Kashmir” published in The Statesman, Oct 29-30 2006, available elsewhere here.)

Jammu & Kashmir continued in orderly existence as a state until it crashed into legal and political anarchy and civil war a century later. The new Pakistan had entered into a “Standstill Agreement” with the State of Jammu & Kashmir as of August 15 1947. On or about October 22 1947, Pakistan unilaterally ended that Standstill Agreement and instead caused military forces from its territory to attack the State of Jammu & Kashmir along the Mansehra Road towards Baramula and Srinagar, coinciding too with an Anglo-Pakistani coup d’etat in Gilgit and Baltistan (see my “Solving Kashmir”; “Law, Justice & J&K”; “Pakistan’s Allies”, all published in The Statesman in 2005-2006 and available elsewhere here).

The new Pakistan had chosen, in all deliberation, to forswear law, politics and diplomacy and to resort to force of arms instead in trying to acquire J&K for itself via a military decision. It succeeded only partially. Its forces took and then lost both Baramula and Kargil; they may have threatened Leh but did not attempt to take it; they did take and retain Muzaffarabad and Skardu; they were never near taking the summer capital, Srinagar, though might have threatened the winter capital, Jammu.

All in all, a Ceasefire Line came to be demarcated on the military positions as of February 1 1949. After a war in 1971 that accompanied the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan, that Ceasefire Line came to be renamed the “Line of Control” between Pakistan and India. An ownerless entity may be acquired by force of arms — the erstwhile State of Jammu & Kashmir in 1947-1949 had become an ownerless entity that had been dismembered and divided according to military decision following an armed conflict between Pakistan and India. The entity in the world system known as the “State of Jammu & Kashmir” created on March 16 1846 by Gulab Singh’s treaty with the British ceased to exist as of October 22 1947. Pakistan had started the fight over J&K but there is a general rule of conflicts that he who starts a fight does not get to finish it.

Such is the simplest and most practical statement of the history of the current problem. The British, through their own compulsions and imperial pretensions, raised all the talk about a “Lapse of Paramountcy” of the British Crown over the “Native Princes” of “Indian India”, and of how, the “Native Princes” were required to “accede” to either India or Pakistan. This ignored Britain’s own constitutional law. BR Ambedkar pointed out with unsurpassed clarity that no “Lapse of Paramountcy” was possible even for a single logical moment since “Paramountcy” over any “Native Princes” who had not joined India or Pakistan as of August 15 1947, automatically passed from British India to its legal successor, namely, the Dominion of India. It followed that India’s acquiescence was required for any subsequent accession to Pakistan – an acquiescence granted in case of Chitral and denied in case of Junagadh.

What the Republic of India means by saying today that boundaries cannot be redrawn nor any populations forcibly transferred is quite simply that the division of erstwhile J&K territory is permanent, and that sovereignty over it is indivisible. What Pakistan has claimed is that India has been an occupier and that there are many people inhabiting the Indian area who may not wish to be Indian nationals and who are being compelled against their will to remain so ~ forgetting to add that precisely the same could be said likewise of the Pakistani-held area. The lawful solution I proposed in “Solving Kashmir, “Law, Justice and J&K” and other works has been that the Republic of India invite every person covered under its Article 370, citizen-by-citizen, under a condition of full information, to privately and without fear decide, if he/she has not done so already, between possible Indian, Iranian, Afghan or Pakistani nationalities ~ granting rights and obligations of permanent residents to any of those persons who may choose for whatever private reason not to remain Indian nationals. If Pakistan acted likewise, the problem of J&K would indeed come to be resolved. The Americans, as self-appointed mediators, have said they wish “the people of the region to have a voice” in a solution: there can be no better expression of such voice than allowing individuals to privately choose their own nationalities and their rights and responsibilities accordingly. The issue of territorial sovereignty is logically distinct from that of the choice of nationality by individual inhabitants.

2. Benazir’s assassination falsely compared to the Mumbai massacres

Secondly, President Zardari draws a mistaken comparison between the assassination last year of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, and the Mumbai massacres a few weeks ago. Ms Bhutto’s assassination may resemble more closely the assassinations in India of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

Indira Gandhi died in “blowback” from the unrest she and her younger son and others in their party had opportunistically fomented among Sikh fundamentalists and sectarians since the late 1970s. Rajiv Gandhi died in “blowback” from an erroneous imperialistic foreign policy that he, as Prime Minister, had been induced to make by jingoistic Indian diplomats, a move that got India’s military needlessly involved in the then-nascent Sri Lankan civil war. Benazir Bhutto similarly may be seen to have died in “blowback” from her own political activity as prime minister and opposition leader since the late 1980s, including her own encouragement of Muslim fundamentalist forces. Certainly in all three cases, as in all assassinations, there were lapses of security too and imprudent political judgments made that contributed to the tragic outcomes.

Ms Bhutto’s assassination has next to nothing to do with the Mumbai massacres, besides the fact the perpetrators in both cases were Pakistani terrorists. President Zardari saying he himself has lost his wife to terrorism is true but not relevant to the proper diagnosis of the Mumbai massacres or to Pakistan-India relations in general. Rather, it serves to deflect criticism and condemnation of the Pakistani state’s pampered handing of Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds, as well as the gross irresponsibility of Pakistan’s military scientists (not AQ Khan) who have been recently advocating a nuclear first strike against India in the event of war.

3. Can any religious nation-state be viable in the modern world?

President Zardari’s article says:

“The world worked to exploit religion against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan by empowering the most fanatic extremists as an instrument of destruction of a superpower. The strategy worked, but its legacy was the creation of an extremist militia with its own dynamic.”

This may be overly simplistic. As pointed out in my article “Pakistan’s Allies”, Gregory Zinoviev himself after the Bolshevik Revolution had declared that international communism “turns today to the peoples of the East and says to them, ‘Brothers, we summon you to a Holy War first of all against British imperialism!’ At this there were cries of Jehad! Jehad! And much brandishing of picturesque Oriental weapons.” (Treadgold, Twentieth Century Russia, 1990, p. 213). For more than half of the 20th century, orthodox Muslims had been used by Soviet communists against British imperialism, then by the British and Americans (through Pakistan) against Soviet communism. Touché! Blowback and counter-blowback! The real question that arises from this today may be why orthodox Muslims have allowed themselves to be used either way by outside forces and have failed in developing a modern nation-state and political culture of their own. Europe and America only settled down politically after their religious wars were over. Perhaps no religious nation-state is viable in the modern world.

4. Pakistan’s behaviour leads to schizophrenia in international relations

President Zardari pleads for, or perhaps demands, resources from the world:

“the best response to the Mumbai carnage is to coordinate in counteracting the scourge of terrorism. The world must act to strengthen Pakistan’s economy and democracy, help us build civil society and provide us with the law enforcement and counterterrorism capacities that will enable us to fight the terrorists effectively.”

Six million pounds from Mr Gordon Brown, so much from here or there etc — President Zardari has apparently demanded 100 billion dollars from America and that is the price being talked about for Pakistan to dismantle its nuclear weapons and be brought under an American “nuclear umbrella” instead.

I have pointed out elsewhere that what Pakistan seems to have been doing in international relations for decades is send out “mixed messages” – i.e. contradictory signals, whether in thought, word or deed. Clinical psychologists following the work of Gregory Bateson would say this leads to confusion among Pakistan’s interlocutors (a “double bind”) and the symptoms arise of what may be found in schizophrenic relationships. (See my article “Do President-elect Obama’s Pakistan specialists believe…”; on the “double bind” theory, an article I chanced to publish in the Journal of Genetic Psychology, 1986, may be of interest).

Here are a typical set of “mixed messages” emanating from Pakistan’s government and opinion-makers:

“We have nuclear weapons
“We keep our nuclear weapons safe from any misuse or unauthorized use
“We are willing to use nuclear weapons in a first strike against India
“We do not comprehend the lessons of Hiroshima-Nagasaki
“We do not comprehend the destruction India will visit upon us if we strike them
“We are dangerous so we must not be threatened in any way
“We are peace-loving and want to live in peace with India and Afghanistan
“We love to play cricket with India and watch Bollywood movies
“We love our Pakistan Army as it is one public institution that works
“We know the Pakistan Army has backed armed militias against India in the past
“We know these militias have caused terrorist attacks
“We are not responsible for any terrorist attacks
“We do not harbour any terrorists
“We believe the world should pay us to not use or sell our nuclear weapons
“We believe the world should pay us to not encourage the terrorists in our country
“We believe the world should pay us to prevent terrorists from using our nuclear weapons
“We hate India and do not want to become like India
“We love India and want to become like India
“We are India and we are not India…”

Etc.

A mature rational responsible and self-confident Pakistan would have said instead:

“We apologise to India and other countries for the outrageous murders our nationals have committed in Mumbai and elsewhere
“We ask the world to watch how our professional army is deployed to disarm civilian and all “non-state” actors of unauthorized firearms and explosives
“We do not need and will not demand or accept a dollar in any sort of foreign aid, military or civilian, to solve our problems
“We realize our economic and political institutions are a mess and we must clean them up
“We will strive to build a society imbued with what Iqbal described as the spirit of modern times..”

As someone who created at great personal cost at an American university twenty years ago the book Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s, I have a special interest in hoping that Pakistan shall find the path of wisdom.

Posted in Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Afghanistan, anarchy and governance, Asia and the West, Bangladesh, Benazir Bhutto, Bolsheviks, BR Ambedkar, Britain, Britain in India, Britain's monarchy, British history, Constitutional law, Double bind, Gilgit and Baltistan, Gregory Bateson, Gulab Singh, Hindus and Muslims, India in international law, India's Bangladesh liberation war, India's Diplomacy, India's History, India's independence, India's Military Defence, India's Muslims, India's Partition, India's secularism, India-Pakistan peace process, Indira Gandhi, Indira Gandhi's assassination, International Law, International politics, Jammu & Kashmir, MA Jinnah, Mumbai massacres, Mumbai terrorist Kasab, Mumbai/Bombay, Pakistan in international law, Pakistan's diplomacy, Pakistan's history, Pakistan's nuclear weapons, Pakistan's politics, Pakistan's terrorist masterminds, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pashtuns, Psychology, Rajiv Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, Religion, Schizophrenia in international relations, Secular governance, September 11 attacks, Sheikh Abdullah, Sikhs, Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka's civil war, US Military Doctrine, US Pakistan policy, War. Leave a Comment »

Kasab was a stupid, ignorant, misguided youth, manufactured by Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds into becoming a mass-murdering robot: Mahatma Gandhi’s India should punish him, get him to repent if he wishes, then perhaps rehabilitate him as a potent weapon against Pakistani terrorism

December 12, 2008 — drsubrotoroy

The crime of murder is that of deliberate homicide, that of mass-murder is the murder of a mass of people. There is no doubt the lone captured Mumbai terrorist, “Kasab”, has committed mass-murder, being personally responsible for the murder of probably 20 or 30 wholly innocent people he had never met. He killed them by machine-gun fire and grenades at CST/VT railway station on November 26 2008 before being shot and captured by police. He is also a co-conspirator in the mass-murders carried out by his associate at the railway station and those elsewhere in Mumbai. There is no doubt he should serve rigorous imprisonment for life in an Indian prison for his crimes.

And yet…. And yet…

If the Government of India is sensible, it needs to describe and comprehend the moral subtleties of the circumstances surrounding Kasab’s life, especially during the last year. Here was a stupid, ignorant, rather primitive youth misguided by others first into becoming a petty robber, later into becoming a terrorist-trainee in hope of advancing his career in thievery!

Bakri-Id 2008 has just occurred – it is on Bakri-Id a year ago in 2007 that Kasab reportedly first ventured into volunteering for terrorist training as a way of learning how to use firearms! It is almost certain he had never met a Hindu or an Indian in his life before then, that he knew absolutely nothing about the subcontinent’s history or politics, that he would be ignorant about who, say, Iqbal or Jinnah or Maulana Azad or Sheikh Abdullah or Mahatma Gandhi ever were. Within less than a year, that same youth had been brainwashed and trained adequately enough by Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds to become a robotic mass-murderer in Mumbai’s railway station. Now having been caught and treated humanely by his captors, he has confessed everything and even expressed a wish to write a letter to his father in Pakistan expressing remorse for his deeds.

If I was the judge trying him, I would sentence him to a minimum of twenty or thirty years rigorous imprisonment in an Indian prison. But I would add that he should be visited in jail by a few of India’s Muslim leaders, and indeed he should be very occasionally allowed out of the prison (under police supervision) in a structured program to offer Namaz with India’s Muslims in our grandest mosques. He should learn firsthand a little of the lives of India’s Muslims and of India’s people as a whole. Perhaps he will become a model prisoner, perhaps he may even want to become in due course a potent weapon against the terrorist masterminds who ruined his life by sending him to murder people in India.

It bears to be remembered that in an incredible act of Christian forgiveness, the widow of the Australian missionary Graham Staines forgave the cold-blooded murderers who burnt alive her husband and her young sons as they slept in a jeep in Orissa. The family of Rajiv Gandhi may have done the same of those who assassinated or conspired to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi. This is the land of Mahatma Gandhi, who had woven a remarkable moral and political theory out of the Jain-Buddhist-Hindu doctrine of ahimsa as well as Christian notions from Tolstoy and Thoreau of forgiving the sinner.

Of course there cannot be forgiveness where there is no remorse. Kasab’s behaviour thus far suggests he will be remorseful and repentant; there are many other thieves and murderers in the world who are not.

Subroto Roy

Reported statement of Mohammad Ajmal Amir ‘Kasab’, 21, to police after arrest: “I have resided in Faridkot, Dinalpur tehsil, Ukada district, Suba Punjab state, Pakistan since my birth. I studied up to class IV in a government school. After leaving school in 2000, I went to stay with my brother in Tohit Abad mohalla, near Yadgar Minar in Lahore. I worked as a labourer at various places till 2005, visiting my native once in a while. In 2005, I had a quarrel with my father. I left home and went to Ali Hajveri Darbar in Lahore, where boys who run away from home are given shelter. The boys are sent to different places for employment. One day a person named Shafiq came there and took me with him. He was from Zhelam and had a catering business. I started working for him for Rs120 per day. Later, my salary was increased to Rs200 per day. I worked with him till 2007. While working with Shafiq, I came in contact with one Muzzafar Lal Khan, 22. He was from Romaiya village in Alak district in Sarhad, Pakistan. Since we were not getting enough money, we decided to carry out robbery/dacoity to make big money. So we left the job.

We went to Rawalpindi, where we rented a flat. Afzal had located a house for us to loot… We required some firearms for our mission… While we were in search of firearms, we saw some LeT stalls at Raja Bazaar in Rawalpindi on the day of Bakri-id. We then realised that even if we procured firearms, we would not be able to operate them. Therefore, we decided to join LeT for weapons training. We reached the LeT office and told a person that we wanted to join LeT. He noted down our names and address and told us to come the next day. The next day, there was another person with him. He gave us Rs200 and some receipts. Then he gave us the address of a place called Marqas Taiyyaba, Muridke, and told us to go to there. It was an LeT training camp. We went to the place by bus. We showed the receipts at the gate of the camp. We were allowed inside… Then we were taken to the actual camp area. Initially, we were selected for a 21 days’ training regimen called Daura Sufa. From the next day, our training started.

The daily programme was as follows: 4.15 am — Wake-up call and thereafter Namaz; 8 am — Breakfast; 8.30 am to 10 am — Lecture on Hadis and Quran by Mufti Sayyed; 10 am to noon – Rest; Noon to 1 pm – Lunch break; 1 pm to 4 pm – Rest; 4 pm to 6 pm – PT; instructor: Fadulla; 6 pm to 8 pm – Namaz and other work; 8 pm to 9 pm – Dinner

After Daura Sufa, we were selected for another training programme called Daura Ama. This was also for 21 days. We were taken to Mansera in Buttal village, where we were trained in handling weapons. The daily programme was as follows: 4.15 am to 5 am – Wake-up call and thereafter Namaz; 5 am to 6 am – PT; instructor: Abu Anas; 8 am – Breakfast; 8.30 am to 11.30 am – Weapons training; trainer: Abdul Rehman; weapons: AK-47, Green-O, SKS, Uzi gun, pistol, revolver; 11.30 am to Noon – rest; Noon to 1 pm – Lunch break; 1 pm to 2 pm – Namaz; 2 pm to 4 pm – Rest; 4 pm to 6 pm – PT; 6 pm to 8 pm – Namaz and other work; 8 pm to 9 pm – Dinner.

After the training, we were told that we will begin the next stage involving advanced training. But for that, we were told, we had to do some khidmat for two months (khidmat is a sort of service in the camp as per trainees’ liking). We agreed. After two months, I was allowed to go to meet my parents. I stayed with my parents for a month. Then I went to an LeT camp in Shaiwainala, Muzaffarabad, for advanced training… We were taken to Chelabandi pahadi area for a training programme, called Daura Khas, of three months. It involved handling weapons, using hand grenade, rocket launchers and mortars.

The daily programme was as follows: 4.15 am to 5 am – Wake-up call and thereafter Namaz; 5 am to 6 am – PT; instructor: Abu Mawiya; 8 am – Breakfast; 8.30 am to 11.30 am – Weapons training, handling of all weapons and firing practices with the weapons, training on handling hand grenade, rocket-launchers and mortars, Green-O, SKS, Uzi gun, pistol, revolver; trainer: Abu Mawiya; 11.30 am to 12 noon – rest; Noon to 1 pm – Lunch break; 1 pm to 2 pm – Namaz; 2 pm to 4 pm – Weapons training and firing practice; lecture on Indian security agencies; 4 pm to 6 pm – PT; 6 pm to 8 pm – Namaz and other work; 8 pm to 9 pm – Dinner

There were 32 trainees in the camp. Sixteen were selected for a confidential operation by one Zaki-ur-Rehman, alias Chacha, but three of them ran away from the camp. Chacha sent the remaining 13 with a person called Kafa to the Muridke camp again. At Muridke, we were taught swimming and made familiar with the life of fishermen at sea… We were given lectures on the working of Indian security agencies. We were shown clippings highlighting atrocities on Muslims in India. After the training, we were allowed to go to our native places. I stayed with my family for seven days. I then went to the LeT camp at Muzaffarabad. The 13 of us were present for training. Then, on Zaki-ur-Rehman’s instructions, Kafa took us to the Muridke camp. The training continued for a month. We were given lectures on India and its security agencies, including RAW. We were also trained to evade security personnel. We were instructed not to make phone calls to Pakistan after reaching India.

The names of the persons present for the training are: n Mohd Azmal, alias Abu Muzahid n Ismail, alias Abu Umar n Abu Ali n Abu Aksha n Abu Umer n Abu Shoeb n Abdul Rehman (Bada) n Abdul Rehman (Chhota) n Afadulla n Abu Umar. After the training, Chacha selected 10 of us and formed five teams of two people each on September 15. I and Ismail formed a team; its codename was VTS. We were shown Azad Maidan in Mumbai on Google Earth’s site on the internet… We were shown a film on VT railway station. The film showed commuters during rush hours. We were instructed to carry out firing during rush hours — between 7 am and 11 am and between 7 pm and 11 pm. Then we were to take some people hostage, take them to the roof of some nearby building and contact Chacha, who would have given us numbers to contact media people and make demands. This was the strategy decided upon by our trainers. The date fixed for the operation was September 27. However, the operation was cancelled for some reason. We stayed in Karachi till November 23. The other teams were: 2nd team: a) Abu Aksha; b) Abu Umar; 3rd team: a) Abdul Rehman (Bada); b) Abu Ali; 4th team: a) Abdul Rehman (Chotta); b) Afadulla; 5th team: a) Abu Shoeb; b) Abu Umer.

On November 23, the teams left from Azizabad in Karachi, along with Zaki-ur-Rehman and Kafa. We were taken to the nearby seashore… We boarded a launch. After travelling for 22 to 25 nautical miles we boarded a bigger launch. Again, after a journey of an hour, we boarded a ship, Al-Huseini, in the deep sea. While boarding the ship, each of us was given a sack containing eight grenades, an AK-47 rifle, 200 cartridges, two magazines and a cellphone. Then we started towards the Indian coast. When we reached Indian waters, the crew members of Al-Huseini hijacked an Indian launch. The crew of the launch was shifted to Al-Huseini. We then boarded the launch. An Indian seaman was made to accompany us at gunpoint; he was made to bring us to the Indian coast. After a journey of three days, we reached near Mumbai’s shore. While we were still some distance away from the shore, Ismail and Afadulla killed the Indian seaman (Tandel) in the basement of the launch. Then we boarded an inflatable dinghy and reached Badhwar Park jetty. I then went along with Ismail to VT station by taxi. After reaching the hall of the station, we went to the toilet, took out the weapons from our sacks, loaded them, came out of the toilet and started firing indiscriminately at passengers. Suddenly, a police officer opened fire at us. We threw hand grenades towards him and also opened fire at him. Then we went inside the railway station threatening the commuters and randomly firing at them. We then came out of the railway station searching for a building with a roof. But we did not find one. Therefore, we entered a lane. We entered a building and went upstairs. On the third and fourth floors we searched for hostages but we found that the building was a hospital and not a residential building. We started to come down. That is when policemen started firing at us. We threw grenades at them.

While coming out of the hospital premises, we saw a police vehicle passing. We took shelter behind a bush. Another vehicle passed us and stopped some distance away. A police officer got off from the vehicle and started firing at us. A bullet hit my hand and my AK-47 fell out of my hand. When I bent to pick it up another bullet hit me on the same hand. Ismail opened fire at the officers in the vehicle. They got injured and firing from their side stopped. We waited for a while and went towards the vehicle. There were three bodies in the vehicle. Ismail removed the bodies and drove the vehicle. I sat next to him. Some policemen tried to stop us. Ismail opened fire at them. The vehicle had a flat tyre near a big ground by the side of road. Ismail got down from the vehicle, stopped a car at gunpoint and removed the three lady passengers from the car. Since I was injured, Ismail carried me to the car. He then drove the car. We were stopped by policemen on the road near the seashore. Ismail fired at them, injuring some policemen. The police also opened fire at us. Ismail was injured in the firing. The police removed us from the vehicle and took us to the same hospital. In the hospital, I came to know that Ismail had succumbed to injuries. My statement has been read to me and explained in Hindi, and it has been correctly recorded.”

Posted in Ahimsa, Buddhism, Christian forgiveness, Christianity, Ethics, Existentialism, Good and Evil, Graham Staines, Habeas Corpus for terrorist suspects, Hinduism, Hindus and Muslims, India's crimes, India's Jurisprudence, India's Muslims, India's Rule of Law, India's secularism, Iqbal, Jainism, MA Jinnah, Maulana Azad, MK Gandhi, Moral reasoning, Mumbai massacres, Mumbai terrorist Kasab, Mumbai's Police, Mumbai/Bombay, Nariman House massacre, Pakistan in international law, Pakistan's politics, Pakistan's terrorist masterminds, Pakistan's terrorist training institutes, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, Sheikh Abdullah, Tolstoy. Comments Off

Dr Rice finally gets it right (and maybe Mrs Clinton will too)

December 7, 2008 — drsubrotoroy

When, or perhaps if, the full story of the George W Bush Presidency comes to be written, it may be found that Dr Condoleeza Rice’s political connections at Stanford contributed more to the chances of the Texas Governor winning the Republican nomination than has been widely known. Dr Rice was without a doubt a Republican star at the time but when she became National Security Adviser, she had the wrong expertise! She was a USSR expert by training from Cold War days and knew next to nothing about the Middle East. Now finally, as America’s foreign minister in the dying weeks of the Bush Presidency, she has come into her own as a world diplomat: her intervention following the Mumbai massacres may have yet staved off an Indian military retaliation against Pakistani targets and also induced Pakistan to move slightly towards governance and away from terrorist anarchy. Learning-on-the-job has been productive for Dr Rice — she and Robert Gates also appear to have staved off a Bush-Cheney attack on Iran.

Would it not be interesting to see her on the top of the 2012 Republican ticket against Barack Obama?

Her successor, Hillary Clinton, may too become a competent American diplomat and have finally found her calling after all — assuming she is able to transcend domestic interest groups and ignore all politically correct nonsense like “climate change”.

Posted in American academia, American politics, anarchy and governance, Barack Obama, Diplomacy, Hillary Clinton, India's Diplomacy, India's Military Defence, India-Pakistan peace process, Mumbai massacres, Pakistan's nuclear weapons, Pakistan's politics, Pakistan's terrorist masterminds, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, US Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Espionage, US Pakistan policy, US Republicans and Democrats, War. Leave a Comment »

“Anger Management” needed? An Oxford DPhil recommends Pakistan launch a nuclear first strike against India within minutes of war

December 5, 2008 — drsubrotoroy

Some nine or ten years ago, Gohar Ayub Khan, as Pakistan’s foreign minister, had said the next war with India would be over in a few hours with an Indian surrender, presumably because Pakistan would immediately launch nuclear bombs. Now a leading Pakistani military scientist (who is said to have earned a doctoral degree in 1966 from Oxford University in Experimental Nuclear Physics) has apparently recommended his Government immediately launch nuclear bombs against India within minutes of a war.

[If the link does not work, as it seems not to, paste in http://dailytimes.com.pk

followed by

/default.asp?page=2008

followed by

story_5-12-2008_pg7_24

Viz., Daily Times, December 5 2008 “Nuclear missiles can be fired within minutes in case of war”.]

This is supposed to be responsible behaviour and talk from a serious nuclear weapons’ power ? Whose leadership has assured its Western mentors and allies that its nuclear arsenal is kept in a disassembled state beyond the control of all irregular forces like potential terrorists?

And there is its cricket board suggesting business go about as usual with India! While its liberal commentators go about shedding crocodile tears for victims of the systematic mass murder last week, describing it all as the “Mumbai incident” or the “Bombay event”! Almost the Bombay soiree?

There is a sheer lack of reason, a lack of reasoning, and a lack of reasonableness here, as well as widespread need among Pakistan’s terrorist and military masterminds for what is known in popular psychology these days as “Anger Management”.

Posted in Air warfare, Asia and the West, India's Military Defence, India-Pakistan peace process, Mumbai massacres, Nuclear conflict, Pakistan's nuclear weapons, Pakistan's terrorist masterminds, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, War, World History. Leave a Comment »

India’s Muslim Voices (Or, Let us be clear the Pakistan-India or Kashmir conflicts have not been Muslim-Hindu conflicts so much as intra-Muslim conflicts about Muslim identity and self-knowledge on the Indian subcontinent)

December 4, 2008 — drsubrotoroy

India’s Muslim Voices

(Or, Let us be clear the Pakistan-India or Kashmir conflicts have not been Muslim-Hindu conflicts so much as intra-Muslim conflicts about Muslim identity and self-knowledge on the Indian subcontinent)

by

Subroto Roy

Ill-informed Western observers, especially at purported “think tanks” and news-portals, frequently proclaim the Pakistan-India confrontation and Jammu & Kashmir conflict to represent some kind of savage irreconcilable division between Islamic and Hindu cultures.

For example, the BBC, among its many prevarications on the matter (like lopping off J&K entirely from its recently broadcasted maps of India, perhaps under influence of its Pakistani staffers), frequently speaks of “Hindu-majority India” and “Indian-administered Kashmir” being confronted by Muslim Pakistan.

And two days ago from California’s Bay Area arose into the Internet Cloud the following profundity: “What we’re dealing with now, in the Pakistani-Indian rivalry, is a true war of civilizations, pitting Muslims against Hindus…. the unfathomable depths of the Muslim-Hindu divide….”.

Even President-elect Obama’s top Pakistan-specialists have fallen for the line of Washington’s extremely strong Pakistan lobby: “Pakistan… sees itself as the political home for the subcontinent’s Muslim population and believes India’s continued control over the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley and denial of a plebiscite for its inhabitants represent a lingering desire on India’s part to undo the legacy of partition, which divided the British Indian Empire into India and Pakistan.”

The truth on record is completely different and really rather simple: for more than a century and a half, Muslims qua Muslims on the Indian subcontinent have struggled with the question of their most appropriate cultural and political identity.

The starkest contrast may be found in their trying to come to terms with their partly Arabic and partly Hindu or Indian parentage (the words Hindu, Sindhu, Indus, Indian, Sindhi, Hindi etc all clearly have the same Hellenistic root).

For example, there was Wali Allah (1703-1762) declaring “We are an Arab people whose fathers have fallen in exile in the country of Hindustan, and Arabic genealogy and Arabic language are our pride”.

But here has been Mohammad Iqbal (1877-1938), in his 1930 Allahabad speech to the Muslim League, conceiving today’s Pakistan as a wish to become free of precisely that Arab influence: “I would like to see the Punjab, NWFP, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single state… The life of Islam as a cultural force in this living country very largely depends on its centralisation in a specified territory… For India it means security and peace resulting from an internal balance of power, for Islam an opportunity to rid itself of the stamp that Arabian Imperialism was forced to give it, to mobilise its law, its education, its culture, and to bring them into closer contact with its own original spirit and the spirit of modern times.”

In an article “Saving Pakistan” published last year in The Statesman and available elsewhere here, it was suggested Iqbal’s “spirit of modern times” may be represented most prominently today by the physicist/political philosopher Pervez Hoodbhoy: in a December 2006 speech Hoodbhoy suggested a new alternative to MA Jinnah’s “Faith, Unity, Discipline” slogan: “First, I wish for minds that can deal with the complex nature of truth…. My second wish is for many more Pakistanis who accept diversity as a virtue… My third, and last, wish is that Pakistanis learn to value and nurture creativity.” He has spoken too of bringing “economic justice to Pakistan”, of the “fight to give Pakistan’s women the freedom which is their birthright”, and of people to “wake up” and engage politically. But Pakistan’s Iqbalian liberals like Hoodbhoy still have to square off with those of their compatriots who sent the youthful squad into Mumbai last week with assault rifles, grenades and heroic Arabic code-names, as well as orders to attack civilians with the ferocity of the original Muslims attacking caravans and settlements in ancient Arabia.

What the extremely strong Pakistan lobbies within the British and American political systems have suppressed in order to paint a picture of eternal Muslim-Hindu conflict is the voice of India’s nationalist Muslims, who historically have had no wish to have any truck with any idea of a “Pakistan” at all.

Most eminent among them was undoubtedly Jinnah’s fiercest critic: Maulana Abul Kalam Azad whose classic 1946 statement on Pakistan is available in his India Wins Freedom, the final version published only in 1988.

“I have considered from every possible point of view the scheme of Pakistan as formulated by the Muslim League. As an Indian, I have examined its implications for the future of India as a whole. As a Muslim, I have examined its likely effects upon the fortunes of Muslims of India. Considering the scheme in all its aspects, I have come to the conclusion that it is harmful not only for India as a whole but for Muslims in particular. And in fact it creates more problems than it solves. I must confess that the very term Pakistan goes against my grain. It suggests that some portions of the world are pure while others are impure. Such a division of territories into pure and impure is un-Islamic and is more in keeping with orthodox Brahmanism which divides men and countries into holy and unholy — a division which is a repudiation of the very spirit of Islam. Islam recognizes no such division and the prophet says “God made the whole world a mosque for me”.

Further, it seems that the scheme of Pakistan is a symbol of defeatism, and has been built on the analogy of the Jewish demand for a national home. It is a confession that Indian Muslims cannot hold their own in India as a whole, and would be content to withdraw to a corner specially reserved for them.

One can sympathise with the aspiration of the Jews for such a national home, as they are scattered all over the world and cannot in any region have any effective voice in the administration.. The conditions of Indian Muslims is quite otherwise. Over 90 million in number, they are in quantity and quality a sufficiently important element in Indian life to influence decisively all questions of administration and policy. Nature has further helped them by concentrating them in certain areas.

In such a context, the demand for Pakistan loses all force. As a Muslim, I for one am not prepared for a moment to give up my right to treat the whole of India as my domain and to shape in the shaping of its political and economic life. To me it seems a sure sign of cowardice to give up what is my patrimony and content myself with a mere fragment of it.

As is well known, Mr. Jinnah’s Pakistan scheme is based on his two nation theory. His thesis is that India contains many nationalities based on religious differences, Of them the two major nations, the Hindus and Muslims, must as separate nations have separate States, When Dr Edward Thompson once pointed out to Mr. Jinnah that Hindus and Muslims live side by side in thousands of Indian towns, villages and hamlets, Mr. Jinnah replied that this is no way affected their separate nationality. Two nations, according to M Jinnah, confront one another in every hamlet, village and town, and he, therefore, desires that they should be separated into two States.

I am prepared to overlook all other aspects of the problem and judge it from the point of view of Muslim interest alone. I shall go still further and say that if it can be shown that the scheme of Pakistan can in any way benefit Muslims I would be prepared to accept it myself and also to work for its acceptance by others. But the truth is that even if I examine the scheme from the point of view of the communal interests of the Muslims themselves, I am forced to the conclusion that it can in no way benefit them or allay their legitimate fears.

Let us consider dispassionately the consequences which will follow if we give effect to the Pakistan scheme. India will be divided into two States, one with a majority of Muslims and the other of Hindus. In the Hindustan State there will remain 35 million Muslims scattered in small minorities all over the land. With 17 per cent in UP, 12 percent in Bihar and 9 percent in Madras, they will be weaker than they are today in the Hindu majority provinces. They have had their homelands in these regions for almost a thousand years and built up well known centres of Muslim culture and civilization there.

They will awaken overnight and discover that they have become alien and foreigners. Backward industrially, educationally and economically, they will be left to the mercies to what would become an unadulterated Hindu raj.

On the other hand, their position within the Pakistan State will be vulnerable and weak. Nowhere in Pakistan will their majority be comparable to the Hindu majority in the Hindustan States. ( NB Azad could hardly imagine even at this point the actual British Partition of Punjab and Bengal, let aside the later separation of Bangladesh from West Pakistan, SR. )

In fact, their majority will be so slight that will be offset by the economical, educational and political lead enjoyed by non-Muslims in these areas. Even if this were not so and Pakistan were overwhelmingly Muslim in population, it still could hardly solve the problem of Muslims in Hindustan. Two States confronting one another, offer no solution of the problem of one another’s minorities, but only lead to retribution and reprisals by introducing a system of mutual hostages. The scheme of Pakistan therefore solves no problems for the Muslims. It cannot safeguard their rights where they are in minority nor as citizens of Pakistan secure them a position in Indian or world affairs which they would enjoy as citizens of a major State like the Indian Union.

It may be argued that if Pakistan is so much against the interest if the Muslims themselves, then why should such a large section of Muslims be swept away by its lure? The answer is to be found in the attitude of certain communal extremists among the Hindus. When the Muslim League began to speak of Pakistan, they read into the scheme a sinister pan-Islamic conspiracy and began to oppose it out of fear that it foreshadowed a combination of Indian Muslim and trans-Indian Muslim States. The opposition acted as an incentive to the adherents of the League. With simple though untenable logic they argued that if Hindus were so opposed to Pakistan, surely it must be of benefit to Muslims. An atmosphere of emotional frenzy was created which made reasonable appraisement impossible and swept away especially the younger and more impressionable among the Muslims. I have, however, no doubt that when the present frenzy has died down and the question can be considered dispassionately, those who now support Pakistan will themselves repudiate it as harmful for Muslim interests.

The formula which I have succeeded in making the Congress accept secures whatever merits the Pakistan scheme contains while all its defects and drawbacks are avoided. The basis of Pakistan is the fear of interference by the Centre in Muslim majority areas as the Hindus will be in a majority in the Centre. The Congress meets this fear by granting full autonomy to the provincial units and vesting all residuary power in the provinces. It also has provided for two lists of Central subjects, one compulsory and one optional, so that if any provincial unit so wants, it can administer all subjects itself except a minimum delegated to the Centre. The Congress scheme threescore ensures that Muslim majority provinces are internally free to develop as they will, but can at the same time influence the Centre on all issues which affect India as a whole.

The situation in India is such that all attempts to establish a centralized and unitary government are bound to fail. Equally, doomed to failure is the attempt to divide India into two States. After considering all aspects of the question, I have come to the conclusion that the only solution can be on the lines embodied in the Congress formula which allows room for development both to the provinces and to India as a whole. The Congress formula meets the fear of the Muslim majority areas to allay which the scheme of Pakistan was formed. On the other hand, it avoids the defects of the Pakistan scheme which would bring the Muslims where they are in a minority under a purely Hindu government.

I am one of those who considers the present chapter of communal bitterness and differences as a transient phase in Indian life. I firmly hold that they will disappear when India assumes the responsibility of her own destiny. I am reminded of a saying of Mr. Gladstone that the best cure for a man’s fear of the water was to throw him into it. Similarly, India must assume responsibilities and administer her own affairs before fears and suspicious can be fully allayed.

When India attains her destiny, she will forget the chapter of communal suspicion and conflict and face the problems of modern life from a modern point of view. Differences will no doubt persist, but they will be economic, not communal. Opposition among political parties will continue, but it will based, not on religion, but on economic and political issues. Class and not community will be the basis oaf future alignments, and policies will be shaped accordingly. If it be argued that this is only a faith which events may not justify, I would say that in any case the 90 million Muslims constitute a factor which nobody can ignore and whatever the circumstances, they are strong enough to safeguard their own destiny.”

Next must be Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s classic February 1948 Speech to the UN Security Council, four months into the initial Pakistani attack on Kashmir:

“Aggression, not accession, is the issue: I have heard with patience, attention and respect the statements made by the representative of Pakistan and members of the Security Council, as well as the statements made on various occasions by the members of my own delegation. The Security Council will concede that I am probably the one man most concerned in the dispute because I happen to come from that land which has become the bone of contention between the two Dominions of India and Pakistan.

I have been quoted profusely on either side, and rightly so, because I have had the fortune-or, should I say, misfortune of leading my countrymen to freedom from 1931 onwards. In this task, I have suffered a great deal. I have been imprisoned not once or twice, but seven times, and the last imprisonment carried with it an aggregate sentence of nine years.

There are many troubles in Kashmir. I have heard patiently the debate in the Security Council, but I feel that I am rather confused. After all, what is the point in dispute? The point in dispute is not that the sovereignty of the Prince is in question, as the representative of Pakistan stated yesterday. After all, I have suffered the punishment of being sentenced to nine years imprisonment for saying what the representative of Pakistan said with regard to the Treaty of Amritsar of 1846. I am glad that he said in the Security Council, where he is immune from any punishment. Therefore, I am not disputing that point and that it is not the subject of the dispute before the Security Council.

The subject of the dispute before the Security Council is not the mal-administration of the Princely State of Kashmir. In order to set right that mal-administration, I think I have suffered the most, and today, when for the first time, I heard the representative of Pakistan supporting my case, it gave me great pleasure.

After all, what is the dispute between India and Pakistan? From what I have learned from the complaint brought before the Security Council by my own delegation, the dispute revolves around the fact that Kashmir acceded legally and constitutionally to the Dominion of India. There was some trouble about the demarcation of the Kashmir administration within the State, and the tribesmen from across the border have poured into my country. They have been helped and are being helped by the Pakistan Government, with the result that there is the possibility of a greater conflagration between India and Pakistan. India sought the help of Security Council so that Pakistan might be requested to desist from helping the tribesmen, and to desist from supporting the inside revolt, should I say, against the lawful authority.

I should have understood the position of the representative of Pakistan if he had come boldly before the Security Council and maintained: “Yes, we do support the tribesmen; we do support the rebels inside the State because we feel that Kashmir belongs to Pakistan and not to India, and because we feel that the accession of Kashmir to India was fraudulent.” Then we might have discussed the validity of the accession of the State of Kashmir to India. But that was not the position taken by the representative of Pakistan. He completely denied that any support was being given by the Government of Pakistan to either the tribesmen or those who are in revolt within the State against the constituted authority.

How am I to convince the Security Council that the denial is absolutely untrue? I am sitting before the Security Council at a distance of thousands of miles from my country. I have fought many battles, along with my own men, on the borders of Jammu and Kashmir. I have seen with my own eyes the support given by the Pakistan Government, not only in supplying buses but in providing arms, ammunition, direction and control of the tribesmen and I have even seen the Pakistan Army forces from across the border.

The denial has come so flatly that it becomes very difficult for me to disprove it here before the Security Council, unless the Security Council accedes to our request to send a commission to the spot and to find out first whether the allegations brought before the Security Council with regard to the aid given by the Government of Pakistan are correct or incorrect. If they are incorrect, the case falls; if they are correct, then the Security Council should take the necessary steps to advise the Government of Pakistan to desist from such support.

But then, this simple issue has been confused. On the one hand, the Pakistan Government says, “We are not a party to the trouble within the State. The trouble within the State exists because the people are fighting against the mal-administration of the Jammu and Kashmir Government.” Yes, we are fighting, we have been fighting against the mal-administration of that State since 1931. We have been demanding democratisation of the Government there. But how is it that today Pakistan has become the champion of our liberty? I know very well that in 1946, when I raised the cry “Quit Kashmir,” the leader of the Pakistan Government, who is the Governor-General now, Mr.Mohammed Ali Jinnah, opposed my Government, declaring that this movement was a movement of a few renegades and that Muslims as such had nothing to do with the movement.

The Muslim Conference, which has been talked about so much, opposed my movement and declared its loyalty to the Prince. The representative of Pakistan now says that Sheikh Abdullah, once the supporter of “Quit Kashmir”, has joined hands with the Maharaja of Kashmir, and that in one of my public speeches I declared that I wanted the Maharaja to be the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir-not the Maharaja of Jammu only, but the Maharaja of entire State.

I should like to correct the misreporting of my speech. I did deliver that speech in Jammu, which is the winter capital of our country, but it was in a different context. As the members of the Security Council have already heard from the head of my delegation, some massacres did occur in the Jammu Province. After the Kashmir Province was raided by the tribesmen, and after thousands of Hindus and Sikhs were uprooted from the villages and towns in the Kashmir Province and found their way into the Jammu Province, there was some very bad retaliation. I could not go to Jammu Province to control that situation because I was busy with the raiders in Kashmir Province. However, as soon as I had some time, I flew down to Jammu Province, addressed a gathering of 60,000 Hindus and Sikhs in Jammu city, and gave them some plain advice.

I told them clearly that this policy of retaliation would bring no good to them as Hindus and Sikhs and would bring no good to their leader, because while they could retaliate in one or two districts where they formed the majority, and could even wipe out the Muslim population in these one or two districts, the State happens to have a population which is 80 per cent Muslim, and it would be impossible for them to wipe out the entire Muslim population. The result would be that the Prince, whom they wanted to support, would remain the Prince of only two districts, and not of the entire State of Jammu and Kashmir. I told them that if they wanted him to be the Prince of Jammu and Kashmir, they would have to change their behaviour. That was the speech I delivered, and that was the context in which it was made.

However, I have already stated how this trouble started. It is probable that the representative of Pakistan would admit that when India was divided into two parts, my colleagues and I were all behind prison bars. The result of this division of India was to start massacre on either side. Where Muslims in the West Punjab formed the majority, the killing of Hindus and Sikhs started and this was retaliated in East Punjab. All along our border, massacres of Hindus and Sikhs, on the one hand, and Muslims on the other hand were a daily occurrence. But the State of Jammu and Kashmir, and its people, kept calm. The result was that thousands of refugees, both Muslims and Hindus, sought refuge in our State and we rendered every possible help to all of them.

Why was that so? It was because I and my organisation never believed in the formula that Muslims and Hindus form separate nations. We do not believe in the two-nation theory, nor in communal hatred or communalism itself. We believed that religion had no place in politics. Therefore, when we launched our movement of “Quit Kashmir”, it was not only Muslims who suffered, but our Hindu and Sikh comrades as well. That created a strong bond of unity between all the communities, and the result was that while Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims were fighting each other all along the border, the people of Jammu and Kashmir State — Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs alike-remained calm.

The situation was worsening day by day and the minority in our State was feeling very nervous. As a result, tremendous pressure was brought to bear upon the State administration to release me and my colleagues. The situation outside demanded the release of workers of the National Conference, along with its leader, and we were accordingly set free.

Immediately we were liberated from prison we were faced with the important question of whether Kashmir should accede to Pakistan, accede to India, or remain independent, because under the partition scheme these three choices were open us as, indeed, they were open to every Indian State. The problem was a very difficult one, but I advised the people of my country that although the question was very important to us, it was a secondary consideration. The all important matter for us was our own liberation from the autocratic rule of the Prince for which we were fighting and had been fighting for the past seventeen years. We had not achieved that goal, and therefore I told my people that we must do so first. Then, as free men we should have to decide where our interest lay. Being a frontier State, Kashmir has borders with both Pakistan and India, and there are advantages and disadvantages for the people of Kashmir attached to each of the three alternatives to which I have referred.

Naturally, as I have indicated, we could not decide this all important issue before achieving our own liberation, and our slogan became “Freedom before accession”. Some friends from Pakistan met mein Srinagar. I had a heart- to- heart discussion with them and explained my point of view. I told them in plain words that, whatever had been the attitude of Pakistan towards our freedom movement in the past, it would not influence us in our judgement. Neither the friendship of Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru and of Congress, nor their support of our freedom movement, would have any influence upon our decision if we felt that the interests of four million Kashmiris lay in our accession to Pakistan.

I requested them not to precipitate this decision upon us but to allow us time, supporting our movement for the while. I added that once we were free they should allow us an interval to consider this all important issue. I pointed out that India had accepted this point of view and was not forcing us to decide. We had, in fact, entered into a standstill agreement with both Pakistan and India, but the leader of the Indian delegation has already explained to the Security Council what Pakistan did to us.

While I was engaged in these conversations and negotiations with friends from Pakistan, I sent one of my colleagues to Lahore, where he met the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Mr. Liaqat Ali Khan, and other high dignitaries of the West Punjab Government. He placed the same point of view before them and requested that they should allow us time to consider this vital question, first helping us to achieve our liberation instead of forcing us to declare our decision one way or the other. Then, one fine morning while these negotiations were proceeding, I received news that a full-fledged attack had been carried out by the raiders on Muzaffarabad, frontier town in the Kashmir Province.

The representative of Pakistan has stated that immediately upon my release I went down to Delhi to negotiate the accession of Kashmir to India. That is not a fact. He probably does not know that while in jail I was elected President of the All India States People’s Conference, and that immediately upon my release I had to take up my duties. Accordingly, I had called a meeting of the executive of that Conference in Delhi, a fact which I had conveyed to the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Indeed, I had told the Prime Minister of Pakistan that immediately upon my return from Delhi I should take the opportunity of meeting him personally to discuss my point of view with him. I did not go to Delhi to conclude any agreement on behalf of Kashmir because, although released, I was still considered a rebel.

I might inform the representative of Pakistan that although I am beyond doubt the head of the Administration of Kashmir State, I am not the Prime Minister. I am head of the Emergency Administration, and that not because the Maharaja of Kashmir wished it. In fact, I do not know whether the Maharaja wishes it even now. I hold the position because the people of my country wish me to be at the helm of affairs in Jammu and Kashmir State.

When the raiders came to our land, massacred thousands of people—mostly Hindus and Sikhs, but Muslims, too—abducted thousands of girls, Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims alike, looted our property and almost reached the gates of our summer capital, Srinagar, the result was that the civil, military and police administrations failed. The Maharaja, in the dead of night, left the capital along with his courtiers, and the result was absolute panic. There was no one to take over control. In that hour of crisis, the National Conference came forward with its 10,000 volunteers and took over the administration of the country. They started guarding the banks, the offices and houses of every person in the capital. This is the manner in which the administration changed hands. We were de facto in charge of the administration. The Maharaja, later on, gave it a legal form.

It is said that Sheikh Abdullah is a friend of Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru. Yes, I admit that. I feel honoured that such a great man claims me as his friend. And he happens to belong to my own country;he is also a Kashmiri, and blood is thicker than water. If JawaharLal Nehru gives me that honour, I cannot help it. He is my friend. But that does not mean that, because of his friendship, I am going to betray the millions of my people who have suffered along with me for the last seventeen years and sacrifice the interests of my country. I am not a man of that calibre.

I was explaining how the dispute arose—how Pakistan wanted to force this position of slavery upon us. Pakistan had no interest in our liberation or it would not also have opposed our freedom movement. Pakistan would have supported us when thousands of my countrymen were behind bars and hundreds were shot to death. The Pakistani leaders and Pakistani papers were heaping abuse upon the people of Kashmir who were suffering these tortures.

Then suddenly, Pakistan comes before the bar of the world as the champion of the liberty of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. The world may believe this, but it is very difficult for me to believe. When we refused the coercive tactics of Pakistan, it started full fledged aggression and encouraged the tribesmen in this activity. It is absolutely impossible for the tribesmen to enter our territory without encouragement from Pakistan, because it is necessary to pass through Pakistan territory to reach Jammu and Kashmir. Hundreds of trucks, thousands of gallons of petrol, thousands of rifles, ammunition, and all forms of help that an army requires, were supplied to them. We know this. After all, we belong to that country. What Pakistan could not achieve by the use of economic blockade it wanted to achieve by full-fledged aggression.

What do we request? We request nothing more than that the Security Council should send some members to this area to see for themselves what is happening there. If Pakistan comes forward and says, “We question the legality of accession”, I am prepared to discuss whether or not the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India was legal. However, now they say, “We want a plebiscite, we want to obtain the free and unfettered opinion of the people of Kashmir. There should be no pressure exerted on the people and they should make the free choice as to the State to which they wish to accede.”

Not only this the offer that was made by the people of Kashmir to Pakistan long, long ago, but it is the offer made by the Prime Minister of India at a time, I think, he had not the slightest need for making it, as Kashmir was in distress.

We realised that Pakistan would not allow us any time, that we had either to suffer the fate of our kith and kin of Muzaffarabad, Baramulla, Srinagar and other towns and villages, or to seek help from some outside authority.

Under these circumstances, both the Maharaja and the people of Kashmir requested the Government of India to accept our accession. The Government of India could have easily accepted the accession and could have said, “All right we accept your accession and we shall render this help.” There was no necessity for the Prime Minister of India to add the proviso, when accepting the accession, that India does not want to take advantage of the difficult situation in Kashmir. We will accept this accession, without Kashmir’s acceding to the Indian Dominion, we are not in a position to render any military help. But once the country is free from the raiders, marauders and looters, this accession will be subject to ratification by the people. That was the offer made by the Prime Minister of India.

That was the same offer which was made by the people of Kashmir to the Government of Pakistan, but it was refused because at that time Pakistan felt that it could, within a week, conquer the entire Jammu and Kashmir State and then place the fait accompli before the world, just as happened some time ago in Europe. The same tactics were used.

But having failed in these tactics, Pakistan now comes before the bar of the world, pleading, “We want nothing, we only want our people to be given a free hand in deciding their own fate. And in deciding their own fate, they must have a plebiscite.”

They then continue and say, “No, a plebiscite cannot be fair and impartial unless and until there is a neutral administration in the State of Jammu and Kashmir.” I have failed to understand this terminology with reference to a “neutral administration”. After all what does “neutral administration” mean?

The representative of Pakistan has stated that Sheikh Abdullah, because he is a friend of Jawahar Lal Nehru, because he has had sympathy for the Indian National Congress, because he has declared his point of view in favour of accession to India, and because he is head of the Emergency Administration, cannot remain impartial. Therefore, Sheikh Abdullah must depart.

Let us suppose that Sheikh Abdullah goes, who is to replace Sheikh Abdullah ? It will be someone amongst the 4 million people of the State of Jammu and Kashmir. But can we find anyone among these 4 million people whom we can call impartial? After all, we are not logs of wood, we are not dolls. We must have an opinion one way or the other. The people of Kashmir are either in favour of Pakistan or in favour of India.

Therefore, Pakistan’s position comes down to this that the 4 million people of that State should have no hand in running the administration of their own country. Someone else must come in for that purpose. Is that fair ? Is that just ? Do the members of the Security Council wish to oust the people of Kashmir from running their own administration and their own country ? Then, for argument’s sake, let us suppose that the 4 million people of the State of Jammu and Kashmir agree to have nothing to do with the administration of their country; some one else must be brought into the country for this purpose. From where do the members of the Security Council propose that such a neutral individual may be secured? From India? No, from Pakistan? No, from anywhere in the world? No, frankly speaking, even if the Security Council were to request Almighty God to administer the State of Jammu and Kashmir during this interim period, I do not feel that He could act impartially. After all, one must have sympathy either for this side or that side.

If elections were to be held in the United Kingdom sometime after tomorrow with the Labour Government in power, would anyone say to Mr Attlee: “The elections are now going on. Because you happen to belong to Labour Party, your sympathies will be in favour of the Labour vote. Therefore, you had better clear out. We must have a neutral man as Prime Minister until our elections are finished?

However, we have been told that Sheikh Abdullah must walk out because he has declared his point of view in favour of India. Therefore, he cannot be impartial. We must have some impartial man we must have some neutral man.

As I have submitted to the members of the Security Council, Sheikh Abdullah happens to be there because the people wish it. As long as the people wish it, I shall be there. There is no power on earth which can displace me from the position which I have there. As long as the people are behind me, I will remain there.

We have declared once for all, that there shall be freedom of voting and for that purpose we have said, “Let anyone come in, we have no objection. Let the Commission of the Security Council on India come into our State and advise us how we should take a vote, how we should organize it, and how it can be completely impartial. We have no objection.” My Government is ready to satisfy, to the last comma, the impartiality of the vote.

But to have an impartial vote is one thing; to have a say in the administration of the State is a different thing entirely. After all, with what are we concerned? We are concerned only with the fact that no influence shall be exercised over the voters, either in one way or in another. The people shall be free to vote according to their own interests. We are ready to accede to that.

It is then said: “You cannot have freedom of voting as long as the Indian Army remains in the State of Jammu and Kashmir.” It is probably very difficult for me to draw a full picture of what is going on in that country. There is absolute chaos in certain parts of the country, fighting is going on and thousands of tribesmen are there ready to take advantage of any weakness on the part of the State of Jammu and Kashmir.

Once we ask the Indian Army, which is the only protective force in Kashmir against these marauders, to clear out, we leave the country open to chaos. After all, one who has suffered for the last seventeen years, in attempting to secure the freedom and liberation of his own country, would not like an outside army to come in and to remain in the country.

However, what is the present situation? If I ask the Indian Army to clear out, how am I going to protect the people from the looting, arson, murder and abduction with which they have been faced all these long months? What is the alternative? here need be no fear since the Indian Army is there, that this army will interfere in the exercise of a free vote. After all, a Commission of the Security Council will be there in order to watch. The Indian Army does not have to go into every village. It will be stationed at certain strategic points, so that in the event of danger from any border, the Army will be there to protect that border. The army is there to curb disorders anywhere in the State; that is all. The army will not be in each and every village in order to watch each and every vote.

It is then said: “Can we not have a joint control ? Can we not have the armies of Pakistan and India inside the State in order to control the situation ?” This is an unusual idea. What Pakistan could not achieve through ordinary means, Pakistan wishes to achieve by entering through the back door, so that it may have its armies inside the State and then start the fight. That is not possible. After all, we have been discussing the situation in Kashmir. I should say that we have been playing the drama of Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. The people of Kashmir are vitally interested in this question. Four million people in Kashmir are keenly interested in this entire affair. I have sympathies with the people of Poonch and Mirpur. The representative of Pakistan will probably concede that I have suffered greatly for the people of Poonch as well as for the people of Mirpur. There is no difference on this part of international democratisation of the administration between me, my party and the people of Poonch. We are one, we want our own liberty, we want our own freedom, we do not want autocratic rule. We desire that the 4 million people in Jammu and Kashmir—Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims— shall have the right to change their destiny, to control their country, and to administer it as best as they can. On that point there is absolutely no difference.

However, it is not a question of internal liberation. The Security Council should not confine the issue. The question is not that we want internal freedom, the question is not how the Maharaja got his State, or whether or not he is sovereign. These points are not before the Security Council. Whether Kashmir has lawfully acceded to India—complaints on that score have been brought before the Security Council on behalf of Pakistan—is not the point at issue. If that were the point at issue, then we should discuss that subject. We should prove before the Security Council that Kashmir and the people of Kashmir have lawfully and constitutionally acceded to the Dominion of India and Pakistan has no right to question that accession. However, that is not the discussion before the Security Council.

Indian and Kashmiri forces are ready to deal with tribesmen, to come to an understanding with the people of Kashmir and to establish ademocratic form of government inside the State. We shall do all that. We do not want Pakistan to lend us support to suppress an internal revolt or to drive out the tribesmen. We do not seek any support from Pakistan in that connection. Since Pakistan is a neighbouring country, we desire to remain on the friendliest possible terms with this sister Dominion. But we do ask that Pakistan shall have no hand, directly or indirectly, in this turmoil in Kashmir. The Government of Pakistan has said: “We have no hand in this turmoil.” The only course left to the Security Council is to send out the commission and to see whether or not Pakistan has any hand in this turmoil. If Pakistan has had any hand in this turmoil, then the Government of Pakistan should be asked to desist from such activity. If Pakistan has had no hand in this turmoil, then that can be proved.

This issue has been clouded by very many other issues and interests. I suggested at informal talks that according to my understanding there are two points at issue, first, how to have this neutral impartial administration; second, whether or not the Indian Army shall remain. It is not at all disputed that we must have a plebiscite and that the accession must be ratified by the people of Kashmir, freely and without any pressure on this or that side. That much is conceded, there is no dispute about that. The dispute arises when it is suggested that in order to have the free vote, the administration must be changed. To that suggestion we say, “No.”

I do not know what course future events will take. However, I may assure the Security Council that, if I am asked to conduct the administration of this State, it will be my duty to make the administration absolutely impartial. It will be my duty to request my brothers, who are in a different camp at this time, to come to lend me support. After all, they are my own kith and kin. We suffered together, we have no quarrel with them. I shall tell them: “Come on; it is my country; it is your country. I have been asked to administer the State. Are you prepared to lend me support? It is for me to make the administration successful; it is for me to make the administration look impartial.” It is not for Pakistan to say “No, we must have an impartial administration.” I refuse to accept Pakistan as a party in the affairs of the Jammu and Kashmir State. I refuse this point blank. Pakistan has no right to say that we must do this and we must do that. We have seen enough of Pakistan. The people of Kashmir have seen enough. Muzaffarabad and Baramulla and hundred of villages in Jammu and Kashmir depict the story of Pakistan to the people of Jammu and Kashmir. We want to have no more of this.

In concluding, I again request that in order to settle this issue of Kashmir, the Security Council should not confuse the point in dispute. The Security Council should not allow various other extraneous matters to be introduced. Very many extraneous matters have been introduced. The representative of Pakistan gave us the history of the Jammu and Kashmir State. He read to us some letters from Viceroys of India, asking the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir to behave, giving the Maharaja good advice, et cetera. However, we cannot forget that these States are the creation of British imperialism in India who has supported these states and this misrule for these 150 years? It is not going to convince me or the world for the representative of Pakistan to say: “These events have happened and these letters were written.” We know how the Princes have acted, how the states were brought into existence, and how the Princes were supported. This was all a game in the British imperialist policy. But this legacy has now fallen upon us. We are not here to discuss whether or not the Maharaja lawfully became the ruler of the State, whether or not there is moral administration in this State, whether or not the Maharaja is sovereign and whether or not Kashmir has legally acceded to India. These issues are not before the Security Council. The only issue before the Security Council is that Pakistan must observe its international obligations and must not support any outside raiders.

Pakistan should not encourage inside revolt. Pakistan has denied that it has in order to verify the statements made by the representatives of India and Pakistan, the Security Council must send a commission to the spot to see whether the complaint brought before the Security Council is valid or invalid. If the Security Council finds that the complaint brought before it by India is valid, then Pakistan should be asked to desist or India should be permitted to use its means to carry out the decision of the Security Council.

As far as I can speak on behalf of India, India does not want the help of the armies of Pakistan. What it wants from Pakistan is that Pakistan should not supply bases to the raiders on Pakistan territory across the border from Jammu and Kashmir State. All along the border on Pakistan territory, there are huge concentrations of these tribesmen who are Pakistani nationals. We request Pakistan not to allow its territory to be used by these raiders.

Pakistan should not provide ammunition, arms, direction and control to these tribesmen. It should stop the passage of these tribesmen through its territory. Pakistan should not supply arms and ammunition to the people who are fighting within the State because all these matters fall under an international obligation. Therefore, Pakistan should desist from that practice. That is all. We do not want any armed help from Pakistan. If Pakistan does what we have requested, the Indian Army, I am quite sure, will be capable of driving out the raiders and tribesmen. If Pakistan does not meddle in our affairs, we will be capable of solving all our own internal disputes with the Maharaja of Kashmir. However, as long as this unofficial war continues, it is very difficult for us to do any thing. Our hands are tied.

What is happening? The raiders are concentrated just across the border. They enter our State in large number—four or five thousand strong. They raid four or five villages, burn them, abduct women and loot property. When our army tries to capture them, they go across the border, and can not fire a single shot across the border, because if it does, there is the immediate danger of a greater conflagration. So our hands are tied.

We do not want to create this difficult situation without informing the Security Council and we felt honour-bound to inform it of the actual position. The Indian Army could easily have followed the raiders across the border and could have attacked the bases, which were all in Pakistan territory, but it desisted. We thought it would be better to inform the Security Council of the situation.

However, I did not have the slightest idea that when the case came before the Security Council, the representative of Pakistan would so boldly deny that Pakistan supplied all this help. Everybody knows that Pakistan is aiding these raiders and tribesmen and the people who are fighting with the State. However, Pakistan chose boldly to deny all these charges.

What is left for me to do? After all, I do not have any magic lamp so that I might bring the entire picture of Jammu and Kashmir State, along with the borders of Pakistan, before the eyes of the members of the Security Council so that they might see who is fighting and who is not fighting. Therefore, somebody must go to the spot. Then at that time it would be for us to prove that the charges we have brought before the Security Council are correct to the last word. That is the only help we want and no other help.”

Thirdly, though by no means lastly, may be placed the 14 August 1951 Memorandum of prominent Muslims led by Dr Zakir Hussain to the UN Representative Dr. Frank P. Graham:

“It is a remarkable fact that, while the Security Council and its various agencies have devoted so much time to the study of the Kashmir dispute and made various suggestions for its resolution, none of them has tried to ascertain the views of the Indian Muslims nor the possible effect of any hasty step in Kashmir, however well-intentioned, on the interests and well- being of the Indian Muslims. We are convinced that no lasting solution for the problem can be found unless the position of Muslims in Indian society is clearly understood.

Supporters of the idea of Pakistan, before this subcontinent was partitioned, discouraged any attempt to define Pakistan clearly and did little to anticipate the conflicting problems which were bound to arise as a result of the advocacy of the two-nation theory. The concept of Pakistan, therefore, became an emotional slogan with little rational content. It never occurred to the Muslim League or its leaders that if a minority was not prepared to live with a majority on the sub- continent, how could the majority be expected t o tolerate the minority.

It is, therefore, small wonder that the result of partition has been disastrous to Muslims. In undivided India, their strength lay about 100 million. Partition split up the Muslim people, confining them to the three isolated regions. Thus, Muslims number 25 million in Western Pakistan, 35 million to 40 million in India, and the rest in Eastern Pakistan. A single undivided community has been broken into three fragments, each faced with its own problems.

Pakistan was not created on a religious basis. If it had been, our fate as well as the fate of other minorities would have been settled at that time. Nor would the division of the sub- continent for reasons of religion have left large minorities in India or Pakistan.

This merely illustrates what we have said above, that the concept of Pakistan was vague, obscure, and never clearly defined, nor its likely consequences foreseen by the Muslim League, even when some of these should have been obvious.

When the partition took place, Muslims in India were left in the lurch by the Muslim League and its leaders. Most of them departed to Pakistan and a few who stayed behind stayed long enough to wind up their affairs and dispose of their property. Those who went over to Pakistan left a large number of relations and friends behind.

Having brought about a division of the country, Pakistan leaders proclaimed that they would convert Pakistan into a land where people would live a life according to the tenets of Islam. This created nervousness and alarm among the minorities living in Pakistan. Not satisfied with this, Pakistan went further and announced again and again their determination to protect and safeguard the interests of Muslims in India. This naturally aroused suspicion amongst the Hindus against us and our loyalty to India was questioned.

Pakistan had made our position weaker by driving out Hindus from Western Pakistan in utter disregard of the consequences of such a policy to us and our welfare. A similar process is in question in Eastern Pakistan from which Hindus are coming over to India in a large and large number.

If the Hindus are not welcome in Pakistan, how can we, in all fairness, expect Muslims to be welcomed in India ? Such a policy must inevitably, as the past has already shown, result in the uprooting of Muslims in this country and their migration to Pakistan where, as it became clear last year, they are no longer welcome, lest their influx should destroy Pakistan’s economy. Neither some of the Muslims who did migrate to Pakistan after partition, and following the widespread bloodshed and conflict on both sides of the Indo-Pakistan border in the north- west, have been able to find a happy asylum in what they had been told would be their homeland. Consequently some of them have had to return to India, e.g. Meos who are now being rehabilitated in their former areas.

If we are living honourably in India today, it is certainly not due to Pakistan which, if anything, has by her policy and action weakened our position. The credit goes to the broadminded leadership of India, to Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, to the traditions of tolerance in this country and to the Constitution which ensures equal rights to all citizens of India, irrespective of their religion caste, creed, colour or sex.

We, therefore, feel that, tragically as Muslims were misled by the Muslim League and subsequently by Pakistan and the unnecessary suffering which we and our Hindu brethren have to go through in Pakistan and in India since partition, we must be given an opportunity to settle down to a life of tolerance and understanding to the mutual benefit of Hindus and Muslims in our country – if only Pakistan would let us do it. To us it is a matter of no small consequence.

Despite continuous provocations, first from the Muslim League and since then from Pakistan, the Hindu majority in India has not thrown us or members of other minorities out of Civil Services, Armed Forces, the judiciary, trade, commerce, business and industry. There are Muslim Ministers in the Union and State cabinets, Muslim Governors, Muslim Ambassadors, representing India in foreign countries, fully enjoying the confidence of the Indian nation, Muslim members in Parliament and state legislatures, Muslim judges serving on the Supreme Court and High Courts, high-ranking officers in the Armed Forces and the Civil services, including the police.

Muslims have large landed estates, run big business and commercial houses in various parts of the country, notably in Bombay and Calcutta, have their shares in industrial production and enterprise in export and import trade. Our famous sacred shrines and places of cultural interest are mostly in India.

Not that our lot is certainly happy. We wish some of the state Governments showed a little greater sympathy to us in the field of education and employment. Nevertheless, we feel we have an honourable place in India. Under the law of the land, our religious and cultural life is protected and we shall share in the opportunities open to all citizens to ensure progress for the people of this country.

It is, therefore, clear that our interest and welfare do not coincide with Pakistan’s conception of the welfare and interests of Muslims in Pakistan.

This is clear from Pakistan’s attitude towards Kashmir. Pakistan claims Kashmir, first, on the ground of the majority of the State’s people being Muslims and, secondly, on the ground, of the state being essential to its economy and defence. To achieve its objective it has been threatening to launch “Jihad” against Kashmir in India. It is a strange commentary on political beliefs that the same Muslims of Pakistan who like the Muslims of Kashmir to join them invaded the state, in October 1947, killing and plundering Muslims in the state and dishonouring Muslim women, all in the interest of what they described as the liberation of Muslims of the State. In its oft-proclaimed anxiety to rescue the 3 million Muslims from what it describes as the tyranny of a handful of Hindus in the State, Pakistan evidently is prepared to sacrifice the interests of 40 million Muslims in India – a strange exhibition of concern for the welfare of fellow- Muslims. Our misguided brothers in Pakistan do not realise that if Muslims in Pakistan can wage a war against Hindus in Kashmir why should not Hindus, sooner or later, retaliate against Muslims in India.

Does Pakistan seriously think that it could give us any help if such an emergency arose or that we would deserve any help thanks to its own follies ? It is incapable of providing room and livelihood to the 40 million Muslims of India, should they migrate to Pakistan. Yet its policy and action, if not changed soon, may well produce the result which it dreads.

We are convinced that India will never attack our interests. First of all, it would be contrary to the spirit animating the political movement in this country. Secondly, it would be opposed to the Constitution and to the sincere leadership of the Prime Minister. Thirdly, India by committing such a folly would be playing straight into the hands of Pakistan.

We wish we were equally convinced of the soundness of Pakistan’s policy. So completely oblivious is it of our present problems and of our future that it is willing to sell us into slavery – if only it can secure Kashmir.

It ignores the fact that Muslims in Kashmir may also have a point of view of their own, that there is a democratic movement with a democratic leadership in the State, both inspired by the progress of a broad minded, secular, democratic movement in India and both naturally being in sympathy with India. Otherwise, the Muslim raiders should have been welcomed with open arms by the Muslims of the State when the invasion took place in 1947.

Persistent propaganda about “Jihad” is intended, among other things, to inflame religious passions in this country. For it would, of course, be in Pakistan’s interests to promote communal rioting in India to show to Kashmiri Muslims how they can find security only in Pakistan. Such a policy, however, can only bring untold misery and suffering to India and Pakistan generally and to Indian Muslims particularly. Pakistan never tires of asserting that it is determined to protect the interests of Muslims in Kashmir and India. Why does not Pakistan express the same concern for Pathans who are fighting for Pakhtoonistan, an independent homeland of their own ? The freedom-loving Pathans under the leadership of Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan and Dr. Khan Sahib, both nurtured in the traditions of democratic tolerance of the Indian National Congress, are being subjected to political repression of the worst possible kind by their Muslim brethren in power in Pakistan and in the NWFP. Contradictory as Pakistan’s policy generally is, it is no surprise to us that while it insists on a fair and impartial plebiscite in Kashmir, it denies a fair and impartial plebiscite to Pathans.

Pakistan’s policy in general and her attitude towards Kashmir is particular thus tend to create conditions in this country which in the long run can only bring to us Muslims widespread suffering and destruction. Its policy prevents us from settling down, from being honourable citizens of a State, free from suspicion of our fellow-countrymen and adapting ourselves to changing conditions to promote the interests and welfare of India. Its sabre-rattling interferes with its own economy and ours. It expects us to be loyal to it despite its impotence to give us any protection, believing at the same time that we can still claim all the rights of citizenship in a secular democracy.

In the event of a war, it is extremely doubtful whether it will be able to protect the Muslims of East Bengal who are completely cut off from Western Pakistan. Are the Muslims of India and Eastern Pakistan to sacrifice themselves completely to enable the 25 million Muslims in Western Pakistan to embark upon mad, self-destructive adventures?

We should, therefore, like to impress upon you with all the emphasis at our command that Pakistan’s policy towards Kashmir is fraught with the gravest peril to the 40 million Muslims of India. If the Security Council is really interested in peace, human brotherhood and international understanding, it should heed this warning while there is still time.

Dr. Zakir Hussain (Vice Chancellor Aligarh University); Sir Sultan Ahmed (Former Member of Governor General’s Executive Council); Sir Mohd. Ahmed Syed Khan(Nawab of Chhatari, former acting Governor of United Provinces and Prime Minister of Hyderabad); Sir Mohd. Usman (Former member of Governor General’s Executive council and acting Governor of Madras); Sir Iqbal Ahmed (Former Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court); Sir Fazal Rahimtoola (Former Sheriff of Bombay); Maulana Hafz-ur-Rehman M.P.; Col. B.H. Zaidi M.P.; Nawab Zain Yar Jung (Minister Gcvernment of Hyderabad); A.K. Kawaja (Former President of Muslim Majlis); T.M. Zarif (General Secretary West Bengal Bohra Community)”.

Such have been the most eminent voices of India’s Muslims in times past. Sadly, they have no equivalent today when India’s Muslims need them with greater urgency. (Bollywood or cricketing celebrities hardly substitute!) This fault in the intellectual history of the modern subcontinent has been a principal factor causing the misapprehensions and distortions of Pakistan’s and J&K’s political reality to continue worldwide.

Posted in Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Arabs, Asia and the West, Balochistan, Bangladesh, BBC, Britain in India, Britain's immigrant communities, Dr Zakir Hussain, Hindus and Muslims, India's History, India's independence, India's Land, India's Muslims, India's Nationalism, India's Partition, India's Politics, India's Polity, India-Pakistan cooperation against terrorism, India-Pakistan peace process, International Law, International politics, Iqbal, Islam, Israel, Jammu & Kashmir, Jews for and against Zionism, MA Jinnah, Maulana Azad, Mumbai massacres, Muslim and Hindu communalism, Pakistan in international law, Pakistan's history, Pakistan's politics, Pakistan's terrorist masterminds, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistani expansionism, Palestine, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Secular governance, Secularism in practice, Sheikh Abdullah, US Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Espionage, USA, United States polity, War, World History, Zionism. 4 Comments »

Habeas Corpus: a captured terrorist mass-murderer tells a magistrate he is not being mistreated by Indian police

December 3, 2008 — drsubrotoroy

A youth who had been a petty thief in Multan, was induced by Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds to train to become a mass murderer with an assault rifle and grenades in the Mumbai massacres last week. He was shot and arrested by India’s police and is now in custody. He has already been produced before a magistrate who asked him if he was being mistreated, to which he said he was not. This redounds to India’s credit in view of the vast (and yes, probably racist) mistreatment over years of those held e.g. at Guantanamo Bay. (The argument that the US Constitution and the laws associated with habeas corpus did not apply to the US Government because Guantanamo Bay was not American territory, was always specious.)

Posted in Habeas Corpus for terrorist suspects, India's Judiciary, India's Jurisprudence, India's Rule of Law, Law, Mumbai massacres, Mumbai terrorist Kasab, Mumbai's Police, Mumbai/Bombay, Natural Justice, Pakistan's terrorist masterminds, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Racism, Secular governance, Secularism in practice, September 11 attacks, US Constitution, US Federal Law & Jurisprudence. Leave a Comment »

In international law, Pakistan has been the perpetrator, India the victim of aggression in Mumbai

November 30, 2008 — drsubrotoroy

In international law, the attacks on Mumbai would probably reveal Pakistan to have been the aggressor state, India the victim of aggression. It is standard law that a “master” is responsible for the misdeeds of his “servant”. E.g., “Where the relation of master and servant clearly exists, the employer is responsible for injury occasioned by the negligent conduct of the servant in carrying out his orders. And this rule is so extensive as to make the master liable for the careless, reckless and wanton conduct of his servant, provided it be within the scope of his employment”. President Zardari and Prime Minister Gillani may declare truthfully they had no prior knowledge of the attacks on Mumbai, that these were not in any way authorized by them or their Government. But it seems likely on the basis of current evidence that the young terrorists who attacked Mumbai were still in a “master-servant” relationship with elements of the Pakistani state and had been financed, trained, motivated and supplied by resources arising, directly or indirectly, from the Pakistani exchequer. Public moneys in Pakistan came to be used or misused to pay for aggression against India — in a quite similar pattern to the October 1947 attack on Kashmir, Ayub Khan’s 1965 “Operation Grand Slam”, and Pervez Musharraf’s 1999 attack on Kargil.

And to think that these youth who were made into becoming terroristic mass murderers were toddlers when the USSR withdrew from Afghanistan, in primary school when the 1993 WTC bombing happened and adolescents at the time of the 9/11 attacks.

Do President-elect Obama’s Pakistan specialists suppose Maulana Azad, Dr Zakir Hussain, Sheikh Abdullah were Pakistanis (or that Sheikh Mujib wanted to remain one)?

November 18, 2008 — drsubrotoroy

Once upon a time, half a century ago, the son of a Pakistani president married the daughter of an American ambassador to Pakistan and moved to Washington. That might be as good a time as any from which to mark the start of the grip Pakistan’s military and political/bureaucratic elite have managed to have on the process of defining official American policy towards Pakistan and indeed the subcontinent as a whole.

Four young and doubtless well-meaning Democratic Party “think tank” analysts have now produced a document Partnership for Progress: Advancing a New Strategy for Prosperity and Stability in Pakistan and the Region (Center for American Progress November 2008) that is the latest edition emerging out of that process.

It is hard to find the most simplistic of the statements contained in the document. My runner-up candidate would be the recommendations that what should happen in Pakistan now is

“Dismantle militant groups and reduce regional tensions;
Bolster civilian governance;
Strengthen Pakistan’s economy and advance development”.

Bravo! What else to say?

My winning candidate for naiveté though must be this on page 16:

“Pakistan… sees itself as the political home for the subcontinent’s Muslim population and believes India’s continued control over the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley and denial of a plebiscite for its inhabitants represent a lingering desire on India’s part to undo the legacy of partition, which divided the British Indian Empire into India and Pakistan.”

Now someone really ought to explain to these soon-to-be-Obama-Administration-Pakistan-specialists that, once upon a time, there were men named Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Dr Zakir Hussain and Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and many others like them (let aside Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan) who were all not merely devout Muslims but also leaders who had no wish to have any truck with any idea of a “Pakistan”. And furthermore, that some years later there came to be another man named Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and many others like him, who were Pakistanis but who no longer wished to remain so.

How is it possible for four young scholars from places like the Fletcher School to not know this and yet pretend to expertise on Pakistan or the subcontinent? Pakistanis and Indians and Bangladeshis who actually live in Pakistan and India and Bangladesh all know this from mother’s knee. But the powerful Potomac/CFR/Houston etc Pakistan lobby which has heavily influenced if not controlled the discussion of America’s Pakistan-India policy-thinking has hidden away such inconvenient facts, and may have thus misled our young authors entering these woods for the first time. The inevitable result of such repression has been the set of neuroses and psychoses that have beset the US-Pakistan relationship for decades on end and seem likely to continue now under President Obama.

(As for official New Delhi, its own infirmities, like allowing organized business lobbies to define and control India’s relationship with the United States, as well as its delusions of grandeur, causes it too to fail History 101 miserably, which explains the shallow depths that Indian diplomatic discussion manages to reach on the subject.)

What the Center for American Progress has to say expectedly contains contradictions that have been long seen before. For example, the authors are unable to reconcile their own explicit statements (A) and (B), revealing what a clinical psychologist might follow Gregory Bateson to identify as a classic “double-bind” leading to schizophrenia in the Pakistan-US relationship:

(A) “The United States should continue supporting and working with the Pakistani military despite strains in the relationship. The stakes are too high to walk away from Pakistan’s military establishment. Not only does most of the materiel for the US war effort in Afghanistan go through Pakistan, but the ISI is almost the exclusive source of information about international terrorist attacks perpetrated by Al Qaeda and its affiliates in Pakistan.”

(B) “Pakistan’s powerful military establishment has launched four outright coups d’etat in the country’s 60-year history. And through its control of the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or ISI, Pakistan’s premiere intelligence service, the military continues to carry out subtler manipulations of the political system during the periods when it has not held power directly…. The military establishment also has expanded far beyond its national security portfolio, entrenching itself in the Pakistani economy…. .The United States shares some of the blame for imbalance between military and civilian institutions in Pakistan. During the 1960s, 1980s, and since 9/11, the Pakistan military has been richly rewarded by the United States based on its status as a front-line state in the Cold War and then in the war against extremist terrorist networks. The United States has created perverse incentives by richly rewarding the Pakistani military in its promotion of unstable and insecure geopolitical situations on the other side of its borders, and then withdrawing our support if peace and stability return. The Pakistan military, meanwhile, uses the threat of India and the dispute over the Kashmir region to legitimize its leading role in Pakistan’s domestic politics and budget…. Ties between the Pakistani security establishment (or at a minimum individuals within it) and specific militant groups have not been severed. The militants that now form the core of the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Army have long-standing connections and shared interests….”

What may be recommended by way of therapy?

For starters, a book created under immense adversity at an American university almost 20 years ago: Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s, Edited and with an Introduction by one William E James and one Subroto Roy. (Yes, I too once was as young as these authors are now but we We may have produced a more substantial piece of work.) A prominent Pakistani author in the book thanked me for creating it because, he said, it was the first time Pakistan had been treated seriously at a Western university, not merely seen as a source of real-estate or manpower for Anglo-American interests.

Besides the book, I would, most immodestly, recommend any fraction of my subsequent publications in the field, listed alphabetically as below and all most easily available at this site.

America’s Pakistan-India Policy
History of Jammu & Kashmir
India and Her Neighbours
India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh Merchandise Exports
Iqbal & Jinnah vs Rehmat Ali in Pakistan’s Creation
Is Balochistan Doomed?
Justice & Afzal
Lal Masjid ≠ Golden Temple
Law, Justice and J&K
On Hindus and Muslims
Pakistan’s Allies
Pakistan’s Kashmir obsession
Racism New and Old
Saving Pakistan
Separation of Powers: India, the USA, Pakistan
Solving Kashmir: On an Application of Reason
The Greatest Pashtun: Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan
Two cheers for Pakistan
Understanding Pakistan
What To Tell Musharraf

Etc

https://independentindian.com/2011/10/13/my-seventy-one-notes-at-facebook-etc-on-kashmir-pakistan-and-of-course-india-listed-thanks-to-jd/

In such matters, naiveté is too expensive a luxury to indulge in.

Subroto Roy

Postscript: I had erroneously (and patronisingly) brushed all four authors as “young”; that has now been corrected; I hope it will not distract from the substance of the critique.

Posted in Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Afghanistan, American academia, Asia and the West, Balochistan, Bangladesh, Barack Obama, Britain in India, Democracy, Diplomacy, Double bind, Dr Zakir Hussain, Government of India, Gregory Bateson, Imperialism, India's Bangladesh liberation war, India's secularism, India-Pakistan peace process, India-United States business, India-USA interests, International diplomacy, International Law, International politics, Jammu & Kashmir, Maulana Azad, Mujibur Rahman, Obama Administration, Pakistan's history, Pakistan's nuclear weapons, Pakistan's politics, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Psychology, Schizophrenia in international relations, Secular governance, September 11 attacks, Sheikh Abdullah, US Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Espionage, US Military Doctrine, US Pakistan policy. Leave a Comment »

Pre-Partition Indian Secularism Case-Study: Fuzlul Huq and Manindranath Roy

November 16, 2008 — drsubrotoroy

The 1940 Lahore Resolution of the Muslim League did not mention the word “Pakistan” but is considered its political blueprint. MA Jinnah’s political support lay among the Muslim elite in Muslim-minority areas of India — he needed a show of support from the Muslim-majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal too, and indeed Sikandar Hyat Khan and AK Fuzlul Huq came to draft and present the Lahore Resolution.

Fuzlul Huq was Prime Minister of undivided Bengal from 1937-1943. On 11 May 1942, he led the bridegroom’s procession when my father went to wed my mother. Here is Fuzlul Huq entering the car to do so, with my grandfather Manindranath Roy helping him into the car. My mother’s family were surprised; they were Bengali Brahmins from Jamshedpur and did not quite know what to make of all this. My mother, aged 16 at the time, remembers she was non-plussed to find Fuzlul Huq ‘s bulky frame seated for some reason between her and her new husband in the car on the return journey too!

Fuzlul Huq, having been a young colleague of Surendranath Roy in the Bengal Legislative Council, was a family friend and treated my grandfather, Manindranath Roy, with affection. (Manindranath was a Justice of the Peace, but unlike his father was not political.)

Fuzlul Huq would apparently make requests of my grandmother for delivered meals during political confabulations; my grandfather’s family had been forced to leave Behala as the family home had been requisitioned by the military to be a hospital during the war, and they lived instead in Ballygunge. My father recalls cycling from there with the requested food to the political confabulations in the middle of the wartime blackout (Japanese aeroplanes had apparently reached Calcutta on their bombing missions).

Here too is a note dated 9 August 1945 from Fuzlul Huq to my grandfather thanking him for food and sending his “best blessings” to my grandmother — a Muslim, one of the founders of Pakistan, sends his blessings to an orthodox Hindu Brahmin family and everyone remains completely cheerful and apolitical: such was normal Indian secularism in practice at the time. Partition between India and Pakistan and the ghastliness that accompanied it, and the hatred and bloodshed that has followed, were all quite beyond anyone’s imagination at the time.

Of a new New Delhi myth and the success of the University of Hawaii 1986-1992 Pakistan project (with 2015 Postscript)

November 15, 2008 — drsubrotoroy

A leading Indian commentator says in this morning’s paper (November 15 2008) about Manmohan Singh:

“His formulation on Kashmir (“I have no mandate to change borders, but we can make borders irrelevant”), became the obvious solution once he articulated it.”

Such may be how modern New Delhi’s myths and self-delusions get born — since in fact there is no evidence that Manmohan Singh or any of his acolytes had anything to do with originating the Pakistan-India peace process in recent decades, just as there has not been that Manmohan Singh or any of his acolytes had anything to do with originating the Congress Party’s new economic thinking in 1990-1991.

(Lest I be misunderstood I should add at the outset that I have the highest personal regard for Dr Singh, he has been in decades past a friend of my father’s, he at my father’s request consented to discuss economics with me in Paris in 1973 when I was a callow lad of 18, he himself has not claimed the originality that has been frequently mis-attributed to him by others for whatever reason, etc.)

The origins of the idea about India-Pakistan and J&K expressed by Manmohan Singh’s words are to be found in the last paragraph of the Introduction by the Editors of a book which arose from the University of Hawaii’s 1986-1992 Pakistan project, which read:

“Kashmir… must be demilitarised and unified by both countries sooner or later, and it must be done without force. There has been enough needless bloodshed on the subcontinent… Modern Pakistanis and Indians are free peoples who can voluntarily agree in their own interests to alter the terms set hurriedly by Attlee or Mountbatten in the Indian Independence Act 1947. Nobody but we ourselves keeps us prisoners of superficial definitions of who we are or might be. The subcontinent could evolve its political identity over a period of time on the pattern of Western Europe, with open borders and (common) tariffs to the outside world, with the free movement of people, capital, ideas and culture. Large armed forces could be reduced and transformed in a manner that would enhance the security of each nation. The real and peaceful economic revolution of the masses of the subcontinent would then be able to begin.”

The University of Hawaii’s Pakistan project, involving Pakistani and other scholars, including one Indian, led to the volume Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s published in Karachi, New Delhi and elsewhere. The book reached Nawaz Sharif and the Islamabad elite, including the most hawkish of Islamabad’s hawks, and Pervez Musharraf’s 2006 proposal on J&K, endorsed warmly by the US State Department, may have grown from that paragraph. The Editors of the book, as economists themselves, decried the waste of resources involved in the Pakistan-India confrontation, saying it had

“greatly impoverished the general budgets of both Pakistan and India. If it has benefited important sections of the political and military elites of both countries, it has done so only at the expense of the general welfare of the masses.”

Such words were impossibly bold in the late 1980s-early 1990s. However, as stated in a special editorial article “What to tell Musharraf” in The Statesman of December 16 2006, they seemed in recent years incomplete and rather naïve even to their author, who was myself, the only Indian in that project and the one who had conceived it. Most significantly, the position in international law in the context of historical facts had been wholly neglected. So had been the manifest nature of the Pakistani state (as it had become prior to the splendid 2008 elections).

The Hawaii project had involved top Pakistani economists, political scientists and other commentators but had deliberately chosen to keep the military and the religious clergy out of its chapters. And it was the military and religious clergy who in fact came to dominate Pakistan’s agenda in the 1990s, at least until the 9/11 attacks in America indirectly altered the political direction of the country.

The peaceful and mundane economic agenda outlined for Pakistan in the Hawaii project has come into its own by way of relevance ever since. A few weeks ago, the first trucks filled with fruit, woolens and many other goods traversed across the “Line of Control” in J&K for the first time in sixty years. The Pakistan project that James and I led at the University of Hawaii in the late 1980s may be now declared a success. Among other things, our book explained to Indians that there does exist a Pakistani point of view and perhaps explained to Pakistanis that there does exist an Indian point of view. That is something that had not existed before our book.

Postscript 18 Nov 2015: I have made clear at Twitter that I find the K.M. Kasuri book promoted and publicized in India by MS Aiyar, S Kulkarni, B Dutt and others in Delhi and Mumbai is mendacious where it is not merely self-serving. Its clear intent is to get India to accept the (false) ISI/Hurriyat narratives about 1947, Kashmir, Bangladesh, terrorism etc. Its purported ideas of demilitarisation and a borderless Kashmir are essentially lifted from my earlier 1980s work in America cited above — which I myself have rejected as naive since the Pakistani aggression in Kargil in 1999. More anon.

Posted in Academic economics, Academic research, American academia, Asia and the West, Britain in India, British foreign policy, British history, British imperialism, Cold War, Congress Party, Diplomacy, Government of India, Government of Pakistan, India in international law, India's 1991 Economic Reform, India's Economy, India's History, India's independence, India's Polity, India-Pakistan peace process, Jammu & Kashmir, Jammu & Kashmir in international law, Land and political economy, Manmohan Singh, Pakistan in international law, Pakistan's economy, Pakistan's history, Pakistan's politics, Pakistan's terrorist masterminds, Pakistan's terrorist training institutes, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistani expansionism, Politics, September 11 attacks, University of Hawaii, USA, United States, World History. 3 Comments »

Indira Gandhi in Paris, 1971

October 18, 2008 — drsubrotoroy

This is a photograph of Indira Gandhi emerging with Andre Malraux for a press-conference at the Embassy of India in Paris in the Autumn of 1971. (My father, pictured in the centre, had been posted to the Embassy just a few weeks earlier in anticipation of the visit. [My father recalls her asking him during or between one of these meetings, “Mr Roy, I am very hungry, can you please get me something to eat?”, and he went and grabbed a small hotel plate full of peanuts which she devoured…]) Indira was making the serious diplomatic effort that she did in world capitals to avert war with West Pakistan over its atrocities in East Pakistan. War could not be averted and within a few weeks, in December 1971, Bangladesh was born.

“Indira Gandhi’s one and paramount good deed as India’s leader and indeed as a world leader of her time was to have fought a war that was so rare in international law for having been unambiguously just. And she fought it flawlessly. The cause had been thrust upon her by an evil enemy’s behaviour against his own people, an enemy supported by the world’s strongest military power with pretensions to global leadership. Victims of the enemy’s wickedness were scores of millions of utterly defenceless, penniless human beings. Indira Gandhi did everything right. She practised patient but firm diplomacy on the world’s stage to avert war if it was at all possible to do. She chose her military generals well and took their professional judgement seriously as to when to go to war and how to win it. Finally, in victory she was magnanimous to the enemy that had been defeated. Children’s history-books in India should remember her as the stateswoman who freed a fraternal nation from tyranny, at great expense to our own people. As a war-leader, Indira Gandhi displayed extraordinary bravery, courage and good sense.” (From my review article of Inder Malhotra’s Indira Gandhi, first published in The Statesman May 7 2006 and republished elsewhere here under “Revisionist Flattery”.)

“She had indeed fought that rarest of things in international law: the just war. Supported by the world’s strongest military, an evil enemy had made victims of his own people. Indira tried patiently on the international stage to avert war, but also chose her military generals well and took their professional judgement seriously as to when to fight if it was inevitable and how to win. Finally she was magnanimous (to a fault) towards the enemy ~ who was not some stranger to us but our own estranged brother and cousin. It seemed to be her and independent India’s finest hour. A fevered nation was thus ready to forgive and forget her catastrophic misdeeds until that time….” (From “Unhealthy Delhi” first published in The Statesman June 11 2007, republished elsewhere here).

Posted in Andre Malraux, Asia and the West, Bangladesh, France, India's Bangladesh liberation war, India's Diplomacy, India's Foreign Policy, India's Foreign Service, India's Polity, Indira Gandhi, Pakistan's history, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Paris, Richard Nixon, US China policy, US Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Espionage, War, World History. 3 Comments »

Govt of India: Please call in the BBC and ask them a question

September 27, 2008 — drsubrotoroy

The BBC has unilaterally decided that Jammu & Kashmir has nothing to do with India. On its 1530 Indian Standard Time broadcast of purported “World News” today, it unilaterally lopped off all of J&K from the map of the Republic of India (shown attached to mention of a Delhi bomb-blast). Usually, the BBC at least makes pathetic reference to something it has invented called “Indian-Administered Kashmir”.

There are senior BBC staff-members who are dual Pakistani/British nationals and who may be counted on to have been pushing such a line within the organisation, but lopping off all of J&K unilaterally may be a novelty. There are several “Indian-origin” staff-members too but perhaps they have renounced their Indian nationality, and apparently they have no ability to make any editorial protest.

Does the Government of India have the sense, and the guts, to call in the local BBC and ask them for an explanation about their insult of history? For that matter, what is the BBC’s formal position on the J&K problem? The same as that of the UK Government? What is that of the UK Government for that matter? Has it remained constant since Clement Attlee in October 1947?

BBC staff may like to refer to my articles “Solving Kashmir”, “Law, Justice and J&K”, “Pakistan’s Allies”, “History of Jammu & Kashmir”, etc for enlightenment.

Subroto Roy

Posted in Asia and the West, BBC, Britain, Britain in India, Government of India, India's Polity, Jammu & Kashmir, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, World History. 1 Comment »

Map of Kashmir to Sinkiang 1944

June 8, 2008 — drsubrotoroy

Map of Sinkiang, Tibet and Neighbours 1944

June 7, 2008 — drsubrotoroy

The same map is shown here in four parts:

Leadership vacuum

June 7, 2008 — drsubrotoroy

First published in The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, June 7 2008, http://www.thestatesman.net

Leadership vacuum

Time & Tide Wait For No One In Politics: India Trails Pakistan & Nepal!

Subroto Roy

The Karnataka legislative elections, as well as to lesser extent the Bengal panchayat polls, have revealed the vacuum that exists across the leadership of India’s national-level politics today.

To start with the BJP: had India been a normal democratic country on the Western pattern, Mr Arun Jaitley would have rocketed to the top of his party’s leadership by now. Besides being articulate in both Hindi and English and in his fifties (the age-group of most leaders in democratic countries), Mr Jaitley’s political acumen and organisational skills have been acknowledged even by his Congress adversaries after the Karnataka result. He himself has been frank and expansive about his formula for winning in Karnataka, which was simply to focus on real issues, especially state-specific ones, as well as to project a single credible leader. Had the BJP been a normal political party in a normal country, Mr Jaitley would have been given the task of leading it to victory in the next General Election and, assuming he won a Lok Sabha seat, to become its prime ministerial candidate.

Dadagiri

Instead, the BJP chooses to remain backward, backward, backward in the majority of its thought-processes and behaviour-patterns ~ from its kneejerk anti-Muslim psychology via its hyperinflationary macroeconomics and protectionist trade to its embrace of astrology and bovine exclusiveness. The idea of uniting behind someone relatively modern-minded in his politics like Mr Jaitley would be simply unacceptable not merely to people in the party within his own age-cohort (including the present party president) but even more so to those in age-cohorts decades older (including the party’s present prime ministerial candidate).

The opposition of the first group would arise from, in a word, jealousy. The opposition of the second group would arise from, in a word, dadagiri, i.e. the gerontocratic idea that merely because one is older, one is owed respect, authority and the plums of office in precedence over someone who is younger. Jealousy is a universal emotion not something specific to Indian politics, but dadagiri and the lack of meritocracy in our political culture is one reason India remains an abnormal polity in the modern democratic world.

LK Advani, driven by his unfulfilled personal ambition, will likely lead the BJP in the next election and do so with Mr Jaitley’s explicit support; Mr Advani may lead it into defeat or even to a victory in which he, given his age, is not as successful a PM as a Jaitley might have been. Yet our sclerotic political culture is such that neither Mr Advani nor Mr Rajnath Singh will simply stand aside now and hand over the reins to a newer, more competent and progressive leadership.

The same idea of dadagiri pervades what passes for the official “Left” in India as exemplified by the CPI-M. Mr Jyoti Basu has in a recent letter to Harkishen Singh Surjeet reminisced of their times together, and in doing so remarked that he remained the Chief Minister of West Bengal for as many years as he did because the Party had instructed him to do so, and when he handed over power to Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, he did so with the Party’s agreement.

Those who believe in India’s parliamentary democracy might have thought that what our system requires is for a Chief Minister to hold the confidence of the legislative assembly from the bottom up but clearly that is not so because what a CM or PM seems to need are Party instructions from the top down. When Mr Bhattacharjee was anointed the new CM, the present author had remarked to the then Editor of The Statesman that the transition seemed to take place even without a formal vote of confidence in the Assembly. Does anyone in fact recall the last confidence vote debated and passed in the West Bengal Assembly? Democratic legislatures the world over routinely begin their new sessions with a debate and vote of no confidence being brought by the Opposition against the Government-of-the-day.

Does that happen with us, purportedly the world’s largest democracy? Let aside State legislatures, even our Parliament sees only the rare vote of confidence, and LK Advani specifically as Leader of the Opposition seems to have introduced none. Oppositions that do not wish to properly oppose are of course complicit in a government’s misdeeds.

It is the dadagiri culture shared by the official Communists that has caused the generational handover of power from Mr Basu and Mr Surjeet to the JNU coterie of the Karats and Mr Sitaram Yechuri. The “Left” like the “Right” and everyone else in Indian politics, can only handle cherubic “known” faces at the top ~ genuine grassroots activists like Binayak Sen or Medha Patkar must languish in jail or starve on hunger-strike in seeking to represent the politically and economically powerless in India while the entrenched dadas of Indian politics continue with their dissimulation.

Puppet-masters

In case of the Congress, it is an even deeper aspect of the Indian joint family system than dadagiri that has dominated its political culture, namely, the question who is the karta of the family and, if the karta is or seems too young or naïve or inexperienced, who will act as Regent on the karta’s behalf? Indira Gandhi was successfully guided in international politics for several years by a coterie led by PN Haksar. Rajiv Gandhi was attempted to be guided by several different competing coteries of senior party dadas ~ one of whom first brought up the name of Manmohan Singh in Indian politics on 22 March 1991 in a challenge addressed to the present author on liberalisation plans that Rajiv had authorised.

It is almost true to say that Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have been in recent years played by puppet-masters of whose personal interests and intrigues they remain clueless. As has been said before by this author, the most salubrious thing Sonia Gandhi could have done for the Congress Party was to remain steadfast in her decision to stay out of Indian politics, and to have organised a fair, tough intra-party contest among its putative senior leaders based on differences of political and economic ideology.

Instead there is now paralysis in decision-making induced by Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh each mistakenly relying upon the other’s purported economic wisdom and political acumen. This confusion came to be most clearly illustrated in the choice of Head of State last year though that was something politically costless ~ the failures of which Karnataka is the current example may lead the Congress to lose what it, like other Indian parties, loves most of all, namely political power in Lutyens’ Delhi.

Indians should make no mistake: our good neighbours in Pakistan and Nepal (Muslim in Pakistan, Hindu and Buddhist and communist in Nepal) have been through healthy cathartic political experiences in recent months and years of a kind we have not. There continues to remain a dangerous intellectual vacuum around the throne of Delhi.

Serendipity and the China-Tibet-India border problem

June 6, 2008 — drsubrotoroy

Our carpenter completed some new book-cases and this led to our library being churned around a little. I found KPS Menon’s 1947 Delhi-Chungking: A Travel Diary about his 125-day 1944 journey from Delhi through Kashmir and Sinkiang/Xinjiang and “the 8th War Zone” to Chiang Kaishek’s capital at the time, Chung King/Chongqing. I had not read the book properly in decades. Looking at the contents, I found it said there were maps in the inside jacket — something I had never noticed before. Now I found the inner-jacket, put my hand in, and out came two Survey of India maps of Northern India (Kashmir, Baltistan), Sinkiang, China, Tibet….

I shall scan and upload them here within a day or so. It is clear that as of 1947 at least, China and Tibet were distinct on a map.

China’s force and diplomacy: The need for realism in India (2008)

May 31, 2008 — drsubrotoroy

China’s force & diplomacy: The need for realism In India

Subroto Roy

First published in The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, May 31, 2008

It is almost as large an error to overestimate Chinese military aims and capabilities as it has been to underestimate them. On 8 May 2008 at Tokyo’s Waseda University, China’s President Hu Jintao declared in a speech broadcast live “China has taken a defensive military policy and will not engage in any arms race. We will not become a military threat to any country and we will never assert hegemony or be expansionistic”. This was as clear and authoritative a reply as possible to the June 2005 statement in Singapore of the then American defence minister Donald Rumsfeld: “China appears to be expanding its missile forces, allowing them to reach targets in many areas of the world, not just the Pacific region, while also expanding its missile capacities here in the region. Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: why this growing investment?”

By 2006, Rumsfeld’s generals were saying China had “the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States,” and could “field disruptive military technologies that could over time offset traditional US military advantages absent US counter strategies”. The “sizing” of China’s military by American and other Western analysts became a parlour game ~ one with major business implications since the threat perceived or misperceived from China affects American decisions on the size of its own military.

As recently as 13 May 2008, the Wall Street Journal carried opinion that China’s military expansion demanded America have a 1000-ship navy not a 280-ship one, 40 aircraft-carriers not 11, 1000 F-22 aircraft not 183. Exaggerating China’s military and the threat posed by it to the world can mean big business for militaries opposing it!

Dominating India

Communist China’s physical, political and psychological domination of independent India since the 1950s has been achieved more by diplomacy, subterfuge and threat of force than actual military conflict. In its first phase, the policy was expressed clearly by the Chinese Ambassador to New Delhi on 16 May 1959 when he told India’s Foreign Secretary: “Our Indian friends, what is your mind? Will you agree to our thinking regarding the view that China can only concentrate its main attention eastward of China but not south-westward of China, nor is it necessary for it to do so?…. Friends, it seems to us that you, too, cannot have two fronts. Is it not so? If it is, here then lies the meeting point of our two sides. Will you please think it over?” (BN Mullick, Chinese Betrayal, p. 229).

At the time, Pakistan was in military alliances with the USA through CENTO and SEATO, and the Pakistan-China alliance was still years away. The Chinese had used subterfuge to construct their road linking Tibet and Sinkiang through Aksai Chin, ignoring India’s sovereignty, and were now suggesting they had no interest in fighting India because their major military interests were to their east as India’s were towards Pakistan.

The second phase was the short border conflict itself in 1962-63, which consolidated China’s grip on occupied territory in Aksai Chin while establishing its threat to the Brahmaputra Valley that has been perpetuated to this day. The third phase is represented by the 27 November 1974 conversation between Henry Kissinger and Deng Xiaoping, recently made publicly available:

“Deng : There’s something very peculiar about Indian policy. For example, that little kingdom Sikkim. They had pretty good control of Sikkim. Why did they annex it?
Kissinger : It is a good thing India is pacifist, I hate to think (of what they would do) if they weren’t. (Laughs).
Deng : Sikkim was entirely under the military control of India.
Kissinger : I haven’t understood Sikkim. It is incomprehensible.
Deng : After the military annexation, their military position was in no way strengthened.
Kissinger : They had troops there already.
Deng : And they haven’t increased their troops since. We published a statement about it. We just spoke for the cause of justice.
Kissinger : Is it true that you set up loudspeakers to broadcast to the Indian troops on the border? It makes them very tense. (Laughs)
Deng : We have done nothing new along the borders, and frankly we don’t fear that India will attack our borders. We don’t think they have the capability to attack our borders. There was some very queer talk, some said that the reason why the Chinese issued that statement about Sikkim was that the Chinese were afraid after Sikkim that India would complete the encirclement of China. Well, in the first place we never feel things like isolation and encirclement can ever matter very much with us. And particularly with India, it is not possible that India can do any encirclement of China. The most they can do is enter Chinese territory as far as the Autonomous Republic of Tibet, Lhasa. And Lhasa can be of no strategic importance to India. The particular characteristic of Lhasa is that it has no air-because the altitude is more than 3,000 metres.
Kissinger : It’s a very dangerous area for drinking mao tai (a Chinese hard liquor).
Deng : Frankly, if Indian troops were able to reach Lhasa, we wouldn’t be able to supply them enough air! (Laughter)
Kissinger : I don’t think their intention is with respect to Tibet, their immediate intention is Nepal.
Deng : That is correct. They have been recently exercising pressure on Nepal, refusing to supply them oil. It is the dream of Nehru, inherited by his daughter, to have the whole subcontinent in their pocket.
Kissinger : And to have buffer zones around their border…. It is like British policy in the 19th Century. They always wanted Tibet demilitarized.
Deng : I believe even the British at that time didn’t make a good estimate of whether there was enough air. (Laughter)
Kissinger : I think an Indian attack on China would be a very serious matter that cannot be explained in terms of local conditions, but only in terms of a broader objective….”

Our self-delusion

The attitude that is revealed speaks for itself, and has been essentially continued by Deng’s successors in the next decades, especially Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. It is because China does not perceive a military threat from India that it has agreed to military exercises with us ~ exercises which, if anything, reinforce their psychological dominance by helping to spook our military’s morale. During this third phase also, China went about systematically creating a major military threat to India in its support of Pakistan’s military, exploiting our subcontinent’s communal conflicts fully to its own strategic advantage.

China has been engaged for more than a decade now in a massive exercise of modernisation of its armed forces, improving productivity, technology, organisation and discipline while trying to cut corruption. It has a right to do so, and such modernisation does not in and of itself signal aggressive intent. The last aggressive war China fought was almost 30 years ago against Vietnam. It is possible that what simply explains the military modernisation (besides conflict with Taiwan) is China’s awful history of being exploited by foreign powers over the centuries.

Indian analysts have expressed concern about nuclear submarines based in Hainan; but where else would China put them? We delude ourselves if we think we are the guardians of the Straits of Malacca. We may do better being concerned to try to modernise, improve productivity and reduce corruption in our own forces, as well as integrate them better with national goals as China has done instead of continuing to maintain them in a rather old-fashioned colonial / imperial manner.

Two cheers for Pakistan!

April 7, 2008 — drsubrotoroy

Two cheers for Pakistan!

by

Subroto Roy

First published in The Statesman

Editorial Page Special Article, April 7, 2008

A century has passed since British rulers in India like Curzon and Minto became self-styled interlocutors between Muslims and Hindus of the subcontinent. Up through the 19th century there had been no significant national political conversation between India’s main communities. The “Chief Translator” of the High Court in Calcutta was highly prized for his knowledge of Sanskrit, Persian and English because at least three different sets of laws governed different people in the country. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad wrote of his experience in the Bankim-inspired revolutionary societies of Bengal who treated him with extreme suspicion because they could hardly believe a Muslim wanted to join them as an anti-British rebel.

Jinnah vs Azad

Then came MA Jinnah, Iqbal, Rahmat Ali and others, initial creators of Pakistan whether through greater or lesser motives. Azad, Zakir Hussain, Sheikh Abdullah and other Muslims were equally firm the Pakistan idea was not only bad for India in the world it was bad for Muslims in particular. The Azads condemned the Jinnahs as greedy megalomaniacs, the Jinnahs condemned the Azads as minions of the Hindus. Larke lenge Pakistan, marke lenge Pakistan, khoon se lenge Pakistan, dena hoga Pakistan was the mob-cry during the bloody Partition, while the British, weakened by war and economics and bereft of their imperial pretensions, made haste to leave “this beastly country” to its fate ~ rather hoping the bloodshed would be such someone might hire them to stay on.

Certainly, having used the Indian Army for imperial purposes in the War, Britain (represented locally by a series of smartly dressed blundering fools) behaved irresponsibly in not properly demobilizing that Army during a period of intense communal tension. There were no senior Indian officers ~ KM Cariappa became a Brigadier only in 1946, Ayub Khan was a Colonel under him. Then there were the fatuous “princes” the British had propped up in “Indian India”, few being more than cardboard creatures. Among them was J&K’s ruler who was a member of Churchill’s War Cabinet and had come to harbour illusions of international grandeur. Once J&K’s Muslim soldiers returned to their Mirpuri homes, Jammu and Punjab were in communal conflict, months before the decision that Pakistan would indeed be created out of designated areas of British India just before British India extinguished itself. Army-issued Bren guns came to be used by former soldiers in communal massacres of the convoys of refugees going in each direction.

Part of the problem over J&K since then has been that it seems a dialogue of the deaf. Pakistanis since Zafrullah Khan claimed it was communal violence against Muslims in Jammu and Punjab that prompted the Pashtun invasion of Srinagar Valley beginning 22 October 1947; Indians have always claimed the new (and partly British-officered) Pakistan Army organized and instigated the invasion, coinciding with the planned takeover of Gilgit.

As in all complex moral problems, there was truth on all sides though no one doubts the invasion was savage and that the Pashtuns carried off Kashmiri women, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh. J&K descended into civil war, Abdullah’s secularists backed by the new India, Ibrahim’s communalists by the new Pakistan. Field Marshall Auchinlek, who commanded both Indian and Pakistani armies, had the decency to resign when he realized his forces were at war with one another. That J&K could not be independent in international law was sealed when the 15 October 1947 telegram sent by Hari Singh’s regime went unanswered by Attlee. The tribal invasion from Pakistan caused the old State of J&K to become an ownerless entity in international law, whose territories were then carved up by force by the two new British Dominions (later republics) and the result has been the “LOC”.

ZA Bhutto was perhaps Pakistan’s only politician after that time. The years between the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan and the rise of Bhutto saw Pakistan’s military begin its liaison with the Americans ~ from the US Ambassador’s daughter marrying the Pakistan President’s son to the leasing of Peshawar’s airfields for U-2 flights over the USSR. Yet Bhutto’s deep flaws also contributed to the loss of Bangladesh and to brutality, supported by the Shah of Iran’s American helicopters, against the Baloch.

Bhutto’s daughter now may have succeeded in death where she could not in life. Like Indira Gandhi, there seemed a shrill almost self-sacrificial air about Benazir in her last days, and, like Indira, her assassination caused all her countrymen including her enemies to undergo an existential experience. Perhaps the public death of a woman in public life touches some chivalrous chord in everyone.

Benazir’s husband was transformed from seeming a rather dubious self-seeker to becoming a national leader of some sobriety. Her old adversary Nawaz Sharif, brought to power by one Army Chief and removed by another, is now a constitutional democrat – seemingly adamant that there be the Rule of Law and not of generals. Most of all, Benazir’s death seemed to completely shut up that most loquacious of Pakistanis: Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf seemed stunned and promised free, fair and transparent elections; though no one believed he would deliver, he somehow did. He would like now to be a senior statesman though it seems as likely his countrymen will not forgive his misdeeds and instead exile him to America.

Afghanistan

Pakistan’s main international problem is not and has never been J&K. It has been and remains its unsettled western border and identity vis-à-vis Afghanistan (as India’s problem has been the eastern border with China). Dr Khan Sahib and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan knew this but they were not allowed to speak by Pakistan’s Kashmir-obsessed elite. Zaheer Shah’s Afghanistan was the only country that voted against Pakistan joining the UN sixty years ago.

The present author has said before that Osama bin Laden may well be safely and comfortably in the deserts of North Africa while NATO and the Americans raise hell in Afghanistan and Waziristan pretending to look for him. It is not in India’s interest as it is not in Pakistan’s interest that Western militaries, who seem to have nothing better to do, brutalize Afghans of all descriptions in the name of nation-building or fighting “terrorism”. Afghan nation-building can only ultimately come from the Afghans themselves, no matter how many loya jirgas it takes. What Pakistan dislikes emerging from New Delhi is the sometimes rather supercilious and ignorant condescension that our officialdom is infamous for. Instead, with a new, seemingly clear-headed and well-intentioned Government in Pakistan elected for the first time ever, it may be time for all good people in the subcontinent to raise a glass of fruit juice and say “Two cheers for Pakistan!”

Posted in Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Academic research, Afghanistan, anarchy and governance, Asia and the West, Balochistan, Bangladesh, Benazir Bhutto, Blowback, Britain in India, British foreign policy, India's Diplomacy, India's Foreign Policy, India's History, India's independence, India-Pakistan peace process, International diplomacy, International politics, Iqbal, Jammu & Kashmir, Life and death, MA Jinnah, Maulana Azad, Men and women, Muslim and Hindu communalism, Nationalism, Nawaz Sharif, Osama bin Laden, Pakistan in international law, Pakistan's origins, Pakistan's psychology, Pakistan's constitutional politics, Pakistan's history, Pakistan's judiciary, Pakistan's military, Pakistan's nuclear weapons, Pakistan's politics, Pakistan's Rule of Law, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistani expansionism, Pashtuns, Pervez Musharraf, Politics, UN/League of Nations, US Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Espionage, US Military Doctrine, US Pakistan policy, War, World History. Leave a Comment »

Pakistan’s Kashmir obsession

February 16, 2008 — drsubrotoroy

(Author’s Note: This article was preceded by several others e.g. “Saving Pakistan”, “Understanding Pakistan”, “Pakistan’s Allies”, “Law, Justice & J&K”, “Solving Kashmir” , and has been followed by “Two Cheers for Pakistan”.)

Pakistan’s Kashmir obsession
Sheikh Abdullah Relied In Politics On The French Constitution, Not Islam

Subroto Roy

First published in The Statesman, Feb 16 2008, Editorial Page Special Article

Indians would be naïve to suppose Pervez Musharraf has at any point shown friendliness towards India or willingness to come to a genuine permanent agreement over J&K fully consistent with law and justice. Musharraf tells everyone and himself every day that he is a soldier, and it is well to remember he is from the last generation of Pakistan military men motivated by visceral hatred of the Indian Union and a wish to inflict any kind of defeat upon us. Pakistan’s new Army Chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, being a decade younger than Musharraf, may have a less irrational, less belligerent outlook towards India, and it would be a wise Indian move to invite him officially to visit and receive the normal courtesies and honours due to a foreign military chief.

Musharraf, like Ariel Sharon, was visibly uncomfortable with the Hindu rituals we compel foreign leaders to carry out at Mahatma Gandhi’s Memorial; but General Kayani would visit purely as a military chief and not have to make any political gestures.

Lion of Kashmir

As long as Musharraf remains in power, we may expect him to continue to be motivated by his overtly anti-Indian 12 January 2002 speech. Yes, he said, Pakistan would cooperate against terrorism but it expected the USA to reciprocate by pressuring India on Jammu & Kashmir. “Kashmir runs in our blood. No Pakistani can afford to sever links with Kashmir… We will continue to extend our moral, political and diplomatic support to Kashmiris. We will never budge from our principle (sic) stand on Kashmir. Kashmir has to be resolved through dialogue in accordance with the wishes of the people of Pakistan (sic) and in accordance with the UN resolutions.” (BBC 12 January, 2002, Musharraf speech highlights). Pakistan’s first Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, during his 1950 visit to the USA had claimed “culturally… Kashmir ~ 80 per cent of whose people like the majority of the people in Pakistan are Muslims ~ is in fact an integral part of Pakistan”.

Now, as a matter of fact, Kashmir does not “run in the blood” of Pakistanis nor do the many diverse and ancient cultures of Jammu & Kashmir have much to do with that of a relatively newly created country like Pakistan. It was because Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah knew this and bluntly said so often enough, including at the UN, that Liaquat called him a “Quisling” and the Pakistan Government routinely defamed him as an “Indian stooge”. Yet the Sheikh was known by all in Srinagar Valley as the “Lion of Kashmir”, and had been the acknowledged voice of Muslim political awakening in the Valley ever since 1931.

J&K’s democracy today is the principal political legacy of Sheikh Abdullah. The Pakistan Government to this day denies legitimacy to the elected Government and Opposition of Indian J&K despite there never having been in the history of Pakistan a change of government more democratic in nature than that which occurred in J&K in 2002, bringing in the PDP-Congress Government in place of the National Conference.

Before Pakistan had started its series of military coups, Abdullah had led J&K to adopt an exemplary Constitution and ratify the State’s joining of the new Indian Union. The unbridgeable gulf between Abdullah and the Pakistan Government arose because Abdullah, a Koran scholar and devout Muslim known to intersperse his political speeches with Koranic wisdom, relied for J&K’s constitutional principles not on Islam but rather on the French Constitution. Pakistan’s constitutions by contrast say Pakistan’s sovereignty belongs to Almighty God, leading to perennial confusion over the mundane business of governance here on Planet Earth.

It was the tragic depraved Rahmat Ali, driven by his deep personal anti-Hindu bigotry, who put the “K” into “P, A, K, I, S, T, A, N” purportedly representing “Kashmir”. In his crank view of history, all of Punjab, Afghanistan, Iran, “Tukharistan” (sic) and more would be part of Pakistan too.

The new country might have been better named after a person (as are Colombia, America, Israel), viz., “Iqbalistan” after Mohammad Iqbal who conceived it. It was Iqbal’s seminal 1930 speech to the Muslim League at Allahabad that described the areas (aside from Indian Punjab) that actually constitute post-1971 Pakistan: “I would like to see the Punjab, Northwest Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single state. Self-government within the British Empire or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North West Indian Muslim state appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims at least of Northwest India”. “Dar-e-Islami-Hind”, “Indus Islamic Republic”, “Indic Islamabad” or “Republic of North-Western India” also may have been alternatives to the random acronym Rahmat Ali coined in 1933 on a London bus.

Though Kashmiri himself, Iqbal made no reference to J&K or any of the so-called “princely states” (nor to what became East Pakistan). The legal theory later sold by Britain to both India and Pakistan was that a “Lapse of Paramountcy” over “princely states” would occur on 15 August 1947 before or after which their rulers must “accede” to one or other new Dominion of Britain’s Commonwealth. BR Ambedkar in a brilliant analysis showed this to be erroneous in law: “paramountcy” over any “princely states” which had not acceded passed automatically to the legal successor state of British India, and that was the Dominion of India.

The Dominion of Pakistan was a new state in international law, created out of certain designated territories of British India the day before British India extinguished itself. If, for example, Chitral or Junagadh acceded to Pakistan after that date, it would have to be with the acquiescence of British India’s legal successor, namely, the Dominion of India ~ an acquiescence granted in case of Chitral and denied in case of Junagadh. In case of J&K, all such matters became moot once hostilities broke out between India and Pakistan following the tribal invasion of J&K from Pakistan that commenced October 22 1947; Pakistan’s plan to take over Gilgit by force had been made months before that. The erstwhile State of J&K descended into civil war and chaos, becoming an ownerless entity whose territories came to be carved up by force of arms by both new countries (and in case of uninhabited Aksai Chin, by Communist China also some years later).

Bloated military
Pakistan’s failure to properly develop as a state today ~ in particular allowing its military to bloat in size relative to other social and political institutions and even to possess nuclear weapons intended against the Indian Union ~ has resulted out of the neurotic obsession with Kashmir. India owes a democratic responsibility to residents of the Indian State of J&K to choose their nationality freely under conditions of full information and individual privacy; if some, like Syed Geelani, choose to renounce Indian nationality and either remain stateless or seek the nationality of Pakistan, Iran or Afghanistan, they may still receive permanent residence in India and be legally akin to the many foreign nationals who live and work in India permanently and peacefully. That may be as much as India can realistically contribute to helping the Pakistan Government resolve its neurosis over Kashmir.

Pakistan’s military naturally possesses a fierce loyalty to Pakistan ~ the best way for that loyalty to be implemented in practice may be for General Kayani to allow the country’s public institutions to gradually normalize in size and function. Once Musharraf’s rule comes to an end or a legislature under new clear-headed leaders comes to exist some day, the military may be able to recognise that.

Our Dismal Politics: Will Independent India Survive Until 2047? (from 2008)

February 1, 2008 — drsubrotoroy

Our Dismal Politics
Will Independent India Survive Until 2047?

By SUBROTO ROY

First published in The Statesman Editorial Page, Special Article, Feb 1 2008

Mayawati and Narendra Modi are both in their 50s. So are the current leaders of Russia, Germany, Britain, France, the USA. No country, not even Communist Party China, is as pretentiously corrupt as ours in allowing a whole generation to be bred of “babalog” politicians among children of dead politicians or existing elderly politicians in their 70s and 80s. These babalog, Rahul Gandhi pre-eminent among them, are usually in their late 30s or early 40s. Having developed no useful marketable skills in life nor done anything worthwhile or creative, they have tended to arbitrage the political positions of their parents (whether departed or living) into gaining access and advantage in Delhi or the State capitals. Some nepotism is being seen in the USA with the Bush and Clinton families but nobody had heard of a Putin, Merkel or Sarkozy before they won their way into political power.

Inheriting advantage

The Indian phenomenon of the inheritance of advantage is also seen in organised business, in Bollywood and in journalism, which, like our politics, tend to be sold via TV. Academic institutions and the civil and military services are not far behind although there the phenomenon more usually involves exporting adult children (and bank accounts) especially to the USA or UK or Australia, and then making annual trips abroad during the hot summer months to be able to tell the neighbours about later.

The idea that the future of Indian politics is in the hands of a babalog GenNext is sheer nonsense and fantasy. The victories of Mayawati and Modi were also defeats of the expectations raised by Rahul Gandhi’s Congress. There is a continuity of years between someone like Sonia Gandhi and her children which implies there can be no discontinuous jump from Sonia to Rahul in the leadership of the Congress. In between, as it were, are people like Kamal Nath among “Friends of Sanjay” or Mani Shankar Aiyar (a solitary Rajivist), both of whom have won seats in the Lok Sabha unlike Sonia’s current elderly PM. If Sonia Gandhi devolves political power to her son who then leads the Congress into another defeat, of which UP and Gujarat have been examples, there will be a revolt among senior middle-aged politicians in the Congress, and the Congress may splinter into a Right Faction and Left Faction leaving Rajiv Gandhi’s family to look after the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation which is what they should have been doing in the first place rather than playing at Indian politics.

A Congress disintegration may or may not finally cause a useful bipolarisation in Indian politics because Indian politics has not only an economic dimension, it has a social or communal dimension too. Besides being (ostensibly) pro-poor or anti-poor, you can be either “Islamophilic” or “Islamophobic” ~ i.e. either pro-Muslim “secularist” /”pseudo-secularist”/minorityist, or anti-Muslim “communalist”/ “fascist”/majority communitarian.

Narasimha Rao cleverly manipulated the median parliamentary vote along these two dimensions so as to maintain a weak Government in power for five years by seeming to ally with the BJP on economic issues and seeming to ally with Leftists on social issues. If the Congress splits after another major defeat caused by Sonia-Rahul incompetence, with the Right Faction joining hands with whatever the BJP morphs into, and the Left Faction joining hands with whatever the CPI-M and CPI morph into, the central question will become which side of the split along the economic dimension holds the median voter along the pro-Muslim/anti-Muslim social dimension.

The BJP remains as dreadful and unscientific a gathering as it has been always without displaying the slightest creative trace of being able to evolve into a serious Conservative Party that India remains in desperate need of. AB Vajpayee and LK Advani led it into electoral defeat but that was not enough for their patriarchy to be disturbed by competent new younger people. In any case, the BJPs more articulate better-educated members in their 50s and 60s are unable to command nation-wide respect nor, with the exception of Modi, are they able to win an election on their own steam. The idea that e.g. Pramode Mahajan’s son could “succeed” him on the 10 JanPath pattern fortunately self-exploded. The best the BJP could do was to choose an inarticulate member as its nominal head while the patriarchy continued unchanged in its backward communalised thinking. Its RSS parent occasionally shows a little savant-like intelligence but generally remains in mental and physical regression.

As for the so-called Left, its multi-dimensional hypocrisy and incompetence has been permanently exposed in the heartland of what passes for Indian communism, Bengal. After the demise of the USSR and transition of Communist China towards Capitalism/ Fascism, there has been no real reason why the CPI and CPI-M cannot merge into one and then renounce together their retrograde ideology in favour of becoming a genuine Social Democratic and Labour Party representing working people and the poor. But that, like any corporate merger, would mean administrative redundancies, retrenchment and new management, and the last thing Stalinist politburo members like is the idea of losing their Rajya Sabha sinecures (in Russia and China they lost their heads but Indian conditions are kinder, gentler, more non-violent).

Besides the Congress, BJP and “Left”, most other parties in India revolve around the whims, personality and IQ of some single local political warlord/warlady. The Naxals and other extremists, including Hindu and Muslim religious terrorists, at least make some pretence at representing political interests of some sections of the people; there is thus at least a slight authenticity about them, no matter how disengaged their thought processes may be from realities around them.

Endless deficit finance

The 2008 Budget or the 2009 General Election seem likely to remain in the grip of all such dramatis personae permanently on the Indian stage, and no new real creative constructive force seems likely to appear. Every political misdemeanour will be paid for by endless deficit finance and money-printing, the accounts and auditing of all public institutions shall remain in a shambles while private pockets of the heads of public institutions come to be lined with gold, the armed forces shall be ready to fight their Pakistani counterparts while deferring to any more formidable adversary, rich business people will continue with their grotesque conspicuous consumption, young people graduating from India’s pampered institutions of tertiary education will continue to line up outside foreign embassies to seek hope and escape.

Can India survive as an independent democratic republic for 100 years after 1947, let alone be a country where all citizens are reasonably free and comfortable? A worst-case scenario may see North India in endless conflict with a chaotic Pakistan, Eastern India hived off under Beijing’s influence, and peninsular India from Surat to Vizag being Western-dominated with “SEZs” on the pattern of pre-communist Coastal China. The failure of our elite classes to provide healthy creative governance over generations must inevitably result in the putrefaction of our body politic.

(Author’s Note: The graph that accompanied this article is published elsewhere here under the title “Median Voter Model of India’s Electorate”.)

Lessons from the 1962 War: there are distinct Tibetan, Chinese and Indian points of view that need to be mutually comprehended (2007)

January 15, 2008 — drsubrotoroy

Prefatory Note: This is part of a series of articles published in The Statesman since October 2007 and republished here, viz., Understanding China, India-USA Interests, China’s India Aggression, Surrender or Fight?, China’s Commonwealth, Nixon & Mao vs India, China’s India Example and China’s Force and Diplomacy. See https://independentindian.com/2009/09/19/my-ten-articles-on-china-tibet-xinjiang-taiwan-in-relation-to-india/

Lessons from the 1962 War

Beginnings of a solution to the long-standing border problem: there are distinct Tibetan, Chinese and Indian points of view that need to be mutually comprehended.

SUBROTO ROY

First published in The Sunday Statesman, January 13 2008, Editorial Page Special Article

WAR is an existential experience from which nations emerge altered, reflective and sometimes more mature. Germany tried to purge anti-Jewish hatred, Japan to adopt pacifism, Britain to break class-structures, Russia to explode Stalin’s cult. America learnt little from its Vietnam debacle, creating new tactics and technologies to reduce American casualties in war but not showing any improved capacity to comprehend the world beyond its shores and borders.

India after the 1962 defeat by Mao’s China learnt less than was possible and necessary to do. The Government’s official history concluded: “In a fundamental sense, the origins of the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict lay in Chinese expansionism and occupation of Tibet. The issue got further aggravated due to failure of the Chinese to win over the Tibetans. Indian asylum to the Dalai Lama raised Chinese suspicions about ultimate Indian intentions. On the other hand, India, while tacitly accepting the Chinese occupation of Tibet through a treaty in 1954, failed to obtain any quid pro quo on the border issue.” This is true enough but a deeper probe is also possible.

India’s 20th Century political and intellectual leadership may have grossly failed to comprehend critical world events in a realistic manner, specifically Vladimir Ulyanov’s German-assisted Bolshevik coup d’etat, the Kuomintang and Maoist takeovers in China, as well as India’s own struggle for Independence. After BG Tilak, Annie Besant, GK Gokhale and other founders of Indian nationalism passed from the scene, leaders arose like MK Gandhi, MA Jinnah, SC Bose and J Nehru who tended to be consumed, to lesser or greater extent, by their own hubris and were less able to see India’s fortunes and capacities in context of a larger world. None had military, administrative or public finance experience needed for practical government; instead there arose almost a new hereditary caste of the “professional politician” who has no other vocation or anything better to do in life. Nazi-admirers like Mashriqi and Rahmat Ali among Muslims and the Mahasabha and RSS among Hindus also lent mainstream Indian nationalism a harsh distasteful colouration.

Czechoslovakia’s great nationalist Masaryk (who famously denounced Austro-Hungary as a “corrupt, pretentious, senseless relic”) was said to be “a leader who planned further ahead than his contemporaries, understood the corroding effects of power, the vital need of restraint in the ruler, and above all the need for taking the nation into his confidence, educating it in the sense of drawing out all its innate qualities and sharing its manifold aspirations” (Seton-Watson). India’s clear-headed statesmen of that calibre were not among its most visible or ambitious. Vallabhbhai Patel, MAK Azad, C Rajagopalachari and others were left on the sidelines of free India’s politics ~ as Plato predicted, the genuine pilot of the ship of state will be hardly invited to take its wheel nor even want to do so.

Nehru alone, as chosen by Gandhi, came to wield actual power in the 1950s, having maneuvered Rajendra Prasad to being President. And Nehru, besotted in middle age with a married British woman, seemed awestruck by appearance of a victorious Maoist communism in China just as he had been adoring of Stalin’s Russia two decades earlier. The Congress’s friends among India’s official Communists and fellow-travelers never had much original indigenous grassroots support and always looked abroad for guidance. Non-alignment needed to be made of sterner stuff.

Nehru’s flawed management of the relationship with Communist China included not merely choosing a favourite like Krishna Menon to head India’s military, but also imagining himself a competent world diplomatist. Girja Shankar Bajpai would have been far superior as India’s first Foreign Minister. In 1952, Bajpai, then Governor of Bombay, wrote to Nehru saying India should inform Zhou Enlai the McMahon Line was firm in law and non-negotiable.

Was the McMahon Line firm and just? Nehru was no Curzon but it was as a Curzonian imperialist that Mao and Zhou saw him. All Chinese, whether Communist or Nationalist, chafed at the way the Manchu-dynasty’s Empire had been carved up. “China is our India” was Czarist Russia’s intent towards China itself. China had an awful political and military history from when foreign depredations began in the 1840s all the way until the Mao-Zhou era ended in the 1970s. Indeed China’s polity between the 1840s and 1940s suffered far greater chaos and anarchy than India’s in the same period.

From a Chinese standpoint, Younghusband’s diplomatic and military invasion of Gyantze and Lhasa in 1903-1904 was an insult they had been unable to militarily confront. Curzon sent Younghusband’s expedition because there appeared to be Russian intrigues with the Dalai Lama via the Russian/Mongolian agent Dorjiev who had transmitted Russian ideas of extending its new Siberian railway to Lhasa and posting Cossack soldiers there. The Russians seemed to want to adopt the Dalai Lama given his religious influence over Mongolia. The British were alarmed and determined to annihilate the influence of Dorjiev which they did. Thence came the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1907 which specified British and Russian spheres of influence in Iran and Afghanistan, and stated Tibet would be dealt with internationally only through the Chinese Empire. The McMahon Line, as a recognition of the traditional boundary, flowed naturally from the legitimacy of the Anglo-Russian Treaty. As for Sinkiang, though a Chinese province since 1884 it came to be ruled by warlords under Russian influence.

The Mao-Zhou war machine was determined to take over and militarily hold both Sinkiang and Tibet as an assertion of new China’s self-definition against Russia and Britain; hence their denunciation of Nehru as a pawn first of Britain and then of Russia. China building a road surreptitiously between Sinkiang and Tibet through Aksai Chin was reminiscent of Russia’s coercive behaviour against China in building the Trans-Siberian Railway through Chinese territory to Vladivostok. At worst, the Indians would have to admit that erstwhile J&K State since October 1947 had become an ownerless entity whose unclaimed territory had been carved up by force by the new Pakistan, new India and new China.

From an Indian standpoint, the traditional recognised boundary placed Aksai Chin clearly in Ladakh and not Tibet. Aksai Chain is a salt pit without “a blade of grass” but for all anyone knows, it could be rich in minerals. Karakorum Pass is also newly valuable to the Chinese as they seek to develop a land-route from Baluchistan’s Gwadar Port through Pakistan to China. If India has lost Aksai Chin and Karakorum Pass by force of arms without compensation, force of arms may be the only means of retrieval. Due compensation from China could be Chumbi Valley between Sikkim and Bhutan, and China seems once to have mentioned mutual perpetual lease of Aksai Chin and Chumbi Valley.

From a Tibetan point of view, the Amban representing the Chinese Emperor was driven out of Lhasa in 1912 and Tibet was independent of China for 38 years. Tibet has as much of a claim to be independent of China as Poland or Ukraine have had to be of Russia. As for the McMahon Line, it is indeed legally non-negotiable between China and India as it flowed directly out of the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1907, and it was under that Treaty that China received international recognition of its formal suzerainty over Tibet since 1720 until that time. Mao once likened Tibet to the palm of a hand with Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and Assam as five fingers. Modern China must decide between such a metaphor of Maoist expansionism (which India would have to militarily resist) and joining the world of international law created since Grotius. Democratic conditions in Tibet would also have to be insisted upon so the Dalai Lama and other Tibetans may return home from India in peace and freedom.

Posted in 1962 War, Aksai Chin, Anglo-Russian Treaty 1907, Annie Besant, Asia and the West, Assam, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Balochistan, Bhutan, Bolsheviks, C Rajagopalachari, Chiang Kaishek, China, China's expansionism, China's History, China's military, China's Politics, China's wars, China-India Relations, China-Tibet problem, Chumbi Valley, Communist China, Congress Party, Curzon, Dalai Lama, Dorjiev, Existentialism, Germany, Gilgit and Baltistan, Girja Shankar Bajpai, GK Gokhale, Good and Evil, Holocaust and its denial, India's Army, India's Foreign Policy, India's Military Defence, India's Polity, India-China relations, India-Tibet Border, International Law, International politics, Jammu & Kashmir, Japan, Jawaharlal Nehru, Karakorum Pass, Kuomintang, Laddakh, MA Jinnah, Mao Zedong, Maulana Azad, MK Gandhi, Nationalism, NEFA Arunachal, Nepal, Pakistan's history, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Plato, Politics, Rajendra Prasad, Russia, Sikkim, Sinkiang, Sino-Indian Border, Stalin, Tibet, Uighurs, US China policy, US Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Espionage, US Military Doctrine, USA, United States, Vallabhbhai Patel, Vietnam War, War, World History, Xinjiang, Younghusband, Zhou Enlai. Leave a Comment »

Map of Asia c. 1900

January 9, 2008 — drsubrotoroy

Surrender or Fight? War is not a cricket match or Bollywood movie. Can India fight China if it must? (2007)

December 4, 2007 — drsubrotoroy

Surrender or fight?

War is not a cricket match or Bollywood movie. Can India fight China if it must?

By Subroto Roy

First published in The Statesman, Dec 4 2007, Editorial Page Special Article

Armies of the subcontinent, all deriving from rather antiquated British military traditions, have only once since 1947 fought an external army ~ when China’s Communists, using Lin Biao’s military doctrines, attacked India in 1962 and India lost territory, soldiers and self-respect, gaining ignominy for half a century instead. India and Pakistan have fought wars against each other, India’s army has fought Kashmiri, Naga and other rebels, Pakistan’s army has brutalised Bangladeshi and Baluchi civilians and fought Pashtuns in Waziristan, Bangladeshi soldiers have brutalised tribal minorities and shot at Indian border guards, Sri Lanka’s military has fought Tamil rebels, Nepal has fought communist rebels, etc. Other than the 1962 Chinese attack, all warfare in the subcontinent has been domestic and internecine.

Official 1962 history

The official Government of India history of the 1962 war frankly says: “The Indian Army trained and fought like the British Army, unimaginative, elephantine, rule-bound and road-bound. Armies of Germany, Japan, USSR or China were vastly better war machines, and patterned very differently.” During the 1962 war, the US Ambassador JK Galbraith wrote to President Kennedy: “The great question is what the Chinese intend…. The Indians have consistently underestimated Chinese intentions…. the Indian Army in its command, organisation, tactics and equipment is extremely old-fashioned. The individual soldiers carry personal arms that are sixty years old and this can hardly give them the feeling of equality with opponents carrying modern light automatic weapons. The tactics are stuffy and rigid… Some of the commanders are very good. More still are the amiable frauds that rise to the top in any peacetime Army… ”

When diplomacy is exhausted and international conflict arises, there is always an option of surrendering or yielding sovereignty instead of standing up to fight, e.g. Vichy France yielding before Nazi Germany. There is always a choice between submission and fighting. Pakistan’s military has geared itself over decades only to fight India, and chosen to serve the West and China as desired towards that end. Whatever America wants in Pakistan, America gets, e.g., if American missiles need to enter Pakistani airspace to hit Afghan targets, the US Government does not seek Pakistani permission but merely informs them not to think offensive missiles have been sent from India, and they say okay.

India’s Army may be under some suspicion of being similarly geared to fight only Pakistan ~ and when India and Pakistan are armed and obsessed only with fighting one another, they can hardly think of taking on other adversaries. “India’s soldiers now stand sentinel along India’s frontiers; but they perform guard-duties and are not spear-heads for her advancing armies”, Peter Lyon in FS Northedge (ed), Foreign Policies of the Powers, 1973.

Certainly India’s military has not seemed keen to have anything but a highly defensive posture against Communist China. On 23 March 1991, Rajiv Gandhi at his residence released a fat book by a retired Army Chief on Indian military defence titled Prepare or Perish. The book’s author and the present author had been working together for Rajiv, and the former was asked why in the hundreds of pages of the book there was barely a mention of Indian military preparation against China. He replied that our strategy against China would have to be a defensive holding action which relied on the international community’s intervention before matters escalated ~ revealing a rather wild optimism about the efficacy of international relations. Another Army Chief years before him, General Thimayya himself, is reported to have said “as a soldier he could not think of a total war with China and would leave the dispute to be settled by the diplomats” (BN Mullick, The Chinese Betrayal, p. 318).

Thimayya realised India was weak after World War II facing Mao’s Communists who had two and a half million armed men, had acquired large stocks of American and Japanese weapons after defeating Chiang Kaishek, and were aggressive and experienced after decades of fighting culminating in the Korean war. (Three divisions were trained in India by the Americans and sent for Chiang in 1942-45 with supplies along the Stilwell Road or flown across the “hump”.) Indian soldiers had fought mostly under British or American commanders; in 1947, they disintegrated in chaos into the new armies of India and Pakistan who went to war with one another immediately over J&K.

Not only was India militarily weak until 1962, our political and diplomatic policies since 1949 had been consistently ones of flattery and appeasement, betraying our interests as well as our relationships with Chiang’s Nationalist Chinese and, most cruelly of all, with the Tibetans who shared India’s culture. Our first Ambassador to Beijing was a communist sympathiser, his son-in-law a leading Indian communist. India was the first country outside the Soviet bloc to recognise Communist China, the first to help Mao diplomatically in the Korean war, the pioneer of many UN resolutions to have Communist China admitted as a veto-holding Security Council member in place of Chiang’s Nationalists. We bent over backwards to accommodate and appease them over Tibet. All this got us less than nothing ~ Communist China soon enough joined hands with Pakistan’s greedy generals against us.

Zhou Enlai was said to be “one of those men who never tell the truth and never tell a lie. For them there is no distinction between the two. The speaker says what is appropriate to the circumstances. Zhou Enlai was a perfect gentleman; he was also a perfect Communist” (Father Laszlo Ladany, The Communist Party of China and Marxism, 1921-1985, Stanford 1988). Zhou enforced India’s political and diplomatic surrender, and then we failed to fight adequately on the military front. Communist China thus established its dominance over India. After Nixon and Kissinger made their devious opening to Mao and Zhou using Pakistan, American policy changed too, almost betraying Taiwan and certainly stamping American approval on the idea that between Communist China and India, China shall be seen as dominant.

For recent Chinese Ambassadors to New Delhi to brazenly use today the same language as Zhou did half a century ago is not a good sign but an indication of Communist China’s wish not to have a relationship with modern India on the basis of sovereign equality. For them to say Tawang must be theirs because the monastery there was where the sixth Dalai Lama was born and the Dalai Lama is Chinese and not Indian, is to reveal an aggressive subconscious against us. We may next hear it said Buddha himself was Chinese since he was probably born in Nepal, as an excuse for further Communist encroachment.

Diplomatic relations

The last time China’s Communists attacked India the world was distracted by the Cuban missile crisis just as it is distracted today with Iran and Iraq. The Tawang monastery issue today is symbolic of India’s entire relationship with China since 1949. There is no economic reason why bilateral trade in goods and services cannot continue but it may be high time India gathers some remaining self-respect and downgrades and then considers ending diplomatic relations with this aggressive dictatorship, awaiting instead the development of democracy and a free society for all of China’s great people, perhaps on the Taiwan-model. The Dalai Lama was greeted with great warmth in Taiwan and there is no doubt a free democratic China will seek a healthy new relationship with Tibet as befits great cultures. Militarily, India must indeed prepare for the next Communist aggression or perish, which requires real modernisation and efficiency in the armed forces and an end to corruption, indiscipline and incompetence.

India-USA interests: Elements of a serious Indian foreign policy (2007)

October 30, 2007 — drsubrotoroy

India-USA interests: Elements of a serious Indian foreign policy

by

Subroto Roy

First published in The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, Oct 30 2007

If there is a “natural alliance” between India and the United States, it arises to the extent that both are large democracies and more or less free societies that happen to be placed half way across the globe and pose no perceptible military threat to one another. The real long-term strategic and political dimensions of such an alliance are quite independent of the business interests driving the “nuclear deal” or selfish interests of the few million “elite” Indians who have fled to the USA as immigrants in recent decades. The interests of Indian immigrants in the USA and interests of the vast masses in India are, after all, quite distinct. Also, America derives most if its own energy not from nuclear reactors but from abundant hydroelectric resources. If the nuclear deal has been ill-conceived and fails in implementation at any stage, India will not import expensive nuclear reactors but can still learn much from the USA in developing hydroelectric power which constitutes India’s greatest energy potential as well.

China and Pakistan

Key strategic interests of India and the USA are fully convergent in East Asia, especially in respect of Communist China. But in West Asia, American attitudes and actions towards the Muslim world, specifically the invasion and occupation of Iraq and now a possible assault on Iran, have been deeply disconcerting for India which has some 120 million Muslim citizens.

It is not a coincidence that Pakistan, an overtly religious Muslim state, has had a marriage of convenience with Communist China, an overtly atheistic anti-religious state. Both have been militarist dictatorships that have seen democratic India as a strategic adversary, especially over territorial claims. It was Pakistan that facilitated President Nixon’s desired opening to Communist China and later permitted President Reagan’s attack on the soft underbelly of the USSR in the Afghan civil war (an attack in which China participated too). With the USSR’s collapse, the USA removed its main strategic adversary only to be left with two new adversaries: Islamic fundamentalism in the short run and China in the long run!

Indian diplomacy can credit a rare (indeed exceptional) success in having warned the USA from the early 1990s onwards of the dangers brewing in the jihadist camps in Pakistan sponsored by the ISI. The US Government has now declassified its assessments of those dangers and what it tried to do as early as 1995 and as late as 2000 through the Saudis with the Taliban’s Mullah Omar ~ who refused to hand over Osama Bin Laden to Saudi Arabia and openly spoke of plans for revenge against American interests. With a continuing Cold-War mindset, US policy-makers thought state-actors like Saddam Hussein were a graver risk to Israel than non-state or pan-state actors like Osama could be to the American mainland. Having distracted itself with Saddam, the US Government’s response to Osama has been far too much far too late ~ the maddened bull chasing the matador’s cape, in Stephen Holmes’s recent metaphor.

Pakistan’s consistent motivation was one of gaining advantage with the Americans in the hope of undermining India, and indeed the nexus created in Washington by Pakistan’s bureaucrats, politicians and military over decades has been the envy of all lobbyists. But Pakistan overplayed its hand, and once the 9/11 genie was let out of the bottle it could not be put back in again. Meanwhile, Pakistan allowing Gwadar port to become a haven for China’s Navy would have obvious new strategic repercussions.

American interests in West Asia are to protect Israel, to protect trade-routes and to defend against non-state or pan-state terrorism. American interests in East Asia are to protect Japan, South Korea and Taiwan from communist attack, to protect trade-routes and to defend against new terrorism arising from places like Indonesia or the Philippines. All American interests in Asia would be facilitated by appearance of genuine multiparty democracy and free societies in China and Pakistan.

China as a two-party or multi-party democracy and a free society, even on the Taiwan-model, is unlikely to be an expansionist militarist aggressor in the way it has been as a dictatorship and unfree society. Communist China in the early 21st Century makes the same outrageous unlawful claims on Indian territory as it did half a century ago. Only the USA came to India’s assistance in a tangible way when Communist China attacked in Ladakh and Arunachal in the late months of 1962. John Kenneth Galbraith was President Kennedy’s Ambassador in New Delhi and his memoirs tell the tale of the landings of C-130 aircraft in Kolkata carrying infantry weapons, light artillery and quartermaster stores for the beleaguered Indian Army in Tezpur and Leh.

Nehru, Krishna Menon and India’s whole political and diplomatic leadership revealed gross incompetence as did the Army’s top brass. Indian Communists virtually betrayed the country. The Chinese massed in the Chumbi Valley near Nathu La, and had they attacked all the way to Siliguri, India’s North East would have been cut off. As a demonstration, the Chinese in division strength took and held the whole of Arunachal for a month, withdrawing before there could be anyIndian attempt to retaliate or cut supply lines. The geography has not changed in fifty years. What can yet change is the ideology, away from the communism that has ruined China’s great people, to a new and bold commitment to liberal democracy and the Rule of Law.

As for Pakistan, its people under crude military rule have hardly allowed themselves to become the source of Muslim culture that Iqbal had dreamt of. Pakistan today is not a place even the most ardent pro-Pakistani person in Jammu & Kashmir can find very appealing or inspiring. If there was multiparty democracy and a free society in which the military had a normal small role of defence (as opposed to a large purportedly offensive role against India), Pakistan could calm down from its neuroses and become a normal country for the first time~ one in which the so-called “extremists” of today are transformed into a politically legitimate religious conservatism, who could seek to take power responsibly through the ballot box.

Neutrality

India should be a friendly neutral in the conflict between the West and Muslim world, doing whatever we can to bring better understanding between the two sides. Both have been invaders in Indian history, bringing both evil and good in their wake. India’s culture absorbed and assimilated their influences and became more resilient as a consequence. India also was a haven for Jews and Zoroastrians fleeing persecution. India as a country must condemn fanatical terrorist attacks on the West and bizarre reactionary attempts to return to a caliphate in the world of modern science. Equally, India must condemn vicious racist bombing and warfare unleashed by technologically advanced countries upon ancient societies and cultures struggling to enter the modern world in their own way.

As for the central issue of Israel in Palestine, Martin Buber (1878-1965), the eminent Zionist scholar and philosopher of Judaism, said to Rabindranath Tagore in 1926 that the Jewish purpose should be one of “pursuing the settlement effort in Palestine in agreement, nay, alliance with the peoples of the East, so as to erect with them together a great federative structure, which might learn and receive from the West whatever positive aims and means might be learnt and received from it, without, however, succumbing to the influence of its inner disarray and aimlessness.” If India could guide the region towards such a “great federative structure” of reason and tranquillity, while encouraging democracy in China and Pakistan, the aim of our “natural alliance” with the United States half way across the globe would have been fulfilled.

https://independentindian.com/2006/10/09/new-foreign-policy-kiss-up-kick-down/
https://independentindian.com/2006/06/05/pakistans-allies/

https://independentindian.com/2011/10/13/my-seventy-one-notes-at-facebook-etc-on-kashmir-pakistan-and-of-course-india-listed-thanks-to-jd/

https://independentindian.com/2009/09/19/my-ten-articles-on-china-tibet-xinjiang-taiwan-in-relation-to-india/

https://independentindian.com/2007/08/19/to-clarity-from-confusion-on-indo-us-nuclear-deal/

https://independentindian.com/2009/11/25/on-the-zenith-and-nadir-of-us-india-relations/

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Against Quackery (2007)

September 24, 2007 — drsubrotoroy

Against Quackery

First published in two parts in The Sunday Statesman, September 23 2007, The Statesman September 24 2007

by

Subroto Roy

Manmohan and Sonia have violated Rajiv Gandhi’s intended reforms; the Communists have been appeased or bought; the BJP is incompetent

WASTE, fraud and abuse are inevitable in the use and allocation of public property and resources in India as elsewhere, but Government is supposed to fight and resist such tendencies. The Sonia-Manmohan Government have done the opposite, aiding and abetting a wasteful anti-economics ~ i.e., an economic quackery. Vajpayee-Advani and other Governments, including Narasimha-Manmohan in 1991-1996, were just as complicit in the perverse policy-making. So have been State Governments of all regional parties like the CPI-M in West Bengal, DMK/ AIADMK in Tamil Nadu, Congress/NCP/ BJP/Sena in Maharashtra, TDP /Congress in Andhra Pradesh, SP/BJP/BSP in Uttar Pradesh etc. Our dismal politics merely has the pot calling the kettle black while national self-delusion and superstition reign in the absence of reason.

The general pattern is one of well-informed, moneyed, mostly city-based special interest groups (especially including organised capital and organised labour) dominating government agendas at the cost of ill-informed, diffused anonymous individual citizens ~ peasants, small businessmen, non-unionized workers, old people, housewives, medical students etc. The extremely expensive “nuclear deal” with the USA is merely one example of such interest group politics.

Nuclear power is and shall always remain of tiny significance as a source of India’s electricity (compared to e.g. coal and hydro); hence the deal has practically nothing to do with the purported (and mendacious) aim of improving the country’s “energy security” in the long run. It has mostly to do with big business lobbies and senior bureaucrats and politicians making a grab, as they always have done, for India’s public purse, especially access to foreign currency assets. Some $300 million of India’s public money had to be paid to GE and Bechtel Corporation before any nuclear talks could begin in 2004-2005 ~ the reason was the Dabhol fiasco of the 1990s, a sheer waste for India’s ordinary people. Who was responsible for that loss? Pawar-Mahajan-Munde-Thackeray certainly but also India’s Finance Minister at the time, Manmohan Singh, and his top Finance Ministry bureaucrat, Montek Ahluwalia ~ who should never have let the fiasco get off the ground but instead actively promoted and approved it.

Cost-benefit analysis prior to any public project is textbook operating procedure for economists, and any half-competent economist would have accounted for the scenario of possible currency-depreciation which made Dabhol instantly unviable. Dr Singh and Mr Ahluwalia failed that test badly and it cost India dearly. The purchase of foreign nuclear reactors on a turnkey basis upon their recommendation now reflects similar financial dangers for the country on a vastly larger scale over decades.

Our Government seems to function most expeditiously in purchasing foreign arms, aircraft etc ~ not in improving the courts, prisons, police, public utilities, public debt. When the purchase of 43 Airbus aircraft surfaced, accusations of impropriety were made by Boeing ~ until the local Airbus representative said on TV that Boeing need not complain because they were going to be rewarded too and soon 68 aircraft were ordered from Boeing!

India imports all passenger and most military aircraft, besides spare parts and high-octane jet fuel. Domestic aviation generates near zero forex revenues and incurs large forex costs ~ a debit in India’s balance of payments. Domestic airline passengers act as importers subsidised by our meagre exporters of textiles, leather, handicrafts, tea, etc. What a managerially-minded PM and Aviation Minister needed to do before yielding to temptations of buying new aircraft was to get tough with the pampered managements and unions of the nationalized airlines and stand up on behalf of ordinary citizens and taxpayers, who, after all, are mostly rail or road-travellers not jet-setters.

The same pattern of negligent policy-behaviour led Finance Minister P. Chidambaram in an unprecedented step to mention in his 2007 Union Budget Speech the private American companies Blackstone and GE ~ endorsing the Ahluwalia/Deepak Parekh idea that India’s forex reserves may be made available to be lent out to favoured private businesses for purported “infrastructure” development. We may now see chunks of India’s foreign exchange reserves being “borrowed” and never returned ~ a monumental scam in front of the CBI’s noses.

The Reserve Bank’s highest echelons may have become complicit in all this, permitting and encouraging a large capital flight to take place among the few million Indians who read the English newspapers and have family-members abroad. Resident Indians have been officially permitted to open bank accounts of US $100,000 abroad, as well as transfer gifts of $50,000 per annum to their adult children already exported abroad ~ converting their largely untaxed paper rupees at an artificially favourable exchange-rate.

In particular, Mr Ratan Tata (under a misapprehension he may do whatever Lakshmi Mittal does) has been allowed to convert Indian rupees into some US$13,000,000,000 to make a cash purchase of a European steel company. The same has been allowed of the Birlas, Wipro, Dr Reddy’s and numerous other Indian corporations in the organised sector ~ three hundred million dollars here, five hundred million dollars there, etc. Western businessmen now know all they have to do is flatter the egos of Indian boxwallahs enough and they might have found a buyer for their otherwise bankrupt or sick local enterprise. Many newcomers to New York City have been sold the Brooklyn Bridge before. “There’s a sucker born every minute” is the classic saying of American capitalism.

The Sonia-Manmohan Government, instead of hobnobbing with business chambers, needed to get Indian corporations to improve their accounting, audit and governance, and reduce managerial pilfering and embezzlement, which is possible only if Government first set an example.

Why have Indian foreign currency reserves zoomed up in recent years? Not mainly because we are exporting more textiles, tea, software engineers, call centre services or new products to the world, but because Indian corporations have been allowed to borrow abroad, converting their hoards of paper rupees into foreign debt. Forex reserves are a residual in a country’s international balance of payments and are not like tax-resources available to be spent by Government; India’s reserves largely constitute foreign liabilities of Indian residents. This may bear endless repetition as the PM and his key acolytes seem impervious to normal postgraduate-level economics textbooks.

Other official fallacies include thinking India’s savings rate is near 32 per cent and that clever bureaucratic use of it can cause high growth. In fact, real growth arises not because of what politicians and bureaucrats do but because of spontaneous technological progress, improved productivity and learning-by-doing of the general population ~ mostly despite not because of an exploitative parasitic State. What has been mismeasured as high savings is actually expansion of bank-deposits in a fractional reserve banking system caused by runaway government deficit-spending.

Another fallacy has been that agriculture retards growth, leading to nationwide politically-backed attempts at land-grabbing by wily city industrialists and real estate developers. In a hyperinflation-prone economy with wild deficit-spending and runaway money-printing, cheating poor unorganised peasants of their land, when that land is an asset that is due to appreciate in value, has seemed like child’s play.

What of the Opposition? The BJP/RSS have no economists who are not quacks though opportunists were happy to say what pleased them to hear when they were in power; they also have much implicit support among organised business lobbies and the anti-Muslim senior bureaucracy. The official Communists have been appeased or bought, sometimes so cheaply as with a few airline tickets here and there. The nonsensical “Rural Employment Guarantee” is descending into the wasteland of corruption it was always going to be. The “Domestic Violence Act” as expected has started to destroy India’s families the way Western families have been destroyed. The Arjun-DMK OBC quota corrodes higher education further from its already dismal state. All these were schemes that Congress and Communist cabals created or wholeheartedly backed, and which the BJP were too scared or ignorant to resist.

And then came Singur and Nandigram ~ where the sheer greed driving the alliance between the Sonia-Manmohan-Pranab Congress and the CPI-M mask that is Buddhadeb, came to be exposed by a handful of brave women like Mamata and Medha.

A Fiscal U-Turn is Needed For India to Go in The Right Economic Direction

Rajiv Gandhi had a sense of noblesse oblige out of remembrance of his father and maternal grandfather. After his assassination, the comprador business press credited Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh with having originated the 1991 economic reform. In May 2002, however, the Congress Party itself passed a resolution proposed by Digvijay Singh explicitly stating Rajiv and not either of them was to be so credited. The resolution was intended to flatter Sonia Gandhi but there was truth in it too. Rajiv, a pilot who knew no political economy, was a quick learner with intelligence to know a good idea when he saw one and enough grace to acknowledge it.

Rule of Law

The first time Dr Manmohan Singh’s name arose in contemporary post-Indira politics was on 22 March 1991 when M K Rasgotra challenged the present author to answer how Dr Singh would respond to proposals being drafted for a planned economic liberalisation that had been authorised by Rajiv, as Congress President and Opposition Leader, since September 1990. It was replied that Dr Singh’s response was unknown and he had been heading the “South-South Commission” for Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, while what needed to be done urgently was make a clear forceful statement to restore India’s credit-worthiness and the confidence of international markets, showing that the Congress at least knew its economics and was planning to take bold new steps in the direction of progress.

There is no evidence Dr Singh or his acolytes were committed to any economic liberalism prior to 1991 as that term is understood worldwide, and scant evidence they have originated liberal economic ideas for India afterwards. Precisely because they represented the decrepit old intellectual order of statist ”Ma-Bap Sarkari” policy-making, they were not asked in the mid-1980s to be part of a “perestroika-for-India” project done at a foreign university ~ the results of which were received, thanks to Siddhartha Shankar Ray, by Rajiv Gandhi in hand at 10 Janpath on 18 September 1990 and specifically sparked the change in the direction of his economic thinking.

India is a large, populous country with hundreds of millions of materially poor citizens, a weak tax-base, a vast internal and external public debt (i.e. debt owed by the Government to domestic and foreign creditors), massive annual fiscal deficits, an inconvertible currency, and runaway printing of paper-money. It is unsurprising Pakistan’s economy is similar, since it is born of the same land and people. Certainly there have been real political problems between India and Pakistan since the chaotic demobilisation and disintegration of the old British Indian Army caused the subcontinent to plunge into war-like or “cold peace” conditions for six decades beginning with a bloody Partition and civil war in J&K. High military expenditures have been necessitated due to mutual and foreign tensions, but this cannot be a permanent state if India and Pakistan wish for genuine mass economic well-being.

Even with the continuing mutual antagonism, there is vast scope for a critical review of Indian military expenditures towards greatly improving the “teeth-to-tail” ratio of its fighting forces. The abuse of public property and privilege by senior echelons of the armed forces (some of whom have been keen most of all to export their children preferably to America) is also no great secret.

On the domestic front, Rajiv was entirely convinced when the suggestion was made to him in September 1990 that an enormous infusion of public resources was needed into the judicial system for promotion and improvement of the Rule of Law in the country, a pre-requisite almost for a new market orientation. Capitalism without the Rule of Law can quickly degenerate into an illiberal hell of cronyism and anarchy which is what has tended to happen since 1991.

The Madhava Menon Committee on criminal justice policy in July proposed a Hong Kong model of “a single high-tech integrated Criminal Justice complex in every district headquarters which may be a multi-storied structure, devoting the ground floor for the police station including a video-installed interrogation room; the first floor for the police-lockups/sub-jail and the Magistrate’s Court; the second floor for the prosecutor’s office, witness rooms, crime laboratories and legal aid services; the third floor for the Sessions Court and the fourth for the administrative offices etc…. (Government of India) should take steps to evolve such an efficient model… and not only recommend it to the States but subsidize its construction…” The question arises: Why is this being proposed for the first time in 2007 after sixty years of Independence? Why was it not something designed and implemented starting in the 1950s?

The resources put since Independence to the proper working of our judiciary from the Supreme Court and High Courts downwards have been abysmal, while the state of prisons, borstals, mental asylums and other institutions of involuntary detention is nothing short of pathetic. Only police forces, like the military, paramilitary and bureaucracies, have bloated in size.

Neither Sonia-Manmohan nor the BJP or Communists have thought promotion of the Rule of Law in India to be worth much serious thought ~ certainly less important than attending bogus international conclaves and summits to sign expensive deals for arms, aircraft, reactors etc. Yet Rajiv Gandhi, at a 10 Janpath meeting on 23 March 1991 when he received the liberalisation proposals he had authorized, explicitly avowed the importance of greater resources towards the Judiciary. Dr Singh and his acolytes were not in that loop, indeed they precisely represented the bureaucratic ancien regime intended to be changed, and hence have seemed quite uncomprehending of the roots of the intended reforms ever since 1991.

Similarly, Rajiv comprehended when it was said to him that the primary fiscal problem faced by India is the vast and uncontrolled public debt, interest payments on which suck dry all public budgets leaving no room for provision of public goods.

Government accounts

Government has been routinely “rolling over” its domestic debt in the asset-portfolios of the nationalised banks while displaying and highlighting only its new additional borrowing in a year as the “Fiscal Deficit”. More than two dozen States have been doing the same and their liabilities ultimately accrue to the Union too. The stock of public debt in India is Rs 30 trillion (Rs 30 lakh crore) at least, and portends a hyperinflation in the future.

There has been no serious recognition of this since it is political and bureaucratic actions that have been causing the problem. Proper recognition would entail systematically cleaning up the budgets and accounts of every single governmental entity in the country: the Union, every State, every district and municipality, every publicly funded entity or organisation, and at the same time improving public decision-making capacity so that once budgets and accounts recover from grave sickness over decades, functioning institutions exist for their proper future management. All this would also stop corruption in its tracks, and release resources for valuable public goods and services like the Judiciary, School Education and Basic Health. Institutions for improved political and administrative decision-making are needed throughout the country if public preferences with respect to raising and allocating common resources are to be elicited and then translated into actual delivery of public goods and services. Our dysfunctional legislatures will have to do at least a little of what they are supposed to. When public budgets and accounts are healthy and we have functioning public goods and services, macroeconomic conditions would have been created for the paper-rupee to once more become a money as good as gold ~ a convertible world currency for all of India’s people, not merely the metropolitan special interest groups that have been controlling our governments and their agendas.

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Pakistan violates Nawaz Sharif’s rights

September 11, 2007 — drsubrotoroy

Every person has a natural right to enter and live in his/her own country. One may be deported from a foreign country to one’s own country but one may not be deported from one’s own country to a foreign country. That is simple international law. Pakistan’s 1973 Constitution enshrines it in Article 15, which is what the Pakistani Supreme Court has relied upon to say Nawaz Sharif has a right to return to Pakistan. The 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights says the same thing. General Musharraf along with his friends in the USA, UK and Saudi Arabia have made a mistake. The Pakistani Supreme Court ordered the Government to produce Sharif before them. Instead they sent him back to Saudi Arabia and claimed it was a deportation.

Posted in International Law, Natural Justice, Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's politics, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pervez Musharraf. Leave a Comment »

Saving Pakistan: A Physicist/Political Philosopher May Represent Iqbal’s “Spirit of Modern Times”

August 13, 2007 — drsubrotoroy

Saving Pakistan: A Physicist/Political Philosopher May Represent Iqbal’s “Spirit of Modern Times”

by Subroto Roy

First published in The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, August 13 2007,

Pakistan’s Nobel winning particle physicist Abdus Salam (1926-1996) was, like Pakistan’s most eminent jurist Zafrullah Khan (1893-1985), treated badly by his country and compatriots merely because of his religious beliefs as an Ahmadiya/Qadiani. This itself may be an adequate reason for secular thinking when it comes to identifying Pakistan’s or any country’s interests. Pakistan has had eminent poets and writers but there have been no dedicated first-rate technical economists ~ and no serious political philosophers other than, recently, Pervez Hoodbhoy who is a physicist. Most political economy by Pakistanis about Pakistan has tended to be at the level of World Bank bureaucratic reports or traveller’s tales, which have their uses but hardly amount to profound insight or significant scholarship. (We in India also have had numerous minor World Bank/UN bureaucrats, with or without PhDs about anything, passing themselves off as experts on India’s political economy.)

Yet during Pakistan’s present national crisis (and Pakistan has continually faced crises ever since 1947) people must go back to first principles of political economy and ask questions like “Who are we?”; “What are we doing to ourselves?”; “What is our future?” etc ~ questions about national identity and national viability and national purpose.

Abu Dhabi Pact

On 29-30 July, a deal was reportedly struck in Abu Dhabi after a secret face-to-face meeting between Pervez Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto: he would stay on as President for five years, she would be PM and Head of Government, have prosecutions against her dropped and get back her enormous frozen wealth. Such would be the intended outcome of the long-touted return to fair competitive elections later this year. The deal was brokered by British, American, Saudi and other go-betweens outside Pakistan, and is an overt way of keeping Musharraf in power while also seeming to allow a large concession by way of the return of a purported symbol of democracy like Benazir.

But Benazir seems out of touch with reality. When she returned two decades ago as a young unmarried woman confronting General Zia ul-Haq, she was a genuine popular hero. Her father’s judicial execution at Zia’s hands was still fresh in public memory, and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, no matter how misguided his ideologies, had some makings of a serious modern Pakistani nationalist politician.

Benazir as a middle aged matron is not her father and has lost almost all political credibility with her flip-flopping opportunism, and is now seen merely as a face agreeable to the West. Her good looks were discussed on American TV by the comedian Bill Maher while Musharraf’s publicity agent had him sharing jokes on a rival TV comedy – however, American TV audiences are or should not be a Pakistani constituency.

Benazir also forgets that Zia had set up Nawaz Sharif as an ally of the Pakistan military against her own populism in the late 1980s, just as she is being set up now as an ally of the same military against people like Sharif, Javed Hashmi, Maulana Fazlur Rahman and Imran Khan. Musharraf overthrew Sharif and jailed Hashmi and they are his declared foes; the other two have expressed opinions hostile to Western military presence in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Maulana made a nationalistic overture towards India, while Imran has openly praised Indian democracy despite its faults. But Indian foreign policy has not responded and seems under manifest influence of the Western powers ~ had we felt and thought with genuine independence we could have, for example, easily declared and implemented large-scale humanitarian food-aid from the FCI’s wheat-stocks for the people of Afghanistan and Iraq as was suggested in these pages a year ago.

A Musharraf-Benazir alliance is hardly destined to save Pakistan and will be no more than a cynical example of short-term opportunism: we in India can expect them to use J&K as traditional rhetorical camouflage for their own continuing misgovernance and corruption. As in Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan, the Western powers face the dilemma that any government they support in Pakistan will be perceived as lacking legitimacy while a genuine hands-off policy could result in legitimate popular governments which seem to Western Governments beyond their control and hence seemingly adverse to Western interests.

The West has long ill-understood Pakistan, partly because it has seen Pakistan merely to be used as a source of convenient military manpower and real-estate for itself as and when necessary. American diplomats were reporting as early as November 1951 that Maulana Maududi’s Jamaat were hostile to the “evils” of Western materialism which they wanted to “do away with root and branch” in the country. In January 1976, American diplomats were reporting Pakistan’s “crash program to develop nuclear weapons”, and by June 1983 that Pakistan was close to nuclear test capability, intended to deter aggression by India “which remains Pakistan’s greatest security concern”. For Islamic revivalism to coincide with nuclear weapons in the last decade has been something long-predictable if there had been adequate will to do so.

Right wing politicians and religious fundamentalists have come to power in countries with nuclear weapons without untoward results, e.g., Likud in Israel or the BJP/RSS in India. (It is America’s present leaders, as well as all main Democrat and Republican presidential candidates except Ron Paul, who have unilaterally threatened nuclear attacks on a non-nuclear country that has not committed aggression against anyone.) There is no obvious reason why an elected legitimate “conservative” or right wing government in Pakistan must come to pose a special nuclear danger to anyone. If it is serious about governance (which Musharraf-Benazir may not be), it may even succeed in finding enough sobriety and political honesty to start to face up to Pakistan’s real economic and social problems which are vast in size and scope.

Wali Allah vs Iqbal

“We are an Arab people whose fathers have fallen in exile in the country of Hindustan, and Arabic genealogy and Arabic language are our pride,” said Wali Allah (1703-1762). Two centuries later, Mohammad Iqbal (1877-1938), in his 1930 Presidential Speech to the Muslim League in Allahabad conceptualising today’s Pakistan, wished precisely to become free of that Arab influence: “I would like to see the Punjab, NWFP, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single state… The life of Islam as a cultural force in this living country very largely depends on its centralisation in a specified territory… For India it means security and peace resulting from an internal balance of power, for Islam an opportunity to rid itself of the stamp that Arabian Imperialism was forced to give it, to mobilise its law, its education, its culture, and to bring them into closer contact with its own original spirit and the spirit of modern times.”

That “spirit of modern times” is today represented most prominently in Pakistan by Pervez Hoodbhoy. In a December 2006 speech, Hoodbhoy suggested a new alternative to MA Jinnah’s ”Faith, Unity, Discipline” slogan: “First, I wish for minds that can deal with the complex nature of truth…. My second wish is for many more Pakistanis who accept diversity as a virtue… My third, and last, wish is that Pakistanis learn to value and nurture creativity.” And he has spoken of bringing “economic justice to Pakistan”, of the “fight to give Pakistan’s women the freedom which is their birthright”, and of people to “wake up” and engage politically. We shall witness a most engaging battle if Benazir and her new military friends all representing the jaded and corrupt old political power structures, come to face in the elections a new conservative alliance of people like Sharif, Hashmi, Fazlur Rahman and Imran all infused with Hoodbhoy’s scientific liberalism representing Iqbal’s ”spirit of modern times”.

America’s Pakistan-India Policy (2007)

July 27, 2007 — drsubrotoroy

US Pak-India Policy
Delhi & Islamabad Still Look West In Defining Their Relationship

First published in The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article,

July 27, 2007

by

Subroto Roy

“Balance of power” between other nations while pursuing one’s own commercial and political self-interest, was the leitmotif of British foreign policy throughout the 19th Century and up until World War I. This came to be broadly absorbed and imitated by US foreign policy-makers afterwards. It remains the clear leitmotif of US policy between and towards Pakistan and India in recent years, especially since the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. Pakistan’s armed forces have been induced through the usual incentives of modern weapons like F-16s, comfortable officer-visits to US military academies, and hard cash to behave cooperatively with perceived American objectives.

Osama bin Laden
For some bizarre and unknown reason (though it might be as simple as ignorance and thoughtlessness), the USA has made itself believe that arch-enemy Osama bin Laden has remained in the Pashtun areas ever since the American attack took place on the-then Taliban Government in late 2001. The Taliban’s leader Mullah Omar certainly remained there or in Balochistan, but anyone who recalls the reported last conversation between Omar and Osama at the time may well have surmised that Osama was planning a long and permanent trip away from Afghanistan and Pakistan. The present author’s own speculation has been that Osama bin Laden probably moved westwards and has been in a safe and comfortable hideout somewhere in the deserts of North Africa ~ while everyone continues to frantically and ridiculously look for him very far away from where he is.

American policy towards Pakistan has been determined by the parameters of the new policy towards Afghanistan ~ which has been to prop up the Hamid Karzai Government in the hope a pro-American “moderate” “modern” Pashtun like Mr Karzai might one day become a constructive role model for all other Pashtuns, while NATO extends itself “pacifying” any new Pashtun insurgency and attacking poppy-crops on the pattern of the anti-narcotics war in Colombia, and US “Special Forces” continue to look for Osama and friends. Pakistan’s Musharraf has been expected to play along with this, and, in order for him to release and transfer some 80,000 soldiers towards that end, India has been requested not to give him a reason not to want to do so.

General Musharraf was one of the major beneficiaries of the officer-exchange programmes between the US and Pakistan militaries in the past. Like Benazir Bhutto, he is a “known” quantity, well-understood and hence rendered predictable by the American military and diplomatic establishment. Both are also explained and advocated for by their go-betweens, the extremely influential Pakistani bureaucrats within the Washington Beltway and their K-Street lobbyists. Musharraf’s departure to a nice retirement/exile in the USA helped by royalties from his book etc as well as his already-exported son, presumably constitutes a well-planned exit strategy for him personally.

The American problem is that Musharraf may be among the last if not the last of such pliable old-style Pakistani generals ~ the officer-exchange programmes came to slow down or end after the USA pulled out following the defeat of the USSR in Afghanistan, and at the same time Zia ul-Haq had initiated an overt Islamisation of younger officers of the Pakistan military. With such a level of uncertainty as to where the post-Musharraf Pakistan military can or would take itself (along with the country and its nuclear weapons), the only strategy has been to buy them out.

In the current Foreign Affairs, Daniel Markey of the US State Department and Council on Foreign Relations says as much (amid the usual little rhetoric about supporting Pakistani democracy): “Washington must win the trust and confidence of Pakistan’s army. This goal can only be achieved through closer working relationships and tangible investments that lock the United States into a long-term commitment to the region” (italics added).

If American policy towards Pakistan has been to pay to pacify Pakistan’s unpredictable nuclear-armed military, the policy towards India has been one of business, business, and more business. The “US-India Business Council” is merely an official Washington lobbyist protecting American business interests in India such as getting the Governments of India and Maharashtra to pay several hundred million dollars over the Dabhol-Enron fiasco. Yet that is where senior Indian politicians, like the Finance and Commerce Ministers, feel the need to routinely visit on pilgrimage if only to be made to feel important while in the USA. Even Dr Manmohan Singh felt the need to send a personal emissary to gift Condoleeza Rice a basket of Indian mangoes not at her office in the US State Department but when she was addressing a closed-door meeting of that business-lobbyist.

Certainly in case of the so-called “nuclear deal”, there is a political motivation on the American side that India must be prevented from conducting future nuclear explosions, although this may be something mostly symbolic as US intelligence agencies had notoriously failed to predict Pokhran I and Pokhran II. And there is doubtless some reliance that the Indian side to the negotiations has not really properly understood the intricacies of the American political and administrative system, e.g. the insignificance of a Presidential “signing statement”. Hence, if the deal goes through as seems likely now, it will certainly indicate the American side is more than comfortable that if a future Indian Government does not do what the US-side has intended in the nuclear deal (whether or not the Indian negotiators have understood that now), a future US Congress and President will be able to reverse the deal without too much difficulty.

What has mainly driven the deal on the American side is the prospect of very large nuclear business ~ specifically, that India will import six to eight American lightwater reactors. As I have said before in these pages, India’s national energy outlook will barely improve through the nuclear deal (given the miniscule size of the nuclear sector compared to coal and hydro), though a few favoured metros, and Delhi for sure, may see improvement after a decade or two when and if these expensive nuclear reactors become operational.

Short-sightedness
The short-sightedness and indeed sheer imbecility of Indian and Pakistani foreign policy is made clear by the fact we are unable to properly communicate with one another about our common interests as neighbouring countries with the same history and geography except through Washington. The elites of both countries have either fled already or would like to flee or at least travel to the USA to visit their exported adult children as often as possible. It is not dissimilar to our imperial relationship with Britain, where Indians had to travel to London to have their Round Table Conference, England being of course a place of national pilgrimage as the USA has now become. The result is not merely that the militaries and polities of Pakistan and India have wasted vast immeasurable resources in struggles against one another and continue to do so, but also and as importantly, have failed to define robust national identities after six decades.

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Lal Masjid ≠ Golden Temple (2007)

July 15, 2007 — drsubrotoroy

Lal Masjid ≠ Golden Temple

Wide differences are revealed between contemporary Pakistan and India by these two superficially similar military assaults on armed religious civilians

By SUBROTO ROY

First published in The Sunday Statesman, July 15 2007, ww.thestatesman.net, Editorial Page Special Article

There is a superficial similarity between what happened in Pakistan’s “Operation Silence/ Sunrise” at the Lal Masjid a few days ago and what happened in India’s “Operation Blue Star” at the Golden Temple in May-June 1984. In both cases, heavily armed religiously motivated civilians were holed up in a place of worship, and were laid siege to and then killed or arrested by an assault force sent by the national government.

That, however, is about as far as the similarity goes, and it would be a gross error to equate the two and suppose General Musharraf has been only doing something similar to what Indira Gandhi did twenty three years ago. In fact, revisiting the Golden Temple case allows a vivid contrast to be drawn between the very different kinds of national societies modern India and Pakistan have become.

Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was an unexceptional preacher who shot into prominence and fame after first being used by Sanjay Gandhi and Zail Singh in Punjab politics, and later causing the Akali Dal itself to become more communal in nature. Bhindranwale was initially set up by the Sanjay-Zail Congress Party in 1978 to oppose the heretic Nirankari sect, in an attempt to make the Congress gain local electoral support relative to the Akalis by seeming more chauvinistic and less secular in outlook. By July 1982, Bhindranwale, whose associates had been implicated by the police in a number of murders, was holed up in the Golden Temple complex and apparently never left again until he was killed in Operation Blue Star in early June 1984.

Officially, “minimum force” was to be applied in Blue Star: soldiers went in barefoot “with humility in our hearts and prayers on our lips” and sustained heavier casualties than they would have otherwise. Fierce fighting saw Vijayanta tanks and armoured cars being attacked by Chinese-made rocket-propelled grenades that had been smuggled in from the Afghan war. Innocent civilians and surrendered prisoners came to be killed (see Mark Tully and Satish Jacob, Amritsar: Mrs Gandhi’s Last Battle, 1985.)

Yet even so, India’s military had only an instrumental role to play in the Golden Temple siege and assault. The root causes that made the siege inevitable had nothing to do with India’s military itself but were a result of the myopic, ignorant and rather evil nature of our democratic politics during the Indira-Sanjay era ~ something which has continued in slightly milder form to this day throughout the country.

By contrast, the current Pakistani situation is one in which the assault was ordered by the retired head of the Pakistan Army, Pervez Musharraf, who has refused to quit office since being dismissed eight years ago by the last civilian Government headed by Nawaz Sharif. Instead he carried out a coup d’etat against Sharif, and has maintained himself in office claiming, like Ayub Khan, he will one day restore democratic institutions better than the nascent ones he has destroyed. To his credit, Pakistan’s press has been freer than before.

Pakistan’s generals and retired generals have seemed to occasionally grumble, especially when Nawab Bugti of Balochistan was killed, but not do more. This may be because Musharraf has made clear, most poignantly in his January 2002 speech, that any price would be paid by him, including succumbing entirely to American pressure on all matters, so long as the paramount goal of the Pakistan military was maintained, which has been, after all, that of trying by hook or crook to wrest Jammu & Kashmir from India.

J&K has remained the external objective of the Pakistan military as an institution even while, internally, officers have amassed vast personal fortunes over the decades and become major businessmen involved in innumerable foreign collaborations, especially with the Chinese. Musharraf, when asked by an Urdu TV channel not long ago what would happen if India did not relent on J&K, even murmured that war could then continue for a 100 years. Such has been the ostensible driving force of the Pakistan military and the raison d’etre of its domination of all aspects of the economy and society of the country.

At the same time, Pakistan’s military has constituted an Anglo-American reserve bastion for decades, and been a major destination of Western and Chinese armaments ~ paid for often by soft loans or grants from the Gulfs states and Saudi Arabia where thousands of Pakistani personnel serve to staff Arab militaries. Many commentators (e.g. Ayesha Jalal and WE James and myself in the late 1980s/early 1990s, Husain Haqqani and Ayesha Siddiqa today) have pointed to the smothering effect the military has had on all matters of modern Pakistan’s political economy.

The French diplomatic scholar Frédéric Grare has described the situation bluntly: “The fear of an Islamic threat has been the driving force behind most Western countries’ foreign policies toward Pakistan in recent years. The possibility that violent Islamists will kill President Pervez Musharraf, throw Pakistan into turmoil, take over the country and its nuclear weapons, and escalate regional terrorism has dominated the psychological and political landscape. Such fears have usually led to support of the Pakistani military as the only institution able to contain the danger. But the Islamist threat is neither as great nor as autonomous as many assume. True, Pakistan has experienced more than its share of religious violence, both sectarian and jihadi. But serious law-and-order problems do not mean the fate of the state is at stake. No Islamic organization has ever been in a position to politically or militarily challenge the role of the one and only centre of power in Pakistan: the army. On the contrary, the Pakistani Army has used Islamic organizations for its purposes, both at home and abroad. Islamist organizations balance the power of rival mainstream political parties, preserving the army’s role as national arbiter. The army has nurtured and sometimes deployed violent Islamists in Afghanistan (with US support at first), Kashmir, and other hot spots on the subcontinent.” Pakistan: The Myth of an Islamist Peril, Carnegie Endowment, February 2006. Pakistan’s Army may be effectively beyond anyone’s control other than itself. The fox has placed itself in charge of the hen-house.

Indeed, unlike the Indian case during the Bhindranwale period, where religious differences were attempted to be marked between Sikhs and Hindus to allay the perpetual Sikh fear of being reabsorbed into the Hindu fold, the present Pakistani case has had less to do with religious differences than it has to do with the concentration and dispensation of political power. By kidnapping Chinese masseuses in Islamabad, Lal Masjid protestors were hardly making a large religious point but rather one of political powerlessness and lack of voice or exit.

As for the people of J&K on both sides of the Line of Control, if they are objective in their assessment of the histories of India and Pakistan that they see before them, they may conclude once more as they did in the past that, all things considered, their political ancestors especially Sheikh Abdullah and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad were prescient indeed back in 1947-1951 in pressing the future of J&K with the new secular democratic India and not a Pakistan that remains petulant and militarist. Pakistan’s military has expanded itself using J&K as the ostensible cause, yet the more unpleasant Pakistan’s political economy becomes because of that military, the less attractive modern Pakistan becomes to all the peoples of the subcontinent. As the present author said in these pages on 3 September 2006, “To be a man of destiny, Musharraf must transcend the military-business complex he rules over and reduce its role in Pakistani life, not increase it.”

American Turmoil: A Vice-Presidential Coup — And Now a Grassroots CounterRevolution?

June 18, 2007 — drsubrotoroy

American Turmoil: A Vice-Presidential Coup – And Now a Grassroots CounterRevolution?

First published in

The Statesman, Editorial Page, Special Article June 18 2007

by

Subroto Roy

The Cold War was lost by Soviet and East European communism, and the laurelled victor was the USA along with its loyal allies. Russia and East Europe then transformed themselves. Once there had been Dubcek in the Prague Spring and Sakharov in his apartment. Then there was Lech Walesa the electrician, who, on 14 August 1980, climbed over a fence and led an 18-day strike from which arose the first independent trade union ~ Walesa said “the very basic things: he stood on the shipyard gate and called things by their real names”. Then came Gorbachov and Yeltsin. The despised Berlin Wall was smashed into small saleable bits in November 1989 and people just walked across. That was the end of communism. An unknown student stood down the tanks in Tiananmen Square — though a dozen years earlier the death-watch of Chinese communism had begun with Wei Jingsheng’s “Democracy Wall”. Communist apparatchiks everywhere (except New Delhi and Kolkata) started to unlearn communism; communist societies and economies began to be placed on a road to health and taken off the road to misery.

Winner’s curse

What happened to the victors? Germany quietly unified. Italy’s politics stabilised a little. France achieved its wish of being undominated in Europe. Britain, already forlorn from loss of empire, was left trying to arbitrage between Europe and America (though there too there was new competition from the Irish Republic).

Some political learning, reconciliation and growth took place in Europe but there was none in America ~ the biggest victor of all, the one country but for whose efforts all of Europe might have become and remained communist. Instead, the USA chose to gorge itself on self-accolades, bloated, then started to choke on its own hubris.

The result is that as the 2008 Presidential election campaign gets underway, and the Second Iraq War is at its peak, America’s polity at its highest level may be in turmoil of a sort not seen since the student revolts at the peak of the Vietnam War.

Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter were an interregnum after the Vietnam and Watergate traumas. It was during the Reagan “restoration” that communism collapsed and Osama bin Laden was befriended. Carter’s military mission to rescue American hostages in Iran notoriously failed; Reagan restored American pride by sending in the US Army’s crack Rangers to defeat an almost non-existent enemy ~ in Grenada. It was the first successful American military action in a long time. But there was also failure in Beirut where Reagan withdrew after 241 US soldiers were killed by a suicide-bomber.

George Bush Sr glided into the Presidency in Reagan’s wake. He felt sure of being re-elected when Saddam’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait gave him a war with which to seal his chances. For his part, Saddam had primly and properly called in the US Ambassador to Iraq, the top career diplomat April Glaspie, and told her he had accounts to settle with Kuwait over the Iran-Iraq war. Glaspie, under instructions of the Bush-Baker State Department, famously told him the USA had no opinion on inter-Arab conflicts. Saddam took this to be a green signal, or at least not a red signal, from America and went ahead with his attack on Kuwait.

The American President worked himself into an angry indignation ~ and soon there were large numbers of American troops in Saudi Arabia, soon Iraq was forced to retreat with thousands slaughtered in a turkey-shoot from the air, soon there would be severe sanctions and bombings by the USA and UK. Bush was sure he would be re-elected in 1992, and indeed he led all the polls ~ except an oddball surprise Ross Perot pulled away his votes, and caused the third man running, a young governor of a minor State, to push through to victory instead. Bill Clinton was as surprised as anyone that he was President of the USA in 1992. Dissimulation and mendacity reached new heights during his time yet he came to be re-elected in 1996.

Osama bin Laden started to rant against his former ally. Remove your troops from our holy land, he said. Clinton and Madelaine (“It’s worth it”) Albright continued to bomb Saddam instead ~ who after all had launched a few backward Scuds at Israel during the First Iraq War of 1991. Somehow or other, Osama and/or someone else then designed the destruction of Manhattan’s tallest buildings on September 11 2001; it remains unclear what projectile hit the Pentagon or exactly what happened over a field in Pennsylvania the same morning. The mass murder of thousands remains unsolved.

America, under Bush’s elder son, attacked Osama’s hosts in Afghanistan (but not so as to upset their common Pakistani friends too much), then turned their really motivated firepower against their old foe, Saddam Hussein. Iraq by the summer of 2003 was destroyed as a nation-state, and today in 2007 under American occupation has been almost wholly destroyed as a culture and a society. The new US Embassy in Baghdad is as large as the Vatican. Fourteen permanent American military bases have been built. The US Government has spoken of moving troops from Saudi Arabia to Iraq, and of being in Iraq for ever on the Korean pattern.

United States history and political culture had never seen a Vice President as being anything more than an invisible silent shadow of the President of the land. That has changed drastically. Indeed in recent months there has been much serious Washington talk of the incumbent Vice President having unlawfully usurped political power from the President himself. Cheney’s people throughout the Bush Administration have been in almost open battle against the official foreign and diplomatic policy of Condoleeza Rice and the professional military represented by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Before the attack on Iraq they had overturned the CIA’s official intelligence assessments. There is a general perception that Cheney’s people have been far shrewder and more experienced of the Washington Beltway than Bush’s.

Attack on Iran?

Now the central issue has been whether to attack Iran, and if so how and when. Cheney’s people and their think-tank friends are determined America must do so, perhaps with a new Netanyahu Government in Israel early in 2008 or sooner. The President was apparently warned by his generals in December 2006 that such an attack would gravely endanger the supply lines of US troops who would face a Shia insurrection in Iraq; that may have been the sole reason no attack occurred, and also one reason for the present infantry “surge”. Three aircraft carrier battle groups in the Persian Gulf indicate a potential strike, and that level of force has been coming and going from there for months.

The main Democratic Presidential candidates, especially Mrs Clinton, have said nuclear weapons are “not off the table” in reference to striking Iran without provocation. Nine out of ten of the Republican Presidential candidates agree. The exception is Ron Paul who has recognised the United States was not intended by its founders to be launching aggressive nuclear war against non-nuclear countries in the 21st Century. The Reagan-era economist Paul Craig Roberts has said such war will leave America more reviled than Hitler’s Third Reich.

A grassroots democratic counter-revolution could be starting to overturn the elitist coup d’etat that may have occurred in Washington. “People power” beat organised State power in many times and places. Can it win here? Or could there be tanks in Dupont Circle forty years after the tanks in Wenceslas Square?

Home Team Advantage (2007)

June 3, 2007 — drsubrotoroy

Home Team Advantage

On US-Iran talks and Sunni-Shia subtleties: Tehran must transcend its revolution and endorse the principle that the House of Islam has many mansions

First published in The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page, Special Article, June 3 2007

By SUBROTO ROY

On Monday 28 May in Baghdad,the American and Iranian Governments held their first official face-to-face talks in some 26 or 27 years. This sheer fact is a good thing. For more than two years there has been incessant sabre-rattling and gunboat diplomacy by the USA against Iran, as well as provocative words and deeds by Iran’s President against America’s Israeli ally (though it is apparently false his words included saying he wished Israel “wiped off the map”). Palmerston said there are no permanent allies among nations. The last unofficial transactions had to do with the notorious “Iran-contra” affair which blighted Ronald Reagan’s second term as President. Iran was sold American weapons from Israel (yes, the same Iran and same Israel) for use against Iraq (the same Saddam’s Iraq which had been Rumsfeld’s friend and which apparently received American intelligence and logistics help against yes, the same Iran); the moneys the Americans received were then used to pay for anti-Sandinista “contra” forces in Nicaragua (so they could, for example, buy American weapons too). Apart from that unofficial and embarrassing “Iran-contra” affair, the American and Iranian Governments had not had face-to-face discussion since diplomatic relations broke in 1980 during the “hostage crisis”.

Arthur Millspaugh, an American invited by the Iranians to help their public finances, once wrote: “Persia cannot be left to herself, even if the Russians were to keep their hands off politically.… Persia has never yet proved its capacity for independent self-government.” The title of his 1925 book America’s Task in Persia reflected the old paternalist attitude that an imperialist power must necessarily know better than local people what happens to be in their interest in the way a parent knows better than a child. Even that otherwise great libertarian JS Mill himself once suggested that contact with a “superior people” allowed rapid advancement. India’s “Lenin Peace Prize” winner and Soviet sympathiser KPS Menon Sr (grandfather of our present top diplomat) said the same after the 1979 invasion and occupation by the USSR of Afghanistan. Nationalists of all colours and times ~ from Tom Paine, Patrick Henry (“Give me liberty or give me death”) and George Washington to Bal Gangadhar Tilak (“Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it”), Ho Chi Minh and Ayatollah Khomeini ~ would disagree.

Indeed, in the Iranian case, the Khomeini Revolution was the antithesis of the imperialist doctrine. But Iranian revolutionaries then seized the American Embassy on 4 November 1979 and took 66 hostages. Thirteen women and black Americans were released two weeks later; one man was released due to ill-health in July 1980. In a failed attempt to rescue the remaining 52, eight American military personnel died on 25 April 1980. The 52 hostages, including two women and one black, were released on 20 January 1981 under the “Algiers Accord”, a day before Reagan became President. Even if the US Embassy in Tehran had been a den of spies, as the Iranians claimed, the Revolutionary Government could have ordered them all to leave and ended diplomatic relations.

Instead hostages were taken in deliberate violation of international law. The United States Government under duress on 19 January 1981 had to sign the “Algiers Accord”, the first point of which stated: “Non-Intervention in Iranian Affairs: The United States pledges that it is and from now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran’s internal affairs.” That was the “blowback” from the coup d’etat against Iran’s democratic government under Mossadeq in 1953 which the CIA had engineered. Modern US-Iran relations have been about two wrongs ~ indeed multiple wrongs ~ not making a right.

From Algiers until the Baghdad meeting there was no official interaction between the USA and Iran (besides the Iran-contra affair and American relief supplies during an Iranian earthquake). The present US-Iran talks had to do with the catastrophic mess in Iraq, and were held via the current Al-Maliki Government of Iraq which is beholden to both as patrons.

Saddam’s Iraq had been officially secular not an “Islamic Republic”. But its Baathist national-socialism (with yes, a few silly Nazi aspects) had been populated mostly by Saddam’s fellow Sunnis, and there was some vicious anti-Shia persecution.
Doctrinally, the Sunni-Shia conflict may have originated during Prophet Muhammad’s lifetime. “In the words of al-Baghdadi, a Sunni is one who believes in the creation of the universe, the unity and pre-existence of its Maker, the apostolate of Muhammad, recognizes and observes the duties of the five prayers, fast of Ramazan, poor-rate and pilgrimage, and does not adulterate his faith with an abominable innovation which leads to heresy.” (Imtiaz Ahmad in Grewal ed. Religious Movements and Institutions in Medieval India, p.277). Shias claim that exegetical authorities, both Sunni and Shia, record the Prophet on 10 March 632 AD at the pool of Ghadir “while returning from his last pilgrimage to Mecca… delivered his farewell address” in which he declared Ali ibn Abi Talib his successor (S. Ali Nadeem Rezavi, ibid., p. 281). No logical contradiction between Sunnis and Shias seems obvious from this.

But there also have been racial and cultural aspects to the division. Arabs, though not Iraqi Arabs, are mostly Sunni while Iranians are mostly Shia. At the same time, Persian culture and history has had incorrigibly Zoroastrian roots just as Egypt was the land of the Pharoahs and Arabia of Meccan paganism. Mesopotamian culture has had Sumerian and Babylonian roots, and Indian Islam has grown among the cultures of Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs. Intra-Muslim conflict will be reduced only when it becomes generally recognised that the House of Islam has had many mansions.

Saddam’s war against Khomeini’s Iran was not a religious war but one between two putative nation-states. In Iraqi junior schools during the war, a class of 40 pupils could be divided by academic merit such that the top 20 would play brave Iraqis in the school-play ~ the hapless bottom 20 had to play the wicked Persians, leaving them in tears as well as in simulated defeat.

What the current US-UK invasion and occupation of Iraq has quite deliberately accomplished is the destruction of Iraq as a putative nation-state and the fanning of mostly suppressed Shia-Sunni differences instead. The idea of “regime-change” in Teheran in the old way of the CIA coup against Mossadeq also has not been far from Anglo-American thinking in the current confrontation with Iran. “Who lost Iran?” was an American political slogan in the 1980s, and there are day-dreamers in Washington think-tanks today who have fantasies of Iran being run by compliant “Iranian-American” émigrés from Los Angeles. But instead the destruction of Saddam’s regime inevitably has led to Iran’s strengthening, as all Iraqi Shia forces made dominant as a result are, at least from a doctrinal standpoint within Islam, united with Tehran to greater or lesser degree. A new Iraq-Iran war is hard to imagine as along as Shias dominate Baghdad’s Government. Iran for its part needs to demonstrate that it has transcended its revolution and that it unequivocally endorses the principle that the House of Islam has many mansions.

The British and Americans are great lovers of sports and inventors of many modern games played on fields around the world, from cricket and soccer to basketball. Their Governments seem to have forgotten in their foreign policy theorising that there is such a thing as “home-team advantage”. Imperialists ultimately can never defeat nationalists, because, at the end of the day, imperialists have to either go home or (as Conrad and Coppola knew) “go native”. In the new Iran-USA talks, both sides may have sensed Iran has the home-team advantage. The most the United States can do to Iran is bomb it and leave.

On Indian Nationhood (2007)

May 25, 2007 — drsubrotoroy

On Indian Nationhood
From Tamils To Kashmiris And Assamese And Mizos To Sikhs And Goans

First published in The Statesman, Editorial Page

May 25 2007

By Subroto Roy

In the decades before 1947, imperialist critics of Indian nationalism accused the movement of being less about creating Indian nationhood than about supplanting British rule with local Indian oligarchies. Sydenham, for example, in the upper house of Britain’s Parliament in August 1918, gleefully quoted from the “Madras Dravidian Hindu Association” (forerunners of today’s DMK etc): “We shall fight to the last drop of our blood any attempt to transfer the seat of authority in this country from British hands to so-called high-caste Hindus, who have ill-treated us in the past and will do so again but for the protection of British laws.” Also quoted were “Namasudras of Bengal”, allegedly numbering “ten million men”, protesting “gross misrepresentation” by “so-called high-caste leaders” of the desirability of “Home Rule or self-government”. Besides caste and class there was always religion too by which India’s inhabitants could be classified and divided, and it must have delighted Sydenham to quote the “South Indian Islamic League” saying “Nothing should be done which will weaken British authority in any manner whatsoever, and hand over the destinies of the Moslem community to a class which has no regard for their interests and no respect for their sentiments”.

Home Rule League

Sydenham was attacking the Montagu-Chelmsford Report which had stated that India had “a core of earnest men who believe sincerely and strive for political progress; around them a ring of less educated people to whom a phrase or a sentiment appeals; and an outside fringe of those who have been described as attracted by curiosity to this new thing, or who find diversions in attacking a big and very solemn Government as urchins might take a perilous joy at casting toy darts at an elephant.”

Annie Besant, herself an Englishwoman, was, along with BG Tilak and MA Jinnah, a pioneer of Indian nationalism at the time and headed the new Indian Home Rule League on the Irish pattern. The League stated its membership at 52,000. Sydenham multiplied that by five and asked if a quarter million could purport to rule 244 millions in an Indian democracy. Where, he demanded, was the “voice that cannot yet be heard, the voice of the peoples of India”? The imperialist jibe was that the British Raj would be replaced at best by a “Vakil Raj” of “high-caste” Hindus and at worst by anarchy and bloodshed.

Thirty years later India’s was partitioned and independent under Attlee’s Labour Party. Churchill took over the imperialist mantle and found solace in the new India agreeing to remain in Britain’s “Commonwealth”, saying that India doing so as a Republic did not impair “the majesty of the Crown or the personal dignity of the King”.

The ghosts of Churchill and Sydenham today would heartily cheer our Republic’s current President APJ Abdul Kalam agreeing to receive the “King Charles II Medal” from the Royal Society, and our current PM Manmohan Singh accepting honorary British degrees also while in office. Britain’s Crown Prince has proposed a cricket match between India and Pakistan to mark the 60th anniversary of 1947, and what, after all, could be less inappropriate to mark the event in British eyes? All that Indian nationalism would have been firmly put in its place.

Now Pakistan mostly goes unmentioned in the history of Indian nationalism because the new Pakistanis as of 14 August 1947 hardly felt or even wished to be independent of the British. Instead they longed only to acquire control over any kind of Muslim-majority Government that they could, and as much of the resources and joint military assets of the old India they could get their hands on.

The Kashmir dispute and India-Pakistan conflict have not been ones between Hindus and Muslims, regardless of what the BBC, CNN etc make themselves believe. As much as for any other reason, Kashmir escalated out of control because of British irresponsibility during the process of disintegration of the old Indian Army between the two new Dominions. Newly demobilised Mirpuri soldiers who had formed loyal British battalions were drawn into the cycle of Partition-related communal violence and reprisals in Punjab, which inevitably spilt over into Jammu and culminated in the attack on J&K State that commenced from Pakistan’s NWFP in October 1947 ~ plunging J&K into civil war with Sheikh Abdullah and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad’s National Conference allied to the new secular India and Sardar Ibrahim’s Muslim Conference allied to the new and soon to be Islamic Pakistan. Field Marshal Auchinlek, the Supreme Commander of both Indian and Pakistani Armed Forces, had the decency to resign and abolish the so-called “Supreme Command” as soon as he realised his own forces were at war with one another.

It would not be too inaccurate to say Pakistan and Britain continued in a neo-colonial relationship throughout the 1950s and 1960s ~ all the way until Ayub Khan (who had been warmly entertained at Chequers during the Christine Keeler-Profumo matter), overplayed his hand by attacking India in 1965. That war followed by the East Pakistan cyclone in 1969 brought to a head the inherent political contradictions of the Pakistani state accumulated until that time, and soon led to Bangladesh’s creation in 1971. Britain has had no real interest in Bangladesh but as Pakistan had allowed dual nationality with Britain, Britain found itself with a lot of Bangladeshi immigrants whose “Indian” restaurants give modern Britons today something to look forward to every weekend.

Britain and its American ally continued to have deep interests in Pakistan, mostly because of the geopolitical importance of Pakistani real estate and the generally obsequious and compliant nature of the Pakistani military and diplomatic elite. All that began to change fundamentally when the real declaration of Pakistani independence occurred in the world with the AQ Khan nuclear bombs exploding in 1998 followed by the September 11 2001 attacks upon the USA.

Nationalism today

As for ourselves in India, we have developed some coherent and recognisable design of a modern political economy with a Union Government and more than two dozen State Governments, and we have abolished the imperialist lackeys known as the “princes”. Our Governments at Union and State levels change peacefully by periodic elections under the 1950 Constitution. This in itself would be seen as an astonishing democratic achievement relative to where we were one hundred years ago at the time of the Morley-Minto policies. Thanks to Jawaharlal Nehru, we have had universal franchise since 1952 (at a time when the USA still had its Jim Crow laws against black citizens) ~ yet the imperialist jibe of an infinitesimally small elite purporting to represent hundreds of millions of India’s people remains to be addressed.

It would be interesting to know how many descendants of the 52,000 members of Annie Besant’s Home Rule League remain in India and how many have emigrated to the USA, Britain, Australia etc. The children of our top military, bureaucratic, business, professional and academic elite have cheerfully led an exodus out of the country. E.g. the son of a former commanding general of the Indian Army’s Artillery Regiment is now a British businessman and member of Tony Blair’s new House of Lords. Indian Nationhood in the 21st Century no longer has to include Bangladeshis and Pakistanis who have ended up seeking to develop their own nationalisms, but it remains hard enough to try to include everyone else ~ from Tamils to Kashmiris and from Assamese and Mizos to Sikhs and Goans. Cleaning up our government accounting and sorting out our public finances nationwide so as to establish a sound money for everyone to use for the first time in sixty or seventy years, is among the first steps in defining our common goals as an independent nation.

(Postscript: The original text stated Independence and Paritition came “forty years” after the only date mentioned until that point in the text, which is of the 1918 Montagu-Chelmsford period. Unconsciously, I was counting from the Morley-Minto period of 1906-1908 which was the constitutional precedent to Montagu-Chelmsford.)

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India and Her Neighbours

May 15, 2007 — drsubrotoroy

We & Our Neighbours
Pakistanis And Bangladeshis Would Do Well To Learn From Sheikh Abdullah

by Subroto Roy

First published in The Statesman May 15 2007, Editorial Page Special Article, http://www.thestatesman.net

Pakistan and Bangladesh, unlike ourselves in India, have yet to properly establish elementary constitutional institutions. “Individuals may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation”, said Benjamin Disraeli. The continual political chaos on the streets of Pakistan and Bangladesh ~ not just in recent weeks but in recent years and decades ~ indicate such institutions are still lacking or stillborn there. Tear gas, water cannon and hordes of armed policemen to charge at enraged stone-throwing crowds are not part of any solution but part of the political problem itself.

One main purpose of constitutional institutions has to do with peaceful transfer of power from one political party to its adversary. Mulayam Singh Yadav has just transferred political power to Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh, an Indian State more populous than either Pakistan or Bangladesh. Not long ago Lalu Prasad Yadav did the same to Nitish Kumar in Bihar, and Atal Behari Vajpayee to an appointee of Sonia Gandhi for all India itself. Modern democratic institutions are precisely about such peaceful transfers of power after voters have acted periodically to try to “throw the rascals out”.

Honeymoon period
It would be foolish to suppose an incoming Government of UP, Bihar or all India itself will be very much better than the one it displaces. But certainly in its first few “honeymoon” months or weeks at least, it will not be any worse. The tail-end of any scheduled democratic government, whether in India, Britain, the USA or elsewhere, is quite a disgusting sight, as those in their last days of power grab whatever they can from office before departure without any pretence of shame or embarrassment. Serious decision-making in the public interest would have long ago ceased. Almost anything new would be better.

At the same time, among those coming into power there will be some earnest wish at least to make some small difference for the better ~ a wish that will surely disappear within weeks of entering office after which the old cynicism and corruption will take hold again, and it will be the same ugly business as usual. But certainly, voters can expect slightly fresh air for a brief time after they have thrown one party out of power and chosen to bring in another. That is as about as good as democracy gets in modern practice.

Of India’s dozen or more larger States, we have, in the sixth decade of our Constitution, quite a few in which bipartisan democratic processes have been taking shape. UP was not one of them, and it is to Mayawati’s credit that she has broken the pattern of hung assemblies and now heads a majority government. Bihar too had seemed in the monolithic grip of Lalu Yadav until Nitish Kumar broke it, though the latter’s honeymoon period is now long over and it is business quite as usual there. Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and even J&K each have a noticeable bipartisan nature developing with at least one “national” party present to be counted. Tamil Nadu has been bipartisan but in an unhealthy way based on the personality cults of antagonistic leaders rather than any political principles or class-interests ~ which is a pity as the old Madras once had seemed a source of some new rationality in Indian politics. West Bengal’s voters have been definitely bipartisan, the communist vote being no more than that of the Congress and Trinamul combined. But for decades the local Congress has been notoriously sold down the river to its communist adversary by the Congress “leadership” in Delhi, and that has allowed an entrenched and wholly corrupted communist cultural and political mindset to rule in Kolkata. The Basu-Bhattacharjee Government was palpably bewildered over the Singur and Nandigram events because of their self-induced delusion about the economic and political realities of the State.

Throughout India though, periodic elections have acquired enough legitimacy to be accepted as the means of peaceful change of government. And with bipartisan politics there is a tendency for the median voter to be wooed at election-time.

We have of course many other continuing problems in our political economy ~ most notorious of which is the rotten state of our public finances and the continuous massive deficit finance that has ruined our paper currency and banking system ever since Indira Gandhi’s rule, coinciding with the start of Manmohan Singh’s career as an economic bureaucrat and Pranab Mukherjee’s as a politician in the early 1970s. Our acceptance of the democratic way has to an extent depended on our notoriously irresponsible macroeconomic policies ~ since every State and Union Government entity has been allowed to face no effective binding financial budget-constraint, and all its perverse decision-making can flow eventually into the swamp that is our Public Debt which constitutes the asset-side of the domestic banking system. India’s cardinal problem then becomes one of how to improve our macroeconomics without losing our democracy ~ something the Sonia-Manmohan-Pranab Congress, the BJP/RSS and the Communists are all equally clueless about.

Across our borders, our Pakistani and Bangladeshi cousins were cut from the same constitutional cloth as ourselves, namely the 1935 Government of India Act and the Montague-Chelmsford reforms before that. But after Jinnah’s death they refused to admit this and instead embarked on trying to write and implement a Constitution for a new Caliphate. The initial demand was “That the sovereignty in Pakistan belongs to God Almighty alone and that the Government of Pakistan shall administer the country as His agent”. In Rashid Rida and Maulana Maududi’s words, Islam becomes “the very antithesis of secular Western democracy. The philosophical foundation of Western democracy is the sovereignty of the people. Lawmaking is their prerogative and legislation must correspond to the mood and temper of their opinion… Islam… altogether repudiates the philosophy of popular sovereignty and rears its polity on the foundations of the sovereignty of God and the viceregency (Khilafat) of man.” (Rosenthal, Islam & the Modern National State, Cambridge 1965). Pakistan’s constitutionalists thus have faced an impossible battle to overcome the ontological error of assuming that any mundane government can be in communication with God Almighty.

J&K’s Constitution
Now Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah was as pious a Muslim as any but was far more modern in his 5 November 1951 speech to J&K’s Constituent Assembly: “You are the sovereign authority in this State of Jammu & Kashmir; what you decide has the irrevocable force of law”. Referring to the American and French Constitutions, he said the “basic democratic principle” was of the “sovereignty of the nation”. “We should be clear about the responsibilities that this power invests us with. In front of us lie decisions of the highest national importance which we shall be called upon to take. Upon the correctness of our decisions depends not only the happiness of our land and people now, but the fate as well of generations to come.”

Can a modern conclave of Pervez Musharraf, Nawaz Sharif, Benazir Bhutto and Chaudhry Iftikhar Ahmed decide or declare any better for Pakistan today? Or one of Khaleda, Hasina and whichever cabal of generals and bureaucrats happens to head Bangladesh at present?

If Pakistan and Bangladesh each chose to restart with the modern-minded constitutional example Sheikh Abdullah set more than a half century ago in J&K, they may find their political problems less severe in due course. It is a long road ahead.

Uttar Pradesh Polity and Finance

March 24, 2007 — drsubrotoroy

Uttar Pradesh Polity & Finance

A Responsible New Govt May Want To Declare A Financial Emergency

First published in The Statesman Editorial Page, March 24 2007

by

Subroto Roy

Uttar Pradesh goes to the polls beginning April 7. Nothing may succeed better in focusing the minds of its citizens and political candidates than some hard macroeconomic realities. Discussing UP’s public finances may be the first step to bringing cool rationality to the cauldron of its politics ~ consisting as it does of seemingly deep and irreconcilable divisions of religion, caste and personality.

UP shared initials of the old British “United Provinces of Agra and Oudh”, and in 1947 was mostly the same territory. It deserves better than to be known merely as our “Northern State”: UP has been India’s fulcrum, deeply affecting our history, culture and politics. There could have been today not merely a new Uttarakhand but also perhaps Agra, Bareilly (Rohilkhand), Jhansi (Bundelkhand), Meerut, Avadh (Ayodhya, Oudh), Kanauj, Varanasi etc.

History and politics

Each has had its history. Oudh was seen by the British before Dalhousie as a northern buffer for their Bengal possessions. Bareilly was “an important centre of disaffection” of Muslim soldiers against the British in 1857 and also where Hindus after Aurangzeb’s death in 1707 had “thrown off the imperial yoke” refusing to pay tribute to Delhi. The very idea of “Pakistan” was mostly a UP-invention. Long before Iqbal and Jinnah, Sayyid Ahmad Barelvi (1786-1831) initiated a mass migration of Muslims and created a theocratic principality in the NWFP (Tariqah-i-Muhammadiyah) which collapsed due to conflict between his Pashtun and North Indian followers. Pervez Musharraf’s family were frankly nostalgic during their India-visit, and indeed Pakistan’s Mohajirs long for fertile UP more than the arid country they in fact possess ~ even more than for J&K on which Pakistanis since Liaquat (UP’s most prominent Muslim legislator between 1926-1940) became fixated instead.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the “Ram Janambhoomi/Babri Masjid” dispute may have been mostly a gigantic, inchoate, incoherent national exercise in defining our identity: “Who are we?” or perhaps “Who are we not?” as modern Indians, questions that remain unanswered. Certainly, in 1908 the Imperial Gazetteer of India Vol XIX pp 279-280 reported: “After Babar had gained a footing in Hindustan by his victory at Panipat in 1526, and had advanced to Agra, the defeated Afghan house of Lodhi still occupied the Central Doab, Oudh, and the eastern districts of the present United Provinces. In 1527, Babar, on his return from Central India, defeated his opponents in Southern Oudh near Kanauj, and passed on through the Province as far as Ajodhya where he built a mosque in 1528, on the site renowned as the birthplace of Rama. The Afghans remained in opposition after the death of Babar in 1530, but were defeated near Lucknow in the following year.”

History books and doctoral theses should have been perhaps where all such old facts deserved to remain in a modern self-confident, self-aware India.

Today’s UP at more than 166 million people exceeds in population France and Germany combined. One in every six or seven Indians is from UP. The State has become notorious for its chaotic politics, its “history-sheeters”, its corruption, crimes, badlands, astrology and other superstition. Its popular power gets divided between Mulayam, Mayawati and the BJP: each the self-appointed spokesman of Muslims, “Bahujans” and Hindu upper castes respectively. Congress, once India’s grand old secular national party, has been side-lined in UP politics.

Yet UP’s pivotal role remains such that the healthiest development for Indian democracy today may be for the Lok Sabha Member from Rae Bareilly to close down 10 Janpath as a residence and office for herself, and live instead as an exemplary parliamentarian among the common people of her constituency, setting the example too for her son to do the same in Amethi. Their permanent departure from New Delhi, becoming prominent UP politicians instead, would be the desperately needed “tough love” required by the Congress Party ~ which finally, after many decades, would be compelled to grow up and elect a leadership for itself based on some real political principles and not mere sycophancy.

Focussing on UP’s Public Finances is the first constructive step towards a rational political economy arising in the interests of its many citizens. As with other States of our Union, it is not impossible to understand what is going on with UP’s finances, though it does take some serious effort. The State receives tax revenues, income from State operations (like bus fares etc), and grants transferred from the Union. Of these revenues, more than 70% arise from taxation. Of those taxes, about 45% is collected by the Union on behalf of the State according to the Finance Commission’s formulae; 55% is collected by the State itself, and about 50% of what the State collects is Sales Tax. On the expenditure side, some 43% has been going to repay the State’s debts plus interest owed on that debt. The remainder gets distributed as summarily shown in the table.

Audit and restructuring

As with the Union of India, as well as with other States like West Bengal, the wide difference between income and expenditure implies the Government must then issue new public debt, which typically has been a larger and larger sum every year, greater than the maturing debt being amortised or extinguished. The grave consequences of this will be obvious to any householder, and makes it imperative that calm, sober thought and objective analysis occur about UP’s financial condition and budget constraint. E.g., what is revealed at a higher level of detail is that in 2003-2004, Rs. 5.43 Bn (Rs 543 crores) were spent to collect Rs. 1.18 Bn (Rs. 118 crores) of land revenue! UP has also spent extraordinarily vast public resources (and World Bank loans) on electricity ~ yet its power supply remains dismal.

The author is Contributing Editor, The Statesman

30.33
3.17
25.81
1.13
11.63
8.41
29.00
62.79
18.97
6.04
16.13
200.22
29.98
16.07
8.19
1.08
18.36
0.20
0.37
0.53
373.60

3.52%
0.37%
2.99%
0.13%
1.35%
0.98%
3.36%
7.28%
2.20%
0.70%
1.87%
23.23%
3.48%
1.86%
0.95%
0.13%
2.13%
0.02%
0.04%
0.06%
43.34%

tax revenue
operational income
grants from Union
loans recovered
total income
268.74
22.82
24.82
124.98
Govt. Borrowing Requirement:
(total expenditure minus total income) 420.67
financd by:
new public debt issued
use of Trust Funds etc.

385.41
35.26
420.67

From the author’s research based on latest available data published by the C&AG of India

What To Tell Musharraf: Peace Is Impossible Without Non-Aggressive Pakistani Intentions

December 15, 2006 — drsubrotoroy

What to tell Musharraf:

Peace Is Impossible Without Non-Aggressive Pakistani Intentions

First published in The Statesman December 15, 2006,

Editorial Page Special Article

by

SUBROTO ROY

In June 1989 a project at an American university involving Pakistani and other scholars, including one Indian, led to the book Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s published in Karachi, New Delhi and elsewhere. The book reached Nawaz Sharif and the Islamabad elite, and General Musharraf’s current proposal on J&K, endorsed warmly by the US State Department last week, derives from the last paragraph of its editorial introduction: “Kashmir… must be demilitarised and unified by both countries sooner or later, and it must be done without force. There has been enough needless bloodshed on the subcontinent… Modern Pakistanis and Indians are free peoples who can voluntarily agree in their own interests to alter the terms set hurriedly by Attlee or Mountbatten in the Indian Independence Act 1947. Nobody but we ourselves keeps us prisoners of superficial definitions of who we are or might be. The subcontinent could evolve its political identity over a period of time on the pattern of Western Europe, with open borders and (common) tariffs to the outside world, with the free movement of people, capital, ideas and culture. Large armed forces could be reduced and transformed in a manner that would enhance the security of each nation. The real and peaceful economic revolution of the masses of the subcontinent would then be able to begin.”

The editors as economists decried the waste of resources involved in the Pakistan-India confrontation, saying it had “greatly impoverished the general budgets of both Pakistan and India. If it has benefited important sections of the political and military elites of both countries, it has done so only at the expense of the general welfare of the masses.”

International law

Such words may have been bold in the early 1990s but today, a decade and a half later, they seem incomplete and rather naïve even to their author, who was myself, the only Indian in that project. Most significantly, the position in international law in the context of historical facts had been wholly neglected. So had been the manifest nature of the contemporary Pakistani state.

Jammu & Kashmir became an entity in international law when the Treaty of Amritsar was signed between Gulab Singh and the British on March 16 1846. British India itself became an entity in international law much later, possibly as late as June 1919 when it signed the Treaty of Versailles. As for Pakistan, it had no existence in world history or international law until August 14 1947, when the British created it as a new entity out of certain demarcated areas of British India and gave it the status of a Dominion. British India dissolved itself on August 15 1947 and the Dominion of India became its successor-state in international law on that date. As BR Ambedkar pointed out at the time, the new India automatically inherited British India’s suzerainty over any and all remaining “princely” states of so-called “Indian India”. In case of J&K in particular, there never was any question of it being recognised as an independent entity in global international law.

The new Pakistan, by entering a Standstill Agreement with J&K as of August 15 1947, did locally recognise J&K’s sovereignty over its decision whether to join Pakistan or India. But this Pakistani recognition lasted only until the attack on J&K that commenced from Pakistani territory as of October 22 1947, an attack in which Pakistani forces were complicit (something which, in different and mutating senses, has continued ever since). The Dominion of India had indicated it might have consented if J&K’s Ruler had decided to accede to Pakistan in the weeks following the dissolution of British India. But no such thing happened: what did happen was the descent of J&K into a condition of legal anarchy.

Beginning with the Pakistani attack on J&K as of October 22 upto and including the Rape of Baramulla and the British-led Pakistani coup détat in Gilgit on one side, and the arrival of Indian forces as well as mobilization by Sheikh Abdullah and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad of J&K’s civilians to repel the Pakistani invaders on the other side, the State of Jammu & Kashmir became an ownerless entity in international law. In Roman Law, from which all modern international and municipal law ultimately derives, the ownership of an ownerless entity is open to be determined by “military decision”. The January 1949 Ceasefire Line that came to be renamed the Line of Control after the 1971 Bangladesh War, demarcates the respective territories that the then-Dominions and later Republics of India and Pakistan acquired by “military decision” of the erstwhile State of J&K which had come to cease to exist.

What the Republic of India means by saying today that boundaries cannot be redrawn nor any populations forcibly transferred is quite simply that the division of erstwhile J&K territory is permanent, and that sovereignty over it is indivisible. It is only sheer ignorance on the part of General Musharraf’s Indian interviewer the other day which caused it to be said that Pakistan was willing to “give up” its claim on erstwhile J&K State territory which India has held: Pakistan has never had nor even made such a claim in international law. What Pakistan has claimed is that India has been an occupier and that there are many people inhabiting the Indian area who may not wish to be Indian nationals and who are being compelled against their will to remain so ~ forgetting to add that precisely the same could be said likewise of the Pakistani-held area.

Accordingly, the lawful solution proposed in these pages a year ago to resolve that matter, serious as it is, has been that the Republic of India invite every person covered under Article 370, citizen-by- citizen, under a condition of full information, to privately and without fear decide, if he/she has not done so already, between possible Indian, Iranian, Afghan or Pakistani nationalities ~ granting rights and obligations of permanent residents to any of those persons who may choose for whatever private reason not to remain Indian nationals. If Pakistan acted likewise, the problem of J&K would indeed come to be resolved. The Americans, as self- appointed mediators, have said they wish “the people of the region to have a voice” in a solution: there can be no better expression of such voice than allowing individuals to privately choose their own nationalities and their rights and responsibilities accordingly. The issue of territorial sovereignty is logically distinct from that of the choice of nationality by individual inhabitants.

Military de-escalation

Equally significant though in assessing whether General Musharraf’s proposal is an anachronism, is Pakistan’s history since 1947: through Ayub’s 1965 attack, the civil war and secession of Bangladesh, the Afghan war and growth of the ISI, the Kargil incursion, the 1999 coup détat, and, once or twice removed, the 9/11 attacks against America. It is not a history that allows any confidence to arise in Indians that we are not dealing with a country misgoverned by a tiny arrogant exploitative military elite who remain hell-bent on aggression against us. Like the USA and USSR twenty years ago, what we need to negotiate about, and negotiate hard about, is an overall mutual military drawdown and de-escalation appropriate to lack of aggressive intent on both sides. Is General Musharraf willing to discuss that? It would involve reciprocal verifiable assessment of one another’s reasonable military requirements on the assumption that each was not a threatening enemy of the other. That was how the USA-USSR drawdown and de-escalation occurred successfully. If General Musharraf is unwilling to enter such a discussion, there is hardly anything to talk about with him. We should wait for democracy to return.

On a Liberal Party for India

October 22, 2006 — drsubrotoroy

NON-EXISTENT LIBERALS

By SUBROTO ROY

First published in The Sunday Statesman October 22 2006, Editorial Page Special Article

Communists, socialists and fascists exist in the Left, Congress and BJP-RSS ~ but there is a conservative/”classical liberal” party missing in Indian democracy today

We in India have sorely needed for many years a serious “classical liberal” or “conservative” political party. Major democratic countries used to have such parties which paid lip-service at least to “classical liberal” principles. But the 2003 attack on Iraq caused Bush/McCain-Republicans to merge with Hilary-Democrats, and Blair-Labour with Tory neocons, all united in a cause of collective mendacity, self-delusion and jingoism over the so-called “war on terror”. The “classical liberal” or “libertarian” elements among the Republicans and Tories find themselves isolated today, just as do pacifist communitarian elements among the Democrats and Labour. There are no obvious international models that a new Indian Liberal Party could look at ~ any models that exist would be very hard to find, perhaps in New Zealand or somewhere in Canada or North Eastern Europe like Estonia. There have been notable individual Indian Liberals though whom it may be still possible to look to for some insight: Gokhale, Sapru, Rajagopalachari and Masani among politicians, Shenoy among economists, as well as many jurists in years and decades gone by.

What domestic political principles would a “classical liberal” or conservative party believe in and want to implement in India today? First of all, the “Rule of Law” and an “Efficient Judiciary”. Secondly, “Family Values” and “Freedom of Religious Belief”. Thirdly, “Limited Government” and a “Responsible Citizenry”. Fourthly, “Sound Money” and “Free Competitive Markets”. Fifthly, “Compassion” and a “Safety Net”. Sixthly, “Education and Health for All”. Seventhly, “Science, not Superstition”. There may be many more items but this in itself would be quite a full agenda for a new Liberal Party to define for India’s electorate of more than a half billion voters, and then win enough of a Parliamentary majority to govern with at the Union-level, besides our more than two dozen States.

The practical policies entailed by these sorts of political slogans would involve first and foremost cleaning up the budgets and accounts of every single governmental entity in the country, namely, the Union, every State, every district and municipality, every publicly funded entity or organisation. Secondly, improving public decision-making capacity so that once budgets and accounts recover from having been gravely sick for decades, there are functioning institutions for their proper future management. Thirdly, resolving J&K in the most lawful and just manner as well as military problems with Pakistan in as practical and efficacious a way as possible today. This is necessary if military budgets are ever going to be drawn down to peacetime levels from levels they have been at ever since the Second World War. How to resolve J&K justly and lawfully has been described in these pages before (The Statesman, “Solving Kashmir” 1-3 December 2005, “Law, Justice and J&K”, 2-3 July 2006).

Cleaning up public budgets and accounts would pari passu stop corruption in its tracks, as well as release resources for valuable public goods and services. A beginning may be made by, for example, tripling the resources every year for three years that are allocated to the Judiciary, School Education and Basic Health, subject to tight systems of performance-audit. Institutions for improved political and administrative decision-making are necessary throughout the country if public preferences with respect to raising and allocating common resources are to be elicited and then translated into actual delivery of public goods and services.

This means inter alia that our often dysfunctional Parliament and State Legislatures have to be inspired by political statesmen (if any such may be found to be encouraged or engendered) to do at least a little of what they have been supposed to be doing. If the Legislative Branch and the Executive it elects are to lead this country, performance-audit will have to begin with them.

The result of healthy public budgets and accounts, and an economy with functioning public goods and services, would be a macroeconomic condition for the paper-rupee to once more become a money that is as good as gold, namely, a convertible world currency again after having suffered sixty years of abuse via endless deficit finance at the hands of first the British and then numerous Governments of free India that have followed.

It may be noticed the domestic aspects of such an agenda oppose almost everything the present Sonia-Manmohan Congress and Jyoti Basu “Left” stand for — whose “politically correct” thoughts and deeds have ruined India’s money and public budgets, bloated India’s Government especially the bureaucracy and the military, starved the Judiciary and damaged the Rule of Law, and gone about overturning Family Values. While there has been endless talk from them about being “pro-poor”, the actual results of their politicization of India’s economy are available to be seen with the naked eye everywhere.

One hundred years from now if our souls returned to visit the areas known today as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh etc, we may well find 500+ million inhabitants still below the same poverty-line despite all the gaseous prime ministerial or governmental rhetoric today and projections about alleged growth-rates.

If the Congress and “Left” must oppose any real “classical liberal” or conservative agenda, we may ask if the BJP-RSS could be conceivably for it. The answer is clearly not. The BJP-RSS may pontificate much about being patriotic to the motherland and about past real or imagined glories of Indian culture and religion, but that hardly ever has translated concretely into anything besides anti-Muslim or anti-Christian rhetoric, or breeding superstitions like astrology even at supposedly top technological institutes in the country. (Why all astrology is humbug, and a pre-Copernican Western import at that, is because all horoscopes assume the Sun rotates around the Earth in a geocentric solar system; the modern West’s scientific outlook arose only after astrology had declined there thanks to Copernicus and Galileo establishing the solar system as heliocentric.)

As for a “classical liberal” economic agenda, the BJP in Government transpired to be as bad if not worse than their adversaries in fiscal and monetary profligacy, except they flattered and were flattered by the organised capital of the big business lobbies whereas their adversaries flatter and are flattered by the organised power of the big labour unions (covering a tiny privileged class among India’s massive workforce). Neither has had the slightest interest in the anonymous powerless individual Indian citizen or household. The BJP in Opposition, instead of seeking to train and educate a new modern principled conservative leadership, appear to wish to regress even further back towards their very own brand of coarse fascism. “Family Values” are why Indian school-children have become the envy of the world in their keen discipline and anxiety to learn – yet even there the BJP had nothing to say on Sonia Gandhi’s pet bill on women’s property rights, whose inevitable result will be further conflict between daughters and daughters-in-law of normal Indian families.

At the root of the malaise of our political parties may be the fact we have never had any kind of grassroots “orange” revolution. There has been also an underlying national anxiety of disintegration and disorder from which the idea of a “strong Centre” follows, which has effectively meant a Delhi bloated with power and swimming in self-delusion. The BJP and Left are prisoners of their geriatric leaderships and rather unpleasant ideologies and interest-groups, while the Congress has failed to invent or adopt any ideology besides sycophancy. Let it be remembered Sonia Gandhi had been genuinely disdainful of the idea of leading that party at Rajiv’s death; today she has allowed herself to become its necessary glue. The most salubrious thing she could do for the party (and hence for India) is to do a Michael Howard: namely, preside over a genuine leadership contest between a half-dozen ambitious people, and then withdraw with her family permanently from India’s politics, focusing instead on the legacy of her late husband. Without that happening, the Congress cannot be made a healthy political entity, and hence the other parties have no role-model to imitate. Meanwhile, a liberal political party, which necessarily would be non-geriatric and non-sycophantic, is still missing in India.

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Justice & Afzal

October 14, 2006 — drsubrotoroy

Justice & Afzal

first published in The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page

October 14, 2006

There is a difference between law and equity (or natural justice). The power of pardon is an equitable power. Commuting a death-sentence is a partial pardon
By SUBROTO ROY

“Fiat justitia pereat mundus” ~let justice be done even if the world shall perish ~ is a maxim only Immanuel Kant among the great philosophers may have wished to maintain. Yet it serves to remind us that there exist wrong reasons for carrying out as well as wrong reasons for not carrying out the death-sentence on Afzal Guru. Wrong reasons for carrying out the death-sentence include saying that only by his death will families of the victims of the Parliament attack receive satisfaction (justice is hardly the same thing as revenge) or that only thereby can the Indian Republic show itself to be standing up to terrorism. Wrong reasons for not carrying out the death-sentence include saying Afzal’s death would be seen as unjust by many people in J&K and result in further civil or political turmoil there or elsewhere, or that more terrorism will result.

Justice should be done and be seen to be done to Afzal by the Indian Republic ~ here as elsewhere, justice is a matter between an individual and the State. The question remains open whether such justice involves his death or his imprisonment for life or even his being paroled in due course. Unlike Praveen Mahajan for example, Afzal has not committed premeditated first-degree murder or parricide. He is from an Indian State where there has existed some separatist sentiment for decades, and evidently he has been an accomplice to an act of war against India involving attempted kidnapping or mass murder. If he is an Indian national, he may have been treasonous and seditious; if he is a Pakistani national or wishes to be treated as such, he may have been some kind of spy, agent provocateur or saboteur, or an accomplice of such people. The moral question before India today has to do with what precisely is the nature and quality of justice to be dispensed in this particular case, in these particular factual circumstances as far as presently known, given all the principles, precedents, rules and laws available.

Someone may fairly wonder how or why it is possible the President of India has any discretion at all left to commute a sentence of death once the judiciary up until the Supreme Court of India has spoken. The answer has to do with the subtle distinction that is still made in common law countries like Britain, the USA and India between law and equity or “natural justice”. Britain ever since the 13th Century has had an institution known as “Lord Chancellor” in whose person came to be combined the highest judicial and executive roles (Tony Blair’s New Labour Government is due to abolish it). “Chancery” or courts of equity traditionally were parallel to courts of law, recognising that normal legal processes may cause justice to sometimes fail (especially in corrupt times) and hence require direct executive intervention. In the United States today, equity is embodied in Rule 60(b) of the Federal Rules, and federal courts are empowered to oversee all other courts including themselves for violations of natural justice.

By way of example having nothing necessarily to do with capital punishment, “solicitation of counsel, clerks or judges” is embracery curialis, recognized as extrinsic fraud and subversion of justice since Jepps 72 E R 924 (1611), “firmly established in English practice long before the foundation” of the USA, Hazel Atlas, 322 US 238 (1943). “Embracery is an offense striking at the very foundation of civil society” says Corpus Juris 20, 496. A court of equity has inherent power to investigate if a judgement has been obtained by fraud, and that is a power to unearth it effectively, since no fraud is more odious than one to subvert justice. Cases include when “by reason of something done by the successful party… there was in fact no adversary trial or decision of the issue in the case. Where the unsuccessful party has been prevented from exhibiting fully his case, by fraud or deception practised on him by his opponent, as … where an attorney fraudulently or without authority assumes to represent a party and connives at his defeat; or where the attorney regularly employed corruptly sells out his client’s interest to the other side ~ these, and similar cases which show that there has never been a real contest in the trial or hearing of the case, are reasons for which a new suit may be sustained to set aside and annul the former judgment or decree, and open the case for a new and a fair hearing….” Hazel Atlas. Fraud on the court includes that “perpetrated by officers of the court so that the judicial machinery cannot perform in the usual manner its impartial task of adjudging cases that are presented for adjudication” Moore’s Federal Practice 60-360.

Equitable action under Rule 60(b) can vacate judgment whenever such action is appropriate to accomplish justice. (In contemporary American federal judicial processes at least in the present author’s experience over two decades, this rather subtle branch of jurisprudence may have become known, however, more in its breach than fulfilment).

The power of pardon is one such supra-legal equitable power of the executive authority. For a state’s chief executive to pardon a crime is to release someone of guilt or to remit punishment. In Britain, the power is with the Government’s Home Office and in the old Commonwealth it was delegated to the Governor-General. In the USA it is a power of the President or State Governors to pardon crimes, and the most famous case was that of President Gerald Ford pardoning his predecessor Richard M. Nixon. Pervez Musharraf recently pardoned A Q Khan. Both highlight the fact the power of granting a full pardon is to be exercised rarely, and may be justifiable only on grounds of “Reasons of State” where someone has done something unlawful which the State is willing to condone for sake of some greater good in the national interest. But a pardon also can be partial, requiring the offender fulfil a condition such as serving a lesser substituted punishment. Commuting a death sentence by requiring the offender to serve life in prison is this sort of conditional pardon.

In India today, the President under Article 72 of the Constitution is empowered “to grant pardons, reprieves, respites or remissions of punishment or to suspend, remit or commute” a sentence of death and also intervene in other cases. Article 161 gives a lesser power to State Governors. These are singular examples of the acknowledged presence of equity in modern Indian jurisprudence, though our customary laws remain a vast untapped source of natural justice, (viz. Tagore Law Lectures 1905-1906 by SN Roy). Just last week, a Supreme Court bench of Justice Arijit Pasayat and Justice SH Kapadia ruled the power of reprieve, pardon or remission of sentence may not be exercised for “political considerations or on the basis of religion, caste or other extraneous factors”. There must be bona fide valid reasons. The bench set aside an Andhra Pradesh order passed by a Governor from the Congress Party remitting the sentence of imprisonment awarded to a Congress leader in a murder case involving a Telegu Desam Party victim. In an egregious violation of his discretion, the Governor had said the sentence already undergone was sufficient and directed release, but the Supreme Court in November 2005 admitted a petition challenging the order and stayed it. The Court has now held that exercise of the power is subject to judicial review and it may not be exercised for extraneous, political or mala fide reasons. The Court has thereby enlarged its role in equity (or natural justice) similar to that which American federal courts have had under Rule 60(b). There is also an argument for abolishing Article 161.

In cases of equitable treatment of capital punishment in India today like that of Afzal (or Dhananjay before him), the fact the Executive has notoriously starved our Judiciary of adequate resources ever since Independence (The Statesman, 26 February 2006) also may not be something irrelevant to evaluating the likelihood of a mistake having been made. All things considered, if justice is to be done and seen to be done in Afzal’s case, the Indian Republic should be in no hurry whatsoever in deciding to either execute him or to even release him.

From Facebook 31 March 2014

Why was Afzal hanged in such a hurry and almost in secret? Why did the BJP bay for his death so loudly every day, getting the Congress scared they would lose an election if they did not? Competitive foolishness just as over Telengana. Afzal had not pulled any trigger. That it was an avoidable injustice is made apparent by the Supreme Court commuting the death sentences of other political murderers, including Rajiv Gandhi’s killers and now Bhullar…

From Facebook 24 November 2012

I did not think Kasab should have been hanged principally as it was on the basis of his evidence that India cracked the case and he deserved some jurisprudential credit for that. He was the star witness for the prosecution against the terrorist masterminds who had sent him. Separately, I also do not believe, all things considered, that Afzal should be hanged, though there may be nothing defective in law against his conviction and sentence and he has had some legal bad luck. The law of pardon or commutation is of an equitable nature, beyond the normal law itself…His cooperation with the police would be the reason for his life to be spared — besides the fact that he pulled no trigger to kill anyone himself nor caused anyone else to do so.

From Facebook August 12 2011:

Subroto Roy has now for the first time been able to read the Supreme Court judgement affirming Afzal Guru’s death sentence, commuting Shaukat’s, and affirming the acquittal of Gillani. It does not seem defective in law. Afzal Guru was perhaps misrepresented by lawyers or misled himself into confessing his crimes very early on. But hand-in-glove with the murderous terrorists he certainly appears to have been. The fact he helped the police with his confession may be the only equitable reason for the President to commute the sentence.

New Foreign Policy? (8-9 Oct 2006)

October 9, 2006 — drsubrotoroy

NEW FOREIGN POLICY? “Kiss Up, Kick Down”?

Seven phases of Indian foreign policy may be identifiable since Nehru; the current phase seems to involve subservience to the strong, jingoism otherwise

by Subroto Roy

First published in The Sunday Statesman 8 Oct 2006, The Statesman 9 Oct 2006 Editorial Page Special Article

The outlines of a new tri-partisan Indian foreign policy may be becoming discernible. That it is “new” or that it commands near unanimity among the Congress, BJP and “Left” and their respective friends in the Indian media and political classes, does not make it sound or robust in any way. In fact, its basis in the history, geography and economics of India is wholly inadequate, and it is also entirely divorced from any clearly enunciated new Indian political ethics for the modern world.

The new policy, which may be fairly dubbed the Jaswant-Manmohan policy after the BJP and Congress politicians who have been its putative authors and leading practitioners, is as likely as not to lead to an India that is no longer a free decision-maker in any meaningful way in world affairs by 2047, one hundred years after Independence. Our great grandchildren may well be taught that for some decades in Indian history a sovereign unitary republic actually existed which then came to be effectively lost.

Indeed the new policy may amount to being less a coherent new doctrine of India’s role in international relations than a mere change in attitude on the part of politicians, bureaucrats and their intelligentsia friends: from seeming universally arrogant in the world to becoming pliant and subservient towards those world powers perceived (accurately or inaccurately) as strong, combined with a vainglorious jingoism towards all others. It is an application to international diplomacy and politics of the classic bureaucratic principle of “kiss up, kick down” in an organisation, and may reflect the fact the two main institutions the Mughals and British used to run their empires were the bureaucracy and military ~ both of which have grown and continued to run New Delhi (and Islamabad) afterwards, co-opting whatever domestic political development that has arisen. There is plenty of wishful waffling too about India becoming a “great power” or being a “swing state in the global balance of power”, and about how well the economy is supposedly doing ~ as if what Government spokesmen say about the economy is to be believed at face-value. Indian Leftists and their fellow-travellers ~ as great lovers themselves of bureaucracy, collectivist groupthink and propaganda on the USSR or PRC pattern, and fearful or envious of all individual criticism, creativity and achievement – have taken to the same principle like fish to water.

The first phase of Indian foreign policy was Nehruvian in that it began with Nehru’s Fabian misperception of Stalin’s USSR, and ended with the military debacle he led the country into at the hands of Zhou’s “human wave” armies in the mountains of Ladakh and NEFA.

A second phase was Kashmir-centric, overlapping with the first insofar as it may be traced to Karan Singh’s iniquitous dismissal of Sheikh Abdullah’s first Government, but really beginning after Nehru’s death with the Ayub-Abdullah summit, and being marked by Ayub’s 1965 attack in J&K ~ Shastri’s riposte reaching the Ichogil Canal signalled that no longer would war over J&K be confined to J&K.

A third phase was forced on India by the Pakistani civil war that led to Bangladesh’s creation, and was marked by the Indira/ Haksar alliance with Brezhnev’s USSR, as well as by Pokhran-I.

A fourth phase of Indian foreign policy may be identified in the late 1970s and 1980s, marked by rebellion of the fundamentalist Sikhs whom Indira and Sanjay Gandhi had provoked, which led in due course to her assassination. The turmoil that followed in Punjab and North India was financed by anti-Indian Sikhs from Vancouver,California and Britain, with gleeful help from the Pakistanis, and Indian diplomats had their hands full in trying to counter that phenomenon. It was during this phase of domestic Indian turmoil that New Delhi wholly missed the seismic changes occurring in the USSR, East Europe and international relations generally, and completely failed to predict its consequences for India.

The phase came to end when the Narasimha Rao Government (upon advice of a well-known communist cabal in the IFS and JNU) instantly showered praise on the anti-Yeltsin coup in August 1991. When Yeltsin returned to power, the new anti-communist Russians took their revenge on New Delhi, exacting hard dollars for the soft rouble-trade of friendlier times.

A fifth phase may be seen in retrospect as one of relative success.The main plank of Indian foreign policy in the late 1980s and early 1990s was to get Pakistan designated a “terrorist state” in American eyes, as well as to warn of the dangers of a Pakistani nuclear bomb. It had been prompted by the end of American involvement in the Afghan war, which caused the ISI to shift the jihadis to J&K, and the Indian policy was destined not to succeed. No matter how hard Kanwal Sibal tried in 1992-1993 as Minister-Political in the Washington Embassy to tell the Americans that their Pakistani friends were dangerous, he was destined to fail as the MEA had entirely failed to realise how far ahead the Pakistanis were in their lobbying power in Washington ~ the Pakistani super-elite has been entrenched among the K-Street lobbyists and in expensive real-estate along the Potomac River for more than two generations. Yet after the 9/11 attacks several years later, the Indians were able to look back at that fifth phase and say to the Americans, “We told you so”.

In the late 1990s came a short-lived sixth phase of Pokhran-II and the Lahore bus-trip, which may be credited as Vajpayee successes, and also contained the Kargil War and Kandahar hijacking, which were more dubious. This overlapped with the last and currently continuing seventh phase of Indian foreign policy with Jaswant Singh breaking the ice with the Americans when they had recovered from the fact the CIA’s failures included not foreseeing Pokhran-II; it coincided too with Osama bin Laden’s declarations of jihad against the USA. The Americans enlisting themselves on the side of the Northern Alliance to defeat the Taliban after 9/11 was beneficial from an Indian standpoint since Afghanistan had been effectively lost to secular Indian influence for two decades, and the Taliban had shown themselves no friends of India during the Kandahar hijacking.

But the BJP’s anti-Muslim thought processes quickly took over, as did its proximity to organised business lobbies. When Iraq was attacked and occupied in 2003, there was hardly a whimper from the BJP leadership, and instead their businessmen friends started to fly to Amman hopeful of “reconstruction” contracts. The Sonia/ Manmohan Congress/Leftist combine has effectively continued and expanded that trend, though now the business lobbies have been much more muted and subtle, especially in their backroom dealings and payoffs with respect to the nuclear deal. There is also an occasional burst of anti-Americanism from leftists though it is hard of course to beg for American foreign investment in Marxist-run areas while also being sincere in quaint street demos or agitprop.

Running through the new foreign policy is a fiction that it is driven by a new economic motivation to improve development and mass well-being in India. The bizarre idea of creating hundreds of so-called “Special Economic Zones” (reminiscent of 17th and 18th Century colonial fortifications) illustrates this. India’s ordinary anonymous masses ~ certainly the 850 million people entirely outside the organised sector ~ have little or nothing to do with any of this. Benefits will accrue only to the ten million Indian nomenclatura controlling or having access to the gaping exit holes to the outside world in the new semi-closed economy with its endless deficit finance paid for by unlimited printing of an inconvertible domestic currency.

It is as fallacious to think private investment from foreign or domestic businessmen will support public “infrastructure” creation as it is to think foreign exchange reserves are like tax revenues in being available for Government expenditure on “infrastructure”. Such fallacies are intellectual products of either those who know no economics at all or those who have forgotten whatever little they might have been once mistaught in their youth. What serious economics does say is that Government should generally have nothing to do with any kind of private business, and instead should focus on properly providing public goods and services, encourage competition in all avenues of economic activity and prevent or regulate monopoly, and see to it all firms pay taxes they are due to pay.

That is it. It is as bad for Government to be pampering organised foreign or domestic business or organised labour with innumerable subsidies, as has been happening in India for decades, as it is to make enterprise difficult with red tape and hurdles. Businessmen are grown ups and should be allowed to freely risk their capital and make their profits or their losses without public intervention.

An economics-based policy would have single-mindedly sought to improve the financial condition of every governmental entity in the country, with the aim of improving the provision of public goods and services to all 1,000 million Indians. If and when budgets of all governmental entities become sound, foreign creditors would automatically line up before them with loans to sell, and ambitious development goals can be accomplished. As long as public budgets (and public accounts) remain in an outrageous shambles, nothing can be in fact achieved and only propaganda, corruption and paper-money creation results instead. Whatever economic growth does occur is due to new enterprise and normal technological progress, and is mostly despite and not because of New Delhi’s bureaucrats (see “The Dream Team: A Critique”, The Statesman 6-8 January 2006).

The first aspect of the new Indian foreign policy has been for Government to become wholly ingratiating towards any and all “First World” members visiting India who may deign to consider any kind of collaboration whatsoever. The long line of foreign businessmen and heads of government having photo-ops with the Indian PM began with Vajpayee and has continued with Manmohan, especially when there is a large weapons’ or commercial aircraft or other purchase to be signed. The flip-side has been ministerial and especially Prime Ministerial trips abroad ~ from Vajpayee’s to a Singapore golf-cart immediately after commiserating Gujarat, to Manmohan receiving foreign honorary doctorates while still holding public office.

Subservience to foreign business interests in the name of economic policy extends very easily to Indian naval, military or diplomatic assets being used to provide policing or support services for the great powers as and when they may ask for it. Hence, Indian naval forces may be asked by the Americans to help fight pirates in the Indian Ocean, or escort this vessel or that, or India may be asked to provide refuelling or base facilities, or India may be requested to vote against Iran, Venezuela or whomever here or there. But there would be absolutely no question of India’s role in international politics being anything greater than that of a subaltern or comprador whose response must be an instant “Ji, Huzoor”. The official backing of the Tharoor candidacy was as futile and ridiculous as the quest for UN veto-power or the willingness to attend G-8 summits as an observer.

While subservience towards the First World’s business and military interests is the “kiss up” aspect of the new foreign policy, an aggressive jingoism towards others is the “kick down” aspect. One influential voice among the media friends of the new foreign policy states it as follows: “The search for `equity oil’ has been the single most important new element of Indian economic diplomacy in recent years… Equity oil raises India’s stakes in the stability of regimes or even individuals who preside over these resources… the big question is how far would India go in defence of `regime stability’ elsewhere? And if it’s assets fall into hostile hands, would India be prepared to consider promoting `regime change’?” Just as surely as a pacifist Fabian socialist Nehru misperceived Stalin’s USSR, New Delhi’s new capitalistic jingoists have misperceived the Cheney-Rumsfeld grab for “equity oil” and have even defined Bush-Blair adventurism as being “the side of the angels”. How they must love to want to project Indian military force ~ paratroopers in the Maldives perhaps, though they need to recall what happened with the LTTE too!

Multiple Jallianwalla Bagh massacres may have been occurring in front of us in Iraq, Afghanistan and Balochistan, and there may soon be an attack on Iran too. New Delhi’s new “kiss up, kick down” attitude has rendered India’s once-dignified and sober voice silent, our eyes closed or our face turned away.

The obvious alternative to bureaucratic “kiss up, kick down” would be “kick up, kiss down” loved by all individualists and anti-bureaucrats. In other words, it would be for India to take each case and circumstance in international politics on its merits; be seen to stand up seriously to the powerful in world politics wherever and whenever necessary; seek to protect those who may be vulnerable to international or other brutality in world affairs, while getting on properly with the mundane business of ordinary government and commerce at all other times. That mundane business may call for a gradual withdrawal of India from all or most of the fancy, corrupt international bureaucracies in New York, Washington, Geneva etc, focussing calmly but determinedly instead on improved administration and governance at home. Such was what Rajiv Gandhi was advised in January 1991 (see “Memos to Rajiv,” The Statesman 31 July-2 August 1991; Freedom First October 2001), when for one futile moment he even formed a peaceful bridge between the Americans and Saddam during the first Gulf War. The New Delhi establishment may be too intoxicated with power and insecure intellectually to be able to reflect on such sober alternatives.

Racism New and Old (2006)

September 8, 2006 — drsubrotoroy

Racism New and Old

Subroto Roy

Editorial page, The Statesman September 8, 2006

When Iraqi Sunni terrorists killed 11 Pakistani and three Indian Shia pilgrims on the same bus to Karbala the other day, they did not check passports or wait to hear discourses from their victims about the validity of Jinnah’s Two-Nations Theory or the RSS’s views on Akhand Bharat and Bharat-Mata. All Indians and Pakistanis of whatever religion are pretty much “Hindis” to the average Arab. If Pakistanis (much to their own chagrin) are indistinguishable from Indians in many Arab eyes, Hindus and Sikhs are (much to their own chagrin) indistinguishable from Muslims in many North American and British eyes. Matthai Chakko Kuruvila, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Religion Writer (and whose own splendid ethnicity may appear obvious to us from his name), reports Paul Silverstein, an American anthropologist, saying “Muslims are the new Jews… They are the object of a series of stereotypes, caricatures and fears which are not based in a reality and are independent of a person’s experience with Muslims.” Kuruvila says: “The Muslim caricature has ensnared Hindus, Mexicans and others” across the USA “with violence, suspicion and slurs”, giving new form to America’s “age-old dance around racial identity”.

Assimilation

The subcontinent’s Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and others are from pretty much similar racial populations, so when we wish to distinguish ourselves from one another as we tend to do on the subcontinent, we wear turbans, beards, long hair, veils, bindis etc ~ symbols about which the average New Jersey “dot-buster” or British “Paki-basher” cares not a hoot. London last year even saw Jean Charles de Menezes, a young Brazilian electrician on his way to work in the morning, pinned down by an elite squad of Britain’s much-vaunted policemen and receive seven bullets point-blank in the back of his skull ~ merely for having “looked Asian”.

Subcontinental immigrant families in the West experience a defining moment when the wife first bobs her long hair and takes to wearing slacks, skirts or even shorts, just so she can leave home and assimilate better in the workplace or shopping mall. The saris, salwars and real jewellery are kept for the weekends when she meets people who will understand her as herself, namely, her friends and kith and kin in the immigrant community. When salwar or sari-clad women start fake-kissing one another in Western-style greeting at those weekends, the alternation of their identities (and confusion in their self-knowledge) may have become complete. A limiting point of such attempts at assimilation is reached perhaps when an Asian woman becomes a BBC or CNN newsreader, reading what she has been told to yet still narcissistically indulging in the extent of her external transformation.

Muslim-Hindu differences of religious and cultural beliefs and practices between racially similar peoples may be contrasted with the main fault-lines that have existed in Western societies in recent centuries: fault-lines of race and colour between European and African, and of race and religion between Jew and Gentile.

An eminent American legal scholar once said African slavery had been “the living lie” in America’s official heritage of democracy and individual freedom. Black America took one hundred years from Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation to Martin Luther King Jr., to begin to overcome the impossible odds against it. Sports, music, show-biz and the arts were obvious arenas for public demonstration of individual genius. Athletes like Jesse Owens, Joe Louis and Arthur Ashe, musicians like Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole and Eartha Kitt, “in-your-face” satirists like Sammy Davis Jr, Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy upto and including modern rapsters and many thousands of others demonstrated that Black America was not going away anywhere, certainly not returning to Liberia, was going to stay in and permanently alter American life and culture, and wondered if anyone thought otherwise. The degree of assimilation into non-black cultures would be a matter of personal choice, not social or economic compulsion. During the Bush invasion of Iraq, Harry Belafonte re-ignited an old controversy when he referred to his fellow West Indian and perfectly assimilated Colin Powell in context of the “plantation slave”/”house slave” dichotomy: plantation slaves were externally oppressed but felt free within while house slaves had more comforts but were docile compradors inside their souls.

Immigrant communities from the subcontinent have had their share of the same. It has been all too easy for young people to reach academic highs in New Delhi or Kolkata only to escape to obscure corners of America and lead docile subservient unfulfilling lives forever afterwards, in exchange for material and ultimately meaningless rewards. It might be called the Madhuri Dixit Phenomenon of being transformed from celebrity-status in India to becoming a complete unknown in America.

Jewish-Gentile divide

The Jewish-Gentile divide in Western civilisation has been more insidious and damaging to mankind, and potentially remains so as the anger it generates has been transferred onto modern Muslims instead. At its unspoken roots is the frank Jewish theological assessment that Jesus of Nazareth was at most a wise and honest rabbi, not Christ Immanent ~ a veracious blow that seems to remove the corner-stone of all European culture and civilisation. The length of mutual recriminations and miscomprehensions as well as self-deceptions and cruelties over the millennia that have resulted on both sides, remains endless. On the Christian side there has been the vile persecution of Jews for centuries. On the Jewish side, there has arisen the vast myth that today’s Israel has something to do with the ancient Hebrews, when contemporary Jews likely descend mostly from the conversion to Judaism of the Khazar Khanate in the second half of the 9th Century (see e.g. Paul Meerts, “Assessing Khazaria”, International Institute for Asian Studies July 2004). In between Jewish and Christian self-deceptions and mutual misunderstandings has arisen Anti-Semitism, Zionism, and also Anti-Zionism (many thoughtful Jews having opposed the creation of Israel). As George Eliot, Hannah Arendt and many others noticed, the assimilation of 19th Century Jews into elite society in Vienna or London was only permitted where some exceptional individual genius was displayed, most prominently perhaps in case of Benjamin Disraeli who became Victoria’s Prime Minister. Even that acceptance of assimilated “exceptional” Jews came to disintegrate into the horrors of the 20th Century, from which we are yet to recover. Modern American foreign policy has been partly driven by the East and West Coasts’ understanding or misunderstanding of that history.

Is Balochistan Doomed? (2006)

September 3, 2006 — drsubrotoroy

Is Balochistan Doomed?

by Subroto Roy

First published in The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page Special Article Sep 3 2006

Nawab Mohammad Akbar Khan Bugti’s death (apparently in a cave that was precision-bombed by the Pakistani military using American equipment after he had spoken on a Thuraya satellite-phone) lengthens Pakistan’s list of political killings and assassinations, many still unsolved. Liaquat Ali Khan, Dr Khan Sahib, ZA Bhutto and sons as well as their enemy Zia ul Haq, are prominent members of the list. The Rule of Law is better in India to the extent we tend to solve and punish our major assassinations.

Bugti’s killing is symptomatic of many of Pakistan’s continuing ills, not least of which is the continuing inability of the military to comprehend politics as a discipline that accommodates competing interests and uses two-way dialogue, not one-way instruction, as its method. There is also the personal failure of Pervez Musharraf, seven years after his coup détat, to transform himself into Pakistan’s first genuine statesman in many years. Musharraf is a well-read, well-spoken soldier who sees himself as a man of destiny but he has quite simply failed to recognise statesmanship requires far more than personal ambition; he has become a Napoleon at home and a Quisling abroad when what he aspired to become was Pakistan’s Attaturk.

The roots of Pakistan’s Balochistan problem are depthless. When Pakistan was first created, Punjabis constituted 25 per cent of the population but 77 per cent of the new armed forces. East Bengalis constituted 55% of the population ~ a fact inevitably leading to the idea of a “one-unit West Pakistan wing” governing itself independent of the numerical majority of Bengali-speakers. Equally inevitably perhaps, this led to Punjabi military domination of East Pakistan; the history of Bangladesh’s creation is too well-known to need recitation here except to say the Mukti Bahini, like Balochi separatists today, were incapable of taking on Pakistan’s military on their own.

After Bangladesh’s secession, Pakistan became the four areas originally named in Iqbal’s 1930 speech conceptualising a Muslim country in North Western India (which, incidentally, excluded J&K despite Iqbal having been Kashmiri). Pakistan’s Pashtun and Baloch highlanders were never of Hindu/Indian origin, whereas the plainsmen consisting of Punjabis, Sindhis and migrants from India were (despite protestations and pretensions), closely related to their Hindu/Indian cousins and neighbours. Muslim and Hindu religious and cultural beliefs and practices may be very different, but DNA testing would likely identify most of the subcontinent’s Muslims and Hindus as ethnically indistinguishable from a scientific point of view.

The central fact driving and explaining Pakistan’s political history has been that the idea of Pakistan arose in the subcontinent’s Muslim-minority areas, not among the peoples of the areas that today constitute Pakistan ~ least of all the Baloch (viz., F Robinson in WE James & S Roy (eds) Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy). Having created a country based on an ideology imported by a handful of super-elite Indian migrants like Jinnah and Liaquat, serious political conversation and democratic nation-building of a high order was required immediately from Pakistan’s national statesmen to make the enterprise a success. That was never forthcoming simply because there were no such national statesmen, only rather thick bungling soldiers and some corpulent corrupt politicians. In an alternative universe in which ZA Bhutto had been born a generation earlier, things might have been different. Musharraf’s efforts since his January 2002 speech to become an intelligent modern soldier-statesman amount to far too little, far too late, rather the way the French physiocrats were too late and came to be swept away by revolution.

The Baloch are a tribal people who defeated and later assimilated the Dravidian(?)-Brahui inhabitants of the area. For most of their modern history they were independent though owed nominal allegiance to the Afghan ruler in Kabul. The 19th Century British created a strip known as “British Balochistan” including Quetta and Sibi, but were interested in the region solely to the extent it controlled access to Afghanistan and otherwise left the Khan of Kalat to himself. The British also annexed Sindh from a Balochi dynasty. In the 21st Century, it has become Balochistan not Afghanistan which has immense economic potential and strategic value in international politics. Yet its future must be filled with foreboding because Musharraf’s military-business state, goaded on by Western and Chinese business and military interests, has recognised its potential and begun to behave ruthlessly against Balochis as a result. Balochistan contains Pakistan’s reserves of uranium, coal, gold, silver, copper, aluminium, and of course plentiful natural gas at Sui. The Makran Coast had been gifted by the Khan of Kalat to Oman, and was bought back by Pakistan in 1958. Development of Gwadar and Ormara ports and naval bases (whose strategic value is self-evident) and a road link through the Karakoram to Sinkiang have now become top Pakistani and Chinese military and business priorities.

Gwadar real-estate speculation is rampant among Lahore and Rawalpindi’s military-businessmen, while two Chinese workers were killed in Gwadar by Balochi nationalists in 2004 causing ruthless Punjabi reprisals. Also, the Americans have long had secret CIA-built bases in Pasni and Dalbandin in Baloch territory, which are being used presently in military operations in Afghanistan; their Pashtun/Taliban enemy also use Quetta and northern Balochistan for rest and recuperation while fighting in Afghanistan! And Balochistan’s caves are where Pakistan’s nuclear-armed F-16s against India are hidden. The Balochi are a small, poor, traditionally peaceful, politically divided tribal minority of perhaps 6.5 million people spread sparsely over this vast arid area that constitutes more than 48% of Pakistan’s present territory. Despite the pretensions of an articulate expatriate rebel elite (including even a self-styled Government-in-Exile based in Jerusalem dreaming of a secular free Balochistan), Baloch guerrilla fighters are wholly incapable of taking on the organised military might of the Pakistani state, armed by America and China. The expansion of Pakistan’s 74 million Punjabis, 30 million Sindhis and 17 million Pashtun into Balochistan seems as inevitable at present as the expansion of the Han Chinese into Tibet ~ a similarity doubtless noted by Musharraf’s Communist Chinese friends and advisers. Also, because there are two million Balochis in Iranian Balochistan, Pakistan’s Balochi nationalists have had a declared enemy to their west in the Iranian Government ~ the Pahlevi regime even provided Italian-made American Huey helicopter gunships with Iranian pilots to help Bhutto crush the Baloch rebellions of the early 1970s. In fact, Balochi rebels have had no military allies except the pre-communist Government of Afghanistan under Daud, who “ordered the establishment of a training camp at Qandahar for Baloch liberation fighters. Between 10,000 and 15,000 Baloch youths were trained and armed there” (R Anwar, The Tragedy of Afghanistan 1988, p. 78). The Governments of India or the United States lack motivation or capability to help, and Balochistan may be doomed to becoming a large human rights/genocidal disaster of the next decade.

An independent Balochistan may be unviable, being overwhelmed by its riches while having too small, uneducated and backward a population of its own, and powerful greedy neighbours on either side. In effect, a weak Balochistan has been divided rather like a weak Poland was divided by Hitler and Stalin in the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact.

Today, the Pashtun of Pakistan and Afghanistan (as well as perhaps Sindhis of Baloch origin) may be the only interlocutors who can prevent a genocide and mediate a peace between Balochi nationalists and Musharraf’s ruthless Punjabi military-businessmen determined to colonize Balochistan completely with Chinese help, effectively subsidising their misgovernance elsewhere with Balochistan’s riches. Like Bhutto and Zia, Musharraf has chosen military suppression and failed to see the only way forward for Pakistan is political accommodation of both Baloch and Pashtun aspirations and desires, while solving Pakistan’s grave fiscal and monetary problems separately. The terms of a peaceful accommodation could involve e.g., a vertical administrative division of Pakistan between its tribal highlander peoples and its Indus Valley plainsmen (viz., The Statesman 16 July 2006) followed by slow, steady, sustainable development and modernization consistent with tribal cultural wishes ~ not Shanghai or World Bank capitalism. To be a man of destiny, Musharraf must transcend the military-business complex he rules over and reduce its role in Pakistani life, not increase it. Statesmanship involves taking risks for a noble cause and these are the main risks he needs to address and build a national consensus upon. Instead, he has enhanced military capabilities and seems hell-bent (perhaps on advice of his MBA prime minister) on ruthless exploitation of Balochistan as a Lahore/ Rawalpindi colony. It is the road to catastrophe.

(NB The original article said grandsons of Nawab Bugti had been killed with him, but this is not confirmed.)

Posted in Balochistan, Bangladesh, Britain, China, Freedom, India's Foreign Policy, Iqbal, Iran, Jammu & Kashmir, MA Jinnah, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pashtuns, Pervez Musharraf, Tibet, USA, United States, World History. 2 Comments »

India’s Energy Interests

August 28, 2006 — drsubrotoroy

OUR ENERGY INTERESTS
Subroto Roy

First published in The Sunday Statesman, August 27 2006, The Statesman August 28 2006, Editorial Page Special Article

Americans are shrewd and practical people in commercial matters, and expect the same of people they do business with. Caveat emptor, “let the buyer beware”, is the motto they expect those on the other side of the table to be using. Let us not think they are doing us favours in the nuclear deal ~ they are grown-ups looking after their interests and naturally expect we shall look after our own and not expect charity while doing business. Equally, let us not blame the Americans if we find in later years (long after Manmohan Singh and Montek Ahluwalia have exited from India’s stage) that the deal has been implemented in a bad way for our masses of ordinary people.

That said, there is a remarkable disjoint between India’s national energy interests (nuclear interests in particular), and the manner in which the nuclear deal is being perceived and taken to implementation by the two sides. There may be a fundamental gap between the genuine positive benefits the Government of India says the deal contains, and the motivations American businessmen and through them Indian businessmen have had for lobbying American and Indian politicians to support it. An atmosphere of being at cross-purposes has been created, where for example Manmohan Singh is giving answers to questions different from the questions we may want to be asking Montek Ahluwalia. The fundamental gap between what is being said by our Government and what may be intended by the businessmen is something anyone can grasp, though first we shall need some elementary facts.

In 2004, the International Energy Agency estimated the new energy capacity required by rising economic growth in 2020 will derive 1400 GW from burning coal (half of it in China and India), 470 GW from burning oil, 430GW from hydro, and 400 GW from renewable sources like solar or wind power. Because gas prices are expected to remain low worldwide, construction of new nuclear reactors for electricity will be unprofitable. By 2030, new energy expected to be required worldwide is 4700GW, of which only 150GW is expected from new nuclear plants, which will be in any case replacing existing plants due to be retired. Rational choice between different energy sources depends on costs determined by history and geography. Out of some 441 civilian reactors worldwide, France has 59 and these generate 78 per cent of its electricity, the rest coming from hydro. Japan has 54 reactors, generating 34% of its electricity from them. The USA has 104 reactors but generates only 20 per cent of its electricity from them, given its vast alternative sources of power like hydro. In India as of 2003, installed power generating capacity was 107,533.3MW, of which 71 per cent came from burning fuels. Among India’s energy sources, the largest growth-potential is hydroelectric, which does not involve burning fuels ~ gravity moves water from the mountains to the oceans, and this force is harnessed for generation. Our hydro potential, mostly in the North and North-East, is some 150,000MW but our total installed hydro capacity with utilities was only 26,910MW (about 18 per cent of potential). Our 14 civilian nuclear reactors produced merely 4 per cent or less of the electricity being consumed in the country. Those 14 plants will come under “international safeguards” by 2014 under the nuclear deal.

It is extremely likely the international restrictions our existing nuclear plants have been under since the 1970s have hindered if not crippled their functioning and efficiency. At the same time, the restrictions may have caused us to be innovative too. Nuclear power arises from fission of radioactive uranium, plutonium or thorium. India has some 8 million tonnes of monazite deposits along the seacoast of which half may be mined, to yield 225,000 tonnes of thorium metal; we have one innovatively designed thorium reactor under construction. Almost all nuclear energy worldwide today arises from uranium of which there are practically unlimited reserves. Fission of a uranium atom produces 10 million times the energy produced by combustion of an atom of carbon from coal. Gas and fossil fuels may be cheap and in plentiful supply worldwide for generations to come but potential for cheap nuclear energy seems practically infinite. The uranium in seawater can satisfy mankind’s total electricity needs for 7 million years. There is more energy in the uranium impurity present in coal than can arise from actually burning the coal. There is plenty of uranium in granite. None of these become profitable for centuries because there is so much cheap uranium extractable from conventional ores. Design improvements in reactors will also improve productivity; e.g. “fast breeder” reactors “breed” more fissile material than they use, and may get 100 times as much energy from a kilogram of uranium as existing reactors do. India has about 95,000 tonnes of uranium metal that may be mined to yield about 61,000 tonnes net for power generation. Natural uranium is 99.3 per cent of the U-238 isotope and 0.7 per cent of the radioactive U-235 isotope. Nuclear power generation requires “enriched uranium” or “yellow cake” to be created in which U-235 has been increased from 0.7 per cent to 4 to 5 percent. (Nuclear bombs require highly enriched uranium with more than 90 per cent of U-235.) Yellow cake is broken into small pieces, put in metal rods placed in bundles, which are then bombarded by neutrons causing fission. In a reactor, the energy released turns water into steam, which moves turbines generating electricity. While there is no carbon dioxide “waste” as in burning fossil fuels, the “spent” rods of nuclear fuel and other products constitute grave radioactive waste, almost impossible to dispose of.

The plausible part of the Government of India’s official line on the Indo-US nuclear deal is that removing the international restrictions will ~ through importation of new technologies, inputs, fuel etc ~ improve functioning of our 14 existing civilian plants. That is a good thing. Essentially, the price being paid for that improvement is our willingness to commit that those 14 plants will not be used for military purposes. Fair enough: even if we might become less innovative as a result, the overall efficiency gains as a result of the deal will add something to India’s productivity. However, those purchasing decisions involved in enhancing India’s efficiency gains must be made by the Government’s nuclear scientists on technical grounds of improving the working of our existing nuclear infrastructure.

It is a different animal altogether to be purchasing new nuclear reactors on a turn-key basis from American or any other foreign businessmen in a purported attempt to improve India’s “energy security”. (Lalu Yadav has requested a new reactor for Bihar, plus of course Delhi will want one, etc.) The central question over such massive foreign purchases would no longer be the technical one of using the Indo-US deal to improve efficiency or productivity of our existing nuclear infrastructure. Instead it would become a question of calculating social costs and benefits of our investing in nuclear power relative to other sources like hydroelectric power. Even if all other sources of electricity remained constant, and our civilian nuclear capacity alone was made to grow by 100 per cent under the Manmohan-Montek deal-making, that would mean less than 8% of total Indian electricity produced.

This is where the oddities arise and a disjoint becomes apparent between what the Government of India is saying and what American and Indian businessmen have been doing. A “US-India Business Council” has existed for thirty years in Washington as “the premier business advocacy organization promoting US commercial interests in India.… the voice of the American private sector investing in India”. Before the nuclear or any other deals could be contemplated with American business, the USIBC insisted we pay up for Dabhol contracted by a previous Congress Government. The Maharashtra State Electricity Board ~ or rather, its sovereign guarantor the Government of India ~ duly paid out at least $140-$160 million each to General Electric and Bechtel Corporations in “an amicable settlement” of the Dabhol affair. Afterwards, General Electric’s CEO for India was kind enough to say “India is an important country to GE’s global growth. We look forward to working with our partners, customers, and State and Central Governments in helping India continue to develop into a leading world economy”.

Also, a new “US-India CEO Forum” then came about. For two Governments to sponsor private business via such a Forum was “unprecedented”, as noted by Washington’s press during Manmohan Singh’s visit in July 2005. America’s foreign ministry announced it saying: “Both our governments have agreed that we should create a high-level private sector forum to exchange business community views on key economic priorities…” The American side includes heads of AES Corporation, Cargill Inc., Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Honeywell, McGraw-Hill, Parsons Brinckerhoff Ltd, PepsiCo, Visa International and Xerox Corporation. The Indian side includes heads of Tata Group, Apollo Hospitals Group, Bharat Forge Ltd, Biocon India Group, HDFC, ICICI One Source, Infosys, ITC Ltd, Max India Group and Reliance Industries. Presiding over the Indian side has been Montek Ahluwalia, Manmohan’s trusted aide ~ and let it be remembered too that the Ahluwalias were Manmohan’s strongest backers in his failed South Delhi Lok Sabha bid. (Indeed it is not clear if the Ahluwalias have been US or Indian residents in recent years, and if it is the former, the onus is on them to clear any perception of conflict of interest arising in regard to roles regarding the nuclear deal or any other official Indo-US business.)

Also, before the Manmohan visit, the Confederation of Indian Industry registered as an official lobbyist in Washington, and went about spending half a million dollars lobbying American politicians for the nuclear deal. After the Manmohan visit, the US Foreign Commercial Service reportedly said American engineering firms, equipment suppliers and contractors faced a $1,000 billion (1 bn =100 crore) opportunity in India. Before President Bush’s visit to India in March 2006, Manmohan Singh signed vast purchases of commercial aircraft from Boeing and Airbus, as well as large weapons’ deals with France and Russia. After the Bush visit, the US Chamber of Commerce said the nuclear deal can cause $100 billion worth of new American business in India’s energy-sector alone. What is going on?

Finally, the main aspect of Manmohan Singh’s address to America’s legislature had to do with agreeing with President Bush “to enhance Indo-US cooperation in the field of civilian nuclear technology”. What precisely does this mean? If it means the Indo-US nuclear deal will help India improve or maintain its existing nuclear infrastructure, well and good. There may be legitimate business for American and other foreign companies in that cause, which also helps India make the efficiency and productivity gains mentioned. Or has the real motivation for the American businessmen driving the deal (with the help of the “CEO Forum” etc) been to sell India nuclear reactors on a turn-key basis (in collaboration with private Indian businessmen) at a time when building new nuclear reactors is unprofitable elsewhere in the world because of low gas prices? India’s citizens may demand to know from the Government whether the Manmohan-Montek deal-making is going to cause importation of new nuclear reactors, and if so, why such an expensive alternative is being considered (relative to e.g. India’s abundant hydroelectric potential) when it will have scant effect in satisfying the country’s energy needs and lead merely to a worsening of our macroeconomic problems. Both Manmohan Singh and Montek Ahluwalia have been already among those to preside over the growth of India’s macroeconomic problems through the 1980s and 1990s.

Lastly, an irrelevant distraction should be gotten out of the way. Are we a “nuclear weapons” state? Of course we are, but does it matter to anything but our vanity? Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev had control over vastly more nuclear weapons and they declared together twenty years ago: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must not be fought”, which is how the Cold War started to come to an end. We need to remind ourselves that India and Pakistan are large, populous countries with hundreds of millions of materially poor, ill-informed citizens, weak tax-bases, humongous internal and external public debts (i.e. debt owed by the Government to domestic and foreign creditors), non-investment grade credit- ratings in world financial markets, massive annual fiscal deficits, inconvertible currencies, nationalized banks, and runaway printing of paper-money. Discussing nuclear or other weapon-systems to attack one other with is mostly a pastime of our cowardly, irresponsible and yes, corrupt, elites.

Posted in Dabhol/Enron fiasco, Economics and Energy, India's balance of payments, India's Economy, India's Energy, India's Foreign Policy, India's Government Expenditure, India's Military Defence, India's Monetary & Fiscal Policy, India's Polity, India-United States business, India-US Nuclear Deal, Manmohan Singh, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, Nuclear conflict, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Ronald Reagan, USA, United States. Leave a Comment »

Understanding Pakistan

July 31, 2006 — drsubrotoroy

UNDERSTANDING PAKISTAN

First published in The Sunday Statesman & The Statesman Editorial Page Special Article

30-31 July, 2006

by

Subroto Roy

Pakistan’s political institutions have failed to develop properly over sixty years. Yet in the last ten years or more, its Government has acquired weapons of mass destruction and in 1998-99 its Foreign Minister half-threatened to use these against India in a first strike. As a religious and cultural phenomenon and as a putative nation-state, Pakistan needs to be sought to be understood in as unbiased and objective a manner as possible, not least by Pakistanis themselves, as well as by Afghans, Bangladeshis, Chinese, Americans,Israelis, Arabs, Iranians etc. besides ourselves in India.

The slogan “Islam in danger” has always had some substance since orthodox Muslims constantly face temptations in the world existing around them from materialism, scepticism, syncretism, pantheism etc. Some responded defensively to the Westernisation/modernisation of India’s Hindus, Parsees and Christians by becoming insular and separatist in outlook, and anti-individualist or communal in behaviour.

“We are an Arab people whose fathers have fallen in exile in the country of Hindustan, and Arabic genealogy and Arabic language are our pride,” declared Wali Allah (1703-1762), a contemporary of Nejd’s founder of Wahhabism. “We must repudiate all those Indian, Persian and Roman customs which are contrary to the Prophet’s teaching”, declared Barelvi (1786-1831), who also initiated the idea of a religious mass migration of North Indian Muslims. His movement saw “jihad as one of the basic tenets of faith… it chose as the venue of jihad the NW Frontier of the subcontinent, where it was directed against the Sikhs. Barelvi temporarily succeeded in carving out a small theocratic principality which collapsed owing to the friction between his Pathan and North Indian followers…” (A. Ahmed, in Basham (ed) Cultural History of India).

Political and psychological tensions between Pakistan’s Pashtun/Baloch tribal people and Punjabi/ Urdu elite continue to this day, even when many of the former have integrated into industries and vocations controlled by the latter. The highlanders were never part of Hindu societies, while the plainsmen, whether they admit it or not, ethnically were converts for the most part from India’s native religions (though here again the religious syncretism of Sindhis, both Muslim and Hindu, may be contrasted with orthodoxy). Barelvi’s theocracy, named Tariqa-yi Muhammadiya, had remnants near Sittana until the First World War, and his followers are still a major component of Pakistan’s most orthodox today.

Muslim separatism in North India would have been futile without British political backing. As early as 1874, the British saw their advantage: “The existence side by side of these hostile creeds (Hindu and Muslim) is one of the strong points in our political position in India. The better classes of Mohammedans are a source of strength to us and not of weakness. They constitute a comparatively small but an energetic minority of the population whose political interests are identical with ours.” When the Agha Khan’s 1906 delegation first pleaded for communal representation, Minto agreed with them, and Minto’s wife wrote in her diary the effect was “nothing less than the pulling back of sixty two millions (of Muslims) from joining the ranks of the seditious opposition.” The slogan “If you are not with us you are against us” was always widely applied by the British in India in the form “If you dare to not be with us, we definitely will be with your adversaries”.

One obscure ideological current of today’s Pakistan came via the enigmatic personage of Inayatullah Mashriqi (1888-1963), who, from being a Cambridge Wrangler, became a friend of Adolf Hitler in 1926, received a Renault as a gift from Hitler (possibly housed in a Lahore museum today) and claimed to have affected Hitler’s ideology. Mashriqi created the Khaksars, modelled on the Nazi SA, and was often jailed for violence.

But the official ideology of today’s Pakistan came from Mohammad Iqbal (1877-1938), an admirer of Friedrich Nietzsche. Indeed, “Pakistan” would have been better named “Iqbalistan” and its nationals “Iqbalians”, just as countries like Colombia, the USA, Israel, Saudi Arabia etc. have been named after an individual person. Iqbal’s 1930 Presidential Speech to the Muslim League in Allahabad conceptualised the country that exists today: “I would like to see the Punjab, NWFP, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single state…the formation of a consolidated NW Indian Muslim state appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims at least of NW India… India is the greatest Muslim country in the world. The life of Islam as a cultural force in this living country very largely depends on its centralisation in a specified territory… “

Though Kashmiri himself, Iqbal was silent about J&K being any part of this new entity. Nor did he see this Muslim country being theocratic or filled with anti-Hindu bigotry: “A community which is inspired by feelings of ill-will towards other communities is low and ignoble. I entertain the highest respect for the customs, laws, religious and social institutions of other communities…. Yet I love the communal group which is the source of my life and my behaviour; and which has formed me what I am by giving me its religion, its literature, its thought, its culture,and thereby recreating its whole past, as a living operating factor, in my present consciousness… Nor should the Hindus fear that the creation of autonomous Muslim states will mean the introduction of a kind of religious rule in such states…. I therefore demand the formation of a consolidated Muslim state in the best interests of India and Islam. For India it means security and peace resulting from an internal balance of power, for Islam an opportunity to rid itself of the stamp that Arabian Imperialism was forced to give it, to mobilise its law, its education, its culture, and to bring them into closer contact with its own original spirit and the spirit of modern times.” Iqbal clearly wished to be rid of the same stamp of Arabian Imperialism that Wali Allah had extolled.

In 1937, Iqbal added an economic dimension referring to Shariat in order that “at least the right to subsistence is secured to everybody”. A “free Muslim state or states” was “the only way to solve the problem of bread for Muslims as well as to secure a peaceful India.”

Iqbal persuaded MA Jinnah (1876-1948), who had settled once again into his London law practice, to return to India in 1934. But when, following the 1935 Government of India Act, India experienced its first democratic elections in 1937, the Muslim League’s ideology promoted by Iqbal and Jinnah failed miserably in the very four provinces that Iqbal had named.

Three days after Hitler’s attack on Poland, the British chose to politically empower Jinnah. Until September 4 1939, the British “had had little time for Jinnah and his League. The Government’s declaration of war on Germany on 3 September, however, transformed the situation. A large part of the army was Muslim, much of the war effort was likely to rest on the two Muslim majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal. The following day, the Viceroy invited Jinnah for talks on an equal footing with Gandhi…. because the British found it convenient to take the League seriously, everyone had to as well” (F. Robinson, in James & Roy (eds) Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy). Jinnah himself was amazed: “suddenly there was a change in the attitude towards me. I was treated on the same basis as Mr Gandhi. I was wonderstruck why all of a sudden I was promoted and given a place side by side with Mr Gandhi.”

Britain at war was faced too with intransigence from the Congress — Gandhi, for example, rudely dismissing the 1942 Cripps offer as a “post-dated cheque on a failing bank”. It was unsurprising this would contribute to the British tilt towards Congress’s adversary. Suddenly, Rahmat Ali’s acronym “PAKSTAN” , supposedly invented on the top floor of a London bus, was becoming a credible possibility.

By 1946, Muslim electoral opinion had changed drastically in the League’s favour. By 1947, Iqbal’s lofty philosophical vision of a cultured Muslim state had degenerated into irrational street mobs shouting: “Larke lenge Pakistan; Marke lenge Pakistan; Khun se lenge Pakistan; Dena hoga Pakistan”.

Events remote from India’s history and geography, namely, Hitler’s rise and the Second World War, had contributed between 1937 and 1947 to the change of fortune of Jinnah’s League, and hence the fate of all the people of the subcontinent. Even so, thanks to AK Azad’s diplomacy, the May 1946 Cabinet Mission Plan denying Partition and Pakistan did come to be accepted by Jinnah’s Muslim League, and it was doubtless the obduracy and megalomania of Azad’s Congress colleagues which contributed equally to the failure to find a political solution ~ along with the vapid behaviour of a pompous, vacuous Mountbatten who caused infinite uncertainty until June 3 1947, as to what was going to happen to the lives of scores of millions of ordinary people within a few weeks.

In August 1947, the new Pakistani elite hardly felt or even wished to feel free of the British ~ they merely felt independent of what they saw as Congress domination, and had now acquired some power for themselves. Far from any nation-building taking place, Pakistan’s early years were marked by political, legal, constitutional and military chaos and trauma. Both Dominions made a grab for the Raj’s common assets, especially the armed forces.

Indeed, how did the Kashmir problem originate? As much as any other factor, it occurred because of the incompetent partitioning of military assets and hurried decommissioning of British Indian armies ~ causing thousands of Mirpuri soldiers to return to a communally inflamed Punjab/ Jammu region.

The first J&K war started within weeks of Partition and was in all but name a civil war ~ somewhat like the American Civil War. It was a civil war not merely between Kashmir’s National and Muslim Conferences but also between Army regiments who had been jointly fighting Britain’s enemies until very recently.

Pakistan’s leadership vacuum started at once. Jinnah was ill and died shortly. Liaquat Ali Khan was the only politician of any experience left. He faced on one side Pashtuns having no wish to be dominated by a new Karachi/ Rawalpindi elite, and on the other side, the Kashmir conflict. The most basic functions of governance never got started. Taking a Census has been one such function since Roman times, yet Pakistan has never had one. Writing a Constitution is another, but Maududi and others demanded “That the sovereignty in Pakistan belongs to God Almighty alone and that the Government of Pakistan shall administer the country as His agent”. As a result, Pakistan’s few constitutionalists have been battling impossibly ever since to overcome the ontological mistake made of assuming that any earthly government, no matter how pious, can be in communication with God Almighty as easily as it can be with foreign governments.

The Rule of Law is another basic function. But when Liaquat was himself assassinated in 1951, his assassin was killed on the spot yet the murder remained unsolved. Mashriqi was immediately arrested because of his hostility to the Muslim League, but later released. Because the assassin was Pashtun, Afghanistan was blamed but the Afghan Government proved otherwise. The investigating policeman was killed in an aircrash, and all documents went with him. Final suspicion pointed towards Akbar Khan, the renegade Army general who had led the attack on J&K and was in jail for the Rawalpindi conspiracy. Years later, Liaquat’s widow (the former Irene Pant of Naini Tal) rued the fact no one was ever prosecuted.

After Liaquat’s assassination, the period of Ghulam Mohammad, Nazimuddin, Mohammad Ali Bogra, Chaudhury Mohammad Ali, and most importantly, Iskander Mirza leading up to Ayub Khan’s Martial Law in 1958, was simply appalling in its display of the sheer irresponsibility of Pakistan’s new super-elite. Instead of domestic nation-building or fulfilling the basic functions of governance, close comprador relations came to be established with the US and British Governments ~ exemplified by Mirza’s elder son taking the American Ambassador’s daughter as his (first) wife and moving to a lifelong career with the World Bank in Washington. This comprador relationship between Washington, London and Pakistan’s super-elite flourishes and continues to this day. E.g., the current World Bank head and architect of the 2003 Bush invasion of Iraq, Paul Wolfowitz, remains in a mentoring relationship with Shaukat Aziz, a former American bank executive, who is General Musharraf’s Prime Minister. For better or worse, Pakistan’s Government will never veer from the side of Anglo-American policy while such comprador relationships remain intact.

Before the 1971 war, West Pakistan was in a frenzy from a propaganda campaign of “Crush India” and “Hang Mujib”. General Niazi’s surrender to General Arora in Dhaka Stadium ~ causing 90,000 PoWs whom India then protected from Bangladeshi revenge ~ shocked Pakistan and shattered the self-image of its Army. ZA Bhutto was the only populist politician of the country ever, and his few years held vanishing promise of a normal political agenda (no matter how economically misguided) finally arising. But Bhutto suppressed the new Baloch revolt with the Shah of Iran’s military help; at the same time he failed to protect his own back against Zia ul Haq’s coup, leading to his judicial murder in 1979. Zia tried to rebuild the Army’s shattered esprit de corps the only way he knew how, which was by indoctrinating the Punjabi officer corps with Sunni dogmatism. This coincided with the Afghan civil war, influx of refugees, and US-Saudi-Chinese plan to defeat the USSR. Pakistan’s super-elite in their comprador role were happy to allow themselves to be used again and be hung out to dry afterwards.

All normal branches of Pakistan’s polity, like the electorate,press, political parties, Legislature and Judiciary, have remained at best in ill-formed inchoate states of being. The economy remains, like India’s, one fed on endless deficit finance paid for by unlimited printing of inconvertible paper money, though Pakistan has had relatively more labour emigration and much less foreign investment and technological progress than India. Both are wracked by corruption, poverty, ignorance and superstition.

Over half a century, the military has acquired vast economic and political interests and agendas, on pretext of protecting Pakistan from India or gaining “Kashmeer” for it. With few and noble exceptions, academics, politicians and journalists have remained timid in face of fascistic State-power with its militarist/Islamist ideology ~ causing a transferance of the people’s anger and frustration onto an easier target, namely ourselves in India. Anti-Indianism (especially over J&K) remains the sole unifying factor of Pakistan’s super-elite, regardless of what history’s objective facts may have to say. Much political courage and understanding will be needed for that to be reversed.

All countries hunger for genuine national heroes who take upon themselves individual risks on behalf of ordinary people. Wali Khan stood up to his father’s jailors, and young Benazir of 1980s vintage to her father’s executioner. But Pakistan has had few such heroes,certainly none among its bemedalled generals. Why AQ Khan is seen as a hero is because he at least took some personal risks, and finally brought Pakistan a kind of respect and independence in the world with his Bomb.

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The Greatest Pashtun: Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan

July 16, 2006 — drsubrotoroy

THE GREATEST PASHTUN

First published in The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page Special Article, July 16 2006

By

SUBROTO ROY

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988) was without a doubt the greatest political genius the Pashtun people have yet produced.

Understanding the political economy of the Pashto/Pakhto speaking peoples, as well as the Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Turkmen and other inhabitants of Afghanistan, remains a top intellectual challenge for everyone including themselves. Afghans have hardly lived a peaceful decade since Genghiz Khan destroyed them avenging his grandson in the 13th Century. Ghazni, Ghor, Peshawar etc. were launch-pads for attacks against the settled people of India’s fertile plains (most recently, the October 1947 attack on Kashmir Valley) while Herat saw wars by and against Iran.

Lyall, one of the architects of 19th Century British policy, thought Afghans “wretched”, “treacherous barbarians with whom it was an unfortunate necessity to have any dealings at all”… “I can only sympathise with the Afghan’s love for his country and his hatred against those who disturb him, although he has no scruple in disturbing others to the best of his savage ability”. Yet the British idea of Russian armies marching into India through Afghanistan was always a wild exaggeration, especially after joint boundary commissions demarcated the imperial spheres of influence. When the Russians did finally enter and occupy Afghanistan in 1978-79, they lived to regret it; and they arrived in independent India on passenger aircraft, were greeted as fraternal socialists selling weapons, and remain so today. Pakistan’s generals exaggerated the prospect of Russia seeking warm water ports, first to Nixon (as Vice President) then to Carter and Reagan, causing the Americans to happily supply weapons which the generals promptly turned against India.

Ghaffar Khan was and remains the only thoughtful figure in Pashtun history who invented a new, living political philosophy as a constructive force for his people’s peace and progress. Even though his ideology failed to take permanent root or survive among them, he commanded universal respect among all Pashtuns and Afghans and became “Badshah Khan” or “Bacha Khan” to them. Afghanistan’s civil war, in which the USSR was pit against the USA, Pakistan etc, stopped with a ceasefire in 1988 for his burial to take place in Jalalabad, with a funeral procession that was miles long.

Pashtun and other Afghan and Arab tribal people have become notorious today by their association with the dogmatism, intellectual insularity and retrograde ideology of Muslim extremism. Yet Osama bin Laden and his Taliban and other friends have been unable to make any moral argument for the cause of violence other than one built on revenge for perceived or misperceived injustices against Muslims. “Because you have done this and this to Muslim people, we are bound by the code of vengeance to do this to you” is just about the entire quantum of moral reasoning contained in Al-Qaida’s statements. “Revenge is a wild kind of justice” and circumstances can exist where injustice is so deep that only revenge suffices in rectification. The current case of the rape-murder of an Iraqi girl and her family by a group of renegade American soldiers may be one such, which explicitly led to the kidnap, torture and murder of some of the soldiers by Iraqis seeking vengeance. But justice too is a civilised kind of revenge, and the transition from a code of revenge to a code of justice is precisely the transition from tribal warfare to civilisation. In Western countries, it occurred recently enough when duelling with swords or pistols came to be banned, giving way to the law of torts.

Ghaffar Khan attempted to change the Pashtun code in this one fundamental and all-important direction by abolishing the right to revenge. In its place he brought the doctrine of non-violence. “I am going to give you such a weapon that the police and the army will not be able to stand against it. It is the weapon of the Prophet, but you are not aware of it. That weapon is patience and righteousness. No power on earth can stand against it.”Patience and righteousness are not political virtues that seem to find much mention in Islamic or Afghan folklore, and doubtless they arose in Ghaffar Khan’s thought and actions at least partly through his encounter with Christian altruism, first with Rev. Wigram his schoolmaster, and later in adult life with the Tolstoy-Thoreau doctrines applied along with Jain ahimsa by MK Gandhi in the movement for Indian independence.

“It is the weapon of the Prophet” was Ghaffar Khan making explicit he was and remained at all times the most devout of Muslims and none could say otherwise; “but you are not aware of it” was his new move to tell his people they had misled themselves by sacerdotalism and needed to read the Prophet’s life and message afresh. He once told M. K. Gandhi how he explained to amazed Punjabi Muslim Leaguers the precise evidence in favour of non-violence from the Prophet’s life in Mecca, leaving his audience speechless.

Today’s “Taliban” were named for their purported piety; Lashkar-e-Taiba even means “Army of the Pious”, the typical image being of pious studious youth seated memorising scriptures in a Pakistani madrassa, and later waving AK-47s in a moving truck. Ghaffar Khan’s Khudai Khidmatgar “Servants of God” were their polar opposite. Each of some 120,000 members of the order took a fierce oath to non-violence and renunciation: “I am a Servant of God, and as God needs no service, but serving his creation is serving him, I promise to serve humanity in the name of God; to refrain from violence and from taking revenge; to forgive those who oppress me or treat me with cruelty; to refrain from taking part in feuds and quarrels and from creating enmity; to treat every Pathan as my brother and friend; to refrain from antisocial customs and practices; to live a simple life, to practice virtue, and to refrain from evil; to practice good manners and good behaviour and not to lead a life of idleness… I will sacrifice my wealth, life, and comfort for the liberty of my nation and people… side with the oppressed against the oppressor… live in accordance with principles of nonviolence… serve all God’s creatures alike… my object shall be the attainment of the freedom of my country and my religion. … will never desire any reward whatever for my service. All my efforts shall be to please God, and not for any show or gain.”

In their founder’s words, the Khudai Khidmatgars were to be ready to lay down their own lives for their cause and never take any life doing so. They became far more forceful practitioners of non-violence than their Gandhian Indian counterparts in the struggle for political freedom from the British, and hundreds of them died in Peshawar under British brutality.

In 1893, Durand’s controversial boundary-line gave the British control over the three mountain passes between Afghanistan and India in exchange for raising the annual British subsidy to the Afghan Amir by 50% from Rs 8 lakhs to 12 lakhs. Today, the Durand Line roughly separates perhaps 10 million Pashtun comprising 40% of Afghanistan’s population from perhaps 8 million Pashtun who are Pakistani nationals (no one has exact figures as there has been no census). In the 1950s and 1960s, the Afghan Government backed by the USSR, on pretence that the Durand Line had not been freely accepted by Afghans, wished for a “Pakhtoonistan” under its sway.

Though jailed by the new and nervous Pakistanis, Ghaffar Khan was averse to any truck with the Afghan Government ~ he had not demanded erasing the Durand Line but had demanded a separate and distinct “Pashtunistan”. A mature self-confident federal Pakistan today would bifurcate itself vertically into one or two mountainous western provinces on one side, and two or three river valley eastern provinces on the other. The former could be named “East Pashtunistan” if the Baloch agreed, or East Pashtunistan and Baluchistan otherwise, and extend to the port of Gwadar, while the latter would remain Punjab, Sindh and “Northern Kashmir”.

Along with an Afghan “West Pashtunistan” and an Indian “Southern Kashmir”, a stable design of peaceful nation-states from Iran through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India would be then finally in place. Badshah Khan’s influence in death may yet become greater than his influence in life.

Law, Justice and J&K (2006)

July 3, 2006 — drsubrotoroy

LAW, JUSTICE AND J&K

by SUBROTO ROY

First published in two parts inThe Sunday Statesman, July 2 2006 and The Statesman July 3 2006 Editorial Page Special Article

I. For a solution to J&K to be universally acceptable it must be seen by all as being lawful and just. Political opinion in Pakistan and India as well as all people and parties in J&K ~ those loyal to India, those loyal to Pakistan, and any others ~ will have to agree that, all things considered, such is the right course of action for everyone today in the 21st Century, which means too that the solution must be consistent with the facts of history as well as account reasonably for all moral considerations.

On August 14, 1947, the legal entity known as “British India”, as one of its final acts, and based on a sovereign British decision made only two months earlier, created out of some of its territory a new State defined in international law as the “Dominion of Pakistan”. British India extinguished itself the very next day, and the newly independent “Dominion of India” succeeded to all its rights and obligations in international law. As the legal successor of the “India” which had signed the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and the San Francisco Declaration of 1945, the Dominion of India was already a member of the new UN as well as a signatory to many international treaties. By contrast, the Dominion of Pakistan had to apply afresh to sign treaties and become a member of international organisations. The theory put forward by Argentina that two new States, India and Pakistan, had been created ab initio, came to be rejected and was withdrawn by Argentina. Instead, Pakistan with the wholehearted backing of India was made a member of the UN, with all except Afghanistan voting in favour. (Afghanistan’s exceptional vote signalled presence of conflict over the Durand Line and idea of a Pashtunistan; Dr Khan Sahib and Abdul Ghaffar Khan were imprisoned by the Muslim League regime of NWFP which later supported the tribesmen who attacked J&K starting October 22, 1947; that conflict remains unresolved to this day, even after the American attack on the Taliban, the restart of a constitutional process in Afghanistan, and the purported mediation of US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.)

Zafrullah Khan, Pakistan’s distinguished first ambassador to the UN, claimed in September 1947: “Pakistan is not a new member of UNO but a successor to a member State which was one of the founders of the Organisation.” He noted that he himself had led India to the final session of the League of Nations in Geneva in 1939, and he wished to say that Pakistan had been present “as part of India… under the latter name” as a signatory to the Treaty of Versailles. This was, however, logically impossible. The Treaty of Versailles long predated (1) Mohammad Iqbal’s Allahabad Address which conceptualised for the first time in the 20th Century a Muslim State in Northwest India; (2) Rahmat Ali’s invention of the word “PAKSTAN” on the top floor of a London omnibus; (3) M. A. Jinnah and Fazlul Haq’s Lahore Resolution; and (4) the final British decision of June 3, 1947 to create by Partition out of “British India” a Dominion named Pakistan. Pakistan could not have acted in international law prior to having come into being or been created or even conceived itself. Zafrullah Khan would have been more accurate to say that the history of Pakistanis until August 14, 1947 had been one in common with that of their Indian cousins ~ or indeed their Indian brothers, since innumerable North Indian Muslim families came to be literally partitioned, with some brothers remaining Indians while other brothers became Pakistanis.

Pakistan was created at the behest of Jinnah’s Muslim League though with eventual agreement of the Indian National Congress (a distant ancestor of the political party going by the same name today). Pakistan arose not because Jinnah said Hindus and Muslims were “two nations” but because he and his League wished for a State where Muslims would find themselves ruled by fellow-Muslims and feel themselves part of a pan-Islamic culture. Yet Pakistan was intended to be a secular polity with Muslim-majority governance, not an Islamic theocracy. That Pakistan failed to become secular was exemplified most poignantly in the persecution Zafrullah himself later faced in his personal life as an Ahmadiya, even while he was Pakistan’s Foreign Minister. (The same happened later to Pakistan’s Nobel-winning physicist Abdus Salaam.) Pakistan was supposed to allow the genius of Indo-Muslim culture to flourish, transplanted from places like Lucknow and Aligarh which would never be part of it. In fact, the areas that are Pakistan today had in the 1937 provincial elections shown scant popular Muslim support for Jinnah’s League. The NWFP had a Congress Government in the 1946 elections, and its supporters boycotted the pro-Pakistan referendum in 1947. The imposition of Urdu culture as Pakistan’s dominant ethos might have come to be accepted later in West Punjab, Sindh and NWFP but it was not acceptable in East Bengal, and led inevitably to the Pakistani civil war and creation of Bangladesh by Sheikh Mujib in 1971.

In August 1947, the new Dominions of India and Pakistan were each supposed to protect their respective minority populations as their first political duty. Yet both palpably failed in this, and were reduced to making joint declarations pleading for peace and an end to communal killings and the abduction of women. The Karachi Government, lacking the wherewithal and administrative machinery of being a nation-state at all, and with only Liaquat and an ailing Jinnah as noted leaders, may have failed more conspicuously, and West Punjab, the Frontier and Sindh were soon emptied of almost all their many Sikhs and Hindus. Instead, the first act of the new Pakistan Government in the weeks after August 14, 1947 was to arrange for the speedy and safe transfer of the North Indian Muslim elite by air from Delhi using chartered British aeroplanes. The ordinary Muslim masses of UP, Delhi and East Punjab were left in danger from or were subjected to Sikh and Hindu mob attacks, especially as news and rumours spread of similar outrages against Pakistan’s departing minorities.

In this spiral of revenge attacks and counter-attacks, bloodshed inevitably spilled over from West and East Punjab into the northern Punjabi plains of Jammu, though Kashmir Valley remained conspicuously peaceful. Zafrullah and Liaquat would later claim it was this communal civil war which had caused thousands of newly decommissioned Mirpuri soldiers of the British Army, and thousands of Afridi and other Frontier tribesmen, to spontaneously act to “liberate” J&K’s Muslims from alleged tyranny under the Hindu Ruler or an allegedly illegal Indian occupation.

But the main attack on J&K State that began from Pakistan along the Manshera-Muzaffarabad road on October 22, 1947 was admittedly far too well-organised, well-armed, well-planned and well-executed to have been merely a spontaneous uprising of tribesmen and former soldiers. In all but name, it was an act of undeclared war of the new Dominion of Pakistan first upon the State of J&K and then upon the Indian Dominion. This became obvious to Field Marshall Auchinlek, who, as Supreme Commander of the armed forces of both India and Pakistan, promptly resigned and abolished the Supreme Command in face of the fact that two parts of his own forces were now at war with one another.

II. The invaders failed to take Srinagar solely because they lost their military purpose while indulging in the Rape of Baramula. Thousands of Kashmiri women of all communities ~ Muslim, Sikh and Hindu ~ were violated and transported back to be sold in markets in Peshawar and elsewhere. Such was standard practice in Central Asian tribal wars from long before the advent of Islam, and the invading tribesmen shared that culture. India’s Army and Air Force along with the militias of the secular democratic movement led by Sheikh Abdullah and those remaining loyal units of J&K forces, fought off the invasion, and liberated Baramula, Naushera, Uri, Poonch etc. Gilgit had a British-led coup détat against it bringing it under Pakistan’s control. Kargil was initially taken by the Pakistanis and then lost by them. Leh could have been but was not taken by Pakistani forces. But in seeking to protect Leh and to retake Kargil, the Indian Army lost the siege of Skardu ~ which ended reputedly with the infamous communication from the Pakistani commander to his HQ: “All Sikhs killed; all women raped.”

Legal theory

Now, in this grave mortal conflict, the legal theory to which both the Indian and Pakistani Governments have been wedded for sixty years is one that had been endorsed by the British Cabinet Mission in 1946 and originated with the Butler Commission of 1929. Namely, that “Lapse of Paramountcy” over the “Indian India” of the “Native States” could and did occur with the extinction of British India on August 15, 1947. By this theory, Hyderabad, J&K, Junagadh and the several other States which had not acceded to either Dominion were no longer subject to the Crown’s suzerainty as of that date. Both Dominions drew up “Instruments of Accession” for Rulers to sign upon the supposed “Lapse” of Paramountcy that was to occur with the end of British India.

Ever since, the Pakistan Government has argued that Junagadh’s Ruler acceded to Pakistan and Hyderabad’s had wished to do so but both were forcibly prevented by India. Pakistan has also argued the accession to India by J&K’s Ruler was “fraudulent” and unacceptable, and Sheikh Abdullah was a “Quisling” of India and it was not his National Conference but the Muslim Conference of Ibrahim, Abbas and the Mirwaiz (precursor of the Hurriyat) which represented J&K’s Muslims.

India argued that Junagadh’s accession to Pakistan or Hyderabad’s independence were legal and practical impossibilities contradicting the wills of their peoples, and that their integration into the Indian Dominion was carried out in an entirely legitimate manner in the circumstances prevailing.

On J&K, India has argued that not only had the Ruler requested Indian forces to fight off the Pakistani attack, and he acceded formally before Indian forces were sent, but also that democratic principles were fully adhered to in the unequivocal endorsement of the accession by Sheikh Abdullah and the National Conference and further by a duly called and elected J&K Constituent Assembly, as well as generations of Kashmiris since. In the Indian view, it is Pakistan which has been in illegal occupation of Indian territory from Mirpur, Muzaffarabad and Gilgit to Skardu all the way to the Khunjerab Pass, Siachen Glacier and K2, some of which it illegally ceded to its Communist Chinese ally, and furthermore that it has denied the peoples of these areas any democratic voice.

Roman law

In June 1947, it was uniquely and brilliantly argued by BR Ambedkar in a statement to the Press that the British had made a catastrophic error in comprehending their own constitutional law, that no such thing as “Lapse” of Paramountcy existed, and that suzerainty over the “Native States” of “Indian India” would be automatically transferred in international law to the successor State of British India. It was a legal illusion to think any Native State could be sovereign even for a single logical moment. On this theory, if the Dominion of India was the sole successor State in international law while Pakistan was a new legal entity, then a Native State which acceded to Pakistan after August 15, 1947 would have had to do so with the consent of the suzerain power, namely, India, as may be said to have happened implicitly in case of Chitral and a few others. Equally, India’s behaviour in integrating (or annexing) Junagadh and Hyderabad, would become fully explicable ~ as would the statements of Mountbatten, Nehru and Patel before October 1947 that they would accept J&K going to Pakistan if that was what the Ruler and his people desired. Pakistan unilaterally and by surprise went to war against J&K on October 22, declared the accession to India “fraudulent”, and to this day has claimed the territory of the original State of J&K is “disputed”. Certainly, even if the Ambedkar doctrine is applied that no “Lapse” was possible under British law, Pakistan did not recognise India’s jurisdiction there as the suzerain power as of August 15, 1947. Altogether, Pakistan’s sovereign actions from October 22 onwards amounted to acting to annex J&K to itself by military force ~ acts which came to be militarily resisted (with partial success) by India allied with Sheikh Abdullah’s National Conference and the remaining forces of J&K. By these military actions, Pakistan revealed that it considered J&K territory to have descended into a legal state of anarchy as of October 22, 1947, and hence open to resolution by “Military Decision” ~ as is indeed the just outcome under Roman Law, the root of all municipal and international law today, when there is a contest between claimants over an ownerless entity.

Choice of nationality

Hence, the present author concluded (“Solving Kashmir”, The Statesman December 1-3, 2005) that the dismemberment of the original J&K State and annexation of its territories by India and Pakistan that has occurred since 1947, as represented first by the 1949 Ceasefire Line and then by the 1972 Line of Control, is indeed the just and lawful outcome prevailing in respect of the question of territorial sovereignty and jurisdiction. The remaining “democratic” question described has to do with free individual choice of nationality by the inhabitants, under conditions of full information and privacy, citizen-by-citizen, with the grant of permanent residency rights by the Indian Republic to persons under its jurisdiction in J&K who may choose not to remain Indian nationals but become Afghan, Iranian or Pakistani nationals instead. Pakistan has said frequently its sole concern has been the freedom of the Muslims of J&K under Indian rule, and any such genuine concern shall have been thereby fully met by India. Indeed, if Pakistan agreed to act similarly, this entire complex mortal problem of decades shall have begun to be peacefully resolved. Both countries are wracked by corruption, poverty and bad governance, and would be able to mutually draw down military forces pit against one another everywhere, so as to begin to repair the grave damage to their fiscal health caused by the deleterious draining away of vast public resources .

Pakistan’s Allies

June 5, 2006 — drsubrotoroy

PAKISTAN’S ALLIES

First published in two parts in The Sunday Statesman, June 4 2006, The Statesman June 5 2006, Editorial Page Special Article

by Subroto Roy

From the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar creating the State of Jammu & Kashmir until the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Britain and later the USA became increasingly interested in the subcontinent’s Northwest. The British came to India by sea to trade. Barren, splendid, landlocked Afghanistan held no interest except as a home of fierce tribes; but it was the source of invasions into the Indian plains and prompted a British misadventure to install Shah Shuja in place of Dost Mohammad Khan leading to ignominious defeat. Later, Afghanistan was seen as the underbelly of the Russian and Soviet empires, and hence a location of interest to British and American strategic causes.

In November 1954, US President Dwight Eisenhower authorized 30 U-2 spy aircraft to be produced for deployment against America’s perceived enemies, especially to investigate Soviet nuclear missiles which could reach the USA. Reconnaissance balloons had been unsuccessful, and numerous Western pilots had been shot down taking photographs from ordinary military aircraft. By June 1956, U-2 were making clandestine flights over the USSR and China. But on May 1 1960, one was shot or forced down over Sverdlovsk, 1,000 miles within Soviet territory. The Americans prevaricated that it had taken off from Turkey on a weather-mission, and been lost due to oxygen problems. Nikita Kruschev then produced the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, who was convicted of spying, though was exchanged later for a Soviet spy. Powers had been headed towards Norway, his task to photograph Soviet missiles from 70,000 ft, his point of origin had been an American base 20 miles from Peshawar.

America needed clandestine “forward bases” from which to fly U-2 aircraft, and Pakistan’s ingratiating military and diplomatic establishment was more than willing to offer such cooperation, fervently wishing to be seen as a “frontline state” against the USSR. “We will help you defeat the USSR and we are hopeful you will help us defeat India” became their constant refrain. By 1986, the Americans had been permitted to build air-bases in Balochistan and also use Mauripur air-base near Karachi.

Jammu & Kashmir and especially Gilgit-Baltistan adjoins the Pashtun regions whose capital has been Peshawar. In August-November 1947, a British coup d’etat against J&K State secured Gilgit-Baltistan for the new British Dominion of Pakistan.

The Treaty of Amritsar had nowhere required Gulab Singh’s dynasty to accept British political control in J&K as came to be exercised by British “Residents” in all other Indian “Native States”. Despite this, Delhi throughout the late 19th Century relentlessly pressed Gulab Singh’s successors Ranbir Singh and Partab Singh to accept political control. The Dogras acquiesced eventually. Delhi’s desire for control had less to do with the welfare of J&K’s people than with protection of increasing British interests in the area, like European migration to Srinagar Valley and guarding against Russian or German moves in Afghanistan. “Sargin” or “Sargin Gilit”, later corrupted by the Sikhs and Dogras into “Gilgit”, had an ancient people who spoke an archaic Dardic language “intermediate between the Iranian and the Sanskritic”. “The Dards were located by Ptolemy with surprising accuracy on the West of the Upper Indus, beyond the headwaters of the Swat River (Greek: Soastus) and north of the Gandarae (i.e. Kandahar), who occupied Peshawar and the country north of it. This region was traversed by two Chinese pilgrims, Fa-Hsien, coming from the north about AD 400 and Hsuan Tsiang, ascending from Swat in AD 629, and both left records of their journeys.”

Gilgit had been historically ruled by a Hindu dynasty called Trakane; when they became extinct, Gilgit Valley “was desolated by successive invasions of neighbouring rulers, and in the 20 or 30 years ending with 1842 there had been five dynastic revolutions. The Sikhs entered Gilgit about 1842 and kept a garrison there.” When J&K came under Gulab Singh, “the Gilgit claims were transferred with it, and a boundary commission was sent” by the British. In 1852 the Dogras were driven out with 2,000 dead. In 1860 under Ranbir Singh, the Dogras “returned to Gilgit and took Yasin twice, but did not hold it. They also in 1866 invaded Darel, one of the most secluded Dard states, to the south of the Gilgit basin but withdrew again.”

The British appointed a Political Agent in Gilgit in 1877 but he was withdrawn in 1881. “In 1889, in order to guard against the advance of Russia, the British Government, acting as the suzerain power of Kashmir, established the Gilgit Agency”. The Agency was re-established under control of the British Resident in Jammu & Kashmir. “It comprised the Gilgit Wazarat; the State of Hunza and Nagar; the Punial Jagir; the Governorships of Yasin, Kuh-Ghizr and Ishkoman, and Chilas”. In 1935, the British demanded J&K lease to them for 60 years Gilgit town plus most of the Gilgit Agency and the hill-states Hunza, Nagar, Yasin and Ishkuman. Hari Singh had no choice but to acquiesce. The leased region was then treated as part of British India, administered by a Political Agent at Gilgit responsible to Delhi, first through the Resident in J& K and later a British Agent in Peshawar. J& K State no longer kept troops in Gilgit and a mercenary force, the Gilgit Scouts, was recruited with British officers and paid for by Delhi. In April 1947, Delhi decided to formally retrocede the leased areas to Hari Singh’s J& K State as of 15 August 1947. The transfer was to formally take place on 1 August.

On 31 July, Hari Singh’s Governor arrived to find “all the officers of the British Government had opted for service in Pakistan”. The Gilgit Scouts’ commander, a Major William Brown aged 25, and his adjutant, a Captain Mathieson, planned openly to engineer a coup détat against Hari Singh’s Government. Between August and October, Gilgit was in uneasy calm. At midnight on 31 October 1947, the Governor was surrounded by the Scouts and the next day he was “arrested” and a provisional government declared.

Hari Singh’s nearest forces were at Bunji, 34 miles from Gilgit, a few miles downstream from where the Indus is joined by Gilgit River. The 6th J& K Infantry Battalion there was a mixed Sikh-Muslim unit, typical of the State’s Army, commanded by a Lt Col. Majid Khan. Bunji controlled the road to Srinagar. Further upstream was Skardu, capital of Baltistan, part of Laddakh District where there was a small garrison. Following Brown’s coup in Gilgit, Muslim soldiers of the 6th Infantry massacred their Sikh brothers-at-arms at Bunji. The few Sikhs who survived escaped to the hills and from there found their way to the garrison at Skardu.

On 4 November 1947, Brown raised the new Pakistani flag in the Scouts’ lines, and by the third week of November a Political Agent from Pakistan had established himself at Gilgit. Brown had engineered Gilgit and its adjoining states to first secede from J&K, and, after some talk of being independent, had promptly acceded to Pakistan. His commander in Peshawar, a Col. Bacon, as well as Col. Iskander Mirza, Defence Secretary in the new Pakistan and later to lead the first military coup détat and become President of Pakistan, were pleased enough. In July 1948, Brown was awarded an MBE (Military) and the British Governor of the NWFP got him a civilian job with ICI~ which however sent him to Calcutta, where he came to be attacked and left for dead on the streets by Sikhs avenging the Bunji massacre. Brown survived, returned to England, started a riding school, and died in 1984. In March 1994, Pakistan awarded his widow the Sitara-I-Pakistan in recognition of his coup détat.

Gilgit’s ordinary people had not participated in Brown’s coup which carried their fortunes into the new Pakistan, and to this day appear to remain without legislative representation. It was merely assumed that since they were mostly Muslim in number they would wish to be part of Pakistan ~ which also became Liaquat Ali Khan’s assumption about J&K State as a whole in his 1950 statements in North America. What the Gilgit case demonstrates is that J&K State’s descent into a legal condition of ownerless anarchy open to “Military Decision” had begun even before the Pakistani invasion of 22 October 1947 (viz. “Solving Kashmir”, The Statesman, 1-3 December 2005). Also, whatever else the British said or did with respect to J & K, they were closely allied to the new Pakistan on the matter of Gilgit.

The peak of Pakistan’s Anglo-American alliance came with the enormous support in the 1980s to guerrilla forces created and headquartered in Peshawar, to battle the USSR and Afghan communists directly across the Durand Line. It was this guerrilla war which became a proximate cause of the collapse of the USSR as a political entity in 1991. President Ronald Reagan’s CIA chief William J. Casey sent vast sums in 1985-1988 to supply and train these guerrillas. The Washington Post and New Yorker reported the CIA training guerrillas “in the use of mortars, rocket grenades, ground-to-air missiles”. 200 hand-held Stinger missiles were supplied for the first time in 1986 and the New Yorker reported Gulbudin Hikmatyar’s “Hizbe Islami” guerrillas being trained to bring down Soviet aircraft. “Mujahideen had been promised two Stingers for every Soviet aircraft brought down. Operators who failed to aim correctly were given additional training… By 1986, the United States was so deeply involved in the Afghan war that Soviet aircraft were being brought down under the supervision of American experts”. (Raja Anwar, The Tragedy of Afghanistan, 1988, p. 234).

The budding US-China détente brokered by Pakistan came into full bloom here. NBC News on 7 January 1980 said “for the first time in history (a senior State Department official) publicly admitted the possibility of concluding a military alliance between the United States and China”. London’s Daily Telegraph reported on 5 January 1980 “China is flying large supplies of arms and ammunition to the insurgents in Afghanistan. According to diplomatic reports, supplies have arrived in Pakistan from China via the Karakoram Highway…. A major build-up of Chinese involvement is underway ~ in the past few days. Scores of Chinese instructors have arrived at the Shola-e-Javed camps.”

Afghan reports in 1983-1985 said “there were eight training camps near the Afghan border operated by the Chinese in Sinkiang province” and that China had supplied the guerrillas “with a variety of weapons including 40,000 RPG-7 and 20,000 RPG-II anti tank rocket launchers.” Like Pakistan, “China did not publicly admit its involvement in the Afghan conflict: in 1985 the Chinese Mission at the UN distributed a letter denying that China was extending any kind of help to the Afghan rebels” (Anwar, ibid. p. 234). Support extended deep and wide across the Arab world. “The Saudi and Gulf rulers … became the financial patrons of the Afghan rebels from the very start of the conflict”. Anwar Sadat, having won the Nobel Peace Prize, was “keen to claim credit for his role in Afghanistan…. by joining the Afghanistan jihad, Sadat could re-establish his Islamic credentials, or so he believed. He could thus not only please the Muslim nations but also place the USA and Israel in his debt.” Sadat’s Defence Minister said in January 1980: “Army camps have been opened for the training of Afghan rebels; they are being supplied with weapons from Egypt” and Sadat told NBC News on 22 September 1981 “that for the last twenty-one months, the USA had been buying arms from Egypt for the Afghan rebels. He said he had been approached by the USA in December 1979 and he had decided to `open my stores’. He further disclosed that these arms were being flown to Pakistan from Egypt by American aircraft. Egypt had vast supplies of SAM-7 and RPG-7 anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons which Sadat agreed to supply to Afghanistan in exchange for new American arms. The Soviet weapons, being light, were ideally suited to guerrilla warfare. … the Mujahideen could easily claim to have captured them from Soviet and Afghan troops in battle.… Khomeini’s Iran got embroiled in war (against Iraq) otherwise Kabul would also have had to contend with the full might of the Islamic revolutionaries.” (Anwar ibid. p. 235).

Afghanistan had been occupied on 26-27 December 1979 by Soviet forces sent by the decrepit Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov to carry out a putsch replacing one communist, Hafizullah Amin, with a rival communist and Soviet protégé, Babrak Karmal. By 1985 Brezhnev and Andropov were dead and Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev had begun his attempts to reform the Soviet system, usher in openness, end the Cold War and in particular withdraw from Afghanistan, which by 1986 he had termed “a bleeding wound”. Gorbachev replaced Karmal with a new protégé Najibullah Khan, who was assigned the impossible task of bringing about national reconciliation with the Pakistan-based guerrillas and form a national government. Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan in February 1989 having lost 14,500 dead, while more than a million Afghans had been killed since the invasion a decade earlier.

Not long after Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution, Gregory Zinoviev had said that international communism “turns today to the peoples of the East and says to them, `Brothers, we summon you to a Holy War first of all against British imperialism!’ At this there were cries of Jehad! Jehad! And much brandishing of picturesque Oriental weapons.” (Treadgold, Twentieth Century Russia, 1990, p. 213). Now instead, the Afghan misadventure had contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Empire itself, the USSR ceasing to be a political entity by 1991, and even Gorbachev being displaced by Boris Yeltsin and later Vladimir Putin in a new Russia.

What resulted for the people of the USA and Britain and the West in general was that they no longer had to live under threat of hostile Soviet tanks and missiles, while the people of Russia, Ukraine and the other erstwhile Soviet republics as well as Eastern Europe were able to throw off the yoke of communism that had oppressed them since the Bolshevik Revolution and instead to breathe the air of freedom.

What happened to the people of Afghanistan, however, was that they were plunged into further ghastly civil war for more than ten years. And what happened to the people of Pakistan was that their country was left resembling a gigantic Islamist military camp, awash with airfields, arms, ammunition and trained guerrillas, as well as a military establishment enlivened as always by perpetual hope that these supplies, provisions and personnel of war might find alternative use in attacks against India over J& K. “We helped you when you wished to see the Soviet Union defeated and withdrawing in Afghanistan”, Pakistan’s generals and diplomats pleaded with the Americans and British, “now you must help us in our wish to see India defeated and withdrawing in Kashmir”. Pakistan’s leaders even believed that just as the Soviet Union had disintegrated afterwards, the Indian Union perhaps might be made to do the same. Not only were the two cases as different as chalk from cheese, Palmerstone’s dictum there are no permanent allies in the politics of nations could not have found more apt use than in what actually came to take place next.

Pakistan’s generals and diplomats felt betrayed by the loss of Anglo-American paternalism towards them after 1989.

Modern Pakistanis had never felt they subscribed to the Indian nationalist movement culminating in independence in August 1947. The Pakistani state now finally declared its independence in the world by exploding bombs in a nuclear arsenal secretly created with help purchased from China and North Korea. Pakistan’s leaders thus came to feel in some control of Pakistan’s destiny as a nation-state for the first time, more than fifty years after Pakistan’s formal creation in 1947. If nothing else, at least they had the Bomb.

Secondly, America and its allies would not be safe for long since the civil war they had left behind in Afghanistan while trying to defeat the USSR now became a brew from which arose a new threat of violent Islamism. Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, whom Pakistan’s military and the USA had promoted, now encouraged unprecedented attacks on the American mainland on September 11 2001 ~ causing physical and psychological damage which no Soviet, Chinese or Cuban missiles ever had been allowed to do. In response, America attacked and removed the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, once again receiving the cooperative use of Pakistani manpower and real estate ~ except now there was no longer any truck with the Pakistani establishment’s wish for a quid pro quo of Anglo-American support against India on J&K. Pakistan’s generals and diplomats soon realised their Anglo-American alliance of more than a half-century ended on September 11 2001. Their new cooperation was in killing or arresting and handing over fellow-Muslims and necessarily lacked their earlier feelings of subservience and ingratiation towards the Americans and British, and came to be done instead under at least some duress. No benefit could be reaped any more in the fight against India over Jammu & Kashmir. An era had ended in the subcontinent.

Revisionist Flattery of Indira Gandhi

May 7, 2006 — drsubrotoroy

**Inder Malhotra’s Indira Gandhi : A Review Article**
by Subroto Roy
First published in The Statesman May 7 2006

Indira Priyadarshini Nehru was fortunate to have been a handsome woman born to an eminent and indulgent father and grandfather. Despite her lack of higher education or significant worldly wisdom or experience, she acquired enough of an aura of being born to rule that she became Congress Party President in 1959 at age 41, and India’s most dramatic Prime Minister from 1966-1977 and again from 1980-1984 when she was assassinated. She was lucky too that the Zoroastrian man she married did not have one of the many long and colourful surnames Indian Zoroastrians can have, but coincidentally shared the same surname as modern India’s founder. Hence arose the iconic name and personage known as Indira Gandhi.

“The evil that men do lives after them, the good is often interred with their bones”, said Shakespeare. Indira Gandhi’s one and paramount good deed as India’s leader and indeed as a world leader of her time was to have fought a war that was so rare in international law for having been unambiguously just. And she fought it flawlessly. The cause had been thrust upon her by an evil enemy’s behaviour against his own people, an enemy supported by the world’s strongest military power with pretensions to global leadership. Victims of the enemy’s wickedness were scores of millions of utterly defenceless, penniless human beings. Indira Gandhi did everything right. She practised patient but firm diplomacy on the world’s stage to avert war if it was at all possible to do. She chose her military generals well and took their professional judgement seriously as to when to go to war and how to win it. Finally, in victory she was magnanimous to the enemy that had been defeated. Children’s history-books in India should remember her as the stateswoman who freed a fraternal nation from tyranny, at great expense to our own people. As a war-leader, Indira Gandhi displayed extraordinary bravery, courage and good sense.

Unfortunately, this was the only arena in which these virtues of hers came to be expressed. India’s serious history-books, beyond those written for or read by children, need to record that her sheer ignorance of the fundamentals of domestic statecraft as well as her caprice, arrogance and hubris caused permanent harm to India’s polity in innumerable dimensions from which we have yet long to recover. On advice first of her childhood acquaintance, the proto-communist P. N. Haksar, and later of her ruffian unprincipled younger son Sanjay, she single-handedly destroyed India’s nascent parliamentary traditions, federalism, the Rule of Law, and its most important political party; the integrity of the civil services, judiciary, police, intelligence services and other public institutions; as well as monetary and fiscal prudence Beside this, she and her younger son Sanjay contributed to destroying communal harmony and political stability in the Punjab, while she and later her older son Rajiv contributed to do the same in Kashmir. She exulted in the personality cult, courtier culture and durbar politics of her father and grandfather.

Many pertinent questions about the personal and political life of Indira Gandhi have remained to be answered by any serious modern biographer. Her relationships with her husband and his rival for her time and affections, her father, remain in darkness, as does, after their deaths, her relationship between 1967- 1974 with Haksar, her key adviser. Her capacity and her failures as a mother to two very different sons also remain unclear. Her own lack of education was transmitted to them and neither succeeded at what he studied to be, though at least Rajiv became a gentleman. Her father had been an indifferent husband to Kamala and she an indifferent wife to Feroze — the most important thing her sons may have done with their lives was to have married women she did not choose for them, and then to have become well-loved spouses themselves. As mother-in-law, her petulant bullying of the young Sikh widow of Sanjay, mother of an infant child at the time, remains to be contrasted with her apparent warmth and generosity towards her Italian-born elder daughter-in-law. All such questions would be ones of feminine gossip or TV-soap operas in case of any ordinary woman but assume political significance for Indians because of the inordinate impact she, her father, her sons and their widows have had on India’s modern history. Why all of India’s national-level politics have acquired a gossipy joint-family tone about them is because she projected onto them no high and universally known political principles whatsoever, but merely her own personal experiences and desire for popularity.

The book at hand provides almost no new fact or insight on any relevant extant personal or political question about Indira Gandhi at all. The one exception has to do with a brief discussion of her relationship with Lal Bahadur Shastri which reveals her naked ambition most clearly, though the author is too ingratiating to wish to draw such a conclusion himself. He meekly deflects blame for her faults onto exogenous random shocks like monsoon failures, the rise in petroleum prices or other uncontrollable international events, or the ill-will of others. The most fawning apologists and cultists are quoted with approval: Sanjay was merely “inept”, the Emergency was brought on by its victims and not such a bad thing really, the Shah Commission resembled “a Chinese people’s court”, Maneka was a “rebellious chit of a girl”, etc. Two decades later, we must expect the greatest detachment and calm objectivity in any serious treatment of this complex stateswoman’s life. What we have instead received — at a time when Rajiv’s widow is in power in Delhi and Haksar’s protégé is her PM, while The Mitrokhin Archives II are published — is a clear attempt at revisionist flattery, complete with Indira’s face smiling at us at the start of every chapter and old propaganda photos from the PIB. This is deeply unfortunate coming from the National Book Trust. Indeed, neither she nor her father deserve further inquiry and reflection today more than do their respective spouses, Feroze Gandhi and Kamala Nehru, both of whom died prematurely.

Modern World History

May 7, 2006 — drsubrotoroy

MODERN WORLD HISTORY

by Subroto Roy

First published in The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article May 7 2006

MUCH as we in India might like to think we were the central focus of Britain’s national life in the 19th and 20th Centuries, we were not. India’s matters were handled mostly by a senior cabinet minister to whom the governor-general or viceroy reported. Though possession and control of India gave the British a sense of mission, self-importance and grandeur, and events in India (mostly bad ones) could hog the newspapers for a few days, it was never the case that India dominated Britain’s political consciousness or national agenda for any length of time. British prime ministers and diplomatists, from Pitt through Canning, Palmerston, Peel, Gladstone, Granville, Disraeli and Salisbury, mostly had other concerns of foreign policy, mostly in Europe and also in the Americas, Africa, and the Near and Far East. India was peripheral to their vision except as a place to be held against any encroachment.

A French historian used to begin lectures on British history saying “Messieurs, l’Angleterre est une ile.” (“Gentlemen, Britain is an island.”) The period of unambiguous British dominance of world diplomacy began with Pitt’s response to the French Revolution, and unambiguously ended in 1917 when Britain and France could have lost the war to Germany if America had not intervened. Since then, America has taken over Britain’s role in world diplomacy, though Lloyd George and Churchill, to a smaller extent Harold Wilson, and finally Thatcher, were respected British voices in world circles. Thatcher’s successor Major failed by seeming immature, while his successor Blair has failed by being immature to the point of being branded America’s “poodle”, making Britain’s loss of prestige complete.

Between Pitt and Flanders though, Britain’s dominance of world affairs and the process of defining the parameters of international conduct was clear. It was an era in which nations fought using ships, cannon, cavalry and infantry. The machine-gun, airpower and automobile had been hardly invented. Yet it is amazing how many technological inventions and innovations occurred during that era, many in Britain and the new America, vastly improving the welfare of masses of people: the steam-engine, the cotton gin, railways, electricity, telecommunications, systems of public hygiene etc. The age of American dominance has been one of petroleum, airpower, guided missiles and nuclear energy, as well as of penicillin and modern medicine.

It was during the period 1791-1991, between the French Revolution and the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, that world diplomacy created the system of “Western” nation-states, from Canning’s recognition of Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia etc to the emergence of the European Union. There is today peace in Europe and it has become unthinkable there will be war between e.g. France and Germany except on a soccer pitch. Even the unstable Balkans have stabilised. The transition from British to American dominance occurred during and because of the 1914-1918 World War, yet that war’s causes had nothing to do with America and hence America’s rise has been somewhat fortuitous. The War superficially had to do with those unstable Balkans in the summer of 1914 and the system of alliances developed over the previous 100 years; beneath was the economic rise of the new Germany.

Austro-Hungary went to war against Serbia, causing Germany its ally into war with Russia, Serbia’s ally. Belgium’s neutrality was guaranteed through British diplomacy by the Treaty of London in 1839 signed by Austria, France, Britain, Russia and Prussia. This “scrap of paper” Germany tore up to invade Belgium on 4 August 1914, because it was easier to attack France through Belgium than directly as most French generals had expected. Though Germany had no dispute with France, France was Russia’s ally, and the Germans had long-feared fighting on two fronts against larger but more slowly mobilising forces. Violation of Belgian neutrality caused Britain into war with Germany. So all Europe was at war from which it would fail to extricate itself without American intervention. This arrived in 1917 though it too had been provoked by German submarines sinking American ships in the Atlantic. The actual impact of American forces entering the battlefields was small, and it was after the Armistice, when the issue arose of reparations by Germany to everyone and repayments by Britain and France to America, that America’s role became dominant. New York took over from London as the world’s financial capital.

Woodrow Wilson longed to impose a system of transparent international relations on the Europeans who had been used to secret deals and intrigues. He failed, especially when America’s Senate vetoed America’s own entry into the League of Nations. America became isolationist, wishing to have nothing more to do with European wars ~ and remains to this day indifferent towards the League’s successor. But the War also saw Lenin’s Bolsheviks grab power after Russia extricated itself from fighting Germany by the peace of Brest-Litovsk. And the Armistice saw the French desire to humiliate and destroy German power for ever, which in turn sowed the seeds for Hitler’s rise. And the War also had led to the British making the Balfour Declaration that a Jewish “National Home” would arise in Palestine in amity and cooperation with the Arabs. The evolution of these three events dominated the remainder of the 20th Century ~along with the rise and defeat of an imperialist Japan, the rise of communist China, and later, the defeat of both France and America in Vietnam.

Hitler invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, and Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September. The next day in faraway India, the British in a panic started to place Jinnah on an equal footing as Gandhi ~ astounding Jinnah himself as much as anyone since his few supporters had lost the 1937 elections badly, especially in the provinces that today constitute the country he wished for. After the defeat and occupation of Germany and Japan, America’s economic supremacy was unquestionable. Utterly exhausted from war, the British had no choice but to leave India’s angry peoples to their own fates, and retreated to their fortified island again ~ though as brown and black immigration increased with the end of Empire, many pale-skinned natives boarded ships for Canada, Australia and New Zealand. America came to have much respect for its junior British ally during the fight against Hitler and later in the political battle against the USSR. It was Thatcher who (after battling Argentina in the South Atlantic) led Reagan to make peace with Gorbachov. With the end of Soviet communism, Germany would be unified again. All across Christendom there was peace for the first time ever, and a militarily powerful nuclear-armed Israel had been created too in the old Palestine. In this new period of world history, the Security Council’s permanent members are the modern version of the “Great Powers” of the 19th Century. The American-led and British-supported destruction of Baathist Iraq, and threatened destruction of Khomeinist Iran mark the final end of the League of Nations’ ethos which had arisen from the condemnation of aggression. In Osama bin Laden’s quaint idiom, there seems a battle of “Crusaders” and “Zionists” against Muslim believers. Certainly Muslim believers (which means most Muslims as there are relatively few agnostics and atheists among them) think that it is obvious that the Universe was created, and that its Creator finally and definitively spoke through one human being in 7th Century Arabia. Many people from North Africa to the Philippines are not often able to conceive how things might have been otherwise. The new era of history will undoubtedly see all kinds of conversations take place about this rather subtle question.

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Lessons for India from Nepal’s Revolution

April 26, 2006 — drsubrotoroy

Lessons for India from Nepal’s Revolution

Subroto Roy

The Statesman, frontpage, April 26 2006

King Gyanendra of Nepal has lost legitimacy in the eyes of almost all his people. His days as a monarch are numbered. It is as inevitable as night follows day that his dynasty is over, and Nepal will sooner or later become a secular Republic. The practical questions that follow include what is to be done with him and his family, that is, which country should they seek exile in and at what pension, to whom exactly should sovereignty in Nepal pass immediately and in the long term, how may needless bloodshed, civil chaos and mayhem come to be avoided, and how soon can a viable democratic republic and a healthy economy and society emerge.

Salus populi suprema lex: the good of the people is the supreme law. And the good of the people in Nepal today requires Gyanendra to depart (that is, for exile in Britain), after abdicating in favour of his son ~ or better still his infant grandson, placing a Regent acceptable to the Seven-Party Alliance in charge of calling a Constituent Assembly as everyone and especially the Maoists have demanded.

The Government and people of India seem strangely ignorant or indifferent about what is happening right next door to us, even when that door is open. While the people of Nepal almost stormed their Bastille, we witnessed instead the bizarre televised parade of politicians and Bollywood personalities to visit another celebrity in hospital (we should be thankful they have not been allowed anywhere near him).

Our Prime Minister/foreign minister, with his “national security advisor” sitting next to him, flew off to a brief spring holiday in Europe to discuss importation of uranium and BMWs and other such posh things. The Congress Party has said the Prime Minister may have expressed “his own views” on the subject of supporting King Gyanendra’s Friday offer but that the Government of India always supported “multiparty democracy” and the Congress Party supported the government! Have people become even more detached from reality here? If it is the case the Prime Minister has become so utterly consumed by personal hubris that he is making impromptu remarks contrary to his own government’s policies, then it may be time for him to realise he has filled his quota of foreign trips and put in his papers. At the very least, MK Narayanan has been derelict in his duties by joining the Prime Minister in the European spring rather than remaining in India watching Nepal. The Prime Minister has been so negligent as his own foreign minister (for example, handing over his America policy to personal diplomacy by his favoured aide, Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia) that he is making the country almost miss the foreign minister who had to be fired, an unfortunate thought!

In the last six months, Nepal’s non-Maoist opposition coalesced and the Maoists declared a unilateral cease-fire. India remained preoccupied with the vanities of its own petty dynasties. Why we Indians, despite our pretensions as the world’s largest democracy (in reality, the world’s largest voting public), may have been so dull and ignorant with respect to Nepal’s “trinamul” democratic movement is that we have never had any kind of revolution ourselves.

Revolution is anathema to the pompous bureaucrats of New Delhi, just as it is to the pompous generals of Islamabad. Partition was the one all-consuming trauma experienced by the Indian and Pakistani ruling classes, and they are simply unable to understand populist rebellions of the kind now being seen in Nepal or seen under Sheikh Mujib in East Pakistan almost 40 years ago. The Indira Gandhi brand of populism practised by India’s “democratic leaders” has to do with renting crowds and giving speeches while waving to the TV cameras, always making sure to fly back to air-conditioned comfort in Lutyens Delhi by the end of the day if at all possible. Lutyens Delhi is Royal India, and Royal India secretly sympathises with all Royalty and pseudo-Royalty. Ours has become a democracy upside down where it is not a question of how the interests of the people of India should be represented in New Delhi but how New Delhi’s interests can come to be projected upon the people of India.

In Nepal on the other hand, the questions now precisely have to do with the most difficult issues of sovereignty, political legitimacy and representation. The forced exile of the Shah of Iran was followed by the return of Ayatollah Khomeini from Qom and the brutality and bloodshed of the Islamic Revolution. The exile of Sihanouk of Cambodia was followed by the horrors of the Khmer Rouge. Can mass bloodshed and class war be averted if the exile of King Gyanendra is followed by a Maoist takeover in Nepal? The Maoists are indisputably led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal (Prachanda) who does not appear to be a murderous Pol Pot and has been projected as principled and statesmanlike. But will he be able to control his own creation or could he himself be swept aside? “Revolution is not a tea party” said Mao Zedong. There are at least two other proximate models that are more benign. One was the forced exile of Ferdinand Marcos and his odious family to the USA in 1986, leading to Mrs Benito Aquino becoming President of the Philippines. She and Fidel Ramos had led ordinary people to the most peaceful bloodless revolution ever seen until then, and coined the term “People Power”. Democracy has had its problems here but has survived intact ever since. Another relevant model has to do with the forced departure for Bombay of Hari Singh of Jammu and Kashmir (who pretended to “abdicate” in favour of his young son though in fact no such alternative existed in international law). Sheikh Abdullah knew his constitutional politics well enough and then led J&K to a reasonable Constituent Assembly. Our Pakistani cousins, cut from the same political cloth as ourselves, embarked haplessly saying “That the sovereignty in Pakistan belongs to God Almighty alone and that the Government of Pakistan shall administer the country as His agent”. In the words of Rashid Rida and Maulana Maududi, Islam becomes “the very antithesis of secular Western democracy. The philosophical foundation of Western democracy is the sovereignty of the people. Lawmaking is their prerogative and legislation must correspond to the mood and temper of their opinion… Islam… altogether repudiates the philosophy of popular sovereignty and rears its polity on the foundations of the sovereignty of God and the viceregency (Khilafat) of man.” Sheikh Abdullah by contrast told the J&K Constituent Assembly: “You are the sovereign authority in this State of Jammu & Kashmir; what you decide has the irrevocable force of law. The basic democratic principle of sovereignty of the nation, embodied ably in the American and French Constitutions, is once again given shape in our midst. I shall quote the famous words of Article 3 of the French Constitution of 1791: `The source of all sovereignty resides fundamentally in the nation. Sovereignty is one and indivisible, inalienable and imprescriptable. It belongs to the nation.’ We should be clear about the responsibilities that this power invests us with. In front of us li e decisions of the highest national importance which we shall be called upon to take. Upon the correctness of our decisions depends not only the happiness of our land and people now, but the fate as well of generations to come.”

The fact the young son of Hari Singh then caused or contributed to a putsch against Abdullah is among the most regrettable events contributing to the misfortunes of J&K’s recent history. Nepal is going through its own French Revolution in which Gyanendra is no longer able to claim the “Divine Right of Kings” simply because his people have permanently withdrawn their acceptance of his legitimacy.

In the circumstances, Nepalese of all political colours would do very well to remember that the greatest of them in the history of mankind was a Hindu prince who became the founder of Buddhism. As the Himalayan home of Hindus and Buddhists and many others, the Nepalese Revolution could be among the most exemplary in being peaceful without bloodshed. The aim of Indians and all other friends of Nepal must be to seek to ensure that.

Posted in Buddhism, Communists, Congress Party, France, Hinduism, India's Foreign Policy, India's Jurisprudence, India's Polity, Islam, Jammu & Kashmir, Liberalism/Libertarianism, Manmohan Singh, Natural Justice, Nepal, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Sheikh Abdullah, World History. Leave a Comment »

A Modern Military

April 16, 2006 — drsubrotoroy

A Modern Military
First published in The Statesman

Editorial Page Special Article

April 16 2006

by

Subroto Roy

THE first line of defence in a major modern war is the air force, and any air force is only as good as its pilots. A small number of determined pilots once beat Goering’s Nazi armada in the skies over the English Channel. The good, indeed excellent, news for Indians is that our air force’s fighter pilots and frontline military aircraft now have been internationally benchmarked and are being recognised as first-class. Objective assessments are becoming available of the joint exercises the IAF held with the United States Air Force in 2004 and 2005 in Alaska, Gwalior and Kalaikunda. Though there were mixed Indo-US teams during several exercises, on balance the Americans admitted being surprised and even defeated by the IAF’s aircraft, technical skills and tactics. The IAF literally “defeated” the USAF in the sense Indian “gun cameras” shot pictures of their opponents far more often than vice-versa thus indicating “hits”; and the IAF certainly destroyed for all time all the expectations the Americans may have had about exercising with an inferior fighting force. To be sure, American apologists have made several political and technical points since then. One of the cheapest is that the American squadrons sent were not top frontline squadrons whereas the IAF had sent its best. Another has been that the USAF literally wished to “throw” a fight because they have wanted American legislators to fund the super-advanced F-22, and one way to help do that was by getting the IAF’s Russian aircraft to “beat” American F-16s. Of more substance is the point that the IAF imposed a requirement of “old-fashioned dogfights”, which in this missile age means aircraft being within “visual range” of one another. Current USAF strategy relies more on “Beyond Visual Range” (BVR) capabilities where aircraft never get to see the enemy but launch their air-to-air weapons based on instructions, for example from advanced on-board instrumentation or from airborne controllers in Airborne Warning and Control (AWAC) aircraft. The Americans also use “fire-and-forget” missiles in this BVR warfare which they did not bring to the joint exercises with India. Lastly, American AWACs did operate in the Indo-US exercises but as a neutral party assigning targets to pilots from both air forces; this was the first experience Indian pilots had of working with AWACs and by American accounts they outperformed their counterparts despite lack of familiarity with the technology. However, in an actual war, the AWACs and other devices would have been used to jam or destroy an adversary’s communications, and India has no capability in that.

Even so, in most encounters between the USAF’s F-16s and F-15 C/D Eagles, and the IAF’s Sukhoi-30 MKIs, MiG-27s, MiG-29s, and even the refurbished MiG-21 Bisons, Indian pilots apparently came out winners. One American commander said: “We try to replicate how these aircraft perform in the air, and I think we’re good at doing that in our Air Force, but what we can’t replicate is what’s going on in their minds. They’ve challenged our traditional way of thinking on how an adversary, from whichever country, would fight.” And the USAF’s Chief of Air Combat Command, General Hal M. Hornburg told USA Today that as a result of defeats in the mock combat exercises with the Indians he felt: “We may not be as far ahead of the rest of the world as we thought we were”. As in case of the Bofors gun, despite the corruption scams surrounding the deal-making, the Sukhoi-30 has apparently been a sound military purchase.

If the competence of our pilots and their aircraft is the good news, the bad news has been their failure of morale. The IAF’s pilots in droves have wished to quit because of “poor working and living conditions”, family-separation, and a “culture of sycophancy” promoted by the top brass which has made it difficult for them to work or even to stay motivated. In 2002-2004, 263 pilots were allowed to seek premature retirement; in 2005, only 8 out of some 200 have been allowed (one of whom got an MP to support him). The High Court has ruled in favour of the Air Force that when the nation spends untold millions in each pilot’s training, he/she is required to fulfil his/her obligations in turn. Premature retirement cannot be given by the Air Force on “compassionate grounds” to everyone who might ask for it. The new commercial airlines also seem very alluring to both young pilots and older commanders Perhaps an exit strategy needs to be devised whereby Air Force pilots wanting to quit and join the private sector may be allowed to do so ~ once they have agreed to repay the Air Force a reasonable fraction of the millions that have been invested by the country in their training. If we extrapolate these kinds of facts in different directions, a modern picture of desirable Indian weaponry, armed forces and doctrine can begin to be sketched. The first step must be an objective assessment of military threats faced by the country. We have only one declared adversary with aggressive intent against us, and that is the military and political elite that has ruled over Pakistan for almost 60 years. For sake of argument, let us ask if we have any other identifiable external enemies. We might imagine China to be an enemy because of the border war decades ago but there is in fact no plausible war scenario with China today. There may be conceivable threats but hardly any large ones from Bangladesh, Nepal, Burma, the Tamil Tigers, Indonesia, or Iran. As for Afghanistan, we have our Pakistani cousins to thank for having unwittingly buffered us from the turmoil there over three decades, although of course the Pakistani establishment tried to use that chaos to its advantage against India. There are some traditional threats of a special nature from insurgencies in the North-east but these too are amenable to political and diplomatic resolution. If we are vulnerable anywhere from an unknown quarter it is to a modern air-sea attack of the kind launched against Iraq twice recently and being threatened upon Iran now. Indeed our new American friends had themselves “gamed” a scenario as early as 1990-1991 of such an air-sea assault taking place upon India. Assuming we come to resolve our difficulties with Pakistan over Jammu & Kashmir reasonably (cf. Solving Kashmir, The Statesman 1-3 Dec. 2005 republished here), what India comes to need from a military standpoint is a compact, first-rate airforce, a defensive naval capacity based on nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed submarines (the era of grandiose vulnerable aircraft carrier battle groups is over), and some short and intermediate-range missile capacity of the kind we have in fact been developing. Jungle warfare, counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism may be the new specialised areas required from ground troops, though of course traditional artillery and armoured corps will likely have to be developed and retained indefinitely until such a time as Pakistan becomes a peaceful and healthy nation-state, which may be a long time yet.

Most important of all though, we need a supply of young fighter pilots of the kind who defeated the Americans in the war-games, young submariners willing to go to sea for ever, young soldiers like Batra, Hanifuddin, Kalia and the other heroes of Kargil who are prepared to dedicate their minds, bodies and souls for their compatriots if the need ever arises. For that to happen, the Army, Navy and Air Force must not merely cut all the corruption, sycophancy, fat, waste and moral turpitude in the senior ranks of their organisational structures, but political statesmen must arise to lead and motivate the whole polity itself with an inspiring yet realistic vision of India’s future, and one which remains consistent with our national ethos of ahimsa. A paradox has come to be revealed in our young warriors being excellent and yet their morale and motivation being low. The fault lies not with them but with those who purport to lead them.

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Atoms for Peace (or War)

March 5, 2006 — drsubrotoroy

Atoms for Peace (or War)

by Subroto Roy

First published in The Sunday Statesman, March 5 2006 Editorial Page Special Article,

“Atoms for Peace” was Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1953 speech to the UN (presided over by Jawaharlal Nehru’s sister) from which arose the IAEA. Eisenhower was the warrior par excellence, having led the Allies to victory over Hitler a few years earlier.

Yet he was the first to see “no sane member of the human race” can discover victory in the “desolation, degradation and destruction” of nuclear war. “Occasional pages of history do record the faces of the ‘great destroyers’, but the whole book of history reveals mankind’s never-ending quest for peace and mankind’s God-given capacity to build.” Speaking of the atomic capacity of America’s communist adversary at the time, he said: “We never have, and never will, propose or suggest that the Soviet Union surrender what rightly belongs to it. We will never say that the peoples of the USSR are an enemy with whom we have no desire ever to deal or mingle in friendly and fruitful relationship.” Rather, “if the fearful trend of atomic military build-up can be reversed, this greatest of destructive forces can be developed into a great boon, for the benefit of all mankind…. if the entire body of the world’s scientists and engineers had adequate amounts of fissionable material… this capability would rapidly be transformed into universal, efficient and economic usage”. Eisenhower’s IAEA would receive contributions from national “stockpiles of normal uranium and fissionable materials”, and also impound, store and protect these and devise “methods whereby this fissionable material would be allocated to serve the peaceful pursuits of mankind.…to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world… to serve the needs rather than the fears of mankind.” When Eisenhower visited India he was greeted as the “Prince of Peace” and a vast multitude threw rose petals as he drove by in an open limousine.

Now, half a century later, Dr Manmohan Singh read a speech in Parliament on February 27 relating to our nuclear discussions with America. But it seems unclear even his speech-writers or technical advisers knew how far it was rhetoric and how far grounded in factual realities. There is also tremendous naivete among India’s media anchors and political leaders as to what exactly has been agreed by the Americans on March 2.

Churchill once asked what might have happened if Lloyd George and Clemenceau told Woodrow Wilson: “Is it not true that nothing but your fixed and expiring tenure of office prevents you from being thrown out of power?” The same holds for George W. Bush today. Wilson made many promises to the world that came to be hit for a six by US legislators. In December 2005, Edward Markey (Democrat) and Fred Upton (Republican) promised to scuttle Bush’s agreements with India, and once the pleasant memories of his India visit fade, Bush may quite easily forget most things about us. All the Americans have actually agreed to do is to keep talking.

It needs to be understood that submarine-launched ballistic missiles are the only ultimate military deterrent. Land and air forces are all vulnerable to a massive first-strike. Only submarines lurking silently for long periods in waters near their target, to launch nuclear warheads upon learning their homeland had been hit by the enemy, act as a deterrent preventing that same enemy from making his attack at all. Indeed, the problem becomes how a submarine commander will receive such information and his instructions during such a war. (For India to acquire an ICBM capability beyond the MRBM Agni rockets is to possess an expensive backward technology — as retrograde as the idea India should spend scarce resources sending manned moon missions half a century after it has already been done. The secret is to do something new and beneficial for mankind, not repeat what others did long ago merely to show we can now do it too.) A nuclear-armed submarine needs to be submerged for long periods and also voyage long distances at sea, and hence needs to be nuclear-powered with a miniature version of a civilian nuclear reactor aboard in which, e.g. rods of enriched uranium are bombarded to release enough energy to run hydroelectric turbines to generate power. Patently, no complete separation of the use of atomic power for peace and war may be practically possible. If India creates e.g. its own thorium reactors for civilian power (and we have vast thorium reserves, the nuclear fuel of the future), and then miniaturised these somehow to manufacture reactors for submarines, the use would be both civilian and military. In 1988 the old USSR leased India a nuclear-powered submarine for “training” purposes, and the Americans did not like it at all. In January 2002, Russia’s Naval Chief announced India was paying to build and then lease from 2004 until 2009 two nuclear-powered Akula-class attack submarines, and Jaswant Singh reportedly said we were paying $1 thousand crore ($10 bn) for such a defence package. Whether the transaction has happened is not known. Once we have nuclear submarines permanently, that would be more than enough of the minimum deterrent sought.

Indeed, India’s public has been barely informed of civilian nuclear energy policy as well, and an opportunity now exists for a mature national debate to take place — both on what and why the military planning has been and what it costs (and whether any bribes have been paid), and also on the cost, efficiency and safety of the plans for greater civilian use of nuclear energy. Government behaviour after the Bhopal gas tragedy does not inspire confidence about Indian responses to a Three Mile Island/Chernobyl kind of catastrophic meltdown.

That being said, the central question remains why India or anyone else needs to be nuclear-armed at all. With Britain, France or Russia, there is no war though all three are always keen to sell India weapons. Indeed it has been a perennial question why France and Britain need their own deterrents. They have not fought one another for more than 100 years and play rugby instead. If Russia was an enemy, could they not count on America? Or could America itself conceivably become an enemy of Britain and France? America owes her origins to both, and though the Americans did fight the British until the early 1800s, they have never fought the French and love the City of Paris too much ever to do so.

Between China and India, regardless of what happened half a century ago, nuclear or any war other than border skirmishes in sparse barren lands is unlikely. Ever since Sun Yat-sen, China has been going through a complex process of self-discovery and self-definition. An ancient nation where Maoism despoiled the traditional culture and destroyed Tibet, China causes others to fear it because of its inscrutability. But it has not been aggressive in recent decades except with Taiwan. It has threatened nuclear war on America if the Americans stand up for Taiwan, but that is not a quarrel in which India has a cogent role. China (for seemingly commercial reasons) did join hands with Pakistan against India, but there is every indication the Chinese are quite bored with what Pakistan has become. With Pakistan, our situation is well-known, and there has been an implicit equilibrium since Pokhran II finally flushed out their capacity. Had India ever any ambition of using conventional war to knock out and occupy Pakistan as a country? Of course not. We are barely able to govern ourselves, let aside try to rule an ideologically hostile Muslim colony in the NorthWest. Pakistan’s purported reasons for acquiring nuclear bombs are spurious, and cruelly so in view of the abject failures of Pakistan’s domestic political economy. Could Pakistan’s Government use its bombs against India arising from its own self-delusions over J&K? Gohar Ayub Khan in 1998-1999 threatened to do so when he said the next war would be over in two hours with an Indian surrender. He thereby became the exception to Eisenhower’s rule requiring sanity. An India-Pakistan nuclear exchange is, unfortunately, not impossible, leaving J&K as Hell where Jahangir had once described it as Heaven on Earth.

America needs to end her recent jingoism and instead rediscover the legacy of Eisenhower. America can lead everyone in the world today including Russia, China, Israel, Iran and North Korea. But she can do so only by example. America can decommission many of her own nuclear weapons and then lead everyone else to the conference table to do at least some of the same. Like the UN, the IAEA (and its NPT) needs urgent reform itself. It is the right time for serious and new world parleys towards the safe use of atoms for peace and their abolition in war. But are there any Eisenhowers or Churchills to lead them?

War or Peace (2006)

February 24, 2006 — drsubrotoroy

WAR OR PEACE

By SUBROTO ROY

First published in The Statesman

Editorial Page Special Article, February 23-24, 2006

An American Attack On Iran Will End The Post-1945 System Of Nation-States

The relevance of the Iran-USA conflict to India’s energy, nuclear and strategic future is obvious, yet it appears ill understood by New Delhi’s bureaucrats and politicians, whether neo-communist or neo-fascist. It is understood even less by Islamabad’s army generals, all of whose official brainpower has been perpetually consumed by one subject alone: how to obtain J&K for Pakistan by hook or by crook from India. Yet Iran’s potential nuclear weapons arose entirely thanks to sales by Pakistan’s AQ Khan and the ISI — friends or allies of the USA, just like Osama bin Laden, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein once had been. We may surmise that a possible war will be quite catastrophic for the world, and India’s and Pakistan’s region of it in particular.

Israel’s piecemeal strategy
The Americans and Israelis may be assumed to have developed over years contingency plans to attack Iran by air and/or sea, though Israel is unlikely to take any offensive role in view of the circumstances of the end of Ariel Sharon’s political career. For one hundred years, the security and prosperity of the Zionist migration to Palestine, which came to be transmuted into the Israeli Republic in the middle of the 20th Century, has been defined as a matter of vital national interest first by Britain and then by America. Badly outnumbered by hostile Muslim countries, Israel after the 1973 Yom Kippur war adopted a long-term piecemeal strategy of diplomacy with Egypt, Jordan and North Africa; co-existence with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf; battle with Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians leading to co-existence; and indirect war, using the USA and UK as proxies, with Iraq and Iran leading in due course to co-existence.

Ayatollah Khomeini’s Revolution in 1978-1979 caused Iran’s Islamic Republic to start to pose a major ideological threat to Israel. But during the decade of the Iran-Iraq war that started immediately after the Iranian Revolution, neither could pose any possible military threat to Israel. Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait was a result of the Iran-Iraq war, and since then Saddam has been neutralised by the Americans as a military threat to Israel. A new Iran, torn between a modern future for itself and a return to its revolutionary origins, is the last Muslim nation-state that could possibly threaten Israel. Pakistan would never dare to do so, nor wish to do so in view of its single-minded obsession for almost sixty years with trying to obtain J&K from India, or to dominate India any which way it can. The Pakistanis — having been Indians previously (even A Q Khan was born in Bhopal) — want to rule or dominate Delhi, or at least display their self-styled superiority to Hindus. They are uninterested from a psychological perspective in what happens to European and American Jews in the Middle East because they are mostly of Indian origin themselves.

Pakistanis’ explicit hatred (or implicit love) of India is at least in part a hatred (or love) of themselves. The US State Department and Pentagon have realised that as long as they tilt towards Pakistan on J&K now and then, the Pakistani Government will stay obsessed with its relationship with India alone, and also remain an American ally.

Possible nuclear strike
The questions to be asked now are when the Americans will make an attack on Iran, what manner it will take, and what Iranian and Muslim and world reaction will be. Israel’s attack on Iraq’s nuclear facilities a quarter century ago taught the Iranians to go underground and disperse their facilities around the country. Conventional heavy B52, B2 or Stealth bombing or cruise-missile attacks using ships, submarines and carrier-based aircraft from American forward bases in Diego Garcia, the Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Britain, Germany, Turkey or former Soviet Republics will kill at least 10,000 Iranians even if there are American warnings to evacuate human populations. Much physical havoc will be caused to Iran’s two dozen main nuclear installations, delaying or crippling Iran’s ambitions by years. But it is unlikely such attacks will succeed in wiping out Iran’s capacity. America’s warplans may thus include exploding small nuclear warheads on Iran’s suspected installations. If that happens, it would be the first use of atomic weapons since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is doubtful if the world as a whole will actually condemn American use of heavy bombing or even small nuclear weapons against Iran in anything but words. Permanent changes in the post-1945 system of international institutions will certainly result. Kofi Annan (or his successor) will resign, ending the UN staff’s effete pontificating. Indeed, all the inefficient, corrupt international bureaucracies in New York, Washington, Geneva and elsewhere may come to close down. The Japanese Left will weep and wring their hands while the Right will renew calls for Japan’s re-militarization. North Korea’s Kim will issue warnings of how crazy he is. India’s PMO and MEA will express deepest concern, sorrow and tears; after the communists bluster about in Delhi and Kolkata, this will be enlarged to unequivocal condemnation. But India’s anti-Muslim brigades will remain silent and smiling and the VHP/Bajrang Dal will say it is revenge for Nadir Shah and assorted other Iranian plunderers in India’s past. JNU, AMU etc. historians and Bollywood and Tollywood showbiz personalities will hold seminars and processions and shake their fists at America. Pakistan’s Government will issue strong condemnations and call in the American Ambassador for a talking to, then explain to the Karachi street-mobs how important it is to continue the alliance with America so that J&K may be gained for Pakistan one day. The Hurriyat and other friends of Pakistan will agree with Pakistan and demonstrate in Srinagar against India and America. Russia will privately regret its impotence while Putin will refuse to turn up at a G-8 meeting in protest. The Chinese will shake their heads, warning Taiwan not to think itself as loved by America as Israel is. Muslim countries will rant and rave Death to America, and recruit thousands of new suicide bombers. France and Britain will look for new reconstruction or weapons contracts once the smoke clears. Germany, Holland, Scandinavia, Canada and New Zealand will hold candle-light peace vigils. South America’s leftists will decry Il Nord from high in the Andes or deep in the Amazon. Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Dalai Lama and the Pope will condemn the inhumanity of it all. Australia will agree with America. That may be just about all, except the oil price will reach $200 a barrel momentarily, then settle at $150 for ever, causing large macroeconomic problems for several years in the world economy.

The new ideology
Iran itself will be plunged into greater political and economic disarray than it is in already. It is unlikely to be intimidated into accepting Western conditions straightaway. Nor will it experience any kind of “regime-change” with Non-Resident Iranian-Americans coming back from Los Angeles to try their hand at a little government and money-making at home. Iran would launch conventional war against the 140,000 American infantry in Iraq as well as missiles against Israel, but is unlikely to make much successful war against American or Israeli interests. But Iraq’s Shia majority would join with them, and make America’s departure more prompt from an anarchic, chaotic and disintegrating Iraq, hanging Saddam Hussein before they go. Essentially, Iran’s ability to pose any conceivable military threat to Israel will have been militarily neutralized, just as has happened to Iraq recently, and to Egypt, Jordan etc. by diplomacy and foreign aid ever since Jimmy Carter’s Sadat-Begin summit in 1978. Syria and Lebanon’s Hezbollah will remain but Israel can on its own battle them defensively anytime.

The cost of having eliminated all possible military threats to Israel permanently will have been rendering chaos and immense destruction upon the erstwhile Republics of Iran and Iraq. But that is not a cost that America’s public cares very much about, and so will not appear much on American TV screens or America’s public memory for very long. Iraq and Iran will have been neutralised and destroyed as legal entities and modern nation-states, being left instead as large oil-fields and chaotic/anarchic polities and societies under sway of American and Western military forces. The return in the 21st Century to the pre-1945 world of imperialism would entail an end of the system of worldwide nation-states that was attempted with the United Nations experiment (the progeny of US President Woodrow Wilson’s “League of Nations”), and the imposition of a new ideology of the West vs. the Rest.

A Mature Israel Is The Key To Averting An American Attack On Iran

It would be better for everyone in the world, including Israel and America, if an American attack against Iran could somehow be averted. Muslim cultures have much long-term patience — a virtue modern American culture most conspicuously lacks. There are Iraqi mothers who have promised their unborn sons for vengeance against America and Iranian mothers may well join them. America’s TV-driven culture can barely remember who said or did what last week, whereas ideological Muslims rehearse and revisit endlessly every day what supposedly happened in Muslim history over 1200 years ago. Indeed ideological Muslims and their orthodox Jewish and Christian fundamentalist adversaries have all tended to be obsessed with the purported ancient histories of the three faiths that arose in the deserts of Palestine and Arabia — though none of these religious histories or any other may be able to withstand very much rigorous academic or scientific scrutiny.

Martin Buber
What has been forgotten too has been the early joint history of Zionists and Palestinians together. Founders of Zionism, including Theodor Herzl himself, who began his campaign in Vienna about 1897 in response to European anti-Jewish behaviour, envisioned “brotherhood” and “cooperation” with the Arab inhabitants of Palestine, where new Jewish immigrants were to find refuge from the decades of tyranny against them in Europe long before Hitler arose. Martin Buber, the profound Hasidic philosopher and Zionist, corresponded with Rabindranath Tagore about the need to build a strong “federative” structure among all the peoples of the East — because the peoples of the West seemed to Buber to have become lost and aimless. (It is not impossible America’s entry into the First World War in 1917, which thwarted a possible German victory, was part of a complicated trade-off in which the Balfour Declaration by Britain promising creation of an Israel, living peacefully with the Arabs in Palestine, was another part.) It was only later revisionist Zionists, led by Vladimir Jabotinsky, who proposed a complete separation of Jew from Arab in that small land — which is where we seem to have been headed now decades later. Israel and Pakistan were the only two countries created in the 20th Century, and about the same time, supposedly as “homelands” for people based on religious definitions alone. The Zionist Movement was ongoing by the early 1930s, and young Rahmat Ali, the lonely ideological inventor of the term “PAKSTAN” on the top floor of a London bus in 1934, might well have been influenced by what he heard of it.

The one way war may be preventable today is if Israel’s political centre and right-wing (i.e. the Kadima and Likud parties) came to obtain and declare a clear and justifiable view that (a) an American attack on Iran would be counter- productive; and/or (b) that an Iran, even a nuclear armed Iran, shall not be a tangible threat to Israel. If an American attack on Iran is ultimately premised on the defence of Israel, and if the Israelis themselves come to justifiably believe such an attack overall could be a very bad thing and told the Americans so publicly or privately, there would no longer be reason for the Americans to be preparing to make such an attack, and instead could keep their almost 600 warships and submarines in harbour or on normal patrol around the world.

Israeli security assessment

There may be enough reason on both these points for Israel’s toughest hawks to agree that superior alternatives to war need to be and can be found. On the first, Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel’s domestic security agency, Shin Bet, has recently said that Israel may yet come to regret the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. His confidential speech to students preparing for military service came to be secretly recorded and was then broadcast on Israeli TV. “When you dismantle a system in which there is a despot who controls his people by force, you have chaos… I’m not sure we won’t miss Saddam”, saying a strong dictatorship may have been better than the present “chaos” in Iraq. Israeli security assessments are likely to be far more astute than what gets to be produced in America’s East Coast think tanks. The near-chaos the Bush-Blair invasion of Iraq in 2003 has caused will be multiplied several fold if there was now a major attack on Iran, let aside use of atomic bombs against it. Such an attack may be in fact wholly counterproductive.

Secondly, Israel needs to abandon her feigned immaturity and coyness with respect to her erstwhile Anglo-American guardians, and instead demonstrate to the world and her neighbours in particular that she is a mature and responsible adult in international politics. Avner Cohen and Thomas Graham Jr. have said in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists May/June 2004 that Israel had promised the USA “it [would] not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East…A taboo was created… By September 1969, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and President Richard Nixon had reached a new secret understanding of the issue. Meir pledged that Israel would not declare its nuclear status, would not test its weapons, and would not use its nuclear capability for diplomatic gains. Rather, the Israeli bomb would be kept in the basement, for use only as a last resort. Israel would not join the NPT, but it would not defy it either. What had begun as a taboo turned into a symbiotic policy. The United States stopped pressuring Israel and accepted a de facto policy of `don’t ask, don’t tell’. …Today … Israel’s policy of nuclear secrecy stands in profound tension with the basic values upon which the country’s democracy rests: the principles of accountability, oversight, and the public’s right to know. In the absence of public debate (and public debate requires some factual information) the taboo only reinforces and perpetuates itself….By becoming more transparent and by associating itself in some way with the nonproliferation regime — from which it indirectly benefits — Israel could gain an important element of legitimacy for its program and for its security posture…. The basic technology needed to create nuclear weapons is increasingly available. Capabilities once possessed only by a few governments can now be purchased in stores and marketplaces around the world. If nuclear weapon states are ever to achieve deep cuts in their nuclear stockpiles — an important part of the basic bargain of the NPT and essential to the long-term viability of the treaty — some account has to be taken of Israel, India, and Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. They must be integrated into the non- proliferation regime”.

The road to peace
Israel declaring itself a nuclear weapons power of long-standing with an independent deterrent the size of France or Britain (with perhaps 500 nuclear warheads, more than China, India and Pakistan combined), would be more than enough by way of military warning to its potential adversaries. Indeed even if Iran (having bought from Pakistan’s programme which itself had bought from North Korea and China) was allowed over the next dozen years to crawl towards half a dozen nuclear warheads of its own, recognition and normal diplomatic relations between Israel and Iran, and Israel and Pakistan, could be followed by a new protocol between Israel, India, Pakistan and Iran. Israel, India and Pakistan are not signatories to the existing NPT and Iran has now declared its intent, as a sovereign signatory, to exit the NPT as well. To get Iran and Israel to recognise one another and establish diplomatic relations would be of course a masterly feat of international diplomacy. But it is not impossible if adequate knowledge and determination can be mustered in good time before it becomes too late. Finally of course, as President Dwight D. Eisenhower had warned in his Farewell Address to the American people in 1961, an “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” must also rein in America’s “military industrial complex”.

Separation of Powers: India, the USA, Pakistan

February 13, 2006 — drsubrotoroy

SEPARATION OF POWERS (2006)

Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws outlined a doctrine that applies to India, the USA and all constitutional democracies: there is no monopoly of political wisdom.

By SUBROTO ROY
First published in The Sunday Statesman, The Statesman Editorial Page,

Special Article Feb 12-13 2006

The Speaker’s noble office is that of the single member of the House, traditionally chosen by unanimity, whose task it is to self-effacingly maintain order in Parliamentary debate and proceedings, so that the House’s work gets done. C’est tout. Once chosen Speaker, he ipso facto retires from partisan politics for life. The Speaker neither contributes to the substance of Parliamentary debate (except in the rare case of a tie) nor has to feel personally responsible for Parliament’s conduct.

Our Parliament has tended to become so dysfunctional since Indira Gandhi and her sycophants destroyed its traditions 30 years ago, that supervising its normal work is an onerous enough task for even the finest of Speakers to handle.

The Lok Sabha’s incumbent Speaker has tended to see himself as the champion of Parliament. He need not. He does not command a majority in the Lok Sabha; the Government Party does. We have had the oddest peculiarity unfolding in India at present where the person who does command the Lok Sabha’s majority, and therefore who would be normally defined as Prime Minister of India, has chosen to nominate someone who is not a member of the Lok Sabha to act as Prime Minister, i.e. to command the Lok Sabha’s majority. (The Rajya Sabha was and remains irrelevant to most things important to Indian democracy, regardless of its narcissism and vanity). Someone with access to 10 Janpath should have told Sonia Gandhi in May 2004 that if she did not wish to be PM and wanted to gift the job to someone else, she should do so to someone who, like herself, had been elected to the Lok Sabha, like Pranab Mukherjee (elected for the first time) or Kamal Nath or Priya Ranjan (both veterans).

Manmohan Singh, a former Lok Sabha candidate, may as Finance Minister have been able to progress much further with economic reforms. But sycophancy has ruled the roost in the Congress’s higher echelons, and nobody had the guts to tell her that. Indeed as early as December 2001, Congress leaders knew that in the unlikely event they won the polls, Manmohan Singh would likely be PM by Sonia Gandhi’s choice (though he was not expected to last long at the top), and yet he did not contest the Lok Sabha polls in 2004.

The Government of the day, not the Speaker, is Parliament’s champion in any discussion with the Supreme Court over constitutional rights and Separation of Powers. And the Government has in fact quietly and sensibly requested the Supreme Court to set up a Constitutional Bench for this purpose. Such a Constitutional Bench shall have cause to ask itself how far Kesavananda Bharati needs to be tweaked if at all to accommodate the contention that Parliament has a right to judge its own members. The Court may well likely say that of course Parliament has a right to judge its own members but even that right is not an absolute right, (nothing is). Even Parliament’s right to judge its own members must be in accordance with natural law, with principles of justice, with due and clearly defined processes. E.g. the established Privileges Committee and not the ad hoc Bansal Committee had to do the needful.

Imagine a hypothetical case of fantastic fiction where half a dozen independent MPs are elected to a future Lok Sabha, and then take it upon themselves to expose corruption and shenanigans of all major political parties. Our fantastic super-heroes become whistleblowers within Parliament itself while remaining totally incorruptible as individuals — like Eliot Ness’s team who jailed Al Capone and other gangsters, and came to be depicted in Hollywood’s The Untouchables. These Untouchables would come to be feared and despised by everyone from Communists on one side of the political spectrum to Fascists on the other. They would upset everybody precisely because they were so clean and were not purchasable. The Government and Opposition of the day might wellgang up to expel such troublemakers and even fabricate charges to do so. (Now there’s a script for a Bollywood movie!)

What our Supreme Court’s Constitutional Bench decides now in the matter at hand will determine the fate of our super-heroes in such a future fantasia. The present case is a polar opposite — where MPs have been caught on camera with their sordid fingers in the cookie-jar, and then made to walk the plank immediately by their peers. Yet natural law applies here as it will to our fantastic future fighters, and this is what the Bench would have to speak on.

Why the present situation continues to be disconcerting is because the whole country heard all the holier-than-thou protestations, yet everyone continues to take a very dim view of what they see of politicians’ behaviour. There remain strong suspicions that only a few very tiny tips of very large icebergs were or can be caught on camera. Large-scale deals and contracts involve payments into invisible bank accounts, not petty cash into pockets or even suitcases filled with cash sloshing around Delhi.

What we have desperately needed in the situation is modern prime ministerial leadership which could intelligently and boldly guide national debate in the right direction on the whole matter of probity in public life. Why a distinguished parliamentarian like the Speaker has found himself in the limelight is because neither the de jure nor de facto Prime Ministers of India are anywhere to be seen thinking on their feet on these central issues of constitutional procedure and practice. They tend to use prepared scripts and may be temperamentally disinclined to do what has been called for by these unscripted circumstances. (Indeed the much-maligned H. D. Deve Gowda could be alone among the bevy of recent PMs who has been able to think on his feet at all.)

Collapse Before Executive Power

In the meantime, the United States is going through its own Separation of Powers’ crisis. As explained in these columns previously, the American system is distinctly different from the British, and our own system is midway between them. Yet similar principles may be discerned to apply or fail to be applied in all.

Winston Churchill once perspicaciously observed:

“The rigid Constitution of the United States, the gigantic scale and strength of its party machinery, the fixed terms for which public officers and representatives are chosen, invest the President with a greater measure of autocratic power than was possessed before (the First World War) by the Head of any great State. The vast size of the country, the diverse types, interests and environments of its enormous population, the safety-valve function of the legislatures of fifty Sovereign States, make the focussing of national public opinion difficult, and confer upon the Federal Government exceptional independence of it except at fixed election times. Few modern Governments need to concern themselves so little with the opinion of the party they have beaten at the polls; none secures to its supreme executive officer, at once the Sovereign and the Party Leader, such direct personal authority.”

America’s Legislative Branch has, on paper, strong powers of advice and consent to control errors, excesses or abuse of power by the Executive President. But (with rare and courageous exceptions like Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia) the Legislature cravenly collapsed before the father-son Bush presidencies in regard to the Middle East wars of recent years. America’s once-revered federal judiciary has also tended to lose its independence of mind with overt politicisation of judicial appointments in recent decades.

Bush the First went to war against Saddam Hussein (a former American ally against Islamic Iran) at least partly with an eye to winning re-election in 1992 (which he would have done as a result but for a random shock known as Ross Perot; Bill Clinton became the beneficiary). Bush the Second obsessively wished to follow up on the same, to the point of misjudging the real threat to America from Bin Laden and fabricating a false threat from an emasculated Saddam.

America’s Legislature palpably failed to control her Presidents. Now, late in the day, after all the horses have bolted, the Senate Judiciary Committee began tepid hearings on February 5 2006 into whether the President authorized laws to be broken with impunity in regard to wire-tapping some 5,000 citizens (doubtless mostly non-white and Muslim) without judicial warrants. Republican Senator Arlen Specter, the Committee’s Chairman, has said he believes the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has been “flatly” violated, and “strained and unrealistic” justifications are now being offered. Bush’s men, from his Vice President and Attorney General to political intelligence operatives, have brazenly placed in the dustbin the traditional principle fiat justitia pereat mundus — let justice be done even if the world perishes — saying that the Sovereign can do just as he pleases to save the realm from external enemies as he might perceive and define them to be.

What this kind of collapse in current American practice reveals is a new aspect unknown at the time of Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws. In the modern world, Separation of Powers involves not merely constitutional institutions like Executive, Legislature and Judiciary but also the normal civil institutions of a free and open society, especially academic institutions and the press. In America, it has been not merely the Legislature and Judiciary which have tended to collapse before Executive Power in regard to the recent Middle East wars, but the media and academia as well.

“Embedded reporters” and Fox TV set the tone for America’s official thought processes about Iraq and the Muslim world — until it has become too late for America’s mainstream media or academics to recover their own credibility on the subject. On the other hand, unofficial public opinion has, in America’s best traditions, demonstrated using vast numbers of Internet websites and weblogs, a spirited Yankee Doodle individuality against the jingoism and war-mongering of the official polity.

Neither the press nor academia had collapsed the same way during America’s last major foreign wars in Vietnam and Cambodia forty years ago, and it may be fairly said that America’s self-knowledge was rather better then than it is now, except of course there were no Internet websites and weblogs.

Our Pakistani Cousins
Across the border from us, our Pakistani cousins are, from a political and constitutional point of view, cut from the same cloth as ourselves, namely the 1935 Government of India Act, and the Montague-Chelmsford and Morley-Minto reforms earlier. However, ever since Jinnah’s death, they have refused to admit this and instead embarked haplessly on what can only be called an injudicious path of trying to write a Constitution for a new Caliphate. The primary demand of the main scholars influencing this process was “That the sovereignty in Pakistan belongs to God Almighty alone and that the Government of Pakistan shall administer the country as His agent”. By such a view, in the words of Rashid Rida and Maulana Maududi, Islam becomes “the very antithesis of secular Western democracy. The philosophical foundation of Western democracy is the sovereignty of the people. Lawmaking is their prerogative and legislation must correspond to the mood and temper of their opinion… Islam… altogether repudiates the philosophy of popular sovereignty and rears its polity on the foundations of the sovereignty of God and the viceregency (Khilafat) of man.” (Rosenthal, Islam & the Modern National State, Cambridge 1965.) Pakistan’s few modern constitutionalists have been ever since battling impossibly to overcome the ontological error made here of assuming that any mundane government can be in communication with God Almighty. In the meantime, all normal branches of Pakistan’s polity, like the electorate, press, political parties, Legislature and Judiciary, have remained at best in ill-formed inchoate states of being — while the Pakistan Armed Forces stepped in with their own large economic and political interests and agendas to effectively take over the country and the society as a whole, on pretext of protecting Pakistan from India or of gaining J&K for it. Pakistan’s political problems have the ontological error at their root. Pakistan’s political parties, academics and press, have with rare exceptions remained timid in face of the militaristic State — directing their anger and frustration at an easier target instead, namely ourselves in India. The Pakistan Government’s way of silencing its few political, academic or press dissidents has been to send them into comfortable exile abroad.

Sheikh Abdullah Contrasted
Pakistan’s perpetual constitutional confusion deserves to be contrasted with the clarity of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s thinking, e.g. his 5 November 1951 speech to the Constituent Assembly of J&K: “You are the sovereign authority in this State of Jammu & Kashmir; what you decide has the irrevocable force of law. The basic democratic principle of sovereignty of the nation, embodied ably in the American and French Constitutions, is once again given shape in our midst. I shall quote the famous words of Article 3 of the French Constitution of 1791:- ‘The source of all sovereignty resides fundamentally in the nation. Sovereignty is one and indivisible, inalienable and imprescriptable. It belongs to the nation.’ We should be clear about the responsibilities that this power invests us with. In front of us lie decisions of the highest national importance which we shall be called upon to take. Upon the correctness of our decisions depends not only the happiness of our land and people now, but the fate as well of generations to come.”

Contrasting the Pakistani views of constitution-making with those of Sheikh Abdullah may help to explain a great deal about where we are today on the delicate and profound subject of J&K. (See “Solving Kashmir”, The Statesman, December 1—3, 2005)

India’s current debate about Separation of Powers needs to keep at a distance the clear negative examples of our American friends, who have brought upon themselves in recent times a craven collapse of Legislature, Judiciary, press and academia to the Executive President (as Churchill had seemed to predict), as well as of our Pakistani cousins who have continued with general political and civil collapse for half a century. Because our universities are all owned by the State, India’s academics, from Communist to Fascist, have tended to be servile towards it. In respect of the press, the power of independent newspapers has been dwindling, while the new TV anchors have created their own models of obsequiousness and chummery towards New Delhi’s ruling cliques of the day. It thus becomes India’s Supreme Court which remains the ultimate guardian of our Constitution and the safest haven of our very fragile freedoms — besides of course our own minds and hearts.

***The Sunday Statesman 12 February 2006***

Posted in America's impatience, America's military-industrial complex, American academia, American democracy, American history, American politics, Asia and the West, Comparative Government, Constitutional law, Constitutional Politics, Democracy, Expertise and democracy, Fiat justitia pereat mundus, France, Governance, Government of India, Government of Pakistan, India's Cabinet Government, India's protocols, India's Constitution, India's constitutional politics, India's corruption, India's Democracy, India's independence, India's Jurisprudence, India's Lok Sabha, India's Parliament, India's political lobbyists, India's political parties, India's Politics, India's Polity, India's Reserve Bank, India's Supreme Court, Indira Gandhi, Iraq war, Islam, Jammu & Kashmir, Jurisprudence, Manmohan Singh, Pakistan's history, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Parliamentary Backbenches, Parliamentary Government, Parliamentary law, Parliamentary Procedure, Politics, Sheikh Abdullah, Sonia Gandhi, Television, US Constitution, US Federal Law & Jurisprudence, US Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Espionage, USA, United States, USA, United States polity, Winston Churchill, World History. Leave a Comment »

Solving Kashmir: On an Application of Reason (2005)

December 3, 2005 — drsubrotoroy

SOLVING KASHMIR: ON AN APPLICATION OF REASON

by

Subroto Roy

First published in three parts in The Statesman

Editorial Page Special Article 1, 2, 3 December 2005

This article has its origins in a paper “Towards an Economic Solution for Kashmir” which circulated in Washington DC in 1992-1995, including at the Indian and Pakistani embassies and the Carnegie Endowment, and was given as an invited lecture at the Heritage Foundation on June 23 1998. It should be read along with other articles also republished here, especially “History of J&K”, “Law, Justice and J&K” , “Understanding Pakistan”, “Pakistan’s Allies” and “What to Tell Musharraf”. See https://independentindian.com/2011/10/13/my-seventy-one-notes-at-facebook-etc-on-kashmir-pakistan-and-of-course-india-listed-thanks-to-jd/ The Washington paper and lecture itself originated from my ideas in the Introduction to Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy, edited by WE James and myself in the University of Hawaii project on Pakistan 1986-1992.

Postscript 30 Dec 2015: I have made clear at Twitter that I find the K.M. Kasuri book, promoted and publicized in India by Mani Shankar Aiyar, Sudheendra Kulkarni, Barkha Dutt and others in Delhi and Mumbai, to be mendacious where it is not merely self-serving. Its clear intent is to get India to accept the (entirely false) ISI/Hurriyat narratives about 1947, Kashmir, Bangladesh, terrorism etc. Its purported ideas of demilitarisation and a borderless Kashmir are essentially lifted without the decency of normal acknowledgement from my earlier 1980s work in America cited above — which I myself have rejected as naive since the 1999 Pakistani aggression in Kargil…

NB: https://independentindian.com/2006/07/03/law-justice-and-jk/

https://independentindian.com/2006/10/30/history-of-jk/

I. Give Indian `Green Cards’ to the Hurriyat et al

India, being a liberal democracy in its constitutional law, cannot do in Jammu & Kashmir what Czechoslovakia did to the “Sudeten Germans” after World War II.

On June 18 1945 the new Czechoslovakia announced those Germans and Magyars within their borders who could not prove they had been actively anti-fascist before or during the War would be expelled — the burden of proof was placed on the individual, not the State. Czechoslovakia “transferring” this population was approved by the Heads of the USA, UK and USSR Governments at Potsdam on August 2 1945. By the end of 1946, upto two million Sudeten Germans were forced to flee their homes; thousands may have died by massacre or otherwise; 165,000 remained who were absorbed as Czechoslovak citizens. Among those expelled were doubtless many who had supported Germany and many others who had not — the latter to this day seek justice or even an apology in vain. Czechoslovakia punished none of its nationals for atrocities, saying it had been revenge for Hitler’s evil (“badla” in Bollywood terms) and the post Cold War Czech Government too has declined to render an apology. Revenge is a wild kind of justice (while justice may be a civilised kind of revenge).

India cannot follow this savage precedent in international law. Yet we must recognise there are several hundred and up to several hundred thousand persons on our side of the boundary in the State of Jammu & Kashmir who do not wish to be Indian nationals. These people are presently our nationals ius soli, having been born in territory of the Indian Republic, and/or ius sanguinis, having been born of parents who are Indian nationals; or they may be “stateless” whom we must treat in accordance with the 1954 Convention on Stateless Persons. The fact is they may not wish to carry Indian passports or be Indian nationals.

In this respect their juridical persons resemble the few million “elite” Indians who have in the last few decades freely placed their hands on their hearts and solemnly renounced their Indian nationality, declaring instead their individual fidelity to other nation-states — becoming American, Canadian or Australian citizens, or British subjects or nationals of other countries. Such people include tens of thousands of the adult children of India’s metropolitan “elite”, who are annually visited abroad in the hot summer months by their Indian parents and relatives. They are daughters and sons of New Delhi’s Government and Opposition, of retired generals, air marshals, admirals, ambassadors, cabinet secretaries, public sector bureaucrats, private sector businessmen, university professors, journalists, doctors and many others. India’s most popular film-actress exemplified this “elite” capital-flight when, after a tireless search, she chose a foreign husband and moved to California.

The difference in Jammu & Kashmir would be that those wishing to renounce Indian nationality do not wish to move to any other place but to stay as and where they are, which is in Kashmir Valley or Jammu. Furthermore, they may wish, for whatever reason, to adopt, if they are eligible to do so, the nationality of e.g. the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan or the Islamic Republic of Iran or the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

They may believe themselves descended from Ahmad Shah Abdali whose Afghans ruled or misruled Kashmir Valley before being defeated by Ranjit Singh’s Sikhs in 1819. Or they may believe themselves of Iranian descent as, for example, are the Kashmiri cousins of the late Ayatollah Khomeini. Or they may simply have wished to be, or are descended from persons who had wished to be on October 26 1947, citizens of the then-new British Dominion of Pakistan — but who came to be prevented from properly expressing such a desire because of the war-like conditions that have prevailed ever since between India and Pakistan. There may be even a few persons in Ladakh who are today Indian nationals but who wish to be considered Tibetans instead; there is, however, no Tibetan Republic and it does not appear there is going to be one.

India, being a free and self-confident country, should allow, in a systematic lawful manner, all such persons to fulfil their desires, and furthermore, should ensure they are not penalised for having expressed such “anti-national” desires or for having acted upon them. Sir Mark Tully, the British journalist, is an example of someone who has been a foreign national who has chosen to reside permanently in the Republic of India — indeed he has been an exemplary permanent resident of our country. There are many others like him. There is no logical reason why all those persons in Jammu & Kashmir who do wish not to be Indians by nationality cannot receive the same legal status from the Indian Republic as has been granted to Sir Mark Tully. There are already thousands of Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi and Nepalese nationals who are lawful permanent residents in the Indian Republic, and who travel back and forth between India and their home countries. There is no logical reason why the same could not be extended to several hundred or numerous thousand people in Jammu & Kashmir who may wish to not accept or to renounce their Indian nationality (for whatever personal reason) and instead become nationals, if they are so eligible, of the Islamic Republics of Afghanistan, Iran or Pakistan, or, for that matter, to remain stateless. On the one hand, their renunciation of Indian nationality is logically equivalent to the renunciation of Indian nationality by the adult children of India’s “elite” settled in North America and Western Europe. On the other hand, their wish to adopt, if they are eligible, a foreign nationality, such as that of Afghanistan, Iran or Pakistan, and yet remain domiciled in Indian territory is logically equivalent to that of many foreign nationals domiciled in India already like Sir Mark Tully.

Now if you are a permanent resident of some country, you may legally have many, perhaps most, but certainly not all the rights and duties of nationals of that country. e.g., though you will have to pay all the same taxes, you may not be allowed to (or be required to) vote in national or provincial elections but you may in local municipal elections. At the same time, permanently residing foreign nationals are supposed to be equal under the law and have equal access to all processes of civil and criminal justice. (As may be expected though from human frailty, even the federal courts of the USA can be notorious in their injustice and racism towards “Green Card” holders relative to “full” American citizens.) Then again, as a permanently resident foreigner, while you will be free to work in any lawful trade or profession, you may not be allowed to work in some or perhaps any Government agencies, certainly not the armed forces or the police. Many Indians in the USA were engineering graduates, and because many engineering jobs or contracts in the USA are related to the US armed forces and require US citizens only, it is commonplace for Indian engineers to renounce their Indian nationality and become Americans because of this. Many Indian-American families have one member who is American, another Indian, a third maybe Canadian, a fourth Fijian or British etc.

The same can happen in the Indian State of Jammu & Kashmir if it evolves peacefully and correctly in the future. It is quite possible to imagine a productive family in a peaceful Kashmir Valley of the future where one brother is an officer in the Indian Armed Forces, another brother a civil servant and a sister a police officer of the J&K State Government, another sister being a Pakistani doctor, while cousins are Afghan or Iranian or “stateless” businessmen. Each family-member would have made his/her choice of nationality as an individual given the circumstances of his/her life, his/her personal comprehension of the facts of history, his/her personal political and/or religious persuasions, and similar deeply private considerations. All would have their children going to Indian schools and being Indian citizens ius soli and/or ius sanguinis. When the children grow up, they would be free to join, if they wished, the existing capital flight of other Indian adult children abroad and there renounce their Indian nationality as many have come to do.

II Revealing Choices Privately with Full Information

For India to implement such a proposal would be to provide an opportunity for all those domiciled in Kashmir Valley, Jammu and Laddakh to express freely and privately as individuals their deepest wishes about their own identities, in a confidential manner, citizen by citizen, case by case. This would thereby solve the fundamental democratic problem that has been faced ever since the Pakistani attack on the original State of Jammu & Kashmir commenced on October 22 1947, which came to be followed by the Rape of Baramulla — causing the formal accession of the State to the then-new Dominion of India on October 26 1947.

A period of, say, 30 months may be announced by the Government of India during which full information would be provided to all citizens affected by this change, i.e. all those presently governed by Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. The condition of full information may include, for example, easy access to Afghan, Iranian and Pakistani newspapers in addition to access to Indian media. Each such person wishing to either remain with Indian nationality (by explicitly requesting an Indian passport if he/she does not have one already — and such passports can be printed in Kashmiri and Urdu too), or to renounce Indian nationality and either remain stateless or adopt, if he/she is so eligible, the nationality of e.g. Afghanistan, Iran, or Pakistan, should be administratively assisted by the Government of India to make that choice.

In particular, he/she should be individually, confidentially, and without fear or favour assured and informed of his/her new rights and responsibilities. For example, a resident of Kashmir Valley who chooses to become a Pakistani citizen, such as Mr Geelani, would now enjoy the same rights and responsibilities in the Indian Republic that Mr Tully enjoys, and at the same time no longer require a visa to visit Pakistan just as Mr Tully needs no visa to enter Britain. In case individual participants in the Hurriyat choose to renounce Indian nationality and adopt some other, they would no longer be able to legally participate in Indian national elections or J&K’s State elections. That is something which they say they do not wish to do in any case. Those members of the Hurriyat who chose e.g. Pakistani nationality while still residing in Jammu & Kashmir, would be free to send postal ballots or cross the border and vote in Pakistan’s elections if and when these occur. There are many Canadians who live permanently in the USA who cross home to Canada in order to cast a ballot.

After the period of 30 months, every person presently under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution would have received a full and fair opportunity to privately and confidentially reveal his/her preference or choice under conditions of full information. “Partition”, “Plebiscite”, and “Military Decision” have been the three alternatives under discussion ever since the National Conference of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and his then-loyal Deputy, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, helped the Indian Army and Air Force in 1947-1948 fight off the savage attack against Jammu & Kashmir State that had commenced from Pakistan on October 22 1947. When, during the Pakistani attack, the Sheikh and Bakshi agreed to the Muslim Conference’s demand for a plebiscite among the people, the Pakistanis balked — the Sheikh and Bakshi then withdrew their offer and decisively and irrevocably chose to accede to the Indian Union. The people of Jammu & Kashmir, like any other, are now bound by the sovereign political commitments made by their forebears. Even so, given the painful mortal facts of the several decades since, the solution here proposed if properly implemented would be an incomparably more thorough democratic exercise than any conceivable plebiscite could ever have been.

Furthermore, regardless of the outcome, it would not entail any further “Partition” or population “transfer” which inevitably would degenerate into a savage balkanization, and has been ruled out as an unacceptable “deal-breaker” by the Indian Republic. Instead, every individual person would have been required, in a private and confidential decision-making process, to have chosen a nationality or to remain stateless — resulting in a multitude of cosmopolitan families in Jammu & Kashmir. But that is something commonplace in the modern world. Properly understood and properly implemented, we shall have resolved the great mortal problem we have faced for more than half a century, and Jammu & Kashmir can finally settle into a period of peace and prosperity. The boundary between India and Pakistan would have been settled by the third alternative mentioned at the time, namely, “Military Decision”.

III. Of Flags and Consulates in Srinagar and Gilgit

Pakistan has demanded its flag fly in Srinagar. This too can happen though not in the way Pakistan has been wishing to see it happen. A Pakistan flag might fly in the Valley just as might an Afghan and Iranian flag as well. Pakistan has wished its flag to fly as the sovereign over Jammu & Kashmir. That is not possible. The best and most just outcome is for the Pakistani flag to fly over a recognised Pakistani consular or visa office in Srinagar, Jammu and Leh. In diplomatic exchange, the Indian tricolour would have to fly over a recognised Indian consular or visa office in Muzaffarabad, Gilgit and Skardu.

Pakistan also may have to act equivalently with respect to the original inhabitants of the territory of Jammu & Kashmir that it has been controlling — allowing those people to become Indian nationals if they so chose to do in free private decisions under conditions of full information. In other words, the “Military Decision” that defines the present boundary between sovereign states must be recognised by Pakistan sincerely and permanently in a Treaty relationship with India — and all of Pakistan’s official and unofficial protégés like the Hurriyat and the “United Jehad Council” would have to do the same. Without such a sovereign commitment from the Government of Pakistan, as shown by decisive actions of lack of aggressive intent (e.g. as came to be implemented between the USA and USSR), the Government of India has no need to involve the Government of Pakistan in implementing the solution of enhancing free individual choice of nationality with regard to all persons on our side of the boundary.

The “Military Decision” regarding the sovereign boundary in Jammu & Kashmir will be so recognised by all only if it is the universally just outcome in international law. And that in fact is what it is.

The original Jammu & Kashmir State began its existence as an entity in international law long before the present Republics of India and Pakistan ever did. Pakistan commences as an entity on August 14 1947; India commences as an entity of international law with its signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919 20 1918. Jammu & Kashmir began as an entity on March 16 1846 — when the Treaty of Amritsar was signed between Gulab Singh Dogra and the British, one week after the Treaty of Lahore between the British and the defeated Sikh regency of the child Daleep Singh.

Liaquat Ali Khan and Zafrullah Khan both formally challenged on Pakistan’s behalf the legitimacy of Dogra rule in Jammu & Kashmir since the Treaty of Amritsar. The Pakistani Mission to the UN does so even today. The Pakistanis were following Sheikh Abdullah and Jawaharlal Nehru himself, who too had at one point challenged Dogra legitimacy in the past. But though the form of words of the Pakistan Government and the Nehru-Abdullah position were similar in their attacks on the Treaty of Amritsar, their underlying substantive reasons were as different as chalk from cheese. The Pakistanis attacked the Dogra dynasty for being Dogra — i.e. because they were Hindus and not Muslims governing a Muslim majority. Nehru and Abdullah denounced monarchic autocracy in favour of mass democracy, and so attacked the Dogra dynasty for being a dynasty. All were wrong to think the Treaty of Amritsar anything but a lawful treaty in international law.

Furthermore, in this sombre political game of great mortal consequence, there were also two other parties who were, or appeared to be, in favour of the dynasty: one because the dynasty was non-Muslim, the other, despite it being so. Non-Muslim minorities like many Hindus and Sikhs in the business and governmental classes, saw the Dogra dynasty as their protector against a feared communalist tyranny arising from the Sunni Muslim masses of Srinagar Valley, whom Abdullah’s rhetoric at Friday prayer-meetings had been inciting or at least awakening from slumber. At the same time, the communalists of the Muslim Conference who had broken away from Abdullah’s secular National Conference, sought political advantage over Abdullah by declaring themselves in favour of keeping the dynasty — even elevating it to become an international sovereign, thus flattering the already pretentious potentate that he would be called “His Majesty” instead of merely “His Highness”. The ancestry of today’s Hurriyat’s demands for an independent Jammu & Kashmir may be traced precisely to those May 21-22 1947 declarations of the Muslim Conference leader, Hamidullah Khan.

Into this game stumbled the British with all the mix of cunning, indifference, good will, impatience, arrogance and pomposity that marked their rule in India. At the behest of the so-called “Native Princes”, the 1929 Butler Commission had hinted that the relationship of “Indian India” to the British sovereign was conceptually different from that of “British India” to the British sovereign. This view was adopted in the Cabinet Mission’s 12 May 1946 Memorandum which in turn came to be applied by Attlee and Mountbatten in their unseemly rush to “Divide and Quit” India in the summer of 1947.

It created the pure legal illusion that there was such a thing as “Lapse of Paramountcy” at which Jammu & Kashmir or any other “Native State” of “Indian India” could conceivably, even for a moment, become a sovereign enjoying the comity of nations — contradicting Britain’s own position that only two Dominions, India and Pakistan, could ever be members of the British Commonwealth and hence members of the newly created UN. British pusillanimity towards Jammu & Kashmir’s Ruler had even extended to making him a nominal member of Churchill’s War Cabinet because he had sent troops to fight in Burma. But the legal illusion had come about because of a catastrophic misunderstanding on the part of the British of their own constitutional law.

The only legal scholar who saw this was B R Ambedkar in a lonely and brilliant technical analysis released to the press on June 17 1947. No “Lapse of Paramountcy” over the “Native Princes” of Indian India could occur in constitutional law. Paramountcy over Indian India would be automatically inherited by the successor state of British India at the Transfer of Power. That successor state was the new British Dominion of India as well as (when it came to be finalised by Partition from India) the new British Dominion of Pakistan (Postscript: the deleted words represent a mistake made in the original paper, corrected in “Law, Justice & J&K” in view of the fact the UN in 1947 deemed India alone the successor state of British India and Pakistan a new state in the world system). A former “Native Prince” could only choose to which Dominion he would go. No other alternative existed even for a single logical moment. Because the British had catastrophically failed to comprehend this aspect of their own constitutional law, they created a legal vacuum whereby between August 15 and October 22-26 1947, Jammu & Kashmir became a local and temporary sovereign recognised only by the Dominion of Pakistan (until October 22) and the Dominion of India (until October 26). But it was not a globally recognised sovereign and was never going to be such in international law. This was further proved by Attlee refusing to answer the J&K Prime Minister’s October 18 1947 telegram.

All ambiguity came to end with the Pakistani attack of October 22 1947, the Rape of Baramulla, the secession of an “Azad Kashmir”declared by Sardar Ibrahim, and the Pakistani coup détat in Gilgit on October 31 1947 followed by the massacre of Sikh soldiers of the J&K Army at Bunji. With those Pakistani actions, Gulab Singh’s Jammu & Kashmir State, founded on March 16 1846 by the Treaty of Amritsar, ceased to logically exist as an entity in international law and fell into a state of ownerless anarchy. The conflict between Ibrahim’s Muslim communalists backed by the new Dominion of Pakistan and Abdullah’s secularists backed by the new Dominion of India had become a civil war within a larger intra-Commonwealth war that itself was almost a civil war between forces of the same military.

Jammu & Kashmir territory had become ownerless. The Roman Law which is at the root of all municipal and international law in the world today would declare that in the ownership of such an ownerless entity, a “Military Decision” was indeed the just outcome. Sovereignty over the land, waters, forests and other actual and potential resources of the erstwhile State of Jammu & Kashmir has become divided by “Military Decision” between the modern Republics of India and Pakistan. By the proposal made herein, the people and their descendants shall have chosen their nationality and their domicile freely across the sovereign boundary that has come to result.

Assessing Vajpayee: Hindutva True and False (2005)

November 14, 2005 — drsubrotoroy

Assessing Vajpayee: Hindutva True and False

by

Subroto Roy

First published in The Sunday Statesman, Nov 13 2005 and The Statesman, Nov 14 2005, Editorial Page Special Article

Atal Behari Vajpayee, mentored by Shyama Prasad Mookerjee himself, became Prime Minister of India for less than a fortnight in 1996, then again in 1998 and again in 1999 and remained so until he was voted out in 2004.

He became PM holding the trust of India’s 120 million Muslims. He was supposed to be the genial, avuncular “good cop” who would keep at bay the harsh forces represented by the unpredictable “bad cop”, his Deputy PM and long-time colleague LK Advani. It was the first time RSS members had come to lead India’s government. How is the Vajpayee-Advani duumvirate to be candidly assessed? The question is important not only for the RSS and BJP engaged in their own introspection and petty politics but for the country as a whole. India needs both a competent Government and a competent Opposition in Parliament, and it is not clear we have ever had either.

Overall, Vajpayee-Advani, as the chief public symbols of the RSS-BJP, earned relatively high marks in office handling India’s strategic and security interests, including the nuclear issue and Pakistan. Equally, they failed badly in their treatment of India’s Muslims and religious minorities in general. This is a paradox that can be explained by the general failure of putative Hindutvadis to acquire an objective understanding of the processes that had led to Independence, Partition, and Pakistan’s creation.

Roughly, their comprehension of these processes has been one which sees all Muslims everywhere as cut from the same communal cloth, regardless of the beliefs or actions of individual Muslims. In such prejudiced eyes, there is no conceptual or ultimate difference between a Jinnah and an Azad, between a Salauddin who attacks India at Kargil and a Lt Hanifuddin who dies for India at Kargil. This is the product of a sloppy and erroneous philosophy of history, which in turn is an outcome of an attitude towards modern science and modes of rigorous reasoning that can only be called backward and retrograde.

It has been signalled most conspicuously by the extremely public adherence of many putative Hindutvadis (and millions of other Indians) to astrology — in apparent ignorance of the fact that all horoscopes assume the Sun rotates around Earth. Astrology, a European invention, came to decline in Europe after the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo became widely understood there.

Like Indian Communists, Hindutvadi ideologues with rare exceptions played no role in the movement that led to Indian independence in 1947 and creation of the modern Indian Republic in 1950. They remained to their credit constantly suspicious of and hostile towards the foreign phenomena that were Bolshevism, Stalinism and Maoism. They remained to their discredit constantly suspicious of and hostile towards Indian Muslims, even at one point seeing virtuous lessons in Hitler’s attitude towards the Jews. They have in their own way subscribed to Ein Reich, Ein Volk but fortunately have always failed to find Ein Fuhrer (on a pattern e.g. of a modern “Netaji”).

Where Nazis saw communists and Jews in conspiracies everywhere, Hindutvadi ideologues have tended to see communists and Muslims, and also Christians and “Macaulayite” Hindus, in conspiracies everywhere. (An equal methodological admiration for Nazism occurred on the part of Muslims in the 1930s led by Rahmat Ali, the Pakistani ideologue — who saw “caste Hindus” as the root of all evil and in conspiracies everywhere.) The paradox of the RSS-BJP success in handling nuclear and security issues quite well and domestic issues of secular governance badly, is explained by this ideology of double hostility towards communism and Muslims.

On the positive side, Vajpayee-Advani advocated a tough clear-headed realpolitik on the issue of Indian’s security. “We should go nuclear and sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty as a nuclear weapons’ state. The whole world will recognise us by our power. We don’t want to be blackmailed and treated as oriental blackies. Nuclear weapons will give us prestige, power, standing. An Indian will talk straight and walk straight when we have the bomb”. That is what the BJP told the New York Times in 1993.

Three years later, the moment Vajpayee first entered office as PM in May 1996, the government’s scientists who had already secretly assembled the bomb for testing, were instructed to stand by for orders to go ahead. Vajpayee did not know if his Government would survive the vote of confidence required of them. When it was pointed out that if he tested the bomb and lost the vote, a successor Government would have to cope with the consequences, Vajpayee, to his credit and reflecting his political experience and maturity, cancelled the test. When he lost the vote, the public demonstration of Indian nuclear weapons capability was also postponed until May 1998, after he had returned as PM a second time. The bomb was a celebration of Hindu, or more generally, Indian independence in the world. India had nominally freed herself from the British but not from Western culture, according to the RSS. Where the Congress had been in the grip of world communism, the RSS-BJP led India to nuclear freedom – such was their propaganda.

In reality, a long line of prime ministers including Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, VP Singh and IK Gujral had authorised India’s bomb, and a long line of scientists starting with Homi Bhabha had developed it over several decades.

Vajpayee’s decision finally flushed out Pakistan’s clandestine nuclear weapons developed with North Korea and China. Pakistan is an overtly Islamist state where liberal democracy shows no signs of starting even 65 years after the Lahore Resolution. Its nuclear bombs remain a far greater threat to the world than anyone else’s. Moreover, while India has renounced first use of such weapons, Pakistan has not only not done so, its Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan boasted in 1998-1999 that the next war would be over in two hours with an Indian surrender.

Such glib talk about nuclear war is beyond contempt in its irresponsibility. A study by medical doctors estimated that a Hiroshima-sized bombing of Mumbai would cause 9 million deaths from blast, firestorms, radiation and fallout. An Indian retaliation would end Pakistan’s existence (though the Pakistani super-elite has long ago fled with its assets to Britain and America). An India-Pakistan nuclear exchange would leave a vast wasteland, finally ending all intellectual controversies about Partition and Jinnah’s theory. In reality, each is hardly able to cope with natural calamities like earthquakes, cyclones and floods, and also has very grave macroeconomic crises brewing because of unending deficit-finance and unlimited printing of paper money. For either to imagine itself a major power is a vain boast regardless of the polite flattery from visiting foreign businessmen. Of course, while each remains the principal enemy of the other, neither is a serious military force in the world.

After the exchange of nuclear tests in 1998, Vajpayee took the bus across the Wagah border to meet Nawaz Sharif in February 1999. He claimed it was a diplomatic and psychological breakthrough as indeed it was for a moment. But it had not been his original idea. AM Khusro, who accompanied him on the bus, had worked with Rajiv Gandhi in 1990-1991 when Rajiv was advised to make such a Sadat-like move. Furthermore, Vajpayee failed to see the significance of the Pakistani military chiefs led by Pervez Musharraf refusing to meet him formally, which would have entailed saluting him when he was their enemy.

Vajpayee also may not have known the Pakistani monument he visited was later “purified” with rose water by orthodox Muslim believers. So much for Indian diplomatic triumphs or Pakistan’s diplomatic niceties towards their kaffir guest. BJP foreign ministers later ingratiated themselves with Ariel Sharon because he was an enemy of Muslims — though again the BJP seemed unaware that “a single hair” shorn from idol-worshipping Hindu women at Tirupathi was enough for orthodox rabbis to declare as “impure” the wigs worn by Jewish women made from such hair. The evil of “untouchability” has not been a “caste Hindu” monopoly.

Kargil war

According to the Sharif-Musharraf plan secretly brewing during Vajpayee’s Pakistan visit, the Kargil infiltration followed. India’s Army and Air Force gamely fought back in the initial weeks suffering relatively severe losses, but the country seemed mesmerised by World Cup cricket and there was no significant political leadership from Vajpayee’s Government until the second week of June 1999. It was only after Brajesh Mishra was provoked by an analysis of how Pakistan might actually succeed (with the possibility of hidden Pakistani plans of a blitzkrieg and missile attacks), that Vajpayee’s Government seemed to wake up from its stupor, mobilised forces rapidly and threatened Pakistan with direst consequences, a threat made credible because it was conveyed by Mishra via the Americans. The Pakistanis backed down, which led soon to Musharraf’s coup détat against Sharif, and the world has had to deal with a Pakistani state synonymous with Musharraf ever since. The Vajpayee-Advani military triumph at Kargil was short-lived, as it was followed within months by an abject surrender to the Taliban’s terrorists at Kandahar airport.

In the meantime, on 23 January 1999, the Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons were murdered by a savage anti-Christian mob as they slept in their car in rural Orissa. Vajpayee, the agreeable face of the RSS-BJP with allegedly impeccable secular credentials, responded without the moral strength that was necessary from a leader of all of India’s people. It was a model of weakness of political will and comprehension that would be followed in the larger catastrophe to occur in Gujarat.

On 27 February 2002, a train approaching Godhra station had a bunch of travelling rowdies bullying ticketed passengers, ticket-collectors and local tea-vendors. The vendors belonged to a lowly Muslim caste whose members were entrenched around Godhra and the nearby Signal Falia. During an extended stop at Godhra station, the altercations grew fiercer — the rowdies forcing people to shout slogans and roughing them up when they did not. False rumours flew that the rowdies had molested a Muslim woman and her two daughters who had been waiting on the platform. As the train left Godhra, a gang of rioters led by one tea-shop owner and other tea-vendors gathered before Signal Falia, stopped the train and assaulted it with stones and petrol-bombs.

One whole compartment was completely burnt, scores of passengers, including 26 women and 12 children, were incinerated, many of whom remain unidentified. (Some of those supposed to be in the compartment according to Railway lists were later found alive and well, as they had moved due to the rowdyism.) Throughout the day, Godhra District Collector Jayanthi Ravi stated on television and radio that a riot had occurred and appealed for calm. But after 7 pm, the State’s political executive called it a “pre-planned violent act of terrorism”, and an organised pogrom began against Muslims across the State. Over several weeks, thousands were killed and raped and turned into refugees inside their own country.

Political patronage

Gujarat’s chief political executive, a Vajpayee-Advani protégé, should have been immediately held accountable; instead he continued to receive their political patronage. Vajpayee, en route to a planned business trip abroad, made a perfunctory visit to the scene of the civil horror, then proceeded to Singapore, where he was shown moving around on a golf-cart wearing designer goggles. He had clearly failed to grasp the dimensions or the gravity of the nature of the office he held. Vajpayee thus came to lose the trust of India’s Muslims and minorities in general which he had earned by his moderation and maturity over many decades in the Opposition. The RSS-BJP had lost, perhaps permanently, the last opportunity to make their actions tally with their sweet words about a united Indian people living in bliss in a common sacred Motherland.

Vajpayee’s finance and economic planning ministers were as ignorant of the reality of India’s macroeconomics as the Stalinist New Delhi bureaucrats pampered by Congress and its Communist friends. These bureaucrats continued in power under Vajpayee. Plus the RSS’s pseudo-economists were enough to scare away all except a minor econometrician and a shallow economic historian. The latter led the BJP up the garden path in 2003-2004 with talk about India’s economy being on the point of “take off” (based on defunct American theory from the 1960s), which misled them into the “India Shining” campaign and electoral defeat. The BJP finance minister, thus misled, revealed his own ignorance of his job-requirements when he happily spoke on TV of how much he sympathised with businessmen who had told him CBI, CVC and CAG were the initials holding India back from this (bogus) “take off”. Equally innocent of economics, the BJP’s planning chief went about promising vast government subsidies to already-rich Indians abroad to become “venture capitalists” in India! Instead of reversing the woeful Stalinism of the Congress decades overall, Vajpayee’s Government super-imposed a crony capitalism upon it. Budgetary discipline was not even begun to be sought — another BJP finance minister revelling publicly in his ignorance of Maynard Keynes.

The signal of monetary crisis that was the UTI fiasco was papered over with more paper money printing. Privatisation was briefly made a fetish — despite there being sound conservative reasons not to privatise in India until the fiscal and monetary haemorrhaging is stopped. Liquidating real assets prior to a likely massive inflation of paper assets caused by deficit-financing, is not a public good.

RSS members and protégés appointed to government posts and placed in charge of government moneys revealed themselves as corrupt and nepotistic as anyone else. The overall failure of the management of India’s public institutions and organs of State continued under Vajpayee-Advani just as it had done for decades earlier. Vajpayee-Advani evinced no vision of a modern political economy as reformers of other major countries have done, such as Thatcher, Reagan, Gorbachev-Yeltsin, Adenauer-Erhardt, De Gaulle, even Deng Tsiaoping.

Irrational obsession

The overall explanation of the ideological and practical failure of the putative Hindutvadis must have to do with their irrational obsession over two decades with the masjid-mandir issue. Ramayana and Mahabharata are magnificent mythological epics yet they are incidental aspects of the faith and culture deriving from the Vedas and Upanishads. The motive force of a true Hindutva is already contained in the simple Upanishadic motto of the Indian Republic, Satyameva jayathe (let truth prevail) which is almost all the religion that anyone may need. The search for all truth necessarily requires individual freedom, and taking its first steps would require the RSS-BJP denouncing all their backward pseudo-science and anti-science. Who among them will liberate them from the clutches of astrology, and bring instead the fresh air and light of modern science since Copernicus and Galileo? Without rigorous modern reasoning, the RSS and BJP are condemned to their misunderstanding of themselves and of India, just as surely as their supposed enemies — literalist Muslim believers — are committed to a flat earth and an implacably stern heaven placed above it. Pakistan’s finest academic has reported how his colleagues pass off as physics the measurement of earth receding from heaven if Einstein and The Qúran could be amalgamated. The RSS and BJP need to free themselves from similar irrational backwardness in all fields, including politics and economics. It is plain Vajpayee, Advani or any of their existing political progeny cannot lead themselves, or Indians in general, to that promised land.

Posted in Atal Behari Vajpayee, BJP, Communists, Congress Party, Fascists, Germany, Godhra and aftermath, Hinduism, India's Caste/Ethnic Problems, India's crimes, India's Economy, India's Foreign Policy, India's Military Defence, India's mob violence, India's Monetary & Fiscal Policy, India's Muslims, India's Nationalism, India's Parliament, India's Partition, India's political lobbyists, India's Politics, India's Polity, India's pork-barrel politics, India's Rule of Law, India's secularism, India-Pakistan peace process, Indira Gandhi, Jammu & Kashmir, Jawaharlal Nehru, LK Advani, Mumbai/Bombay, Muslim and Hindu communalism, Nuclear conflict, Pakistan's history, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pervez Musharraf, Politics, Rajiv Gandhi, Ram Janambhoomi, Religion, Science, Science, Religion, Literature, Secular governance, Uttar Pradesh, World History. 2 Comments »

US Espionage Failures (2005)

October 26, 2005 — drsubrotoroy

US Espionage Failures

(There is a hippopotamus in the room)

First published in The Statesman Perspective Page under the title “Flunking inteligence” Oct 26 2005

by

Subroto Roy

There have been three or four enormous failures of American espionage (i.e. intelligence and counter-intelligence) in the last 20 years. The collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of Soviet communism were salubrious events but they had not been foreseen by the United States which was caught unawares by the speed and nature of the developments that took place. Other failures have been catastrophic.

First, there was the failure to prevent the attack that took place on the American mainland on September 11 2001. It killed several thousand civilians and caused vast, perhaps irreparable, psychological and physical destruction to the United States.

The attack was without precedent. The December 7 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in Hawaii, though a surprise, was carried out by one military against another military and did not affect very many civilians (except that thousands of American civilians of Japanese ancestry came to be persecuted and placed in concentration camps for years by the US Government). And the last time the American mainland had been attacked before 2001 was in 1814 when British troops marched south from Canada and burnt down the Capitol and the US President’s house in Washington.

Secondly, there has been a failure to discover any reasonable justification for the American-led attack on Iraq and its invasion and occupation. Without any doubt, America has lost, at the very least, an incalculable amount of international goodwill as a result of this, let aside suffering two thousand young soldiers killed, fifteen thousand wounded, and an unending cost in terms of prestige and resources in return for the thinnest of tangible gains. India at great cost liberated East Pakistan from the brutal military tyranny of Yahya Khan and Tikka Khan in December 1971 but the average Bangladeshi today could hardly care less. Regardless of what form of government emerges in Iraq now, there is no doubt the mass of the Iraqi people will cheer the departure of the bulk of foreign troops and tanks from their country (even if a permanent set of a dozen hermetically sealed American bases remain there for ever, as appears to have been planned).

When things go wrong in any democracy, it is natural and healthy to set up a committee to investigate, and America has done that several times now. For such committees to have any use at all they must be as candid as possible and perhaps the most candid of the American committees has been the US Government’s 9/11 Commission. But it too has appeared no closer to finding out who was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks or who financed it and who, precisely, executed it. Osama Bin Laden may have been the ideological head of a movement allied to the perpetrators, and Bin Laden undoubtedly expressed his glee afterwards, but it beggars the imagination that Bin Laden could have been executive president in charge of this operation while crawling around Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan. If not him, then whom? Mossad the Israeli spy agency was supposed to have pointed to a super-secret invisible Lebanese terrorist but nobody really knows. The biggest modern mass murder remains unsolved.

As for solutions, the American 9/11 Commission went into the same politically correct formulae that came to be followed in 2005 by British PM Tony Blair’s New Labour Cabinet, namely, that “moderate” peace-loving Muslims must be encouraged and bribed not to turn to terrorism (indeed to expose those among them who do), while “extremist” Muslims must be stamped out with brute force. This rests on a mistaken premise that an economic carrot-and-stick policy can work in creating a set of external incentives and disincentives for Muslims, when in fact believing Muslims, like many other religious believers, are people who feel the power of their religion deep within themselves and so are unlikely to be significantly affected by external incentives or disincentives offered by non-believers.

Another committee has been the United States Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence which reported in July 2004, and from whose findings have stemmed as an offshoot the current matter about whether high government officials broke the law that is being investigated by Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

Bertrand Russell said in his obituary of Ludwig Wittgenstein that he had once gone about looking under all the tables and chairs to prove to Wittgenstein that there was not a hippopotamus present in the room. In the present case, however, there is in fact a very large hippopotamus present in the room yet the entire American foreign policy establishment has seemed to refuse to wish to see it. Saddam Hussain and OBL are undoubtedly certifiable members of the international gallery of rogues – but the central fact remains they were rogues who were in alliance with America’s defined strategic interests in the 1980s. Saddam Hussain’s Iraq invaded Iran in 1980 and gassed the Kurds in 1986; an Iraqi Mirage on May 17 1987 fired two Exocet missiles at the USS Stark killing 37 American sailors and injuring 21. The Americans did nothing. The reason was that Saddam was still in favour at the time and had not yet become a demon in the political mythology of the American state, and it was expedient for nothing to be done. Indeed Saddam’s Iraq was explicitly removed in 1982 from the US Government’s list of states sponsoring terrorism because, according to the State Department’s Patterns of Global Terrorism, it had “moved closer to the policies of its moderate Arab neighbours”.

The very large hippopotamus that is present in the room at the moment is April Glaspie, the highly regarded professional career diplomat and American Ambassador to Iraq at the time of the 1990 Gulf War. Saddam Hussein as President had a famous meeting with her on July 25 1990, eight days before he invaded Kuwait. The place was the Presidential Palace in Baghdad and the Iraqis videotaped the meeting:

U.S. Ambassador Glaspie – “I have direct instructions from President (George Herbert Walker) Bush to improve our relations with Iraq. We have considerable sympathy for your quest for higher oil prices, the immediate cause of your confrontation with Kuwait. (pause) As you know, I lived here for years and admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. We know you need funds. We understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. (pause) We can see that you have deployed massive numbers of troops in the south. Normally that would be none of our business, but when this happens in the context of your threats against Kuwait, then it would be reasonable for us to be concerned. For this reason, I have received an instruction to ask you, in the spirit of friendship – not confrontation – regarding your intentions: Why are your troops massed so very close to Kuwait’s borders?

Saddam Hussein – As you know, for years now I have made every effort to reach a settlement on our dispute with Kuwait. There is to be a meeting in two days; I am prepared to give negotiations only this one more brief chance. (pause) When we (the Iraqis) meet (with the Kuwaitis) and we see there is hope, then nothing will happen. But if we are unable to find a solution, then it will be natural that Iraq will not accept death.

U. S. Ambassador Glaspie – What solutions would be acceptable?

Saddam Hussein – If we could keep the whole of the Shatt al Arab – our strategic goal in our war with Iran – we will make concessions (to the Kuwaitis). But, if we are forced to choose between keeping half of the Shatt and the whole of Iraq (i.e., in Saddam’ s view, including Kuwait ) then we will give up all of the Shatt to defend our claims on Kuwait to keep the whole of Iraq in the shape we wish it to be. (pause) What is the United States’ opinion on this?

U.S. Ambassador Glaspie – We have no opinion on your Arab – Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960’s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America. (Saddam smiles)

Saddam had seen himself fighting Islamic Iran on behalf of the Kuwaitis, Saudis and other Arabs, and Islamic Iran was of course the sworn adversary of the USA at least since Khomeini had deposed America’s ally, the Shah. Therefore Saddam could not be all bad in the eyes of the State Department. On August 2 1990, the Iraqi troops seen by American satellites amassed on the border, invaded and occupied Kuwait.

On September 2 1990, the Iraqis released the videotape and transcript of the July 29 Saddam-Glaspie meeting and Glaspie was confronted by British journalists as she left the Embassy:

Journalist 1 – Are the transcripts (holding them up) correct, Madam Ambassador? (No answer from Glaspie)

Journalist 2 – You knew Saddam was going to invade (Kuwait ) but you didn’t warn him not to. You didn’t tell him America would defend Kuwait. You told him the opposite – that America was not associated with Kuwait.

Journalist 1 – You encouraged this aggression – his invasion. What were you thinking?

U.S. Ambassador Glaspie – Obviously, I didn’t think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait.

Journalist 1 – You thought he was just going to take some of it? But, how could you? Saddam told you that, if negotiations failed , he would give up his Iran(Shatt al Arab waterway) goal for the whole of Iraq, in the shape we wish it to be. You know that includes Kuwait, which the Iraqis have always viewed as a historic part of their country!

Journalist 1 – America green-lighted the invasion. At a minimum, you admit signalling Saddam that some aggression was okay – that the U.S. would not oppose a grab of the al-Rumeilah oil field, the disputed border strip and the Gulf Islands (including Bubiyan) – the territories claimed by Iraq?

Glaspie said nothing, the car door closed behind her, the car drove off. Nothing has been apparently heard from Glaspie ever since, and we may have to wait for her memoirs in 25 years when they are declassified to come to know what happened. It is astonishing, however, that the 521 page report of the US Senate’s Select Committee on espionage about Iraq before the 2003 war finds no cause whatsoever to mention Glaspie at all (at least in its public censored version). It is almost as if Glaspie has never existed and her conversation with Saddam never happened. Glaspie has disappeared down an Orwellian memory-hole. Yet her conversation with Saddam was the last official, recorded conversation between the Americans and Saddam while they were still on friendly terms.

There may be many causes explaining how such serious failures have come to occur in a country where billions of dollars have been annually spent on espionage. Among them must be that while America’s great strengths have included creation of the finest advanced scientific and technological base on earth, America’s great intellectual weaknesses in recent decades have included an impatience with historical and philosophical reflection of all sorts, and that includes reflection about her own as well as other cultures. This is exemplified too in the third palpable failure of intelligence of the last 20 years, which has been to have not foreseen or prevented atomic weapons from being developed by America and Britain’s Islamist ally and client-state, Pakistan, and thence to have failed to prevent the proliferation of such weapons in general. The consequences of that may yet turn out to be the most grave.

The Mitrokhin Archives II from an Indian Perspective: A Review Article

October 11, 2005 — drsubrotoroy

The Mitrokhin Archives II from an Indian Perspective: A Review Article

by Subroto Roy

First published in The Statesman, Oct. 11 2005, Perspective Page

Vasili Mitrokhin’s defection from the former Soviet Union to Britain in 1992 caused a treasure-trove to reach MI-6 and the CIA and FBI, because he exposed many dozens of Soviet agents and their plots and intrigues around the world. But this fact that his material greatly helped Anglo-American counter-intelligence does not per se make it a source of accurate evidence with which a historian’s history book can be created. Rather, what this monumental and extremely informative volume amounts to being is a vast documentation, from an Anglo-American perspective, of what MI-6 and its allies have agreed to make public about what they now know of Soviet foreign policy and KGB practices, and of how Russian diplomacy and the KGB’s successors might function in the future.

That this is not a detached and disinterested history of intelligence is revealed by the three chapters on the subcontinent which have been causing a stir in India for the wrong reasons.

Everyone in the 1970s and through the 1980s knew of the tight grip around New Delhi’s policy-making circles of top bureaucrats, academics, journalists etc who were blatantly and incorrigibly pro-Soviet, some being active communists or fellow- travellers. Some of those complaining today know fully well that a cardinal implicit reason the CPI(M) broke from its parent party had to do precisely with Moscow’s control of the CPI. Moreover, while it might have been newsworthy when the KGB honey-trapped a senior diplomat or a junior cipher clerk in the Indian Embassy now and then, there were also hundreds of public sector bureaucrats, military personnel, journalists, technology professors, writers, artists, dancers et al who were treated most hospitably by the Soviet state – getting freebies flying to Soviet cities, being greeted by singing Young Pioneers, touring L’Hermitage with Intourist, receiving dollar honoraria and splendid gifts, sitting in on “technical training”, even receiving bogus Soviet doctoral degrees to allow themselves to be called “Dr” etc. Purchasing influence in New Delhi or any other capital city has never been merely a crude matter of cash-filled suitcases sloshing around in the middle of the night. Much of what Mitrokhin’s material says about the KGB’s penetration of India should, candidly speaking, generate but a desultory yawn from us –although even this book seems not to know that Narasimha Rao’s infamous, catastrophically damaging remarks in August 1991, in favour of the abortive KGB coup led by Kryuchkov against Gorbachev and Yeltsin, had been prompted by a staunchly pro-Soviet retired Indian diplomat at his side long-associated with the CPI.

Yes there are many titbits in this book that may be of interest from an Indian perspective — such as that Sanjay Gandhi’s entourage contained both a Soviet and an American mole in it (where are they now?). But what may be far more interesting to us today is what can be deduced from what Mitrokhin is silent about. For example, India and the Soviets were close allies in 1971 when Kissinger had teamed up with Yahya Khan and Bhutto to send Nixon to China. It is well known our Army Chief, General Maneckshaw, had demanded and received from Indira Gandhi and Jagjivan Ram enough time to prepare to go to war, and when Maneckshaw finally did move to liberate Bangladesh in December, it surprised Yahya and the Americans. Were the Soviets also quite surprised? If so, it would mean that although the Indian establishment was as porous as a sieve with respect to arms’ deals etc, on a matter of paramount national interest, namely, the just war on our own against Yahya Khan and Tikka Khan’s brutality in East Pakistan condoned by Nixon and Kissinger, India had kept her secrets secure. If, as seems likely, Indira Gandhi and her overtly communistic advisers had kept India’s war plans from not leaking to the KGB between March and December 1971, we may not have been in fact too badly compromised despite the widespread “shallow” penetration that occurred through corruption all around in the bureaucracy, academic institutions, media, political parties, etc.

Mitrokhin’s material describes this kind of shallow corrupt penetration that everyone knew was (and still remains) part of the lobbying process in Delhi. But there is no evidence in the book that the KGB knew of General Maneckshaw’s military preparations or plan of action until the lights went out in a blackout in Delhi on the night of December 2 1971 — that at least is something of which Indians may be slightly proud today. The same goes for the Pokhran nuclear tests. It is well known the CIA was caught by surprise by Pokhran-II in 1998; was the KGB caught by surprise by Pokhran-I in 1974? Probably so. Equally, the book says the KGB had at one point cracked Pakistani codes; did the Soviets share this information with India? Almost certainly not. Our Government’s chummery with the Soviets during the Cold War probably stopped well short of complete incest.

Unfortunately, many questions of interest to India or other countries have simply not been asked in the book. The Soviets (and Harold Wilson) had seemed to broker the India-Pakistan ceasefire in 1965, and Lal Bahadur Shastri died the day after he signed the Tashkent Declaration. What is the inside KGB information on that?

We do not know from this book. What do Soviet archives say about communist influence through the 1940s in Jammu & Kashmir (upon some of the very names who became Indira Gandhi’s inner circle later in Delhi)? Or about the uncritical adoption in the 1950s of Sovietesque economic models by the Planning Commission (and the suppression of Milton Friedman’s November 1955 memorandum to the Government of India, as well as the tarnishing of BR Shenoy as a CIA agent)? The answers are not present in this book because these and analogous questions of interest to India or many other countries simply have not been asked. Mitrokhin’s material has been mined only from an Anglo-American point of view, and until it is thrown open completely to everyone, a detached and disinterested history of permanent and universal interest on the important matters it touches upon is not available.

Several factual and methodological problems result as a consequence, and these need to be identified for purposes of future progress in understanding. For example, the book speaks many times of the KGB having forged or fabricated documents around the world as a technique of spreading disinformation.

Doubtless this was standard operating procedure for intelligence agencies but it is left completely impossible for the average reader to come to any assessment whether a given document mentioned was genuine or forged.

Consider a case in Iran. The book states that in February 1958, the KGB “forged a letter from the American Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, to his ambassador in Tehran belittling the Shah’s ability and implying that the United States was plotting his overthrow. The Teheran residency circulated copies of the letter to influential Iranian parliamentarians and editors in the confident expectation that one would come to the attention of the Shah – which it duly did. According to the KGB files on the operation, the Shah was completely taken in by the fabricated Dulles letter and personally instructed that a copy be sent to the US embassy with a demand for an explanation. Though the embassy dismissed it as a forgery, the Teheran residency reported that its denials were disbelieved. Dulles’s supposedly slighting references to the Shah were said to be a frequent topic of whispered conversation among the Iranian elite.” (p. 171)

It is impossible for anyone who has not seen this document or other supporting evidence to come to any assessment of what actually happened here. Matters are made worse by a note that says the KGB “claimed improbably that the Americans blamed the forgery not on the KGB but the British, who were said to be jealous of the strength of US influence in Iran”.

Was the document genuine or was it forged and if so by whom? If forged, must we believe the KGB was so astute in 1958 in its knowledge of American idiom that it could achieve the tremendous deception of mimicking the greatest of Cold Warriors writing to his own ambassador, enough to fool the Shah of Iran who had been placed in power by the very same Americans? No one can really tell unless the documents are opened up completely.

Another example is of more topical interest, and also reveals that this book must be seen as a contribution to a continuing (if friendly and academic) battle between rival intelligence agencies. Yevgeny Primakov, the former KGB chief and reformist Prime Minister (and Soviet Ambassador to India) is quoted as saying about the American help to the Pakistan-based guerrillas against the Soviets in Afghanistan: “the idea of deploying the Stingers (shoulder-held ground-to- air-missiles) was supplied by Osama bin Laden, who had been cooperating closely with the CIA at the time.” (Russian Crossroads, Yale University Press, 2004.)

Professor Andrew denies this flatly: “There is no support in the Mitrokhin material (or any other reliable source) for the claim that the CIA funded bin Laden or any of the other Arab volunteers who came to support the mujahideen. Most were funded through charities and mosques in the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, and were frequently viewed with suspicion by the Afghan mujahideen.” (p. 579)

It is obvious why this question is important: if Primakov is right and Andrew is wrong the Americans must be acutely embarrassed in having been allies or supporters or financiers not long ago of the very same Bin Laden who has now become their most bitter enemy. The United States Government’s “9/11 Commission” in 2004 made a much weaker statement than Professor Andrew: “Saudi Arabia and the United States supplied billions of dollars worth of secret assistance to rebel groups in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet occupation. This assistance was funnelled through Pakistan: the Pakistani military intelligence (ISID) helped train the rebels and distribute the arms. But Bin Laden and his associates had their own sources of support and training and they received little or no assistance from the United States…. In his memoirs, (Bin Laden’s deputy) Ayman al Zawahiri contemptuously rejects the claim that the Arab mujahideen were financed (even `one penny’) or trained by the United States… CIA officials involved in aiding the Afghan resistance regarded Bin Laden and his `Arab Afghans’ as having been militarily insignificant in the war and recall having little to do with him.”

Bin Laden was a callow youth when he got to Afghanistan shortly after the Soviet invasion in December 1979. Yet his contributions of funds, military effort and religious zealotry made him emerge age 33-34 as the “Emir” of Al Qaeda by the time the Soviets were compelled to withdraw in 1989, having suffered 14,500 dead. The Americans then began to lose interest in the region and in their Pakistani clients, and it was in that atmosphere that Pakistan decided to declare its independence in the world with its clandestine nuclear programme (never having felt part of the nationalist movement which led to Indian independence in 1947). It was in the same period that Bin Laden and Al Qaeda grew to become implacable and formidable enemies of the West, which culminated in the 9/11 mass murders in 2001. The claim that while the CIA certainly supported “Afghan” jihadists, it did not support Arab or African ones like Bin Laden and his friends is highly implausible. The New Yorker and Washington Post reported in 1986 the CIA supplying and training Hekmatyar’s “Hizbe-Islami” in the use of Stinger missiles to bring down Soviet aircraft. It is impossible to imagine the admittedly myopic American policy at the time included checking passports of these trainee- beneficiaries, saying “OK, you’re an Afghan resistance fighter you get a Stinger, you’re an Arab/African terrorist-of-the-future-who-may-attack-New York, you don’t”. Professor Andrew quotes positively the work on Bhutto of Raza Anwar, the Pakistani socialist, but he may have been unaware of Anwar’s The Tragedy of Afghanistan (Verso, 1988) where the precise nature of the American, Chinese and Arab support for the thousands of guerrillas in the dozens of camps in Zia’s Pakistan is quite fully and objectively documented. Foreign jihadists in Jammu & Kashmir came to be known as “Afghans” because they were veterans of the Afghan conflicts, not because they were Afghan nationals. Unlike Britain’s MI-6, the United States Government’s 9/11 Commission has made no bones about the connection between Bin Laden and the Pakistani ISI whose intent has been to attack India: “Pakistan’s rulers found these multitudes of ardent young `Afghans’ a source of potential trouble at home but potentially useful abroad. Those who joined the Taliban movement, espousing a ruthless version of Islamic law, perhaps could bring order in chaotic Afghanistan and make it a cooperative ally. They thus might give Pakistan greater security on one of the several borders where Pakistani military officers hoped for what they called `strategic depth’ (…. Pakistan’s need for a friendly, pliable neighbour on the west due to its hostile relationship with India on the east.)… It is unlikely that Bin Laden could have returned to Afghanistan (in 1996) had Pakistan disapproved. The Pakistani military intelligence service probably had advance knowledge of his coming, and its officers may have facilitated his travel. During his entire time in Sudan, he had maintained guesthouses and training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. These were part of a larger network used by diverse organisations for recruiting and training fighters for Islamic insurgencies in such places as Tajikistan, Kashmir and Chechnya. Pakistani intelligence officers reportedly introduced Bin Laden to Taliban leaders in Kandahar, their main base of power, to aid his reassertion of control over camps near Khowst, out of an apparent hope that he would now expand the camps and make them available for training of Kashmiri militants.”

Regardless of the fondness of the very strong lobby of British apologists (led by a former British High Commissioner to Pakistan) for the ISI and Pakistani Army, no detached history of modern intelligence in our part of the world can be written which whitewashes the misdeeds of Pakistan’s generals over several decades. Aside from what The Mitrokihn Archive II signifies about our region, there is a great amount of invaluable material on other parts of the world too, from Chile and Peru to Cuba and Nicaragua, to South Africa and Egypt and Israel, to China and Korea and Japan.

Indeed the keenest pages have to do with the internecine tensions between communists, like Castro and Gorbachev, or Khrushchev and Mao Zedong, in which no Anglo-American interests were involved. We in India have had our share of academic apologists and fellow travellers for totalitarian communist China, but the roots of the Sino-Soviet split have never come to be aired in Indian discussion. Professor Andrew is a leading member of the vitally important Cold War International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC, whose website displays new and vitally important data from formerly communist countries (like Mongolia, Russia and East Germany) about how Chinese communists saw and felt about India, Pakistan, Tibet etc, which needs urgent attention from serious Indian observers. The Mitrokhin Archive II gives us a privileged glimpse of some of what happened: “The Sino-Soviet split in the early 1960s brought to an acrimonious end the deference from the PRC which Stalin had taken for granted. The first public attack on Moscow was made by Mao’s veteran security chief, Kang Sheng, whose ferocious purges during Mao’s Great Leap Forward were largely modelled on techniques he had learned in Moscow during the Great Terror. On the Soviet side, the ideological dispute with China was compounded by personal loathing for Mao – the `Great Helmsman’ – and a more general dislike of the Chinese population as a whole, Khrushchev `repeatedly’ told a Romanian delegation shortly before his overthrow in 1964 that `Mao Zedong is sick, crazy, that he should be taken to an asylum, etc.” An assessment of Chinese national character circulated to KGB residencies by the Centre twelve years later claimed that the Chinese were `noted for their spitefulness’. What most outraged both the Kremlin and the Centre was Beijing’s impudence in setting itself up as a rival capital of world Communism, attempting to seduce other Communist parties from their rightful allegiance to the Soviet Union. Moscow blamed the horrors of Pol Pot’s regime… on the takeover of the Cambodian Communist Party by `an anti-popular, pro-Beijing clique’.

If nothing else, The Mitrokhin Archives II provides an honest opportunity for India’s Left to come clean with their frank and non-ideological opinions about Soviet, Chinese and other communist histories, and hence to candidly gain self-knowledge. Will they take it? Are there any George Orwells out there?

Kolkata, October 5 2005

Iqbal & Jinnah vs Rahmat Ali in Pakistan’s creation

September 3, 2005 — drsubrotoroy

Iqbal & Jinnah vs Rahmat Ali in Pakistan’s Creation

By Dr Subroto Roy

First published in Dawn (Karachi) Encounter September 3, 2005

MUHAMMAD IQBAL (1877-1938) was the poetic and spiritual genius who (at least in the 20th Century) inspired the notion of a Muslim homeland in northwestern India. His seminal 1930 presidential speech to the Muslim League in Allahabad laid the foundation stone of the new country that was yet to be. He said “I would like to see the Punjab, Northwest Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single state. Self-government within the British Empire or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North West Indian Muslim state appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims at least of Northwest India…”.

Iqbal did not see such a Muslim state being theocratic and certainly not one filled with anti-Hindu bigotry:

“A community which is inspired by feelings of ill-will towards other communities is low and ignoble. I entertain the highest respect for the customs, laws, religious and social institutions of other communities… Yet I love the communal group which is the source of my life and my behaviour… Nor should the Hindus fear that the creation of autonomous Muslim states will mean the introduction of a kind of religious rule in such states… I therefore demand the formation of a consolidated Muslim state in the best interests of India and Islam. For India it means security and peace resulting from an internal balance of power, for Islam an opportunity to rid itself of the stamp that Arabian Imperialism was forced to give it, to mobilise its law, its education, its culture, and to bring them into closer contact with its own original spirit and the spirit of modern times”.

Now such a Muslim country as conceived by Muhammad lqbal — and which, as it happens, constitutes more or less the territory of present-day Pakistan other than East Punjab— did not necessarily have to receive the name it did come to receive. It might have been named “Dar-e-Islami-Hind” or the “Indus Islamic Republic” or “Indic Islamabad” or “The Republic of North-Western India” or some other such appropriate appellation — even “Iqbalistan” perhaps or some name deriving from Iqbal’s notion of “khudi” which he had developed from his admiration as a young man for the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.

Nor did Mohammad Ali Jinnah (1876-1948) himself, the explicit and acknowledged political founder of the new country, use the appellation that it did come to have, not even when he introduced the Lahore Resolution in the 1940 meeting of the Muslim League which aimed to implement Iqbal’s idea. It was Iqbal who persuaded Jinnah to return to India from England, where Jinnah had settled in a law practice again after his first stint in Indian politics, and in 1934 Jinnah had done so when elected to the Central Legislative Assembly in a reserved seat for Bombay Muslims.

By 1938 Jinnah had declared his permanent opinion: “Congress leaders may shout as much as they like that the Congress is a national body. But … (the) Congress is nothing but a Hindu body”. Finally, at the Lahore session of the Muslim League in 1940, Jinnah introduced the idea: “That geographically contiguous units are demarcated into regions which should be so constituted, with such territorial readjustments as may be necessary, that the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in a majority, as in the North-Western and Eastern zones of India should be grouped to constitute Independent States in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign”.

Who had seconded Jinnah’s Lahore Resolution? It had been Sikander Hyat Khan, leader of the Punjab Muslims, and Fazlul Haq, leader of the Bengal Muslim peasantry. Jinnah as of 1940 had been most conspicuously a leader of Muslims only in the Muslim-minority provinces of British India, and clearly had felt it necessary to demonstrate that in proposing the Lahore Resolution he had the support of the two leaders of the two largest Muslim-majority provinces, Punjab and Bengal.

Sikander Hyat Khan had been due to become Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India in Bombay in 1936 when instead he returned to Punjab to lead the Unionist Party of Muslim, Sikh and Hindu landlords in 1937. “The Sikander-Jinnah pact stipulated that the Unionist Party of the Punjab, led by Sikander, would retain full autonomy of the affairs of the province.” Fazlul Haq would later conceive with Sarat Bose (elder brother of Subhash Bose) of a Muslim majority “United Bengal” in an attempt to keep Calcutta out of the new India, a notion which would have Jinnah’s backing but otherwise would not get anywhere. Support for the Lahore Resolution among the Muslims of the princely states like Jammu and Kashmir or Hyderabad was conspicuous by its absence. Neither were they mentioned in Iqbal’s seminal 1930 speech nor in Jinnah’s 1940 Lahore Resolution backed by Sikander Hyat Khan and Fazlul Haq. What has been called the “Paradox of Kashmir” is that prior to 1947 Jammu and Kashmir did not seem to appear in any discussion whatsoever, and yet it has consumed almost all discussion ever since.

To this must be added now another newly understood dimension having to do with the conceptualization and foundation of the new country not only by lqbal the poet and Jinnah the politician, but by the third and upstart founder of Pakistan: its young radical Islamist ideologue, Chowdhury Rahmat Ali (1895-1951).

Official Pakistan has venerated Iqbal and accorded Jinnah due honour and respect but has apparently treated Rahmat Ali as the lunatic uncle who has needed to be locked up secretly in the attic. Yet Rahmat Ali’s impact on the creation of Pakistan and events in the subcontinent equalled those of his two better educated, more respectable and eminent compatriots — and may yet come to exceed them (not necessarily salubriously).

Rahmat Ali was born in a village in Hoshiarpur district of Punjab in 1895, making him almost 20 years younger than Iqbal and Jinnah. He matriculated from Jullunder and graduated in 1919 from Islamia College, Lahore. About 1931, having “accumulated some money as a legal advisor to a Baluchi landlord”, he arrived in England and took admission in Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

By way of studies, Rahmat Ali may have passed a set of Part I exams but not perhaps the Part II. There does not seem to be any record of him attending the Inns of Court or of being called to the Bar, though he styled himself “Barrister at Law” in his writings. According to the obituary he received in the Emmanuel College Magazine of 1950-51, “he made Cambridge his home, shifting a little unhappily from lodging to lodging, and using, perhaps rather more than was proper, the College as an accommodation address.”

Interviews with his landlady and housekeeper-secretary, conducted by Dr Taufiq Shelley in 1970-71, yielded that Rahmat Ali was a devout pious Muslim who along with a few compatriots had been secretly and secretively very active as a pamphleteer from England creating and spreading among India’s Muslims a radical Islamist ideology for Pakistan, even founding something called the “Pakistan National Liberation Movement”.

Rahmat Ali was inspired by Iqbal’s 1930 call for a Muslim state in northwest India but felt Iqbal had been too vague and was disappointed that Iqbal had not pressed the issue at the Third Round Table Conference. In 1933, apparently on the top floor of a London bus, Rahmat Ali invented for Iqbal’s imagined political entity the name “PAKSTAN”, the P standing for his native Punjab, the A for Afghania, K for Kashmir, S for Sind, and the STAN allegedly doubling up for Balochistan.

Rahmat Ali sought a meeting with Jinnah in London, met him and pressed the name ‘Pakstan’ upon him as a possible nomenclature. “Jinnah disliked Rahmat Ali’s ideas and avoided meeting him”. Jinnah pointed out to Rahmat Ali he had failed to consider the other Muslim majority province, Bengal, as well as Muslim minority regions.

At this, Rahmat Ali produced a general scheme of Muslim domination all over the subcontinent: there would be “Pakistan” in the northwest including Kashmir, Delhi and Agra; “Bangistan” in Bengal; “Osmanistan” in Hyderabad; “Siddiquistan” in Bundelhand and Malwa; “Faruqistan” in Bihar and Orissa; “Haideristan” in UP; “Muinistan” in Rajasthan; “Maplistan” in Kerala; and even “Safiistan” in “Western Ceylon” and “Nasaristan” in “Eastern Ceylon”, etc. The map deriving from such a crank view of history was published by Rahmat Ali in 1934 and came to be widely circulated in his pamphleteering among Indian Muslims at the time.

Rahmat Ali was vituperative in his bigotry against Hindus, referring to the Indian nationalist movement as a “British-Banya alliance” presumably in reference to MK Gandhi’s caste. He even declined to refer to an “India” as having ever existed at all and instead personally renamed the entire subcontinent as “Dinia”, and the oceans and the seas around India as the “Pakian Sea”, the “Osmanian Sea” etc. He urged Sikhs to rise up against the Hindus in a “Sikhistan” (and might have interacted with Master Tara Singh), and indeed urged all of India’s peoples who were not Hindus to rise up in war against Hindus. Given the obscurity of the facts of his life before his arrival at Emmanuel College, what experiences may have led him to such extreme bigotry towards Hindus are not known.

When in 1947 a new but “moth-eaten” country had come to be named with the word he had coined on a London bus more than a dozen years earlier, and was a country which had two “wings” after a partition — the more populous “East Pakistan” and the more arrogant “West Pakistan” — Rahmat Ali turned his wrath from England upon its new government. He condemned Jinnah as being treacherous, and then newly re-interpreted his letters P, A, K, I, S, T, A, N to now refer to Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Iran, Sindh, Tukharistan (sic), Afghanistan, and Balochistan.

The word “pak” coincidentally meant pure in Arabic, so Rahmat Ali began to speak of Muslim believers anywhere as being the “Pak” i.e. “the pure” people, and of how the national destiny of the new Pakistan should be to liberate “Pak” people everywhere, including the new India, and create a “Pak Commonwealth of Nations” stretching from Arabia to the Indies. The map he now drew placed the word “Punjab” over Jammu & Kashmir. Thus as of 1947 or so, Rahmat Ali’s crank view of history led to an Asia dominated by a “Pak” empire: However, when Rahmat Ali landed in the new country whose name had been invented by him, he was apparently placed under arrest and deported back to England immediately. In a previous visit to Sikander Hyat’s Punjab, he had been apparently assaulted. He had not been invited to the promulgation of the Lahore Resolution, which, even though it did not refer to his name Pakistan, came to be called the Pakistan Resolution.

Shunned by the officialdom of the new country which now carried the name he had invented, Rahmat Ali died in poverty and obscurity in England during an influenza epidemic in 1951; the Master of Emmanuel College paid for his funeral and was later reimbursed for this by the Government of Pakistan.

In recent years Rahmat Ali has been undergoing a restoration, and his grave at Cambridge has become a site of pilgrimage today for Pakistan’s Islamist ideologues, while his maps, writings and rantings have been reprinted in, e.g., The Nation newspaper in Pakistan as recently as February 2005.

At best, Rahmat Ali may be described as a pious and devout Muslim who was a sincere and ardent Islamist ideologue. At worst he was a deeply bigoted crank and a reactionary Muslim imperialist. His views on Hindus are not far in the level of their depravity from the views of the author of Mein Kampf on the Jews — and ironically the author of Mein Kampf had been a model for a few Hindu authors at the time who wrote with equal bigotry about the Muslims of India.

Indeed Rahmat Ali’s views against Hindus may be classified with those of other bigoted views at the time such as those against Jews or against Muslims, which may all well have been examples or models or counterfoils for one another in the crank fringes of rival ideological movements at the time.

The anti-Hindu bigotry of Rahmat Ali’s views would explain why they were anathema to Jinnah, the secular-minded constitutionalist. Like other Muslim nationalists of his time such as Attaturk, Nasser, Mossadeq or even Saud himself, Jinnah would have been embarrassed to be promoting a reactionary Islamic imperialism in that modernising era that was the middle of the 20th century.

Dr Roy along with WE James created the book Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s (Sage, Delhi, OUP, Karachi 1992). His most recent book is one edited with John Clarke, Margaret Thatcher’s Revolution: How it Happend and What it Meant (Continuum, London & New York 2005, 2006).

Posted in Balochistan, Bengal, Britain, Cambridge University, Fascists, Iqbal, Islam, Jammu & Kashmir, MA Jinnah, Pakistan's history, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Racism, Religion, World History. 6 Comments »

The Case For and Against The Satanic Verses: Evaluating Diatribe and Dialectic as Art (2001)

December 22, 2001 — drsubrotoroy

Preface 14 August 2022:

The attempted murder of #SalmanRusdhie #Rushdie deserves to be punished with all severity…
Rushdie & I had a meeting at Senate House London c 1974 when he was about 26, I 18/19. I’d done a good job as a reporter on the London Univ student paper “Sennet” (?) on a story about the Greek military coup, or revolt or whatever, and the extreme leftist demos outside the Greek embassy…. I recall a formidable bunch of bulky bearded Macedonians (they made clear they were Macedonians not Greeks) came to the paper’s office to check on what we were going to say about them as they were leaders of the leftist demo — (these, incidentally, may have been the core of the Nov 17 terrorist group later!)… I had to leave but the editor insisted I stay as Salman Rushdie (who’s he? I asked) was due in the office too after the Greek leftists left… The editor thought it would be good for me an Indian to meet Rushdie a Pakistani, with the Dec 1971 events still fresh. Rushdie charged in in due course, nattily dressed, said he had just come down from a visit to Cambridge. We were introduced by the editor who then left us to talk, tho’ there may have been some food and a meal too. Rushdie learning I was Indian, and the son of a diplomat at that, started with a vicious anti-Indian tirade; I sat thru silently assuming he was a Pakistani (which he was I think); the Dec 1971 defeat of Pakistan was still fresh; he then started a critique, perhaps a bigger critique, of Pakistan & ended saying he was in process of becoming British; the meeting ended sweetly with him saying he had a flat and a phone — both rarities back then, gave me his phone no in sweet Big Brotherly (dadagiri) fashion, invited me to call for help anytime; a few years later when I’d left London for Cambridge I did call him in London, as I needed a place to “doss” the night, but he couldn’t put me up… Decades later I found myself writing the definitive review of his most notorious book… https://www.facebook.com/notes/10157728274867285/

The Case For and Against The Satanic Verses: Evaluating Diatribe and Dialectic as Art

by Subroto Roy

June 2001, Kolkata, India. First published at www.chowk.com on December 23, 2002. First appearance in print in The Statesman Festival Volume, October 2006. (Note, April 2007: this article is an example of how the Internet age has transformed meanings: before the Internet, to be published and to be printed referred to practically simultaneous events; but this article was published on the Internet almost four years before it came to be republished in print.)

Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses is a manifold document; in reading it more than a dozen years after publication, what is brought to mind is the relation between art and criticism described by Lawrence and advertised by Leavis:

”We judge a work of art by its effect on our sincere and vital emotion, and nothing else. All the critical twiddle-twaddle about style and form, all this pseudo-scientific classifying and analysing of books in an imitation-botanical fashion, is mere impertinence and mostly dull jargon. A critic must be able to feel the impact of a work of art in all its complexity and its force. To do so, he must be a man of force and complexity himself, which few critics are. A man with a paltry, impudent nature will never write anything but paltry, impudent criticism. And a man who is emotionally educated is rare as a phoenix…”

The sincere and vital emotions most obviously provoked by Rushdie’s book are nausea, anger and irritation. It appears at first sight an abusive, incoherent masquerade of a novel with little artistic value, a mere moneymaking vehicle for a preening, self-seeking author and his publisher. The decisions of the Republics of India and Pakistan to ban it for being gratuitously offensive to the religious sentiments of millions of people, or the finding against it of blasphemy by the Islamic authorities of Iran seem understandable.

Yet such an initial response may be followed by another very different set of sincere and vital emotions. Upon reflection and a second reading, it is possible to feel exhilaration, delight, even the calm of a Shia Muslim spiritual experience from the book. These may be accompanied by a conviction that Rushdie has produced a significant work of art even if he himself remains unaware of its nature. This kind of unusual and dichotomous critical experience needs to be explained. College professors around the world have been writing theoretical essays portraying Rushdie as a “magic realist” or some such oxymoron. The truth may be more prosaic: The Satanic Verses is nothing if it is not a second, perhaps definitive, autobiographical experiment in which Rushdie has attempted to reconcile himself with his own experiences, a task in which he has achieved at best partial success. It is as if he has tried to comprehend his own life as an English-speaking Indo-Pakistani Muslim in the Western world, and in that process the words of The Satanic Verses just came tumbling out. And there is little even a bitter enemy can say about one’s search for self-knowledge, especially on matters of religious belief.

The cover says The Satanic Verses is a novel; what may be called its superficial plot amounts to something a giggling adolescent might have written for an undergraduate essay. Here is its outline:

Once there were two young Muslim boys of Bombay, Najmuddin and Chamchawalla. N. is born poor and raised in the slums; from delivering tiffins he becomes a small-time and then a major screen idol of Hindi cinema, a kind of Muslim NTR/Bachan mixture. In his profligacy he has an affair with R. who later murders her young children and commits suicide because of her unrequited love for him; N. travels in an aeroplane to England which is blown up midair by Sikh hijackers at 30,000 ft; he falls unharmed to the ground, is found on the English coast by an old woman whose lover he becomes until her death; then he returns to a lovely Jewish girlfriend who seems to have no reason to want to be with him, he returns to India, murders the Jewish girlfriend and kills himself, all along being tormented by a notion he may have invited divine wrath for having willfully eaten pork. In parallel, the other young Muslim boy, C. grows up in a privileged Bombay neighbourhood, is sexually molested by a dhoti-clad street-vendor, has peculiar and perverse parents and servants, is sent to a public school and University in England, ends up in London advertising, is on the same aeroplane which explodes in the sky, also falls unharmed to the ground and is found by the same old woman, but is taken in by British police and immigration authorities, and, most oddly, finds himself transmogrified gradually into a goat like being and then Satan himself, is forced by British police to eat his own goat-pellets, escapes to find refuge among a generous Bangladeshi family in London’s immigrant ghettos, is re-transformed into a human being again after his hatred becomes focused on a single individual, his fellow Mumbaikari, Najmuddin. C attempts to avenge himself on N. for no particular reason except jealousy, yet N. saves his life and there is supposed to be a moral of good and evil there. C. also at some point acquires a splendid English wife who divorces him — again a woman whom we see no reason to want to be with a jerk like him (though we are not told he might have wanted her for the British passport). C. finally returns to Bombay, is reconciled with his dying father, meets up with an old girlfriend, and the book ends with these two being together.

This is not “magic realism”, it is palpably poor writing. If the superficial plot suffices to make The Satanic Verses a novel, then your or my singing in the shower suffices for us to be in grand opera.

Seen as an autobiographical experiment, however, the superficial plot begins, ever so slightly, to make sense as Rushdie appears himself as both Muslim boys whose lives are traced from Bombay to London and back. He is Najmuddin to the extent he torments himself throughout for having willfully violated Muslim practice

“his mouth full of unclean meat ”(p. 31);

in his relationship with at least one of Najmuddin’s three women, the Jewish girlfriend Allie; and perhaps more generally in his having

”managed to bury his greatest talent so deep that it might easily have been lost forever, his talent, that is, for loving genuinely, deeply and without holding back, the rare and delicate gift which he had never been able to employ” (p.26)

Rushdie is Chamchawalla more obviously in having grown up in a privileged Bombay neighbourhood, been sent to school and university in England, gotten married to and divorced from an English woman named Pamela. Both Najmuddin and Chamchawalla are left with their fathers after their mothers’ early deaths, and Rushdie is original and most authentic in describing these father-son relationships where he appears to draw deeply on his own emotional life. There is a short delightful scene of him teaching his own son to ride a bicycle. Then he makes rare records of the terrible conflicts possible between fathers and adult sons:

(N.) “would understand how much the older man had resented him, and how important it was for the father to defeat the son and regain, thereby, his usurped primacy in the affections of his dead wife”. (p.19)

(C.) “wrote his father a letter full of cruelty and anger, whose violence was of the type that exists only between fathers and sons, and which differs from that between daughters and mothers in that there lurks behind it the possibility of actual, jaw-breaking fisticuffs. “(p.47)

The son returns to India to be tenderly reconciled with the emaciated dying old man from whom he has been estranged:

”Abba, I came back because I didn’t want there to be trouble between us anymore.

That doesn’t matter any more. It’s forgotten, whatever it was.”

Whatever it was. Death makes family feuds seem petty and inconsequential in retrospect. The old man is just happy to see the boy, his own life, once again. The son unexpectedly finds in himself love, devotion and respect for the old man whom he had long feared and despised:

”First one falls in love with one’s father all over again, and then one learns to look up to him, too…. He is teaching me how to die… He does not avert his eyes, but looks death right in the face…” (pp. 543 et. seq, italics original)

A child sees his parents initially as God-like beings said Sigmund Freud; an aspect of maturity arrives when the child begins to see them no longer as deities but as humans, warts and all. When Rushdie has applied himself to his own inner life and relationships with his father and his son, he delves into a vast pool of expressiveness, and, ever so briefly, discovers and establishes his artistry. His poignant reconciliation with a dying father is a small treasure.

Another episode worth notice in the superficial plot of The Satanic Verses has to do with the growth to maturity of the character of the young Bangladeshi-British adolescent, Mishal Sufyan, and her marriage to the white-fathered, Pakistani(?)-mothered Hanif Johnson. Their love signals fresh hope and new life in Britain’s grim immigrant neighborhoods filled with fear and hatred. The race riots in England in 2001 could have been taken from a chapter of The Satanic Verses. Rushdie has been a self-conscious observer here as nice boys from Rugby School don’t normally go slumming even if they are wogs themselves, yet even so the Indian preppie from Rugby or Harvard must still reconcile the continuous threads which bind him to the people cleaning the lavatories at Heathrow or pumping gas or running motels in America.

In parallel with this superficial plot, The Satanic Verses contains a theological dialectic mostly on the origins, beliefs and practices of Islam, the faith in which Rushdie was born and raised. This is practically independent of the superficial plot, or at best the two have been clumsily pasted together. The link is once more Rushdie himself. While he appears as the main protagonists Najmuddin and Chamchawalla in the superficial plot, he makes a triple appearance in the theological treatise, at three different levels of Muslim doubt or faith.

At the greatest level of scepticism, Rushdie appears as the infidel poet and satirist Baal who gives his life to the cause of an absolute artistic and intellectual freedom, mocking Prophet Muhammad and The Quran, saying he recognizes no authority except his artistic Muse:

”A poet’s work (is to) name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep. “(p. 100)

Under the sword of his Muslim captors, Baal ends with

“I’ve finished. Do what you want”;

he is beheaded but dies a spiritually free unbroken man. Rushdie may have relied on Islamic legend here though his fellow Anglo-Pakistani, the social anthropologist Akbar Ahmed, has apologetically said that as a matter of historical fact:

“The conquest of Makkah cost less than 30 lives…. The charge of those critics who accuse the Prophet of the (death) of a poet who wrote satirical verse… will not hold. An over-zealous Muslim infuriated by his verses set out to silence the poet.”

At a lesser level of scepticism or a greater level of Muslim belief, Rushdie appears in the theological dialectic as a fictional Salman Farsi, supposed to be the “calmest” (p. 107), and “most highly educated” (p. 377) of the Prophet’s intimate disciples. This character becomes in course of time a drunken apostate after starting to doubt the authenticity of The Quran as Divine Revelation, as well as the transcription of the Hadith.

As a safety measure perhaps, Rushdie put in

”Where there is no belief, there is no blasphemy” (p. 393).

But in real life the authorities of contemporary Iran were not amused or impressed by legal niceties as to whether young Salman sitting in England had renounced Islam or his Pakistani passport for a British one. In 1989 they roundly pronounced The Satanic Verses to be blasphemous to Islam and sentenced Rushdie to death in absentia, causing as we know a significant recent incident of international law.

Ironically, Rushdie`s experience since might have been scripted by himself:

”Your blasphemy, Salman, can’t be forgiven.”

In response, Salman Farsi is

”unable to muster the smallest scrap of dignity, he blubbers whimpers pleads beats his breast abases himself” (p. 387)

and escapes death only by promising to denounce Baal, the idolatrous satirist.

In real life Rushdie blubbered, whimpered, pleaded and abased himself to win a reprieve without avail. If the Iranian authorities have since reduced their hatred of him, it seems because they became bored and found him less consequential as time went by, not because of anything he said or did in repentance. In June 2001, Ayatollah Khatami, then President of Iran, said the blasphemy case was “closed”, and that Iran had always seen Rushdie’s book as part of a modern Western assault on Islam.

Yet one must be grateful the Iranian death sentence did not get carried out because there is evidence to reasonably conclude that, all things considered, Rushdie may well be innocent of blasphemous intent. Though he may be guilty of several literary crimes and misdemeanors, he may have been wrongly placed on Iran’s death row for a dozen years.

The evidence suggests that what The Satanic Verses has attempted to be is a genuine Muslim dialectic between faith and doubt — albeit one not expressed in Arabic, Farsi or Urdu to attract serious Islamic scholars, but one done in English in the manner of a Hollywood screenplay designed to attract as much hard currency as possible for Rushdie and his publisher. Commercial English comedy as hermeneutics you might say: Monty Python meets Prophet Muhammad.

That Rushdie has lacked blasphemous intent is evident from his third appearance in the theological treatise, this time as the secular Indian Muslim, Mirza Saeed Akhtar, who loves and lusts after both his sick wife, Mishal, and her new friend, the epileptic orphan woman Ayesha. The two women are dogmatic Shia Muslims, who insist on leading a vast, pious pilgrimage from central India into the Arabian Sea in the belief their faith will miraculously make the waters part and allow them to walk to Mecca.

Rushdie does not identify them as Shia Muslims but the story is based on actual events in 1981-1983 in the Naseem Fatima “Hawkes Bay” case in Pakistan. According to the sociologist Akbar Ahmed, Naseem Fatima,

“a shy, pleasant looking girl with an innocent expression on her face, who had a history of fits,”

after a series of miraculous religious experiences which were scorned by Sunni Muslims but were not inconsistent with Shia doctrine, led 38 people into the Arabian Sea at Karachi believing the waters would part and they would be transported miraculously to Shia holy sites in Karbala in Iraq.

“(The women and children locked) in five of the six trunks died. One of the trunks was shattered by the waves and its passengers survived. Those on foot also survived; they were thrown back onto the beach by the waves… The survivors were in high spirits — there was neither regret nor remorse among them. Only a divine calm, a deep ecstasy. The Karachi police in a display of bureaucratic zeal arrested the survivors. They were charged with attempting to leave the country without visas…. Rich Shias, impressed by the devotion of the survivors, paid for their journey by air for a week to and from Karbala. In Iraq, influential Shias, equally impressed, presented them with gifts, including rare copies of the Holy Quran.”

In The Satanic Verses, Rushdie has altered and transformed these facts into a rich allegorical dialectic between rationalism and scepticism on the one hand, and dogmatic faith and ecstatic religious experience on the other. The husband Mirza Saeed, representing Rushdie himself, condemns what he says is the foolishness of the faith-filled women, begs them, pleads with them to change their minds, and finally when they cannot be stopped, follows behind them in his Mercedes, collecting stragglers, hypocrites and apostates on the way. The intellectual and spiritual tension between the rationalist and believer is built up excellently. The reader is finally certain that Ayesha and the other pilgrims walk to their earthly deaths in the Arabian Sea, but is left uncertain whether the miracle may have in fact occurred even so, whether they have in fact walked into Paradise itself on the strength of their faith. It is a splendid, exhilarating and unexpected spiritual experience emerging from the book. Moreover, the Rushdie-character, though he survives the pilgrimage, tempers his scepticism by the end of his life, and eventually dies in fusion with the ghost of his love, the believer Ayesha, and, we are led to think, is finally absorbed with her into the Paradise described in The Quran.

Thus in the attempted theological treatise that is contained within The Satanic Verses,

Rushdie appears

(i) as Baal the disbelieving, mocking, satirist who gives his life for artistic freedom;

(ii) as Salman Farsi the Muslim believer who turns to apostasy; and

(iii) as Mirza Saeed Akhtar, the rationalist and sceptic who turns eventually towards Muslim faith and belief.

In making this triple appearance, Rushdie has tried to construct a genuine Muslim dialectic between scepticism and dogmatism; if the sceptical parts have outraged Muslim believers, some of his descriptions of Muslim belief and practice might do no less than add new sympathisers or converts to Islam among the heathen and infidels. It is a creative achievement for a modern English-speaking Muslim, perhaps unintentionally, to try to turn the tide of hostile opinion that exists against Islam in the English-speaking world, through a sympathetic rendering of aspects of Islam. E.g., a practice like halal, which seems cruel or at least pointless to the non-Muslim, is given new meaning by Rushdie, and made into a point of existential philosophy:

”(The Prophet)… required animals to be killed slowly, by bleeding, so that by experiencing their deaths to the full they might arrive at an understanding of the meaning of their lives, for it is only at the moment of death that living creatures understand that life has been real, and not a sort of dream.“(p. 376).

It is only at the moment of death that life may make its fullest sense. Such would be to look back at life from the point of death; T. S. Eliot in Burnt Norton seemed to speak of looking forward at life all the way to the point of death:

“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

…Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.”

Leavis drew attention to the religious meaning assigned to these lines by the critic D. W. Harding:

“For the man convinced of spiritual values, life is a coherent pattern in which the ending has its due place, and, because it is part of a pattern, itself leads into the beginning.”

The Satanic Verses is preoccupied with the possibility of such patterns of birth, death and rebirth, conflict and its resolution, tension and its relaxation.

“To be born again … first you have to die” (p. 1)

Rushdie was raised a Muslim exposed to the university of critical thought and dialogue; as such he owed himself a responsibility to examine Islam to determine whether he would render it his individual allegiance, not by fiat or blind faith but by the canons of reasonableness. In The Satanic Verses he has traversed a range of logical possibilities between disbelief, doubt and faith in Islam. On the strength of the Mirza Saeed Akhtar character in the book, he may have been truthful in declaring himself a genuine believing Muslim who was innocent of the charges of blasphemy against him. He needs to be absolved of the charges, and his conviction by the Iranians set aside, as in effect has been done by Iran’s President Ayatollah Khatami in June 2001. Here ends the case for The Satanic Verses.

The case against Rushdie however must continue. He has produced a few ounces of artistic and philosophical gold but these are contained in mountains of muck, which remain to be disposed of. Rushdie shows himself emotionally alive and expressive as a son to his father and a father to his son, as well as a keen social observer of Britain and a thoughtful and philosophical Muslim believer; but at the same time he also reveals himself immature, dishonest and cowardly as a writer. These aspects are summarily revealed in Rushdie’s desire to be gratuitously abusive or offensive towards a wide range of chosen targets, from the memory of Prophet Muhammad to the innocuous Chinese.

For example, for no discernible reason except to show that little Salman can say bad words and get away with it, a Mallory-like ghost on Mt. Everest is made to converse about “Goddamn Chinese” and “Little yellow buggers”. Then an implausible Sikh woman terrorist (named after the Delhi journalist Tavleen Singh though reminiscent more of Leila Khaled, the pioneer Palestinian hijacker) leads Khalistanis to hijack an Air India jumbo (numbered 420) and explode it mid-air.

In June 1985 an Air India jumbo did explode mid-air killing all 329 lives on board, and it took painstaking work by the Canadian police to arrest and prosecute (unsuccessfully) the major suspects who were Canadian Sikhs. The victims’ families whose tragedies are trivialized in The Satanic Verses join the list of people Rushdie has wished to pointlessly upset by his personal fantasy of two survivors falling unharmed from that aircraft.

Then, Rushdie’s Khalistanis go about yelling

”those mother-f…..g Americans and sister-f…..g British”,

when in fact Khalistan seemed plausible mostly to North American and British Sikhs in Vancouver or California who (unlike perhaps Rushdie himself at the time he authored the book), tend not to be abusive of America or Britain in that kind of way. The cursing merely shows how our purportedly great British writer keeps despoiling the possibility of his own artistry.

Hindus and India come in for special abuse in Rushdie’s worldview. India is that rather amusing and grotesque country

”of hundreds of millions of believers…. in which, to this day, the human population outnumbers the divine by less than three to one,”

where a Muslim NTR/Bachan cinema star can become

“the most acceptable, instantly recognisable, face of the Supreme” (p. 17).

A Hindu character

”coming as she did from a polytheistic tradition”

is considered

”plainly… incapable” (p. 334)

of comprehending the scriptures of the Semitic faiths.

Rushdie reveals himself incompetent here in his purported role of theologian, as he has failed to see that the secular outlook of Hinduism and its heterodox descendants like Buddhism does not imply belief in more than one god. Rushdie is not alone in this prejudice for the most venerable Oxford English Dictionary itself announces

“Hinduism is the polytheistic religion of the Hindus”.

In fact, Indian traditions always have freely allowed questioning whether there is any God at all, let alone whether there is one God or many gods. I.e., there always has been space freely available within orthodox Hinduism and its heterodox offshoots for all manner of religious scepticism, including nihilism and pyrrhonism. This is highly problematic for a believing member of any of the Semitic faiths like Rushdie, or the author of the entry on Hinduism in the Oxford English Dictionary. Thus even Pope John Paul VI said Buddhism is not a religion in his sense of what a religion must be, namely, a doctrine entailing belief in God.

The Hindu, or at least the philosophical Hindu, is very troublesome to all others because he is somehow able to accommodate all of them within his own folds.

“You want to worship the sun, the seas, the mountains, rivers, trees, snakes or stones as God Immanent?; that’s fine with me,”

he says to the animist.

“You think there is no God as such?; that’s cool”,

he says to the Buddhist.

“You’re telling me Jesus of Nazareth was God’s incarnated Son?; okay that’s great, I like that,”

he says to the Christian.

“You’re telling me the Holy Quran was revealed by Al-Lah to Prophet Muhammad near Makkah?; I’ll accept that,”

he says to the Muslim. And so on. The Hindu’s all-inclusive catholicity can drive other believers up the wall, especially those closest to him like Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs who may most urgently want to differentiate themselves from Hindu practice.

Rushdie momentarily accepts the Hindu view when Najmuddin

”is often filled with resentment by the non-appearance, in his persecuting visions, of the One who is supposed to have the answers, He never turns up, the one who kept away when I was dying, when I needed needed (sic) him. The one it’s all about, Allah Ishvar God. Absent as ever while we writhe and suffer in his name” (p. 113)

Here Rushdie momentarily acknowledges his secular Indian childhood as well as his Christian schooling about Christ on the Cross. But mostly he has taken the easy path of branding the Hindu a rather silly polytheistic idolater or animist. There is a reminder of the destruction of religious idols by the new Muslims in pre-Islamic Mecca (Jahilia). Then there is a long development of the wickedness of the character of the chief idolater, the female Hind. The real Hind was a foe turned convert of Prophet Muhammad; Rushdie’s Hind converts, is forgiven by Prophet Muhammad, then secretly continues as an idolatrous witch who plots and causes the Prophet’s demise. Her name “Hind” is the Urdu/Persian name for India and the root of “Hindu”, so it is possible Rushdie’s years as a Pakistani have led him to absorb some of the views prevalent in that country about Hindus and Hindustan being implacable foes of Islam.

Then, Rushdie makes pornographic allusions to Ganesh and Hanuman, and a pointed reference to

”these Shiv Sena bastards in control”

of contemporary Bombay. A Brahmin and an “Untouchable” (there can be no Harijans or Dalits in Rushdie’s British world) seem to convert to Islam only to retract, while pious Muslim pilgrims are attacked by the wicked VHP and RSS in scenes Rushdie might have lifted from Attenborough’s Gandhi. No mention here of East Pakistan, Yahya Khan, Tikka Khan or Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto — just

“Bungleditch”

for Bangladesh. In Rushdie`s view, the ominous forces of Hindu nationalism (the folks who gave him a visa to finally visit India in 2000) are to be kept at bay only by arm-in-arm socialism. It all amounts to a rather stale politically correct ideology fashionable in the 1970s, which crashed with the Berlin Wall one year after The Satanic Verses was published. Rushdie, a one-time child citizen of India, knows in his middle age next to nothing about modern Indian society or its political economy, yet apparently longs to prove his correct Limousine Socialism credentials to his Western publishers and clientele. He keeps putting his thumb in the pan.

He also has been cowardly. Living in Britain, he did not set out to write a modern diatribe against all religious traditions he had encountered which might have amounted to a nihilism or pyrrhonism worth examining. Jews and Christians are conspicuous by their absence from his target-list, allowing him to duck away from the savage criticism he would have received from within the Judeao-Christian countries where he has led his adult life. The Satanic Verses has been received with considerable applause there, and earned him a lot of money. The few characters identified as Jews in the book (Mimi, Cohen, his wife, and daughter) are all normal and sympathetically drawn (Cohen is even made a Holocaust survivor who survived Nazi “monsters” but now commits suicide). There is one identified Christian, who, consistent with Rushdie’s ideology of Limousine Socialism, is made a comical American creationist who bites off his own tongue in fear during the hijacking.

The Satanic Verses was banned in India and Pakistan after its publication; but had Rushdie attacked Jewish or mainstream Christian beliefs and characters with the same kind of parody he hurls at Muslim and Hindu beliefs and practices, he likely would not have been published at all in the West, drying up his dollar-income.

It was simply too risky for Salman Rushdie to be as offensive towards Jews and Christians in Britain or America as he has been to Muslims and Hindus in India or Pakistan. Much easier and more lucrative to write “Monty Python meets Prophet Muhammad” or some Peter-Sellers pidgin Indian English dialogue or dig up some dowry-deaths from reading the Indian newspapers. Goes down well with the people who matter. Fits in with their own post-Imperial pretensions about the state of the wogs today. Even better that the Chief Wog himself is saying so. That has been the principal point made by the Iranian authorities against Rushdie, as for example when Ayatollah Khattami said in June 2001 in “closing” the blasphemy case, that Iran always took The Satanic Verses to be a part of the Western assault on Islam.

Indeed Rushdie’s single worst and most pointless example of offensiveness has to do with his distortion of the memory of Prophet Muhammad himself.

Muhammad (572-632 AD) was without doubt one of the greatest men of history, as may be measured by his vast impact on human civilization. His greatness was marked by a magnificent humility; at his death, it was famously said:

“If you are worshippers of Muhammad, know that he is dead. If you are worshippers of God, know that God is living and does not die”;

indicating the total self-effacement of the man to his mission. Arabic is the language of Islam, but even in Rushdie’s chosen language of English there has been a vast literature over the centuries on Prophet Muhammad’s life and example. One of the best known is Carlyle’s fully sympathetic 1842 account , which made the message of the Prophet’s religious experience one of universal import well beyond Muslim ontological beliefs:

“The great Mystery of Existence… glared in upon (Muhammad), with its terrors, with its splendours; no hearsays could hide that unspeakable fact , “Here am I!”. Such sincerity… has in very truth something of divine. The word of such a man is a Voice direct from Nature’s own Heart. Men do and must listen to that as nothing else; all else is wind in comparison.”

Carlyle quoted Goethe:

“If this be Islam, do we not all live in Islam?”

And Carlyle told the stories of how Muhammad could not abide by his own severe faith when he wept over the dead body of an early disciple:

“You see a friend weeping over his friend”;

and of how the young beautiful Ayesha once tried to get Muhammad to compare her favourably to his deceased wife and first disciple the widow Khadija, and how Muhammad had denied her:

”She believed in me when none else would believe. In the whole world I had but one friend and she was that!”

In face of such an enormous wealth of rich legendary material to select from to write about Prophet Muhammad, what does Salman Rushdie, purportedly a major British-educated 20th Century Muslim novelist, choose to do? He invents a pointless sequence of pornographic allusions and events to do with how a Mecca whorehouse increases its business! It makes highly offensive reading, not just to Muslim believers but to decency and the truth of Muhammad’s life; rather like the person who associated Christ on the Cross with a urinal and claimed artistic freedom for himself, outraging Christian opinion in the United States of America a few years ago. Why do it, one may ask? Where is the art in it? Where could the art in it possibly be? Why should it not be seen as merely base and revolting?

In putting together then, the case for and against The Satanic Verses, it may be seen how Rushdie’s artistry might have made him a great writer and also how his vast incorrigible faults have kept him permanently from becoming one. To draw a contrast, in The Brothers Karamasov one hundred years ago, Dostoevsky wrote perhaps the definitive internal critique of Christianity, of how Jesus Christ had made true Christian practice impossibly difficult, of how Christianity demanded too much of mankind, more than man’s nature could possibly achieve. Lawrence said of it:

“As always in Dostoevsky, the amazing perspicacity is mixed with ugly perversity. Nothing is pure. His wild love for Jesus is mixed with perverse and poisonous hate of Jesus: his moral hostility to the devil is mixed with secret worship of the devil. Dostoevsky is always perverse, always impure, always an evil thinker and a marvellous seer.”

Rushdie would have liked a similar comparison in respect of Prophet Muhammad and Islam; but he does not deserve it because he lacks the honesty possessed by the great writers while he possesses a greed and cupidity they disowned. As a novel, The Satanic Verses is about as far from The Brothers Karamasov as the music of David Bowie or Boy George or Madonna is from the music of Tchaikovsky or Beethoven. Superficially, it paints nauseous grotesque absurd accounts of incoherent events, mostly with cartoons and caricatures where real people should have been, forcing the reader to take a most unpleasant journey largely because Rushdie`s deliberately cultivated notoriety pleads for his book to be read. The nausea comes to be suspended for a page here, a handful of pages there, when Rushdie demonstrates that a splendid artistry does exist within him even if he finds it impossibly difficult to muster enough discipline to maintain it. That other Indian writers have been imitating his style in the last few decades often without his substance may merely go to show how far critical editorial standards have collapsed in the book-publishing industry.

It is only when The Satanic Verses is seen as a tortured self-exploration by Rushdie to reconcile his Western life with his Islamic upbringing that it begins to become sensible and comprehensible. Madonna or Boy George’s music is not that of Beethoven and everyone has forgotten it already while no one forgets Beethoven, but it is still a kind of music. Similarly, no one forgets Anna Karenina or Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor and everyone will forget Salman Rushdie, but even so his work still needs to be tested for the presence of significant art. That there is some art in it, perhaps hitherto undiscovered, has been the purpose of this essay to reveal.

References

Akbar Ahmed, Discovering Islam; Pakistan Society

Thomas Carlysle, Heroes and Hero Worship

D. H. Lawrence, Phoenix

F. R. Leavis, The Living Principle; Valuation in Criticism (G. Singh ed.)

Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

SUBROTO ROY’s works include Philosophy of Economics: On the Scope of Reason in Economic Inquiry (Routledge, London & New York, International Library of Philosophy, 1989, 1991).

A General Theory of Globalization & Modern Terrorism (2001)

November 16, 2001 — drsubrotoroy

A General Theory of Globalization & Modern Terrorism with Special Reference to September 11

Subroto Roy

This was a keynote address to the Council of Asian Liberals & Democrats meeting on November 16 2001, Manila, Philippines, and was published in Singapore in 2002, Alan Smith, James Gomez & Uwe Johannen (Eds.) September 11 & Political Freedom: Asian Perspectives. It was republished in the West on January 26 2004 on the University of Buckingham website, when the author was Wincott Visiting Professor of Economics there. It came to be followed a few months later by a public lecture at the University, titled “Science, Religion, Art and the Necessity of Freedom: Reason’s Response to Islamism” which has also been published here.

1. Globalization Through a Wide-Angle Lens
2. Suicide, Terrorism & Political Protest
3. Science, Religion, Art, and the Necessity of Freedom
4. Asia’s Modern Dilemmas: Named Social Life or Anonymous Markets
5. September 11: the Collapse of the Global Conversation
6. Envoi

Synopsis: The world after September 11 2001 has seemed a very bewildering place — as if all liberal notions of universal reason, freedom, tolerance and the rule of law since the Enlightenment have been proven a lie overnight, deserving only to be flushed away in the face of a resurgence of ancient savageries. One aim of this essay is to show this would be too hasty an assessment; another is to provide a general theory of “globalization”, a notion which often has seemed lost for meaning.

1. Globalization Through a Wide-Angle Lens
The perpetrators of September 11 subjectively acted in the name of Islam. It would have surprised them to know of the great respect with which the religious experience of Prophet Muhammad (572-632 AD) had been treated in the English language by Carlyle in 1842:

“The great Mystery of Existence… glared in upon (Muhammad), with its terrors, with its splendours; no hearsays could hide that unspeakable fact, ‘Here am I!’. Such sincerity… has in very truth something of divine. The word of such a man is a Voice direct from Nature’s own Heart. Men do and must listen to that as nothing else; all else is wind in comparison.” 1

Carlyle told the story of Muhammad once not abiding by his own severe faith when he wept for an early disciple saying “You see a friend weeping over his friend”; and of how, when the young beautiful Ayesha tried to make him compare her favourably to his deceased wife and first disciple the widow Khadija, Muhammad had denied her:

“She believed in me when none else would believe. In the whole world I had but one friend and she was that!”

Carlyle suggested the simple humanity and humility of Muhammad’s life and example, and even an intersection between Islamic belief and modern science (“a Voice direct from Nature’s own Heart”). He quoted Goethe: “If this be Islam, do we not all live in Islam?”, suggesting there might be something of universal import in Muhammad’s message well beyond specifically Muslim ontological beliefs.
In general, the life or words of a spiritual leader of mankind like Muhammad, Christ, or Buddha, as indeed of discoverers of the physical world like Darwin or Einstein, or explorers of secular human nature like Aristotle, Adam Smith or Karl Marx, may be laid claim to by all of us whether we are explicit adherents, disciples or admirers or not. No private property rights may be attached upon their legacies, but rather these remain open to be discussed freely and reasonably by everyone.

A second example is more proximate. It is of M. K. Gandhi the Indian sitting in South Africa reflecting on the Christian ideas of Thoreau the American and Tolstoy the Russian, synthesizing these with Hindu-Jain notions of “ahimsa” or “non-hatred” into a technique of political action to be applied eventually to end British rule in India; then transferred a decade after Gandhi’s assassination to the U. S. Civil Rights Movement led by Martin Luther King Jr, and later, after King’s assassination, back to Nelson Mandela languishing in prison, who ends apartheid and brings in its place a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” in South Africa.2
Construing globalization to mean merely Westernization of the East has been a commonplace error, leading to a narrow cramped perspective and reflecting ignorance of both East and West. There are countless examples of the Easternization of the West including the exportation of Judaism and Christianity, and of Indian and Arab mathematics and astronomy in the Middle Ages. There have been and will be countless cross-fertilizations between East and West, let aside the subtle influences of Africa and other cultures and continents on art, music, dance, sports and beliefs around the world. In general, whenever an idea, practice, institution or artifact transmits itself from its origin elsewhere, we have a little piece of globalization taking place. The speed and volume of such transmissions may have vastly increased in recent decades thanks to the growth of modern transport and communications but that is not to say some of the most important transmissions have not already taken place or may not yet take place. Ours like every generation may be biased in favour of its own importance.

2. Suicide, Terrorism & Political Protest
Global transmissions can be as soft and salubrious as Americans learning to enjoy football which is not American football. But they can be grim and desperate too — like the transfer of “suicide bombing” techniques from Sri Lanka’s civil war to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; or the idea of schoolboys firing automatic weapons germinating from A Clockwork Orange to actuality thirty years later in an American or a German school.

In fact the Thoreau-Tolstoy-Gandhi techniques of civil disobedience or a hunger-strike inflicting pain or sacrifice on oneself to show an adversary his folly, slide naturally to a limit of suicide as political protest — as when the Buddhist Superior Thich Quang Duc, protesting religious persecution by Diem’s regime in South Vietnam, immolated himself on June 2 1963, soon to be followed by other Buddhist monks and nuns, leading to the end of the Diem regime and start of the American war in Vietnam. Six years and half a world away, Jan Palach, on January 19 1969, immolated himself in Wenceslas Square protesting the apathy of his countrymen to the Soviet invasion that had ended the Prague Spring. Suicide as political protest still abides by the Socratic injunction that it would be better to suffer wrong than to wrong others.3

Terrorism by suicide killing crosses that line — over into a world of utilitarian calculation on the part of the perpetrator that his or her suicide as political protest would be inadequate, and must be accompanied by causing death among the perceived adversary as well.

Gandhi, King and Mandela each had conservative, accommodative currents on one side, as well as radical dissident or parallel terrorist offshoots on the other, and we will return to ask why no non-violent political movement seems identifiable of which September 11 was the violent terrorist offshoot.

Where political protest is absent from the motivation, and killing the adversary becomes the aim with suicide merely the means, as with Japan’s kamikaze pilots, we have passed into a realm of international war between organized authorities in contrast with mere terrorism against some organized authority. A suicide-killer may of course subjectively believe himself/herself to be making a political protest though his/her principals may see him/her as an instrument of war.

Also, if it is correct to distinguish between kamikaze pilots and the perpetrators of September 11 by absence and presence of political protest in their motivation, terrorism typically arises as rebellion against some organized authority, and is to be contrasted precisely with war between organized authorities. “State terrorism” can then only refer to an organized authority being repressive to the point of using its power to cause terror, physical or mental, upon a people or individuals under its control. “State-sponsored” terrorism would be something else again, where an organized authority assists a terroristic rebellion against some other organized authority, amounting effectively to an undeclared international war.4

3. Science, Religion, Art, and the Necessity of Freedom
The question arises whether anything in human nature or society may be identified to help analyse, explain or predict the myriad transmissions of globalization taking place, whether salubrious or not. If such a theory claims to be “general”, it will need to be wide enough to try to explain the motivation for modern terrorism and September 11 2001 in particular.

We could start with the observable fact there is and has been only one human species, no matter how infinitely variegated its specimens across space and time. All have a capacity to reason as well as a capacity to feel a range of emotions in their experience of the world, something we share to an extent with other forms of life as well. And every human society, in trying to ascertain what is good for itself, finds need to reason together about how its members may be best able to survive, grow, reproduce and flourish. This process of common reasoning and reflection vitally requires freedom of inquiry and expression of different points of view. The lone voice in dissent needs to be heard or at least not suppressed just in case it is the right voice counselling against a course which might lead to catastrophe for all. To reason together implies a true or right answer exists to be found, and the enterprise of truth-seeking thus requires freedom as a logical necessity. It takes guts to be a lone dissenter, and all societies have typically praised and encouraged the virtues of courage and integrity, and poured shame on cowardice, treachery or sycophancy. Similarly, since society is a going concern, justice and fairplay in the working of its institutions is praised and sought after while corruption, fraud or other venality is condemned and punished.

A flourishing society may be viewed as one advancing in its scientific knowledge, its artistic achievements, and its religious or philosophical consciousness. Each of these dimensions needs to be in appropriate balance in relation to the others during the process of social and economic growth, and each has a necessity for its own aspect of freedom.

Science is our public knowledge regardless of culture or nationality gained of ourselves as members of the world and the Universe, and has been the most important common adversary of all religions. Who or what is homo sapiens relative to other living species? What is the difference between plants and animals? What constitutes a living organism? What is the structure of a benzene ring or a carbon atom or any atom or subatomic particle? What is light, sound, gravity? What can we say about black holes or white dwarfs? When did life begin on Earth and when is it likely to end? Are we alone in the Universe in being the only form of self-conscious life? Such questions have been asked and attempted to be answered in their own way by all peoples of the world, whether they are primitive tribes in hidden forests or sophisticated rocket scientists in hidden laboratories. Our best common understanding of them constitutes the state of scientific knowledge at a given time.
At the bar of reason, all religions lose to science wherever they try to compete on science’s home grounds, namely, the natural or physical world. If a religious belief happens to imply a material object can be in two places at the same time, that something can be made out of nothing, that the Sun and planets go around the Earth, that if you offer a sacrifice the rains will be on time, then it is destined to be falsified by experience. Science has done a lot of its work in the last few centuries, while the religions pre-date this expansion so their physical premises may have remained those of the science understood in their time. In all questions where religions try to take on the laws of scientific understanding head on, they do and must lose, and numerous factual claims made by all religions will disappear in the fierce and unforgiving heat of the crucible of scientific reasoning and evidence.
With the enormous growth of science, some scientists have gone to the limit of declaring no religious belief can possibly survive — that we are after all made up of dust and atoms alone, that there is no real difference between a mechanical talking doll and a gurgling baby who has just discovered her hands and feet.

Yet reasonable religious belief, action and experience does exist and may need to make its presence felt. Religion may not battle science and expect to win on science’s home ground but can and does win where science has nothing and can have nothing to say. It has been reasonable everywhere for men or women faced with death or personal tragedy to turn to religion for strength, courage or comfort. Such would be a point where religion offers something to life on which science has nothing of interest to say. These include the ultimate questions of life or death or the “Mystery of Existence” itself, in Carlyle’s term.

In fact the ultra-scientific prejudice fails ultimately to be reasonable enough, and is open to a joint and decisive counter-attack by both the religious believer and the artist. Modern science has well established that our small planet orbits an unexceptional member of an unexceptional galaxy. Copernicus by this started the era of modern science and began the end of the grip on Western culture of astrology, which was based on a geocentric Ptolomaic worldview (many Asian cultures like India and perhaps China still remain in that grip).

Yet the pre-modern geocentrism contained a subtle truth which has formed the foundation of both art and religion: to the best of scientific knowledge to this day, Earth is the centre of the Universe inasmuch as it is only here that reason and intelligence and consciousness have come to exist, that there is such a thing as the power to think and the power to love.5

We are, as far as anyone knows, quite alone in having the ability to understand ourselves and to be conscious of our own existence. The great galaxies, black holes and white dwarfs are all very impressive, but none of them is aware of its own existence or capable of the thought or love of any human baby or for that matter the commonest street dog.

What responsibility arises for human beings because of the existence of this consciousness? That is the common and reasonable question addressed by both religion and art, on which science is and must remain silent. We may come to know through science that life has existed for x million years and is likely to be extinguished in y million more years, but we do not know why it arose at all, or what responsibility devolves on those beings, namely ourselves, who have consciousness and reason to comprehend their own existence in the Universe.
D. H. Lawrence meant to raise this when he said the novel was a greater invention than Galileo’s telescope. Great painters, composers, or other artists can be imagined saying something similar. Art is the expression of life, and human cultures, like plants, may be fresh and vigourous with life or decadent and doomed to death. The society which both recognizes and comprehends its own artistic traditions through reasonable evaluation while encouraging new shoots of artistic creativity, will be one with a vibrant cultural life; the society incapable of evaluating its own art self- critically enough will be likely also to kill new creativity from within itself, and become vulnerable to a merger or takeover.

Science, religion and art each vitally requires freedom in order to thrive. In art, the function of reason arises in critical evaluation of literature, paintings, cinema, drama, music, dance, architecture and other aspects of aesthetics. Swimming against a full tide of majority opinion here often may be the right thing to do. The critic F. R. Leavis spoke of the importance of there being an educated public to maintain serious cultural standards; he meant that the freedom to be vigourously critical, often against shallow entrenched coterie opinions, may be the only safeguard preventing artistic or cultural standards from collapse. In science, the activity of reasoning whether in public with one another or privately within oneself, dispels scientific illusions (like astrology) and so enlarges the area occupied by a common empirical understanding. Freedom is logically necessary here to keep potential avenues towards the truth open; it extends also to protecting through tolerance those factual beliefs which may be manifestly false — it may be a crime to steal or commit murder but it is not a crime to hold erroneous factual beliefs about the world as such (e.g. astrology is wrong because Copernicus is right, but it would be illiberal to jail people for believing in astrology.) Such a need for freedom of belief and experience, as well as the tolerance of dissent, becomes most obvious in religion, where the stupendous task facing all human beings is of attempting to unravel the “Mystery of Existence”. The scope of these ontological questions, unanswered and unanswerable by science, is so vast it would be only wise to allow the widest search for answers to take place, across all possible sources and religious faiths, wherever the possibility of an insight into any of these subtle truths may arise. Perhaps that is why some solitary thinkers have sought to experience all the great religions in their own lifetimes, sometimes by deliberate conversion from one faith to the next.

A flourishing society, then, would be one which grows along the three planes of science, religion and art under conditions of freedom. And such a notion may be measured at different scales of social life. It starts with the family as the author of Anna Karenina knew in its famous opening sentence: “All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. It could then move to flourishing tribes, neighborhoods or local communities, to flourishing towns, provinces, or whole nations. At any of these levels, the flourishing society is one which inhales deeply the fresh air of natural science, and so sees its knowledge of the material world grow by leaps and bounds; it encourages religious and philosophical discussions and tolerance so does not fail to comprehend its own purpose of being; and it lives creatively and self-critically in trying to improve the expressiveness of its artistic achievements. Such a society would be self-confident enough to thrive in a world of global transmissions of ideas, practices, institutions and artifacts. Even if it was small in economic size or power relative to others, it would not be fearful of its own capacity to absorb what is valuable or to reject what is worthless from the rest of the world. To absorb what is valuable from outside is to supercede what may be less valuable at home; to reject what is worthless from outside is to appreciate what may be worthwhile at home. Both require faculties of critical and self-critical judgement, and the flourishing society will be one which possesses these qualities and exercises them with confidence.

4. Asia’s Modern Dilemmas: Named Social Life or Anonymous Markets
Actual societies, whether small like families or large like nations, in East or West, now or in the past, typically display these qualities in relative balance, excess, or shortage.6 Broadly speaking, throughout the vast span of Asia, there has been unstinting admiration over the last two hundred years for the contribution of the modern West to art, architecture and the growth of scientific knowledge. Where it has come to be known and applied, there has been admiration for liberal Western political thought; while ancient Asian nations which hastily imported ideologies like fascism and communism have lived to regret it. Western political morality at its finest derives from the philosophy of Immanuel Kant that rational beings recognise one another’s autonomy and treat one another as ends in themselves, not as means towards each other’s ends. 7 We see this in action today in for example the cordial relations between the USA and Canada, or between North America and Europe, or in recent attempts at European integration.

Asian nationalists in the 20th Century struggled to try to establish individual autonomous national identities, as the West had done in the 18th and 19th centuries. Asian nationalism represented an unwillingness to be treated as mere means towards the ends of Western nations, something we still see today when country B is used to counter A, then C used to counter B, then D used to counter C, etc in the old imperial manner of divide and rule This remains a serious problem of international relations but is something Asia can resolve independently by seeking to create for herself free societies which flourish in science, religion and the arts which would then be robust, self-confident and autonomous enough to decline to be used as means towards others’ ends. Furthermore, Asian societies in some respects all resemble one another and pre-modern Western societies more than they do the contemporary West. These pre-modern societies were ones in which a person was identified by rights and obligations flowing from the place he or she came to occupy through inheritance or brave achievement, and centred around the loyalty of friendship and kinship, as well as fidelity of the household. The relationships between the sexes, between generations, between friends, all these across Asia today may still perhaps resemble one another and the pre-modern West more than they do some trends in the contemporary West. History and identity continue to predominate our cultures in Asia: everyone is someone’s son or daughter, someone’s brother or sister or friend or relative, everyone is from some place and is of some age; and every deed has a history to it which everyone knows about or wants to talk about.

In contrast, the modern Western financial economics which the present author teaches his students, describes a world of anonymous “efficient markets” with no memory; where anyone can thrive as long as he or she brings something of value to trade; where all information needed to determine prices tomorrow is contained in today’s prices and events; where nothing from yesterday is necessary to determine anything in the future; where the actual direction of price-change is random and cannot be consistently foretold, so we cannot in general make any prediction which will lead to profit without risk. We are to imagine a large number of players in such a market, each with only a tiny bit of market-power itself, and none able to move the terms of trade on its own. Each of these players then, according to the textbooks, seizes every chance to improve his or her own position regardless of all else, he or she will “buy low” and “sell high” whatever and whenever possible, until price differences between identical assets vanish and no extra profit remains to be squeezed out from anything. Such briefly is the pure theory of the efficient market economy which one teaches as an economist. One tells one’s students it is a good thing, and it is to be found, if anywhere in the best international financial markets, and that what globalization refers to is the whole world becoming like one big efficient marketplace.8

Yet, privately, Asia may have watched with dismay the near-collapse of family and social life which has sometimes accompanied the modern prosperity and technological advancement. The war in Vietnam brought obvious physical destruction to parts of Asia but may also have had more subtle corrosive long-term effects on the social fabric of the West. If there has been something liberal and humane about Western politics while Asian politics have been cruel and oppressive, there may also be something stable and chaste about traditional Asian family life while modern Western societies have sometimes seemed vapid and dissolute. Specifically, if it is fair to say there has been too little autonomy experienced by women and children in many Asian societies, it may be fair as well to observe a surfeit of choices may have arisen in some Western societies, greater than many women and children there may privately wish for. How does a society find its right balance on the question of the autonomy, modesty and protection of family life and other social relationships? The divorce courts of the ultra-modern world are places of deep misery for everyone except the lawyers involved in the trade, and as some Asian leaders have observed, something the globalization of Asia could well seek to avoid. Thus the dilemma faced by many Asians today may be how to absorb the efficiency of markets and sound governance of liberal political institutions, without the kind of private social collapse that seems to have occurred in many ultramodern societies, nor the kind of loss of political sovereignty against which Asian nationalists had struggled during the age of imperialism. We may now see how far this brief but general theory of globalization may be applied in explaining the bewildering events of September 11 2001.

5. September 11 : the Collapse of the Global Conversation
Words are also deeds while deeds may also convey meaning.9 The words and deeds of the perpetrators of September 11 2001, and of the nation-states organized against them since that date, are both components of a complex and subtle global conversation taking place as to the direction of our common future.
In earlier times, Gandhi, King and Mandela each led successful non-violent political protests of “non-white” peoples against “white” organized authorities. Their protests assumed a level of tolerance arising out of mutual respect between rebel and authority. None was a totalitarian revolutionary out to destroy his adversary in toto but rather each intended to preserve and nurture many aspects of the existing order. Each had first become the master of the (Christian?) political idiom of his adversary and was willing and able to employ this idiom to demonstrate the selfcontradiction of his opponent, who was typically faced with a charge of hypocrisy, of maintaining both x and its contrary ~x and so becoming devoid of meaning. Such political conversations of words and deeds required time and patience, and the movements of Gandhi, King and Mandela each took decades to fructify during the 20th Century. They had more conservative accommodative currents on one side, and more impatient radical terroristic offshoots on the other.

All such aspects seem absent from September 11 and its aftermath, which seems at first sight sui generis. No patient non-violent political protest movement can be identified of which September 11 was a violent terroristic offshoot or parallel. Tolerance has not merely vanished but been replaced by panic, mutual fear and hatred. Violence appears as the first and not last recourse of political discussion. The high speed of the modern world almost demands a winner to be declared instantly in conflicts with subtle and unobvious roots, and the only way to seem to win at speed is by perpetrating the largest or most dramatic amount of violence or cruelty. The world after September 11 2001 has seemed a very bewildering place — as if all liberal notions of universal reason, freedom, tolerance and the rule of law since the Enlightenment have been proven a lie overnight, deserving only to be flushed away in face of a resurgence of ancient savageries.

But this would be too hasty an assessment. The global conversation clearly collapsed very badly from the time of e.g. Carlyle’s effort in 1842 to understand Islam’s legacy to the point of September 11 2001 being carried out against the United States or Western civilisation in general in Islam’s name. Even so, the universal liberal virtues of patience, tolerance and common reasoning can still find use here — in identifying possible deep, long-term historical factors which may have accumulated or congregated together to cause such a crime to take place.
One such historical factor has been technological and economic: the invention and immense use of the internal combustion engine throughout the 20th Century, coupled with discovery of petroleum beneath the sands of Arabia — all of which has made the material prosperity of the modern West depend, in the current state of technology, on this link not becoming ruptured. A second and independent factor has been the history of Christian Europe’s alternating persecution and emancipation of the Jewish people, which leads in due course to the Balfour declaration of 1919 and, following the Nazi Holocaust, to the creation of modern Israel among the Arabic- speaking peoples. The history between Christianity and Judaism is one in which the Arabic-speaking peoples were largely passive bystanders. Indeed, they may have been almost passive bystanders in creation of their own nation-states as well — for a third historical factor must be the lack of robust development of modern political and economic institutions among them, with mechanisms of political expression and accountability often having remained backward perhaps more so than in many other parts of Asia.

The end of World War I saw not only Balfour’s declaration but also Kitchener, Allenby and T. E. Lawrence literally designing or inventing new nationstates from areas on a desert-map:

“Our aim was an Arab Government, with foundations large and native enough to employ the enthusiasm and self-sacrifice of the rebellion, translated into terms of peace. We had to … carry that ninety percent of the population who had been too solid to rebel, and on whose solidity the new State must rest…. In ten words, (Allenby) gave his approval to my having impertinently imposed Arab Governments… upon the chaos of victory…”

“(The secret Arab societies) were pro-Arab only, willing to fight for nothing but Arab independence; and they could see no advantage in supporting the Allies rather than the Turks, since they did not believe our assurances that we would leave them free. Indeed, many of them preferred an Arabia united by Turkey in miserable subjection, to an Arabia divided up and slothful under the easier control of several European powers in spheres of influence.” 10

Beginning with the Allied-induced Arab revolt against the Turks, the classic imperial doctrine of “balance of powers” or “divide and rule” has seemed to continue to be applied in rather more subtle diplomatic form up until the present: with post-Mossadeq Iran against any incipient Arab nationalism, then with Iraq against post-Revolutionary Iran, then against Iraq in the Gulf War of 1991. It is only during and after the Gulf War that Osama Bin Laden, as a totalitarian revolutionary, arose as an adversary of the West.

Throughout these decades, little or no spontaneous cosmopolitan political conversation seems to have occurred from which a mature, sustained indigenous Arab or other Muslim nationalism may have arisen as the basis for nation-states, as had done e.g. with Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian or Vietnamese nationalism.11

From 1919 to 1945, the global conversation became preoccupied with other matters, and from 1945 to the end of the Cold War, with yet other matters again. While the three long-term factors unfolded themselves through these turbulent decades, the natural vibrant free conversation vitally necessary for the political life of any people continued for the Arabic-speaking peoples to remain mostly stifled, dormant, inchoate or abortive. Expectedly enough, whatever little current it had turned inward to the insular austere roots of a faith of the desert:

“The Beduin of the desert…found himself indubitably free…. In his life he had air and winds, sun and light, open spaces and a great emptiness. There was no human effort, no fecundity in Nature: just the heaven above and the unspotted earth beneath. There unconsciously he became near God…. The Beduin could not look for God within him: he was too sure that he was within God. He could not conceive anything which was or was not God, Who alone was great…. This creed of the desert seemed inexpressible in words, and indeed in thought. It was easily felt as an influence, and those who went into the desert long enough to forget its open spaces and its emptiness were inevitably thrust upon God as the only refuge and rhythm of being…. This faith of the desert was impossible in the towns…” 12

But this attempt to return inevitably became something reactionary in the late 20th Century. Finding the Beduin and the original deserts of Arabia transformed over the intervening decades, it could only try to recreate itself among the Pashtoon in the barrenness of Afghanistan, and led to the bizarre scenes of the Taliban attempting to destroy televisions and cassette-tapes in the name of Islam.

6. Envoi
The crimes of September 11 2001 were ones of perverse terroristic political protest, akin on a global scale to the adolescent youth in angry frustration who kills his schoolmates and his teachers with an automatic weapon. But they were not something inexplicable or sui generis. They represented a final collapse of the centuries-old cosmopolitan conversation with Islam, while at the same time it was an incoherent cry of a stifled people trying to return to the austere faith of the desert. Words are also deeds, and deeds may also be language. What September 11 has demonstrated is that even while the information we have about one another and ourselves has increased exponentially in recent years, our mutual comprehension of one another and ourselves may well have grossly deteriorated in quality.

Reversing such atrophy in our self-knowledge and mutual comprehension requires, in the opinion of the present author, the encouragement of all societies of all sizes to flourish in their scientific knowledge, their religious and philosophical consciousness and self-discovery, and their artistic expressiveness under conditions of freedom. Ultra-modern societies like some in North America or Europe may then perhaps become more reflective during their pursuit of material advancement and prosperity, while ancient societies like those in Asia or elsewhere may perhaps become less fearful of their capacity to engage in the transition between tradition and modernity, indeed, may even affect the direction or speed of change in a positive manner.

To use a metaphor of Otto Neurath, we are as if sailors on a ship, who, even while sailing on the water, have to change the old planks of the ship with new planks one by one. In due course of time, all the planks get changed one at a time, but at no time has there not been a ship existing in the process — at no time need we have lost our history or our identity.

1 Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero Worship, London 1842.
2 In fact, “Gandhi’s correspondence with Tolstoy… only started after passive resistance had begun, and he only read Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience when he was in prison for that very offence”. Judith M. Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power,Indian Politics 1915-1922, Cambridge University Press 1972.
3 Cf. The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Princeton, 1961, Gorgias 474b, 483a, b.Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind, Thinking, pp. 181-182, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971
4 Applying this to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the precise question would be
how far the present Palestinian authority may be objectively considered the organized authority of a nation-state: if it is, then Palestinian suicide-killings are acts of war; if it is not, they are acts of terrorism. The rhetoric on each side
5 Finding water or even primitive life elsewhere will not change this.
6 For example, the relatively new nation-states created upon the ancient societies of the Indian subcontinent to which the present author belongs, apparently display a surfeit of religiosity combined with a shortage of rational scientific growth, including the sciences of governance and economics. Despite the examples of solitary thinkers from Kabir and Nanak to Gandhi, the political and economic benefits of social tolerance still seem badly understood in the subcontinent. Equally, the mechanism of holding those in power accountable for their actions or omissions in the public domain has often remained extremely backward. A mature grasp of the division between the private and public spheres may also have been absent in Asia; the distinction between private and public property is often fuzzy or opaque; the phenomena of corruption and pollution are then easily explained as mirror-images of one another: corruption is the transmutation of something valuable from the public domain into private property; pollution is the expulsion of private waste into the public domain. Each is likely to be found with the other.
7 Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, ed. H. J. Paton, Oxford
8 The contrast between “named” and “anonymous” societies occurred to the
author on the basis of the theoretical work of Professor Frank Hahn of Cambridge University, Cf. Equilibrium and Macroeconomics, MIT 1984.
9 This was emphasized by the late Cambridge philosopher Renford Bambrough, “Thought, word and deed”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol.
LIV, 1980, pp. 105-117.
10 T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, A Triumph, 1926, Doubleday 1935, pp. 649, 659; pp. 46-47
11 The most may have been Attaturk’s Turkey, M. A. Jinnah’s creation of a Pakistan separate from India, and Algeria’s independence from France — all distant from the fulcrum of Arabia. In case of Pakistan, it was Hitler’s invasion of Poland that led the British, in something of a panic, to begin on September 3 1939 to treat Jinnah’s Muslim League on par with Gandhi ‘s Indian National Congress. The 1937 provincial election results had shown little support for Pakistan in the areas which today constitute that country. Cf. F. Robinson, “Origins” in Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s, edited by William E. James & Subroto Roy, Hawaii MS 1989, Sage 1992, Karachi OUP 1993.
12 Seven Pillars of Wisdom, pp. 40-41

Three Memoranda to Rajiv Gandhi 1990-1991

February 15, 1991 — drsubrotoroy

THREE MEMORANDA TO RAJIV GANDHI 1990-1991

I. PAKISTAN, SECULARISM AND HINDU COMMUNALISM

II. FOREIGN POLICY

III. ECONOMIC POLICY

SUBROTO ROY

Author’s Note, April 2007: As told elsewhere here, in September 1990 I was appointed by Rajiv Gandhi to advise on the long-term agenda for the country. These advisory memoranda were first written by me in that capacity. The Economic Policy Memo was written in September-October 1990; the Foreign Policy Memo was written in February 1991 (during and after the Gulf War); the one on Secularism was a compendium of several smaller ones written in late 1990. These were confidential at the time though were based on the work of the perestroika projects on India and Pakistan that I had been leading since 1986 at the University of Hawaii. As has been told elsewhere, I warned against Rajiv’s vulnerability to assassination. My warnings went in vain. When he was killed, I published these documents in The Statesman Editorial Pages of July 31, August 1, August 2 1991. The published subtitles were “Stronger Secular Middle”, “Saving India’s Prestige”, and “Salvation in Penny Capitalism” respectively. Needless to say, I do not today at age 52 agree with everything I wrote in these documents some 16 years ago at age 35-36, and my perspectives on the economy, Pakistan etc have matured further as may be seen from my current writings; but I am pleased to find I am today not embarrassed more than very slightly by any statement I made back then. My most recent writings relevant to the change in my thought since these documents include “What to tell Musharraf”, “Solving Kashmir”, “Law, Justice and J&K”, “India’s Macroeconomics”, “Fiscal Instability” and “India’s Trade and Payments”.

I. PAKISTAN, SECULARISM, AND HINDU COMMUNALISM (“Stronger Secular Middle”)

The world political order has seen immense structural changes recently. The most important of these are the result of the collapse of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and its replacement there by free and self-critical thought and debate, with all the risks and responsibilities that these carry. As a result, the world economy too is on the verge of major change. There may well be by 2000 a pact led by people of European descent from Australia via the Americas and Europe to Siberia, and a smaller pact of East Asian peoples from the Sea of Japan to the Straights of Malacca. Competition between the powers in such a world will be for new markets and cheap sources of labour, energy and natural resources. Given the fragmentation of the Islamic world and the overall weakness of Africa, it is China and our subcontinent which may be the only significant counterweights in this new balance of power. Both have long histories, resilient cultures, and vast populations, which make others apprehensive. But the future of China is far from clear to anyone. The collapse of totalitarianism seems certain after the passing of the present gerontocracy, but what will follow is anybody’s guess. At best, it may be the emergence after a power struggle of a Chinese Gorbachev who will free the domestic economy, restore political freedom, and restore Tibet’s self-governance. At worst, it may be a civil war between the remnants of the communists and some new Kuomingtang nationalists backed by Taiwan and Hong Kong. The one thing certain about China’s near term future is the oncoming uncertainty. This leaves our subcontinent, and here the key is India-Pakistan relations.

There is little doubt that the post-Partition configuration of India, Pakistan, and a divided and disputed Kashmir has been extremely detrimental to the welfare of all the people of the subcontinent, and has impoverished the general budgets and distorted the economies of both countries. If it has benefited important sections of the political and military elites of both countries, it has done so only at the expense of the general welfare of the masses. So long as the arms-race and elite-rivalry continues, the economies of both countries are likely to remain severely distorted, and there is little genuine prospect of improvements in mass welfare or the large-scale economic development of either country.

It seems hard to remember that little more than a generation or two ago, there was no problem of Kashmir on the subcontinent, or that, for the most part, the Muslims and Hindus lived in amity in undivided India. Partition came about because of the failure of the political dialogue between the Congress and Jinnah. This dialogue failed for three sets of reasons: the British role in the middle, the specific international context at the time, and the fact Congress and Jinnah were more often at cross-purposes than addressing the same issues. The proof they were largely at cross-purposes is indicated by the fact that Kashmir was never on the agenda of any serious discussion before Partition, yet ever since it has come to precisely symbolize the crisis over national identity in both India and Pakistan.
Now, in general, a country cannot have large land and naval forces at the same time. If it is assumed Pakistan and India must remain the perpetual military enemy of one another, both may have today more than adequate land and naval forces. But if that assumption is mistaken, then the real military weakness of the subcontinent taken as a whole becomes immediately apparent. This is made clear by the recent Gulf War, which is a defining event of the last half-century, and even perhaps of the whole century. If India and Pakistan are to protect themselves adequately in the modern world, they must do so by combined forces.

From a practical point of view, this cannot happen so long as each has its army trained at the other and calling it the “dushman”. On the other hand, the combination of both forces would immediately make the resulting force one of significant power, even though there would have to be further transition towards naval forces while infantries are transformed towards amphibious, airborne, reserve, and civil duties.

In the modern age, the defence of our subcontinent as a whole has to be naval and strategic, and such a defence cannot be made adequately so long as there are instead large rival armies facing one another in anger across a disputed border in Kashmir. The lesson of the Gulf War for the people of the subcontinent is that our bitter problems must be resolved, and resolved completely and permanently, in the way the bitter problems between France and Germany came to be resolved by De Gaulle and Adenauer.

Eventually, Kashmir (with or without Jammu and Ladakh) has to be united and demilitarized by both countries. But Kashmir cannot be independent any more than Punjab, Sind or Assam. Nor can a united Kashmir “go” to either India or Pakistan without further needless bloodshed. So the solution must be to try to mutually re-define the foundational basis of the sovereign states of our subcontinent after Partition. Indians and Pakistanis are free peoples who can voluntarily agree together to alter in their own interests the terms set hurriedly by Attlee or Mountbatten in the Indian Independence Act of 1947. Nobody but we ourselves keeps us prisoners of British or American definitions of who we are or might be.

For such a redefinition to take place, there has to be recognition that the configuration which occurred after Partition was a monumental mistake, which even Jinnah — the chain-smoking secular-minded Muslim nationalist — had not wanted at the time. (Jinnah’s cheerless speech to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan is, incidentally, as secular a document as any.) The solution must be to reopen the dialogue where it failed almost fifty years ago, and to work towards a major constitutional revision for a new and stable configuration to emerge in all of our subcontinent. Fifty years is, after all, not a long time in the history of our peoples. This kind of a solution is further implied by an understanding of the nature of the three nationalist forces on the subcontinent: secular nationalism as is supposed to be represented by the Congress and its offshoots; Muslim nationalism as represented today by Pakistan; and Hindu nationalism as represented today by the BJP. For the whole of the present century, these have been the three permanent political forces on the subcontinent. Congress has been the most important and central force. But the fact Congress was started mostly by Hindus was enough for a Muslim political force in the form of the Muslim League to get created on one side of it. Muslim politicization had its own reaction of an explicitly Hindu politicization in the form of the Hindu Mahasabha on the other side of Congress. It is not long ago, relative to the length of our history, that the Muslim League and Hindu Mahasabha were just factions of the Congress in its struggle for independence, and many people like Jinnah had joint membership of both a communal and a secular organization.

The fact these three forces are permanent fixtures of our politics is of the highest importance. Each has changed in name, form and strength from time to time. The Muslim force went into the hands of Jinnah who, in course of bluffing his way with Congress and the British in the hope of gaining maximum advantage for his constituents, inadvertently created a moth-eaten Pakistan, which soon collapsed into military rule, foreign domination, civil war and secession. The Hindu political force became associated in the public mind with the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, was eclipsed for a short while, then re-emerged in the form of the RSS, the Jana Sangha and now the BJP. Congress has stayed more or less in the middle. But with a frequent policy of expediency instead of a clear and convincing national philosophy, during decades of extreme economic and political crisis, Congress has been experiencing continuous factionalism and splintering into various disunited and opportunistic groups.

Nevertheless, a permanent configuration of political forces on the subcontinent can be identified of a secular middle, with Hindu and Muslim communal interests on either side of it. Each force is of such a size and importance that it must be respected and cannot be ignored. None of the three can be destroyed or converted by any one or combination of the other two. Congress and the BJP cannot destroy Muslim communalism as represented today by Pakistan. Congress and the Muslims cannot destroy Hindu communalism as represented today by the BJP. And the BJP and Pakistan will destroy one another and the whole of our subcontinent with them before they destroy secularism. Much as they might like to, neither can the RSS impose universal Hindu domination nor can the Pakistani ulema impose Islamic law over all parts of the subcontinent. Nor, for that matter, can Congress and its offshoots expect to spread secularism everywhere on the subcontinent.

These are the fundamental facts of political life on the subcontinent. They have not changed for 100 years, and, come what may, they are not likely to change for the next 50 years. If the forces are not recognised correctly and accomodated and reconciled properly, all that will happen is that the real and emotional resources of all sides will be drained against each other, until such a time as there is perhaps a break-up of the subcontinent and a repeat of the 18th century, with elites panicking and fleeing abroad if they can, mass blood-letting, while foreigners roam the country competitively in search of aluminium, manganese, coal, iron ore, oil, women, cheap labour, quick profits or whatever. Both the national movement for Independence from European rule and Jinnah’s desire to preserve the cultural identity of Indian Muslims will have become ghastly long-term failures. So long as the conflict between the Hindus and Muslims of the subcontinent continues, with secular forces caught in the middle, it is certain that the people of our subcontinent will not experience genuine mass economic improvement or be able to take their proper position in the world. Instead, we shall be completely vulnerable and defenceless with respect to predaory foreign powers in the post-Cold War world.

A genuine reconciliation between Pakistan and Hindu communalism is possible only via the revitalised leadership of a secular centre, with a clear-headed understanding of the facts and the way forward. It will require courage and calm statesmanship of a high order, of the kind shown by Willy Brandt, Sadat and Gorbachev in recent years. (Postscript: Rajiv Gandhi may have been able to show such statesmanship in his second term.)

II. FOREIGN POLICY (“Saving India’s Prestige”)
A key principle by which to guide the foreign policy of a large and potentially great nation like ours can be stated simply as follows:

An action of the Government of India outside the territory of India, i.e., an act of foreign policy, should be undertaken if and only if it protects or promotes Indian interests outside the territory of India.

Indian interests outside India encompass the private interests of Indian businessmen, Indian migrant workers and their descendants, Indian pilgrims, Indian students, Indian tourists etc, as well as the public interests of the Indian Republic such as the defence of the territory and property of India and the promotion overseas of the culture, languages and values of India.

It is a fact that Indian prestige on the world-stage has declined steadily since Independence. India’s share of world trade and finance used to be large in the 1750s, considerable in the 1850s, small but significant in the 1950s. It is close to insignificant today as we approach 2000. Accurately or not, we are perceived by those who think about us at all as a complex mess of a society, rife with caste, class and religious conflicts; moralistic and hypocritical beggars and braggarts on the world stage; very weak relative to our potential and our pretensions; with all talk and little ability. True or false, whether we like it or not, that is how we are perceived by many people outside India.

Repercussions of this view that the world has of us today are felt everywhere. A cynical Pakistani foreign minister once said about Non-Alignment: “Zero plus zero equals zero”. He was wrong then but would be right today. In public international circles, the Government of India is mostly ignored, and not even humoured or flattered the way some are because of their oil. Many Indians outside India face harrassment, hostility and discrimination of various degrees. This is related not only to the fact they are often competent and successful relative to local populations, but also to the perception that India is a weak and flabby country unable to protect her citizens abroad or offer them a proper life at home. If we are to formulate a new and effective foreign policy for India, we have to be first candid and realistic in our assessment of the facts and circumstances of the world situation and our present place in it.

Ideally, the foreign policy and defence of the subcontinent should be common. Differences between private Indians, Pakistanis, etc tend to disappear outside the subcontinent in face of common opportunities and adversities. If we are not able to persuade our neighbours about this in the short run, we may nevertheless act as far as possible as if we have a common policy, hoping to thereby persuade our neighbours by our example of the gains from such a policy. With this in mind, the broad aims of a new foreign policy may be formulated as follows:

A. Independence from so-called “foreign aid”. We do not ask for or accept public foreign aid from foreign Governments or international organizations at “concessional” terms. Requiring annual foreign aid is an indication of economic maladjustment, having to do with the structure of imports and exports and the international price of the Indian rupee. Receiving the so-called aid of others, e.g. the so-called Aid-India Consortium or the soft-loans of the World Bank, diminishes us drastically in the eyes of the donors, who naturally push their own agendas and gain leverage in the country in various ways in return. Self-reliance from so-called foreign aid would require making certain economic adjustments in commercial and exchange-rate policies, as well as austerity in foreign-exchange spending by the Government. Emergency aid from abroad (e.g. for disaster relief) or private voluntary aid need not be affected.

B. Promotion of amity and demilitarisation on the subcontinent. The idea would be to aim towards a more or less common foreign and military policy on the pattern of Western Europe within five or ten years. This will require some outstanding statesmanship and domestic political courage vis-a-vis Pakistan on the lines suggested in the previous memorandum.

C. Resolving the border-dispute with China by treaty. This too will require some clear-thinking statesmanship. The general trade-off between sectors may be a commonsensical way of breaking the impasse. Prima facie at least, Arunachal which we already have is probably more valuable to us than Aksai Chin which they already have, unless there are defence reasons to the contrary. A sound settlement should allow us to take a firm if quiet stand with them on Tibet. What they do at Tiannanmen may be not be our affair but what they do in Tibet is. Our position on Tibet has not been an altogether honourable one in the last 40 years. Also we should seek to protect those of Indian descent in Hong Kong from the chaos that is likely to occur in 1997.

D. Promotion of emigration and reverse migration to and from e.g. North America, Hong Kong, Africa etc. On the one hand, we should export our most exportable product, which is inexpensive good quality labour skills. At the same time, any Indian or descendant of an Indian living abroad should be encouraged to return at will. This is important for economic reasons, in effect adding value to the stock of human capital in the country. It is even more important for political reasons, as it will undercut to some extent the overseas financing of domestic terrorism. Nationality laws have to be amended giving Indian nationality to as many people as possible of Indian descent. Every Indian abroad who has taken a foreign passport but wishes to retain or re-acquire Indian nationality at the same time should be encouraged by us to do so. This may go to isolate extremist opinion, as thousands of moderate emigrants in Britain and North America will presumably prefer to maintain or freely re-acquire Indian nationality alongside their new nationalities. Many may rediscover patriotism for their homeland, where they now feel rootless in alien cultures which is what subconsciously motivates the demand for an abstract separatism.

E. Promotion of commerce, finance and investment abroad — exports, imports, capital flows in and out, tourism, contacts and exchanges. This is of fundamental importance for economic reasons. It will entail establishing as quickly as possible conditions favourable for the freeing of the rupee, as will be described in the next memorandum.

F. Achievement of tolerable standards in sports, music, and the arts. Our sporting prowess has become laughable. This contributes to our dismal image in the outside world. The present system is utterly hopeless, because of the heavy and completely unnecessary Government involvement in sports. Sports can be and must be privatized as completely as possible. Let commercial advertising and private sponsorship help our athletic development with minimum Government involvement. For example, Government can give tax breaks to sponsors who finance athletes for competitive international sport. There is plenty of black money in the economy which can be induced to come out to support sports in the country. To a lesser extent, the state of music and the arts and the culture in general have also become hopeless due to the unnecessary Government involvement.

For these six new objectives of an effective Indian foreign policy to be achieved, there must be a clear-headed and consistently formulated long-term view. The basic means would be to make a major and distinct move away from multilateralism towards bilateralism in international affairs. This would begin with Pakistan, on the lines discussed in the previous memorandum. Our most active foreign policy must be on the subcontinent, followed by South East Asia to where we once exported Buddhism, Islam, Sanskrit and Hinduism. South East Asia is today thriving economically and is quite stable politically. We have to learn what we can from them and offer whatever we have in exchange. Then there are the major powers: the United States, the Soviet Union, Germany, Japan, Britain and France. Then there is the Islamic crescent from Morocco to Indonesia. Then there are the countries where Indians have gone or can still go as emigrants or where there are significant Indian interests. These include Australia, Canada, South Africa, East Africa, Fiji and the West Indies. Then there are continental powers like Brazil, Argentina, Egypt and Nigeria. Then there are regional groups like the European Community and Scandinavia as collectivities.

On the subcontinent, the relationship should be made domestic and familiar with the aim of identifying common interests and forging a common policy as soon as possible. With the others, a rational bilateralism would involve starting with a thorough assessment of bilateral relations country-by-country. What are the principal components of imports and exports and their rates of expansion or contraction? What are Indian assets and liabilities in each of these countries and how liquid are these? How significant are private Indian interests in each — immigrants, tourists, students, businesses, etc.? What is the scope for expansion of ties in view of our objectives? Etc. Long-term foreign policy requires a constant stock of reliable information and also a continuous flow into and out of that stock. This may require overhauling some of the civil services. For good foreign policy to be made and implemented, there should be easy flow between the IFS and IAS, academia and the military and intelligence services. The aim would be to have a pool of highly qualified people voluntarily pursuing foreign languages and research of national importance with respect to the different countries of the world. The dozens of unthinking think-tanks in Delhi may have to be drastically overhauled to actually produce something useful after all.

Having determined what are the priorities and what are not, a reallocation of the foreign exchange resources of the Government of India will be called for to achieve stated foreign policy objectives. This has to accompany the process of economic reform, as well as the vigourous pursuit of reasonable solutions to the subcontinent’s continuing political problems. Obtaining a broad national consensus on the objectives is very important. Once the thinking has been clarified and the pieces put in place, this may not be so hard to achieve.

III. ECONOMIC POLICY (“Salvation in Penny Capitalism”)
Our economic problems have to do with the misdefinition which has occurred since Independence of the role of government in the economy. Partly under the influence of numerous domestic and foreign economists and pseudo-economists, our Government since the 1950s has frequently done things which need not or should not be done by government at the expense of things which have to be done or can only be done by government. The prime indicator of economic mismanagement today is not the annual deficit, but rather the vast public debt today of more than Rs. 273,000 crores. Our Government has borrowed something like Rs. 3500/- on behalf of each man, woman and child in the country — and spent it. A pile of rupee coins adding up to the public debt of India would stretch 4.55 million km into the sky, or be as long as six trips to the moon and back. That is the size of the problem.
Commonsense says that for the individual family or business or the nation as a whole, if you borrow funds for productive purposes which repay their worth, the size of the debt incurred is immaterial. If you borrow on the credit of the Government of India and then add to the country’s capital stock (whether human capital via better health and education or physical capital like roads and bridges), then the size of the debt does not matter, as long as the payments of interest on the debt are matched by increases in the capital stock. But if Government spends borrowed funds recklessly without a thought to rates of return, no capital gets created and instead the economy approaches technical bankruptcy at which time foreign creditors come knocking at the door.

The roots of the crisis may be traced to the following:

(A) Politicians in democratic systems make competitive soft promises of cash and immediate benefits, without thinking of where the revenue is going to come from. It is recognition of this which this has led to the turnaround in the Western economies since 1979, and made politics there much more sober from an economic point of view.
(B) Our closed economy with a captive Reserve Bank and credit market has caused any amount of the currency to be debased internally. To correct the problem at the roots, these two factors have to be faced squarely.

Short Run Policy (0-6 months) All political parties, national or regional, whether they have been in power or not, are mutually responsible for the crisis. It has been one of the unintended side-effects of the democratic system we have chosen. Therefore, all parties have a responsibility to set things right, and the way to do so was thoughtfully placed in the Constitution by its framers in Article 360: in a situation in which the “financial stability or credit” of India is threatened, the President is entitled to declare a financial emergency. This would permit freezing all levels and increases in Government spending outside essential functions (defence, law and order, roads, transport and comunications, basic education and health), initiate cost-cutting in all non-essential parts of the Government, and create the appropriate mood of seriousness in the country.
Next there will have to be an increase in revenue without increasing taxes. Can this be done? (Bush had once called this Reagan/Thatcher idea “voodoo economics”.) In our economy it may be possible via the appropriate use of two facts — the vast black economy of undeclared income of perhaps Rs. 43,000 crores, and the vast Government-owned industrial and services sector plus any amount of Government-owned land and capital. The black economy has made our businessmen waste their enterprise in trying to cheat or buy out the Government. The Government-owned sector has led our workers to waste their skills and learning abilities in overmanned and unproductive occupations. Any reform-minded Government must be prepared to tackle corrupt or lazy businessmen, union bosses and Government employees, while creating a system which rewards initiative, honesty, enterprise and effort on the part of business, labour and the bureaucracy.
As part of the financial emergency, every Government department can be instructed to reduce costs by 10-25% every year for the next five years. Much of this may be possible without layoffs but by internal economies and tough administration — freezing wages and benefits, saving office-space, more clatter and less chatter, etc.

More crucially, there must be an absolute moratorium on strikes in the public sector. Only if an industry is vital to the national interest should it be in the public sector, e.g. space research, defence production or oil. Strikes in such industries damage the whole country and not just the individual employer. Therefore, either there are no strikes, or the industry is not vital to the nation and can be safely placed in the private sector.

This will set the example for more fundamental changes in industrial relations. Labour laws have to be applied or amended to ensure unions are run for the benefit of their members and not of union bosses or political parties. Unions are vital in industrial society to protect individual workers from exploitation, discrimimation and safety hazards. They are not supposed to be empires for unelected union bosses, arenas for party politics, or excuses for overmanning. Our productivity is shockingly low relative to international standards, and without crucial improvements in it we shall be wiped out if and when the economy is opened as it will have to be for other reasons.

Increasing productivity per head throughout the economy is therefore a vital preparatory step, and must be tackled in the first few months. The device of a strike has to be made a last resort. Workers have to be free to elect their leaders by secret ballot without fear or intimidation. Political parties have to be removed from the workplace. The power of toughs and vandals has to be broken by the ballot box.

At the same time, employment can be made to increase by leaps and bounds by freeing all domestic enterprise from licensing, controls and permits. Freeing domestic enterprise from retrograde Central and State laws may be again most easily done via the Constitution. Subject only to local laws of safety, morality and environmental protection, all trade, commerce and enterprise throughout the territory of India should be made free from Government interference or restriction. That was what was envisioned by Articles 19 and 301 of the Constitution.

The increase may be incalculable in employment, wages and income, and hence the consumption of the masses of our people. Important side-benefits will be that urban discontent, political vandalism and communalism will be reduced. An idle mind is the devil’s workshop — with increased employment via enterprise, there will be less time and inclination for political or communal crimes.

Special notice has to be given to banking policy, as banks affect all other enterprises. Our nationalised banks are in disastrous shape. Private banks are responsible to their share-holders; if bad loans are made or bad risks taken, or if costs are too high or service poor, then managements get replaced by the power of share-holders. In public sector banks this does not happen. Costs are very high, profit rates low or negative, loans are not repaid or should not have been made in the first place, and service is appalling. Small depositors place their confidence in them because they have no other place to put their meagre savings, and because they believe the Government knows best and is not itself bankrupt. If a serious opening of the economy is to be planned in the medium and long-term, there has to be adequate preparation of the monetary system, else there may be a run on the banks and a collapse in public confidence in the currency.

It becomes essential that costs in the public sector banks are slashed, loans get repaid, loan melas stop, and banks are run as banks and not as public charities or employment agencies. At the same time, the Reserve Bank has to be made independent of the Ministry of Finance and of parliamentary pressure, and preferably made constitutionally independent like the UPSC or the Auditor-General. The task of any central bank is to maintain a currency in which the domestic public can have confidence in making their economic transactions, and to reflect a realistic price on international currency markets. The Reserve Bank’s role has been severely distorted by it being forced practically at gunpoint to hold massive amounts of the Government’s debt, and to finance this by printing more and more paper money. Instead, the currency has to reflect real economic transactions, and the Reserve Bank can be instructed (as its own 1985 report said) to follow a non-inflationary monetary rule of expanding the money-supply only relative to the rate of growth of real income and output in the economy.
Similarly, markets for insurance and life-insurance have to be rescued from the bankruptcy of nationalisation. Insurance is a highly complicated industry involving the correct assessment and sharing of business and personal risks. The present industry is in a shambles and will probably have to learn the modern business almost from scratch. Yet reforming it is vital to a new and invigorated economy, and also to laying the basis for heath-insurance for the masses.

Medium-Run Policy (6-18 months) Next, a concerted effort will have to be made to raise revenue without raising taxes. To the contrary, tax rates have to be simplified and reduced if possible, and especially the system of invisible indirect excise taxes (which tend to hurt the poor most heavily) gradually changed as far as possible to visible direct income and wealth taxes. If revenues are to be raised without increasing taxes, it is black money and the public sector which must be made to come to the rescue of the country. The public sector belongs to the public — not to the IAS, not to the public sector unions and certainly not to local politicians. Ideally, the most efficient and equitable means of share-holding of the public sector would be for every Indian adult to receive at the address of his or her domicile (or voter registration), upon a simple application and a processing fee, oe share-certificate in each enterprise being run by the Government of India. (An even better model would be to have a poverty-citerion, and give the shares to the poorest of the poor villages or village panchayats.) The shares would become tradeable; markets of penny-capitalism would spread throughout the villages of India, as each penny-capitalist decided whether to hold or sell the share-certificates thus received, and the Government would have safely handed over the ownership of the public sector to its rightful owners.

It would be a historic move for the distribution of national wealth, as scores perhaps hundreds of millions of new shareholders are created. The hidden hoards of black money would come out and become distributed equitably. Of course the shares of some public sector enterprises will not be worth much, but they will not be worth less than nothing. Nor would anyone be obliged to sell until it was privately profitable to do so. Future entrepreneurs (domestic or foreign) who wished to take over or turn around the fortunes of a bankrupt public sector firm would have to solicit the shares from a vast population of penny-capitalists.

Long-Run Policy (18+ months) Thus the key objective would be to control wasteful Government spending in order to place the Government in a position to redirect public resources towards the fundamental sources of economic growth for the common people of India. One further step would be necessary. This would be to make the rupee a hard currency of the world.
This will have to be done with utmost care and proper preparation of economic and political expectations. It will mean making every Indian — high or lowly, rich or poor — free to hold his or her assets, small as these may be, in any currency or precious metal of choice without Government intervention. Government would use its own reserves of foreign exchange and gold for its own purchases and obligations abroad — e.g. defence, diplomacy, or emergency reserves. Success or failure will depend squarely on the credibility and resolve of the Government that there will be no U-turn. If the Government is steadfast and is believed, the rupee will fall some distance for some months and then turn upwards and rise some lesser distance, at which point it would have become a hard currency. The initial fall will bring out black money and pent-up demand, and may reduce the present (October 26 1990) artificial price of Rs. 20 to the dollar to even Rs. 40 or Rs 50 to the dollar. The import bill will become enormous, and immediate relief will have to be given by cutting back on import duties and excise taxes on petroleum equivalently, leading to a fall in revenue from these sources. Export incentives should be immediately withdrawn, as Indian exporters will face an unprecedented boom as the dollar prices of their goods tumble, and goods which were previously high-cost and unexportable become very exportable. The export boom may be so huge as to be inflationary in the short term, requiring the same steady monetary policy plus corrective action by release of food and other stocks. The critical burden will fall on expansion of supply and production — it is here that the importance of first establishing domestic free enterprise and cooperative industrial relations is seen, as domestic enterprise must be in a position to respond to an export boom when the rupee becomes a hard currency. The rupee would become a hard currency the moment its initial fall comes to an end and it starts upwards at a new and steady equilibrium value. At this value, our credit-worthiness in the world would be firm, our export-led boom would have begun, capital owned by Indians abroad would have begun to flow freely in, and the Government would be in a position to embark on fundamental changes for long term economic growth and welfare of the masses — specifically, village-based economic development and school-based village development. Most important, as people gain more control over their own individual futures, the mood and momentum should make the position one of strong confidence.

Rajiv Gandhi and the Origins of India’s 1991 Economic Reform

September 18, 1990 — drsubrotoroy

Rajiv Gandhi and the Origins of India’s 1991 Economic Reform

Subroto Roy

Author’s Note May 2008: The family of Rajiv Gandhi received a copy of this when it was first written in July 2005. An earlier abbreviated version “Encounter with Rajiv Gandhi: On the Origins of India’s 1991 Economic Reform” was published in October 2001 in Freedom First, Bombay, a journal founded by the late Minoo Masani and now edited by S V Raju. A copy of that article was received by all Congress MPs of the 13th Lok Sabha. In May 2002, the Congress Party passed an official resolution stating Rajiv Gandhi and not Narasimha Rao or Manmohan Singh was to be credited with having originated the 1991 economic reforms. This article has now been published in print in The Statesman Festival Volume, October 2007. It may be profitably followed by “The Dream Team: A Critique”, “Solving Kashmir”, “Law, Justice & J&K”, “What to tell Musharraf”, “India’s Macroeconomics”, “Fiscal Instability”, “India’s Trade and Payments”, “Fallacious Finance”, “Against Quackery”, etc. My original advisory memoranda to Rajiv in 1990-1991 were published in The Statesman’s Editorial Pages July 31-August 2 1991, and now have been republished elsewhere here as well. See too https://independentindian.com/thoughts-words-deeds-my-work-1973-2010/rajiv-gandhi-and-the-origins-of-indias-1991-economic-reform/did-jagdish-bhagwati-originate-pioneer-intellectually-father-indias-1991-economic-reform-did-manmohan-singh-or-did-i-through-my-e/ https://independentindian.com/2014/08/07/haksar-manmohan-and-sonia/

I met Rajiv Gandhi for the first time on 18th September 1990 thanks to an introduction by S. S. Ray (see “I’m on my way out”: Siddhartha Shankar Ray (1920-2010)… | Independent Indian: Work & Life of Professor Subroto Roy) We met a half dozen or so times until his assassination in May 1991. Yet our encounter was intense and consequential, and resulted directly in the change of the Congress Party’s economic thinking prior to the 1991 elections. I had with me results of an interdisciplinary “perestroika-for-India” project I had led at the University of Hawaii since 1986. This manuscript (later published by Sage as Foundations of India’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s edited by myself and W. E. James) was given by me to Rajiv, then Leader of the Opposition, and was instrumental in the change of thinking that took place. In interests of fairness, I tried to get the work to V. P. Singh too because he was Prime Minister, but a key aide of his showed no interest in receiving it.

The Hawaii project manuscript contained inter alia a memorandum by Milton Friedman done at the request of the Government of India in November 1955, which had been suppressed for 34 years until I published it in May 1989. Milton and Rose Friedman refer to this in their memoirs Two Lucky People (Chicago 1998). Peter Bauer had told me of the existence of Friedman’s document during my doctoral work at Cambridge under Frank Hahn in the late 1970s, as did N. Georgescu-Roegen in America. Those were years in which Brezhnev still ruled in the Kremlin, Gorbachev was yet to emerge, Indira Gandhi and her pro-Moscow advisers were ensconced in New Delhi, and not even the CIA had imagined the Berlin Wall would fall and the Cold War would be over within a decade. It was academic suicide at the time to argue in favour of classical liberal economics even in the West. As a 22-year-old Visiting Assistant Professor at the Delhi School of Economics in 1977, I was greeted with uproarious laughter of senior professors when I spoke of a possible free market in foreign exchange. Cambridge was a place where Indian economists went to study the exploitation of peasants in Indian agriculture before returning to their friends in the well-known bastions of such matters in Delhi and Calcutta. It was not a place where Indian (let alone Bengali) doctoral students in economics mentioned the unmentionable names of Hayek or Friedman or Buchanan, and insisted upon giving their works a hearing.

My original doctoral topic in 1976 “A monetary theory for India” had to be altered not only due to paucity of monetary data at the time but because the problems of India’s political economy and allocation of resources in the real economy were far more pressing. The thesis that emerged in 1982 “On liberty and economic growth: preface to a philosophy for India” was a full frontal assault from the point of view of microeconomic theory on the “development planning” to which everyone routinely declared their fidelity, from New Delhi’s bureaucrats and Oxford’s “development” school to McNamara’s World Bank with its Indian staffers.

Frank Hahn protected my inchoate liberal arguments for India; and when no internal examiner could be found, Cambridge showed its greatness by appointing two externals, Bliss at Oxford and Hutchison at Birmingham, both Cambridge men. “Economic Theory and Development Economics” was presented to the American Economic Association in December 1982 in company of Solow, Chenery and other eminences, and then Pricing, Planning and Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India published by London’s Institute of Economic Affairs, provoking the lead editorial of The Times on May 29 1984. The Indian High Commission sent the editorial to the Finance Ministry where it caused a stir as the first classical liberal attack on post-Mahalonobis Indian economic thought since B. R. Shenoy’s original criticism decades earlier. The “perestroika-for-India” project was to follow at Hawaii starting in 1986. New Delhi was represented at the project’s conference held between May 22-27 1989 by the accredited Ambassador of India to the USA, the accredited Consul General of India to San Francisco, and by the founder-director of ICRIER (see photo).

All this I brought into that first meeting with Rajiv Gandhi on September 18 1990. That first day he came to the door to greet me. He was a handsome tall man with the most charming smile and manner, seemed pleased to see me and put me at ease at once. I gave him my books as well as the manuscript of the “perestroika for India” project. He gave me a celebratory volume that had just been published to mark his grandfather’s centenary. He began by talking about how important he felt panchayati raj was, and said he had been on the verge of passing major legislation on it but then lost the election. He asked me if I could spend some time thinking about it, and that he would get the papers sent to me. I said I would and remarked panchayati raj might be seen as decentralized provision of public goods, and gave the economist’s definition of public goods as those essential for the functioning of the market economy, like the Rule of Law, roads, fresh water, and sanitation, but which were unlikely to appear through competitive forces.

I distinguished between federal, state and local levels and said many of the most significant public goods were best provided locally. Rajiv had not heard the term “public goods” before, and he beamed a smile and his eyes lit up as he voiced the words slowly, seeming to like the concept immensely. It occurred to me he had been by choice a pilot of commercial aircraft. Now he seemed intrigued to find there could be systematic ways of thinking about navigating a country’s governance by common pursuit of reasonable judgement. I said the public sector’s wastefulness had drained scarce resources that should have gone instead to provide public goods. Since the public sector was owned by the public, it could be privatised by giving away its shares to the public, preferably to panchayats of the poorest villages. The shares would become tradable, drawing out black money, and inducing a historic redistribution of wealth while at the same time achieving greater efficiency by transferring the public sector to private hands. Rajiv seemed to like that idea too, and said he tried to follow a maxim of Indira Gandhi’s that every policy should be seen in terms of how it affected the common man. I wryly said the common man often spent away his money on alcohol, to which he said at once it might be better to think of the common woman instead. (This remark of Rajiv’s may have influenced the “aam admi” slogan of the 2004 election, as all Congress Lok Sabha MPs of the previous Parliament came to receive a previous version of the present narrative.)

Our project had identified the Congress’s lack of internal elections as a problem; when I raised it, Rajiv spoke of how he, as Congress President, had been trying to tackle the issue of bogus electoral rolls. I said the judiciary seemed to be in a mess due to the backlog of cases; many of which seemed related to land or rent control, and it may be risky to move towards a free economy without a properly functioning judicial system or at least a viable system of contractual enforcement. I said a lot of problems which should be handled by the law in the courts in India were instead getting politicised and decided on the streets. Rajiv had seen the problems of the judiciary and said he had good relations with the Chief Justice’s office, which could be put to use to improve the working of the judiciary.

The project had worked on Pakistan as well, and I went on to say we should solve the problem with Pakistan in a definitive manner. Rajiv spoke of how close his government had been in 1988 to a mutual withdrawal from Siachen. But Zia-ul-Haq was then killed and it became more difficult to implement the same thing with Benazir Bhutto, because, he said, as a democrat, she was playing to anti-Indian sentiments while he had found it somewhat easier to deal with the military. I pressed him on the long-term future relationship between the countries and he agreed a common market was the only real long-term solution. I wondered if he could find himself in a position to make a bold move like offering to go to Pakistan and addressing their Parliament to break the impasse. He did not say anything but seemed to think about the idea. Rajiv mentioned a recent Time magazine cover of Indian naval potential, which had caused an excessive stir in Delhi. He then talked about his visit to China, which seemed to him an important step towards normalization. He said he had not seen (or been shown) any absolute poverty in China of the sort we have in India. He talked about the Gulf situation, saying he did not disagree with the embargo of Iraq except he wished the ships enforcing the embargo had been under the U.N. flag. The meeting seemed to go on and on, and I was embarrassed at perhaps having taken too much time and that he was being too polite to get me to go. V. George had interrupted with news that Sheila Dixit (as I recall) had just been arrested by the U. P. Government, and there were evidently people waiting. Just before we finally stood up I expressed a hope that he was looking to the future of India with an eye to a modern political and economic agenda for the next election, rather than getting bogged down with domestic political events of the moment. That was the kind of hopefulness that had attracted many of my generation in 1985. I said I would happily work in any way to help define a long-term agenda. His eyes lit up and as we shook hands to say goodbye, he said he would be in touch with me again.

The next day I was called and asked to stay in Delhi for a few days, as Mr. Gandhi wanted me to meet some people. I was not told whom I was to meet but that there would be a meeting on Monday, 24th September. On Saturday, the Monday meeting was postponed to Tuesday because one of the persons had not been able to get a flight into Delhi. I pressed to know what was going on, and was told I was to meet former army chief K.V. Krishna Rao, former foreign secretary M. K. Rasgotra, V. Krishnamurty and Sam Pitroda.

The group met for the first time on September 25 in the afternoon. Rasgotra did not arrive. Krishna Rao, Pitroda, Krishnamurty and I gathered in the waiting room next to George’s office. The three of them knew each other but none knew me and I was happy enough to be ignored. It seemed mysterious while we were gathering, especially when the tall well-dressed General arrived, since none of us knew why we had been called by Rajiv, and the General remarked to the others he had responded at once to the call to his home but could not get a flight into Delhi for a day.

Rajiv’s residence as Leader of the Opposition had a vast splendid meeting room, lined with high bookshelves on one or two walls, a large handsome desk on one side, two spacious comfortable sofa sets arranged in squares, and a long conference table with leather chairs occupying most of the rest of the room. The entrance to it was via a small 10 ft by 10 ft air-conditioned anteroom, where George sat, with a fax machine, typewriters and a shredding machine, plus several telephones, and a used copy of parliamentary procedures on the shelf. Getting to George’s office was the final step before reaching Rajiv. There were several chairs facing George, and almost every prospective interviewee, no matter how senior or self-important, had to move from one chair to the next, while making small talk with George, as the appointment with Rajiv drew near. Opening into George’s office was a larger and shabbier waiting room, which is where we sat, which was not air-conditioned, and which opened to the outside of the building where a plainclothes policeman sometimes stood around with a walkie-talkie. There were large photographs of Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru and Indira Gandhi on the wall, and a modern print also hung incongruously. A dozen or more plastic chairs lined the walls. There were faded torn issues of a few old magazines on the plastic coffee-table, and on one occasion there was a television playing the new sporadic domestic cable news and weather information for the entertainment of the many visitors waiting. Via this waiting room went the vast majority of people who were to meet Rajiv in his office. To reach the waiting room, one had to walk a hundred yards along a path lined by splendid high hedges from the initial reception desk at the rear-gate, manned by Congress Seva Dal volunteers in khadi wearing Gandhi-caps. These persons were in touch with George’s office by telephone, and would check with George or his assistant Balasubramaniam before sending a visitor along. The visitor would then pass through a metal-detector manned by a couple of policemen. If someone’s face came to be known and had been cleared once, or if someone acted to the policemen like a sufficiently important political personage, such a person seemed to be waved through. Outside, the front-entrance of the premises were closed unless extremely important people were entering or exiting, while at the rear-entrance there were usually two or three jeeps and several plainclothes policemen, who might or might not challenge the prospective visitor with a kind of “Who goes there?” attitude before the visitor reached the Seva Dal reception desk. The whole arrangement struck me from the first as insecure and inefficient, open to penetration by professional assassins or a terrorist squad, let aside insiders in the way Indira Gandhi had been assassinated. I could not imagine counter-terrorist commandos would suddenly appear from the high hedges in the event of an emergency.

On that Tuesday when Rajiv finally called in our group, we entered hesitantly not knowing quite what the meeting was going to be about. Rajiv introduced me to the others and then spoke of why he had gathered us together. He wanted us to come up with proposals and recommendations for the direction the country should take on an assumption the Congress Party was returned to power in the near future. He said it would help him to have an outside view from specialists who were not party functionaries, though the others obviously had been closely involved with Congress governments before. Rajiv said we were being asked to write a draft of what may enter the manifesto for the next election, which we should assume to be forthcoming by April 1991. I asked what might have become of the “perestroika” manuscript I had given him at our previous meeting. He said he had gotten it copied and bound, and that along with my 1984 monograph, it had been circulated among a few of his party colleagues who included P. Chidambaram and Mani Shankar Aiyar.

The initial meeting left us breathless and excited. Yet within a few days, the others became extremely tied up for personal causes, and I found myself alone in getting on with doing what we had been explicitly asked to do. I felt I should get done what I could in the time I had while keeping the others informed. Rajiv had said to me at our first meeting that he felt the Congress was ready for elections. This did not seem to me to be really the case. He actually seemed very isolated in his office, with George seeming to be his conduit to the outside world. I decided to start by trying to write a definite set of general principles that could guide and inform thought about the direction of policy. I spent the evening of October 26 in the offices at Rajiv’s residence, preparing an economic policy memorandum on a portable Toshiba computer of his, the first laptop I ever used. After Rajiv’s assassination, this was part of what was published in The Statesmen’s center pages July 31-August 2, 1991.

Rajiv read the work and met me on October 30 or 31, even though he was down badly with a sore throat after his sadbhavana travels around the country; he looked odd clad in khadi with a muffler and gym shoes. He said he liked very much what I had written and had given it to be read by younger Congress leaders who would discuss it for the manifesto, for an election he again said, he expected early in 1991. I said I was grateful for his kind words and inquired whom he had shown the work to. This time he said Chidambaram and also mentioned another name that made me wince. In December 1990, I was back in Hawaii when I was called on the phone to ask whether I could come to Delhi. With the rise of Chandrashekhar as Prime Minister, Rajiv had called a meeting of the group. But I could not go.

In January 1991, the Gulf War brought an odd twist to my interaction with Rajiv. On January 15, the UN deadline for the withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait passed without Iraqi compliance, and American-led forces started the heavy aerial bombardment of Iraq. The American media had built up the impending war as one of utter devastation and mass killing, especially when the American infantry became engaged. Estimated casualties on the American side alone were being wildly exaggerated by the number of “body-bags” being ordered by the Pentagon. An even larger conflagration was being imagined if Israel entered the fighting, while Saddam Hussein had vowed to set fire to Kuwait’s oil-fields before retreating. I like everyone else erroneously believed the media’s hyperbole about the impending regional catastrophe. On January 16, just after the bombing of Iraq had begun, I called an American family friend who had retired from a senior foreign policy role and who had known me from when I was an infant. In informal conversation, I mentioned to him that since other channels had by then become closed, an informal channel might be attempted via India, specifically via Rajiv who was still Leader of the Opposition but on whom the Chandrashekhar Government depended. The sole aim would be to compel an immediate Iraqi withdrawal without further loss of life. What transpired over the next few days was that a proposal to that effect was communicated at Rajiv’s decision to a high level of the Iraqis on the one hand, and evidently received their assent, while at the same time, it was mentioned to the authorities on the American side. But nothing came of it. Rajiv initiated a correspondence with Chandrashekhar beginning January 19, demanding a coherent formulation of Indian policy in the Gulf war, and faxed me copies of this. By February 8, the Times of India led by saying Rajiv’s stand “on the Gulf War demonstrates both his experience and perspicacity … in consonance with an enlightened vision of national interest”, and urged Rajiv to “give the nation some respite from [the] non-government” of Chandrashekhar. I taped my phone conversations with Rajiv during the Gulf War because notes could not be taken at the necessary speed; in late December 1991, I was to give his widow a copy of the tape for her personal record.

I returned to Delhi on Monday, March 18, 1991 as new elections had been announced. Rasgotra said I should be in touch with Krishna Rao, and the next day March 19 Krishna Rao met me for several hours. I told him what I thought were the roots and results of the Gulf war. He in turn generously told me what had happened while I had been away. He said the group had met Rajiv in December with the proposal that Rajiv better organize his time by having an “office manager” of larger political stature than George. The name of a UP Congressman of integrity had been put forward, but nothing had come of it. Rajiv had been advised to keep Chandrashekhar in power through the autumn of 1991, as Chandrashekhar was doing Rajiv’s work for him of sidelining V. P. Singh. The idea was to cooperate with Chandrashekhar until he could be pushed up to the Presidency when that fell vacant. Rajiv had been advised not to work in a Chandrashekhar cabinet, though in my opinion, had we been like the Scandinavians, it was not impossible for a former prime minister to enter another cabinet on the right terms in the national interest of providing stable government, which was imperative at the time. Things seem to have slipped out of control when Chandrashekhar resigned. At that point, Rajiv called the group together and instructed them to write a draft of the manifesto for the impending elections. I had advised readiness back in September but the lack of organization had prevented much tangible progress at the time. Our group was to now report to a political manifesto-committee of three senior party leaders who would report to Rajiv. They were Narasimha Rao, Pranab Mukherjee and Madhavsingh Solanki. Krishna Rao liased with Narasimha Rao, Krishnamurty with Mukherjee, Pitroda with Solanki. While Rajiv would obviously lead a new Congress Government, Mukherjee was the presumptive Finance Minister, while Narasimha Rao and Solanki would have major portfolios though Narasimha Rao was expected to retire before too long.

Krishna Rao said I should be in touch with Krishnamurty who was preparing the economic chapters of the draft of the manifesto. Krishnamurty told me he had brought in A. M. Khusro to the group, and there would be a 5 p.m. meeting at Khusro’s office at the Aga Khan Foundation. I arrived early and was delighted to meet Khusro, and he seemed pleased to meet me. Khusro seemed excited by my view that India and Pakistan were spending excessively on defence against each other, which resonated with his own ideas, and he remarked the fiscal disarray in India and Pakistan could start to be set right by mutually agreed cuts in military spending. (Khusro was eventually to accompany Prime Minister Vajpayee to Lahore in 1999).

Krishnamurty had prepared a draft dated March 18 of several pages of the economic aspects of the manifesto. After our discussions, Krishnamurty was hospitable enough to open the draft to improvement. That evening, the 19th, I worked through the night and the next morning to get by noon copies of a revised version with all the members of the group. At 4 p.m. on the 20th there was a meeting at Andhra Bhavan of the whole group except Pitroda, which went on until the night. The next day the 21st , Krishnamurty, Khusro and I met again at Andhra Bhavan for a few hours on the economic aspects of the draft. Then in mid-afternoon I went to Rasgotra’s home to work with him and Krishna Rao. They wanted me to produce the economic draft which they could then integrate as they wished into the material they were dictating to a typist. I offered instead to absorb their material directly on to my laptop computer where the economic draft was. Rasgotra was reluctant to let go control, and eventually I gave in and said I would get them a hard copy of the economic draft, which they then planned to re-draft via a stenographer on a typewriter. At this, Rasgotra gave in and agreed to my solution. So the work began and the three of us continued until late.

That night Krishna Rao dropped me at Tughlak Road where I used to stay with friends. In the car I told him, as he was a military man with heavy security cover for himself as a former Governor of J&K, that it seemed to me Rajiv’s security was being unprofessionally handled, that he was vulnerable to a professional assassin. Krishna Rao asked me if I had seen anything specific by way of vulnerability. With John Kennedy and De Gaulle in mind, I said I feared Rajiv was open to a long-distance sniper, especially when he was on his campaign trips around the country.

This was one of several attempts I made since October 1990 to convey my clear impression to whomever I thought might have an effect that Rajiv seemed to me extremely vulnerable. Rajiv had been on sadhbhavana journeys, back and forth into and out of Delhi. I had heard he was fed up with his security apparatus, and I was not surprised given it seemed at the time rather bureaucratized. It would not have been appropriate for me to tell him directly that he seemed to me to be vulnerable, since I was a newcomer and a complete amateur about security issues, and besides if he agreed he might seem to himself to be cowardly or have to get even closer to his security apparatus. Instead I pressed the subject relentlessly with whomever I could. I suggested specifically two things: (a) that the system in place at Rajiv’s residence and on his itineraries be tested, preferably by some internationally recognized specialists in counter-terrorism; (b) that Rajiv be encouraged to announce a shadow-cabinet. The first would increase the cost of terrorism, the second would reduce the potential political benefit expected by terrorists out to kill him. On the former, it was pleaded that security was a matter being run by the V. P. Singh and then Chandrashekhar Governments at the time. On the latter, it was said that appointing a shadow cabinet might give the appointees the wrong idea, and lead to a challenge to Rajiv’s leadership. This seemed to me wrong, as there was nothing to fear from healthy internal contests for power so long as they were conducted in a structured democratic framework. I pressed to know how public Rajiv’s itinerary was when he travelled. I was told it was known to everyone and that was the only way it could be since Rajiv wanted to be close to the people waiting to see him and had been criticized for being too aloof. This seemed to me totally wrong and I suggested that if Rajiv wanted to be seen as meeting the crowds waiting for him then that should be done by planning to make random stops on the road that his entourage would take. This would at least add some confusion to the planning of potential terrorists out to kill him. When I pressed relentlessly, it was said I should probably speak to “Madame”, i.e. to Mrs. Rajiv Gandhi. That seemed to me highly inappropriate, as I could not be said to be known to her and I should not want to unduly concern her in the event it was I who was completely wrong in my assessment of the danger. The response that it was not in Congress’s hands, that it was the responsibility of the V. P. Singh and later the Chandrashekhar Governments, seemed to me completely irrelevant since Congress in its own interests had a grave responsibility to protect Rajiv Gandhi irrespective of what the Government’s security people were doing or not doing. Rajiv was at the apex of the power structure of the party, and a key symbol of secularism and progress for the entire country. Losing him would be quite irreparable to the party and the country. It shocked me that the assumption was not being made that there were almost certainly professional killers actively out to kill Rajiv Gandhi — this loving family man and hapless pilot of India’s ship of state who did not seem to have wished to make enemies among India’s terrorists but whom the fates had conspired to make a target. The most bizarre and frustrating response I got from several respondents was that I should not mention the matter at all as otherwise the threat would become enlarged and the prospect made more likely! This I later realized was a primitive superstitious response of the same sort as wearing amulets and believing in Ptolemaic astrological charts that assume the Sun goes around the Earth — centuries after Kepler and Copernicus. Perhaps the entry of scientific causality and rationality is where we must begin in the reform of India’s governance and economy. What was especially repugnant after Rajiv’s assassination was to hear it said by his enemies that it marked an end to “dynastic” politics in India. This struck me as being devoid of all sense because the unanswerable reason for protecting Rajiv Gandhi was that we in India, if we are to have any pretensions at all to being a civilized and open democratic society, cannot tolerate terrorism and assassination as means of political change. Either we are constitutional democrats willing to fight for the privileges of a liberal social order, or ours is truly a primitive and savage anarchy concealed beneath a veneer of fake Westernization.

The next day, Friday March 22, I worked from dawn to get the penultimate draft to Krishna Rao before noon as planned the night before. Rasgotra arrived shortly, and the three of us worked until evening to finish the job. I left for an hour to print out copies for a meeting of the entire group, where the draft we were going to submit would come to be decided. When I got back I found Rasgotra had launched an extended and quite unexpected attack on what had been written on economic policy. Would someone like Manmohan Singh, Rasgotra wanted to know, agree with all this talk we were putting in about liberalization and industrial efficiency? I replied I did not know what Manmohan Singh’s response would be but I knew he had been in Africa heading something called the South-South Commission for Julius Nyrere of Tanzania. I said what was needed was a clear forceful statement designed to restore India’s credit-worthiness, and the confidence of international markets. I said that the sort of thing we should aim for was to make clear, e.g. to the IMF’s man in Delhi when that person read the manifesto, that the Congress Party at least knew its economics and was planning to make bold new steps in the direction of progress. I had argued the night before with Rasgotra that on foreign policy we should “go bilateral” with good strong ties with individual countries, and drop all the multilateral hogwash. But I did not wish to enter into a fight on foreign policy which he was writing, so long as the economic policy was left the way we said. Krishnamurty, Khusro and Pitroda came to my defence saying the draft we had done greatly improved on the March 18 draft. For a bare half hour or so with all of us present, the draft was agreed upon. Later that night at Andhra Bhavan, I gave Krishna Rao the final copy of the draft manifesto which he was going to give Narasimha Rao the next day, and sent a copy to Krishnamurty who was liaising with Pranab Mukherjee. Pitroda got a copy on a floppy disc the next day for Solanki.

In its constructive aspects, the March 22 1991 draft of the Congress manifesto went as follows with regard to economic policy: “CHAPTER V AGENDA FOR ECONOMIC ACTION 1. Control of Inflation …. The Congress believes the inflation and price-rise of essential commodities… is a grave macroeconomic problem facing the country today. It has hit worst the poorest and weakest sections of our people and those with fixed incomes like pensioners. The Congress will give highest priority to maintaining the prices of essential commodities, increasing their production and supply using all appropriate economic instruments. 2. Macroeconomic Policy Framework To control inflation of the general price-level, the Congress will provide a predictable long-term policy framework. The average Indian household and business will not have their lives and plans disrupted by sudden changes in economic policy. Coherent monetary policy measures will be defined as called for by the Report of Experts of the Reserve Bank of India in 1985. The Long-Term Fiscal Policy introduced by the Congress Government of 1984-1989 will be revived. Medium and long-term export-import policies will be defined. The basis for a strong India must be a strong economy. The Congress believes a high rate of real growth is essential for securing a strong national defence, social justice and equity, and a civilized standard of living for all. As the party of self-reliance, Congress believes resources for growth must be generated from within our own economy. This means all wasteful and unproductive Government spending has to be cut, and resources transferred from areas of low priority to areas of high national priority. Subsidies have to be rationalized and reduced, and productivity of investments already made has to be improved. The widening gap between revenue receipts and revenue expenditure must be corrected through fiscal discipline, and the growing national debt brought under control as a matter of high priority. These policies in a consistent framework will create the environment for the freeing of the rupee in due course, making it a hard currency of the world of which our nation can be proud. Public resources are not unlimited. These have to be allocated to high priority areas like essential public services, poverty-reduction, strategic sectors, and protection of the interests of the weaker sections of society. Government has to leave to the initiative and enterprise of the people what can be best done by themselves. Government can now progressively vacate some areas of activity to the private, cooperative and non-government sectors. Black money in the parallel economy has become the plague of our economic and political system. This endangers the social and moral fabric of our nation. Artificial price controls, excessive licensing, capacity restrictions, outmoded laws on rent control and urban ceiling, and many other outdated rules and regulations have contributed to pushing many honest citizens into dishonest practices. The Congress will tackle the problem of black money at its roots by attacking all outmoded and retrograde controls, and simplifying procedures in all economic spheres. At the same time, the tax-base of the economy must be increased via simplification and rationalization of tax-rates and coverage, user-fees for public goods, and reduction of taxes wherever possible to improve incentives and stimulate growth. 3. Panchayati Raj India’s farmers and khet mazdoors are the backbone of our economy. Economic development is meaningless until their villages provide them a wholesome rural life. The Congress will revitalize Panchayat Raj institutions to decentralize decision-making, so development can truly benefit local people most effectively. 4. Rural Development Basic economic infrastructure like roads, communications, fresh drinking water, and primary health and education for our children must reach all our villages. The Congress believes such a policy will also relieve pressures from migration on our towns and cities…… Through the Green Revolution which the Congress pioneered over 25 years, our farmers have prospered. Now our larger farmers must volunteer to contribute more to the national endeavour, and hence to greater equity and overall economic development. Equity demands land revenue should be mildly graduated so that small farmers holding less than one acre pay less land revenue per acre…. 9. Education and Health The long-run prosperity of our nation depends on the general state of education, health and well-being of our people. Small families give themselves more choice and control over their own lives. Improving female literacy, promoting the welfare of nursing mothers and reducing infant mortality will have a direct bearing on reducing the birth-rate and improving the health and quality of all our people. Primary and secondary education has high social returns and is the best way in the long-run for achievement of real equality. Efforts will be made to reduce the cost of education for the needy through concessional supply of books and other study materials, scholarships and assistance for transportation and residential facilities. The Congress Party pledges to dedicate itself to promoting education, especially in rural areas and especially for girls and the weaker sections of society. The next Congress Government will prepare and launch a 10-year programme for introduction of free and compulsory primary education for all children of school age. It will continue to emphasize vocational bias in education, integrating it closely with employment opportunities…. 11. Industrial Efficiency Our industrial base in the private and public sectors are the core of our economy. What we have achieved until today has been creditable, and we are self-reliant in many areas. Now the time has come for industry to provide more efficiency and better service and product-quality for the Indian consumer. The public sector has helped the Indian economy since Independence and many national goals have been achieved. Now it has become imperative that the management of public sector units is made effective, and their productivity increased. Major steps must be taken for greater accountability and market-orientation. Failure to do this will make our country lose more and more in the international economy. Budgetary support will be given only for public sector units in the core and infrastructure sectors. Emphasis will be on improving performance and productivity of existing investments, not on creating added organizations or over manning. Units not in the core sector will be privatised gradually. Even in core sectors like Telecommunications, Power, Steel and Coal, incremental needs can be taken care of by the private sector. The Government-Enterprise interface must be properly defined in a White Paper. The Congress believes privatisation must distribute the profits equitably among the people of India. In order to make our public enterprises truly public, it is essential that the shares of many such enterprises are widely held by the members of the general public and workers. Congress pledges to allot a proportion of such shares to the rural Panchayats and Nagarpalikas. This will enhance their asset-base and yield income for their development activities, as well as improve income-distribution. 12. Investment and Trade Indian industry, Government and professional managers are now experienced enough to deal with foreign companies on an equal footing, and channel direct foreign investment in desired directions. Foreign companies often bring access to advanced technological know-how, without which the nation cannot advance. The Congress Government will formulate a pragmatic policy channelling foreign investment into areas important to the national interest. Every effort must be made also to encourage Indians who are outside India to invest in the industry, trade and real estate of their homeland. Because of the protected and inflationary domestic market, Indian industry has become complacent and the incentive for industrial exports has been weakened. When all production is comfortably absorbed at home, Indian industry makes the effort to venture into exports only as a last resort. This must change. A Congress Government will liberalize and deregulate industry to make it competitive and export-oriented, keeping in mind always the interests of the Indian consumer in commercial policy. Export-oriented and predictable commercial policies will be encouraged. Existing procedural constraints and bottlenecks will be removed. Quotas and tariffs will be rationalized. Thrust areas for export-development will be identified and monitored. Efforts will be made to develop a South Asian Community. Trade and economic cooperation among South Asian countries must be increased and simplified.”

This March 22 1991 draft of the Congress’s intended economic policies got circulated and discussed, and from it rumours and opinions appeared that Congress was planning to launch a major economic reform in India. Economic Times said the manifesto “is especially notable for its economic agenda” and Business Standard said “if party manifestos decide election battles” Congress must be “considered home and dry”. A senior IMF official told me three years later the manifesto had indeed seemed a radical and bold move in the direction of progress, which had been exactly our intended effect. When I met Manmohan Singh at the residence of S. S. Ray in September 1993 in Washington, Ray told him and his senior aides the Congress manifesto had been written on my computer. Manmohan Singh smiled and said that when Arjun Singh and other senior members of the Congress had challenged him in the cabinet, he had pointed to the manifesto. Yet, oddly enough, while the March 22 draft got discussed and circulated, and the Indian economic reform since July 1991 corresponded in fundamental ways to its contents as reproduced above, the actual published Congress manifesto in April 1991 was as tepid and rhetorical as usual, as if some party hack had before publication put in the usual nonsense about e.g. bringing down inflation via price-controls. Certainly the published manifesto was wholly undistinguished in its economic aspects, and had nothing in it to correspond to the bold change of attitude towards economic policy that actually came to be signalled by the 1991 Government.

On March 23, our group was to meet Rajiv at noon. There was to be an event in the inner lawns of Rajiv’s residence in the morning, where he would launch Krishna Rao’s book on India’s security. Krishna Rao had expressly asked me to come but I had to wait outside the building patiently, not knowing if it was a mistake or if it was deliberate. This was politics after all, and I had ruffled feathers during my short time there. While I waited, Rajiv was speaking to a farmers’ rally being held at grounds adjoining his residence, and there appeared to be thousands of country folk who had gathered to hear him. When it was over, Rajiv, smiling nervously and looking extremely uncomfortable, was hoisted atop people’s shoulders and carried back to the residence by his audience. As I watched, my spine ran cold at the thought that any killer could have assassinated him with ease in that boisterous crowd, right there in the middle of Delhi outside his own residence. It was as if plans for his security had been drawn up without any strategic thinking underlying them.

Krishna Rao arrived and graciously took me inside for his book launch. The event was attended by the Congress’s top brass, including Narasimha Rao whom I met for the first time, as well as foreign military attaches and officers of the Indian armed forces. The attaché of one great power went about shaking hands and handing out his business card to everyone. I stood aside and watched. Delhi felt to me that day like a sieve, as if little could be done without knowledge of the embassies. One side wanted to sell arms, aircraft or ships, while the other wanted trips abroad or jobs or green cards or whatever for their children. And I thought Islamabad would be worse — could India and Pakistan make peace in this fetid ether?

Proceedings began when Rajiv arrived. This elite audience mobbed him just as the farmers had mobbed him earlier. He saw me and beamed a smile in recognition, and I smiled back but made no attempt to draw near him in the crush. He gave a short very apt speech on the role the United Nations might have in the new post-Gulf War world. Then he launched the book, and left for an investiture at Rashtrapati Bhavan. We waited for our meeting with him, which finally happened in the afternoon. Rajiv was plainly at the point of exhaustion and still hard-pressed for time. He seemed pleased to see me and apologized for not talking in the morning. Regarding the March 22 draft, he said he had not read it but that he would be doing so. He said he expected the central focus of the manifesto to be on economic reform, and an economic point of view in foreign policy, and in addition an emphasis on justice and the law courts. I remembered our September 18 conversation and had tried to put in justice and the courts into our draft but had been over-ruled by others. I now said the social returns of investment in the judiciary were high but was drowned out again. Rajiv was clearly agitated that day by the BJP and blurted out he did not really feel he understood what on earth they were on about. He said about his own family, “We’re not religious or anything like that, we don’t pray every day.” I felt again what I had felt before, that here was a tragic hero of India who had not really wished to be more than a happy family man until he reluctantly was made into a national leader against his will. We were with him for an hour or so. As we were leaving, he said quickly at the end of the meeting he wished to see me on my own and would be arranging a meeting. One of our group was staying back to ask him a favour. Just before we left, I managed to say to him what I felt was imperative: “The Iraq situation isn’t as it seems, it’s a lot deeper than it’s been made out to be.” He looked at me with a serious look and said “Yes I know, I know.” It was decided Pitroda would be in touch with each of us in the next 24 hours. During this time Narasimha Rao’s manifesto committee would read the draft and any questions they had would be sent to us. We were supposed to be on call for 24 hours. The call never came. Given the near total lack of system and organization I had seen over the months, I was not surprised. Krishna Rao and I waited another 48 hours, and then each of us left Delhi. Before going I dropped by to see Krishnamurty, and we talked at length. He talked especially about the lack of the idea of teamwork in India. Krishnamurty said he had read everything I had written for the group and learned a lot. I said that managing the economic reform would be a critical job and the difference between success and failure was thin.

I got the afternoon train to Calcutta and before long left for America to bring my son home for his summer holidays with me. In Singapore, the news suddenly said Rajiv Gandhi had been killed. All India wept. What killed him was not merely a singular act of criminal terrorism, but the system of humbug, incompetence and sycophancy that surrounds politics in India and elsewhere. I was numbed by rage and sorrow, and did not return to Delhi. Eleven years later, on 25 May 2002, press reports said “P. V. Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh lost their place in Congress history as architects of economic reforms as the Congress High command sponsored an amendment to a resolution that had laid credit at the duo’s door. The motion was moved by…. Digvijay Singh asserting that the reforms were a brainchild of the late Rajiv Gandhi and that the Rao-Singh combine had simply nudged the process forward.” Rajiv’s years in Government, like those of Indira Gandhi, were in fact marked by profligacy and the resource cost of poor macroeconomic policy since bank-nationalisation may be as high as Rs. 125 trillion measured in 1994 rupees. Certainly though it was Rajiv Gandhi as Leader of the Opposition in his last months who was the principal architect of the economic reform that came to begin after his passing.

Bibliography, Books, Public Lectures, Memoranda, Memoirs

Some Recent Work

My Recent Tweets

Index of Names and Subjects

The most important of these are in the newspapers and/or at this site too. I will try to have everything reproduced here.

00) https://independentindian.com/2015/03/03/pakistans-indias-illusions-of-power-psychosis-vs-vanity/

0) India-Pakistan Diplomacy During the 1965 War: the MK Roy Files, at this site

1) https://independentindian.com/2011/11/22/pakistans-point-of-view-or-points-of-view-on-kashmir-my-as-yet-undelivered-lahore-lecture-part-i/

2) Law, Justice and Jammu & Kashmir (2006)

Monday, October 5, 2009

3) Solving Kashmir: On an Application of Reason (2005) https://independentindian.com/2005/12/03/solving-kashmir-on-an-application-of-reason/

Monday, October 5, 2009

4) My (armchair) experience of the 1999 Kargil war (Or, How the Kargil effort got a little help from a desktop)

Thursday, April 29, 2010

5) Understanding Pakistan (2006)

Monday, October 5, 2009

6) Pakistan’s Allies (2006)

Monday, October 5, 2009

7) History of Jammu & Kashmir

Monday, October 5, 2009

8) from 30 years ago, now in pdf

9) Talking to my student and friend Amir Malik about Pakistan and its problems

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

10) My thanks to Mr Singh for seeing the optimality of my Kashmir solution

Sunday, September 4, 2011

11) Zafrullah, my father, and the three frigates: there was no massacre of the Hindu Sindhi refugees in Karachi in 1947

Saturday, August 27, 2011

12) Conversation with Mr Birinder R Singh about my Kashmir solution

Saturday, August 20, 2011

13) On the Hurriyat’s falsification of history

Friday, August 19, 2011

14) Letter from a young Pashtun whose grandfathers were in the 1947 invasion of Kashmir (which the Hurriyat says never happened)

Friday, August 19, 2011

15) More on my solution

Thursday, August 18, 2011

16 ) A Hurriyat/Taliban Islamist emirate in the Valley subject to an Indian blockade would likely face famine.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

17) There is no Kashmiri nationality and there never has been in the modern era of international law

18) Of the Flag of Pakistan, and the Union Jack, and the Flag of India — August 14-15 1947

Sunday, August 14, 2011

19) Talking about Kashmir in 1947 to Ralph Coti

Saturday, August 13, 2011

20) Conversation with Prof. Bhim Singh about 1947

Saturday, August 13, 2011

21) The LOC represents the division of ownerless, sovereignless territory won by military conquest by either side…

Monday, August 1, 2011

22) Talking to Mr Tauseef

Monday, August 1, 2011

23) J&K had ceased to exist as an entity in international law by August 15 1947, at most by October 22 1947

Sunday, July 31, 2011

24) Would someone be kind enough to tell me which freedoms Indian Kashmiris are being deprived of?

Friday, July 29, 2011

25) Kunan Poshpora: I would say the evidence reported by the Verghese Committee itself was enough to indicate there had been rape 28 July 2011

26) Talking to Mr Rameez Makhdoomi about Kashmir

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

27) And, as you well know, General Hasnain is both Muslim and Kashmiri, besides being the Commanding Officer of 15 Corps.

Friday, July 22, 2011

28) Kashmir needs a Coroner’s Office!

Friday, July 22, 2011

29) A slogan for Kashmir: No exaggerations, no hallucinations, no cover-ups please: Just the plain facts & accountability

Friday, July 22, 2011

30) Towards a Spatial Model of Kashmir’s Political History

Sunday, July 17, 2011

31) Why did Allama Iqbal say “India is the greatest Muslim country in the world…”?

Friday, July 15, 2011

32) Conversation with Mr Arif

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

33) Omar Qayoom Bhat: A Victim of State Repression in J&K

Monday, July 11, 2011

34) Good and evil in Kashmir over more than a millennium…

Sunday, June 26, 2011

35) Letter to Mr Zargar (Continued)

June 23, 2011

36) From the Official Indian Army website re Human Rights Violations

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

37) A Facebook Discussion on Kashmir with the Lahore Oxford & Cambridge Society

Sunday, June 19, 2011

38) Answering two central questions on the Kashmir Problem

Friday, June 10, 2011

39) Some articles on Jammu & Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan

3) Solving Kashmir: On an Application of Reason (2005)
https://independentindian.com/2005/12/03/solving-kashmir-on-an-application-of-reason/