Old Truths May Still Be True

Narendra Modi’s latest ploy is mightily interesting. On April 18, a day after failing to push through a constitutional amendment in the Lok Sabha that could have given his party near-perpetual rule by raising the representation in future Lok Sabhas of states in northern and central India (where the BJP is strong) relative to states in the south and the east (where opposition parties are stronger), he delivered a suddenly-announced, 29-minute TV “address to the nation” almost all of which attacked the Congress Party and its allies as anti-women, while simultaneously painting himself as a lifelong, self-sacrificing servant of India’s women.

Some of Modi’s motivation in making this extraordinary intervention was plain: crucial elections in West Bengal (Apr 23, Apr 29) and Tamil Nadu (Apr 23). Both are states where strong local parties opposed to him and his BJP are not only in power (TMC in Bengal and DMK in Tamil Nadu) but are expected by some election-watchers to return to office for five more years. 

While the TMC has an India-wide understanding with the Indian National Congress (INC), in West Bengal the TMC (one of the INC’s numerous spinoffs) is the number one party and hopes to be reelected on its own strength, despite having governed Bengal from 2011. 

Modi has long tried to defeat the TMC in Bengal, but in his national address he also lambasted the INC, the DMK, and the Socialist Party, the BJP’s primary opponent in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, which goes to the polls in 2027. The address was telecast everywhere in India, including in Bengal and Tamil Nadu, by all government and private channels, and diligently reproduced in all newspapers. The speech was also highlighted in huge frontpage ads in dozens of newspapers in multiple languages, all paid for by the BJP and possibly by BJP governments.

CONJOINING TRICK 

With brazen inventiveness, Modi had tied the constitutional amendment to an unimplemented law already enthusiastically passed in 2023 with all-party support that reserved one-third of all future Lok Sabha seats to women. Fully aware that the BJP and its allies could not and would not muster the two-third majority necessary for a constitutional amendment, Modi coupled that amendment with a promise of reserving a third of future Lok Sabhas for women. The conjoined measure’s guaranteed defeat would enable him to make the TV address he had already prepared. 

Modi thus positioned himself, immediately before the voting in Bengal and Tamil Nadu, as the savior of India’s women.

On paper, India’s rules strictly prohibit such gimmicks and an election-eve speech of the kind Modi made, but the legal and judicial institutions that enforce laws have for some time been effectively crushed in India. In his address, Modi purveyed one falsehood after another with the certainty that he would face no hurdle or rejoinder.

Will he gain his electoral objectives in Bengal and Tamil Nadu? A pretty widespread sentiment in today’s India holds that in reality Modi no longer commands the esteem he used to. Many seem certain that the women of West Bengal and Tamil Nadu will laugh at his falsehood-rich ruse and reject it. 

However, there are ominous reports from West Bengal of the deployment all across the state of thousands of paramilitary men and women from outside Bengal, and of eve-of-election raids, restrictions, and evictions mounted against TMC leaders as also the party’s ground-level workers and election machinery. These reports have come on top of other profoundly disquieting reports of the removal from West Bengal’s voters’ lists of hundreds of thousands of names and of the addition of tens of thousands of new names.

Are we witnessing the start of an operation to prevent somehow the return once more of Bengal’s chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, and bring the BJP to power there? Results for both Bengal and Tamil Nadu, and also for voting in the states of Kerala and Assam that took place on April 9, are to be declared on May 4. By then we will know what percentage of democracy survives in India.

WHAT THE GULF IS SAYING

Old observers of the Middle East, and of global reactions to events there, have marked a number of distinct messages. The most obvious one is that almost every national economy in the world is dependent on shipping in the Gulf. A second significant message is that the American population no longer seems willing to give Israel the moral right to do as it pleases. The unashamed seizure of Lebanese and Palestinian lands has aroused unprecedented and open criticism in quarters in the US hitherto habituated to justify any and every Israeli step. 

It appears, thirdly, that while the people of Iran may not like the theocratic system run from their capital, Tehran, their dislike of US bullying is much stronger. The world has found Iranians undergirding their ancient nation’s integrity and independence against heavy odds and at great personal cost.

Fourthly, Western countries with large populations like the UK, France, Italy, Germany, and Spain seem to have freed themselves from what until now appeared to be a compulsion to always follow the White House’s line. Even smaller-in-numbers Hungary has displaced the long-ruling Viktor Orban, who for years seemed to admire both Trump and Putin, and has found a new leader.

Finally, the whole world will surely be relieved if the region’s own different powers – Iran, Turkey, Israel, and the Arabs, to mention four prominent ones -- find a way of co-existing with one another. With its oil and gas, the Middle East has long been fueling the world, but we should identify the region’s greatest and most durable wealth.

REGION’S REAL WEALTH 

Apart from the huge part played by oil and gas, the US’s bases in the region seemed to offer “security” for every kind of enterprise. Universities and high-end medical centers grew. Construction boomed, and the Gulf hosted global sporting events. The region’s dependable sunshine appealed to the many who are uncomfortable with cold winters.  Altogether, places like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar provided jobs, incomes and wealth for natives as well as for millions of non-natives from Asia, Europe, North America, Australia, Egypt, and elsewhere in the Middle East. 

But none of these constituted or constitute the region’s greatest asset. Much more so than its minerals or the sun, the region’s PEOPLE are the treasure. Sadly for everyone on the planet, but most of all for themselves, these richly endowed women and men of the Middle East have hesitated to befriend their regional neighbors. 

Beguiled by power-hungry leaders who thrive on fear, hate, and ignorance, the people of the Gulf region (and the Middle East as a whole) have looked to countries far away for allies and complementarities. 

Israel’s story is well-known: American satellites, weapons, and dollars have enabled its expansionist drives. But the Jewish state has turned its back on attracting the neighborhood goodwill its children, women, and men will need for future comfort and security.

There’s a similar hard truth for others in the Middle East. The banner of Islam hasn’t prevented suspicion and hostility between Arabs, Iranians, and Turks.

THE TRUCE SEEKERS 

All of us anywhere can be thankful that leaders in Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey have served as intermediaries between Iran and the US and expressed willingness to serve as mediators as well. They have a stake in peace returning to the region, but since messengers and truce-seekers take risks, their role should be acknowledged. 

In Pakistan’s case, for their leaders to step forward despite their nation’s formidable internal challenges has been impressive, the more so when you realize that Islamabad’s constructive initiatives have required cooperation between sharply divided political parties as also between political and military leaders.

When I remind myself that I am an Indian, not merely a member of humanity at large, I am of course disappointed that India’s leaders and diplomats have not added their voice and effort to the global calls for peace and accord in the Gulf and the Middle East. Even before I speak of the better relations required in the Middle East, I realize that that sanity is needed with the same if not greater urgency in the region that we call South Asia, which adjoins the Middle East and forms along with it a single geostrategic space.

Not all that long ago India was a recognized leader of what were called the world’s Nonaligned Nations. From “Nonalignment” India’s international posture moved first to “multi-alignment” and then to “strategic autonomy,” positions admirable in their own way but somehow lacking connection to the commonsense that turns neighbors into allies.

Even as India’s Hindu nationalist government persists with its Islamophobic drives, the people of India, 80 percent Hindu, have indicated widespread and deep empathy for the people of Iran, where non-Muslims may not add up even to one percent of the population. One day scholars will analyze this empathy and tell us how much of it is due to ancient historical and even genetic ties, how much to familiarity with and warmth for Persian poems, legends, and art, how much to the widespread use of the Persian language during Mughal times and also in the first phase of British rule, how much to a distaste for “Western” supremacy, and how much to a universal revulsion against “safe” bombings from afar of areas that include bridges, schools, and hospitals and populations that include children and the very old.

ACCEPTING THE STRANGER 

Truths do not become errors merely because they are forgotten or ignored. Therefore I remind myself as well as anyone anywhere who listens of old verities. The goal must be to seek justice and fairness. On that path we will walk with everyone without exception, and especially with our immediate neighbors. When necessary, we may walk alone. 

In India, Mohandas Gandhi, better known as Mahatma Gandhi, whose native Gujarat is not too far from the Gulf, spent his life reminding us of a 15th-century verse, which said that sensible people comprehend the pain of the other, of the stranger. 

And Gandhi’s older fellow-traveler, the Bengali poet who won the Nobel in 1913, Rabindranath Tagore, wrote these lines for the people of his country and of all countries:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action,

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.