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Annus Horribilis

The year 1999 of the Common Era has not been a good one for India. We experienced an unexpected war and continuing low-intensity-conflict; one of the worst natural disasters in a century; and an unnecessary election. Despite some cheer on the economic front, we are stuck with rising oil prices and lack of momentum on reforms. All in all, a forgettable year. In the winter, I always get curmudgeonly -- bah, humbug and all that. This year it's especially bad.

First, Kargil. Much has been written about this -- and I, for one, fully supported the media's enlightened role in making this India's first televised, in-your-face war. The outpouring of support for the common soldier and the level of patriotic fervor shows that national pride is finally emerging among the populace. This, of course, is anathema to the 'secular' 'progressives' -- but their day in the sun may well be over, as Indians appear to be moving towards conservatism, in step with global trends. About time, too.

That is the good part. The bad part, of course, is that such a war was necessary at all. With the rise of the caudillo next door -- especially one such as General Musharraf who, as a Mohajir, has to outdo Punjabi Pakistanis in jingoism -- it is clear that any momentum created by bus diplomacy has evaporated completely.

I don't think the Jammu & Kashmir problem will be solved soon -- especially so long as 'progressive' belly-aching gives Pakistanis the illusion that India will relinquish J&K any day now. This is, of course, the wrong message -- and the wrong reality, too; as Zulifqar Ali Bhutto famously said regarding his nukes, Indians will eat grass before giving up on J&K.

It is my humble opinion -- and I say this at the risk of offending the editor of Rediff -- that the series on J&K recently was against the national interest. What is so sacred about J&K that Indians should tolerate barbarism and ethnic cleansing there, apparently with the enthusiastic support of the local population? Any more than we should tolerate the atrocities committed elsewhere? For instance primary schoolteacher Jayakrishnan being beheaded in front of his entire class by Marxist thugs in Kannur, Kerala, in early December?

I am sure an equally heart-breaking series can be (and should be) written on the damage done to innocent people by Naxalites in Bengal and Kerala, Bihar and Andhra. And the murders of Sikhs in Delhi in 1984 -- and what happened in the Punjab during the insurrection. And ethnic cleansing done to the Reang and Chakma tribals by Christian missionaries in Mizoram. Where are the bleeding-heart liberals? Or is it the case that only the victimization of Muslims and Christians is reprehensible? Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists deserve to be victims, I suppose?

Enough said about Kargil and Kashmir. Then there is Orissa. Here was one of the worst disasters in living memory, another Kargil; and a shocking situation wherein the entire state machinery came to a grinding halt. It is easy enough to blame that ineffective man, Giridhar Gamang. Yet, it was not just Gamang, it was all of us who collectively failed Orissa; and it is a crying shame.

The thing that shocked me most was the uncaringness of the entire nation, and even the entire world. There was photo after photo of human beings and animals rotting in the ditches; of the benighted survivors begging for food; of people drinking contaminated water. Yet, it did not move the collective heart of the nation as the Kargil crisis did. The money collected was a fraction of what was collected for Kargil. Why did nobody care? Because these were not 'people like us'?

And then there are the major world relief organizations like the Nobel-Prize-winning Medecins sans Frontieres, the Red Cross/Red Crescent, and the Christian missionary World Vision. As far as I can tell, none of these was particularly diligent or present in Orissa. Or was it that the government put roadblocks in their way?

The numbers are simply staggering (data from India Today, November 22/29):

· At least 8,000 dead.

· 10 million made homeless.

· 1.3 million houses need to be rebuilt.

· 500,000 cattle killed.

· Deforestation: 6 million trees felled.

· Standing crops along the 480 km from Puri to Balasore lost, and the soil salinated in 1.5 million acres of paddy fields.

· The worst cyclone in 100 years.

· Damage estimated at Rs 7,000 crore, (US $ 1.5 billion), 4 times the state's budget.

The relief work needed:

· 10,000 km of roads need repair.

· 5,000 tonnes of food need to be supplied daily.

· 6 million utensils needed.

· 12,400 kilolitres of kerosene needed daily.

· thousands of human and cattle corpses yet to be cleared.

And look at the official response:

· The chief secretary of Orissa flew to the US to see his ailing daughter a week after the storm.

· Giridhar Gamang showed himself to be completely at sea -- and remember, this is the man whose single vote in Parliament, which he really wasn't entitled to, brought down the last Vajpayee government. He ought to be ashamed of himself indeed -- he is the perfect example of India's politician: a creature with nothing but greed and self interest in mind; not even the remotest hint of competence.

· Anywhere else in the world, the leader of Gamang's party would have accepted moral responsibility and resigned. But, of course, Sonia Gandhi had no such scruples.

· The central government did not exactly cover itself in glory, either -- although, to their credit, Defence Minister George Fernandes was dispatched post-haste to Orissa and did do something useful.

· Hundreds of trucks were idling uselessly in Bhubaneswar's main stadium, as they weren't given the proper permits to move goods to the affected areas.

· The only efficient relief effort was from the team sent by neighbouring Andhra to the area around Cuttack. I take my hat off yet again to that remarkable man, Chandrababu Naidu

That we let this happen in the first place -- by not giving adequate warning to the residents; and then failed to provide them with succor after the fact -- is a blot on India's human rights record. It re-emphasises once more the fact that we are inured to the suffering of our fellows.

And then the nation wasted several billion rupees in holding a election, mainly to satisfy the bloated egos of a few parasitic politicians.

Finally, the events in Indonesia should have a salutary effect on Indian strategic thinkers. The film has it that 1968 was Indonesia's Year of Living Dangerously. But in fact, it was 1999, the year the dismemberment of the largest Muslim country in the world started. East Timor is the beginning, not the end -- there are separatist movements in Aceh, etc, where the West is supporting Christian secessionists.

India should make common cause with the Indonesians -- who, after all, are the mild side of Islam as compared to the wild-eyed fundamentalists of West Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In this clash of civilizations, India and Indonesia are both likely victims of Western propaganda. The Americans, in particular, have no respect for national sovereignty (except their own) -- as they have demonstrated in Yugoslavia, and now as they pressurise the Russians over Chechnya.

With the Pope's visit, and increased funding for conversions in Asia in general and in India in particular -- the details of this effort on a war-footing are of course on the net -- we surely need to worry about a future secessionist movement in the northeast which will be positioned globally by the Western media as the result of 'Hindu oppression of Christians'. I can well imagine Australian 'peace-keepers' in Nagaland conducting a 'UN-sponsored referendum' on 'independence'.

Cry, the beloved country, indeed. I can only hope that 2000 brings better tidings.

Millennium bugs:

Even though most of us are heartily sick of the unceasing hype about the 'millennium' there are some people who take it seriously. They are wrong, as is well known: the new millennium of the Common Era only begins in 2001 -- as in the famed film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Furthermore, this era did not necessarily begin with the birth of Jesus Christ -- his birth and death dates are not known with any certainty, as he was not honored in his lifetime. Yet, there are those, especially American fundamentalists, who take as literal truth some of the strange prophecies in texts such as The Book of Revelations, awaiting the Armageddon (a major world war) and the Rapture wherein the faithful would be elevated bodily to heaven.

I once publicly offered any Christian fundamentalist a wager of US$ 1 million that the world would not end in 2000 CE, but alas, nobody took me up on it. I was pretty sure this was a safe bet: after all, if the world ended, I wouldn't have to pay up!

There are quite a few people, if you are to believe the FBI et al, who will be looking with interest at December 31, 1999 as a time to inflict massive damage -- by bringing down power grids, or by acts of terrorism against the large celebrating crowds anticipated all over the West. One of the prime suspects, of course, is Osama bin Laden and his band of extreme Islamic fundamentalists.

But there are Christian and Jewish extremists too, in particular the former, who have gone to Jerusalem -- some were recently deported by Israeli authorities back to the US -- to help usher in the Second Coming of Christ by blowing up the Dome of the Rock, which stands on the site of the Second Temple of the Jews, and then constructing the Third Temple thereon. Since Muslims consider the Dome of the Rock the third holiest place in Islam, you can imagine there will be some fireworks in that case.

Other American fundamentalists like Christian Identity and New American, two groups prone to millennial violence, are being watched by the FBI. They have also discovered a plan to detonate a 24 million gallon propane repository in Sacramento, California, as well as plans to attack Jewish synagogues in Skokie, Illinois.

I, for one, will be glad to see the last of these millennium bugs. For I believe the year 2000 CE has no significance, and nothing in particular will happen, any more than the usual mayhem around the world. I refer you to the panic of 1844, when, similarly, Christian fundamentalists predicted the end of the world; as is obvious, nothing happened then either.

Postscript: I received an enormous amount of mail responding to my column about American hypocrisy and the idiocies of religion in the US. Reader Suresh from Houston pointed out further strange cults -- those Southern Baptists who 'speak in tongues' -- ie 'holy' gibberish; and those who handle poisonous snakes to prove their devotion. But most hilariously, people like the Reverend Wildmon who listen to pop music played backwards, and discover 'Satanic messages' recorded in the works of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, etc. They must have a lot of spare time.

Reader Dahyabhai from New Jersey pointed out that the Reverend Jimmy Swaggart, a very bigoted man, was found in the arms of a prostitute and brazened it out with a tearful television performance. I also read recently that the Reverend Jerry Falwell has 'outed' one of the Tele-tubbies, a sickeningly cloying set of British toys. This particular Tele-tubby, a male named Tinky-Winky, was deemed to be a closet gay, as he carries a hand-bag! Yes, a toy, crucified for gayness!

One person, no doubt a Southern Baptist, wrote that the disastrous Orissa cyclone was divine retribution for the murder of missionary Graham Staines. Remarkable theory. Of course, they must have burned a lot of missionaries in the US that the Loma Prieta earthquake happened in 1989, and the great hurricanes of 1999, not to mention the Second World War. I wonder what the retribution was for the burning of some 80 black churches around the US in the last few years -- God gave America Bill Clinton, maybe?

In thinking about this theory, I noticed a remarkable fact -- Orissa Chief Minister Giridhar Gamang was a Christian; his boss Sonia Gandhi was a Christian; and the Pope, a Christian, was about to come to India when the cyclone hit. I had fun constructing equally asinine theories about divine warnings from these facts.

But I must say the Pope and his minions made a terrible public relations mistake by paying absolutely no attention to the Orissa tragedy -- they were obsessed with creating lots of Christians in Asia. It just shows how much they care about the average human being in India -- as I keep saying, we are just so much brown cannon-fodder for their conversion machinery.

Reader Dahyabhai also sent me some lore about the Antichrist, the Kalki-like entity whose arrival is supposed to herald the end of the world. It researching the Antichrist, I found to my surprise that a lot of Southern Baptists, and Protestants in general, consider the Pope the Antichrist! In fact, a brief search on the Web brought up a book by the Reverend Ian Paisley, a well-known leader of the Irish Protestants: The Pope is the Antichrist.

Another book by a medieval scholar, Francis Turretin (1623-1687) supports this view by quoting extensively from the Testaments and Revelations. He suggests that the term vicarius filii Dei, vicar of the son of God, denoting the Pope, indicates the number 666, famously the symbol of the Beast or the Antichrist! Christopher Hitchens quotes Dante Alligheri as saying that the Pope and the Emperor were still fornicating! Protestants on the Web refer to the Pope as the 'whore of Babylon', the 'seed of Satan'!

I was startled by all this. As an average Hindu, I have thought of the Pope -- even one as unbending and fundamentalist as the current one -- as the representative of Christ. To see him reviled by his fellow-Christians as merely a politician at best and as the Devil incarnate at worst was a true revelation. It appear the only thing papists and pope-haters agree upon is the need to convert the brown masses. Truly a motley crew, these guys!

Rajeev Srinivasan