IOS Book on Freedom Struggle

L-R: Shri Akhilesh Mittal, Historian; Prof. Z.M. Khan, Secretary General, IOS; Shri M. Hamid Ansari, Hon'ble Vice President of India; Prof. Refaqat Ali Khan, General Editor of the Volumes; Prof. M. Afzal Wani, Member, Governing Council IOS

New Delhi, May 31: The Vice President of India, Shri M. Hamid Ansari released a three-volume book from the Institute of Objective Studies (IOS) titled “The Role of Indian Muslim’s in the Indian Freedom Struggle (1857-1947)” at the Vice President’s House here last evening.

As the chief guest of the ceremony, he said that he had already inaugurated the first volume sometime ago at the same venue, and had expressed the desire to the IOS Chairman Dr. M. Manzoor Alam to soon inaugurate the entire set.

Dr Alam was not in the country yesterday. The Vice President said he missed him on such a momentous occasion.

He said the freedom movement was a response of Indian people to British colonial dominance. They fought as Indians, not as followers of some religion or members of some caste or ethnic group.

However, they often articulated the struggle in religious terms like Jehad for freedom, or Gandhiji’s ideal of Ram Rajya.

The series editor of the book, Prof. Refaqat Ali Khan, emphasised the fact that 1857 was a people’s movement in which all sections participated. “The urban India at revolt had the armed support of the peasants and tribes.”

He said the Muslim struggle for independence was inclusive, a part of national struggle for freedom, in which all sections of society worked together. During the Non-Cooperation Movement, in many areas as many as two-thirds of those arrested were Muslims.

The argument that such massive participation of Muslims in Non-Cooperation Movement was due to the Khilafat Movement does not hold ground if one considers the equally large Muslim participation in the Civil Disobedience Movement.

Historian Akhilesh Mittal said the communal divide was the handiwork of the British. “In 1857 the country stood as one man. Among the warriors against the British, 31 percent were Brahims and 34 percent Rajputs.” However, over the decades the British succeeded in dividing them, he concluded.

The programme was conducted by Prof. Afzal Wani.

The age controversy of Gen. V K Singh may open a Pandora’s Box

by MG Devasahayam 
Ex-IAS officer,

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

This agenda is in vast variance with the ‘growth aspiration’ the country started with at independence. In the vision of the Father of the Nation, Independent India would be sui generis, a society unlike any other, in a class of its own.

Gandhi’s India would not go for gigantic, FDI-funded development projects and large-scale industry and mining, typical of market-led growth under capitalism. Instead, India would pursue an equitable, participatory, small-is-beautiful, need-based, inclusive, balanced development while conserving nature and livelihoods. It is to nurture this socio-economic ethos that IAS was established and covenanted in the constitution.

The present-day neo-liberal agenda is just the opposite, seeking an India of market-making MNCs, millionaires and billionaires, a middle class of 300 million providing that market and the rest of 800 million Indians surviving as barely literate, malnourished multitude. This agenda is being driven by a new breed of adhocracy within the IAS that has come about through inbreeding and rank favouritism.

Ever since UPA government under Manmohan Singh assumed power (2004) two kinds of adhocracy have been shaping up. One was born of the ‘clan-within-clan’ inbreeding being practiced by a ‘linguistic-parochial’ group that at one point of time occupied almost every top-job in Delhi’s corridors of power.

The other is the ‘loyalist-core’ put together to implement the neo-liberal agenda. With the active participation of PMO patriarchs, spread of ‘clan-within-clan’ adhocracy was fast and furious capturing several key positions of ‘might and money’. And barring honourable exceptions, other coveted positions went to agenda-men anointed by the ‘Moneyed and the Mighty’.

Bureaucracy was meant to administer through laid down rules. The ICS was called the steel frame, precisely for this reason. ICS men viewed any deviation from the rules as a misdemeanor. Its successor, the IAS endeavoured to keep up the standards. Though there were hiccups, the bureaucratic system by and large ensured that men/women with merit were not denied their due place in promotions and postings.

Adhocracy on the other hand is being nurtured through blatant violation of processes and procedures to ensure that the top positions of Government, Joint Secretaries, Additional Secretaries and Secretaries, are held only by the clansmen and their agenda-abiding loyalists. Such adhocracy, which is antonymous to rule-bound bureaucracy, has substantially skewed and compromised the decision making process and standards. The result is for all to see; policy failure in almost all fronts, suffocating corruption and near total collapse of governance.

As if by intent, adhocracy seem to have permeated the Army Headquarters also as it did in the civil citadel. Sometime in 2005, out of the blue, the then Chief of the Army Staff (General JJ Singh) initiated the unique ‘look down policy’ to determine the ‘line of succession’ to the top position in the Army.

He was not looking for immediate succession but was looking deep-down to the year 2012 and found one favourite - Brigadier Bikram Singh. The Chief also realised that events and dates relating to the then Major General VK Singh, who was sure shot to become Army Chief in 2010, needed to be manipulated if Bikram Singh was to succeed him in 2012!

Once this sub-agendum was set, things started moving. Someone in the MS Branch ‘discovered’ VK Singh’s UPSC application form mentioning 1950 as his year of birth and this was the ‘brahmastra’ to be used to truncate and restrict VK Singh’s tenure as the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) to a two year period, so that the passage could be cleared for Bikram Singh to take over in May 2012. The massive documentary proof establishing 1951 as General’s YoB was ignored. A dismal charade of seeking ‘acceptance’ of 1950 from VK Singh as his YoB was played out.

But there were more hurdles. At that point of time, this favourite was not a front-runner as there were other officers ahead of him, who needed to be ‘eliminated’ at the COAS’s level itself with a bit of deft manoeuvring. A list was prepared, nick-named ‘Op MOSES’ which implied that the Chief would part the waters like in the ‘Ten Commandments’ for Bikram Singh to smoothly walk through! Like a family tree in reverse, Op MOSES listed few potential threats - Brigadiers and Major Generals of higher calibre - who were dealt with and pushed out one by one either through supersession and non-empanelment! For this purpose even ‘records of service’ were tinkered and tampered with and some even made to disappear.

The fallout of this crude manipulation indulged in by the military adhocracy was the sordid age-row of VK Singh that has rocked the nation. The actual DoB is a matter of record as rightly observed by the Supreme Court. But what is of concern is the manner in which the controversy was first stoked, then fanned and finally, brought into play. This calls for thorough investigation.

This is all the more urgent because it is alleged that TKA Nair, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister was behind this brazen manoeuvring. Well before the age controversy came out in the open, Nair is reported to have told his confidants that VK Singh had to go in May 2012 because the ‘Prime Minister had assured his wife that General Bikram Singh would be the next COAS’. Incidentally this gentleman was the chief mentor of the civil service adhocracy!

We have seen the neo-liberal agenda for creating and nurturing the civil adhocracy. But what is the agenda for the military adhocracy? This begs the question. But corruption and carpet bagging could be a possible answer. It is believed that there are IB reports about massive kick-backs in the still-born Eurocopter deal and a top Army brass has reportedly transferred 22 million Euros (Rs. 145 crores) to his relative in Paris through hawala post. But unfortunately for him the deal fell through and he had the consternation of returning the moolah! As if to compensate, this man was rewarded with a coveted civil position with powers to award thousands of crores worth of construction contracts! Now, with huge weapon/equipment purchase deals either being processed or pending in the Army HQ a pliable adhocracy is needed to serve the MNC agenda.

With the state turning into a non-functioning kleptocracy, corruption is the common denominator between civil and military adhocracy. Of late we have seen several cases of swindling and misappropriation in which General Officers have been court-martialed and dismissed from service. Many more must be lying buried.

Sensing danger the civil-military adhocracy has combined to hound out General VK Singh who does not fit into the adhocracy mould. Bulk of the media including ‘reputed’ scribes and defense analysts partnered with the kleptocrats in this despicable task, which indeed is the real tragedy!

http://indiamydreamland.blogspot.in/2012/03/age-controversy-of-gen-v-k-singh-may.html

An Unpleasant Gift Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam’s perspective on UPA-II’s three years in office and the beginning of the fourth.

Dr.Manzoor Alam

UPA-II’s anniversary celebrations seem to have come at an inopportune time. Caught up in a media blizzard, seemingly orchestrated to facilitate a transition in 2014, the Congress Party led UPA has few options.

Cornered and desperate to wriggle out of a sticky situation, the coalition is taking one mis-step after the other. Even measures that could make some economic sense would be political disasters as they do not go well with the voter.

A considerably large lobby within India and the United States is busy projecting Narendra Modi as the future prime minister of India – a business-friendly, no nonsense guy, who thinks he is some kind of a reincarnation of the “Iron Man”, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Recently, the American news magazine Time  did a transparently dishonest cover story on him with the title, “Modi Means Business.”

The woman who did the story (Jyoti Thottam) did not ask the opinion of the sufferers of 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom or the activists who are fighting for their cause. For her, the sorrow of Muslims did not matter, and it had to be either excised out of the narrative or to be given an insignificant play. The net result was that the victims’ voices were silenced in the story.

Modi suits the global corporate agenda of overpowering the state systems of developing countries, silence the people’s voices and subvert their independent political agenda. A part of the propaganda against UPA is driven by this powerful lobby.

Not that UPA has not contributed to this in generous measure. It has always wanted to be seen doing things without really doing them. One example is a senior government minister claiming in public that 80 per cent of the Sachar Committee recommendations had been implemented.

The government’s chief economist, Kaushik Basu, has admitted in an interview to the Times of India  that decision-making has stalled in the UPA in the aftermath of repeated scams and an “excessively cautious bureaucracy.”

The economy is sputtering, causing worried foreign investors to withdraw their money. The rupee’s fall vis-à-vis the dollar is seemingly unstoppable. In that wake comes the Rs 7.5 hike per litre in petrol prices. Diesel and gas have soon to follow. Then will come the turn of other petroleum products like naptha, urea and all kinds of polymers and polyester yarn.

All this is going to create a havoc on the lives of common people because this will drive prices of every commodity in turn, pushing the cost of living for all of us. This is not a pleasant anniversary gift from the UPA-II.  g