When dreams die

So much has been written and spoken glowingly about the Arab Spring and so many hopes have centred on this these past two years that it is perhaps necessary to revisit this to see how and where these hopes dwindled and why. Let us first get a few things clear in our minds when we speak of the Arab Spring. The description ‘Arab’ is a loose description. The relaxed Islam and liberal attitudes of the Arab of Tunisia have little in common with the dry severe Wahabbism of the Arab of Saudi Arabia.

Tunisian protesters congregate outside the Interior Ministry building at Avenue Habib Bourguiba on January 24, 2011 in Tunis. Pic/Getty Images

 

Tunisia, Egypt and Libya were championed as the leaders of the Arab Spring. Yet Tunisians scorned at the Libyans considering them to be filthy rich Bedouins and were always cool towards the Egyptians and neither could understand why Libyans were embroiled in a tribal civil war. Very soon after Gaddafi was brutalised and killed, the new leader declared that all laws that contravened the Sharia were null and void. Egyptians and Tunisians are willing to face off at soccer matches and kill each other.

Apart from this, even the religious practices of the Islam that is observed in the Middle East is not uniform, and the Shia-Sunni schism translates into Iran versus the rest and a struggle for domination and political power. None of the movements in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and Yemen were for Islamic ideology, yet today Al Qaeda or the Salafists are present in all these countries, with Mali as the latest entrant into the list.

But when the Shia majority in Bahrain protested against the minority Sunni rulers, a nervous Saudi monarchy sent its tanks across to suppress them and the Arab Spring of this tiny kingdom ended abruptly and no one mourned the end of this movement and its aspirations. The Saudi monarchy was worried about growing Iranian influence in Bahrain and the Americans were naturally concerned with their Centcom bases on the island. Bahrain thus did not qualify for an Arab Spring.

Tunisia is the place where it all started and it is therefore useful to see why it happened there first and where the movement stands in Tunisia and in the rest of the Middle East. Tunisia had been ruled by an authoritarian but secular and much revered ruler Habib Bourgiba for over 30 years till he was overthrown by Ben Ali.

Bourgiba allowed unheard of social freedoms to his people, he gave Tunisia a world class education system, kept the army under control, detested Islamic ideology and championed women’s rights in the Muslim world. Yet this is where the spark was lit by the self-immolation by Mohammed Bouazizi, a street vendor.

The spontaneous uprising had no moorings except that the people were fed up with the untrammelled corruption of Ben Ali and his extended family. The revolt was against the narrow political economic elite. Ironically, after his ouster Ben Ali fled to Wahabbi Saudi Arabia, as no other country was willing to grant him shelter.

The Islamists exiled for long by Bourgiba, were not there in the initial phases of the uprising, but were back in business soon enough. Today, the Salafist group Ennahda led by the Islamist Rachid Ghannouchi is the majority party in the Consultative Assembly having relegated all other secular groupings.

The famous Tahrir Square movement of January 2011 in Cairo that had promised so much ended up as feared. There were early indications of the hand of the Ikhwan playing their role carefully. Commenting on this two years ago, I had said “It makes better sense to use the momentum of the present movement to position itself for later negotiations.

Even as it is, there is an attempt to change the discourse by describing the Ikhwan as a moderate force rather like dealing with moderate/good Taliban in Afghanistan”. The anti-Mubarak Twitter and Facebook revolution demanding release from poverty, illiteracy and corruption had soon became anti- US and anti-Israel as the Muslim Brotherhood began to take control. The slogans at Tahrir Square had changed to “Freedom Freedom, Salafiya Salafiya”.

What was hoped to be the flowering of democracies and freedoms in the Middle East in the 21st century has unfortunately morphed into the inevitable rise of religious fundamentalists whose dogma is to violently push their people back at least to the 11th century, if not the 7th century. Tackling this all over the Middle East is going to be much harder. The Arab Spring has really become an Arab Winter and the Global War on Terror is about to resume in different parts in more vicious forms.

Source : Mid Day, February 2013 , Vikram Sood  is a former chief of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW)

State of the Union

Some images endure. Like the one near the memorial to our fallen war heroes, in New Delhi. This is the photograph of that horrible December 2012 day in many newspapers.

It shows six men in uniform, their laathis raised high and about to strike at two prone unarmed protestors. This image of senseless brutality by the state, was more an image from Colonial India against Indians seeking independence than from a Free India.

Sociologists may ascribe societal reasons for this misogyny arguing that in India and indeed the subcontinent, wealth, land and a woman is the exclusive property of the male and all three are his to use embellish, improve, exchange and discard or abuse as he chooses. Partly yes, but the sad reality is that there was an inevitability about the events of December 16.

Delhi police baton-charge a lady during a protest calling for better safety for women following the gang rape of a medical student in December last year

 

This breakdown did not happen overnight. The signs had been there for some years but we chose to ignore them hoping that this malaise will somehow go away. The markers of this breakdown were visible in the events that led to the brutal rape in a bus and eventual death of that young physiotherapist in New Delhi. From the time the young couple left the theatre till the time they ended up at Safdarjung hospital, there were at least a dozen violations of the law and numerous cases of societal neglect and apathy as the two lay naked and bleeding on the road side.

When the young went seeking redress and sympathy, the state pummelled them with water cannons, tear gas and baton charges. The hierarchy was playing the blame game and there was clearly evasion of responsibility. The state had gone into stupor and for days there was no sympathy except self congratulation from the portals of power. Our young leaders were not to be seen and the senior leaders were silent, barring the repetitive gaffes. We had not learnt any lessons from the chaos and paralysis of Mumbai November 2008.

What happened for the next few days was a confirmation that the State, unable to implement its own laws, was paralysed. If this is how we are going to respond to what was a local crisis how would this state react when there is a national crisis. One shudders at the prospect.

The arrogance with which the law of the land has been regularly violated ranging from transgressions on our roads to illegal constructions to cover- ups of the Priyadarshini Mattoo, Jessica Lal and Bhanwari Devi murders and the Ruchika Girotra suicide. In a country where in the 1990s there was a backlog of 25 million cases, where it took up to 20 years to settle, Bibek Debroy had calculated that it could take 324 years to dispose of these cases. The figure would only have increased. The brutes in that bus were confident that they would get away with murder, literally.

Murder is now routine and corruption is folklore. Both show a disdain for law and order and weaken democracy. Add intolerance of all kinds that is gathering momentum these days, and we have a lethal mixture. We can now have gangland style shootouts with cops of a neighbouring state involved at a farm house owned by a wealthy person whose tainted wealth may have political colours too. This was reality imitating the Gangs of Wasseypur, except that this shoot out was in the country’s capital and not in a small town in Bihar.
Populist and patronage politics that began  in the 1970s only created entitlements without responsibilities and weakened the rule of law. If India has to remedy this and progress, we must have a strong liberal democracy. This requires three elements, says Gurcharan Das, citing Francis Fukuyama, in his book “India Grows at Night” India must have a strong authority that allows quick and decisive action, a transparent rule of law to ensure legitimate action and is accountable to the people. These ideals had inspired our founding fathers, were never easy to follow and we let this slip away badly.

The people need speedy justice delivered not just fast track courts. They need that the rule of law is visible and the state is able to ensure this. The state must reassert authority without being authoritarian and be kind but without feet of clay. This is not going to be easy and the fear is that we might get distracted in the satisfaction that the rapists will have been punished and we have a new law.

Source : Mid Day , Mumbai , 7th February 2013 , The writer is a former chief of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW)