Mark Tully

The Pakistan Army’s Operations in East Pakistan Were Brutal and Ruthless

A reporter’s eyewitness account of what he saw in 1971 in and around Dhaka.

The year 1971 was marked with several ‘big victories’ – in politics, cricket and in war – all of which had long term implications for India. The national mood was buoyant, even if the country continued to struggle with endemic problems.

Fifty years later, we look back at those times and evoke some of that mood. In a series of articles, leading writers recall and analyse key events and processes that left their mark on a young, struggling but hopeful nation.

On March 24, 1971 negotiations on a new constitution for Pakistan collapsed. The negotiators were the President, General Yahya Khan, trying to hold the two wings of Pakistan together, the leader of the eastern wing Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, demanding autonomy little short of independence, and the leader of the western wing, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, insisting vehemently on a centrist constitution.

Tajuddin Ahmed, the secretary of Mujib’s party, the Awami League, announced that his party had submitted its final proposals and had nothing to add or negotiate. Bhutto’s advisers and aides started leaving Dhaka and the same evening Yahya Khan left secretly for Islamabad.

During the ten days Yahya Khan had been in Dhaka security in the city had deteriorated so far that the city was effectively in the hands of Mujib’s Awami League and the army was confined to the cantonment.

The day after he left, Yahya broadcast to the nation. Ignoring the conciliatory speech which had been drafted for him by Major General Rao Farman Ali who was advisor to the Governor of East Pakistan, Yahya declared war on Mujib, claiming that he had committed treason by running a parallel government, and promising he would not go unpunished. By the time he broadcast the punishment had already started.

Also read: 1971: The Year India Felt Good About Itself

Around midnight army units had moved out of the cantonment and in brutal assaults captured key points in the city. Sheikh Mujib had been arrested. After the crack-down Bhutto was escorted to the airport where, before boarding the plane, in a typically bombastic statement that was to prove so wrong he said, “Thank God Pakistan has been saved.”

At that time I was in London writing commentaries for the Eastern Service of the BBC World Service. They were broadcast in Hindu, Urdu, Bengali, Tamil and English.

Although the Bangladeshi media was blacked-out and foreign correspondents had been rounded up and flown out of Dhaka, we were kept informed by our two stringers, the Bengali freelance journalists Ataus Samad and Nizamuddin. But their movements were limited by curfews and they had to be circumspect. Sadly Nizamuddin was eventually killed by Razakars when they discovered he was providing information for the BBC. Razakars were pro-Pakistan volunteers, almost entirely non-Bengalis, raised by the army to augment their strength.

It wasn’t until five days after the crack-down that we got a more detailed account of its severity from a report in the London Daily Telegraph by its correspondent Simon Dring. When foreign correspondents were rounded up, he had hidden in Dhaka’s Intercontinental Hotel with the help of its Bengali staff. He later managed to get to the University, the old city and the police barracks and document the massacres that had taken place there. He counted thirty bodies in the University.

Dring’s report was invaluable but we were still not able to give our listeners much information about what had happened and was happening in other cities and towns of Bangladesh, and in the countryside too.

Then a bombshell hit the Pakistan army’s public relations effort, a bombshell the army never recovered from. It was an extensive eyewitness expose of the brutality of the Pakistan army’s crackdown. The report was written by Anthony Mascarenhas, a Karachi journalist. The Pakistan government had taken a party of West Pakistani journalists, including Mascarenhas, to the eastern wing.

Also read: Modi in Bangladesh: PM Talks of Fight Against Terror, His Own Participation in Liberation Protests

Their reports were subject to strict censorship and so gave the impression that the brutality of the army crackdown had been grossly exaggerated and normalcy had been restored throughout the province. Mascarenhas was so shocked by what he saw and heard that he felt it was his duty to reveal the truth about the situation. He went to London to meet Harold Evans, the renowned editor of the Sunday Times, who agreed to publish his report once he had managed to get his family out of Pakistan. This Mascarenhas did with some difficulty, his report appearing in the Sunday Times on June 13, 1971.

The report described seeing the army ‘“hunting” for Hindus. In the night Mascarenhas had heard screaming coming from the Circuit House in Comilla where men were being bludgeoned to death. He found the riverside port of Chandpur almost totally deserted. In army messes, officers boasted to him of the number of Bengalis they had personally shot and the number of houses they had burnt. They spoke of “kill and burn missions” conducted under cover of darkness and of “the final solution” to the problem of Bengal. A Divisional Commander, Major General Shaukat Raza told Mascarenhas, ”We are going to complete the job. We are not going to hand it over half-finished to politicians so that they can mess it up again.”

As well as reporting the brutality of the Pakistan army, Mascarenhas also reported the massacre of non-Bengalis by Bengali soldiers and policemen who had mutinied. He wrote of their “atrocious savagery”.

Mascarenhas’ revelations had a huge international impact. We earned the wrath of the government of Pakistan by broadcasting news of the report extensively, so we were surprised when we were invited to send a reporter to join a party of the first foreign journalists to be allowed to visit East Pakistan, travel freely in the Province, and report without any censorship. The BBC put my name forward.

Mark Tully in what was then East Pakistan. Photo: Author provided.

It’s fifty years now since I landed in Dhaka for my first visit to East Pakistan. I deeply regret that throughout my BBC career I didn’t keep a diary, nor did I keep my notes or copies of my despatches, so I have to depend on my memory, which is inevitably not entirely fresh, to recall that visit.

I can’t remember the exact date of our visit but it was not long after the Pakistani army secured the last two towns, Cox’s Bazar on April 28 and Maulvi Hatia on May 11. We were allowed a limited time to be in the province, I think about two weeks.

We worked individually but sometimes met in the evenings to share notes. Major General Rao Farman Ali, advisor to the formidable governor of East Pakistan Lt General Tikka Khan briefed us and answered our questions patiently and politely. After the departure of the scholarly Martial Law Administrator, Lt General Sahabzada Yakub Khan, Rao Farman Ali became the brains of the high command in Dhaka. He was called on to draw up the first part of the plan for Operation Searchlight, the code name for the crackdown.

During his briefings, Rao Farman Ali attempted to convince us that life was returning to normal in Pakistan and that miscreants trained in India were responsible for what trouble there was. He arranged for us to meet jawans and officers in the field. All of them were extremely hostile to India. One jawan actually said to me, “We will show them that one Muslim is equal to ten Hindus.”

The change in media policy which led to our visit was the brainchild of a remarkable Public Relations Officer Major Siddiq Salik. He was in the army’s headquarters in Dhaka throughout 1971 and was taken prisoner of war after the army surrendered. In 1977 Salik published a book called Witness to Surrender, a highly critical account of the army’s role in the last days of East Pakistan. Nevertheless he went on to be promoted and become General Ziaul Haq’s public relations officer when he seized power. Saliq died when a case of mangoes exploded in the aeroplane he and General Zia were travelling in.

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi with then President of Pakistan, General Zia-Ul-Haq on December 17, 1985. Photo: KKK/December, 1985, M32RG/A63(9)

Salik realised the importance of BBC broadcasts and although I was never officially followed while in Dhaka, he somehow managed to turn up almost everywhere I went. There developed between us one of those strange relationships which do sometimes develop between journalists and PR officials, a sort of love-hate relationship. Salik signed my copy of his book “To Mark, my dear!” signifying, I think, our peculiar relationship.

One place in Dhaka, Salik didn’t show up at was the deserted Hindu area, Shakhara Bazaar. I was preoccupied, taking photos of burnt or boarded up shops when my arm was grabbed by a six-foot plus burly Punjabi policeman, one of the 5,000 West Pakistani policemen sent to the eastern wing because the Bengali force was no longer trustworthy. The Punjabi marched me to a police station and, speaking in Hindustani, ordered the SHO to arrest me. When the SHO realised I was a journalist with official permission to do my job, he rounded on the Punjabi saying, “You people come here. You don’t even know our language, and you start giving us orders. Get out.”

Over the inevitable cup of tea that followed the Punjabi officer’s departure, I asked the SHO about the crackdown. He replied, “You can see with your eyes what has happened.”

I did see evidence of the random firing that had taken place in the old city, I saw the burnt out dormitories of Rajabargh Police Lines, and the damage caused by mortars fired at Iqbal and Jaganath Halls in the University. All the Hindu areas I visited were deserted and there was evidence of random firing.

I contacted our two stringers on the phone but we didn’t meet because that would have endangered them. They informed me that the army was creating terror searching for rebels or insurgents as they called the Mukti Bahini. Young men were being taken off the streets to be interrogated in what was being called “the torture chamber” situated in the Second Capital. Many middle class citizens had left to stay with upcountry relatives or crossed the border into India. The Punjabi policemen on the streets were a constant reminder that Dhaka was an occupied city.

Also read: For Indian Diplomats in Pakistan, the Run up To the 1971 War Was a Very Tense Time

It was arranged for me to meet the sector commander of the Mukti Bahini, Nasiruddin Yusuf Bachchi. He claimed that his “boys” were even active in the capital and told me that they had recently blown up an electricity transformer and a bridge. I remember being able to confirm the damage of the bridge and reporting it. Not surprisingly, the sector commander denied getting any help from India.

I also met leaders of the Bihari community, non-Bengalis who had come to East Pakistan from Bihar and other parts of India at partition. Because of the atrocities inflicted on their community by Bengalis they welcomed the army presence and were hostile to me because they regarded BBC as anti-Pakistani.

When I travelled outside Dhaka I got an impression of the extent of the army’s crackdown. For mile after mile, I passed deserted villages with huts burnt to cinders. Small towns were deserted too. On the ferry crossing the mighty Padma river, I heard two army officers making disparaging remarks in Urdu about the manifest poverty of many of the passengers. On the other side of the river there was no sign of life. The army hadn’t even bothered to establish check posts, presumably because there was virtually no traffic to check. I wasn’t able to drive as far as I planned because the condition of the road was deplorable – evidence of the government’s neglect of the eastern wing of the country.

Also read: Revisiting the Battle of Garibpur, a Precursor to the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War

In his book, Siddiq Salik described witnessing one of the “clearing missions” which wrought the devastation I saw outside Dhaka. Searching for Mukti Bahini, the column he travelled with was even accompanied by field artillery which fired at suitable intervals in what Salik called “the general direction of the move”. The infantry travelled in trucks with machine guns mounted on them and “opened up on the slightest pretext or suspicion. A stir in a branch of trees or a little rustle…was enough to evoke a burst of automatic fire or at least a rifle shot.”

Salik saw the soldiers setting thatched huts on fire. In the deserted small town of Karatea they burnt down the bazar and some kerosene drums.

In one village an argument broke out between soldiers and an old Bengali, so poor he was only clad in a dirty loincloth. Salik found him sitting under a banana tree and asked him what had happened. He replied, “I am a poor fellow. I don’t know what to do. A little earlier they (the Mukti Bahini) were here. They threatened to put me to death if I told anyone about them. Now you confront me with an equally dreadful end if I don’t tell you about them.”

For Salik, “That summed up the dilemma of the common Bengali.” For me, Salik’s summary is an admission by a Pakistani officer that the army declared war on the civilian population. That was the impression I left East Pakistan with.

I spent the rest of that year back in London writing commentaries for the BBC Eastern Service on all the developments in East Pakistan. I returned after the war between Pakistan and India, to be among the first foreign journalists to interview Sheikh Mujib after he came back from imprisonment in Pakistan.

‘The House of Jaipur’ Maps the History, Glamour and Feuds of a Former Royal Family

Author John Zubrzycki’s new book is a nuanced view of the failings and contributions of Indian princes.

The sub-title of John Zubrzycki’s book is The Inside Story of India’s Most Glamorous Royal Family, so any reader could be forgiven for thinking it is yet another romance about royalty, fabulous wealth, beautiful people and the secrets of their personal lives, glamour and its dark side masquerading as history. House of Jaipur is a popular history in that it is extremely readable, except when the reader gets too entangled in the internecine litigation which has plagued the family for the last 40 years.

There are stories of colourful people told colourfully. There is wealth beyond the dream of Croesus too. But The House of Jaipur is not romantic – it’s a serious history of one of the unique institutions, the Princely States, which enabled the British to hold India together. The Indian princes ruled over one-third of India’s population at the time of independence, therefore they played a crucial role in creating the nation which was partitioned at independence.

Zubrzycki undermines the myth that all the princes were feudal despots, rulers clinging to an outdated tradition of absolute monarchy with servile subjects bound to them by archaic religious ritualism. He brings out the extent to which the Jaipur Maharajas were bound to the British, yet at the same time had the freedom to govern the state as they would. He does write of the princes’ “antediluvian” mindset, yet he stresses how progressive the Maharaja of Baroda, Sayajirao Gaekwad III, was. His granddaughter Gayatri Devi, internationally renowned for her beauty, married the last member of the royal house of Jaipur to rule his state.

The Baroda Maharaja introduced numerous social reforms including banning untouchability, child marriage, bigamy and purdah, and making education for all school-age children compulsory. He sympathised with the independence movement and is renowned for turning his back on King Emperor George the Fifth at the 1911 Durbar, instead of stepping backwards after paying obeisance to him.

John Zubrzycki
The House of Jaipur
Juggernaut, 2020

The Jaipur family claims its history goes back to Kush, the son of Lord Ram, a genealogy Diya Kumari, the mother of the current Maharaja and a BJP MP, does not allow her constituents to forget. The Jaipur monarchy was rooted in Hinduism, yet Zubrzycki traces the rise of the family to their alliances with the Mughal rulers. Although this was an unequal relationship, the Jaipur rulers were allies. They were certainly not subservient, or as some portray them, slaves. Man Singh I became the commander-in-chief of Akbar’s army.

In the middle years of the 19th century, it was in part because the two rulers, Jai Singh I and Ram Singh II, managed to keep outside interference at bay, that Jaipur enjoyed a cultural flowering. Free of interference and minimising the internecine struggles which had plagued the family and would do so in the future, the two rulers “devoted their energies to creating dreamlike palaces, forts and extraordinary cityscapes, and patronizing the arts”.

Ram Singh’s successor Madho Singh II chose to ingratiate himself with the British. As a result, he was one of the few princes invited to King Edward VII’s coronation. Zubrzycki describes in detail all the arrangements made for his voyage to avoid being polluted by crossing the kala pani. These included six separate kitchens, one for his deity Gopalji, installed in the newly commissioned ship he was to travel in. But for all his position as a favourite of the British, Madho Singh made no secret of his disapproval of their way of life and their culture, and he discouraged his nobles from having anything to do with them. He remained a staunch, orthodox Rajput Hindu.

Most historians don’t pay much attention to the story of the princes in the independence movement. Zubrzycki says Gandhi and the Congress were not very interested in Rajasthan in the 1920s, but the British were. The anglicising of the House of Jaipur started when Madho Singh died without a son in 1922. His adopted heir Sawai Man Singh II, known in the family as Jai, was only ten years old so the British moved in to insure he grew up as they wanted him to grow up. They took a special interest in his sex life. His guardian recommended that to avoid repression and venereal diseases, from about the age of 15 Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II should “associate with a healthy young girl, and that in moderation”. But the pull of Rajput tradition proved too powerful and he was married to a princess from the Jodhpur Royal family at the age of 12. The British saw to it that they were not allowed to cohabit for several years.

The anglicising programme continued, with Jai being sent to Mayo College modelled on the British public school system. That was followed by a year’s military training in Britain. The British were so concerned about keeping Jai on their side, and being able to keep his people on their side too, that the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, presided over his investiture on the Jaipur throne.

Also read: The Maharani’s Mercenaries and Family Disputes in the House of Jaipur

Zubrzycki considers Jai’s time undergoing military training in London as a turning point in his life. It was the time when released from the formalities and intrigues of Jaipur, he learnt to have “fun”. From then on, he led two separate existences. In Jaipur he was a Hindu monarch. On his annual extensive visits to Britain, he was welcomed into London’s high society preoccupied with parties and polo. The British authorities in India were worried that the Maharaja didn’t take his Indian responsibilities sufficiently seriously. But they didn’t have to worry about his politics. He remained unashamedly loyal to the King Emperor and joined the British army in the Second World War rather than the Indian army .

It was while having fun in Calcutta that Jai met Gayatri Devi, the daughter of the Maharaja of Cooch Behar. He was 19 and she just 12, but Zubrzycki says she developed a schoolgirl crush on him which grew into a full-blown romance. Ignoring warnings about Jai’s philandering, she became his third wife in 1940. The British disapproved of the marriage and refused to endorse it. Jai’s courtiers and the Rajput community opposed it too, because Gayatri Devi was not a Rajput.

In the end, the British divided and quit, leaving the princes who they had relied on to govern two-fifths of India’s land mass to the mercy of Sardar Patel and V.P. Menon. Zubrzycki describes their duplicitous dealings. They proposed that Jai should be the Rajpramukh or hereditary governor of Greater Rajasthan. But then they whittled down the offer removing the hereditary status and making Jai little more than any other governor. In 1956, Jawaharlal Nehru abolished the office altogether.

In 1970, Jai died playing polo in England. The vast crowds which turned out for his funeral showed that although he had been stripped of all power, he was still deeply respected by his people. His death was another turning point in the history of The House of Jaipur. One of the family friends quoted in the book had once told me, “it all fell apart when Jai died”. The family became embroiled in litigation over Jai’s property, with his widow Ayesha lined up against Jai’s son and successor, Bhawani Singh known as Bubbles. That was the beginning of seemingly never-ending litigation, which has kept more than 40 internecine cases still rumbling on in local courts.

Bhawani Singh, the last titular ruler of Jaipur. Photo: royaljaipur.in via Jaipur Royal Family

But the litigation has not been the end of The House of Jaipur. Although Bubbles’ attempt to establish a new role for a Maharaja in government failed when he was defeated as the Congress candidate for Jaipur in the 1989 general election, Ayesha had a successful political career with the Swatantra Party. She swept Jaipur in her first of three successful parliamentary elections and earned the wrath, and Zubrzycki suggests the jealousy, of Indira Gandhi. He quotes Kushwant Singh as saying, “Indira couldn’t stomach a woman more good-looking than herself.” Indira insulted Gayatri Devi in parliament, set the taxmen on her and locked her up during the Emergency.

Gayatri Devi’s beauty was indeed legendary. Historian, restorer and hotelier Aman Nath described her beauty as “angelic’. Zubrzycki quotes the Economist describing her on her death as “a princess, and a princess who could make Jackie Kennedy almost a frump”.

After Jai died, Gayatri Devi suffered the tragedy of her only child, an alcoholic son, dying as a result of a binge in London. She faced a challenge to his will from the family which led to her two grandchildren falling out with her, but she was eventually reconciled to them. She became recognised in India and internationally as the brand ambassador of the House of Jaipur, working for the empowerment of women and for the promotion of arts and culture.

When Gayatri Devi died aged 80 in 2009, almost four decades had elapsed since the House of Jaipur was stripped of all royal powers, prerogatives and privileges. but Zubrzycki describes in detail the regal procession led by two elephants, the crowds and the cries of ‘Maharani ki jai‘ which accompanied Gayatri Devi to her cremation.

Zubrzycki maintains that even the death of Gayatri Devi has not marked the end of the House of Jaipur. He says they now manage their estates and assets professionally. Under their direction, the City Palace has become one of the finest museums in India. Padmanab Singh, the present Maharaja, plays polo for India and is an international fashion model. Bubbles’ daughter Diya Kumari is a BJP MP. So Zubrzycki concludes his history of the House with these words,

“In politics, at the polo ground and even on the catwalk the House of Jaipur has begun to map out a new set of traditions, deftly harnessing their royal aura as they reinvent their roles and their relevance in twenty first century democratic India.”

Mark Tully is a writer and columnist, and is the former India Bureau chief of the BBC.

When a Government Is Hostile to the Press

The current regime puts the media under severe pressure to be lapdogs. Those who don’t comply are suitably punished.

The prime minister has spoken. We are locked down for another three weeks. During the time ahead, the role of journalism will be particularly important because controversies are bound to occur, mistakes will be made, the poor will continue to suffer, the economy will continue to bleed, and there will be the daily toll of infections and deaths. India is faced with potentially demoralising, dispiriting uncertainty.

No one can tell how and when this crisis is going to end, whether this second phase of lockdown will be sufficient, what the damage to the economy will be, how many will be left mourning the deaths of husbands or wives, relatives or friends.

In such uncertain times as these, it is essential for journalists to be allowed to do their job of providing accurate and balanced information if confidence in the government is to be maintained and rumours are to be squashed.

Also read: Amartya Sen on The Wire, the Police and Beyond

I realise this may be controversial, but I would say that journalists should be aware that we are fighting a war and that sustaining ‘patriotism’ is vital in wars. By patriotism I do not mean the nationalism we hear so much about – which is purely political and divides rather than unites. That one is sustained by the fear of the other, and on the abuse of the phrase ‘anti-national’ and the misuse of the charge of sedition.

Mark Twain described patriotism as “loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.”

The patriotism I speak of is balance and professionalism.

So what is the position of journalism in India as we go into our second lockdown? There are frequent complaints that journalists have become lapdogs, lapping up the government’s point of view. There are even comparisons with Indira Gandhi’s Emergency regime, which I think are exaggerated. She imposed strict censorship, and Modi has not gone that far.

But this government does put the media under severe pressure to be lapdogs. Writing in the New York Times, Vindu Goel and Jeffrey Gentleman suggested “under Modi, India’s press is not so free anymore”. To illustrate the government’s attempts to subjugate the media, they told the story of a TV channel which was abruptly taken off air just before a broadcast and closed for 48 hours because its coverage had seemed “critical of Delhi Police and the RSS”.

Nowadays, the police seem to think any criticism of the government or them is a crime. The NYT article also described the case of two television presenters on ABP who were pressurised by the owners to resign because they had criticised Narendra Modi.

These are only three of the more blatant cases of government pressure on the media. False cases have been filed against journalists, involving them in never-ending legal battles. Tax cases have been filed against promoters. Advertisers have been told to withdraw their advertisements from channels the government does not approve of.

Also read: UP Police Serve Notice on The Wire, Summon Founding Editor to Ayodhya Despite Lockdown

But in spite of all the pressure on journalists, promoters and proprietors, there are still television channels, newspapers, digital and print, and other outlets providing information about the government which is critical of the prime minister and his government when they feel that is justified.

When a government is hostile to the press, it prompts hostile reactions too. Currently, India is getting bad press internationally and this is damaging its global image which Modi sets such store by, and which is so important in attracting foreign investment. The NYT article was damaging enough.

Far more damaging was a long article by Arundhati Roy published in possibly the most influential newspaper in the business world, London’s Financial Times. In her dazzling prose, she first launched a blistering attack on US President Donald Trump and America’s response to the coronavirus crisis. She then turned to India, her own country. She attacked PM Modi for imposing the national lockdown without preparation and without warning, “saying the man who loves spectacles has created the mother of all spectacles”. Writing of the call for social distancing, Roy said it was “easy to understand for a society so steeped in the practice of caste”.

Also read: When Freedom of the Press is Stricken With the Coronavirus

Summing up her article, she wrote, “As an appalled world watched India revealed herself in all her shame- her brutal structural, social and economic inequality, her callous indifference to suffering.”

Would this article encourage any reader of the Financial Times to invest in India?

While Modi keeps up the pressure on media organisations trying to do the job they should be allowed to do, he ignores those organisations which should be stopped from doing what they are doing – the television channels which deliberately provoke hostility toward Muslims. The Tablighi Jamaat incident gave them a field-day. On two consecutive nights over a week after the incident, I watched an anchor on Republic television repeatedly stressing on the ‘Tablighi impact’ on the infection figures and insinuating that their failure to obey government orders “was typical Muslim behaviour”. Poisonous fake news circulates freely on social media. One story in circulation alleges that Tablighis deliberately spat on doctors to infect them.

BJP president J.P. Nadda asked BJP party leaders to refrain from giving any “communal colour” or create any division or differences over the COVID-19 outbreak. That instruction seems to have been obeyed by BJP leaders. Nevertheless, there was evidence of the spread of poisonous prejudice on the eve of the prime minister’s latest broadcast. In Delhi, a man was seen on television screens flogging a vegetable seller just for being Muslim. Six Muslim vegetable sellers in UP complaining that they had been abused and prevented from selling their produce were also seen by television viewers. But Modi has not followed his party president’s example by acknowledging that there is a problem and warning against it

We are in dangerous waters. The crowds of migrant workers who came on the streets of Mumbai, Surat and Hyderabad demanding transport to take them home after the prime minister’s broadcast demonstrate the risk of civic unrest and the danger of rumours.

The need for journalists to be free to do their job in providing accurate information in a balanced manner is self-evident, as is the need to stem the flow of communal poison which divides society at a time when unity is so crucial.

Mark Tully is a writer and columnist and is the former India Bureau chief of the BBC.

You Called Me Fat? Come Sit, Let’s Have a Chat

A poem on public fat-shaming and the constant trolling of celebrities over their looks.

So you called me fat, come sit
Let’s have a chat,
Now talk to me face to face
If we’re a pack of cards, I’m the ace,
Was being beautiful
Ever about losing weight,
If not then why are you
Spreading so much hate?

Hey, let me get this straight,
Commenting on someone isn’t appropriate
Try stepping into my shoes,
I’m a lioness at it
Will you even be a kangaroo?
Have times changed or is it the same,
Do you comment for attention and fame,
Don’t do it dude it’s seriously lame
This is to all the people who body shame.

Tanvi Ghotage is a 15-year-old who absolutely loves writing. Earlier, she used to write for herself but now wishes to make a change – even if it is the slightest change.

Featured image: Pariplab Chakraborty

Narendra Modi’s Style Is ‘Shock and Awe’, but That Strategy Doesn’t Always Work

From demonetisation to Kashmir, Modi has sprung many decisions on the nation to project himself as a strong leader. But were the consequences of the actions always carefully thought through?

Surprises which shock and extravagant celebrations are a crucial feature of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s strategy for governing India. He has taken policy decisions his predecessors baulked at. He has run risks no other prime minister has run. He has made appointments which seem deliberately designed to shock.

When he surprisingly chose Yogi Adityanath, renowned for his communal statements, to be chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, a leading Muslim from the state told me, ”It seems Modi has done this to shock us.”

The surprises Modi has sprung have been designed to promote his image of being the strong decisive leader who is at last going to make India great – and to make sure politics remains focused entirely on him.

Shock and awe

Modi started his first term in office with a spectacular celebration. The BJP won its first absolute parliamentary majority – certainly a landmark in the history of modern India – and Modi had every right to celebrate his remarkable achievement. However his swearing-in ceremony was so spectacular that it seemed more like a coronation than the institution of the prime minister of a Republic. The spectacle symbolised the birth of a ‘new India’ ruled by a dynamic new leader. The surprise came with the invitation to the then prime minister of Pakistan to attend the event along with the other leaders of SAARC nations.

Also read: Narendra Modi Must Stop Any 11th-Hour Attempt to Erode Fiscal Autonomy of States

The next year there was Modi’s arrival at Nawaz Sharif’s granddaughter’s wedding near Lahore which shocked India. Then external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said Modi’s decision to make the surprise visit was “just like a statesman”.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is greeted by his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif on his arrival in Lahore on December 25, 2015. Credit: PTI Photo

That is how Modi intended it to be seen. At this stage, he was creating the image of a leader strong enough to start meaningful negotiations with Pakistan because of the support he enjoyed among a large section of the population.

But then came the attack on the brigade headquarters at Uri. So Modi changed course and surprised India by ordering the army to cross the line of control in Kashmir to make what was described as a ‘surgical strike’.

That strike erased the memory of Modi’s failed flirtation with Nawaz Sharif.

This is one such instance where we can detect Modi’s ‘surprises and celebrations’ strategy. Often, they are intended to take people’s minds off the failure or limited success of an earlier decision. This seems to be one of the links between demonetisation and the hasty introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

On November 8, 2016, roughly half way through Modi’s first period in office came a big shock – the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. Typically, Modi broadcast to the nation saying, “There comes a time in the history of a country when a need is felt for a strong and decisive step.”

People standing in long queues to exchange their old Rs 500 and 1000 notes and withdraw cash from the ATM in New Delhi. Credit: PTI/Subhav Shukla/Files

Demonetisation caused a cash crunch lasting for about six months. Credit: PTI/Subhav Shukla/Files

That step was demonetisation and he made it clear that he was the strong leader making these decisions. Modi said the intention was “to break the grip of corruption and black money”. He gave assurances that no one would be inconvenienced, that the transfer to new money would be smooth.

But because demonetisation was badly planned, the supply of new money didn’t reach the banks nearly fast enough. The public was severely inconvenienced.

One of the purposes of the hurried implementation of GST only seven months later was surely to take the public’s mind off the botched exercise of demonetisation.

Also read: The ‘Most Productive’ Parliament Session May Also Be the Most Dangerous

For maximum impact, the launch was modelled on the historic occasion when Nehru announced India’s tryst with destiny at midnight on August 15, 1947 in the central hall of parliament. GST therefore was launched at midnight on the night of July 1, 2017 in the central hall. It was intended to be an all-party session of both houses, but Congress and a few other opposition parties boycotted the ceremony. Rahul Gandhi dismissed it as a “tamasha” and a “self-promotional spectacle.”

Modi called the GST the ‘Goods and Simple Tax’.

Unfortunately, it was anything but simple. In the rush to secure a deal with states across India, and enjoy the triumph of an achievement which had eluded earlier prime ministers, Modi allowed too many concessions to be made – leading to too many levels of tax.

Other complications also arose and made doing business more difficult rather than easier. So a ceremony which Modi must have hoped would diminish the memories of the problems created by demonetisation only added to the woes of large sections of the public.

Many economists now put a lot of the blame for the current economic crisis on the shock of demonetisation and the spectacular launch of the flawed GST.

Faced now with an economy slowing down on all fronts Modi’s finance minister has hurriedly introduced measures designed to convey the impression that the government is on top of the crisis.

Also read: Latest GDP Growth Figures Raise Questions About State of Indian Economy

However, it appears that the highest profile measure might have little impact and could even once again damage the economy. The mergers of several government-owned banks has been dismissed by no less than a former governor of the Reserve Bank, D. Subbarao, as “meant to be seen as a big bang response to the slowdown, which on the contrary, are a needless distraction”. Former chief economic adviser Shankar Acharya has described the consolidation of the public sector banks as “a seemingly pointless and possibly damaging exercise”.

The trump card

Although poor planning and hurried implementation have diminished the impact of many of the surprises Modi has sprung and the spectacular celebrations he has mounted, the event which shook India on the eve of the general elections was an outstanding success from Modi’s point of view.

He needed an episode which would blot out the memory of the promises he had made when he first came to power and was not been able to deliver on. He needed to prevent the electorate from asking when ‘Achhe Din’ were going to arrive, why their pockets were not stuffed with black money recovered from abroad, where all the promised jobs were, why the Ganga and indeed India herself was not clean.

Also read: The Ultimate Goal Is a Hindu Rashtra and It Is Now Within Sight

But the Balakot airstrikes gave Modi a nationalist card which trumped all other previously played hands. He went on a non-stop election Bharat yatra as the “Chowkidar of India”. All Rahul could find to challenge him unconvincingly was alleging that “the chowkidar is a thief”.

Modi has started his second spell a prime minister in a typically sensational style. The decision to revoke Article 370 was sprung on the public without any warning and was accompanied by a crackdown in Kashmir of spectacular ferocity, which has still not been lifted.

This was once again a demonstration of Modi being a strong decisive leader. It boosted his nationalist credentials too, and caught the opposition on the wrong foot because it turned out to be a popular decision outside Kashmir. But the difficulty the government is having in restoring normal life in Kashmir indicates that there is no exit plan; that once again, a Modi surprise has been sprung without its consequences being thought through.

The anger in the Valley suggests that the region will remain militarised for a long time to come, much to the shame of India.

And the world will not accept Pakistan as solely responsible for that.

Mark Tully is an author and the former BBC correspondent in India.

How New Delhi Became What It Is Today

‘Connaught Place and The Making of New Delhi’ revisits the capital’s fascinating history.

In Connaught Place and The Making of New Delhi, Swapna Liddle says one of the arguments put forward against moving the capital from Calcutta to Delhi was because “it was a lifeless backwater of the Punjab Province – remote from the major centres of commerce, Calcutta, Bombay, and Karachi and therefore the capital and the officials would end up in a bureaucratic enclave.”

That was about all that Delhi was when I first arrived there 54 years ago. The population then was under three million, now it is the centre of the world’s third largest conurbation in which over 25 million people live.

Swapna Liddle
Connaught Place and The Making of New Delhi
Speaking Tiger, 2018

Liddle describes how this extraordinary population explosion started. Her story begins with the imperious Viceroy Lord Curzon’s decision to partition the troublesome province of Bengal. This autocratic decision only made matters worse and so it was decided that the policy of the government of India should change from autocracy to seeking the cooperation of Indians. Liddle sees the decision to move the capital to Delhi as part of that policy rather than ”the articulation of imperial authority.” The decision was announced by George Fifth, at the 1911 Durbar in Delhi, the only reigning monarch to visit India when it was under British rule.

Many have seen the construction of the vast palace for the Viceroy and the imposing two wings of the secretariat, perched up above the rest of New Delhi on Raisina Hill, as a continuation of the Raj’s policy of building magnificent public buildings to overawe its subjects. But Liddle describes the debates over the extent to which those buildings should have an Indian motif to emphasise that New Delhi was to be a capital Indians could regard as their own.

She quotes Herbert Baker, one of the two leading architects of New Delhi, as saying that although the foundation should be European classical architecture “we must try to graft on all that we can accept of what is best in India sentiment, and achievement, and architecture.”

Baker’s enthusiasm for Indian art and architecture was not shared by the other leading architect, Edwin Lutyens, and this brought the two architects into conflict with each other. There was also the better-known conflict between them over Baker’s secretariat obscuring the view down Raj Path of the palace Lutyens built for the Viceroy.

Also read: A City or a Capital? The Trouble With New Delhi’s Identity

Liddle supports Baker. She believes Lutyens’ role in the construction of New Delhi has been exaggerated and that we shouldn’t be speaking of Lutyens’ Delhi. To justify that view, she points out that his plan for New Delhi was rejected.

Swapna Liddle. Credit: Speaking Tiger books

There is a chapter in the book dedicated to Connaught Place, which was planned as the shopping and leisure centre of New Delhi. It was a decidedly up-market shopping centre. There were food shops catering specially to British tastes, and there was a hairdresser described as “qualified London trained”. Liddle suggests that the architect was influenced by the The Circus in the British Town of Bath or Park Crescent in London. Certainly, its design shows little sign of Indian influence.

In the end, Liddle argues, New Delhi was a failure from the British point of view, saying, “In 1911 the idea of the new capital held the promise of a renewed empire that would enjoy the support of the Indian subjects. At its inauguration 20 years later all that was left was a grandeur that signified the profound inequality of colonial relationships.”

The author tells a compelling story about what could be called a cul-de-sac in history – Britain’s failed attempt to find a different way of ruling this country by co-opting the support of its Indian citizens. Eighty-eight years from the inauguration, controversy still rages over whether this grandeur should be preserved. Liddle says that “there is no doubt that it needs to be preserved”. I hope her book will persuade many others to share that view.

Mark Tully is an author and the former BBC correspondent in India.

The End Of A Much Loved Indian Railway Line

The Satpura narrow-gauge network used to be the longest of its kind in India, stretching more than 1,000km. But it is now facing closure

The narrow gauge Satpura line. Credit: Bingley Hall, Flickr

There were once more than 100 narrow-gauge railways in India. They have often been written off as toy trains. The 2ft 6in gauge Satpura engine did look like a toy when I saw it dwarfed by a massive broad-gauge engine in the central Indian city of Jabalpur’s station where my journey on the Satpura railways started.

But the narrow-gauge railways of India were built for very serious purposes and were anything but toys for those who benefitted from them. The Satpura railways opened up a previously inaccessible hilly area of central India as part of the government’s response to the Great Famine of 1878. Before the railways came, there were only bullock carts to carry food to remote famine-stricken areas. They were very slow and couldn’t travel long distances.

But India no longer has famines and roads have now been built in the Satpura region – so what purpose has the narrow-gauge train with its maximum speed of just 40km/h (25mph) been serving recently?

Narrow gauge trains were very popular at one time. This is was in Baripada in East India. Credit Blingley Hall, Flickr

Trains rather than buses

I once asked a stationmaster on a narrow-gauge line in the western state of Gujarat why so many passengers were waiting for the train at his station, when a main road with faster buses on it ran parallel with the track. He replied with a broad smile: “That’s obvious. We are not too particular about ticketless travel. The bus conductors collect the fares.” The stationmaster at Jabalpur assured me that passengers on his line did buy tickets.

During my journey, which lasted for some eight hours, I had plenty of opportunities to find out why there were so many passengers on the train. Every few kilometres the train stopped – sometimes at fully-fledged stations with a complete complement of staff and buildings presided over by a senior stationmaster, and sometimes at what were known as “passenger halts” which were just small huts and served remote hamlets.

At the first station outside Jabalpur, we were greeted by frenetic drummers waiting to accompany a group of passengers going to bathe in the sacred Narmada river.

As I travelled down the line, I met a student who went home from university every weekend. The train was much cheaper than the bus, and anyhow there weren’t many buses, he explained. An ex-soldier, recognizable by his formidable white moustache, was on his way to a hospital appointment. He felt the train was “more dignified” than the bus.

A mother with her young child clinging to her hand was going to visit her parents. She believed the train was safer. A group of women carrying heavy bundles of firewood on their heads had saved themselves hours of burdensome walking by taking the train. Several unruly young men told me they were “just time-passing”. I thought it unwise to ask whether they too had bought tickets.

Several passengers told me they found the train more comfortable than the bus. I didn’t like to think what travelling in the buses was like. The train was so overcrowded that passengers were standing on the steps outside carriages, clinging precariously to the open doorway, while others sat cross-legged on the carriage roofs.

High speeds on broad-gauge lines, and on many mainlines overhead electrification, have rendered the old Indian tradition of rooftop riding almost obsolete. Another tradition which is dying is the variety of food which used to be cooked on railway platforms.

Hot selling samosas

Nowadays passengers are more likely to be offered pre-cooked food or modern branded snacks in environmentally unfriendly packaging. But when my train stopped at Bargi, passengers rushed to buy Hari Singh Thakur’s famous fresh samosas served on newspaper, and further down the line at Shikara the sweets Lakshmi Chand Khandelwal made from milk were very much in demand.

Many of the passengers described the railway as their lifeline. Now that lifeline has been cut. The traditions associated with it will die. A line of outstanding beauty particularly when it twists like a snake following the contours of a thick, hilly forest will be replaced by a broad gauge line which is being bulldozed through that forest. Fast through-trains with few or no stops will run on the broad gauge ignoring the local demand for rail transport.

Many railway officials are deeply saddened by the death of the Satpura lines. A stationmaster at Nainpur junction, the heart of the system asked me, “Why do they have to close such a busy railway? I have 20 trains a day to handle.” But at least the railways are hoping to preserve a short section of the historic Satpura lines.

Mark Tully is an author and the former BBC correspondent in India

Article and photos published with the permission of BBC News Magazine