Words struggling to break the shackle

If they snatch my ink and pen,

I should not complain,

For I have dipped my fingers

In the blood of my heart.

I should not complain

Even if they seal my tongue,

For every ring of my chain

Is a tongue ready to speak.

– Faiz Ahmad Faiz (translated by Azfar Hussain)

Kabuli voice

In Kabul, people have started talking. There are not just cursing the Taliban. Many of them are also loudly complaining about how bad things are in their locality, their city, their country. Afghans have begun to ask: why are the Americans hitting their children in bombardments. Sometimes eloquence can be a pose to hide one's fears and frustrations. More often, however, it reflects the warmth of confidence, which is what in the end melts the icy block of silence and un-democracy. For millennia, the image of normality in any human society has remained the same—people talking. And boy, are they talking across South Asia!

Bellicose army

Pakistanis are talking too, but more about the future than the glory, suffering, or the shame—real or imagined— of the past. The authoritarian regime of General Musharraf seems to have realised that unless it can deliver something dramatic—peace on the eastern front, development in the western region or social harmony in the south—its days are numbered, verdict of the rigged referendum (98 percent voters granting a five-year term to a self-appointed 'president' generalissimo) and the highly contentious provisions of the Legal Framework Order (LFO) notwithstanding.

Post-9/11, Pakistanis know that their sovereignty is not unconditional. Even an impressive arsenal of nuclear weapons and missiles has little meaning if it is not backed by popular support. Subservience to the generals of CentCom is the price that the defense forces of Pakistan pay for their bellicosity at home, where they prosecute people on such flimsy grounds as "causing humiliation to the country's armed forces". However, when the 'authorities' harass an Amir Mir for his views, voices in his defence are not intimidated by the prospect of retaliatory prosecution anymore.

The words of the Pakistani voices are not unidirectional. While running down India is still the main theme of the official discourse, even the chattering classes of Islamabad, Karachi, and Lahore have begun to ask themselves: why is that Pakistan is one of the only two nations outside of sub-Saharan Africa—the other being Nepal—placed at the bottom rung of the Human Development Index? That one question will probably do what constitutionally proscribing military coups has failed to achieve: challenge the legitimacy of ambitious generals who undermine civil regimes, overthrow them on the slightest pretext, and then rule as if they were a breed apart from all others. The defense forces of Pakistan have lorded over the country for much of its history, but what the generals have to show for it is not very inspiring—dismemberment, backwardness, underdevelopment, and disillusionment of a nation of limitless potential.

Tibetan silence

On the other side of Himalaya, native Tibetans have not yet started talking. Silence is still the medium of their protest. The ones in exile do speak, but over the decades, they have developed their own stakes that are somewhat different from what Tibetans living in Tibet want for themselves. It is doubtful that what Richard Gere says is indeed in the larger interest of the Tibetan people. After years of suffering and struggle, HH Dalai Lama appears to have realised that the trail from Dharamshala to Lhasa passes through Beijing.

Sooner than later, the mandarins in Beijing are going to realise that their interests and the desire of His Holiness have begun to converge. The temporal ambitions of the post-communist regime in China and the material aspirations of entrepreneurial Tibetans of a new generation are not all that different—both of them perhaps wish to see Indo-Chinese trade grow manifold from the USD 7 billion annually at present and to be able to cash in on it. Re-establishment of the primacy of the Potala Palace in Tibet is sure to be mutually beneficial. It will not be very surprising if the railway brings optimism, along with goods and services. For now, all we hear from the activists are the fears of further Han-isation of Tibet, which is doubtless also true. But for Tibetans to begin to take charge of their own affairs—and stand up to the Han influx—Tibetans have to find their own voice and stop depending upon the noise created by western dharma lobbies and others with their own axes to grind against the Chinese.

Aung San

In Burma, renamed Myanmar by its superstitious generals, words remain in chains. But that will change too. How long can Rangoon continue to resist the pressure of world opinion and yet hope to engage in trade, get aid, and wish that the portion of the Asian Highway passing through its territory be built? Sanctions upon the military regime did not work, constructive engagement— with appropriate carrots and sticks—probably will. The military rulers of Burma cannot keep Aung San in endless custody.

Dwikhandita

The morality police continue to prowl the streets of Dhaka, where Bangladeshi authorities once again banned celebrity-author Taslima Nasreen. Earlier, she survived the fatwa, a price on her head, and death threats, for Lajja—-a powerful story indifferently told. Nasreen is sure to survive the present pillorying as well, but why is a society as tolerant as that of the Bengalis fearful of a book as pedestrian as Dwikhandita is said to be? A critic described the book as "a good casual read, but not literature", but even that did not deter the leftist government of West Bengal from banning it in that state too. The author must surely welcome the free publicity. I read Lajja in Nepali translation; perhaps the ban and consequent controversy will inspire the same translator to work on Dwikhandita too? Repressed voices have their own ways of sneaking out and spreading.

Train to Bihar

Parochial Asamiyas attacked Bihari migrants in the Indian Northeast and opened the wounds of the Nellie massacre of 1983. The shock troops of Laloo did not exactly cover themselves in glory either when in retaliation they attacked hapless Assamese passengers in trains passing through Bihar. The inability to express oneself verbally is perhaps one of the factors that drives societies to violence. Violence can only be countered by voices, not more violence.

The accursed state of Bihar was also the stage of a tragic act of silencing. Satyendra Dubey, a 31-year civil engineer working with the Golden Quadrangle Highway, a pet project of Atal Behari Vajpayee, was killed because he had dared to write to the prime minister to demand that the rampant corruption in the National Highway Authority project be investigated. Dubey had made the specific request that his name be kept secret, but people in the office of the prime minister made sure that it was exposed. I mourn the death of Satyendra (the deity of truth) Dubey, and am impressed by the iron resolve of his father, who says that all he wants is justice, not compensation for the death of his truth-seeking son. Hopefully, the spirit of Satyendra will continue to harass the conscience of the comfortable classes of India even as his father seeks justice. Voices of truth have an uncanny habit of rising over the artificial din of falsehood.

Amma with cape

In Madras, which is now Chennai, loyal acolytes of the Lady with Several Cupboards-Full of Silk Saris and Fancy Shoes struck again, when the Tamil Nadu Assembly exercised its privilege to prosecute and punish journalists. To send an unmistakable message that no one was above the whims of the Amma in Cape, the Tamil Nadu assembly chose to tackle the most respected of them all – The Hindu group. Happily, the boomerang has been even more powerful. In the wake of the Tamil Nadu state assembly versus The Hindu controversy, the press, the intelligentsia, and society at large seem to have come to a common conclusion, which is that whenever there is a conflict between the powers of the state (legislature, executive and the judiciary) and the fundamental rights of citizens, the latter must prevail.

Kathmandu's democracy

In Nepal, voices of reason continue to languish on the margins while the fight between the extremism of the left and the right occupy centre stage. Stung by criticism, the extra-legal regime presently ruling from the Singha Darbar secretariat has sought to retaliate with an insidious campaign against democratic politics and independent press. However, challenges before the military-backed non-representative regime appointed by the king are hardly slight. Over a decade of raucous democracy in the country has instilled a culture of asking. questions. Even when no answers are presently forthcoming, the powers that would ignore the barrage of enquiry do it at their own peril.

Lankan general

It is the persistent questioning of the general population that has stopped President Chandrika Kumaratunga of Sri Lanka from completely derailing the peace process initiated by her Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. President Kumaratunga was snubbed by the international community, too, when her international affairs advisor, Lakshman Kadirgamar, lost the race for the post of Secretary General of Commonwealth to current incumbent Don McKinnon of New Zealand. The questioning has become so persistent that even the army chief of Sri Lanka was forced to admit the inevitability of the peace process. "There was temporary suspension of the peace talks. They will resume as soon as a consensus is reached between the Sri Lankan president and the prime minister", Lieutenant General P L Balagalle reportedly proclaimed in Srinagar while on a visit to Kashmir. People's voices find expression in the strangest of places.

SAARC and freedom

When the heads (of state or government) of SAARC member states gather for a summit in Islamabad in the first week of January 2004, there is one decision they must take—they must vow to break the chains that shackle the voices of protest in their respective countries. In fact, they can go a little further than that and declare collectively that all South Asians are free to speak for and against any issue that involves one, several, or all the countries of the Subcontinent. But, you ask, would that not be asking a bit too much of a collective that is made up of presidents Kumaratunga and Musharraf, and prime ministers Thapa, Zia and Vajpayee? Perhaps.