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Wednesday 27 December 2017
How India rejects bad patents
Feroz Ali & Sudarsan Rajagopal In The Hindu
In 2005, India made some remarkable amendments to the Indian Patents Act of 1970, to keep medicines affordable in the country. Since then we have faced a significant blowback not just from the global pharmaceutical industry but also from developed world including from the U.S. and the European Union.
At the heart of the matter are the strong standards for patents which India introduced to promote genuine innovation across all fields of technology, in perfect compliance with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) norms. In contrast, developed countries have weaker standards as a result of incessant lobbying by corporate behemoths. Twelve years later, we now know what it means: India rejects bad patents in far greater number than developed countries.
The background
The findings of a new study by us which examined all 1,723 pharmaceutical applications rejected by the Indian Patent Office (IPO) between 2009 and 2016 have been an eye-opener.
Section 3(d) of the Indian Patents Act, a provision introduced to restrict the patenting of new forms of known pharmaceutical substances, became the subject of international attention after its use in rejecting a patent application by Novartis for the anti-cancer drug, Gleevec. We found that exceptions to patentability in Section 3 of the Act, which includes Section 3(d), were responsible for 65% of all rejected pharmaceutical patent applications.
Over its short lifetime, Section 3(d) has survived a challenge to its constitutionality before the Madras High Court, and Novartis’s fight against the rejection of its patent that went to the Supreme Court. Both courts ruled decisively to uphold the legality of Section 3(d). The United States Trade Representative has also repeatedly rebuked India for this provision in its Special 301 Report, despite its perfect compliance with WTO norms. While the world’s attention is still fixed on this legal experiment that the Indian Parliament introduced into law, there has been a dearth of information on how the IPO has applied Section 3(d). We found that it filters the bad from the good, with the lowest possible administrative and financial burden.
Rejected using Section 3(d)
An astonishing 45% of all rejected pharmaceutical patent applications cited Section 3(d) as a reason for rejection: the applications were identified as mere variants of known compounds that lacked a demonstrable increase in therapeutic value.
Between 1995 and 2005, prior to our new law, India provided a temporary measure to receive patent applications for pharmaceutical products at the IPO, called the mailbox system. Though introduced in 2005, the use of Section 3(d) gradually increased from 2009 when mailbox applications were examined. The spike coincides with the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Novartis case, in April 2013. It would appear that this judgment provided legal certainty to Indian patent law in general, and Section 3(d) in particular, enabling the IPO to weed out trivial innovations.
At the patent office
In the last decade, we found that the IPO rejected about 95% of all pharmaceutical patent applications on its own. Only 5% were through the intervention of a third party, such as a pre-grant opponent. Our basic patentability criteria, that the invention should be new, involve an inventive step (also known as non-obviousness), and should be capable of industrial application, were the most frequently used grounds for rejection, followed by the exceptions to patentability grounds in Section 3.
Section 3(d) invaluably equips the IPO with a yardstick to evaluate applications that are merely trivial innovations over existing technology. In cases where the invention is a variant of a known substance, the criterion for patentability is proof of a necessary improvement in its performance for its designated use, i.e., increased efficacy. In the context of pharmaceuticals, as was the case involving Novartis, this translates to evidence of an improvement in therapeutic efficacy. In other words, trivial innovation must result in a far better product in order to qualify for patent protection.
Within the arcane world of patent law, an argument against provisions such as Section 3(d) is that it is no more than an extension of one of the basic requirements of patentability: non-obviousness. Certainly, for an application to be deemed non-obvious, it has to establish a technical advance over what was known before.
But non-obviousness standards are more effectively applied in invalidity proceedings before a court of law than by officials at the IPO. The advantage that a provision such as Section 3(d) provides is the ability to question an application at the IPO itself without having to go through expensive and time-consuming litigation. The high cost of litigation poses significant barriers. Cases are often settled before reaching a conclusion, in pay-for-delay settlements negotiated by patent owners, where generic manufacturers are essentially paid to stay off the market. Patent litigation is expensive, but it is the patient who eventually pays a higher price — by being subject to exorbitant medicine prices, driven by the unmerited exclusivity that bad patents create.
As a check
Without Section 3(d), the Indian public would have to bear the burden of invalidating a bad patent through litigation.
India is certainly not alone in facing two connected challenges: constrained government budgets and urgent public health needs. As Section 3(d) has been efficient in separating the bad patents from the good in India, it would be a wise move for other developing countries, grappling with similar challenges, to incorporate similar provisions in their law.
In 2005, India made some remarkable amendments to the Indian Patents Act of 1970, to keep medicines affordable in the country. Since then we have faced a significant blowback not just from the global pharmaceutical industry but also from developed world including from the U.S. and the European Union.
At the heart of the matter are the strong standards for patents which India introduced to promote genuine innovation across all fields of technology, in perfect compliance with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) norms. In contrast, developed countries have weaker standards as a result of incessant lobbying by corporate behemoths. Twelve years later, we now know what it means: India rejects bad patents in far greater number than developed countries.
The background
The findings of a new study by us which examined all 1,723 pharmaceutical applications rejected by the Indian Patent Office (IPO) between 2009 and 2016 have been an eye-opener.
Section 3(d) of the Indian Patents Act, a provision introduced to restrict the patenting of new forms of known pharmaceutical substances, became the subject of international attention after its use in rejecting a patent application by Novartis for the anti-cancer drug, Gleevec. We found that exceptions to patentability in Section 3 of the Act, which includes Section 3(d), were responsible for 65% of all rejected pharmaceutical patent applications.
Over its short lifetime, Section 3(d) has survived a challenge to its constitutionality before the Madras High Court, and Novartis’s fight against the rejection of its patent that went to the Supreme Court. Both courts ruled decisively to uphold the legality of Section 3(d). The United States Trade Representative has also repeatedly rebuked India for this provision in its Special 301 Report, despite its perfect compliance with WTO norms. While the world’s attention is still fixed on this legal experiment that the Indian Parliament introduced into law, there has been a dearth of information on how the IPO has applied Section 3(d). We found that it filters the bad from the good, with the lowest possible administrative and financial burden.
Rejected using Section 3(d)
An astonishing 45% of all rejected pharmaceutical patent applications cited Section 3(d) as a reason for rejection: the applications were identified as mere variants of known compounds that lacked a demonstrable increase in therapeutic value.
Between 1995 and 2005, prior to our new law, India provided a temporary measure to receive patent applications for pharmaceutical products at the IPO, called the mailbox system. Though introduced in 2005, the use of Section 3(d) gradually increased from 2009 when mailbox applications were examined. The spike coincides with the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Novartis case, in April 2013. It would appear that this judgment provided legal certainty to Indian patent law in general, and Section 3(d) in particular, enabling the IPO to weed out trivial innovations.
At the patent office
In the last decade, we found that the IPO rejected about 95% of all pharmaceutical patent applications on its own. Only 5% were through the intervention of a third party, such as a pre-grant opponent. Our basic patentability criteria, that the invention should be new, involve an inventive step (also known as non-obviousness), and should be capable of industrial application, were the most frequently used grounds for rejection, followed by the exceptions to patentability grounds in Section 3.
Section 3(d) invaluably equips the IPO with a yardstick to evaluate applications that are merely trivial innovations over existing technology. In cases where the invention is a variant of a known substance, the criterion for patentability is proof of a necessary improvement in its performance for its designated use, i.e., increased efficacy. In the context of pharmaceuticals, as was the case involving Novartis, this translates to evidence of an improvement in therapeutic efficacy. In other words, trivial innovation must result in a far better product in order to qualify for patent protection.
Within the arcane world of patent law, an argument against provisions such as Section 3(d) is that it is no more than an extension of one of the basic requirements of patentability: non-obviousness. Certainly, for an application to be deemed non-obvious, it has to establish a technical advance over what was known before.
But non-obviousness standards are more effectively applied in invalidity proceedings before a court of law than by officials at the IPO. The advantage that a provision such as Section 3(d) provides is the ability to question an application at the IPO itself without having to go through expensive and time-consuming litigation. The high cost of litigation poses significant barriers. Cases are often settled before reaching a conclusion, in pay-for-delay settlements negotiated by patent owners, where generic manufacturers are essentially paid to stay off the market. Patent litigation is expensive, but it is the patient who eventually pays a higher price — by being subject to exorbitant medicine prices, driven by the unmerited exclusivity that bad patents create.
As a check
Without Section 3(d), the Indian public would have to bear the burden of invalidating a bad patent through litigation.
India is certainly not alone in facing two connected challenges: constrained government budgets and urgent public health needs. As Section 3(d) has been efficient in separating the bad patents from the good in India, it would be a wise move for other developing countries, grappling with similar challenges, to incorporate similar provisions in their law.
Reinventing communism can help both the CPI and India
Anand B in The Hindu
The Communist Party of India and its ideology seem to have lost a bit of its sheen in the last three decades, today peeking shyly from the Kerala undergrowth. Time to take to the streets — er, the social media? | Wikipedia
December 26, 1925, was the day the Communist Party of India considers as its foundation day. The party is now 92 years old. There are 84 parties that branched out from this party and follow communism today. This is, however, not about the party leaders or the staunch followers of communist philosophies in the party. This is more about actual communist and socialist workers — people who believe in communism and socialism regardless of their being a member of any affiliated parties.
The communist parties have succeeded in alienating themselves and the communist philosophy as a whole from the youth. Sure, the parties have members under the age of 35. But again, this isn’t about the party or its student-body members.
This is about the man (or woman) who works hard every day to earn a living. The man who no longer cares about philosophies or society as a whole. With the advent of technological advances, communism or Marxism has been left behind. Unfortunately, it is not Marx’s fault. He welcomed technology. He never recommended the destruction of the means of production; he asked the workers to seize it for the greater good.
The IT and BPO industry sans unions have completely blocked a section of society — a vibrant section — from the philosophies and, subsequently, the parties too. An industry which attracted a whole generation for over two decades now has been kept away from the Left and this has crippled the spread of the ideology as well as its philosophy and politics greatly.
What changed?
The factors that helped in spreading the ideology largely disappeared during the final decade of the last century.
With the globalisation of the Indian Market, the death of the USSR, and the absence of grassroots propagandist leaders in the league of EMS or Jeevanandam, the party and its ideology have come in for hard times. The current party leaders confining their discourse largely to politics is not helping either. Not to mention, the mass influx of American culture along with the growth of the IT/BPO industry further dented its reach — the youth became more interested in seizing the day than seizing the means of production. And then, when the communists of the country started to set themselves against both globalisation and pop culture, they completely alienated the present generation, and they were forced to retreat to the universities in the north and factories in the States they ruled.
But they do exist. The philosophy, like all others, cannot be killed so long as even one person believes in it — indeed, even if no individual believes in it. The communists, however, are no longer as ideologically relevant or politically dominant as they used to be and should be to keep the social balance. Nor are they spreading the word as effectively as they used to.
The fact that they still limit themselves to talking about farmers and factory workers is ensuring that a young section of society finds communism or socialism an alien concept. Without meandering into the partisan part of it, being unrelatable is not doing the philosophy or the ideology any favours.
The need for communism
So, why bother with rejuvenating a dying movement? Because the need for communism and socialism is now higher than ever. When the Right gets stronger, the Left is needed to balance it out just as the Right balances the Left. Like the force from Star Wars, the balance of power needs to be restored.
On the personal front, the youth no longer are interested in hunger unless it is their own. They are not interested in problems until it affects them. By living each day for itself, we, the youth, have forgotten the lessons the past taught us and ignore the impact that forgetting these lessons can have on the future. Likes, Shares and Retweets are the highest form of response you can get for actual issues from other members of the proletariat today. All their intelligence and ability to understand politics and social structures is being squandered as they spend all of it on pop culture. The politics in House of Cards and Game of Thrones is more interesting than the actual politics that affect them on a day-to-day basis.
What can they do?
Marx talks more about factories in his manifesto than agriculture. Lenin is credited with bringing in farmers into the fold of socialism and communism — he brought in the sickle and made the philosophy relevant to a larger audience.
Instead of limiting themselves to Marx’s writing, they need to evolve, much like Lenin, and reach out to the larger audience on the issue that affects them. They lost a wonderful opportunity during the recession-driven IT layoffs, for instance, to emphasise their philosophical importance.
Just like they went to universities to reach students, went to factories to reach workers and to farms to reach farmers, they need to go where the youth are concentrated today — the social media.
The philosophy needs to go into their handheld device, those we spend more time with than our better halves or parents. It is up to the party to take it there, to them, with a renewed set of issues that can be solved or mitigated by the application of socialism. This cannot involve merely creating an app which echoes the leaders’ political critique of Modi’s policies but also about creating awareness about the philosophy as a whole in a simple and reinvented ways. They also need to acknowledge that the present generation seeks out the trappings of global pop culture to decide which ideas to consume. Therefore, communism needs to outgrow the books and literature that helped propagate the philosophy in its heyday and be more proactive in its outreach.
Failure to evolve will result in extinction. And socialism/communism is one philosophy that needs to exist in our country and survive as a counterbalance for the other side. The ball is in the parties’ court for now, as always. It is up to them to decide on what to do with it, for it decides their future and ours.
The Communist Party of India and its ideology seem to have lost a bit of its sheen in the last three decades, today peeking shyly from the Kerala undergrowth. Time to take to the streets — er, the social media? | Wikipedia
December 26, 1925, was the day the Communist Party of India considers as its foundation day. The party is now 92 years old. There are 84 parties that branched out from this party and follow communism today. This is, however, not about the party leaders or the staunch followers of communist philosophies in the party. This is more about actual communist and socialist workers — people who believe in communism and socialism regardless of their being a member of any affiliated parties.
The communist parties have succeeded in alienating themselves and the communist philosophy as a whole from the youth. Sure, the parties have members under the age of 35. But again, this isn’t about the party or its student-body members.
This is about the man (or woman) who works hard every day to earn a living. The man who no longer cares about philosophies or society as a whole. With the advent of technological advances, communism or Marxism has been left behind. Unfortunately, it is not Marx’s fault. He welcomed technology. He never recommended the destruction of the means of production; he asked the workers to seize it for the greater good.
The IT and BPO industry sans unions have completely blocked a section of society — a vibrant section — from the philosophies and, subsequently, the parties too. An industry which attracted a whole generation for over two decades now has been kept away from the Left and this has crippled the spread of the ideology as well as its philosophy and politics greatly.
How did communism grow?
To delve a bit deeper, let us take a look at how communism spread. It did not spread merely through charismatic oratory figures or sectarian ideologies like caste or language. It spread from the bottom up. It spread from the workshops. It spread from the factories. It spread from weavers. It spread from the farmers. It spread in the form of trade unions. It spread in the form of student bodies. It spread based on the success it had in the form of USSR, which went toe to toe with the United States.
This meant a person who was to eventually join the party would first have to be attracted by its ideology and the philosophy. This was achieved by a propagandisation of the benefits one would get as a member of the proletariat as much as the power of the workers’ rights against the exploitation they were subjected to. It was done by apprising the worker of their rights. Grassroots propagandists like Jeevanandam or Jyoti Basu or E.M.S. Namboodiripad, who went on to become leaders, greatly helped in taking this message to the common man.
To delve a bit deeper, let us take a look at how communism spread. It did not spread merely through charismatic oratory figures or sectarian ideologies like caste or language. It spread from the bottom up. It spread from the workshops. It spread from the factories. It spread from weavers. It spread from the farmers. It spread in the form of trade unions. It spread in the form of student bodies. It spread based on the success it had in the form of USSR, which went toe to toe with the United States.
This meant a person who was to eventually join the party would first have to be attracted by its ideology and the philosophy. This was achieved by a propagandisation of the benefits one would get as a member of the proletariat as much as the power of the workers’ rights against the exploitation they were subjected to. It was done by apprising the worker of their rights. Grassroots propagandists like Jeevanandam or Jyoti Basu or E.M.S. Namboodiripad, who went on to become leaders, greatly helped in taking this message to the common man.
What changed?
The factors that helped in spreading the ideology largely disappeared during the final decade of the last century.
With the globalisation of the Indian Market, the death of the USSR, and the absence of grassroots propagandist leaders in the league of EMS or Jeevanandam, the party and its ideology have come in for hard times. The current party leaders confining their discourse largely to politics is not helping either. Not to mention, the mass influx of American culture along with the growth of the IT/BPO industry further dented its reach — the youth became more interested in seizing the day than seizing the means of production. And then, when the communists of the country started to set themselves against both globalisation and pop culture, they completely alienated the present generation, and they were forced to retreat to the universities in the north and factories in the States they ruled.
But they do exist. The philosophy, like all others, cannot be killed so long as even one person believes in it — indeed, even if no individual believes in it. The communists, however, are no longer as ideologically relevant or politically dominant as they used to be and should be to keep the social balance. Nor are they spreading the word as effectively as they used to.
The fact that they still limit themselves to talking about farmers and factory workers is ensuring that a young section of society finds communism or socialism an alien concept. Without meandering into the partisan part of it, being unrelatable is not doing the philosophy or the ideology any favours.
The need for communism
So, why bother with rejuvenating a dying movement? Because the need for communism and socialism is now higher than ever. When the Right gets stronger, the Left is needed to balance it out just as the Right balances the Left. Like the force from Star Wars, the balance of power needs to be restored.
On the personal front, the youth no longer are interested in hunger unless it is their own. They are not interested in problems until it affects them. By living each day for itself, we, the youth, have forgotten the lessons the past taught us and ignore the impact that forgetting these lessons can have on the future. Likes, Shares and Retweets are the highest form of response you can get for actual issues from other members of the proletariat today. All their intelligence and ability to understand politics and social structures is being squandered as they spend all of it on pop culture. The politics in House of Cards and Game of Thrones is more interesting than the actual politics that affect them on a day-to-day basis.
Seeing the bigger picture, unchallenged power corrupts. Congress — left of Center under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi — is just not enough. With the currently weak leadership in the party, be it at the regional or national level, Congress is not even a challenge for someone like Modi. As much as we need the aggressive development BJP promises, we also need to have checks and balances politically.
The news channels are not helping. They are giving more coverage to moralistic or mundane controversies (Padmavati, Trump tweets) than actual issues of economic and ecological significance (GST implementation, education sector woes). It is easier to distract the news channels than to distract the youth. Thanks to the TRP race, the current hot issue matters more than the ones that are important to the country as a whole in the long run.
Socialistic and Communist thinking could be the perfect cure for these modern-day ills and help create a future generation that is aware of the hows and whys of the policies that affects them. Taking the thinking to the youth and first-time voters will help the country greatly. The parties that follow Marx are the ones who should take ownership with this. They are better equipped to take this responsibility than anybody else.
The news channels are not helping. They are giving more coverage to moralistic or mundane controversies (Padmavati, Trump tweets) than actual issues of economic and ecological significance (GST implementation, education sector woes). It is easier to distract the news channels than to distract the youth. Thanks to the TRP race, the current hot issue matters more than the ones that are important to the country as a whole in the long run.
Socialistic and Communist thinking could be the perfect cure for these modern-day ills and help create a future generation that is aware of the hows and whys of the policies that affects them. Taking the thinking to the youth and first-time voters will help the country greatly. The parties that follow Marx are the ones who should take ownership with this. They are better equipped to take this responsibility than anybody else.
What can they do?
Marx talks more about factories in his manifesto than agriculture. Lenin is credited with bringing in farmers into the fold of socialism and communism — he brought in the sickle and made the philosophy relevant to a larger audience.
Instead of limiting themselves to Marx’s writing, they need to evolve, much like Lenin, and reach out to the larger audience on the issue that affects them. They lost a wonderful opportunity during the recession-driven IT layoffs, for instance, to emphasise their philosophical importance.
Just like they went to universities to reach students, went to factories to reach workers and to farms to reach farmers, they need to go where the youth are concentrated today — the social media.
The philosophy needs to go into their handheld device, those we spend more time with than our better halves or parents. It is up to the party to take it there, to them, with a renewed set of issues that can be solved or mitigated by the application of socialism. This cannot involve merely creating an app which echoes the leaders’ political critique of Modi’s policies but also about creating awareness about the philosophy as a whole in a simple and reinvented ways. They also need to acknowledge that the present generation seeks out the trappings of global pop culture to decide which ideas to consume. Therefore, communism needs to outgrow the books and literature that helped propagate the philosophy in its heyday and be more proactive in its outreach.
Failure to evolve will result in extinction. And socialism/communism is one philosophy that needs to exist in our country and survive as a counterbalance for the other side. The ball is in the parties’ court for now, as always. It is up to them to decide on what to do with it, for it decides their future and ours.
Sunday 24 December 2017
Why are growing numbers marrying themselves?
More and more people around the world are choosing to "marry" themselves in symbolic ceremonies, and businesses are catering to the trend. But what motivates someone to say "yes" to themselves?
Didem Tali in The BBC
In the summer of 2000, New York-based performance artist Gabrielle Penabaz decided to throw a wedding party for herself while nursing a broken heart.
She carefully chose a location, flowers, a quartz ring, a sweetheart-neckline wedding dress and wrote thoughtful vows.
She even wore "something borrowed, something blue" on the day, even though the event was purely symbolic and lacked one crucial component: a groom.
Nonetheless, her friends and family attended and Ms Penabaz says she had the "best wedding ever". Since then she has been "officiating" at other people's self-marriage ceremonies as a form of performance art - a service for which she charges.
Her clients are usually single women, although people from all genders and marital statuses have taken part.
Image copyrightMARRY YOURSELF VANCOUVERImage captionWomen attending a self marriage ceremony in Canada
She claims to have "married" more than 1,500 people, typically in ceremonies like her own, with mock-up chapels, costumes, cakes and most importantly, vows.
"The ceremonies are usually very cathartic and all about self-love," Ms Penabaz says.
"80% of the people whom I married to themselves shed a tear reading their vows. They usually say things like 'I forgive myself' and 'I will no longer call myself ugly'."
Welcome to the world of self-marriage or "sologamy", which has attracted increasing attention over the last few years.
While it is not legal to marry yourself anywhere in the world, reports of people holding mock ceremonies go for several decades and can be found everywhere from Japan to Italy, to Australia and the UK.
The act has also been the theme of episodes of popular US TV shows such as Glee and Sex and the City, and there are now whole businesses - such as Ms Penabaz's - dedicated to helping people plan their solo events.
Dominique Youkhehpaz officiated at her first solo wedding in 2011 at the US arts festival Burning Man and has since set up the consultancy Self Marriage Ceremonies.
She offers a 10-week online course to prepare brides or grooms for sologamy, costing $200 (£149), as well as private counselling sessions. Ms Youkhehpaz says she's worked with more than 250 clients to date and business is booming.
"A self-marriage ceremony can be anything from a simple ritual in one's bedroom to a more lavish celebration," she explains.
She also thinks it can be incredibly therapeutic for those who take part. "I have witnessed people leave abusive relationships, step more fully into their life's work or meet their beloved after marrying themselves."
Proponents say sologamy is about self-love, acceptance and claiming the social affirmation normally reserved for couples who wed.
While there are no official figures about those choosing to marry themselves, the interest comes at a time when the number of unmarried people is at record highs in many advanced economies, according to the OECD.
Image copyrightSOPHIE TANNERImage captionBriton Sophie Tanner tied the knot with herself after her partner cheated on her
Not surprisingly, businesses have been catering to this new market. In 2014, the Japanese travel agency Cerca Travel reportedly offered a two-day package for solo brides for upwards of £2,500. It included dress fitting, make-up and hair styling and a photo shoot.
Dan Moran, a Los Angeles-based jewellery designer, says he started receiving calls from clients wanting sologamy rings 18 months ago and wedding planners and photographers he knows are getting similar requests.
Most of his new clients are "urban, affluent and educated" women, and interestingly many are already married.
More stories from the BBC's Business Brain series looking at interesting business topics from around the world:
Would you sleep in your favourite shop?
Art and wine: Learning to paint while drinking
How the grilled cheese sandwich went gourmet
"In the coming years, people who work in the wedding industry will definitely have to keep sologamists in mind and tailor their service," he says.
Certainly people are willing splash out on sologamy. Italian Laura Mesi wed herself at a "fairytale" event this September, complete with a white dress, three-layer wedding cake, bridesmaids and 70 guests.
The 40-year-old, who made the move after her 12-year relationship ended, spent £8,700 on the day.
Image copyrightSOPHIE TANNERImage caption"It was the best day of my life," says Sophie, here hugging her father - who gave her away
In the UK, Sophie Tanner married herself in 2015. "For me, it was an important ceremony that demonstrates my commitment to self-compassion, " she told the BBC.
"The wedding was the best day of my life, complete with vintage gown, teary dad giving me away, and dancing bridesmaids."
But not everyone welcomes the sologamy trend. Some call it narcissistic and others criticise it as a pointless submission to a patriarchal institution.
Karen Nimmo, a clinical psychologist in New Zealand, says: "Self-dislike is at the root of so many psychological issues, so where marrying yourself is about healing from past trauma or relationship issues it can be helpful.
"But it's important to make sure your other relationships are healthy. If you rely too much on yourself and constantly put your own needs ahead of everyone else you may be slipping into narcissistic territory - and that's an unhealthy and lonely place to be."
Alexandra Gill, co-founder of consultancy Marry Yourself Vancouver, accepts marrying yourself "kind of is" narcissistic, but adds: "Aren't all traditional white weddings also narcissistic?"
She also says that marrying yourself doesn't have to be taken deadly seriously.
Since 2011, her firm has helped solo brides plan their big days, but is now branching out to offer a "ladies' night" concept which celebrates "self-love and sisterhood".
"Let's face it, all women grow up with the fairytale wedding stories and the princess culture isn't going away anywhere," she says.
"But self-marriage ceremonies allow us to re-write this narrative in which we don't need a groom."
"Weddings have always been a female-centred celebration, anyway," she says.
"Many more women would love to marry to themselves, but they're just self-conscious about it."
Sex in the City's heroic protagonist Carrie Bradshaw, who wed herself in a 2003 episode of the series, would surely agree.
In the summer of 2000, New York-based performance artist Gabrielle Penabaz decided to throw a wedding party for herself while nursing a broken heart.
She carefully chose a location, flowers, a quartz ring, a sweetheart-neckline wedding dress and wrote thoughtful vows.
She even wore "something borrowed, something blue" on the day, even though the event was purely symbolic and lacked one crucial component: a groom.
Nonetheless, her friends and family attended and Ms Penabaz says she had the "best wedding ever". Since then she has been "officiating" at other people's self-marriage ceremonies as a form of performance art - a service for which she charges.
Her clients are usually single women, although people from all genders and marital statuses have taken part.
Image copyrightMARRY YOURSELF VANCOUVERImage captionWomen attending a self marriage ceremony in CanadaShe claims to have "married" more than 1,500 people, typically in ceremonies like her own, with mock-up chapels, costumes, cakes and most importantly, vows.
"The ceremonies are usually very cathartic and all about self-love," Ms Penabaz says.
"80% of the people whom I married to themselves shed a tear reading their vows. They usually say things like 'I forgive myself' and 'I will no longer call myself ugly'."
Welcome to the world of self-marriage or "sologamy", which has attracted increasing attention over the last few years.
While it is not legal to marry yourself anywhere in the world, reports of people holding mock ceremonies go for several decades and can be found everywhere from Japan to Italy, to Australia and the UK.
The act has also been the theme of episodes of popular US TV shows such as Glee and Sex and the City, and there are now whole businesses - such as Ms Penabaz's - dedicated to helping people plan their solo events.
Dominique Youkhehpaz officiated at her first solo wedding in 2011 at the US arts festival Burning Man and has since set up the consultancy Self Marriage Ceremonies.
She offers a 10-week online course to prepare brides or grooms for sologamy, costing $200 (£149), as well as private counselling sessions. Ms Youkhehpaz says she's worked with more than 250 clients to date and business is booming.
"A self-marriage ceremony can be anything from a simple ritual in one's bedroom to a more lavish celebration," she explains.
She also thinks it can be incredibly therapeutic for those who take part. "I have witnessed people leave abusive relationships, step more fully into their life's work or meet their beloved after marrying themselves."
Proponents say sologamy is about self-love, acceptance and claiming the social affirmation normally reserved for couples who wed.
While there are no official figures about those choosing to marry themselves, the interest comes at a time when the number of unmarried people is at record highs in many advanced economies, according to the OECD.
Image copyrightSOPHIE TANNERImage captionBriton Sophie Tanner tied the knot with herself after her partner cheated on herNot surprisingly, businesses have been catering to this new market. In 2014, the Japanese travel agency Cerca Travel reportedly offered a two-day package for solo brides for upwards of £2,500. It included dress fitting, make-up and hair styling and a photo shoot.
Dan Moran, a Los Angeles-based jewellery designer, says he started receiving calls from clients wanting sologamy rings 18 months ago and wedding planners and photographers he knows are getting similar requests.
Most of his new clients are "urban, affluent and educated" women, and interestingly many are already married.
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"In the coming years, people who work in the wedding industry will definitely have to keep sologamists in mind and tailor their service," he says.
Certainly people are willing splash out on sologamy. Italian Laura Mesi wed herself at a "fairytale" event this September, complete with a white dress, three-layer wedding cake, bridesmaids and 70 guests.
The 40-year-old, who made the move after her 12-year relationship ended, spent £8,700 on the day.
Image copyrightSOPHIE TANNERImage caption"It was the best day of my life," says Sophie, here hugging her father - who gave her awayIn the UK, Sophie Tanner married herself in 2015. "For me, it was an important ceremony that demonstrates my commitment to self-compassion, " she told the BBC.
"The wedding was the best day of my life, complete with vintage gown, teary dad giving me away, and dancing bridesmaids."
But not everyone welcomes the sologamy trend. Some call it narcissistic and others criticise it as a pointless submission to a patriarchal institution.
Karen Nimmo, a clinical psychologist in New Zealand, says: "Self-dislike is at the root of so many psychological issues, so where marrying yourself is about healing from past trauma or relationship issues it can be helpful.
"But it's important to make sure your other relationships are healthy. If you rely too much on yourself and constantly put your own needs ahead of everyone else you may be slipping into narcissistic territory - and that's an unhealthy and lonely place to be."
Alexandra Gill, co-founder of consultancy Marry Yourself Vancouver, accepts marrying yourself "kind of is" narcissistic, but adds: "Aren't all traditional white weddings also narcissistic?"
She also says that marrying yourself doesn't have to be taken deadly seriously.
Since 2011, her firm has helped solo brides plan their big days, but is now branching out to offer a "ladies' night" concept which celebrates "self-love and sisterhood".
"Let's face it, all women grow up with the fairytale wedding stories and the princess culture isn't going away anywhere," she says.
"But self-marriage ceremonies allow us to re-write this narrative in which we don't need a groom."
"Weddings have always been a female-centred celebration, anyway," she says.
"Many more women would love to marry to themselves, but they're just self-conscious about it."
Sex in the City's heroic protagonist Carrie Bradshaw, who wed herself in a 2003 episode of the series, would surely agree.
Who pays for Manchester City’s beautiful game?
Nick Cohen in The Guardian
Even though I come from the red side of Manchester, I want Manchester City to win every game they play now. Hoping City fail is like hoping a great singer’s voice cracks or prima ballerina’s tendons tear. Journalists have written and broadcast millions of words about the intensity of Manchester City’s game and the beauty of its movement. You watch and gasp as each perfect pass finds its man and each impossible move becomes possible after all.
Everything that can be said should have been said. But here are words you never hear on the BBC or Sky and hear only rarely from the best sports writers. Manchester City’s success is built on the labour extracted by the rulers of a modern feudal state. Sheikh Mansour, its owner, is the half-brother of Sheikh Khalifa, the absolute monarch of the United Arab Emirates: an accident of birth that has given him a mountain of cash and Manchester City the Premier League’s best players.
An absolute monarchy is merely a dictatorship decked in fine robes. The usual restrictions of free speech, a free press, the rule of law, an independent judiciary and democratic elections still apply in the Emirates federation of seven sultanates. Critics are as likely to disappear or be held without due process as they are in less glamorous destinations. The riches that supply Pep Guardiola’s £15m salary and ensure the £264m wage bill for the players is met on time do not just come from oil. The Emirate monarchies, Qatar and Saudi Arabia rely on a system of economic exploitation you struggle to find a precedent for.
In the UAE as a whole, only 13% of the population are full nationals. In the glittering tourist resort of Dubai, citizenship rises slightly to 15% and in the Abu Dhabi emirate to 20%, but everywhere a subclass of immigrants does the bulk of the work. The obvious comparison is with apartheid: Arab nationals sit at the top, white expats have some privileges, as the coloureds and Asians had in the last days of the South African regime, while the dirty work – from construction to cleaning – is done by despised immigrants from south Asia.
But comparisons with apartheid or the Israeli occupation of the West Bank or America’s old deep south miscarry because the Arab princelings import their working class rather than rule over subdued inhabitants. It’s like Spartans bringing in Helots. Or if images of stern Spartan militarists feel incongruous when imposed on the flabby bodies of Gulf aristocrats, Eloi importing Morlocks. Timid labour reforms are meant to have improved the lot of the serfs. In law, employers can no longer keep them in line with the threat of deportation to India or the Philippines if they do not please a capricious boss. In practice, absolute monarchies repress the lawyers and campaigners who might take up their cases. Now, as always, activists are silenced and workers fear the cost of speaking out.
You should be able to praise Manchester City’s football and condemn it owners. Or, if that is asking too much, you should at least be able to talk about its owners or mention the source of their wealth. If only in passing. If only the once. Instead, there is silence. With Mansour building a global consortium of clubs, Qataris owning Paris Saint-Germain and Emirate money poised to buy Newcastle United, rich dictatorial states are engaging in competitive conspicuous consumption. They are creating the world’s best clubs and may one day take them off into an oligarchs’ league. You are not “bringing politics into football” when you worry about Sheikh Mansour. You are recognising that the future of football is political.
The silence about the fate of the national game covers much of national life. Everywhere you look, you are struck by the arguments that are not being made.
Mainstream Conservatives refuse to join Tory rebels in speaking out against the dangers of Brexit. They like to boast that they are stable and commonsensical types, with no time for dangerous experiments. When confronted with the reckless nationalism of the Tory right, however, they prefer the safe option of keeping quiet until public opinion shifts. Many Labour MPs and leftwing journalists deplore Corbyn and the far left. I speak from experience when I say they talk with great eloquence in private, but will not utter a squeak of dissent in public until Corbyn’s popularity among party members falls. They, too, will speak out when, and only when, they can be certain that it is too late for speaking out to make a difference.
We think of ourselves as more liberated than our ancestors, but the same repressive mechanisms silence us. In the 18th and 19th centuries, few wanted to say that gorgeous stately homes and fine public buildings had been built because the British looted Indians and enslaved Africans. Today, it feels equally “inappropriate” – to use a modern word that stinks of Victorian prudery – to say that a beautiful football club has been built on the proceeds of exploitation.
Football supporters reserve their hatred for owners such as the Glazers, who bought Manchester United with borrowed money and siphoned off the club’s profits to pay down the debt. If billions are available to turn Manchester City or Paris Saint-Germain into world-class clubs, the fans do not care where the money came from. Nor do neutrals who love football for its own sake. For them, it is as miserablist to talk about Manchester City’s owners on Match of the Day as to talk about the factory farming of turkeys at the Christmas lunch table.
Honest sports writers fear the accusation that they are joyless puritan nags whose sole pleasure is ruining the pleasure of others. In Britain’s vacuous politics, Conservatives fear accusations of ignoring the will of the people on Brexit. Labour MPs fear their activists rather than their voters. In both the Tory and Labour cases, the worst that can happen to MPs is deselection. Mail or Express journalists who came out against Brexit would, I imagine, risk their jobs or being moved on to a different story. But no leftwing paper would sack a columnist who criticised Corbyn. The worst they would endure is frosty words from line managers and twaddle on Twitter.
We do not live in Abu Dhabi. The police do not pick up dissidents. Jailers don’t torture them. Yet peer pressure and trivial fears are enough to suppress necessary arguments. If you do not yet have a New Year resolution, it’s worth resolving to treat both with the contempt they deserve.
Saturday 23 December 2017
Modi Ji, thank you for ending my has-been status
by Mani Shankar Aiyer in NDTV.com
Spokespersons for the Bharatiya Janata Party have been asserting on TV screens that I should have taken the government’s permission before hosting an old Pakistani friend of mine to dinner. Why should I seek anyone’s permission to host a dinner party — even if that friend is a Pakistani?
Why cannot I invite friends and colleagues to talk about Pakistan with a distinguished Pakistani? Why must I toe Modi’s line on Pakistan? What gives the government a monopoly of national opinion on our neighbour? Does anyone who does not believe that the Prime Minister is the nation’s sole fount of wisdom become liable to the charge of treachery? Do I not have a right to privacy? Do my guests not have such a right?
The BJP responds that this was not just some dinner party, it amounted to sleeping with the enemy. Indeed, the Prime Minister has darkly hinted that I was hiring a contract killer (“supari”) to get him. Invoking a fake Facebook post, he slyly let slip that the dinner was a “secret” conclave to hatch a “conspiracy” with the Pakistanis to make — horror of horrors — a Gujarati Muslim the chief minister of Gujarat.
Utter rubbish, total balderdash, but a nasty move to establish a salience between Pakistan and Indian Muslims to polarise a crucial election.
Well, I don’t consider Muslims or Pakistanis my enemies, especially a Pakistani Muslim like Khurshid Kasuri, who I have known since we were 20-year-old undergraduates at the same Cambridge college some 56 years ago. It was a friendship that was renewed when the founder-President of the BJP, and then Janata Party Foreign Minister of India, Atal Behari Vajpayee, chose me to be the first-ever Consul General of India in Karachi (1978-82).
Did he choose me to go to Karachi to spew at the Pakistanis? Atal Behari-ji would invariably take his seat in the House whenever I rose to speak on Pakistan. For unlike the present incumbent, he was not paranoid about Pakistan. A true democrat, he was interested in understanding other perspectives on that country.
I flew to Islamabad in Dec 1978 from the home of our ambassador in Abu Dhabi, Hamid Ansari, a brilliant diplomat and an engaging companion with whom I had served a little earlier in Brussels. He was among my closest friends in the Foreign Service and I appointed him chairman of the Oil Diplomacy Committee when I was Petroleum Minister. Destiny had kissed him on the brow to rise for 10 long years (2007-2017) to the second-highest constitutional position in our land: Vice President and Chairman of the Rajya Sabha.
Invaluable in his penetrating insights into the Pak psyche, he has guided me over the years through the maze of Pakistan’s domestic politics. He introduced me to his wife’s relatives in Karachi. Hamid Ansari was second only to Doctor-sahib (former prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh) among the distinguished guests at my dinner.
The morning after I reached Islamabad to be briefed by my Ambassador before taking up my new assignment, I heard the Ambassador speaking on the phone to Khurshid Kasuri. I slipped him a note on which I had scribbled that Khurshid was an old friend of mine. He passed on the phone to me, and I could hear the joy in Khurshid’s voice as he welcomed me to Pakistan, insisting that I proceed to Karachi only after visiting Lahore.
A tempting invitation
That was a tempting invitation as I was born in Lahore. I agreed, subject to Khurshid driving me straight from the airport to my old home at 44, Lakshmi Mansions.
Khurshid agreed and my Ambassador indulgently let me take that circuitous route to my new posting.
That Ambassador, Katyayani Shankar Bajpai, was no soft-heart like me. He has always had a hard, tough understanding of Pakistan, untouched by any of the starry-eyed romanticism that tinges my view of that country. He was at the time in almost daily touch with Barrister Khurshid Kasuri, monitoring developments in the then ongoing Lahore High Court trial of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.
Now nearly 90 years old, Ambassador K. Shankar Bajpai was another of my valued guests.
On my landing in Lahore, Khurshid Kasuri picked me up and drove me straight to the apartment where my family had lived till Partition, now taken over by a medical doctor who had been a student in London while Khurshid and I were cutting our academic teeth in Cambridge.
I have since been several times to Lakshmi Mansions (does Modi know it is still called that even seven decades after Partition?), taking my wife and children with me so often that the old chowkidar lets me in even when Dr Malik is not at home.
Most touching of all was when I visited Pakistan as India’s Petroleum Minister to initiate talks on the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline. The Residents Welfare Association of Lakshmi Mansions (including writer Sa’adat Hassan Manto’s family) organised a welcome reception for me and Dr Malik asked me to send him a blow-up of my parents’ photograph so that he could, in respectful tribute to their memory, hang it on the walls of their first marital home. Is this the enemy?
In 2003, then president Pervez Musharraf appointed Khurshid Kasuri as his Foreign Minister. Kasuri immediately embarked on the most determined exercise in India-Pakistan history to resolve the Kashmir issue.
The parameters for that bold initiative were set by Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Between them, they agreed that there would be no exchange of territory or people, but an attempt to “render the LoC irrelevant” to the ordinary lives of ordinary Kashmiris on either side of the Line of Control.
The task of negotiating the deal was entrusted on the back-channel to a Pakistani civil servant, Tariq Aziz, and Ambassador Sati Lambah of India (yes, Sati too was my guest at the Kasuri dinner). Sati was not only my Islamabad counterpart through all the three years I served in Karachi, he went on to head the Pakistan division at headquarters, returned to Islamabad both as Deputy High Commissioner and High Commissioner, and climaxed his high-flying life in diplomacy as the longest-ever serving PM’s Special Envoy: nine uninterrupted years as Doctor sahib’s most trusted aide on Pakistan. No one knows Pakistan better than Sati Lambah.
The kick-off point for the Musharraf-Manmohan dialogue was Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Jan 2004 visit to Islamabad, accompanied by his Foreign Minister, Yashwant Sinha (who had also accepted my invitation but could not attend because he was detained by the Maharashtra police in Akola).
On the Pakistan side, it was Kasuri who supervised and guided the back-channel conversations that brought more progress than ever before on the vexed question of Kashmir. It would have been concluded but for Musharraf’s domestic fracas with the judiciary that finally ended his regime.
Sohail Mahmood (left), Pakistan’s High Commissioner in India, and Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, the former foreign minister, were among the invitees to a dinner hosted by Mani Shankar Aiyar. The Indian prime minister described the dinner as a plot to undermine his party’s prospects in the Gujarat elections.
Whenever the dialogue is resumed, the four-point formula will surely constitute the point of departure.
On the Indian side, Dr Manmohan Singh’s Foreign Minister at the commencement of the back-channel talks was Natwar Singh. So I invited him too, bearing particularly in mind that not only had he been my boss in Islamabad for most of my term in Pakistan, but also because of his immortal comment to the Pakistan press on the ghastly Moradabad riots after Eid in 1980: “I feel humiliated as an Indian and diminished as a human being.”
As former foreign minister, Salman Khurshid had gone with Atal-ji to Geneva in the mid-90s to give a fitting reply to Pakistan’s canards in the Human Rights sub-commission, I invited him too. Alas, he mixed up the dates and turned up only the next day. But the other Salman — Salman Haider — former foreign secretary and architect of the 1997 “Composite Dialogue” between India and Pakistan that has persisted over 20 turbulent years (its name, but not its essence, changed by the BJP, as is their wont) came, listened, spoke and heartily ate.
Present too were former High Commissioners Sharat Sabharwal and T.C.A. Raghavan. Raghavan’s masterpiece, The People Next Door, published a few months ago, has quickly become the defining narrative of what Raghavan calls in his subtitle, The Curious History, of our relations with Pakistan.
We also had two former heads of the Pakistan division: Chinmaya Gharekhan, who headed the division when I was in Karachi, and then went on to become principal foreign policy adviser in the Prime Minister’s Office to two prime ministers, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, before winding up his career as the longest-ever serving representative of India to the UN.
He was later Dr Manmohan Singh’s special envoy for West Asia. He is a frequent contributor on foreign policy to several journals, including The Indian Express and The Hindu.
Gharekhan, a conspirator? Gharekhan, a subversive? Modi-ji, why not check with him? Know what? Notwithstanding his name, Gharekhan is not a Muslim, his surname is a title bestowed centuries ago on his family. Indeed, he is a fellow-Gujarati! Khem chhe?
The other head of division present was M.K. Bhadrakumar, former deputy high commissioner to Pakistan. No one in India, absolutely no one, is engaged as deeply as he is with Central Asia, West Asia and our neighbourhood and views all foreign policy in the perspective of great power geopolitics and geo-strategies.
After retirement, he has emerged as the most prolific writer on foreign policy in Indian journalism. Far from stooping to low conspiracy, Bhadrakumar’s published view is that the talk at the Kasuri dinner amounted to little more than “airy nothings”.
We had two professional journalists of long standing: Prem Shankar Jha, former editor of The Hindustan Times, and Rahul Khushwant Singh, former editor of The Khaleej Times, Dubai, and former resident editor of The Indian Express, Chandigarh — blameless except for being stained by association with me since our school days!
Besides, we were graced by the participation of an outstanding defence analyst, Col Ajai Shukla (retd), a soldier and intellectual who understands defence matters better than anyone else in the public realm.
I rounded off my list of invitees with none other and none less than the former army chief, General Deepak Kapoor. I wanted him in so that Kasuri would not get away without first hearing an authoritative armed forces voice. This is the highly-distinguished, highly-decorated officer whose patriotism has been impugned by a prime minister as having attended a “secret” conclave in my home to take out a “supari” on Narendra-bhai Modi.
Even my acerbic tongue cannot find the right word to condemn this outrage.
And, oh yes, of course, there was the newly-appointed Pakistan High Commissioner, learning the ropes, more silent than the Silent Valley, deferring to his former boss, Khurshid Kasuri.
Nothing to hide
We had nothing to hide. We had come together to brief Khurshid on Indian perspectives on Pakistan because Kasuri is arguably the best friend India has in influential political circles in that country.
We also wanted to hear him, as an articulate, well-informed and India-friendly interlocutor. He has, of course, been out of office for the best part of a decade and is unlikely to make it again. So the discussion was informal and certainly not “official”. All of us, without exception, were “has-beens”.
There was absolutely nothing “secret” or “secretive” about the get-together. Indeed, the place was crawling with Modi’s intelligence agents. Khurshid Kasuri is related to the Rampur family.
The dates of the wedding in their family had been determined without reference to the election in Gujarat. My invitations had gone out a month earlier and reminders had been issued both by email and mobile phones. Doubtless, both were tapped.
We talked and dined convivially for about three hours, my wife proving to our Pakistani guests that Indian nihari and biryani are quite as good as in Pakistan! Some BJP spokesman misunderstood and claimed we had sat and conspired till 3am. There was no conspiracy. There was no mention of Gujarat. We were just talking Pakistan with a Pakistani guest and friend.
It is shameful that baseless allegations have been flung from public platforms by no less a personage than the present prime minister. How, in a democracy, can the right of any citizen to express views contrary to those of the government be questioned as Modi and his cohort are doing? Are we not drifting towards becoming a police state?
I know Modi hates me. But my party so distrusts me that I was perhaps the only Congressman of 25 years standing who was not sent to Gujarat for the campaign. Yet, Modi’s invective was reserved for me as if the battle for Gujarat was between him and me.
Towards the end of my Rajya Sabha term, I asked him a question on the floor of the upper house. He brushed off my enquiry, adding, quite gratuitously, that I would soon be joining the ranks of the “bhule-bisre” — the forgotten and the destitute. That indeed would have been my fate — except for Narendra-bhai Modi. He has given me more publicity than I could have garnered for myself in three lives. Thank you, Prime Minister.
Spokespersons for the Bharatiya Janata Party have been asserting on TV screens that I should have taken the government’s permission before hosting an old Pakistani friend of mine to dinner. Why should I seek anyone’s permission to host a dinner party — even if that friend is a Pakistani?
Why cannot I invite friends and colleagues to talk about Pakistan with a distinguished Pakistani? Why must I toe Modi’s line on Pakistan? What gives the government a monopoly of national opinion on our neighbour? Does anyone who does not believe that the Prime Minister is the nation’s sole fount of wisdom become liable to the charge of treachery? Do I not have a right to privacy? Do my guests not have such a right?
The BJP responds that this was not just some dinner party, it amounted to sleeping with the enemy. Indeed, the Prime Minister has darkly hinted that I was hiring a contract killer (“supari”) to get him. Invoking a fake Facebook post, he slyly let slip that the dinner was a “secret” conclave to hatch a “conspiracy” with the Pakistanis to make — horror of horrors — a Gujarati Muslim the chief minister of Gujarat.
Utter rubbish, total balderdash, but a nasty move to establish a salience between Pakistan and Indian Muslims to polarise a crucial election.
Well, I don’t consider Muslims or Pakistanis my enemies, especially a Pakistani Muslim like Khurshid Kasuri, who I have known since we were 20-year-old undergraduates at the same Cambridge college some 56 years ago. It was a friendship that was renewed when the founder-President of the BJP, and then Janata Party Foreign Minister of India, Atal Behari Vajpayee, chose me to be the first-ever Consul General of India in Karachi (1978-82).
Did he choose me to go to Karachi to spew at the Pakistanis? Atal Behari-ji would invariably take his seat in the House whenever I rose to speak on Pakistan. For unlike the present incumbent, he was not paranoid about Pakistan. A true democrat, he was interested in understanding other perspectives on that country.
I flew to Islamabad in Dec 1978 from the home of our ambassador in Abu Dhabi, Hamid Ansari, a brilliant diplomat and an engaging companion with whom I had served a little earlier in Brussels. He was among my closest friends in the Foreign Service and I appointed him chairman of the Oil Diplomacy Committee when I was Petroleum Minister. Destiny had kissed him on the brow to rise for 10 long years (2007-2017) to the second-highest constitutional position in our land: Vice President and Chairman of the Rajya Sabha.
Invaluable in his penetrating insights into the Pak psyche, he has guided me over the years through the maze of Pakistan’s domestic politics. He introduced me to his wife’s relatives in Karachi. Hamid Ansari was second only to Doctor-sahib (former prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh) among the distinguished guests at my dinner.
The morning after I reached Islamabad to be briefed by my Ambassador before taking up my new assignment, I heard the Ambassador speaking on the phone to Khurshid Kasuri. I slipped him a note on which I had scribbled that Khurshid was an old friend of mine. He passed on the phone to me, and I could hear the joy in Khurshid’s voice as he welcomed me to Pakistan, insisting that I proceed to Karachi only after visiting Lahore.
A tempting invitation
That was a tempting invitation as I was born in Lahore. I agreed, subject to Khurshid driving me straight from the airport to my old home at 44, Lakshmi Mansions.
Khurshid agreed and my Ambassador indulgently let me take that circuitous route to my new posting.
That Ambassador, Katyayani Shankar Bajpai, was no soft-heart like me. He has always had a hard, tough understanding of Pakistan, untouched by any of the starry-eyed romanticism that tinges my view of that country. He was at the time in almost daily touch with Barrister Khurshid Kasuri, monitoring developments in the then ongoing Lahore High Court trial of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.
Now nearly 90 years old, Ambassador K. Shankar Bajpai was another of my valued guests.
On my landing in Lahore, Khurshid Kasuri picked me up and drove me straight to the apartment where my family had lived till Partition, now taken over by a medical doctor who had been a student in London while Khurshid and I were cutting our academic teeth in Cambridge.
I have since been several times to Lakshmi Mansions (does Modi know it is still called that even seven decades after Partition?), taking my wife and children with me so often that the old chowkidar lets me in even when Dr Malik is not at home.
Most touching of all was when I visited Pakistan as India’s Petroleum Minister to initiate talks on the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline. The Residents Welfare Association of Lakshmi Mansions (including writer Sa’adat Hassan Manto’s family) organised a welcome reception for me and Dr Malik asked me to send him a blow-up of my parents’ photograph so that he could, in respectful tribute to their memory, hang it on the walls of their first marital home. Is this the enemy?
In 2003, then president Pervez Musharraf appointed Khurshid Kasuri as his Foreign Minister. Kasuri immediately embarked on the most determined exercise in India-Pakistan history to resolve the Kashmir issue.
The parameters for that bold initiative were set by Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Between them, they agreed that there would be no exchange of territory or people, but an attempt to “render the LoC irrelevant” to the ordinary lives of ordinary Kashmiris on either side of the Line of Control.
The task of negotiating the deal was entrusted on the back-channel to a Pakistani civil servant, Tariq Aziz, and Ambassador Sati Lambah of India (yes, Sati too was my guest at the Kasuri dinner). Sati was not only my Islamabad counterpart through all the three years I served in Karachi, he went on to head the Pakistan division at headquarters, returned to Islamabad both as Deputy High Commissioner and High Commissioner, and climaxed his high-flying life in diplomacy as the longest-ever serving PM’s Special Envoy: nine uninterrupted years as Doctor sahib’s most trusted aide on Pakistan. No one knows Pakistan better than Sati Lambah.
The kick-off point for the Musharraf-Manmohan dialogue was Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Jan 2004 visit to Islamabad, accompanied by his Foreign Minister, Yashwant Sinha (who had also accepted my invitation but could not attend because he was detained by the Maharashtra police in Akola).
On the Pakistan side, it was Kasuri who supervised and guided the back-channel conversations that brought more progress than ever before on the vexed question of Kashmir. It would have been concluded but for Musharraf’s domestic fracas with the judiciary that finally ended his regime.
Sohail Mahmood (left), Pakistan’s High Commissioner in India, and Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, the former foreign minister, were among the invitees to a dinner hosted by Mani Shankar Aiyar. The Indian prime minister described the dinner as a plot to undermine his party’s prospects in the Gujarat elections.Whenever the dialogue is resumed, the four-point formula will surely constitute the point of departure.
On the Indian side, Dr Manmohan Singh’s Foreign Minister at the commencement of the back-channel talks was Natwar Singh. So I invited him too, bearing particularly in mind that not only had he been my boss in Islamabad for most of my term in Pakistan, but also because of his immortal comment to the Pakistan press on the ghastly Moradabad riots after Eid in 1980: “I feel humiliated as an Indian and diminished as a human being.”
As former foreign minister, Salman Khurshid had gone with Atal-ji to Geneva in the mid-90s to give a fitting reply to Pakistan’s canards in the Human Rights sub-commission, I invited him too. Alas, he mixed up the dates and turned up only the next day. But the other Salman — Salman Haider — former foreign secretary and architect of the 1997 “Composite Dialogue” between India and Pakistan that has persisted over 20 turbulent years (its name, but not its essence, changed by the BJP, as is their wont) came, listened, spoke and heartily ate.
Present too were former High Commissioners Sharat Sabharwal and T.C.A. Raghavan. Raghavan’s masterpiece, The People Next Door, published a few months ago, has quickly become the defining narrative of what Raghavan calls in his subtitle, The Curious History, of our relations with Pakistan.
We also had two former heads of the Pakistan division: Chinmaya Gharekhan, who headed the division when I was in Karachi, and then went on to become principal foreign policy adviser in the Prime Minister’s Office to two prime ministers, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, before winding up his career as the longest-ever serving representative of India to the UN.
He was later Dr Manmohan Singh’s special envoy for West Asia. He is a frequent contributor on foreign policy to several journals, including The Indian Express and The Hindu.
Gharekhan, a conspirator? Gharekhan, a subversive? Modi-ji, why not check with him? Know what? Notwithstanding his name, Gharekhan is not a Muslim, his surname is a title bestowed centuries ago on his family. Indeed, he is a fellow-Gujarati! Khem chhe?
The other head of division present was M.K. Bhadrakumar, former deputy high commissioner to Pakistan. No one in India, absolutely no one, is engaged as deeply as he is with Central Asia, West Asia and our neighbourhood and views all foreign policy in the perspective of great power geopolitics and geo-strategies.
After retirement, he has emerged as the most prolific writer on foreign policy in Indian journalism. Far from stooping to low conspiracy, Bhadrakumar’s published view is that the talk at the Kasuri dinner amounted to little more than “airy nothings”.
We had two professional journalists of long standing: Prem Shankar Jha, former editor of The Hindustan Times, and Rahul Khushwant Singh, former editor of The Khaleej Times, Dubai, and former resident editor of The Indian Express, Chandigarh — blameless except for being stained by association with me since our school days!
Besides, we were graced by the participation of an outstanding defence analyst, Col Ajai Shukla (retd), a soldier and intellectual who understands defence matters better than anyone else in the public realm.
I rounded off my list of invitees with none other and none less than the former army chief, General Deepak Kapoor. I wanted him in so that Kasuri would not get away without first hearing an authoritative armed forces voice. This is the highly-distinguished, highly-decorated officer whose patriotism has been impugned by a prime minister as having attended a “secret” conclave in my home to take out a “supari” on Narendra-bhai Modi.
Even my acerbic tongue cannot find the right word to condemn this outrage.
And, oh yes, of course, there was the newly-appointed Pakistan High Commissioner, learning the ropes, more silent than the Silent Valley, deferring to his former boss, Khurshid Kasuri.
Nothing to hide
We had nothing to hide. We had come together to brief Khurshid on Indian perspectives on Pakistan because Kasuri is arguably the best friend India has in influential political circles in that country.
We also wanted to hear him, as an articulate, well-informed and India-friendly interlocutor. He has, of course, been out of office for the best part of a decade and is unlikely to make it again. So the discussion was informal and certainly not “official”. All of us, without exception, were “has-beens”.
There was absolutely nothing “secret” or “secretive” about the get-together. Indeed, the place was crawling with Modi’s intelligence agents. Khurshid Kasuri is related to the Rampur family.
The dates of the wedding in their family had been determined without reference to the election in Gujarat. My invitations had gone out a month earlier and reminders had been issued both by email and mobile phones. Doubtless, both were tapped.
We talked and dined convivially for about three hours, my wife proving to our Pakistani guests that Indian nihari and biryani are quite as good as in Pakistan! Some BJP spokesman misunderstood and claimed we had sat and conspired till 3am. There was no conspiracy. There was no mention of Gujarat. We were just talking Pakistan with a Pakistani guest and friend.
It is shameful that baseless allegations have been flung from public platforms by no less a personage than the present prime minister. How, in a democracy, can the right of any citizen to express views contrary to those of the government be questioned as Modi and his cohort are doing? Are we not drifting towards becoming a police state?
I know Modi hates me. But my party so distrusts me that I was perhaps the only Congressman of 25 years standing who was not sent to Gujarat for the campaign. Yet, Modi’s invective was reserved for me as if the battle for Gujarat was between him and me.
Towards the end of my Rajya Sabha term, I asked him a question on the floor of the upper house. He brushed off my enquiry, adding, quite gratuitously, that I would soon be joining the ranks of the “bhule-bisre” — the forgotten and the destitute. That indeed would have been my fate — except for Narendra-bhai Modi. He has given me more publicity than I could have garnered for myself in three lives. Thank you, Prime Minister.
Friday 22 December 2017
Ye khel kya hai…. by Javed Akhtar
Mere mukhaalif ne chaal chal di hai
Aur ab
Meri chaal ke intezaar mein hai
Magar main kab se
Safed khaanon
Siyaah khaanon mein rakkhe
Kaale safed mohron ko dekhta hoon
Main sochta hoon
Ye mohre kya hain
Aur ab
Meri chaal ke intezaar mein hai
Magar main kab se
Safed khaanon
Siyaah khaanon mein rakkhe
Kaale safed mohron ko dekhta hoon
Main sochta hoon
Ye mohre kya hain
Agar main samjhoon
Ki ye jo mohre hain
Sirf lakdi ke hain khilone
To jeetna kya hai haarna kya
Na ye zaroori
Na vo aham hai
Agar khushi hai na jeetne ki
Na haarne ka bhi koi gham hai
To khel kya hai
Main sochta hoon
Jo khelna hai
To apne dil mein yaqeen kar lon
Ye mohre sach-much ke baadshah-o-vazeer
Sach-much ke hain piyaade
Aur in kea age hai
Dushmanon ki vo fauj
Rakhti hai jo mujh ko tabaah karne ke
Saare mansoobe
Sab iraade
Magar main aisa jo maan bhi loon
To sochta hoon
Yeh khel kab hai
Ye jang hai jis ko jeetna hai
Ye jang hai jis mein sab hai jaayaz
Koi ye kehta hai jaise mujh se
Ye jang bhi hai
Ye khel bhi hai
Ye jang hai par khiladiyon ki
Ye khel hai jang ki tarah ka
Main sochta hoon
Jo khel hai
Is mein ir tarah ka usool kyon hai
Ki koi mohra rah eke jaaye
Magar jo hai baadshah
Us par kabhi koi aanch bhi na aaye
Vazeer hi ko hai bas ijaazat
Ke jis taraf bhi vo chaahe jaaye
Ki ye jo mohre hain
Sirf lakdi ke hain khilone
To jeetna kya hai haarna kya
Na ye zaroori
Na vo aham hai
Agar khushi hai na jeetne ki
Na haarne ka bhi koi gham hai
To khel kya hai
Main sochta hoon
Jo khelna hai
To apne dil mein yaqeen kar lon
Ye mohre sach-much ke baadshah-o-vazeer
Sach-much ke hain piyaade
Aur in kea age hai
Dushmanon ki vo fauj
Rakhti hai jo mujh ko tabaah karne ke
Saare mansoobe
Sab iraade
Magar main aisa jo maan bhi loon
To sochta hoon
Yeh khel kab hai
Ye jang hai jis ko jeetna hai
Ye jang hai jis mein sab hai jaayaz
Koi ye kehta hai jaise mujh se
Ye jang bhi hai
Ye khel bhi hai
Ye jang hai par khiladiyon ki
Ye khel hai jang ki tarah ka
Main sochta hoon
Jo khel hai
Is mein ir tarah ka usool kyon hai
Ki koi mohra rah eke jaaye
Magar jo hai baadshah
Us par kabhi koi aanch bhi na aaye
Vazeer hi ko hai bas ijaazat
Ke jis taraf bhi vo chaahe jaaye
Main sochta hoon
Jo khel hai
Is mein is tarah ka usool kyon hai
Piyaada jab apne ghar se nikle
Palat ke vaapas na aane paaye
Main sochta hoon
Agar yahoo hai usool
To phir usool kya hai
Agar yahi hai ye khel
To phir ye khel kya hai
Main in savaalon se aane kab se ulajh raha hoon
Mere mukhalif ne chaal chal di hai
Aur ab meri chaal ke intezaar mein hai
Jo khel hai
Is mein is tarah ka usool kyon hai
Piyaada jab apne ghar se nikle
Palat ke vaapas na aane paaye
Main sochta hoon
Agar yahoo hai usool
To phir usool kya hai
Agar yahi hai ye khel
To phir ye khel kya hai
Main in savaalon se aane kab se ulajh raha hoon
Mere mukhalif ne chaal chal di hai
Aur ab meri chaal ke intezaar mein hai
The English translation is below:
What Game is It?
What Game is It?
My opponent has made a move
And now
Awaits mine.
But for ages
I stare at the black and white pieces
That lie on white and black squares
And I think
What are these pieces?
And now
Awaits mine.
But for ages
I stare at the black and white pieces
That lie on white and black squares
And I think
What are these pieces?
Were I to assume
That these pieces
Are no more than wooden toys
Then what is a victory or a loss?
If in winnings there are no joys
Nor sorrows in losing
What is the game?
I think
If I must play
Then I must believe
That these pieces are indeed king and minister
Indeed these are foot soldiers
And arrayed before them
Is that enemy army
Which harbours all plans evil
All schemes sinister
To destroy me
But were I to believe this
Then is this a game any longer?
This is a war that must be won
A war in which all is fair
It is as if somebody explains:
This is a war
And a game as well
It is a war, but between players
A game between warriors
I think
If it is a game
Then why does it have a rule
That whether a foot solder stays or goes
The one who is king
Must always be protected?
That only the minster has the freedom
To move any which way?
That these pieces
Are no more than wooden toys
Then what is a victory or a loss?
If in winnings there are no joys
Nor sorrows in losing
What is the game?
I think
If I must play
Then I must believe
That these pieces are indeed king and minister
Indeed these are foot soldiers
And arrayed before them
Is that enemy army
Which harbours all plans evil
All schemes sinister
To destroy me
But were I to believe this
Then is this a game any longer?
This is a war that must be won
A war in which all is fair
It is as if somebody explains:
This is a war
And a game as well
It is a war, but between players
A game between warriors
I think
If it is a game
Then why does it have a rule
That whether a foot solder stays or goes
The one who is king
Must always be protected?
That only the minster has the freedom
To move any which way?
I think
Why does this game
Have a rule
That once a foot solder leaves home
He can never return?
I think
If this is the rule
Then what is a rule?
If this is the game
Then what is the name of the game?
I have been wrestling for ages with these questions
But my opponent has made a move
And awaits mine.
Why does this game
Have a rule
That once a foot solder leaves home
He can never return?
I think
If this is the rule
Then what is a rule?
If this is the game
Then what is the name of the game?
I have been wrestling for ages with these questions
But my opponent has made a move
And awaits mine.
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