FEATURE

Do we owe anything for the country!
In the world that we live, in this 21st century, John F Kennedy’s oft quoted sentence, surely shall sound like bit of a cliché. ‘Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country’ must have been heard over and over again, ever since he said it, some 50 years ago. Yes, it did inspire lots of people, the world over, in its prestine appeal. In the globalised consumeristic world, it has stopped being attractive to the ears and has lost its original lustre over a period of time.
Ever since the United States of America held out its promise of good life, even before India became politically independent from the British colonialists, there have been many Indians, brilliant and not so brilliant who migrated. They all went in search of better tomorrows. And it is easier to assume that they all found their El Dorado. Having found the going smooth, most Indians kept going. Most stayed back for generations. Some came back to settle down with their fortune, to the land where they truly belonged. But some did come back to serve. Some of the brilliant ones even had a pot shot at Nobel, the ultimate in recognition. Of the six Nobel winners, the first one, CV Raman, did not migrate. Tagore never really went abroad, except to receive the Nobel. Other 4 gentlemen remained India born Non Resident Indians. Now comes the latest addition Venkatraman Ramakrishnan who jointly with other two has made it to the Nobel in Chemistry. Having left India in 1971, has remained abroad since then. That is 38years. Since 1971, he has grown in career and stature. Currently he is a senior scientist and group leader at the MRC Lab of Molecular Biology at Cambridge in the UK. That is an exalted position.
On learning that an Indian got the Nobel prize, made millions of Indians very happy. But some of them went overboard . They clogged his e-mail box with all kinds of congratulatory and other messages. He wasn’t too happy about it. Recently he was communicating with PTI on e-mail.
On a report that he has been short listed by the Government of India for the position of Director of Centre for cellular and molecular biology, he was, reportedly, very categorical, that if such an offer is ever made to him, then "I would refuse immediately".
This gentleman, a 57 year old brilliant scientist, born in India, lived and made use of his motherland and its resources to reach his B.Sc qualification did not waste a moment, when crunch came, to say an emphatic ‘NO’ to an honourable position of recognition from his own country. Yes, India certainly need people of the caliber of Venkatraman Ramakrishnan to help the country do better. This country has helped him to grow educationally and in some way, years he spent in India were the stepping stones leading to the Nobel. Doesn’t he owe anything to this country? Now that the west has recognized him, should he forget his role towards his motherland? Having reached the pinnacle of success doesn’t he feel beholden to his country of birth? If he really turns down a respectable offer from the Indian government, it will be a sad day for all Indians, who feel proud of being Indian. Writing on the latest Indian Nobel winner. 'He is taller than the prize' said S. Gurumurthi,but he does not want to serve his Swadesh. And S. Gurumurthy is a Swadeshi buff!
I & C Feature

No Panic: Peace Prevails in Kashmir
Listening to or reading the alarming reportage over the past few weeks, you would imagine the once happy Kashmir Valley is on fire, almost. Yet having returned from the place after spending eleven days in the city and up in the northern and Southern parts of the valley I am afraid that the reportage is completely off the mark. Not that everything is hunky dory in the valley, troubled by over two decades of insurgency, most of it sponsored from across the border or the Line of Control, if you will.
Yes, there are problems, any number of them, but in my travels and during my talks with many locals, things don’t seem to be very bad either. Forget the latest call for a hartal given by the arch separatist Ali Shah Geelani from his confined abode. The shops may have remained closed but life for the rest appeared to be virtually normal. I drove that afternoon from Srinagar to the Pahalagam resort, some 62 miles away, nowhere did I see any kind of panic, not even slogan shouting. And Geelani’s reason for giving the call was as ridiculous as its consequences: he was upset over Dr. Manmohan Singh’s appraisal that the separatists, like the two Hurriyats, had been done in by people’s verdict during the assembly and parliamentary elections held in the State recently.
And even the Hurriyet, not even the desperate (for power) People’s Democratic Party, have suggested that the elections were not fair. Of course, more than half the problem there lies with the media, the electronic (national as well as the State-oriented) and the local print, which appear to be hell bent on keeping stoking the fire. I am not talking of the Shopians or Baramullas but of the smallest of incidents which are blown out of proportion.
A shop-keeper on Residency Road tells me that local TV channels are in the habit of gathering some 20 odd people usually in the open space outside the city’s Press enclave, urging them to "demonstrate" against any eyecatching issue, banners et al provided. Some of this is religiously passed on to national TV channels and quite often to Pakistani channels as well. I have in my time during the last half century and more of my journalistic career nerver overplayed a story but only when the basic facts were there, the ingredients, which put together, made a sensible reading.
You also have the State Assembly which was in session the days I was there and it does provide for much merriment with the PDP’s Mehbooda Mufti either shrieking or, or as she did very recently, throwing papers at the Speaker or yanking out the mike from his desk. You can tell she is playing to the gallery and the attendant cameras.
I would attribute that kind of behaviour to frustration over loss of power. Why would she walk out of the Assembly at the first drop of her head-scarf whenever the Chief Minister Omar Abdullah or any of his colleagues rise to counter an allegation or simply to make a statement. I did see the Chief Minister in action one day when he spoke with vigour and conviction, rebutting PDP’s allegations against the presence of Central forces in the State.
As the house looked on he told Mehbooba and her colleagues that it was her party that had invoked the provisions of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act to the State. Rather tellingly he added "I have gone through all records and did not find even a letter or any reference that your "Sarparst" (guardian), Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, has ever written about any of these matters to the Prime Minister…then somewhat charmingly he chided: "You may look, by your statements, to be anti-national but I do not consider you or your actions anti-national in any manner, the record (when the Muftis were in power) bears testimony to the same". It is the kind of cat-and-mouse which the Chief Minister, grandson of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, is playing with the pretenders, the Muftis. And that is one part of the story.
The other part relates to the sense of uncertainty that seems to have gripped most valley Muslims. The rise and rise of the Taliban in Pakistan and Islamabad’s inability to curb them even now, when it claims to have thrown the Taliban out of Swat region, is something that scares ordinary Muslims who may once have harboured goodwill for Pakistan. Two decades of militancy in the state have left them cold.
They certainly would not like to see, a Taliban face in the valley, perhaps more so than they would like to see Indian security forces or the local police entering into their villages and urban homes.
The disarray in Pakistan has indeed made Pakistan the least attractive option for the average Kashmiri. He would rather wish that the governments of India and Pakistan sat across the table at the earliest to sort out their differences and give Kashmiri Muslims an open breathing space. Even Azadi appears to be losing some of its sheen although many would be willing to settle for internal autonomy allowing, among other things, easy accessibility to Kashmiris living on either side of the border. The hardliners among this section of opinion would like autonomy to be complete except in the matter of foreign relations where both India (for Jammu and Kashmir) and Pakistan (for Pakistan-occupied Kashmir) would come in.
If this is at all possible in a situation when internally generated funds are hard to come by and seems of little concern to this section of opinion. For some reason some separatist Kashmiris see the recent decision by Pakistan to allow Gilgit and Baltistan to have elected assemblies as a preparatory step by that country to prepare for the self-governing zones of former President Gen. Musharraf’s dream.
My fear is that a freely elected Gilgit assembly might ask for the return of vast areas of the district ceded by Pakistan to China, something that will never happen. Minus the hartals which the separatists and the PDP resort to seems to more like playing a one-day cricket match. What I was happy to observe two and a half years after my last visit, is that the valley virtually appears to be at peace with itself. Even the hartal calls appear to have become a routine although they do interfere with the functioning of schools and colleges.
M. L. KOTRU