Are they just ‘useful idiots’?

See this list of seculars and liberals. Justice Rajinder Sachar, author of the famous Sachar Committee Report on the state of Indian Muslims; Dileep Padgaonkar, one of the three interlocutors on J&K appointed by the central government; Harish Khare, the media adviser to the prime minister; Rita Manchanda, the India/Pakistan Local Partner for Women Waging Peace; Ved Bhasin, editor, Kashmir Times; Harinder Baweja, editor (investigations), Headlines Today; Gautam Navlakha and Kamal Chenoy, human rights activists, and; Praful Bidwai, well-known columnist. This is the illustrative list of popular Indian liberals who exert powerful influence over the Indian discourse — be it on Kashmir or secularism or on corruption or communalism or on Narendra Modi or Sonia Gandhi.


But this is not the list of probables for the Padma awards. This is the list of those who have been the guests of Ghulam Nabi Fai, who was arrested three days back by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the US for acting as the front man of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). The Washington Times (July 19, 2011) reported that Fai “was arrested Tuesday by FBI agents in a suspected influence-peddling scheme to funnel millions of dollars from the Pakistani government, including its military intelligence service, to US elected officials to help drive India out of the disputed Kashmir territory in South Asia”. Fai was arrested in US not for working to drive India out of Kashmir — as it is not an offence under the US law — but for the offence of funnelling ISI money to buy influence over US officials for Pakistan. Under the Indian law, the case against the Indian liberals in Fai’s list may well be one of sedition if they had known who Fai was, or if they had not, they could be well just his “useful idiots” as a former editor, R Jaganathan, wrote in his brilliant column in firstpost.com. But are they just useful idiots or more?

The 45-page affidavit by the FBI in the case has charged Fai with “conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign principal”. Media reports that the FBI swears in its affidavit that Fai, who floated the Kashmir American Council (KAC), was a front man for Pakistani interests in US in the garb of Kashmiri’s. The reports say that Fai “took dictation from his masters” in Pakistan. The media cites the FBI affidavit to say that Fai received at least $4 million — at some $500,000 to $700,000 every year — to manipulate the Kashmir debate in favour of Pakistan. And this is important. This is where the Indian liberals listed at the opening are party to advancing the designs of Fai. They had been attending the conclaves and meets organised by Fai, at the instance of ISI, to oust India from Kashmir.

The FBI seems to have worked meticulously to link Fai to his masters in Pakistan. It appears to have got the details of some 4,000 e-mail and telephone exchanges with his handlers in Pakistan. An accomplice of Fai seems to have confessed — as a confidential witness for FBI — that Fai was a henchman of ISI. According to the confidential witness, cited by the media, the ISI “created the KAC to propagandise on behalf of the government of Pakistan”. Fai could play this role unsuspectingly because he was originally from India, being born in Kashmir, with a master’s degree from Aligarh Muslim University. After becoming an ISI agent, according to reports, he began to do what Pakistan and ISI directed him to do, namely hold conferences and seminars funded by ISI for which he was sourcing the propaganda material of the ISI. According to the report, the confidential witness seems to have confessed that, “of the statements Fai makes, 80 per cent are provided by the ISI for Fai to repeat and disseminate verbatim. The other 20 per cent of the KAC’s messaging consists of Fai’s own ideas, which have been pre-approved by the ISI”. So Fai is a hundred per cent ISI mouthpiece.

Our liberals figuring in the list participated as important speakers from India in the conventions and seminars organised by Fai, now charged by FBI as an ISI agent. According to reports, Fai, assisted in his objectives by our liberals, was so effective in hurting India’s interests, that, to counter him, the Indian government specially had to appoint Wajahat Habibullah, a Kashmir cadre IAS officer who retired last year, as minister, community affairs, in its embassy in Washington. Imagine. On the one hand, the present media adviser to the prime minister and one of the three present interlocutors of the government on J&K had worked to hurt India’s interests in the way the ISI was conspiring to do, by participating in the seminars organised by Fai and funded by ISI to “drive out India from Kashmir”; and on the other, the government of India was forced to send out an IAS officer from Kashmir cadre to contain that damage. The result is that those who, through Fai, were part of the ISI design, are now part of the UPA government.

But could Fai with his mission to push Pakistan/ISI agenda “to drive India out of Kashmir” include in his efforts such important opinion-makers of India, unless he knew that their views would advance his master’s interests? Why would Fai not call an Arun Shourie? A Cho Ramaswamy? An M J Akbar? An Arnab Goswami? It is self-evident. Their views would stall, not support, the ISI. Undoubtedly, Fai knew that the views on J&K publicly held by our liberals in Fai’s guest list would further the cause of the separatists. Now, is it easy to dismiss that they were just “useful idiots”?

PS: Two of these liberals are still in high positions — one is an interlocutor on J&K appointed by the Centre and the other is the media adviser to the PM. Mr Prime Minister, this is evidence coming, not from our police, but from the FBI in the US, the country you love most! Are you listening?

The writer is a well-known commentator on political and economic issues.

E-mail: comment@gurumurthy.net

Padmanabha dasas and political class

http://expressbuzz.com/biography/Integrity-of-Padmanabha-dasas/291645.html
- S Gurumurthy
The wealth of Lord Padmanabhaswamy, kept unbelievably safe, so far counted is estimated at Rs1 lakh crore. The committee appointed by the Supreme Court has till July 2 so far opened five of the six closed chambers in the temple and inventoried the contents leaving one yet to be unsealed. Here is the brief history of the Lord’s wealth and its significance.


In 1750, King Marthanda Varma, the most powerful of the Travancore rulers, pledged that he and his descendents would serve the kingdom as servants of Lord Padmanabha (‘Padamanabha Dasa’) the Lord being the King. The British had observed the tradition and honoured the Lord with a 21-gun salute.

When the Indian states were merged, independent India appointed the Travancore royal head as the Raj Pramukh; but he preferred to be known as Padmanabha Dasa, not as Raj Pramukh.

The government had continued to honour the tradition of gun salute to the Lord till 1970 when, along with the abolition of princely titles, the honour to the Lord was withdrawn! Yet, even today Lord Padmanabha is regarded as the deity of Travancore. To cut a long story short, the Travancore royalty was the servant-trustee of the Lord. M G Gopalakrishnan, a historian of Kerala, says that Tipu Sultan, who had invaded Malabar and destroyed many temples, had conquered Thrissur in 1789 and made it his headquarters, posing a threat to Travancore.

This seems to have persuaded Dharma Raja, the then king of Travancore royalty to bury and seal the wealth of the Lord in secret chambers to keep it beyond the reach of the invader. But, in 1790, Tipu withdrew from Thrissur when the British raided Mysore, de-risking Travancore from invasion. Still Dharma Raja and his successors opted to keep the Lord’s treasure buried, safe from risk of loot.

This is how Justice C S Rajan, member of the committee to inventory the treasure, describes the Lord’s treasure which speaks for itself: “The secret cells were like a dream world, unbelievable and unexplainable. Huge stones, which a team of eight strong men had to struggle to remove, had been placed well to conceal the cells. The cells were small. They could accommodate only four-five persons. The invaluable treasure - gold, gems, stones - offered to the deity by the Travancore royalty, from time to time had been kept in teakwood boxes stacked one over the other. Whenever the kings or their friends or other kings had darshan of the Lord, they used to offer gold coins; one lakh such coins have been found. It is all temple property”.

The Justice is only saying the obvious, as does M G S Narayanan, the historian. And this is precisely what the Indian Treasure Trove Act says, under which only unclaimed wealth discovered is declared as state property. Here the Lord, a juridical person under the law, is the owner of the wealth.

What has been missed in the discourse on the Lord’s wealth hijacked by hype and excitement is that even when the Travancore royals were in danger of losing their kingdom, they never thought of touching the Lord’s wealth. When Tipu was driving down southwards, the kingdom itself was at risk. And yet, the royalty had continued to keep it buried so that it ever remained the wealth of the Lord; it did not unseal it even after the danger had diminished. This shows the unmatched height of honesty and integrity of the trustees, the royal family.

Had any one of the several successors in the royal family been less than absolutely honest, the whole or part of the Lord’s wealth would have moved from the secret chambers to their personal chambers. Nothing of that sort happened for 158 years from 1789 to 1947. In 1947, when the Indian states merged into the Indian Union, the Travancore royalty totally lost its power and wealth. And yet the wealth of the Lord hidden by Dharma Raja remained untouched.

Thanks to such high character and morals in the Travancore royalty, the wealth of the Lord remains intact. The nation should be grateful to the successive members of the Travancore royalty for maintaining such high standards of morality and trusteeship. But with the media hyping the Lord’s wealth wrongly as the treasure trove, some, whose right thinking seems to have left them, even began saying that it should be taken over by the state, and kept in exhibition!

And more. If the Padmanabhaswamy wealth was global news, the 98 kg of gold and `11.5 crore brought to account by the trustees in Satya Sai Baba’s ashram in Puttaparthi earlier had made national headlines. The trustees of the Satya Sai Trusts ensured that the gold and the cash were inventoried in the presence of respectable witnesses - former judges of courts - and deposited in banks.

Had any of them - or any one else in the ashram - been less than honest, would they have deposited the gold or the cash in bank? If they had removed any part of the cash or gold, no one would have come to notice it. In spite of gold worth over Rs 70 crore and cash of Rs 11.5 crore having been duly deposited, the media went hysterical - and some continue to make noise - in respect of a comparatively small amount Rs 35 lakh (some 2 per cent of the cash and gold deposited) seized by the police from a contractor to whom it is claimed to have been paid by devotees for constructing the samadhi of Sai Baba.

While why there should have been un-deposited gold or cash could be a genuine question for the trustees to answer, the trustees certainly deserved a word of compliment for having brought to account the gold and cash offered to Sai Baba when he was alive.

PS: It cannot end without an inevitable question. Can the political class today lay claim to the kind of honesty that the Padmanabha Dasas and the Baba trustees have shown?