goanet-digest Thursday, June 20 2002 Volume 01 : Number 4102
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In this issue:
[Goanet] BETIM CROSS RESTORATION APPEAL.
[Goanet] Re: A Skeptical View on the Padre Pio Hysteria
[Goanet] Pioneer on Time article about Vajpayee
[Goanet] MEDIA 'Time' mag controversy about Vajpayee=20
See end of digest for information on subscribing/unsusbcribing.
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Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 20:45:57 +0530
From: Goa Desc <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Goanet] BETIM CROSS RESTORATION APPEAL.
*****************************************************************
Documented by Goa Desc Documentation Service
& circulated by Goa Civic & Consumer Action Network
(GOA CAN)<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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BETIM CROSS RESTORATION APPEAL.
- --------------------------------------------------------------
The Goa Heritage Action Group, a registered NGO
has taken a decision to help restore the 16th century Cross
located at Betim, Bardez.
Ketak Nachinolkar, a graduate of the Goa College of Architecture
with a post graduate degree in conservation
from the Delhi School of Planning and Architecture
has been appointed by the Group to carry out the restoration work
of this exquisite piece of heritage.
Local residents and well-wishers of the Cross have generously donated
a seed fund to start the restoration. Additional funds are urgently needed
in order to complete the restoration work in time for the World Goa Day
Celebrations on August 18th 2002.
The Group and local community would be grateful for contributions,
however small, for the restoration of the Betim Cross.
All contributions must be made by cheque in favour of
Goa Heritage Action Group and sent to 29/30 Green Valley,
Porvorim 4035231, Bardez, Goa.
Contributions in kind (sand, material, labour, lime, etc.) would be welcome.
Cash donations may also be made directly to Ms. Ana Maria de Souza Goswami,
Life Member of the Group for amounts not exceeding Rs. 500.
Contributors may feel free to inspect the work on site by prior appointment
and book accounts will be open to inspection.
For further information, call Ms. Goswami at 417847.
HETA PANDIT
HON. SECRETARY
PRAJAL SAKHERDANDE
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEMBER
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For contact with the Goa Heritage Action Group
Email:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
- ------------------------------------------------------------------
=======================================
GOA DESC RESOURCE CENTRE
Documentation + Education + Solidarity
11 Liberty Apts., Feira Alta, Mapusa, Goa 403 507
Tel: 252660 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Working On Issues Of Development & Democracy
=======================================
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 18:42:18 +0000
From: "Joe Vaz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Goanet] Re: A Skeptical View on the Padre Pio Hysteria
Dear Readers:
I very much enjoyed the short respite; although I am not well rested, (but
not jetlagged) after my travel to places where my work takes me. So, I will
respond briefly:
In [EMAIL PROTECTED], "santoshhelekar" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>I have debated with Joe Vaz on this matter...
True, I did debate (at length) with Santosh on �Re: Of Miracles and
Beliefs....� and he had said then:
Quote:�I am frankly tired of this argument now, because I think I have
failed miserably in explaining to Mr. Vaz�� Unquote.
Well here he goes again:
>Here is what my understanding of the scientific method is.
>This is the science I know and practice on a daily basis
>in my own modest way:
>
>1. Science always tries to seek rational natural explanations for
>observed phenomena - explanations that do not violate established
>scientific principles based on objective evidence.
>
>2. When confronted with an apparently unusual and extraordinary
>observation the default scientific position is to still seek natural
>explanations perhaps involving modification of the existing
>principles.
I had extensively debated the subject on miracles, and let me say this again
�- I do not claim to know it all; I am in a continual process of learning.
For the benefit of the readers and to negate any misunderstanding on the
miracle concept, I reiterate:
A statement that a miracle occurred, usually - as in the case of many of the
biblical miracles - refers to God as causing something that is not the sort
of occurrence that one would expect to be is explainable in terms of laws of
nature, if it could be explained at all.
God's power is shown in the miracle:
o directly through His own immediate action or
o mediately through creatures as means or instruments.
In the latter case the effects must be ascribed to God, for He works in and
through the instruments. Hence God works miracles through the
instrumentality.
The miracle is essentially an appeal to knowledge. Therefore miracles can be
distinguished from purely natural occurrences. A miracle is a fact in
material creation, and falls under the observation of the senses or comes to
us through testimony. Its miraculous character is known:
- - From positive knowledge of natural forces, e.g., the law of gravity, the
law that fire burns. To say that we do not know all the laws of nature, and
therefore cannot know a miracle, is beside the question, for it would
tantamount the miracle an appeal to ignorance. One may not know all the laws
of the penal code, but one can know with certainty that in a particular
instance a person violates one definite law.
- - From our positive knowledge of the limits of natural forces. Thus, e.g.,
we may not know the strength of a man, but we do know that he cannot by
himself move a mountain. In enlarging our knowledge of natural forces, the
progress of science has curtailed their sphere and defined their limits.
Hence, as soon as we have reason to suspect that
any event, however uncommon or rare it appears, may arise from natural
causes or be conformable to the usual course of nature, we immediately lose
the conviction of it being a miracle. A miracle is a manifestation of God's
power.
- - Miracles are signs of God's Providence over mankind; hence they are of
high moral character, simple and obvious in the forces at work, in the
circumstances of their working, and in their aim and purpose.
Examples are: Red Sea parting as depicted in the movie "The Ten
Commandments" (i.e., not simply a low tide); Jesus raising the dead man
Lazarus to life (John, xi).
People living at the time of Moses or Christ knew just as well as we do --
that seas do not "normally" part, and that people are not, -- in the normal
course of nature, resurrected. What is required for a notion of the
miraculous is not some sophisticated notion of what a law of nature is, but
just a strong sense of what constitutes the normal, natural course of
events. And this is something the ancients had just as much as those living
in a scientific age have.
Place and Value of Miracles in The Christian View of the World:
Christianity teaches that God created and governs the world. This government
is His Providence. It is shown in the delicate adjustment and subordination
of the tendencies proper to material things, resulting in the marvelous
stability and harmony which prevail throughout the physical creation, and in
the moral order, which through conscience, is to guide and control the
tendencies of man's nature to a complete harmony in human life.
Man is a personal being, with intelligence and free will, capable of knowing
and serving God, and created for that purpose. To him nature is the book of
God's work revealing the Creator through the design visible in the material
order and through conscience, the voice of the moral order based in the very
constitution of his own being. Hence the relation of man to God is a
personal one. God's Providence is not confined to the revelation of Himself
through His works. He has manifested Himself in a supernatural manner
throwing a flood of light on the relations which should exist between man
and Himself.
The Bible contains this revelation, and is called the Book of God's Word. It
gives the record of God's supernatural Providence leading up to the
Redemption and the founding of the Christian Church. Here we are told that
beyond the sphere of nature there is another realm of existence -- the
supernatural, peopled by spiritual beings and departed souls. Both spheres,
the natural and the supernatural, are under the overruling Providence of
God. Thus God and man are two great facts. The relation of the soul to its
Maker is religion.
Religion is the knowledge, love, and service of God; its expression is
called worship, and the essence of worship is prayer. Thus between man and
God there is constant intercourse, and in God's Providence the appointed
means of this intercourse is prayer.
Prayer: By prayer man speaks to God in acts of faith, hope, love, and
contrition and implores His aid. In answer to prayer God acts on the soul by
His grace and, in special circumstances, by working miracles. Hence the
great fact of prayer, as the connecting link of man to God, implies a
constant interaction of God in the life of man.
Therefore in the Christian view of the world, miracles have a place and a
meaning. They arise out of the personal relation between God and man. The
conviction that the pure of heart are pleasing to God, in some mysterious
way, is worldwide; even among the heathens, pure offerings are prepared for
the sacrifice. This intimate sense of God's presence may account for the
universal tendency to refer all striking phenomena to supernatural causes.
Error and exaggeration do not change the nature of the belief founded in the
abiding conviction of the Providence of
God.
Now Christian philosophy teaches that God, in answer to prayer confers not
only spiritual favors but at times interferes with the ordinary course of
physical phenomena, so that, as a result, particular events happen otherwise
than they should. This interference takes place in miracles and special
providences.
When we kneel to pray we do not always beg God to work miracles or that our
lives shall be constant prodigies of His power. The sense of our littleness
gives a humble and reverential spirit to our prayer. We trust that God,
through His Infinite knowledge and power, will in some way best known to Him
bring about what we ask. Hence, by special providences we mean events which
happen in the course of nature and of life through the instrumentality of
natural laws.
When, therefore, we pray for rain or to avert a calamity, or to prevent the
ravages of plague, we beg not so much for miracles or signs of omnipotence:
we ask that He who holds the heavens in His hands and who searches the abyss
will listen to our petitions and, in His own good way, bring about the
answer we need.
Testimony: A miracle, like any natural event, is known either from personal
observation or from the testimony of others. In the miracle we have the fact
itself as an external occurrence and its miraculous character. The
miraculous character of the fact consists in this: that its nature and the
surrounding circumstances are of such a kind that we are forced to admit
natural forces alone could not have produced it, and the only rational
explanation is to be had in the interference of Divine agency. The
perception of its miraculous character is a rational act of the mind, and is
simply the application of the principle of causality with the methods of
induction.
The general rules governing the acceptance of testimony apply to miracles as
to other facts of history. If we have certain evidence for the fact, we are
bound to accept it. The evidence for miracles, as for historical facts in
general, depends on the knowledge and veracity of the narrators, i.e., they
who testify to the occurrence of the events must know what they tell and
tell the truth. The extraordinary nature of the miracle requires more
complete and accurate investigation. Such testimony we are not free to
reject; otherwise we must deny all history whatsoever. We have no more
rational warrant for rejecting miracles than for rejecting accounts of
stellar eclipses. Hence, they who deny miracles have concentrated their
efforts with the purpose of destroying the historical evidence for all
miracles whatsoever and especially the evidence for the miracles of the
Gospel.
Thank you for your attention and patience.
May God Bless you.
Best wishes,
Joe Vaz
_________________________________________________________________
Join the world�s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail.
http://www.hotmail.com
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 13:11:41 -0600 (MDT)
From: Frederick Noronha <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Goanet] Pioneer on Time article about Vajpayee
Pioneer
June 17, 2002
http://www.dailypioneer.com/secon3.asp?cat=\story4&d=FRONT_PAGE
This 'Time' it's really sick
By Chandan Mitra
(Mr. Mitra is the Editor of Pioneer newspaper.)
"Aap ko to maloom hoga, kya PM sach-much meetings mein so jaate hain,"
queried the Chairman of a leading public sector bank last Friday. Unable to
figure out the context of his question, I asked him what prompted it.
"Arrey, aap ne Time magazine ka article nehi padha kya," he elucidated.
[SAJA translation: "Do you know if the prime ministed really falls asleep
in meetings?" "What, didn't you read the Time magazine article?"]
I had no knowledge of it then. But within the next few hours I was shown
faxes and e-mail printouts of the relevant portions of the impugned report.
My conviction that nobody in India reads Time was dented. Even if they
don't, in this age of information, relevant portions of such publications
will definitely get accessed. Next day, a newspaper extracted the "juicy"
parts and published a brief story. Over two dozen people have asked me since
Friday what I thought of the Time report on the Prime Minister. Exasperated,
I finally read it Saturday night.
Picking up cudgels against a fellow journalist or publication is "not done"
in our profession. It is permissible to pass snide remarks in private about
a report's inaccuracy or bias, perhaps put out a counter to "put things in
perspective," but it's certainly unusual to write a rejoinder especially
when it does not involve this writer or his publication. However, as an
Indian I was outraged. I was outraged by the supercilious, patronising,
white-supremacist, flippant and crassly ill-mannered tone of the piece. I
was outraged that a magazine of such awesome reputation could actually
publish a catalogue of bazaar gossip, almost totally incorrect and
unsubstantiated. I was outraged that not a single person was quoted to
confirm even one damaging observation. I was outraged that an American
journalist and his redoubtable publication had mocked at the democratically
elected leader of a country of one billion people.
Americans resorted to similar mockery against their adversaries during the
Cold War. Leonid Brezhnev or Mao Tse-tung were often at the receiving end of
the poisoned pens of American scribes, pilloried for their alleged fetishes,
weaknesses of the flesh and physical disabilities. Since the erstwhile USSR
and China were closed societies, it was impossible to ascertain the veracity
of such crudely irreverent comments. But to write such gibberish against a
man who leads one of the most open societies in the world is not just in
pathetic taste but also indicative of a mindset that is contemptuous of
non-Western societies. Also, the turgid pieces against Communist leaders of
yesteryear were part of the American psychological war to debilitate the
enemy. Are we to conclude the Time magazine's tirade against our Prime
Minister is a post-script of that strategy?
I am not an acolyte of the Prime Minister and meet him but rarely. Still I
know him well enough over 25 years and interact sufficiently now to
categorically say that Alex Perry's article is a compilation of outright
untruths, insinuations, distortions and obnoxious assertions. It is apparent
he has never met Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee or spoken to anybody who could give
him an authoritative account of the Prime Minister's health or habits.
Condescendingly titled, "Asleep at the Wheel?" and sub-titled "As India and
Pakistan put up their nukes, is an ailing and frail Vajpayee the right man
to have his finger on the button?" the article mostly comprises figments of
a journalist's imagination. The stuff that have been put in cold print would
not have been said by congenitally irreverent scribes even after consuming
three stiff whiskies at the Press Club. The Prime Minister is accused of
forgetting names, dozing off at meetings and even looking "half dead!"
Indian TV crew are allegedly instructed to shoot him only waist up to avoid
showing his ungainly, post-knee surgery gait! Alex Perry then has not lived
in India long enough or watched Indian TV channels. While it is true that Mr
Vajpayee is an unlikely entrant in an athletic contest, it is a blatant lie
that TV cameras are ordered not to show his shuffling walk.
As if Indian TV channels would obey even if instructed! If I know their
mindset they would focus even more on the lower half of his anatomy if
directives to the contrary were given. What does Alex Perry take the Prime
Minister's advisers and Indian journalists for? Such things might be
happening in the US, but they don't happen here.
As for the sharpness of the Prime Minister's memory, anybody who has ever
interacted with him shall vouch for his incredible ability for recollection.
Just recently as we were travelling to Almaty, he came out of his cabin on
the plane to greet journalists and promptly asked me, "Ye 'Leh kar hum
Sindhu ka dil' ka matlab kya hua?" For a fraction of a second, I was stumped
but only to realise quickly that he was referring to the headline in this
newspaper on my report on the Sindhu Darshan ceremony in Leh. I explained
the headline was based on a popular film number from the 70s. He frowned to
say he had not heard the song and that's why didn't get the pun.
Arguably, Mr Vajpayee is given to long silences while framing answers in his
mind, but anybody who thinks that's because he's gone off to sleep is living
in a fool's paradise. I have observed him close his eyes at meetings, giving
the impression he's catching forty winks. Then comes his turn at the
microphone and he rebuts or endorses point after point made by previous
speakers, quoting their words with remarkable exactitude.
Alex Perry knows nothing of the Prime Minister's habits, mannerisms or
intellectual depth. He has written about Mr Vajpayee's eating habits as if
he were present inside the pantry in Race Course Road whereas he has at best
glanced upon the complex from a distance of 500 metres. While attempting an
article on the Indian Prime Minister's ailments and dietary adventurism,
should Mr Perry not have quoted people actually in the know? I have often
heard Mr Vajpayee is fond of sweets. However, I have never seen him gobble
down rasgullas or laddoos.
It is preposterous to suggest that on the return flight from Almaty he
chastised his staff for not serving him the regular ("spicy" according to
Perry) menu. First the Air-India meal was sumptuous, but not spicy by any
standards. Second, Mr Vajpayee's diet is strictly monitored by his family,
doctors and dieticians. He is often served a special menu even in state
banquets. Where Mr Perry got the "information" about the PM's diet is a
subject of abiding mystery.
All this leads to just one conclusion: There was a motive in running the
article. And that motive can only be to humiliate India and get us to
kow-tow to American diktats in the confrontation with Pakistan. As it is,
the West is laughably paranoid about the (non-existent) prospect of a
nuclear war in the sub-continent. It, therefore, bolsters their argument if
it is proved that a sick man's fingers may trigger a nuclear conflict. The
aim is to lower India's confidence level and deflect the Government into
trying to salvage the Prime Minister's image rather than address the more
important military and diplomatic tasks at hand.
Fortunately for India, Mr Vajpayee is far from sick. If anybody is sick it
is the tribe of scribes that trots out such disgusting pieces of writing in
the name of "investigative journalism."
I have often said at various seminars that the Indian media is much more
evolved than the West's. Alex Perry has reconfirmed my belief. No Indian
journalist would think of penning a piece as condescending and blasphemous
about anybody, leave alone the Prime Minister of a global giant. When he was
in office, did anybody write about Ronald Reagan's Alzheimer's Disease, for
instance? First, our tehzeeb (manners, culture) prevents us from doing so.
Second, we are not given to concocting stories with the kind of merry
disdain for truth that scribes like Mr Perry and his dollar-hungry Indian
"informants" have displayed.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 13:12:21 -0600 (MDT)
From: Frederick Noronha <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Goanet] MEDIA 'Time' mag controversy about Vajpayee=20
Time (Asia edition)
June 17, 2002
http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501020617-260747,00.=
html
Asleep at The Wheel?
As India and neighbor Pakistan put up their nukes, is an ailing and frail
Vajpayee the right man to have his finger on the button?
BY ALEX PERRY NEW DELHI
- - With reporting by Meenakshi Ganguly and Sankarshan Thakur/New Delhi
He drank heavily in his prime and still enjoys a nightly whiskey or two at
74. India's leader takes painkillers for his knees (which were replaced
due to arthritis) and has trouble with his bladder, liver and his one
remaining kidney. A taste for fried food and fatty sweets plays havoc with
his cholesterol. He takes a three-hour snooze every afternoon on doctor's
orders and is given to interminable silences, indecipherable ramblings
and, not infrequently, falling asleep in meetings.
Atal Behari Vajpayee, then, would be an unusual candidate to control a
nuclear arsenal. But for four years the Indian Prime Minister's
grandfatherly hands have held the subcontinent back from tumbling into
war. Despite the fact that he heads the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP), a constituency stuffed with extremists, Vajpayee has ambitiously
pursued peace with neighbor and rival Pakistan, even traveling to the
Pakistani cultural capital of Lahore in 1999, vainly hoping to bury the
bloody animus of the past and start an era of good feelings.
With 1 million soldiers facing each other at high alert on the
India-Pakistan border, those days seem long ago. At the same dangerous
time, Vajpayee's stewardship is looking less and less comforting. The
frail bachelor seems shaky and lost, less an aging sage than an ordinary
old man. He forgets names, even of longtime colleague and current Foreign
Minister Jaswant Singh, and during several recent meetings he appeared
confused and inattentive. After a meeting with a Western Foreign Minister,
his appearance was described by one attending diplomat as "half dead." At
a rare press conference last month in Srinagar, the Prime Minister
tottered to the podium=97Indian TV crews are asked to film him from the
waist up to avoid showing his shuffling gait=97to find he had trouble
understanding questions, repeatedly relying on whispered prompts from Home
Minister Lal Krishna Advani. Even then Vajpayee stumbled over his replies.
"He is very alert when he is functional," says one BJP worker. "But there
are very few hours like that." Adds one Western diplomat: "We have a lot
of conversations about his health. Some of his mannerisms come down to his
personal style. But some of it is definitely spacey stuff."
While no one questions that key decisions on national security and foreign
policy are still made by Vajpayee, the focus is now turning to the two men
behind the throne: Vajpayee's low-key National Security Adviser Brajesh
Mishra, and Vajpayee's hard-line BJP colleague of 50 years, 72-year-old
Advani. The consensus among observers and diplomats is that the hawkish
Advani is preparing to succeed Vajpayee at the next national elections due
by late 2004. "There is no doubt he is the Prime Minister in waiting,"
remarks a diplomat.
In the meantime, Vajpayee has undergone a sudden conversion from
peacemaker to warmonger=97primarily in response to political pressures. Thi=
s
year's standoff on the border shows the dovish Prime Minister has accepted
the argument that war=97or the threat of it=97works. In comments that set o=
ff
alarm bells around the world, Vajpayee last month spoke twice of an
impending "decisive battle" against India's "enemy." Although he has
repeatedly said that he does not want war, the Prime Minister has sound
strategic reasons for ratcheting up the rhetoric. Since Sept. 11, he has
found the international community more sympathetic to the idea of India
waging its own war on terror against jihadis in the contended state of
Jammu and Kashmir, where many of them have been inserted by Pakistan. And
it plays well for India to keep the pot boiling: New Delhi can claim a
victim's solidarity with the U.S., avoid addressing the awkward issue of
its heavy-handed rule in Muslim-dominated Kashmir=97and just possibly get
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to actually shut down the jihadi
industry on his territory, ending what India calls a "proxy war."
Last week, Musharraf told visiting U.S Deputy Secretary of State Richard
Armitage that he was going to put a permanent end to terrorist incursions
into India. Vajpayee's government promised in turn some de-escalation
measures, though a withdrawal of troops from the border has been ruled
out. The big risk, however, is that no matter what Musharraf does, there
are enough jihadis already in Kashmir to keep hammering India with suicide
bombs and death squads. Four people were killed by terrorists Friday night
in Kashmir, even as heavy shelling continued at the frontier and an
unmanned Indian spy plane was shot down by the Pakistani air force. Any
small spark can still push Vajpayee to deploy his soldiers in some
punitive counterattack on Pakistan, which can lead to full-scale war.
Meanwhile, Vajpayee's colleagues carp that he's still not being hawkish
enough. "Any Prime Minister that takes action against Pakistan will sweep
the elections, but Vajpayee is reluctant and that will definitely damage
the BJP," complains BJP hard-liner B.P. Singhal. "As the Prime Minister,
for him, national interest is above party interest."
Tellingly, Vajpayee was forced to give up his moderate stance and attend
to his party in response to a domestic disaster, not an international
crisis. On Feb. 27, a group of Muslims firebombed a train in the western
state of Gujarat murdering 58 Hindus. The reprisals against Muslims in
Gujarat were fierce, unpoliced, and went on for weeks, killing some 2,000
according to human rights groups. (The official death toll, widely
disbelieved, is half this.) On April 4, Vajpayee reacted with revulsion,
urging Hindu rioters to rediscover "a sense of unity and brotherhood."
Asked the published poet: "Burning alive men, women and children? Are we
human or not? Or has a demon taken over us?" His office briefed newspapers
on the likely candidates to replace Gujarat state leader Narendra Modi, a
member of the BJP who was accused of complicity in the violence, or at
least, ineptness in containing it. But scarcely a week later, on April 12,
Vajpayee changed his tune. Nothing more was said about sacking Modi. And
speaking to an audience in Goa, Vajpayee shocked the country by declaring:
"These days militancy in the name of Islam leaves no room for tolerance.
Wherever such Muslims live, they tend not to live in coexistence ... they
want to spread their faith by resorting to terror and threats."
In the subcontinental context, that kind of statement is a license for the
killings to continue. According to diplomatic sources, the burden of the
crisis made Vajpayee unwell. Adds Vinod Mehta, editor-in-chief of the
Indian weekly Outlook magazine, Advani and his supporters used the illness
to gather the party's hard-line core and read him the riot act. "The party
basically gave him no room to maneuver," says Mehta. "He knew he could
have lost his job and he had neither the spirit nor the physical strength
to fight back. So he just gave up his moderate stance and fell in line.
Now he's just a party mascot, a puppet of the hard-liners."
With an enfeebled Vajpayee at the helm, the prospect of war with Pakistan
becomes more real. "Advani would really like to finish this proxy war, and
perhaps do a bit more," says one diplomat. India has none of the checks
and balances designed during the cold war to prevent a nuclear launch in
anger. (Although India's military is comfortingly professional,
nonpolitical and obedient to civilian control. The country's nukes are
controlled by government scientists, and deployment orders come from the
Prime Minister's office alone.) For his part, Advani denies any undue
influence, or even the tag of "hawk"=97although, characteristically, he
describes communal violence under the BJP as "minimal," even after the
shame of Gujarat. But asked about the possibility of attacking across the
Line of Control in Kashmir, Advani answers that in his view India is
already facing an "undeclared war" from the militants. His list of
conditions that Musharraf must meet before peace talks can begin is
lengthy. "As long as this undeclared war, this training, arming, financing
of jihadis, and this infiltration and terrorism and sabotage continues,"
he says, "then any dialogue will be meaningless." And he hints that the
international community has given tacit approval for action. "One major
change in the last 10 days has been that the U.S., Britain and other
coalition members have said publicly and forcefully that Pakistan should
stop cross-border terrorism," he says. "Our Prime Minister took really
radical initiatives in the past. There's no question of that now"=97in othe=
r
words, of actively looking for peace. An Indian army source adds that
unless India detects that promised shift in militant activity and
capability in the next five weeks, the military expects an order to
attack.
The body on the other end of the seesaw is Mishra, a 70-year-old career
civil servant and diplomat, who functions as the equivalent of a White
House chief of staff. The fact that Mishra has survived countless calls
for his removal=97he's accused of wielding influence beyond his position=97=
is
testament to his pivotal role, diplomats say. Mishra is considered to be
the brains behind the peace overtures of the past. His influence with
Vajpayee these days waxes when the two men get away from the capital and
the rest of the BJP. At a regional security conference in the Kazakh
capital of Almaty last week, the Prime Minister made a rare and unexpected
conciliatory gesture when he proposed joint Indian-Pakistani patrols along
the Line of Control to ensure an end to infiltration. All week Mishra was
briefing India's national newspapers that the government had decided to
tone down the rhetoric. And significantly, when Vajpayee returned to Delhi
on Wednesday night, Mishra stayed behind for further talks. But, warns
Outlook editor Mehta, Mishra is just an appointed government servant,
however close he is to the boss. "Mishra's influence is directly
proportional to Vajpayee's position. He has no party base. When Vajpayee
goes down, Mishra goes with him."
Observers say that the BJP is hoping to use Vajpayee through the next
general elections, but no further. The party currently rules in a
coalition, with Vajpayee as the glue that holds it together. If it manages
to win an absolute majority, it won't need him any longer. The Prime
Minister has largely accepted this gradual decline. His great ambition on
gaining office was to do for India-Pakistan relations what Nixon did for
China and the U.S.: only a right-winger, went the argument, could take the
country into a peace deal with the archenemy. And this Vajpayee wanted to
do, to secure a place in the history books. Friends say this ambition is
now dead. Much of the Prime Minister's energy is now devoted to the
business of weight rather than weighty affairs of state. His staff coaxes
the reluctant old man onto a treadmill for 10 minutes every day and
encourages him to take short walks. His "family"=97longtime companion
Rajkumari Kaul, who suffered a heart attack in March, and her daughter
Namita=97ensures he is served only boiled vegetables and rice. But Vajpayee
still insists on an evening drink or two. In the family cottage in the
Himalayan foothills, says an aide, nothing can keep him away from
deep-fried trout. "He promises to stick to his diet with doubled rigidity
once he leaves," says an aide, "but the trout he must have." On a long
flight abroad, Vajpayee compared his menu with other members of the
government party. "He was terribly upset when he discovered he had been
singled out for special treatment," says the aide, "and tried to browbeat
the in-flight staff into serving him the general meal, which was spicier."
Meanwhile, tension seems set to continue between India and Pakistan. But
as Vajpayee's ability to steer a moderate course diminishes, he's spending
the twilight of his political life where he wants to be=97out to lunch.
- - With reporting by Meenakshi Ganguly and Sankarshan Thakur/New Delhi
------------------------------
End of goanet-digest V1 #4102
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