Views On News 07 November 2016

VIEWSONNEWSNOVEMBER 7, 2016 `50
www.viewsonnewsonline.com
An election that has divided
the US like never before
Pinjra Tod movement to break
hostel entry restrictions
FILM REVIEW
Mirzya:
Gripping plot,
haunting music,
stunning
visuals
INTERVIEW
Baloch
leader
Naela
Quadri
Women Power Race to White House
EDITORS’ PICK
Pitfalls of
doubting the
army and its
surgical strike
ThePoet
andthePrize
Cultural icon Bob Dylan gives the Swedish
Academy the silent treatment, then comes
round to humbly acknowledging his Nobel Prize

WHEN we managed to get Baluchistan freedom
fighter Naela Quadri Baloch for an exclusive inter-
view with APN at our Noida studio, I had the
opportunity to ask her some hard questions on the
status of her movement vis-à-vis the diplomatic
concerns of India, Iran, China and Pakistan.
Also, the apparent rift between the movement’s
various leaders.
Quadri was gracious with her responses and
shared some alarming facts from Pakistan’s
largest province covering 44 percent of the coun-
try: “The nuclear tests that China covertly con-
ducted on behalf of Pakistan were followed by the
spread of cancer in
the region. For six
years, it did not rain.
Ninety percent of
cattle and wildlife di-
ed. There were stra-
nge diseases that
suddenly surfaced.”
She also pointed out
that chemicals got
mixed with the sur-
face water, leading to
the deaths of those
who consumed it.
How does a state
end up killing its citi-
zens? Balochistan
has been a shocking
story of human
rights violations for
many years now. Thousands routinely disappear
in this region. Mutilated bodies turn up with organs
missing. Between 2003 and 2012 alone, there
were over 8,000 such disappearances and the
Supreme Court of Pakistan is currently hearing
many of these cases. Activists like Sabeen Mah-
mud and several others have been shot in broad
daylight. Struggling with poverty and years of neg-
lect, the Balochs are not finding it easy to put up a
strong fight against the combined might of the ISI
and the Pakistani Army.
But if such is the cost, why is it that the Balochs
still want freedom from Pakistan? For that, we must
revisit history to find an answer.
The Baloch movement spans not only
Balochistan in Pakistan, but also the Sistan and
Baluchestan province of Iran, which has the
Chabahar port and the Helmand province of
Afghanistan. Before Independence, only the region
of Balochistan which is near the Afghan border
(Durand Line) was under direct control of the
British Raj. It was called the Chief Commissioner’s
Province of Balochistan and after Independence, it
became a part of Pakistan. But the remaining four
princely states of Makran, Kharan, Las Bela and
the Kalat were in control of the Khan of Kalat. On
August 11, 1947, the government in India and Pak-
istan had acknowledged Balochistan as an inde-
pendent state but Pakistan later signed a standstill
agreement with the Khanate. In March 1948, most
ironically, All India Radio inadvertently broadcast
an unconfirmed news item saying that Balochistan
had decided to declare itself a sovereign state,
From Baloch with Love
EDITOR’SNOTE
4 VIEWS ON NEWS November 7, 2016

prompting military action by MA Jinnah’s govern-
ment. It led to a relatively painless capitulation on
the part of the nervous Khan who was caught off
guard by the sudden turn of events. It was an ac-
cession under the shadow of the gun. But succes-
sive years of neglect, economic inequality and
inequitable distribution of royalties earned from the
natural resources of Balochistan stoked the insur-
gency. Besides, there were scores of human rights
violations, rising resentment and decreased auton-
omy to the region and later military rule and dis-
missal of the provincial government added to the
anger. Then there was also the building of Gwadar
port that triggered large-scale migration into the
area, depriving locals of jobs and livelihoods. Im-
portantly, as Quadri points out, Pakistan is, per-
haps, a non-natural entity—as, starting with the
Balochs, everyone, including the Sindhis, Gilgits,
Pakhtuns and Saraikis, wants to secede. Evidently,
loyalty to one’s soil runs deeper than divisive,
communal passions.
India and Balochistan are culturally united by
Sufism which, too, is marked by the saffron color
and the pilgrimage of the desert goddess Hinglaj
or Hingula Devi, syncretically referred to as Nani
ki Haj, but originally one of the 51 sacred peethas
or resting places of Sati as Shakti. Prime Minister
Narendra Modi has extended a hand of friendship
to the people of this region and has rightly brought
the world’s attention to their plight. It is a bold step;
post-Manmohan Singh’s 2009 Sharm el-Sheikh
blunder, and one that has righted many wrongs.
5VIEWS ON NEWS November 7, 2016
WHERE ANGELS FEAR
TOTREAD
Balochistan has been
a shocking story of
human rights
violations—thousands
routinely disappear,
later mutilated bodies
turn up with
organs missing

C O N
LEAD
SOCIETY
Unchain my Heart
10
The newest edition of Pinjratod was both a call for freedom of movement from
female college-goers and a sharp rebuke to misogynist mores
Rolling Stone Gathers Moss
After ostensibly spurning the Nobel, iconic singer Bob Dylan succumbed to
the lure of the Prize and called up the Academy to acknowledge the award
14
Not a Zero Sum Game
A seminar on gender empowerment points out that the sexes are not polar op-
posites and rivals but balance and complement each other
18
Editor Rajshri Rai
Senior Managing Editor Dilip Bobb
Managing Editor Ramesh Menon
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T E N T S
R E G U L A R S
Edit..................................................4
Quotes ............................................8
Webcrawler ...................................41
Breaking News..............................48
Design Review ..............................52
Vonderful English..........................54 Cover design: Anthony Lawrence
GLOBAL TRENDS
22 32
42
Immortal Love
Story
What makes Mirzya special is its stun-
ning cinematography, haunting music
and an excellent screenplay by Gulzar
MEDIA MONITORING
Not trusting the Indian Armed Forces on
the surgical strikes is without good cause
and it makes us look weak before the world
Missing the
Woods
EDITORS’ PICK
“Hero of the
Oppressed”
VIEWS ON NEWS November 7, 2016 7
MEDIA MONITORING
40
The news channel was adjudged
No. 1 among all regional channels in
six states in the latest BARC report
APN onTop
24
Three years ago, the Republican-led House
was close to resolving this vexed issue. An
inside story of what went wrong
Immigration
Imbroglio
GLOBAL TRENDS There are voices of praise for Modi’s
Pak policy from across the border.
Naela Quadri Baloch is one of them
34Trump’s
Grievance Politics
His“Let’s Make America Great Again”
slogan is specious but his special brand
of supremacism is here to stay
COLUMN
31
Jeb Bush, former Florida Governor, will not
be voting for either Republican Donald
Trump or Democrat Hilary Clinton
APowerful
Statement

“As a man who has spent decades championing
women's healthcare and environmental
protection, I was distressed to learn of Pan Bahar's
unauthorized and deceptive use of
my image to endorse their range of pan
masala products."
—Actor Pierce Brosnan, on the Pan bahar ad which
features him prominently, speaking to People magazine
U O T E S
Suhasini Haidar,
journalist
SurrenderoftheState:MNS"allows"
filmreleaseafterproducers
"accept"demands.Mandatestheypay
5croresinfinesforcastingPakistanis
Barkha Duttt, journalist
DearMrThackeray,didyoujustfixthe
priceofasoldier'shonourorizzatat5
crores?Dontyouseethisthuggery
devaluestheUniform?
Shekhar Gupta,
journalist
Historybeingmade,sacrilegiousone.
Extortioninthename&"onbehalf
of"ourArmy&patriotism.Conceding
itisconstitutionalbreakdown
Rajdeep Sardesai,
journalist
Whyshould@karanjoharhaveto
issueanapologeticvideotosavehis
filmwhenhedidnothingwrong?An-
othertriumphforthemob.
Prashant Bhushan,
lawyer-activist
Dear@SushmaSwaraj,Whyismypass-
portrenewalheldupformonths?Does
GOIregardmeasbiggercriminalthan
Mallya?BecauseIopposeModi?
Twinkle Khanna, actor
Thesedaysby40ucouldbeonthe
waytoyour2ndmarriagesowhat's
thepointoffasting-don'tneedthe
mentolastthatlonganymore:)
Kailash Satyarthi,
Nobel laureate
Whateverweinvestinourdaughters
today,tomorrowmotherswillreturn
amilliontimestotheworld.
Pooja Bhatt, actor
Itisneithernationalismnorblack-
mail.Itisschoolyardbullyingatits
best&worst
“Donald wanted me drug tested
before last night’s debate. And look,
I am so flattered that Donald
thought I used some sort of
performance enhancer. Now, actu-
ally I did. It’s called preparation.”
—Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton, in the
final presidential debate
“I would like to clarify that the reason why I re-
mained silent is because of the deep sense of hurt
and the deep sense of pain that I felt because a few
people actually felt that I am anti-national….I have
always felt that the best way to express your pa-
triotism is to spread love and that's all I have
ever tried to do through my work and cinema..”
—Karan Johar, on why he remained silent
regarding Pakistani actors in his film
“One of the things I noticed
tonight—and I’ve known Hillary
a long time—that this is the first
time ever, ever, that Hillary is
sitting down and speaking to
major corporate leaders and not
getting paid for it.”
—Republican Donald Trump, in the
final presidential debate

Lead
URNS out, he is not so
radical, after all. For, after
keeping the chattering
classes holding their col-
lective breath over his ap-
parent refusal to
acknowledge his Nobel Prize for Literature,
Tambourine Man Bob Dylan on October 29 fi-
nally put an end to his by-now-seemingly-un-
breakable silence to declare that he had been
rendered “speechless” by the honor and that it
was indeed “amazing, incredible. Whoever
dreams about something like that?”
The news, in the form of a press release from
the Swedish Academy, comes a little over a fort-
night after it made the announcement of the
award on October 13 and then, after many failed
attempts, stated it had officially “given up on try-
ing to contact” the singer. “It’s impolite and ar-
rogant,” Academy member Swedish writer Per
Wastberg had said, in bites aired on SVT public
Like a
Rolling
StoneCultural icon Bob Dylan gives the
Academy the silent treatment, then comes
round to quite humbly acknowledging
his Nobel Prize for Literature award
BY SUCHETA DASGUPTA
T
RING THEM BELLS
Bob Dylan performs at
Wiltern Theatre in
Los Angeles, US, in 2004

television. A week later, a reference to
the prize was inexplicably removed from
Dylan's website, raising the question of
why it was put there in the first place
(well, now we have an idea). Rather pre-
sciently, the academy’s permanent sec-
retary, Sara Danius, had told state radio
SR, “I am not at all worried. I think he
will show up.”
Well, the 75-year-old, who is cur-
rently on a US tour and who called up
the Academy last week to accept the
honor, will apparently grace the Nobel
awards ceremony as well, slated for the
second week of December. To a query
by a reporter from The (UK) Telegraph,
his reply was: “Absolutely. If it’s at all
possible.” A publicity gimmick; and then
capitulation? How else might one ex-
plain Dylan’s unusual flip-flop? Indeed, to a mi-
nority of news watchers, the entire drama
evoked a certain déjà vu—of things getting as
predictable as they can.
TRAPPED BY HIS IMAGE?
The majority of media consumers had, however,
fallen for Dylan’s Nobel tantrum hook, line and
sinker. Reams were written on its meaning and
import and the internet got flooded with articles
reporting the reactions of the chatterati to his
prize as well as every step of the saga. There was
good reason behind this kerfuffle.
For one, Dylan is also a Pulitzer Prize winner
from 2008, and this made him the only person
other than the great GBS [George Bernard
Shaw] to have both awards to his name. Second,
his surprise choice by the Academy sparked off
a vigorous debate on whether the lyrics of his
music can be termed literature—what is high art
and what isn’t—hastily written articles in leading
publications weighed in, proclaiming that the
last time a songwriter got this prize was in 1913
when Rabindranath Tagore was pronounced
winner only to be followed by others citing doc-
uments that it had been conferred on the Bard
not only for his single book of song-poems, Gi-
tanjali, as is widely believed, but for his life’s
work. That brought the 1.25 billion-strong pop-
ulation of Indians aboard; many have been ex-
posed to cultural expressions solely in their
mother tongue and had not really heard the Jew-
ish singer, still others are too young to feel
strongly enough about the 1960s counterculture
movement which birthed the folk rock icon, but
the Tagore reference got everyone’s attention.
But Dylan, nee Robert Allen Zimmerman,
isn’t just the man who pioneered the new sound
of folk rock in the summer of 1965 in the heady
surrounds of the Newport Jazz Festival. Along
with his one-time girlfriend, Joan Baez, Pete
Seeger and The Staple Singers, he is also one of
the leading lights of the civil rights movement of
that era—the Black Power movement, the anti-
Vietnam War protests and the protests of 1968—
his work showcased the power of song to create
change. The influence of Dylan as a left-wing
icon spread so far and wide that the Indian
PIONEERS OF FOLK-ROCK
A young Dylan with
Joan Baez

People’s Theatre Association translated and tran-
screated his songs and that’s how many older In-
dians first heard the tunes of the American
troubadour. Indeed, Indian folk musicians, wan-
dering minstrels from the Bauls to the Mangani-
yars, have also paid tribute to him in varied
languages and singing styles. For generations of
activists, his songs, with their powerful poetry
and message of social justice—Knocking on
Heaven’s Door, It Ain’t Me Babe, The Times They
Are A-Changin’, Blowin’ in the Wind, Everybody
Must Get Stoned and later, George Jackson, Hur-
ricane and Masters of War—became anthems of
that era and though a critic once famously com-
pared the singer’s debut to the yelps of a fox
trapped in an electric fence, no sound could
send heartbeats racing faster than those electric
riffs and that particularly familiar nasal drawl.
Yet, with time and the arrival of approbation
and much more, it was the same Dylan who
found himself missing his muse and losing his
edge and getting co-opted into the system. He
began avoiding pointed questions on his politics
in his interviews (“Oh, I think of myself more as
a song and dance man, y’know?”), appeared in
ad jingles, getting handsomely remunerated in
return, and in the winter of 1978, gave up the
faith, so to say, and became a Born Again Chris-
tian. Still, the rave reviews continued, and so did
the adulation—despite the mellowing and the
apparent backtracking on specific issues—and
that partly stemmed from the enduring power
of his anti-establishment image which has per-
sisted to this very day. All of which begs the
question—did Dylan distance himself from the
award to keep this image intact? Then slowly get
overwhelmed by his own human desire?
For, to accept the Nobel would have meant
becoming a part of classicism—the very
idea that his art sought to demolish and
rebel against—and officialdom, and western
capitalism. As journalist-novelist and
political commentator Will Self rightly pointed
out, “It cheapens Dylan to be associated at all
with a prize founded on an explosives and arma-
ments fortune.”
AN OFFER YOU CAN’T REFUSE
Of course, you can’t officially refuse a Nobel; you
can decline the prize, but the committee cannot
by rule revoke it and will still list you as the win-
ner. The only two persons known to have volun-
tarily refused the 115-year-old award on a
question of principle are philosopher Jean-Paul
Sartre in 1964 and Vietnamese politician Le Duc
Tho who was conferred the award in 1973
jointly with Henry Kissinger. Those who were
forced to decline the award include chemists
Richard Kuhn (1938) and Adolf Butenandt
(1939), and scientist Gerhard Domagk (also
1939), all by the Nazi regime, and writer Boris
Pasternak (1958), by the Soviet regime which
threatened to exile him if he left for Stockholm
to receive the award.
“I have always declined
official honors...
If I sign myself
Jean-Paul Sartre it is
not the same thing as if
I sign myself Jean-Paul
Sartre, Nobel Prize
winner.”
—Philosopher
Jean-Paul Sartre
“The Saigon administra-
tion, aided and
encouraged by the US,
continues its acts of war.
In these circumstances
it is impossible for me to
accept the 1973 Nobel
Prize for Peace.”
—Vietnamese politician
Le Duc Tho
Lead

“I have always declined offi-
cial honors,” wrote Sartre in his
refusal letter to the Nobel com-
mittee. “This attitude is based
on my conception of the
writer’s enterprise. If I sign
myself Jean-Paul Sartre it is not
the same thing as if I sign my-
self Jean-Paul Sartre, Nobel
Prizewinner.”
Apart from this individual-
istic and creative reason, Sartre
also took a political stand. “I
know that the Nobel Prize in it-
self is not a literary prize of the
Western bloc, but it is what is
made of it, and events may
occur which are outside the
province of the members of the
Swedish Academy. This is why,
in the present situation, the Nobel Prize
stands objectively as a distinction reserved for
the writers of the West or the rebels of the East,”
he wrote.
And what were Le Duc Tho’s reasons to turn
it down? He writes: “Since the signing of the
Paris agreement, the United States and the
Saigon administration continue in grave viola-
tion of a number of key clauses of this agree-
ment. The Saigon administration, aided and
encouraged by the United States, continues its
acts of war. In these circumstances it is impossi-
ble for me to accept the 1973 Nobel Prize for
Peace. Once the Paris accord on Vietnam is re-
spected, the arms are silenced and a real peace
is established in South Vietnam, I will be able to
consider accepting this prize.”
But the most pithily skeptical response to
a Nobel came from a woman—feminist
writer Doris Lessing, who in 2007 had become
the oldest litterateur at 89 to receive the prize.
Told by a Reuters correspondent that she had
been thus honored, she uttered the words, “Oh,
Christ!”, waved her hand at the posse of photog-
raphers trying to click her picture and shooed
them away.
So there have been ample precedents for
Dylan’s gesture and the aging singer has not been
entirely original in his posturing (if one may call
it so) of radicalism and unpredictability.
However, one must appreciate that creativity
is a flighty creature. It waxes and wanes, gather-
ing stimuli from extraneous circumstances and
the environment, not depending solely on the
person of the writer. Even the best of artists wit-
nesses phases of creative highs when they are
flooded with vision, and dry, unproductive pe-
riods. After all that he has given to the world of
music and ideas, it is easy to forgive Bob Dylan.
And as far as the Nobel Prize is concerned, de-
spite all the drama and the fuss, what his peer
and friend Leonard Cohen says rings true. “To
me,” says Cohen, “[the Nobel to Dylan] is like
pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the
highest mountain.” The classic versus pop dis-
pute notwithstanding.
SOUNDS OF REBELLION
Dylan and Pete Seeger at
Newport Folk Festival, 1963

Society
Gender Equality
self-possessed in their anger but also clearly en-
joying themselves, untouched by loss or any big
failure, innocent of the inexorable, soul-killing
cycle of survival imperatives that comprise the
way of the world. Or, perhaps, it was the knowl-
edge of their mission—of no curfew and no
dress code, of affordable accommodation for fe-
male students, of freedom from simultaneous
moral policing and harassment at the hands of a
sexist society—idealistic, no doubt, but one
whose time has come, that did the trick.
The immediate trigger for this march had
been a few incidents of exhibitionism near the
back gates of Lady Shri Ram College, South
ELIVERED to the beat of
tambourines and drums, the
slogans were thunderous
and no-holds-barred; and
contributed to that heady
feeling one might get when walking with a
bunch of raucous, dancing, celebrating young
women—barely out of their teens, confident and
Unchain my Heart
Pinjra Tod hits streets again for equality but there’s a long road ahead
BY SUCHETA DASGUPTA
“Gali gali mein hai yeh shor,
pinjra tod, pinjra tod!
Bol saheli halla bol, halla bol,
halla bol!”
D

15VIEWS ON NEWS November 7 2016
Campus, one of the centers of the one-year-
young Pinjra Tod movement, which took off in
2015 following a notice disallowing late nights
for boarders at Jamia Millia Islamia. The Octo-
ber 3 march, which also listed among its aims
claiming of the streets and public spaces by
women, gave the flashers and their tacit support-
ers among the authorities a fitting reply—em-
barrassing them publicly by naming their
wrongdoing in front of their friends and neigh-
bors, using humor to oppose hostility.
The response? Curiosity that gave way to
shock and confusion, followed by derision and
disapproval; but also and less frequently, support
and unequivocal respect.
“Well done,” offered a gentleman, as the
demonstration passed one of the venues where
an injustice had occurred and the perpetrators
had been shamed. “Theek hi toh keh rahen hain,”
remarked a pair of working class women to a by-
stander at another.
HISTORY
Launched against discriminatory rules for
women students that curtail their mobility,
agency and access to opportunities of excellence
ostensibly to protect them, the #BreaktheHostel-
Locks or Pinjra Tod movement has been around
since the 1980s. But the new wave of unapolo-
getic feminism that India has been witnessing in
this decade, sparked by the 2011 Why Loiter
campaign and the public response to the 2012
Jyoti Singh (Nirbhaya) gangrape, has given it the
self-confidence, the media attention that it de-
serves and the weight of public opinion to influ-
ence authorities to an extent, says Priyanka
Sharma, one of the founding members of the
movement in its new avatar.
Still, to list some landmark protests that are
in public recall one would revisit Miranda House
Women’s Hostel in March 2010 when its resi-
dents held a sit-out protest in response to in-
creasing moral policing by the hostel warden.
Almost 250 women refused to enter the hostel
after the curfew deadline and staged a dharna
outside the gate. A rally was taken out and an
immediate general body meeting was called.
In St Stephen’s Women’s Hostel in 2013, a
movement called House Arrest emerged which
sought open access to campus space at all hours
and resisted stricter curfew timings and curbs in
the wake of the 2012 bus gangrape.
The fight against hostel timings in Ramjas
College took place in 2006-7. The women’s hos-
tel had been newly constructed and had a curfew
of 7.30 pm while the men’s hostel last entry time
was 11 pm. Then the men’s curfew was revised
to 8 pm and they joined issue with the women.
But, as media outlet Youth Ki Awaaz puts it,
it was the “bizarre and vaguely threatening no-
tification” from the Jamia provost dated June 1,
2015, prohibiting night-outs for its women’s hos-
tel residents that really proved the catalyst for the
genesis of the new Pinjra Tod. What started as a
Facebook page in August, created by a collective
of 15 like-minded students, spread like wildfire
across campuses, evoking street art displays,
drawing threats from the ABVP (which denies
these), and finding support in universities in Hy-
derabad and Lucknow.
Not to be denied is the role that Youth Ki
Awaaz, Scroll and The Wire played in single-
handedly disseminating news of the mobiliza-
tion. They began, the mainstream news-
papers followed.
It is a little-
known but
unfortunate
fact that
women’s
hostels
charge
significantly
higher fees
than men’s
hostels
from their
boarders—
something
Pinjra Tod
terms
“gender tax”.

The participants of the march on October 3,
which is the first Pinjra Tod march in South
Campus and the third such rally by the provo-
cateurs, their first having been staged in October
last year, had articulated two important de-
mands in their opening address by Devangana
Kalita—that universities follow the Constitution,
not the khap, and that they implement the Uni-
versity Grants Commission circular issued in
July 2016. To wit, under Article 19, the Consti-
tution guarantees women the rights to freedoms
of movement and expression.
UGC RULES
But what is this new UGC circular all about?
Well, about three months ago, the UGC and
AICTE (All India Council for Technical Educa-
tion) separately notified new regulations that
ban the imposition of “discriminatory” rules like
dress codes and hostel curfews on the pretext of
women’s safety. “Concern for the safety of
women students must not be cited to impose
discriminatory rules for women in hostels as
compared to male students. Campus safety poli-
cies should not result in securitization, such as
over monitoring or policing or curtailing the
freedom of movement, especially for women
employees and students,” the regulations say.
Violating them may lead to the withdrawal of
recognition by the two bodies.
Well, this is the second major victory for Pin-
jra Tod—the second lock that it has broken,
metaphorically speaking. The first came when,
in response to a report submitted by Pinjra Tod,
the Delhi Commission of Women, led by its new
chief, Swati Maliwal, issued a notice to Jamia in
August last year, seeking to know the rationale
behind the differential regulations. And, in
March this year, DCW issued a notice to all 23
registered universities in Delhi, asking them to
answer several questions, including the number
of students in hostel disaggregated by gender, a
separate similar list of students with disabilities,
the entry and exit time restrictions in the hostel
(with reasons if there are differences in timings
based in gender and the penalties on violating
these times) and the annual hostel fees charged
disaggregated by gender. It is a little-known but
unfortunate fact that women’s hostels charge sig-
nificantly higher fees than men’s hostels from
their boarders—something Pinjra Tod terms
“gender tax”.
While it was Maliwal’s initiative that got the
UGC and the AICTE to issue their respective
While the
latest march
exhorted
participants
to take back
the night and
reclaim the
streets, it
predicated it
with the logic
that the
purpose of
this was only
to ensure
women
“felt safe”.
Society
Gender Equality

circulars, none of the universities have imple-
mented it even though it is binding on them to
do so. Neither has any institution, including
Jamia, replied to the DCW notices.
Meanwhile, feminist collective Girls at
Dhabas from Pakistan, which was formed
around the same time as the new Pinjra Tod and
also fights for women’s freedom of movement,
extended its solidarity to and sent its best wishes
for the October 3 rally. The fight continues.
CHALLENGES
As the colorful march hit the streets of Greater
Kailash and Amar Colony, there were two things
that struck a wrong note. First, in their desire to
oppose victim-blaming, Kalita, who is also a
founding member, announced that women are
held responsible for their own safety by society
(they’re not) and that that’s wrong (that they are
not is at the root of the problem? Irrational ac-
cusations apart, they should certainly be trusted,
encouraged to and equipped with the capabili-
ties to take charge), to which her listeners
chanted “Shame!” Second, when the march was
passing its first random group of working class
men—they were street hawkers—one of the girls
started sloganeering—“Chherna, ghoorna bandh
karo, bandh karo, bandh karo!”—which suspi-
ciously smacked of class bias.
One interesting demand that the women
raised was regarding CCTVs. In her address,
Kalita had slammed CCTV
surveillance of women, say-
ing it did not respect their
privacy and was ultimately
useless. “CCTV nahin cha-
hiye, streetlights toh dila do,”
the girls had chanted. When
VoN casually asked a mar-
cher as to how she recon-
ciled the two facts that it was
Maliwal who got the UGC
circular passed, yet it was
the government of the Aam Aadmi Party which
first mooted the idea of CCTVs, she very
articulately said: “It was also Maliwal who re-
cently named a rape victim. Women will make
mistakes. Women will also have political affilia-
tions. That shouldn’t make us harbor biases
against them.”
Indeed, it is this solidarity among women
that is one of the core strengths of this new
movement. Another, that makes it unique, is its
clear choice of freedom over security in the free-
dom vs security debate, a wise pick that will po-
tentially ensure both, but when push comes to
shove, the person clearly knows what she is risk-
ing and is willing to do so.
Unfortunately, while the latest march ex-
horted participants to take back the night and
reclaim the streets, it predicated it with the logic
that the purpose of this was only to ensure
women “felt safe” and there was one poster that
read—“Bekhauf azadi!” Was it tautology or an
oxymoron? One couldn’t decide.
The biggest challenge to the movement, the-
refore, lies not without but within. Any move-
ment wants to gather maximum followers. But
in the effort to attract them, should it dilute its
message? Has the women’s safety rhetoric infil-
trated the new Pinjra Tod and begun watering
down its mission? It will certainly be a sad
day when it does, and let this write-up serve as
fair warning.
UGC rules
state that
concern for
the safety
of women
students must
not be cited
to impose
discrimina-
tory rules for
women in
hostels as
compared
to male
students.
17VIEWS ON NEWS November 7 2016

Society
HERE should be a sense of to-
getherness between men and
women and not just the fight
to be better than each other. If
there’s togetherness, sense of
empowerment will also come,” said Delhi
Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia at a talk
held by The Caravan in the capital recently.
The talk was part of a day-long seminar
titled “The Bridge”, aimed at deepening the un-
derstanding of how gender empowerment is
essential for the transformation of economies
and quality of life. The event was a move towards
identifying roadblocks and solutions to issues
that were discussed.
The event saw luminaries from various walks
of life, including veteran actor Sharmila Tagore,
Union Minister for Women and Child
Development Maneka Gandhi, Egyptian-Amer-
A Case For
Complementary
Harmony
A seminar on gender
empowerment points out
that the sexes are not polar
opposites and
rivals but balance and
complement each other
BY KARAN KAUSHIK
T
GENDER ISSUES
Google Internet Saathi
members at the talk
Photos: Anil Shakya

ican journalist Mona Eltahawy, philanthropist
Rohini Nilekani, choreographer-director Farah
Khan and critically acclaimed director Dibakar
Banerjee, besides Sisodia and others.
The discussions covered a wide range of top-
ics, from empowering women through informa-
tion, evolution of the Indian heroine, and what
it means to be a feminist in India to the chal-
lenges that patriarchy presents for working
women in India and the plight of the young In-
dian man. This is what the different participants
had to say:
MANEKA GANDHI, MINISTER FOR
WOMEN & CHILD DEVELOPMENT
“We have taken the first-ever initiative to intro-
duce the world’s first panic button on cell
phones. It is an app for the safety of women—
once you press the button, it will alert 10 people
closest to you before the police arrives (techno-
logical solution).”
“We have also taken the initiative to intro-
duce ‘one stop centers’ dedicated to women. Fur-
ther, for encouraging women in India, we have
recently started a program called ‘STEP’ in order
to train 200 women at once to get them jobs in
fields like organic farming and learning different
skills. Another such program is ‘E-Mahila Hut’
where people can buy stuff from, instead of buy-
ing them from outside. It has to be a whole gen-
eration of women who can lead the nation and
this should be started from the ground level.”
SHARMILA TAGORE,ACTOR
“Somewhere or the other all female actors have
been in shackles and that is the attitude which
we need to change. The fact is that even now in
many movies which are based on women’s em-
powerment and related issues, somewhere there
are subtle patriarchal messages and this is where
the gap lies. When I started working in the in-
dustry, there was a huge prejudice against work-
ing women. The money they earned was
appreciated but they had to constantly prove
themselves.”
NANDITA DAS,ACTOR
“When I came into the limelight I was always re-
ferred to as ‘dark and dusky heroine’. Somehow
the filmmakers considered my complexion re-
lated to a certain social class and that was the
only role they wanted me to portray.”
The talks
covered
topics like
empowering
women
through
information,
the Indian
heroine, and
what it means
to be a femi-
nist in India.
MAKING A POINT
(L to R) Union minister
Maneka Gandhi and actor
Sharmila Tagore

MONA ELTAHAWY,WRITER
“In Cairo, there were women-only carriages in
the metro. But that is not the solution. I would
like something like a curfew for boys and men,
as crazy as it may sound. In some places, it has
been implemented, like in Bogota, Colombia.
One day a month, after 7 pm, men must stay at
home. As a result, rapes and sexual violence
went down. I also want the government to take
up initiatives to teach boys to not assault women,
be it in a bus or the metro, instead of telling
women how not to dress, not to drink or till
what time they are supposed to be out at night.”
RADHIKA PIRAMAL, BUSINESS WOMAN
“Twenty years ago, VIP bags used to roll out just
three new products in a year but now the com-
pany launches 300 product lines in a year. I am
one of three daughters. I wanted economic in-
dependence from my parents, something which
I realized when I was 17 because I was gay. Join-
ing VIP was something both I and my father
wanted very much. He had confidence in me to
take the company forward.”
SHIKHA MAKAN, FILM MAKER
“I was called names by my society’s chairman in
Mumbai because I was dropped by a male
friend at 2 am. I realized that it was not just
me but women who worked for United Nations
or women working as investor bankers who also
had to face the same problems. How urban India
today looks at this version of women,
women who are self-empowered, financially
independent, self-reliant and standing on their
two feet and saying that this is my choice,
and how society completely rejects this idea
of empowered women... this is what gave me the
idea for my documentary, Bachelor Girls.”
FARAH KHAN, FILM MAKER
“How sad if I am the only commercially viable
female director. My movies make more money
than the male directors’. My movies are feminist.
We should be paid and judged equally. All my
three kids go to judo class and ballet Class. I was
brought up very liberally. I was never told that I
can’t do something because I am a girl.”
ROHINI NILEKANI, BUSINESS WOMAN
“There has been hardly any work to sensitize
men. There is a huge gap in opportunities for
young men; 200 million men are stuck in low-
level equilibrium. They need better laws, better
policies; good education, better role models and
they need us to believe that everyone can work
for change. I believe that unless we are prepared
SHARING OPINIONS
(Clockwise from top far left)
Actor Nandita Das, film
maker Farah Khan and
Deputy CM of Delhi,
Manish Sisodia
Society

to see that men too are stuck, we will not
see the kind of empowerment we are
talking about. Can we look into the faces
of millions of men with fear, insecurity,
lack of access to good education, to jobs,
to secure relationships and can we cre-
atively confine the challenge to make a
positive change? What are the safe plat-
forms for men where they can discuss
their sexuality, the burden of being a
male, patriarchy and masculinity? Every
law that applies to men in this country
has been misused.”
DIBAKAR BANERJEE, FILM MAKER
“I think if boys and girls of the same age
were to play the same game in the same
playground from the time that they were six till
the time that they were 16, we may have a case
of something interesting coming out of there but
it rarely happens in any of the urbanized soci-
eties because gender division is probably settled
in much deeper. When your older sister goes to
a school which is cheaper and when you go to a
school that is more expensive, it’s unfair but it
stays with you forever even when you are in your
forties and that’s where the damage happens.
Those damages are silent and untold damages.”
SONI SORI, ADIVASI SCHOOL TEACHER
“I have come here to tell everyone what has been
happening with the people of Bastar. I will talk
about the women of Bastar and how they are
being tortured and how inhuman treatment is
being meted out to them. In Bastar, women have
changed their roles from being the wife to being
the savior. Recently, a woman kept fighting with
forces to save her husband. They kill the men so
it’s the woman who has to face the real struggle
and that’s why their roles have changed.”
MANISH SISODIA , DEPUTY CM, DELHI
“What kind of education are we giving to our
kids? Our future depends on what we are teach-
ing in our schools. Ram always delivers laddoos
and Sita always works in the kitchen. The gender
bias in the minds of the writers of those books
is so strong that they always make the men do
what they are supposed to do. In all the grammar
books, you will find that the opposite of women
is always men, but, you tell me, are the two op-
posite or are the two complementary? When the
CBSE results are out, we write, ‘Ladkiyon ne
baazi maari.’ Was it a competition between boys
and girls or was it a test of their knowledge? Even
tales like those of Cinderella teach us that a girl
should be beautiful and marrying a prince is her
biggest victory. It sends out a wrong message to
our children. There should be a sense of togeth-
erness; the sense of empowerment will come au-
tomatically.”
The talk was part of a day-long seminar
titled “The Bridge”, aimed at deepening
the understanding of how gender empow-
erment is essential for the transformation
of economies and quality of life.

Not trusting the Indian Armed Forces on the surgical strike makes us look weak
VoN publishes in each issue the
best written commentary on any
subject.The following write-up
from FirstPost has been picked
by our team of editors and
reproduced for our readers as
the best during this fortnight
Losingsightof
biggerpicture
T is an unbelievable hubris that
we would doubt our own mili-
tary and howl for evidence of a
surgical strike following the 18
September Uri attack. But it’s
even worse to drag the government and the In-
dian Armed Forces into petty politics.
It’s almost like it is more exciting to disbelieve
them than to accept that the teams went in, dis-
mantled eight terror camps, and got home.
Occasionally, one gets the feeling that the
need to ‘scoop and sell a story’ is so overwhelm-
ing that we dredge for doubt. And are dismayed
when we don’t find it. But if this is the sort of
‘dog in the manger’ attitude the media is going
to display in its quest to corner the government
on a single four-hour operation and send off
little salvos of ‘shak’ because it is nice and
I
Editors’ Pick
Bikram Vohra
DOUBTS GALORE
DGMO Lt Gen Ranbir
Singh at the press
briefing after the
surgical strike

competitive to do so, what will we do
during a war?
Days have passed since the ‘surgical
strike’ but we seem incapable of moving
on. In purely military terms, it is done
and dusted, and was, itself, not such a
massive action. In tactical terms, it was
an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny beautifully
timed incision, and it is over.
The strikes were ordered to respond
to the blatant attack on an army camp
in Uri and to show Pakistan, India means
business. Period. It was a message and
not a major conflagration. It was neither
the Battle of Britain nor the landings
in Normandie.
As far as the fight against terrorism goes vis-
a-vis Pakistan allowing them refuge on its terri-
tory, this is not even a start and a lot more will
have to be done to rid ourselves of the menace.
I
f we cannot accept a singular strategic move
on trust without having politicians and oth-
ers hogging the limelight by scratching
doubts on the surface, we are in danger of be-
coming our worst own enemies.
Frankly, many of us in the media and with-
out, are heartily tired of the browbeating and the
time and publicity being given to the naysayers.
This phrase ‘surgical strike’ like some heady new
wine has become a mantra and it seems we can-
not get enough of it.
Danger: We will lose sight of the bigger picture
by focusing attention on a corner of this canvas.
Bigger danger: Our troops will look at each
other in wonderment and say, why are we risk-
ing our lives for these people who don’t want to
believe us. @#$% them.
If I was one of the guys who had gone on that
night, and this is what I was hearing and seeing,
I’d be thinking: What the bloody hell do I have
to do before these ###wipes believe me?
Biggest danger: We are giving Pakistan so much
comfort and so much fodder to feed their media
cannons and ridicule us.
The nonsense we are witnessing over the
blaring TV channels and echoing on websites
and blogs and newsprint is largely bed-rocked in
ignorance and a false sense of entitlement fueled
by pro- and anti-Modi factions.
The Army does not owe us the showing
of classified material, contrary to our arrogant
conclusion that anything which happens has to
be shared with the press instantly, or, you are
covering up.
It does not. The government will decide what
military matters are to be shared, and when.
Seriously, let this surgical strike become a
page in military history. A one-goal lead in a
game that has only just begun is not the time to
scratch the scab or jump up and down with joy.
The Indian Armed Forces themselves will tell
you: Get over it.
ACCEPTED RESPONSE
The army was right in
conducting the strike
to give a loud
message after the
Uri attack
It’s almost like it is more exciting to
disbelieve them.... One gets the feeling
that the need to ‘scoop and sell a story’ is
so overwhelming, we dredge for doubt.
And are dismayed when we don’t find it.

UTIÉRREZ had some
idea what had hap-
pened. Becerra had
risen to the No. 4 slot
among House Democ-
rats and was close with
Pelosi, who in turn was
in constant communication with the White
House. Gutiérrez himself was under great pres-
sure from Pelosi not to give up too much to the
Republicans—especially nothing that would
Global Trends
Mexican Immigration
How Washington
Blew Its Best Chance
to Fix Immigration
Three years ago, the Republican-
led House was close to reaching
a compromise on immigration.
The concluding part of the inside
story of what went wrong
BY LEC MACGILLIS
G

undermine Obamacare. Gutiérrez shr-
ugged off her admonitions. “I just found
it extraordinary that every time we
reached an agreement on something,
then we had to go back to House Demo-
cratic leadership to explain it all over
again,” he says. Lofgren was more diplo-
matic. “Becerra is a very cautious man,”
she told me.
The mind-set that Gutiérrez was con-
tending with among Democratic leaders
was hardly incomprehensible. They had
for years faced total Republican intransi-
gence on any bill that might be of political
value to Obama. The notion that the
House could now muster legislation on so
thorny an issue was hard to credit; in my
conversations with White House and
Senate Democratic staff members, their
estimation of the House’s efforts on im-
migration oozed condescension verging
on scorn. House Republicans had become
trapped in a cage of their own making:
On the one side they were hemmed in by
a constituency and far-right contingent
opposed to compromise on principle. On
the other side were Democrats who, even
when many Republicans did want to pass
a law—one the Democrats wanted, too—
responded with a collective eye roll.
Soon enough, Gutiérrez’s warnings to
Democratic leaders proved prescient. In
mid-April, the Senate group introduced
its bill, whose generally liberal provisions
— a path to eventual citizenship for most
of those in the United States illegally,
generous levels of visas for family reuni-
fication and fewer guest-worker permits
than many businesses wanted—and asso-
ciation with Senator Chuck Schumer of
New York, the dominant Democrat in the
group, predictably riled House Republi-
cans. Labrador and the two Texans, John
Carter and Sam Johnson, started coming
under pressure for their involvement.
On May 15, Carter delivered an ultima-
tum: If there wasn’t resolution at the
group’s next meeting, the next day, he
was out. For the first time, the meeting’s
location in one of the House office build-
ings was leaked to the press. A couple
dozen reporters massed outside the
room, ready to pounce if Carter or any-
one else walked out.
I
nside, Lofgren proposed new lan-
guage on health care. Her colleagues
gathered to read it over her shoulder
on her new iPad Mini. It was very vague,
essentially stating that immigrants would
need to pay for their own health care and
that if any government entity provided
them with services, they would be ineli-
gible for permanent residence. Everyone
seemed provisionally in favor of it — ex-
cept for Becerra. The Republicans were
exasperated. “F Becerra,” Gonzalez, Diaz-
Balart’s chief of staff, emailed a colleague.
“Ugh. Now I’m looking for window.”
The group broke into separate rooms,
Democrats in one and Republicans in an-
other. When the group reassembled, the
Republicans said they were fine with the
language. Then Becerra said he would
have to run it by Pelosi.
Carter exploded. “I don’t have to
check it with John [Boehner], why do you
have to check with Nancy?” he said, ac-
cording to Gonzalez and others in the
room. “I’m making a decision here— why
can’t you?”
The group left the meeting saying they
had a tentative agreement, but in the days
that followed, the Democrats backed
away. At a meeting with the group’s De-
mocrats, Pelosi loudly scolded Gutiérrez
for having strayed too far from his brief
on immigration. Gutiérrez himself was
furious that health care had assumed such
importance. At the next meeting of the
group, Gutiérrez asked the staff members
to leave, which was unusual, and berated
Becerra for having made things so hard.
It was the Republicans, however,
HOPE AND DESPAIR
Mexican immigrants employed at a farm
in California

who finally broke first. On June 5, 2013,
Labrador announced he was leaving the
group, saying the health care issue had
become insurmountable and that he
would focus on crafting Republican-only
legislation instead. It was a grievous blow
to the group, coming after it had gone to
great lengths—falling behind the Senate
in drafting its bill—to address Labrador’s
complaints on multiple fronts. Democrats
I spoke to viewed his protestations as fun-
damentally cynical, an excuse to kill a bill
he was ambivalent about by placing it in
conflict with the other party’s most treas-
ured recent legislative accomplishment.
“If people want to get to an outcome, they
can get to an outcome,” Muñoz said, and
sighed. “Look, there’s a reason why no bill
ever got introduced. Had a bill been in-
troduced, the pressure to bring it through
the process would have been very, very
high, which was why they never intro-
duced it.”
Labrador’s exit provided some relief at
first. “He’s a very emotional guy, and
everybody was like, whew,” Lofgren says.
“It was easier to have discussions that
were productive with Labrador out, be-
cause people could focus and not go off
on tangents.” The group also kept getting
encouragement from Boehner. He sur-
prised Lofgren by inviting her to a private
meeting. “He said: ‘Keep this going. This
is really important. This is the best chance
we have.’”
T
he subtext of Boehner’s pep talk
was that the political context
around the issue was changing,
in unhelpful ways. He was coming under
increasing pressure from his conservative
flank to vow not to break the Hastert rule
on immigration. The increase in drug tra-
fficking from Mexico was giving oppo-
nents more fodder. Representative Steve
King of Iowa warned that summer of
immigrants with “calves the size of
cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75
pounds of marijuana across the desert.”
And the Senate, by having released its bill
first, had given opponents something to
push back against.
Support for the bill from Republican-
allied outside groups like the U.S. Cham-
ber of Commerce was registering less in
the House than hoped. And the memory
of the 2012 loss was fading. Members
were talking up a series of posts by Sean
Trende, a RealClearPolitics.com analyst,
that presented an alternate explanation
for the defeat. Contrary to conventional
wisdom, Trende argued, Republicans did
not need more Hispanic support to win
the presidency. They just needed to draw
out the “missing white voters” Romney
had failed to excite.
On June 18, Boehner stated more
definitively than before in a meeting with
fellow House Republicans that he would
not allow an immigration reform bill to
come to the floor without a majority of
Republicans behind it. The following
week, the Senate passed its bill by a vote
of 68-32, with 14 Republicans in favor —
the sort of decisive victory that Demo-
cratic leaders had banked on. But in a
meeting of House Republicans in the
Capitol basement, Boehner said the
House would not take up the Senate bill
and would instead continue to produce
its own legislation.
What legislation, immigration re-
formers wondered, was Boehner talking
about? The Group of 8 had not yet pro-
duced a draft. The support that Paul Ryan
had communicated so enthusiastically to
Gutiérrez in late 2012 was also proving
elusive. On Sept. 10, Diaz-Balart hosted
an evening meeting at his apartment to
discuss a path forward on immigration,
with Ryan, Labrador and a handful of
staff members. But the evening wore on
Diaz-Balart and
Gonzalez had quietly
pitched for a bill that
would combine
heightened border
security and visa
enforcement with
legalization for many
of the 11 million....
Global Trends
Mexican Immigration

with barely any mention of the issue. It
was the night of Obama’s speech
announcing that he had asked Congress
to postpone its vote on authorizing
airstrikes on Syria. The group watched
the speech, hung around for a while and
then dispersed.
Ten days later, Sam Johnson and John
Carter announced that they, too, were
officially leaving the bipartisan group,
rendering it defunct. They were under in-
creasing pressure for participating, and
since Labrador had left and taken with
him the group’s line to the House’s Tea
Party contingent, the project’s efficacy
was in doubt. After all the years spent
haggling together in small rooms, the
news of the Texans’ departure reach-
ed the other remaining members via
news release.
After the Group of 8 disintegrated,
Boehner seemed adrift on immigration.
In January 2014, he announced a set of
“standards” for the legislation at a party
retreat, but they went over poorly, and
even supporters of reform were puzzled
by their purpose. “That kind of fell like a
lead balloon,” Diaz-Balart told me. After
members heading into primary season
for the 2014 midterms complained that it
wasn’t a good time for the issue, Boehner
announced that he would not proceed
after all.
Boehner’s No. 2 and likely successor,
Eric Cantor, was even more wary. “He
was one of the most hard-ass guys we
dealt with,” Diaz-Balart says. “He was al-
ways fair but very tough on us.” On May
12, Boehner was in Laredo, Texas, on the
Mexican border, during a fund-raising
tour, when he ran into Ali Noorani, the
immigration-reform advocate. Noorani
asked Boehner where things stood. “In all
my years in public service, I’ve seen weird
issues, but this is the weirdest,” Boehner
said, according to Noorani. “My own
guys”—his fellow party leaders—“aren’t
even with me on this.”
D
iaz-Balart and Gonzalez,
meanwhile, were making a last-
ditch effort to salvage the
group’s work. For months, they had qui-
etly pitched to House Republicans an idea
for a bill that would combine heightened
border security and visa enforcement
with legalization for many of the 11 mil-
lion but, unlike the Senate’s bill, would
offer no dedicated path to citizenship.
They were getting moral support from
Ryan, who saw their proposal as in keep-
ing with what he had outlined to Noorani
in late 2012, the central plank in a series
of bills. They got clearance from Boehner,
if no direct aid from his leadership
MATTERS OF DIPLOMACY
President Barack Obama with Canadian
PM Justin Trudeau and Mexican PM Enrique
Peña Nieto
The increase in drug
trafficking from
Mexico was giving
opponents more
fodder. Support from
groups like the US
Chamber of Commerce
was registering less in
the House than hoped.

staff, on one condition: “You get the ma-
jority of the majority.”
They assembled their own team of a
dozen or so representatives, including
several ardent conservatives, to assist in
approaching members. They brought to-
gether small groups of members to review
results from two different pollsters show-
ing surprisingly strong support from Re-
publican voters and to watch a focus
group where voters backed the language
they were settling on. They tracked mem-
bers’ likelihood of support, on a 1-to-5
scale, on an Excel spreadsheet.
Gutiérrez assured them that they
could get sufficient Democratic support
even without a special path to citizenship,
on the assumption that millions could
eventually attain citizenship even without
such a path; he had briefed Pelosi on the
proposal and she had not waved him off
it. Diaz-Balart even finally got a call from
Obama. It felt perfunctory, but at least it
was something. Gonzalez had become so
desperate to reach Muñoz by early 2014
that he emailed her during a visit to the
White House Easter Egg Roll asking if he
could come in and see her.
O
n June 10, as primary season
was nearing its end, Diaz-
Balart told House leaders that
his count of Republicans supporting his
immigration-bill language was up to
140—well above a majority of the caucus.
Boehner scheduled a meeting for later in
the week to decide how to proceed.
Reform-advocacy groups, including
the one formed by Mark Zuckerberg,
readied a blast of ads in support of immi-
nent legislation. Diaz-Balart was ebul-
lient. He took a couple of bottles of wine
back to his apartment to celebrate with
Gonzalez and others.
They were gathering when, around 7
p.m., Diaz-Balart got an email from an-
other member. The colleague had seen
some worrying numbers coming out of
Virginia, where polls had just closed in
the Republican primary. Eric Cantor was
defending his seat against David Brat, a
conservative economics professor who
had mounted a challenge inveighing
against Cantor’s Wall Street ties, his inat-
tention to his district and his support —
grudging as it was—for immigration re-
form. Diaz-Balart dismissed it as early
noise. “We were going to toast,” he said.
“And then all of a sudden. … ”
It wasn’t even close. Cantor lost by 11
points. When one top Democratic Senate
immigration aide found out, she burst
into tears, knowing that reform oppo-
nents would seize on Cantor’s loss as a
referendum on the issue, regardless of
Cantor’s ambivalence on it. Gutiérrez
called Diaz-Balart. “Luis,” Diaz-Balart
told him. “We lost the whole thing.
It’s over.”
Reform advocates scrambled together
an emergency effort to counter the spin,
promoted by opponents like the talk-
show host Laura Ingraham, that Cantor
had lost because of immigration, but it
was to no avail. “People got concerned,
and we didn’t have the ability anymore to
keep the numbers,” Diaz-Balart says.
“They came to me on the floor the next
day and said, ‘Hey, man, I know I
whipped, but this is not the time.’”
T
he administration read the writ-
ing on the wall, too. Two weeks
later, with a surge of unaccompa-
nied minors from Central America giv-
ing more fuel to reform opponents,
Obama said his staff would start drafting
executive action on immigration in lieu
of legislation.
When Diaz-Balart held a news confer-
ence shortly afterward, he was so upset
that he had trouble speaking. He singled
out Gutiérrez for his help and his “will-
ingness, when necessary, to take on Re-
publicans, Democrats and the president.”
“It is highly irresponsible not to deal
with the issue,” he said. “We were sent
here by the American people precisely to
tackle difficult issues and not to take the
easy way out.”
One evening in April of this year, John
Boehner settled into an armchair on an
auditorium stage at Stanford University
for one of his first public appearances
since his resignation the previous Sep-
tember. Sitting opposite the Stanford his-
torian David M. Kennedy, Boehner
giddily unburdened himself of his feel-
ings about his fellow Republicans. “It got
to the point where I had to sneak into the
White House,” he said, according to a
recording provided by The Stanford
Daily. “I’d walk to the White House, and
the right-wing press would say, ‘Ooh,
what deal is he going to cut?’” He railed
at the “anything but yes group” in his cau-
The Republican Party
had not merely
failed to address the
existential crisis
laid bare by the 2012
election; it had
lurched in the
opposite direction,
embracing
Donald Trump.
Global Trends
Mexican Immigration

cus—“the knuckleheads.”
He said that he had been the one who
first encouraged bipartisan talks on
immigration reform years earlier, and
that the House group “essentially had an
agreement.” Yet, he said, the compromise
was undone by his party. “There was no
way the votes were there in the House
to do it,” he said. “Believe me, I tried a
dozen times to bring immigration reform
to the floor. I got slapped down by my
colleagues, slapped down by other lead-
ers.” The failure to pass immigration re-
form, he said, was “one of my greatest
disappointments.”
The event made headlines for
Boehner’s frankness — at one point he
called Ted Cruz “Lucifer in the flesh” —
but his account of the immigration battle
was notably incomplete. He failed to
mention that he could, all along, have
pushed harder to bring immigration re-
form to the floor had he merely been will-
ing to skirt the Hastert rule.
B
y early 2014, Boehner was al-
ready planning to retire; if there
had ever been an opportunity for
statesmanship at little personal cost, this
was it. And yet he could not bring himself
to press forward with a legislative effort
that he believed was in the best interest of
his party and the country. “Our problem
was not a substantive problem—it was a
political problem,” says Muñoz, at the
White House. “In the end, the coalition
on the Hill which could pass a bill was
going to consist of a lot of Democrats and
probably not a majority of the Republi-
cans. And the speaker never got to a place
where that felt comfortable.”
She added, “It takes a little bit of
courage to overcome the political obsta-
cles on the Republican side, and that
courage did not manifest itself.”
But the administration and Demo-
cratic leaders made their own miscalcu-
lations.... Their strategy had been
informed by the ace they had waiting in
their pocket: the executive action that
Obama could, and did, authorize in the
event of a stalemate on Capitol Hill. But
this was a rickety scaffolding on which to
build an immigration policy. In February
2015, a federal judge in Texas ruled in
favor of that state’s challenge of the exec-
utive order. After the eight sitting
Supreme Court justices split on the case
in June, the judge’s injunction stands, and
millions of families remain in limbo.
Not long before Boehner’s Stanford
talk, I attended a Republican Party dinner
at a Holiday Inn in Butler County,

Ohio, Boehner’s home base.... I asked
if he would care to take a few questions
on immigration reform. “Oh, God, no,”
he said. After the speech, he escap-
ed through the kitchen to avoid any
more encounters.
The top candidates to take Boehner’s
seat were at the dinner. One had come out
against birthright citizenship. Another
had secured the endorsement of Butler
County’s sheriff, Rick Jones, who is viru-
lently opposed to illegal immigration....
Sheriff Jones was at the event himself,
with his brown dress uniform and walrus
mustache. He had threatened to run
against Boehner in the past. But Boehner
was gone now, replaced as speaker by
Paul Ryan, who was forced to swear off
pursuing immigration reform as a condi-
tion for winning support from conserva-
tive members for his ascension.
T
he party had not merely failed to
address the existential crisis laid
bare by the 2012 election; it had
lurched in the opposite direction, em-
bracing Donald Trump, a nominee whose
idea of Hispanic outreach was tweeting a
picture of himself with a taco bowl on
Cinco de Mayo.... I was struck by how
thoroughly he had managed to fuse anx-
ieties about border security and terror-
ism—my questions about immigration
were often answered with references to
ISIS and Syrian refugees rather than Mex-
icans. But what also struck me was the ex-
tent to which their frustration was aimed
at Washington’s inability to get anything
done, rather than at Republicans’ having
conceded too much. Unwilling to risk a
backlash against a controversial step for-
ward, the party had ended up with a
backlash against its own fecklessness.
At the Holiday Inn, Jones was excited
to tell me about his role the next day as
the introductory speaker at a rally just a
mile away, for Trump. There, Jones would
tell the crowd about his three trips to in-
spect the Mexican border. “Law enforce-
ment, chiefs of police, we’re fed up, we get
no help,” he would say. “Drugs are pour-
ing in from the border.”
Jones had his own ideas for how to fix
the problem, he said, but those weren’t
needed just yet. “My job,” he told me, “is
to get the crowd fired up.”
—Courtesy of ProPublica
Zoe Lofgren,
Democrat
She proposed that
immigrants would
have to pay for their
own health care and
couldn’t take up
permanent residence.
Eric Cantor,
Republican
His surprise defeat
when he contested for
reelection from
Virginia in June 2014
was attributed to his
pro-reform stand.
Xavier Becerra,
Democrat
His colleagues and
opponents called him
overly cautious, and
berated him for
making things hard on
the bill issue.
Global Trends
Mexican Immigration

Virender Sehwag is one of the best Indian
trolls in Twitterverse and is known for
leaving the internet in splits with his tweets.
And he does so without offending anyone.
Surprisingly, the star cricketer was at the
receiving end of a tweet by none other than
his wife. Sehwag had congratulated spinner
R Ashwin for his great performance in the
India-New Zealand Test series. He tweeted:
“Congrats @ashwinravi99 for an incredible
7th Man of the series. Only a married man
can understand the urgency of going home
early. #FamilyTime”, to which the spinner
responded with a “lol”. And then, their wives
swooped in, saying that they never really did
anything that would require the cricketers to
hurry home. While Ashwin’s, wife, Prithi
wrote that she “didn’t do much,” it was Se-
hwag’s better half, Aarti, who stole the show
with “@Prithinarayanan Neither did I. Both
in a hurry as always @ashwinravi99
@virendersehwag.”
Web Crawler What Went Viral
Storm over Priyanka’s tee
AT-shirt worn by actress Priyanka Chopra on
the cover of travel magazine Condé Nast Trav-
eller triggered a furious debate on Twitter be-
tween advocates of anti-immigrant protectionism,
multi-culturists and pro-globalization forces. The
tee had the following words emblazoned on it—
Refugee, Immigrant, Outsider, Traveller. The first
three words had been struck through in red ink.
Once the magazine came out, Twitterati
erupted with comments, mostly critical, about
what they saw as a reflection of the magazine’s
insensitive and elitist worldview. “Oh, I'm sorry,
I wasn’t aware that being a refugee is a matter
of choice... What were you thinking?!” wrote
@anumero_1 @priyankachopra even as femi-
nist ezine The Ladies Finger quipped: “Is this
the ganji from hell? And is it time to call PC
rather non-PC?”
The magazine issued an explanation saying its
message had actually been “about how our la-
belling of people as immigrants, refugees and
outsiders is creating a culture of xenophobia” and
how it had tried to expand the definition of travel
through the T-shirt in question.
Changing times
It does not happen every
year that the Nobel for lit-
erature is given to a singer
but when it does, it sure
sets the internet abuzz. One
of the world’s most influen-
tial singers and songwriters
Bob Dylan, was awarded the
Nobel Prize for literature for
having “created new poetic
expressions within the great
American song tradition.”
While some welcomed
the choice, stating that
Dylan redefined literature in
the 20th century, some
seemed not quite alright
with it. Famous author
Salman Rushdie tweeted:
“From Orpheus to Faiz song
& poetry have been closely
linked. Dylan is the brilliant
inheritor of the bardic tradi-
tion. Great choice #Nobel.”
“I totally get the Nobel com-
mittee. Reading books is
hard” is what author Gary
Shteyngart tweeted.
Trump lampooned
The October 9 presidential debate
between nominees Hillary Clin-
ton and Donald Trump was the
most tweeted about one in history,
garnering over 17 million com-
ments on social media. Users put a
humorous spin on some of the
touchiest issues of the day with
Trump’s treatment of women domi-
nating the online conversation.
However, the moment of the de-
bate that generated the most con-
troversy was Trump’s differing
from running mate Mike Pence on
the handling of the Syrian crisis.
Some of the funniest tweets
were from American Muslims—
“I’m a Muslim, and I would like to
report a crazy man threatening a
woman on a stage in Missouri,”
“My dad is taking a nap, I'll keep on
watching him as Trump ordered”
and “You don’t want to know what
we actually put in hummus.” More
pointed ones included this by
@LibyaLiberty: “I saw armed ji-
hadists curse the US gov & swear
they’d fight to the death but turned
out they were white supremacists.”
When Viru got trolled
—By Karan Kaushik

Film Review
HAT makes Mirzya so spe-
cial is its impeccable cine-
matography, soul-touching
music and an excellent
screenplay by none other
than Gulzar. The movie makes an instant and
powerful impact on the viewer the moment it
begins. Om Puri’s gravelly voice does absolute
justice to the beautifully penned lines by Gulzar.
Daler Mehndi makes sure right at the beginning
that you are there to experience a musical that
will stay with you. Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra
is one intelligent director and with Mirzya he has
proved it once again. The old-world alley charm
of Blue City Jodhpur, the royalty of Rajasthan and
scenic views of Ladakh make for perfect locations
for the script and the visual feel of the movie.
The movie is the story of Mirza-Sahiban and
what it wants and manages successfully to tell its
viewers is that the epic love story will never die.
It will keep acquiring fresher tones in different
generations. The love between the Mirzas and the
Sahibans will remain the same.
This story is about Munish and Suchitra.
The bond they share as school friends is so strong
that one could go to any extent to help the other.
But things take a slightly ugly turn and the two
have to go their separate ways. Cut to a few years
later. Suchitra, the daughter of a police commis-
sioner, returns from abroad to tie the knot with
Prince Karan. And then it’s time for a grown-up
Munish’s entry. His name is now Adil and he is
still in love with his Suchi.
Suchi, the princess-to-be, is required to learn
stud riding, a must-have for any princess. And
guess who is assigned the job? Yes, Adil it is.
The two meet again and thus starts their love
story. The movie uses scenes shot with a Game of
Thrones-inspired look to depict the original
legend. These sequences come at just the right
moments to emphasize the parallel.
Now coming to the most enchanting part of
the film; its cinematography. Pawel Dyllus has
made the movie visually stunning. Each shot is
better than the previous. If cinematography is the
heart of the film, the music by the trio of Shankar,
Haunting music and stunning
visuals make this a cinematic gem
BY KARAN KAUSHIK
W
“MIRZYA”:
Love is
Immortal

Ehsan and Loy is its soul. “Yeh waadiyaan
dudhiyaa kohre ki inme sadiaa behti hain” and
“Chot kahin par lagti hai aur zakhm kahin par
hota hai…ishq me aksar aisa hota hai” are sure to
leave you mesmerized and the former will haunt
you long after leaving the theatre.
And then there are the debutants.
Harshwardhan Kapoor is subtle, looks very
young, smiles like papa Anil, has a voice like
uncle Sanjay but acts like himself. It is refreshing
to see him sans the usual chiseled physique and
six-pack abdomen look which debutants often as-
sume are compulsory for entering the industry.
He needs to work on weeping scenes, though.
Saiyami Kher is a breath of fresh air too. Her
chiseled features and curly hair are not the only
nice aspects.
She is toned down for a girl doing her first
film in Bollywood but has a lot of scope. Art
Malik as the affectionate yet strict father of Su-
chitra leaves a mark with his voice and dialogue
delivery. Anuj Chaudhary as Prince Karan could
have done a better job of emoting. Anjali Patil as
Zeenat, Adil’s secret admirer, is pretty amazing.
She could be the next Radhika Apte if she gets the
right roles. And Puri is excellent in the limited
screen time given to him. He is also the one
narrating the story and Mehra couldn’t have
made a better choice.
Gulzar’s screenplay keeps the audience en-
thralled. The movie has its share of tiny flaws but
overall it’s a nice watch, especially for those who
still believe in eternal love. Watch it today for an
amazing musical ride, visual pleasure and a
captivating screenplay.
PROMISING PAIR
The young debutants,
Harshwardhan Kapoor and
Saiyami Kher

America’s
Dangerous Jester
UdayShankar
Column
Inderjit Badhwar

lease send help
immediately,
These tyrants keep
talking about hope,
If you don’t hear from
me in four years,
Send Democracy.
When was America ever great?
These lines were penned specially for Views
on News by a young, black streetside poet, Lynn
Gentry, who composes verses on demand within
minutes on an old Remington typewriter as he
remains seated behind a plastic desk on the cor-
ner of 7th Avenue and 3rd Street in Brooklyn’s
fashionable Park Slope. He did this for a $2 do-
nation after I requested him to address a poem
to India on the US Presidential election.
The last word, “great”, is loaded with mean-
ing. It alludes to Republican Presidential candi-
date Donald Trump’s main election slogan which
is now emblazoned across all billboards and
campaign posters: “Let’s make America Great
Again.” What does this mean? Is America some
pitiful, helpless giant?
Hardly. The US is projecting its geopolitical
strength across the globe. The economy, as
Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein says, “is
steady but tepid, and growing”. For the first time
since the Lehman Brothers crisis which almost
dragged the world’s most powerful nation and
economy into a depression, consumer spending
is rising and the job market has picked up with
10 million new jobs having been created under
President Barack Obama’s watch.
Usually, anti-establishment candidates, either
for real or posing, as does Trump, have a field
day when unemployment is high and banks and
markets are sinking and hopelessness casts its
shadow across the great Ame-rican prairie or the
nation’s bustling cities. But there is nothing like
that in the air. Yet, millions of Americans are
feeling un-great and underdog-ish. Blankfein,
talking recently to Fareed Zakaria, put it bril-
liantly: “The psychological sentiment is worse
than the economy.”
So this time, it’s not the economy, stupid! It’s
fear. Insecurity. Revanchism. “Great” in Trump’s
Lexicon stands for “white”. And male. America
is by no means non-white! In fact, the white,
non-Hispanic population makes up close to 63
percent of the total of 325 million. Hispanics and
Latinos comprise 17 percent (and rising), and
blacks about 13 percent, Asians a little over
five percent.
I have covered, when I lived and worked in
the US as a journalist for more than 20 years,
election campaigns and the Presidential regimes
of Nixon, Carter, Bush Sr. and several others. Is-
sues were well-defined. There was the usual heat
and dust. But at the end, there was a sameness
to them. This is the first time I do not get that
sense of déjà vu.
I will not bore you with statistics about this
race, or recall the three debates between Hillary
Clinton and Donald Trump. You can get them
on CNN, YouTube or Google them. Suffice it to
say that when you read this piece, a few days be-
fore the November results, Hillary is ahead in all
the polls, and that traditional “Red” (Republi-
can) states like Utah, Virginia, Ohio, Nort-
P
Trump has
vowed to pass
25 Executive
Orders
(which do
not need
immediate
Congress
sanction)
and—
mark these
words—
to “erase
the Obama
administra-
tion”.

Carolina, Colorado—also known as “swing
states”—are turning “Blue” (Democrat), chang-
ing the country’s electoral map and giving
Hillary a comfortable lead way over the 270-
mark needed to clinch the Presidential race. This
may well give the Democrats the necessary five-
seat win needed to control the Senate (34 seats
are simultaneously up for grabs in November).
It would be even more disastrous if Republi-
cans lost their majority in the House as well be-
cause many traditional white Republican voters
and party leaders—especially the young and col-
lege-educated—are deserting Trump. A com-
mentator on the popular Saturday Night Live
show quipped: “This would be the first time
Trump ever evicted white people from a build-
ing.” The reference was to Trump’s racist record
of preventing non-white Americans from rent-
ing apartments in his development complexes in
New York.
A
s noteworthy as a Hillary victory
would be, what I find significant is that
the psychology of the American people
seems also to have changed and that this
change—a retrograde social harbinger of social
upheaval to come—may outlast the result of this
election. That is why The New Yorker described
Trump as the most “dangerous jester let loose on
the American political stage”. The New York
Times said Trump has probably perpetrated
“lasting damage to the country, and politicians
from both parties should recoil from him and
his cynical example”.
The Washington Post cried out: “Never has a
Presidential candidate challenged the legitimacy
of the entire electoral enterprise in which he was
engaged. It is a dangerous man who lacks respect
for American institutions and American democ-
racy. On this central issue Trump has chosen to
prove Clinton right.”
In Washington D.C., I was recently in con-
versation with the celebrated American author
and Kennedy family biographer Laurence
Leamer who has just finished a rapidly selling
satire on Trump called The President’s Butler. He
wondered whether the media’s editorializing so
blatantly about Trump could backfire and pro-
duce a sympathy wave for him. “Why not just let
people see him for himself and let him self-de-
struct?” Larry asked.
Jack Mitchell, a former Senate staff director,
who was part of this conversation, said that
Trump’s candidacy had “shamed America’s
image on the world stage”.
I think both raise excellent points. But my
view is that the American press, for the most
part, while not doing Trump any favors, is cer-
tainly doing America a favor for boldly standing
up and proclaiming that what Trump stands for
is retrogressive and demeaning and militates
against the very idea of a progressive America.
Trump represents what Dr Deepak Chopra
calls the “dark forces” of America which always
Who are
these hard-
core support-
ers? They are
mostly white,
“middle
Americans”
who feel that
the Washing-
ton elites and
bankers have
rigged the
system
against them
to profit from
minority vote
banks....
Column
Inderjit Badhwar

bubble under the surface but are kept in check
by the power of light. This is indeed a
Manichaean view of American politics but it
holds good for this election.
J
orge Ramis, the Spanish head of Univision
TV, who was forcibly evicted from a Trump
press conference in a blatant show of
anti-Hispanic racism, calls this race a “plebiscite
on Trump”. It is once again America’s McCarthy
moment. Senator Joseph McCarthy was an in-
quisitorial witch-hunter with a cult following,
who virtually created a reign of terror between
1950 and 1954, condemning thousands of
Americans as Communists and “spies” and ru-
ining them.
This tyrant who threatened American
democracy like no other was brought down, ul-
timately, not by the electoral process but by brave
voices, among them Edward R Murrow of CBS
News, in the American press. Nixon would never
have been exposed had it not been for The Wash-
ington Post.
Ultimately, Trump is a cult leader rather than
a politician. That is why he ran his campaign,
not with the help of the Republican establish-
ment, which helped create him and now is trying
to back away from their Frankenstein, but with
his hardcore supporters.
Who are these hardcore supporters? They are
mostly white, “middle Americans” who feel that
the Washington elites and bankers have rigged
the system against them to profit from minority
vote banks, conspiratorial bankers (read Jews),
immigrants (mostly Latinos and Mexicans) who
are robbing them of their jobs, international
trade treaties which have destroyed American
manufacturing and appeasement of Muslims.
The rallying cry: “Make America Great (read
White) Again” is aimed especially at Obama.
Trump’s cult supporters, unmoved by all his vile
talk and pornographic behavior with women,
believe that it was an establishment conspiracy,
of which they are the victims, to elect America’s
first black President eight years ago. They
have never reconciled to Obama’s black Presi-
dency, and politically, though their voices were
heard through the ultra-right Tea Party move-
ment, Sarah Palin was not a leader who could
galvanize them.
Trump has finally empowered this group as
a force in national politics outside the fold of the
two parties. He has carefully cultivated the twin
evils of bigotry and misogyny and elevated them
to the political stage at a national level. The sub-
liminal message is, first they gave you a “nigger”
as President, and now they’re trying to thrust the
first woman. Don’t let them give you a double
whammy! (After all, women are nothing more
than objects powerful men have a right to “grab
by the p***y and kiss forcibly.)
This is not speculation. Wiping out the legacy
of the first Black Presidency (of which Hillary is
an integral part) is actually a campaign
Trump’s
supporters
may not be in
sufficient
numbers to
see him
through. But
they have
been empow-
ered and they
will still
be around
following
their Pied
Piper of
Grievance
Politics.

pledge. Trump has vowed to pass 25 Executive
Orders (which do not need immediate Congres-
sional sanction) and—mark these words—to
“erase the Obama administration”. (Read: wiping
out the legacy of the first non-white President
whom he accused of not having been born in the
US and faked his birth certificate, until he was
proven wrong.)
What does “wiping out” this legacy mean?
Among other things, withdrawing from the
Paris Climate Change agreement (Trump says
global warming is a hoax); suspending the Syr-
ian refugee program; withdrawing from NATO
and allowing Japan to arm itself with nukes; sup-
porting Putin’s moves in Syria; playing footsie
with North Korea; breaking the peace deal with
Iran; setting up a new deportation force to harass
non-white Americans; builing a wall all along
the Mexican border; appointing three new
Supreme Court judges who think like him so he
can dismantle Obama’s progressive legislation
such as universal healthcare and tax and labor
reforms, reverse previous rulings on abortion
rights for women and gun control and beat all
legal challenges in the Supreme Court.
The spectre of an unrepentant serial groper
as President (who has now threatened to sue all
the nine women who have publicly described
sexual assaults at his hands) may have turned the
tide of young, enlightened people and his own
party’s true conservatives against him, but they
have had zilch impact on his cult followers
(many of whom are members of the rabidly
white Ku Klux Klan), some of whom profess on
TV that if Hillary becomes President “we’ll take
out that b**** physically.”
This is only a natural corollary to what their
national hero has been saying. His is the first
Presidential campaign in history to proclaim
from the national stage that if he wins, he will
imprison his rival, and if he loses, he will not ac-
cept the verdict. In this context, he has appealed
to his followers to man all the polling booths, es-
pecially in minority voting areas.
Analysts see this as a calibrated tactic with
undercurrents of violence. His motive is to scare
minority voters away from the booths on polling
day because of a fear of violence, hoping that a
lower turnout may go in his favor.
Trump’s appeal has been through his crafting
Column
Inderjit Badhwar
The very idea
of American
nationhood is
based on the
inflow and
accommoda-
tion of immi-
grants and
refugees, civil
rights, the
supremacy of
the constitu-
tion and
equal rights
to opportu-
nity.

a cleverly disguised persona—that of a slumdog
billionaire; a poor country boy who made the
American dream come true for himself through
hard work. And now the same American rags-
to-riches possibility is being withheld from other
white Americans who have become the victims
of an Establishment conspiracy hatched by
blacks, Jews, liberal Democrats, uppity women,
gays and international bankers.
T
he truth is that Trump was born in the
lap of luxury in wealthy Long Island, a
suburb of New York, where his father
was a real estate magnate who gave Trump $14
million to start his own business. Trump’s modus
operandi was to borrow money from bankers
and partners, erect towers bearing his name (like
a franchise) and never pay back the borrowed
money. He would either declare bankruptcy or
take his creditors to court and spend millions of
dollars in lengthy litigation. A recent survey
showed Trump is currently embroiled in some
3,500 lawsuits going back to over a decade. And
after having admitted to being an income tax
dodger (“that’s smart”, he said during a recent
debate), he has also become the first Presidential
candidate to refuse to divulge his tax returns.
The fear among foreign diplomats is that
Trump is completely unpredictable, that as Chief
Executive he may easily run amok as he has
shown in his campaign. What he says about the
India-Pakistan equation today, he may change at
the drop of a hat tomorrow. American diplomats
are worried that he is making a fool of himself
internationally and that America is losing its
moral authority. Hillary’s charges that her inter-
nal campaign strategy emails were leaked to
Trump via WikiLeaks through Russian cyber-
hacks has for the first time in history raised the
frightening possibility of a “foreign hand” trying
to manipulate American domestic politics
through a gullible Presidential candidate.
There is little doubt that these factors—
crooked business practices, misogyny, xenopho-
bia, bigotry, disrespect for the constitution, con-
tempt for his own party leaders—may cause a
seismic shift away from the Republican Party.
The very idea of American nationhood is based
on the inflow and accommodation of immi-
grants and refugees, civil rights, the supremacy
of the constitution and equal rights to opportu-
nity. Without these precepts, American foreign
policy would be totally bankrupt and devoid of
moral credibility.
But Trump would have his supporters believe
that these are the very principles which have
dragged America down and destroyed their
dreams. They believe him and will continue to
do so after the elections. They may not be in suf-
ficient numbers. But they have been empowered
and they will still be around following their Pied
Piper of Grievance Politics.
Laurence Leamer,
celebrated American
author of the rapidly
selling satire on
Trump called The
President’s Butler,
said: “Why not just
let people see him for
himself and let him
self-destruct?”
Senator Joseph
McCarthy was an
inquisitorial witch-
hunter, with a cult
following, who created
a reign of terror from
1950 to 1954,
condemning thousands
of Americans as
Communists and “spies”.

Global Trends
US Elections
EB Bush, former Florida Governor,
who is the son and brother of two
former US presidents, will not be
voting for either Republican Don-
ald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton. When
reporters asked what would happen if everyone
followed his lead, he replied: “Well, if everyone
didn’t vote, it would be a pretty powerful state-
ment, wouldn’t it?” Jeb Bush was delivering the
annual Godkin Lecture hosted by Harvard Uni-
versity’s Kennedy School in collaboration with
Institute of Politics at JF Kennedy forum. The
event was co-moderated by Prof Paul E Petersen
and Prof Ronald G Fryer of Harvard University.
The talk was about “lack of social mobility in the
US and ways in which it can be addressed”.
Bush spoke passionately about the need for
educational reforms. Besides that, he showed his
preference for the “bottom up” approach as op-
posed to the “top down” one. “If you have to be
successful in the 21st century, be a bottom-up
country. Why don’t we empower people rather
than institutions around them?” He talked about
how people are “anxious and angry”. He also
talked about increasing opportunities, welfare
and educational reforms and conservative tax
policies and regulation cuts. He advocated crim-
inal justice reforms. He spoke about “how the
culture of civility needs to be restored”.
Bush was a candidate for the 2016 Republi-
can Party presidential nomination. He sus-
pended his campaign in February this year post
the South Carolina primaries. “I lost and it was
disappointing. I’m not going to change who I
am. I’m not going to be angry. I’m committed to
my views, but the idea that you are weak if you
are warm-hearted or someone who disagrees
with you is an evil person—we got to stop that.
That is dangerous for our democracy.”
“Trump only talks about things being rigged
when it’s not going well for him,” he said. In a
reply to a question, he said: “Trump’s idea of re-
peatedly emphasizing that things are bad—they
are bad—but not offering solutions to give peo-
ple hope, that is not a sustainable message either
and the other side is not much better.”
His speech received mixed reactions from the
crowd. “He has a good grasp of affairs and he is
honest,” said Kinga Tshering, a member of par-
liament from Bhutan, at present a student at Ha-
rvard Kennedy School. “ ‘Don’t vote for either’
seems to be a case of sour grapes… respect the
people’s decision,” said Bonnie, another student.
Meanwhile, the US presidential election has
witnessed an all-time low with the recent explo-
sive revelations about at least one of the two
presidential candidates. The state of affairs is
such that it raises doubts about the extent to
which democracy has matured in the oldest
democracy of the world. Do the two rival candi-
dates actually and truly represent the aspirations
of a nation to which the rest of the world has al-
ways looked with awe and admiration? They
don’t, if Jeb Bush is to be believed.
(The writer is a senior Indian journalist,
at present studying at Harvard University)
Jeb Bush,
former
Florida
Governor, has
decided not to
vote in the
November
election
BY TANU PATNI
A Powerful Statement if None Votes
J

Media Monitoring
BARC Report
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In these painstakingly prepared rosters, APN,
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India Legal, APN Campus Life,Courts’ Round-Up,
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News, APN Uttarakhand and APN Prime.
APN has been rated India’s Most Trusted
News Channel Brand by the TMM Trust Brand
Report and has been recognized for its analytical
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So what are you waiting for? Press 542 on the
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Or use any of the other options in the photograph
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Three Cheers for Apna APN
GOING PLACES
The APN newsroom
breaks new ground
every dayI
It tops regional channels in six states, offering all-round
complete coverage of daily news

Interview
Naela Quadri Baloch
What are your expectations from India?
Narendra Modi’s government is a strong
government. In a democratic setup like
yours, political parties might be in a
competitive mode. But when it is a mat-
ter of national interest, all political par-
ties will support Modi. The Indian public
supports us, but we want the govern-
ment’s support too.
What makes you hopeful that Narendra
Modi will support you? Have you
been in talks? Or is this a
sudden development?
It’s not sudden. We have worked hard for
this. I, along with other leaders, have
been lobbying. I have visited India sev-
eral times during the past four years. It’s
not just one person’s effort that’s now
bearing results. Balochs are active glob-
ally—be it the US, the UN or Europe.
However, there is a long struggle behind
the big success in India. In the past, I
have given numerous presentations to
Indian think tanks and answered some
very technical questions.
Have you met Sangh leaders? As you
want India’s support, you may have met
various organizations, representatives
and communities.
Yes, I did meet the Sangh and got a lot of
affection from them. RSS leader Indresh
Kumar gifted me Shivaji’s sword and
chadar. Gifting the chadar is a mark of
honor and respect among Balochs. I also
met leaders of the Muslim Rashtriya
Manch. There have also been construc-
tive talks with the Muslim community.
What are the concerns raised by the
Indian think tanks?
One major apprehension was that if
Balochistan gets independence, Pakistan
will become a pain in the neck for India.
My simple reply to this was: the entire
mess was created by you—by Nehru and
Jinnah—and you handle it.
However, that’s one way of looking at
things. The other answer is, none of the
nationalities wants to remain in Pakistan:
Balochs, Sindhis, Saraikis and Pakhtoons,
all want independence. If they get that,
Pakistan will be put in its place.
“Modi is a Hero
of All Oppressed
Nations”Despite escalating tension between India and Pakistan following the militant attack
on the Uri army base and India’s surgical strike on terrorist hideouts across the LoC,
there are voices of praise for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Pakistan
policy from across the border. Activists from Balochistan, a region which has
witnessed large-scale human rights violations at the hands of the Pakistan establish-
ment, have thanked Modi for his support to the Baloch community and its
freedom struggle. A leading voice of the Baloch movement, NAELA QUADRI BALOCH,
spoke exclusively to APN Editor-in-Chief RAJSHRI RAI. Excerpts:

It’s not so easy. The Indian government
would like to support Balochistan but
China, Pakistan and Iran are on the
verge of an alliance. Don’t you think
this should be a worry for India?
India need not worry. In the face of pre-
vious sanctions, Iran’s currency had
fallen so much that even food commodi-
ties became very expensive. At that time,
it was India which pulled Iran out of the
crisis by investing in Chabahar Port. Iran
can’t afford to harm its relations with
India. Given a choice between India and
China, Iran would choose India.
Second, the Chinese economy de-
pends on the international market for its
goods. If India were to stop importing
Chinese goods, in fact, if all the nations
who want riddance from Pakistan-based
terrorism were to stop buying Chinese
goods, China would learn its lesson
within a week.
What are your expectations
from India?
We don’t want to impose any conditions.
Let India support in whichever way it
can, as long as it is in our interests as well
as India’s interests. A government-in-
exile would be a platform to bring the
Baloch diaspora of 40 million together.
Our people are scattered. They either
have refugee status and can’t travel or
have Pakistani passports and Indian
authorities reject their visa re-
quests. One of our demands is
that India treat a Baloch as a
Baloch when he approaches
for a visa.
“My message for Indian Muslims is: connect
with the soil of India. You were born here.... If
your heart is elsewhere, it’s a dual life you are
leading.... Pakistan will exploit the situation.”

Views On News 07 November 2016

Views On News 07 November 2016

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