FarmVille on Facebook

Posted: October 25, 2009 in social issues
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I see almost every one playing FarmVille on Facebook at my office. I have seen them rejoicing over sowing, ploughing, buying seeds, buying cows, horses, constructing a house, what not, almost everything. People who do not even know anything about agriculture and farming also indulge in this game, a game which is addictive in the non-existent world in which all these players live in happily. They talk and discuss about the progress of farming with friends.farmFarmVille is a real-time farm simulation game developed by Zynga, available as an application on the social networking website Facebook. The game allows members of Facebook to manage a virtual farm by planting, growing and harvesting virtual crops, trees, and livestock. Since its launch in June 2009, FarmVille has become the most popular game application on Facebook. And why not, when everybody is hooked to their computers even in offices to play the game?! They stay back till late night only because they are playing it.

These are the same people who look down upon agriculture and farmers in the real world, but cultivate a filed in the non-existent world. Neither do they understand the risk or pain undergone by farmers. These are the same people who do not even have respect for the labour of farmers or for the food grains they produce. I have seen many of these people wasting food in functions and showing disrespect to farmers. They don’t understand  how many sleepless night a farmer spends to give them that food. His sweat of 8-10 months goes down the drain in few minutes. They don’t even see people who starve without food when they waste food on their plates.

Sometimes I wonder why don’t these people go and do some farming in real life? Why do they waste their time like this? Why do they fake things like this and forget reality?

I found some strange stories about Nobel laureates.

1. Robert Lucas is winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in economics for his work on the theory of “rational expectations,” split his $1 million prize with his ex-wife.

Robert Lucas

Robert Lucas

If there were a Nobel Prize for Foresight or Timing, she should be nominated, based on a clause in their divorce settlement from seven years earlier: “Wife shall receive 50 per cent of any Nobel Prize.” The clause expired on October 31, 1995. Had Lucas won any year after, he would have kept the whole million.

2. Physicist Lise Meitner, whose work helped lead to the discovery of nuclear fission, was reportedly nominated for the Nobel Prize 13 times without ever winning (though nominations are kept secret, so we don’t know for sure).

Lise Meitner

Lise Meitner

This makes her the Dynasty of the Nobel Prize scene — that show was nominated for 24 Emmy Awards but never won. Other analogies we’d accept: The Color Purple (11 Oscar nominations in 1985, no wins), the Buffalo Bills or Minnesota Vikings (4 Super Bowl losses each without a victory) and William Jennings Bryan (three-time Democratic nominee for President, losing twice to McKinley and once to Taft.)

3. People who refused the Nobel Prize:

(i) Le Duc Tho was awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize with Henry Kissinger for their roles in brokering a Vietnam cease fire at the Paris Peace Accords.

Le Duc Tho

Le Duc Tho

 Le Duc Tho with Henry Kissinger

Le Duc Tho with Henry Kissinger

Citing the absence of actual peace in Vietnam, Tho declined to accept.

(ii) Jean Paul Sartre waved off the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Jean Paul Sartre

Jean Paul Sartre

His explanation: “It is not the same thing if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre or if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre, Nobel Prize winner. A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution, even if it takes place in the most honorable form.”

(iii) Afraid of Soviet retribution if he travelled to Stockholm to claim his prize, Boris Pasternak declined to accept the 1958 Prize in Literature, which he’d earned for Doctor Zhivago.

Boris Pasternak

Boris Pasternak

The Academy refused his refusal. “This refusal, of course, in no way alters the validity of the award. There remains only for the Academy, however, to announce with regret that the presentation of the Prize cannot take place.” Yevgeny Pasternak accepted the prize on behalf of his deceased father in 1989.

(iv) Swedish poet Erik Axel Karlfeldt won Nobel for Literature in 1918.

Erik Axel Karlfeldt

Erik Axel Karlfeldt

He did not accept because he was secretary of the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize. He was given the award posthumously in 1931. This was allowed because the nomination was made before Karlfeldt died — no candidate may be proposed after death.

4. In 2007, 90-year-old professor Leonid Hurwicz became the oldest person to ever win (one-third of the Prize in Economics); at 87,

Leonid Hurwiczwriter Doris Lessing became the oldest woman (Literature).

 Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing

5. DNA expert Kary Mullis — 1993 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry — was scheduled to be a defense witness in O.J. Simpson’s murder trial.

Kary Mullis

Kary Mullis

However, Simpson’s lawyer Barry Scheck felt the prosecution’s DNA case was already essentially destroyed, and he didn’t want Mullis’ personal life to distract jurors (he’d expressed an affinity for LSD.)

6. Big names who never won:

Dmitri Mendeleev, Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Mark Twain, Gertrude Stein, Henrik Ibsen, Joan Robinson, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Jules-Henri Poincaré, Raymond Damadian and Mahatma Gandhi.

Dmitri Mendeleev

Dmitri Mendeleev

Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein

Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen

James Joyce

James Joyce

Joan Robinson

Joan Robinson

 Jules-Henri Poincaré

Jules-Henri Poincaré

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi

Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust

Mark Twain

Mark Twain

Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla

Raymond Damadian

Raymond Damadian

Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf

7. Winners without the greatest reputations:

(i) Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, who won in 1976 for his research in human slow-virus infections, spent 19 months in jail after pleading guilty in 1997 to charges of child molestation.

Daniel Carleton Gajdusek

Daniel Carleton Gajdusek

(ii) Johannes Fibiger won in 1926 after discovering parasitic worms cause cancer — a breakthrough that turned out to not be true.

Johannes Fibiger

Johannes Fibiger

(iii) Yasser Arafat shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin.

Yasser Arafat

Yasser Arafat

Shimon Peres

Shimon Peres

This decision caused Nobel Committee member Kare Kristiansen to resign.

Yitzhak Rabin

Yitzhak Rabin

“What consequences will result,” he asked at the time, “when a terrorist with such a background is awarded the world’s most prestigious prize?”

(iv) William Shockley won for Physics in 1956 for his role in the invention of the semiconductor, but his support of the eugenics movement alienated the scientific community.

William Shockley

William Shockley

Shockley also donated sperm to the Repository for Germinal Choice, a sperm bank developed to spread humanity’s best genes.

8. As part of his divorce settlement, Einstein’s Nobel Prize money went to his ex-wife, Mileva Maric.

Mileva Maric with einstein

Mileva Maric with einstein

9. The Curie family is a Nobel Prize machine, winning five: Pierre and Marie for Physics in 1901;

Pierre Curie with Marie

Pierre Curie with Marie

Marie solo for Chemistry in 1911; daughter Irene and her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie for Chemistry in 1935;

Frédéric Joliot with Irene Curie

Frédéric Joliot with Irene Curie

and Henry Labouisse — Irene’s daughter Eve’s second husband — accepted on behalf of UNICEF in 1965. No family has won more.

Henry Labouisse (left)

Henry Labouisse (left)

10. Marie Curie’s second prize was marred by a scandal. Then a widow, Curie had an affair with a married scientist, Paul Langevin — a former pupil of Pierre Curie.

 Paul Langevin

Paul Langevin

Love letters were involved, eventually leading to a duel between Langevin and the editor of the newspaper that had printed them (no shots were actually fired.) According to NobelPrize.org, when it was suggested that Curie not accept the prize, she wrote a shrewd letter, “which pointed out that she had been awarded the Prize for her discovery of radium and polonium, and that she could not accept the principle that appreciation of the value of scientific work should be influenced by slander concerning a researcher’s private life.”

11. Singing support — While there’s no evidence the Nobel judges can be swayed by theme songs, that hasn’t stopped Loriana Lana from composing one for Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

 Loriana Lana

Loriana Lana

“Peace Can” includes the lyrics, “Silvio forever will be / Silvio is reality / Silvio forever! /Silvio gives us trust.”

12. Alfred Nobel — inventor of dynamite — may have been inspired to create the Nobel Prize after a premature obituary in a French newspaper called him a “merchant of death.”

Alfred Nobel

Alfred Nobel

13. Nobel died on December 10, 1896. The formal awards ceremony is held in Stockholm each year on the anniversary of his death. The first awards show took place on December 10, 1901.

Pics courtesy: Google

I wondered when I came to know that US President Barack Obama has won Nobel Prize for Peace. I wonder if the award is more about the promise of change than actual change.

“I am the commander-in-chief of a country that’s responsible for ending a war and working in another theater to confront a ruthless adversary that directly threatens the American people and our allies,” Obama, the fourth US President to win the Nobel, said.

Will the award create more jobs in the US? Will it fetch Republican votes on Capitol Hill for Obama’s health care push? Will he accept the prize or give it back until he has achieved real world peace? After all, any award is meant for accomplishments and not for intentions.

Ironically, the award was announced on the same day that Obama met with his war council yet again to consider sending up to 40,000 more US troops to Afghanistan. Not, only that, how can people forget the US (NASA)’s attempt to crash a probe into the lunar surface a few hours after Obama’s win? It is nothing but a prize for a promise.

On the contrast, Greg Mortenson, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, whom the bookies gave 20-to-1 odds of winning! Son of a missionary, a former Army medic and mountaineer, Mortenson has made it his mission to build schools for girls in places where opium dealers and tribal warlords kill people for trying. His Central Asia Institute has built over 130 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan. His mission has inspired millions of people to view the protection and education of girls as a key to peace and prosperity and progress.

The prize may give Obama more power to haul unruly nations. But peacemaking is more about ingenuity than inspiration, about reading other nations’ selfish interests and strategically exploiting them for the common good.

Around 35 people, including eight children and six women, drowned when a boat carrying 76 tourists sank in the catchment area of the Mullaperiyar river in Kerala around 5.15 pm on Wednesday, around 12 km away from the landing in the artificial lake near Thekkady.

The lake is known for tree stumps that dot waters, some of them submerged, making boat navigation the exclusive domain of experienced boat drivers. None of the passengers on board was known to be wearing a life jacket.

The tragedy of the boat ‘Jalakanyaka’, belonging to the Kerala Tourism Development Corporationm, once again throws light on the need of implementing safety standards for tourism services in general and for boat cruises in particular.

This is not the first time such a tragedy has occurred in Kerala. In February 2007, 15 schoolchildren and three teachers of St Antony’s Upper Primary School, Elavoor, drowned when their cruise boat capsized at the Thattekkad bird sanctuary. The accident had happened around sunset. As was the case in Thekkady, none was wearing a life jacket.

Then owner-cum-driver of the boat P.M. Raju had been awarded a sentence of five years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 1.5 lakh for being guilty of rash navigation of vessel and culpable homicide not amounting to murder. The sentence was later suspended on an appeal.

In 2002, 29 people drowned in Kumarakom and the victims were local commuters and not tourists.

The boat might have toppled because the centre of gravity of the boat was higher. The problem could have been accentuated by the passengers moving to one side of a boat with a second deck. I wonder, why tourists were not provided with life jackets? Why were they not asked to sit instead of standing and rushing to the upper deck of the boat?

The Kerala police department has opened helpline numbers in Thiruvananthapuram, Kumali and Thekkady.
Thiruvananthapuram: 0471 2331403,  0471 2331639
Kumali: 04869 222111,  04869 222620
Thekkady: 04896 222620,   9446052361
Toll free number: 170

Whenever I watch Tom and Jerry, Iwonder how the tiny rat could outsmart the big cat. Then I console myself thinking that it is just a cartoon meant to entertain kids. But today when I came across a report which dubbed a field mouse as the bravest m,ouse in Britain, I was little surprised.

A field mouse was able to fend off a cat from its natural habitat by standing up to it outside its nest. It made itself as big as possible to the cat after it ventured too near to its nest in Swavesey, Cambs.

Instead of running for its life, the mouse squared up to its larger opponent and stood his ground. Eventually, the cat got bored and turned away, before the mouse went back into its home.

Field mouse scares off its predator

Field mouse scares off its predator

“It was incredible, the little mouse stood up and seemed to be roaring at the cat,” said Wendy Rothwell, 45, who spotted the encounter in her back garden.  “The cat was much bigger than him and could have killed him at any moment but he didn’t seem to care. He seemed to be prepared to do anything to protect his home. He must be the bravest field mouse in the country.”

Pic courtesy: Google

I have seen many of my colleagues playing virtual games on computer. I simply laugh at them for wasting time (I think so) in playing games hooked to their computers at the office. But on the other round, they consider me a fool for not playing games like them! But whatever be it, it can turn out be fatal for our health and relationships.

A report today said that a man in Germany stabbed his wife to death after she fell in love with another man in the virtual world of computer gaming.

Vladimir Gruener knifed his wife Nadja 17 times in the face, breast, legs and three times in the heart. He killed her after she got romantically involved with a dragon slayer in the fantasy game Rappelz and told her husband: “I don’t love you anymore.”

Gruener, 48, said that he stabbed his wife because he had lost her to “endless hours of computer gaming”.

“Everything went well between us until January, when she began sitting in front of the computer, sometimes up to 16 hours per day,” he told the court in Bonn, Germany.

“I don’t know what she was playing. There was shooting and then people were being captured. At night I would set the alarm for 2 am and then go to the computer in the children’s room. She was there. I told her ‘You can’t do this’. She replied: ‘I don’t love you anymore. Something is missing’. That finished me,” he added.

Their son, aged 12, and three-year-old daughter were in the apartment in Bonn at the time of the murder on March 14.

He told the court: “I drank vodka, I’m not sure exactly — she said something — I’m not sure what, I had a knife in my hand, then she fell down. I can’t explain the state I was in exactly.”

I feel that the Shahrukh Khan issue is blown out of proportion. One should admire the steps taken up by US airport to safeguard its country. Think of  doing the same in India! It is almost impossible to do so here. Here people want to show their superiority by disrespecting laws. Everybody is eager to show that they are above law and are VVIPs.

Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan was detained at Newark airport in New Jersey and questioned for over two hours after his surname came up on an airport alert list on Saturday. The actor was on his way to Chicago to attend an Independence Day event and, ironically, was in the US to promote his new film, My Name is Khan.

Later, SRK said: “I was really hassled by the authorities at the airport because of my surname. They wanted to know why I came to the US and where I was staying,” he said.What is wrong in doing routine security check-ups? The detention of SRK was for security purpose and is not a big deal. No 9/11-like incident occurred in the US because of strict vigil and I believe it is a good thing for any country to observe laws strictly.

There should never be any compromise when it comes to security. This is not the first time that an Indian film icon or a VIP was detained at an airport in the US and subjected to severe checks.

Mr George Fernandes, then defence minister, was made to remove his shirt and shoes at Washington’s airport on an official visit. Even former president of India APJ Abdul Kalam was frisked by Continental Airlines officials at New Delhi’s IGI Airport.

In April, Malayalam actor Mammootty was similarly separated for questioning  by security officials at JFK Airport in New York for more than two hours after his name popped up on the computer screen at the immigration counter. Mammootty, whose full name is Muhammadkutty Ismail Paniparambil, arrived at the airport by a British Airways flight and was taken to a separate room for interrogation on his purpose of visit to the US and other details. He was allowed to leave the airport after the Indian consulate contacted authorities and explained he is a popular actor in South India and has visited the US many times in the past.

Not just Muslims or Asians, the cops had not even spared Rock legend Bob Dylan, who was detained by police in Long Branch, New Jersey. Police officer Kristie Buble did not believe him when he Dylan told her his name, so she asked him for identification. When Dylan said he did not have any identification with him, she detained him and took him to the site where he claimed the tour buses were located.

Union I&B minister Ambika Soni’s remark looks very irresponsible. India should adopt similar stringent security measures not as a tit-for-tat to teach a lesson to Americans, but to safeguard the country.

Will all this brouhaha really change the racial profiling in the US. May be all this would have not blown out of the proportion if the officer had told SRK: “Oh, I’m sorry sir. I didn’t know that you are a superstar in India!”

I feel that the whole episode reaffirms the idolatry of VIP status in India. If a person is a politician or a movie star, why should he or she be exempted from security checks? Why shouldn’t they be detained? Why should VVIPS of our country just co-operate with authorities when it comes to security measures? They shouldn’t expect everybody to know their status and position. It’s true that film stars reach a wide audience, but should not think everybody knows about them. These VVIPs should visit any of our villages to know if people really know about them. They can’t recognise several film stars or politicians. If Angelina Joile and Brad Pitt are well known faces abroad, it need not be the same here. Not may will recognise them if they come to India. Likewise, there’s no big deal if people can’t recognise our film stars there.

Our VVIPs should learn to obey the rules and laws of other countries when on visit and stop crying fr such incidents. They need to follow the motto: Be a Roman when you are in Rome.

I have seen my Muslim colleagues, not just men even women, drinking and smoking. I feel they are very lucky to be in a country like India, where their actions invite no public wrath unlike Muslim countries. And for a moment, I was shocked to learn that a Malysian Muslim has been ordered for a caning sentence for drinking alcohol in public place. She was sentenced to six strokes of the cane and a fine after getting caught by Islamic enforcement officials drinking beer at a hotel lounge two years ago. She was first arrested in 2007 for drinking a beer in a hotel nightclub and was tried in a sharia court.

Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, a 32-year-old mother of two, in Malaysia received a temporary reprieve on Monday. Her punishment has been pushed further and will not be carried out in the fasting month of Ramadan. She has also paid a fine of 5,000 ringgit ($1,420) for drinking.

If punished, she will be the first woman in the Southeast Asian country to be caned under rarely enforced Islamic criminal laws. Like a true Muslim woman, instead of appealing for the sentence, Kartika had asked that she be punished in public. She wants others to learn a lesson from her experience!

Kartika’s case has divided Muslims in Malaysia, where Malay-Muslims constitute 55 per cent of the population, with conservatives coming out in support of the punishment.

Time and again the Shariah courts want to show their power and this time, by imposing a punishment on a woman. Politicians of course will not like to upset conservative Malay-Muslims, for the fear of drawing their ire and losing vote base.

This is not the first time a Muslim woman was caught drinking in public. Shariah judges have meted out the maximum sentence for drinking alcohol to a woman on one previous occasion also. The first offender, waitress Noorazah Baharuddin, 22, was sentenced in January for consuming liquor in a pub in Pahang in 2008. She has appealed and the case is reportedly pending.

Three men who were previously convicted for drinking alcohol and were sentenced to be caned are also reportedly waiting for their appeals to be heard.

One of my Muslim friends told me that according to Islamic principles, caning will be conducted with a small, thin stick and cannot be administered on the head, face, stomach, chest or genitals.

Under Malaysian government’s civil criminal system, men can be caned for serious offences such as rape. These punishments are administered using a thicker cane and applied to the bare buttocks of the offender, who is bound to a frame.

Not just Arab countries, even Singapore also allows caning for serious offences like rape and drug trafficking. In 1994, US teenager Michael Fay received four strokes of cane in a Singapore prison after being convicted of vandalism.

In Indonesia, caning is not part of the criminal legal system though it is used in Aceh province, which has introduced a form of Shariah law since getting autonomy in 2005.

Caning is nothing new in Arab countries and several people have been caned in Aceh, the so-called Veranda of Mecca, in Indonesia, for crimes like drinking or selling alcohol, having sexual relations outside marriage and gambling.

The blue book in Aceh lists the crimes and the punishment, including: Not going to the mosque for Friday prayers on three occasions: Six months’ jail or three strokes of the cane;
Eating and drinking in public during the fasting month: Four months’ jail or two strokes of the cane; Consuming alcohol: 40 strokes of the cane; Committing an immoral act such as sex outside marriage: Maximum nine strokes of the cane and minimum three strokes and/or a fine.

I even heard that Aceh was even thinking of implementing more feared punishments of stoning or the lopping-off of hands and even proposals to go one step further, to allow the tips of fingers to be cut off for the crime of stealing.

Being an outsider, I disagree with caning as a punishment and feel Sharia law has gone too far. It is very sad to see a person being caned in public. How can one imagine a person in tears when being caned because of shame?

In India, there was this amusing incident, where women of Dharampur caught men drunk, wrapped skirts around them, paraded them through the village and forced them to pay a fine of Rs 100 in 1993. Scores of women had also broke through a police line in 1992 and knocked down a new liquor store with pick-axes and shovels.  A similar pressure in Andhra Pradesh led the government in 1993 to agree to close up to 6,000 stores that sold arrack.

If authorities or the clerics really want to do something against drinking alcohol, why can’t they ask the government to ban it completely instead of only detaining Muslims who consume alcohol in public places? By banning alcohol, they will not only save people, especially Muslims, from committing a big sin according to their Muslim laws, but also save many families from being ruined due to the addiction. I seriously feel instead of caning and torturing physically, they should give them counselling.

I expected this to happen. The controversial book at last made the BJP to expel veteran leader Jaswant Singh from the party membership. Not just the membership, the 71-year-old leader, who has held the portfolios of finance, defence and external affairs in BJP-led governments, has also been stripped of all the party posts, thanks to the praises on Jinnah in his new book — Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence.

Without even reading the book, how can the party come to a conclusion that Singh has done something wrong? A writer has full freedom to express his views and many have even done so. And this is not the first time Singh’s writings have created controversy. In his previous book A Call to Honour: In Service of Emergent India in 2006, he alleged that there was a mole in the prime minister’s office in the 90s during the tenure of P.V. Narasimha Rao, who leaked information to American sources.

Party president Rajnath Singh informed the leader, who arrived in Shimla Tuesday afternoon for the three-day ‘chintan baithak’ (introspection session) of the party, Wednesday morning not to attend the baithak.

The former Union minister has not only earned the ire of party leaders for his book, but also majority of countrymen who think very conventionally about Jinnah and Pakistan.

If thought practically, what’s wrong in eulogising Jinnah? Jaswant Singh has done a five years of research and has come out with the book. It might be true that Jinnah was ‘demonised’ by India, while it was actually India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru whose belief in a centralised polity had led to the partition of the subcontinent.

Jaswant Singh has been a member of the BJP since it was formed in 1980. It is very unfortunate that the party put an end to his 30 years of service just because he wrote a book. Instead of calling him and informing about the expulsion, the party president could have gone in person and informed him. Else, he could have asked Singh to step down from the party.

It is ironic that India Today magazine had portrayed Jaswant Singh as Hanuman and the BJP considered him as Ravana! It is really sad that taking a non-conventional view on Jinnah and writing a book on him can destroy a veteran’s political career.

He’s not the only person being targetted like this for his views. There have been several writers facing such expulsion and humiliation for making their views and opinions public across the world.

Time and again political parties have showed their true colours and bared their enemosity towards muslims in general and Pakistan in specific. Why are we so paranoid and consider every Pakistani as an enemy? We are not ready to accept the fact even Ravan had some good qualities. Expressing views regarding any individual is his/her personal opinion. You go with it or not is your choice. If Jinnah has good points, why not accept them? Why not congrtulate Jaswant Singh for being true to his conscience?

I always thought the BJP has several men with good academics and who have been allowed to air their views openly compared to other parties. I often admired the integrity of the top few leaders in the party since my school days. But the action of expelling Jaswant Singh for merely writing a book and airing his views, which may not be historically wrong, makes me feel very bad. I still wonder how can a person who cannot even win an election on his own is a president of BJP and can easily expel a veteran like Jaswant who has many more commendable deeds to his credit.

Democracy without dissent will be very dangerous for the country as it will stifle genuine and frank opinions, which may not always be palatable to the majority, be it in the BJP, Congress or any other party. It is a question of the mindset. Parties should have an open mindset to welcome a dissent or a different opinion from members. Parties should help members to express their contrarian views without any fear.

A TV channel aired the interview with Jaswant Singh, discussing the book. Here’s the excerpts:

Jaswant Singh

Jaswant Singh

Q: Mr Jaswant Singh, let’s start by establishing how you as the author view Mohammed Ali Jinnah? After reading your book, I get the feeling that you don’t subscribe to the popular demonisation of the man.
JS:
Of course, I don’t. To that I don’t subscribe. I was attracted by the personality which has resulted in a book. If I wasn’t drawn to the personality, I wouldn’t have written the book. It’s an intricate, complex personality of great character, determination.

Q: And it’s a personality that you found quite attractive?
JS:
Naturally, otherwise, I wouldn’t have ventured down the book. I found the personality sufficiently attractive to go and research it for five years. And I was drawn to it, yes.

Q: As a politician, Jinnah joined the Congress party long before he joined the Muslim League and in fact when he joined the Muslim League, he issued a statement to say that this in no way implies “even the shadow of disloyalty to the national cause”.Would you say that in the 20s and 30s and may be even the early years of the 40s, Jinnah was a nationalist?
JS:
Actually speaking the acme of his nationalistic achievement was the 1916 Lucknow Pact of Hindu-Muslim unity and that’s why Gopal Krishna Gokhale called him the Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity.

Q: In your assessment as his biographer, for most if not the predominant part of his life, Jinnah was a nationalist.
JS:
Oh, yes. He fought the British for an independent India but he also fought resolutely and relentlessly for the interest of the Muslims of India.

Q: Was Jinnah secular or was he communal?
JS:
It depends on the way you view the word ‘secular’ because I don’t know whether secular is really fully applicable to a country like India. It’s a word borne of the socio-historical and religious history of Western Europe.

Q: Let me put it like this. Many people believe that Jinnah hated Hindus and that he was a Hindu basher.
JS:
Wrong, totally wrong. That certainly he was not. His principal disagreement was with the Congress party. Repeatedly he says and he says this even in his last statements to the press and to the constituent Assembly of Pakistan.

Q: So his problem was with Congress and with some Congress leaders but he had no problem with Hindus.
JS:
No, he had no problems whatsoever with the Hindus. Because he was not in that sense, until in the later part of his years, he became exactly what he charged Mahatma Gandhi with. He had charged Mahatma Gandhi of being a demagogue.

Q: He became one as well?
JS:
That was the most flattering way of emulating Gandhi. I refer of course to the Calcutta killings.

Q: As you look back on Jinnah’s life, would you say that he was a great man?
JS:
Oh yes, because he created something out of nothing and single-handedly he stood up against the might of the Congress party and against the British who didn’t really like him.

Q: So you are saying to me he was a great man?
JS:
But I am saying so.

Q:Let me put it like this. Do you admire Jinnah?
JS:
I admire certain aspects of his personality: his determination and the will to rise. He was a self-made man — Mahatma Gandhi was a son of a Dewan.

Q: Nehru was born to great wealth.
JS:
All of them were born to wealth and position, Jinnah created for himself a position. He carved out in Bombay a position in that cosmopolitan city being what he was, poor. He was so poor he had to walk to work. He lived in a hotel called Watsons in Bombay and he told one of the biographers that there’s always room at the top but there is no lift and he never sought a lift.

Q: Do you admire the way he created success for himself, born to poverty but he ended up successful, rich?
JS:
I would admire that in any man, self-made man, who resolutely worked towards achieving what he had set out to.

Q: How seriously has India misunderstood Jinnah?
JS:
I think we misunderstood because we needed to create a demon.

Q: We needed a demon and he was the convenient scapegoat?
JS:
I don’t know if he was convenient. We needed a demon because in the 20th century the most telling event in the entire subcontinent was the partition of the country.

Q: I’ll come to that in a moment but first the critical question that your book raises is that how is it that the man, considered as the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity in 1916 had transformed 30 years later by 1947 into the ‘Qaid-e-Azam’ of Pakistan? And your book suggests that underlying this was Congres’ repeated inability to accept that Muslims feared domination by Hindus and that they wanted “space” in “a reassuring system”.
JS:
Here is the central contest between minoritism and majoritarianism. With the loss of the Mughal empire, the Muslims of India had lost power but majoritarianism didn’t begin to influence them until 1947. Then they saw that unless they had a voice in their own political, economical and social destiny, they would be obliterated. That is the beginning. That is still the purpose.

Q: Let me ask you this. Was Jinnah’s fear or anxiety about Congress majoritarianism justified or understandable? Your book in its account of how Congress refused to form a government with the League in UP in 1937 after fighting the elections in alliance with that party, suggests that Jinnah’s fears were substantial and real.
JS:
Yes. You have to go not just to 1937, which you just cited. See other examples. In the 1946 elections, Jinnah’s Muslim League wins all the Muslim seats and yet they do not have sufficient number to be in office because the Congress party has, even without a single Muslim, enough to form a government and they are outside of the government. So it was realised that simply contesting election was not enough.

Q: They needed certain assurances within the system to give them that space?
JS:
That’s right. And those assurances amounted to reservation, which I dispute frankly. Reservations went from 25 per cent to 33 per cent. And then from reservation that became parity, of being on equal terms. Parity to Partition.

Q: All of this was search for space?
JS:
All of this was a search for some kind of autonomy of decision making in their own social and economic destiny.

Q: Your book reveals how people like Gandhi, Rajagopalachari and Azad could understand the Jinnah or the Muslim fear of Congress majoritarianism but Nehru simply couldn’t understand. Was Nehru insensitive to this?
JS:
No, he wasn’t. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was a deeply sensitive man.

Q: But why couldn’t he understand?
JS:
He was deeply influenced by Western and European socialist thought of those days. For example dominion status would have given virtual independence to India in the 20s (but Nehru shot it down).

Q: In other words, Nehru’s political thinking and his commitment to Western socialist thought meant that he couldn’t understand Jinnah’s concerns about majoritarianism? Nehru was a centralist, Jinnah was a decentraliser?
JS:
That’s right. That is exactly (the point). Nehru believed in a highly centralised polity. That’s what he wanted India to be. Jinnah wanted a federal polity.

Q: Because that would give Muslims the space?
JS:
That even Gandhi also accepted.

Q: But Nehru couldn’t.
JS:
Nehru didn’t.

Q: He refused to?
JS:
Well, consistently, he stood in the way of a federal India until 1947 when it became a partitioned India.

Q: In fact, the conclusion of your book is that if Congress could have accepted a decentralised federal India, then a united India, as you put it, “was clearly ours to attain”. You add that the problem was that this was in “an anathema to Nehru’s centralising approach and policies”. Do you see Nehru at least as responsible for Partition as Jinnah?
JS:
I think he says it himself. He recognised it and his correspondence, for example with late Nawab Sahab of Bhopal, his official biographer and others. His letters to the late Nawab Sahab of Bhopal are very moving letters.

Q: You are saying Nehru recognised that he was as much of an obstacle.
JS:
No, he recognised his mistakes afterwards.

Q: Afterwards?
JS:
Afterwards.

Q: Today, Nehru’s heirs and party will find it very surprising that you think that Nehru was as responsible for Partition as Jinnah.
JS:
I am not blaming anybody. I’m not assigning blame. I am simply recording what I have found as the development of issues and events of that period.

Q: When Indians turn around and say that Jinnah was, to use a colloquialism, the villain of Partition, your answer is that there were many people responsible and to single out Jinnah, as the only person or as the principal person, is both factually wrong and unfair?
JS:
It is. It is not borne out of events. Go to the last All India Congress Committee meeting in Delhi in the June of 1947 to discuss and accept the June 3, 1947 resolution. Nehru-Patel’s resolution was defeated by the Congress, supported by Gandhi in the defeat. Ram Manohar Lohia had moved the amendment. It was a very moving intervention by Ram Manohar Lohia and then Gandhi finally said we must accept this Partition. Partition is a very painful event. It is very easy to assign blame but very difficult thereafter. Because all events that we are judging are ex post facto.

Q: Absolutely, and what your book does is to shed light in terms of a new assessment of Partition and the responsibility of the different players. And in that re-assessment, you have balanced differently between Jinnah and Nehru?
JS:
All vision which is ex post facto is 20/20. It is when you actually live the event.

Q: Quite right. Those who have lived it would have seen it differently but today, with the benefit of hindsight, you can say that Jinnah wasn’t the only or the principal villain and the Indian impression that he was is mistaken and wrong?
JS:
And we need to correct it.

Q: Let’s turn to Jinnah and Pakistan. Your book shows that right through the 20s and the 30s, or may be even the early years of the 40s, Pakistan for Jinnah was more of a political strategy, less of a target and a goal. Did he consciously, from the very start, seek to dismember and divide India?
JS:
I don’t think it was dismemberment. He wanted space for the Muslims. And he could just not define Pakistan ever. Geographically, it was a vague idea. That’s why ultimately it became a moth-eaten Pakistan. He had ideas about certain provinces which must be Islamic and one-third of the seats in the Central legislature must be Muslims.

Q: So Pakistan was in fact a way of finding, as you call it, ‘space’ for Muslims?
JS:
He wanted space in the Central legislature and in the provinces and protection of the minorities so that the Muslims could have a say in their own political, economic and social destiny.

Q: And that was his primary concern, not dividing India or breaking up the country?
JS:
No. He in fact went to the extent of saying that let there be a Pakistan within India.

Q: A Pakistan within India was acceptable to him?
JS:
Yes.

Q: So in other words, Pakistan was often ‘code’ for space for Muslims?
JS:
That’s right. From what I have written, I find that it was a negotiating tactic because he wanted certain provinces to be with the Muslim League. He wanted a certain percentage (of seats) in the Central legislature. If he had that, there would not have been a partition.

Q: Would you therefore say that when people turn around and say that Jinnah was communal, he was a Hindu hater, a Hindu basher that they are mistaken and wrong?
JS:
He was not a Hindu hater but he had great animosity with the Congress party and Congress leadership. He said so repeatedly: I have no enmity against the Hindu.

Q: Do you as an author believe him when he said so?
JS:
I don’t live in the same time as him. I go by what his contemporaries have said, I go by what he himself says and I reproduce it.

Q: Let’s come again to this business of using Pakistan to create space for Muslims. Your book shows how repeatedly people like Rajagopalachari, Gandhi and Azad were understanding of the Jinnah need or the Muslim need for space. Nehru wasn’t. Nehru had a European-inherited centralised vision of how India should be run. In a sense was Nehru’s vision of a centralised India, a problem that eventually led to partition?
JS:
Jawaharlal Nehru was not always that. He became that after his European tour of the 20s. Then he came back imbued with, as Madhu Limaye puts it, ‘spirit of socialism’ and he was all for highly centralised India.

Q: And a highly centralized India denied the space Jinnah wanted.
JS:
A highly centralised India meant that the dominant party was the Congress party. He (Nehru) in fact said there are only two powers in India — the Congress party and the British.

Q: That attitude in a sense left no room for Jinnah and the Muslim League in India?
JS:
That is what made Jinnah repeatedly say but there is a third force — we. The Congress could have dealt with the Moplas but there were other Muslims.

Q: So it was this majoritarianism of Nehru that actually left no room for Jinnah?
JS:
It became a contest between excessive majoritarianism, exaggerated minoritism and giving the referee’s whistle to the British.

Q: Was the exaggerated minoritism a response to the excessive majoritarianism of Congress?
JS:
In part. Also in response to the historical circumstances that had come up.

Q: If the final decision had been taken by people like Gandhi, Rajagopalachari or Azad, could we have ended up with united India?
JS:
Yes, I believe so. It could have. Gandhi said let the British go home, we will settle this amongst ourselves, we will find a Pakistan. In fact, he said so in the last AICC meetings.

Q: It was therefore Nehru’s centralising vision that made that extra search for united India difficult at the critical moment?
JS:
He continued to say so but subsequently, after Partition, he began to realise what a great mistake he had made.

Q: Nehru realised his mistakes but it was too late, by then it had happened.
JS:
It was too late. It was too late.

Q: Let’s end this first interview there. In the next part I want to talk to you about the relationship between the early Gandhi and Jinnah, the questions you raise about Partition and the predicament of Indian Muslims.

Q: Let us start this second interview with the portrait you paint of the relationship between the early Gandhi and the early Jinnah.You say of their first meeting in January 1915 that Gandhi’s response to Jinnah’s “warm welcome” was “ungracious”. You say Gandhi would only see Jinnah “in Muslim terms”, and the sort of implication that comes across is Gandhi was less accommodating than Jinnah was.
JS:
I have perhaps not used the adjective you have used. Jinnah returned from his education in 1896. Gandhi went to South Africa and was returning finally — in between he had come once — to India it was 1915 already. Jinnah had gone to receive him with Gokhale and he referred fulsomely to Gandhi. Gandhi referred to Jinnah and said that I am very grateful that we have a Muslim leader. That I think was born really of Gandhi’s working in South Africa and not so much the reality of what he felt. The relationship subsequently became competitive.

Q: But you do call that response “ungracious”?
JS:
I don’t know whether I call it ungracious?

Q: You do.
JS:
But I might have. Jinnah is fulsomely receiving Gandhi and Gandhi says I am glad that I am being received by a Muslim leader.

Q: So he was only seeing Jinnah in Muslim terms?
JS:
Yes, which Jinnah didn’t want to be seen.

Q: Even when you discuss the impact of their political strategies in the early years before 1920 you suggest that Jinnah was perhaps more effective than Gandhi, who in a sense permitted the Raj to continue for three decades. You write “Jinnah had successfully kept the Indian political forces together, simultaneously exerting pressure on the government.” Of Gandhi you say “that pressure dissipated and the Raj remained for three more decades”.
JS:
That is a later development, because the political style of the two was totally different. Jinnah was essentially a logician. He believed in the strength of logic; he was a Parliamentarian; he believed in the efficacy of parliamentary politics. Gandhi, after testing the water, took to the trails of India and he took politics into the dusty villages of India.

Q: But in the early years up till 1920 you see Jinnah as more effective in putting pressure on the British than Gandhi.
JS:
Yes, because entire politics was parliamentary.

Q: The adjectives you use to characterise their leadership in the early years suggests a sort of, how shall I put it, slight tilt in Jinnah’s favour. You say of Gandhi’s leadership that it had “an entirely religious, provincial character”. Of Jinnah’s you say he was “doubtless imbued by a non-sectarian nationalistic zeal.”
JS:
He was non-sectarian. Gandhi used religion as a personal expression. Jinnah used religion as a tool to create something but that came later. For Gandhi religion was an integral part of his politics from the very beginning.

Q: And Jinnah wanted religion out of politics.
JS:
Out of politics. That is right — there are innumerable examples.

Q: In fact, Jinnah sensed or feared instinctively that if politics came into religion it would divide.
JS:
There were two fears here. His one fear was that if the whole question or practice of mass movement was introduced into India then the minority in India would be threatened. There could be Hindu-Muslim riots as a consequence. The second fear was that this will result in bringing in religion into Indian politics. He didn’t want that — Khilafat movement, etc are all examples of that.

Q: And in a sense would you say events have borne out Jinnah?
JS:
Not just Jinnah, Annie Besant also. When the Home Rule League broke up — resigning from the League, Annie Beasant cautioned Gandhi you are going down this path, this is a path full of peril.

Q: Both Jinnah and Beasant have been borne out.
JS:
In the sense that mass movement, unless combined with a great sense of discipline, leadership and restraint, becomes chaotic.

Q: As you look back on their lives and their achievements, Jinnah, at the end of the day, stood for creating a homeland for Indian Muslims. But what he produced was moth-eaten and broke up into two pieces in less than 25 years. Gandhi struggled to keep India united, but ended up not just with Partition but with communal passion and communal killing. Would you say at the end of their lives both were failures?
JS:
Gandhi was transparently a honest man. He lived his political life openly. Jinnah didn’t even live his political life, leave alone his private life, openly. Gandhi led his private life openly — (in) Noakhali with a pencil stub he wrote movingly “I don’t want to die a failure but I fear I might.”

Q: And did he in your opinion.
JS:
Yes, I am afraid the Partition of land, the Hindu-Muslim divide, cannot be really called Gandhiji’s great success. Jinnah, I think, did not achieve what he set out to. He got what is called a moth-eaten Pakistan, but the philosophy which under laid that Muslims are a separate nation was completely rejected within years of Pakistan coming into being.

Q: So, in a sense, both failed.
JS:
I am afraid I have to say that. I am, in comparison, a lay practitioner of politics in India. I cannot compare myself to these two great Indians but my assessment would lead me to the conclusion that I cannot treat this as a success either by Gandhi or by Jinnah.

Q: Your book also raises disturbing questions about the Partition of India. You say it was done in a way “that multiplied our problems without solving any communal issue”. Then you ask “if the communal, the principal issue, remains in an even more exacerbated form than before then why did we divide at all?”
JS:
Yes, indeed why? I cannot yet find the answer. Look into the eyes of the Muslims who live in India and if you truly see through the pain they live — to which land do they belong? We treat them as aliens, somewhere inside, because we continue to ask even after Partition you still want something? These are citizens of India — it was Jinnah’s failure because he never advised Muslims who stayed back.

Q: One of the most moving passages of your biography is when you write of Indian Muslims who stayed on in India and didn’t go to Pakistan.You say they are “abandoned”, you say they are “bereft of a sense of kinship”, not “one with the entirety” and then you add that “this robs them of the essence of psychological security”.
JS:
That is right, it does. That lies at the root of the Sachar Committee report.

Q: So, in fact, Indian Muslims have paid the price in their personal lives.
JS:
Without doubt, as have Pakistani Muslims.

Q: Muslims have paid a price on both sides.
JS:
I think Muslims have paid a price in Partition. They would have been significantly stronger in a united India, effectively so — much larger land, every potential is here. Of course Pakistan or Bangladesh won’t like what I am saying.

Q: Let us for a moment focus on Indian Muslims. You are a leader of the BJP. Do you think the rhetoric of your party sometimes adds to that insecurity?
JS:
I didn’t write this book as a BJP parliamentarian or leader, which I am not. I wrote this book as an Indian.

Q: Your book also suggests, at least intellectually, you believe India could face more Partitions. You write: “In India, having once accepted this principle of reservation, then of Partition, how can now we deny it to others, even such Muslims as have had to or chosen to live in India.”
JS:
The problem started with the 1906 reservation. What does Sachar committee report say? Reserve for the Muslim. What are we doing now? Reserve. I think this reservation for Muslims is a disastrous path. I have myself, personally, in Parliament heard a member subscribing to Islam saying we could have a third Partition too. These are the pains that trouble me. What have we solved?

Q:In fact you say in your book how can we deny it to others, having accepted it once it becomes very difficult intellectually to refuse it again.
JS:
You have to refuse it.

Q: Even if you contradict yourself?
JS:
Of course, I am contradicting myself. It is intellectual contradiction.

Q: But you are being honest enough to point out that this intellectual contradiction lies today at the very heart of our predicament as a nation.
JS:
It is. Unless we find an answer, we won’t find an answer to India-Pakistan-Bangladesh relations.

Q: And this continuing contradiction is the legacy of Partition?
JS:
Of course, it is self-evident.

Q: Mr. Jaswant Singh, let’s come to how your book will be received. Are you worried that a biography of Jinnah, that turns on its head the received demonisation of the man; where you concede that for a large part he was a nationalist with admirable qualities, could bring down on your head a storm of protest?
JS:
Firstly, I am not an academic. Sixty years down the line someone else — an academic — should have done it. Then I wouldn’t have persisted for five years. I have written what I have researched and believed in. I have not written to please – it’s a journey that I have undertaken, as I explained myself, along with Mohammedd Ali Jinnah — from his being an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity to the Qaid-e-Azam of Pakistan

Q: In a sense you were driven to write this book.
JS:
Indeed, I still search for answers. Having worked with the responsibilities that I had, it is my duty to try and find answers.

Q: And your position is that if people don’t like the truth as you see it – so be it, but you have to tell the truth as you know it.
JS:
Well, so be it is your way of putting it, my dear Karan, but how do I abandon my search, my yearning and what I have found? If I am wrong then somebody else should go and do the research and prove me as wrong.

Q: In other words you are presenting what you believe is the truth and you can’t hide it.
JS:
What else can I do, what else can I present?

Q: In 2005, when L.K. Advani called Jinnah’s August 11, 1947 speech secular he was forced to resign the presidentship of the party, are you worried that your party might turn on you in a similar manner?
JS:
This is not a party document, and my party knows that I have been working on this. I have mentioned this to Sri Advani as also to others.

Q: But are they aware of your views and the content of the book?
JS:
They can’t be aware unless they read it.

Q: Are you worried that when they find out about your views, and your analyses and your conclusion, they might be embarrassed and angry?
JS:
No, they might disagree, that’s a different matter. Anger? Why should there be anger about disagreement?

Q: Can I put something to you?
JS:
Yes.

Q: Mr Advani in a sense suffered because he called Jinnah secular. You have gone further, you have compared him to the early Gandhi. And some would say that Gandhi is found a little wanting in that comparison. Will that inflame passions?
JS:
I don’t think Gandhi is found wanting. He was a different person. They are two different personalities, each with their characteristics, why should passions be inflamed? Let a self-sufficient majority, 60 years down the line of Independence, be able to stand up to what actually happened pre-47 and in 1947.

Q: So what you are saying is that Gandhi and Jinnah were different people, we must learn to accept that both had good points.
JS:
Of course.

Q: And both had weaknesses.
JS:
Of course. Gandhi himself calls Jinnah a great Indian, why don’t we recognise that? Why did he call him that? He tells Mountbatten “give the Prime Ministership of India to Jinnah.” Mountbatten scoffs at him, “are you joking?” He says, “no I am serious, I will travel India and convince India and carry this message”.

Q: So if today’s Gandhians, reading the passages where you compare between the two, come to the conclusion that you are more of praise of Jinnah than of Gandhi.
JS:
I don’t think I am. I am objective as far as human beings have ability to be objective. As balanced as an author can be.

Q: As balanced as an author can be.
JS:
Indeed, indeed. How else can it be?

Q: Your party has a Chintan Baithak starting in two days time, does it worry you that at that occasion some of your colleagues might stand up and say — your views, your comments about Jinnah, your comments about Gandhi and Nehru have embarrassed the BJP?
JS:
I don’t think so, I don’t think they will. Because in two days time the book would not have been (read). It’s almost a 600-page book. Difficult to read 600 pages in two days.

Q: No one will have read the book by the time you go to Simla!
JS:
Yes (Laughs).

Q: But what about afterwards?
JS:
Well, we will deal with the afters when the afters come.

Q: Let me raise two issues, that could be a problem for you. First of all, your sympathetic understanding of Muslims left behind in India. You say they are abandoned, you say they are bereft, you say they suffer from psychological insecurity. That’s not normally a position leaders of the BJP take.
JS:
I think, the BJP is misunderstood also in its attitude towards the minorities. I don’t think it is so. Every Muslim that lives in India is a loyal Indian and we must treat them as so.

Q: But you are the first person from the BJP I have ever heard say, “look into the eyes of Indian Muslims and see the pain.” No one has ever spoken in such sensitive terms about them before.
JS:
I am born in a district, that is my home — we adjoin Sind, it was not part of British India. We have lived with Muslims and Islam for centuries. They are part…. In fact in Jaisalmer, I don’t mind telling you, Muslims don’t eat cow and the Rajputs don’t eat pig.

Q: So your understanding of Indian Muslims and their predicament is uniquely personal and you would say…
JS:
Indeed because I think what has happened is that we try and treat this whole thing as if it’s an extension of the image of the UP Muslim. Of course the UP (Muslim) is…Pakistan is a stepchild of UP in a sense.

Q: The second issue that your book raises, which could cause problems for you, is that at least theoretically, at least intellectually, you accept that there could be, although you hope there won’t be, further partitions. Could that embarrass you?
JS:
No, I am cautioning. I am cautioning India, Indian leadership. I have said that I am not going to be a politician all my life, or even a member of Parliament. But I do say this — we should learn from what we did wrong, or didn’t do right, so that we don’t repeat the mistakes.

Q: In other words this is — how shall I put it, a wake up call?
JS:
Wake-up? Shaking….

Q: A shake-up call!
JS:
Yeah (Smiles)

Q: My last question. Critics in your party, allege that you are responsible for the party losing seats in Rajasthan, they allege that you are responsible for asking questions about the sanctity of Hindutva. Now, after this book, have you fed your critics more ammunition against yourself?
JS:
Time will tell (Smiles).

Q: But does it worry you?
JS:
Do I look worried? (Smiles)

Q: With that smile on your face Mr Jaswant Singh. Thank you very much for these two special interviews.
JS:
Thank you very much.