New Tork Times on Ertugrul

I have already given the link earlier.

The writer is William Armstrong, an editor at Hurriyet Daily News.

The article was published on May 14, 2017.

On the occasion of  Reccep Tayyip Erdogan's US visit the author diverted from dry political analysis to present the political status from the point of view inspired by the 'bombastic' three seasons of popular Turkish television show Dirilish-Erutrul (Resurrection Ertugrul). The 'loaded' tagline was National Awakening.

This chimes with the spirit of the age after Mr. Erdogan framed the constitutional referendum in April as a struggle against enemies of the Turkish nation and domestic traitors.

Apparently the Turkish mood, and even US political mood, can be adjudged by the popularity of their TV shows. Ever since emergence of Erdogan's party coming to power the TV shows are their prime exports.

 The first season featured a Turkish campaign against Crusaders in Anatolia, the second season battles against the Mongols, the third season war with the Christian Byzantines.

Not only the political temperature but national mood is captured by the shows.
At the end it is a bitter culture war between religious conservatives and more secular-minded cultural elites. It is not Islamization but nationalism and corresponding aspirations. It is also an exercise in political legitimization and it is an escape to virtual reality from harsh reality. Erdogan expertly exploits the public mood for political gain using poetry and songs.

Another Dilemma : Current Events vs Past

I have been bogged down for quite some time by the twin issues of the Muslims in India today and the Muslim in the world in general.

Both of these issues are extremely nerve wrecking as of now. So far my personal capabilities and capacity has proved to be inadequate to have an over overall compass of both of these set of problems.

In fact I have not been able to complete the overall historical assessment of either of these problems.

In overall assessment of the situation of the Muslims today in India my corner stone is HM Seervai's book on Partition of India: Legend vs Reality.

On the corresponding issue of the state of the Muslim community the world over my preferred book is Orientalism by Edward Said.

Sadly I have  not been able to get a grip over the over all view presented in these books. Let alone the microscopic details.

And then let us not forget the extremely fast changing current affairs both in India as well as the world.

In this regard friends would say that first of all I must finish my overview of Seervai and Said and they are absolutely right. The pesky problem is the sheer deluge of both domestic, that is India, and world news inflow.

So kindly pray that I can come to grip these problems. The programme at the moment can be summarized as - Seervai-Said-Current Affairs.

Indian Scientis on NRC

Source : The Wire

A group of Indian scientists and scholars from within and without the country have released a note of protest against the draft Citizenship Amendment Bill, expected to be tabled in parliament on December 9. The Bill proposes to grant citizenship to Indians on the basis of religion as well as passively excludes Muslims, and has triggered protests around the country and from various civil society groups as a result.
The scholars’ note, shared in full below, also calls attention to this aspect of the Bill and states that it violates the spirit of Article 14 of the Indian Constitution. Over 750 scholars from around the world have signed the note, including the directors of three major research institutions: Sandip Trivedi (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai), Rajesh Gopakumar (International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Bengaluru) and Atish Dabholkar (International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Italy).

TV Rajeswar on Emergency

This is old link but still very relevant even today where former IB Chief TV Rajeswar had told that RSS backed Indira Gandhi on emergency.

How to Solve the Micro-vs-Macro Conundrum?

Sometimes while dealing with a complex issue with some extensive length and breadth we face the dilemma of whether to present a microscopic view of the issue giving the details of the parts or whether to present a macroscopic view and outline the overall contours of the problem.

This is what I am calling the Macro-vs-Micro Conundrum.

At the logical level there is no solution to this puzzle. Microscopic details are essential and important and hence these must be given. Macroscopic view is important because that that is the only way to encompass the problem and hence that is what should be presented. The end result is that we can not decide which view to present.

Even pragmatism does not offer a way out.

A pragmatic person would say that either you give the macroscopic view with some microscopic details or you give the microscopic view and quickly move towards the macro view. In both of these approaches we are still left with an additional problem - how much details to include. Practically we have failed to solve the problem.

Someone might add that the amount of details that must be included will be decided by the individual problems. This is certainly a good suggestion but it is already demanding additional details to solve the problem.


Edward Said in his book offered a solution to this enigma. There might be many other solutions but Said's solution has struck me as an elegant as well as pragmatic one. In his book Orientalism he used the personal circumstances as the tie breaker between the two alternatives. So when you are besotted with the undecidable issue of choosing the requisite amount of details between the two approaches then use your personal circumstances to decide the amount of details to be included.

Of course in this case also we shall end up deciding on the case to case basis and in that sense it is on par with the earlier suggestion but we do have now a very robust paradigm to use for tie breaking.

Links Accumulating

History Against Sectarianism

Suupreme Court Shamelessly Surrendered to BJP

Blood and Soil in Narendra Modi's India

India : Intimations of an Ending

Nikki Keddie on Afghani

Afghani : Modernism

AG Noorani on Army and Rule of Law

  AG Noorani has got a very powerful article here in the Frontline on duties of an army in face of possibility of wrong being committed in the area under its protection.

BBC Tone of Reportage

When the US has started talking to the Taliban in Afghanistan shouldn't the BBC tone of presentation reflect that?

One argument against this is that the second phase might just start and till there is a final settlement between the US and the Taliban is reached upon the world and hence BBC can not change the tone, attitude and the push of their reportage.

The trouble with this argument is that the reportage from the outset must have been unbiased - that is supposed to be BBC reputation.

But let us look at what is the current BBC attitude. A group of news items are collected under following headline:

What happened to previous Taliban hostages?

• The Scottish aid worker killed during a rescue attempt
• The documentary maker freed 'for a ransom'
• The governor's son who secretly listened to football
• The captured soldier who sparked a political row

It is difficult to change this presentation but one thing is sure that here the negotiating party is not being given the same legitimacy that is expected for open attitude talks.

 The headline in the More on This Story are :

• Afghanistan announces Taliban prisoner swap to free hostages

  12 November 2019

• Jalaluddin Haqqani, founder of Afghan militant network, dies

  4 September 2018

• Why is there a war in Afghanistan? The short, medium and long story

  8 September 2019

• Trump cancels secret US meeting with Afghan Taliban

  8 September 2019

• Afghanistan war: Taliban tell Trump their 'doors are open'

  18 September 2019

• Afghanistan Taliban commanders freed 'in swap for Indian hostages'

  7 October 2019

• Afghanistan war: What could peace look like?14 July 2019

   
  Here we do see some semblance of objectivity but the one negotiating party still comes out more of a suspect rather that a partner in talks.
  

Story of Timothy Weeks

BBC has covered the story of Timothy Weeks in this report.

He is an Australian academic released by the Taliban in prisoner swap. Here is one of his quotes:

"I don't hate them at all," he said. "And some of them I have great respect for, and great love for, almost. Some of them were so compassionate and such lovely, lovely people. And it really led me to think about... how did they end up like this?"

Yet the BBC presentation on this news and the related items is completely different. The headline of the above report itself is:

Timothy Weeks recalls Taliban hostage ordeal - 'I never gave up hope'...

It is not as positive as the sentiments expressed in the earlier quote. Indeed any captivity can not be anything but an ordeal yet the mood of the headline does not match the sentiments of the captive about the Taliban.

One explanation for the softer sentiments of Mr Week will be the Stockholm Syndrome. This too leaves two points unanswered.

Firstly BBC is blowing a different trumpet from US. We remember Tony Blair as UK Prime Minister making a world tour, including India, in support of US President George Bush's agenda in Iraq. The same attitude is not reflected in BBC headlines and reports now that US has been talking to the Taliban. When you are talking to an entity, here Taliban, then you have to have a public posture of not being biased when you go to the talking table.

It is true that it is the US and not the UK who is talking to the Taliban. But this leads to a worse problem - that there is serious division in the west about the status of Taliban. Either it a legitimate agency to talk to or not.

Clearly we are seeing a shift in the US policy towards whom they, the US, were calling the terrorists till yesterday. Such policy shifts are huge operations and it takes time to turn all the relevant wheels.

The second unattended question regarding negative portrayal of Taliban is the larger question - there is the western (US, UK, BBC) narrative about the situation in the Muslim lands. This narrative is that they, the west, are dealing with the terrorists. I am sure there will be the narrative of the so called terrorists.

I am calling so called terrorists because either the Taliban are the terrorists and hence completely condemned or they are respectable enough to hold talks with.

All this still leads an uncovered frontier and that is most important - what is the Muslim narrative of these issues. After all these are the Muslims who have their interests at stake in all this. Does the Muslim World accept the west as the unanimous global policing agency or not? Do they a have their own take on the matter?

As a result should we expect BBC to change the tone, attitude and presentation of their news about Afghanistan?