AmreekanDesi » History Shistory

A Brief History of the Bofors Scandal

amreekandesi — Fri, 08 May 2009 01:35:21 +0000

Last week the CBI removed Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrochi from its wanted list, and removed the Interpol Red Corner notice against him. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh soon supported this decision saying that the case had become an embarrassment for the government.

“It is not a good reflection on the Indian legal system that we harass people while the world says we have no case”[link]

That’s pretty much a public apology from the great nation of India to a man who never was cleared of the corruption charges against him. Bend over Bow in subservience, India!

The thing is, the CBI hasn’t really done a great job with this case. Their attempts to get Quattrochi extradited to India were rejected in Malaysia and Argentina, with the judges noting that the CBI never presented its case properly.

Not saying anything, but this gives the impression that the CBI did a sham job at getting him extradited. Maybe someone didn’t want Quattrochi to come to India?

Let’s start with some history on the Bofors scandal, which remains till date one of the biggest scandals in Indian politics.

It all started when India decided to purchase 400 155mm Howitzers (fancy word for really-big-kickass-gun) from Swedish company Bofors AB for $1.4 billion in 1986.

In 1987 the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and several others were accused of receiving kickbacks for this deal.

Ottavio Quattrochi was a businessman close to the Gandhi family and a prominent man in the hallowed passages of Indian government. His name came up as the middleman in this deal.

The Bofors scandal was huge. Rajiv Gandhi lost the 1989 elections due to the backlash of these allegations.

Other accused included the Hinduja brothers and Win Chaddha, an agent of the Bofors company. (Hi! My name is win. I am here to win your contract!)

Chaddha died in 2001. Gandhi was assassinated in 1991, and was cleared of the corruption charges against him in 2004. In 2005, the charges against the Hinduja brothers were dismissed by the Delhi High court.

The Wikipedia page on Quattrochi throws up some interesting information about the amount of clout he used to enjoy.

From roughly 1980 to 1987 – Indira Gandhi’s final years and Rajiv Gandhi’s honeymoon years – Quattrocchi had the Midas touch. No deal was refused to him. “It was understood,” remembers a Congressman from the original Mrs G’s days, “that a fertiliser contract meant Snamprogetti. That was considered the favour to Sonia and Rajiv.” [link]

It is alleged Quattrocchi was so influential with the office of the prime minister — Rajiv Gandhi — that bureaucrats used to stand up when Quattrocchi visited them.[link]

In 2002 a Malaysian court refused extraditing Quattrochi to India, observing that the offenses alleged against him were open to doubt.

Dismissing India’s review petition for his extradition, Justice Augustine Paul of Kuala Lumpur High Court upheld the Sessions Court verdict earlier this month throwing out the extradition case on the ground that the descriptions of the offenses in the requisition papers were “insufficient, vague and ambiguous.” While discharging Quattrocchi unconditionally, the Sessions Court on December 2 had also ordered return of his passport and the bail. [link]

The CBI chief PC Sharma attributed the failure to the fact that they were in a foreign country and had to present the case through a foreign lawyer. Maybe they should start training multi-lingual Indian lawyers? Malaysian ones are apparently no good.

In December 2005 the Indian government de-froze Quattrochi’s bank accounts on grounds of insufficient evidence to link those accounts to the Bofors payoff. A month later the Supreme court directed the government to ensure that money was not withdrawn from those accounts. It was too late by then. Rs 21 crore ($4.6 mn) had already been withdrawn from the accounts.

Quattrochi was arrested in Argentina in February 2007. The CBI tried to get him extradited to India, but their plea was rejected by the Argentinian courts. The CBI had the option of appealing to a higher court, but it failed to get a clearance from the center. We wonder why that would be.

The judge noted that the CBI did not even present proper legal documents for Quattrochi’s extradition, which led to their request getting rejected. Besides, the Indian government’s decision to de-freeze Quattrochi’s bank accounts did not really add credence to their request. Watch a video report here.

Over more than two decades the case has dragged on like an Energizer bunny, with no end in sight. For some involved parties the case ended with death, some were cleared of charges, but the scandal lives on.

Strangely enough, you can’t attribute it all to the Congress. The Congress may have had an interest in this case, but we have had some non-Congress governments too during these past twenty years that have allowed this drama to carry on, culminating with Manmohan Singh’s government’s farewell gift to Mr Quattrochi.

Reminds us of that movie by the name of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron. The last scene – where all the politicians (and media persons) get together to come up with a deal that gives them all a piece of the pie. The loser in the entire deal? The Common Man.

Our Prime Minister says that this case is an embarrassment to the government. We cant help wonder who the real embarrassment is.

Also see:

Blame it on Bofors
Bofors Scandal chronology – Feb 2007
Just who is Ottavio Quattrochi – Jan 2006
PM Defends Quattrochi

(Image courtesy: indipepal.com)

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The Story of India

amreekandesi — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 07:39:16 +0000

PBS is running a six part series called ‘The Story of India‘ which premiered in the US tonight.

The Story of India already aired in the UK in 2007, and is narrated by historian Michael Wood and shows (attempts to, at least) the history of the Indian subcontinent over the past few thousand years.

Two hour long episodes were telecast tonight, of which i saw the first one and tivo-d the other. The first episode marked the beginnings of civilization in India, and was rather interesting.

To begin with, the logistical stuff for US readers. This series is broadcast on PBS. You can check what channel that would be here. For New York city, it happens to be channel 13 (WNET) for Time Warner cable. For those who missed today’s episodes, i am not sure if they will be repeat telecast, but do check out the rest of the series, if nothing else, for bright visuals and rich music.

(Image courtesy: pbs.org)

Going back to the show, the first episode talked about the origins of Indian civilization.

The journey starts off in Kerela with the proclamation that originally life began in Africa, and moved to India from there. Any non Africans are descendants of Indians. Holy mother of civilization! Fascinatingly the proof lies in a certain M130 gene pool.

Fascinating too was the map where Sri Lanka was labeled as Tamil Nadu. Ah well, maybe they were talking of historical times?

From the south we go northwards to find out the roots of India, and travel to Harappa in Pakistan. Damn Them Pakis got the place where Indian civilization traces its roots! Of course they travel in a dilapidated third class coach of the train, just to experience the real Pakistan/India, the one that the west loves to see and portray.

They talk about the city of Harappa which was so rich and developed that they call it the Manhattan of its day. Interesting to know was the reason the civilization died away – the monsoons. The rainfall from the monsoons were the reason life flourished in the region, and when that dwindled, the civilization too lost its glory.

We move onto language, and the mother of them all, Sanskrit. Apparently Sanskrit is very similar to Latin and Greek, prompting theories of a common origin of these languages outside India. (Great, now they take away our language too!) They cite the Rig Veda and how clues in the book point in that direction. The taming of horses, chariots, non Indian gods, and such.

To explore the theory, we travel to Afghanistan and later to Turkmenistan in Central Asia where they find Som, which is supposedly related to the Som Rasa that our gods are so fond of drinking. In Central Asia they find archaeological evidence suggesting that this was where it all began.

Long story short: The Aryans came to India from Central Asia and brought with them their language and culture.

Aryans left little mark in the DNA of India, but influenced the culture and language of ancient India.

Like so many India renditions we see these days, there’s the cliched displays of buffaloes (bathing in the Ganga alongside people). The poor people and the shabby old houses. The sadhus. The sitar and the tabla. The wildness of holi.

They travel to Hastinapur and come up with this fascinating conclusion because of the worn down houses.

Hastinapur was recognizable in the India of today

All said and done, this was an interesting show to watch. As it progresses we would hopefully learn more about the history of the great Indian civilization. I am no historian, but would take the facts presented in this show with a grain of salt. History has a way of getting distorted by people.

I will end with this famous quote from the great writer Mark Twain.

India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grand mother of tradition. Our most valuable and most astrictive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only!

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Divided We Fall

amreekandesi — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 05:00:29 +0000

Once upon a time, there was a nation that could have lived happily ever after. But then that nation decided to become a democracy, and a confused mix of socialism and communism and capitalism.

Things would never be the same again.

Down the line, several new isms joined in. Big brother communalism started dividing the people on the basis of their regional identities. The nation of twenty one national languages and thousands of other languages and dialects started breaking up. South India hated North India. North India was suspicious of South India. Things came to a pass in 2008 when Maharashtra started beating up people from other states for taking up local jobs and not speaking the local language.

Separatism soon engulfed different corners of the nation. Kashmiris started burning flags and killing people. ULFA went on a rampage in the northeast. Naxalites took over Andhra and adjoining regions.

Then came along secularism. This one was funny because it was really anti secularism. This practice involved certain people from certain political outfits favoring certain religious communities, while ignoring the needs of the majority community. Anyone doing that was proclaimed non secular. Secularism acquired a new meaning – taking for granted the Hindu majority and appeasing the religious minorities to tap into their vote bank.

This secularism eventually broke up the country and gave rise to hatred and intolerance among the various communities.

Soon this evolved into fundamentalism. Muslim groups started blowing up Hindus. Hindu groups started blowing up Muslims. Christian missionaries started getting burnt (literally, unfortunately). When this got too predictable, terrorist outfits started blowing up their own people, just to make the other side look worse. Nobody gained, and a lot of lives were destroyed.

Sikhs got plundered in 1984 because two of them had killed the reigning monarch of India. Hindu pilgrims got burnt alive inside their train at Godhra, and many more Muslims were killed in the ensuing riots.

Gandhi died a second death. And a few dozen more.

This period was a stark comparison to medieval India when a Muslim dynasty ruled most of India’s predominantly Hindu population for a great period of time. Tipu Sultan was a latter day king famous as being a Muslim ruler under whose rule his kingdom of Hindu subjects made immense progress. The British would later come in and implement a Divide and Rule policy which would help them establish control of the huge and diverse country. They were sent packing in 1947, but things were to come a full circle under the politicians of modern day India who played their own game.

The country’s leaders then invented favoritism. They came upon this invaluable instrument that would help them achieve this. A few lives got lost and some people burnt themselves trying in vain to stop them, but we had a winner. Reservation. India started reserving jobs for minority communities. The original intent was noble. Reservation would have led to emancipation of the socially backward in the nation. But that was not what happened.

A couple of decades later, this system was mature. Like a two month old baby. Not satisfied with just having incompetent civil servants, doctors and teachers, the vote beggars started clamoring for reservation in private institutions. (whoever came up with the term civil servants – they are more like rulers!) )This would eventually pave the way for the collapse of the Indian economy as the so called global village started getting suspicious of Indian competitiveness.

Mahatma Gandhi was a Gujarati, as was Sardar Patel. Jagdish Chandra Bose was from Bengal. Bhagat Singh was from Punjab. Maulana Abul Kalam was Muslim. Jai Prakash Narain was from Bihar. C Rajgopalachari was from Tamil Nadu.

Silly people, all of them, representing different regions and religions, yet laying down their lives for the cause of the nation that was not to be.

We will keep fighting. We will keep blowing up people, and then expressing sympathy for them. We will look down upon backward castes. We will keep fighting for our respective regional languages. We will beat up people who don’t accept our viewpoints.

We don’t care.

Unity in Diversity be damned. The nation can go take a walk. This is too much of a power trip for us to bother.

Earlier:
(Dis)Unity in Diversity
Kashmir Still Burns

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Gandhi – My Father

amreekandesi — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 01:14:00 +0000

We always think about Mahatma Gandhi as the freedom fighter, fighting for India’s independence, leading millions of people in protest against the British, liberating the country in his own unique way. What about Gandhi the person, a husband and father of four children?

The movie Gandhi My Father takes a close look at one of Mahatma Gandhi’s life’s biggest personal regrets. A rare movie that talks about his family and the problems in his own personal life. That he was able to rise above them in achieving what he did is just an illustration of his being the great man that he was.

It isn’t easy being great. It is harder being a father when you have greater things to achieve. This movie is about Gandhi and his relationship with his eldest son, Harilal Gandhi.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPD03FHLFis&rel=1]

The movie starts off with a young Gandhi (Darshan Jariwala) before that incident at Pietermaritzburg which made him plunge into the fight for civic rights. He is a lawyer. He is happily married with kids. All but one are with him. The one who isnt, his eldest son, is in Rajkot. Hari Lal.

HariLal (Akshaye Khanna) gets married to Gulab (Bhoomika Chawla) without taking his father’s permission, and Gandhi being the strict father that he is, is offended. Harilal soon comes to South Africa, and gets involved in Gandhi’s work. He in fact becomes the first Satyagrahi in South Africa, and goes to jail. But somewhere inside him there’s this desire to be free of his father who makes all decisions, even the decision to send Gulab back to India even as he was still in jail. He wants to study, become a lawyer, lead a happy family life where he makes money to feed his family. He wants to take his own decisions.

He quits. And goes back to India. Only his abilities don’t match his ambitions. He fails his matric (10th grade) exams three times, and is unable to find any job. So much for becoming a lawyer. His household, meanwhile, is running with money coming from South Africa. Gandhi still wants him to join his movement and he keeps refusing.

Meanwhile Gandhi is done with South Africa and returns to India.

I know i couldnt be the ideal son you wanted, but you are responsible for that. I wasn’t always like this. My hands shake as i write this. I am sorry. Harilal writes in a letter to his father.
Gandhi tells Ba (Shefali Shah) – “My son is brave, but wrong. The good thing is that he is willing to fight for his principles, even if it is against me”

Harilal goes his separate way. Only to commit fraud at his job. The job he got because of is father’s name. Soon people start banging on the doors trying to recover the money they trusted him with. Gulab soon leaves him because she cannot support his corrupt dealings anymore. His son dies soon. Then she dies.

Gandhi asks him to move in to the ashram. Life seems to be getting back on track.

Not for long. Some industrialists involve Harilal in a corrupt scheme involving Gandhi’s name. He is in heavy debt. People lose their life savings investing in this fraudulent venture. Eventually Gandhi has to publicly disown Harilal Gandhi.

Things get worse. He converts to Islam. Gandhi is hurt, but still loves him.

Harilal or Abdulla, they both mean the same thing. Son of God. If he changed his religion, that doesn’t mean that our love for him should grow any less. He tells Ba (his wife – Kasturba)

Things go out of hand soon. Eventually Harilal converts back to Hinduism. But that doesn’t change things much. He is still a drunken, depraved mess of a man who has no clue what to do with his life. Ba dies with Harilal’s name on her lips wishing he was with them.

India gets Independance, though not the one Gandhi wanted. Millions are killed in the rioting all over the country. Gandhi has two regrets in his life – Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and Harilal Gandhi.

In his last days, Gandhi keeps wondering if things would have been different had his son been with him. Harilal is nowhere to be found. Gandhi dies felled by a fundamentalist bullet, and Harilal watches the funeral of his own father from the sidelines.

He dies a few months later, unknown, unsung, and unidentified. A man who couldn’t bear the burden of being the son of a great man. A man who tried to chart his own destiny but whose name wouldn’t let him lead a normal life. A man who couldn’t be the son of the father of the nation.