Lasting Rose

When Hillary Clinton planned and set off to theFareast for what was supposed to be her farewell trip, no one expected the secretary of State and her team to fly right in to the eye of the most testing diplomatic storm of her career. It is remarkable that Hillary Clinton and her equipage left Beijing without being mauled beyond recognition by the Chinese dragons.

So no one can blame Hillary if she decided to take it easy, and give a scoot to her risky engagement with the Tigress of West Bengal, Mamta Banerjee, for some powder room diplomacy instead. Mamta Banerjee had recently got rid of the communists who wrecked the state and its economy during past 24 years and has opposed US investment in India in the retail sector.

In political terms Mamta Banerjee has every quality of a Tiger, an endangered species of wild cats, for which the Sundarban forest of West Bengal is a protected sanctuary and tourist attraction.

Hillary and her team had planned to engage the mercurial leader for extracting concessions for US investment, which she was vehemently objecting. It was part of the larger recognition that power in India no longer resides simply in New Delhi and the U.S. must engage with regional leaders.

Instead, Hillary simply turned her trip in to a charm offensive with her 'namaste' (Indian way of greeting by holding your paws together) and winning smile, making everyone smile and pour accolades and genuine affection on the US Secretary of state, even implore her to contest the presidential in 2016.

Hillary and her team spend the time visiting its Heritage and engaging with its citizens in various cultural programmes though reports say that there were enough of discussions on what she wanted to exchange with the chief minister, which was played down by Mamta and the Indian press.

"I know for myself how difficult it is for women to get elected anywhere," Clinton said in Kolkata. "When I meet a woman who's broken through those barriers. . . we share a common bond, if you will, having gone through the fire of electoral politics."
There is no wonder why Hillary Clinton chose more to explore the lighter side of Kolkata, with which not only the British East India Company but many other famous personalities like Mother Theresa and Dominique Lapierre, the author of 'City Of Joy' were enamoured in the past.
However, it must be the spirit and emotional character of this city, in which it is hard to find a citizen who wants to migrate elsewhere, despite its din and dizzle and mass of population, which must have rubbed on the US Secretary of state and made her declare: "I want to come back to India and wander about without the streets being closed,"
Despite the sweltering heat of the Indian summer, Kolkota, which was the first British capital of India with many heritage buildings and history, has a lot to offer for a tourist with some spirit of adventure.

Article first published as How Did Hillary Clinton’s Diplomacy Tour Turn in to an Indian Holiday, Winning Hearts? on Technorati

It is curious that in the age of the cyberspace, innocuous images in print, with arguably difficult to decipher messages, can create political storms. The cover of Economist Magazine purportedly depicting a bleak future for an Independent Scotland raised political temper, with its regional leader Alex Salmond warning:
“Economist Magazine Will 'Rue The Day' It Mocked Scotland”


There are some parallels in the resurgence of nationalist feelings in the British Isles and the Indiansubcontinent, which has seen recent electoral victories of regional parties, which is questioning the unity and integrity of the nations, which is being seriously flagged by the media.
While such expose by the media result in venting of emotions by political leaders like Alex Salmond in Europe, In India it is turning more sinister with the media choosing to be a silent observer and taking a subservient role.
Recently Mamta Banerjee, the regional leader of India's West Bengal, has gone totally bizerk by ordering and later defending the arrest of a professor of the prestigious Jadavpur University merely for circulating a collage of images poking some innocent fun at her autocratic handling of the nation's Railway Ministry.
The allusion is Mamta colluded in a 'cloak and dagger' plot with a subservient political colleague to sack an able and US educated administrator who wanted to seriously salvage the biggest employer in India facing financial melt down.
In fact the whole episode is funnier than the collage which is being described by the media as a 'cartoon' for some strange reason. A professor of Chemistry found some innocent distraction by putting together a collage of pictures of the three politicians with some captions, comparing the episode as reminiscent of a forgotten movie by the famous Bengalee director Satyajit Ray.
However when he merely circulated his artistic creation to his neighbours by E mail, it took a serious turn and became a cyber crime in the fiefdom of Mamta Banerjee, leading to the political harassment and torture of the professor by her supporters and his arrest by police on dubious charges of cyber crime.
The action of Mamta and her coterie smacks of the Cultural Revolution in China and the rule by the "Gang Of Four" during which several such 'purging' incidents were reported on a daily basis.
It is not the first time Mamta Banerjee has ridden rough should over freedom of expression. A few weeks back her government banned some prominent English Language news papers for being critical of her government.
The event caused uproar in the country about her autocratic behaviour, but surprisingly several news papers came out with editorials which gave up the fight fearing litigation with a mercurial and unpredictable female leader.
Though the media by and large reported the "cartoon" event, none of them has dared to put the controversial cartoon itself on their pages, fearing political and financial repercussions to their publications.
The very fact that an e mail message circulated only to one's neighbours should be reported to the police and the ruling government smacks of political snooping reminiscent of Hitler's Gestapo and Stalin's Gulag.
For West Bengal, the land of India's only Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore and for its capital Kolkota, which prides as the political and cultural capital of India, these recent actions of the government of Mamta Banerjee, India's Giant Communist Killer, pose the question if they like to be a new island in the Archipelago of suppression of freedom of expression and democracy.