04-19-2008, 09:33 PM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> The fortified gauntlet of shame
Swapan Dasgupta
To call it farcical would be a perverse misreading. What was witnessed in the centre of Delhi last Thursday afternoon was an outrage. At the behest of a regime that increasingly resembles the hosts of the 1936 Berlin Olympiad, the Government of India played its role in defiling the Olympic movement. Qu Yingpu, the spokesman for the Olympics torch relay, was being entirely truthful when he boasted to Xinhua news agency that the Rajpath run would be an "unforgettable" day for the Indian torch bearers. For decades to come, many of these noble sportsmen and sponsor-driven filmstars will curse the day they were misled or bamboozled into running through the fortified Gauntlet of Shame. There was nothing remotely resembling the "Olympic spirit of peace, friendship and progress" in the 2.3 km stretch from Raisina Hill to India Gate. The Delhi run was a crude, flag-waving, propaganda exercise for China. In co-sponsoring it, India lowered itself to the level of Musharraf's Pakistan. Â
For Beijing the transformation of Lutyens' Delhi into a Forbidden City was a political triumph it flaunted to its own people through its state-controlled media. But what did signify for India? It is one thing to honour a commitment and ensure that the Olympic torch was not violated, as happened in London and Paris. It is a separate matter to ensure "safe passage" (a quaint expression hitherto reserved for fugitives and terrorists) by re-enacting what the Rowlatt Act sought to do in Amritsar in 1919.
The entire 'torch zone' was declared a no-go area for Indians and, of course, Tibetans. The only ones - apart from security personnel, some pom-pom girls and three busloads of unfortunate schoolchildren - <b>allowed into the sanitised zone were the representatives of those who have acquired sole proprietary rights over the 2008 Olympics - six busloads of Chinese nationals. These special people (akin to the Europeans the Punjab administration exempted from crawling on their bellies) waved super-sized Red Flags with gusto and displayed posters denouncing the Dalai Lama, President Sarkozy and CNN. And while this grotesque assault on the Olympic spirit was being undertaken, Doordarshan ran a commentary that equated the event with the Republic Day parade.
</b>
There were two parallel displays of arrogance on Rajpath last Thursday. There was the triumphalist Chinese displaying a we-don't-give-a-damn-for-what-the-world-thinks sneer. And then there was Indian officialdom with its exemplary show of Vichy complicity.
After the Emergency, it was famously said of many Indian editors that "when asked to bend, they crawled". On Thursday, the Government of India demonstrated the same fawning, over-zealousness before the People's Republic of China. Somewhere in the nerve centres of the Middle Kingdom, they will be calculating what this show of Indian servility implies for China's hegemonic ambitions. In other parts of the world, they will be asking whether their faith in India becoming a counter-weight to China in Asia was based on fantasy.
There is only one formidable obstacle in the path of the Chinese steamroller in India: civil society. Last Thursday's Chinese overkill has ended up converting more people in India to the cause of the Dalai Lama than ever before. Unfortunately, worldwide concern for the plight of Tibetans in China has merely become a handle for Beijing to bolster Han arrogance and nationalism. Far from the Olympic protests being a mellowing influence, popular xenophobia may actually end up reinforcing Chinese intransigence.
Should the democratic world, therefore, try a different tack? Far from it. Tibet has become the symbol of global concern over China's reckless unconcern for the norms of decency that go hand in hand with economic progress. Thanks to the Dalai Lama, it is also a powerful moral symbol.
The Olympics are a sporting event but China is determined to make it an assertion of its political arrogance. It has to be resisted. And what better than for the world outside Beijing to fly the Tibetan flag proudly and ostentatiously throughout August? Even the Government of India can't dare stop that.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Swapan Dasgupta
To call it farcical would be a perverse misreading. What was witnessed in the centre of Delhi last Thursday afternoon was an outrage. At the behest of a regime that increasingly resembles the hosts of the 1936 Berlin Olympiad, the Government of India played its role in defiling the Olympic movement. Qu Yingpu, the spokesman for the Olympics torch relay, was being entirely truthful when he boasted to Xinhua news agency that the Rajpath run would be an "unforgettable" day for the Indian torch bearers. For decades to come, many of these noble sportsmen and sponsor-driven filmstars will curse the day they were misled or bamboozled into running through the fortified Gauntlet of Shame. There was nothing remotely resembling the "Olympic spirit of peace, friendship and progress" in the 2.3 km stretch from Raisina Hill to India Gate. The Delhi run was a crude, flag-waving, propaganda exercise for China. In co-sponsoring it, India lowered itself to the level of Musharraf's Pakistan. Â
For Beijing the transformation of Lutyens' Delhi into a Forbidden City was a political triumph it flaunted to its own people through its state-controlled media. But what did signify for India? It is one thing to honour a commitment and ensure that the Olympic torch was not violated, as happened in London and Paris. It is a separate matter to ensure "safe passage" (a quaint expression hitherto reserved for fugitives and terrorists) by re-enacting what the Rowlatt Act sought to do in Amritsar in 1919.
The entire 'torch zone' was declared a no-go area for Indians and, of course, Tibetans. The only ones - apart from security personnel, some pom-pom girls and three busloads of unfortunate schoolchildren - <b>allowed into the sanitised zone were the representatives of those who have acquired sole proprietary rights over the 2008 Olympics - six busloads of Chinese nationals. These special people (akin to the Europeans the Punjab administration exempted from crawling on their bellies) waved super-sized Red Flags with gusto and displayed posters denouncing the Dalai Lama, President Sarkozy and CNN. And while this grotesque assault on the Olympic spirit was being undertaken, Doordarshan ran a commentary that equated the event with the Republic Day parade.
</b>
There were two parallel displays of arrogance on Rajpath last Thursday. There was the triumphalist Chinese displaying a we-don't-give-a-damn-for-what-the-world-thinks sneer. And then there was Indian officialdom with its exemplary show of Vichy complicity.
After the Emergency, it was famously said of many Indian editors that "when asked to bend, they crawled". On Thursday, the Government of India demonstrated the same fawning, over-zealousness before the People's Republic of China. Somewhere in the nerve centres of the Middle Kingdom, they will be calculating what this show of Indian servility implies for China's hegemonic ambitions. In other parts of the world, they will be asking whether their faith in India becoming a counter-weight to China in Asia was based on fantasy.
There is only one formidable obstacle in the path of the Chinese steamroller in India: civil society. Last Thursday's Chinese overkill has ended up converting more people in India to the cause of the Dalai Lama than ever before. Unfortunately, worldwide concern for the plight of Tibetans in China has merely become a handle for Beijing to bolster Han arrogance and nationalism. Far from the Olympic protests being a mellowing influence, popular xenophobia may actually end up reinforcing Chinese intransigence.
Should the democratic world, therefore, try a different tack? Far from it. Tibet has become the symbol of global concern over China's reckless unconcern for the norms of decency that go hand in hand with economic progress. Thanks to the Dalai Lama, it is also a powerful moral symbol.
The Olympics are a sporting event but China is determined to make it an assertion of its political arrogance. It has to be resisted. And what better than for the world outside Beijing to fly the Tibetan flag proudly and ostentatiously throughout August? Even the Government of India can't dare stop that.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->