Meet and fear 'Senator Kiri'

An American presidential race lasts an entire year or longer. The last one certainly did. But were you able to identify Senator John 'Kiri', in it? No? But that's the name the Democratic candidate has been known by for years to the Indian judicial commission that investigated some seriously curious aspects of the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi near Madras in May 1991.

Had he been identified correctly as John Kerry, would it have made a difference? Quite possibly, yes. For there are so many vested interests that would have wanted or even worked to see the defeat of Senator Kerry - not only in the Republican camp but in remote parts of the world that have little to do with American politics, were they alerted about who he really was and what his victory would mean to their future.

It is strange indeed that not once throughout the presidential campaign was Senator Kerry identified as the man who headed the Senate investigations into the BCCI financial scandal that rocked the international banking industry in the late 80s and early 90s.

The report names Pakistanis from the Zia era, Indian businessmen such as the Hindujas, arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, Arab and Iranian tycoons, the CIA and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam as among those who used and benefited from BCCI.

Now, out of the blue, because of a curious turn of events in New Delhi last week, Senator Kerry's name, more so his investigation into the BCCI affair, may be a topic of discussion for some time to come.

India's federal police, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), said on Friday that it was probing the role of the shadowy Hindu preacher Chandraswami into Rajiv Gandhi's assassination.

Rajiv's widow Sonia Gandhi, who had expressed her anguish at the tardy progress of the probe during the 1991-96 Congress rule of P.V. Narasimha Rao, has assiduously followed the investigation whenever it has gained any steam. (By a sheer coincidence Rao suffered a heart attack the day the CBI named Chandraswami as the object of its inquiry on Friday). There is nothing new in the CBI's interest in investigating Chandraswami.

The Justice Milap Chand Jain Commission's nine-volume final report, that has been gathering dust for over six years, recommended further investigation into at least three crucial aspects of the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.

They are: the alleged role played by Chandraswami; the links of foreign intelligence agencies including the CIA and Israel's Mossad in the conspiracy; and the role of 21 'suspects' who were never charge-sheeted.

Justice Jain devoted an entire volume to allegations and evidence against Chandraswami. Another volume is devoted to intelligence reports, documents and press clippings concerning the politically-connected preacher.

The final report says that the material and circumstantial evidence "raise a serious doubt regarding the involvement of Chandraswami in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi". He also says that the evidence and material with the commission point "an accusing finger" at Chandraswami.

Justice Jain calls for a further probe into Chandraswami's "complicity and involvement" adding that "there are, of course, gaps and missing links in evidence. Unless these gaps are filled and linkages established, the circumstances would continue to raise only doubts."

The section on Chandraswami contains details about the period of Indian politics when Rajiv Gandhi was prime minister, the Bofors scandal was raging and a conspiracy was brewing to unseat him.

Chandraswami, according to Justice Jain, had a "definite" role to play in the machinations. Justice Jain describes the "plethora" of evidence against Chandraswami including Indian intelligence reports as well as the correspondence between these agencies and the prime minister's office.

One note from Sarla Grewal, Rajiv's secretary, to M.K. Narayanan, then Intelligence Bureau chief (now internal security adviser), dated September 23, 1987, states that the government had information that Chandraswami had been meeting opposition leaders and was actively plotting to remove Rajiv.

According to the final report, the animosity that Chandraswami had for Rajiv Gandhi was firmly established as was the fact that he had "all through" been working against him.

Witnesses have stated that Chandraswami frequently used to vent his spleen against Rajiv Gandhi. The report quotes two such instances: "Main usko khatam kar doonga (I'll finish him off)," "Jaise uski maan ki maut huie, vaise he Rajiv Gandhi ko marunga (Rajiv Gandhi will be killed the same way his mother was)."

On relations between Chandraswami and Narasimha Rao, Justice Jain says, Rao, himself had told a former minister that he should not 'insist' that the Jain Commission be given further documentary proof against the 'tantrik'.

The report dwells at length on the 'association' between Chandraswami and Rao. The report states that the two were "very close" and that their association was "not casual".

Another section of the report deals with Chandraswami's connection with the arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and his deposits in BCCI. What did give a boost to the commission's probe was the surfacing of a 130-page report prepared by "US Senator John Kiri", a copy of which was given to the commission by RAW, India's external espionage agency.

It contains the LTTE link. "The Kiri report" states that BCCI was being used by several intelligence and militant outfits like the CIA, Mossad and LTTE and that Khashoggi had two or three 'very active' accounts in its Monte Carlo branch.

The report states that many of these accounts were being used for gun-running and for engineering political assassinations. As much as $84 million had been transferred into the LTTE's accounts.

In his conclusions, Justice Jain says that the "Kiri report" clearly points to the CIA angle in the BCCI affair and that it was "manifest" that BCCI was also being used as a financial front by several terrorist organizations engaged in arms trafficking, including the LTTE. So get ready for a can of worms to be opened, courtesy partly, if not entirely Senator Kerry.

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Here is a conflict of interest that should be widely applauded, not shunned. The Indian government may be pussyfooting around US human rights abuses in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, but not so Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's youngest daughter, Amrit Singh.

She has taken on the Bush administration over the issue of prisoner rights that is convulsing Washington these days. As a staff counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the New York-based Amrit Singh is in the team of attorneys whose dogged persistence has forced the US government to release documents that point to prisoner abuse and torture.

Amrit Singh has the unenviable task of poring through 6,000 pages of documents obtained about a year after filing a Freedom of Information Act request with the Department of Justice and the Department of Defence.

"The government seems intent on preventing the public from learning what policies led to the kinds of abuses we saw at Abu Ghraib," she says. "But the public has a right to know what those policies were, and who put them in place."

Prof Yunus outlines success of Grameen Bank

Poverty is not due to the lack of efforts on the part of the people, poverty is due to the system that doesn't let the poor wriggle out of the situation that they find themselves in, was the quintessence of the talk that Professor Muhammed Yunus, the founder and managing director of the world renowned Grameen Bank, gave to a large audience at a function hosted by Oxford University Press, Karachi.

His talk, punctuated with applause and rounded off with a standing ovation, was attended by a number of local economists and writers.

Recalling what led to the formation of Grameen Bank, Dr Yunus said that in 1972, when he returned to his native town Chittagong, where he was teaching at the university, he realised that while he was teaching elegant economic theories to the students, the people of the next door village were suffering from abysmal poverty.

They were fighting a losing battle against hunger and death. This led him to do something, more as a human being than as an economist. "I discovered that they were unable to pay the interest let alone the principal sum.

A survey with the help of my students gave astonishing results. There were 42 households which needed merely 856 takas ($27), to pay off their loans. I parted with that small amount, much to their disbelief. You'll be surprised to know that the loan was repaid by everyone," recalled Prof Yunus.

Despite the discouragement from the government and the traditional bankers, Yunus and his colleagues established the Grameen Bank which currently operates 1,277 branches, providing credit to 3.8 million people residing in 46,620 villages in Bangladesh.

Prof Yunus added that 99 per cent of the loan given to the poor had been returned and as many as 97 per cent borrowers were women. They managed the finances better than men, and the experience had shown that the entire family benefited by the money they got.

He also revealed in how many ways were the people of Bangladesh benefiting from Grameen. Mobile telephones were given on loans to women, and at places where there were no landlines, these women were doing a great job by linking people and in the process helping themselves too.

The man who did his PhD from Vanderbilt University and who has been given honorary doctorate by 21 universities, all but four of them from Europe and North America, said that the Grameen Bank also offered house building loans, scholarships and repayable student loans. Even beggars were given loans to start selling things and make money.

Prof Yunus, who will be a keynote speaker at a seminar on micro-credit, said the bank was owned by the poor - both the borrowers and the depositors. All that the working class people deposited in the bank for 10 years geo double the amount in the form of pension.

Earlier, Ishrat Husain, the State Bank Governor, described him as the most distinguished son of the region. "He is not a theoretician, he is a practitioner," said Mr Husain.

A former governor of Sindh, Barrister Kamal Azfar, calling him a living legend, said: "There is a lot that we in Pakistan can learn from Bangladesh." Ameena Saiyid, the hostess, introducing the guest speaker, said it was he who gave the concept of micro-credit without collateral. At the end of the function, Prof Yunus signed copies of his readable and informative autobiography Banker to the Poor.

Feel of winter

It's difficult for a Karachian to really get the feel of winter by looking at the daily weather reports across Pakistan. "You have got to be here to know how it feels," said a friend from Islamabad.

She was right. In fact, the temperature difference really hits you when you look at yourself from top to bottom and realize how unsuitably clad you are. While women are dressed to kill in their winter best (nothing but pashminas slung casually on one shoulder), you try to keep warm in front of a room heater trying unsuccessfully to hide your feet covered in sequinned chappals.

"Nobody wears summer footwear during winter," said the friend, visibly scandalized. Clothes apart, the crispness of the weather in Islamabad takes visiting Karachians by surprise.

Winter never seems so cheerfully bright in Karachi, one begins to notice. The sun in Islamabad is really bright and brings out the earthy hues of the foliage which are in sharp contrast to the colourful chrysanthemums, giant dahlias and the yellow gainda. The riot of colour is uplifting for the mood.

And people don't eat gajar ka halwa, haleem, saag with makai ki roti, nihari and payya and down it with scalding Kashmiri chai just because these are winter treats but to actually keep warm.

However, the friend says those days are long gone when they'd sit outside in the sun and eat oranges or gather around the heater in the evening and consume kilos of pinenuts, peanuts and raisins.

"There is no fun now. The expanding waistline is forever making you feel guilty and keeps you away from these tasty pastimes. Even our children don't indulge in them.

However, a few fun-filled activities have remained - winter picnics and brunches are still very much in place. In fact, they have become more elaborate with people entertaining at farmhouses."

Interfaith dialogue

Father Archie DeSouza, a priest of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Karachi, reposes implicit trust in an interfaith dialogue between members of different religious communities, sometimes subscribing to diametrically opposed views on issues widely regarded as contentious.

Holding a PhD in Islamic theology from Gregorian University in Italy, Father DeSouza set up a dialogue centre in Karachi about eight years ago where Muslims (both Sunnis and Shias), Hindus, Bahais, Parsis and Christians hold brainstorming sessions.

Last week, he invited two visiting British priests - Bryan Brain, bishop of Manchester, and his colleague Michael Water - to Our Lady of Fatima Church on Randle Road where they took part in a constructive debate with Muslim scholars, including Dr Mohsin Naqvi, who has a Master's degree in comparative religion from the University of Carolina, and Nilofer Ahmed, founding member of "The Daughters of Islam" group.

The Muslim scholars held political leaders responsible for sectarian strife among various groups. They also underlined the need for re-interpreting the Quranic verses about women.

The British priests, who subsequently visited all the important dioceses in Rawalpindi, Hyderabad, Lahore and Faisalabad, conceded that even in the United Kingdom it would difficult to organize a function at which such pluralistic views were aired.

Karachi may have witnessed a great deal of turmoil over the years, but apparently its ability to accommodate people holding conflicting ideologies has remained unimpaired.

A little night music

It was an eclectic collection of songs and singers that greeted the small audience gathered under the canopied shelter at Italy's Dante Alighieri cultural centre the other night.

But the rendering of the heady mix of popular Beatles numbers, operatic arias, Neapolitan songs and mediaeval Latin lyrics from "Carmina Burana" was uniformly good.

Light and easy on the ears, the music fitted in well with the mood of the evening as the pleasant December air worked its invigorating charm on the audience. The Italians were keen to stress that the singers hailed from a variety of occupations - from engineers to housewives - and represented different faiths, Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Parsi.

Singing mostly in chorus, their voices melded beautifully, and the few odd strains that marked the not-too-perfect openings of some of the stanzas were excusable. After all, many in the chorus had never sung before, although some had received voice training and other musical instruction.

Those that had the benefit of the latter were superb, at least to members of the audience not accustomed to hearing the best performers in the field. The programme was followed by an Italian buffet featuring the ever-popular pasta dishes among other fare.

While this particular performance might pass into memory as a relaxed evening of enjoyable singing and some excellent piano music, it does reflect on the role that cultural centres of various foreign missions can play to build up an appreciation of the way of life in their respective countries.

The Italian centre is a newcomer to the scene, but judging by its cultural output so far it is bound to rival that of the Germans and the French, who have an established presence in the city.

There was a time when the Russians - the Soviets then - too used to be active in this area, showing movies like War and Peace on the big screen at Friendship House. One does not know how active they are now, but one thing is certain: the foreign cultural scene in the city is not so vibrant now as it was then.

This is partly because of the 9/11 crisis and the ethnic violence that rocked the city in the 1980s and the 1990s. Now it is violence blamed on religious and sectarian reasons that prevents foreign missions from making their presence felt.

email: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com.