MINISTRY OF FEAR by Kabir Bedi

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN “TEHELKA” MAGAZINE/ AUGUST 15-21, 2010 ISSUE/ UPDATED.

MINISTRY OF FEAR

Now they’re after the Blackberry. Since “terrorists might use” Blackberry’s email and messaging services, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) wants the master keys to their encryption. Blackberry says there are no master keys, each users code is designed to be unique. So the MHA is threatening to ban them in India. Who will blink first?

The Home Ministry has always been doggedly resistant to technological advances. For decades, their techno-phobic mindsets led to the banning of walkie-talkies on film locations ---“terrorist might use them” --- and the denial of radio taxi services in India, long after it was common across the world. Remember when they’d confiscate our music batteries at airports? Then they went after the Indian telecoms, who are being forced, at an astronomical cost, to make every mobile tappable, and to personally verify owners of the 500 million mobiles in India. It’s a free lunch for the ministry who won’t be paying a penny.

To what end? None of these policies have prevented terrorists from communicating effectively. But they have seriously inconvenienced millions of bonafide customers, tourists, especially in “border states”. Kashmir was kept off the mobile map for many years. Even today whole swathes can’t use mobiles because, “terrorists may use them”. Damn the needs of all the rest.

The threat to India’s Blackberry services is frightening and real. Thuraya satellite phones have already been banned because the company refused to compromise the privacy of its worldwide users. A hapless globetrotting Brit is now languishing in prison for carrying it through the country without having used it once. Forget Thuraya’s unequalled reach in the Himalayan ranges, rural India, the Thar Desert, or the oil rigs at sea. Since “terrorists might use them” nothing else seems to count.

 

We are the greatest beneficiaries of a worldwide revolution in communications. The thrust of today’s technology is to enable people to reach each other in every way imaginable. Telephones, mobiles, smsing, email, Internet telephony, voicemail, multimedia messages, DVDs, online forums, file sharing and the plethora of social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin et al), are creating endless ways for people to communicate with each other. Can the Home Ministry monitor and control them all?

It may be news to the Ministry but smart terrorists don’t use traceable communications like email. They simply file their messages in their ‘drafts’ folder, easily accessed by recipients who share their password. Or they communicate on porn sites. Or on obscure forums in other languages. Or in heavily coded messages. Or, quite simply, through any of the many social media networks using fake accounts. Terrorists are always one step ahead, their survival depends on it.

So going after Blackberry’s privacy is not just pointless, it’s bad policy. Individuals, corporates or countries, all have justified needs for secrecy. Who wants the intelligence agencies peeping into their sexual secrets, business secrets, state secrets? Should the Home ministry be given right to know everything about everybody? Threats from terrorists, however awful their crimes, should not give the state the right to override everyone’s legitimate needs for privacy. It’s a misuse of power.

The MHA’s fear factor is also souring tourism and business in India. One David Headley, a white man who turned out to be a terrorist, and all tourist visas to India are tarred on arrival. Passports are stamped “Not eligible to return to India for two months.” While bad guys always find their way in, with or without visas (remember 26/11?), frequent travellers are lamenting the fading allure of “Incredible India”. At the Foreigner’s Registration Office (FRRO) in Mumbai, those wanting a routine renewal of their Business Visas are told by the FRRO to fly to Delhi for Ministry clearance. Easy, huh? It’s a frog-in-the-well attitude that suspects every foreigner when we’ve exported 25 million of our own.

The antiquated mentality of the Home ministry hasn’t understood the uncontrollable openness of the digital age. Gone are the good old days when surveillance meant steaming open a letter, tapping a phone or intercepting a telegram. It’s a whole new world out there. Undeterred, like some authoritarian states, they’re planning to invade Google too. Next stop You Tube and Facebook? Hey, “terrorist might use them”. What about the legitimate rights of billions who aren’t terrorists?

But let’s be fair. Chidambaram, once a great Finance Minister, is performing admirably in a difficult “job”, as he calls it, as Home Minister. But it’s also his job to change the ministry’s outdated mindset, and drag them kicking and screaming into the 21^st century. Going after Blackberry’s 41 million worldwide customers --- 1 million in India alone --- will seriously disrupt the working lives of enormous numbers of people involved in India’s growth story. And it won’t stop terrorists from communicating. We live in dangerous times and we’re rooting for the good guys. But the Home Ministry shouldn’t expect the rest of the world to do their job for them. The tail can’t wag the dog.

Kabir Bedi is an international actor, producer and columnist.

NO WAY TO TREAT AN ICON

This article was originally printed in the TIMES OF INDIA on February 27^th, 2011, titled “The Karmapa is an Icon, he Deserves more Respect.”   Updated and slightly revised.

NO WAY TO TREAT AN ICON 

by

Kabir Bedi

Almost everyone knows of the Dalai Lama. Not many Indians had heard of  “Karmapa Lama” before he recently burst into the news, accused of having 7.5 crores cash in foreign currencies, attempting benami land deals near Dharamsala and, worst of all, being a Chinese spy. So why are the Tibetan refugees themselves so angered by these accusations? Tenzin Tsundue, a leading activist, says, “This country that we are so grateful to is alleging the Karmapa is a spy for China. And we can’t understand that at all.” Many question the motives of the Indian intelligence agencies in leaking this allegation against the Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, ever since he came to India as a refugee in 2000.

Who exactly is the Karmapa? In a word, after the Dalai Lama, the Karmapa is the most important Tibetan Buddhist leader today. In Christian terms, the Karmapa would be like the Archbishop of Canterbury or the head of the Greek Orthodox Church, second only to the Pope. But the Karmapa’s Kagyu centres across the world, over 500, vastly outnumber the Dalai Lama’s Gelug centres. Most impressive for a 25 year old who left Tibet barely 11 years ago.

How did a monk so young acquire such enormous religious power so quickly? In a manner of speaking, he “inherited” it. The Tibetans have a well-established tradition of finding the reincarnation of their most important lamas to preserve the continuity of their religious orders. Sceptics may scoff at it, but even the Dalai Lama was discovered in this way, though he was just the son of a small farmer.

Selecting the reincarnation of the last Karmapa (the 16^th), who died in 1981, turned out to be a more contentious issue. Those controversies are the root of the present 17th Karmapa’s problems with the Indian security services. He was discovered by high lamas, in a small village of nomads in eastern Tibet, exactly as predicted in a letter left by the last Karmapa. The Karmapa was enthroned, age 8, at Tsurphu monastery near Lhasa, and even recognised by the Chinese. But, unable to bear Chinese religious restrictions, the new Karmapa made, in the words of Time magazine, “a breath-taking escape” to India in January 2000, when he was only 14 years old. Even the Dalai Lama, surely the highest authority on Tibetan affairs, authenticated his status as the new Karmapa.

By then, another high-ranking Kagyu Lama, Shamar Rinpoche, had put forward his own rival candidate as the “real” Karmapa. This grew into a nasty conflict with wild accusations and allegations being hurled at the recognised Karmapa. Some think the Indian security agencies are backing the unrecognised Karmapa rival for darker motives of their own. Be that as it may, the persecution of the authenticated 17th Karmapa hasn’t stopped since the time of his arrival. Intelligence Bureau officials reportedly sit in on his meetings, and he is not allowed to visit anyone outside a 15 mile radius without police permission. It’s a policy that outrages the millions who believe in the historic lineage of the Karmapas. But that’s not half of it.

The previous Karmapa (16^th), Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, was a bear of a man with great wisdom and wit, twinkling eyes, and a laugh that came from the belly. I knew him well. My mother, Freda Bedi, was ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun in his beautiful Rumtek monastery in Sikkim. The 16^th Karmapa was also the “Raj Guru” of the royal families of Sikkim and Bhutan. Living in India as a refugee, he quickly turned his imposing Rumtek monastery into the most important hub of the Kagyu Order outside Tibet.

Despite his iconic status in the Buddhist world, his reincarnated successor, His Holiness Karmapa 17th, has been prevented from returning to his real home, Rumtek monastery, on the orders of the Home Ministry ever since he fled Tibet in 2000. Instructed to stay in Dharamsala, the Karmapa has been accommodated as an “honoured guest” in a small Gyuto monastery, belonging to the Dalai Lama, for the last 11 years. (Now even that monastery has been seized!) Even the Dalai Lama has been “asked” to live in Himachal Pradesh, which prohibits the sale of land to any outsiders. But, in exceptional circumstances, the Himachal government does give permission for such purchases. That permission had been applied for by the Karmapa’s office --- could there be a more exceptional case? --- while they looked for land. From news reports, it seems they had paid a seller an advance of 1 crore rupees, which was discovered and promptly seized by the Himachal police. That seizure led to raids on “the Karmapa’s monastery”, which resulted in the further seizure of 7 crores in 14 foreign currencies, including Chinese Yuans, the perfect fodder for leaking even more allegations about the Karmapa’s Chinese connections.

So what’s going on here? The Karmapa has legions of foreign devotees, including Chinese and Tibetan, who make donations in the currencies of their countries. The Karmapa’s office applied for, and received, permission to bank the money under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act. Inexplicably, this permission was withdrawn after the first $100,000 was received and banked. The Karmapa’s re-application has been pending, and pending, since 2002. What’s a monk to do with a growing pile of donations that can’t be banked, except to keep it in cash and use it for expenses? With all that money now seized, how is the Karmapa expected to pay for the upkeep of all the monks, monasteries and nunneries that depend on him for support while the case winds its way through India’s serpentine judicial system?

If the Home Ministry has any proof of the Karmapa’s misdeeds, let them state their case, prosecute him, and be done with it. If there’s any financial impropriety in the land deal, let the law take its course. But preventing the Karmapa from returning to his historic monastery in Sikkim, refusing permission for his foreign tours (Update: they finally allowed him to vist America in July 2011), not allowing him to bank his donations, and treating him like a pariah for over a decade, makes Indian government look like an oppressive police state with no respect for religious sensibilities. It’s a disgraceful way to treat a Buddhist icon. How would we look if he sought asylum in a friendlier country?

Kabir Bedi is an international actor, producer and occasional columnist. He has been a voting member of the “Oscars Academy” (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) for almost three decades. In December 2010, the Italian Government knighted him, “Cavaliere”, its highest civilian honour.

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BOLLYWOOD SONG AND DANCE

My thoughts on "Bollywood song and dance' were penned as a Foreward  to  Sangita Shreshtova's new book, "Is It All About Hips", highlighting how this unique phenomenon has become a foot-stomping international success.

BOLLYWOOD SONG AND DANCE 

by Kabir Bedi

Bollywood is unique in world cinema. What differentiates their films is the way they integrate singing and dancing into stories whatever their genre: romantic, dramatic, comedy, action, even horror. It’s a convention never questioned by anyone other than some westernised Indian critics who think the sun rises in Hollywood. Song and dance is what’s expected, nay demanded, by hundreds of millions of fans across the world, impatient for Bollywood’s highly entertaining razzmatazz. Its creation of sublime, emotional or foot-stomping escapism is unmatched anywhere in the world.

For decades, Bollywood was known as the “the Hindi film industry”, after the language it spoke. It couldn’t be called Indian cinema, because that would include films in 8 regional languages, with six different scripts, seen by over a billion people. However, all Indian films follow the song and dance format of Bollywood, where it all began in the 1930s with the advent of sound. Somewhere in the early 1990s, the word “Bollywood” replaced “Hindi films” and spread fast. It outraged old-fashioned purists who thought it sounded like a bad rip off of “Hollywood”. Right or wrong, “Bollywood” is now a worldwide brand, growing in popularity by the day. British royalty, taxi drivers in Rome or hair dressers in New York, all want to know more about Bollywood, even if they haven’t seen any of its films. And Bollywood dance routines have been its most successful export ever, with dance classes in Kent, fitness routines in Los Angeles, and ”Jai Ho” being performed at the Oscars. “Is It All About Hips?”, Sangita Shresthova’s new book, highlights this phenomenon brilliantly.

India, the biggest film industry in the world ---1000 films a year or more, with almost 6 songs a film --- creates melodies by thousands every year, generally filmed with stars who dance. That’s a prodigious amount of singing and dancing. As a singer, no one has been more prolific than Bollywood’s Lata Mangeshkar, “the nightingale of India”, who has recorded over 40,000 songs over her 50 year career, a Guinness Record unlikely ever to be surpassed. Indian films are unique in another remarkable way. It’s the only film industry in the world that gives a nation almost all its pop music and its modern dance forms.

Sangita Shreshtova, a classical dancer herself, has been an ardent advocate of Bollywood for years. I first met her when invited me to the Prague Bollywood Festival, which she organised brilliantly in 2007, showing some of my Bollywood films, and, as a special honour, my epic Italian TV series, “Sandokan”. She then moved to California but didn’t lose her focus. This brilliant and entertaining book is product of Sangita Shresthova’s twin passions, Bollywood and Dance. It illuminates the unique phenomenon that defines Bollywood films, its spectacular song and dance routines, while giving us a fascinating insight into its incredible international impact.

It’s ironic that I’ve asked to write this introduction since I’m probably the only Bollywood actor who refused to sing or dance. (Psst: I did try it in a few films, but it wasn’t my scene). But I’m delighted to write this because Sangita has written such a fine book. But, I confess, there’s another naughty reason. I love watching and listening to great Bollywood songs. When theatre lights dim, and Bollywood songs and dance numbers begin, I’m in heaven. Never mind the logic of 15 different locations, with 15 costume changes, all in one song. For me, Bollywood songs and dances rock, and all those who create them are real rock stars. Sangita’s book tells us their story as never before.

MINISTRY OF FEAR by Kabir Bedi

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN “TEHELKA” MAGAZINE/ AUGUST 15-21, 2010 ISSUE, when the Government was threatening to ban Blackberry's encrypted communications in India. UPDATED.

MINISTRY OF FEAR

Now they’re after the Blackberry. Since “terrorists might use” Blackberry’s email and messaging services, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) wants the master keys to their encryption. Blackberry says there are no master keys, each users code is designed to be unique. So the MHA is threatening to ban them in India. Who will blink first?

The Home Ministry has always been doggedly resistant to technological advances. For decades, their technophobic mindsets led to the banning of walkie-talkies on film locations ---“terrorist might use them” --- and the denial of radio taxi services in India, long after it was common across the world. Remember when they’d confiscate our music batteries at airports? Then they went after the Indian telecoms, who are being forced, at an astronomical cost, to make every mobile tappable, and to personally verify owners of the 500 million mobiles in India. It’s a free lunch for the ministry who won’t be paying a penny.

To what end? None of these policies have prevented terrorists from communicating effectively. It’s easy to buy prepaid SIM cards abroad for use in India. But the regulations of security agencies have seriously inconvenienced millions of bonafide customers, tourists, especially in “border states”. Kashmir was kept off the mobile map for many years. Even today whole swathes of India can’t use mobiles because “terrorists may use them”. Damn the legitimate desires of all the rest.

The threat to India’s Blackberry services is frightening and real. Thuraya satellite phones have been banned because the company refused to compromise the privacy of its worldwide customers. An ignorant globetrotting Brit is now languishing in prison for carrying a Thuraya through the country without having used it once. Now even immigration forms ask if you’re carrying a satellite phone. Forget Thuraya’s unequalled uses in the Himalayan ranges, the Thar Desert, thousands of remote locations, even oil rigs at sea. Since “terrorists might use them” nobody else's needs seems to count.

 

We are the greatest beneficiaries of a worldwide revolution in communications. The thrust of today’s technology is to enable people to reach each other in every way imaginable. Telephones, mobiles, smsing, email, Internet telephony, voicemail, multimedia messages, DVDs, online forums, file sharing, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin et al are creating endless ways for people to communicate with each other. Can the Home Ministry ever hope to monitor and control them all?

It may be news to the Ministry but smart terrorists don’t use traceable communications like email. They simply file their messages in their ‘drafts’ folder, easily accessed by recipients who share their password. Or they send messages through porn sites using steganography. Or in heavily coded scripts in other languages. Or, simplest of all, social networking sites. Terrorists always one step ahead, their survival depends on it. Only the foolish ones get caught communicating on mobiles.

So going after Blackberry’s privacy is not just pointless, it’s bad policy. Individuals, corporates or countries, all have justified needs for secrecy. Who wants the intelligence agencies peeping into their sexual secrets, business secrets, state secrets? Should the Home ministry be given right to know everything about everybody? Threats from terrorists, however awful their crimes, should not give the state the right to override everyone’s legitimate needs for privacy. It’s a misuse of power.

The MHA’s fear factor is also souring tourism and business ventures in India. One David Headley, a white man who turned out to be a terrorist, and now all tourist visas to India are tarred on arrival. Passports are stamped “Not eligible to return to India for two months.” While bad guys always find their way in, with or without visas (remember 26/11?), frequent travellers are lamenting the fading allure of “Incredible India”. At the Foreigner’s Registration Office (FRRO) in Mumbai, those wanting a routine renewal of their Business Visas are told by the FRRO to fly to Delhi for Ministry clearance. Easy, huh? It’s a frog-in-the-well attitude that suspects every foreigner when we’ve exported 25 million of our own.

The antiquated mentality of the Home ministry hasn’t understood the uncontrollable openness of the digital age. Gone are the good old days when surveillance meant steaming open a letter, tapping a phone or intercepting a telegram. It’s a whole new world out there. Undeterred, like some authoritarian states, they’re planning to invade Google too. Next stop You Tube? Twitter? Hey, “terrorist might use them”. What about the legitimate rights of billions who aren’t terrorists?

But let’s be fair. Chidambaram, once a great Finance Minister, is performing admirably in a difficult “job”, as he calls it, as Home Minister. But it’s also his job to change the ministry’s outdated mindset, and drag them kicking and screaming into the 21^st century. Going after Blackberry’s 41 million worldwide customers --- 1 million in India alone --- will seriously disrupt the working lives of enormous numbers of people involved in India’s growth story. And it won’t stop terrorists from communicating. We live in dangerous times and we’re rooting for the good guys. But the Home Ministry shouldn’t expect the rest of the world to do their job for them. The tail can’t wag the dog.

Kabir Bedi is an international actor, producer and occasional columnist.