Vijay Vikram

The Sunday Pioneer seems to have outdone itself today. It features op-eds by two of the finest observers of Indian political and social trends.

First, we have Swapan Dasgupta on the anniversary of the November attacks on Bombay. My favourite sentence from the piece is –

If initial trends are any indication, it is likely to become another occasion for media-sponsored indignation by celebrities — the spurious enough-is-enough syndrome until the fire next time. It will also be the occasion for some mindless repetition of meaningless homilies such as the mantra that “terrorists have no religion”.

Second, we have Ashok Malik on Sachin Tendulkar’s completion of twenty years as an international cricketer. Malik is at his persipacious best with this line –

Great individuals often need, and sometimes build or summon, great contexts. Sachin has been the fulcrum of Indian cricket’s greatest generation — five good men, Tendulkar and Dravid, Ganguly and Laxman, and Anil Kumble. This was a Band of Brothers like no other. They rescued Indian cricket from the swamp of shame, renewed its spirit, taught it how it win — everywhere, in all conditions.

Finally, Martin Jaques writes what I think is a paradigm-defining piece on China for the LA Times. He pierces through to the heart of the neo-liberal contention – that an embrace of free-marketry will necessitate an embrace of political modernity – and denies it its philosophical premise. His characterisation of China as a civilisation-state rather than the nation-state of European imagination is convincing. Perhaps, it is time for the Gurcharan Das’ of this world to stop villifying China and realise the potential of the Chinese model as a template for third-world development.