Sunday, February 15, 2009
BBC Documentary: ‘The fall of the Shah’ and its relevance for India of today
On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Iran’s Khomeini revolution, BBC has telecast a documentary: The fall of the Shah. BBC, together with CNN, is the most popular TV channel, that is viewed by English speaking people of India. The chronology of the historical events that brought out a TV covered modern religious revolution that was a first for the world. So will be the lessons drawn from the BBC documentary by more aware observers in India. The fast moving developments have so much like the replay of forces that brought out the religious revolution in Iran. The common factor that pulled down Shah after making him wholly dependant and brainwashed to imagine that he was a super power in the region, was the entry of the US and Israeli conspirators into the affairs of the nation. Just like the Shah, our leaders have been fully convinced by the US and Israel that they know India better than Indian would over know. Just like Americans devising SAVAK in Iran of yester years, India has blindly committed to follow US and Israeli doctrine of brutalization of its own people as the only way to ‘save’ the country. Just like the Shah who was sold most advanced military hardware, and pumped up to feel that the security of the region is his prerogative and his for the asking. Shah’s megalomania completely blurred his common sense judgments. India is being asked to buy US and Israeli defence hardware and the thinking and the need behind the possession and use of these arms, has the same development that were to be one of the prime reason for the downfall of the Shah. When the journalists from the same western countries asked the Shah, why he needed such formidable armaments like a fleet of F-18s, that were not introduced even in the US, the Shah said it is like asking the US and UK why they have such big armies and defence forces. One can easily make out how shallow, Shah’s reasoning was for squandering his oil wealth on military hardware, while his people in village across the country did not have the most basic necessities of life. India with all his back to back high GDP percentages, has yet to get nearly 600 million India out of their abject poverty, where even survival is a life long struggle. All these Tatas, Mittals, Ambanis and Bajajs will not save India, if and when these poor and hungry people cling to any convenient trigger and call it a day.
That trigger too could borrow from the history of Iran. The way Shah was forcing ‘modernization’ on his old country steeped in an age-old culture tied up to an overpowering religion, India’s new wave of modernization is seriously challenging the old morals and cultural conservativeness. Unless the administration is able to moderate the whole face-off between the old and the new, we may be faced with some trigger that will bring fascists to rule the land. India must shun both the US and Israel, get rid with all intelligence and security entanglements with both these ruthless conspirators and depend on its own homegrown intellect to devise ways and means to tackle India’s most intractable problem of poverty. Corruption is working like cancer in the bureaucratic maze of our governance and all public schemes are stuck in paper work. The money is being siphoned off. India should reach out to its people and come out with emergency means to tackle poverty. India’s lopsided progress is creating more heart-burns than any measure of pride in the media hyped super-power hubris. Let our saner thinkers watch the BBC documentary again and again and draw correct lessons from Iranian mistakes to avoid a bloody revolution in India.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com
www.ghulammuhammed.wordpress.com
VISIT: http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/
WHERE THERE IS A WILL, THERE IS A WAY. ITS REMARKABLE HOW DEDICATED INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS HAVE FOUND LINKS TO HELP PIN DOWN THE CULPRITS TO THEIR SCENE OF CRIME THROUGH THEIR PHONE CALL RECORDS!
