Category: Uncategorized

By Ardeshir Cowasjee

THE local press is sometimes rather tardy when it comes to latching on to events on the home front. The video of the flogging of a young girl allegedly by the Taliban in the usurped vale of Swat began its circulation around the internet early last week.

On April 2, a report headed ‘Video of girl’s flogging as Taliban hand out justice’ was printed in The Guardian, and a similar report in The Times under the heading ‘Video: radicals beat girl, 17, in Islamic stronghold of Swat, Pakistan’. Britain awakens early. The New York Times followed suit two days later, on April 4, in tune with our press, and printed a report on the flogging, ‘Video of Taliban flogging rattles Pakistan’.

The news in Pakistan was headlined the same day after the subject video had been aired on most of our news channels on Friday, April 3. On one channel, a ‘spokesman’ for the Taliban defended the punishment with the caveat that it should not have been publicised. And one anchor person apparently quoted chapter and verse of the Quran and applauded the flogging.

The government of the NWFP which, with the blessings of the federal government, concluded the ‘peace’ deal in Swat with Sufi Mohammad and the Taliban on Feb 15, via its information minister called the airing of the video an attempt to ‘sabotage’ the peace deal. President, prime minister and assorted federal ministers had no option but to make the usual condemnatory noises and issue the usual inquiry orders.

Pakistan’s chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, has sprung into action, as expected of a man of his stature who has his head and heart in the right place, and taken suo motu action summoning to his court members of the administration of the NWFP. Not that it can serve much purpose as both provincial and federal governments have abdicated their writ in the vale of Swat and handed it over to the Taliban to do with it and its inhabitants what they will.

Such is the schizophrenia that assails us, which is evident in all walks of life and in all different class distinctions. Education in our case is no panacea for a mass state of denial when it comes to events happening under our combined eyes. It is amazing how the benefits of higher education swiftly rub off our elite classes when it comes to matters of tradition which glorify the violation of human rights.

When Mohammad Ali Jinnah made his famous and much ignored statement on Aug 11, 1947 addressing the members of what was to be the constituent assembly of Pakistan it was not meant in any way to be ambiguous. He was quite clear when he stated that the first duty of any government is to impose and maintain law and order so that the lives, properties and religious beliefs of the country’s citizens could be protected. He did not imply by this that outmoded and barbaric practices which are falsely linked to religion should be condoned.

Enough righteous condemnation has been heaped both by Pakistanis at home and by our international providers, mentors and observers upon the handing over of large chunks of territory to that international arch-enemy, the Taliban. We are all well aware of how they operate having observed them at work in Afghanistan during the 1990s and the first two years of this century, so who should be surprised at the vengeance they are wreaking upon the population of the usurped territories up north? And more to the point, who should be surprised that they are steadily advancing into the heartland of the country and proudly claiming to be the perpetrators of attacks upon cricket teams and the police?

Asif Ali Zardari, president of the Republic, at one stage insisted that the truce, or ‘peace deal,’ or whatever the handing over can be termed, was undertaken purely with the ‘moderates’ amongst the Taliban. Are they divided into moderates and non-moderates or are they purely and simply the same Taliban with the same beliefs and practices?

He needs to take a long hard look at some of the men he has appointed as ministers in both the federal and Sindh governments when it comes to beliefs as to how the women of this nation should be treated.

In a February Asian Human Rights Commission report it was alleged that one Abid Hussain Jatoi, a Sindh provincial minister, had ‘commanded’ a death sentence against a young couple in rural Sindh who had married against the wishes of their families. The young girl was labelled a kari and she and her six-month old child were to be killed if she was not returned to her tribe, that of Jatoi. Reportedly, an FIR has been lodged against him — that is the sole action to have been taken. The names of Nadir Khan Magsi and Abdul Haque Bhurt were also cited in connection with the holding of jirgas against women, an activity which has officially been declared illegal, but which is in full flow in the president’s province.

Then, at the centre, we have a sitting senator, Mir Israrullah Zehri in the ridiculous post of minister for post offices. The man is on record in the Senate as having upheld the burial alive of at least two women in Balochistan in the name of ‘honour’. He maintains that the murder of women suspected of “immoral acts” (a neat way of putting it when men wish to rid themselves of women) are “centuries-old traditions” and are time-honoured “tribal customs” which cannot be disturbed. Even the Taliban have not got round to live burials — yet.

Another appointee to the distinguished cabinet headed by staunch feudals Zardari and Yousuf Raza Gilani is Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani, who has been handed over the portfolio of education. His distinction and his qualification to serve the nation lies in the fact that he was once (how many other times is not known) a member of an illegal jirga which ordered that five minor girls be handed over to the family of a murdered man as compensation.

Our CJP, Justice Chaudhry, prior to being deposed had ordered the arrest of the Bijarani jirga members and froze the illegal decision. Perhaps he will now take up this case once more. Are these men also considered ‘moderates’ by our accidental president who rode in on the coat-tails of a ghost and claims kinship with the founder of the party he has made his own?

arfc@cyber.net.pk

Dawn

By Nirupama Subramanian

A chilling video showing the Taliban flogging a young girl reportedly in the Swat district of the North West Frontier Province has jolted Pakistan and raised new fears about a government agreement to set up sharia courts in the region and the dangers it poses for the rest of the country.
Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary was among the first to react, taking suo motu notice of the video within hours of its hitting the television screens.

Though his court’s influence in Taliban-ruled Swat is in doubt, Mr. Chaudhary sent notices to the Interior secretary, NWFP Chief Secretary and the provincial Inspector-General of police, as well as constituted an eight-judge bench to hear the case from April 6. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said the Pakistan People’s Party had always stood for women’s rights, praised the late Benazir Bhutto’s contributions in this sphere, and said an enquiry had been ordered.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik said it had to be ascertained if the video was genuine and that he had ordered an investigation to “work out” the place and the date of the incident.

The video shows two men holding the girl face down, one by her legs, and the other by her head. The second man is constantly seen pulling up the girl’s burqa, exposing her salwar-covered backside. The third man flogs her with a cane 37 times.

The girl, said to be 17 years old and identified as Chaand, screams for mercy as she is being caned, first begging to be killed, and then begging her flogger for forgiveness in the name of her father, her grandfather and her grandmother. She is speaking in Pashto. At one point, the bearded black-turbaned man flogging her slaps one of the other men apparently for not effectively preventing her from pulling her burqa down over her back.

Muslim Khan, a spokesman for the Swat Taliban, confirmed the incident and said the girl was rightly punished, and said the girl had illicit relations with her father-in-law. But a rights activist in Swat said the girl’s father had turned down the local Taliban commander’s suit for his daughter. The Taliban had meted out this punishment in revenge.

The Awami National Party, which rules the NWFP and made an agreement in February with the Tehrik-e-Nifas-e-Sharia Mohammadi for setting up sharia courts, took cover under the disputed date of the video.

Those who have distributed it say the flogging was filmed after the agreement. The ANP says it took place in January and was distributed at this time “deliberately to derail the peace deal” in Swat.
TNSM chief Sufi Mohammed also dubbed the video a “conspiracy” to destroy the peace agreement in Swat.

Hindu

The news this week has been bad for supporters of women’s rights in at least three parts of the world. On Friday, The Associated Press reported that Israeli newspapers “aimed at ultra-Orthodox Jewish readers” digitally manipulated a photograph of the new Israeli government, to remove two female cabinet ministers, Limor Livnat and Sofa Landver. The photograph was taken at an official ceremony welcoming the new Israeli leadership on Wednesday at the residence of the president of Israel, Shimon Peres.

…

Reuters reports that the woman was 17 years old and describes the scene shown in the video:
Grainy footage apparently shot with a mobile phone camera shows militants making the burka-clad girl lie on the ground on her stomach. One man holds her feet and another her head while a third man with a black beard and turban flogs her with a leather strap. Men can be seen looking on.

“For God’s sake, stop it … hang on, hang on,” the girl cries as the man beats her across the buttocks.
…
All this comes just days after human rights groups expressed concern at a new law in Afghanistan that they say may severely curtail the rights of some women in the country.

As Reuters reported on Thursday, “The new law passed by Parliament and signed by President Hamid Karzai, but not yet promulgated in the official gazette, is meant to legalize minority Shiite family law, which is different than that for the majority Sunni population.”

Jon Boone reported in The Guardian on Wednesday that there was some confusion around the exact provisions of the bill, and that election-year considerations might be at work:

The Afghan constitution allows for Shias, who are thought to represent about 10% of the population, to have a separate family law based on traditional Shia jurisprudence. But the constitution and various international treaties signed by Afghanistan guarantee equal rights for women.

Shinkai Zahine Karokhail, like other female parliamentarians, complained that after an initial deal the law was passed with unprecedented speed and limited debate. “They wanted to pass it almost like a secret negotiation,” she said. “There were lots of things that we wanted to change, but they didn’t want to discuss it because Karzai wants to please the Shia before the election.”
Mr. Boone adds that “the final document has not been published, but the law is believed to contain articles that rule women cannot leave the house without their husbands’ permission, that they can only seek work, education or visit the doctor with their husbands’ permission, and that they cannot refuse their husband sex.”

An Afghan lawmaker, Sayed Hussain Alem Balkhi, who was involved in debating the bill in Parliament, told Reuters that reports about the law were “propaganda,” and claimed that in fact it enshrined certain freedoms for Shiite women, including the right to leave her house “for medical treatment” and “to see her parents without the permission of her husband.”

In Geneva, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, issued a statement on Thursday urging “the Afghan Government to rescind” the new law. Ms. Pillay added that “for a new law in 2009 to target women in this way is extraordinary, reprehensible and reminiscent of the decrees made by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the 1990s.”

Update | 7:42 p.m. As the week has gone on, pressure has mounted on Afghanistan to review the new law. The Guardian’s Julian Borger reported on Wednesday that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised the issue of this new law directly with Afghan President Hamid Karzai at a meeting this week:

Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, came under intense western pressure yesterday to scrap a new law that the UN said legalised rape within marriage and severely limited the rights of women.
At a conference on Afghanistan in The Hague, Scandinavian foreign ministers publicly challenged the Afghan leader to respond to a report on the new law in yesterday’s Guardian, and the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, was reported to have confronted Karzai on the issue in a private meeting.

At a press conference after the meeting, Clinton made clear US displeasure at the apparent backsliding on women’s rights. “This is an area of absolute concern for the United States. My message is very clear. Women’s rights are a central part of the foreign policy of the Obama administration,” she said.

The Associated Press reported the next day that:

Robert Wood, a State Department spokesman, said Thursday that the United States was “very concerned” about the law. “We urge President Karzai to review the law’s legal status to correct provisions of the law that limit or restrict women’s rights,” he said.

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By G. P. Deshpande

Economic & Political Weekly, Vol XLIV No. 14, April 4, 2009

The Taliban has destroyed the Dargah of Rehman Baba on the grounds that women visit it and offer their prayers there. Closer home an ignoramus called Mutalik dictates to all Hindus what Hinduism should be. This Hinduism, it would seem, includes beating up women in the name of “our culture”. How long are we to continue to suffer the destruction of the culture and traditions of south Asia’s two most prominent religions?

G. P. Deshpande, (govind.desh@gmail.com) Marathi playwright, was born in 1938 in Nasik, Maharashtra. He received the Maharashtra State Award for his collective work in 1977, and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for playwriting in 1996. Prof. Deshpande is known for advocating strong, progressive values not only through his academic writings but also through his creative work. His plays especially reflect upon the decline of progressive values in contemporary life. He is impressively persuasive.

Having specialized in Chinese studies, he currently heads the Centre of East Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. The Library of Congress has acquired twelve of his books including a few on Chinese foreign policy. Some of his works have been translated into English.

In the name of God shall I sing
The One whose name higher than any other
He is the master of all masters
He is the King of all kings…

These lines belong to Rehman Baba. Annemarie Schimmel was a German scholar of south Asian Islam and its literatures who published (in 1996) a wonderful book, Glorious Poems from India and Pakistan: Islamic Lyrics of a Thousand Years (as translated from the original German text). The very last lyric there is a rather long poem translated by her from Pashto. What I have cited above are the opening lines of the lyric. They could well belong to Namdev or Meera, but let that be. What you see above is a working translation by me just to give you a feel of Rehman Baba’s attitude. I hope some of Rehman Baba’s confidence comes across in spite of my admittedly inadequate rendering of the late Schimmel’s German rendering of the Pashto text.

“If I sing in the lord’s name, my master, in fact the only master in the world, nobody can stop me for I do His wish” is what he is saying.
Rehman Baba’s full name was Abdurrahman Mohmand (sic). He was born in 1653 south of Peshawar and died not far from his birthplace in 1711. His kabr became a pilgrimage centre in a manner of speaking. It is visited by thousands even now. Or was, shall we say? The Taliban has now destroyed the Dargah on the grounds that women visit it and offer their prayers there. Talking about the poem immediately preceding Baba’s poem Schimmel speaks of the two line verses employed there as a popular form not infrequently composed by women. The Taliban thinks that all this is non-Islamic. What they certify as non-Islamic is naturally also anti-Islamic. This form, called Tappas, described by Schimmel as the most loved folk form in Pashto, was always musical. She has translated the Tappas of Khushal Khan Khatak. Almost all folk forms of poetry are women-oriented in south Asia. So are they in the land of the Pakhtoons. Now these forms are threatened.

Annemarie Schimmel is dead. Otherwise one wonders how she would have suffered the destruction of the culture and traditions of south Asian Islam. She was so fond of the area and its culture. There is a huge necropolis in a place called Thatta in Sind. Her admirer once told me in Karachi that she had on one occasion said, perhaps semi-seriously, that she would like to be buried in that necropolis. Now, as I remember it, I feel that it is just as well that if true her wish was not fulfilled. For all one knows, the Taliban would have made it out of bounds for her.

Callous to Tradition

It is extraordinary that south Asian Islam should have been so insensitive to its own cultural traditions. I suppose that this area has generally been so unmindful of its political and religious culture. A poet’s grave was destroyed in Gujarat. That was no Taliban’s doing. Then some Sree Ram Sene, as we talked about in this column last time, decided to announce that the Hindu culture was under threat. The how and why of it remained mysteriously under wrap. The Sene activists went berserk and Mangalore women were beaten up. All that is a familiar story. The Bamian Buddhas went down to the Butshikans (iconoclasts) at Bamian in Afghanistan.

It was always a mystery when and how the south Asians lost their sense of history. There are perhaps no other people who are so callous to their own history. As if it was not bad enough they are now proclaiming a new version of history. A fellow called Mutalik is now telling me what Hindu culture is. Not just me, he is proclaiming it to all Hindus. He is an ignoramus. That would not have been a problem in itself. It is one because he has designed a pop Hinduism that seems to take Mutalik to be a modern day Sankaracharya. He lays down what Hinduism is or rather should be. This Hinduism, it would seem, includes beating up women in the name of “our culture”. It is perfectly in order or so the Vanar Sene has decided.

Rehman Baba who has been lying there near Peshawar for 300 years is now being told that he must pay the price for women praying at his Dargah. The Dargah must be devastated. And it was. The Taliban recorded yet another of its triumphs. Rehman Baba had almost rhetorically asked once:

“Who but The God, powerful, can make the sun rise and set in the sky?”

Today we can see that the sun has set. Rehman Baba’s grave is no longer there. In another few years people would not be able to show the place where the Dargah existed.

Women are now out of the picture. It has been a convention of the south Asian Bhakti tradition that women were always a part of it. In one stroke the Taliban activists have destroyed a thousand year tradition. Mutalik laid down for us what Hindu culture is. The Taliban are doing this for a while now. They proclaim what Islam is or should be. The entire project is frightening. South Asian religious tradition was always democratic.

The culture was cheerful and colourful here. A certain dry barrenness is taking over. One is tempted to tell Mutalik and his ilk that religion and culture are surely threatened, except that it is endangered by them. In fact we now have a double threat. One is the fundamentalists who cite the authority and texts to ban or destroy something. The other is the “pop religion” which decides the cultural mores for everyone, especially for women. In both cases it is an allegedly fundamentalist ignorance that is leading to violence. In this particular case, as I have stated, there is a systematic attack on south Asian Islamic practices. The Dargahs, the music there, the multi-religious and multi-gender worshipping there were a major source of their popularity. And who would forget the music?

Bent on Self-destruction

The near suicidal tendencies that obtain in fundamentalism are contributing to the destruction of this tradition. In May 2005, the Lashkar-e-Taiba was allegedly responsible for the destruction of the 14th century shrine of Saint Zainuddin Wali of Ashmuqam. There was an unsuccessful effort at destroying the shrine of a mystic of north Kashmir, Ahad B’ab Sopore, and so on.

We seem to be on a self-destructive trip. This part of the world has had an unfortunate history of self-destruction. The greatest tragic epic of the world is the Mahabharata that is perhaps the first depiction of such self-destruction. This kind of self-ruination always brings in its wake a terrifying celebration. We are presently witness to that kind of perverse celebration. In a sense, destruction of these shrines or mosques is destruction of history. That all this should happen here and all these enthusiasts should not realise what they are doing is mind-boggling. Maybe, cultures, in a suicidal mood, have no time or interest in history or religion and spirituality.
Maybe there is little use wailing over this. This destructive instinct seems to follow us everywhere. At the end of Mahabharata, at the end of that monstrous destruction, the sage Vyasa has already voiced the futility of shouting against it. “I stand here, my hands raised and shout. Nobody listens to me”. Or, that Pashto poet Khatak says unto God: “I call you. But you do not respond”.

Are we living in the unresponsive times?

epw

(Submitted by a reader)

South Asian Women in Media (SAWM) in association with Lahore Film and Literary Club (LFLC) invite you to the screening of film:
“Women of the Holy Kingdom” directed by Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy
In Saudi Arabia, women need permission from their male guardians to study, work and travel. They are also forbidden to drive and mix with men in public. Now, a growing number of Saudi Women are challenging these traditions and are clamoring for more rights. Sharmeen Obaid documents the emerging women’s movement. Obaid also interviews religious clerics and young working mothers who denounce change and label the women’s movement as immoral.
Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy is the first non- American journalist to be awarded the prestigious Livingston Award and the youngest recipient of the One World Media broadcast journalist of the year award in the United Kingdom.
Date: Saturday, 11th April 2009 Time: 7 pm Venue: South Asian Media Centre, 177-A, Shadman2. Phone# :(92-42) 7555621-8
Ms Sarah Tareen
Coordinator
Lahore Film and Literary Club
177-A,Shadman-2,Lahore
South Asian Media Centre.
(92-42) 7555621-8

On the 60th anniversary of Burma’s independence, the country is colonized from within by its military rulers. Dinyar Godrej travels to its former capital, Rangoon, to catch what’s in the air.
I’m riding a ghost plane. Apart from the roar of engines, there is an uneasy silence. No holidaymakers of the raucous variety. Just the occasional short, murmured exchange. An elderly Burmese man is fumbling with his immigration form. He turns it over and over in his hands, half the questions unanswered. Next to me a nervous young man cranes his neck, peering out of the window. Eventually he initiates some chit-chat, volunteering that he is returning from London, where he had been staying with relatives. I’m itching to ask how he feels, but I bite my tongue. I’ve been infected by the self-censorship that governs all conversations with strangers in Burma. ‘You never know who is your friend, who is your enemy,’ a local tells me later.
As we touch down, a foreigner abandons her half-read copy of Newsweek. The list of things not to carry into Burma is extensive. I’ve purged my luggage and left all my contact information lurking in an email to myself.
The two women at the immigration desk scribble down details in pencil (no computer in sight) and whisk me through. Following the vicious suppression of street protests in September 2007, tourists are scarce. Numbers were already down due to a long-running boycott urged by the country’s most famous prisoner, the Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.

Feeding the regime
Since 1962 Burma’s people have been under the heel of a military dictatorship. Business is dominated by military-owned conglomerates and entrepreneurs paying their dues, so buying almost anything here feeds the regime. Chances are that the roads one uses in popular tourist destinations, or the golf courses the rich set might tee off on, were built by forced labour. Pagodas visited or ferries boarded incur a dollar fee that goes straight into the junta’s coffers. One cannot visit this country without in some way contributing to the junta. Large parts of it are off-limits to tourists. These are also the places where rape, murder and pillage have reduced entire communities to refugees. Many Burmese in exile tell me the only way to justify a trip is if the solidarity you can show to the people will outweigh the damage you will do with your dollar.
All this makes me uncomfortable. Posing as a tourist, while hoping to get a sense of the place as a journalist, makes me even more so. It’s not easy being what you aren’t.
Every traveller to Burma is told never, ever to initiate a political conversation; let them do the talking. But politics is everywhere. The beaming staff at the reception desk of my guesthouse ask me why I am staying for such a short period. I say I would have loved to stay longer, but because there’s so little good news from Burma in the West I couldn’t persuade friends and family. Tight-lipped silence ensues and I scurry to my room with all the shame of someone who has farted in a lift.
Next morning I walk up Mahabandoola Road on my way to Sule pagoda. This is the wide thoroughfare where thousands gathered in September 2007, emboldened by the protest of the monks. Today it is calm. Monks I speak with later tell me how they were hunted through the city streets when the crackdown began, how they were taken in by sympathetic citizens who gave them ordinary clothes and smuggled them out of Rangoon, walking in groups around them. They tell of their fellow clergy rounded up, stripped naked and beaten, the families of other leaders arrested in order to smoke out those in hiding.

An emptying drain
The protests had begun for economic reasons, but economics is politics in Burma. The military regime is fabulously inept at handling the country’s finances. It used to be called the State Law and Order Restoration Council or SLORC – like the sucking sound of an emptying drain – but now goes under the moniker of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), on the advice of a US PR consultancy. After a disastrous isolationist period supposedly following the ‘Burmese way to Socialism’, it now aspires to the authoritarian capitalism of its neighbour, China. But without the infrastructure or the business acumen of China, it is presiding over a grand sale of the country’s assets, with the top military brass amassing fortunes. Transparency International has dubbed the country, jointly with Somalia, the world’s most corrupt. On top of the heap is the ruthless Senior General Than Shwe, whose daughter’s wedding in 2006 cost an alleged $50 million. Meanwhile, an estimated five million Burmese face chronic hunger – in a country which used to be known as the rice bowl of Asia. About half of all children don’t enrol in school any more; healthcare is among the worst in the world.

Read more Feeding the regime
Since 1962 Burma’s people have been under the heel of a military dictatorship. Business is dominated by military-owned conglomerates and entrepreneurs paying their dues, so buying almost anything here feeds the regime. Chances are that the roads one uses in popular tourist destinations, or the golf courses the rich set might tee off on, were built by forced labour. Pagodas visited or ferries boarded incur a dollar fee that goes straight into the junta’s coffers. One cannot visit this country without in some way contributing to the junta. Large parts of it are off-limits to tourists. These are also the places where rape, murder and pillage have reduced entire communities to refugees. Many Burmese in exile tell me the only way to justify a trip is if the solidarity you can show to the people will outweigh the damage you will do with your dollar.
All this makes me uncomfortable. Posing as a tourist, while hoping to get a sense of the place as a journalist, makes me even more so. It’s not easy being what you aren’t.
Every traveller to Burma is told never, ever to initiate a political conversation; let them do the talking. But politics is everywhere. The beaming staff at the reception desk of my guesthouse ask me why I am staying for such a short period. I say I would have loved to stay longer, but because there’s so little good news from Burma in the West I couldn’t persuade friends and family. Tight-lipped silence ensues and I scurry to my room with all the shame of someone who has farted in a lift.
Next morning I walk up Mahabandoola Road on my way to Sule pagoda. This is the wide thoroughfare where thousands gathered in September 2007, emboldened by the protest of the monks. Today it is calm. Monks I speak with later tell me how they were hunted through the city streets when the crackdown began, how they were taken in by sympathetic citizens who gave them ordinary clothes and smuggled them out of Rangoon, walking in groups around them. They tell of their fellow clergy rounded up, stripped naked and beaten, the families of other leaders arrested in order to smoke out those in hiding.

An emptying drain
The protests had begun for economic reasons, but economics is politics in Burma. The military regime is fabulously inept at handling the country’s finances. It used to be called the State Law and Order Restoration Council or SLORC – like the sucking sound of an emptying drain – but now goes under the moniker of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), on the advice of a US PR consultancy. After a disastrous isolationist period supposedly following the ‘Burmese way to Socialism’, it now aspires to the authoritarian capitalism of its neighbour, China. But without the infrastructure or the business acumen of China, it is presiding over a grand sale of the country’s assets, with the top military brass amassing fortunes. Transparency International has dubbed the country, jointly with Somalia, the world’s most corrupt. On top of the heap is the ruthless Senior General Than Shwe, whose daughter’s wedding in 2006 cost an alleged $50 million. Meanwhile, an estimated five million Burmese face chronic hunger – in a country which used to be known as the rice bowl of Asia. About half of all children don’t enrol in school any more; healthcare is among the worst in the world.
Read More

By Benedict Carey

Look around you. On the train platform, at the bus stop, in the car pool lane: these days someone there is probably faking it, maintaining a job routine without having a job to go to.

The Wall Street type in suspenders, with his bulging briefcase; the woman in pearls, thumbing her BlackBerry; the builder in his work boots and tool belt — they could all be headed for the same coffee shop, or bar, for the day.
“I have a new client, a laid-off lawyer, who’s commuting in every day — to his Starbucks,” said Robert C. Chope, a professor of counseling at San Francisco State University and president of the employment division of the American Counseling Association. “He gets dressed up, meets with colleagues, networks; he calls it his Western White House. I have encouraged him to keep his routine.”
The fine art of keeping up appearances may seem shallow and deceitful, the very embodiment of denial. But many psychologists beg to differ.
To the extent that it sustains good habits and reflects personal pride, they say, this kind of play-acting can be an extremely effective social strategy, especially in uncertain times.
“If showing pride in these kinds of situations was always maladaptive, then why would people do it so often?” said David DeSteno, a psychologist at Northeastern University in Boston. “But people do, of course, and we are finding that pride is centrally important not just for surviving physical danger but for thriving in difficult social circumstances, in ways that are not at all obvious.”
For most of its existence, the field of psychology ignored pride as a fundamental social emotion. It was thought to be too marginal, too individually variable, compared with basic visceral expressions of fear, disgust, sadness or joy. Moreover, it can mean different things in different cultures.
But recent research by Jessica L. Tracy of the University of British Columbia and Richard W. Robins of the University of California, Davis, has shown that the expressions associated with pride in Western society — most commonly a slight smile and head tilt, with hands on the hips or raised high — are nearly identical across cultures. Children first experience pride about age 2 ½, studies suggest, and recognize it by age 4.
It’s not a simple matter of imitation, either. In a 2008 study, Dr. Tracy and David Matsumoto, a psychologist at San Francisco State, analyzed spontaneous responses to winning or losing a judo match during the 2004 Olympic and Paralympic games. They found that expressions of pride after a victory were similar for athletes from 37 nations, including for 53 blind competitors, many of them blind from birth.
“It’s a self-conscious emotion, reflecting how you feel about yourself, and it has this important social component,” Dr. Tracy said. “It’s the strongest status signal we know of among the emotions; stronger than a happy expression, contentment, anything.”
In one continuing experiment, Dr. Tracy, along with Azim Shariff, a doctoral student at British Columbia, have found that people tend to associate an expression of pride with high status — even when they know that the person wearing it is low on the ladder. In their study, participants impulsively assigned higher status to a prideful water boy than to a team captain who looked ashamed.
The implications of this are hard to exaggerate. Researchers tend to split pride into at least two broad categories. So-called authentic pride flows from real accomplishments, like raising a difficult child, starting a company or rebuilding an engine. Hubristic pride, as Dr. Tracy calls it, is closer to arrogance or narcissism, pride without substantial foundation. The act of putting on a good face may draw on elements of both.
But no one can tell the difference from the outside. Expressions of pride, whatever their source, look the same. “So as long as you’re a decent actor, and people don’t know too much about your situation, all systems are go,” said Lisa A. Williams, a doctoral candidate in psychology at Northeastern University.
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