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The fate of rebels..


2011  is a kind of watershed year.  Late 40s and early 50s saw the birth of many nations freeing themselves  from the yoke of colonialism .  90s saw the breakup of the socialist block.  No less important is the arab spring of 2011. Who could predict it?
 Barring Isreal,  all countries in the middle-east  came under the rule of  dictators or military junta after they won freedom from the European colonists . They ruled their countries/kingdoms  using force, often buying protection from US and others out of fear of each other. Having been civilizations born out of a totalitarian faith that sees things in terms of Halal / Haram
Dar-al-arab / Dar-ul-Islam, they have neither the institutional capacity nor developed sinews of democratic functioning .  The bottled up old animosities of sectarianism and tribalism  have come to the fore.  There is no democrat like Nehru or  conscience keepers of the freedom movement  like  Rajaji, Kamaraj, Acharya Kriplani, Vinoba, Azad and Nanaji Deshmukh,  no consititutionalist like Dr. Ambedkar.    
The sunnis are killing the ruling alwaki tribes in Assad’s Syria.  The ruling sunni kings are holding out against the disgruntled Shia majority with the financial help of Saudi Arabia and the muscle power on rent from Pakistan. Iraq is already the amphitheatre of sunni/shia killings. Turkey bombs the hapless Kurds in north Iraq.    Saudi Arabia wants US to bomb Iran.  The jasmine revolution that started in Tunisia has swept away the ruling dispensations in  Egypt, Syria, Libya in its wake.  The only binding force within these societies is Islam, but it is also the most divisive and destructive as it  will place the mullahs in control.  These countries will live under a sword for a longer period  as  the liberators turn into oppressors.  I read the line ‘the fate of all rebels is to create new orthodoxies’ when I was in college without much understanding it. Today I know what Aldus Huxley meant.
But these are nothing compared to what a rustling of social fabric can do for the greatest Satan of them all, China, that is when it happens.  Considering the fact that even the word ‘Jasmine’ uttered in a public place drives the Chinese authorities  nuts, a Chinese implosion is not far away, may be 2015. Mind you 50-60 million people were slaughtered by Mao in 50s under the ‘cultural revolution’.

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