Cry, the Beloved Country

Vajpayee and his government have outlived their usefulness. Vajpayee proved himself to be unequal to the task of promoting communal harmony. He proved to be a father who favored one of his sons over others. A house divided against itself cannot stand. All fantastic projections of economic growth will come to nought if life and limb are not safe. Gujarat, India`s richest state, is ample proof of that. It is a shame that he is bringing his 5 decades long parliamentary career to an ignominous close. Chandrababa Naidu may just do it:

TDP to Withdraw Support?

http://www.hinduonnet.com/stories/2002041406830100.htm

ylh #122 I have already posted a befitting response below - indeed a challenge, no less!! - to your post #128.

But I kept on reading after that and see that you end your post #122 with a PS that was too good to let go: you write ``PS But ah, shankar will continue his unjustified support for this monster!``

Monster!! Moi?? Is this a promotion from the Budha Babba you had made me last week (the one that carries off 21 year old infants in his sack while the baby sitter is warming bottled milk for the future Leader of the Nation)? And Shankar provides unjustified support to me...I bet Shankar realizes the error of his ways after reading your post.

Banjaara #125 you write ``bad duas dont work in ANY position.Had it worked,many names would have vanished not only from Chowk``

Heh! Heh! Some of us would not just have disappeared from Chowk but out of this universe altogether and into some other dimension...

binifer #136 you write ``...Kachee kairyaan...``. Most respectfully of course, what on earth is this phrase supposed to mean: I get the ``Kachee`` part, but ``kairyaan``??.

I see things got heated up a bit while I was gone the past week (on a boat that took us around the Bahamas and onto a couple of really neat islands). So, being in a really great mood, let me take a fresh look at what ylh is trying to say. :-)

Let`s see: Latest ylh post, #138, he refers to his own posts as proof that I am not worthy of any respect. Hmmmmmmmm...If poster X wishes to prove that poster Y is lowlife, doesnt poster X normally cutandpaste something that poster Y wrote? In case of ylh, we have poster X (ylh) pointing to other posts written by poster X (ylh) to prove poster Y (myself) guilty...Sorry, ylh, I still cant say that what you write makes any sense (please notice the effort I made in the last sentence to be polite, and not to explain why this makes you an idiot).

So, here is a challenge to you: If you wish to prove that I am lowlife, please refer to specific posts written by me (and cut and paste the offending text in question, dont ) and then I may respond. Otherwise, bye bye once again...until the next time I decide to show up...

PS: Being older than you does not automatically make me lowlife either.

I believe that Vajpayee has proven that he (and his government) too must go with Modi`s government. Whatever little credibility he had has vanished, and I doubt that it will ever come back. After the Gujarat riots, he has made ALL the wrong moves. He has just delivered a speech that has compelled a BBC correspondent to comment that it was `perhaps the most partisan speech ever given by an Indian PM`. Amazingly, the PM found it fitting to pass judgment on the Muslim community, but said nothing (that`s right, absolutely nothing) about an agenda to modernize India -- education, jobs, industrial growth, poverty eradication. India, and the region, does not need men with petty minds as leaders.

It is time to remind the poet PM the couplet inscribed in stone outside his magnificent office in South Block -- `Freedom does not descend to a people, the people have to rise to it`. By encouraging witch-hunts, the PM is proving that he and the people he leads are incapable of rising to the dawn of a new freedom. He is caving in to the most crass of human instincts -- divide and rule. He is throwing caution to the winds, and if the people of India elect him and his party on his agenda, then they have nobody else to blame but themselves. They will have proven themselves incapable of rising to freedom, for freedom does not come from denying it to your neighbor. I fear for my country, and the entire region.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1928000/1928211.stm

I do not recall a sitting Prime Minister of India ever use language like this:

``Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, addressing a public rally at the BJP national executive on Friday, finally took off the “mask” and spoke words that were music to Hindutva ears.``

``On Gujarat, the Prime Minister echoed chief minister Narendra Modi’s lines that “every action has an equal and opposite reaction” when he told the gathering that the Gujarat carnage was the result of the attack on karsevaks travelling on the Sabarmati Express. His rhetoric, replete with Hindutva ideology and the RSS line of thinking, went on to describe Muslims all over the world as a “threat to peace and tranquillity.” ``

``The Prime Minister said wherever “there is a Muslim population in the world, the countries live under threat of militancy and terrorism.” Mr Vajpayee, often described by the Opposition as “the right man in the wrong party,” added: “Muslims the world over do not want to mingle with other communities. ``

``They simply do not want to live in peace``

http://www.hclinfinet.com/2002/APR/WEEK2/7/AAOInsideNN2.jsp

More nuanced opinions on the Gujarat riots are now beginning to be expressed. For one, the role of TV (previously negligible) is being identified as inciting riots in geographically distant areas.

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?sid=1&fodname=20020422&fname=Column+Prem+%28F%29

It appears that after the Goa conclave, and its recent electoral losses, the BJP has made another significant lurch to the right, and towards Hindutva. If the BJP comes to a majority in Parliament on that agenda, then it is curtains for India. Now is the time to test the thesis that Hindus are too divided to allow a Hindu theocracy to govern India. Now is the time to stand up and be counted.

Dear YLH,

the answer is . . . 42.

I didn`t say that.

A famous author said and wrote it, so did a famous computer, but not Hal.

You can now meet us at the End of the Universe.

whatever

Sorry - kind of long, but heck, we need some feel good stories ...

In a historic gesture, Sikhs return mosque to Muslims

By Zafarul-Islam Khan

New Delhi, April 6: A new chapter was inked in the Western Indian state of Punjab last week. While large-scale bloodshed continues in Gujarat and several other parts of the country over the issue of the proposed Ram temple construction at the site of the now demolished Babri Masjid amid extremist demands to surrender ``thousands`` of other mosques, a historical mosque was returned to Muslims by the Sikh community. For the last fifty four years since Partition of the country this mosque, known as ``Guru ki Maseet`` (Guru`s Mosque) was being used as a gurdwara (temple) by the Sikh community. The mosque is picturesquely situated on a hill overlooking a curve on the banks of the mighty Beas river in Punjab`s Gurdaspur district.

Maulana Hamid Husain Qasmi, the imam of the Jama Masjid in Amristsar, the largest city of the state, was specially called to lead the first prayers in the mosque on March 23. The mosque was constructed by Guru (Sikh religious leader) Hargobind Singh 370 years ago. According to Sikh tradition, the Guru had converted the house of a dead Muslim into a masjid and set up a langar (common kitchen) for the poor. Their tradition records an encounter between Guru Nanak, the first Sikh Guru, and some Muslims which ended with the declaration that ``if Hindus are the left hand, then Muslims are the right, and we all believe in the one true God.``

A “memorandum of understanding” (MoU) has been signed by the Nihangs, the Sikh caretakers of the mosque, and the Punjab Waqf Board. Dr Mohammad Rizwanul Haque, Punjab Waqf Board Administrator, described the MoU as an international event which would pave the way for strengthening communal harmony in the country.

Ms Gurmeet Rai, director of the Cultural Resource Conservation Initiative (CRCI), who was honoured with an international award by UNESCO for the conservation of the historical Krishan Temple at Kishankot village and who has been in the forefront of the campaign for the restoration of the mosque to Muslims said that though as per the MoU, the Taruna Dal, a sect of Nihangs, has agreed to conserve “Guru ki Maseet” as a traditional mosque by allowing Muslims to perform prayers there, yet the Waqf Board requested the Nihangs to continue as caretakers.

For many years, this mosque has been maintained by the Nihangs as it was abandoned at the time of the Partition. Dr Haque said he remembered that the late Baba Kirtan Singh, the Nihang chief of the Taruna Dal, had signed an MoU at Baba Bakala on February 8 last year. He said it was the desire of the Baba that Muslims must perform their prayers at the mosque which was gifted to them. As per the wishes of Baba Kirtan Singh, five saplings were planted in the names of the Sikh Gurus.

The mosque had been in disrepair for long. Now it has been restored by a group of Sikhs and Muslims in a unique manifestation of India`s multi-religious society. Sikhs offered their labour, Muslim masons repaired the walls and an all-woman team of restorers led by Ms Gurmeet Rai lent its expertise.

In 1997, a survey team of the CRCI came to the town and inspected the mosque. Recognizing the value of the building, the group began to undertake the restoration of the mosque as part of the UNESCO and UNDP-UNV’s ``Culture of Peace`` programme, and with additional financial support from the US-based Sikh Foundation. A neighbour donated a piece of land and further property was purchased by CRCI.

Finally the work of restoration of this 370-year-old mosque built by Guru Hargobind, the sixth Guru of the Sikhs, was completed on March 23 in the town named after him, Sri Hargobindpur, halfway between Jalandhar and the Sikh`s holy city of Amritsar, in India`s western province of Punjab. The ``Guru Ki Maseet`` was built in 1630 after the Guru Hargobind`s battle with Jalandhar`s ruler, Abdullah Khan. Legend has it that the mythical Hindu god Vishwakarma came down to earth in a human form to build this sacred town.

Why did a Sikh Guru build a mosque? Had it been a dharmshala (a rest house for Hindu pilgrims), it might have been destroyed by invaders. By building a mosque, and that too by a Sikh Guru, it was ensured that people of all religions would protect it, Baba Kaladhari, a spokesman for the Sikhs, said.

No one destroyed it, yet not too many looked after it either. The neglect began with the Subcontinent`s Partition, when Muslims of the area migrated en masse to Pakistan. `The mosque was deserted for a few weeks, no prayers were held. Then someone installed in the mosque a copy of the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh holy book, and started taking care of not just the mosque but also treating the sick, Chandigarh`s Tribune newspaper quoted Mohinder Kaur as saying. She was 18 at the time of Partition in 1947 and still lives a few yards from the shrine.

For Ms Gurmeet Rai and her team, beginning restoration work wasn`t easy. The Nihangs (praetorian Sikh guards), who had taken control of the mosque in the mid-1970s, weren`t keen on anyone tampering with what they considered to be the Sikh Guru`s own work. When Rai first approached them with the idea of restoration, the response of the Nihangs was very simple - take care not to damage the shrine, and do not ask us for any money.

The enthusiasm has been contagious since the work on the restoration of the mosque was initiated a year ago. The entire village, and even those from the surrounding areas, answered Rai`s call for clearing the earth around the shrine. Hundreds of school children and Nihangs did the spadework. Today the mosque stands elevated. ``We will now try and remove all later additions, like cement, plaster and white-wash from the brick structure, and then apply lime paste plaster, which will allow the building to breathe,`` Rai says.

``The performance of Muslim religious prayers in the mosque after 55 years would be recorded in history as an event when Sikhs showed so much magnanimity towards Muslims,`` said Dr Mohammed Rizwanul Haque. Last year, Waqf Board officials approached the Sikhs requesting them to hand over the mosque. The Sikhs finally agreed after a series of meetings.

The mosque is not the lone case that was under Sikh control. After the Partition of undivided India, Muslims who were in majority in the area, left for Pakistan. Hundreds of mosques were left unattended. Now these mosques have either been destroyed by savagery of times or are under personal control of people who later occupied them. Sikh community meanwhile has been very generous in vacating such mosques when approached by any Muslim group or Punjab Waqf Board that looks after Muslim Waqf properties in three north Indian states of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana.

In a similar event a year ago Sikhs of Chahar Mazra village in Ropar District built a mosque for their Muslim neighbours. Sant Varyam Singh, who heads Vishwa Gurumat spiritual mission in the adjacent Ratwara Saheb village, built the mosque for the Muslims of the area. The first prayers were offered on the Eid day in March last year. After the prayers there were heart-warning scenes of celebrations, exchange of Eid greetings and Muslims embracing their Sikh brethren.

After Partition in 1947, most Muslims of this village migrated to Pakistan and only about 15 households were left in Chahar Mazra who resolved to live and die there. There was no mosque in this village. These Muslims were poor labourers who could not build a mosque for themselves and all these 53 years since 1947 they had to travel 10 to 15 kms away for offering prayers.

When Sant Varyam Singh built his Ashram (religious retreat) in Ratwara Saheb, he stated a movement against drunkenness in the area. During this process he came across these Muslims who helped his movement and offered their services for his Ashram. Sant Varyam Singh visited USA where Ali Faryad, an Iranian at Stratford University, offered a donation for his Asharam. But instead of using this amount for the Ashram, the Sant decided to use it for building a mosque for the Muslims of Chahar Mazra. A site was chosen and construction of the mosque started. The Sant himself laid the foundation stone of the mosque in December 1999.

When the mosque was completed, Sant Varyam Singh left it to the Muslims when to inaugurate it. They decided that they will inaugurate it by offering Eid prayers. Captain Kanwaljeet Singh, the then Punjab finance minister, handed over the mosque to the Muslims on that day a year ago.

Opinion

‘Gujarat’ and the Pakistani state

The stark horror of what is happening in and around Ahmedabad must alert Pakistanis to their own reality. In India, at least, extremism can be combated by the public will.

by Aasim Sajjad Akhtar

Gujarat burning Pakistan agitated



Gujarat has been brought to its knees over the month of March. The gory developments in the state, however, do not come as a surprise. It is the naked communalism and bigotry propagated by the government at the centre over the past couple of years that has allowed extremists, who would otherwise be isolated, to engage in massacres with the patronage of local law enforcement officials. The magnitude of the killing in Gujarat, as in other incidents in the past, has been enough for many in Pakistan to announce how thankful they are that Pakistan exists. Many have started freshly espousing the virtues of the two-nation theory. But this is faulty analysis.

In the first instance, it is well worth remembering that safety from the clutches of religious fanatics is something that Pakistan’s Hindus and Christians have not had the pleasure of experiencing. After the eruption of violence in Gujarat, extremists in Rahim Yar Khan district of Punjab attacked and seriously injured two men from the Hindu Siraiki community, which forms part of the region’s true indigenous population. Rather than bask in a false sense of security, the stark horror of what is happening in and around Ahmedabad should remind Pakistanis of what has been a reality in their own country for too long. There is no cause for any feeling of relief when we know that the Pakistani establishment – just like India’s newly-risen parochial parties – has systematically patronised extremist groups since the late 1970s.

Not long ago, General Pervez Musharraf promised the people a clampdown on armed groups operating in the country and an end to the insane cycle of violence. Instead, the situation is getting worse: as if to make a statement, Sunni supremacists have repeatedly targeted Shi’a doctors in Karachi (see page 22). These killings would not have happened if the government had in fact taken firm measures as promised. Intelligence agencies that are not able to prevent such murderous sectarian incidents should be disbanded. The attack on a church in the diplomatic enclave in Islamabad proved to be a big embarrasment to the government because of high-profile casualties, but even here the law-enforcement and intelligence officials were proven hapless.

It is not that the intelligence agencies cannot deal with extremism if they want to. It is just that they are busy with what has preoccupied them for the past 30 years—keeping a strict watch on political activity and agitations of any kind. This leaves the murdering fanatics free to run riot. Clearly, the promises made by Gen Musharraf are not being kept, and the military regime is proving to be as repressive as any that has come before it – despite loud claims of moving Pakistan on the road to genuine democracy.

With political parties muted, one may well wonder whether the government really needs political intelligence. Sadly and ominously for Pakistan, the little political activity that remains is inviting the wrath of an establishment and elite-dominated state intent on pre-serving the status quo. Whether it is the movement of squatters, or activism by landless tenants or fisher-folk, the state has moved to ruth-lessly suppress the disem-powered. The government has condemned civil dissenters to the zone of terror by bringing them under the ambit of anti-terrorism legislation.

It is difficult to be anything other than skeptical about the true intentions of the military government. The rumours about jehadi groups simply having camouflaged their operations while remaining hand-in-glove with the establishment cannot be dismissed out of hand. However much the Pakistani-on-the-street badmouths India, and seems to be almost (shamefully) gleeful at how Gujarat has degenerated into chaos, we must understand that the Indian polity stands on much firmer ground than Pakistan’s.

Extremism in India is rearing its ugly head, but is neither institutionalised nor patronised by the state establishment as it is in Pakistan. It is the current political dispensation in India that has given rise to the carnage in Gujrat, but the Bharatiya Janata Party government does not represent an irreversible trend, while extremism in Pakistan is permanent until such a time as the Pakistani establishment abandons it. The country’s civil and military administrations have been responsible for propagating violence over a period of time, and unlike in India, the general public in Pakistan is largely powerless to do anything about it.

Indian democracy is hardly perfect, and it is that democracy that has given a party like the BJP the chance to inject its destructive ideology into the political mainstream. But the BJP coming to power had as much to do with the Indian public’s disillusionment with almost 50 uninterrupted years of Congress rule as it did with the politics of the BJP itself. The shameful events in Gujarat have compounded the frustration the Indian public has been feeling toward the BJP government on account of a number of unpopular policies, and it is likely that the BJP will not survive the next general election – the debacle in the Uttar Pradesh state elections suggest as much. The Indian public at large does not generally identify itself on communal or religious lines, and Gujarat has probably convinced people that it is time to accept the failure of the BJP experiment.

This does not mean that extremism does not and will not continue to exist in India. Rather, it shows that should the average Indian reject it through the electoral process, extremism can be combated by the public will. The point lies not in refuting the multitude of contradictions that make up the Indian state and society, including the marginalisation of minorities—whether religious or otherwise. Instead, it rests in the idea that the vast Indian public has some level of control over the kind of politics and society that it wants, with Kashmir being the obvious exception.

The decision of the Indian Supreme Court to prohibit the extremist Vishwa Hindu Parishad from starting a planned shilanyas of a temple on the site of the demolished Babri Masjid is yet another example of the built-in self-correcting mechanism in India that ensures the reign of public interest. The last time Pakistan’s own Supreme Court was called on to make a decision of major significance, it decided that a military coup against an elected government could be legitimised for three whole years. It is plausible to assume that if a situation similar to that of Gujarat were to exist in Pakistan and the Pakistani government was as supportive of extremists as Atal Behari Vajpayee’s government was of the VHP, the Supreme Court in Islamabad would have gone with the government.

At the end of the day, there are many similiarities between extremists in India and Pakistan. Both overseas Pakistanis and Indians inexplicably support extremist groups; and extremist parties are able to mobilise more street power than other parties. However, Indian democracy does give ordinary Indians some possibility of rejecting extremism. Furthermore, the Indian intelligence agencies do not manipulate the electoral process to bring extremists into government, nor can the extremists count on the judiciary remaining hostage to the establishment’s wishes. Pakistanis, in the government and intelligentsia alike, never tire of reminding one another (and others who care) that parochial parties in Pakistan have never garnered more than 7 percent of the total vote during elections. In that case, it is an even bigger indictment of the military establishment for having pandered to the extremists and made them what they are today.

India has not experienced an increase in poverty over the last decade and a half like Pakistan has. India is not mired in foreign debt on such scale that it has had to surrender economic sovereignty to the West and the Bretton Woods institutions. It would be inaccurate to say that all of these differences exist because India is a democratic state and Pakistan never has been one.

But it is high time that Pakistan too was finally allowed a continuous political process. At least, then, citizens could feel responsible for who and what they bring to power, and not have extremism imposed on them by those who presume to dictate what is right and what is wrong.

From: http://www.kurukshetra.org/app/dot/article?aid=88

The opinion page in The Hindu features a scathing indictment of the prime minister, a caricature called Vajpayee. On reading the article

one gets the impression, just as Nero chose to fiddle when Rome was burning, the Indian prime minister is content to wax poetic lyricisms

about the tragedy that Oh...so moved his heart. (the former may have been a myth, the latter is painfully true).

At least the `Laloos` of the world wear their politics on their sleeve, but this dangerous chameleon called Vajpayee practices skulduggery at a far higher level, that which consistently seeks the camouflage of his supposed intellectual `superiority`.

And timing his rant nicely, the old fart delivers this speech. There was probably a time when Vajpayee was an intellectual, a visionary, a

statesman and so forth (certainly before I became conscious of the world around me). Then he signed a deal with the devil just so he could become PM. And now he`s discovered that there`s nothing he can do to get his sorry soul back. For all the sad words of tongue or pen...

goto: http://www.kurukshetra.org

for all the links and many more stories...

http://www.kurukshetra.org/app/dot/article?aid=88

Binifer bibi,

IS itt rue ANNYYY relese lotos of obnoxiues gassses with lotsa sound?

Aaap he bata sakein hai ..kya yeh sach hai???

PLS buys ome ear pluiggs. Not good f or baby.Loud souunnd.

Iam freid.I give symnapthy.Ok?

tata

Lajwanti

Binifer bibi,

IS itt rue ANNYYY relese lotos of obnoxiues gassses with lotsa sound?

Aaap he bata sakein hai ..kya yeh sach hai???

PLS buys ome ear pluiggs. Not good f or baby.Loud souunnd.

Iam freid.I give symnapthy.Ok?

tata

Lajwanti

APRIL 8, 2002 / VOL. 159 NO. 13

Asia

The Lotus and the Robot Redux

TIME Magazine

India dithers while Japan steams ahead—or do we have that backward?

BY PICO IYER

Every time I return to India, the land of my forefathers, from the island where I choose to make my home, Japan, I find myself sounding like a salaryman from Osaka. Why is the 10 a.m. bus still invisible at 10:23? Why do all the people around me insist on going from A to B via P, T and X? Why do those infernal traffic lights, when not failing to impede traffic, flash the word relax? India sometimes seems to exist only to confound the expectations and to explode the tenses of a visitor from abroad. Flying into New Delhi recently, I was instantly lost inside a shouting commotion—traffic jams on the airport road at 2:15 on a Sunday morning!—and wondered how anything ever got done. INCONVENIENCE REGRETTED, read the age-old maxims on facilities being built, renovated or pulled down (who could tell which was which?). By whom, I thought—the gods who were held to be responsible for it?

Settling down in my hotel, I looked out at the swimming pool to see a few men standing around its entirely dry surface, laughing and occasionally pushing one another, as in a playground. Outside my window, cows were padding placidly past the five-star rooms, while wild dogs barked in the early light and a man hung lines of washing (including the shirt I`d just given in?) above a muddy wasteland. And though I couldn`t know it yet, not far away, the first stirrings were beginning to be felt of the terrible bloodshed that erupted a few days later, consolidating India`s sad status as one of the world`s centers of religious hatred.

Yet as I picked up the morning paper, I read that people of Indian origin now make up 30% of all America`s doctors, and another 250 Indians fill the faculties of America`s top 10 business schools. Indians are the highest earning immigrant group in the U.S., indeed, and the reason I had come to New Delhi was to participate in a Festival of Literature celebrating the fact that a disproportionate number of the writers prominent in the world today are of Indian descent. Japan, the paper also reported, was sinking ever deeper into a depression compounded by inertia and a national suspicion of change.

These facts are not entirely to India`s advantage: the truth that many of India`s brightest talents have been ``lost`` to Britain and North America was a constant lament in the literary festival. And the violence that shocked Ahmadabad and Ayodhya the following week made a mockery of blind optimism. Yet in certain ways, I thought, India can be not only the counter-Japan it`s always seemed to be, but, in parts a corrective to Japan. The ``Land of Wa`` famously, ideally, functions like an orchestra in which everyone knows her part in a score designed to present a public harmony; India, by contrast, is a riot of competing interests in which everyone is flying off in a different direction. Yet what this also means is that when the government in Japan is paralyzed, the people tethered to it are equally oppressed; whereas India might be the story of individual energies working around and despite institutions that are sclerotic and inert. Japan, for all its constant movement, seems to be going nowhere; India, for all its changelessness, seems to be on the move.

India (as recent events suggest) remains just as Indian as it`s always been, and yet it`s also ever more in tune with the world outside. Insofar as multiculturalism is the theme of the new millennium, urban Indians—growing up with several languages and used to juggling cultures and traditions—have an edge over people from, say, a unicultural, often homogeneous Japan. Insofar as English is the global village`s lingua franca, voluble, language-loving Indians brought up on Tennyson and Tagore are holding the festivals seldom heard of in Japan. And insofar as the most dominant new force in the world today is computer technology, Indians, famous for both their technological and business skills, are ever more in evidence, even if using Toshiba laptops. Japan may produce our hardware. India often supplies the software.

There`s little chance that poverty will ever be erased in India; 1 billion people are never going to live in the suburban ease of Japan. And religious violence always seems on the verge of flaring up, reminding us that India`s swarming freedoms exact a cost. But at a time when Japan seems to be losing pace, India seems to be catching up with it. My car stopped one day at a red light—RELAX, I read on the traffic light—and a little boy came up to me waving a copy of the Ikea 2001 catalog he was hoping to sell. Behind him, a painted elephant trooped past toward a wedding (STOP FOR HORSES, said the roadside sign), and a monkey dipped its hand into a bag of potato chips. In New Delhi, that mix of old East and new West—the elephant and the Ikea catalog—looked like a winning, and not so Japanese, combination.