SPAN: July/August 2002

SPAN Publisher

J ames Callahan

Dr. Josiah Harlan of Philadelphia An American in Punjab and Afghanistan

By Jean-Marie Lafont

Editor-in-Chief Angela Aggeler

World War II

Editor Lea Terhtme

American Soldiers in India

By Pran Nevile

Associate Editor A. Venkata Narayana

Koran: An Open Book

Copy Editor Dipesh K. Satapathy

By S.A. Abbasi

Editorial Assistant K. Muthukmnar Art Director Hemant Bhatnagar Deputy Art Director Sharad Sovani Production/Circulation Manager Rakesh Agrawal Research Services AIRC Documentation Services, American Information Resource Center

Do the People Rule?

By Michael Lind

Parliamentary Concerns An Interview with Jeremy D. Meadows

By Dipesh Satapathy

& Randy Johnson

The Silk Road: Connecting Cultures

By Lea Terhune

Front cover: This splendid painting of the Court of Lahore is by Austro-Hungarian artist August Schoefft, who visited Maharaja Ranjit Singh's court between 1841-1842. The painting was done a few years after Josiah Harlan returned to America, but many of his associates are depicted in the darbar, starting with Ranjit Singh himself, busy hearing supplicants under the umbrella.

Behind him, near a pillar, is General Allard, Harlan's ally in the court, along with other foreign officers. The painting, which resides in the Sikh Museum at Lahore Fort, Lahore, is reproduced here, courtesy of the Department of Archaeology and Museums in Karachi, Government of Pakistan.

Thanks to Dennis Kux, historian of recent U.S.South Asia relations and former U.S. diplomat, who brought SPAN together with Jean-Marie Lafont and his fascinating story of Josiah Harlan, an older U.S.-South Asia link.

Note: SPAN does not accept unsolicited manuscripts and materials and does not assume responsibility for them. Query letters are accepted.

Published by the Public Affairs Section, American Center, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001 (phone: 3316841), on behalf of the American Embassy, New Delhi. Printed at Thomson Press (India) Limited, Faridabad, Haryana. The opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government. No part of this magazine may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Editor. For permission write to the Editor.

Price of magazine, one year subscription (6 issues) Rs. 125; single copy, Rs. 30.

Visit SPAN on the Web at usembassy.state.gov/delhi.html/wwwh19.html U.S. Embassy Homepage usembassy.state.gov/delhi.html

You Are What You Buy

By Richard and Joyce Wolkomir

Freeing the Skies

By Douglas Gantenbein

Movies and the Mood of Time

By Stanley Kauffmann

For the Love of Mustard

By Joseph A. Harriss Spotlight:

San jay Basu

Making a Difference

By K. Muthukumar

A LETTER

FROM

he relationship of the United States with India is an old one. Our cover story, "Dr. Josiah Harlan of Philadelphia,"

by Jean-Marie Lafont, demonstrates this, and is somewhat of a coup for SPAN. Very little has been written about this American doctor who made his way to Maharaja Ranjit Singh's court to become a governor of three different provinces and later to fight the British in the first Anglo-Afghan War. This is, perhaps, the first article to explore Harlan's history in depth since the good doctor was alive. Mr. Lafont stumbled across this colorful figure during his research on French officers from Napoleon's army who became advisers to Ranjit Singh. Harlan, a selfdeclared "free citizen of the United States," irked the British. The U.S. was still a nascent country and a sore spot for the British, who feared an American-style revolt in their Indian colonies. It is a fascinating tale.

About a hundred years after Harlan graced Punjab, another group of American soldiers found themselves in India, serving in the China-BurmaIndia theater of World War II. In "American Soldiers in India," author and researcher Pran Nevile tells the story and provides the photos of American GIs at work and play in the years between 1941 and 1945.

The importance of South and Central Asia was established early with the growth of the Silk Route.

Trade in silk and other precious commodities linked far-flung countries from Japan in the East to Italy and other European countries in the West. This summer the Smithsonian Folklife Festival is all about this early form of globalization: "The Silk Road: Connecting Cultures, Creating Trust," on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., will run from June 26-30 and July 3-7. India's Rajeev Sethi had a large share in mounting this exhibition. Many of the exhibits were made in India. "The Silk Road: Connecting Cultures," by Lea Terhune, gives the details.

"Just Folk," by Doug Stewart, brings folk traditions from the Western Hemisphere into focus. The United States has its own tradition of folk art that developed in the hands of immigrants, largely self-

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taught artisans living in rural areas. Their work is discussed in this article about the new American Folk Art Museum in Manhattan.

In a more serious vein, Michael Lind examines one aspect of democracy in "Do the People Rule?" The meaning of rule by the people is not as straightforward as it may seem. Who are the people? Find out in this essay In its companion piece, "Parliamentary Concerns," Dipesh Satapathy interviews two U.S. Congressmen who train new legislators in parliamentary procedure.

And in "Koran: An Open Book," S.A. Abbasi clarifies social responsibility and place of war in Islam through the words of the Koran.

"You Are What You Buy," by Richard and Joyce Wolkomir, is about advertising guru James Twitchell, who believes that every symbol, from Coca-Cola's Santa to the Jolly Green Giant plants powerful notions of who we are, influencing our self image.

Tired of airport snafus? "Freeing the Skies," by Douglas Gantenbein, offers five high-tech fixes for air traffic gridlock which causes so many delayed and canceled flights.

Finally, "For the Love of Mustard," by Joseph A. Harriss, is a delicious account of a herb that unites the globe. Whether it is prepared to squirt on American hot dogs, complement haute cuisine or pressed into oil for North Indian delicacies, mustard is everywhere.

This is my last letter as publisher of SPAN. Regretfully, my posting here is drawing to a close. I say regretfully because I feel my experience of India's cultural wealth has only just begun. My time here has been memorable, particularly being introduced around your beautiful country as the Publisher of SPAN! Like most of my American colleagues who come to India, I can only say that one day I hope to return. I want to thank the SPAN staff and all of our readers who support this wonderful magazine and I wish you all the best.

Dr. .loSIIH HIRLIN of Philadelphia An American in Punjab and Afghanistan) 1827-1839

By JEAN-MARIE

LAFONT

~ {:;;

Josiah Harlan Photograph/rom the book Central Asia. Personal Narrative of General Josiah Harlan (1823-1841).

relations between the United States and India are yet ~~l)be fully assessed, particularly in their triangular connections with France in the aftermath of the Treaty of Versailles (1783). The result of this treaty was the exit from the British Empire of a new world power in North America.

But in this same period, in Asia, almost every Indian state quickly passed under British hegemony between 1792 and 1818. With the lone exceptions of Punjab and Sindh, the map of the subcontinent was increasingly "turning red," the color of British territories.

The capitulation of Lord Cornwallis to Washington and Rochambeau at Yorktown on October 19, 1781, and the 1783 Treaty of Versailles which gave birth to the United States of America left a lasting impression on the minds of British officers in charge of India. After Yorktown, Lord Cornwallis went to India, where he was appointed governor-general thrice-and commander-in-chieftwice.

He died in India in 1805. His obvious task was to prevent India from following the path of America. In 1795, when Lord Wellesley was sailing to India to assume his governorship, he wrote about French and American agents at work with Scindhia in Northern India in order to malign the East India Company. In September 1803 Delhi was captured by the British after the battle of Patparganj. The victor, Lord Lake, commander-in-chief of the British armies in India, was a former officer of Cornwallis in North Carolina, and the officer he appointed as the first British Resident in Delhi was Colonel Ochterlony, who later became famous in the Anglo-Nepalese War and is still remembered today by the mighty column erected in his honor on the maidan adjacent to Esplanade in downtown Calcutta.

Ochterlony settled in Delhi in what remained of Dara Shikoh's residence (the "library") and was said to take a "walk" every evening with his 13 wives, riding as many elephants. But this was not the only reason for him being an extraordinary English officer: he belonged to a loyalist family of Boston which migrated to Canada after the Tea-Party. He then joined the English army in India, and was Resident at Delhi from 1803 to 1807. His mission was to make sure that under no circumstances would India go the way America did in 1776-1783, with or without French help.

J

osiah Harlan was born in Newlin, Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 1799, the year Maharaja Ranjit Singh captured Lahore and founded the Sikh kingdom of Punjab.

His eldest brother, Richard, was a physician, and young Josiah seems to have dabbled in medicine and surgery before he sailed on a merchant ship to Canton. Returning to America, he sailed out again-to Calcutta where the Bengal army, being short of surgeons during the Burmese War, enrolled him in July 1824. He served in Rangoon

in 1825, then in Kamal with a regiment of Native infantry. He was on leave in Ludhiana in 1826 when he was informed that an order had been issued for the dismissal of temporary surgeons from the British army.

In 1827, Harlan asked and got permission from the British authorities to cross the Sutlej River, perhaps-as he himself declared later-to go by land to SaintPetersburg. Proud of being "a free citizen of the United States," a fact that was often sarcastically noted by British travelers and political officers in their writings, his plan was in fact to join Maharaja Ranjit Singh's service. He was aware that the Maharaja had French officers serving him since 1822 and that, since the early days of Washington and La Fayette, cordial relations could be easily established between the French and the Americans. However, the Maharaja did not allow Harlan to enter his territories.

So Harlan decided to go to Kabul through Bahawalpur, Kandahar and Ghazni in September 1827. He seems to have had at least three reasons for doing that.

The first was to study the natural histo-

The Darbar of Maharaja

Ranjit Singh Gouache on paper, stuck on wood panel, 91.5 cm. x 32 cm.

Artist unknown, c.1850.

Maharaja Ranjit Singh Museum, Amritsar.

ry of these unknown areas, since Harlan had a keen eye for science and medicine.

The second was to work as an agent for Shah Shuja-ul-Mulk, the exiled King of Afghanistan who resided with his retinue in Ludhiana, British territory, waiting to reconquer his throne. He hoped for the help of British subsidies, if not a British army. Harlan's third motive was, perhaps, to try to recover the papers of William Moorcroft and George Trebeck who had been murdered near Mazar-e-Sharif in Northern Afghanistan while on an ill-concealed spying mission for the East India Company. For this last mission Harlan had no official appointment from the English authorities in India, but he had the secret help and financial backing of John

Palmer, the "Prince of Merchants" of Calcutta. Palmer's long arm extended from the Governor-General of India to Captain Wade, the assistant political agent at Ludhiana in charge of "Sikh" affairs.

From 1826 onwards, the French generals in the service of Ranjit Singh and the Maharaja himself fell within his reach through the commerce that developed with members of the court.

We do not have much information on Harlan's first sojourn in Afghanistan. Like the rare jirangis traveling in that country at that time, he was welcomed by Jabbar Khan, one of the half-brothers of Dost Mohammed Khan, Emir of Kabul. Born of a Shia woman, Jabbar Khan was the head of the powerful Qizilbash Shia com-

Two complemelltary views of the fort alld city of Lahore Gulgashat-i-Punjab Maharaja Ranjit Singh Museum, Amritsar.

~./:"'f~ .. : .

munity in Afghanistan. Most of his hereditary estates were in Laghman, north of Jalalabad, on the way to Kafiristan. Jabbar Khan was a close friend of the French officers in the Lahore service, having received generals Court and Avitabile in Laghman in December 1826, when they were on their way from Persia to Lahore to join Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Whatever Harlan did in Kabul was most certainly known to General Allard in Lahore, and therefore also to Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

In early 1829 Harlan left Kabul and reached Lahore where he resided for a while, having enough money to live on without seeking any employment from the Maharaja. Ranjit Singh himself offered him the brigade of Oms, one of his French officers who had just died and whose elite regiments were stationed at Shahdara, on the right (north) bank of the Ravi River. Harlan refused, saying that he was a medical practitioner and not a military man. He even informed Ranjit Singh that he planned to return to the United States. However, we know from British secret reports that Harlan had started practicing medicine in Lahore with considerable success. Realizing that he could not induce Harlan to join him as a military officer, the Maharaja offered him the position of Governor of Nurpur and Jasrota in December 1829.

These were two old Rajput principalities in the Himalayan foothills between Jammu and Kangra which Maharaja Ranjit Singh found difficult to integrate into his kingdom, especially since the Dogra brothers at Jammu were also quietly trying to extend their influence over them. Apparently Harlan lived there for some time though there is no information on how he managed this difficult appointment. But in March 1831 he was back in Lahore, recalled by the Maharaja because of the many complaints of influential people against him. In

Lahore he took up residence with General Allard who afforded him protection during those difficult times.

There were apparently no serious faults on Harlan's side since in May 1832 Ranjit Singh appointed him Governor of Gujrat (now a district in Pakistan) and invested him with a khilat (dress of honor) which was put on him by General Allard. He was even presented with an elephant and given the sanad conferring upon him the necessary authority for his government. Harlan had to sign a contract, which was deposited in the State Archives in Lahore, and swear on the Bible that he would faithfully serve the Maharaja. A few months later he was called back to Lahore because of the complaints of infuriated zamindars: this per se is not to be taken as a charge, since the Umdat-ut- Tawarikh has several examples of Ranjit Singh using his "French" officers to settle local affairs in which the zamindars complained, and the Maharaja burst into a rage against these oppressive and intolerant landholders.

A very rare letter of Harlan-in 1l his own hand-preserved today ~ is addressed to General Allard, .~ dated October 1833, in which he stated that the complaint he .~ had just made to the Sarkar D:: (Ranjit Singh) was not intended against him (Allard), but against Ventura whose policies he could not stand. The fact that Ventura had jagirs (estates) in the district of Gujrat might be the cause of the outburst, but we have no attested connection between these two facts. However, Harlan soon resumed his duty in Gujrat.

For whatever it is worth, British Resident of Punjab Henry Lawrence's

pseudo-testimony in his novel, Adventures of an Officer, says that the American Governor of Gujrat "is a man of considerable ability, great courage and enterprise."

That he was a jolly fellow is also attested by the Reverend Wolff who was received in his residence in Gujrat where he could hear him singing Yankee Doodle "with the true American snuffle." Wolff described him as "a fine tall man, dressed in European clothing and smoking a hookah" who introduced himself as "a free citizen of the United States, from the city of Philadelphia." During their discus-

Gelleral Jeall-Frallrois Allard Oil on canvas, 127 em. x 97 em.

Copy by Marie de Tournemine of an original painting signed "Court. 1837" by Joseph-Desire Court, Paris, 1837

8

sions Harlan laughingly summarized his contract with the Maharaja as follows: "I [Ranjit Singh] will make you Governor of Gujrat. If you behave well, I will increase your salary. If not, I will cut your nose!"

The observant Wolff concluded that "the fact of his nose being entire proved that he had done well."

During his early years in Ranjit Singh's service Harlan kept in touch with Shah

Maharaja Ranjit Singh Bahadur King of Lahore, Gouache on paper, 21.7 em. x 17.3 em.

By Imam Bakhsh Lahori, Lahore, 1841.

Shuja-ul-Mulk, the exiled king of Kabul who informed him of what was going on in Afghanistan. When in 1833 the Shah was preparing for one of his attempts to recover his throne, he was expecting Harlan to join him with 500 troops and a lakh of rupees.

Harlan did not join the Shah during his disastrous expedition to Kandahar in 1834, most probably because of his duties in the Punjab kingdom. But the Kandahar affair served as a diversion: with Dost Mohammed Khan being engaged in Kandahar against Shah Shuja-ul-Mulk, Maharaja Ranjit Singh sent General Hari Singh Nalwa and General Court with their brigades who in a swift move annexed Peshawar and its province up to the Khyber Pass to the Punjab kingdom. Peshawar had been conquered and annexed to Afghanistan by Mahmud Ghaznavi in 1001-1005 A.D. Ranjit Singh celebrated his own fait d'armes by ordering salvos of guns and illuminations in every city in the kingdom.

Dost Mohammed Khan protested

against this annexation, and in 1835 he made his first attempt to recapture Peshawar through a jihad against the kafirs (the Sikhs). Thejihad was joined by almost all the Muslim tribes of the Khyber Pass. British intelligence predicted that if Ranjit Singh was defeated, the whole Muslim population of Punjab would rise against the Sikhs, and the Maharaja would have the utmost difficulty in saving his kingdom. Well aware of this fact, Ranjit Singh sent his best troops, including his French brigades under the command of General Court, who began to encircle the entrance of the Khyber Pass in order to contain the tens of thousand jihadis or ghazis-the present-day mujahideenwho were pouring out of Afghanistan.

General Court asked the Maharaja's permission to carry out a night attack on the Afghans. Ranjit Singh's strategy was to wait for more time, let the Afghans come out of the Khyber and then encircle and destroy them entirely. For that he needed a stratagem to keep Dost Mohammed Khan busy while he was maneuvering his units in an encircling move. The stratagem Ranjit Singh devised was to send an embassy to the Khan, and he selected two emissaries: Fakir Syed Aziz-udDin, his trusted minister of foreign affairs, and his American Governor, Josiah Harlan. That was on May 11,1835.

We have several accounts on the way the negotiations took place in the Afghan darbar. There were tumultuous debates concerning the qualifications of the ambassadors themselves ("The Farenghis [are] like trees, full of leaves but producing no fruits."), a gift of a copy of the Koran by Harlan to Dost Mohammed Three Akalis From an original drawing by Emily Eden, 38 cm. X 25 cm.

Lahore, c. 1838.

Fakir Syed Aziz-ud-Din Watercolor on paper.

Khan and a fiery theological exchange between some Maulvis and Fakir Azizud-Din on the Sharia, the Muslims and the kafirs. Amidst all this, Ranjit Singh was tightening the noose. Suddenly Dost Mohammed Khan was informed that the Afghan army was almost completely surrounded. It was a rout. Almost 60,000 men with horses and camels headed for the safety of the Khyber Pass. Dost Mohammed Khan, before jumping on his horse, ordered Fakir Aziz-ud-Din and Josiah Harlan to be delivered to his brother Sultan Mohammed Khan to be kept as hostages. Already bought by Harlan, Sultan Mohammed Khan sent them back safely under escort to the Punjab camp.

This apparent victory did not solve anything for Ranjit Singh, since the Afghan army had escaped unhurt before the Punjabi troops could complete their encircling move. The Maharaja was greatly incensed against Fakir Aziz-ud-Din. We might trace his growing discontent with Harlan also to that event, although several sources confirm his dismissal from the Punjab service in April 1836 was for another reason. Harlan was supposed to prepare a magical medicine for Ranjit Singh at the exorbitant price of one lakh rupees: a price to be paid in advance "as he did not trust the Maharaja"! Harlan

Top: The Fort of Jamrud at the entrance of the Khyber Pass. It was built by Sikh General Hari Singh Nalwa in 1836.

(Inset) Attack of the Khyber. Watercolor on European paper, 28.5 em. X 19.3 em. By Imam Bakhsh Lahori, Lahore, 1827-1843.

Above: Areas of 19th-century India and Afghanistan which Harlan visited.

was dismissed, paid his dues and escorted across the Sutlej River, to British territories. Wade reported his arrival in Ludhiana. Soon after he informed Calcutta of Harlan's desire to enter the service ofDost Mohammed Khan at Kabul: "His declared intention is to bring down [to Peshawar] an army to avenge himself on his former master [Ranjit Singh] for the injuries he has received at his hands."

Harlan retraced his journey to Kabul where he was warmly received ("like Themistocles") by Dost Mohammed Khan and given the second regular infantry regiment to train, the first being trained and commanded by Rattray, a British subject.

We have no details concerning the military training Harlan was able to impart to the troops under his command. We know that he was a member of the Kabul darbar although there were various levels of participation in such darbars. We also know he participated in the war launched by Dost Mohammed Khan to recapture Peshawar in 1837. The time was propitious for the Afghans, since Maharaja Ranjit Singh had called back to Lahore all

his French Generals with their brigades in order to impress Lord Fane, commanderin-chief of the British army, who was in Lahore to attend the wedding of Prince Nau Nihal Singh in March. Lord Fane was impressed, but Jamrud narrowly escaped a storming by the sudden flow of ghazis who came out of the Khyber Pass.

Peshawar was saved by the heroic deeds of General Hari Singh Nalwa, who was fatally wounded at Jamrud. But the Nalwa managed to fix the Afghans at the fortress of Jamrud, whose garrison sustained a terrible siege until they were relieved by the French brigades which made a forced march from Lahore to Peshawar in a couple of days. Maharaja Ranjit Singh then entrusted the civil and military command of Peshawar and its province to his three French generals, Allard, Court and Avitabile, who kept their brigades with them. There was no further attempt by the Afghans against Peshawar till 1849, after the British army defeated the Punjabis at the battle of Gujranwala. They were then repulsed by a British column into the Khyber Pass.

In his memoirs, Harlan laid claim to victory in the battle of Jamrud and the death of Hari Singh Nalwa. British historians, not very happy to acknowledge the efficiency of an American, usually prefered to praise Rattray and Campbell, two English deserters in the Afghan service at that time. What is sure is that after Jamrud, Harlan's influence in Kabul increased. He has left us in his memoirs one of the best and most vivid descriptions of Amir Dost Mohammed Khan. In September 1838 Harlan was attached to his troops to the expedition against Mir Murad Beg of Qunduz. As he wrote in his memoirs, "1,400 cavalry; 1,100 effective infantry; and 100 artillery; total of fighting men, 2,600; camp followers, 1,000; grand total, 3,600 men; horses, 2,000; camels, 400; elephant, one," which elephant was sent back from Bamiyan to Kabul because he could not sustain the cold anymore. Harlan and his men crossed the lofty passes of the Hindukush, stayed at Bamiyan on their way to Qunduz as well as on the way back. And as Harlan proudly wrote: "There upon the mountain heights [I] unfurled my country's banner to the

breeze, under a salute of twenty-six guns."

Harlan was back in Kabul in spring 1839, just in time to meet with the British advance troop of what was later known as the First Anglo-Afghan war. From the evidence that is available, his participation in the war is not clear at all. But in Kabul, Harlan met one Dr. Kennedy who left an interesting portrait of him. Despite the common prejudices of a British gentleman for an American "adventurer," Dr. Kennedy made a number of sagacious and positive observations. We quote: "There was at this time at Kabul a certain 'free and enlightened citizen of the greatest and most glorious country in the world [i.e.

Amir Dost Mohammed Khan From an engraving in Mohan Lal Kashmiri's Life of the Amir Dost Mohammed Khan of Kabul, London, 1846.

the USA ... ]' in the person of a Dr. Harlan .... I met him one morning and was surprised to find a wonderful fund of local knowledge and great shrewdness in a tall manly figure with a large head and gaunt face, dressed in a light shining pea-jacket of green silk, maroon co loured small clothes, buff boots, a silver lace girdle fastened with a great silver buckle larger than a soldier's breast plate, and on his head a white catskin foraging cap with a glittering gold band, precisely the figure that in my youth would have been the pride and joy of a Tyrolean Pandaen pipe band.

Though he dressed like a mountebank, this gentleman was not a fool, and it will

not be creditable to our Government if he is not provided for, as there is no law making it penal to have served against us, and the President and the Congress would have required an answer at our hand had we made it so."

British authorities in India did provide for Dr. Harlan, for he was sent back to Ludhiana with the British forces returning to their barracks in September 1839 after the capture of Kabul. After a short stay there, he was transferred to Calcutta, and then sent back to the U.S.A. at the expenses of the East India Company. That was the end of his Indian adventures. He reached Philadelphia in August 1841 and a year later published A Memoir of India and Avghanistaun. This memoir was an objective-albeit terrible-analysis of the mechanisms and consequences of British colonialism in India: machiavellianism of the invaders, rapacity of the civil servants and the revenue collectors, a systematic looting of the country by a handful of colonizers, a general impoverishment of the population and a growing indebtedness of the peasants. According to him, the natives of India were no less slaves "than the enslaved Africans for whom the English affect the warmest sympathy."

These results were not the side effects, or the collateral damage, of a system whose implementation would be globally positive for the Indians: it was the perfection and willful accomplishment of a policy leaving to the peasants the smallest possible portion to survive, an analysis corroborated at the same period by French natural historian Victor Jacquemont and confirmed for the 1830s by several eminent specialists of British India today.

Moreover Harlan was the first to publish inside information concerning the way the British army bought its way to Kabul in 1839, describing the corruption on a great scale of the political agents from Kandahar to Ghazni to Kabul. He emphasized the miseries inflicted upon the populations in this war, and the political, spiritual and moral destabilization such a war was going to imprint on the tribes of Afghanistan. Harlan looks at these tribal populations sympathetically, more as a sociologist than as a historian, and the exactitude of his descriptions is

striking for people who know Afghanistan.

Some other aspects of his testimony concern the vain glory of the British military units during this campaign, victories which were purchased and not won, decorations raining on Kabul particularly, which did not recompense any military courage. He cites a Political Head of Mission, MacNaghten, who was nothing but a "Bombaste furioso," and the magisterial incompetence of the political officers. When the revolt arose ultiCourt of Lahore Watercolor on paper, 28.5 em. x 24 em.

Probably by Imam Bakhsh Lahori, c. 1835, Philadelphia. Although the Philadelphia Free Library could not establish its provenance, it is likely to have come from the collection of Josiah Harlan, say author Lafont and art historian Barbara Schmitz.

mately and the Afghan tribes started collecting to repulse the invaders, an indecisive army hesitated to move and ended up in a last stand on the hills of Gandamak, between Jalalabad and Kabul.

A Memoir

of India

and Avghanistaun

was to be followed by A Narrative, which was never published in its entirety.

Considering the magnitude and precision of Harlan's accusations, which interpreter and adviser to the British government in Afghanistan Mohan Lal's Life of the Amir Dost Mohammed Khan of Kabul confirmed with more detail a couple of years later, British authorities in Calcutta took all necessary steps to prevent the sale and distribution of the book.

Harlan spent the next 30 years of his life in the United States. He purchased and

sold some estates around Philadelphia, married in 1849 and had a daughter. In the 1850s, when the American Government was considering the import of camels for military use in the deserts, Harlan supplied a lot of information coming from his experience in North-West India and Afghanistan. During the Civil War in 1861, he raised a regiment for the Union Army, called Harlan's Light Cavalry, later known as the 11th Cavalry. He served as its colonel in the Army of the Potomac until he retired due to ill health in 1862. He then lived for a couple of years in Philadelphia, with his souvenirs, his papers and his collections. He also suggested to the government the import of vine-trees and other fruit-trees from Afghanistan into the U.S., and he even prepared an estimated budget-$1 O,OOO-for an expedition to be sent to collect the plants from Afghan istan.

Some years after the end of the Civil War, Harlan moved to San Francisco where he again practiced as a physician.

He died there in October 1871. His wife returned to Philadelphia, where she died in 1884. Their daughter Sarah went to live in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and she had many papers, diaries, memoirs, drawings and correspondence of her father kept in several milk cans in her house. In 1929, a fire destroyed Sarah Harlan's house, burning whatever was left of General Harlan's adventures in Punjab and Afghanistan. Harlan had already published some extracts of his Narrative in 1842. Three completed chapters of this manuscript were given in 1908 to the Chester County Historical Society, from where they were published by Frank E. Ross in 1939 under the title Central Asia.

Personal Narrative of General Josiah Harlan (1823-1841). That is all we have

now of what Josiah Harlan wanted to tell us about his extraordinary life in Punjab and Afghanistan.

0 About senior Human Delhi.

the Author: Jean-Marie Lafont is a research scholar with the Centre of Sciences, Embassy of France in New He is the author of Maharaja Ranjit

Singh: Lord of the Five Rivers University Press, Delhi, 2002).

(Oxford

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American Soldiers in India Ameritan involvement in World War II tonjures images of the War in Europe or the Padfit. But a selett group of Ameritans, most serving in what was then tailed the U.S. Army Air Fone, were right here in India. They refurbished and flew planes, defending the China-Burma-India theater. When off duty, they were alive to a tountry very different from their own, whith they explored, enjoyed and photographed.

provide assistance to t~e British for visiting India in 1896, the defense of India and also to mainMark Twain, the celebrated ~ tain the supplies to China. By the time merican Iiterary figure American General Joseph Stilwell called India the "Land of Wonders." reached China in March 1942 the He wrote: "So far as I am able to Japanese had captured Burma and he judge, nothing has been left undone, was forced to escape with his staff either by man or nature, to make India to India. The reconquest of Burma the most extraordinary country that became imperative for helping China the sun visits on his round-India is and driving out the Japanese from the only foreign land I ever daydream Southeast Asia. about or deeply long to see again."

The CBl (China-Burma-India) theFifty years later, an American soldier John W. Wohlfarth, after his brief ater was established in New Delhi with the primary objective of organiztenure in India, is so much captivated ing supplies to China. It was chiefly by the country and its people that he logistical in nature. Two major Amerecords in his diary: "The world needs rican units operated under the CBI India intact! Tear down Roman ruins American, Indian, and Royal Air Force guards, theater. The first American troops to if you will, level Cyclopean walls, somewhere in India, 1942. arrive in India in March 1942 were the build bridges with stones of gothic abbeys and feudal fortresses but lay no hand on the glory and U.S. Army Air Force persOlmel. As part of the Tenth Air Force, they undertook the task of training crews for combat, transport grandeur oflndia."

The Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in and allied activities. They set up bases in Assam and numerous December 1941 brought about American active participation in roads and airfields were built. They organized air transpOlt of material to China. American pilots flying this route called the World War II. Prior to that the United States had been extending "Hump" had to cross Himalayan peaks of more than 4,570 material support to Britain and her allies as well as to China's war against Japan. Following the Pearl Harbor attacks, the meters in poor weather. They also covered strategic and technical missions to Burma. The second unit operating under this theJapanese had won victory after victory in Southeast Asia. When the Japanese attacked Burma, the United States came forward to ater was the SOS (Services of Supply), headed by Brigadier ter

A mixed crew of English, Chinese and Indian workmen repair a Hudson bomber somewhere in India.

Lend-lease repair equipment kept Us. planes flying.

Opposite page, left: American Red Cross ship in Hoogly, Calcutta.

Opposite page, right: Valuable mica is packed for shipment to the us. on reverse lend-lease basis. Mica was needed in the manufacture of aircraft, some 7 kilograms being used in each bomber, and enjoyed top priority in transport.

Above: "Hump Happy Tavern "-living quarters for a group of American pilots of the India-China theater. The "Hump" was the highest point in the Himalayas over which the pilots flew, in all weather, en route from India to China.

Right: Returning from a flight across the "Hump. " (Startingfrom left) Lt. Ronald J Fruda of West Palm Beach, Florida, Lt. Laurence D. Putnam of Portland, Oregon, and radio operator Fishbaugh.

General Raymond K. Wheeler. It set up supply services and depots in different parts of India, piling up stocks of lend-lease material for India and China. It also undertook the maintenance and construction operations connected with the war effort. The principal seaport for the CBI theater was Calcutta. After unloading at this port; cargoes were transported by rail, road and ferry to the Assam border.

The American SOS improved and enlarged the port facilities at Calcutta in order to handle more cargo efficiently. India's antiquated railroad system of the Bengal and Assam Railways was also reorganized. The SOS set up the Military Railway Service at Guwahati and as per agreement with the Government ofTndia, over 4,000 American railway troops were engaged to take over the operations of about 1,290 kilometers of key sections of the rail lines. Through improved maintenance and scheduling as well as new techniques, there was a notable improvement in the performance of the railroad system in this strategic region.

Another major American activity in India was the establishment of a training base at Ramgarh in Bihar. General Stilwell engaged some senior experienced American officers to train three Chinese divisions on the American model with instructions in weapons and jungle warfare. The only American regiment to be trained at Ramgarh was the 124th Cavalry Regiment of the Texas National Guard.

The CBI theater was later split into India-Burma and China theaters. The SOS depended heavily on Indian sources for the supply of food, cloth and other consumables. Faced with shipping shortage, the U.S. War Department had issued instructions

to them to make the maximum use of local resources. The Government of India on its part agreed to provide supplies to them as reciprocal aid or reverse lend-lease. With a marked increase in suppplies from India in 1943 and 1944, some American agencies adopted measures to enhance Indian productivity. American experts introduced new techniques and methods of production in Indian factories. Further, along with supplying modern capital goods and machinery, Indians were also given training in the United States.

The American War establishment in India gave employment to numerous local civilians ranging from office staff to skilled and unskilled labor. By September 1944, the number of these employees rose to about 79,000 and they were paid by the Government of India under reciprocal aid.

Until World War II, Indo-American contacts were quite limited and official dealings with India were through the British Government. The American presence in India, an important part of the CBI theater marked the beginning of a new and significant era in Indo-U.S. relations. There was lively and meaningful encounter between Indians and thousands of American GIs stationed in India or in transit. Indians had hailed the Atlantic Charter, which carried a promise of liberation for all oppressed people. President Roosevelt openly supported greater autonomy to India leading to independence. Some other leading Americans of the day like Wendell Wilkie, Pearl S. Buck, Louis Fischer and Mrs. Gunther eloquently advocated the Indian nationalistic cause. All this generated a considerable amount ofIndian goodwill for the American Government and people.

The American presence in India marked the beginning of a new and significant era in Indo-American relations

American opinion became a factor in Indian politics and this was a disturbing prospect for the British authorities.

According to the British War Office records, secret measures were taken during the second half of 1942 to keep American journalists in India under surveillance.

Their private mail was regularly intercepted and read for evidence of anti-British sentiment. The correspondence of individual American reporters revealed a deep hostility to Britain and its administration in India. There is an interesting case of one Mrs. Bilimoria, a former Seattle schoolmistress, who ran the film section of the American Office of War Information in New Delhi. The British Military Intelligence objected to her anti-British attitude and the authorities asked for her removal but it was refused.

Not much has been written on the life and experiences of American soldiers in India during the War. The Stilwell Papers, published in 1967, are war journals written by General Stilwell which present a factual account of the military operations. Then there is a book, Behind the Burma Road, by Co!. W.R. Peers who was in the CEl theater during 1943-45. Besides giving an account of war activities Co!' Peers vividly describes experiences of his train journey from Karachi to New Delhi. He was a witness to the Quit India disturbances of August 1942 and he observed the negative side of British power in India.

Easily, the most fascinating and delightful account of an American soldier's encounter in India is offered by John W. Wohlfarth in his book, A Modern Pilgrim in India-The Diary of

an American Soldier, published in 1995. Corporal Wohlfarth recorded his day-to-day experiences, impressions, reflections and encounters with Indians, Americans and the British in Calcutta, Delhi, Agra, Darjeeling and other places. His book, covering a brief period of about one year (1945-46), provides rare insights into Indians at a crucial period in their history. Wohlfarth carries his remarkable scholarship lightly as revealed by his discussions with Indian and English scholars on a variety of subjects like Indian music, the rise and fall of civilizations, inter-racial relations and the plunder of Indian wealth by the British. He was charmed by the sights, sounds and smells of Calcutta, which he calls the heartbeat of India, compared to Delhi where its brain functions. He is fascinated by the diversity ofTndian people and their unique way of life. Among several anecdotes narrated by him, an amusing one relates to his being identified as an American by a shopkeeper simply for shaking hands with him which no Englishman ever did. He also mentions how some American soldiers were mistaken for British and assaulted during the communal riots in Calcutta. Thereafter the military personnel were directed to have the American flag sewn on the back of their uniforms. Generally, the British soldiers kept their distance from Americans.

As regards Indian impressions of American soldiers, it was appreciated that unhampered by class-consciousness or racial prejudice and friendly by temperament they mixed with Indian on

An American Flying Squadron in India; leisure hour, time to write home.

After dinnel; a game of poker is enjoyed by the Americanjlyers of "Hump Happy Tavern. "

us. Army Signal Corps members trying to catch a goldfish in the marble-lined pool at the Taj Mahal, Agra. equal terms. With emoluments and perks far higher than the BaRs (British Other Ranks), they were valued patrons in leading stores, hotels and fashionable restaurants. They flocked to cinema houses showing American movies, and were responsible for introducing the queue system for buying tickets. In New Delhi American officers were provided with luxurious accommodation and had their exclusive club on Janpath almost opposite the Imperial Hotel. The soldiers occupied barracks in the vicinity of Connaught Place and were a familiar sight riding tongas or their attractive cycles.

Unaccustomed to social contact with white men of the ruling race, it was indeed an unexpected and novel experience for Indians when they met the exuberant American visitors and were struck by their gusto and vigor. There were occasions when Indians invited them to participate in their festivities and functions. The American presence in India was also taken note of by Nehru who wrote in his Discovery of India: "And then came the Americans-while the help they were bringing was very welcome, they were not liked in the highest official (British) circles and relations were strained. Indians liked them on the whole; their energy and enthusiasm for the work in hand was infectious and contrasted with the lack of these qualities in British official circles in India.

Their forthrightness and freedom from official constraints were appreciated."

0 About the Author: Pran Nevile is a former diplomat and author who specializes in the study of social and cultural scene in India, especially during the British period.

The live session is on as Lt. Marion J Rich of Trenton, New Jersey, and Lt. L.D. Putnam of Portland, Oregon, go into their routine, March 1943.

Thoughts on the secularism of Islam

O

ne June evening years back, in a in his generalization. Anyone who goes Thiruvananthapuram restaurant, a through a regulated life, with a strong stranger walked up to my table, sense of humility and concern for othvoiced the Muslim greeting "as-salaam-oers-tenets which all major religions of alaikum" (peace be on you) and sat down the world emphasize-does acquire cerin an empty chair opposite me. tain natural dignity and grace. It may be 1 was surprised and asked the stranger, more noticeable with Muslims because "Do you happen to know who 1 am?" "No," Islamic practices demand day-to-day reghe said, "I haven't known you." "Then how ulation oflife and frequent reiteration that only God is almighty and divine, that all did you make out 1 am a Muslim?"

The stranger-clean-shaven above the humans are created equal and that no one upper lip and sporting a thick beard below has hierarchical superiority over any other human being in the eyes of God. the lower one-smiled.

"It is not difficult Some Muslims here and there, all over to tell a Muslim among the strangers," he said, "a Muslim has certain dignity and the world, do manage to scale the high crossbar of hypocrisy needed to kneel grace about him that sets him apart."

Just then his coffee came which he before Allah five times a day and yet viosipped in silence as 1 sipped my tea. I late the basic tenets of peace, harmony, recalled the words of Bernard Lewis, the democracy, and respect for human dignity acclaimed scholar of Islam: "There is which, together, constitute the edifice of Islam. Does the motivation to use viosomething in the religious culture of Islam lence against non-combatants as a form of which inspired, in even the humblest peasant or peddler, a dignity and a courprotest in "the cause of Islam" emanate tesy toward others never exceeded and . from such hypocrisy? rarely equaled in other civilizations."

The visibility of the September 11 I decided against disappointing my attacks on the United States, played out interlocutor by telling him that I wasn't a live before gasping TV audiences around the world, and the repeated assertions of practicing Muslim. The "dignity and grace" he had seen at that moment on my the terrorists that their act formed part of face was perhaps an illusion created by a "holy war," raised this question in the the fading light of a Kerala summer. minds of more people than ever before: But, 1 believe he wasn't entirely wrong are there provisions in Islam which give

religious sanctity to such violence? Statements such as those by Al Qaida's Abu Ghaith, to the effect that the September 11 acts were committed because "God the almighty had ordered us to terrorize the infidels ... to fight the commanders of infidels," give rise to the question again.

Is it so?

The question isn't so difficult to answer because, literally and metaphorically, Islam is an "open book." The religion flows only and totally from a single book, which is there for everyone to read: the Koran.

The most basic and sweeping covenant of Islam, the Kalma or the Shahadah, must be intoned by a person "with no compulsion and with unshakable belief' if the person wishes to embrace Islam. This is: "There is only one God and Muhammad is his messenger." The natural corollary to this proclamation is God's final message has been passed on to Muslims only by Muhammad and no one else; this message has been enshrined completely and unchangeably in the Koran. Unlike several other scriptures of which, for one or the other reason, multiple versions exist, the Koran has been transcribed and "sealed" before Prophet Muhammad breathed his last. Therefore only a single, definite, and immotile version of the Koran exists. No other book or saying contains the final word of God for the Muslims. Everything in Islam must follow the principles laid out in the Koran. It follows that anything that contradicts the Koranic message, or is claimed to have been a divine instruction outside the Koran, has no sanctity whatsoever in Islam.

"Nothing will be solved by searching

for 'true Islam' or quoting the Quran," wrote Fareed Zakaria (see SPAN, November/December 2001). "The Quran is a vast, vague book, filled with ... contradictions." These words echo the impatience of many a modern secular Muslim with the Koran, Muslims who, one suspects, might not have found time for a careful reading of the rather voluminous scripture. But then one can't understand Islam by ignoring the Koran; indeed the Koran is Islam.

The Koran is undoubtedly a vast book.

But is it vague too? Taking directions from the Koran requires discipline as taking directions from, say, the Constitution of India or the Constitution of the U.S.A, does. One can't pick a line here, a paragraph there, from the constitution, and generalize at will. There are basic tenets or articles of faith which have to be read together and interpreted in such a marmer that any action confirming to one article does not violate another article.

The Koranic directions are, perhaps, easier to interpret because Islam is meant to be a simple religion, with repeated emphasis that every human being has equal access to God. Nevertheless, the Koran doesn't lend itself to hasty interpretation based on an incomplete understanding of its fundamental tenets.

Believe in God, believe in the Day of Judgment, and do good deeds is the Koranic refrain; the three directives are closely interconnected and mutually supportive. By emphasizing that God, and God alone, is divine, the Koran underlines the equality of all men and forestalls any claims of superiority by one human being over the other-on the basis of pedigree, race, nationality or vocation. By calling

for belief in the Day of the Judgment, the Koran wants the believers to forever remember that they will have to answer to God for their misdeeds and sins and that even if one escapes punishment in this world, it is but a temporary reprieveinescapable punishment from God awaits everyone guilty of sin. The first two commandments automatically commit the believer to the third: doing good deeds.

It is exceedingly important that one mentions the central belief of Islam and Sunnah that besides Muhammad, no one can rightfully claim that he/she had got any message from God contradictory to Koran.

Besides the Ten Commandments, also observed by Christians, the Koran directs Muslims to give alms to the needy, be courteous and helpful to the elders, be forgiving, and so fOlth. Truly righteous is he who ...spends his money on the kindred and the orphans, and the needy. ..and on those who ask for charity, and on freeing the slaves ...and who fulfils his promise when he has made one (Al-Baqarah; 2: 178). One of the most common injunctions is to be just, even to your enemy. No form of behavior or conduct which con-

Unformnate distorlions of Koranic verses obscure Islam's essential message of peace, hannonv and equalitY.

tradicts these tenets-all of which are based on respect and concern for others, democracy, honesty, and fair play-can be claimed to be Islamic.

What about intolerance toward other faiths? What about coercion, aggression, violence?

The Koranic message about violence, even coercion, is loud, clear, and very consistent. The Koran unambiguously prohibits coercion, aggression and violence.

Quite early (AI-Baqarah; 2:63), the Koran says, Surely the believers, and the Jews, and the Christians and the Sabians-whichever party from among those truly believes in God and the Last Day and does good deeds-shall have their reward with their Lord and no fear shall come upon them. The Koran doesn't mention Hind (India) or Hinduism-both these terms were coined about 500 years after Muhammad-but any sincere reading of Koran makes it clear that all Hindus (who essentially believe in Parameshwar, the Supreme Being, in the hereafter, and in doing good deeds), confirm to the definition of "believers" as quoted above.

Islam acknowledges all the apostles that came before Muhammad, beginning with Adam. It believes in the tenets received from God by Moses on the mountain, in the Virgin Mary and the Holy Ghost, in the healing power of the Messiah, and much else that the Sanatans, the Christians, the Jews, and the followers of other prophets before Muhammad believe. It permits Muslims to marry other believers, with specific direction that the non-Muslim spouse must be given full freedom to pursue his/her faith and be given all rights and privileges due to a

Muslim spouse. Say ye: we believe in cific call had to be given to the believers to Allah and what has been revealed to us, - take to arms, but only to ward off threat to and. ..what was given to all other prophets their own existence. from their Lord. We make no difference Besides the Koran, Muslims have an between any of them; and to Him we subauthentic corpus of information on how a mit ourselves (AI-Baqarah; 2:137). true Muslim should behave. This corpus is On violence, the Koranic message is formed by the life and teaching of best summed up in these lines: Fight in Muhammad. He was a 40-year-old, illiterthe way of God those who wage war on ate but moderately successful merchant you, and do not commit aggression. God when the revelation of the Koran began. does not like aggressors (Al-Baqarah; For a long while his message had few tak2: 191). Also, permission to fight is given ers. Some early adherents were tortured to to those against whom war has been death by the pagans to terrorize others waged, because they have been wronged into rejecting Muhammad.

(AI-Haji; 22:40). On each occasion that From this stage Muhammad's life went fight in self-defense has been mentioned, through ups and downs. He breathed his the believers are simultaneously warned last in 632 A.D. at age 62. A widely sucagainst committing aggression, and modcessful and revered man, Muhammad eration is ordered even in fights against always emphasized that he was an ordiaggressors: And if you desire to punish the nary mortal and except for the fact that aggressors, then punish them only to the God has chosen him as messenger, there extent to which you have been wronged; was nothing divine about him. His duty, but if you show patience, then, surely, that Muhammad maintained, was to live a life is the best (AI-Nahl; 16: 127). The fights in conformity with Koranic principles.

According to Islamic belief, God correctmust be stopped as soon as the aggressor sues for peace: And if they incline towards ed Muhammad whenever he was about to peace, incline thou also towards it (AI- err in interpreting the Koran. Therefore Anfal; 8:62).

Muhammad's actions and sayings, which The Koran gives firm directions that have been documented authentically in treaties must be honored (AI-Tauba; 9:4), the Sunnah, provide Muslims with the non-combatants among the opponents most unambiguous and unarguable form of behavior. According to Muhammad's must be protected (AI- Tauba; 9:6), prisoners of war must be taken only in course of interpretation of the Koranic message, winning over one's enemy by one's comregular fighting (AI-Anfal; 8:68) and such prisoners be treated with compassion (AI- passion and sagacity is infinitely better Nul'; 24:33, 24:34). The Koran even than through violence. Said Muhammad: advises releasing prisoners of war without "The ink of a scholar's pen is more sacred expecting anything except goodwill in than the blood of a martyr." return (Muhammad; 47:5).

When Muhammad triumphantly returnThere is a historical context to a few pas- ed to Mecca in 624 A.D., he ordered his sages about war in self-defense that occur in the Koran. When Muhammad began speaking of the divine revelations he had received-of equality among humanity, of respect for women, and of the tyrannical paganism prevalent in those times-there was a hostile reaction. The powerful people exploited the weak and personified what Muhammad condemned. They tried to silence, and then liquidate Muhammad and his followers. Until that point there was overpowering emphasis on peace, surrender (to God), and compassion in God's message as spread by Muhammad. A spe-

And if vou desire to punish the aggressors, then punish them onlYto the extent to Which you have been wronged; bill if you show patience, then, surelV,that is the b8Sl

followers to forgive all their tormentors, abstain from plunder, and protect not just all human life but also animals and trees.

Muhammad exemplified the Koranic message by treating all human beings with equality and dignity, liberating slaves, respecting women, respecting other religions, and being just and forgiving even to his enemies.

One must underscore the central Islamic belief that after Muhammad no human being has been, or shall be the messenger of God. It follows that there is no divine sanctity to the sayings of the Caliphs, the Ulemas, the Mullahs, and most decidedly not the Osamas and the Abu Ghaiths; we are free to reject every claim or act as un-Islamic that goes against the spirit of the Koran or the Sunnah.

In a sincere and well-meant write-up on Islamic terrorism, (see SPAN, Marchi April 2002), Andrew Sullivan has posed a question, "Is This a Religious War?" He has answered it in the affirmative and has tried to find evidence in history for "an extreme and violent strain in Islam." With exemplary humility Sullivan has also looked at the history of Christian civilizations for comparison. But a reading of Sullivan, or any objectively written history, leads to but one conclusion: Islamic societies, by and large, have had no worse record of religious tolerance and human rights than other contemporary societies; quite often, in fact, the Islamic record has been better.

In medieval India, Muslim invaders destroyed temples, plundered wealth, and harmed the locals in other ways. It is sometimes implied in such descriptions that the invaders did all this because they were Muslims and the conquered were idolaters.

It is overlooked that the invaders were Turk, Afghan, Persian or Mongol warlords typical of medieval times. They weren't emissaries of Islam or Islamic fundamentalists; no pan-Islamic thread ran through them; and much of what they did was blatantly un-Islamic. Indeed they fought and committed atrocities against each other for territory, as much as they did against nonMuslims. If at all, the limited influence Islam had on the invaders was to bestow a

semblance of tolerance upon what were utterly ferocious and unscrupulous mercenaries before they took to Islam. The performance of medieval non-Muslim invaders h1 other parts of the world was equally abominable.

If the medieval warlords invaded India to cleanse it of "idolaters," after 600 years of "Muslim" occupation, India would have been left with an overwhelming majority of Muslims when that rule ended in the 18th century. This was not the case.

Ifhistory can be grossly misrepresented it would come as no surprise that the Koran is mistranslated or quoted out of context to justify violence in the name of, or against, Islam. Even a fair-minded writer like Andrew Sullivan has apparently been misled into quoting the supposedly violent passages from the Koran, which, in reality, are totally different in letter and spirit. First, a crude mistranslation of the fifth verse, chapter 9, taken out of its context, reads: "And when the sacred months are passed, kill those who join other gods with God wherever ye shall find them; and seize them, besiege them, and lay wait for them with every kind of ambush."

From among numerous translations of the Koran by qualified scholars, all of which are freely available, I select the version from the Presidency of Islamic Researches, IFTA, Saudi Arabia. It has been officially endorsed by the custodian of the two holy mosques in Saudi Arabia and can be safely taken as an authentic translation. Sullivan's quotation comes from the fifth ofthe first six interconnected verses in the chapter AI- Tauba. The verses deal with conduct of Muslims in times of war waged on them by unbelievers. I quote the 4th, 5th, and 6th verses:

4. (But the treaties are) not dissolved with those Pagans with whom ye have entered into alliance/and who have not subsequently failed you/nor aided anyone against you/so fulfil your engagements with them to the end of their term/for Allah loveth the righteous.

5. But when the forbidden months/are past, then fight and slay/the Pagans wher-

S81d~ - '1118 ink of a scholar's

pen is more sacred than die

blood of a manvr." ever ye find them/and seize them, beleaguer them/and lie in wait for them/in every stratagem (of war)/but if they repent/and establish regular prayers/and pay alms/then open the way for them/for Allah is oft-forgiving/most merciful.

6. If one amongst the Pagans/ask thee for asylum/grant it to him/so that he may hear the word/of Allah; and then escort him/to where he can be secure/that is because they are/men without knowledge.

Read in its proper context of how to act in times of war these passages underline the emphasis not on violence but on fair play, moderation, and chivalry that runs through all the Koranic passages on conflict. From the same chapter had come Sullivan's second misquote of which the correct version is 0you who believe, you shall fight the disbelievers who challenge you-let them find you stern-and know that God is with the righteous (AI-Tauba; 9: 123).

Here are two verses, a question and an answer, from another scripture: Question: It is not, therefore, befitting of us to kill these ... our own kinsmen;!how can we be happy, having slain our own people?

Answer: Yield not to importance, 0 Warrior, it is not worthy ofthee;/shake off this paltry faint-heartedness and arise, 0 scourge of the foes!

Do these lines reflect some acutely violent philosophy or a collapse of morality, where someone is being exhorted to slay one's own kith and kin?

These verses are quoted to illustrate a point. The scripture from which they are drawn is among the most sublime that mankind has been fortunate to have: the Bhagavad Gita. The translation is by Aurobindo, a sage-philosopher-writer of

unquestionable excellence and authenticity. Quoted out of context, the verses are misleading and grotesque.

Interestingly, the following verses from the Bhagavad Gita, in correct order, remind us so much of the Koranic message that one should not fear a battle if it is against an aggressor for upholding the truth: Further, looking at thine own Dharma, (belief, duty), thou shouldst not tremble; for there is no greater good than righteous battle (2:31). Happy are the ones, when such a battle comes to them of itself like the open gate of heaven (2:32). But if thou dost not fight this battle for the right, then hast thou abandoned thy Dharma and thy glory, and sin shall be thy portion (2:33). Besides, men will recount thy perpetual dishonour, and to one in noble station, dishonour is worse than death (2:34). Slain thou shalt attain heaven, victorious thou shalt enjoy the earth; therefore, arise, resolved upon battle (2:37).

Can there be a greater travesty of truth, a coarser misrepresentation of timeless wisdom than to call these lines "violent passages" and trace one or the other misdeed of a people to these lines?

If anything, the command for a righteous war has been given much more forcefully in the Bhagavad Gita than one may find in the Koran. The entire scripture is set in the context of a war and seeks to justify why such a war must be fought!

Are we to take a line here, a paragraph there from the great scriptures, put them in an order of our devious choice, and begin promulgating the theory that there is something inherent in either polytheism or monotheism which makes a human being downgrade another? Or begin raising bogies of "clashes of civilization?" It isn't any ideology contained in the scriptures at the root of violence and terrorism, it is the greed of man-who distorts the truth, misappropriates the knowledge, and pollutes the spirit behind the ideologies to serve his own ends, often recasting the "word of God" as an excuse for his own misdeeds.

0 About the Author: S.A. Abbasi is a senior professor and director at the Centre for Pollution Control and Energy Technology in Pondicherry University.

1789). "There necessarily exists in every government," Wilson American f government were a cake, what kind of cake would it be? Political science and law examinations at told the delegates, "a power from which there is no appeal; and which, for that reason, may be termed supreme, absolute and unAmerican universities frequently ask some version of that question. Is the best metaphor for the relationship between controllable. Where does this power reside?" the federal and state governments in the U.S. Constitution Wilson rejected the British idea that the government-in the a layer cake, in which each level retains its own identity? Or does case of Britain, the crown-in-parliament-was sovereign: "The the United States have a "marble cake federalism," in which, ac- idea of a constitution limiting and superintending the operations cording to the political scientist Morton Grodzin, "ingredients of of legislative authority seems not to have been accurately underdifferent colors are combined in an inseparable mixture, whose stood in Britain. To control the power and conduct of the legislacolors intermingle in vertical and horizontal veins and random ture by an overruling constitution was an improvement in the swirls"? Layer cakes and marble cakes do not exhaust the science and practice of government reserved to the American states." However, Wilson continued, it would be a mistake to asmetaphorical possibilities. All the culinary constitutionalism seems appropriate for a nation that some claim was once a meltsume that the constitution is sovereign: "This opinion approaches ing pot but is now a salad bowl. a step nearer to the truth, but does not reach it. The truth is that, in our governments, the supreme, absolute, and uncontrollable This battle of metaphors reflects a deep and enduring disagreepower remains in the people. As our constitutions are superior to ment among Americans about the nature of popular sovereignty our legislatures, so the people are superior to our constitutions." in the United States. Is the United States a creation of the individAlthough the idea of popular sovereignty reached its fullest ual states-or are the states a creation of the Union? Is there a single American people-or are there as many "peoples" as there development in the United States during the War of are states?

Independence and the early years of the American republic, it The debate began when the ink was hardly dry on the new was an ancient concept. The Roman republic and, at least in federal constitution drafted in Philadelphia in the summer of theory, the subsequent Roman Empire were based on imperium 1787. That fall, delegates populi, the delegated soverfrom across Pennsylvania eignty of the people. The Presidents as diverse as William McKinley, Gerald Ford, convened in Philadelphia to idea of popular sovereignty and Jimmy Carter have spoken the simple words: ratify or reject the document. was revived in the late "Here the people rule." But the meaning of the words On October 6, 1787, the deleMiddle Ages and the is by no means as straightforward as it may seem. gates heard from James Renaissance

by Christian Wilson, a Scots-born lawyer and humanist opponents of Who exactly are the people? The inhabitants of 50 difwho had been one of the the divine right of kings. ferent states, or the inhabitants of a single nation? One leading thinkers at the past In 17th-century England, people, or 50 peoples ioined by compad? The questions summer's constitutional conduring decades of civil war are as old as the nation, and perhaps best answered and other political turmoil, vention (President George today by recognizing validity in each position.

English thinkers worked out Washington would appoint him to the Supreme Court in the basics of the modern doc-

I

trine of popular sovereignty. Drawing on earlier writers, philosopher John Locke argued that every people has a right to change its government whenever the government becomes tyrannical. Although the theory of popular sovereignty remains controversial in Great Britain, all mainstream American constitutional thinkers have accepted the Lockean premise that, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, "to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government."

The paramount debate in American history has not been about the ultimate sovereignty of the people, but rather about the identity of the people (meaning a single entity, in the sense of populus). Is there a single American people? Or is the United States a federation of as many peoples as there are states?

The two rival interpretations of popular sovereignty in America have been the nationalist theory and the compact theory. The nationalist theory holds that from the beginning there has been a single American people, which has existed in the form of successive "unions." Lincoln summarized this view in his first inaugural address: "[W]e find the proposition that, in legal contemplation, the Union is perpetual confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then 13 states expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And, finally, in 1787 one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was 'to form a more perfect union.' " Lincoln's nationalist interpretation of history drew on the thinking of the Supreme Court justice Joseph Story in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833).

According to Story, the Continental Congress, formed by dele-

gates from the then-British colonies, "exercised de facto and dejure sovereign authority, not as the delegated agents of the governments de facto of the colonies, but in virtue of original powers derived from the people." The Declaration of Independence was "implicitly the act of the whole people of the united colonies," not of separate state peoples that had independently seceded from the British Empire.

Though the compact theory, like its competitor the nationalist theory, comes in several versions, every version holds that the American union is a compact among the states-the state peoples, that is, not the state governments. The most familiar version, held by Thomas Jefferson, John C. Calhoun, and the Confederate secessionists, can be described as the unilateral compact themy. South Carolina senator John C. Calhoun, its most brilliant proponent, argued in the Senate in 1833 that "the people of the several States composing these United States are united as parties to a constitutional compact, to which the people of each State acceded as a separate sovereign community." Calhoun denied "assertions that the people of these United States, taken collectively as individuals," had ever "formed into one nation or people, or that they have ever been so united in anyone stage of their political existence."

According to Calhoun's unilateral version of the compact theory, the people of each state, represented in a constitutional convention, could authorize the secession of the state. They could also "nullify" laws they regarded as unconstitutional, a case that was made in response to President John Adams's unpopular Alien and Sedition Acts by the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. (Thomas Jefferson was the secret author of the Resolutions.) In the Nullification Crisis of 1832-33, South Carolina claimed a right to nullify a federal tarifflaw, and backed down only when President Andrew Jackson threatened to use federal force against the state.

As an interpretation of the federal constitution that went into effect in 1789, the unilateral compact theory is unconvincing.

The alleged right of states to declare federal laws unconstitutional is incompatible with the supremacy clause of the Constitution and the role of the Supreme Court in adjudicating conflicts between the state and federal governments. But the claim that there is a constitutional right of unilateral secession is not as easily settled, because the Constitution is silent on whether, or how, states that have ratified it can depart from the Union. The most reasonable inference is that states can leave the United States only by the legal route of a constitutional amendment or by the extra-legal route of a new constitutional convention that dissolves the federal constitution and creates a new union with new members. Responding to the possibility that opposition to the War of 1812 would inspire some of the states of New England to secede, Thomas Ritchie, editor of the Richmond Enquire!; wrote, "The same formality which forged the links of the Union is necessary to dissolve it. The majority of States which form the Union must consent to the withdrawal of anyone

branch of it. Until that consent has been obtained, any attempt to dissolve the Union, or obstruct the efficacy of its constitutional laws, is Treason-Treason to all intents and purposes."

The unilateral compact theory, then, is weaker than the nationalist theory of successive unions as an interpretation of the federal constitution of 1787. But as an explanation of American constitutional history right up through the ratification process of the federal constitution, the compact theory is more persuasive than the nationalist theory.

On July 4, 1861, President Lincoln said in a message to Congress, "The Union is older than any of the States, and, in fact it created them as States." Political scientist Samuel H. Beer restated this nationalist argument in To Make a Nation: The Rediscovery of American Federalism (1993), when he wrote that "the reallocation of power by the Constitution from state to federal government was simply a further exercise of the constituent sovereignty which the American people had exercised in the past, as when they brought the states themselves into existence."

The argument is flimsy. For one thing, it implies that without permission from the Continental Congress, the colonial populations would not have abolished their colonial governments and created new republican governments.

To make matters worse for the nationalist theory, the phrasing of the Declaration of Independence supports the compact theory by referring to the formation of new state governments by the authority of the people of the colonies when it means the people of Massachusetts, the people of Virginia, and so on. And these colonial peoples, which became the peoples of the first states, had come into existence generations earlier-when each colony had been established by royal charter, if not before.

Nationalists also emphasize the description of the United States as "one people" in the Declaration of Independence: "When in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands, which have connected them with another ...." But elsewhere the Declaration refers to the colonies in the plural, and concludes that ''these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent States." The author of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, was a fervent champion ofthe compact theory. Indeed, the Declaration claims that for generations the individual colonies had been separate states in a federal empire held together only by personal allegiance to the British monarch.

The United States continued to look like a league of sovereign states under its first formal constitution, the Articles of Confederation (1781-89). In his Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1787-88), John

Adams treated each state as a republic but rejected the applicability of the concept of republicanism to the United States as a whole, on the grounds that, under the Articles, Congress was "not a legislative assembly, nor a representative assembly, only a diplomatic assembly." In April 1787, James Madison observed that under the Articles of Confederation, "the federal system ...is in fact nothing more than a treaty of amity of commerce and of alliance, between independent and sovereign states."

The history of the constitutional convention of 1787 and the process of ratification also supports the compact theory. The authors of The Federalist-Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay-informed their readers that the new federal constitution would replace a league of states with a federal (or as Madison called it, a "compound") republic. If the "Union" under the Articles of Confederation were already a nation-state, albeit a decentralized one, it would have made no sense for Madison, Hamilton, and Jay to warn against disunion if the federal constitution were not adopted.

The method by which the federal constitution was ratified also refutes the arguments of nationalists such as Lincoln and Story that a union based on a single people had existed since 1776 or 1774.

Samuel H. Beer writes, "Nationalist theory required that ratification be both popular and national, a procedure which expressed the will of individuals, the ultimate authority in a republic, and which eme braced a single nationwide constituency, acting on behalf of the people at large in the United States." During the Constitutional Convention, Pennsylvania's Gouverneur Morris indeed proposed that the Constitution be ratified by "one general Convention, chosen and authorized to consider, amend, and establish the same." His proposal was rejected. The Constitution was ratified not by a national convention or even by the state governments but by the peoples ofthe states.

One of the peculiarities ofthe ratification process is that the new constitution went into effect upon being ratified by nine of the 13 states. (A similar rule of nine had earlier been used under the Articles of Confederation to authorize the admission of new states to the United States.) Nationalists argue that the rule of nine meant that the Constitution was ratified by a numerical majority of the American people, considered as a single national community.

According to Beer, "Calculated according to the index of representation in the House, as proposed by Madison, any nine states would have had not only a majority of the states but also a majority of the population." Beer himself admits that the rule of nine guaranteed this nationwide numerical majority "without saying so." But the argument that the ratifiers had to be hoodwinked into taking patt in

a majoritarian procedure that Baltimore (1833) that the fedThe paramount debate in Americanhistory they did not understand weakens eral Bill of Rights applied only has not been about the ultimate sovereignty rather than strengthens the case to the federal" government; the for the nationalist interpretation. peoples ofthe several states had of the people, but rather about the identity If the understanding of the to limit state governments by of the people. ratifiers of the Constitution and passing state bills of rights. The not of the drafters is the one that only restraints on the states counts for the purposes of American constitutional law, then one were a few in the federal constitution, such as the prohibition of must reject the promising variant of nationalist theory proposed bills of attainder and titles of nobility, and the guarantee that in 1987 by Professor Akhil Amar of Yale Law School. Amar sug- every state would have a republican government. Only the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which were not ratified gested in the Yale Law Journal that during the process of ratification of the Constitution, "previously separate state Peoples until after the Civil War, in 1868 and 1870 respectively, nationalagreed to 'consolidate' themselves into a single continental peoized part or all of the Bill of Rights. (The degree of nationalizaple." In contrast with the Story-Lincoln version of nationalist tion is hotly disputed to this day.) doctrine, Amar's variant would grant that the compact theory is It follows, then, that the compact theory provides the only an accurate description of the United States up until 1789, when plausible interpretation of the Tenth Amendment. As odd as it the United States became a federal republic. may seem to contemporary Americans, in theory at least there are The most interesting part ofAmar's theory-the notion that preas many peoples as there are states. Each state people assigns the viously distinct state peoples fused during 1787-88 to become a same portion of its popular sovereignty to the federal governsingle national people-is contradicted by Madison's statement in ment. But each state people-that of Massachusetts or Virginia, The Federalist 39 that the federal constitution would be ratified for example-is then free to allocate powers to the state govern"by the people not as individuals composing one entire nation, but ment, or reserve them for the people of the state, in different as composing the distinct and independent States to which they re- ways, as each sees fit. spectively belong." Amar's view is also incompatible with the way It appears, therefore, that Lincoln was mistaken when he arin which states were later added to the Union. The formation of a gued that "the Union is older than any of the States, and, in fact, state "people" in a telTitory for only a few months or weeks would created them as States"-and that President Ronald Reagan, in be pointless if the "people" were then dissolved into a unitary his first inaugural address, was correct: "The Federal government American people once the new state joined the Union. The com- did not create the states; the states created the Federal governpact theory makes more sense. A people in a state fonned from a ment." The compact theory of popular sovereignty, which holds territory delegated a portion of its sovereign power to the federal that there are as many sovereign peoples as there are states, exgovernment on joining the Union, but reserved the rest-and plains far more of American constitutional history and law than maintained its identity as a distinct population. Texas, the only the nationalist theory does with its positing of a single, unitary state that began as an independent republic, would never have American people. This conclusion may seem surprising. After joined if its people thought they were dissolving "the people of all, Americans are highly mobile and rarely feel an intense loyTexas" and reducing Texas to a mere address. alty to the state in which they happen to live. They define their identities far more commonly by factors such as race, ethnicity, he Tenth Amendment may be fatal to all versions of religion, and political ideology than by state patriotism; indeed, the nationalist theory of a single constituent the very phrase "state patriotism" seems quaint. Nevertheless, American people: "The powers not delegated to the the nationalization of Ame~ican society has not been accompaUnited States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by nied by a nationalization of America's constitutional structure. it to the States, are reserved to the States respecEven in the 21st century, there is no mechanism such as a natively, or to the people." Under a nationalist interpretation ofthe tional ballot initiative or referendum by which Americans nationamendment, the single national people divided its sovereign wide can express their views. The United States Senate still power into free lumps and gave one to the federal government represents state constituencies, and the only national officer, the and one to all state governments, while reserving the third lump President, is chosen by the Electoral College, in accordance with of sovereignty to itself. Thus, the Tenth Amendment created a a formula that takes states as well as populations into account. zone of reserved popular power upon which neither the states nor The Electoral College made it possible for George W. Bush to dethe federal government could encroach. feat AI Gore, who received more of the popular vote.

That interpretation is appealing today, when, thanks to the In addition to seeming old-fashioned, the compact theory has Fourteenth Amendment and the civil rights revolution, the Bill of long been tainted by its association with the Confederate secesRights has been partially held to restrain the state governments as sionists and with later southern racists who used "states' rights" well as the federal government. But it is a way of thinking that theory to defend institutionalized racial segregation. Fortunately, was alien to all but a few extreme nationalists during the early like the nationalist theory, the compact theory comes in more than Republic. The Supreme Court ruled in Barron v. City of one version. And even more fortunately, its most plausible vari-

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Madison's subtle version of ant-that of James MadisonMost contemporary Americans would agree that the compact theory reconciles undermines the arguments of the revolution of the people of South Carolina the actions of Lincoln in both the Confederates and the against the British Empirewas iustified, but that preserving the Union with the segregationists and produces a view of the U.S. Constitution idea of plural sovereign states the later revolution of the same people against that most contemporar)' liberals that shaped the logic of the the United States was not. as well as most conservatives Declaration of Independence as can accept. well as the form of the federal Madison, the "Father of the Constitution," has been accused of constitution and the method by which it was ratified. Madison's inconsistency. It is often said that he was a nationalist when he mutual compact theory is more convincing than John C. helped draw up the federal constitution and co-authored The Calhoun's unilateral compact theory (which is incompatible with Federalist, that he became a states rights theorist when he sup- the federal constitution) and Lincoln's nationalist theory (which ported Jefferson's Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions in 1798 does not take accurate account of the War of Independence, the and when, as President, he favored Iimited government; and that Articles of Confederation, and the ratification process of the he finally returned to his early nationalism late in life when he Constitution). denounced nullification and the idea of secession. Though Even in Madison's pro-union version of the compact theory, a Madison, like any public figure, sometimes contradicted himself, state people retained the moral right, though not the legal right, to he appears more consistent once he is identified as a member of rebel on its own against a tyrannical federal government. In his the compact school-but a member with significant differences letter to Webster, he warns against confusing "the claim to secede with other compact theorists. at will, with the right of seceding from intolerable oppression.

The former answers itself, being a violation, without cause, of a Madison dissented from the logic of the nationalist theory: faith solemnly pledged. The latter is another name only for revolution, about which there is no theoretic controversy." Madison's It is fortunate when disputed theories can be decided by theory could establish that unilateral secession was illegal and undisputed facts. And here the undisputed fact is that the unconstitutional under the terms of the 1787 constitution, but it Constitution was made by the people, but as embodied into could not establish that an illegal secession was an illegitimate the several states, who were parties to it and therefore made by the States in their highest authoritative capacity. They act of revolution. But no mere constitutional theory could. The justice or injustice of a revolution is a matter for political and ethmight, by the same authority and by the same process have ical theory, not for constitutional law. Most contemporary converted the Confederacy [the United States under the Americans would agree that the revolution of the people of South Articles of Confederation] into a mere league or treaty; or continued it with enlarged or abridged powers; or have emCarolina against the British Empire was justified, but that the later revolution of the same people against the United States was bodied the people of their respective states into one people, not. In both cases, a majority of the South Carolina population nation or sovereignty; or as they did by a mixed form make suppOlied the revolution; but the goal of the first was to preserve them one people, nation, or sovereignty, for cetiain purposes, and not so for others. and increase republican government in North America, while the goal of the second, in fact if not in rhetoric, was to preserve and So far, Madison is merely restating the conventional theory of possibly extend the zone of chattel slavery in North America.

The conclusion must be that popular sovereignty in itself is not the Constitution as a compact among different state peoples. But he goes on to say that "whilst the Constitution, therefore, is ad- a sufficient basis for the moral legitimacy of governments or mitted to be in force, its operation in every respect must be pre- their acts. In a world in which peoples rather than kings are the cisely the same"-whether the Constitution is thought to have sovereigns, the peoples, like kings, may use their sovereign been authorized by one national people (Webster's view) or by power for evil as well as for good. As James Wilson told the the separate state peoples (Madison's view). The compact can be Pennsylvania convention in 1787 when he described the theory of popular sovereignty, "There can be no disorder in the commurevised or dissolved, but only with the agreement of all the parnity but may here receive a radical cure. Ifthe error be in the legties, not just one or a few. In other words, according to Madison, the compact theory, properly understood, leads to the same conislature, it may be corrected by the constitution; if in the constitution, it may be corrected by the people. There is a remclusions as the nationalist theory: Unilateral secession by a state and unilateral nullification of federal laws are unconstitutional. edy, therefore, for every distemper in the government, if the people are not wanting to themselves. For a people wanting to Further, this Madisonian version of the compact theory would themselves, there is no remedy."

D not support the later states' rights argument against federal civil rights legislation. After ratification of the Fourteenth AmendAbout the Author: Michael Lind, a senior fellow at the New America ment in 1868, the only genuine argument was about what the fed- Foundation, is the author of The Next American Nation (1995) and other eral civil rights regime would be-not about whether there would books. His new book (with Ted Halstead.) is The Radical Center: The Future be one. of American Politics.

PARLIAMENTARY CONCERNS An Interview with

JEREMY D. MEADOWS & RANDY JOHNSON

Jeremy D. Meadows, program manager of international programs, at the National Conference of State Legislatures in Washington, D.C., and Randy Johnson, state representative of the Florida House of Representatives, visited India recently to meet policy makers, businessmen, legislators, senior parliamentary officials and bureaucrats to learn about the key challenges that India faces in its legislative assemblies. How to develop a strong infrastructure was their focus, particularly in the new states of Uttaranchal and Jharkhand. Meadows develops training programs for parliamentarians and facilitates exchange programs between different U.S. legislatures and other countries. Johnson is the chair of the Transportation and Economic Development Appropriatjons Committee of the Florida House, and oversees eight agencies, including the Florida Tourjsm Commission and Enterprise Florida, the body responsible for economic development of Florida state.

Meadows and Johnson spoke to SPAN.

What are the key features of training programs for parliamentarians in the United States?

My organization, the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), helps state legislatures design their orientation programs for newly elected legislators.

NCSL helps new legislators understand what the jobs are, transitioning from the campaign trai I to legislative world, what resources are available to them for public policy, whether that is within the legislative or executive branch or institutions such as mine or other think tanks. We also have training material available in audio cassette and print form

to help legislators learn how to chair committees, what parliamentary process and procedures are, how to deal with the press and how to work with the constituents.

You also have exchange programs for different legislators within the United States. What do these comprise?

Meadows: Domestically, we offer networking opportunities, meetings and seminars on a variety of topics that state legislators and legislative staff can participate in. Internationally, we do have exchange programs with legislatures around the world. We have exchange programs with national assemblies in Germany and several French-speaking nations. I am also manager of exchange programs with Africa.

How do you get the best possible representation in the legislature and what is the ratio of representatives to the voters?

Meadows: That varies by state, for instance, representative [Randy] Johnson represents about 200,000 people in a house district in Florida-the Florida House.

Each state constitution spells out how many legislators are permitted and the number of votes is divided equally among the districts. Every 10 years, we redraw district lines to maintain a balance of voters to legislators. My district grew from 107,000 constituents in 1990 to 205,000 in 2000. I currently represent the 205,000, but starting next January, after the November elections, that number will be reduced to 135,000. One legislator to 135,000 voters.

Meadows: U.S. Congressmen represent about 6,500 people and all California Senate districts are larger than that. A California State Senator represents more people in California than a U.S. Congressman. That's because the way the district is drawn, the size of the state and the size of the California Senate-there are 40 members in the California Senate, 80 members in the California House.

There is no screening for legislators.

The screening is the ballot box. Many businessmen are successful because they have demonstrated they can run an operation to profit, they can make payroll, they can deliver on their promises, but you also have many teachers, labor organizers and people from many different sectors who run for office. For the U.S. Congress there

are some age requirements, different states may have different age requirements, but there is not necessari ly an educational requirement. For example, the Ohio House has a house representative who turned 18 only in time for the election. He campaigned until the election before he was actually eligible for the election. So it is all about the votes.

How do you draw a parallel between good governance issues in India and the United States?

Meadows: Good governance in the U.S. context means a transparent and fair process that is open and accessible to the public, and it means reasoned public policy fairly and equitably applied. I frankly do not know enough about the Indian system to be able to draw a distinct comparison. But I am being led to believe that transparency is a key issue and more open dialogue between elected representatives, businessmen, civil society is needed in order to make sure that public policy is reached through a very informed and deliberative process.

What all did you discuss with the Uttaranchal and Jharkhand governments?

Meadows: In Uttaranchal we talked about how to build infrastructure, how to encourage private investment, and how to encourage private sector to work hand in hand with the government giving as examples some great success stories that created some very good communities in the United States. We also talked about the specifics of taking advantage of some of the natural attributes of Uttaranchal such as its incredible education system, and how we can use that to pursue economic development.

When businesses move into that area, people will be interested to know how good the schools are for their kids, where their workforce will come from. There are some missing links though, one being the university system.

We also talked about the need for airports, more train routes and improving roads. It has a tremendous potential for tourism. In Jharkhand, most of my meetings focused on economic issues.

What are the key differences between the functioning of legislatures in the Us. and India?

Meadows: One of the things that I am most struck with is the dichotomy of the government and the private sector in India, how little they seem to engage with each other. I also have the sense that politicians are not nearly as available to their constituents as they are in the United States. These things take time as this is a relatively new democracy. The exciting part is how passionate Indians seem to be about democracy and how much they engage and how willing society seems to accept other opinions that are different from the norm.

Johnson: One of the first striking differences is the system itself. The United States has a separation of power system where the executive, legislative and judicial branches are separated and there are firewalls between the branches. India is operating with a parliamentary system.

There is a distance between the government, the executive and the rank and file legislatures. It seems there is not a lot of communication and consultation between the minister and the secretaries, the bureaucracy working under him, on their agenda. Whereas in the United States, a legislative committee will not hesitate to call the equivalent of a minister to testify about mishaps, scandals, spending plans, or budget requests. In addition to demanding his input, the committee expects him to respond to its sense and direction. In Uttaranchal, the legislature is new and the members are still finding their roles and learning their jobs.

Should the government take the full responsibility of developing infrastructure?

Meadows: Certainly, when infrastructure development has no promise of immediate profit, but it is something deemed necessary through the legislative process for the public good. It is the responsibility of the government to set the ball rolling by investing in the public works. However, Representative Johnson certainly presented several cases from Florida where the government set the ball

rolling and the private sector recognized the profitability and picked up the ball and ran with it whether it was the case of airports or power projects.

What are the alternative modes of infrastructure financing for cash-starved developing countries?

Meadows: The things that come immediately to mind are the international donors but those are not necessarily the advisable sources because funding from those sources always comes with strings and the prospect of demands at some point oftime. The user-pay scenario could be a reasonable funding mechanism. In the United States, the states' fiscal sovereignty has been critical to their success as autonomous entities that promote economic and infrastructure development.

Johnson: The immediate place to look is your own backyard. And it is to tap your own private sector resources to leverage government process. The key to that is tracking back the profit, the revenue sources of a successful government project, and engage the private sector in the process. All governments have the ability to do things like streamlining the process of permitting and minimizing red tape.

Sometimes it is not just spending money but figuring out how to save someone some money that can induce them to come and participate in infrastructure development for you. A great way for a government which has very little to prosper is tourism. Tourism by and large requires much less infrastructure than most industries. The government can engage the tourism industry to put together the total package. This will cettainly improve the quality of life of people who will benefit from the tourism industry.

Florida is one of nine states in the United States which do not levy personal income tax solely because of tourism.

How do you arrive at a consensus as to which policies are to be taken up for lobbying?

Meadows: NCSL only takes up a lobbying position, i.e., we can reach a consensus if a minimum of three-quarters of the states present in a meeting adopt a

policy. If we do not reach that level of consensus, we may track the issue, may inform the members but not lobby with the federal government. It is up to the individual states to pursue their own interests.

Johnson: I think the vehicle for that consensus is the NCSL. It is a forum where we would debate and come to a consensus. The issues are like anything else that are legislative in nature. There are many issues, like states' rights, on which there is tremendous consensus.

How do you manage emergency funding?

Johnson: We have a large emergency fund for hurricanes. It is for Florida and other eastern seaboard states as not all states have hurricane problems. These states also have insurance, where insurance companies and owners of insurance policies pay into a general fund. There is a large pool of money so that the state can assist in times of crisis. With respect to the tourism emergency fund all the security money that we have to spend at the airports has really come out of oW' rainy day account. We are required to keep five percent of oW' annual budget in an emergency fund.

Tell us something on the zero-based budgetary subcommittee on general government.

Meadows: The term is government speak. Basically the committee is made up of the chairman and five members from both Senate and the House. Our job is to go back to every agency that we fund and look at them from the ground up.

Everything is reviewed very critically.

There are no places in anyone's budget that, for political or other reasons, that do not come under review. When we say zero-based budget, that means we are starting with the concept that we are giving you nothing. Now you must explain to us why we should give every dollar that you ask for.

Corporate lobbying is deemed to have some negative effects. So how do you overcome this particular negative aspect of lobbying?

In Uttaranchal we talked about how to build infrastructure, how to encourage private investment, and how to encourage private sector to work hand in hand with the government.

Meadows: First of all in framing the U.S. Constitution James Madison said that the best governance comes out of the expression of self-interest. That's not an exact quote but it gets at the point.

Lobbying is merely an expression of those self-interests. So I personally do not view it as a dirty word. It is corporate entities, governmental entities, civil society and public interest groups expressing their interests with the purpose of educating and informing policy makers so that they make sound and decent judgment. So I do not think there is any negativity to it.

What kind of technical assistance do you provide to developing countries?

Meadows: NCSL has done need assessments of several newly democratized countries or new legislatures to help them identify what gaps there may be or what kinds of training they might want to seek. We might help legislatures organize members' orientation programs.

We have done staff training on a variety of levels whether that is legislative research or bill drafting or committee staffing or oversight responsibilities, done training for committees. We have organized internships for staff, policy exchanges and other activities that are intended to fortify and strengthen the legislative institutions.

How do you tackle corruption in legislatures in the United States?

Meadows: There are several components. We have done a little bit of ethics training to help define what ethics means in the particular context and to present the ways that the state legislatures have instituted anti-corruption or good ethics programs and the enforcement mechanisms.

Also, transparency and public access are

critical for anti-corruption concerns. So showcasing the way the process is open to the public and the media in the United States and providing some assistance and advice on opening the legislative process in the new legislatures to the public is important.

Apart from the general accountability guidelines for legislators, are there rules for punishment for legislators who fail to deliver?

Meadows: The ultimate punishment is that you may not get reelected. In the United States representatives run every two years and in some states it is four.

State senators generally have a four-year term. U.S. senators have a six-year term.

So sooner or later you are going to face the public. The media, public interest groups and the individual voters will hold you accountable. If you do not deliver, but the electorate puts you back in office anyway, that's their choice. But the parties in the United States are actually fairly weak institutions. So there is no party mechanism to punish people who do not deliver on campaign promises.

What level of authority does the legislature has over the implementation of regulations which it enacts?

Meadows: In the U.S., the judiciary does not play any role in implementation of regulations. The legislature passes a law, establishing a policy and direction, and grants to an executive agency the right to develop regulations. The executive department then is responsible for developing the rules and implementing them. The judiciary becomes involved only in case of any conflict.

The legislature does not get terribly involved directly in the development of those regulations. Periodically legislators individually or the legislative committee may inquire how the regulations are being developed, call in the appropriate official to testify before the committee, the effects of the regulations, whether it is meeting the legislative intent. So the legislature makes sure that what they wanted to happen is happening. When it comes to oversight, that's a legislative function. -D.S.

Talk about buzz, the Rajeev Sethi Sceneographers office and work site in New Delhi were both humming like bee, r" hives. Designers' heads bent over computer keyboards, • ~ .••fabrics, tiles, styrofoam models, sketches, photographs.

Close at hand was an imposing "bible" full of Silk Route art.

This was no ordinary project. All the intensive work, not only in Delhi but in villages all over India, was preparation for the 2002 Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C. For the first time since it began in 1967, the festival focuses on a single and very timely theme, "The Silk Road: Connecting Cultures, Creating Trust." Between June 26-30 and July 3-7, visitors sampled Asian culture in its myriad forms: from the silk textiles for which the Silk Road got its name, to paper-making and the blue pottery that was ubiquitous along the trade route, to typical tea stalls and noodle feasts.

And as Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage director Richard Kurin observed, "Never before has the Smithsonian depended upon such a massive collaborative effort in the production of its highly prestigious festival." It is a festival that typically attracts a cool million visitors each year.

Ambitious, yes. The Silk Road involves hundreds of traditional artists, artisans, musicians, dancers, storytellers, and even cooks, from more than 20 nations. An eight-hectare area along the National Mall

#. ~~

Above,' Preparations under way for the Silk Road Festival in Washington, D, C Left,' A side view of a decorated truck from Pakistan on display at the Festival

Clockwise from above left: Rajeev Sethi guides Secretary of State Colin Powell around some Silk Road exhibits; a view of the Mall from the bell tower of the Smithsonian Castle on the inaugural day of the Silk Road Festival; Mongolian wrestlers show off their skills;

traditional Jewish singers ji-om Bukhara; children enjoy a rickshaw ride; terracotta sculptures from India; a young boy and girl investigate the cab of an ornately decorated Pakistani truck; and, a re-creation of the Bamiyan Buddhas before their destruction by the Taliban draws crowds.

The hot weather did not discourage visitors, who converged in their thousands to sample the delights of Asia: the variety of music, art, food and the chance to buy handicrafts proved irresistible. provides ample space for them to demonstrate their skills. Scaffolding, tents, canopies, hundreds of bolts of silk, hand-painted canvases, silk screens, pottery and other decorative items were transported from India's villages to Delhi for checking and onto ships bound for the United States.

The motive force behind the celebration of the Silk Road on the National Mall and at other Washington venues this summer is famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma, founder of the Silk Road Project.

The project is a global initiative focusing on the Silk Road's historic contribution to cross cultural diffusion of arts, technologies and musical traditions. It draws an ancient cultural legacy into the present, with the help of modern-day artists from the lands traversed by the Silk Road. The 2001 Folklife Festival is produced in pa11nership with the Silk Road Project with funding by the Smithsonian with sponsorship from the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, the Ford Motor Company, and Sony Corporation, among others.

The bold design concept was meticulously mapped out by India's

Rajeev Sethi Sceneographers and the Asian Heritage Foundation.

Sethi is well known in culture circles for his innovation, versatility and wide-ranging knowledge ofthe Asian arts territory. He has mounted successful exhibitions before, notably the "Aditi" show for the Festival ofIndia, which debuted in the U.S with a "Mela," an earlier collaboration with the Smithsonian's Folklife Center.

The Basic Needs Pavilion at Expo 2000 in Germany was designed

by Sethi and his team. He is also part of a World Bank "mentor" group, along with Yo-Yo Ma and Arnartya Sen, who are consulted on crafts and design industries in developing countries.

The amount of work that went into creating the Silk Road exhibition, from the research, scanning of art to be reproduced, organizing the artisans to paint and make, and finally, pulling all the silken threads together, was immense. It was a task that Sethi obviously relished. He is doubtless animated by the spirit of entrepreneurship passed on from his own forbears who traded along the Silk Route. He discovered this family history when he began to research the project. "They were living in Kashmir but they used to go to Yarkand," astonishing people with their display of succulent fruits from their orchards, an uncommon sight in the plains in those days.

To Sethi the Silk Road is a theme with great relevance in today's world. "It's been energizing," he said, while in the throes of packing out 25 shipping container loads to Washington. "I think about all that one must have gone through in those days, be it issues of property rights, human rights or issues of diversity, cultural dialogue. In some way or another it manifested itself in the phenomenon of the Silk Route, which is the world's first globalization." He adds: "All the things that vex us now are there because we don't let our history teach us what it can."

And teaching diversity in an intimate, human way is all the

more relevant in a post-September 11 world. "America always benefits when it knows more about other people," Sethi says.

The Silk Route countries had technologies that existed long before America was even discovered. He continues, "Every time we see a cultural manifestation, we get a sense of geography and people in a very personal way. So when we read something about that place in cold print in a newspaper the next day, we don't just dismiss it as a piece of news. It has a very different resonance." After "sipping a good tea in the chai khana in Uzbekistan [one has been duplicated on the Mall], the next time some horrible thing happens there, people's hearts will connect."

"A 21st century perspective often makes it difficult to visualize the past, much less to understand it," Sethi avers. "Present-day communications have irrevocably altered old notions of time and space." Yet the primary goals and struggles of humanity remain the same, particularly in the Silk Route countries. The diaspora from these countries has brought many millions of Asians to the United States, so the exchange continues in the modern New World ..

For four months Delhi was the hub of a network that drew on talent from everywhere in India. Japanese screens and ikats that would ultimately embellish the recreated gateway ofNara were fashioned in villages of Andhra Pradesh and Bihar. So were rugs, dhurries and silk. Painting of other exhibits was done by artists in Indore, Bhilwara and Mumbai. Furniture and ethnic fabrics came from Jaipur and Udaipur. Turkish tiles were painted in Khurja and Jaipur. Screens, tents, canopies, mats and rugs, pottery, damascene and other items fabricated in India fill the bazaars set up along the Mall. The Sackler and Freer museums both have special silk road events to coincide with the festival.

One of Rajeev Sethi's goals is to improve conditions for artisans, to help them preserve their crafts and lead dignified lives at

Master artists and designers busy compiling exhibits in New Delhi last spring. The exhibits were shipped to the Us. to be displayed at the Silk Road Festival on the National Mall, Washington, D. C. Artisans Fom villages all over India contributed to the effort, working in materials such as bamboo, silk and cotton ikat, dhurries, carving, pottery and ceramics.

the same time. It is a goal he hopes will be furthered by the Silk Road exhibition. Sarthi, an organization of which he is a co-founder, helps artists and artisans achieve their basic needs for housing, medical care, education and training while promoting their work. In a day when digitalization is taking over, even cinema poster painters are hard pressed to find work.

Sethi had them copying murals from the Dun Huang caves or painting the rocky expanse of Bamiyan-as it was before the Taliban destroyed the Buddhas-on panels destined to line the Mall. "Iconic monuments" from the Silk Route that are rendered in the exhibition represent all great religions and include historic mosques, cathedrals and temples, from Kyoto to Venice.

Of the common motifs prevalent in Silk Route art-lions and tigers, angels and apsaras, stars and sunbursts-the Tree of Life is, to Sethi, the most evocative of the essence of this exhibition: the viable, blooming tree whose tendrils and shoots reach into the present. Connecting cultures, creating trust, The Silk Road exhibition, as envisioned by Folklife Center director Kurin, should provide a space of pause, consideration and peace "in a world sometimes gone mad with demonization, where differences have become the cause for the murder of innocents."

D For more details visit www.asianheritagefoundation.org www.silkroadproject.com

and

From embroidered samplers to sugar bowls, weathervanes to whistles, the new American Folk Art Museum in Manhattan has an engaging collection that gives an intimate view of early American life

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the revolutionary war, a German-speaking Pennsylvanian painted a fanciful portrait of his commander-in-chief's wife.

With rouged cheeks and high heels, "Laedy Waschington" sits astride a rearing horse, a tulip in her right hand. The anonymous artist, likely a refugee from religious intolerance in Europe, revealed an obvious affection for his adopted nation-in-the-making, despite some liberties he took with the future First Lady's appearance.

Now more than ever, it lifts the spirit to see how charmingly an early immigrant celebrated the land of the free, back when our democracy was still an untested novelty. The good "laedy" is one of the gems offolk art currently on view in "American Radiance," the spectacular inaugural show of the American Folk Art Museum's shimmering new quarters in Manhat-

tan, which opened its doors last year.

Traditional folk art-the works of largely self-taught, mostly rural Americans -has always offered an intimate glimpse into the lives and preoccupations of ordinary citizens, and a thread running through "American Radiance" is a simple, heartfelt patriotism: a carved walnut George Washington with broad shoulders and tiny booted feet, a regal Statue of Liberty weathervane, a Depression-era Uncle Sam made by a Long Island tinsmith and, from Lower Manhattan, an intricately carved cake board that pressed into New Year's cakes of the

1830s the image of an Indian princess holding a wind-whipped Old Glory as an eagle dangles the scales of justice from its beak.

"Folk art tends to be an innocent expression of the nation's spirit," says Gerard Wertkin, the museum's director, "often in ways that are more personal and more moving than in academic art." It's fitting that folk art's new showcase is in New York City, he adds. "Building our museum in the heart of Manhattan is an affirmation of the importance of folk art, which has always been an important cultural expression in America." In a small way, Wertkin says, the new building is also a vote of confidence in the future of New York City as the nation's cultural headquarters. It's the first art museum to be built in the city from the ground up since the Whitney was completed in 1966.

The museum's opening exhibition unLandscape and architectural scenes often embellished such items as this c. J 820 traveling trunk.

itinerant New England artist Ammi Phillips did hundreds of portraits during his 50-year career, including Girl in Red Dress with Cat and Dog (c. 1830-1835).

veiled what has been widely considered the most important collection of American folk art in private hands. The works on display were painstakingly acquired over the past 35 years by Paris-born New Yorker Ralph Esmerian.

A fourth-generation gemstone dealer and first-generation folk art aficionado, Esmerian has long served on the museum's board and was instrumental in its 20-year campaign to build a permanent home. In 2001, the 61year-old bachelor donated to the museum the entire contents of "American Radiance"-more than 400 objects valued at between $50 million and $60 million. The donation includes a number of icons of American folk art and, in a single stroke, vastly strengthens the museum's holdings.

Highlights include the itinerant New England artist Ammi Phillips' transfixing Girl in Red Dress with Cat and Dog, for which Esmerian paid $1 million in 1984 (a folk art record), and an exceptional group of Pennsylvania German fraktur (decorative works on paper).

Founded in 1961, the folk art museum in the beginning had no money, no building and no collection. For years, as it gradually acquired objects, the museum struggled to mount shows in a series of rented spaces around the city. The $22 million new building on West 53rd Street quadruples the exhibition space of its old site near Lincoln Center, which will remain an annex for special exhibitions.

Designed by two of New York's hottest architects, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, it features sculptural, roughly textured panels of gleaming white bronze that give the museum's exterior the illusion of being handcrafted. Behind this cool metallic facade, Williams and Tsien have warmed the interior with wooden flooring, idiosyncratic staircases and a series of intimate nooks. "Traditional folk art is very personal and direct," Tsien says, "and we tried to make our design for the new mu-

Cast in coppel; the allegorical figure of Fame caps a c. 1890 New York weathervane.

seum a personal expression, too, rather than another anonymous white box." With weathervanes in stairwells and small paintings waiting to be discovered in odd corners, the unpredictable interior succeeds in giving museumgoers a taste of a visit to Esmerian's Park Avenue apartment before his collection was shipped across town last fall.

In a city with its share of eccentric residences, Esmerian's expansive apartment was eccentric indeed. To enter the living room, one stepped through a freestanding 250-year-old farmhouse door. Under the watchful gaze of citizens painted during the Monroe and Jackson administrations, visitors dodged shop signs and sidestepped hatboxes.

Carved eagles jostled for space with flasks shaped like pigs. The apartment may be the only one on the Upper East Side with a brick-floored kitchen and barnboard paneling, even on the refrigerator.

A courtly, articulate man with an emphatic baritone voice, bushy gray hair and a welcoming if somewhat formal manner, Esmerian inherited his jeweler's eye and refined tastes from his father, Raphael, a dealer in colored gemstones and a collector of rare Renaissance bookbindings.

Raphael moved the family from Nazi-occupied Paris to New York City soon after Ralph was born. The younger Esmerian dreamed of becoming a baseball player and later a city planner before he joined the family business in the 1960s. Esmerian's tastes are more egalitarian than his father's. He patronizes a particular hot dog vendor outside his Rockefeller Center office and keeps in a case in his apartment a 1927 New York Yankees baseball autographed by the whole team-one treasure he's holding on to.

In the mid-l 960s, Esmerian had a folk art conversion experience. Looking for a gift in a dealer's shop, he was drawn to a

humble ceramic dish from Pennsylvania barely 7.5 centimeters across. He loved its rough back almost as much as its glazed and decorated front. "I thought, 'This is the clay-the actual earth-of America in 1830 or 1840.' So I bought it." After pottery, he began buying works on paper, then furniture and paintings. (In addition to folk art, he collects, among other things, children's book illustrations and vintage Disney drawings.)

In folk art, Esmerian's eye has always been drawn to well-preserved works of high quality and workmanship. He understands that it might seem odd that a connoisseur brought Princeton-educated up amid high-style French furniture and precious gems would develop a passion for old pie plates and needlepoint samplers. But the raw, unpretentious honesty offolk art is exactly what draws him to it.

"These things were never created to be art," he says. "Each object had a purpose, whether it was a weathervane, a blanket for a bed, or a piece of pottery." (Of course, that purpose could include providing a creative outlet for the farmer, sailor or pickle-maker who fashioned it.)

"Seeing these things and holding them in your hands," he continues, "you have the romantic illusion that you're connecting with the people who built the cultural foundations of our society."

R

nerican art historians have not always shared Esmerian's passion. Before the turn of the 20th century, many viewed folk art as a quaint historical backwater. But since then, respect has grown appreciably. "Through the years, it's often been folk art that best tells the story of this country," says Stacy Hollander, the museum's senior curator. "Folk art was part of the fabric of people's lives. This is what hung on walls and filled homes."

Before photography swept the country in the 1840s, painted portraits were a common indulgence. Visiting the United States in the 1830s, French writer Alexis de Tocqueville noted: "Democratic people may amuse themselves momentarily by looking at nature, but it is about themselves that they really are excited."

Portraits that depict a young wife with her minutely reproduced lace bonnet and shawl, a formally dressed man bowing a pegless cello, a physician posing with his mortar and pestle before colorful rows of bottled chemicals-all were inventories of prized possessions, as well as badges of social status. Moreover, in an era when lives were too often cut short without warning, the record of a spouse's face or of one's children in a group was an important keepsake. "Portraits were not intended to be flattering," says Hollander.

"They were intended to be likenesses."

When we encounter the work of an unschooled 19th-century painter, of course, we're sometimes struck by how wrong the picture looks: oddly proportioned heads, out-of-kilter perspectives, horses the size of Chihuahuas. To be sure, many smalltown artists weren't very good. But the best folk art paintings can be riveting.

"Most oil portraits I find terribly boring," Esmerian says. He makes a snoring noise. "But then you see something that truly hits you. There's a real character and energy that's been captured." He especially loves paintings of children, with their hints of real-life vitality. An 1837 Joseph Davis watercolor in the collection portrays a well-dressed young boy with a toy whip, a startled cat and an overturned houseplant. And a delightful circa 1814 miniature by an anonymous artist captures a year-old girl with one shoe on and one clutched in her hand.

The itinerant painters who produced many of these pictures journeyed from town to town, stopping at inns for a few weeks and advertising for work. In 1810 Ammi Phillips, for instance, was promising to portray his customers with "perfect shadows and elegantly dressed in the prevailing fashions of the day." In 1812 Connecticut's Reuben Moulthrop painted one portrait in return for the care and feeding of his horse. (He occasionally took time off from portrait painting for what was evidently better-paying work-the creation of full-sized figures modeled in beeswax and coiffed with human hair, among them "the KING OF FRANCE in the Act of losing his Head.") Trying perhaps to compete with daguerreotypes in

Attributed to artist Robert Peckham, this portrait a/the Farewell children was done in c. 1841, the year baby Mary Jane (in carriage) died.

the 1840s, Sheldon Peck, a farmer who had migrated to Illinois in 1836, began painting wood-grained trompe l'oeil frames around the portraits he made of his small-town neighbors. Peck's wonderfully hard-edged portrait of little Anna Crane, with her dourlooking grandmother and the family Bible, was painted on a linen bed-

sheet in exchange for a cow.

Landscape paintings, too, had their documentary purposes. Prosperous farmers and homeowners would commission paintings of their property in which every carriage and fruit tree seemed to be recorded. An 1878 canvas by Carl Hambuch of a Richmond, Virginia, hog farm offers a bird's-eye view of the entire operation. The artist is said to have dissuaded the farmer's wife from taking down her laundry before he set up his easel on a nearby rooftop. Just visible on a

Landscapes and urban scenes, such as this view of the c. 1848 New York City skyline from Brooklyn, commonly adorned overmantels.

clothesline is a faded Confederate flag, now apparently put to use as a bedspread.

One of the jewels of the Esmerian collection is a much dreamier landscapeThe Peaceable Kingdom, by Edward Hicks. The painting depicts an Old Testament prophecy of predators and their prey lying together, while in the background William Penn signs a treaty with the Indians. Hicks, a Pennsylvania ornamental painter who decorated carriages, furniture and the occasional fire bucket, was also a Quaker minister.

Some of his congregants sniped that his taste for embellishment was a tad unQuakerly. Hicks' obsessive portrayals of this scene (the piece in the show is one of 62 versions he's known to have painted) may have been an attempt to atone for his more frivolous work.

Despite Hicks' experience, Pennsylvania was renowned for its religious tolerance, and by the mid-18th century, the countries beyond Philadelphia had a flourishing population of German-speaking

farmers. Pious, conservative and tidy-so tidy that fannwives often painted the tree trunks near their homes-Pennsylvania Germans nonetheless indulged a taste for vivid colors and eye-catching decoration.

The Esmerian collection is rich in humble masterpieces from these well-tended households, especially decorated pottery.

One standout is a covered eaIthenware jar made by potter Solomon Grimm in 1822.

Drawing on old-world techniques, Grimm applied colored slip (liquefied clay) to the surface of the unfired jar and then inscribed decorative patterns by scraping away the slip to expose the red clay beneath-a technique called sgraffito. Local potters brewed their own glazes according to jealously guarded recipesa mixture using turpentine, tobacco juice and urine, perhaps. Elaborate pieces like Grimm's were presented as gifts and kept as heirlooms, not

used in the kitchen. But there are exceptions. Esmerian likes to lift the lid of a 120-year-old glazed sugar bowl and smell the interior. "It still smells like brown sugar," he says.

Simpler pottery sold for pennies, and a Pennsylvania German farm family with eight or ten children needed plenty of it.

Pie plates were in particular demand, as a household might eat fruit pies four times a day. Visitors from Europe were astounded by their quantity and variety-apple, peach, apricot, cherry, quince, mulberry, gooseberry, raisin.

Elegantly crafted pie crimpers were used for sealing the crusts in varying patterns that helped everyone remember which kind of pie was which.

German immigrants also loved making fraktur. The word derives from the fractured-looking Gothic typefaces that the calligraphy on these illustrated family papers mimicked.

Harking back to religious documents A young schoolgirl likely painted this violin in c. 1830 as an exercise to hone her skill.

in Europe, fraktur in America took many forms: birth and baptismal certificates, "tunebooks," penmanship exercises, even, for some reason, lavishly ornamented account books. Fraktur were typically composed in German and decorated (with tulips, hearts, angels and sundry unrelated images) by moonlighting schoolteachers. For a fee, Lancaster County schoolmaster Christian Strenge produced chaste love letters ("In my thoughts I have often kissed you, because you are such a pretty maiden") in the form of intricate heart-filled paper cutouts. A stylized double eagle painted

by David Kulp in nearby Bucks County is a tour de force of text-free fraktur painting. Though his design is almost Persian in its decorative geometry, his choice of bird was suitably American, popular in post-Revolutionary art of all kinds as a symbol of independence.

Teachers in the Northeast helped popularize a very different sort offolk alt. Well-to-do families in the early 19th century enrolled their daughters in private academies to learn fine embroidery, painting on silk and other domestic arts. "Often teachers would provide a print or a pattern, and the girls would copy it or take elements from it," says Hollander.

Practicing these arts was thought to endow girls with the skills and patience needed for womanhood.

"It was really about making them attractive as marriage partners."

Within these prescribed limits, the most talented girls, some as young as 9, found room to use their imaginations. The examples in the Esmerian collection have a bright and quirky liveliness, from a 1744 sampler of Adam and Eve, fig leaf and all, to a circa 1830 violin that an unidentified schoolgirl painted in red and black checks. Morbid as it may seem to us now, mourning pictures-weeping figures in black, gravestones in the foreground, willows to one side-were a favorite schoolgirl exercise. Neoclassic ele-

ments from Greek and Roman art, inspired in part by the discoveries at Pompeii, gave these pictures a trendy air. "It was fashionable to produce mourning art, and Americans have always wanted to be fashionable," says Hollander.

'fr

e vogue for this kind of art in the first decades of the 19th century was spurred by a national outpouring of grief over the death of George Washington in 1799. Indeed, Washington was a folk art favorite from well before his death until long after Americans stopped mourning his passing. "It is noteworthy that every American considers it his sacred duty to have a likeness of Washington in his home," wrote a Russian diplomat who visited the United States in 1811.

"Washington's portrait is the finest and sometimes the sole decoration ...." Besides framed pictures, his stolid image has turned up on sgraffito plates, box lids, andirons and whale's teeth, the raw material of scrimshaw.

In fact, some of the most astonishing objects in the new exhibition are scrimshaw, especially the three-dimensional pieces. Scrimshaw was carved from the teeth and bones of whales and the tusks of walruses in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The carvers were typically men on whaling voyages, which could stretch for years-plenty oftime to fashion cane handles, pie crimpers and, in one case, a striking inlaid box with tiny scrimshaw fists as drawer pulls.

Sailors didn't stroll the deck with canes, nor did they bake many pies. The carving of domestic objects aboard ship reflected the longing of homesick men for solid land, homecooked meals and female companionship.

Although scrimshaw was often more decorative than practical, other folk sculptures in the show were obviously put to good use.

The shop sign, like the weathervane, was, at its best, a perfect blend of art and uti lity. By the middle of the 19th century, most designs were produced in quantity, usually by anonymous craftsmen in commercial shops (among them former figurehead-carvers).

Here, too, patriotic symbols were common. The pose of a circa 1880 cigar-store sultana from New York, with a raised right hand, suggests a sidewalk Statue of Liberty. The real thing wasn't to grace New York Harbor until 1886, but her design had been widely publicized and her giant copper torch had already awed visitors to the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876. Another remarkable sculpture is a miniature version, in painted tin, of a knifePainted by Daniel Hendricksonfor a New Jersey home, the 18th-century door later graced Ralph Esmerian s Park Avenue apartment.

George s other half, Martha, sports a "bee-bonnet" headdress in this c. J 780 fraktur drawing by an anonymous Pennsylvania artist.

Below: The jagging wheel (pie crimper) was favored by whalers as a showcase for their creativity; this c. J 870 sea horse is from New England.

grinder at work, complete with moving parts. Amazingly, the piece was found inside a plaster wall during a 20th-century renovation of a house in Marblehead, Massachusetts.

'fi';

wentieth-centUry folk art hasn't been a major part of Esmerian's collecting.

(Complementing his focus on traditional 18th- and 19th-century folk art, the museum is mounting a special inaugural exhibition of the work of 20th-century "outsider artist" Henry Darger, a Chicago recluse.) Exceptions to Esmerian's preference for works made before 1900 include pieces by two African-American artists who died at mid-century-William Edmondson and Bill Traylor. Edmondson was a janitor and tombstone maker who carved chunks of scavenged limestone into stylized figures, using a railroad spike as a chisel. Traylor, born a slave in Alabama in 1854, was in his eighties when he began making witty, semiabstract paintings and drawings of people and animals. In just three years, from 1939 to 1942, he produced nearly 1,500 works on discarded mail and scraps of cardboard.

Esmerian likes the idea that Traylor and Edmondson both worked for themselves, pursuing personal visions in their own distinctive ways year after year. He hopes the opening of the museum's new building in the center of Manhattan's cultural district-next door to the Museum of Modem Art, no less-will give new visibility to the best self-taught artists of centuries past while helping, in a modest way, to ensure New York City's vitality as an art center in the years ahead. "I've lived in New York most of my life," he says, "and somehow this city keeps renewing itself."

0 About the Author: Doug Stewart is afrequent contributor to Smithsonian.

Copyright © The New Yorker Collection 200 I Peter Steiner from Cartoonbank.com. All rights reserved.

C~ARGfS D1'MIS>{;OI DIDN'T Rr;p.JJ~£YOU WERE A C£LEBRITY.

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You Are

What

By RICHARD and JOYCE WOLKOMIR

According to advertising guru James Twitchell, every advertising symbol plants powerful notions of who we are

Along with two friends who need a new plastic dish drainer, James Twitchell, professor of 19thcentury poetry at the University of Florida in Gainesville, is visiting a Wal-Mart. Twitchell gazes raptly upon the aisles stacked with TV sets in boxes, and picnic baskets and T-shirts and beach balls. So much mass-produced stuff! Twitchell is energized-as any dedicated scholar would be upon entering an archive packed with new material.

"Look at this wire shopping cart-it's the equivalent of the Las Vegas poker chip," he says.

"In a casino, instead of gambling with your real money, you use little colored plastic disks, so it seems OK. This huge cart is something like that: it's so roomy you don't. feel you're buying too much. Marketers fooled around with the size of these carts, getting them just right."

Twitchell loves this stuff. He loves it so much that he has switched from teaching and writing solely about Romantic-era poetry to buzzier issues, such as adolescents wearing dungarees slung low to reveal their Joe Boxers, and whether the Jolly Green Giant is an avatar of Zeus. And now, reveling in all these bedspreads and CD players and croquet sets and yellow raincoats, Twitchell tells his friends that one reason he began studying such fine points of mass marketing is that his parents, long ago, denied him Wonder Bread.

Twitchell's father, a Vermont physician, dismissed Wonder Bread as "air and water." His mother warned that Coca-Cola was sugar water that would "rot your teeth." Now he keeps a cellophane-wrapped loaf of Wonder Bread and an aluminum can of Coke-icons among American consumables-atop his computer monitor. In one of Twitchell's recent books, Lead Us Into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism, he wrote that everything he loved as a youth was from the forbidden mass culture: "It was mass produced, mass marketed and consumed en masse." And if he wanted to savor Pepsi and Whoppers and Dairy Queen sundaes, he had to do it on the sly, "for we would not countenance them inside the family circle."

Twitchell-who is now in his fifties, trim and urbane-says his study of mass culture, especially

advertising, began 15 years ago, when he Keats. "But they could recite the 'Mmm, was teaching a class on the Romantic po- mmm good' Campbell's Soup jingle," he ets. "I suddenly realized my students had says. "They didn't know Rembrandt, but no interest in what I had to say." He asked they could tell you Ben's and Jerry's last them to complete a line from Wordsworth: names." Twitchell was stunned. "I wanted "My heart leaps up when I behold a to know why the stuff they knew was so ____ in the sky." Nobody could suppowerful it pushed my stuff out of the ply the missing "rainbow," but his stuway." dents could flawlessly recite the contents Since then, he has been observing himof a Big Mac: two all-beef patties, special self, his law professor wife, his two sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions daughters, now grown, his colleagues, on a sesame-seed bun. students, neighbors. He has invited "It was an epiphany," he himself into advertising agensays. cies as an academic gadfly on At the time, the the wall. He has explored admuch-discussed book vertising's history. And he

by E.O. Hirsch, et aI., has learned the average Cultural Literacy: adult now encounters What Every American some 3,000 advertisements Needs To Know, argued PRNewsFoto/Burger King Corporation every day, from bus flanks to that cultures need the glue of shared knowlmessages over the telephone as the caller edge, like who Napoleon was or where waits on hold. He has probed the impact of Beirut is. "I realized he was right, we do all that mass marketing in such works as need a body of information," explains ADCULTUSA and his latest book, Twenty Twitchell. "But he was wrong about what Ads That Shook the World. body of information we share, because it isAcademics usually excoriate modern n't from high culture-it's from pop cul- materialism as spiritually deadening and ture, the world my students knew so well." socially corrupting, he observes. "My own His students knew little about Dickens or take is that humans love things, and we've

A balloon depicts McDonald's mascot Ronald McDonald in Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in New J'OrkCity.

always been materialistic, but until the Industrial Revolution only the wealthy had things-now the rest of us are having a go at arranging our lives around things."

Especially in the past 20 years, young people have had lots more money to spend. "Now they're driving the market for mass-produced objects." And especially for youths, Twitchell maintains, advertising has become our social studies text. "Ask l8-year-olds what freedom means, and they'll tell you, 'It means being able to buy whatever I want!' " But advertising's job is not just urging, "Buy this!" Twitchell cites 1950s ad ace Rosser Reeves, who created a television commercial in which a hammer clangs an anvil to remind viewers how a headache feels (or maybe to induce one) while reporting good news: Anacin is "for fast, Fast, FAST relief...." Reeves would hold up two quarters. It was advet1ising's task, he said, to make you believe those two quarters were different. Even more important, the ad had to persuade you that

one of those quarters was [ . floated.

Gamble claimed his new soap, worth more. ~a.

To illustrate the process, .§ Ivory, floated because it was pure~in fact, Twitchell points to 1930s ~ E 9944/1 00 percent pure. ads claiming Schlitz steam- ~ Earl ier, England's cleaned its beer bottles. & Andrew Pears~the faWhat the ads omitted was ~ it ther-in-law of Thomas that all brewers steamJ. Barratt~had develcleaned their bottles. Thus, i!,~ !,i.,l. through advertising, the oped a translucent soap.

It seemed a natural to company achieved "ownerappeal to the class-conship" of product purity~it created for itself what the scious Briton's desire ad industry calls a USP for whiter skin, versus a Twitchell's laborer's weathered tan.

(U niq ue Selling Proposition). students knew Barratt got the message According to Twitchell, in such ways as Iittl e about Dickens or across it was in the Victorian era plastering his comKeats. "But they could pany's new slogan, an that mass culture reared up, driven by the steam-powrecite the 'Mmm, early version of Nike's Do It," on walls all ered printing press, which mmm good' "Just over the British Empire: spewed out text and images Campbell's Soup "Good Morning! Have and notions for the "mob."

Victorians invented the jingle," he says. You Used Your Pears' word "mob," he says, by Twitchell wanted to Soap?" shortening the Latin moBut Barratt's greatest know IIwhy the coup was co-opting bile vulgus, "rabble on the move." Victorian educastuff they knew was Bubbles, a John Everett Millais painting of the tion strove to differentiate so powerful it artist's angelic grandson literature from pulp novels, pushed my stuff watching a just-blown to show classical music's superiority to dance-hall out of the way.II soap bubble waft uptunes, to instill "art appreward.

Barratt sold ciation." But with the maMillais on the notion that, distributed as a free chine age churning out poster, his painting would reach thousands cheap goods, consumerism was erupting all over, and so was advertising. upon thousands of potential new art Thomas J. Barratt, the 19th-century lovers, for their edification. For their furmanufacturer of Pears' Soap, noted: "Any ther edification, Barratt had a cake of the fool can make soap. It takes a clever man soap lying in the painting's foreground, to sell it." And Barratt was just that man. inscribed "Pears'."

"The manufacture of soap is a turning Branding made adveliising possible. In point in civilization," says Twitchell. the early 1800s, soap was just soap. Like Originally, farmers boiled animal fats with biscuits or nails, it came in barrels, and to wood ashes and molded the result into get some, you told the store clerk, "Two bars of soap, please." By the late 1800s~ soap balls, which soon stank. With the manudged by Barratt's advertising~you chine age came soap concocted from caustic soda and vegetable fats, pressed might specifY Pears' Soap.

Twitchell says Barratt's hijacking of art into bars that lasted forever. But one soap was much like another. to sell soap "blurred, for the first time and forevennore, the bright line between art and In 1881, at James Gamble's soap factory in Cincinnati, a worker forgot to turn adveliising, between high culture and the off the mixing machinery, inadvertently vulgar, between pristine and corrupt." producing a batch of soap so air-filled it Today, art co-opted by advertising is so

20-Minute Recipe

Challenge

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commonplace we do not blink at Michelangelo's David wearing Levi's cutoffs.

Back in the Wal-Mart, Twitchell veers toward a barrel displaying kitchen floor mats. "Two for five dollars!" he says, reading a sign. It is clearly tempting. Two floor mats, one price. But he pulls himself away fi'om the alluring floor mats to ruminate about literature. "I'm supposed to teach English Romantic poetry," he says.

"That period, the beginning of the 19th century, is where many of our views on materialism came from, because that was when the Industrial Revolution began producing the surfeit of things that will cause the trouble."

Surpluses produced by the new technologies, like steam power, were particularly apt to pile up after wars, and that was especially true in the aftermath of the Civil War. "What it takes to win a war is the ability to produce more war materials than your opponent, but when the war ends you have too many blankets, boots, rifles, and too much patent medicine~ which was the subject of the first real advertising," he explains. "In the 1870s we had the rise of advertising, along with the rise of newspapers, and now we stan talking about two nostrums or two pairs of boots as if they were different, when we know they are the same."

Modern advertising, Twitchell insists, learned its stuff from religion. "uU11~)~ ~ "I grew up a •Vermont • ~ Congregationalist.

My . father was a doctor in our ftrill town, and his father had It been a doctor in our 12:. town, and my mother's family had lived around there since the Revolution." His was, except for Wonder Bread denial, a stable life. "In the world where I grew up, you knew who you were by a series of time-tested an@@@ chors~ancestry, land, re@@@) ligion, where you went to Ci'@g) ~chool, your accent, your eI Job~but we've been 8 SlIi"'0 rapidly losing those an#.

chors," he argues. "One marriage out of two ends in divorce, the average person changes jobs seven or eight times during a lifetime." With the old determinants of socia! position shifting or gone, he says, "we're starting to build our identity around driving a Lexus or displaying Ralph Lauren's polo player on our shirt."

He notes that many of modern advertising's founders had religious backgrounds. A Baptist minister's son, Bruce Barton, cofounded the large ad agency Batten, Balion, Durstine & Osborne (which comedian Fred Allen suggested sounded like "a trunk falling downstairs"). Artemas Ward, who wrote psalms to Sapolio Soap, was the son of an Episcopal minister. John Wanamaker, whose marketing genius helped create the modern department store, once considered becoming a Presbyterian minister. Rosser Reeves, creator of the Anacin anvils, was the son ofa Methodist minister.

Twitchell contends that these founders of modern advertising, and others like them, modeled their messages on parables they heard in church. He sketches a typical TV commercial in which someone is distressed. Perhaps it is a young woman, if the product is a dish detergent. Perhaps it is a middle-aged man, if the product is a cold remedy. The heroine or hero consults another person who gives witness: a certain product "works miracles." The product is tried. Relief! Ads create and then promise to absolve you of secular sins, such as halitosis or dandruff, or "ring around the collar" or "dishpan hands."

But Twitchell says that advertising also reaches back to paganism. Instead of Zeus in the clouds and dryads in trees, we have televisions that are inhabited by the Jolly Green Giant, the Michelin Man, the Man from Glad, Mother Nature, Aunt Jemima,

the White Knight, the Energizer Bunny and Speedy Alka-Seltzer with his magical chant: "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz ...."

Commercial culture is so potent, Twitchell believes, that it has "colonized" society. For instance, Christmas was lowkey until the 1800s, when stores reinvented the holiday to sell off their surpluses. On December 24, 1867, R.H. Macy kept his Manhattan store open until midnight, setting a one-day sales record of more than $6,000.

Santa started as "a weird conflation of St. Nicholas (a down-on-his-Iuck nobelman who helped young women turn away from prostitution) and Kriss Kringle (perhaps a corruption of the German Christkindl, a gift giver)." Today's familiar Santa, Twitchell continues, originated in the 1930s, because Coca-Cola's sales slumped in winter. Ads began ~ showing Santa-in his modern <! persona-relaxing in a living room after toy delivery, quaffing a Coke apparently left for him by the home's children. "Coke's Santa was elbowing aside other SantasCoke's Santa was starting to own Chri stmas."

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was a 1930s creation of a Montgomery Ward copywriter.

And Twitchell says Kodak ads universalized the tradition of blowing out bilihday-cake candles and other "Kodak Moments" to "show what you can do with fast Kodak film and the Kodak Flashmatic attachment on your Kodak camera."

Ads have even changed our attitude toward debt, which once could lead to prison. "Think only of how consumer debt was merchandised until it became an accepted habit, not an abhorred practice," observes Twitchell.

"Think only of how the concept of shine and 'new and improved' replaced the previous value of patina and heirloom." Twitchell says politics hit its modem ad-driven stride starting with the 1952 "Eisenhower Answers America" Presidential campaign, designed

by Rosser Reeves. Regarding his own ads, Ike said ruefully: "To think an old soldier should come to this."

Athletes have become logo-bedecked living billboards. But Twitchell argues that commercial culture has affected us all.

Cereal, for example, is now synonymous with breakfast. "Before Messrs. Post and Kellogg, this meal consisted of breaking fast by finishing last night's dinner," he says, adding that leftovers went to the family dog. Dog food was a creation of Ralston Purina's ad agency. Twitchell says that some marketing ploys fizzled, of course, citing an old ad headlined: "Sunday is Puffed Grain Day." Mother's Day began in the early 1900s when Philadelphia merchandiser John Wanamaker elevated to stardom a local

woman mourning for her mother. He ran full-page ads in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Soon only a blackguard would fail to buy a Mom a present on her newly special day.

Wanamaker reportedly gloated that he would rather be the founder of Mother's Day than the king of England.

Twitchell is no longer amazed that his students, inundated with commercial messages, display their status with manufacturers' logos on their shit1 pockets or on their sunglasses. "At a Palm Beach store a woman explained to me that the more expensive the sunglasses, the smaller the logo, so that with Cartier you can barely see the c." H is students derogatori Iy refer to certain classmates as "Gaps," after the retail chain where they buy their clothes.

In the 19th century, people learned manners from novels and magazines; in the 20th century from sitcoms and ads. When his daughter was a teenager, he heard her telling friends, after watching a teen TV show, 90210, "Can you believe how cool Kelly looked in Dylan's Porsche!"

Twitchell shrugs: "That's all they have for Trollope."

Economist Thorstein Veblen coined the term "conspicuous consumption": displaying possessions to impress others.

"Between ages 15 and 25, we males consume the most as a percentage of our disposable income because we're displaying our feathers to potential mates," says Twitchell.

"Now it's more complicated because females are working and they can display too." But the urge wanes. "After about age 45, many people start moving away from acquisition.

Thus, ads, TV shows, and movies, which are studded with paid-for product placements, concentrate ferociously on youths, who seem to get the message.

But not all analysts agree with Madison Avenue's youth fixation. In fact, according to Beth Barnes, an associate professor at Syracuse University and chair of the advertising department at the S.l. Newhouse School of Public Communications, advertisers are increasingly recognizing that the over-45 age-group is growing fast. And older Americans often have the magic ingredient: disposable income. "I think the change is slow, but inevitable," Barnes

Twitchell insists modern advertising learned its stuff from religion-even paganism. Instead of Zeus in the clouds and dryads in trees, we have televisions that are inhabited by the Jolly Green Giant, the Michelin Man and the Energizer Bunny. says. For one thing, she notes, advertising is increasingly segmented, exploiting today's highly segmented media to aim finetuned messages at specific subcultures, including age-groups.

"Advertising for soft drinks may stay aimed at youth," she says. "But the trick is to go after older people with products in which they are not set in their ways-computers, for instance, or travel and tourism, or financial services, or new products, like Chrysler's PT Cruiser."

In 1999, marketing circles buzzed over the surprising number of over-45 on-line shoppers. "It makes sense. They're amazingly machine savvy-my mother just got a new computer because her old one was too slow."

It is true, Barnes continues, that younger people may be less loyal to brands, and easier to woo away. But she adds: "There's a flip side to that-young people are lot more skeptical too!"

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Perhaps.

"Why,"

asks James Twitchell,

"are my daughters willing to buy a bottle of water worth two cents and pay $\ .50?"

They aren't buying the product itself; they're buying the values that advertising has attached to the product, such as being hip. He cites a Madison Avenue adage: "You don't drink the beer; you drink the adveI1ising."

Many of today's ads leave the average reader or viewer totally confused about what is being sold. For instance, in one current TV commercial, a cool young couple is driving down a city street, their car's windshield wipers clacking. They are so tuned in, they notice that the passing scene is rife with tempos, such as a boy bouncing a basketball, all in perfect sync with the rhythmic clack of their windshield wipers. What is going on?

"Often advertising is not about keeping up with the Joneses, but about separating you from them," Twitchell points out.

"That's especially true of advel1ising directed at a particular group, such as adolescents or young-adult males-it's called 'dog-whistle' advel1ising because it goes out at frequencies only dogs can hear." In this case, the "dogs" are the commercial's target group of young adults. The young couple is hip enough to be driving their model of Volkswagen.

"The idea is, your parents can't understand this, but you can." He cites a recent advel1isement for a new sport utility vehicle that actually has the headline: "Ditch the Joneses!"

The most egregious example of this oblique marketing ploy was, of course, Benetton's spate of ads that employed the force of shock in order to create product recognition.

The image of a nun and a priest, locked in a passionate kiss, was offensive to many people. But the pieces de resistance were Benetton's portraits of 25 death row inmates in America's prisons.

This ad campaign cost Benetton its lucrative contract with Sears, Roebuck & Company and ended Oliviero Toscani's 18year career as Benetton's creative director.

Such an ad may look senseless to a 50year-old, Twitchell says, "but it's being properly decoded by a 23-year-old."

It works. Today's average American consumes twice as many goods

and services

as in 1950, and the average home is twice as large as a post-World War II average home. A decade ago, most grocery stores stocked about 9,000 items; today's stores carty some 24,000.

Twitchell says he does not believe for a minute that our commercial society is a better world. "But it might be a safer world, oddly enough, if we value machine-made objects about which lies are told, rather than feuding over how to save souls," he says. "And we may be moving into a quieter world as people who were never able to consume before begin getting and spending."

He points upward, to the Wal-Mart's ceiling, with its exposed girders, pipes, wires and ducts, painted industrial gray.

"That's to give you the illusion that you're buying stuff as close to the factory as possible," he says. His eyes fix upon Kraft Macaroni & Cheese boxes, each inscribed "The Cheesiest." He says, "It looks like a cornucopia, and the message is, 'Take one!' And see, the stack still sits on its freight pallet, to give you the idea there aren't many middlemen between you and the factory price."

Everything in the store is a brandname product. "See, a stack of Fedders' air conditioners in their boxes. Jt was Wal-Mali founder Sam Walton's great insight that if he sold only branded items and negotiated lower prices, the manufacturers would do all the adveliising for him."

Twitchell wanders back to the alluring display of floor mats that had first attracted his eye. He stares, transfixed.

"Two for five dollars! I came in here meaning to buy one. That idea of two seemingly for the price of one took hold in the 1940s, especially with Alka-Seltzer, which you originally took as only one tablet until they halved the dosage so you'd take two: 'Plop, plop ....'''

A few steps farther, he eyes a display of bottled mineral water. "This one is made

by Pepsi. When they studied its marketing in Wichita, they were astonished to find out that buyers of these lower-priced mineral waters didn't care if it came from underground springs or runoff from Alpine glaciers-they bought the water because they liked the name and the feel of the bottle in their hand."

He pauses at a rack of greeting cards.

"It's how we exchage emotions now, the commercializing of expression. The most touching are the cards to send to kids, offering your sympathy because their parents just got divorced."

Such cards perform a useful service. "They're facilitators of difficulty, and they help us handle emotionally fraught events quickly and efficiently."

As his friends prepare to leave the WalMart, without the dish drainer they had sought, Twitchell stops. "I'm going to go buy those two floor mats, but after you leave, because I'm ashamed to be seen succumbing to that two-for-the-price-ofone deal," he says.

Even so, Twitchell-deprived as a boy of Wonder Bread and Coke-believes the stuff cramming our stores, which advertisements strain to get us to buy, is not necessarily invidious to our cultural health. "After all," he says, "we don't call them 'bads'-we call them 'goods!'"

0 About the Authors: Richard and Joyce Wolkomir are longtime writers for the Smithsonian. Joyce is a former Scholastic Magazines editor and Richard is a former editor at the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company.

Five high-tech fixes for air-traffic gridlock

he thunderstorm was closing in fast on the Orlando, Florida, airport, with wind gusts hitting about 95 kilometers per hour. Stonns like this, called "gust fronts" by meteorologists, wreck havoc with airport operations by overriding prevailing winds and forcing airplanes to shift to a new landing approach. That can take 30 minutes or more as aircraft 160 kilometers away are detoured into a new path, gumming up flights for hours. But controllers in Orlando pulled a slick maneuver.

Over the protests of the Jacksonville regional air-traffic center, which wanted all incoming aircraft to immediately shift to a new approach, the local controllers brought a last batch of aircraft down. Then, minutes later, when the gust front hit, they already had aircraft lined up on the new approach. There were only a few delays, and minimal headaches for passengers.

How was this nifty trick managed? With a new weather-radar system being tested at the Orlando airport. Called ITWS, for Integrated Terminal Weather System, it uses powerful radar and computers to give flight controllers an unprecedented view of the weather. It warns of lightning and wind shear, outlines stonn fronts, and gives controllers precise information about the speed and direction of storms. Orlando controllers using a prototype ofITWS were able to predict when the gust front would hit the airpOli, enabling them to determine exactly when to begin routing approaching aircraft to a new landing pattern. The regional center in Jacksonville didn't have ITWS, says Bill Brenner, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) project manager for the system, but "as soon as they saw what it could do, they started clamoring for it."

ITWS, which may begin rolling out nationally this year, is a key component of one of the most ambitious programs the FAA has launched in decades: a 10-year, $11.5 billion effort that will rely heavily on technology to cut flight delays and relieve airport congestion by as much as 30 percent over the next 10 years. Air travelers will welcome any improvements the FAA can wring out of a system that at times seems closer to a shrieking gooney-bird colony than an orderly air-traffic network. One in every four flights was delayed or canceled in 2000, and the delays add up. A plane held up five minutes on the runway at ewark International Airport now creates delays for more than 250 other planes as far away as Minneapolis, according to the FAA. In 2000, the average delay was more than 52 minutes. And planes are so full they cannot quickly accommodate passengers from other flights that have been delayed or canceled.

Many of the delays, of course, can be attributed to a simple fact: More people are flying than ever before. In 1978, when the airline industry was deregulated, U.S. commercial aircraft carried only 250 million passengers each year. That figure approached 700 million in 2000, and is expected to hit I billion by 2010. Meanwhile, airport construction has been all but stymied by high costs and "not-in-my-backyard" opponents.

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Long waits, cancellations, frayed tempers.

Is anyone doing anything about it?

Enter the problem solvers.

Reprinted from Popular Science with pennission.

Copyright Š 2001 by Time 4 \1edia, Inc. All rights reserved.

Wrong-Way Traffic ervous fliers worry about plane crashes. But the most hazardous part of a flight-besides the drive to the airport-may be taxiing to and from the terminal. The odds are surprisingly high that there will be a "runway incursion," the aviation industry's bloodless term for what happens when an aircraft or support vehicle is on the wrong part of the runway.

A record 431 runway incursions were reported in 2000, a jump of 48 percent over 1999. And a federal report released last June warned that runway incursions over the next 20 years could cause as many as 15 fatal collisions and 800 deaths.

Most major airports are equipped with ASDE-3, a ground radar system that tracks taxiing aircraft but requires a controller to watch for potential problems. A better solution might be emerging from NASA's Aviation Safety Program.

Last fall, at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, NASA engineers tested a system called Rips, for Runway Incursion Prevention System. Rips takes existing signals-from an air-

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Yet it's equally true that the air-traffic infrastructure has not come close to keeping pace. Some solutions now being touted by the FAA date back 20 years. The agency has tried big technological overhauls before, and failed. In the early 1990s, for instance, the FAA spent more than $5 billion on an IBM-led effort called the Advanced Automation System, which was to massively upgrade the computers that direct air traffic. In 1994, with hardly a single component reaching air-traffic centers, the project was scrapped. "The problem is not too many airplanes in the sky," says Michael Boyd, a Colorado-based airline consultant and a harsh critic of the FAA. "The problem is a lack of real management and investment in the air-traffic system."

Certainly, the FAA faces a formidable task: increasing air capacity safety, at a reasonable cost, and before the entire system collapses. Much of that mission has been placed in the lap of researchers at the agency's vast William J. Hughes Technical Center. Located in a complex of labs and office buildings at a former military base that now serves as the Atlantic City, New Jersey, airport, the technical center has been developing programs that range from improved air-traffic control stations to entirely new ways to guide commercial aircraft through the skies. It's here, for instance, where work is under way on ITWS, the radar that controllers will soon use to accurately track and predict the weather immediately surrounding an airport. That can playa big role in reducing delays: Experts blame perhaps

half of all delays on weather-related woes.

Developed by MIT's Lincoln Laboratory and built by the Raytheon Corporation, ITWS combines an array of powerful detection systems to depict weather conditions. It fuses data from the FAA and National Weather Service's Doppler weather radar, which measures wind speed and rain, with data from a wind shear alert system, lightning detection systems, and National Weather Service computer models and aircraft. Controllers are automatically alerted to the most hazardous weather conditions, including wind shear (any rapid change in wind direction), microbursts (sudden downdrafts from tkunderstorms, the cause of several crashes in recent years), and lightning.

"With ITWS, we get a real clear picture of the weatherwhere it is now and where it will be in 10 or 20 minutes," says Bill Brenner, as a nearby video monitor replays a storm that hit Atlantic City in 2000, its outlined front a writhing mass of red, yellow and green. "And we made it user-friendly, so the controllers don't have to be meteorologists. They can just look at the screen and have a real clear idea of what's going on out there."

ITWS will be used initially as a planning tool at regional facilities that direct traffic around major airports-to make better high-level decisions about traffic flow and landing or takeoff patterns. But the goal is to eventually put detailed weather information in front of the people who can make the best use of it: individual air-traffic controllers and pilots. That would be impossible with the displays now used by the controllers-glowing phosphor discs with a radar line sweeping over them-equipment that hasn't changed much in two decades. But in the future, controllers will have a more detailed look at air traffic and weather because of another major FAA initiative called Stars, for Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System.

Leading a tour of the Stars laboratory at the Hughes Technical Center, engineer Doug Crispell kicks a stack of antique-looking Sperry computers that power the old Arts III (Automated Radar Terminal System) displays that still form the backbone of the national air-traffic control system. "As this stuff gets older, it gets harder and harder to maintain," Crispell says of the big black boxes with rows of blinking lights on their front panels. "Some of the parts haven't been made for 20 years." And when there is a breakdown, the whole flight-control system may temporarily collapse until a repair is done.

Next to the Sperry computers, taking up a fraction of their space, sits a stack of Sun Ultra 5 computers using a new Solaris operating system. Both the hardware and software are "off the shelf," not custom-built for the FAA. "These use distributed architecture, so if one goes down you don't lose the whole system," says Crispell.

But easier maintenance is just the tip ofthe Stars iceberg. Inside a semi-darkened room set up like an air-traffic center, John Lawson sits in front of one of the new Stars terminals. "This is like Star Wars, " says Lawson, a fonner air-traffic controller who is testing Stars for the FAA. "You can do so many things with it." The terminals, for starters, use a 20- by 20-inch full-color screen, unlike the old amber Arts screens. There's no radar "sweep"-the targets simply appear on the screen. Using trackballs or keyboards, con-

trollers can easily zoom in or out on the images. And with more powerful computers, a Stars-equipped air-traffic center will be able to keep track of as many as 1,350 aircraft within an 80-kilometer radius.

While Stars screens won't yet have the super-precise weatherreading capability of the new lTWS system, controllers using Stars will have six levels of weather severity displayed on their screen, with more detail in the years to come. Even the relatively modest amount of weather data now shown is a big improvement for controllers. "Before, I just had to take the pilot's word for what the weather was," says Lawson. "Now I have a good idea as to what the pilot is seeing." With that information, a controller can do a better job of routing aircraft around bad weather, or keep them flying through weather that might otherwise have caused flight-path changes.

Stars-equipped controllers have been directing traffic for a year at the Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, and at airports in Syracuse, New York, and El Paso, Texas. Another II regional airtraffic control sites will have Stars by 2003, with all 173 FAA sites scheduled to receive the system by 2008. Similar equipment for use in the traffic centers that manage cross-country and highaltitude traffic is also in the test phase. But Stars doesn't represent a radical change in how commercial aircraft are directed. Its color screens and better radar simply improve a system that's long been in place, in which ground-based controllers manage aircraft whose pilots essentially do what they're told. Phil Condit, chairman of the Boeing Co., which is developing solutions for air-traffic management that it hopes to sell to the FAA,

likens the pilot's situation to that of someone driving a car with mud-splattered windows while someone with a clear view barks instructions.

Although that system has proven to be safe, it's not very efficient. Few flights, in fact, follow straight lines; most weave across the country following the national array of YOR (YHF Omnidirectional Range) radio beacons. For example, a J-shaped route between Nashville and Boston, dictated by YOR locations, now adds about 270 kilometers to each air trip. Even at 725 kilometers per hour, that's a big chunk of lost time, and between that and the additional fuel burned, the detour costs American Airlines about $900,000 per year. Multiply that by hundreds of routes nationwide, and the FAA estimates that $40 million in fuel is wasted each year. ot to mention the extra hours passengers are forced to peruse the Sky Mall catalog, looking at $1,500 barbecue grills. The rationale for this setup, though, is simple: There can't be a free-for-all in the sky, with westbound aircraft using the same lanes as eastbound planes.

Radar has its limits, so flights must follow carefully prescribed paths that stick close to VOR beacons and allow a safe cushion of 8 kilometers horizontally and about 460 meters vertically around each aircraft.

The alternative? An approach called "free flight," which is at the heart of the FAA's plans for technology-driven air-traffic improvements. Free flight would be the greatest change since radar in how air traffic is managed. The new system would work in much the same way a suburbanite drives to the local Home Depot: figuring time of day, local traffic, and maybe even whether the roads are wet or dry to calculate the best route to the store and back.

Free flight relies on a satellite-based technology that boaters and hikers have used for years; the orbiting Global Positioning System (GPS). With GPS, each aircraft would actively broadcast its position, rather than being passively tracked by a radar system.

The acronym-happy FAA currently is testing two GPS-based systems. One, dubbed WAAS (for Wide Area Augmentation System), handles aircraft-positioning chores during a flight.

The other, called LAAS (for Local Area Augmentation System) takes over as an aircraft approaches an airport. Together, they provide the underlying technology for Advanced Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, or ADS-B. This is the system that would actually go into cockpits-a small LCD screen displaying the speed, direction, and altitude of aircraft within a radius of about

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l60 kilometers. Each similarly equipped aircraft would constantly broadcast its intended flight path, creating a web of invisible lines in the sky. Wherever these lines cross, the system would alert pilots to a potential conflict and suggest an alternative altitude or path. "It would be a paradigm shift," says Marvin Smith, director of the air-traffic control program at EmbryRiddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida.

"Pilots make excellent air-traffic controllers, as long as they know what's going on."

A system that begins to explore the potential of such an approach, called URET (User Request Evaluation Tool), has been tested at airports in Memphis and Indianapolis for two years.

With URET, potential conflicts are plotted up to 20 minutes in advance, enabling pilots to request new flight paths and controllers to quickly determine whether those requests are feasible.

In time, landings in essentially zero visibility may be possible thanks to GPS navigational tools. GPS eliminates the need for each runway to have the cumbersome radio array that now enables pilots to land blindly, using only their instruments. With a GPS-based system, even large airports would require only one transmitter, and small airports that currently lack instrumentlanding equipment would be able to stay open in bad weather.

The day after the FAA unveiled its big air-traffic initiative, with free flight as its centerpiece, the Boeing Co. announced its own foray into the business. Also emphasizing free flight, Boeing has proposed being even more aggressive in using technology to squeeze more aircraft into the skies. Boeing's technical knowhow and relatively nimble private-enterprise structure may enable it to move further and faster than the FAA in developing new gridlock-busting techniques.

For both the FAA and Boeing, however, the path toward a cockpit-centered, GPS-based flight-control system isn't an easy one. The technology for such a system has existed since the

1980s, but problems remain. Among them, warns EmbryRiddle's Ken Fleming, is the relative ease with which GPS signals can be jammed. Another issue: managing the clamoring for new flight paths that may erupt, with airlines trying to save money and time on their own flights by taking routes that may disrupt the flights of their competitors.

Then there are the practical implications of giving pilots an entirely new job. Will putting yet another LCD screen in the cockpit give them more information than they can use? How much freedom do pilots really want? And with pilots and ground-based controllers wielding the same information, who's in charge?

"We're looking at the information needs pilots have," says Mark Rogers, the FAA's chief scientist in charge of human factors.

"That information must be presented in a way that's consistent and not confusing."

A start on solving such problems is under way at the FAA's technical center. Its human factors laboratory, for instance, refined the new Stars terminals after controllers testing the terminals were wired so that engineers could track their hand, eye, and head movements. Changes included modifYing the color palette of the screens, adjusting the positions of the controls, and simplifYing the weather information so a controller could more easily evaluate storm conditions. The FAA is also looking at ways to make free flight work, including shifting most current radio chatter between pilots and ground stations to an automated network in which the aircraft itself would relay to ground controllers information that now is spoken by pilots.

Will technology ensure on-schedule flights? It's not a panacea, says Steven Zaidman, the FAA's associate administrator for research and acquisitions. "In my view, nothing beats concrete," says Zaidman, who in a May interview was less optimistic than the FAA's June projections of 30 percent traffic improvements.

"But with technology, we can add anywhere from 5 to 15 percent in capacity, and perhaps defer gridlock for some time."

It doesn't help that better flight-control technology is already 10 years or more behind schedule. Fleming, a veteran military air-traffic controller before he joined academia, jokes about going to meetings where GPS-control of aircraft was discussed "103 years ago."

Michael Boyd is even more critical, accusing the FAA of nurturing an expensive, dysfunctional network of contractors who profit from initiatives such as the ill-fated Advanced Automated System, yet are not held accountable for results. Even the FAA's most optimistic goals for improving traffic flow over the next J 0 years, he says, don't keep up with projected growth rates for air traffic itself.

Still, after some false starts, technology that could radically change how aircraft traverse the nation's airways may be just around the corner. For a nation of delay-jaded passengers, it won't come a minute too soon.

D About the Author: Douglas Gantenbein is the Seattle correspondent for The Economist. As aji'eelance writer. he has contributed to Popular Science, The Atlantic Monthly, Audubon, Sports Illustrated, The Wall Street Journal and Outside.

avid Thomson, in a review of a biography of JOM Ford, wrote a final paragraph that was especially charged with experience and thought. In it he asked: Can young people today read the poetry in The Searchers through the thickets of convention (and through Natalie Wood's eye makeup)? Do they want to know, or has the language of the Western been shot to pieces for them? I would not bet that John Ford or any of his peers-Hawks, Lubitsch, Sturges, Capra-are going to last beyond their century. Movies flash bright and die early. They are hard to preserve, and harder to watch once the mood of their time has gone.

This paragraph bristles with ideas that invite comment. Are films harder to watch in a later era than the one in which they were made, harder to appreciate than other arts in the same time straits? Is the work of dead white males-insofar as the term fits-more distanced in film than in other acts? Certainly time puts any work in a different context. In film courses that I have taught, grand pronouncements about honor and patriotism by screen characters often evoked snickers and groans from the class. But this disjuncture in ti1e isn't limited to film. In a theater seminar where I was discussing.Measure for Measure with a graduate group, one young woman burst into whooping laughter when Isabella asks her brother to give his life in order to preserve her virginity. (And told us what her brot say.)

Art critics, E.H. Gombrich among l<mg told us that we can never look at a work with the artist's contemporaries. Not to aggrandize Ford r directors mentioned above, why should their films be co mned by the flow of years any more than the work of other sorts of important artists? Let time winnow out chaff. Who today reads Martin Tupper, the Victorian versifier who rivaled Dickens in popularity? Who listens to Paisiello's Barber of Seville instead of Rossini's? But those very questions imply that some work does endure. Why not the best of films?

Admittedly, films are intrinsically different, and this means that, in some part at least, Thomson is right. Films, even good ones, can suffer from age more than other arts because film is more immediate, more swiftly enveloping, than any other art except music (which itself often aids films); and that immediacy is frequently based on contemporary bonds with the audience, bonds both explicit and buried. As time goes on, references to defunct subjects obviously become dim, but more disturbing is the arrival of what Thomson calls "cultural misunderstanding."

Terms of friendship or love become ungainly, as do choices of occupations and principles, belief in the very story of a film.

(What director today would make Lady for a Day, in which an impoverished old woman gets one day of riches? Or Sullivan's Travels, in which a Hollywood director travels around the country penniless in order to learn about life?) So many of the links that once created immediacy are broken.

Thus the Ford Western, even at its best, may be vulnerable,

less because of the genre itself than because of its moribund social and artistic acceptances. Ford's view ofIndians is the outstanding social instance. Artistic instances abound: showing Wagon Master, much of it marvelous, I used to warn classes in advance about Joanne Dru's hairdo, which was always perfect no matter how' rough the trek, so that they wouldn't have to waste time in scoffing. But Ford's power shoulders its way through all his gaffes. Besides, more genres than Westerns show wear and tear. Some screwball comedy classics, so called, are unbearable today. To see Bringing Up Baby today is to choke on its archaic archness, despite Grant and Hepburn. And musicals! When I watch Fred Astaire films on TV, which I do as often as possible, I press the Mute button between musical numbers. (How sharply Astaire's films distinguish betweenlhe mortal and the immortal.)

If "movies flash bright and die early," we can probably, for the most part, be glad of it. I just wish that more of them would at least flash bright. Peter Brook is said to have said of his theater work, "I thank God every night that the theater is ephemeral."

Film is less so. But obviously Thomson was thinking not of arrant trash but of notable work when he bet on film's "century" of life and 1he lM> between that work _ ~ generations. Many, ~tf included, have tried ttJ UlJderâ&#x20AC;˘. stand that gap, 1m â&#x20AC;˘

30 years ago. It is unexplained, but n has helped by conrecting the breach with the fact that many films are frozen in now-discarded beliefs. Perhaps, too, the young generations of the past c were spoiled because they lived in times when geniuses kept ;and abroad, in a dazzling cascade. The fate of fi )nay depend on that old romantic hope, the arrival of The future of past themselves are preserv than the future of any a praised than other good art w se films are so powerful so quickly, but time usually punctures inflated praise. If that is so, then why shouldn't the best endure? It is hard to imagine a future when there will be no response, for instance, to Chaplin's I A.M and his combat with the folding bed; or Keaton's The Cameraman and his swift glide through New York to his girl's house; or Henry Fonda looking down the road at the start of The Grapes of Wrath; or The Straight Story, with Richard Farnsworth's last line. The only thing that might kill superior work in the future would be either the immense degradation of the human spirit or its immense improvement.

0 About the Author: Stanley Kauffmann is film critic of The New Republic.

People send him mustards they find during their travels, such as a and souse and good mustard withal." jar from Sri Lanka that Wisconsin State Chief Justice Shirley Among the literally thousands of mustards now on offer are flaAbrahamson brought back. Besides the collections behind glass, vors including lemon peel, tarragon, chives, ginger, peppercorn, some 500 kinds of mustard are on sale here. That includes, be- peanut, black olive, dill and pineapple, with essence of kitchen lieve it or not, chocolate fudge mustard that is made in-where sink surely not far behind. You can even sneak in a tipple while else?-California. spreading on mustard made not only with the traditional white wine but also with sloe gin, real ale, cognac, whiskey, Guinness Today is the first Saturday in August, making it National Mustard Day according to Chase's Calendar of Events, which stout or champagne. "It sometimes seems that in the United States keeps track of noteworthy moments in America's life. Dozens of a new mustard product is being marketed every week," says John mustard aficionados crowd around tables laden with open jars, Hemingway, a globe-trotting British mustard consultant based in plunge plastic spoons into them and solemnly compare. One Norwich, England, with an encyclopedic knowledge of the subtaster, a state con'ections officer with a jet-black Vandyke beard, ject. "Cottage-industry specialties and regional styles now comtries one labeled Royal Bohemian XXX, screws his eyes shut and pete with new aromatic varieties from the big producers. You can hardly keep up with it." concentrates on the growing glow on his tongue. "Good God, that's hot," he pronounces. "1've gotta have it. The garlic one is One reason: it's a perfect fit with today's lifestyle, a condiment really good, too. So many flavors, so little time." Nearby, a that indisputably, ahem, cuts the mustard. It contains virtually no brawny guy in short"s and running cholesterol. Its emulsifYing qualities make it shoes tries a jalapeno mustard: an essential part of everything from salad "Whooeee, that really opens the sidressings and mayonnaise, to baked beans ith mustard nuses!" One lady from Rhode Island and barbecue sauce. Mixed into industrially seed now picks up some jars (cranberry, key prepared foods, it not only adds flavor but lime) for her mother, while another, gives them a longer shelflife by inhibiting the the world's from Baltimore, goes for raspberry growth of molds and bacteria; meat products most heavilY traded honey mustard and Inglehoffer Extra like hot dogs and bologna have better texture Hot. Wearing his Captain Mustard cosand slice more easily when made with musspice, lTIustard's on a tume of yellow tights, leotard and tard flour as a binding agent. black cape for the occasion, Levenson roll in An1erica Mustard's new diversity is much on gives his explanation of mustard's view at the annual apa Valley newfound diversity and popularity: Mustard Festival, held January to "It's cheap and easy to make, which March in locales like St. Helena, makes it ideal for people who want to Yountville and Calistoga, start up their own small businesses and California.

Though almost cottage industries. And for consumers no condiment-quality mustard it's a very affordable luxury." seed is cultivated in the valley, No doubt about it, mustard's the spring fields are ablaze with on a roll in America. With musmustard in bloom; the plant is used tard seed now the world's most as a cover crop in many vineyards to preheavily traded spice, an unctuvent erosion and to enrich the soil when plowed ous river of creamy yellow under. When some 248 mustards from seven countries were judged by tasters last year, the grand champion was paste is spreading across American platters and palates.

Robert Rothschild Raspberry Honey Mustard, made by a small In the current trend to bolder, firm in Urbana, Ohio. Runners-up were a motley bunch of musmore piquant flavors in American tards including roasted chipotle, smoky garlic, apricot ginger and meals-witness the popularity of Sea Dog Beer. Another star at the festival was Russian Sergei spicily exotic cuisines from Tex-Mex to Thai, Cajun to SzechuanLyapin, who brought a load of Sarepta mustard from a 190-yearmustard is also well ahead of other traditional flavorings like red old firm in Volgograd, about 480 kilometers south of Moscow. pepper, sesame, paprika, cinnamon, oregano and basil, according to Lyapin hopes his spread, with the bite and consistency of horsethe American Spice Trade Association. Overall sales of sauces, radish, will find its niche in America's wide-open, $300 million condiments and dressings, which totaled $7 billion in 1998, grow mustard market. steadily every year. A sizable chunk of that is mustard, updated and To be sure, that market is still largely dominated by the brighttransformed into myriad modern modes that seem to go with everyyellow spread that has festooned American hot dogs since it, and thing. It's all as if gourmand Americans have come to agree with the hot dog, were introduced at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904.

16th-century English poet Thomas Tusser's recipe for good cheer: French's Cream Salad mustard was the creation of George Dunn, "Good bread and good drink, a good fier in the hall,lBrawn pudding the plant superintendent for George French. Canny New York State

'W .

French s was Ihe firsl successjitl commercial muslard in Ihe Us. and has been around since 1904. Here Mr Mustard enlerlains on the boardwalk at hot dog cenlral, Nathan S, in Coney Island, New York.

mustard makers at the turn of the last century, French and his brother, Francis, figured that Americans weren't consuming as much mustard as I they would like because it was, well, hot. Heat -I might be what furriners liked about mustard, but French knew his compatriots' predilection for blandness. His milder variety, whose bright-yellow color actually comes not from mustard seed but from added tunneric, was right on target: the company made a million dollars by 1915, and by 1926 it had sold out for a tidy $3.8 million to an English food products company.

Today, French's processes more than 12 million kilograms of mustard seed a year at its plant in Springfield, Missouri, and its ubiquitous jars and squeeze bottles account for nearly one-third of the U.S. market.

Its Classic Yellow, as Dunn's creation is now called, is used by 69 percent of American households in any given year. The company also produces a milder version of Dijon-style mustard (which it promises to be safely free of "ooh, la, la spiciness," and "as American as apple pie"), along with four other varieties, including deli style, honey, sweet onion and horseradish blends. It regularly creates and publishes recipes for busy cooks, such as seashell pasta salad, deviled eggs and guacamole chicken wrap.

"Women today don't have a lot of time to spend on preparing meals," says Janet Andreas, who runs French's test kitchen and works up such recipes. "With mustard they can add a creative touch to simple meals put together with everyday ingredients." merica's infatuation with mustard has led to dozens of Web sites run by small specialty and regional mustard makers hawking their wares. Mustard flowing via the Internet is one measure of how far the spice has come since the days of Alexander the Great, who once used it as a sort of primitive telegraph during a battle in 331 B.C. Alexander figured he would knock off the Persian Empire in an easy afternoon's work, but Persia's cocky emperor, Darius Ill, sent him a saucy warning: a bag of sesame seeds symbolizing how numerous his troops were. Alexander coolly replied with a similar bag-but filled with much more numerous mustard seed to show not only the number of his warriors but their hot ferocity as well.

Alexander won.

All the great ancient civilizations, from Greece and Egypt to China and India, cultivated and consumed mustard seed. The Greek dramatist Aristophanes wrote in the fifth century B.C. of mustard-spiced stews, while Pythagoras, perhaps looking for ways to help people remember his theorem about right triangles, held that mustard improved memory. Bronze Age sites in Greece and Anatolia have yielded the seed; Indian and Sumerian texts

going back to 3000 B.C. mention it.

The ancients held that mustard was good, and good for you, if not a virtual panacea. The Greeks credited Aesculapius, son of Apollo and god of medicine, with creating it. Dioscorides, the firstcentury A.D. Greek physician whose De re medica was the standard pharmacological text for centuries, prescribed mustard for everything from swollen tonsils to epilepsy, and as a tonic against "feminine lassitude." The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder ground mustard seed with vinegar and used it as a poultice for snakebite and scorpion stings, while the Greek physician Hippocrates favored mustard poultices for treating bronchitis, pneumonia, rheumatism and neuralgia-ample precedent for today's folk medicine remedy ofa mustard plaster for many of the same ills.

Persian noblemen, they say, used to show offtheir swordsmanship by putting a mustard seed on a block and slicing through the minuscule orb with a single stroke oftheir scimitar. No mean feat when you consider that a brown seed is only 0.16 centimeter in diameter, and it takes some 26,500 of them to make one jar of Dijon mustard. That's why Saint Matthew, when searching for a metaphor to show how powerful even a tiny bit of faith is, wrote, "Ifye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove: and nothing shall be impossible unto you."

We know the Greeks and Egyptians chewed mustard seeds with meat, probably to disguise its gamy taste. But it was the Romans who used it most widely and creatively, mixing it with vinegar, honey and oil, and pickling meats with it. Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella wrote of mustard in his 12-volume reference work, De re rustica, giving detailed recipes for making the condiment with such ingredients as saltpeter and hot coals.

It appears that the Romans also gave us, at least indirectly, the condiment's name. Savants disagree, as they will, over the origin of the word "mustard," but the consensus seems to lie with the Latin mustum because the condiment has often been prepared by mixing

with unfermented grape juice, or must. Add the Latin ardens, "hot" or "fielY," and you have it. But some hold for a Celtic derivation from mwstardd, meaning "something that emits a strong odor."

The conquering Romans carried mustard seed to their province of Gaul, where it took root and formed the basis of France's traditional preeminence in mustard making~and consumption. By the ninth century, French monasteries were already making a good revenue from their mustard preparations. In 1336, the Duke of Burgundy supplied no less than 270 liters of it for a single day's feasting.

In medieval Paris, hundreds of hawkers, wearing blue aprons and red caps, trundled wheelbarrows of mustard through the streets, housewives popping out their doors for a daily refill.

French king Charles VII fortuitously discovered a new mustard recipe in 1422 while fighting the Hundred Years War. Blowing

By the mid-19th century, mustard was becoming so popular in France that gastronomic authority Grimod de La Reyniere commented that mustard had become "such a primary necessity that without it at least two-thirds ofthe stomachs in Paris wouldn't be able to digest." And not only in Paris. Most self-respecting French cities have had their local mustard, but France's supreme center of mustard making has long been the Burgundian city of Dijon. This seemed so obvious to writer Alexandre Dumas that when he stopped at the city's Hotel du Parc for dinner one evening, he was taken aback when the waiter asked what mustard he wanted with his two lamb cutlets and half a cold chicken.

"Parbleu," the author of The Three Musketeers exploded, "moutarde de Dijon!" But the waiter politely explained that Dijon mustard then existed in both a men's and a milder ladies' version. Dumas hesitated, then helped himself to some of both.

into the village of Sainte-Menehould in eastern France between battles, he demanded dinner, but most local cupboards were bare.

Finally one obliging housewife threw together what she could find: four pig's feet. She prepared them in a batter of breaded herbs and mustard sauce. The king was delighted and voila, a traditional French recipe was born, pied de co chon a fa SainteMenehould. His successor, Louis XI, also was fond of mustard but feared being poisoned. Solution: the king always carried his own personal mustard pot with him when he traveled, breaking it out whenever he appeared unannounced to dine with his subjects.

Life in the American Colonies was a rustic affair, but early settlers still added a touch ofluxury with mustard. An issue in 1735 of the South Carolina Gazette heralds mustard seed "just imported from London by Jon Watson"; Thomas Jefferson indulged his Frenchified tastes by ordering two kilograms of mustard seed from Paris and planting it in his garden at Monticello. On the West Coast, the Spanish Catholic missionary Junipero Serra, the Apostle of California, spread mustard seed along the Mission Trail, starting at Mission San Diego in July 1769.

"At just the sight of the beautiful yellow color of this admirable stimulant appetite," Dumas later wrote, "I plunged the wooden spoon into each pot and made two pyramids of mustard in my plate." Bon apetit, indeed.

Located at the foot of the vine-covered slopes of the Cote d'Or hills, Dijon, former home of Philip the Bold and John the Fearless, passed in 1390 its first city ordinance prescribing how Dijon mustard should be made. And city fathers made sure it was enforced.

Dijon's purist approach to mustard making was reflected again in the ordinance of May 1634: producers had to swear before the aldermen to serve king and city well and faithfully, and perform a three-year apprenticeship under a master moutardier before mixing up their own batches. The strictly codified recipe for Dijon remains pretty much the same: black or brown seeds (more pungent than white) are ground and passed through a sieve. Verjuice or white wine is added to obtain a light yellow paste, then the mixture is packed into jars for shipment. No coloring, cereal flour or stabilizers are permitted.

Today France produces about 47 percent of all prepared mustard

from Europe, just ahead of Germany, and exports more than 4,000 tons of it, worth some $5 million, to the United States. Dijon mustard factories like Maille, Bornier and Reine de Dijon couldn't look less like those in 19th-century photographs, where a dozen gents in mustaches and flatcaps fiddle with stone grinding wheels and oaken casks of mustard paste. ow a batch takes only four hours, from pouring seed into the grinders to pwnping consumerready paste into sterile jars. One or two technicians can easily follow the whole mechanized process on computer screens.

The proliferation of varieties of mustard means that the major French makers are producing 50 or more kinds. Most are for the export market: straight, strong, sinus-opening mustard is by far the most popular in France. "We like the idea ofa wide variety of mustards, and we have brought out IS new flavors for our boutiques since 1997," says Jean-Denis Bellon, international marketing manager for the AM Group, which makes Maille, "but we can't go on at that rate for the retail market. We think mustard should taste like mustard. If you get too fancy, you limit the kind of food it goes with. We make honey mustard, for instance, but only for export and our boutiques. Few French would touch it."

At the Reine de Dijon company, sales manager Luc Vandermaesen understands the trend. "The move to wider variety is here to stay," he says. "People have always mixed other things with mustard to get different flavors; now you can get something different straight off the shelf." He spends time in American supermarkets picking up mustards to bring back and analyze.

"Look at this," he says indignantly as he reads the list of ingredients off a jar of American-made "Dijon" mustard. "Additives include citric acid, spices, coloring, cornstarch, sugar, liquid egg white, locust bean gum and flavoring, whatever that is. It has nothing to do with what we make here in Dijon."

Paradoxically, one thing they don't make in Dijon is mustard seed. "Lots of people think these are mustard plants," Jean-Denis Bellon tells me as we drive along fields of yellow-flowering plants near the Maille factory. "But Burgundy farmers stopped growing it years ago because they couldn't get as much subsidy for it from the Common Market as for rapeseed." At least they stay in the large and diverse mustard family, rapeseed also being a product of a Cruciferae plant. The family includes some 390 genera of plants with cruciform flowers and peppery leaves, such as radishes, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, turnips and watercress. Ornamental mustard family members include candytuft, honesty, rose of Jericho, basket-of-gold and-oddly in the case of mustard-wallflower.

Dijon mustard makers, like those elsewhere, import nearly all their seed from thousands of miles away: the endless plains of western Canada. Unlike most other spices, mustard for export is grown mainly in the temperate zones, meaning the industrialized world. "It's a simple question of economics and climate," explains Kevin Dick, a marketing executive for Canada's big United Grain Growers company in Winnipeg. "Mustard needs the kind of long, cool summer days we have to mature, and we get such good yields here on the western plains that no other part ofthe world can meet our prices. The only European countries with a significant produc-

tion are Britain and the Czech Republic." The 280,000 hectares devoted to mustard in the country's Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta provinces produce some 250,000 tons of seed per year, enough to supply more than 90 percent of the world's export needs.

To keep their competitive advantage, Canadian grain companies are constantly researching yellow (Brassica hirta) and brown (Brassica juncea) mustard plants at field stations to improve yield-now about 1,100 kilograms per hectare-and resistance to white rust fungus and other plant diseases, and to achieve greater regularity in seed size for easier milling. ot many crops pay as well as mustard," says Lynn Shaw, a tall, burly farmer with a generous shock of gray hair, "and it's easygoing, tolerating extremes of weather and suffering from few insect pests or diseases. That makes it a good rotation crop to mix in with wheat, rye and oats." Like other growers, Shaw just hopes there's not another baseball strike like the one in the United States a few years ago--"the price for mustard seed always goes up when the season starts and those hot dog vendors get going."

When I take a look at his crop at Gainsborough, Saskatchewan, it's easy to spot the 160 hectares of mustard: a broad swath of bright-yellow flowers glows toward the horizon. Shaw bends down, plucks a hairy pod of yellow seed and pops it open. "Still green," he observes, rolling the soft little seeds between thumb and forefinger. "When they're beige-colored and the moisture content goes down, we know it's time to harvest, usually in early September." 1 pick a pod myself and place a couple of seeds in my mouth. The budding heat is already there and it leaves my mouth refreshed for a long while afterward.

This distinctive, palate-cleansing quality is one thing Alain Passard loves about ever-versatile mustard. "It adds a perfect touch of acidity that offsets the cloying greasiness of meat," says Passard who, as chef and owner of Paris' three-star Arpege restaurant, is one of France's greatest cooks today. He doesn't much take to all the aromatic mustards coming out now, preferring a natural flavor and color, and a silky texture on the tongue. "The slightly floral and fruity taste of real mustard lends an almost subversive elegance to many dishes like chicken or sweetbreads with mustard sauce, or a crayfish bisque," he says. "1 Iike to add just a touch of it to many sauces for a subtle grace note that surprises diners when they discover it's mustard."

Given the confusing welter of mustards on offer today, which one to choose? The only important thing is in fact to choose wisely, rather than just grab the first jar or tube on the supermarket shelf. Variety and quality are so great now that it's worth the trouble to try several and form an opinion. Like professional mustard tasters, the rest of us might even start talking about its appealing, vinegary nose, full, smooth texture, and decently balanced flavor building to an intense, bright heat. After all, mustard has come a long way from the ballpark, baby.

D About the Author: Joseph A. Harriss is a ji-eelance writer of American origin based in Paris. He contributes to Smithsonian, Air & Space and Reader's Digest among other publications.

Sanjay Basu Making a Difference

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or 21-year-old Sanjay Basu, awards and scholarships are not new. The latest addition to the long list is the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University for 2002. But even Rhodes Scholarships seem pedestrian compared to what Basu does to pass his time at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT): sending AIDS drugs to needy Haitian patients. And that is only one of his many imaginative projects.

Basu explains his priorities: "I'd like to study some of the concerns that arise within developing countries." He is particularly interested in how governments, development agencies and NGOs operate. In his freshman year a lecture by MIT linguistics professor Noam Chomsky inspired him to help the disadvantaged. "I became interested in this work as a result of the work of Dr. Paul Farmer, an infectious disease physician who argued a few decades ago that people with drug-resistant tuberculosis should receive proper treatment rather than being left to die. He's changed a lot in international medicine and improved the standards of care dramatically, and he now lives in Haiti, where he treats AIDS and TB patients," says Basu.

Basu founded United Trauma Relief (UTR), a collegebased humanitarian aid organization that provides medicine to poor AIDS patients and supplies disaster services for international aid efforts. Basu first solicits pharmacists to donate AIDS drugs that have been returned. He mails out thousands of doses of AIDS drugs each month. After failing to elicit donations from big drug companies to support his project, Basu put in $1,000 of his own money for this work.

He also gets about $1,000 from MIT to support his network, which draws on 26 pharmacists around the U.S. A year after its inception, UTR has members from more than 200 American universities. UTR brings vital medicines to other countries as well. It provided free drugs to hundreds of AIDS patients in Africa. UTR, with various other organizations, gave relief assistance in Gujarat after the devastating 2001 earthquake. The group also works together with the Revolutionary Afghan Women's Association (RAWA) to provide relief to refugees in war-torn Afghanistan.

"If an organization such as Doctors Without Borders did not exist, Basu would have been the one to found it," says Lawrence J. Vale, associate professor for urban studies and planning and MIT's principal advisor for the Rhodes Scholarships. As a Rhodes scholar Basu wants to pursue an M.Phil. in medical anthropology and then attend medical

L

school to specialize in international medicine. After medical school he plans to practice in a developing country. He is also keen to study the economic and social development of underdeveloped countries.

Sanjay Basu received the Truman Scholarship last year for his studies in neuroscience at MIT. He was one of 54 students selected from more than 300 universities around continental U.S.A. The nominees must exhibit leadership potential and the likelihood of "making a difference." Basu has also received the Barry Goldwater Scholarship, Tylenol Scholarship and Robert Bird Scholarships given to two state scholars of each state. In 1998 he was selected by USA Today as one of the 20 most advanced students in the United States. Basu's parents immigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s from Calcutta. His father is an electrical engineer and mother a teacher at a community college in Naperville, Illinois. Basu's work of getting AIDS drugs to Haiti as a relief measure has drawn the attention of international media, including The Wall Street Journal.

On the recent ventures of UTR, Basu says: "Our present work involves a landmine clearance initiative to clear minefields in Afghanistan and a project to take soon-to-be-disposed, but usable and good quality equipment from American hospitals and send it to clinics in the developing world." As far as the focus on India is concerned, he says: "Yes, we're looking to include India in this, particularly for clinics that aren't publicly supported and that operate in poorer areas. Several hospitals here dispose of good equipment because it's not state-of-the-ati, but still quite useful for most purposes." While mentioning UTR's proposed projects, he is very enthusiastic about an initiative to free slaves in Sudan by raising money to purchase their freedom and also a local initiative to improve labor conditions at factories producing MIT-licensed apparel.

During his MIT days, Basu did research on Alzheimer's disease at the genetics and aging unit of Harvard Medical School, located at Massachusetts General Hospital. Basu was the first undergraduate who was allowed to do research on a regular basis in this laboratory. He, along with two Harvard Medical School doctors, discovered evidence of genetic linkage of Alzheimer's disease last year. These findings were published in Science and Nature journals.

Basu is an editor of MIT Tech magazine and founder and chief editor of MIT's Undergraduate Research Journal. He is also a weekend volunteer for the Red Cross.

-K.

Muthukumar