MEANWHILE : A Leak Here and There: Asians Play the Game 
International Herald Tribune
September 29, 1998
Sunanda K. Datta-Ray

Asians watched the Kenneth Starr road show with mixed feelings: The plight of President Bill Clinton is a somber reminder of both the power of information and the perils of open government.

While Malaysians may be upstaging Mr. Starr in Asia with a home-brewed steamy mix of sex and politics, Indians fear that the U.S. political scandal might set back their own promised freedom of information bill.

India's record is ambivalent. Blessed with Asia's most feisty press, the world's largest democracy is so porous that yesterday's bazaar gossip can become tomorrow's state secrets.

The most innocent trivia provokes official paranoia about security. The foreign tourist pointing his camera at the magnificent cantilevered bridge spanning the Hooghly River between Calcutta and Howrah is pounced upon as a spy. It is safer to buy a postcard of the span.

Power lies not so much in the news as in how it is managed — in content, presentation, timing and target. Malaysia's recently dismissed and now detained deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, who is accused of illicit sex, sodomy and sedition, might complain of a hit-and-run campaign. But Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad can claim to uphold the right to know.

The Malaysian authorities have learned their lesson from Britain, the former colonial ruler. Before executing Sir Roger Casement for treason during World War I, the British government showed the Irish patriot's supposed account of his homosexual adventures to a handful of influential opinion-makers who might otherwise have supported him.

Patriotism is the more potent lever in India, enabling the government of Jawaharlal Nehru to demolish the credentials of Indian Communists during the 1962 border dispute with China. It did so by publicizing a letter in which the Communist leader, S.A. Dange, had promised to cooperate with Britain against Germany in World War II. Dange was no Uncle Tom. It was just that his ideological godfather, the Soviet Union, was aligned with the Allies while nationalist Indians favored Germany, the enemy's enemy.

A researcher was supposed to have turned up the so-called "Dange letter." The skill lay in knowing how to use it. A free flow of information could reduce such scope for blackmail. But it might also yield even more explosive material. Either way, an Indian freedom of information law would be Asia's first.

But the reported move by the Indian Defense Ministry to put its telephone directory in the restricted category assures me that no genuflection at the altar of modernism will make much difference.

Indians do not get excited over "inappropriate relationships." I cannot imagine an Indian parallel to the Clinton, Anwar or Casement dramas. Some lines I found scribbled on a wall in a remote Bengali village more than 30 years ago seemed to capture this relaxed attitude. All the more startling for being in English in a place where the language was virtually unknown, the verse read:

The sins of youth are hardly sins So frank and free are they.'Tis but in middle age that we have need of morality.

Of course, Mr. Clinton and Mr. Anwar are both in ripe middle age, but few would buy the argument that information about their alleged sexual peccadilloes is the antidote to political dysfunction.

Asians understand all too well that the name of the game is blackening the reputation of a political player who is inept enough to be caught with his pants down.

The writer, former editor of The Statesman in India, is an editorial consultant with The Straits Times in Singapore. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.

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