Keep the Crusades away from our millennium

The connotations of the Crusades continue to haunt and terrorise our lives and can be guarded against by exercising greater caution in our thinking and sensitivity towards our actions, says Tarun Dalaya.

So pertinent was the thought of the philosopher and poet George Santayana, that William Shirer chose to quote him among the initial pages of his monumental work, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which read: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it".  Shirer, it seems, was exhorting his readers, through this epigraph, to remember the evil perpetrated by a defeated power lest they suffered something similar again, because of their follies.

Santayana's words bear significance as people, the world over, continue to face the condemnation of re-living undesired history, especially in the form of conflicts arising out of religious strife. Take for instance the conflicts created by radicals representing the religions of Christianity and Islam.  No other religious conflict has been more severe and continuous than what these two faiths have experienced.  Can there be a more haunting example of this than the Crusades?

Historians tells us that the Crusades – a series of “holy” wars waged by the Latin Christian World against the Islamic World of the Middle-East – were fought during the period 1096–1291, and still continued in various forms throughout following centuries. Bigots, ruled by feelings of insecurity and obscure identities, sowed seeds of irreparable tension between peoples of Christian and Islamic faiths.

Man has now entered a new millennium and yet he continues to repeat the misdeeds of his ancestors -- blatantly or shrouded in subtlety.

Let us consider the daring attacks on the World Trade Centre and elsewhere in the U.S., the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the bombings in Bali and Kenya.

Those responsible for initiating and executing these events conveyed dangerous connotations, deliberately or inadvertently, that the fires of the Crusades never died and have been transported, with advancements in travel and technology, to many parts of the world.

While learned and correct-thinking people are not vulnerable to such connotations, it is unfortunate that such minds are few and scattered.

In an essay which I read on the internet some time ago, Alfred J. Andrea, professor emeritus of medieval history at The University of Vermont, U.S.A., refutes the connotation that such events taking place bear semblance to the Crusades or are acts avenging it but says that “This is not to say that Islam's recently reconstructed memory of crusader aggression is not real and its sense of grievance is not genuine. Faced with what many cultural traditionalists, religious conservatives, and disenfranchised young people perceive as Western assaults upon Islam's values and its very existence, it is easy for them, in the midst of their anger and sense of victimhood, to believe they have discovered a continuous pattern of Western crusader hostility that extends back to nine centuries”.

While the US took it upon itself to cleanse the world of so-called weapons of mass destruction that, it claimed, were possessed by Saddam Hussein's regime; others used the invasion as an excuse to bring terror on innocent targets representing the Western world.

Devious and bigoted minds are influencing the naïve who number in millions. They are making sure that there is no respite from what took place centuries ago.

On the other hand, those who are scrupulous, have been careless in their actions and words and have added fuel to the fire that has been created by the unscrupulous. Balanced and rational persons, especially among the youth, could waver in their thoughts towards the irrational, as emotions overrule their minds.

These are intensely testing times, indeed, for sanity to assert itself. Sane minds of the world must unite and make strenuous efforts to ensure that their communities remain rational and unfazed.

The anti-war demonstrations that took place in many nations as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, did display solidarity, but how much were they able to influence their governments? Were they able to defeat those who called for jihad in retaliation for what a handful of countries were doing in an Islamic country?

Christianity and Islam together constitute the largest religious following in the world and any turmoil between the communities of these religions have had and will continue to have global implications.

A Washington Post website report on the terrorist bombings of commuter trains in Madrid in Spain quoted an e-mail sent by an Islamic militant group to a London-based Arabic language newspaper, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, claiming responsibility for the attacks and saying "This is part of settling old accounts with Spain, the crusader, and America's ally in its war against Islam".

It is imperative for peace-loving people in authority and those having the creativity or power of influencing authority, to come together with sane minds among masses to prevent a rising tide of hatred and violence and avert a foreseeable catastrophe in the world.

Religion was founded to refine man’s consciousness towards his creation and the existence of his creator, but it has sadly found its purpose challenged, over many centuries, by flames ignited and fanned by people who have distorted it for their own perverted agendas.

Let us not forget our past and remain cautious in our actions and thoughts or else be doomed to an apocalypse which no one wants.

Copyright © Tarun Dalaya

For that all-embracing brand

Corporate houses these days are into unrelated areas. How can a brand create that common thread?

Since Independence, a majority of enterprises in India continue to be family-owned businesses which began as one business, founded by one or two family members.

Over the years, many of these enterprises continued to stay in the same business and grew.

Those who could correctly feel the pulse of market dynamics, the gradual impact of globalisation and international trends, were able to build their brands effectively and sustain their market shares.

Very few deep-pocket companies took the risk of diversifying into new businesses. If they did, then most looked at a common value stream, while a few took the plunge into a non-connected or disparate business.

 

From the branding point of view, disparate businesses within a group pose a huge challenge in creating and building a common brand identity which conveys a lineage of intrinsic strengths.

 

This problem would not arise in the case of a group of companies that form part of an easily discernible value chain.

 

An easy-to-discern value chain offers ease in brand building and supporting communication mediums.

 

Take, for instance, a group which began by manufacturing steel coils, went on to making sheet metal products, then diversified into bus bodies and then eventually assembling buses.

 

But if you are a group of companies which has come up in the food sector and you suddenly decide to get into building power plants, it becomes difficult to link that business to a perceived core competence related to the food sector.

 

Customers to whom one is pitching in the power sector may ask on what basis or grounds will your new business deliver, when your strengths lie in another sector or sectors.

Smart movers

It is apparent that at the turn of the millennium, to take benefit of an emerging economy and a growing market like India, an increasing number of companies or groups are responding to the temptation of foraying into disparate businesses from their eagerness to either de-risk, enhance revenues and consequently their profitability or all of these.

 

For instance, Mahindra & Mahindra began in the automotive sector, made a name for itself and some years ago, under the leadership of Anand Mahindra, took the plunge into other non-automotive sectors which today include aviation and software.

 

Another example is the North India-based Anand Group which stuck to the automotive industry for years through its myriad joint-ventures and forayed into the luxury hospitality sector in the recent past.

 

This would have been unimaginable perhaps ten or more years ago. But true today in India and obvious from the very diverse patterns of most emerging businesses.

 

A cluster of disparate businesses within a group makes it very difficult for brand-builders and corporate communicators to identify and project a common brand identity.

 

And after that common thread has been found, how does one weave it through the parent brand and then through all the other different brands under that?

 

Mahindra & Mahindra managed to do this cleverly through a unified “Rise” brand positioning for which it engaged New York-based advertising agency Strawberry Frog.

 

Anand Mahindra was quoted in a Knowledge@Wharton article as saying “We are attempting to unify different businesses that share the Mahindra brand, and offer a compelling value proposition.”

 

Once conceived and executed, everything was thrown behind “Rise” to take things forward. That this creativity had challenges once it was executed is evident from the quote of an expat employee in the same article, who said “many people internally are worried about what the new program means for them and their businesses.”

Innovation, the link

Identifying a common thread requires great thought and patience. Ideally speaking, a large chunk of the creative direction should be driven from inside the company while the nitty-gritties can be outsourced.

 

Since no one else than a person working in the company or Group can understand the DNA better, the chief brand officer or corporate communicator should be able to provide key direction to the entire process.

 

And if the common thread is found, it could still be in danger of being clichéd or confusing. There may be other key determinants which one may not think of.

 

Quality could be identified as a common thread. But one may say that in the 21st century and an emerging, extremely competitive market such as India, quality is a hygiene factor; a given. On the other hand, innovation could be accepted as a common thread which could connect all businesses.

 

Once the common thread is identified, a key methodology which would take it forward would be the messaging.

 

Messaging, if communicated intelligently, informs with clarity what binds the businesses and gives a group of companies a distinction in the mind of the market.

 

Again, high creativity is important. It could comprise a key message in the form of a slogan, tagline or a positioning statement which could be further elaborated on in different places.

Effective communication

Web sites are a crucial and effective medium for conveying the messaging of the common thread and other key components for groups possessing disparate businesses. But this requires deftness and high levels of thinking, creativity and clarity.

 

Great care has to be taken to ensure that the objective does not fail, or else the Web site will become a cause of greater confusion than the powerful tool of clarity that it is supposed to be.

 

As many Indian enterprises hurry to grab unconnected business opportunities to enlarge their basket of sustenance, it is critical to be aware of the difficulties they will face in building a common identity and projecting unity in diversity.

 

To be able to do so successfully calls for courage to take bold decisions and not pay lip service to the immense creativity that is required.

 

(My article published in the 19th August 2013 edition of The Hindu Business Line newspaper on the Op-Ed page)

 

Copyright © Tarun Dalaya

 









My destiny will be made between me and my maker and not between me and my fellow men and women.

Copyright © Tarun Dalaya

Home and the roots of murder

The potential to become a murderer develops at home and history has proved it.

The killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, could have been prevented.

A mother’s (said to have once been a teacher) fascination for guns is extraordinary but extraordinary and cautious is how the education of her children at home should have been. The perpetrator of the killings, her 20-year-old son Adam, is alleged to have been mentally challenged. If true, it would have been known to her and she should have hence exercised greater caution rather than dangerously exposing him to her collection and interest in firearms.

Debate on the enactment and enforcement of a strict law for gun control in the U.S. is another but related matter of utmost importance. The ease of buying weapons and their resultant proliferation among the civilian population has been a large contributor to gun-related violence in the country. What is even more worrying is access to weapons by those who are mentally challenged or of unsound mind. Care for mentally challenged people in a developed country like the U.S. is far ahead compared to India. Yet, how many times do we hear of a mentally challenged person here committing mass murder? On the contrary there are numerous such people who roam the streets, naked and hungry. To see a weapon in their hands is a fantasy.

It is not just the kind of parenting but our lack of proactive counselling to someone for his or her failure, or the quality of counselling itself, which determines the constructive or destructive direction a person takes in life. I once heard that Mahatma Gandhi's assassin Nathuram Godse had aspired to join the Indian Air Force and in the process of doing so at the Air Force Selection Board in Dehradun, failed for medical reasons. Would effective counselling to overcome the negative feelings and thoughts arising from failure have helped Godse succeed in more constructive ways in another career?

History is replete with examples of mass murderers like Hitler and Stalin in whose formative years the seeds to commit murder were sown. Hitler’s genocidal mind may have also been triggered by his failure to join the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. Hitler and Stalin both came from dysfunctional families. Their fathers were cruel towards them. It is obvious that their mothers, though attached to them and vice-versa, failed to constructively influence their minds. The esoteric causes for the dictators’ bloodied future entails another study all-together.

Notable people like Dr. R. A. Mashelkar, who rose meaningfully from a challenging childhood, are rare. His poor and widowed mother is said to have struggled doing odd jobs to pay for his education. He eventually became a noted scientist and the Director General of India’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.

At the time of writing, it is still uncertain about what drove the gunman to kill his mother at home and 26 others at the school. Reports say that he was fond of violent video games and was disturbed by his parents divorce. Well, many children go through the upheaval of divorce of parents and may like video games based on violence. But in the case of Adam, there were other accumulated factors that made him into a tinder box which ignited. We may never know what finally triggered the fuse, but that his parents could have played a more effective role in preventing the formation of the tinder box is certain.

Quality of parenting is crucial and plays a big role in enabling a child with signs of saintliness to become a saint or a child showing signs of violence or a mental illness to become a criminal.

Monsters do not come out of earth or sky to commit their monstrosities. They are made somewhere amidst our lives. And the reality is that in most cases the beginnings of the potential to commit murder starts at home.

Copyright © Tarun Dalaya