"My name is George Nathaniel Curzon,
I am a most superior person,
My cheek is pink, my hair is sleek,
I dine at Blenheim once a week".

Kitchener could not have been very personable or companionable as an individual. By all accounts he was testy and querulous, averse to a collegial approach to decision-making and loath to delegate authority. He has been variously described as ruthless and uncouth, but then his exploits in South Africa and Sudan, that made of him a public hero, did not quite call for liberal measures of "ruth" or "couthness".

It was not too long before the Viceroy and his Commander-in-Chief were at loggerheads over policy and when the British Cabinet upheld Kitchener, the "most superior person" resigned. He was to hold high office again but after a period in the political wilderness. Kitchener, though disgruntled at not being named Viceroy, soldiered on. He moved up the pecking order of Peers, attained the rank of Field Marshal and was named Secretary of State for War during World War I. True to form, he "quarrelled endlessly with 23 gentlemen" -- his Cabinet colleagues -- who became less and less enamoured with him. One wonders if he was missed or deeply mourned when the cruiser bearing him on a mission to Russia was struck by a German mine and he drowned at sea. Years earlier in Sudan, he had the body of the slain Mahdi disinterred and cut into pieces. Was it to cow the local population into servility? Or was it to quench some atavistic craving or instinct in the man? Winston Churchill, not exactly a squeamish person himself, expressed distaste for the deed.

The ravines of the Chambal region in North India have long been dacoit-infested. This is or was as much a socio-economic as a law and order problem. A few dacoits have even been celebrated in legend and lore as fighters for social justice. One such dacoit leader, decades back, was Chhabiram. A couplet was written about him: "Jab thak bhukha kissan rahega, Tab thak ek Chhabiram rahega"(So long there are hungry peasants, there will always be a Chhabiram). Chhabiram died a dacoit's death, in a shoot-out with the police. Later, some in the police party that hunted him down, commented on his coolness and courage under fire and his tactical acumen as he sought vainly to elude the vastly superior force that was pursuing him. His fate may have been inevitable, even deserved. What grated on sensitivities, however, was a picture taken by a camera-happy person that was carried by a few papers. It showed the leader of the police party in a proud pose with the corpse of Chhabiram at his feet, reminiscent of an old time big-game hunter, gun in hand and one foot firmly on the trophy -- lion, tiger, rhino or elephant. Human dignity surely warranted something more edifying.

Pan Singh Tomar fell into a special category of "baghi" or rebel, as dacoits are at times described. He had been a soldier by profession and also an Asian Games bronze medallist in a track and field event. After retirement he returned to his village, became victim of some injustice or slight and took to the life of a dacoit. His end too was typical for a dacoit. His picture after death appeared in a few papers with an identification tag tied to a toe. A sports celebrity, who had devoted the prime years of his life to a vocation that is honourable and heroic, come to such a pass! "How art thou fallen...O Lucifer son of the morning"! Pan Singh had paid his debt to society, paid for his transgressions and dearly so. Was the display of his remains in the manner of a stuffed trophy also part of his punishment and penance?

Pope Formosus (816-896) was buried with papal honours when he died. Less than a year later, at the instance of Roman co-emperor Lambert, a "cadaveric synod" was convened to declare his five-year pontificate illegal. The late Pope had actually dared to establish Lambert's rival Arnulf as co-emperor! Formosus' remains were exhumed for trial and, after a guilty verdict, stripped of papal array and tossed into the Tiber.

Thomas Becket (1118-1170), the slain Archbishop of Canterbury, was canonised a mere three years after death. 350 years on, Henry VIII had his skeleton tried for treason before the Star Chamber and after conviction had his bones burnt. An indignity certainly, more so for a saint, but surely also less painful than the fates of two of Henry's six wives.

Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell(1599-1658) had as lavish a funeral as any in Britain and was buried in Westminster Abbey. A mere two years later, with the restoration of Stuart rule, his remains were savagely disinterred and beheaded for the crime of regicide -- an incredible eight strokes of the executioner's axe needed for the purpose. His severed head was impaled and put on display at the roof of Westminster Hall, where it stayed for 24 years. Charles II no doubt was gratified.

One would imagine that morbid games with human remains would be merely a grisly anachronism in the 21st century. Not so. We have had recently the instances of Uday and Qusay, the sons of Saddam Hussein. Neither, if reports about them are even fractionally accurate, would be a beau-ideal. And yet they were human beings. They perished in the face of vastly superior fire-power and numbers.

It is for dispassionate scholars of the future to determine definitively whether the war on Iraq was justified. At this time the uncomfortable feeling persists in the minds of many that unless the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, former Presidents and Nobel Laureates Mandela and Carter, Privy Councillors and former Cabinet Ministers Robin Cook and Claire Short, Hans Blix and Kofi Annan, the NAM and the OIC were all united in an unholy conspiratorial cabal, the object of which was to subvert the US and promote terror, it was a wrong war, an avoidable war that was visited on the hapless people of Iraq. Iraq today is an occupied country or a liberated country. It cannot be both. With foreign troops and tanks patrolling cities and executive authority vested in a foreign administrator, the situation obtaining in Iraq would conform to any dictionary definition of "occupied" rather than "liberated".

But going back to Uday and Qusay. Photographs of their mangled remains were gleefully published and their spruced up corpses put on display for journalists. The suggestion was mooted -- shades of Lord Kitchener -- that their remains could not be buried unless claimed by family. Ordinary decency did prevail in the end and both were buried in their home village. Their tombs were shown on TV, draped in national colours.

The "world's mightiest mortal", who is also the "fastest gun alive" -- an awesome combination of attributes -- rejoiced unabashedly in the deaths of these two men, as did his staunchest and stoutest -- not corporeally -- acolyte from across the ocean. Perhaps the "born again Christian" forgot the Biblical exhortation: "If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink..." Somewhat incongruously two things came to mind. The first was an old saying that a friend told me long ago was prevalent among Sikhs. "Do not rejoice if your enemies die, for the day will also come when your friends will die". The second was anecdotal. An eminent US Senator of the 19th century, possibly Daniel Webster, when asked to comment on the passing of an old political adversary, had tartly observed: "When the Almighty Himself lays His hands on someone Sir, I take mine off". But then times change, as also norms and values, perhaps not always for the better though. For 30 pieces of silver Jesus Christ was betrayed. For Uday and Qusay the figure was a more munificent $30,000,000, allowing maybe for inflation over two thousand years and also for an exponential increase in human needs and avarice.

There is a saying in Latin that has come down from antiquity and generally attributed to the "Seven Sages"(c650-550BC) of old: "De mortuis nil nisi bonum". Or in English, "Of the dead nothing but good". More popularly, "Do not speak ill of the dead". There are treaties and conventions aplenty regulating behaviour among nations and peoples. I am not aware of any treaty, however, that pertains to humane treatment of mortal remains. One wonders if there lived in ancient times, wise and compassionate people, who may have put together an understanding -- tacit or more formal -- in this regard, something that may have been lost in time. Experts are, after all, agreed that the extant works of Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus represent a mere fraction of their literary output -- of their other works there is no trace. In any case, could a saying so concise, compassionate and pithy as "De mortuis nil nisi bonum" have emanated from a vacuum?