All posts by Aditya Nigam

Debates, Politics, Theory

‘Secularism has become another religion’ – Etienne Balibar

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[French Marxist philosopher, Étienne Balibar was in Delhi recently, where he delivered a series of lectures. A former student of Louis Althusser, Balibar has over the last few decades, worked towards the articulation of a critical Marxism – one that is at once liberated from the shibboleths of old modernist certainties and yet does not give up on the idea of a possible emancipatory project of a world beyond capitalism. Balibar’ later philosophical work has been more and more engaged with the contemporary political problems of France and Europe.

Balibar is critical of hardline French secularists for their xenophobic intolerance of issues concerning French citizens of Arab and African descent. In the 2007 French presidential election, he was among the two hundred intellectuals who expressed support for the candidature of Marie-Ségolène Royal of the Socialist Party. Professor Emeritus of Moral and Political Philosophy at Université de Paris X – Nanterre, and Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine, Balibar gave a series of lectures in New Delhi last week. S. Anand of Tehelka joins Nivedita Menon, Reader in Political Science at the University of Delhi, and Aditya Nigam, Fellow at the Centre for Study of Developing Societies, in discussing with Balibar the overlap of racism, Islamophobia and secularism in a global context. The interview is published in the current issue of TEHELKA.]

etiennebalibar

Menon: You have written about the race riots in 2005 in the French banlieues, the suburbs, as a ‘revolt of the excluded’ and have linked it to the contradictions of globalisation. What were the dynamics of these riots?

Balibar: I am surprised these events provoke such curiosity in places as far away as Chicago and New Delhi since I think these riots were extremely banal in the sense that they are a type of urban disorder that has repeatedly taken place all over the world for a long period, owing to similar issues of “difference”. Perhaps the French were exceptional in thinking that the typical effects of the redistribution of populations created by globalisation, involving race and class factors, would not affect France. There’s also been extreme reluctance on the part of French commentators, not only of the Right but also the Left, to use race and racial categories.

Continue reading ‘Secularism has become another religion’ – Etienne Balibar →

Capitalism, Ecology/Environment, Empire/ Imperialism

Interview with Evo Morales

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Democracy Now!

By way of Liberation News Service

[Interview with Bolivian President Evo Morales. Here he talks about some interesting question relating to the new possibilities of democratic transformation, the problems of leadership, and global warming – among other things. Some Excerpts:]

AMY GOODMAN: The Bolivian Supreme Court recently asked the government to start extradition proceedings for the former Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, who lives here in the United States in Miami. They also asked for an order for him not to be allowed to go to another country, but to be sent back to Bolivia. What is the former president guilty of and whether he thinks the United States will extradite him.

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: First of all, the United States cannot, should not receive, protect delinquents from any part of the world. It is unconscionable that the United States, a democratic country, would be protecting international criminals like Posada Carriles. The process has to do with two issues: first of all, human rights, and second of all, for economic damages done to the state. So people who massacre peoples, that violate human rights and do economic damage to countries and their economies have to go to jail. The United States shouldn’t be sitting there waiting for a process to be put into motion, but rather should kick these people out so that they can be submitted to justice.

I hope the United States respects these norms and respects the decision of our Supreme Court. But here, we have an experience. The last military dictator was sent to jail. And since that time, in Bolivia, no member of the military dares to threaten a coup d’etat. Likewise, any democratic government that violates human rights, that massacres people or that does economic damage to the state should also be subject to these sorts of processes, and their leaders should be put in jail, so that they never dare to do it again either.

Continue reading Interview with Evo Morales →

Government, Law

The Righteous Anger of Our Hon’ble Lords

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A treat to the eyes and ears this! The screaming headlines in the newspapers today: “Angry SC talks of Prez Rule as DMK shuts TN” (The Times of India). “SCs new anger Benchmark: We can get the state government sacked” (The Indian Express).

Rewind to 1992. 6 December. A bewildered country watched aghast as a mob led by the soon-to-be Deputy Prime Minister, Home Minister and other important personages – including the chief minister of a certain state where an old monument was located, demolished the monument. This was done after the motely crowd of ministers-to-be and chief minister et al gave their commitment to the honourable Supreme Court that they will not demolish the monument. Remember. This was not a peaceful bandh but an act that changed the face of India forever and led to some of the worst carnages in our post-independence history. Were the hon’ble lordships angry? Did they demand the dismissal of the Kalyan Singh government – or threaten it? And did they decide to take any action against the Advanis and Joshis?

Fast forward a decade. Gujarat 2002. February 27-28 onwards – not one day but for months on end…a series of carnages that reduce December 1992 to child’s play. This is not so very long back But did the conscience of the judiciary lead it to demand – or simply threaten – the dismissal of the Narendra Modi government? The fact that the DMK is a strong ally of the UPA government has been invoked this time but at that time, the state government was led not by an ally but the leading party of the ruling NDA coalition.

I hold no brief for the DMK or any other party for that matter but am simply puzzled…and this could be a crime these days. But one word may not be out of place. The honourable judges may ban the written word and jail the Mid Day journalists or anybody else who dares to challenge the undemocratic writ of the courts, but who can jail those thousands and lakhs of spoken words that are being uttered daily about this same matter – undermining the authority of one of the most august institutions of our democracy. Who can jail that mall owner businessman in Vasant Vihar who recently told a friend of mine that he really was not worried about the judiciary because he knew that its judgement in a certain case would go in his favour?

Debates, Government, Law

Perils of Arbitrariness – MSS Pandian

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The Central Educational Institution (Reservation and Admission) Act, 2006, which provides for 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in institutions of higher learning, is in a state of deep freeze. The Union Government’s desperate promises to expand the educational infrastructure in these institutions, to increase the number of seats so that the number of open quota seats will remain the same, and to address the issue of creamy layer, has failed to convince the Supreme Court. After a court battle of five long months, a Supreme Court Bench has finally refused to vacate the stay on the Act imposed in March 2007.
The Supreme Court’s objection to the Act is quite straightforward and seemingly reasonable. It posed to the Union Government, what is the basis on which the figure 27 per cent had been arrived at. The Union Government failed to come up with any credible answer and the Supreme Court, as one would expect, stuck to its position. In other words, Supreme Court wants no legislation to be arbitrary but be based on defendable rational basis.
Continue reading Perils of Arbitrariness – MSS Pandian →

Government, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

“IB’s bearded ‘jihadi’ moulvis trapping Muslims “

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[Evidence is piling up – of a whole range of so-called encounters to actual ‘terrorist’ acts, conducted by police, intelligence agencies and their undercover agents. Different groups and organizations have been gathering evidence, meticulously documented, that shows clearly how police have gone about ‘fighting terrorism’ and in effect (if not by intent) actually created an atmosphere of terror for the minorities. Every time such a suggestion is made, predictably, there are howls from certain quarters. So we think this extremely important and silent work of documenting will eventually help to uncover the nefarious ways of these agencies. Often these are carried out in cahouts with the organizations of the Hindu Right. How many times have we not wondered about so-called terrorists who come out of a railway station, take a taxi to go and either blow up Akshardham temple or the Ayodhya ‘Ram Mandir’! What if their train was late? what if, they did not get a cab on time. What if….But does it really matter, with a gullible and all to complicit media to blow up police versions as ‘serious terrorist plots’? Here then, is a small story from The Kashmir Times. The characters mentioned in this story are not unfamiliar to those who follow how they were first recruited as ‘mukhbirs’ or informers and when they refuse to play along, they become ‘terrorists’ – exactly the way the ex-surrendered Afzal Guru was made into the ‘terrorist ‘who, even the Supreme Court felt should be hanged to satisfy the ‘collective conscience of the nation’ even though no evidence could be produced against him. So, much for the “world’s largest demcracy”. – AN ]

NEW DELHI, Sep 21: Next time, you confront a long bearded Maulana with some sob story extorting young men to take to ‘Jihad”. Beware! He could be an intelligence mole, hunting for fodder to the canon of “war on terrorism”. A former informer of Delhi Police’s Special Cell and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) now cooling heals in Delhi’ Tihar Jail is spilling beans.

Continue reading “IB’s bearded ‘jihadi’ moulvis trapping Muslims “ →

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Identities

Kaurnanidhi knows his Ramayana Well – MSS Pandian

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MSS PANDIAN, well known scholar, writes on DMK, Ram and the BJP. 
 

For M Karunanidhi, DMK chief and Tamil Nadu chief minister, Lord Ram is not a historical persona but a figment of human imagination. He has not only invited BJP leader L K Advani for a public debate on Ram’s historical status but also – as if turning the knife into the wound – has advised him to read Valmiki’s Ramayana with all the care it deserves. It is common knowledge in Tamil Nadu that Karunanidhi knows his Ramayana well.

Karunanidhi’s remarks have provoked Advani and his cohorts to breathe brimstone and fire. But they have not succeeded one bit in turning the Hindus of Tamil Nadu against Karunanidhi. Their desperation is evident when Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, BJP spokesperson, claimed during a press meet that Karunanidhi has lost his head. Perhaps, he meant Karunanidhi’s followers too.

But for a minuscule fraction of rationalists, the majority of the cadres and sympathisers of the DMK are practising non-Brahmin Hindus. They regularly visit temples, worship, and go on pilgrimages. If they stand by Karunanidhi despite his open disavowal of Ram, they have their own reasons. For one thing, there is nothing novel in Karunanidhi’s comments on Ramayana. From the days of the Self-respect Movement founded by Periyar E V Ramasamy in the 1920s, Ramayana and Ram have been subjects of vigorous public debate in Tamil Nadu.

Read the full story in Times of India

Government, Identities, Right watch, Scams

Hashimpura RTI replies expose State patronage of Impunity

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[Courtesy: Vrinda Grover, Hashimpura Legal Advisory Committee.]

On 24th May 2007, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the communally motivated Hashimpura PAC custodial killings, victim families and survivors filed 615 RTI applications in Lucknow.

613 RTI applications were filed at the office of the D.G.P. at 1 Tilak Marg, Lucknow. Shri D.C.Pandey, DIG, who is the Public Information Officer (PIO). The survivors and families of the victims asked the State why the accused PAC men charged by a Delhi Sessions Court for the murder of 42 Muslim men, continue to be in active service of the PAC? Was any departmental inquiry initiated against them? Was any disciplinary action taken against them? Or were they rewarded with promotions in rank and emoluments? Were the 19 accused PAC men ever suspended from service? What were the grounds on which they were reinstated? They asked for copies of the annual Confidential Report (ACR) of each of the accused persons to be made available.

In reply to these RTI applications some information has been made available. The A.C.R. of the accused PAC men reveals that mass custodial killing of Muslims does not even invite a negative comment in the Report. To the contrary the ACR noting for the year 1987 gives the PAC accused a glowing
and congratulatory report. The career prospects of the accused were in no way hurt by the fact that the CBCID was enquiring into their role in the brutal killings of over 42 innocent Muslims. Further documents obtained through RTI disclose that they were suspended very briefly and then quickly reinstated in service on flimsy grounds. The attitude and approach both of the State and the Police Department sends a clear signal encouraging State impunity.

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Debates, Identities, Politics, Right watch, Theory

Of ‘Nation’ and Other Modes of Belonging

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It might be appropriate to begin this piece with the story of an old man from the ‘East’. No, this ‘East’ is neither the East of the Orientalists, nor indeed the Biblical ‘East’ (as in the ‘three wise men from the East’). This old man hailed, rather, from Eastern part of the north Indian province of Uttar Pradesh (UP) – a purabiya as ‘easterners’ are referred to in spoken Hindi. This man, Mata Badal, belonged to some village in the Awadh region and worked as a gardener in the house in Dehra Dun where we grew up. (The tale of Dehra Dun, once part of Western UP and now the capital of the newly formed state of Uttarakhand itself reveals one more dimension of the reconfiguration of Indian identity in the last two decades.) Every other year Mata Badal used to take leave to go to his des (literally country or homeland). He would tell us that he did not like life here in this pardes or foreign land, where he had had to come in search for livelihood. As children we used to laugh at his ‘ignorance’: how silly of him, we often thought, that he does not even know that his desh is the whole of India.

What I did not realize then but have begun to feel increasingly now is that his des was emphatically not merely a linguistically fallen form of the purer, Sanskritik, desh. I realize now that it probably embodied a different mode of being and idea of belonging. Outside this des, he continued to live like an exile. It is also interesting and worth underlining that it was not merely his notion of belonging but also of all those who would refer to him as an ‘Easterner’ – for implicit in the notion of the purabiya is the idea of the frontier or horizon, beyond which what is East does not matter. Even ‘Calcutta’ (Kolkata), which for instance became the subject of so many folk songs of separation for the inhabitants of Eastern UP (as male members from those parts went off to Calcutta in search of jobs), did not figure, till very recently, within the lived geography of Western UP inhabitants. The concept of a national identity, embodied in the more Sanskritik term Desh, remained, I believe, largely fictive or at any rate, not quite relevant to the rhythm of daily lives of millions of people all over India.

Continue reading Of ‘Nation’ and Other Modes of Belonging →

Government, Politics

Mayawati Intervenes, Sends Out New Signal

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In a refreshingly swift intervention in the affair concerning Roma’s arrest, the UP chief minister Mayawati has ordered the revocation of the cases under the National Security Act and she was released soon thereafter. Mayawati has also called for an explanation in this regard, from concerned police officers of Sonebhadra district. This is unimaginable in contemporary India, across the political spectrum from the Right to the Left. Rarely has such a prompt intervention been undertaken by those tempered in the logic of power and ‘institutions’. As a matter of fact, experience shows that, even in the best of cases, such complaints – even uproar – about the misuse of power, are routinely pushed through a mesh of bureaucratic ‘rules and regulations’ in a manner that leaves you wondering, in the end, whether there is really any desire on the part of the political leaders concerned to address the issue at hand.

Mayawati’s decision has been welcomed by Medha Patkar and other organizations and activists like Tahira Hasan of Tehrik-e-Niswan and Roop Rekha Verma of Sanjhi Duniya. It is worth remembering that while Medha Patkar has been supportive of struggle over land, elsewhere in the state, she has been quite forthright in welcoming this move. Jansatta reporter Ambarish Kumar, quotes Tahira Hasan and others to the effect that this step by Mayawati shows that she has decided not to go the Mulayam Singh way, for such a thing would have been unimaginable in his rule. Kumar also reports that CPI(ML) Liberation leaders have also welcomed this decision. This is important because, a large number of those killed or arrested by the police in these areas of UP, have actually been activists of the CPI(ML) Liberation and not ‘Maoists’ – who hardly have any presence in the region.

Media politics, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Deoband Muftis Criticize Fatwa Against Taslima

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[A report from khabrein.info by the Staff Reporter, Khabrein. Did anybody see this report filed in the mainstream media? Maybe we missed it. Barkha Dutt sure did not see the placard-wielding protestors protesting against the attack and subsequent fatwa against Taslima Nasreen. Do we by ignoring such voices of internal opposition and by arrogating all secular wisdom to ourselves, really advance the cause of  ‘secularism’, Ms Dutt? We wonder. Extracts from the report:]

Clerics at world renowned seminary Darul Uloom Deoband (waqf) have denounced fatwa against controversial Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen saying that the fatwa in itself was illegal. Prominent muftis of the madrasa Maulana Khursheed Alam, Asst. rector of the seminary Mufti Ehsan Qasmi, Mufti Muhammad Arif and Maulana Abdullah Jawed said that in a democratic and secular country like India a fatwa like the one that sought beheading of Taslima Nasreen was not based on a sharia law.

A cleric in Kolkata had issued a fatwa or a death warrant Friday against Taslima Nasreen if she did no leave India. “Anybody eliminating her would be given Rs 100,000 and unlimited rewards if she does not leave the country immediately. She has insulted Islam and continued to create problem in this country,” said Syed Noor-ur-Rehman Barkati, the shahi imam of Tippu Sultan Mosque in Kolkata. He went on to say that “We are forced to issue such a warrant because the government is not making use of the constitutional provisions and driving her out of the country”.

Read the full report here.

Countryside, Government, Law, Media politics, Violence/Conflict

Roma’s Arrest, Land Mafias and the Indian Police State

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Even as semi-literate journalists and supposed pundits in the Capital celebrated the 60 years of the “world’s largest democracy”(incidentally the greatest and most grotesque cliché of our times), away from the “watchful eyes” of the media, other less savoury stories have been playing themselves out. Brave and self-effacing women activists like Roma, have been arrested under the National Security Act and have now been labeled as ‘Maoist’, according to a report in the Jansatta (Ambarish Kumar, 17 August, “Manavidhikar Karyakarta to Ab Naxali Banane ki Muhim”). This is no small and isolated happening. It is, in a microcosm, the story of what this ‘largest democracy’ is all about. The ultimate weapon of a desperate police force (widely used all across the length and breath of the country) of ‘labeling a dog mad before killing it’ is being brought into play to deal with peaceful struggles of ordinary people.

For those who have any idea of the activities of activists like Roma, this is a lie of the most blatant sort. Roma has been long active in organizing the tribals and landless Dalits, and especially, of late, landless women to fight for their property rights. Roma’s struggle has been fought under the banner of Dr Ambedkar, Jyotiba Phule, Savitri Bai Phule, Birsa Munda and Rani Lakshmibai and has never resorted to any kind of violent means. Nonetheless, her arrest, along with Shanta Bhattacharya and Malati, in Sonbhadra district of UP, shows that even such non-violent and constitutional struggle is becoming impossible in large parts of the country today. It is the state and the police that are producing Maoists by the hour. It is not without reason that former Prime Minister VP Singh had to proclaim in utter exasperation that he too wants to become a Maoist. It is the utter cynical contempt with which the state, the judiciary and the media have treated a long and peaceful struggle against land acquisition – the Narmada Bachao Andolan – that sends out the signal, loud and clear that the only language that the state and the cohorts of corporate capital understand is that of the gun.

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Bad ideas, Culture, Law, Left watch, Right watch

The Attack on Taslima Nasrin in Hyderabad

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Dear All (apologies for cross posting on Kafila.org and the Sarai Reader List)

The recent attack on Taslima Nasreen has again shown how fragile the freedom of expression is in India today. It breaks whenever a sentimental reader or viewer has their ‘sentiments challenged’. Are all these worthy gentlemen who go about obstructing screenings and readings suffering from some early childhood trauma that makes it difficult for them to countenance growing up and acquiring the ability to listen to contrary point of view? How long are we to be held hostage to their infantile suffering?

What is worse is the fact that the people who attacked her, and have made public threats to kill her – activists and elected representatives belonging to MIM, a leftover of the Nizam’s hated Razakars, were arrested and then let off on bail. So, the message that the state sends out to these goons is – “threaten to kill, be taken to a police station to have a cup of tea, have your picture taken, be splashed in the media, go home and make some more threats.”

see – http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=90746

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Bad ideas, Debates, Theory

Time And The Revolutionary Imagination

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“If the socialist revolution in the ‘twenty Latin Americas’ cannot be unified, then neither can its timing. The national fragmentation of the Latin American revolution is matched by the way its political calendar is fragmented into quite unconnected rhythms and upheavals. In each country the process has its own time clock: whether armed or not, the class struggle will always be at a different moment in Caracas and Buenos Aires, and again different in Guatemala city. Vanguards can see far and wide: it is this that makes them the vanguard…Vanguards decide on their present action in view of the ‘far-off socialist ideals’ with which, by theoretical anticipation, they become contemporary. But it is pointless for them to set their watch to Caracas time in Buenos Aires (or Hanoi time in San Francisco for that matter). The people who make history are living by the time not of a continental, or world, revolution, but of the material living conditions of the area, the town or the country, which their horizon is bounded by. ” Regis Debray[i]

“In the Austro-Hungarian monarchy there are examples of all the economic forms to be found in Europe, including Turkey…What exists in the International as a chronological development – the socialism of artisans, journeymen, workers in manufacture, factory workers, and agricultural workers, which undergoes alterations, with the political, social or the intellectual aspect of the movement predominating at any given moment – takes place contemporaneously in Austria.” Otto Bauer.[ii]

‘Staging’ a Revolt

A little over forty years ago, in May 1967, the extraordinary event called ‘Naxalbari’ took place in a northern Bengal village (whose it name it bears), ante-dating the May 1968 upsurge in Europe by a full year. A peasants armed struggle to begin with, Naxalbari represented a utopian burst of revolutionary energy as rebels from within the CPI(M) challenged the cautious pragmatism of the party leadership that has, ironically, increasingly come to mark radical political practice since then. Formally, the main plank of the movement was its complete rejection of all parliamentary politics and a call for armed seizure of power. Located within the global conjuncture of the rise of Left-wing radicalism of the 1960s, the revolt was formally inspired by Maoism and the ongoing Cultural Revolution in China.

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Culture, Debates, Genders, Theory

‘Kalbela’, Naxalbari and Radical Political Cinema

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Gautam Ghose’s Kalbela is a film set against the background of the Naxalite movement. Based on a 1980s novel by Samaresh Majumdar, the film sets itself up, quite self-consciously, within a certain tradition of films, namely radical political Bengali cinema of the 1970s and 1980s. It thus establishes an intertextuality and a certain connection with them.

The casting sequences take us through a rapid tour of some of the more emblematic moments of that cinema and that time:

  • The shot from Mrinal Sen’s Calcutta 71 of the young man on the run jumping off a wall, running through the lanes, pursued by the police and finally shot in an open field. You can almost hear Akashvani’s signature tune as it begins its news bulletin to announce the discovery of yet another anonymous dead body in those troubled times.

You are barely through with it and in quick succession you see two, now somewhat iconic, scenes representing the 1970s angry young Bengal:

  • Ranjit Mallik in the final sequence of Interview, flinging a stone to break open the showcase of a shop. He would denude the mannequin and remove the suit it is wearing, and take it for his interview the next day. It is a stylized ‘trial’ of this character for the offence of disrobing the mannequin that becomes the opening sequence of Sen’s ‘Chorus’.
  • The other sequence is also equally iconic: Dhritiman Chatterjee ‘turning the tables’, literally, as it were, on his interviewers. This is a sequence from Ray’s Pratidwandi. Satyajit Ray, who has all too often been accused of ‘evading politics’, however captures, in this sequence, an important mood of rebellion that marked the 1970s.

Continue reading ‘Kalbela’, Naxalbari and Radical Political Cinema →

Capitalism, Debates, Politics

Slavery Exists in the UK Today: Report

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“Urban Britain is heading for Victorian levels of inequality”
“The chasm between rich and poor seen in London today resembles the Manchester that Engels described in the 1840s” – so run the headlines of an interesting story in The Guardian by Tristram Hunt. Hunt, who is working on a new biography of Engels, finds interesting parallels of contemporary London, its social segregation and inequality with the London described by Engels in his Conditions of the Working Class in England: The poverty and and exploitation side by side with the sharp increase in middle class power on the one hand and its concentration in the hands of the filthy rich – 1 percent of the population controlling 24 percent of the national wealth. So much for the ‘trickle down’ effect. Hunt’s story itself is based on a report released last Tuesday (17 July). Some Glimpses of the report:

As the UK marks the 200th anniversary of legislation for the abolition of the slave trade, a new report shows how modern forms of slavery occur in the UK. Written by leading experts in the field, this report is the first comprehensive review of evidence about the extent of slavery in the UK today.

Contemporary slavery in the UK, produced by a joint research team from the University of Hull and Anti-Slavery International for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), examines the nature of modern slavery and the conditions under which it occurs. It also contains detailed accounts of the circumstances being faced by those enslaved….

Slavery in contemporary Britain cannot be seen in isolation. Most of those working as slaves in the UK have come from elsewhere, often legally. This makes slavery an international issue. Many relationships of enslavement trap people by withdrawing their passports or ID documents, making escape unlikely. Evidence shows that those who protest about the appalling working conditions may be beaten, abused, raped, deported or even killed.

Capitalism, Debates, Theory

Peasant Capitalism and The Industrialization ‘Debate’

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A recent report in the Indian Express makes for an interesting reading in the context of the debate on industrialization unleashed by the ‘Nandigram effect’. This is a somewhat novel story: In the village of Avasari Khurd, about 40 kilometres off Pune, about 1500 farmers passed a unanimous resolution seeking a SEZ (Special Economic Zone) status for their village. The resolution, approved by the gram sabha has been sent for further action to both the state and central governments. The peasant/farmers of the village have formed a company by the name of ‘Avasari Khurd Industrial Development Pvt Ltd’, using 3, 500 acres of land, while the remaining will be used for agribusiness and residential purposes. All the 1500 farmers will be shareholders of the company and each of them will contribute Rs 1 lakh as initial investment. The idea of course, is that rather than let the government acquire land from them or they be forced into some highly unequal bargain with corporate sharks like Reliance, the farmers themselves become shareholders of their land and take their destiny in their own hands.

However, because the initiative for this effort has come from the Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture, the vision of this plan goes in a corporate capitalist direction, with land being earmarked for the automobile, the electronic, infotech and pharmaceutical sector. One can however, easily imagine such initiative being taken in such a way that these could become the basis of an interesting new type of common ownership, something akin to an agro-industrial cooperative, which could focus on industries less ecologically destructive than some planned here (e.g. automobiles). But for such a thing to happen, radicals and Leftists of various hues need to intervene in the flow of life that is being transformed every day, every minute, rather than merely issue shrill rhetorical speeches against some far off enemy – safely away in the United States or some such place.

Continue reading Peasant Capitalism and The Industrialization ‘Debate’ →

Debates, Right watch

Art, Creativity and the Flow of Life – Radha R

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[Radha R is an alumnus 1990 B.(Fine) Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts , MSU, Baroda. In the piece below, she reflects on important issues of art and life in the wake of the recent happenings in Baroda. AN]

When I last left the Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda where I was a painting student between 1985 and 1990 my heart was already heavy with the image of the saffron neo -Hindutva flag fluttering over what was to be my last Navrathri Garbha in a long time to come…

Post Godhra , I once stayed awake in a train that passed by Baroda station at 2a.m just to see how it felt to see once more the platforms upon which I had spent many a day sketching …There was a gloom to the light, an eeriness in the pools of shadows that were insomniac people squatting there perhaps holding in zones of impenetrably dark memories …Beneath the clock, those huddled up and sleeping resembled the dead…

In the same trip just a couple of months since the killings I walked restlessly through the crowds in the Old City around the Ahmedabad railway station … The roads were crowded …the markets were crowded…people of communities that were the murdering and the murdered thronged the centres where goods were exchanged with a briskness that bewildered the imagination …

In the midst of all this, where was history?

…Tucked out of sight under which fold of skin?

Where were the wounds that hemorrhaged their ways into our hearts?

Who was the expert plastic surgeon? Who wielded the Airbrush of erasure to such frightening perfection?

The skin before the TV was after all always correctly fair, almost, blemishless and perfect …save for a small blue vein that dammed up and spilt over the edges within which it was sought to be held and that stubbornly showed itself up from within the layers of the skin… History now calls it the Narmada Bachao Andolan…

… I have never ever felt like going back to a landscape where the scars of personal trauma now mingled inextricably with the suppurating welts of collective suffering…

FOR THE STUDENTS OF FACULTY OF FINE ARTS AND THEIR ACTING DEAN-

Continue reading Art, Creativity and the Flow of Life – Radha R →

Capitalism, Left watch

In the wake of Nandigram via Dhruva Narayan

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A call by concerned citizens

The valiant struggle of the peasantry in Nandigram against the acquisition of their land and homesteads for the proposed chemical hub SEZ has drawn nationwide attention. Despite the massacre of March 14 and the continuing reign of terror unleashed by the police and hired killers of the ruling party in the state, Nandigram has refused to surrender. On the contrary, it has sparked unprecedented mass protests across West Bengal and elsewhere. People’s movements in various parts of the country against the forcible acquisition of farmlands, forests and other natural resource base of the poor in the name of SEZ and for the so-called industrial projects have also drawn inspiration and sustenance from Nandigram. No wonder, Nandigram has become a major focus of people’s resistance against the neo-liberal agenda that seeks to establish the hegemony of global corporate capitalism.

Time is now ripe to bring all the people’s resistance movements across the country together under one coordinating network. Towards this end, we are proposing a People’s Convention, followed by a huge rally, in Kolkata on 2-3 June 2007 (before the onset of monsoon). We call upon all our friends in the people’s movements and people’s organisations, irrespective of political or ideological moorings, to come forward and actively participate in this programme. May the convention/rally become the launching pad for a united nationwide struggle against the government’s land acquisition policy for SEZ and industrial projects.

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Debates, Left watch

Brinda Karat: The Paranoia of a Totalitarian Mind

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While West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya adopted a misleadingly deceptive tone, apparently taking all the blame for the unfortunate events that took place in Nandigram (at the 29 March SFI-DYFI rally in Kolkata), the party’s lie-machine continues to overtime on its disinformation campaign. Bhattacharya’s plea for an end to violence and killings, virtually beseeching the ‘Opposition’ to stop killing Leftist (read CPM supporters), is meant to have a specific effect – that of making it appear as though it is really they who are the aggrieved party. It is a belated strategic move, aimed at the more gullible and the wider world outside, to convey the impression that they are at the receiving end. Suddenly all the belligerence seems to have disappeared and this reasonable man appears with folded hands to beg for the return of ‘normalcy’. But this is misleading because, at another level of discourse, this new pose is accompanied by continuous, ever new production of lies and insinuations, by other members and wings/ arms of his party.

The full article was first posted in sacredmediacow.

Debates, Left watch

Sacrifice of Truth in Nandigram

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The ‘logic’ of the CPIM and the (West Bengal) State police under its control for launching an all-out attack on the villagers of Nandigram who had totally cut themselves off from the State to counter its anticipated move to dispossess and displace them is extremely clear. The State cannot tolerate the refusal of the people to be ruled by it. That is precisely why it makes use of its sovereign power to demonstrate and establish its supremacy or hegemony. In this particular regard, the State presumably governed by Leftist ideology has acted no different – not at all. The main reason for worry here is that the CPIM has completely forgotten that it is not a wing of the State the way the police or any other administrative department is. One may, however, retort that hardly anywhere in the world wherever the Communist party has come to power has bothered to keep a distance between itself and the State. Rather it looks upon the State as an instrument for its own expansion.

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Debates, Left watch, Politics

Comprador Intellectuals on the War-Path

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[comprador: 1. An intermediary; a go-between. 2. A native-born agent in China and certain other Asian countries formerly employed by a foreign business to serve as a collaborator or intermediary in commercial transactions. Source: American Heritage Dictionary. A word once popularized in the writings of Mao Tsetung, this meant simply a foreign agent. We could more profitably deploy it here to describe those who have abdicated their position as critical intellectuals to the demands of power. ]

A friend who teaches in Kolkata University was once accosted by a group of SFI [acronym of the CPM’s student-wing] activists asking for ‘donations’. You have of course to be familiar with the political culture of West Bengal – first under the Congress regime and then ably carried on under the CPM – in order to understand what ‘donation’ or ‘chaanda’ means. Ordinary mortals tremble when CPM supporters come to ask for chaanda, be it for the Durga Puja or for students’ elections. This brave man happened to tell them that he would not give donations to the SFI or CPM as he disagreed with their politics. As the students were leaving the room, one of them returned to tell him, “Sir, Amaar naam Ratna Sarkar. Kichhu dorkaar hole bolben.” [Sir, my name is Ratna Sarkar (name changed for obvious reasons). Please let me know if you need something]. The very mention of the name was supposed to reveal in a flash to this foolhardy teacher, who at 50 years plus, continues to remain a ‘senior lecturer’, that she was the daughter of one of the most powerful state CPM leaders. A daily occurrence in West Bengal. A silent terror inscribed in daily life.

This friend needs also to be mentioned here today because he has had a fairly compelling thesis for sometime now. Civil society in Bengal, he suggests, has been decimated ever since the CPM/LF came to power. In the pre-Left Front days, he argues, it was the Leftist intelligentsia that constituted the critical voice, interrogating the excesses of power. Not any more. What can such an intelligentsia be called but comprador, who have ‘sold their conscience’ to the party line – to resort to a mild polemical Leninism. But alas, such intellectuals are not merely the Sunil Gangopadhyays in Bengal who have fallen in line not because of party commitment but maybe some other calculations; after all they have to live in CPM ruled West Bengal for quite some more time to come. Such are also the seventeen intellectuals who have issued the statement in defense of the West Bengal government.

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