All posts by Nivedita Menon

Debates, Genders, Sex

Homosexuality and Islam – Indian Muslims’ Responses: Abhay Kumar

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Guest Post by ABHAY KUMAR 

No sooner had the Muslim minority of India come to terms with a sudden surge of the Hindu right BJP in four assembly elections, seen as the ‘semi-final’ ahead of the General Election scheduled for early 2014, than their attention was gripped by yet another controversy. On December 11, 2013, the Supreme Court recriminalized homosexuality, overruling the three-year old  judgment of Delhi High Court.[1] The bench comprising Justice G.S. Singhvi and S.J. Mukhopadaya ruled that homosexuality or unnatural sex between two consenting adults under section 377 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) is an offence.[2] The judgment has evoked mixed response. The political elites and parties[3] along with religious leaders have responded in more than one way and some have supported the Supreme Court judgement while others are against it.[4]  But a strong protest against the verdict has been lodged by progressive, left circles backed up by English language media.[5]

Contrary to this, Muslim religious leaders and those politicians whose primary constituency is the Muslim belt, have wholeheartedly welcomed the ruling. While the English language media has acted as a ‘torch-bearer of liberal’ values, the Urdu press, on the other hand, has fought a spirited battle against the western ‘disease’. [6]

However, unlike these ‘guardians’ of the community, there are some other Muslim voices, who have broadly opposed criminalising people on the basis of their sexual orientation. This paper attempts to discuss the responses of Indian Muslims on the question of homosexuality. Continue reading Homosexuality and Islam – Indian Muslims’ Responses: Abhay Kumar →

Countryside, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Independent inquiry into Muzaffarnagar ‘Riots’: Mohan Rao, Ish Mishra, Pragya Singh, Vikas Bajpai

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Press Statement on the Report  prepared by Mohan Rao, Ish Mishra, Pragya Singh and Vikas Bajpai                                                                                

December 30, 2013

A team of independent academics and a journalist carried out an inquiry into the communal violence that shook Muzaffarnagar district in UP this past September. The report is based on the findings of the team during its visit to Muzaffarnagar district on the 9th and the 10th of November and again on the 27th November. The members of the team were:

  • Dr. Mohan Rao, Faculty, Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health, JNU.
  • Mr Ish Misra, Faculty, Department of Political Science, Hindu College, Delhi University.
  • Ms.Pragya Singh, Journalist, Outlook, and
  • Dr. Vikas Bajpai, Ph.D. Scholar, Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health, JNU.

The team also drew upon the assistance of Dr. Subhash Tyagi, Professor of Geography, Machra College, Meerut, and Praveen Raj Tyagi, Principal Greenland Public School, Duhai, Ghaziabad, in the collection of some data and the conduct of the visit.

OBJECTIVES OF OUR ENQUIRY:

  1. To investigate the role of state agencies in either preventing or containing violence, in taking appropriate punitive actions against the guilty and also to investigate some incidents of communal violence.
  2. To investigate the role of the government in providing relief and rehabilitating the displaced and the progress made in displaced people going back to their villages and homes.
  3. To understand economic, social and political reasons that led to the recent spate of communal violence in this area of Western Uttar Pradesh. Continue reading Independent inquiry into Muzaffarnagar ‘Riots’: Mohan Rao, Ish Mishra, Pragya Singh, Vikas Bajpai →
Culture, Education, Images

Freezing History in a Pedagogy-proof Textbook: Kishore Darak

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Guest Post by KISHORE DARAK

In the current academic year, the fourth grade history textbook in Maharashtra titled Shivchhatrapati depicting the valiant life of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj (1630-1680) completed 43 long years of its existence, this being in itself a record. More than 3 million children in the 75000 plus schools affiliated to the Maharashtra State Board follow the textbook presently. It is probably the only example of textbook in the world which teaches the life of a single historical personality to 9 year old pupils.

The textbook shows remarkable similarity with a 1952 Marathi film, Chhatrapati Shivaji, directed by Bhalji Pendharkar who is known for his support of right wing ideology. The original version of 1970 and subsequent editions of the textbook follow an exact sequence of scenes and contain similar visuals as we see in the movie, as the first two images demonstrate.

Meeting between Afzhal Khan and Shivaji Maharaj 

In the 1952 film

Untitled 3In the text-book (Republished 2000)

Untitled 4

Continue reading Freezing History in a Pedagogy-proof Textbook: Kishore Darak →

Bad ideas, Debates, Everyday Life, Identities

Cultures of Servitude and the Khobragade-Richard Issue: Nissim Mannathukkaren

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Guest Post by Nissim Mannathukkaren

When the great lord passes the wise peasant bows deeply and silently farts. (Ethiopian proverb)

When progressive politics finds itself in agreement with Arnab Goswami, then it is time for the alarm bells to ring. What has been unfolding over the last week has been nothing but spectacular: a wronged and humiliated ‘Third World’ nation (finally) standing up to the imperialist Satan over the Devyani Khobragade episode. A story supposedly fit for lore. But in reality it would have been comical only if it did not have serious consequences.

What is comical is a nation whose elites and middle classes are perfectly in sync with the American worldview (India is among the top America-loving nations in the world) and think that America is the epitome of democracy (a survey from a couple of years ago showed that Indians, more than any other people in the world, think that the United States is a multilateral rather than a unilateral actor), whose students and youth dream the American dream (the largest number of foreign students in America are from India), whose rulers salivate at the prospect of an eternal soiree with the American establishment (after all, the Indo-American strategic partnership has been called the ‘defining alliance of the 21st century’) have suddenly woken up to the rude reality that maybe the Americans do not think about us in the same way! Hence our petulant reactions – like a spurned lover.  Continue reading Cultures of Servitude and the Khobragade-Richard Issue: Nissim Mannathukkaren →

Everyday Life, Feminism, Sex, Violence/Conflict

Ganguly Must Go – Chairs of Rights Bodies Must be Above Reproach

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Statement from Women’s Groups Across India on 16 December 2013

Exactly one year ago, the gang-rape of a young woman triggered immense outrage across the board, putting freedom from rape and sexual assault at the forefront of public debate. From law reform to overhaul of institutions of justice delivery, from media sensitization to public awareness, women’s safety is now squarely on the public agenda, thanks to mass protests. Ironically, during those very protests, on 24 December 2012, a young lawyer revealed that a retired judge of the highest court in land had sexually harassed her while she was working with him as an intern, and that she was unable to speak about it only ten months later.

According to her statement, Justice (Retd) A.K. Ganguly currently the Chairman of the West Bengal Human Rights Commission said, “’You know that I’m attracted to you, don’t you? You must be thinking, what, this old man is getting drunk and saying such things. But I really like you, I love you’. When I tried to move away, he kissed my arm and repeated that he loved me.” This is not merely inappropriate behavior by a senior over junior staff or interns; it is not merely over-stepping of boundaries; it is not merely friendly overtures: such acts constitute a clear case of abuse of power and sexual harassment at the workplace.  Continue reading Ganguly Must Go – Chairs of Rights Bodies Must be Above Reproach →

Debates, Feminism, Genders, Sex

Suresh Koushal v. Naz Foundation: Pratiksha Baxi

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Suresh Koushal v. Naz Foundation directs law’s violence on the body of the Constitution of India. Proclaiming colonial law as constitutional, the Supreme Court negates its role in the making of postcolonial constitutionalism. It departs from the theatres of comparative constitutionalism in the post–colonies, which used Naz to strengthen their battles against Macaulay’s legacies. Today the Supreme Court is cited amongst the infamous precedents of injustice that mark Indian legal history. Dubbed as ADM Jabalpur 2, the judgment declares sexual emergency on LGBT communities. By breathing life into s. 377, the Supreme Court attaches a badge of stigma on the body of Constitution.

Taking a jurispathic turn, the Supreme Court asserts that equality is subservient to scale by claiming that the LGBT community is a “miniscule fraction of the country’s population”. Inventing the category of a miniscule minority, the Supreme Court implies that equality provisions will apply only to numerically preponderant body populations. Thereby, overwriting equality jurisprudence by the insidious politics of numbers.  Continue reading Suresh Koushal v. Naz Foundation: Pratiksha Baxi →

Genders, Law, Right watch, Sex

Section 377 and India Shining: Pronoy Rai

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Guest Post by PRONOY RAI

It is 2004 all over again. India is shining. Such a difference a decade can make. BJP is on the verge of returning to power, Modi could be India’s next Prime Minister, and the many failures of the UPA could give a new lease of life to Hindutva, if it was dead at all. As India shines, the state (its judicial arm, in this case) has abandoned the queers, questioning their claim to the status of “minority”, rendering them vulnerable to brutality at the hands of the hetero-normative society and other arms of the state (police, for instance), in equal measures. Other minority groups, strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, fought against the claim to citizenship of a (sexual) minority group, decisively defeating them at the altar of justice. 

Some of us queers, who stuck to every single word that was written in 2004 that went on to show how agrarian distress, farmer suicides, and saffronization of education didn’t quite add up to a shining India, were left puzzled by the reaction of the BJP to the Supreme Court verdict upholding section 377 in its original, pristine self. You’d think that the shrewd right-wing would take on the first opportunity to invoke a very obvious ancient Indian “culture of homosexuality” to make a progressive argument in favor of decriminalization. You’d assume that in a ravaging hunger to return to power, they would try to bring on board every single group that they can, maybe only later to abandon them, but at least carry them along through elections. Alas, no. For the BJP, India is still shining, and this shining confidence is perhaps sufficient to help them march into 7 Race Course Road, next year.  Continue reading Section 377 and India Shining: Pronoy Rai →

Debates, Genders, Law, Sex

An anti-constitutional judgement: Johannes Manjrekar

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Guest Post by JOHANNES MANJREKAR

The ruling by a two-member bench of the Supreme Court, striking down the judgement of the Delhi high Court which had held that Article 377 – a pre-Constitution, 19th century colonial-era law – violated the spirit and directive principles of the Indian Constitution, seems to break new ground in jurisprudence. In an era where governments worldwide have been engaged in systematically rolling back hard-won civil liberties and individual rights and violating constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and principles, one might be excused for believing that the most urgent duty of an independent judiciary endowed with a reasonable degree of conviction and courage, would be to curb the transgressions of governments against the principles laid down in their own constitutions. The recent ruling of the SC does little to encourage such a belief. Continue reading An anti-constitutional judgement: Johannes Manjrekar →

Debates, Genders

On the SC judgement on Sec 377: Statement from TISS teachers

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It is with deep shock and disappointment that we received the regressive judgment of the Supreme Court dated 11-12-13, on the reading down of Section 377 of the IPC related to the rights of queer (lesbian bisexual gay and transgender…) people in this country, which reverted the decriminalisation of non-normative sexualities following the Delhi High Court judgement in 2009.

The Delhi High Court had based its expansive judgement on the eloquent discussion of constitutional morality by the framers of our Constitution, especially Dr. Ambedkar. Constitutional morality, they argued is the basis for equality of citizens since public morality which is largely the morality of the dominant forces in society can never guarantee democracy, and perhaps even more importantly equality and dignity to its citizens, especially its most marginal citizens. Additionally, The Delhi High Court judgement evoked the spirit of dignity, inclusiveness and non-discrimination, thereby emphasizing equality of all citizens that Nehru spoke of during the Constituent Assembly debates, so necessary for the deeply hierarchical social fabric that our country represents. Continue reading On the SC judgement on Sec 377: Statement from TISS teachers →

Feminism, Sex

The Misogyny of India’s Cultural Elite: Kavita Bhanot

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Guest post by KAVITA BHANOT

Thanks to the brave actions of a woman who had the courage to speak out against her very powerful boss, something huge has happened in the last week in India. The very sophisticated, cosmopolitan English-speaking cultural elite of India has been forced, for once, to look at itself, to face up to the sexism and misogyny that it has long harboured.

For many years this elite has been protesting, exposing, judging, mocking the patriarchy of the lower classes – of the policeman, the religious fundamentalist, the ‘unpolished’ politician, the working class urban migrant, the eve-teaser on the street.  But rarely have the men, or the women of this class, looked, in public, at themselves – the men examining their attitude towards women and the women thinking about their own complicity, the ways in which they have allowed or turned a blind eye to the misogyny of the men of their own class.

Neither the incident, nor Shoma Chaudhury’s response to it, surprises me in the least. In the time that I spent in this world, it became quickly apparent to me that deeply entrenched in the suave, cosmopolitan world of English language media, literature, art – were problematic attitudes towards women that neither the men or the women seemed to question.

Continue reading The Misogyny of India’s Cultural Elite: Kavita Bhanot →

Media politics

Not an open letter to Tarun Tejpal: Hartman de Souza

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Guest post by HARTMAN DE SOUZA

When I hit out at him, Tejpal stood there with a swagger and a go-fuck-yourself smile on his face. Butter doesn’t melt easily in this guy’s mouth; he was smug when he said he hadn’t run Raman Kirpal’s story on the mining scam in Goa (that he himself had commissioned mind you) because it was not good enough for Tehelka.

 “There were no hard facts, man,” he said, his voice exiting his quasi-American accent in a nasal peeve, “just a lot of conjecture”.

He actually asked me whether I had read his magazine. Probably never even saw the eulogy I wrote for Tehelka, on that magnificent footballer from Kerala, VP Sathyan, who threw himself in front of a train at the age of 41 just plain bloody tired of being broke and ignored.

On July 18, 2006, when Sathyan, stupidly, stopped believing in the beauty of football, Tejpal’s star was in its ascendancy. That was the day – nearly a year and a half after Tehelka shed blood, sweat and tears, that the CBI also charge-sheeted former BJP President Bangaru Lakshman for ‘allegedly’ pocketing money from a fictitious armament firm and influencing a weapon deal.

That’s the ‘scoop’ that put Tejpal on the ladder – and just so that we all know what is what, people still don’t give a shit about VP Sathyan who in 1992 captained what is arguably Kerala’s  best ever football team.

Continue reading Not an open letter to Tarun Tejpal: Hartman de Souza →

Feminism, Sex, Violence/Conflict

Former Tehelka journalist speaks out

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This is the full text of the statement issued today to the media by the gutsy woman journalist who refused to take sexual harassment as routine. More power to her and others like her!

I am heartened by the broad support I have received over the past fortnight. However, I am deeply concerned and very disturbed by insinuations that my complaint is part of a pre-election political conspiracy.

I categorically refute such insinuations and put forward the following arguments:

The struggle for women to assert control over their lives and their bodies is most certainly a political one, but feminist politics and its concerns are wider than the narrow universe of our political parties. Thus, I call upon our political parties to resist the temptation to turn a very important discussion about gender, power and violence into a conversation about themselves.

Continue reading Former Tehelka journalist speaks out →

Feminism

Feminist interventions and the agency of the survivor: A Statement

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We write as feminists and activists in the women’s movement, disturbed by imputations of motive to some fellow activists who have spoken out publicly in the Tehelka sexual assault case. These allegations of pandering to the Tehelka management’s attempts to cover up the serious charges against Tarun Tejpal, have come expectedly from the Right, but also disturbingly, from sections of the Left, who interpret the insistence on respecting the decisions of the complainant, as disrespect of the law on sexual assault.

Many of us have been in the position of being confidantes to women who come to us with complaints of sexual harassment and assault. In such situations, we see our prime responsibility as that of offering unconditional support to the complainant, making available to her the largest possible range of options, helping her to take difficult decisions. Among these options is always the recourse to the police and criminal prosecution. But we believe it would be entirely counterproductive to insist that the complainant report to the police if she is not prepared to do so immediately. And until she expresses her readiness to move forward on that path, we try to build her courage to take that step, while remaining quietly supportive of whatever steps she does wish to take in the interim.

Continue reading Feminist interventions and the agency of the survivor: A Statement →

Feminism

Sexualized workplaces, predatory men and the rage of women

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Listen. Can you hear it? That low growl on the horizon, coming closer, growing louder? It’s the dam bursting its bounds. It’s the quiet shriek of convivial silence being ripped apart.

The silence around the normalizing of a range of behaviour from the apparently casual to the outrightly violent. The laughing sexual innuendo; the misogynist jokes; the well-known ‘displaced squeeze’ of the upper arm, the shoulders; the repeated, relentless expression of romantic or sexual interest despite clear NO’s; the grabbing of the breast, the unwanted kiss, the out-of-town work trip ending in physical assault, presented as flattering interest; and through it all, the clear invocation of the power relationship.

You look great, Sir, retirement suits you, says a younger female colleague to a Professor visiting his former institution. Really, he smirks. Two other people told me this, and they are both women. What do you think it means? She smiles uncomfortably and hurries out of the office of the male head of the institution in whose presence this comment is made.

Continue reading Sexualized workplaces, predatory men and the rage of women →

Bad ideas, Feminism

“Equality is like gravity – we need it to stand on this earth” Joss Whedon

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WHY DO YOU CREATE STRONG WOMEN CHARACTERS?

A question Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) gets asked every single time by reporter after reporter (a question that Indian reporters may be spared from ever having to ask any man – or anyone – in TV or cinema here?)

This video gives you Whedon’s answer:

 

Everyday Life, Government, Identities, Right watch

Voting with their feet – Religious conversion as a democratic right

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Voting with one’s feet:  to express one’s dissatisfaction with something by leaving, especially by walking away.

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More than 1 lakh Dalits and tribal Hindus converted to Buddhism in May 2007 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of B.R. Ambedkar’s conversion, in what is considered the largest mass conversion in the country

What business is it of any government if I want to convert from one religion to another? Why should I seek permission from, or inform the government that I intend to follow a different god or gods from the one/s I was taught to worship from birth? There is absolutely no justifiable basis for the various anti-conversion laws in India, every one of which should be struck down as anti-constitutional.

Recently, Godie Osuri commented on the paradox of anti-conversion legislations being named ‘Freedom of Religion’ Acts when in fact they entail religious unfreedom.  And so they do. The Gujarat government has ordered a probe into the mass conversions of Dalits to Buddhism at Dungarpur village in Junagadh district last Sunday (October 12, 2013). Why? Because under the state’s Freedom of Religion Act of 2003, it is mandatory for the organizers to have taken prior permission. Turns out that the organizers did in fact inform the authorities, who provided facilities such as an ambulance, microphone and so on. It is clear that this ‘probe’ is a belated and panic stricken response from the Gujarat government upon realizing how great the Dalit response was to the event.

Continue reading Voting with their feet – Religious conversion as a democratic right →

Bad ideas, Politics, Right watch

India First and the BJP anti-conversion platform: Goldie Osuri

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Guest Post by GOLDIE OSURI

We seem to live in an age where paradoxes become parodic simplifications in the seemingly global race to support all manner of fascist majoritarian nationalisms. I recently saw a youtube video, where P.P. Hegde of the NaMo Brigade linked the meaning of Namo Namaha—the letting go of ego in meditation—to the image of a giant saffron-vested image of Narendra Modi.

Namo Namaha. Literally, not-me, not my ego-self. Linked to a giant PR machine promoting an individual, the face of Hindutva fascism, nothing but ego. The lack of an ironic sensibility in such campaigns is perhaps sadly characteristic of our time.

Similarly anti-conversion campaigns targeting Christians seem paradoxical and parodic in their demand for Acts of Religious Freedom which literally entail religious unfreedom. Recently, the BJP leader of Andhra Pradesh, Venkaiah Naidu stated that the ‘BJP will bring an anti-conversion law to ban religious conversions in the country if it is voted to power in 2014 General Elections’. 

Continue reading India First and the BJP anti-conversion platform: Goldie Osuri →

Capitalism, Debates

A Tihar Experience: Nitheesh Narayanan

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Guest Post by NITHEESH NARAYANAN 

This account of a young student’s experience of a week in Tihar Jail as a political prisoner gives us the opportunity to reflect afresh on ‘appropriate’ punishment, in the context of the recently revived debates on the death penalty. In those debates, incarceration is assumed to be the more humane punishment, but Nitheesh’s account reopens even older debates on the prison itself as a mode of disciplining society (Foucault), Angela Davis’s stirring question – Are Prisons Obsolete? – in which she argues that the current prison system perpetuates the same power relations of race, class and gender that society is based upon, and widespread critiques of the prison industrial complex in the USA, where private corporations run prisons for profit, using prisoners as practically free labour. (It is alarming therefore, to see an argument for privatizing prisons in India being put forward as a measure to “reform” prisons!)

Here then, offering us a view of prison as a microcosmic reflection of every oppressive power structure outside it, is Nitheesh Narayanan:

Tihar Jail, Central Jail no. 4, Ward no.1, and seven days spent in Barracks 1, 2 and 3. Around thirty of us, including SFI’s National President Com. V Sivadasan and some comrades from JNU decided on a protest demonstration at Kerala House, New Delhi, in solidarity with the series of protests in Kerala against the Chief Minister involved in the Solar Panel scam and to mark our indignation at any form of corruption. There were no policemen at the gate as the protest was unexpected. We entered the compound and sat in the portico of the main building. We burned Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandi’s effigy, raising slogans all the while. It was when Com. Sivadasan was addressing the protestors that about a hundred policemen entered the compound and started unleashing violence on us and arrested us. Nine of us were booked under severe offences.

We spent that night in a shabby lockup room full of filth and spit, lying on a newspaper sheet. One of the inmates in that lock-up room was an accused in a crime involving a core and a half rupees and a murder. We were shocked when he told us that in order to weaken the charges against him, he had poured almost fifteen lakhs into the pockets of corrupted officials.  Continue reading A Tihar Experience: Nitheesh Narayanan →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Everyday Life, Government

Casting a backward glance after a court order – the UID project: Usha Ramanathan

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Guest Post by USHA RAMANATHAN

On September 23, 2013, the Supreme Court ‘s directed that “no person should suffer for not getting the aadhaar card in spite of the fact that some authority had issued a circular making it mandatory”. Reacting to an argument of Mr Anil Divan, Justice Puttaswamy’s counsel, the judges added that “when any person applies to get the Adhaar Card voluntarily, it may be checked whether that person is entitled for it under the law and it should not be given to any illegal immigrant”. The order regarding making the UID mandatory  was made in the context of the questionable legality of the project, and the instructions being issued, as it has been in Maharashtra, that  teaching and non-teaching staff and judges of the High Court would not get their salaries unless they have a UID. The latter part of the order on `illegal immigrants’ echoes those who wanted, and got, an amendment to the Citizenship Act in 2003 authorising the creation of a National Register of Citizens. This was inherently illogical and opportunistic; for, the rhetoric of threat from the outsider drew upon the Kargil standoff in 1999, when it was Pakistan that was seen as sending in terrorists who needed to be identified and dealt with, but the politics of the day made the migrant from Bangladesh the `threat’. The Home Minister of the day saw them in every shadow. The UID project is a part of this enterprise.

The UID Project, with Mr Nandan Nilekani at its helm, has developed ambitions of its own in the four years since it was set by executive notification. In these four years, what observers and analysts have seen of the project has produced disturbing questions around what constitutes identity and how it will be established: [1]

Continue reading Casting a backward glance after a court order – the UID project: Usha Ramanathan →

Bad ideas, Government, Violence/Conflict

In the shadow of AFSPA – Not so uncommon lives: Chonchuirinmayo Luithui

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Article on Armed Forces Special Powers Act in Manipur by CHONCHUIRINMAYO LUITHUI received via Repeal AFSPA list

AFSPA Nagaland_thumb[1]

My father was picked up from home by the Indian Army late one evening, tortured till dawn, he was pushed down a slope and left for dead. It was a miracle that he survived that night. I had just started kindergarten and was learning the Alphabets. I remember screaming the A B Cs outside the window of his room at the hospital so that he could hear me because I was told not to make noise inside. I wanted him to know what I was learning at school. I was a few months shy of my fourth birthday.

It was from that age that my idea of the ‘enemy’ was drawn. Any big guys in uniform were the real life villains. Dogra Regiment, Sikh Regiment, Assam Rifles, etc were common names. You could only hate them. But this was not an exceptional situation. It was common to most of the children from my generation in the Naga areas. We grew up knowing of, at least, one person tortured or killed by the Indian army and associated them with everything that we were scared of. Parents would frighten us when we were out of line that the ‘shipai’ (soldiers) were coming or that they would give us to the ‘shipai’. Not the best way to discipline a child but it worked. We might never witness the violent acts of the Indian army but we heard and knew when the grownups talked in hush hush manner. Children are smart that way.  Continue reading In the shadow of AFSPA – Not so uncommon lives: Chonchuirinmayo Luithui →

Bad ideas

If It Happened There … the Government Shutdown: Joshua Keating

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This is the first installment by JOSHUA KEATING of “If It Happened There,” a regular feature on SLATE in which American events are described using the tropes and tone normally employed by the American media to describe events in other countries. 

182532993.jpg.CROP.promo-mediumlargeWASHINGTON, DC – SEPTEMBER 30: The sun sets on an uneasy capital.

WASHINGTON, United States—The typical signs of state failure aren’t evident on the streets of this sleepy capital city. Beret-wearing colonels have not yet taken to the airwaves to declare martial law. Money-changers are not yet buying stacks of useless greenbacks on the street.

But the pleasant autumn weather disguises a government teetering on the brink. Because, at midnight Monday night, the government of this intensely proud and nationalistic people will shut down, a drastic sign of political dysfunction in this moribund republic.

READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE HERE