Category Archives: Debates

Capitalism, Debates, Empire/ Imperialism, Frontiers, Left watch, Movements, Theory

Re-booting Communism Or Slavoj Zizek and the End of Philosophy – I

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Zizek - the postmodern Lenin?
Zizek - the postmodern Lenin?

Today, 13 March, a whole galaxy of philosophers and theorists got together for a three-day conference “On The Idea of Communism” under the auspices of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, London University. The Conference opened to a jam-packed hall where all tickets had sold out (no jokes, this was a ticketed show where the likes of Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zizek, Jean Luc-Nancy, Toni Negri, Jacques Ranciere, Terry Eagleton and many many others are to perform on the ‘idea of communism’). The huge Logan hall with a capacity of about 800-900 was so packed that the organizers had made arrangements for video streaming in another neighbouring hall – and that too was half full! Very encouraging in these bleak days.

The conference began in the afternoon with brief opening remarks by Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek. Badiou made his general point (see below) about the continuing relevance of the ‘communist hypothesis’. Staid and philosopherly. Continue reading Re-booting Communism Or Slavoj Zizek and the End of Philosophy – I →

Bad ideas, Debates, Left watch

Save the left from left scholars

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I have just returned from an atrocious talk delivered by a famous Nepal expert, David Seddon, who claims to belong to the ‘old British Marxist tradition of Eric Hobsbawm and E P Thompson’.

So this Mr Seddon is well known in Nepal for a book he wrote three decades back – Nepal in Crisis. More recently, he got along with a local activist to edit a book on the People’s War.

Now, Seddon sahib comes here. He tells a Nepali audience how he is worried about the rising violence and the ‘law and order’ problem. He links the violence with identity – “people feel they have a legitimate basis to pick arms and throw stones because they belong to a caste and ethnic group.” He tells the audience, many of whom have struggled for long to bring some change in the exclusionary Nepali state structure, that ‘identity politics is profoundly undemocratic and federalism is not necessary.” And here is the clincher, “When your constituent assembly members adopted a federal democratic republic, I am sure they were thinking only about the republic part. No one really thought about the federal part.” Continue reading Save the left from left scholars →

Capitalism, Debates, Government

Bailout or Bankruptcy?

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With the economy in the doldrums, Barack Obama in the White House, and Elton John releasing a line of crystal encrusted Ipods for charity, it’s suddenly fashionable to talk about “Sacrifice” once more; a trend that senior management at General Motors seems to have picked up on.  Their December 2, 2008 proposal to the Senate Banking Committee calls for sacrifices no less than nine times in twenty four pages from everyone including stake holders, share holders, bond holders, management, senior executives and in one instance, even the GM balance sheet (it has been asked to sacrifice leverage).   That the Company wrangled out $13.4 billion from the TARP suggests an era in which nothing succeeds like sacrifice, but the accompanying term sheet suggests that the time for martyrdom has just begun.

Continue reading Bailout or Bankruptcy? →

Bad ideas, Debates

Can you repeat the Question? Slumdog gets an answer WRONG!

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In our continuing converage of all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small – I stumbled across this excellent little piece by Rajeev Shrivastava in the 13th February issue of Friday Review of The Hindu. (It was also posted on the Sarai Readerlist). While Kafila has been debating the merits/de-merits, context and meaning of Slumdog Millionaire (in much the way that only we can); Shrivastava’s piece brings back memories of one of our earliest debates on Kafila on Sahir Ludhianvi and film lyricists-which featured pieces by Sohail Hashmi (Thinking about Sahir Ludhianvi) and Mahmood Farooqui (Pal do pal ka shayar).

To quote Shrivastav:

Continue reading Can you repeat the Question? Slumdog gets an answer WRONG! →

Debates, Genders, Identities, Images, Language, Movements, Politics, Sex

Caste/gender in a poem by Varavara Rao

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I’m posting below a poem by Varavara Rao and a response to it by Rochelle Pinto. Comments and debate welcome, but trolls will strictly not be allowed regardless of caste and gender! Comments are regulated here by a disclaimer to maintain sanity. Not repeating your position ad nauseum helps, unless you desperately want to have the last word.

Merit

by VARAVARA RAO

Lucky
You are born rich
To say in your language
“Born with silver spoon in the mouth”

Your agitation sounds creative
Our agony looks violent
Continue reading Caste/gender in a poem by Varavara Rao →

Capitalism, Debates, Government, Language, Law, Movements, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Interview with Ragavan on Tamil Militancy (Early Years)

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As the Tamil community in Lanka is at the crossroads with twenty five years of war nearing an end with the increasing marginalization of the LTTE, I would like to do a series of interviews on the social, economic and political conditions that led to the emergence of armed politics and militarization of the Tamil community.  Returning to those years in the seventies and early eighties then is an attempt to also think about ways forward out of the militarized and armed politics of the last few decades.  I intend to do a series of interviews to capture that important political period for Lankan Tamils.  This important shift in Lankan politics and the decades of war that followed it did irreparable damage to the Lankan Tamil community and all the peoples of Lanka.

I begin with an interview of Ragavan, a founding member of the LTTE, who left the movement in 1984 and has since moved to London where he lives in exile.  In this first interview, Ragavan speaks about his background and early years of militancy.

This is an interview by Ahilan Kadirgamar of Ragavan at his London home on 25 January 2009. Continue reading Interview with Ragavan on Tamil Militancy (Early Years) →

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Everyday Life, Genders, Images, Right watch, Sex

Will we overcome? Pramada Menon

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This is a guest post by PRAMADA MENON

Sundays are days for doing nothing much. Often I sit in front of the television and surf and watch many, many movies until all the story lines start merging into one. It’s fun because it does not require you to think. If one switches on a news channel, the chances are that you will start to splutter like mustard seeds in oil, since there is so much to splutter about – Nirmala Venkatesh, a member of the central government’s National Commission for Women, was put in charge of a three-member panel to investigate the attack on the women at a pub in Mangalore at 4pm in the evening. The way she sees it, Venkatesh is supposed to have said, women have the right to enjoy themselves but should also recognize societal limits. As part of her inquiry, she said, she plans to meet with the attackers, the bar owner and the families of the young women to see whether their parents
allowed them to go out to pubs every night at midnight. “My personal advice: Women should be very careful,” she said. “I can’t just roam after midnight.”

Continue reading Will we overcome? Pramada Menon →

Debates, Government, Identities, Language, Left watch, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Jayampathy Wickramaratne on Political Solution in Sri Lanka

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I am posting a longer version of an interview with Jayampathy Wickramaratne.  The February 2009 issue of Himal Southasian, a special issue on Sri Lanka, has a shorter version of this interview.  At a time when there is much concern about the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe there have also been increasing voices calling for a political solution.  On the history of displacement and humanitarian concerns with the twenty-fire year war in Sri Lanka, I recommend Rajan Hoole’s article in Himal.  This interview with Jayampathy Wickramaratne might engage those interested in past attempts at a political solution as well as the problems with the 13th Amendment (which came out of the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987 and is currently being talked about both in Sri Lanka and India).

Ahilan Kadirgamar talked to Jayampathy Wickramaratne, who is President’s Counsel, a constitutional lawyer, a former senior advisor for the Ministry of Constitutional Affairs, and a member of the team that drafted the 2000 Constitution Bill.  Wickramartane was a member of the panel of experts to assist the All Party Representative Committee and signatory to the “Majority Report” (December 2006) that proposed extensive restructuring of the state, with extensive devolution and power sharing at the centre.   Wickramaratne is a politburo member of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party. Continue reading Jayampathy Wickramaratne on Political Solution in Sri Lanka →

Debates, Identities, Politics

Viva ‘Academic Untouchability’ !

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Jantar Mantar, a unique historical place in the capital, which today acts as a ‘sanctioned abode of protest’ under a liberal bourgeois regime, witnessed a protest dharna in the first week of February. Looking at the participation level, one could easily say that, it was indistinguishable from similar protest actions held on the same date. But it is incontestable that the raison detre for the dharna carried very large import which pertained to the entitlements of dalits, tribals or OBCs in higher education. It brought forth the surreptitious manner in which the Congress led UPA government is pushing a bill which would do away with reservation at faculty level in institutions of ‘national importance’.

As expected for the media managers and the pen pushers (or byte takers) employed by them the whole protest action was a non event. Question is why the articulate sections of our society, which yearn for justice, peace and progress, has joined the conspiracy of silence about this particular issue.

The return of ‘academic untouchability’ with due sanction of the parliament and the further legitimisation it would provide to the ‘merit’ versus ‘quota’ debate need to be questioned and challenged uncompromisingly. Continue reading Viva ‘Academic Untouchability’ ! →

Capitalism, Debates, Government, Law, Politics

Corporate Complicity and Gujarat

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The 4th ‘Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors’ Summit, organized by the Gujarat government on 12-13 January 2009 in Ahmedabad, and the statements by some prominent Indian corporate leaders, have spawned protests, analysis, debates and questions about corporate accountability, complicity, responsibility and rights in Indian democracy. At this biennial event, ‘Jai Jai Garvi Gujarat’ has been showcased as an ‘ideal investment destination, both for Indian and foreign investors’, where prospective investors have ‘only Red Carpet and no Red Tape and it is where investors can sow a rupee and reap a dollar as returns’ (see Official portal of Gujarat Government).

Bringing together business leaders, investors, corporations and policy makers by a democratically-elected government, exploring business opportunities and signing memorandum of understandings are legitimate economic activities. However, the projection of the Chief Minister of the State, Narendra Modi, as the next Prime Minister of India by corporate cheerleaders is much more than mere economic activity. It is turning a blind eye to gross abuses of rule of law, and knowingly assisting a political leader and his government to continue committing them. It is becoming party to a specific political vision in a manner that incurs responsibility and blame. Such corporate leaders thus become complicit with a government and its leader in serious human rights abuses. It is negative and unacceptable.

Continue reading Corporate Complicity and Gujarat →

Debates, Empire/ Imperialism, Law, Politics, Right watch, Scams, Violence/Conflict

Guantanamo and Illegal U.S. Detentions: Time for Real Change

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[On the seventh anniversary of Guantanamo Bay, 11 January]

The United States detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba – seven years old on 11 January 2009 – have become emblematic of the gross human rights abuses perpetrated by the US Government in the name of fighting terrorism. Though the U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to close down the Guantanamo Bay, there are undoubtedly substantial challenges to closing. Every day that Guantánamo is kept open is another day in which hundreds of detainees and their families are kept in the legal shadows. Distressing to the individuals concerned and destructive of the rule of law, the example it sets – of a powerful country undermining fundamental human rights principles – is dangerous to us all. It would be no less dangerous, and no less unlawful, if the USA were simply to transfer the problem it has created at Guantánamo to another locations.

Detainees at Guantanamo Bay
Detainees at Guantanamo Bay

The detention facility at Guantánamo Bay isn’t the only prison where the United States is holding detainees from the ‘war on terror.’ At Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, Camp Bucca and Camp Cropper in Iraq, and many more – some known and others secret – are used to detain those captured by the U.S. military. Camp Bucca alone has at times held 20,000 prisoners, most of whom live in groups of tents surrounded by wire. Most detainees are held unlawfully, without warrant or charge, and without recourse to challenge their detention. Even when Guantánamo is closed, the need to push for detainee human rights will continue.

Continue reading Guantanamo and Illegal U.S. Detentions: Time for Real Change →

Debates, Everyday Life, Identities, Left watch, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

In Cold Blood: Abuses by Armed Groups

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India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Occupied Territories, Indonesia, Egypt, Jordan, USA, UK, Spain, the Russian Federation, to name a few, are a testimony to the cruel attacks on civilians and other human rights abuses in the recent past by non-state armed groups, including terrorist groups. They are showing utter disdain for the lives of civilians and others, continuing a pattern of serious crimes and crimes against humanity. They fail to abide by even the most basic standards of humanitarian law. The attacks and other abuses by armed groups are so frequent and the security situation so grave, that it is impossible to calculate with any confidence the true toll upon the civilian population, let alone the long term consequences that so many people inevitably suffer.

Continue reading In Cold Blood: Abuses by Armed Groups →

Culture, Debates, Excavation, Politics, Theory

John Milton Takes a Stand? Prasanta Chakravarty

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This is a guest post by PRASANTA CHAKRAVARTY

[Dissidence comes along with responsibility. If that sounds an utter sell out, one has to look back no further than the career and oeuvre of John Milton, whose 400th Anniversary is being celebrated around the world.]

Students of English literature usually do not prefer meddling too much with politics, especially if that comes in the way of appreciating the hermeneutics of the text, the lyricism set aside for the work of art. Sophisticated scholars have learnt to deftly negotiate and work with Marxism, new historicism and cultural criticism, without compromising on the finer points of close reading. They have also welcomed areas like textual studies and performance and newer genres like memoirs, broadsheets, travelogues, petitions, graphic fiction and so forth within the critical ambit with a careful eye that such forays do not destabilize the Great Book tradition. Students of politics and the political, on the other hand, have a certain distrust for soft aesthetic options. In one interesting recent interview, James Scott, who routinely uses Zola and Tolstoy in his classes and works, lamented in jest on his status at the Yale Political Science Department as an outlier, blaming it onto the ascendancy and monopoly of formal and rational choice models in the discipline.

Continue reading John Milton Takes a Stand? Prasanta Chakravarty →

Debates

The monster in the mirror

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Arundhati Roy wants you to choose:

There is a fierce, unforgiving fault-line that runs through the contemporary discourse on terrorism. On one side (let’s call it Side A) are those who see terrorism, especially “Islamist” terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics. Therefore, Side A says, to try and place it in a political context, or even try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime in itself.

Side B believes that though nothing can ever excuse or justify terrorism, it exists in a particular time, place and political context, and to refuse to see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in harm’s way. Which is a crime in itself. [The Guardian, Saturday, 13 December 2008]

Bad ideas, Capitalism, Culture, Debates, Everyday Life, Language, Media politics, Politics

The Battle of Mumbai

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Guest post by BALMURLI NATRAJAN, a member of the South Asia Solidarity Initiative (SASI)

The Battle of Mumbai did not begin on November 26, 2008. There was no clear beginning, regardless of what somnambulists who have just woken up, or saber-rattlers who have been sharpening their tools for a while, pronounce. Like all modern wars, it burst into public view over the internet, unannounced and in full-swing. Continue reading The Battle of Mumbai →

Debates, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Mumbai, the Hindu Right, and the Problem with Sonal Shah

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Guest post by SVATI P. SHAH

Like so many millions of others, I was glued to the news for days during the Mumbai attacks.  In the aftermath of the terrible human tragedy that reverberates from those long hours, I share the universal concern about the political context for these attacks, a context that is about to change as the governments of India and the U.S. each undergo another major governmental transition. In his response to the attacks, President-Elect Barack Obama said that militants based in South Asia represent the biggest threat to the United States. As we well know by now, South Asia is about to become a foreign policy priority for the Unites States like never before, and this should give us pause. Continue reading Mumbai, the Hindu Right, and the Problem with Sonal Shah →

Capitalism, Culture, Debates, Everyday Life, Images, Media politics, Violence/Conflict

Sandra Samuel, Faces and the ‘Nouveau’ Media – Monobina Gupta

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Guest post by MONOBINA GUPTA

“The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of a cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalistic industry, along plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good die like dogs, for no good reason.”

– Hunter Thompson in Generation of Swine

We, in the business of media, are running a trade in ‘faces;’ swapping ordinary ones for the attractive, distorting news coverage and not really giving a damn about it. But the craft of journalism was not always so warped. We made it so.

Continue reading Sandra Samuel, Faces and the ‘Nouveau’ Media – Monobina Gupta →

Culture, Debates, Everyday Life, Government, Identities, Politics, Theory, Violence/Conflict

Mumbai terror, the revolt of the elites and Life itself

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You have said everything there is to say, and felt everything there is to feel. You have shouted angrily or reflected seriously or stated in the calm tone of conviction that terrorists are as authoritarian as the states they target, that terrorists have no religion, that terrorists are cowards who target soft civilian populations. You have despaired at the carnage wreaked on a city sick and tired of having to be “resilient”; of having faced one disaster after the other – from floods to targeted attacks on specific communities to bomb blasts – and “emerged with its spirit intact”. Your heart has clenched painfully at the inconsolable tears of baby Moshe; at the blood-spattered, newly motherless one-year old Viraj in an exhausted Head Constable Salunkhe’s arms, entrusted to him by his father, a utensil seller wounded by bullets at CST. You have gazed numbly at the image of Maharashtra ATS Chief Hemant Karkare’s young son with drawn countenance bearing the ritual paraphernalia of his father’s cremation ceremonies. Despite yourself you felt a sudden glimmer of hope steal into you at the stony dignity in Kavita Karkare’s dry-eyed grief at her husband’s funeral, at her steadfast bindi and her coloured sari. You have hated yourself for being relieved that those you know in that poor torn city are safe, when hundreds you did not know were not.

In fear and foreboding the feeling has overcome you – “What lies ahead of us now?”

But after all of that, after all of the sorrow and the grieving, in the midst of absolute despair, when you start to think again – STOP. Continue reading Mumbai terror, the revolt of the elites and Life itself →

Debates, Media politics, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Mr Friedman’s Demagoguery

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Guest post by SAADIA TOOR and BALMURLI NATARAJAN of the South Asia Solidarity Initiative (SASI)

A response to his op-ed piece in The New York Times, December 3, 2008.

Among Mr. Friedman’s long list of talents seems to be the ability to directly access the minds of dead people.  After all, how else could he know that the real attackers in the Mumbai shootings shared the same set of intentions and motivations as the fictional characters he creates who murder an imam and his wife purely for being Sunni?  Maybe his short sojourns in South Asia through airports and the plush suites of the Marriot and the Taj Mahal Hotel do not allow him to imagine any other kind of Muslim than a unidimensional protestor of xenophobic cartoon images (produced, distributed and hotly defended, incidentally, by the enlightened West).  Maybe this talent comes from the same well of wisdom that made him the biggest promoter of the “innovative genius” of Wall Street bankers not too long ago, a position that he now has some trouble justifying, except by calling them “stupid”.  Or just maybe, he has simply made it a habit to promote views and policies that have no basis in fact and do not stand up to the slightest scrutiny.  After all, those are the perks that come with a regular column in a major newspaper and a guaranteed readership just waiting for one to provide the ‘expert’ fuel to their fire.  Continue reading Mr Friedman’s Demagoguery →

Debates, Everyday Life, Identities, Media politics, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Thinking Through the Debris of Terror: After Bombay

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Last week’s terror attacks on Bombay/Mumbai, for which there can be no justification whatsoever, have targetted railway stations, restaurants, hospitals, places of worship, streets and hotels. These are the places in which people gather. where the anonymous flux of urban life finds refuge and sustenance on an everyday basis. By attacking such sites, the tactics of the recent terror attack (like all its predecessors) echo the tropes of conventional warfare as it developed in the twentieth century. These tactics valued the objective of the escalation of terror and panic amongst civilians higher than they viewed the neutralization of strictly military or strategic targets. In a war without end, (which is one way of looking at the twentieth century and its legacy) panic is the key weapon and the most important objective.

Continue reading Thinking Through the Debris of Terror: After Bombay →

Bad ideas, Debates, Movements, Politics, Violence/Conflict

More reflections as Southasians on Mumbai

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Anjum Altaf has sent us two posts on The South Asian Idea that reflect on the terrorism in Mumbai and discuss how best we can respond as Southasian citizens: