Yamuna Pushta – 2003 and 2005.
“The time for silver bullets has passed,” proclaimed Marc Stewart, “What we need is a Shotgun!” In his bright Bali shirt, Nike sneakers and Investment Banker haircut, Mr Stewart is the firm-handshaking, fist pumping, ever effusive all-American co-founder of Ecosecurities, a firm that specialises in developing and marketing carbon trading projects under the Clean Development Mechanism – CDM – of the Kyoto Protocol. With emission reductions under Kyoto less than a month away, Mr Stewart’s firm is looking to extend its market capitalisation to far beyond its existing 40 million USD. The Ecosecurity model functions in the following way – they find and help develop projects in the developing world that is eligible for credit credits under the CDM, and then sell the credits to firms in EU, and across the world, that are looking to meet their Kyoto targets by offsetting excess emissions against carbon credits. Firms like Ecosecurities pushed the carbon market to 30 billion dollars in 2006; and if Annex 1 agrees to further emission cuts (25-40 per cent below 1992 by 2020) the potential size of the market is open to the most optimistic hyperbole.
The “Shotgun Approach” suggested by Stewart was his response to the fact Continue reading The Shotgun and the Sniper
[We are pleased to present this guest piece by Radha R, a poet and artist, who reflects on violence and other matters.]
1985 :
We were standing at the Bakery junction just behind the campus where the better -off amongst the designer students came alone or in select groups to gorge on buns at teatime… Freshly baked and still warm and soft, the baker slit them open swiftly and expertly with an extra sharp long thin knife roughly slapping in a whole 50 grams of yellow butter that dripped down the sides …
Post the curfew there was no one now standing at the junction .In this somewhat upmarket quarter there was little outward sign of that nightmare of violence…
“Do you know how they do it?” He whispered “With knives…”
He made a quick gesture of measurement with his hands… “This long…”
“The pillion rider behind the scooterist slashes open the sides of bystanders on the road who often do not realize as they run as to how badly wounded they are… Till it is too late… The sharp edge of the knife blade is lined with calmpose, you see…To numb”
What were you doing on December 6, 1992?
We remember with a great sadness that winter’s day on which the unthinkable came to pass…
Continue reading 6th of December 1992 on 6th of December 2007
Read Asad Mustafa on his memories of the day the Babri Masjid was demolished.
In many ways it is just like any other Lucknow winter day. Sun has come up and my mother is watching her pickles dry on the roof. Our neighbor, Shukla-ji’s daughter has come for a lazy winter
afternoon conversation with my mother and is oiling her hair. I am struggling with unsolved papers from previous years’ JEE tests. This year’s JEE is going to be my first big test in the real world.
In perhaps a first ever “Impact Kafila” story; the event organisers at the UNFCCC Climate Change Summit at Bali 07, seem to have changed their lunch plan. Two days ago, Kafila carried an exclusive investigative breaking news type piece on how millions of rupiahs were being wasted on freeloaders who attended lunch and refreshments and slipped away before the sessions began. Our fearless reporter posed as a freeloader and purloined one free lunch, some prawn cocktails and a can of Dr Peppers Ginger Ale (it tasted pretty awful, but I could not resist the attractive packaging) before unceremoniously leaving the premises and attending a rival side session. However, the event I attended this afternoon, had no large tables covered with starched white tablecloths, no silverware polished to a dull glow, no mile long queue of people from all over the conference – in fact, no free lunch. Continue reading Kafila makes Impact at International Conference!
[We have received this second statement by Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali and other signatories of the earlier letter on Nandigram. As will be evident, in this letter the authors have made some clarifications in response to the reactions they received from a range of people in India.
However, in the meantime, there has been a misrepresentation of what we thought was a private response from Prof Chomsky to the signatories of the statement issued by some of us (See the post Response to Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn et al on Nandigram). For instance, see the comment by Hindol Bhattacharya on the above post. Regarding that comment, we must clarify one point here: Prof Chomsky’s letter to us explained the situation in which he had felt compelled to issue the first statement, his explanation being that an earlier private email correspondence with some individual supporter of the ‘opposition’ had extracted one part of that correspondence and it was ‘used as a slogan in demos’. The person concerned could probably better clarify this situation, which is indeed unfortunate. We refrained from publicizing Prof Chomsky’s response to us, given this previous misuse by somebody of his private correspondence.
However, Mr Bhattacharya has now produced an extract from another mail (private? public? we do not know) supposedly from Prof Chomsky which runs thus:
“The statement that you saw has been grossly misinterpreted by segments of the Indian left. As those who responded know, but didn’t say, the statement was issued after members of the opposition took a phrase from a letter of mine expressing concern but saying that I did not know enough to support them, and manipulating it into a statement of support. The statement that I and others signed was in part a reaction to this misrepresentation.”
This is truly astonishing, for he wrote to us AFTER we sent him our response – as a response to our response. The charge therefore of “our knowing but not saying” is entirely unfounded. There are several different voices raising questions about the CPM – it is simply convenient to conflate all of them as “the opposition”.
The new statement by Chomsky et al is published below:]
We are taken aback by a widespread reaction to a statement we made with the best of intentions, imploring a restoration of unity among the left forces in India –a reaction that seems to assume that such an appeal to overcome divisions among the left could only amount to supporting a very specific section of the CPM in West Bengal. Our statement did not lend support to the CPM’s actions in Nandigram or its recent economic policies in West Bengal, nor was that our intention. On the contrary, we asserted, in solidarity with its Left critics both inside and outside the party, that we found them tragically wrong. Our hope was that Left critics would view their task as one of putting pressure on the CPM in West Bengal to correct and improve its policies and its habits of governance, rather than dismiss it wholesale as an unredeemable party. We felt that we could hope for such a thing, of such a return to the laudable traditions of a party that once brought extensive land reforms to the state of West Bengal and that had kept communal tensions in abeyance for decades in that state. This, rather than any exculpation of its various recent policies and actions, is what we intended by our hopes for ‘unity’ among the left forces.
We realize now that it is perhaps not possible to expect the Left critics of the CPM to overcome the deep disappointment, indeed hostility, they have come to feel towards it, unless the CPM itself takes some initiative against that sense of disappointment. We hope that the CPM in West Bengal will show the largeness of mind to take such an initiative by restoring the morale as well as the welfare of the dispossessed people of Nandigram through the humane governance of their region, so that the left forces can then unite and focus on the more fundamental issues that confront the Left as a whole, in particular focus on the task of providing with just and imaginative measures an alternative to neo-liberal capitalism that has caused so much suffering to the poor and working people in India.
Signed
Michael Albert, Tariq Ali, Akeel Bilgrami, Victoria Brittain, Noam Chomsky, Charles Derber, Stephen Shalom
Day Two at the Bali Conference sees an intensification of the “inSide Climate Change” programmes. “inSide” is the UNFCCC’s witty title for the side events and exhibits at Bali 07 and is often a good indicator of the issues that shall be on the agenda for upcoming conferences. inSide is thus a great place to hang out if you want to get a sense of the future and, if you time it right, get to free lunch on donor-body expense. Because lunch is a serious issue. Not content with making collossal amounts of money off the UN for hosting their conference, the Bali conference centre offers meals at (literally) One million Rupiyah a pop – which works out to about 10 dollars for a grubby sandwich; but the point about the side events is that they offer a glimpse into big businesses plans for our environment. And there are many. Continue reading Day Two At Bali
Manmohan Singh from the Indian Express two days ago:
I sincerely pray and hope that we remain a functional democracy. But democracy has certain disadvantages. I have a friend in the International Monetary Fund, who went to Korea in the days it was run by an authoritarian system. They were discussing the issue of devaluing the currency. When my friend talked with the finance minister, he said, “That’s a very difficult question. You don’t expect me to give an answer right away.” When my friend asked him how much time he would need, the finance minister said, “I will take half an hour, I have to book a call to the president.”
We have to work, therefore, to create a new mindset. Some ten days ago, I was in Singapore and had the privilege of meeting Premier Wen Jiabao of China, for whom I have great admiration, both for him and President Hu Jintao. The type of leadership that China has produced since the days of Deng, I think, is the greatest asset that China has. [Link]
Narratives, says French philosopher DeCerteau, go ahead of social practices to make way for them. Continue reading Imagining Governance and Governing our Imagination
“Much is at stake … for generations to come! We are running out of time.We are mobilising around the world. We must take strong action NOW!”
Sitting in on the press conferences of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Bali 2007, is a bit like watching the Green version of Independence Day – that immensely forgettable film starring Will Smith. While Smith merely had to pilot a UFO deep into the heart of the alien mothership to save Planet Earth, the cast of “Mission Emission” face a far more insidious enemy:”Caaaarrrrbonnnnn!” Colorless, Odourless, and unsettlingly stable. The vast stage in the darkened Bali International Convention Centre takes the place of the “Command Room” where practically every human calamity, from the kidnapping of the US President to the end of the universe, is invariably solved in approximately one and a half hours. An array of perfectly tailored suits deliberate the myriad aspects of the “greatest challenge faced by mankind…. Ever!” Continue reading The Climes they are a’changin
Arundhati Roy articulated in her interview last night on IBN7, the deep suspicions of the “deep state” that many of us have harboured in our collective anti-national (and now apparently anti-left) bosom. How convenient that the violent anti-Tasleema protests have deflected the anger of the left-secular folks from Nandigram to Islamic fundamentalism. Arundhati responded to a question about whether she was claiming there was a conspiracy, by saying, quite correctly, that there doesn’t need to be anything as crude as that. But we know, people on the street know – there’s something way too convenient in the timing. Or, as she put it elsewhere, quoting a Hindi film song, “yeh public sab jaanti hai.”
Imagine my disappointment as a political theorist to discover that we don’t need to make any intellectual forays into the complex ways in which states “see” and “do”. There was a conspiracy, and it worked out like the the script of a bad street play, in which the villains mutter and grimace and do bad things in the dark of the night, while the good folk get all confused by the sudden transformation of their peaceful locality by dawn. (Life is in fact a bad street play, a realization I came to long ago).
As we have been discussing both Nandigram and the situation that Taslima Nasreen has found herself over the last few weeks, I thought that it might be interesting to listen in on a conversation that Karan Thapar has had with the writer Arundhati Roy that takes on both these questions. This interview was broadcast today on CNN IBN.
Transcript of Arundhati Roy interviewed on the treatment of Taslima Nasreen by Karan Thapar on ‘Devil’s Advocate’, broadcast this evening on CNN-IBN
The transcript was published on Sun, Dec 02, 2007 at 20:32, on the IBNlive.com website
A video of the interview is also available on the website.
———————————————
Hello and welcome to Devil’s Advocate. How do India’s leading authors respond to the treatment given to Taslima Nasreen over the last 14 days? That’s the key issue I shall explore today with Booker Prize- winning novelist Arundhati Roy.
Karan Thapar: Arundhati Roy, let me start with that question. How do you respond to the way Taslima Nasreen has been treated for almost 14 days now?
Arundhati Roy: Well, it is actually almost 14 years but right now it is only 14 days and I respond with dismay but not surprise because I see it as a part of a larger script where everybody is saying their lines and exchanging parts.
In mid-November, a pro-tribal outfit, the Adivasi Rehabilitation Council, demanded that the Kerala Government hand over to them, land leased to Hindustan Newsprint Ltd. The Adivasis had been given title deeds to this land in 2003, when A K Antony was chief minister, but it was never handed over. They dispersed after local revenue officials assured that this would be done.
But when nothing was done about it, the tribals regrouped and went into the land again, building little huts and vowing to start farming. Around November 26th, the 200-odd families were physically removed by truck-loads of CPM cadre.
J Devika on the need for a new perspective on Left politics:
When the CPM-led LDF coalition swept into power in the elections to the Kerala State Legislative Assembly in 2006, the victory was widely interpreted to be the individual triumph of V S Achuthanandan, who seemed to be nothing less than the personification of Principled-Opposition-to-the-State-and-Global-Capital. During the campaign, VS received the mantle of A K Gopalan, whose brilliant strategies of mass mobilization and militancy had made him the most admired and best-loved of all communists in Kerala. Throughout Kerala, life-size posters of a smiling VS proclaimed him Paavangalude Padatthalavan (NM – something like garibon ka masiha)
Continue reading The Trojan Horse of Neo-liberal Capital in Kerala
For If I Shall Not Burn
And You Shall Not Burn
If We Shall Not Burn
Then Who Will Dispel The Dark
-Nazim Hikmet
I
Whether anybody is familiar with a place called Auschwitz which is around 270 kms. from Warsaw, capital of Poland. It has been more than sixty years that the brick kiln structure there which housed detainees witnessed silent sufferings of lakhs of people who were put to death in myriad ways by the henchmen of Hitler. Continue reading Auschwitz of Our Times
In Wolfgang Becker’s film Good Bye Lenin set in East Germany at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a young boy tries to protect his invalid mother from the shock of learning about the transformation that has overtaken their country. When despite his elaborate deception, she manages to see a television programme showing thousands of cheering Germans at the remnants of the wall, he tells her that the capitalist west has fallen, that refugees from West Berlin are pouring into the East, and that East Germany has welcomed them with open arms. And she believes him.
Thing is, there was no historical inevitability to the fall of communism. The story the boy tells his mother in Good Bye Lenin could well have been the way things went in history, but for the self-destructiveness of Stalinism – its hubris, its fetishization of a certain notion of industrialization and progress, its anti-democratic core, its contempt for the “people” it claimed to represent (or rather, the people it claimed to be.)
Continue reading Theses on Feuerbach, Woody Allen and Nandigram
We read with growing dismay the statement signed by Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and others advising those opposing the CPI(M)’s pro-capitalist policies in West Bengal not to “split the Left” in the face of American imperialism. We believe that for some of the signatories, their distance from events in India has resulted in their falling prey to a CPI(M) public relations coup and that they may have signed the statement without fully realising the import of it and what it means here in India, not just in Bengal.
We cannot believe that many of the signatories whom we know personally, and whose work we respect, share the values of the CPI(M) – to “share similar values” with the party today is to stand for unbridled capitalist development, nuclear energy at the cost of both ecological concerns and mass displacement of people (the planned nuclear plant at Haripur, West Bengal), and the Stalinist arrogance that the party knows what “the people” need better than the people themselves. Moreover, the violence that has been perpetrated by CPI(M) cadres to browbeat the peasants into submission, including time-tested weapons like rape, demonstrate that this “Left” shares little with the Left ideals that we cherish.
Continue reading Response to Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn et al on Nandigram
[We are posting this rejoinder by Sukla Sen to a recent piece by CPM economist Jayati Ghosh. The original article by Jayati Ghosh is appended at the end of Sukla Sen’s response. Both these appear in a recent publication, Nandigram: What We Stand For by Mazdoor Mukti (Workers’ Liberation), Kolkata. We thank Mazdoor Mukti and Arvind Ghosh for making this available to us.]
In the following article mailed to a number of recipients, Jayati Ghosh has tried to defend the indefensible, the gruesome violence unleashed by the hired mercenaries on the villagers of Nandigram on behalf of and under the patronage of the CPIM, as a political party, and, more significantly, the West Bengal government led by it by means of a counterattack on the critiques of the diabolical act. Not for nothing it is said that “offence is the best defence!” And Jayati Ghosh is nothing if not a faithful soldier of the Party, ready to spring to its defence, with a bit of intellectual halo around her. And if ends justify the means, then sacrificing of truth in carrying out the mission is only a small price to be paid.
We’d attempt here to subject the article, appended below with paragraphs numbered, to a systematic analysis.
In the paragraph [1], Ms. Ghosh pretty sanctimoniously proclaims that the “current events in Nandigram in West Bengal give rise to many emotions, but one of them is surely a sense of shock at the cynicism and irresponsibility of some apparently progressive activists and artistes”.
Continue reading On Nandigram: A Rejoinder to the Calumny of Jayati Ghosh – Sukla Sen
Once more, Stalinism’s seductions have taken over even libertarian Leftists and Trotskyists, who, one would imagine, should know better about the methods of this devious ideological machine. Leading intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn have issued a statement addressed to “Our Friends in Bengal”, which you can read here. The statement offers the solemn advice that in the face of Iraq and the impending attack on Iran, ‘it would be impetuous to split the Left’. Suddenly, as if by magic, ‘all Leftists’ from anarcho-communist Chomsky, Trotskyist Tariq Ali, and many many Liberal Leftists – all become ONE with Stalinism (‘The Yet-Unsplit Left’). For it will be apparent to any one who reads the statement that the appeal not to split the Left is made not to the CPM, but to those who oppose its crypto- capitalist policies.
Continue reading Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Tariq Ali: The Seductions of Stalinism
“Instead of society having conquered a new content for itself, it seems that the state has only returned to its oldest form, to a shamelessly simple rule by the sword and the monk’s cowl. “
-Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon
We live in strange times. Really strange times. Just as the news from Kolkata was getting better, it got worse again.The sudden spectre of ‘communal rioting’ has reared its head, as if from nowhere in West Bengal. The All India Minorities Forum, a little known entity led by a busy body called Idris Ali materialized yersterday on the streets of Kolkata demanding the deportation of the exiled Bangladeshi writer, on the grounds that she had once injured the sensitivities of Muslims. Crowds attacked police, pitched street battles continued, the Army was called in. Curfew was declared, and on television, Biman Bose, a CPI(M) and ‘Left’ Front hatchet man, declared – “… if her stay creates a problem for peace, she (Nasrin) should leave the state” (see NDTV report at the end of this posting)
Continue reading The Sword and the Monk’ s Cowl: Curfew in Kolkata
Dear Sudhanva,
*A Biology Lesson*
The discussion on Nandigram is heading in interesting directions across lists and blogs, (even as the Army walks the talk in Kolkata tonight) and I find this situation of accumulating discursive intensity actually very productive. Let a hundred rejoinders blossom, and a few good schools of thought contend. So I welcome your rejoinder and criticism of my text. And I for one, stand chastised by your incisive criticism of my posts (responding to your earlier writing) on the reader-list, and on Kafila.
NOT IN MY NAME – KARL MARX (See image below)
You are not what you were – Ashok Mitra after 14th November, 2007:
[For all the stories that Sudhanva Deshpande has to tell – quoting what else but Ganashakti – we reproduce here the agonized remarks of another ‘pathological Left-hater’ (in SD’s words, that is what every CPM critic is!). Somewhere here, you might get a clue as to why the likes of Prabhat Patnaik ‘had to sign on the dotted line’ – on a statement drafted in AKG Bhavan. Has Patnaik made his ‘Lukacsian choice’? Our sympathies are with him. Read the full translated version of the original Bengali article here. – AN]
“Till death I would remain guilty to my conscience if I keep mum about the happenings of the last two weeks in West Bengal over Nandigram. One gets torn by pain too. Those against whom I am speaking have been my comrades at some time. The party whose leadership they are adorning has
been the centre of my dreams and works for last sixty years…”
Continue reading Karl Marx Replies to Comprador Intellectuals
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 