Right watch

Population control in Gujarat

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Narendra Modi, the architect of a pogrom in which the Vishwa Hindu Parishad mobs killed around two thousand Muslim Indians in 2002, onec made a controversial statement saying that Muslims reproduce so as to turn five of them into twenty five, thus increasing their population. This is conventional wisdom an old cliche of the Hindu right that tries to scare you into believeing that Muslims are going to outnumber Hindus by the time an Indian lands on the moon. Modi later claimed, with intellectual honesty typical of the Hindu right, that he was quoted out of context, that he was merely talking of population control, with no reference to any community in particular. What those of us outside Gujarat didn’t get to know is that he backed up his claim with a ‘massive’ population control programme. Continue reading Population control in Gujarat →

Bad ideas, Capitalism, Theory

The Art of Fleeing, Capital and Molecular Socialism

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Compared to the 19th and early to mid 20th centuries, capitalism, today has acquired an entirely new shape and character, often broadly referred to under the rubric of ‘globalization’. Among marxists of different hues there seems to be a remarkable unity in considering ‘globalization’ as a fresh assault of imperialist capital that represents a new wave of re-colonization of the third world. It is seen as a global conspiracy emanating from a single source.

Clearly this reading emanates from an understanding of capital as an all-powerful, singular, sovereign entity, virtually like God. Everything presumably is a consequence of the logic of capital. Ironically, barring a few exceptions, the votaries of ‘working class struggles’ cannot – or do not – see any role of such struggles in the way the present has shaped up, including one of its most significant effects – the apparently terminal crisis of the labour movement. Continue reading The Art of Fleeing, Capital and Molecular Socialism →

Identities

Walled away in faith’s defence

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Like today’s ‘secular’ or ‘moderate’ Muslim, a species called the ‘nationalist Muslim’ was extremely sought after, and equally rare, in pre-Independence India. The nationalist Muslim was the counterpoint to the problem of Muslim disaffection that surfaced after 1857 — a statist problem to which the colonial solution was the creation of a set of collaborators. In turn, the nationalist retort was to create a nationalist Muslim i.e., one willing to consider mutual agreements to resolve disputes rather than the colonial state as a bulwark. That is to say, a Muslim who ratified the Congress was a nationalist, one who did not was a communalist. But since even the best nationalist Muslims remained disaffected — read Maulana Azad’s ministerial correspondence — and many who started as nationalists ended as communalists or separatists — take Jinnah, Mohammed Ali Jauhar or Iqbal — a Muslim’s only respectable political choice was to become a communist. Continue reading Walled away in faith’s defence →

Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Kherlanji, Aligarh and the Provincial Armed Constabulary

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The horrific massacre at Kherlanji and the protests that have followed have, once again, raised troubling questions on the impartiality of the Police force. The following is an article that i wrote for Frontline in the aftermath of the Aligarh riots in April 2006. The article finally didn’t make it – not because of a conspiracy of silence – but because another correspondent had already filed; but I think it might answer the “What were the police doing?” question that we often find ourselves asking.

*

“The mob is frenzied and frightening. But you can run from the mob. You can’t run away from a police bullet,” says Sarfaraz Khan, a resident of Aligarh. When he heard the mob coming, Khan’s son, Shadab pulled down the shop shutters and headed home, but never made it. As he scrambled up long slope that separates Muslim settlement at Tantan Para Farsh from the Hindu settlement at Kanvari Farsh, Shadab was cut down by a bullet that sliced through his neck with clinical precision. He was nineteen. By afternoon on the 6 April 2006, police firing in the riot hit town of Aligarh had claimed three more casualties: Naved was 16, Sarfaraz was 22, and Azam was 24 years old. Another 17 people were wounded. Continue reading Kherlanji, Aligarh and the Provincial Armed Constabulary →

Excavation, Identities

The Orkut Brahmins

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This excerpt from a discussion on the message board of a ‘Brahmin’ community on the social networking site young people spend hours on these days, offered without comment:

T.U.»»: Why do we have Ram’s Picture ?
I know that Ram was one of the avatars of Lord Vishnu, but the thing is Ram was not a Brahmin, he was a Kshatriya..The Raghukul Gotra among Kshatriyas are from Ram’s descendants..So as a Hindu I respect Shri Ram, but as a Brahmin It is lord Vishnu we should worship..what say? Correct me if I am wrong ..

krishna: just a reply……..
well……there r lot many humans to bind in castism man…..keep LORD RAM separate from this stupid concept……GOD don’t have any cast they r above of all this…..
if u say ur a brahmin u shud keep this simple fact in mind that our GOD’s doesn’t come under the concepts of what we brahmins created as CAST………any correction of what ever i said always welcome….thanx
and one more thing LORD vishnu is neighter a kshatriya nor a brahmin…… Continue reading The Orkut Brahmins →

Identities, Language, Media politics, Politics

The Dalit ‘Betrayal’ of Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan

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Karan Thapar of CNBC -TV18 recently presented a half-hour debate on whether Dalits have a better future adopting English rather than one of the so many Indian languages. Some of us followed it keenly because we knew where it was comig from and also the dramatis personae – Chandrabhan Prasad(CP), Yogendra Yadav(YY) and Alok Rai(AR) – all very dear friends, and people who have been deeply engaged with the politics and practice of languages in North India. It was a one-sided debate from the moment it started: clear victory to Chandrabhan Prasad from the word go, first of all, because he had managed to pitchfork his provocative stance into a full scale discussion in the national press and the big media. Think about it: it has taken him just three consecutive annual Macaulay’s birthday parties to friends, to bring it to the attention of a much wider number of intellectuals and a larger public. It was a victory for his own brand of Gandhigiri – that you could very much debate and advance your cause while having fun: ‘chicken, mutton, daaru and daliton ki kuchh samasyayein’ is his style, in his own inimitable words. This is not to say that he does not believe in agitational politics. He does that as well.The debate was also one-sided because CP’s interlocutors did not have convincing answers to his extremist views on language and religion and the coupling of the two, which had to inevitably sneak into the discussion, considering en mass dalit conversions were fresh in media memory. For example, when Karan Thapar probed CP on why he suggested Dalits take flight from Hindi and Hinduism; was it because he hated Hinduism? CP had perhaps an obvious but pithy answer: I did not choose to hate Hinduism, Hinduism never loved me!YY and AR looked aghast and betrayed at the idea of rejecting Indian languages, for Dalits, after all, were communicatively, politically and experientially rooted in these languages, beginning with Marathi, most of the(autobiographical) dalit literature was written in indian languages. They went on, the NRI example of turning away from one’s language is not a healthy one: look how they have all become Hindutva supporters, etc. etc. CP of course rubbished this secular middle class sentimentalism by citing Ambedkar’s example, that he always wrote in English and he did so knowing very well that it is not the Dalits who would read him!

Continue reading The Dalit ‘Betrayal’ of Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan →

Media politics

Manoj Mishra gets his TV spot.

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“In a world that is really upside down, the true is a moment of the false,” wrote Guy Debord in “The Society of the Spectacle”, his ground-breaking situationist text on mass-media and reality. Forty years after the text was published, on 15 August 2006, Manoj Mishra, a transport contractor in Gaya, Bihar, died in an attempt to generate the ultimate visual image of protest against the non-payment of his dues. Goaded on by a battery of television news cameras, Mishra doused himself with diesel and set himself on fire as the cameras recorded his death. Reports in national newspapers suggest that camera-persons went to the extent of handing him a diesel-soaked rag, and assuring him of rescue once their footage was complete. In the event, private security guards came to his rescue and rushed him to the Patna Medical College Hospital, but by then it was too late. He succumbed to his burns en-route. Continue reading Manoj Mishra gets his TV spot. →

Law, Media politics

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

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Sometimes only a good old cliché can capture the essence of certain things.

How many times in the past few years, while watching television have we wanted to strangle the anchor (“aap ke saath itna na-insaafi hui hai, aapko is waqt kaisa lag raha hai” or “There has been a gruesome terrorist attack at the IISC in Bangalore, dont go away, we will return to the story immediately after out reporter updates you on Aamir Khan’s wedding which is taking place in the same city). And yet while watching what is perhaps the closest televised strangling of a reporter, it was with a strange sense of pleasure and fear.

The interview that I am referring to is Sagarika Ghose’s of Ram Jethmalani on his decision to defend Manu Sharma. Here is a small sampling

Sagarika Ghose: But as a criminal lawyer, don’t you believe there is a lakshman rekha that even all criminal lawyers have to work under?

Ram Jethmalani: I am sorry. Please don’t talk of this bullshit to me. I know what my lakshman rekha’s are. I have read my rules of the conduct of a lawyer. It will be the saddest day when a lawyer refuses to stand between the state and the final verdict.

Ram Jethmalani: I have told you it’s none of your business—the courts will decide. And for God’s sake, stop becoming judges and Gods. You are over stepping the limits of your duty

Sagarika Ghose: But why don’t you search your own conscience. A young girl was shot in the presence of a hundred people.

Ram Jethmalani: I am searching my own conscience. All this bullshit won’t convince me at all. My conscience is mine and you are not responsible for it. And I don’t sell my conscience either to you or to anybody else nor will I change my professional etiquette because some chit of a girl comes and tells me that something is wrong.

An absolute demolition and indictment of the media, if ever there was one. I guess the fact that the case deals with Manu Sharma of the Jessica Lal case makes us all a little less enthusiastic about this slap in the media’ s face.

But what is really scary however in the interview is the way that the devil of the day-a lustful and loathsome corporate media is pitted against its other- the Courts, the sea of wisdom in which the rule of law sails. So the illegitimacy of the media happens only via the further strengthening of judicial sovereignty; For Jethmalani, the battle for the truth is a battle between the media and the judiciary. Someone has rightly said it is almost impossible to think of battles in the contemporary without being bewildered about where lines are drawn, and what they mean. Stewart Motha for instance accurately describes the battle between Islam and Democracy as a battle between two monotheisms. In India, the battle between the judiciary and the media for the truth takes place at the site of citizenship and the casualties of this battle and its lies are borne by the denizen.

So on the one hand, we have Sagarika Ghosh (self righteous indignance dripping with every syllable) asking “Why me? I am just a voice of the people” and on the other we have Jethmalani’s tirade “You don’t know the rule of the law, you don’t know democracy; you don’t know anything”.

Those who neither have any Faustian contracts, nor can swim very well are in a lot of trouble.

Media politics

Watchdogs of Another Kind?

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Media is presented as a ‘watchdog of democracy’ in today’s times.

But it was really shocking to see a story on IBN 7 ( Friday, 3 rd Nov 2006 around 3-4 p.m.) which rather communicated that in today’s Corporatized times it is metamorphosing into ‘Watchdog against Democracy’. It is time that friends also know about the manner in which media is appealing (instigating would be a better word) to the powers that be that ‘too much’ democracy will be a disaster.

Punjab as everybody knows has a rich tradition of cultural festivals/ gatherings where people/groups from all over the state come together and hold day long/ nightlong programmes where dramas are staged, action songs are staged, book exhibition is organised etc. Anyone who has attended these programmes can come back replenished with energy. One such cultural festival is held in memory of the Ghadarite martyrs which is called ‘Gadari baba ka Mela’.

I do not remember exactly how it was framed but the IBN story did focus on the recently held festival in memory of these martyrs only. Interestingly, the aim of the story was not to give details of the Mela or the rich tradition which is still alive in Punjab but rather to caution the government about the literature/CDs being sold. It also interviewed one of the activists who was managing the stall. Thereafter, the unbelieving presenter proceeded to ask ” How can one allow public distribution of such literature/CDs which help arouse the masses against the state”. There was even a small byte with the local SSP also where the presenter/reporter asked him “How can you allow such things to happen in your vicinity”. The hardened Policeman was cool enough and just said we will enquire.

Media politics

Exiles from the Republic of Numbers

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I was watching news television a few nights ago – it was a programme on the Afzal death penalty. As the CNN-IBN anchor aggressively postured on screen, the viewers were invited to SMS their vote on the hanging, which was updated constantly on screen. This seemed the most natural thing to do – people are asked to vote instantly on TV contests, social issues, sports etc. Telephone companies make massive profits in this system, which is shared with TV networks. That seems obvious. There is another story here, behind the obscenity of like sending in your votes on the issue of the death penalty. Never mind that many of these polls in news television are often carefully staged, a friend of mine who works at a network told me that when ‘voting’ is low, staffers are asked to reach for their phones or call their friends… Continue reading Exiles from the Republic of Numbers →

Politics

The Social Forum Phenomenon

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The Idea of Open Space

The recent years have seen the rise and spread of local, national, regional, thematic and global social forums, inspired directly and indirectly by the World Social Forums (WSF) and its Charter of Principles. Any Social Forum, inspired by the WSF, and the WSF itself is conceived as an open space that facilitates the coming together of people to engage with each other on diverse social-political issues, and to oppose neo-liberalism and the domination of the world by Capital and any form of imperialism. They are committed to building a planetary society directed towards fruitful relationships among Humankind and between it and the Earth. Indian social and political activism has shown tremendous energy for the Forum in these years: Activities of the WSF process in India were initiated in early 2002, and were designed to set up and build a World Social Forum process in the country, towards hosting the Asian Social Forum in Hyderabad in 2003 and subsequently the World Social Forum in Mumbai in 2004. And now, the proposed India Social Forum in Delhi from 9 to 13 November 2006 marks the initiative to further advance the movement against neo-liberal globalisation, sectarian politics, casteism, patriarchy and militarization. Continue reading The Social Forum Phenomenon →

Media politics

Azad Media ki Ajeeb Dastaan

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Strange tales of the independent media

Tale #1

Recently, after endless rants against the NBA our favourite paper, The Indian Express, finally gave some space to Medha Patkar to set the record straight (November 4 2006). Her blunt and effective challenge to Indian Express common-sense concluded with some record-straightening by the Express Kolkata office.

The supposed response from the newspaper to Medha’s pointed questions, consists SOLELY of information from government sources: “according to the Addl District Magistrate”; “We have verified this from Singur’s block development officer”; and “land compensation rates reported by us are all official figures.” The best part is where they triumphantly say – the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 is the law of the land, much though Ms Patkar may view it as a one-sided process.

Hello – have you missed the point? She and thousands of others all over the country, insist it is an anti-democratic and draconian law and it must be radically changed. So you simply reiterate that it is the law of the land? THIS is a debate? Here are some other Laws of the Land: the Armed Forces Special Powers Act that keeps the North-East under the military jack boot; Section 377 that says if you have sex that the judge thinks is against the order of nature, you’re a criminal; rape laws that say it is not rape but a much lesser crime if someone shoves a finger up an infant’s vagina…

Who ARE these people who get hired to write this stuff? They’d fail a decent BA degree.

Continue reading Azad Media ki Ajeeb Dastaan →

Metropolis

Whose City Do We Live In?

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On September 18, 2004, newspapers carried a mandatory Public Notice issued by the DDA, inviting objections and suggestions to a proposal to modify the Delhi Master Plan (2001). The DDA wanted to change the classification of six hectares of land that lay right by the Yamuna — just south of the erstwhile Yamuna Pushta slums — from “riverbed” to “commercial”. The change was needed to accommodate an it Park as part of the collaboration between the Delhi government and the Delhi Metro.

At first sight, the notice appears much like any other of the dozens one skips rapidly past every morning. What makes this notice different, however, is that, at the time of issue, the it park had already been under construction for over a year despite a 2003 Supreme Court order to clear all riverbed encroachments, and to stop all construction on the Yamuna banks. The DDA’s “proposal” was, in effect, simply a de-facto regularisation of what planners argue is an illegal encroachment. Just a few kilometres away, accused of violating the same Master Plan, and under the directive of the very same Supreme Court verdict, another kind of “encroachment” had no public notice in its defence, as tens of thousands of people were forcibly evicted from the slums of Yamuna Pushta — home to some of them for twenty-five years. Continue reading Whose City Do We Live In? →

Media politics

Dam the Media – Give Them Land in New Harsud!

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Before the ‘Battle for Truth’, Reveal Your Assets, Honourable Men and Women of the Media

Today’s Indian Express carries Medha Patkar’s response to a long continuing rant by the paper on a series of issues ranging from compensation for the displaced of Narmada valley to the whole issue of SEZs. She has thrown the gauntlet – a challenge to the newspaper to join her in a ‘Battle for Truth’. The Express has of course joined it right away in the most unbecoming way that has by now become a hallmark of its ranting style: It barely lets Medha conclude and puts in a rejoinder from its “Kolkata Bureau” – they could barely wait for her to finish and if the form did not impose the limitations, one could imagine them jumping up and down and shouting her down, booing her in the middle of her speech…

So gentlemen and women of the media, before you really join the Battle for Truth, the time has come for you, especially senior media persons – Editors and senior Commentators, the custodians of public opinion (or Truth, should we say?) – to declare your assets and their sources. You have been very vociferous about maintaining public standards and have campaigned tirelessly to see that politicians are forced to declare their incomes. Since the functions that you honourable people perform are no less public – you too must lay yourself open to public scrutiny. When the CEO of Xphatic or some secretary-general of a Corporate Association or a Chamber of Commerce writes, we know exactly where they speak from and for whom. But when “journalists”, “Editors” and political commentators  – in this and other papers and news channels – write or talk, they supposedly talk from the “objective” position of truth. Everybody in the trade of course knows that there are crores of rupees of ill-begotten wealth circulating in the media that shapes the Truth. The defence campaign of the takeover of farmers’ land for a leading corporation by most of the English media is not unrelated to the circulation of this strange thing. This is not an insinuation against any specific person/s but surely a declaration of assets should become the voluntary practice of all those who desire and fight tirelessly for probity in public life. What say you gentlemen and gentlewomen?

But what of those really innocent ones who may not be otherwise part of corrupt corporate power nexuses? Their naïveté  is so truly astonishing that it would make you gasp. These really innocent ones are products of the New Age who have taken in the new theology hook, line and sinker. Immediately after deaths in police firing on protests against takeover of tribal land in Kalinganagar by the government for a private company, a well known TV journalist demanded of the hapless tribals  – “But why are you against industrialization?” Holy shit! You are against Industrialization! Next you will turn against your own Self – Don’t you see that it is the messiah who has come to redeem you and deliver you from your hellish existence! One can hardly respond to such innocence except by saying Dam the Media for starters – and give them – all the displaced journalists some Cash Compensation. Oops! That is one thing they are not short of – How about some land in barren New Harsud town.

Government, Language, Law

Doublethink in the Time of Criminal Reform

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Orwell created a range of wonderful concepts in his dystopic novel 1984 to characterize the language of power. One such phrase Doublethink referred to the ability to hold “two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them” without being aware of their contradictions.

The latest addition to the vast repository of doublethinks in the archives of the Indian state comes from the background note of the new committee formed for the reform of the criminal justice system. Barely a few years after the controversial Malimath Committee, yet another committee has been formed under the chairmanship of Dr. Madhava Menon (the founder of the National Law School in Bangalore). The National Criminal Justice System Policy Drafting Committee (“NCJSPDC”) has been constituted “taking into account changing profile of the crime and criminal” We can safely assume in the context of the global war against terror, what the changing profile of the crime and the criminal refers to. Continue reading Doublethink in the Time of Criminal Reform →

Metropolis

On dilemmas about property

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When I was in Mumbai, I would talk of property from the point of view of an outsider. In that space, I was largely a participant-observer. Now, in Bangalore, I am involved in the everyday conflicts about property. Let me talk of some of my recent experiences in Thilaknagar.

Thilaknagar is touted as one of the most successful slums in Bangalore (I don’t know here what the benchmarks/parameters of this measured sucess are).

In the month of July, the street in my lane was dug up so that it could be concretized. It was agonizing to be part of this process because for fortnights, the muck would lie on the street and rains would make it sloshy, but the contractor would nowhere be seen. (This would have been the usual rant of inefficiency in the language of Civil Society!) Continue reading On dilemmas about property →

Debates

Beyond the Tyranny of Blueprints: WSF as Experimental Form

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Published earlier in Social Action, Vol 54, April-June 2004

Shortly after the World Social Forum (Mumbai 2004) I came across an article by Cecilie Surasky, an American Jew, posted on a discussion list by a friend from Amsterdam. The article was startlingly entitled “Anti-Semitism at the World Social Forum?” and naturally invited one to read it immediately. It transpired that the author was the Communications Director of an organization called “Jewish Voice for Peace” that works for a peaceful and democratic resolution of the Palestinian problem and is therefore, also anti-Zionist. She was writing from within the specific context of a well-known but disturbing trend in Jewish politics, particularly in the US. A glimpse of this troubling context is provided by the fact that important voices among Jews, the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) in particular (which has been known for its important work in hunting down Nazi criminals worldwide), has been portraying the World Social Forum (WSF) “as one of the centers of the ‘new anti-Semitism'”.

Surasky further reports that “these charges have been picked up by various journalists as evidence of a dangerous new trend on the left.” The SWC had described the atmosphere at the third WSF in Brazil the previous year as “anti-Jewish”, according to her. She therefore landed up at Mumbai to check out first hand: “I have come to the WSF to be loudly and visibly Jewish…and to see for myself this purported new tidal wave of hatred of Jews from the rest of the global left.” The actual event of course, turned out to be something entirely different and if anything, Surasky ended up making some of the most moving friendships with many Arabs. Her account of these friendships in the article is quite touching in itself. What was most amazing for her, however, was that on return she found that the SWC had published an article on the WSF in the Jerusalem Post, entitled “Networking to Destroy Israel”. It further claimed that the WSF Mumbai event had been hijacked by “anti-American, anti-Israel forces”. As Surasky puts it, it became clear that many of these propagandist accounts made practically no distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism or in fact, any criticism of Israel.

The important thing about the WSF however, was that it provided a space to some one like Cecilie Surasky, a “come out” Jew, as she puts it, to meet, exchange notes and make friends with people from the Arab world. So did it to the innumerable others who have so far only known about the ‘Other’ through representations by propaganda machines like the Simon Wiesenthal Center and their Arab counterparts – or through the US media. This is of course, one small episode in the big event called the WSF. But the WSF is actually made up of literally thousands of such episodes. It was an occasion where the displaced Tibetans – supporters of the Dalai Lama – could move about prominently, distributing their literature, making friends and allies from different parts of the world. It was an occasion where the Dalit groups of India could make their voice heard before a vast gathering of people who were all fighting for their own liberation from oppressions of different kinds.

Continue reading Beyond the Tyranny of Blueprints: WSF as Experimental Form →

Identities

Politics, political consciousness and being

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Sometimes it is a matter of a moment, just that moment …

I headed towards the cobbler at Madhavan Park to repair my broken sandal. He was a darkish man. His shop had a photograph of Dr. Ambedkar.

Around Madhavan Park are some small shops and spaces occupied by people at different times in the day. There is a coobler shop, then a knick-knacks shop which also sells newspapers and is an information space for the auto drivers who are lurking there. A lady also comes by in the afternoon and sets up shop to sell food to the auto drivers and to other clients.

I stood by the coobler shop, watching the cobbler repair my shoe. An old vegetable vendor came by and dropped some tomatoes in the cobbler’s shop. The two of them had a mischievous exchange and the cobbler continued repairing my shoe. I continued watching the cobbler at work, very intently watching him, his facial features, his craft. It struck me then that here is a man who would be called ‘chamar’, a ‘dalit’. But how different is he from me? What is this theory and politics about caste?

My words are proving to be futile here because I am really attempting to describe that moment, that moment where a certain transcendence occurred and I could only see this person repairing my shoe as myself, as me. Such a moment betrays all theory, all politics and it is perhaps such moments which cause major transformations among humankind.

Such moments are those which give me a great amount of hope. There is much hope in this world. We all live by it!

As I walk by Bangalore, pass by the city in the buses, I watch the newly formed cobbler kiosks. Most of them are empty. The occupied cobbler spaces are many. And most of them are laced with photographs of Dr. Ambedkar. This photograph does not appear in a vacumm. It appears as a source of consciousness of being, it emerges out of an assertion of a certain identity.

The empty cobbler kiosks are empty not as a matter of lack of occupancy. They are empty because politically, these spaces are flat, devoid of the very identity which forms the basis of our everyday politics.

Theory

In Search of a New Left

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This is the Concept Note for a panel in the India Social Forum on “New Horizons For a Radical Democratic Politics: In search of a New Left”.

The panel is being proposed as a way of getting together activists and scholars in thinking afresh about the possibilities of a different kind of Left – a New Left, if you please – or radical democratic political practice. It is being proposed as a forum for thinking of ways of bringing together different kinds of radical urges and aspirations that have come forth in the last couple of decades. Many of these, broadly subsumed under the category of social movements, are based on sectional identities and interests. There are others that have been based on class questions but in a way quite different from conventional kinds of class politics. At the level of thinking however, most movements, despite having taken some extremely bold initiatives, have not really begun to articulate alternative theoretical positions or think through the far-reaching implications of their own practice.

Feminism, ecological movements like the Narmada Bachao Andolan or the sexuality movements have undoubtedly made major contributions in terms of enabling us to think of democracy and ways of radicalizing it, of thinking about the good life very differently. Movements like the Dalit movement or some recent independent trade union initiatives that are inclined towards the idea of an autonomous workers’ movement have also started posing new questions for radical political practice – questions that are not always very comfortable.

Yet, the fact remains that the moment we begin to think about contemporary capitalism, we almost unthinkingly tend to lapse back into some nineteenth and early twentieth century formulations that  need to be seriously re-thought today. Much of the thinking on capitalism – influenced by Marxism of one shade or the other – has remained caught within the problematics of the state and the nation-state (both seem to us to be discrete but inter-related problematics). Even when we recognize that global capitalism at the beginning of the twenty-first century is an altogether different beast, all we get by way of theorization are tired repetitions from the Communist Manifesto (“the bourgeoisie seeks to build a world in its own image” or “the need for markets chases it all over the globe” etc). In contemporary capitalism this may tell us only a small part of the truth.

Further, in most of Left-wing discourse, nation-states continue to be posed as some sort of defense against global capital and the ultimate ground of emancipation and the state in general as the object of revolutionary politics, as that point where all transformative attention must be focused.

The panel is being proposed to explore questions connected with some of these articles of faith. As indicative of some of the questions that we could address, we list below some which we group together according to some broad themes. (To be sure, this is a tentative list): Continue reading In Search of a New Left →

Excavation

We

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We is a fast-paced 64 minute documentary that covers the world politics of power, war, corporations, deception and exploitation.

It visualizes the words of Arundhati Roy, specifically her famous Come September speech, where she spoke on such things as the war on terror, corporate globalization, justice and the growing civil unrest.

It’s witty, moving, alarming and quite a lesson in modern history.

We is almost in the style of a continuous music video. The music used sets the pace and serves as wonderful background for the words of Ms. Roy and images of humanity in the world we live all in today.

We is a completely free documentary, created (and released) anonymously on the internet. [www.weroy.org]

But who made it?

“We” is a free documentary produced by an anonymous student in New Zealand. He (or She) goes by the name “anon”. It was released for free on the Internet and first appeared at an Australian web site called resist.com.au.

 

 

Law

Satyameva Jayate? : With Regard to the Impending Execution of Mohammad Afzal Guru in Tihar Jail.

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Posted on the Sarai Reader List on 16th October, 2006

A few days from now, a man called Mohammad Afzal Guru, son of Habibullah Guru, currently resident in Ward Number 6 of Jail Number 1 in Tihar Central Prison in Delhi will hang to satisfy the bloodlust of the Indian Republic, unless the President of India thinks otherwise, A few weeks ago, I recall reading the NDTV newscaster Barkha Dutt’s breathless three cheers for the fact that India retains the death penalty (so that the indignant tears in the eyes of television presenters like herself, and the loved ones of murder victims, can be wiped away with each rope that tightens around the neck of condemned prisoners). [See ‘A Battle for Life’: Barkha Dutt, on NDTV Columns, September 20, 2006]

At times like this, when hangmen are asked to practice their moves, nothing comes more in handy than the teflon coated enthusiasm for capital punishment of television crusaders like Barkha Dutt. Great democracies, like the United States of America, the Islamic Republics of Iran and Pakistan, the Peoples Republic of China, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea and enlightened states like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are known for their zeal in retaining the death penalty as a necessary part of state ritual. The Republic of India is in eminent company, and I am grateful to Barkha Dutt for making me remember that. I need not advance moral and ethical arguments against the death penalty here, because they have been so well countered by Ms. Dutt. Never mind the fact that states that have done away with the death penalty have lower rates of violent crime, never mind the fact the innocence of people that condemned to die has often been established after they have been executed. Ms. Dutt has demonstrated that the death penalty is the balm that comforts her agonized soul. And many of those who argue that the President should not in fact assent to the petition filed by Afzal’s family are also arguing that the Afzal must hang so that the Indian democracy and the loved ones of those who died defending the Indian parliament may rest in peace. The dignity of the Indian Republic hinges on the lever that will catapult Afzal into the empty space under the gallows in Tihar jail. As the noose tightens, our polity will blossom with renewed vigour. Continue reading Satyameva Jayate? : With Regard to the Impending Execution of Mohammad Afzal Guru in Tihar Jail. →

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