I quickly wanted to express my thanks to blog readers who kindly responded to recent posts; I will respond in a little while to the very pertinent issues and points of critique raised about my arguments in those reflections. My apologies for the delay. For now, I wanted to add some additional reflections about the horrendous events in different cities in India (each reflective of some repellent variety of intolerance, hypocritically carried out in the name of Indian "values), and what Gandhi might tell us about the nature of these events.
[read more below...]
The incidents that I am referring to include the shameful attack on pubgoers, especially women, in Mangalore by the Sri Ram Sene, the vandalism in Bombay University by the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. They might also be extended, to the symbolic real, to include Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot's comments about "pub culture" and "boys and girls walking hand in hand in malls" (I wonder if Mr Gehlot feels the same way about domestic violence and sati).
These events are part of a larger culture of disregard for rule of law where celebrities, criminals, politicians, and religious leaders threaten, intimidate and /or even kill Indian citizens as a matter of course, or seize land, or take over religious, political, or social institutions as if it were their personal fiefdom. The Imam of Jama Masjid, Imam Bukhari, for instance, treats the area surrounding the mosque as his personal property. As this article notes, it is also misused as a sanctuary by all kinds of vile sorts. If you visit the area, it is commonly referred to as "Buhkari ka ilaka" (Bukhari's domain / property).
The children of rich industrialists and the riff-raff of the Bombay film world (of which there is no dearth) can kill citizens while driving drunk or shoot endangered animals; politicians can, in cahoots with the underworld, murder citizens to steal their property, even as we endlessly congratulate ourselves on the strength of our civil institutions, our growth rates, and our technology whizkids.
I have been trying to grapple with why it is that this kind of uncouthness, violence, thievery, and yes--- terrorism, for it is surely that--- has become increasingly acceptable as a form of legitimate political 'reasoning' in Indian society. More specifically, it has become a particularly effective form of political reasoning, and one that civil society appears helpless to stop, as group after group, criminal after criminal, politician after politician (often the same as the previous category) resort to it as a strategy to achieve what they want.
As always, it is Gandhi who provides an invaluable insight.
In an essay on the Bombay terrorist attacks, Faisal Devji speaks of "Gandhi’s dictum that religious violence is a form of luxury because its combatants’ lack of political responsibility allows them to rely upon the state to reassert order."
This idea of Gandhi's can be amended to explaining political violence of the kind committed by the Shiv Sena, MNS, Sri Ram Sene, Samjawadi Party, BSP, and assorted groups of all religious persuasions who are "offended" by one thing or another.
The violence committed by the intolerant is a luxury because the perpetrators of such violence know that their victims will not retaliate.
I am sure that millions, if not tens of millions, of Indians would find it immensely satisfying if Pramod Muthalik, Raj Thackeray, Bal Thackeray, Narendra Modi, Imam Bukhari, Abu Azmi, the riff raff of the Bombay film industry, and criminals associated with various underworld gangs were to be the receiving end of the same kind of intimidation that they subject others to.
That is not a solution anyway.
But it will never happen.
Because most Indians are fundamentally decent and good people, most Indians are people who actually do have values, and most Indians do not allow themselves the luxury of indecency.
All goons and thugs know this fact about the people they harass. They consider decency a form of weakness; hence their strategies --- death threats, killing people, threatening their spouses and children, assaulting women, threatening to throw acid, destroying an office.
Each and every one of these individuals and groups that claims to defend 'religious' values or 'Indian values or culture' while attacking innocent citizens is an utter and absolute disgrace. Their acolytes, whether academics, journalists, South Bombay celebrities who fawn over them in columns or invite them to their parties, or marketing gurus or investment bankers, or business tycoons who cultivate them, are also a disgrace.
Most Indians may not know how to respond -- or may not want to respond- in like to violence and thuggery. At the very least, that may be read as a confirmation of their essential decency. Those who commit acts of moral obscenity as well as those who side with the perpetrators of moral obscenity perversely and parasitically exploit that decency in promoting their culture of violence.
Full post...
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Amitav Ghosh on "Opium and Empire"
Here is a wonderful, wonderful conversation -- "Opium and Empire" -- between Amitav Ghosh and K. Anthony Appiah at a recent Asia Society event. Ghosh offers a number of startling and remarkable insights and observations, which are scandalous perhaps only in that they have not received adequate attention.
.......
Ghosh notes that India in the 19th century was what Africa was in the 17th and 18th: a global pool of semi-free labor. He identifies how China was attacked in the name of "free trade," with British merchants also pointing out candidly that the empire rested on opium. These individuals, Ghosh tells us, are from the "first generation" that has "swallowed" Adam Smith's ideas "hook, line and sinker"
And, in something resonant for our times, British merchants also claimed that there would be cheering on the streets of Canton when the British invaded China!
Ghosh also argues that the only area in which the West was dominant in the 19th century was "violence." The West had unquestionable military domination, but did not quite possess the same advantages in trade. Ghosh notes that in the Western Indian region of Malwa, for instance, Indian merchants constantly outperformed and outwitted British merchants.
I hope Ghosh develops this argument in an essay. It will provide an interesting counterpoint to a whole line of argument: what I might call 'speculative ethnocentric history', i.e., work that seeks to explain why the West 'beat' the rest. I hope Ghosh's book is also the subject of discussion at upcoming conferences in history and South Asian studies. It is bound to get attention in literary conferences.
Ghosh also points to the links between trade / business and military intervention in the sovereign affairs of another nation: specifically, the attacks on China that were planned and conceptualized by the British firm Jardine, Matheson & Co. to forcibly open the Opium markets.
Walter Benjamin famously observed that there was no monument of Western civilization that was not at once a monument of barbarism. Can we make the same point about Western titans of industry and trade? Indian titans of industry and trade? The Tatas of course made their fortune in the Opium trade...
Full post...
.......
Ghosh notes that India in the 19th century was what Africa was in the 17th and 18th: a global pool of semi-free labor. He identifies how China was attacked in the name of "free trade," with British merchants also pointing out candidly that the empire rested on opium. These individuals, Ghosh tells us, are from the "first generation" that has "swallowed" Adam Smith's ideas "hook, line and sinker"
And, in something resonant for our times, British merchants also claimed that there would be cheering on the streets of Canton when the British invaded China!
Ghosh also argues that the only area in which the West was dominant in the 19th century was "violence." The West had unquestionable military domination, but did not quite possess the same advantages in trade. Ghosh notes that in the Western Indian region of Malwa, for instance, Indian merchants constantly outperformed and outwitted British merchants.
I hope Ghosh develops this argument in an essay. It will provide an interesting counterpoint to a whole line of argument: what I might call 'speculative ethnocentric history', i.e., work that seeks to explain why the West 'beat' the rest. I hope Ghosh's book is also the subject of discussion at upcoming conferences in history and South Asian studies. It is bound to get attention in literary conferences.
Ghosh also points to the links between trade / business and military intervention in the sovereign affairs of another nation: specifically, the attacks on China that were planned and conceptualized by the British firm Jardine, Matheson & Co. to forcibly open the Opium markets.
Walter Benjamin famously observed that there was no monument of Western civilization that was not at once a monument of barbarism. Can we make the same point about Western titans of industry and trade? Indian titans of industry and trade? The Tatas of course made their fortune in the Opium trade...
Full post...
Jyotirmay Sharma on "India Inc. and Modi"
A terrific piece on "India Inc. and Modi" by Jyotirmay Sharma on Siddharth Vardarajan's blog (reference via Salil Tripathi)
In the following passage in his compelling essay, Sharma draws on George Steiner in skewering the collusions between the pretence of Indian business to 'help' India and Modi's vision of development.
....
There is, however, an unintended irony in Sharma's use of Steiner. Steiner, an accomplished scholar and author, sometimes described by the word 'humanist,' is not above racism. Here is Steiner pointing out that he would not be able to tolerate living next door to Jamaicans.
Cambridge academic says he would not tolerate Jamaican neighbors.
Perhaps this kind of sentiment is what ultimately leads to the barbarism of Modi's Gujarat, love of Shakespeare or European civilization notwithstanding?
Full post...
In the following passage in his compelling essay, Sharma draws on George Steiner in skewering the collusions between the pretence of Indian business to 'help' India and Modi's vision of development.
....
In a brilliant essay, the philosopher George Steiner once remarked: `It is not only that education has shown itself incapable of making sensibility and cognition more resistant to murderous unreason. Far more disturbing, the evidence is that refined intellectuality, artistic virtuosity and appreciation, scientific eminence will collaborate actively with totalitarian demands or, at best, remain indifferent to surrounding sadism. Resplendent concerts, exhibitions in great museums, the publication of learned books, the pursuit of academic research both scientific and humanistic, flourish within close reach of death-camps. Technocratic ingenuity will serve or remain neutral at the call of the inhuman.' There could be no better description of the march of the high and mighty in the Indian business world parading before the `leader' in Gujarat, singing his praises and hailing him as a beacon of hope. So compelling is the mystique of Modi as someone who can deliver the idea of progress that it now makes even CPM leaders compose panegyrics for the Gujarat leader.
There is, however, an unintended irony in Sharma's use of Steiner. Steiner, an accomplished scholar and author, sometimes described by the word 'humanist,' is not above racism. Here is Steiner pointing out that he would not be able to tolerate living next door to Jamaicans.
Cambridge academic says he would not tolerate Jamaican neighbors.
Perhaps this kind of sentiment is what ultimately leads to the barbarism of Modi's Gujarat, love of Shakespeare or European civilization notwithstanding?
Full post...
Sunday, January 25, 2009
The 'root causes' of terrorism; Republic Day
In a post 9/11 world, barely a week goes by without some new book, conference, or news story about terrorism. A great deal of the discussion focuses on the "root causes" of terrorism. Here for instance is the Dalai Lama on the matter.
With respect to 9/11, the guilty root causes / structural factors are typically described as poverty, oppression, lack of education, US foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, oil companies, colonialism, imperialism, and so on. In the wake of the terrorist attacks on Bombay, similar arguments have been advanced, usually by the Left and thoughtful liberals. The culprits here are the usual suspects: poverty, oppression, treatment of minorities by the Indian state, the Kashmir fracas, the post Babri-Masjid riots and post-Godhra violence, the role of the US in Afghanistan, cold war politics, colonial history, and so on.
I just want to present one objection to this point of view.
(It is generally considered treasonous to be critical of anything that the Dalai Lama says among polite circles in the twenty-first century Western world, but as a matter of principle his views must be subject to the same critique as anyone else).
My objection to this line of argument about the 'root causes' of terrorism is predicted on a simple comparison between classes of criminals or perpetrators of different acts of violence. To state the obvious: the Bombay terrorists were also criminals and murderers, a fact that is often masked by the incessant use of the word 'terrorist' to describe them.
Would we use the same line of argument about trying to understand where other criminals 'come from'? Would we try and understand the 'root causes' underlying the actions of those who engage in political intimidation and murder? Or murder for the purpose of grabbing someone's land? Here are two examples from India of such murders.
This is the recent tragic case of an engineer in the Public Works Department of UP being murdered by a BSP politician because he refused to be extorted by the politician for Rs 50,000 for Chief Minister Mayawati's birthday celebrations.
This is an older, equally tragic, incident of the murder of historian Papiya Ghosh and the lady who worked as her domestic help in Patna allegedly by members of a criminal-politician nexus who wanted to seize her ancestral property. Two of the murderers remain at large.
Would the Indian and global Left ask us to try and understand the 'root causes' of whatever it is that drives these politicians and criminals to commit murders? Would they ask us to try and understand the 'root causes' underlying the actions of those bums and thugs in the Shiv Sena, MNS, and other such sorts who attack shops, threaten and harass women, assault citizens of India in the name of protecting Indian culture or of protecting jobs for locals? Would they ask us to understand the root causes of the behavior of those Muslim leaders who threaten Taslima Nasreen or Salman Rushdie? Would they ask us to understand the root causes behind the actions of the goons at Aligarh Muslim University who threaten women who wear jeans?
Why then are the crimes of the Bombay terrorists privileged as worthy of excavation to identify their 'root and structural causes' by the Indian Left? The same question can be asked of terrorism in general with reference to the global Left.
[As a sidebar, it is worth noting that the attacks on Taslima Nasreen have generated nowhere near the same outrage on Indian Left-Liberal email lists and the like as Sonal Shah's appointment by the Obama administration. This, I presume, is because of the Indian political Left / CPI(M) position that self-censorship on issues of violence by minorities serves the larger cause of secularism because such critique can be 'coopted' by the Hindu Right]
There is, additionally, another troublesome dimension to a related position on the 'root causes' stance. One strand of Left-Liberal argument will have it that everyone must take time out to educate themselves about the 'complexities' of the so-called 'Muslim issue' globally or in India to understand why terrorism takes root. This is a laudable position but the problem here is that this position is essentially prescriptive and thus undemocratic. People have the right not to educate themselves about anything that they are not interested in. Ignorance and indifference may not be virtues but they are not crimes.
[This problem may be resolved through a radical revision of the school and college curriculum that emphasizes a more inclusive, if more complex, history. It will also require the principled enforcement of an institutional culture of autonomy and freedom in academic institutions. However, as long as our educational system tacitly assumes a national frame, it is condemned to understand difference and otherness as pathology. And, while India has many very fine educational institutions, these are not immune, unfortunately, to political pressures and political intimidation. The example of Mushirul Hasan, Vice Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, suffering assaults by students at the university for his position on The Satanic Verses is a case in point.]
A final thought. Neither the argument about the impact of colonial political economy nor arguments about the actions of the Indian state satisfactorily explain why some individuals and groups in India threaten or kill innocent Indian citizens.
Earlier today, some new, shady, Hindu outfit in Mangalore beat up women in a pub for 'violating Indian morals' if you please. Yesterday's New York Times has an article about the reign of terror unleashed in areas of Pakistan by the Taliban, who use radio broadcasts as a means of surveillance and intimidation, suppplementing the acts of physical oppression and violence that they direct at citizens of Afghanistan.
Even the most sophisticated explanations about colonialism as a form of governmentality that created new capacities for violence in colonized societies, that pitted colonized group against colonized group, that created the Idi Amins, and so on, fall short in addressing the pathologies of violence that afflict India and Afghanistan today.. The fact of colonialism does not explain why the Hindu right organization attacks women in pubs in India.
Similarly, the detailed analyses about the CIA's role in nurturing the Taliban do not explain why the Taliban attacks girls by throwing acid on them for attending school.
There are other, indigenous, sources to these forms of violence as well.
In Radhika Singh's memorable phrase, the judicial system under colonial rule was a function of "a despotism of law." The savage punitive measures routinely and randomly enforced by social, political, and cultural groups -- as well as the state -- on any and all categories of Indians citizens suggest that this despotism has become constitutive of the body politic in the postcolonial context. If the terrorism of Pakistani nationals against India are acts of thuggery and criminality, then these forms of thuggery and criminality practiced by Indian citizens are also acts of terrorism.
Perhaps something to mull on Republic Day, as ---- against the backdrop of the state's capacities for technological and military violence--- the Indian president sounds clarion calls for strong actions against terrorists.
Full post...
Those who carried out the violent acts of 11th September were also human beings. If something similar had happened to their family and friends, presumably they, too, would have experienced pain and suffering. And as human beings they would naturally have had a desire to avoid that suffering. Therefore, we need to try to understand what motivated them to behave the way they did, if we are to avoid some future repetition of these awful events. I feel that the hatred and destructive emotions underlying the attacks of 11th September have been completely counterproductive for the cause, whatever it might be, espoused by the attackers.
With respect to 9/11, the guilty root causes / structural factors are typically described as poverty, oppression, lack of education, US foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, oil companies, colonialism, imperialism, and so on. In the wake of the terrorist attacks on Bombay, similar arguments have been advanced, usually by the Left and thoughtful liberals. The culprits here are the usual suspects: poverty, oppression, treatment of minorities by the Indian state, the Kashmir fracas, the post Babri-Masjid riots and post-Godhra violence, the role of the US in Afghanistan, cold war politics, colonial history, and so on.
I just want to present one objection to this point of view.
(It is generally considered treasonous to be critical of anything that the Dalai Lama says among polite circles in the twenty-first century Western world, but as a matter of principle his views must be subject to the same critique as anyone else).
My objection to this line of argument about the 'root causes' of terrorism is predicted on a simple comparison between classes of criminals or perpetrators of different acts of violence. To state the obvious: the Bombay terrorists were also criminals and murderers, a fact that is often masked by the incessant use of the word 'terrorist' to describe them.
Would we use the same line of argument about trying to understand where other criminals 'come from'? Would we try and understand the 'root causes' underlying the actions of those who engage in political intimidation and murder? Or murder for the purpose of grabbing someone's land? Here are two examples from India of such murders.
This is the recent tragic case of an engineer in the Public Works Department of UP being murdered by a BSP politician because he refused to be extorted by the politician for Rs 50,000 for Chief Minister Mayawati's birthday celebrations.
This is an older, equally tragic, incident of the murder of historian Papiya Ghosh and the lady who worked as her domestic help in Patna allegedly by members of a criminal-politician nexus who wanted to seize her ancestral property. Two of the murderers remain at large.
Would the Indian and global Left ask us to try and understand the 'root causes' of whatever it is that drives these politicians and criminals to commit murders? Would they ask us to try and understand the 'root causes' underlying the actions of those bums and thugs in the Shiv Sena, MNS, and other such sorts who attack shops, threaten and harass women, assault citizens of India in the name of protecting Indian culture or of protecting jobs for locals? Would they ask us to understand the root causes of the behavior of those Muslim leaders who threaten Taslima Nasreen or Salman Rushdie? Would they ask us to understand the root causes behind the actions of the goons at Aligarh Muslim University who threaten women who wear jeans?
Why then are the crimes of the Bombay terrorists privileged as worthy of excavation to identify their 'root and structural causes' by the Indian Left? The same question can be asked of terrorism in general with reference to the global Left.
[As a sidebar, it is worth noting that the attacks on Taslima Nasreen have generated nowhere near the same outrage on Indian Left-Liberal email lists and the like as Sonal Shah's appointment by the Obama administration. This, I presume, is because of the Indian political Left / CPI(M) position that self-censorship on issues of violence by minorities serves the larger cause of secularism because such critique can be 'coopted' by the Hindu Right]
There is, additionally, another troublesome dimension to a related position on the 'root causes' stance. One strand of Left-Liberal argument will have it that everyone must take time out to educate themselves about the 'complexities' of the so-called 'Muslim issue' globally or in India to understand why terrorism takes root. This is a laudable position but the problem here is that this position is essentially prescriptive and thus undemocratic. People have the right not to educate themselves about anything that they are not interested in. Ignorance and indifference may not be virtues but they are not crimes.
[This problem may be resolved through a radical revision of the school and college curriculum that emphasizes a more inclusive, if more complex, history. It will also require the principled enforcement of an institutional culture of autonomy and freedom in academic institutions. However, as long as our educational system tacitly assumes a national frame, it is condemned to understand difference and otherness as pathology. And, while India has many very fine educational institutions, these are not immune, unfortunately, to political pressures and political intimidation. The example of Mushirul Hasan, Vice Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, suffering assaults by students at the university for his position on The Satanic Verses is a case in point.]
A final thought. Neither the argument about the impact of colonial political economy nor arguments about the actions of the Indian state satisfactorily explain why some individuals and groups in India threaten or kill innocent Indian citizens.
Earlier today, some new, shady, Hindu outfit in Mangalore beat up women in a pub for 'violating Indian morals' if you please. Yesterday's New York Times has an article about the reign of terror unleashed in areas of Pakistan by the Taliban, who use radio broadcasts as a means of surveillance and intimidation, suppplementing the acts of physical oppression and violence that they direct at citizens of Afghanistan.
Even the most sophisticated explanations about colonialism as a form of governmentality that created new capacities for violence in colonized societies, that pitted colonized group against colonized group, that created the Idi Amins, and so on, fall short in addressing the pathologies of violence that afflict India and Afghanistan today.. The fact of colonialism does not explain why the Hindu right organization attacks women in pubs in India.
Similarly, the detailed analyses about the CIA's role in nurturing the Taliban do not explain why the Taliban attacks girls by throwing acid on them for attending school.
There are other, indigenous, sources to these forms of violence as well.
In Radhika Singh's memorable phrase, the judicial system under colonial rule was a function of "a despotism of law." The savage punitive measures routinely and randomly enforced by social, political, and cultural groups -- as well as the state -- on any and all categories of Indians citizens suggest that this despotism has become constitutive of the body politic in the postcolonial context. If the terrorism of Pakistani nationals against India are acts of thuggery and criminality, then these forms of thuggery and criminality practiced by Indian citizens are also acts of terrorism.
Perhaps something to mull on Republic Day, as ---- against the backdrop of the state's capacities for technological and military violence--- the Indian president sounds clarion calls for strong actions against terrorists.
Full post...
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