Cuckoo's call

Here to stay!

2011-11-10T08:44:00.004+05:30

Today's newspaper reports that the Mayor of Calcutta, Sovan Chatterjee announced yesterday that fresh licences would be issued to hand-pulled rickshaws.

The Calcutta Municipal Corporation had stopped issuing licences in 2009 - following upon the former chief minister's announcement, in 2005, that the hand-rickshaw would be banned.

I hope this brings to an end the travails of the rickshaw pullers, in regard to the uncertainty surrounding their livelihood. Now it is time to empower the rickshaw pullers and improve their working and living conditions.

Some things never change ...

2011-11-07T11:45:00.001+05:30

Concerned New Yorkers protest against slums at
the city's May Day Parade in 1936.

See more pictures from New York city in the 1940s here.

We won't give up the Fight!

2011-07-10T12:08:00.005+05:30

The song says it all. Nothing more remains to be said.

Thank you Meghnath Bhattacharjee. As Fr Beckers told you, we are proud and happy that you are our friend.

Man's life upon this earth

2011-07-10T08:31:00.000+05:30

"For of all I have ever seen or learned, this book [Ecclesiastes] seems to me the noblest, the wisest, and the most powerful expression of man’s life upon this earth – and also the highest flower of poetry, eloquence, and truth. I am not given to dogmatic judgments in the matter of literary creation, but if I had to make one I could say that Ecclesiastes is the greatest single piece of writing I have ever known, and the wisdom expressed in it the most lasting and profound."

Tom Wolfe

Read the Ecclesiastes here.

Films

2011-06-26T14:22:00.025+05:30

I am not a film critic or scholar, but simply a consumer and enjoyer of cinema. And a "student", in the sense of learning from, or being formed by the film, not so much things about cinematic art, but the story / subject and treatment.

I was thinking about films I have seen from my childhood onwards, which made a strong impact on me, or where the experience of watching the film is a personally memorable and resonant experience, or simply enjoyed the film. Names started coming thick and fast. I'm sure if I thought some more, other names would come, some of the earlier names might even be deleted. But here's a first list anyway - which has already crossed 100! The films are listed below, together with the year they were made, but in the order in which I saw them (as far as I could recall). It is an eclectic list. The list is, of course, subject to my own limited exposure, with some major film-makers' work entirely missing merely because I have not seen their films.

The first film in the list was seen in 1965, and the last one recently. Perhaps the most fecund period of film watching was in the early 80s, when I was a student in London. During much of the 1990s, I hardly saw any films. Since the late 80s, most films would have been seen on video or television. Over the last two years or so, I watch films on my laptop. I am collecting and watching films avidly over the last 8 months.

My Fair Lady, 1964
2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968
Do Ankhen Barah Haath, 1957
Do Bigha Zameen, 1953
Pyasa, 1957
Mrigaya, 1976
West Side Story, 1961
Nosferatu, 1922
Rahgir, 1969
Operation Daybreak, 1975
Ankur, 1974
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 1975
Manthan, 1976
Manhattan, 1979
Marathon Man, 1976
Soldier Blue, 1970
Julia, 1977
Coming Home, 1978
The Front Page, 1974
Z, 1969
Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyon Aata Hai, 1980
Aaakrosh, 1980
Aparajito, 1956
Aranyer Din Ratri, 1970
Chashme Buddoor, 1981
Charulata, 1964
Bhuvan Shome, 1969
All That Jazz, 1979
Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi, 1958
Bicycle Thieves, 1948
Chariots of Fire, 1981
The Caine Mutiny, 1954
The Loneliness of The Long Distance Runner, 1962
The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1981
Gallipoli, 1981
A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, 1982
Battle of Algiers, 1966
Yol, 1982
Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, 1983
Brideshead Revisited, 1981
The Jewel in the Crown, 1984
Pixote, 1981
Double Indemnity, 1944
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 1966
The Lavender Hill Mob, 1951
Amok, 1983
Question of Silence, 1982
Sophie's Choice, 1982
An Englishman Abroad, 1983
Zelig, 1983
My Dinner with Andre, 1981
Attica, 1980
Alsino and the Condor, 1983
Bhavni Bhavai, 1980
Twelve Angry Men, 1957
Adharshila, 1982
Picnic at Hanging Rock, 1975
Samskara, 1970
Excalibur, 1981
Amadeus, 1984
Maya Mriga, 1984
The Competition , 1980
Jean de Florette, 1986
Forest of Bliss, 1986
The Tin Drum, 1979
The Sacrifice, 1986
Oridath, 1986
Fitzcarraldo, 1982
Znachor / The Charlatan, 1937
Dharamtalla Ka Mela, 1983
Kathy Come Home, 1966
Famine '87, 1987
The Murder of Mary Phagan, 1987
Brief Encounter, 1945
Dead Poets Society, 1989
Teesri Kasam, 1966
Rosa Luxemburg, 1986
Goopy Gyne, Bagha Byne, 1968
Chinatown, 1974
Sur Asur, ?
Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro, 1989
Antarnaad, 1991
Pather Panchali (restored), 1955
Sleepers, 1996
Devi, 1960
The White Balloon, 1995
Goodbye Mr Chips, 1939
Once Were Warriors, 1994
Carrington, 1995
Three Colours - White, 1994
Life is Beautiful, 1997
Angel Heart, 1987
Thirteen Days, 2000
A Beautiful Mind, 2001
Field of Dreams, 1989
Saving Private Ryan, 1998
Heavenly Creatures, 1994
Boys Don't Cry, 1999
Mr Hollan'd Opus, 1995
Gandhi, My Father, 2007
Bawarchi, 1972
Shine, 1996
Sicko, 2007
Talk to Her, 2002
Lovers of the Arctic Circle, 1998
E la nave va, 1983
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, 2008
Rabbit-Proof Fence, 2002
The Lives of Others, 2006
Fight Club, 1999
City of God, 2002
Offside, 2006
Downfall, 2004
Down by Law, 1986
Pan's Labrynth, 2006
Zero for Conduct, 1933
The Sweet Hereafter, 1997
Dhobi Ghat, 2010
Ulysses Gaze, 1995
Goodbye Lenin, 2003
Capitalism: A Love Story, 2009
Sthaniyo Sangbad, 2010
Favela Rising, 2005
The Fall, 2006

Gender inequity in West Bengal

2011-06-16T11:35:00.002+05:30

by Supriya Chaudhuri
from The Telegraph

The Second Sex: Certain things could remain unchanged in Bengal

West Bengal today has a woman chief minister, and Presidency University a woman vice-chancellor. One would not think so, however, going by the composition of the newly-constituted advisory committee for higher education, or by the media debates on the future of the new university. These are exclusively populated by men, indeed by high-caste Hindu men, if their names are any guide. While one could argue that this dominance is simply accidental, at an early stage of planning, or — more alarmingly — that it reflects the superior achievements of high-caste Hindu men in all spheres relating to education and administration, I would suggest that both arguments are untenable. The preponderance of men in these bodies is not accidental, but it is also not a measure of their real distinction. Rather, it indicates a social bias that has persisted so insidiously and universally that we are deluded into believing that it does not exist.

The Bengali middle class prides itself on its liberal and enlightened attitudes towards women’s education and their entry into professions. Certainly, there is a history of early activism in these matters, necessitated by its converse in cruelty and oppression. Before and after Independence, women played active roles in school and college education, in politics, in social work, and in some professions such as nursing and medicine. The children of the urban elite today believe that most doors are open to them, irrespective of gender. School and university examination results confirm that girls are doing well, and middle class families encourage their daughters to aim as high as their sons. Women are visible in most social spheres, especially in education and in the medical profession, but also in the corporate world. Some hold important administrative posts. This phenomenon leads many to claim, quite sincerely, that there is no gender bias against women in Bengal, that they are involved in all stages and spheres of public life, and that they are free to participate in public policy-making. In fact, this is very far from the case.

All available evidence shows that West Bengal is ranked appallingly low in terms of human development and gender disparity indices, and that women’s economic participation and their access to education and health services are meagre to say the least. The West Bengal Human Development Report, 2004, and later studies, indicate “a major undercurrent of gender discrimination” reflected in reduced economic agency and poor recognition of women’s unpaid work, a female literacy rate just above the national average but far below that in Kerala, Maharashtra or Tamil Nadu, and high rates of underage marriage, school dropout, poverty and domestic violence. Eighty-four out of a hundred girls do not complete their secondary education; 50 per cent of girls receive less food than their brothers; and the state ranks 19th in India in respect of married women with iron-deficiency anaemia. Unsurprisingly, its HDI scores placed it 22nd, and its GDI scores 24th, out of 35 states and Union territories in 2006. It is unlikely that there has been substantial improvement in the past five years.

What is baffling about this reality, however, is the persistent failure of the educated middle class to recognize it. Whatever the statistics regularly publicized by development agencies, whatever the evidence of female illiteracy, impoverishment, ill health and ill-treatment by which it is surrounded, this class would prefer to think itself representative of a community striving for gender equity and social justice. If there are failures and inadequacies in our record they are, so we would prefer to believe, caused by economic underdevelopment and inherited imbalances: they do not reflect a general attitude. A long period of leftist rule has produced, if nothing else, some complacency about the state’s secular credentials and its recognition of women and minorities. Yet if one looks at the actual facts, there is very little reason for self-congratulation — apart from one notable statistic, the decline in communal violence over the past 30 years.

The Right to Education Act is probably the most important single piece of legislation India has effected since Independence. It is particularly relevant for a state like West Bengal, where in 2004 there were only 59 primary schools for each lakh of population, many without a schoolroom and with teachers who remain absent most of the year. The introduction of the district primary education programme in 1997 and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan in 2000 improved the situation to some extent, especially through the provision of Shishu Shiksha Kendras and anganwadi schools. But we are still very far from a teacher-student ratio of 1:40, a school within one kilometre of every habitation, and universal elementary schooling. The dispiriting reality is one of absent-teacher or one-teacher schools without classrooms or toilets, and of school buildings converted to grain-sheds or used for other purposes. Very few rural schools are able to implement the cooked mid-day meal scheme, although it shows immediate results in bringing children, especially girls, to school. Over 40,000 teachers’ posts remain unfilled in primary schools across the state, a situation exacerbated by the Primary Teachers’ Training Institute deadlock. The new government has announced that it will fill 46,000 vacancies, reserving 10 per cent of posts for PTTI candidates, but no one can say how this promise will be fulfilled. There is no clarity as to how the general provisions of the RTE Act, including the reservation of 25 per cent of seats in private schools for children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, might be implemented. Despite NGO activism, half of Calcutta’s children do not go to school.

Within this dismal scene, girls are more likely than boys not to complete their schooling and to drop out in middle school. Poor recognition of the worth of education for girls, the pressures of household work and underage marriage are obviously responsible for this, but so too are systemic defects such as the absence of girls’ toilets and lack of protection for girls in and outside the school. Despite this, for the first time this year there were more girls than boys appearing for the Madhyamik and Madrasah examinations, though considerably fewer at the higher secondary level. But this fact, combined with stray evidence of individual women seeking education (such as the case of Asiya Bibi reported on June 13, 2011) and girls resisting forced marriages, should not lead us to conclude that all is well with the education of girls in this state. Female illiteracy continues to be high, with some districts such as rural Purulia performing far more poorly than others, with correspondingly low figures for school enrolment and attendance.

But education is viewed as a lifeline by girls themselves, and where the opportunity is provided, there is a high degree of commitment to learning and acquiring the means of livelihood. Women figure at all levels within the formal and non-formal education system, as learners and as teachers, often working for low wages in non-unionized and ‘non-official’ posts as temporary or contracted staff in schools. There are large numbers in colleges and universities, especially in the less valued humanities departments, while the science and engineering faculties are dominated by men. Without women’s work, it would have been impossible to sustain the state education system or the network of private schools: nor, for that matter, the healthcare systems, state and private. Their presence creates the illusion that women are free to choose professions and are involved in decision-making in at least two critical areas, education and healthcare.

This is regrettably not the case. While some individual women hold high administrative posts, Bengal is in fact run by a largely male bureaucracy and political class which appears to think that the struggle for women’s rights is over and that no further concessions need to be made to inclusive action. I use the word “concession” advisedly. A recent report on school textbook content in Bengal notes that apart from the token inclusion of Rokeya Hussain and Mahasweta Devi, no other woman writer is featured, women’s work continues to be relegated to the household, the student-addressee appears to be Hindu, male, able-bodied and urban, and girls are represented as caring for younger siblings while boys take part in sport and study science or medicine. Most women who pursue professions speak of a constant, unacknowledged denial of the practical difficulties they face in the public sphere. There was no toilet for women teachers at Presidency College before and during the ten years I taught there: our representations to the college and education department authorities went unheard. Many women doctors speak of impossible physical conditions in hospitals and no security when they are on call at night. Development funds are largely controlled by a male bureaucracy.

Given the magnitude of our economic and social problems, it is easy for Bengal’s ruling class to forget these imbalances, regard the struggles of women, minorities and subaltern groups as past, and concentrate on the road-map for the future. The media has played their part in producing the impression that Presidency University is vital to this future, though its contribution will be infinitesimal given the huge tasks thrown up by the RTE Act. The committee to advise on higher education has a wider remit. It is symptomatic that not even a token woman or member of a minority community has been included in that committee, just as none has been named as part of the mentor group for Presidency University. Media debates on this institution appear to draw on an old boys’ club. There was something faintly comic in the televised spectacle of ten men lined up on a stage by the college’s alumni association to advise a single woman vice-chancellor, who, from her own speech, appeared fully capable of taking her own counsel. Despite a change of regime, nothing will change in Bengal unless we wake up from the complacent dream that all is well with us in respect of gender and social justice. Very little is.

This land is not yours to give

2011-05-27T17:05:00.004+05:30

It was a happy day for the citizens of Calcutta yesterday, when the Supreme Court quashed the land allotment made by the recently ousted Left Front govt of West Bengal to former cricketer, Saurav Ganguly. The cricketer had been granted a sizeable chunk of prime land in Salt Lake to start a private school, with all norms being given a go by, thanks to his friend, Asok Bhattacharya, the former urban development minister. The Supreme Court rebuked the Left Front government for adopting “questionable means” to provide the plot and “failing to discharge its constitutional role”.

Read the report here.

Neglected Indians & Public Policy in India

2011-05-26T12:46:00.004+05:30

by Amartya Sen

A fuller understanding of the real conditions of the mass of neglected Indians and what can be done to improve their lives through public policy should be a central issue in the politics of India.

The steadily rising rate of economic growth in India has recently been around 8 percent per year (it is expected to be 9 percent this year), and there is much speculation about whether and when India may catch up with and surpass China’s over 10 percent growth rate. Despite the evident excitement that this subject seems to cause in India and abroad, it is surely rather silly to be obsessed about India’s overtaking China in the rate of growth of GNP, while not comparing India with China in other respects, like education, basic health, or life expectancy. Economic growth can, of course, be enormously helpful in advancing living standards and in battling poverty. But there is little cause for taking the growth of GNP to be an end in itself, rather than seeing it as an important means for achieving things we value.

It could, however, be asked why this distinction should make much difference, since economic growth does enhance our ability to improve living standards. The central point to appreciate here is that while economic growth is important for enhancing living conditions, its reach and impact depend greatly on what we do with the increased income. The relation between economic growth and the advancement of living standards depends on many factors, including economic and social inequality and, no less importantly, on what the government does with the public revenue that is generated by economic growth.

Some statistics about China and India, drawn mainly from the World Bank and the United Nations, are relevant here. Life expectancy at birth in China is 73.5 years; in India it is 64.4 years. The infant mortality rate is fifty per thousand in India, compared with just seventeen in China; the mortality rate for children under five is sixty-six per thousand for Indians and nineteen for the Chinese; and the maternal mortality rate is 230 per 100,000 live births in India and thirty-eight in China. The mean years of schooling in India were estimated to be 4.4 years, compared with 7.5 years in China. China’s adult literacy rate is 94 percent, compared with India’s 74 percent according to the preliminary tables of the 2011 census.

As a result of India’s effort to improve the schooling of girls, its literacy rate for women between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four has clearly risen; but that rate is still not much above 80 percent, whereas in China it is 99 percent. One of the serious failures of India is that a very substantial proportion of Indian children are, to varying degrees, undernourished (depending on the criteria used, the proportion can come close to half of all children), compared with a very small proportion in China. Only 66 percent of Indian children are immunized with triple vaccine (diphtheria/ pertussis/tetanus), as opposed to 97 percent in China.

Comparing India with China according to such standards can be more useful for policy discussions in India than confining the comparison to GNP growth rates only. Those who are fearful that India’s growth performance would suffer if it paid more attention to “social objectives” such as education and health care should seriously consider that notwithstanding these “social” activities and achievements, China’s rate of GNP growth is still clearly higher than India’s.

2

Higher GNP has certainly helped China to reduce various indicators of poverty and deprivation, and to expand different features of the quality of life. There is every reason to want to encourage sustainable economic growth in India in order to improve living standards today and in the future (including taking care of the environment in which we live). Sustainable economic growth is a very good thing in a way that “growth mania” is not.

GNP per capita is, however, not invariably a good predictor of valuable features of our lives, for those features depend also on other things that we do — or fail to do. Compare India with Bangladesh. In income, India has a huge lead over Bangladesh, with a GNP per capita of $1,170, compared with $590 in Bangladesh, in comparable units of purchasing power. This difference has expanded rapidly because of India’s faster rate of recent economic growth, and that, of course, is a point in India’s favour. India’s substantially higher rank than Bangladesh in the UN Human Development Index (HDI) is largely due to this particular achievement. But we must ask how well India’s income advantage is reflected in other things that also matter. I fear the answer is: not well at all.

Life expectancy in Bangladesh is 66.9 years compared with India’s 64.4. The proportion of underweight children in Bangladesh (41.3 percent) is lower than in India (43.5), and its fertility rate (2.3) is also lower than India’s (2.7). Mean years of schooling amount to 4.8 years in Bangladesh compared with India’s 4.4 years. While India is ahead of Bangladesh in the male literacy rate for the age group between fifteen and twenty-four, the female rate in Bangladesh is higher than in India. Interestingly, the female literacy rate among young Bangladeshis is actually higher than the male rate, whereas young women still have substantially lower rates than young males in India. There is much evidence to suggest that Bangladesh’s current progress has a great deal to do with the role that liberated Bangladeshi women are beginning to play in the country.

What about health? The mortality rate of children under five is sixty-six per thousand in India compared with fifty-two in Bangladesh. In infant mortality, Bangladesh has a similar advantage: it is fifty per thousand in India and forty-one in Bangladesh. While 94 percent of Bangladeshi children are immunized with DPT vaccine, only 66 percent of Indian children are. In each of these respects, Bangladesh does better than India, despite having only half of India’s per capita income.

Of course, Bangladesh’s living conditions will benefit greatly from higher economic growth, particularly if the country uses it as a means of doing good things, rather than treating economic growth and high per capita income as ends in themselves. It is to the huge credit of Bangladesh that despite the adversity of low income it has been able to do so much so quickly; the imaginative activism of Bangladeshi NGOs (such as the Grameen Bank, the pioneering microcredit institution, and BRAC, a large-scale initiative aimed at removing poverty) as well as the committed public policies of the government have both contributed to the results. But higher income, including larger public resources, will obviously enhance Bangladesh’s ability to achieve better lives for its people.

3

One of the positive things about economic growth is that it generates public resources that the government can devote to its priorities. In fact, public resources very often grow faster than the GNP. The gross tax revenue, for example, of the government of India (corrected for price rise) is now more than four times what it was just twenty years ago, in 1990-1991. This is a substantially bigger jump than the price-corrected GNP.

Expenditure on what is somewhat misleadingly called the “social sector”— health, education, nutrition, etc. — has certainly gone up in India. And yet India is still well behind China in many of these fields. For example, government expenditure on health care in China is nearly five times that in India. China does, of course, have a larger population and a higher per capita income than India, but even in relative terms, while the Chinese government spends nearly 2 percent of GDP (1.9 percent) on health care, the proportion is only a little above one percent (1.1 percent) in India.

One result of the relatively low allocation of funds to public health care in India is that large numbers of poor people across the country rely on private doctors, many of whom have little medical training. Since health is also a typical example of “asymmetric information,” in which the patients may know very little about what the doctors (or “supposed doctors”) are giving them, even the possibility of fraud and deceit is very large. In a study conducted by the Pratichi Trust — a public interest trust I set up in 1999 — we found cases in which the ignorance of poor patients about their condition was exploited so as to make them pay for treatment they didn’t get. This is the result not only of shameful exploitation, but ultimately of the sheer unavailability of public health care in many parts of India. The benefit that we can expect to get from economic growth depends very much on how the public revenue generated by economic growth is expended.

4

When we consider the impact of economic growth on people’s lives, comparisons favour China over India. However, there are many fields in which a comparison between China and India is not related to economic growth in any obvious way. Most Indians are strongly appreciative of the democratic structure of the country, including its many political parties, systematic free elections, uncensored media, free speech, and the independent standing of the judiciary, among other characteristics of a lively democracy. Those Indians who are critical of serious flaws in these arrangements (and I am certainly one of them) can also take account of what India has already achieved in sustaining democracy, in contrast to many other countries, including China.

Not only is access to the Internet and world opinion uncensored and unrestricted in India, a multitude of media present widely different points of view, often very critical of the government in office. India has a larger circulation of newspapers each day than any other country in the world. And the newspapers reflect contrasting political perspectives. Economic growth has helped — and this has certainly been a substantial gain — to expand the availability of radios and televisions across the country, including in rural areas, which very often are shared among many users. There are at least 360 independent television stations (and many are being established right now, judging from the licences already issued) and their broadcasts reflect a remarkable variety of points of view. More than two hundred of these TV stations concentrate substantially or mainly on news, many of them around the clock. There is a sharp contrast here with the monolithic system of newscasting permitted by the state in China, with little variation of political perspectives on different channels.

Freedom of expression has its own value as a potentially important instrument for democratic politics, but also as something that people enjoy and treasure. Even the poorest parts of the population want to participate in social and political life, and in India they can do so. There is a contrast as well in the use of trial and punishment, including capital punishment. China often executes more people in a week than India has executed since independence in 1947. If our focus is on a comprehensive comparison of the quality of life in India and China, we have to look well beyond the traditional social indicators, and many of these comparisons are not to China’s advantage.

Could it be that India’s democratic system is somehow a barrier to using the benefits of economic growth in order to enhance health, education, and other social conditions? Clearly not, as I shall presently discuss. It is worth recalling that when India had a very low rate of economic growth, as was the case until the 1980s, a common argument was that democracy was hostile to fast economic growth. It was hard to convince those opposed to democracy that fast economic growth depends on an economic climate congenial to development rather than on fierce political control, and that a political system that protects democratic rights need not impede economic growth. That debate has now ended, not least because of the high economic growth rates of democratic India. We can now ask: How should we assess the alleged conflict between democracy and the use of the fruits of economic growth for social advancement?

5

What a democratic system achieves depends greatly on which social conditions become political issues. Some conditions become politically important issues quickly, such as the calamity of a famine (thus famines tend not to occur at all when there is a functioning democracy), while other problems — less spectacular and less immediate — provide a much harder challenge. It is much more difficult to use democratic politics to remedy undernourishment that is not extreme, or persistent gender inequality, or the absence of regular medical care for all. Success or failure here depends on the range and vigour of democratic practice. In recent years Indian democracy has made considerable progress in dealing with some of these conditions, such as gender inequality, lack of schools, and widespread undernourishment. Public protests, court decisions, and the use of the recently passed “Right to Information” Act have had telling effects. But India still has a long way to go in remedying these conditions.

In China, by contrast, the process of decision-making depends largely on decisions made by the top Party leaders, with relatively little democratic pressure from below. The Chinese leaders, despite their scepticism about the values of multiparty democracy and personal and political liberty, are strongly committed to eliminating poverty, undernourishment, illiteracy, and lack of health care; and this has greatly helped in China’s advancement. There is, however, a serious fragility in any authoritarian system of governance, since there is little recourse or remedy when the government leaders alter their goals or suppress their failures.

The reality of that danger revealed itself in a catastrophic form in the Chinese famine of 1959-1962, which killed more than 30 million people, when there was no public pressure against the regime’s policies, as would have arisen in a functioning democracy. Mistakes in policy continued for three years while tens of millions died. To take another example, the economic reforms of 1979 greatly improved the working and efficiency of Chinese agriculture and industry; but the Chinese government also eliminated, at the same time, the entitlement of all to public medical care (which was often administered through the communes). Most people were then required to buy their own health insurance, drastically reducing the proportion of the population with guaranteed health care.

In a functioning democracy an established right to social assistance could not have been so easily — and so swiftly — dropped. The change sharply reduced the progress of longevity in China. Its large lead over India in life expectancy dwindled during the following two decades — falling from a fourteen-year lead to one of just seven years.

The Chinese authorities, however, eventually realized what had been lost, and from 2004 they rapidly started reintroducing the right to medical care. China now has a considerably higher proportion of people with guaranteed health care than does India. The gap in life expectancy in China’s favour has been rising again, and it is now around nine years; and the degree of coverage is clearly central to the difference.Whether India’s democratic political system can effectively remedy neglected public services such as health care is one of the most urgent questions facing the country.

6

For a minority of the Indian population — but still very large in actual numbers — economic growth alone has been very advantageous, since they are already comparatively privileged and need no social assistance to benefit from economic growth. The limited prosperity of recent years has helped to support a remarkable variety of lifestyles as well as globally acclaimed developments of Indian literature, music, cinema, theatre, painting, and the culinary arts, among other cultural activities.

Yet an exaggerated concentration on the lives of the relatively prosperous, exacerbated by the Indian media, gives an unrealistically rosy picture of the lives of Indians in general. Since the fortunate group includes not only business leaders and the professional classes but also many of the country’s intellectuals, the story of unusual national advancement is widely and persistently heard. More worryingly, relatively privileged Indians can easily fall for the temptation to focus just on economic growth as a grand social benefactor for all.

Some critics of the huge social inequalities in India find something callous and uncouth in the self- centred lives and inward-looking preoccupations of a relatively prosperous minority. My primary concern, however, is that the illusions generated by those distorted perceptions of prosperity may prevent India from bringing social deprivations into political focus, which is essential for achieving what needs to be done for Indians at large through its democratic system. A fuller understanding of the real conditions of the mass of neglected Indians and what can be done to improve their lives through public policy should be a central issue in the politics of India.

This is exactly where the exclusive concentration on the rate of GNP growth has the most damaging effect. Economic growth can make a very large contribution to improving people’s lives; but single-minded emphasis on growth has limitations that need to be clearly understood.

Courtesy of The New York Review of Books.

The unimaginable recrudescence of Bengal

2011-05-14T11:23:00.007+05:30

13 May 2011 shall go down in the history of Bengal and of Bengali people as "freedom day". As a university student, when my baptism in becoming Bengali began, I learnt about the date, 21st February, ekushe februari, that lies at the heart of Bengali identity. 13 May is for me as significant.

The con-munists have finally been ousted.

See images of Calcutta on 13 May 2011 here.

There was a time, just a little while ago, when not a leaf in Bengal stirred but with the party's say-so, when freedom of speech, of thought, of action, was forgotten ...

I have no doubt whatsoever that things can only get better. But most importantly, I hope the main lesson has been learnt, that things can become better only if everyone, each and every person, tries to be better, and do better. And thus break the inertia, of thought, speech and action which has trapped Bengal in a miasma of stagnation. If that happens, then the new government will be enabled to begin in some substantive fashion the enormous task of rebuilding from shambles. However, if people look to the new government to wave some kind of magic wand and create some magical transformation - then, despite the best intentions and efforts of the government, stagnation and rot shall continue.

It is possible now for people's own thinking and efforts to bear fruit, provided these are rooted in working with the people. Now is the time to give oneself to the public cause, through constructive action. I am sure we are going to see a blooming of voluntary grassroots action now with the exit of the cowardly dogs, the CPI(M), who clamped down on all voluntary action simply because they were petrified lest anyone see and know for themselves the real truth behind their deceitful claim of being "pro-people". They wanted to be gate-keepers, and thus be unimpeded in sucking the blood of the people.

The people of Bengal can be proud once again. We have a leader who is a genuine mass leader, who has battled almost single-handedly against and withstood every kind of assault and attack and adversity, to finally prevail over her enemies and emerge gloriously victorious. It is a victory for democracy, it is a victory of people power. Bengal has once again shown the way for India - in showing the importance and power of democracy. Since we got it cheap we take it for granted.

But the real work of Mamata begins only now. That may make her struggle over two decades seem tame. But if she applies herself to the challenge with the same unflinching, fierce tenacity of which she has become a veritable iconic symbol, then positive change is inevitable.

I wish her Godspeed and Godstrength.

The alternative

2011-05-12T11:24:00.002+05:30

Poster at Nandigram protest meeting in Calcutta, 2007. Slogan:
From Singur to Nandigram, Resistance's new naam (name).

The people's struggles in West Bengal over the last decade and more have brought to centre-stage the issue of land. City-folk, intellectuals, professionals, people who empathise with the peasants - are quick to point out that the old must give way to the new, that the spread of urbanisation is inevitable and irreversible, that a village cannot hold out against the advancing city, that industry is necessary and so on. And that, therefore, in a region of significant population density and relative land scarcity, it has to be agricultural land that is given up. They emphasise the issue of proper compensation and rehabilitation.

We are living in a time of great scams. Historically too, there have been some great conspiracies. And always, the poor and powerless have borne the brunt of these, and been simply forgotten. The bulk of the people in entire regions of the country have been living out, and continue to do so, direly, the ramifications of the planned consignment of their places to backwardness and zones of exploitation and extraction. Entire peoples and communities, cultures and languages, live out the consequences of the planned expropriation of a place by "enlightened" people from outside, and the conversion of the indigenous people into serfs, in a mutually beneficial plot between them and the state (colonial, Indian).

Although the mega-scam / conspiracy of forced land acquisition in Rajarhat by the CPI(M) mafia preceded Singur and Nandigram, and was held up as a "model" of consensus-based land acquisition, Rajarhat is now set to explode in the face of the arch-villain, Gautam Deb. In the documentary film on Rajarhat, "Their City on Our Land", an elderly farmer says, "we are not poor, we are rich, we have land, they have nothing, only money, but they don't have land. They buy our land with money, and become rich and we become poor." And just as the historic election in West Bengal comes to a close, the election in which the land question was perhaps the key issue driving the desire for change, in the very centre of the country, another explosion of the land question is taking place.

The city folk who empathise with the peasants but think land acquisition is unavoidable, a necessary sacrifice for collective advance - they must realise that democracy is not just about what they think it is about. Democracy in India implies an unflinching adherence to some basic parameters, that are being set by people's struggles in this land of historical injustice and inequity. The struggles are democracy in action, and the parameters set by them are directions for public policy and governance. Knee-jerk resort to assertions that "there is no alternative", "dams are vital", "urbanisation is inevitable", "land must be acquired" and so on is only part of the unquestioned continuation of status quo, regarding what "development" means and entails. It only shows what "power" is, and where it lies, who has it, and who does not. So, really, it is very clear that the empathic, development-oriented city-folk are with someone and against someone else.

But time is running out. The people of this country are not going to go on and on accepting that status quo, which is entirely one-sided: some sit in comfort while some suffer the earth sinking beneath their feet. The peasant whose land is being seized today, is not the peasant of an earlier age, who gave way to capitalist industry. He and she are here today, together with us, and contemporaneous with global capitalism. And fighting against it, unlike anyone else. Fighting for survival.

What is the alternative? That is what the city-folk ask. As if, over and above all the comfort and privilege they have enjoyed, they are now also privileged to have this formulated by the (powerless) people and handed over to them, to examine with cynical arrogance. What about them? What is their role? What can they do? Have they tried to immerse themselves in this concern, taking full responsibility? Instead of the sneering, despising disdain reserved for the poor and powerless. You better think fast, and think soundly, for your balls are otherwise going to be excised by the peasant's tangi.

If there is to be a market economy, that must be guided by people's interests. The lives of people cannot be dictated by unbridled market forces.

The poor are ingenious and enterprising, they must be in order to survive. In central Kolkata, slum dwellers hang around the spaces where the cars of early morning shoppers in New Market are parked. As soon as the babu goes off, someone will swiftly duck behind the car and crouch and empty his bowels, and thus get ready for another day of labour to sustain the fragrant city. That same ingenuity and razor-edge, do-or-die intensity must be brought to the engagement with the subject of "alternative" - by those who today only ask the question.

Against the "irreversible", "immutable" sway of global economy, the poor and powerless in Bengal, the ever rebellious land, have screamed out: you shall not take our land! The unstoppable advance of the jack-boot of economic forces, that goliath, may finally have come up against a little David in the Bengal peasant.

Which side are you on? Will you finally start working with the people and for the people, to fabricate an alternative, to produce a genuine local crop?

Song of Saadi

2011-05-12T10:55:00.002+05:30

Recently a song was cooking within me.

This is a poem by Saadi, the great Persian mystic, poet and thinker of the 13th century, on the indivisibility of humanity. Raya, a neice of mine, who is Iranian, had put up the calligraphed Farsi lines on Facebook, together with a nice translation in English.

Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.

If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.

If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain.

Transcribing the Farsi in Roman:

bani aadam a'zaaye yekdigarand
keh dar aafarinesh ze' yek goharand

cho ozvi beh dard aavarad roozegaar
degar ozvhaa raa namaanad gharar

to keh az mehnat-e-digaraan bi ghami
nashaayad keh naamat nahand aadami

I was taken by this, especially that they said virtually exactly the same thing as another song I had composed with lines by Shantideva, the great Buddhist monk and teacher, who lived several centuries before Saadi. I thought I should take this and add it to my small collection of songs and chants based on sacred texts.

My neice also directed me to a YouTube video of a song by Shakila, a Farsi singer, a woman, singing a song based on similar poetry. I heard that a couple of times. That was in mid-March.

Soon afterwards, I met Dr Siddiqui, the anthropologist, who knows Farsi, and got the exact sound / pronunciation and meaning of the Farsi lines. I noted it all down in my pocket note book. A few times, I would open the notebook to the page, and go over the lines, trying to learn them, trying to say them out with a smooth flow of the words. Not happening. Then some weeks later, alone at home, in the quiet stillness of mid-morning it was as if a faint melody entered my ear from nowhere. So as not to lose it (I do not know how to note down music), I recorded it in the voice recorder in my cellphone. That was in mid-April. I played and listened to the melody recording a few times.

Last Sunday, in the evening, as I was idle, I just picked up the notebook, and in a few minutes it was all over, the mastery over the words threaded by the melody, reciting it confidently and smoothly, singing it, inserting inflexions, everything was done.

So now I am eager to sing it, to sing it out!

Their City on Our Land

2011-04-29T14:47:00.003+05:30

FILM SCREENING

"Amader Jomite Oder Nogori" [Their City on Our Land]

A documentary film on the issue of urbanization and dispossession
of land in the Rajarhat-New Town area

Director: Promod Gupta

Date:Friday, 6th May, 2011

Time: 3 PM

Venue:

Seminar Room,
CENTRE FOR STUDIES IN SOCIAL SCIENCES,
R 1 BAISHNABGHATA PATULI,
KOLKATA 700094

Golden smiles

2011-04-17T18:26:00.002+05:30

Candidates woo voters with innovative schemes in Tamil Nadu

From our Desi Times correspondent: special update 11 April 2011

Everyone is all too familiar with the methods used to seek votes in Tamil Nadu. The technique of 500-note-for-vote is already an old one. Free TVs, bicycles for school students, rice at one rupee a kilo, aand free and expensive medical insurance are some of the ongoing methods, used by both parties. The ruling party may begin a “scheme” and the opposition would do a take on that and implement “scheme plus”. In areas where the gifts are distributed at the door-step at pre-dawn hours, a power cut during those hours is a part of the tactic, ensuring that nobody knows who came and who accepted.

Since yesterday a new scheme called the Golden Smile has made an appearance. Voters are promised a gold-capped tooth – the tooth should be positioned between the pre-molar and the incisor to be seen when smiling – if they align with the party. Apparently both parties are keen to oblige the voters so we can rest assured there will be many smiles through these electoral days. One actually looks forward to all these golden smiles as one has become a little weary of the grimness after the scams.

To ensure that all these gold teeth are in place in all the mouths, several dentists have been hired. Through reliable sources it has been confirmed that about 500 NRI dentists, based in the USA and the UK, who are party patriots, have agreed to come and contribute their services for their party. State dentists, both private and those working for the government, may be hired at up to Rs 2,500 per cap which makes each tooth worth about Rs 5,000.

Since the announcement of this Golden Smile scheme less than 24 hours ago, a total of 107,433 people have already registered and the number is likely to grow at a fast clip. Tooth caps will be fitted in party centres in almost all the major cities in Tamil Nadu, including the hill stations of Ooty, Yercadu and Kodaikanal. It is estimated that these smiles will eventually cost the tax payer a sum of Rs 1.53 lakh crores; party insiders let it be known that the bosses wanted to keep costs less than what was incurred by the 2G scam.

All these potential smiles will bring many reporters and journalists to Tamil Nadu during this week. A few foreign correspondents, including those from the German Der Spiegel and the Dutch Volkskrant are also expected to cover the Tamil elections. The tourism industry which in Tamil Nadu won laurels for the maximum tourists in 2010 – beating God’s own country Kerala by a substantial margin – has been asked to gear up for the event.

The common man in Tamil Nadu, used by now to a life of free-dumb, is happy. A quick calculation has revealed that the resale value of the gold tooth, post elections, would be Rs 1200. That’s equivalent to about 20 quarter bottles of the local brandy sold at TASMAC. More reasons to smile as the money gets recycled!

Profits before people

2011-04-17T18:00:00.003+05:30

by Eric Stevenson

Profit first policy endangers people in India and other countries

When it comes to strategies and plans involving major businesses, profits and revenue are what most companies always strive for. A number of businesses in Canada and the United States have put this desire for high profits and revenue above the risk of health problems related to their exports.

The health problems arising from such exports involve the use of asbestos. While it used to be known as one of the most versatile building materials, it’s now known more for its correlation and connection to health problems such as mesothelioma and asbestosis. Both of these diseases result from direct exposure to asbestos.

Even though most countries have halted the use of asbestos as a usable product and building material, U.S. and Canadian businesses continue to export asbestos, in order to reap the monetary benefits from that. Canada is now one of the only countries left in the world that actually still mines asbestos. Even though resources are running out as far as Canadian mines are concerned, the businesses continue to mine and export asbestos, in the interest of their profit. In America, they don’t work as a direct exporter of asbestos, but rather as a third party in the asbestos trade. Nevertheless, businesses in both countries are putting their profits and revenue above the possible health risks for the countries they’re exporting to. Even though neither country has been able to “technically” ban the use of asbestos, the material is essentially blacklisted and viewed in a negative light in both countries.

One country in particular, India, has been the topic of research when it comes to the countries that are being exported to. Not only is it the largest of these countries, but it is a country that continues to use asbestos as a construction material. Research in India has also shown that often workers handle asbestos without the proper safety gear, putting them at a major risk regarding associated health problems.

The saddest part of the situation involves the kind of countries the asbestos is exported to. Usually the countries at the expense of which Canada and the US make money are poor and developing countries. This includes many countries in Africa and southern Asia. Moreover, the low affordibility in these countries also implies a major step-down in medical practice and health care. When a material like asbestos is brought into these countries, the people are confronted with a major risk of exposure, as well as all the health problems that often accompany asbestos exposure. Given the poor quality of health care and medical awareness in many of these countries, the people are in danger of serious and sometimes even life-threatening consequences.

For example, mesothelioma is extremely severe, often leaving victims to live only a year after their original diagnosis. Without the proper type of medical care, the health problems connected with asbestos are even more dangerous.

Even though this profit-first policy may have brought business leaders some good fortune, there has certainly been a backlash from media and controversy around the decision to send asbestos out to these countries. Hopefully with an increase in controversy surrounding these practices and the inevitable end of mining resources in Canada, the end to such cynical practices is near.

Image: from Modern Medical Guide

Friendship Day

2011-03-24T20:48:00.007+05:30

Today, 24th March - henceforth, I shall remember it and observe it as "Friendship Day".

It is the birthday of a very dear friend, Dayan. He died in a car crash eight years ago. He was less than 28.

Though Dayan was 15 years younger than me, he was a beloved friend. We were in the same team, over the space of a few months, that did the web-portal of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation, "CALMANAC", in 2000 (that is now defunct). I connected with him soon after we first met - thanks to some "zany" interests we shared in common. And we became close friends.

On Dayan's birthday, and on the date of his passing, 19 February, I try to communicate with his parents, and visit his grave. I did that today morning. His parents were in Bombay, and so I went alone to the cemetery, with a mass of marigolds.

As it turned out, today was to be devoted to friends, and I zip-zap-zoo-ed across the city on this mission.

Another dear friend, Samrat, who lives in Assam, was in town, and we agreed to meet despite the narrow "window" of available time. (Samrat and i were on a course together seven years ago. He is also much younger than me.) So after remembering Dayan, I went to meet Samrat, in a coffee shop.

Then on to Debra, a close friend from Durban, South Africa, whom I first met in 1992, someone I would never get to meet in the normal course of things. She was in Calcutta for an important conference. She was in a very hectic situation, and the only time we managed to get was a few minutes around noon, when she exit-ed from a heated discussion to meet her friend.

After that Dr S. That is the anthropologist, Dr MKA Siddiqui. He is a father-figure for me. Despite wanting to, I haven't seen him in a long time, owing to one thing and another. As my movements across the city took me very close to his office, I thought I must see him today. So after seeing Debra, I went to Dr S's office. I had in mind to get from him the correct pronunciation of a Farsi poem by Sa'adi which I want to render to song. I could do that. And i could tell him about another friend, Madhu, who spent twenty years as a friend of the Gond people of Bastar. And also share with him my gladness at possibly visiting again a city I love, Nablus, in Palestine. I was there in 1999 and just being there helped me understand something I'd read Aristotle had said: "Men come together in cities in order to live. They remain together in order to live the good life." My friend, Marwan lives there, and it's thanks to him that I might go there again soon and meet him.

In the evening I attended a meeting and film screening organised by Nagarik Mancha, or Citizens' Forum, a civil society group, to look at what "city development" has come to mean in Calcutta. The Secretary of Nagarik Mancha, Naba Dutta, is an old comrade in public action in the cause of people, from over 25 years ago.

It was only today, thanks to this concatenation of friendly events that it occured to me to call 24 March, a day I associate with a dear friend, Dayan, as Friendship Day. I think meaningful public action can only be built on the pillars of friendship.

I remembered a Sufi tale about "friendship":

Ibrahim dreamed he saw the angel Gabriel writing down the names of the friends of God. Ibrahim asked, “Is my name there?” “No,” the angel replied. Ibrahim said, “I am a friend of the friends of God.” Gabriel was silent for a long time. Then he said, “Ibrahim, I am writing your name at the head of this list.”

And I remembered that one of the 99 names of Allah is - Al-Walí, The Protecting Friend.

Here's to friends!

What is "Mysticism"?

2010-12-30T12:25:00.008+05:30

"What do we mean by mysticism?"

Evelyn Underhill asks this question in her book Mysticism (1911) and then proceeds to explain what exactly this means.

I reproduce below excerpts from Underhill's text.

......

Mysticism, in its pure form, is the science of ultimates, the science of union with the Absolute, and nothing else, and the mystic is the person who attains to this union, not the person who talks about it. Not to know about but to Be, is the mark of the real initiate.

The difficulty lies in determining the point at which supersensual experience ceases to be merely a practical and interesting extension of sensual experience—an enlarging, so to speak, of the boundaries of existence—and passes over into that boundless life where Subject and Object, desirous and desired, are one. No sharp line, but rather an infinite series of gradations separate the two states. Hence we must look carefully at all the pilgrims on the road; discover, if we can, the motive of their travels, the maps which they use, the luggage which they take, the end which they attain.

Now we have said that the end which the mystic sets before him is conscious union with a living Absolute. That Divine Dark, that Abyss of the Godhead, of which he sometimes speaks as the goal of his quest, is just this Absolute, the Uncreated Light in which the Universe is bathed, and which—transcending, as it does, all human powers of expression—he can only describe to us as dark. But there is—must be—contact “in an intelligible where” between every individual self and this Supreme Self, this Ultimate. In the mystic this union is conscious, personal, and complete. “He enjoys,” says St. John of the Cross, “a certain contact of the soul with the Divinity; and it is God Himself who is then felt and tasted.” More or less according to his measure, he has touched—or better, been touched by—the substantial Being of Deity, not merely its manifestation in life. This it is which distinguishes him from the best and most brilliant of other men, and makes his science, in Patmore’s words, “the science of self-evident Reality.” Gazing with him into that unsearchable ground whence the World of Becoming comes forth “eternally generated in an eternal Now,” we may see only the icy darkness of perpetual negations: but he, beyond the coincidence of opposites, looks upon the face of Perfect Love.

As genius in any of the arts is—humanly speaking—the final term of a power of which each individual possesses the rudiments, so mysticism may be looked upon as the final term, the active expression, of a power latent in the whole race: the power, that is to say, of so perceiving transcendent reality.

Few people pass through life without knowing what it is to be at least touched by this mystical feeling, Here, in this spark or “part of the soul” where the spirit, as religion says, “rests in God who made it,” is the fountain alike of the creative imagination and the mystic life. Now and again something stings it into consciousness, and man is caught up to the spiritual level, catches a glimpse of the “secret plan.” Then hints of a marvellous truth, a unity whose note is ineffable peace, shine in created things; awakening in the self a sentiment of love, adoration, and awe. Its life is enhanced, the barrier of personality is broken, man escapes the sense-world, ascends to the apex of his spirit, and enters for a brief period into the more extended life of the All.

This intuition of the Real lying at the root of the visible world and sustaining its life, is present in a modified form in the arts: perhaps it were better to say, must be present if these arts are so justify themselves as heightened forms of experience. It is this which gives to them that peculiar vitality, that strange power of communicating a poignant emotion, half torment and half joy, which baffle their more rational interpreters.

The mystic may say—is indeed bound to say—with St. Bernard, “My secret to myself.” Try how he will, his stammering and awestruck reports can hardly be understood but by those who are already in the way. But the artist cannot act thus. On him has been laid the duty of expressing something of that which he perceives. He is bound to tell his love. In his worship of Perfect Beauty faith must be balanced by works. By means of veils and symbols he must interpret his free vision, his glimpse of the burning bush, to other men. He is the mediator between his brethren and the divine, for art is the link between appearance and reality.

But we do not call every one who has these partial and artistic intuitions of reality a mystic, any more than we call every one a musician who has learnt to play the piano. The true mystic is the person in whom such powers transcend the merely artistic and visionary stage, and are exalted to the point of genius: in whom the transcendental consciousness can dominate the normal consciousness, and who has definitely surrendered himself to the embrace of Reality. As artists stand in a peculiar relation to the phenomenal world, receiving rhythms and discovering truths and beauties which are hidden from other men, so this true mystic stands in a peculiar relation to the transcendental world, there experiencing actual, but to us unimaginable tension and delight. His consciousness is transfigured in a particular way, he lives at different levels of experience from other people: and this of course means that he sees a different world, since the world as we know it is the product of certain scraps or aspects of reality acting upon a normal and untransfigured consciousness. Hence his mysticism is no isolated vision, no fugitive glimpse of reality, but a complete system of life carrying its own guarantees and obligations. As other men are immersed in and react to natural or intellectual life, so the mystic is immersed in and reacts to spiritual life. He moves towards that utter identification with its interests which he calls “Union with God.” He has been called a lonely soul. He might more properly be described as a lonely body: for his soul, peculiarly responsive, sends out and receives communications upon every side.

The earthly artist, because perception brings with it the imperative longing for expression, tries to give us in colour, sound or words a hint of his ecstasy, his glimpse of truth. Only those who have tried, know how small a fraction of his vision he can, under the most favourable circumstance, contrive to represent. The mystic, too, tries very hard to tell an unwilling world his secret. But in his case, the difficulties are enormously increased. First, there is the huge disparity between his unspeakable experience and the language which will most nearly suggest it. Next, there is the great gulf fixed between his mind and the mind of the world. His audience must be bewitched as well as addressed, caught up to something of his state, before they can be made to understand.

The mind must employ some device of the kind if its transcendental perceptions—wholly unrelated as they are to the phenomena with which intellect is able to deal—are ever to be grasped by the surface consciousness. Sometimes the symbol and the perception which it represents become fused in that consciousness; and the mystic’s experience then presents itself to him as “visions” or “voices”.

The mystic, as a rule, cannot wholly do without symbol and image, inadequate to his vision though they must always be: for his experience must be expressed if it is to be communicated, and its actuality is inexpressible except in some side-long way, some hint or parallel which will stimulate the dormant intuition of the reader, and convey, as all poetic language does, something beyond its surface sense. Hence the large part which is played in all mystical writings by symbolism and imagery; and also by that rhythmic and exalted language which induces in sensitive persons something of the languid ecstasy of dream. The close connection between rhythm and heightened states of consciousness is as yet little understood. Its further investigation will probably throw much light on ontological as well as psychological problems. Mystical, no less than musical and poetic perception, tends naturally—we know not why—to present itself in rhythmical periods: a feature which is also strongly marked in writings obtained in the automatic state.

All kinds of symbolic language come naturally to the articulate mystic, who is often a literary artist as well: so naturally, that he sometimes forgets to explain that his utterance is but symbolic—a desperate attempt to translate the truth of that world into the beauty of this. It is here that mysticism joins hands with music and poetry: had this fact always been recognized by its critics, they would have been saved from many regrettable and some ludicrous misconceptions. Symbol—the clothing which the spiritual borrows from the material plane—is a form of artistic expression. That is to say, it is not literal but suggestive.

Further, the study of the mystics, the keeping company however humbly with their minds, brings with it as music or poetry does—but in a far greater degree—a strange exhilaration, as if we were brought near to some mighty source of Being, were at last on the verge of the secret which all seek. The symbols displayed, the actual words employed, when we analyse them, are not enough to account for such effect. It is rather that these messages from the waking transcendental self of another, stir our own deeper selves in their sleep. It were hardly an extravagance to say, that those writings which are the outcome of true and first-hand mystical experience may be known by this power of imparting to the reader the sense of exalted and extended life.

Returning to our original undertaking, that of defining if we can the characteristics of true mysticism, I propose to set out, illustrate and, I hope, justify four rules or notes which may be applied as tests to any given case which claims to take rank amongst the mystics.

1. True mysticism is active and practical, not passive and theoretical. It is an organic life-process, a something which the whole self does; not something as to which its intellect holds an opinion.

2. Its aims are wholly transcendental and spiritual. It is in no way concerned with adding to, exploring, re-arranging, or improving anything in the visible universe. The mystic brushes aside that universe, even in its supernormal manifestations. Though he does not, as his enemies declare, neglect his duty to the many, his heart is always set upon the changeless One.

3. This One is for the mystic, not merely the Reality of all that is, but also a living and personal Object of Love; never an object of exploration. It draws his whole being homeward, but always under the guidance of the heart.

4. Living union with this One—which is the term of his adventure—is a definite state or form of enhanced life. It is obtained neither from an intellectual realization of its delights, nor from the most acute emotional longings. Though these must be present they are not enough. It is arrived at by an arduous psychological and spiritual process—the so-called Mystic Way—entailing the complete remaking of character and the liberation of a new, or rather latent, form of consciousness; which imposes on the self the condition which is sometimes inaccurately called “ecstasy,” but is better named the Unitive State.

Mysticism, then, is not an opinion: it is not a philosophy. It has nothing in common with the pursuit of occult knowledge. On the one hand it is not merely the power of contemplating Eternity: on the other, it is not to be identified with any kind of religious queerness. It is the name of that organic process which involves the perfect consummation of the Love of God: the achievement here and now of the immortal heritage of man. Or, if you like it better—for this means exactly the same thing—it is the art of establishing his conscious relation with the Absolute.

The movement of the mystic consciousness towards this consummation, is not merely the sudden admission to an overwhelming vision of Truth: though such dazzling glimpses may from time to time be vouchsafed to the soul. It is rather an ordered movement towards ever higher levels of reality, ever closer identification with the Infinite. “The mystic experience,” says Récéjac, “ends with the words, ‘I live, yet not I, but God in me.’ This feeling of identification, which is the term of mystical activity, has a very important significance. In its early stages the mystic consciousness feels the Absolute in opposition to the Self . . . as mystic activity goes on, it tends to abolish this opposition. . . . When it has reached its term the consciousness finds itself possessed by the sense of a Being at one and the same time greater than the Self and identical with it: great enough to be God, intimate enough to be me.”

This is that mystic union which is the only possible fulfilment of mystic love: since

“All that is not One must ever
Suffer with the wound of Absence
And whoever in Love’s city
Enters, finds but room for One
And but in One-ness, Union.”

The history of mysticism is the history of the demonstration of this law upon the plane of reality.

To sum up. Mysticism is seen to be a highly specialized form of that search for reality, for heightened and completed life, which we have found to be a constant characteristic of human consciousness. It is largely prosecuted by that “spiritual spark,” that transcendental faculty which, though the life of our life, remains below the threshold in ordinary men. Emerging from its hiddenness in the mystic, it gradually becomes the dominant factor in his life; subduing to its service, and enhancing by its saving contact with reality, those vital powers of love and will which we attribute to the heart, rather than those of mere reason and perception, which we attribute to the head. Under the spur of this love and will, the whole personality rises in the acts of contemplation and ecstasy to a level of consciousness at which it becomes aware of a new field of perception. By this awareness, by this “loving sight,” it is stimulated to a new life in accordance with the Reality which it has beheld.

Image: Solitary Tree, by Dennis Frates.

Christmas greetings

2010-12-24T18:50:00.004+05:30

Here is Mr Pascal, by the British animation film artist Alison de Vere. This shall remain an immortal classic, and there's no better time to watch it than Christmas!

Christmas greetings to everyone, and may the occasion spur us to seek and find the child within us.

Anjan Ghosh memorial lecture

2010-12-07T10:43:00.006+05:30

The Sociological Association, West Bengal is organising the first Anjan Ghosh Memorial Lecture. Anjan, a social scientist, teacher, activist and public intellectual, passed away suddenly 6 months ago, and today it's only clearer that the void he left can never be filled.

The lecture will be delivered by sociologist and historian, Ramachandra Guha, a former student of Anjan Ghosh. The title of the lecture: "The Tragedy of the Indian Adivasis".

Date: Sat, 18 December 2011
Venue: St Xavier's College auditorium, 30 Park Street, Calcutta
Time: 2 30 pm

All are invited to attend.

There is also another lecture in memory of Anjan Ghosh:

Professor Gyanendra Pandey, Professor in History, Emory University, Atlanta, USA

will give a talk titled

"Subalternity of Difference or the Difference of Subalternity"

Date: Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Time: 3 -5 PM.

Venue: Seminar Room, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences (CSSSC) , Patuli, Calcutta.

Fiscal Crisis in West Bengal

2010-12-07T10:42:00.003+05:30

The Statesman, Kolkata, carried a two-part article, yesterday and today, titled "In Fiscal Straits" on the fiscal crisis of West Bengal. The author, Bibekananda Ray, is a retired civil servant.

I am reproducing the articles here.

..........

Bengal Subsists On Overdrafts And Loans

The media and Opposition leaders have, for some time, been describing West Bengal as a bankrupt state because of the huge public debt the Left Front has incurred over the past 33 years. They claim that if an Opposition party or alliance forms the next government in 2011, it will be hamstrung by this debt and cumulative interest. On 3 July, Siddhartha Shankar Ray had remarked: “If West Bengal were put on auction now, there would be no buyer.”

The state has been facing a crisis since mid-November 2010. Continuously for a week, it took overdrafts from the Reserve Bank, forcing the finance minister to run to Delhi, take recourse to another market loan, raise excise duties and slash non-plan expenditure. Unless the Centre clears the controversial dues on account of coal royalty, West Bengal will be on the threshold of bankruptcy.

On 31 March this year, the state’s cumulative internal debt stood at Rs 192,499.77 crore; it has now exceeded Rs 194,000 crore. West Bengal is now the leading internal debtor among general-category states and the second largest borrower of Central loans (after Uttar Pradesh). It used to be behind UP and Maharashtra in the volume of Central loans, but in March this year it overtook Maharashtra. This reality has not been mentioned in the state budgets or the Economic Reviews and Statistical Appendices since the 1990s. Nor for that matter has it ever been disclosed by the finance minister, Dr Asim Dasgupta. The state exchequer has always been in a precarious condition since 1977. Once, a substantial loan had to be taken from a private insurance company to pay the wage and pension of government employees. In 2000-01, the state took a staggering 134 overdrafts from the RBI.

Most general category states take loans from the RBI and the market because their revenue receipts are generally less than revenue expenditures and cannot meet the development needs of a welfare state. Article 292 of the Constitution has set parliamentary limits and guarantees on public borrowing by the Centre and the states. What is unique about West Bengal is the large volume of its internal debt which can hardly be repaid by any government, unless the state enhances the rates of taxes, introduces new imposts or finds some other means of increasing revenues or reducing expenditure. On the contrary, the interest paid annually on the debt accounts for a large chunk of the government’s revenue, holding up development.

The 1977-78 vote-on-account budget before the June 1977 election showed a surplus of Rs 23.9 crore. This means that in 25 years (excluding the five years of three spells of President’s rule, two UF regimes and one led by Dr PC Ghosh) the Congress government incurred a cumulative deficit of Rs 17976.1 crore. In just eight more years, seven Left Front governments incurred a debt of nearly Rs 2 lakh crore rupees. The finance minister admits that a child born in West Bengal today has on its head a staggering state loan of Rs 22,000.

The Left regime has had two finance ministers ~ Ashok Mitra (1977-86) and Dr Asim Dasgupta thereafter. Mr Mitra resigned, following differences with Jyoti Basu on a particular issue, one that neither disclosed. Basu picked Dr Dasgupta, then an MIT-trained professor of Calcutta University. He contested the Assembly election in 1987 as a CPI-M nominee. A committed and hard-working Marxist, he was Basu’s favourite. Though Basu retired on 3 November 2000, he had to intervene to ensure his continuance in Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s cabinet after the 2006 election. The party gave him one year to show results. The employment scenario was grim and he had to dole out state largesse to keep the electorate happy. In the net, the exchequer was depleted. The government’s internal debt has risen to alarming levels over the past two decades. The jugglery with figures hasn’t helped.

Eight out of Mr Mitra’s nine years as finance minister saw budget deficits, but in 1986-87, he was able to show a surplus. The net deficit during his tenure was about Rs 9195.6 crore. Since 1988, after Dr Dasgupta took over, deficits went up considerably as revenue receipts had a free fall against revenue expenditures. From 1986 to 1991, the net deficit was Rs 19358.5 crore, but in the next five years (1991-96), it more than doubled to Rs 40844.3 crore and in the next five years (1996-2001), it went up by more than six times to Rs 261540.8 crore. The three kinds of deficit ~ fiscal, revenue and primary ~ peaked in 1999-2000, comprising 9.2 per cent, 7.3 per cent and 5.9 per cent of GSDP. The primary reason was the enhanced pay and pension to about 10 lakh government employees and over four lakh pensioners. He resorted to zero-deficit budgeting for four years ~ from 1988 to 1992, i.e. by not carrying forward the loans and deficits of previous years. In a mid-term fiscal reforms programme, signed with the Centre, he promised to contain expenditure by banning creation of new posts, freezing subsidies, limiting the rise in pension and holding back additional DA for retired and serving employees. As it turned out, he redeemed none of them.

The Asian Development Bank, after a joint study of the state’s economy in 2005, drew a fiscal consolidation programme which was also not followed. He has admitted to a shortfall in the collection of “Own Tax Revenue” since 1999.

West Bengal’s present internal debt of about Rs 194,000 crore is about 16 per cent of India’s. The state’s revenue deficit was steady at 3.1 per cent of the GSDP from 2005-06, but declined from the following year at the rate of 2.7 per cent. The 13th Finance Commission has advised the state to bring it down to 1.6 per cent in 2011-12, and to zero in 2014-15. The fiscal deficit, which was 4.1 per cent of the GSDP in 2005-06, fell to 3.7 per cent in 2007-08 and is targeted to be further brought down to 3 per cent in 2014-15. The state’s outstanding debt was 42 per cent of the GSDP in 2009-10; the Finance Commission has fixed a target of 40.6 per cent in the current year and of 34.3 per cent in 2014-15. On 31 March this year, its outstanding loan from the National Small Savings Fund (NSSF) was Rs 55430.60 crore; the interest payable with the reset rates will be Rs 4988.75 crore.

The collection of state taxes is increasing, but the cost is high and evasion widespread. A whopping Rs 263 crore is spent on collecting Rs 993 crore of land revenue. The current year’s budget estimates tax revenue of nearly Rs 35213.8 crore, which will be Rs 6647 crore more than the revised estimate of 2009-10. It estimates receipts worth Rs 63.34 crore on account of loans and advances to 37 categories and an outgo of over Rs 14018.49 crore on payment of interests on sundry loans, funds and advances, of which over Rs 11953 crore will go to pay interest on internal debt alone. The current year’s budget estimate covers 61 types of loans to various departments and institutions. West Bengal did not enact the FRBM (Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management), as recommended by the 12th Finance Commission. Nor did it avail of the commission’s offer of debt or interest relief on Central loans since 2005-06, but it was granted waiver of debt and pre-payment for 2008-09. In the text of the FRBM Bill, drafted by the finance department, the government admits that it has not been possible to ensure prudence in fiscal management and fiscal stability by making the enactment during the tenure of the 12th Finance Commission. The Bill will impose strict borrowing curbs on the present and next governments.

The Net Result Of Reckless Populism

To understand its gravity, West Bengal’s outstanding debt position needs to be examined in the context of the country and other states. The Government of India has also incurred enormous internal and external debt. Yet their servicing has not impeded the spending on development. In terms of public debt, which is the cumulative total of all government borrowings less repayments in rupee, India ranks 34th. In external debt, the country ranks fifth in the world ~ after China, Russia, Turkey and Brazil.

In West Bengal, subsidies and populist measures were almost the order of the day ever since the Left Front took over. In last year’s budget, the total subsidy stood at Rs 422 crore. The latest sop is a pension scheme with accident insurance benefit for 15 lakh transport workers, to be financed by the cess of Rs 2 per litre of diesel and of 45 paise per litre of kerosene. Soon after the massive defeat of Left parties in the municipal election, a “land gift scheme” was revived. Every landless family will be given up to five cottahs (about 3500 sq ft) of arable land, buying it at up to 25 per cent more of the market price. In 1981, school education up to class XII was made free. To woo the electorate, the Left Front pursued a policy of appeasement instead of putting in place long-term infrastructure.

Unemployment allowance was introduced in 1978; widow and disability allowances followed. Dr Asim Dasgupta recently announced a 70 per cent increase in the salaries of college and university teachers. At least 331 posts of teachers were created in government colleges, in accordance with the GK Chaddha Committee recommendation.

Soon after taking over as finance minister, Dr Dasgupta abolished octroi (re-introduced last year) and the highway toll. Public undertakings were heavily subsidised to keep them running despite losses. The State Transport Corporations, for instance, have not earned a profit for the last five years; the total deficit since 2005 is Rs 518.42 crore.

The government has effected a marked increase in recruitment after the Left Front debacle in 2009. An urban employment scheme has also been announced with an initial outlay of Rs 250 crore. Another subsidy of Rs 422 crore has also been announced to sell rice and potato at Rs 2 a kg to BPL card-holders. The joint operation against Maoists is another unproductive expenditure. The CRPF recently demanded nearly Rs 7.5 crore for the first six months of its deployment in Lalgarh ~ up to December 2009 ~ on account of salary, accommodation, vehicles and fuel. The CRPF currently sends a monthly bill of Rs 1.25 crore.

West Bengal’s unspent public fund has been the highest among the states; in five years from 1995, it came to nearly Rs 8249 crore; in the same period, funds wasted and blocked amounted to nearly Rs 1349 crore and Rs 4237 crore, respectively. State employees have been pampered. On 27 May 1980, the code of conduct for government employees, a British legacy, was abolished and they were granted trade union rights, including the right to call and observe a strike The confidential report system, also a British legacy, was done away with. When Nelson Mandela visited Kolkata soon after his release in 1990, the third Left Front government advanced a donation of $5 million to facilitate the reconstruction of South Africa.

There has been a sharp increase in the salaries of state government employees and teachers following the implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission’s recommendations.

The current budget proposes an internal debt of Rs 36721.09 crore and a loan of Rs 63.34 crore, altogether Rs 36784.43 crore. Early this year, the state floated a market loan of Rs 2000 crore through the sale of bonds. The World Bank has agreed to lend Rs 920 crore to the gram panchayats in nine districts. The state government will provide a matching Rs 80 crore. To woo the Muslims, now veering towards the Trinamul, the Plan outlay for the Department of Minority Affairs and Madrasa Education has been increased from Rs 121 crore in 2009 to Rs 300 crore this year. The monthly pension of the old, disabled, widows, artisans, handloom weavers, farmers and fishermen has been raised from Rs 750 to Rs 1000. The exemption of VAT on sugar has been extended to 31 March 2011. Subsidy on electricity and foodgrain for the poor has been increased. To mop up excise revenue, licences have been issued to open foreign and country liquor shops.

The food minister announced that infirm BPL cardholders would receive 10 kg of rice every month free of cost. Duty has been imposed on cotton thread at the rate of one per cent of the cotton price under a 2002 Act which defines cotton as an agricultural product. A drive to collect property and services tax from rural households by panchayats began in 2003, raising the per capita average tax to Rs 21.64 with a target to collect Rs 300-400 crore.

Statistics do not convey the magnitude of the financial crisis in West Bengal. Populism has neutralised the occasional directives on austerity. As D Bandyopadhyay, former Union Revenue Secretary, has pointed out, a revenue deficit is more dangerous than fiscal. Unless the trend is checked, West Bengal will find itself caught in a debt trap... and ultimately, bankruptcy. So much for the fiscal position after 34 years of Left rule.

Domestic Work

2010-12-07T10:40:00.003+05:30

Paddy Processer

Rice Maker

The International Labour Organsiation, New Delhi, is organising a photo exhibition shortly on the theme "Your Work is Important", as part of its project on domestic workers. The two pictures above, by my dear friend, Sheikh Jan Mohammad, have been selected for the exhibition.

Keep it up Jan!

Where The Wild Things Are (Not)

2010-11-06T12:43:00.014+05:30

I read Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are only in 1996 or so. My brother-in-law, Tom, had sent it for my son, Rituraj, who was four or five. But it was only a few years later that I really got engrossed in the book and story. I had been in Jerusalem on work, and in the end of my stay, had visited the Holocaust Museum. There I learnt about Dr Janusz Korczak, in the Warsaw ghetto, and then read about him in the book The King of Children. Talking about my visit to the museum with colleagues in my office, the idea of a film took shape in my mind, a musical, an animated musical, on Dr Korczak. Refusing to abandon the children who were his wards in his orphanage, he had walked along with them, all singing in chorus, to the gas chambers in Treblinka. For me, that would be the climax of the film, an expression of the indomitable, indefatigable human spirit, through which he rises from this mortal world, and temporal enemies, and becomes immortal. Yes, it was a terrifying, tragic moment, but also one of heroism, and hence a moment to celebrate, and thus honour. My colleagues wondered whether people could accept a celebratory musical on the holocaust, and referred to Life is Beautiful, which was then running in the cinema hall.

After my return to Calcutta and Talimi Haq School, in Howrah, Janusz Korczak was always on my mind. The idea of a drama production by the children of our school arose in my mind, from reading about such things done by Korszak. Somehow, in this context, the idea of doing a drama production of Where The Wild Things Are took root. For that is one heck of a book and story!

Written in 1963, it is about a naughty boy, Max, who is sent up to his room, as punishment, by his mother. And there begins his fantasy, this angry naughty boy's fantasy ... of being wild. And so he voyages, to where the wild things are, and has himself a wild, wild time, with the wild things, before returning home, and ... (I won't say more).

Where The Wild Things Are is one of the world's most read, most loved and most sold children's books.

The images in the book, of the wild characters, spurred within me the project of making costumes and stage props to bring the book to life with exactness, in a production titled "Jidhar Jangli Cheez Hain". All to be done by the children and their teachers. So, for several weeks I was in a world of my own, immersed in thinking about and planning the production and the fund-raising means to support all this.

Anyway, nothing happened. Life went on.

So, when some months ago, I learnt through television about a film version of Where the Wild Things Are, notwithstanding the general impassiveness with which I tend to relate to most things nowadays, it did evoke a feeling of interest and happy expectation. I got the film some days ago, and watched it yesterday.

One could say the film is based on the book. But it's NOT the book. Its much more, with all kinds of impositions to the very short, very simple story. In fact the story is so short, and so threadbare, while being so explosively full of fun and mischief and innocence, that it poses a challenge to any dramatiser or film-maker. While seeking to add substance to the original story so as to give something for the film to stand upon, it actually diminishes the original story. And that takes the cake. The film is something else altogether. As if driven by the logic of the unnecessary impositions, it goes on and on, and goes ... to some places ... which are not wild, just ... gimme a break, who wants to see this rubbish.

The whole point of the film is its name, which is the name of THE BOOK. So to see a film of that name and find something else - after one has invested goodwill to watch, and want to like it - is disapponting, annoying. Soon one begins to dislike it, and watches it probably only out of inertia, or out of academic interest, to see where else it goes. It drags, it hangs, it's unconvincing. As if the entire assembled cast have to somehow do something or the other to fill the time alotted for the film.

The little boy, Max, the central character of the story - tries his best, but he has no chance, given the mish-mash mess the screenplay is. So it ends up being a mis-cast.

Perhaps someone who has never read or SEEN the book may like things about the film. It is a lavish production, with an evidently generous budget, enough to see that no efforts were spared, in terms of locale, costumes, effects etc. Money, technology, expertise and creativity all came together under the name. The music and songs - are okay, but not great. That would anyway be another big challenge for any production. In this film, the music and songs do not really take up that challenge.

The film is too long, and needlessly so. Why could it not have been a much, much shorter film? One could do justice to it through animation. But there is also the short film medium. I have no doubt all the lovers of the book would have tried to see and obtain the short film. It could have been a classic. But to decide upon a long film format, a priori, and then alter the story till it is almost unrecognizable in terms of its essentials ... is inexcusable.

In the end, when the credits appear, one learns that the film was co-produced by Maurice Sendak himself. That seems unbelievable. If he allowed the film to appear with his title and his name, one assumes he stands by the film. One wonders how he could have done that. It is also co-produced by, surprise, Tom Hanks! I wonder what he thinks about the film. Is there something I missed? Did they have no idea what a let-down the film is, how it devalues Sendak's brilliant work, and how it diminishes one's goodwill towards him?

One wonders while watching the film - is there something helplessly unstoppable in Hollywood whereby this happens? Whereby what is poor at core, in conception, is wrapped in very expensive trappings? Just because money is there? I had wanted just a small amount of money, to devote specifically to celebrating that book, but that was not to be. Now one understands why JD Salinger never allowed his Catcher in the Rye to be made into a film. I hope this film marks the final burial of Hollywood in my consciousness.

Maurice Sendak has sold himself terribly short.

Thankfully the book remains, and shall remain, long after the film is well-forgotten. Or perhaps it should not be forgotten. It should be a classic How Not To Make film. Maurice Sendak will thankfully continue to be known as the book's creator, despite his error of judgement with the film. The film being forgotten - will also protect the goodwill he enjoys from his readers.

Where The Wild Things Are will continue to inspire creative artists to bring it alive in a fitting manner, so that the viewers love and celebrate that rendition. It poses a terrific creative challenge. But few productions can have the benefit of a name as powerful as that.

Perhaps the best rendition of Where The Wild Things Are would be a musical stage production, by, of and for children, undertaken by oneself. Where producing it as as wild as the book.

I wait, and meanwhile I imagine. There, where perfection is possible, where wild things are.

Farewell, P. Lal

2010-11-04T08:07:00.011+05:30

Calcutta lost one of her illustrious sons yesterday, when Purushottam Lal, teacher of literature, poet, writer, trans-creator and publisher, passed away yesterday, at the age of 81.

A magnetic personality, he had inspired generations of students, poets and writers. He represented the best of Calcutta's cosmopolitanism and intellectual vitality.

He shall be deeply missed, and Calcutta will never be the same again.

The Alumni Association of St. Xavier's College (where Professor Lal taught for a substantial portion of his life) will hold a memorial service for him on Saturday, 13th November at 3 PM.

My earlier post on Prof Lal is here.

Read P. Lal's obituary in The Economist here.

The Boy, the Slum, and the Pan's Lids

2010-10-17T10:53:00.007+05:30

Thanks to the Kalpanirjhar Short Films Festival held annually in Calcutta, a few years ago I was fortunate to see the film The Boy, the Slum, and the Pan's Lids (1995), directed by Cao Hamburger, of Brazil.

Just five minutes in duration, this is an amazing, awsome and uplifting little film, simply brilliant in conception and crafting. Little wonder then, that it has received many awards from across the world.

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I just discovered that one can watch it online.

See the film here.

A Moment of Silence

2010-09-16T11:17:00.005+05:30

by Emmanuel Ortiz

Before I begin this poem, I’d like to ask you to join me in a moment of silence in honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001.
I would also like to ask you to offer up a moment of silence for all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned, disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes, for the victims in Afghanistan, Iraq, in the U.S., and throughout the world.
And if I could just add one more thing…
A full day of silence… for the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of U.S.-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation.
Six months of silence… for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of malnourishment or starvation as a result of a 12-year U.S. embargo against the country.
… And now, the drums of war beat again.
Before I begin this poem, two months of silence… for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa, where “homeland security”
made them aliens in their own country
Nine months of silence… for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where death rained down and peeled back every layer of
concrete, steel, earth and skin, and the survivors went on as if alive.
A year of silence… for the millions of dead in Viet Nam —a people, not a war—for those who know a thing or two about the
scent of burning fuel, their relatives bones buried in it, their babies born of it.
Two months of silence… for the decades of dead in Colombia, whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have
piled up and slipped off our tongues.
Before I begin this poem,
Seven days of silence… for El Salvador
A day of silence… for Nicaragua
Five days of silence… for the Guatemaltecos
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years.
45 seconds of silence… for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas …
1,933 miles of silence… for every desperate body
That burns in the desert sun
Drowned in swollen rivers at the pearly gates to the Empire’s underbelly,
A gaping wound sutured shut by razor wire and corrugated steel.
25 years of silence… for the millions of Africans who found their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could poke
into the sky.
For those who were strung and swung from the heights of sycamore trees
In the south … the north … the east … the west …
There will be no dna testing or dental records to identify their remains.
100 years of silence… for the hundreds of millions of indigenous people
From this half of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears
Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the refrigerator of our consciousness …
From somewhere within the pillars of power
You open your mouths to invoke a moment of our silence
And we are all left speechless,
Our tongues snatched from our mouths,
Our eyes stapled shut.
A moment of silence,
And the poets are laid to rest,
The drums disintegrate into dust.
Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence…
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won’t be.
Not like it always has been.
… Because this is not a 9-11 poem
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem…
This is a 1492 poem.
This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written.
And if this is a 9/11 poem, then
This is a September 11th 1973 poem for Chile.
This is a September 12th 1977 poem for Steven Biko in South Africa.
This is a September 13th 1971 poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York.
This is a September 14th 1992 poem for the people of Somalia.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground amidst the ashes of amnesia.
This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told,
The 110 stories that history uprooted from its textbooks
The 110 stories that that cnn, bbc, The New York Times, and Newsweek ignored.
This is a poem for interrupting this program.
This is not a peace poem,
Not a poem for forgiveness.
This is a justice poem,
A poem for never forgetting.
This is a poem to remind us
That all that glitters
Might just be broken glass.
And still you want a moment of silence for the dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves,
The lost languages,
The uprooted trees and histories,
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children …
Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.
So if you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines, the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights
Delete the e-mails and instant messages
Derail the trains, ground the planes.
If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window
of Taco Bell
And pay the workers for wages lost.
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the penthouses
and the Playboys.
If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July,
During Dayton’s 13 hour sale,
The next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful brown people have gathered.
You want a moment of silence
Then take it
Now,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence.
Take it.
Take it all.
But don’t cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime.
And we,
Tonight,
We will keep right on singing
For our dead.

Emmanuel Ortiz is a third-generation Chicano/Puerto Rican/Irish-American community organizer and spoken word poet. He is the author of a chapbook of poems, The Word Is a Machete (self-published, 2003), and co-editor of Under What Bandera?: Anti-War Ofrendas from Minnesota y Califas (Calaca Press, 2004). He is a founding member of Palabristas: Latin@ Word Slingers, a collective of Latin@ poets in Minnesota. Emmanuel has lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Oakland, California; and the Arizona/Mexico border. He currently lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the “buckle of the Bible Belt,” with his two dogs, Nogi and Cuca. In his spare time, he enjoys guacamole, soccer, and naps.

The book is out!

2010-07-21T14:13:00.021+05:30

The Golden Gandhi Statue from America: Early Stories, by Subimal Misra, translated by V Ramaswamy, Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers India, 2010. Price: Rs 199.

The collection includes fifteen stories, written by Subimal Misra during 1968-73, a turbulent period in the history of Calcutta and West Bengal.

Review in New Indian Express, Chennai.

Review in The Statesman, Calcutta

Review in The Telegraph, Calcutta.

Review in Afternoon Despatch & Courier, Mumbai.

Review in Times of India.

Review in the blog Jabberwock.

Review in the blog Writers Read.

Review in the e-zine Muse India.

Review in the e-zine Book Reviews For Booklovers By Booklovers.

Subimal Misra interview in Tehelka.

Arunava Sinha's comment.

My deepest thanks to everyone who made this book possible.

The book can be purchased online and from leading bookshops in the metro cities (of India).

The project to translate the short fiction of Subimal Misra continues.

Spivak lecture in Calcutta

2010-07-05T09:58:00.003+05:30

Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor and a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University, will deliver the Fifth Dilip Kumar Roy Memorial Lecture in Calcutta, titled "To Construct a Personal Past: Pages from a Memoir".

Date: Friday, 9 July 2010
Time: 6 pm
Venue: Sri Aurobindo Institute of Culture, 3 Regent Park (near Ranikuthi), Tollygunge, Calcutta 700040

The programme is organised by Hari Krishna Mandir Trust, Pune and Sri Aurobindo Institute of Culture, Calcutta.

Translation adda

2010-06-25T15:56:00.013+05:30

DU: It seems to me that translation, either Bangla-English or English-Bangla, must aspire to blend into the social milieu of the language it is being translated in. I remember some of the exquisite translations of English (a lot of them translations themselves from German and French) poetry into Bangla by Buddhadeb Bosu and Sudhindranath Dutta, where they translated some very Western mythic allusions into some comparable Indian/Bengali mythology that retained the spirit and the meaning of the original but cannot be called a "translation" in the strict sense of the term, though that is what they were trying to do. It seems to me that the translator must get to the spiritual heart of the text rather than try to convey the typical cultural intonations or local differences. Yes, something will be lost. But it is upto the translator to make up for that loss in terms of his/her knowledge of the social milieu of the language into which the translation is being made by rendering the untranslatable into another untranslatable. The translator is the bridge. A bridge helps you to cross from one side to the other, but does not merge one side into the other.

DE: I fully agree, but translating prose and verse are obviously so different. We all know about Rabindranath's description of poetry translation as expressing love through an attorney. William Radice has turned out to be a pretty good attorney though. But some bridges can very nearly merge both sides, figuratively and otherwise.

AD: I prefer Snoopy as an attorney!

PR: Some of the Old Man's translations of his own work make one cringe (like when you have a long wait at the Rabindra Sadan metro station!

DE: I agree with both of you. Our poet/singer/painter minister should do something about it. Looking forward to Snoopy's attorneying. Playwright grandnephew CM should recommend.

DU: Yes, I agree that translating prose and verse are different. I was talking more about the spirit of the act of translation itself. A translator is just like an anthropologist. An anthropologist can never render the "truth" of the other culture, only his/her representation of it in another language by using tropes of that language. Or how would they reach their audience? Ultimately the moral responsibility of being "truthful" has to be borne by the translator/ anthropologist alone.

RA: Can habitual liars be translators / anthropologists?! What about story-tellers?

DU: Anthropology as a discipline has defined itself as different from story-tellers. There is that all important issue of empiricity. A habitual liar can for all professional purposes be an anthropologist, and unless caught lying, may even be a very successful one. But Anthropology does not identify with story-telling.

There have been immense debates in the Western Anthropological circles about Margaret Mead's not-so-truthful ethnography of the Samoas. That is where self-reflexive anthropology - which then degenerated into near-soliloqui or just an exchange among people who know the jargon - got its start. Not that anthropologists have ever been anything but self-reflexive, or even could be, but "self-reflexivity" came to be publicly recognized as almost a genre at this point of time.

RA: Ok, now if an anthropologist is studying a story-teller (like a griot) - we have two levels of mediation! By rules of probability, the likelihood of "truth" is multiplicatively reduced!

DU: Yes, true :-) And then the Anthropologist will have to make the truth of the untruth explicit through her writing.

AD: I believe it has been observed that in Italian a Translator = Traduttore, which is quite close to a Betrayer =Traditore.

DU: Retelling, in whatever mode, always contain the possibility of a betrayal. The Italians are wise people.

RA: Are the Italians wise ... or merely truthful (about their lying)?

PR: I propose to print some T-shirts saying, THE LIE IS THE TRUTH OF OUR TIME. Am open to selling shares in the undertaking. Sell it online and at plenary sessions of all political parties, scientific and technology associations and religious rallies.

RA: And is HONESTY the greatest LIE of our time (or all time)?

DE: Its all MAYA!

AD: Could you please make some T-shirts with the line: "... eat the same".

Why? Well, on Bishnupur rail station, which is the jumping off point for the Ramakrishna - Saradamoni Tour, an enthusiastic station master once had large translated quotations carved in cement; the most famous being "Aam khete eyechis, Aam kheye jaa!"

Being a dedicated bureaucrat, on one platform he translated: "You have come to eat mangoes", and on the other: "Eat the same"

DE: Sadly, this time in South Africa, the Italians' wisdom failed miserably, or was it a case of traditore?

RA: The Italy team failed to translate potential into victory ... were they honest about their failings?

DE: Maybe it depends on whether those tears were honest?

India erupts

2010-06-21T14:57:00.010+05:30

For some years now, I have been concerned about the situation in India, and the possibility of the eruption of blind, destructive violence against the system and all its vested interests.

We have Maoist insurgency in various parts of the country, which the prime minister of India had described as independent India's most serious security threat. But the Maoist insurgency had not yet been expressed in destructive violence against the system at large. The so-called Jehadi violence in India has been of the latter character. Maoist violence had not yet become like Jihadi violence. Maoist action had also become enmeshed in mafia operations, the latter being a general feature of India.

But some recent incidents have thrown up the question of whether Maoist insurgency has now turned into blind violence. A passenger train was derailed in West Bengal, allegedly by the Maoists, and a goods train came and rammed the derailed train coaches, resulting in a massive loss of life. In another incident, an entire bus was blown up in Chhattisgarh, because some of the passengers were security personnel. Here too, a large number of civilians died. Hence, I have been preoccupied with this question, of whether the violence of poverty, disparity and exclusion is finally going to cause a volcanic eruption of destructive violence against everything.

From what I see around me, living in Calcutta, it seems we are living under the shadow of looming violence. A civil war, where the have-nots finally turn against the haves. Once something like that erupts, we are in for successive rounds of ever more ferocious blood-letting. No good will come of all that, and India's future as a pluralist democracy would be under severe risk. Life in India would become like what life is like now for people in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But the question is, can the necessary changes that must take place in India, which have NOT taken place in the 63 years since India's independence - can such change happen, before the destructive violence erupts? Things like education, healthcare, housing, drinking water, sanitation, public transport. Equal opportunity for all irrespective of their socio-economic circumstances.

I do not see that on the horizon, quite the reverse actually. Neither the govt, nor the private business sector has any such inclusive vision. The civil society is weak and fractured, and divided by caste and religion. It has no influence in public policy. I do not see the possibility of civil disobedience, of a non-violent uprising by the country's educated section, the middle-class and the intelligentsia, to compell the state to act in favour of the poor and marginalised, and to put in place in the system the means for a basic level of equity.

Those of us who have a vision of a more equitable and truly democratic India, and know that only a non-violent social revolution can realise that, and that this means an inner awakening in every individual - we shall do and keep doing whatever we can towards that goal, whatever the odds. We have no other alternative, in the sense that this is the only thing we are able to do. Like ants.

Rahul has written a fitting "song of the ant".

Farewell, Saramago

2010-06-19T10:12:00.012+05:30

Jose Saramago, the Portuguese novelist and Nobel Prize winner (1998) passed away yesterday, at the age of 87.

I first read Saramago only in 2006 (his novel Blindness). But in the four years since then, I have read seven more of his novels. I have not read so many books of very many writers. The last one I read, only recently, was The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. Born in a family of landless peasants, Saramago was a late bloomer as a novelist (a first novel, published when he was 23, was followed by 30 years of silence). He became a full-time writer only in his late 50s, after working variously as a garage mechanic, a welfare agency bureaucrat, a printing production manager, a proofreader, a translator and a newspaper columnist.

Every book of Saramago's is a delight to read, though the subjects are not so delightful: an epidemic of blindness (Blindness); the destruction of community by commercial development (The Cave); human obsessions and behaviour in bizarre circumstances (All the Names, The Double); citizens' ballot-box revolt against the system (Seeing); the suspension of dying (Death With Interruptions); the separation of the Iberian peninsula from Europe (The Stone Raft); or the story of a human Jesus Christ. In every book, Saramago looks unflinchingly at life, with his unique gaze and diction. Reading a book of Saramago's is an elevating experience, a journey exploring the geography of the human spirit.

Farewell Jose Saramago!

Read the obituary in The Economist here.

Read Saramago's autobiographical essay in the Nobel Prize site here.

Cycling

2010-06-16T13:35:00.006+05:30

London World Naked Bike Ride event, in London,
on 12 June 2010. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

D: This is really lovely!

R: India te-o erom jodi hoto - taley activism e onek lok ashto!

D: Shudhu cheshta korar dorkar - lok aashbe. kintu amader 'activist-neta' praani eto bheetu ki shob kothay boley "lok toiri noy", jokhon ki sotyo kotha to ei ki ora neejerai toiri noy...

R: Kichu ta hochhey o, recently, Bombay te ekta cycle rally holo, young people der, shobai super-hero costume porey cycle korchhilo. Mojaar ghotona, with a message. Amaar ek chaatri, o passionate "active transport" and cycle-related public policy niye lorey jachhey, and besh kichu accomplish korey jachhey. Ekebare "non-political" meye ta, tobu o...

Neta-netri ... joto kom bola jaay, toto bhaalo!

D: Kolkatar ghotonar opor jodi kono report achhe to pathiye dao. Kaaje aashbe. Ekhaneo lokera cycle rally korechhe. BRT niye lorai cholechhe.

R: Kolkatay cyclists der obosthya ekhon bhishon jotil. Onek jaygay cycling banned, dhorey niye jaay. Ami kono din gaari chaalai ni, onek bochor cycle e ghora-phera kortam. Ekhon sheyta korte partam na, raastay jayga nei, gaari eto beshi, jiboner risk prochur. Dekhi, didimoni-ra ashaar por, ebong ekhon thekei, notun mayor ke diye, ki kora jaay.

This India is not incredible

2010-06-14T16:24:00.004+05:30

Bhopal news leakage disaster

by Rajinder Puri

The Statesman

In Bhopal, leaking gas killed people. From Bhopal, leaking news is killing reputations. Arjun Singh ordered the release of Warren Anderson after earlier arresting him. Why did he do that? He is under a cloud. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asked his ministers to consider the Dow Chemical proposal to waive its financial liability in lieu of helping obtain foreign investment in India. He is under a cloud. Chief Justice Ahmedi who reduced the criminal liability in the Bhopal case later headed the hospital trust set up by the accused. This was gross violation of judicial propriety. He is under a cloud. Chidambaram and Kamal Nath lobbied for Dow Chemical with the government to write off the compensation for Bhopal victims due from it in return for promised foreign investment. Both are under a cloud – but enough! There is little point in mentioning names. Why pick on a few individuals? The entire political class is under a cloud.

However Rajiv Gandhi is not under a cloud. No Congress leader dares to name him. Rajiv was Prime Minister when Anderson was released in Bhopal. He was Prime Minister when Anderson was allowed to fly from Delhi to the USA. He was in Bhopal with Arjun Singh on the very day and at the very time when the latter reversed his earlier decision of arresting Anderson to order his release and fly him to Delhi in a State aircraft.

Rajiv Gandhi alone could have been responsible for the release of Anderson. The PM’s principal secretary PC Alexander has confirmed that the Cabinet meeting convened soon after the Bhopal gas tragedy did not refer to Anderson’s release. Congress spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan said: “I categorically deny involvement of the then central government.” She is right. Anderson’s release was not ordered by the Central government. It was ordered personally by Rajiv Gandhi who sat next to chief minister Arjun Singh in Bhopal when the latter addressed the press confirming Anderson’s arrest.

Rajiv Gandhi must bear ultimate responsibility for allowing the government’s claim for settlement of US$ 3.3 billion from Union Carbide to be whittled down to a paltry US$ 470 million that was eventually paid. The Supreme Court directed the final settlement of all litigation in the amount of US$ 470 million to be paid by 31 March, 1989. Both the Indian government and Union Carbide accepted the court's direction for payment of US$ 470 million. In May, 1989 the SC offered its rationale for the settlement. It stated that the compensation was higher than ordinarily payable under Indian law.

Did the honourable Judges pay any attention to international law? In the same year 1989 Exxon Valdez spilled 10.8 million gallons of crude oil in the waters near Alaska. Exxon had to shell out US$ 5 billion for a disaster in which no human lives were lost! Given our recent history it is legitimate to ask: was any amount in the huge gap between 3.3 billion US$ claimed by the government, and 470 million US$ received by it, pocketed by any politician? And let us not be surprised by the SC settlement. After all, the Supreme Court just months earlier overcame its doubts to sentence innocent Kehar Singh to death in the Indira Gandhi assassination case.

Let us not miss the wood for the trees. This issue is not about Rajiv Gandhi or the Congress. All our past political icons deserve scrutiny by scanner. The issue is no longer about the Bhopal gas disaster. The victims are no longer the 500,000 disabled or the 20,000 dead of Bhopal. The issue is the independence of India. The victims are the one billion plus citizens of India. They do not need compensation. They need revolution. They need liberation from the corrupt, venal ruling class that enriched itself by bartering the nation’s independence and self respect during the past six decades.

Yes, six decades! The time has come to recall all the disgraceful betrayals of the national interest since 1947 by those who have ruled us. The time has come to revisit history. The exposures of the Bhopal gas disaster present a defining moment. If India seeks remedy for its decadence and decline the diagnosis must be based upon truth. There is a generation of Indians ignorant of our history. It will need to acquaint itself with the truth. It is available for all those who seek it. If India’s new generation wants a future it will have to fight for it. It will have to fight for the future of the nation. Who knows, it may surprise history by doing just that.

Farewell Anjan

2010-06-07T11:34:00.022+05:30

Anjan Ghosh, social scientist, passed away suddenly on Saturday, 5 June 2010. He was 59. He had been diagnosed for leukemia about a month ago and was in hospital for chemo-therapy. He suffered a cardiac seizure early on Saturday morning. He leaves behind his mother, wife, Sweta, and daughter, Ragini.

Anjan was a professor at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC), one of the premier institutes in the country. But more than that, for over 30 years, Anjan had been a public intellectual in the true sense, and a supporter of people's struggles. He has written, but perhaps more significantly he also worked to keep alive well-known activist journals, like Frontier and Annya Artha.

Anjan graduated in English literature from St Xavier's College, Calcutta, and then did his MA and MPhil in sociology from the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. He taught at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, before joining CSSSC in the early 1980s. He completed his doctorate from the University of Michigan in the mid-90s.

It is also a personal loss for me. Anjan was a friend and also my wife, Rajashi's, uncle. Such a host of memories ...

I had received his spontaneous warm acceptance as a prospective newcomer to the family and to the domain of public activism in Calcutta. He had encouraged Sandip Bandyopadhyay and me when we wrote a report on the working conditions of labour on the Calcutta Metro project in 1985. It was from him that I learnt about the book Orality and Literacy, by Walter Ong. He was one of the few friends of mine who attended my marriage ceremony. When I was trying to ensure that the ceremony be a simple civil one, shorn of rituals and customs and the usual expenditures, Anjan had supported me wholeheartedly, He attended the house-warming get-together in 1986, when Rajashi and I first moved to rented premises in the city fringe. For several years I used to drop in at his house on 10 November, his daughter Ragini's birthday, whether invited or uninvited. We travelled together to attend a memorable seminar on "Development & Displacement" in 1987, organised by Prof RS Rao, at Sambalpur University. We both attended the farewell party hosted by a friend in 1988 for his CSSSC colleague, MSS Pandian. He also attended the important seminar on "Development Not Displacement", in Bokaro, in 1990, which I had helped to organise. At my request, he gave a talk to a group of students from Hong Kong University on a study visit to Calcutta in 1990. More recently, he had encouraged me when I took up translating the Bengali writer, Subimal Misra. He too had actively participated in two recent conferences organised by the CSSSC which I'd attended, one on "Migration, Diaspora & the City" and the other on "Muslim Situation in India".

So many common friends, shared jokes and hearty laughs, unforgettable discussions ...

Anjan was much loved as a teacher and friend, and was a mentor to many young researchers. A condolence meeting was organised at the CSSSC today afternoon. His colleagues and students, all of whom are still in a state of disbelief, spoke about his unique and endearing qualities. Anjan was a bibliophile, with a bibliographic-encyclopedic memory, which his colleagues came to rely on. He was totally committed to the CSSSC, as a knowledge institution, and served it as a loyal foot-soldier. He exemplified the Socratic tradition. For him, pursuit of knowledge was essentially a collaborative endeavour. He personified the engaged intellectual. The Bengali word aantorikota - intimate nature - describes him. Like a good Bengali, he loved adda (relaxed, free-flowing discussion). He was a scholar and a gentleman, a good and decent man, a caring and affectionate person. He was always ready to help his students and fellow-scholars. He was accessible and disarmingly friendly, with a generosity of spirit and warmth. A team man. A genuine and authentic person, with a love of humour, mirth and banter, a mischievious twinkle in his eyes.

He leaves behind a large number of teachers, friends, colleagues, fellow-activists and students who deeply mourn his untimely and shocking demise.

There will be a condolence gathering in memory of Anjan Ghosh on Sunday, 20 June, at 5 pm, at Jadunath Bhavan, Lake Terrace, Calcutta (former location of CSSSC).

Read Ramachandra Guha's tribute to his former teacher here.

Fire in Calcutta

2010-06-03T17:21:00.009+05:30

(AP Photo)

Su: From the frying pan to the fire??? Let's just hope it can't get much worse!!!

Ba: What are you talking about?

Su: Our 'state' of being :-)

Ra: With due respect, such notions need to be criticaly examined. For instance, why it was "alright" to have the people who were there so far, and what was so spectacularly superior in them? Second, as I learnt, much to my discomfiture, sitting in Calcutta (or elsewhere in India) one cannot have the remotest dea of what things are like in rural West Bengal, in particular the real face of the grassroots support, participation, membership and leadership of the TMC. Citizens can be justifiably proud of this.

Su: Of course, I can only see it for myself. The goons who live next door from where I live; all of whom have 'grassroot' membership! Who build a huge house and a garage in someone else's land and get away with it ... no amount of complaints to the police and the municipal authorities gets us anything!

I am a selfish common man, bothered about us in 'Calcutta'

And please don't get me wrong. It was not alright to have the people who were there so far, which doesn't mean the 'paribartan' that has come is a welcome change either!

Ra: The party's face in Calcutta may be as you say, and I do not doubt that, that's also what I can see, but it was a revelation to me that this in no way defines the party. So I am hopeful that the process of change that's taking place in the party will bode well for the future. But there is a huge gulf between Calcutta and the rest of the state; Calcutta is a mess, in a rut, ungovernable, thanks to the political culture established by the other, and simply mirrorred by all else. Being in the districts is distinctly cheering compared to living in Calcutta. And finally, whether one likes to hear this or not, Calcutta is a parasite, its doomed, its nice folk are likely to be done to death by bloodthirsty mobs.

Su: I hear a little justification there! As I said, I am a common man, and only bothered about the 'state' of our being! Which is Calcutta ... and I can only speak from my experience.

And if the change is a mirror of the already established political culture (I quote you here) then may be it's not a 'poribartan' after all. Its only a change of face!

(AP Photo)

Ru: Sometimes getting into the fire is better than stewing in the frying pan. I'm hoping this is one such time.

Su: We all are hoping for the same Ru. Don't forget I have suffered the worst of the left! I went to a Bengali medium school when English was taken away from the course!

I also happen to spend a little more time here. So ... let's hope the fire would make us all become purified!

Ra: Good metaphor, of purifying fire, agni pariksha, agni path etc etc. Everyone who has lived in Bengal in the last 40 years has had to live in fire. Su, no justifucation at all. There are no two ways, there is only one right way. But there are millions of dualities and conflicts in our apartheid, disparity-ridden society. Looking only at Calcutta - yes, those living here can only see what's there around them. But which Calcutta? Babu/bibi Calcutta? Jhupdi-bashi Calcutta? Muslim Calcutta? Dalit Calcutta? ...

CPM solidified lumpen raj in the state, done intentionally as a ruling strategy. Lumpen-ism is a feature of the city, like its air pollution, which affects all. Even the sushil "bhaw-dro" babu somaj has become highly lumpen in its make-up (just observe the civic sense of smart young things zipping around in their a/c cars on Calcutta's roads). The challenge is to oust the lumpenism. Even at this moment, there are more CPM lumpens in Calcutta then there are TMC lumpens. And the former are earning hundreds of crores for their lumpen party everyday.

I hope we can have a discussion, in which I can fill you in with a crash course in sociology/politics, while taking in your refined aesthetic sensibility, and come to a shared understanding and vision. More fundamentally, there is a profound sociological / political phenomenon happening in Bengal right now, for now connected with the TMC, but its something larger than that or any party. That will never be caught by the bhaw-bhaws or the wonderful, smert media. Once you discern that, you will also inevitably be filled with gentle hope.

Khoma korun didimoni, aar bhaat bokbo na, promise.

Uj: Su, I think Calcutta/Bengal woes have bottomed out in the last 3 decades. There is not much else that can go wrong. So in a situation like this, probably the worst we will see is the same ole ... let's pray for the best :-)

Vi: I could not resist ... The present communist government is getting it's just desserts. I hope the party of Lakshman Seth, Rabin Deb, Binoy Konar, Subhas Chakraborty and the bunch of the most organised violent and intolerant goons who ruled and laid waste an entire state is consigned to the funeral pyre, agni cheeta if you like. Good riddance, or should we actually keep your fingers crossed till the vampires are actually put back in their coffins.

Photo: William Vandivert, Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Calcutta, Tilottama

2010-06-03T11:35:00.010+05:30

"Kolkata ek din kollolini tilottoma hawbe."

Jibananda Das

Calcutta shall one day be a swaying Tilottama.

Tilottama: the sum total of every iota of all the beautiful elements on earth, pieced together to every last bit. The line is from Jibanananda Das' poem "Suchetana", written in the late 1930s. The poet says that all the bloodshed and warfare and material advancement are not the last thing, and expresses hope for a transformation towards eternal truths .

Goosebumps

2010-04-20T12:54:00.001+05:30

Roots of Muslim backwardness

2010-04-09T14:56:00.005+05:30

by Sk Sadar Nayeem

The Statesman, 9 April 2010

The socio economic backwardness of the Muslim community in India was underlined by the Justice Sachar Committee report. Then came the Ranganathan Mishra Commission report which recommended 10 per cent job reservation for Muslims because the community occupied the lowest rung in the human development index. Now, on the heels of these two reports, the National Council for Applied Economic Research has come out with data about the economic status of Muslims in the country that makes dismal reading. The NCAER report says that one-third of Muslims in India survive on less than Rs 550 a month. In other words, three out of 10 of them lived below the poverty line in 2004-05. Even among the poor, urban Muslims were slightly better off compared to Muslims living in the villages who survived on Rs 338 a month during the year under review.

The three reports obviously belied the allegation of certain political parties and groups that Muslims are being appeased. It is, however, true, that 63 years after Independence, Muslims were being used merely as a vote bank by all the political parties and no worthwhile administrative action to improve their socio-economic condition was taken by any government.

The important thing is that if the condition of Muslims is to be improved, the masses themselves must be awakened. Behind their backwardness lies some historical reasons, besides government apathy. Muslims did not occupy an important position in the 19th century because modernisation resulted in the growth of a middle class that was monopolised by Hindus who succeeded because of their wealth and their positive attitude to education. The change in the language (from Persian of the Muslim era to English of the British period) of administration was also an important factor.

The beginning of the 19th century saw the British East India Company firmly entrenched in eastern India. Soon the British started introducing laws to govern the region. One such law was “Permanent Settlement”. After the introduction of this law, the former land revenue collectors of the Mughal Empire were transformed into the landholders with permanent tenure with the government. With this emerged a new class called zamindars. These feudal lords became allies of the new English rule obviously because this new class of vested interests was primarily created by the British for their political convenience. At the same time, the English merchants began to trade through Indian intermediaries which helped in the rise of a rich Indian trading class. Their business transactions brought this class in close contact with the English and their world view.

Further, the base of the bourgeois class began to broaden when the spread of British rule made it necessary for Indians, who had even meagre knowledge of English, to be appointed to the services. As a result, the educated middle class grew rapidly in number. But this middle class was monopolised by Hindus. Muslims, who had lost land and position disproportionately, did not occupy any important role during the period whereas the English-educated Hindu middle class, especially in Bengal, called “bhadralok”, provided the necessary leadership to the Hindu community.

On the other hand, the ashraf or respectable people (mansabdars and jaigirdars during the Mughal period) among the Muslims were on the decline. They were adversely affected from 1830 when Permanent Settlement and resumption proceedings came into force and Persian was replaced by English as the official language. the ashraf response to the change was not positive. They thought that it was enough for them to learn Arabic and Persian through which they could study the Koran and get the religious education like what they had been doing during Mughal rule. Thus, they failed to recover from the stupor, thereby lagging behind Hindus who, by then, had adopted an English education with zeal through which the modernisation of their society began. As a result, Muslims did not get employment in government offices. After the death or dismissal of old Muslim incumbents, their places were in all cases filled by Hindus. Opportunities in government services apart, ashrafs also lost both social prestige and economic opportunities by ignoring Western education. This left no Muslims in higher places.

It is true that “Indian Muslims became a minority when they began to be afraid” and some writers traced this “to the time when the Muslim elite in India began to be apprehensive about its future after the failure of the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857 which meant the final eclipse of Muslim political power”. This fear was not unjustified but that was not the reason for the “final eclipse of Muslim political power”. An important element in the revolt of 1857 was Hindu-Muslim unity. The events of 1857 revealed that the people and politics of India were not basically communal.

After 1857, the British tried to maintain their hold over the country by setting into motion the divisive forces of communalism and began to ally themselves with the most backward, obscurantist, religious and social forces. Therefore, the failure of the Sepoy Mutiny did not make Muslims apprehensive because it meant the final eclipse of Muslim political power. The fact is that there was no such political power in India called “Muslim power”. It was “Muslim” only in the sense that the ruler happened to be Muslim. The large Muslim populace had nothing to do with it. After 1857, the communal violence had scared Indian Muslims since they had been simply looking for personal security in a country where they were numerically in a minority.

India was divided in 1947. The creation of Pakistan was the result of a fear psychosis of losing Muslim identity in India with an 80 per cent Hindu population. This fear was generated by the British and, later, by a section of the Muslim elite in India. After partition, political leaders never allowed the community to think of their socio-economic problems and backwardness in education. The net result was that being 14 per cent of the Indian population, Muslims did not constitute even one per cent in civil services and the community’s per capita income remained five per cent below the national average. The only problem being highlighted was that of Muslim security. But without the root of communal divide being eradicated, Muslims were given hollow promises of their lives and property being safeguarded in order to make sure of their votes.

Despite the earnest efforts of Indian Muslims to look for that elusive political protector who would deliver them from communal violence, riots broke the back of the community in independent India. Naturally, the ghetto became common. Neither any government nor any political party nor the Muslim leadership did anything to help the community adapt to the socio-economic demands of the age. In fact, Muslims were not in a position after partition to evolve a new social leadership to both contribute to and benefit from a sustained socio-economic development. As a result, Muslims are largely illiterate and mired in grinding poverty. Modern education, trade and industry has not made much headway among Muslims. Muslim job seekers are being subjected to unfortunate discrimination both in the public and private sector. Such discriminations created a shortage, especially after partition, of a modern intelligentsia, modern middle classes and modern bourgeoisie — in short, of modern civilisation among Indian Muslims.

Under the circumstances, it is imperative for the government to come out with a comprehensive plan to improve the condition of Muslims. But it is equally necessary for Muslims themselves to come out of the quagmire and achieve their own empowerment. Like Urdu poet Iqbal says, “Allah does not change the condition of the people unless they strive to change themselves”.

Image: AFP

Muslim Situation in India

2010-02-27T15:55:00.006+05:30

The Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC), and the Eastern Regional Centre of the Indian Council of Social Science Research organised a seminar on "Muslim Situation in India: Contemporary Questions", at the CSSSC, during 24-26 February 2010.

This was indeed an important event in the life of this city. And the quality and seriousness of the seminar proceedings was indeed noteworthy. The list of speakers is given below.

Inaugural address: Dr. S.S.Z. Adnan, Chairperson, West Bengal Minorities Commission

Keynote Address : "Disparities among Socio-religious Groups in India: A Perspective for Intervention", Amitabh Kundu, Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

"The Muslim as Victim, the Muslim as Agent: Religion as a Social Category", M. G. Valenta, University of Amsterdam.

"Reforming the Indian Madrasas", Yoginder Sikand, National Law School, Bangalore.

"Health Status of Muslims in India: Some evidences from NSSO and NFHS", Sachidanand Sinha, JNU, New Delhi.

"Towards Analyzing the Muslim Situation in India – Perspectives from Community, Society and State", Rahim Mondal, North Bengal University.

Special Lecture: "Muslims in Contemporary India", Asghar Ali Engineer, Mumbai.

"Socio-religious Group Disparities in Levels of Living in India: Is Positive Discrimination an Effective Policy Option ?", Amaresh Dubey, JNU, New Delhi.

"Religious Minorities and Public Goods in Rural West Bengal: Results from a Large Scale Survey", Pranab Kumar Das, Saibal Kar and Madhumanti Kayal, CSSSC, Calcutta.

"Poverty, Employment and Education: Towards Explaining Backwardness of Muslims in Rural West Bengal", Zakir Husain, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi.

"Migrants into Peasants: Agrarian Economy and Contemporary History of Assam", Arup Saikia, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati.

"Work, trade and identity among the Qureshis of Delhi and Ansaris of Banaras", Zarin Ahmed, Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi.

'Politics of Violence and Production of Ethnic Spaces in Mumbai", Abdul Shaban, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

"Muslim in the Metropolis: A View from the Grassroots", V. Ramaswamy and Amina Khatoon, Howrah Pilot Project, Howrah.

"On the Difficulty of Being a Muslim", Raziuddin Aquil, Delhi University

"Explaining Population Growth differentials between Hindus and Muslims in West Bengal: Thinking of a research agenda", Sohel Firdos, CSSSC, Calcutta.

Panel Discussion: Muslims as Minorities - Practices and Policies

Speakers: Mohd. Salim, Chairman, West Bengal Minority Development & Finance Corporation, Anjan Ghosh, Fellow, CSSSC, Sugata Marjit, RBI Professor and Director, CSSSC.

Some truths about Muslims

2010-02-09T15:16:00.005+05:30

by MKA Siddiqui

Constituting over 10.6 million persons, or 25.2 per cent of the total population of West Bengal, 84.26 per cent of the Muslims are rural-based, while 15.74 per cent live in urban areas. Those in the rural areas are predominantly peasants and agricultural labour. In the city they are mainly artisans and handicraftsmen, as well as small traders.

Muslims constitute about 21 percent of Calcutta’s total population. Over 75 per cent of them live in slums or bastis around the Central Business District, in unimaginably bad housing condition, while a substantial number of the rest inhabit the older areas which do not differ from the slums.

A sample survey of the slum-dwelling Muslims showed that:

64.92 % are born in the slum, 12.58 % are born in the city (Calcutta), 3.90 % are born in West Bengal and 18.58 % are from the neighbouring states.

Male / Female Ratio among Muslims is 1000: 841, compared to the total population ratio of 1000:799.

The data discounts the idea that Muslim population in the slums is a "floating" population. Rather it is rooted in the city.

The living condition of the vast bulk of the Muslims can be judged from the fact over 65 per cent of the Muslim families, of the average size of 6.65 members, occupy from 67-160 sq.ft. of space, in which they live and work, engaging themselves in various crafts. The details are as follows:

2.31% occupied up to 66 sq.ft., 19.61% occupied 66-86 sq.ft., 17.12% occupied 81-100 sq.ft., 15.96% occupied 101-120 sq.ft., 2.12% occupied 121-140 sq.ft., 8.27% occupied 141-160 sq.ft., 5.00% occupied 161-180 sq.ft., 3.46% occupied 181-200 sq.ft. and 5.00% occupied 350 sq.ft. and above.

The occupational structure of the Muslims in the city differs sharply from that of the non-Muslims, in so far as Muslims are not only left to themselves for their own support but quite often face challenges from the socio-political system and often get dislodged from some of the comparatively more comfortable niches they carve out for themselves.

According to a survey of age grades in the Muslim population, numbering 926,769 in the city, those from 6-18 years, constituting about 40 %, or numbering 307,000, are supposed to be normally in educational institutions, but their enrollment figure did not exceed 15,000, or 4%. If we take into account all sorts of maktabs, madrasas, private schools, the enrollment figure does not exceed 9% of the total. Thus 91% of the boys and girls have no chance of going to school because they have no schools to go to, nor their socio-economic condition allows them to do so.

A large proportion of the lucky 4% or 15,000 who have the good fortune of getting admission in affiliated schools, drop out before reaching school final stage. The drop-outs have been estimated to be 80% of the total number enrolled. It is tragic that not less than 75% of the total number of Muslim children of school going age serve as child labour, absolutely unhindered by the administration.

Out of total number of over 600 schools in the Calcutta Municipal Corporation area, there are only 43 Urdu medium schools, and actually only 27 of these are recognized and the rest remain unrecognized.

Consequently the educational attainment of the Muslims in Calcutta was found to be as follows:

16.95% can only sign, 14.19% have studied up to primary level, 6.23% have studied up to secondary level, 2.75% have studied up to higher secondary level and 0.17% have studied up to graduate level or above.

But what is cause for a greater worry is the fact that the rate of literacy of Muslims in Calcutta is much lower today than what it was on the eve of Independence in 1947.

This is not the occasion to go back to the historical developments leading to a systematic downward mobility of the Muslims in the city and recession of their ‘social expectation’ that adversely affected their educational achievement. How they were simply made a tool in the hands of the dominant, to be utilized in their socio-economic endeavour. Muslims had taken this trend as their destiny until the very recent past.

Today they are gaining a vague consciousness of the gigantic problems that confront them, which are larger in proportion to the resources at their disposal. They are also not aware of the path that can lead them to achieve the goal, avoiding complications.

The plight of the people of this region is not only reflected in extremely bad living condition, political disempowerment, negligible employment in the organized sector, low level of literacy and education, marginality of their occupational pursuit and incredibly bad housing condition, but also the fact that they are the victims of the most sophisticated form of parochialism that shelters behind modernity and secularism. This has resulted in a low level of ‘social expectation’ and consequently retarded development.

The key to the solution lies in correct understanding, through hard and irrefutable facts, and through motivating and enabling the members of the community to take appropriate action for their solution.

The Divided City

2010-02-04T15:20:00.011+05:30

I attended a book launch and reading and discussion with the author, last week, on 27 January 2010. The author was Suad Amiry, a Palestinian architect and writer.

That was indeed interesting. Ms Amiry was attractive, lively, articulate and witty, a great raconteur. Her story about her journey with her puppy through Israeli checkpoints to get the latter vaccinated was absolutely hilarious. Her account of the emergence and rise of Hamas was brilliant. It was difficult not to be infatuated with Ms Amiry!

But the venue was inappropriate, otherwise many more people could have been present. Perhaps the organisers had a private programme in mind! But I would have thought that given the person in question, and the subject of her book, this was something that should have been thrown open to the public.

Calcutta has its public places, where public meetings, conventions etc take place. When one thinks "public" one has to look at things very critically: for instance, is the very venue of an event something that implicitly or explicitly excludes some? How can one ensure maximal public participation? Through engaging with the public domain, and getting acquainted with the people, activities, places and so on, one is schooled in public domain activity. People lacking this experience do not even know that they are devoid of a certain vital knowledge. When they try to organise something, their attempts therefore have a slightly pathetic (and yet never un-arrogant) quality, but they are quite unaware of this. The public domain means self-effacement, and reaching out, and learning, and sharing, and collaborating.

I was fortunate to have served an apprenticeship in public activism in an organisation that was committed in every way to the cause of the public domain of Calcutta.

Calcutta is a peculiar city. Its intelligentsia would be found expressing solidarity with people in Palestine and elsewhere; but they remain callously, chronically apathetic and oblivious to the plight of the hundreds of thousands of slum-dwellers in their own city, who live a sub-human existence. I guess that's the normal hypocrisy of India's babu-class and today's Bengali bhadralok.

I have been working for the last 25 years with the city's squatters and slum-dwellers, for their rights. Since 1997, I have been working in one large, old, jute-workers' slum in Howrah (across the river from Calcutta), trying to build leadership and capabilities for community development among the youth of this predominantly Muslim slum. After hearing Mr Amiry's talk, I was keen to introduce her to my grassrots colleagues and the slum women. I thought her account of everyday resistance and struggle of Palestinian people would resonate with the slum women - who cannot take even a basic thing, like a toilet, for granted.

In 2000, I had visited a Palestinian village, near Nablus, and attended a meeting of a women's self-help group. After hearing me speak about the conditions of life in Howrah's slums, a woman said that when they felt the difficulties of their life they should remember that there are others in even greater difficulty, for whom their prayers should be directed.

I should add something more about my great city, Calcutta, which is held up to be a symbol of diversity and tolerance...

Calcutta is a city that is completely divided, along religious lines. Muslims constitute about 20% of the city population, and are almost entirely confined to ghettos in various enclaves of the city, something that happened in the early 1960s after repeated outbreaks of Hindu-Muslim riots. An overwhelming proportion of Muslims in Calcutta live in slums. The Muslim population is also predominantly a labouring and artisanal one. Muslims in Calcutta and in the state of West Bengal have experienced acute socio-economic marginalisation in the last 2-3 decades.

It is almost impossible for a Muslim family to get a place to live anywhere in the city except in / around the Muslim ghettos.

Muslim slums in the city are among the oldest, largest, most congested and environmentally degraded settlements. Disaggregated health statistics reveal the real nature of urban inequality and institutionalised deprivation. For instance, infant mortality rates for the Muslim population in Howrah (where we work ) are significantly higher than that for Hindus. This basically reflects the slum-non slum differential in environmental health risks, and the fact that Muslims live predominantly in slum neighbourhoods.

While the intelligentsia of Calcutta prides itself on being fiercely secular and tolerant, the truth is that most educated Hindus in the city would never have had any substantive intercourse with a Muslim in their lives. And yet they would not hesitate to express their opinion on Muslims, Islam etc.

Almost every one in a typical intellectuals' gathering - like this one I attended - would be Hindu. Yet that is considered to be a citizens' forum, rather than a Hindu one. But a gathering of Muslim intellectuals would be seen by Hindus as an exclusively Muslim affair, rather than a civic gathering. Hindu - is Indian, the mainstream. Muslim - is the other, an aberration.

To paraphrase something I was told recently, in West Bengal there is no exclusion as such, but inclusion is a big problem!

Yet, there are those who are different, and try to make a difference! That is the real spirit of Calcutta, but that would rarely be found among the glitterati and literati, the intelligentsia and the academics.

Howard Davidson is a friend from Canada who spends a couple of months in Calcutta every winter. In the course of a discussion with him a couple of days ago, about the socio-economic and educational status of Muslims in Calcutta, he suddenly remarked that depriving a community of education is nothing short of calculated ethnocide.

Catching the magic of Glass

2010-02-02T11:46:00.036+05:30

Remain in peace in the unity of God and walk blindly in the clear straight path of your obligations...

If God wishes more from you his inspiration will make you know it.

JD Salinger, 1958

"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though."

Holden Caulfield, in Catcher in the Rye

I first heard about JD Salinger and his Catcher in the Rye when I was a college student in Calcutta, more than 30 years ago. My sister Sita had got that from a library, and my father told me that so much had been made about the book but he had now read it and was unable to fathom what the book, and all the hullabaloo, was about!

I read Catcher after that, and later Franny and Zooey, when I was still a university student. That left a quietly powerful impression, and was then largely forgotten. I think some years later I read Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction. When my own fiction writing urge began surfacing, about 20 years ago - a natural outcome of reading a lot of fine literature - I found that there was strong influence of Salinger, and specifically the stories relating to the Glass family.

In 2003, on a visit to London after many years, I came upon and picked up a copy of Catcher and read it again a few months later, after my return to Calcutta. And thus began my "second innings" with JDS, but of course, by now, I too had been through the experience of life, and of walking along the mystic path. Visiting a bookshop with my sons in early 2004, I came upon Salinger's Nine Stories and the Raise High volume and picked those up. Reading them, soon after - I was finally in the inescapable grip or clutch of Salinger, and the magic of the Glass saga. I frantically searched for Franny and Zooey, which I was fortunate to find. I devoured that too.

But we were now living in the internet age, so thanks to Google, I could find so much on the net, by and about Salinger and his writing. I was also fortunate to be able to read Salinger's "uncollected" stories (i.e. those which had been published in various magazines but not collected in one volume). This included "Hapworth", his last published story, which appeared in The New Yorker in 1965. I read what several people, well-known writers, critics, had written about Salinger. I found myself differing from them. I read about the various purportedly eccentric things he had supposedly said or done.

Read the cover story in Time magazine on JD Salinger, which appeared on 15 September 1961.

I also came upon the wonderful Dead Caulfieds site, and began communicating by email with Kenneth Slawenski, the site owner. I am simply a reader-lover of literature, while Kenneth also has the faculties of a literary critic. So we had an interesting dialogue about JDS and his writing.

Since then I have been a translator of the stories of Bengali anti-establishment writer, Subimal Misra. He is also a reclusive, stubbornly principled, cantankerous, eccentric, cussed, and yet endearing, person. But I have been fortunate to win his trust and confidence. So now it is easier for me to understand Salinger.

I knew Salinger was of an advanced age, and every now and then - just like I used to do vis-a-vis Studds Terkel - made a mental calculation of how old he must be, and thought about him awhile. In fact just some days before Salinger pased away (on 27 January), I had reflected that he would be 91 now. I only learnt about his demise on 29 Jan. As it turns out, my son Rituraj has chosen Catcher for his high school graded study. So I subsequently gave my copy of the book to him and searched through my computer for articles I had downloaded that might be relevant to him. And so I was once again deep inside Salinger-dom.

I also wrote to Kenneth.

I was wondering what your thoughts were on his passing away.

Kenneth replied:

I was shocked by the news of Salinger's passing. I had heard that he was recovering well from hip surgery last spring and lulled myself with the belief that he would be around for a number of years to come. Extreme old age is not unusual in the Salinger family and while many laughed at him for his meager diet of organic vegetables in the 1960s, no one was scoffing in 2009 when he turned 90.

An amazing thing has happened here that gives me encouragement even at this sad time. In honor of the author, people have started to read and are discovering Salinger and his works in unprecedented numbers. YouTube is bursting with tributes sent in by ordinary people reading The Catcher in the Rye. Catcher is presently the #5 bestselling book in the nation - and would probably be #1 if it were obtainable. Even Amazon.com has run out of copies. Not only of Catcher, but all four Salinger books.

That is a tribute even Salinger would have enjoyed. The only one that really matters.

I reproduce below my reply to Kenneth.

.....

JDS was simply a magician, the allure, mystique, infatuation and pull he created for many people with those few books - that was the magic wrought by the writing.

As far as I can see and understand, JDS was of a strongly mystic disposition, though he also had several other uncommon and powerful elements in his make-up (e.g. military action service). There was also a rich creative synthesis of these multiple dispositions.

He experienced transcendence in his own being, and in his (latter) stories, and specifically through the Glass stories, he sought to write about being and transcendence. I suppose he had experienced for himself how reading and intellection can bring such transcendence.

What JDS lacked in terms of quantity (of disclosed or published output), he more than made up with the intensity of the work. Few writers with a much larger body of work achieve the kind of powerful hold over readers that he did.

There is a big gap between JDS and people in the domain of "literary-" or literature. But I would think his hold is largely outside the literary world, among (thinking) people who are only fiction / literature readers-lovers (like me), not scholars or teachers or literary critics etc. So when people in the literature world have criticised his writing (and his persona as deduced by them from his writing), that may be quite irrelevant.

He has a place even just within the literary domain, simply in terms of his superior story-telling craftsmanship. But JDS saw himself in the wider canvas of life, of public culture, and the thinking, sensitive, aesthetic, self-educating individual within that, writing as a medium within that. And essentially he was writing for people like himself; solitary mystic individuals, men I guess, who have been formed and re-formed through literature. He did connect to and become part of the mystic stream, flowing through the ages, of literature / epic / saga / mythology, and in turn helped to renew that grand stream, in his own time, from his own place .

My own disposition is not to form opinions or judge, but simply to try to understand, with the totality before me accepted as a given; to try to get inside him and his head, to share, to witness. So that is the relation I have to him and his work. From that perspective, I don't find things he said or did to be incomprehensible, just as I don't agree with things said by others (e.g. comments on Hapworth). I think it is an important part of the Glass saga, it is not redundant vis a vis the rest of the saga, for me, it stands well by itself, for someone who has been inside the Glass saga. (There should also be a long gap between the readers' "Glass-enclosure" and the reading of Hapwworth! Like a music composer, and in keeping with his quality-over-quantity nature, JDS also knew well the powerful value and quality of "silence", in the saga of his life and writing.)

Given his reclusive life and secured inaccessibility, his passing away makes no difference. The other way of saying this is that, he was alive (and eternal), and he continues to be alive (and eternal)! His passing away will hopefully have the positive effect of a renewed interest and appraisal and celebration of his writing.

Maybe he made arrangements for his work from his "silent" years to be made public at some later juncture. Who knows!

I guess one could call JDS a writers' writer rather than a writer.

Unfortunately, my father passed away long before I could have told him what the "hullabaloo" about Catcher was about! But I'm sure, by the end of his life, when his innate mystic disposition surfaced, no such explanation was needed.

.....

Farewell, dear friend, and all strength for your onward journey. You remain in our hearts.

Read Adam Gopnik's obituary in The New Yorker here and a tribute by Lillian Ross here.

The quote in the beginning of this post appears on the Dead Caulfields site.

A question of taste

2010-02-01T16:37:00.007+05:30

Great products, according to Steven Jobs, are triumphs of “taste.” And taste, he explains, is a byproduct of study, observation and being steeped in the culture of the past and the present, of “trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then bring those things into what you are doing”.

Farewell JD

2010-01-29T18:39:00.002+05:30

Farewell JD Salinger (1 January 1919 - 27 January 2010). Thank you.

Jyoti Basu's Bengal

2010-01-22T11:12:00.013+05:30

Kanchan Gupta has written about Jyoti Basu.

While his piece helps to put in perspective the pathetic outpouring of praise in the mainstream media, the comment leaves one with a feeling of the main things remaining unsaid.

Bengal's present plight owes significantly to JB, but the story begins much earlier. The CPM in West Bengal is but one aspect of Bengal society and politics, it is a natural expression of the immense cleavages and distortions characterising the society.

Calcutta and Bengal's economy, in 1947, was overwhelmingly an obsolete colonial edifice. While those nurtured and groomed by this colonial city and its institutions - like JB himself - went on to do well for themselves, there was no thought for the public domain, and in particular industry and manufacturing. That called for a massive renewal, and when the soil's brightest and best were most needed they were nowhere to be found. But that was only to be expected in the barna bibhakto samaj that is Bengal.

The 60s and especially the mid- and late-60s were a bad time for India as a whole. It was a huge signal for change and renewal. Our much-lauded green revolution is an example of a mission that was prioritised by the Indian state, and completed. But West Bengal simply had to suffer the "structural adjustment', of being rendered redundant and irrelevant. And by that juncture, the mid-60s, the fragile and tenuous (formal) political environment in the state had also collapsed to yield outcomes such as the UF govts. The iron fist of the Indian state asserting itself - was seen in the SS Ray period. But with the massive anti-Congress sentiment in the state (and the manufacture of electoral outcomes by the CPM, despite the fact that the state has, even since 1977, had a Congress vote share which is only a little less than the Left votes), Indira-is-India could not reclaim Bengal. And the state has had to be embroiled in its own contradictions and discontents.

JB's record is a classic example of TINA, there was no alternative. What this means is the utter bankruptcy of the Bengali bhadralok society, its erstwhile education and institutions and its political ideologies and formations, in conceiving and rendering a socio-economic order other than the inherited one. A bhadralok society that lives off the subaltern folk who comprise the common people of the land. All that one instead saw was an endless cycle of negativism, self-destructiveness, violence and breakdown, demolition of all that was. JB presided over an order which was simply like gaseous vapours emanating from a dung heap, or maggots in a carcass. And he ensured that the party would reign supreme in that dungheap order.

Bengal today is not anything, it is only a non-thing, it is the negation of the British order that was salubrious for the bhadralok and viscerally hated by everyone left out of the circle of privilege.

Everyone likes to partake of the benefits of a place or a situation, but a few must build, conserve and renew. In Bengal, everyone fled when things got difficult. Or huffed and puffed, in parodies of revolution.

It was not labour militancy which scared off capital and led to capital flight; rather, labour militancy itself was the knee-jerk reaction of the (babu-led) trade unions' leadership in a situation of all-round industrial collapse owing to technological and economic obsolescence. Of course, the insanities of the late 60s - early 70s also led to capital and human flight. But it is also important to note that the lion's share of industrial disputes was claimed by lock-outs. That is a telling indicator of the the real power balance in society as far as the proletariat was concerned.

The CPM's tenure in the state has been accompanied by the transformation of the economy into a non-industrial one, the decimation of the industrial proletariat and the growth of a lumpen proletariat. The contribution of SS Ray to the creation of the culture of a politically patronised lumpen army, cannot be forgotten.

JB's bile against the class / community he himself belonged to - but disavowed in his public life - led him to destroy everything held sacred by them. He only mirrored the hatreds organic to the parasitically ruled society. And securely installed was a party ruling the roost over the debris of all that was. The common folk of the land benefited to an extent that the apartheid bhadralok order, in its natural / inherent tendency, would never have enabled. They were psychologically empowered by the party, but otherwise entirely feeble and dependent on the party for survival. But in the main, the CPM order was about keeping people poor and backward, whipping up class hatreds so that a dog-eat-dog environment prevailed, in which it could consistently emerge victorious (in the polls). And the party could be the sole arbiter of everything.

Given what the CPM was, and in a sense what left-ism had been reduced to in the state, that was all that could be expected.

The result of western communist / left ideology in a backward, caste-divided society ruled by Bengali bhadralok.

Nandigram represented the violent revolt of the masses against party rule.

JB epitomised all the contradictions, ironies and irrationalities of Bengal. The unsmiling, emotionless mask that he seemed to wear was actually quite real. He was simply a "virtual' entity, not human, just an abstract compound of all the negatives of Bengal. His personal life and tastes were very far removed from the party he was a major part of. It is actually quite amazing that a man could so completely efface his human-ness all day long, for so many years. He gave himself up fully and completely to and for the party, he made the party his all, and in return the party made him the supreme leader. And he ensured the party reigned supreme. A person completely empty, a polished mirror of the society and the party. And after he left office, he disappeared from public view, leaving the CPM to manage its fiefdom. But we see now that this fiefdom is nearing its demise.

So it is the CPM that should be grateful to Basu.

Bengal never got a Deng, or technocrats. The contradictions and discontents within Bengal society were too powerful for that.

But yes, one cannot fail to recognise Basu's consistent and steadfast abhorrence of communalism. A communal mindset is actually at the core of Bengali bhadralok society, and Basu represents the disavowal of that too. Such a disavowal is also very much a part of the soil of Bengal. But the party he was a part of could not hold on to that for very long. Party membership was no longer an ideological thing, it was simply a means for opportunism,

Hence Basu's rule was a period of absence of communal riots. He ensured that communal disturbances were stamped out at once. As a pre-independence CPI man, he knew all about communal riots. But just as the absence of communal bigotry, a negative, was not accompanied by anything positive at its core, Bengal's record of being free of communal riots was also a record of all-round marginalisation of the Muslim community. And that too was only an indicator of the deeply entrenched communal mindset in the society and its institutionalisation. Basu could not do anything about that. Basu also made the mistake of failing to recognise the rise of Hindutva in the latter part of the 80s, and so he tried to make amends by being the most ardent national champion of so-called "secular" politics, from the latter part of the 90s. That ensured that the BJP was held at bay.

So besides the CPM and the formal Left, it is the Congress at the centre that should be most grateful to Basu.

"West Bengal, with its huge pool of talent, could have led India from the front" ... No. That required leadership, and above all, self-leadership (swaraj), something sorely lacking in the gene pool of the sick bhadralok society. So though independence and freedom was achieved by driving out the British (and then the bhadralok), though swa-desh, self-rule was achieved, real freedom, swa-raj, is still an elusive dream.

Image: Maggots in a carcass, courtesy Bear Blog and Carcass Cam.

The making of the "mainsteam"

2009-12-18T08:23:00.003+05:30

by Noam Chomsky

Part of the reason why I write about the media is because I am interested in the whole intellectual culture, and the part of it that is easiest to study is the media. It comes out every day. You can do a systematic investigation. You can compare yesterday’s version to today’s version. There is a lot of evidence about what’s played up and what isn’t and the way things are structured.

My impression is the media aren’t very different from scholarship or from, say, journals of intellectual opinion—there are some extra constraints—but it’s not radically different. They interact, which is why people go up and back quite easily among them.

You look at the media, or at any institution you want to understand. You ask questions about its internal institutional structure. You want to know something about their setting in the broader society. How do they relate to other systems of power and authority? If you’re lucky, there is an internal record from leading people in the information system which tells you what they are up to (it is sort of a doctrinal system). That doesn’t mean the public relations handouts but what they say to each other about what they are up to. There is quite a lot of interesting documentation.

Those are three major sources of information about the nature of the media. You want to study them the way, say, a scientist would study some complex molecule or something. You take a look at the structure and then make some hypothesis based on the structure as to what the media product is likely to look like. Then you investigate the media product and see how well it conforms to the hypotheses. Virtually all work in media analysis is this last part—trying to study carefully just what the media product is and whether it conforms to obvious assumptions about the nature and structure of the media.

Well, what do you find? First of all, you find that there are different media which do different things, like the entertainment/Hollywood, soap operas, and so on, or even most of the newspapers in the country (the overwhelming majority of them). They are directing the mass audience.

There is another sector of the media, the elite media, sometimes called the agenda-setting media because they are the ones with the big resources, they set the framework in which everyone else operates. The New York Times and CBS, that kind of thing. Their audience is mostly privileged people. The people who read the New York Times—people who are wealthy or part of what is sometimes called the political class—they are actually involved in the political system in an ongoing fashion. They are basically managers of one sort or another. They can be political managers, business managers (like corporate executives or that sort of thing), doctoral managers (like university professors), or other journalists who are involved in organizing the way people think and look at things.

The elite media set a framework within which others operate. If you are watching the Associated Press, who grind out a constant flow of news, in the mid-afternoon it breaks and there is something that comes along every day that says "Notice to Editors: Tomorrow’s New York Times is going to have the following stories on the front page." The point of that is, if you’re an editor of a newspaper in Dayton, Ohio and you don’t have the resources to figure out what the news is, or you don’t want to think about it anyway, this tells you what the news is. These are the stories for the quarter page that you are going to devote to something other than local affairs or diverting your audience. These are the stories that you put there because that’s what the New York Times tells us is what you’re supposed to care about tomorrow. If you are an editor in Dayton, Ohio, you would sort of have to do that, because you don’t have much else in the way of resources. If you get off line, if you’re producing stories that the big press doesn’t like, you’ll hear about it pretty soon. In fact, what just happened at San Jose Mercury News is a dramatic example of this. So there are a lot of ways in which power plays can drive you right back into line if you move out. If you try to break the mold, you’re not going to last long. That framework works pretty well, and it is understandable that it is just a reflection of obvious power structures.

The real mass media are basically trying to divert people. Let them do something else, but don’t bother us (us being the people who run the show). Let them get interested in professional sports, for example. Let everybody be crazed about professional sports or sex scandals or the personalities and their problems or something like that. Anything, as long as it isn’t serious. Of course, the serious stuff is for the big guys. "We" take care of that.

What are the elite media, the agenda-setting ones? The New York Times and CBS, for example. Well, first of all, they are major, very profitable, corporations. Furthermore, most of them are either linked to, or outright owned by, much bigger corporations, like General Electric, Westinghouse, and so on. They are way up at the top of the power structure of the private economy which is a very tyrannical structure. Corporations are basically tyrannies, hierarchic, controled from above. If you don’t like what they are doing you get out. The major media are just part of that system.

What about their institutional setting? Well, that’s more or less the same. What they interact with and relate to is other major power centers—the government, other corporations, or the universities. Because the media are a doctrinal system they interact closely with the universities. Say you are a reporter writing a story on Southeast Asia or Africa, or something like that. You’re supposed to go over to the big university and find an expert who will tell you what to write, or else go to one of the foundations, like Brookings Institute or American Enterprise Institute and they will give you the words to say. These outside institutions are very similar to the media.

The universities, for example, are not independent institutions. There may be independent people scattered around in them but that is true of the media as well. And it’s generally true of corporations. It’s true of Fascist states, for that matter. But the institution itself is parasitic. It’s dependent on outside sources of support and those sources of support, such as private wealth, big corporations with grants, and the government (which is so closely interlinked with corporate power you can barely distinguish them), they are essentially what the universities are in the middle of. People within them, who don’t adjust to that structure, who don’t accept it and internalize it (you can’t really work with it unless you internalize it, and believe it); people who don’t do that are likely to be weeded out along the way, starting from kindergarten, all the way up. There are all sorts of filtering devices to get rid of people who are a pain in the neck and think independently. Those of you who have been through college know that the educational system is very highly geared to rewarding conformity and obedience; if you don’t do that, you are a troublemaker. So, it is kind of a filtering device which ends up with people who really honestly (they aren’t lying) internalize the framework of belief and attitudes of the surrounding power system in the society. The elite institutions like, say, Harvard and Princeton and the small upscale colleges, for example, are very much geared to socialization. If you go through a place like Harvard, most of what goes on there is teaching manners; how to behave like a member of the upper classes, how to think the right thoughts, and so on.

If you’ve read George Orwell’s Animal Farm which he wrote in the mid-1940s, it was a satire on the Soviet Union, a totalitarian state. It was a big hit. Everybody loved it. Turns out he wrote an introduction to Animal Farm which was suppressed. It only appeared 30 years later. Someone had found it in his papers. The introduction to Animal Farm was about "Literary Censorship in England" and what it says is that obviously this book is ridiculing the Soviet Union and its totalitarian structure. But he said England is not all that different. We don’t have the KGB on our neck, but the end result comes out pretty much the same. People who have independent ideas or who think the wrong kind of thoughts are cut out.

He talks a little, only two sentences, about the institutional structure. He asks, why does this happen? Well, one, because the press is owned by wealthy people who only want certain things to reach the public. The other thing he says is that when you go through the elite education system, when you go through the proper schools in Oxford, you learn that there are certain things it’s not proper to say and there are certain thoughts that are not proper to have. That is the socialization role of elite institutions and if you don’t adapt to that, you’re usually out. Those two sentences more or less tell the story.

When you critique the media and you say, look, here is what Anthony Lewis or somebody else is writing, they get very angry. They say, quite correctly, "nobody ever tells me what to write. I write anything I like. All this business about pressures and constraints is nonsense because I’m never under any pressure." Which is completely true, but the point is that they wouldn’t be there unless they had already demonstrated that nobody has to tell them what to write because they are going say the right thing. If they had started off at the Metro desk, or something, and had pursued the wrong kind of stories, they never would have made it to the positions where they can now say anything they like. The same is mostly true of university faculty in the more ideological disciplines. They have been through the socialization system.

Okay, you look at the structure of that whole system. What do you expect the news to be like? Well, it’s pretty obvious. Take the New York Times. It’s a corporation and sells a product. The product is audiences. They don’t make money when you buy the newspaper. They are happy to put it on the worldwide web for free. They actually lose money when you buy the newspaper. But the audience is the product. The product is privileged people, just like the people who are writing the newspapers, you know, top-level decision-making people in society. You have to sell a product to a market, and the market is, of course, advertisers (that is, other businesses). Whether it is television or newspapers, or whatever, they are selling audiences. Corporations sell audiences to other corporations. In the case of the elite media, it’s big businesses.

Well, what do you expect to happen? What would you predict about the nature of the media product, given that set of circumstances? What would be the null hypothesis, the kind of conjecture that you’d make assuming nothing further. The obvious assumption is that the product of the media, what appears, what doesn’t appear, the way it is slanted, will reflect the interest of the buyers and sellers, the institutions, and the power systems that are around them. If that wouldn’t happen, it would be kind of a miracle.

Okay, then comes the hard work. You ask, does it work the way you predict? Well, you can judge for yourselves. There’s lots of material on this obvious hypothesis, which has been subjected to the hardest tests anybody can think of, and still stands up remarkably well. You virtually never find anything in the social sciences that so strongly supports any conclusion, which is not a big surprise, because it would be miraculous if it didn’t hold up given the way the forces are operating.

The next thing you discover is that this whole topic is completely taboo. If you go to the Kennedy School of Government or Stanford, or somewhere, and you study journalism and communications or academic political science, and so on, these questions are not likely to appear. That is, the hypothesis that anyone would come across without even knowing anything that is not allowed to be expressed, and the evidence bearing on it cannot be discussed. Well, you predict that too. If you look at the institutional structure, you would say, yeah, sure, that’s got to happen because why should these guys want to be exposed? Why should they allow critical analysis of what they are up to take place? The answer is, there is no reason why they should allow that and, in fact, they don’t. Again, it is not purposeful censorship. It is just that you don’t make it to those positions. That includes the left (what is called the left), as well as the right. Unless you have been adequately socialized and trained so that there are some thoughts you just don’t have, because if you did have them, you wouldn’t be there. So you have a second order of prediction which is that the first order of prediction is not allowed into the discussion.

The last thing to look at is the doctrinal framework in which this proceeds. Do people at high levels in the information system, including the media and advertising and academic political science and so on, do these people have a picture of what ought to happen when they are writing for each other (not when they are making graduation speeches)? When you make a commencement speech, it is pretty words and stuff. But when they are writing for one another, what do people say about it?

There are basically three currents to look at. One is the public relations industry, you know, the main business propaganda industry. So what are the leaders of the PR industry saying? Second place to look is at what are called public intellectuals, big thinkers, people who write the "op eds" and that sort of thing. What do they say? The people who write impressive books about the nature of democracy and that sort of business. The third thing you look at is the academic stream, particularly that part of political science which is concerned with communications and information and that stuff which has been a branch of political science for the last 70 or 80 years.

So, look at those three things and see what they say, and look at the leading figures who have written about this. They all say (I’m partly quoting), the general population is "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders." We have to keep them out of the public arena because they are too stupid and if they get involved they will just make trouble. Their job is to be "spectators," not "participants."

They are allowed to vote every once in a while, pick out one of us smart guys. But then they are supposed to go home and do something else like watch football or whatever it may be. But the "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders" have to be observers not participants. The participants are what are called the "responsible men" and, of course, the writer is always one of them. You never ask the question, why am I a "responsible man" and somebody else is in jail? The answer is pretty obvious. It’s because you are obedient and subordinate to power and that other person may be independent, and so on. But you don’t ask, of course. So there are the smart guys who are supposed to run the show and the rest of them are supposed to be out, and we should not succumb to (I’m quoting from an academic article) "democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interest." They are not. They are terrible judges of their own interests so we have do it for them for their own benefit.

Actually, it is very similar to Leninism. We do things for you and we are doing it in the interest of everyone, and so on. I suspect that’s part of the reason why it’s been so easy historically for people to shift up and back from being, sort of enthusiastic Stalinists to being big supporters of U.S. power. People switch very quickly from one position to the other, and my suspicion is that it’s because basically it is the same position. You’re not making much of a switch. You’re just making a different estimate of where power lies. One point you think it’s here, another point you think it’s there. You take the same position.

@PAR SUB = How did all this evolve? It has an interesting history. A lot of it comes out of the first World War, which is a big turning point. It changed the position of the United States in the world considerably. In the 18th century the U.S. was already the richest place in the world. The quality of life, health, and longevity was not achieved by the upper classes in Britain until the early 20th century, let alone anybody else in the world. The U.S. was extraordinarily wealthy, with huge advantages, and, by the end of the 19th century, it had by far the biggest economy in the world. But it was not a big player on the world scene. U.S. power extended to the Caribbean Islands, parts of the Pacific, but not much farther.

During the first World War, the relations changed. And they changed more dramatically during the second World War. After the second World War the U.S. more or less took over the world. But after first World War there was already a change and the U.S. shifted from being a debtor to a creditor nation. It wasn’t huge, like Britain, but it became a substantial actor in the world for the first time. That was one change, but there were other changes.

The first World War was the first time there was highly organized state propaganda. The British had a Ministry of Information, and they really needed it because they had to get the U.S. into the war or else they were in bad trouble. The Ministry of Information was mainly geared to sending propaganda, including huge fabrications about "Hun" atrocities, and so on. They were targeting American intellectuals on the reasonable assumption that these are the people who are most gullible and most likely to believe propaganda. They are also the ones that disseminate it through their own system. So it was mostly geared to American intellectuals and it worked very well. The British Ministry of Information documents (a lot have been released) show their goal was, as they put it, to control the thought of the entire world, a minor goal, but mainly the U.S. They didn’t care much what people thought in India. This Ministry of Information was extremely successful in deluding hot shot American intellectuals into accepting British propaganda fabrications. They were very proud of that. Properly so, it saved their lives. They would have lost the first World War otherwise.

In the U.S., there was a counterpart. Woodrow Wilson was elected in 1916 on an anti-war platform. The U.S. was a very pacifist country. It has always been. People don’t want to go fight foreign wars. The country was very much opposed to the first World War and Wilson was, in fact, elected on an anti-war position. "Peace without victory" was the slogan. But he was intending to go to war. So the question was, how do you get the pacifist population to become raving anti-German lunatics so they want to go kill all the Germans? That requires propaganda. So they set up the first and really only major state propaganda agency in U.S. history. The Committee on Public Information it was called (nice Orwellian title), called also the Creel Commission. The guy who ran it was named Creel. The task of this commission was to propagandize the population into a jingoist hysteria. It worked incredibly well. Within a few months there was a raving war hysteria and the U.S. was able to go to war.

A lot of people were impressed by these achievements. One person impressed, and this had some implications for the future, was Hitler. If you read Mein Kampf, he concludes, with some justification, that Germany lost the first World War because it lost the propaganda battle. They could not begin to compete with British and American propaganda which absolutely overwhelmed them. He pledges that next time around they’ll have their own propaganda system, which they did during the second World War. More important for us, the American business community was also very impressed with the propaganda effort. They had a problem at that time. The country was becoming formally more democratic. A lot more people were able to vote and that sort of thing. The country was becoming wealthier and more people could participate and a lot of new immigrants were coming in, and so on.

So what do you do? It’s going to be harder to run things as a private club. Therefore, obviously, you have to control what people think. There had been public relation specialists but there was never a public relations industry. There was a guy hired to make Rockefeller’s image look prettier and that sort of thing. But this huge public relations industry, which is a U.S. invention and a monstrous industry, came out of the first World War. The leading figures were people in the Creel Commission. In fact, the main one, Edward Bernays, comes right out of the Creel Commission. He has a book that came out right afterwards called Propaganda. The term "propaganda," incidentally, did not have negative connotations in those days. It was during the second World War that the term became taboo because it was connected with Germany, and all those bad things. But in this period, the term propaganda just meant information or something like that. So he wrote a book called Propaganda around 1925, and it starts off by saying he is applying the lessons of the first World War. The propaganda system of the first World War and this commission that he was part of showed, he says, it is possible to "regiment the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments their bodies." These new techniques of regimentation of minds, he said, had to be used by the intelligent minorities in order to make sure that the slobs stay on the right course. We can do it now because we have these new techniques.

This is the main manual of the public relations industry. Bernays is kind of the guru. He was an authentic Roosevelt/Kennedy liberal. He also engineered the public relations effort behind the U.S.-backed coup which overthrew the democratic government of Guatemala.

His major coup, the one that really propelled him into fame in the late 1920s, was getting women to smoke. Women didn’t smoke in those days and he ran huge campaigns for Chesterfield. You know all the techniques—models and movie stars with cigarettes coming out of their mouths and that kind of thing. He got enormous praise for that. So he became a leading figure of the industry, and his book was the real manual.

Another member of the Creel Commission was Walter Lippmann, the most respected figure in American journalism for about half a century (I mean serious American journalism, serious think pieces). He also wrote what are called progressive essays on democracy, regarded as progressive back in the 1920s. He was, again, applying the lessons of the work on propaganda very explicitly. He says there is a new art in democracy called manufacture of consent. That is his phrase. Edward Herman and I borrowed it for our book, but it comes from Lippmann. So, he says, there is this new art in the method of democracy, "manufacture of consent." By manufacturing consent, you can overcome the fact that formally a lot of people have the right to vote. We can make it irrelevant because we can manufacture consent and make sure that their choices and attitudes will be structured in such a way that they will always do what we tell them, even if they have a formal way to participate. So we’ll have a real democracy. It will work properly. That’s applying the lessons of the propaganda agency.

Academic social science and political science comes out of the same thing. The founder of what’s called communications and academic political science is Harold Glasswell. His main achievement was a book, a study of propaganda. He says, very frankly, the things I was quoting before—those things about not succumbing to democratic dogmatism, that comes from academic political science (Lasswell and others). Again, drawing the lessons from the war time experience, political parties drew the same lessons, especially the conservative party in England. Their early documents, just being released, show they also recognized the achievements of the British Ministry of Information. They recognized that the country was getting more democratized and it wouldn’t be a private men’s club. So the conclusion was, as they put it, politics has to become political warfare, applying the mechanisms of propaganda that worked so brilliantly during the first World War towards controlling people’s thoughts.

That’s the doctrinal side and it coincides with the institutional structure. It strengthens the predictions about the way the thing should work. And the predictions are well confirmed. But these conclusions, also, are not allowed to be discussed. This is all now part of mainstream literature but it is only for people on the inside. When you go to college, you don’t read the classics about how to control peoples minds.

Just like you don’t read what James Madison said during the constitutional convention about how the main goal of the new system has to be "to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority," and has to be designed so that it achieves that end. This is the founding of the constitutional system, so nobody studies it. You can’t even find it in the academic scholarship unless you really look hard.

That is roughly the picture, as I see it, of the way the system is institutionally, the doctrines that lie behind it, the way it comes out. There is another part directed to the "ignorant meddlesome" outsiders. That is mainly using diversion of one kind or another. From that, I think, you can predict what you would expect to find.

Image: Rudimentary Peni, Cacophony.

Sangam

2009-12-06T12:09:00.002+05:30

Herbie Hancock and Lang Lang play Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue at the Classical Brit Awards, London, 13 May 2009.

Inclusion and "quality"

2009-10-11T10:02:00.004+05:30

The sociologist, Andre Beteille, delivered a lecture in Calcutta in March which I attended.

He touched upon academic quality versus inclusion (e.g. through reservation or affirmative action), and said quality need not be compromised. At the end of the lecture, I asked him to elaborate a bit on this issue of quality versus inclusion; some may think inclusion compromises quality, while others may assert that quality itself is arbitrarily defined around certain privileges. What is the meaning of quality in a democratic and inclusive society?

I did not find his answer interesting.

What I meant was:

We are all familiar with the conventional notion that inclusion will compromise “quality”, and that can be argued against, and qualified, like he did … My point was something else: WHAT is this wonderful thing called “QUALITY”? What are the historically, cognitively rooted biases in its definition? Whether western / imperial / colonial, or Brahminical / Manuvadi…

Let me give some examples, both of which are not academic but real things I have encountered.

Let us say a “backward class” peasant’s son joins an agricultural engineering course. Does his whole store of experiential knowledge of cultivation, from his personal knowledge, from his own life and that of his family and community, count for anything in this “scientific domain”? Will it be a one-way traffic, of him receiving the wisdom of that discipline? Or will that discipline be open to receiving his knowledge and try to re-constitute itself on that basis?

Similarly, with, say, an adivasi’s knowledge of flora and fauna and the scientific domain of forestry. Prof Kailash Malhotra (the anthropologist), and Madhu Ramnath (who lived for years among the Gond as one of them and took up “adivasi botany”) have given me fascinating accounts of “adivasi taxonomy” of animal life and plants respectively, from Midnapore and Bastar, again respectively. Would the disciplines of zoology, botany and forestry re-constitute themselves on the basis of such knowledges? Is there a horizontal or equal relationship in the dialogue of knowledges; or a rigid hierarchical one? Does the very definition of existing disciplines have much meaning in the face of the alternative worldview?

Is there a whole new “way of knowing” waiting to be glimpsed by human society, with today’s “backwards”, indigenes and marginals being the emissaries of those songs and tales that have never been heard before?

Public lectures, Calcutta

2009-08-31T12:17:00.005+05:30

Two important public lectures are coming up in Calcutta.

Professor Jan Breman, of the Centre for Asian Studies, Amsterdam University, speaks on:

Labour and Globalisation

Date: 9 September 2009
Time: 5.30pm
Venue: Prabha-Batakrishna Pathagar, Sashipada Bandyopadhyay Resource Center (SBRC), 278 Jodhpur Park, Calcutta 68.

Organised by Nagarik Mancha (Citizens' Forum).

Professor David Ludden, Department of History, New York University, speaks on:

Spatial Reorganisation of North Eastern Parts of British India, 1905 to the Present

Date: 12 September 2009
Time: 4 pm
Venue: Academy of Fine Arts, 2 Cathedral Road, Calcutta 71

Organised by Calcutta Research Group.

China lecture

2009-08-25T11:47:00.007+05:30

Public lectures can inform, enlighten and inspire citizens, and thus keep alive the intellect and conscience of the city so that it can grow and renew itself. Over the last 20 years, I have attended a number of public lectures at the Netaji Centre in Calcutta. Tony Benn, Ayesha Jalal, Yasin Malik, Pranab Bardhan, Amartya Sen have been among the speakers.

I attended the Sisir Kumar Bose Lecture, 2008, in Calcutta on 11 January 2008, by Dr Lin Chun of the London School of Economics. The lecture was on "China’s Post-Mao Economic Reforms: A Critical Assessment”.

I found Lin Chun's lecture most illuminating and exhaustive, and was struck by her quiet and modest demeanour, which evidently concealed a sharp mind and a big heart.

A published version of her lecture is accessible here.

Image: From Deng Xiaoping: Portrait of a Chinese Statesman by David L. Shambaugh (Editor), Clarendon Press, 1995.

Identity: Choice & Inheritance

2009-08-24T12:50:00.008+05:30

The Idea of Justice, a new book by Prof Amartya Sen, economist and prolific writer, has recently been published.

Read the review of the book in The Economist.

I had attended the Netaji Oration by Prof Amartya Sen in Calcutta, on 27 December 2007, where he spoke on "Is Nationalism a Curse or a Boon?". The full-text version of the lecture is available in The Oracle, journal of the Netaji Research Bureau, Calcutta. (See pages 16-25 of the pdf version of the journal here).

I remember I had written a response to Prof Sen's lecture. That is reproduced below.

...

Dear Prof Sen

I am writing to you after hearing your talk at Netaji Bhavan, Calcutta, yesterday on "Nationalism".

As a student and teacher of economics from Calcutta, it was a privilege to hear you speak.

I have been working among squatters and slum-dwellers in Calcutta since 1984. In 1996, while working as a consultant on a govt of West Bengal planning project, I came upon infant mortality figures from Howrah Municipal Corporation. This showed a significant infant mortality rate differential between Hindus and Muslims. Eventually that led to my working in Priya Manna Basti, a century-old jute workers slum in the Shibpur area of Howrah. This is today home to over 40,000 people, mainly Urdu-speakin Muslims.

That work continues, in an attempt to build grassroots youth capabilities and leadership for slum community development. The work has been akin to a live laboratory, on poverty in the metropolitan Calcutta Muslim slum context. Through the work it was possible to understand that the Hindu-Muslim infant mortality rate differential was a kind of proxy indicator of slum - non-slum differentials in environmental health risks, besides indicating the existence of deep-rooted institutional barriers to securing adequate municipal services in Muslim slums. It is by looking at the disaggregated health statistics of cities that one begins to understand the nature of inequalities and inequities characterising the city, and their impact on the poor. And it is by trying to unearth the causes of differentials that one comes face to face with the meaning, forms and manifestations of prejudice.

Working with the poorest section in the slum, it was also possible to discern the crippling large-scale and long-term impact of the Urdu-medium education system in metropolitan Calcutta. One consequence of this is the phenomenon of "reverse discrimination" in schooling, where boys drop out of school after a meagre amount of schooling and begin working, while girls continue in and often finish school.

I mention all this by way of context, to touch upon the idea that nationalism can also gloss over real differences in power among different religious communities, which persist and make nationalism something devoid of any substantive meaning or even emotive power. With acute segregation of communities and the lack of substantive intercourse between them, the conditions in which the have-nots live is not part of "mainstream" consciousness. And in such a context, raising the issue of these real and persistent differences is seen as "anti-national" or even "communal", depraved and sick, especially in today's "emergent India" situation.

In your talk you spoke about chosen identity in contrast to inherited identity. That struck a very personal chord, since I have long been troubled by the inappropriateness of upholding something that happens to coincide with an identity inherited merely by chance. Professing something which is based on conscious choice always seemed stronger to me. Nationalism cannot be at the cost of anything else, it must be without prejudice to any other identification. For otherwise, it would be devoid of meaning for one possessing that identity. If one had inherited that identity by chance, then such a nationalism would have been something alien.

You must be aware of the work on "Allophilia" by your Harvard colleague Prof Todd Pittinsky. He looks at warm, exuberant feelings towards other people -national, religious, racial or social. That is something coming out of conscious choice, rather than inherited identity. One can think of the feelings towards India, the land of the Buddha, among Buddhists from Sri Lanka, Burma, Tibet, Japan etc. The feeling about Sri Lanka, the land of the Buddhist canon, among followers of Buddha's teachings. The feelings towards India and West Bengal among a section of people in Bangladesh. The feelings towards the people of Vietnam among people in Calcutta and West Bengal during the Vietnam war.

Perhaps this issue of "Choice & Inheritance" could be the subject of your forthcoming thinking and writing!

Here it would be germane to mention the mystic tradition. In India we have many examples like Kabir, whose own identity (religious) was ambiguous, he was non-denominational as well as multi-denominational. Rather than hold on to one identity inherited by chance, mystics talk of finding one's true identity, unobscured by the veil of illusion cast by the false notion of "self". One must choose one's true inheritance, as a human.

As someone close in so many ways to Rabindranath Tagore, you would be familiar with the name of Evelyn Underhill (with whom Tagore translated Kabir's poems), and her classic work Mysticism. In this 800th anniversary year of the great Persian mystic and poet, Jalaluddin Rumi, I look forward to reading your thinking drawing upon the mystic tradition, and bringing this to the fold of the issues and subjects of your concern.

With my best wishes and respectful regards,

Yours sincerely

Year

2009-08-20T11:12:00.012+05:30

Its been quite a year.

In January, I travelled to Pune and then Mumbai, for public policy and academic conferences, and then to Delhi, for a business meeting.

In February I visited my son Rishiraj at the Rishi Valley School, in south India, together with my older son Rituraj.

I was unwell and convalescing during February-April. Nonetheless, I managed to complete a writing assignment, on urban protest in Calcutta. I also completed the translation into English of my colleague Amina's articles on the theme "See the City from Here", about slums.

In May, I was in the capital again, to join a friend in his business development. Having decided that I should leave Calcutta and begin a new livelihood, I corresponded with some schools. So I visited the Sahyadri School, near Pune. Shortly after that I visited the Sholai School, near Kodaikanal, in south India. Sholai had an immense impact on me. A school in a forest in a mountain. A haven of peace and solace, far away from the ugly city. The school was started about 20 years ago by an Englishman, Brian Jenkins. He was keen that I join and help to start a teacher training college there, among other things.

In June, on the invitation of a friend, I joined a rural governance study in the northern districts of West Bengal. That was indeed a strenuous and hectic affair. But also one that was very educative, rewarding and reinvigorating, as it afforded a vision of a new Bengal in the making in the grassroots.

I had to submit the manuscript of my translated stories of the Bengali writer Subimal Misra. I managed to extract the time to complete it in great haste and sent that off in early July.

Shortly after that, I travelled to Assisi in Italy. I was invited to join a week-long international children's camp there, organised by two Italian foundations, on the theme of 'Time of Rights'. I accompanied two children from our Talimi Haq School in Howrah. 28 children from India, Italy and Peru participated in the campus, together with teachers and workshop animators. That was like a continuing epiphany. I was in Ancona and Roma briefly before returning to Calcutta.

A few days latter I went to London. I stayed at the International Students House, at Regents Park, where I had lived as a student during 1982-84. I tramped through my old and favourite haunts. I spent a long time, and a small fortune, in bookshops, indulging my penchant for outstanding specimens of graphic literature, to enlarge the mental horizons of my sons.

I attended my friend Mark's wedding, at the Kings College chapel in Cambridge. I was in Cambridge again after 25 years. How I had wanted nothing more than to be immersed lifelong in study in Cambridge! But that was not to be. But now I sang at the chapel as part of Mark's wedding service. The acoustics in the chapel - quite awesome indeed. Yes, I was an a capella singer alright.

In London, I realised that this was the city I could truly and zestfully call my own, and profess love for. After all, it was where I was born again, where I came to light, where I became a man. And in London, this truly international city, I also became aware, for the first time, of the peculiar circumstance of my life, me, an Indian, in faraway Calcutta, being defined so profoundly by the English language.

I then went to Hannover, in Germany, to initiate a business collaboration with a small German electronics company. They have developed tools and technologies for early child learning and for language learning. I intend to bring that to India. I made a close new friendship, with Ralph, the CEO of the company. A powerful business opportunity, a new chapter in my life, a means for enormous wealth creation. Which would enable public good, with the Talimi Haq School as a small sapling to help grow an enormous Right to Education movement for the country's disprivileged children.

Meanwhile, in the small manufacturing enterprise which I have been managing on behalf of my family, we are at a challenging stage. Much to be done, but through that there is the strong potential of becoming a leading manufacturer in the world in the tiny niche we operate in.

Its still only August. I have some more important trips and journeys to make in the coming months. So far, and especially since June, I have been made, unmade and remade during and through the travels, leaving me feeling like a whirling dervish. Patterns and circles, cycles and symmetries, and synchronicities... life clad in epic raiment, humbling one to silent labour.

Bengal

2009-06-28T12:25:00.006+05:30

I had been travelling in some of the districts of north Bengal (Murshidabad, Dakshin Dinajpur and Koch Bihar). That was a most humbling, educative and inspiring experience. Living in Calcutta, life can be bleak. But my travels through rural Bengal filled me with cheer and hope, as I witnessed the promise of a new dawn for the people in the land of Bengal. A watershed in my life, self-discovery, roots, renewal...

Here are some images from my travels. See the complete set of images here.

Shan sines again in Bengal

2009-05-19T16:44:00.007+05:30

It took 32 years for the ghost of Siddhartha Shankar Roy to be buried, and for the self-destructive negativism underlying much of life in Bengal to be set aside. Bengal has rejoined the national mainstream. It has been part of a national wave, and played a significant part in enabling the formation of a stable federal govt committed to good governance, economic growth and social inclusion. Bengal had played a significant role in India's anti-colonial and freedom movement. Now, through its electoral behaviour, it has once again found its place under the Indian sun. The people of Bengal have to give flesh and bones to that promise and potential.

It is unlikely that any future govt will last for 30 years - or for that matter, whether "Bengal" as we know it today, will have any meaning in 30 years time, given the pace at which changes and transformations are taking place in the world. Any new dispensation in Bengal has only a short time within which it can carry out the work of repairing, rebuilding and renewing Bengal. It is not a question of pragmatism, or expediency or opportunism. Of erstwhile CPM-supported auto, bus-transport and union mafias, and real estate dons now doing business as usual with new rulers. It is a question of overturning and transforming the way life is lived in Bengal, of how people breathe, and what they are.

Bengal needs vision, inspiration and example; people need counselling and instruction and encouragement; and chastening and chiding and punishment and reward. In short, Bengal needs leadership. Bengalis are habitually averse to all these things. But the same Bengalis can do as much and more when they are inspired, and believe and trust. Netaji is long gone, and is not about to return. Even Prabhakaran, the mass murderer, who claimed Netaji's inspiration, is now dead. The people of Bengal have to find leadership within themselves, individually and collectively. Yes, Bengal needs a new Swaraj party.

With that, no one or nothing can stop Bengal from realising its place of destiny in this planet. A beautiful land, a peaceful and prosperous place, of gifted and quirky people, a different place, which is also a beacon for others.

Painting: The Sun Makers Free Your Mind, by Eric Singleton.

This lady does not vanish

2009-05-19T15:11:00.003+05:30

I had the following discussion with a friend, let us call him D.

D: This was a good result. They, i.e. CPI(M), have got their comeuppance at last. I can only hope the lessons will be well-learnt because if this is repeated 2 years later, in West Bengal we will go from frying pan to fire. But indications are that the college ideologues in Delhi are unwilling to learn anything. On the other hand, will the victorious lady learn anything now? Both sides need merciless whipping.

Me: I am not cynical and anxious about life in Bengal after the lady comes to office. Things cannot get any worse, they can only get better. And the people of Bengal, once awakened, cannot be taken for granted. And being able to fight against state power, on and on, for almost 20 years now, despite all the abuse, reviling, vilification, pillorying and beating, and finally vanquish the oppressor, does surely indicate some capability. If that capability, that sense of challenge, that fighting spirit, is focused on good governance, then surely some good will come out of that.

D: I'm not sure about the lady coming to office here and indeed things can get much much worse. The people of Bengal lack stamina anyway. Can't expect any deliverance as it's difficult to say which is the greater evil. In any case, as a bad Bong I have never been a political animal and have limited interest in social issues. Not keen on spoiling the party but am certainly cynical about our state, though feeling optimistic about Bharat at his point.

Me: There is no such thing as Bharat, every place in Bharat is another place like Bengal or Kolkata or whichever village. Bengalis have stamina - to be so badly raped repeatedly for 32 years and more and survive, and though they are down, they are definitely not out. The Bengali cannot be wiped out or effaced. His sense of self is indestructible. And indestructible is his desire to find joy and self-satisfaction, even amidst the most hellish circumstances and deprivation.

D: I meant sarkar. Getting raped for 32 years doesn't indicate stamina but such a populous community can't be wiped out unless there is a deadly fish flu! Effacement has occurred over the years but hubris is indestructible. You are right about the joy and satisfaction and above all, humour. Also, talent is still there aplenty.

Deliverance will come if we can throw out governments every 5 years. If the lady manages to come, with the penchant for shooting herself in the foot, she isn't capable of staying put like the Left, thankfully! Nor should any future Left be allowed to stay for long again. There may be some danger of Gujarat getting stuck with Modi and BJP.

Left out

2009-05-17T16:58:00.004+05:30

After 32 years, the wheel has finally turned for the CPI(M). The results of the parliamentary elections are a resounding slap in the face of the party, which has been routed in Calcutta and across much of West Bengal. Those living outside West Bengal cannot imagine how unimaginable this is. One cannot help smiling!

The dark, dark night of CPI(M) rule has finally begun to come to an end. But so much damage has been done! Can it ever be rectified? Where would one begin?

Elections for the Calcutta Municipal Corporation in 2010, and for the state assembly in 2011. The CPI(M) can only sit and watch its own annihilation. Notwithstanding the hogwash of its gerontocrat apologists about making amends, the party is in an unstoppable self-destruct mode now, and I have no doubt that we are going to see some more spectacular performances by the party that is now nothing other than a mafia, gorged on the blood of the people.

Many people still think of the CPI(M) as "the Left". Left toe! A new politics is waiting to be born, something other than parties, of grassroots movements, of deepening democracy. The sooner people bury the CPI(M) - in their minds - the sooner such alternatives can emerge.

Narcissism and Despair

2009-05-17T12:28:00.010+05:30

Love Thy Enemy, by Bogdan Migulski

by Ashis Nandy
The Little Magazine

Interpretations of the events of 9/11, 2001, and the diverse political and intellectual responses to them, have oscillated between a concern with the wrath of the disinherited and exploited and the elements of self-destruction built into a hegemonic system. In this essay, I shall focus on the rage of those who feel they have been let down by the present global system and have no future within it. This feeling has been acquiring a particularly dangerous edge in recent times. For the rage often does not have a specific target but it is always looking for one; and regimes and movements that latch on to that free-floating anger can go far. Indeed, once in a while, their targets too have the same kind of need to search for, and find, enemies. The two sides then establish a dyadic bond that binds them in lethal mutual hatred.[1]

Six years after the event, it is pretty obvious that this time there has been a narrowing of cognitive and emotional range all around. The global culture of commonsense has come to the conclusion that it is no longer a matter of realpolitik and hard-headed, interest-based use of terror of the kind favoured by the mainstream culture of international relations and diplomacy — as for instance the repeated attempts by the CIA over the last six decades to assassinate recalcitrant rulers hostile to the United States — but a terror that is based on the defiance of rationality and abrogation of self-interest, a terror that is deeply and identifiably cultural.

It also seems to insist, to judge by the responses to 9/11, that there are only two ways of looking at this link between terror and culture. One way is to emphasise cultural stereotypes and how they hamper intercultural and inter-religious amity. This emphasis presumes that the West with its freedoms — political and sexual — and its lifestyle, identified in the popular imagination by consumerism and individualism, has come to look like a form of Satanism in many millennial movements, particularly in those flourishing in Islamic cultures. Multiculturalism and intercultural dialogue are seen as natural, if long-term, antidotes to such deadly stereotypes. So is, in the short run, ‘firm’ international policing.

The other way is to locate the problem in the worldview and theology of specific cultures. What look like stereotypes or essentialisations in the former approach are seen as expressions of the natural political self of such cultures in the latter. At the moment, Islam looks like the prime carrier of such a political self but some other cultures are not far behind. The American senator who ridiculed those who wore diapers on their heads did not have in mind only the Muslims; nor did the American motorist who, when caught while trying to run over a woman clad in a sari, declared that he was only doing his patriotic duty after 9/11.

The first way — that of multiculturalism and intercultural dialogue — is of course seen as a soft option, the second as too harsh. However, the second has in the short run looked to many like a viable basis for public policy and political action. The reason is obvious. Terror has been an instrument of statecraft, diplomacy and political advocacy for centuries. To see it as a new entrant in the global marketplace of politics is to shut one’s eyes to the deep human propensity to hitch terror to organised, ideology-led political praxis. Robespierre said — on behalf of all revolutionaries, I guess — that without terror, virtue was helpless. Terror, he went on to claim, was virtue itself.

This propensity has also enjoyed a certain ‘natural’ legitimacy in the dominant global culture of public life when it comes to the serious business of international relations. Despite recent pretensions, in international politics violence does not have to be justified; only non-violence has to be justified. The mainstream global culture of statecraft insists that the true antidote to terror is counter-terror.

In that respect, the killers who struck at New York on 9/11 and the regimes that claim absolute moral superiority over them share some common values. Both believe that when it comes to Satanic others, all terror is justified as long as it is counter-terror and interpreted as retributive justice. Both look like belated products of the twentieth century, which in retrospect looks like a century of terrorism and its natural accompaniment, collateral damage. Guernica, Hamburg, Dresden, Nanking, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are all formidable names in the history of terror and counter-terror, used systematically as political and strategic weapons. On a smaller scale, the same story of attempts to hitch terror to virtue and to statecraft has been repeated in a wide range of situations — from Jallianwalla Bagh to Lidice and from Sharpeville to Mi Lai. The culpable states were sometimes autocratic, sometimes democratic.

Liberal democracy has not often been a good antidote against state terror unleashed by its protagonists. Few are now surprised that some of the iconic defenders of democracy, such as Winston Churchill, were as committed to terror as Robespierre was. Churchill was not only a co-discoverer of the concept of area bombing, as opposed to strategic bombing, he also did not intercede when supplied with evidence, including aerial photographs, of Nazi death camps.

Hence also the widespread tendency to dismiss all talk of fighting terror without recourse to counter-terror as romantic hogwash. It is a basic tenet of the mainstream global culture of politics that only the fear of counter-terror dissuades terrorists from walking their chosen path. Hence also the admiration for the terrorism-fighting skills of a country like Israel in states like Sri Lanka and India and the pathetic attempts of such admirers to use Israeli ‘expertise’, forgetting that Israel has been fighting terror with terror for more than fifty years without success. All that the Israeli state can really take credit for is that, in a classic instance of identifying with its historic oppressors, it has succeeded in turning terrorism into a chronic ailment within the boundaries of the Israeli state, in the process brutalising its own politics and turning many of its citizens into fanatics and racists.

Into this atmosphere has entered a new genre of terrorists during the last few yearsin Palestine, Sri Lanka, India and now the United States. These are terrorists who come in the form of suicide bombers and suicide squads. They come prepared to die and, therefore, are personally and, one might add, automatically immune to the fear of counter-terrorism. Actually, they usually view counter-terrorism — and the reaction it unleashes — as a useful device for mobilisation and polarisation of opinion.[2] This is one thing that the hedonic, death-denying, self-interest-based, individualistic culture of the globalised middle classes just cannot handle. It looks like an unwanted war declared by the death-defying on the death-denying. What kind of person are you if you do not want to keep any options open for enjoying or even seeing the future you are fighting for? What kind of person are you if you do not care what happens to your family, neighbourhood or community in the backlash? To the civilised modern citizen, such suicidal activism looks like the negation of civilisation and the ultimate instance of savagery, apart from being utterly irrational and perhaps even psychotic.

In the nervous, heated discussions about the kamikaze nearly fifty years ago, they often appeared like strange, subhuman adventurers and carriers of collective pathologies, driven by their feudal allegiances and unable to distinguish life from death or good from evil. Recent discussions of the suicide bombers of Hamas, Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka and Al Qaeda and Jaish-e-Mohammed in Pakistan and Kashmir invoke the same kind of imageries and fantasies. Hence, probably, the abortive attempts to rename suicide bombings as homicide bombings. They invoke such imageries and fantasies because the modern world is always at a loss to figure out how to deter somebody who is already determined to die.

For most of us, this kind of passion has no place in normal life; it can be only grudgingly accommodated in textbooks of psychiatry as a combination of criminal insanity and insane self-destructiveness.

Outside the modern world too, few call it self-sacrifice. For unlike the freedom fighters of India and Ireland who fasted to death during the colonial period as an act of protest and defiance of their rulers, the self-sacrifice of the suicide bombers also includes the sacrifice of unwilling, innocent others, what the civilised world has learnt to euphemistically call unavoidable collateral damage.

Yet, the key cultural-psychological feature of today’s suicide bombers and suicide squads, despair, is not unknown to the moderns. Indeed, the idea of despair has become central to our understanding of contemporary subjectivities and we also acknowledge that it has shaped some of the greatest creative endeavours in the arts and some of the most ambitious forays in social thought in our times. Van Gogh cannot be understood without invoking the idea of despair, nor can Friedrich Nietzsche. So powerful has been the explanatory power of the idea of despair that recently Harsha Dehejia, an Indian art historian, has tried to introduce the concept in the Indian classical theory of art — by extending Bharata’s theory of rasas itself — as an analytic device. Dehejia feels that without recourse to this construct, we just cannot fathom contemporary Indian art.[3]

One suspects that the desperation one sees in the self-destruction of the new breed of terrorists is the obverse of the same sense of despair that underpins so much of contemporary creativity. Only, this new despair expresses itself in strange and alien ways because the cultures from which it comes are not only defeated but have remained mostly invisible and inaudible. Indeed, their sense of desperation may have come not so much from defeat or economic deprivation but from invisibility and inaudibility.[4]

Of the 18 people identified as members of the suicide squad that struck on 9/11, 15 have been identified as Saudis. They come from a prosperous society where dissent in any form is not permitted, where political conformity and silence are demanded and extracted through either state terror or the fear of it. It can be argued that by underwriting the Saudi regime, which also presides over Islam’s holiest sites and has acquired an undeserved reputation in many circles as a prototypical if not exemplary Islamic state, the United States has helped identify itself as the major source of the sense of desperation that the killers nurtured within them. Violence of the kind we saw on 9/11, Johan Galtung and Dietrich Fischer argue, presumes “a very high level of dehumanisation of the victims in the minds of aggressors.”[5] That dehumanisation does not happen in a day, nor can it be conveniently explained away as unprovoked.

Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek and Stephen Schwarz of Spectator have drawn attention to the denominational loyalties of the 18 terrorists. They were Wahhabis, given to an aggressively puritanical form of Islamic revivalist ideology. But all Wahhabis do not turn as aggressive as the Saudi, Palestinian, Pakistani and Pashtun Wahhabis have sometimes done, and certainly all of them do not become suicide bombers. Who does or does not is the question we face.

The answer to that question, we may find out in the coming years, lies not in the ethnic origins or religious connections of terrorism but in the fear of cultures that encourage us not to acknowledge the sense of desperation, if not despair, that is today crystallising outside the peripheries of the known world. It is the adhesive in the new bonding between terror and culture. This desperation may not always be preceded by Nietzschean theocide but it is accompanied by a feeling that God may not be dead but he has surely gone deaf and blind. The Palestinian situation is only one part of the story. The present global political economy has for the first time become almost totally oblivious to the fact that the unprecedented prosperity and technological optimism in some countries have as their underside the utter penury and hopelessness of the many, accompanied by collapse of life support systems due to ecological devastation.[6]

Nothing I have come across reveals the nature of this nihilistic, suicidal despair in some parts of the globe better than the following extract from a journalist’s story. I request the reader to go through it, despite its length:

Aman [Brigadier Amanullah, secretary to Benazir Bhutto and former chief of Pakistan’s military intelligence in Sind, bordering India] noticed me looking at the painting and followed my gaze. … “A rocket ship heading to the moon?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “A nuclear warhead heading to India.”

I thought he was making a joke. … I told Aman that I was disturbed by the ease with which Pakistanis talk of nuclear war with India.

Aman shook his head. “No,” he said matter-of-factly. “This should happen. We should use the bomb.”

“For what purpose?”

He didn’t seem to understand my question.

“In retaliation?” I asked.

“Why not?”

“Or first strike?”

“Why not?”

I looked for a sign of irony. None was visible…

“We should fire at them and take out a few of their cities — Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta,” he said. “They should fire back and take Karachi and Lahore. Kill off a hundred or two hundred million people… and it would all be over. They have acted so badly toward us; they have been so mean. We should teach them a lesson. It would teach all of us a lesson. There is no future here, and we need to start over. So many people think this. Have you been to the villages of Pakistan, the interior? There is nothing but dire poverty and pain. The children have no education; there is nothing to look forward to. Go into the villages, see the poverty. There is no drinking water. Small children without shoes walk miles for a drink of water. I go to the villages and I want to cry. My children have no future. None of the children of Pakistan have a future. We are surrounded by nothing but war and suffering…”[7]

In the bonding between terror and culture, a subsidiary role has been played by the perception that all strange cultures are potentially dangerous and sources of violence, and that multiculturalism is only a means of organising or confederating those cultures that approximate or are compatible with the global middle-class culture — cultures that can be safely consumed in the form of ethnic food, arts, museumised artefacts, anthropological subjects or, as is happening in the case of Buddhism and Hinduism, packaged ethnic theories of salvation. The tacit solipsism of Islamic terrorism and its ability to hijack some of Islam’s most sacred symbols is matched by the narcissism of America’s policy elite that finds expression in an optimism that is almost manic.

At the same time, for a large majority of the world, all rights to diverse visions of the future — all utopian thinking and all indigenous visions of a good society — are being subverted by the globally dominant knowledge systems and a globally accessible media as instances of either romantic, other-worldly illusions or as brazen exercises in revivalism. The Southern world’s future now, by definition, is nothing other than an edited version of the contemporary North’s. What Europe and North America are today, the folklore of the globalised middle class claims, the rest of the world will become tomorrow. Once visions of the future are thus stolen, the resulting vacuum has to be filled by available forms of millennialism, some of them perfectly compatible with the various editions of fundamentalism floating around the global marketplace of ideas today. In the liminal world of the marginalised and the muted, desperation and millennialism often define violence as a necessary means of exorcism.

September 11, Gandhian activist-scholar Rajiv Vora and the Swarajpeeth initiative have recently reminded us, was the day Satyagraha, militant non-violence, was born in Johannesburg in 1906. South Africa at the time was a proudly authoritarian, racist police state, not at all like British India, presided over by an allegedly benign, liberal colonial regime that, some votaries of political realism assure us, ensured the success of Gandhi’s non-violence. Does this coincidence have something to tell us?

One way of understanding the recent changes in the global culture of protest is to offset the despair-driven, suicidal forms of terror against the self-destructive defiance and subversion of authorities, as in the case of the Irish hunger-strikers, whom we have already mentioned. The other way is to compare the new culture of terror with the no less religious, militant nonviolence of a community known all over the globe today for its alleged weakness for religion-based terror in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Pathans, known for their martial valour and officially declared a martial race by British India in the nineteenth century, have virtually been turned into official symbols of mindless violence. Yet, in India at least, till quite recently they were also the symbols of the non-violence of the courageous and the truly martial. They had been the finest exponents of the art of Gandhian militant non-violence, directed against the British imperial regime in the 1930s.[9] The Pathans who participated in that struggle were exactly the community that has in the last decade produced the Taliban and played host to Osama bin Laden and his entourage. Can this discrepancy or change be explained away only as a result of the efforts of dedicated fundamentalist clerics, the brutalising consequence of the anti-Soviet struggle in Afghanistan, or the skill and efficiency of Inter Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s version of the Central Intelligence Agency? Or does the contradiction exist in the human personality and Pashtun culture itself?[10]

The second possibility cannot be dismissed offhand. The behaviour of ordinary Afghans after the fall of the Taliban regime — in their everyday life and their participation in politics — does not suggest that the Taliban enjoyed decisive support of the people they ruled. Most Afghans seemed genuinely happy to be rid of the harsh, puritanical reign of the Taliban. On the other hand, some of them have obviously helped their guest, bin Laden, and the now-unpopular ruler, Mullah Mohammed Omar, to successfully escape the clutches of the American ground troops.

Who is the real Pathan? The one sympathetic or obedient to the Taliban or the one celebrating the Taliban’s fall? The one known for his martial values or the one who in the 1930s turned out to be the most courageous passive resister, who, according to a number of moving accounts of the Non-Cooperation Movement, faced ruthless baton charges by the colonial police but never retaliated and never flinched? The Pathans evidently brought to their nonviolence the same commitment and fervour that the Afghan terrorists are said to have brought to their militancy in Afghanistan and in other hotspots of the world. Are they as ruthless with themselves now as they were in the 1930s, during colonial times?

I shall avoid answering these questions directly and instead venture a tentative, open-ended comment to conclude. Most cultures enjoin non-violence or at least seek to reduce the area of violence, and these efforts often go hand in hand with cultural theories of unavoidable violence. Only a few like Sparta and the Third Reich glorify, prioritise or celebrate violence more or less unconditionally as the prime mover in human affairs or as the preferred mode of intervention in the world. In the huge majority of cultures that fall in the first category, violence and non-violence both exist in the same persons as human potentialities. The life experiences that underscore one of the two potentialities are the crucial means of entering the mind of the violent and to understand why the violent actualised one of the potentialities and not the other.

The experiences that in our times have contributed to the growth of massive violence can often — though not always — be traced to the collapse of communities and their normative systems. The old is moribund and the new has not yet been born, as the tired cliché goes. In many cases, the powerful and the rich welcomed this collapse because they did not like the norms of other people’s communities.

But flawed norms, one guesses, are norms all the same.

The resulting flux has psychologically disoriented and sometimes devastated a large section of humankind and generated in them a vague sense of loss, anxiety and anger. They live with a sense of loneliness and a feeling that the work they have to do to earn their living, unlike the vocations they previously had, is degrading and meaningless. Those who do not clearly perceive the hand of any agency in these changes often try to contain their anger through consumerism and immersion in the world of total entertainment. But some do identify an agency, correctly or incorrectly. The contemporary terrorists come from among them.

This also means that only by engaging with these experiences can you battle the worldviews or ideologies that organise these experiences into a work-plan for terror. If you are unwilling to negotiate these life experiences, if you consistently deny their existence and legitimacy and the normal human tendency to configure such experiences into something ideologically meaningful, you contribute to and aggravate the sense of desperation and abandonment for many. At least one well-known Palestinian psychiatrist has claimed that in West Asia ‘it is no longer a question of determining who amongst the Palestinian youth are inclined towards suicide bombing. The question is who does not want to be a suicide bomber.’[11]

You then push the desperate and the abandoned towards a small, closed world of like-minded people who constitute a ‘pseudo-community’ of those whose rage and frustration are sometimes free-floating but always seeking expression in nihilistic self-destruction masquerading as self-denying martyrdom.

NOTES

An earlier draft of this paper was presented at a symposium on ‘Edward Said: Speaking Truth to Power,’ organised by the Institute for Research and Development in Humanities, Tarbiyat Modaress University, Tehran University and Center for Dialogue of Civilizations in Tehran, and an expanded version at the Workshop on ‘The Dialogue of Civilizations: Intellectual and Organizational Signposts for the Future’, La Trobe University, Melbourne.

1. Vamik D. Volkan, The Need to Have Enemies and Allies (New York: Jason Aronson, 1988).

2. This is recognised, though in the language of the mainstream, in Michael S. Doran, ‘Somebody Else’s Civil War’, Foreign Affairs, January-February 2002, 81(1), pp. 22-42.

3. Harsha Dehejia with Prem Shankar Jha and Ranjit Hoskote, Despair and Modernity: Reflections from Modern Indian Paintings (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2000).

4. Partly because American hegemony today is ensured not so much by an army and a ready reserve of about 3.9 million men and an annual expenditure of about 650 billion dollars as by a near-total control over global mass media.

5. Johan Galtung and Dietrich Fischer, ‘The United States, the West and the Rest of the World’, unpublished MS.

6. That is why one of the most thoughtful intellectual responses to September 11, 2001 remains Wendell Berry, ‘In the Presence of Fear’, Resurgence, January-February 2002, (210), pp. 6-8; see also Jonathan Power, ‘For the Arrogance of Power America Now Pays a Terrible Price’, TFF Press Info 127, Transnational Foundation, September 13, 2001.

7. Peter Landesman, ‘The Agenda: A Modest Proposal From the Brigadier: What one Prominent Pakistani thinks his Country should do with its Atomic Weapons’, The Atlantic Monthly, March 2002.

8. Rajiv Vora, ‘11 September: Kaun si aur Kyun’, Unpublished Hindi paper circulated by Swarajpeeth and Nonviolent Peaceforce, New Delhi 2005; and Arshad Qureshi, ‘11 September 1906: Ek Nazar’, unpublished paper circulated by Swarajpeeth and Nonviolent Peaceforce, New Delhi, 2005.

9. An ethnographic monograph that nevertheless captures the other self of the Pathan in a moving fashion is Mukulika Banerjee, The Pathan Unarmed: Opposition and Memory in the North West Frontier (Oxford: James Currey, 2000). For a hint that this is not merely dead history but a living memory for many, see Ayesha Khan, ‘Mid-Way to
Dandi, Meet Red Shirts’, The Indian Express, March 22, 2005.

10. See an insightful, sensitive discussion of the way the same cultural resources can be used to legitimise and resist terrorism in Bhikhu Parekh, ‘Dialogue with the Terrorists’, in Colonialism, Tradition and Reform: An Analysis of Gandhi’s Political Discourse (Sage, New Delhi, 1989), pp. 139-71.

11. Eyyead Sarraj, quoted in Chandra Muzaffar, ‘Suicide Bombing: Is Another Form of Struggle Possible?’, Just: Commentary, June 2002, 2 (6), p. 1.

------

Ashis Nandy, renowned political psychologist and social theorist, is a leading figure in postcolonial studies and arguably India’s best known intellectual voice of dissent. He is Director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. His recent awards include the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize.

Decay of the spirit of Islam?

2009-04-27T20:57:00.006+05:30

from The Economist

The Crisis of Islamic Civilisation, by Ali A. Allawi, Yale University Press.

For those (and they are many) who are convinced by the thesis that the West and its values are under remorseless siege from a menacing and resurgent Islam, Ali Allawi’s antithesis may seem a little surprising, even absurd. But the author is a distinguished Iraqi who has twice served in post-Saddam governments in Baghdad and whose last, much-acclaimed book was a searing indictment of American (and Iraqi) failings. Though the two books tackle very different themes, what they have in common is their author’s intimate knowledge of both Islam and the West, and his unflinching honesty.

Mr Allawi calls his new book an “attempt to understand the factors behind the decay of the spirit of Islam”. He locates this decay not in the personal piety of the world’s Muslims—which remains vibrant—but in the collective failure of Muslims, over the past 200 years, to come up with an adequate and effective response to Western modernity. The problem is not that Islam is incapable of finding its own path to modernity. Mr Allawi wholly rejects the popular notion that Islam is inherently incompatible with tolerance, democracy, women’s rights—in short, all that the West holds dear.

The difficulty, he says, is that the predominant Muslim response to the Western challenge has been narrowly political instead of being rooted in the inherited ethos of Islamic civilisation. Seen in this light, the Islamist movements which have received so much attention since the Islamic revival in the 1970s are shallow and passionate. For all their pretence of offering an “Islamic alternative”, they represent, or so he argues, nothing more than Western modernity in Islamic garb.

Mr Allawi calmly and methodically deconstructs an Islamic revival which has failed to live up to its promise. Islamist movements and secular governments anxious to pay lip-service to Islam have, between them, failed spectacularly to anchor themselves in genuinely Islamic principles: principles which, for Mr Allawi, are as much about inner spirituality as outward religiosity. The results are everywhere to be seen. Autocratic governments abuse human rights, whether in Islamic Iran, Saudi Arabia and Sudan or in secular Egypt and Syria. Economies are corrupt and maladministered, and their supposed ethical principles, such as Islamic banking, are a sham. There has been a profound loss of cultural creativity, apparent, for example, in the decay of the Islamic city and its time-honoured traditions of craftsmanship, piety and community.

Mr Allawi buttresses his case with some striking statistics: “The creative output of the twenty or thirty million Muslims of the Abbasid era [750-1258] dwarfs the output of the nearly one-and-a-half billion Muslims of the modern era.” Per head, the income of the wealthiest Muslim country (the United Arab Emirates) is 200 times that of the poorest (Somalia).

Is there a solution? Mr Allawi, himself a Shia Muslim, believes the mystical (or Sufi) tradition must be an integral part of the revival of Islamic civilisation. But here too—although Sufism retains a strong grassroots following in several parts of the Muslim world—he finds himself at odds with both the modernist and puritanical (Wahhabi) strands of Islam, which disdain the individualistic heterodoxy of “folk Islam”.

The West has not helped. Mr Allawi castigates the hysterical Islamophobia which came in the wake of the attacks of September 2001, as well as the hubristic attempts to “reform” Islam in the name of defeating terrorism. He insists that the challenge of recapturing the “spirit of Islam” is a task for Muslims, not outsiders. The stark choice for the Muslim world is between the revival of its civilisation, difficult as that is to achieve, and its secularisation—“the dissolution of Islam into modernity”. Mr Allawi is not sanguine.

Image: From The Spirit of Islam: Experiencing Islam Through Calligraphy, an exhibition at the Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia.

Literate city?

2009-04-21T14:45:00.006+05:30

Too bookish for crime? Photo: Piyal Adhikary.

I have written earlier about how 'literate' my city, Calcutta is (see here and here.

Well, now the great Amartya Sen no less, has given the ultimate certificate to Calcutta.

I reproduce the report from today's The Telegraph on Amartya Sen's lecture in London.

.....

Calcutta low crime linked to books: Sen

by Amit Roy

London, April 20: Calcutta has the lowest crime rate in the world because of the civilising effect of books, Amartya Sen said today in his keynote opening address at the London Book Fair.

Even by Sen’s exacting standards, it was by common agreement one of the Nobel Prize winner’s most brilliant speeches when he spoke on “India in the Modern World”.

With India chosen as the “market focus country” at the London Book Fair this year, the economist and moral philosopher examined the possible relationship between a love of books and low crime.

After his speech, Sen told The Telegraph: “I don’t know the answer but it is something worth looking into.”

This year the British Council has brought nearly 50 authors from India who, between them, represent 15 languages. Nearly 100 publishers from India have also made the journey to the Earl’s Court exhibition centre in London.

It was pointed out that India is now the third largest publishers of English books in the world. This works out to 15,000 titles a year.

The Indian book market, now worth £625 million, is growing at 10 per cent a year, with Hindi titles making up 26 per cent of the market.

Sen, however, did not deal with dry statistics. His speech made Calcutta sound the most exciting literary city in the world.

The question he posed was: “Does the culture of books influence the life of the city in any profound way?” He then offered an intriguing theory which even the people of Calcutta might not have considered.

“To consider one remarkable feature, Calcutta has, by a long margin, the lowest crime rate in the world, including the incidence of homicide and murder,” he said. “While the number of murders per hundred thousand people per year varies between 2 and 10 per year in many cities in Europe and America, and between 15 and 50 per year in many cities in Africa and Latin America, the homicide rate in impoverished Calcutta is only 0.3 per cent — a fraction of the rate in any other city in the world.”

He then drove him his point: “Indian cities generally have low murder rates, around 2.7 on the average (rather like London but much lower than American cities like New York or Chicago), but Calcutta in particular beats them all — even the famously peaceful towns of Singapore and Hong Kong — in terms of the lowness of homicide rates.”

He came round again to his fundamental question: “Does the peculiar love of books and culture, and here I would add Calcutta’s fondness for theatre, too (often produced at very low cost), have a role here? I don’t really know, and there is no rigorous work on this that has properly tested any of the possible hypotheses.”

He had cleverly planted the germ of a revolutionary thought: “It is abundantly clear that the standard explanation of crime in terms only of economic poverty does not tell us much about the incidence and causation of violent crime, including homicide. There is certainly some research to be done here.”

Sen appeared to speak not so much about modern India but why Calcutta was just about the most fantastic city in the world bar none. In terms of the number of people who attended, the Calcutta Book Fair was the biggest in the world — bigger than even Frankfurt, he stressed.

He said that “the city I came from, namely Calcutta, has a huge book culture”.

He remembered the pavements in College Street with their spread of books and nearby stores jammed with volumes of every description. “I should perhaps mention here, in these precarious roadside shops that the future film director, Satyajit Ray, read publications on films from across the globe, which introduced him to the traditions of world cinema. A considerable part of Satyajit Ray’s affection for the city that he loved despite finding it ‘monstrous, teeming, bewildering’ (perhaps because of that) related to the book culture that expanded his horizon so radically, even on the sidewalks of Calcutta.”

He also disclosed how his own life had been changed by Calcutta’s book culture. “It was in one of the College Street bookshops, called Dasgupta’s, that my friend Sukhamoy Chakravarty found at the end of 1951 a copy of a recent book by a brilliant economist Kenneth Arrow.”

On his friend’s recommendation, Sen read the book “which would radically influence my direction of work. I often wondered whether my life would have gone very differently had my friend, Sukhamoy, not been such a book hound.”

Perhaps Sen’s keynote address should have been called, “Calcutta: why you should book your ticket this afternoon.” Sadly, there are no longer any direct flights from London to Calcutta, a city increasingly isolated from the rest of the world by political and economic Luddites, most analysts would say.

During the question and answer session, Sen demolished the logic behind Mulayam Singh Yadav’s manifesto commitment to downgrade the English language. He argued this would only serve to increase the admitted inequalities between those who knew English and those who did not. The answer, as far as Sen was concerned, was to ensure more people had the opportunity to learn English.

.....

Reading the report this morning, I was seething with annoyance. I wrote to some friends: "I have never heard such piffle in my life! I'm, sure you too would agree, on the basis of whatever you know about Calcutta, how abominable his comment is. Sadly, all the not-so-wonderful "Calcuttans" are going to be full as rosogollas with pride reading this. Would be great if you fired off a riposte! I would love to carry that on my blog.

.....

Sumanta Banerjee wrote:

Amartya Sen seems to have been swept off his feet by his nostalgic memories of childhood and youth in Calcutta, before it became "Kolkata". Being an `argumentative Bengali', and fond of theorizing, he has come up with this rather fanciful notion that the city's low rate of crime (is that substantiated by facts?) is due to its love for books!

To start with ... there are crimes and crimes, various nuances and shades. If burglaries, rape and murder are cognizable crimes, what about nursing-home doctors fleecing their patients and botching up operations (a regular phenomenon in Kolkata), or private tution-hungry college teachers exploiting their students, or a chief minister ordering the police to fire upon unarmed protestors and encouraging his party goons to burn villages? Aren't these crimes ?

And more importantly, aren't the perpetrators of these crimes great book-lovers - the doctors poring over medical texts, the teachers parading their erudition with volumes tucked under their arms, the chief-minister quoting poetry while inaugurating book fairs ?

In fact, by concentrating only on cognizable offences as defined in the Indian Penal Code (like murder, theft, burglary, etc) which are usually attributed to the illiterate, uneducated plebs (those bereft of the knowledge of books), we deliberately wink at the crimes of the educated book-lovers, and thereby betray a class bias.

May I go a bit further? During my research in crime in 19th century Calcutta, I found an interesting connection between the increasing availability of books (on modern chemistry, for instance) to the educated Bengali middle classes with the emergence of new types of criminals (although few in number) from among these classes - quack doctors learning to concoct medicines that could slow-poison some unsuspecting victims, or forgers learning from the texts how to manufacture inks that would delete portions from a will and replace them with a different version without arousing any suspicion. From this finding however I wouldn't jump to the reverse conclusion - that books lead to crimes!

I would have expected Amartya Sen to refrain from a similar simplistic conclusion that a city's crime rate rises or dips in proportion to its love of books. What about other metropolitan cities like London, Paris, New York? Are they less book-loving? Yet, as far as I know, crime rates there are quite high.

.....

Dulali Nag wrote:

Wonder what prompted him to utter such inanities... I believed he was not one to bow to the demands of political correctness. And what about some statistics on the number of book-lovers in New York, London, Chicago, and Mexico City vis a vis the number in Calcutta? And I cringe in my imagination faced with those "Calcuttans" who would be "full as rosogollas with pride reading this". These are the people who actually line the divide between the upper crust and the lower class in Sumanta Banerjee's essay on crime in Calcutta. These are hypocrites of the first order, 100% complacent, and exercise their agency only when it comes to deriding others.

.....

Ravi Vyas wrote:

Sumanto, a dear friend, kindly forwarded Amartya Sen's lecture at the London Book Fair that you had sent him, about low crime rates in Calcutta becoz of the Bengali's love of books. I fully endorse your view that this is a lot of bullshit but I want to add to it.

I was a publisher for almost 25 years and can claim to know the state of the book market in Calcutta - at least much more than AKS does. Publishers not only publish but also take on the much more onerous task of promoting and selling the books. As chief editor at Longman and later in Macmillan, I know the ground realities. I have walked the streets - College Street and all the rest - like a male prostitute, marketing and selling my wares. So have my colleagues who supported me.

There is a myth about the Bengali intellectual that needs to be exploded. True, long ago there were some pioneers but that is long since over. Besides, the best of them migrated (this includes AKS) to Delhi and elsewhere, where they have done good work. It is NRBs (non-resident Bengalis), not those in Calcutta, who should be commended.

The Calcutta book market is moribund. Nothing moves; it is stagnant. College Street only has the remains of the day. The long and short of this is: AKS has become obnoxious. He pontificates on just about everything - nurition, the virtues of the free press, India-China and all the rest - things he knows little about.

Boss-napping

2009-04-20T16:38:00.005+05:30

Caterpillar's Grenoble chief executive, Nicolas
Polutnik, was held captive in his office after announcing
layoffs. (By Laurent Cipriani - Associated Press)

Calcutta added to the lexicon of labour militancy in the late-1960s with gherao.

Around the same time then, there was an uprising in Paris, with 10 million workers on strike and all universities and factories occupied.

Well, four decades later, once again in France, a luta continua, the struggle continues...

Edward Cody writes this report, published in The Washington Post.

French Workers Hold Bosses Captive to Force Negotiations

GRENOBLE, France: The striking workers had no battle plan, but their jobs were endangered by layoffs, and they were itching for a confrontation.

So when managers at the U.S.-owned Caterpillar factory here refused to negotiate under pressure, workers recalled, resentments that had built up during several years of increasingly sour labor relations suddenly boiled over. About 40 employees invaded the executive suite, locked five top bosses inside and said they would be released only after resuming talks on the strikers' demands.

"It was spontaneous. We just had it with them," said Benoit Nicolas, 38, a Caterpillar line supervisor and delegate from one of several striking unions, the General Labor Confederation. "They refused to talk, so we locked them up until they agreed to negotiate."

The takeover, at midday March 31 in a Grenoble suburb in the Alpine foothills 75 miles southeast of Lyon, ended without injuries 24 hours later. It was one of more than half a dozen "boss-nappings" over the past month in factories across France, a whiff of revolution by workers who are facing massive layoffs because of the global economic crisis.

The hostage-takings, a specifically French reaction to the worldwide crisis, have been denounced as illegal by President Nicolas Sarkozy. But they have been widely applauded among the French people -- and in some instances have brought results. Most of all, they have dramatized the extent to which, in France perhaps more than anywhere else, the perspective of class struggle remains lodged in many people's minds and shapes the way they view the economic crisis.

The latest detention took place Thursday, when workers facing layoffs at a printer plant near Strasbourg run by Faure et Machet, a Hewlett-Packard contractor, confined their bosses in a meeting room for about 12 hours and forced them to continue negotiating on a severance package. Previously, a 3M executive in Pithiviers was held overnight after announcing layoffs, as were the head of Sony France in Pontoux-sur-Ardour and three expatriate British bosses in a Scapa Group adhesive tape plant at Bellegarde-sur-Valserine.

Trying another tactic, workers facing layoffs at the Celanese-owned Acetex-Chimie plant in Pau started a rotating hunger strike, with Mayor Martine Lignières-Cassou taking a turn to show solidarity.

More spectacularly, François-Henri Pinault, a luxury-brand magnate who recently married actress Selma Hayek, was surrounded in a car in the middle of Paris by salesclerks upset at layoffs in his stores. Before police came to his rescue, television cameras captured the Gucci millionaire negotiating through the car window and snapping to his captors that their actions were altogether inappropriate.

The historic class-struggle reflex has been sharpened because, in the view of many French workers, the current crisis is the fault of rapacious Wall Street speculators and their French equivalents. Reports of fat bonuses and stock options, even in businesses that accepted anti-crisis subsidies, have exacerbated the popular outrage. In opinion polls, about half of those queried support the workers who carry out boss-nappings.

"There is no justice in France today, and even less in America, because the bosses went to the casino with our pension money," complained Rene Mirisola, 46, a machinist and 24-year Caterpillar veteran whose schedule has been reduced to part time.

Jérôme Pélisse, a sociologist at the University of Reims who specializes in labor conflicts, said the French labor union movement descended from a tradition of confrontation. The main Caterpillar plant here, for instance, sits next to Leon Blum Avenue, named for the socialist prime minister whose Popular Front government in the 1930s instituted paid vacations and the 40-hour workweek despite bitter opposition from French industrialists.

Moreover, Pélisse said, France's perennially high unemployment rate means laid-off workers will have difficulty finding new jobs. "When they leave, they have to leave with a lot," he said, drawing attention to the demand for severance packages that are at the core of many labor-management disputes, including Caterpillar's.

Capturing the mood in its own way, the satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchaine published a front-page cartoon Wednesday showing executives in a fancy restaurant, sharing tables with their mistresses and calling their wives on cellphones to explain that they would not be home for dinner because they had been abducted by workers. Another cartoon showed a bedraggled manager exiting his factory with strikers in the background and telling a companion, "I think I deserve a kidnapping bonus."

In that vein, Pierre Piccarreta, another delegate from the General Labor Confederation, said union negotiators have demanded that executives at Caterpillar's Grenoble factory give up their bonuses for 2008 and turn in their company cars to sweeten the pot for severance payments. The demand was rejected out of hand, he added.

"We live in a crazy world, and if things don't change, there is going to be a revolution," Piccarreta told a rally Tuesday, generating whoops from the workers. "We demand redistribution of the wealth that has been generated by Caterpillar. Today the workers are calling the tune."

Workers at the rally, numbering about 600, shouted and whistled when Piccarreta urged more defiance. They booed and sent up catcalls when he brought up Sarkozy's condemnation of their tactics. The refusal of Caterpillar executives to forgo company cars elicited cries of "scandal" and "shame."

"They say we're a bunch of hotheads," screamed a bearded worker, seizing a microphone and addressing his colleagues. "We're not hotheads. The problem is that they are jerks."

Union organizers said they were convinced that the hostage-taking was a success, forcing management to take them seriously. Only after the executives in Grenoble were held captive during the night, the organizers said, did they call U.S. headquarters, get authorization to pay workers for several strike days and resume negotiations.

The chief executive of Caterpillar in Grenoble, Nicolas Polutnik, told employees in February that the factory would lay off 733 of its approximately 2,500 employees, citing a drastic decline in orders for Caterpillar's earth-moving and construction equipment. Many workers already had been put on part-time schedules. Reducing the number of layoffs is the unions' main goal, organizers said, but they are also seeking increases in the severance package.

Polutnik was one of the five senior executives taken hostage. The human resources director, Maurice Petit, was released at the end of the day because of a heart problem. But Polutnik and the other three spent the night in the executive suite with a rotating team of workers acting as jailers.

Since then, talks have been held in government offices with involvement by the central government's regional representative and telephone discussions between the representative and senior Caterpillar executives in the United States, union officials said. The Grenoble management team now moves about town with bodyguards, they added.

Despite Sarkozy's call for respect of law, French authorities have brought no charges against the Caterpillar workers or others who have taken executives hostage. But a Grenoble court on Friday ordered the removal of 19 workers who were camping at the factory entrance and harassing employees who tried to enter.

Touched with violence

2009-04-12T11:24:00.003+05:30

The Telegraph

Indian society is inured to everyday sights of cruelty. Little boys working in roadside teashops being cuffed or slapped around, children carrying loads, washing clothes and utensils, running barefoot after their mothers rushing to catch the train back home after a day of labour in the city are common sights that no one registers as cruel or uncivilized. People would be surprised if told that such sights are a marker of a society’s selfish myopia, insensitivity and lack of concern about the rights and needs of the less fortunate. Efforts to spread awareness and the honing of laws, against child labour for example, may have been intended to rouse people from these characteristic darknesses; evidently they have failed. Instead, people turn inhumanity into spectacle. A young girl, Moyna Das, accused of stealing from a house, was tied by her wrists to the grills of a window outside the house to be beaten up. She was ultimately — and ironically — ‘rescued’ by the police. In the news photograph that showed Moyna tied up, the heart-breaking helplessness of her face is given its true context by the grinning, eager faces of young women close by. They seem to represent the monstrous blood-thirst and love of bullying violence that lurk in today’s society.

The people of West Bengal, whether in the city or in towns and villages, have developed a habit of taking the law into their own hands. A petty thief or a pickpocket, if caught, is very often beaten up by a vengeful mob to an inch of his life, and sometimes killed. The excuse is that the police would let the offender go; it is up to the victimized people to make sure he does not do it again. It is true that the politicization of every institution and the links of local politicians with criminals have together undermined public trust to a great extent. But all that this negative synergy does is encourage the love of violence among citizens, for the opposite of order is always disorder. Citizens feel righteous in their inhumanity: when a theft should just be reported to the police, they become the accusers, judges and executioners all in one. The most basic forms of civic life are now not just at risk, but also in danger of being forgotten. The trend is terrifying.

The enthusiastic violence is always directed at the weak, poor and helpless. No one can be more vulnerable than a young girl allegedly caught stealing in a strange neighbourhood and exposed to a delighted public. She should not have been there if society had any pretence of being civilized. The Left in West Bengal has always liked to claim credit for the absence of communal and caste discrimination. But the arrogant contempt towards claims of the humanness of the poor is a disguised form of casteism that expresses itself typically in public spectacles of collective violence of the kind Moyna faced. When violence is the only mode of touching, it is the other side of a culture of untouchability.

Sweet Lemonade!

2009-04-10T17:07:00.004+05:30

I just discovered that Deb S, from Saint Louis, Missouri, has nominated me for the Lemonade Award.

Wow! Thank you Deb! What an honour!

The Lemonade Award recognizes blogs that show great attitude and/or gratitude.

It is now my turn to honor ten other blogs. Before I announce the winners, here are the rules for the award:

1. Put the logo on your blog or post.

2. Nominate at least 10 blogs that show great attitude and/or gratitude.

3. Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.

4. Let them know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog.

5. Nominate your favorites, and link to this post.

I am delighted to nominate the blogs I find deserving of the Lemonade Award. Here are the names, in (blogger) alphabetical order.

Anil
Awab
Bhupinder
JP
Kavitha
Madeeha
Nayyar
Rahul
Tyler
Unheard Voice

Congratulations to all of them!

The path of Greed

2009-04-10T13:11:00.004+05:30

These London demonstrators seem to
instinctively get philosopher Francois
Flahault's point that "The desire for
existence that has taken the path of greed
becomes a blind addiction. A way of being
that one cannot undo." (Photo: Leon Neal /
AFP / Getty Images

Daya has made the profound observation that "It had taken man 2,500 years to come back to the truth stated by the Buddha... It was man’s greed which led to inequality and suffering, it will continue to cause suffering, until we can do away with our greed and envy."

This article by François Flahault, makes the same point.

The Abuse of the Desire for Money or the Drugs of Capitalism

by François Flahault
Le Monde

Are politicians thinking about the common good when they talk about "moralizing capitalism?" Undoubtedly, they are primarily thinking that they must calm discontent to maintain their credibility: a democratic state is supposed to fulfill the function of third party between the powerful and the weak. Yet now, even in the United States, which, through skillful electoral marketing, had long succeeded in making the poor vote for the rich (a success that has created imitators), the crisis has just reminded everyone that a gap exists between those two groups.

Must the search for the common good translate itself into a "moralization of capitalism?" All things considered, that would be a rather advantageous compromise for economic actors. Since everyone is painting themselves over in green (as ecology makes compulsory), why not also "communicate" the ethical character of companies, as long as a few concessions are being made anyway?

To the extent that it underestimates the balance of power, moral discourse plays its role, however involuntarily, in concealing those power relationships, that is, in the staging of rationality. The big economic and financial groups are powers, forces. We need to extend Montesquieu's great idea about the limitation of powers to the relations between politics and the economy. Since every power naturally tends to exert and extend itself, none self-limits of its own volition. Only one force can limit another force. In these last few months many economists have said what must be done to reform capitalism. Now, it remains to gather together the forces that would allow it to be done: a thing all the more difficult to do, given that one of the great victories of economic power has been to convert politicians to a doctrine which facilitates the supremacy of economic power.

Economic science generally and the free market doctrine in particular can be seen as a staging of rationality. Justifiable and convincing in many respects, that staging only makes it all the easier to forget power relations and the desire for power.

As we have seen, the faith in self-regulation applied to financial markets is altogether illusory. But if the role attributed to it in economic theory is questionable, there's another role it plays that the theory does not discuss, but which it fulfills particularly well: convincing economic actors (especially the most powerful ones), and, where possible, politicians, that it is useless to concern themselves with the common good, useless to worry about the long term. One need only leave it to the invisible hand: natural providence which all by itself achieves the common good. Under the appearance of rationality, the lack of accountability that is encouraged this way leaves the field wide open to the strongest.

The Desire for a Rolex

This staging of rationality is used to give credence to the figure of the individual transparent to himself, of the thinking person in a world of things. What must not be allowed to show through is that at the very heart of economic calculations, humans continue to grapple with one another, and that, within those interactions, they are not as transparent to themselves as they want to be or believe themselves to be.

In reality, trust, mistrust, desires, passions, all that has no less place in business than in private life - to which one would like to confine affect. Calculations, figures, cleverly thought-out strategies, yes, the means are rational. But the ends? The desire to enrich oneself has nothing rational about it. It's a matter of passion, if one understands "passion" to mean all that relates to the desire to exist, to the desire to enjoy one's place among others, and, if possible, a good place. A childish desire that persists into adulthood. The desire to own a Rolex, for example. Nonetheless, the desire to exist is not necessarily puerile. Testifying to the universal life force that moves us all, it deserves our complete attention.

The desire to exist has no content fixed by our genes, no object that responds to it, as water does to thirst. That makes it a desire without object or limit. Hence the reason desire for money is so largely shared: money is that substance which exists in unlimited quantities and with which one may buy all that one wants.

Except that it's not a substance, but the fruit of shared trust, a liquid that exists only on condition that it circulate. That's why abuse of the desire for money ruins confidence and trust, drying up its circulation. If there's any truth the crisis has returned to our notice, it's certainly that one. Already in 2003, economist Frédéric Lordon took the excess in the desire for money altogether seriously. The following year, Michel Aglietta and Antoine Rebérioux published "Dérives du Capitalisme Financier" ["Aberrations of Financial Capitalism"] (éd. Albin Michel).

How would they have been heard? The desire for existence that has taken the path of greed becomes a blind addiction. A way of being that one cannot undo. For a person who has embarked down the path of excess, orienting himself to a more moderate way of life would be experienced as a reduction in diet, as being less. Ask repentant (or laid-off) traders: they will tell you about this intense addiction that tied them to the unfolding of numbers across the screen and to money that became, as for Dostoyevsky's "Gambler," simultaneously everything and nothing.

Another lesson from the crisis: the fact of being a cog in an immense machine maintains a feeling of legitimacy. For the more a way of being is shared, the more it seems justified to those who have adopted it. If I lose my way along with others, I am unaware of losing my way.

Even when, under the impact of mimetic competition, my greed spirals out of control. To maintain one's position among others is experienced as a justification. What's important is that those who pay for the game, whatever their number and whatever harm they undergo, be outside the circle of those who stick together.

François Flahault is a philosopher and director of research at the [French] National Center for Scientific Research whose most recently published book is Le Crépuscule de Prométhée. Contribution à une Histoire de la Démesure Humaine ["Twilight of Prometheus. Contribution to a History of Human Excess"], (Mille et une nuits, 2008).

Translation: Leslie Thatcher

Cynical?

2009-04-10T11:47:00.007+05:30

I am often accused of being cynical. But I think I am critical, and discern things that most people are either insensitive to or disregard. In the last 2-3 years, whatever is happening around me, here, in the city of Calcutta, is impossible to bear. I have expressed my sense of depair in earlier posts (see here or here). It is driving me insane. For instance, the air pollution - thanks to polluting buses and auto-rickshaws whose owners have the patronage of the ruling party to remain above the law - is such that people are beginning to drop dead like flies. Or take the testimony of my colleague Amina, whose mother was recently admitted to Calcutta's leading govt hospital; she said its not a hospital but a slaughter-house, run by a mafia of looters. Or consider what one Mr Sourav Sengupta writes in a letter to The Telegraph: "...the culture of unbridled hooliganism that prevails in Calcutta and the rest of Bengal, which have been nurtured by decades of misrule and political nepotism, which in turn have given birth to roughnecks who treat state property as their own. ... Our so-called bhadralok culture is but a thin veneer concealing a rot consuming both Bengal and Bengalis."

So I was glad to re-read a talk by Robert Jensen (2001), which too begins by making the distinction between "cynical" and "critical". He goes on to say: "every great struggle for justice in human history began as a lost cause", and "the joy is in the struggle". I reproduce Jensen's talk below.

Critical Hope: Radical Citizenship in Reactionary Times

After a recent antiwar talk in which I sharply criticized U.S. foreign policy, a student asked me, "Don't you find it hard to live being so cynical?" When I responded that I thought my comments were critical but not cynical, he looked at me funny and said, "But how can being so critical not make you cynical?"

The student was equating any critique of injustice produced by institutions and systems of power with cynicism about people. His question made me realize how easy is cynicism and how difficult is sustained critique in this culture, which shouldn't surprise us. People with power are perfectly happy for the population to be cynical, because that tends to paralyze people and leads to passivity. Those same powerful people also do their best to derail critique -- the process of working to understand the nature of things around us and offering judgments about them -- because that tends to energize people and leads to resistance.

Understanding the difference between critique and cynicism -- and the difference between hope and optimism -- is crucial to the future of any struggle against injustice. At this moment in history, those struggles must not only be about trying to win changes in policies but also about the reinvigoration of public life -- a call for participation, for politics, for radical citizenship in reactionary
times.

I don't use radical and reactionary in this case to describe specific political positions, left versus right. I am talking instead about an approach not just to politics, narrowly defined, but to the central questions of what it means to be a human being in connection with others. I think the world we live in is reactionary because it is trying to squeeze those important human dimensions out of us in the political sphere and constrict the range of discussion so much that politics does seem to many to be useless. I want to argue that our only hope is to be radical, to be political, and to be radical in public politically.

To do that, I will talk about my own journey from cynicism to hope, my own struggle both for greater understanding of my self and an understanding of something greater than me. I am going to talk about love and justice. I am going to risk being seen as naive or self-indulgent or just plain silly. That's OK; I'm just a good-natured hick from North Dakota. We're generally plodding and slow and often don't realize we're being naive, or when people are making fun of us for it.

Let me start the story when I was younger, in my teens and 20s. I saw that the world was in pretty awful shape. When I looked around at the world, I saw a whole lot of pain. The United States had just ended its terrorist campaign in Southeast Asia -- what we commonly call the Vietnam War -- and was pursuing another by proxy in Central America; rich people seemed unconcerned that their luxury was built on the backs of the suffering of literally billions of poor people around the world; people all over the place were still getting kicked around simply because they were women or non white or gay or different in some fashion; and many people seemed not to care that the ecosystem that sustained our lives was in collapse.

I looked around at all this, and I got cynical. Human beings, it seemed to me, were pretty unpleasant creatures. Human nature, I assumed, had to be pretty rotten for all this suffering to go on and on, generation after generation. Even with the advances in social justice -- and there have been advances, such as the end of slavery, greater recognition of the basic rights of women, etc. -- it is hard to be upbeat moving out of the 20th century, one of the most brutal and bloody in human history, into the 21st century, which promises to be just as, if not more, brutal.

Being cynical appeared to have some advantages. I could step back from all the chaos and be hip. I could make jokes about how stupid people were. I could pretend not to care. I could turn away from the suffering of others because I, one of the hip and cynical, understood just how pathetic a species we were. I thought I was the one who saw it all so clearly.

I stayed cynical, and disengaged, for some time. The fact that I was working at newspapers didn't help; for journalists, cynicism is an occupational hazard that takes great intelligence and maturity to resist, and I didn't possess either quality in adequate amounts. So cynical I stayed, until I went to graduate school and was given the luxury of time to read, think, and study. Lots of people go to graduate school and become cynics, or their cynicism deepens; universities can do that to people. But I got lucky and met some exceptional people -- many of them outside the university -- who helped me see another way.

For me, that way began with feminism. I read a lot and listened to women. I started to not only learn about gender and sexism, but I also picked up a new way to understand the world, a new method of inquiry for examining the ideas and institutions that shape our world. I learned to look at how systems and structures of power operate. I learned to see past the surface to the core elements of those systems and structures. When I did that, I realized that things were far worse than I had thought -- the world was in more trouble than I had ever imagined. I learned about new levels of suffering and oppression.

That's when I stopped being cynical and began to feel full of hope.

That may seem counterintuitive. How did a deepening sense of the scale and scope of injustice and suffering make me hopeful? The answer is simple. For all those years, I was cynical for two basic reasons: I had the wrong view of human nature, and I didn't understand how the world worked. I thought the evil and stupidity all around me were the product of an inherently evil and stupid human nature, and therefore I didn't see any way to fight against injustice. It all seemed beyond our control.

Once I started to understand the nature of illegitimate structures of authority, I realized that in fact people (including me) were not inherently evil or stupid, and that human nature (including mine) was complex and sometimes maddening, but not inherently aimed at the destruction of the world. I came to realize that the authority structures that so bent our lives were powerful and deeply entrenched.

I also realized that most of the channels that the dominant culture offered us for working to make the world a better place were themselves deeply embedded in those authority structures, so that often the solutions were part of the problem. I realized that the analysis and action that could save us had to be more radical than I ever could have imagined. I also realized that at the moment in history in which I lived, there were relatively few people who wouldagree with any of this: People had begun to talk about a "postfeminist" age; the attacks on affirmative action and ethnic studies were emerging; the fall of the Berlin Wall "proved" that capitalism was the only possible economic system; and the United States was celebrating the slaughter of the Gulf War.

So, at the moment I realized the depth of the problem and the forces stacked against justice, I got hopeful. The hope comes not from some delusional state, but from what I would argue is a sensible assessment of the situation. Cynicism might be an appropriate reaction to injustice that can't be changed. Hope is an appropriate response to a task that, while difficult, is imaginable. And once I could understand the structural forces that produced injustice, I could imagine what a world without those forces -- and hence without the injustice -- might look like. And I could imagine what activities and actions and ideas it would take to get us there. And I could look around, and look back into history, and realize that lots of people have understood this and that I hadn't stumbled onto a new idea.

In other words, I finally figured out that I should get to work.

So hope emerged out of cynicism. I began to see the power of radical analysis and the importance of collective action. I began to take the long view, to see that we face a struggle, but that it is not a pointless struggle. The exact choices we should make as we struggle are not always clear, but the framework for making choices is there.

Hope and optimism

I have hope, but that does not mean I am optimistic.

Just as we have to distinguish between critique and cynicism, we have to realize that hope is not synonymous with optimism. I am hopeful, but I am not necessarily always optimistic, at least not about the short-term possibilities. These systems and structures of power, these illegitimate structures of authority, are deeply entrenched. They will not be dislodged easily or quickly. Optimism and pessimism should hang on questions of fact -- we should be optimistic when the facts argue for optimism.

For example, I am against the illegitimate structure of authority called the corporation. I want to see different forms of economic organization emerge. I am hopeful about the possibilities but not optimistic that in my lifetime I will see the demise of capitalism, corporations, and wage slavery. Still, I will do certain things to work toward that.

The same can be said of the problem of U.S. aggression against innocent people in the rest of the world, particularly these days in Afghanistan, where the aggression is most intense. Given the bloody record of the United States in the past 50 years and the seemingly limitless capacity of U.S. officials to kill without conscience, I must confess I am not optimistic that such aggression will stop anytime soon, in large part because those corporate structures that drive the killing are still around. But I will do certain things to work against it.

Or take the large state research university. I am concerned about how the needs of students are systematically ignored and the needs of corporate funders are privileged, how critical thinking is squashed not by accident but by design. I am concerned about the illegitimate structures of authority that I work in and that compel me to act in ways against the interests of students. I am not optimistic that the structure of big research universities is going to change anytime soon. But I will do certain things to work against the structures.

So, why would I do any of those things if my expectations of short-term success are so low? One reason is that I could be wrong about my assessment of the likelihood of change. I've been wrong about a lot of things in my life; the list grows every day. For all I know, corporate capitalism is on the verge of collapse, and if we just keep the pressure on it will start to unravel tomorrow. Or perhaps public discontent with murderous U.S. foreign policy is just about ready to crystallize and mobilize people. Or perhaps the contradictions of these behemoth universities are becoming so apparent that the illegitimate structures of authority are about to give way to something that deserves the label "higher education."

History is too complex and contingent for any of us to make predictions. We simply don't have the intellectual tools to understand with much precision how and why people and societies change. History is a rough guide, but it offers no social-change equation. Still, there's really no reasonable alternative except to keep plugging away.

Basically, there are two choices, which are common sense but that I didn't figure out until I heard them articulated by Noam Chomsky: We can either predict the worst -- that no change is possible -- and not act, in which case we guarantee there will be no change. Or we can understand that change always is possible, even in the face of great odds, and act on that assumption, which creates the possibility of progress. (See Chomsky's interview with Michael Albert.)

Every great struggle for justice in human history began as a lost cause. When Gabriel Prosser made plans to take Richmond, Virginia, in 1800, the first large-scale organized slave revolt, he was fighting a lost cause, for which he was hanged. When eight Quakers got together in 1814 in Jonesboro, Tennessee, to form the first white anti-slavery society in the United States (the Tennessee Society for the Manumission of Slaves) they were fighting a lost cause. A lost cause that eventually won.

But that can't be the only answer to the question "why should I be politically active." We are human beings, not machines, and we all have needs. It is hard to sustain yourself in difficult work if the only reward is the possibility that somewhere down the line your work may have some positive effect, though you may be long dead. That's a lot to ask of people. We all want more than that out of life. We want joy and love. At least every now and then, we want to have a good time, including a good time while engaged in our work. No political movement can sustain itself indefinitely without understanding that, not just because people need -- and have a right -- to be happy, but because if there is no joy in it, then movements are more likely to be dangerous. The joy -- the celebration of being human and being alive in connection with others -- is what must fuel the drive for change.

People find joy in many different ways. As many people over the years have pointed out, one source of joy is in the struggle. I have spent a lot of time in the past few years doing political work, and some of that work isn't terribly fun. Collating photocopies for a meeting for a progressive political cause isn't any more fun than collating photocopies for a meeting at a marketing company. But it is different in some ways: It puts you in contact with like-minded people. It sparks conversation. It creates space in which you can think and feel your way through difficult questions. It's a great place to laugh as you staple. It provides the context for connections that go beyond superficial acquaintanceships.

The joy is in the struggle, but not just because in struggle one connects to decent people. The joy is also in the pain of struggle. Joy is multilayered -- one key aspect of it is discovery, and one way we discover things about ourselves and others is through pain.

Struggle confronts pain, and confronting pain is part of joy. The pain is there, in all our lives; there is no human life without pain. Pain can become part of joy when it is confronted. Struggle confronts pain. Struggle produces joy.

The joy is in the struggle. The struggle is not just the struggle against illegitimate structures of authority in the abstract. The struggles are in each of us -- struggles to find the facts, to analyze clearly, to imagine solutions, to join with others in collective action for justice, and struggles to understand ourselves in relation to each other and ourselves as we engage in all these activities.

I realize that this struggle doesn't seem appealing to many. I have heard lots of people lately say that they can't cope with the complexity of politics. It seems too much, too big, too confusing. All they can handle, they say, is to focus on their individual lives and do the best to fix their lives. I think these folks misunderstand not just their moral obligation but the nature of progress, individual and collective. We don't fix ourselves in isolation. We don't build decent lives by cutting ourselves off from problems just because they are complex. Yes, there are times when difficult situations force us to turn inward and deal with pressing problems in our lives. I have done that, and I see no need to apologize for it. But I am arguing against the permanent division of our lives into these artificial categories.

Our problems are never wholly individual, and hence they can't be fixed in individual ways. Part of the solution is always to be found in the bigger struggle, in which we all have a part.

I have learned that there is great joy in that bigger struggle. And that leads us back to the abandonment of cynicism and the embrace of hope. Cynicism is a sophomoric and self-indulgent retreat from the world and all its problems. Hope is a mature and loving embrace of the world and all its promise. That does not mean one should have unfounded or naive hope. Wendell Berry reminds us that history shows that "massive human failure" is possible, but:

"[H]ope is one of our duties. A part of our obligation to our own being and to our descendants is to study our life and our condition, searching always for the authentic underpinnings of hope. And if we look, these underpinnings can still be found." [Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community (New York: Pantheon, 1993), p. 11.]

Hope is one of our duties. But that does not mean it is always easy. There are many times, especially since September 11, that I have had to struggle to hold onto hope. The combination of seeing the World Trade Center towers fall in an instance and then watching the unfolding of an illegal and immoral war on Afghanistan has tested my own sense of hope. I managed to hold on for a couple of months, but in the few days before I sat down to write this I could feel my sense of hope fading. At the same time that I have been writing and thinking about the war, I also have been continuing my work on sexual violence and pornography. Both spark the same feeling in my gut -- despair over how cruel people, especially men, can be. When I have to face humans' willingness to inflict pain -- and ability to find pleasure in inflicting pain -- whether in the realm of the global or the intimate, some part of me wants to die; I can't bear it. Maybe some part of me does die.

In the few days before I wrote this, I especially was having trouble in the mornings; lying awake in bed in the dark; trying to reclaim that sense of hope so that getting out of bed would make sense; trying not to think about the war but realizing that not thinking about it would be even worse; dying a little bit inside every morning, in the dark.

But those authentic underpinnings of hope remain. On the day I wrote this, I had a meeting with a student on my campus who had read something I had written about the war and wanted to talk. She said she didn't have anything in particular to ask me. She just wanted to talk to someone who didn't think she was crazy. All around her at work and school, people -- pro, con or neutral -- were refusing to talk about the war, she said. So we talked for a bit. We did politics, in a small way, the way politics is most often done. We talked about how she might organize a political group on campus. But maybe more important, we shored up each other's sense of hope. We could talk about the pain and craziness of the war without turning away.

Real hope -- the belief in the authentic underpinnings of hope -- is radical. A belief that people are not evil and stupid, not consigned merely to live out pre-determined roles in illegitimate structures of authority, is radical. The willingness to act publicly on that hope and that belief is radical.

We all live in a society that would prefer that we not be radical, that we not understand any of this. We live in a society that prefers productive but passive people. I work at a university that is part of that society, and has many of the same problems. Many classes at the university are either explicitly or implicitly designed to convince students that everything I have argued here is fundamentally loony. The same goes for much of what comes to us through the commercial mass media. Some of what I say indeed may be misguided; as I said, I understand that I could be, and often am, wrong.

But, even if I'm wrong in some ways, I'd rather be wrong with hope than cynicism. I'd rather be naive than hip. I'd rather work for a just and sustainable world and fail than abandon the hope. I understand that this position is not wholly logical; it is based on a sense of how we can best make good on the gifts that come with being part of the human community. It is based on a faith in something common to us all, a capacity that is difficult to name, but which is perhaps best summed up by a phrase once used by the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. Our task simply put, Freire said, is "to change some conditions that appear to me as obviously against the beauty of being human." [Myles Horton and Paulo Freire, We Make the Road by Walking
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), p. 131.]

In the end, that is the central hope: We can join together to help build not a utopia but a world in which we can struggle -- individually and collectively, through the pain and with joy -- to get as close as we can to the beauty of being human.

Robert Jensen is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, a member of the Nowar Collective, and author of the book Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream. He can be reached at www.rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu. Other writings are available online here.