Archive for Civil Society and Governance
Pre-History of Religious Conflict in India
According to the scholars of secular nationalist historiography, the British colonial rule, especially its ‘divide and rule’ policy, was responsible for Hindu-Muslim conflict and the breakdown of communal harmony in India. For example, Das (1990:22) has argued that communalism was first conceptualized by the British to secure allies. They raised Muslim communalism as a counter-weight to the emerging Indian nationalism. Hasan (1980: 1395) has noted that the roots communalism in India lies in ‘the Morley-Minto Reform [of 1909] which, by creating communal electorates, exacerbated Hindu-Muslim divisions and fostered the spirit of political exclusivism’.
Although such explanations are true, they provide only a partial understanding and ignore ‘the longue duree’ of the construction of communal identities in India (van der Veer 1994:30). Scholars like Christopher Bayly (1985), Peter van der Veer (1994) and others have stretched the discussion to pre-colonial period and have argued that religious and communal conflict had a pre-history in India even before the consolidation of the British rule. According to them ‘community-based state policies’, as followed by Aurangzeb (1618-1707) and Tipu Sultan (1750-1799) on the Muslim side and Jai Singh II of Jaipur (1688-1743) on the Hindu side, were responsible for communal conflict during the pre-colonial period (Bayly 1985:184-186; van der Veer 1994:32).
Such preferential exclusivist community-based policies were, however, continued by the British (e.g. through separate electorates for religious minorities), which resulted in large-scale ethno-religious violence in colonial India and ultimately culminated in its territorial division into the Islamic state of Pakistan and the Hindu dominated but secular India. Language, religion and ethnicity have, since then, been issues that keep challenging the democratic character of a pluralistic India.
Civil Society and Democratization in India
This chapter is an attempt to understand the emergence of civil society in India as a response to the rolling back of the state from social welfare. The chapter begins with an overview of the recent challenges before Indian democracy and moves on to discuss how civil society organizations used the various traditional media like folk dance, popular songs, street plays and other popular methods to spread awareness and to bring development through the empowerment of common people. It argues that the macro and mainstream universalistic media and communication was unable to capture the fragmented realities and social problems of the rural life for which civil society called for a micro and particularistic media to address the issues in rural society. Through the example of Mazdoor Kishan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) in Rajasthan, the chapter also discusses the role of civil society organizations in enhancing democratization, especially the Right to Information Act in ensuring good governance in society.
Power and Contestation
Nivedita Menon and Aditya Nigam (2007) Power and Contestation: India since 1989, London: Zed Books.
Power and Contestation, written by two well-known political theorists-cum-activists in India, presents the most up-to-date and comprehensive chronicle of India’s political history since 1989. Combining post-nationalist, feminist and new left perspectives, the authors candidly illustrate how the power of capital and nation in post-1989 India has constantly been contested in public and political discourse.
Narrating the political transformations and changing state–society relations in India in the last two decades, the authors argue that India post-1989 has witnessed a significant departure from its foundational principles such as Nehruvian socialism, secular nationalism and the principles of non-alignment. Although global factors like the ‘end of the Cold War’ and neoliberal reforms have significantly influenced developments in India, the authors argue that it was primarily the ‘internal conflicts and logics’ that propelled these transformations in India (p. 2). With the decline of the Congress party and the regionalization of Indian politics, the issue of caste has re-emerged in the political sphere. The ‘mandalization of politics’ (p.16) and the increasing political mobilisation of the lower caste has not only challenged the hegemony of the upper castes but also significantly influenced the imperatives of electoral politics in India. Secularism, a key political principle which traditionally provided considerable psychological and political security to religious minorities, has been under vigorous attack with the rapid rise of Hindutva politics manifested in the demolition of Babri Mosque in 1992 and the ‘state-sponsored massacre of Muslims in Gujarat’ in 2002 (p. 51).
Globalisation and neoliberal economic reforms, as updated incarnations of the old idea of development and modernisation, have dispossessed people, disrupted communities and destroyed their cultures and livelihoods without offering them any viable or dignified alternatives. As a response, various non-party political formations and grass-roots movements or what the authors call ‘new left’ movements have emerged to contest the exclusive and exploitative logic of global capital and its local ally the nation/state. The conflicts in the north-east and Kashmir region have also challenged the ‘idea of India’. Although global capital has helped the Indian nation to secure a place in the world, the authors conclude that ‘in India, as elsewhere in the world, the contestations to the power of Capital and Nation are so many, so varied, and so relentless’ (p. 181).
Since the book is written from the ‘new left’ perspective, it captures only one aspect of India’s transformation since 1989. Despite this, the strength of the book is its numerous recent examples and candid analytic style, which make it an admiral contribution to the Zed Books series on ‘Global History of the Present’ and a rich resource for anyone working on India.
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@ Sarbeswar Sahoo, Political Studies Review, Vol. 7, No. 1, January 2009
Making Aid Work?
Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee (2007) Making Aid Work. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 170pp, £9.95, 978 0 262 02615 4
Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee’s Making Aid Work provides an excellent forum to discuss the problems engulfing international development aid. It argues that the ineffectiveness of foreign development aid is primarily due to “institutional laziness” (p.7). Banerjee argues that international donor agencies, NGOs and multilateral institutions do not pay much attention to the impact and “cost-effectiveness” (p.16) of a program and are often “unclear about what they should be pushing for” (p.21). Building on the drugs evaluation model, Banerjee argues that “randomized trials… are the simplest and best way of assessing the impact of a program” (p.10). Although “randomized trials are not perfect” (p.11), argues Banerjee, they provide “hard evidence” (p.113) and “spur[s] innovation by making it easy to see what works” (p.122).
The problems of foreign aid, as recognized by Banerjee, have been universally agreed upon by several economists and policy makers. However, his arguments on lazy thinking and randomized experiments have received skeptical responses. Many have rejected his accusations that the international donors are not pursuing impact evaluation and cost-benefit analysis. Banerjee’s argument is very limited and ambiguous. His academic training in economics influences much of his thinking on macro level quantitative experimentation, ignoring the dynamics of power relations at the grassroots level. He also fails to explain the idea of randomized experiment in a clear manner. His emphasis on laziness (not filling up a form) that is grounded on a particular example from Pakistan does not really apply to regular NGO functioning. As Mick Moore has rightly argued, development agencies are “staffed and run by expressive intellectuals” who are “skilled in performing the key functions of the contemporary aid business: producing position papers and strategy documents and managing inter-agency coordination meetings” (p.43).
By placing the emphasis on institutions, Banerjee has failed to address the “politics” of development and international aid, which often has created a “culture of dependency” at the grassroots level. Banerjee is also unable to understand that the problem of foreign aid is not primarily due to “institutional laziness” but the result of a rationalized and active institutional effort to depoliticize development and to create what James Ferguson (1990) has called an “anti-politics machine”. Nevertheless, Banerjee’s arguments have generated numerous pertinent issues and discussions related to the aid regime. His concluding essay has brilliantly addressed the machine like character of development policy making. The structure of the book is innovative, although the forum discussions are regrettably brief.
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This review has been published by Sarbeswar Sahoo in Political Studies Review, Vol. 7, No. 1, January 2009
The Politics of Tribal Resistance in Orissa
Why does collective resistance occur where they do and how are the actions and options of social movement agents shaped by and also impact on social structures? What inspires and empowers people to resist and to reveal the character and spirit of the cultural expressions of resistance? In short, what is the ‘politics’ of (tribal) resistance in Orissa? Addressing these issues, the paper makes three basic arguments – Firstly, the ‘fear’ of the uncertain future, and the cultural meaning attached to the geographical notions of ‘place’ provide important perspectives in understanding the relations of power, domination and the politics of collective resistance. Secondly, the threat of material interest serves as an organizing principle in politicizing identity and interest groups against the outside authority. And finally, the magnitude of resistance intensifies when the grievances of the people are treated in an unresponsive and oppressive manner.
Individualism – Man’s Right to Exist for his Own Sake
Has man any right to exist if he refuses to serve society?
Thousands of years ago the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake, he taught his brothers to light. But he left them a gift they had not conceived. And he lifted darkness off the earth. Throughout the centuries, there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. The great creators, the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors stood alone against the men of their time. Every new thought was opposed; every new invention was denounced. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid, but they won. No creator was prompted by a desire to please his brothers. His brothers hated the gift he offered. His truth was his only motive. His work is his only goal. His work, not those who used it; his creation, not the benefits others derived from it; the creation which gave form to his truth. He held his truth above all things and against all men. He went ahead whether others agreed with him or not, with his integrity as his only banner. He served nothing and no one. He lived for himself, and only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement.
Man cannot survive, except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon, but the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. The man who thinks must think and act on his own. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be subordinated to the needs, opinions or wishes of others. It is not an object of sacrifice. The creator stands on his own judgment. The parasite follows the opinions of others. The creator thinks; the parasite copies. The creator produces; the parasite loots. The creator’s concern is the conquest of nature. The parasites concern is the conquest of men. The creator requires independence. He neither serves nor rules. He deals with men by free exchange and voluntary choice. The parasite seeks power. He wants to bind all men together in common action and common slavery. He claims that man is only a tool for the use of others that he must think as they think, act as they act, and live in selfless, joyless servitude to any need but his own.
Look at history! Everything we have, every great achievement has come from the independent work of some independent mind. Every horror and destruction came from attempts to force men into a herd of brainless, soulless robots without personal rights, without personal ambition, without hope, or dignity. It is an ancient conflict. It has another name – the individual against the collective. Our country, the noblest country in the history of men was based on the principles of individualism – the principle of man’s inalienable rights. It was country where a man was free to seek his own happiness. To gain and produce, not to give up and renounce; to prosper, not to starve; to achieve, not to plunder; to hold his highest possession, a sense of his personal value and as his highest virtue his self-respect. Look at the results! That is what the collectivists are now asking you to destroy as much as the earth has been destroyed.
I am an architect. I know what is to come by the principle on which it is built. We are approaching a world in which I cannot permit myself to live. My ideas are my property. They were taken from me by force, by breach of contract. No appeal was left to me. It was believed that my work belonged to others to do with as they pleased. They had a claim upon me without my consent that it was my duty to serve them without choice or reward. Now you know why I dynamited Cortlandt. I designed Cortlandt, I made it possible, I destroyed it. I agreed to design it for the purpose of seeing it built as I wished. That was the price I set for my work. I was not paid. My building was disfigured at the whim of others who took all the benefits of my work and gave me nothing in return. I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone’s right to one minute of my life nor to any part of my energy, nor to any achievement of mine, no matter who makes the claim. It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing. I came here to be heard in the name of every man of independence still left in the world. I wanted to state my terms. I do not care to work or live on any others. My terms are a man’s right to exist for his own sake.
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@ This is translated from a video on “Fountain Head”.
Globalization, Social Welfare and Civil Society in India
Globalization is being understood differently by different people. Fukuyama (1992) has referred it as the “end of history”, which established democracy as “the only legitimate and viable alternative to an authoritarian regime of any kind” (Huntington, 1992, p. 58). Where as, political theorists like Ohmae (1995), considering the vulnerabilities of the nation-states, have pronounced the “end of the nation-state”. Though it remains as an empirical question to see whether nation-states have lost their significance or not, one thing is clear that the existing state-society relationship in developing countries have undergone metamorphosis due to the policies of liberalization, privatization and globalization.
Following a historical analysis of the state-society relationship in India, the paper seeks to analyze the effects of globalization on Indian civil society. It argues that civil society during the colonial and early post-colonial period remained confined to the English educated upper caste elites and the subaltern populations were excluded from the public sphere because of the virtues of modernity and the paternalistic policies of post-colonial state and ruling elites. The decline of the moderate state and the Congress system in mid-1970s and the policies of globalization and the rolling back of the welfare state in mid-1980s transformed the state-society relationship and brought incongruous implications for civil society in India. The apparatus of the state became pluralized and several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and people’s movements emerged to take up issues affecting the lives of poor and marginalized.
The paper concludes that though globalization has radicalized civil society activism and expanded its sphere over the past few years, in the process, it has turned civil society into a site of increasing class war, widespread violence and growing unfreedom. If civil society has to achieve freedom, democracy and social justice, it needs to move beyond its middle class orientation and transform itself as a more inclusive and more right based sphere of political activism.
Why Civilizations cannot Climb Hills?
Prof. James C. Scott, a professor at Yale, was a visiting professor at the Institute of Development Studies in Roskilde University in Denmark. Presenting his research on Southeast Asia, he spoke about Why Civilizations cannot Climb Hills on 29 April 2008. He argued how states stop when they come to hills and presented the history of non-state spaces. According to him, the history of agriculture in Southeast Asia is of 8,000 years. The history of homo-sapiens is 200,000 years and the history of homo-sapiens in Southeast Asia is 50,000 years. He also argued that most of human experience has been state-less. Population and production in Southeast Asia was dispersed.
He distinguished between the Valley and the Hill and argued that the valley has always been the sites of states – taxes, Kings, sites of war and of hierarchy. The hill has no permanent states, no permanent Kings and taxation system. It is relatively egalitarian, although it is considered uncivilized, primitive and as barbarian periphery. Hill peoples are the past of the valley people. Hill peoples don’t share the religion of the valley. Mountains remain at the fringes of civilization. People run away from valleys to hills to evade state-making – taxation, mono-cropping, etc. of the state. Hills are not barbarian periphery but they are kind of political refugees. Hill peoples are considered as tribes and tribes were the creation of states and empires. They are the people who live in the fringes of the state. In Southeast Asia and South Asia, tribes were escaping state-building where as in Africa tribes were part of the state project. The idea of nation-state has been to control the periphery and to expand the state sovereignty till the border.
Riots in Rajasthan
He was on his house’s roof, when he heard people shouting and running for shelter towards their houses. “There is riot in the city” someone shouted. Abdul Ghani’s house was in the Keer Khera mohalla of Chittore Garh. He thought his house was safe, as he had enmity with none. There were two more houses in the mohalla which belonged to the Muslims.
Suddenly he saw a crowd of fanatic people shouting slogans against Muslims heading towards his house. Now he was a bit anxious, as he had an adolescent daughter. He rushed down and closed the main gate of his house and bolted it thoroughly. Then he called his wife and daughter to the inner room and closed it firmly. He heard the sound of breaking of the main gate and in no time the rioters were on the door of the inner room in which he had hidden himself with his daughter and wife. The door could not resist the bumping and it fell open. Abdul Ghani now gathered his whole courage and tried to stop the hooligans from entering the room but he was hit by a knife in his belly, again and again, till he fell unconscious. Now his wife Bismillah tried to defend her daughter but she was beaten by sticks so badly that she had multiple fractures. Now the girl was there, unprotected and afraid. They dragged her and brought out to the street. There were about 40 people who ripped her clothes to make her stark necked. The intention was obvious. A few people of the mohalla felt ashamed as the girl belonged to their locality. They came to her rescue and the girl was saved except for some bruises on her body.
The riot broke in the city on the day of Holi. It was not all of a sudden, but well designed by the communal forces. The Police and administration didn’t take any action for complete four hours. The miscreants burnt, ransacked and looted the shops of Muslims freely for four hours. The Police Control room happens to be only 30 feet away from the Dargah of Sufi saint Hazrat Chal-Phir Shah, where all the menace was going on and the rioters were selectively burning and looting the shops belonging to the Muslim community. Even if there had been a shop of a Hindu among the Muslim shops, it was evacuate sympathetically and then the Muslims’ shops were set afire. The shameless nuisance continued even after curfew was imposed in the city.
Though it is commendable on the part of the Police, that they prevented any direct clash between the communities, but just after gaining control, they started arresting innocent people from both sides in the name of `rapid action’ till the number reached to about 45. Most of the detainees had nothing to do with the riot. The actual culprits, against whom FIRs have been lodged with their names, are still roaming about fearlessly and threatening the victims, even after one and a half month. According to the local residents, the offenders belong to the ruling party BJP and are fully protected.
During this unfortunate riot, about 60 shops, belonging to the Muslims were burnet, damaged or looted. According to the survey done by the administration, the loss amounted to Rs. 63 lakhs, but according to the local people, it amounts to about Rs. 85 lakhs to One Crore. Till now only 8 persons have been paid Rs. 50,000/- each and 49 have been offered Rs. 2000/- to 5000/- in lieu of their damaged properties worth lakhs of Rupees, what a joke? Really the communal forces must be rejoicing on the success of their plan to pull down theMuslims economically. Most of the victims have refused to accept such a meager help from the government.
The District Chittore Garh of Rajasthan has been in the clutches of the fascist and communal forces since a year. Recently in the month of December, 2007, on the very next day of Eidul Azha, 6 villages of Kapasan Tehsil of the district faced fierce riots in which several acres of fields with the crop either awaiting to reap already reaped and dumped there, were set ablaze, 19 tube wells were destroyed, hundreds of meters of PVC pipes were burnt, a tractor and a motor cycle were set on fire as well as quintals of fodder and manure. Here too is the same story. FIR was lodged against 51 people, but not a
single was arrested from among the chief culprits who are threatening the plaintiffs and amusing that you can do nothing against us.
Recently a delegation of Rajasthan Muslim Forum (a united forum of the Muslim organizations of the state) headed by Er. Muhammad Salim (State President JIH and member Forum) has visited the affected areas of the district. The villagers of Raghunath Pura, Umand, Hathiyana etc., informed the delegation that the culprits are enjoying the shield provided by the ruling party. They also complained against the District Collector P. L. Agrawal, Kapasan Tehsildar Himmat Singh and sub-section officer Manveer Singh Atri of being communal and biased against the Muslim Community and said that due to these officers the culprits could not be nabbed till now.
Here, (Kapasan Tehsil) also, the compensation amount being given to the sufferers is very small which they have denied to accept. Tehsildar Himmat Singh is reportedly forcing them to accept the amount and threatening that they will be charged falsely with serious allegations if they refuse to take the compensation.
The overall situation is that the district is fully in the hold of the communal and fascist forces, who consider themselves above the law. They are pretty confident, that no action will be taken against them. Another tragedy is that the Opposition party Congress didn’t play any role in bringing the rioters behind the bars or in availing justice for the victims. Moreover, some members of the party were found to be indulged in the December 07 riots of the Kapasan Tehsil.
The Rajasthan Muslim Forum has demanded from the government to arrest the culprits without delay, release the innocent people, give away the appropriate compensations for the losses and take stern action against the officers who are guilty of saving the criminals and discriminating communally.
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@ Received from South Asia Contact Group on 11 May 2008
NGOs, Activists & Foreign Funds
THE WELL-researched book is the result of two events; the national systemic bending-over-backwards to ‘render justice’ to the Muslim victims of the Gujarat riots and the denial of a visa to the Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi, by the US state department. The first was a process and the second an incident, and both the process and the incident were authored by the same group of prominent ‘peace’ and human rights NGOs and individual activists whose signature tune is ‘anti-Hindu’.
This book is not about the hundreds of NGOs working with great dedication among the socially and economically backward sections of our society motivated only by the inspiring vision of transforming social attitudes and the quality of life of the people amongst whom they live and work. But it is about those NGOs and activists whose ’peace’ and human rights activism cloak deep political ambitions and objectives not restricted to participating or influencing electoral politics but aimed at shaping the character and direction of the Indian polity in a manner which derives from their warped notion of the Indian nation. Their political ambitions and activism are essentially undemocratic and anti-India nation.
Notwithstanding the fact that important democratic institutions including the NHRC, Parliament and the Judiciary have repeatedly shown a marked tilt towards minorityism and have rushed to do the bidding of the ‘peace’ and human rights activists profiled in this book, these persons have nevertheless shamed our judiciary, our men in uniform and our polity with their criticism of these pillars of our democracy on foreign soil and even before foreign governments. Parliament should consider suitable restrictions being placed on retired judges, retired armed force personnel including and above the rank of Brigadier, retired bureaucrats including and above the rank of Assistant Secretary and retired policemen including and above the rank of SP from undertaking projects for foreign or foreign-funded think-tanks and from deposing before foreign governments and their departments on any issue without prior permission from the Government of India.
The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has been sitting for over five decades on the title suit of the Ramjanmabhumi while the Supreme Court promptly issues interim orders on cases filed by the Muslim community seeking to deny Hindu access to the site; those guilty of the genocide of Sikhs during the anti-Sikh riots of 1984, those guilty of the genocide of Kashmiri Hindus and those that render Kashmiri Hindus alive in the notorious Radhabai Chawl incident during the Mumbai riots of 1992, have all escaped the notice and attention of these very national institutions and the same ’peace’ and human rights activists who continue to campaign for the Muslim victims of the Gujarat riots of 2002.
There is a growing perception among the Hindu intelligentsia that ‘peace’ and human rights NGOs and activists are holding all democratic institutions in the country hostage to international opinion about democracy and good governance to serve the cause of ’secularism’ in a peculiarly on-sided fashion, which may be interpreted to be anti-Hindu.
The well researched book exposes that India’s so-called secular polity is teetering perilously on the brink of minorityism aided and abetted in no mean measure by this well-networked group of Hindu-baiters who have succeeded in cleverly cloaking their congenital anti-Hindu bias in the garb of constitutional ’protection of minority rights’ discourse. These NGOs and other politically motivated activists have embarked on the twin mission to weaken India’s political will to deal ruthlessly with Islamic, Christian and Naxal terrorism and to de-Hinduise the nation. A group of nationalist Indians – some of them residing abroad – came together to profile these ’internationally acclaimed’ ’peace’ and human right NGOs and activists with a view to exposing their anti-India and anti-Hindu activism.
The most striking feature of this book is that, in spite of the fact that the authors never discussed which NGOs to put under the scanner and which activists to expose when they began to write the book, they all zeroed in on the same groups! The book offers a veritable mine of information on these NGOs and activists – who are their supporters, partners and collaborators, what they say, what they write and their position on important national issues. What the compilers have presented, however, is only the tip of the iceberg. They have provided endnotes and appendices, which will enable the interested reader to dig deeper.
The book argues that contrary to doctored public opinion, these internationally- acclaimed NGO’s and activists are a threat to communal harmony and India’s democratic ethos. Communal harmony and democracy are naturally and best protected only when 85 per cent of this nation’s population repose faith in the country’s democratic institutions.
The book exhorts the reader to raise his voice too as a political Hindu to render service to this great nation’s well being.
In this second and revised edition of the book a new chapter, exposing AID, has been added, as well as a number of new appendices that include Narendra Modi’s speech at a book release function. The book exposes Nirmala Deshpande, Arundathi Roy and Admiral Ramdas and their kind much better and the kind of industry of which they are a part. Arundhati Roy, soon after Pokharan 2, said that she was a mobile independent republic. Roy also said she is not a flag-waving patriot. But since Roy has a passport, it must have something to do with the Indian nation. So, the Indian nation is relevant at least to the extent that it allows these people to travel abroad to badmouth this country.
The clearly reveals the position of these so called NGO activists in regard to national territory, to opinions they express in regard to Jammu and Kashmir, the kind of nonsense they speak on American and Pakistani soil about our jawans, is a cause of grave concern, because they are members of either the National Integration Council or of CABE or of the National Advisor Council of the UPA government. And they are not above glorifying terrorism.
With facts the book argues that the so-called NGOs have no faith in our elected parliament, they have no faith in our judiciary, they have no faith in the NHRC. They go to the US state department to depose before it, begging the US State Department to come to India and protect India’s democracy. It is high time legislation is put in place banning such people from deposing before alien governments against the Indian Army and India’s democratic institutions. Very little is generally known about the kind of position these people take on American soil against the Indian nation, or their position on Jammu and Kashmir, or what they are to say about our army. We have our jawans dying day in and day out protecting our territory, protecting our right to live. Why is it that the media does not do an expose of these people, on what they have stated about Jammu and Kashmir, what they have stated about Naxal terrorism, what they have stated about India’s defence requirement, what they have stated about the Indian Army? What is the opinion that they have about India’s democratic institutions? Every major issue concerning national security, every issue concerning national interest, they reduce to the politics of minoritysm.
Arundhati Roy, for example, speaks for effect. She puts words cleverly together. And, mindless that we are, we are so fascinated by the English she speaks that we fail to subject the contents to critical scrutiny. In fact, she has run down everything that is sacred or reverent to large sections of India’s people. The book has documented, word for word, what they have said, and the kind of patrons they have found abroad. Why do the European Parliament and the US State Department support these activists? The compilation prompts us to look at these questions and gives us the need to have the courage to look at the answers. Releasing the book on September 9, 2006, KPS Gill noted his surprise ‘that anti-nationals in our country are respected, and nationalists are derided. These days our country is fighting terrorism. But our so-called intellectuals have made efforts unparalleled in the history of the world to decry and deny our success in fighting terrorism’.
Vigil has placed before the readers, world for word a true picture of the so-called NGOs. One must have the courage to look at the book dispassionately. The book exposes the illustrious people who find international patronage. This brilliantly analysed and thought-provoking book is a must for all those who love India.
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Reviewed by Pradeep Kumar, Meri News: Power to People, 29 March 2008
