Empowering Visions
What roles do the modern media play in the sphere of culture, politics and governance? Christiane Brosius’ Empowering Visions: the Politics of Representation in Hindu Nationalism (London: Anthem Press, 2005) is an attempt to address ‘why, how and when Hindutva ideologues and pragmatics exploited the video media in order to claim power over public opinion-making and opinion-shaping’ (p. 3). Grounded on the theories of popular culture, anthropology of audiovisuals and thick ethnographic analysis, Brosius brilliantly depicts the roles played by Jain Studios’ videography in representing Hindutva’s cultural nationalism as an alternative conception of modernity, nationhood and national identity against the existing morally corrupt culture of secularism. These alternative empowering visions are realized through active entwining of ‘imagination to politics and ideology, space to time, image to narrative, and agent to action’ (p. 4).
The author argues that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies, since the late 1980s, have heavily exploited the modern media, particularly audiovisual technologies to create visions of idealized Hindu way of life. Employing Schiffauer’s idea of ‘field of discourse’– ‘as a sphere in which cultural agents interact with each other with regards to interpretations, norms, values, questions of style and memories’ (p. 3) – Brosius argues that Jain Studio’s production and distribution of propaganda videos has helped the BJP in spreading cultural and ideological images to influence the public consciousness with a pan-Indian cultural nationalism grounded on the glories of the golden age. By depicting the people passionately participating in the saffron revolution, these images and narratives invite further participation of the audience. Key images and narratives from the domain of local popular culture were appropriated and commodified in a package to heighten ‘political marketing’ and mobilization (p. 93); to influence the popular psyche of the people; and to present itself as a credible force to reshape the modern nation-state, reclaim the stolen stories and rewrite the national history.
Selective use of particularistic media imaginations and narratives has colonized the public conscience and provocative representations in the public sphere have generated antithetical feelings of ‘self’ and ‘the other’. Visual media has convincingly justified Hindutva’s agenda of Hindu cultural identity as ‘credible’ and depicted Muslims as anti-nationals and a threat to the nation. It argues that the national history has been misrepresented by the anti-nationals and a self-empowerment could be achieved only by re-mapping Indianness through a return to the ‘indigenous and “true” history of the Hindu people’ (p. 12). A sense of ‘pop patriotism’ is being crafted by softly manipulating the Hindu sentiment through devout citizenship, righteousness, self-sacrifice, sacred violence, heroism, national devotion, and the notion of martyrdom which has ‘left deep scars on the skin of civil society, and changed the mental maps of large parts of Indian citizenry for good’ (p. 180). The video media, which is a part of Hindutva’s ‘cheerful revolution’ aimed at forming a powerful paternalistic state with a seemingly disciplined and infantile citizenry ever ready to sacrifice for the cause of universal brotherhood and moral community (p. 93). Since 1998, the Internet has decentralized the power of representation and disseminated Hindutva ideology on a wider scale. The presentation of imaginary and narratives in cultural production has, thus, played a significant role in redefining identity, history, nationhood, governance and politics.
The only shortcoming of the book would be its overemphasis on the cultural ‘production’ of image and narratives and not the ‘reception’ of it by the people. Despite this, the book is an admiral contribution to the Anthem South Asian Studies series. Its uniqueness lies in its provocative and telling arguments embedded in ethnographic description and provides a valuable contribution to the field of popular culture and anthropology of iconography.
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@ Reviewed by Sarbeswar Sahoo, Contemporary South Asia, Vol. 16, No. 3, September 2008, pp. 357-358.
Who Invented Hinduism?
Hinduism, I had thought, is a very old religion. To my disbelief, it is actually not. Many have claimed that Hinduism is a colonial construction/invention and was non-existent before the colonial times. W.C. Smith, who is identified as the pioneer, cites the year 1829 before which “Hindooism” did not exist. As John Hawley (1991) writes, “Hinduism – the word perhaps the reality too – was born in the nineteenth century, a notoriously illegitimate child. The father was middle class and the British, and the mother, of course, was India”. Similarly Brian Smith (1989) has argued that “Hinduism was probably first imagined by the British in the early part of the nineteenth century to describe (and create and control) an enormously complex configuration of people and their traditions found in South Asian subcontinent. ‘Hinduism’ made it possible for the British, and for us all (including Hindus) to speak of a religion when before there was none or, at best, many”.
The question however is if Hinduism is an illegitimate invention of colonialism, what was it called before the British gave it this name? Contrary to the above claims Many argue that variants of the word Hindu were existent in Persian and vernacular Indian languages long before nineteen the century. The religious sense also coexisted and overlapped with an ethnic and geographical sense. It is commonly agreed that the word Hindu is derived from the name “Sindhu” to refer to the inhabitants of the lands near and to the east of the Indus. If the word “Hindu” had a purely geographical sense up until the nineteenth century, then why were the foreign Muslims, who permanently settled in India, or at least their descendants born in India, not called Hindus? Heinrich von Stietencron answers this by insisting that the Muslim rulers persistently maintained a foreign self-identity for generations, while the Hindus, i.e. native Indians, just as persistently maintained a separate, indigenous identity. Addressing some of these contentious and controversial issues, David N. Lorenzen argues that the claim that Hinduism was invented or constructed by European colonizers, mostly British, sometime after 1800 is false. The evidence instead suggests that a Hindu religion theologically and devotionally grounded in texts such as the Bhagabad-gitas, the Puranas, and philosophical commentaries of six darshanas gradually acquired a much sharper self-conscious identity through the rivalry between Muslims and Hindus in the period between 1200 and 1500, and was firmly established firmly before 1800.
Dragon vs. Elephant
In an April 20 column, I argued the case for Sino-Indian economic co-operation, suggesting the two countries had complementarities that could make such co-operation mutually beneficial (as some companies in both countries are already proving). I also dismissed any talk of comparing India to China, arguing that the two countries’ systems are so different that we simply can’t compete with China in the growth stakes. Lest some readers infer from this that i think China is superior to India in every respect, let me assure them that they are wrong.
Certainly, in absolute numbers, the Chinese are way ahead. Their export of electronic goods now tops $180 billion a year. One out of every three shoes exported in the world is made in China. They make 75% of the world’s toys. Foreign direct investment is at the level of $70 billion a year (for comparison, India gets $15 billion). Shanghai alone has nearly 4,000 skyscrapers (more than all of India, and exceeding Los Angeles and Chicago combined). China has built an estimated 60,000 kilometers of expressways in less than two decades and will soon outstrip the total length of the US highway network. Per capita income has risen nearly 10-fold since 1978 to over $6,000 a head, and the number of people living in absolute poverty has dropped from 425 million two decades ago to 26 million today. The population is almost totally literate; life expectancy is reaching developed-country levels. This year, China is expected to overtake Germany to become the world’s third largest economy, behind the US and Japan. It won’t stay Number Three for long.
Against this, though, are a number of factors suggesting that not everything is rosy in China. Economic growth has occurred at breakneck speed, but that means some necks have been broken: the human cost of development has not been negligible (population displacement, farmers thrown off their lands, villages flooded by dams, mounting pollution, low-wage labour in appalling conditions, widening disparities between the rich and the poor, an absence of human rights and few checks on governmental abuses). The Chinese have seen great and rapid improvements in their Internet access, but Beijing employs some 40,000 ‘cyber-police’ to monitor politically-undesirable activity on the Web.
Equally important, China’s success has not just been China’s; a disproportionate share of the benefit goes abroad, to the foreign companies who have set up factories in China. It has been estimated that of the $700 American price of a Chinese-made laptop, only $15 remains in China. Only four of the country’s top 25 exporters are Chinese companies, according to Forbes magazine’s Robyn Meredith, who adds that in practice, ‘Made in China’ really means ‘Made by America (or Europe) in China’. The Chinese financial system also leaves much to be desired. Where India has been running sophisticated stock markets since the early 19th century — and Indians are so skilled at doing so that they got the Bombay stock market up and running within 24 hours of the 1992 bomb blasts — China is new at the game, and not particularly adept at it.
The financial information provided by China’s companies, especially those in the large governmental sector, is notoriously unreliable, and standards of corporate governance are low. There are no world-class Chinese companies with sophisticated managers to match Tata or Wipro or Infosys. China’s capital markets are weak and its banks inefficient: the Chinese banking system carried an estimated $911 billion in unrecoverable loans as of 2006, mainly to government firms. State-owned enterprises still account for half of China’s economic assets. China has yet to master the art of channelling domestic savings into productive investments, which is why it has relied so extensively on foreign direct investment.
And the world has yet to develop any confidence in China’s legal system (where a contract still means whatever the government says it means). In other words, it still lags behind India on the ’software’ of development — not just technical brainpower or engineering know-how, but the systems it needs to operate a 21st century economy in an open and globalising world.
And then there’s politics. Whatever you might say about India’s sclerotic bureaucracy versus China’s efficient one, our tangles of red tape versus their unfurled red carpet to foreign investors, our contentious and fractious political parties versus their smoothly-functioning top-down Communist hierarchy, there’s one thing you’ve got to grant us: India has become an outstanding example of the management of diversity through pluralist democracy. Every Indian has been allowed to feel he or she has as much of a stake in the country, and as much of a chance to run it, as anyone else: after all, our last elections were won by an Italian woman of Roman Catholic heritage who made way for a Sikh to be sworn in as PM by a Muslim president, in a nation 81% Hindu.
And our largest state is being ruled by a Dalit woman, from a community once considered ‘untouchable’, who bids fair to rule the entire country if she can make the coalition arithmetic add up right after the next election. She wasn’t promoted by the Brahmin elite in New Delhi; she rode to the top on the ballots of her political base. Contrast this with Beijing, where political freedom is unknown, leaders at all levels are handpicked from the top for their posts, and political heresy is met with swift punishment, house-arrest or worse. India’s politics means its shock-absorbers are built into the system; it has endured major road-bumps without the vehicle ever breaking down.
In China’s case, it is far from clear what would happen if the limousine of state actually encountered a serious pothole. The present system wasn’t designed to cope with fundamental challenges to it except through repression. But every autocratic state in history has come to a point where repression was no longer enough. If that point is reached in China, all bets are off. The dragon could stumble where the elephant can always trundle on.
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@ Sashi Tharoor, Why the Elephant can Dance better, The Times of India, 3 August 2008.
OH THE GREAT AMERICANS! STIR UP YOUR CONSCIENCE!
The history was busy to write your name,
Amongst the nations with the highest fame.
The world was proud of your grace,
Virtue and love were the signs of your face.
From your soil, streams of justice used to flow,
To the vices and wrongs , you were a lethal blow.
You used to inspire a trust in all,
You drew no line between big and small.
The cascade of wisdom from your mind,
Quenched the intellectual thirst of every kind.
To the benighted humanity, you sowed new seed,
The compassion of Jesus (p.b.u.h.) was your creed.
Why suddenly, for you, this turn of fate?
How you emerged as a symbol of hate?
Stir up your conscience,
Look ahead with prescience.
Strain your nerves to see the right,
With a sense of justice, not with might.
Your eyes will perceive a demeaning course,
That made you believe in arms and force.
Delve deep into your soul,
To find out your filthy role.
Each part of the globe was within your reach,
With the Bible in hand; its lesson to preach.
You threw it away with a ruthless shake,
Your hands now possess weapons , for power sake.
The world is now standing aghast,
Why this all has happened so fast?
I know, only a few in your midst,
Spoiled your serenity with a grisly twist,
Sullied your image as a graceful race,
And eclipsed the sedateness of your pace.
Rise up ! purge your glory,
Of the present grim story;
Restore your lost dignity,
With penitential ‘sad’ and ‘sorry’.
Listen to the shrieks and wails,
See the destruction and travails,
Your sons have caused in others’ land,
With the dead falling like heaps of sand.
When the advent of Christ (p.b.u.h.) is too close,
Why you became so hideous, and why you chose,
To smear your face with innocent blood,
To engulf the humanity with your raging flood.
Now is the time for you to repent,
For what you have done, and what you spent,
To bring about fright and fear all around,
Let once again the global ambience reverberate,
Not with threats and piercing cannonade,
But with your soothing sermons, and remorseful sound.
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@ Written by Dr. Mustafa Kamal Sherwani, President, All India Muslim Forum, Lucknow- India
Assassination of the Third World
THE DARKER NATIONS — A Biography of the Short-lived Third World: Vijay Prashad; LeftWord Books, 12, Rajendra Prasad Road, New Delhi-110001. Rs. 650.
Vijay Prashad opens his book The Darker Nations: A Biography of the Short-lived Third World with the affirmation that the Third World was not a place but a project, vibrant and significant. Leaders of newly-independent countries crafted an ideology and a set of institutions to bear the aspirations of their populations for another, better world.
This is a powerful account of the way in which the Third World moved to the centre stage of international politics by the beginning of the 1960s, challenged the forces of domination and by the end of the century was pushed out or to use Prashad’s term “assassinated” by neo-liberal globalisation and its powerful instruments. The Third World project and its ideologies and institutions had enabled the powerless to hold a dialogue with the powerful and try to hold them accountable. The dialogue was terminated unilaterally by the powerful.
Beginnings
Prashad traces the new political platform from the 1928 meeting in Brussels of the League Against Imperialism where the project of the Third World began to take shape. It was there that the call for the rights of the darker nations was first made. Unity of the people of the Third World came from a political position against colonialism and imperialism rather than from any intrinsic cultural or racial commonalities. But in the early stages itself, they demonstrated their ability to discuss international problems and offer considered notes on them. The platform incorporated not only a quest for enhanced status, but also for economic justice in the face of a shared condition of poverty, underdevelopment and dependence. Prashad points out how in spite of disagreements in tactics and strategy, the Third World had a core political programme around the values of disarmament, national sovereignty, economic integrity and cultural diversity.
Underlining the significance of the Bandung Spirit, the author shows how the formation of the Afro-Asian movement was an integral part of the story because it was through the relations among the main non-aligned countries that the Third World was constituted. What was meant by the Bandung Spirit was simply that the coloured people had emerged to claim their space in world affairs not just as an adjunct of the First and Second Worlds but as players in their own right.
The Bandung Spirit was a rejection of the two major policies of imperialism — economic subordination and cultural suppression. Despite its immense diversity, the Third World came to exhibit a remarkable unity of purpose in its struggle to establish a new international order, to shake off the rules and institutions devised by the old established forces and create new rules and institutions that would express the aspirations of the newly emerging forces.
Marginalisation
Prashad describes the marginalisation and virtual demolition of all international institutions, oriented to or initiated by the Third World, not only by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) but by the U.N. itself. Two examples will suffice. The United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC) was virtually suppressed. The principles and procedures produced by the UNCTC would have posed a frontal challenge to the kind of anti-Third World operations maintained by many multinational corporations. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) which was created on the initiative of the Third World and which could at one time challenge the power of the First World global corporations was deprived of its original purpose and direction. With the creation of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), it was deemed superfluous and unnecessary and the UNCTAD in its leaner and meaner form became just a promoter of transnational corporations. In July 2000 the U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, launched an ambitious partnership with 50 of the world’s biggest and most controversial corporations thus blessing their exploitative penetration of markets in the Third World, having already buried the UNCTC’s Code of Conduct which would have effectively held them to account.
The economic development in the Third World was a complex process that involved more than just economic factors. The distorted development agenda followed by most of the Third World and the imperialist pressure faced by these states resulted in misery for millions. By the 1980s the Non-aligned Movement (NAM) was infected with the belief that economic development is a technical problem that should not be bothered with the question of the Third World. Prashad points out how the path to the New World Order has been paved with the debris of failed policies and short-sighted development programmes promoted by the World Bank, IMF and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT).
Nationalism
Prashad traces the evolution of nationalism in the Third World. Rejecting the idea of nationalism that emerged from Europe’s history, the Third World states had absorbed the idea of nationalism and fashioned it to suit the rhythm and demands of their various histories. But as IMF-led globalisation undermined the idea of nationalism, conservative social classes gathered together to offer an alternative vision of what is meant to be patriotic; indeed what it meant to be nationalistic. The secular nationalism of the Third World agenda withered before the rise of a cultural nationalism deeply invested in racial, religious and such atavistic differences.
Collapse
The assassination of the Third World led to the virtual destruction of the ability of the state to act on behalf of its population, an end to making the case for a new international economic order and a disavowal of the goals of nationalism. Prashad shows how catastrophic the demise of the Third World has been.
In spite of the virtual collapse of the Third World, the term is used as a self-designation of peoples who have been excluded from power and authority to shape their own life and destiny. As such it retains, as in Prashad’s description, a supra-geographic denotation, describing a social condition marked by social, political, religious and cultural oppressions that render people powerless and expendable. In this sense the Third World also encompasses those people in the First World who form a dominated and marginalised minority.
Based on prodigious research, this ambitious and wide-ranging book presents a fascinating account of the Third World, its rise and fall. Prashad’s study represents issue-based international history at its best. He weaves together the tale of Third World politics with stories about personalities, problems of revolution and social change, ideological tensions and people’s aspirations.
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@ Ninan Koshi, The Hindu, 15 July 2008
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
Runaway State-Building
Conor O’Dwyer (2006) Runaway State-Building: Patronage Politics and Democratic Development, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 278pp, ₤ 33.50, 0 8018 8365 2
Runaway State-Building offers a comparative analysis of democratic performance in three newly democratized countries of Eastern Europe –Poland, Slovakia and Czech Republic. Employing both quantitative and qualitative analysis and drawing upon the literature on party politics and theories of organization, especially of Weberian bureaucracy, O’Dwyer introduces the idea of ‘runaway state-building’ which refers to ‘rapid expansion in the size of the state administration without a commensurate increase in its professionalism and effectiveness’ (p.28). What causes runaway state-building; and why have certain states performed better in comparison to others although democratic transition occurred during the same time? The answer, according to him, lies in the intertwining of party-building and state-building where patronage politics plays a significant role.
O’Dwyer partly disagrees with Martin Shefter that democratic transition into unconsolidated state bureaucracies results in rampant patronage politics. According to him, ‘[s]tate administrations in new democracies may be predisposed to patronage politics, but they are not predestined to it’ (p. 19). He identifies three basic factors affecting the state-building process – ‘demobilized societies, delegitimized states and varying logics of party competition’; his emphasis, however, lies on ‘the quality of party competition’ (p.170).
In demobilized societies, elections provide an opportunity for the citizens to punish the non-performing governing parties. In robust party competition system, the ‘fear of losing’ power is high which ultimately constrains patronage politics and holds parties accountable. Runaway state-building occurs when the opposition parties fail to constrain the government. Due to the lack of any credible challenge, the fragmented parties and ‘weak governance system’ in Poland and the ‘dominant party system’ in Slovakia are heavily involved in patrimonialism to legitimize their authority, and are more prone to ‘fictitious universalism’ – ‘preserving nominally free benefits for which under-the-table payments are necessary’ (p. 143). However, the presence of robust competition, a credible opposition and a ‘responsible party system’ has shielded the Czech politics from runaway state-building. Extending the argument to other new democracies in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, he makes a ‘huge comparison’ (p. 171) which conforms and also concludes that ‘patronage-driven expansion’ not only weakens the state effectiveness but also undermines ‘the legitimacy of the new democratic order itself’ (p. 192).
Two of the shortcomings are the author’s non-recognition of the role of civil society which was active during the transition; and his over emphasis on the role of political parties which suffer from centralization of authority and lack of grassroots social base. Despite this, the uniqueness of the book lies in its theoretical sophistication substantiated by numerous empirical comparisons across the globe which makes it a valuable contribution to the literature on comparative politics and political sociology.
Reviewed by Sarbeswar Sahoo in Political Studies Review, January 2008, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 140-41
Orissa in India: An Economic Scam Brewing?
While the Government of Orissa (India) ostensibly fights opposition to the POSCO project from human rights activists and environmentalists, is there a gargantuan economic scam playing out?
The second statement in the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between POSCO and Orissa state government states:
“The Government of Orissa, desirous of utilizing its natural resources and rapidly industrializing the State, so as to bring prosperity and wellbeing to its people, has been making determined efforts to establish new industries in different locations. In this context, the Government of Orissa have been seeking to identify suitable promoters to establish new Integrated Steel Plants in view of the rich iron ore and coal deposits in the State.”
We must look at the impact of this economic venture on Orissa from a social and environmental perspective but most importantly from an economic perspective.
In the MoU, POSCO plans investment of approximately USD 12 Billion or Rs 48,000 crores. The numbers are awesome. Rs 48,000 crores could do much for a state that is faced with one of the poorest social and economic indices in the nation – in terms of literacy, health care, nutrition and mortality, earning power, etc. As part of Phase I, POSCO plans on setting up projects worth Rs 21,900 crores by 2012 and projects worth 21,500 crores as part of Phase II by 2016.
POSCO will set up an Indian subsidiary headquartered in Bhubaneswar for this effort based on 20-25 acres of land. In addition, POSCO will require 6000 acres of land for the steel project and associated facilities as well as for township development. In addition, other land may be acquired for infrastructure to transport goods between plants and to the port, for water treatment, etc.The Government of Orissa has undertaken to provide this land to the company.
In a show of good intentions, the MoU also notes that:
“The Government of Orissa appreciates that the Company will be a responsible corporate house with a high involvement in employees’ welfare and social development.”
The Oriya community is thus thrilled at the prospect of a major multinational investing in setting up the biggest iron and steel project in Orissa which will not only bring in an unheard amount of investment into the state but also provide for jobs and townships to help develop the people of the state. The Government of Orissa must be proud for having pulled this off.
And yet, there has been significant hue and cry on this deal. Environmentalist crying about a waterfall that could die – who cares about it when people are dying from starvation! Hills and scenic beauty will disappear – who cares if it provides stable livelihoods to a significant fraction or Orissa’s people. Even the discussion on the Ridley turtles seems ridiculous from this perspective. The people of Orissa seem justified in arguing that similar penalties were paid in the development of Maharashtra, Karnataka or other more developed parts of India or the world – so why complain now that we are doing the same. And that is a fair argument.
It is also fair to truly understand the details of this economic benefit that Government of Orissa believes will come to Orissa.
The Direct Economic Component
As part of the initial deal, POSCO has promised a flat rate of royalty at Rs 27/tonne of iron ore to the Government of Orissa (for ore with at least 62% iron content). This results in less than Rs 1620 crores to Government of Orissa over time of the contract of 600 Million Tonnes.
The current global market rate of iron ore is over USD100/tonne. In December 2007, the market was at USD 120/tonne. By this rate, 600 million tonnes of iron ore (that POSCO would mine) at greater than 62% iron content would result in Rs 240,000 crores. Wow! We suddenly realize that POSCO has effectively been given this ore free. Accounting for mining costs and the total investment package (less than 10% of the costs) the people and the state of Orissa are getting less than 1% of open market price of iron ore.
This is not a special deal for POSCO – similar (though smaller) deals are in the works with Tatas, Vedanta, Jindal, etc. Why is the Government of Orissa (and the Central Government) pursuing such deals? People in the business point to the strength of special interest groups and the mining lobby and that all political parties have received their dues from the lobby. Processes are encumbered with corruption – every truck load mined needs to pay the local MLA Rs 500 and a similar amount goes to the party coffers.
For all the excitement among the Oriya community, there have been few demanding accountability from Government of Orissa – why is the Government of Orissa is selling the ores at less than 1% of the global price. Surely, more money coming into the state coffer will be more helpful for people, will lead to more development?
After detailed analysis, some groups have demanded that the Government of Orissa set the royalty at 50% of market price, and that if the iron ore were to be converted to steel outside the state, the royalty be 80%. Even at this high a royalty, POSCO will be profitable. While Government of Orissa argued that this would allow other states to undercut Orissa and get a better deal, critics have suggested that these states form a coalition, like Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), to set prices. Such a coalition including the 5 states of Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Karnataka and Rajasthan is underway. Chief Ministers from these states met with the Prime Minister of India, on 19th of December and demanded a 20% royalty down from public demand of 50%. The Central Government of India haggled and is considering a royalty of 7.5-10%. The Government of Orissa seems too readily satisfied with this suggestion.
Such pressure does make the state respond. Now the state of Orissa will receive Rs 18,000 to 24,000 Crore in royalty (if this is made binding) as opposed to 1620 crores as per the earlier plan.
What reasons force these governments to undersell minerals at >90% below market prices? The state government has been very unwilling to provide details of the transactions, with the Government of Orissa initially claiming that disclosing such details of public funds went against confidentiality agreements (unless there are security threats, democratic governments globally have provided details of deals with private agencies). Why should Government of Orissa, with an annual budget of 4500 crores, let go 108,000 crores or 3600 crores per year for next 30 years and be satisfied with 600 crores/ year? (50% of 216,000 crores the price of 600 MT of Iron Ore at last year’s prices)
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@ Sandip Dasverma & Sanat Mohanty, The Seoul Times, Friday, 4 April, 2008
Terrorism is not a Muslim Monopoly
“All Muslims may not be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.” This comment , frequently heard after the Mumbai bomb blasts implies that terrorism is a Muslim specialty, if not a monopoly. The facts are very different.
First, there is nothing new about terrorism. In 1881, anarchists killed the Russian Tsar Alexander II and 21 bystanders. In 1901, anarchists killed US President McKinley as well as King Humbert I of Italy.
World War I started in 1914 when anarchists killed Archduke Ferdinand of Austria. These terrorist attacks were not Muslim. Terrorism is generally defined as the killing of civilians for political reasons.
Going by this definition, the British Raj referred to Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad and many other Indian freedom fighters as terrorists. These were Hindu and Sikh rather than Muslim.
Guerrilla fighters from Mao Zedong to Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro killed civilians during their revolutionary campaigns. They too were called terrorists until they triumphed.
Nothing Muslim about them. In Palestine, after World War II, Jewish groups (the Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang) fought for the creation of a Jewish state, bombing hotels and installations and killing civilians.
The British, who then governed Palestine, rightly called these Jewish groups terrorists. Many of these terrorists later became leaders of independent Israel — Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon.
Ironically, these former terrorists then lambasted terrorism, applying this label only to Arabs fighting for the very same nationhood that the Jews had fought for earlier.
In Germany in 1968-92, the Baader-Meinhoff Gang killed dozens, including the head of Treuhand, the German privatisation agency. In Italy, the Red Brigades kidnapped and killed Aldo Moro, former prime minister.
The Japanese Red Army was an Asian version of this. Japan was also the home of Aum Shinrikyo, a Buddhist cult that tried to kill thousands in the Tokyo metro system using nerve gas in 1995.
In Europe, the Irish Republican Army has been a Catholic terrorist organisation for almost a century. Spain and France face a terrorist challenge from ETA, the Basque terrorist organisation.
Africa is ravaged by so much civil war and internal strife that few people even bother to check which groups can be labelled terrorist. They stretch across the continent.
Possibly the most notorious is the Lord’s Salvation Army in Uganda, a Christian outfit that uses children as warriors. In Sri Lanka, the Tamil Tigers have long constituted one of the most vicious and formidable terrorist groups in the world.
They were the first to train children as terrorists. They happen to be Hindus. Suicide bombing is widely associated with Muslim Palestinians and Iraqis, but the Tamil Tigers were the first to use this tactic on a large scale.
One such suicide bomber assassinated Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. In India, the militants in Kashmir are Muslim. But they are only one of several militant groups. The Punjab militants, led by Bhindranwale, were Sikhs.
The United Liberation Front of Assam is a Hindu terrorist group that targets Muslims rather than the other way round. Tripura has witnessed the rise and fall of several terrorist groups, and so have Bodo strongholds in Assam.
Christian Mizos mounted an insurrection for decades, and Christian Nagas are still heading militant groups. But most important of all are the Maoist terrorist groups that now exist in no less than 150 out of India’s 600 districts.
They have attacked police stations, and killed and razed entire villages that oppose them. These are secular terrorists (like the Baader Meinhof Gang or Red Brigades).
In terms of membership and area controlled, secular terrorists are far ahead of Muslim terrorists. In sum, terrorism is certainly not a Muslim monopoly.
There are or have been terrorist groups among Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, and even Buddhists. Secular terrorists (anarchists, Maoists) have been the biggest killers.
Why then is there such a widespread impression that most or all terrorist groups are Muslim? I see two reasons. First, the Indian elite keenly follows the western media, and the West feels under attack from Islamic groups.
Catholic Irish terrorists have killed far more people in Britain than Muslims, yet the subway bombings in London and Madrid are what Europeans remember today.
The Baader Meinhof Gang, IRA and Red Brigades no longer pose much of a threat, but after 9/11 Americans and Europeans fear that they could be hit anywhere anytime. So they focus attention on Islamic militancy.
They pay little notice to other forms of terrorism in Africa, Sri Lanka or India: these pose no threat to the West. Within India, Maoists pose a far greater threat than Muslim militants in 150 districts, one-third of India’s area.
But major cities feel threatened only by Muslim groups. So the national elite and media focus overwhelmingly on Muslim terrorism. The elite are hardly aware that this is an elite phenomenon.
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@ Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar,The Times of India, 23 July 2006
