Bhimayana

His face doesn’t shine on currency notes. Neither does Ariel Sharon make floral tributes at his Samadhi. Unlike half clad bania fakirs, he is well dressed and well read. However for millions of unlettered, shabbily dressed and routinely tortured people, living in the margins of India’s village `republics’, he is what Moses was to the Jews, Spartacus was to the slaves of the roman republic. However it doesn’t come as a surprise that school history books in India hardly speak of this revolutionary who inspired and instilled confidence in sixteen billion people who were destined to ‘serve’ in ‘a harmonious Hindu society based on division of labour’. History was always written by the victors, the oppressors and the elites.
Bhimayana comes as a surprise. A pictorial biography of Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was much needed to fill the vacuum that exists in the popular representation of the Dalit icon. Ambedkar has been subjected to a lot of use and abuse in recent years by the upper caste Indian intelligentsia. ‘Nationalist Marxist’ historians have edited his life to perpetuate their hegemony. For them, Ambedkar is just the chairman of the drafting committee of Indian Constitution. The Hindu right has appropriated him to vilify the ‘left liberal’ secular dispensation. In their office walls, Ambedkar shares space with Savarkar and Golwalkar. The left-liberal intelligentsia sees him as a liberal force in post-Independent India dominated by Hindu-traditionalists- the architect of Hindu Code Bill and a supporter of Nehruvian secularism. Ambedkar- the “untouchable” Mahar fighting against centuries of oppression by caste hindus, is hardly ever a part of this discourse. Bhimyana is an attempt to discover the real Ambedkar by dusting away the layers of distraction.
The book impresses from its very beginning. It’s a clear break away from the style of storytelling popularized by western graphic novelists like Satrapi and Sacco and imitated by their Indian counterparts. Durgabai and Shyam – tribal artists of the Pradhan Gond tradition do an extraordinary job by telling the story by invoking images from their surroundings. One is left spellbound in by the sophistication of tribal art while depicting Mahad Satyagraha or Babasaheb’s experience of upper caste insensitivities in Baroda. However that is where my excitement ends.
The gifted illustrators of this book are neither dalits nor are aware of the movements of dalit assertion. As a result, their art fails to convey the pain and angst of millions of dalits in this country. The book depoliticizes the life of Babasaheb and makes him look like a tragic Hindi film hero. In an effort to steer clear from controversy, it does not devote much space to the ideological differences between Gandhi and Babasaheb. Ambedkar’s critique of romantic notions of “gram swaraj” and his opposition to oriental obscurantism are not discussed in detail. As a result, never does the reader feel angry and agitated at the injustice inherent in Indian society. The only emotion it evokes is that of sympathy. However I don’t blame Durgabai or Subhash for this. I would rather blame the publishers, who in spite of the best of intentions, have imposed the politics of caste on Durgabai and Shyam and robbed them of their own politics of jal, jangal aur zammen. As a result there appears to be an eerie disconnect between the story and the story teller.
What is even more upsetting is that Ambedkar’s story is used to make a very weak case for affirmative action. By indulging in this naivety, the publishers do a great deal of disservice to the Dalit cause. A much stronger case for affirmative action could have been made by using the huge amount of academic work on affirmative action by Indian scholars like Sukhdeo Thorat, Ashwini Deshpande and western scholars like Glenn Loury, Thomas Wiesskoph and William Darity Jr.
Having said that, I would like to thank the authors and the publishers for trying to narrate Babasaheb’s life to the world, something that upper caste historians have consciously avoided. I just hope that they learn from their experience, and come out with a more political and hard-hitting graphic novel on the life of Babasaheb.

Arundhati Roy Speaks about state repression and tribal resistance in India.

http://www.truthout.org/arundhati-roy-becoming-internal-security-threats58077

Confession

Abhishek Mukherjee was 28. I am 28. He had balls to fight for what he believed was right. I didn't. He died yesterday. I should die every other day but I don't. May be I am too thick skinned.

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http://www.indianexpress.com/news/exjustudentamong2ultraskilled-kishenjihit-claimcops/596277/
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Elite Indians try out the democratic route

The news of successful professionals and businessmen, like Meera Sanyal and Gopinath, joining politics was unexpected yet interesting. The English language media as usual tried to portray these people as saints who will lift us from depths of misery and prosperity. As someone who keenly follows Indian politics, this phenomenon makes me happy and worried at the same time. The Indian middle class has often lampooned our democratic system. For them, democracy or power to the masses meant impediment on the path of development. Deep in their hearts heart they desired for a Pinochet style corporate dictatorship. However, the success of Indian democracy in the last sixty years has made them realize that Indian democracy is much potent and mature than its Latin American counterparts. This realization has ensured that the middle class no longer speaks of changing the system according to their needs; it rather tries to be a part of the system that it has despised for so long. This development is indeed encouraging. It is indeed heartening to see that the urban elite have finally understood the power and strength of Indian democracy. They realize that opening a thousand facebook groups titled “Make Ratan Tata the Prime-Minister” but that would hardly make any difference. If they want Tata to be the PM, they will have to ensure that the guy has the guts to contest elections.

However, as was pointed out by a journalist in today’s edition of NDTV’s “We the People”, the middle class in India has always overestimated is political power. The phenomenon of corporate honchos contesting elections might be a manifestation of that over confidence. This overconfidence owes it’s origin to the role played by the English language media in India. The English media has often tried to project the views of an elite microscopic minority as the view of the average Indian. We saw this at work when the anti-OBC movement started in 2006. The English language media portrayed the leaders of this casteist movement as revolutionaries and their views as the views of the ordinary Indian youth. The election results of major Indian universities proved that this was not the case. The newly formed upper caste association called the “Youth for Equality” contested elections and were routed by traditional student organisations like the NSUI, AISA, SFI and ABVP. It needs to be noted that all these student organizations had officially supported the government’s proposal on OBC reservations. However, students affiliated to upper caste organizations like the YFE couldn’t swallow these results as the English language media had made them to believe that most students agree with their world view. With their dreams shattered, they now tried to distort the system in place in most universities. They now started speaking (unofficially) against the democratic structure of student politics in Indian universities. This became more than evident when YFE became the only student association in JNU campus that came out in support of the administration’s proposals that sought to shrink the democratic space in JNU. This is what worries me. The 15^th Lok Sabha elections will prove that the Meera Sanyals of South Mumbai are irrelevant in Indian politics. I can bet that even in an urban constituency with high income levels, Meera will lose her deposit. It will prove that that the vote of a dalit agricultural worker in Bundelkhand is as important as the vote of an investment banker in malabar hill. The frustration that will come with the realization of their powerlessness in Indian polity will give them incentives to derail the engine of democracy. They will cry foul on talk shows. There will be calls for tax evasion like the ones made after 26/11. They will try to use their money poor to change the rules of the game. They will start dreaming of avatars in the form of Pinochet or Suharto to save them from this “mess” and this is what worries me.

Fundamentalism and the liberals

I write this as I was rather amused by the "liberal" views expressed on the Mangalore episode in today's edition of "We the People". As someone who takes immense pride in calling himself a liberal, I was surprised and angered by the "liberal" response after the Mangalore episode. The Pink Chaddi campaign, organised by a group of elite indians, amused and irritated me at the same time. I was devastated today when I found Ram Guha, one of the greatest intellectual of our times, speaking the language of "pink chaddhi activists". I could see the manifestation of liberal fundamentalism in the face of Hindu fundamentalism.
The Muthalik episode has divided urban idea into two halves. (Rural India doesn't care) Students, teachers, professionals, politicians, intellectuals are being called upon to choose sides : Pink panties Vs Khanki chaddhis.The problem is that making such a choice is a lot like making a choice between Bush and Saddam or IDF and Hezbollah.
What happened in Mangalore is deplorable. The Hindu right ,which has seldom understood the language of democracy, unleashed it's terror on innocent Mangloreans. The state turned a blind eye as the BJP smelled blood: a new issue before the polls.
However the intellectual debate that followed changed tracks and focused on something deeper: the concept of "moral policing". I was surprised by the the moral indignation,shown by the " liberals", about the concept of moral policing. They spoke as if the concept of "personal freedom" is absolute and sacrosanct. Can we name a society that doesn't indulge in moral policing? When the state stops a person from flashing in the public, is it not infringing on his personal freedom? Will feminists see that act of masturbation in public as an expression of personal freedom? When I state it to my feminists friends, they argue that this is something that causes unacceptable psychological harm to others, while the act of wears a mini skirt/going to bar is harmless. However the very idea of "causing unacceptable harm to others" is subjective and differs from person to person. A person coming from the interiors of Budelhand might be scandalized looking at women in tank tops on the streets of Delhi. Ideas regarding acceptable public behaviour can change very rapidly as we move from Malad to Bandra, from Murshidabad to Kolkata or even when we move from Sahajanabad to Luytens Delhi. Now to which sets of values should our laws, action, political behavior conform in a country. As a unapologetic democrat , I feel that it is natural the laws should reflect the values of the majority. I realize that such a view has it problems.By stretching my argument one can justify the acts of Narendra Modi or Buddhadev Bhhatacharya, but is there a better( fair and just) way of dealing with this problem of preference aggregation. However I often feel Indian laws, reaction of the media and polity reflect the ideas, morality and aspirations on a "liberal" elite and doesn't represent the views of India as a whole. Since the time of Nehru (remember the Hindu Code Bill), the ideas of an liberal oligarchy has been thrust down the throat of an unwilling majority. If this continues to happen we will soon and up in a situation like Turkey. Nothing helped the radical Islam in Turkey more than the western ideas of modernity imposed on unwilling masses by Attaturk and his successors.Sagarika Ghose mentioned in one of her blogs that she fears that India might end up being like Iran where a coterie of elite liberals had their way before 1979. If we liberals want our idea of an idea of an ideal society to prevail, we will have to reach out to the millions who don't share our vision of an ideal society. Have the liberals lost faith in the democratic process or have they lost faith in the average Indian? "Pink Panties" don't help. A few people get to score brownie points but the chasm between the two India's widen. Gandhi's country should be mature enough to understand that two wrong never make a right."Liberal" intolerance in face of "Hindu" intolerance will only create a more divided India , rather than the liberal paradise we envision.

The Way Ahead...

I don’t want to act like a Yankee scholar, who goes around the world telling people what to do and what not to. I am someone who believes that such acts are based on false ideas about the superiority of one civilization over another and thus goes against the basic principles of humanism. However as a great admirer of the Nepalese revolution and as a seventy six years who has seen the defeat of Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the fall of Soviet Union and the ideological dilution of the African National Congress, I present before you what I consider should be the list of priorities of the Maoist government in Nepal:

• Nepalese Society is highly stratified. Not only is the distribution of wealth highly skewed, the influence of Brahminical Hinduism has led to the stratification of Nepalese Society on the basis of Caste. Dalits (Backward Castes) have for long suffered at the hands of Upper Caste Hindus. Upper Caste Hindus control an overwhelming majority of agrarian land. The dominance in salaried employment is easily visible.

  The revolutionary government should take radical steps to redress such inequities. Land is the main source of economic power in any agrarian society. Excess land should be confiscated from large landowners (with or without compensation) and distributed to tiller. Nepal will do well to emulate the steps taken by the Indian state of West Bengal and Kerala in this regard.

  Economic Empowerment does not lead to automatic decimation of social discrimination. The government should adopt a policy of affirmative action in favour of dalits and Muslims to neutralize effects of current and past discrimination.

• The government should dogmatic while framing it’s economic policies. State owned enterprises have proved to a failure around the world. There are serious incentive/information problems which cannot be tackled in a “state controls all” environment. Private enterprises should be allowed to flourish under the watchful eye of the state. The government should step in to tackle problems of market failures. Even in the agrarian sector failed experiments of agrarian cooperatives should not be repeated just for ideological reasons. The unique features of the Nepalese society and economy should be studies in detail before deciding on policies. Policy prescriptions exported by Indians, Yankees and multilateral agencies like IMF should always be studied in detail before any thought of applying them are entertained.

• Nepal should not follow the path of Stalinist USSR in dealing with individual rights. While needs of the society are supreme, individual rights shouldn’t be trampled upon in the name of social justice. Dissidence should be respected and debates encouraged.

• While needs of the society are supreme, individual rights shouldn’t be trampled upon in the name of social justice. Dissidence should be respected and debates encouraged.

• While Nepal’s march towards secularism is indeed laudable, Nepal should not follow Kemal Attaturk’s policies towards religion. Religion is something very private, and the state should not interfere as long as an individual tries to flaunt it in public. At the same time, it should keep a watch on the activities of the Hindu right and crush all communal elements with an iron hand.

• Nepal should write a new chapter with regard to it’s relation with it’s neighbor. It should cease to be a vassal state of India and demand an immediate scrapping of the Indo-Nepal friendship treaty, which goes against the interests of the Nepalese people. At the same time it should try to maintain friendly relation with its neighbors.

I hope the Nepalese revolution will emerge victorious. I wish them all the best in their onward march towards prosperity..

Distribution of Climate Change Victims

Why should the Left in Less Developed World take Climate Change seriously?
The Answer lies above.