Sri Lanka’s hypocrisy

I haven’t had time to write about this just yet, but you have to check out BBC’s Hard Talk intervew with the Sri Lankan Minister of Disaster Management and Human Rights (sic). Stephen Sackur, the host of the show tears into him, castigating him for his government’s abominable record on human rights and press freedoms. Watch this interview and think about what the Tamils in Sri Lanka are enduring.

Sri Lanka’s War of Terror

Few people in the U.S. have paid attention to the island nation of Sri Lanka, and to the decades-long struggle for self-determination by the Tamil-speaking minority community. As the conflict has begun to instensify and make headlines in recent weeks, the Sri Lankan government has done its utmost to control the story being told by the international media. Just as the Israelis did during their most recent invasion of Gaza, the Sri Lankan military too has prevented journalists from entering war zones. The international media have consequently largely followed official Sri Lankan pronouncements, and have encouraged us to view this decades-old conflict through the relatively new lens of the “war on terror.”

Meanwhile, human rights organizations, various NGOs, and diasporic Tamil organizations have produced evidence of a brutal military campaign by the Sri Lankan state directed against the Tamil population at large.

A recent Amnesty International press release about the unfolding humantiarian catastrophe in Sri Lanka, titled “Government and Tamil Tigers violating laws of war” (28 Jan 2009), reads as follows:

“Recent fighting has placed more than a quarter of a million civilians at great risk. People displaced by the conflict are experiencing acute shortages of humanitarian aid, especially food, shelter and medical care. There has been no food convoy in the area since 16 January,” said Yolanda Foster, Amnesty International’s Sri Lanka researcher.

The Government of Sri Lanka is carrying out military operations in areas with a civilian population. The aerial and artillery bombardment has reportedly led to civilian deaths, injuries, the destruction of property and mass displacement.

Sri Lankan government forces have pushed the Tamil Tigers out of all major urban areas they had held for nearly a decade and into a small pocket of land. More than 300,000 civilians who have fled the oncoming government troops are also trapped in this small area. They have been displaced multiple times and are increasingly vulnerable as fighting moves closer.

Hundreds of people have been killed or injured and such medical care as has been available is threatened due to danger to the few health workers and damage to hospitals.

The government had declared “safe zones” to allow civilians to seek shelter, but information made available to Amnesty International indicates that several civilians in the so-called safe zone have been killed or sustained injuries as a result of artillery bombardment.

A doctor working in a hospital in a “safe zone” says that about 1,000 shells fell around the hospital.

Then, we are told that “in at least one instance,” the rebel Tamil Tigers blocked the movement of a Red Cross convoy of injured and at-risk people out of the “war zone.” The AI press statement ends by quoting Yolanda Foster again:

“The immediate priority is medical attention for the seriously wounded. The Tamil Tigers must let injured civilians go” says Yolanda Foster, “Preventing civilians from accessing medical care constitutes a war crime.”

The Amnesty International statement thus lists the crimes committed by the Sri Lankan military only to end by suggesting that the obstacle to meeting the most “immediate priority” is the “war crime” being committed by the rebel LTTE group. Nowhere in the statement are the words “war crime” associated with the government’s actions, which are instead referred to as “a military campaign.”

On the other hand, many Tamil activists and organizations have urged the international community to recognize the Sri Lankan government’s latest military assault on the Tamils as constituting, at a minimum, “acts of genocide” as defined by the Geneva Conventions.

Campaign of state terror

On the streets of the capital Colombo, roving gangs of political thugs have waged a campaign of terror designed to intimidate any and all opposition to the Sri Lankan state. On January 28, human rights lawyer and activist Amitha Ariyaratne received death threats from police officers at a police station just north of Colombo. Three days later, his office was burned down by an unknown arsonist.

This came on the heels of the sensational assassination on January 8 of a leading journalist and critic of the government and editor of the Sunday Leader newspaper. Lasantha Wickramatunga was assassinated by unidentified assailants during his morning commute in rush-hour traffic. His car window was smashed in, and he was shot in the head, the chest and the stomach. He died on the way to the hospital.

Wickramatunga’s last article, “And then they came for me,” was a moving and passionate letter to his readers predicting his own death at the hands of his government. Not surprisingly, Reporters Without Borders ranks Sri Lanka 165th (out of 173 countries) in its index of press freedom around the world.

The Sri Lankan government has turned a deaf ear to international human rights organizations and Tamil NGOs who have complained about innumerable human rights violations and the ongoing humanitarian disaster in the northeast. Using “war on terror” rhetoric, Sri Lankan state propaganda has instead deflected international media attention towards war crimes allegedly committed by the LTTE.

However, the Sri Lankan government has absolved itself of its own obligation to respect human rights. In 2006 the Supreme Court declared that “[T] the Human Rights Committee at Geneva … is not reposed with judicial power under our Constitution,” (see the text of the ruling here) providing a legal fig-leaf for the government’s draconian crackdown on the Tamils. The Asian Human Rights Commission has declared that “The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka is a part of the human rights violation mechanism.”

BACKGROUND TO THE CRISIS: Sinhala chauvinism and Tamil disenfranchisement

74 percent of the Sri Lankan population consist of Sinhala-speaking Buddhists, while the rest are Tamil-speaking Hindus and Muslims. Since the 1980s, a brutal civil war between the government forces and the Tamil Tigers has claimed over 70,000 lives, with hundreds of thousands more injured and displaced, the majority of them Tamils.

Most media reports date the origins of the conflict between the Tamils and the Sinhalese to the founding of the LTTE in the 1980s, but the Tamils have faced discrimination and repression at the hands of Colombo’s Sinhala-dominated government ever since Sri Lanka achieved its independence from Britain in 1948.

One of the first acts of the newly-independent state in 1949 was to disenfranchise, at the stroke of a pen, some one million Tamils who had arrived in Sri Lanka in the twentieth century. They were declared non-citizens and told to return to India. Many of these “Indian Tamils” had been brought in by the British from India to not only labor in the tea plantations but to serve in the colonial administrative bureaucracy. British divide-and-rule policies resulted in special privileges for middle-class Tamils who had been educated in English in India. This bred resentment among sections of the Sinhala majority, and right-wing Sinhalese chauvinism began to gain ground during the waning years of British rule.

By disenfranchising the “Indian Tamils,” the newly-independent Sri Lankan state had resorted to a despicably ethnic-chauvinist policy, and encouraged the growth of the far right. In 1956, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) rode this wave of Sinhalese-Buddhist chauvinism to come to power and unleashed the first anti-Tamil pogrom, leaving some one hundred Tamils dead and thousands displaced from their homes. The pogroms were led, and egged on, by militant and fascistic Buddhist monks.

Another wave of anti-Tamil hysteria in the 1960s resulted in the declaration of Sinhala as the only official language of the state. More pogroms followed in the early 1970s, with the monks and their allies periodically terrorizing and intimidating the Tamil population, while their political patrons reaped the rewards of a ready-made majority at the polls. In 1981, in an act that I’ve heard Tamils refer to as “cultural genocide,” rioting policemen burned down the Jaffna Library, which housed much of the cultural memory of the Tamil population.

THE TAMIL RESPONSE

In response to the disenfranchisement and the pogroms, the Tamils at first sought to negotiate with the government, but to no avail. The Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), which led the political negotiations, soon lost its credibility, particularly amongst radicalizing Tamil youth in the early 1970s. A new round of anti-Tamil pogroms in 1972 spurred the formation of various revolutionary organizations among Tamils in the northeast, particularly in the city of Jaffna. United in demanding self-determination for the Tamils, the groups differed on the end goal. Some demanded autonomy within a federal system, while others called for a separate state, called Eelam. As Tamil refugees fleeing pogroms began to flock to the shores of the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Tamils in India demanded that their state and local politicians back the struggle of the Tamils in Sri Lanka.

The Tamil New Tigers (TNT), which later morphed and developed into the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), was formed in 1972. Over the following years, the Tigers emerged as the leading Tamil nationalist organization, but they did so by a series of targeted killings and assassinations that all but wiped out other competing organizations. They have since been waging an armed struggle against the Sinhalese state, with armed cadres estimated to be in the high thousands. The Tigers have operated a small but effective naval force, and recently shocked the world with a surprise aerial bombing of a Sri Lankan Air Force base.

Taking on the mantle of a national liberation struggle for Tamil self-determination, the LTTE have certainly fought for Tamil rights against a brutally unyielding State, but they have been just as ruthless in quelling dissent, both within their own ranks and in Tamil society at large, by murdering reformist-oriented and moderate Tamil leaders. It was the LTTE that invented the suicide bomber, and its cadres are known for wearing a cyanide capsule around their necks, to kill themselves if they were arrested.

Politically, the Tamil Tigers have much in common with Maoist-inspired guerilla movements like the Naxalites of India, the IRA, and the FARC in Colombia. On the one hand, they say they are fighting for self-determination against a well-armed and ruthless state. Their terror tactics, however, have alienated many people, including amongst the Tamils themselves. Using violence to smash any opposition to their dominance in Tamil politics, they have unscrupulously, and with impunity, killed hundreds of Tamils over the years.

Their armed-struggle strategy produced a militarization of their organizational structure and operational thinking. Thus, while the TNT in the 1970s had mass support among the Tamil population, and while they, together with several other revolutionary organizations were often referred to, affectionately, as “the boys,” the Tamil Tigers soon left many progressives disillusioned, despite their rhetorical gestures towards Marxism. The LTTE is viewed by many Tamils today with ambivalence, if not outright hostility. Nevertheless, during any military escalation, the state’s indiscriminate targeting of Tamil-populated areas pushes the Tamil population into the arms of the LTTE.

The LTTE receives substantial support from Tamils in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and set up training bases there in its early years with a wink and a nudge from the state government. The LTTE reportedly also receives its funding from a fairly large and active Tamil diaspora, despite being proscribed as a “terrorist organization” by the U.S., India and many other countries.

In 1987, the Indian military was called upon, at first by the government and the LTTE, to help broker a peace deal. It was not long before the peacemakers became an occupying force in Tamil territory and turned their guns on the rebels. Now colluding with the Sri Lankan state, the so-called Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) launched a brutal military campaign to “disarm” (wipe out) the LTTE. When they finally withdrew in defeat, an Indian military commander said that this had been “India’s Vietnam.”

The LTTE soon exacted its revenge in the most notorious suicide-bombing in history: the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. The Indian government’s crackdown on LTTE support bases in India was almost immediate.

FROM “PEACE PROCESS” TO ALL-OUT WAR

In 2002, the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE agreed to a ceasefire and to a peace process mediated by Norway. The United National Party (UNP), headed by Ranil Wickramasinghe had hoped to achieve a power-sharing arrangement with the LTTE. The centrist UNP was the leading partner of the ruling center-right coalition. The big business backers of the UNP hoped that by ending the civil war, they could attract foreign capital and take advantage of Sri Lanka’s cheap labor costs to compete on the world market, and thereby produce their own version of the Indian economic “miracle.”

The LTTE, for its part, demanded the creation of an Interim Self-Governing Authority in the Tamil-dominated areas in the north and east of the country, which the Tamils would govern for five years, and the UNP seemed, on the eve of the negotiations, willing to consider a “broad devolution of powers.”

On the other hand, the more hardline Sinhala factions of Sri Lanka’s rulers, such as then-President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s SLFP, the Janatha Vimukti Perumana (JVP) and the Buddhist clergy, wanted no truce with the LTTE, and insisted on maintaining Sinhala dominance over the country’s affairs.

When, on October 31, 2003, the LTTE announced its plans to set up an Interim Self-Governing Administration in the Tamil-majority regions in northern and eastern Sri Lanka, the SLFP and JVP forces in the government bared their teeth. On November 4, Kumaratunga imposed a state of emergency across the country, and stripped key parliamentary officials of their authority. The BBC reported: “[S]he accused Mr Wickramasinghe of giving too many concessions to the Tamil Tigers. By then dissolving parliament in early 2004, Mrs Kumaratunga effectively scuttled Mr Wickramasinghe’s peace process with the Tigers, argues Mr Senaratna [a former Kumaratunga associate ‘who later crossed over to the UNP’].”

The Sri Lankan political establishment had once again proved themselves to be unrelentingly chauvinist in their outlook. The peace process was now in shreds, as was the tenuous ceasefire that the government and LTTE forces had signed.

The 2005 elections saw the Sinhala-chauvinist SLFP-JVP alliance, headed by Mahinda Rajapakse, eke out a narrow victory. Rajapakse’s margin of victory was a mere 180,000 votes. Moreover, Tamils stayed away from the polls, and according to the BBC, “the boycott in Tamil-dominated areas was almost total.”

In January 2006, Norwegian diplomats brokered what appeared to be a resumption of peace talks, but the Sri Lankan government refused to enter into the talks unless the LTTE agreed to renegotiate the ceasefire agreement they had earlier signed. The LTTE refused, demanding instead the implementation of the ceasefire and cessation of military attacks on Tamil areas.

The still-born peace negotiations were soon forgotten in the wake of a series of bomb blasts at various Sri Lankan army bases, culminating in yet another spectacular suicide-bomb attack by the LTTE, this time on no less a target than the Sri Lankan Army Headquarters, killing a senior army commander. The low-intensity war began to escalate rapidly following the LTTE’s surprise air attack on a Sri Lankan air force base in March 2007. The LTTE already had a fairly large artillery, but now it boasted of being the only guerilla organization in the world with an air force.

Over the past year, however, the Sri Lankan military has pushed back with an all-out assault on the Tigers. They have mined the waters in the north to cripple the LTTE’s naval force, the Sea Tigers. Relentless heavy-artillery bombardment of Tamil areas has gradually pushed the LTTE into a smaller and smaller enclave, and hundreds of thousands of Tamils have been displaced as a result of the fighting.

The LTTE have been accused by many international aid organizations of preventing civilians from leaving the warzone and of using civilians as human shields. Given the LTTE’s unscrupulous record, this is quite plausible. But the LTTE are also calling on the government to stop the shelling of Tamil territories (including so-called “safe zones” and hospitals), raising the question: is the greater war crime an unrelenting bombardment of large, populated areas by a powerful, sophisticated military machine, or a rebel force refusing to allow civilians to leave the warzone?

THE END OF THE ROAD FOR THE LTTE?

By all accounts the LTTE forces have been all but defeated, and their military capability severly diminished. From controlling some 18,000 sq. km. of territory, the LTTE find themselves hemmed into a 200 sq. km. area today. It might only be a matter of time, we are told, before their leader, V. Prabhakaran, is captured or killed by the Sri Lankan military. The Rajapakse government’s chest-thumping triumphalism can already be heard in the international media.

But the government has made no friends among the Tamils with its latest campaign. Nor has it offered any semblance of autonomy or devolution of powers to the Tamil community after its military victory over the LTTE. As such, its victory celebrations might be premature.

What the LTTE’s defeats reveal most clearly is that the strategy of armed struggle has run its course. Armed struggle has, furthermore, relied on the passivity of the majority of ordinary Tamils (i.e., civilians), and alienated many, thus discouraging the emergence of a mass-based liberation movement. The Tamil resistance itself will very likely continue, but in what shape or form, and with what politics, remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, there have been several demonstrations in Tamil Nadu, India, demanding a stop to the Sri Lankan military offensive. Tamil-nationalist politicians in India have variously postured as the spokespersons for the sense of outrage and grief among thousands of Tamil-speaking Indians who share cultural and historical ties with the Sri Lankan Tamils. The politicians take to the airwaves to periodically accuse one another of betraying the Tamil cause, while hypocritically insisting that they are against self-determination for oppressed minorities within India’s borders, in the northeast and in Kashmir.

Internationally, Tamil human rights organizations are calling upon their supporters to demand an end to the Sri Lankan military’s genocidal campaign. Many are demanding an arms embargo on Sri Lanka, as well as protests at Indian embassies worldwide to protest India’s support of the Sri Lankan government. Such demonstrations of solidarity with the Tamils of Sri Lanka must be welcomed.

Others are urging the U.S. and United Nations to intervene to stop the killing. However, calling on the fox to guard the hen-house is never a good idea. The U.S. and U.N. are taking their lead from the regional hegemon, India, whose rulers have no desire to see a successful Tamil liberation movement just south of their borders. After all, they face similar secessionist movements in Kashmir and in the northeast. Having banned the LTTE as a terrorist organization, the Indian government is today fully behind Rajapakse’s brutal campaign.

A just and lasting solution to the conflict is impossible without the recognition of the right to self-determination of Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority. For the millions of ordinary Sri Lankans, Sinhalese and Tamil alike, there is little to choose from among the various establishment parties, on the one hand, and the LTTE on the other. The parties of the so-called “left,” the Communist Party and the sometime-Trotskyist Lanka Sama Samaj Party (LSSP) have proven their bankruptcy time and again by supporting the state and even SLFP pogromists against the interests of ordinary Sri Lankans, Sinhalese and Tamils alike. Meanwhile, right-wing Sinhala-chauvinist forces have been used to silence journalists and human-rights activists, intimidate dissenters in the capital, and thereby prop up the beligerent Rajapakse government.

There is a crying need for a mass-based socialist alternative from below that can challenge the priorities of a system which pits Tamils against Sinhalese in the interests of power and profit. In the stifling political climate created by state-sponsored terror and intimidation, on the one hand, and triumphalist “war on terror” rhetoric on the other, the immediate prospects for the emergence of such an alternative seem bleak. Nevertheless, the elements of an genuine left alternative do exist, both within Sri Lanka and around the world. The protests being called by the Tamil diaspora might presage the coming together of some of these forces.

After the Mumbai attacks

TENSIONS ARE rising between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan after Indian politicians accused Pakistan of supporting or tolerating the armed groups responsible for the massacre in Mumbai, India’s largest city.

The sensational and senseless attacks killed nearly 200 people during a three-day rampage. The operation was reportedly carried out by a group of no more than a dozen well-armed men, who targeted various public buildings and locations around the city in a coordinated assault.

A hitherto-unknown group, calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen, claimed responsibility for the attack. Deccan is a region of India, suggesting that the fighters might have been Indian citizens. They have since threatened to carry out similar attacks in the country’s capital of Delhi.

However, Indian authorities insisted from the outset that Pakistan must have played a role in the attack. The government then announced that the lone survivor among the attackers, Ajmal Amir Kasab, is from the Punjab province of Pakistan. The Indian media reported that Kasab said–under interrogation–that he was one of 24 fighters who trained for a year in a camp run by the Islamist group Laskar-e-Toiba (LeT).

India has long claimed that LeT was created by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to carry out operations in the Indian-controlled sector of Kashmir, a province claimed by both Pakistan and India, as well as other violent acts. India accuses the LeT of carrying out the December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi.

The claims about LeT’s role in the Mumbai attacks must be viewed skeptically, however. The Indian government has long used disinformation and propaganda to further its political and military agenda at Pakistan’s expense (Pakistan does likewise). Even so, major media outlets, including prominent newspapers like The Hindu, reported the claim of LeT’s involvement in the Mumbai massacre as valid, despite the lack of any credible evidence.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh demanded the presence of the director-general of the ISI in India to help investigate the connections between the attackers and their alleged Pakistani backers. Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari at first acceded to the demand, but then refused, following a meeting with the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani.

The mass killings in Mumbai are the largest and most spectacular in a series of attacks in India by armed groups. In July 2006, hundreds were killed in a series of bomb blasts on Mumbai’s commuter trains, and in recent months, smaller explosions have hit several cities across India in what seems to be an escalating campaign. Also, in July, a suicide bomber attacked the Indian embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.

After each attack, the Indian government placed blame either directly on Pakistan’s ISI or on Indian Muslim organizations, such as the banned Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), which the government claims is funded and trained by the ISI. This has emboldened Hindu chauvinists in the Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP) and their far-right allies, who have long advocated a more aggressive policy toward Pakistan.

Even before all the Mumbai attackers had been killed or captured, the BJP launched an advertising campaign accusing the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition of incompetence in failing to prevent the attacks and responding slowly. The UPA, dominated by the center-left Congress Party, has tried to deflect the criticism by making its own loud threats toward Pakistan.

Whoever was responsible for the Mumbai attacks, the fighters were clearly well-trained and had access to resources.

The attack began November 26 when a pair of gunmen opened fire on passengers at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Rail Terminus, one of India’s busiest train stations. Within hours of this shooting, several other locations were attacked, including two five-star luxury hotels, the Taj Mahal Hotel and the Trident-Oberoi; two area hospitals; a restaurant frequented by foreign tourists; a Jewish outreach center; and two government buildings, the Bombay Municipal Corporation and the Vidhan Sabha, which houses the legislative assembly.

The attackers then took hostages at the two luxury hotels and Nariman House, the Jewish center. Indian security forces laid siege to the buildings, and by early morning on November 29, it managed to kill the last of the gunmen at the Taj Mahal Hotel. Several hostages were also killed in the process.

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WHILE THE identity of those who carried these attacks is unclear, it is nevertheless true that India has become a target for militant Islamist organizations.

One reason for this is the growing alliance between India and the U.S. and the Indian government’s enthusiastic support for the “war on terror.” Another factor is that a war between India and Pakistan would force the Pakistani military to redeploy its forces, away from the Afghan border, where it is facing a growing Taliban insurgency.

In other words, the stepped-up attacks in India are a direct effect of the so-called “war on terror,” which is destabilizing the entire subcontinent.

But there are many domestic causes for the increased frequency of Islamist attacks in India.

India’s ruling coalition, the UPA, is facing intense criticism for the failure of its intelligence and security apparatus. But few of these critics have drawn attention to the state’s treatment of Muslims within its borders.

While the Indian government condemns terrorist attacks committed by Muslims as “anti-national,” it turns a blind eye to the crimes of the Hindu fundamentalists in the various BJP-allied organizations, which have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent Muslims over the years. The perpetrators of the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in the state of Gujarat, in which 2,000 Muslims were murdered and some 200,000 driven out of their homes, have not yet been brought to justice–and the politicians who protect them remain in office.

And in the Muslim-majority province of Kashmir, the Indian government’s sweeping security crackdown continues to take its vicious toll.

When hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris took to the streets demanding self-determination in July and August this year in mass nonviolent demonstrations, the Indian security forces responded with brutal violence, killing dozens of demonstrators and arbitrarily jailing their leaders.

The oppression of Muslims in India must be challenged politically. There is no justification for the indiscriminate killing innocent people in Mumbai–many of whom were Muslims.

But the Indian government’s tolerance of, and participation in, repression against Muslims shows that the safety of ordinary people in India will not be improved by strengthening the security apparatus of the Indian state. And the calls for military attacks on Pakistani territory will only threaten millions of lives by risking war between the nuclear powers.

The only solution is to reject religious violence and militarism, and work toward solidarity among working people in South Asia across national, religious and ethnic divides.

Anatomy of the Kashmir crisis

September 8, 2008

A humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Kashmir as Indian security forces impose a round-the-clock curfew across the valley.

More than 30 unarmed Kashmiri protesters have been killed by Indian forces in the last few weeks in an effort to stamp out mass demonstrations that have shaken the disputed region, which is partitioned by India and Pakistan, and where India has maintained a military occupation in the section it controls.

The demonstrations were sparked by the announcement of the transfer of 100 acres of public land to the Amarnath Shrine Board, but have since snowballed into a province-wide revolt. Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children have taken to the streets demanding “azadi” (freedom) and their right to self-determination. In response, Indian military and paramilitary forces imposed a curfew and media blackout, and have fired on large, unarmed rallies, killing dozens and injuring hundreds.

Sanjay Kak is a filmmaker whose recently completed documentary, Jashn-e-Azadi (How We Celebrate Freedom) was made over a period of several years in Kashmir. I interviewed him on August 16, days after the mass protests began.

WHAT IS the significance of the Kashmiri uprising?

I THINK part of the problem is that in India, our attention always comes in at the tail end of the story. Here it comes in when there is an explosion of resentment against the granting of lands to the Amarnath Shrine Board, and then we all act mystified: “How can there be so much resentment against something so small?”

That’s because no one paid attention to what’s been happening in the year prior, or the five years prior or, indeed, 18 years prior to this event. So there’s a kind of structured amnesia about what events bring us to this place.

And this is not an accident. Particularly when it comes to Kashmir, in India, it is a structured amnesia.

You’ve got more than 500,000 Indian soldiers in Kashmir. They are sitting in literally every street and village and by-lane and crossing and water-point, and then you begin thinking that peace has returned to Kashmir. But it hasn’t. You’re just sitting on top of people.

Then the media dutifully starts wheeling out the spin, and you’re told, “Oh, tourists are returning to Kashmir, all is well, the militancy is gone.” And everybody begins to believe it.

I once had a conversation with an army officer, and he said, “Things are very peaceful here now. As a Kashmiri, you should come and visit, as often as you like.” “Peaceful” is not a word I would use to describe what was around us, even where were sitting, in the officers’ mess, with a breathtaking view of the grand Wular Lake.

“But colonel, there’s a soldier with an AK-47 every 30 feet,” I said.

“No, no,” he said, “we’ve got the situation under control.”

“So when will you leave?” I said, “You know, troop reductions–cut by, say, 20 percent?”

“No, no, that’s out of the question,” he replied. “Everybody would be out on the streets, there would be an uprising.”

On the ground, that colonel commanding a military unit in Kashmir knows the score. The Indian security apparatus has taken 18 years to build a stranglehold on Kashmir, to control every aspect of daily life over there. That is the kind of “peace” that they hammered onto Kashmir.

In the wake of the armed uprising of the 1990s, which was represented as “terrorism” and an “Islamic jihad,” they managed to do what they had to do, because Indians–and the rest of the world–were a little confused about what was happening. But what are they going to do now, when there are no weapons in this uprising? There are just hundreds of thousands of people out on the streets. What are they going to do? Are they going to just start firing? And how many will they kill?

This is the real significance of what we are seeing. Until now, even ostensibly sympathetic Indians would throw the question at the Kashmiris: “Why did you take to the gun? You took to the gun, and you alienated the Indian people.”

This time around, they haven’t brought the gun out. They are coming out in vast numbers and demonstrating for what they believe in. They are coming out in the ways that Indian democracy ought to believe in. Only this time, the same liberal intelligentsia who wanted them to give up the gun are now calling these vast assemblies “violent mobs” of “extremists”!

In a sense, the Indian state is hoisted on its own petard, flummoxed. [Indian rulers] do not know how to react to this situation.

THE SPIN that the state and the media have been putting forward, how far back does that go? When did they begin to present Kashmir as a “pacified” province?

IT IS difficult to give a precise date, but I would say that by around 2000, the army, in a sense, had a handle on the situation, and that’s when they came up with “Operation Sadbhavna” (Operation Goodwill).

Having caught the valley in a vice-like grip, the army was now going to be benevolent: they would come with sewing machines, and hold sewing classes for girls in the village; they would build computer centers, or a bridge, or a water pump somewhere.

It was a strategic thing, a good amount of money was being put out, and it was a bit mystifying. Why was the army doing what the civil administration ought to be doing? Obviously for a whitewash in the media, to paper over what was going on.

Now, for such a hot zone of conflict, Kashmir is a very interesting place. It’s very strange that almost none of the mainstream channels or newspapers have non-Kashmiri reporters. Ordinarily one would say, how nice, they only have Kashmiris reporting on Kashmir! But look at the flip side, and think of how easy it is to put pressure on someone who’s on the ground, and has family, relatives, children.

If you or I, out of Delhi (or New Jersey), were posted in Srinagar [the capital of the state of Jammu and Kashmir], chances are that we would report what we see. We would probably survive only for a year, or two or three, and then get out of there.

But if you are a local journalist, you can’t get out, can you? I know several very fine journalists in Kashmir, but eventually their output is totally choked. You can put tremendous pressure on people on the ground without having to kill them or beat them up too often (although even that does happen once in a while). They are always under scrutiny and pressure. The gatekeepers up in the news organizations are the people who finally control the news flows? This, of course, is not unique to Kashmir; it is true anywhere in the world.

This tight control of the media was well in place by about 2003, and that’s when you begin to see this “opening up” being touted. S.K. Sinha, a retired army general, was appointed governor of Jammu and Kashmir in 2002. He threw himself passionately into the business of promoting the Amarnath yatra [an annual pilgrimage of Shaivite Hindus].

By 2003, there was a kind of self-assurance on the part of the security establishment. They thought they had it licked militarily. They had a grip on the armed militancy, which was the only thing they could see and worry about.

But if you go to Kashmir, and travel outside of Srinagar, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out the resentment and the anger. The impact of having 500,000 soldiers is incredible. Whether or not people are passionate about azadi (freedom) and what form their notion of azadi takes, what they are extremely passionate about is getting the Indian army out of there.

What we are seeing today is the fact that, spontaneously and simultaneously, people are coming out in the hundreds of thousands from all across the valley. They are responding to the everyday humiliation, the everyday beatings and checkings, and just the continuous presence of security forces in their backyard. Just having [those forces] there constitutes such an enormous pressure on the people. They just exploded.

TALK ABOUT the Amarnath yatra and the protests in Hindu-dominated Jammu for the acquisition of land in Muslim-majority Kashmir.

I SEE these protests as the last act of a fairly well-planned strategy of provocation.

In 2003, I traveled through Kashmir. Governor Sinha had already taken over as chairman of the Amarnath Shrine Board. I was shocked at the militarization of the yatra (pilgrimage), and the fact that all along the way there were banners of the Indian paramilitary forces, the [Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)] and [Border Security Force (BSF)], welcoming the pilgrims.

When I did the yatra myself in 1989, there were no more than 20,000 pilgrims, but through design, and an elaborately constructed political economy, this pilgrimage has been transformed into something that drew 500,000 people this year! Governor Sinha extended the period of the pilgrimage too, from its traditional 15 days, to a month, and now, three months. He had even talked of making it an all-year pilgrimage.

To me, this is not just some hair-brained idea of an ex-army general. The area that the pilgrimage goes through is an area where there are currently no military cantonments. The pilgrimage already gives them a natural excuse to cordon off these areas for months at a time. The governor and the Amarnath Shrine Board, and their enthusiasm, have helped gradually make this yatra central to Hindu sentiment. People are going in busloads to Amarnath, from places where people had never heard of Amarnath.

New gods, new shrines, new pilgrimages emerge all the time in India, but not so rapidly, and not with the full collusion of the state. There are buses from Jammu, there’s security organized, free food for the pilgrims. In the years that the [Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP)] was in power, north India saw an explosion of tax-exempt trusts, whose sole job was to take people to Amarnath. They received large amounts of money from rich traders in north India. These trusts set up free kitchens along the route. So, if you wanted to do the pilgrimage, all you had to do was get to Jammu. Once you get there, there are subsidized buses and there’s free food.

The BJP thinks it has timed this very well. In the run-up to the next [general] elections, they don’t really have an emotive issue to galvanize the “Hindu” vote. Now they have created one: “It is our Amarnath. How can these Muslims stop us?”

The keepers of the shrine have actually been Kashmiris–and those credited with discovering it, Kashmiri Muslims, in fact. But there’s already some debate generated about whether the “discovery” ought to be credited to Muslims at all, and whether the shrine is 150 years old or 3,000 years old.

In India, everything has antiquity. Whether this cave existed 3,000 years ago or not, it had certainly fallen into disuse, and was discovered by a Muslim shepherd and his family 150 years ago, and they reported it. They became the custodians of the shrine, and a share of the offerings went to them. A Hindu mahant (priest) was responsible for the religious part of it. Of course, under Governor Sinha, even the mahant has been cut out of the Amarnath Shrine Board, and is one of its most trenchant critics.

Meanwhile, the yatra has become a travesty. If you’re rich, you don’t even have to walk up the route. You can stay at the lake-front Palace Hotel in Srinagar, and take a commercial helicopter–taking off from the governor’s estate–to the shrine and back.

Two years ago, a well-known Hindu preacher held a special camp for his rich disciples. For about a week, these people were being ferried by choppers to and from the shrine. Sixty or 70 helicopters taking off and landing barely 200 meters from the shrine. The ice formation that is at the heart of the pilgrimage, the Shiv Ling, melted before the walking pilgrims even got to the cave!

Meanwhile Kashmiri Muslims, separatists and others alike, have been going blue in the face saying that they have never obstructed the yatra, but that isn’t heard. For all of them, the aggressive pushing of the yatra by the governor was like driving a shaft into the heart of Kashmir. [Author and activist] Gautam Navlakha refers to it as an attempt to annex land. It seems like Palestine and the Israeli settlements.

You could come to that [comparison] just by looking at Kashmir, but believe me, it’s no coincidence. The Indian security establishment’s fascination with Israel is very strong. It has not just to do with military equipment, but with how [the Israelis] operate. The Indian army, which is one of the most experienced in the world in counter-insurgency and dealing with the suppression of civilian populations, is rivaled only by Israel. When India and Israel are locking arms in this loving embrace initiated by the earlier BJP government, you can be sure that all kinds of ideas are going back and forth. It’s not just conjecture anymore–it is bubbling through. You can see it.

In fact, one of the key proposals put forward by the [Hindu right-wing] Panun Kashmir (Our Kashmir) organization is for a homeland that is a fortified enclave. Their discussion lists are full of talk about Israel–they are fascinated by that model.

THE FACT that it has taken the form of mass protests–does this come from the sense that armed militancy hasn’t gone anywhere? How have the protests in Jammu influenced the mass character of this explosion?

LET’S BE clear. What you are seeing today isn’t really about 100 acres of land for the Amarnath yatra. That just happens to be the last straw. In Jammu, while they can go blue in their face saying that there is no political party involved, that this is totally spontaneous and so on, there is no doubt that it is totally and tightly guided by the Hindu right, in particular the BJP.

The first thing people did in Jammu was to come out onto the streets carrying Indian national flags. Immediately a polarity was established between the “anti-national” Kashmiris of the valley, and the nationalistic protesters of Jammu.

The second thing they did was to announce an economic blockade of the valley. The valley is connected only by a slender highway that goes through Jammu and across the Banihal Pass. Once the outrage about the blockade began to be reflected in the Indian media, suddenly there were all these planted stories, asking whether there ever was a blockade, or not. There was even a newspaper report claiming that this was a plot by the Pakistani [Inter-Services Intelligence].

In a few days, the army secured the highway within the state of Jammu and Kashmir, but the trucks were still not making it through to the markets of Delhi. They were being attacked in Punjab, which is where the BJP came in. Even Kashmiri Sikh bus drivers were beaten up. What is significant about this economic blockade is that the one tenuous link that connects the everyday life of a Kashmiri to India is trade.

Kashmiris are very good traders. Having sealed the borders on the Muzaffarabad side, having put a cap on the natural flows of trade and commerce in the Kashmir Valley, which was all on towards the Pakistani side of the border, blockading this highway was like choking its windpipe. That’s what has made this as powerful as it is.

“Muzaffarabad chalo” (“March to Muzaffarabad” in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir): the slogan is very significant. If we are being held for ransom every time, people seemed to be saying, with threats to choke off supplies to the valley, then we’ll find a way out of it. There was unanimity in the valley. There was no confusion. The confusion was only on the editorial pages of the Indian newspapers. The media held complicated debates about the origins of the Amarnath shrine, but every time they generate this sort of fluff, you know that they are afraid to talk nuts and bolts. So we get stuck in the details, and lose any sense of what people are really thinking and feeling.

It’s not a coincidence that, even as we speak, another march to Muzaffarabad has been announced. Of course, they don’t imagine that tomorrow the borders will open and the trucks will roll in to Muzaffarabad. But, if we are talking about a tangible element of azadi, along with getting the army out, this–trade across the border–is the other issue on which nobody will disagree.

In the absence of any one clear leader or political party, you have to watch and see: What’s the consensus? The consensus seems to be that people want to be on the streets, and that they are not asking for an armed struggle. That seems to be quite obvious. There have been no statements by the militant groups, whereas normally they comment on everything. They also have seen that the people are not asking for them. Even the so-called hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani said a few months ago that the armed militancy needs to pull back. No one’s saying that they haven’t served an important function, but a different phase has begun now.

If you are interested in democracy, then what has been happening in Kashmir is extremely interesting. A population that has been beaten and battered over the last 20 years has seen a consensus that seems to be coming through, throbbing through, the crowd. Three months ago, even the “separatist” leaders seemed quite resigned to the status quo. There was this debate about whether or not to participate in the coming elections. It was a lukewarm, tired time, a kind of defeated time. But now, suddenly, even those separatist leaders have been pulled back into the thick of it. It’s a different world now, a different atmosphere.

Last month, during the agitation around the Amarnath shrine, people took over the clock tower in Lal Chowk, in the center of Srinagar. This clock tower has become symbolic of the presence of Indian security forces, because the BSF and CRPF hoist the Indian flag there on Independence Day, and the Indian flag flies there.

That flag was brought down, in front of the CRPF forces. The flag of the Awami Action Committee, a green flag with a crescent and star (often mistaken by the media for a Pakistani flag) was hoisted in its place.

Yesterday, August 15, there was a complete hartal (strike). There was no one on the streets until 2 p.m. Then, at 2:30, thousands of people showed up in Lal Chowk. Once again, the CRPF had to move back. The Indian flag was brought down again.

This, to me, is a sign of great self-confidence. The security forces are all around. They say they’ve been given an order to “go soft.” But what else can they do in this situation? I can’t believe that, at a time when India is proclaiming itself a world power and a great democracy, that they are willing to kill 500 people a day. And that’s what they’ll have to do to regain control of the situation. Even the incredible ability of Indian state to ride out crises will be tested in the months to come.

Since August 11, we’ve seen mobilizations in the tens of thousands, and even higher.

Sheikh Abdul Aziz, a senior separatist leader and a former militant, was shot and killed at point-blank range during the protests a few days ago. Today was his chehrum, his memorial service. Close to 200,000 people showed up for that, and they’ve announced another march to Muzaffarabad. It would be foolish to imagine that this is a just a bit of pressure cooker letting off a little steam. That’s happened in the past, but this is different. Everybody has agreed that they have not seen such numbers since 1990-91. One reason for this, of course is because of the crackdown that ensued then. But now everything has changed.

THE BJP has launched a nationwide agitation, so has the [Vishwa Hindu Parishad]. They have the capacity to organize, and they are organized. Let’s talk about the response of the left. It seems so imbalanced.

HOW THE Hindu right is going to use this situation is quite apparent. The BJP isn’t publicly involved right now in Jammu, because they don’t want to put it on a boil right now. The elections are still months away, remember.

So let’s talk about the liberal left. I think this is a very important question. After a long period of amnesia about Kashmir, in the last three or four years, because of so-called “normalization” and because Kashmir seemed to begin to appear less “threatening,” with calls for azadi seeming to have dissipated, everyone began tut-tutting about human rights in Kashmir and today, Kashmir is flooded with Indian do-gooders, all talking about brotherhood and peace and love.

NON-GOVERNMENTAL organizations (NGOs)?

THERE ARE thousands of them. There are some 3,300 NGOs registered with the government in the valley now, and there is even an official ban on registering NGOs because there are too many of them. They don’t want to talk politics, because in this context that would mean a separatist agenda. But they can talk about human rights and occasionally critique this or that aspect of the army. So I am very curious to see how this bunch is going to respond now

IN THE early 1990s, Indian society found it easy to turn its back on Kashmir. It was possible for them to say this was an armed Islamist upsurge, and they couldn’t possibly have truck with it. How are they going to respond now? Already I can hear some of them saying, “Is it surprising that the CRPF opened fire when crowds are demolishing their bunkers?”

YES, CROWDS have come out and demolished CRPF bunkers, but what have they demolished them with? Not with bazookas, but with their bare hands. What else are they to do? And the panic! The panic the moment that they see a Pakistan flag. So long as you are a sobbing widow, or an orphan, or someone who’s been tortured, a charity case, Indian civil society has found a place for you.

Now there are people who have had a very good line on Kashmir, a consistent line, and one respects them. People like Gautam Navlakha, and civil rights groups in Andhra Pradesh. But broadly speaking, this is not the case–and the people who will be most found wanting will be the orthodox left. They will come out on a humanitarian basis, but when it comes to nationalism, when it comes to the flag, when it comes to the territorial integrity of India, there is no one more passionate than the left in India. It’s not a coincidence that the only people who have publicly and officially come out in favor of self-determination are those in the extreme left, the Maoists. As you move toward the fringe of the left, you find some openness, but not among the mainstream liberal lot.

WHAT SHOULD we be doing? Whom can we look to in the valley, and how should Indian progressives orient themselves?

IT’S NOT very easy. Kashmir does not make it easy for us to simply say, “Here are the nice guys and I’m with them.”

Personally, that’s been an important journey for me. At a time when the world is being consumed with Islamophobia, here is an uprising in a Muslim-majority province that is mobilized on the basis of a religious metaphor, and yet what they are asking for has a historical and moral validity.

So that’s what makes it so challenging. In that sense, it’s a very good opportunity for us to confront our own prejudices, and it makes for an interesting problem for progressives. Progressives are very anxious about messing around with anything that is religious, aren’t they?

I went to make a film in Kashmir five years ago. I am a Kashmiri pandit from Delhi, and yet I was met with nothing but decency in the course of making the film, because I went nihattha (unarmed), with a curiosity and an openness to hear what they are saying. Just by going in and listening and learning about it, people can do a lot.

But there’s more. If India is indeed on its way to becoming a superpower and the great democratic hope and so on, then it is time to call its bluff. There must be a political solution to this. The military solution, as we know, stands exposed. It hasn’t worked in 18 years. These last two months have shown that it simply did not change people’s minds.

The last two months have also exploded the canard that the common people are not involved in this. Well, right now, the militants’ guns are invisible, and the people are clearly in the forefront. If you are seriously committed to democracy, as I think we all should be, then Kashmir is becoming a more and more an interesting place–because it is posing new, urgent questions that need answers.

So far, the debate on Kashmir has been tightly controlled by Pakistan and India. What Kashmiris are actually thinking and saying hasn’t been heard, and that’s the challenge for all of us today. It’s a challenge, but it’s also an opportunity for all of us.

—

First published in Socialist Worker

An Appeal from Kashmiris

Received this earlier today.

-LP

APPEAL

Civil society calls for international intervention in Kashmir

Srinagar, Aug 27: In view of the deteriorating humanitarian situation and the media black out of the events in Kashmir, we call upon the international humanitarian agencies, particularly the UN bodies and world press to intervene immediately to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in Kashmir.

Owing to the strict curfew, hundreds of the injured lying in various hospitals of Kashmir, are not able to get critical medicines and the attendants are without food.

Due to the aggressive enforcement of the curfew, the sick and injured (by the Indian armed forces) are not able to reach hospitals, resulting in deaths. Attendants of dozens of dead in various hospitals in Kashmir are awaiting their transportation to their homes for the final rites. Two pregnant women died since yesterday when the ambulances carrying them where disallowed by the Indian armed forces to reach maternity hospitals. Beating up of the drivers of the ambulances and their inability to reach hospitals has compounded the situation. Medical personnel of various hospitals in Kashmir are not able to attend their duties as identity cards and curfew passes are not being honored by the hostile troops deployed on the streets.

There is a serious dearth of medicines, baby milk, food stuff, milk and other essential commodities in the market due to the curfew and the blockade of the only road link to Kashmir. In view of the four days of stringent restrictions on people’s movement and heavy clampdown by the state forces across the 10 districts of Kashmir, including Srinagar city, we appeal the international community to ask the government of India to immediately ease curfew restrictions so that people are able to access basic essentials. Children going without milk and the sick without medicines are matters of serious concern.

We condemn the use of heavy force to thwart peaceful protests, resulting in killings of 50 civilians in Kashmir. We also condemn the violent attack allegedly by militants in Jammu on Wednesday which has resulted in the death of three innocent civilians.

The flow of information has completely stopped for the first time in the history of Kashmir and no newspaper has been able to publish in last 3 days, because of these indiscriminate restrictions imposed by the government. The communications blockade has been compounded by the banning of news and current affairs programs on local cable TV channels, and ban on sms services. Such communications blockade is resulting in loss of news about the unfolding events, black out of significant happenings in Kashmir’s country side – where currently media has no access – and which is tightly controlled by the army. We call upon the international community to call upon the government of India to lift the communications blockade without any delay.

Signed by:

Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, Chamber of Commerce and Industries Kashmir, Kashmir Hotel and Resturant Owners Federation, Valley Citizen’s Council (Zareef Ahmed Zareef), Naagar Nagar Coordination Committee, Ahad Zargar Research Foundation, Himayat Trust, JK People’s Development Trust, Kashmir Thinker’s Guild, Dr. Altaf Hussain, Dr. Shaikh Showkat Hussain (Faculty of Law, University of Kashmir), Prof. N.A. Baba (Faculty of Political Science, University of Kashmir), Arjimand Hussain Talib (Columnist), Z.G. Mohammad (Columnist), Dr. Mubarik Ahmed (Social Activist), Noorul Hassan (Ex-Chief Conservator), Jamiat Hamdania, Firdous Education Trust for Orphans, Doda Peace Forum, Poonch Initiave for Peace and Justice, Ehsaas (A Developmental Organisation)

Where is the Kashmiri intifada headed?

The cry of “Azadi!” (“Freedom!”) from the streets of Srinagar and Pampore has now reverberated across the Kashmir valley and beyond. Images of banners calling for “Freedom,” held aloft by throngs of Kashmiri protesters, are sending out an unmistakable message across the airwaves, breaking through even the sophisticated barriers of the neoliberalized Indian media landscape.

The immediate trigger for the Kashmiri intifada was the Amarnath land transfer decision, but unfortunately for the Hindutva brigade that engineered the Jammu protests, the explosion that followed in the valley has radically redefined the terms of public debate. As Arundhati Roy points out in her most recent piece in Outlook,

To expect matters to end there was of course absurd. Hadn’t anybody noticed that in Kashmir even minor protests about civic issues like water and electricity inevitably turned into demands for azadi? To threaten them with mass starvation amounted to committing political suicide.

She writes:

Not surprisingly, the voice that the government of India has tried so hard to silence in Kashmir has massed into a deafening roar. Raised in a playground of army camps, checkpoints, and bunkers, with screams from torture chambers for a soundtrack, the young generation has suddenly discovered the power of mass protest, and above all, the dignity of being able to straighten their shoulders and speak for themselves, represent themselves. For them it is nothing short of an epiphany. Not even the fear of death seems to hold them back. And once that fear has gone, of what use is the largest or second largest army in the world?

Roy’s article is an excellent analysis that both celebrates the eruption of a mass revolt in the valley, and at the same time questions the politics of the leadership of the movement. I really think that Kashmir is at a major turning point. If so, then it will shake up the status quo, not just in Jammu and Kashmir, but in the subcontinent, and even wider.

Hundreds of thousands of people have marched in nonviolent protests almost every other day since August 11. This mass movement shows no signs of abating. Meanwhile, the leadership of various “separatist” groups were caught napping. Not so much napping, as demoralized and resigned, and more or less reconciled to not seeing any major change in the near future.

It appears that Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the pro-Pakistani “separatist” leader, has emerged as the figurehead of the uprising, at least for now. Geelani and others like him are labeled “separatist” by the Indian state and media. However, while they call for Kashmir’s secession from the Indian state, they advocate its annexation by the Pakistani state. Meanwhile, those who advocated complete independence from both India and Pakistan, such as Yasin Malik’s Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, have, at best, played a symbolic role in this uprising, and seem to have little traction, either with the masses on the ground, or with the international media.

Kashmir is at a crossroads. As Roy points out, the question of azadi (freedom) is very much on the table now, as is the question of what kind of azadi, and for whom? Who gets to decide? Will the Kashmiri intifada throw up new leaders with a new vision for change? Or will the the political brinksmanship of the old leaders lead the movement into the cul de sac of international diplomacy?

But there is a greater danger lurking. Here is Roy again:

Already the spectre of partition has reared its head. Hindutva networks are alive with rumours about Hindus in the Valley being attacked and forced to flee. In response, phone calls from Jammu reported that an armed Hindu militia was threatening a massacre and that Muslims from the two Hindu majority districts were preparing to flee. (Memories of the bloodbath that ensued and claimed the lives of more than a million people when India and Pakistan were partitioned have come flooding back. That nightmare will haunt all of us forever.)

There is absolutely no reason to believe that history will repeat itself. Not unless it is made to. Not unless people actively work to create such a cataclysm.

However, none of these fears of what the future holds can justify the continued military occupation of a nation and a people. No more than the old colonial argument about how the natives were not ready for freedom justified the colonial project.

Will the Indian government succeed in regaining control of the situation? How? The Indian military’s much-ballyhooed counter-insurgency tactics will have to work overtime in the face of what is clearly a mass, nonviolent revolt. And unless the masses of the valley can be somehow demobilized and sent back to their homes, the Indian state apparatus will find it difficult to quietly co-opt the leadership on the ground. The Kashmiri leaders are now in full view of their constituencies. What they say, and more importantly, what they do, will be watched very closely by the people.

Things are developing very rapidly, and it is impossible, of course, to predict where things might go from here. One thing we can say: A potentially world-historical event seems to be taking shape before our eyes. Its resolution, one way or another, will have lasting consequences, which will be felt far beyond the subcontinent.

Indo-U.S. Nuclear Deal and the “Trust Vote” Spectacle

INDIA’S RULING coalition came perilously close to losing a July 22 confidence motion in parliament as the result of a proposed U.S.-India nuclear treaty.

The crisis began as a result of a falling out between the ruling coalition, the Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) on the one hand, and its supporters in the Left Front, led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM), on the other.

At issue was a proposal known as the 123 Agreement. Under this U.S.-backed deal, India would be granted an exemption under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to allow it to openly procure nuclear technology, fuel, know-how and infrastructure from the countries in the Nuclear Suppliers Group to pursue its civilian energy needs. This would then bring the Indian civilian nuclear program under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regulations and safeguards.

For several months, the left had put up a vigorous parliamentary opposition to the 123 Agreement. While the UPA insisted that signing the 123 Agreement was necessary to address India’s energy needs, the left correctly pointed out that nuclear technology cannot make more than a dent in India’s energy requirements for the foreseeable future. They also argued, rightly again, that the deal is simply the latest step in a series of measures designed to create a U.S.-India strategic partnership.

Following this, the left might have argued that such a strategic alliance will only destabilize the region further, increase geopolitical tensions in this already-troubled region of the world and likely trigger an arms race that none of the peoples in this region can afford. It could have used the debate on the nuclear deal to educate the public about working-class internationalism in the face of the Indian state’s alliance with the U.S. Instead, however, the left argued that such a strategic alliance would “undermine India’s sovereignty.”

Ideologically, this was a weak populist argument that held little weight.

Read the rest of this article at Socialist Worker Online

Twenty20, corporate leagues and Indian cricket

It worries me that cricket too is morphing into a clone of American sports culture.

Check out this article from the New York Times: it talks about American cheerleaders coming to Bangalore to hold a national cheerleader training of sorts! Don’t we have enough sexism at home? Do we have to import some more?

The problem is not in terms of the pseudo-”swadeshi” argument of the Hindutva folks and their Vanar Sena apes, but in terms of the sheer economics of it. The commercialization of American sport has had many negative effects:

1. Lured by the huge amount of money in coporate sponsorship that the leagues generate, city governments and town municipalities go out of their way to bring the leagues to their cities and towns. Huge stadiums are built at the expense of taxpayer-funded subsidies. Check out this article from the Wall Street Journal (certainly not a radical socialist newspaper!!) for more on why, and with what consequences. It tells us that, according to an article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives,

Arenas put a drag on the local economy by hurting spending on other activities in the city and boosting municipal costs such as security.

Beyond what the WSJ article lays out, we can also say this: Prime seats in the stadiums are auctioned off to corporate bidders, where corporate CEOs hang out with their politician buddies. Meanwhile, the regular fan, the working-class fan of the game find the tickets priced beyond their reach, because there are fewer seats up for sale. Plus, they now pay $8-$10 for a hot dog that otherwise would cost a dollar, and $8 for a beer that otherwise would cost $4. Taxpayers are promised big returns in terms of jobs; but these jobs tend to be the lowest-paid and temporary service jobs. Meanwhile, money that could have gone for better schools, cheaper healthcare, cheaper utilities, etc., goes to the builders and developers who make big bucks in the process (no offense to builders and developers on this list!!).

2. The game itself becomes a huge advertising billboard for multinationals to sell their wares to the Indian consumer middle class. Reliance, Toyota, Infosys, make the big bucks, while we suffer through a constant barrage of advertising that makes the game into a spectacle. Where there once was a “gentleman’s” spirit behind it, the game now is transformed into what makes for the best advertisement, the best commercial for all the commodities they want us to buy. It becomes a garish, commercialised spectacle, which takes over the spirit of the game. Ruthless competition, celebrity stardom, and an emphasis on charisma rather than talent begins to ruin what used to be a showcase for talent.

(Meanwhile, we become very good consumers. While we shop in our glittering new malls and drink fizzy sugar syrup [yes, Coke] thinking it’s cool, our credit card debts go up along with our diabetes stats. )

3. The sportsmen (and women, although less so) become commodities themselves, bought and sold to the highest bidder. Nothing wrong with that, perhaps, but it has a trickle-down effect on the millions of youth who struggle to make it into the big leagues. The vast majority of them will have their hopes dashed, or dreams deferred, because only the cream of the crop will get the big bucks. The vast majority will make do with crappy, low-wage jobs, playing in some local league which struggles to even stay afloat. They won’t get lucrative contracts or endorsement deals. The result of this is still more ruthless competition, reaching down to the very lowest levels of the game’s foodchain.

Enter steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. You get the drift.

There’s a whole lot more to this, as it affects the local economy, the culture of the sport, and the popular culture as a whole, but I have neither the time nor that kind of knowledge of the business of sports to explain it here. In the Indian context, it becomes even messier, I would argue. The super-wealthy in India are already making fabulous amounts of wealth. Do they need to invade our sports as well?

Why don’t the rich and the multinationals put some money into improving the infrastructure in cities like Bangalore? Or in ridding the countryside of poverty, hunger and disease? The Tatas, the Ambanis, the Hindujas, and their ilk could wipe out rural poverty without even noticing a change in their own lifestyles. If you don’t believe me, go do the research. Find out how much the World Bank or the UNDP says is needed to eliminate rural poverty, illiteracy, healthcare, etc in India–you will be surprised at how little it would cost to do all of this. On a global scale the estimation is something of the order of $40 billion. That’s all.

Why don’t they put this money into high-quality free education for everyone through college? They could afford it. The government could subsidize it using taxpayer money. What’s that you say? Revenues are low? Well, how about raising the tax on capital gains?

Of course, the rich won’t like that, but the rest of India will. And it is the rest of India that the commercial world wants us to forget.

Hell, what do I know? I could be totally wrong on all of this. But check out Dave Zirin’s book Welcome to the Terrordome and his sports column, Edge of Sports. You’ll learn a thing or two about the business of American sports.

Believe me, it ain’t pretty.

So pardon me if I’m less than enthusiastic about this American-ization of cricket.