SACW | April 25-26, 2007 | Wishing away the Poor / 1857 / Religion Market / Multiculturalism Fraud

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire  | April 25-26, 2007 | Dispatch No. 2394 - Year 9

[1]   Pakistan: Subject: Wishing away poverty, or the poor? (Zubeida Mustafa)
[2]   India: Adjust kar lenge: The new SEZ policy? (Aseem Shrivastava)
[3]   India: Economic reforms made me completely Marxist' (Mani Shankar Aiyar)
[4]   India: Santa Claus visits the Tatas (Ashok Mitra)
[5]   Genealogies of Globalisation: Unpacking the 
'Universal' History of Capital  (Aditya Nigam)
[6]   India - 1857: Invisible history (Nayanjot Lahiri)
[7]   Commercialization of religion must end (S Irfan Habib)
[8]   Foreign-funding and sedition allegations 
against NBA Countered (NBA Press Release)
[9]   Multiculturalism Kills Me  (Vijay Prashad)
____


[1]

Dawn
April 25, 2007

WHAT HURTS IS THE RICH-POOR DIVIDE
by Zubeida Mustafa

POVERTY, an area of profound concern for 
economists in the Third World, has acquired 
enormous political connotations. It has come to 
be used as the yardstick to measure the 
performance of a government. It is therefore not 
surprising that policymakers make exaggerated 
claims about poverty reduction.

The Musharraf government is no exception. Prime 
Minister Shaukat Aziz insists that the ratio of 
those living below the poverty line in Pakistan 
has come down in five years from 34.46 per cent 
in 2000-01 to 23.9 per cent in 2004-05.

Yet we have the critics lamenting the high cost 
of living. According to them, incomes have not 
risen proportionately. Hence the common man is in 
dire straits as he struggles to make two ends 
meet.

Who is correct? It really depends on one's 
perception. When seen through the eyes of an 
economist, the picture of poverty is quite 
different - even rosy - from how an 
anthropologist sees it. The economist studies 
poverty through statistics which are by their 
very nature biased in favour of the formal 
sector. Anthropologists, on the other hand, view 
poverty as a relative phenomenon in a 
contextualised way against the backdrop of the 
distribution of wealth in society.

Obviously the anthropologist's is the more 
realistic and human approach since bare 
statistics miss out the human dimension. This was 
most graphically and conclusively pointed out by 
Prof Jan Breman of the Amsterdam School of Social 
Science Research in a talk arranged by PILER in 
Karachi. The author of several books on labour, 
peasants and workers in the Third World, Prof 
Breman has seen poverty from close quarters as a 
social scientist.

Having carried out field research in Gujarat 
(India) and Java (Indonesia) over a period of 45 
years, he certainly is in a better position to 
assess the pangs of hunger and the pain of 
disease suffered by the poor than the economists 
sitting before their computers in their ivory 
towers.

The topic of Prof Breman's thought provoking 
lecture summed up his underlying thesis. He spoke 
on "Wishing away poverty, or the poor?" One key 
figure missing from the audience that evening was 
Mr Shaukat Aziz, who is the current architect of 
Pakistan's economic policy. He would have 
benefited immensely from the lecture.

Speaking about Gujarat - and that is equally true 
about Pakistan - Prof Breman pointed out that he 
found a little improvement in some aspects of the 
living conditions of the agricultural labour when 
he returned 25 years later to the village he had 
studied earlier. The village now had a school and 
a health centre. Housing had changed and quite a 
few people were living in concrete houses. But 
the economic and social gap between the rich and 
the poor had increased. The poor felt they could 
not get any poorer. He used the term 
"pauperisation" to describe the state of the 
poorest of the poor when a person loses control 
over his life and lives in a stupor since he has 
no choices to exercise.

This is what is happening to the poor in Pakistan 
whose number is growing, Statistics do not tell 
the true story and can be deceptive. The fact is 
that the absolute number of poor is on the rise.

Today there are nearly 40 million people - on the 
basis of official percentages - who can be 
described as pauperised. In 1990, there were 29 
million absolute poor as stated in government 
documents. What is worse is that the gap between 
the rich and the poor - the bane of poverty - is 
also growing and this is reflected in official 
statistics.

The State Bank Report 2005-06 tells us that the 
income inequality as presented by the Gini 
coefficient and the ratio of the highest 20 per 
cent to the lowest 20 per cent has widened during 
2001-05. The Gini coefficient has gone up from 
0.2752 to 02976 in the corresponding

period. The ratio of the richest and the poorest 
has increased from 3.76 to 4.15.

What should be a cause for serious concern is 
that the social impact of poverty and deprivation 
on the poor is extremely degrading. They rob the 
poor of their self esteem. When concurrent with 
poverty is the growing gap between the haves and 
the have nots, one has the perfect recipe for 
discontent, anger and alienation born of an acute 
sense of injustice.

The worst part is that the poor lose the will for 
collective action since they feel helpless and 
unable to change the situation. That also 
explains why they cannot register their anger and 
discontent in spite of their massive numbers.

It has been established by studies conducted by 
sociologists that a community where poverty is 
equally distributed tends to be more socially 
adjusted and in better physical health than a 
community that is cumulatively wealthy but with 
its wealth unequally divided.

Hence Dr Breman is more perturbed by the unequal 
distribution of wealth and the existing 
disparities rather than the fact of poverty 
itself. Besides when the cake is large and the 
slices are relatively equal in size even the 
smallest slice is not too small and can be 
filling enough to keep a person quite satisfied. 
He pointed out that there were people in his own 
country who were poorer than others but because 
their basic needs are met and the gulf between 
the rich and the poor is not so wide, the low 
income classes are not as badly off as the 
economically disadvantaged in Pakistan.

The millennium development goal calls for the 
halving of poverty by the year 2015. But such 
statistical targets, even if they are achieved, 
will not improve the lot of the poorest of the 
poor. The issue that really needs to be addressed 
primarily is that of the disparity of wealth 
between the various sections of society.

When the poor live alongside the rich - see the 
shanty towns that creep up to the boundary walls 
of the palaces of the rich in our cities - the 
psycho-social, economic and political 
repercussions of this phenomenon are devastating, 
more so when the rich are used to ostentatious 
living and flaunting their wealth.


_______


[2]

InfoChange News & Features, April 2007

ADJUST KAR LENGE: THE NEW SEZ POLICY?

by Aseem Shrivastava

What do the latest changes in the Special Economic Zones policy mean?

The cataclysmic events at Nandigram on March 14 - 
in which no one still knows how many people were 
killed, how many raped, how many are still 
missing - led to the scrapping of the 10,000-acre 
SEZ for the Indonesian Selim Group and the CPM's 
hasty retreat from the area.

Most importantly, the central government was 
forced back to the drawing board. It came out 
with some not insignificant changes in policy.

What are they? There is a ceiling of 5,000 
hectares (12,500 acres) put on an SEZ. There was 
no cap earlier. Much more significantly, state 
governments can no longer acquire land for an SEZ 
on behalf of private developers. In other words, 
though the government stopped short of spelling 
this out in so many words, no recourse is going 
to be taken to the Land Acquisition Act of 1894. 
It is also left unspecified whether SEZs are to 
be treated as a "public utility" nonetheless, 
exempting them from the full operation of the 
Industrial Disputes Act (which gives workers 
various bargaining rights).

Nor can state governments form joint ventures 
with private developers if they do not already 
have land in hand to offer the project. States 
can also acquire land to develop SEZs on their 
own, provided they stick to the new relief and 
rehabilitation package to be announced soon.

Moreover, at least 50% of the total area in an 
SEZ is to be earmarked for processing units. 
Earlier, the norm was 35% for multi-product SEZs. 
SEZs will also have tougher export norms to 
meet-instead of being merely net foreign exchange 
earners, they will have to have export earnings 
at least equal to their purchases from the 
domestic tariff area.
These were the major changes announced.

If actually implemented, the changes are 
significant. For instance, the new policy implies 
that private developers will have to deal 
directly with farmers and landowners to acquire 
SEZ land. There will be a free market in land for 
once, without interference from the state. In a 
country like India, where the acquisition of 
large chunks of contiguous land in a farmed area 
is complicated by the number of different owners 
the acquiring company has to deal with, the 
transaction costs for the  company are 
substantial. (Of course no such problem would 
arise if government invited the private sector to 
purchase degraded land, but who wants to spend 
any money on building infrastructure when it is 
already there to piggyback on?) There is also the 
risk that the company may fall short of the 
minimum land required for the industry in 
question due to the unwillingness of one or a few 
owners to sell their property.

This was the very reason that the Land 
Acquisition Act of 1894 was invoked to accumulate 
land for SEZs. The state would then effectively 
act as a broker for private companies, hardly a 
role behoving a democratically elected set of 
people's representatives. The conflicts and 
protests during the last several months in West 
Bengal, Maharashtra, Punjab and elsewhere, have 
revealed the moral folly of such an approach. (In 
contrast to their Communist counterparts in West 
Bengal, the Gujarat government has skilfully 
minimised such conflicts by staying out of land 
deals in the first place. It has also avoided 
some problems by keeping agricultural lands out 
of the reckoning.)

  "This is not the Gita or the Bible. No?"

That is how Union Minister for Commerce and 
Industries Kamal Nath responded to the media when 
queried about the new policy ruling on land 
ceilings for SEZs. Not surprisingly, just the 
previous day the Reliance spokesman on SEZs, 
Anand Jain, had told NDTV: "I am sure this is not 
a final no. There is much more to come. We will 
go to the government, we will place our ideas 
with them, and we are sure they will change their 
mind." A good sample of how policies are made, 
unmade and remade in this fascinating democracy. 
Policies are made in the shadows. The government 
implements them by stealth. People protest. 
Government appears to budge. Money whispers. The 
media feels sorry for the megacorps. Politicians 
nod. They wait for people to get tired. Soon 
everything goes back to where it started.

Kamal Nath was visiting China when he made that 
remark. Perhaps the perspective of distance made 
him feel secure in making the statement, within 
two weeks of the meeting of the Empowered Group 
of Ministers on SEZs. The echoes of Nandigram 
might have faded in the din of Beijing.

Being the biggest accumulator of SEZ land in the 
country, Reliance was "hardest hit" by the policy 
ruling of April 5. It had the sympathies of the 
media. Reliance has been in the process of 
acquiring, among other properties, two huge areas 
of over 25,000 acres each near Gurgaon in Haryana 
and near Mumbai. Evidently, their confidence is 
unshaken by the new policy ruling. They are not 
giving up: "The cap on the size of SEZs does not 
exist in any other country. This is one of the 
vital issues that will be taken up with the 
government," Anand Jain told PTI the other day. 
(SEZs do not exist in most countries, the reason 
why caps on their size do not exist either.) 
Reacting to the government's decision to distance 
itself from acquiring land for SEZs, he said: 
"The government cannot have it both ways. They 
cannot insist on the SEZ being on contiguous land 
and then refuse to get involved..." It becomes 
clearer how the government is being cornered to 
play the role of land broker once again.

When asked how Reliance would acquire land in the 
face of protests by farmers and activists, Jain 
told NDTV that the compensation package to 
farmers will be like a lottery. So much for fair 
compensation.

Exactly who calls the shots when it comes to 
economic policymaking ultimately becomes clear 
when you listen to Kamal Nath after his return to 
New Delhi: "Should a proposal for an SEZ be for 
an area larger than 5,000 hectares, after 
examining its impact on the economy overall, the 
government could consider itŠOnce the 
rehabilitation policy is in place the government 
will look into it. It (the ceiling) is not part 
of the SEZ Act, but part of the rules."

So why all the song and dance about the government changing SEZ policy?

It wastes a lot of the public's time.

Movers and shakers

According to The Times of India, having learnt 
from the events at Nandigram, the newly elected 
government of Prakash Singh Badal in Punjab may 
reverse its predecessor's decision to acquire 485 
acres of land for the giant builder-developer DLF 
across seven villages near Amritsar. This despite 
clearance from the central government for the SEZ 
projects in the state.

Yogesh Verma, head of the SEZ division of DLF 
told the newspaper: "We had decided to go to 
Punjab following an assurance by the state 
government to provide us land. How can it go back 
on its promise? Land acquisition for our project 
should be considered retrospectively."
Given that DLF is planning investments of Rs 
1,800 crore at an SEZ near Ludhiana, in addition 
to the Rs 453 crore planned for the Amritsar SEZ, 
it remains to be seen whether the Badal 
government is strong enough to stick to its word.

The new Punjab government will do well to 
remember that the Amarinder Singh government had 
suffered a bitter defeat in the recent assembly 
elections in Punjab thanks to its pro-corporate, 
anti-farmer policies. There is no barren land in 
Punjab, only some of the most fertile arable land 
in the world. The anger and resentment of farmers 
against state policies runs high.

Besides DLF in Punjab there are investors in 
other parts of the country who are looking for a 
reinstatement of the original SEZ policy of the 
government. There is, for instance, the South 
Korean steel transnational POSCO, slated to bring 
the largest-ever foreign investment into India 
($12 billion or Rs 52,000 crore, in order to 
access cheaply some of the best and largest iron 
ore deposits in the world) and waiting for the 
Orissa government to complete acquisition of the 
4,000-odd acres of land in Jagatsinghpur 
district. The acquisition has been stalled not 
merely by the central government's recent policy 
of suspending the clearance of SEZs (before April 
5) but also by the fierce resistance the state 
has faced from three local tribal villages who 
are defending their heritage in a way no less 
zealous than the peasants of Nandigram fought for 
theirs.

POSCO has applied pressure from the top, by 
getting the mayor of Seoul to approach the Indian 
Prime Minister himself. A dozen platoons of the 
Orissa police have surrounded the three villages, 
waiting for orders to strike. The villagers are 
ready for them. But Nandigram is too haunting a 
recent memory to allow either the Prime Minister 
or the Chief Minister (Naveen Patnaik) to take 
recourse so readily to force yet again. Besides, 
it would be a direct contradiction of the stated 
change in government policy (on April 5) if the 
government still found it within reason to use 
the Land Acquisition Act to take over the land 
from the tribal communities.

And yet, an Orissa government release to The 
Times of India on April 20 has the temerity to 
claim that "the government of India requested 
government of Orissa to expedite land allotment 
to POSCOŠPOSCO may negotiate with land users for 
acquisition of private land if they want SEZ 
status, in which case the state government can 
facilitate the process."

So there we go: the state as land broker yet again.

The alternative

It is clear that the State must stay out of land 
acquisition (for SEZs or indeed, for any other 
purpose). That is the message of Nandigram and 
Singur. Wouldn't the farming community then be 
vulnerable to local land mafias, who can be 
deployed by private builders and developers to 
seize the land of farmers?

The State has a Constitutional responsibility to 
defend the private property of farmers and 
peasants. It is legally obliged to use its 
coercive policing powers to ensure that the land 
mafia does not use threat or force to seize the 
land from vulnerable peasants. This must be the 
demand made of governments across the nation as 
regards the policy of land acquisition.

If governments can't learn that lesson from 
Nandigram and Singur, they should at least draw 
it from the string of recent electoral defeats 
for incumbent parties throughout India. People 
have had enough of their needs being trampled 
upon by a State all too cosy with corporate India 
- in cruel disregard of pre-existing rights of 
the underprivileged.



______


[3]


Indian Express
April 24, 2007

'I WAS ALWAYS LEFTIST. ECONOMIC REFORMS MADE ME COMPLETELY MARXIST'

by Mani Shankar Aiyar

In a speech at a CII meet, Mani Shankar Aiyar 
argued that policy is hijacked by a small elite. 
That the cabinet he belongs to is quite 
comfortable with this hijacking. That India's 
system of governance is such that Rs 650 crore 
for village development is considered wasteful 
but Rs 7,000 crore for the Commonwealth Games is 
considered vital. The classes rule all the time, 
Aiyar says, the masses get a look-in every five 
years

  A few weeks ago the newspapers reported that the 
number of Indian billionaires had exceeded the 
number of billionaires in Japan, and there was a 
considerable amount of self-congratulation on 
this. I understand from P. Sainath that we rank 
eighth in the world in the number of our 
millionaires. And we stand 126th on the Human 
Development Index. I am glad to report that last 
year we were 127th.

At this very fast rate of growth that we are now 
showing, we moved up from 127th to 126th 
position. This is the paradigm of our development 
process. In a democracy, every five years the 
masses determine who will rule this country. And 
they showed dramatically in the last elections 
that they knew how to keep their counsel and show 
who they wanted. We, my party and I, were the 
beneficiaries and we formed the government. Every 
five years, it is the masses who determine who 
will form the government. And in between those 
five years the classes determine what that 
government will do.

In determining what that government will do, the 
CII has played an extremely important role. I am 
not surprised, as that is its job. It represents 
industry, and therefore it argues for the 
interests of the industry. Industry has been 
enormously benefited by the processes of economic 
reform that we have seen in this country over the 
last 15 years or so. But the benefits of these 
reforms have gone so disproportionately to those 
who are the most passionate advocates of reforms 
that every five years we are given a slap in the 
face for having done what the CII regards as 
self-evidently the right thing for this country.

It is a sustainable economic proposition, because 
our numbers are so vast, that there are perhaps 
10 million Indians who are just as rich as the 
richest equivalent segment anywhere in the world 
or in any group of countries. There are about 
fifty million Indians who really are 
extraordinarily well off. That's the population 
of the UK.

But if you look at the 700 million Indians who 
are either not in the market or barely in the 
market, then the impact of the economic reforms 
process, which is so lauded by the CII, makes 
virtually no difference to their lives. That is 
why there is a complete disjunct between what the 
democratic processes are trying for in the short 
run and what those who have made an enormous 
success of our achievements in the last fifteen 
years deem to be, at least in the short run, 
their own requirements.

So when you talk of a nine point two per cent 
growth rate, it becomes a statistical 
abstraction: 0.2 per cent of our people are 
growing at 9.92 per cent per annum. But there is 
a very large number, I don't know how many, whose 
growth rate is perhaps down to 0.2 per cent. But 
certainly, the number of those who are at the 
lower end of the growth sector is very much 
larger than those who are at the higher end.

Yet what happens when you have the budget? As an 
absolute ritual every finance minister (my 
colleague Chidambaram is no exception) will 
devote the first four or five pages of his budget 
speech to the bulk of India and there will then 
be several pages, including whole of part B, 
which deals perhaps with one or two per cent of 
our population. Almost the entire discussion that 
takes place at CII or CII-like forums, will be 
about Part B rather than Part A.

There are comfort levels that you get from 
statistics - for instance, suddenly Arun Shourie, 
announcing in the NDA government that our poverty 
rates have fallen from 35 per cent to 22 per 
cent. He did it by changing the basis on which 
you estimate poverty. You cannot compare apples 
and oranges. The next national sample survey has 
shown that our poverty levels have actually 
increased. Are we going to be mesmerised by these 
statistics or understand that 700 million of our 
people are poor?

So we have an Indira Awaas Yojana which will 
ensure that there will be a 'jhuggi' for every 
Indian round about the year 2200. We have the PM 
Gram Sadak Yojana which was supposed to complete 
all the gram sadak in seven years - we are in the 
eighth year. And where we are told that the 
education of 1000 may be covered, who knows only 
the education of 500 will be covered. And if you 
happen to be a tribal in Arunachal, you are told 
that because of your social custom you are to 
live in one hut atop a hill, we can't provide you 
a road.

I was always something of a leftist. But I became 
a complete Marxist only after the economic 
reforms. Because I see the extent to which the 
most important conception of Marx - that the 
relationship of any given class with the means of 
production determines the superstructure - holds.

This ugly choice is placed before the government. 
An unequal choice, because you have organised 
yourself to say what you want to say but the 
others are only able to organise themselves and 
that too without speaking to each other in the 
fifth year when the elections take place. That is 
why this expression anti-incumbency, although the 
Oxford Dictionary says that it is a word 
belonging to the English language, is a 
peculiarly Indian phenomenon. Because everything 
that goes in the name of good governance like the 
economic reforms either does not touch the life 
of people or affect them at all.

We have seen what happened at Nandigram, we have 
seen what was happening at Singur and we have 
these propositions that say that SEZs are going 
to come and lakhs of hectares are going to be 
utilised for the good of the country. For what's 
the syndrome in all this, it's still 'do bigha 
zameen'. The chap says that I want my one bigha 
of zameen to be reinstated, but you offer double 
the compensation and "baad mein dekha jayega". 
You go to Hirakud, which is where Jawaharlal 
Nehru actually used the expression modern temples 
of India, and you ask what happened to the 
tribals who were driven out of there. Absolutely 
nobody knows.

Coming to the cabinet, you see what happens. The 
minute suggestions are made as to what would 
perhaps benefit the people and what would benefit 
the classes, the tendency is to say that our 
great achievement is 9.2 per cent growth. Our 
great achievement is that Indian industrialists 
are buying Arcelor and Corus. That Time magazine 
thinks we are a great power.

In these circumstances, when a proposal came 
before the government to spend Rs 648 crore on 
the Gram Nyaya department, we were solemnly 
informed by one of the most influential ministers 
in the government to remember that we are a poor 
country. I was delighted when the next day he was 
with me in a group of ministers and I reminded 
him of his remark and said in that case can we 
stop spending the Rs 7000 crore on the 
Commonwealth Games and he said, "No, no, that is 
an international commitment and a matter of 
national pride." This national pride will of 
course blow up if you spend Rs 7000 crore on the 
Commonwealth Games. We will be on the cover of 
Time and Newsweek.

I have always wondered why this rate of growth 
and economic reforms process is dated to Manmohan 
Singh. Because actually it should be dated to 
L.K. Jha's book Economic Strategy for the 80s. It 
is the decade in which we quickly recovered from 
agricultural depression and registered a double 
digit growth. At the beginning of the decade our 
biggest import was crude oil and after that it 
was edible oil. By the end of the decade we were 
exporters of several kinds of edible oil.

Why is it that Nehru became successful with his 
Hindu rate of growth? The reason is that the 
Hindu rate of growth was five times what our 
pre-Hindu rate of growth was. From 1914 to 1947, 
the figures of which are available, the rate of 
growth of the Indian economy was 0.72 per cent. 
And we got the Hindu rate of growth which was 
five times that and it made a difference to the 
people. The minute you had solid land reforms, 
the people had their 'zameen'. That is what 
Mother India was all about. People felt that they 
were involved in the process. All the political 
talk was: gareeb ke liye ham kya kar sakte hain. 
Indira Gandhi matched it beautifully when the 
entire political spectrum joined hands against 
her by saying, "Woh kehte hain Indira hatao, hum 
kehte hain Garibi hatao."

There is nobody so marginal in a government as 
the minister of Panchayati Raj. I count for 
nothing. Nothing! When I was the minister of 
petroleum, I used to walk surrounded by this 
media. I kept on telling them that petrol prices 
can do only three things - go up, go down or 
remain where they are. And it was all over the 
place. But try and get them to write two words 
about the 700 million Indians - absolutely 
impossible. And now with terrestrial television 
it is even worse. You have to be quarreling with 
your mother-in-law or hitting your 
daughter-in-law to be able to hit the headlines. 
It is impossible to get particularly the pink 
papers to focus on issues that affect the bulk of 
the people. And it is so easy to get them to 
focus on issues that are of high relevance to 
only one or two per cent of the people.

I believe the CII, if it is serious about the 
issue, should not be restricting itself to 25 
minutes discussion before lunch but hold 
discussions for ten days and maybe something will 
come out of it.

Edited extracts from a speech at the CII Northern 
Region annual meeting 2006-07, New Delhi, April 4


______


[4] 

The Telegraph
March 30, 2007

SANTA CLAUS VISITS THE TATAS
- Freebies from a debt-ridden government
Cutting Corners - Ashok Mitra

The uproar over Nandigram - and Singur - in West 
Bengal will not die away soon. Competitive 
democracy has its own laws; those opposed to the 
party ruling in the state will try to squeeze the 
maximum advantage from the discomfiture it has 
brought upon itself.

Speculation continues on the riddle as to why, 
despite repeated assurances to the contrary, the 
state administration fell back on a colonial-type 
police offensive to re-assert its authority in 
Nandigram. The underlying reason, informed 
sources suggest, was a strong message from the 
Salim group, who were promised vast stretches of 
land in the area for their chemical hub project; 
they might move away elsewhere, the message said, 
if the land was not handed over to them within 
the next few weeks. That set the panic bell 
ringing; the sequel has been horrifying.

Nothing illustrates more glaringly the spell 
globalization has cast on the country, even on 
those whose ideology and praxis should have 
prepared them to cope with it in a better manner. 
Industrialization, the rationale of which few 
will dispute, is being taken to be synonymous 
with industrialization under private auspices. To 
talk of industrial growth in the state sector is 
assumed to be heresy. Questions such as whether a 
particular private project will actually lead to 
a net increase in employment or output are 
discouraged too. Fables are having a field day: 
the private sector means efficiency to the nth 
degree, public enterprise is the other name for 
sloth, incompetence and wastage. The stunning 
achievements of the National Thermal Corporation, 
Bharat Heavy Electricals, Nalco, the Oil and 
Natural Gas Commission, the Gas Authority of 
India or the Indian Oil Corporation in recent 
years are conveniently ignored. Also brushed 
aside is any reference to the huge resources at 
the command of public sector fiscal agencies such 
as the Life Insurance Corporation of India and 
the Unit Trust of India.

As in the other poorer countries, here too fiscal 
devices are introduced at the behest of US-led 
international financial institutions to compel 
ruling politicians to desist from taking new 
initiatives in the public sector. The Fiscal 
Responsibility and Budgetary Management Act is 
being applied to admonish both the Centre and 
state governments not to 'fritter' resources on 
public sector extravaganzas. There is, in 
consequence, a gradual maturing of the belief 
that industrial activities are a natural monopoly 
of private entities, foreign as well as domestic.

The Left Front in West Bengal is the product of a 
historical movement which had as its credo the 
expansion of public goods and industrial growth 
through the deus ex machina of the public sector. 
Those currently in charge of the Front government 
in the state have apparently convinced themselves 
that, in the era of globalization, ideological 
shibboleths are poison, development ipso facto is 
development sponsored by the private sector, the 
government has only the residuary obligations to 
acquire land, on behalf of private tycoons, on 
which industry is supposed to be set up, and, in 
addition, provide costly infrastructural 
facilities the private sector will not build on 
its own because of their low profitability.

Once development is defined in such constricted 
terms, maximizing the rate of return for private 
operators becomes the only criterion by which to 
judge success. The logic is simple: if private 
profit expands, capitalists feel good; if 
capitalists feel good, they will expand their 
activities and the economy will have growth. The 
state government does not dare to enquire whether 
activities undertaken by capitalists will be on 
the basis of any careful analysis of costs and 
benefits, or whether in deciding the technology 
for the investments undertaken, alternative 
choices will be considered. Fifty years ago, when 
official faith in economic planning was still 
extant in the country, any investment proposal 
would be examined, taking into account the 
expected rate of income growth, the expected rate 
of employment growth and the expected rate of 
surplus or profit. With the eclipse of the 
planning era, such elementary practices have gone 
the way of all flesh; the only desideratum 
regarded as relevant is the expected rate of 
generation of private profit.

This transformation is illustrated most luridly 
by the details the state administration in West 
Bengal has finally been forced to disclose 
concerning the agreement it has reached with the 
Tata group apropos the small car project at 
Singur. The Tatas are, of course, rolling in 
money. Only a couple of months ago, they invested 
a sum roughly the equivalent of Rs 50,000 crore 
to take command of a giant international steel 
complex. To persuade this fabulously rich group 
to start a modest-sized car factory here, the 
state government has already spent something 
around Rs 150 crore to acquire close to 1,000 
acres of land. The least that was expected was 
that it would recoup this amount from the Tatas. 
Nothing of the sort. Instead, the Tatas have been 
handed over this entire tract of land on a 
ninety-year lease without any down payment at 
all. For the first five years of the lease, they 
will pay only one crore rupees; for the next 
twenty-five years, the payment will increase by 
25 per cent at five-year intervals; for the next 
thirty years payment will be raised at five-year 
intervals by 33 per cent; for the final twenty 
years, the rent will be only Rs 20 crore per year.

The discounted present value of what the Tatas 
have agreed to pay, any respectable accountant 
will vouchsafe, will hardly exceed Rs 50 crore. 
Equally necessary to take into account here are 
the historical trends in the rate of inflation 
and the likely explosion of real estate values 
through the decades of the 21st century. The 
conclusion is incontrovertible: the government 
is, really and truly, making a free gift to the 
Tatas of the land in Singur.

That is, however, only a minor part of the story. 
The state government is, in addition, offering 
the Tata group a gift coupon in the way of a loan 
worth Rs 200 crore carrying a nominal interest of 
only 1 per cent (as against the rate currently 
charged by the banks of at least 10 per cent); 
the principal, one suspects, is never intended to 
be returned. Finally, in terms of the lease 
agreement, the entire proceeds for the first ten 
years of the value-added tax on the sale of this 
precious car in West Bengal are proposed to be 
handed back to the Tatas, again at a nominal 
interest of only 1 per cent. If 40,000 cars are 
sold every year in West Bengal - not an 
unreconcilable assumption - with a value- added 
tax at 12.5 cent, this particular act of 
magnanimity on the part of the state would ensure 
an extra bonanza of more than Rs 500 core for the 
Tatas.

All told, therefore, the group is being offered 
the allure of around Rs 850 crore by the state 
government, apart from their being spared the 
bother of acquiring the land through their own 
efforts. The deal does not though mention what 
the Tatas are, in exchange, offering West Bengal. 
There is not even a stray reference to the likely 
employment, direct or indirect, consequent to the 
setting up of the plant. Were the employment 
generated not to exceed 10,000, that would just 
about equal the number of share-croppers and 
landless farm workers displaced at Singur 
following the acquisition of land. The state's 
outlay of Rs 850 crore would be for nothing.

Suspend the debate over the ideology of 
development. Also steer clear of the pastime of 
apportioning moral responsibility for the deaths 
and other incidents in Singur and Nandigram. 
Forget for the moment the dubious economics too. 
What about one's sense of aesthetics though? Does 
it not appear obscene that a state government, 
carrying a burden of debt of more than Rs 150,000 
crore and with a countless number of problems, 
would offer a freebie of Rs 850 crore to an 
industrial group which has made an outlay of over 
Rs 50,000 crore only the other day to satisfy 
their expansionary ego overseas?



______


[5]

Economic and Political Weekly
March 24, 2007

Genealogies of Globalisation:
UNPACKING THE 'UNIVERSAL' HISTORY OF CAPITAL
This essay is a preliminary attempt to revisit 
the history of capital and capitalism with a view
to unravelling its supposedly universal character 
and so-called historical inevitability. With this
aim, it re-reads Marx as a critic and historian 
of capital, and finds in him and his legatees a
continuing tension between the belief in 
capital's universality and its actual 
failure-to-be in
most of the world. This assumption of capital's 
inevitability continues unshaken even when it is
clear that short of state elites' conscious 
intervention, capitalism just does not seem to 
take hold.

by Aditya Nigam

http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2007&leaf=03&filename=11217&filetype=pdf

______


[6]

Hindustan Times
April 23, 2007

INVISIBLE HISTORY

by Nayanjot Lahiri

'As silent as a statue' we sometimes say; yet statues, too can speak

When Graeme Davison wrote these words, he meant 
that public monuments form a vital clue to what 
people choose to remember. His insight is worth 
reflecting upon, as a choreographed commemoration 
of the 150th anniversary of the 1857 revolt is 
fast approaching.

It is ironic that Delhi will witness a state 
remembrance of the rebellion. The 
post-Independence political class that inhabits 
it has actually suffered a 'monumental' amnesia 
in relation to this defining event. There is no 
separate memorial that honours the rebels in 
Delhi, no mention of those who lost their lives 
fighting the British, nor of those thousands who 
were hanged on charges of treason and sedition. 
The rich history of the revolt is somewhat 
invisible in our national capital.

Unless, appropriating British memorials by 
setting up inscriptions counts as a befitting 
remembrance. The Mutiny Memorial set up by the 
British to remember their dead was 'converted' 
into our memorial. An inscription informs us that 
the 'enemy' of the British epitaphs were "those 
who rose against colonial rule". But who they 
were and how they died has not been thought  to 
be worthy of remembrance. Not all those who have 
controlled Delhi have been as inattentive to 
their dead as the ruling class of 
post-Independence India. In the aftermath of the 
revolt, the British commemorated their victory 
quite deliberately, creating around the graves 
and the original scenes of action, a mutiny 
landscape of sacrifice and bravery 'selflessly' 
displayed for a larger cause.

Meanwhile, at Lal Qila, the symbol of Delhi's 
resistance, the 1857 legacy remains more or less 
absent. The display highlights only the medieval 
history of monuments, to the exclusion of what 
they were used for since then. Few visitors 
realise that the Diwan-i-Khas was where Bahadur 
Shah was tried for treason. Nor are they made 
aware that the Naqar Khana quartered British 
soldiers while  the Zafar Mahal was their bathing 
area. This fort  will certainly see a major 
gathering in May that is also unlikely to have 
much to do with the summer of 1857. Unlike the 
small group of Meerut sepoys who moved overnight 
on May 10, this time 30,000 'volunteers' will 
first be brought to Meerut, marching over four 
days to reach Delhi.

If integrating 1857 into the public sphere is the 
aim, more meaningful ways of doing this can be 
suggested. The Congress can earn enduring 
political mileage by making the aam aadmi of the 
revolt, who lies locked away in the archives, 
accessible. Such an exercise, though, would not 
attract the same coverage as a national tamasha. 
Nor would event managers be singing all the way 
to the bank.

Let us put aside the powerful in Delhi, and 
follow the revolt in a less visible arena. Jhansi 
is one such place. The June of 1857 in Jhansi 
eerily evoked the Delhi events  - rebellious 
soldiers seizing the armoury, burning property, 
massacring unarmed firangis after reneging on 
promises of safe passage. And, as at Delhi, 
rebels seeking the help of a reluctant ruler who 
had been shorn of power by the British. The ways 
in which memories of the revolt have been 
preserved around the landscape of resistance, 
though, are strikingly different. Unlike Delhi's 
'national' culture, which has hardly given any 
space to this moment in its history, Jhansi's 
charm stems from its unconventional yet inclusive 
modes of commemoration in this season of 
centrally orchestrated remembrance.

Eighteen fifty-seven in Bundelkhand is much 
remembered because of Rani Lakshmi Bai. 
Naturally, Jhansi resonates with her presence. 
She is aggressively depicted - a sword-wielding 
figure, riding a horse, with her adopted son, 
Damodar Rao, strapped to her back. Such statues 
have been erected all over Jhansi as also in 
nearby Gwalior, where the Rani was cremated. The 
Gwalior equestrian bronze, though, is somewhat 
diminished by the absence of Damodar Rao, who was 
stolen some years ago.

But Jhansi is not frozen in a one- dimensional 
remembrance of the Rani. The Jhansi fort is a 
marker of this. The artefacts and structures at 
this iconic site of resistance underscore its 
multi-layered history. Like Delhi's Red Fort, it 
is a 17th century construction. Unlike the 
monochromatic characterisation in Delhi, the 
Jhansi fort confronts us as a stronghold of many 
occupants. The entrance signpost mentions the 
Bundella chief who built it, and its masters 
since then - Mughals, Marathas and British.

Simultaneously, this long-term history is 
juxtaposed with the 1857 resistance - through a 
plaque etched with Subhadra Kumari Chauhan's 
Jhansi ki Rani. It is unusual to see the 
invocation of a bard at a monument protected by 
the Archaeological Survey. But this emotionally 
charged poem happens to be one of the reasons why 
Jhansi's  fighting Rani is so vividly remembered. 
The poetess is herself memorialised in an equally 
dramatic way. 'Subhadra Kumari Chauhan' is now 
the name of an  Indian coast guard ship that 
defends the Indian shore, commissioned in 2006 in 
the presence of her descendants.

Even more unusual are the modes of remembrance 
that surround Lakshmi Bai. The  Rani  is 
remembered  as  an armed defender of her 
principality, as someone who enjoyed gardens, and 
as a devout Hindu. From the Ganesha and Siva 
temples where she worshipped to the Amod garden 
where she frequented, we are encouraged to think 
of her as a human actor, not a frozen monument. 
Similarly, the 'baradari' is a monument to the 
multifaceted persona of Gangadhar Rao, the less 
famous ruler of Jhansi and husband of Lakshmi 
Bai. It is his love of performing arts, rather 
than his accomplishments as a ruler, that the 
performing arena evokes.

One of the performers - the only regular female 
performer on the stage of Gangadhar Rao - lies 
buried in the fort. She is, however, commemorated 
in her later avatar, as a gunner in Lakshmi Bai's 
army as is the Bhawani Shankar cannon she 
operated. A 'canonical' remembrance has also been 
accorded to Ghulam Ghaus Khan in the form of the 
'kadak bijli' cannon he operated. Ghaus Khan, 
like Moti Bai, was killed on June 4, 1858, and he 
too is buried along with her, as is another 
soldier, Khuda Baksh, who lost his life on the 
same day. They lie together in a collective 
monument of martyrs, adding to the multiple ways 
in which this monumental landscape is humanised.

It is not as if remembrance is faithfully 
authentic. The fibre glass form of Ghulam Ghaus 
Khan in the government museum cannot, in any way, 
be a representation of the original hero. This 
was once part of the Uttar Pradesh government's 
Republic Day 'jhanki'. It has since then been 
recycled as museum display. Similar is the status 
of the 'jumping spot' from where the Rani on 
horseback, with her son, is supposed to have 
escaped. Almost certainly, this has nothing to do 
with what actually happened.  Lakshmi Bai did 
escape the British siege around Jhansi, but she 
left from the main gate accompanied by Afghan 
mercenaries and riders on  April 4, 1858.

Commemoration in Jhansi is also not static. It 
continues to feed off the energies generated by 
recent social movements. A new element in the old 
history of the revolt is the Dalit woman hero, 
Jhalkari Bai. She is supposed to have resembled 
Lakshmi Bai, and it was her impersonation that 
allowed the Rani to escape. How much of her story 
can be located in orthodox historical sources is 
hardly relevant here. Just as faith in gods and 
goddesses has created an archaeology of Hinduism, 
similarly, a belief in the persona of Jhalkari 
Bai has been proactively translated into a 
veritable archaeology of remembrance around her. 
There are statues and paintings of her in a 
Lakshmi Bai like form  as also a Jhalkari burj, 
where the cannon operated by her husband was 
located. Even  the locality where she lived, 
Nayapura,  is now recognised by the Nagar Palika 
as Jhalkaripuram.

Jhansi's untidy entanglement of memory and 
materiality makes us see the landscape of 1857 in 
its multiple forms. Is it too naïve to hope for a 
'happy end' in Delhi? Is it possible that the 
1857 rebellion will be commemorated not through 
pointless display but in a way that makes the 
Delhi rebels, and their histories, visible?


Nayanjot Lahiri's work on 1857 is supported by 
Delhi University where she teaches


______


[7]

The Economic Times
12 April 2007

Its Time Marketers Explore Community-Specific Consumer Segments
COMMERCIALIZATION OF RELIGION MUST END
by S Irfan Habib
Scientist
NISTADS
New Delhi

Why should marketers explore community specific 
consumer segments now? As a matter of fact, a 
large number of Indian and transnational 
companies have done that already and this 
intervention has commercialized our cultural, 
social and religious lives. Than what do we mean 
by community in India?
	As America seems to be the model in most 
of the market strategies, I must point out that 
American idea of a community is different from us 
in India. America is a huge diaspora where 
diverse races and communities form a single 
nation. Fresh communities are added changing the 
demographic profile of the American nation. Close 
to 18% US population today is Hispanic, with a 
growing purchasing power. A large number of 
marketing groups are rightly targeting this 
community. Comprising several unique and diverse 
consumer segments, the Hispanic Cohorts offers 
marketers the ability to understand the 
demographics, lifestyles, attitudes and 
behavioral characteristics of America's largest, 
and fastest growing ethnic market. In India, 
however, the notion of a community is mostly 
around religion or region. Quite a few of our 
marginal Hindu festivals have been put on centre 
stage through the community specific marketing of 
several products. In a country like India, with 
serious economic and social disparities and 
heterogeneities, such unashamed commercialization 
has created social tensions, particularly in 
urban India. Why should a commercial product 
appeal to someone's communitarian identity? We 
have designer T-Shirts with Om, Allah, and 
pictures of Gods and Goddesses in the market and 
now ring tones like Gayatri mantra for Hindus and 
Azaan for Muslims. One of the major MNCs launched 
a soap called Ganga with a claim that the soap 
had few drops of sacred Gangajal, obviously 
targeting the Hindu community in north India.
	Besides profit and business, I see the 
need for community related marketing as part of 
the identity crisis in the globalized world. Even 
science and knowledge have not been spared from 
this essentialism and we have serious advocates 
for Islamic science and Hindu science, who tend 
to see their science as different from modern 
science. Islamic science in particular emphasizes 
its distinctive character, with Quran as its sole 
inspiration. I see all such attempts as divisive, 
particularly in a plural society like India.
	Thus, I must say, I have a serious 
ethical problem with community specific 
marketing. Indian society, which is already 
fissured socially and regionally, should not be 
exposed to the neo-liberal market logic that 
revolves around profit at all cost. I do not 
advocate a return to the license raj but 
globalization does not mean unabashed aping of 
American consumerism. I say American here and not 
Western because I have often observed and shared 
a European's discomfort with an American's 
infinite appetite to consume

______


[8] 

NARMADA BACHAO ANDOLAN
62 Gandhi Marg, Badwani, M.P.  Ph. 07290-222464, 
09893204498, badwani at narmada.org
Maitri Niwas, Tembewadi, Dhadgaon,  Nandurbar, Maharashtra. Ph: 02595-220620


PRESS RELEASE
Camp Delhi, 25th April 2007

Counter to foreign-funding and sedition allegations against NBA

[This press release is issued only to counter the 
propaganda and false publicity given to the 
sedition case filed against Narmada Bachao 
Andolan and the wrong reports that have been 
issued to/by different media]

?No enquiry into Narmada Bachao Andolan's funding 
ordered by any court, false reports will face 
legal action

?The Government of India gives clean chit to NBA 
against charges of illegal foreign funding

??The defamatory petition on 'sedition' will be 
heard May 8th 2007 at the Supreme Court

An utterly false vilification campaign against 
NBA & myself is on! This is, as claimed by them, 
initiated and carried forward by one Mr. V.K. 
Saxena, said to be representing National Council 
of Civil Liberties (NCCL). He is one of the 
accused in the case filed based on an FIR filed 
by me, for the physical attack in Sabarmati 
Ashram and another case of defamation for the 
expensive advertisement published in many 
newspapers a few years ago. NCCL has now filed a 
petition charging NBA of 'sedition' apart from 
illegal foreign funding, violence using 
detonators, etc. and stalling a 'development' 
project.

The Supreme Court (Mr. Sabharwal, former Chief 
Justice) admitted the case, but refused to issue 
notice to me personally, inspite of having been 
made a party but issued notice to Narmada Bachao 
Andolan and other parties including state 
governments of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and the 
Union of India. NBA has replied to every 
allegation, which is false & baseless and 
challenged this interpretation of the non-violent 
peoples movement as violent and 'seditious'. The 
charge of foreign funding, claiming that we have 
accepted foreign awards illegally & received 
money through support organisations is also 
countered with all proof & data. Advocate Indira 
Jaising is pleading on behalf of NBA.

NBA has not, as our well-wishers know and as was 
publicly announced in 1990s, touched any money 
associated with the awards and do not have any 
foreign funded projects. Who questions foreign 
funding, when the governments, many political 
parties and their affiliates with very few 
exceptions, survive on the same (which we 
challenge as neo-liberal policy through our 
movements), is another core issue. To exemplify, 
questions have been raised on money collected by 
Vishwa Hindu Parishad and for the earth quake 
relief in Kutch as well as non-utilisation of 
funds for compensating the flood affected in 
Gujarat. It is ridiculous that while foreign 
investment at the cost of peopleís rights, 
resources and sovereignty is followed as a core 
economic policy, a mass movement, sustained with 
meager resources, fighting for justice has been 
challenged throughout the last two decades mainly 
because the system and the vested interests see 
it as threat.

The state governments of Gujarat and Madhya 
Pradesh have filed their affidavits in which 
Gujarat has stated in one sentence, that a high 
level enquiry may be conducted. Madhya Pradesh 
has repeated the cases filed by itself (the 
police at local levels) while almost all of those 
are settled in favour of NBA activists, the 
affected people themselves. The state government 
itself has said that the cases are being taken of 
under the normal law.

The Central Government too filed its affidavit on 
April 17th in which it has referred to the two 
enquiries already conducted into the account 
books of NBA in 2000 & 2002 by the Ministry of 
Home Affairs and found nothing indicating 
violation of Foreign Contribution Regulation Act 
(FCRA). The Central Government has annexed a 
letter by Shri Harin Pathak, then Minister of 
State for Home Affairs, dated August 2003, 
addressed to Narendra Modi, stating this 
conclusion in response to Mr. Modi's letter which 
is not enclosed. This proves that Gujarat 
Government concealed the facts regarding these 
earlier enquiries, while pleading for a fresh 
enquiry into NBA's sources of funds, without any 
argument justifying the same.

In relation to a few support organisations and 
Mr. Rahul Bannerjee (a freelance researcher, 
author) the petition has alleged that NBA 
receives funds from /through supporters 
illegally. NBA has already denied it forcefully 
and Mr.Bannerjee has submitted his audited 
accounts and various proofs, clarifying that he 
was never an activist if NBA. On this, the 
Government of India affidavit only mentions the 
trusts and two other organisations, supposedly 
supporters of NBA, that they do not have FCRA. No 
linkage, financial or otherwise is discussed in 
the GOI's affidavit. The GOI affidavit thus does 
not put any legal accusation against NBA. On the 
other hand, it brings out clearly that the 
earlier enquiry had also investigated into the 
accounts of NBA's support organisations and 
cleared them of any illegal utilization of funds 
for NBA.

The Union of India affidavit also expresses its 
opinion on Rehabilitation, saying there is no 
human rights violation involved in Sardar Sarovar 
Project. The Sardar Sarovar affected people in 
groups have already filed five cases including a 
contempt case against the Chairmen/chairwomen of 
various authorities & a case of intervention is 
also filed by 10 eminent persons including Dr. 
Upendra Baxi, Shri Kuldip Nayyar, Shri Swami 
Agnivesh, Ms. Aruna Roy. Dr. B. D. Sharma, Shri 
Harsh Mander, Ms. Kamla Bhasin, Shri Ramasamy 
Iyer, Dr. L.C. Jain & Shri Suhas Borker, which is 
being pleaded by Prof. Upendra Baxi, the eminent 
legal scholar himself. The issues related to 
Rehabilitation & displacement, are, therefore, 
not to be main issues in the sedition/defamation 
case.

The Supreme Court bench headed by Justice C.K. 
Thakker has not heard the case as yet & hearing 
is scheduled for 8th May 2007. Meanwhile the news 
item put out by PTI and reproduced in many Hindi, 
English & Marathi newspapers about "enquiry 
ordered" into funds of NBA/ Medha Patkar or "the 
accusation by GOI" etc. is utterly false & 
legally challengeable as criminal/defamatory. 
Narmada Bachao Andolan will take steps that are 
appropriate & necessary.

It is obvious that certain interests, corporates 
to political, would like to accuse NBA and 
sabotage the organisation and the genuine 
development issues it has been raising over the 
last two decades. But as earlier accusations have 
died down, time will prove that it is not easy to 
do so, especially as it continues to fight 
battles for human dignity, justice and people 
oriented development. We pledge to continue our 
non-violent battles legally and ethically ñ with 
help and support from all those people who 
believe in an egalitarian society.

Medha Patkar
(Contact Nos. 09869446684/9990110643)

______


[9]

Z Mag
April 26, 2007

MULTICULTURALISM KILLS ME

by Vijay Prashad


Not as much as straight-up racism. That's made a 
comeback these days. This year, the number of 
incidents of "black face" and other assorted 
throwbacks to Jim Crow racism is astounding. My 
own campus suffered this, as did Texas A&M (where 
the scandal broke just as President George W. 
Bush nominated its president, Robert Gates, to be 
his Secretary of Defense). Such Klan-variety 
racism is generally couched as juvenile 
thoughtlessness, lubricated with drink and drugs, 
although it doesn't feel like a prank for African 
American students. For them, this is terrorism of 
a domestic sort.

Colleges respond to such racism with a call for tolerance and diversity.

More diversity, less racism. That's the received 
wisdom. Diversity and tolerance are part of an 
ensemble of concepts that form the heart of 
liberal multiculturalism. College administrators 
rightly cast out cruel racism.

Against intolerance of difference, they champion 
a diverse cultural life world and ask that we 
respect that which is unfamiliar. With experience 
comes comfort. On the surface, there is nothing 
wrong with such an attitude.

Indeed, it is far better to have differences championed than denigrated.

Liberal multiculturalism, whose main concepts are 
tolerance and diversity, provides a raft for 
students who otherwise would be on the frontline 
of juvenile cruelty. But, liberal 
multiculturalism does as much long-term harm as 
it does short-term good. Here are some of its 
problems:

(1) It adopts a narrow view of "culture," seeing 
it as the property of a "people" rather than a 
set of resources and traditions that emerge in 
different parts of the world, filled with 
contradictions and opportunities.

As Gandhi said of a narrow idea of culture, "if I 
can't swim in tradition, I'll sink in it."

(2) It gets caught in who it allows to define the 
boundaries of a "culture," and in who gets to 
regulate it. Typically, because theocratic and 
conservative forces organize on the field of 
culture, they have come to dominate it. 
Therefore, it is not ordinary people, with all 
our contradictions, who fashion the "culture" of 
multiculturalism. Rather it is most often the 
most conservative elements, those who have an 
investment in making purity central to their 
cultural project, who seize control of the 
multicultural dynamic.

(3) Finally, because multiculturalism sets up 
culture to such a high standard for the 
understanding of the world's people's, "culture" 
operates as the determinant of destiny. There is 
no place for political economy or social 
institutional analysis, if indeed culture can 
explain everything about how and why people 
behave.

The descent of multiculturalism into the 
provision of cover for projects of cruelty is 
best illustrated in the world of Indian America. 
In 1990, a group of committed activists of the 
hard right formed the Hindu Students Council 
(HSC) in the woods of New Jersey. Their public 
pronouncement was along the grain of liberal 
multiculturalism, that they wanted to assist 
Hindu students who struggle with the "loss and 
isolation" due to their "upbringing in a dual 
culture Hindu and Judeo-Christian·.We try to 
reconcile our own sorrows and imperfections as 
human beings in a variety of self-defeating ways. 
And we usually go through this confused internal 
struggle alone. It was precisely to assist you 
with this spiritual, emotional and identity needs 
that HSC was born." Given the strictures of 
liberal multiculturalism, everyone, including 
college administrators, must stand by and applaud.

But the HSC was never simply about the identity 
struggles of those whom it called Hindu 
Americans. It was also the youthful fingers of 
the long-arm of Hindutva-supremacy in India. It 
was initially a "project of the Vishwa Hindu 
Parishad of America," the far right "cultural 
wing" of the hard right Sangh Parivar (Family of 
the Faithful). When activists of the right 
destroyed a five hundred year old mosque in 1992, 
the VHP egged them on, the VHPA cheered, and so 
did the leaders of the HSC. For them, concern 
over the identity struggles of young Indian 
Americans could easily be reconciled with their 
anti-Muslim politics. Multiculturalism in the U. 
S. provided cover for the cruel, cultural 
chauvinism in India.

All this is revealed in a new report, Lying 
Religiously: The Hindu Students Council and the 
Politics of Deception, released in early April 
2007 by the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate (the 
report is available at 
http://hsctruthout.stopfundinghate.org). In 2002, 
the Campaign had unmasked another "front" 
organization of the far right, the India 
Development and Relief Fund (IDRF), a U. S. based 
charity organization that raises money for mayhem 
(it continues to operate with impunity).

The HSC tried to rebut the report, saying in a 
press release that it is not only "open about its 
activities," but that it does such ordinary 
things as "hosting speakers, performing community 
service, holding poojas, celebrating festivals, 
and participating in interfaith discussions." 
But, as the report shows, in 2000, the head of 
the VHP, the cultural wing of the hard right, 
Ashok Singhal said of the HSC, "Now, the first 
project we have in mind is strengthening the 
Hindu Students Council. The second-third 
generation Hindu youth do not want to identify 
themselves with India because they are American 
citizens, but they do not hesitate to call 
themselves Hindu. This is the generation which is 
going to throw up the leadership of the future.

We therefore feel that they should be the focus 
of our attention. Our anxiety is that they should 
not be torn asunder from their own roots."

Singhal, who is a fire-breathing leader of the 
Hindutva right, is currently in the midst of an 
election campaign, where he is defending the use 
of a repellent election DVD made by the party of 
the Hindutva right, the BJP (it shows, for 
example, graphic details of a Muslim butcher 
killing a cow, an image intended to inflame 
hatred against Muslims). So much for tolerance 
and diversity. The HSC now claims to be a 
separate organization. The Report from the 
Campaign makes the circumstantial claim that its 
independence is a sign of its maturity within the 
far right, "Such a severance of links signifies 
the very opposite, that is, this marks the 
graduation of the HSC from being a mentored 
project of the VHPA to a full member of the 
Sangh." This might be so. It is, of course, hard 
to prove beyond a circumstantial argument. But 
the claim is sufficient to start a discussion 
inside and around the HSC.

What is the nature of its independence, and what 
are its links with the VHPA and the "family"?

But it is another worthwhile place to hold a 
discussion about multiculturalism, the social 
ideology on our college campuses that allows a 
conservative idea of culture to take charge. 
Diversity trumps over a forthright campaign 
against white supremacy, and one that dispatches 
all hurtful cultural forms, whatever their 
provenance.


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Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South
Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
SACW archive is available at: bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/

DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.