SACW | June 22-25, 2009 / Sri Lanka: Prisoner Refugees / Karma in Burma / India: Feminist Groups on Kashmir Coverup / Ali Akbar Khan / Giovanni Arrighi / John Saville
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex at gmail.com
Wed Jun 24 18:35:50 CDT 2009
South Asia Citizens Wire | June 22-25, 2009 | Dispatch No. 2637 -
Year 11 running
From: www.sacw.net
[ SACW Dispatches for 2009-2010 are dedicated to the memory of Dr.
Sudarshan Punhani (1933-2009), husband of Professor Tamara Zakon and
a comrade and friend of Daya Varma ]
____
[1] Sri Lanka: Why are the Vanni civilians still being held hostage?
(Rohini Hensman)
[2] Instant Karma in Myanmar (Sudha Ramachandran and Swe Win)
[3] Pakistan / India: Time to move on, Dr Singh (Zafar Hilaly)
[4] India's Women’s Groups Condemn State Cover-up in Shopian Rape
Case (in Kashmir)
+ Wheels Within Wheels (Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal)
[5] India: The age of the aam crorepati (P. Sainath)
[6] Indus Valley sites and dangers from fundamentalist violence
(Ranjan Roy)
[7] India: Lifeless Statues Can’t Feed The Hungry
[8] Remember These Three Men of Who Left us: Ali Akbar Khan /
Giovanni Arrighi / John Saville
[9] Announcements
(i) Discussion Emergency Thirty Four Years on - Prof. Dineshbhai
Shukla speaks (Ahmedabad, 25 June 2009)
(ii) Social Movement groups Talk National Strategy Meet On Metro
Rail Projects (Bombay, 27-28 June 2009)
(iii) Lecture by Dr Stewart Motha on ‘De-Positioning Sovereignty
and the Limits of the Political’ (Colombo, 30 June 2009)
_____
[1] Sri Lanka:
http://www.sacw.net/article978.html
WHY ARE THE VANNI CIVILIANS STILL BEING HELD HOSTAGE?
by Rohini Hensman
Throughout the last stages of the civil war, the government of Sri
Lanka claimed to be engaged in a hostage rescue mission on behalf of
civilians in the Vanni who were being held against their will be the
LTTE. How far are its words borne out by its actions?
It is certainly true that the LTTE was keeping hundreds of thousands
of civilians hostage and using them as forced labour, a source of
child and adult conscripts, and a human shield from behind which they
could engage in offensive operations against Sri Lanka’s armed
forces. It has also been confirmed that in general the soldiers
showed compassion to the escaping civilians, and some even risked
their own lives to enable civilians to escape to safety. Although it
was clear that for the political and military leadership, the aim of
finishing off the LTTE involved sacrificing the lives and limbs of
civilians, there did not seem to be any deliberate targeting of
civilians during the war. Even the claim by some government
spokespersons that shelling was necessary in order to free the
hostages has some plausibility, given that the LTTE used the
cessation of hostilities over the Sinhala and Tamil New Year to
tighten its hold over the trapped civilians, not to release them.
However post-war, the picture gets more murky. Around 280,000 of the
civilians who have suffered so much already have been kept prisoners
behind barbed wire in camps where conditions are in many cases
abysmal. It is clear that the government is unable to provide for
them adequately, yet those with relations outside who would willingly
look after them are being denied the right to join their families. If
others want to check up on their homes in the Vanni or start
rebuilding them, no one on earth has the right to stop them. This
denial of the fundamental right to freedom of movement is especially
cruel for families which have been split up, and are thereby denied
the possibility of reuniting, or even finding out what has happened
to their loved ones. It is lethal for those who are physically
vulnerable; senior citizens were supposed to be released after a
court found that many had died of starvation and more were dying
daily, but the sick and injured, pregnant women, and mothers with
babies are also vulnerable. With the monsoon, it is likely that
gastrointestinal diseases will kill thousands. Why, then, are these
unfortunate people being penalised like this?
Collective Punishment
Two reasons are cited by the government. The first is that it will
take at least six months to make the areas from which they come
habitable again, and therefore they have to be kept in the camps
until then. This is a patently spurious excuse for denying them
freedom of movement. Even if it takes six months to make the war-
ravaged areas of the Vanni habitable, why can’t people who have homes
or relatives elsewhere leave the camps? Wouldn’t this in fact reduce
the burden on the government, and enable it to look after those who
remain more adequately? Why can’t camp inhabitants go out to look for
missing relatives, or receive visits from friends and relations, or
visit their homes if they want to? This cannot possibly be the real
reason why civilians are being imprisoned in internment camps.
The other reason given for holding them is that they need to be
screened to weed out LTTE cadres who escaped with them. It is true
that after hostages have been released, they are often screened to
find out if any of the hostage-takers are among them. But normally,
this takes just a few hours, and the hostages are released
immediately after being screened. Even if the large number of
hostages in this case means that the screening process would take
longer, there is no conceivable reason why it should take much more
than a month. By now, all the civilians, or at least most of them,
ought to be free. From Day 1, a steady stream of civilians should
have been given the right to freedom of movement, as they were
screened and cleared.
Moreover, the reason why such screening is carried out is to prevent
terrorists from escaping, rejoining their group, and carrying out
future attacks. But in this case, the LTTE’s military capability has
been destroyed, its top leadership wiped out; for a group that was
identified completely with its supreme leader Prabakaran, and was
defined by its military prowess, this means that it is finished.
Furthermore, hatred engendered in these IDPs by the LTTE leadership’s
utterly brutal treatment of them, especially at the end of the war,
is the best guarantee we have that there is no chance it can be
revived, regardless of what the pro-LTTE diaspora may think. In fact,
as Anandasangaree has pointed out, their escape to government-held
territory in defiance of LTTE orders was itself an act of resistance.
If any militant group arises in the future, it will be a completely
new one. So the benefits of apprehending a few hundred ex-LTTE cadres
are far outweighed by the costs of detaining hundreds of thousands of
innocent people without charge for an indefinite period and creating,
possibly, thousands of future militants.
The fundamental rights petition filed on behalf of five IDPs held in
camps at Kodikamam and Vavuniya made it crystal clear that they are
being held against their will, and that this constitutes appalling
cruelty to individuals still suffering physically and mentally from
the trauma they had undergone. The IDPs came out cursing the Tigers
and positively inclined towards the government forces which had
helped them to escape, but with every day that they remain in
detention, their hostility to the government will grow; they will
feel that they have jumped out of one frying pan into another. If the
new Chief Justice selected by the President delays or refuses to
order their release, they will have every justification for feeling
that the Sri Lankan state is holding them hostage.
Such collective punishment belies the government’s claim that it was
trying to free the hostages, and makes it look as if it simply wanted
to take them hostage itself. It contradicts Mahinda Rakapaksa’s
statement that there are no longer any minorities in Sri Lanka by
making it clear that there are minorities who do not share the right
to freedom of movement and equal protection of the law enjoyed by the
majority. As former Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva pointed out, this
lays the groundwork for a new war, since comparable discrimination
against and persecution of Tamil civilians played a major role in
starting the war which has just ended. It thus insults the soldiers
who risked and in many cases lost their lives to free the civilians
from the LTTE, and makes a mockery of celebrations of the end of the
war.
Indeed, it looks as if this is already the start of a new war: a war
against Tamils. The longer Tamil civilians are detained in prison
camps, the more disappearances and extrajudicial killings are likely
to occur. Given that they are in the custody of an army commanded by
Sarath Fonseka, who thinks that Sri Lanka belongs to the Sinhalese
just as Hitler thought that Germany belonged to the Aryans, we can
only fear the worst.
Moving Towards Dictatorship
There are strong indications that some elements in the government and
armed forces do not want an end to the war but want to keep it going,
or even expand it. The people of Sri Lanka were asked to sacrifice a
great deal in the interests of defeating the LTTE, and we would
expect that these sacrifices would now come to an end. We would
expect at least two-thirds of the soldiers to be demobilised, so that
the rest of the country does not have to pay for them any more; they
could easily be employed at the same wages to do constructive work
rebuilding the war-ravaged areas and upgrading infrastructure
elsewhere, thus helping to attract investment into the country. We
would expect the government to avoid practices which led to the war,
such as discrimination against and persecution of minorities, and to
repeal the PTA and Emergency Regulations which were used for the
extrajudicial killing of thousands of Tamils as well as Sinhalese.
Instead, the very opposite is being done. Apart from the detention of
hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians and the failure to repeal
the PTA and Emergency Regulations, we are told that the army, already
doubled to 200,000 during the latter stages of the war, is going to
be expanded by another 100,000! What earthly purpose could this
serve? One purpose, clearly, is that it will enhance the power of
military commanders and the Defence establishment, which would
otherwise be reduced in peacetime. Presumably the military occupation
of the North and East will be continued by the existing soldiers,
treating citizens as aliens. But what will all the new soldiers do?
Could they, conceivably, be deployed to the South, to crush any
protests that might arise when people realise that far from being
able to loosen their belts, they have to tighten them even more?
It would not be the first time this has happened. Let us not forget
that the Sinhala nationalist regimes of Jayawardene and Premadasa,
with some help from the Sinhala nationalist JVP, managed to kill more
Sinhalese in the space of three years than the LTTE could kill in
thirty. Are some elements in the government and armed forces planning
a repeat of the tyre-pyres and mutilated bodies piled up by the
roadside, clogging the rivers and washed up on the beaches? There are
disturbing indications that the Rajapaksa regime is moving in that
direction. The murder of Lasantha Wickrematunga, the fact that his
killers were never caught, and the justification of it in a BBC
interview by the Defence Secretary, was an indication that the death
squads which had been operating in the North and East have moved
South. Other attacks on journalists, the fact that those who reported
the assault on Poddala Jayantha were themselves detained, images of
Mahinda Rajapaksa as a godlike king, and the proposal to cancel the
presidential elections, all suggest a regime in which democracy is
rapidly being undermined.
If there are elements in the government and armed forces working to
destroy the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, it is
incumbent on all of us who love our country to resist. The lack of a
viable opposition, given the UNP’s equally rotten record, is a
drawback; but the courage of Anandasangaree and others in his
Democratic Tamil National Alliance in resisting the President’s
pressure to get the DTNA to join the UPFA gives us hope that one
could be created. Tamil, Muslim and Left politicians who support a
government that is detaining hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankan
citizens without charge are betraying their constituencies; they
should withdraw their support to the government so that they are in a
position to put pressure on it, and stand in solidarity with the
DTNA. What is required today is a strong grassroots democracy
movement throughout the country, out of which a new political
leadership could emerge. The first priority of such a movement should
be to defend the democratic rights of displaced civilians.
______
[2] Myanmar
Asia Times
June 18, 2009
INSTANT KARMA IN MYANMAR
by Sudha Ramachandran and Swe Win
BANGALORE - The sudden collapse of an ancient temple last month -
like most significant events in Myanmar - has been opened to a wide
range of arcane interpretation. The state-run New Light of Myanmar
newspaper blamed the demise of the 2,300-year-old Danok pagoda on
inferior reconstruction. But others saw something much darker in its
destruction.
The crumbling of the sacred site came as the ongoing trial of pro-
democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was still prominent in
international media - earning the famously xenophobic government
criticism from around the globe. More important to the superstitious-
minded, it came just week's after Daw Kyaing Kyaing - wife of
Myanmar's junta supremo, Senior-General Than Shwe - had presided over
a reconsecration ceremony at the temple.
Gold-domed Danok pagoda sits just outside Yangon, the former capital.
It was damaged during Cyclone Nargis last year and had been recently
renovated. The pagoda has collapsed at least three times before, but
its recent fall has generated much talk; fingers are pointing to the
highest ranks of the ruling government and its first family.
Many in Myanmar interpret that the accident portends the fall of the
repressive military regime that has ruled for nearly half a century.
On May 30, the pagoda's bell-shaped stupa collapsed onto its northern
prayer hall. Three weeks earlier, Kyaing Kyaing, accompanied by a
family entourage and the families of senior military officials,
visited the pagoda reopening and placed a jewel-encrusted hti (sacred
umbrella), a seinbudaw (diamond orb) and a hngetmyatnadaw (pennant-
shaped vane) atop the pagoda during the ceremony.
Highly revered by Myanmar's Buddhists, Danok pagoda is "believed by
the local populace to reject donations offered by bad people and to
shake in repudiation", Ingrid Jordt, an expert on Myanmar and
anthropology professor at the University of Wisconsin, told Asia
Times Online in an e-mail interview.
The pagoda didn't just shake this time, it totally caved in. The
sacred umbrella fell and the diamond orb donated by Than Shwe's
family was lost in the rubble. "The Danok pagoda rejected Than Shwe's
offering," a Myanmar exile based in Delhi said.
Jordt says the event is significant. "It says that more inauspicious
events are to come. It says that even the devas [good spirits]
despise this regime and have removed their protective oversight of
sacred places like Danok because of the regime's heavy sins. More
importantly, it is a sign that Than Shwe's spiritual potency [based
on previous meritorious acts] has been exhausted," wrote Jordt. "It
is a sign that he has done so many evil things that he no longer has
the ability to make merit any longer." It is seen, Jordt claims, as
"a very bad sign for the regime".
A rattled junta responded swiftly. It ordered the media in Yangon not
to report the Danok incident. A week later, it blamed the collapse on
shoddy renovation work. But discussion, in Myanmar's streets or
expatriate blogs, of what the pagoda collapse means is unlikely to be
silenced easily.
Within a week of the devastation of Danok, an accident occurred at
the Bawdi Ta Htaung monastery in Monywa, 136 kilometers north of
Mandalay. Two senior monks who were inspecting a Buddha statue in the
monastery - the 130-meter statue is Myanmar's tallest - were injured
when the elevator they were in hurtled downwards, crashing into a
stairway.
"Two bad incidents within a week of each other and that two in places
of religious significance is a bad omen. It could mean trouble for
the regime or even a natural catastrophe that will bring suffering to
people," the exile said.
Astrological advice
Belief in superstition, numerology, astrology and the occult is deep
and widespread in Myanmar. It is well known that the generals are
influenced in their decisions by astrology and portents.
General Ne Win, who seized power in 1962, was guided in his decisions
by a belief that the number nine was his lucky number. In September
1987, he introduced the 45 kyat and 90 kyat bank notes because they
are divisible by nine and their digits add up to nine. An astrologer
reportedly told him that he would live for 90 years if he did - he
died aged 92. It is said that Ne Win used to walk backwards on
bridges to ward off evil.
Than Shwe is also said to believe deeply in astrology and occult. His
sudden decision in 2005 to shift Myanmar's capital from Yangon to the
jungle redoubt Naypyidaw, meaning "royal palace", was apparently
influenced by soothsayers.
Exiles claim he uses occult rituals to ward off bad luck before talks
with pro-democracy leaders and foreign envoys. U Gawsita, one of the
leading monks in the 2007 Saffron Revolution now living in the US,
told Asia Times Online by phone that the regime has long been engaged
in what he calls "astrology politics".
Reportedly on the advice of his astrologers, Than Shwe has resorted
to a bewildering array of yadaya (rituals performed to avert
impending misfortune) to counter any karmic misstep and to sustain
his hold on power. He has installed a jade Buddha allegedly
resembling his own appearance at the Shwedagon pagoda in Yangon.
Buddha images donated by Than Shwe and his family have been installed
across Myanmar in recent years.
Than Shwe's superstitions seem to have originated in his childhood.
According to a relative of Kyaing Kyaing, Than Shwe has a birthmark
which the astrologers in his native town interpreted it as the sign
of a "future king".
According to the wife of a high-ranking Myanmar diplomat's wife, who
declined to be identified, a 70-year-old nun named Dhammasi living in
the northern part of Yangon is the principal adviser of Daw Kyaing
Kyaing and Than Shwe on arcane matters.
"There was a scurry of visits to that nunnery by Than Shwe's family
and former general Khin Nyunt's. The two families were vying with
each other to get the most powerful occult advice from the nun," she
told Asia Times Online. Khin Nyunt was the former intelligence chief
and a highly influential figure in the regime’s top brass before he
was deposed and put under house arrest in 2004.
The diplomat's wife said the aging nun is still visited by Than
Shwe's wife: "Once we followed [Dhammasi] to upper Burma [Myanmar] in
her search for lost Buddha images which she said she saw in her
dreams and on the way our car was stuck in the mud. The nun took out
her mobile phone which very few Burmese people could use at that time
and she made a phone call to someone. Very soon, battalions of
soldiers came out in trucks and pulled out our car."
She said soothsayers are often approached by the regime's top brass
seeking promotions and to strengthen their positions. Astrologers and
practitioners of the arcane often tend to be nuns, astrologers and
even some corrupt Buddhist monks, according to a range of Myanmar
citizens.
Still, many families in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar consult their
favorite astrologers and spiritual advisers for an array of purposes:
to successfully go abroad, to get promoted, to control an adulterous
spouse, to pass an exam, or to have a successful interview.
Many perform yadayar to offset predictions of negative events. For
example, throwing away a slipper means preventing the possibility of
jail because the jail and the slipper represent the same planetary
significance.
Also, every given name has a planet and some astrological
significance. Sometimes, however, this becomes a simple play on
words. To defuse tension in the aftermath of the 2007 protests, the
government appointed a liaison officer to speak to Suu Kyi named Aung
Kyi. "Aung" means success, and the thinking was he would win over "Kyi".
Numerology also plays a significant role in Myanmar. Using
astrological calculations based on one's date of birth, numbers and
calculations are inscribed on a sheet of metal. That metal is
sometimes placed on an altar or a sacred part of a home to bring luck.
Aung San Suu Kyi seems to be a rare exception. According to a Myanmar
woman who frequently met Suu Kyi before she was put under house
arrest, the Noble Peace Laureate never showed an interest in
astrology. Still, whenever people, including her party leaders,
handed her papers of astrological advice, she never rejected them out
of respect.
Others in Myanmar's opposition movement are hardly so skeptical. The
famous jailed student leader Min Ko Naing changed to his current name
- meaning "the one who triumphs the king" - from his original name
Paw U Tun. U Gambira, a leader of the Saffron Revolution whose new
name means "magic", was once called U Samdawbarsa. (The so-called
"8888" student uprising of 1988, is also an allegedly auspicious digit.)
Dates in time
Myanmar's military rulers are not the only political leaders
influenced by astrology or superstitions. In neighboring India,
astrology rules the lives of ordinary people as well as powerful
politicos. Tamil Nadu chief minister Muthuvel Karunanidhi, a self-
professed "rationalist" and avowed follower of the iconoclastic Tamil
leader "Periyar" E V Ramaswamy Naicker, has never been seen without a
yellow shawl on his shoulder for the past 15 years. Many Indian
politicians contest elections and file their nominations only after
consulting their astrologers.
Former United States president Franklin D Roosevelt had an obsessions
with unlucky numbers, specifically avoiding the number 13.
Astrologers also reportedly influenced the scheduling of ex-president
Ronald Reagan's appointments, including the time when important arms
treaties with the Soviets were signed.
Myanmar's junta leaders, closed and paranoid at the best of times,
are unlikely to have missed the fact that the pagoda collapsed on May
30, a date of great significance to the country's pro-democracy
movement.
It was on that day in 2003 that the Depayin massacre took place.
Thugs allegedly in the pay of the junta attacked the Suu Kyi's convoy
and killed around 100 of her supporters. "For many in Myanmar, there
is a link between Suu Kyi and Than Shwe's fall. The generals are
unlikely to have missed the date of the pagoda collapse," said the
Myanmar exile in India.
The significance of the pagoda collapse against the backdrop of
recent events, specifically the high-profile trial and detention of
Suu Kyi, may have made the junta extremely nervous.
According to Jordt, "The generals have in recent weeks enhanced
surveillance of tea shops and restaurants in the major cities to
ferret out any anti-regime talk. They have created stricter curfews
for students in the various university towns. They have locked down
the soldier's barracks so that their families cannot leave even to do
business in the marketplace. The monks are not allowed to travel easily.
"In short, the regime is bracing for the worst."
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
Swe Win is a former political prisoner from Myanmar now working as a
freelance reporter.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
______
[3] Pakistan / India:
The News, June 20, 2009
TIME TO MOVE ON, DR SINGH
by Zafar Hilaly
A bonhomie that is contrived, praise that is mostly hollow and
gestures that are excessive and exaggerated are the usual features of
India-Pakistan summits. To an outsider observing the leaders of India
and Pakistan together it would appear that the two countries are firm
friends rather than enemies. But for a change none of this was
evident when Mr Zardari met Dr Manmohan Singh in Yekaterinburg. And,
notwithstanding the grin Mr Zardari sported, it was noticeable that
all Dr Singh could muster up was a rueful smile as they shook hands
for the benefit of the press.
Dr Singh's demeanour was not surprising. Pakistan has made little
progress in apprehending those involved in organising, funding and
planning the Mumbai attack and the Indian prime minister is not
prepared to let matters rest. The release by a Pakistani court of the
Lashkar-e-Taiba chief, for want of evidence, added salt to India's
wounds.
One can sympathise with India. Having convinced herself that the
Pakistani establishment was somehow involved in the Mumbai mayhem,
India wants her pound of flesh. The problem is that even if elements
of the Pakistani establishment were involved, to expect a mea culpa
from Pakistan is being naive. Intelligence agencies everywhere,
including RAW and the ISI, never admit wrongdoing even if they were
to be caught with their hands in the till. That is standard operating
procedure for intelligence organisations the world over.
We need to move on. Of course, that is not to say that Pakistan must
sit on its hands till the memory of the Mumbai outrage subsides in
India. The terrorists who almost succeeded in precipitating war,
possibly a nuclear conflict, must be brought to book and, if guilty,
hanged, drawn and quartered. But the longer India refuses to engage
constructively with Pakistan the greater the opportunity she will
provide to those who wish to add further grist to the mills of hate.
One is disappointed therefore that Dr Singh, possibly the steadiest
hand on the helm that India has had, has made constructive engagement
between the two countries hostage to Mumbai. It is as short-sighted
and self-defeating a stance as Pakistan's decades-long insistence
that unless the Kashmir dispute was resolved to its satisfaction
India and Pakistan would remain at daggers drawn.
Dr Singh's statement that Pakistan must not allow its territory to be
used for attacking India was uncalled for and understandably not well-
received in Pakistan. If the truth be told it was not only tasteless
to have made it in the presence of a roomful of journalists while
greeting Mr Zardari but also needless considering the difficulties
Pakistan is confronting in preventing terror attacks against itself,
what to speak of India. Dr Singh does not need to trumpet publically
what can be communicated privately. He should resist the temptation
to play to the gallery, unless he wishes to revert to the kind of
invective and name calling that have sadly depicted relations and
which he has sensibly thus far avoided. Besides, how does it help?
Mr Zardari in his meeting with the Indian prime minister apparently
asked for more time (since denied) to deal with the terrorists. But
while more time may help Pakistan in uncovering the Mumbai attack it
will not ensure that such an attack won't recur. That will depend on
how Pakistan fares in her ongoing battle against the extremists who
are now present in every major city in Pakistan. A battle that India
is complicating by retaining the bulk of her forces in a threatening
mode on Pakistan's eastern borders. In fact the more time that
elapses in settling disputes between the two countries, all of which
barring Kashmir, are easily resolved given the will and a mite of
common sense, the wider the chasm that separates the two countries
will grow the more intractable the disputes will become.
Dr Singh and Mr Zardari are, if truth be told, on the same side when
it comes to opposing terrorism and establishing peace in the
subcontinent; and the sooner they act in unison, helping rather than
carping at the other, the quicker and more effectively will those
opposed to India-Pakistan amity be thwarted.
There are many in India who feel that at the moment India has the
upper hand and should, nay must, drive a hard bargain with Pakistan.
Others go further and actually advocate an activist role for India in
the 'impending' break-up of Pakistan. Indian meddling in Balochistan
suggests to some that the Indian establishment concurs with the
latter view. Yes, India seems well placed to compound Pakistan's
difficulties but India is neither so influential to decisively affect
events nor the situation in Balochistan so dire that it cannot be
reclaimed. Hence for India to believe that until a terrorist-racked,
bleeding Pakistan eats crow and delivers up the Mumbai killers there
is absolutely no need for the Indian premier to relent is wishful
thinking. And, ironically, it is a mistake that those Pakistanis
whose lives and livelihoods depend on continued tension between India
and Pakistan are banking on India to commit. For India to adopt such
a policy would therefore sow the seeds of a graver and more dangerous
confrontation than exists at the moment.
Dr Singh would do better to drive not so much a hard as a fair
bargain; and strive for a just rather than a one-sided peace. He has
a choice; he can remain, and be forgotten, as a transactional leader
or aspire to become a transformational one.
If the chance for peace that exists today is squandered, as it was on
at least one earlier occasion, it is unlikely that another
opportunity will arise for another generation. Faced by a hostile
India, Pakistan will likely revert to the path on which it had been
launched by a number of military dictators with, in due course, the
current febrile democracy giving way to authoritarian government,
militarism and eventually a national security state that will depend
as its raison d'etre on continued confrontation or worse with the
eternal enemy India.
Surely that is a prospect that India neither relishes nor desires for
the subcontinent. And surely to avoid that prospect taking a chance
at forging peace, even if it amounts to bucking the establishment at
home, is worth the effort. Dr Singh and the Congress have an
opportunity to rewrite the sad saga of relations that has plagued our
lands and if they decide to rise to this challenge then among the
people and the present government in Pakistan they will find willing
partners.
____
[4] Kashmir:
INDIA'S WOMEN’S GROUPS CONDEMN STATE COVER-UP IN SHOPIAN CASE (IN
KASHMIR)
sacw.net 21 June 2009 (http://www.sacw.net/article976.html)
The news of the rape and murder of two young women in Shopian in
Kashmir is deeply shocking. We condemn this violence in the strongest
possible terms.
We are also deeply disturbed by the reaction of the State. Instead of
speaking out against this flagrant violation of human rights, and
particularly the right of women to live safely and with dignity,
instead of taking speedy and firm steps to bring the perpetrators to
book, the State and the new administration first denied the rape of
women and then attempted to justify it by saying that women went
there on their own and their murder was an accident or suicide.
It is sickening to see the depths to which the State can go to
provide a cover-up for the guilty. It was only after weeks of protest
that a simple thing like filing of a First Information Report was
allowed. Does the filing of an FIR have to wait for ‘conclusive
evidence’ of rape and murder before it can be registered? Why call it
a First Information Report then? And now, a ‘one man commission’ has
been ordered by the State Government in the name of ‘responding to
people’s lack of faith in the police’. It is striking that in the
matter of rapes by security personnel, the government did not think
of having even one woman on the Commission.
The situation in J&K is completely unacceptable to anyone even with
the smallest tinge of a conscience; democracy is not a matter of
elections or election rhetoric. Its substance is the rule of law and
justice for all. However, widespread militarisation and the Armed
Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in the Kashmir Valley have provided
immunity to security personnel in countless cases of rape, murder,
disappearances and fake encounters. A few transfers, a camp removed,
a few heads rolling, will not end the intolerable situation in J&K.
The signals are clear: the AFSPA must go if people are to live normal
lives; else the case of Shop1an will not be the last.
As women activists and women’s groups who have for long fought for
women’s rights and their place in Indian society, we wish to register
our strong protest on the incidents at Shopian and extend our
solidarity and friendship to the women of Kashmir in the struggle for
justice and the rule of law, and for an end to all forms of immunity
that obstruct the prosecution of the guilty.
signed by Farida Khan, Jagori, Nirantar, Partners for Law in
Development, Pratiksha Baxi, Saheli, Stree Adhikaar Sanghatana, Uma
Chakravarti, Zubaan
o o o
Kashmir Times
21 June 2009
WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS
by Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal
Disastrous policy decisions taken on Kashmir over a decade ago have
begun to show their ugly results. One among them is the creation of
the hydra-headed monster called the Special Operations Group as also
the additional policy of arming renegades, better known locally as
Ikhwanis, and other civilians including the village defence committee
members in counter insurgency operations. Whenever, there is a bid to
entrench areas with large scale presence of militaries or to
militarise societies by arming them, in the name of security or
defence, the results are obviously going to be disastrous. In Kashmir
and other militancy affected areas of Jammu and Kashmir,
unfortunately, both exercises took place side by side, impacting the
social and scenic fabric of the state immensely in so short a span of
time. An indicator to this is not just the recent Shopian dual rape
and murder case, where investigations and circumstances are pointing
out both to the involvement of the police/ SOG and their tacit role
in hushing up the case or tampering evidence. This is just one of the
many cases that have revealed their questionable role.
The SOG has earned a lot of notoriety for its unmanageably rising
graph of excesses committed on people. Whether it is rapes, murders,
custodial deaths or disappearances, they seem to be topping the
charts, second only to the dreaded Ikhwanis, who have been given
unlimited powers without any accountability. Officially, all security
agencies distance themselves from the Ikhwanis. In practice all of
them use their services and in turn give them patronage. Criticism of
this practice has only paved way for legitmising and regularising the
services of Ikhwanis within the security agencies, mostly as
Territorial Army personnel, Special Police Officials or even by
absorbing them within the SOG. Unlike the Army and the other central
security forces, which enjoy unlimited powers under draconian laws
like public safety act, the SOG automatically appear to enjoy extra-
judicial powers with no system of accountability but unlimited
official patronage. Unfortunately, while everybody is raking up the
issue of demilitarisation, the slogan is limited to withdrawal of
army and central security forces. There is not even a whisper of
doing away with the ugly SOG, which has not only hiked up the graph
of human rights violation. It has also set a very wrong precedent, of
criminalising the law and order machinery, that has an ultimate
bearing on the society, the criminalisation within drawing
inspiration from what is officialy enforced and endorsed, often
coupled by a set of official denials. It makes everything that is the
antithesis of civility a legitimate exercise.
Multiplicity of guns is never a solution to armed insurgency, rather
it creates a vicious cycle of violence, brutality and barbarity, as
we see today. It makes a civil society habitual of violence and
barbarity, which in due course of time becomes an acceptable norm.
Besides, it creates and nourishes a culture of intolerance that does
not augur well for any society, hindering its progressive movement in
a civilised world. The proximity of the gun, the unlimited powers to
the gunmen and their highly disproportionate presence is thus proving
to be a disaster. Even more onerous becomes the task of undoing this
wrong that has been wrongly justified for years in the name of
tackling militancy.
The extreme militarisation of civilian space in Kashmir and the
creation of unwanted forces like SOG, VDCs, Ikhwanis and SPOs has
been done on the logic of fighting counter insurgency. They may have
helped pushing militants to the corner. But perhaps, those justifying
the logic forgot the other side of the story - that violence begets
violence. And that you can create a bigger monster to dwarf another
one but you can't efficiently demolish the one you have created. The
genie of militarisation was let loose several years ago.
Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly difficult even for the
creators to tame or bottle up the genie they created. But such
helplessness should not be an excuse. A beginning has to be made
somewhere and with a sense of immediacy, lest it ushers in the
decline of a society, pushing it to the point of no return. Both
those demanding that security forces, along with its unleashed
genies, are reined in and reduced in numbers, as well as those
justifying their presence, must understand the imperatives and the
practical ground realities. Withdrawal process has to begin and the
best course would be to begin this in phases. Even small such
experiments in certain pockets that are followed up with more
meaningful exercises should work ideally, if there is a political
will at the top to do so.
______
[5]
The Hindu
20 June 2009
THE AGE OF THE AAM CROREPATI
by P. Sainath
If you are worth Rs. 50 million or more, you are 75 times more likely
to win an election to the Lok Sabha than if you are worth under Rs. 1
million.
“I think almost everyone will grant that if candidates for the United
States Senate were required to possess ten million dollars, and for
the House one million, the year-in-year-out level of conservatism of
those two bodies might be expected to rise sharply. We could still be
said to have a freely elected Congress. Anybody with ten million
dollars (or one, if he tailored his ambition to fit his means) would
be free to try to get himself nominated, and the rest of us would be
free to vote for our favourite millionaire or even to abstain from
voting.” — A.J. Liebling, The Wayward Pressman, 1947
Liebling also warned in the 1960s that the business models of
newspapers would one day prove their undoing. A prophecy that rings
true today for the giants of that industry in his own country. Yes,
you’ve seen his words on voting in these columns before. But the 2009
poll results have made him doubly relevant. “Voting for our favourite
millionaire” comes alive with the 15th Lok Sabha. Its 543 MPs are
worth close to Rs. 28 billion. (Of which 64 Union Cabinet members
from the Lok Sabha account for Rs. 5 billion). And the links between
wealth and winning elections are firmer than ever before.
If you are worth over Rs. 50 million, you are 75 times more likely to
win an election to the Lok Sabha than if you are worth under Rs. 1
million. At least, in the case of the 2009 polls. (Some 23 of 64
Cabinet Ministers whose asset worth is in the public domain fall into
this Rs. 50 million-plus category. Providing it stability of sorts, I
guess. In the entire Cabinet, only one falls into the less-than-Rs.1
million group.)
Another 29 members of the Cabinet fall in the Rs. 5 million-Rs. 50
million category. If you are in this bracket, your chances of winning
aren’t as great as the 50 million-plus, or Platinum Tier, elite.
However, you are still 43 times more likely to win than those with
less than Rs. 1 million in assets (that is, almost the whole of
India’s population). The remaining Ministers, in case you were losing
sleep over their condition, fall into the Rs. 1 million-Rs. 5 million
club, the Cabinet equivalent of BPL. However, there are five years in
which to remedy this situation and alleviate the misery of this group.
These are just a few of the insights brought to us by an interim
report of National Election Watch on the 2009 polls. NEW is a
coalition of over 1200 civil society groups working across the
country. Their “Analysis of MPs of the 15th Lok Sabha (2009)” makes
great reading and is the product of fine research and much hard work.
There were 3,437 candidates in the polls with assets of less than Rs.
1 million, says the report. Of these, just 15 (0.44 per cent) made it
past the post. But your chances soar with your assets. Of the 1,785
candidates in the Rs. 1 million-Rs. 5 million group, 116 (6 per cent)
won. This win-ratio goes up to 19 per cent of candidates for the Rs.
5 million-Rs. 50 million segment. And of 322 candidates in the Rs. 50
million-plus or platinum tier, 106 (33 per cent) romped home.
The higher you climb the ladder of lucre, the better your chances.
That is obvious. But what is striking is how bleak things are for non-
millionaires. Even a modest improvement in your wealth helps. Say,
you move from the below Rs. 1 million group to the Rs.1-5 million
group — your chances immediately improve at a higher rate than your
wealth. (Of course, that works only if you are already close to the
Rs. 1 million mark.) So it’s not just that wealth has some impact on
election outcomes — it influences them heavily and disproportionately
as you go up the scale.
All of a piece with a society that only last year had 53 dollar
billionaires (pre-meltdown). One that still has 836 million human
beings who “get by” on less than Rs. 20 a day. Which ranks 66th
amongst 88 nations on the Global Hunger Index (just one notch above
Zimbabwe). Which has plummeted to rank 132 in the United Nations
Human Development Index (one slot below Bhutan) as our billionaire
count has risen. That wallows below Bolivia, Botswana, the Republic
of the Congo and the Occupied Territories of Palestine in the HDI
rankings. And never mind being worth billions — 60 per cent of adult
rural Indians simply do not have bank accounts.
There is little question that big bucks help in our polls. The number
of ‘crorepatis’ in the present Lok Sabha is up 98 per cent as
compared to 2004. Then there were 154, now there are 306 — almost
double. A healthy growth rate. And there are grounds for optimism
that the BPL group in the Cabinet can uplift itself speedily. That’s
happened to both MPs and candidates in some of the most troubled
parts of the country. The net worth of candidates in Vidarbha rose by
over 160 per cent between 2004 and 2009. In the Wardha district of
that region alone, the net worth of candidates rose by 1,157 per cent
between 2004 and 2009. (Ananth Krishnan, The Hindu, April 14, 2009).
The Kalahandi-Bolangir-Koraput region had seven ‘crorepati’ candidates.
But back to the NEW report. Of the 306 crorepatis in the new Lok
Sabha, 141, almost half, belong to the party of the aam aadmi, the
Congress. The BJP lotus is a withering second, with 58. The SP, the
BSP and the DMK follow with 14, 13 and 12 multi-millionaires. The
Shiv Sena doesn’t do too badly with nine and the NCP with seven. In
the case of these two parties, it means that almost 80 per cent of
their elected MPs are ‘crorepatis.’ The Left bloc fares poorly,
scoring just one from among its 24 MPs.
The one-in-three success rate of the Rs.50 million-plus candidates
doesn’t tell the whole story, though. Often, they have defeated
others of their own league. Who might well have fared better against
candidates of lower asset castes.
We are also faithful to our role model: the United States, where
Liebling’s prophecy has worked with a vengeance for decades. One pre-
meltdown piece in www.opensecrets.org put it neatly last year. “As
Americans worry about their own finances, their elected
representatives in Washington — with a collective net worth of $3.6
billion [roughly Rs. 172 billion] — are mostly in good shape to
withstand a recession.” Before the meltdown rained on their parade,
it says, members of Congress, “saw their net worths soar 84 per cent
from 2004 to 2006, on average.” It points out that while U.S.
Senators had “a median net worth of approximately $1.7 million in
2006,” only about “1 per cent of all American adults had a net worth
greater than $1 million around the same time.”
So the collective net worth of elected representatives in Washington
is Rs.172 billion and that of our own Rs. 28 billion. Okay, we’re
outclassed. But not to feel too bad about it. For one thing, the U.S.
figure appears to include both the Senate and the House of
Representatives. Ours covers only the Lok Sabha. What’s more, our
team seems to clock a better rate of growth. And the gap is
narrowing. The good rate of growth for second or third-term MPs also
holds another lesson. Not only is it easier to get elected if you
have money, it is easier to make money if you get elected
In both countries, money from big corporations helps clinch poll
victories. Corporate lobbies like Big Oil have long “owned” Senators
and Congressmen. In India, this trend has grown even in terms of
individual corporate chiefs. In the U.S., corporate power has been on
shameless display during the financial bailouts.
The AIGs, The Goldman Sachs et al unsheathed their massive clout to
grab public money. In India, that power was visible to the naked eye
in the run-up to last year’s trust vote in Parliament. One party even
dumped a sworn political stand of eight decades under that influence.
In the NEW report, the wealthiest group of those elected falls into
the Rs. 50 million-plus category. The ranking within this is
intriguing. The average worth of a Lok Sabha MP is Rs. 51 million.
But there are 74 MPs with serious criminal charges against them whose
wealth averages Rs. 60 million. That is, they are well entrenched in
Parliament’s Platinum tier. And the average wealth of a Cabinet
Minister is around Rs. 75 million. Ah well, it’s a hard climb to the
top.
_____
[6] Indus Valley sites and dangers from fundamentalist violence
[This short piece might interest the SACW readers. The author only
focuses on dangers from the Muslim right to archeological sites.
Unfortunately, the Hindutva demolition squads and their threat to
archeological sites are forgotten by the author. -HK]
o o o
The Times of India
June 16, 2009
WE NEED TO SAVE HISTORY FROM TERRORISTS TOO!
by Ranjan Roy
What is lost in terrorist attacks is much more than life. Driven by
single-minded hatred towards all things they either don’t know of,
understand or those that don’t fit into the Pashto-centric worldview,
terrorists have destroyed chunks of history and today are dangerously
threatening more. After the Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas in
central Afghanistan because boss Mullah Omar had decreed all
depiction in stone or paper of human and animal forms un-Islamic, the
phrase archeological terrorism was coined by scholars who had watched
the carnage unfold.
Last Friday’s suicide attack that killed well-known Lahore cleric
Sarfraz Ahmed Naeemi in the seminary’s office is a gruesome calling
card by the Taliban that says no idea, thought or philosophy barring
their own has any space.
The world watched with horror as the Taliban destroyed ancient
sculptures in Afghanistan. The response was a helpless, collective
gasp as explosives, tanks, and anti-aircraft weapons blew apart two
colossal images of the Buddha in Bamiyan, 230 km from the Afghan
capital Kabul. Today, the same danger looms over Pakistan, which
contains sites from the Indus Valley civilization.
Baitullah Mehsud's Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan has only hatred and
disdain for the golden relics of Harappa and Mohenjodaro, the first
of the urban civilizations built on syncretic ideas which are
anathema to the Kalashnikov-wielding Taliban. Imagine the damage
caused in any attack on sites which have only in recent years started
yielding pointers to the journey our modern society has traversed.
Visualize the Taliban plundering the ancient site of Taxila, a few
hours north of Islamabad, not far from where the Pakistan army is now
fighting them. The worries aren’t mine alone. Many young men, who
make a living by acting as guides to tourists told me during a visit
to Taxila two years ago that they are already being frowned upon for
talking about Buddhism and Buddhist history.
It’s not just a doomsday scenario! I shudder at the thought of
Taliban attackers plundering thorough Lahore Museum that Kipling
writes about in Kim. It’s something that they have done and will do.
That’s one more reason why this band of terrorists has to be
defeated. Herat, the western Afghanistan city fell to the Taliban
even before Kabul did in 1996 and it is here that some of the teasers
to the carnage of Bamiyan took place. Journeying through Afghanistan
the year Taliban captured Kabul, I smuggled myself into Herat to see
some of this. Frightened residents, after ensuring it was safe to
talk to me, took me to buildings where poets hid, lest they be
executed for heresy. The kite-maker in a neighbourhood had run away
after the Taliban destroyed his workshop and banned kite-flying as un-
Islamic entertainment. And worst of all, was what I saw at the Herat
museum that once housed priceless relics from the time that Alexander
the Great crossed into the region. The Taliban had pillaged though
the brick buildings and smashed ancient stone sculptures, pottery and
glassware. Some residents had waited for the mob to go back and then
sneaked in and collected whatever they could salvage. The greedier
ones sold these pieces, some close to 1,000 years old, for a few
hundred dollars each, but there were others who reportedly handed
them over to authorities later when the Taliban were defeated.
UNESCO and governments around the world need to wake up to the danger
that the building blocks of the Indus Valley Civilization and sites
such as Taxila are today at grave risk. While the focus will remain
on the ground battle, history too needs to be protected against
terrorism.
_____
[7] India: Statues for Breakfast
Mail Today
22 June 2009
EDITORIAL: LIFELESS STATUES CAN’T FEED THE HUNGRY
FOR thousands of years, the idea of immortality has fascinated
humans. But even the most die- hard admirer of Ray Kurzweil, the
transhumanism and immortality advocate, would admit that UP Chief
Minister Mayawati’s quest for immortality by building statues of
herself and other Dalit icons is off- track.
In an impoverished state such as Uttar Pradesh, the Rs 194 crore
spent on erecting edifices are not only a manifestation of her
megalomania, but also an assault on the public’s aesthetic sense. If
Ms Mayawati wanted to advance the cause of social uplift by bringing
Dalits into the mainstream, then, surely that money could be better
spent elsewhere? Perhaps, we dare suggest, she might even have tried
her hand at planning and executing large- scale infrastructure projects.
However, Ms Mayawati is neither known for her humility nor has she
shown in her terms as chief minister any disposition towards leading
UP with a certain degree of statesmanship. Even the setback she faced
in the general elections does not seem to have had any effect on her.
If anything, by transferring hundreds of police officers and
bureaucrats after the debacle, she has fed on her own insecurities.
The time has come for people close to the mercurial politician to
inform her that if she believes in her immortality, then living on in
the minds of the people as a doer of good deeds is a far better idea
than being a lifeless statue in parks.
_____
[8] REMEMBER THESE THREE : Ali Akbar Khan / Giovanni Arrighi / John
Saville
Los Angeles Times
OBITUARIES
ALI AKBAR KHAN DIES AT 87; SAROD PLAYER HELPED BRING INDIAN MUSIC TO
U.S.
Master musician
Ali Akbar Khan “was instrumental in transforming Indian music into an
international tradition” in an unprecedented way, a student said of
the sarod player.
The performer and composer, considered a 'National Living Treasure'
in India, was the first Indian musician to be honored by the
MacArthur Foundation with its so-called genius grant.
By Jon Thurber
June 20, 2009
Maestro Ali Akbar Khan, the master Indian musician and composer who
was a pivotal figure in introducing the music of his homeland to the
West, has died. He was 87.
The legendary sarod player and teacher died of kidney failure
Thursday night at his home in the Bay Area city of San Anselmo,
according to an announcement on the website of the Ali Akbar College
of Music, Khan's teaching facility in northern California. The
announcement said Khan had been a dialysis patient since 2004 but was
still teaching at the college until just two weeks ago.
Considered a "National Living Treasure" in India, Khan was the first
Indian musician to be honored by the MacArthur Foundation with its so-
called genius grant, which he received in 1991.
He was also awarded the National Endowment for the Arts' prestigious
National Heritage Fellowship, the highest U.S. honor in traditional
arts, in 1997.
He recorded more than 95 albums, was nominated for five Grammy Awards
and composed scores for both Indian and Western movies, including the
1963 Merchant-Ivory film "The Householder" and the 1993 Bernardo
Bertolucci film "Little Buddha."
But to many, his influence was in expanding the appeal of Indian music.
"He was instrumental in transforming Indian music into an
international tradition in a way that was unprecedented," said David
Trasoff of Los Angeles, a senior student of Khan's who has studied
north Indian classical music and sarod performance for the last 36
years.
"What he attempted to do and, I believe, succeeded in doing was to
transplant this very deep musical tradition by committing himself to
a level of teaching that resulted in a number of proteges who have
gone on to present this music throughout the world," Trasoff said.
Khan was born April 14, 1922, in Shivpur, East Bengal (now
Bangladesh). He began playing the sarod -- a 25-stringed instrument
that is similar to the Middle Eastern oud -- and other instruments as
a young boy. His father was Ustad Allauddin Khan, widely considered
the greatest figure in north Indian music in the 20th century.
Under his father's tutelage, Khan's training was rigid, vigorous and
sometimes brutal, with sessions often lasting 18 hours a day. He
would study with his father for decades.
"I started to learn this music at the same time I began to talk,"
Khan told music writer Don Heckman in The Times some years ago. "So
it is as natural to me as speaking. It's not something I have to
think about any more than I have to think about the words I'm saying."
He made his first public performance at 14 in Allahabad, and in his
early 20s made his first recordings and became a court musician for
the maharajah of Jodhpur, a post he held for seven years until the
maharajah's death.
In the early 1950s, the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin visited India
and became keenly aware of the power of Indian music. Menuhin invited
renowned sitarist Ravi Shankar to the United States in 1955 to
present a concert at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. But
Shankar declined, and a reluctant Khan -- whom Menuhin called "the
greatest musician in the world" -- took his place.
"I didn't want to come at all," Khan told The Times. "I wanted to
open a college in Calcutta . . . and when I came here, people didn't
have any idea that India had some kind of classical music. . . . But
I played and I liked the audiences, and I think they liked me."
The concert was seen as a key introduction of Indian music to the
West. While in New York, Khan also made his first U.S. recording of
Indian classical music on Angel Records and gave the first
performance of Indian music on Alistair Cooke's program "Omnibus,"
which was then on CBS-TV.
Upon returning to India, Khan opened his college in Calcutta. It
closed in the 1960s.
In 1965 and 1966, he was invited back to the United States to teach
under the auspices of the American Society for Eastern Arts in Berkeley.
From that foundation, he was encouraged to start the Ali Akbar
College of Music, initially in Berkeley and then in Marin County.
Over the years, he has trained an estimated 10,000 Americans on the
sarod and the tradition of northern Indian music. In 1985, he opened
an extension of his music college in Basel, Switzerland.
"I teach what I learned from my father," Khan told The Times. "The
same system, with the same traditional purity. The same kind of
devotion, the same love for music has to be built up. And that can
only happen when it comes from the heart. Otherwise, music doesn't
last. It doesn't stay."
Khan is survived by his wife, Mary, and his 11 surviving children
from his present and two former marriages. Three of his sons,
Aashish, who teaches Indian music at the California Institute of the
Arts, and Alam and Manik, are sarod players.
A memorial service and burial will take place Sunday at Mt. Tamalpais
Cemetery, 2500 5th Ave., San Rafael.
Instead of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the
Ali Akbar College of Music for the Ali Akbar Khan Library.
o o o
GIOVANNI ARRIGHI (1937-2009)
Giovanni Arrighi passed away on thursday June 18, 2009 morning in
Baltimore. He will be sorely missed. Posted below are some things
that SACW might want to look at. 1.) A long video with Giovanni
Arrighi, Joel Andreas, and David Harvey; 2.) A wonderful interview of
Giovanni Arrighi
Is US power in decline? What are we to make of the rise of China?
Will a possible equalization of North-South relations herald a more
brutal capitalism or a better world? Giovanni Arrighi, Joel Andreas,
and David Harvey give their perspectives in this forum, for a
discussion of Arrighi's 2007 book Adam Smith in Beijing (Verso). The
event, filmed in Baltimore, MD, in March of 2008, was organized by
the Red Emma's collective.
http://ia360933.us.archive.org/3/items/2640Arrighi/2640Arrighi.mp4
Giovanni Arrighi: Winding Paths of Capital
An interview by David Harvey
http://www.newleftreview.org/assets/pdf/ArrighiInterview.pdf
o o o
The Guardian,
16 June 2009
Obituary : JOHN SAVILLE (1916 - 2009)
Marxist historian renowned for his great work, the Dictionary of
Labour Biography
by Eric Hobsbawm
John Saville, the socialist economic and social historian who has
died aged 93, was an academic at Hull University for nearly 40 years,
but will be remembered above all for the great, open-ended Dictionary
of Labour Biography (partly co-edited with Joyce Bellamy), of which
he was able to complete the first 10 volumes (1972-2000), and the
three volumes of Essays in Labour History (1960, 1971, 1977) co-
edited with Asa Briggs (Lord Briggs).
He was born John Stamatopoulos, in a Lincolnshire village near
Gainsborough, to Edith Vessey, from a local working-class family, and
Orestes Stamatopoulos, a Greek engineer who disappeared from the
lives of both soon after. His mother's remarriage in London some
years after the first world war to a widowed tailor, freemason and
reader of the Daily Mail, to whom she had acted as housekeeper, gave
her son a comfortable lower-middle-class childhood and the name he
later adopted.
He won a scholarship to Royal Liberty school in east London, but in
the conventional and, until the sixth form, not particularly
intellectual, schoolboy sportsman there was little to suggest a
future in political radicalism. But something must have been
germinating for, "almost the day I arrived" at the London School of
Economics in 1934, once again on a scholarship, he began to go to
leftwing meetings and within two months had joined the Communist
party, in which he was to remain for the next 22 years.
Saville left the LSE, then (with Oxford and Cambridge) the major
centre of student communism, with a first, with the confident and
incisive manner that became his trademark, in lifelong partnership
with Constance (Saunders), whom he married in 1943, and with his
passion for research postponed. He did not return to academic life
until 1947, when he began to teach economic history at the (then)
University College of Hull, where he was to remain until retirement
from the chair of economic and social history in 1982. He continued
to live in Hull until a month before his death.
Called up in 1940 after a spell of employment, he had the leftwing
equivalent of a good war: "I had several large-scale quarrels with
authority, although I was a good and efficient soldier." Against the
party line, he refused to take a commission, but advanced rapidly
from anti-aircraft gunner to gunnery sergeant major instructor and
regimental sergeant major, engaged in political work wherever he went
- especially, from 1943 to 1946, in India.
India - where he met Nehru and leaders of the Muslim League and his
friendship with Indian communist students in Britain, all from
establishment families, opened most anti-imperial doors - reinforced
his own firm, but no longer uncritical, convictions. (Unlike him,
Constance had never accepted the Moscow-imposed party line of
1939-41, which followed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact). The cold war,
particularly frozen during the years of Korea and McCarthyism, made
it easier to maintain them.
He soon became a pillar of that remarkable assembly of talents, the
Communist Party Historians' Group ("intellectually my lifeline"), and
also of the Hull Communist party and its associated organisations,
while building a double expertise in 19th-century British economic
history and labour history.
Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin in 1956, or, more exactly, the
failure of the British CP leadership to recognise its significance,
transformed the Historians' Group from loyalists into vocal critics.
Saville's was the first voice raised at its meetings. Soon, in
partnership with another Yorkshire Communist historian, EP Thompson,
he launched an opposition journal, the New Reasoner. Both were
suspended by the CP and soon resigned from it with their supporters
under the impact of the Hungarian rising of that year.
Saville remained a Marxist and, like most of the ex-Communist
historians, firmly on the left; indeed, decidedly "old left" rather
than "new left", let alone New Labour. The Society for the Study of
Labour History, which he helped to found in 1958, inspired his most
influential work: Essays in Labour History and the Dictionary of
Labour Biography. This latter, remarkable, work, the best of its kind
anywhere in the world, will almost certainly remain as his most
lasting monument. He was also a force in the new Oral History
Society, of which he became the first chairman in 1973, and in the
library and publications department of Hull University, not to
mention the economic and social history committee of what was then
the Social Science Research Council.
From 1964, most of his political writing was to be published in the
Socialist Register, an annual volume he co-edited for some decades
with Ralph Miliband. In the early 1970s he co-founded, later chaired,
and, as usual, did most of the work for, the Council for Academic
Freedom, in defence of the civil liberties of (British) academics. To
the end, he remained proud of the speakers' classes he ran for six to
eight weeks every summer for many years in Hull for trade unionists.
He published a book of memoirs, Memoirs from the Left, in 2003.
Lucid, fiercely loyal to friends and causes, and a formidable enemy
of bullshit, Saville made his contribution to history and to
scholarship outside the limelight. "There are not many entries in the
Dictionary of Labour Biography," Miliband wrote in the introduction
for the Festschrift (Ideology and the Labour Movement, 1979)
presented to him by friends and pupils, "which record lives of
greater dedication and integrity."
Constance died in 2007. He is survived by their three sons and a
daughter.
• John Saville (John Stamatopoulos), economic and social historian,
born 2 April 1916; died 13 June 2009
_____
[9] Announcements:
(i) 25th June Thirty Four Years of Emergency
Disussion On 25th. June, Thursday, At 6 P.M.
TOPIC: EMERGENCY THEN & NOW
Speaker- Prof. Dineshbhai Shukla
Place- Narmad- Meghani Library, Meethkhali, Meethakhali (Natraj
Railway) Crossing, Ahmedabad
From- Movement for Secular Democracy(MSD)
--
(ii) NATIONAL STRATEGY MEET ON METRO RAIL PROJECTS
Venue: Ajmera Hall, Grant Road Station (West), Mumbai.
Dates: 27th & 28th June'2009
DAY 1 27th June 09
10.00 am
Registration
10.30
Inauguration
+ Welcome and Introduction of the Theme
+ Economic Reforms, Urban Growth
& Neo-liberal Governance
+ Urban Transport & Metro Rails
11.15
Self Introduction
11.30
Presentation of Case Studies of Cities
(30 Minutes Each, followed by 10 mins discussion)
+ Delhi
+ Bangalore
Discussion
1.00
Lunch
2.00
Presentation of Case Studies of Cities
(30 Minutes Each)
+ Mumbai
+ Hyderabad
+ Pune
+ Ahmedabad
+ Kochi
+ Nagpur
+ Chennai
5.00
Discussion on the Day's Proceedings
6.00
End of the Day
DAY 2 28th June 09
10.00
Discussion on Impact of Metro on Other transport Projects/Means
11.00
Discussion on Impact of Metro on Shelter & Livelihoods.
12.00
Discussion on Metro & its Financial-Social & Environmental Implications.
1.00
Lunch
2.00
Strategy Session: The Way Ahead.
5.00
Concluding Session
NATIONAL STRATEGY MEET ON METRO RAIL PROJECTS
Dear Friends,
You are heartily invited for a National Meet on the Metro Rail
projects being implemented/proposed across some 26 cities of the
country.
Metro Rail has come part of the idea of transforming the cities and
with the proclaimed aim of providing "world class transport
infrastructure". The experiences, international as well as national
show that the idea of Metro is much beyond of it being only a mode of
transport.
With investment of thousands of crores of rupees and open ended
role of private consultants to corporates; it is furthering the
displacement and destruction of human settlements, livelihoods and
environment. Inspite of the well researched and logic based critiques
by many experts and activists the governments are not paying heed to
the same and bent on pushing the same across the length and breadth
of the country.
In context of the above a 2 day strategy meet is being held at Mumbai
where the Metro Rail Projects of cities like Delhi, Bangalore,
Mumbai, Chennaih, Pune, Calcutta etc will be discussed and analysed
focusing on the following issues.
* Public Transportation in that city,
* About the Metro Rail Project,
* What are our Objections:
* What are our Alternatives,
* What next?
Awaiting your response and confirmations,
C. Ramachandraiah Simpreet Singh Rajinder
Ravi Medha Patkar
9969 36 3065
(Kindly spare these days for the Meet only and book the tickets
accordingly)
Information confirming your attendance, well in advance will be
appreciated.
* Ajmera Hall is on Platform No. 1 of the Grant Road Station(West),
which is close to Mumbai Central as well as Dadar Station.
* Accommodation will be arranged for the delegates, who request for
the same in advance.
--
(iii) LST FORUM
‘De-Positioning Sovereignty and the Limits of the Political’
Dr Stewart Motha
Senior Lecturer in Law
University of Kent, Canterbury
(Editor, Democracy’s Empire: Sovereignty, Law and Violence, Blackwell
2008)
Tuesday 30 June 2009
5pm
@ 3, Kynsey Terrace
Borella, Colombo 8
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