SACW - 9-10 Aug 2016 | Sri Lanka: 10 Years after ACF killings / Pakistan: Caste capitalism / Bangladesh: Bauls under attack / India: Pious Mobs / Soviet Bus Stops / Austria

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - 9-10 August 2016 - No. 2906 
[via South Asia Citizens Web - sacw.net since 1996]

Contents:
1. Pakistan: Suicide Bombing Mourners at a Hospital in Quetta, Balochistan - reports, commentary and a statement by a rights organisation
2. India: Full Text of Citizens Statement Against Attack on Journalist Neha Dixit For Exposing the RSS!
3. India: Second Letter to the Prime Minister - regarding delays in investigating murders of rationalists and seeking enquiry into far right organisations 
4. August 9, 1953: A Defining Moment in the History of Kashmir | Nyla Ali Khan
5. India: The needless quest for NSG membership | M.V. Ramana and Suvrat Raju
6. India: So Where Are the Babas, Gurus, Fortune Tellers, Can They Tell Where That Plane Ended Up ?
7. Those Amazing Bus Stops From the Former Soviet Union - a short documentary film

8. Recent On Communalism Watch:
 - India: Modi and vigilantism (Mukul Kesavan)
 - Bangladesh: Bauls under attack
 - Bangladesh Cafe Attack: pictures of sophisticated blokes who intigated the terrorists
 - India: Pious Mobs - Editorial in The Telegraph
 - Indian state steps up hunt for mythical glow-in-the dark plant - £28m committed from tax payers money
 - The Rising Tide of Intolerance in Narendra Modi’s India (Shahnoor Seervai)
 - India: How Golwalkar the RSS boss threatened to kill Gandhi -- say 1947 police reports

::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::
9. Sri Lanka: 10 Years Since Aid Worker Massacre - A press release by Human Rights Watch
10. Sharia, security and the church: dangers of the British Home Office Inquiry by GITA SAHGAL
11. Cooling down Kashmir | Pervez Hoodbhoy
12. Caste capitalism in Pakistan | Foqia Sadiq Khan
13. India: An engine of cowardice - Arnab Goswami's treachery towards the Indian Constitution | Ruchir Joshi
14. M M Thomas: Centenary of a Christian Marxist | Gabriele Dietrich
15. Are we living through another 1930s? | Paul Mason
16. Ghazala Khan: Trump criticized my silence. He knows nothing about true sacrifice
17. Austria: The Lesson of the Far Right | Jan-Werner Müller
18. Ex USSR: ‘All my own relatives are in prison too!’ | Yoram Gorlizki
19. Vorkuta, a coal monotown - former gulag mining centre looks to immigrants | Philippe Descamps

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1. PAKISTAN: SUICIDE BOMBING MOURNERS AT A HOSPITAL IN QUETTA, BALOCHISTAN - REPORTS, COMMENTARY AND A STATEMENT BY A RIGHTS ORGANISATION
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senseless and brutal attack on civilians which according to the Balochistan Bar Association, has killed 97 persons which includes 63 lawyers and injured more than 120 persons including women and children. The attack preceded the assassination of the President of the Bar Association of Balochistan, Mr Bilal Anwar Kansi who called for a boycott of the Balochistan Courts, in solidarity of another lawyer who was assassinated two days before.
http://sacw.net/article12901.html

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2. INDIA: FULL TEXT OF CITIZENS STATEMENT AGAINST ATTACK ON JOURNALIST NEHA DIXIT FOR EXPOSING THE RSS!
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We, the undersigned journalists, activists and academics, condemn in the strongest terms, the brazen attack launched by RSS organizations and individuals on journalist Neha Dixit and Outlook magazine for a thorough investigative report by Dixit based on three months of field work. This report revealed how different Sangh outfits trafficked 31 tribal girls, some as young as three years, from tribal areas of Assam, to Punjab and Gujarat. Orders were issued to these organizations by the Assam State Commission for the Protection of Child Rights, the Child Welfare Committee (Kokrajhar), the State Child Protection Society, and Childline (Delhi and Patiala), to return the children to Assam. These orders were violated with impunity by Sangh-run institutions with the help of the Gujarat and Punjab governments.
http://sacw.net/article12900.html

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3. INDIA: SECOND LETTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER - REGARDING DELAYS IN INVESTIGATING MURDERS OF RATIONALISTS AND SEEKING ENQUIRY INTO FAR RIGHT ORGANISATIONS SANATAN SANSTHA AND HINDU JAN JAGARN SAMITI
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Letter from Maharashtra Adhashtradha Nirmulan Samitee (Maharashtra anti Superstition Committee) on 20 July 2016
http://sacw.net/article12896.html

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4. AUGUST 9, 1953: A DEFINING MOMENT IN THE HISTORY OF KASHMIR
by Nyla Ali Khan
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The ouster of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, first Muslim Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir and my maternal grandfather, on August 9, 1953, at the behest of the Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, and his subsequent arrest, was an event that alienated the Kashmiri masses and cast his next of kin as personae non grata.
http://sacw.net/article12899.html

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5. INDIA: THE NEEDLESS QUEST FOR NSG MEMBERSHIP
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Instead of further attempts to enter the NSG, India would do better to simply give this club a wide berth, write M.V. Ramana and Suvrat Raju
http://sacw.net/article12890.html

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6. INDIA: SO WHERE ARE THE BABAS, GURUS, FORTUNE TELLERS, CAN THEY TELL WHERE THAT PLANE ENDED UP ?
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A satrical post from Nastik Nation via Facebook
http://sacw.net/article12895.html

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7. THOSE AMAZING BUS STOPS FROM THE FORMER SOVIET UNION - A SHORT DOCUMENTARY FILM
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in 2002, the Canadian photographer Christopher Herwig embarked on a long-distance bike ride from London, England, to St. Petersburg, Russia. And he brought to world's notice the most amazing bus stops that came up in the Soviet times and still exist
http://sacw.net/article12892.html

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8. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
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India: Modi and vigilantism (Mukul Kesavan)
Bangladesh: Bauls under attack
Bangladesh Cafe Attack: pictures of sophisticated blokes who intigated the terrorists
India: RSS man is the new chief minister of Gujarat state
India: Uniform Civil Code: Why and How? (Ram Puniyani)
Uniform Civil Code: Meaningless without Gender Justice
Day long Public event announced: Sangh Terror and Failures of Justice (August 9, 2016, New Delhi)
India: Pious Mobs - Editorial in The Telegraph
India: ‘Your Mother, You Bury Her’: Gujarat Dalits Abandon Cow Carcasses
India: From Red to Saffron, the Literary Journey of Namvar Singh (Kuldeep Kumar)
Hindutva Driven Francois Gautier's blacklist of enemies of hindus
India: Mindless Vigilantism, It is never on our side
India: RSS's Operation Baby Lift to Indoctrinate Hindutva way of life
The Kanwaria Yatras: In India We've come to accept that public piety can trump civic rights (Anjali Modi)
India: cartoon was published in 1945 in a journal published by Nathuram Godse who murdered Gandhi
Indian state steps up hunt for mythical glow-in-the dark plant - £28m committed from tax payers money
The Rising Tide of Intolerance in Narendra Modi’s India (Shahnoor Seervai)
India: How Golwalkar the RSS boss threatened to kill Gandhi -- say 1947 police reports

India: Cow Vigilantism as Terror - Statement by New Socialist Initiative

 -> available via: http://communalism.blogspot.com/
 
::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::
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9. SRI LANKA: 10 YEARS SINCE AID WORKER MASSACRE - A press release by Human Rights Watch
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https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/07/31/sri-lanka-10-years-aid-worker-massacre

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10. SHARIA, SECURITY AND THE CHURCH: DANGERS OF THE BRITISH HOME OFFICE INQUIRY by GITA SAHGAL
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Does the UK’s Sharia Review resemble the sharia ‘courts’: secretive procedures and discriminatory advisors? Are the Home Office and the church ignoring conflicts of interest?
https://opendemocracy.net/5050/gita-sahgal/sharia-security-and-church-in-uk-dangers-of-home-office-inquiry-into-sharia

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11. COOLING DOWN KASHMIR
by Pervez Hoodbhoy
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(Dawn - 30 July 2016)

ONE wonders why the Indian army, with nearly 600,000 soldiers and paramilitary personnel, saw 22-year-old Burhan Wani and his Kashmiri lads as a terrible threat needing elimination. Surely these were not the monsters that murdered dozens at the Victoria Terminus and then scoured the rooms of the Taj looking for Hindus and Jews to shoot. They were not crazed religious extremists, nor on Pakistan’s payroll. Instead these angry rebellious youth were drawn by romance and bravado into their war against Indian occupation. They had a few guns but their real weapons were Facebook images.

That Wani was hunted down, and killed instead of captured, was bad enough. But the use of pellet guns to blind and maim hundreds of protesters at his funeral — no less than 200,000 — is downright criminal. Wani’s killing was also a clear slap in the face for India’s Supreme Court which, on July 8, had curtailed the immunity enjoyed thus far by the Indian armed forces. Specifically, its ruling declared that every armed person in a disturbed area, including Kashmir, may not be necessarily considered an enemy but, even if he turns out to be an enemy, excessive use of force is still not legally permitted.

Having chosen to create another dead hero for Kashmiri independence, India must once again deal with a rebellion that threatens to go viral. Reports say that protesters chanted ‘Tum kitne Burhan marogay? Har ghar se Burhan niklega’ (How many Burhans will you kill? A Burhan will emerge from every home). Wani’s killing may well have set into motion an action-reaction cycle that could take Kashmir back to the carnage of 1987. Set off by protests against the rigging of Kashmiri elections by far-off Delhi, India’s massive over-reaction had sparked off an insurgency that lasted into the early 2000s and resulted in the deaths of nearly 90,000 civilians, militants, police, and soldiers.
The indigenisation of the Kashmir movement suggests a new path for Pakistan.

Those horrible times must never be forgotten. Nor, of course, must we forget that Pakistan had then hijacked an indigenous uprising. The crimes committed by Indian security forces were eventually eclipsed by those committed by Pakistan-based mujahideen. The massacres of Kashmiri Pandits, targeting of civilians accused of collaborating with India, killings of Kashmiri political leaders, destruction of cinema houses and liquor shops, forcing of women into the veil, and revival of Shia-Sunni disputes, severely undermined the legitimacy of the Kashmiri freedom movement and deprived it of its most potent weapon — the moral high ground.

Pakistani strategists of the time believed that secret support for the Kashmiri mujahideen would be a low-cost option to end a military stalemate. But this botched thinking led to major diplomatic defeats. In this age of television cameras and instant communication, Pakistan’s denials of aiding and arming militants carried no weight. As a result, international support for Pakistan’s position sharply declined. In the UN, the Kashmir dispute is today on the back burner. Even at the level of passing resolutions, Muslim countries and the OIC have been lukewarm. More significantly, China is extremely wary of liberating Kashmir through jihad.

But, this time around, things are actually different. Although the initiative has once again come from the Kashmiris themselves, there is little that Pakistan can do to help them. This may not be what some in Pakistan’s military want, but the choice is almost not there. A fence now runs the entire length of the Pak-India border and hi-tech surveillance and night-vision equipment has made infiltration difficult and dangerous.

The indigenisation of the Kashmir movement, increased difficulty of penetration, and the grave domestic and international political costs of using proxies suggests a new path for Pakistan. It can make a virtue out of necessity by cracking down upon Kashmir-oriented militant groups still operating from its soil. Such groups have turned out to be a menace to Pakistan’s society and armed forces, apart from taking legitimacy away from those fighting Indian rule.

No one sees the Kashmir dispute having a solution in the foreseeable future. Everything has been tried: war, repression, elections, and inducements. The only question at present is how to prevent a bad situation from spiralling out of control. Lest thousands more die, it is now time for calm thinking, letting passions subside and moving ahead. Rather than look for ultimate solutions now, the present needs to be managed.

Reflecting the viewpoint of Indian liberals, the respected Indian journalist Prem Shankar Jha has three eminently sensible suggestions: The first step, that Indian security forces declare a unilateral cease-fire, delete the Indian police’s history sheets and give all those on them a respite from fear. The second, to fully support chief minister Mehbooba Mufti in her efforts to heal the wounds inflicted on the wounded Kashmiri psyche. Thirdly, equip the police with suitable technology to deal with stone pelters and others without the use of lethal force.

Jha’s point of view may have few takers in Modi’s India. But thoughtful Indians must ask why their country should care. Surely, if India considers Kashmiris to be its citizens then it must treat them as such, not as traitors deserving bullets. Else it should hand Kashmir over to Kashmiris — or Pakistan. Indeed, its efforts to create a secular state and have religious harmony — and to become the third biggest economy in the world by 2050 — could all come to naught if Pakistan and India relations boil over.

Pakistan and India cannot afford the next decade to look like previous ones. Their conflict is like a cancerous growth, a malignant organism growing unchecked. The current gloomy situation offers just the slightest sliver of hope: the absence of a substantive Pakistani role in this new uprising. This could be seized upon to break the impasse in Pak-India relations. Instead of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif lamely repeating “Kashmir banega Pakistan” — and Sushma Swaraj angrily retorting that this will never happen — the two countries should seek dialogue, not confrontation. Pakistan’s proxies led to India looking for proxies in Pakistan, which Pakistan now complains about. Both ways, this interference must stop.

The writer teaches physics in Lahore and Islamabad.

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12. CASTE CAPITALISM IN PAKISTAN
by Foqia Sadiq Khan
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(The News on Sunday - 7 August 2016)

How the textiles sector in Pakistan came into the hands of Memons and Chiniotis after the Partition

One of the surprising findings of a study of the textiles sector is that it turns out to be dominated by family and caste capitalism. Social institutions play a preponderant role in accumulation. Two trading castes — Memons and Chiniotis — have dominated the textiles manufacturing since the founding of Pakistan. Just like Marwaris in India, Memons and Chiniotis have dominated the textile industry in Pakistan.

It was in the 1990s that the term “social capital” became a vogue. It denoted that human networks that contribute to harnessing of capitalism are just as important as material goods and finance that forms the backbone of the process of production.

Several Muslim trading communities moved to Pakistan from what became India after the partition. Memons moved to Karachi and Chiniotis moved to Lahore and Faisalabad. Before that, there were only a couple of “local” business houses in Pakistan, like Colony in the Punjab and Gandhara and Hoti in the NWFP. Even Saigols who were Punjabi had their earlier business experience in Calcutta.

Memons and Chiniotis are trading communities who have their roots in pre-partition India. Memons belong to Gujarat in India and they went to trade in Asian and African countries and other parts of India since the 18th century. They have a long history of being in business. Chiniotis are from a place in the central Punjab, called Chiniot. They went to Calcutta and other parts of the united India to deal in hides in the 19th century since Hindus who dominated trade in India did not want to deal with leather due to religious taboos.

From geographical point of view, people went to ‘mainland’ India from the ‘frontier’ regions as there was hardly any business in the frontier regions. Most of the land was controlled by Muslims while most of the business was controlled by Hindus. Muslims were landlords and peasants and not in business. Thus, pre-partition textiles were controlled by Hindus.

When Pakistan came into being in 1947 and mass scale migration took place between the new India and Pakistan, both Memons and Chiniotis went to Pakistan and started off with trading and quickly ventured into manufacturing. Post-partition textile mills were largely set up by Memon and Chinioti families such as Valikas, Dawoods, and Crescent. Memons were basically traders. After they came to Pakistan, they were supported by the government to set up plants. Memons like Valikas, Adamjees, Dawoods and Gul Ahmed rose to prominence in Karachi while Chiniotis like Nishat and Colony in the Punjab. They were all traders to begin with.

My key informants claimed that the textiles sector in Pakistan was dominated by Memons and Chiniotis at the time of the fieldwork in early 2000s. Memons are called “Seths” and Chiniotis “Mians”. Hence, the common perception during the fieldwork was that the “Seths” and “Mians” were controlling the textile sector.

It was in the 1990s that the term “social capital” became a vogue. It denoted that human networks that contribute to harnessing of capitalism are just as important as material goods and finance that forms the backbone of the process of production.
It is an interesting commentary on caste capitalism. While presenting the theory of “social structures of accumulation”, scholars like Barbara Harris-White have long argued that the process of accumulation is mediated through caste, locality, occupation, gender, religion, and party politics. I came across caste capitalism in Pakistan’s textiles sector and saw evidence of inter-generational hereditary transfer of business skills during the fieldwork.

The larger point is caste capitalism explains reduction in transaction costs, path dependency, repeated contracts, trust and proves to be a lubricant in easing the production processes. Yet, the caste capitalism functions in the context of the overall state policies as the ascendance of Chiniotis over Memons in the post-1980s period indicates. Of course, the other contributing factor is that Memons were in ascendance in the 1950s and 1960s and were hit hard both by nationalisation of 1970s and dismemberment of Pakistan and suffered the most. Most of the leading Memon families left the country in disarray. Yet, rise and fall of business groups cannot be explained without taking into account the state institutions’ patronage.

Caste capitalism has been at work in Pakistan’s textiles sector for decades and it has strong similarity with the way fraternal or guanxi (connections) capitalism has worked in other parts of the developing world. The politics of state patronage has cast its long shadow over the contestation by two particular castes — Memons and Chiniotis — in the textiles sector. Together, these two castes dominate the largest export sector in Pakistan and caste capitalism works in the context of overall state’s politics.

Other than their historical specificity, one of the key reasons that these two castes dominate the textiles sector in Pakistan is because of the lack of Weberian impersonalisation and the weak rule of law in the country. When the rule of law is weak, there is greater likelihood of the relations of accumulation being even more firmly getting entrenched and embedded in social institutions such as caste and family.

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13. INDIA: AN ENGINE OF COWARDICE - ARNAB GOSWAMI'S TREACHERY TOWARDS THE INDIAN CONSTITUTION
The Thin Edge - Ruchir Joshi
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(The Telegraph - July 31 , 2016)

Let me explain Arnab Goswami to you. Or, rather, since I'm not Arnab Goswami, please allow me to place before you how I see Arnab Goswami of Times Now TV. Actually, first let me explain why any time at all should be spent on someone like Goswami. If, like me, you accept that India is exceptional among our immediate neighbours, that despite its many ongoing tragedies it's a better country to live in than, say, Pakistan or Myanmar, then you also have to say why this is so. In this, I would list our Constitution, which guarantees secularism and free speech at its core, as the first crucial thing that differentiates us from our neighbours. Preceding the Constitution, but bolstered and protected by it, is a tradition of a free press that is unique in South Asia. This press may fluctuate from time to time between being more or less free, being pushed around by the governments or large bits of it bought out by business interests, but the tradition the best practitioners of Indian journalism uphold is one of loudly and clearly saying uncomfortable and even unsayable things to the people in power. Now, it's one thing for a minister to demand the gagging of the press, one thing if some oligarchic business house tries to squash a book, but it's quite another if a prominent news anchor demands the arrest of fellow journalists on the grounds that they are 'anti-national'. This is what Arnab Goswami is doing right now, and it constitutes the worst, slimy, jingoistic, profit-seeking attack on democracy, the free press, the Indian Constitution and, therefore, on the Indian Republic itself.

Wherefore the questions come up: who is this rich and powerful traitor in our midst? And how are we to understand him and his motives?

Most of us have suffered school bullies. The bully is that boy, perhaps physically a bit bigger than others, who uses all means at his command to control smaller students and push them around. If he can, the bully will beat you up when the teachers aren't looking; if he needs to, the bully will start a campaign against some other kid, to cow him down and make him miserable; when faced with authority the bully will not hesitate to use outright lies; if the bully is met with physical resistance, paid back in his own coin, so to speak, he will also not hesitate to run to the teachers and tearfully complain that he has been beaten up, no matter that it was he who started the fight. There may be some differences in the modus operandi but this kind of bully is to be found among both girls and boys.

The bully may not necessarily have physical heft but, invariably, she or he will have the will and stamina to cause unprovoked harm, and invariably he or she will follow only one mantra: me, myself and I above everyone else - me always - right or wrong, I must be the one who prevails - by whatever means, fair or foul.

Sometimes these bullies grow up and modulate their characters, but all too often they carry this bullying nature into adulthood, assuming it will continue to reward them with power and success. Far too often, they are not disappointed. These bullies appear in society, in every walk of life.

Upon the evidence of his TV show, Arnab Goswami is a classic example of just such a bully. In fact, the next time you watch his show, try doing a mental exercise: take this man out of his suit and put him in various different costumes and situations - the local boys' club secretary who leads the gang aggressively demanding puja contributions, the one standing behind a gang of thugs who eggs them to get violent in any altercation, the cop who beats up a defenceless riksha-walla or a thela-walla, the Chief Minister's or the Prime Minister's political Rottweiler, who does the savaging on behalf of his fakely dignified master, the corrupt magistrate who thunders down a sentence on the victims of a crime while letting free the perpetrators, the semi-suave high society gentleman who turns ugly at the drop of a hat, the rich man in an SUV who hits an auto-riksha and then gets out and beats up the auto-walla, claiming damage to his fancy car. See if you can recognize Arnab Goswami in these men and vice versa. In case you feel this is an ad hominem attack, that this is a personal takedown of the man rather than the issue, I would simply point out that the public persona Goswami has assiduously created for himself, his self-righteousness, his loud, spitting, hectoring style on national television, is at the core of the issue. It doesn't matter what 'politics' Goswami espouses; the issue would be the same - and his behaviour equally odious - if he was a Stalinist bully, say nominally of the 'Left', demanding a lynch mob to string up people he deemed 'counter-revolutionaries'.

As with all bullies, what drives Goswami is an engine of huge cowardice. This is plainly in evidence in the way the man conducts his TV show. The first fear (and one with which he has sadly infected several competitors) is of losing TRPs. Goswami and Times Now have to know what they are doing is poisonous for the intellectual environment of the country they claim to love so much; yet they are bound to ride the monster they have created, they cannot afford to change tack even in the face of proof that they have been caught out as liars, as news fabricators, and for providing provocation for the worst tendencies in a fast-changing, young society. The construction of the monster goes like this: 1. find a news item or an issue that can magnet high emotion from the viewer, 2. define the headline in the most dishonest and dumbed-down terms, 3. pass a verdict on it even before a word has been spoken in the 'debate', 4. find scapegoats on the wrong side of the 'verdict' and bash the living daylights out of them, giving the viewer the satisfaction of having participated in a virtual blood sport.

In this, the enemies of the profit-project are people who articulately challenge Goswami's pre-trial verdict and, equally bad, the ones who try and bring some complexity and nuance into a discussion. So, Goswami's cowardice is in evidence from the very start of his show - if you're against what he is proclaiming that evening, He. Will. Not. Let. You. Speak. Period. Cheap trick #1: Goswami will speak long and loud in a preamble and then grandly say, 'The debate is now open! Answer the question!' As soon as the hapless victim opens their mouth to answer, Goswami will (often using the sound delay between cities) jump in and stomp on the poor sap, Cheap Trick #2: Someone will get half a reply out, with the main point still to come, when, again, they will be ambushed by brutal interruption, Cheap Trick #3: these maulings will force the victim to reply in sound bites, not something everyone is good at, and AG will claw some de-contextualized phrase out of the answer and repeatedly punch the 'guest' with it, Cheap Trick #4: If your English happens to be ever so slightly shaky, Goswami will jump on that like a tiger on a tied goat (his own English, it should be mentioned, is atrocious - a few pompous phrases that he repeats incessantly, in the grotesquely mutated psuedo-Shakespearean delivery he must have learnt in school).

Again, all of this is a problem because what India needs desperately is tough journalists asking straight questions of the people in power. Goswami's barrage not only obfuscates that need but also creates an environment in which such questioning becomes almost impossible. In comparison, let's just take two examples of how Boris Johnson caught it from the press over the last month or so. The first was the American journalist who asked two knock-out questions during Johnson's press conference with John Kerry: the questions were politely put yet pulled no punches - as Foreign Minister, what will you say to such and such world leaders about whom you've previously written this and this? Standing next to Johnson, Kerry visibly blanches; Johnson (plenty of time to answer, long rope) squirms from foot to foot, talking panicky nonsense in reply. Middle stump uprooted. Point made. Second, senior British TV journalist Andrew Marr eviscerates Johnson in a one-on-one interview about Boris once encouraging a man to beat somebody up. The long question ends with the words, 'You're quite a nasty piece of work aren't you?' But, again, it's done quietly, with plenty of room for Johnson to answer, or not, or squirm (Johnson fudges and squirms). Both the interrogations work precisely because there is never any feeling that anyone is shouting down Johnson, or denying him space to speak.

Now, the thing is, there is no reason why in India we cannot subject both so called 'anti-nationals' and self-proclaimed 'gau-rakshaks' to this kind of public questioning. As a sophisticated people, we totally get pauses and nuance and telling silences, it's just that for someone like Arnab Goswami, giving space to nuance and contradiction is not profitable - he and his marketing crew need to bulldoze that sort of thing because it would destroy their monster model. Far better for Goswami to be a fawning mouse when faced with Narendra Modi and far better for him to swallow serious questions about the well-being of his supposedly beloved Indian military (What about the fiasco of Modi's impromptu Rafale deal with France? Why are ancient, now dangerous, Ukrainian aircraft still the workhorses of the IAF? Why was the Mountain Strike Corps 'shrunk' by this government after having been 15 years in the planning?). Why is the Patriot Missile Arnab Goswami missing in action on asking these questions of the government? It may be totally cowardly, and totally perfidious to the spirit of our Constitution, but in these times, it's far safer to attack fellow journalists for asking sensible questions about when the AFSPA might be lifted from Kashmir and the Northeast, and about why - no matter what Burhan Wani's crimes were - are so many Kahsmiri youth out on the streets risking their lives after Wani's death?

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14. M M THOMAS: CENTENARY OF A CHRISTIAN MARXIST
by Gabriele Dietrich
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(Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 51, Issue No. 31, 30 Jul, 2016)

Remembering M M Thomas, a man who believed that every revolutionary situation was created by the relation between power as political expression towards justice, the opposition of the counter-revolutionary force of the established order and the misdirection and corruption of it leading to the betrayal of the end of justice by the revolutionary forces.

In these times, when free speech is under heavy attack, the use of the word “Azaadi” invites sedition charges, journalists and researchers are assaulted and deported from Chhattisgarh for reporting on the destruction of Adivasi livelihoods by mineral mining companies, supported by coercive forces of the state, the political legacy of a Madathilparampil Mammen Thomas (M M Thomas), a towering figure of the Ecumenical movement from its formal inception in 1948, is all the more relevant. Unfortunately his name does not figure in the present political discussions on democracy and secularism. It is important to fill this gap.

The Christian Marthomites celebrate their famous son, who is known worldwide, but they also do not like to remember him as a Marxist in his youth, who was refused ordination of his church just because of this. And the Marxists were embarrassed to offer him party membership, because he could not renounce his faith in god. His brother, M M Cheriyan, was a party member, but he was not an active member of the Mar Thoma Church.

World Council of Churches

With only 2% Christians in India, many of them being Roman Catholics, the World Council of Churches (WCC) as an Assembly of Protestant Churches, has not played any part to bring together different protestant denominations here. The attempt to bring different churches into dialogue was born out of the need for reconciliation between denominations of different countries in Europe which had been reeling under two world wars. This had to do with the quest for peace worldwide. In Asia, this was intertwined with the process of decolonisation and with what was called “participation in nationbuilding.” While the building of the process which led to the formation of the United Nations was a secular effort, the WCC explicitly dealt with different forms of Christian faiths, which had also been at war with each other in Europe and which now were challenged to seriously confront the need to achieve peace, decolonisation, democracy, freedom from fascism and war and the challenge of social justice.

Spirituality and Theology

M M Thomas had been nurtured by the faith of his father, who was a schoolteacher and evangelist and the spirituality of his mother, who only died when he himself had crossed 70 years. He had served as a youth leader, working with destitute boys through his church and had developed an abiding desire to establish social justice and human dignity. His inspiration at that time was Sadhu K I Mathai of Christava Ashram, Manganam in Kottayam district, who induced him into this work. Later, he became more explicitly Marxist, partly under the influence of his brother. When he developed a critique of Stalinism, he always felt that the Marxist attempt of transformation needed grace and forgiveness. He resorted to Gandhism only with hesitation and later was sympathetic to the socialistic ideas of Ram Manohar Lohia.

At the WCC Assembly in Amsterdam (1948), M M Thomas was one of the few Asian participants. He was appalled by the Eurocentrism of the western churches and was critical of the distorted content of social ethics promoted by Reynold Niebuhr, who influenced him with his anthropology and critique of power on one hand, and, on the other took for granted the justification of the Cold War. Thomas understood how much the cold war hampered the anti-colonial struggles in Asia.

He served as the study secretary of the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF). At the same time he also kept a foot in the youth work of the Mar Thoma Church. He always kept his Indian roots intact and never moved to Geneva for the WCC after he finished his assignment with the WSCF to take up responsibilities with the WCC. Interestingly, Thomas in his “part time” arrangement with the WSCF was also secretary of the Commission of Student Christian Movement (SCM) in the world struggle. In other words, he was involved in guiding the conceptualisation of the work revolution on behalf of the WSCF. He developed a framework of different aspects which “affirmed that the world struggle was the result of the awakening of hitherto submerged nations, races and classes, seeking a revolution of social justice which would bring human dignity.” He felt that “every revolutionary situation was created by the relation between three aspects of the revolution, namely, its power political expression towards justice, the opposition of the counter-revolutionary force of the established order and the misdirection and corruption of it leading to the betrayal of the end of justice by the revolutionary forces” (Thomas 1990: 96f).

    Of course there were lively discussions among Asian Christians on the response to the revolutionary situation. M M Thomas explained how he envisaged the response of Christians to revolutionary situations: Christians should say yes to the basic revolutionary urge for justice. They should not only say No to the counter-revolutionary forces, but also resist spiritually the corruption inherent in the revolution itself and resist politically forces of revolution which as a whole may have become corrupt (Thomas 1990: 97).

Thomas later had ample opportunity to oppose political corruption during the Emergency of Indira Gandhi (1975–77) and later as governor in Nagaland (1990–92). But before going into that history, it is useful to look at his formation regarding inter-religious dialogue, which is relevant in today’s situation.

Inter-religious Dialogue

After an intense study year in 1953–54 he got involved in the early 1950s in building up the Christian Institute for the Study of Religion and Society (CISRS) in Bangal0re together with Paul Devanandan. He became its associate director in 1958. Through the involvement in the seminars and publications of CISRS, he developed positions which are relevant in the present situation of rising Hindutva and shrinking democratic spaces. While his main interest was in building a society which was equitable and participatory, Devanandan’s interest in Hinduism led to more interaction of people with different backgrounds. Thomas had a great aversion to the colonial version of Christianity which had been promoted by missionary movements. The missionary movement had often worked along caste lines. Besides, he was always critical of Christian triumphalism. He chose the image of the “Suffering Servant” (Isaiah 43) to counteract the symbol of the “conquering king.”

At the same time, he affirmed the need for the struggle of the oppressed. In the inter-religious dialogue, the discussion was on social problems, not on religious tenets. Thomas took a position that “conversion” was a movement from injustice to social equality, while conversion from one religion to another was not necessary for salvation. At the same time, he firmly stood by Article 21 of the Constitution and affirmed the right to profess and proclaim one’s religion. He also opposed anti-conversion laws. Against Western individualism, he affirmed “personhood in community.” He wrote a book titled The Acknowledged Christ in the Hindu Renaissance in 1969 which pointed out that Jesus had been acknowledged by many Hindu thinkers independently, going far beyond the Catholic theologian Raimundo Panicker’s book The Hidden Christ of Hinduism (1981). Thomas later encouraged Ninan Koshy in his research on caste in the Kerala churches. He also wrote on political ideologies and struck up a friendship with Ajit Roy, the editor of The Marxist Review. This friendship deepened during the Emergency when censorship threatened political self-expression. The Guardian Weekly published from Bangal0re showed vast censorship gaps. When it became impossible to meaningfully continue it, Thomas took to cyclostyled messages in which he daringly criticised the 20-point programme, the “Taj Mahal Policy,” which led to rampant slum evictions and the dismantling of the right to freely debate and express deviant opinions.

This was in tune with his position in the late 1960s of supporting democratic socialism during the Prague Spring, promoted by Alexander Dubcek and President Ludvok Svoboda, an uprising which sealed the attempt to expand people’s power in Eastern Europe. Thomas also supported the anti-imperialist struggle in Vietnam. Another important aspect was the support of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa through the Combat Racism Programme of the WCC from the late 1960s onwards. Thomas held important positions in the WCC.

Towards the end of his career he was the chairman of the executive committee of the WCC. During the fifth assembly of the WCC in Nairobi in December 1975, he promoted a plenary resolution which condemned the Emergency, though several prominent members of the Indian delegation like Bishop Paulos Mar Gregorius defended the Emergency. Since even the Communist Party of India supported Indira Gandhi, this was not surprising. It only shows that Thomas had a great political clarity and minced no words in expressing and promoting his positions. The collection of his circulars during the Emergency was later published under the title Response to Tyranny.

Governor of Nagaland

Thomas retired from his ecumenical responsibilities after the assembly in Nairobi in 1975. He had also retired from the CISRS when he turned 60 in 1975. He received many invitations for lecturing in different parts of the world. He also got honorary doctorates. After retirement, he settled down in Thiruvalla, where his wife Elezebeth Thomas aka Pennamma had a house which later came to be known as Pennamma Bhavanam. His wife was a college teacher and had brought up their three children, but she succumbed to cancer and died at the age of 51 in 1969. After returning from his lecturing stints, Thomas’s life held another surprise in 1990 during the Janata government’s rule. He was chosen as the governor of Nagaland, which he realised only when watching the television, before he was officially intimated. This was in recognition of his brave resistance during the Emergency period, when he not only had published pamphlets, but also organised relief for prisoners and their families. Together with M J Joseph, he had organised the Political Detenue’s Relief Fund with Metropolitan Johanan Mar Thoma as chairman. At the end of 1976, in a meeting held in Kochi, CPI–M, Socialists and Jana Sangh came together to oppose the emergency. Thomas was elected as chairman for the Kerala branch of the People’s Union for Democratic and Civil Liberties. When Indira Gandhi announced elections in order to garner support, she won in Kerala, but lost all over the country.

Thomas’s stint as a governor was remarkable in several respects. The CISRS had taken much interest in what was then known as “tribal awakening.” This concerned the problems of Adivasis as well as the indigenous communities in the North East. Thomas took on his new responsibility with enthusiasm. He dismissed the corrupt Congress government under S C Jamir right away. In thefollowing elections, the Nagaland People’s Council (NPC) won. Thomas was the first ever Christian governor in a state with 85% Christians. He fulfilled his secular duties during the week, but took the freedom to worship and sometimes to preach as a simple citizen on Sundays.

The governor struck it off beautifully with the Naga population. He travelled all over the state and his manifold interactions are documented in his book titled The Nagas Towards AD 2000. I managed to visit him in 1990 after the conference of the Indian Association of Women’s Studies in Jadavpur University in Kolkata. He sent the governor’s car to Dimapur to pick me up. The next day he took me for a walk in the garden of the governor’s bungalow, guarded by black cats with AK 47s. I was taken aback. He said: “I now represent the Centre, after all. You would not want me dead, would you?” When P V Narasimha Rao came back at the centre, defections to the Congress increased, but the Nagaland People’s Council (NPC) under Vamuzo Phesao asked for time to consolidate for elections. The governor agreed to that and did not describe the situation as requiring centre’s intervention. This was taken as disobedience by the centre and the governor was unceremoniously dismissed. He happily returned home to Kerala and felt that his political mission had been fulfilled. He earned enormous recognition all over the country by the democratic forces for having upheld the constitution without hesitation. The situation reminds of events in today’s Uttarakhand—minus the civil courage of the governor today.

Free Man

Thomas had been a headache for his security forces throughout, especially when visiting his home in Kerala. He was in the habit of sleeping in the open veranda of Pennamma Bhavanam protected only by a mosquito net. He refused to obey his security guards and permitted them to lock themselves in the house. The house was always shared with young visitors from activist groups.

Later, when Thomas was a “free man” again, he interacted a lot with people who had belonged to the non-party political formations and social action groups of the 1970s and 1980s. In early 1986, when the National Alliance of People’s Movements went on the national tour which preceded its official launch in Sevagram, they came to Madurai as well and we went together to Thiruvalla, where we stayed in Thomas’s house, now, again without state security. Thomas chaired the public meeting in SC Church Hall in Thiruvalla. Sometime later in the same year, Thomas needed to stay in Vellore for a while to deal with a heart condition. He felt very unhappy to be deprived of his freedom to interact and decided to return to Kerala. He died while travelling in a train on 3 December 1996.

On the day of the funeral, his body was laid out on his beloved verandah and later in the SC Church Hall. People came from far and wide, even from Nagaland. The SCM representative Neju George tearfully said: “The world has lost a great theologian. We have lost our grandfather.”

There have been memorial meetings in Kerala and in several theological institutions elsewhere; but his political relevance needs to be remembered in a situation where the “Hindu nation” is rapidly being imposed, freedom of expression is in danger and rampant neocolonial capitalism widens the gap between the rich and poor in unprecedented ways.

Gabriele Dietrich (reach.gabriele[at]gmail.com) is a scholar and activist based in Madurai.

References

M M Thomas (1966): The Christian Response to the Asian Revolution, London: SCM Press.
— (1979): Response to Tyranny, New Delhi: Forum for Christian Concern for People’s Struggle.
— (1990): My Ecumenical Journey 1947–75, Thiruvananthapuram: Ecumenical Publishing Centre.
— (1992): The Nagas Towards A D 2000, Madras: The Centre for Research on New International Economic Order.
- See more at: http://www.epw.in/journal/2016/31/commentary/m-m-thomas.html

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15. ARE WE LIVING THROUGH ANOTHER 1930S?
by Paul Mason
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(The Guardian - 1 August 2016)

As daunting events come thick and fast amid increasing public racism and xenophobia, the similarities with the buildup to the second world war are real, but we can take hope from a few key differences

Labourers queue for work at the London docks in 1931. Photograph: Fox Photos/Getty Images

Things are happening with machine-gun rapidity: Brexit, the Turkish coup, Islamist massacres in France, the surrounding of Aleppo, the nomination of Donald Trump. From the USA to France to post-Brexit Britain, the high levels of public racism and xenophobia, reflected now in the outpourings of politicians with double-digit poll ratings, have got people asking: is it a rerun of the 1930s?

On the face of it, the similarities are real. Britain’s vote to leave the EU parallels its panicked decision to quit the gold standard in September 1931 – the first major country to quit the global economic system. Labour’s incipient split mirrors the one that left the party out of power for 14 years. And of course the economic background – a depression and a banking crisis – has echoes in the present situation.

But a proper study of the 1930s reveals our situation today to be better and more salvageable in many ways, although in one respect worse.
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Following the Wall Street crash of 1929, the economic downturn took hold in 1931, with the failure of banks on both sides of the Atlantic, the imposition of austerity measures on already-weak economies, the resort to tariffs, currency blocks and economic nationalism. The fact that elites advocated mass unemployment, as a downward pressure on wages, created the firewood; overtly militarised and genocidal fascist groups lit the spark. It took just two years from Hitler’s first electoral breakthrough in 1930 for the Nazi party to score 37% in an election.

Then you get the million-strong far-right demonstration in Paris in 1934; the rising of the Asturian miners in Spain, put down by the army; German rearmament beginning in 1935. The Spanish civil war starts in 1936 – while, in the same year, workers in both France and the US stage mass occupations of factories, and Stalin begins the great purge.

It is here that the 30s take their essential shape: the surrender of democracy, the certainty of war – and the march to mass civilian death.

For us today, the single biggest positive difference is that we start from a globalised world economy. We begin from a qualitatively more interdependent economic system, in which autarky is widely understood – even by politicians who would like to try it – as suicide.

It was this realisation that forced the disoriented elites at the London and Cannes G20 conferences in 2009 and 2011 to coordinate extraordinary stimulus measures to stave off a 1930s-style breakdown. Those, myself included, who paced around the edges of these events declaring the action inadequate should admit – despite the inadequacy – that they acted in the right spirit. The elite rejected “pro-cyclical” economics of the kind that plunged the US into depression and Germany into fascism. Everywhere, that is, except Europe – and, even in Europe, far-right extremism has been held at bay until now.
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The problem is, politically, we have in one sense gone beyond the 1930s.

Force yourself to listen to the subtexts of social media: the organised hatred against black female actor Leslie Jones, the anonymous racism and misogyny, the habitual fusion of anti-left and anti-Islam hate. Force yourself – maybe just once – to watch what some people are watching every day: black kids murdered by US cops; Syrian kids blown to pieces by Assad, or Russia or the US airforce; bloggers crucified in public by Isis, the mangled bodies of French partygoers on the Nice seafront.

When Franco’s troops took Badajoz, and put 2,000 of its inhabitants against the wall in the early days of the Spanish civil war, the Wehrmacht’s military observer was so disgusted that he advised German troops should never be allowed to serve alongside Franco’s lest they become “brutalised”.

Today, an entire generation of humanity has been brutalised – whether it experiences mass slaughter, rape and torture firsthand, or whether it simply sees the pictures and hears the stories. If you read any memoir from the 30s and the war years, there is almost always a moment of realisation: what a cadaver looks like; that prisoners can be shot; that the Geneva conventions may be flouted.

Sadly, in sheer brutality, we are past the 1930s – and in the struggle between governments and civilian populations the Geneva conventions do not apply.

The worst thing about the present – and millions of people feel it – is the momentum towards catharsis. It is impossible to imagine everything dying back to a boring stasis.

When you watch Erdoğan’s goons marching lifelong democratic journalists to jails where, as Amnesty International reports, beatings, torture and rape are routine, it becomes possible to imagine these things happening in other nominal democracies.

On the face of it, we have two things the 1930s lacked. We have billions of educated and literate brains on the planet; and we have the concept of universal and inalienable human rights.
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When, at the start of this unrest, I read Stephane Hessel’s Indignez Vous! (Time for Outrage) – one of the pamphlets that inspired the Occupy protests – I wondered why he dwelt so long on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Hessel had been a French resistance fighter and helped write the 1948 declaration. In an address to the youth of the tent camps in 2008, he spends several long paragraphs explaining why they fought so hard for the word “universal” and not “international”: “That is how to forestall the argument for full sovereignty that a state likes to make when it is carrying out crimes against humanity on its soil.”

Hessel’s generation understood that – even if it were all a figleaf for US hegemony – a global and universal system of human rights would leave a lasting legacy. Today, when a journalist or NGO worker stumbles on the scene of a massacre, they think – if they have been trained right – about evidence-gathering for a court first, the sensational scoop second.

So, no. This is not the 1930s with drones and trolls. We have – and must defend – a resilient global system. One glance at an uncensored social media timeline will tell you what happens if we let go of that.

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16. GHAZALA KHAN: TRUMP CRITICIZED MY SILENCE. HE KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT TRUE SACRIFICE
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(The Washington Post - July 31, 2016)

 Ghazala Khan’s son, U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan, was killed in Iraq in 2004.

CHARLOTTESVILLE

Donald Trump has asked why I did not speak at the Democratic convention. He said he would like to hear from me. Here is my answer to Donald Trump: Because without saying a thing, all the world, all America, felt my pain. I am a Gold Star mother. Whoever saw me felt me in their heart.

Donald Trump said I had nothing to say. I do. My son Humayun Khan, an Army captain, died 12 years ago in Iraq. He loved America, where we moved when he was 2 years old. He had volunteered to help his country, signing up for the ROTC at the University of Virginia. This was before the attack of Sept. 11, 2001. He didn’t have to do this, but he wanted to.

When Humayun was sent to Iraq, my husband and I worried about his safety. I had already been through one war, in Pakistan in 1965, when I was just a high school student. So I was very scared. You can sacrifice yourself, but you cannot take it that your kids will do this.
Humayun Khan was an American Muslim Army soldier who died serving the U.S. after 9/11. His father, Khizr Khan, spoke at the Democratic National Convention and offered a strong rebuke of Donald Trump, saying, "Have you even read the United States Constitution?" (Video: Victoria Walker/The Washington Post;Photo: Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)

We asked if there was some way he could not go, because he had already done his service. He said it was his duty. I cannot forget when he was going to the plane, and he looked back at me. He was happy, and giving me strength: “Don’t worry, Mom. Everything will be all right.”

The last time I spoke to my son was on Mother’s Day 2004. We had asked him to call us collect whenever he could. I begged him to be safe. I asked him to stay back, and not to go running around trying to become a hero, because I knew he would do something like that.

He said, “Mom, these are my soldiers, these are my people. I have to take care of them.” He was killed by a car bomber outside the gates of his base. He died trying to save his soldiers and innocent civilians.

That is my son. Humayun was always dependable. If I was vacuuming the house and he was home, he would take the vacuum from my hand and clean the house. He volunteered to teach disabled children in the hospital how to swim. He said, “I love when they have a little bit of progress and their faces, they light up. At least they are that much happy.” He wanted to be a lawyer, like his father, to help people.

Humayun is my middle son, and the others are doing so well, but every day I feel the pain of his loss. It has been 12 years, but you know hearts of pain can never heal as long as we live. Just talking about it is hard for me all the time. Every day, whenever I pray, I have to pray for him, and I cry. The place that emptied will always be empty.

I cannot walk into a room with pictures of Humayun. For all these years, I haven’t been able to clean the closet where his things are — I had to ask my daughter-in-law to do it. Walking onto the convention stage, with a huge picture of my son behind me, I could hardly control myself. What mother could? Donald Trump has children whom he loves. Does he really need to wonder why I did not speak?

Donald Trump said that maybe I wasn’t allowed to say anything. That is not true. My husband asked me if I wanted to speak, but I told him I could not. My religion teaches me that all human beings are equal in God’s eyes. Husband and wife are part of each other; you should love and respect each other so you can take care of the family.
Photo Gallery: The most memorable moments from the Republican and Democratic conventions

When Donald Trump is talking about Islam, he is ignorant. If he studied the real Islam and Koran, all the ideas he gets from terrorists would change, because terrorism is a different religion.

Donald Trump said he has made a lot of sacrifices. He doesn’t know what the word sacrifice means.

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17. AUSTRIA: THE LESSON OF THE FAR RIGHT
by Jan-Werner Müller
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(NYR Daily)

Campaign posters for far-right presidential candidate Norbert Hofer, Nickelsdorf, Austria, May 3, 2016
Leonhard Foeger/Reuters

Could Austria become the first Western European country since World War II to have a far-right president? Amid the shock over the Brexit vote, few have noted the extraordinary sequence of events that have played out in this wealthy social democracy. On May 22, Norbert Hofer of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party lost the race for the Austrian presidency by around 31,000 votes to Alexander Van der Bellen of the Green Party. On June 8, the Freedom Party contested that result, alleging several irregularities, among them the premature opening of mail ballots and the release of election data to the media too early. In fact, there was no evidence of manipulations having changed the outcome. But on July 1 Austria’s Constitutional Court nevertheless ruled that the election would have to be repeated. Thus the Freedom Party—a party that was once described as a “party of former Nazis for former Nazis”—will have a second chance at the presidency in early October.

Just why has the far right done so well in Austria in particular? The country enjoys one of the highest per capita income levels in the EU, has an extensive welfare system, and has benefited enormously from the opening to Eastern Europe since 1989 (Vienna used to be shabby compared to Berlin; now it’s the other way around). Nor has Austria, until now, suffered from the devastating terror attacks that have afflicted France and Belgium. Picking up on Pope Paul VI’s praise of Austria as an isola felice, the country’s most important post-war political figure, long-time Chancellor Bruno Kreisky (in office 1970-1983), called it an “island of the blessed.” Nonetheless, the Freedom Party has been growing in Austria for more than two decades. If there were Austrian parliamentary elections today, the far right would win.

The Austrian Constitutional Court’s decision to redo the presidential election was aimed at removing even the shadow of a doubt about the legitimacy of the result. But the rise of Austria’s far right, and its ability to contest—and possibly win—highest office in a country without major economic or social problems, tell us at least as much about the new shape of politics in Europe as the UK’s decision to leave the EU. As the Austrian case makes clear, the success of populist parties cannot be reduced to a single explanation. Above all, the country provides an object lesson in how mainstream parties seeking to confront the rise of populist politicians can end up further strengthening them.

In many respects, the Freedom Party seems to draw on the same forces that are feeding its counterparts elsewhere. Hofer, an aeronautical engineer by training, soft-spoken in public but uncompromising in his authoritarian-nationalist views, is very much of the new generation of European right-wing populists: like Marine Le Pen, he presents himself as a defender of freedom and democracy against the European Union; like Le Pen and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, he is now calling for a referendum on EU membership; and, very much like other right-wing populists, Hofer has strictly opposed opening Europe’s borders to refugees and adopted anti-Islam rhetoric. Similar to the National Front in France, Hofer’s Party is drawing growing numbers of workers away from the Socialists, who in the eyes of their former constituents have made too many concessions to free trade and immigration.

But the Freedom Party’s seemingly unstoppable rise can only be understood against the background of the peculiar political system created under the Second Austrian Republic after 1945. For the entire postwar era, Austria was always governed by one of the two large parties, the center-right Christian Democrats or center-left Socialists—or, often, both at the same time, when they formed a grand coalition, as is the case today. The writer Karl-Markus Gauß once joked that someone growing up during these decades may well have thought that the Austrian constitution reads: “Austria is a Republic which is governed by a grand coalition.” This tendency to form joint governments, which had no parallel elsewhere in Western Europe, served a very particular purpose: to secure stability in a country that had long been characterized by deep divisions between a “red” left-leaning Vienna and a “black,” conservative Catholic, countryside. Extreme polarization between these two factions had resulted in a brief civil war in 1934, before the installation of a Catholic authoritarian regime and then the Anschluss by Hitler in 1938. 

In post-1945 Austria, the red and the black were determined to avoid this kind of conflict through a system of proportional representation in virtually all spheres of social and political life—hence the ubiquitous term Proporz to describe the Austrian approach. They effectively outsourced much policy-making to “social partners”—unions and employers’ associations—who worked out deals that were then rubber-stamped in parliament. This arrangement had partly been inspired by the very ideal of social harmony promoted by the Catholic authoritarian regime in the 1930s. Such an approach took for granted that virtually all voters would be able to identify with one of the two main parties. As the contemporary writer Robert Menasse once observed, Austrians had to wonder whether they actually lived in a democracy, given that, whatever the election outcome, there never seemed to be an opposition. 

Opposition to the two-party system eventually arose in the form of a young, charismatic nationalist named Jörg Haider. Haider had been an assistant professor of law before turning full-time politician. He objected to what he regarded as the privileges of the red-black elite, who controlled all aspects of public life from elementary schools to Alpine hiking associations, and he stridently opposed Austria’s immigration policies. In 1986, he seized the leadership of the then-small Freedom Party with a coup at the party’s congress. Adopting the slogan “Austria First,” Haider initiated a nation-wide petition calling for a constitutional amendment specifying that Austria was not a country of immigration (the petition failed). Later, he gained international notoriety for praising the successful employment policies of the Third Reich and for calling SS veterans “men of character.” (He himself was, in his own words, a Nazikind; both his parents had been ardent National Socialists.)

Crucially, unlike Germany from the Sixties onward, Austria never underwent a comprehensive process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, or coming-to-terms with its Nazi past. Instead, Austrians clung to the misleading idea, formulated by the Allies’ Moscow Declaration of 1943, that their country was the “first free state to fall victim to Hitlerite aggression.” Christian Democrats and Socialists were fully complicit in perpetuating this myth; what is more, for purely opportunistic reasons, they turned a blind eye to the political rehabilitation of former Nazis. In 1949 the Socialists encouraged the formation of the “Association of Independents” (VdU), from which the Freedom Party (FPÖ) emerged, with the cynical calculation that another right-wing option would drain support from their main opponents, the Christian Democrats. When Simon Wiesenthal uncovered the SS past of a Freedom Party leader in the mid-1970s, Socialist Chancellor Kreisky, who was eyeing a coalition with the FPÖ, attacked Wiesenthal, going so far as to suggest that Wiesenthal might have been a Gestapo collaborator. Kreisky was Jewish and had once been faced with election posters that portrayed his Christian Democratic opponent as a “real Austrian.” But not only did Kreisky put national unity and stability first; he also occasionally hinted that making deals with the former Nazis was no worse than collaborating with the Christian Democrats, who, after all, were the heirs of the authoritarian regime of the 1930s and who, infamously, supported the former Wehrmacht officer Kurt Waldheim in his successful presidential run in 1986. 

The Freedom Party always endorsed Deutschnationalismus, centered on the dream of unification with Germany (an option that had been popularly endorsed in 1919, after the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but was rejected by the Allies at the time). Haider, a complicated, celebrity-seeking, and in many ways self-destructive character, followed in this tradition. The Austrian media portrayed Haider literally as the devil in magazine features—knowing that a Haider cover, just like a Trump story today, would always sell better. Thus, they also kept Haider perpetually at the center of national attention. In fact, even though he never served in the federal government, Austrian politics revolved around Haider for at least two decades, and his party succeeded in pushing the government further to the right on immigration and other issues.         
Jörg Haider, former leader of the Freedom Party, paying tribute to Austrian Nazi veterans, Ulrichsberg, Austria, October 1, 2000
Patrick Zachmann/Magnum Photos
Far-right leader Jörg Haider paying tribute to Austrian Nazi veterans, Ulrichsberg, Austria, October 1, 2000

Haider achieved his greatest triumph in 1999, when the FPÖ drew 27 percent of the vote and came second in the national elections. The Freedom Party entered a coalition with the Christian Democrats, who, despite receiving less support, got to nominate the Chancellor, Wolfgang Schüssel. Haider was kept out of the government, but everyone assumed that he would control his party from behind the scenes. There were major street protests in Vienna against bringing the far-right into government—an arrangement that had no parallel in Europe at the time. Ministers had to enter the presidential palace for their swearing-in ceremony through underground tunnels instead of walking over from the Chancellery across the Ballhausplatz, as had been the tradition. Other EU countries ostracized the right wing government, with unintended consequences. Chancellor Schüssel convinced even the opposition parties that plucky little Austria—proud of its neutrality during the Cold War as much as its self-declared status as a “cultural great power”—was being picked on unfairly. On the far right, Deutschnationalismus now gave way to a new Austro-patriotism with a heavy anti-EU flavor (Haider and his party had initially supported joining the Union, but then reversed their stance.).         

Haider could deal with street demonstrations and sanctions, but the one thing he couldn’t cope with was not being at the center of attention. He seceded from his own party and founded a new right-wing movement before dying in a car accident in 2008. His old party benefited from both his defection and death: in power, FPÖ had proved enormously corrupt (especially in Haider’s home state, Carinthia). This should have damaged their claim to be a real alternative to the Proporz system. Instead, all problems could now be blamed on the deceased Haider. 

Today, Austria is once again governed by a “grand coalition,” though there’s nothing very grand any more about the two parties from which it is formed. In 1975, over 90 percent of votes went to Christian Democrats and Social Democrats; in the presidential elections this spring, their candidates could barely get above 10 percent each and, as a consequence, were eliminated from the second, decisive round of the contest. Apart from the fact that both the red and the black candidate proved uninspiring, it clearly hurt them both that their government, under pressure from the Freedom Party, completely changed course on refugee policy. Social Democratic Chancellor Werner Faymann had been Angela Merkel’s most steadfast ally in the fall; by March of this year, he effectively closed the borders. By contrast, the mayor of Vienna, Michael Häupl, a Social Democrat, resolutely stuck to his pro-refugee stance and won the city election last fall, even though an FPÖ victory had been predicted. 

As so many politicians trying to imitate far-right populists have learned the hard way, pandering rarely works. Citizens who support the new populism will in the end prefer the original to the copy, while those who favor a more humanitarian stance will turn away in disgust. This is also one of the lessons from the Brexit debate: parts of the Tory leadership effectively made Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party, the central figure of British politics and tried to outdo him in Euroscepticism. Once they conceded that the referendum really was about saving freedom-loving England from the undemocratic designs of a “distant Brussels,” it seemed ludicrous to persuade people to remain in the EU because leaving would make them 4,000 pounds worse off per year.           

The Austrian case suggests that the decline of mainstream parties does not have to spell doom for democracy. Hofer’s opponent in the final round of the May 22 presidential election, Van der Bellen, was an economics professor supported by the Green Party. The Greens, who are in favor of further European integration, have the lowest level of working class support among all parties, but benefit from the fact that Vienna—a city featuring pictograms of same-sex couples for its “walk/don’t walk” traffic lights—has a large bourgeois-bohemian population that endorses them. They are also the only major Austrian party that has never made any tactical concessions when it comes to condemning both the Nazi past and the continuities with interwar authoritarianism.

The presidential election situation that arose in Austria in May and will be repeated in October—a run-off between the Greens and the far right—has never occurred in Europe before. But it starkly reveals a fundamental political conflict that can be found in many Western democracies today. This conflict is not meaningfully described as one of “ordinary people versus the establishment.” In Austria, both the Freedom Party and the Green Party have been “established” since the mid-1980s; in Britain, Boris Johnson, one of the main faces of the Brexit campaign, is about as establishment as one can get in the UK; and Donald Trump is hardly the authentic representative of Main Street. Rather, on one side of the new conflict are those who advocate more openness: toward minorities at home and toward engagement with the world on the outside. On the other side we find the Le Pens, Farages, and Trumps: close the nation-state off by shutting borders and thereby, or so they promise, take back control; but also, preserve the traditional hierarchies that have come under threat on the inside. “Make America Great Again” means above all: “Make sure white males rule again.”

It is often misleadingly suggested that there are growing numbers of populist, or “anti-establishment,” voters on both sides of this conflict, and hence they must share crucial political or moral characteristics. But only one side denies the pluralism of contemporary societies altogether. Only right-wing populists claim that they alone represent what they call “the real people” or “the silent majority”—and that, as a consequence, the defenders of openness and increasing pluralism must somehow be illegitimate. Hofer confronted Van der Bellen with the statement that “you have the haute-volée, I have the people behind me”; Farage declared the outcome of the Brexit referendum a “victory for real people” (thus rendering the 48 percent who voted to stay in the EU somehow “unreal.”) Donald Trump has said so many offensive things over the course of the past year that one remark at a rally in May passed virtually unnoticed—even though that statement effectively revealed the populism at the heart of Trump’s worldview: “The only thing that matters,” he said, “is the unification of the people—because the other people don’t mean anything.”

Since “the real people” are a myth conjured up by populists, actual election outcomes or opinion polls can always be questioned in their name. If the populist candidate loses, it is not because he or she is not as popular as anticipated; it is because the “real people” have not yet spoken—or worse, have somehow been prevented from expressing themselves. It is not an accident that populists so easily resort to conspiracy theories or rush to contest election outcomes. Yet the Austrian constitutional court was right to order another ballot; otherwise, the FPÖ could have persisted with the claim that its candidate was somehow robbed of victory by illegitimate elites scheming behind the scenes. 

Whatever the outcome of the revote, it would be wrong to conclude that Austria will from now on be polarized between the Greens and the far right—though the very clear division between Van der Bellen’s support in cities and Hofer’s in the countryside is indeed reminiscent of the twenties and thirties. It might have been a good thing that the presidential vote offered a clear choice in May and will do so again in October: citizens are debating with each other openly and political conflicts are no longer taboo. Several Austrian Chancellors in the past—including Kreisky—wanted it to be known that Robert Musil’s The Man without Qualities was their favorite book. Austrian politicians have specifically quoted Musil’s term Möglichkeitssinn—a sense of possibilities. That the country was the first ever to elect a Green president—and might do so again in October—shows that not all the news from Europe these days has to be bad. Austria demonstrates the real perils of far right-populists, but also the more hopeful possibility of fresh political forces to counter them.

July 25, 2016

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18. EX USSR: ‘ALL MY OWN RELATIVES ARE IN PRISON TOO!’
by Yoram Gorlizki
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London Review of Books
Vol. 38 No. 16 · 11 August 2016
pages 37-38 | 3003 words

‘All my own relatives are in prison too!’
Yoram Gorlizki

    Stalin’s Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics by Sheila Fitzpatrick
    Princeton, 384 pp, £24.95, September 2015, ISBN 978 0 691 14533 4

We were ‘milk-drinkers’ by comparison, Vyacheslav Molotov, for many years Stalin’s deputy, said of Stalin’s inner circle. ‘Not one man after Lenin … did even a tenth of what Stalin did.’ For Molotov, Stalin’s organisational skills, his boldness and his cunning saved the Bolshevik Revolution after Lenin died. Others would take a different view. Either way, part of the fascination Stalin exercises comes from the sharp contrast, especially in the 1920s and 1930s, between the warm, affectionate, tactile world of his inner circle and the often brutal world beyond – and the ease with which disbelieving former friends and comrades were dispatched from one to the other. Stalin was skilled in the art of eviction. ‘Rykov and his gang must be driven out but for the time being this is just between ourselves,’ he mused to Molotov in 1929. Members of the group were to be dropped one by one, according to different timetables. ‘No doubt this incremental approach was the product of Stalin’s caution,’ Sheila Fitzpatrick observes in On Stalin’s Team, ‘but at the same time it had a tinge of sadism: the defeated hung twisting in the wind for a long time, begging for clemency and reinstatement … until they ended up as total outcasts if not gibbering wrecks.’

FULL TEXT AT: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n16/yoram-gorlizki/all-my-own-relatives-are-in-prison-too

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19. VORKUTA, A COAL MONOTOWN - FORMER GULAG MINING CENTRE LOOKS TO IMMIGRANTS
by Philippe Descamps
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(Le Monde diplomatique, August 2016)

On 25 and 26 February 2016 a series of underground explosions killed 31 miners and five rescue workers in the Severnaya pit, 10km from Vorkuta, the Russian coal-mining town inside the Arctic Circle. It took several weeks to extinguish the fire by flooding the mine, and the pumping-out operation, which began in June, may last another six months. A thousand miners have had to be temporarily redeployed to four still-operational mines. Eight of the town’s pits have already closed since 1991. The Vorkutaugol combine now has just 7,000 employees (1), compared to 45,000 at its peak in 1967.

The first coal seam here was discovered near the Ob river in 1930 by a young geologist, Georgy Chernov. Since then, coal extraction has been the raison d’être of this town built on the permafrost with materials transported north by train. Ubiquitous rusting metal and general decay give the residential district of Severny the appearance of a war zone. The visitor encounters the occasional person keen to show off the only new building, a brightly coloured wooden Orthodox church that stands in marked contrast to the greyness of its surroundings. If the mine never reopens, what will become of Severny’s huge, crumbling apartment blocks, so typical of Soviet-era monotowns (devoted to a single industry)? Many of the blocks are already empty, their roofs collapsed because of snow or fire. Near the town centre, whole districts, such as Rudnik, the site of the first camp by the first pit, are now vast ruins abandoned to the icy wind.

After years of decline, during which there was a marked increase in crime and drug use, Vorkuta’s hopes rose in 2003 when Vorkutaugol was acquired by Severstal. The Russian metallurgy giant, whose clients include Renault and Volkswagen, planned to exploit the 33km of active galleries and maintain an annual output of around 13m tonnes of run-of-mine (raw unprocessed) coal. But the owner of the largest coal deposit in Europe has had to acknowledge the geological challenge of mining galleries that descend more than 1,000m below the surface. With the fall in coal prices since 2010 and demands to reduce greenhouse gases, coal has become an increasingly unattractive fuel.

As the main source of income in the town, the combine also has to fund social programmes, holiday camps, roads and public transport for a municipality that is almost broke. Within the ring of Vorkuta’s 13 pits the official population figure is 60,000 — though several locals put it at barely 40,000 — compared with 216,000 in 1989 (2). The decline has been so rapid that some people think Vorkuta may become the world’s biggest ghost town, disappearing along with the activity that caused it to be built, like Gagnon in Quebec and Bodie in California.

Yet, like Norilsk, Vorkuta has come through previous dark times. And like the railway line that runs along the Urals, the town was built through the involuntary sacrifice of tens of thousands of prisoners. Nicknamed the ‘frozen guillotine’, Vorkuta was the location of the hunger strike by political prisoners (mainly Trotskyists) at the height of the repression in 1936, and of the great strike of 1953. With the release of foreigners and de-Stalinisation, the number of prisoners dropped from 70,000 in 1950 to 39,000 in 1958, and kept falling.

To replace this workforce of forced labourers, the authorities appealed to young Communists and demobbed military personnel, glorifying the town’s pioneering spirit and its critical role in supplying Leningrad (St Petersburg) during the siege (1941-4). Social advantages and good wages made it possible to attract workers and boost coal production, which peaked at 22bn tonnes in 1988.

Today there is no museum or extant camp to bear witness to this past. The absence of a heritage policy that deals with the gulag and the conquest of the north make it hard to grasp its full complexity, including why some former zeks (prisoners) stayed on in the town. Apart from the valuable archival work being done by the Memorial association, physical traces are rare: a few graves in symbolic locations and some monuments erected by families of former prisoners, especially from abroad. Otherwise, it is as though the countless industrial ruins were enough to convey this monotown’s destiny.

Philippe Descamps
Journalist

(1) Data from Severstal group, sole owner of Vorkutaugol.
(2) Alan Barenberg, Gulag Town, Company Town: Forced Labour and its Legacy in Vorkuta, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2014.


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South Asia Citizens Wire
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
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