Thank God for Earthquakes?

Simon Jenkins, in this fine Guardian piece, analyses how the earthquake in Xinjiang is a foreign policy blessing for many:

"You don't have to be cynical to do foreign policy, but it helps. A sigh of relief rose over the west's chancelleries on Monday as it became clear that the Chinese earthquake was big - big enough to trump Burma's cyclone."

Add to that China's relatively good behaviour, and then, Jenkins notes, the Western prophecy (of sit-and-wait-it-out-till-democracy-magically-blossoms) miraculously self-fulfils itself:

"To add to the relief, Beijing was behaving better than it has over past calamities. Since this might have been thanks to the west's "positive engagement" with China's dictators - even awarding them the Olympics - we could possibly take credit from the week's tally of disaster. Sorry about that, Burma."

Some of it is knee-jerk comparisons to Iraq and Afghanistan, but the piece is informed, at its heart, by a profound dissatisfaction with the motives of Western mandarins:

"After days of hand-sitting and abuse-hurling, the thesis that "diplomatic pressure" is going to burst the dam of Burma's hostility seems naive. I have read not one observer who believes this regime will admit aid workers, while many accept that it would be unlikely to contest a dump-and-run airlift under appropriate air cover. If the west refuses even to plan such an operation, it would be more honest to admit to doing nothing and stop counterproductive abuse of the regime.

What is sickening is the attempt to squeeze a decision not to help these desperate people into the same "liberal interventionist" ideology as validates billions of pounds on invading, occupying, destabilising, bombing and failing to pacify other peoples whose governments also did not invite intervention."

This deserves to be read.

Expose: India is classist

Vir Sanghvi, in this quite hilarious article, stumbles onto a shocking fact about India:

"We are still shamelessly class-ist. We regard certain professions as so contemptible that any reference to them is treated as an insult."

And in what context did he reach this radical conclusion?

"[MP from Kerala] Abdul Wahab was supposed to board an Indian Airlines (now called Air India) flight at Kozhikode airport on Tuesday. He arrived at the aircraft late, escorted by the Indian Airlines manager. The aircraft’s pilot began shouting at the manager and complaining about the delay.

Why there was a delay is a matter of some controversy. According to Wahab, he had reached the airport on time, and had waited patiently in the VIP lounge to board. He suggests that Indian Airlines may have taken too long to emplane him. The pilot initially claimed that he had arrived late and expected the aircraft to be held up for him, but this claim has now been tempered.

What happened next, however, is clear. Wahab told the pilot to stop shouting at the Indian Airlines manager and said that he was no more than a ‘glorified driver’."

Hit the link for the best of what passes for class analysis in the mainstream media nowadays. I'm going to find myself a hockey stick.

Free speech for non-citizens?

There's one aspect of the recent furore about the treatment of Taslima Nasreen which I believe hasn't received sufficient attention: the question of her citizenship. Unlike the producers of Jodha(a?)-Akbar, for example, she is not a citizen of India. She is a visitor at the courtesy of the Indian government, and as such is subject to restrictions on the enjoyment of certain rights which Indian citizens can avail of freely. To argue that what the Indian government has done in her case is unconscionable (and I refer here to her being asked to leave, not about her 'house arrest') is to take a position on an issue about which reasonable disagreement can exist.

The Constitution's founders, in their wisdom, founded the republic on the following basis:

'We the People of India having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a Sovereign Democratic Republic and to secure to all its citizens...liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship' (the Preamble to the unamended Constitution)

The limitation of the enjoyment of the right of free expression was quite deliberate, as may be seen from the wording of Art. 19(1)(a):

'All citizens shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression'

Understanding the Constitution as it stood in 1950, therefore, it appears quite evident that certain freedoms are not automatically available to non-citizens of India. Parliament may, at its discretion, have extended these freedoms to such individuals, but this is not mandated by the Constitution. Thus, there's nothing immediately unconscionable about restricting the speech and expression rights of Taslima.

I don't think it should automatically follow, either, that the Indian government has an obligation to extend these constitutional freedoms to non-citizens in general, and to Ms Nasreen in particular. An Indian's citizenship is a valuable part of her identity, we have certain peculiar rights and obligations to enjoy and uphold by virtue of our constitutional position in the Indian state (since the Union of India rests on the endorsement of we, the people). To extend the enjoyment of the rights available to Indians to everyone else wholesale is to depreciate the value which one's own citizenship has. We have certain rights by virtue of our Indian-ness; either we have been born to the country, and have political, cultural and/or social ties (however distant) to it, or our parents do, and we enjoy the same ties by virtue of our relationship to them, or we have demonstrated a commitment to the idea of India by living there for a certain period of time (these are the requirements of Art. 5, and the Citizenship Act). Ms Nasreen is a political refugee, and it is quite a matter of pride that she chose India as her base away from persecution (as did the Tibetans, but more about them a little later), but she chose to live here at the pleasure of the government, and on the terms which it imposed on her, as on other visitors. In this respect, she is different from those who protested her presence in the country: the government is constitutionally obliged to respect their wishes, but it is not so required to protect her speech rights. When caught between the demands of (some of) its constituents, and the interests of a visitor, the government chose the former. It can well be debated whether this was the right postion to take, this is a matter on which reasonable disagreement can exist. It is unfair, however, to hold that there is only one position which the Indian government could morally take on the issue, to do so is to ignore the ethos of our Constitution: that being Indian means something special, and the enjoyment of the rights of Indian citizenship are a mark of distinction in this respect.

This is not to appear to be a rabid nationalist, far from it. Cosmopolitan arguments carry a good deal of influence with me, and I cannot deny that I have fully enjoyed the protection of good laws in the countries I have lived in as a guest. However, cosmopolitanism is not a universal value, it is possible to have reasonable (and morally acceptable) disagreement about whether a State should be cosmopolitan or not (e.g. Bhutan), and the degree to which it should be accommodating of the rights and interests of others who are not part of its political constituency. In light of India's experiences with imperial domination not too long ago, it is perhaps not surprising that its citizenship requirements are so onerous. Perhaps some day this will change, but that day is not here yet.

A word about Tibetan refugees and speech rights: I am a strong critic of the government's policy to bar Tibetan refugees from protesting in Delhi. This needs a longer discussion than a post-script, but I will outline my position in brief here: given the strength of the Tibetan government-in-exile's association with India, and the invaluable contributions of the Tibetan community to the State and the regions where they have settled, it is unfair to deny them the protection of the rights which other citizens enjoy. Questions of line-drawing, and substantive distinctions may well arise, but I think the point should not be over-emphasised too much. It would be tough to compare the contributions of the 100,000-odd Tibetan settlers in India with those of Ms Nasreen, and not just for reasons arising out of numerical superiority.

A short requiem for Indian civilization

In which civilized country does this happen?

'Seventy-five-year-old Rajpati Devi of Kharagpur died on the streets of Calcutta early on Thursday, after being denied entry into a government-run hospital through the night.

The liver cancer patient died unattended after being referred by Nil Ratan Sircar (NRS) Medical College and Hospital to Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute, where she was refused permission to even enter the premises.'

But all is well, for the babus are in action. Or are they?

' “We have not received any complaint yet. I will get in touch with the institute director and ask for a report once we get the complaint,” state health minister Surjya Kanta Mishra told [Telegraph] Metro late on Thursday.

The vice-chairman of the institute’s governing body added that the health department would “definitely look into the matter” once it received a formal complaint.'

I understand how well-intended concerns about the use of the label 'civilized' to create distinctions between nations are, but sometimes politically correct squeamishness just has to take a back seat to proper indignation. Can anyone, with a straight face, claim the mantle of civilization for India anymore?

PS - this post has been festering for a while, mainly in response to this, this, and this. If, as Emerson had us know, the true test of civilization is the kind of man it turns out, we've come a long, long way from the India which produced Tagore.

A New Bengali Radicalism?

Ashis Chakravarti, in this Telegraph column, wonders if the Nandigram protests in Kolkata provides 'two simple messages':

'One, Bengal at last perhaps wants an alternative to the CPI(M). Two, the search for it cannot end in a return to the Seventies'

I'm not sure if this is true for all Bengalis, but as an analysis of the change in attitude towards violence among the bhadralok (especially those who had openly embraced militancy during the Naxalite period), the column makes for interesting reading. There's also more to the Ghare Baire reference in the piece than Chakravarti lets on, but that's matter for a different post.

Celebrating ad hoc justice

I've been hearing many positive comments about stuff like this, and the public's reaction to the Rizwanur case in general. The middle class Bengali, tamed to within a shade of domestic felinity, now fully occupies himself with illusions of reclaiming the tiger's mantle. I am reluctant to join in the general enthusiasm for the popular reaction in cases like this, for much the same reason as some have problems with celebrating the 'indomitable spirit of Bombay'. I fear that we are becoming a nation of people who seek justice in the details, for whom instances of individuated claim resolution are sufficient to quench the desire for redressal. Instead of diverting our energies towards systemic reforms, to use such tragic cases as rallying points to press for an end to police impunity in general, we pat ourselves on our back for our candle-lit vigils, and our 'hard-hitting' editorials.

We had found ourselves in a great moral moment last month: we had the opportunity to not let the tragic death of Rizwanur go unatoned, and to use the tremendous groundswell of sentiment to actually press for radical change in the way we are governed. Instead, the CBI files a case against Todi, the CM calls on Rizwanur's family, and we are easily satisfied. Come tomorrow, and it's back to business for us, and for the defunct, dysfunctional bureaucracy which holds us in its thrall. Through our callousness, we are all complicit in the deaths of a thousand Rizwanurs. And no amount of lighting candles is going to change that.

Rethinking West Bengal's caste-free status?

Yogendra Yadav calls the Left Front out for double-speak and hypocritical commitment to rights-talk in this Indian Express op-ed today. Pointing out the inconsistency in the CPM's actions, and it's positioning as "a party that swears by human rights and lofty democratic ideals lies vast hypocrisy", Yadav also notes that Nandigram isn't the first time something like this has taken place in West Bengal:

"The story of Alipurduar goes back to January 10 1987, twenty years before Nandigram. On that day, UTJAS had organised a rally of what they estimated to be about 50,000 people in Alipurduar, the headquarters of Cooch Behar district. As the rally started, they noticed something unusual: The police was nowhere in sight. Soon the rallyists found themselves surrounded by and under attack from the armed cadre of the CPM. The rally was dispersed as unarmed protesters were beaten and chased. The police surfaced, only to arrest the victims, once the party cadre had finished their job.

Note the parallels between Nandigram and Alipurduar: The Party faces a political challenge, decides to nip it in the bud and executes an onslaught in sync with the police and administration. The only difference this time was that there was unexpected resistance. And that an anti-SEZ movement makes more news today than a dalit movement did twenty years ago. There were no Gopal Gandhi or Tanika and Sumit Sarkar then to point out that the emperor had no clothes."

Nothing new here for those who've lived in West Bengal, but what is even more interesting is what follows after:

"This gap between the CPM’s preaching and practice did not surprise me. I have been looking at Christophe Jaffrelot’s research on the social profile of MLAs in India. His analysis shows that the proportion of upper caste MLAs is on the decline all over the country since the 1960s. There is only one exception: In West Bengal the proportion of upper castes has increased in the state assembly after 1977, after the Left Front came to power. A coincidence? Not if you calculate the caste composition of successive Left Front ministries: About two thirds of the ministers come from the top three jatis (Brahman, Boddis, Kayasthas). Perhaps you did not notice that West Bengal was the last major state to come out with an OBC list to implement Mandal. You might say, the CPM believes in class, not caste. Fair enough, but then why is the CPM in Delhi so aggressive about championing Mandal? Why does it present itself as more Mandalite than thou?

Or read the data supplied by the West Bengal government to the Sachar Committee. With 25.2 per cent of Muslim population, the state government has provided just 2.1 per cent of the government jobs to Muslims. West Bengal has the worst record of all Indian states in this respect. Gujarat has just 9.1 per cent Muslims and has 5.4 per cent Muslims among government employees. The irony, of course, is that the CPM was the first party to come out with a statement demanding implementation of the Sachar Report!"

Yadav's conjecture is a serious one, in essence arguing that in spite of the pride it takes in its apparent castelessness and commitment to secular tolerance, the West Bengal government is far worse off in respect of increasing opportunities for Muslims and lower castes than other states, even ones which have a proven track record of ill-treatment of minorities. This also turns much of the received political wisdom about caste and religion in West Bengal on its head, for it challenges the commonly held notion that institutional discrimination against lower castes and Muslims in Bengal is hardly prevalent.

Postscript: More on caste in Bengal:

Anjan Ghosh, "Cast(e) out in West Bengal" (Seminar)
Sandip Bayopadhyay, "Bengal's Caste Prejudices" (The Statesman)
VB Rawat, "Dalits Ask for Justice in West Bengal" (Countercurrents Newsletter)
Sukanta Bhattacharyya, "Caste, Class and Politics in West Bengal: Case Study of a Village in Burdwan", Economic and Political Weekly, January 18, 2003 (noting that, based on the study of data in one village in this district, "the numerical strength of the lower castes and lower classes has been established at the level of panchayat and other organisations. But at the leadership level, concentration of power is found in the hands of the middle peasantry", and further, "At the level of the elected village body one would expect a communist party to have a high percentage of agricultural labourers and poor peasants [Lieten 1992]. My findings show an absence of this group in the party level, which does not signify any radical restructuring of the rural power structure.")