January 2008 – Anasuya Sengupta

He had a dream

Monday (January 21st) was Martin Luther King’s birthday; it also happens to be the only public holiday commemorating and celebrating the life of an African American in the USA. It seemed appropriate for CommonDreams.org to publish his speech of ‘independence’ from the war in Vietnam, called ‘Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence’, delivered in April 1967. It speaks to all of us, across the world, as we watch this nation debate wars that affect us, an economy that affects us, and a future President who will affect us. Let’s hope they choose right.

An excerpt:

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. When machines and computers, profit and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look easily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: ” This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from re-ordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are the days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take: offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wombs of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to ad just to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us re-dedicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

Image from CommonDreams.org

My heart is in Nairobi…

The only downside to having lots of friends across the globe is that you worry about them when things fall apart. In Gujarat, for instance, or Pakistan. Or Kenya. A few of us have been trying to contact friends there over the past few days, but it’s been tough. I’ve been reading Global Voices and Ethan Zuckerman’s blog, and watching Al Jazeera’s coverage on YouTube.

For those of you who came in late, violence has broken out across Kenya over the disputed election victory of President Mwai Kibaki, though ethnic tensions are believed to underlie much of the violence. As The Economist puts it:

THE decision to return Kenya’s 76-year-old incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, to office was not made by the Kenyan people but by a small group of hardline leaders from Mr Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe. They made up their minds before the result was announced, perhaps even before the opposition candidate, Raila Odinga, had opened up a lead in early returns from the December 27th election. It was a civil coup.

According to the BBC, over 180,000 people have been displaced and more than 300 killed.

This is today’s news update from the Kenyan blogger M., writing at Thinker’s Room:

Official death toll is now 300. Unofficial death toll is much larger
Yesterday there were skirmishes in Bahati, Maringo, Kangemi, Arwings Kodhek, Industrial Area and Thika Road
A man was killed on Thika Road when police fired in the air, severing an electrical cable that fell on him
ODM rally was moved to Saturday
At long last Mwai Kibaki addressed the nation in a lackluster speech long on hot air, ambiguity, vagueness and lethargy and short of concrete solutions
Archbishop Desmond Tutu arrived and met with the ODM leadership. The grapevine has it that Kibaki initially refused to meet with him. Subsequently it turned out that a meeting was indeed scheduled for this day.
Again proving that no matter how low the bar is, stupidity will always find a way to slither under, Government Spokesman Alfred Mutua, rose eyed lens firmly on, castigates the international community for interfering.
Flies on the wall allege that Kibaki himself is pretty amenable to negotiation. But as is the hallmark of his regime other elements in his administration are taking hardline positions.
Same flies say that Kibaki is willing to form a coalition government with the opposition. This I have to see to believe.
Nairobi water company allays fears that the city water supply is poisoned.

Blog aggregators for Kenya can be found at Kenya Unlimited and Mashada. Reading bloggers’ accounts on them seemed horrifically akin to reading stories of communal violence in India; substitute ethnicities for religion and caste identities, and there you have it. Stupid, unnecessary, maiming horror. As they say in Swahili (or at least I hope this is correct), we need wakati wa amani; a time of peace.

***

Update: in an extraordinary combination of technology and activism, Kenyan bloggers have created an amazing website to track the violence in Kenya, at Ushahidi (in fact, I want to check with them if we can develop something similar for India, and elsewhere). Add serendipity to that: Ashwin saw this, and suggested to his friend, Nick Rabinowitz, that this was the perfect place for the timeline tool he’d created. Sure enough, a few emails later, here it is, an extremely useful addition to the Ushahidi site: the timeline of events. Yay for all those who put this together, and a special yay for Nick!
Image from the Thinker’s Room.

A message from Pakistan

Farida Shaheed, one of the founders of Shirkat Gah (a women’s resource centre in Pakistan) and WLUML (the network for women living under Muslim laws), wrote in from Pakistan. With her consent, I share this. It seems clear that despite her shortcomings, Benazir represented a hope for Pakistan that has been horrifically snuffed out.

Dear friends thank you for all your notes of concern,

As a new year starts, I sit here still numbed by the events, paralysed by the events that seem to have shut down our ability to think and act, unable to concentrate (like many others).

Only after her assassination have we come to realize just how many of our hopes were pinned on Benazir, her presence and leadership of the only mainstream party that consistently speaks of the federation, of the poor, the peasants, the workers; spoke of equality for all, especially the minorities and women. The one party with supporters until now across a deeply divided and troubled country, who gave us hope that, maybe – just maybe we could turn this nightmare around, if elections were held and if they were not entirely rigged, and if we received some breathing space…so many if’s and still we dared to hope.

I met Asma [Jahangir] on the 29th and thanked her for having inviting Benazir that night last month as soon as they lifted the house arrest on Asma and Benazir both. Asma said ‘but no, I didn’t call the meeting. Perhaps she was meant to meet us all that last time because it was she who phoned and asked for a meeting with civil society’…A meeting we were pleasantly surprised at, that left us commenting on how much she had matured. She listened to all of us with great patience and grace, answered with patience and good cheer, even some of the sillier points made/questions asked. She reserved her fire for a short passionate intervention on how the fight with the extremists was our own fight not someone else’s agenda and on how precarious Pakistan’s situation was, and how it was time to act.

And yes, it was important that she was a woman, a woman of great courage of defiance and of passion who led from the front foot (as they say in cricket). I am old enough to remember the day she became Prime Minister in 1988 and how immediately – and I do mean immediately – after eleven years of brutal and increasing oppression of women (and others) under Zia, the atmosphere shifted the sense of oppression in the streets lifted and women felt the burden lighten. And if she didn’t always deliver (and often she didn’t), as peasants said of her father, at least she made us the promises, and gave us hope.

Right now, it is difficult to foresee the future, whether and when elections will take place – what will happen during Muharram and ashura, around the corner, when nerves are ragged anyway and the menace of potential violence lurks.

We can only hope that some sense prevails somewhere, that elections are held as quickly as possible and that we find a way out of this spiral descending to madness…

Farida

Image from the Wikipedia entry on Benazir Bhutto.

A prayer for 2008

A poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz (translated by Agha Shahid Ali), from the site Indian Muslims, via Shivam Vij.

du’aa

aaiye haath uThaayeN ham bhii
ham jinheN rasm-e-du’aa yaad nahiiN
ham jinheN soz-e-muhabbat ke sivaa
ko’ii but, ko’ii Khudaa yaad nahiiN

aaiye arz guzaareN ke nigaar-e-hastii
zehr-e-imroz meN shiiriini-e-fardaa bhar de
voh jinheN taab-garaaN-baarii-e-ayyaam nahiiN
un ki palkoN pe shab-o-roz ko halkaa kar de

jin kii aaNkhoN ko rukh-e-subh ka yaaraa bhii nahiiN
un kii raatoN meN ko’ii shamaa munavvar kar de
jin ke qadmoN ko kisii rah ka sahaara bhii nahiiN
un kii nazroN pe ko’ii raah ujaagar kar de

jinkaa diiN pairavi-e-kazbo-riyaa hai un ko
himmat-e-kufr mile, jurrat-e-tehqiiq mile
jin ke sar muntazir-e-tegh-e-jafaa haiN un ko
dast-e-qaatil ko jhaTak dene ki taufiiq mile

ishq ka sarr-e-nihaaN jaan tapaaN hai jis se
aaj iqraar kareN aur tapish miT jaaye
harf-e-haq dil meiN khaTakta hai jo kaNTe kii tarah
aaj izhaar kareN or khalish miT jaaye

Prayer

Come, let us join our hands in prayer.
We, who can not remember the exact ritual
We, who, except the passion and fire of Love,
do not recall any god, remember no idol.

Let us beseech, that may the Divine Sketcher
mix a sweet future in the present’s poison
For those who can’t bear the burden of time,
the rolling of days on their souls, may He lighten

Those, whose eyes don’t have in their fate, the rosy cheek of dawn
may He set for them some flame alight.
For those, whose steps know no path
may He show their eyes some way in the night.

May those whose faith is following falsehood and pomp
have the courage to deny, the boldness to discover.
May those whose heads wait for the oppressors sword
have the ability to push off the hand of the executioner.

This secret of Love, which has put the soul on fire,
may we express it today and the burning be gone.
This word of Truth that pricks in the core of the heart,
may we say it today and the itching be gone.

Faiz, 14th August 1967

Is there anything of cheer from 2007?

It’s been a rotten end of the year for us South Asians. Modi is back – and unsurprisingly – from all accounts of friends working on the ground in Gujarat. Most activists said that the Tehelka expose of the 2002 genocide – horrific, remarkable and courageous as it was – was bad timing; it polarised the polity further and strengthened rather than weakened Modi’s hand. However, Tehelka also explores what Modi’s victory might mean: for his party, his state and the rest of India. My 2008 hope: that Moditva cannot work anywhere else in the country. My 2008 worry that belies the hope: Can Karnataka be next on the hate list? There are many reasons to fear that it might well be, and I will explore that in another post (and one of my 2008 resolutions: when I tell myself I will do a blog post, I must *write* it, within… er… seven days??).

And then, in Pakistan, Benazir’s assassination. As Tariq Ali put it:

Even those of us sharply critical of Benazir Bhutto’s behaviour and policies – both while she was in office and more recently – are stunned and angered by her death. Indignation and fear stalk the country once again.

However, there is some cheer left in the year yet. As we look back, Medea Benjamin provides a list of ten ‘good’ things about 2007, which include the elections in Australia, where Labour Party’s Kevin Rudd beat the Conservative Prime Minister John Howard, and the one defiant stand of the Iraqi government and people against the US, which was to vote against its nationalised oil system becoming open to foreign corporate control.

She also celebrates – but not enough, methinks – my favourite politician of the year: the Papua New Guinea representative at the UN climate conference in Bali, Kevin Conrad. In the Telegraph’s account of it, the Indian ambassador (yes!) had begun by saying that the draft ‘road map’ did not clearly indicate the responsibility of industrialised nations to supply developing countries with clean technologies, finance and support to deal with the problem of climate change “in a measurable manner”. Paula Dobriansky, the chief negotiator for the US, replied that India’s proposed change was something “we are not prepared to accept”. With frustration mounting, the killer blow came from Kevin Conrad.

He used James Connaughton’s (Bush’s primary climate change advisor) diplomatic gaffe of earlier in the week to humiliate the Americans. Mr Connaughton had said: “We will lead. We will continue to lead but leadership also requires others to fall in line and follow.”

So therefore, at this impasse, when Papua New Guinea was called upon to speak, Kevin Conrad said this to the American delegates: “We seek your leadership. But if for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way.” The audio of this remarkable statement is here.

Perhaps that is the wish we need for all politicians across the world in 2008: if you are not willing to lead with integrity, justice and courage, listening to the voices of your people, then please… Get out of the way.