Category: Politics

Yes, Nepal can!

So California couldn’t manage it; Proposition 8 – a ban on gay marriage – was passed, and the California Supreme Court will now examine whether the ban is constitutional or not.

And India is still mulling over it; the Indian Supreme Court is yet to give its final verdict on Section 377, which criminalises gay sex.

But Nepal leads the way: in a historic judgement, delivered on 17 November, Nepal’s Supreme Court not only reiterated that LGBTIs are ‘natural persons’, entitled to equal rights, identity and expression, regardless of their sex at birth, but has also set up a commission that will recommend a same-sex marriage act for the Nepal government.

What made this extraordinary moment possible? One reason is clearly the tireless activism of LGBTI groups in Nepal, led amongst others, by the first openly gay member of Nepal’s constituent assembly, the Communist Party of Nepal (United) representative Sunil Babu Pant. Another factor seems to be the participation of LGBTI in campaigns for a democratic, secular Nepal, a process that led to the relinquishing of the monarchy by King Gyanendra in April, and a new constituent assembly in which the Maoists have the majority.

As Sunil Pant himself said, on a recent visit to India:

In Nepal, the LGBTI communities were part of the campaign for garnering votes for the Communist Party of Nepal. They approached me to campaign and I managed to secure 15,500 votes. It makes a statement that LGBTI people are interested in matters of politics and governance and not just sex. The campaign not only gave LGBTI issues visibility but a platform to negotiate for rights.

And a final interesting possibility raised by a Global Voices commentator from Nepal, is that the country’s predominantly Hindu culture is more accepting of gay rights. She quotes an excerpt from Ruth Vanita’s essay on Homosexuality and Hinduism, in support:

In 2004, Hinduism Today reporter Rajiv Malik asked several Hindu swamis (teachers) their opinion of same-sex marriage. The swamis expressed a range of opinions, positive and negative. They felt free to differ with each other; this is evidence of the liveliness of the debate, made possible by the fact that Hinduism has no one hierarchy or leader. As Mahant Ram Puri remarked, “We do not have a rule book in Hinduism. We have a hundred million authorities.

However, while this argument should surely have traction in India – and is used by sexuality rights advocates – the Indian government’s stand has been, rather ironically, more Victorian than Vedic. Whether the courage of Nepal’s jurists inspires their colleagues in India, remains to be seen. This is one case of cross-border trafficking that I would welcome.

Responsibility by association

My father worked for thirty five years in an organisation that many would claim has committed some egregious acts of violence against Indians. I have worked for six years heading a project with an agency that many would claim to be at the front line of some of those acts. The ‘organisation’ is the Indian state, and my father was reputedly a bureaucrat of integrity, probity and a deep sense of accountability. The ‘agency’ was the Karnataka police, with whom I coordinated a UNICEF partnership on violence against women and children, and I believe I did it with a deep sense of justice. Yet even if one were to acknowledge that these are not monolithic structures, and they are not peopled by monsters (however monstrous some of their actions may appear), it would be easy to accuse me of co-operating with the state and being co-opted by the police. Am I coercive and violent at worst, or naive and ineffectual at best? I would hope neither, though being ineffectual is a recurring nightmare.

… I understand how invidious ‘guilt by association’ can be, as an argument for damning someone.

Yet, in the current debate around Sonal Shah‘s nomination to the Obama advisory group – and her alleged links to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad through her family’s and her own varying levels of involvement with the organisation – the parallels stop here for two reasons. First, the Indian state is not the VHP (though it appeared co-terminous with the Gujarat government in 2002), and there are various ways, however convoluted or difficult, to hold the state responsible for its in/actions. Even more critically, the Indian state’s constitutional foundation is that of a democratic republic premised on principles of justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity to *all* citizens, however flawed its follow through might be; I am yet to believe that the VHP is a flagbearer for these principles.

The parallel also ends with the immutable fact that I have not been asked to join Obama’s advisory board (and never will be). However, if I were ever to be in a position of power, privilege and leadership – whether by appointment or implication – and I was challenged about my past ‘associations’ with the Indian state, I would not only welcome the challenge, I would think it irrefutably appropriate.

My key disappointment with the entire debate that has sprung up over Shah’s appointment – and her own response to it – is that it continues to be framed, if unwittingly, in problematic binaries: in the waning days of Bush, we still seem to settle on ‘you’re either with us, or against us’. On the one hand, Vijay Prashad is absolutely correct in demanding some sense of accountability for Sonal Shah’s political antecedents. If she was national coordinator of VHP-America till 2001, it means that at least until the age of 33 (she is reportedly 40 now), she was in a position of leadership in an organisation that has been implicated in egregious acts of bigotry, hate-mongering and sectarianism back in India. Amardeep Singh may claim that a scrutiny of Shah is not warranted till she is in a government appointed position that has connections with India; this seems to me to be a case of acquittal by dis-association… surely we have a right to ask probing questions of someone who is ‘representing’ both issues of ‘development’ and (even if unwillingly) issues of the Indian American community?

On the other hand, in Prashad’s somewhat lengthy telling of Shah’s history and VHP’s actions in Gujarat (while touching upon the Obama campaign and US interventionism), he fails to give us the substance of his conversation with Shah at a conference. I can well imagine that this is through the slippages of time and memory, but I would have found it helpful to hear a well-delineated argument about why he was convinced she understood, and did not repudiate, the political implications of her past associations. In personalising the encounter, and limiting its description to a ‘bitter exchange’, the very valid questions he poses lose some force. Singh’s defence of Shah is more subtle from this perspective: he posits that she may well have been involved with the VHP as she grew up, found its politics too problematic, and dis-engaged herself from the organisation. Still, this too seems disingenuous, given that she was 33 when coordinating earthquake relief in Gujarat; at this age, it is hard to think of her as being ‘naive’ about VHP politics… why not choose any of the many organisations also doing relief work with no right-wing antecedents whatsoever? This is when guilt by association slips into guilt by action (or inaction, as the case may be).

In fact, it worries me that if she was indeed unclear about the connections between disaster relief and the growing power of fundamentalist organisations (connections that have repeatedly been seen across the world, not just in India), then her understanding of the politics of development may also be suspect. In her own statement, she gives no indication that she understands that humanitarian work can be political in and of itself, or have deeply political impacts: she herself calls it ‘apolitical’. A more honest and self-reflexive analysis of her former position as VHP-A national coordinator would have helped support her claims of condemning the ‘politics of division, of ethnic or religious hatred, of violence and intimidation as a political tool’; instead she elides that past. I am deeply thankful, however, that she clearly and specifically disassociates herself from the ‘views espoused by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or any such organization’. Unfortunately, these organisations do not see fit to disassociate themselves from her; currently, the RSS is making arrangements to hold a public reception in her honour in Gujarat.

Complicating the debate, what I found both disturbing and thought-provoking, in the commentary for and against Sonal Shah, was this statement:

As far as second generation Indians affiliations with groups such as VHP, I too was raised attending some of their youth camps. I assure you they do not train us in weapons training or to hate Muslims. Being born and/or raised in this country, second generation Indian Americans have few options about learning about their faith or their culture. VHP has had a recognizable base in the US for as far as I can remember and I am 30 now. They were one of the few organizations that taught children belonging to Hindu families of their religion and culture. While we may not agree 100% ideologically with them, it does not mean we are fanatic by our associaton (sic) with them.

This is precisely the point at which the larger debate of activism around ideals of secularism and plurality, stumbles in India, and perhaps (as I witness it now), here in the US. Why is our analysis not able to convey the slippery slope between VHP summer schools and the genocide in Gujarat? Have we, as activists for a progressive world, so denounced a middle ground of faith, religiosity and associated ‘culture’, that we have ended up allowing the fascist right to take over that space? Is a VHP summer school the only option that a young Hindu growing up in America has for learning about her heritage, whatever this might mean? How far are we committed to having ‘youth camps’ about syncreticism, pluralism, and that most particular aspect of Indian heritage: secularism as both the church-state separation, as well as a respect for all faiths? With histories that include Hindu and Muslim worship at Baba Budangiri, or the Hindu and Christian celebrations at Velankinni?

And finally, do people not have the right to find some sense of meaning for themselves in a complex and violent world, even if those meanings are not always our own? Do we negate the nuances of spirituality, faith and religiosity by hardily lumping them together with conservatism and fundamentalism? Surely the common values should be of peace, equality and humaneness, even if the approaches are different? As an activist in India post the Gujarat genocide, I asked myself precisely these questions in an essay entitled ‘Fundamentalisms of the Progressive‘; knowing fully well that I could be accused of being naive at best, and renegade at worst. Yet I think those of us fighting the long fight against the politics of hate and oppression, need to keep analysing our own positions and strategies, and have the wisdom and honesty to acknowledge past omissions and commissions, an honesty I equally expect from someone like Sonal Shah. And unlike the somewhat blunt debate of is-she-isn’t-she, I see this process of probity being less about guilt, and more about responsibility by association.

The Onion peels it all away

From the Onion, 5 November 2008:

Although polls going into the final weeks of October showed Sen. Obama in the lead, it remained unclear whether the failing economy, dilapidated housing market, crumbling national infrastructure, health care crisis, energy crisis, and five-year-long disastrous war in Iraq had made the nation crappy enough to rise above 300 years of racial prejudice and make lasting change.

“Today the American people have made their voices heard, and they have said, ‘Things are finally as terrible as we’re willing to tolerate,” said Obama, addressing a crowd of unemployed, uninsured, and debt-ridden supporters. “To elect a black man, in this country, and at this time—these last eight years must have really broken you.”

Added Obama, “It’s a great day for our nation.”

Carrying a majority of the popular vote, Obama did especially well among women and young voters, who polls showed were particularly sensitive to the current climate of everything being fucked. Another contributing factor to Obama’s victory, political experts said, may have been the growing number of Americans who, faced with the complete collapse of their country, were at last able to abandon their preconceptions and cast their vote for a progressive African-American.

[…]

As we enter a new era of equality for all people, the election of Barack Obama will decidedly be a milestone in U.S. history, undeniable proof that Americans, when pushed to the very brink, are willing to look past outward appearances and judge a person by the quality of his character and strength of his record. So as long as that person is not a woman.

Tom Lehrer famously declared that political satire died the day Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. But if it’s dead already, what happens when the Onion calls a spade… <horror>… a spade? Never before in the twenty year history of this immodest publication has such a moment been seen.

Potted biography of Political Satire: Henry Kissinger wins Nobel Peace Prize. Satire dies. Bush becomes President. Satire resurrected. America elects its first black President ever, just in time for its own particular annus horribilis (offstage whisper: and still not ready for a woman). Satire closely resembles reality. Satire collapses and is DOA. Dead on Assembly.

Rest in Pieces, Satire.

Vote

At around six in the morning on the 1st of May 1997, I was on Magdalen Bridge in Oxford, listening as the Magdalen choir sang in the summer, while the sun came up from behind and shone brighter with each clear note. I then walked slowly to the polling station near home, gathering friends along the way, and cast my vote in a historic election: a landslide victory for Labour, a resounding defeat for the Conservatives after eighteen years of Tory rule. I could vote in the national polls because I was a member of the Commonwealth, and in the local elections because I had been resident in Britain for over six months by then. It was a deeply satisfying, if quirky, event for an Indian to participate in: an acknowledgment, if you like, of the crooked and sometimes unexpected pathways of colonisation, the bound histories of coloniser and colonised.

I’ve thought about those elections a great deal in the past few months, and particularly yesterday. Not in the least because much of that process was about the overwhelming support for Tony Blair, amidst Labour slogans of ‘Enough is Enough’ and ‘Britain Deserves Better’. Personality is key to political victories of this kind, and I can only hope that Obama’s course in history will not end up feeling like betrayal, the broken promise of Blair.

There is much to be critiqued, and even more to be analysed, about these American elections. Including the irritating – and dubious – notion of US exceptionalism when it comes to electing a black man as President. As some of us felt last night while watching the results come in, it wasn’t only ‘Yes, We Can’, and ‘Yes, We Did’, though these were powerful thoughts. For the rest of the world, it was also a sense of ‘Yes, About Time You Did’.

But let those analyses be for tomorrow. For today, I was privileged to be part of an extraordinary moment in a nation’s history, even if as visitor not citizen. The weight of that history came home to me not while listening to the somewhat fatuous commentaries of the news anchors, but through the tears of Congressman John Lewis –  a man who was left beaten and bloody on an Alabama bridge forty years ago, as he marched for the right of African Americans to vote. He called it “a wonderful night… a night of thanksgiving,” and I thought to myself about another elections in 1994, when apartheid was dismantled in South Africa, not blow by blow, but vote by vote.

A South African poet, Adam Schwartzman, wrote this poem at that time, and it rings true for first time voters across the world, and for those, like me, who invest in the notion of participation, who spend years, months, days, working and waiting for that opportunity. Lucky to be born as a voting citizen in a complex country, I try not to take that destiny for granted; in my first elections in India, I went to nearly 20 polling stations before I found my name on the rolls (and Yes, It Wasn’t Easy).

However flawed our democracies, however complicated our experiences of citizenship, casting our vote is a moment of arrival, as well as of continued journey: as voters, as citizens, we bear witness to both.

 

Vote

I could hear our air over the radio, being everywhere
differently, belonging to no man. I cried for you

—you dumb girl—standing in line with the naughty, safe emigrés,
too far from my home and thinking how you might be now—

water in Retief’s Kloof, night on the Malutis,
silence in the suburbs. When I was a boy I

had you. We were growing ready, learning to be blessed
and slightly forgetful for the time we’d grow away.

I’ve waited to do this with you. I saw the very last day
out with one soft cross. It was my first time too.

Adam Schwartzman (from The Good Life. The Dirty Life. and other stories, Carcanet 1995)
London, 26 April 1994

 

What a long, strange trip it’s been…

So it’s finally November 4th, and since I can’t GOAV (get out and vote) myself, I will WTV (watch the vote) instead. But as a quick round-up, just a few images and thoughts that have stuck with me through this long, strange trip. First, a video that a few young women put together for Sarah Palin, which I thought was perfect for all those crazies who thought Hillary supporters might swing Sarah’s way. Yeah, right (sic)!

Then the ‘roast‘ at the Alfred E. Smith dinner, which I thought was a remarkable event; two Presidential candidates, a day after an intense final presidential debate, meet to make fun of each other and themselves. Highly recommended for politicians in India. Obama did tell us he was Superman (as if America didn’t know that already): “contrary to the rumors you have heard, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father, Jor-el, to save the planet Earth,” while McCain invoked Joe the Plumber – again! – to tell us he “recently signed a very lucrative contract with a wealthy couple to handle all the work on all seven of their houses”. I have to say, McCain had brilliant comic timing, Obama much less so. But then it’s another sort of timing that will count today.

Which brings me to the final moment, that my favourite pollsters at fivethirtyeight.com wrote about, after a rally in North Carolina. In Sean Quinn‘s words, “something is stirring in America”:

Back at the rally, after the march had left MLK Gardens, I’d gone back for the car while Brett took photos, and I spotted a very old black man in a sharp Sunday suit walking slowly at the very back of the huge march. He hadn’t yet arrived at the voting center, and I decided to find him when I got back.

I wanted to go talk to him, to ask him what this moment meant to him. He was a guy who you take one glance at, and know, that guy’s seen it all. I wanted a quote. I had my journalist hat on. I thought, this will be great.

So when I got back to the voting location with the car, I went to find him in the line. Eventually I spotted him, and was ready to walk up the few feet between us and introduce myself when I stopped in my tracks.

A young black boy, no more than eight years old, walked up to this man, who was at least eighty. The boy offered the man a sticker, probably an “I Voted” sticker, but I couldn’t see. The man took the sticker and paused. Silently, he looked down at the boy, who was looking back up at the man. The man put his hand gently on the boy’s head, and I saw his eyes glisten.

I didn’t ask the man for a quote. I didn’t need to. I walked over by myself, behind the community center, and I sat down on a bench next to the track, and wept.

The Communist Manipesto

Other than the fact that Stephen Colbert called it that on his late night show last week – “what does Karl Marx put on his pasta? Communist Manipesto” – it was interesting that when I went dressed as the Spectre in Red for a Halloween party (accompanying Ashwin’s turning-gray-grad-student-reading-Marx), so few people should have recognised a take-off on the Communist Manifesto. The original first two lines read:

A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.

My version red:

A spectre is haunting America — the spectre of communism. All the powers of the Grand Old Party have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: McCain and Palin, Rove and Dole, Fox and Drudge.

Is it really that most people in this country are so wary of the S(ocialism) and C(ommunism) words that they don’t know what has to count as one of the most important historical documents ever (whatever your political persuasions or leanings)? In Berkeley, of all places? Ah well. Perhaps I should give unto myself a new title: Redistributor-of-Sauce. Move over, Colbert.

Darkening his image?

Ashwin Madia, whose parents were reportedly Mumbaikers till they moved to the US, is a Democrat running for Congress from Minnesota. According to a KARE news report, he has had his image ‘darkened’ in a Republican attack ad. Literally.

If this was India, we’d have Fair and Handsome ads that told him he couldn’t win without the bleach. Aaargh. Racism is alive, peeps… and perhaps it’ll be severely unwell post November 4th? Now that’s the audacity of hope.

Section 377 and Proposition 8

Here in California, both advocates for and against are calling it the second biggest battle after the Presidential elections on November 4: the fate of Proposition 8 on the ballot, or the move to ban gay marriages. In June this year, same-sex marriages were made legal in California (the second state after Massachusetts, and then Connecticut followed); over 11,000 couples have got married in the few months since. In fact, pioneering lesbian rights activist, Del Martin, died in August at the age of 87, after having married Phyllis Lyon, her companion of over 55 years, on June 16, the first day of legalisation. Sexuality rights activists are worried that well deserved celebrations in June are starting to feel somewhat premature: proposition 8 is the first time an attempt is being made to eliminate a civil right already achieved.

Back home in India, an even more fundamental – and equally critical – battle is being fought over Section 377, the section of the 1861 Indian Penal Code that criminalises ‘unnatural sex’. Ironically, the British – under whose reign the Indian Penal Code was created in pre-independent India – rejected such criminalisation in 1967. And various scholars, including Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai in Same-Sex Love in India, have demonstrated fairly unequivocally that same-sex love and relationships have existed and been represented in Indian art and literature for over two thousand years.

In 2002, the Naz Foundation (India) filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Delhi High Court to challenge Section 377, with growing support from across the country. In recent hearings on the PIL, the Additional Solicitor General PP Malhotra has sounded more than mildly Victorian himself while trying to defend the section against incisive judicial questioning: “Gay sex is against the order of the nature. We will disturb the nature by allowing them to do so. In the compelling circumstances the State has to take the help of the law to maintain the public morality.” The government’s stand itself is somewhat confused: the Ministry of Health believes that legalising homosexuality would help in its efforts to combat HIV/AIDS, while the Ministry of Law is against it on ‘moral’ grounds.

Last week, over 30 Rhodes Scholars from India wrote to the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh – who has often served on the Selection Committee for the Rhodes Trust – and asked him to repeal Section 377. In the letter, we said:

Ever since the prestigious Rhodes Scholarships were first given to Indian students in 1947, its recipients have contributed in many different ways to the progress of India, in education, the civil service, science, and business. We, the undersigned, belong to this diverse community of Indian Rhodes Scholars but write in our individual capacity as Indian citizens with a commitment to public service and the fundamental principles of the Indian constitution — liberty, equality, justice, and the dignity of the individual. We believe that it is clear what these principles demand of us today: to join the growing body of concerned citizens that calls for the decriminalisation of consensual sex between adults of the same sex by the reading down of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code.

As the historic case over the constitutionality of Section 377 now awaits the attention of the Delhi High Court, we write to register our profound disagreement with the language of the Additional Solicitor General P. P. Malhotra, who, in articulating the government’s stance, has argued that reading down the section could ‘open the floodgates for delinquent behaviour and be misconstrued as providing unbridled licence for homosexual acts’. He has argued, in addition, that strong social disapproval and the ‘right to health of society’ is sufficient reason to justify the treatment of homosexuals as criminals.

[…]

The health of our society, our democracy, and our polity, requires that we recognise the historic nature of this moment. Section 377 is a colonial relic, an imposition of un-Indian Victorian attitudes towards human sexuality that even the United Kingdom rejected in 1967. The government today has the unique chance to extend the fundamental right to equality and freedom to Indians who have long been discriminated against. This discrimination is real and manifests itself in police arrests, the threat of blackmail, and brutal violence, among other things, relegating India’s sexual minorities to second-class citizenship. We recall the courage of earlier governments in putting principle above immediate popularity in fighting for an end to institutionalised caste- and gender-based discrimination. We urge this government, a government committed to the cause of social and political justice, to seize the moment and make the historic decision to end discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

The full text of the letter is here. The Telegraph reported that a couple of days after the delivery of the letter, the Prime Minister asked the Ministers of Health and Law to “sit together”, and “sort out” the matter:

Singh’s directive to his colleagues came two days after 30-odd Rhodes scholars from India wrote to him requesting “an end to a law” that they said went “not only against fundamental human rights” but also worked “sharply against the enhancement of human freedoms”.

Earlier this year in an article in Frontline, Rakesh Shukla of Voices Against 377 said: “The petition is important but not enough. We need to continue to lobby with political parties, the legal fraternity, the police and mental health professionals and to raise awareness among the public.” This is absolutely true; repealing Section 377 is not going to ensure dignity and security for hijras, kothis, lesbians or gays in India, but it is an urgently needed first step, and our government needs to take it.

Image courtesy Sangama.

Just (kinda) do it

This is un-bloody-believable, pardon the Sanskrit. A woman who won the Nike Women’s Marathon in San Francisco on Sunday (billed as the world’s largest women’s marathon), didn’t get to be on the winner’s podium because she wasn’t part of the group of ‘elite’ runners – who began 20 minutes ahead of the running proletariat – and was therefore not even considered for the awards. Then when she cross-checked, the organisers acknowledged that she’d been faster than the ‘elite’ winner by over *eleven* minutes, yet they wouldn’t give her the trophy. Finally, after public outcry – er, yes, she ran the fastest, so perchance, she should be the winner? – they are giving her a trophy, and recognising her as ‘a’ winner, not ‘the’ winner.

Sounds to me like Nike following in the dubious track of a certain US presidential race. Except in that case, if you’re the popular winner and you still lose the ‘elite’ vote (with some fudging), you don’t become Prez, but you might get a Nobel Prize instead.