“First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out…Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.â€
– Pastor Martin Niemoller
Western Bombing of India and Intellectual Fanaticism
In January of 2006, protesters took to the streets all-over Pakistan to “vent their anger†against the US bombing of Pakistan that had left 18 villagers dead in the Pakistani village of Damadola of Bajaur [1] . If there was any aspect of human decency left in India, people should have joined our Pakistani brethren in protesting these attacks of aggression. But for the intellectuals in India – for all their new found love for everything insane and irrational and American – this ghastly event went vastly unnoticed and without comments. But the unmentioned fact remains that any attack on Pakistan is a cultural and political attack on the fabric of India as well – and thus the massacre of villagers in Pakistan is a direct affront to our nation and her peoples too.
One does not necessarily need to make the above (valid) argument to understand the western (and their Indian collaborators) hatred for the lives of Indians, that hate became all the more visible from the time the IMF was able to ram through its neo-liberal policies during the early 90s. Ever since the time, the Indian state has abandoned its responsibility toward the agricultural institutions (of credit, input etc.) to US multinational corporations, along with doing away a fair deal to farmers, placing at peril the lives of hundreds of millions of farmers in India. Suicides among farmers have become so commonplace that their reporting is now taken for granted (among those who pay some attention).
None is a better representation of this politics of hate than the NY Times. The corporate US newspaper which joined the US government in mass propaganda about non-existent WMDs said virtually nothing about the agrarian distress in India which was being created and then abused by US corporations like Monsanto for over a decade. Apart from
un-understandable concepts of patenting seeds, the US corporation sold (and sells) poorly tested seeds that consume vastly greater quantities of inputs (including water) than the normal varieties that were traditionally used by farmers [2]. And just like the fear mongering by the NY times within the US prior to the aggression against Iraq, the genuine survival concerns among farmers after the state withdrew input support was used by the likes of Monsanto to falsely propagate that their GM products provided superior yield.
Thanks again to NY Times and friends, virtual silence was maintained on these issues while they paid hosannas to their free market associates who inhabit the hitech centers in Bangalore and Hyderabad. By Sept. 2006, probably waking up to the fact that the situation cannot be bluntly ignored just like their lies on the WMDs in Iraq, the newspaper came out with a report on the Farm suicides in India [3]. While acknowledging the situation, the article blesses Monsanto for having brought in “promising biotechnology†though with “new risksâ€. Here is the case of a cabal who worship the free-market but have no problems in terming the sale of Bt. Cotton seeds (that too in the false claim of high yields) as bringing in “promising biotechnologyâ€. Lest someone may criticize this scandal, lets add to it the words “new riskâ€. In all this melee, someone from the high-tech centers in Bangalore might just wonder what if they sold hard-drives and networking routers, and database systems to US corporations which cannot tolerate known levels of electricity fluctuations – and further didn’t bother testing it. Hey, will the NY Times will let us off with encouraging remarks about our sincere attempts to sell “promising technology†with “new risks†even though there were severe breakdowns on the other side of the Atlantic as a result of this sale, and even though US corporate CEOs had to sacrifice some of their bungalows as a result of the anticipated decline in profits?? I will not insult the memory of the reader by recalling the consequences of hurting those who do matter.
When the situation calls for massive mass compensation of Indian farmers by Monsanto, NY Times blames the Indian farmers as “barely 4 %†of them insure their crops. Bad weather boss! Reality check: deliberate crimes of Monsanto.
The reality is well understood by those who study the agrarian crisis thoroughly, like journalist P Sainath who was forced to comment that “You might as well send out the air force and bomb the countryside. It’ll cause less damage than doing this.â€[4]
Full-Spectrum Barbarians and their bramins friends: Moral ‘bombs’ for an immoral cabal
In the past few weeks, occurred an event which turns out to be very instructive. At the Aero-India aeronautics show in Bangalore, the Ratan Rate Chairman of the Tata group of Industries – a large and probably the oldest business group in India – was allowed by US aircraft manufacturers to fly the two of the important US aerial tools of terrorism: The F-16 and FA-18 military jets. [5]
An examination of this and related recent events surrounding Mr. Tata will be lead to some stark conclusions. Significant among these is
1) the reinforcement of the fact of western intellectuals selective amnesia towards the crimes of their close friends like Mr. Tata and
2) An understanding that there is virtual unanimity among the political and intellectual classes on the support for neo-liberal measures. This includes the parliamentary left consisting of the CPI(M), CPI and their supporters – their rhetoric on communism notwithstanding.
For many ordinary people in India, people like Mr. Ratan Tata represents the sector of Indians who do not hesitate for a moment to wear the colonial boot to oppress their own countrymen so long as its in their own narrow interests. Just recently, Mr. Tata in cohorts with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) ,or CPI(M), which rules the Indian state of West Bengal had managed to use the colonial-era laws to appropriate the agricultural lands of farmers, for the purposes of setting up a car factory. (on the side, one should note that the CPI(M) has been at the center of these major crimes: something the holy Indian left has consciously avoided talking about and hence even more important to point out). Bharati Das, was one of many residents of Singur who was brutally assaulted by the police in her own home in West Bengal when she resisted arrest.[6] While one wonders why colonial-style prohibitory orders were needed for a party that claims to represent the people’s interests, the CPI(M) leadership had no problems claiming accolades for itself for the forced land grab referred to as peaceful acquisition, in Singur.
Sensible people in the West, who frequent the pages of the NY times had virtually no chance of knowing about these crimes just as they hadn’t heard about the planned destruction of the lives of Indian farmers for a decade. So, even as Mr. Tata was flying the killing machine low over the skies of Bangalore – perhaps surveying which stretch of people to displace next to grab their land – selective amnesia of the western intellectuals and their Indian counterparts prevented any reference to the ongoing crimes of their flying friend. For example, there was no condemnation of Boeing for helping in the PR campaign of a corporate criminal like Mr. Tata. Hey, after all he is our killer! And don’t be surprised when Lockheed Martin and Boeing land lucrative contracts from the Indian government.
While such destruction of the lives of ordinary Indians assumes more grotesque proportions, another global spectacle has been unfolding in the background. As is known, the US has been accelerating funding for weapons systems aimed at global domination including the domination of space. That barbarians will seek such extreme courses should not surprise a decent individual. What is however surprising is the reach of the barbarians is not limited to Washington DC but has penetrated the depths of power in New Delhi as well. The US government dealt another major blow to the spirit of the NPT by promoting a deal which would accelerate the capacity of the Indian government to manufacture nuclear weapons – by providing external sources of nuclear material and freeing domestic supplies for manufacturing weapons. That the US believes the cost of this deal is the price of the sovereignty of India was clear by the demand – happily accepted by the stooges in Delhi – that India vote against Iran at the IAEA [7].
Such fundamental loss of popular control over India‘s economic, political and military decision-making might not concern the barbarians – including the bramins in Bengal and Delhi – but should be of vital importance to all Indians concerned with a decent life and survival for ordinary people in our country and elsewhere.
Hopes for an sustainable future – Lessons from the unfinished third world project
In yet another display of arrogant submission of mind and body to US interests, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh took to the NAM Summit in Havana, the need for the NAM to fight terrorism [8]. But Mr. Singh did not clearly mention which group or state was the agent of the terrorism he demands that NAM should be concerned about. This was crucial that no agent be mentioned, as then the agent will be understood to be the conventional official enemies of the world’s primary terrorist state. This served two purposes: Firstly, any reference to the far more extreme forms of US terrorism against Cuba is avoided thus re-declaring the irrelevance of Non-Alignment to official India. Secondly, that way it would be understood – particularly by the people in Washington whose boots he licks – that his reference to fighting terrorism is an attempt to invoke corruption in the NAM arena and to sell the project of Non-Alignment to US imperial interests: Hey, those Islamic terrorists are so scary, go get your dirty blood-stained US flags.
Along with the fight against neo-liberalism and the Indian collaborators with US imperialism that goes on everyday on the ground in India and this author cannot regret more his inability to join his citizen Indians, many lessons are rightly pointed out by knowledgeable people. To cite just one of numerous examples, Vandana Shiva – an environmental activist – while calling for an end to the US corporate driven neo-liberal policies, demanded the promotion of traditional organic farming that would make agriculture self-sustaining and would extricate Indian farmers from the US oppression more severe than bombing [9]. Many histories of many countries, including our own, including Cuba – where incidentally the NAM Summit was held – offer us hope.
The policy goals we should have aim for in other areas are not hard to enunciate: Terminate all military cooperation with the leading terrorist states like the US and Israel, engender more regional cooperation including by pursuing the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. And if we are truly decent to confront US aggression militarily in any justifiable and responsible manner in our region.
In the earlier centuries, under ideological assault from the British about us Indians not having a rational understanding of our own history, a bramin scholar Tarinicharan commented “We must have a historyâ€. That the British went ahead to write yet another irrational version of that history is another story. Whatever the relevance of the dialogue then, today we have a history and many a struggle – including that of showing the British the end of their days in the sun – to take pride from. Do we have the dedication and will to learn from it and act to recover our sovereignty from the trans-Atlantic bramin barbarians? Our country and our world.
This is a modified version of an article originally written for the Fineprintzine (www.finprintzine.com ) – a youth and student run magazine in Lowell, MA. Karthik R is a citizen of India, born in Chennai, currently working as a technical worker in Massachuetts. Feel free to email at [email protected]
Notes:
1. http://www.dawn.com/2006/01/16/top4.htm
2. Vandana Shiva on Water usage by GM seeds (“drought-prone “).
www.mindfully.org/GE/2003/India-GMO-Failure-Shiva31may03.htm
Devinder Sharma on Water consumption.(“water consumptionâ€)
http://www.countercurrents.org/en-btcotton.htm
3. “On India‘s farms, a plague of suicidesâ€.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/19/world/asia/19india.html?ex=1171947600&en=e287bf875a8f027d&ei=5070
4. P. Sainath Interview. “The relief package is a bureaucratic shamâ€
http://tehelka.com/story_main19.asp?filename=Ne090906The_relief_part2_CS.asp
5. http://www.hindu.com/2007/02/09/stories/2007020909031200.htm
6. “(Not) Ok Tata!†Asseem Shrivastava.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11590
7. “US Coercion of India against Iran at IAEA†, Siddharth Varadarajan
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=12381
8. “Beyond the rhetoricâ€. Partha S. Ghosh
http://www.flonnet.com/fl2319/stories/20061006004500700.htm
See the para, that reads “Besides the importance that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh attached to the concerted and unequivocal commitment of NAM to tackle terrorism …â€
[To Note: Despite Manmohan’s efforts, the NAM conference condemned not just US hegemony but came down heavily on the inverted policy of the nation that helped found the NAM along with Egypt and Yugoslavia. See:
http://www.flonnet.com/fl2319/stories/20061006006100400.htm ]
9. Vandana Shiva’s statement calling for sustainable agriculture.
www.thehindubusinessline.com/2006/05/19/stories/2006051900180800.htm
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate