[L-I] ML International Newsletter: November-December 2003 (plain text)

 

 
ML International Newsletter
November-December 2003

 

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An update on news and ideas from the revolutionary
left in India. 

Produced by: Communist Party of India
(Marxist-Leninist) Liberation international team 

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Website: www.cpiml.org

Email: [email protected] and [email protected]


 
Table of Contents
 

1)     National Conference of All India Agricultural
Labourers' Association

2)     South Asia: Dalits and the Rest

3)     The Lula Illusion: Brazil’s ‘People’s
President’ Unmasked

4)     Media, Globalization and Health: Presentation
at the Che Forum

5)     Recent Literature of the South Asian Diaspora

 


 
Major Initiative
 

National Conference of All India Agricultural
Labourers' Association

 

- ML Update, October 2003.

The All India Agricultural Labourers' Association
(AIALA), called Khet Mazdoor Sabha in Hindi, will hold
it's first national conference in Arrah (Bhojpur) of
Bihar (India) on November 14-15. The preparations for
the conference are going at full throttle and, besides
various programmes being taken up throughout the
country, an extensive propaganda campaign along with
various other programmes is being undertaken in and
around Bhojpur. A programme to erect memorials of
martyrs has also been taken up from 26 October to 5
November and a total of 32 martyrs memorials,
including those of comrades Jagdish, Sheela Chatterji
and Rameshwar (Ekbari village), Butan Mushhar (Baruna
village), Jiut and Sahato (Kunai village) and Agni
(Sandesh village), will be erected during this
campaign. A massive Mazdoor-Kisan Ekta Rally
(Worker-Peasant Solidarity Rally) will be held before
the Conference on Nov 14 at Ramana ground in Arrah
while the Conference will be held in stadium ground in
the city. 

Large gates have been erected in almost all the
villages, where struggles of agrarian labourers are
going on. The local committees of Khet Mazdoor Sabha
are conducting an intensive wall-writing campaign and
installing hoardings to welcome the delegates.
Pamphlets, handbills, flags and other propaganda
materials are being distributed in the villages and
mass-contact and fund-collection campaigns are being
conducted as part of preparations for the Conference.
Cycle rallies, torchlight processions and prabhat
pheries (morning marches) are also being organised at
different places in the region. 

The central coordination committee of AIALA concluded
its meeting on October 18 in Patna and reviewed the
preparations going on for the Conference. The
coordination committee has appealed to double the
efforts and sharpen the propaganda to make the
Conference historic. The coordination committee has
also appealed to elect maximum number of women
delegates to the Conference. Around one thousand
delegates, observers and guests are expected to attend
the Conference from all over the country. A document
is being finalised that will be presented in the
Conference after detailed discussions with leading
activists at all state, district and block levels.
Representatives of fraternal and friendly
organisations have been invited to the Conference of
which CPI (ML) General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya
will be the chief guest.

 


 
South Asia
 

Dalits and the Rest

 

- Daya Varma

It might be true that the massacre of Sikhs in 1984
was mainly done by destitute slum dwellers and workers
– both Hindus and Muslims. There are many reports that
a large number of Adivasis and Dalits committed
atrocities against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002. Do all
these instances in any way change the important
question of Dalit emancipation? Or, do they require
any reservation, whatsoever, in the attitude of the
rest of us towards the plight of Dalits, which has
lasted as long  as the recorded or popularly believed
history of India?

Neither the role of workers in 1984 riots has
transformed them into capitalist exploiters nor has
the role of Dalits in Gujarat imparted upon them the
arrogance and brutality of caste Hindus.  Why they did
it and why they may continue to do such things for
some time to come needs to be understood in the
historic context of the Indian society.

 

There is no known instance in history of oppression
creating saints. On the other hand, there are
instances of dehumanizing effect of deprivation,
segregation and enslavement. Slaves sent from America
to Liberia started enslaving the local population and
created a class of their own, the consequences of
which still persist. Jews were persecuted almost
everywhere for thousands of years and faced
extermination in  fascist  Germany; yet the Jewish
state of Israel is doing to Palestinians what
colonialists and conquerors did to natives not too
long ago. 

 

Professor Shukla in his note on Foil circuit correctly
stated that: “In view not only of what happened in
Gujarat but is threatening to happen on a continual
basis in the electoral culture of Hindu fascism it is
necessary to look a little closely into the Dalit
question.” He went on to say: “If Kanshi Ram and
Mayawati exemplify the kind of spokesmen that Dalits
have, it must be admitted that they inspire no
confidence and that they did much disservice to the
Dalit cause.” These are well-formulated statements and
questions. And yet, is it at all possible that the
onward march of Dalits from insignificant political
entity to emancipators of the Indian nation will
escape filthy episodes? There will be Ambedkars but
then there will also be Kanshi Rams and Mayawatis, the
former fighting for their emancipation and leadership
role and the latter attempting to Brahminise them both
culturally and politically and in the process pushing
them to the service of their age-old tormentors. 

 

Since the independence, certain significant changes
took place in land relations. All subsections of India
with the exception of Muslims have regrouped
themselves as political force, which, and not
corruption, is the reasons for splits after splits in
the Congress as well as both the birth and demise of
many political parties. The backward castes,
traditionally peasants, have emerged as rich and
middle peasantry and constitute a  political force
under Mulayam Singh, Laloo Yadav and the likes.
Because feudal land relations were the backbone of
deprivation of the vast majority of Dalits, the
so-called backward castes are replacing former landed
gentry of caste Hindus as Dalit oppressors. However,
Dalits too are no more as much of political nonentity
as they were before and for a few years after
independence. This political transformation is not and
cannot be smooth to our liking. It is bound to give
rise to both opportunists and revolutionaries and both
trends can be witnessed in India although the
opportunist trend is the dominant one for the time
being.

 

The contention that Sikhs and Muslims were massacred
by Adivasis, Dalits and workers is correct only on the
surface but not in essence. In essence the killings
were done and masterminded by the upper echelons of
the society just as the crimes against the people of
Iraq are not being done by the American, British and
Gurkha soldiers but by Bush and Blair and the
corporate establishment. For as long as we know Dalits
have been made to serve the caste Hindus and the
landed gentry. How do Dalits fulfill this role is not
determined by them but by their own tormentors. And
this role has gone on for so long that it has become
integrated into revered Indian culture so much so that
even Dalits sometimes feel it is their duty and
destiny. Why else will they willingly give up their
right to use water from wells owned by caste Hindus
and desists from touching foods of caste Hindus?

 

It is not uncommon to take strong exception to any
deviation by the deprived and marginalized sections.
In the West, many a committed opponents of racism and
segregation will be appalled by what they term
“reverse racism” as if this is a bigger crime than
racism itself.  Not many seem to be agonized by the
fact that a significant majority of Hindus of all
castes (not Dalits) have been drawn into the service
of Hindutva fascism – yet another big chunk is not in
it but at the same time not revulsed  by it. Indeed
the source of the current dehumanizing culture of
India is the team headed by Vajpayees, Advanis,
Singhals, Togadias and the rest and not Kanshi Rams,
Mayawatis and other Dalit leaders.

     

Dalits are confronted with two options. 

One is a spillover of long tradition, which leads them
to wrongly assume that they can emancipate themselves
by mimicking the caste Hindus. A dedicated social
activist, who left the Delhi School of Architecture to
work for Adivasis in UP-MP region and whose need is Rs
500 per month, runs a school with the specific
objective, among other things, to impart upon them a
pride in their own history. He once told me that as
they get educated they change their name to some
“Singh” and start wearing “Janeyu (the “sacred”
thread). He is baffled but not disheartened because
some do develop a pride in their own history and talk
about transforming India.   Nevertheless this is a big
question. Our own partial or total indifference to the
burning issues of India is a testimony to the fact
that persistent brutality benumbs our sensitivities.
It is not surprising that Dalits too succumb to the
norms of the Indian society.

 

The second option requires revolutionary
transformation in the outlook of Dalits and in their
perception of the Indian history. It requires the
realization that until and unless the whole Indian
society is democratized to the very bottom, there can
be no emancipation of Dalits. 

 

In the existing political framework, both currents are
in operation. In the midst of the current corrupt
electoral culture of India, Dalits are being used by
some of their own leaders as well as Sangh Parivar to
serve them for a pittance. As Professor Shukla wrote:
“What these "leaders" (Kanshi Ram and Mayawati) have
really succeeded in doing is their projection of the
Dalits as a viable vote bank. … A vote bank
susceptible to fraud ... (and) … an anti-social
spree.” Yet so far they have participated in the
anti-social acts only under the leadership of major
national parties – in 1984 and in 2002.  Kanshi Ram
and Mayawati are transient phenomenon; Sangh Parivar
too will not last forever but its demise is not too
close.  

 

When the Communist Party of India was founded in mid
20’s, it paid little or no attention to two of the
most important intertwined questions facing our
society then and now- the question of Dalits and the
question of peasantry. Although the peasant question
did come to occupy an important place in the communist
movement during the Telangana and Naxalbari upsurge,
the question of Dalits remained somewhat obscured as
an aspect of the peasant question. Analyzing the
experiences of the Bihar peasant struggles, Comrade
Vinod Mishra, the late General Secretary of the
Communist Party of India (M-L) for the first time,  to
my knowledge, raised the Dalit question as a  class
question. This analysis at once implies the need to
organize Dalits not only as peasants and workers like
other peasants and workers but as Dalit peasants and
workers. When this is done, the question of social
dignity and equality with any and all other sections
of the Indian society become integral part of the
platform.  Dalits are the emancipators of Dalits. 

 

The Lula Illusion
 
Brazil’s ‘People’s President’ Unmasked
 

- PB

Brazil’s Worker’s Party (PT) has gained international
prominence because of its meteoric rise to power and
for its role in the organisation of the World Social
Forum (WSF) in Porto Allegre, Brazil. It won the
elections in October 2002 and its leader Mr. Luis
Inacio Da Silva, popularly known as Lula, was elected
as the President of Brazil. Progressives worldwide,
especially outside Brazil, still hold Lula in high
esteem and think that the election of Lula could
initiate the establishment of a worker’s state in
Brazil. For example, he spoke in a packed lecture
amidst “delirious cheering” at the London School of
Economics as trade unionists, his former supporters,
booed him in Brazil’s capital only in the preceding
month. Let us take a critical look at this party, its
leaders and their relationship with the most popular
movements of Brazil. 

When the western financial press starts to become
neutral and does not criticize the election of a
‘People’s President’, progressives should start to get
sceptical. Even before Lula was elected the financial
press started to allay the anxiety of Wall Street.
Actually they did not have to work hard at this, Lula
did the job for them. His running mate for Vice
President was a textile magnate and leader of a right
wing party. As he was being hailed by people on the
left, non-government organizations (NGOs), and liberal
intellectuals, as the harbinger of the new left, he
embarked on a path to appease his “real” friends. The
Economist (June 21st, 2003) wrote “Investors, who
worried that a left-wing president would unleash
inflation and/or default on Brazil’s debts, have been
won over by Lula’s tight fiscal and monetary
policies.”  

 
Brazil’s Economic Reality
Brazil is the largest country in Latin America with a
population of 175 million, out of which 52 million
live in official poverty. Brazil had an external debt
of $230 billion, which Lula had promised to honour, at
the time he was elected. Brazilian economy has been in
recession for the last three years and has paid over $
60 billion just in debt payments. In his acceptance
speech, he said “The tough path Brazil will have to
walk will demand austerity in the use of public
funds…” and he has since kept his promise. Actually
even before the election, when the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) loan of $30.4 billion for Brazil
was approved Lula and other major presidential
candidates signed it.  

 

George Soros, the infamous financial speculator,
advised the Brazilian people not to vote for Lula, as
ultimately the markets will rule. Soros’s
prognostication has proved right. “Lula has submitted
to the financial orthodoxy of his predecessor… raising
interest rates and chopping the budget to stabilise
inflation and debt… Much of this smacks of the need of
the PT’s leaders to persuade their rank-and-file to
back policies they have long opposed… The petistas are
as pragmatic as they are idealistic.” (Economist,
March 8th, 2003). Maybe, now, Soros is having second
thoughts, as Lula can both create a myth and make the
markets rule. 

 

The US is currently pursuing its Latin American trade
strategy under the auspices of the Free Trade Area of
the Americas (FTAA). The FTAA ensures the dominance of
US corporations in the Americas. While the US
government continues to subsidise large
agribusinesses, the latest subsidy of $ 10 billion to
the likes of Cargill and ADM, it demands the
elimination of subsidies in Latin America. Like his
predecessor, Lula has cut the funding for housing,
health, education and agriculture. In order to
implement these harsh policies, Lula has allied with
the right wing parties while quelling all left wing
dissent in his own Worker’s Party. After delivering
his speech at the WSF he ran to Davos for the World
Economic Forum (WEF) to please the rich countries and
its investors. Lula and the PT see a lot of benefits
in being part of both the forums, after all, both of
them are funded by imperialist monies, one directly
and the other indirectly. It helps maintain a myth
amongst the people about the socialist nature of the
workers’ party while in reality keeping the investors
happy.   

 
Brief History of Lula and PT
The PT and Lula have evolved, as parties and people
evolve, unfortunately, in this case, into defenders of
capitalism in Brazil. At its inception PT consisted of
numerous social movements including the landless
workers, metal workers, teachers, public employees,
and artists. The PT grew because it waged struggles
for the rights of its constituents. It stood for a
socialist society that would repudiate foreign debt,
implement land redistribution, and socialisation of
banking. Lula himself was a metal worker. That was a
quarter century ago. PT slowly evolved into a party
that paid lip service to the causes of the people
while forming alliances with the parties of the ruling
classes and business groups. All streams within the PT
became detached from mass organising except during the
election campaigns. The “new” PT consisted largely of
the middle or lower middle class functionaries, who
constituted 75% of the delegates to the last PT
Congress. Trade union and landless workers’ leaders
constituted a minority of the delegates! This is the
PT that won the election in Brazil. 

 

Lula has appointed the former President of a US
multinational bank, a person who admitted to voting
for Lula’s opponent, as the head of the central bank
of Brazil. The President of the Brazilian agribusiness
association is the agricultural minister while a
millionaire, chairman of another agricultural company,
is the head of the trade and development ministry.
Recently Lula visited Cuba and reiterated that it was
a purely business trip. For a change, he was being
honest. The business was mostly about furthering the
interests of Brazil’s agribusinesses. The ambassador
to the US in the previous Cardoso regime, is now the
foreign minister. This is a clear indication of the
continuation of the policies of previous anti-people
governments. To top it all, before his inauguration
Lula went to Washington to get the blessings of Bush
and also discuss how, as co-chairs of FTAA, to
expedite the implementation of FTAA. This in the face
of widespread rejection of FTAA by millions of
Brazilians. 

 
Landless Workers Movement
Movement of Rural Landless Workers (MST) has its
origins in the struggles of the 1940s and 50s when
similar organizations under the leadership of the
Communist Party of Brazil (PCB) were organizing
peasants. After three decades, despite massive
repression of the rural and urban movements, the
landless workers in the rural areas formed the MST.
Numerous leaders of unions participated in the first
meeting of the formation of the MST in 1984. MST is an
“autonomous mass movement struggling for land, for
agrarian reform… They insist on the fact that it must
be a movement of class struggle, and not of
bureaucratic negotiation at top levels… It was the MST
that introduced mass

struggle as a necessity. According to its leaders,
this system of sending demands to the government with
a list of signatures, assemblies, etc., solved nothing
at all. Experience had shown that it was the struggle
of the masses – the only way to change the correlation
of political forces in society – that made agrarian
reform go forward.” It espouses the slogan “land for
those who work it” … But from the very beginning this
movement understood that agrarian reform cannot stop
at the conquest of a piece of land … while struggling
for the land to be controlled by those who work it,
the MST also fights for a “just, equitable” society,
“one that will put an end to capitalism.”  (Harnecker,
2002). Brazil has about 25 million landless in the
rural areas. Since its founding the MST, has occupied
large landed estates and has settled about 350, 000
families. 

 

The MST has also tried to organize the workers, small
peasants and their families in Cooperatives for
Agricultural and Cattle-Raising Production (CPAs).
Presently there are nine state level cooperatives
within the Confederation of Agricultural Cooperatives
for Agrarian Reform in Brazil (Concrab). However, the
cooperatives are at the mercy of the capitalist
market. After the implementation of an aggressive
policy of opening up of agriculture, under the
previous Cardoso regime, the international commodity
market determines agricultural product prices. The
multinationals (MNCs) have come to dominate these
markets. Today three multinational corporations
control almost 90 % of the maize trade in Brazil,
namely Cargill, Dupont (both US MNCs) and Burg Borns.
Similarly, in the milk market small producers and
cooperatives are forced to sell to practically three
multinationals Nestle (Swiss MNC), Gloria (US MNC) and
Parmalat (Italian MNC). As milk is priced according to
the international market, thus, the price of milk in
Brazilian and Italian markets is the same. In Brazil,
Parmalat pays 20 cents of a real per liter to the
producer, and sells the milk at 1 real. In Italy the
producer is paid 50 cents a liter, and therefore, the
margin for the firm in Italy is much lower than in
Brazil. In the 1990s, as the cheap and subsidised
imports from the US and EU have flooded the markets,
around a million peasants have been driven from their
land. 

 

The multinational monopolies have also been
established in seed control. Monsanto (US MNC), sells
not just genetically modified soy but also the
herbicide and insecticide that ‘matches’ the seed.
This ensures that Monsanto makes hefty profits selling
herbicide and insecticide. Only a few years ago the
seeds were freely available through a government
company that sold seeds at a low price. But now
Cargill and Monsanto, control 65% of all wheat seeds.
The new agrarian policy has also led to the formation
of large, highly mechanized farms. The biggest one is
a 100, 000 hectare cotton farm which employs 20
harvesters. 

 

MST has been close to the radical section of the PT.
Now that several of the prominent members of the
radical wing have been expelled or sidelined, the MST
has decided to lift the moratorium on land occupation.
After PT’s nine months in office land had been
distributed to only 2, 000 families. The MST has asked
to settle 120, 000 families immediately and 1 million
in four years. The PT’s government has reciprocated
with a target to settle 60, 000 families this year,
even less than the previous Cardoso regime. The MST
was fooled into believing that the PT will implement
radical land reforms as Lula and the PT were trying to
entice the parties of the landlords. Lula has also
publicly declared that he will deal strongly with
“illegal land occupations”, so, all land seizure
should be part of the government’s agrarian program.
There has hardly been any official agrarian program
for land redistribution since PT came to power.

 
Trade Union Movement
The Central Labor Confederation (CUT) is a large
labour confederation with close ties to the PT. It is
estimated that it has a membership of about 15 million
but is not able to mobilise more than a few thousands
for a demonstration. There is however a section of the
CUT, which consists of leftists from various political
parties that is quite militant. A large section of the
CUT’s leadership has been co-opted by the PT. This CUT
leadership was invited to discuss the “Social Pact”,
which included the postponing of wage and minimum wage
increases and reduction of pensions. The CUT
leadership’s only bone of contention with the PT is
the speed of implementation of these reforms. The
leadership of CUT is being co-opted by offering them
positions in the government if they support
pro-business labour reform. Like the trade union
secretary of PT stated “We are going to undertake a
grand reform and many unions will disappear” (FT, Nov.
26th, 2003). PT is planning to propose a legislation
that will permit capitalists to secure labour
contracts overriding legally established workers’
benefits. 

 

Before the elections, MST, CUT, progressive church and
leftist groups organised an unofficial referendum on
FTAA. 11 million Brazilian voted and 95% of them voted
against the FTAA in this referendum. Lula during his
election campaign repudiated this referendum while the
PT called for negotiating to improve the FTAA. In a
country that has about 40 million un- and under-
employed people, who have no future employment
prospects, the struggle will have to be a long drawn
one. Very quickly the workers have seen through the
renegades of the so called socialist workers’ party.
Ironically in March 2003, under a former metal
worker’s presidency, a union of metal workers went on
strike protesting declining real wages. Then, a large
section of the public sector workers went on strike as
the PT continued to implement the IMF/WB dictated
macroeconomic policies. 

 
Conclusions
The harsh cuts in public services, decline in pension
payments, real reduction in minimum wage and huge
budget cuts will reduce the living standards of the
Brazilian people. Despite the initial disorientation
that the Lula election caused, the major movements and
other socialist parties are endeavouring to build
their movement against capitalism and imperialism. The
MST restarted its land occupation program in March
2003. The workers have started to organise and strike.
The realignment of progressive forces has already
commenced and there is a possibility of the coming
together of left-wing MST and CUT leaders, progressive
Catholic clergy, dissident PT leaders and other
socialist parties in a political formation. The focus
will have to be on building a movement and taking the
class struggle to the next level. 

 

Capitalist parliamentary democracy is a very slippery
slope. If a party starts to disengage from the working
peoples’ struggles and gives primacy to the
parliamentary elections it will inevitably slip into
the capitalist trap and only emerge as a
representative of the capitalist class. In the current
situation, in most countries of the world, communist
parties cannot but engage in unmasking the
parliamentary system through participation. The idea
of capturing power, within the capitalist framework,
and expecting a radical social transformation is
nothing but an illusion – the Lula illusion. The
toiling people of the world need to unmask the parties
and its leaders who create these illusions about
socialism under capitalism. A vanguard peoples’ party
needs to take the struggle of the oppressed as the
fulcrum to establish a true socialist society.

 

References:

Boron, Atilio, “Lula and the Argentine Signal,” ZNet,
2003. 

Brunelle, D., “Towards a Free Trade Area of the
Americas,” Le Monde Diplomatique, 2001.

Economist, “Lula Comes Under Friendly Fire,” July
19th, 2003.

Economist, “Lula ‘twixt Inflation and Recession,” June
21st, 2003.

Economist, “Brazil’s New Politics: Compromising
Idealists,” March 8th, 2003.

Financial Times, November 26th, 2003.

Harnecker, M., Landless People: Building a Social
Movement, Siglo XXI España Publishing House, 2002.

La Riva, G. “What Lula’s Election Portends for
Brazil,” Workers World, 2002.

Ortellado, P. “Brazil: What Happened to the Left?”
Znet, 2003.

Petras, J., “Present Situation in Latin America,”
Rebelion, 2003. 

Petras, J., “U.S. Ratings of Latin American Regimes,”
Rebelion, 2003.

Petras, J., “Brazil and FTAA,” Rebelion, 2003.    

Petras, J., “Whither Brazil?” Rebelion, 2003.

Petras, J., “The Peasantry and the State in Latin
America,” Rebelion, 2001.

RUPE, Economics and Politics of the World Social
Forum, No. 35, September 2003. 

 


 
Media, Globalization and Health
 
‘Fuzzy words, sharp bullets’
 

- Sundaram

There is an image that has been haunting me in my
sleep for the past many months now. It is an image
from the first wave of bombing raids carried out by US
warplanes in the town of Basra in southern Iraq. 

In this image there is a tired, broken Iraqi father
who is lifting up the limp body of his dead 10 year
old daughter from the rubble of his bombed out home.
If one could freeze all the tragedy possible,
anywhere, within one human lifetime- this would be the
image to capture it. A distraught father with his dead
daughter.

 

Now what do health, media or globalization has to do
with this image and the incident it represents? 

 

Let me explain. To begin with I think most of you will
agree that your, my or anyone’s health is not a mere
function of our individual behavior alone but also the
behavior of entire societies. It is a direct function
of the politics, economics, ecology and culture of the
world we live in. 

 

Before anyone gets me wrong let me make it clear that
I do believe that individual behavior is still a very
important determinant of individual health. One cannot
absolve individuals of responsibility and blame every
misfortune that befalls the individual on society at
large

 

And yet can anyone tell me what precisely was the
problem with the individual behavior of that young
Iraqi girl that she had to die at such a tender age
and the way she did? 

 

It is quite obvious that young girl there had to die
because neither she, nor her father, were really a
match for the firepower of the world’s only remaining
superpower. But maybe she had to die because someone
very powerful, very far away, at a very safe distance
thought she could one day grow up, become a mother and
give birth to a ‘terrorist’. Could it be also possible
that she had to die because she as an Iraqi citizen
was sitting on top of the world’s second largest
reserves of oil and there are too many petroleum
junkies in the United States who need this
indispensable narcotic of modern civilization?

 

These are the kind of questions that come to my mind
when I see an image like that from Basra. War, it is
clear, is the biggest threat to public health
anywhere. And make no mistake, the times we live in is
all about war and conflict- with really no end in
sight soon. So when you think health, please think
about the impact of war on the health of the
individual and how we can bring about peace to an
increasingly violent world. 

 

But where do war and conflict really come from? Is it
just about the faults of human nature or the
differences between religions or nationalism and
fundamentalisms of different kinds? These are all
surely ingredients that catalyze conflict in different
parts of the world, but I would like to bring your
attention to the one perpetual source of violence
throughout human history- the quest for control and
consumption of resources. 

 

These could be natural resources- food, forests or
fossil fuel as in the case of the US occupation of
Iraq. Yet again, the conflict could be for control and
domination of human resources. In the old days
monarchs used to repeatedly rally their people to war
for capturing slaves from their neighboring countries.
In the modern age the role of the ‘monarch’ has been
neatly taken over by ‘multinational’ corporations. And
the term ‘slaves’ has been replaced by ‘cheap labour’
from the Third World.  

 

And it is this process by which feudal control over
global resources has been replaced by corporate
control that brings us to that much publicised word
‘globalisation’. I have always felt that there really
can’t be a fuzzier word possible in the dictionary
than this term ‘globalisation’. Think about it
carefully and you will see it really means nothing on
its own. 

 

After all, we all know that the globe, the planet
Earth exists and has been around for a long time. (it
will hopefully be around a little longer). People
across the oceans, forests, mountains and entire
continents have always traveled across the face of the
planet- in search of better habitats, resources,
experience or just for their own enjoyment. All of
human kind, any anthropologist will tell you, migrated
out of Africa- which was truly the motherland of our
entire species. 

 

And yet there are those who today claim that they are
going to ‘globalise’ the ‘globe’. That would be like
making an apple more of an apple or adding to Mona
Lisa’s smile to make her look more attractive. 

 

There is a reason for this lack of clarity behind the
word ‘globalisation’. The word obfuscates the fact
that we are not really one ‘globe’ at all and that
there are many planets within this one planet Earth
that all of us are supposed to inhabit. 

 

There is the glittering golden planet of the bold and
the beautiful, the rich and the powerful, the masters
of our universe. The small minority who control most
of the wealth on planet Earth, who make the policies
that run the economic, political and military systems
of our world – and who decide the fate, life and death
of the millions. 

 

There is also a silver planet run by those who will do
anything to serve their masters on the golden planet
and aspire to join them at some point of time. These
are dubious managers, generals, advertising and public
relations professionals who spend all the time
polishing and protecting the gold of their Godfathers.


 

And finally there is the planet of iron, rusting away,
inhabited by a majority of the world’s population. The
people who work, who consume the least, and with whose
sweat and blood the other two planets thrive and
survive. And these are the very people- the people who
make the globe spin on its axis- to whom the virtues
of ‘globalisation’ are being preached to by those from
the planets of gold and silver. 

 

In order to ‘globalise’ they are told to give up their
land, water, forest and minerals to the global
corporations. They are told to leave their fate and
that of their families to the mysterious market, which
is manipulated by global bankers and investors. They
are told to tighten their belts- (which are often
around their necks)- and promised that globalisation
will bring them a ‘shining’ future. 

 

Well, we have all seen what this ‘shining’ future
looks like for our planet’s workers. It means
‘shining’ the shoes of the rich in the hope that one
day that pair of shoes will be their own. That day
will never come for the workers of the world through
globalisation- for what is sold to them as a dream is
in reality the darkest nightmare. 

 

All I can see in globalization is the continuation of
colonization by other means but for the same purpose-
the looting of local resources, the destruction of
indigenous livelihoods, the bankrupting of entire
national economies, the loss of sovereignty of the
developing world. And every time the people of the
world try to improve their lives, even by following
the rules of the marketplace, the globalisers find new
ways to increase their own wealth and keep the vast
majority in poverty. Poverty, which by itself is the
mother of all health problems.

 

Coming to the role of the global media and health what
is alarming is the way basic concepts of medicine are
being misused by global elites in their quest for
imperial control of our world.  

 

A few years ago when I first heard the term ‘surgical
strikes’ used to describe the bombing of Kosovo in
Yugoslavia I did not think very much about it. But
‘surgical’ is a medical term and surgery is a
procedure that is meant to save lives. So why is the
US army using this term (and the global media
promoting it) to describe a process that is meant to
kill people? 

 

This misuse of medical terms has only increased under
the so-called War on Terror launched by the United
States since September 11. So now we have US leaders
calling for the ‘wiping out’ of terrorists, US army
commanders talk of ‘detecting and destroying’
terrorists. People dubbed as ‘terrorists´ are compared
to snakes, deadly bacteria and microbes and the
promise is made to ‘cleanse´ the world of terrorism as
if it was a disease or an epidemic of some kind. 

 

Make no mistake about it- in the eyes of the
imperialists all those who resist imperialism are
really nothing more than microbes. And this is where
the global media plays a crucial role in the
de-humanisation of all those who resist and preparing
the ground for massacres and genocide by the
imperialists. 

 

There is another strange new trend vis a vis the
global media that I have noticed in recent times.  The
role of the global media as a mouthpiece of the
establishment has actually diminished. This is not
because the media has become more truthful in its
reporting of realities but because the establishment
no longer needs to make a pretence and is willing to
launch an open and brazen attack on the rights of the
people everywhere. The masters of the golden planet
have already fired the media from its pitiful role as
a messenger. 

 

Let me put it this way. For a long time now the
Emperor has been quite naked in the eyes of many of
us. But the global media acted as the Emperor’s mask
and hid his truly ugly face from the view of the
world’s people. Today, the Emperor has thrown even
this mask aside because he is desperate and willing to
do anything- murder, massacre, genocide- to keep his
Empire together. 

 

That is what we see in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in the
entire so-called War on Terror throughout the globe.
The brazen invasion of sovereign nations, the blatant
violation of all human rights, the pillage and plunder
of resources from weaker societies and above all the
willingness to use extreme violence and devastating
force to achieve these ends. 

 

I will give you an example of what I am trying to say.
A couple of years ago, I like many of you,  heard the
US President George W. Bush claim on television that
he is going to send a strong ‘message’ to terrorists
everywhere in the world. Soon after that US armed
forces invaded Afghanistan and took over that country,
killing thousands of innocent people in the process. 

 

Again, earlier this year I heard Little Bush say that
he is going to send a strong ‘message’ to dictators
everywhere. Soon after that the US air force started
pounding Iraq with bombs of every description, and
have now occupied the country, once again killing
thousands of civilians as well as poorly armed
soldiers. 

 

>From this I can conclude only one thing that
communicating a ‘message’ does not mean sending an
email or a letter or newspaper report or a television
picture anymore. In the dictionary of US imperialism
communication has always been about sending bullets,
bombs and missiles to make their point to those who
dare to defy them. And that is truer today than ever
before. 

 

That is why I believe that the smokescreen of the
global media has been dispensed with and the real
messages in our times come from the armed forces of
the imperialist powers. While their words have become
fuzzier, their bullets have become sharper and that is
where the impact of their propaganda comes from. This
is the ugly reality we have to wake up to. The sooner
we stand up and resist the closer we will be to
creating a better world. 

 

Comrades, what I am saying is nothing more than what
the great Che Guevara, whose memory we celebrate here
today, understood clearly. That the oppressed people
of the world cannot have a dialogue with Imperialism
through mere words and images- however poetic and
powerful these may be. That dialogue may have been
possible in normal times, but the sad fact is that we
live in abnormal times. The time has come for all of
us to communicate in the only language that elites
everywhere understand- that of mass movement and mass
resistance. 

 

Comrades, I am proud to be here with you at this
festival in memory of the great Che Guevara. In his
times, in a world of tired, beaten, fractured human
beings Che was an entire, unbroken human being. In
martyrdom Che became a Spirit, a Great Spirit
reminding us of what the determination of human beings
to fight injustice can achieve. Let Che always be our
guiding spirit as we struggle to bring light to
darkness, good health to a deeply ailing world and
justice for that ten-year-old Iraqi girl who died
without the slightest chance. 

 

>From presentation made at a forum on ‘Che Guevara’s
thoughts on medicine and humanity’ held in Cuenca,
Ecuador between 13-17 October and organised by the
Faculty of Medicine, University of Cuenca.

 


 
Review
 

 Recent Literature of the South Asian Diaspora

 

- Soumitra Bose 

They call it “Empire writing back”. They mean the
erstwhile (?) subjects of colonies are expressing and
those expressions are becoming the mainstream
narrations of victor’s literature. Well, nothing can
be farther from truth, one guesses lies like this are
allowed in the world of fiction, which in other ways
do mean constructed fibs, fables and lies. Fiction
however is not simple coalesced fables or constructed
fibs. Fiction is more akin to novels. We in the third
world do not find in our experience novels in
vernacular languages following the cannons and
characteristic features of European Novels. Yet Novels
in whichever tradition is avowedly a projected
historical myth. Whatever this convolution means,
people who read them do know what to expect, not so
much of exact chronology, not so much of written
proofs but some kind of reflection of the reality in
the minds of the actors and protagonists. Actors may
represent individuals, mostly presenting various
viewpoints as constructed by the author; they may also
represent some class or creed as seen by the author.
Novel and therefore fiction is political, not in the
direct sense of activism, but in the sense of a
representation. 

Subjects of COLONY [now, that it is a well-understood
terms and contains post-colonies, neo-colonies and
semi-colonies- that is the entire third world] are
writing Novels in the languages of the colonizers.
What politics they are coming out with? We find two
very big groups of these writings, one in French by
African writers, mostly all of whom were educated in
the elite institutions of France and the other group
is in English. Indian writings in English have become
very attractive and are now lapping up most of the
lucrative prizes of the first world. 

 

There were distinctive groups of authors. The
movement, if you will, started through the writings of
Salman Rushdie. Indians writing in English started
probably through Bankim Chandra when he wrote
“Rajmohan’s wife” and even earlier but the movement of
“colony writing back” started veritably with some
gusto with Salman. Salman and Hanif Quraishi belong to
a rare category that actually was either born abroad
in families of Sub-continental origins or is
transported abroad at a very tender age. Somehow this
trend could not gather much moss in terms of numbers
of authors. In came a swishing group, those who spent
their adolescence in their native countries and then
migrated to become a part of Diaspora. Authors like
Jhumpa Lahiri and Monica Ali are a sub group who,
though consciously born abroad, have very strong and
almost day-to-day connection with their native land.
The rest of the subgroup is made of authors who had
their basic education in the native lands though
mostly in the language and culture of their
metropolitan languages. They were physically native
and mentally western and now they are transported to
the west, they could not leave the nostalgia and they
are making a nice commodity out of it. In addition to
this there are native residents who have not left
their native land but being educated in the
metropolitan language are westerners by choice. Then
there are native writers who actually wrote in their
native languages and either translated their own works
or got it translated. Thus there is a multitude and
there is not much of a commonality in their origins.
The language, style diction, subject matter and
narration differ therefore. The one thing that does
not change is the attitude of making their “products”
palatable to the western audience, a kind of
mystifying their expression through elements, which
the western audience would find fascinating, illusory,
funky, new and freaky! – That is the masala formula!
However may be the volume of discourse of sub-alterns’
capacity of representing and presenting and “talking”,
the real incentive was the commodity value to serve
the colonizer mind, the mystic masala of the east!
Theories did not explain the market and market created
the commodity. 

 

Having said that, the commodity has evolved into its
own eigenvalue, into a form, which laid bare the
ideology of colony. Colonies these days are phenomenon
more pronounced when the colonizer is not around and
the colonized perpetuates and guards with zeal the
interests of the colonizer. The subject itself becomes
the perpetrator and the actor of colonialism on behalf
of some one (s)he does not know, but constructs. When
such a subject transports itself into the metropolitan
(s)he is confused, she immediately becomes conscious
of her position; she knows she cannot get a
reverse-transformation; she is lost. 

 

Identity has been the most common aspect in almost all
these cases. Starting from Salman [to a greater
extent] down to Monica Ali, Pico Iyer [the two real
protagonist of second generation sub-continentals who
were transported at a very tender age] through Jhumpa
Lahiri, through the track of Chitra Bannerjee, Geeta
Mehta, Kunal Bose and everyone treaded the same beaten
track, over and many times over again. Somehow
“Identity” is the question, the issue, the problem,
the case. One wonders, why during the entire direct
colonial period, those who wrote in the metropolitan
language did not have this predicament? Why did they
never feel the identity crises? Why the then second
generation Indians like R. P. Dutta considered
themselves both equally responsible Indians and Brits
and why Ben Bradleys and Michael Brights came to the
colonies to work with the native working class and
sacrificed their lives and never ever faced this
dilemma and even Niveditas and Terressas did not have
problems or more interestingly why the natives working
along did not have any problems either? Is that
therefore the “identity” question a typical “Colonial
question”? One cannot stop wondering! 

 

Globalisation has brought the new concept of “identity
crises” as its anathema, as its anti-thesis, or it may
be that [and we in the third world are very inclined
to believe so] it is posited as the problematic to
obfuscate the class question? We see an apparent 
“profoundication” of the nation-state concept in terms
of endeavours to eke out identities in all nuances,
scratch the skin of it and one finds a ploy! – the
ploy of posing nation-state and identity to bring up
as many differences as one can to divide the people’s
unity against globalisation. 

 

For the first part we wish to ask for opinions on
three representative works from three of the authors.
Pico Iyer is almost a second generation Indian. He
perpetually finds himself “lost” from any one culture
and “found” in an airport culture of flux. Yet he is
not contented but gives the air that he is contented,
being a part of everything and yet is pained that he
“belongs” to no “accredited” culture! The reader is
confused and thanks to his lucid prose the reader is
bemusedly confused. The reader goes into a trance of
the airport – land a virtual and post-modern space
where technology fleets identities as it fleets roots.
Speed is the ruler, speed is the mother and speed is
what people retain. Yet, Pico craves for nostalgia, he
not only suffers or enjoys nostalgia, he craves for
having one. At the end one may not understand the
problem, one very well lives on problematic as a
staple food, not to solve it or devour it, but to
accept it and live on it. This is how an individual is
marginalized by globalisation – much against
globalisation’s proclaimed celebration of
individuality. Pico has a great sense of rhetoric. His
works are puns in bulk; one can construe the same
paragraph as a celebration or denigration of the
present times, as one wish to do so! Pico is truly a
“Global Soul” – a soul, who enjoys the globality but
laments loosing the root! Pico is truly post-modern –
a quantum of contradictions, dissatisfaction and
temporal enjoyment. Pico’s prose and diction is post
modern too (!), his style really gives a glimpse of
the global village, the intellect, the awareness that
is demanded of a global citizen, and his laments and
savours fit the bill of a jet set flux of a quantum of
a technology called post modern man! – an existence of
temporal and spatial reality. Pico accepts everything
he gets, acquires, bequeathed upon and paid and
ridicules all of them at the same time. He is above
all - an individual fighting to survive, surviving to
die every moment and dying to live long in this
virtual world!

 

Monica here laments her co-natives, their predicaments
faced by inhabitants of Brick Lane a virtual
Bangladesh within East London. The protagonist faces
the same kind of problem with the reality and the
surrealism resulting out of the imposition of two
differently poised and time-oriented societies. A good
and Islamic ward coming up in a kafir land has extra
loads of pangs to take care of. From fits of rebellion
to bouts of collaboration the life of an immigrant
ultimately finds the entire world not only changing
around her but not so slowly, not so visibly, receding
from her. Monica is under the same identity crises, as
to who she is, who an immigrant protagonist is. Her
experience additionally deals with being a Muslim in
the west, a woman and a girl at that! – a subaltern in
many dimensions. Monica never knew how to make her
protagonist walk along in rallies with people of
different races and colours against common enemies and
yet feels and bruised by the racism at every step.
Monica’s predicaments are really the predicaments of
all the Diaspora, or are they really? Or are they not
what the common enemy wants it to be? Or are they not
what global capitalism wants every individual and
subject to gruel through and become a confused slave?
Well, Monica does not answer, because she detests
politics for her protagonist. She is Bangladeshi-Brit,
“no politics for them, please!” 

 

Not in the whiff, but in the deluge of “Jessi”
[confident and not confused semi-desis] , who Bends
like Beckham, those who are fighting their individual
fights individually and often are either getting lost
or are estranged or are turning druggy-anarchists, we
find a gentle breeze of Manjushree Thapa’s “the
history tutor”! She paints the easel with the changing
politics of the Hindu Kingdom from King’s dom to the
Maoists’ haven. The players are from a way-forsaken
village that never knew what politics could be, yet
has no problem in figuring their own way out of
survival. Manjushree does not have any problem of
feeling a minority, of being a woman, of even being
schooled in Delhi or abroad, she finds her
protagonists steeled through, to quite an extent
mauled through, to graduate through the class nature,
character, base and origin of different political
ideologies. A sleepy country is waking up, finding out
one’s identity in this jet set global village through
a local practice with a global worldview. That is the
new breeze from Nepal. This is the very first novel
from Nepal and look at the force with which it
emerges! Airport laden Pico, Londoner Monica and not
to speak of the masala story tellers we find what the
flow of dynamism of a non-political most backward
peasants catching the chord of consciousness. 

 

Manjushree is not an ace literature, her protagonists
are not icons, and they are in fact faceless ones. She
does not have the onus of catering masalas in funky
palates from the “Inscrutable East”. Manjushree does
not represent therefore, she presents the Nepal
dynamics, the dynamics of peoples’ consciousness. She
does not have the overarching identity crisis; there
in her novel identity is created, evolved and shaped
on its own through the eigen experiences of the people
through the forms of struggle. Sub-altern spoke and
let others know they are here and now!

 
References
Monica Ali, Brick Lane, DoubleDay, 2003. 

Jhumpa Lahiri, Name Sake, Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

Pico Iyer, The Global Soul, Knopf Publishing Group,
2001.

Manjushree Thapa, Tutor of History, Penguin Group,
2001. 

 





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