:: Thursday, October 24, 2002 ::

Assessing the Strength of the RSS & Sangh Parivar:

Conrad argues that the power of the RSS lies not so much in its pseudo-military discipline as in the willingness of its unpaid volunteers to carry out the political activities of their chosen party. More broadly these volunteers keep the ideas and ideology of Hindutva alive. I agree that this is the strength of the RSS as an organization. However, I think it will help if we can carefully map and disaggregate where, when, and how the RSS is a political and social force. (As usual I have more questions than answers, but I hope that the utility of these questions will not seem too obscure):

(1) Urban/Rural: While the RSS does have an affiliated white-collar union (i.e., Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh) in urban areas and an affiliated farmers' organization (i.e., Bhartiya Kisan Sangh), the RSS does not seem to have a strong base of support in rural areas. My hunch is that most peasants and farmers are quite resistant to RSS and affiliated organizations.

(2) North/South: How popular is the ideology of Hindutva in the southern states (and the northeastern states)?

(3) Hard Saffron/Soft Saffron: The argument that the RSS draws on the support of "soft Saffrons" makes intuitive sense. However, I would like to know how consistent the support is for the RSS from the soft Saffrons. I have read reports which state that middle class support for the RSS declined dramatically after the Babri Masjid was demolished. This may mean that the soft Saffrons felt the core issue had been resolved (i.e., that Hindu dominance had been reasserted) or that they were repulsed by the hooliganism that marked the assault on the Masjid. Although "hard Saffrons" may rally after a riot, how do "soft Saffrons" react?

(4) Men/Women: What is the support for Hindutva ideas and particularly the Sangh Parivar amongst women? The RSS claims that there are 500 shakhas of the Rashtra Sevika Samiti, but I am skeptical if it even has that much support amongst women.

All of these suuport bases need to be analysed because there is the assertion that Hindutva has a broad base of sympathy. Even if this is true, I doubt that the base of sympathy is a static resevoir or homogenously distributed.

(5) The Public Sphere: Conrad argues that Sangh Parivar has injected communalism into the public sphere and shifted the terms of political discourse to the right. One could argue that a rightward shift in the general cultural debate is to be expected, regardless of the RSS, given the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of "capitalist-roaders" in China. While academics will certainly distinguish between communism and the Soviet regime, one would be hard pressed to argue that the collapse of the Soviet Union did not have serious consequences for the credibility of radical leftist ideas around the world and in India. (Of course, it is not like the Naxalites particularly care what the Chinese or Russians are up to these days).

Personally, I think there is still a great deal of debate in the cultural sphere, and in fact some "leftist" artists and authors are radically challenging Indian society in new and innovative ways (that I wholeheartedly applaud). If there is a rightist lurch, there is also a leftist lurch. For example, let's look at the highly controversial films of Deepa Mehta. Although her film "Water" (third in a loose trilogy) had to be shut down because of local protests and acts of vandalism, one must concede that all three of her controversial films were cleared by the Central government. The crew was given protection by four batallions of the Rapid Action Force and 200 police officers. When local conditions made it impossible to film in Varansi, the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh gave Deepa Mehta the opportunity to make her film in MP as a public rebuff to the BJP and RSS. Filming had to be terminated because of tight financing, not because such a film could not have been made in India.

Maybe I am missing the forest for the trees. I don't want to dilute the real dangers to the cultural sphere that Hindutva represents, but I am skeptical of the argument that the terms of discourse are shifting only in one direction or that the public sphere has been coopted. Perhaps, it would be most reasonable to say that the right has greater influence -- but how does one "measure" this in the cultural sphere? I will agree though that the ideas of Hindutva do make the minority communities of India feel more insecure -- and this fact cannot/should not be ignored.

I should add that coupled with the leftist and rightist lurches is a significant lurch towards consumerism and crass materialism that has accompanied economic liberalisation. In my opinion, both ideologies compete with and attempt to use/benefit from the seemingly "apolitical" rise of crass consumerism. In fact one of the major themes highlighted by Vachani's film is the way in which the RSS is losing adherents to the demands of consumer culture. Perhaps the ultimate winner in the battle between the left and the right will the be the market and those ideologies that can most effectively buttress/compensate for it?

:: Vikash Yadav 11:59 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Re: The RSS and Fascism:

Vikash’s analysis of the Lalit Vachani film captures very accurately one of the main Leftist responses to the rise of Hindu nationalism in India. Broadly speaking, there have been two different responses to this phenomenon which I have noticed amongst in the oppositional discourse and feeling against the Saffron tide: the first in line with Vikash’s post sees the RSS and the Sangh Parivar in general as only a very pale initiation of real Fascism and fascist organisations and too weak and disjointed to pose a serious credible long-term threat to the Indian polity. This does not mean that they are not to be resisted or tolerated but it does mean that they are not quite the forces of demonic subervision that they are often portrayed as. The other main interpretation is a more orthodox one that sees the RSS and its umbrella organisations as the most serious challenge to Indian democracy and to the project of nation-building that the legacy of Independence has left. In this discourse the Hindu right is often referred as Fascist and explicit comparisons with the Nazis and German fascism are frequently (and it has to be said quite carelessly) made. In this view the Hindu Right is the Ultimate Evil which must be resisted at all costs and prevented from coming to power: should they ever gain control of the Indian polity then it would be an unmitigated disaster and destroy more or less everything about India that most progressives, liberals and leftists cherish. Similarly with Gujarat and the recent riots there, there are those who feel that such polarisation and rioting will not spread beyond the state as none of the others are solely ruled by the BJP and that specific conditions are called for to explain the riots there; while others argue that the Godhra carnage is just the tip of the iceberg and the sign of things to come: in this scenario Gujarat is merely the laboratory for what could/will be attempted elsewhere and the Hindutva forces are just pushing the limits to see how much the secular and democratic framework of the polity can stretch without too much resistance.

My own personal inclination is towards the former view on this issue and I am in sympathy with Vikash’s stance; though one must be wary of making any broad generalisations and also try and discern what has changed with the rise of Hindutva on the Indian landscape. Caution is called for, as while I think, the portrait of the RSS outlined by Vikash is persuasive, it would be unlikely that any turn towards Fascism or ugly communalism would be necessarily preceded by well documented existence of highly disciplined and tightly marching bands of Hindutva foot soldiers (unfortunately History actually suggests just the reverse, in that such political constellations are never quite taken very seriously until it is too late). Historians of communal riots have noted the large degree of organisation that went into communal flare ups after WWI; arms, munitions were distributed beforehand, targets chosen and areas for attack marked out; there also existed a close but hidden relationship between many Congressmen during this period and those responsible for organising these riots/incidents; Sumit Sarkar notes how police records show that during the 1930’s the Congress ministry in the United Provinces knew of such plans and refused to do something about them. This was repeated by the GB Pant ministry after independence as well. Even today much of the recruitment for these organisations like the Shiv Sena and the Bajrang Dal come from lumpenproletariat elements of urban society which are already criminalized; in the past these groups would have been the main sources of manpower for outfits like the Youth Congress under Sanjay Gandhi who would have used their hooliganism to break up the campaigns and activities of opposition parties. As such these groups though violent lack the organisation, co-ordination or discipline to pose a serious threat if they are met with firm action. The problem arises when they are ignored or tacitly encouraged by the state and when they can provoke the society into communal polarisation around them – the Kar Sevak agitation over Ayodhya is a good case in point where the religious passions aroused at large provided a cover for these groups to push their agenda further.

The discipline of the RSS lies less in its capability as a paramilitary organisation but as an unpaid body of volunteers who are willing to carry out political activities for their party of choice and keep the Hindutva flame burning. The key issue is that alone they are ineffective, what is truly alarming and what many secularists have not realised is the sympathy and the reaction they can arouse within large sections of Hindu society at large. I make the distinction here between hard saffronites and soft saffronites: RSS and the members of the Sangh Parivar would come under the label of the hardcore of Saffron opinion yet the power they exert comes from the soft saffronites many of whom are otherwise moderate members of society and for example were Congressmen or socialists etc. A large section of the Congress party could be described as soft saffronites – this accounts for the initially phenomenon rise of the BJP from only 2 MPs in the Lok Sabha in 1984 to being the largest single party after the 1995 elections – much of this support in the form of legislators/politicians switching allegiances and votes being transferred came from those sections of society that supported the Congress as long as it limited its practise of secularism to giving largely symbolic concessions to minorities and allowed the status quo to exist peacefully. As soon as this consensus started to break down and real concessions and minority demands started to occur then the BJP was seen to be a better vehicle for representing their interests. As Nehur once remarked beneath a Congressman's guise there lurked many a Hindu Mahasabha sympathiser.

At macro-level, what I would argues is that it is not the pure strength of the right per se that we need to fear but rather the twin abilities of the Hindu right to coerce and co-opt the centre and also to shift the terms of political discourse to the right. The latter is a slide that is occurring in different political scenarios at a very general level: I was struck by reading the latest issue of the New Left Review which analysed the recent French presidential elections in these terms arguing that the real success of the National Front lay not in electoral gains as the rise in votes for Le Pen was only 234,000 more in the 2002 elections over 1995 and that the NF itself was found only to have a membership of 42,000 with poor attendances for many of its rallies such as the Joan of Arc march on May 1 2002 (which was dwarfed by the anti-fascist demonstrations); but in the successive “Le Penisation of political discourse whereby :

“Unacceptable” outbursts – ‘going overboard’ on racial inequality, immigrant numbers, need for the death penalty, or, most potently in recent years, North Africans as the principal source of crime – may spark initial storms of protest from the media and lead, in the short term, to a drop in the opinion polls; but after a few months the ratings are often higher than before, while party ranks have been kept appeased. Then comes the next stage, when the outrage is forgotten and the FN’s conceptions re-merge in the mainstream – Fabius remarking that the Front “asks the right questions but gives the wrong answers”; Giscard comparing immigration to ‘invasion’ Balladur commenting favourably on the idea of ‘national preference’. At this point the cycle can recommence, with the Far Right shifting the terrain of acceptable discourse one notch further,…. (From New Left Review, 17 September/October Issues, ,2002)

To my mind this is what the BJP has done, in shifting the terms of the discourse to the right and undermining some of the old Nationalist premises on which the Indian republic was founded. In concrete terms this has translated into a general insecurity for religious minorities, increased incidences of rioting and hate attacks against vulnerable groups. By injecting communalism into the public sphere like this the Sangh Parivar have quite successfully managed to make many regress into their ascriptive religious identities and made people think of themselves not as Indians first but as Hindu Indians and Muslims Indians etc. A cynic could argue that at this stage this is all the Saffron forces are really capable of as the BJP doesn’t have direct political power in many states or at the Centre; should a situation arise whereby the BJP achieves the level of domination that Congress did before 1967 then it is possible that we may see a different and more ruthless face of the BJP. Controversial issues like the Ram Mandir, Article 370, the Uniform Civil Code and the re-design of the Constitution have been kept off the agenda owing to the coalition demands of the BJP allies in government, so far.

Certain sinister aspects remain though – a clear example is the insistence that religious minorities such as Christians in Gujarat register their households with the nearest police station; when challenged on this the Gujarat Chief Minister insisted that it was for their own protection. Given the communalisation of the police and the recent move, which allows civil servants to retain membership of the RSS even when employed by the state; this does not augur well. For as a strict paramilitary organisation the RSS may well be a failure but given charge of the Law and Order organs of the state I have no doubt that they could wreck considerable damage.

All this should not make one paranoid and I do feel irritation at many secularists and leftists like Arundhati Roy and AG Noorani who should know better than to throw around the fascist label and paint the RSS/BJP as the most serious threat facing India; this maybe yet clear evidence has not shown the issue to be so clear. After all the BJP are only carrying on a tradition of creeping saffronisation initiated by the Congress, the Ayodhya issue is a case in point. The idols of Ram were smuggled into the Babri Masjid with the benign neglect of the district administration who were entrusted with the duty of guarding the mosque and then when Nehru insisted that they be removed the local District Magistrate refused arguing that it could cause a communally tense situation and lead to unrest and was supported by the then Chief Minster of Uttar Pradesh GB Pant. That the District Magistrate later joined the BJP and stood as a parliamentary candidate hardly reassures me of the impartiality of the state machinery in this matter; Nehru chose not to pursue the matter further and thus was the imbroglio born. The blatant majoritarianism of Congress under Indira Gandhi only worsened matters, as did her manipulation of religious imagery and devices in electoral campaigning. Events like the televising of the religious mythological epics and the spread of colour television in most urban homes hastened the potential audience creation for the BJP.

What concerns me most is the rise of communal sentiments amongst individuals I know personally and who can hardly be described as Fascist sympathisers. The accusations of pampering of minorities and Muslims, the law and order problem, the pressures of a middle class lifestyle under threat and fear of falling down the socio-economic ladder all add to the appeal of the BJP as a party and as long as it delivers on these concerns, many are willing to close their eyes to what it may do to selected minorities. After all most influential sections of Indian society are not Muslims or Christians but rathre upper caste and middle class Hindus. Beneath this attraction lies the fact that the BJP has essentially stolen the Conservative-Centrist platform of the Congress and that those who vote for it have a stake in the existing social order: hence much of their fear is a coded fear of the teeming masses, of the lumpenproletariat, of lower caste assertiveness and of minorities who denied a share of the prosperity and security afforded to the privileged have started to mobilise for a redistribution of these benefits and rights. This is both the great limitation and great danger of the Hindu right in India: I have already stated why I don’t consider the RSS fascist though it has definitely absorbed some of the fascist ideology of European fascism, real fascism though will elude its grasp under current conditions. The rise of Hitler and the Nazis was dependent on other enabling factors and could not have happened just due to the existence of a well disciplined and organised party organisation and paramilitary corps and these are as yet non-existent in India: a sense of national insecurity following a defeat in a major war, destruction of much of the middle-class through the hyperinflation, weak institutionalised history of democracy, humiliating imposition of a peace settlement and restrictions on military policy and lastly but most importantly the economic collapse of the Great Depression. None of these factors are present in India, should a combination of them occur then there may well be a serious threat of a real Fascist movement emerging but as yet it seems unlikely. On the other hand the Hindutva movement has further polarised and poisoned communal relations and infected the political discourse and has constantly pushed the terms of the debate in thier favour: with the erstwhile Centrist parties instead of challenging it acceding to its programme such conflict has sharpened. As in many societies the mere numbers or discipline of the RSS is not a good indicator of the kind of discrimination it espouses a better analogy would probably be the KKK in post-Civil War Southern USA or the British National Party in the northern British towns: both organisations represented a minority of the society as a whole and had limited memberships but characterised the racist and discriminatory nature of the society against its minorities and the distorted social structures as well as the inability of Leftist/Centrist forces to eliminate such political views or the state to control them – in effect they show a disillusionment with existing political options and this is always a cause for concern as the masses lose faith in the forces of the centre and the state reposing their trust instead in those who advocate extreme views; such aleination is always dangerous. Indian society will not grow tired of the antics of the Saffron Right just yet I am afraid.

:: Conrad Barwa 5:35 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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The Men in the Tree:

I had the privilege of attending a screening of Lalit Vachani's "Men in the Tree" tonight and I thought I would share some of my thoughts on this documentary as it relates to our ongoing discussion about the RSS and fascism. This film is a sequel to his earlier work ("The Boy in the Tree") on the way in which RSS shakhas or branches are formed. Vachani's sequel returns to find what became of the young recruits he had filmed one decade earlier around the time of the destruction of the Babri Masjid.

The film is disarming because one quickly realizes how unconventional and unsystematic the RSS recruitment process is. Basically, the RSS recruits children and provides structured lesiure time activity with some rather pathetic attempts at indoctrination. The RSS's attempts to teach Karate are patently absurd and useless. The instructors of the martial arts are barely able to handle the most basic "horseman" or Kamachi stance. The training seemed to just drop off after the supervisors found other interests. The real purpose of these "manly" exercises were apparently symbolic rather than goal oriented. The memorization games go nowhere and the members have skewed and incomplete understandings of their own country's history. The organization is not quite the Hitler Youth that some claim.

One gets the feeling from this film that the RSS is awash in homoeroticism. There does not appear to be much point to the organization other than finding excuses for the boys in shorts to get physical with one another and their instructors. As the boys grow older, they seem somewhat dejected by the realization that their former pals have grown up and gone off to heterosexual relationships. In fact, they blame women for converting to other religions and "forcing" Hindu men to convert out of their own religion in order to get married. In other words, women are portrayed as tricksters who ruin the wonderful homosocial paradise filled with Kabbadi and wrestling.

One gets the feeling throughout the film that the rank and file members of the RSS are basically unsophisticated petty bourgeois types who lead rather meaningless lives. They fetishize their time as "volunteers" only because they are so utterly castrated in the society around them. Other members simply drop out of the organization as the demands of work become more pressing or they get sickened by the climate of fear and hatred.

Where the film fails is its abrupt attempt at the end to explain the Godhra riots in an epilogue. The director wants us to realize that the RSS movement is waning but he seems challenged to explain how such a vicious event could happen. Of course, he could have easily emphasized the way in which the rioting was generally confined to the state of Gujarat, but he does not. Some friends also complained that the director was a bit manipulative in the use of some imagery such as the swastika which is honestly not a big deal in India and is not associated with fascism in the minds of most Indians.

Overall though, the film is quite worth seeing because it helps to moderate some of the fear and loathing that surrounds the RSS. As a colleague of mine noted: When one sees the volunteers adopting the "Jehovah's Witness" strategy of going door to door to spread their message, the utter silliness of the organization is revealed. It is undoubtedly true that much of this organization is devoted to trouble making, but they lack an intellectual and disciplinary base. Their leaders are rumor mongers and their average cadres can't even march in straight lines. They are basically thugs who long to be something more to disguise their fear and castration. They will probably continue to be a menace to secular India, especially as their membership fails to grow and they need stunts to get attention; but in the long run Indian society will grow tired of their antics.

:: Vikash Yadav 11:36 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Hindutva and Fascism:

I thought it interesting that Vikash, discussed the appropriateness of the term facism in describing the Hindutva movement in India. This topic had come up in another forum and I thought it worthwhile to re-produce my comments then when the members were discussing the suitability of the term fascism when talking about the RSS. Needless to say those who supported the RSS, were vocal in denying that it was in anyway a Fascist organisation.

I am reluctant to use the term fascist when dealing with the RSS for a number of reasons, but the issue I think is an open one. It should be noted however, that the RSS does have some of the characteristics of a paramilitary organisation with its Shaka drills, strict discipline and khaki uniform. Moreover, we should note that the RSS does have a supreme leader - what else is the Sarsangchalak but a spiritual Generalissimo whose diktat cannot be questioned. There is no democracy within the RSS as one is meant to obey very strictly the orders of the senior leaders. In this the RSS's discipline is envied by many other political formations (the only comparable cadre organisation to it is that of the Communist parties); if the BJP had some of this discipline when governing they would be difficult to beat in an election. It is interesting compare the Hindutva organisations to those of the Left especially the Communists as both have very disciplined and motivated cadres (though there has been backsliding here as well) but there are some differences between the two sets of cadres.. I find it very revealing that no RSS/BJP split has occurred on a similar scale to that of the Left parties whose factionalism and splitting in India is legendary.

The RSS does do a lot of work that does not fit into the traditional schema of a fascist organisation - it runs educational schools, provides scholarships and performs aid and development work. No fascist organisation I know of does this on such a broad level, moreover it does categorise itself as a predominantly "cultural" rather than a political organisation - again odd, Fascist organisations are usually quite happy to project themselves as political organisations that explicitly seek political power. Not that such work is benign or done purely out of altruism as it has propaganda value and the effect of assuring minorities like adivasis and Dalits that there is a place for them in Hindutva society - but then one can argue that Christian missionaries do the same work as do more explicitly fundamentalist organisations such as Hamas in the occupied territories and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. In fact, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt runs an impressive parallel welfare system that ensure it has a great deal of support amongst the urban poor and this translates into support for fundamentalist activities against the state. I think the RSS in this way functions more as a fundamentalist religious organisation than a fascist one. We must be wary of throwing around the word fascism, as it too often becomes a blanket word to tar anybody who we want to stigmatise and exclude. I particularly dislike the use of the term fascism when applied to Islamic Fundamentalists in the Middle East - journalists such as Christopher Hitchens use the term Islamo-facism which I think is grossly inaccurate. Here it plainly becomes a term to create a broad coalition, as in the Second World War Fascism was the one enemy that everyone from Russian Communists to American Capitalists banded together to fight. What the Islamic Fundamentalists really seem to hate is the continuing impasse over Palestine and the American military presence in the region. In any case, I do not think the Shiv Sena qualifies as a democratic Hindu organisation - especially as it was only when forced to do so by the Election Commission did it consent to conducting internal elections. What ensued was amusing as Sainiks scrambled to ascertain from the leadership who they should vote for. Furthermore if I am not mistaken the candidate for the post of Sarsangchalak in the RSS usually runs without an opposing candidate making the election a mere formality. All these factors make the Sangh Parivar’s democratic credentials and commitment to democracy questionable to say the least.

I agree with Vikash's reservations and dislike using the term fascist when talking about the saffron front in India, though some prominent critics like Arundhati Roy are quite happy to label them in this way. Not only does this betray the tendency to collapse anybody one doesn't like under some master signifier of evil; but it is also somewhat inaccurate. As Vikash, points out there are two basic elements to Fascism, my interpretation is similar to his: there is first how they resolve or propose to deal with the basic economic conflicts at the heart of society and the structural struggle between Capital and Labour and then secondly there is the anti-liberal/racist element as that Vikash has described, to this I would also add the particular use of nationalism that Fascism employs: harking past to a lost golden age which preceded the fall from grace and promising a restoration of the era when the Nation was a power to be feared. This can take several forms from Mussolini's evocation of the ancient Roman Empire and its glories, which he promised to recapture for the modern Italian nation to the more sinister First Reich of Germany born in the ancient Germanic forests that the Nazis looked back to. Such nationalism uses both Conservative notions of cultural superiority with a Romantic nostalgia for the past to achieve its effect.

As with regards to its application to India, I am not sure whether the Hindutva forces can aptly be described as "fascist" in the same way, in line with my earlier observations on them I think two further differences exist that make the use of such a label problematic. Firstly, as scholars such as Jaffrelot show, the Hindutva thinkers nowhere espouse a biological form of racism, but a socio-cultural one. The desire of thinkers such as Savarkar and Gowalkar is not to exterminate of eliminate the Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis etc. but to subsume them within a greater Hindu Rashtra. Hence Savarkar ends his book as to Who is a Hindu with a call for Muslims to give up their conversion to Islam and to take up arms as Hindu Kshatriyas and Gowalkar says that minorities must become fully Indian and have to regard India as their Holy Land and venerate Hindu culture above all else – contingent upon doing this they will become part of the nation. Hindutva Nation building is not premised upon the identification and elimination of a foreign evil element within the body politic like the Jews were for the Germans but rather on the incorporation of those foreign elements (albeit on very unequal and mandatory terms) into the greater Hindu Rashtra. Secondly, I also think that rather than corporatist, the Hindutva project does rest on a much more Conservative alliance between the state and Capital against Labour, though ostensibly class differences are meant to be subsumed. Such a false resolution is ultimately untenable and unrealistic, here I always recall the perennial criticism of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis with the last scene of artificial reconciliation between Joh the Master of Metropolis (Capital) and Grot agent provocateur turned revolutionary (Labour) being an unconvincing and forced ending). A closer examination of Hindu Right parties will show their close collaboration with landed, mercantile and industrial interests, even if we go beyond the typical characterisations of the BJP as a Brahmin-Bania party (though these two castes are disproportionately influential within the party) the current BJP which was preceded by the Jan Sangh was it self an amalgamation of several other political forces including the only right wing party that ever existed in India – the Swatantra party and the Ganatantra Parishad representing the feudal landowners and former rulers of the more conservative Princely Kingdoms; this gives some indications as to the socio-economic roots of the BJP. This relationship and the dynamics of economic policy under the BJP for me point to a more conservative reading.

These reasons are the basis for my hesitation in applying the Fascist label readily to the Hindutva organisationsand as Vikash points out we need to develop a new and precise terminology to deal with the rise of Hindu Nationalism.

:: Conrad Barwa 9:03 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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How Blair tried to sell jets and peace to India:

I seem to recall that we had pointed out the irony in this kind of thing a few months ago, when looking at the role of the US/UK in supposedly "bringing peace to Kahsmir" it drives home the point I think that Pakistan and India have got to summon up the will to tackle their problems bilaterally and between just themselves, involving outside powers is not really going to help in the long term. The Guardian carried this story on its front page today:

Tony Blair personally lobbied the Indian prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to buy British Hawk jets during a recent Chequers meeting despite the continuing crisis with Pakistan over Kashmir.Mr Blair's sales pitch at his country retreat comes at a time when India and Pakistan have hundreds of thousands of troops facing each other in the divided Himalayan region. The prime minister, during informal talks last Saturday, urged Mr Vajpayee to work to reduce tension with Pakistan. But the Guardian has learned that Mr Blair combined this plea for peace with a sales pitch on behalf of Britain's biggest defence manufacturer, BAE Systems.

[Read more at the Guardian ]

What to me is particularly insulting about Blair's stand is his obvious use of evangelical style of politics as a way of selling his government's policies to the British public - one cannot blame a leader for furthering the interest of his own state, but to combine such an aproach with rhetoric that is heaviliy Christianised and preachy in its character and tone is just dishonest and drags religion into spheres where it does not belong.

:: Conrad Barwa 1:51 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Iraq crises due to Oil: Former Indian PM

Trawling through the archives led me to stumble on this little item. Little bit dated, but an interesting take from the former Primie Minister IK Gujral; Gujral was Ambassador to the USSR in the 1970's and Foreign Minister during the VP Singh government of 1989 and when he was Prime Minister was responsible for the "Gujral doctrine" which aimed to imporve India's relationship with its neighbours by taking the first step and offering concessions as a foundation for improved ties. It just shows the lack of imagination in Indian foreign policy that such a commonsense approach was so feted at the time as something novel and heralding a new era in the international relations of the region; unfortuantely it was shortlived as the United Front government soon collapsed and the BJP coalition came to power in the subsequent elections. Still, the Gurjal doctrine did not achieve much concrete success on the ground, the sole exception that comes to my mind being the resolution of the Farrakha barrage issue of distributing the waters in the lower Ganges with Bangladesh; a sensible accomodation in this matter saw the surpirising site of an Indian Prime Minister being praised and esteemed in Dhaka, where antagonism towards India has traditionally been the norm.

NEW DELHI, September 22 (PNS): Former Indian Prime Minister I. K. Gujral has disclosed that he had made all possible efforts to defuse the crisis of Iraq in 1995 but the then US Foreign Secretary informed him it was due to oil reserves. "I thanked God that we do not have oil," he said and elaborated "The pre-independent India had spices, and we paid for it,'' in an apparent reference to the colonial Britain's imperialistic policies.

From: PAKNEWS

:: Conrad Barwa 1:30 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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History as Farce:

Conrad's comments about the term "Axis-of-Evil" points to an growing problem in US war mobilization tactics. The repeated references to World War II imagery have begun to wear thin. The entire idea of "Axis-of-Evil" was never taken seriously, even by members of Bush's own political party.

The use of WWII references and particularly references to nazi fascism are old hat for the US propaganda machine. In his latest book, Clash of Fundamentalisms, Tariq Ali traces all of the people who have been labelled as the "New Hitler" by the US: Gamel Abdel Nasser ("Hitler on the Nile"), Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Osama bin Laden. Hitler is the vampire of the American imagination -- he reappears in new guises after each death. But how long can this myth be trotted out to excite American citizens in the desire for war?

In fact, the only interesting turn in this stale imaginary was the pronouncement during the German elections by a politician that the Europeans were appeasing Bush, much like Chamberlin did to Hitler. (Truth be told this did go too far.).

The term fascist has become too broadly applied and it is begining to lose its force. For the US, any enemy is ipso facto considered either Fascist or Communist. Hence, it was not surprising when Francis Fukuyama began touting the phrase "Islamo-fascist." The convenience of metaphorically placing the new enemy into a SS outfit, turban and all, was just too easy to resist.

The left cannot be exempted from the overuse of the term fascist and the imagery of WWII. I myself am quite guilty of overusing the term "Hindu-fascists" to describe members of my faith/culture with whom I have mortal disagreements. I am begining to wonder though whether or not I need to script Hindutva types in this manner. I agree with Christope Jaffrelot's careful study which documents the fascist elements within the RSS ideology and world view. However, I wonder whether or not I am insulting my audience when I must dumb down all the threats to secular democracy in coded language from another area/era. Aren't there parallels here between the ways in which Marxists attempted to analyze caste relations in India as a "feudal mode of production"? In what ways does the term "fascist" mask very real differences between current threats and those associated with Hitler's Germany?

The first step toward clarification is to distinguish between the form of political organization in Hitler's Germany, i.e. "corporatism" and the anti-liberal/racist ideology/policies of that regime. The latter aspect of fascism is commonly what people intend when they deploy the term "fascism." There are also those who simply use the words fascism, communism, and "evil" interchangably. What I would like is a way to indicate the combination of anti-liberalism and racism without necessarily invoking the other elements of the term "fascist". What I am arguing for is a more precise terminology that helps us to understand aspects of the threat to secular democracy. Maybe until we can fashion such a term we should all restrict ourselves from using the term "fascist."

:: Vikash Yadav 10:39 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Re: North Korea and Pakistan

This just shows to me the stupidity of the whole Axis of Evil imagery raised by the Bush administration. The only reason I can see for this rhetoric is a very ill-thought attempt to try and convince the American public that this is another WWII; a pretty shameless attempt of manipulation but also stupid given the choice of enemies that are so ill assorted and totally unconnected (apart from the fact that none are predominantly Caucasian democracies). The current US administration despite all its brave words doesn’t seem to realise that if you want to wage war against a foe like Al-Qaiuda then using terminology and thinking that applied to a war fought over 50 years ago is not the best approach.

The other main inconsistency that this exposes is the problem of US allies – the two main American allies in the Islamic world in the War-on-Terror are Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, yet both these countries have governments which have exploited and used Islamic fundamentalists in the past and have links with many of the organisations/individuals now thought to be part of the terror network. Both also have governments that do not enjoy much popular legitimacy in the eyes of the population. How can two of your key allies not only have financed and supported fundamentalist organisations like Al-Quaida in the past but now as in the case of Pakistan be involved in the trafficking of nuclear and missile technology? As Vikash points out, the Manichean world view of the Bush administration had led it to focus on Iraq to the exclusion of all else; the so-called War-on-Terror obviously has not managed to cripple or eliminate Al-Quaida completely – how can it when so much of it is really an War-for-Oil against Iraq. The most appalling thing is that it is now emerging very clearly that whatever the US administration’s priorities are dismantling the terrorist Infrastructure and the protection of US citizens is definitely not the top one.

:: Conrad Barwa 8:41 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Pakistan & North Korea:

It appears that Pakistan may have supplied nuclear weapons technology to North Korea in exchange for rice, oil, and later missile technology.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said today on "Meet the Press" that President Musharaff had assured him "400%" that this would not happen in the future. Pakistan still maintains that it did not supply weapons technology to North Korea. Russia and China also stand accused.

So does this mean that Pakistan is now an Ally of the US and used to be an ally of the Axis of Evil? Or is Pakistan working for both at the same time? Oh the paradoxes of a manichean world view...

:: Vikash Yadav 11:36 AM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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