Desicritics Category: Politics: Peace

Elie Wiesel And The Kingdom of Night

Shantanu Dutta — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 13:58:50 EDT

Over the last week or so, I have been tracking several articles about the “outsiders” and the hostility surrounding them. Maharashtra of course has been of course very prominently covered, because of the ranting of the Thackerays. But of course Maharashtra is not the only state in the country plagued by xenophobia – it just so happens that every one has their correspondent stationed there and so what happens there gets around faster. But this trait of us vs them is every where. In Manipur. In parts of West Bengal. The rabidly ethnic Amra Bangali and Kannada Chalvali and many more of the kind.

Somehow in India things do not reach extremes – they get sorted out along the way but if any one wants to know the logical direction that these quasi fascist movements take, then they ought to pick up Ellie Wiesel’s riveting book Night. Of course, there are many, many books written on the holocaust – The Diary of Anne Frank being one of the most famous but Night is different because the author survived to not just retell a story but also be a prophetic voice into the future – for which he received the Nobel Peace prize in 1986.

Wiesel was first ghettoized and then deported along with his family from Hungary to Germany where he was separated from his mother and three sisters as men and women were separated. He and his father stayed together and survived for a while before age, deprivation and the sub human living conditions felled the father. Watching his father die before his eyes and watching other sons betray their fathers in a dog eat dog environment scarred him forever.

When the ethnic cleansing of the Jews began in Hungary, Wiesel and his family as well most other Jews are in denial that any thing more drastic than some minor harassment will ever take place. Wiesel remembers asking his father “Can this be true ? This is the twentieth century, not the middle ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed ? How could the world remain silent ?”

Well the twentieth century came and went and many other episodes of ethnic cleansing and genocide came and went – Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia. These are of course the more well documented ones. There are numerous other hot spots of a smaller scale and many within our country. Although we have crossed the calendar into the twenty first century, it is still possible to ask in Wiesel’s child like fashion as to whether any acts spurred by anger or bitterness or hatred that make less than half a column’s worth of news will lead to any thing more.

Most of us believe that responding to what happens when a group of people in one part of the country act and believe that those others who are different from them are migrants and infiltrators or “unwanted” by one or the other name, the responsibility for action lies with the government and a bunch of professional human rights groups like PUCL. Such an attitude is common as most of us do not know what to do and how to get involved and some times as these issues are politically tinged, we want to be extra cautious.

In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, Elie Wiesel recounted how surviving the holocaust forever changed his view of life. He says that after the war was over and he was finally released, he swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. He emphatically says that “ We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented….”

Looking at my own apathy and the apathy of most people around me, I wonder if the principal problem for most of us is that we have not been victims – yet and so we know nothing of the psyche of the wounded. The sufficiently insulated lives that we lead, kind of ensure that we remain protected. and as yet Elie Wiesel discovered, assurances can be misleading and walls and barricades can be broken.

Book Review : Speaking of Empire and Resistance by Tariq Ali

Shantanu Dutta — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 07:07:11 EDT

Tariq Ali is one of the most articulate leftist and secularist thinkers to have come out of Pakistan and has been living in exile in London since the 1960s when he began to speak out against the country’s first military dictators. Nearly fifty years later, he has lost none of his fire and has consistently spoken out against imperialism, colonialism, religious fundamentalism. In his book Speaking of Empire and Resistance conducted as a series of interviews with dissident thinker, David Barsamanian, the focus is on Anglo – American engagement in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Arab world.

In this extremely readable and extremely articulate book, Tariq Ali, reaches way back into history to recreate the history of imperialist involvement in the world- both the overt, in your face British imperialism, and the comparatively overt American imperialism. For instance Tariq talks about the nature of British imperialism – viceroys and governors ET all all imported from the mother country – and the American version where they simply bought off purchasable allies willing to do their bidding. King Hussein of Jordan, Suharto, the Pakistani generals, the Shah of Iran, the several Gulf Sheikhs Emirs is cited as examples.

There are also examples from India too – Tariq for instance mentions that except for World War II, when the country served as a transit point for Allied troops headed East, at no point did the British ever have more than 36,000 troops of their own in the huge territory of undivided India; yet they were able to retain control, by buying off the allegiance of the rulers of the princely states as well as the landed gentry and aristocracy. The Americans refined the process and bought off the leadership of countries en masse.

Some observations in the book are quite poignant. Citing numerous instances, Tariq Ali establishes how during the cold war era, in the name of suppressing communism, the secular elements of the polity of many nations were either weakened or completely eliminated. Indonesia which once had the world’s largest communist party outside the socialist countries is one example where Suharto’s brutal repression wiped the nation of a secular, non sectarian voiced. Afghanistan is another example cited where a secular government was first destabilized prompting Soviet intervention and then once the Red Army moved in, reactionary Islamic fundamentalists were intentionally marshaled, trained and then coaxed to fight the godless infidels. The vacuum left by the destruction of these secular forces has now been filled by the rabidly religious, for which the US and its allies alone are to blame.

The book has been written in the context of 9/11 and the subsequent interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and has that anti war focus, but surprisingly enough does not appear to be biased. Tariq Ali traces out the many failings in the early communist states – particularly the Soviet Union and points out that their own failings were also largely responsible for socialism losing popular support and subsequently collapsing.

Tariq Ali’s consistently anti American stand may not be popular with those who support the American foreign policy and the actions of the current Bush Administration in particular; but so potent and well researched are his arguments going far back into history and tracing many of today’s burning issues to their very roots, that it would take back breaking research to counter his extremely logically argued point of view. And ultimately of one thing we can be sure; no matter what view point we hold- this book will make the reader sit up and take note that there is another way to go- even if it is a path hardly ever trodden.

Intimidation of the Press

Shantanu Dutta — Fri, 6 Jun 2008 09:40:55 EDT

Two separate incidents occurred over the last few days where the Press was intimidated. The profiles of the two cases are quite interesting. In the first instance, a case of sedition was filed by the Ahmedabad Police Commissioner against a journalist from the Times of India.. The provocation was a series of articles that the newspaper ran, alleging links between the city police chief and a former underworld don. As the news blew up into a major storm, the Gujarat police leadership distanced itself from the action of its own police chief in Ahmedabad, stating that the act of filing an FIR against the TOI journalists was his own independent decision.

It is a shabby display of power of the grossest kind that a policeman can independently decide to book journalists for sedition because they have written things that he did not want to hear. Would a private citizen have this kind of facility? Of course not. Even assuming that the journalists did write some thing objectionable, there is a clear conflict of interest in a situation where an aggrieved public servant instead of referring the matter to his superiors for action, chooses to file a criminal case to defend him. Besides a layman’s reading of the Indian Police Code does not indicate that Section 124 has got any thing to do with writing articles in newspapers as such.

The other case is of a type that we are of course becoming increasingly familiar with. A newspaper decides to write about an iconic figure and all manner of rage is stirred up, all in the name of “hurt sensibilities” or “a spontaneous response” by aggrieved people. In this particular instance, the Marathi newspaper “Loksatta” from the Indian Express group had editorially commented on the decision of the State government to put up a statue of Shivaji in the Arabian Sea- a statue that in its size, is supposed to surpass the Statue of Liberty. For his efforts, the editor had his house vandalized and copies of the newspaper were burnt at his doorstep. Incidentally the paper made had no comments at all on the persona of Shivaji or his rule – all known to be potentially inflammatory material. All that the paper had said was that the present government was trying to gain shallow political mileage by putting up statues.

An obscurantist mob and the public servant of a democratic state should have little in common with each other. But these two fringes of society – the Democratic State with all its lordly élan and dignity and the lumpen elements with in society with no other intellectual pretensions except the intelligence of a mob have both used power to further their own ends. The elite as in the case of the Police Commissioner dug up provisions of the law to silence opponents as in the case of the journalists or in the case of the human rights activist and doctor Binayak Sen who has been held without charges for more than a year in Chattisgarh for alleged links with Maoists. The lumpen mobsters lacked the sanitizing wand of the law and used naked displays of muscle and violence to get their way. But either way, the blatant intolerance of dissent and its suppression through any means available is despicable.

Paranoia, Transformers, & the Free State

Harish C — Sat, 31 May 2008 05:46:40 EDT

Recently at the Heathrow airport, there was this incident of an airline traveler who was asked to change his t-shirt because it featured a Transformer robot carrying a gun -- a robot with a gun that apparently posed a threat to flight safety.

So the long list that includes safety razors and toothpicks (“Stop! Take this plane to Libya or…er…we’ll shave your brains off!!”) has been updated to include items as innocuous as T-Shirts and (heaven forbid!) chequered lungis.

Now seriously, how exactly do they rationalize adding printed tees into the list of items banned during air travel? What to they think? That mid-air, Megatron would metamorphose from the T-Shirt, hijacking them away in search of the Cube or would he demand destruction of all hard detergents? I am sure some bloke with a wild imagination and an overdose of Transformers can be blamed for it.

The actions of the free world (read the U.S.) since 9/11 have been predicable, disturbing and laced generously with paranoia. Patriot Acts and War for Democracies, Aggressive Diplomacy and extensive Bipolarization…Above all; the transformation of even mundane tasks that transverse across borders into something that makes even the seasoned partisan shudder. Let it be airline travel, visa interviews, IRC, Blogging or Freedom to wear a T-Shirt.

The fat cats fail to realize that what their actions based on an overzealous protectiveness is fulfilling the terrorists’ agenda more than their own. What they achieve with one tiny blast is realized tenfold or hundred fold (depending on the location, Indians shrug it off and Americans respond with fixing the third shotgun in their cars gun rack) by the seismic waves of restrictions, gagging, acts that inevitably follow. What they need is not blanket bombing of these into the unsuspecting populace. Indeed, it would well serve them to remember that even the actual blanket bombing was a ridiculous failure. They need to craft precision surgical strikes based on the strong core of intelligence gathering and extensive cooperation among the countries of the free world. Alas, the power-hungry politicos across the globe know that these do not work as well as their scare tactics in filling up their ballot boxes and hence try to disregard them.

Only Israel, secure in its Jewish nationalism and having (almost) selfless democratic machinery managed to do this successfully. Spiriting away Nazi war criminals from Argentina and demolishing the whole terror apparatus behind the Munich attacks using kidon teams. This resoluteness and ruthlessness, which Goda Meier possessed, needs to be imbibed in our leaders for them to react constructively.

Till then let us keep our Batman underwear and Shaktimaan Parle G biscuit packs at home while travelling.

Book Review : Changing Gods by Rudolf C Heredia

Shantanu Dutta — Fri, 23 May 2008 09:16:41 EDT

In his work, Changing Gods the Jesuit sociologist Rudolf Heredia very eruditely unpacks the rather prickly subject of religious conversion - no mean job. Fr. Heredia looks at the subject from several angles and poses some probing questions. At the outset, he defines some terms – Atmaparivartan - a conversion within one’s religious tradition – for instance sanatan dharmi Hindu choosing to become a follower of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar or a Christian becoming born again. Then there is Dharm Parivartan, a conversion across religious traditions – A Hindu becoming a Christian or a Christian becoming a Muslim. The author maintains that while atmaparivartan is accepted and tolerated in society, Dharam Parivartan has become increasingly politicized and frowned upon.

Of course, the two terms are not neat packages. If a Hindu Dalit chooses to become a Buddhist or a Sikh, is he doing Dharmantaran or Atma Parivartan? According to VD Savarkar, the father of Hindutva, anyone whose pitra bhu (fatherland) and punya bhu (holy land) is anywhere in undivided India, is a part of the Indic civilization and therefore a Hindu; the others – basically Muslims and Christians are foreigners. However Neo Buddhists coming in from a Dalit background or Sikhs particular about preserving their particular identity may not agree. Heredia pursues Savarkar’s thesis further by asking if in countries like Sri Lanka or Thailand, Buddhism should be considered a foreign faith or Hinduism in Bali should be considered one, as Buddhism or Hinduism are not indigenous to these countries.

The author presents some interesting case studies: The journeys of Dr. Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi, Sister Nivedita and Pandita Ramabai. The stories of the two ladies, both contemporaries are particularly interesting. Sister Nivedita, begins life as Margaret Noble, becomes disillusioned with Christianity and is attracted to the teaching of Swami Vivekananda. She becomes his disciple but her vision for India is more radical than what he or his Ramakrishna Mission can digest. Shortly after Swamiji’s death, she is cold-shouldered by the apolitical Mission and ends up bonding with Hindu Revolutionaries like Aurobindo Ghosh who she helped in his exile to Pondicherry and Vivekananda’s brother for whom she stood bail when he was arrested on charges of sedition.

Ramabai begins as a Hindu Brahmin; Sanskrit Scholar titled by Hindu scholars as Pandita, is widowed at a young age and begins questioning Hindu patriarchy. She comes in contact with the Anglican Church, converts to the Christian faith and is scorned by Hindus. However Anglican Christian is not her niche and as she continues her relentless questioning, she falls out with the Anglicans and remains a Christian but without quite belonging to any sect or denomination. Was the journey of Nivedita and Ramabai a Dharamantaran or an atma parivartan or bits of both? In a spiritual journey, the markers get somewhat blurred.

The author questions the isolationism of the minority religions and says that ghettoism does not facilitate dialogue but rather the furtherance of silence which he says is a fit bed-fellow for suspicion and the propagation of stereotypes. Dialogue he says would facilitate greater understanding between different faiths and reduce tensions. Some of the other questions and issues the book examines is the conversion tradition in various religions including supposedly non proselytizing faiths like Hinduism. The book also looks at the many Freedom of Religion Acts in different states including those from pre independence days in the princely states. An interesting speculation is when Dr Ambedkar led his followers out of the Hindu fold into his Navayana school of Buddhism, promising them freedom from the exploitation that they faced in Hindu society , what would have happened if the Freedom of Religion Acts were in place. Would his offer to his followers have been interpreted as an inducement? Interesting question that !

Doing Peace Wrong

mbjesq — Mon, 19 May 2008 00:08:35 EDT

Nicholas Kristof’s Sunday essay in the New York Times, “Fed-Up with Peace”, sounds a depressingly cautionary note about the future of the Tibet – China conflict. Young Tibetans are frustrated with the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s strategy of peace and now widely favor violent resistance. “We think the Dalai Lama has been too peaceful,” Mr. Kristof quotes one young Tibetan monk as saying. “There is a big discussion now about whether we should turn to violence.”

But the problem is not the impotence of pacifism; it is how ineffectual the Dalai Lama has been in using non-violence for political change.

Don’t get me wrong. The Dalai Lama is a profoundly great man, and the purity and simplicity of his philosophy of peace has been an important and influential source of good in the world. The question on the table, however, is not whether his teaching is flawed; it is whether he has used his commitment to peace as an effective instrument of the political change he seeks.

The Dalai Lama is often touted as an heir to the great legacy of Mahatma Gandhi; and he also is not immune to making this reference, as he did in his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize. Certainly, the Dalai Lama has used his tremendous natural charisma and the universal attractiveness of his philosophy of love to win a large and enthusiastic following around the world and to draw attention to the injustice and violence of the Chinese military occupation of Tibet, which he refers to as “cultural genocide.” But Tibet is no closer to political autonomy and cultural liberation than it was when the Dalai Lama and his government took flight into exile in 1959.

There are a number of important historical differences, which make the Dalai Lama’s independence effort quite a bit more challenging than between Gandhi-ji’s. The most important, perhaps, is that Gandhi-ji’s adversary was a liberal, democratic society. While the British government was understandably reticent to acknowledge the injustice of its colonial rule, it was, ultimately responsive to growing public sentiment which saw the inconsistency of British constitutionalism and the way in which India was ruled. China’s autocratic government labors under no such democratic handcuffs. China is also emboldened by the historical ambiguity of the arguments in favor of one-side-or-the-other in the question of entitlement to govern Tibet. Britain’s only moral justification for continued colonial rule was an outmoded Nineteenth Century paternalism, which was never more than a convenient excuse for its venality.

But the Dalai Lama also holds a number of key advantages. In Gandhi-ji’s day, the cycle-time for a news story to reach England from India could be measured in days, was largely limited to print, and was mostly filtered through the editorial prism of British journalism. Today, the news is multi-media and largely instantaneous. The Dalai Lama is able to travel the world and deliver his message directly, without editorial intermediary. He enjoys considerable celebrity and immense esteem in the global media. The recent embarrassments experienced by the Chinese in parading the Olympic torch around the world demonstrate the remarkable breadth and depth of international support for the Tibetans.

Why has the Dalai Lama not been able to convert these crucial advantages into Tibetan independence? Not, as the radical young monks would have it, because of the Dalai Lama has followed Gandhian non-violence; rather, it is because the non-violence of the Dalai Lama lacks Gandhian shrewdness and opportunism.

Gandhi-ji understood that the political power of non-violence involves forcefully and relentlessly targeting the conscience – if not directly to the perpetrators of injustice, then at least to those who might influence their actions. If Gandhi-ji’s tool was the persuasive force of ethical absolutes like the human right to self-determination and fundamental injustice of colonialism, that “Truth” (Satya) was not expected to work its magic simply by force of ontology. The tool of truth was to be actively deployed in the service of politics. For Gandhi-ji, the ceaseless strategic struggle was to find ever-more effective means to ensure that the truth reached its target audience in ways most likely to influence change. It is not enough for the world to merely see things as they are; the world must also be moved to act in favor of a solution. Were it not for this caveat, the Dalai Lama’s pacifism might well have been successful. He has certainly won the moral debate with the Chinese; but the Chinese are not capitulating, and the international community has thus far decline to press the issue.

Gandhi-ji understood a fundamental distinction between mere “passive resistance” and his strategy of non-violent political opposition, satyagraha. “Passive resistance,” he wrote, “has been universally acknowledged to be a weapon of the weak…. Satyagraha is a weapon of the strong.” The strength – indeed, the outright bravery – required of the Gandhi-ji’s satyagrahi comes, in significant part, because of the crucial political theater created when the forces of power are seen to brutally crush well-deported people who seek only justice. Gandhi-ji did an awful lot of jail-time and more than a few well-publicized hunger strikes. His non-violent protesters regularly got the crap beaten out them, with the newsreel cameras rolling. They were well-trained for their mission of non-violence, intelligently deployed, and well-disciplined to resist retributive impulses. None of this was accidental, and they took their lumps (and worse) to great political effect. The British, eventually, had no stomach to see their military continually brutalize innocents.

The Dalai Lama, on the other hand, seems to have a belief that righteousness alone, by its mere existence, will ultimately prevail. He has declined to actively train his people in the practices of non-violent protest; and so, it is not altogether surprising that the recent protests in Lhasa degenerated into moderate rioting once the Chinese military crackdown started. This lack of discipline created a media talking-point for the Chinese (who have neither great faith in, nor particular adherence to the concept of truth) and somewhat diminished the Tibetan moral high-ground.

When the Dalai Lama vigorously denies Chinese claims that he instigated the March protests in Lhasa, he is perfectly credible; but it is hard to see the merit of his position. Better that he would have lead a massive non-violent seige of the Tibetan capital, preparing his followers, like Gandhi-ji did, for a courageous, well-planned, orderly, entirely peaceful civil disobedience. No doubt the Chinese would respond with heinous, oppressive violence as always; but the moral contrast would be on display to the world in powerful, provocative images.

Freedom always comes at a high price when totalitarianism holds sway. But better to rip the plaster off quickly than to suffer through endless, ineffectual half-measures. Indian Freedom fighters were prepared to endure beatings, arrest, jail, and martyrdom in the service of liberty. The Dalai Lama seems unprepared to ask his people to incur the cost, even though it continues to be paid, with interest, year-after-year.

When the Chinese military began shooting protesters in March, the Dalai Lama was quick to urge Tibetans to back-down. He characterized this position as advocacy of peacefulness but, in reality, there was nothing essentially violent about the conduct of the Tibetan demonstrations to begin with. The truth is: the Dalai Lama has never been willing to allow Tibetans to be put in harm’s way. Gandhi-ji and Martin Luther King understood the indispensable utility of harm’s way.

One could well argue, as the Dalai Lama himself might, that it is compassion for his people that causes him to shield them from the full-force of Chinese brutality. On the other hand, the slow, festering suffering of the Tibetan people shows no remit. It is therefore unsurprising that the youth of Tibet are looking for another way.

I hope the youth of Tibet will come to see that they should not abandon peace; they should just do peace right.

Tibet - The Myth of Shangri-La

C R Sridhar — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:46:42 EDT

‘We ought not suffer ourselves to be deluded by unfounded theory or specious argument.’ -Abbe Felice Fontana.

The recent uprising in Tibet, which was crushed by China, reopened old wounds of the Tibetan struggle for independence from China. The international media was quick to highlight the traumatic events of the Chinese crackdown in 1959 in Tibet, which led to the exile of Dalai Lama to India. The international condemnation of the tough action taken on the Tibetan protesters was embarrassing to China as she was to play the host in the Beijing 2008 Olympics. The bad publicity came at an inopportune time and blunted the PR exercise mounted by China as an emerging Super Power.

The international coverage of the uprising was to a large extent uniform expressing moral outrage at the Chinese oppression but simplified the complex historical events of the Sino-Tibetan struggle. In the simplification lay the romantic notion that the Lamas (the priestly class) ruled wisely and with compassion. As the Dalai Lama himself stated that "the pervasive influence of Buddhism" in Tibet, "amid the wide open spaces of an unspoiled environment resulted in a society dedicated to peace and harmony. We enjoyed freedom and contentment.”¹

Hollywood version of Tibet

The romantic notion of idyllic Tibet where men, women and children lived in perfect harmony was reinforced in the West by Hollywood movies produced by talented directors such as Bernardo Bertolucci's Little Buddha (1993) and Martin Scorsese's Kundun (1997) and Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Seven Years in Tibet. In these excellently directed and lavishly produced films there are powerful messages suggesting ‘exaggerated reverence, with heavy-handed depictions of Tibetans, especially Tibetan monks, as solemn, holy and kind instead of as ordinary people who quarrel and joke around.’ The Western World also idealized Tibetan culture as pure and otherworldly. As Jamyang Norbu, a Tibetan immigrant and writer living in Tennessee, said: ''In the West, the response to Tibetan culture is so worshipful and romantic. There are elements in Tibetan culture that have all this magical, medieval stuff that Westerners love. The New Age thing. The Tibetan thing has style -- the color, the costumes. To a great extent, we exist only in the imagination of Western fantasists.''²

The slavish adoration of all things Tibetan finds articulation in the novel Lost Horizon, written by James Hilton who popularized Shangri-La – a place of perfect serenity. The novel tells a story of some Englishmen whose plane crashed in the Himalayas found peace and tranquility in the company of lamas who engaged them with philosophical conversation over endless cups of tea. This myth of Tibet – a veritable Shangri-La - entered Western consciousness and struck a sympathetic chord. This impression of Tibet as a Utopian world untainted by greed or corruption excited the imagination of western people and formed the basis of public opinion supporting the Tibetan struggle against China.

Exploitative class structure

But did the popular opinion about Tibet as a Shangri-La have any basis in reality? Were there any historical records to support the claim that it was Shangri-La ruled by the wise lamas? A careful and scrupulous reading of Tibetan History reveals a radically different picture. Far from being a Shangri-La Tibet was crushed from within by a viciously exploitative class structure. “Until 1959, when the Dalai Lama last presided over Tibet,” writes Michael Parenti, “ most of the arable land was still organized into manorial estates worked by serfs. “³ Even a writer sympathetic to the old order allows that "a great deal of real estate belonged to the monasteries, and most of them amassed great riches . . .. In addition, individual monks and lamas were able to accumulate great wealth through active participation in trade, commerce, and money lending."⁴

In old Tibet, there were a number of small farmers who eked out a living under extremely difficult circumstances. These were the lucky ones as they were free peasants. The middle class was in the region of ten thousand comprising small traders, merchants, and shopkeepers. Thousands were beggars and some slaves who owned nothing. But staggering parts of the population - some 700000 out of 1250000 were serfs.⁵ The serfs and other poor peasants had no education or medical care. They slaved for the lama and the secular landed aristocracy. They had no rights and were subject to the whims of the lords. The plight of the serfs is chronicled in the Timely Rain: Travels in New Tibet and also in other scholarly books such as Tom Grunfeld’s The Making of Modern Tibet, M.E. Sharpe, 1996; Anna Louise Strong, Tibetan Interviews, Peking New World Press, 1929.

Hell on Earth

The exploitative regime of the Lamas was enforced through terror and wide spread use of torture. For runaway serfs and thieves the summary punishments were given such as eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation. Notes Parenti “ In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, gouging out eyes, and breaking off hands. There were instruments for slicing off kneecaps and heels, or hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling.”⁶ The testimonies of the victims of torture are heart rending as they are enduring chronicles of man’s inhumanity to man.

The religious teaching of Karma was used to keep the iniquitous social order in place. The pernicious doctrine taught that the poor had themselves to blame as they justly suffered for their sins committed in past lives. The rich enjoyed the affluence and prosperity as a reward for their virtuous deeds in the past. This religious dogma prevented any challenge to the social order and preserved a status quo for the benefit of the Lama elites.

Enter the Red Dragon

In 1950 the Chinese communists occupied Tibet and crushed the ill-equipped Tibetan army. In 1951 the Seventeen Point agreement was signed and Tibet was officially incorporated into the People's Republic of China. Dalai Lama was given self- government in Tibet with the Chinese government retaining control over military and foreign relations. In Eastern Kham and Amdo (Quingai) considered being outside the purview of the Tibetan Government, the Chinese initiated land reforms. Most lands there were taken away from noblemen and monasteries and re-distributed to serfs. This aroused resentment among the landed class in Tibet. The Chinese accusation was that Tibet under the Dalai Lama was regressive in nature and opposed all attempts to modernize a serf society. The Chinese abolished serfdom and introduced social reforms by reducing usurious interest rates and built hospitals and roads. “Contrary to popular belief in the West," writes Goldstein, the Chinese "took care to show respect for Tibetan culture and religion. No aristocratic or monastic property was confiscated, and feudal lords continued to reign over their hereditarily bound peasants.”⁷

Meanwhile the relationship between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese communists worsened. In Eastern Kham and Amdo(Qinghai) the landed class with the monks started a rebellion in June 1956, which eventually spread to Lhasa. The Chinese crushed the Tibetan resistance with extreme violence in 1959. After the Lhasa rebellion in 1959, the Chinese government lowered the level of autonomy of Central Tibet, and implemented full-scale land redistribution in all areas of Tibet.

Tibet as a pawn in the Cold War

The American involvement in the Tibetan struggle arose due to geopolitical concerns about the ideology of communism that was hostile to interests of capitalism. American foreign policy strategists, less inspired by thoughts of benevolence, saw a golden opportunity to halt the spread of communism by actively supporting Dalai Lama. The CIA involvement with the bands of Tibetan fighters dates back to 1956 when the Tibetan fighters attacked the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army. The CIA gave this group military training, support camps in Nepal and supply of arms. A propaganda unit called the American Society for a Free Asia – a CIA front- espoused the cause of free Tibet.

The Dalai Lama’s eldest brother, Thubtan Norbu, played an active role in this society.⁸ The CIA bankrolled the exiled Tibetan community throughout the sixties to the tune of $1.7 million a year according to the documents released by the State Department in 1998. The CIA also gave the Dalai Lama annual payments of $186000. These facts were reported in the Los Angeles Times (15-9-1998) and also in New York Times (1-10-1998) by the publication of the article ‘CIA Gave Aid to Tibetan Exiles in '60s, Files Show’ written by Jim Mann. The documents released by the State Department are also analysed in a book written by Morrison titled The CIA's Secret War in Tibet.

The armed resistance movement petered out in 1972 when the CIA abruptly withdrew support. Both President Nixon and Dr. Henry Kissinger saw that rapprochement with China served US geopolitical interests. The Tibetans were left high and dry. There is another important reason, not discussed in mainstream media, why the resistance failed: because large sections of Tibetan society who were serfs did not join the armed struggle against the Chinese. Unlike other liberation struggles against imperial invasions, the Tibetan resistance was confined to the land owning aristocracy and monks who lost the most during the Chinese occupation. The non- involvement of the class of peasants/ serfs spelt the death knell of the resistance.⁹

The bitterness of the 14th Dalai Lama was evident, as he knew that the US involvement in Tibet was a game to thwart the expansion of Communist China. It had nothing to do with the plight of the Tibetan people. While thanking the CIA for its support in the Tibetan struggle he told John Kenneth Knaus, an ex-CIA official, that “the U.S. Government had involved itself in his country's affairs not to help Tibet but only as a cold war tactic to challenge the Chinese.''

Today the financial support for Dalai Lama flows from the National Endowment for Democracy and other conduits. The US Congress has allotted annually a sum of $2 million for Tibetans in India with additional budget of millions for the democratic activities for the Tibetan Exile Community. Heather Cottin, in "George Soros, Imperial Wizard," CovertAction Quarterly no. 74 (Fall 2002) has also alleged that the Dalai Lama also gets money from financier George Soros, who now runs the CIA-created Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and other institutes.

Writing on the Wall

Beneath the smiling face of the 14th Dalai Lama that we see on TV interviews and at public functions there is a worried man. The worries of Dalai Lama are founded on painful realities confronting Tibet. In recent times the Han Chinese constituting 95% of the immense Chinese population have settled in large numbers dominating the Tibetan economy. The Han Chinese views the Tibetans with contempt. The economic levers are in the hands of the Chinese, which has aroused the antagonism of the local Tibetans. The culture of Tibet is in danger of being effaced by the demographic shift in favour of the Han Chinese.

The dark shadow cast by China as an emerging super power has blunted the bargaining power of Tibet in her quest for independence. In recent times China has meshed with the globalised economy as a supplier of low cost goods to US and the world. With US slipping into recession and real wages declining, the flood of cheap goods to meet declining purchasing power in US may stem the consumer protest in that country. Hence, apart from posturing and making rhetorical speeches, the US establishment may find no reason to rock the Chinese boat. The US occupation of Iraq against international law, which has cost precious lives, has turned public opinion against military intervention in general. Moreover, the financial crisis in US and declining dollar has limited the capacity of US to militarily intervene in Tibet. The Government in exile of Dalai Lama has no support in US to overthrow the Chinese from Tibet and risk the prospect of a third world war.

The option of Dalai Lama is restricted to negotiate with China for autonomy while being a part of China. The conciliatory efforts made by the Dalai Lama to the Chinese leadership in Beijing would be the best step forward to ensure that the freedom of worship and human rights are restored in the best traditions of democracy.

“For every complicated problem,” said Mencken, “there is a solution that is simple, direct, understandable, and wrong.” For the people who support the Free Tibet movement the myth of the Shangri-La must be laid to rest and there must be international pressure to model Tibet as a democracy. Few Tibetans would like the return of the corrupt aristocratic clans who fled with the Dalai Lama in 1959. Many Tibetan farmers would not like to give up the land distributed to them during the Chinese land reforms. Slaves who suffered terribly under the feudal overlords would not like the return to slavery. These voices must be heard and respected. Otherwise the freedom loving people of Tibet would be replacing the yoke of Chinese Occupation with the yoke of theocratic despotism of the Lamas. A fate that must be avoided at any cost.

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1 Dalai Lama quoted in Donald Lopez Jr., Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1998), 205.

2 Tibet (Hold the Shangri-La)- BARBARA STEWART Published: March 19, 2000- the New York Times.

3 Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth- Michael Parenti.

4 Pradyumna P. Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet: The Impact of Chinese Communist Ideology on the Landscape (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1976), 64.

5 Stuart Gelder and Roma Gelder, The Timely Rain: Travels in New Tibet (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1964) page 110.

6 Anna Louise Strong, Tibetan Interviews (Peking: New World Press, 1929) quoted in Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth.

7 Melvyn C. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), page 52.

8 Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, The CIA's Secret War in Tibet (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 2002); 9 Hugh Deane, "The Cold War in Tibet," CovertAction Quarterly (Winter 1987).

Food or Fuel - A Hobson's Choice

Shantanu Dutta — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 01:14:35 EDT

I grew up hearing stories about the Bengal Famine of 1943-45, hearing about them from my mother about how close to four million people died due to what was essentially a man made tragedy as food grains were diverted by the British Indian Government to feed the Allied Armies and the war effort, putting civilian lives at a much lower priority. My mother recounts stories of how food was scarce but unavailable as the prevailing shortages and black marketing and hoarding made it unaffordable for most of the farmers who actually grew the food in the first place. Wealthy families who could afford to still buy would often cook a little extra, running soup kitchens of a kind for those who turned up at their doors.

Hearing and reading about the food riots in various parts of the world makes one wonder if the man made famines are coming back to haunt us again. Food riots have already been reported in Haiti, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Mozambique, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Bolivia and Indonesia. India thus far has been spared because the country has been self sufficient in food but the impact sooner or later will be felt here too no doubt with inflation making food grains inaccessible to many, especially those out of the ambit of the revamped public distribution system or the various employment guarantee schemes.

But what is worrying now is not that food shortages are happening but the reasons why they are happening and the fact that unlike the famine victims of the 1940s, who were largely ignorant of the causes as well as ignorant of the way, they could protest, today’s generation is empowered enough to make their voice heard but not necessarily knowledgeable enough to reverse powerful processes that seem driven by irreversible policy imperatives

Here is the grim scenario of how the post modern Frankenstein is playing out :

“Briefing media persons in New Delhi on Wednesday, the director-general of UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Jacques Diouf said: "World food prices have risen 45% in the last nine months and there are serious shortages of rice, wheat and maize." He singled out bio-fuel programme as one of the major contributing factor to the global price rise as it has caused diversion of farmland from food to fuel crops and the prices of bio-fuels which scaled up in tandem with the prices of fossil fuels in turn affected the food prices.”

Now with the prices of crude oil consistently rising and trading for long at prices of over at one hundred dollars a barrel, it is imperative to look for alternative beyond fossil fuels. And the search for an alternative seems to have zeroed in on bio fuels wherein farmers once enticed by cash crops to abandon staples are now being enticed to grow food product but use them not for food but to produce fuel. And so farmers in several parts of the world including the USA have increasingly switched to producing corn for the purposes of producing ethanol. This has obviously reduced the area available for cultivation for crops like wheat and diversion of corn from the market place to the refinery. Climate change over the years has also begun to affect farm yields.

In India, the government has mandated the blending of ten percent ethanol in all petrol to be marketed from October. Apart from technical issues (Germany has scrapped a similar program finding it unviable); there is the question of where this ethanol is going to come from. If it is going to come from domestic sources, then it would mean that in India too, land would come from that part of the agricultural land that is currently being used for growing food grains. This along with the fact that increasingly needs for infrastructure are being met by acquiring agricultural land (West Bengal being a well known case in point) means that food grain production in India will decline. India's food grain production could fall 11 million tonnes short of the target of 220 million tones according to the pre budget economic survey presented before the budget.

Caught between the need to feed its people and the need for energy to transport people and goods, it seems that not just India but just the world itself is caught between a rock and a hard place. The tragedy is that in earlier days, thought the effects of famine were colossal, they were localized and temporary and with the right kind of political will, they could be handled in part, because if parts of the world had food shortages, there were other parts of the world that had surpluses and imports or food aid could be arranged. The news this time round is that the shortages of food could be global and there simply may not be enough food any where in the world that is available for import. That the whole world could be headed for a chronic and slow famine with some of the environmental tinkering that we have done apparently irreversible in the short haul at least is a grim thought.

Voices We Do Not Hear

Shantanu Dutta — Sun, 6 Apr 2008 00:29:54 EDT

The people of Majuli are angry. For years, their land , the world’s largest riverine island is having its land mass eroded by the Brahmaputra and no one is doing any thing about it. Not even the Prime Minister who represents Assam in the Rajya Sabha. And Majuli is not just another back water island; apart from being home to over two lakh people, it is also the heart and soul of Assamese culture and arts. In other wise violence prone Assam, if the agitation has remained peaceful, it can probably be attributed to the fact that the leadership of the movement so far has stayed with the Satradhikars—heads of traditional Vaishnavite Satras which are based in Majuli.

Part of the hurt and anger stems from the fact that they feel ignored. The religious heads have been agitating for long, but all that they get is promises that are not kept. Apparently the Prime Minister has promised to visit at least three times ever since he took office but he chose to cancel the trips at the last minute. More should be read into the hurt of the Vaishnvite leaders of Majuli than is being perhaps read. For the Prime Minister’s repeated cancellations of his trip seem to be sending out a message that peaceful methods of conveying one’s demands are fruitless and go unheeded. It is true that the erosion of land by the Brahmaputra and other rivers like the Ganga is a complex problem and there may be no ready answers available.

But that does not negate the importance of a country’s leaders standing by its people. After cyclones, floods and earthquakes when leaders visit , it is not that they go with any lasting solutions. But even those visits, some looking pretty hypocritical in fact; still lend a bit of the healing touch that is sorely needed at those times.

By ignoring peaceful protests like the one emanating from Majuli, the nation is sending out a very sad message that to be noticed and heard ; one has to be aggressive and violent. Throw a few bombs and grenades; kill some innocent people and it will become a “law and order” problem at the very least and police, para military and army boots will com trampling down to make sure thing are in order. Be persistent – may be for decades and you will feted and invited for talks.

Witness for instance how the government is bending over backwards to negotiate with the NSCN factions , strtching the Indian constitution to the very limits of its elasticity so that the Naga demands can be solved. Or just look at the situation in Siachin where over Rs 60 million is spent every day to protect the territorial integrity of India – a glacier and a place where as was famously put once, not a blade of glass grows. Yet it is de rigeour for defense ministers to pay a visit there at least once in their tenure. But ask for the state to take to take some interest in a place where people actually live and not only that a place that is a virtual cultural treasure house fit for consideration as a world heritage site and suddenly no one has any time to visit and only a few measly crores is available as a grant.. It is a pity , is it not.

One cannot but connect the protest of the Vaishnavite seers without also reflecting on the changing trajectory of the Tibetan resistance. For decades, the Dalai Lama led the Tibetan resistance movement with an emphasis on non violence but the movement got no where. Now with the Dalai Lama ageing and no solution in sight, the Tibetan Youth Congress and other newer groupings have no use for the path of non violence. Before the peaceful Vaishnavite movement takes that route, we should take cognizance of a voice that we seem not to hear.

Paradigms of Power

Shantanu Dutta — Tue, 1 Apr 2008 10:56:57 EDT

Recently the pet dog of the Police Commissioner of Delhi got lost. The dog- a 12 year old Daschund went missing last Saturday and sent the establishment into a tizzy. But Toto is one lucky thing for its master wields a lot of power and so the police establishment swung into action to find and restore the pet to its delighted owner, who had announced a reward of Rs10,000( out of the Commissioner’s own pocket) for the dog.

Looking at the time available to the Station House Officer of the Nizamuddin Police Station and others to track the dog, one could perhaps safely assume that Delhi is a crime-free city where the police find diversion in looking for lost pets but the facts are that Delhi is not just the political capital of the country but also the Crime capital of the nation too. “3,244 criminal cases - including 467 murders, 581 rapes, 1764 dacoity and other heinous crimes - were registered in the city during the 2007 .During the last year, the capital also emerged more bloodthirsty compared to 2006 when 462 murders had taken place” .

Further, according to the National Human Rights Commission, the capital records the maximum number of cases of missing children. In India more than 44,000 children of all ages go missing annually and Delhi has topped the list with 6.7 percent of the total cases. I The NHRC report goes onto say that of the missing children, only about 80 percent are eventually traced. Given the pay hike given to the “public servants” so that they can serve bettter, it is possible now that senior bureaucrats will now cultivate more exotic and extravagant pets which if lost can be tracked.

This is not a reflection on dogs or police commissioners or the Pay Commission- but on power. Power on the face of it has nothing shadowy about it – if you have it, you flaunt it- if you don’t , you moan sitting in a corner and cringe before those who have it. One would have you believe that if you don’t parade it, you don’t have it. And lest there be any doubt, you display it blatantly - be it in the red beacon on your car or the gun toting security guards by your side or the slap that an MLA administers on a hapless commoner.

It looks graceless when people with the power which only their position gives them use it so coarsely – whether it be by slapping a liftman or using the hapless, over worked people under you to look for a missing pet ( for a report on the working conditions of the Delhi Police look here) or raping a woman or through in any of the innumerable ways in which we demonstrate our power, not to lift up the weak but to further crush those who are already trampled.

There is a sad anachronism about the society we live in that people who are paid hefty salaries to serve exhibit raw muscle power at its most base or use it for various forms of gratification. Anachronistic because grand old men like the late Baba Amte who died recently, at the ripe age of 92, felt the call to serve and with problems of the spine which rendered him bed ridden and problems of the heart which a broken pace maker could not repair used to trundle through Anandwan in a bullock cart.

The sad paradigm of power is that the truly powerful seem to be frail of body like broken reeds like Gandhiji or Baba Amte or Nanaji Deshmush or Mother Teresa while their shadows flaunt a caricature of power through golden cages of glitzy cars or the grandeur of Lutyens' bungalows displaying vain glory in the guise of the emperor’s new clothes as in Hans Christen Anderson. Truely Gandhiji in his loin cloth was far better clothed than those in resplendent robes of office unaware of their nakedness.