Based on the absurd notion that a river flowing into the sea is a “waste” of water, the Supreme Court, in an act of unbelievable hubris, has arbitrarily ordered that India’s rivers be interlinked, like a mechanical water supply system. Implementing this would mean tunneling through mountains and forests, altering natural contours and drainage systems of river basins and destroying deltas and estuaries. In other words, wrecking the ecology of the entire subcontinent. (B. N. Kirpal, the judge who passed this order, joined the environmental board of Coca-Cola after he retired. Nice touch!)
The regime of free market economic policies, administered by people who are blissfully ignorant of the fate of civilizations that grew too dependent on artificial irrigation, has led to a worrying shift in cropping patterns. Sustainable food crops, suitable to local soil conditions and microclimates, have been replaced by water-guzzling, hybrid, and genetically modified “cash” crops, which, apart from being wholly dependent on the market, are also heavily dependent on chemical fertilizers, pesticides, canal irrigation, and the indiscriminate mining of groundwater. As abused farmland, saturated with chemicals, gradually becomes exhausted and infertile, agricultural input costs rise, ensnaring small farmers in a debt trap. Over the last few years, more than 180,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide.2 While state granaries are bursting with food that eventually rots, starvation and malnutrition approaching the same levels as sub-Saharan Africa stalk the land.3 Truly the 9 percent growth rate is beginning to look like a downward spiral. The higher the rate of this kind of growth, the worse the prognosis. Any oncologist will tell you that.
It’s as though an ancient society, decaying under the weight of feudalism and caste, was churned in a great machine. The churning has ripped through the mesh of old inequalities, recalibrating some of them but reinforcing most. Now the old society has curdled and separated into a thin layer of thick cream— and a lot of water. The cream is India’s “market” of many million consumers (of cars, cell phones, computers, Valentine’s Day greeting cards), the envy of international business. The water is of little consequence. It can be sloshed around, stored in holding ponds, and eventually drained away.
Or so they think, the men in suits. They didn’t bargain for the violent civil war that has broken out in India’s heartland: Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal.
Coming back to 1989. As if to illustrate the connection between “Union” and “Progress,” at exactly the same time that the Congress government was opening up India’s markets to international finance, the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), then in the opposition, began its virulent campaign of Hindu nationalism (popularly known as Hindutva). In 1990, its leader, L. K. Advani, traveled across the country whipping up hatred against Muslims and demanding that the Babri Masjid, an old sixteenth-century mosque that stood on a disputed site in Ayodhya, be demolished and a Ram temple built in its place. In 1992, a mob, egged on by Advani, demolished the mosque. In early 1993, a mob rampaged through Mumbai attacking Muslims, killing almost one thousand people. As revenge, a series of bomb blasts ripped through the city, killing about 250 people.4 Feeding off the communal frenzy it had generated, the BJP, which had only two seats in Parliament in 1984, defeated the Congress Party in 1998 and came to power at the center.
It’s not a coincidence that the rise of Hindutva corresponded with the historical moment when the United States substituted Communism with Islam as its great enemy. The radical Islamist mujahideen—whom President Reagan once entertained at the White House and compared to America’s Founding Fathers— suddenly began to be called terrorists. CNN’s live broadcast of the 1990–1991 Gulf War—Operation Desert Storm—made it to elite drawing rooms in Indian cities, bringing with it the early thrills of satellite TV. Almost simultaneously, the Indian government, once a staunch friend of the Palestinians, turned into Israel’s “natural ally.” Now India and Israel do joint military exercises, share intelligence, and probably exchange notes on how best to administer occupied territories.
By 1998, when the BJP took office, the “Progress” project of Privatization and Liberalization was eight years old. Though it had campaigned vigorously against the economic reforms, saying they were a process of “looting through liberalization,” once it came to power the BJP embraced the free market enthusiastically and threw its weight behind huge corporations like Enron. (In representative democracies, once they’re elected, the people’s representatives are free to break their promises and change their minds.)
Within weeks of taking office, the BJP conducted a series of thermonuclear tests. Though India had thrown its hat into the nuclear ring in 1975, politically the 1998 nuclear tests were of a different order altogether. The orgy of triumphant nationalism with which the tests were greeted introduced a chilling new language of aggression and hatred into mainstream public discourse. None of what was being said was new, it’s just that what was once considered unacceptable was suddenly being celebrated. Since then, Hindu communalism and nuclear nationalism, like corporate globalization, have vaulted over the stated ideologies of political parties. The venom has been injected straight into our bloodstream. It’s there now—in all its violence and banality—for us to deal with in our daily lives, regardless of whether the government at the center calls itself secular or not. The Muslim community has seen a sharp decline in its fortunes and is now at the bottom of the social pyramid, along with Dalits and Adivasis.5
Certain events that occur in the life of a nation have the effect of parting the curtains and giving ordinary people a glimpse into the future. The 1998 nuclear tests were one such. You don’t need the gift of prophecy to tell in which direction India was heading. This is an excerpt from “The End of Imagination,” an essay that I wrote after the nuclear tests:
“Explosion of Self-esteem,” “Road to Resurgence,” “A Moment of Pride,” these were headlines in the papers in the days following the nuclear tests …
“These are not just nuclear tests, they are nationalism tests,” we were repeatedly told.
This has been hammered home, over and over again. The bomb is India, India is the bomb. Not just India, Hindu India. Therefore, be warned, any criticism of it is not just antinational, but anti-Hindu … This is one of the unexpected perks of having a nuclear bomb. Not only can the government use it to threaten the enemy, it can use it to declare war on its own people. Us …
Why does it all seem so familiar? Is it because, even as you watch, reality dissolves and seamlessly rushes forward into the silent, black-and-white images from old films—scenes of people being hounded out of their lives, rounded up, and herded into camps? Of massacre, of mayhem, of endless columns of broken people making their way to nowhere? Why is there no soundtrack? Why is the hall so quiet? Have I been seeing too many films? Am I mad? Or am I right? Could those images be the inescapable culmination of what we have set into motion? Could our future be rushing forward into our past?6
The “Us” I referred to was those of us who do not belong to—or identify ourselves—with the “Hindu” majority. By “past,” I was referring to the Partition of India in 1947, when more than one million Hindus and Muslims killed each other, and eight million became refugees.
In February 2002, following the burning of a train coach in which fifty-eight Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya were burned alive, the BJP government in Gujarat, led by chief minister Narendra Modi, presided over a carefully planned genocide against Muslims in the state. The Islamophobia generated all over the world by the September 11, 2001, attacks put wind in their sails. The machinery of the Gujarat state stood by and watched while more than two thousand people were massacred.7 Women were gang-raped and burned alive. One hundred and fifty thousand Muslims were driven from their homes. The community was— and continues to be—ghettoized, socially and economically ostracized. Gujarat has always been a communally tense state. There have been riots before. But this was not a riot. It was a genocidal massacre, and though the number of victims was insignificant c
ompared to the horror of, say, Rwanda, Sudan, or the Congo, the Gujarat carnage was designed as a public spectacle whose aims were unmistakable. It was a public warning to Muslim citizens from the government of the world’s favorite democracy.
After the carnage, Narendra Modi pressed for early elections. He was returned to power with a mandate from the people of Gujarat. Five years later he repeated his success: he is now serving a third term as chief minister, widely appreciated across the country for his clear thinking and his faith in the free market. To be fair to the people of Gujarat, the only alternative they had to Narendra Modi’s brand of Hindutva (nuclear) was the Congress Party’s candidate, Shankarsinh Vaghela, a disgruntled former BJP chief minister. All he had to offer was Hindutva (lite and muddled). Not surprisingly, it didn’t make the cut.
The Gujarat genocide is the subject of “Democracy: Who Is She When She’s at Home?” written in May 2002 when murderous mobs still roamed the streets, killing and intimidating Muslims. I have deliberately not updated the text of any of the essays, because I thought it would be interesting to see how a hard look at the systemic nature of what is going on often contains within it a forecast of events that are still to come. So instead of updating the text of the essays, I’ve added new notes. For example, a paragraph in the essay on the Gujarat genocide says:
Can we expect an anniversary celebration next year? Or will there be someone else to hate by then? Alphabetically: Adivasis, Buddhists, Christians, Dalits, Parsis, Sikhs? Those who wear jeans or speak English or those who have thick lips or curly hair? We won’t have to wait long.
Mobs led by Congress Party leaders had already slaughtered thousands of Sikhs on the streets of Delhi in 1984, as revenge for the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. Goons belonging to the Bajrang Dal, a Hindu militia, attacked an Australian missionary, Graham Staines, and his two young sons, and burned them alive in January 1999.8 By December 2007, attacks on Christians by Hindu militias moved beyond stray incidents. In several states—Gujarat, Karnataka, Orissa—Christians were attacked, churches gutted. In Kandhamal, Orissa, at least sixteen Dalit and Adivasi Christians were killed by “Hindu” Dalits and Adivasis.9 (“Hinduizing” Dalits and Adivasis, pitting them against each other, as well as against Muslims and Maoists, is perhaps the mainstay of the Hindutva project.) Tens of thousands of Christians now live in refugee camps or hide in the surrounding forests, afraid to venture out to tend their fields and crops. (Once again, it’s not a coincidence that these communities live in forests and on mineral-rich lands that corporations have their eyes on and governments want vacated. So the Hindutva shivirs [camps], under the pretext of bringing them into the “Hindu fold,” are a means of controlling people.)
In December 2008, protected by the first-ever BJP government to come to power in a southern state, Hindu vigilante mobs in Bangalore and Mangalore—the hub of India’s IT industry—began to attack women who wear jeans and western clothes.10 The threat is ongoing. Hindu militias have vowed to turn Karnataka into another Gujarat. That the BJP has struck roots in states like Karnataka and Gujarat, both front-runners in the globalization project, once again illustrates the organic relationship between “Union” and “Progress.” Or, if you like, between fascism and the free market.
In January 2009 that relationship was sealed with a kiss at a public function. The CEOs of two of India’s biggest corporations, Ratan Tata (of the Tata Group) and Mukesh Ambani (of Reliance Industries), while accepting the Gujarat Garima— Pride of Gujarat—award, celebrated the development policies of Narendra Modi, architect of the Gujarat genocide, and warmly endorsed him as a candidate for prime minister.
As this book goes to press, the nearly $2 billion 2009 general election has just been concluded.11 That’s a lot more than the budget of the US elections. According to some media reports, the actual amount that was spent is closer to $10 billion.12 Where, might one ask, does that kind of money come from?
The Congress and its allies, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), have won a comfortable majority. Interestingly, more than 90 percent of the independent candidates who stood for elections lost. Clearly, without sponsorship it’s hard to win an election. And independent candidates cannot promise subsidized rice, free TVs, and cash for votes, those demeaning acts of vulgar charity that elections have been reduced to.13
When you take a closer look at the calculus that underlies elections, words like “comfortable” and “majority” turn out to be deceptive, if not outright inaccurate. For instance, the actual share of votes polled by the UPA in these elections works out to only 10.3 percent of the country’s population! It’s interesting how the cleverly layered mathematics of electoral democracy can turn a tiny minority into a thumping mandate.14 Anyway, be that as it may, the point is that it will not be L. K. Advani, hatemonger incarnate, but Dr. Manmohan Singh, gentle architect of the market reforms, a man who has never won an election in his life, who will be prime minister of the world’s largest democracy for a second term.
In the run-up to the polls, there was absolute consensus across party lines about the economic reforms. K. N. Govindacharya, formerly the chief ideologue of the BJP, progenitor of the Ram Janamabhoomi movement, sarcastically suggested that the Congress and BJP form a coalition.15 In some states they already have. In Chhattisgarh, for example, the BJP runs the government and Congress politicians run the Salwa Judum, a vicious government-backed “people’s” militia. The Judum and the government have formed a joint front against the Maoists in the forests who are engaged in a deadly and often brutal armed struggle against displacement and against land acquisition by corporations waiting to set up steel factories and to begin mining iron ore, tin, and all the other wealth stashed below the forest floor. So, in Chhattisgarh, we have the remarkable spectacle of the two biggest political parties of India in an alliance against the Adivasis of Dantewara, India’s poorest, most vulnerable people. Already 644 villages have been emptied. Fifty thousand people have moved into Salwa Judum camps. Three hundred thousand are hiding in the forests and are being called Maoist terrorists or sympathizers. The battle is raging, and the corporations are waiting.
It is significant that India is one of the countries that blocked a European move in the UN asking for an international probe into war crimes that may have been committed by the government of Sri Lanka in its recent offensive against the Tamil Tigers.16 Governments in this part of the world have taken note of Israel’s Gaza blueprint as a good way of dealing with “terrorism”: keep the media out and close in for the kill. That way they don’t have to worry too much about who’s a “terrorist” and who isn’t. There may be a little flurry of international outrage, but it goes away pretty quickly.
Things do not augur well for the forest-dwelling people of Chhattisgarh.
Reassured by the sort of “constructive” collaboration, the consensus between political parties, few were more enthusiastic about the elections than some of the major corporate houses. They seem to have realized that a democratic mandate can legitimize their pillaging in a way that nothing else can. Several corporations ran extravagant advertising campaigns on TV, some featuring Bollywood film stars urging people, young and old, rich and poor, to go out and vote. Shops and restaurants in Khan Market, Delhi’s most tony market, offered discounts to those whose index (voting) fingers were marked with indelible ink. Democracy suddenly became the cool new way to be. You know how it is: the Chinese do Sport, so they had the Olympics. India does Democracy, so we had an election. Both are heavily sponsored, TV-friendly spectator sports.
The BBC commissioned a coach on a train—the India Election Special—that took journalists from all over the world on a sightseeing tour to witness the miracle of Indian elections. The train coach had a slogan painted on it: Will India’s voters revive the World’s Fortunes?17 BBC (Hindi) had a poster up in a café near my home. It featured a $100 bill (with Ben Franklin) morphing into a 500 rupee note (with Gandhi). It said: Kya India ka vote bachayega duniya ka note
? (Will India’s votes rescue the world’s notes?) In these flagrant and unabashed ways, an electorate has been turned into a market, voters are seen as consumers, and democracy is being welded to the free market. Ergo: those who cannot consume do not matter.
What does the victory of the UPA mean in this election? Obviously myriad things. The debate is wide open. Interpreting an Indian election is about as exact a science as sorcery. Voting patterns are intricately connected with local issues and caste and community equations that vary literally from polling booth to polling booth. There can be no reliable Big Conclusion. But here’s something to think about.
In its time in office, in order to mitigate the devastation caused by its economic policies, the former Congress regime passed three progressive (critics call them populist and controversial) parliamentary acts: the Forest Rights Act (which gave forest dwellers legal right to land and the traditional use of forest produce), the Right to Information Act and, most important of all, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). The NREGA guarantees every rural family a hundred days of work (hard, manual labor) a year at minimum wages. It amounts to an average of 8,000 rupees (a little more than $120) per family per year. Enough for a good meal in a restaurant, including wine and dessert. Imagine how hellish times must be for even that tiny amount of money to come as a relief to millions of people who are reeling under the impact of the precipitous loss of their lands and their livelihoods. (Talk about crumbs from the high table. But then, which one of us has the heart, or the right, to argue that no crumbs are better than crumbs? Or, indeed, that no elections are better than meaningless elections?) Implementing the NREGA, seeing that the crumbs actually reach the people they’re meant for, has occupied all the time and energy of some of India’s finest and most committed social activists for the last several years. They have had to battle cartels of corrupt government officers, power brokers, and middlemen. They have faced threats and a fair amount of violence. One rural activist in the Jharkhand immolated himself in anger and frustration at the injustice of it all.
My Seditious Heart Page 50