My Seditious Heart

by Arundhati Roy

  11.Epstein, “U.S. Seizes Skies over Afghanistan.”

  12.Human Rights Watch, “Military Assistance to the Afghan Opposition: Human Rights Watch Backgrounder,” October 2001, http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/asia/afghan-bck1005.htm. See also Gregg Zoroya, “Northern Alliance Has Bloody Past, Critics Warn,” USA Today, October 12, 2001, 1A.

  13.David Rohde, “Visit to Town Where 2 Linked to bin Laden Killed Afghan Rebel,” New York Times, September 26, 2001, B4.

  14.Zahid Hussain and Stephen Farrell, “Tribal Chiefs See Chance to Be Rid of Taliban,” Times (London), October 2, 2001.

  15.Alan Cowell, “Afghan King Is Courted and Says, ‘I Am Ready,’” New York Times, September 26, 2001, A4.

  16.Said Mohammad Azam, “Civilian Toll Mounts as Bush Signals Switch to Ground Assault,” Agence France-Presse, October 19, 2001; Indira A. R. Lakshmanan, “UN’s Peaceful Mission Loses 4 to War,” Boston Globe, October 10, 2001, A1; and Steven Lee Myers and Thom Shanker, “Pilots Told to Fire at Will in Some Zones,” New York Times, October 17, 2001, B2.

  17.UN documents and reports summarized in Center for Economic and Social Rights, “Afghanistan Fact Sheet 3: Key Human Vulnerabilities,” http://www.cesr.org/downloads/Afghanistan%20Fact%20Sheet%203.pdf.

  18.David Rising, “U.S. Military Defends Its Food Drops in Afghanistan from Criticism by Aid Organizations,” Associated Press, October 10, 2001; Luke Harding, “Taliban Say Locals Burn Food Parcels,” Guardian (London), October 11, 2001, 9; and Tyler Marshall and Megan Garvey, “Relief Efforts Trumped by Air War,” Los Angeles Times, October 17, 2001, A1.

  19.Martin Merzer and Jonathan S. Landay, Knight Ridder News Service, “Second Phase of Strikes Begins,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, October 10, 2001, 1A.

  20.Jennifer Steinhauer, “Citing Comments on Attack, Giuliani Rejects Saudi’s Gift,” New York Times, October 12, 2001, B13.

  21.Robert Pear, “Arming Afghan Guerrillas: A Huge Effort Led by U.S.,” New York Times, April 18, 1988, A1. See also Coll, “Anatomy of a Victory,” A1; Coll, “In CIA’s Covert Afghan War, Where to Draw the Line Was Key,” A1; Weiner, “Blowback from the Afghan Battlefield”; and Rashid, “Making of a Terrorist,” 26.

  22.“Voices of Dissent and Police Action,” Hindu, October 13, 2001.

  23.“Vajpayee Gets Tough, Says No Compromise with Terrorism,” Economic Times of India, October 15, 2001.

  24.Howard Fineman, “A President Finds His True Voice,” Newsweek, September 24, 2001, 50.

  25.Aaron Pressman, “Former FCC Head Follows the Money,” IndustryStandard.com, May 2, 2001.

  26.Alice Cherbonnier, “Republican-Controlled Carlyle Group Poses Serious Ethical Questions for Bush Presidents, but Baltimore Sun Ignores It,” Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel, n.d. See also Leslie Wayne, “Elder Bush in Big G.O.P. Cast Toiling for Top Equity Firm,” New York Times, March 5, 2001, A1.

  27.“America, Oil and Afghanistan,” editorial, Hindu, October 13, 2001.

  28.Tyler Marshall, “The New Oil Rush: High Stakes in the Caspian,” Los Angeles Times, February 23, 1998, A1.

  29.Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale Nota Bene / Yale University Press, 2001), 143–82.

  ON CITIZENS’ RIGHTS TO EXPRESS DISSENT

  1.Nadja Vancauwenberghe and Maurice Frank, “New Media: If You Take a Bribe, We’ll Nail You,” Guardian, June 4, 2001; “Egg on Congress’s Face,” Statesman, April 10, 2001; “Chief Justice Turns Down Request for Sitting Judge for Arms Scandal Inquiry,” BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, March 20, 2001; and “CJI Refuses to Spare Sitting Judge,” Times of India, March 20, 2001.

  2.PTI, “EX-SC Judge to Hold Probe,” Tribune, March 19, 2001, http://www.tribuneindia.com/20010320/main3.htm.

  DEMOCRACY: WHO IS SHE WHEN SHE’S AT HOME?

  1.Violence was directed especially at women. See, for example, the following report by Laxmi Murthy: “A doctor in rural Vadodara said that the wounded who started pouring in from February 28 had injuries of a kind he had never witnessed before even in earlier situations of communal violence. In a grave challenge to the Hippocratic oath, doctors have been threatened for treating Muslim patients, and pressurised to use the blood donated by RSS volunteers only to treat Hindu patients. Sword injuries, mutilated breasts and burns of varying intensity characterised the early days of the massacre. Doctors conducted post-mortems on a number of women who had been gang raped, many of whom had been burnt subsequently. A woman from Kheda district who was gang raped had her head shaved and ‘Om’ cut into her head with a knife by the rapists. She died after a few days in the hospital. There were other instances of ‘Om’ engraved with a knife on women’s backs and buttocks.” From Laxmi Murthy, “In the Name of Honour,” CorpWatch India, April 23, 2002.

  2.See “Stray Incidents Take Gujarat Toll to 544,” Times of India, March 5, 2002.

  3.Edna Fernandes, “India Pushes through Anti-Terror Law,” Financial Times (London), March 27, 2002, 11; “Terror Law Gets President’s Nod,” Times of India, April 3, 2002; Scott Baldauf, “As Spring Arrives, Kashmir Braces for Fresh Fighting,” Christian Science Monitor, April 9, 2002, 7; Howard W. French and Raymond Bonner, “At Tense Time, Pakistan Starts to Test Missiles,” New York Times, May 25, 2002, A1; Edward Luce, “The Saffron Revolution,” Financial Times (London), May 4, 2002, 1; Martin Regg Cohn, “India’s ‘Saffron’ Curriculum,” Toronto Star, April 14, 2002, B4; and Pankaj Mishra, “Holy Lies,” Guardian (London), April 6, 2002, 24.

  4.See Edward Luce, “Battle over Ayodhya Temple Looms,” Financial Times (London), February 2, 2002, 7.

  5.“Gujarat’s Tale of Sorrow: 846 Dead,” Economic Times, April 18, 2002; see also Celia W. Dugger, “Religious Riots Loom over Indian Politics,” New York Times, July 27, 2002, A1; Edna Fernandes, “Gujarat Violence Backed by State, Says EU Report,” Financial Times (London), April 30, 2002, 12; and Human Rights Watch, “‘We Have No Orders to Save You’: State Participation and Complicity in Communal Violence in Gujarat,” vol. 14, no. 3(C), April 2002, www.hrw.org/reports/2002/india/ (hereafter HRW Report). See also Human Rights Watch, “India: Gujarat Officials Took Part in Anti-Muslim Violence,” press release, New York, April 30, 2002.

  6.“A Tainted Election,” Indian Express, April 17, 2002; Meena Menon, “A Divided Gujarat Not Ready for Snap Poll,” Inter Press Service, July 21, 2002.

  7.See HRW Report, 27–31 Dugger, “Religious Riots Loom over Indian Politics,” A1; “Women Relive the Horrors of Gujarat,” Hindu, May 18, 2002; Harbaksh Singh Nanda, “Muslim Survivors Speak in India,” United Press International, April 27, 2002; and “Gujarat Carnage: The Aftermath—Impact of Violence on Women,” 2002, www.onlinevolunteers.org/gujarat/women/index.htm.

  8.HRW Report, 15—16, 31; Justice A. P. Ravani, Submission to the National Human Rights Commission, New Delhi, March 21, 2002, appendix 4. See also Dugger, “Religious Riots Loom over Indian Politics,” A1.

  9.HRW Report, 31; and “Artists Protest Destruction of Cultural Landmarks,” Press Trust of India, April 13, 2002.

  10.HRW Report, 7, 45. Rama Lakshmi, “Sectarian Violence Haunts Indian City: Hindu Militants Bar Muslims from Work,” Washington Post, April 8, 2002, A12.

  11.Communalism Combat (March–April 2002) recounted Jaffri’s final moments: “Ehsan Jaffri is pulled out of his house, brutally treated for 45 minutes, stripped, paraded naked, and asked to say, ‘Vande Maataram!’ and ‘Jai Shri Ram!’ He refuses. His fingers are chopped off, he is paraded around in the locality, badly injured. Next, his hands and feet are chopped off. He is then dragged, a forklike instrument clutching his neck, down the road before being thrown into the fire.” See also “50 Killed in Communal Violence in Gujarat, 30 of Them Burnt,” Press Trust of India, February 28, 2002.

  12.HRW Report, 5. See also Dugger, “Religious Riots Loom over Indian Politics,” A1.

  13.“ML Launches Frontal Attack on Sangh Parivar,” Times of India, May 8, 2002.

  14.HRW Report, 2
1–27. See also the remarks of Kamal Mitra Chenoy of Jawaharlal Nehru University, who led an independent fact-finding mission to Gujarat, “Can India End Religious Revenge?” CNN International, “Q&A with Zain Verjee,” April 4, 2002.

  15.See Tavleen Sigh, “Out of Tune,” India Today, April 15, 2002, 21. See also Sharad Gupta, “BJP: His Excellency,” India Today, January 28, 2002, 18.

  16.Khozem Merchant, “Gujarat: Vajpayee Visits Scene of Communal Clashes,” Financial Times (London), April 5, 2002, 10. See also Pushpesh Pant, “Atal at the Helm, or Running on Auto?” Times of India, April 8, 2002.

  17.See Bharat Desai, “Will Vajpayee See through All the Window Dressing?” Economic Times, April 5, 2002.

  18.Agence France-Press, “Singapore, India to Explore Closer Economic Ties,” April 8, 2002.

  19.See “Medha Files Charges against BJP Leaders,” Economic Times, April 13, 2002.

  20.HRW Report, 30. See also Burhan Wazir, “Militants Seek Muslim-Free India,” Observer (London), July 21, 2002, 20.

  21.See Mishra, “Holy Lies,” 24.

  22.The Home Minister, L. K Advani, made a public statement claiming that the burning of the train was a plot by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Months later, the police have not found a shred of evidence to support that claim. The Gujarat government’s forensic report says that sixty liters of petrol were poured onto the floor by someone who was inside the carriage. The doors were locked, possibly from the inside. The burned bodies of the passengers were found in a heap in the middle of the carriage. So far, nobody knows who started the fire. There are theories to suit every political position: It was a Pakistani plot. It was Muslim extremists who managed to get into the train. It was the angry mob. It was a VHP / Bajrang Dal plot staged to set off the horror that followed. No one really knows. See HRW Report, 13–14; Siddharth Srivastava, “No Proof Yet on ISI Link with Sabarmati Attack: Officials,” Times of India, March 6, 2002; “ISI behind Godhra Killings, Says BJP,” Times of India, March 18, 2002; Uday Mahurkar, “Gujarat: Fuelling the Fire,” India Today, July 22, 2002, 38; “Bloodstained Memories,” Indian Express, April 12, 2002; and Celia W. Dugger, “After Deadly Firestorm, India Officials Ask Why,” New York Times, March 6, 2002, A3.

  23.“Blame It on Newton’s Law: Modi,” Times of India, March 3, 2002. See also Fernandes, “Gujarat Violence Backed by State,” 12.

  24.“RSS Cautions Muslims,” Press Trust of India, March 17, 2002. See also Sanghamitra Chakraborty, “Minority Guide to Good Behaviour,” Times of India, March 25, 2002.

  25.P. R. Ramesh, “Modi Offers to Quit as Gujarat CM,” Economic Times, April 13, 2002; “Modi Asked to Seek Mandate,” Statesman (India), April 13, 2002.

  26.See M. S. Golwalkar, We, or Our Nationhood Defined (Nagpur: Bharat, 1939); Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Hindutva (New Delhi: Bharti Sadan, 1989). See also “Saffron Is Thicker Than …,” editorial, Hindu, October 22, 2000; David Gardner, “Hindu Revivalists Raise the Question of Who Governs India,” Financial Times (London), July 13, 2000, 12.

  27.See Arundhati Roy, Power Politics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2001), 57 and notes (p. 159).

  28.See Noam Chomsky, “Militarizing Space ‘to Protect U.S. Interests and Investment,’” International Socialist Review 19 (July–August 2001), www.isreview.org/issues/19/NoamChomsky.shtml.

  29.Pankaj Mishra, “A Mediocre Goddess,” New Statesman, April 9, 2001, a review of Katherine Frank, Indira: A Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi (London: HarperCollins, 2001).

  30.William Claiborne, “Gandhi Urges Indians to Strengthen Union,” Washington Post, November 20, 1984, A9. See also Tavleen Singh, “Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow,” India Today, March 30, 1998, 24.

  31.HRW Report, 39–44.

  32.President George W. Bush, “September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks on the United States,” address to Joint Session of Congress, Federal News Service, September 20, 2001.

  33.John Pilger, “Pakistan and India on Brink,” Mirror (London), May 27, 2002, 4.

  34.Alison Leigh Cowan, Kurt Eichenwald, and Michael Moss, “Bin Laden Family, with Deep Western Ties, Strives to Re-Establish a Name,” New York Times, October 28, 2001, 1, 9.

  35.Sanjeev Miglani, “Opposition Keeps Up Heat on Government over Riots,” Reuters, April 16, 2002.

  36.“Either Govern or Just Go,” Indian Express, April 1, 2002. Parekh is CEO of HDFC, the Housing Development Finance Corporation Limited.

  37.“It’s War in Drawing Rooms,” Indian Express, May 19, 2002.

  38.Ranjit Devraj, “Pro-Hindu Ruling Party Back to Hardline Politics,” Inter Press Service, July 1, 2002; “An Unholy Alliance,” Indian Express, May 6, 2002.

  39.Nilanjana Bhaduri Jha, “Congress [Party] Begins Oust-Modi Campaign,” Economic Times, April 12, 2002.

  40.Richard Benedetto, “Confidence in War on Terror Wanes,” USA Today, June 25, 2002, 19A; David Lamb, “Israel’s Invasions, 20 Years Apart, Look Eerily Alike,” Los Angeles Times, April 20, 2002, A5.

  41.See “The End of Imagination,” above.

  42.“I would say it is a weapon of peace guarantee, a peace guarantor,” said Abdul Qadeer Khan of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb. See Imtiaz Gul, “Father of Pakistani Bomb Says Nuclear Weapons Guarantee Peace,” Deutsche Presse-Agentur, May 29, 1998. See also Raj Chengappa, Weapons of Peace: The Secret Story of India’s Quest to Be a Nuclear Power (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2000).

  43.The 1999 Kargil War between India and Pakistan claimed hundreds of lives. See Edward Luce, “Fernandes Hit by India’s Coffin Scandal,” Financial Times (London), December 13, 2001, 12.

  44.See “Arrested Growth,” Times of India, February 2, 2000.

  45.Dugger, “Religious Riots Loom over Indian Politics,” A1.

  46.Edna Fernandes, “EU Tells India of Concern over Violence in Gujarat,” Financial Times (London), May 3, 2002, 12; Alex Spillius, “‘Please Don’t Say This Was a Riot. It Was Genocide, Pure and Simple,’” Daily Telegraph (London), June 18, 2002, 13.

  47.“Gujarat is an internal matter and the situation is under control,” said Jaswant Singh, India’s foreign affairs minister. See Shishir Gupta, “The Foreign Hand,” India Today, May 6, 2002, 42 and sidebar.

  48.“Laloo Wants Use of POTA [Prevention of Terrorism Act] against VHP, RSS,” Times of India, March 7, 2002.

  WAR TALK: SUMMER GAMES WITH NUCLEAR BOMBS

  1.Prophecy, directed by Susumu Hani (1982; Nagasaki, Japan: Nagasaki Publishing Committee), 16mm.

  2.See Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey, “Words and Deeds,” India Together, June 2002, and “Stand-Off at Maan River: Dispossession Continues to Stalk the Narmada Valley,” India Together, May 2002, www.indiatogether.org/campaigns/narmada/. See also “Maan Dam,” Friends of River Narmada, www.narmada.org/nvdp.dams/maan/.

  3.“Nobel laureate Amartya Sen may think that health and education are the reasons why India has lagged behind in development in the past 50 years, but I think it is because of defence,” said Home Minister L. K. Advani. See “Quote of the Week, Other Voices,” India Today, June 17, 2002, 13.

  4.See Human Rights Watch, “Behind the Kashmir Conflict: Abuses by Indian Security Forces and Militant Groups Continue,” 1999, www.hrw.org/reports/1999/kashmir/summary.htm.

  5.See Pilger, “Pakistan and India on Brink,” 4; Neil Mackay, “Cash from Chaos: How Britain Arms Both Sides,” Sunday Herald (Scotland), June 2, 2002, 12.

  6.See Richard Norton-Taylor, “UK Is Selling Arms to India,” Guardian (London), June 20, 2002, 1; Tom Baldwin, Philip Webster, and Michael Evans, “Arms Export Row Damages Peace Mission,” Times (London), May 28, 2002; and Agence France-Presse, “Blair Peace Shuttle Moves from India to Pakistan,” January 7, 2002.

  7.Pilger, “Pakistan and India on Brink.”

  AHIMSA (NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE)

  1.The government of India plans to build 30 large, 135 medium, and 3,000 small dams on the Narmada to generate electricity, displacing 400,000 people in the process. For more information, see www.narmada.org.
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  2.The activists ended their fast on June 18, 2002, after an independent committee was set up to look into the issue of resettlement. For more information, see www.narmada.org/nba-press-releases/jun-2002/fast.ends.html.

  COME SEPTEMBER

  1.See John Berger, G. (New York: Vintage International, 1991), 123.

  2.See Damon Johnston, “U.S. Hits Back Inspirations,” Advertiser, September 22, 2001, 7.

  3.See John Pomfret, “Chinese Working Overtime to Sew U.S. Flags,” Washington Post, September 20, 2001, A14.

  4.See “Democracy: Who Is She When She’s at Home?” above.

  5.See David E. Sanger, “Bin Laden Is Wanted in Attacks, ‘Dead or Alive,’ President Says,” New York Times, September 18, 2001, A1; John F. Burns, “10-Month Afghan Mystery: Is Bin Laden Dead or Alive?” New York Times, September 30, 2002, A1.

  6.See the Associated Press list, available on the website of the Toledo Blade, of those confirmed dead, reported dead, or reported missing in the September 11 terrorist attacks, www.toledoblade.com/Nation/2011/09/11/list-of-2977-victims-of-Sept-11-2001-terror-attacks.html.

  7.Quoted in Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (New York: Summit Books, 1983), 265.

  8.See Pilar Aguilera and Ricardo Fredes, eds., Chile: The Other September 11 (New York: Ocean, 2002); Amnesty International, “The Case of Augusto Pinochet.”

  9.Clifford Krauss, “Britain Arrests Pinochet to Face Charges by Spain,” New York Times, October 18, 1998, 1; National Security Archive, “Chile: 16,000 Secret U.S. Documents Declassified,” press release, November 13, 2000, nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/20001113/; and selected documents on the National Security Archive website, nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/20001113/#docs.

  10.Kissinger told this to Pinochet at a meeting of the Organization of American States in Santiago, Chile, on June 8, 1976. See Lucy Kosimar, “Kissinger Covered Up Chile Torture,” Observer, February 28, 1999, 3.

  11.Among other histories, see Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, trans. Cedric Belfrage, 2nd ed. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998); Noam Chomsky, Turning the Tide: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace, 2nd ed. (Boston: South End, 1985); Noam Chomsky, The Culture of Terrorism (Boston: South End, 1983); and Gabriel Kolko, Confronting the Third World: United States Foreign Policy, 1945–1980 (New York: Pantheon, 1988).