My Seditious Heart

by Arundhati Roy

  79.Heather Stewart, “Iraq—After the War: Fury at Agriculture Post for US Grain Dealer,” Guardian (London), April 28, 2003, 11.

  80.Alan Cowell, “British Ask What a War Would Mean for Business,” New York Times, March 18, 2003, W1; “Spoils of War,” editorial, San Francisco Chronicle, March 29, 2003, A14; Jan Hennop, “S. African Apartheid Victims File Lawsuit in US Court, Name Companies,” Agence France-Presse, November 12, 2002; and Nicol Degli Innocenti, “African Workers Launch Dollars 100bn Lawsuit,” Financial Times (London), October 13, 2003, 9.

  81.John Vidal, “Shell Fights Fires as Strife Flares in Delta,” Guardian (London), September 15, 1999, 15; Vidal, “Oil Wealth Buys Health in Country within a Country,” Guardian (London), September 16, 1999, 19. See also Ike Okonta and Oronto Douglas, Where Vultures Feast: Shell, Human Rights, and Oil (New York: Verso, 2003); Al Gedicks, Resource Rebels: Native Challenges to Mining and Oil Corporations (Cambridge, MA: South End, 2001).

  82.Tom Brokaw, speaking to Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn, NBC News Special Report: Target Iraq, March 19, 2003.

  83.Bryan Bender, “Roadblocks Seen in Sept. 11 Inquiry,” Boston Globe, July 9, 2003, A2. See also Josh Meyer, “Terror Not a Bush Priority before 9/11, Witness Says,” Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2004, A1; Edward Alden, “Tale of Intelligence Failure Above and Below,” Financial Times (London), March 26, 2004, 2.

  84.Zinn, A People’s History of the United States. See also Anthony Arnove and Howard Zinn, Voices of a People’s History of the United States (New York: Seven Stories, 2004).

  WHEN THE SAINTS GO MARCHING OUT: THE STRANGE FATE OF MARTIN, MOHANDAS, AND MANDELA

  1.See “Democracy: Who Is She When She’s at Home?” 160–76 above.

  2.“Cong[ress Party] Ploy Fails, Modi Steals the Show in Pain,” Indian Express, August 16, 2003.

  3.Agence France-Presse, “Indian Activists Urge Mandela to Snub Gujarat Government Invite,” August 4, 2003; “Guj[arat]–Mandela,” Press Trust of India, August 5, 2003; and “Battle for Gujarat’s Image Now on Foreign Soil,” Times of India, August 7, 2003.

  4.Agence France-Presse, “Relax, Mandela Isn’t Coming, He’s Working on a Book,” August 5, 2003.

  5.Michael Dynes, “Mbeki Can Seize White Farms under New Law,” Times (London), January 31, 2004, 26.

  6.Ibid.

  7.Patrick Laurence, “South Africa Fights to Put the Past to Rest,” Irish Times, December 28, 2000, 57.

  8.Anthony Stoppard, “South Africa: Water, Electricity Cutoffs Affect 10 Million,” Inter Press Service, March 21, 2002.

  9.Henri E. Cauvin, “Hunger in Southern Africa Imperils Lives of Millions,” New York Times, April 26, 2002, A8; James Lamont, “Nobody Says ‘No’ to Mandela,” Financial Times (London), December 10, 2002, 4; and Patrick Laurence, “South Africans Sceptical of Official Data,” Irish Times, June 6, 2003, 30.

  10.See Ashwin Desai, We Are the Poors: Community Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2002).

  11.South African Press Association, “Gauteng Municipalities to Target Service Defaulters,” May 4, 1999; Alison Maitland, “Combining to Harness the Power of Private Enterprise,” Financial Times (London), August 23, 2002, survey: “Sustainable Business,” 2.

  12.Nicol Degli Innocenti and John Reed, “SA Govt Opposes Reparations Lawsuit,” Financial Times (London), May 19, 2003, 15.

  13.South African Press Association, “SAfrica Asks US Court to Dismiss Apartheid Reparations Cases,” BBC Worldwide Monitoring, July 30, 2003.

  14.Martin Luther King, Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. James M. Washington (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 233.

  15.Ibid., 233.

  16.“Men of Vietnam,” New York Times, April 9, 1967, Week in Review, 2E. Quoted in Mike Marqusee, Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties (New York: Verso, 1999), 217.

  17.King, Testament of Hope, 245.

  18.David M. Halbfinger and Steven A. Holmes, “Military Mirrors a Working-Class America,” New York Times, March 30, 2003, A1; Darryl Fears, “Draft Bill Stirs Debate over the Military, Race, and Equity,” Washington Post, February 4, 2003, A3.

  19.David Cole, “Denying Felons Vote Hurts Them, Society,” USA Today, February 3, 2000, 17A; “From Prison to the Polls,” editorial, Christian Science Monitor, May 24, 2001, 10.

  20.King, Testament of Hope, 239.

  21.Quoted in Marqusee, Redemption Song, 218.

  22.King, Testament of Hope, 250.

  23.Marqusee, Redemption Song, 1–4, 292.

  IN MEMORY OF SHANKAR GUHA NIYOGI

  1.Human Rights Watch, “India: Human Rights Developments,” Human Rights Watch World Report 1993, www.hrw.org/reports/1993/WR93/Asw-06.htm.

  DO TURKEYS ENJOY THANKSGIVING?

  1.See André Verlöy and Daniel Politi, with Aron Pilhofer, “Advisors of Influence: Nine Members of the Defense Policy Board Have Ties to Defense Contractors,” Center for Public Integrity, March 28, 2003, https://www.publicintegrity.org/2003/03/28/3157/advisors-influence-nine-members-defense-policy-board-have-ties-defense-contractors.

  2.“Strike Not Your Right Anymore: SC [Supreme Court] to Govt Staff,” Indian Express, August 7, 2003; “Trade Unions Protest against SC [Supreme Court] Order on Strikes,” Times of India, August 8, 2003.

  3.See “On Citizens’ Rights to Express Dissent,” in the current volume.

  4.Michael Jensen, “Denis Halliday: Iraq Sanctions Are Genocide,” Daily Star, Lebanon, July 7, 2000. See also the interview with Halliday and Phyllis Bennis in Iraq under Siege, 53–64.

  5.Arnove, Iraq under Siege, 103–04.

  6.Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002), 7, 61, 253–54.

  7.“World Trade Special Report,” Independent (London), September 10, 2003, 1; Thompson Ayodele, “Last Chance for Fair Go on Trade,” Australian Financial Review, September 11, 2003, B63.

  8.George Monbiot, The Age of Consent (New York: New Press, 2004), 158. See also UN General Assembly, External Debt Crisis and Development: Report to the Secretary-General, A/57/253, 2003, 2, https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N02/503/65/PDF/N0250365.pdf?OpenElement.

  9.The Fifth WTO Ministerial Conference was held in Cancún, Mexico, September 10–14, 2003. Sue Kirchhoff and James Cox, “WTO Talks Break Down, Threatening Future Pact,” USA Today, September 15, 2003, 1B.

  HOW DEEP SHALL WE DIG?

  1.Hina Kausar Alam and P. Balu, “J&K [Jammu and Kashmir] Fudges DNA Samples to Cover Up Killings,” Times of India, March 7, 2002.

  2.See “Democracy: Who Is She When She’s at Home?” 160–76, above.

  3.Somit Sen, “Shooting Turns Spotlight on Encounter Cops,” Times of India, August 23, 2003.

  4.W. Chandrakanth, “Crackdown on Civil Liberties Activists in the Offing?” Hindu, October 4, 2003: “Several activists have gone underground fearing police reprisals. Their fears are not unfounded, as the State police have been staging encounters at will. While the police frequently release the statistics on naxalite violence, they avoid mentioning the victims of their own violence. The Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee (APCLC), which is keeping track of the police killings, has listed more than 4,000 deaths, 2,000 of them in the last eight years alone.” See also K. T. Sangameswaran, “Rights Activists Allege Ganglord-Cop Nexus,” Hindu, October 22, 2003.

  5.David Rohde, “India and Kashmir Separatists Begin Talks on Ending Strife,” New York Times, January 23, 2004, A8; Deutsche Presse-Agentur, “Thousands Missing, Unmarked Graves Tell Kashmir Story,” October 7, 2003.

  6.Unpublished reports from the Association of Parents of Disappeared People (APDP), Srinagar.

  7.See also Edward Luce, “Kashmir’s New Leader Promises ‘Healing Touch,’” Financial Times (London), October 28, 2002, 12.

  8.Ray Marcelo, “Anti-Terrorism Law Backed by India’s Supreme Court,” Financial Times (London), December 17, 2003, 2.

  9.Pe
ople’s Union for Civil Liberties, “In Jharkhand All the Laws of the Land Are Replaced by POTA,” Delhi, India, May 2, 2003, www.pucl.org/Topics/Law/2003/poto-jharkhand.htm.

  10.“People’s Tribunal Highlights Misuse of POTA,” Hindu, March 18, 2004.

  11.“People’s Tribunal.” See also “Human Rights Watch Ask Centre to Repeal POTA,” Press Trust of India, September 8, 2002.

  12.Leena Misra, “240 POTA Cases, All against Minorities,” Times of India, September 15, 2003; “People’s Tribunal.” The Times of India misreported the testimony presented. As the Press Trust of India article notes, in Gujarat “the only non-Muslim in the list is a Sikh, Liversingh Tej Singh Sikligar, who figured in it for an attempt on the life of Surat lawyer Hasmukh Lalwala, and allegedly hung himself in a police lock-up in Surat in April [2003].” On Gujarat, see “Democracy: Who Is She,” above.

  13.“A Pro-Police Report,” Hindu, March 20, 2004; Amnesty International, “India: Report of the Malimath Committee on Reforms of the Criminal Justice System: Some Comments,” September 19, 2003 (ASA 20/025/2003).

  14.“J&K [Jammu and Kashmir] Panel Wants Draconian Laws Withdrawn,” Hindu, March 23, 2003. See also South Asian Human Rights Documentation Center, “Armed Forces Special Powers Act: A Study in National Security Tyranny,” November 1995.

  15.“Growth of a Demon: Genesis of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958” and related documents in Manipur Update, December 1999.

  16.On the lack of any convictions for the massacres in Gujarat, see Edward Luce, “Master of Ambiguity,” Financial Times (London), April 3–4, 2004, 16. On the March 31, 1997, murder of Chandrashekhar Prasad, see Andrew Nash, “An Election at JNU,” Himāl, December 2003. For more information on the additional crimes listed here, see 287–90, above.

  17.N. A. Mujumdar, “Eliminate Hunger Now, Poverty Later,” Business Line, January 8, 2003.

  18.“Foodgrain Exports May Slow Down This Fiscal [Year],” India Business Insight, June 2, 2003; “India—Agriculture Sector: Paradox of Plenty,” Business Line, June 26, 2001; and Ranjit Devraj, “Farmers Protest against Globalization,” Inter Press Service, January 25, 2001.

  19.Utsa Patnaik, “Falling Per Capita Availability of Foodgrains for Human Consumption in the Reform Period in India,” Akhbar 2 (October 2001); P. Sainath, “Have Tornado, Will Travel,” Hindu Magazine, August 18, 2002; Sylvia Nasar, “Profile: The Conscience of the Dismal Science,” New York Times, January 9, 1994, 8; and Maria Misra, “Heart of Smugness: Unlike Belgium, Britain Is Still Complacently Ignoring the Gory Cruelties of Its Empire,” Guardian (London), July 23, 2002, 15. See also Utsa Patnaik, “On Measuring ‘Famine’ Deaths: Different Criteria for Socialism and Capitalism?” Akhbar 6 (November–December 1999), www.indowindow.com/akhbar/article.php?article=74&category=8&issue=9.

  20.Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999).

  21.“The Wasted India,” Statesman (India), February 17, 2001; “Child-Blain,” Statesman (India), November 24, 2001.

  22.Utsa Patnaik, “The Republic of Hunger,” lecture, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, April 10, 2004, macroscan.com/fet/apr04/fet210404Republic_Hunger.htm.

  23.Praful Bidwai, “India amidst Serious Agrarian Crisis,” Central Chronicle (Bhopal), April 9, 2004.

  24.See “Power Politics,” 76–105, above.

  25.See Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (New York: Verso, 2002).

  26.Among other sources, see Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation (New York: Three Rivers, 2003).

  27.“For India Inc., Silence Protects the Bottom Line,” Times of India, February 17, 2003; “CII Apologises to Modi,” Hindu, March 7, 2003.

  28.In May 2004, the right-wing BJP-led coalition was not just voted out of power, it was humiliated by the Indian electorate. None of the political pundits had predicted this decisive vote against communalism and neoliberalism’s economic “reforms.” Yet even as we celebrate, we know that on every major issue other than overt Hindu nationalism—nuclear bombs, Big Dams, privatization—the newly elected Congress Party and the BJP have no major ideological differences. We know that it was the legacy of the Congress that led us to the horror of the BJP. Still we celebrated, because surely a darkness has passed. Or has it? Even before it formed a government, the Congress made overt reassurances that “reforms” would continue. Exactly what kind of reforms, we’ll have to wait and see. Fortunately, the Congress will be hobbled by the fact that it needs the support of left parties—the only parties to be overtly (if ineffectively) critical of the reforms—to make up a majority in order to form a government. The left parties have been given an unprecedented mandate. Hopefully, things will change. A little. It’s been a pretty hellish six years.

  29.India was the only country to abstain on December 22, 2003, from UN General Assembly Resolution, “Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms While Countering Terrorism,” A/RES/58/187, http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/58/187&Area=UNDOC. Quoted in Amnesty International India, “Security Legislation and State Accountability: A Presentation for the POTA People’s Hearing, March 13–14, New Delhi.”

  BREAKING THE NEWS

  1.Statement of Mohammad Afzal to the Court under Section 313 Criminal Procedure Code, September 2002.

  2.“‘Terrorists Were Close-Knit Religious Fanatics’” and “Police Impress with Speed But Show Little Evidence,” both published in The Times of India, December 21, 2001.

  3.Judgment of the Supreme Court of India on Mohammad Afzal v. the State (NCT of Delhi), August 4, 2005.

  4.“Book on December 13 Parliament Attack,” ptinews.com, December 13, 2006.

  5.Speech made by Manmohan Singh (at the time the leader of the opposition, and later prime minister) on December 18, 2001, in the Rajya Sabha. See the full text in Rajya Sabha, Official Day’s Proceedings, December 18, 2001, paragraph 4, 430.

  6.Davinder Kumar, “The Ham Burger—Did Delhi Police Sleuths Jump the Gun with the Wrong One?” Outlook, January 21, 2002.

  7.Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi, “‘Advaniji Too Was Confused,’” Outlook, December 24, 2001.

  8.For the full text of the Parliament attack charge sheet, see Nirmalangshu Mukherji, December 13: Terror over Democracy (New Delhi: Promilla, 2005), Annexure 1.

  9.See “Scandal,” Economist, August 28, 1999; and Sarah Delaney and Michael Evans, “Britain Joined Plot to Overthrow a Communist Italian Government,” Times (London), January 14, 2008, 31. On the political context, see Noam Chomsky, Turning the Tide: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 19;87), 67, 195.

  10.“Show No Mercy, Hang Afzal: BJP,” Indian Express, November 23, 2006.

  11.Chandan Mitra, editor of the Pioneer newspaper, reviewed the book 13 December: A Reader in India Today (January 22, 2007, “Trapped in Half-Truths”). An edited version of my letter in response was published in the Letters section of India Today (February 5, 2007). Here is the full text:

  Sir—This is regarding Chandan Mitra’s review of the book 13 December: A Reader. An interesting choice of reviewer—someone who has brazenly falsified facts on the Parliament attack case and has been exposed for doing so in the book he reviews. He asks for a “source” for my statement: “On December 12, 2001, at an informal meeting, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee warned of an imminent attack on Parliament.”

  Please refer to the speech made by the Prime Minster Manmohan Singh (then leader of the opposition) on December 18, 2001, in the Rajya Sabha. He said: “Yet, it is a fact that an attack on parliament was quite anticipated … In fact, one day before this attack took place, i.e., on 12th December, while speaking at Mumbai, the Hon. Prime Minister himself had referred to the existence of this threat, such a threat to our Parliament.”

  In his own article, “Celebrating Treason” (Pioneer, October 7, 2006) cited in
my Introduction, Chandan Mitra says, “Afzal Guru was one of the terrorists who stormed Parliament House on December 13th 2001, and it was he who first opened fire on security personnel, apparently killing three of the six who died protecting the majesty of democracy that morning.”

  None of the three court judgments sentencing Mohammad Afzal to death have accused him (leave alone found him guilty) of killing anybody, of being directly involved in the attack on Parliament, or indeed of being anywhere near the parliament building on December 13, 2001. Even the police charge sheet clearly states that at the time of the attack, Afzal was somewhere else. The Supreme Court judgment explicitly says there was no direct evidence against him, nor any evidence that he was a member of a terrorist organization. Can Chandan Mitra cite a source for his outlandish assertion? Or tell us how he knows what the police and the courts do not?

  And why he has suppressed this “evidence” for all these years?

  See Chandan Mitra, “Celebrating Treason,” Pioneer, October 7, 2006.

  12.Swapan Dasgupta, “You Can’t Be Good to Evil,” Pioneer, October 1, 2006.

  13.Siddhartha Gautam, “The Other Side of Afzal’s Surrender,” CNN-IBN, November 27, 2006. See also Narendra Nag, “Afzal Gets Mixed Bag from Politcos,” CNN-IBN, November 28, 2006.

  14.Siddhartha Gautam, “Tortured, but Kept Alive for a Deal,” CNN-IBN, November 27, 2006.

  15.Dravinder Singh, interview by Parvaiz Bukhari, October 2006, in Srinagar, unpublished manuscript, provided in personal correspondence to the author dated March 7, 2009.

  16.Gautam, “Tortured, but Kept Alive for a Deal.”

  17.Gautam, “The Other Side of Afzal’s Surrender.”

  18.“Advani Criticizes Delay in Afzal Execution,” Hindu, November 13, 2006.

  19.See Judgment of the Supreme Court of India on Mohammad Afzal vs. the State (NCT of Delhi), August 4, 2005.