the TISS skyscape...corporate social responsibility gets a new name..corporate social work..!!
See what I mean?
road to the field is long...so stop,have a snack and start ramblin' again...
Life's prepaid here...remember the forced insurance....??
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
abstraction
undrowning myself out of your person,
as blazing petals of a just climaxed, momentary intervaniousness fall melting around me,
burning holes through the intimate folds of the white linen as they fall,
i sit nibbling at the darkness within,
kneading deep,
trying to find streaks of purpose fading out in the dense nothingness,
tracing your anatomy against the fogging window pane,
finding rhythm in the numbness of your heartbeats against the thundering silence of the rain lashing outside,
i seek the culmination of my existence in the careening ballet of white cigarette smoke,
the "cuts" heal my wounds....
Mahim P Singh
undrowning myself out of your person,
as blazing petals of a just climaxed, momentary intervaniousness fall melting around me,
burning holes through the intimate folds of the white linen as they fall,
i sit nibbling at the darkness within,
kneading deep,
trying to find streaks of purpose fading out in the dense nothingness,
tracing your anatomy against the fogging window pane,
finding rhythm in the numbness of your heartbeats against the thundering silence of the rain lashing outside,
i seek the culmination of my existence in the careening ballet of white cigarette smoke,
the "cuts" heal my wounds....
Mahim P Singh
Monday, May 05, 2008
The Shock Doctrine (Shock Doc)
The Rise of Disaster Capitalism- by Naomi Klein
Analysis of Part 7: The Movable Green Zone: Buffer Zones & Blast walls
(by Mahim Pratap Singh)
Blanking The Beach (The Second Tsunami): Sri Lanka, Thailand and Maldives. Three different countries. Three different types of governments. Three different populations meted out strikingly similar capital (ist) punishments. Colorful beaches of the idyllic Arugam Bay that sustained simple fishing communities and entire ecosystems, faced the wrath of nature during the December of ’04. The destruction caused by the killer waves was no match for the havoc wreaked upon unexpecting fisherpeople by what can be called the “second tsunami”. A giant killer wave of unrelenting capitalist expansion that rendered homeless scores of civilians already shattered by a long-drawn ethnic strife. The pain caused by the second tsunami proved way more acute than that caused by the first one. The first at least could be bore with as a “natural” disaster, beyond mortal control. But the subsequent wave, brought in with the help of the same government that the people had shown faith in, at a time when storm battered families awaited state help, was too much to bear with. The beaches where fishing communities had been living for generations were taken away from them in order to make way for a multi-billion dollar tourism industry. Expectations of state-intervention were belied and met by state orchestrated evacuations and repression. The global politics behind these evacuations is evident from the fact that long before the tsunami actually struck, the state tourism industry, lured by typical Chicago-school capitalist gains being sold by western capitalism, had been making attempts at driving fishing communities out of the beaches in order to convert the Sri Lankan East coast to a paradise retreat for wealthy tourists. Centuries old cultures sold off to wealth of the west and replaced with vulgar monstrosities available for capitalist consumption. Numerous anthropological studies have documented cultures of consumption as well as consumption of cultures. How about cultures being sold off to consumption? An ecosystem sold-off to capitalism in exchange for a market catering to the stinking desires of a few. The money was there, in the form of high disposable salaries of modern day IT sweatshop (BPOs) slaves and their masters, along with various other capitalist encampments in Asia; what was needed was an untouched-by-globalization natural paradise that could offer them a vacation for their money’s worth. What the tourism industry had been long trying to achieve without much success i.e. large-scale displacement and gentrification, was orchestrated by the tsunami over a matter of weeks. As with Sri Lanka, so also with Maldives, Thailand, Indonesia and other Southeast Asian nations. Under the repressive regime of President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, Maldives has been transformed into a chain of luxury island resorts, providing getaways and vacations to an elite clientele, displacing thousands of fisherpeople and other island communities. State-assisted corporate land-grab on a massive scale. A Throwback to the colonial doctrines such as terra nullius and the doctrine of lapse? “Efforts” towards reconstruction have given rise to the slummification or ghettoization of an otherwise self-sustaining fishing community, in the process making the people lose faith in the role of NGOs and other voluntary organizations. The same reconstruction myth that was played out in Iraq and Afghanistan and had blunderous consequences is being staged in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka on its way to reconstruction- U.S. style.
Disaster Apartheid- another instance of disaster capitalism playing out its dirty games. The aftermath of the hurricane Katrina exposed the weaknesses of a state rendered incapable of discharging its civic duties on account of mindless privatization. It also brought to light the limitations of a rich, industrialized, western nation with regard to its preparedness for a natural disaster that had been 6 months in anticipation. Or were they limitations at all? As noted by Naomi Klein, mistakes repeated in the form of a pattern across two geographically and ethnically distinct locations are not mistakes. When the Green Zones of Iraq are staged out in New Orleans with striking similarities, calling carefully planned profit-making strategies mistakes, would be naivety. Another point that the author hammers in several times is that earlier, disasters were periods of social leveling, when communities put hatred aside to help each other. Now, of course, they are periods that guarantee huge state-sponsored profits, where “money and race buy survival”. State intervention during the hurricane was minimal and civilians were left at the mercy of the market. Activities like rescue-ops, providing rehabilitation, medical care, food etc to the victims, that should have been the responsibility of the state were mechanically “awarded” to private players such as Halliburton/KBR, Shaw, Flour, Blackwater etc. in the form of contracts. That these contracts were all paid off with the taxpayers’ money, that they were awarded without even an open bidding, that they were awarded almost exclusively to corporations that are regular contributors to right wing political organizations and that these corporations donate generously to the political campaigning of the Republican party are not mere coincidences. The fact that this post-disaster management has given rise to and sustains an entire parallel economy and even something close to a parallel private government (Blackwater’s private mercenaries etc.) is shocking. In the words of one Dave Blandford, an exhibitor at the National Hurricane Conference in Orlando, Florida, “this is huge business man…I’m going to be a hurricane debris contractor”. This statement shows how disaster capitalism is not a third world concern or a threat to “other” countries by western capitalists. With no regard for human existence and with no respect for the sanctity of human life, the evils of this self-styled money-spinning business know no bounds, even if the target is one’s own country, which would definitely disturb even the most hardcore right-winger, as is evident from this statement by Martin Kelly, a widely believed “believer”, “ the collapsed levees of New Orleans will have consequences for neoconservatism just as long and deep as the collapse of the Berlin wall had on Soviet Communism”. With increasing privatization of state responsibilities, constant cutting back of public funds and expenses and humanity at the mercy of a ruthless profit-seeking market, disaster capitalism will successfully continue churning out one crisis situation after another. Even for those working within this system, the gains are reaped by only those at the higher rungs and “actual” workers have to sustain themselves on marginal wages, as happened with the large number of immigrant, mostly Hispanic, workers employed in the reconstruction process after hurricane Katrina. Do the poor always have to bear the “costs” incurred during the profit making practices of disaster capitalism? The rich, meanwhile stay convinced that they can buy their way out of any crisis. Making money out of human death and misery? Does the post-Kargil war coffin-scam in India qualify for a berth on this disaster capitalism bandwagon? Are these crises of governance? Or are those of morality? Civil society? Or are these crises of humanity that the globalized world faces?
The Rise of Disaster Capitalism- by Naomi Klein
Analysis of Part 7: The Movable Green Zone: Buffer Zones & Blast walls
(by Mahim Pratap Singh)
Blanking The Beach (The Second Tsunami): Sri Lanka, Thailand and Maldives. Three different countries. Three different types of governments. Three different populations meted out strikingly similar capital (ist) punishments. Colorful beaches of the idyllic Arugam Bay that sustained simple fishing communities and entire ecosystems, faced the wrath of nature during the December of ’04. The destruction caused by the killer waves was no match for the havoc wreaked upon unexpecting fisherpeople by what can be called the “second tsunami”. A giant killer wave of unrelenting capitalist expansion that rendered homeless scores of civilians already shattered by a long-drawn ethnic strife. The pain caused by the second tsunami proved way more acute than that caused by the first one. The first at least could be bore with as a “natural” disaster, beyond mortal control. But the subsequent wave, brought in with the help of the same government that the people had shown faith in, at a time when storm battered families awaited state help, was too much to bear with. The beaches where fishing communities had been living for generations were taken away from them in order to make way for a multi-billion dollar tourism industry. Expectations of state-intervention were belied and met by state orchestrated evacuations and repression. The global politics behind these evacuations is evident from the fact that long before the tsunami actually struck, the state tourism industry, lured by typical Chicago-school capitalist gains being sold by western capitalism, had been making attempts at driving fishing communities out of the beaches in order to convert the Sri Lankan East coast to a paradise retreat for wealthy tourists. Centuries old cultures sold off to wealth of the west and replaced with vulgar monstrosities available for capitalist consumption. Numerous anthropological studies have documented cultures of consumption as well as consumption of cultures. How about cultures being sold off to consumption? An ecosystem sold-off to capitalism in exchange for a market catering to the stinking desires of a few. The money was there, in the form of high disposable salaries of modern day IT sweatshop (BPOs) slaves and their masters, along with various other capitalist encampments in Asia; what was needed was an untouched-by-globalization natural paradise that could offer them a vacation for their money’s worth. What the tourism industry had been long trying to achieve without much success i.e. large-scale displacement and gentrification, was orchestrated by the tsunami over a matter of weeks. As with Sri Lanka, so also with Maldives, Thailand, Indonesia and other Southeast Asian nations. Under the repressive regime of President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, Maldives has been transformed into a chain of luxury island resorts, providing getaways and vacations to an elite clientele, displacing thousands of fisherpeople and other island communities. State-assisted corporate land-grab on a massive scale. A Throwback to the colonial doctrines such as terra nullius and the doctrine of lapse? “Efforts” towards reconstruction have given rise to the slummification or ghettoization of an otherwise self-sustaining fishing community, in the process making the people lose faith in the role of NGOs and other voluntary organizations. The same reconstruction myth that was played out in Iraq and Afghanistan and had blunderous consequences is being staged in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka on its way to reconstruction- U.S. style.
Disaster Apartheid- another instance of disaster capitalism playing out its dirty games. The aftermath of the hurricane Katrina exposed the weaknesses of a state rendered incapable of discharging its civic duties on account of mindless privatization. It also brought to light the limitations of a rich, industrialized, western nation with regard to its preparedness for a natural disaster that had been 6 months in anticipation. Or were they limitations at all? As noted by Naomi Klein, mistakes repeated in the form of a pattern across two geographically and ethnically distinct locations are not mistakes. When the Green Zones of Iraq are staged out in New Orleans with striking similarities, calling carefully planned profit-making strategies mistakes, would be naivety. Another point that the author hammers in several times is that earlier, disasters were periods of social leveling, when communities put hatred aside to help each other. Now, of course, they are periods that guarantee huge state-sponsored profits, where “money and race buy survival”. State intervention during the hurricane was minimal and civilians were left at the mercy of the market. Activities like rescue-ops, providing rehabilitation, medical care, food etc to the victims, that should have been the responsibility of the state were mechanically “awarded” to private players such as Halliburton/KBR, Shaw, Flour, Blackwater etc. in the form of contracts. That these contracts were all paid off with the taxpayers’ money, that they were awarded without even an open bidding, that they were awarded almost exclusively to corporations that are regular contributors to right wing political organizations and that these corporations donate generously to the political campaigning of the Republican party are not mere coincidences. The fact that this post-disaster management has given rise to and sustains an entire parallel economy and even something close to a parallel private government (Blackwater’s private mercenaries etc.) is shocking. In the words of one Dave Blandford, an exhibitor at the National Hurricane Conference in Orlando, Florida, “this is huge business man…I’m going to be a hurricane debris contractor”. This statement shows how disaster capitalism is not a third world concern or a threat to “other” countries by western capitalists. With no regard for human existence and with no respect for the sanctity of human life, the evils of this self-styled money-spinning business know no bounds, even if the target is one’s own country, which would definitely disturb even the most hardcore right-winger, as is evident from this statement by Martin Kelly, a widely believed “believer”, “ the collapsed levees of New Orleans will have consequences for neoconservatism just as long and deep as the collapse of the Berlin wall had on Soviet Communism”. With increasing privatization of state responsibilities, constant cutting back of public funds and expenses and humanity at the mercy of a ruthless profit-seeking market, disaster capitalism will successfully continue churning out one crisis situation after another. Even for those working within this system, the gains are reaped by only those at the higher rungs and “actual” workers have to sustain themselves on marginal wages, as happened with the large number of immigrant, mostly Hispanic, workers employed in the reconstruction process after hurricane Katrina. Do the poor always have to bear the “costs” incurred during the profit making practices of disaster capitalism? The rich, meanwhile stay convinced that they can buy their way out of any crisis. Making money out of human death and misery? Does the post-Kargil war coffin-scam in India qualify for a berth on this disaster capitalism bandwagon? Are these crises of governance? Or are those of morality? Civil society? Or are these crises of humanity that the globalized world faces?
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Global Governance and the Causes of Conflict
Mahim
An analysis of the above-mentioned chapter from Mark Duffield’s
Global Governance And The New Wars
Duffield analyzes the Northern project of global liberal governance discourse and causes of conflict as dictated by this discourse. The causes of conflict that this discourse dictates serve to justify the “need” for “liberal” aid in conflict-ridden areas and hence formulation of aid policies voicing out political rhetoric and free market propaganda as articulated through the “structural adjustments” they impose on receiving countries.
There are two causes of conflict dictated by two different discourses. The first is New Barbarism, which is rooted in the neo-racial or bio-cultural discourse of the 1960s. New Barbarism, like multiculturalism recognizes racial and ethnic diversity and concurs with multiculturalism over the non-superiority or non-inferiority of any race. However, unlike multiculturalism, it does not understand these differences as being a source of richness and vibrancy, but as a reason for conflict and antagonisms. New Barbarism thrives on primordialization of the “other”, thereby presenting them as traditionally harboring antagonistic and hate-producing feelings towards each other. Duffield gives a lot of examples to hammer this point down (Chechen wars, Balkan mentality of Yugoslavia, Bosnia conflict, Rwanda genocide etc.) and refers to Kaplan, Goldberg and obviously, though importantly, Huntington, with the latter’s thesis on Clash of Civilizations asserting civilization as the ultimate human tribe and the clash of civilizations, therefore, as a global tribal conflict. Huntington clearly mentions how cultural and civilizational identities are increasingly shaping patterns of cohesion and conflict, with civilizations sharing similar values or characteristics realizing cohesion and those having contradictory values producing conflict, what he calls fault line wars. Further, Duffield underscores the emergence of disease perceived as being as great a security threat by the North, as terrorism or arms proliferation (do they view it as bio-terrorism of a different kind?). The “remedy” to anarchy and disease prevailing in Africa as articulated through Goldberg’s argument, lies not with the state or assistance, but with the free market, as it would provide “astute” leaders “encouragement” to keep primordial animosities in check. The second cause of conflict is Underdevelopment, which draws fuel from the free market discourse and advocates multiculturalism as promoting vibrancy and vitality, provided free market forces are allowed to exercise their benevolence. The association of underdevelopment with a high risk of conflict is the core assumption within the developmentalist discourse, which by implication would mean “development” as resolving conflict and there is of course no debate on the model of development ! Further the changes that have occurred in the nature of conflict and the institutional adaptations that these changes spur shape the emergence of global liberal governance. The disappearance of former constraints in liberal economic governance make the task of global liberal governance easier by presenting new policy measures as undoing the “damage” done by inappropriate governance of the 1980s, which rendered that decade “lost” for many countries. In the context of this, the repackaging of development aid as effecting structural conflict prevention has been the major emphasis of the liberal governance regime. This also means that poverty, which has no doubt been central to even past developmental discourses, is rearticulated as intertwined with underdevelopment and a cause as well as effect of conflict, though this causality may or may not be direct as evident in case of middle-income Balkan countries. Causality, therefore, in this case, would lie in probability i.e. poor countries carry within their structures a high risk of conflict but not necessarily a definite cause for conflict. By implication, conflict itself is seen as deepening poverty as it destroys developmental assets and social capital e.g. the 15 year civil war in Mozambique which led to the declaration of it being the poorest country in the world. However, Duffield says, it’s difficult to trust the validity of such assertions as they are seldom backed by reliable statistical evidence. Citing, Nordstrom (2000) he says the UN claim of Mozambique being the poorest country was made during the war and not following it. A cause effect relationship in this case is therefore skewed and unsubstantiated by empirical evidence. This is further supported by the fact that neighboring countries like Zambia and Malawi, which haven’t suffered any major conflict, have similar poverty levels. This makes it clear that even under dearth of empirical data, the mere idea that conflict deepens poverty helps mobilize support for liberal peace. Taking this rhetoric to ridiculous levels, former World Bank economist Joseph Stiglitz asserts that the persistence of traditional values and cultures in conflict ridden poor countries is a sign of past developmental failures, thereby providing liberal governance an excuse for systematic destruction of indigenous cultures and value-systems and replacing them with “modern” pro-developmental and “progressive” institutions. Interestingly, conflict is utilitarian for the cause of liberal peace as it is seen as eroding traditional cohesion, culture etc. which would mean an opportunity for the new radicalized developmental discourse to transform entire societies, including popular beliefs and attitudes. [Given this argument, what would stop even the most ignorant observer, from believing that the contractors of liberal peace would not create and sustain conflicts, in order to simplify their cause?] According to Duffield, conflict may actually have the opposite effect; in making social groups more dependent on their resources, coping strategies and social networks, it often acts to reaffirm or even strengthen socio-cultural cohesion [I see an example of exactly this in the form of community based security groups in the Shias of Iraq]. Moving ahead, the destructive effects of conflict, both on development and culture, cast the poor as victims, thereby providing liberal peace an opportunity to intervene. However, besides just justifying intervention, the liberal peace project also intends to make the poor allies to its cause, casting them as self-acting agents. Conflict is thus portrayed by liberal peace as a reaction by the poor against the oppressive regime of underdevelopment. This, however, hits a roadblock due to the fact that the poor already have their own local non-liberal leaders and liberal peace resolves this by delegitimizing previously existing local leadership by problematizing the very basis of their leadership as something leading to violent, oppressive and underdevelopmentalist conflict. The developmental discourse uses two approaches for this- the first fuelled by New Barbarism, depicting traditional leadership as being anarchic and fragmented, lacking any clear political purpose; and the second, more recent approach, which goes a step further and criminalizes conflict and leadership (Rwanda and Bosnia), rather than calling them just anarchic and un-political. The first approach, as I see it, was more innocent in that it saw leadership and conflict lacking motive and going nowhere; the second approach, however sees a criminal motive that would definitely lead to destruction, thereby separating people from their leaders. The project for designer peace therefore uses aid to buy-off leaders and if that fails, creating linkages between those who oppose violent conflict and constructing spaces for peace.
Mahim
An analysis of the above-mentioned chapter from Mark Duffield’s
Global Governance And The New Wars
Duffield analyzes the Northern project of global liberal governance discourse and causes of conflict as dictated by this discourse. The causes of conflict that this discourse dictates serve to justify the “need” for “liberal” aid in conflict-ridden areas and hence formulation of aid policies voicing out political rhetoric and free market propaganda as articulated through the “structural adjustments” they impose on receiving countries.
There are two causes of conflict dictated by two different discourses. The first is New Barbarism, which is rooted in the neo-racial or bio-cultural discourse of the 1960s. New Barbarism, like multiculturalism recognizes racial and ethnic diversity and concurs with multiculturalism over the non-superiority or non-inferiority of any race. However, unlike multiculturalism, it does not understand these differences as being a source of richness and vibrancy, but as a reason for conflict and antagonisms. New Barbarism thrives on primordialization of the “other”, thereby presenting them as traditionally harboring antagonistic and hate-producing feelings towards each other. Duffield gives a lot of examples to hammer this point down (Chechen wars, Balkan mentality of Yugoslavia, Bosnia conflict, Rwanda genocide etc.) and refers to Kaplan, Goldberg and obviously, though importantly, Huntington, with the latter’s thesis on Clash of Civilizations asserting civilization as the ultimate human tribe and the clash of civilizations, therefore, as a global tribal conflict. Huntington clearly mentions how cultural and civilizational identities are increasingly shaping patterns of cohesion and conflict, with civilizations sharing similar values or characteristics realizing cohesion and those having contradictory values producing conflict, what he calls fault line wars. Further, Duffield underscores the emergence of disease perceived as being as great a security threat by the North, as terrorism or arms proliferation (do they view it as bio-terrorism of a different kind?). The “remedy” to anarchy and disease prevailing in Africa as articulated through Goldberg’s argument, lies not with the state or assistance, but with the free market, as it would provide “astute” leaders “encouragement” to keep primordial animosities in check. The second cause of conflict is Underdevelopment, which draws fuel from the free market discourse and advocates multiculturalism as promoting vibrancy and vitality, provided free market forces are allowed to exercise their benevolence. The association of underdevelopment with a high risk of conflict is the core assumption within the developmentalist discourse, which by implication would mean “development” as resolving conflict and there is of course no debate on the model of development ! Further the changes that have occurred in the nature of conflict and the institutional adaptations that these changes spur shape the emergence of global liberal governance. The disappearance of former constraints in liberal economic governance make the task of global liberal governance easier by presenting new policy measures as undoing the “damage” done by inappropriate governance of the 1980s, which rendered that decade “lost” for many countries. In the context of this, the repackaging of development aid as effecting structural conflict prevention has been the major emphasis of the liberal governance regime. This also means that poverty, which has no doubt been central to even past developmental discourses, is rearticulated as intertwined with underdevelopment and a cause as well as effect of conflict, though this causality may or may not be direct as evident in case of middle-income Balkan countries. Causality, therefore, in this case, would lie in probability i.e. poor countries carry within their structures a high risk of conflict but not necessarily a definite cause for conflict. By implication, conflict itself is seen as deepening poverty as it destroys developmental assets and social capital e.g. the 15 year civil war in Mozambique which led to the declaration of it being the poorest country in the world. However, Duffield says, it’s difficult to trust the validity of such assertions as they are seldom backed by reliable statistical evidence. Citing, Nordstrom (2000) he says the UN claim of Mozambique being the poorest country was made during the war and not following it. A cause effect relationship in this case is therefore skewed and unsubstantiated by empirical evidence. This is further supported by the fact that neighboring countries like Zambia and Malawi, which haven’t suffered any major conflict, have similar poverty levels. This makes it clear that even under dearth of empirical data, the mere idea that conflict deepens poverty helps mobilize support for liberal peace. Taking this rhetoric to ridiculous levels, former World Bank economist Joseph Stiglitz asserts that the persistence of traditional values and cultures in conflict ridden poor countries is a sign of past developmental failures, thereby providing liberal governance an excuse for systematic destruction of indigenous cultures and value-systems and replacing them with “modern” pro-developmental and “progressive” institutions. Interestingly, conflict is utilitarian for the cause of liberal peace as it is seen as eroding traditional cohesion, culture etc. which would mean an opportunity for the new radicalized developmental discourse to transform entire societies, including popular beliefs and attitudes. [Given this argument, what would stop even the most ignorant observer, from believing that the contractors of liberal peace would not create and sustain conflicts, in order to simplify their cause?] According to Duffield, conflict may actually have the opposite effect; in making social groups more dependent on their resources, coping strategies and social networks, it often acts to reaffirm or even strengthen socio-cultural cohesion [I see an example of exactly this in the form of community based security groups in the Shias of Iraq]. Moving ahead, the destructive effects of conflict, both on development and culture, cast the poor as victims, thereby providing liberal peace an opportunity to intervene. However, besides just justifying intervention, the liberal peace project also intends to make the poor allies to its cause, casting them as self-acting agents. Conflict is thus portrayed by liberal peace as a reaction by the poor against the oppressive regime of underdevelopment. This, however, hits a roadblock due to the fact that the poor already have their own local non-liberal leaders and liberal peace resolves this by delegitimizing previously existing local leadership by problematizing the very basis of their leadership as something leading to violent, oppressive and underdevelopmentalist conflict. The developmental discourse uses two approaches for this- the first fuelled by New Barbarism, depicting traditional leadership as being anarchic and fragmented, lacking any clear political purpose; and the second, more recent approach, which goes a step further and criminalizes conflict and leadership (Rwanda and Bosnia), rather than calling them just anarchic and un-political. The first approach, as I see it, was more innocent in that it saw leadership and conflict lacking motive and going nowhere; the second approach, however sees a criminal motive that would definitely lead to destruction, thereby separating people from their leaders. The project for designer peace therefore uses aid to buy-off leaders and if that fails, creating linkages between those who oppose violent conflict and constructing spaces for peace.
Rang De Basanti
“ courageous, untroubled, mocking, violent- that is what wisdom wants us to be”
Friedrich Nietzsche
Courageous, untroubled, mocking & violent-adjectives for the ways in which dissent among youth burst upon the Indian celluloid in the form of Rang de Basanti. Directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, this story involving a bunch of young college students, impervious to any and everything happening outside their immediate worlds, was a major success and one of the few movies to achieve a cult following among the youth of a nation where dissent is equated with indiscipline and indiscipline is criminal. The notion of dissent being criminal is reflected in constant and unquestioned state policing and suppression of “rebellions”. Whenever the state denies accountability to the people, a section of the population questions it and the authority does what its known best to do: silence it.
Rang de Basanti is a story of five friends who are disillusioned with the state India is in but nonetheless are too happy in their own world to either realize or do something to address this disillusionment. The movie addresses this disillusionment of the youth by historicizing and juxtaposing it with the lives and events occurring within them of DJ (Aamir Khan), Aslam (Kunal Kapoor), Sukhi (Sharman Joshi), Karan (Siddharth), Laxman (Atul Kulkarni) and Sonia (Soha Ali Khan) with those of revolutionaries Chandrashekhar Azad, Ashfaqullah Khan, Sukhdev, Bhagat Singh, Ram Prasad Bismil and Durga respectively. This juxtaposition is manifested in and through a documentary being filmed by Sue (Alice Patten) who plays the granddaughter of a British Police officer who was in charge of the jail-terms and executions of the revolutionaries. DJ, Aslam, Sukhi, Karan, Sonia are all college students who’s philosophy in life is “live for the moment”. This seemingly hedonistic but naïve philosophy comes across as an escape route if one looks closer, for all of them, in their own ways are unhappy with the “system”. Conversations among them repeatedly bring out the hopelessness they perceive and the futility of everything that India has to offer, even independence. There is a strong irony in this disillusionment with independence. While the “heroes” that they are being compared with fought and died for India’s independence, it’s this independence, its perceived ineffectiveness, futility and a quest for its reclamation that drives the friends to rebellion. The realization of this, of course, is triggered off by a personal loss, the death of Ajay (Madhavan), a pilot with the Indian Air Force and a close friend of the five. This sets in motion a series of events that leads to friends’ decision to kill the Defence Minister Shastri (Mohan Agashe) who is shown to be responsible for an arms deal that causes Ajay’s death due to a MiG air crash. They however witness an unexpected bouleversement of their action, as the DM is decorated as a martyr and a hero. It is at this point that they decide to do what the film symbolically equates with Bhagat Singh’s action of dropping a bomb in the assembly chamber of the British Parliament; they decide to assume the responsibility of the DM’s murder on AIR. The message conveyed through both acts is the same: “it takes a loud noise to make the deaf listen”, a statement originally attributed to Valliant, a French anarchist martyr, but made immortally famous by Bhagat Singh and revolutionarizingly relived in Rang de Basanti. At this point, the state intoxicated with power and forever ill-equipped to address dissent resorts to what its best known for, suppression through violence. The students are immediately declared terrorists, even as the truth about the DM spreads around India, creating a huge wave of support for the students. Unarmed students are cornered and executed by the use of heavy firing and dissent is silenced.
The film, however, remains “unclimaxed” with various questions thrown at the viewer. Is violence the only means of expressing dissent? Is violence necessarily wrong, even when it is resorted to by the oppressed and targeted towards the oppressor? Who is the enemy; does it have to be a foreign power? Can it not be the state itself, the independent, democratic government of the day? Why is dissent so unsettling? Why is change so dreaded? What is the truth and more importantly how it is to be told to who it is to be told? These and various other questions float in the unsettling numbness and the vacuum that the film creates. The film, in its course, celebrates the spirit of rebellion as inherent in the ideas of Bhagat Singh and his comrades. It celebrates the romance of youth and the varicolored expressions of its nature to question, to rebel, to change what is unsettling to it. The idea is to bring about the need for dissent, the need to question the order, the authority, the need to realize and reclaim freedom in all its spirit, in all its rawness, in all its undiluted, intoxicating glory.
These ideas are voiced with screaming conviction through the movie’s electrifying soundtrack (A.R.Rahman). Words, lyrics, poetry have always been faithful comrades of revolutionaries all over the world, as rightly portrayed in the movie through the observation of Chris Patten (the officer in charge) “ I think it was their poetry that kept them alive”. Every revolution in the world has had some sort of a “soundtrack”. Prasoon Joshi’s simmering lyrics set on fire by Rahman’s electrifying tunes provide the lyrical fuel for the movie’s revolutionary ideas. The songs all celebrate rebellion and the existential chaos experienced by the youth. Whether it be the screaming “Loose Control” or “be a rebel” or pathshaala or the liberating assertion of chaos in “Khalbali’, forcefully brought out by lyrics like “ hum lapakte saaye hain, hum sulagte aaye hain, ghar bata ke aaye hain……hai khalbali!!” Also brought is the need for blood that the revolution demands in “ khoon chalaa” and of course the famous pronunciamento of the realization of the fire within, in “roobaroo”.
Rang de Basanti is thus a film that is unapologetic about the ends it’s characters achieve and at the same time wonders whether the means employed towards that end are justified. The revolutionary overtones of the movie set up debates on violence and rebellion and the role of state.
Mahim Pratap Singh
M.A.
JNU
“ courageous, untroubled, mocking, violent- that is what wisdom wants us to be”
Friedrich Nietzsche
Courageous, untroubled, mocking & violent-adjectives for the ways in which dissent among youth burst upon the Indian celluloid in the form of Rang de Basanti. Directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, this story involving a bunch of young college students, impervious to any and everything happening outside their immediate worlds, was a major success and one of the few movies to achieve a cult following among the youth of a nation where dissent is equated with indiscipline and indiscipline is criminal. The notion of dissent being criminal is reflected in constant and unquestioned state policing and suppression of “rebellions”. Whenever the state denies accountability to the people, a section of the population questions it and the authority does what its known best to do: silence it.
Rang de Basanti is a story of five friends who are disillusioned with the state India is in but nonetheless are too happy in their own world to either realize or do something to address this disillusionment. The movie addresses this disillusionment of the youth by historicizing and juxtaposing it with the lives and events occurring within them of DJ (Aamir Khan), Aslam (Kunal Kapoor), Sukhi (Sharman Joshi), Karan (Siddharth), Laxman (Atul Kulkarni) and Sonia (Soha Ali Khan) with those of revolutionaries Chandrashekhar Azad, Ashfaqullah Khan, Sukhdev, Bhagat Singh, Ram Prasad Bismil and Durga respectively. This juxtaposition is manifested in and through a documentary being filmed by Sue (Alice Patten) who plays the granddaughter of a British Police officer who was in charge of the jail-terms and executions of the revolutionaries. DJ, Aslam, Sukhi, Karan, Sonia are all college students who’s philosophy in life is “live for the moment”. This seemingly hedonistic but naïve philosophy comes across as an escape route if one looks closer, for all of them, in their own ways are unhappy with the “system”. Conversations among them repeatedly bring out the hopelessness they perceive and the futility of everything that India has to offer, even independence. There is a strong irony in this disillusionment with independence. While the “heroes” that they are being compared with fought and died for India’s independence, it’s this independence, its perceived ineffectiveness, futility and a quest for its reclamation that drives the friends to rebellion. The realization of this, of course, is triggered off by a personal loss, the death of Ajay (Madhavan), a pilot with the Indian Air Force and a close friend of the five. This sets in motion a series of events that leads to friends’ decision to kill the Defence Minister Shastri (Mohan Agashe) who is shown to be responsible for an arms deal that causes Ajay’s death due to a MiG air crash. They however witness an unexpected bouleversement of their action, as the DM is decorated as a martyr and a hero. It is at this point that they decide to do what the film symbolically equates with Bhagat Singh’s action of dropping a bomb in the assembly chamber of the British Parliament; they decide to assume the responsibility of the DM’s murder on AIR. The message conveyed through both acts is the same: “it takes a loud noise to make the deaf listen”, a statement originally attributed to Valliant, a French anarchist martyr, but made immortally famous by Bhagat Singh and revolutionarizingly relived in Rang de Basanti. At this point, the state intoxicated with power and forever ill-equipped to address dissent resorts to what its best known for, suppression through violence. The students are immediately declared terrorists, even as the truth about the DM spreads around India, creating a huge wave of support for the students. Unarmed students are cornered and executed by the use of heavy firing and dissent is silenced.
The film, however, remains “unclimaxed” with various questions thrown at the viewer. Is violence the only means of expressing dissent? Is violence necessarily wrong, even when it is resorted to by the oppressed and targeted towards the oppressor? Who is the enemy; does it have to be a foreign power? Can it not be the state itself, the independent, democratic government of the day? Why is dissent so unsettling? Why is change so dreaded? What is the truth and more importantly how it is to be told to who it is to be told? These and various other questions float in the unsettling numbness and the vacuum that the film creates. The film, in its course, celebrates the spirit of rebellion as inherent in the ideas of Bhagat Singh and his comrades. It celebrates the romance of youth and the varicolored expressions of its nature to question, to rebel, to change what is unsettling to it. The idea is to bring about the need for dissent, the need to question the order, the authority, the need to realize and reclaim freedom in all its spirit, in all its rawness, in all its undiluted, intoxicating glory.
These ideas are voiced with screaming conviction through the movie’s electrifying soundtrack (A.R.Rahman). Words, lyrics, poetry have always been faithful comrades of revolutionaries all over the world, as rightly portrayed in the movie through the observation of Chris Patten (the officer in charge) “ I think it was their poetry that kept them alive”. Every revolution in the world has had some sort of a “soundtrack”. Prasoon Joshi’s simmering lyrics set on fire by Rahman’s electrifying tunes provide the lyrical fuel for the movie’s revolutionary ideas. The songs all celebrate rebellion and the existential chaos experienced by the youth. Whether it be the screaming “Loose Control” or “be a rebel” or pathshaala or the liberating assertion of chaos in “Khalbali’, forcefully brought out by lyrics like “ hum lapakte saaye hain, hum sulagte aaye hain, ghar bata ke aaye hain……hai khalbali!!” Also brought is the need for blood that the revolution demands in “ khoon chalaa” and of course the famous pronunciamento of the realization of the fire within, in “roobaroo”.
Rang de Basanti is thus a film that is unapologetic about the ends it’s characters achieve and at the same time wonders whether the means employed towards that end are justified. The revolutionary overtones of the movie set up debates on violence and rebellion and the role of state.
Mahim Pratap Singh
M.A.
JNU
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Saturday, July 07, 2007
JNU:The Perversion of the Polemic
Arrey Naxalbaari.... Laaal Salaaaam...!!...Roaring voices soaring high, filling up the crowded air lanes of the red JNU sky, carrying forward the lingering legacy of the comrades of the east. As an outsider, you hear all kinds of stories about JNU, part true, part false, all romantic...guaranteed! So when you become a part of this “socially responsible university”, the first thing you do is go accosting these suave stereotypes, excitedly hoping them to be true (whether they actually are is another issue, worthy of another essay, probably longer than this one.)
So in this institution that prides itself in being the “red corner” of the national capital, with a student union that has been legendarily “anti-establishment”, the P-word assumes enticingly tempting proportions. Apart from the acclivity of its academic endeavors, the next best thing that abscises JNU from other universities of the country is its politics & the culture it has spawned over the years- revolutionary, intellectual and essentially non-violent.... while still being courageous, after all, showing black flags to the Indian prime minister requires balls, doesn’t it. In this sense, politics in JNU becomes so all-encompassing that it becomes difficult, almost impossible to understand anything on the campus in exclusivity. From belabored discussions around dhabas over chai and relaxed carefree smokes to organized debates between celebrated experts in a post-dinner capacity filled hostel mess, politics is everywhere in JNU. So much so that when you approach a girl here, you don’t ask her out for coffee straightaway (like in other places with similar emotionally demanding situations, which put to test all your communication skills). Instead, you remember Al Pacino from “scent of woman” saying “we should meet up for coffee sometime, to discuss politics” & give your best at appearing as a faithful comrade of Che, disillusioned with the unfulfilled promises of the establishment, angry with the world and most importantly, desperately in need of lady love to guide you through the blood-spilled thorny passage to the revolution. Erwing Goffman becomes your god and Marx shines brightly from behind her as your angel of redemption, with a red halo around his big hairy head. The coffee, meanwhile (or chai, as it’s JNU we are talking about) is reduced to a mere adjunct. Take a look around the campus and you will discover that canteens and dhabas are not mere eating joints. They double up as heavily-graffitied hot spots for political ideologies and discussions and also as agencies for mobilization of public opinion.
Such is the presence that politics in JNU commands in matters of students’ everyday lives. Even the professors wear their political ideologies on their proverbial sleeves. So, as you slowly get acclimatized to this politically supercharged island of confluencing ideologies, you finally have your first rendezvous with your eagerly awaited folklore-ish comrades, accoutered with their legendary jholas, kurtas and left-aligned rings of cigarette smoke. Divided on ideological lines of radical and liberal “leftism”, each of these groups of debate-happy connoisseurs of communism claim themselves to be more genuinely left-oriented than the others. You also, very soon, meet the right wing and centrist “conservative” “elements”, who are, with practiced convenience, called “sanghi lumpens” by their left wing comrades. The “rightists” and “centrists” receive this nomenclature, which has been bestowed affectionately upon them by their political brethren, with amazing abjectness. Now, what’s interesting here is that unlike most other universities in India, where the left struggles for an also-ran status, here in JNU, its the other ideological groups that play this part, surviving on mere “leftovers”.
So, while the left is forever trying to bring to light the blatant bigotry & the ever-absconding position of the right wing bugaboos on major political and campus related issues at the same time condemning their jaded calls for jingoism, the right, in its own largely unnoticeable & garishly grandiloquent gimmicks, attempts to bring out the romanticized hypocrisy and the abstruse ideological claims of the left. Hypocrisy, did one say? Well, you got to be careful mate, for this is the last bastion of the socialism in India, gloriously upholding the ideals of Marx, Lenin and Bhagat Singh, with the last name bearing ideological claims of both the left and the right. Anyways, it should not be forgotten that our comrades here, abhor all forms of hedonism and stand up against the naked narcissism of the bourgeoisie. So what if their cigarette expenses exceed the minimum daily wages of the workers they are fighting for? Come on, we are all answerable to our mortal bodies and their demands of immediate gratification and therefore are tempted to...or rather bound to fulfill our duties towards them by indulging in occasional pleasure “trips”. Even comrade Che smoked fine Habanos cigars, which by no means imply that he did not fight for the rights of his comrades. So treading his footsteps faithfully, our comrades here in JNU too, by acrimoniously attacking the governmental policies actuated by capitalist transformation, fight for the common good of the brotherhood...err.... and also of the sisterhood (careful mate; you don’t want to offend your rapidly-increasing-in-number-everyday feminist friends, do you?) Whoa! JNU is a politically charged place demanding political correctness all the time and you cant dare to be politically incorrect, even if it means incorporating a break in the flow of the passage on account of grammatical inconsistencies due to unnecessary ideological accommodation.
Color, comrades, is another inalienable aspect of the student politics of our great institution, with two hues varying in saturation, battling for supremacy. Now hold your horses & for once, don’t read between the lines, for its not racism that is being talked here, its just color, plain and simple. So the campus politics and affiliations are clearly defined on the colored lines of RED and SAFFRON, each trying to prove itself as the identifying hue of JNU. So there are shouts of “ bhagwa hai bhai bhagwa hai, JNU bhagwa hai” by the right wing patriots and “laal hai bhai laal hai, JNU laal hai” by the leftists. Now, even within the comrade camp, there is a fight over which group represents the true red. So, we hear shouts of, “jab asli laal lehrayega, toh hosh thikane ayega” and finally there are the unnoticed wails of the centrists and other groups who fill in by vouching for the tricolor. See how important color is?
Come election time and the entire campus transforms itself into a politically charged landmine-zone. Any kind of political incorrectness implies tripping over (sometimes over mines you set yourself) and thereby, voluntarily or involuntarily, though successfully in either case, inviting acrid controversies and unparalleled street credit, leading to overnight celeb-status to some and instant labeling as a killjoy onto some others. There is surprising warmth in everyday interaction and every other person seems like your best friend, especially those who come seeking your honored support to their cause. Election Committee members, who constitute of faces seldom known to people otherwise, command faithful avoidance and cosmetic respect, for they will be the ones required to manage all the chaos and pandemonium in the various GBMs and during the polling sessions and then stay up two nights and one day, locked inside the exciting interiors of the School of International Studies, counting and recounting votes. Their repeated demands to the Vice Chancellor for the deployment of EVMs have been religiously opposed by the union, for EVMs would reduce the time (read: days) required for counting and thus the counting extravaganza, spread over two nights and a day, would be reduced to a few hours, in the process, ending all the razzmatazz going on in the all-day, all-night bivouacs of various political organizations. The campus territory, meanwhile, becomes an agglomeration of pamphlets and posters of contesting candidates, efficiently covering every corner, every alcove of the campus, hardly leaving any space, even on the ground, unutilized. Adroit utilization of resources, you see. And in the cacophony of various ideological slogans, the concerns of some sections of students about environmental pollution and paper-wastage seem too insignificant to be considered. Moral of the story: politics is the religion of JNU and the Student Union Election is its annual festival, which needs to be celebrated in all its glory, without caring about petty financial, environmental and other related issues.
A final word of caution before we part amigos. Walking around the campus, when you hear gut-wrenching slogans of JNUSU “maachh-O, maachh-O” don’t just succumb to the innocent perversions of your naive mind and the phonetic comparisons it’s forcing you to make with similar sounding expressions of uncensored anger. Don’t start retreating, predicting a violent riot; look closer...for all our politically supercharged friends are doing is urging you, as members of the JNUSU, to “march-on, march-on!” You get the drift, right?
P.S. Word’s around that a new political outfit is making its presence felt around the campus. It’s called the FTG; the acronym, true to the democratic traditions of JNU, is open to subjective interpretation. For The Good, Fight The Goons, Fire The Guards, Fuck The Guerillas, are some of expressions floating around.... take your pick!
Mahim P. Singh
JNU
Arrey Naxalbaari.... Laaal Salaaaam...!!...Roaring voices soaring high, filling up the crowded air lanes of the red JNU sky, carrying forward the lingering legacy of the comrades of the east. As an outsider, you hear all kinds of stories about JNU, part true, part false, all romantic...guaranteed! So when you become a part of this “socially responsible university”, the first thing you do is go accosting these suave stereotypes, excitedly hoping them to be true (whether they actually are is another issue, worthy of another essay, probably longer than this one.)
So in this institution that prides itself in being the “red corner” of the national capital, with a student union that has been legendarily “anti-establishment”, the P-word assumes enticingly tempting proportions. Apart from the acclivity of its academic endeavors, the next best thing that abscises JNU from other universities of the country is its politics & the culture it has spawned over the years- revolutionary, intellectual and essentially non-violent.... while still being courageous, after all, showing black flags to the Indian prime minister requires balls, doesn’t it. In this sense, politics in JNU becomes so all-encompassing that it becomes difficult, almost impossible to understand anything on the campus in exclusivity. From belabored discussions around dhabas over chai and relaxed carefree smokes to organized debates between celebrated experts in a post-dinner capacity filled hostel mess, politics is everywhere in JNU. So much so that when you approach a girl here, you don’t ask her out for coffee straightaway (like in other places with similar emotionally demanding situations, which put to test all your communication skills). Instead, you remember Al Pacino from “scent of woman” saying “we should meet up for coffee sometime, to discuss politics” & give your best at appearing as a faithful comrade of Che, disillusioned with the unfulfilled promises of the establishment, angry with the world and most importantly, desperately in need of lady love to guide you through the blood-spilled thorny passage to the revolution. Erwing Goffman becomes your god and Marx shines brightly from behind her as your angel of redemption, with a red halo around his big hairy head. The coffee, meanwhile (or chai, as it’s JNU we are talking about) is reduced to a mere adjunct. Take a look around the campus and you will discover that canteens and dhabas are not mere eating joints. They double up as heavily-graffitied hot spots for political ideologies and discussions and also as agencies for mobilization of public opinion.
Such is the presence that politics in JNU commands in matters of students’ everyday lives. Even the professors wear their political ideologies on their proverbial sleeves. So, as you slowly get acclimatized to this politically supercharged island of confluencing ideologies, you finally have your first rendezvous with your eagerly awaited folklore-ish comrades, accoutered with their legendary jholas, kurtas and left-aligned rings of cigarette smoke. Divided on ideological lines of radical and liberal “leftism”, each of these groups of debate-happy connoisseurs of communism claim themselves to be more genuinely left-oriented than the others. You also, very soon, meet the right wing and centrist “conservative” “elements”, who are, with practiced convenience, called “sanghi lumpens” by their left wing comrades. The “rightists” and “centrists” receive this nomenclature, which has been bestowed affectionately upon them by their political brethren, with amazing abjectness. Now, what’s interesting here is that unlike most other universities in India, where the left struggles for an also-ran status, here in JNU, its the other ideological groups that play this part, surviving on mere “leftovers”.
So, while the left is forever trying to bring to light the blatant bigotry & the ever-absconding position of the right wing bugaboos on major political and campus related issues at the same time condemning their jaded calls for jingoism, the right, in its own largely unnoticeable & garishly grandiloquent gimmicks, attempts to bring out the romanticized hypocrisy and the abstruse ideological claims of the left. Hypocrisy, did one say? Well, you got to be careful mate, for this is the last bastion of the socialism in India, gloriously upholding the ideals of Marx, Lenin and Bhagat Singh, with the last name bearing ideological claims of both the left and the right. Anyways, it should not be forgotten that our comrades here, abhor all forms of hedonism and stand up against the naked narcissism of the bourgeoisie. So what if their cigarette expenses exceed the minimum daily wages of the workers they are fighting for? Come on, we are all answerable to our mortal bodies and their demands of immediate gratification and therefore are tempted to...or rather bound to fulfill our duties towards them by indulging in occasional pleasure “trips”. Even comrade Che smoked fine Habanos cigars, which by no means imply that he did not fight for the rights of his comrades. So treading his footsteps faithfully, our comrades here in JNU too, by acrimoniously attacking the governmental policies actuated by capitalist transformation, fight for the common good of the brotherhood...err.... and also of the sisterhood (careful mate; you don’t want to offend your rapidly-increasing-in-number-everyday feminist friends, do you?) Whoa! JNU is a politically charged place demanding political correctness all the time and you cant dare to be politically incorrect, even if it means incorporating a break in the flow of the passage on account of grammatical inconsistencies due to unnecessary ideological accommodation.
Color, comrades, is another inalienable aspect of the student politics of our great institution, with two hues varying in saturation, battling for supremacy. Now hold your horses & for once, don’t read between the lines, for its not racism that is being talked here, its just color, plain and simple. So the campus politics and affiliations are clearly defined on the colored lines of RED and SAFFRON, each trying to prove itself as the identifying hue of JNU. So there are shouts of “ bhagwa hai bhai bhagwa hai, JNU bhagwa hai” by the right wing patriots and “laal hai bhai laal hai, JNU laal hai” by the leftists. Now, even within the comrade camp, there is a fight over which group represents the true red. So, we hear shouts of, “jab asli laal lehrayega, toh hosh thikane ayega” and finally there are the unnoticed wails of the centrists and other groups who fill in by vouching for the tricolor. See how important color is?
Come election time and the entire campus transforms itself into a politically charged landmine-zone. Any kind of political incorrectness implies tripping over (sometimes over mines you set yourself) and thereby, voluntarily or involuntarily, though successfully in either case, inviting acrid controversies and unparalleled street credit, leading to overnight celeb-status to some and instant labeling as a killjoy onto some others. There is surprising warmth in everyday interaction and every other person seems like your best friend, especially those who come seeking your honored support to their cause. Election Committee members, who constitute of faces seldom known to people otherwise, command faithful avoidance and cosmetic respect, for they will be the ones required to manage all the chaos and pandemonium in the various GBMs and during the polling sessions and then stay up two nights and one day, locked inside the exciting interiors of the School of International Studies, counting and recounting votes. Their repeated demands to the Vice Chancellor for the deployment of EVMs have been religiously opposed by the union, for EVMs would reduce the time (read: days) required for counting and thus the counting extravaganza, spread over two nights and a day, would be reduced to a few hours, in the process, ending all the razzmatazz going on in the all-day, all-night bivouacs of various political organizations. The campus territory, meanwhile, becomes an agglomeration of pamphlets and posters of contesting candidates, efficiently covering every corner, every alcove of the campus, hardly leaving any space, even on the ground, unutilized. Adroit utilization of resources, you see. And in the cacophony of various ideological slogans, the concerns of some sections of students about environmental pollution and paper-wastage seem too insignificant to be considered. Moral of the story: politics is the religion of JNU and the Student Union Election is its annual festival, which needs to be celebrated in all its glory, without caring about petty financial, environmental and other related issues.
A final word of caution before we part amigos. Walking around the campus, when you hear gut-wrenching slogans of JNUSU “maachh-O, maachh-O” don’t just succumb to the innocent perversions of your naive mind and the phonetic comparisons it’s forcing you to make with similar sounding expressions of uncensored anger. Don’t start retreating, predicting a violent riot; look closer...for all our politically supercharged friends are doing is urging you, as members of the JNUSU, to “march-on, march-on!” You get the drift, right?
P.S. Word’s around that a new political outfit is making its presence felt around the campus. It’s called the FTG; the acronym, true to the democratic traditions of JNU, is open to subjective interpretation. For The Good, Fight The Goons, Fire The Guards, Fuck The Guerillas, are some of expressions floating around.... take your pick!
Mahim P. Singh
JNU
THE DIALOGUE
The small room seemed less like a place of human residence and more like an agglomeration of books and CDs spread all over the floor and some makeshift racks, with a computer claiming its own little territory shared with unwilling helplessness between a dusty old table and itself, playing “down to the waterline” from Dire Straits through two cheesy speakers with unaccomplished perfection, vainly trying to fill up the deafening silence suspended between the only two visible carbon-based life forms, of mentionable significance, in the room. And as they lay on the single bed, in the after hours of the lazy winter afternoon of January, she graffittying his chest with her bare fingers and he stroking her face with the back of his hand, simultaneously lighting up the last cigarette from the big red pack of Dunhill, trying to fix up the arduous uncertainties of the day, he suddenly spoke, disturbing the careening ballet of white smoke, breaking the ennui enveloping the smoke filled room, that both parties shared with mutual comfort.
“Do you think suicide-bombers are brave people?”
“What?” She realized the initiation of a dialogue.
“Do you think/believe/feel that the act (s) committed by suicide-bombers are those of bravery? Or courage?” He said, stressing on certain words.
“ Which ones? I mean there are so many of them...Arabs, Sri Lankan...even Indians...which ones are you talking about?” she replied with an obvious lack of interest.
“I don’t know. Come on. You don’t have to knead into it. Just answer the fucking question, will you? If you remember it!” His irritation was apparent.
“Well...no! Absolutely not; its utter brazenness. I mean you’re marching into certain death” She was still not seriously engaged into the conversation.
“Yeah? What about the soldiers fighting under the Rajputs? Or the Sikhs? Or the Japanese during the Second World War? Or the Marathas & Tipu Sultan against the British? An insignificant handful of them fighting for territories, which did not even belong to them in the first place, ramming head-on into forces much larger than theirs. But we prefer to call it courage. I mean, they marched into certain death too. But we heroicize all those ill-planned endeavors of eccentric emperors. We don’t...”
“...Oh come on! It’s not even the same thing. Those armies, those soldiers had a cause to defend. They fought to ensure safe existence for societies, which they belonged to. What you are doing is taking one thing and calling it another.”
“ & What you are doing is euphemizing the brazenness of a section of favored individuals or groups by calling it courage, when it can be easily established that their characterization, or attribution, as I would like to call it, was just the outcome of a series of convincingly-fed historical accidents by the media, which we accepted with compromised convenience as true acts of unbridled glory.”
“Well, you can say that with the benefit of retrospect on your side. To me, these so called Suicide-Bombers of yours are religious fanatics, shamelessly brandishing irrationally raucous recalcitrance, fuelled by constant indoctrination and brainwashing by shady ideologues; self-proclaimed messiahs of mankind, who place their hollow religious claims over and above everything else. They don’t give two fucks about education, economic development, unemployment or any other indicator of human development.”
“That’s where you give in to the temptations of conjecture and resort to the employment of convenient mental categories, which the society has been feeding you with, and decide to assume things and ideas whose validity or even existence is questionable, as it remains unsubstantiated by the lack of empirical evidence. Cognitive economy, you see! How can you just decide, single handedly, all by yourself, that “those people” are indoctrinated with venomous fanaticism by vested interests. What makes you declare with such conviction that they are “brainwashed” and not genuine believers in their actions? Just by this simplistic and conjectural assumption you can’t decide, they are wrong. Don’t you know that we humans have this irritatingly uncanny ability to justify our actions, no matter how offensive they are to others? Go ask “those people”, they will give you a thousand reasons why they do what they do and to your uncomfortable surprise they will all manage to convince you. They can justify their so-called fanaticism just as well as you and me can justify the selfishness behind our occasional altruism. So don’t brand their actions as wrong, just because you think they are wrong.”
“Well, it’s not about justification. Just because something is justifiable, doesn’t necessarily mean its “right.” So when you make love to me and leave your lingering aroma all over my soul, even after all your aggressive ways, I feel indulged in pleasure. But when a stranger does it without my consent, I’d call it rape. That the rapist would anyhow justify it, doesn’t make it right. Although the acts are similar, their meaning and consequences to the other person make them polar opposites, one epitomized as the meeting of souls, worthy of extravagant nomenclatures and divine comparisons, the other despised as a manifestation of basal instinct, a lack of respect and compassion towards the other person and the abasement of that blissful interaction of two consenting bodies, reveling in each other’s warm embrace, which we often, with nonchalant convenience call “fucking”, which again makes the same process sound cheap and animalistic. Morover, on another plane, its a violation of and contradiction to the accepted norms and ideals of the collectivity. So at this level, it’s about the collective conscience; what the collectivity considers wrong or extreme.”
“I don’t know. The example you give makes your argument sound believable, but nevertheless renders it ineffective when viewed through a macro-perspective, by being extremely specific and over-inductive. Morover, what you call respect and adherence to the collective conscience, I call institutionalized passive conformism. So Arabs are terrorists, Israelis are not, just because the they’re backed by the US, even though they may have been constantly acting in ways that have doomed millions of innocent Palestinians to a life plagued by a perpetual fear of impending death and terror.”
.........to be contd.
mahim
The small room seemed less like a place of human residence and more like an agglomeration of books and CDs spread all over the floor and some makeshift racks, with a computer claiming its own little territory shared with unwilling helplessness between a dusty old table and itself, playing “down to the waterline” from Dire Straits through two cheesy speakers with unaccomplished perfection, vainly trying to fill up the deafening silence suspended between the only two visible carbon-based life forms, of mentionable significance, in the room. And as they lay on the single bed, in the after hours of the lazy winter afternoon of January, she graffittying his chest with her bare fingers and he stroking her face with the back of his hand, simultaneously lighting up the last cigarette from the big red pack of Dunhill, trying to fix up the arduous uncertainties of the day, he suddenly spoke, disturbing the careening ballet of white smoke, breaking the ennui enveloping the smoke filled room, that both parties shared with mutual comfort.
“Do you think suicide-bombers are brave people?”
“What?” She realized the initiation of a dialogue.
“Do you think/believe/feel that the act (s) committed by suicide-bombers are those of bravery? Or courage?” He said, stressing on certain words.
“ Which ones? I mean there are so many of them...Arabs, Sri Lankan...even Indians...which ones are you talking about?” she replied with an obvious lack of interest.
“I don’t know. Come on. You don’t have to knead into it. Just answer the fucking question, will you? If you remember it!” His irritation was apparent.
“Well...no! Absolutely not; its utter brazenness. I mean you’re marching into certain death” She was still not seriously engaged into the conversation.
“Yeah? What about the soldiers fighting under the Rajputs? Or the Sikhs? Or the Japanese during the Second World War? Or the Marathas & Tipu Sultan against the British? An insignificant handful of them fighting for territories, which did not even belong to them in the first place, ramming head-on into forces much larger than theirs. But we prefer to call it courage. I mean, they marched into certain death too. But we heroicize all those ill-planned endeavors of eccentric emperors. We don’t...”
“...Oh come on! It’s not even the same thing. Those armies, those soldiers had a cause to defend. They fought to ensure safe existence for societies, which they belonged to. What you are doing is taking one thing and calling it another.”
“ & What you are doing is euphemizing the brazenness of a section of favored individuals or groups by calling it courage, when it can be easily established that their characterization, or attribution, as I would like to call it, was just the outcome of a series of convincingly-fed historical accidents by the media, which we accepted with compromised convenience as true acts of unbridled glory.”
“Well, you can say that with the benefit of retrospect on your side. To me, these so called Suicide-Bombers of yours are religious fanatics, shamelessly brandishing irrationally raucous recalcitrance, fuelled by constant indoctrination and brainwashing by shady ideologues; self-proclaimed messiahs of mankind, who place their hollow religious claims over and above everything else. They don’t give two fucks about education, economic development, unemployment or any other indicator of human development.”
“That’s where you give in to the temptations of conjecture and resort to the employment of convenient mental categories, which the society has been feeding you with, and decide to assume things and ideas whose validity or even existence is questionable, as it remains unsubstantiated by the lack of empirical evidence. Cognitive economy, you see! How can you just decide, single handedly, all by yourself, that “those people” are indoctrinated with venomous fanaticism by vested interests. What makes you declare with such conviction that they are “brainwashed” and not genuine believers in their actions? Just by this simplistic and conjectural assumption you can’t decide, they are wrong. Don’t you know that we humans have this irritatingly uncanny ability to justify our actions, no matter how offensive they are to others? Go ask “those people”, they will give you a thousand reasons why they do what they do and to your uncomfortable surprise they will all manage to convince you. They can justify their so-called fanaticism just as well as you and me can justify the selfishness behind our occasional altruism. So don’t brand their actions as wrong, just because you think they are wrong.”
“Well, it’s not about justification. Just because something is justifiable, doesn’t necessarily mean its “right.” So when you make love to me and leave your lingering aroma all over my soul, even after all your aggressive ways, I feel indulged in pleasure. But when a stranger does it without my consent, I’d call it rape. That the rapist would anyhow justify it, doesn’t make it right. Although the acts are similar, their meaning and consequences to the other person make them polar opposites, one epitomized as the meeting of souls, worthy of extravagant nomenclatures and divine comparisons, the other despised as a manifestation of basal instinct, a lack of respect and compassion towards the other person and the abasement of that blissful interaction of two consenting bodies, reveling in each other’s warm embrace, which we often, with nonchalant convenience call “fucking”, which again makes the same process sound cheap and animalistic. Morover, on another plane, its a violation of and contradiction to the accepted norms and ideals of the collectivity. So at this level, it’s about the collective conscience; what the collectivity considers wrong or extreme.”
“I don’t know. The example you give makes your argument sound believable, but nevertheless renders it ineffective when viewed through a macro-perspective, by being extremely specific and over-inductive. Morover, what you call respect and adherence to the collective conscience, I call institutionalized passive conformism. So Arabs are terrorists, Israelis are not, just because the they’re backed by the US, even though they may have been constantly acting in ways that have doomed millions of innocent Palestinians to a life plagued by a perpetual fear of impending death and terror.”
.........to be contd.
mahim
Sunday, February 18, 2007
The Highway
The line separating faith from superstition is thin, to the extent of being ineffective! Speeding down the Jodhpur-Jaisalmer highway, towards the Temra temple, this is the one thought that keeps resonating across the consciousness. The rationality of thought acquired through modern education forever trying to dismiss faith as mere superstition & values fed by religion persistently trying to justify seeming superstitions as faith. The highway meanwhile, keeps you occupied. The vast expanse of the desert seems all encompassing, with the wind whistling past you fiercely. The emptiness of the landscape on both sides of the road stretches endlessly towards the horizon, punctuated only by small hamlets bodied of tiny straw huts scattered unevenly. And as the jeep you are driving tears through this imposing view, you can almost smell the rubber on the wheels burning against hot asphalt. The sun, meanwhile, continues to shine relentlessly, painting beautiful mirages on the road ahead; tempting you to stop by and soak in much-needed coolness.
A small dhaba appears on the left of the road with the words “Coca-Cola” screaming from a large red board, suddenly pulling you back into material existence, proof that globalization is a reality that is here to stay. It is time to pull over for a small break; tea, pakoras and a quick smoke, if you would. Vapours from the tea-kettle liquefy the space around them, blurring your vision. A couple of rabbits pop out of nowhere, flop their ears, and vanish as immediately as they had appeared, lighting up the dead landscape with this sparkling cameo. The dhabawallah meanwhile informs that the temple is just a few kilometers ahead. And the journey resumes with the din of the diesel engine and the smell of burning rubber keeping you company. 30 minutes and 25 kilometers later, something appears on the landscape, leaving you gaping with your eyes wide open- 17 tall windmills dotting the barren stretch of land that accommodates the small rock atop which the small temple sits. The jeep is pulled over to the side of the road, as you try to absorb this imposing dialogue between nature and technology. Moving towards the temple, you are not exactly delighted to discover that a total of 173 steps lie between you and the structure atop the rock that houses faith. 173 steps later, you finally get to enter the temple. The temple, it is informed, houses the clan deity of the Charans and Rajputs of Jaisalmer. The blood on the floor bears testimony to the numerous animal sacrifices that have taken place there. Faith or superstition? The view from the top, meanwhile, is enticing; the windmills stand tall, silhouetting the ever expanding desert that stretches lazily beyond the scope of your vision.
Mahim Singh
HABITS AND RABITS
Habits die hard. Yeah. Old saying. I know. But why do habits die hard? Well, let me first define what a habit is. A habit is any pattern of behavior or action tendency that is relatively stable and enduring, in the process becoming an almost inseparable part of an individual’s personality. It can also be called a relatively independent, enduring and self-perpetuating conditioned response. As a matter of pure coincidence, habit, the word, rhymes with rabbit, the word .but while habits die hard, rabbits die easy. This is a strange aberration, a very striking observation. What? Dumb comparison? Illogical connection? There’s no such thing as a connection between rabbits and habits? Hang on fellas. This is interesting. Why?? Let me explain. Well, cuz when everything that breathes or walks or lives (rabbits, for instance, and other animals) dies so cheap at the hands of us homo sapiens, why do habits form such an unrelenting exception? Hmm. That’s a tough question. Really difficult. Why don’t habits die? In the above mentioned comparative analysis between rabbits and habits, we can have an answer. But before attempting an answer, we should take note of the fact that out of the two, only one has fur, the other is thick skinned, like a rhino, but that doesn’t mean habits and rhinos are similar things, cuz rhinos have a horn, while habits have thorns which keep pricking you and never let go and never let you forget about them. Anyways, back to our very sincere attempt at answering a very grave problem. We humans have a penchant for killing things, but only those things that are “other”. I mean, things that are outside of us and in one way or another, don’t belong to us. There lies the sense of victory, which we derive from such acts. It is for this sense of victory & gaining control over others that we kill things, anything and everything, animals, people, property, emotions….everything. It makes us feel powerful, gives us the proverbial shot in the arm or wherever. This assumption also automatically implies that we can’t kill habits cuz they exist within us; they feed on us & thrive on our weaknesses. They are, if it can be put across thus, so “ours” that we are attached to them, they are our own & although we acquire them from the society, we gradually come to internalize them.
Smoking, my friend, is a habit. It is NOT, mind it, a rabbit. Well, yeah, agreed that both are generally white & have a soft & furry tail, but that’s the only possible similarity that can be drawn.
finish it up later guyz.....gottta ctch a quick...yeah...well...smoke.!!!
Habits die hard. Yeah. Old saying. I know. But why do habits die hard? Well, let me first define what a habit is. A habit is any pattern of behavior or action tendency that is relatively stable and enduring, in the process becoming an almost inseparable part of an individual’s personality. It can also be called a relatively independent, enduring and self-perpetuating conditioned response. As a matter of pure coincidence, habit, the word, rhymes with rabbit, the word .but while habits die hard, rabbits die easy. This is a strange aberration, a very striking observation. What? Dumb comparison? Illogical connection? There’s no such thing as a connection between rabbits and habits? Hang on fellas. This is interesting. Why?? Let me explain. Well, cuz when everything that breathes or walks or lives (rabbits, for instance, and other animals) dies so cheap at the hands of us homo sapiens, why do habits form such an unrelenting exception? Hmm. That’s a tough question. Really difficult. Why don’t habits die? In the above mentioned comparative analysis between rabbits and habits, we can have an answer. But before attempting an answer, we should take note of the fact that out of the two, only one has fur, the other is thick skinned, like a rhino, but that doesn’t mean habits and rhinos are similar things, cuz rhinos have a horn, while habits have thorns which keep pricking you and never let go and never let you forget about them. Anyways, back to our very sincere attempt at answering a very grave problem. We humans have a penchant for killing things, but only those things that are “other”. I mean, things that are outside of us and in one way or another, don’t belong to us. There lies the sense of victory, which we derive from such acts. It is for this sense of victory & gaining control over others that we kill things, anything and everything, animals, people, property, emotions….everything. It makes us feel powerful, gives us the proverbial shot in the arm or wherever. This assumption also automatically implies that we can’t kill habits cuz they exist within us; they feed on us & thrive on our weaknesses. They are, if it can be put across thus, so “ours” that we are attached to them, they are our own & although we acquire them from the society, we gradually come to internalize them.
Smoking, my friend, is a habit. It is NOT, mind it, a rabbit. Well, yeah, agreed that both are generally white & have a soft & furry tail, but that’s the only possible similarity that can be drawn.
finish it up later guyz.....gottta ctch a quick...yeah...well...smoke.!!!
Monday, December 18, 2006
twenty thousand leagues under the sea....and u dont have a drop of water to drink...man...big achievement..twenty thousand leagues under water...with all kinda scary things floating all around of u...illusions of beauty..wrapped up in all kinda protective gear...illusions of safety..!!!twenty thousand leagues under the sea and ur soooo fukin alone...!!!
there are times wen u have so many people around u...yet feel like a loner....times wen u have everything in the world lying in front of u...spread eagle....yet u cant reach out and grab 'em...!!!not that u dont want to.....but just tht u cant....u just cant !cuz there are things around u ...happening...tht keep u from reachin out.!!!
and u go out in the cold...smoke a cigarette....and the wind comes whistling..tearing apart the silence...and hits u in the face....and u realise...nuthing's calm...illusions of calmness!and u think...all ur life u kept thinking...sumday...u wud be sumthing...sumthing big....sum fukin movie god...sum sports icon..rockstar...sumthing....and u wud never do stuff that the crowd does....the usual "bread -house-car" jobs tht keep lesser mortals engaged for the span of their entire lives...and the wind...it screams in ur ear..time out tuff guy...u gotta be the same "things" that other mortals are...crawling the surface of earth,lusting for material pleasures....totally unaware of the stuff thats super-limen....above the fukin threshold..!!stuff thats waiting....thts been waiting for all this time...!!stuff thats been calling u...that the world is urs for the taking...!
but the wind...it fukin slaps its wings on ur face ..and throws down realities ...that come crashing down on u....and u have no choice but 2 answr....u hafta say that okay fine...i will get a good job...i will marry a gud girl...i will be a gud son,husband,father,brother.....but wot i will not do is...be myself...i wont be myself...i will stop chasing my dream...ill giv up my claims for self-actualisation...i will nvr think of transcending the miserable lives of lesser mortals.....the hypocrisy of human relations....the sticky filth of "humanhood"....thts stopping me from opening my eyes...or gettin up 2 face the world...!!!i will stay burried under that 4evr....!!!
okay...gotta go now....will finish this up later...!
there are times wen u have so many people around u...yet feel like a loner....times wen u have everything in the world lying in front of u...spread eagle....yet u cant reach out and grab 'em...!!!not that u dont want to.....but just tht u cant....u just cant !cuz there are things around u ...happening...tht keep u from reachin out.!!!
and u go out in the cold...smoke a cigarette....and the wind comes whistling..tearing apart the silence...and hits u in the face....and u realise...nuthing's calm...illusions of calmness!and u think...all ur life u kept thinking...sumday...u wud be sumthing...sumthing big....sum fukin movie god...sum sports icon..rockstar...sumthing....and u wud never do stuff that the crowd does....the usual "bread -house-car" jobs tht keep lesser mortals engaged for the span of their entire lives...and the wind...it screams in ur ear..time out tuff guy...u gotta be the same "things" that other mortals are...crawling the surface of earth,lusting for material pleasures....totally unaware of the stuff thats super-limen....above the fukin threshold..!!stuff thats waiting....thts been waiting for all this time...!!stuff thats been calling u...that the world is urs for the taking...!
but the wind...it fukin slaps its wings on ur face ..and throws down realities ...that come crashing down on u....and u have no choice but 2 answr....u hafta say that okay fine...i will get a good job...i will marry a gud girl...i will be a gud son,husband,father,brother.....but wot i will not do is...be myself...i wont be myself...i will stop chasing my dream...ill giv up my claims for self-actualisation...i will nvr think of transcending the miserable lives of lesser mortals.....the hypocrisy of human relations....the sticky filth of "humanhood"....thts stopping me from opening my eyes...or gettin up 2 face the world...!!!i will stay burried under that 4evr....!!!
okay...gotta go now....will finish this up later...!
Sunday, November 19, 2006
ALIENATION IN POST 9\11 AMERICAN SOCIETY
9\11. Plainly looking, just a date on the Gregorian calendar. Just a way of putting into words a particular day of a particular month. But mention it to any aware & sensible person, especially to an American citizen & this small speck on the calendar of 2001 magnifies itself, staring in your face, reflecting a million emotions & asking a thousand questions. This date, marking one of the darkest days of American civil & social history, is perhaps the shortest expression & a universal label for global terrorism. That fateful Tuesday of the September of 2001, when two airplanes, led by terrorist outfit Al-Qaeda rammed into the World Trade Center & the Pentagon, killing scores of innocent civilians, shook an entire nation out of its comfortable slumber. People working in their offices, finishing routine jobs were caught unawares and unprepared. Some saw it as a manifestation of the age-old battle between Islam & Christianity, others as a cathartic reaction by the middle-east countries against American domination, & still others as simply a planned terrorist attack aimed at creating civil unrest in the world’s most powerful nation. Whatever it was, it definitely brought to attention the fact that terrorism was not merely a third-world problem, but a cancer that was spreading fast across the world, hollowing out whatever claims the world leaders had been making. Of course the event had global ramifications & hurt humanity at large. But more importantly it rattled the conscience of the average American, basking in the glory and pride of being a citizen of America-the land of the brave and the proud. It shattered their proud notion of being “untouchables”(the word has different implications in the American context-meaning somebody who “cannot” and not “should not” be touched). Citizens of the U.S.A. realized that their nation was no longer the safe nest that the media, the authorities and the national leaders had portrayed it as all along. And they learned it the hard way.
Alienation in the American civil society, historically, is not a new phenomenon. Be it the world wars, the great depression of the ‘30s or the Vietnam War, all these events triggered widespread alienation in society. But alienation in American society is so much more visible post 9\11, something that can be explained by the ever-increasing individualism of the average American citizen coupled with other factors like America’s post 9\11 wars. With fast moving times and rapidly changing social ethos, individualism has witnessed an alarming increase in the American civil society, as also in all other world societies. And this individualism has contributed significantly in creating conditions perfect for alienation. What’s more interesting to note is that this individualism is both the cause and the effect of the widespread alienation that American society has witnessed post 9\11. This alienation has manifested itself in many different and dangerous ways. Crime rate has increased, unemployment has gone up, there is a general feeling of mistrust among people and an increasing number of people believe that the government is not doing enough for their security. People have lost faith in the government. According to a survey conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center of the University of Ohio, More than a third of the American public suspects that 9\11 was an “inside job” assisted by federal officials. They believe that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so that the United States could go to war in the Middle East. This national survey of 1,010 adults also found that anger against the federal government is at record levels, with 54 percent saying they "personally are more angry" at the government than they used to be. Widespread resentment and alienation toward the national government appear to be fueling a growing acceptance of conspiracy theories about the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The question is not whether these allegations against the government are based on any substantial evidence, but a more serious one - has the government lost the faith of its people? Why do people think that the federal government has failed them? Or is the federal government so incompetent that it cannot handle internal crises? The average American is feeling alienated form the government policies & the society at large. The fact that the memories of 9\11 still haunt the people of America shows that there’s still fear, confusion, uncertainty, mistrust & panic prevailing among citizens. This panic has sustained itself for all these years and has become even more pronounced after the U.S. decided to wage a war against terrorism, which was by all practical means a war against Iraq. The war, explained as an aftermath of 9\11 has outlived its superimposed “honest purpose” & the average American knows it, even after relentless justifications by Mr. Bush & Co. People now realize the reality of war & jingoistic explanations supporting the stance taken by the Bush administration are no longer workable. The nationwide condemnation of the Iraq war even after being justified as an aftermath of 9\11 shows that citizens are disinterested in its continuation.
Another reason why the American citizens feel alienated from the government policies and the society post 9\11 is that the war against Iraq has come to be viewed as a war against mankind in general. The large number of civilian deaths taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan are not a good step towards the cause of universal harmony and peace, a cause by which most of America’s educated & sensible population stands. The Bush administration’s explanations of collateral damage are no longer sellable even to conservative Americans. The human cost of war in the two countries has been substantial. A reasonable estimate is that, at minimum, 70,000 Iraqis and Afghanis have died due to war-related violence (including excess criminal violence). The people have realized that the US-led "war on terrorism" is addressing and solving nothing, neither American security threats nor the problem of global terrorism. Overall, terrorist activity and violence has grown worse, not better since 11 September 2001. Average levels of terrorist violence that would have been considered extreme in the period prior to 9/11 have become the norm in the years since. And there is no sign that this trend is abating. This much is evident from a review of the terrorism incident database maintained by the Rand Corporation for the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), which is funded by the US Department of Homeland Security. The rate of terrorism fatalities for the 59-month period following 11 September 2001 is 250 percent that of the 44.5-month period preceding and including the 9/11 attacks.
9\11. Plainly looking, just a date on the Gregorian calendar. Just a way of putting into words a particular day of a particular month. But mention it to any aware & sensible person, especially to an American citizen & this small speck on the calendar of 2001 magnifies itself, staring in your face, reflecting a million emotions & asking a thousand questions. This date, marking one of the darkest days of American civil & social history, is perhaps the shortest expression & a universal label for global terrorism. That fateful Tuesday of the September of 2001, when two airplanes, led by terrorist outfit Al-Qaeda rammed into the World Trade Center & the Pentagon, killing scores of innocent civilians, shook an entire nation out of its comfortable slumber. People working in their offices, finishing routine jobs were caught unawares and unprepared. Some saw it as a manifestation of the age-old battle between Islam & Christianity, others as a cathartic reaction by the middle-east countries against American domination, & still others as simply a planned terrorist attack aimed at creating civil unrest in the world’s most powerful nation. Whatever it was, it definitely brought to attention the fact that terrorism was not merely a third-world problem, but a cancer that was spreading fast across the world, hollowing out whatever claims the world leaders had been making. Of course the event had global ramifications & hurt humanity at large. But more importantly it rattled the conscience of the average American, basking in the glory and pride of being a citizen of America-the land of the brave and the proud. It shattered their proud notion of being “untouchables”(the word has different implications in the American context-meaning somebody who “cannot” and not “should not” be touched). Citizens of the U.S.A. realized that their nation was no longer the safe nest that the media, the authorities and the national leaders had portrayed it as all along. And they learned it the hard way.
Alienation in the American civil society, historically, is not a new phenomenon. Be it the world wars, the great depression of the ‘30s or the Vietnam War, all these events triggered widespread alienation in society. But alienation in American society is so much more visible post 9\11, something that can be explained by the ever-increasing individualism of the average American citizen coupled with other factors like America’s post 9\11 wars. With fast moving times and rapidly changing social ethos, individualism has witnessed an alarming increase in the American civil society, as also in all other world societies. And this individualism has contributed significantly in creating conditions perfect for alienation. What’s more interesting to note is that this individualism is both the cause and the effect of the widespread alienation that American society has witnessed post 9\11. This alienation has manifested itself in many different and dangerous ways. Crime rate has increased, unemployment has gone up, there is a general feeling of mistrust among people and an increasing number of people believe that the government is not doing enough for their security. People have lost faith in the government. According to a survey conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center of the University of Ohio, More than a third of the American public suspects that 9\11 was an “inside job” assisted by federal officials. They believe that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so that the United States could go to war in the Middle East. This national survey of 1,010 adults also found that anger against the federal government is at record levels, with 54 percent saying they "personally are more angry" at the government than they used to be. Widespread resentment and alienation toward the national government appear to be fueling a growing acceptance of conspiracy theories about the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The question is not whether these allegations against the government are based on any substantial evidence, but a more serious one - has the government lost the faith of its people? Why do people think that the federal government has failed them? Or is the federal government so incompetent that it cannot handle internal crises? The average American is feeling alienated form the government policies & the society at large. The fact that the memories of 9\11 still haunt the people of America shows that there’s still fear, confusion, uncertainty, mistrust & panic prevailing among citizens. This panic has sustained itself for all these years and has become even more pronounced after the U.S. decided to wage a war against terrorism, which was by all practical means a war against Iraq. The war, explained as an aftermath of 9\11 has outlived its superimposed “honest purpose” & the average American knows it, even after relentless justifications by Mr. Bush & Co. People now realize the reality of war & jingoistic explanations supporting the stance taken by the Bush administration are no longer workable. The nationwide condemnation of the Iraq war even after being justified as an aftermath of 9\11 shows that citizens are disinterested in its continuation.
Another reason why the American citizens feel alienated from the government policies and the society post 9\11 is that the war against Iraq has come to be viewed as a war against mankind in general. The large number of civilian deaths taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan are not a good step towards the cause of universal harmony and peace, a cause by which most of America’s educated & sensible population stands. The Bush administration’s explanations of collateral damage are no longer sellable even to conservative Americans. The human cost of war in the two countries has been substantial. A reasonable estimate is that, at minimum, 70,000 Iraqis and Afghanis have died due to war-related violence (including excess criminal violence). The people have realized that the US-led "war on terrorism" is addressing and solving nothing, neither American security threats nor the problem of global terrorism. Overall, terrorist activity and violence has grown worse, not better since 11 September 2001. Average levels of terrorist violence that would have been considered extreme in the period prior to 9/11 have become the norm in the years since. And there is no sign that this trend is abating. This much is evident from a review of the terrorism incident database maintained by the Rand Corporation for the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), which is funded by the US Department of Homeland Security. The rate of terrorism fatalities for the 59-month period following 11 September 2001 is 250 percent that of the 44.5-month period preceding and including the 9/11 attacks.
Another important trend that shows the growing feeling of alienation and mistrust towards the government is that a large number of Americans today think that America is wasting national resources, both human & financial, in a war that is against that has no practical benefits for them. The war is believed to be costing the U.S. very heavy. First among the costs of operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom are the 3,000 dead and 20,000 wounded US service personnel. The monetary cost of operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom to the end of FY 2006 has exceeded $400 billion (including reconstruction assistance). Additional cost is presently accruing at a rate of approximately $10 billion per month. Two economists who have attempted such an analysis, Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University and Linda Bilmes of Harvard's Kennedy School, conclude that the total costs of the Iraq war alone may accumulate to between $1 trillion and $2.2 trillion -- on the assumption of a gradual troop drawdown between 2006 and 2010. (Bilmes and Stiglitz, January 2006).
There’s also a strong feeling that America’s post 9\11 wars have threatened and jeopardized national security. Citizens are living in a constant state of fear of terrorist attacks & they think that their safety is heavily compromised. A lot of this can be attributed to exaggerated media reporting and over-reaction by a panicking population but the facts cannot be completely denied. Of the total U.S. military strength, more than 220,000 i.e. 23 % are operationally deployed in or around Iraq, Afghanistan, and other foreign territories. Not since the Vietnam era has the United States had such a large portion of its active-component armed forces at work overseas or deployed in operations as today.
This implies that there are lesser number of troops available for American security purposes & thus the citizens’ fears are justified.
All these factors have instilled a strong feeling of alienation among the youth of the nation, springing from the idea that the government is concentrating too much on useless wars & not doing anything substantial to address the “real” problems, which the American society is facing. The society is loosing out on its cultural fabric and there is widespread normlessness. Problems such as teen pregnancies, drug abuse, school dropouts, unemployment, high attrition rates, employee burnouts plague almost all sections of the society. Apart from these, increase in divorce rates, single-parent households, breaking down of the institution of family & social apathy towards old-age people have all become features of contemporary American society. This has resulted in a general fragmentation of community ethos & the entire social structure in general. Community ethics, general moral principles and social safeguards required for the smooth functioning of a society are all breaking up in post 9\11 & Iraq-war America & this alienation is being reflected in all parts of American civil life, be it movies, music, television or the increasing trend of social pathologies.
REFLECTIONS OF ALIENATION IN AMERICAN MUSIC
All these factors have instilled a strong feeling of alienation among the youth of the nation, springing from the idea that the government is concentrating too much on useless wars & not doing anything substantial to address the “real” problems, which the American society is facing. The society is loosing out on its cultural fabric and there is widespread normlessness. Problems such as teen pregnancies, drug abuse, school dropouts, unemployment, high attrition rates, employee burnouts plague almost all sections of the society. Apart from these, increase in divorce rates, single-parent households, breaking down of the institution of family & social apathy towards old-age people have all become features of contemporary American society. This has resulted in a general fragmentation of community ethos & the entire social structure in general. Community ethics, general moral principles and social safeguards required for the smooth functioning of a society are all breaking up in post 9\11 & Iraq-war America & this alienation is being reflected in all parts of American civil life, be it movies, music, television or the increasing trend of social pathologies.
REFLECTIONS OF ALIENATION IN AMERICAN MUSIC
9\11 has proved to be an important event in the history of American society; in the sense that post 9\11 American society is a totally different case- study in itself. Citizens see their lives almost divided into two distinct sections: pre-9/11 and post-9/11. And they are desperately craving entertainment that speaks to the uncomfortable post-9/11 feeling taking over them-- this surety that they are going to be warring with terrorists for years to come, this belief that wont be feeling safe for quite some time, no matter who wins the election. And American popular music attempts to bring out this split of times in the American society quite successfully by acting as a catalyst that serves to unite an entire generation against war. Artistes have taken up the case of fellow citizens and are voicing their disillusionment against the government through their music. And so one can see all major stars sounding off on the post-9/11 era: Toby Keith, Alan Jackson, Madonna, Paul McCartney, R.E.M., John Mellencamp & most notably Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young & Green Day. Songs composed by these artistes have themes of alienation, anti-war sentiments and a strong vision of peace and a world without wars.
Green Day’s album American Idiot explicitly condemns everything about the Bush administration, from its domination of world media to its post 9\11 reactionary measures and the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. Two songs-“American Idiot” & “Wake me up when September ends”- specially get the message across. In American idiot, the band screams, “Don't want to be an American idiot, don't want a nation under the new media. Welcome to a new kind of tension. All across the idiot nation. Everything isn't meant to be okay. Television dreams of tomorrow. We’re not the ones who're meant to follow. For that's enough to argue.” The song “Wake me up” is about a teenage couple unsure of their future. The video shows how the boy enlists in the troops fighting in Iraq expecting to make things better for both of them and how his and his partner’s life are affected by the war. The lyrics to the song say, “Summer has come and passed. The innocent can never last. Wake me up when September ends. As my memory rests, But never forgets what I lost. Wake me up when September ends”. The reference is of course to 9\11 and the message is that the trauma & disturbance caused by 9\11 is not ending, in fact its being continued by the federal government itself. Another song by rap band Fort Minor titled “where’d you go” is especially about the soldiers fighting in Iraq and the way it’s affecting the lives of their families. Another very important effort has been by Neil Young’s “Living with war.” The album is loaded with anti-war and anti-bush messages. The song “living with war” expresses, “I'm living with war everyday, I'm living with war in my heart every day, I'm living with war right now. And when the dawn breaks I see my fellow man, and on the flat-screen we kill and we're killed again, and when the night falls, I pray for peace”. The song brings out the disturbing reality that the American citizens are forced to live with the idea of war. Another of Neil Young’s songs “what are their names” expresses sadly,” I wonder who they are, the men who really run this land and I wonder why they run it, with such a thoughtless hand. Tell me what are their names, and on what street do they live…” which again very bluntly questions the competency of the government of the day. UB-40’s “who you fighting for” is another straight forward song asking, “sell the arms, suppress the truth, Create the fear, invent the proof, Wave the flag - don't tell the youth, Who they are fighting for.” Similar questions are asked by Slipknot’s song B.Y.O.B. that says, “Why don't presidents fight the war? Why do they always send the poor?” these songs have bitter feelings of anger towards the government and the society has accepted them as true representations of the prevailing conditions. These and many other artistes have come out in the open voicing the feelings of betrayal and alienation. The songs composed by these acts are not confined to a collector’s edition disc-set but have penetrated the conscience of their fellow citizens & also of millions of others around the world.
In this way, the conditions of alienation, disillusionment, confusion & anger towards the federal government, prevailing in the American society all find a platform in the form of protest songs.
The fact that these songs are composed by mainstream artistes and not just some insignificant one-time act, ensures their reach and success all the more. This also proves that music in America is more than just a medium of entertainment, it’s a way of life and an important form of protest against all kinds of social pathologies & certainly reflects the mood of the American civil society. And its not just the recognized artistes who have created protest music, ordinary citizens have also joined in to voice their protests. This protest song scribbled on an Internet graffiti sums it all up,
I’m going to Camp Casey.
Gonna sleep beside the road And when you smirk and swagger here’s what I’ll say.
Too many died, because you lied. They crossed that river deep and wide.
Gonna sleep beside the road And when you smirk and swagger here’s what I’ll say.
Too many died, because you lied. They crossed that river deep and wide.
(Camp Casey was the name given to the encampment of anti-war protesters outside the George W. Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas during his five-week summer vacation there in 2005, named after Iraq War casualty US Army Specialist Casey Sheehan.)
-MAHIM P. SINGH
J.N.U.
NEW DELHI
INDIA
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