Gateway to Genocide

In the wake of Thanksgiving week’s horrific terrorism in Mumbai and death of many innocent people – both Indians and Westerners – barrage of anti-government protests, name-calling and finger pointing have begun. Many fear that the genocide at the Gateway of India is going to unfold a new stained chapter in the violent, bloody history of the British-partitioned subcontinent.

Intellectuals and liberal oped writers have flooded the print, TV and cyber media with their instant thoughts and esteemed analyses. I’ve collected a few articles for my files. I share with you some excerpts and my personal thoughts.

It’s not easy to filter through the three days of horror, chaos and mass confusion exacerbated by the Indian and U.S. media and people in power. Also, I’m not from Bombay and don’t particularly know the city so well. But I know India like the back of my palm, and I know its political landscape. I’ll therefore use some of those notable overviews, and offer my two cents.

Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found and journalism professor at New York University, wrote in the New York Times: What They Hate About Mumbai http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/opinion/29mehta.html

"Mumbai is a “soft target,” the terrorism analysts say. Anybody can walk into the hotels, the hospitals, the train stations, and start spraying with a machine gun. Where are the metal detectors, the random bag checks?"

[Mehta also writes: "In Mumbai, it’s impossible to control the crowd. In other cities, if there’s an explosion, people run away from it. In Mumbai, people run toward it — to help." To me, that’s too condescending: people in other parts of India would not appreciate that comment. Ask anyone from Kolkata.]

The security collapse theme is now central in anti-government allegations in India, and they are quite justified. Just like the Bush administration had completely failed to protect the lives of three thousand civilians on September 11, the U.S.-blessed Indian government led by Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi have shown their laughable inefficiency to save the industrial metropolis. The only difference in the immediate aftermath is that the powerful Indian home minister Shivraj Patil, the man in charge of the nation’s domestic security, has now resigned yielding to public criticism, in stark contrast to the post-9/11 mayhem when John Ashcroft and other U.S. strongmen never took any responsibility, and assumed unprecedented power; the corporate media and two-party oligarchy never put any serious pressure on them for their grotesque failures. Consequently, we saw the immediate passing of the PATRIOT Act, mass round-up of countless “perceived terrorists,” and other rampant breach of civil rights and liberties. The Afghanistan and Iraq genocides began soon thereafter.

India is getting ready to hold its five-year ritual of elections in a few months, and these horrific incidents bring the possibility of the ultra-right wing to come back to national power. Particularly in the city of Mumbai and its parental state Maharashtra and adjacent state Gujarat, the two most affluent provinces, Hindu chauvinism and fanaticism have garnered maximum strength: in both places, extremists have caused anti-minority barbarism in recent years. Contrary to Mehta’s assertions, in the possible scenario of a future anti-minority hate resurgence, very few including the local governments would show up to the rescue of the poor and the vulnerable.

(Of course, as Mehta pointed out, Amitabh Bachchan would sleep tight with his gun tucked under his pillow.)

And Mehta knows very well that the Indian police forces are notoriously inefficient and corrupt: everyone who knows the country knows that practically the only two-fold role the police play there is brutalize the powerless and extort bribes. They also have active and direct collusion with the underworld smugglers and political mafia – powers that rule especially the city of Mumbai and its precious Bollywood.



Recent Indian governments, especially in the last two decades, have followed the footsteps of its police malfunction and resorted to extreme corruption, muscle flexing and underworld money laundering to remain in power. Basic administrative services changed hands from once-reputed state machineries to arrogant and violent political goons sponsored by New Delhi bosses. The very visible consequence: countrywide terrorist activities on one hand and massive, escalating rich-poor disparity and civil service failure on the other.

The fact is that the Mumbai carnage is not the first of its kind; just in the past few months, a number of gruesome, parallel violent incidents have occurred in various parts of India, resulting massive bloodshed. Shashi Tharoor, author and former senior UN official, mentioned it in TheDailyBeast.com: City Under Siege http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-11-26/terror-in-mumbai/

"This year alone, terrorist bombs have taken lives in Jaipur, in Ahmedabad, in Delhi and […] several different places on one searing day in the state of Assam. Jaipur is the lodestar of Indian tourism to Rajasthan; Ahmedabad is the primary city of Gujarat, […]; Delhi is the nation’s political capital and India’s window to the world; Assam was logistically convenient for terrorists from across a porous border. Mumbai combined all four elements of its precursors: by attacking it, the terrorists hit India’s economy, its tourism, and its internationalism, and they took advantage of the city’s openness to the world. A grand slam."

And then, we have the usual “strength and resilience” platitude often exercised by the liberal elite: ones we’ve seen in the post-9/11 "soul-searching." Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek gave an interview to the magazine’s online edition: The Mayhem in Mumbai http://www.newsweek.com/id/17100

"I think India is showing remarkable resilience. They're trying to get back to business as usual. They were planning to open the stock market, which is not far from the Taj; they ultimately decided that that might have been a bridge too far, but they're encouraging people to go back to work. That's the best thing about an open society. They're trying to project an image of resilience."

Remember the Republocrat resilience rhetoric?

What else can you do? What else especially the subcontinent's working poor and middle class can do? From New York, I called my sister and nephew in Mumbai on the morning after the terror strike. Both of them work in the private sector, one as a receptionist, and other as a junior computer professional. Both of them told me that their companies had not called them yet not to come to work, even though it was extremely dangerous to go out and even in Mumbai where the subway is the lifeline of millions of commuters, it was all but shut down. Resilience? Of course, my sister and nephew must go back to work and “show courage” to stand up against those ghastly cowardice forces. Or else, Zakaria must know, the private sector would show them the door.

Welcome to the globalized, neo-liberal, Wall Street-modeled world, India being at its forefront, along with its corrupt, criminals and crooks.

Post-script: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has already announced that an Indian version of Homeland Security is on the way! What's next? Follow the Giuliani-Bush-Ashcroft-Rumsfeld daily diaries. On the other side of the football field, note how the Indian KKK are busy chalking up the next round of mob lynching.

[To be continued]

Sonal Shah of Obama Team and Her Alleged Hindu Extremist Nexus

Dear Friend:

[Background info for those who need it:

1. Sonal Shah, an Indian-American advocate, has been chosen by Barack Obama to work on his transition team. Initially, the news was warmly received by the South Asian community both here in the U.S. and in Europe and India.

2. VHP (English: World Hindu Council) and BJP (English: Indian Peoples' Party) are right wing Hindu extremist political forces in India; they've been directly responsible for inciting massive violence and genocide in India to gain political mileage -- if you're interested, you can read my little book on BJP and its mentor group the RSS (English: National Volunteer Corps). In short, RSS is the Indian version of Christian Coalition or Moral Majority -- it preaches and practices Hindu supremacist doctrine, and its premier leaders have borrowed heavily from the Third Reich.

3. Some non-resident Indian groups here in the U.S. and left-wing scholars have brought new allegations that Sonal Shah and her family have been deeply involved with the Hindu extremist groups: according to them, Shah's father and brother have been active members of VHP and Overseas Friends of BJP. Read one story at:

http://www.twocircles.net/2008nov10/nri_groups_ask_sonal_shah_clarify_vhp_links.html

4. Sonal Shah has vehemently denied her links with any extremists. See one story at

http://www.bjp.com/2008/11/11/sonal-shah-denies-baseless-and-silly-reports-of-rightwing-links/]

I'd like to draw your attention to the newly unfolding saga. I'm troubled by it, especially if there's indeed a nexus. I'd also be greatly troubled if it was another ploy by renegade anti-Hindu extremists (and the far left) to tarnish Shah and consequently, the Obama administration, whom they don't like in the first place (I've had my share of disagreements with the far left); my fear is that only the corporate media and right wing Republicans will take advantage of it.

I invite your thoughts and action. Thank you.

-Partha

P.S. -- It's an utmost irony that RSS, BJP and VHP (and a more fascistic group Shiv Sena -- even its acronym SS is uncanny) are now most powerful in the Western Indian states of Gujarat and Maharashtra; it's ironic because Gandhi, a Gujarati, was assassinated by an ex-RSS member Nathuram Godse, who was from Maharashtra. But that's another story: let me know if you're interested to hear it.



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The American Football of Lies and Prejudice -- Can Obama Really Win It?

By Partha Banerjee


(Author is a college teacher and human rights and media activist in New York City. Email: banerjee2000@hotmail.com. Web: http://www.geocities.com/chokmoki.)



Just in a few days Americans will vote to elect their president. This historic election will decide the course of social, political and economic movements, not just for the U.S., but for the entire world.

As a foot soldier of democratic rights, justice and peace movements, I’ve always supported the candidacy of Barack Obama. In diverse capacities, I’ve worked for his election campaign in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania; I’ve also written and spoken in various forums to promote his candidacy and the significance of his victory. Apparently, based on the gallup and tracking polls, the wind is behind his sail. Still, in these final hours just before the November 4 elections, I express my doubts and fears whether Obama is really going to win. Because, the climate of lies, prejudice and divisive politics that is now pervading this country is unprecedented; one might compare it with the fourth and final quarter of a game of American football – a game where the heretofore losing team has suddenly turned violent, and is desperate to steal the show by any underhanded, unimaginable means.

Can a principled, issue-based, straight-talking Obama fight off the heinous opponent and still win it?

Way back when, during my school days in Calcutta, I played minor league football (the international version where feet, and not hands, move the ball around). Along the way of playing across the city, I discovered Kajal the Referee – infamously known as Kajal the Crook. I discovered that he was a millionaire black-market broker, with shady dealings with Calcutta’s two leading football clubs. This man would provide muscle power for the club elections, kidnap the young rising star players during the pre-season signing, and keep them under his personal surveillance til the period was over. He would sponsor the neighborhood minor leagues, fix matches, descend on the field himself as the celebrity referee, and employ his cadres of thugs to jumpstart violence should his match-fixing ploy not work well; at the least, his musclemen would make sure the opponent’s young, talented kid is kicked unconscious, when the referee himself would look the other way. We were also told that because both the teams in the championship match were sold to him, it didn’t matter who won: Kajal the Crook and his army would just manipulate the tension high through the end.

When I look at the way the U.S. corporate media work, I can’t help but remember that manipulative referee. The way big media keeps making up new, sensational stories round the clock, the sole purpose being build and perpetuate high-electricity tension – never mind the lies, half-truths and cooked-up scandals – is no different from the way that Calcutta crook played his game; the striking resemblance is that both shoot for the same goal: reaping maximum profit (I'm afraid using the phrase "by hook or by crook" would be chastised by redundancy-conscious readers).

Here’s the real story about big media here in the U.S. They work on a couple of basic premises. One, almost all of them work directly for or under some multinational corporations such as General Electric, Walt Disney, Westinghouse or Rupert Murdoch’s star empire – where the primary political tenet is that they would not allow anybody outside of their own beltway to pose as a serious contender for the prize of presidency; just as none other than the two big teams would ever win the Calcutta Football League, nobody but some insider Democrat or Republican would ever be promoted by big media to become the U.S. president (or members of the Congress) – I can only imagine big media were in a shock when Barack Obama defied all the conventional wisdom, defeated the Clinton powerhouse, and actually became the Democratic presidential candidate. Big media such as CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, PBS or NPR made sure even within the Democratic Party, anti-status-quo voices such as Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, et al. were silenced long ago; we’re not even talking about right-wing nuts and the ilks of Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Dobbs, Hannity, Malkin or Drudge.

Two, U.S. media's primary objective is profit and their worldwide business survives and flourishes on their commodity: news. Just the way potato farmers and distributors would need various brands of chips, fries and salads to create, sustain and increase their profits, media corporations would need various news and views packages to make their money. As a result, in order to keep you on the edge, media would bring in fake, hollow and meaningless news and analyses by so-called experts, which in turn would find the all-important ratings to stay ahead in their own competitive world. The higher the Nielsen and other ratings are, the more media companies make money through mass consumption, and especially through commercials from car, food, make-up, beer, insurance or drug companies. Mega-dollars of revenue would make them mega-rich.

Following this simple logic, big media have built an extreme tension on the election battle between Obama and McCain, excitement that one can normally find in the fourth quarter of a Super Bowl game. They must do it because after all, the incredulously high amount of fundraising by the two campaigns (especially when the U.S. economy is such tatters) is essential to feed the media dinosaurs and their insatiable appetite for advertisement dollars. Especially in a country where a virtual society has largely replaced the real society, TV, radio and Internet commercials are the street corner rallies, main-street marches, even though Obama has recently managed to physically meet a 100,000-strong crowd in St. Louis; in an exceptional departure from American politics-as-usual, he’s done it repeatedly especially since August.

Following the time-tested formula, however, big media have manufactured an array of package – diet, regular, salty, unsalted, sweet and sugar-free -- to sale and to profit. Thus, in this end game, media have manufactured a star out of Sarah Palin and her far right wing “base” (whose activity and rhetoric remind me of Bajrang Dal, Shiv Sena or Jamat of India). Media have brought into the drama a new character named Joe the Plumber. Following the footsteps of the “success” they had with Rev. Jeremiah Right, they’ve now brought in the so-called terrorist connections between Obama and Bill Ayers of Chicago. As backup entertainment, they’ve added grassroots group ACORN and its so-called far left agenda. They’ve included in this potpourri the Lieberman-fashioned, unguarded remarks of Joe Biden.

Yet, each of these packages has proved to be trash, and should’ve been trashed. After the revelations of the Alaska wrongdoings of Sarah Palin and her husband, media should’ve challenged them more vigorously instead of rewarding them with further stardom and insipid interviews. After it was known that Ohio’s Joe ran his business without a license (i.e., perhaps ran it tax-free?), was a registered Republican who meant to harangue Obama, and would actually be benefited by Obama’s tax cuts, media should’ve dropped the Joe the Plumber issue altogether. After it was came to light that Bill Ayers could not have political connections with Obama during the sixties – for the simple fact that Obama was eight years old at that time – media should’ve faced off with McCain and Palin on exploiting it.

But they decided not to do it, again, for the simple reason that keeping tensions and excitements – however false – would be profitable; after all, mega-rich owners and their rich anchors and hosts would not lose much should either Obama or McCain be the next president. (I sometimes wonder whether media corporations lost wealth the Lehman Brothers or AIG way even in these horrific, meltdown days!)

Consequently, even those American voters who’ve miserably suffered during the past eight years of Bush-Cheney-Rove-McCain destruction of the economy, those who’ve lost jobs, mortgage, health care, retirement savings, are not able to send their children to college, are still undecided, unsure. Can we rather say that the vested interest have purposefully kept them unsure?

And on top of that, we now have witnessed in the U.S. a resurgence of hate, bigotry, racism and violence; the fringe but powerful far right, with help from airwave hate talks, are screaming for blood. Even today, a sizeable population in this country is too prejudiced to stomach the possibility of a black man to be their president, even though this black man is a Harvard-educated lawyer and has proved to have more than the necessary presidential character, composure and judgment (particularly in comparison to his opponents). On his side are now elite personalities such as Warren Buffet who’s carefully heard by Wall Street; he has on his side Colin Powell, a top general respected by both parties. Most importantly, millions of new-generation students, youth and workers – black, white, brown and yellow -- have come out to be on his side. This is an unprecedented, formidable coalition! I’ve seen this revolutionary coalition at work during my campaign days in New York, New Jersey or Pennsylvania.

Just don’t forget our Calcutta referee Kajal the Crook. His mastermind is always busy fomenting trouble: who knows what’s up his sleeves now? There could be mass fraud and voter suppression the 2000 Florida way, there could be violence instigated on election eve, or there could be a backlash against the equality doctrine of Obama that WSJ, CNN, PBS or Times never likes anyways. Now that Pat Buchanan has fatwah’ed that with Obama’s rise, “center-right” America will surely turn into a far-left state, the so-called center-right church and social leaders under the auspices of Newt Gingrich, Pat Robertson or Phyllis Schafly would preach last-minute sermons to their devotees to defeat the demon of communism. All the other issues namely jobs, money to buy food and gas, education for our children or Medicare for our elderly parents would be sermoned to be less significant.

This Halloween is going to be mighty spooky.


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