HEATHER MCROBIE - What sex means for world peace

Speaking at the Nobel Women’s Initiative conference, Valerie Hudson argues that best predictor of a state’s peacefulness is how well its women are treated. Little analysed in international relations theory, state security and women’s security are inextricably linked.

Valerie Hudson, one of the authors of ‘Sex and World Peace’, has made the compelling case that, just as state security impacts on women’s security, so women’s security significantly impacts on state security, something that has barely been discussed within the field of international relations.  In fact, she argues, the best predictor of a state’s peacefulness is not its wealth, democracy or any of the other traditional factors highlighted in international relations theories, but how well women are treated in a state.  The greater the gap between the treatment of men and women in a state, the more likely it is that the state will be involved in intra- and interstate conflict.

This analysis turns traditional international relations theory on its head and demonstrates the centrality of gender violence to militarism, social inequalities and social injustice.  As well as the striking correlation between the treatment of women and a country’s likelihood of conflict, her analysis shows the gender dimensions of health, economic stability and levels of corruption.  For instance, the larger the gender gap, the higher the levels of both perceived and actual government corruption in a society.  There is also a direct correlation, she argues, between the size of the gender gap in a country and the GDP per capita of a nation and the rate of its national economic growth.

Her work raises the question of how to integrate gender equality into initiatives for peace.  As just one example, the necessity of women in peace negotiations becomes obvious in this larger context of the significance of gender-equality to peace: when women are represented in peace negotiations, participants are more satisfied with the outcome and the agreement is more durable.  Hudson discussed with panellists Madeleine Rees, Amina Mama and Helen Mack whether a ‘feminist state’ would have a standing army, given the interrelated nature of gender violence and conflict. Amina Mama, the Director of Women and Gender Studies at UC Davis, argued that a feminist state would not have a military, while Madeleine Rees of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, argued that, if a feminist state had been secured, we would have already defeated militarism and the militaristic mindset.

The methodology behind ‘Sex and World Peace’ is a significant contribution to the academic and research resources available for those researching gender – a decade’s worth of empirical research built the picture presented in the work, and produced the WomanStats Database, a free online hub of over 130,000 data points on gender and security.  It is reminiscent of Sylvia Walby’s comprehensive work on ‘gender mainstreaming’ as an effective tool to stitch women’s security into all levels of decision-making.

Hudson’s work can also be seen in light of recent analysis such as that of Kirthi Tayakumar, who has written about a ‘wartime-peacetime sexual violence continuum’, and shown that wartime gender-based violence is proof of a prevalent undercurrent of gender discrimination in peacetime.  While it has long been held true by sociologists that domestic violence increases during the crisis of war and recessions, this research highlights how the ‘peacetime’ treatment of women colours the severity of gender-based violence when a crisis hits. 

The link between patriarchy and militarism has been a recurrent topic of discussion amongst the speakers at the Nobel Women’s Initiative.  The apparent increase in violence against women worldwide shows the problematic false neutrality in arguments by those such as Steven Pinker who have recently argued that ‘violence’ is decreasing; Hudson’s analysis notes that there is no peace without the security of women, but ends on the positive note that, in light of this, changing the world is something over which we have control – it starts in our homes and in our streets, by working to end violence against women in our own lives.

Heather McRobie is reporting for openDemocracy 5050  from the Nobel Women's Initiative conference  Moving Beyond Militarism and War: Women-Driven Solutions for a Nonviolent World  May 28-31, Belfast, Ireland.   Read 50.50's full coverage of the conference 

 http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/heather-mcrobie/what-sex-means-for-world-peace

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Ritwik Agrawal: Mannequin Lingerie Ban in Mumbai – It’s about controlling women, not men

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided that lingerie bearing mannequins are akin to “sex toys” and their public display is “embarrassing” to women. Furthermore, according to the Shiv Sena controlled BMC,  such mannequins provoke men into sexual crimes against women.

A few observations:

While the BMC is trying to spin this move as a means to control men by removing from sight a ‘provocative’ object, it should be more than clear that the real attempt is to control women’s sexuality. The argument is eerily similar to one adopted by apologists for the burqa or by those advocating “traditional”, “decent”, “appropriate” dress for women – don’t provoke men, because if a women does, then the sexual harassment shes faces is, if not justified, at least causally linked to her mode of dress and her “behaviour”.

In an article published under the byline of “FP Staff”, the news website firstpost.com has asked the BMC to cut the men some slack. Much digital ink has been spilled in proving how the mere sight of lingerie, particularly on mannequins does not excite men into sexual violence. While this is true, the story only takes the claims of the BMC at face value and tries to refute them. But the action of the BMC cuts deeper, and needs to be understood as a step against women’s freedom and only peripherally against men’s (presumed) desire to get their sexual kicks off lingerie-clad mannequins.

The political and religious right has long been terrified of the appearance in public of any activities related to love, sex and individual choice. We can recount valentine’s day vandalism, the actions of the Sri Ram Sene in Mangalore where they attacked women in pubs and at parties, demands for ban on sex toys, frequent demands for censorship of films, support for curfews on women, exhortations to women to not forget their “Indian culture” and numerous other instances.

Coming as it does from the same political stable, the mannequin lingerie ban in Mumbai should be seen as yet another attempt to somehow efface sexuality, particularly, female sexuality, from the domain of everyday sights and sounds. This move is, thus, part of a larger political project which is inextricably opposed to liberal modernity as characterized by free choice of the individual.

Of course, the proponents of this political project will gladly take the technological side of modernity – they are particularly fascinated by guns and tanks and the like – but the individual freedoms side of modernity – upon which liberal democracy is based – is for them extremely cumbersome, as it necessarily involves questioning of tradition and continually altering or even rejecting past practices and prejudices.

This fear of individual freedoms is precisely why secularism means “India first”(=hyper nationalism) to the tall leaders of such ideologies. This is why their focus inmulti-million dollar campaigns led by American PR agencies is on “development” – as they dream of imparting to India the gleaming external gloss of modernity, but at the same time they want a a highly hierarchical, ordered, mechanical, hedonistic and gender-unjust society.

http://www.ritwikagrawal.com/2013/05/29/mannequin-lingerie-ban-in-mumbai-its-about-controlling-women-not-men/

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Raymond Tallis - Philosophy isn't dead yet

Far from having replaced metaphysics, science is in a mess and needs help. Einstein saw it coming

‘The attempt to fit consciousness into the material world, usually by identifying it with activity in the brain, has failed dismally.'

In 2010 Stephen Hawking, in The Grand Design, announced that philosophy was "dead" because it had "not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics". He was not referring to ethics, political theory or aesthetics. He meant metaphysics, the branch of philosophy that aspires to the most general understanding of nature – of space and time, the fundamental stuff of the world. If philosophers really wanted to make progress, they should abandon their armchairs and their subtle arguments, wise up to maths and listen to the physicists.

This view has significant support among philosophers in the English-speaking world. Bristol philosopher James Ladyman, who argues that metaphysics should be naturalised, and who describes the accusation of "scientism" as "badge of honour", is by no means an isolated case.

But there could not be a worse time for philosophers to surrender the baton of metaphysical inquiry to physicists. Fundamental physics is in a metaphysical mess and needs help. The attempt to reconcile its two big theories, general relativity and quantum mechanics, has stalled for nearly 40 years. Endeavours to unite them, such as string theory, are mathematically ingenious but incomprehensible even to many who work with them. This is well known. A better-kept secret is that at the heart ofquantum mechanics is a disturbing paradox – the so-called measurement problem, arising ultimately out of the Uncertainty Principle – which apparently demonstrates that the very measurements that have established and confirmed quantum theory should be impossible. Oxford philosopher of physics David Wallace has argued that this threatens to make quantum mechanics incoherent which can be remedied only by vastly multiplying worlds.

Beyond these domestic problems there is the failure of physics to accommodate conscious beings. The attempt to fit consciousness into the material world, usually by identifying it with activity in the brain, has failed dismally, if only because there is no way of accounting for the fact that certain nerve impulses are supposed to be conscious (of themselves or of the world) while the overwhelming majority (physically essentially the same) are not. In short, physics does not allow for the strange fact that matter reveals itself to material objects (such as physicists).

And then there is the mishandling of time. The physicist Lee Smolin's recent book, Time Reborn, links the crisis in physics with its failure to acknowledge the fundamental reality of time. Physics is predisposed to lose time because its mathematical gaze freezes change. Tensed time, the difference between a remembered or regretted past and an anticipated or feared future, is particularly elusive. This worried Einstein: in a famous conversation, he mourned the fact that the present tense, "now", lay "just outside of the realm of science".

Recent attempts to explain how the universe came out of nothing, which rely on questionable notions such as spontaneous fluctuations in a quantum vacuum, the notion of gravity as negative energy, and the inexplicable free gift of the laws of nature waiting in the wings for the moment of creation, reveal conceptual confusion beneath mathematical sophistication. They demonstrate the urgent need for a radical re-examination of the invisible frameworks within which scientific investigations are conducted. We need to step back from the mathematics to see how we got to where we are now. In short, to un-take much that is taken for granted.

Perhaps even more important, we should reflect on how a scientific image of the world that relies on up to 10 dimensions of space and rests on ideas, such as fundamental particles, that have neither identity nor location, connects with our everyday experience. This should open up larger questions, such as the extent to which mathematical portraits capture the reality of our world – and what we mean by "reality". The dismissive "Just shut up and calculate!" to those who are dissatisfied with the incomprehensibility of the physicists' picture of the universe is simply inadequate. "It is time" physicist Neil Turok has said, "to connect our science to our humanity, and in doing so to raise the sights of both". This sounds like a job for a philosophy not yet dead.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/27/physics-philosophy-quantum-relativity-einstein

Some related issues:

NB: Matters that are unanswerable by scientists may nevertheless be significant for human life and well being. Metaphysical speculation does not concern only ridiculous propositions, but important issues of concern for human action and social existence. These include questions such as :

Is the essence of truth mathematical? Is the idea of truth exhausted by science, leaving no space whatever for speculative intelligence?

Are science and reason ethically vacuous?

Can there be irrefutable knowledge of the consequences of our actions?

Does a speculative future lighten or remove the burden of present action?

Are we in a condition of confrontation with a hostile universe?

Is the meaning of life an invention or a discovery?

I think discussing these (and similar) matters; as well as issues of public morality is a necessary exercise - it is reasonable, whilst not being 'scientific'. Metaphysics in this sense is another name for philosophical questioning, and as such has immense significance for a healthy society - Dilip

some related passages from a philosopher

"The connection between reason and the good is established by the structure of human experience as choosing between better and worse. It is a false description of human nature and therefore bad science, to say that we make these choices on a narrowly utilitarian basis; and it is simply unintelligible to be told that we are not making these choices at all but that they are being made for us by our blood sugar level or the firing of cells in our brains. There is no ghost in the machine, not merely because there are no ghosts, but because we are not machines.." "Of course humans disagree about which things in particular are good and which bad. But the disagreement would be impossible if they did not agree that there is a difference between good and bad.." "To say that reason is good for life, is of course, not the same as saying that life is good. My point, however, is not that reason is an instrument for something else but that it is a direct expression of goodness." (From the essay 'Sad Reason', by Stanley Rosen in 'Metaphysics in ordinary language'.

‘It is time to state that philosophy is neither analytic nor synthetic, but both, and more. Philosophy is the dream of the whole. This dream is known in the textbooks as metaphysics.. What is required is the capacity to see outside the limits of analysis, and this means to see, indeed, to dream, the context of analysis. In so doing we must not reject analytical thinking. The turn to the pre-scientific is not a turn away from science but an act of obedience to the original intention of science, of which contemporary analytical philosophies of science are fantasms' - Stanley Rosen, in 'The Limits of Analysis'

Extract from a criticism of a typical example of rationalist nihilism:

It is, as I hope we agree now, no accident that Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the existentialists, in attributing nihilism to the consequences of rationalism, accept without quarrel the rationalistic definition of reason. That definition was doomed from the outset on two main counts. First, the reduction of reason to ratio in the sense of counting, ordering, intuiting geometrical shape, and drawing inferences made it impossible to describe the activity of reason in reasonable terms. Second, the activity of reason, regardless of the divine powers initially attributed to it, was rooted in man's imagination, will, and passions. The application of ratio to the passions of the soul did not give a basis for pride but melancholia. Since the values attributed to human passions are but facts, and the pattern of the facts is a matter of chance, man has been revanquished by fortune. Contrary to Machiavelli's advice, fortune, even though put to the torture, has triumphed in the midst of her defeat.

Not all modern rationalists have succumbed to melancholia. This, however, may be a sign of their thoughtlessness rather than of their strength of soul. Is the currently fashionable "scientific humanism," for example, anything more than an uncritical vulgarization of Nietzsche's interpretation of science as a free creation of spirit, and so as an expression of the will to power? Even an admirer of science might be forgiven for preferring Cartesian pride or Nietzschean creativity to the spectacle of positivism wedded to romanticism. However this may be, the net philosophical result of modern rationalist epistemology is to have created a situation which cannot be distinguished from Nietzsche's teaching, so far as the reasonableness of reason is concerned. Let us close this section of our study with a brief analysis of the crucial contemporary example of rationalist nihilism. Suppose we believe, as do so many scientific humanists today, that all psychic or mental phenomena may be reduced to biochemical processes and thereby to mathematically computable energy distributions. What is the status of this belief itself, and finally of the self who believes it? (emphasis added - DS)

To begin with, if the belief is true, it is itself an instance of a biochemical process, an electrical excitation of the physical organ known as the brain, and so a pattern of extension, matter, or energy. As such, it has no "value" in any sense other than the numerical. Thus, the mere fact of its truth (supposing it to be true) carries with it no rational or scientific recommendation, not to say obligation, that it be believed or, if believed, that it be regarded as a reasonable belief. If the reasonable is the useful, it is almost certainly unreasonable, because harmful, to accept a doctrine that obliterates the difference in dignity between man and dirt. On the other hand, if "reasonable" means "true," and the doctrine in question is true, then we accept it in tacit or explicit deference to the principle, "one ought to accept what is true." Now what status has this principle? 

If it is true that one ought to accept the truth, then it cannot be true that truth is always at bottom a mathematical description of energy patterns, since such patterns, if taken to be the final stratum of reality, into which all superficial or illusory strata are to be reduced, provide no basis for the reconstruction of moral or psychological imperatives. If it is not true that one ought to accept the truth (because of the assumption that "true" and "ought" are incompatible), but merely that we sometimes have a propensity to do so, then truth, and so reason, must be distinguishable from motives determining what we accept or believe. In other words, there is no reason, no reasonable reason, for believing the true rather than the false. The mere fact that proposition X is true is insufficient to command the allegiance of a reasonable man to that proposition, especially if it certifies that, qua man, or conscious being who is deliberating whether to accept X, he is an illusion and so does not exist in those terms which alone make rational the debate concerning the acceptance or repudiation of proposition X.

On this alternative, then, the fact that proposition X is true is paradoxically transformed into a value, namely, something which we may believe or not as we see fit, or depending upon whether we regard it as worthwhile to believe it. And the transformation is paradoxical because X in effect asserts the radical distinction between facts and values. This self-transformation of the assertion of the principle of contemporary rationalism into a value is equivalent to the transformation of philosophy into poetry by Nietzsche and others. In the first case, a distinction is made between facts and values which renders values unreasonable. In the second case, facts are redefined as a special kind of values, which means that facts are rendered unreasonable. The contemporary nihilist situation is a synthesis of these two (basically equivalent) processes: the total effect is to make both facts and values unreasonable and valueless. And so there is no real difference, in this context, between scientists and humanists. If it is fatuous to assume that nihilism will be overcome by knowledge of the second law of thermodynamics, it is equally fatuous to assume that it will surrender to an appreciation of poetic style. What then are we to say of the view that man's salvation lies in the union of such knowledge and such appreciation? - Stanley Rosen, Nihilism: a philosophical essay - Yale Univ P, 1969; pp 69-71

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PUCL Condemns Killings by Maoists // NAPM Condemns the Ambush by Maoists in Bastar

26th May, 2013

PUCL Condemns Killings of Congress Party leaders, their PSOs and Ordinary Villagers by Maoists 

in Dharba Ghati of Sukma District, Chhattisgarh 

          The PUCL strongly condemns the ambush of a Congress party election cavalcade by the dalam of the CPI(Maoist) party at Dharba Ghati area in Sukma district of Chhattisgarh on Saturday, 25th May, 2013, resulting in the death of 28 people including Congress party leaders, their personal security officers and ordinary villagers of the area. PUCL denounces as totally unacceptable, the abduction, kidnapping and subsequent killing in cold blood of the Congress party President of Chhattisgarh, NK Patel, and his son Dinesh. The Maoists also killed Mahendra Karma, the founder of the dreaded Salwa Judum, and his security guards.  

          What is particularly reprehensible is the killing of unarmed political workers of the Congress party by over 200 gun wielding members of the Maoist party which ended up killing a number of innocent bystanders also, who accidentally happened to be in the spot. Particularly reprehensible is the fact that armed Maoists cadre also killed people who had surrendered and were in their custody.  

        It is the PUCL's understanding that under no circumstances can acts of brutality be justified, even if they be in response to equally heinous and brutal acts unleashed by the security forces, as we are seeing presently in Chhattisgarh, as recently as the killing of 8 innocent tribal villagers in Edasmeta village of South Bastar on 17th and 18th May, 2013; or in response to the brutalities committed by the vigilante Salwa Judum founded by the deceased Mahendra Karma. 

       We equally stress that whatever the circumstances, the security forces must act within the bounds of law. Our apprehension that the present incident will be used by both the Central as also State Governments to launch a brutal counter-offensive engulfing local tribal communities amidst greater state violence springs from the already grim human rights situation that prevails in the area. Complaints abound of state security forces committing with impunity,  torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, secret detentions, abductions, arbitrary, prolonged and incommunicado detention, unfair trials, and enforced disappearances, and worse in the wake of Operation Greenhunt. 

        A Fact Finding Team of PUCL Chhattisgarh had recently, on 21st May, 2013, released its Report titled, `Guilty until proven Innocent – A Report on Unlawful Police Activities in North Bastar, Chhattisgarh’ which detailed the atrocities committed by the security forces in 2 villages in Chhattisgarh. 

        While PUCL firmly condemns the violence of the Maoists and acknowledges the constitutional duty and responsibility cast on the Governments to protect the life of all people, PUCL nevertheless asserts that all counter-measures adopted by the Government should adhere strictly to the rule of law, including the core principles of criminal and constitutional law and the specific standards and obligations of international human rights law, and, where applicable, humanitarian law. It should be noted that these principles, standards and obligations, as constantly affirmed by the Supreme Court, define the boundaries of permissible and legitimate State action against extremism and terrorism. It is however very important that the revolting nature of extremist acts cannot serve as a basis or pretext for the Governments to disregard their national and international obligations, in particular in the protection of fundamental human rights. We would like to point out to the caution highlighted by the International Council of Jurists in its Declaration on Upholding Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Combating Terrorism, The Berlin Declaration, 28 August 2004 

  

        PUCL would like to point out that it is important to strengthen civil society, not weaken it so as to effectively tackle political violence. An effective strategy to preventing the downward spiral into lives filled with violence, fear and repression is to genuinely acknowledge, respond and respect the key issues faced by tribals and local communities in Chhattisgarh; this will deny the basis for real or imagined grievances from supporting violence. The best way to strengthen democracy is by integrating human rights, equity and social justice considerations into all government policies, plans and programmes.  

       The spirals of violence and counter-violence in the troubled areas of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and other states is grim and life threatening. The PUCL, through this appeal, is therefore giving a national call for a `HUMANITARIAN RESPITE’ and appeals to the Central and State Governments, the security forces and also to the Maoists, to agree to an immediate ceasefire, stopping of armed engagements and engage in talks.  

Sd/- Sd/-       

Prof. Prabhakar Sinha  (Dr. V. Suresh)

National President, PUCL            National General Secretary, PUCL  

FOOT NOTE:      Berlin Declaration, 2005

“A pervasive security-oriented discourse promotes the sacrifice of fundamental rights and freedoms in the name of eradicating terrorism. There is no conflict between the duty of States to protect the rights of persons threatened by terrorism and their responsibility to ensure that protecting security does not undermine other rights. On the contrary, safeguarding persons from terrorist acts and respecting human rights both form part of a seamless web of protection incumbent upon the State. Both contemporary human rights and humanitarian law allow States a reasonably wide margin of flexibility to combat terrorism without contravening human rights and humanitarian legal obligations”.

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PUCL National Office:
270-A, Ground Floor, Patpar Ganj, Mayur Vihar-I, Delhi-110091
Ph. 011-22750014
Website: www.pucl.org

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Politics of Violence and Counter Violence will only Maim Adivasis

NAPM Condemns the Ambush by Maoists in Bastar

Increased Militarisation in the Region would be no Solution

New Delhi : Once again in the ongoing politics of offensive and counter offensive between State and Maoists, adivasis have lost their lives. In an ambush on the convoy carrying Congress leaders, Maoists have reportedly killed 27 people and injured several others including senior Congress leader, V C Shukla. On the intervening night of May 17-18 too eight villagers, including three children, and a personnel of elite CRPF Cobra battalion were killed in a gun-battle near Edasmeta village in southern Chhattisgarh too. Adivasis caught in the armed conflict have been the worst victim of this war of control over resources, territory and sovereignty. That this happened during the Parivartan Yatra, a programme of the Congress Party to reach out to the people, is indeed unfortunate.

National Alliance of People's Movements condemns this ambush leading to loss of precious lives. Life of those in power and leadership are important and so are the lives of common adivasis who are being tortured, jailed and killed by Security forces and Maoists alike. In the ongoing conflict both claim to represent the interests and work for Adivasis but their stance and means has only alienated them and perpetrated injustice on them. Their rights have often been violated resulting in large number of adivasis in jail on false trumped up charges. In the same Durma valley where the attack by Maoists have killed Congress leaders, state administration violated all the existing laws and procedures to facilitate land grab for Tata Steel.

Salwa Judum, an armed Sena of the young and adolescents worsened the scenario. It has been termed as illegal and directed to be disbanded by Supreme Court, but State government responded by making them part of the regular police. Even, as Salwa Judum burnt houses, raped women, maimed and killed adivasis, the State supported it and failed to provide justice to adivasis and continued to brand them as Maoists and their supporters. A democratically elected government in Chattisgarh or at the Centre can't use the dictum of ‘you are with us or against us’. Its allegiance is to the rule of law and its duty is to protect the rights of its citizens.

Even while, politicians across the political spectrum are terming this as an attack on democracy, let us not forget that every time an adivasi is jailed, killed, their houses burnt, women raped and their schools occupied to facilitate resource grab or termed as collateral damage in the 'Operation Green Hunt', democracy is attacked and the faith of citizens in the State's ability to uphold justice and rule of law, shaken. Violence on both sides is condemnable and should be avoided forever.

We fear that this latest ambush will now be used by the state to justify further militarisation in the region and make lives of Adivasis more difficult. There is an urgent need for political intervention and dialogue. The guns of State or Maoists, will not solve the problem. Politics of violence and counter violence will only make lives of adivasis and others in the region more difficult, which will ultimately have an impact on the democratic norms and freedom of citizens elsewhere in the country, as seen in shrinking spaces for non-violent, democratic movements and arrest of activists. Soni Sori, Lingaram Kodopi and many others are braving brutality as a result of the war promoted by the state and Maoists, both. Mahendra Karma, openly supported Salwa Judum, a violent outfit and the same violence has killed him. This is tragic, yet a telling fact.

The swiftness with which the centre has promised all help in this regard and dispatched a large number of security forces, if the same urgency was shown for providing justice to the victims of Salwa Judum in all these years, Indian state would have won a bigger political battle by now. Awards, compensation and martyrdom will be bestowed on those killed by Maoists but Adivasis victims of this collateral damage and those languishing in jail need justice too. There is an urgent need to address that otherwise situation will only deteriorate. We demand that political dialogue in all sincerity be initiated to arrive at a political solution rather than increased militarisation.

Medha Patkar, Prafulla Samantara, Dr. Sunilam, Arundhati Dhuru, Gabriele Dietrich, Gautam Bandopadhyay, Ramakrishnan Raju, Sister Celia, Maj. Gen (Retd) Sudhir Vombatkere, Vimal Bhai, Krishnakant, Rajendra Ravi, Meera, Seela M, Madhuresh Kumar

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National Alliance of People’s MovementsNational Office : 6/6, Jangpura B, Mathura Road, New Delhi 110014
Phone : 011 26241167 / 24354737 Mobile : 09818905316
Web : www.napm-india.org

Facebook : www.facebook.com/NAPMindia

Twitter : @napmindia

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RAMACHANDRA GUHA - The continuing tragedy of the adivasis

In the summer of 2006, I had a long conversation with Mahendra Karma, the Chhattisgarh Congress leader who was killed in a terror attack by the Naxalites last week. I was not alone — with me were five other members of a citizens’ group studying the tragic fallout of the civil war in the State’s Dantewada district. This war pitted the Naxalites on the one side against a vigilante army promoted by Mr. Karma on the other. In a strange, not to say bizarre, example of bipartisan co-operation, the vigilantes (who went by the name of Salwa Judum) were supported by both Mr. Karma (then Leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly) and the BJP Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh, Raman Singh.

‘Liberated zone’

From the 1980s, Naxalites had been active in the region, asking for higher wages for tribals, harassing traders and forest contractors, and attacking policemen. In the first decade of this century their presence dramatically increased. Dantewada was now identified by Maoist ideologues as the most likely part of India where they could create a ‘liberated zone.’ Dozens of Telugu-speaking Naxalites crossed into Chhattisgarh, working assiduously to accomplish this aim.

The Naxalites are wedded to the cult of the gun. Their worship of violence is extreme. They are a grave threat to democracy and democratic values. How should the democratically elected State government of Chhattisgarh have tackled their challenge? It should have done so through a two-pronged strategy: (i) smart police work, identifying the areas where the Naxalites were active and isolating their leaders; (ii) sincerely implementing the constitutional provisions guaranteeing the land and tribal forest rights of the adivasis, and improving the delivery of health and education services to them.

The Chhattisgarh government did neither. On the one side, it granted a slew of leases to industrialists, over-riding the protests of gram panchayats and handing over large tracts of tribal land to mining companies. On the other side, it promoted a vigilante army, distributing guns to young men owing allegiance to Mahendra Karma or his associates. These goons then roamed the countryside, in search of Naxalites real or fictitious. In a series of shocking incidents, they burnt homes (sometimes entire villages), raped women, and looted granaries of those adivasis who refused to join them.

In response, the Naxalites escalated their activities. They killed Salwa Judum leaders, murdered real or alleged informers, and mounted a series of daring attacks on police and paramilitary units. The combined depredations of the Naxalites and Salwa Judum created a regime of terror and despair across the district. An estimated 150,000 adivasis fled their native villages. A large number sought refuge along the roads of the Dantewada district. Here they lived, in ramshackle tents, away from their lands, their cattle, their homes and their shrines. An equally large number fled into the neighbouring State of Andhra Pradesh, living likewise destitute and tragic lives.

It was to study this situation at first hand that our team visited Chhattisgarh in 2006. We travelled across the Dantewada district, speaking to vigilantes, Naxalites and, most of all, ordinary tribals. We met adivasis who had been persecuted by the Naxalites, and other adivasis who had been tormented by the Salwa Judum vigilantes. The situation of the community was poignantly captured by one tribal, who said: “Ek taraf Naxaliyon, doosri taraf Salwa Judum, aur hum beech mein, pis gayé” (placed between the Maoists and the vigilantes, we adivasis are being squeezed from both sides).

We also visited the State capital, Raipur, speaking to senior officials of the State government. They privately told us that Salwa Judum was a horrible mistake, but added that no politician was willing to admit this. Then we spent an hour in the company of the movement’s originator, Mahendra Karma. He told us that he was fighting a dharma yudh, a holy war. We asked whether the outcome of this war was worth it. We told him of what we had seen, of the homes burnt and the women abused by the men acting in his name and claiming that he was their leader. He answered that in a great movement small mistakes are sometimes made. (The exact words he used were: “Badé andolanon mein kabhi kabhi aisé choté apradh hoté hain.”)

I was immediately reminded of a politician in another country, George W. Bush. In his holy war, too, there was no thought to the collateral damage that innocent civilians would suffer. Admittedly, the jihadis that Bush was fighting were as bloodthirsty and amoral as the Naxalites. But did a democratic government have to reproduce this amorality and this bloodthirstiness? Should it not fight extremism by saner methods? The tortures, the renditions, the displacement of thousands upon thousands of civilians — in all these respects, Dantewada seemed to me to be a micro version of Iraq or Afghanistan.

Palpable indifference

From Raipur we went to Delhi, where we met the Prime Minister, the Home Minister, and the National Security Adviser. Their indifference to the unfolding tragedy was palpable. So, in 2007, we filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court asking for the disbandment of Salwa Judum. Four years later, the Court issued an order chastising the Chhattisgarh government for creating “a miasmic environment of dehumanisation of youngsters of the deprived sections of the population, in which guns are given to them rather than books, to stand as guards, for the rapine, plunder and loot in our forests.” By arming poor and largely illiterate adivasis, the State government had, said the Supreme Court, installed “a regime of gross violation of human rights in a manner, and by adopting the same modes, as [have] done Maoist/Naxalite extremists.”

The strictures of the Supreme Court were disregarded by the State government, which recast Salwa Judum under another name and form, and by the Central government, which continued to put the interest of mining magnates above those of the suffering adivasis of the land.

The killings of Mahendra Karma and his colleagues are the latest casualties in a bloody war that began a decade ago in Dantewada. What will the State and Central governments now do? The knee-jerk reaction, doubtless encouraged by editorial writers and TV anchors in Delhi, will be to call for the Army, and perhaps the Air Force too, to launch an all-out war on the Naxalites, regardless of the consequences for civilians. One hopes wiser counsels will prevail. The times call not for further retributive violence, but for a deeper reflection on the discontent among, and dispossession of, the adivasis of central India, who are in all respects the most desperately disadvantaged of the Republic’s citizens, far worse off than Dalits even.

In the winter of 2006, after my experiences in Dantewada, I gave a public lecture in Bhubaneshwar. The State’s Chief Minister, Naveen Patnaik, was in the audience. I urged that the rash of mining leases being proposed by the State government on tribal land be stopped. As it happened, foreign and Indian mining companies were invited into the State, without any attempt to make adivasis stakeholders in these projects. The consequence is that Orissa, a State once completely free of Naxalites, has seen them acquiring considerable influence in several districts of the State.

The social scientist Ajay Dandekar, who has done extensive research on the subject, observes that the rise of extremist violence is a consequence of “the complete mismanagement of democracy and governance in the tribal areas.” The latest bout of violence, he says, should come as a wake-up call to those “who place still some hope in the rule of law and constitutional governance.”

I entirely concur with Dandekar when he writes that “if even now the policy makers are willing to take the issues of justice to the tribals head-on the extremists will definitely be dealt a bodyblow in the process and their own legitimacy would stand questioned.” A first step here would be for the top leadership of the present government to reach out directly to the adivasis. The Prime Minister and the Chairperson of the UPA should together tour through the strife-torn areas of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Orissa, promising the full implementation of the Forest Rights Act, a temporary ban on mining projects in Fifth Schedule Areas, and a revival of the powers of gram panchayats. That would be a far more effective strike against Naxalites than sending in fighter planes or massed battalions.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/the-continuing-tragedy-of-the-adivasis/article4756954.ece?ref=sliderNews

Also see: Maoist press release, owning the action

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/chhattisgarh-attack-in-4-page-note-maoists-state-why-they-targeted-congress-leaders-372151?pfrom=home-lateststories

Extracts from Sabyasachi Panda's letter to Maoist leadership

A Hard Rain Falling (on private armies and political violence in India) (EPW, July 2012)

Armies of the Pure:  The Question of Indian Fascism 

An Open Letter to the world on the Bangladesh crisis of 1971

On 'revolution': Closing the Circle (Frontier Vol 45, No. 7, Aug 26 -Sep 1, 2012)

Dilip Simeon: The Other side of Maoism

On the Salwa Judum

Maoism and the philosophy of insurrection

The Futility of Common Sense: An Essay on Ahimsa

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The Last of the World War I Vets Speak

No soldiers survive the first Great War. But the author of The Last of the Doughboys talked to some of the last vets before they passed.

This is an excerpt from Richard Rubin’s The Last of the Doughboys: The Forgotten Generation and Their Forgotten World War, the story of a decade-long odyssey to recover the stories of the forgotten world war. Rubin interviewed dozens of American World War I veterans for the book, including William J. Lake, a private in the U.S. Army’s 91^st (“Wild West”) Division who was drafted in 1917 and served with a machine gun crew in France. At the time of the interview, in October 2003, Lake was 107; he died in June 2004. The Last of the Doughboys is being published this week by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Pvt. William Lake and the rest of the Wild West Division trained at Camp Lewis, near Tacoma, Wash., he told me, for nine months before they boarded trains for Camp Merritt, N.J., whence they would head up to New York and ship out for France. According to the unnamed author of The Story of the 91^st Division, published in 1919, the land portion of the trek took about six days. It was early summer; they traveled through a lot of areas that were probably quite hot at the time, and I doubt there were showers on those trains. Nevertheless, it was a spirited journey:

"After witnessing demonstrations from coast to coast, the men of the 91^st felt that they were backed by an undivided nation. The motherly gray-haired old woman standing in front of her little cottage on the broad prairie of Montana, alternately waving a flag and brushing away the tears she could not restrain, contributed as much to this feeling as did the impromptu receptions tendered the men in the great cities through which they passed."

If it sounds like the men of the 91^sthad a grand old time crossing the country by rail, Pvt. William J. Lake, at least, did not. He was sick the whole way across, was sick even before he left Camp Lewis.

“I got the measles,” he explained.

Eighty-five years later, that continued to mystify him: “I don’t know where I got them,” he told me. “Still don’t know where I got them!” No one else seemed to have them; there was no word of measles in the camp, or on the train. Not even from him: Bill Lake traveled six days on a hot, crowded troop train, from Washington to New Jersey, sick with measles—and never told anyone. “I didn’t say anything until we got on the boat,” he confessed. “I was out on the water.” The boat, he recalled, was the Empress of Russia, a British/Canadian mail ship that was used as a troop transport during the war

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked him.

“Because I know if I did,” he said, “and it leaked that I did have something, I might be out of the company or something, and I didn’t want that, so I didn’t say nothing.” He smiled, and then laughed.. read more:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/history/2013/05/world_war_i_veteran_the_last_of_the_great_war_s_soldiers_speak.html

See also: 

The Twenty-First Century - the End of History?

The Russell-Einstein Manifesto of 1955

Rare First World War documents go online + Unseen photographs

Paul Fussell, ex-soldier, literary Scholar & critic

John Mack: The Enemy System

John Horgan on erasing war from the human condition

Hitler's annihilation of the Romanis 

A Final Warning by George Orwell

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Moonrise from Space By Phil Plait

In March 2004, the European Space Agency launched the Rosetta probe on its way to the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It’s still on its way there—space is big. But it made a few detours along the way, including a pass of Mars, three of Earth (to gain energy and boost it along its way), and two asteroids (Steins and Lutetia).

On Mar. 3, 2005, during the first Earth flyby, it took several images of our planet, including this achingly beautiful picture of the crescent Moon rising over the limb of our home world:

My scientist brain immediately notices that the Moon looks small compared to Earth because of how close Rosetta passed to us—just under 2000 kilometers (1200 miles) above Earth’s surface, a fantastically close shave—as well as how dark the Moon looks. Its surface is, on average, far less reflective than Earth’s, so to expose the planet correctly means the Moon looks much fainter.

But the part of my brain that appreciates art and beauty just sees the panoply of clouds, the graceful arc of the world, the thinner arc of atmosphere (visible on the left) allowing us to breathe, and the ghostly, milky looming of the Moon.

This is science, this is engineering, and this is art.

Some of the artistry came long after. My friend Emily Lakdawalla, writer for The Planetary Society Blog, took the raw image from Rosetta and reprocessed it to clean it up, enhancing the natural beauty stored in those zeros and ones.The raw image is inset here to give you an idea of what she did; click both to see them far larger.

Rosetta is due to reach the comet next year. It will launch a probe that will physically land on the surface of the comet, the first time humanity will have achieved such a feat. I can only imagine what wonders it will reveal then. Given that Rosetta took one of my favorite pictures of Earth of all time, I expect amazing things come 2014.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/05/27/moonrise_from_space_rosetta_spacecraft_picture_of_the_moon_rising_over_earth.html

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