The Politics of Culture (Book Review)

Books:

G P Deshpande, The World of Ideas in Modern Marathi: Phule, Vinoba, Savarkar, Tulika, New Delhi, 2009, pp. 120. Rs. 240.

G P Deshpande, Talking the Political Culturally and Other Essays, Thema, Kolkata, 2009, pp. 127, Rs. 150.

How Not to Understand Muslim fundamentalism

Mahmood Mamdani recently gave a talk at the University of Johannesburg, touching on the topics of free speech and bigotry in our contemporary world. He took the example of Mohammed cartoons to make this point. It is a well argued and seemingly persuasive thesis which you can read here at Kafila.

I found that I had some fundamental differences with it and decided to write them out here. Please do read him before you read my response.

Tackling the Taliban

This is the draft version I wrote for the editorial of the Economic and Political Weekly, Vol XLIV No. 20, May16 2009.

[A sole dependence on military solutions cannot defeat the Taliban]

The Significance of Uttar Pradesh

This is the draft of the edit I wrote for EPW published in the 18-24 April, 2009 edition.

[Uttar Pradesh as a bellwether province in the Indian general elections; then and now.]

Father, Son and the Emergency Ghost

It is hugely ironical that the BJP (and their candidate from Pilibhit parliamentary constituency, Varun Gandhi) should accuse the Election Commission of bias against the young lad due to the presence of Chief Election Commissioner designate, Naveen Chawla. But before we get to explaining that irony, here are a few facts.

So what is the solution in Swat?

The rise of extremism in Pakistan’s Swat valley needs a nuanced and democratic response.

 

[This is the draft for the editorial I wrote on the Taliban takeover of the Swat and the Pakistan Government’s deal with them. The final revised version will be published in the EPW 28 Feb – 6 Mar 2009 (Vol XLIV NO 9) edition.]

Israel versus Humanity

On the night of 9-10 November 1938, the Nazis killed dozens of Jews in Germany, sent thousands to concentration camps and destroyed Jewish properties and synagogues in an orgy of violence which removed all doubts about the nature of persecution Jews faced under the Nazi regime and was a precursor of what was to come. Writing 10 days after this Nazi pogrom, which is known today as the Kristallnacht, Mohandas Gandhi said, “…the German persecution of the Jews seems to have no parallel in history.” But, he went on to add, “…my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me”,

Evaluating China’s Role in Tibet

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The recent protests in Tibet have again put the spotlight firmly on China and its politics. By global standards, both the violence and the Chinese Government’s efforts to control it are not unprecedented. More people die in the US colonies of Iraq and Palestine in a week than have been reported killed in Tibet over the past week by even staunchly pro-Tibet information sources. Even the information clampdown and externment of foreigners ordered by the Chinese authorities, pales in comparison to the track record of the US and its allies in media manipulation. Moreover, it is also likely that Governments and media in the US and Europe are encouraging a bigger coverage of the events in Tibet for clearly political reasons. It is easy to do this since unorganised citizen protestors facing heavily armed soldiers and armoured personnel carriers readily lends itself to heroic adulation.

Left Writing Pakistan’s Elections

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At the beginning of the new year, just a few days after the tragic assassination of Benazir Bhutto, this column had written about why democracy has been structurally weak in Pakistan and the threat of religious fundamentalism gaining power in Pakistan. This column had argued that the dominance of landed property, the weakness of an independent industrial capitalist class and the merging of the armed forces with the landed ruling class had created conditions where it would be near difficult for democracy to strike roots. It had further argued that this array of conditions made the likelihood of a fascist takeover of power a credible threat in the near future.

It was a gloomy prognosis to say the least and it is with undiluted glee that I have welcomed the resounding defeat of the religious fundamentalists and those political parties which were aligned to military rule. These electoral results have reverberated all over the world and have been seen as the beginning of a new chapter in the political history of Pakistan. It truly is a moment for democrats and progressive forces all over the world to savour when the people of Pakistan, braving the bombs, bullets, sundry threats and inducements of the establishment and of the fundamentalists, comprehensively voted both out.

The Coming Revolution in Pakistan – II

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Last week this column had posited that Benazir Bhutto’s assassination was the culmination of a long series of failures by the Pakistani ruling class to manage the contradictions inherent in a State based on strong landed property with a weak industrial base. The column argued that such conditions created a predilection for the use of brute repression (the strategy of the stick) to deal with popular demands and undermined the possibility of democratic institutions gaining ground. The column further argued that this predilection was conditioned by the structural limitations that landholding imposes on the political strategy that a ruling class can adopt vis-à-vis the demands of the masses.

These structural limitations are the falling rate of return on primary products in global trade and the physical difficulty of dividing landed wealth among new aspirants to the ruling class.

The Coming Revolution in Pakistan – I

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Benazir Bhutto’s assassination is perhaps as significant a turning point in the history of Pakistan as was the assassination of her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and of Pakistan’s first Prime Minister, Liaqat Ali. In a sense these three killings form three significant watersheds in the political history of Pakistan and each represent the culmination of the failure of the country’s ruling class to successfully manage the contradictions of their time. What is particularly significant is that each assassination, built as it was on the failure of the previous attempt to overcome contradictions, has been more calamitous for the country than the previous one. Today, in the opinion of this columnist, it’s a situation of do or die for Pakistan as a nation and its citizens as a people.

Soap Opera View of History (Understanding India 1)

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One of the greatest impediments to peace in our region is the skewed understanding of history that we generally carry in our heads. Popular understanding seems preponderantly skewed in favour of understanding India’s history in terms of individual rulers and leaders or in categories of Hindu and Muslim. We perceive our past in terms of either great deeds done by equally great men (and notice that these are always men, usually great, but also often its opposite, evil) or in terms of the Hindus and the Muslims playing out a historical soap opera of epic proportions.

Religious Demography in India

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This is a review of Religious Demography of India, A.P. Joshi, M.D. Srinivas and J.K. Bajaj, Centre for Policy Studies, Chennai, 2003, pp. i-xxii + 358, Rs. 800.

I wrote it in October 2003 when I was working for The Hindu, but unfortunately, it never got published. The issue of “religious demography” remains as important today as ever and the carnards spread by Hindutva propagandists as vile as ever, therefore I am posting this review.

Left Writing Pakistan…

The following are a random collection of posts relating to Pakistan from different debates I have been part of on Orkut in the past few months.

Hyderabad Muslims

These three articles were published in April 2003, as a special report on the Muslims of Hyderabad.