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CLOUDS OF INJUSTICE: Bhopal Disaster 20 Years On. Amnesty International, London, 2004.

THE victims of the Bhopal gas disaster have not disappeared as do lost memories. Maybe, even if they wanted to, they cannot. For they exist, in large numbers, bearing the continuing burden of the chemical industry’s callousness in the matter of risk and safety. Suffering impoverishment, certain only of uncertainty, ill-health and pain, incapacity imposed on them by the disaster, injustice heaped on them by the Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), the executive agency of the Indian state, and American and Indian courts, they have fought on. They have found support in local and distant geographies which has helped convert their collective complaints into a cause and to keep alive the pursuit of justice.

It is therefore apt that the Amnesty International report readied for release on the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal gas disaster should extensively invoke victims’ voices to speak about the many violations, and denials, of human rights in the sordid saga spanning more than three decades: from the establishing of the UCC factory in Bhopal to the disaster in 1984, the many vicissitudes of the litigation, and the parallel problems of contaminated soil and water.

Post the disaster, the near-exclusive focus on making UCC pay for the injury, death and damage lasted till 1989, when the settlement was signed in the Supreme Court and the review petition signed in 1991. This was then replaced by the process of determining and classifying the victim, and disbursing compensation: a process that was burdened with executive pragmatism, often tainted by a perception of the victim as a freeloader. The small sums given in compensation, the numbers of victims whose claims to compensation were rejected, the numbers that were acknowledged as having borne less injury than in fact they had – all testify to a version of pragmatism and perception. The confirmation of soil and water contamination in and around the plant in the late nineties gave UCC and the site, and in consequence the victims, a space in the environmental agenda.

The many aspects of the human rights agenda have, however, lain in relative obscurity and it is apt that a report recording a retrospective of the disaster now gives a centrality to human rights. This the Amnesty International (AI) report has set out to do.

AI appears to have taken a significant stride in producing this report on the Bhopal gas disaster and its aftermath. This is, it would seem, the first time AI has moved out of its traditional domain of civil and political rights to address an episode located in the economic and social justice arena. The rising power of the corporation, with its increasing comparability with state power, may have acted as a spur. The acknowledgement of indivisibility of rights may provide part of the reason for this extension of rights territory. Perhaps the privatization, liberalization and globalization neo-liberal agenda of the nineties has contributed to a rethink within the AI of how it is to retain relevance, and its capacity to make a difference to human rights accountability.

The report has two avowed aims: ‘To expose the failure by UCC/Dow and the Indian government to comply with their respective obligations and responsibilities to (a) prevent the gas leak and address the consequences, and (b) prevent and stop the continuing pollution of the environment and water through the dispersal of toxic and hazardous substances’ (p. 2). The second aim is ‘to demonstrate – by showing how companies evade their human rights responsibilities – the need to establish a human rights framework that can be applied to companies directly’ (p. 2). The sins of the corporation, the Indian state and the judicial system are set out to detail the many human rights failures that make up the twenty years after the Bhopal gas disaster.

The damage to health, including respiratory illness, immune system impairment, neurological damage, neuromuscular damage, cancers, gynaecological disorders and mental health effects, has been compounded by the abrupt cessation of the ICMR studies on the effects of the gas disaster. The reports of the ICMR studies conducted till 1994 lie in inaccessible cabinets, keeping information that may help the victims in shrouds of secrecy. UCC, too, has all along maintained a stubborn silence on the composition of the leaked gases, its consequences, and any antidotes known to science. This denial of the right to health, rendered graphic by quoting the victim, is illustrative of how the report is structured. What emerges from the independent medical committees that the Supreme Court finally agreed needed to be set up, and ordered be constituted (by orders dated 17 August and 17 September 2004), should hopefully incite moves to right the many wrongs in the matter of health care of the victims. The special effects on children, the entrenchment of poverty amongst a working class population, the particular damage to women’s lives, pollution and contamination of water are visited in the report.

In providing a framework of human rights law, Chapter 2 of the report is fairly pedantic, even as it draws attention to the human rights instruments to which India is a party and whose dicta ought, then, to be respected and acted upon by the Indian state. The right to life, to a remedy, to an adequate standard of living, to freedom from discrimination and to a safe environment is explained. Indian law, and standards set by the judiciary including the precautionary principle, the polluter pays principle, and the principle of restitution are culled out from domestic texts. The evolving theme of human rights responsibilities of companies, although they are non-state actors, is laid out in the context, especially of dangerous activity. And the report adverts to the UN Norms which are currently being debated.

The accountability of Union Carbide for its activities at the site, and for the disaster, should be obvious, one would think. But the success with which the corporation ducked liability, the soft approach adopted by the Supreme Court towards the corporation and its officers, and the state’s implicit support for the offending corporation while practising disdain for the victims have fundamentally altered the potential for accountability. So setting out the evidence on double standards, inordinate risk, ownership, control, design defects and the logic of corporate neglect of safety becomes necessary, and the report is useful as a reminder of what we have known all along. The post-disaster response of the corporation comes in for critical scrutiny especially in its refusal to share information about the gas, in obstructing the victims’ right to justice including the matter of interim compensation to victims, and in the corporation’s attempts to disappear into other identities – as UCC moving into Dow and playing games on how much of one entity is how much of the other after merger.

The state – meaning both the Indian state and the state of Madhya Pradesh – evaded challenge to their questionable role in the establishment and functioning of the factory in Bhopal. This was effected, essentially, by the passage of the Bhopal Claims Act in 1985, through which it took over the litigation on behalf of all the victims, thus arraying itself with the victims and holding the corporation out to be a common adversary. In 1989 when, by the settlement-order, the Union of India did an about turn and become a front for the Union Carbide and converted the victims into claimants before itself, the attention of the victims was inevitably drawn to what the state might do with the monies received in their name. This deflected attention from the role of the state as a joint tortfeasor. The AI report contributes to bringing the focus back to the state and its answerability for, and after, the disaster (Chapter 4).

There are conclusions and recommendations with which the report calls curtains. The governments of India and Madhya Pradesh, the US government, Dow Chemical Co., the UN Commission on Human Rights and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights are each called upon to fulfil tasks that are spelt out in the report. There are some significant omissions though that may also be noticed. For instance, the recalcitrance in the matter of extradition of Warren Anderson, the CEO of UCC who has been a fugitive from the law and to whom the US has been providing a safe haven, has been missed. In 1987, changes were made in the Factories Act 1948, s.96, enhancing the punishment for an inspector of factories for disclosing information viz. when he takes samples from a factory and has it tested, other than for the purposes of prosecution, to six months imprisonment or Rs 10,000 or both. Notably, this change was brought in at the same time as disclosure of information to potential victims was declared as vital to enhanced safety, and by amendment in another part of the same Factories Act! The state begs to be challenged on this patent anomaly by which industrial secrecy gains further dominance over safety.

A parting thought: why is it that the UN, which is now working on norms to restrain corporations, has been so silent on the Bhopal gas disaster? Even in its current phase of engagement with corporate (mis)conduct, there is no resonance and certainly no direct acknowledgment of the Bhopal gas disaster. Is this amnesia? Or ignorance? Or is this to be passed off as the soft approach which will ensure that corporations stay on board? An explanation from the UN is in order, and we would not complain were AI to raise the question.

Usha Ramanathan

 

THE CORPORATION: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan. Constable, London, 2004.

CORPORATIONS are in the dock. In the two decades and a half just past, the rise of corporate power and an attendant immunity, has led to a not-so-subtle battle for primacy between the corporation and the state. The emergence of the transnational corporation, among the few entities that border controls do not halt, has given it a power to appear, and disappear, and held out a shield from accountability to which a state cannot legally, or legitimately, lay claim. The formula of privatization, liberalization and globalization – compelled into common parlance by the Bretton Woods institutions in the ’80s and the ’90s – have done their work well in privileging the corporation over the peoples of the world, and the interests of nations and states.

Most recently, the UN Draft Norms on the responsibilities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises with regard to human rights, bear witness to the rising equivalence of corporate power and state power. Read Article 1 of the Draft Norms and find the sameness of the responsibility to respect, protect and fulfil the agenda of human rights to states and to corporations which is embedded in the article. Implicit in this is the recognition of the potential of the corporation to harm human rights, just as the state might.

Joel Bakan’s book is situated in a time that echoes with vocal, and articulate, resistance to this rise of corporate power: from Cochabamba in Bolivia to Coca Cola in Plachimeda in Kerala, Dow Chemical in the US (with resonance around the globe, including among the Union Carbide victims in Bhopal) to Shell among the Ogoni tribes in Nigeria, to the Chad-Cameroon pipeline and so on.

The route to writing the book has thrown up a companion, a documentary, ‘The Corporation’, co-directed by Mark Achban and Jennifer Abbott and produced by Big Picture Media. The book stands alone, and constitutes a compelling narrative; but the film adds a flavour of authenticity when we see the faces and hear the voices of those whose words we read in the book. The book and the film have been travelling together, often accompanied by its author/makers, carrying a campaign against the untamed growth of corporate power, and coopting along the way those who share their reasoned distrust of the corporation in its present guise.

Are disgraced and handcuffed officials a symptom of ‘bad apples’, some ‘bad people’ and ‘bad practices’? Or is there something systemic in the corporate abuse of position and power? The key premise on which Bakan locates his work is that the corporation is an institution – a unique structure and set of imperatives that direct the actions of people within it. It is also a ‘legal institution’, whose ‘legally defined mandate is to pursue relentlessly and without exception, its own self-interest, regardless of the often harmful confluences it might cause to others’ (pp. 1-2). As a result, Bakan argues through the book, ‘the corporation is a pathological institution, a dangerous possessor of great power it wields over people and societies’ (p. 2).

As professor of law at the University of British Columbia, it is not difficult to understand Bakan’s, and the book’s, strong basis in law. What is reassuring is the ease with which he lets the law melt into the background and gets on quickly, and simply, beyond what the law is to what the law does. As a creature of the law, the corporation has passed through a history of banishment in England in 1720 to its resurrection in 1825, the 19th century birth of the American corporation and ‘limited liability’ to the corporation emerging as a ‘person’ in law and through advertising, and the loss of reputation and the moulding of the New Deal in 1930s America, till the ‘new convergence of technology, law and ideology – economic globalization – (which) reversed the trend toward greater regulatory control of corporations and vaulted the corporation to unprecedented power and influence’ (p. 21). The American focus is because ‘the world’s largest and most powerful corporations are based in the US, and economic globalization has extended their influence beyond national borders’ (p. 3). This, of course, does not explain the less-than-passing mention of Bhopal, but maybe that is merely my ethnocentric crib.

Both the book and the film revolve around interviews with a range of actors that include anti-establishment and anti-corporate gurus as Chomsky, Naomi Klein, (Body Shop’s) Anita Roddick and the Indian inducted into the study, Vandana Shiva. There is more metaphor and simile in the film though, where ‘monsters’, ‘hawk’, ‘eagle’ and the likening of a corporation as an ‘externalizing machine’ to a shark as a ‘killing machine’ abound. The book is more measured and persuades by its persistent internal logic. The film provides the campaign. The film is more extravagant in its chapterisation and starts with the Birth of the Corporation and runs through subheads such as the Pathology of Monstrous Obligations, Triumph of the Shield, Advancing the Frontiers, Unsettling Accounts, Hostile Takeover, Democracy Ltd., Psychotherapies and Prognosis. It dwells on the ‘pathology’, ticking off a checklist of characteristics that the corporation possesses and which make up a psychopathic personality. It is interesting that the certificate issued by the state has classed it to be viewed only with Parental Guidance!

The medium of the printed page adds to analysis, and relies on anecdotal and historical narrative. In arriving at the psychopathic diagnosis the corporation is found to be singularly self-interested, irresponsible when putting others at risk, manipulative of everything including public opinion, grandiose in insisting that ‘we’re number one, we’re the best’, lacking in empathy and manifesting asocial tendencies. Also, ‘corporations often refuse to take responsibility for their own actions and are unable to feel remorse.’ And they relate to others superficially – presenting themselves in a way that will appeal to the public although this may not be representative of what the organization is really like (pp. 56-57).

Bakan contextualises the undemocratic nature of the corporation, and the effect of the disjunction between ownership, which is supposed to vest in the shareholders, and control. There is a role for ‘limited liability’ in the irresponsibility which attends corporate prioritization and practice. In explaining the externalising of costs on to the public, beyond the contours of corporate self-interest, Bakan sets out a detailed exposition of the corporation as a free rider. He reserves his maximum emphasis for the efforts of corporations to bring down regulation as much as they possibly can and identifies the flaws, and dangers, in the corporate position for deregulation. In a prescriptive chapter in conclusion, Bakan iterates and reiterates the need to keep the state in, and stresses the imperative of regulation.

There are snapshots in history which are bound to stir those of us not yet acquainted with those moments in time. In illustration, the coup which corporations engineered to control, or despatch, F.D. Roosevelt because they saw his New Deal as a assault on capitalism. The attempt failed when their frontman revealed all; they had misjudged their man. For, Smedley Darlington Butler, a former US Marines general, was by then sick to the gills having ‘spent 33 years… being …a racketeer of capitalism.’

Perhaps it is in destroying the myths surrounding Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) that Bakan makes his most important contribution today. Corporations use CSR as a sheen of morality, demanding alongside that the state leave them alone. The socially responsible corporation is projected along with the inefficient, maybe corrupt, state to demand deregulation. A scary scenario where corporations will be responsible for human rights in their ‘sphere of influence’ is being drawn up, and unwitting activists ranged against corporate pursuit of power are buying into this idea. The delineation of CSR, what it is, how far it can go (it cannot legally go beyond the interests of its shareholders) and why corporations adopt CSR, tell a tale or two that those working to understand, and deal with, corporate power and accountability would do well to have read to them.

Usha Ramanathan

 

TRESPASS AGAINST US: Dow Chemical and the Toxic Century by Jack Doyle. Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, 2004.

AN extremely successful multinational corporation, listed high in the Fortune 500, in existence for more than one hundred years with a track record for innovation, diversification and profitability, the world’s largest chemical corporation with an annual sale of US$ 32 billion, an ideal that many corporations would like to emulate and a blue-chip investment for all, from the small individual investor to the huge financial investment companies. This is also a description of The Dow Chemical Company that comes through in Jack Doyle’s meticulously researched, detailed and current book (many figures quoted are for 2003) Trespass Against Us – Dow Chemical and the Toxic Century.

Despite these hallmarks of corporate achievement, the message, loud and clear while reading the book, is of a company which has produced and sold, and in many cases is still producing and selling, chemicals used in warfare like Agent Orange and Agent Purple; a slew of persistent and organic chemicals which are polluting the environment and affecting all forms of life from the whales to the exquisite song birds; defoliants, herbicides, insecticides and fungicides, many of which have the ability to persist in the environment and negatively affect all forms of life; dioxins that are amongst the most toxic substances known, and a mind-boggling variety of plastic substances. This is only an extremely abbreviated list of the very large number of products that Dow Chemical produces through synthetic chemistry and markets through the catch phrase, ‘Better living through chemistry.’

Let me list some of the effects on people that have been documented by the author due to ‘Better living through chemistry’ – increase in incidence of cancers, miscarriages and birth defects. For us to really grasp these effects which are not mentioned in the annual reports of Dow Chemical, we need to understand the concepts of ‘toxic trespass’ and ‘body burden’. Toxic trespass is the uninvited invasion of our personal environment and our bodies by many of the products developed, produced and marketed by Dow Chemical. In a sense it is a grand chemical experiment that Dow Chemical has performed and continues to perform with our bodies and our environment for which they do not have the consent from any one of us. It is akin to an intruder in our homes, only that this intruder is guaranteed to stay with us for the rest of our lives and seriously damage our health and in many instances be passed on to our descendants. Body Burden is the presence of synthetic chemicals in our bodies caused by this toxic trespass. Only in the last decade or so, greater than 500 synthetic chemicals (many of these are carcinogens, mutagens and endocrine disruptors), have been found in human blood and body tissue. This burden, humanity as a whole is forced to carry for generations to come; we have no choice. These facts indicate an absolute disregard by Dow Chemical for the rights of individuals (not to mention the other forms of life on Earth), to lead a healthy and full life, and to live in and enjoy a safe and healthy environment.

What are the strategies and tactics that have enabled Dow Chemical to carry on with their extremely profitable business for so many decades and to grow into the behemoth that they are today? Subtle and sometimes outright intimidation of various processes which could potentially derail their profitable enterprise; excellent public relations and lobbying to ‘fix their image’; a long drawn process of appeals and delays through the legal and regulatory system, adopting a chemical by chemical approach to the defence of their products and in the meantime continuing to market the products under question; tampering with the jury; when the case gets really tough to engineer out-of-court settlements so that most of the case details and proceedings are sealed from public view; influence the legal and other policies to favour them; work to break labour unions so that safety of workplaces cannot be demanded strongly; consistent breach of environmental, health and workplace safety laws; invent-first-ask-questions-later approach to the development and marketing of synthetic chemical products without undertaking the required toxicological studies; wilful withholding of information which would have warned the consumers and regulators of the negative effects of their products; misleading research to counter the findings of other research teams which could have a damaging effect on the company and even undertaking toxicity testing on prisoners without their informed consent. If this does not sound like a horror list, I wonder what will.

In today’s world the unfortunate truth is that products and derivatives of Dow Chemical touch all our lives almost on a daily basis. Approximately every 10 seconds a new synthetic chemical is discovered; they enter the market at the rate of three per day, adding up to more than one thousand per year. About 18 million synthetic chemical substances are known to science but their long-term effects on human health and the health of the environment is not really understood and appreciated by the general public around the world. What makes this situation worse is the persistent nature of many of these chemicals and their ability to be biomagnified through the food chain. In a sense the lives of future generations of many forms of lives, including human beings, are blighted. Dow’s track record on safety of its production facility and products is unbiased as far as geographical considerations are concerned. It is equally bad all over the world.

Some of the factors that have enabled the strategies of Dow Chemical to succeed include inadequate laws and lax enforcement; the lag time between the exposure to the product and the manifestation of the ill effects; the unfortunate emphasis on after-the-event fixing of responsibility rather than adopting the precautionary principle and building of dependencies on the products prior to the emergence and recognition of its ill effects.

Jack Doyle has done a wonderful job in detailing all of the above, and the book presents numerous case histories and interviews which enables the reader to easily relate to the events. The Bhopal gas tragedy is one such case history. Dow Chemical acquired Union Carbide in 2001, purely a commercial decision as Dow is unwilling to take any responsibility for the tragedy and its victims. This was raised in the board meeting of Dow in May 2003 by some of its shareholders. Maybe this is an indication that there might still be some hope for these and other victims of Dow’s products all over the world.

Jack Doyle is a good story teller, but unfortunately it is a sad story that he has to tell. It is no story but the tragic truth that affects all of us and our environment with all other forms of lives as well. If this does not serve as a call to arms and goad all of us into action, then there is very little that can be done.

In my early twenties, I read Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring. It left an indelible impression on me and since then Trespass Against Us has been one of the most powerful books that I have read. It is a shame that despite the evidence, governments and people continue to lead their lives in an unconcerned manner. I can only draw a comparison with the tactics of the tobacco industry but with the one very important difference: with smoking one can exercise a choice but unfortunately with synthetic chemicals one cannot.

To me this is another case of blind faith in technology with absolute disregard for Nature. From the detailed documentation in this book it is clear that Science has clearly oversold itself with very tragic consequences. This is another indication of the overwhelming motive for profit which is pursued irrespective of the consequences. This according to me is due to the extremely short timeframes of reference for corporate decision-making, a function of the reporting of figures for every quarter. This is absolutely out of sync with the time scales on which issues related to human health, ecology and environment are dealt with. Unless the ‘financial profit alone and at all costs’ measure of corporate performance is changed and much stronger regulation by the public and the government enforced, there is insufficient incentive for companies like Dow to change their style of functioning.

Ravi Chellam

 

THE BHOPAL SURVIVOR’S STORY by Rumah Rasaq. 2004.

BHOPAL: A Second Tragedy by Sunanda and Yogesh Walia. 1995.

PUBLIC anxieties around media ‘harm’ often target the usual suspects: film and television. Consequently, the print and electronic news media, or the ‘free’ press, has been spared being subject to any rigorous and sustained scrutiny. In the world of corporate media, censorship operates in ways that are complex, even invisible. For, if the news does not exist in the first place, how can it be censored? More than a decade back when satellite news channels arrived to challenge the monopoly of state-owned media channels there was optimism that news reporting would become ‘free’, fair and accurate. That bubble has burst. Now we know that news channels are even scared to reveal the results of their own exit polls for fear of losing political favour or facing political reprisal.

It is perhaps for this reason that documentaries (particularly long documentaries) have captured everyone’s imagination. Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 is as much about the failure of the Bush administration as about failure of the American media to challenge the dubious claims and policies of the federal government. Closer home, Rakesh Sharma’s Final Solution, a three and half-hour long documentary on the Gujarat genocide, is valuable because it systematically unravels and exposes what the print and electronic press has failed to do. Unlike the PBS in the US or BBC in the UK, Indian TV has never encouraged long documentaries or investigative reporting on contemporary political issues. The attempt of Indian news channels to understand the complex reality of India through talk shows and transient sound bytes has proved to be shamefully inadequate.

While media in the age of corporate globalization has opened up new spaces, it has also erased many others. Sustained reporting and analysis have been the first casualties. In this scenario, independent documentary filmmakers have emerged as the witness bearers. Stories that are of little interest or convenience to the corporate media have found their way into documentary films and they, in turn, have found their audiences in varied and unforeseen places. For precisely this reason the documentaries under review are valuable testimonies as they bear witnesses to events and moments that would be of little interest to the corporate media.

The Bhopal Survivor’s Story (1984-2004) directed by Rumah Rasaq tells the shocking story of how, even after 20 years, the central and state governments have failed to hold the perpetrators accountable, compensate the victims of the terrible tragedy, or detox the environment for a safe future in the aftermath. Instead, the film reveals, how thousands of people continue to become victims of the toxicity that permeates the ground water and soil, making them susceptible to cancer, TB, brain retardation and various other equally debilitating and life-threatening ailments. Lethal toxins and carcinogens like mercury, organoclorine, dichlorobenzene, tricholorobenzene continue to contaminate the environment and claim its victims. When Dow Chemical took over Union Carbide, it chose to inherit the assets but none of the liabilities which, the film argues, is only expected given the company’s track record. Dow has been responsible for the bombing of Japan, spraying Agent Orange over Vietnam, developing Napalm and secretly testing chemicals on prisoners and students. Dow also produces Dursban, a highly toxic insecticide that is banned in the US because it causes brain damage in children but continues to be promoted aggressively in India. The documentary is a strong indictment of the government’s abject failure to protect the interests of the people and punish corporate crooks. I wish, however, that the script by Meera Ashar was more conversational and refrained from lapsing into academese like ‘subaltern people’ and ‘hegemonic forces of large MNCs and the state.’

Unlike Bhopal Survivor’s Story, which is an independent documentary, Bhopal: A Second Tragedy (1995) is a television documentary produced and directed by Sunanda and Yogesh Walia for ITV. Presented by Mark Tully, the documentary is a compelling journey through the dismal aftermath of the world’s largest industrial disaster. The seamy subplots reveal corporate callousness, government cynicism, judicial corruption, administrative incompetence and the continued failure to bring a semblance of justice to the survivors of the tragedy. In chasing down Union Carbide’s dubious claims, Tully travels through India, USA and Mexico to explore the lassitude that surrounds the enforcement of environmental laws. Made in the best traditions of TV journalism, Bhopal: A Second Tragedy is one more valuable document testifying to the failure of mainstream journalism in India.

Making (and reviewing) documentaries on the Bhopal gas tragedy and its aftermath is daunting simply because of the overwhelming number of documentaries that have been made since 1984, including The Bhopal Legacy (Nadeem Udddin), Unravelling the Tragedy of Bhopal (Gittleman Film Associates), The Heart Becomes Quiet (David Christensen and Robin Schlaht), Hunting Warren Anderson (Amos Coheny), Cloud Over Bhopal (Gondwana Films/Spanish Television) and many others. Inevitably therefore, both documentaries frequently evoke a sense of déjà vu; a feeling of having ‘been there and seen that.’

As I see it, two major challenges confront those who plan to use the media in their continuing campaign around the unfinished business of justice and compensation in Bhopal. First, campaigners need to find creative strategies to push the Bhopal campaign in both the mainstream and independent media. Second, and more difficult, independent documentary filmmakers have to struggle to find new and more compelling ways to tell their stories. Mainstream media must be challenged not just through content but also through the use of unconventional narrative strategies.

Shohini Ghosh

 

THE TRAUMA AND THE TRIUMPH: Gender and Partition in Eastern India edited by Jasodhara Bagchi and Subhoranjan Dasgupta. Stree, Calcutta, 2003.

WHEN Indians repossessed their homeland on 15 August 1947, close to 12 million people on all sides of the borders were left without a home. The black irony of the situation was deliberately repressed in official and popular celebration of the amazing fact of freedom, so hard-won, and so ardently awaited. Within another quarter of a century, the subcontinent was split a second time, unravelling the logic of the first partition: the two nation theory, espoused by the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League, came unstuck as the nation state of Pakistan splintered in the name of other solidarities and contradictions that could not be contained within the framework of religious identity.

The celebration of the 50th year of India’s freedom saw a dramatic redefinition of the meaning of August 1947. The event that appeared on the forefront of scholarly and popular memorialisation was more the horrors of the holocaust and the breakup of the country than the pleasure of repossessing the country. It is interesting to speculate on why that semantic shift occurred at this point. The promise of the Nehruvian welfare state and the new-founded economic sovereignty had largely been dissipated in the last decade, substantially eroding the expectant optimism with which the newly-made citizens had greeted the infant nation state in 1947. More significant, the horrors of anti-Sikh and anti-Muslim pogroms brought back memories of the holocaust. The foundation of the nation state had not been a monolithic one. A mass movement, rare in the history of the world in the scale of popular activism and non-violence, had been one of its sources. But there had also been the parallel narrative of religious separatism, both Hindu and Muslim, a long lineage of mass communal violence and hatred that had shaped the course of events that led on to freedom-with-partition. The 50th year of our freedom saw a preoccupation with the recovery of the second strand of nation making, reflecting the new and darker context for historical writings.

The new histories of the Partition were written largely by feminist scholars and gender became a key prism through which the events were reviewed. There was a shift away from the earlier preoccupation with the realm of high politics, negotiations and bargains over the fate of nations. There was also, by and large, a breakaway from the earlier historical explanations that traced lineages of partition in the long histories of communalism and violence, especially in Bengal and Punjab. The accent was on the experiential, the emotive aspects of events and the holocaust was seen as an apocalyptic occurrence that could be studied on its own without being necessarily located in an ideological and political context. The histories expanded the methods of using oral narratives; they revealed the conjoined patriarchies of states and families, the involuted violence that separated even the victims.

In all this, Bengal had remained, by and large, a relatively minor footnote. Punjab provided the dominant frame of reference to which Bengal provided examples of departures from the norm. Of course, there was a major exception to this general trend. Joya Chatterjee had, in fact, pioneered the revival in partition studies with a focus on Bengal. She was able to weave together the experiential with the institutional, the immediate events of holocaust with histories of communal ideology and political organization. In her more recent work, she had emphasized a vitally important point: partition did not end, but began in June 1947 as the scheme for territorial separation came to be finalized. In other words, the proper life of partition begins with the displaced people and the separated lands, the new economies and state structures, as they came to take shape from 1947.

In very recent years, the probe of Bengal partition has widened. The editors of the volume under review have rightly pointed out that the nature of the Bengal partition was different from Punjab in some very crucial ways. One of the striking differences is that there was no massive concentration of violence in one or two years followed by a virtual exchange of entire populations as happened in Punjab. The partition in Bengal was a very long drawn out affair, the borders remained open much longer and the migration was both more continuous and thinner at any given point of time. There were, moreover, repeated spurts of violence leading on to recurring bouts of migration, some of it caused by threat perception rather than by actual violence, and some of it also caused by economic dislocations that made older patterns of livelihood untenable. The Indian government, determined to accord proper refugee status only to people who could prove that their flight was directly caused by communal violence, took little responsibility for the streams of Hindus from East Pakistan. There was, moreover, more than one displacement in the lives of Bengali migrants as they were torn out of the settled Bengali landscape and flung into the wilds of the Sunderbans or into the forests of Dandakaranya outside Bengal. One hardly knows where to put a closure to the history of the Bengal partition.

The recent studies of Bengal partition have, therefore, focused closely on the history of displaced people, their many dislocations and their struggles for survival, land and homes. The focus on violent events or memories of spectacular violence which characterize the Punjab studies, are, in comparison, less dominant. The present volume continues that trend.

The most important feature of the volume is that it is a mosaic made up of fragments from many different archives. A diverse range of histories, history writings and historical sources are pulled together, suggesting multiple directions for future research. The collage format also enabled the editors to bring together many of the strengths of different modes of historical reconstruction. There are recollections as well as historical analyses of policies and experiences; there are accounts of state and institutional grapplings with the ‘refugee problem’ along with literary and filmic representations of refugee self-fashioning. And, true to the peculiarities of the Bengal partition, the scope is not confined to the moment when partition began to happen. The second partition of the subcontinent brings it into recent post-colonial histories as it concerned Bengal yet again. Given the diversity of genres and themes that the volume represents, it is impossible to write adequately about each single contribution. I shall merely point out some of the strengths.

As the title of the volume signifies, the editors work with a complex dialectic of losses and new beginnings. As Asoke Mitra had observed long back, the burden of partition was borne mainly by refugee women who stepped into unprecedented roles: homemaker, breadwinner, political activist. Such struggles in a hostile environment which compounded the traumatic escape from homes and homeland nonetheless promised new, though difficult, beginnings. The book provides an excerpt from Ritwik Ghatak’s memorable film, Meghe Dhaka Tara, but, in a different vein, the excitement of inhabiting public roles and spaces, perhaps, comes out more in Satyajit Ray’s Mahanagar. The woman, forced to earn a living, was not entirely a tragic figure, even if her difficulties were massive.

The editors also point out the role of the Left in mobilizing broken, traumatized people in struggles where, again, women played a major role. The Left came into its own, marking out future bases and forms of struggle by going into the heart of rehabilitation work and with militant claims to unsettled land. It is somewhat ironic to think that in the present state of West Bengal, the Left Front government engages in breaking up some of these very resettlement colonies in the interests of urban development.

A very perceptive comment by Jasodhara Bagchi points out the structural similarity between the traumatic events of a generalized loss of home and the routinised abandonment of ancestral homes for all women living under patrivirilocal systems.

Subhoranjan Dasgupta reads Akhtaruddin Elias’ Khwabnama as a fictional completion of history. The text evokes very powerfully – and Dasgupta’s reading communicates that power most vividly and sensitively – an unusual perspective on partition: that of a Muslim. In this connection, a comparison with Gourkishore Ghose’s novel, Prem Nei, might have been further illuminating. Dasgupta interestingly counterposes the united peasants’ struggle in the Tebhaga movement to its contemporary event of partition as a split possibility. It, however, leaves the question open as to why the mass movement for partition triumphed, even among Bengali peasants.

Selina Hossain’s short story, ‘Kantatare Projapati’ evokes the excruciating torture of a woman in prison. The context, most possibly, is the Bangladesh War of 1971, but one misses a further explanation, or an introduction to the author. Similarly, the memorable pamphlet of 1951, based on Ila Mitra’s statement to the East Pakistan police is reproduced without any contextualisation or explanation. The extraordinary document from the legendary leader of the Tebhaga movement has been largely unknown and one is grateful to the editors for bringing it back into the public domain. However, Ila Mitra has become a shadowy name to the present generations, and to readers outside Bengal. This would have been a major opportunity to revive that history.

Rachel Weber does a close study of one of the refugee settlements in South Calcutta. She locates this against the changing urban topography of the metropolis that the partition brought in its wake. The changing fate of the Bijoygarh Colony in Jadavpur is filled out through the words and recollections of the refugee inhabitants who then go back to an older past to talk about an older home and its violation and loss. She introduces her own subject position as a child of Jewish refugees who escaped from Nazi Germany to create a correspondence between the two moments of exodus. The comparison may be somewhat misleading, masking the specificities of each history.

Renuka Roy was a leading figure in rehabilitation work, going on to become the Minister of Rehabilitation. Rehabilitation was an area in the new governmental enterprise where the expertise of women had acknowledged value, since even in conventional gender understanding, they are seen to possess ‘natural’ abilities for rebuilding broken homes. The article is a very important contribution tracing, as it does, the trajectory of refugee existence from the Sealdah station to the camps and then the colonies. It provides a detailed and critical account of the inadequacies and obstinate blindness of the Indian government towards the true dimensions of the problem in Bengal. It also traces the complicated centre-state negotiations on this. It blames the Nehru-Liaqat Pact of 1950 which mistakenly assumed that the eastern influx was temporary and that the status quo ante could be restored. When that did not happen, there was no revision of the structures of the rehabilitation plan.

In another valuable article, Meghna Guha Thakurta contrasts patterns of Hindu migration after 1950 from East Pakistan with Muslim migration away from West Bengal after the riots of 1964. It explains migration decisions by families in the post 1947 and 1971 contexts and contrasts the aspirations of Hindu and Muslim migrants: Hindus leaving their precious ancestral home or ‘bhitabari’ and Muslims imagining that they were moving towards their ‘promised land’. This is done through micro-studies of two families: a Hindu one coming away from Barisal in East Pakistan, and a Muslim one going away from Barasat in West Bengal. She notes the tendency to settle down in large urban centres, even for rural families. She also traces the pattern of pre-partition migration from East to West Bengal and shows how the networks were overstretched and eventually broke down under the strain of the pressures of population movements after the partition.

Urvashi Butalia captures the curious story of the strange anomalies of territorial partition which created ‘chitmahals’ or enclaves in each other’s territories as a province was arbitrarily pulled apart. The belated merger of two princely states – Cooch Bihar in the West and Rangpur in the East – with two different states left the borders notoriously ill-defined and the inhabitants trapped within tightly enclosed land ringed round with borders from which any movement became most difficult. It also made them vulnerable to police harassment on both sides. The ingrained perversity of the refugee experience receives a further twist within this history of Berubari.

Meenakshi Sen looks into the history of another ex-princely state, Tripura, whose demographic profile changed entirely after partition. There was an earlier history of pre-partition Bengali Hindu migration into the state but the trickle became a torrent after 1947. The exodus of Tripura Muslims towards Pakistan firmly established the numerical predominance of Bengali Hindus within the state. The situation, however, became complicated after the 1960s, as some of the Muslims attempted to return on highly unfavourable terms. The Congress government actively discouraged the migration and the discrimination that the Muslims faced is recounted in the words of two Muslim women migrants. Hindu dominance touched the lives of the indigenous tribal women as the institution of dowry was introduced to their villages.

The volume offers important oral archival material that future historians of Bengal partition will find useful. There are interviews with refugee women who then became involved with different kinds of political activities in West Bengal. Nalini Mitra, an active member of the Purba Pakistan Mahila Samiti that was set up in East Bengal under Leela Ray, recalls her experiences of communal violence – the only piece that deals with the theme in this volume – and Sukumari Chaudhuri describes her political work in the 1955 strike at the Bengal Lamp Factory in Calcutta. Gargi Chakravartty interviews Bithi Chakravarti to follow the trajectory of her life as she leaves home, comes to Calcutta with her practically destitute family and ultimately emerges as the family breadwinner. Dasgupta interviews a CPI activist of undivided Bengal – Nibedita Nag – who, along with a section of party workers, went against the stream, to move to the East and carry on with party work under dangerous constraints. There are very interesting fragments from the Partition Diary of Suhasini Das of Sylhet as she despairingly watches the exodus of Hindus and the changed social landscape.

There is a fascinating recollection of travels through riot-torn Noakhali in the fateful year of 1946 by the veteran social activist Ashoka Gupta who accompanied Gandhiji through a district where Hindu girls had been molested on a large scale and where Gandhiji took a group of young Hindu women on his mission of peace and as a token of his faith in peace. In 1955, Ashoka Gupta, Bina Das, Amar Kumari Vatma, Sudha Sen and Sheila Davar went on a tour of refugee centres in East Punjab and Delhi to compare rehabilitation policies vis a vis Punjabi refugees with the conditions in West Bengal refugee camps. The detailed comparison established the discrimination and marginalisation that Bengali refugees encountered as compared with the much greater investment of resources and sensitivity that Punjabi refugees received. The report is reproduced in the volume.

Subhoranjan Dasgupta moves forward in time to locate the tentacles of the partition among the women in the Brindaban pilgrimage of today. There is also a moving excerpt from Dakshinaranjan Basu’s recollections of a vanished way of life in his village Sonarang, marked by a history of Buddhist practices and relics. It would have been useful if the short introduction mentioned the location of the village, since the text does not indicate it. There are beautiful translations by Dasgupta of poems of two refugee poets, Jibanananda Das and Taslima Nasreen: poems of nostalgia for landscapes that have vanished from their lives. They underline something that has been crushed and overwritten by the current foregrounding of the nation state as the sole measure of a spatial affiliation with a particular territory – that is, the meaning of homeland in lives of people, the sensuous and concrete bonding with an inherited landscape.

It is a large and crowded canvas that we have here. That makes for a rich understanding of the complexity of the problem but it also reduces the scope for an extended engagement with any particular aspect.

Tanika Sarkar

 

SHIFTING BODY POLITICS: Gender, Nation, State in Pakistan by Shahnaz Rouse. Women Unlimited, New Delhi, 2004.

GENDER IN THE HINDU NATION: RSS Women as Ideologues by Paola Bacchetta. Women Unlimited, New Delhi, 2004.

THE two books are a collection of three essays each, under the series Feminist Fineprint, focusing on a single issue and written from a critical feminist perspective. Both add to the literature on the subject of fundamentalism and women in South Asia, an area of major concern in recent years, given the pervasive influence of right-wing fundamentalism in the region. While Bacchetta’s book is more specifically a study of the Rashtra Sevika Samiti – its history, ideology and place within the larger framework of the Hindu fundamentalist agenda in India, Rouse attempts to delineate the theoretical assumptions whereby fundamentalism seeks to shift the dominant political discourse in favour of anti-democratic forces. Specifically in the context of Pakistan, Rouse traces how religion has come to define the parameters for nationhood in a manner as to also shape the discourse on citizenship and sovereignty. Interestingly, both studies establish how women, along with minorities, emerge as citizens born into politico-ideological structures that seek to define citizenship on a differential basis.

Rouse begins by locating the discourse on gender within the larger contextual terrain of politics in Pakistan. A crucial aspect of alignments within the political formation was their being centred around debates on the nature of state as well as the form of Islam to be practised from a range of perspectives, without any serious challenge to the notion of Pakistan’s existence and identity having a religious basis. Women and gender have been significant categories in the discourse on religion, modernity and nationalism since the years of the Raj. However, these discussions were mostly premised on a construction of womanhood based on the lives of women of the privileged social classes, with no consideration of the needs and experiences of the non-Ashraf, thereby ignoring the need to problematize the category of gender. Rouse maintains that while the dichotomy drawn in terms of modernists versus traditionalists as overlapping with British and Muslims respectively cannot be held to be valid, simplistic notions of ‘secular’ forces versus ‘Islamic’ too need to be examined because there is a ‘continuity in the manner in which the State (pre-Zia, during Zia’s time and since) has sought to control and define women…’ Also, within Pakistan, women have sometimes emerged as active partners in the construction of patriarchal ideology and support of the structures that maintain it: the latter is thus not imposed from above and women are not mere victims but active participants. Rather, it rests on the ‘convenience of subservience’.

Almost as if to carry this discussion forward, Bacchetta’s work traces the formation of the Rashtra Sevika Samiti, its relationship with the RSS and the role assigned to women within it. The author explores how the Sangh and the Samiti conceptualise the Hindu nation differently, even as they seek to retain unity to ultimately achieve a common objective. The Samiti engages in a fractionalised, specifically feminine, Hindu discourse, using some of the same symbols and signifiers even as it creates some of its own. In the course of her analysis Bacchetta argues that there are ‘zones of convergence, of non-antagonistic divergence and of complementary difference.’ The last, she contends, originate around questions of feminine and masculine identities, with the Samiti exiting the realm of the Sangh’s discourse to craft a Hindu nationalism to which women can relate, since the Sangh’s notion of the Hindu nation, like that of the Islamic state, remains highly gendered. Even as women and men struggle for what they collectively call a ‘Hindu nation’, the author argues that they do not necessarily have the same entity in mind.

Bachheta’s work moves on to concretely outlining the process by which divergence is overcome to achieve unity of objective. The Samiti emphasises both the masculine and the feminine principle while the latter is missing from the view of the Sangh. The two organisations are different even as they run parallel, because women’s ‘field’ is different from that of men. It is significant that the ‘swayam’ is missing from the name of the Samiti, since while a ‘man’s self is individual’, that of the woman implies ‘not only the individual self but also family, society, nation, religion and culture’.

The adherence to a political strategy within the confines of the Sangh’s framework is achieved in such a manner that the points of divergence actually enable acceptance of the larger frame and fulfil the function of achieving unification despite the fractionalisation, thereby assuring complicity. Sevikas rarely appear in Sangh literature while the Sangh is always present in the background of the frame within which discussions take place in the Samiti. Sevikas, sometimes, represent an ‘active choice’ model where, having revolted against the model of femininity, they emerge as fierce and independent women. This ‘alternate femininity’ model is steeped in religious resistance and revenge where the Hindu nationalist women take after goddesses who are all armed. The organisational mould in which pracharikas are cast provides a highly respectable space to single women who profess to be ‘married to the nation’. Thus the Samiti interprets the ‘ideal’ not just vis a vis a single man: rather authority and power are vested in the nation which command a sense of duty, loyalty, chastity and bravery.

In the course of this shift, specificity of location based on caste, class and sexuality are excluded, even as the last is projected onto women of the ‘other’ who are represented as ‘prostitutes and baby factories’ or, alternately, when talking of Hindu women, as victims of evils perpetrated by Muslim men. Women of the minority community, seen as potential or real communal and sexual property of Hindu men, hence emerge as targets for Hindu nationalists to weave their stories of valour, either through reabsorption by way of marriage or humiliation and desecration. Thus the ‘mother image’ of Hindu women is as central to Hindu fundamentalism as the gross (mis)representation of women of the ‘other’ community. The Rashtra Sevika Samiti fulfils an important function as the ideological pallbearer of fundamentalism in its struggle for hegemony, which may be based on complicity but transcends passivity to impart ‘agency’ to the ‘empowered Sevika’. The examples of Uma Bharati and Sadhavi Ritambhara are there for all to see.

Bacchetta’s work is extremely useful since it focuses on the mode of operation by which fundamentalism mobilises women. However, the contradictions and convergences need to be examined further, specially in the context of recent political developments and ground level realities. Also, there is need to study the form and expansion of the organisation in greater detail, including its sectional and regional spread. What are the Samiti’s relations with other Sangh affiliates, including the BJP Mahila Morcha, the Durga Vahini and the VHP Mahila Mandali? Are these oriented to different activities, is there coordination and are there ambiguities in roles and functions? How are the boundaries demarcated and what is the role of the Sangh in the decision-making process?

Bacchetta rightly notes the change of stance regarding the reasons/causes for the formation of the Samiti. She outlines the process by which the Samiti mediates between women and the RSS, but understanding how the Samiti provides a conduit for the Sangh to reach out to women is only one part of the story. If the political process by which women have been mobilised by the ideology of Hindutva en route its road to power is to be understood, it is important that different phases in the growth of the Sangh/Samiti and the relations between them are delineated more sharply. Such analysis is needed if we are to understand the sharp rise in the Sangh’s ability to actively mobilise women, e.g., at the time of demolition of the Babri Masjid, or the state-organised pogrom in Gujarat. In other words, while symbols and modes of representation help us to understand how right-wing fundamentalist forces extend their hegemonic influence by creating space for a religion based community identity on an everyday basis, they are not sufficient to explain the fervour and active agency displayed during identifiable acts of intervention based on unleashing of terror on a large scale. The real picture still eludes us.

Rouse, similarly, traces the links between state, fundamentalism and governance in the context of Pakistan, delineating aspects of both convergence and contradiction. In view of a strong scripturalist position and sharp divisions amongst the Islamists on political strategies, there is a marked congruence with respect to gender. This is reflected in a shared desire to subsume women’s voices to contain gender-based struggles and reposition women in the interests of the fundamentalists with total disregard for their divergent experiences. Rouse traces the evolution of the discourse on the state in Pakistan, its espousal by Muslim nationalist figures such as Iqbal and Jinnah, the misogynistic content of the latter’s thought and the false dichotomies drawn between modernity and British power as posited against traditionalism and Islam. She rightly asserts that the issue of gender in independent Pakistan cannot be understood as separate from struggle for control over the state by contending forces which, in the name of religion, have effectively checked the evolution of democratic polity in Pakistan. She refers to the shifting base of the regimes and the alliances sought to be built with different social groups to bolster power and authority, but considering that there is a great need to analyse the socio-economic basis of fundamentalism and of the terror economy, one is left disappointed.

The outline of the discussion on gender within the Muslim League remains perfunctory but useful: whereas prior to independence in the 1930s, the League adopted a resolution favouring suffrage, representation and equality for women, as early as 1949, the newly formed state of Pakistan retracted from these promises. This was facilitated by proclamation of Islam as the state religion, accompanied by an increased role for Islamic ideology and strengthening of the influence of the ulema, employed as advisors to the legislators. The struggle over the basis of the state being secular or religious was, effectively, about whether to opt for a democratic political state formation or not?

Ironically, Rouse argues that since the early Pakistani regimes were pro-US, the oppositional forces represented both by the left and Islamists traversed some common ground. Does not this ‘commonality’ of opposition that the author notes couch differences in the form of or grounds for opposition? Could the framework of women’s rights provide a tool to distinguish between these forces? Would not responses to the women’s movement be an important parameter to distinguish between religion-based anti-US sloganeering and the pro-democracy forces?

Rouse merely touches upon movement-oriented activity with reference to the Women’s Action Forum, choosing instead to focus on regimes and changes at the top. A more comprehensive analysis of strategies employed by movements to challenge the policy and stance of the state would reveal the complexities of working out a ‘feminist’ standpoint, since as per her own admission, the veil, symbolic of a homogenous Muslim identity, actually hides behind it a vastly diverse social, economic, cultural universe. Mention is made of the continued collusion with international capital that has characterised successive regimes in Pakistan. This link between militarization, masculinization, and fundamentalism and the corporations dictating economic processes requires closer examination in view of proto-fascist forces gaining ground in this region. This is an aspect Bacchetta altogether ignores given her single-minded focus on one organisation and Rouse only touches upon briefly. Clearly, as Rouse argues, shifting the focus to the ideological realm of ‘cultural’ authenticity and nationalism and targeting the abandonment of ‘indigenous culture and ideas’, performs the useful function of blunting the opposition to imperialism within the domain of political economy.

By reinforcing the significance attached to women as the repositories of culture, fundamentalism strengthens the tendency to see women in only one way, hiding the contribution of women to economy and society at different levels (Pakistan’s most well-kept secret as feminists refer to it). This should not be mixed with traditionalism, for the process of abrogation of civil rights and women’s rights proceeds alongside changes at the international political level. This period was marked by the emergence of Pakistan as a frontline state in the US war against Soviet Union. The culpability of the US in forging an alliance of military and religious powers cannot be underestimated: not even when some, like the Taliban emerge as frontrunners in the opposition to it. Through the period that a conservative consensus was being evolved on what it meant to be a Pakistani, segments of civil society were being targeted by repressive military regimes. Surprisingly, as in the case of India, the most advanced regions and the most privileged social groups did not necessarily take the lead in asserting the need for a progressive political formation at the level of state and policy formulation.

Contrary to her own evidence, Rouse argues that, ironically, women made the most significant gains in the dictatorial phase. How is that to be understood? The scenario that emerges is as follows: Zia, who took the lead in attacking women’s rights, first destroyed whatever credible opposition there could have been from democratic forces. Once democracy was overruled, women who did not conform to the norm, risked losing their rights in the context of sovereignty and citizenship. At the same time, with the entry of international agencies, the setting up of women’s divisions and the co-option of professional women perhaps created a space for women at the top, even as the general mass lost their limited freedom? Since donors and funding agencies today significantly influence the discussion on women’s rights, this throws up pertinent questions.

Rouse refers to the increase in violence, including sexual violence and crimes against women in Pakistan since the late ’70s. A parallel development can be seen on this side of the border. The moral policing enforced by the state, in the case of Pakistan and, by fundamentalist organisations in India, leads to the abrogation of civil rights in both the public and the private spheres. The perspectives they impose speak of the violence they wish to inculcate in the body politic. While the Indian example offers insights into what fundamentalism can wish to accomplish through a level of ‘populist’ mobilisation while functioning within a democratic political set-up, the experience of Pakistan highlights the dangers of fundamentalist ideology controlling political institutions and the state. One exists already, while the other wishes to succeed in its design. The future for India and South Asia, as the books under review indicate, holds out a challenge for both the survival of democracy as well as for those who seek to intervene specifically on behalf of women.

Indu Agnihotri

 

FLASHPOINT: How the US, India and Pakistan Brought Us to the Brink of War by J. Sri Raman. Common Courage Press, Monroe, ME, Canada, 2004.

READING J. Sri Raman’s book, Flashpoint, an account of ‘how the US, India and Pakistan brought the world to the brink of nuclear war’ is an experience akin for me, I suspect, to Sancho Panza’s as he watched the good Don Quixote ride into battle once again. With one crucial difference, however; the windmills I see are in the heads of those who the good Sri Raman has gone forth to tilt against. These windmills in the head are what apparently drive state policies about ‘national security’, and they are horrific in their immediate effects as well as deeply troubling in what they say about society itself in the long term.

To begin with, what is the book about? As he says at the beginning, Sri Raman is attempting to ‘explain’ to peace-activist friends outside South Asia the politics of the subcontinent as the proper context for understanding its nuclear weaponization. His major contention is that ‘Indo-Pak peace overtures’, which regularly light up the political horizon, are likely to be false dawns because they are incidental to the shifting balances within a complex militarist Indo-Pak-US triangular relationship which has culminated in a nuclear arms race.

Sri Raman traces the roots of Indo-Pak hostilities to the ‘Hindu-Muslim’ divide resulting from what he firmly sees as the colonial ‘divide-and-rule’ response to the 1857 ‘Sepoy Mutiny’ or the ‘First War of Independence’. He links the colonial partition decision with the devious plan of continuing colonialism by other means, and then sketches the persistent Indo-Pak hostilities of the post-colonial period as the almost inevitable outcome of the partition engendered legacy of hate. To this sorry fabric in the background of nuclearization, he adds another thread – that of the evolution of Hindutva-fascist designs. Stir in the continuation of colonial-hegemonic evil by another agency, the US, through its control over these fractiously warring protagonists, and this witches’ brew then inescapably leads to nuclear weapons, an arms race, growing mutual hate, and apocalypse. It is to Sri Raman’s immense credit that the plausibility of this bleak future comes through, stark and clear.

The tone is frankly polemical, and I could not but stand and cheer (adding to my self-image as Sancho) the resounding hammerblows that Raman delivers; never was a doughtier warrior for peace, no matter the many quibbles I have with his historical details. Depressingly, a recurring gut feeling as I read the book was, don’t we know all this already, more or less? How can anyone not know this? These are obviously silly questions given the recent decision of the Indian government, cutting across apparent ideological divides, to maintain the nuclear weapons programme. The proper question therefore is – why do we all not see the logic and sense of what Sri Raman is telling us?

In a sense, one limitation of the book is in its very passion, targeting the USA and its nefarious imperialistic designs (with all the weaknesses of conspiracy theories no matter how well merited), so that one is left wondering why society as a whole puts up with this. The answer of course is that it does so because it is complicit. How can a society that murders girl children in pursuit of a fundamentally inequitous patriarchy easily see the nuanced ethics that Sri Raman is arguing so passionately about? And how can Sri Raman not see the need to identify the unjust society as an enthusiastic participant in nuclear weaponization?

The book, therefore, does not address the culpability of its audience deeply enough for me. This limitation is unwittingly aided by the device that Sri Raman uses to explain the broad political context of nuclear weaponization in South Asia – the device of ‘peacenik IR’, if one may be allowed so signal a contradiction. Sri Raman explains his history in terms of conscious, aware actions of ‘states’ in pursuit of long-term strategic goals. While this may be useful for condensing complex and multi-faceted events into broad historical sweeps, it loses the sense of fractured, co-opted society so necessary for a proper appreciation of the cultural underpinnings of militarism.

The angry broad-brush torrent of Sri Raman’s narrative leaps over other gaps too. Thus, there is no mention of the post-colonial claim to inheritance of empire that the Indian state (like many others, including China) has traditionally maintained, which is part and parcel of the roots of subcontinental militarism. In this context, the draconian, secrecy-riddled nature of India’s nuclear legislation (from the 1960s) is not a player on Sri Raman’s stage either. Perhaps nationalism intrudes a little as well – given the intensity of his anti-colonial stance, it should not surprise me, I guess, that he does not address the lack of scientific competence and credibility in the subcontinent, and of the contribution of this scientific mediocrity to nuclear nationalism, as directly and pointedly as deserved.

Another hole that keeps intruding as I read is, why is the US (and the elites in India and Pakistan) indulging in this wide-ranging conspiracy (in Sri Raman’s book; perhaps merely survival-strategising in mine)? Clearly, elite globalization, with all its deeply flawed premises (including the subversion of ‘globalization’ to a dirty word from a potentially egalitarian concept Ambedkaresque in its sweep), is a core driving force in all this, and yet, Sri Raman’s book finds little direct mention of this overarching shadow, although the arms market certainly does figure time and again.

What the book does read like is a primer for understanding us – anti-nuclear, pro-peace activists/supporters in the South Asian subcontinent – a series of careful, detailed answers to the questions raised by Sri Raman’s western interlocutors mentioned at the beginning of the book. Yet, it says remarkably little about what the South Asian peace movement needs to do to expand the scope and impact of its perspectives. In one brave chapter, Sri Raman does attempt to talk about ‘saving a subcontinent’, but this remains the weakest part of the book. One reason is that even today, opinion in India against nuclear weapons remains reactive in nature. In part, this is to do with the fact that nuclear weapons are not, by their nature, easy to portray as ‘clear and present danger’. Once they are there, they sit, so to say, in a hole in the ground, and do not easily impinge on people’s lives.

As with many other issues related to peace and social justice, opposition to nuclear weapons is no favourite of the well-off elite in Indian society, while for the rest of society, daily issues of livelihood are so pressing that opposition to nuclear weapons becomes relegated to protests when ‘something happens’. This gives the movement a sporadic feel, and detracts from its impact; it becomes easy enough for its critics to say that it is just a knee-jerk response of a few people that will go away given time. Sri Raman is smack on the mark in talking about where we have come from to this sorry pass. Would that he had found as much clarity about where we are to go from here.

Satyajit Rath

 

PRIVATIZATION OF RIVERS IN INDIA by Arun Kumar Singh. Vikas Adhyayan Kendra, Mumbai, 2004.

INTER-LINKING OF RIVERS IN INDIA: A Preliminary Assessment by Arun Kumar Singh. The Other Media, New Delhi, 2003.

THE two books under review make a valuable addition to the ongoing debate on India’s most pressing challenge in the new century – water. It is now a truism that large swathes within the country are deep in the middle of a ‘hydraulic crisis’. Despite the subcontinent’s capacious rivers, the often times copious gift of the monsoon and a rich history in traditional water harvesting and management, the population’s vulnerability to hydraulic extremes has been on the rise: being either parched or, on the reverse, wreaked by the fury of flood. But it is not only about confronting a double-sided assault by nature. Water as a resource has been, over the years, abused, overused, mismanaged and irremediably depleted – by bureaucratic fiat, vested political interest and engineering hubris. India, consequently, now experiences unprecedented levels of river pollution, groundwater exhaustion, the destruction of watersheds, the rapid decline in traditional water harvesting structures and gargantuan ecological despoliation brought on by over-irrigation and the proliferation of large dams. In short, a man-made recipe aimed at comprehensive and certain societal disaster.

A mid-stream turn in the water strategy is therefore now inevitable and urgent. The voices, however, clamouring for a revolutionary change in the water sector make for a crowded and heterogeneous group. On the far right, the prognosis on India’s water crisis is that it is essentially a market failure. The government’s command and control hydraulic strategy, it is claimed, is riddled with corruption, inefficiencies, wastage, subsidies aimed at patronage and decrepit infrastructure. Consequently, the government delivers water more like a worn out, leaking, corrugated bucket rather than a precision-operated shining faucet. The solution, the great mantra for these protagonists on the right, is the decisive urgency for imposing the logic of profit. In sum, ‘users’ must pay at real cost. This actual pricing, it is argued, will correctly signal and reveal water need and in time arrive at the ultimate efficiency – supply will accurately respond to disciplined demand.

Arun Kumar Singh’s book, Privatization of Rivers in India, explores most of these claims and their implications for the Indian public at large. The book is a helpful guide to unpacking both the politics and the economics that underpin the recent attempt to imagine water as an economic commodity. The author starts by following the privatization trail from the rarefied recesses of the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund – a trinity, as it were, that has begun over the years to assemble a complex but nevertheless pointed set of financial-legal frameworks for turning water into a saleable and profit-seeking commodity. The WTO, in fact, since its inception in 1995, has been pressing for the commercialisation of public services in countries across the world, which in particular has meant redefining water from being treated as a human right to that of a commodified need. Not unexpectedly, most countries who are signatories to the WTO have been arm-twisted and compelled to adopt this sharp change in direction in their water policies.

Not unexpectedly, the World Bank and the IMF have also been equally vociferous in forcing countries to accept the privatization of the latter’s water services, usually as part of a loan conditionality. Typically enough as well, the process of privatization is paralleled by the entry of private industry in the water business, which in many cases refers to the entry of multinational corporations. These TNC’s often known as the ‘Big 10’, in the main indicate companies such as Vivendi (France), Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux (France), Bouygues (France), Enron (USA) and Anglican Water (UK). The two largest of the water corporations namely Vivendi and Suez Lyonnaise de Eaux jointly control about 70 per cent of the existing water markets in over 120 countries.

India’s dramatic entry into this new water dispensation was made in a declaration in its National Water Policy document of 2002; in which in clause 13 the government sought private sector participation in managing and developing the water sector in the country. Arun Kumar’s book, in fact, provides an excellent account of the changes that were subsequently introduced for privatizing water in India. The classic case being the sale of a part of the Sheonath river in Chattisgarh state to Radius Water Limited, a private sector company, with a fairly dubious history in construction and engineering works. Several other such questionable arrangements are listed and discussed in the book alongside a very helpful set of annexures on water policy legislations and contracts in India.

What emerges, from this brief experience with privatizing water in Chattisgarh and states (to name a few) such as Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, is the how quickly profit from water has threatened the livelihood practices of the poor and under privileged. Take the case of Radius Water Limited (RWL) and the Sheonath river saga: Arun Kumar points out that the RWL immediately introduced its own set of draconian rules for regulating access to water. These included the forcible seizure of farmers’ pump sets bordering the Sheonath and villagers were completely stopped from fishing, bathing, washing clothes, growing vegetables along the banks and even from allowing their livestock to drink water from the river, beyond a few minutes. Turning water into a commodity obviously meant being accompanied by an extreme definition of ownership. The book goes on to list many similar instances and provides an unsettling eye opener to what privatization will mean to the majority that usually remain outside the discipline of the market.

In the second book, Inter-linking of Rivers in India, Arun Kumar provides a useful and critical introduction to the subject. The book is well-structured to help the reader wade step by step through the humungous ocean of claims, counterclaims, statistics and the logistics that have gone into explaining the government plans for carrying out the inter-linking project. The idea for connecting the rivers, in fact, sounds alluringly simple. Move the surplus waters to areas suffering from deficits and thereby balance out nature’s incompetence. The subsequent benefits that could result from this manual replumbing of the continents hydrology makes for a seductive, mouth-watering (no pun intended) appeal for any planner. The claim is that irrigation benefits could be extended to 35 million hectares, augmenting 40,000 cusecs of water at Farakka Barrage, mitigate floods, mitigate droughts, increase fish production, increase navigation facilities and, thrown in for good measure, control pollution and salinity.

Arun Kumar carefully sets about puncturing these claims in the course of the book. Many of the claims for river inter-linking project are, in fact, ecologically unsound. River flows and the ostensible assessment about the surplus are very contentious. Besides, rates of glacial melt in the Himalayas for the past three decades are enough cause for alarm about how much of the waters from the main stem of the Ganges can be diverted. Added to which there are severe strains with Nepal and Bangladesh on existing river sharing agreements. And included is the mother of all fears about China’s possible move to drain a large part of the upper arm (the Tsangpo) of the Brahmaputra to water its semi arid plains in the Southwest. This is not the mention the fact that an innumerable number of inter-state tensions about river sharing already exist in India such as the Cauveri dispute or the Punjab-Haryana snafu over the SYL canal. Arun Singh also offers some excellent number crunching over the costs of such an endeavour. After all, Rs 56,000 crore (a conservative estimate) as the likely cost of the project is the same amount of money that India has spent in total in the water sector since independence. Planners perhaps forget to note that the economic balance sheet of most large dams and irrigation projects in India has repeatedly been inflated by delays, over expenditure, expected corruption and lowered performance. Arun Kumar rounds off his argument by discussing a slew of international experiences with inter-basin transfers. These experiences underline a strong need for caution. The Aral Sea incident, in which for years two of its in-flowing tributaries were deflected for cotton irrigation, has now become one of the world’s most well-known ecological disaster. Many similar hydraulic disasters in China and the USA are a clear warning to water transfer enthusiasts.

The books discussed in the review should enable the uninitiated to quickly and insightfully grasp the contemporary anxieties and dilemmas about water management in the Indian subcontinent. Clearly, water privatization and the inter-linking of India’s rivers will not be the solution; rather they will further exacerbate an already explosive problem.

Rohan D’Souza

 

WHO WANTS DEMOCRACY? by Javeed Alam. Orient Longman, Hyderabad, 2004.

THERE are far too many of us who bemoan the state of democracy in the country, treat political parties and politicians with scant respect and probably would be happy with a dose of authoritarianism. Underlying this unease, if not cynicism, is a fear of the masses, seen not only as unruly and trapped in pre-modern ascriptive identities and logics but, though this is rarely explicitly articulated, as not ready for democracy. Elections thus are viewed as a farcical exercise managed by an amoral and self-serving political class to retain its stranglehold over public resources. Little surprise that ‘people like us’ are increasingly voting and participating less in our ever more frequent electoral contests.

Javeed Alam’s tract Who Wants Democracy?, if carefully read, will unsettle many of these formulations. As both a highly regarded researcher and political activist, Alam sees a deepening of democracy. Despite the continuing history of broken promises by leaders and parties, and the disturbing state of poverty, illiteracy and ill-health, the poorer and the more marginalised strata not just retain their faith in electoral democracy, returning in ever larger numbers to vote, but engage with this exercise with a view to alter the terms of their existence. In brief, more than us it is they who are the real guardians of democracy in India. ‘In India,’ argues Alam, ‘the life of democracy has come to depend on the politics of the governed. Those who wield power, represent the people and govern the country are not the guardians of democracy. The system works despite their failures, despite their broken promises’ (ix). In explaining this paradox – why is it that those who ostensibly get the least out of a system work the hardest to defend it – Alam argues that democracy has become internal to the people’s consciousness. By giving them a space to fight for their dignity, rights and entitlements, the right to vote helps flatten hierachies and equalises people, enables the underprivileged to transcend their social location and gives them a sense of power that they never experience in real life. In brief, elections and democracy help reaffirm hope, not stifle it.

Drawing on extensive survey data collected by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, Alam tries to give content to the multiple meanings of democracy in India. Relying more on Rousseau than Hobbes or Locke, Javeed Alam emphasizes the centrality of the egalitarian impulse in democracy, crucial in a society characterized by multiple and fluid hierarchies and multiple modes of exclusion. He thus sees the struggle for democracy, through elections and without, as essentially an attempt by those on the margin, the excluded, to alter the terms in which they are incorporated into the system. It is crucial to remember that the elite has many ways to make the ‘system’ conform to their desires; the poor have mainly their numbers and vote.

For all the editorials on the decline of democracy and democratic values in the country, more people today believe that their vote matters. They continue to repose trust in political parties as key institutions of democracy. All this despite only a minority thinking that the representatives care about them. It is instructive that when offered a choice between better governance but no elections and parties, 70% as against 11% rejected the choice. Not that Alam is arguing that all is well with our democracy. He recognises that majorities are often a result of contingent and demagogic factors (garibi hatao, the nation in danger, Hindutva) and that political consciousness is fickle. Even more that our system has so far failed to solve any of the major problems of the common people – work, food, shelter. There is also the systemic denial of rights of people – lower castes, tribes, minorities and women – flowing out of our social structure. Nevertheless, electoral democracy is seen as the most efficacious way to acquire voice, dignity and agency to impact life chances.

Alam’s slim tract is particularly useful for deconstructing the passions around caste (the Mandal question) and the role of minority groupings. It is crucial to underscore that the poor, lower caste and minority groupings vote in greater proportions than earlier – be they adivasis, dalits or Muslims. The same is true of the rural and urban poor. In brief, we are being forced to rework our understanding on who the democratic masses are.

The second insight is that unlike in the past, the poorer strata including the social minorities, are becoming more autonomous of the elite in the expression of their political choices. So for instance, the Congress no longer has a monopoly over dalit, tribal and minority votes. The shift of these votes to a multiplicity of smaller formations, the fluidity between elections, and so on all indicate that these voters can no longer be taken for granted – a healthy trend.

In discussing caste, Alam works with the notion of ‘collective unfreedom’ which implies that unlike the serfs in Europe, lower caste groups, for enhancing their freedom, have to fight collectively, that ‘dignity, equality and rights may accrue to communities first, and then be reflected in individual lives’ (p. 48). Expectedly, therefore, his take on the Mandal agitation and reservations is vastly more sympathetic than most elite commentators. An interesting side implication of his analysis flows out of his understanding of the different roles, aspirations and political affiliations of the emergent middle classes as distinct from the older, established middle classes whom he calls the privilegentsia.

On the Muslim question too, Alam raises the important point about not only the differentiation within the Muslim communities but that the concern for protecting community identity has not automatically given rise to Muslim communitarianism. It is noteworthy that explicit Muslim formations have not come up or gained strength in areas where Hindu communalism has become strong. Instead, Muslim votes go increasingly to different ‘secular’ parties seen as best placed to confront and defeat the forces of Hindutva.

Equally interesting is Alam’s analysis of the growth of right-wing Hindutva and whether it can destabilize Indian democracy. Appreciative of the regressive character of this tendency, Alam reads the 2004 verdict as a rejection of the political project of re-moulding democracy around exclusionary and confessional lines. We thus have been granted a breathing space which needs to be consolidated and expanded.

Simultaneously, Alam reminds us of the original promises of democracy – as enshrined in our Constitution – and warns that persistent non-delivery by ruling elites may erode the faith that our less privileged citizenry has reposed in democratic institutions and means. So far, the covenant has held. The future, however, remains uncertain.

Overall, this brief but dense tract is likely to unsettle many formulations about the working of our democracy and its future. This edition of ‘tracts for the times’ deserves serious engagement.

Harsh Sethi

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