The End of Imran Khan's Revolution

 

Sikh radicalism and votebank politics in Canada

 

Pakistan's Political Instability

The political overlords of a violent underclass

RAJRISHI SINGHAL in the hindu

  

THE HINDU

 

Skewed growth is pushing the marginalised into the arms of waiting netas who turn them into tools of violence

The rape of a photojournalist in midtown Mumbai has revived public indignation and the debate that followed the brutal and barbaric rape of a young Delhi girl in December 2012. Amidst much hand-wringing and a rerun of inanities over national television, talking heads seem to have once again missed the central narrative — the rising tide of assorted violent acts, the political patronage (both explicit and implicit) that’s sponsoring it and how rape might be an integral part of this hostile environment. What’s more, the horrific incidents of rape continue unabated.

As India staggers from a semi-feudal society to one that’s embracing a strange (and hybrid) version of capitalism, violence in its myriad forms has emerged as the dominant template. The repertoire of violence has graduated from booth-capturing during elections to assassinating political opponents (including whistle-blowers), from vandalising art shows to rape and murder. And the culprits seem to be getting away each time. While the government continues to attract a large share of public censure for its inaction, the blame should ideally lie with the entire political class. It is this section of society, and the trajectory of its evolution, which seems to be strengthening the foundations of violence in our society. Every political party today — across all aisles and the entire spectrum — has to maintain a large army of warm bodies, described variously as “lumpen proletariats,” or “lumpens” or “the underclass,” for implementing its dirty tricks.

In simple terms, these are people thought to inhabit the space below the working class. Social scientists use the term to describe anybody who lives outside the pale of the formal wage-labour system. Disenfranchised and conventionally unemployable, political parties use these people to commit acts — most of which are outright criminal — to improve its own popularity and election prospects.

Becoming invincible

When utilised by political parties as the blunt edge of a bludgeon, this section of society acquires a modicum of invincibility. Given the large-scale subversion of the police force by politicians, lumpens have acquired a sense of daredevilry, a brazen approach to law and order. Immunity from arrests and indifference towards due process of law has invested them with a special feeling of invulnerability.

Some of this imperviousness is inevitable as criminals, or individuals with criminal accusations, become elected representatives themselves. This is a disease that afflicts all political parties. According to the Association for Democratic Reforms, 1,448 of India’s 4,835 MPs and State legislators have declared criminal cases against them. In fact, 641 of these 1,448 are facing serious charges like murder, rape and kidnapping.

The violence is also reflective of the pushing and jostling for elusive entitlements, a handmaiden of the stop-go model of development pursued by India. Asynchronous development of the economy and its institutions often lead to the privileged sections of society cornering disproportionate gains, resulting in discontent among the less fortunate. This then becomes a fertile hunting ground for political dividends. As the economy staggers through a new model of development without overhauling the outdated feudal structure — that still discriminates on the basis of caste, sex, class — missed opportunities and unrealised aspirations push many of the deprived into the arms of opportunist politicians.

Divested of education and employment opportunities, bereft of basic health facilities, exploited by the powerful and ignored by society, the underclass can only turn to political warlords for not only survival but to also actualise their dreams and aspirations. They become the shadow army, the heaving underbelly that the urban middle class doesn’t want to talk about.

Writing in the newspaper Business Standard, T.N. Ninan described the men behind the Delhi rape: “The men who raped and killed...have biographies that are starkly different. Their families may not have been from backgrounds vastly different from that of the girl’s father; they too were mostly one generation removed from villages in North Indian states. But they fell through the cracks in the Indian system — cracks that are so large that they are the system itself.”

To be sure, the combination of economic prosperity for a select few and abject poverty for large sections of the population is a guaranteed recipe for social combustion. When privilege, or nepotism, determines access to scarce resources, conflict is bound to erupt. Inequality, of any kind, remains the spring-well for all conflicts.

Violence is also a way of ensuring maintenance of this privilege. On the day of the Mumbai rape incident, a Shiv Sena MLA abused and threatened women employees of a toll booth in Maharashtra. About a fortnight ago, Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena party workers beat up North Indian migrant workers in Kolhapur at random as a protest against the rape of a five-year-old allegedly by a labourer from Jharkhand. Not very long ago, a fringe, religio-political outfit in Mangalore, Karnataka, used the excuse of moral offence to inflict violence against young boys and girls. A senior police officer in Uttar Pradesh was shot dead — allegedly by associates of a local politician — when investigating a land dispute.

Police reforms

If these examples of violence seem random and arbitrary, here is the simple truth: if you can dream up any imaginary offence against any section of society, contemporary Indian political grammar gives you the licence to inflict violence against that segment. In the meantime, certain law officers and do-gooders wanting to eradicate rape and sexual crimes from society seem intent on examining the wrong end of a telescope: they are contemplating a ban on pornography.

What’s even more unfortunate is that the police look on helplessly, since their career progression is tied closely to the moods of political masters orchestrating these unorganised armies. Sometimes, they refuse to act even against political goons out of power because who knows what hand will be dealt during the next election.

There have been numerous suggestions and various committee reports on how to reform the police force. The Supreme Court in 2006 had also suggested seven measures to improve the police force. But like all other tough decisions, the government swept this too under the carpet. In addition, lack of proper investigation and poor documentation by the police often forces the judiciary to put criminals back on the streets even before you can say Amar-Akbar-Anthony. As a result, the fear of law ceases to exist.

Growing intolerance

Another form of violent behaviour is now finding sanction from political parties across ideological divides — a new-found love for banning painters, authors, film-makers, etc. Political parties find justifications for banning any art form, using hired goons — who have perhaps never been acquainted with the contentious piece of work — to vandalise and wreak havoc. Recently, supporters of a right wing party vandalised an art show in Ahmedabad for exhibiting works of Pakistani artists. A political party has to only utter indignant statements about any creative work and a ban is immediately enforced. Canada-based, Indian-born writer Rohinton Mistry’s award winning book Such a Long Journey was hurriedly removed from Mumbai University’s syllabus after similar protests. Violence takes many forms and unfortunately India has become home to most of these varieties: imported terrorism, domestic violence, female foeticide, armed insurgency, criminal activity, communal acts, oppression (of caste or gender), etc. While politics does have an indirect role in promoting domestic violence or some criminal activities, its fingerprints are all too visible in all the other forms of violence perpetrated in the country. It’s surprising that a country which gained independence from colonial powers through the instrument of non-violence should today exhibit such a preponderance of violence in its daily life.

But what is baffling is how, increasingly, rape is committed without any fear of legal reprisal or the extent of punishment that might be meted out. Sample the West Bengal government’s reluctance to prosecute party workers accused of rape. It is therefore not surprising that increasing incidents of mindless violence and sexual assaults are being reported from across the country. Judicial commissions and committees are slowly drawing attention to this aberrant social phenomenon: political sanction for violence.

Verma report

The Justice Verma Committee castigates the political class in its report for pandering to chauvinistic and patently anti-women organisations (such as khap panchayats). The committee also pans the political class for ignoring the rights of women since Independence: “Have we seen an express denunciation by Parliament to deal with offences against women? Have we seen the political establishment ever discuss the rights of women and particularly access of women to education and such other issues over the last 60 years in Parliament? We find that over the last 60 years the space and the quantum of debates which have taken place in Parliament in respect of women’s welfare has been extremely inadequate.”

A licence to kill should ideally live only in fiction. A free hand to maim or murder has created a fascist mindset, a mental construct that is at odds with the aspirations of an ancient civilisation trying to find a place on the high table of the modern, free world. It is often argued that the first step in evolving sustainable solutions probably lies in creating independent institutions. But, that might not be enough. As Nobel Prize winning economist and philosopher Amartya Sen has said in his book The Idea of Justice, the existence of democratic institutions is no guarantee of success. “It depends inescapably on our actual behaviour patterns and the working of political and social interactions.”

The first step then might be to provide everybody with equal opportunity — access to education, employment, health care, basic infrastructure (like water or power) — and to overhaul the political system itself by reforming campaign finance.

The dirty war on WikiLeaks

Media smears suggest Swedish complicity in a Washington-driven push to punish Julian Assange

• 
• • John Pilger
  • guardian.co.uk, Friday 9 March 2012 21.00 GMT

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, arriving for an extradition hearing at the high court in London on 2 November 2011. Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

War by media, says current military doctrine, is as important as the battlefield. This is because the real enemy is the public at home, whose manipulation and deception is essential for starting an unpopular colonial war. Like the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, attacks on Iran and Syria require a steady drip-effect on readers' and viewers' consciousness. This is the essence of a propaganda that rarely speaks its name.

To the chagrin of many in authority and the media, WikiLeaks has torn down the facade behind which rapacious western power and journalism collude. This was an enduring taboo; the BBC could claim impartiality and expect people to believe it. Today, war by media is increasingly understood by the public, as is the trial by media of WikiLeaks' founder and editor Julian Assange.

Assange will soon know if the supreme court in London is to allow his appeal against extradition to Sweden, where he faces allegations of sexual misconduct, most of which were dismissed by a senior prosecutor in Stockholm. On bail for 16 months, tagged and effectively under house arrest, he has been charged with nothing. His "crime" has been an epic form of investigative journalism: revealing to millions of people the lies and machinations of their politicians and officials and the barbarism of criminal war conducted in their name.

For this, as the American historian William Blum points out, "dozens of members of the American media and public officials have called for [his] execution or assassination". If he is passed from Sweden to the US, an orange jumpsuit, shackles and a fabricated indictment await him. And there go all who dare challenge rogue America.

In Britain, Assange's trial by media has been a campaign of character assassination, often cowardly and inhuman, reeking of jealousy of the courageous outsider, while books of perfidious hearsay have been published, movie deals struck and media careers launched or resuscitated on the assumption that he is too poor to sue. In Sweden this trial by media has become, according to one observer there, "a full-on mobbing campaign with the victim denied a voice". For more than 18 months, the salacious Expressen, Sweden's equivalent of the Sun, has been fed the ingredients of a smear by Stockholm police.

Expressen is the megaphone of the Swedish right, including the Conservative party, which dominates the governing coalition. Its latest "scoop" is an unsubstantiated story about "the great WikiLeaks war against Sweden". On 6 March Expressen claimed, with no evidence, that WikiLeaks was running a conspiracy against Sweden and its foreign minister Carl Bildt. The political pique is understandable. In a 2009 US embassy cable obtained by WikiLeaks, the Swedish elite's vaunted reputation for neutrality is exposed as sham. (Cable title: "Sweden puts neutrality in the Dustbin of History.") Another US diplomatic cable reveals that "the extent of [Sweden's military and intelligence] co-operation [with Nato] is not widely known", and unless kept secret "would open up the government to domestic criticism".

Swedish foreign policy is largely controlled by Bildt, whose obeisance to the US goes back to his defence of the Vietnam war and includes his leading role in George W Bush's Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. He retains close ties to Republican party extreme rightwing figures such as the disgraced Bush spin doctor, Karl Rove. It is known that his government has "informally" discussed Assange's future with Washington, which has made its position clear. A secret Pentagon document describes US intelligence plans to destroy WikiLeaks' "centre of gravity" with "threats of exposure [and] criminal prosecution".

In much of the Swedish media, proper journalistic scepticism about the allegations against Assange is overwhelmed by a defensive jingoism, as if the nation's honour is defiled by revelations about dodgy coppers and politicians, a universal breed. On Swedish public TV "experts" debate not the country's deepening militarist state and its service to Nato and Washington, but the state of Assange's mind and his "paranoia". A headline in Tuesday's Aftonbladet declared: "Assange's moral collapse". The article suggests Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks' alleged source, may not be sane, and attacks Assange for not protecting Manning from himself. What was not mentioned was that the source was anonymous, that no connection has been demonstrated between Assange and Manning, and that Aftonbladet, WikiLeaks' Swedish partner, had published the same leaks undeterred.

Ironically, this circus has performed under cover of some of the world's most enlightened laws protecting journalists, which attracted Assange to Sweden in 2010 to establish a base for WikiLeaks. Should his extradition be allowed, and with Damocles swords of malice and a vengeful Washington hanging over his head, who will protect him and provide the justice to which we all have a right?