Published: 29 December 2007
Weird, isn't it, how swiftly the narrative is laid down for us. Benazir Bhutto, the courageous leader of the Pakistan People's Party, is assassinated in Rawalpindi – attached to the very capital of Islamabad wherein ex-General Pervez Musharraf lives – and we are told by George Bush that her murderers were "extremists" and "terrorists". Well, you can't dispute that.
But the implication of the Bush comment was that Islamists were behind the assassination. It was the Taliban madmen again, the al-Qa'ida spider who struck at this lone and brave woman who had dared to call for democracy in her country.
Of course, given the childish coverage of this appalling tragedy – and however corrupt Ms Bhutto may have been, let us be under no illusions that this brave lady is indeed a true martyr – it's not surprising that the "good-versus-evil" donkey can be trotted out to explain the carnage in Rawalpindi.
Who would have imagined, watching the BBC or CNN on Thursday, that her two brothers, Murtaza and Shahnawaz, hijacked a Pakistani airliner in 1981 and flew it to Kabul where Murtaza demanded the release of political prisoners in Pakistan. Here, a military officer on the plane was murdered. There were Americans aboard the flight – which is probably why the prisoners were indeed released.
Only a few days ago – in one of the most remarkable (but typically unrecognised) scoops of the year – Tariq Ali published a brilliant dissection of Pakistan (and Bhutto) corruption in the London Review of Books, focusing on Benazir and headlined: "Daughter of the West". In fact, the article was on my desk to photocopy as its subject was being murdered in Rawalpindi.
Towards the end of this report, Tariq Ali dwelt at length on the subsequent murder of Murtaza Bhutto by police close to his home at a time when Benazir was prime minister – and at a time when Benazir was enraged at Murtaza for demanding a return to PPP values and for condemning Benazir's appointment of her own husband as minister for industry, a highly lucrative post.
In a passage which may yet be applied to the aftermath of Benazir's murder, the report continues: "The fatal bullet had been fired at close range. The trap had been carefully laid, but, as is the way in Pakistan, the crudeness of the operation – false entries in police log-books, lost evidence, witnesses arrested and intimidated – a policeman killed who they feared might talk – made it obvious that the decision to execute the prime minister's brother had been taken at a very high level."
When Murtaza's 14-year-old daughter, Fatima, rang her aunt Benazir to ask why witnesses were being arrested – rather than her father's killers – she says Benazir told her: "Look, you're very young. You don't understand things." Or so Tariq Ali's exposé would have us believe. Over all this, however, looms the shocking power of Pakistan's ISI, the Inter Services Intelligence.
This vast institution – corrupt, venal and brutal – works for Musharraf.
But it also worked – and still works – for the Taliban. It also works for the Americans. In fact, it works for everybody. But it is the key which Musharraf can use to open talks with America's enemies when he feels threatened or wants to put pressure on Afghanistan or wants to appease the " extremists" and "terrorists" who so oppress George Bush. And let us remember, by the way, that Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter beheaded by his Islamist captors in Karachi, actually made his fatal appointment with his future murderers from an ISI commander's office. Ahmed Rashid's book Taliban provides riveting proof of the ISI's web of corruption and violence. Read it, and all of the above makes more sense.
But back to the official narrative. George Bush announced on Thursday he was "looking forward" to talking to his old friend Musharraf. Of course, they would talk about Benazir. They certainly would not talk about the fact that Musharraf continues to protect his old acquaintance – a certain Mr Khan – who supplied all Pakistan's nuclear secrets to Libya and Iran. No, let's not bring that bit of the "axis of evil" into this.
So, of course, we were asked to concentrate once more on all those " extremists" and "terrorists", not on the logic of questioning which many Pakistanis were feeling their way through in the aftermath of Benazir's assassination.
It doesn't, after all, take much to comprehend that the hated elections looming over Musharraf would probably be postponed indefinitely if his principal political opponent happened to be liquidated before polling day.
So let's run through this logic in the way that Inspector Ian Blair might have done in his policeman's notebook before he became the top cop in London.
Question: Who forced Benazir Bhutto to stay in London and tried to prevent her return to Pakistan? Answer: General Musharraf.
Question: Who ordered the arrest of thousands of Benazir's supporters this month? Answer: General Musharraf.
Question: Who placed Benazir under temporary house arrest this month? Answer: General Musharraf.
Question: Who declared martial law this month? Answer General Musharraf.
Question: who killed Benazir Bhutto?
Er. Yes. Well quite.
You see the problem? Yesterday, our television warriors informed us the PPP members shouting that Musharraf was a "murderer" were complaining he had not provided sufficient security for Benazir. Wrong. They were shouting this because they believe he killed her.
'People will forgive you for being wrong, but they will never forgive you for being right - especially if events prove you right while proving them wrong.' Thomas Sowell
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Saturday 29 December 2007
Friday 28 December 2007
A tragedy born of military despotism and anarchy
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto heaps despair upon Pakistan. Now her party must be democratically rebuilt
Tariq Ali
Friday December 28, 2007
The Guardian
Even those of us sharply critical of Benazir Bhutto's behaviour and policies - both while she was in office and more recently - are stunned and angered by her death. Indignation and fear stalk the country once again.
An odd coexistence of military despotism and anarchy created the conditions leading to her assassination in Rawalpindi yesterday. In the past, military rule was designed to preserve order - and did so for a few years. No longer. Today it creates disorder and promotes lawlessness. How else can one explain the sacking of the chief justice and eight other judges of the country's supreme court for attempting to hold the government's intelligence agencies and the police accountable to courts of law? Their replacements lack the backbone to do anything, let alone conduct a proper inquest into the misdeeds of the agencies to uncover the truth behind the carefully organised killing of a major political leader.
How can Pakistan today be anything but a conflagration of despair? It is assumed that the killers were jihadi fanatics. This may well be true, but were they acting on their own?
Benazir, according to those close to her, had been tempted to boycott the fake elections, but she lacked the political courage to defy Washington. She had plenty of physical courage, and refused to be cowed by threats from local opponents. She had been addressing an election rally in Liaquat Bagh. This is a popular space named after the country's first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, who was killed by an assassin in 1953. The killer, Said Akbar, was immediately shot dead on the orders of a police officer involved in the plot. Not far from here, there once stood a colonial structure where nationalists were imprisoned. This was Rawalpindi jail. It was here that Benazir's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged in April 1979. The military tyrant responsible for his judicial murder made sure the site of the tragedy was destroyed as well.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's death poisoned relations between his Pakistan People's party and the army. Party activists, particularly in the province of Sind, were brutally tortured, humiliated and, sometimes, disappeared or killed.
Pakistan's turbulent history, a result of continuous military rule and unpopular global alliances, confronts the ruling elite now with serious choices. They appear to have no positive aims. The overwhelming majority of the country disapproves of the government's foreign policy. They are angered by its lack of a serious domestic policy except for further enriching a callous and greedy elite that includes a swollen, parasitic military. Now they watch helplessly as politicians are shot dead in front of them.
Benazir had survived the bomb blast yesterday but was felled by bullets fired at her car. The assassins, mindful of their failure in Karachi a month ago, had taken out a double insurance this time. They wanted her dead. It is impossible for even a rigged election to take place now. It will have to be postponed, and the military high command is no doubt contemplating another dose of army rule if the situation gets worse, which could easily happen.
What has happened is a multilayered tragedy. It's a tragedy for a country on a road to more disasters. Torrents and foaming cataracts lie ahead. And it is a personal tragedy. The house of Bhutto has lost another member. Father, two sons and now a daughter have all died unnatural deaths.
I first met Benazir at her father's house in Karachi when she was a fun-loving teenager, and later at Oxford. She was not a natural politician and had always wanted to be a diplomat, but history and personal tragedy pushed in the other direction. Her father's death transformed her. She had become a new person, determined to take on the military dictator of that time. She had moved to a tiny flat in London, where we would endlessly discuss the future of the country. She would agree that land reforms, mass education programmes, a health service and an independent foreign policy were positive constructive aims and crucial if the country was to be saved from the vultures in and out of uniform. Her constituency was the poor, and she was proud of the fact.
She changed again after becoming prime minister. In the early days, we would argue and in response to my numerous complaints - all she would say was that the world had changed. She couldn't be on the "wrong side" of history. And so, like many others, she made her peace with Washington. It was this that finally led to the deal with Musharraf and her return home after more than a decade in exile. On a number of occasions she told me that she did not fear death. It was one of the dangers of playing politics in Pakistan.
It is difficult to imagine any good coming out of this tragedy, but there is one possibility. Pakistan desperately needs a political party that can speak for the social needs of a bulk of the people. The People's party founded by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was built by the activists of the only popular mass movement the country has known: students, peasants and workers who fought for three months in 1968-69 to topple the country's first military dictator. They saw it as their party, and that feeling persists in some parts of the country to this day, despite everything.
Benazir's horrific death should give her colleagues pause for reflection. To be dependent on a person or a family may be necessary at certain times, but it is a structural weakness, not a strength for a political organisation. The People's party needs to be refounded as a modern and democratic organisation, open to honest debate and discussion, defending social and human rights, uniting the many disparate groups and individuals in Pakistan desperate for any halfway decent alternative, and coming forward with concrete proposals to stabilise occupied and war-torn Afghanistan. This can and should be done. The Bhutto family should not be asked for any more sacrifices.
Tariq Ali
Friday December 28, 2007
The Guardian
Even those of us sharply critical of Benazir Bhutto's behaviour and policies - both while she was in office and more recently - are stunned and angered by her death. Indignation and fear stalk the country once again.
An odd coexistence of military despotism and anarchy created the conditions leading to her assassination in Rawalpindi yesterday. In the past, military rule was designed to preserve order - and did so for a few years. No longer. Today it creates disorder and promotes lawlessness. How else can one explain the sacking of the chief justice and eight other judges of the country's supreme court for attempting to hold the government's intelligence agencies and the police accountable to courts of law? Their replacements lack the backbone to do anything, let alone conduct a proper inquest into the misdeeds of the agencies to uncover the truth behind the carefully organised killing of a major political leader.
How can Pakistan today be anything but a conflagration of despair? It is assumed that the killers were jihadi fanatics. This may well be true, but were they acting on their own?
Benazir, according to those close to her, had been tempted to boycott the fake elections, but she lacked the political courage to defy Washington. She had plenty of physical courage, and refused to be cowed by threats from local opponents. She had been addressing an election rally in Liaquat Bagh. This is a popular space named after the country's first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, who was killed by an assassin in 1953. The killer, Said Akbar, was immediately shot dead on the orders of a police officer involved in the plot. Not far from here, there once stood a colonial structure where nationalists were imprisoned. This was Rawalpindi jail. It was here that Benazir's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged in April 1979. The military tyrant responsible for his judicial murder made sure the site of the tragedy was destroyed as well.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's death poisoned relations between his Pakistan People's party and the army. Party activists, particularly in the province of Sind, were brutally tortured, humiliated and, sometimes, disappeared or killed.
Pakistan's turbulent history, a result of continuous military rule and unpopular global alliances, confronts the ruling elite now with serious choices. They appear to have no positive aims. The overwhelming majority of the country disapproves of the government's foreign policy. They are angered by its lack of a serious domestic policy except for further enriching a callous and greedy elite that includes a swollen, parasitic military. Now they watch helplessly as politicians are shot dead in front of them.
Benazir had survived the bomb blast yesterday but was felled by bullets fired at her car. The assassins, mindful of their failure in Karachi a month ago, had taken out a double insurance this time. They wanted her dead. It is impossible for even a rigged election to take place now. It will have to be postponed, and the military high command is no doubt contemplating another dose of army rule if the situation gets worse, which could easily happen.
What has happened is a multilayered tragedy. It's a tragedy for a country on a road to more disasters. Torrents and foaming cataracts lie ahead. And it is a personal tragedy. The house of Bhutto has lost another member. Father, two sons and now a daughter have all died unnatural deaths.
I first met Benazir at her father's house in Karachi when she was a fun-loving teenager, and later at Oxford. She was not a natural politician and had always wanted to be a diplomat, but history and personal tragedy pushed in the other direction. Her father's death transformed her. She had become a new person, determined to take on the military dictator of that time. She had moved to a tiny flat in London, where we would endlessly discuss the future of the country. She would agree that land reforms, mass education programmes, a health service and an independent foreign policy were positive constructive aims and crucial if the country was to be saved from the vultures in and out of uniform. Her constituency was the poor, and she was proud of the fact.
She changed again after becoming prime minister. In the early days, we would argue and in response to my numerous complaints - all she would say was that the world had changed. She couldn't be on the "wrong side" of history. And so, like many others, she made her peace with Washington. It was this that finally led to the deal with Musharraf and her return home after more than a decade in exile. On a number of occasions she told me that she did not fear death. It was one of the dangers of playing politics in Pakistan.
It is difficult to imagine any good coming out of this tragedy, but there is one possibility. Pakistan desperately needs a political party that can speak for the social needs of a bulk of the people. The People's party founded by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was built by the activists of the only popular mass movement the country has known: students, peasants and workers who fought for three months in 1968-69 to topple the country's first military dictator. They saw it as their party, and that feeling persists in some parts of the country to this day, despite everything.
Benazir's horrific death should give her colleagues pause for reflection. To be dependent on a person or a family may be necessary at certain times, but it is a structural weakness, not a strength for a political organisation. The People's party needs to be refounded as a modern and democratic organisation, open to honest debate and discussion, defending social and human rights, uniting the many disparate groups and individuals in Pakistan desperate for any halfway decent alternative, and coming forward with concrete proposals to stabilise occupied and war-torn Afghanistan. This can and should be done. The Bhutto family should not be asked for any more sacrifices.
Friday 21 December 2007
The Seduction Of Indifference, Again And Again And Again
By Gaither Stewart
20 December, 2007
Countercurrents.org
(Rome) Yesterday I ran into a poem I had read as a student in Germany written by the Luthern Pastor, Martin Niemöller, who broke with the Nazis in 1933 and became a symbol of the German resistance. His words prompted me to look more closely at the complex subject of indifference he speaks of. Niemöller wrote the following at war’s end in 1945:
First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.
In my mind the subject of indifference is not a closed end affair. You don’t even need a password to enter this site. Most certainly I cannot relegate the matter to “oh, that, well, we’re all indifferent to many things in life.” If so it would imply “indifference to indifference,” which in my mind is located still another ring deeper in the Dantesque Inferno. In that respect; I hope that here, as Baudrillard writes, words will prove to be carriers of ideas and not the reverse.
Life Is Oh So Beautiful
Recently one-third of Italian TV viewers watched a 100-minute tour de force of a literary-political interpretation of Dante’s Divine Comedy delivered by comic philosopher Roberto Benigni (Remember the film, Life Is Beautiful!). At the point Benigni referred to the “indifference” of Dante’s characters in his Inferno, I ran for pen and paper.
Making notes on indifference, I have continued thinking about that grassroots activist in Asheville, North Carolina who warns that voting is just not enough to change things. As a growing number of others like her, she feels frustrated because of the widespread indifference to Power’s deviations. I have in mind the polls showing that over half of Americans oppose the war in Iraq, oppose how it is conducted and its costs to America, and some are even horrified by the slaughter of Iraqi people.
The other side of the coin is that, amazingly, nearly half the public either favors the war against Iraq or they just don’t care one way or the other. Those many millions of people display an inexplicable indifference to the reality of the suffering, indifference to war’s uselessness and to its criminal-terroristic nature.
Some writers have long dealt with that one aspect of indifference, the indifference that the strong feel toward the weak. In the end most concord that such indifference is frivolity and knavery and cowardice.
Categories of Indifference
It’s true that there are many kinds of indifference and many things to which we can be indifferent. Animals can be loving and attentive one moment and totally indifferent the next. Just watch a cat, after a few caresses it marches away triumphantly. Nature in general is indifferent. Medieval Europe was incredibly indifferent to the great Alpine chain—the magnificent geographical mountain divide of the continent. Especially the Papal State was indifferent to nature in general and to its former territories around Rome in particular.
Researching the word indifference I re-encountered Albert Camus’ notation of the universe’s “benign indifference” toward creation. Also my former professor Nobel poet Czeslaw Milosz was fascinated by “the contradiction between man’s longing for good and the cold universe absolutely indifferent to any values. “If we put aside our humanity,” Milosz writes, “we realize that the world is neither good nor bad—it just is.”
The spark of human life in us differentiates us from nature, which, though neither good nor evil, doesn’t always seem neutral. But in human beings the battle between good and evil is eternal. From that point of view humanity is also in battle with nature, against its apparent meaninglessness. We humans instead search for meaning.
Therefore man is an alien creature in the universe because he cannot be genuinely indifferent to what is good and what is bad.
In that sense, the indifference of reasonable people to war seems inconceivable. In the same western generation that was obsessed enough with the Vietnam War to help bring it to an end, the indifference to the Middle East wars today seems impossible.
Back To Earth
This year Italy is marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Alberto Moravia, a major novelist of the 20th century. Born to a family of the Rome bourgeoisie in 1907, Moravia published his most famous novel, The Age of Indifference, at age 22. That story shows the apathy of Rome bourgeois society during the same time that Fascism was taking root in the nation.
“All these people,” Moravia’s protagonist, Michele, thinks, “have something to live for, whereas I have nothing. If I don’t walk, I sit; it makes no difference.” Michele knows he should act but never succeeds in shaking off his inertia. All actions and situations are alike for him. He is indifferent to emerging Fascism as were the masses of Germans during the rise of Nazism.
Here one might shrug and say indifference today is so general that it is not worth reflection. What difference does it make? Nonetheless here are some examples.
Indifference means “no difference.” On a basic human level, the indifference of one person to the other in a dwindling love affair is emblematic of the terrible impact of indifference in any field at all. As French chansonnier Serge Gainsbourg sang of his love for Brigit Bardot: What does the weather matter, What matters the wind! Better your absence than your indifference. Or Gilbert Becaud’s words: Indifference kills with small blows.
For Indifference, as Martin Niemöller and most people of the murderous 20th century know, is the destroyer of whole societies. I have excerpted some lines from a speech on Indifference by Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate, Elie Wiesel, delivered in the White House on April 12, 1999:
A strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur between … good and evil. Is there a philosophy of indifference conceivable? Can one possibly view indifference as a virtue?
Of course, indifference can be tempting—more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from victims….In a way, to be indifferent to suffering is what makes the human being inhuman.
Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony, one does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative.…Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor.
What Is the Alternative?
For me the opposite of indifference is involvement. It’s the search that leads to fulfillment, the extraordinary event we wait and hope for that interrupts the everyday flow of time. It is a kind of transcendence that points toward answers to questions like, ‘What am I as an individual?’ ‘What is my life all about?’ ‘Do I count?’
The answers to such questions however are forever misty and cloudy. We are aware—just barely aware—of that something hovering in the beyond, which at some rare times, for brief moments, seems within reach. It is something like longing for an impossible Utopia that we aspire to, most certainly the conviction that we are not neutral in the world.
However, that devil and prison of Indifference—and the indifference to indifference—excludes a priori the possibility of those high moments of existence that make life worth living.
Three Steps Back
So what, all these quotes and reflections about indifference! What does it mean today? What does it mean to me personally? Am I involved and committed just because I am aware of indifference? Does it even matter?
At this point I want to retrace my steps toward the heart of the subject at hand: indifference toward evil.
Late in life, the great Argentinean writer, Jorge Borges, denied he wrote for either an elite or the masses; he wrote for a circle of friends. This claim is familiar but suspect. His thesis that “there is a kind of lazy pleasure in useless and out-of-the-way erudition” is dangerous banter. Nobel Prize winner this year, Doris Lessing, said in an interview last October that she wrote for herself, for what interested her at the time. But her case is different from that of Borges, for she always dealt in ideas—anti-war for example.
Indifference toward evil! In 2002, I “covered” the G-8 conference in Genoa, a phony show, which ended with the murder of a real little man dressed in black. An Italian, from the suburbs of this port city, he called himself an Anarchist. The Big 8 labeled him an enemy of globalization, of the free market, an enemy of progress. While representatives of the rich world were barricaded inside the safe zone and served sumptuous meals by hordes of servants, they exchanged expensive gifts that were/are slaps in the face of the poverty they had gathered to combat.
Leaders of the world’s eight richest nations nonchalantly discussed poverty in Africa, issued casual sentences about the economies they do not control, imparted lessons they themselves do not observe, and finally budgeted the indifferent sum of 1.3 billion dollars to combat epidemics in Africa, a few pennies for each African dying of AIDS, a sum reportedly equal to one-eighth of the annual cost of only the tests for the US space shield project.
As inhuman as it is, indifference to suffering is bearable as long as it is invisible. We all experience that each day watching newscasts. Indifference to war is something else; were it not for the enthusiastic way humans participate in war we could call it inhuman.
Most people know of someone whose loved one died in US foreign wars for absurd reasons. But then time passes. Wounds heal. Indifference takes over.
Ignorant and deaf indifference is bad enough. But today, in Europe and the United States where information abounds, we have to call conscious indifference to war and injustice, and also its brother “indifference to indifference,” criminal and evil.
Here is an example of active indifference: the Chávez referendum in Venezuela. A former journalist acquaintance in Rome when he was the correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, today an editor and columnist of the New York Times, in his articles about Chávez on the eve of the referendum, was remarkably indifferent to what is really happening in Venezuela. A talented but overly ambitious journalist, he, like the newspaper he works for, is aware of but indifferent to the reasons that Venezuela and most of Latin America are striving for independence from the USA, whether its struggle is called “Socialism of the 21st Century” as in Venezuela, or “Agrarian Revolution” as in Bolivia.
Indifference! It doesn’t matter! Indifference appears in all places and at all times about every subject that has no direct, personal bearing on one’s own little life.
Indifference about global warming.
Indifference about national health care.
Indifference about poverty and the abyss between rich and poor.
Indifference to the value of labor and the working man.
Indifference about a society based on euphemisms and slogans.
Indifference about public corruption and crime.
Indifference about violence against women.
Indifference about arms controls.
Indifference about the government defrauding its citizens.
Indifference about the indifference granting the government license to defraud citizens.
Indifference about capital punishment.
Indifference about bombing civilians from the stratosphere.
Indifference about facts.
Indifference about a free press.
Indifference about indifference.
I made this list, sat back and examined it again and again, added one more indifference, deleted another, and turned a few words until I came to realize I had omitted the principle indifference: the indifference to evil itself that creates the things about which we are indifferent.
This rings complex but in fact it is not.
And I realized too that indifference is in fact often active indifference. It encourages indifference in others.
In a speech in 1908 Eugene Debs, the great Socialist trade unionist-activist, said more or less what Pastor Niemöller said in his poem a half century later: the indifferent ones do not see others. Theirs is a life of emptiness, devoid of any future. Debs recalled that thousands of years ago the question was asked: ''Am I my brother's keeper?''
Our society refuses to answer that question.
20 December, 2007
Countercurrents.org
(Rome) Yesterday I ran into a poem I had read as a student in Germany written by the Luthern Pastor, Martin Niemöller, who broke with the Nazis in 1933 and became a symbol of the German resistance. His words prompted me to look more closely at the complex subject of indifference he speaks of. Niemöller wrote the following at war’s end in 1945:
First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.
In my mind the subject of indifference is not a closed end affair. You don’t even need a password to enter this site. Most certainly I cannot relegate the matter to “oh, that, well, we’re all indifferent to many things in life.” If so it would imply “indifference to indifference,” which in my mind is located still another ring deeper in the Dantesque Inferno. In that respect; I hope that here, as Baudrillard writes, words will prove to be carriers of ideas and not the reverse.
Life Is Oh So Beautiful
Recently one-third of Italian TV viewers watched a 100-minute tour de force of a literary-political interpretation of Dante’s Divine Comedy delivered by comic philosopher Roberto Benigni (Remember the film, Life Is Beautiful!). At the point Benigni referred to the “indifference” of Dante’s characters in his Inferno, I ran for pen and paper.
Making notes on indifference, I have continued thinking about that grassroots activist in Asheville, North Carolina who warns that voting is just not enough to change things. As a growing number of others like her, she feels frustrated because of the widespread indifference to Power’s deviations. I have in mind the polls showing that over half of Americans oppose the war in Iraq, oppose how it is conducted and its costs to America, and some are even horrified by the slaughter of Iraqi people.
The other side of the coin is that, amazingly, nearly half the public either favors the war against Iraq or they just don’t care one way or the other. Those many millions of people display an inexplicable indifference to the reality of the suffering, indifference to war’s uselessness and to its criminal-terroristic nature.
Some writers have long dealt with that one aspect of indifference, the indifference that the strong feel toward the weak. In the end most concord that such indifference is frivolity and knavery and cowardice.
Categories of Indifference
It’s true that there are many kinds of indifference and many things to which we can be indifferent. Animals can be loving and attentive one moment and totally indifferent the next. Just watch a cat, after a few caresses it marches away triumphantly. Nature in general is indifferent. Medieval Europe was incredibly indifferent to the great Alpine chain—the magnificent geographical mountain divide of the continent. Especially the Papal State was indifferent to nature in general and to its former territories around Rome in particular.
Researching the word indifference I re-encountered Albert Camus’ notation of the universe’s “benign indifference” toward creation. Also my former professor Nobel poet Czeslaw Milosz was fascinated by “the contradiction between man’s longing for good and the cold universe absolutely indifferent to any values. “If we put aside our humanity,” Milosz writes, “we realize that the world is neither good nor bad—it just is.”
The spark of human life in us differentiates us from nature, which, though neither good nor evil, doesn’t always seem neutral. But in human beings the battle between good and evil is eternal. From that point of view humanity is also in battle with nature, against its apparent meaninglessness. We humans instead search for meaning.
Therefore man is an alien creature in the universe because he cannot be genuinely indifferent to what is good and what is bad.
In that sense, the indifference of reasonable people to war seems inconceivable. In the same western generation that was obsessed enough with the Vietnam War to help bring it to an end, the indifference to the Middle East wars today seems impossible.
Back To Earth
This year Italy is marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Alberto Moravia, a major novelist of the 20th century. Born to a family of the Rome bourgeoisie in 1907, Moravia published his most famous novel, The Age of Indifference, at age 22. That story shows the apathy of Rome bourgeois society during the same time that Fascism was taking root in the nation.
“All these people,” Moravia’s protagonist, Michele, thinks, “have something to live for, whereas I have nothing. If I don’t walk, I sit; it makes no difference.” Michele knows he should act but never succeeds in shaking off his inertia. All actions and situations are alike for him. He is indifferent to emerging Fascism as were the masses of Germans during the rise of Nazism.
Here one might shrug and say indifference today is so general that it is not worth reflection. What difference does it make? Nonetheless here are some examples.
Indifference means “no difference.” On a basic human level, the indifference of one person to the other in a dwindling love affair is emblematic of the terrible impact of indifference in any field at all. As French chansonnier Serge Gainsbourg sang of his love for Brigit Bardot: What does the weather matter, What matters the wind! Better your absence than your indifference. Or Gilbert Becaud’s words: Indifference kills with small blows.
For Indifference, as Martin Niemöller and most people of the murderous 20th century know, is the destroyer of whole societies. I have excerpted some lines from a speech on Indifference by Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate, Elie Wiesel, delivered in the White House on April 12, 1999:
A strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur between … good and evil. Is there a philosophy of indifference conceivable? Can one possibly view indifference as a virtue?
Of course, indifference can be tempting—more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from victims….In a way, to be indifferent to suffering is what makes the human being inhuman.
Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony, one does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative.…Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor.
What Is the Alternative?
For me the opposite of indifference is involvement. It’s the search that leads to fulfillment, the extraordinary event we wait and hope for that interrupts the everyday flow of time. It is a kind of transcendence that points toward answers to questions like, ‘What am I as an individual?’ ‘What is my life all about?’ ‘Do I count?’
The answers to such questions however are forever misty and cloudy. We are aware—just barely aware—of that something hovering in the beyond, which at some rare times, for brief moments, seems within reach. It is something like longing for an impossible Utopia that we aspire to, most certainly the conviction that we are not neutral in the world.
However, that devil and prison of Indifference—and the indifference to indifference—excludes a priori the possibility of those high moments of existence that make life worth living.
Three Steps Back
So what, all these quotes and reflections about indifference! What does it mean today? What does it mean to me personally? Am I involved and committed just because I am aware of indifference? Does it even matter?
At this point I want to retrace my steps toward the heart of the subject at hand: indifference toward evil.
Late in life, the great Argentinean writer, Jorge Borges, denied he wrote for either an elite or the masses; he wrote for a circle of friends. This claim is familiar but suspect. His thesis that “there is a kind of lazy pleasure in useless and out-of-the-way erudition” is dangerous banter. Nobel Prize winner this year, Doris Lessing, said in an interview last October that she wrote for herself, for what interested her at the time. But her case is different from that of Borges, for she always dealt in ideas—anti-war for example.
Indifference toward evil! In 2002, I “covered” the G-8 conference in Genoa, a phony show, which ended with the murder of a real little man dressed in black. An Italian, from the suburbs of this port city, he called himself an Anarchist. The Big 8 labeled him an enemy of globalization, of the free market, an enemy of progress. While representatives of the rich world were barricaded inside the safe zone and served sumptuous meals by hordes of servants, they exchanged expensive gifts that were/are slaps in the face of the poverty they had gathered to combat.
Leaders of the world’s eight richest nations nonchalantly discussed poverty in Africa, issued casual sentences about the economies they do not control, imparted lessons they themselves do not observe, and finally budgeted the indifferent sum of 1.3 billion dollars to combat epidemics in Africa, a few pennies for each African dying of AIDS, a sum reportedly equal to one-eighth of the annual cost of only the tests for the US space shield project.
As inhuman as it is, indifference to suffering is bearable as long as it is invisible. We all experience that each day watching newscasts. Indifference to war is something else; were it not for the enthusiastic way humans participate in war we could call it inhuman.
Most people know of someone whose loved one died in US foreign wars for absurd reasons. But then time passes. Wounds heal. Indifference takes over.
Ignorant and deaf indifference is bad enough. But today, in Europe and the United States where information abounds, we have to call conscious indifference to war and injustice, and also its brother “indifference to indifference,” criminal and evil.
Here is an example of active indifference: the Chávez referendum in Venezuela. A former journalist acquaintance in Rome when he was the correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, today an editor and columnist of the New York Times, in his articles about Chávez on the eve of the referendum, was remarkably indifferent to what is really happening in Venezuela. A talented but overly ambitious journalist, he, like the newspaper he works for, is aware of but indifferent to the reasons that Venezuela and most of Latin America are striving for independence from the USA, whether its struggle is called “Socialism of the 21st Century” as in Venezuela, or “Agrarian Revolution” as in Bolivia.
Indifference! It doesn’t matter! Indifference appears in all places and at all times about every subject that has no direct, personal bearing on one’s own little life.
Indifference about global warming.
Indifference about national health care.
Indifference about poverty and the abyss between rich and poor.
Indifference to the value of labor and the working man.
Indifference about a society based on euphemisms and slogans.
Indifference about public corruption and crime.
Indifference about violence against women.
Indifference about arms controls.
Indifference about the government defrauding its citizens.
Indifference about the indifference granting the government license to defraud citizens.
Indifference about capital punishment.
Indifference about bombing civilians from the stratosphere.
Indifference about facts.
Indifference about a free press.
Indifference about indifference.
I made this list, sat back and examined it again and again, added one more indifference, deleted another, and turned a few words until I came to realize I had omitted the principle indifference: the indifference to evil itself that creates the things about which we are indifferent.
This rings complex but in fact it is not.
And I realized too that indifference is in fact often active indifference. It encourages indifference in others.
In a speech in 1908 Eugene Debs, the great Socialist trade unionist-activist, said more or less what Pastor Niemöller said in his poem a half century later: the indifferent ones do not see others. Theirs is a life of emptiness, devoid of any future. Debs recalled that thousands of years ago the question was asked: ''Am I my brother's keeper?''
Our society refuses to answer that question.
Thursday 20 December 2007
"British Citizens"?
"British Citizens"?
Posted June 16th, 2007 by Priyamvada Gopal
The kind of citizenship and Britishness that is being called for by Gordon Brown is facile and ceremonial rather than truly engaged and reflective…
“British citizens” -what a good idea! So as the Blair era recedes into the twilight of lucrative speaking fees, so, it seems, are the sanctimonious and so far, futile, tears for Africa. The Brown rhetorical drum will be beating instead for that not-so-new chestnut, ‘Britishness’. The Chancellor has long been talking, of course, about the need for a cohesive national identity and celebratory days. But as Brownism becomes official, we are hearing more now about a ‘citizenship revolution’ (a terrific idea if it were really were to happen), further tests for migrants (as of April, you have to prove knowledge of British life before you can even stay on as a resident, leave alone become a passport holder) and citizenship courses for migrants and teenagers. Jack Straw, campaign manager for the coronation of Brown as Labour leader, has been puffing away on what he calls the ‘British story’, the need for a common vision of ‘freedom and democracy’. Excellent values, both, of course, if the government could actually find a way to broaden their scope.
Excellent too is the idea of having British citizens. It would mean, of course, that all Britons would, in fact, become citizens of a democratic republic rather, agents than “Subjects” of a monarch and head of church with a Divine Right to rule. If in the process we could get to discuss a ‘common vision’ rather than having it imposed on us by the benevolent all-knowing patriarchs of New Labour, then the possibilities are endless (‘Blue skies’. I’ve been listening to Blair for too long….). As many in Britain’s former colonies were able to do as their new nations came into being after wresting freedom from their imperial rulers, Britons too could finally participate in a debate about what it means to be a nation and to participate in a national community. Precisely such a debate gave India a constitution, for instance, and whatever (the many) crises and betrayals that have followed independence, there has always been a point of reference, a constitution which enshrined civic, social and political values to which citizens and activists can appeal (and which the corrupt can honour in the breach). If the ‘citizenship revolution’ can give Britain this much, then let us rush to the barricades.
This revolution (Straw wants a Bastille Day equivalent without a Bastille day) could, in theory, open up a discussion not on what British values are (sententious rhetoric about tolerance and fair play) but on what they should be. Liberty and tolerance are apparently there already, but perhaps they need closer examination. Can we talk about social justice as a national value: a liveable, not just a minimum, wage? Affordable housing for the citizenry? Higher taxes for the really wealthy without it being perniciously and falsely termed ‘the politics of envy’, one of New Labour’s many borrowings from Toryspeak? Truth in politics? (Or would that bring too many politicians down and cause Prime Ministers to resign?). Broad internationalism (productive dialogue with and relationships with nations other than the United States)? Can we talk about ‘community’ without it being immediately collapsed into ‘faith communities’ as though religion were the only axis around which communities can arrange themselves? ‘Inclusivity’ that isn’t just about making sure there are a few women and ethnic minorities in the group photograph but also about addressing economic marginalisation? It’s not just the flag that the Right has appropriated but also the moral high ground on questions of disenfranchisement and marginalisation. Much easier to take the Union Jack back than to seriously address the gap between rich and poor Britons without scoffing at something called ‘envy’ (I think they mean what was once called ‘fairness’).
But the reason all these more substantial ideas about a common vision won’t fly is that the kind of citizenship and Britishness that is being called for is facile and ceremonial rather than truly engaged and reflective. It’s easy to say that we should reclaim the Union Jack and patriotism from the far Right but more challenging to discuss how we might rewrite and reposition what we take back from them. So much easier to call for a ‘British story’, (a fairytale? myth? legend?)as Straw does than to address a complex national British reality. What greater warning could there be then that Brown and Straw want this story and accompanying ceremonies to ‘mimic’ America and its Fourth of July celebrations. THAT story with its exclusions and glossings over (the butchery, the genocide, the landgrabbing, the plantations worked by slave labour)! Is that what we really want to imitate? Look where it has taken that country (and Britain, in the bargain).
And if we really are talking about an inclusive and cohesive national community, then why are all the models and ‘equivalents’ drawn from Europe or America? This ia country with citizens descended from Asian, Africans and Caribbean nations. What about those stories and traditions—the great traditions of uprisings against slavery and struggles against imperialism? Should we not be memorialising them too and learning about traditions of democracy and debate outside Europe? For it is not only false but counter-productive to talk about ideas of liberty and participatory governance as though they were purely European ideas; it encourages false oppositions which each chauvinists on all sides can take refuge in. Until ethnic minorities, including British Muslims, can participate in a ‘story’ and history which reminds them that they too come from great traditions of debate, dissent and humane thinking, ‘Britishness’ will continue to be a narrative aimed at outsiders expected to integrate by swallowing its complacent assumptions wholesale – thereby denying their own cultural heritages of tolerance and diversity.
We DO need a debate on national community and common values. But until it is offered as a challenge (for politicians as much as the citizen-subjects) and goal to strive for rather than a given ‘story’, we will keep circling the wagons and rehearsing the same old divisive cliches. Let’s wrest Britishness and citizenship away not only from the right, but from Brownian myth-making as well. Then we’ll have something to celebrate.
Posted June 16th, 2007 by Priyamvada Gopal
The kind of citizenship and Britishness that is being called for by Gordon Brown is facile and ceremonial rather than truly engaged and reflective…
“British citizens” -what a good idea! So as the Blair era recedes into the twilight of lucrative speaking fees, so, it seems, are the sanctimonious and so far, futile, tears for Africa. The Brown rhetorical drum will be beating instead for that not-so-new chestnut, ‘Britishness’. The Chancellor has long been talking, of course, about the need for a cohesive national identity and celebratory days. But as Brownism becomes official, we are hearing more now about a ‘citizenship revolution’ (a terrific idea if it were really were to happen), further tests for migrants (as of April, you have to prove knowledge of British life before you can even stay on as a resident, leave alone become a passport holder) and citizenship courses for migrants and teenagers. Jack Straw, campaign manager for the coronation of Brown as Labour leader, has been puffing away on what he calls the ‘British story’, the need for a common vision of ‘freedom and democracy’. Excellent values, both, of course, if the government could actually find a way to broaden their scope.
Excellent too is the idea of having British citizens. It would mean, of course, that all Britons would, in fact, become citizens of a democratic republic rather, agents than “Subjects” of a monarch and head of church with a Divine Right to rule. If in the process we could get to discuss a ‘common vision’ rather than having it imposed on us by the benevolent all-knowing patriarchs of New Labour, then the possibilities are endless (‘Blue skies’. I’ve been listening to Blair for too long….). As many in Britain’s former colonies were able to do as their new nations came into being after wresting freedom from their imperial rulers, Britons too could finally participate in a debate about what it means to be a nation and to participate in a national community. Precisely such a debate gave India a constitution, for instance, and whatever (the many) crises and betrayals that have followed independence, there has always been a point of reference, a constitution which enshrined civic, social and political values to which citizens and activists can appeal (and which the corrupt can honour in the breach). If the ‘citizenship revolution’ can give Britain this much, then let us rush to the barricades.
This revolution (Straw wants a Bastille Day equivalent without a Bastille day) could, in theory, open up a discussion not on what British values are (sententious rhetoric about tolerance and fair play) but on what they should be. Liberty and tolerance are apparently there already, but perhaps they need closer examination. Can we talk about social justice as a national value: a liveable, not just a minimum, wage? Affordable housing for the citizenry? Higher taxes for the really wealthy without it being perniciously and falsely termed ‘the politics of envy’, one of New Labour’s many borrowings from Toryspeak? Truth in politics? (Or would that bring too many politicians down and cause Prime Ministers to resign?). Broad internationalism (productive dialogue with and relationships with nations other than the United States)? Can we talk about ‘community’ without it being immediately collapsed into ‘faith communities’ as though religion were the only axis around which communities can arrange themselves? ‘Inclusivity’ that isn’t just about making sure there are a few women and ethnic minorities in the group photograph but also about addressing economic marginalisation? It’s not just the flag that the Right has appropriated but also the moral high ground on questions of disenfranchisement and marginalisation. Much easier to take the Union Jack back than to seriously address the gap between rich and poor Britons without scoffing at something called ‘envy’ (I think they mean what was once called ‘fairness’).
But the reason all these more substantial ideas about a common vision won’t fly is that the kind of citizenship and Britishness that is being called for is facile and ceremonial rather than truly engaged and reflective. It’s easy to say that we should reclaim the Union Jack and patriotism from the far Right but more challenging to discuss how we might rewrite and reposition what we take back from them. So much easier to call for a ‘British story’, (a fairytale? myth? legend?)as Straw does than to address a complex national British reality. What greater warning could there be then that Brown and Straw want this story and accompanying ceremonies to ‘mimic’ America and its Fourth of July celebrations. THAT story with its exclusions and glossings over (the butchery, the genocide, the landgrabbing, the plantations worked by slave labour)! Is that what we really want to imitate? Look where it has taken that country (and Britain, in the bargain).
And if we really are talking about an inclusive and cohesive national community, then why are all the models and ‘equivalents’ drawn from Europe or America? This ia country with citizens descended from Asian, Africans and Caribbean nations. What about those stories and traditions—the great traditions of uprisings against slavery and struggles against imperialism? Should we not be memorialising them too and learning about traditions of democracy and debate outside Europe? For it is not only false but counter-productive to talk about ideas of liberty and participatory governance as though they were purely European ideas; it encourages false oppositions which each chauvinists on all sides can take refuge in. Until ethnic minorities, including British Muslims, can participate in a ‘story’ and history which reminds them that they too come from great traditions of debate, dissent and humane thinking, ‘Britishness’ will continue to be a narrative aimed at outsiders expected to integrate by swallowing its complacent assumptions wholesale – thereby denying their own cultural heritages of tolerance and diversity.
We DO need a debate on national community and common values. But until it is offered as a challenge (for politicians as much as the citizen-subjects) and goal to strive for rather than a given ‘story’, we will keep circling the wagons and rehearsing the same old divisive cliches. Let’s wrest Britishness and citizenship away not only from the right, but from Brownian myth-making as well. Then we’ll have something to celebrate.
We must understand why racist belief systems persist
Racial differences may be genetically few, but human beings seem designed to attach importance to them
Priyamvada Gopal: The story peddled by imperial apologists is a poisonous fairytale
Niall Ferguson
Tuesday July 11, 2006
Guardian
Some things are worth debating. Are empires always and everywhere irredeemably malignant? Or might some empires have conferred benefits as well as costs? I am happy to argue about such questions, even if it can be frustratingly hard to get specialists in postcolonial studies to think intelligently about the economics of imperialism.
There is, however, no debate worth having over racism. In my new book, I argue that it was the willingness of groups of men to identify one another as aliens - as if "the Other" were actually a different species - that lay at the root of much of the 20th century's worst violence. The idea of racial difference spread round the world like a virus of the mind.
So I was appalled by a recent article on these pages that strongly implied that I condone racism. According to Priyamvada Gopal, my book is helping to bring "the racism institutionalised by empire ... back in fashion". My argument, she alleges, is "not far from the pseudo-scientific nonsense that once made it possible to punish interracial relationships". This is a gross misrepresentation.
Race mattered, and, alas, may still matter, not because there are biologically distinct races but because people believe in their existence. That belief has repeatedly served to justify acts of organised repression, ranging from discrimination to attempted annihilation. It is therefore of considerable importance to understand why racism persists as a belief system.
First the reality about race. Modern genetics has revealed that humans are remarkably alike. The evolutionist Richard Lewontin famously calculated that about 85% of genetic variation in humans occurs among individuals in an average population; only 6% occurs among races. The variants that affect skin colour, hair and facial features - the things that are perceived to differentiate races - involve an insignificant amount of the billions of nucleotides in an individual's DNA. Our underlying similarities reflect our shared origins. It is clear that, despite the obstacles of distance and mutual incomprehension, human populations have been interbreeding since the earliest times.
Why, then, have men repeatedly thought and acted as if a few superficial differences were evidence of biologically distinct races? The superficial answer is that people swallowed a lot of 19th-century pseudo science: the idea of biologically distinct races was able to reproduce itself far more successfully than the distinct races it claimed to identify.
But why was this idea so contagious, when so many other theories of heredity declined? In the 20th century, most people stopped believing that power and status should be inherited. Some doubted if even property should. Why did people persist in believing that a combination of character traits could be passed from generation to generation?
Here the work of evolutionary biologists and anthropologists - not, however, postcolonialists - offers important insights. The first is that when people were few and far between, the overriding imperatives were to hunt or gather sufficient food and to reproduce. People formed small groups because cooperation improved the individual's chances of doing both. Tribes were inevitably in competition for scarce resources. Hence, as Paul Seabright has argued, conflict could take the form of plunder - the seizure by violence of another tribe's means of subsistence - and downright murder of unrelated strangers, to get rid of sexual rivals. Man, so some neo-Darwinians argue, is programmed by genes to protect his kin and fight "the Other".
Second, there is evidence from the behaviour of humans and other species that nature does not necessarily favour breeding between genetically very different members of the same species. As Patrick Bateson and others have shown, "optimal outbreeding" is achieved with a surprisingly small degree of genealogical separation. A first cousin may actually be preferable as a mate to a wholly unrelated stranger. This makes evolutionary sense. A species of hunter-gatherers that could reproduce successfully only with genetically (and geographically) distant individuals would not have lasted long.
Third, it must be significant in its own right that separate human populations so quickly developed distinctive facial characteristics. Some evolutionary biologists argue that this was a result not just of "genetic drift" but "sexual selection". Like attracted like, and continues to; those drawn to "the Other" may be atypical in their sexual predilections.
Finally, recent research by Andreas Olsson and his collaborators has indicated that human beings seem predisposed to trust members of their own (self-identified) race more than members of other races, though how far this can be explained in evolutionary terms and how far in terms of inculcated prejudice is clearly open to question.
In short, racial differences may be genetically few, but humans seem to be designed to attach importance to them.
No one would accuse the authors I have cited of seeking to make racism fashionable. Rather, we are all concerned to understand better why the biologically nebulous concept of racial difference has proved so resilient - and dangerous - a force in modern history.
At a time when British voters are expressing unprecedented anxiety about immigration - when terrorist acts and the measures to prevent them threaten to polarise our multi-ethnic society - it is imperative that we improve our understanding of racism. The last thing we need is crass distortion of a serious historical attempt to do so.
· Niall Ferguson is the author of The War of the World and professor of history at Harvard University
©Niall Ferguson, 2006 www.niallferguson.org
Priyamvada Gopal: The story peddled by imperial apologists is a poisonous fairytale
Niall Ferguson
Tuesday July 11, 2006
Guardian
Some things are worth debating. Are empires always and everywhere irredeemably malignant? Or might some empires have conferred benefits as well as costs? I am happy to argue about such questions, even if it can be frustratingly hard to get specialists in postcolonial studies to think intelligently about the economics of imperialism.
There is, however, no debate worth having over racism. In my new book, I argue that it was the willingness of groups of men to identify one another as aliens - as if "the Other" were actually a different species - that lay at the root of much of the 20th century's worst violence. The idea of racial difference spread round the world like a virus of the mind.
So I was appalled by a recent article on these pages that strongly implied that I condone racism. According to Priyamvada Gopal, my book is helping to bring "the racism institutionalised by empire ... back in fashion". My argument, she alleges, is "not far from the pseudo-scientific nonsense that once made it possible to punish interracial relationships". This is a gross misrepresentation.
Race mattered, and, alas, may still matter, not because there are biologically distinct races but because people believe in their existence. That belief has repeatedly served to justify acts of organised repression, ranging from discrimination to attempted annihilation. It is therefore of considerable importance to understand why racism persists as a belief system.
First the reality about race. Modern genetics has revealed that humans are remarkably alike. The evolutionist Richard Lewontin famously calculated that about 85% of genetic variation in humans occurs among individuals in an average population; only 6% occurs among races. The variants that affect skin colour, hair and facial features - the things that are perceived to differentiate races - involve an insignificant amount of the billions of nucleotides in an individual's DNA. Our underlying similarities reflect our shared origins. It is clear that, despite the obstacles of distance and mutual incomprehension, human populations have been interbreeding since the earliest times.
Why, then, have men repeatedly thought and acted as if a few superficial differences were evidence of biologically distinct races? The superficial answer is that people swallowed a lot of 19th-century pseudo science: the idea of biologically distinct races was able to reproduce itself far more successfully than the distinct races it claimed to identify.
But why was this idea so contagious, when so many other theories of heredity declined? In the 20th century, most people stopped believing that power and status should be inherited. Some doubted if even property should. Why did people persist in believing that a combination of character traits could be passed from generation to generation?
Here the work of evolutionary biologists and anthropologists - not, however, postcolonialists - offers important insights. The first is that when people were few and far between, the overriding imperatives were to hunt or gather sufficient food and to reproduce. People formed small groups because cooperation improved the individual's chances of doing both. Tribes were inevitably in competition for scarce resources. Hence, as Paul Seabright has argued, conflict could take the form of plunder - the seizure by violence of another tribe's means of subsistence - and downright murder of unrelated strangers, to get rid of sexual rivals. Man, so some neo-Darwinians argue, is programmed by genes to protect his kin and fight "the Other".
Second, there is evidence from the behaviour of humans and other species that nature does not necessarily favour breeding between genetically very different members of the same species. As Patrick Bateson and others have shown, "optimal outbreeding" is achieved with a surprisingly small degree of genealogical separation. A first cousin may actually be preferable as a mate to a wholly unrelated stranger. This makes evolutionary sense. A species of hunter-gatherers that could reproduce successfully only with genetically (and geographically) distant individuals would not have lasted long.
Third, it must be significant in its own right that separate human populations so quickly developed distinctive facial characteristics. Some evolutionary biologists argue that this was a result not just of "genetic drift" but "sexual selection". Like attracted like, and continues to; those drawn to "the Other" may be atypical in their sexual predilections.
Finally, recent research by Andreas Olsson and his collaborators has indicated that human beings seem predisposed to trust members of their own (self-identified) race more than members of other races, though how far this can be explained in evolutionary terms and how far in terms of inculcated prejudice is clearly open to question.
In short, racial differences may be genetically few, but humans seem to be designed to attach importance to them.
No one would accuse the authors I have cited of seeking to make racism fashionable. Rather, we are all concerned to understand better why the biologically nebulous concept of racial difference has proved so resilient - and dangerous - a force in modern history.
At a time when British voters are expressing unprecedented anxiety about immigration - when terrorist acts and the measures to prevent them threaten to polarise our multi-ethnic society - it is imperative that we improve our understanding of racism. The last thing we need is crass distortion of a serious historical attempt to do so.
· Niall Ferguson is the author of The War of the World and professor of history at Harvard University
©Niall Ferguson, 2006 www.niallferguson.org
The story peddled by imperial apologists is a poisonous fairytale
Neocon ideologues are being given free rein by the media to rewrite the history of Britain's empire and whitewash its crimes
Niall Ferguson: We must understand why racist belief systems persist
Priyamvada Gopal
Wednesday June 28, 2006
Guardian
Aresurrection is haunting the British media, the bizarre apparition of "benevolent empire". It takes the form of documentaries and discussions steered towards the conclusion that colonialism was not such a bad thing after all and that something of a celebration is in order. Trouble is, to get there, some creative reworking of the facts is needed. After a recent brouhaha about Britain's imperial history on Radio 4's Start the Week - in which I took part - the presenter Andrew Marr worried that the debate had been "pretty biased" against empire: there was a lot of enthusiasm and a "warm nostalgia" for empire, he suggested in the subsequent phone-in, even in former colonies, "still something there, absolutely".
Only the desire to recover some imaginary good from the tragedy that was empire can explain the elevation of the neoconservative ideologue Niall Ferguson to chief imperial historian on the BBC and now Channel 4. His aggressive rewriting of history, driven by the messianic fantasies of the American right, is being presented as a new revelation. In fact, Ferguson's "history" is a fairytale for our times which puts the white man and his burden back at the centre of heroic action. Colonialism - a tale of slavery, plunder, war, corruption, land-grabbing, famines, exploitation, indentured labour, impoverishment, massacres, genocide and forced resettlement - is rewritten into a benign developmental mission marred by a few unfortunate accidents and excesses.
Soundbite culture thrives on these simplistic grand narratives. Half-truths and fanciful speculation, shorn of academic protocols such as footnotes, can sound donnishly authoritative. The racism institutionalised by empire also seems to be back in fashion. The book accompanying Ferguson's current Channel 4 series on 20th-century history, The War of the World, tells us that people "seem predisposed" to "trust members of their own race", "those who are drawn to 'the Other' may ... be atypical in their sexual predilections" and that "when a Chinese woman marries a European man, the chances are relatively high ... that only the first child they conceive will be viable." Not far from the pseudo-scientific nonsense that once made it possible to punish interracial relationships.
Behind such talk and the embrace of the broadcasters is the insistence that we are being offered gutsy truths that the "politically correct" establishment would love to suppress. This is the neo-conservative as spunky rebel against liberal tyranny. Yet Ferguson peddles nothing more than the most hackneyed, self-aggrandising myths of empire, canards once championed by old imperialists such as Macaulay and Mill and rehashed now by the Bush administration: western imperialism brings freedom, democracy and prosperity to primitive cultures. The myth decorates US and British foreign policy spin while trendier versions have also emerged in platforms such as the Euston Manifesto. By anointing Ferguson and his fellow imperial apologists such as Andrew Roberts as semi-official historians, the British media are colluding in a dangerous denial of the past and lending support to contemporary US imperial propaganda .
The evidence - researched by scholars such as Amartya Sen, Nicholas Dirks, Mike Davis and Mahmood Mamdani, Caroline Elkins and Walter Rodney - shows that European colonialism brought with it not good governance and freedom, but impoverishment, bloodshed, repression and misery. Joseph Conrad, no radical, described it as "a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly". Good governance? More famines were recorded in the first century of the British Raj than in the previous 2,000 years, including 17-20 million deaths from 1896 to 1900 alone. While a million Indians a year died from avoidable famines, taxation subsidising colonial wars, and relief often deliberately denied as surplus grain was shipped to England.
Tolerance? The British empire reinforced strict ethnic/religious identities and governed through these divisions. As with the partition of India when 10 million were displaced, arbitrarily drawn boundaries between "tribes" in Africa resulted in massive displacement and bloodshed. Freedom and fair play? In Kenya, a handful of white settlers appropriated 12,000 square miles and pushed 1.25 million native Kikuyus to 2,000 restricted square miles. Resistance was brutally crushed through internment in detention camps, torture and massacres. Some 50,000 Kikuyus were massacred and 300,000 interned to put down the Mau Mau rebellion by peasants who wanted to farm their own land. A thousand peaceful protesters were killed in the Amritsar massacre of 1919.
A collective failure of the imagination now makes it difficult for us to think about the globe before European and American domination. Greed and violence are hardly exclusive to one culture. But colonialism destroyed or strangled possibilities and potential for progress, such as Mughal Emperor Akbar's "sul-e-kul" or "universal good" which underpinned his governance. The scale of European imperialism inaugurated a new chapter in the history of greed which still shapes all our lives. Natural resources - cotton, sugar, teak, rubber, minerals - were plundered in gigantic quantities. The Indian textile industry was the most advanced in the world when the British arrived; within half a century it had been destroyed. The enslaved and indentured (at least 20 million Africans and 1.5 million Indians) were shipped across the globe to work on plantations, mines and railroads. The stupendous profits deriving from this enabled today's developed world to prosper.
The point isn't for Europeans to feel guilt, but a serious consideration of historical responsibility isn't the same thing as a blame game. Forgetting history is tempting but undermines a society's capacity for change.
Among the many facile assumptions encouraged by these imperial apologists is that those who criticise colonialism are absolving tyrants and bigots in Asia and Africa from responsibility for their crimes. Of course it is possible and absolutely necessary to condemn both. Indians must acknowledge their culpability for atrocities during the partition, for example. But that in no way exonerates the British Raj from its pivotal role in the tragedy that led to over a million deaths.
A wilful ignorance of other people's cultures and histories encourages the notion that freedom, democracy and tolerance are intrinsically western. As Amartya Sen has argued, the subcontinent has long been home to traditions of free-thinking and debate. Participatory governance was not Britain's gift (recall Gandhi's indigenous village republics), even if parliamentary democracy as an institutional form was adopted in some ex-colonies. Free trade is another mythical western contribution to world history. Amitav Ghosh has reconstructed the forgotten history of a vibrant trade culture between medieval India and Africa. When the Portuguese arrived, they demanded that the Hindu ruler of Calicut expel Muslims, "enemies of the Holy-Faith", from his kingdom. He refused and was subjected to two days of bombardment.
Indeed, one legacy of European colonialism that we all reckon with is the self-fulfilling prophecy of the "clash of civilisations". The claim that east and west are bound to come into conflict is merely an extension of imperial practice which found it useful to seal off porous cultures into fixed categories. This tragic "lie of the colonial situation", as Frantz Fanon called it, rebounds on us tragically in the terror unleashed in the name of Islam and Bush's "war on terror". If we are to undo the destructive legacies of empire, it won't do to invest celebratory falsifications with credibility. To make sense of a shared present and look towards a more humane future, we need to start with a little informed honesty about the past.
· Priyamvada Gopal teaches postcolonial studies at Cambridge University and is the author of Literary Radicalism in India: Gender, Nation and the Transition to Independence
pg268@cam.ac.uk
Niall Ferguson: We must understand why racist belief systems persist
Priyamvada Gopal
Wednesday June 28, 2006
Guardian
Aresurrection is haunting the British media, the bizarre apparition of "benevolent empire". It takes the form of documentaries and discussions steered towards the conclusion that colonialism was not such a bad thing after all and that something of a celebration is in order. Trouble is, to get there, some creative reworking of the facts is needed. After a recent brouhaha about Britain's imperial history on Radio 4's Start the Week - in which I took part - the presenter Andrew Marr worried that the debate had been "pretty biased" against empire: there was a lot of enthusiasm and a "warm nostalgia" for empire, he suggested in the subsequent phone-in, even in former colonies, "still something there, absolutely".
Only the desire to recover some imaginary good from the tragedy that was empire can explain the elevation of the neoconservative ideologue Niall Ferguson to chief imperial historian on the BBC and now Channel 4. His aggressive rewriting of history, driven by the messianic fantasies of the American right, is being presented as a new revelation. In fact, Ferguson's "history" is a fairytale for our times which puts the white man and his burden back at the centre of heroic action. Colonialism - a tale of slavery, plunder, war, corruption, land-grabbing, famines, exploitation, indentured labour, impoverishment, massacres, genocide and forced resettlement - is rewritten into a benign developmental mission marred by a few unfortunate accidents and excesses.
Soundbite culture thrives on these simplistic grand narratives. Half-truths and fanciful speculation, shorn of academic protocols such as footnotes, can sound donnishly authoritative. The racism institutionalised by empire also seems to be back in fashion. The book accompanying Ferguson's current Channel 4 series on 20th-century history, The War of the World, tells us that people "seem predisposed" to "trust members of their own race", "those who are drawn to 'the Other' may ... be atypical in their sexual predilections" and that "when a Chinese woman marries a European man, the chances are relatively high ... that only the first child they conceive will be viable." Not far from the pseudo-scientific nonsense that once made it possible to punish interracial relationships.
Behind such talk and the embrace of the broadcasters is the insistence that we are being offered gutsy truths that the "politically correct" establishment would love to suppress. This is the neo-conservative as spunky rebel against liberal tyranny. Yet Ferguson peddles nothing more than the most hackneyed, self-aggrandising myths of empire, canards once championed by old imperialists such as Macaulay and Mill and rehashed now by the Bush administration: western imperialism brings freedom, democracy and prosperity to primitive cultures. The myth decorates US and British foreign policy spin while trendier versions have also emerged in platforms such as the Euston Manifesto. By anointing Ferguson and his fellow imperial apologists such as Andrew Roberts as semi-official historians, the British media are colluding in a dangerous denial of the past and lending support to contemporary US imperial propaganda .
The evidence - researched by scholars such as Amartya Sen, Nicholas Dirks, Mike Davis and Mahmood Mamdani, Caroline Elkins and Walter Rodney - shows that European colonialism brought with it not good governance and freedom, but impoverishment, bloodshed, repression and misery. Joseph Conrad, no radical, described it as "a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly". Good governance? More famines were recorded in the first century of the British Raj than in the previous 2,000 years, including 17-20 million deaths from 1896 to 1900 alone. While a million Indians a year died from avoidable famines, taxation subsidising colonial wars, and relief often deliberately denied as surplus grain was shipped to England.
Tolerance? The British empire reinforced strict ethnic/religious identities and governed through these divisions. As with the partition of India when 10 million were displaced, arbitrarily drawn boundaries between "tribes" in Africa resulted in massive displacement and bloodshed. Freedom and fair play? In Kenya, a handful of white settlers appropriated 12,000 square miles and pushed 1.25 million native Kikuyus to 2,000 restricted square miles. Resistance was brutally crushed through internment in detention camps, torture and massacres. Some 50,000 Kikuyus were massacred and 300,000 interned to put down the Mau Mau rebellion by peasants who wanted to farm their own land. A thousand peaceful protesters were killed in the Amritsar massacre of 1919.
A collective failure of the imagination now makes it difficult for us to think about the globe before European and American domination. Greed and violence are hardly exclusive to one culture. But colonialism destroyed or strangled possibilities and potential for progress, such as Mughal Emperor Akbar's "sul-e-kul" or "universal good" which underpinned his governance. The scale of European imperialism inaugurated a new chapter in the history of greed which still shapes all our lives. Natural resources - cotton, sugar, teak, rubber, minerals - were plundered in gigantic quantities. The Indian textile industry was the most advanced in the world when the British arrived; within half a century it had been destroyed. The enslaved and indentured (at least 20 million Africans and 1.5 million Indians) were shipped across the globe to work on plantations, mines and railroads. The stupendous profits deriving from this enabled today's developed world to prosper.
The point isn't for Europeans to feel guilt, but a serious consideration of historical responsibility isn't the same thing as a blame game. Forgetting history is tempting but undermines a society's capacity for change.
Among the many facile assumptions encouraged by these imperial apologists is that those who criticise colonialism are absolving tyrants and bigots in Asia and Africa from responsibility for their crimes. Of course it is possible and absolutely necessary to condemn both. Indians must acknowledge their culpability for atrocities during the partition, for example. But that in no way exonerates the British Raj from its pivotal role in the tragedy that led to over a million deaths.
A wilful ignorance of other people's cultures and histories encourages the notion that freedom, democracy and tolerance are intrinsically western. As Amartya Sen has argued, the subcontinent has long been home to traditions of free-thinking and debate. Participatory governance was not Britain's gift (recall Gandhi's indigenous village republics), even if parliamentary democracy as an institutional form was adopted in some ex-colonies. Free trade is another mythical western contribution to world history. Amitav Ghosh has reconstructed the forgotten history of a vibrant trade culture between medieval India and Africa. When the Portuguese arrived, they demanded that the Hindu ruler of Calicut expel Muslims, "enemies of the Holy-Faith", from his kingdom. He refused and was subjected to two days of bombardment.
Indeed, one legacy of European colonialism that we all reckon with is the self-fulfilling prophecy of the "clash of civilisations". The claim that east and west are bound to come into conflict is merely an extension of imperial practice which found it useful to seal off porous cultures into fixed categories. This tragic "lie of the colonial situation", as Frantz Fanon called it, rebounds on us tragically in the terror unleashed in the name of Islam and Bush's "war on terror". If we are to undo the destructive legacies of empire, it won't do to invest celebratory falsifications with credibility. To make sense of a shared present and look towards a more humane future, we need to start with a little informed honesty about the past.
· Priyamvada Gopal teaches postcolonial studies at Cambridge University and is the author of Literary Radicalism in India: Gender, Nation and the Transition to Independence
pg268@cam.ac.uk
Wednesday 19 December 2007
What The Reader Wants
If journalism is a consumption item like butter chicken, then why not give the customer the flavour and taste he wants? At least that is what advertising managers and self-styled media pundits would have us believe...
VINOD MEHTA
This is the full text of Outlook Editor in chief's speech on receiving the IPI Award 2007 which the magazine won for its Navy War Room leak and Scorpene stories
***
It is an honour and a privilege for me accept this coveted award on behalf of the Outlook Group. I would like to especially congratulate Saikat Datta, the correspondent and Ajith Pillai, his editor. Saikat pursued this story for over six months, putting it together for all of us was like a roller coaster drive.
Ladies and gentlemen, in India 2007 numerous challenges face the media. There is the reluctance of the media, especially the electronic media, to regulate itself. And simultaneously we see daily the eagerness of our political masters to impose a code on the profession which will effectively castrate it.
Then there is the strange but seemingly irresistible animal called sting journalism, which when it is good is very good, but when it is bad, shames us all.
Then there is the media’s myopia regarding how its credibility is being eroded. To the extent that journalism today is often confused with being part of the entertainment industry.
Then there is the challenge of the markets. What is the media for? Is it only for making money? Once you treat the media as if it is no different from running an ice-cream parlour, journalism loses out to commerce.
Then there is the accusation, hurled by politicians, that the media creates cynicism about politicians. Thanks to the media, our politicians maintain, the public views its leaders and the very process of governing, with suspicion and mistrust. Our netas say a pervasive climate of cynicism leads to the sense that a whole range of problems are beyond the control of mere politicians, beyond solutions altogether. This in turn breeds frustration, hopelessness and lack of faith in government. I don’t accept this highly exaggerated accusation, but I concede it is on the table. And the media needs to counter it, probably with the response that politicians by their conduct create the cynicism, we journalists merely spread it around.
And last but not least, what checks and balances should the media impose on itself in India 2007, where the intense competition, both in print and TV, is threatening professional ethics? As journalists we need to remember that a newspaper’s credibility is like the virginity of a woman. You can lose it only once.
I now come to my main concern. There is one more critical challenge, one that is rarely discussed in journalism seminars or among serious editors. But I notice advertising managers and self-styled media pundits pontificate on it endlessly -- and they have by now signed and sealed the argument. They have given us a new mantra. When these guys speak in the excellent and proliferating media and advertising journals, they assume the pose of Moses. Their words are written on tablets of stone. And what is their subject? It is the nature of editorial content in television and print. They have come to the considered conclusion that the highest responsibility of the media is to give the reader or the viewer what he or she wants. Any other kind of journalism is irrelevant, indeed an insult to the public!
I believe this is a crucial issue for the media. Alas, the wrong guys are discussing it, the wrong guys are giving us the solutions.
I say this with much humility, but brand managers, with honourable exceptions, are congenitally incapable of understanding the nature and purpose of journalism.They simply cannot understand it by virtue of their background: which is sales in order to maximise profits. They can never understand that content is more, much more, than what readers want. It also has a social dimension. Thus, content is a mix of what the reader wants and what he does not want. The trick is to marry the two and make money.
Accompanying the mantra, is much loose talk that the old journalism is dead and a new journalism has been born. This new journalism is entirely based on reader or viewer demands. So, we are told the reader is king and it is the job of a responsible media organisation to provide cent per cent satisfaction.
This proposition is now so widely accepted that to argue against it is like whistling in the dark. Those who believe otherwise are seen as cranks, out of touch with the contemporary market -- in other words the reader. If journalism is a consumption item like butter chicken, then why not give the customer the flavour and taste he wants. That, after all, is the first rule of free market capitalism.
Ladies and gentlemen, in my nearly 30 years as editor, I have heard a lot of nonsense talked about journalism and its role in India, but this piece of nonsense is outrageously and self-evidently absurd and dangerous. To demolish it is urgent. To let it become the benchmark of our profession is to put in peril everything we have worked for in 60 years.
I ask you this: If some readers or viewers wish to see or read about paedophilia, should we oblige? If some readers or viewers wish to see or read about wife-beatings, should we oblige? I could go on. The whole idea is preposterous and I dare say most editors would end up in jail if they followed the mantra.
I will just provide three examples of the confusion in readers minds regarding their expectations from the media.
One. Research shows unambiguously that most readers desire to read more international news. Yet, the international pages of a paper are the least read. International news may be good for the soul but it does nothing for circulation.
Two. Readers insist that the price of their morning paper does not matter. It is such a vital part of their life that they would happily pay the extra rupee for it. Yet, as Mr Rupert Murdoch and Mr Samir Jain have demonstrated, print publications are extremely price sensitive. You can bleed the opposition by cover price cuts. The phrase "invitation price" terrifies rival publishers.
Three. Readers will tell you that they want a single-section, compact morning paper. They don’t want sections and supplements dropping out. Yet the opposite is true. Papers with multi-sections prosper, others suffer.
I think I have made my point. We must lead readers, not be led by them. Really great journalism must do more than merely give people what they want. There has to be room for the unexpected, for stories the public has no idea it wants until it sees them.
The reader is a paradox. He frequently complains about negative news being constantly reported. But for all his clamouring for positive news, surveys show that people are more interested in negative news, sensational news, news about crime, violence and corruption. The reader, ladies and gentlemen, is not king; actually he is a nice hypocrite.
Editors in India are an endangered species, but only a good and professional editorial team can decide what is news and what is humbug. That is the sum of what I have learnt in 30 years. Thank you.
VINOD MEHTA
This is the full text of Outlook Editor in chief's speech on receiving the IPI Award 2007 which the magazine won for its Navy War Room leak and Scorpene stories
***
It is an honour and a privilege for me accept this coveted award on behalf of the Outlook Group. I would like to especially congratulate Saikat Datta, the correspondent and Ajith Pillai, his editor. Saikat pursued this story for over six months, putting it together for all of us was like a roller coaster drive.
Ladies and gentlemen, in India 2007 numerous challenges face the media. There is the reluctance of the media, especially the electronic media, to regulate itself. And simultaneously we see daily the eagerness of our political masters to impose a code on the profession which will effectively castrate it.
Then there is the strange but seemingly irresistible animal called sting journalism, which when it is good is very good, but when it is bad, shames us all.
Then there is the media’s myopia regarding how its credibility is being eroded. To the extent that journalism today is often confused with being part of the entertainment industry.
Then there is the challenge of the markets. What is the media for? Is it only for making money? Once you treat the media as if it is no different from running an ice-cream parlour, journalism loses out to commerce.
Then there is the accusation, hurled by politicians, that the media creates cynicism about politicians. Thanks to the media, our politicians maintain, the public views its leaders and the very process of governing, with suspicion and mistrust. Our netas say a pervasive climate of cynicism leads to the sense that a whole range of problems are beyond the control of mere politicians, beyond solutions altogether. This in turn breeds frustration, hopelessness and lack of faith in government. I don’t accept this highly exaggerated accusation, but I concede it is on the table. And the media needs to counter it, probably with the response that politicians by their conduct create the cynicism, we journalists merely spread it around.
And last but not least, what checks and balances should the media impose on itself in India 2007, where the intense competition, both in print and TV, is threatening professional ethics? As journalists we need to remember that a newspaper’s credibility is like the virginity of a woman. You can lose it only once.
I now come to my main concern. There is one more critical challenge, one that is rarely discussed in journalism seminars or among serious editors. But I notice advertising managers and self-styled media pundits pontificate on it endlessly -- and they have by now signed and sealed the argument. They have given us a new mantra. When these guys speak in the excellent and proliferating media and advertising journals, they assume the pose of Moses. Their words are written on tablets of stone. And what is their subject? It is the nature of editorial content in television and print. They have come to the considered conclusion that the highest responsibility of the media is to give the reader or the viewer what he or she wants. Any other kind of journalism is irrelevant, indeed an insult to the public!
I believe this is a crucial issue for the media. Alas, the wrong guys are discussing it, the wrong guys are giving us the solutions.
I say this with much humility, but brand managers, with honourable exceptions, are congenitally incapable of understanding the nature and purpose of journalism.They simply cannot understand it by virtue of their background: which is sales in order to maximise profits. They can never understand that content is more, much more, than what readers want. It also has a social dimension. Thus, content is a mix of what the reader wants and what he does not want. The trick is to marry the two and make money.
Accompanying the mantra, is much loose talk that the old journalism is dead and a new journalism has been born. This new journalism is entirely based on reader or viewer demands. So, we are told the reader is king and it is the job of a responsible media organisation to provide cent per cent satisfaction.
This proposition is now so widely accepted that to argue against it is like whistling in the dark. Those who believe otherwise are seen as cranks, out of touch with the contemporary market -- in other words the reader. If journalism is a consumption item like butter chicken, then why not give the customer the flavour and taste he wants. That, after all, is the first rule of free market capitalism.
Ladies and gentlemen, in my nearly 30 years as editor, I have heard a lot of nonsense talked about journalism and its role in India, but this piece of nonsense is outrageously and self-evidently absurd and dangerous. To demolish it is urgent. To let it become the benchmark of our profession is to put in peril everything we have worked for in 60 years.
I ask you this: If some readers or viewers wish to see or read about paedophilia, should we oblige? If some readers or viewers wish to see or read about wife-beatings, should we oblige? I could go on. The whole idea is preposterous and I dare say most editors would end up in jail if they followed the mantra.
I will just provide three examples of the confusion in readers minds regarding their expectations from the media.
One. Research shows unambiguously that most readers desire to read more international news. Yet, the international pages of a paper are the least read. International news may be good for the soul but it does nothing for circulation.
Two. Readers insist that the price of their morning paper does not matter. It is such a vital part of their life that they would happily pay the extra rupee for it. Yet, as Mr Rupert Murdoch and Mr Samir Jain have demonstrated, print publications are extremely price sensitive. You can bleed the opposition by cover price cuts. The phrase "invitation price" terrifies rival publishers.
Three. Readers will tell you that they want a single-section, compact morning paper. They don’t want sections and supplements dropping out. Yet the opposite is true. Papers with multi-sections prosper, others suffer.
I think I have made my point. We must lead readers, not be led by them. Really great journalism must do more than merely give people what they want. There has to be room for the unexpected, for stories the public has no idea it wants until it sees them.
The reader is a paradox. He frequently complains about negative news being constantly reported. But for all his clamouring for positive news, surveys show that people are more interested in negative news, sensational news, news about crime, violence and corruption. The reader, ladies and gentlemen, is not king; actually he is a nice hypocrite.
Editors in India are an endangered species, but only a good and professional editorial team can decide what is news and what is humbug. That is the sum of what I have learnt in 30 years. Thank you.
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