My teacher is no more. Professor Michael Gurevitch passed away this morning.

As I fight my tears in disbelief, I am also smiling at my various imaginings. In my little world of unbridled imaginations, Prof Gurevitch was Woody Allen’s Side Effects and head of McLuhan’s Global Village. He was the moderator of the noise in my world of blogs. He was the caricaturist of the planet myspace. Prof Gurevitch was the professor without the difficult words. He was the guide with the greatest wits. He was a scholar who knew his roots. A teacher ever willing to learn. He was the one who I always wanted to emulate. And I shall always do.

So what if he is no more in this world? Certainly, he will be missed terribly by his most loving family; he is going to be missed on the corridors of the College in Maryland by his colleagues. He is also going to be missed at the committee meetings and classrooms by the graduate students, no doubt.

But more importantly, it is his presence that will be felt forever as media studies will continue to be researched upon. It is his contributions to global comparative analysis that will help shape future perceptions as the world shrinks even further. It is Professor Gurevitch’s staunch refusal to limit to the dichotomies that will pave the way for eliminations of schools of thoughts in a deeply divided world of media theories.

And personally for me, he shall reside in my mind and heart, in my pen and keyboard, in my thoughts and actions, than he will ever likely to be missed.

Before I attended the very first class with him, it was my beloved professor, Dr John W Cordes who offered me an introduction. So deeply in love with Prof Cordes’ class that I was, I was slightly apprehensive of leaving the room for the next. Prof Cordes asked me, “Whose class is next?” I said, “Dr Gurevitch’s”. I remember very vividly the reply given by Prof Cordes: “Oh is it? I am so jealous and you are all so fortunate that you shall now be attending to a lecture by Michael!”.

Prof Cordes is always a man of very few words. Although intensely philosophical at heart, he is always concise, and although deeply theoretical, he spoke s a little. And yet, when he offered such a rich tribute to a living professor that one usually reserves for the legends and myths, I could not wait any longer to meet with Prof Gurevitch.

The professor at the Media Theory class was not visibly impressive. He was not dressed in a suit. He was not articulate in his words. He was not polite enough to be the quintessential gentleman. He was not elite enough to be a full professor of a research university. On the contrary, he was the most casual presence in the classroom. He was extremely sarcastic when it came to most thoughts. He was the one who would turn the student’s question upside down and then ask the student what is meant by turning a question upside down.

For Prof Gurevitch, asking the question was not enough. Asking the right questions was crucial. Watching the TV was not inducing violence. Getting afraid of the televised cops was. Presidential elections were not important enough to be in the media. Media were more important for the presidential candidates to continue the fanfare. Would violence stop if there were no video games? Would everyone be so obsessed with their presidents if the television attended to more important issues?

Is it the driver or the bus that’s saying hello to you when you step inside? Why are people so polite in their interactions? Is it because the society is so highly segmented so as to lead to instrumental relationships? Are we gossiping more about the celebrities than our neighbors? No, gossiping is not bad. We have just been overlooking the scene outside the windows, if at all we open it once in a while.

Prof Gurevitch was equally sarcastic of the ideologies. And no, the ideologies were not in the communist countries. When media focus on President Bush, they are doing the duty of presidential coverage. Why are media considered unfree when they focus on the presidents in a totalitarian regime in those countries?

If media are supposed to make us informed citizens, we can ask how well do they perform their role. Perhaps we can test the people if they are well informed, and the professor would chuckle to himself. Then he would be generous to the ambitious freethinking scholars and say that the level of information and level of informed people perhaps do not provide the required comparative scale, but they merely show there is a disconnect somewhere.

Does the disconnect start at the dining room? Why is it that in the American society, sanctity of privacy is so highly regarded that the public sphere almost goes amiss? Why should people discuss politics over food when they can rather watch television? How different is it in a country like Cuba where people watch televisions in communities? Is it a good thing that people cannot afford individual TV sets? What have we done to community radio? How do we know what the housewives feel as a collective experience? Is there a distinction between citizens and consumers? If the democracy needs citizens, do we have a democracy existing today? Have the media not turned us all into consumers? Why do students remain silent inside the libraries? Why is there a “Do not Talk” signboard at a place where debates must naturally should take place?

Prof Gurevitch was never short of questions. When he asked me what was my blog all about, I asked him to go through it. He stressed that he does not even have any interest to write emails to people. He does not believe cell phones are tools of liberation. And yet, the next time I saw him after that was at an informal gathering of bloggers. I walked upto him to pay him respect and give some company as he was the only old man conspicuous by his presence sitting by the corner leaving few empty benches ahead of him. He said he was there to feel the pulse of the blogs. “Can you lend me the video you took of the blog conference you said you had attended in Washington DC last month?”

Prof Gurevitch decided to remain in my committee. Yes the dissertation is about the blogs, but I shall address the issues of noise, he said. I was absolutely thrilled and remained grateful. I am yet to know if the blogs are the vehicles of some sort of liberation, or some sort of noise, but among many words of wisdom that I have learned from Prof Gurevitch, I ever so closely remember the most is his note of caution to me: “Do everything that you must, but take a pause once in a while in life’s journey and look back. Who knows, you might discover you were wrong in some ways. Then move forward again.”

Prof Gurevitch’s own life was a saga of pause and play. In an academic world of strict schools of thoughts, he had to choose his sides only to later disown them gracefully. Earning a doctoral degree through quantitative empirical analysis only to show merits of theoretical qualitative scholarship later. A Marxist scholar who would on more occasion than one publicly deny the allegation. As the Howard Zinn of the media studies in my view, Prof Gurevitch was deeply saddened by the orthodoxy and elitism pervading the Marxist scholarship today. To the classroom he would often digress from Marx and go beyond to Hegel, and as my good fortune, he would then think for a while and say, “hmm..Saswat would have a clue about Hegel, I am sure”.

He knew throughout of my spiritual and emotional love for Karl Marx and Marxist-Leninist philosophies. He was never the one to dismiss the merits of a system that many in American academia swear has failed. He was more concerned about the collective amnesia regarding the constant failure of the democracy that is being heralded as a success. Democracy was a failure in the US as glaringly as it was in India. Who are the ones researching about it? I brought to him texts that were apolitical in many ways to walk the safe lanes. He instead brought his notepad and wrote down the names of the scholars I had proposed. Gayatri Spivak was one of the many he would subsequently go to read about. Feminism was not the solution, and film studies he would stay clear of, but like the blogs, his initial resistance was not so much a denial of his want, as to test how well committed were the arguments in favor of various schools. Once convinced of the arguments, he would go one step further to provide support. I remember clearly how on the day of defense of my Comprehensive examination he asked me in the end, “I am going to ask you a question that I have not asked anyone before.” I was naturally most curious and very apprehensive. He then went on to say, “Frame a question yourself that you would like to answer because you think the question is important, and then answer it yourself.” I was stunned, and delighted at the same time. Was it not just the greatest compliment I had ever received in my life? Or was it perhaps the most difficult question I had ever faced? Either way, it was a lesson I shall always cherish in life, and a wisdom I shall pass along as I keep growing up.

Prof Gurevitch had a sarcasm towards the so-called free society that never really left him. He knew well that the free society was free depending on how much means of freedom one owns. Closer home, he knew how free he was in the classroom depended on how much was he going to be allowed to be. Even with his public shyness from academic radicalism, he often was branded in political terms. In the entire University of Maryland Systems, he was the most qualified of the professors to be offered the least compensation for his contributions. A couple of years back when I had checked into the public disclosure of annual salaries of the university community, most faculty members who were not even full Professors were being paid three times more the amount than Prof Gurevitch himself. Not that he ever discussed why it was so, but he certainly alluded to the fact that even the professors in the free society needed to buy themselves some grants as well. These are the times when there are way less grants for critical studies research, and lot more funding for administrative researches. In this world of unnecessarily positive fancies, where undergrad students would much rather hear of a beautiful career of television anchoring than learn about media monopolies and exploitations, it was only natural that critical media scholarship was about to slowly go defunct.

A former colleague of the legendary Stuart Hall, Prof Gurevitch relentlessly continued his scathing yet constructive attack on the corporate media and conclusively proved that “Media Studies” was not about studying media alone, it was about ripping apart the media as well. Media have always been active agents of the ruling classes everywhere in the world. It is time to honestly critique their roles and needs. Prof Gurevitch in his inimitable wit suggested a website in the classroom during the time none of us had an idea it existed. Nakednews.com is also a media, in fact it offers the very latest news, except that it is more candid about the fetishism surrounding television news. We laughed, but learned it to be true as well.

Amidst the laughter and learning processes, there are millions of words he spoke, and spoke well. Thousands of examples he offered that brought life to a field yet to be systematized. Evidences he suggested which brought to surface the reality that human beings are not scientific, how can the media be?

And beneath all his teachings, and erudite research, he was forever a simple man who had good words to say about different cultures, a winning way to speak with the students, a collegial comrade to his beloved college. And as I recollect the person who perhaps was closest to him in academia in his later years, Prof Kathy McAdams, saying to me, “Did you just take a class with Michael? Did you not simply love him?” I realize that not only have I been so fortunate as having attended his class, I have always and shall continue to love him as a human being I have been proud to have known in this life.

Tags: Saswat, Media, Academic, Activism

By Saswat Pattanayak

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia University was arguably the most important step taken by a world leader to initiate the global peace that is so much needed in the clearly terrorized world we live in.

Ahmadinejad is a leader of significant importance—chief of a major country and representative of a major world religion-- who was humble enough to accept a university invitation, and tolerant enough to appear in front of the most hostile audience that any academic institute in the world could feel ashamed of. And despite the odds, he was clearly on a mission: to promote the spirit of peace and open the road to desirable dialogue.

So, how was he received at the Land of the Free? First, the New York City Mayor displayed his level of arrogance by refusing Ahmadinejad a visit to 9/11 memorial site. Second, the Columbia University President exhibited unparalleled level of ignorance by verbally abusing the Iranian President. Third, the American President bathed in his self glory by refusing to entertain any possibility of any urgent dialogue.

Columbia: Elite University, Elitist Mindsets:
Columbia University characterized the drama usually associated with the great American Hypocrisy that has led to several wars and ideological confrontations during past many decades. One important way in which the First World countries have justified their position as regards to Freedom of Speech is by boasting about it. To prove that America allows freedom of speech, American administration needs to allow a certain amount of dissent to take place. Both the dissent and the freedom then have to be televised appropriately. Finally, the melodramatic confrontations are then needed to be compared with the economically subjugated world so as to prove an innate superiority in the methods of the free world.

In Ahmadinejad’s visit, all the above aspects were clearly evident. First, he was invited by Columbia University as the speaker. He was invited despite vehement protests from various student groups. This proved the spirit of tolerance that American democracy boasts of. However, critically deconstructing such an obvious reflection, one would fathom that the real reason why he was invited was not so much as “despite”, as was “because” of the protests from various groups of people. He was invited to speak on campus, because of the amount of controversy it would generate. And clearly, Columbia University did not do anything to stop the protests. Indeed, it advertised on its website additional permissions to student groups to create the noise and requested the community to bear with the protests which would continue for the entire day. Such vehement noisy protests where anyone could attribute any ghastly name to another country’s chief showcased a circus that was well planned and organized. Students and other social groups were not protesting against Columbia University (which they could have legitimately done by asking people to boycott a visit to the campus), rather they were enjoying the centrestage of press attention by using placards that could allow them to equate Ahmadinejad with Hitler and use any amount of vulgar slangs to denounce Iranian politics. In a country where peace marchers including octogenarian peacenik grandmothers are imprisoned because of silent protests, the rowdy behaviors from various “free speech” and student groups in front of a university was in fact encouraged.

Why was Ahmadinejad invited to the campus if the university was well aware that there would be thousands of people on the streets to protest? It was because the university was not afraid that they will lose reputation. It was not because the university was going to be boycotted. Not because students who resent Ahmadinejad were going to dissuade potential applicants from joining the campus. After all, a university which invites a “Hitler” naturally was going to be branded as anti-semite and was going to get bad press, and was going to be mocked at. The university was going to lose its own face by inviting someone whom many people on campus considered or even studied as a dictator.

Then why did the Columbia University invite someone as a chief guest who was so deeply hated by many in the campus community? In fact, Ahmadinejad was unique because he was (and continues to be) hated by both conservatives and liberals alike. Even several Free Speech coalitions did not have kind words for him. None of the politically correct historians had good thoughts about him. None of the civil rights organizations thought Ahmadinejad should be tolerated.

Lee Bollinger’s speech answered why: Calling the Iranian President “brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated”, even before allowing him an audience, the Columbia University professor proved the invitation was premeditated to be insulting. “You exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator,” Bollinger called Ahmadinejad. It was with the sole purpose of insulting the Iranian head that Ahmadinejad was invited to speak. The spirit of sheer hatred continued as stealth mockery found resonance throughout Bollinger’s long introduction.

Lee Bollinger who in the mask of being a free speech advocate (Michigan Affirmative Action champion) went all the way to demonstrate how utterly vulgar and autocratic he could be. A proclaimed “free-speech” advocate, Bollinger not only did not feel sorry about Ahmadinejad not being granted the freedom to visit 9/11 site, but he went one step further. Even before Ahmadinejad could speak on his “defense”, the Columbian professor went on verbally attacking the Iranian head as befitting a liar, idiot, rogue and conman.

Bollinger said a number of Columbian graduates were the brave fighters serving the American troop in Iraq. That was spoken in order to praise the American war against the Iraqi people! He asked Iranian President on their behalf why “Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq killing US troops”. Whether it is a proxy war that Iran is fighting in Iraq is a matter of dispute. What, however has been true is that the US fought an unjust war in Iraq and American troops caused much military misconduct that have been quite extensively recorded in recent past. What the Columbia University President should have done was to apologize on behalf of the infamous troop that has caused much distress to the world citizenry by its brazen inhuman treatment of peaceful civilians. Even after prison tortures, and civilian rapes committed by American troops (yes the same “brave” Columbian graduates as cohorts), the highly educated and informed professor proved his agenda of falsehoods and pretensions time and again.

Bollinger continued with his series of malicious attacks that were not evidenced nor called for. He brought to the fore the issue of Iran’s nuclear deal, which suggested his lack of awareness about the matter. Contrary to his accusations against Iran as a country working to create an unsafe world, the UN’s agency (International Atomic Energy Agency) has been in close collaboration with Iran and has found no such threats as being decried by the professor. Inviting a guest, and accusing him and the country he leads in highly derogatory terms and verbally abusing him as insane and unintelligent without even having evidence or knowledge to back up marked the genius of Bollinger. Who does Bollinger quote to support his opinions? French president Sarkozy – a right wing conservative—who apparently has lost patience (according to Bollinger) with Iran. Did such trivial information make sense in an introductory speech provided to “welcome” an international guest?

Bollinger then asked Ahmadinejad, “Why have you made the people of your country vulnerable to sanctions?” If Bollinger had any sense of empathy or understanding, he could have instead asked why do the first world powers foster vulnerable conditions for Iranian civilians. In an unsurpassed level of academic elitism that should ideally call for much loath and disgrace, Professor Bollinger outdid his sense of self-glorification by finally challenging the head of state of Iran to respond to his speech: “Let me close with a comment. Frankly and in all candor, Mr President, I doubt you have the intellectual courage to answer these questions but your avoiding them will in itself be meaningful to us. I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mindset that characterizes so much of what you say and do…I am only a professor who is also a university president, but today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion of what you stand for. I only wish I could do better.”

A huge section of Columbia University audience cheered and clapped to their president’s hate speech and waited gleefully for Ahmadinejad to fail the test. In contrast to the obviously arrogant speech of Bollinger, Ahmadinejad’s talk was pensive, thoughtful, full of insights. Ahmadinejad asserted that he was still an instructor at a university and as an instructor he strived for the whole truth. Apart from the questionable religious wisdom and denial of homosexuality in Iran, Ahmadinejad’s speech was more than an answer to Bollinger’s outlandish accusations. Yes, he did not answer anything “straight”, despite pleading from the university for him to answer in “yes” or “no”. But that was more due to the fact that Islam logic is not necessarily as vertically dismissive as Christian expectations. In every sentence that Ahmadinejad spoke, there was humility, a touch of candor and empathetic understanding. In every sentiment of Ahmadinejad, there was a prayer for collaboration, a hope for global peace, a step towards mutual dialogue. In every answer of Ahmadinejad to the Q/A session, there was an assertion of a world leader who was humble enough to raise historical lessons, and of an educated non-elite who was unafraid to research.

Ahmadinejad was forced to revisit his stance on Holocaust. Clearly he had not come to the US to speak about his views on historical revisionism, but to extend a hand of friendship for future peace pacts. Even at that stage he said he was not a Holocaust denier, what he wanted instead was further research into the area of history that has led the world to prepare for the largest unrest in recent times. Palestine did not fight World War II. Europe did. And why are the Palestinians facing the crisis still? Not an easy answer to this question, and Ahmadinejad sought for further research into this aspect. Talking about the halt in Iranian progress, he dwelt on the root cause of the unrest and insecurity. Why was Iran under sanction? Why did the first world powers withdraw unilaterally after assuring nuclear energy support to Iran? Why should there be limitations imposed on Iran’s scientific endeavors especially when IAEA has not found any problem with Iran’s peaceful nuclear program?

Moreover, Ahmadinejad did not just ask questions that were uncalled for. He offered agreements. Despite the insults and abuses and threats outside the campus building that were encouraged by the university officials, he invited American students to visit Iran, attend the universities and speak with civilians. Whether he would agree to hold a dialogue with the White House regarding resolution of US-Iran disputes? Of course, anytime! Ahmadinejad requested for a peaceful dialogue. “Everything can be resolved over talks. We need to talk”.

White House ignored Ahmadinejad during the rest of his stay. Ahmadinejad even called for a meeting of religious leaders to initiate global peace talks and succeeded. Around 140 religious leaders attended the meeting in New York, with the sole exception of any Jewish leader who refused to attend.

On the Homosexuality Question:
I waited for a few days to study media response to such an uncivilized treatment meted out to a state’s head. The American corporate media of course bathing in its biased glories preferred to maintain the line adopted by Columbia University and at their best, tried to provide a “balanced” perspective to the issue that clearly called for critical intellectual intervention.

Most reports mocked at the ignorance of Ahmadinejad when it came to issue of homosexuality. They chose to play moral pundits while not mentioning how America treats its own LGBT community. The fact that the US has consistently failed to provide for basic human rights to homosexual population even after acknowledging their presence in every sphere in social life here is clearly amiss from all reports that attacked Iran’s condition. “Mr President, in your country, homosexuals are treated in this and that way” has been a standard line of both the Columbia University president and our enlightened western press. Not for once did the educated pause awhile to review the fact that not so long ago American Psychology Association (APA), the famed master of all things research, used to consider homosexuality as an abnormality. And even to this date, the major state religion whose dictums appear on the courtroom walls and classroom prayers has been the single biggest enemy to the cause of the LGBT community.

On the Holocaust Question:
Most amount of time devoted by the university professor in his speech and later on by the university during Q/A session, and by media reports before, during and after the visit of Ahmadinejad focused on the alleged “holocaust denial” of the Iranian head. It has been accused severally that he is an Anti-Semite, like most of anyone we know in the recent history who has challenged the Holocaust issue from different perspectives.

Even as we have succeeded in challenging the legacy of Columbus and George Washington, the only and perhaps the largest event of significance has remained beyond recent review. Bollinger, the academician said there was absolutely no need to do any further research on Holocaust while Ahmadinejad said to presume that research on a topic is already exhausted is to underestimate the power of knowledge itself.

The wisdom which Ahmadinejad brought to the conference hall of the New York based university was clearly demolished to pieces with overriding imposition that calling for research into Holocaust amounts to challenging the truth itself.

The fallacious logic applied by the dominant historical thread about Holocaust is clearly evident in the manner in which they are unwilling to entertain any slightest of suggestions that can be introduced to enrich our collective historical knowledge.

If the leading academicians of the western world are so vehement in their resistance to any further research into one specific historical event, then commonsense implies there is something wrong somewhere. Personally, for me, to deny Holocaust is a crime by itself, and I am sure Ahmadinejad has not committed that crime. However it is equally a crime if we refuse to allow any more research on a historical process that changed the geographical face of the planet. Like Ahmadinejad said, we need to conduct research into every possible field in the world. We do not know whether our beliefs will be restored or quashed. The motive behind conducting a research is not to prove one or the other side. The motive of conducting a research has been to excavate further truths that may or may not unsettle previously known knowledge. On the day of his speech, Professor Ahmadinejad had not forgotten the basics of research methods. Professor Bollinger, had clearly forgotten that. And in all earnest observation, Bollinger behaved every bit unlike a student, unlike a teacher. Where is the zeal to conceal truth coming from? What legacy does Holocaust hold?

This is a crucial question of our times. Let me state that each human being of this planet has a stake in this question and each of us have a moral responsibility to respect the multiple truths that emerge from the researches done, and researches awaiting to be done. Neither the professor at Columbia holds the key to a sole truth, nor the head of Israel, Iran or United States.

If fact be told as has been chronicled by every historian of our age, the truth is the people who are steadfastly holding onto the Holocaust theory are probably the ones to have distorted the truth. That is why we need further research into the field. If truth be told, the truth is the mainstream history by denouncing Stalin and Soviet Communism and trumpeting the capitalistic cause of the age have in fact automatically joined the world of holocaust deniers.

The fact is it was the Red Army which for the first time in the world discovered the Auschwitz camps that led to an understanding of the Holocaust. The fact is when Stalin’s administration tried to send out this message to the first world for it to react, none of the western countries came forward either to help the Red Army or the victims of Hitler’s camps as was required. Quite the contrary, as has been well-evidenced, the truth is Western Europe and America were foremost in denying access to the victims of the Nazi camps.

The truth is when the Vatican learned of the secret chambers, it refused to act against the Nazi powers because the Communists had helped release the victims and for the church, communism as a political theory was more dangerous than Nazism was. The truth is Hitler’s army was heavily funded and in fact sustained by most of the leading business empires of America and Europe that continue to amass wealth and do great businesses worldwide. The capitalists during that time were aiding Hitler because for them badmouthing communism was more important than saving the lives of people who were victims of Hitler’s camps. The truth is those corporations today own most of the media business, most automobile industries. Both Ford and General Motors were aiding the Nazis then, and they are as household names in American families even now.

The truth is that the actual Holocaust deniers are those that have been hesitating to give due credits to Stalin and Red Army for their role in letting the world know about the secret chambers, by saving the lives of the remaining survivors, and by revealing the actual number of Nazi massacres to the world.

The truth is the Red Army, the only brave people who fought Hitler to his death, had put the number of dead as 4 million. This is the statistics that remained the only official figure for more than four decades. There was no question of anyone denying Hitler’s concentration camps. Of these 4 million, overwhelming majority of people were communists and communist sympathizers and fellow travelers. Hitler’s main ire—aided by his western capitalistic sponsors and the church—was against the consolidation of communism in the world. The world embracing communistic philosophy that aimed at redistributing private properties for social good was the biggest threat to the Fascist and Nazi forces that ruled the minds and hearts of rulers of every western imperial power then. Recently the formerly classified British intelligence reports have proven how the UK was a partner in crime with the Nazi forces in imprisoning, torturing and murdering communists during the WW II period. Countless American reports have suggested that the apparent threats of McCarthy seemed like a joke when compared to the actual CIA interventions in the lives of the progressives in the world. Anti-communism was the biggest single weapon that was used by Hitler then and continued till Reagan later. Interestingly, between the both, the fact is the same companies financed their respective empires wholeheartedly for them to rise and shine in power ladders.

However, to erase the fact that Communists were the actual victims of Nazi camps, the attempts on part of conservative religious groups finally led to the revision of the 4 million figure. The revisionist conservative historians conveniently “denied” the camps and its death toll and revised the number from 4 million to a little over 1 million. And the revisionists claimed that the number was much less that 4 million because 1 million of them were the Jews that were killed.

Much before Ahmadinejad proposed for a revision, it was Dr. Franciszek Piper who did revisionist research into the number of prison camps, and his research erased more than 3 million people from the total number. And the Poland’s museum which for four decades mentioned 4 million as the number of people killed by the Nazis was forced to revise the number to 1.1 million because of the revisionist historians.

The sole purpose of reducing the number was to discredit the Soviet role in combating Hitler, and to erase the historical truth about the majority of those who were killed. The majority from 4 million were actually murdered because of political reasons, and if research is led in this direction to actually demonstrate the way the Nazi-Capitalism-Church combine led their ugly war against the communists of that era, much academic curiosities will end up perhaps in suggesting the need for further research into this area of history.

Israel was built on the legacy of Holocaust. Soviet Union was disintegrated on the legacy of Communism, and the Third World was ravaged on the legacy of anti-imperialism. This is our history. We must demand to know why the 3 million victims of Nazi Capitalism were forgotten from the history. We must demand to know why the millions of Red Army soldiers were eminently discredited because they fought the Hitler to his death. We must demand to know why the Vatican and the America and the Europe did not admit the Communists to their countries even after aiding the perpetrators of the biggest genocide in recent world history. We must demand to know why the corporate houses and banks that materialized Hitler’s army and funded it to wipe off millions off the face of earth still continue to dominate businesses. We must demand to know why the inhabitants of the land, the Palestinians still continue to remain dispossessed in their own lands while the plans laid out by the perpetrators have been allowed to succeed to decide on their fates. We must demand to know why intellectually dishonest academicians and historians on their own sweet will decide what constitutes apt to be called a history despite their revising it, and why something will be rejected as history simply because they do not approve of it. We must demand to know. We must demand. History is about us.

Helpful Links:
Ahmadinejad Meets Clerics, and Decibels Drop a Notch

Iranian President Ahmadinejad speaks at Columbia University

Film: America and the Holocaust

Film: Amen

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Activism, Iran, USA, Capitalism, History, Cold War, Israel, Islam

By Saswat Pattanayak

Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.
--Jean-Paul Sartre


I apologize for the delay in posting this entry, but I guess I had to wait till the mainstream media no more confused readers with the “hot topic” any longer. I had to wait until after they would have well done away with the headlines and sensations and the matter were allowed to be relegated to backburner. And I realize now is such a time when suddenly the matter of “Reservation” is not being brought about any longer. Its no more being contextualized, as yet again a socio-economic defeat on part of the lower class struggle of India.

However, I will begin with the comment of a long standing reader of this blog. In my last post, Friend Sanjay has kindly posted a comment worth introspecting over. I will do it here.

While thanking him for his continuous critical appraisals for posts here, let it be stated that despite staunch opposition to some of his views, I have always held them with utmost respect. Many a times I have felt like some views that are reactionary to the point of resulting in further ambiguity in progressive views must be discouraged. But truthfully, I have never “censored” a single view so far.

There are certain difficulties in indulging in intellectual discourses when one relates to the self. While walking down the less taken roads, one always feels tempted to stop by more often, and ask the critical questions, “Could I have been wrong throughout the trip? How come the journey is so lonesome? Is it because this road is not going to provide any solution? Am I merely dreaming that things would take place, whereas in reality the road that most people have already taken is the one which is fulfilling dreams every passing moment? People are making records, breaking records, appearing on prime time shows, winning applauds, gold medals and Hollywood breaks. And I am here philosophizing against the notion of success and dream of a society sans “individual successes”. But then how is it logical to state that “their” dreams are any inferior to my own? Am I the sole custodian of notion of what constitutes “societal good”? Where do I intersect, accept, and carry on, because if the struggle is for all, at least majority needs to approve me at some point.”

I am not indifferent towards these series of questions which challenge the roots of my thoughts, opinions, views, and actions. I have known all the while, that in fact, views that are opposing one’s own are the only views that have any intrinsic values worth cherishing. Only through opposing tooth and nail most existing views, have I learnt anything in life. And now why the resistance to be opposed, when it comes to my own worldviews?

Sanjay provides the answer already: He says, “As you are not part of the society which is opposing reservation, I too refuse to belong to a society which develops selective amnesia in attributing traits.” It merely implies that in the nature and process of forming views, we choose sides. At times we are flexible in the face of new facts to change our views. At times we are not. Personally for me, I have changed many of my views (on God, on Salman Khan or on Indian Cricket team) several times in life basing on newer facts or facets. I am sure all of us do the same too.

Then is the struggle to impose (or you may say, influence) views a struggle to win non-members into one’s side? For a professional politician it is a desirable thing to do (hence I have problems with people who think ‘vote bank politics’ is a bad thing. I mean that’s the whole point of politics in a democracy). But for those, including myself, who do not aspire to be political candidates, what sort of struggle would that be? A struggle, which Sanjay refuses to be with me in?

This is a struggle to ‘understand’ opposing viewpoints. Now the word ‘understanding’ is more complex than it looks like. We need to give time to, contextualize, empathize, agree with reason, disagree with justification—all of these and more, in order to merely understand someone or someone’s views.

On a public forum like this, the purpose is just this: to understand each other and each other’s views depending on where we come from.

Sanjay’s concerns are obviously genuine. Are reservations going to be the solution?

A right-wing political solution?

The answer is, I do not know. But the only alternative which nays the reservations has at least proven that it would mean further systematic marginalization of the dispossessed. When reservation proposal was being discussed, I was not exulted either. I knew for certain that it is a move to pacify, not to agitate. It was a step to bow down to reactionaries, not to give vent to the oppressed. It was actually so reactionary a step that all we found out after the bill being tabled was an unforeseen unity among the upper castes, a unanimous media support to their causes, a never-before-seen coverage of their strikes, and most importantly an organized efforts by the opportunistic elites in such an organized fashion, that it must have put the neo-nazis to shame. Reservations debates, if at all helped the elites to recognize each others’ needs all the more and made them get united so much that right wing parties gaped. What BJP could never achieve in terms of uniting the upper castes (since half of them did not want any of Advani yatras anyway), the Congress at the center had achieved: notwithstanding their party affiliations, in fact notwithstanding their political standpoints or lack thereof, irrespective of the states they came from (not Gujarat or UP, but entire India, South and the North, East and the West), upper caste peoples showed solidarity with each other that must have prided the supremacists. Clearly BJP is going to win the next poll. Thank the communists for that this time!

(Racists of India, Unite?)


Whose Identity?

It is important to understand that the contemporary history of India is not that of a struggle for Individual rights or liberty. It is struggle for group rights. This is a slightly different scenario than ever in the past. The group identity struggle that the SC/ST/OBCs are going through is because of their conferred identity. They are being discriminated against, not because they are merely poor, not because they are merely uneducated, not merely because they overwhelmingly reside in states of India which are sidelined, BUT because of their caste status. It’s an identity struggle. It’s going on not just in India today, but all over the world. Indigenous people are fighting to reclaim their lands. To reclaim their lost dignity. There is a heartening gesture here, though. The demand to ‘reclaim’ is a demand that should have been logically bloody. Simply because their loss of land at the first place was done at the cost of bloody dominations of oppressors. But unlike the oppressor classes, the indigenous people are not predisposed to violence (else they would win hands down any day in organizing efforts at dethroning the minority upper castes). Secondly, they have proved to be more law-abiding than the oppressor classes themselves. Let me elucidate.

Its only natural for the society ruled by oppressor class, to already frame certain laws to rule out any bloody struggle as ‘illegal’ because the ‘evolution’ of the oppressor classes have metamorphosed into a consensual class. Consequently, this society to garner its position of power, takes onto itself the mammoth sense of generosity to either ‘grant’ or ‘dispel’ the need to let its prisoners-0f-wars a chance to compete with itself. When it finds, as in areas of agriculture that the lower class people cannot stake claim to superiority in face of industrial society, it makes no issues. When it finds, as in areas of primary education or adult education, where the lower class can learn how to get empowered, (but in reality are never so…its like knowing how to draw rockets does not land one in the moon…one needs to be part of a multi-billion dollar industry for that actualization), there is no problem either. Only when the matter is evaluated at par with elite positions (medical or physical science as education or administrator and priest as profession), that there seems to be unwavering difficulties.



All’s well that ends well?

Reservation will never be the solution. But it is a definite challenge to the status quo thought process of taking the majority of people for granted. And that is why it’s important to revisit the issue of reservation. At the core of it, some of my friends are absolutely right about the upper-caste students. Sure, they do not think like the politicians. They do not think in terms of castes. Students in the classroom today do not consider any group as untouchables. Quite accurate in some cities of India.

But the grim reality is that it breeds something more dangerous. At least where untouchability is practiced, there is a caste consciousness that translates into class struggles or similar identity struggles. As we know from experience that opposite of love is not hate, but indifference; what happens among the highbrows is that they profess a caste-blindness that’s so indifferent to caste issues that it glorifies the oppressor class as the egalitarian tolerant group!

While practicing the caste-blindness, the issue of historical oppression is bid goodbye. Essentially whole generations of students are going to graduate (and their children in future) from schools and colleges without an iota of knowledge in field of caste struggles in India (except those who are interested in studying Sociology or History as subjects—that too if the Saffronites don’t take over NCERT). Rest of the students are not going to be studying the unique tribal history, the unique Dravidian struggle, the unique struggles of the OBCs, who are at times depicted as part of the Dalitbahujans. The struggle that is not religious, but caste-based. A history where people still do not think they are Hindus, only that they think they are Kurumaas, and Chakaali in the South India or Bhandari, and Goudaa in East India.


Caste-denial: In whose interest?

Although Hindus would love to include all these peoples as belonging to the most “ancient” religion, and although the Brahmins and upper caste people do not go around talking about their castes, there is need for a complex understanding here. Upper caste people of India need to realize that the caste-structure had been shaped by the upper castes themselves for “their” own convenience. And hence they take it quite for granted without having to feel burdened by the weight of caste on them. By actually not talking about their castes, they absolve themselves of their well-deserved “guilt”. For the Dalitbahujans, however, it’s quite a different type of struggle. This struggle for caste assertion is one of an identity, not one that they can take for granted. This is one that’s not going to make them live easily. It’s a painful daily reminder, and they have no other course except to assert their snatched rights. The surnames are their characters. They have to live upto them, and yet surpass them. It’s not a privilege, but a burden. Like a wealthy person taking money for granted, the upper caste people carry their surnames without having to think about it twice. But like a poor person valuing the small thatched cottage, the lower caste people even will look at universal wind as enemy to their rooftops.

In India or elsewhere, there needs to be more studies of caste and race, precisely because the oppressor classes have almost taken it for granted. In America, Critical Whiteness Studies need to take place more vigorously to make most white students realize the invisible burden they have imposed on the people of color by means of color discrimination. In India, the Critical Brahmin Studies need to be institutionalized for the upper caste people to understand complexities of caste and socio-economic well being that are influenced by their stoic silences, if not outright display of prejudices. Minority studies are fine to “understand” a differential culture (Asian-American Studies, or Black Cultural Studies), but what we need also is the Brahmin Studies or White Studies, just to “teach” the history of their oppressive culture.

Currently to the powerful White males of the world, there is just a big fuss about need for affirmative action or of assertion of rights of colored people, because according to them, most of the issues have been resolved, now that “marginalized” people have attained “success” already in many spheres. Likewise the Brahmins or upper castes of India think there is no need for reservation because so many Dalit and OBC people are becoming successful. They cite the incidents of chief ministers, sportspersons and plain rich men among “lower castes” who have rode the ladder as examples to justify doing away with any proactive reservation policy.

What, then, is the picture? Have these traditionally marginalized people not attained success enough so as not to need any more reservation or affirmative policies in place? The mainstream answer is yes. Alternative cries are no. What’s the deal?



Part II


The anti-reservation lobby cites success of lower caste people as examples to denounce reservations. If the progress is being done anyway, what is the need of further reservation? The initial period when lower caste people should have been given a chance, has passed already. So there should be no more extension of such scope, let alone any proliferation of further reservations. Such run few arguments on the right.

On the left front, some even justify reservation as means to attain more success just as a form of ripple effect. Some arguments favor reservations because it will alone let the lower caste people to become successful in life, because the competition is indeed tough otherwise. We must build more access to the people with disabilities, after all.

Although I would still support the Left mainstream argument, I tend to think both core arguments primarily are dealing with the same question. And once the question is pre-determined, we are not going to find a radical solution to that. After all, as Audre Lorde had so rightly said, “The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.”

I think the question needs to be reassessed entirely. The alternative question I pose about this whole issue (and thereby my peripheral arguments) is about the concept of “Success” itself. As we know already, success in capitalistic society is not just determined, or competed for, but also ‘defined’ by owners of means of production. This is because Capitalism is that phase of human history which aims to suit the least number of people. Prior to capitalism, there were phases of history, possibly more draconic: that of kings and slaveowners and feudal lords. But there were constant competitions, and rivalry among them. Some kind of ‘balance of power’ was always being maintained. There was no clear cut class division on a world scale. The working class and the ruling class were ill-defined.

But with Capitalism, arrived Monopoly. Only a few hundreds of people in the entire world ruled over the rest of us. They own not just wealth, but also own the yardstick to value the wealth. They not just own the knowledge economy, they also own the yardstick to value what passes on as knowledge. They don’t just own managers, they own the philosophy behind creating managers. Not just doctors, but also the rationale behind entrance tests to medical profession.

Capitalism, unlike every other previous stages of human societal development established the yardsticks, which we shall call here as Standards. Earlier there were hundreds of Emperors. With Capitalism, it had to be just one! Earlier there were hundreds of kingdoms. With Capitalism, it was reduced to just a G-7. Earlier there were skilled people respected in every corner of the world. With Capitalism, they began to be respected only in certain professions at certain corners while working for certain sectors. Earlier phases of history were horribly bad. Capitalism became merely grotesquely inhuman.


What are the Standards?

Let’s begin with Gods. After all, Capitalism thrives on the belief that God created the universe and made it a standard assumption. The biggest testimony of that can be found on every dollar bill. “In God We Trust” is the single most famous used slogan in everyday exchanges of capitalism. But with thousands of tribal gods, nature gods and no gods, there used to appear quite a competition. And with majority of people either not believing in a single God or believing in their personal Gods, it had invariably become difficult to conquer the lands populated by such unrestricted folks. God needed to be standardized. In name of spiritualism or in name of organized religions, godmen and gods had to be proclaimed on ranks. Consequently what happened were multi-fold. One Christianity spread throughout the globe as it had been hijacked into becoming the religion of the oppressing White man. “Missionaries” were established in most parts of the world to propagate this religion. Based on Biblical myths, a religion which had absolutely no cultural commonality with indigenous peoples (in terms of names of characters or nature of redemption), this soon emerged as the standard religion. Two, basing on it, other oppressive religions (according to geographical peculiarities) also took charge in their lands to standardize beliefs. Hence for example, in India, when it’s about Gods, the standardized Gods stand out everywhere. They are themes for mythological television programs. They are Gods after whom national holidays are observed. They are the designated Gods. Brahma, Vishnu, Laxmi, Parvati, Shiv, Ganesh: these dominant Hindu Gods were used in the process to kill the Other or Lesser Gods. Gods worshipped by lower caste people in India (who the Census includes as Hindus) are entirely different, unwept, unsung and almost condemned by the general society (that make up the law, media, schools and parliament).

Kancha Ilaiah, a Dalitbahujan activist says in his book “Why I am not a Hindu” (Samya, 1996),

“Even a Brahmin family might talk about Pochamma, Maisamma or Ellemma, but not with the same respect as they would about Brahma, Vishnu, Maheswara. For them Pochamma and Maisamma are ‘Sudra’ Goddesses and supposed to be powerful but in bad, negative ways. A Pochamma according to them does not demand the respect that Lakshmi or Saraswathi do, because Lakshmi and Saraswathi are supposed to be ideal wives of ideal husbands, whereas no one knows who Pochamma’s husband is, any more than they can name Maisamma’s husband. This is the reason why no Brahmin or Baniya child bears the name of Pochamma, Maisamma or Ellamma, whereas in our families these are revered names and we name our children after these Goddesses…. It does not strike an average Dalitbahujan consciousness that these Goddesses do not have husbands and hence need not be spoken of derogatorily. This is because there are many widows in our villages who are highly respected whose stature is based on their skills at work and their approach towards fellow human beings…”

After establishing a standard in religion, and the icons representing the ‘legitimate’ religions (the history of Native-American experience should not be lost on us either, where they were on gun points forced to convert to Christianity, in their very own lands), the religious principles themselves are standardized. The hierarchy of families, the sanctity of marriage, the importance on child-bearing might all seem as comfortable as the essence of any religion or God. But just like the religions, these “value systems” help perpetuate the male dominance of women, in which male property ownership becomes the key. Single or divorced women, unwed mothers, and people of alternative sexual orientations are systematically exploited on economic grounds and the laws to that effect are set on the justice walls even to this day. Conservation of traditional hierarchy, male supremacy, Christian ‘family values’ etc continue to dictate the value system.

In such conservation movement, God (or the justices or president’s addresses) becomes pretty much irrefutable. A former president of Harvard (who stepped down recently) University whose tenure saw the reactionary findings on affirmative action, and whose personal understanding of causes behind women’s underrepresentation in Math and Sciences echoed that of many elite professors of India who attribute similar causes behind lower caste peoples’ ‘failure’ in technical field, also found need to conserve the conservative thoughts around the issues. Lawrence H Summers said to his defense, “My point was simply that the field of behavioral genetics had a revolution in the last fifteen years, and the principal thrust of that revolution was the discovery that a large number of things that people thought were due to socialization weren't, and were in fact due to more intrinsic human nature, and that set of discoveries, it seemed to me, ought to influence the way one thought about other areas where there was a perception of the importance of socialization.”

“Intrinsic human nature”? Summers thinks it was a recent scientific discovery. Perhaps true. But it is so recent because the community of those elite scientists themselves could have been driven by agendas, their research funding agencies more so, and people like Summers for believing in them and citing these studies, even more so. The agenda is simple: to not diversify the field of science and engineering in order for women to come and shake the male hardcore foundation. Similar cases exist exactly in India where upper castes have had problems with lower caste people rising up from shining shoes to claim that given better climate to make up for their social loss, they can challenge the ‘scientists’ off their mindsets.

Capitalism while working on the superstructure of culture, politics and society takes help of first ‘Standardizing’ even before influencing. Standardization helps in dispelling any authoritarian tactics. It works smoothly and creates necessary illusions that are comforting and numbing at the same time.

Hence when the standards of beauty are envisaged, Capitalism dictates the norms of blue-eyes, 36-24-36 vitals, the designer clothes. So much so that the terms it devises to further normalize thought process are “Fashion”, “Model” etc. Model is a term that goes unquestioned. I mean in a way, everyone wants to be a Model to others. Or for that matter no one wants to be “unfashionable”. Standards of ‘good’ and ‘desirable’ are carefully orchestrated, pretty much like the way the term “Black” connotes everything negative (Black days, Black march, Black-out, Blackmail, Dark Age) etc., as opposed to White which denotes ‘fair’ness.

In terms of country, it’s the Western Europe and the US which become the Standards. From Greenwich Mean Time where world begins at London, to the ‘Super Power’ of the US, the notion so pervades minds that they become a standard. It becomes difficult to pursue the US as a country having poverty or illiteracy or exploitation. Hence more often than not, it’s the people who are brought to task for being ill-informed than the system of governance which has somewhat made a mark at keeping people ill-informed.

And this system of governance, the western Democracy model which is infamous for promoting ignorance by emphasizing on monoculture, single language, single god, unitary value system, disproportionately high ownership of things by a single race, religion and gender, a citizen privilege syndrome etc has also been made a standard in governance. Based on ballot box competition, driven by high fund-raising efforts by the old Men networks, so-called democracy rules. to the extent that any country that does not practice western democracy, is offered strange looks and armed intrusions.

Capitalism, which works as the seed for corporate sector to prosper, demands that human labor be mindlessly replaced by machines and turn both against each other. It thrives on breeding alienation, creating divisions among workers by refusing unions any intrinsic power to organize and call off work. It promotes certain brands of education that supports its machinery. Professionals from technical background become the only ones who are needed to run capitalism, since labor force becomes the most dispensable factor. Efficiency becomes the key word and it merely goes unquestioned since it basically means that the bosses need to get most out of the workers by making them work for as less as possible so as to make higher profits. In such a setup, the workers tend to think of the welfare of the company bosses (‘we should work even harder because if the company goes on loss then boss will fire us&rsquo. The bosses accordingly do not give any two hoots to workers’ welfare. Because apparently, the workers are less educated and hence they are dispensable. Education becomes a promoter of class society, not an instrument to bridge the access and control gap.

Class society in turn preaches the idol god, but in reality worships only one God, universally seen. The Money God. Success is calculated in terms of money. Achievements in life are translated in terms of recognition by money (after all, what is Nobel Prize, if not a committee of Trust money?), parameters of in-group and out-group status are financially drawn. Money determines who will be in politics, who will hog limelights, who will be on television, who will have luxury to watch television. That’s the reason why Indian reactionaries cite Dalits are successful when they become politicians, or corrupt bureaucrats, because they understand their own language of what constitutes success. Success then means one’s access to money, one’s ability to worship money and one’s capacity to overcome monetary needs. Being rich becomes being successful becomes worthy of being emulated. Being a celebrity, a politician, a TV star. “Hot Happenin n Rockin”.

This entire discourse rests on economic systems of capitalism where capital, not community, becomes paramount to judge standards of society, culture and politics. And that’s why everytime we indulge in “Merit”, and “Success”, and “Achievement”, and “Ability”, we are basically using the words that help the capitalism’s arguments stronger.

For one, let’s change the question. Rather, let’s turn it upside down. And we will see the need to revisit our privileges and celebrate the “failures” as treasures that keep the world from getting reduced to a competitive turf of mindless warfare. And when it comes to give back to them for their great tolerance and display of peaceful silence, Reservation needs to be just a primary offering.

Tags: Saswat, Philosophy, Capitalism, Academic, Atheism, Casteism, Racism

By Saswat Pattanayak

I will call this the Princess Diana Syndrome. Remember that poor adorable princess who met an untimely death? The whole world just seemed to have lost this great soul who was so beautiful and could have changed everyone’s lives by posing alongside the orphans. Media everywhere from global to national to regional to local got hooked onto the image of Diana as the savior who was a victim (even if that meant that she was victim of media themselves!) To some extent the media houses blamed each other, the paparazzis and even the evil cash-rich boyfriend who was also some kind of a prince.

The fairy tale ended with Diana. Or as much I thought.

Until I started following the medical students in India. A country that recently underwent a historic blunder with a nuclear treaty, whose prime minister went on the stage to hail the colonial powers, whose farmers were reportedly committing suicides every passing day off unpaid debts, whose tribal people were being shot at by police brutally for absolutely no legal reason, whose fortunes had been so unevenly distributed that the gap between the rich and the poor had only been doubling periodically if not more, whose healthcare system, education system, and corruption system were all continuing to be elitist in every phase of reincarnations.

Suddenly someone dropped a cup of tea. Reservation bill for the other backward castes. I thought it was teacup indeed because I read from school civics book about the directive principles of state policies in Section IV of Indian constitution. And if I never would have read those books, then also I could have understood the need for such reservations for a country like India. In my recent trip to India this last December I could feel that Bangalore needed some reservations for working class people to stay there, lest the city be taken over by cash-rich tech-savvy tenants. In Hyderabad, I felt like in Charminar area, there needed to be some reservations for the Muslim preachers so that the Hindu temple created alongside the monument does not continue intentionally blowing its bhajans on loudspeakers. In Bhubaneswar, I felt like the Orissa tribals needed some reservations at Kalinga Nagar lest the lands all get to money hungry arms dealers aka government. But hardly I realized that the teacup would become a storm, possibly the worst storm to have hit India in recent times.

I always thought reservations for backward caste people in India are not some proposal or imaginings. It is a necessity. It’s a historical necessity! But instead what I found as I kept flapping emails and newspapers and blog comments were some grounds of objection which were gaining mammoth popularity. I have dealt with many issues, including Merit, elsewhere in this blog. But I will lay out other popular domains here.

1) Is Reservation a Favor?
One, the ground that the backward caste people have made quite some progress, and so they do not need reservation anymore.

Of course this is valid observation to say that they have made quite some progress. But to say that they don’t need reservation any more is to defeat the crux of the observation itself. Precisely because they have made progress, it’s logical to conclude that the reservation policies in India have worked positively in improving the lots of some people who include people that we historically called untouchables. Now the reality though is their improvement has taken place only marginally so far, and is on a constant progression. They are growing in the social ladders, but are yet to attain the power structures. Quite similar to the black people of America where through affirmative actions, many of the minority people rose to stardom, yet we know that not many of them have become influential so far in many elite areas. Even today more than 90% or more of the deans of colleges all over are White. Even today there is only one Senator who is a black. But some progress is being made nevertheless. I have a quicker solution (to which I will allude in a while), but I am also ready to go with the tide!

Likewise in India, the progress in order to continue demands that we increase the reservation quotas even more so that we can see more substantial improvement in the lives of the historically dispossessed. There is also a moral question here, which often goes unnoticed. That answers the question of ‘Why should we care’ types. These people are lower caste, because they were declared so by the ‘higher’ castes. They suffered so that the higher ones would enjoy the privilege. And hence, if not for any other legal and rational reasons (which are aplenty), for this moral reason itself, India needs to resurrect itself and let the lower caste people have greater shares of the cake now on. We owe it to them. To our domestic servants, and to the farmer-slaves. And to those students whose seats we not only refused them to have, but also refused them to dream of having.

2) Who Divides the Society?
Second line of reasoning that I see common to my readers’ resentments is pertaining to the division of society on basis of caste. To this, my answer is one of amazement. Caste politics have always continued to thrive in India. All the while, the lower caste people were subjugated and there was not a sign of remorse and guilt (and no demonstrations by upper castes against their fellow oppressors. When Gandhi offered his token fasts, he was also killed by the Hindu fundamentalists). Even to this day, all classified marriage ads would stress on marriages within castes. Even today domestic slaves are continuing to flock households of higher classes. Division of labor is indeed a casteist prerogative. Medical students who are polishing shoes to demonstrate their anger are clearly suggesting that they consider the work of cobbler as below their dignity! Even to this day! In other words the children of Brahmin caste would not allow their children to become cobblers in India. No matter how poor, the Brahmin families would stress on wearing the sacred thread to distinguish them from lower caste families. These active forms of caste discriminations are being practiced in India for as long as we know. And now only since the structure of Brahminical dominance bastion (the education) is being challenged, the country is noticing havoc. Suddenly politicians are being blamed for caste-based politics now. All along when the politicians themselves practiced Brahminism and the people did so religiously (everytime they invited only the Brahmin priests to solemnize a marriage) then no one questioned the caste divisions of India. Only when there is a valid demand for legitimate share in higher education, there is the hue and cry. Some of the more progressive minds agree that it’s fine to “improve the quality of primary education by granting even 80% seats to backward castes”, but its not OK to have reservations in Higher Education! I mean, the answer to that is, of course there are 80% of people in India who are backward castes anyway. So all of them will be in primary education, which is free and compulsory! It is the lack of resources and access to elite medical school coachings and preparations for them that deprive these 80% people! Hence the need for reservations.

The point is regarding losing the power. The well-meaning friends know it too well that primary schools do not change power equations. Throw them to schools, when their parents will force them to work in fields or have them sold to ragpickers, they will anyway drop-out. Plus they know that there is no chance in hell for the backward castes people to fund their medical preparations or other elite education at all. So it’s easier to give those 80% away to primary education! The ruling class knows the rules of wishful thinkings. Saying let them have primary education is like saying, let the wives do the household works only! When it comes to decision making and when it comes to budgeting money, the Men are there! Young students of India are actually thinking that higher education needs merit, and let the primary education go to the lower castes. The transition and the factors in between, the vertical structure of class society, the money factor, the debt factor, the social mobility factor, the factor of having one surname in place of another---are completely lost on the blue-eyed youngsters!

3) The Infatuation with Exotic Exceptions:
Third, is the question of the poor Brahmins. The poor Brahmins are aplenty in India. No denying that. But how come again, the minority poor Brahmins are now becoming the issue when the majority poor backward castes never were catered to?!

If total population of Brahmins in India are mere 5% and of them one percent would be actually poor, or comparatively poor with the landless Dalits and Adivasis we need to make policy decisions here. No I do not agree with the alternative proposals of economic parity argument. I am sure that’s not going to work in a simple way. From Vivekananda to Aurobindo, Hindu preachers knew to what extent caste is a socio-economically complex concept. The poor Brahmins are NOT the same as the poor Dalits. Period.

We all know it just too well. When the poor Brahmin begs in India, it’s considered a blessing to serve him/her. When the poor Dalit begs, the person is treated like a cursed cur. Who are we kidding? It’s actually regressive to even equate both categories. To begin with, Brahmins were not supposed to be wealth accumulators. I hardly know many Brahmins who are super rich. As I have stated earlier it’s the Kshyatriyas and Vaisyas who were the rich and powerful. All that the Brahmins had was the monopoly on knowledge, and that to a great extent translated power for them. Because of that so-called ‘knowledge’, the Brahmins have always survived the otherwise economic onslaughts. Using that today, most of them have become Pandits, Vedis, Dwivedis, Trivedis and Chaturvedis! They are the traditional scholars building up the ivory towers of education. They have defined the syllabus where students don’t read history of Dalit plights in independent India. They have demarcated the superiority of engineering and medicine as subjects that only they have ensured as more worthy by creating a demand-supply ratio that increases market pressure for those jobs. The Brahmins have relegated farming as a lowly activity although India is supposed to be an agricultural country. In Brahminical India, the farmers commit suicides and engineers fly first class! They have not just conceptualized their brand of education and forced its validity down on us, they have also created a market for their education (reason why students of literature and art history do not get jobs and find hardly any takers for marriage even for a dowry!), and they have earmarked the status tags.

In that whole process, their monopoly has not got lost on us—and which we see every passing day, the disproportionately high beggars on Indian streets, the prostitutes in cheap brothels and the large unemployed crime-prone youth groups. What it has also done is let a few cracks fall here and there, where there have been some Brahmin victims as well. But the victims in these cases are victimized because of a Brahminical structure itself, not because they are Brahmins. It’s like the White homeless people of America are victim of a White structure that thrives on market capitalism.

The question is where to start the reform process. As I have said earlier, I have quicker ways to address these issues. I guess many are working towards that in Nepal, in Orissa, and in Jharkhand now. But since the governments, that are more interested to guard the Indian Hindu Constitution than to empower the people in reality want a reform process, I think they know the answer now.

Part of the reason why even a rightwing BJP is supporting the Communists in this case (whoa!) is because it understands that the opportunistic Communist members in the UPA do not want radical replacement of the power structure. They want to maintain the ‘sanctity’ of the unity factor which enables the ruling class to rule.

The reason why different nations of India are not yet separate countries is because Nehru passed a bill in early 60’s that made it illegal to cede from the country. Likewise, every ruling coalition guards its interests. That’s the reason why all political parties want this reservation to go on, not as a revolutionary step—but as a conservative step to prevent the alternative.

Is there a Quicker Alternative?

The young inspired idiots who think they are some medical scholars should get the political maturity to understand that there cannot be a better government for them than the current UPA. At least Manmohan Singh can use his so-called leftist pimps to silence the Dalit resentments in India. In the other case, if they fail to do that (and Lord Ram forbid, Advani must be chanting) a massive revolution of the landless against the landlords in India could result not only in abolition of those medical coaching centers, but also in revamping of the healthcare system completely.

Five decades ago, the US thought Cubans were no good other than being sex slaves and sugarcane farmers. Fidel Castro got the support of his revolutionary people to change the country into one of the best healthcare haven known in the world history (even better than the US itself)! It’s because Cuba did not have an elite medical education, nor did it distinguish between people of different jobs. Yes, the media reports have denounced Cuba because the doctors get less pay there than the peons get paid in Indian government offices. But what the heck, doctors in Cuba have demonstrated highest human concerns (even to a Katrina crisis that US could not handle), whereas for all we know, India has one of the worst healthcare systems in the recorded world history that ignore the poor people systematically who cannot pay their fees.

If the medicos do not heed to their politically powerful friends in both ruling and opposition (as if there is a difference between Manmohan Singh and LK Advani!), they will soon be unable to withstand the abolition of elitist structure of higher education. Once higher education will be massified, and will be available for free to all (deservedly so), they can no longer monopolize over the professions and they can no longer demand French wines from Pharmaceutical companies to prescribe illicit drugs! My friends who are Pharma sales representatives have given me rides to clinics of doctors in big cities of India, where they demand for gifts ranging from liquor to flight tickets to call girls! Oh those merit-based established Brahmin doctors of India!

The Taboo Question: Do Doctors deserve the Hype?

With all these talks of merit and education, the medical practitioners in India are impaired by skills. Engineering and medical colleges in India are institutes of big fraudulent activities. Seats are blocked, sold and malpractices in examinations are so rampant that even the college principals have to call off the examinations. Why “Munnabhai MBBS” movie became such approved despite being an unoriginal flick is because people have lost trust on the doctors as a whole. Visit any medical and one finds unattended patients rolling down on the floor for days. Only those who have money or power are lucky enough to procure a bed inside the hospital. People die on the hospital corridors every passing day because doctors simply refuse to look at them. The AIIMS, where one protestor was allegedly killed (another media hype which could turn out to be false) is a place where thousands of critical patients are without beds, where to get a doctor appointment one needs to wait for weeks, and where dozens of people die on daily basis because of inefficient care even before being admitted! The private hospitals like Apollo are so expensive that even Americans would prefer the state hospital of Baltimore county.

India, the country to second largest population in the world is mired by healthcare issues from the beginning. Brahminical stress on female infanticide and the expensive screening of unborn gender are a regular inhuman practice. Historically “merit”-orious doctors have history of neglect that have no known parallels, in terms of sheer magnitude.

The myth of merit being attached to doctors is one which also needs to be shattered. Democratization (proper representation of backward castes which form the majority) and not professionalization (elitism) holds the key if we want any change for the good.

In the meantime, I am saddened to notice that many well-meaning people have actually found their Princess Diana in the medical students’ strikes. It’s glamorous. Pretty faces holding slogans any day get more prominence in media than black-faced coal mine workers. Or the landless tribals who get killed for defending their rights, or even the students who demand reservations because they are discriminated on grounds of merit. After all, just like caste, Merit is also a human construct.

Caste and Merit: Two sides of the same Coin?

What’s interesting is that both caste and merit were devised by the upper class Brahmins. When it suited them to rule over others, they used ‘Caste’ and aided the Kings in exploiting the masses. Those were the days when even the ‘poor’ Brahmins were comfortable being poor, because they gained respect ONLY by renouncing their wealth. People from villages to royal palace would continuously garland them with gifts and foods, and those poor Brahmins would not have to toil on fields and even if they did not own a palace they had unrestricted access to any house they wanted to visit, to rape lower caste virgins or to ‘banish’ lower caste rebels.

When the feudal society was “replaced” by capitalistic one (not entirely though as we learn more) by the same ruling class, the terms changed slightly. The moving money started ruling, instead of the concrete lands. At this juncture also, the ruling class (including the Brahmins) started monopolizing over the money since modern money economy also germinated from Gold (their traditional ownership) than crops (the farmers’ produce, although that also took place in lands owned by the landlords).

But with the revolution of the landless once again to cause imbalance of ruling structure, money found itself in slightly more democratic structure (just as the historic progression of everything else). Here is where some Brahmins and members of other ruling classes fell prey to competition. Before all the palaces and the institutions were about to be conquered by the hitherto landless class, the ruling coalition devised the Class Society.

The sustenance of Class Society:

Class Society in Democratic systems work in a hegemonist way, to facilitate power consolidation in the society on basis of “Knowledge”, another traditional weapon of the ruling class. Here also, the only ones who benefited were the small elites. But when the most accessible ones (the applications or the Arts) could be understood by the majority, the ruling elites raised the bar for the most inaccessible ones –only with the aim to exclude people, not include—(the principles or the Sciences).

At this juncture, the traditionally landless people are now rising up to demand their share in the inaccessible sciences, to stop further gaps between them and the knowledge, not just in terms of economic costs, but also in terms of social costs of understanding. In the past, we have seen how physical sciences were hijacked by the ruling elites also by practice. Indian bomb needed to be called a Hindu Bomb for that reason! The nuclear physics that earmarked the class society helped the traditional Pandits. What has a tribal society got to do with nuclear weapons? Even if it has some constructive uses, why should the traditionally landless village dwellers bother about this when they can live peacefully with their Mother River, without disturbing “geopolitics” of “Indian subcontinent?.

But as the class society progressed in its greed, the divisions became more apparent. The modern landless of India got most affected in the whole process. Bereft of traditional education, and threatened by industrial displacements, the majority of the poor have been organizing at several places of India at several levels. But at the same time, irrespective of the local area developments, and the cooperatives, there has been such an exoticization of the backward caste people that an imagery of them becoming engineers and doctors are inviting wraths from the traditional bastion holders.

Just like the “White Men’s Burdens”, the Brahminical burden to civilize Indian population has expressed itself in bad to worse forums. One comment on a blog read, “How can you let a SC/ST doctor conduct operation”? Its not unfortunate, its actually criminal to think that someone from a lower caste who get, lets say 40 marks less than the higher caste (for various reasons spanning from absence of English heritage, to lack of malpractice, to no proximity with the professor who rather wants to give away his daughter’s hand to a fellow Brahmin aspirant doctor) will become an inferior doctor.

With the current healthcare records of India as an indicator, if nothing else, the candidates getting lower marks (which is anyway improbable) must be allowed to replace the candidates with higher marks. For the practice of medicine is not meant to be proven in its elitism of institution or certificate rankings, but in the everyday dealings with suffering people. Established doctors and enrolled medical students who have clearly demonstrated that they do not feel for the fellow suffering aspirant students, are clearly also sending out a message that they are highly insincere, insensitive and criminal when it comes to dealing with suffering patients. We do not need high-scoring candidates now, all that India needs now is skilled people with human values that champions the causes of the dispossessed. We have the majority of such well meaning people (clearly evident by the way they have been tolerating a minor Hindu supremacist rule in India since decades now) in the country. What we need is to merely train them in the elite fields to make the skills accessible to most people. Since there are a handful of opportunist professionals (like airline pilots) blackmailing the country, Indian people perhaps should request doctors from fellow third world countries for a short duration and in the meantime, fix these irresponsible doctors behind bars, and completely overhaul the current healthcare system, where they must allow no more than 5% of upper caste people to get into the profession (they will be needed for short time, since the indifferent socialites will need some counseling from those so-called doctors who can actually empathize with their midlife crises).

No more Princess Diana tears, please. What we need is addressing of the real issues that affect THE MAJORITY, not the minority. When Bolsheviks came to power they had to overlook the pains caused to beautiful daughters of the royal families. When peasant revolutionaries of India chased the Kings down the streets, they did not spare the innocent children of the palace either. When a revolution takes place or almost takes shape (as in Nepal) one does not have time nor patience to attend the cute royal Dianas' pleas.

At least 80% to 95% reservations of seats in medical institutes (merely to reflect the proportion of backward caste people), if not outright revolutionary takeover of the medical colleges, is a necessity at this critical juncture. If a small minority of 5% of people could rule over the country through complete control over elite institutions (and promote divisive oppressions), then 80% of people taking over every hospital to take care of their own lot through complete control over elite institutions (to make them mass institutes, and promote majority rule) is definitely going to be a welcome relief in India.

Tags: Saswat, Racism, India, Casteism, Academic, History, Capitalism, Indigenous

By Saswat Pattanayak

Fellow reader Open to Discussion asks me some valid questions following my earlier post on the topic . I have decided to publish my answers here as well for more general readership.

OD asks:
1. why so much of poison my dear friend?
2. no where in india were the rulers were brahmins
entire UP and bihar had been ruled by Yadavs(OBC), rajasthan by jats (OBC), in tamil nadu all except Brahmins come under reserved cat, so some body amongst them must be ruler.
3. algebra questions are never asked in medical entrance!!
u set any syllabus, it does not matter, toppers will remain toppers.
for indigenous med, we have separate ayurvedic collages. there is no need to include it in allopathy

I respond:
Dear Open to Discussion:
The reason behind my relatively long posts is that I explore the forest, not stick to trees. If you will read the entire post, it merely says that it’s a wrong thing for elite students to protest against possibility of equal opportunity for students who have been historically denied the privilege, owing to their socio-economic class.

To further this humble opinion, I have cited examples to show how the ruling classes guard their interests and growth by NOT sacrificing their privilege.

I do not wish to influence you into believing one way or the other, but I do not wish to find your words in my mouth either. Hence, my quick responses to your questions:

1. There is no poison. But yes, lots of anger. Because I possess a privileged ‘caste’ background myself, and I would not wish to support such protests being done by people coming from my social locations. Therefore I feel something in me is at stake too. Coming from Orissa, I have witnessed firsthand the violence against the so-called lower-caste and untouchable people. By not denying my privilege, I have understood to what extent I am a part of the oppressive sphere. And by seeing that the cycle is not being allowed to change, again by the ruling classes in Orissa, the Brahmin Bureaucracy and the Patnaik governance, I would be naïve not to see the role of my social class in perpetuating the crisis. For all I know, if I took my resume to a place of work in Orissa, (or anywhere in India), I will not have to feel conscious of my surname and no one will make assumption that by family name, such as, ‘you are good only to mend shoes’. And you know what, I am born with this great privilege. Hence it’s not a poison. Its an understanding of being privileged and expressing resentments when such privilege is mis-utilized, as at the current juncture by some fellow medicos.

2. I do not like to be dragged into this, because I personally think some of the Indian rulers I will name now are my favorites too. However, my point was not to say that Brahmin rulers should not be there, but to say that we must reserve seats for rulers of other caste varieties too (and overwhelmingly so, since they represent a much wider people). However my friend, to refute your supposition, following are few exemplars:

Historically, yes Brahmins were never the rulers. In fact, Hardly ever! But they surely collaborated with the local kings to help the caste division take place according to their sacred texts. We are well aware of the Brahmin sponsored Mauryan coup against the Nandas. Or several such dynasties. Since my post is mostly about current India, we will focus on the here and now (the India which began in 1947).

First, there needs to be a distinction between who are the actual rulers. As you know, there are thousands of people in the power structure but only a few really implement the policies. There are very many different Nations inside India. Only a few govern them through federal laws. I will refer to them here; (note, not all of them are Brahmin supremacists at all…quite the contrary, many are very progressive indeed. But this was beyond the point…since you need the statistics..)

The prime ministers: Nehru, Indira, Rajiv (one family that actually ruled..!), P.V. Narasimha Rao, Morarji Desai and Atal Bihar Vajpayee… (did I leave out any other name…Shastriji?)…Whoa…that’s called real power.
Being the prime minister of India, being able to change national languages, being able to divide Tamil Nadu, being able to annex Tripura, being able to destroy Babri Masjid, being able to cause Bofors ….

Looking at the huge majority of PMs and all the Prime Minister’s Men (ministers, bureaucrats), India has been ruled ALWAYS by the Brahmin caste, if that answers your curiosity. It’s the prime ministers alone who decide over the fate of this country, alongwith their clouts of bureaucrats. Unless you want to include presidents, and we can talk of V.V. Giri, Shankar Dayal Sharma etc.

You bring up the question of Bihar and UP and cite OBC rulers. Clearly OBCs may not be equally disadvantaged. But partly also because they are more than 60% of population in those states. On a closer look, even as they are majority in UP, what do we see? Time after time, “Presidents Rule”. Don’t forget Romesh Bhandari’s weapon to destabilize UP! Or creation of Jharkhand and the perpetual poverty that plagues Bihar, once the most treasured state of India. To even think that Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party or Rashtriya Janata Dal have ever ruled the country is a lie. Not even DMK or AIADMK. Although I will come to Tamil Nadu now.
Her Highness Jayalalitha is also a Brahmin. Not just that, she is a loyal ally of the BJP! So when you say “in tamil nadu all except Brahmins come under reserved cat, so some body amongst them must be ruler”, you need do more research.

Kushwant Singh had given a statistical interface to suggest Brahminical hegemony in India long back. Those were the days when the right wing had not even seized India. Now situation is far worse. But here is a pointer to some of his findings:
The Brahmins control over 70% of the top decision-making posts in the political system, administration, judiciary, army, police, press, media and academics (Statistics on composition from 1935 and 1985)
For example, in 1935, during the Anglo-Brahmin Colonial Era, the 5% Brahmin caste group held most of the gazetted positions among Indians in the upper echelons of the administrative machinery. In 1985 one finds that out of 3,300 Indian Administrative Officers (IAS), 2,376 are Brahmins; from the rank of deputy secretaries upwards, out of 500, 310 are Brahmins; of the 26 state chief secretaries, 19 are Brahmins; of the 16 Supreme Court judges, 9 are Brahmins; of 438 district magistrates, 250 are Brahmins; and so on in other circles of power and policy in the Indian state. If we also include the “twice born” Brahmanical castes, mainly comprising the Banias and Kayasths, the combined state power of theirs jumps from 70% to almost 95%.

Now that says clearly something! We can look at all chief secretaries of India and confirm the statistics even in 2006. Lets not forget Romesh Sharma either! These are again instances of not Brahminism so much, as they are instances of an absence of lower castes and tribes in the actual power structure of India.

And what is the percentage of Brahmin population in India? Five %

3. As regards, Algebra in entrance tests, again we miss the point when we look at certain question papers in some states than looking at the entire philosophy. First off, only students who have science backgrounds are usually eligible to sit for these tests. Which essentially demands knowledge of mathematics. And yes, when I said Algebra, it also meant Formulae and Values in Physics, which are integral to the examinations. The point I was making is that many complicated concepts make up for the entrance test, and most are foreign to students of minority community, ESSENTIALLY because they cannot afford a two-year coaching preparation education to know these concepts!

Since a ‘good’ education that can help someone fit into the system’s demands requires Money with a big M, its not so simple to say that “Toppers will be Toppers”. Toppers are those people who have access to the best of resources in their fields of studies and have incentives good enough to motivate them to secure that position. Please take it from me, as I have topped in many exams (state level, university level etc) myself, and I have to feel humbled to say that it was nothing so extraordinary to have achieved what I did, which others with similar environment could not have. Its only a systematic deprivation of sections of society from availing the resources that undernourishes them. Even to get loans for coaching, one needs to have a rich men network, to begin with. Unless we block the desired number of seats for the backward people and coach them for free (while continuing to charge the rich for their kids’ education), we will be only part of the same oppressive ancestors who subjugated the country, territorially, and now as we realize more and more, mentally too.

Regarding Ayurveda, the point of reference was that the respect traditionally attached to Allopathic medicine science is because of the exclusivity and professionalism attached with Medical profession (reason why seats are always limited to begin with). And what I was offering was basic assertion that all of the medicinal practices (Allopathy, Ayurvedic and what we have&hellip need not gear towards becoming ‘elitist’. Since health is the most common factor for survival, the attitude of practitioners should be to “massify” their skills, not “classify”.

I am open to discussion as well. But more open to an understanding AND empathetic discussion geared towards social justice for people who are most marginal in our society; than towards justice for students who hold banners in their hands to shamelessly protest against equal opportunity (yes social equality needs sacrifice of individual liberty at many junctures). I can understand why the elites need to guard their class interests, but can never support their stands.
Greetings,
Saswat

Tags: Saswat, Racism, India, Capitalism, Indigenous, Casteism, History, Academic

By Saswat Pattanayak

It should not be surprising to notice that just as the Indian economy is getting liberalized day after day, Indian society is growing regressive quite at the same pace.

As an instance, we allowed private broadcasters to dominate television primetime. Once what used to be an instructional medium for a nascent republic, Doordarshan soon gave way to a television culture that heralded an era of perverse family-centric, monolithic, stereotyped middle-class squabbles. On another instance, India let go of its mission-centric national healthcare focus and allowed doctors to practice in private, for the rich, and to get paid by business trusts. In its latest instance, we allowed private education sphere to dictate the nation’s future, and the publicly funded institutions of learning that once strived to provide equal opportunity to all, soon succumbed to corporate norms of cut-throat competition and insecurity.

It is possibly a combination of all three (and many more such) making a simultaneous movement ahead, that is making sure that the gap between the privileged and the dispossessed is maintained and fostered.

At the same breath, as a consequence, it should not be surprising either to notice the recent demonstrations of the medical students against the proposal for reservation of seats. Not only does this movement sing to the tune of the global media hegemonists who thrive on “individualistic interests” of instant gratifications (by means of a dominating television culture), it also promotes the business sense of private concerns who place money above everything else even in basic needs such as healthcare; and nourishes the merit-myths of an unequal society in order to perpetuate exploitation of historically unprivileged people.

The ongoing medical students’ demonstrations bring out simply the worst, the most disgraceful and most selfish core that can occupy human hearts. It’s not that this is something unique to Indian medical practitioners. Such pathetic stance of elitist bias can exhibit itself on the streets any given day at any place in the world.

But these are the times when rest of the world is slowly waking up to realize the need for “affirmative actions”, and “equal opportunity policies” to not only allow the ruling class an occasion to atone for causing historical injustices to discriminated sections of society, but also to understand that the society would not progress without those whose interests have been sacrificed at its alter. And ironically, these are the times when on the roads of India, privileged students are organizing efforts to prevent historically “forced” backward class of people from joining ranks!

Basically the dichotomy is this. The indigenous, tribals and “backward” castes peoples have been systematically exploited in the land of India since ancient times. Since the days of Aryan Invasion (which is basically an Indo-Iranian phase), a section of elites who formed the ruling class (Kshyatriya) always faced unsuccessful challenges from the people who originally inhabited the vast land from Himalayas to Kanyakumari. Unfortunately, as elsewhere, these indigenous people were never known to be violent or reactionary (a horrendous Tyrant Asoka realized this when he was massacring millions of Oriya tribals in 261 Before Common Era). They had already developed their own models of collective living (so-called ancient civilizations were already in place before “Aryan” invasions, just like America was already a people of inhabited land before Columbus “discovered” it). And for the ruling class invaders that ‘settled’ in India, conquering lands were easy, but to silent the egalitarian mass of tribal people from putting up resistance was the most arduous task. Not that the ruling elites were incapable of winning small wars against the tribal people, but the reality is they needed them to build roads, clean palaces and become sex slaves. (Just as today, the state and central governments of India would much rather do without the tribal people and their naxalite inspirations, but then, who would sweep the floors and clean the kitchen and become domestic slaves of the Babus?)

The elite minorities always need the presence of the larger majority of hapless people. Now not everyone in the elite minority section may be actually ruling. And not everyone from the larger majority may be suffering. But when it comes to guard interests of their respective historical classes, they know who to stick to (barring an extremely few exceptions…and those, we shall leave to Hindi filmmakers for sensationally outlandish cinemas). On a general rule of thumb, the elite minorities to remain guilt-free have chosen two principal methods to rule over: one, to divide people and ruthlessly suppress popular resentments, and two, to create a more inclusive basis for their governance to project themselves as representative of the majority.

One may argue that “divide and rule” has been the most potent weapon in the hands of the ruling class. From Mohandas Gandhi to Malcolm X, great freedom fighters have expressed this several times that some elite White men have always divided the world in order for them to rule. Whereas this is an accurate assessment of colonial history, in my view, there have been greater and far more effective tools of oppression in the hands of the ruling elites. And this one comes from more ancient times and has been lasting to more recent days! This one, I will call, “inclusive rule”.

To demonstrate validity, let’s go back to the days of Aryan/Columbus/White invasions. After discovering that annihilation of indigenous people creates more problems than its worth, and also realizing that the ruling class had lost all moral authority to rule in an ancient world where people were not only egalitarian, but highly spiritual (worshippers of river, sun, earth), the militarist ruling class sought an alternative solution. Why not to create a class of people who would come from within the masses, will possibly stay as the masses themselves, but yet serve the cause of the ruling class by NOT positing a division, but a coalition.

Thus the movement aimed at converting of spiritual into religious began by the ruling militarists who took definitive help of a group of “learned” people who in different religions are called differently (in Hindu India, they were declared the Brahmins). The innately spiritual tribal people were assured that it is in their own good to accept the Brahmins as the higher forms of human beings since they have attained from birth already what masses of people have been striving to attain throughout life. To a society that was unaware and absolutely seeking no God (since it found the Eternal in every element of nature anyway), such a Brahmin striving was named ‘God’. The people of the mountains and rivers were told that they did not know what they sought for, if they did not seek for that one God, who the Brahmins had a way to communicate with.

Simultaneous world history shows similar activities taking place everywhere else. The Americans (I mean, the real original ones) were forcibly converted into Christianity by invading Europeans. Bible was forced down the throats of the indigenous people who hitherto had only worshipped the elements of nature. In every continent, the Aryan/Columbus/White mix in its overtly ambitious project of conquering (count Napoleon to Asoka within this bracket) the world followed this method. NOT of divide and conquer. But of being Inclusive Rulers. From Chanakya to Machiavelli, all political treatise involved diplomatic ways to rule lands, not by causing outright divisions among people.

So, once the society was comprised of different caste structures (or liberal Hindus may say “division-of-labor” structure—as if it helps any bit), the ruling coalitions (of Kshyatriyas and Brahmins….or ….landlords and priests) continued their ruling legacies for centuries hence on, putting forth the simple proposition: “we are the mandated rulers, blessed and permitted by God to create rules of legal living”.

Today, as mandated rulers, the politicians appoint their favored people too. The judges in India still pass judgments from over a table that shows a mythological figurehead from Hindu Epic. Judges in the West still have Biblical inscriptions on the walls of courtrooms (or just outside). The ruling class since those days of brutal conquests have been parroting the same lines of “God Bless Our Land”, “God’s Own Land” etc to position their seats of power as clearly invincible and definitely indestructible. When God, in their projection is the creator, and when God wills their rules, how can their seats be overthrown?

Fortunately, these opportunistic alliances have never succeeded at ruling for long at a stretch. Despite the masterminded intelligence plans of including people in their ruling coalitions, they have only given vent to a dictum created by themselves: Power corrupts. Neither power instrument nor corruption mechanism ever existed in the communitarian ways of living in the beginning (a funny quip I have to invent here: … “In the beginning..there were peoples”!). These were the contributions of these ruling classes. And they kept felling victims to their own trap almost all the time. In name of monarchy, they fought with each other for power. Princes killed their father Emperors for power. Second queen poisoned the food of the King so that her son will fight and win battle with son of the first queen. All kinds of perverse self-centric conquests permeated this culture.

All along, in the historical stages of progress, peoples’ revolutions, although never highlighted, made kingdoms fall, resulted in several wars where people came on the verge of eliminating power addiction among the ruling classes. But using all kinds of manipulative methods to rule was never the prerogative of the oppressed masses. Perhaps in the daily slavery, they did not have time to devise plans. Or perhaps they had grown conditioned into defeatist mindsets (these are the only two reasons why people today don’t fight the militarists either). When the coalition rules did not succeed, and indeed their inability to contain popular resentments caused them to kill each other inside kingdoms, people grew more conscious of their need to eliminate these class structures. Although, deeply uprooted from their rationalist thought processes, and perhaps blinded by religious fervors too, people still have always wanted to punish the ruling class. From Sepoy Mutiny of 19th century to Grandmother Against War of 21st, people have always fantasized about teaching a lesson or two to the ruling class combines. But ask them if they would like to rule then? The answer always invariably been: “Not interested in politics. Thank you!”. I always despised those answers, because they smack of indifference. But ask me, and I will answer very similarly too. Why? Because people refuse to play into the game of the ruling class. It’s not just for Marie Antoinette to say ‘let them have cake’. Its also peoples’ prerogative to say “let them fight and squabble and rule and die”.

Such a people have always existed. In fact, many from these people (and count me in that) accidentally or deliberately, simply do not believe that power games are necessarily a good thing. These people never believed that Kings were doing any good to the society. They provided the backbone for popular resentments and a wish to establish a form of society that existed in the beginning, lacking competition, thriving on cooperation and understanding.

Once the ruling coalition of militarists and priests came to the realization that like them, not everybody is a pig and not everyone wants to get dirty, not everyone cares about their harems and their crowns and their glories, and actually most of them are so fed up with the elite culture of writing history that they would rather revolt and take away their thrones and dump them into obscurity, the ruling class changed its strategies. Of course, the indigenous people along with their other working class counterparts forced the kings to flee. And they refused to work as bonded laborers to landlords, and work as slaves to masters. But of course before things could get really out of control, and more radical elements among the resisters could actually behead all of the ruling class folks (not out of their love for violence…but out of their love for tolerance for a peaceful society which could be established only without lecherous treacherous emperors), the ruling class left the kingdoms and created the parliaments or Houses.

The transition of ruling class from slaveowners to “elected” presidents has been extremely smooth. The transition of Royals to “elected” members of parliament has been equally smooth. The transition of feudal lords to market capitalists has been definitely smooth. The transition of priests and Brahmins to educators and scholars has been exceedingly smooth. The conversations of transitions left out the indigenous and working class peoples entirely! So much so, in fact, the transitions needed to take place without their consent.

The so-called democratic institutions everywhere in the world were founded on the well-laid out plans charted by the ruling class, which changed colors (from White British imperialists to Brown Indian capitalists) but the transfers of powers took place between the parties that agreed upon with each other whereby the dominance cycle would have to continue, with direct or indirect benefits to the ruling elites, only.

So for instance, in India, there was a transfer of power quickly done, just when the British realized that freedom movement among peasant revolutionaries were possible—people who didn’t seek power and were not affiliated to any political parties that would agree to future British terms. They came to this conclusion after several times imprisoning Indian leaders, just to test if Indian people could lead a struggle without these leaders. And spontaneous peasant uprisings everywhere suggested they bloody well could and shall. Before things could turn ugly for the ruling class (landlords, kings of princely states, Indian opportunistic leaders, Hindu fanatics, and British rulers), the (potential) ruling coalition comprising all these aforesaid categories made quick compromises. Everyone’s interests were taken care of. Landlords who had enslaved hundreds of indigenous people were let go without penalty (even their lands remained with themselves, until after Indira Gandhi was pressured by Soviet Bloc to act on these pests). Kings of princely states anyway had left their palaces fearing murders, but they were all provided security and even parliamentary tickets to fight elections. Opportunistic political leaders quickly agreed with any and every terms so that they could also enjoy the seats of power, no matter if it meant division of the country and separated families from each other and caused millions of deaths. Hindu fanatics had a field day in keeping the huge majority of country with them, to the greediest extent that they refused to even let go of a Muslim state of Kashmir. British rulers of course after tea parties and tiresome map drawings, left to a wealthier exploiter Britain most comfortably, without being tried and hung in public even for once in an Indian court for all the millions of lives they had taken (although today, Indian ruling class is very interested in Saddam Hussein’s trial)!

The winners took it all, and loser people stood small. These small people were soon called names in the free India. The dominant argument went that India would progress quickly if the government would not spend money on these low class people. The elite Brahmins who had declared the indigenous and tribal people as ‘Untouchables’ shivered at the idea of allowing them a place in the Indian mainstream. ‘They were good only for the jungles, after all!’ So in every possible fields, attempts were made to keep the ‘backward’ castes (whoever devised that term clearly thought of ‘his’ caste as a ‘forward’..sic! because its not meant in just the economic sense) out of focus. When they could not stop Ambedkar, they projected Nehru. Although Nehru was actually progressive, he was since 1930’s dominated by Ballavbhai Patel in Indian politics. So even as Nehru sat on the throne, Patel ran the show after doing the country a favor by integrating the princely states (whose kings were anyway thrown out by the revolutionary masses) with Union of India. When Communists came to Kerala, they together dismissed its legitimacy. When Dravidian languages raised their heads, they installed a first president of India who was a Hindi fanatic and Hindi-fied the country. The Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan slogan went hand in hand with the ruling combines.

The structure changed, but the coalition never changed. Although the BJP might be cribbing about not tasting power for three decades, it should take heart that greater Hindu representatives were always ruling over India in the garb of Congress. S Radhakrishnan, the first vice president was an authority on why Hinduism was the best religion in the world. Religious, casteist perverts continued the same rampage directly in the ‘free’ India which they used to carry out on behalf of British imperialists in the days of colonial India. The structure had just been changed. Not replaced.

The history of this so-called Independent India is now nearing 60 years. And the original inhabitants of India, the indigenous peoples even to this day are being sacrificed at the alter of ‘development’. Be it the great redundant Dam on Narmada or be it the shining McDonalds at nook and corners, the tribal people have no place in India’s landscape to go to. They are being denied rivers they have worshipped for generations. They are being charged the same taxes (or more) that they paid to the landlords earlier, now in more sophisticated manner. They are being displaced and sent to the city outskirts to live in inhuman slums. Forced to sell their own children in want of food. If their child has a talent, (like Buddhia) its being targeted to be killed. They have no ways and means to compete with the city-dweller upper caste coalitions who know how to order a ‘Maharaja Mac’. They end up becoming rag pickers, sex workers, and domestic slaves.

All this, not because we never did not have policies in place to reserve seats for these oppressed people. In fact, Indian policies for reservations (thanks to the only backward caste guy in the entire constituent assembly—BR Ambedkar) were in place long before the US opted for Affirmative Actions to benefit the Black population at education and workplaces. But the fact remains, the “Inclusive Politics” diplomacy works to put up an illusive front, and whereas it says the law is there, it does not guarantee that it’s implemented. Just as the law is harsh on rapists, but rapists get away anyway. We have reservation policies in place, its just that it does not get implemented.

For instance, let’s begin from the latest scenario. With growing privatization, the law for reservations will not hold good. Private concerns do not give a damn to government regulations (partly explains why they are called private, and not public). Of course, they do encourage workplace diversity and end up recruiting many women candidates. In effect, these candidates are chosen not on basis of caste, but on gender alone. And whereas that’s a good beginning, it’s still like the second wave feminism where white women got equal rights as white men! The backward caste women never stand a chance to get employed in this case. That’s the reason why I have always opposed the Women’s Reservation Bill in Indian Parliament, because it will eventually lead to wives and daughters of royal families ruling the country. It’s another story they are already in such a large population in parliament. The Indian mainstream media acting as their pimp, keep criticizing lower caste Rabri Devi, but puts Her Highness Rajmata Vijayraje Scindia of BJP on Page 3.

Educational institutions are increasingly becoming private, hiring teachers by providing them higher scales and better facilities to groom students. They are interviewing parents before admitting children and finding out if the parents are rich and ‘English’ enough first! (Sic!)

Healthcare industry likewise is hiring doctors and grooming them to be the best, funding their researches, sending them abroad, installs sophisticated machineries, and caters to elite clients alone. Basically the best doctors are today affiliated with private practice, flatly refusing to treat the poor, who need the treatments the most owing to their circumstantial disadvantages and lack of access to other healthy platforms.

Privatization of Indian economy is not an accidental phenomenon. It’s a very well envisaged part of the ruling combine that has historically ruled. The land-grabbing, convent educated, wealthy, upper-caste social bulls and butterflies of India find it extremely convenient to maintain their own class status. To that extent, they are willing to go to any end. They are the ones who created the class society on basis of language (Sanskrit vs Pali or Hindi vs Assamese/Oriya), religion (Hindu vs Islam), caste (Brahmin vs scheduled castes/tribes), education (Engineering/technology vs Humanities), economics (landowners vs landless), geographical location (North vs the rest), employment (bureaucrats vs ragpickers/constables) etc.

And now they want to make sure of few more things in order to secure their seat belts all the better. They have orchestrated an extremely elitist demonstration which is causing havoc in daily lives of millions of people in India. They are blackmailing the entire country to decide once and for all, on the issue of reservations for backward caste people. And with the convenient middle class mentality that they have been able to create now, the decision will soon be against reservations. And that will be yet another victory in their history books. And yet another struggle of the oppressed against the mighty, that will never be taught at classrooms. For the time being, if you need a chapter, draw a leaf from SCP’s simply outstanding analysis about the need of reservations and the criminally redundant positions taken up by the elite students. Click here to read this excellent post.


Reminds to me, if the country had given equal support to the Tribal people who came on the streets to protest against police state’s organized killing of 14 innocent people and the subsequent mutilation of their body parts to evade post-mortem charges at Kalinganagar, we would not have seen these elite medical students on the streets. They should have been by now serving the villages of the same indigenous peoples who need medical assistance, and bloody well deserve it.

These medical professionals are examples of the most ungrateful humans. Before their conscience pricks, they should realize few things: that they are not smart from the womb, that they are being groomed to be doctors, and that a certain number of seats does not mean that that’s the number of people who are talented in the country. They should also not confuse talent for a skill, with merit to qualify for the skill. They should realize that indigenous people have a lot to bring into the medical profession through their crude understanding just as some elites have introduced convoluted Ayurveda as an alternative form or just as someone like a Deepak Chopra introduces Hindu ways to healthy living. The world should know of the elementary nature cures, which can be introduced by people from the rural areas only. For this of course, we must ensure the so-called medical entrance tests to be reconfigured to include questions pertaining to tribal and Other Backward castes’ history and their history of struggles with medical facilities and seek their judgments on how to improve healthcare system in India, and stop asking frivolously complicated European algebra questions…

The police will surely not kill 14 of these students (since they are children of bloodsucking bureaucrats and tax evading businessmen, and because their lives are not worth just fifty thousand rupees like the Orissa Chief Minister estimated as the cost of tribal lives he took away). But the police must put all these disturbing people behind bars and the Supreme Court of India must act immediately to forbid these people from practicing ever in their life as doctors. In my humble opinion, they should start working as janitors on the roadside as they are good to take to streets so often, and for that they need to sit for national entrance tests too. For the rest, who do not qualify, I am sure some of them will ‘attempt’ (and of course never commit!!!) self-immolation acts already enacted by the dramatist par excellence Rajiv Goswami during Mandal issue.

It’s a shameful chapter that the history of India has to go through, and down six generations, children reading history books will know how grossly pathetic Indian civilization actually has been, evaluated from the lens of mainstream culture—a thoroughly racist, casteist, sexist, patriarchal, elitist country based on systematic discrimination, state sponsored fraud, and oppressive regimes. And where the oppressed are killed by police bullets and sympathies go for the reactionary elites.

Tags: Saswat, India, Racism, Capitalism, Academic, History, Casteism, Indigenous

By Saswat Pattanayak

"Yes, the celebration of May Day has truly been made official. It has been celebrated by the state. The might of the state was evident in many ways. But is it not intoxicating to think that the state, until recently our worst enemy, now belongs to us and has celebrated 1 May as its greatest festival?
And yet, take my word, if this festival had only been official, it would have produced nothing but coldness and emptiness.
But no, the popular masses, the navy, the Red Army all true working people put their efforts towards it. And we can therefore say that this festival of labour has never been so beautiful."

Extract from A. V. Lunacharsky's diary for 1 May 1918, describing the May Day festivities in Petrograd.



When some Australian workers in 1856 first decided to organize and celebrate a no-work day on May 1, they had no idea how much they deserved it. Hence, despite their intent of participating in the event just one time, the day gained such prominence, not out of a media publicity or government endorsement, but because of the growing needs of the times for the workers to assert themselves.

During those days, the average work hours per week was 70 hours! No wonder May 1 celebration touched the lives of millions and immediately followed the Americans. Early in 1886, the Chicago employers were filching away from their employed, the privilege recently unreasonable length than ten or eleven hours. Against this familiar device of the masters, many meetings of the men were held in Chicago in the earlier months of 1886. One of these meetings was called in the Haymarket, for the evening of May 4th. It was called by the anarchists. A special protest was to be made against the killing of seven unarmed workers a few days earlier, outside McCormick's premises, by Pinkerton detectives. The speeches of the Anarchists before this particular occasion had been of the "sound and fury" type. There had been talk of bombs and the like. (To-Day, Nov 1887).

Even before it, on May 1 that year, working men mobilized in support of the eight-hour workday in cities across the United States. According to New York Times of May 2, 1886, in Chicago, “one good-sized procession, one small one, two small meetings, some gatherings too feeble to be called meetings, and less than 30,000 laboring men taking a holiday, either willingly or unwillingly, represent the first day of the era in which, it has been declared, eight hours shall constitute a day's work and 10 hours' pay shall be gotten for eight hours' work. The red flag has bobbed up here and there, some incendiary speeches have been made.”

NYT reported that the furniture manufacturers of St. Louis formed an association and unanimously resolved to operate their factories on the eight hours per day system after that day, on a basis of eight hours' wages. All the plumbers in the city, 200 in number, quit work that morning. They made a demand of the bosses that they adopt the eight-hour system without decreasing their wages, beginning to-day. Similar reports were filed from Indianapolis, Detroit, Milwaukee, Louisville, Washington, Pittsburg, Philadelphia, Troy, Hartford, New-Haven, Boston And Portland.

Soon after, the Resolution introduced by Raymond Lavigne, International Socialist Congress, Paris, July 20, 1889 summed up the intent for a truly International Labor Day. The International Socialist Congress in Amsterdam calls upon all Social-Democratic Party organizations and trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically on May First for the legal establishment of the 8-hour day, for the class demands of the proletariat, and for universal peace. The most effective way of demonstrating on May First is by stoppage of work. The Congress therefore makes it mandatory upon the proletarian organizations of all countries to stop work on May First, wherever it is possible without injury to the workers.

And as Leon Trotsky put it in 1924, the fundamental May Day demands were threefold: the eight-hour working day, for which generations of the working class have fought, the international solidarity of workers and the struggle against militarism.

And the visions, demands and struggles associated with May Day continue to reverberate in the collective hope of the entire working class of the world as they move from one form of industrial society to another! Long live, May Day!

Tags: Saswat, Communism, History, USSR, Academic, Literature, USA

By Saswat Pattanayak

“This is our function. Our Founding Fathers understood that government by its nature tends to oppress those it has power over. Our Founding Fathers decided that there must be, there had to be, there should be and there is, an institution that keeps an eye on government. That is what we do. There is nothing in the Constitution about the freedom to practice law. There is nothing in the Constitution about the freedom to practice medicine. There is nothing in the Constitution about the freedom to engage in commerce. There is nothing in the Constitution about teaching or learning. But there is something in the Constitution about the freedom of the press. Our Founding Fathers understood that it would be necessary to have a watchdog on government, and that is our role: to keep a watch out.”
--Jack Anderson (1922-2005) in a speech at Utah State University six years ago.

Even the legendary Anderson was under the illusion!

And as the documents of one of the greatest investigative journalists, are now being accessed by FBI for editing, his thundering words of trust in the freedom of press falls short of vindication.

Anderson’s family wants to donate his papers to George Washington University. And NPR reports that the FBI wants to review the archive and remove items it deems confidential.

Question is not about the onus of ownership. It’s certainly neither about the authenticity of what should be considered ‘confidential’. It’s not even about respecting the right of Anderson’s family to put forth the request.

What’s at stake is what’s being excavated. What’s at stake is the nature of materials that Anderson had access to, both as the friend of McCarthy, and subsequently as his nemesis. As being member of the then American President’s notorious list. As arch-enemy of the then FBI’s director, possibly the most illustrious director of all time. As someone constantly distancing himself from the powerful and always aligning himself with the working class sources. As an example, today completely lacking among mediocre media showbiz.

Anderson attested how the so-called ‘cold war’ has been fraught with several hot-blooded wars that have caused millions of deaths. And Anderson’s contribution to exposing at least parts of that cannot be undermined. Recently official documents released by White House showed America’s active role in destabilizing Indian subcontinent. It confirmed the Nobel Prize for Peace winner Henry Kissinger’s actual Warmongering motives. It showed how misunderstandings were being deliberately created between Vietnam, China and USSR, for gains that would cause genocides in Bangladesh.

And coming into light of these knowledge is no mean achievement. For one, it clearly demonstrate that so-called democratic regimes are not governed either by its peoples (most Americans are peace-loving working class people), or for its peoples (most Americans suffer the burdens of international terrorism). And most importantly, Anderson’s documents clearly deconstruct the larger narrative of North-South, First World-Third World dichotomies, where traditionally, even according to primary textbooks, people from the “underdeveloped” economies are mean-minded savages. Anderson’s documents prove quite an upset to that.

Anderson also exposed CIA conspiracy to assassinate Fidel Castro. He too exposed threadbare the FBI Hoover’s various dubious, and often monstrous links. He traced to core the position of Mafia in American political circles. As the longest running and widest read political commentator of the country, his readers believed he and his team investigated daily, what Woodward and Bernstein did just once in Watergate.

And many of the papers, apart from their gory portrayals of sinister cold war period, could actually educate the entire country on more authentic history of the peoples, from the lens someone who stood in the circle of the people, than basked in the glories of the official press lobby. And for these acts of conviction, during his lifetime, his murder was attempted by top political agents. And today, after his death, its way ironic, that he would even to this day haunted by the people in power for his documents.

For in his lifetime, he would not have let anyone take possession of the papers, in order to hide them. For an investigative journalist, the entity lies in “exposing” the findings to the public and “concealing” the source. Not, exposing the sources, and concealing the findings. No matter, the intentions of the founding fathers, as Anderson quotes, the foundation understanding of press functions lack authenticity today.

Tags: Saswat, Media, USA, Academic, Communism, Capitalism

By Saswat Pattanayak

The history of my campus is replete with racism. Most of the presidents of the university were decisively racists. Segregation of students based on whiteness/color had been a constant. In a timeline I helped prepare for my office, we discovered even more startling facts, some too gory to carry online.

Well, what’s new, one would say, when ‘everyone was doing it basically the same’ way up until 70’s. You know, folks actually get away with that loose canon. Of course it absolves the guilt of the guilt. The blacks, the asians, the hispanics had no place in white colleges back then, after all.

Back then sounds like a clichéd history. Except that we oftentimes fail to recognize how hysterically historical our contemporary society even is. The majority of population surrounding my campus are Blacks and Hispanics. Indeed, there are scores of communities of Latino population just outside the campus area (less than 100 meters away). Miles of stretches of apartments are inhabited by Latinos and Blacks. It’s like the invisible America of the national Capital.

After all, the visible are the big cities, not their population. The buildings, not the workers. Powerful sites like Washington DC, New York City or Las Vegas. Invisible are their makers: the cheap labor force. Behind all the glory of the Capitol streets, all glitz of the Times Square and glamour of Nevada casinos are the footmarks of the Blacks and Latinos. ‘They’ construct the roads and buildings and yes keep them darn clean.



Same goes with the giant ivory tower of the University of Maryland. The College Park campus alone is located on 1,250 acres of rolling land. The communities surrounding the campus are predominantly Latino. At least 80 percent of them are! Eighty freakin percent! The PG County which houses the College Park university is predominantly black. About 63% of population in PG County are Black (whereas only 27% are White). Likewise, the adjoining Washington DC –the state that houses the most powerful maniacs in political history—has a population of 60% blacks and only 30% whites.

Now let’s look at the largest campus of the area, the flagship public university and how diverse it is—which basically means how much does the university attempt at recruiting from the population that is represented in the area. How reflective is it of the reality and how contrasting are the statistics when we compare between the people who make up the area and the ones who get the elite tickets to higher education. We are not even talking of the rates of retention which is pathetically lower when it comes to students of color. For the purpose, we are to talk only of the recruitment (colored students who at least showed up—no matter if they left the place owing to the great mismatch between lived reality in their living neighborhood and the classroom incongruence).

Here it is, among the undergraduates: White students: 68%! Asians: 14%. Blacks: 12%. Latino: 5.7%.
And among the graduate students: White students: 83%! Blacks: 7%. Rest: 10%

So what we have here is a complete contradictory picture of what is real outside and what’s reflected inside. This is true of all major universities of the US. All big cities are predominantly inhabited by people of color. Just look at the statistics, from the US census: Latinos comprise 27% of New York City, 46% of Los Angeles, 26% of Chicago, 37% of Houston, 36% of Dallas, 30% of San Jose, 59% of San Antonio, 77% of El Paso, 25% of San Diego, and 34% of Phoenix.

Likewise, Blacks comprise, 28% of New York, 44% of Philadelphia, 37% of Chicago, 26% of Houston, 27% of Dallas, 82% of Detroit, 65% of Baltimore, 62% of Memphis, 61% of Washington DC, and 68% of New Orleans.

Now add these figures for all the major cities of the America. Even if we don’t count the Asians, these numbers alone are staggeringly so high that the reality is, the great big cities of the world are actually great because of the contributions of the hard-working people of color who comprise the majority here.

So where are the 77% of Whites of American population?
Well, a small minority of them are in the big cities, alright. And they clout the elite institutions –courts, universities, business empires in major proportions. They don’t deal with the slum problems since they have got people to build huge buildings for them already. They don’t have communities or neighborhoods. Only towers shrouded by private forests where paparazzi have to make a living of. The majority among the rest of them also take a break and don’t have to deal with the problems of the colored people—leading eventually to real segregation of the great contemporary America—one of the lesser pondered truths of modern times.

Huge majority of whites do not reside in the working class population that constructs the modern monuments. The one that is the invisible America in the Hollywood movies (again an example of mismatch—between who appear on screen and who live in Los Angeles), and the invisible America amidst the homeless millions of New York and DC.

In the cities that control the rest of the country, the ones who control the cities are a small minority White population. And that is the grim reality even to this date. And control they do, remotely. Living luxuriously in posh bungalows in richest counties which either exist side by side the largest slums (consider the fact that the country’s 10 richest communities are in the Washington metropolitan area only—where even as less than one-third are White!) or completely are way off in less dense states, demarcating the lines of segregation.

This is called the classic contradiction of capitalism in the political economy. The majority work hard to make the civilizations, for the minority to rule. The class society reinforces a social divide, uses overpowering instruments—dominant religions, mainstream education, standard work ethics, negotiable law and order—to normalize the illusions. It feels good to assume its one country, one America blessed by a Christian God, one culture where we have reduced the indigenous to less than 2 percent, one power fighting one war of terror outside the country and one superpower solving the world’s problems since we are not supposed to have any.

And it certainly makes most of us also forget –to choose sides in the exceedingly polarized two worlds of modern America—the Haves America, and the Have-nots America.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Racism, Economics, USA, Immigrant

National Communication Association conference at Boston this week.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Media

Alright. So who are the top 10 authorities cited in American academic journals?

They are in the following order:
1. Karl Marx
2. V. I. Lenin
3. William Shakespeare
4. Aristotle
5. The Bible
6. Plato
7. Sigmund Freud
8. Noam Chomsky
9. Hegel
10. Cicero

I chanced upon this while viewing the video Rebel Without a Pause. What struck me most was I almost always believed that it was Marx, Bible and Chomsky in that order. It still is in that order. But well, I had no idea some others too went in between. Especially, Lenin at No. 2!

Tags: Saswat, Literature, Philosophy, Communism, Academic

By Saswat Pattanayak

Robert A Dahl cites the table of Arend Lijphart’s “Pattern of Democracy” in his book “How democratic is the American Constitution” (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).

Dahl says there are 22 countries in the world that have steadily remained political democracies since at least 1950: Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Costa Rica, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States.

Of course the glaring omission is India, whose political leaders proudly claim it to be the largest democracy (and hence they logically deduce it should be a natural ally to the US), as recent trip of PM Manmohan Singh would testify.

Dahl admits that too and he says it has been done for two reasons: one, India had its system disruptions for two years 1975-77, when Indira Gandhi had imposed emergency, and two, India is too poor.

I have a couple of observations here: One, that “at least 1950” was deliberately a yardstick so that countries like Germany and Italy could be included. After all what difference would it have made had the cut-off year been 1940? Quite a lot. Indian emergency would have then looked like a joke in face of 1940’s Europe. Clearly the elites needed to stick together even if they had to do so just in order to exclude other countries.

Two, clearly economy plays a part. Why else would Dahl infer that a poor country had no right to call itself a democracy? But then he is right on target. Democracy has been associated so far with all these 22 countries, and all of them have been economically advantaged.

Thirdly, what becomes clear to me is that politically democracy is not a popular choice in the world, after all. Out of 193 countries in the world, only 22 have embraced democracy. Not only is the idea such unpopular, but ironically the wealth of the world is being owned by only these unpopular elites.

Having said that, let’s look at the Lijphart’s table to see what can justify for the elitisms of the 22 countries. A model democracy case study would be the United States. In terms of performance, it ranks one of the lowest (18th) in terms of women’s parliamentary representation, 19th lowest in energy efficiency, 17th lowest in welfare state index, 17th lowest in social expenditure, 19th lowest in foreign aid, 21st lowest in voter turnout. Not only that, the US has the 4th greatest rich-poor divide ratio (the economic gaps between have and have-not classes) and the highest rank in terms of incarceration rate (the biggest prison-industrial complex in the world).

With all these “worst performances”, where all rest of the countries (100% of them) do better in foreign aid or in incarceration rate, in what respect does the US shine? Only in one field: Economic growth, where it is among the top three rank.

As I view it, more imprisonments are then directly proportional to higher economic growth. And as corroborated by history, this has been the one of the ways (imprisoning, and mass murdering) using which the European expansions have continued to this date. Earlier it was just territory they were after. Now it includes the culture and economy.

The second repugnant truth is that economic growth of a country has nothing to do with socio-economic conditions in which its people live. In case of the US, it’s evident that with greater economic growth, there is greater rich-poor divide. Hence there is an economic growth, but one that helps the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

And is it not ironical that the same US economic model is now in place with more than 90% of the world since late 1980’s? Police states pretending to be democracies and abject poverty and homelessness owing to irresponsible capitalism. That’s the future of our planet earth?

Tags: Saswat, Economics, India, Academic

By Saswat Pattanayak

A cursory look at the higher educational institutes (more prestigious, the more trenchant in their case) shows the future. And even the past.

A university is usually always isolated from the community. In physical space, it is beyond the areas where people live. The excuse: people in academic scene need more tranquility than traffic. So always in the outskirts of the hustle and bustle of the “madding crowd”, the universities help form their own quite cheap but alienated townships.

Students are encouraged to use their own school buses, buy books from their school bookstores, shop from their co-op stores and sport their school uniforms (well, to some extent with the school logo jerseys with pride). In essence, form a distinctly different culture from the masses and stay away from their vicinities.

The classrooms are always figuratively well maintained. The corridors are high and vertically rising. The stairs leading to the college buildings are intimidating. The campus celebrates its own occasions for celebration. Awards salutations and distinguishes the achievers. Recognizes the students who have excelled and faculty who have bagged grants. All without any knowledge of the people outside. Even the campus newspaper caters to the campus.

Universities host their own games, students chant their own war cries, in order to show their allegiance and support, they shout “down down” to the guest school participants. There are almost always a tension between the faculty, the graduate students and the undergraduate students. Among the teaching assistants and the ones who are not. Among the interns and those ones who are not. Among the C graders and the A graders. Between the assistant professors and the associate professors. Between the associate professors and the full professors.

In the competitive yardsticks that it has institutionalized, the ideal university values funds more than anything else. Because the competition is then between universities themselves as structures. Universities compete to become news in elitist magazines as top schools. They actually are now functioning as followers of magazine protocols than guarding interests of disadvantaged students.

However, in the larger gamut of the killer games, the education in its pristine form never is neglected. Education is always the priority. Only issue with education being the gradual augmentation of thought-controls.

If conforming to the norms of university regulations and peer reviews which lead to faculty promotions, they in turn expect students to conform to their respective schools of thoughts as invisible grounds of favoritisms. Researches begets researches and the tools used in it become crucial. Apart from students being used in furthering the researches, it is also institutional resources which are called to task. The university on its part, promotes one unit over another for fund allocation. More often than not, few technical and management schools bag the prizes, and among them some faculty members who conform to the ideology of the project become awardees.

In effect, not only do the universities become ivory towers, but within them, certain units/schools are more ivory than the others. This naturally enough, promotes feelings of inadequacies among the neglected units. Most of them try to declare themselves to be either professional or scientific, in order to claim some authority for future grants.

As the race continues, far from the “madding crowd”, the university does not seem sane enough. By the time students graduate they face a life outside campus to be one for which they were never prepared for. If the distinctions between the world outside the university and the world within be revisited, the faults then squarely lie not on the community, but the classrooms that teach alienation from the community. The desirable and acceptable languages used (research terminologies), the methods of inquiry (fast surveys), the project goals (to produce peer-reviewed –who are themselves academic elites--brilliant works than relevant works with an agenda for people’s actions), the classroom teaching techniques (top-down vertical instructions or diplomatically speaking suggestions about what is acceptable if one needs an A) are all instruments in the hands of the university to clearly delineate the alumni from everyone else (the “they” ones).

Education, unlike any other pursuit, is idealism in another word. But with buildings named after rich donors and professors subservient to funding agencies, students have to be more than willing to sacrifice idealism.

More easily than I state this, university, then emerges as breeding grounds for future miscreants. Only it makes them smart enough and rich enough to know how to evade charges. And someday when one looks back at the world leaders of the developed world, one wonders why all of them studied at the top schools and yet desired wars with civilians more than peace with the oppressed. Their education not only encourages them from calling mass scale war shots owing to their superiority complex (ingrained from the university days), but it also enables them to become comfortably numb at the consequences (owing to educational indifferences) and work against the interest of the people at large (who they were prevented from mingling with, by the university towers).

Tags: Saswat, Peace, Academic, Activism

By Saswat Pattanayak

Of course the committee cannot come to any decisive conclusions. In a vibrant marketplace of ideas, its difficult to reach any.

Maybe we are looking for a larger consensus. But as I see it, in a democracy, any consensus is usually not reflective of the genius, rather indicative of a timely compromise.

On the brighter sides, with Ratnesh, Craig, and Gloria, the evenings are extremely memorable.

For the day, it was not without its own news (remember the maxim: no news is good news). Well the current debate is surrounding the curriculum. I am part of this eight-member committee here discussing what should stay, what should go and what should be added. Well, I don’t know what the results will be, but here was one compelling suggestion: if we are doing a diversity course, then why are we not including the conservative voices in the texts. Are folks not already criticizing us for the liberal bias?

I vehemently objected, of course to this thoughtful suggestion. While I respect the members’ wisdom, my argument is this: have we not always studied conservative readings anyway? How else did we know that George Washington was the most truthful human ever produced—I studied it even in India and here in US, I heard about the book on all the lies the history teacher told.

Moreover, is the idea about diversity studies not itself a political one? The notion that instead of “teaching”, one got to “facilitate”; the idea that students, and not faculty decide the flow of the theme; the picture around dialogic discourse than imposing instruction: are these not all progressively political?

Well, to be frank, even I do not know. I am sure these are political issues. But I am unsure of the flow as of now. What happens when folks include conservative literature to “balance” and with the predominant conservative population in the campuses, the texts then become “theirs” (remember the way “Bharat Mata Ki Jai”, Vivekananda and Bhagat Singh were converted into rightist propaganda materials in India)?

I wont be surprised. If multiculturalism is not meant to pacify and if pacification is not one way of spiritual forgiveness, then what it is. And I am not scared of the peace, for the records. I am scared of the murder of the peace. Because for a war-mongering capitalism to survive, the peace needs to become the covert casualty. But like democratic illusory manner, it needs to be swiftly dealt with. Unless the informed people think that the "dictatorship" is here and demanding their proletariat participation!

Historically, its been “we give and show, you take and see” approach. Freedom is not inherent in four-fifth of the world. It has been historically granted.

The salad bowl is now on the offing. And the Melting pot was too hot. The future looks interesting. And disturbing.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Activism

Little more than two dozen people from eight universities are deliberating issues that affect the progress of the intergroup dialogue program. They have been further divided into three committees, and I am part of the Curriculum development committee.

The day had its ups and downs. Few members wondered what we do with the multiracial, since category-wise the dialogues traditionally focused on the binaries. Evidently there are many (a couple members gave examples of Asian Americans) who do not identify with the people of color. In fact in a series of communication between a student and I last year, the question had been raised. Although the issue was far from being agreed upon, it surely followed more feedbacks.

Of course, against the backdrop of research purity, rational judgments do not necessarily hold forte. Moreover, there is this obligation to act according to the funds which has consequently always been the means and ends of the studies.

On the brighter sides, great dinner at Prof Pat Gurin’s place. She is a wonderful human being, and that’s needless to state. I am enjoying company of all the researchers/professors at Ann Arbor participating at the conference, full of spirits and unbound, unbridled hopes for a brighter future.

More power to the dreams.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Activism

Leaving for Michigan to be part of the Multiversity project on intergroup relations. Spearheaded by the IGR of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, the project involves eight universities (Arizona State University, University of California-San Diego, University of Illinois, Lake Forest College, University of Maryland, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, University of Washington, Occidental College, Syracuse University and University of Texas-Austin).
University of Maryland resources on the program can be found here

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Activism

On campus at UMD, we had few events, of course. We even had Vijay Prasad over to give one of the most interesting talks I have heard of. He would agree too that the observation of the Asian Heritage Month was also one of the ways to normalize the potential dissent.

Well, one of the pitfalls of the multiculturalism is of course that it makes things appear so subtle that it would then look like cultures were made to live by side of each other by default. Subsequently any war and peace are byproducts of a complicated web of interactions.

In essence, the ways of living is clearly left for the people to determine. Culture never belonged to the government anyway. And millions of democracy lovers would want the Government to stay away from controlling culture. So, easy game, baby. Dominant will prevail.

For the rest, we shall observe a month for them. Rest 11 months, the tech-slave Asians live within free American society.
Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Immigrant, USA, Racism, History, Academic, Activism

By Saswat Pattanayak

The contentification (well that’s due to my lack of vocabulary), of dissident communities is nothing new. It takes place by sheer force, or implicit persuasion. The sheer force is very visible, very unacceptable, for our double standards to consume. How can after all, we civilized human beings accept the ‘undemocratic’ practices?

Hence folks fought against the British in India, and fought against British against South Africa. In India they succeeded in throwing the colonialists out. In South Africa, they threw the imperialists out of power, if not out of the land.

Very visible were the Nazi invasions. We all hated Hitler to call ourselves civilized. We even hated Stalin who wiped out our object of hatred, the Hitler. Because Stalin was also visibly controlling. In fact we ended up hating Communism as much as Fascism. In fact, we hated Communism more, because Fascism did not contradict our own senses of racial superiorities like we perceived under our very own democracy. Our democracies neglected women, minorities, the people with disabilities, old people, children in schools, men in military. Fascism was no different.

But Communism which was speaking against Fascism and our own types of democracies, was the real threat. Hence we needed to hate Communism for at least four more decades. First we were afraid of Hitler. But Stalin took care of that. And since we need to look good, this year (this week in fact), we visited the Soviets to celebrate the death of 32 million Commie bastards. Between Fascism and Communism, we needed to acknowledge the latter’s contributions. Hence when we needed to bomb Japan, we needed to love Stalin. In fact our most loved Prez FDR (who was power hungry to his fourth term! even as we condemn third world dynastical rules) came back to proclaim Stalin was our friend. But Stalin did not feel the need to kill more Commies in the name of democracy. So we had to hate Stalin. After all, either you are with us, or you are doomed to be proclaimed dictator in rest of our history books. Even in our friend Khrushchev’s history books.

We are civilized folks. How can we accept anything visibly disturbing? In India, the Gandhi had three monkeys. One had its ear closed—not to listen to evil things. One had its eyes closed—not to see anything evil. One had its mouth shut—not to speak evil.

We are civilized. We need to close our ears, eyes and mouths.

How else can we not see the war Operation Matador going on at the Syrian border today? This morning, the U.S. offensive have pounded the area with airstrikes, artillery barrages and gunfire and a man exclaimed to the Associated Press Television News in Qaim "They destroyed our city, killed our children, destroyed our houses. We have nothing left". But this quote came toward the end of the stories. The main story as presented by AP was this: “American fighter jets flattened a suspected insurgent safe house near the Syrian border, the U.S. military said Friday, as hundreds of U.S. troops searched remote desert villages house by house for followers of Iraq's most wanted militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.”

Indeed, what is visible here is the most wanted militant leader being hounded. Invisible are the cries of the residents whose houses have been targeted, whose family members killed for none of their faults and who have unwelcome visitors speaking American slangs at the mid of the nights.

These are times of struggle between the visible and the invisible. And invariably the visible has won. The visibles, very elite minority, own the media houses and they own 80 per cent of world’s capital. The visibles today get to tell their stories and suppress the majority’s. The visibles have converted the world into a police state and controlled the stories we come to hear of others to such extent that my immigrant friends exclaim: poor in America? You must be kidding!

Because the poverty, homelessness, illiteracy, prison population, prostitution, per capita debt, defense spending etc etc are falling in the invisible category.

Reprinted from Austin Chronicle, City Pages of Minneapolis had an article by Michael Ventura on February 23, 2005. Ventura had put down many scribbles together so that factoids start making meaningful themes. I am stating it here completely, lest it disappears from public memory and internet archives:

No concept lies more firmly embedded in our national character than the notion that the USA is "No. 1," "the greatest." Our broadcast media are, in essence, continuous advertisements for the brand name "America Is No. 1." Any office seeker saying otherwise would be committing political suicide. In fact, anyone saying otherwise will be labeled "un-American." We're an "empire," ain't we? Sure we are. An empire without a manufacturing base. An empire that must borrow $2 billion a day from its competitors in order to function. Yet the delusion is ineradicable. We're No. 1. Well...this is the country you really live in:
• The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).
• The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
• Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).
• "The International Adult Literacy Survey...found that Americans with less than nine years of education 'score worse than virtually all of the other countries'" (Jeremy Rifkin's superbly documented book The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, p.78).
• Our workers are so ignorant and lack so many basic skills that American businesses spend $30 billion a year on remedial training (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004). No wonder they relocate elsewhere!
• "The European Union leads the U.S. in...the number of science and engineering graduates; public research and development (R&D) expenditures; and new capital raised" (The European Dream, p.70).
• "Europe surpassed the United States in the mid-1990s as the largest producer of scientific literature" (The European Dream, p.70).
• Nevertheless, Congress cut funds to the National Science Foundation. The agency will issue 1,000 fewer research grants this year (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004).
• Foreign applications to U.S. grad schools declined 28 percent last year. Foreign student enrollment on all levels fell for the first time in three decades, but increased greatly in Europe and China. Last year Chinese grad-school graduates in the U.S. dropped 56 percent, Indians 51 percent, South Koreans 28 percent (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004). We're not the place to be anymore.
• The World Health Organization "ranked the countries of the world in terms of overall health performance, and the U.S. [was]...37th." In the fairness of health care, we're 54th. "The irony is that the United States spends more per capita for health care than any other nation in the world" (The European Dream, pp.79-80). Pay more, get lots, lots less.
• "The U.S. and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all their citizens" (The European Dream, p.80). Excuse me, but since when is South Africa a "developed" country? Anyway, that's the company we're keeping.
• Lack of health insurance coverage causes 18,000 unnecessary American deaths a year. (That's six times the number of people killed on 9/11.) (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005.)
• "U.S. childhood poverty now ranks 22nd, or second to last, among the developed nations. Only Mexico scores lower" (The European Dream, p.81). Been to Mexico lately? Does it look "developed" to you? Yet it's the only "developed" country to score lower in childhood poverty.
• Twelve million American families--more than 10 percent of all U.S. households--"continue to struggle, and not always successfully, to feed themselves." Families that "had members who actually went hungry at some point last year" numbered 3.9 million (NYT, Nov. 22, 2004).
• The United States is 41st in the world in infant mortality. Cuba scores higher (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
• Women are 70 percent more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
• The leading cause of death of pregnant women in this country is murder (CNN, Dec. 14, 2004).
• "Of the 20 most developed countries in the world, the U.S. was dead last in the growth rate of total compensation to its workforce in the 1980s.... In the 1990s, the U.S. average compensation growth rate grew only slightly, at an annual rate of about 0.1 percent" (The European Dream, p.39). Yet Americans work longer hours per year than any other industrialized country, and get less vacation time.
• "Sixty-one of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are European, while only 50 are U.S. companies" (The European Dream, p.66). "In a recent survey of the world's 50 best companies, conducted by Global Finance, all but one were European" (The European Dream, p.69).
• "Fourteen of the 20 largest commercial banks in the world today are European.... In the chemical industry, the European company BASF is the world's leader, and three of the top six players are European. In engineering and construction, three of the top five companies are European.... The two others are Japanese. Not a single American engineering and construction company is included among the world's top nine competitors. In food and consumer products, Nestlé and Unilever, two European giants, rank first and second, respectively, in the world. In the food and drugstore retail trade, two European companies...are first and second, and European companies make up five of the top ten. Only four U.S. companies are on the list" (The European Dream, p.68).
• The United States has lost 1.3 million jobs to China in the last decade (CNN, Jan. 12, 2005).
• U.S. employers eliminated 1 million jobs in 2004 (The Week, Jan. 14, 2005).
• Three million six hundred thousand Americans ran out of unemployment insurance last year; 1.8 million--one in five--unemployed workers are jobless for more than six months (NYT, Jan. 9, 2005).
• Japan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea hold 40 percent of our government debt. (That's why we talk nice to them.) "By helping keep mortgage rates from rising, China has come to play an enormous and little-noticed role in sustaining the American housing boom" (NYT, Dec. 4, 2004). Read that twice. We owe our housing boom to China, because they want us to keep buying all that stuff they manufacture.
• Sometime in the next 10 years Brazil will probably pass the U.S. as the world's largest agricultural producer. Brazil is now the world's largest exporter of chickens, orange juice, sugar, coffee, and tobacco. Last year, Brazil passed the U.S. as the world's largest beef producer. (Hear that, you poor deluded cowboys?) As a result, while we bear record trade deficits, Brazil boasts a $30 billion trade surplus (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
• As of last June, the U.S. imported more food than it exported (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
• Bush: 62,027,582 votes. Kerry: 59,026,003 votes. Number of eligible voters who didn't show up: 79,279,000 (NYT, Dec. 26, 2004). That's more than a third. Way more. If more than a third of Iraqis don't show for their election, no country in the world will think that election legitimate.
• One-third of all U.S. children are born out of wedlock. One-half of all U.S. children will live in a one-parent house (CNN, Dec. 10, 2004).
• "Americans are now spending more money on gambling than on movies, videos, DVDs, music, and books combined" (The European Dream, p.28).
• "Nearly one out of four Americans [believe] that using violence to get what they want is acceptable" (The European Dream, p.32).
• Forty-three percent of Americans think torture is sometimes justified, according to a PEW Poll (Associated Press, Aug. 19, 2004).
• "Nearly 900,000 children were abused or neglected in 2002, the last year for which such data are available" (USA Today, Dec. 21, 2004).
• "The International Association of Chiefs of Police said that cuts by the [Bush] administration in federal aid to local police agencies have left the nation more vulnerable than ever" (USA Today, Nov. 17, 2004).
No. 1? In most important categories we're not even in the Top 10 anymore. Not even close.
The USA is "No. 1" in nothing but weaponry, consumer spending, debt, and delusion.

Ventura has indeed quoted the mainstream press (not some conspiracy media) to substantiate a claim.

And after having said this, it’s important to note that the tidbits here are not part of the larger discussions still. The press after quoting figures has left the interpretation part out, in the true tradition of the objective media! So with dry disjointed figures, one hardly sees the picture. And proving Lincoln wrong, we have been fooled for all the times to come. After what we have done to the rest of the world, if we go into believing that we have not been fooled into the assumption that we are going to remain the Top (sic!) country…..

Else, we should have shut up and not fucked (over and over again) the peace of the peoples of China, Italy, Greece, the Philippines, Korea, Albenia, Eastern Europe, Germany, Iran, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Syria, the Middle East, Indonesia, Western Europe, British Guiana, Soviet Union, Cambodia, Laos, Haiti, France/Algeria, Ecuador, the Congo, Brazil, Peru, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Ghana, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Australia, Angola, Zaire, Jamaica, Seychelles, Grenada, Morocco, Suriname, Libya, Nicaragua, Panama, Bulgaria, Afghanistan, El Salvador, and the peoples of the Americas.

You will wonder, unlike the countries named above who were all attacked within the last 50 years, India does not figure. Still, why the hell am I cribbing?

Well, precisely, that is why. Rest of the world has been bundled. And waiting. And one doesn’t have to be an Indian or Greenlander to keep quite. You just have to be the well meaning, god-fearing American who keeps electing the war mongers to power, to keep quite. For the rest of us world citizens, we need to ask of our land and future.

Whose land is this anyway? Like my fellow immigrant population, I am being asked to go through the process of contentification—of believing and proving that through a smile, that all is well in the Jesusland and I should feel fortunate that I can now stay in the America and watch Desperate Housewives (which has not yet been translated for the third world yet&hellip.

But, damn, how long will I laugh at the televised comedies in the world of neighborhood tragedies?
Have a painful weekend.

Tags: Saswat, History, Capitalism, Communism, Academic, Activism

The IMF's Global Monitoring Report 2005 is out and it seems clear on its agenda: That, without early and tangible action to accelerate progress, the Millennium Development Goals will be seriously jeopardized—especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, which at current trends will fall short of all the goals. At stake are prospects not only for hundreds of millions of people to escape poverty, disease, and illiteracy, but also for long-term peace and security—objectives intimately linked to development. Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Economics, Capitalism, Academic

The Tunnel of Oppression event at the school went great. It was heartening to see some young people showing interest, after all. Few who came through the tunnel were of course disgusted. On the resources table which I was managing, one could find people of various questions and inclinations, including wanderers who thought the graphics were too graphic.
Well, everyone volunteering were not supposed to air their views to the audience. The reason why I could not say if few pictures were ever telling the picture anyway. Some people are lucky to be reaping the benefits and remaining ungrateful still...
Congrats Team

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Activism

Words are political: not just by degree of how effectively they can be manipulated, but also by the kind of phrases they are put into by the writers. By the latter I mean, expressions are prerogatives of writers: some need to vent out, some strive to agitate and some find words in reminiscences.

My essay on confessional vs subjectivity.

Tags: Saswat, Philosophy, Media, Academic

Dramatized television just should finish its quota.

Gil Scott Heron was thinking of the powerful visuals of television and their impacts on audience when he was growing definitively skeptical. But he had still not thought that television with its pluralistic marketplace of ideas still had more coming. And soon, we discovered that McLuhan’s “hot” medium no more can match up with the hardline messages of some commentators, who are out to convince viewers that facts as portrayed by them are more engrossing than fictions.

Enough has been said of “The O'Reilly Factor” -- the most-watched program on cable news. In fact “Outfoxed” has grossed millions only by its critic on Bill O'Reilly. As if Fox was not already known to be catering to the conservatives, derived from Pew Researches on audience constitution, we have a frenzy in the nation to prove if O’Reilly is a liberal or a liberal-basher. To end controversies, one just needs to watch Talking Points, any episode, to get it straight from mouth of the horse, as I did last week...


Read the entire story here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Media

My blog is mine. Therefore yours.

My blogs, then become one of the outlets for both my frustrations and anger, because I need not take things for granted any longer and I want to connect with those who are on the similar path. For, I am not alone in this world where freedom is granted in installments by the ruling class. I am with the groups of people who seek freedom for all, or freedom for none—who believe that the limited freedom, that better than thou freedom in effect, should be reserved for none.

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Saswat, Media, Technology, Academic

Between the stories, why does it have to be a big fish?

A powerful underwater earthquake which struck off the west coast of Indonesia may well have been the main news of the 29th March edition of New York Times, but it compares poorly with the Michael Jackson trial story which received almost twice the space in the paper (688 words as compared to 1200 words). Interestingly, the Jackson story (“In Jackson Trial, Jurors Can Hear of Other Cases&rdquo had not much to say apart from what had already been said by the paper on its March 19th edition (“Judge to Hear About 2 Jackson Accusers in 90's&rdquo.

Such is the significance attached to the Jackson trial that despite the nature of the trial (long and persisting, often tiresomely repetitive), it has never been relegated to obscurity. Instead, Jackson stories of “did he? didn’t he?” question has hogged the limelight in the leading press as one of the “top stories” on invariably daily basis.

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Media

No matter if “Who is a journalist” event turned into “What is journalism” debate. The panel still discussed the “rules for who is what” at the National Press Club on Friday.

Mostly the conservative Jeff Gannon faced the cannons as he struggled with answering why he thought it was quite natural for him to get into the White House. He in fact declared that there was nothing wrong either to quote what has already been mouthed by the government. Much to his embarrassment (if at all), the enlightened press booed and gave their verdict that journalism entailed more than that, by the way.

To me, the spirit had little direction. I could see why Gannon could not recollect the number of “weeks or days” he had to wait to get the pass, while answering to Ana Marie Cox. He just did not want to answer that. But what I could not understand was why the folks on the panel (which included Julie Hirschfeld Davis of The Baltimore Sun, Garrett Graff, John Stanton, Matthew Yglesias, Mike Madden) just stressed so much on how Gannon got into the White House press corps.

Admittedly and Wonkette put it bluntly (more to your growth, Ana!), briefing room at White House is such a bland place anyway. And moreover even the small room is not always full. I second. Who is keen on taking the notes for the speakers who know too little of what they speak especially when most of it is pure advertorials.

If one has to report on comments (sorry Jeff, they are not “facts”, as we found out with so-called WMD), come and blog.
I agree with Eric Brewer: “Perhaps the best line of the day came from Ana Marie Cox, who had earlier made the point that one reason Gannon got into the White House briefing room was because lately there have been a lot of empty seats, since mainstream reporters have largely given up on getting anything of substance out of the stone wall that is Scott McClellan. She went on, ”I think it would be awesome if bloggers suddenly stormed the White House briefing room and filled all those seats and started asking questions. Then maybe your reporters would take the briefing more seriously, too."
We’re trying, Ana, we’re trying."

You have said it better, Eric!

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Media, Technology, USA

The third coming of blog for me, is here.

If there is just one way to define a blog, I would do it thus: a series of chronologically arranged journal entries available online alongwith several sourced hyperlinks. In terms of type, this one definition does it well. In terms of degree though, if there are to be more definitions than one, which I am sure is the compelling case: there are plenty. And it is amidst this scope of plenty, that some journalists seek their most preferred explanation.

Needless to say, I have found one which is as varied in degrees as possible, to include comments, pictures, external hyperlinks, and poems ranging from mine to Woody Guthrie’s.

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Media, Technology

Whose opinions count?

In an editorial on April 4, The Weekly Standard came down heavily on the federal judges for citing “evolving standards of decency” to save the life of Christopher Simmons who was earlier sentenced to death by the laws of Missouri, and contrasted the logic with Terri Schiavo’s case, arguing that the standards of decency were not enough to save the latter’s life.

The attempt to draw analogies between two unrelated cases which are contextually distinctive is continuation of a neo-conservative journalism tradition. This is one which the conservative Insight magazine follows in its opinion too, “Is Terri Schiavo's right to not be starved to death less than that of a convicted murderer like Scott Peterson, who gets three square meals a day on death's row?” A critical look as opposed to a surface one, would prevail two fallacies: one, on content, the cases are entirely different in terms of their unique histories, and two, countless anti-life cry against Simmons/Peterson et al, doth not make one pro-life cry for Schiavo right. The neo-rights have not come clear on the policy decisions on life and death; they have merely tried to highlight the show with one single incident.

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Media

I believe Personal is ALWAYS Political anyway...

With the world of things around me, I would not have opted for a life to begin with. What rightful a life is if my happiness is conditional upon some others’ discomforts? Not only was I brought to this world without my expressed permission, but each act of mine subsequently were determined by existing norms of an (in)human society which has resulted in mutual hatred among peoples, a society whose legitimacy I reject wholeheartedly.

This deep anguish of helplessness and implicit submission forms the core of what I call my life. This is a life that’s ceased to be personal for long. Since the time I violated the enforced norms purposively and refused to surrender, I joined ranks with the social misfits—whose life experiences have varied not in types, but in degrees. With that, my personal journey has somewhere down the roads got mingled with the social roads not often taken, but largely despised.

Read the entire article here

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Media

The standard definition online of GNU/communism is that it's a term used to mock open source activist, and tag them as communists. Communist is used due to the resemblance between open source's philosophy of sharing the code among all humanity and communism's idea to share resources among all continent's population.

I do not have any problem with that. Actually I also think Richard Stallman is a highly progressive thinker and I adore him for that. But I dont quite get why the "open source" people are called activists and on top of that "mocked" as communists. First of all, a standard definition using mock as a word is itself pejorative. Two, open source activists themselves will come forward to denounce communism on their own. Why take extra trouble? For one, I know GNU is not as "open source" as "open source" people claim they are.

Don't these people study any philosophical differences between Stallman (read the GNU) with the rest (read the open source managers like Linus Torvlds, Bruce Perens etc..)?

Tags: Saswat, Technology, Media, Academic, Activism

Revisiting Time, Newsweek and US News and World Report:

The three global magazines Time, Newsweek and US News and World Report, magazines are available in the developing world as widely as any of the more “local” periodicals. Indeed, despite the costs (each of these issues costs more than eight times the price of lets say, India Today or Outlook magazines in India), I have, like many of my friends, grabbed the copies to have perspectives on the actual global news. No wonder we have equated the Americas and their concern as the only globe worth reporting about. Nothing significant has changed even after the global tragedy of September 11.

Although the divisions are made of the magazines for convenience, the similarities are glaring. There is no coverage of Africa, Asia or Australia. And there is no coverage of areas and peoples of the world that are not affecting the US at this time.

Read the full article here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Media

Is there anything new about my blogs?

Amidst hope, there is despair. Nothing astounding. But surely, not a matter of one exercising free will to carve out the hope and purge the despair.

Where I do exercise my free will, is where I blog.

I do not feel vulnerable as I blog. Indeed, I get empowered. There is no feeling as powerful as knowing that one is able to express the voice within. The medium well could be the message, but the message is what counts, after all.

Read the complete article here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Technology, Media

My rationale for why I blog:

I blog, therefore I am. Without blogging, I would surely have an essence, but no existence. Not only does existence precede the essence, but I am of the view that, to exist one carves a different path than to live off the essence.

To exist, I need to know that I do. To discover my essence I need only to see the outcomes of my participation in the social production process. My works at home, office or community mark my essence. The purpose that I have created of life, and conveniently amended from time to time in order to suit the societal circumstances, do bring out the essence. But I can have the existence, even sans the manufactured timeline, and without succumbing to the social infrastructure in place.

Read the complete article here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Technology, Media

The Economist and The New Yorker revisited:

I see a clear bias of The Economist: a colonial bias. Even as Tony Blair report on Africa suggests that foreigners who pay bribes should be punished, and foreign firms that extract minerals from African soil should be more transparent in their dealings with local governments, The Economist is quick to point out that foreigners do not cause corruption.

Indeed it justifies the international scams as it goes on: “For every shady multinational, slipping a minister a sackful of cash for a contract, there are thousands of African policemen robbing people at roadblocks or African bureaucrats inventing pointless rules so that they can demand bribes not to enforce them.” Indeed, in the post-colonial discourse, the roadmap to police brutality or bureaucratic corruption in Africa could have been carved out more critically, more radically. The articles on Africa remind one of Richburg’s “Out of America”—a tale half-told, poorly told.

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Media, Capitalism

The following is the abstract of the recent paper Bu and I are working on:

By employing framing theory and content analysis, this study identified the media frames in the leading Chinese and Indian newspapers and Websites in their coverage of 2004 U.S. presidential debates. The major findings include both Chinese and Indian media predominantly disclose preferences for John Kerry over George Bush in their news reports. The U.S. debates also generated media discussions of some other issues the debates did not cover extensively, such as U.S. policy towards Taiwan and North Korea nuclear issue for Chinese media, and Kashmir issue and India’s stand on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for Indian media.

This study also discovers other media frames including media bias, poll prediction, online cynicism, and personality politics. The authors argue that studying these frames may broaden the understanding of the media effects of international reporting, which might be a valuable contribution to research about the construction of reality using media frames, and implicit ideology in political reporting.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, China, India, Media, USA

Following yesterday's mail, here is the response of the student. I am sure the discussion on the topic will not cease, although I do not think it is a debate, considering that I am not myself so fond of the term. Alright, here is the reply:

I obviously understand that the term is politically correct, but that doesn't make it right necessarily. Clearly, you didn't do anything wrong except go against your own personal beliefs/values because you said yourself in your e-mail back to me that you were not exactly a fan of the term because it is referring to you as well. Well I guess I just don't understand why you would promote that term, by using it in that survey, if you yourself don't agree with it.

My take on the issue is simple: If the word "color" or "negro" is used to connect with the minds of the oppressed people, the historical differences with the Whites, the words are most welcome. At the same time, any attempt at celebrating the color in the umbrella of multicultural ethos aimed at nullifying confrontational differences through normalization, is dangerous. Its in the same vein as the political component which reminds the colonial people that they are colonial (which I think is needed), as opposed to the social attempt at building a commonwealth of colonies which would cherish their colors (thats awwwww...).

Tags: Saswat, Racism, Capitalism, Academic

By Saswat Pattanayak

One undergraduate student writes to me that the term ”people of color is very offensive and I am surprised that it was used in the survey," referring to the post-test survey conducted after the dialogue program. Incidentally, she was a participant in a video I had created to record dialogue reactions.
I do not disagree with her statement, and in a way completely at a loss to give an authoritative answer (considering that there are none). But this is what I had to say:

As for the "People of Color", the phrase has been approved by the UN to address non-white populace in the world. Since usages of Negro, or other terms to address Asians (some call mongolian and some even chinks) were considered to be gross, the politically correct usage today is People of Color.
People of Color is used to identify the colonized people throughout the world who were oppressed by the Whites over the ages and I guess in want of a better term to describe them, we are today using this. "Color" is of course better than "Nigger" if you realize and hence there is no issue around it yet.
At the same time, I recognize that you do not wish such a term to exist. And I have highest respect for that sentiment. Maybe we could phrase a better term this time around. I personally also would like to be called differently.
To some extent I have reservations against "African-American" or "Asian-American" phrases too. I feel they just reinforce a racial hegemony of defining others in terms of the dominant class.
Your resentment to a conventional term indicates your forthrightness and honesty. Keep it up and do let me know if you come across a better phrase. I will join you in requesting for a better phrase.

Tags: Saswat, Racism, Academic, USA

If you have already checked the Free Mumia series on the site, here’s the latest update on the book.
I guess we need a Free Speech and Expression series alongside.

Tags: Saswat, Literature, Black Power, Academic

What struck me was the way Pew Charitable Trusts have produced the 2004 fact sheet for The Internet and Daily Life: Many Americans use the Internet in everyday activities, but traditional offline habits still dominate.
A thouroughly documented 34 pages document discusses why Americans use Internet and there are comprehensive tables to indicate findings. You can read it here...
For it to strike me, I went ahead and made a search for the ‘sex’ word on the document. Lo and behold! Zero result!

Tags: Saswat, Media, Technology, USA, Academic

By Saswat Pattanayak

Today was the day for Social Justice from Classroom to Community. At least in my campus. Organized by the office I work with.
Click here for Complete Story
The event was meant to be the last of the sessions where a couple of hundred students went through what we call Intergroup Dialogue Programs. This was of course meant to demonstrate how to implement the learning in the community setting. Students had vindicated the findings in a short video film I had made to showcase the students interviews which was screened in the morning. So it was a good afternoon with good attendance with a good speaker and good three panelists.

What could have gone wrong?

The purpose itself. Was the name SJCC sounding too good to be true? Some were confident social justice was possible. But the dilemma remained: social justice for whom? For the marginalized is the obvious.

Now the next sword hanging: the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered) community is marginalized today and so also is the Jewish community. The Black people are still on the sideline and the women still face the wrath. The Muslims are a minority and the multiracials are the misunderstood. Immediately comes to mind well over a dozen marginalized groups. In the USA, that is. Elsewhere in the world the marginalized people have different characteristics. For example in India it takes a converted Christian to be marginalized. But the speaker of the day, a brilliant orator, a lawyer that he is, continued the trend of public debate in the country and ended with a thumping note: We must work together for social justice in the USA and make America the greatest country on earth. In spirit, the responsibilities of students did not entail them to think beyond the US of America. Isn’t it an irony that the people who can affect most to the world situation (mostly because the world situation has been aggravated by their country’s foreign policies) are always honed to be concerned about their country. That’s the beauty of both the democrats and republicans, of the speakers at the universities and the churches: God bless America. The rest of the world can go to hell.

In contrast I recollect lectures by so called Indian ‘nationalistic’ leaders ranging from Nehru to Vajpayee who have religiously left notes for how to make the ‘world a better place’. In all our morning lecture sessions at school we were praying for the world, for all religions in the world, for peace throughout the world. It seems a completely different set of narrations, as I clearly recall. Don’t know what India gained from it, except for the notion that the welfare of India was dependant on the peace for all people on the earth, not just one country or the other. The slogan ‘vasudeva kutumbakam’ has been used by many a corporate entities to imply that the entire world is one family. Of course in retrospect, one can assume that Indian companies also wanted to spread out to the world to do business (which they have failed to). But all in all, the third world population was more lectured on the social justice in the world whereas the American population (in EVERY single presidential debate, every state university addresses and every telecast speech by the political and business leaders) was lectured on how God should bless America.
The diversion in my line of comment was on purpose.
The important question of social justice has a radical component. Which is, to go back to the roots and understand what we have been. But that’s just a component. And unlike many view, this is not even the first component. There’s quite a bit of chaos needed in analyzing how to lead social justice movement. First component is not in recognizing what we are by our unique socio-cultural roots. This is an essential component in writing a history book, not in leading the future. Rather the first component in achieving social justice is to define social injustice itself.

Social injustice may be portrayed by definition, as a collective feeling that the movements/developments in the world are becoming counterproductive to the progress. Remember the word world in this context. The world as a big family in this case, of course. To take Thatcher out of context, it would translate thus: there is nothing called society. There are just families.
A highly individualistic conservative Thatcher factor can indeed be revisited if we want to understand the concept of ‘family’ vis-à-vis society. The Bush conservatism is no different from the Tina. And no matter how much we crave God to bless America and make America the best place, it will simply not happen. The reason being, the God in question is the Christian God here, not a Muslim or Hindu God. Because apparently elsewhere the Gods of other varieties are protesting through ‘their’ people’s violences.

No ma’am, no sir, the world is not composed of several different social justices. What of the lowest socio-economic status which indeed is representative of the majority of people in the world. They are not marginalized. They are just unheard. They just don’t own the media. No voluntary organizations. No non-profit sector. They don’t become members of the boards of directors of any organization meant for their welfare. There are no organizations for the poor. For, if there indeed will be, all other divisions will be obsolete.

For the real question here is economical existence, not a cultural identity. As I said going back to roots is not the first of the social justice components.

Defining the social injustice is the first.

The poor who will never get to read what I am writing here is still sans a home. For him/her the question of identity will come much later. Or it may never come. For teeming millions are starkly unaware of the identities and their intersectionalities. It sounds un-academic in spirit. It conveys an insincere tone in the politically incorrect sense. But the reality is millions more people suffer from social injustices from the fact that they are economically downtrodden. Their names dont have surnames and they event dont remember their dates of births, let alone any other identities.

Well said, but how about the other ‘complexities’. Is poverty a result by itself or is it induced by several other interactions? Such as race and gender and caste and sects and tribes and languages and nationalities and geographic locations?
Back to social justice.

Yes for sure, I agree that there are several intersections. There are layers of realities which constitute the poor. A minority poor lives harsher life than the majority poor.
But in an average of less than a hundred years that we all live on the planet (much less in many other locations of the world), we cannot do it all. We cannot study it all and act it all. We cannot let people grapple with their identities and wage a historical war with their other counterparts and still think of solving the life-death dilemma of countless others.
We have seen less than a hundred mass-scale revolution. Hundred is a good number to play with. Because it signifies, large but not large enough a number. Has every movement failed. Can’t say for sure. But has one succeeded in solving the misery? Can say for sure that none has.

There is a course for the future. Lets call it Future Course 101:
Let’s acknowledge that there is a divide. Call the divide by many names. But mostly lets call it economic. Why? Well, lets see. There are 48 more billionaires this year, according to the Forbes, which ironically quizzes its readers to see if they have got it what it takes to be billionaire (what it misses out on are traits like manipulation, muscle and motivation to be greedy!). Put the wealth of only the world billionaires together (only 467 people!!!) and their worth is $1.9 trillion, which is much more than the GDP of the entire United Kingdom. Of course the US alone has more than 60% of the billionaires of the world. And nay, the rest are not very well distributed over the world!

Interesting!

Well, the bottomline is what Forbes headlines its article in February 2004 issue as “The Rich Get Richer”. In its March issue, Tim Ferguson writes that “Here are 12 largest countries, by population, with no known private billionaires. We cheekily call them “deprived,” and in a sense they are: Any modern economy that does not produce at least one huge fortune is, almost by definition, not creating the kind of wealth that is the earmark of a prosperous society.”

Interestinger!

Prosperous “society”?
In Ferguson’s defamed list are countries like Sudan, Congo, Ethiopia, Egypt, Nigeria and of course Vietnam. He did not mention China, though. China is making private progress in collaboration, you see.

Another article titled “In praise of inequality”, says “a disparity of income and wealth is good for us, as long as people can move up the ladder”! Of course “us” must have been the “US” in the mind of Nigel Holloway, the author.

That’s the only family, remember. The American homogenous family. Some in the family are not Americans of course, they are either African-Americans, Asian-Americans, or the Hispanics and Latinos and, hold on, the Indian-American (who’s afraid of the natives anyway?). No one gets more correct politically than the sensitized American torchbearer of human identity. One that forgets to call its own race as European-American.

God bless America. Only the Americans.

Now before we diverge to another debate altogether one last proud quote from Holloway: “The income gap is greater in the US than in Japan, but its easier in America to amass a fortune.” I agree.

A country of celebrities, people who are respected because they have wealth! I remember in India we abhorred the landlords and moneylenders because they had wealth and respected our poor school teachers who came by bicycles because they had knowledge. Of course things are changing now, the American way. Now India has respect for criminals-industrialists just because they have ‘amassed wealth’ the American way. So that the rest of us can discuss why the late industrialists’ sons had a family squabble and how one bride owns an art gallery. Food for depraved thought.

Indians will soon have their People magazine (Hint! Hint! Time-Warner).

Now lets talk about the historical roots of the movements against social injustice. Of course we know of the Robin Hood. Lets focus on the last fifty years. Fifty is an interesting number. Not recent, but not much far away either.
Movements of social justice have its roots in peoples. Peoples of the world who have waged revolutions to overthrow existing forms of governments to bring in equitable distributions of wealth. The experiments have succeeded many a times. What perplexes me most is the usual debate over the failure of socialistic economies everywhere. I wonder when at least forty percent of the world embraced communism and let it run for at least ten years (most conservatively) to eliminate the private wealth and ensure equitable distributions of wealth, did we stand by the idea of social equality?

Did we ever try to locate solutions in the wealth distributions when such a process was in force? We sang in praise of ‘democracy’ and almost ‘installed’ democracy as though it were a licensed software even without recollecting to best of minds if there were ever a period of at least ‘ten years’ when democracy has been successful in any part of the world? With vote-scams, selective disenfranchisements, and snobbish ban on ‘immigrant’ (hello, who is this one?) rights to votes, we run a democracy. With a lack of political diversity, we talk of social diversity. To evade the real issue of economic inequality we are talking of a ballot democracy where people are so sensitized about their problems that all they think of is their own fatherland. Where folks have no idea that foreign relations are important enough because countries may be foreign, but issues of economics are not.

Social justice needs to meet a common ground in order to succeed. And that common ground today, as it was five hundred years back as well, is that of economic disparity. Once the economically backward people are organized to call an end to private amassment of wealth which rightfully belong to everyone in the planet on an equal level or none-at-all level, social justice will have well begun.

We have lost opportunities to stand by the people who have been in the struggles to put an end to inequality. Instead we gloat in favor of inequality. And to bring home the point, the social justice drumbeats in the US (which only focuses on the ‘national groups&rsquo are played by the institutional frameworks of private concerns. Ford Foundation comes to mind. Well played. Well played.

Before we all have been played out and enacted our last acts of pretensions that we are progressing where all we have been doing is moving in a myopic direction, before we all in the line of similar thinking act radically differently owing to our own preoccupations of identity crises, before we drop dead thinking that our life was worth living since we fought the entire life for our human dignity of being respected because we have a unique background than others, before we realize the reason why diversity might replace unity, before all that, we need to curb all differential thoughts and ask to ourselves what Gandhi had said long back in his talisman to the “world”: "I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away."

We got to watch our step. It has to be in direction of the world progress. Of international movement of the working class poor. The step which will proclaim that we can live happily only if we ALL can live happily. Lets call one denominator for the time being, my friend. That of economic equality. And stand by all the people who are trying at it. Lets stand by the striking workers of the world who demand higher wages. Stand by the rising teachers of the world who want permanent positions. Stand by the protesting students of the world who want no more tuition hikes. And stand by the resenting labor force in the third world who are tired of working in the sweat shops.

I am reminded of the wonderful speech made by the director of my office, where she quoted Marcos in the poem mentioned below-with context:
Some time ago, in an attempt to discredit one of the Zapatista leaders in southern Mexico, Sub-comandante Marcos, government officials there tried to put forth the idea that Marcos was gay. In a region where machismo still runs strong, it was hoped this would tarnish the leader’s credibility.

Marcos responded by writing a poem:
“Yes, Marcos is gay. Marcos is gay in San Francisco Black in South Africa an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10pm a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains.
“Marcos is all the exploited, marginalised, oppressed minorities resisting and saying `Enough'. He is every minority who is now beginning to speak and every majority that must shut up and listen. He is every untolerated group searching for a way to speak. Everything that makes power and the good consciences of those in power uncomfortable – this is Marcos.”
[From Social Justice E-Zine #27.]

To stand by the social justice is to define it. To define it is to know that it has several layers. Almost as many as innumerable. An environment of family conservatism makes girls in India become victims to child sexual abuse which can be translated as social unjust stance. An environment of ‘sexual liberation’ makes the young in the US become victims of the largest pornography industry in the world. Yes Marcos, is right. Its marginalized all over.

But they are not in the minorities anymore. Add “every exploited, marginalized and oppressed minorities resisting” together and we have the majority in the world. Because most of us cannot afford to be decent enough to be called civilized anymore. The most of us who are poor and cannot afford to buy clothes and those of us who are otherwise minorities but know how to dress the rich have to find the connection. To look at the mirror and ask as MJ asks: I’ve Been A Victim Of/ A Selfish Kind Of Love/It’s Time That I Realize/That There Are Some With No Home, Not A Nickel To Loan/Could It Be Really Me/ Pretending That They’re Not Alone?

All of us are marginalized in some way. But lets not forget the privileges of the marginalized. And that is, to turn against the tide. And today’s tide is that of the capitalistic notion of development. Within that tide, some of us may be co-opted, used and abused. We better be careful and organize. That’s what they are afraid of. We are no more the minorities. United we stand and we are the majority in the world. Just a helping hand to end the mindless competition, just an empathizing mindset to know how the Congo lives (instead of ridiculing it for having failed to produce a billionaire!) and a firm step forward, without remorse, without attachment, without recollections of the selfish loves, to end the saga which exploits.
It has to begin with the mirror..

Tags: Saswat, USA, Activism, Academic, Economics, Communism

How do I feel about the business of blogs, now that I am into it?

Famously described as the free forum for virtual communities, blogs have been of late developing the vibrant industry traits of attracting revenues. Despite being acclaimed as an outcry against big media monopoly and providing for scopes of a participatory democracy where the aim is ideally to live life online with fellow members of the community without having to worry about the rents and the lease, some vastly inhibited changes in the economics of blogs have prompted this research.

To read the entire article, click here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Technology, Media, Capitalism

Albeit differences, what Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Mill were indulged in had to do with a component of ‘understanding’. However, said Marx, the problem of the age was that philosophers only interpreted the world whereas the issue, was to change it. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard or Du Bois followed closely with the ‘change’ component too.
What we need now, is changes, with understanding.

My first dissertation committee meets today. I am going to discuss blogs! In a way, it’s also a comeback of my own official blog. I shall, with time, post the archives soon.

Tags: Saswat, Media, Academic, Philosophy

Wit doesn’t get much better than this. Bierce would have liked me to say it does not get any better than his! Here is one definition from the strictly adorable Devil's Dictionary:

MAD, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence; not conforming to standards of thought, speech and action derived by the conformants from study of themselves; at odds with the majority; in short, unusual. It is noteworthy that persons are pronounced mad by officials destitute of evidence that themselves are sane. For illustration, this present (and illustrious) lexicographer is no firmer in the faith of his own sanity than is any inmate of any madhouse of the land; yet for aught he knows to the contrary, instead of the lofty occupation that seems to him to be engaging his powers he may really be beating his hands against the window bars of an asylum and declaring himself Noah Webster, to the innocent delights of many thoughtless spectators.

Tags: Saswat, Literature, Humor, Academic

Following was my screening of a movie and contextualization of it in the class of Prof. Nirupama Prakash. Dr McAdams too came by to attend the class.

Tracing the utility values of films in understanding society and predicting social characters to inspire movies have been the preoccupation of post-colonial discourses. In addition, there is a need of subjective positioning of the audience since societal study involves the historical frameworks of human sufferings as well as living patterns emanating from this specific background.

Any attempt to understand women in a uniquely complex Indian society requires for subtler examination of core issues that the present film Mrityudand (Death Penalty) raises. Any apparent problem we are about to witness in the movie directs to multiple layers of societal adjustments. At the base, they will appear rudimentary and reflexive. But as we have studied in the earlier classes already, there are historical factors behind the reinforcement of certain values in any economically backward region.

Mrityudand chiefly raises the following questions:
Religious fanaticism: Is communalism a prevailing threat to the world order now or is it a historically existing order that is increasingly being challenged by empowered women?

Caste conflicts: Lower caste people are the ‘other’ in any society. They are pronounced as racially inferior. Who dictates the terms and defines the caste levels?

Caste politics: Why does the lower caste ‘play the card’? What is the histiography of caste politics? Is caste politics (especially when almost half of India is ruled via caste politics) a necessary evil?

Gender: Why doesn’t the ‘other’ gender unite, despite needs? Is it a family concern or a societal issue? Is there a need to distinguish family from society?

Culture: Is culture all pervading or differentiable? Is there anything such as a low culture and high culture?

Class issue: Are every other type of distinctions going to dissolve with distinct socio-economic class formations? Does radical uprising of the oppressed provide any solution? Or is it the only solution?

Information:
Duration of Hindi film Mrityudand is 2 hours 34 minutes. Released in 1997, it is directed by Prakash Jha.
Jha, an alternative cinema maker, has to his credit other ‘social’ theme based films like Hip Hip Hurray (1984), Damul (1985), Bandish (1996), (1996), Rahul (2001) and Gangaajal (2003).

Other films that might interest you:
Damini (1993), Tejasvini (1994), Astitva (2000) and Lajja (2001)

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Feminism, Film, Bollywood

Prof (Dr) Nirupama Prakash of BITS, Pilani, India is holding a Summer course here in Maryland. The course (WMST 498A/SLCC 498I) is titled “Culture, Caste and Women in Indian Society”. For the ones to be more interested, “this course is intended to examine the status of women in Indian society and explore the issues & challenges in process of empowerment. Uniqueness of Indian women stem from the social location which apart from being post-colonial also represents the global character of modern achievers.

I am assisting the professor in some minor ways and preparing to show a movie or two to encourage a class discussion. The course will explicate the inherent complexities in progression of Indian women from being rendered a subject status by a patriarchal society dominated by male rulers, to the subjugated women’s struggle to reclaim centrality in modern India.

Women’s status in India is bound with social, cultural and economic factors that influence all aspects of their lives. There are strong cultural influences on fertility, preference for sons, education of the girl child, age at marriage, dowry system, widowhood, decision-making, child-bearing practices, nutritional status, access to health care and degree of access to the outside world. All these factors have profound implications on the status of women in India. The course also reflects on various facets of Indian culture, viz., institutions of caste, tribes, family, marriage and also highlights the policy issues for development of Indian society with focus on gender issues.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Feminism, India

Following is my critique of an article on Chinese Cultural Sphere.

The Net is the world's only functioning anarchy but it could soon become a major tool for democracy. By allowing anyone, everywhere access to the information and opinions of anyone else, anywhere else, a morsel is being given to mankind with one instruction: "Eat Me, so that we may grow." (Fenchurch, 1994, p. 11)

Goubin Yang assistant professor in sociology at University of Hawaii in Manoa, who authored and presented a paper “The Internet and the rise of a transnational Chinese cultural sphere” at a conference in New York, on China's Environmental Discourse, makes case for two premises: one, that the internet for Chinese population, has facilitated global mass protest movements, and two, inside China, online ‘spaces’ have influenced civil society development. The paper appeared in ‘Media, Culture & Society’ (Vol 25, Issue 4, 2003) with the underlying assumption that online media have given birth to a transnational Chinese cultural sphere.

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Media, China

My mediocre review/critique of an excellent work of media research:

Kavoori’s work is unique from three standpoints: firstly, this is a comparative media study across five, instead of between two countries, secondly, it revisits the media imperialism theories with a changed premise and last but not the least, the dissertation deals extensively with globalization from an ethnographic perspective.

“Globalization, media audiences and television news: A comparative study of American, British, Israeli, German and French audiences”, is suitably titled, deriving research data from a four year “Global Newsroom” project.

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Media

My arguments in favor of Castells:

When Will Durant attempts at making Shakespearean literature a canon in Philosophy, he uses two well known quotes: Of Touchstone asking Corin “Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd?” and Hamlet’s “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Durant tells us that if Shakespeare made a guess he kept it to himself, and perhaps thereby proved himself a philosopher.

But the confessed Shakespearean rival George Bernard Shaw refutes Shakespeare’s canonical status in Philosophy by claiming that there was no metaphysics in the latter’s works, no view as to the ultimate nature of reality, no theory of God. Even Shakespeare, according to Shaw, speaks with no reverence of professed philosophers and doubts that any of them ever bore the toothache patiently.

The full article can be found here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Philosophy, Media

By Saswat Pattanayak

My proposed syllabus for a class on Radical Alternative Media:

Media have often been depicted as part of the fourth estate in a democracy, the other three wings being the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. Role of the media, their representations of “social reality”, as well as biases in their reflections have often held center stage of public concern.

But, on counts of content and the context, the bouquet and the brickbats, and the cultural as well as political-economic approaches, it is often the mainstream media, which get the attention. Either some television programs are portrayed as too violent, or few mainstream newspapers are cited as truly neutral. In either cases of extremes, the debate surrounds the media that are akin to big corporate organizations. They are the media that represent the focus and are widely circulated. Plausibly, the assumptions being that those media organizations are worth studying which have the reach. No wonder, most critical media theories actually surround the impacts of big business conglomerates in the political-economic tradition or negotiations within dominant messages in the cultural studies tradition. Most administrative researches too, focus on role of mainstream media because they are well documented and appear more convenient for the purpose, at times because of being supportive of the researches themselves.

Check the full syllabus here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Communism, Media

Now in its 22nd year, the Socialist Scholar's Conference is the largest annual gathering of the US left. Two days of more than sixty panels will feature leading activists and thinkers discussing the quagmire in Iraq, the future of the global justice movement, the drive to unseat George W. Bush and a raft of crucial political and economic issues.

Program details are as follows:
March 12-14, Cooper Union fo the Advancement of Science and Art
7 East 7th Street, New York City
For ticket information, schedules and directions, please call 212-817-7868 or click here.


Speakers this year include The Nation's Naomi Klein, William Greider, Doug Henwood, Liza Featherstone and Ian Williams as well as Laura Flanders, Manning Marable, Marshall Berman, Hilary Wainwright, Christian Parenti, Dilip Hiro, Frances Fox Piven, Greg Palast and Micah Sifry, among many others.

Check out the full line-up here.

Tags: Saswat, Communism, Academic

Doing an internship with the Office of Human Relations Programs. This is the President's Office for Equity and Diversity.

Currently producing materials for a program called Social Justice from Classroom to Community!
Whoa...thats a useful name for a university program.

Tags: Saswat, Academic

James M. O'Neill writes on how Penn grad students authorize a strike

Graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania, seeking recognition to
unionize, last night voted to hold a strike on the Ivy League campus on
Thursday and Friday. Union organizers said last night that 83 percent of
more than 200 students attending voted to go ahead with a strike. "It's a
measure of the frustration we have with the university's legal obstruction,"
said graduate student spokesman Dillon Brown. "It also shows that graduate
students are eager to demonstrate how much they want their votes to be
counted."

Tags: Saswat, Communism, Academic

In a national phone survey between March 12 and May 20, 2003, the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that more than 53 million American adults or 44% of adult Internet users have used the Internet to publish their thoughts, respond to others, post pictures, share files and otherwise contribute to the explosion of content available online. 21% of Internet users say they have posted photographs to Web sites. 13% of Internet users maintain their own Web sites. Around 7% have Web cams running on their computers that allow other Internet users to see live pictures of them and their surroundings.

Read all about it here.
As always Interesting stuff, this Pew research. Wondering what they mean by "American adult Internet users". This is funny but I must confess, after reading thousands of opinion polls, I see I am never intereviewed for a poll in life. Just a sheer coincidence or an exalted call to an idea that I am one in a million.

Tags: Saswat, Technology, Media, Academic

Congratulations, Todd!
My friend Todd S Burroughs will be reading out portions of his new chapter in the new most relevant book!

The Book Launch for Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching is taking place on the Wednesday, March 31, 2004, 6:30–8:30 p.m at the National Council of Negro Women, Inc. 633 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20004.


Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching, is a new publication from Teaching for Change and PRRAC (Poverty and Race Research Action Council). The event will be joined by editors, contributors, and Movement activists to celebrate this book that will help students find their connection to the Civil Rights Movement and discover the roles they can play in fighting injustice today!

Dr. Dorothy Height, Chair and President Emerita of the National Council of Negro Women, will grace the occasion as welcoming speaker.

More information on Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching can be found on its companion website. For directions and information about the venue, visit here.

Tags: Saswat, History, Black Power, Academic, Literature

Very Interesting Chinese Blog here
Just some students at Berkeley. I think its a great job, folks! But what I always keep seeing is China's obsession with Japan, at least as seen by the Chinese scholars abroad. Must have been such a break for Indian politicians of late. No news is good news.

Tags: Saswat, Technology, Academic

Well this was my Survey tool, in course of my research, during the first semester.

Prof John W Cordes, that incredibly wonderful human being and teacher, helped me finish it in time!

Tags: Saswat, Academic

I am now a member of the University of Maryland Senate. In the Student Affairs Committee, I am drafting proposal for Online Syllabi.

The idea is that faculty members will compulsorily work on this. But knowing them, I have huge doubts!

Excerpts from a draft I am working with now:
"Every academic course will have an online syllabus" is a directive
principle.
I propose five broad divisions based on a modular approach with links to
other pages on top of the home page (as opposed to linear approach which is
posting everything on one page):
Goals, Schedules, Assignments, Readings and Notes
within them,
Goals: Objective, Course Outcomes, Expectations (pre-requisites, readings,
class listserv, attendance, behavior, academic honesty), and Grading policy.
Schedules: Week-wise, topics, readings, assignment/lab
Assignments: Mini exercises (depends on the course), final examinations, any
paper presentation suggestions.
Readings: Suggested Weekly readings for individual or groups. sources must
be mentioned.
Notes: Additional readings, links to sources, copies of class slides and
other information pertinent to class.".........

Tags: Saswat, Academic

One leaves oneself at home when one goes to the theatre, one renounces the right to one's own tongue and choice. . . . There one is common people, audience, herd, female, pharisee, voting cattle, democrat, neighbor, fellow man . . . even the most personal conscience is vanquished by the leveling magic of the great number. . . . (Nietzsche)

An Interesting read it was. On Theodor Adorno & HEAVY METAL. For the starters, Adorno was the distinct champion of the Critical school of Frankfurt and author of texts which are understood only with a decent dictionary alongside.

Tags: Saswat, Philosophy, Media, Academic

By Saswat Pattanayak

Russian Orientalist, Prof. Grigory Bondarevsky has been murdered in Moscow. Of course, he used to take special interest in the subversive role of Western intelligence agencies in the history of India, Iran and Arab countries.

And of course, after dissolution of the USSR, the systematic obliteration of the original researches have been started full force. Indeed, Bondarevsky is the 10th Russian scholar to have been killed over the past year (for example, in June, Alexander Krasovsky of the Academy of Sciences died following an armed burglary into his apartment, while in January Viktor Frantzuzov, deputy rector of the Moscow Institute of Chemical Technologies, was shot dead etc). And none of the murder mysteries have been solved yet.

In the Indian context, Prof. Bondarevsky was the honorary professor of the Meerut University and winner of the Jawaharlal Nehru International Prize as well as Padma Shri, one of the highest civilian awards. In the Soviet context, the most recent and unique research of his was regarding the Chechen struggle. In fact the attackers had not stolen anything from his apartment except a Chechnya-related research. The Russian interior ministry was quick to suggest the killers might have been members of the Russian Mafias.

Mafias work for whom and why? Who would benefit from the people’s researches on Islam and the West’s contribution in its militarization?

Well, Well!

Tags: USSR, Saswat, Communism, Capitalism, India, Academic