By Saswat Pattanayak

At the crux of the divided opinion regarding Chavez’s decision to take control over a private TV channel is the ever-elusive concept of human ‘freedom’.

Freedom, although is being defined purely from a consumerist-capitalist lens than from a socialist perspective. And hence what we see is demise of individual liberty, the status of savior in form of Youtube and an international condemnation of Venezuelan crisis.

People across political spectrum are quick to draw conclusions. Most from the politically right are obviously thrilled at the prospect of noticing the deterioration of “democracy” in Venezuela. Even as they would not go their graves confirming that the goal of communism has anything to do with western democratic ideals, they still would condemn Chavez for failing to stand ‘their’ tests.

More baffling is the responses from many of the left-wing comrades. There is an attempt to portray RCTV as the evil incarnation of conspiring media that deserved to die. How could Chavez even allow it to exist for five years since he came to power? Many from the progressives are perhaps still in a stage of denial. This is a classic case of denial that permeated throughout during the Stalinist days when the Soviet leader exercised his cultural controls. For a long period, there was silence among the communists over the “high-handedness” of Stalin. After his death followed the last testament of Khrushchev, and the international condemnation of Stalin from most people even from the left.

Perhaps little too early to draw a comparison here, but it would be apt to indicate that “threat to life of the leader” has been the common grounds on which censorships worked in both Soviet Union and now in Venezuela. Chavez feels and rightly so, that there were attempts on his life by the forces supportive of the private channels, and the RCTV anyway was part of a coup to oust him from power before. So in all good sense, he would rather have the station shut down. Similar parallels can be found in the lifetime of Joseph Stalin who promulgated censorships in lieu of security to his own life and maintenance of socialist order in Soviet Union.

Just as Stalin was credited with improving Soviet industrial economy, so is Chavez with his ability to pay off the Venezuelan debts and making the country a strong contender for a role in the UN. Just as Stalin had a “personality cult” theory to haunt him after his death, Chavez and his comrade Castro have personified enough of their respective countries for the personality cult to emerge and dominate the communist worldviews too.

Let me make it quite clear that the act of Chavez in Venezuela in banning the one or two television stations is an act of gross censorship that’s unparalleled in world history. RCTV was no joke (although its programs were famous for their bad humor). It was the most important television channel to have been there in Venezuela for over six decades now. It was a major pillar media estate that drew viewership of majority of people in Venezuela. To shut down RCTV would be to shut down CNN in America or Zee TV in India. Isn’t it a big violation of human rights?

To confirm that it is, so far, even the liberal watchdogs have proclaimed their hasty judgments on Chavez. Amongst those who have condemned the closure of RCTV are not just the US Senate, or Chile’s Congress, but also the Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Committee to Protect Journalists and members of the European Parliament. The potential allies of Chavez have not just become distanced from him. With the closure of Globovision, his enemies have even started to grow.

Chavez has unleashed state power also to throttle opposition in his homeland. His police forces have confronted protesting crowds. Even one student is claimed to have been dead in firing.



More Pictures here.

The world media, and certainly the bloggers have been taking quite some notice of what is happening in the backdrop of a new media world. How much of control can be exerted on the traditional media when there are newer avenues still open out there in the forms of YouTube and weblogs? Indeed RCTV is now online already.
Moreover, what logic can be justified in a decision to shut down the messengers? And in our age of television, as a blogger rightly asks, indeed what could be the worst that can happen: shutting down of a TV Station!
Wait, there is even more. The Drudge Report says Chavez may shut down yet another station and readers are aghast.

Its becoming a field day for the right-wing media actors who have now left no stone unturned to poke fun at everyone else including the unassuming democrats.


What defense has Chavez got?
Chavez has very weak defense, if at all. Unfortunately, unless he stands up to declare what this whole thing is all about, speculations will not stop. And fuel for an uninformed audience can prove to be extremely dangerous for the future of world progressive thoughts.

What I mean by this is, Chavez has chosen to defend him. One weak way of doing that is by claiming that he was a victim of a coup and this is merely unacceptable to allow the disturbing elements. Those supporting Chavez are merely repeating his words. According to Chavez there can be no argument on his decision since that’s a sovereign matter of his country and is legitimate.

A portion of American Left, Democratic Underground has a theory that substantiates some of his sentiments in a more informal sense. One thread reads:

“President Hugo Chavez is shutting down a RW CIA operation mistakenly called a "TV" station and not only does he have a perfect right to do that, it's his patriotic DUTY to do so. For six years this RW nest of snakes has been trying to overthrow a DEMOCRATICALLY elected leader. This so-called TV station helped the coup in 2002 and they have never stopped aiding covert US forces since then. He gave them plenty of warnings but they just kept up their SHIT! It is time for the FASCIST media to get it thru there head that everybody is getting sick and tired of their FAKE NEWS CHANNELS which are being used to overthrow governments by creating FAKE CIA protests. This tactic which started in 1953 when it was used against Iran, has caused nothing but trouble for US credibility. In other words IT'S NOT WORKING ANYMORE! Hugo Chavez was legally elected and he has duty to protect his people from covert attacks by other countries. RCTV is a threat to Venezuela's national security. Personally I think just shutting it down was being WAY TO NICE! The "reporters" cough cough, should be THROWN IN PRISON FOR TREASON! This should be a message to all in the FAKE MEDIA and their counterpart organizations...
YOU ARE CRIMINALS and you are not getting away with this crap anymore. If any "REAL" people are upset with the shutting down of the CIA front TV station it's only because they will miss their soaps. That can be fixed and I'm sure Chavez plans to do that. Hugo Chavez is doing a bang up job for his people. He's paid off their debt. and for that alone he needs to be supported by all good people. All you SELFISH GREEDY RW CRIMINALS can go right to HELL! GOD BLESS HUGO CHAVEZ!”


The same form of defense goes on with another usual Left Spin: Jo Swift says, This TV station is a company that would not get a license in other democracies, including the United States.
Swift even says the story is “framed” as a simple matter of censorship and that the US Media has a Spin to it in order to accelerate the opposition against Chavez. (Ironically, at the same time, the right-wing bloggers are saying the US Media has a liberal spin that decides not to cover it as much as it should be).


The language of revolution:
The defense of both Chavez as well as the leftwing bloggers are indefensible simply because the way they are argued. Chavez is a wonderful human being by the way he deals with his people and their pressing issues. At the same times he is infinitely humble as a politician, and one can even recollect the manner in which he paid rich tribute to Chomsky’s works on the floor of the UN in the recent past. Whereas all this is good, he is still way short of declaring what his actions constitute in the sense of revolutionary actions.

Just as many a Chomsky’s speeches end with his declaration that America is indeed the freest country there is in the world (because the privileges of a MIT professor are lost to the Manhattan homeless lots), many left scholars and activists begin from an ideal assumption that exists in the world, than needs to be carved out. In that exercise they use languages such as “sovereign”, “legitimate” as Chavez uses or “God Bless Hugo Chavez” as the DemUnderground uses, or “not a censorship” as Swift uses. Or the overall sentiment for this instance that the justification for terminating a “license” is the coup.

All the above phrases and feelings are defined within the context of a specific class that we all are aware of, but most of us are unable to challenge due to the collective fixation with the normatives associated with this class function. For example, what Chavez did is indeed part of exercising the prerogatives in the interest of majority of people of the entire world. This doesn’t have to be “democratic”, or “sovereign” or anything to do with a “coup”. In fact, Chavez himself was involved in forming a coup, according to mainstream historians.

And so far as democracy, freedom and sovereignty are concerned, they are languages of one class of people today that enjoys the tools to define these words. To assume that Chavez will not fall into this trap is dangerous for the future. For now, Chavez is powerful enough to combat a reactionary image of his personality cult. But once the Left even disowns him for having failed the test of capitalist word-lists, he will end up being another Stalin from the grave.

Where Stalin had made clear his principles was in his declaration of his actions as part of a class war that was waging during his days. “Class War” is the phrase that can alone describe the struggle between the propertied classes and the ones who are in favor of emancipation of majority of people from the chains of private control. In this politically correct world it may be sounding naïve to call for a war, and that is what holds back most progressive people everywhere. And of course humanity has seen enough bloody wars to learn a lesson that we don’t need violence any longer to live in peace. Whereas one premise is material (that is, the struggle between two classes), the other is strictly ideal (that let the struggle be peaceful).

History is witness to the property relations of privileged classes that have perpetrated their oppressions against the working class in the name of enjoying “freedom”. Rarely do people ask “whose freedom”. When we talk about media in the world, rarely we ask “whose media”. What Chavez has done in action is possibly the most brilliant work of a leader that answers these questions as well. Through his actions alone, Chavez says, the freedom for the majority. And he says the Media for the People.


This is Class War!

The Class War is going on everywhere in the world today. At some places its more implicit than at others. Some get due news coverage, and some never get it at all. From Mexico to India, the class wars of the landless against the propertied are going on perpetually. Such struggles will invariably involve things like “coup” that will be staged at times by the communists, at times by the capitalists. There is no telling how many times such “coup” has taken place in history. However, for all the records in the past, only a very few times the poor working class coup has emerged successful. And with RCTV, possibly the first time that a major media coup has taken place that is people-driven than property-driven.

It is not the biased coverage of RCTV that should be a cause of censorship. Indeed as NewsBusters responding to a LA Times article says: if the “crime" of RCTV was its supposedly biased coverage, then by that reasoning, even the ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS should be shut down because of their biased coverage of the Bush Administration.

And its not going to be easy defending oneself as the torchbearer of freedom, liberty and democracy if Chavez allegedly plans to change the constitution to permit infinite reelection. It will not be long before he is denounced as another Stalin: personality cult, continued reelection, media censorship.

The answer lies in defiantly declaring the events of the world of marginalized against their oppressors as part of a larger class war. Before the narrations of the feminists and the environmentalists and the gay activists and the civil rights advocates and the communist parties in power fall into the traps of defending themselves against the yardsticks of “individual freedom” established by capitalist ethos, it is imperative to learn and accept that the personality cults and reelections and censorships and identity wars are perfectly within the acceptable norms only if they are orchestrated by the leaders and peoples that are opposed to maintenance of private property relations.

Dictatorship is not a term to be despised, as long as it’s the dictatorship by the proletariat. Its not censorship per se that needs to be condemned. It’s the censorship by the private elitists that stifles the voice of the majority that needs to be condemned. Its not a class war that needs to be avoided at any point in the human civilization. It’s the imperialist war against the people for greedy profit motives such as oil and gold acquisitions that needs to be attacked. Its not permanent reelection or one-party system that needs to be a concern so long as the party in power is able to look after the poorest and offer them top priority. It’s the farcical “democracies” that changes their bottles every five years or so while toasting to the same vulgar display of disproportionate wealth disparity among its classes of people that needs to be focused on.

This is an opportunity to reclaim the class struggle and declare it as such without moralistic pretensions of being freedom loving or being any more politically correct than we have mostly been by condemning former communist control/command economies. The fact of the matter is the initiatives by the revolutionaries must not be limited to the personal impacts in a local sphere but must extend to international future roadmaps.

And it is in this spirit of consolidation of international progressive movement that the RCTV acquisition must be looked from. It is not a battle against the owners of RCTV, rather is part of a larger class war waged against exploitative private propertied class of the whole world.

To end with Che Guevera (who called himself “Stalin II” and had an unwavering support for revolutionary goals without getting perturbed by the first world cultural definitions and never felt ashamed of his warring radical declarations that have been the most vociferous ones we have ever heard) once said:
“The revolutionary, the ideological motor force of the revolution within the party, is consumed by uninterrupted activity that comes to an end only with death, unless the construction of socialism is accomplished on a world scale. If one’s revolutionary zeal is blunted when the most urgent tasks have been accomplished on a local scale and one forgets about proletarian internationalism, the revolution one leads will cease to be a driving force and sink into a comfortable drowsiness that imperialism, our irreconcilable enemy, will utilize to gain ground. Proletarian internationalism is a duty, but it is also a revolutionary necessity. This is the way we educate our people.”

Let not Che’s education go wasted. And certainly let us not romanticize Chavez by either claiming him to be a victor or a loser. Its his bold step at striking at a corporate media interest that needs to be hailed without conditions, or justifications. This is not a closure of a TV station. It’s a war against the private monopolists.

The Class War is continuing. And as brother Scott Heron would have said, the revolution still will not be televised. And yes, we don’t need a a bunch of private TV channels making people laugh at insanely sick jokes during our most trying troubled times.

Tags: Saswat, Communism, Venezuela, Activism, Philosophy

By Saswat Pattanayak

"Violence against women has yet to receive the priority attention and resources needed at all levels to tackle it with the seriousness and visibility necessary."

UN Secretary-General’s in-depth study on violence against women (2006) (A/61/122/Add.1)

Before we reach another consensus on violence against women, let us examine the existing differences. For, whereas it is far easier (because it is pacifying) to share the knowledge that violence against women continues to exist, it is rather discomforting (because it is agitating) to throw lights on why it is so.

Like every year, academic and administrative reports of all kinds will be generated to commemorate March 8. After all, since we have a non-profit United Nations and we have corporate profiteers, we will eventually need to reach a consensus on issues such as violence against women. And amidst the thousands of articles and hundreds of televised tear-jerkers we will encounter in the coming month, the information overload would have done the damage, if we do not stay alert about few conditions that need addressing:

1. Suspect the Messengers: The kinds of messages about women may be misgivings. Indeed, most channels that provide news about women’s progress and violence are owned and controlled by men. Whereas it is undoubtedly true that many men are truly understanding of their gender positions and many women are too willing to play the assigned roles, it is still wise to suspect the men in the month of IWD message boards.

2. Women’s Rights are Universal Rights: Some will talk about women’s rights as a domain that applies to women only. Indeed, women’s rights are women’s prerogative only as a practice, but everyone’s concern as a scope. Just like they fool us by writing different history books for African-Americans, and the Americans as though American history does not include the minorities, it is highly suspect that women’s rights are not matter of concern for men.

3. Workplace for women vs Women for workplace: Most arguments about women’s rights focus on necessities to prepare the women for the workplace. Its like Amartya Sen saying that the question should not be if democracy is good for a country, but it should be directed towards making the country good for a democracy. Well, frankly speaking, he could be wrong. Just as JFK was while demanding that people give to the country without asking what the country can do for them. That’s the populist tone. The reality is women don’t need to be prepared for workplace. Workplaces need to be geared to serve women.

4. International Woman has a meaning: It means, women identify with each other across different boundaries. This identification has an undertone: that is, they accept the differences across cultures. To be truly international means understanding that there are differences across nations, and hence across women from different nations. There is no place for homogenization of women as one entity. So yes, White women are different from Black women are different from Asian women are different from Latina women are different from Muslim women are different from Hindu women are different from Swahili-speaking women who are different from Greek women. Women have different social locations among themselves, and hence understanding them holds the key. Let no one lead us into an essentialist notion of women’s problem. Different women face oppressions of different nature. The similarity is the most striking: that women are oppressed simply because they are women.

5. Are women human?: MacKinnon’s question is still valid. No amount of cultural excuses (from first world pornography to third world dowry) makes all women full human today. Ruling classes of the world still consider women as accessories to either their power ladder, or to their social justice tokenism. Their domestic adornment or cheap working class market value. Their television anchoring revenue system or their make-up kit industry. Just as Aishwarya Rai cannot be allowed to cry in public because Revlon will probably run into losses, Tamara MaidenName cannot challenge her greedy boss for uneven wages because he will merely retaliate.

International Women’s Day must not be allowed to promote card and gifts companies to indulge in exhibitionism of annual love to the mothers and sisters and wives and friends. It is rather a day to remind all of us in the world that a separate battle is on. This one is a battle of all. A battle that is waged by the true majority of the world, the women. A battle, that addresses the core inconsistencies of capitalism.

Originally written for Womens Rights Blog.

Tags: Saswat, Feminism, Communism, Capitalism, Philosophy

By Saswat Pattanayak

Death penalty for Ronell Wilson is unfortunate. In fact, death penalty itself is an unfortunate decree. Majority of the world population do not want such a punishment. A huge majority of capital punishment cases have been proved to be unsuccessful after being taken up. And again in the majority of capital punishment cases, entirely innocent people have been framed, and discharged with all honor.

Yet, since New York—that last bastion of liberal America—has decided death sentence for Wilson, the underlying spasms defining a gap between New York and the New Yorkers have come to the fore. Since reinstatement of death penalty in 1995, New Yorkers have spent $170 million of their tax money unwillingly, and perhaps unknowingly, to the cause of finding a scapegoat.

And Wilson, it seems was worth that money.

I will not enter into the moralist debates here. Certainly not to uphold the human lives as more valuable than any other animal’s in order to condemn death penalty. Indeed, to claim that human life is, lets say, more precious than that of animals, would be only to condone the vast parallel that can be drawn regarding the relative life value of an African-American (black) as opposed to an European-American (white) in the Unites States.

Neither will I advance the much discussed theory of how United States happens to be the only developed country in the world where death penalty still exists. Indeed, to claim that the European nations that have banned death penalty are civilized, would be to acknowledge deliberate omission of facts related to history of genocides caused by, perpetrated through, and resulted due to those very powers.

But amidst these superficial larger moral rationale that are usually hyped against each other in the public space (of human life or democracy model), the issue that should not go amiss is the specificity of the cases involved. Since death penalty is not awarded to a society, but to an individual (as opposed to a system of governance like electoral democracy or communism), it is imperative for us to be able to deconstruct the power equations involved in death penalty (racism, political decisions etc), but without neglecting the individual cases under observation.

To make a sweeping claim such as death penalty must be banned everywhere (although basing on statistics of their success, that’s a valid claim) would be to get entrapped inside the ethical dilemmas (are we to then passively watch imperialist wars or actually declare the war against the imperialists). Just as not all wars are indeed to be banned, banning of death penalty need not be a necessary discourse of our times.

In my personal opinion (shaped by my desire to uphold an ideal), wars and death penalties should be gotten rid of. However, considering this is an idealistic assumption, such an opinion looks not at the reality, but at possibility alone. In matters that affect our superconscious (to borrow from Freud), it is desirable that we go beyond the possibilities. And to embrace segments of reality, however painful that may be, however hard it may further our dissonance.

If we do not need to take a stand on death penalty as yet, are we then to bear with the penalties now? And to that, thankfully there is a heartening answer. The short answer is “no”.

Death penalty is usually handed over as a solution to a problem. Almost in all the cases, it is assumed that a killer is to be put to rest through lethal injection/gunshot/electric chair/hanging. It is this method of solution that needs to be analyzed. What problem is exactly being dealt with here? Crime?

We all know that society prepares the crime and the criminal commits it. In other words, crime is a social phenomenon and not a personal one. As Priestley’s “An Inspector Calls” reminds us at the end of the play, all of us are responsible for the death of the working class girl. Or at least that’s how the conscience posing as the inspector reminds the business family under self-denial. Need we resort to eliminating the “criminal” or address the grounds that scientifically gives birth to what we call crime?

The jurors in death penalty cases, notwithstanding their decisions, often fail to acknowledge a need to overhaul the societal system to contain the crime. For all the glorious trumpets of capitalism, the capitalist society has “produced” the largest number of undertrials in the world history. In fact, this should not come as a surprise, considering that capitalism thrives on inequality; it shines on the premise that only a few can consolidate.

When only a few monopolists consolidate the best of earthly resources, the rest of us have two ways to deal with this reality. One, which is usually the most preferred path: that is, we decide to serve the interests of the monopolists so that we can be benefited by the trickles of ill-gotten fortune. To that extent, we serve them well. The better we serve the capitalists, the better lives we live. Better, meaning hassle-free, crime-free, interference-free. We do our “own things”, which translates into: ‘we serve our bosses exactly the way we are told to’. Huge majority of human beings either willfully, or coaxed into, or even grudgingly carry out such a life. We learn to obey the commands, act in the directed manner, read the book we are told, watch the televisions they permit, even play the games, use computers, share music –in an ‘order’ly fashion.

Some of these, just as the laws of probability goes, are actually good. For example, standing in a line to buy grocery is a good thing to do, because it allows us to understand priorities. In fact, it also allows for those who need special attention to go before us. Not only because there is a rule, but because we as human beings share an understanding that some of us need more than the rest of us. Hence its actually good if we obey the rule that says, women, children and people with special needs get priority on this counter and so forth.

But most of the rules are debatable. In fact, quite debatable. Who gets to own a gun? Who deserves the most luxurious cars? Who needs to live in palatial houses? Who decides on our behalf to go on a war? Who decides whose life is more precious?

Here is where the rest of us come into picture. A minority (and some would say, fortunately so) among us will at times refuse to serve. We will protest against the capitalists. We will disobey some laws (remember we may still agree to obey the law that has affirmative benefits for disadvantaged groups).


So then, are all lawbreakers coming from the disadvantaged section of society? Hardly so. When people start disobeying some laws that is because they fall into one of the two categories below:
a. When we are highly privileged not to obey. That is, when we are members of the economically elite section of society. In a way, we make the laws. So we believe we can break it whenever we want. Take for example, when this minority among us declares war on innocent people of Middle East. That’s the group. Or the feudal elements of democratic powers whose nepotism runs high among such political configurations. This group bungles in all ways possible to reinforce its sway. It does financial corruption of highest disorder. It awards itself tax benefits. It establishes factories that damages and kills millions of people over the years, all the while earning itself unaccounted wealth. Since it really does not “need” to kill anyone (although they kill each other in family feuds, extramarital affairs and property disputes), this group merely directs the killings indirectly. Worse, it projects its own private wealth—the killer of society—as its shield, a very acceptable, nay, desirable shield. It bathes itself on the glory of its power, which it calls legitimate.

b. The second category of minorities is from the disadvantaged group. This class of people has refused to emulate its fellow members, majority of whom are those have-nots that have chosen to work for the privileged, so as to earn some leftovers. At times such refusal is organized, contemplated over and borne out of knowledge. But at most times, refusal to obey the masters and their laws, are borne out of ignorance, and disorganized irresponsible actions. Irrespective of the method, the action is usually one of dissent. The dissent, when organized, is directed towards positive furtherance of societal welfare. In this case, they form a band of radicals to envisage revolutionary goals of majority emancipation. And when not quite organized, these dissenters often end up emulating the first category (the rich filthy legitimate elites). The idea is to climb the ladder. But the reality is, more often than not (some get away: those rags-to-riches business profiles will vouch), they get entrapped.

Once trapped, the have-not is usually left at the mercy of the same law of the land against which it had dissented. This is the law of the land that awards its owners a huge leverage. Indeed it builds up courtrooms, a thick law book, and a plethora of liars who study the law just so they can play around with the manipulative words.

Yes, lawyers do not manipulate the law: the words are manipulative on purpose. The words are left in vagueness because only then they can be interpreted differently by the lawmakers to suit their interests. When it would come to displacement of poor people from their lands, the law can be twisted to suit its masters. And again, when the poor rise up to commit a small theft at a rich landgrabber’s mansion, the same law can award this ‘criminal’ a life sentence, only after years of undertrial experience inside inhuman cells the masters have created called prisons.

Little wonder, almost all undertrials and prisoners in basic jails hail from the second category. And again, little wonder then, that almost all the masters of the land that make the laws (congressmen, senators, parliament members, and their corporate partners) hail from the first category.

Laws of the lands where capitalism prevails are designed largely to benefit the affluent and influential. They are not meant to award death penalty to industry giants who encroach African lands and pollute the poor lives through poisonous gas that cripple the generations there. Most people on earth still die prematurely only because of environmental pollution. Worse than death is the lives they lead in want, in hunger, in deprivation of utilization of their own lands that have been grabbed and colonized and exploited by the elites. Most people on earth till date are without access to safe drinking water, because the corporate elites with mutual help of their lawmakers make sure that the distribution of water resources—those natural resources that are supposed to be belonging to the whole of human race, and if not so, then none of us should be having anything to do with each other, let alone decreeing death penalties—is made in a way to support factories and plants and bank balance, not the poor peoples’ lives. Every day we are bombarded with fact finding missions that discover how every private corporate entity, irrespective of their brand names, and their funded political parties, irrespective of their fame, have been trampling down peoples’ lives and aspirations under the capitalist system. Indeed, individual murder of a person may or may not carry with it an evil intent of larger consequence. But the manner in which instruments of capitalism continue to ruin peoples’ prospects to live a life of dignity (because dying is better than slaving), it is high time that we revisited the crucial questions.

Who commits the crimes? Is it the one who commits it, or the one who creates the condition?

Its not death penalty per se which is problematic. It is who receives it, that should be a bother.


Additional readings:
NYCLU: http://www.nyclu.org/leg_aa_dp1_060602.html
HRW: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/04/18/usdom10503.htm
Gothamist: http://www.gothamist.com/archives/2006/12/21/guilty_verdict_1.php
The Nation: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050307/hatchmiller
NYADP: http://www.nyadp.org/main/60823ronell
DPI: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=38&did=1066
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6317089.stm

Tags: Saswat, USA, Law, Capitalism, Philosophy

By Saswat Pattanayak

Amidst the impending war on people of Iran, and the ongoing oppression of peoples everywhere through military and financial means, we have limited choices.

One, we could claim refined patriotism that needs validation through the bumper stickers proclaiming, “I support my troops”. This will make some of us look politically correct, since the attacks are apparently not on civilians, but on terrorists (although for most of those among us who profess this first choice, the difference between civilians and terrorists is a matter of our stereotypes based on artificial dissonances—race, religion, nationality—than anything else). Our definition of terrorist is of course one that is rhetorically the most agreed upon, although politically it is the most disagreeable. Despite all the finer questions that complicate our lives, these among us will always root for the troops. Killing, raping, vandalizing, infiltrating, promoting ethnic violence, are all fine, so long as our troops are fighting their terrorists. In fact, the more violence there is, the more legitimacy, our troops gain. As Sister Nirmala implied for Missionaries of Charity that since poverty was God’s gift, it was required to be preserved.

And two, we could go on marching on the streets with pro-peace placards, be called crazy, and court arrests, hog headlines, and be butt of television narratives which pride on being liberal—they harp on the fact they manage to bring two opposing voices to engage in a debate cut short by ad industry’s dictates. But hey, since we are the liberal ones, unlike Fox TV, at least we have the voice of the Democrats on the television. Move on, shall we? So how did we stop the war in Afghanistan? Well, the liberals among us engage in congratulating each other for having persuaded the American troops to be out of the country. Its alright if we staged a stooge there who will play diplomacy with Pakistan and balance the power in our favor in the subcontinent. And how did we stop the war in Iraq? Why, of course we exposed the lies about the WMD. You see, there was no WMD, and the republicans lied about it, and we exposed that. And now, America is isolated.

Clearly, the first group of people who support troops and claim their brand of patriotism as genuine are psychically numb, and the lesser said about their glories and successes, the better it is. But at the same time, one would notice, that the second group, the liberal ones among us, are actually a bunch of opportunistic idealists with no sense of historical conditions.

Why I say that, is because it’s not the war against which we need to worry about so much. Rather we must identify the perpetrators and oppressed in a war situation and mobilize activisms accordingly. The moment we feel elated about WMD myth, we are accepting two prepositions to be valid: one that we are surprised at a politician telling a lie, and two, that if there were actually some WMD, then we would have anyway maimed the future Iraqi generations of children. Likewise, the moment we feel good about Afghanistan, or any other victim of the ‘cold’ war saga, we just look at the consequences (the installation of our favored man as a victory for the dissenting people), and never at the cause (that we might have produced a situation for the conflicts, and to prevent further deterioration, we must get the hell out of these places and let a world body decide a course of action).

Slogans against war are helpful in a society whose main ideology is peace. That’s a society where the state funds peace marches, and signature campaigns against nuclear war. Such informed agitation among the people is necessary to drive a people’s state through necessary checks and balances. Unfortunately, our overworking intelligence sources have already relegated such states to history’s dustbins.

But if we are talking about the elite democracies like the US today, assembly by peace-loving people will only be met with what they face ultimately. Peace activists court harmless arrests, their groups are infiltrated by police informers and yes afterwards, they are ‘allowed’ to continue with their job of opposing the regime. In a way it helps politicians of all kinds in this country to claim that this is not a country made up of kangaroo court, and that since citizens have a right to protest, this is indeed the best form of government that the people deserve.

In the end, the protesters are counseled by the state apparatus that the regime is serious about granting of freedom that enable the protest to go on within the stipulated rules. For example, it is alright to silently hold a placard of protest, but not to disrupt normal activities of other people on work. If you are the peace activist, then you go do your work, just the way your neighbor who is a business executive, does his/hers. Interesting, how the state controls the scopes within which ‘protests’ can take place, its expression dynamics, and the limitations (temporary arrests, and permanent FBI files).

Such a tactic of ‘allowance for opposition’ is so germane to western democracies that it works as a double-edged sword to further the governance mode. It declares the system as the most valid form of governance with active ‘help’ of the opposition. And at the end of the day, when the protestors are as free as they ever were, they come back home satisfied with their opposition tactics and claim the way even Chomsky does: that America is the freest country on the planet.

Behind the simplistics:

When played out, both assumptions confirm with the one-liner “Either you are with us, or with the terrorists.” Its like saying, “Either you support us/join us in war, or oppose us on the street.”

The dominant assumptions on the pro-war front are the following:
1. There is a war going on in Iraq/Iran
2. War is being waged against the terrorists
3. We need more external armed forces
4. We need more internal security
5. We should not stop our attacks till we have eliminated all terrorists off the world map


The dominant assumptions of the anti-war coalitions are the following:
1. War is evil
2. All wars should be opposed on principle
3. We should not break international law
4. We should save our children from dying in the war
5. War costs enormous human lives and money

I have run out of patience in coming down on the war mongers and their ‘classic’ arguments. These are blatantly racist, sexist, militarist people who would use any kind of excuse to either support the national armed forces, or join them and emotionally support those that join, out of pure guilt conscience at times owing to their equalizing the military with morality. More often than not, they will use moralist position to defend the indefensible, and introduce hysteria of necessity. For example, even if they will acknowledge that the military is doing something grotesquely insane (like prison torture) they will still carry on with it arguing that ‘without’ defense forces the country will be even more insecure anyway. Warning of such reactionary trends, the former president of America, Abraham Lincoln had said, “Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose -- and you allow him to make war at pleasure. If today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I see it, if you don't.’”

Coming to the anti-war movement, there are some issues that need urgent addressing. Firstly, not all war is evil. Indeed, there is a categorical difference between imperialist war and war against the imperialists. Hence, not all wars need to be opposed. Having said that, it’s important to stress not on the ethics of international law, rather energy should be focused on making it mandatory to accept the international laws of sovereignty. Any country violating the aggression-related international law must be prohibited from taking part in the UN proceedings and must be stripped off its security council privileges if any. This alone may just rouse the consciousness of the country’s citizenry.

Lastly, the disgusting drama of “Bring our boys home” must be stopped. It’s highly sexist, since it assumes that there are no women among the troops. Secondly, its too self-centric, since it cares only for the troops of the aggressor country, at the cost of overlooking the various rapes and murders “our boys” commit while having field days in the war. It also unnecessarily sympathizes with the military brutes who are not necessarily innocent little creatures. We can perfectly understand a mother’s cry in wake of her son’s sacrifice at the war against Iraqi peoples, but what we must not encourage is the trend of glorifying the troop at the expense of such shallow patriotism.

(What's the Alternative?
Next: Bring the War Home, Part II)

Tags: Saswat, War, Peace, Communism, USA, Philosophy

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

Atheists are identified as America’s most distrusted minority.

Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.”

Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.

Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public.

Today’s atheists play the role that Catholics, Jews and communists have played in the past—they offer a symbolic moral boundary to membership in American society

Respondents associated atheism with an array of moral indiscretions ranging from criminal behavior to rampant materialism and cultural elitism.

“Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years,” says Penny Edgell, associate sociology professor and the study’s lead researcher.

(Findings by the University of Minnesota, March 2006. To appear in the April issue of the American Sociological Review.)

Diversity in America is an oxymoron. Because the ideals that shaped the libertarian (and its varieties) thoughts of the founding fathers were necessarily a celebration of the marketplace. At times the marketplace was considered to be a civic space (as Jefferson would have wanted), and in more recent times, maybe a corporate space. But throughout, the stress on individual liberty in a marketplace of ideas has remained a defining hallmark of the American society.

In its simplicity, this is of course not quite such an acceptable proposition. For, if the aims of individual liberties were to sustain a socially desirable good, then it just implies that protection of those liberties will eventually result in these goods. However on closer examination, what is socially desirable are often times not the product of individual liberty prerogatives. Else, pornography industry and market monopolies would then have to be declared as socially good produce. So the checks on individual liberty (the practice) then become crucial to promotion of social good (the goal).

Individual liberties, being necessary corollaries of the marketplace, are thus, embedded with its ideologies. But the marketplace is never free, since it’s determined by the dominant actors there. Since the time America became torchbearer of individual liberties, there has been no marketplace of free access. First it was the class of slaveowners who flagrantly violated every possibly known human ethos of freedom thus restricting the marketplace to the same audience that Greece had, during its mythical democracy.

Then came the conservative moderators of the marketplace who while professing free values actually never shared the ownership of the free values with the subjects—hence no rights worth the bill were passed on to the freed slaves, the immigrants, the women and people needing special care. Here again, freedom meant a compliance to marketplace norms than a participation of an equal level.

In the third wave of freedom struggles of the 60’s, the marketplace set its own libertarian rules. Ghosts of McCarthy ruled the policies. Second class citizens and disenchanted black youths were the targets for immediate compliance. The liberties, in order to be relished, had to be subsumed as a trickled down grant than an inherent right.

Today, even as the individual liberties are being celebrated, the critical lens should suggest that they are the sustainers of the dominant marketplace player than anything else. Because just as the realization that certain individual liberties (like vandalism) should be curbed in order that they don’t flagrantly violate social good, and certain individual liberties (like appealing in the courts) should be encouraged so that the people don’t come on the roads, again to violate social good; what is crucial to know is that not all individuals have equal historical conditions of privilege allowing them enough “access” freedom to practice and “control” their realm of freedom.

This realization has come to acknowledge that upholding of individual liberties (lets say of the KKK) often can end up in curtailing the social good of the group liberties of some historically dispossessed (lets say of the colored people). The benefits of identity, then does not lie on individual’s prerogatives, but on the historically oppressed individual’s potential as a progressive group member/champion.

However this idea of promoting the minority groups’ causes then violates the essential framework of marketplace concept, which relies on promotion of individual liberties. Since the marketplace is governed by individual rules, and the dominant actors are the individuals who have infinitely greater influence on the market rules owing to their historical advantages, it is no wonder that to uphold the existing rules, it is desirable for them to further them too. So, implicitly the marketplace then promotes the values of naked individualisms—which benefit the individuals who have both access and control over the fruits of their liberty. For example, if the women are excluded as a group to vote, then the marketplace is free in its theoretical rules, but only in that it lets the men do the voting. Likewise today, the rules around the new immigrants is that the old immigrants who have had a say so far in the marketplace are professors of freedom, but only in terms of what appears to them as legitimate.

This internal contradiction of free marketplace that frames its own rules, promotes them through excluding certain players who want group freedom as well as individual freedom (thereby asking for recognition also as their identities in groups—LGBT, Latino/a, etc).

And the most chilling example is the marketplace of “Secular” state, where the actors surely claim a separation of church from the state, but only so as to theoretically uphold their argument of individual liberty. That is, if someone does not wish to join a prayer session in a school, it could be considered ok (although it’s also far from real). But what it has effectively done to promote its dominant actor class character is explicitly weave the market around its own set of rules. So what we have are educational institutions (including public universities) that host quite a few chapels. What we have are public gatherings where people are asked to seek blessing of Jesus to join the dinner. Recently when I went to attend an award ceremony for Women of Color inside the university campus, before the dinner was served, in a matter-of-fact way it was asked of the audience to show gratitude to Jesus. Considering the vast numbers of Christian organizations and their representatives (quite of few of them keep knocking my apartment doors to talk of God’s grace) who have been historically present, in furthering their causes, the reality is that there are not many non-Christian organizations to even provide a fare trade balance.

The problem area is this, while within the marketplace, the Christian rights are considered individual liberties (and hence the state vs “church” legalities), the rights of the other religious identities are considered as group liberties. And a marketplace dominated by worshippers of individual liberties (of the comfortable right-blinds), the group dynamic creates conflicts. It creates even more conflicts when it comes to the alternative identity beyond the interfaith tradition: the atheists.

Atheists just do not belong to the marketplace of free expression, because there is no leveling field out there. They are not instituted as anything (there is Islamic Studies, for example, not Atheistic Studies). They are not fostered as anything (there are state-sponsored minority religion ceremonies, not of Atheistic Award for Unity). They are not even acclaimed as anything (no governmental efforts are directed towards recognizing their philosophies).

Not just a complete lack of political will, but a near normalization of abhorrence towards anything related to atheism has historically bred contempt, and now breeding indifference (which is even worse, since the contends do not get discussed anymore). Films are not made to portray the sub-cultures of atheism, there is no funding for “advancement of atheism discourse”. Overall speaking, the dearth of popular knowledge on the subject of challenge to the structure and function of faith systems just are not allowed to exist in a society driven by the gatekeepers of its mythical free marketplace: since the key elements of power structure personally propagate their belief.

One wonders why no leader of any repute ever ends addresses as saying “Blessed be my Color” (the race discourse), whereas every leader of any repute starts with “God bless you all” (the religious discourse). For, the assumption is that the people have been conditioned enough to accept the God dynamic, since this has been the founding cornerstone of Western civilization (which has, for the records, merely gone ahead and ‘converted’ through will or coercion millions of people of various ‘races’ into a religious fold, including spectacularly mass converting the indigenous people of America on gun point).

The diversity discourse that exists today then exists because it is well within the parameters of the marketplace that legitimizes its recognition, but does not enforce its institution. So what we lack from the parlance of diversity are the elements that stand to challenge (which turns the question on its head) than to merely oppose (which forms a healthy continuum).

If the United States really needs to emerge out of the comfortable space of assumption making about human natures, then it will do well to promote the rich alternative thoughts that exist within western rational, eastern material, a worldly spiritual (devoid of religious adherence), and an earthly tribal tradition.
For, anything other than that, including a prolonged silence on the issue or even a complete absence of atheistic outlook from the power structures (considering that atheists would want to be ‘group’ed than individualized) will perpetuate vast regressive myths about atheism (like “oh, but you are so nice…I don’t believe you are an atheist”, often confusing moral conducts with religions), and people who believe not in an organized religion.

Tags: Saswat, Atheism, Philosophy, USA, Capitalism

By Saswat Pattanayak

Sahir Ludhianvi (1922-1980) is the poet who was neither afraid of authority, nor afraid to be outspoken. Neither afraid of going to jail nor to voice against the prison system. Neither afraid of the momentary life, nor of the eternal death. His involvement in the Left politics in the pre-and post-independent India, in organizing the peoples’ theatres, in writing for the peasants, farmers and the factory workers should serve a reminder to the wordsmiths of the present day that there is indeed a tool to choose a side with. But that’s a side between the material and the mystical; between the working class and the owning class; to side with the profit-hungry or the wage-hungry.

To Sahir, just like to Robeson , and to Neruda there was nothing to debate about which side an artist must choose. The question is redundant. The artist cannot afford to establish bonds with the heaven and the promises of spiritualism. The artist must cry with the beloved oppressed peoples all over the world. The choice is clear, as Robeson said: “Every artist, every scientist must decide, now, where he stands. He has no alternative. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of man's literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of national and racial superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. This struggle invades the former cloistered halls of our universities and all her seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear. The artist elects to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice! I had no alternative!”

In the following attempt to translate a poem by Sahir, I have tried to remind ourselves of our desirable commitments, and a sheer lack of choice. We are not free to make a choice anymore in regards to who we need to lend our support to. As the world is increasingly growing individualistic in the euphoria around capitalistic utopia, we need to recollect our personal experiences in the shared human history of our age, that is stifled with pain, remorse and tears of the majority.


Rajaata pasanda hum, ke tarakqi pasanda hum maim
Isa bahasa ko fizula-o-abasa janata hum maim

Aina-e-havadisa-e-hasti haim mere saira
Jo dekhata raha hum voha kahata raha hum maim

Tarom ki anjumana se mujhe vasata nahim
Insaniyata pe aska bahata raha hum maim

Duniya ne tajurbata-o-havadisa ki sakala mem
Jo kucha mujhe diya hai voha lautata raha hum maim
(by Sahir Ludhianvi)


Am I conservative by outlook, or progressive by orientation
A non-issue this is, its redundancy to me is well known

My words like mirror, the reflections of myriad nature
What I witness is what I recite: sans color nor alter

I do not heed to the conscience of stars and the heaven
On my land of humanity, I have enough to shed tears on

All that I have to return to you, to give back in word
Is what I have gained from my experiences in this world..
(Trans. by Saswat Pattanayak)

Tags: Saswat, Poem, History, India, Urdu, Philosophy, Literature

By Saswat Pattanayak

The most read books today are the best examples of books we do not need to read.

The state of the world today is dismal, impoverished and regressive. At least, this is how the majority of the world feels. For once if we consider that state as a valid reflection, then we do not have a single major work today of any relevance that gets into the bestseller’s list anywhere in the world.

An exhibitionist technological progress is running parallel with widespread poverty, sometimes the former thriving at the cost of the latter. Defense industry everywhere is continuing to grow despite its negative-return investments. Individual aggressiveness is the mainstay today replacing a collective will for social progress.

In times like these, a writer has a role to play. A side to choose. A writer must feel stifled, and hence must express the sentiments of the underrepresented. Utilizing the uniquely powerful medium of writing, writers have the potential indeed to change the world for the better. This could be a highly underrated opinion, but the reality is that the people who read books, do so selectively, with all voluntary knowledge and they exercise their choice to spend money of their own sweet will (much unlike any television programs, which are often adjudged by researches regarding their effectiveness in perception-making).

If among the literate circle, book (active choice) is more powerful medium than even the television (passive reception), then what are the books of the day preaching to the world?

To begin with, books come in all shapes, sizes and matters. They come from different publishers, cater to specific segments, are rated differently by a heterogeneous populace. And yet amidst all this apparent diversity of bibliophiles, there is a surprisingly staggering amount of cohesiveness when it comes to reading books. To vulgarize a phrase, book readers think alike. For example, there is a genre of book called Classics (of course no one says they are just the Western Classics) that includes books about Moby Dick, Tom Sawyer, Robin Hood, Three Musketeers, etc. None of us ever missed any of these during childhood. The stories were good. David Copperfield or the Man Friday. It used to be the most happening thing for us to read the classics in their original, abridged or translated form.

Fast-forward few decades and what we see is a flood from a different genre: the modern classics for the troubled times. The Chicken Soup series, the Deepak Chopras, the 7 Habits of Effective People, the Da Vinci Code, The World is Flat, The Alchemist, The Monk who sold his Ferrari, The Fountainhead.

Much like the old classics which glorified a colonial world by never questioning the status quo of the most horrendous periods of human history, the modern classics on the bestsellers list also help maintain the current world order by emphasizing continuity. The old guards White writers of the past century never wrote anything to condemn the slavery, to revolutionize the minds about the vast inequalities brought forth by feudal society that they helped build up in the third world. They even refused to imagine that the world divide was being perpetuated by their reactionary pens. East is East and West is West and never they were to meet. Not just Kipling, most of the European writers should have felt burdened by this guilt of carrying such bias, instead what they thought they were doing was bearing the White-man’s burden to civilize the savages.

The modern times have seen further downfall of intellectual capacities. Instead of effortlessly indicating the gross disparities and weaving ideas around bettering the existing conditions by challenging a self-fulfilling system, the ‘acclaimed’ writers have indulged themselves in preaching individualism and spiritual illusions.

For example, leading New York Times columnist and multiple Pulitzer winner Thomas Friedman’s exploratory history of the modern world has been the number one bestseller since it was released last year. The book of course declares the world as being flat, but does not indicate how badly vertical is the surface. Devoting a substantial section on India, Friedman is highly impressed by the cyber cities like Bangalore. The exoticisation is achieved in India not only by people like Friedman who fail to note that the IT industries have helped sky-rocket the rent prices of rooms for people who are not working in that sector, have forced people to give up Kannada in favor of America English if they want to survive the race, have made people accept the rape and murder of a call center executive of HP as though it was some professional hazard with an unapologetic HP still letting people take drunk cabbies back home.

With a conspicuous lack of critical reasoning which should help writers frame arguments against mindless displacement of mental means of productions, what we have instead is intellectual frauds like the Deepak Chopras. Reducing the matters to mind and calling the luxurious emotional upsurges as some aspect of spiritualism, these writers have made money out of innocence of the gullible. These so-called gurus have no inkling of the foundations of old Indian materialistic philosophies, the atheistic orientation of the East, which is far more ancient and critical than the enlightenment or rationalism of the modern Europe. Instead what they harp on is the easy path. The path of superstitions, the path of blind belief, the path of hero-worship, the path of sacred texts, the path of submissiveness. And we have The Alchemists and the Monks. The objectivism of Ayn Rand. The celebration of blatant individualism, the refusal to look like a member of community, the aversion towards uniformity, the love of the ego-centrism, the victory of the lone survivor (who of course enjoys defeating others in the race).

Social issues of significance never get discussed in these bestseller books of today. Only the quickest ways to solve individual dilemmas of careers or spiritualism, self-centred happiness or recovery from anguish resulting from selfish love triangles. And the book publishers along with the television channel owners, the big media conglomerates, the famous five white companies of the world that control everything we know every passing day, that converts news into entertainment and then says entertainment is the news—they constitute what we need to know and what writers need to write in order to sell.

Its not like there is a dearth of writers we need to read. Its just that they are not highlighted by the mainstream media. Purposively, it serves their interest of staying together. Else they would sink. Why else I never found a book written by Howard Zinn anywhere in Bangalore on my recent trip? Because its still the age of the Ayn Rand or the Alchemist. The age of the individual success, not of a collective revolutionary rage.

To continue with the example, let’s contrast mainstream Friedman with alternative Neruda and find out why the cultural czars had to send Neruda to exile and why they needed to glorify Friedman. If Neruda was the oppressed people’s representative, Friedman does sound like an agent for Microsoft and Infosys.

Naturally enough, Neruda who never served the elite interests could torch the flame, while Friedman, a child of the conglomerates still can’t see the light.


And therefore, I so much long that Friedman, the most famous writer of America today, author even a wee bit similar to what Chile’s most famous poet of yesteryears wrote more than three decades ago. Especially, since the times, with due apologies to Bob Dylan, have still not changed for a large part.
“I Begin by Invoking Walt Whitman” by Pablo Neruda:

Because I love my country
I claim you, essential brother,
old Walt Whitman with your gray hands,

so that, with your special help
line by line, we will tear out by the roots
this bloodthirsty President Nixon.

There can be no happy man on earth,
no one can work well on this planet
while that nose continues to breathe in Washington.

Asking the old bard to confer with me
I assume the duties of a poet
armed with a terrorist’s sonnet

because I must carry out with no regrets
this sentence, never before witnessed,
of shooting a criminal under siege,

who in spite of his trips to the moon
has killed so many here on earth
that the paper flies up and the pen is unsheathed

to set down the name of this villain
who practices genocide from the White House.

Tags: Saswat, Literature, Media, Capitalism, Philosophy

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

What is the equation between individualism and nationalism in the neocolonial period?

With most nations breaking free from foreign dominations (although quite many still remain occupied, viz., Sikkim in India or Hawaii in US—and their status are not likely to be challenged anytime soon), have preached individual progress, what effectively has taken place is an enforced allegiance of the subjects towards the State.

In fulfilling the individual dreams, the State persistently demanded individuals to give for the country, not to assume what the country can do for them. Most of us must have grown up with quoting the Kennedy lines and reciting the national anthems of our respective countries with pride.

This ideology of isolated patriotism has left us a growing distrust for those who differed from us: Isolated patriotisms have few features— national ideologies, national interests, national flags, which have unequivocally been uniquely crafted. This is ironical, since the interests of people of the world are hardly any different (food, clothes, shelter, education and empowerment). Yet political leaderships in each country draft their interests differently!

This love for one’s land as inscribed in national anthems and portrayed in national flags have one major purpose: to leave people feeling that they exist, because they are different from the “others”. The Others in this case have been defined by the degree to which “they” have disagreed with “us”, and by the type of nationalities they have had (completely obliterating the historical similarities in peoples’ struggles to gain independence). This has led to an assumes sense of right vs wrong war where we are always right and they are always wrong, and as united we stand, “we” are defined by our nationalities rather than our intrinsic similarities (for example, the people of Latin America in their struggles, the African Americans in theirs, the colonial peoples of Asia in theirs—were all similar in their approach towards their oppressors, yet they never joined hands together, since they were made to believe that they were of different countries having different “interests”! So when Paul Robeson wrote to Indonesian people, he was actually criticized back home by the Black leaderships. And when Indo-China war was on, civil rights leaders largely turned away from protesting. Interests in home became more crucial than interests outside. After all, that’s what the primary lessons of good socialization process-how to safeguard one’s own interests.

Hence when it’s family members preaching inhuman sermons, our neighbors harassing their children, or even our local politicians ransacking public wealth, we are used not to take much notice. If the government prescribes conscriptions or curfews, we are the gullible law-abiders giving in to the neofascists with glee.

To recognize these efforts, any expressions of intolerance within one’s country are always met with dire consequences by the respective police states. But try enacting the same drama against, let’s say other countries (the famous “enemy” countries--burning effigies of Bush, Musharraf or Saddam) and suddenly that becomes the hallmark of free expressions. One quick mental exercise to assess the “national” leaders (since there are not many “world” leaders—except Mandela and Castro), and we are well aware of the fear psychoses techniques they employ against their people to keep them united. Yet there are vehement expressions of oppositions against some among them, depending on which side folks are on. To be a “true” Indian, one needs to hate Pakistan, to be a “true” Chinese one needs to hate Japanese, to be a “true” American, one needs to show disdain towards Iraq or towards anyone who is not with the Bush administration, notwithstanding that the vice versa are true in all cases too.

In quest to affirm one’s true identity of nationalistic allegiance, one unfortunately has been relegated to hate something. Reverse the question: Who does one need to love, in order to be a true anything? Such questions are not much asked. But of course, the propaganda mill teaches that for unity to prevail, people need to love each other. Then again, the mill teaches that the “each other” need to be part of the same territory.
For its not forming human communities which is the priority here, it’s ruling a country, which is.

And to rule subjects as a unitary, homogenous, one culture whole, a sense of acute distrust towards potential threats (in case of none, threats need to be manufactured) becomes necessary. National flags are symbolic not just of a country’s unique colors of identity from another, but they have historically always been a means of asserting one’s standing on one’s land (remember that all the colonial struggles were led by flag-marching freedom fighters). But the irony is that the flags during colonial times by struggling people were in retaliation to the imposition of a foreign flag, not a novelty by any standard. In the hands of fighters, flags call war. They shout protests. They cry freedom. In the hands of the oppressors, flags become a shame. They become systematic means to declare that no one is above the state, no one is above the rulers, howsoever right the individual might be, howsoever wrong the state machinery might be.

As we grow more individualistic, our social commitments also become an extension of the same trait. Isolationistic patriotism that proves reactionary becomes the end-result. When as freedom fighters, patriotism is displayed, it is epitome of mass consciousness to build a new society of cooperation. When as rulers, they display patriotism, it easily gets converted into the weapon to subjugate the vast majority of people under constant fear of the “others”, those others who do not bow to the same flag. And we too often sadly forget that it was Hitler who as the ruler led the most patriotic bunch of people ever in the world.

Tags: Saswat, Philosophy, Colonialism, Capitalism, Immigrant

By Saswat Pattanayak

Part of fighting terrorism, the British realize, is refusing to change a way of life, writes Andrew Sullivan, and he calls it the “Quiet Power of the Stoic” in the Time Magazine this week.

Well, one will wonder why I stoop to quote Sullivan on the same page where I quote Neruda. Not quite unreasonable considering that today’s media provide the sort of inspirations like Sullivan’s pieces, for a scribe like me to think as deep as Neruda to ruminate over problems which have only proliferated since. Hence instead of the painstaking love ballads, I have to create the apt rebuttal for the reactionary stoicisms.

How do I react to the reactionaries? To the politically correct? To the timely interventionists? To the anti-terrorism conscience keepers? To the crusaders against illegal aliens? To the wise interpreters of Islam?

To begin with, one of the most popular bloggers of all time, Sullivan sure knows the vulnerabilities of the print media like Time. First, in times of crises like the London Blasts, its easier to express popular sentiments, and two, in places like Time, he cannot expect immediate responses. Its another matter that with all the trumpets being blown by bloggers about the grassroots media being one where there is a scope for the readers to correct the blogger via comments, Sullivan is out of comments on his site!

In any case who expects contrary comments when the bomb blasts in London is the only political incident today in the world and standing by the aggrieved is the only politically correct thing to do. So Sullivan writes:

The English, as Orwell once observed, celebrate their freedom in small ways: gardening, sports, pets, pubs, stamps, crossword puzzles. Part of this is now patriotic mythology. But part is also the enculturated national DNA to see these things not as trivial but as integral to the life of a free people. These things didn't stop, even during the Blitz, when thousands lived through night after night with the prospect of being incinerated by bombs from the sky. Part of fighting the war, the Brits realized, was military. But part was also a refusal to change a way of life, however small its detail, however petty its peeves.

---

As long as some maniac wants to kill himself and others in a subway or supermarket, we will not be able to stop him. And so stoicism matters. Getting on with our lives matters. Spelling bees, college football, celebrity gossip, high school proms: the simple continuance of these things is integral to the meaning of freedom.

Or so the British have long proved. Their small-c conservatism can lead to errors of complacency--like appeasing Hitler in the 1930s. But it is also a deep strength, as self-effacing as it is unmovable.

I am rendered speechless and I do not know where to post comments. But here is what I thought Sullivan said and half meant.

Basically, do anything. Support Hitler. Gossip celebrity. Prom high schools. Invade Iraq. Stay conservatives. Let Tony Blair comment on how some Muslims got Islam wrong. Allow him to pass a stricter law now so that illegals can be filtered out. Call people maniacs, systems perfect and the celebrate indifference. Don’t reflect on actions, don’t contextualize. Just get going with life, as usual. Stay stoic. Don’t change yourself.

What Orwell forgot to mention was that the English celebrated their freedom in other small ways too: invaded the natives, raped their women, killed their ables, subjugated their economies, dried their resources, came back home peacefully without any damage, when they needed cheap workforce they got the natives to work as cobblers and slaves, treated them as dogs disallowing them to enter into restaurants, promoted racism, and when the natives forgot their language and became Englicised, refused them equal pay. After keeping them illiterate in their own cultures, got the natives to pay tuitions to study in English traditions, and when the students applied for jobs, asked them to go back home with a debt, and when few natives played by their rules and ran their industries and wrote their stories, they got them knighted so that they became to be known as English, not natives anymore.

If these are not exercise of unbridled freedom on part of the English, then I do not know what these are. And now what again so conveniently was forgotten by Sullivan was that alongwith the college football, the Brit ruling class has been perfectly innocently content about their sense of superior freedom when it comes to the debt trap they lead Africa into (some countries there have paid thrice the original debt only to suffer for the rest of the civilization trying to pay the guilt-ridden interests), about their realization of peace at inflicting deaths by the hundreds to the civilians in the middle east, over the Palestine crisis and the Iraq fiasco. When British personnel were exposed for prison torture, the English were at peace with themselves over such “small issues” too.

Who can afford to stay stoic? I cannot. I am enraged at the bombings. I am enraged at the bombings, yes prime minister, over the same bombings which killed Muslims too. I am enraged at the stoic take on the heinous bombings that killed ordinary lives, the British working class lives which never agreed with the Queen’s stance on Diana and Blair’s stance on Iraq. I am enraged at this whole thing about “Pakistani descent”, when all of the alleged bombers were British citizens. I am enraged at the whole lectures of the PM about Islamic extremism when it is partly a case of British security failure. I am enraged about the way its being dismissed as individual acts of terrorism, whereas the main bomb makers are largely amiss, their motives overtly unknown. Instead of looking at it as a social byproduct of modern capitalism, I am enraged at the way the narrative speaks only of the religious bigotry (itself a product of modern capitalism). I am enraged about the way distinction is being done among people of faiths basing on this incident which has to do more than religious sentiment.
Clearly no religion preaches violence. Why should the Muslims be singled out? When a Christian lobbyist cheats the Congress, does one blame Christianity and tries to dig its textual interpretations? Or when Mandela suffered for 27 years in the islands, was Christianity revisited?

Stoicism, my dear Andrew, is the opium of the British. And the ruling class of Britain wants it to stay. So that they can now tighten the immigrations a little more and claim to have solved the case with four dead men as providing evidence. And in the process the bigger questions will be purged: Who harbored the criminal intents? Who encouraged the situation? Whose education called for social distrust among promising youths? Who were they born and brought up amidst the British neighborhoods?

From nationalists in the 1850s, to being called patriots in the 1920s, to announced radicals in the 1960s, to call terrorists in the Bush era, individuals have been branded. Sullivan dismisses them as maniac individuals this time. The issues have changed, the enemies have changed, the causes have been reversed. Yet the violence persists. When the state machineries have gone violent, we have called them war, when individuals have chosen violence they are now suicide bombers. We do not know why these people have behaved this cowardly as they did now. One thing for sure, we know that many people all over the world have been converted into suicide bombers since at least three decades now. To dismiss their acts as manic acts of random nature would be to stay stoic and fail to bridge the gaps that exist between us humans. For one, going by the massive protests at all the meetings of world leaders (and we do not see many Muslims at all, remember!), we know that the rulers are not very much welcome by the ruled and their principles or lack of them are being vehemently opposed. What we need is a deep appreciation of contrary interests and constructive dialogues to understand the oppositional chords rather than being violent (which is easy for a police state anywhere to cause and generate), being stoic (which is easy for the i-pod generations and Disney theme park visitors in the developed world to enjoy and mock with), being dismissive and accusatory (which is easy considering the might and the wealth of the developed economies which never hears of the bombs in the quarrelling poor nations but goes deafeningly reactionary when any singular incident takes place and attributes religious and international tones to it to vitiate the atmosphere further).

With time, we shall know what circumstances we have created in a world we no more love, which have led many youths astray—from being socially productive, and individually progressive, to emerge as self-obsessed reflections of a warring imperialistic individualistic world divided by flags, religions and countries.

Between the mad people and the scared people (and scared people don’t remain stoic, remember), the situation may not be managed well. But by taking pride in a stoic citizenry instead of encouraging them to become alert international human beings, we are taking steps backwards.

Tags: Saswat, Media, Terrorism, War, Christianity, Philosophy

By Saswat Pattanayak

So who is a journalist? One who is ideal or who is pragmatic?

I guess there is the dilemma which has caused the storm in the teacup. At least that’s what has distinguished the actions of NYT and Time.

Two major mainstream media publishing houses acted contradictorily when it came to their reporters. And brought up the core structures and functions of journalism to question.

What Judith Miller did was what the profession is founded on. Journalists, unlike lawyers and doctors, have never been subjected to a state administered admission test or course or affiliation or accreditation, at least in the United States. One of the principles this country has prided on is its First Amendment which allows for the freedom of the press to be exercised, to such an extent that journalists themselves decide the rules regarding who should be awarded credentials. In other words, the sovereignty and autonomy inherent by the media in the US is unparalleled. So the foundation of the profession, as understood by Miller was based on certain principles—independence of choice, freedom from interference. Hence the sources may not be disclosed. For two reasons: because journalists need to have independence from any pressure to disclose any sources they might think improper to reveal, and secondly, because practically it will become impossible for potential sources to confide in journalists if they are to be named later on by the scribe breaking the basic minimum human trust.

Hence, Miller must have these ideals in mind when she pleaded:

"Your Honor, in this case I cannot break my word just to stay out of jail. The right of civil disobedience based on personal conscience is fundamental to our system and honored throughout our history…. The freest and fairest societies are not only those with independent judiciaries, but those with an independent press that works every day to keep government accountable by publishing what the government might not want the public to know."

Now lets move on to the pragmatics. I have three contentions. One, where do these “freest and fairest societies” exist? It’s a dark humor if we consider the current situations working against the majority people everywhere without daily access to their share of freedom they are supposed to be born with. Two, as some journalists have chosen not to support Miller , we need to understand their final verdict: reporters are not above law. Three, as we move from public sphere to being a profit sphere, any illusions regarding the notion that journalists by their independence make for a better world need to be done away with. Media, far from being a social service sector, today are at the mercy of few profit-hungry (redundant expression) capitalists. Any anticipation that they will stand by their reporter as a social activist, is a wishful thinking. Far from it, in fact in journalism schools, detachment to events is one of the prime lessons being taught so that the future media professionals behave no differently than the marketing executives—selling news, at any cost.

When the profession itself has been sold out, journalists abide by contract laws than organizing themselves to draft their own future, stand by their profiteer managements than their sources and interests; to expect anything from judiciary or executive or legislature or the general public is expecting in vain.

Judith Miller joins Jim Taricani, Vanessa Leggett, Timothy Crews, David Kidwell, Bruce Anderson, Lisa Abraham, Tim Roche, Brian Karem, Myron Farber etc as one of the many journalists who have served prison in the United States while on duty, for refusing to disclose sources. Yet to what extent people are willing to fight for their conscience-keepers is one to watch out for. And which people are we talking about here to stand for causes? The same people who have been subjugated to a corporate individualist culture by the media professional themselves!

Tags: Saswat, Media, Capitalism, Philosophy

By Saswat Pattanayak

First they killed the African peoples. Injected hunger and deprivation. Malnutrited them. Abject poverty led to baseless violence. They provided the poor with the rich man’s guns. So that the poor stay as domesticated security guards of the conquerors and merciless killers of their own peoples.

Then they killed the Asian peoples. Colonized them and plundered away to merry. Took everything they could find. From the women to the wealth. For hundreds of years kept the people subjugated under terror.

Then they attacked the Australians peoples. The indigenous remained no more so. The Myall Creek massacre became their party as they went on subsequently to own the continent they had no right over to begin with.

Now they have targeted European peoples.

The attack in London was not an attack on Londoners. It was a dastardly attack orchestrated in order to get the necessary media coverage so that some new draconic bills can be passed without the slightest protest. And the attacks on Europeans can be validated.

As the world watches with awe, one question arises. Bombing is taking place and taking tolls of hundreds on everyday basis in many parts of the world. Worse they are not even called scarce bombing. They are organized war efforts. Why is it that, people (by which we mean the world leaders at the G8) are so normalized about what’s going on to hundreds of dying civilians in the middle-east daily on military warfare and why is it that they are so indifferent to hundreds of people dying in Africa daily on hunger warfare and people elsewhere on psychological warfare.

Why sudden fascination towards the London Calling?

Of course none of us want another bombing to take place in London tomorrow. But it might take place a year from now, two years from now. Are we prepared to face the grim reality and actually mend our own ways to reflect if we as a collective whole in the world have gone wrong somewhere, to deserve this?

Nay, we cannot escape it by saying we never deserve to be bombed! Those of us who silently support their respective governmental draconisms are answerable. Those of us who actively support the racists are answerable. Those of us who do not voice resentments in face of injustice are answerable.

Who says we never deserve to be bombed? The question is what do we need to do so that we shall not deserve to be bombed. The bombmakers will make bombs. They will never stop at that until we organize. They shall strike the biggest business deals with prospective bomb owners. The show will go on with our implicit permissions. What do we ensure?

One, who buys bombs and why? Some fundamentalists for attack, some cowards for defense. Both patronage the bombmakers and spread the web of terror. The fundamentalists indulge in organized bombings like the Wars against developing nations. The cowards indulge in retaliation of minor attacks that so far have killed very few civilians in comparison. But the fundamentalists who own the media propaganda machines make sure to have their “patriotic” efforts be appreciated as a normal peacekeeping measure, at the same time branding the cowards as the evil terrorists who need to be wiped out using taxpayers’ money.

The bombings need to be understood in context, if and only if, we want to prevent recurrence. And that is, that the bombings are taking place as a two-way process. Both the war-mongers and cowards are engaged in constant battle, leaving out the majority of people in the conversation, and instead they profit the arms manufacturers’ business which thrives in all times of crisis (which is why we are made to live under constant crisis of security, believing that sex is bad and war is good).

Once this context is understood, we need to sympathize with neither. Instead, we, the majority people, who are as silent as Audre Lorde had predicated her theory about (“Silence will not Protect you&rdquo, need to do something about this damn affair which is taking away all the future securities.

War will only breed war. Of smaller type. Or of different variety. International despotism run by G8 has to be ended. The NATO forces have so far caused the biggest catastrophes on the civilization. Instead of preaching against the reactions, the G8 leaders should do better to practice and reflect on their own original actions that have ripple effects among the cowards lots.

Any terrorism efforts need to be condemned. G8 leaders are right in their verbal responses. And now its time to start the charity from their homes.

Tags: Saswat, Philosophy, UK, History, Colonialism

By Saswat Pattanayak

The questions on war need to be repositioned. I do not think the ethics of peace can ever invalidate the reasons for war.

The conflictual and often contradictory separatism existing between the war mongers and the peaceniks is one of no useful consequence. Extremisms that characterize both the cases make them ineffective. “War at any cost” or “Peace at any cost” lend themselves to the fallacy of self-contradiction, because “any cost”, when attached to the “events” such as war or peace is militarist in nature. Instead, “any cost” can be suitably applied to the “process”. By this it is implied that “progress” can be made at any cost—a progress that does not smack of opportune rise of one interest group to the exclusion of the most others, rather just the other way around.

Often the arguments of the day have sided with Peace and War as binaries and there where lies the inherent source of flaws. Peace may just be the time to prepare for war and war may just be teaching the lessons of history. In both the ways of extreme sense, they are dangerous. Because what we often forget to ask are, “Peace for whom” and “Whose war”.

Contextualizing the situations of peace and war can help shape the way we can lead better lives. The war mongers always serve the interest of a business group which intends to sell its goods. That’s just about it. There is no other rationale for the war mongers to be existent. The sole cause is money making for a few. To validate it, they go any extent and as histories are witnesses, nationalism, internal security, anti-communism, religious intolerance are among the few excuses that the military-industrial complex have always utilized to thrive.

As for peaceniks, it has been a utopian journey all throughout. When Lennon proclaimed the End of the War, all he asked was of people was to imagine. “The War is Over – If you want it”, ran the billboards across Canada during John and Yoko’s bed-in peace demonstrations. What they and the peace marchers forgot to mention was that the War was actually not over and it had nothing to do with people wanting it. In a subtle unintentional way they were implying that people did not want the war to end. This was far from the truth. It was a certain section of capitalists who wanted the war business to go on in the name of protecting Vietnam from the “monstrous Communism”. The catchline should have been “The War must begin—Against the war mongers”.

This was the feeling which so classically embedded in case of the Soviet defense against the Nazis. It was very important to defeat Hitler in a bloody war, for the entire earth to survive. Almost exhausting majority of its able men force of the country (more than 6 million deaths and millions of families affected), the Soviets contributed their biggest lot to the rest of the world, by relentlessly fighting the gory battle to stop the expansion of the radical right wingers. Today no one even among the most politically correct would denounce the defeat of Hitler. The war was not such bad after all.

In the post-cold war phases, the danger subsequently was in a school of propaganda which equated freedom with anything that ran a so-called democratic form of government and called everything else authoritarian dictatorships. In other words, a false claim was made to justify the subsequent phase of the cold war period, which took millions of lives all over the world in the name of defeating the spread of communism. And what we had was a prevailing situation of intolerance with anyone who differed from the mainstream model of electoral governance (howsoever fraud it might be owing to the various vote scams). All socialist governments fell pray. Almost all Islamic regimes over the world were attacked. The ones who agreed to do business at the terms of the democratic warriors were of course spared.

As the wars escalated, the peaceniks among us cried out against all forms of attacks. The paradigm shifted to discuss the dangers of wars. Nobel laureates attributed lack of democracy as a necessary cause for breeding grounds of war. To spread democracy, wars were validated. And civilians who had no need and idea of ballot boxes were forced to see their houses bombed if they were lucky to survive. All in the name of democracy.

The question of “who caused the war” shifted to “why we must stop the war”. In the process of course that big joke, the United Nations called every step by sovereign countries to protect themselves as “aggression” and every step by the militarist nations to attack foreign lands as “peacekeeping”.

With such peacekeepings, of course who needed wars?

The burden of the peace man goes on today without questioning if these are the ones who need to be fought against? Are not the arms dealers and racketeers the worthy causes for active resistance? It’s not the war which is at fault. It’s our inability to distinguish the elements who should be targeted at. The question needs to be turned on its head: for once we need a war—against the original perpetrators who had no business to start it.

Tags: Saswat, Philosophy, Peace, War, Cold War, History

By Saswat Pattanayak

Is not the war on terror actually a war on freedom?

As more and more countries join the camp, and try to outdo each other to bring American attention to their solidarity against this so-called war on terror, the obvious question is one of agenda. What, and who is served in the pursuit?

Primarily, the anti-people lobbies. With the dawn of the end of territorial imperialism, there was widespread significance attached to sovereignty of states, and in effect, its people. Sovereignty entailed that there was going to be no more subjugation and in fact, the freedom granted to people could act as the greatest proof of that.

After 9/11, we have seen an institutionalization of sovereignty erosion. Blatantly acting against the interest of the intrinsic sovereign freedom, states have passed different laws to contain any prospects of popular resentments.

In phony politically democratic societies (wide majority of the world) where the state either acts as instrument of terror and/or indifference by the corporate and administrative elites, there have been vehement oppositions to the system of misgovernance. From time to time, people have resorted to different methods of airing frustrations. To gross apathy towards social welfare, there have been ineffective mass demonstrations. To individual harassments by the police states, there have been reciprocal community reactions. But within a political framework, which thrives on sustaining necessary and illusory world of vague/abstract and abused freedom (such as speech, opportunity, dignity, security etc), its only natural that large majority remains discontent.

But another illusory method to combat discontentment since the last century has been not one of suppression (that was left to state communisms so that they could be attacked logically), but one of sustainable law and order systems. The mass media was used to make heroes out of the police and the detectives and the judiciary, to reinforce popular faiths in these systems, without letting the public know that these were indeed the very instruments that the ruling elites utilize to maintain a stronghold.

Hence, whenever the system of callous administration produced petty thieves, the individuals were required to be punished by the society which reveled in the glory of smart detectives who caught the criminal! Gradually the people were made to believe that the systems of oppressions were working for their own interests, whereas the abominably low proportion of people who rose up against the ways of the unjust world, were the traitors. This false and dangerous distinction between people who were actually working against the interest of society and who were serving their interests were still furthered with reinforcement of another wing of normalization: religion.

Religions and Law, mostly guided the norms that the society was compelled to live by or else! The people acting against the norms, because they most rationally thought of doing so to combat sustained injustice in the society, were naturally enough proved to be abnormal, and hence relegated to the prisons, that most systematically neglected byproduct of oppressive political system.

Instead of focusing on the system that thrives on numbing the anger in a meritocracy (by definition, a flawed anti-people term), the people were given occasional (once in five years?) reminders that they were able to decide their futures, with political freedom to “choose”!

Now that the small minority of people who chose to oppose the conventions has grown to a larger number with the apparent contradictions of so-called democracies, and their resentments have been expressed more vehemently, leading ways to formation of several hundreds of Independent media to expose the agents of draconic democracies, the rulers have now gone back to religions and legal experts to effect changes. If they don’t listen to “love-thy-class-enemy” sermons of religions, then pass some laws (like POTA or Patriot ) to restrict their freedoms.

Even while doing this, the democratic leaders, as expected, resort to sly methods of calling the spade. They call it now a war on terror, instead of war on freedom. After all, what are they so terrified of? If they can shred the 9/11 papers to disprove their involvement in traditional assault on innocent civilians…

Tags: Saswat, Terrorism, Capitalism, Philosophy

By Saswat Pattanayak

In an answers-driven society, what good is a question? Well, good enough so long as its answer can be found. The go-getter, well-networked, capitalistic monopolists must find the answer, else they must freak out. Lack of answer is lack of control. Lack of control is end of the world.

But the world must continue. For it to continue, the systems must exist. And be respected.

Hence the refusal to ask the pertinent question and yet seek pleasure in deriving the quick answers. The How-To and the Chicken Soups have all become global bestsellers. I came across (but of course avoided reading!) this book on Chicken Soup for African American Souls. Needless, it calls itself a "tribute to a culture that prides itself on survival, resiliency, healing, prayer and perseverance."

When Internet cannot help, healing and prayer are the newest ways to seek the answers. Of course one would argue that they always were. But the fine line of distinction lies in the fact that unlike earlier days, when people struggled to find concrete answers (because the answers were ill-defined and poorly presented), these days its not just easy to find answers, but answers lead to more answers than more questions because of the sophisticated style of presentations. Just look at the way Google serves you the dish of answers with degrees of "relevance".

Realistically speaking, answers are to be found in the capitalistic supermarket of Google. I am sure Google is like the Arundel Mills Mall and our answers, like the commodities are all available at this one place. And if we don't locate the answers, we get frustrated. Because going by the logic of the machine, the answer must be there. The logic of the question needs to be reframed. So the machine stops working for us. We start toiling for the machine. Because, no matter what, the answers must be traced.

What Google does is in fact categorize answers on relevance. And what we need, I guess, is instead to make our questions relevant. So we may need to pause awhile and think of the questions that are of need in today's world, and realize that the answers are not easy to be found anywhere, and of course impossible on the Google.

One needs to struggle against odds to win the answers. Not be lulled into a microsecond trip down the fast lane of illusions.

Tags: Saswat, Philosophy, Capitalism

By Saswat Pattanayak

JF Kennedy must be the hero of the Bush administration. In all the ways possible that Kennedy had thought of the American people to think of what they could do for their country instead of assuming that the country could do anything for them, GW Bush has implemented the dream.

In JFK era, it was a call for the people to sacrifice their lives to destroy a form of economy growing popularity in the world over, where it would be envisaged that people lived with dignity without worries about basic food, clothing and shelter. It was a time where john lennon dreamed of a world free of religions and national flags. A time when the women of color differed with their white counterparts and opposed any sense of essentialism attributed to them. A time when the angry poets hoped to kill poetry because the poetry served the interests of the elites in propagating an uneasy comfort level. When the weathermen and the panthers got their acts together to reflect their dreams of a better world. That had to begin with demanding that the state behave well and take responsibility of its citizenry, young and old, literate and unemployed.

And then, Kennedy spoke of the role of the people in not expecting the state to perform. In a highly nationalistic fervor, many people applauded. The counterrevolutionary stance helped prevent a new world, it led to various blocks, gross mistrusts and people’s selfish allegiance to their state (to do all that they can do for their own country).

Now Mr Bush has ardently followed Kennedy’s path. He wants people to sacrifice their interests, cut the benefits, raise the burdens and maybe hope for a compulsory military recruitment. After all, don’t expect what the country can do for you, think of what you can do for the country.

Such lines are often heard at the German convention of the Aryans. Or the Indian meets of the right wing conservatives.

Tags: Saswat, Philosophy, Capitalism, Economics

By Saswat Pattanayak

My newest poem entry. Not meant to soothe hearts, or make an evening pleasant. The time to stop feeling comfortable is Now.

A revolutionary knows
the national boundaries are made up to divide, not unite peoples
hence believes in none of that, not to raise the flags, nor to unite banners

A revolutionary feels
true service to earth is working for fellow beings, not worshipping false Gods
hence rejects the notion of imposed God, of different brands, various religions

A revolutionary affirms
the continuation of progress has nothing to do with statutory movements
hence works to make laws work for people, not let people suffer owing to laws

A revolutionary condemns
the racist, communalists, capitalistic superstructures that work out divisions
hence recalls historical assaults lest folks repeat; yet doth not manipulate tensions

A revolutionary forwards
the notion of collective workloads, to share, not to compete, to enjoy not to own
hence advocates workers’ rights to unite for strength, not be vehicles for reaction

A revolutionary minces
no words as a communist, for the mission is to work towards goals despite many an obstruction
hence realizes that struggle with fascists will continue even after the battle is half-won

A revolutionary upholds
sense of social equality even at the cost of individual liberties, for duties hold more than rights
hence propagates the messages of selfless sacrifices even to the face of content reactionary elites

A revolutionary learns
that teaching in schools are always thought control, but need to be so for the betterment
hence sides with of the oppressed in the world, not result in joys of personal advancement

A revolutionary visits
churches, mosques, temples, all religious shrines to register the torture on hapless workers
hence perceives those who built the edifices did as slaves to the Gods or Kings, not to benefit fellow sufferers

A revolutionary dedicates
life for fellow women, children, and peaceniks; for environment and peaceful co-existence
hence militarily opposes any oppression on so-called weaker sections of societies of essence

I am a revolutionary who experiences
time running out, for the onus lies on the revolutionary to cause revolution
there is no such time as the present which provides the most sufficient condition

Tags: Saswat, Communism, History, Philosophy

By Saswat Pattanayak

The signs of the times are often determined by the signs of the ruling classes. This houses an intrinsically flawed assumption too. Which is, that the ruling classes then are endorsed by the ruled subjects.

This first leads to a diversion I wish to address. The political correctedness of our times demand that we not call subjects thus, because they are in fact participants who have human hearts, you see. But so long as the research is in the domain of the experimenter and the people actually do not have a say in the conclusions or the ways to get about to that owing to research limitations, what good is it to call one participant when one is actually not determining the course of study.

Of course some one gets benefited from these subtle word usages. The ones who end up calming the potential agitations.

With such subjects, feeble with access but holding no control, the history of the ruling classes emerge depicting the signs of their times. Its important to remember that the signs of their times necessarily relate only to the times led by the ruling class people, not of the times led by their subjects. Hence the history texts not only talk of the times as glanced by the ruling class elites, always few in number, but also the subtexts run contrary to the historical sentiments expressed en masse by the large population of working peoples.

In effect, all histories written in the past, as documented and used as secondary sources, need not only be revisited for revisions, but also replaced with the anti-text which will be truly representative of the majority peoples’ lives, and hence secure place as the only legitimate history narration.

That’s simpler done than said. Life lies ahead and for us folks who agree to do that formidable tasks, its never too late, for I believe there are fellow-believers who will succeed in generations to come too.

And yes, we gotta take a side, even though the side may not always look at our best. That’s the humble irony at many a times. Hence when we address the societal fallacies it includes us also. For example, our collective disgraceful tolerance of our generation of an unforeseen capitalistic domination in the world. To begin with. More shames will follow. More we realize our gory pasts, more we can look forward with promising future: one made by us, not meted out on a platter manufactured in Hong Kong sweatshops marketed by Wal-Mart family of billionaires.

Tags: Saswat, Philosophy, Economics, Capitalism

By Saswat Pattanayak

As a continuation of an earlier debate yesterday, I still have the question fresh. Who is a hero? Do we have one? What are the criteria for choosing a hero? How does one distinguish between a leader, a hero, an icon, a legend? Is it possible to make the divisions? Is it desirable?

Are heroes needed in the society? If so, why, at all? Do they fill in the same void for folks as religions do in one way (religions enslave feeble people who can’t articulate for themselves, even to distinguish on their own what is contextually correct and what is not)?

Or are heroes actually needed so that people have something good to look back to? We have had worst phases of our inhuman legacies, of causing war and depression, of deliberate perpetuations of exploitative saga and firm refusal to replace existing systems.
At least we had some heroes also to look back at (you want to talk of Bhagat Singh and Malcolm X…. Netajee Subhas and Patrice Lumumba).

Well not anymore. First there was systematic suppression of heroic feats (like they banned Paul Robeson and Mohammad Ali). Next, there was systematic and legalized infiltration of anti-heroic commodifications (like the Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and all the obvious honors including the bob dylans of the times getting the tastes of market). Then there were mortification of heroes where people were made into legends (suddenly the atheist Buddha was made into a God, and Gandhi was a huge statue and a story to be challenged every now and then for anyone who wanted to sound different). Of course lastly there came a time when all these sounded dated and came a new genre of heroes—the television celebrities.

British accused Americans of their obsession with popular vulgar culture of paris hiltons. Americans accused the Brits of their obsession with elite vulgar cultures of a dormant prince-lover cuckoo love in royal kingdoms. As they all fought with each other, they discovered the common minimum factor: the hero-worshipping driven by media zeal. And yes Paris and Prince Charles continue to be the heroes.

And at most times too, teenage girls aspire to become the heroes even if it means they have to become desperate housewives. For apparently the desperate housewives every Sunday night are about heroes too.

Pathetic culmination of human civilizations.

And if this is civilization, I demand barbarism now!

Tags: Saswat, Philosophy, Communism, Media

By Saswat Pattanayak

I am taken aback by the growing number of religious organizations functioning smoothly in various campuses across the United States.

Working at an office for diversity, I should be the first one to applaud such an environment where different and often competing religions are represented in such democratic fashion. After all, student organizations can be composed from different bases.

That’s precisely what’s bothering me. This argument for multifaceted multiculturalism is also encouraging such an unhealthy trend, that it seems folks just don’t learn from history.

I have nothing much against religions. Except that they are the worst manifestations that can be. Each religion is backward by its very nature in that, instead of leading believers forward towards social progress by encouraging critical discussions on roots of existing injustices, it takes them back to the all pervading irrefutable canons all the while; that religions of the world are the only core factors behind all major wars and almost all the minor battles; that religions help in creating an illusory sphere to the extent that human beings start becoming impractical dreamers in alliance with fates instead of progressive activists in union with organizational potential; that at the crux, religions compete with each other and downgrade each others’ Gods; even within the texts religions are based on extremely disposable prepositions and yet are adhered so much that it fails one to understand why human beings need to be so uncritical of such mass con acts.

After having said this, I must again admit that I have not much to say against religions, as much as I have against those who practice them in various forms. This is because, texts (in this case, religious texts), are not so powerful all on their own. It takes the practitioners of the texts to do the damage, or the good, as the case may be.

And this is when I bring myself back to the campus scenarios and ask the question: Are the state education and church indeed separated as being claimed.

With the Bush administration, came the “Guidance on Constitutionally Protected Prayer in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools" which went into effect in March 2003 as part of the No Child Left Behind Act. The rules instruct schools to show "neither favoritism nor hostility against religious expression," including at graduation ceremonies and assemblies. Of course in such a free-for-all expressionist platform, as is characteristic in any other Spencerian institution, the stronghold beliefs prevail.

Consequently, at the universities, even if they are state-run, most student organizations are religion-based, indeed, Christian-based (the justification, needless to say, is because most students profess this religion). So there is a clear absence of balance of power even within the student community religion expressions. And the educational places are mere bystanders to the minority struggles of claiming My God Is Bigger Than Yours. And forget the Atheists of course. They are godless bas***ds.

Tags: Saswat, Philosophy, Capitalism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Atheism

By Saswat Pattanayak

Does power corrupt?
I think the answer is No. The idea that "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" (according to Acton and the rest of 'em), is to me, a statement not only farthest from truth, but also serves a three-pronged purpose.
a) It normalizes the status quo, which might be indulged in corrupt practices. Many democracies have got away with this idea of normal corruption trends, quoting Acton.
b) It criticizes some of holding “absolute power” since they do not practice Western model for Democracy.
c) It does not recognize that Power to the People can lead to a change in society, since the skeptics and the pessimists would always sigh: “What’s the point? Power will eventually make these people corrupt too. So let’s not get into misadventure of challenging the existing structure.”
Power dynamics are not as complex as they are often made out to be. Power is not in isolation to leadership. Indeed even in Eisenstein's movies, the toiling masses have become leaders themselves as one unit while defying the royal families. So what happens when power is delegated?
Instead of the cliche question as to who can be a good leader to use power, one needs to ask: for whose benefit the power will be used. Its more important to know which side one takes than to philosophically complicate the issue by weighing if its worth taking a side. I think there is nothing more powerless an act than to be indifferent. Unless that is, if one can afford to be stoic.

Tags: Saswat, Philosophy, History

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

By Saswat Pattanayak

Does freedom mean different things to different people. I would say yes. And which is why, blog freedom is still not worth a dekko for most people at this point.
But if we look before we leap to this conclusion, it will be indeed foolish.
There are at least two resulting conclusions:
One, freedom is necessary
Two, It is not.

I think both ends of the freedom spectrum have some values. How much freedom is “necessary”? I would say, minimum freedom is necessary. Just like the minimum sources of sustenance.
Lets start from the minimum: With basic freedom of speech and expression and of all things necessary, the world can live a happy life. There are oppressed people and suppressed voices world over who need to be heard. Folks burdened with the task of teaching the untamed quite a few lessons need to find a stage and platform. For, the unheard are not voiceless. The unheard are just plenty of noises yet to find a channel. The united voices will emerge sooner or later.

And when the majority will speak, the voice will no more be suffocated under any obligations, will not be marred by moral prospects, will not stay quite for sake of civility. The outcry for freedom from colonialists and imperialists have found its ways of expressions in the past and it will in the future. Difficult is the process, for the majority indeed are the marginalized in the world today.

But the time is not far ahead. I am sure its going to take place during my lifetime. During this lifetime. Institutional norms will be challenged. Classics will be revisited. Values long kept holy will be tarnished with specks of multiple truths only to reject them. Traditional discriminations will meet with radical equalities.

Individuals will have found a society where the freedom will be experienced vis-à-vis the way we all would be connecting, not constantly squabbling over disconnects.


Now, that’s minimum freedom. Enough to generate a life and sufficient to live it with dignity. Unfortunately most are deprived of it since long.

Now the analogy I intend to draw is with the material acquisitions. To what extent can one possess things to be called one’s own. When even one’s life betrays, can the material goods or private property provide the lasting comforts to last as much as one would wish one had. Aren’t accidents caused in luxurious cars and business class flights? In other words, there is never enough of material comforts to grant one a content life. What is needed indeed is, a basic minimum standard of living. For All. So that we don’t fight over each other’s “acquisitions”. That’s community building with a social concern. How to do that is another question, we will attempt at answering in next few writings. But what it is, is this: We need just the basic means. Everything else is superfluous.

Stretch the material acquisitions for a moment to imply that the more one has, the more happy one is, if not content. True. But what gathers momentum is the fact that the gap existing between the haves of the “comforts” and the have-nots of the “comforts” get indeed widened beyond repair unless some drastic and often radical measures are taken to bring economy to homeostasis.

Include freedom: How much freedom is enough was discussed. But what was left out, apart from the mechanism of freedom (like the political economy), the apprehension if the amount of freedom has any normative value.

Here it is: when freedom is unbridled in an unequal society, the class of people who owns the most will also end up owning the most freedom. In other words, the grand narrative will again be repeated by the owners of the freedom in the dominant tongue.

Freedom is a thing one is born with, not something to be granted. Perhaps so. But the fact remains, that freedom is often enough trampled and en masse bought by the ruling class who subsequently grants some of it to us in installments. As long as we do not notice this, we will be turning our back at the most fundamental need.


What do we need to do?

We need to ensure basic freedom to all. This will mean the same “drastic and often radical measures” to take away some extra freedom from some and distribute among all. I am not sure yet if freedom needs to be taken care of before “owned” properties or vice versa, but the only plausible solution at the moment points towards this.

In my opinion, there are excesses of Freedom as there are excesses of Private properties. The prerogative lies with the privileged to not acknowledge this. And with the vast majority of the world’s populace without access either to properties or freedom, unmatched both by degree and type, its time to acknowledge this.

Some of us shall have to sacrifice parts of us we called our own, this part which we thought we could use in any manner possible. At least this was true in case of those who have the power to exercise this excess of freedom. In order to exonerate the power, we have to redefine what constitutes freedom and how much exactly we need.

For if not done, those who own freedom granting authorities will keep on wielding more of the freedom to restrict some of it when it comes to us, and justify the entire gamut of unfair play in the name of “We the people”.

Tags: Saswat, Philosophy, Media, Capitalism, Communism

Straight from the preachers of death penalty! Trust the organized religions to expose themselves!

Although not relevant to the legal application of the death penalty in the United States, religious issues are a significant thread within the moral debate.
Read More...

Tags: Saswat, USA, Christianity, Philosophy, Terrorism

Truths is well said. Because there are more than one truth.

Oftentimes I wonder why is it that there need to be a quest for the multiples. If we will anyway not get at a single truth, will we ever get to the point when we would have got enough of the multiples?

Are multiples not compound? Complex? Interchangeable and interjected?
An Inspector Calls comes to mind.

Tags: Saswat, Literature, Philosophy

By Saswat Pattanayak

In the last fortnight, at least two eminent professors and two international administrators ran into arguments with me on a specific subject: Merit.
Does the issue of ‘merit’ merit a discussion?
I guess so. At least when we consider the range of issues it brings forth.
Lets start with Merit-iocracy
Like bureaucracy, Merit-iocracy deserves to be loathed, hence less talked about. Who desires to loath? Only those who wish to get dirty in the process. And most of us are of course clean people and want to wear stain-free clothes. Hence no loathes please.
Especially not loath the people who have ‘merits’. Lets vaguely describes the m-cracy-Not to question the existing system, assuming that the system makes for unequal existence because not all people have the merits to live with equal dignity...
What does the school of m-cracy profess: All human beings are born equal but they do not deserve equally dignified life, because it’s a world of equal opportunities and those who can make it should make it and those who fail to make it must perish.
Lets search for examples: the ones who excel in education (we mean the ones who secure the top ranks etc) are the people with merits. Now these people have other traits too-to finish the homeworks in time, with precision, with knack for meticulous details and ability to compete.
Lets search for anti-examples: the rest of 'em, which is of course, most of us.
At the face of it, it sounds like the obvious. But of course we know that its not true. I am of the opinion that we are not born equal, and hence, we must strive to make it possible to live with equal dignity as we start living...
I can recollect the uncle of mine raised and still staying in my village-with-half-time-electricity, who can web oral poetry like nobody’s business; that friend of my school days who did not graduate the final exams with any distinction but made an extremely good webmaster and teacher or those hundreds of faces that swarm in my mind’s eyes when I look for all the human beings who have made better differences in others' lives than their own.
You have your own pictures by now too. Yet we judge people by certain yardsticks of education or other categories (sports, entertainment, and all other forms of “cultural resonances” assuming that to be the final parameter of merit. Why?
The question is not yet fine-tuned, but I was already offered answers. One forceful one was, no matter what one does, one needs to do it well. Sounds rational, doesn’t it?
But during my life of twenty seven years, one thing which I have learnt of life is that life is not rational anyway. Before we fly philosophical terrains, lets zero down on the examples here. And I guess the time has come for fine-tuning the questions:
a. How does one do well in any field?
b. Why does one need to excel?
c. What makes one feel that one is better than the others?
d. Which is the life’s biggest truth and is it surveyed often?
e. When does one make the leap, if at all?
f. Where does one stop and look back?

All the above questions have been answered various ways. Again, I would say, not really answered as they have been interpreted. Locate the answers in any religious texts and you wont be disappointed or better still look for the new sacred texts: google.com
I will attempt at them strictly and solely from the angle of meritiocracy.
First question attempted: one can do well in any field. But not well enough. Its not a post-modern puzzlement I am hinting at. It’s the knowledge that one’s ignorance is the weapon to combat one’s claims. Its only through the awareness that one is vastly ignorant about the world that one will take the forward steps. Now, for hints that all of us have ignorance in vast measures, I can throw open a question: Do you know me?
In all possibility, no. Because I am sure no one in the world knows me. Each one of them who have known some facets of me are unaware of some others. Counterpose would arise and question the need to know the insignificant me. Lets throw open the other question: Do you know yourself?
It does not take Freud to tell us that most moments in each of us germinate from the unconscious/subconscious. For example do you know why you saw that dream which depicted you as dining with a man whom you never met and are unlikely to ever. We wont even go to the mystery of the flying saucers. Our ignorance is not a bliss or curse. It’s a reality.
Having said that, do we try to do well in any field. Sure. But one needs to name the fields. One needs to qualify which fields are better than the rest. And then only rank the competing people that we are. Here is the catch. The field often defined defy logic. For example, in India, the most “meritorious” are the ones who have become the administrative officers. The second most are those who are in foreign services, the third most could be in the revenue services and then some in the field of engineering and some in nuclear physics. In the US of A one would be the president of the country followed by the rocket scientist. In the world order one needs to win the Nobel Prize, nothing less and if one does not beat that contest, Forbes and Fortune magazines will decide it for them.
In other words, the fields which have been less defined are not the ones which define high merit. For example, fields like cultivating farms or cleaning the roads and the loos.
But hold on. Are we getting surprised? Why is it that the high merit level fields seem like no fields at all, whereas the low merit-level fields are actually the areas.
Let me clarify. Getting into administrative service or becoming president is not a field. Its one of ‘becoming’. That is, these are posts which are conferred. Not areas where one works ‘well’. For example you don’t do president. You don’t do bureaucrat. And certainly you don’t do nobel prize. Whereas, you do farming and you do cleaning.
So are we looking at people who are politicking and writing or who are becoming presidents and becoming prize winners? Are we looking at the “working-at-it fields” or are we looking at “winner-categories”? In more simplified terms, are we looking at only those people for whom there is a defined “winner category”? Which would imply that they are not the same thing as the fields, anyway. And doing well in any field has nothing to do with winning any rewards/awards. Any doubt and ask the one who regularly works at a lake everyday in a muddied Congo and does it damn well.

Second question attempted: Frankly the answer is no. No one needs to ‘excel’. Because excelling is not an intrinsic quality one is born with, rather is a recognition conferred by a particular society...

Tags: Saswat, Philosophy, Economics, India, Capitalism

The arrest of Sankaracharya of Kanchi came as a big surprise to most people. Of course one quarter asked if anyone would dare arrest Pope if he were alleged to have a hand in murder!
Hindus, I hear, are followers of extremely kind and accommodating religion. Well over a hundred Americans have already informed this to me. Of course they dont consider my being born in a family of Hindus make me Hindu. They know for sure, I dont agree we have to be part of any religion to be called human.
ut incidentally, I explain them back, that in India, being born makes all the difference. As our friend Vulcan Jena (in a recent posting at yahoogroup) made an excellent point recently, which I quote:
"What Manu did five thousand years ago, preachers of GOD still trying to continue & maintain it. Manu made Hindu society into four classes. There is no mobility. You are born a brahmin, that is the only way to be a brahmin. And that is the highest society, the topmost class. Then number two is the warriors, the kings: the Khyatriyas. But you are born in that caste, it is not a question that you can move. Then third is the class of the vaishyas, the business people; you are born in it. And the fourth is the sudras, the untouchables. All are born into their caste. That’s why, until Christianity started converting so many Hindus, particularly the sudras, who were ready, very willing to become Christians, because at least they would be touchable. Amongst Hindus, sudras are untouchable, and there is no way to get out of the structure.For your whole life you have to remain the same as your forefathers remained for five thousand years. For five thousand years there has been a stratified society. Hindus were not a converting religion, because the great question was, if you convert somebody, in what class are you going to put the person? Brahmins won’t allow you, and you would not like to be put with the sudras, the untouchables."
Well, not to say that one is better than the others. And if Pope can indeed not get arrested even after a murder case against him, then its a shame indeed. If not, lets investigate further and see why we have not made so many arrests so far.
But then people like you and me get arrested on daily basis. Laws like TADA or POTA or Patriot Act are already in place. See what they did in the post-riot Bombay or Gujarat or the fifty years of Kashmir.
Asian Age in 1999 came out with a flyer story on how Indian army officers raided the house of a Kashmiri family and killed their dog. Reason: it was barking. And so the conclusion was simple: A dog that barks at Hindu army must be a pakistani dog!
India never had so much conflict with any other land on this planet as poor (economically at least) Pakistan because of religious differences. And common people and domestic dogs have been paying the prices. Whereas the ones like religious ‘seers’ and ‘imams’ (he has now come forward to support the sankaracharya...who knows the Muslim preacher might be having a pandora’s box too) call the shots...

Tags: Saswat, Hinduism, Orissa, India, Philosophy

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

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

What price is happiness? Does it cost? Can one buy happiness? No matter what the sacred texts or the greeting cards have said, I know happiness costs. And only a section of people can afford to buy it. Its either happiness for all, or happiness for none. But till then, its advantage, some.

Tags: Saswat, Capitalism, Philosophy

My resistance to post-modernists is huge. Partly because I think they make the dissident movements effete by their convenient generalizations. Partly also because I don’t see the vagueness as clearly as they do. Either of us has to be less intelligent to perceive the halos. Let me be the one, then.
In the meantime, I found Stuart Hall in his “On postmodernism and articulation: An interview with Sturat Hall”, (ed. Lawrence Grossberg) say this about Baudrillard. How very accurate. Did I tell you how much I love this man, Hall, who refuses to be a mere legend.

“Let's take Baudrillard's argument about representation and the implosion of meaning.This seems to rest upon an assumption of the sheer facticity of things: things are just what is seen on the surface. They don't mean or signify anything. They cannot be 'read'. We are beyond reading, language. meaning. . . . I think Baudrillard's position has become a kind of super-realism, taken to the nth degree. It says that, in the process of recognizing the real, there is nothing except what is immediately there on the surface. ... But there is all the difference in the world between the assertion that there is no one final, absolute meaning - no ultimate signified, only the endlessly sliding chain of signofication, and, on the other hand, the assertion that meaning does not exist. ... Therefore, I don't agree with Baudrillard that representation is at an end because the cultural codes have become pluralized. I think we are in a period of the infinite multiplicity of codings, which is different. We have all become, historically, fantastically codable encoding agents. We are in the middle of this multiplicity of readings and discourses and that has produced new forms of self-consciousness and reflexivity.”
(from Journal of Communication Inquiry (1986), 10(2), 45-60)

Tags: Saswat, Philosophy, Media, Communism

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

Check the following link about an interesting article on Sophism. It is going to appear as a presentation in the September 12, 2003 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2003/sci-techs/3035sophism.html

Tags: Saswat, History, Philosophy