Hasta La Victoria Siempre, Campanero Fidel

Article written by Comrade Aniket Alam for The Post

This line, which was supposedly spoken by Ernesto Che Guevara before his departure for Africa to fight with the anti-colonial revolutionaries there, is a fitting slogan to bid adieu to one of the greatest revolutionaries and Marxists of our times. This line would roughly translate as "Until [we achieve] victory forever! Comrade Fidel". Yesterday, Fidel Castro, President of Cuba, announced his decision to step down from the top post bringing to an end an entire era which he straddled like a colossus.

Clichés often belittle a person's contribution but it would not be incorrect to state that Fidel Castro is among those few world historical individuals whose contribution to human history will resonate long after the writer and the readers of these words have turned to dust.

Even when it happened, the Cuban revolution was a near impossibility. Situated just 90 miles from the mightiest superpower of the world – the United States of America – very few people expected Cuba's socialist experiment to survive under the hostile gaze of its dominant northern neighbour. Over the years, in a manner strangely reminiscent of the treatment meted out to its eastern neighbour – Haiti, Cuba has been sought to be economically strangled by one of the most stringent economic and political embargoes by the USA. Not only that, the US Government has tried to destabilise the Cuban Government every which way including sponsoring "invasions" by disgruntled Cuban expatriates living in Florida. The CIA's attempts to kill Fidel have taken on legendary proportions with 638 assassination attempts (you read that right!) having being documented over the past five decades.

One of the reasons Cuba managed to survive the economic blockade and the hostile attacks was the support given to it by the erstwhile Socialist State system led by the USSR. Close to 90 per cent of Cuba's foreign trade was with the Socialist states and almost all its fuel supplies came from there. But, ironically, even though the mighty superpower that was the USSR collapsed under the weight of its own mistakes and shortcomings, Cuba – which seemed to be dependent on the USSR for its survival – survived the collapse of the Socialist State system and continues to be the sole example of a mature socialist system of our times. This column had previously discussed the manner in which Cuba had managed to survive the collapse of the Socialist States in the last century ("The Anti-Growth Manifesto", 31 October 2007). There is one more, significantly more important, reason for Cuba's ability to not only survive economic blockade and political terror from the USA but to survive as a thriving socialist system.

Previously, this column spoke about how Cuban doctors have spread out all over the world, including in Pakistan after the 2005 earthquake, providing relief and medical aid to poor people free of cost. The fact that these Cuban doctors, considered among the most capable of their profession in the world, have not "sought asylum" in America or European countries and become rich doctors, but continued to work in poor countries indicates that simple idealism is a reality in Cuban society. For someone living in a country where every second teenager "dreams" of migrating to the developed West, it is surely surprising that an overwhelming majority of Cubans do not leave their country even when they have a choice. But Cuban idealism does not end here.

Last year, Cuban doctors working in field clinics in rural Bolivia performed a free operation on a retired soldier of the Bolivian army who had lost his eyesight to cataract. A simple event, but for the fact that this soldier was the one who had shot Ernesto Che Guevara dead in 1967! Where does such generosity of spirit come from?

One of the founding principles of the Cuban communist party has been sacrifice. Cuban communist party members are expected to sacrifice and set an example to other citizens. Unfortunately, this word has been such a favourite of spin-doctors that it is normal for the readers' eye to glaze over with cynicism at seeing it here. In Cuba this translates into real practical steps. In all matters of benefits, communist party members are last in the queue while in matters of contributing labour and life, communist party members are first in the list. So if there are a certain number of heart surgeries which can be performed in a particular month in a given district, communist party members will be last in the queue for that and non-party members will be operated upon first. Similarly when food was rationed in the 1990s, communist party members would get food only after the non-members have gotten their share.

Not only this, Communist party members in Cuba are held to a higher level of personal morality and probity. I remember reading about a gang of four drug smugglers who were caught in the mid-1990s and found guilty of the charge. Three of them, who were not communist party members, were sentenced to life-imprisonment, while the one who was a communist party member was sentenced to death. This principle has led to a natural barrier to all sorts of opportunists and careerists joining the communist party for their benefit, as happened in all other socialist states.

But the Cuban Communist Party did not confine this simple, yet pathbreaking, principle to their party but worked to broadcast it widely in Cuban society in general.

In the early 1960s, when Cuba was grappling with the challenge of increasing its industrial and agricultural productivity it was counselled by its Soviet advisors that one way of getting people to work harder and produce more was by providing material incentives. So, for example, the best workers would be given salary bonuses or the best farmers given better shares of their produce. Che Guevara, with the support of the Cuban communist party, opposed this method, arguing that to promise material rewards for good work was to sow the seeds of a anti-communist ideology inside society and its individuals. It would encourage people to look at their self-interest and foster competition between workers and farmers, rather than encouraging people to foreground the common good and fostering collaboration and cooperation.

In a somewhat bitter argument, Che and the Cuban party stood their ground over Soviet and East German advice. Che argued that good workers should be honoured publically rather than given material goods for working well. If people start working well in anticipation of material goods then it would lay the material foundation for the entry of bourgeois ideas of self-interest driven individualism. He argued that this would be the mortal enemy of socialist reconstruction of society. The demise of the Socialist State system of the twentieth century into a cesspool of renegade capitalism and the continued existence of Cuba as a standard bearer of Socialism probably is the greatest living proof of the correctness of this principle.

Today, when Fidel Castro – the leader of the Cuban revolution and Che's close associate – retires from the leadership of Cuba, it is a good occasion to salute these principles of the Cuban revolution which show the way ahead for socialists all over the world. The flame which was lit by the slave army of Haiti in 1804 has been kept alive by their compañeros in Cuba. Emancipation of the human being remains a practical possibility, a living reality.

First among “differentials”

Article written for The Post

First among “differentials”

The presidential primaries in the United States' two major parties, the Republican and the Democratic parties have reached a decisive phase. While senator John McCain has become the presumptive nominee from the Republican side, senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are fighting a close battle to clinch the Democratic nomination; Obama seemingly having his nose in front in the photo-finish race so far.

A few weeks ago, we did a profile of all the candidates on foreign policy, from the eye of a third world watcher and found that none of the candidates from both parties had a vision that could be accepted with glee by the majority of the developing world. Yet this lack of substantive choice based on foreign policy does not mean that the candidates are figures cut from an one-dimensional block. There exists serial differences in approach and vision between not just the parties but also among the candidates in the Democratic party that should interest a political observer enough to make prognostications about what kind of administration would be in offer if these candidates are nominated.

Hillary Clinton, if elected would be the first woman president of the United States. While that is a great and long due prospect, it is another first that worries the observer: the pioneering “first gentleman” in office: Bill Clinton. The Bill Clinton administration during the 1990s was definitely a more appetising government compared to the disastrous George W Bush administration. It presided over a economic boom and left a fiscal surplus but did not offer a substantive difference from the earlier Republican administrations in foreign policy or even on the question of removing poverty through welfare measures in the capitalist American system. This is seen as a legacy of the “third-way” movement led in the Democratic party by a section belonging to the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). The DLC promotes a mixture of right-wing corporate friendly policies and welfare concepts while retaining hawkish positions on foreign policy.

The Bill Clinton administration, akin to the Labour Party under Tony Blair was the hallmark of the “third way” movement, which pushed the Democratic Party to the centre-right in the political spectrum. Bill Clinton is expected to play a guiding role in a future Clinton administration under Hillary. Hillary Clinton has not disavowed the positions of the DLC or the Clinton administration and does not correspond to the more populist slogans in the party's progressive sections of rejecting corporate lobbying and special interests. At the same time, Hillary Clinton has taken bold measures on domestic economic policies such as a mandated health insurance programme to help get nearly 50 million uninsured Americans insured. On foreign policy, however, the unilaterist streak in the DLC's thinking is reflected in Hillary Clinton's positions on Iraq and Iran (whatever she might say about her withdrawal plans from Iraq). Despite centrism and non-radicalism being the governing principle of the Clinton politics and campaign, there exists a vast area of confrontation between the right wing Republicans and the Clintons owing to the partisan politics in the '90s involving the Clintons' personal life which was attacked with vigour by the Republican opposition.

This reliance on centrist and entrenched interests is exactly that has drawn attack from Barack Obama. Obama, a relatively new political entrant (he has merely two years on his resume as a senator) plays to the large American gallery which is distrustful of the special interest based Washington politics. He promises change, hinting at overturning the cynical and lobbying based politics that has characterised the American federal centre. However, in contrast to John Edwards (the withdrawn Democratic candidate), who stood on a platform of confrontation against special interests and the right wing forces (read Republicans), Obama has a different perspective on how to enact change. He rejects the reductionist approach of straitjacketing politics within the “left-right” divide and wants to engage in drawing in on commonalities while holding on to liberal, progressive values. This, he believes can be achieved through raising the pitch of value based politics through inspiration and non-partisanship. He refrains in confronting even his worst political enemies trying to draw positives out of his rivals and trying to build bridges while enacting progressive policies. Critics and observers would point out that such a formal approach will hardly bring about substantive change as this understanding goes against the ordained system of class differences that characterises society. But Obama's answer is that his reliance on his diverse personal background and on refreshing consistency in policy positions would inspire more participants in the democratic process and bring about “change”. A grain of truth exists in this argument, as the record breaking high turnouts in the primaries have pointed out, as also the support to Obama from Republicans who call themselves, “Obamacans”.

From a virtual underdog, Obama has risen to be a stronger candidate, overcoming Hillary Clinton's established machine in many of the states that have completed their primaries. The contest is still on, even as Clinton has attacked the deliberate “poetic” nature of Obama's appeal of “change” as opposed to her substantive policy positioning based on “experience”. Obama's vision of a non-mandated health insurance programme is criticised as a compromise by the Clinton campaign. More or less though, the battle among the Democrats is one of image and aura and not ideological.

John McCain, on the other hand is an intriguing candidate, who has brought in scorn from the far-right sections of the conservative Republican Party. It is a reflection of the great right-ward shift in American politics that John McCain, who holds a conservative record on foreign policy (bullish is the right term), pro-business record in economics and who is a decorated war veteran is termed not to be conservative enough by his own partymen. Part of this suspicion is the fact that McCain holds on to old conservative values of American patriotism (imperialism for the developing world) that is still based on agreed international norms. In contrast, the neo-conservative Bush administration has used folly and deception to go to war and has recidivist views on torture and internationalism. McCain rejected the nonsensical tax-cuts to the super-rich (one reason for the super-fiscal deficit of the non-performing American government). This has drawn the ire of the influential far-right Republicans who see McCain's moves on a bipartisan approach to illegal immigration and his disavowal of torture as signs of him being “liberal”, a bad word in the conservative lexicon.

Conversely, the dismal failure of far-right conservatism which has resulted in misery for great numbers of Americans who are disillusioned with the state of health care, housing and fiscal misery, not to mention the disastrous invasion of Iraq, has meant the demise of any viable far-right candidate in the primaries. John McCain, despite his “maverick” credentials, therefore becomes the Republican nominee by attracting independent and moderate voters. It remains to be seen how McCain could defeat Obama or Clinton without the entrenched far-right support. It also explains the courting of the far-right by McCain in the recent past (he has now promised to make the tax-cuts for the rich permanent) and has avowed the continuation of a bullish foreign policy in west Asia to defeat “jihadism”, even if means bombing Iran and continuing to stay put in Iraq. For the far-right in the US, any regime in west Asia opposed to American imperialism is jihadist (note the repeated pronouncement of the largely secular Ba'ath regime in Iraq as being close to Al Qaeda). McCain re-affirms this nonsensical understanding of west Asian nations.

For an observer, the American primary process is a reflection of the dominant political discourses in the nation. The American media, though, channelises this discourse through the formal route of image and aura, which destroys the larger substantive idea of representation of all political streams. It is a great weakness of the American system that vox populi lacks adequate representation in ideas, but only in images.

Sporting Parallels

An Article I wrote about 4 years ago when in Infosys, Hyderabad

A Feature by V.R.Srinivasan

The advent of ESPN-Star into the Indian television arena has not only wrought in a lot of excitement among sport lovers but has opened up frontiers to view an eclectic mix of the best sporting action occurring across the planet. Today, the "buffet" served for the sport viewers have veritably increased with a lot more players in the sports telecast arena". We have been able to relish and appreciate the best of sports, and this article will focus on the several similarities between different sportspersons across different sports and cricket specifically.

Sachin Tendulkar and Ichiro Suzuki:

When Yours Truly was in Japan for nearly two years, he was struck by the ebullience of an iconic sportsman named Ichiro Suzuki, who plays for Seattle Mariners in Major League Baseball. Ichiro is as much a superstar in Japan as is Sachin Tendulkar in India. However what was striking was his very close resemblance in style, substance and character to Sachin.

The six-lettered Ichiro is a five-star person in Japan, not merely because he is referred to by the first name, which is very uncommon, but also because of the dint of his performances when he consistently averaged the highest among all batters while playing for Orix Blue Wave in the non-descript Pacific League in the NPB (Japanese Professional Baseball). He moved over to the superior Major League in 2001 and didn't miss a beat averaging 0.350 in his first season as a Mariner leadoff hitter. He still plays as the most consistent hitter for the Mariners constantly in tune to win the batting title in the American League. Now that’s uncannily similar to what’s been done by Sachin throughout his batting career.

What’s very common to him and Tendulkar is the way both handle themselves on the field and away from it. His picture-perfect batting technique mirrors that of Sachin in many respects. His all-round hitting ability across different areas in the park parallels Sachin's 360-degree dominance of the wagon wheel during batting. Ichiro has a fierce arm from right field constantly threatening runners on bases, similar to Sachin's ability to give the ball a rip from the boundary line while fielding deep. And the most common attribute to these superstars is how they handle their private lives: free of controversy, fully dignified and absolutely mature. They have another common feature; they give really bland and boring interviews, reserving their insight to while playing the game rather than talk about it. Both are hence laconic but special sportsmen who deserve every bit of the adulation they receive.

Zinedine Zidane and VVS Laxman:

Anyone who has seen Zidane play would affirm to the magical abilities and the gazelle-like play that are so part and parcel of "Zizou"'s game. Zidane is a genius who mixes elegance with innate talent in the right proportions while delivering consistently for both country France and club Real Madrid, who are both the top teams in the football world owing a lot to this maestro. The telling feature of Zidane's play is how he seems to be from a different planet with his shimmies, flicks, dribbles and cuts amidst a crowd of defenders, making his counterparts and colleagues on the same field look like mere mortals. This feature is what brings into focus, India's panache-batsman VVS Laxman. When Laxman is on song, the sound of the ball hitting the meat of his bat sounds mellifluous, the flow of his blade is as smooth as the note that emanates from a Beethoven symphony, the ball is caressed across the field as if no friction exists on the ground and the timing of the shot is as perfect as the jump from one note to another in an Ilayaraja song. Both these sportsmen aren't exactly muscularly endowed, nor are they versions of Adonis, it's the way they play that draws the choicest eulogies and hosannas from the sport watching public.

Laxman has a long way to parallel Zidane's standing as the best footballer on the planet, in cricket. Yet for sheer elegance and wizardry with the bat, his name pops up immediately when similar players in different sport are thought about in the same "style" league as Zidane.

Brian Lara & Kobe Bryant:

Before venturing into the similarities, it’s the dissimilarities that have to be pondered about between these two players. Brian Lara plays in a Lone-Star team whose winning/losing is dependent on his performance more often than not. Kobe Bryant plays in a team which is consisted of four future Hall of Famers, the strongman Shaquille O'Neal at Center, "The Glove" Gary Payton at Point Guard and the second highest scorer in the NBA ever, "The Mailman" Karl Malone at Power Forward. With such a robust and strong squad, the pressure is not solely on Kobe's shoulders to take his team to glory.

However, both these players have an uncanny knack of playing the best with their backs to the wall. Kobe, who has been mired in an alleged sexual harassment trial all season long, has endured a sore shoulder, played all season with hardly any pre-season training and has still performed when he was least expected to. His 36-point outburst against Houston in the fourth and decisive playoff game came right after a court attendance in Colorado. The two outrageous three pointers at the brink of the buzzer against Portland in a late-season game were testimony to his crunch-shooting prowess. Game after game, he has re-affirmed that he is among the best who "perform-when-it-matters-the-most". This is precisely what Brian Lara is renowned for. His knocks of 153* (which included a fervent partnership with Courtney Walsh for the 10th wicket), 213 against Australia in 1999,the "bring-the-smile-back" 400* were all innings that showed tremendous grit in times of utmost peril. When the game is on the line, Brian Lara and Kobe Bryant's numbers are invariably dialed and most surely their teams are obliged with a saving/winning performance.

Muttiah Muralitharan & Sohail Abbas:

Sport is full of surprises. Sport is full of the inconceivable. Happenings in Sport are mostly unpredictable. There are a few very "Sure-Fires" in sport, very few "take-it-to-the-bank" stories. Muttiah Muralitharan, the controversial but extremely effective and most deadly spinner from Sri Lanka is a sure-fire performer though. With lots of 5-fers and lots of 10-fers in test cricket in his pocket, there seems to be no one as consistent as this wily off spinner in world cricket. We can always expect at least one 5-wicket haul in a test match from him and invariably our faith and Sri Lanka will be rewarded.

Such consistency has a parallel in Sohail Abbas in Field Hockey. The Drag-flick specialist is a constant threat to the opposition when a penalty corner cometh. His success rate in the penalty corner zone is the highest in international hockey and Pakistan have won a slew of matches due only to the sheer brilliance of Abbas. He has a variety of flicks in his armory and he constantly befuddles the opposition in penalty corner positions with a great sense of direction and a wondrous ability to punch in the requisite power in the shot. A nonpareil target hitter, Sohail Abbas along with Muttiah Muralitharan make up paragons of consistency.

Thanks to the dedicated sports channels, one gets to study the nuances that are common to different sportspersons playing different fiddles and under the ambit of different rules. Three cheers for the globalization of sport!

Article originally written for an amateur site: cricketfundas.com

Candidates as Salespersons

Editorial published in the Economic and Political Weekly

Candidates as Salespersons

Image and aura predominate over policy options in voter choice of candidates.

Candidates in the two major American political parties, the Democratic and the Republican parties, continue to fight for the respective parties' presidential candidate nomination for the elections in November this year. Expectations that the primaries in a number of states on February 4 would yield a defining result have not been proven correct.

About 30 states have concluded their primaries and caucuses. Among the Republicans, senator John McCain has emerged as the front-runner, while on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continue to engage in a close tussle. Trends have indicated that there has been a huge surge in the number of voters who have identified themselves as Democrats, clearly affirming to the unpopularity of the current Republican regime headed by president George Bush. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama promise a break from the right wing policies of the current government, in the economic arena as well as on the foreign policy front. If the Democratic candidate wins, the US would have either a woman or an African American president for the first time.

As voters have identified the continuing occupation of Iraq and a sagging economy as primary concerns, these have dominated the speeches and political positions of the candidates. On the Democratic side, both the candidates have promised to withdraw troops from Iraq, but only gradually and in a phased manner. They also insist that they will be “pro-active” in areas such as Afghanistan and take appropriate diplomatic measures against Iran to counteract its supposed nuclearisation. Both candidates do not rule out military action against Al Qaeda in Pakistan if there is sufficient information on the presence of Osama Bin Laden or against Iran either, but Barack Obama, who spoke against the invasion of Iraq in 2002 as an Illinois state senator, promises to engage in talks with the heads of Iran, Syria and other regimes supposedly “hostile” to the US.

Hillary Clinton, who voted as a senator for both the invasion of Iraq as well as the consideration of a military action against Iran, while harping on international diplomacy, retains hawkish positions on policies in west Asia, and supports the continuation of the economic embargo against Cuba. The Republican candidates want a continuation of the Bush policy of unilateralism and pre-emption and show no remorse for the erroneous war. John McCain is even more hawkish on Iraq as he had supported a “troops surge” and has ruled out any timetables for their withdrawal from Iraqi soil.

The Democratic party candidates more or less affirm to centrist policies on economy. The crucial difference between Clinton's and Obama's positions lies in the issue of health care. Nearly 50 million American residents lack health insurance and this is a pressing issue in the elections. While Clinton argues for a mandated insurance coverage that could eventually lead to a form of universal care, Obama rules out a mandated programme (except for children).

For the Republican party candidates, social issues (abortion, gay rights) and illegal immigration are the primary issues of contention. John McCain, a former Vietnam war prisoner-of-war and veteran, is seen to be a moderate as compared to the arch-conservative Bush and leads the race over fiscal conservative Mitt Romney, social conservative and former Baptist preacher, Michael Huckabee, and libertarian, anti-war long-shot candidate Ron Paul. Except for Paul, all of them share a hawkish foreign policy, oriented toward a militarist position against “jihadist” forces in west Asia. McCain's wins in the primaries have come through support from moderate sections of the Republican party and independent voters, a fact that has made arch-conservatives in the party jittery about his possible nomination.

The format of the primaries, ensures that more than the issues, it is the image and aura of the candidates that determine their vote getting ability. Omnipresent media networks emphasise body language, image and personality as talking points in the campaign. Barack Obama, for example, has campaigned on the slogan of “change” from the years of right-wing rule under the Republicans and the “third way” policies of Bill Clinton, in contrast to Hillary Clinton's harping on her “experience” as a two-term senator and as the wife of a former president. Candidates such as John Edwards or Dennis Kucinich, who offered substantially different policy positions closer to the progressive and populist ethos of the party, have had to withdraw from the race. They did not enjoy the same media coverage and public presence owing to fewer campaign funds in comparison to the frontrunners, who have raised and spent millions of dollars on advertisements and campaigning.

There is virtually no media coverage of primaries of other smaller parties such as the Green Party or of independents who have comprehensive differences with the policies of the centre-right space straddled by the two big parties in the US. One could argue that the nature of primary elections in the US, owing to the undue emphasis on campaign resources and candidate image, is devoid of substantive differentiation in the political spectrum as compared to other democracies in Europe or even India.

Full Blown Conflict -IV

Final part of the Series on Sri Lanka from The Post

Civil wars, especially those arising cantankerously from ethnic divides, create impasses from which the process of extricating peace is the most difficult. The Sri Lankan problem involving the ethnic Sinhalese and minority Tamils is not a one-off case without precedent or parallel in the world. Kurds spread across Turkey and Iraq have fought for an independent Kurdistan; Basques in Spain speaking Euskadi have demanded a separate Basque state carved out of Spain and France; the Portuguese speaking East Timorese achieved independence after a protracted and bloody phase in a fight for independence; and the intra-tribal rivalries that has engulfed Africa are legion.

The formation of a nation is to be determined not merely on the basis of simple identity demarcation, but through the lens of imagination of the constituent masses. In other words, the question to be asked is whether the Sri Lankan Tamils and the Sinhalese have a common imagination of their histories and shared interests within a geographical limit. The presence of substantial intermingling among these communities despite linguistic differences and shared common interests in the form of common professions mean that there indeed is a shared history for the ethnic Sinhalese and the ethnic Tamils in Sri Lanka. It is definitely true that there are regions where ethnicities predominate in their numbers; as in the East and the North that are dominated by the Tamils and the inner parts of the island as well as the south that are constituted mainly of the Sinhalese. But there is also a wide scattering of other minorities as well as the intermingling of either community.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) claims a separate nation out of the north and the east on the basis of the incompatibility of the Tamils in a Sri Lankan nation dominated by the Sinhalese. LTTE chief Prabhakaran makes this evocative statement to his followers often that a homeland for the Tamils, which co-exists with a Sinhala state, is due. Central to the argument is that the LTTE imagines a Tamil nation distinct culturally and ethnically from that of the existing Sri Lankan state. The behaviour of the LTTE in negotiations over the past few years has tended to emphasise that they are the sole representatives of not just the Tamil community, but a de facto Tamil state, dealing with the Sri Lankan government. Tamil nationalism for the LTTE is no longer about ‘sharing the Sri Lankan state pie’, but carving a new pie for the community. The LTTE envisages the Eelam to be the homeland of Sri Lankan Tamils in the island and demarcates the geography to cover the north and the east parts of the country. These areas are also home to Muslims who are uncomfortable with the narrow Tamil nationalism and who have been at the receiving end of governance in areas controlled by the LTTE.

Therefore, as such there exists three forms of nationalism in the conflict: Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim. The substantial Muslim population in the east and the north have been lukewarm to the separatist struggle of the Tamils and this lack of enthusiasm has even gone on to take the form of hostility, particularly towards the LTTE. Essentially, the LTTE project of a separate territorial nation-state for the Tamils is hindered by this emphasis on a narrow linguistic nationalism that does not accord the space to minorities such as the Muslims. More or less, this nationalism suffers from the same majoritarian impulses that created enough grievances for the Tamil community to estrange itself substantially from the Sinhala-dominated Sri Lankan political system.

Added to this is the question of how would the Tamil plantation workers (migrants from India in the 20th century) fit within the scheme of Eelam. These workers, based in interior and mainland Sri Lanka, have won political and economic rights after years of trade union struggle represented by the Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC) whose deceased leader S. Thondaman is regarded as one of the strongest working class leaders in the country. This section of the Tamils has participated in the political processes of the Sri Lankan state and has not acceded to the principle of separatism for all Sri Lankan Tamils. Again this means that the narrow Tamil nationalism project envisaged by the likes of the LTTE for an Eelam would not include the Tamils of recent Indian origin, thereby complicating the claims for statehood for all Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Again, it is essentially clear that basing the idea of a new Tamil nation merely on ‘ethnic nationalism’ obscures the real problem in Sri Lanka: the absence of a legitimate civic nationalism that accords a sharing principle to all minorities and is not tied to the interests of the majority. Added to this problem is the fact that there exists a federal state for the Tamils in India in the north. Despite initial demands for an independent ‘Dravida-nadu’ in the early 1950s, the integration of Tamils within India under the principle of linguistic reorganisation of units (states) in a federal union is complete. The Tamilian identity is sufficiently subsumed and integrated within a civic Indian identity. The Tamilians have been successful in instituting their native tongue as one of the nationally official languages and the federal system of governance has ensured that Tamils have equal rights as much as any other linguistic group within the nation. The Indian government is very chary, therefore, about the prospect of an independent Eelam carved out of Sri Lanka based on linguistic ethnic nationalism.

In essence, this author repudiates the fact that the Tamils in Sri Lanka are better off with their own nation-state. The very basis of this nation-state is the same rationale that drove the ethnic conflict in the first place: chauvinist nationalism that was and is still being espoused by many sections of the Sinhala majority. It is, therefore, imperative that the political centre in Sri Lanka makes all efforts to ensure federal rights for the minority Tamils and provide them with large doses of autonomy in several aspects of governance to assure a “shared political future” (as analyst Jayadeva Uyangoda points out). In other words, the plurality of the Sri Lankan state must not only be token, but be real, vibrant and inclusive.

The trouble is to incorporate this rationale in the current political miasma that Sri Lanka is in. As seen in the preceding sections, both the sides in the conflict have now taken intractable positions and hardened military stances ruling out the possibility of reasoned opinion pointing toward a solution to the conflict on the lines argued above. The civil war that has re-erupted with increased hostilities (bombings by the government, guerrilla attacks by the LTTE) has dashed all hopes for a protracted political solution. The government is being naïve in assuming that the LTTE can be destroyed militarily and then peace can be established followed by a political settlement, without considering the psychological impact on the Tamils of the military process. With the absence of a realisation of an inclusive nationalism that does not peter down to a ‘unitary’ state among the Sinhala polity, it is impossible to create an environment for a lasting settlement, even if the LTTE is demolished completely.

The LTTE on the other hand holds on quixotically to a one-point agenda of complete secession, trying to rely upon eventual international sympathy to their project. The political praxis adopted by the LTTE (suicide bombings, terror attacks, political assassinations) is not going to allot it any legitimacy in an increasingly terror-weary international political order. This organisation must give up its irrational emphasis on a one-point agenda and return to talks and ceasefire and agree to a political settlement by involving other sections of the Tamil polity as well. The LTTE can use the internal differences among the Sinhala polity to argue for a civic, shared and integrated nationhood as a first priority and it could take a leaf from the book of the political methods used of late in Nepal by the ex-insurgent Maoists.

To the extent of pushing the Lankan government to stop the military attacks and assure a federal settlement, convincing the Tamil representatives to eschew rebel violence, the international community, especially India can play a pressure group/facilitating role. For the sake of humanity in Sri Lanka and in South Asia, one hopes that such a culmination takes place sooner rather than later.

(Concluded)

Full Blown Conflict -III

Article written for The Post, Lahore

The previous sections dealt with the events as they have happened in Sri Lanka in the recent past. One would be clear that the situation in Sri Lanka is very much a civil war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) based in Kilinocchi in north east Sri Lanka and the central government in Colombo. The motivation for the conflict is the claim made by the LTTE that the Tamil population deserve an independent nation carved out of the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government is quite clear that no carving out is possible and the united nationhood of the Sri Lankan island is not going to be compromised.

The question that would be asked first is why at all has this problem erupted between the ethnic communities in the country, even as these communities have been living together for centuries in the island? Clearly the disaffection of the Tamils with the national system has grown out of alienation and maltreatment ever since the formation of an independent Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon) from imperialist clutches. One has to understand the dynamics of ethnic troubles more thoroughly by studying both the colonial as well as the post-colonial period to answer the question of reasons for disaffection.

One thing is however clear – ethnic hatred between the communities is not a legacy of the ancient past as it is made out to be. The incompatibility of nationalism in countries with high concentrations of multiple ethnicity is a myth that has been a legacy of colonial understanding. That these myths have been used to buttress the idea of ethnic nationalism as the basis of nationhood today is a tragedy of post-colonial history. In fact, some of the biases and distinctions on ethnic basis were itself made by colonialists in Sri Lanka in the form of ethnic censuses that bracketed Tamils, Muslims and ethnic Sinhalese into boxes for bureaucratic purposes. Such a boxing in of myriad people within categories was a case in point in India too, where censuses were done on the basis of caste and religion.

It suited the colonial agenda to create these categories ostensibly to help the policy of ‘divide and rule’, as well as the fact that it reflected the imperialists’ understanding of their colonies and their people, that it was impossible for the colonised to rule themselves because of the myriad differentiations among them. Such thinking was prevalent even among the academicians. Prominent anthropologists for example maintain that primordial identity (caste, creed, religion or language) is a primary problem in the non-coalescing of a nation-state in countries such as India and obviously such logic applied to Sri Lanka as well. The fact that India has survived as a federal nation with its multiplicities of identities puts paid to such theories. The question remains why Sri Lanka has failed to emulate the Indian model effectively.

The ruling class in Sri Lanka (erstwhile Ceylon), just after the decline of the British empire, was represented by forces such as the United National Party, a right wing party leading the interests of the Lankan elite (landed gentry and business classes) that were satisfied with a dominion status under the British empire instead of complete independence. As these forces were pro-market and right wing, vast levels of disenchantment among labour (mostly plantation workers and agricultural labourers) was tried to be warded off by using means to pander to ethnic sentiments, particularly by fuelling the language divide. Widespread anger among the populace on the fact that plantations were still owned by British corporations and that there existed no national bourgeoisie representing the interests of the newly independent nation, was channelled into mobilisations on ethnic lines, due to skillful manipulation of this divide by the ruling elite. Since independence, essentially, the ruling classes pandered to Sinhala nationalism off and on, to exploit the disenchantment with the fact that the Tamils enjoyed a high share of urban government employment and had a high degree of literacy and education as compared to the much high numbers of unemployed among the ethnic Sinhalese.

The emergence of a centre-left, national bourgeois party, the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP) in the power centre did not change things drastically, as this party nurtured Sinhala nationalism even further. Under the leadership of SWRD Bandaranaike, a Sinhala Only Act was passed that laid the first seeds for the growth of a militant Tamil consolidation. This Act meant that many Tamils in the civil service, for example, were forced to quit their jobs owing to the Sinhala-only policy and ethnic lingual prejudice created a strident rift between the communities. As such therefore, the ruling parties, despite their commitment to varying economic ideologies, worked on ethnic fault lines to buttress their strengths. It is not as if there was no opposition to this opportunism. There existed a strong Leftist party, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), a Trotskyite party that envisaged equal rights for both the Tamils and the Sinhalese in a socialist Lankan republic. The party was successful in forcing the ruling elite to declare Sri Lanka as an independent republic and was able to get the foreign owned plantations nationalised. It was also involved in several trade union movements and struggles. However, the party, having compromised itself in deals with the ruling parties (particularly the SLFP) owing to the inevitable pulls of parliamentarism, gradually weakened, a process that was accentuated by the international split in the Left movement. The disenfranchisement of the Indian Tamil plantation workers was a major blow to the support base of the LSSP too.

In essence the weakening of the Left in Sri Lanka, the only major force to support a political system that accorded equal rights to the minorities, left the political arena to openly ethnic parties. The Janatha Vimuktha Peramuna, an adventurist Leftist party that tried many insurrections to get to power, also based itself on a strong Sinhala nationalism. The continuing Sinhala-only policy and the repeated incidences of extreme violence against Tamil groups saw the rapid militarisation of Tamil outfits and the birth of radical forces such as the LTTE. The deep-seated anger against such lopsided policies by the Lankan government resulted in the marginalisation of even moderate groups such as the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF). The LTTE took to deadly attacks on the Sri Lankan military forces in an attempt to fuel support for the formation of a separate Tamil Eelam and these sporadic actions took the shape of a full-scale civil war since 1983. Organised pogroms in Tamil areas by the Sri Lankan government and guerrilla attacks by the LTTE marked the start of a prolonged conflict. Many Tamil militants also enjoyed support from covert agencies of the Indian government, as also from the political parties in Tamil Nadu, the south Indian state. The LTTE, through its policy of eliminating internal opposition among the various Tamil militant groups, emerged as the largest militant organisation, particularly in the Tamil dominated city in North Sri Lanka, Jaffna.

Indian intervention to broker peace between the warring sections in Sri Lanka only exacerbated the ethnic differences. While the nationalist elements in Sri Lanka were angered by the intrusion of Indian forces on Lankan soil, the Sri Lankan Tamils found the Indian interventionist action against the LTTE galling. The entire operation was thus a fiasco despite some initial gains and culminated eventually in the LTTE’s assassination of Indian leader Rajiv Gandhi, who had sent the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to Sri Lanka. The notorious assassination (just a few years after IPKF withdrawal) started the international isolation process of the LTTE.

Essentially, the story of conflict in Sri Lanka is a complex one, which involves the failure of the elite as well as the subaltern in evolving a consensual republic that based itself on respect to ethnic differences. The success of India to overcome such differences in comparison to the Lankans owe to the largely progressive character of the Indian national movement and the assertion of sovereignty fairly early after independence. Can such a consensus evolve in the future in Lanka, is the question to be answered in the next section.

(to be continued)

Justice for Bilkis Bano

Editorial written for the Economic and Political Weekly

A sessions court verdict ends a harrowing six-year wait for justice by pogrom victim Bilkis Bano.

A measure of justice was finally provided to Bilkis Bano, one of many victims of gruesome incidents of hate crime during the Gujarat violence of 2002. Bano (who was pregnant at the time) was gang raped while 14 member of her family were massacred in the post-Godhra violence in Dahod (or Dahot?) district in Gujarat. The special court in Mumbai, to which the Supreme Court had transferred the case , awarded life imprisonment to 11 who were found guilty, while a police officer was given three years rigorous imprisonment for colluding with the perpetrators of the crime. Seven of the accused, including five police officers and a doctor were acquitted. While Bilkis Bano has welcomed the verdict, she has said that her struggle to bring the acquitted to book will continue.

Bilkis Bano's case is just one example of a score of heinous crimes that were perpetrated in Gujarat as part of the Godhra and post-Godhra violence that are still being heard in courts. The special court's judgement is significant as justice was awarded despite the active efforts to subvert it in Gujarat. The subversion of justice and the active role of the Narendra Modi government in abetting the planned violence against the minority community is a known fact.

Bano's case went through quite a few tribulations, as her case was initially ordered to be closed by a magistrate in Limkheda taluka in Dahot district in Gujarat. The Supreme Court then stepped in and ordered the transfer of the case to Mumbai, after taking into cognisance Bano's fear that witnesses were being intimidated and evidence was being tampered with in Gujarat. She must be commended for her brave determination in fighting the case by petitioning the highest judiciary, with the help of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), for an impartial hearing outside Gujarat. The case was one of a few which were referred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) by the Supreme Court. The Best Bakery trial, where again a guilty verdict was handed down, was another such case. Other prominent ones such as the Naroda Patiya and the Gulbarg Society massacres (the latter involving the killing of former Member of Parliament Ehsan Jaffri) are still awaiting a conclusion. Meticulous investigative work by the CBI to present evidence on the massacre of many of the family of Bilkis Bano helped the sessions court in Mumbai reach its verdict.

The Bilkis Bano judgement should be a precedent for the scores of cases relating to the Gujarat crime that are still being heard, though with the passage of time it would be much more difficult to present convincing evidence in court. Revelations through media exposes have shown that the justice system in Gujarat has been wilfully thwarted by entrenched sections in government who have gone to the extent of even protecting the guilty. The CBI must quickly conclude its investigations and file charges against the perpetrators in the cases that have been assigned to it by the Supreme Court.

Question marks have been raised over the judiciary's handling of cases where the members of the religious minorities comprise the larger number of victims. While the prosecution and the courts have moved to deliver justice in cases where the members of the minority community have been the guilty, it is perceived that there has not been a similar intent in cases involving riots instigated by members of (or acting in the name of) the majority religious community. The most disturbing example of this is the determination with which the Bombay Blasts case was investigated and tried in court while the crimes of the Bombay riots of 1992-93 have been largely ignored.

The Bilkis Bano case verdict is therefore one that would go some way in dispelling such misgivings about the willingness of the state and the judiciary to prosecute the guilty irrespective of their religious denomination. The role of civil society in ensuring support to the carriage of justice must be commended as well. An end to further delays in the trials in many cases (more than 1600) that were reopened by the Supreme Court in 2004 should re-establish confidence in the legal-political system in the country, even if the political class in Gujarat continues to victimise the riot victims in the state.

Full Blown Conflict -II

Article written for The Post, Lahore.

The preceding section of the series focused on the recent events in Sri Lanka that have created the impasse between the insurgent Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the government in Colombo. The escalating crisis in Sri Lanka has reached a point of no return from a full-scaled civil war as more bombings and civilian killings have already taken place in the interim since the previous column. This article in the series tries to elucidate the reasons for the escalation of the conflict over the past few years and shows how the efforts made to bring a solution to the impasse have obviously failed.

The ceasefire agreement signed in February 2002 gave legitimacy to the LTTE as a frontal organisation representing minority Sri Lankan Tamils in a war of attrition against the Sinhala majority-led Sri Lankan government. Even though there were other agreements that failed in fructification of peace, the CFA of 2002 was encouraging as it laid out the basis of a comprehensive dialogue between the warring sections. A truce was brokered by a group of co-chairs from the US, Japan, Norway and the European Union (EU) between the Lankan government and the LTTE leadership, based in Kilinochchi city in northern Sri Lanka. The LTTE leadership (chief V. Prabhakaran and the now deceased Anton Balasingham, the chief strategist) negotiated a settlement for peace with the then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe of the United National Party. Wickremasinghe himself was elected on an agenda of peace in the parliamentary elections concluded in 2001 after the Lankan forces had suffered several military losses and the state had experienced economic pressures during the Kumaratunga-Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP) rule. Wickremasinghe’s peace plan and the response by the LTTE had the effect of ending open and hostile war for a period of time and was also responsible for a negotiated dialogue process through a series of talks between both the parties. The LTTE now also enjoyed legitimacy as a sovereign player in Sri Lankan politics, feted by international missions for multiple talks. Despite such formal privileges, the LTTE retained its covert abilities, and used the detente to target military intelligence personnel in the Sri Lankan government, as well as to assassinate people among the Tamil community inimical to the organisation (TULF leader, Neelan Thiruchelvam, was killed allegedly by the LTTE and so was Kethesh Loganathan, a Tamil human rights activist).

The CFA was thus being violated with impunity by both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government. The latter, which was supposed to cease hostilities and to recognise LTTE-held territories and to desist from military activities in these areas, did not pay heed to the CFA while capturing LTTE-held areas in the north-east region. One has, however, got to raise the question why the CFA turned out to be a dead-letter agreement without an actual proper implementation and an answer can be found by taking recourse to understanding the Byzantine world of Sri Lankan democratic politics.

The CFA, as mentioned earlier, was signed by the then Prime Minister Wickremasinghe of the UNP when President Chandrika Kumaratunga belonged to the SLFP. Several sections of the Sri Lankan populace, as well as the polity, were upset that the agreement acknowledged the LTTE as a legal and legitimate player, thereby weakening the case for the sovereign hold of the Sri Lankan state on areas in the north and north-east. Political players such as the nationalist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and Buddhist parties that favoured a unitary Sri Lankan state were dead against any leeway given to the LTTE or indeed any Tamil nationalist outfit, let alone a separatist force. These sections were strengthened when they became part of a government led by Mahinda Rajapaksa (the current president) of the SLFP after a coalition was formed to defeat the UNP in 2004. The Rajapaksa coalition was able to form a government because Tamils (many of whom were sympathetic toward the UNP for its role in the ceasefire) were prevented from voting in the parliamentary elections in areas controlled by the LTTE. The hawkish coalition, from day one, ratcheted up the confrontation with the LTTE, which simultaneously was engaging in overt violation of the CFA through its own actions. Increasing the hostility between the two sides was the fact that the Lankan government was providing covert support to the breakaway Karuna faction of the LTTE in the eastern regions.

The LTTE, weakened by the breaking away of the Karuna faction was also seriously hurt by growing international isolation. Even as the monitors of the peace mission were deploring the violations of the agreement, a growing international consensus against “any form of terrorism” was hurting the LTTE. The death of chief strategist Anton Balasingham was a big blow, as Balasingham was seen as a moderating influence enjoying wide international access as a representative of the LTTE in the international fora.

Several representatives of the LTTE in various countries such as in the US, the EU and Australia were arrested for involvement in covert arms deals, money extraction from the diaspora and for other reasons. This dealt a serious blow to the LTTE internationally. The Sri Lankan government on the other hand increased its defence budget, and started buying weapons and defence material from various nations such as China and even India. Despite the presence of a Sea Tigers unit and even the use of light aircraft vehicles by the LTTE, the increasing bombing operations by the government targeted at the LTTE strongholds resulted in the death of at least one prominent LTTE leader, S.P. Tamilchelvan.

The strategies adopted by the two parties in the conflict were quite clear: the Lankan government wanted to weaken and destroy the LTTE militarily even as it kept the option of a federal solution to the minority problem open. The LTTE on the other hand, wanted to use the humanitarian crisis generated by the military operation undertaken by the Lankan government to highlight the improbability of a coexistence of the two communities under one sovereign, by alleging that the Lankan state was a majoritarian terrorist state bent upon “genocide”.

The Sri Lankan government’s formal rejection of the CFA now seems to be a political response to the growing demands by the ultra-nationalist segments supporting the government, to annihilate opposition by the LTTE militarily. These sections such as the JVP have for quite some time demanded a ban on the LTTE, as well as the abrogation of the CFA signed by the UNP. The JVP has even rejected a federal solution, retaining its notion of a unitary Sri Lanka rejecting the claims of the ethnic minority to get any respectable share in power. Even though the Sri Lankan government’s military actions against the LTTE in the north and the north-east have not been addressed very negatively by the international community owing to the tactics and actions of the LTTE, the tearing up of the CFA by the government is only bound to loosen the international shackles over the LTTE. The international community including the important neighbour, India, is not pleased with the open civil war that the Lankan government has embarked on, disheartened by the government’s response to the humanitarian problem caused as well as the measures taken against Tamil minorities in the capital city in the name of security.

It is clear that both the government and the LTTE’s visions of a protracted military driven conflict is only bound to obscure the real issues that entail the differences between the minority and the majority community, as well as to belie any hopes of a negotiated settlement of the problem. The LTTE’s reliance on a single point agenda of the formation of a separate state for Sri Lankan Tamils stems from an extremist viewpoint that suggests that a nation can only be formed out of a single communitarian identity, while the Sri Lankan state’s repeated failure in bringing about a political consensus for a federal solution to the problem highlights the entrenched presence of a majoritarian consciousness among the Sinhala polity. The reasons for this entrenchment, as well as the demand for a separate state, can only be explained by a review of the history of the island republic, which should be done in the next segment of this series.

Kenya erupts in violence

Editorial written for Economic & Political Weekly

Rival tribes engage in killings over presidential election results.

Incidents of internecine killings and violence have rocked the east African nation Kenya ever since the results of the December 27th presidential elections had been announced. The decision of the election commission in Kenya to declare the victory of incumbent president Mwai Kibaki of the Party of National Unity (PNU) has been the spur for these incidents, in which around 600 people have been reported to be killed.

It was widely believed that the results to the elections would have been extremely close with the opposition leader Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) mounting a strong challenge to Kibaki's rule. However with reports of rigging and electoral malpractices coming in, the declared victory of Kibaki is seen to a dubious one by several independent observers. The fact that the prominent candidates belong to different tribes; Odinga from the Luo tribe and Kibaki from the Kiyuki tribe is mentioned as the reason for violence against the Kiyuki tribe members by disenchanted voters belonging to the Luo and other tribes. The most prominent incident of violence involved the burning of a church which had provided refuge to Kikuyu tribe members in a small town about 185 miles away from the capital, Nairobi, in the process, killing a number of people trapped inside.

It is however too simplistic to term this violence as motivated by just another case of inter-tribe rivalry in Africa. The political rivalry between Kibaki and Raila has been very intense and both accuse the other of personal corruption. During the Kibaki regime, formed since the demise of the Daniel Arap Moi dictatorship, Kenya has seen significant foreign investment led economic growth (about 6 percent according to latest figures) but concurrently widening regional and economic disparities in the predominantly agriculture based country. While prosperity has been accrued to sections in and around central Kenya (Nairobi and some other urban centres), regions in the west has seen continuation and accentuation of poverty (a national average of 79 percent) that has characterised the nation for quite long. Raila Odinga derives a lot of support from these regions, while the Kikuyu tribe dominated central Kenyan regions have affirmed support to Mwai Kibaki.

Mwai Kibaki, when first elected to power in 2002 was able to defeat Arap Moi's designated nominee Uhuru Kenyatta of the Kenya African National Unity (KANU) with the support of Raila Odinga. Kibaki's legacy was to devolve power in a federated system for Kenya, but the problems of corruption had continued to plague his regime. Odinga, a prosperous industrialist became part of the ODM along with other politicians and launched a movement to oppose Kibaki's rule. A much touted move for a new constitutional draft through a referendum by the government in 2005 was defeated resoundingly by the opposition, particularly because of a powerful grass roots mobilisation by Odinga. Odinga therefore emerged as a powerful candidate to replace Kibaki in the recent December 2007 elections and opinion polls pointed out that he would win by a narrow margin over the incumbent president.

Fundamentally however, Raila Odinga does not offer any substantial change in the economic policy (Odinga belongs to the Liberal Democratic Party faction of the ODM) and his elevation would have been yet another case of circulation of elites, common to African post-colonial nations. As it is however, the doubts raised over the legitimacy of the election verdict, fuelled the current spate of violence as Odinga refused to accept the verdict and called for a re-count and resignation of the new government.

Supporters of Kibaki have alleged that rigging occurred in ODM strongholds as well and Kibaki has refused an official recount or resignation, conceding however that the allegations about the election verdict have to be fought in the courts. Kibaki has also suggested a national unity government with portfolios for members from the opposition; the idea having been refused by Odinga however. A presidential candidate Kalonzo Musyoka who came third in the elections (also from the ODM), has been named as the vice president in the newly installed government.

Representatives of the African Union have offered to mediate between the warring politicians in Kenya to bring about a conciliation, which could stop the internecine violence. An official and accurate recount seems to be the best way out of the impasse. But the prevention of internecine violence of this nature in the future can only happen if the structural problems of the Kenyan political economy are sufficiently addressed by a democratically elected non-corrupt government.

Full Blown Conflict -I

The island republic of Sri Lanka is now officially engulfed by civil war. With the breaking up of the farcical ceasefire agreement (CFA) between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the government has now acknowledged that it has plunged headlong into a full fledged war against insurgents in control of territory in the northern parts of the country. A series of articles will therefore focus on the current situation in the country, a background of the grievances that have created this quagmire and perhaps work out a way out of the impasse. The first part of the series will focus on the events as they stand.

The CFA was signed in 2002 between the two parties, brokered by a group of international monitors led by Norway. The agreement was welcomed widely as it had laid down the possibility of a lasting solution to the ethnic crisis in the nation, torn as it was by years of civil war and strife between the majority Sinhala and the Tamil communities. The Sri Lankan Tamil community's grouse was that they were denied basic rights for years by the Sinhala dominated central government and were at the receiving end of countless massacres led by the federal government. The Sri Lankan government on the other hand had deplored the insurgent tactics used by the LTTE, and claimed that the adoption of political assassinations, suicide bombings and Machiavellian tactics by the LTTE to retain military power was what that led to the impasse between both the parties.

The ceasefire agreement raised the possibility of a federal solution to the conflict and had also provided the first instance of the LTTE's acceptance of such a solution to the vexed ethnic nationality problem. It also gave official recognition to the LTTE's claim of representing the Tamilians. The LTTE was just one of a myriad set of groups fighting for various goals for the Tamil minority, from autonomy to complete independence. Groups such as the Tamil Union Liberation Front (TULF) which had existed for a longer time had advanced moderate methods of achieving goals such as federal autonomy and was endorsed by older and intellectual sections among the Tamils, while the LTTE and other paramilitary groups advocating the creation of a separate Tamil state, Eelam, found favour among younger sections. The LTTE over a period of time had been involved in internecine conflict among the various Tamil groups itself and after a period of attrition had emerged as the undisputed, strong and armed militant organisation. It had simultaneously cultivated an international backing through ties with the vast Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora and had also been supported by several sections of the Tamil polity in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Indian intervention in the Sri Lankan crisis in the late 1980s had created disenchantment among both the Tamils and the Sinhala sections and the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) had to leave the Sri Lankan soil without tangible gains in bringing about an end to the conflict. The outcome of the IPKF saga led to the LTTE assassinating Rajiv Gandhi through a suicide bomber, as Gandhi was identified for having been responsible for the intervention in Sri Lanka. Rajiv Gandhi's assassination however had the effect of alienating the LTTE from support in India, as the organisation was banned and its leader V. Prabhakaran was made the prime accused for the Indian leader's brutal murder.

After long periods of civil strife in the 1990s, the Sri Lankan government under then prime minister Chandrika Kumaratunga came forward with a devolution package which was rejected by the insurgents even as killings continued as the Sinhala government wrested back control over strategically important regions such as the Jaffna peninsula in north Sri Lanka. The LTTE had then decided to go in for a detente not just to recoup from its military losses but also to gain legitimacy by setting up governing institutions, thus graduating from a guerilla outfit into a governing authority in some areas in the North and East Sri Lankan regions, after the ceasefire agreement. The LTTE set up policing and revenue collecting organs, as well as judicial courts, even as the tenuous peace held with the reduction in hostilities between the two parties.

The peace however was not to last, as political assassinations and violations of the CFA started with impunity. A big blow to the LTTE was the breaking away of a major commander of the outfit, Vinayagamurthy Muralidharan a.k.a “Col”. Karuna who started his own outfit consisted of disgruntled Tamil extremist elements from the east Sri Lankan region. This group was later to be tacitly supported by the Sri Lankan government forces. The defection of Karuna weakened the LTTE in the eastern parts of Sri Lanka.

The decisive blow to the CFA was the assassination of Sri Lankan foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar. Kadirgamar, who was an ethnic Tamil was an articulate minister who had ideas for not just the solving of the ethnic problem but also for increased economic and diplomatic co-operation between different countries in South Asia. Kadirgamar was however a marked man for the LTTE for having tried to convince the case against the insurgents in the international community and his brutal killing by a bullet of an assassin suspected to be from the LTTE, put paid to any hopes of the CFA holding up for longer. The Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (SLMM) which was set up to monitor incidents that violated the CFA, was now flush with innumerable complaints and violations. Nearly 90% of the violations were from the LTTE side themselves.

The coming to power of a hawkish coalition led by president Mahinda Rajapaksa of the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP) (supported by left nationalist Janata Vimukti Peramuna (JVP) and the Buddhist religious conservative Jathila Hela Urumaya) put paid to any hopes of reviving the CFA to workable levels. The Rajapaksa administration paid lip service to the question of granting federal autonomy to the Tamil minorities while going in for a full scale military offensive which included targeted air bombings. There were great hopes for a consensus on federal autonomy and an emulation of the Indian model of federalism in Sri Lanka through an agreement between the chief political actors in the Sinhala polity (the SLFP and the opposition United National Party), but it was prevented by petty politicking. An All Party Representative Conference called upon to evaluate a solution through the involvement of the mainstream parties was to become a cropper because of insistence of hardline positions by the JVP.

In the meantime, the military conflict achieved some victories for the Sri Lankan government as top LTTE leaders, political commisar S.P.Tamilchelvan and intelligence deputy “Col.” Charles were killed. But the conflict has escalated the humanitarian crisis in the region, affecting the already traumatised Tamil population greatly. More and more people have been forced to stay in decampments after severe aerial bombing and even the Tamils in cities such as Colombo have been harassed by security agencies ostensibly as a security measure. The LTTE has promised to retaliate in kind, meaning more bombings, suicide killings, and terror attacks in the Sri Lankan capital and other cities are in the offing.

After the tearing up of the CFA, the government has declared its intentions for a full scale assault on LTTE lines in the Wanni region in north Sri Lanka, saying no federal solution is possible without demolishing the LTTE. The LTTE is expected to revert to its time tested guerilla strategy of “hit and runs” and tactical retreats into jungles and many analysts say that the assault would be a long drawn one as the LTTE has withdrawn its cadre from the eastern belt to protect the northern strongholds. The humanitarian crisis is only bound to worsen as this conflict continues to escalate. All hopes raised in 2002 during the ceasefire are shattered and an interminable military confrontation looms large but very near. Future sections of this series will explore the historical basis for the conflict and would try to work out a viable solution, if at all possible.

Article written for The Post, Lahore

BJP wins in Himachal Pradesh

Editorial written for Economic & Political Weekly

Himachal Pradesh keeps faith with its voting history by ejecting the incumbent government

Since the creation of Himachal Pradesh in 1971, assembly elections in the state have usually followed the pattern of removal of incumbent governments from power. The recent elections conformed to the trend with the main opposition party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), winning a comfortable majority (41 out of 68 seats), defeating the incumbent Congress Party. The BJP's victory was significant as it followed up its success in Gujarat.

The BJP has gone on to claim that the national mood was turning in the party's favour and against the ruling coalition in the centre. The Congress, on the other hand, has dismissed the electoral loss as having no impact at the national level and has blamed the anti-incumbency factor for the loss. The party had hoped to break this trend by trying to announce welfare schemes in the later stages of the Virbhadra Singh-led government just before the election schedule was to be announced. That game plan came a cropper with the Election Commission announcing the poll schedule ahead of the expected date due to reasons of logistics.

The primary reason for anti-incumbency voting in the recent elections was the non-fulfilment of promises the Congress government had made after its victory in the 2002 assembly elections. The party had promised one job for every family in the state just after coming to power. Himachal Pradesh remains a state where agriculture, outside the apple orchards, is mostly subsistence based and the primary means of employment outside agriculture has traditionally been government provided. The problem of unemployment is chronic and the downsizing of government in this state too, a characteristic of neo-liberal reforms across India, has meant that newer jobs were left to be created primarily in the private sector through private investment. The Congress government had formulated that 70 per cent of all new jobs created in the private sector must be for Himachal residents, but this was not properly implemented on the ground. Unemployment therefore remained a burning issue that turned the voter mood against the Congress. Perennial issues such as corruption and patronage were other reasons for the grouse against the Congress as much as these were reasons that militated against the BJP in earlier elections.

The BJP victory in this election was qualitatively different from its earlier victories in the state. It was for the first time that the BJP won an overwhelming majority without help from parties such as the erstwhile Himachal Vikas Congress. This points to the effective management of the regional contradictions in Himachal Pradesh. The BJP, seen as strong in the Kangra region (termed New Himachal, as it merged into the old Himachal formed in 1966), was able to win substantially in the seats in the old Himachal region too. The BJP was also able to neutralise earlier perceptions and misgivings about the party on the issues of corruption and mismanagement as the electorate held the Congress government guilty of the same phenomena. The large margins of victory and the increase in vote percentage for the BJP are testimony to the disenchantment with the Congress government. Unlike Gujarat and other states, the politics of “hindutva” and communalism have mattered little in Himachal Pradesh, a state that has a very low concentration of religious minorities.

Another factor that was talked about in this election was the presence of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which contested most of the seats and threatened to make an impact by bringing disgruntled elements from the BJP and the Congress into its fold. The presence of a sizeable dalit population and the resounding success of the BSP in Uttar Pradesh raised hopes of the party making an impact in Himachal, but that was not to be. The BSP won only one seat, won by a Congress dissident and could only act as a spoiler in some constituencies.

Himachal Pradesh has always seen high levels of political participation, reflected in good voter turnouts. The fact that the politics of patronage, bad governance and the presence of corruption have ruled the roost in the state has forced the electorate to reject incumbent governments. The recently concluded election is validation of this pattern. Can the new Prem Kumar Dhumal-led BJP government buck the trend by providing an alternative to such politics?

A primer about the Primaries

To be published in The Post

The American primaries, elections which decide the presidential candidates of the two dominant political parties in the country, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have begun. The Iowa caucus is the first state poll followed by a sequence of polls in other states which decide the party candidate for president through a “winner take all” basis. Which means that the candidate who wins the most number of states is taken to be the presidential representative for the parties. For a interested south Asian, the presidential election process in the United States is important because one gets to see the various positions on foreign policy and worldview of the different candidates for the most powerful executive post in the world today.

In the predominant two party system that drives American democracy, the presidential candidate nomination process follows a set routine; the candidates get heavy duty funding from various sources and use expensive campaigns to get support for themselves. Numerous public debates are also conducted where the various candidates' positions on different issues come to the fore. The upcoming elections would widely decide if a change is brought about in the the decidedly right wing world view that has dominated the Bush presidency in the US. As such therefore, a perusal of the various policy positions of the different presidential candidates would serve a teaser preview of the possibility of such change.

The Democratic Party candidates, primary of whom are Hillary Clinton (former first lady in the Bill Clinton administration), Barack Obama (the only African American senator in the US senate) and John Edwards, attest to formulating and implementing a change in the disastrous foreign policy followed by the Bush administration. The prominent Republican party candidates, however, more or less affirm to the direction in the foreign policy brought about by the Bush administration and suggest a continuum of the unilateral measures adopted by the incumbent administration.

Yet for the outside observer, this difference hardly matters much. The prominent Democratic candidates with the exception of Barack Obama endorsed the war in Iraq by approving the measure to invade Iraq. John Edwards apologises for having done this basing his opinion on faulty intelligence in 2003, while Hillary Clinton refuses to acknowledge her mistake. Obama on the other hand has voted for increases in the war fund in Iraq. Even though he emphasises that his vision would envisage a change in the foreign policy discourse and that he would hold talks with regimes opposed to the US, he has betrayed the same unilateralist tendency as others in the Democratic fray by suggesting that he would keep the options open for a military initiative in Iran and even in Pakistan, disspelling any doubts on his respecting national sovereignty. Overall, the Democratic position on foreign policy seems nuantically different from the Bush course but in essence on overall policy, does not envisage any change in the American hegemonist positions on world affairs. And this is despite the near overwhelming opposition to the war among Americans, one reason for the strong Democrat performance in the 2006 Congressional elections.

The only Democrat candidate who has rejected “war as an instrument of foreign policy” and has opposed American unilateralism, including the Iraq invasion consistently is Dennis Kucinich, a Congressman who has promised a “Department of Peace” once elected to power. Yet, Kucinich seems to be a fringe candidate with very little funding and destined only to win a marginal number of votes of support. The record of other Democrat candidates does not inspire much confidence in them for a resident of the developing world, who sees hegemonic action by the United States as violation of all international norms and institutions, and as being dangerous to the citizens of the developing world.

The Republican candidates' positions are even more dreadful. Leading candidate Mike Huckabee has practically little knowledge about foreign policy and his social conservative and religious views reflect a warped understanding of the East. Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney not only endorse the war on Iraq but want to continue the unilateral course of action on other nations even if it amounts to invasion, bombing or violations of sovereignty, all in the name of “war on terror”. No remorse is shown for the near three quarters of a million Iraqi deaths since the American occupation, or for the fraudulent reasons that were advocated for the illegal occupation. Among the Republicans however, there is one candidate, Ron Paul who happens to be a libertarian and sees no place for a interventionist foreign policy, as it violates the constitutional principles of the United States and as it is a huge drain on the exchequer. Ron Paul, who has become some sort of a internet favourite in the US however remains as much a fringe candidate among the Republicans as much as Kucinich is among the Democrats.

The battle among the Democrats therefore seems to be as to who would occupy the liberal imperialist mantle and among the Republicans as to who would inherit the neoconservative hardline imperial position on foreign policy. The virtual non-existence of a recognition to strengthen liberal international institutions in regulating world affairs and to reverse the disastrous geopolitical course in west Asia is common to both the Republicans and the Democrats. As such therefore, none of the purported successors to George Bush inspire much confidence to the inhabitants of the third world, even as one would be relieved that the likes of George Bush and Dick Cheney would finally be out of power.

Noam Chomsky when once asked as to how different he would have acted if he was hypothetically in presidential power in the aftermath of the 2001 terror attacks in New York, replied sarcastically that he would have perhaps done the same thing as George Bush. Chomsky mentioned that whoever the president is in the United States, the foreign policy establishment and the policy making circles, driven by nationalism and interests of the elite have circumscribed decision making to a set of policies that tend to emphasise American hegemony. The current positions of the different candidates for president in the US among the two parties is reflective of Chomsky's understanding.

The future presidency in the United States would be exposed to a world that has been rendered dangerous because of disastrous foreign policy decisions by the Bush administration. West and south Asia are the spots where the effects of American intervention have been the most turmoil-ridden. In Afghanistan, there is virtual anarchy beyond Kabul as the NATO presence has not helped resist the return and rise of the Taliban. Iraq remains a nightmarish quagmire of ethnic, sectarian and internecine divisions which have been exacerbated by American rule. Years of meddling in Pakistan's internal affairs and covert links between the American establishment and the Pakistani military and ruling classes have resulted in a situation where extremism has reared its head, after having been nourished by covert support for quite sometime. The Palestinian greivances against Israeli expansionism continue to remain and the US' continued emphasis on rejecting a just solution to the Palestinian cause by favouring Israeli hegemony has resulted in tearing up of the peace process in the region. Renewed threats of bombing and military action by the US has been played upon by radical sections all across west Asia. Even if military action has virtually decimated Al Qaeda, the terrorist organisation's oxygen has been sustained by acts of American unilateralism in the region.

All these point out to the need for a radical change in American policy from unilateralism and from an urge to control natural resource rich regions in the world to winning the confidence of the peoples of this reason by strengthening international institutions. Except for fringe candidates in the presidential fray, none of the frontrunners have shown the wherewithal to bring about this much needed change.

Modi’s Victory

Editorial dated december 29, 2007 in the Economic & Political Weekly

Narendra Modi spearheads another triumph in Gujarat for the Bharatiya Janata Party.

For the second consecutive time, Narendra Modi has led the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to a massive victory in the Gujarat assembly elections, making it the fourth time in a row since 1995 for the party. In every assembly election, the BJP has pitched a campaign theme; while it was the issue of anti-corruption in 1995 and an aggressive pitch for Hindutva in 2002, it was development of a “vibrant Gujarat” in 2007.

The victory in 2007 is different from the earlier assembly triumphs. The strings of BJP leadership in Gujarat had virtually passed on to Narendra Modi, with the gradual sidelining of other senior leaders who have either broken ranks or have remained dissidents. From former ministers (including ex-chief ministers) in the BJP government to other leaders in the Sangh parivar, an array of people who were in the forefront during the communally polarised elections in 2002 were this time ranged against Narendra Modi. Numerous exit polls and media surveys predicted that the outcome would be a close call between the Congress and the BJP. Yet, the prognosticators were proved completely wrong.

This was Narendra Modi’s election and this was his personal triumph, even if many had hoped that the Gujarat electorate would hold him accountable for the crimes of 2002, for which there has neither been atonement nor justice for the victims. The continued dominance of the BJP in 2007 points to the failure of the Congress in effectively countering the seeping in of communal consciousness that has been a fallout of uninterrupted BJP rule in the state. At the same time, the emphasis on “development” in the 2007 elections by the BJP suggested that Narendra Modi wanted to be judged by the voters on his government’s record in issues such as industrialisation, irrigation support, rural electrification, and economic growth. The agenda of “cultural nationalism” and Hindutva, which dominated the 2002 elections, was missing, even as, during the later stages of the election campaign, Narendra Modi started stirring up such issues again.

The Congress had hoped to mobilise support from disenchanted sections among dalits, tribals and particularly the minorities who have continued to live in fear and neglect in the BJP regime. It was expected that the “caste arithmetic” success formula in the 1980s for the Congress, the Kshatriya-Harijan-Adivasi-Muslim (KHAM) alliance would be again forged, this time with the help of sections in the Patidar community led by BJP rebels. However, the inability of the Congress to address the ideology of Hindutva head on or to provide alternate solutions to the development paradigm followed by the BJP, as well as the absence of a viable charismatic leadership to take on Narendra Modi has resulted in yet another defeat for that party. Narendra Modi’s image as a chief minister with a direct style of governance, bypassing patronage networks and his being seen as responsible for services such as irrigation facilities, power systems, and investment for industry, was cultivated into a personality based propaganda campaign by the BJP’s. Modi’s tenure has been marked by a penchant for breaking away from party structures and pressure groups in favour of direct hands on management based on personal charisma. This personalised emphasis – which won him widespread popularity within the state – and the BJP’s aggressive “regional identity” message was manifest in the party’s campaign theme, “Jeetega Gujarat” (Gujarat will win).

The BJP has been clever in setting an agenda around communalism and majoritarianism during every assembly poll, while the Congress has always played second fiddle, unsure in its criticism and in its rejection of Hindutva as well as in the formulation of a more inclusive economic policy. The BJP’s victory in Gujarat despite the horrors of the state-led pogrom in 2002 and the continuing denial, subversion of justice and relief to the victims and survivors of the riots does point out to the weaknesses of liberal democratic institutions. It questions the ability of formal democracy to ensure that those who are guilty of violating constitutional duties and norms are held responsible for their actions.

Irrespective of the massive verdict in favour of Narendra Modi in the assembly elections, we must continue to work to ensure justice for the victims of 2002. And if the ideology of hatred that has taken root has to be defeated politically, all efforts must be made to project a viable alternative that wins the support of the Gujarati people. Only this can provide a strong counter to the charisma that Narendra Modi wields in Gujarat.