"New Middle Classes" in India and Iran

While it should be clear from a socialist point of view that, in the long term, the interests of the bulk of the Green Movement participants (who appear to be largely of the "new middle classes" whose income and status depend more on their education than their property) and those of the bulk of Ahmadinejad voters (the urban and rural poor, urban and rural petty producers, etc.) are in sync, it would take a great deal of effort to clarify their common interests to both sides in the short term.

That is because, in the short term, the "new middle classes" may actually benefit from the kind of restructuring of Iran's political economy and its relation to the rest of the world (liberalizing its economy and opening it up to the West, while moving away from the NAM) that Rafsanjani, et al. envision. This is not a problem unique to Iran, as Prabhat Patnaik notes below:

Since Left ideas typically get nourishment from the literati and the urban intellectual strata, even though these ideas reach their fruition in the struggles of the workers and peasants, who are the victims of globalization but are sociologically distant from the intellectual strata, the Left movement gathers momentum in situations where the urban middle class has also suffered from globalization and hence makes common cause with the workers and the peasants. But it faces problems in situations where the urban middle class is a beneficiary of globalization. In such cases, the resistance to imperialism and globalization often gets championed by forces other than the Left; or, if the Left remains committed to the interests of the "basic classes" and resists globalization, it often suffers through isolation from the intellectual strata and the urban youth and students. . . .

The current anti-imperialist upsurge in Latin America, which has brought Left or Left-oriented governments to power over much of that continent, is a consequence of the long years of crises that hurt, and hence radicalized, the urban youth, students and intellectuals. On the other hand, in much of central Asia, and now Iran, where the urban youth has not directly experienced the adversity inflicted by globalization, imperialism still retains the capacity to mobilize, or at least claim the sympathy of, vast numbers of the urban population in so-called "orange", "tulip" and "velvet" "revolutions" that are supposed to bring in modernity and democracy together with neo-liberalism. In India, since the adversity of workers, peasants, agricultural labourers and petty producers, under globalization, has been accompanied by high growth rates, and rapid increases in incomes and opportunities for the urban middle class, a degree of pro-imperialism among this class which includes intellectuals, media persons and professionals, and hence a degree of exasperation with the Left's continued adherence to old "anti-imperialist shibboleths", is hardly surprising.

Multinational Investors' Vote of Confidence in Ultra-imperialism

Check out multinational investors' major vote of confidence in ultra-imperialism today: John Willman, "Markets Cheer Bank Bail-outs" (Financial Times, 13 October 2008); Ralph Atkins, "European Banks Offer Unlimited Dollar Funding" (Financial Times, 13 October 2008); "Full Text: US Treasury Tarp Plans" (Financial Times, 13 October 2008); Louise Story and Andrew Ross Sorkin, "Morgan Agrees to Revise Terms of Mitsubishi Deal" (New York Times, 13 October 2008); "Gulf Shares Surge as UAE and Qatar Act (Financial Times, 12 October 2008); and Robin Wigglesworth and Simeon Kerr, "UAE Leads Drive to Stem Crisis" (Financial Times, 13 October 2008).

It's true that, if China, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and the United States functioned as one politically (if not legally) coherent establishment, Americans would be back in the black:

Global Balance of Payments ($bn, 2007)

SOURCE: Martin Wolf, "Asia's Revenge," Financial Times, 9 October 2008, p. 9.

That's the level at which the ruling classes have built their post-WW2 hegemony (cf. Kees van der Pijl, The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class; and Gavan McCormack, Client State: Japan in the American Embrace; etc.).

Therefore, a radical shift in global class relations could come only if there were a radical shift in any one of the aforementioned countries, but these are the very ones where the Left has the least chance in the world.

Is China, though, a weak or strong link in this chain of empire (to which Latin socialists, Islamists from the Hindu Kush to the Persian Gulf to the Horn of Africa to the Niger Delta, Maoists in Nepal and India, the national security interests of Russia, etc. have provided a partial material -- if ideologically incoherent -- counterweight)?

Update

"[T]he needs of our economy require that our financial institutions not take this new capital to hoard it, but to deploy it" ("Text: Henry Paulson Remarks Tuesday," 15 October 2008).

"Investors are recognizing that the financial crisis is not the fundamental problem. It has merely amplified economic ailments that are now intensifying: vanishing paychecks, falling home prices and diminished spending. And there is no relief in sight" (Peter S. Goodman, "Markets Suffer as Investors Weigh Relentless Trouble," New York Times, 16 October 2008).

What Western Diplomats Said about the Taliban after the Execution of Najibullah in 1996

On 27 September 1996, the Taliban executed Mohammad Najibullah, the last president of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Three days later, John F. Burns reported in the New York Times:

Now, with two-thirds of Afghanistan under their control, the Taliban are closer to ending the fighting than anybody has been since 1979. For Pakistan, peace in Afghanistan would bring a major dividend, including the possibility of re-opening trade routes to Central Asia and curbing the flood of opium, heroin and automatic weapons that have made large parts of Pakistan virtually ungovernable.

Other neighboring countries are deeply wary of the Taliban. For Iran, the Taliban's Islamic militancy is less important than the fact that the Taliban are mostly Sunni Muslims, long at odds with the Shiite Muslims who predominate in Iran.

Iran backed the Government ousted by the Taliban, which was headed by Persian-speaking leaders from Afghanistan's Tajik minority. Russia, wary of the spread of militant Islam to the newly independent Central Asian states, also backed the Government, as did India.

But Western diplomats in Islamabad say that there has been no sign that the Taliban leaders want to spread their beliefs beyond Afghhanistan's frontiers, or that they are inclined to back terrorism. ("New Afghan Rulers Shock Even Their Backers in Pakistan," 30 September 1996)

A Victory for Hezbollah

Washington leaned on "Lebanon's governing coalition" to disarm Hizballah, just as it pushed the "Iraqi government" to disarm the Mahdi Army. Both moves failed to achieve their goals -- more spectacularly in the case of Lebanon:

Lebanon’s governing coalition on Wednesday night formally reversed two decisions that had provoked the militant group Hezbollah, bringing the country a step closer to resolving the week-old political crisis that set off the worst factional violence since the nation's 15-year civil war.

The announcement was made after a day of intensive meetings between Lebanese leaders and an Arab diplomatic delegation led by the foreign minister of Qatar. Rescinding the decisions was a victory for Hezbollah, the Shiite group backed by Syria and Iran that has been trying to wrest more political power from the government. After it was announced, shortly after 11 p.m., loud bursts of celebratory gunfire echoed across the city for almost an hour from Beirut’s southern suburbs, Hezbollah’s stronghold.

Lebanon’s information minister, Ghazi Aridi, said the cabinet reversed the two decisions -- which challenged the militant group’s private telephone network and the job of a Hezbollah ally who directs airport security -- "in view of the higher national interest." (Robert F. Worth, Lebanon Reverses Decisions That Prompted Violence," New York Times, 15 May 2008)

Washington has trouble winning in the so-called Shia crescent, as well as in Latin America, because the nature of its imperial project compels it to ally only with the pro-American, upper-class factions against organizations based in lower classes.

Politics is more ambiguous in Brazil, India, Turkey, and South Africa, the key nations in their respective regions, whose popular classes have hitherto backed the parties that have played both sides of the game. These are the key swing votes determining the fate of socialists in Latin America and Islamo-Leninists in the Shia crescent.

The Indian Left on Energy and Sovereignty

The Left in India has gotten great political mileage out of the question of energy and sovereignty -- the India-US nuclear deal and the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline deal -- making the most of its veto power:

Ahead of the joint meeting on the India-US civil nuclear deal next week, the Left has said that the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline's fate will prove how independent India's foreign policy is under the present dispensation.

"If the pipeline deal goes through, then we will know we have an independent foreign policy," Communist Party of India leader A B Bardhan said.

"If the pipeline deal does not go through, it would mean the American pressure has won," Bardhan declared, while alluding to American opposition to the three-nation gas pipeline. ("After N-deal, Left Puts Government to Iran Pipeline Test," Times of India, 4 May 2008)

India and the Peace Pipeline

Will New Delhi sign onto the tri-national pipeline to transport natural gas from Iran to Pakistan and then to India, aka a peace pipeline because of its potential to diminish tensions between India and Pakistan? It is still in talks with Tehran over the gas price and with Islamabad over transit fees, but money, of course, is not the main reason why it has hesitated.

Economically speaking, India really needs gas from Iran:

India, Asia's third-largest economy, can produce only half the gas it needs to generate electricity, causing blackouts and curbing economic growth. Demand may more than double to 400 million cubic meters a day by 2025 if the economy grows at the projected rate of 7 to 8 percent a year, according to the oil ministry. (Manash Goswami, "India Plans Talks with Pakistan over Stalled Iran Gas Pipeline," Bloomberg.com, 28 March 2008)

However, the Indian government is under pressure from the United States, to stay away from the pipeline in exchange for a nuclear deal.

Although publicly New Delhi has maintained that it stands by the IPI pipeline, the reality is going to be different.

"The final deal [on IPI] is not going to happen in the near future as the project is no longer just about energy security, it's more about India's strategic position in the global community," a Foreign Ministry official told Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity.

"The project is in the radar of the Prime Minister's Office and unless there is a clear signal from there, it is unlikely that India's Petroleum Ministry will agree to any final arrangement," he added.

US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, during a recent visit to India, is believed to have recommended that Delhi not go ahead with the project. And subsequently Treasury Under Secretary for International Affairs David McCormick told reporters that the US hoped India would not move forward with the pipeline. He said "it would not be the right path during a time the world should be imposing greater discipline on its interactions with Iran". He added that India should meet its energy needs through the nuclear deal with the US that is now stalled in the Indian Parliament. (Siddharth Srivastava, "Iran, Pakistan Dump India on Pipeline," Asia Times, 15 November 2007)

The nuclear deal that Washington offered to India, however, is in fact no favor to the country. To the contrary, it's one that will subject Indian nuclear policy to whims of the United States:

Let us be clear then as to what this agreement entails: the U.S. openly gains the power to threaten to deny ongoing fuel supplies (and even the forcible removal of supplies previously given) in order to control future Indian policy. Is this a remote speculation? We must recall that in the 1970s the U.S. unilaterally cut off all fuel supply to Tarapur, in material violation of the previous "123" agreement between the U.S. and India of 1963. (Analytical Monthly Review, "The U.S.-Indian Nuclear Deal: An Unequal Colonial Treaty," MRZine, 12 August 2008)

Communists and other leftists in India are opposed to this deal. Often at odds with one another over economic policy -- Maoists and other leftists are rightly critical of the CPI(M)'s neoliberalism, most clearly expressed in its embrace of Special Economic Zones -- they probably have more in common with one another on this issue than any other.

Can the Indian Left veto the Indo-US nuclear deal and get India again on a path toward its own national development and regional security, based on the ideals -- Swaraj, Swadeshi, Satyagraha -- that inspired the Indians toward independence? If not, "China has told Pakistan it is ready to join a gas pipeline project to import Iranian gas if India decides not to be part of the multi-billion dollar venture" (PTI, "China Ready to Join Tri-nation Gas Project If India Opts Out," The Hindu 25 March 2008).

This Is What Liberal Democracy Looks Like

This is what liberal democracy -- whose Third World poster child Washington has made "Shining India," as New Delhi broke ranks with the Non-Aligned Movement and sold out Iran -- looks like: "Kidney Thefts Shock India" (Amelia Gentleman, New York Times, 30 January 2008). The rich get richer, the poor poorer, and the rich literally live off the poor.

La izquierda en crisis

La izquierda en crisis

Por Yoshie Furuhashi
Traducción Néstor Gorojovsky

Tanto las respuestas al debate Robert Brenner-Sam Gindin (7 de diciembre de 2007) como el debate en sí mismo me hacen pensar nuevamente que los izquierdistas deberían olvidarse de la remanida pregunta sobre si el capitalismo está en crisis, y hacerse otras preguntas.

El capitalismo, como modo de producción, jamás entrará en crisis a nivel planetario. Siempre hay tendencias económicas globales, y a veces algunas golpean negativamente a las tasas de ganancia, pero hay diferencias dramáticas en el modo en que impactan en los diversos países; el impacto depende de sus economías políticas, sus estructuras sociales, y (lo más importante) de sus condiciones culturales (que son las únicas sobre las cuales en este momento pueden intervenir los izquierdistas, hasta cierto punto al menos, antes incluso de encontrarse en condiciones de cambiar la economía política y la estructura social de un país determinado).

El capitalismo siempre está cambiando, pero hay períodos durante los cuales los cambios son más profundos y marcan la transición de un régimen de acumulación a otro; se pasa entonces de viejas estructuras políticas nacionales e internacionales que eran funcionales al viejo régimen a otras, nacionales e internacionales, que se ajustan mejor al nuevo régimen. La Segunda Guerra Mundial hizo posible la hegemonía estadounidense que puso fin a la era de las guerras interimperialistas: fue uno de esos pasajes. El fin de la expansión de posguerra fue otro. Quizás hoy nos encontremos ante otro pasaje, marcado por la posibilidad del fin de la hegemonía del dólar, que está asomando en el horizonte.

En cada transición se ofrecen aperturas políticas a las clases populares. La pregunta está en saber si están motivadas y organizadas de modo de aprovecharlas. Sobre este asunto crucial, Brenner y Gindin están de acuerdo: esté o no en crisis el capitalismo, lo seguro es que lo están los izquierdistas, en especial los del Norte; en buena medida debido al problema innegable de que los trabajadores del Norte, sobre todo en los EEUU, están cada vez más atomizados, y en una medida no menor debido a la ausencia de una alternativa sistémica¹ al capitalismo que inspire al pueblo y consiga su lealtad.

Cuando el pueblo no está organizado ni motivado para aprovechar las aperturas, las clases dominantes lo hacen, y establecen un nuevo régimen de acumulación.

Y no siempre que los pueblos están motivados y organizados lo están por fuerzas e ideas originados en la tradición marxista.² "En realidad, y al menos por ahora, Marx ha cedido el escenario de la historia a Mahoma y el Espíritu Santo. Si Dios murió en las ciudades de la revolución industrial, se ha vuelto a poner de pie en las ciudades postindustriales del mundo en desarrollo", declara Mike Davis ("Planet of Slums," New Left Review 26, Marzo-Abril 2004).

Aijaz Ajmad reconoce el mismo fenómeno, y agrega:

El mundo secular tiene que ser justo por partida doble: tiene que serlo según los términos que definió para sí mismo, y también para defenderlo de la afirmación de que Dios hubiera ofrecido mejor justicia. Dicho de otro modo, tiene que contener suficiente justicia como para que no haga falta invocar la justicia de Dios contra la injusticia de los no creyentes. ("Islam, Islamism and the West," Socialist Register 2008)

Pero, ¿cómo? Randhir Singh aclara lo que hay que hacer en mejores términos que Davis y Ajmad: "negociar mejor las transacciones inevitables entre desarrollo económico y justicia social, entre requerimientos de productividad y eficiencia, por un lado, y por el otro sustentabilidad ambiental y calidad de vida, que no son reducibles a progreso material o crecimiento económico" ("Future of Socialism," MRZine, 29 de diciembre de 2007). Pero está muy lejos de ser evidente por sí mismo, y para los religiosos está más lejos que para nadie, que los izquierdistas seculares puedan negociar mejor esas transacciones -- así como otra, la que se da entre libertad y seguridad -- que aquellos que "invocan la justicia de Dios contra la injusticia de los no creyentes", dada la experiencia del socialismo de Estado del siglo XX y los gobiernos de quienes se autoidentifican como socialistas u otros izquierdistas seculares que existen hoy.

Así que la crisis de la izquierda secular continuará. Reconocerla como un problema más urgente que el de si hoy el capitalismo es dinámico o se ha estancado es el primer paso hacia su superación.

1 La idea de "socialismo del siglo XXI" por la que se combate en Venezuela, Ecuador y Bolivia, aún está en su infancia y es hoy más una alternativa a la hegemonía estadounidense y al régimen neoliberal de acumulación que una alternativa al captialismo como tal, y las fuerzas que han llevado al poder a Hugo Chávez, Rafael Correa y Evo Morales (y allí los mantienen) se componen de clases y corrientes políticas contradictorias.

2 Concientemente, al menos. Pero la tradición marxista ha dejado marcas indelebles en todas las fuerzas de las clases populares, incluso las que la han rechazado expresamente.

A pesar de la moda de compararlo con los movimientos políticos de la extrema derecha, la mejor definición del islamismo sería "islamo-leninismo". Si bien el leninismo es un movimiento secular que niega su origen religioso y el islamismo es un movimiento que se reconoce religioso mientras suprime su deuda con el pensamiento secular, el pensamiento escatológico es igualmente central para ambos. (John Gray, "Faith in Reason: Secular Fantasies of a Godless Age," Harper's Magazine, Enero 2008, p. 88)

Haría un comentario a la observación de Gray: se debería reservar el término "islamo-leninistas" para aquellos islámicos que, como los de Irán, Hizballah y Jamas, pueden construir organizaciones de masas de las clases populares en función de sus propios proyectos nacionales de inflexión populista y antiimperialista, que no hay que confundir, por ejemplo, con el islamismo de las células terroristas al estilo de Al-Qaeda.

Left in Crisis

Responses to the Robert Brenner-Sam Gindin debate (7 December 2007), as well as the debate itself, make me think, yet again, that it would be better for leftists to drop the oft-asked question -- "Is capitalism in crisis?" -- and ask different questions.

Capitalism as a mode of production will never be in crisis on the global scale. There are always global economic trends, some of which negatively impact profit rates sometimes, but their impacts differ dramatically from one nation to another, depending on their political economies, social structures, and (most importantly) cultural conditions (which alone are subject to leftists' interventions at least to a certain extent even before leftists find themselves in a position to change political economy and social structure on the national level).

Capitalism is always changing, but more profound changes happen during some periods than others, changes that amount to transition from one regime of accumulation to another regime, shifting from old national and inter-national political structures functional to the old regime to new national and inter-national ones that better fit the new regime. The emergence of US hegemony, made possible by the Second World War whose outcome ended the age of inter-imperialist wars, was one such shift; the end of the post-WW2 boom was another such shift; the possibility of the end of the dollar hegemony on the horizon today may be yet another shift.

Each transition presents popular classes with political openings. The question is whether popular classes are so organized and motivated to take advantage of them. It is on this crucial question that Brenner and Gindin agree: whether or not capitalism is in crisis, it is certain that leftists, especially leftists in the North, are, in large part due to the undeniable problem of increasing atomization of working people in the North, working people in the USA above all, and in no small part due to the absence of a systemic alternative¹ to capitalism that inspires people and commands their allegiance.

When people are neither organized nor motivated to take advantage of the openings, the ruling classes will, establishing a new regime of accumulation.

Even when and where people are organized and motivated, they are not necessarily organized and motivated by forces and ideas that come from the Marxist tradition.² "Indeed, for the moment at least, Marx has yielded the historical stage to Mohammed and the Holy Ghost. If God died in the cities of the industrial revolution, he has risen again in the postindustrial cities of the developing world," declares Mike Davis ("Planet of Slums," New Left Review 26, March-April 2004).

Recognizing the same phenomenon, Aijaz Ahmad says:

The secular world has to be just twice over: in terms of what it has defined for itself, and also to ward off the claim that God would have given better justice. That is to say, the secular world has to have enough justice in it for one not to have to constantly invoke God’s justice against the injustices of the profane. ("Islam, Islamism and the West," Socialist Register 2008)

But how? In more practical terms than Davis and Ahmad, Randhir Singh clarifies what is to be done: "better negotiate the necessary trade-offs between economic development and social justice, between requirements of productivity or efficiency and environmental sustainability or quality life which is not entirely a matter of material progress or economic growth" ("Future of Socialism," MRZine, 29 December 2007). And yet it is far from self-evident to all, the least of all to the religious, that secular leftists are better at negotiating the aforementioned trade-offs -- as well as another trade-off, that between liberty and security -- than those who "invoke God’s justice against the injustices of the profane," given the experience of state socialism of the 20th century and still existing governments led by self-identified socialists or other secular leftists.

The crisis of the secular Left will thus continue. Recognizing that as the more urgent problem than whether capitalism today is dynamic or stagnant is the first step toward overcoming it.

1 The idea of socialism of the 21st century, struggled over in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia, is still in its infancy, at present more an alternative to US hegemony and the neoliberal regime of accumulation than an alternative to capitalism as such, and forces that pushed and have kept Hugo Chávez, Rafael Correa, and Evo Morales in power are composed of contradictory classes and political currents.

2 At least consciously. The Marxist tradition, however, has left indelible marks upon all forces of popular classes, even those that have expressly rejected it:

[D]espite the fashion for comparing it with political movements of the far right, Islamism could more accurately be described as "Islamo-Leninism." If Leninism is a secular movement that denies its origins in religion, Islamism is an avowed religious movement that suppresses its debts to secular thinking; eschatological thinking is equally central to both. (John Gray, "Faith in Reason: Secular Fantasies of a Godless Age," Harper's Magazine, January 2008, p. 88)

I'd qualify Gray's remark: those who may be properly called "Islamo-Leninists" are those Islamists, such as the Islamists of Iran, Hizballah, and Hamas, who have the capacity to build mass organizations of popular classes for their own national projects inflected with populism and anti-imperialism, not to be confused, for instance, with terrorist cells of Al-Qaeda-type Islamism.

Update
Read it in Spanish: Yoshie Furuhashi, "La izquierda en crisis," Traducción Néstor Gorojovsky, Critical Montages, 6 de enero de 2008.

Future of Socialism

Take a look at Randhir Singh's "Future of Socialism" (MRZine, 29 December 2007). At 16,471 words, it's about ten times longer than a typical MRZine article, and it may be a little too long to read online, but there is much in it that is worthy of leftists' consideration.

The points that Singh emphasizes are the ones that are particularly important for our time: Marx's understanding of socialism as "a transition between capitalism and communism (not "as a social formation existing in its own right"), the value of difference and individualization (as opposed to the ideology of individualism), the need to put class politics in command (rather than remain a slave to the logic of capitalist development), Marx's criticism of "Russian capitalism admirers" (i.e., those who in effect make a defense of perpetual capitalist development out of some of Marx's statements).

One question that I have about Singh's article concerns this: "The 'actually existing socialism' -- which was not Marx's socialism whose possibility remains open -- has, of course, failed. But, surely, the 'actually existing capitalism' -- which is the only kind of capitalism possible -- has not been the success it is made out to be," says Singh. For "Marx's socialism" to be possible, however, it has to be attempted in the North, but, as Singh says, "Once available to capitalism for it to emerge, consolidate itself, and grow dominant, time is no longer so available to socialism," due to threats of climate change, and "as with 'underdevelopment', 'overdevelopment', too, poses its own unanticipated problems for the realisation of Marx project of socialism." That puts the possibility of "Marx's socialism" into question.

For people of the North to desire to try "Marx's socialism," they will have to value democracy and republicanism more than social wealth, for "Marx's socialism" will never make a majority of people of the North richer than they are. Will they ever?

America! America!

Listen to B Jayashree sing "American War Paar Da! (Check Out the American War!)"

Opium for the Masses

The US-led multinational empire holds up Shining India as an example of what liberal democracy can do for the Third World: "Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Bush today declare their resolve to transform the relationship between their countries and establish a global partnership. As leaders of nations committed to the values of human freedom, democracy and rule of law, the new relationship between India and the United States will promote stability, democracy, prosperity and peace throughout the world" ("Joint Statement Between President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh," 18 July 2005).

But liberal democracy in the Third World, for instance, lets 99.6% of its population who are in need of palliative care do without it, "spending their last days writhing in agony, wishing death would hurry":

Although opium was one of the chief exports of British India and the country still produces more for the legal morphine industry than any other country, few Indians benefit. They end up like millions of the world’s poor -- spending their last days writhing in agony, wishing death would hurry.

About 1.6 million Indians endure cancer pain each year. Because of tobacco and betel nut chewing, India leads the world in mouth and head tumors, and has high rates of lung, breast and cervical cancer. Tens of thousands also die in pain from AIDS, burns or accidents.

But only a tiny fraction -- Dr. [M. R.] Rajagopal ["India's 'father of palliative care'"] estimates 0.4 percent -- get relief.

Clinics dispensing morphine are so scarce that some patients live 500 miles from the nearest. Calcutta, a city of 14 million, has only one. (Donald G. McNeil, Jr., "In India, a Quest to Ease the Pain of the Dying," New York Times, 11 September 2007)

The world's largest democracy does have occasionally useful parliamentary Communists, and one of the things that they are reportedly good at is prescribing opium for the masses:

The exception is Kerala, where Dr. Rajagopal practices and about 80 percent of India’s palliative care is delivered. A small slice of the southwest coast, it is sort of India’s Massachusetts: it has a mere 3 percent of the population, but high literacy rates, responsive local leadership and a bent for bucking central government.

The state government allows any doctor with six weeks of training -- which Dr. Rajagopal provides -- to prescribe morphine. (McNeil, Jr., 11 September 2007)

Armenians, Dalai Lama, and Other Good News

Check this out: Neela Banerjee, "Armenian Issue Presents a Dilemma for U.S. Jews" (New York Times, 19 October 2007). The Armenian genocide resolution, alienating Turks from Washington and putting the ADL, the AJC, and Co. (who oppose it because "Israel’s relationship with Turkey is the second most important, after its relationship with the United States" in the words of ADL national director Abraham H. Foxman) in hot water, is a Democratic gift that just keeps giving. They should bring one up every year! Meanwhile, the Congress also gave Dalai Lama a Congressional Gold Medal, angering China: "Strong Protest Lodged over US Congress Award to Dalai Lama" (China Daily, 19 October 2007). Perfect. If only they could also call for an international tribunal of the killings of Anna Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko or do something equally foolish!

At the same time, Indian Communists are making themselves useful. On the front page of the Hindu today: "Left Parties Will Not Allow India to Be Junior Partner of U.S., Says Karat" (19 October 2007); and "Manmohan Rules Out Resignation" (19 October 2007), which means that the Indo-US nuclear deal is dead.

Non-Alignment in the 21st Century

Whether or not Iran can resist the US-led multinational empire depends a lot on whether it can gain and keep allies -- Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and so on -- and get other countries that are neither full members of the empire nor allies of Iran -- Russia, China, India, Turkey, etc. -- to resist economic and other sanctions on Iran as much as possible.¹

Iran should also continue to work on driving wedges between the USA on one hand and Japan and European states on the other hand, so the latter won't fully sign on to the US campaign to economically isolate Iran.

Conversely, the fall of Iran would embolden the empire and make it easier for it to intensify attacks on Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and others. Survival of Iran would weaken US hegemony further, a favorable outcome for all who are or may become Washington's targets.²

Condoleezza Rice claims that Non-Alignment "has lost its meaning":

. . . I know that there are some who still talk about non-alignment in foreign policy. But maybe that made sense during the Cold War when the world really was divided into rival camps. Now the question that I would ask is, as fellow democracies with so many interests and principles in common at a time when people of every culture, every race, and every religion are embracing political and economic liberty, what is the meaning of non-alignment?

It has lost its meaning. (Condoleezza Rice, "Remarks at the U.S.-India Business Council 32nd Anniversary 'Global India' Summit," U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Washington, DC, 27 June 2007)

Not true. Non-Alignment in the 21st Century means non-alignment with the US power elite, consciously building new military alliances (away from the NATO and other multilateral and bilateral military cooperation with the USA), financial networks (away from the dollar), cultural connections (away from the American media), and so on to roll back the empire.

1 InternetActivist.org has created a useful list of where other nations stand in their relations to Iran and the US campaign to isolate it: "So How Have the US/Israeli Efforts to Isolate Iran Fared around the World?" (27 September 2007).

2 Those leftists who try to isolate Iran from Latin socialist leaders are silly sectarians who have no mass following on the ground and care little about what will become of the Iranian people. The "Iranian Revolutionary Socialists' League," which says it is "highly critical of the Chavez government's extraordinarily close and fraternal relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran" in its open letter (17 September 2006), is a case in point.

The Last Mughal

Liberals in the Third World are like Zafar, as described by William Dalrymple (in his review of The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain by Nicholas B. Dirks and The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj by David Gilmour) and Tobin Harshaw (in his review of The Last Mughal by Dalrymple). Woe to the countries run by them.

Exactly 150 years ago, on September 14, 1857, at the height of the Great Uprising against the British in India, British forces attacked Delhi. They entered the besieged city through a breach in the walls near the Kashmiri Gate. Then they proceeded to massacre not just the combatants that were ranged against them -- their own rebellious infantrymen (or sepoys), supported by freelance Muslim jihadis armed with battle-axes -- but also the ordinary defenseless citizens of the old Mughal capital. In one muhalla (neighborhood) alone, Kucha Chelan, some 1,400 unarmed citizens of Delhi were cut down. "The orders went out to shoot every soul," recorded Edward Vibart:

It was literally murder.... I have seen many bloody and awful sights lately but such as I witnessed yesterday I pray I never see again. The women were all spared but their screams, on seeing their husbands and sons butchered, were most painful.... Heaven knows I feel no pity, but when some old grey bearded man is brought and shot before your very eyes, hard must be that heart that can look on with indifference....

Those city dwellers who survived the killing were driven out into the countryside to fend for themselves. Delhi, a sophisticated city of maybe half a million souls, was left an empty ruin. Though the Mughal imperial family had surrendered peacefully, most of the Emperor's sixteen sons were tried and hanged, while three were shot in cold blood, having first given up their arms, then been told to strip and hand over their jewels: "In 24 hours I disposed of the principal members of the house of Timur the Tartar," Captain William Hodson wrote to his sister. "I am not cruel, but I confess I did enjoy the opportunity of ridding the earth of these wretches."

The father of the princes was the Emperor Bahadur Shah II, known by his pen name, Zafar. Zafar was the last Mughal emperor, and the direct descendant of Genghis Khan and Timur, of Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan. He was born in 1775, when the British were still a relatively modest power in India, looking inward from three enclaves on the Indian shore. In his lifetime he had seen his own dynasty reduced to insignificance, while the East India Company transformed itself from a group of vulnerable traders into an aggressively expansionist military force. Captured soon after the fall of Delhi, Zafar was put on trial in his own palace and prosecuted as a rebel and traitor—despite the fact that the company had long acknowledged, even on its own seal, its legal status as the Emperor's vassal. The court sentenced him to be banished to Burma. There he died and was buried in an unmarked grave. The Emperor, a noted poet, lamented in one of his last lyrics:

My life now gives no ray of light,
I bring no solace to heart or eye;
Out of dust to dust again,
Of no use to anyone am I.
Delhi was once a paradise,
Where Love held sway and reigned;
But its charm lies ravished now
And only ruins remain.

The violent suppression of the Great Uprising of 1857 -- the largest anticolonial revolt against any European empire anywhere in the world in the entire course of the nineteenth century -- was a pivotal moment in the history of British imperialism in India. It marked the end of both the East India Company and the Mughal dynasty, the two principal forces that had shaped Indian history over the previous three hundred years, and replaced both with undisguised imperial rule by the British government.

Not long after Zafar's lifeless corpse had been tipped into its anonymous Burmese grave, Queen Victoria accepted the title "Empress of India" from Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, initiating a very different period of direct imperial rule. (William Dalrymple, "Plain Tales from British India," New York Review of Books 54.7, 26 April 2007)

By Central Asian standards, the 19th-century Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar II had some pretty impressive bloodlines. Put it this way: If the descendants of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan had held family reunions on the same summer Sunday, Zafar would have been expected to show up at each, lamb biryani in hand. Alas, Zafar -- King of Delhi, Refuge of the Inhabitants of the World, Generous and Affectionate Killer of the Degenerate Infidels (perhaps these sound better in Persian) -- was a case study in how even the finest thoroughbreds can beget an also-ran.

To be fair, the Islamic Mughal empire Zafar inherited in 1837 had been in steep decline since the death of Emperor Aurangzeb -- as pitiless a tyrant as ever had a wazir disembowled -- 130 years earlier. With no real power and a nearly bare treasury, Zafar turned inward: he was a skilled calligrapher, Sufi mystic, speaker of five languages and master of verse in two. Deep into the night, he oversaw drunken poetry competitions called mushairas.

While Zafar is the title character of "The Last Mughal," his life is just the thread along which William Dalrymple continues to explore a theme that has fascinated him for two decades: the utter collapse of relations between the British and the inhabitants of their Indian dominions. In his last book, the excellent "White Mughals," a doomed love affair between a British civil servant and an Indian noblewoman served as an allegory for broader social unraveling. Here he tackles the most obvious example, the Great Mutiny of 1857, in which hundreds of thousands of mostly Hindu soldiers turned murderously on their British officers and inexplicably made their feeble Muslim monarch the figurehead of Asia's first great anticolonial uprising.

Dalrymple excels at bringing grand historical events within contemporary understanding by documenting the way people went about their lives amid the maelstrom. His coup in researching "The Last Mughal" was his uncovering, deep in the National Archives of India, some 20,000 personal Persian and Urdu papers written by Delhi residents who survived the uprising.

Why had historians not used these papers before? As Dalrymple explains, what really happened doesn't fit any fashionable academic dogmas: "The stories that the collection contains allow the uprising to be seen not in terms of nationalism, imperialism, orientalism or other such abstractions, but instead as a human event of extraordinary, tragic and often capricious outcomes."

Dalrymple lets the characters tell their own tales: a 12-year-old Muslim nobleman who watched the defeated Indian mutineers and conquering British "vying with each other as to which should carry the day in pillage or robbery"; a functionary in Zafar's court with the wonderful title of "Keeper of the Dynastic Fish Standard of the Mughals"; and a poet who saw that the mutiny was only empowering the uneducated Indian soldiers to wipe out his humanist class, "as the moon is engulfed by the eclipse."

As for the British, Dalrymple focuses on a few whose emotional transformations are the most idiosyncratic: the gregarious son of a poisoned British official is driven to homicidal rage in the battle to retake Delhi; the editor of the city's English-language daily becomes the leading voice in the movement to raze the capital; the wife of a senior British officer gives birth during her harrowing escape yet, almost alone among the participants, retains her sanity and humanity.

Sanity, alas, is not Zafar's strong suit, at least not by the time he flees the city, only to dither on its outskirts and take refuge in the tomb of an ancestor, Humayun. This is fitting, as Humayun, the second Mughal emperor, was also more suited to poetry than politics and also lost his throne, regaining it just in time to pass it along to his remarkable son Akbar in 1556.

No such fortune awaited Zafar: he was arrested, given a kangaroo trial and exiled to Burma. What blame does he deserve for the bloody fiasco? Dalrymple feels it is "difficult to see what more Zafar could have done," but the details he has so painstakingly assembled tend to undermine such sympathies.

Consider two events in the mutiny's first week. On May 14, upset that some Indian soldiers were defiling a beloved garden, he began "refusing audience to all." This was a threat to withdraw his imprimatur from their rebellion, and the mutineers moved on. Two days later, when the rebels discovered 52 Europeans Zafar had hidden in the palace, the emperor "wept and besought the mutineers not to take the lives of helpless women and children," but stepped aside as the executioners went to work.

At the pivotal moment of his doomed reign, Zafar concentrated not on his role as a leader of men or on the sparing of innocent lives, but rather on his flowers. Deep in their tombs, one suspects, Humayun sympathized, Aurangzeb scoffed and Genghis Khan wept silent tears. (Tobin Harshaw, "King of Delhi," New York Times, 22 April 2007)

Global Business in Iran

Take a look at the American Enterprise Institute's interactive map of "Global Business in Iran": <www.aei.org/IranInteractive/>.  Impressions that many have to the contrary, Russian business transactions with Iran are apparently in the same league as those of Canadian and American businesses.  Russia's interests in Iran are more geopolitical than economic.

After looking at the map, click on "Analysis," and then click on "Bilateral Trade Ranking, by $ Amount of Business Transactions, 2000-Present."  The main business partners with Iran are China (44.45% of the total)^* and India (34.97% of the total), which are way ahead of France, Germany, and Italy.

If the AEI's research is accurate, whether Iran can survive economic sanctions depends a lot on China and India.

* See, also, Paulo Prada and Betsy McKay, "Trading Outcry Intensifies: Firms Face More Calls to Cut Ties With Censured Nations," Wall Street Journal 27 March 2007.

Fanaa and Kashmir; Aamir Khan, Narmada, and the BJP

Watch Fanaa if it comes to a theater near you, out of solidarity with Aamir Khan if nothing else.

Apparently, the BJP is angered by Khan, the handsome star of Fanaa (who plays Rehan Qadri, a Kashmiri boy who is serving in the Indian military but secretly working for the Kashmiri independence movement -- Rehan gets betrayed and killed by his love Zooni, a Kashmiri girl who is "a patriotic Indian," choosing "her country" over her man), because he supported the anti-Narmada Dam campaign; and the party wants to ban it in Gujarat.

• Anti-Narmada dam agitators, sitting on Dharna and hunger strike at the Jantar Mantar Road in New Delhi for past 20 days demanding that the height of the dam not be raised, got a shot in the arm when leading film actor Aamir Khan paid them a visit on Friday.
  
  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  
  Aamir listened to the grievances of the agitators with patience but did not utter a word. Clad in black T-shirt and jeans, the film actor also visited the 1984 Bhopal gas victims who have been demonstrating for release of relief fund.
  
  "Last week when I was in Delhi, I passed by Jantar Mantar and was told about the two campaigns. I decided to come back and learn more about their problems," he later told reporters.
  
  Khan said he was pained upon learning of the sufferings of the dam displacees. "I do not know about the technicalities involved in raising the height of the dam. What I do know is that farmers have been displaced from their land and they have lost their livelihood. Till the people who have already been displaced by the dam are not rehabilitated, the height of the dam should not be raised." (Onkar Singh, "Aamir Lends Support to Narmada Campaign," Rediff, 14 April 2006)


• Aamir Khan addressed a press conference outside his home in Khar, north Mumbai, saying he will not apologise about his comments on the Narmada issue.
  
  "I am saying exactly what the Supreme Court has said. I only asked for rehabilitation of poor farmers. I never spoke against the construction of the dam. I will not apologise for my comments on the issue," he says. (Rediff Entertainment Bureau, "Aamir on Narmada: I Won't Apologise," Rediff 25 May 2006)


• Describing the virtual ban on screening Fanaa in Gujarat as an indication of "extreme intolerance" displayed by the ruling party and its organisations in Gujarat to any dissent, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) demanded that the Modi Government uphold the law of the land.
  
  In a statement, the party Polit Bureau said the reported assurance by Chief Minister Narendra Modi of police protection to cinemas showing the film was an eye-wash as it was under his leadership that front organisations of the Sangh combine were threatening cinema owners against showing the film.
  
  The ire of the protesters was against the solidarity expressed by actor Aamir Khan with the demand for rehabilitation of thousands of tribals and peasant families displaced by the Narmada project. ("CPI(M) Flays Ban on Fanaa in Gujarat," The Hindu, 26 May 2006)


• The controversial Aamir Khan film Fanaa was released in Gujarat on Tuesday in the presence of a strong police contingent in a single cinema owned by a high-profile Congress family. (Manas Dasgupta, "Fanaa Released in Gujarat amid Security," The Hindu, 7 June 2006)

Hazaaron Khwaishen Aisi

Rohan Shivkumar of Anarchitect offers a tantalizing glimpse of a new Indian film: Hazaaron Khwaishen Aisi (Dir. Sudhir Mishra, 2003).

The film's title comes from a ghazal by Ghalib:

A thousand desires like these, each worth dying for
Many are filled, and yet as many remain.

Read Maithili Rao's review below, and you will not want to miss the film if it comes to a screen near you.

Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi is an unconventional triangle with no single hero dominating the narrative. It is an open-ended graph of shifting relationships between three friends, two men and a woman, and not a rigidly enclosed triangle of formulaic romance. Two abiding themes -- the play with time and the changing psychology of people over a given time -- surface in practically every film [Sudhir] Mishra has made and they come together with near perfection in Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi. He uses his Masters in Psychology to flesh out characters conceived in the round, a novelistic trait that film-makers so often overlook in the pursuit of the perfect image for its own sake.

So, it is time to meet the three protagonists as they graduate from a prestigious Delhi college and get inextricably drawn into their closely observed lives. Siddharth Tyabji (Kay Kay) is the emblematic representative of secular elitism: obviously the son of liberal Leftists who married across the communal divide. His dilemma is typical of his class, afflicted by the peculiar predicament of bearing a Muslim surname but unable to speak good Urdu. No one is more aware of this existential irony than Siddharth himself. He is the idealist looking for a cause in the ideological vacuum of a Delhi polluted by politicking. This is a Delhi society where class and education count more than ethnicity and language.

Geeta Rao (Chitrangada Singh) is the brilliant daughter of an eminent scientist, who, for all his eminence, clings to his South Indian conservative ways. Geeta has this innate ability to live easily in many worlds, a seeming epitome of the high-achieving modern woman. From the Telugu-speaking orthodox home complete with an extended family to the trendy set she hangs out with, and then on to Oxford for higher studies and finally to a strife-worn Bihar village... she traverses them all in the course of an eventful life, driven by her singular passion: Siddharth.

If Siddharth is the love of Geeta's life, Siddharth is in love with his great cause: bringing revolution to the parched land and disenfranchised peasants of Bihar. He gives up the cultured ease of Delhi to join the naxalites. His gentle, scholarly father watches helplessly -- he cannot approve but neither can he forbid, for he understands Siddharth's commitment to his chosen cause for which he is willing to pay any price.

Watching this drama from the sidelines is Vikram Malhotra (Shiny Ahuja). If his friends inhabit a rarefied realm of passionate idealism, Vikram is the point of identification. He is himself and yet, everyman. He is the typical small-town boy, desperate to acquire the cosmopolitan sheen that comes so naturally to the elegant Geeta and sophisticated Siddharth. Vikram is in a hurry to distance himself from his father's legacy -- a small-time, small-town politician who retains his idealism for which the son has nothing but contempt.

But watching the political process at first hand has given Vikram an invaluable lesson: how to spot, then court and win the politico and the party that is calling the shots at the moment, but without burning his bridges to previous denizens of the corridors of power. From artful survivor to smooth operator with high connections to independent purveyor of power is the fascinatingly familiar trajectory that Vikram's career takes. He knows everybody and apparently, everybody knows him too -- the more important part of the power transaction. Vikram's transformation from uncertain small-time guy to the assured, if oily, power-player, is wryly funny and precise in finding the satirical target.

For all his pragmatic survival skills that make him somebody over the years, Vikram is desperately in love with Geeta. And how this love stays with him -- even after Geeta returns from Oxford, becomes a journalist and endures an unhappy marriage and finally, throws in her lot with Siddharth, a man hunted by the police -- is Vikram's path to redemption. He is jealous of Siddharth at one level, specially when he finds out that Geeta has been using her journalistic cover to meet the fugitive activist and has an off-and-on affair with him. At another level, Vikram has a reluctant admiration for a man who has the courage of his convictions. When it comes to the crunch and Siddharth's life is in imminent danger, it is Vikram who uses his connections and comes to the aid of his one-time classmate and rival. (Maithili Rao "Mapping a Political Era," Frontline 22.5 26 Feb. -11 Mar. 2005)

Mishra, who has a banner of Che Guevara in his living room, says: "He [Che] had a dream, and every dream which talks of a better future inspires me" (qtd. in Mohammed Wajihuddin, "Join the Fight," Screen 20 Apr. 2005).