"Sometimes — quite often — the same people who are capable of a radical questioning of, say, economic neo-liberalism or the role of the state, are deeply conservative socially — about women, marriage, sexuality, our so-called ‘family values’ — sometimes they’re so doctrinaire that you don’t know where the establishment stops and the resistance begins. For example, how many Gandhian/Maoist/ Marxist Brahmins or upper caste Hindus would be happy if their children married Dalits or Muslims, or declared themselves to be gay? Quite often, the people whose side you’re on, politically, have absolutely no place for a person like you in their social, cultural or religious imagination. That’s a knotty problem… politically radical people can come at you with the most breathtakingly conservative social views and make nonsense of the way in which you have ordered your world and your way of thinking about it… and you have to find a way of accommodating these contradictions within your worldview."
- Arundhati Roy, in a 2005 interview with Tehelka
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
1.9.14
Seams
29.12.12
On Being a Woman and 'Keeping Safe' in Delhi
My city is not mine. I have always felt this, but only realised it
fully last week, when, in the aftermath of the unspeakably brutal rape
of a 23-year-old woman by six men, I began talking to women around me
about safety. This is not a new subject. I have grown up and into an
understanding that this city is hostile towards me, and that everything
possible must be done to keep me safe.
My safety, my mother tells me, has always been a primary concern for her. No men in the house. A maid supervising the daily carpool to school. Boarding school and college abroad. Having spent her youth getting pawed by men in DTC buses, once only narrowly escaping an acid attack, she was determined to shield me from what she knew to be a harsh city for women. Every effort was made, every resource utilised to ensure I could circumvent the hazards of this city and be the independent person I was already becoming—elsewhere.
I now understand that that alternative would have been to stay here, in the city but removed from it, skirting its edges, tunneling through it, being smuggled in a tightly regulated bubble between illusory safe spaces—ones with gates, or guards, or a cover charge—like so many young women I know whose parents can afford to keep them safe, to hold them apart from the city.
Though irreproachable in its intent, the tragedy of this approach, as my mother puts it, is that you can’t give your child the confidence to operate in the world. Indeed, our collective fear of the city transforms it into an adversary, with whom we interact tentatively and only when necessary, careful not to do anything to provoke its ire.
We abide by a hallowed yet vague code of conduct: don’t stay out after dark, don’t wear anything that shows off your legs, don’t trust strangers, especially men, don’t stand out in a crowd. We negotiate our own curfews: no autorickshaws after 8, no metro after 10, no driving alone after 11. We permit ourselves small conditional freedoms: if you must go out, go in a group with boys, go to someone’s house, go only to this or that safe neighbourhood, take a driver.
One or another of our well-wishers arms us with a laundry-list of good faith measures: wear a dupatta, take my Swiss-army knife, here’s a bottle of pepper spray, why don’t you buy a padlock, a metal torch, a sharp umbrella—just carry it, please, for my peace of mind. Pin-up your bangs. Wear leggings under your skirt. Don’t get into an auto with two men in the front seat. Text me the cab’s licence plate number. Call me when you leave the restaurant, and then again when you get into the car. Have someone walk you from the restaurant to your car. If you’re driving yourself to a movie at night, don’t go to one in a mall. Why would you take an auto when I can pick you up? Why would you take a bus when we have a car for you? Why would you drive when we have a driver? What if a bunch of cars corners you and forces you to stop? Never get out of your car if someone hits it. Don’t slow down for male cops.
And in the news: a buffet of nightmares. We are fed fear all our lives, and, as adults, are expert navigators of an obstacle course of terrors. Being safe in this city is a full-time job, but the only skills you develop doing it are self-censorship and avoidance. A whole generation of women brought up in hiding, never learning to swim for fear of drowning. Who do we become, in all this? Fugiti- ves from our own city and our own lives, expending all our energies and using all our resources to avoid getting raped.
And yet every woman I talk to knows that there is no foolproof way to avoid it. I speak to a 21-year-old who has moved to Delhi from another city where also she lived alone for several years, mastering the art of keeping a low profile. She tells me she doesn’t feel too afraid anymore, perhaps because she is accustomed to constant vigilance, or because she has reached the end of her tether.
“I’ve lost my hang-ups. If I’m late, I’m late. I’ve done my part. I try to be respectful of the society that we live in, but there’s only so much I can do. Whether it’s apathy or stupidity, I’ve just realised that there’s really nothing you can do to be safe. If I have to be raped, it’ll happen. Pepper spray won’t help, being with a man won’t help, the police won’t help, society won’t kick in, humanity won’t kick in, protests will happen and fizzle. As women, we’ve exhausted all possibilities. And if I still can’t go out at night, then screw it.”
The sentiment is echoed by other women, fed up of the things they’ve been told they must do to keep safe. A 25-year-old who grew up in a single-parent household finds it irritating that she even has to think about things like what she wears and how she travels. “I decided I wasn’t going to stop myself from doing things just because it was unsafe.”
She speaks of repeated rows with her mother over her comings and goings. Regretful of the pain and anxiety she has had to cause her mother, she says it was a conscious trade-off with the independence and fearlessness she insisted on cultivating in herself.
“I’ve done a lot of stupid shit consciously. Nothing bad has happened, and that’s not true for everyone, but it’s made me feel confident. Now I don’t feel helpless in the city.”
It irritated her to live in fear, especially when, in the course of her work on human rights, sexual violence and public health, she met people who had been through much worse, and those who were taking greater risks every day of their lives. She is clear her risks are not the same as theirs. “I am in a privileged position. I choose where I go, when I go. It’s when you have to do something every day against your will that it becomes a problem. Otherwise it’s all a lark.”
When I listen to her, I think of all the times I’ve heard the question, “Why do you want to take an unnecessary risk?” I suppose that depends on what you understand as being necessary, and what it is you’re calling a risk. It is not necessary that my friend take the bus home at night, in that her circumstances do not constrain her to only that option. This lack of constraint is what she calls her privilege. But, perhaps, if we live in a city where something as basic as public transport is so unsafe as to be seen as a compulsion, a last resort, a risk, it is another kind of necessity that motivates her to do it anyway—the necessity of conscience, of asserting control over her choices, of carving out a place in public space.
My friend constructs her privilege as something that enables her to take such a necessary risk—“I know if something happens, I will have support”—rather than something that excuses her from having to take it. This is a crucial difference. By deploying her privilege to choose to do something considered risky, like taking a bus at night, she has transformed that action from a compulsion to an empowered choice.
Another woman, 24 years old, understands that privilege is no guarantee of protection. She narrates to me my own experience of studying abroad, becoming convinced of the centrality of public transport to city life, then coming home and having to argue with her parents about taking an autorickshaw. At first it was a matter of embarrassment and convenience—it was ridiculous to have to rely on your parents’ car and driver—but eventually, she realised that a car and driver are no guarantee of safety in the first place.
Soon after she moved back to the city, she was stopped by cops in outer Gurgaon in the middle of the night for no reason, with two younger girls in the car. While her driver sat paralysed with fear, she negotiated the release of her car’s insurance and registration papers. A friend of hers was in a car with friends when they accidentally brushed past a man in a narrow street, and found themselves watching terrified as their driver and the boy in the front seat were pulled out and thrashed.
“There are degrees of safety,” she says, “but by and large, anything can happen anywhere. You could lull yourself into a sense of security. But if something’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. I value my independence. I want to do what I want, whenever I want. I’m not going to let a threat of violence deter me from that.”
It is this refusal to let fear stop their lives that is motivating so many women I know to resist their unnatural coddling, jump their security detail, and confront the spectre of the city. Each of them has negotiated, and is continually negotiating her individual balance between prudence and principle. But simply being terrified is no longer an option. “It’s not that you don’t feel scared. But when you do, you just tell yourself to shut up. You have to push yourself,” my bus-travelling friend says, push yourself against your fear, even of getting raped.
Those talking about rape being the worst thing that can happen to a person, she says, are merely reinforcing its power as an act of subjugation. Why is rape any worse than a brutal beating, she asks. Because we have subscribed to the patriarchal carp about rape being a violation of honour, a destruction of identity, an “annihilation of a human being” as one young protestor screamed into a TV camera last weekend on Raisina Hill.
Growing up with the threat of such an annihilation hanging over our heads, we are intimidated to cede our stake in our city, our slice of public space, ostensibly in favour of a flimsy sense of security. Our parents, terrified too, yell at us, lock us up, try to give us the best protection money can buy, but a sense of safety cannot be bought, it must be fought for, and the fight is not merely against rapists, or indifferent police, or weak government, but also against ourselves and our inherited fears.
That my friend takes the bus is not a gesture of stupidity. It is a considered act of bravery. It is a challenge, to the world and to herself, of a person who no longer wishes to remain in the grip of her fear. You could tell her there is reason to fear. She will tell you she has no right to be afraid in a world where she is automatically shielded from so many worse fates. You could tell here it is unrealistic to act on her ideals, but what she is actually doing is acting out her ideal. Counterarguments are irrelevant. “You get to a point where you just have to live.” How are you going to talk her out of that?
This is why so many women have responded to the rape of a 23-year-old girl from Dehradun not by battening down the hatches and hiding, but by barrelling into the street to reclaim the space that was denied her. We cast our bodies into the city like ballots, affirmative votes for our place in it, protests against the default monopoly of men over space. This is my city, we are saying, and I am here. I am here to take up space, I am here to reassure the next woman she can be here, I am here to provide with my presence one more defiant answer to the question “What do you think you’re doing here?” I am here to alter this city’s character, I am here to combat the normalcy of my absence, I am here as an argument against fear. Gawp, glare, gossip, but get used to it, I am here.
[Published in OPEN Magazine]
My safety, my mother tells me, has always been a primary concern for her. No men in the house. A maid supervising the daily carpool to school. Boarding school and college abroad. Having spent her youth getting pawed by men in DTC buses, once only narrowly escaping an acid attack, she was determined to shield me from what she knew to be a harsh city for women. Every effort was made, every resource utilised to ensure I could circumvent the hazards of this city and be the independent person I was already becoming—elsewhere.
I now understand that that alternative would have been to stay here, in the city but removed from it, skirting its edges, tunneling through it, being smuggled in a tightly regulated bubble between illusory safe spaces—ones with gates, or guards, or a cover charge—like so many young women I know whose parents can afford to keep them safe, to hold them apart from the city.
Though irreproachable in its intent, the tragedy of this approach, as my mother puts it, is that you can’t give your child the confidence to operate in the world. Indeed, our collective fear of the city transforms it into an adversary, with whom we interact tentatively and only when necessary, careful not to do anything to provoke its ire.
We abide by a hallowed yet vague code of conduct: don’t stay out after dark, don’t wear anything that shows off your legs, don’t trust strangers, especially men, don’t stand out in a crowd. We negotiate our own curfews: no autorickshaws after 8, no metro after 10, no driving alone after 11. We permit ourselves small conditional freedoms: if you must go out, go in a group with boys, go to someone’s house, go only to this or that safe neighbourhood, take a driver.
One or another of our well-wishers arms us with a laundry-list of good faith measures: wear a dupatta, take my Swiss-army knife, here’s a bottle of pepper spray, why don’t you buy a padlock, a metal torch, a sharp umbrella—just carry it, please, for my peace of mind. Pin-up your bangs. Wear leggings under your skirt. Don’t get into an auto with two men in the front seat. Text me the cab’s licence plate number. Call me when you leave the restaurant, and then again when you get into the car. Have someone walk you from the restaurant to your car. If you’re driving yourself to a movie at night, don’t go to one in a mall. Why would you take an auto when I can pick you up? Why would you take a bus when we have a car for you? Why would you drive when we have a driver? What if a bunch of cars corners you and forces you to stop? Never get out of your car if someone hits it. Don’t slow down for male cops.
And in the news: a buffet of nightmares. We are fed fear all our lives, and, as adults, are expert navigators of an obstacle course of terrors. Being safe in this city is a full-time job, but the only skills you develop doing it are self-censorship and avoidance. A whole generation of women brought up in hiding, never learning to swim for fear of drowning. Who do we become, in all this? Fugiti- ves from our own city and our own lives, expending all our energies and using all our resources to avoid getting raped.
And yet every woman I talk to knows that there is no foolproof way to avoid it. I speak to a 21-year-old who has moved to Delhi from another city where also she lived alone for several years, mastering the art of keeping a low profile. She tells me she doesn’t feel too afraid anymore, perhaps because she is accustomed to constant vigilance, or because she has reached the end of her tether.
“I’ve lost my hang-ups. If I’m late, I’m late. I’ve done my part. I try to be respectful of the society that we live in, but there’s only so much I can do. Whether it’s apathy or stupidity, I’ve just realised that there’s really nothing you can do to be safe. If I have to be raped, it’ll happen. Pepper spray won’t help, being with a man won’t help, the police won’t help, society won’t kick in, humanity won’t kick in, protests will happen and fizzle. As women, we’ve exhausted all possibilities. And if I still can’t go out at night, then screw it.”
The sentiment is echoed by other women, fed up of the things they’ve been told they must do to keep safe. A 25-year-old who grew up in a single-parent household finds it irritating that she even has to think about things like what she wears and how she travels. “I decided I wasn’t going to stop myself from doing things just because it was unsafe.”
She speaks of repeated rows with her mother over her comings and goings. Regretful of the pain and anxiety she has had to cause her mother, she says it was a conscious trade-off with the independence and fearlessness she insisted on cultivating in herself.
“I’ve done a lot of stupid shit consciously. Nothing bad has happened, and that’s not true for everyone, but it’s made me feel confident. Now I don’t feel helpless in the city.”
It irritated her to live in fear, especially when, in the course of her work on human rights, sexual violence and public health, she met people who had been through much worse, and those who were taking greater risks every day of their lives. She is clear her risks are not the same as theirs. “I am in a privileged position. I choose where I go, when I go. It’s when you have to do something every day against your will that it becomes a problem. Otherwise it’s all a lark.”
When I listen to her, I think of all the times I’ve heard the question, “Why do you want to take an unnecessary risk?” I suppose that depends on what you understand as being necessary, and what it is you’re calling a risk. It is not necessary that my friend take the bus home at night, in that her circumstances do not constrain her to only that option. This lack of constraint is what she calls her privilege. But, perhaps, if we live in a city where something as basic as public transport is so unsafe as to be seen as a compulsion, a last resort, a risk, it is another kind of necessity that motivates her to do it anyway—the necessity of conscience, of asserting control over her choices, of carving out a place in public space.
My friend constructs her privilege as something that enables her to take such a necessary risk—“I know if something happens, I will have support”—rather than something that excuses her from having to take it. This is a crucial difference. By deploying her privilege to choose to do something considered risky, like taking a bus at night, she has transformed that action from a compulsion to an empowered choice.
Another woman, 24 years old, understands that privilege is no guarantee of protection. She narrates to me my own experience of studying abroad, becoming convinced of the centrality of public transport to city life, then coming home and having to argue with her parents about taking an autorickshaw. At first it was a matter of embarrassment and convenience—it was ridiculous to have to rely on your parents’ car and driver—but eventually, she realised that a car and driver are no guarantee of safety in the first place.
Soon after she moved back to the city, she was stopped by cops in outer Gurgaon in the middle of the night for no reason, with two younger girls in the car. While her driver sat paralysed with fear, she negotiated the release of her car’s insurance and registration papers. A friend of hers was in a car with friends when they accidentally brushed past a man in a narrow street, and found themselves watching terrified as their driver and the boy in the front seat were pulled out and thrashed.
“There are degrees of safety,” she says, “but by and large, anything can happen anywhere. You could lull yourself into a sense of security. But if something’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. I value my independence. I want to do what I want, whenever I want. I’m not going to let a threat of violence deter me from that.”
It is this refusal to let fear stop their lives that is motivating so many women I know to resist their unnatural coddling, jump their security detail, and confront the spectre of the city. Each of them has negotiated, and is continually negotiating her individual balance between prudence and principle. But simply being terrified is no longer an option. “It’s not that you don’t feel scared. But when you do, you just tell yourself to shut up. You have to push yourself,” my bus-travelling friend says, push yourself against your fear, even of getting raped.
Those talking about rape being the worst thing that can happen to a person, she says, are merely reinforcing its power as an act of subjugation. Why is rape any worse than a brutal beating, she asks. Because we have subscribed to the patriarchal carp about rape being a violation of honour, a destruction of identity, an “annihilation of a human being” as one young protestor screamed into a TV camera last weekend on Raisina Hill.
Growing up with the threat of such an annihilation hanging over our heads, we are intimidated to cede our stake in our city, our slice of public space, ostensibly in favour of a flimsy sense of security. Our parents, terrified too, yell at us, lock us up, try to give us the best protection money can buy, but a sense of safety cannot be bought, it must be fought for, and the fight is not merely against rapists, or indifferent police, or weak government, but also against ourselves and our inherited fears.
That my friend takes the bus is not a gesture of stupidity. It is a considered act of bravery. It is a challenge, to the world and to herself, of a person who no longer wishes to remain in the grip of her fear. You could tell her there is reason to fear. She will tell you she has no right to be afraid in a world where she is automatically shielded from so many worse fates. You could tell here it is unrealistic to act on her ideals, but what she is actually doing is acting out her ideal. Counterarguments are irrelevant. “You get to a point where you just have to live.” How are you going to talk her out of that?
This is why so many women have responded to the rape of a 23-year-old girl from Dehradun not by battening down the hatches and hiding, but by barrelling into the street to reclaim the space that was denied her. We cast our bodies into the city like ballots, affirmative votes for our place in it, protests against the default monopoly of men over space. This is my city, we are saying, and I am here. I am here to take up space, I am here to reassure the next woman she can be here, I am here to provide with my presence one more defiant answer to the question “What do you think you’re doing here?” I am here to alter this city’s character, I am here to combat the normalcy of my absence, I am here as an argument against fear. Gawp, glare, gossip, but get used to it, I am here.
[Published in OPEN Magazine]
14.3.11
Heart over History
Oh man. Out of Africa has broken my heart clean open.Which is weird because my first reactions to colonial-era films are usually always political. I have no idea why this one should escape. I think I should feel terrible, or second guess how I do feel, or protest, somehow.
But I suppose once you get used to a certain narrative of history, you learn to feel between the lines. Something other than discomfort. Something other than rage. Something other than what is now so obvious to me, it has become almost invisible. The fibs are transparent, glass-like: tangible, yet uninterfering.
***
(April 8)
On another level entirely, this film is so resonant it scares the pants off me. Does someone really need to die in order to facilitate a nostalgic resolution and a successful writing career?
3.3.11
Be cool, man, the world's watching.
There is nothing quite so disheartening as having to persuade your fellow countrymen to not be such complete nutjobs.
[I'm sure folks with American passports can agree.]
[I'm sure folks with American passports can agree.]
19.2.11
Revealing
Here's what I wrote in response to a rightfully angry, yet slightly off-kilter Salon article, regarding it's confusion on the point of Nir Rosen's controversial tweets in the wake of early news about Lara Logan's assault during celebrations in Tahrir Square last week:
Because let me be very, very clear: that she is blonde, attractive, a celebrity, was allegedly promiscuous, might have made an arguably 'bad call' getting into the thick of riotous celebrations, and 'was in the Middle East, after all' are not and should not be cited as excuses for the assault on her. Any form of "she was asking for it" is unacceptable--no woman is ever asking to be forced upon. In any setting. No matter how she looks or what she wears or what she has done in her past. No aspect of her conduct or personality or appearance should be license for her violation.
The incredibly sad truth, however, is that her appearance might actually have had something to do with why she specifically, over other women in the square, was assaulted. And she is still not to blame. Her assailants probably had no idea that she was a pro-war reporter, but it is possible they took her to be a symbol of what angered them. Anti-American sentiment does exist, some of it highly misguided. Misguided enough, perhaps, to imagine that it is reasonable to exact historic revenge from one woman because she looks American. Just as misguided as those who deliriously took her assault to be confirmation of the bad-character of all Arabs or all Muslims, no matter how insistent on democracy. For it is equally likely that this was an isolated incident. Still, one cannot ignore that this is what someone, somewhere took the opportunity to do at a moment of great political import.
Conflict--cultural, moral, political, historic, "civilizational"--has always been played out on the bodies of women. That is the material point. That is why Lara Logan gets sexually assaulted during a victory celebration at the end of peaceful protests demanding fair government. And that is why Lara Logan is refracted through tabloid tragedy and turned into Exhibit A for the case against the Arab world.
All of it boils down to the same crappy fact: women's bodies are still not respected as absolutely being their own. A fact highly visible these days in the Republican party's charming efforts to redefine rape, and restrict reproductive rights to the point of complete illogic. It is the woman's body: she decides whether it is rape. She decides whether to have sex. She decides whether to use birth control. She decides whether to continue the pregnancy. She decides her appearance, her apparel, her profession. Somebody else may disagree with her choices, call them selfish or foolish or risky. But nobody else is entitled to pronounce judgment on what she may or may not do to her own body.
Saying that someone's tragedy caught the media's attention because she looks a certain way is not the same as saying that that someone deserved her tragedy for looking that way. Nir Rosen, I believe, was making the former point. He chose a highly inappropriate time to make that point. There is no good time to make that point. He should absolutely be criticized, chastised, even ostracized, what have you, for publicly withholding his sympathy, for implying that her "war-mongering" reportage somehow balanced out the offense against her, and for being such an ass about making his point. But his point, underneath all the insensitive rhetoric, was still not that she deserved the assault, but that her assault would provoke a unique (and in his opinion overblown) media reaction--one that would not exist were it not for the way she looks. This nuance is crucial to me. Victim-blaming is a terrible, sick thing, far worse than being unsympathetic or insensitive, and we should take care in accusing someone of it.Unquestionable crime, questionable media.
"And your opinion of how she does that job, the religion her assailants share with a few million other people, or the color of her hair has nothing to do with it."Nothing to do with the heinous crime, certainly, but EVERYTHING to do with the western media's coverage of it.
Which, by the way, is the point Nir Rosen was attempting, in an admittedly crass way, to make. A person's belief in the validity of that point need not necessarily be interpreted as an apologia for the assault perpetrated on Logan.
That people so adamantly interpreted (it) as such smacks of defensiveness. Nobody wants, after all, to admit that the horrible abuse of a white woman celebrity is more worth reporting than the similarly horrible abuse of anonymous non-white women.
Because let me be very, very clear: that she is blonde, attractive, a celebrity, was allegedly promiscuous, might have made an arguably 'bad call' getting into the thick of riotous celebrations, and 'was in the Middle East, after all' are not and should not be cited as excuses for the assault on her. Any form of "she was asking for it" is unacceptable--no woman is ever asking to be forced upon. In any setting. No matter how she looks or what she wears or what she has done in her past. No aspect of her conduct or personality or appearance should be license for her violation.
The incredibly sad truth, however, is that her appearance might actually have had something to do with why she specifically, over other women in the square, was assaulted. And she is still not to blame. Her assailants probably had no idea that she was a pro-war reporter, but it is possible they took her to be a symbol of what angered them. Anti-American sentiment does exist, some of it highly misguided. Misguided enough, perhaps, to imagine that it is reasonable to exact historic revenge from one woman because she looks American. Just as misguided as those who deliriously took her assault to be confirmation of the bad-character of all Arabs or all Muslims, no matter how insistent on democracy. For it is equally likely that this was an isolated incident. Still, one cannot ignore that this is what someone, somewhere took the opportunity to do at a moment of great political import.
Conflict--cultural, moral, political, historic, "civilizational"--has always been played out on the bodies of women. That is the material point. That is why Lara Logan gets sexually assaulted during a victory celebration at the end of peaceful protests demanding fair government. And that is why Lara Logan is refracted through tabloid tragedy and turned into Exhibit A for the case against the Arab world.
All of it boils down to the same crappy fact: women's bodies are still not respected as absolutely being their own. A fact highly visible these days in the Republican party's charming efforts to redefine rape, and restrict reproductive rights to the point of complete illogic. It is the woman's body: she decides whether it is rape. She decides whether to have sex. She decides whether to use birth control. She decides whether to continue the pregnancy. She decides her appearance, her apparel, her profession. Somebody else may disagree with her choices, call them selfish or foolish or risky. But nobody else is entitled to pronounce judgment on what she may or may not do to her own body.
12.2.11
One more, for the long road ahead:
Mubarak se azaad hue Egypt ke logon ko azaadi mubarak ho.(Don't miss the graphic.)
11.2.11
A tweet worth blogging / Social media is so meta
If you don't know what "some cartoons" refers to, see this, and please also understand that a friendship between us might be difficult.
16.9.10
In The Eye
The latest gem from Arundhati Roy:
The essay which finds its conclusion in the paragraph above is stunning, upsetting, and absolutely essential. Put an hour aside and read every word.
"The first step towards re-imagining a world gone terribly wrong would be to stop the annihilation of those who have a different imagination -- an imagination that is outside of capitalism as well as communism. An imagination which has an altogether different understanding of what constitutes happiness and fulfillment. To gain this philosophical space, it is necessary to concede some physical space for the survival of those who may look like the keepers of our past, but who may really be the guides to our future. To do this, we have to ask our rulers: Can you leave the water in the rivers? The trees in the forest? Can you leave the bauxite in the mountain? If they say cannot, then perhaps they should stop preaching morality to the victims of their wars."
The essay which finds its conclusion in the paragraph above is stunning, upsetting, and absolutely essential. Put an hour aside and read every word.
22.6.10
Bad-ass Boots.
The Coup, The Coup, The Coup.
One single band that can make you think, dance, lust, grieve.
Here's what I was listening to this evening:
One single band that can make you think, dance, lust, grieve.
Here's what I was listening to this evening:
24.5.10
What I Am Doing With My Life:
In case someone's wondering, here's what I am doing with my life:
Making every possible effort to reduce my complicity in a world-system which invariably results in disasters like the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the anti-immigration legislation recently passed in Arizona.
That's the gist. That's what I'm up to. That is what my whole deal boils down to. That's what I'll be trying to do tomorrow, Thursday, and six years from Sunday.
If in the process I happen to change or improve something in some small way, that's just a bonus.
Making every possible effort to reduce my complicity in a world-system which invariably results in disasters like the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the anti-immigration legislation recently passed in Arizona.
That's the gist. That's what I'm up to. That is what my whole deal boils down to. That's what I'll be trying to do tomorrow, Thursday, and six years from Sunday.
If in the process I happen to change or improve something in some small way, that's just a bonus.
14.4.10
"It's hard for me because I'm..."
If you have multiple oppressed identities, which takes precedence? Which is the most crucial? Put more simply, if you're brown, foreign, and a girl, which should you complain about in order to get offered the most number of Kleenexes?
Any bets?
Be warned, however, that if you choose anything other than "girl", you will immediately be accosted by a vast army of highly compassionate, educated, and noble women who will explain to you that female oppression is the most devastating and pervasive ill of all. They'll also say that it is far and away the most important to fight, and that you should put aside all other, relatively trivial historical grudges to fight it. This, they will promise, will liberate you.
That's when you call Saba Mahmood and ask her if she'd like a drink.
She, I trust, will remind you that the world is divided along multiple intersecting lines, and that the elimination of one may not get rid of the rest. Then, I hope, she will suggest that you review the details of your subscription to Liberation Magazine. You may be signing up for things you weren't aware of, and paying more for them than you thought.
Because here's the thing: if you really want to emancipate yourself from whatever you feel is trapping you, you must do it on your own terms. What good is it being saved by someone else if you're merely transferred from danger to dependency?
Think about what happened the last time we were offered salvation in exchange for conversion.
Any bets?
Be warned, however, that if you choose anything other than "girl", you will immediately be accosted by a vast army of highly compassionate, educated, and noble women who will explain to you that female oppression is the most devastating and pervasive ill of all. They'll also say that it is far and away the most important to fight, and that you should put aside all other, relatively trivial historical grudges to fight it. This, they will promise, will liberate you.
That's when you call Saba Mahmood and ask her if she'd like a drink.
She, I trust, will remind you that the world is divided along multiple intersecting lines, and that the elimination of one may not get rid of the rest. Then, I hope, she will suggest that you review the details of your subscription to Liberation Magazine. You may be signing up for things you weren't aware of, and paying more for them than you thought.
Because here's the thing: if you really want to emancipate yourself from whatever you feel is trapping you, you must do it on your own terms. What good is it being saved by someone else if you're merely transferred from danger to dependency?
Think about what happened the last time we were offered salvation in exchange for conversion.
24.1.10
Law Enfarcement
This week's Eugene Weekly:
Unsurprising that this would be the week I'd walk by the bus station and see the following: two security people (or oddly dressed policemen--they weren't in regular uniform, and were wearing red caps) standing back and smirking as a casually indignant Eugenian complained on the phone to someone about the unfairness of being harassed "as a citizen in this government". An apt sequel to "Don't taze me, bro!"
Unsurprising that this would be the week I'd walk by the bus station and see the following: two security people (or oddly dressed policemen--they weren't in regular uniform, and were wearing red caps) standing back and smirking as a casually indignant Eugenian complained on the phone to someone about the unfairness of being harassed "as a citizen in this government". An apt sequel to "Don't taze me, bro!"
19.5.09
New Governments, Old Fears
From the Asia Times Online:
"Manmohan will no doubt continue to place primacy in foreign policy on India's partnership with the US. The accent will be on harmonizing India's regional policies with the US approach in theaters such as the Indian Ocean and South Asia, Middle East and the Far East; on boosting military-to-military cooperation, and, in overall terms, on striving to become a participant in the US's global agenda and strategies."
(The complete article can be found here.)
Is anyone else alarmed by this? I've been worrying about it for a while, but I suppose there's no point in me wringing my little hands, wishing India wouldn't jump on the US' War On Terror bandwagon. The Bush era is over, you say? Perhaps. But there hasn't been much change in US foreign policy. The debris left behind by the previous administration needs to be dealt with, and it looks like the new administration is doing the same old thing: an approach closer to slash and burn than sift and clean. The latter is dirty work, and Hillary probably prefers not to be up to her elbows in bearded men who want to cover her up. Having attempted a makeover of his nation's image, Obama probably doesn't want to hear "America Murdabad!" So off they go, with 17,000 troops to kill the Talibacteria from the inside. Anything that falls in the way, be it magnificent cities or mere civilians, risks destruction too. No holds barred. When America is threatened, all means are necessary. Palestinians and Pakistanis become terrorists by association, and layers of history are whittled down to strategic interest.
And in all this, India is willingly getting on board, allowing its local specificities to become subsumed in global generalities.
I know it's a little more complicated than an angsty blogpost. But, really, isn't this what it boils down to? Taking sides on the playground of global politics? Choosing teams? "You look like you have a good GDP, I want you." Bullies win, outcasts sit out, the little ones get pummeled. Do we want to play this game? Of course. Dissidents are called punks and punched out. Better make good with the punchers. Be friends. Allies. Thing is, I'm not sure powers HAVE allies. Agents, yes. And armies. The rest participate in their games, their wars, their agendas. For what?
I, for one, would prefer not to be sacrificed at the alter of material greed, cultural mimicry, and political ambition. But who the hell am I?
"Manmohan will no doubt continue to place primacy in foreign policy on India's partnership with the US. The accent will be on harmonizing India's regional policies with the US approach in theaters such as the Indian Ocean and South Asia, Middle East and the Far East; on boosting military-to-military cooperation, and, in overall terms, on striving to become a participant in the US's global agenda and strategies."
(The complete article can be found here.)
Is anyone else alarmed by this? I've been worrying about it for a while, but I suppose there's no point in me wringing my little hands, wishing India wouldn't jump on the US' War On Terror bandwagon. The Bush era is over, you say? Perhaps. But there hasn't been much change in US foreign policy. The debris left behind by the previous administration needs to be dealt with, and it looks like the new administration is doing the same old thing: an approach closer to slash and burn than sift and clean. The latter is dirty work, and Hillary probably prefers not to be up to her elbows in bearded men who want to cover her up. Having attempted a makeover of his nation's image, Obama probably doesn't want to hear "America Murdabad!" So off they go, with 17,000 troops to kill the Talibacteria from the inside. Anything that falls in the way, be it magnificent cities or mere civilians, risks destruction too. No holds barred. When America is threatened, all means are necessary. Palestinians and Pakistanis become terrorists by association, and layers of history are whittled down to strategic interest.
And in all this, India is willingly getting on board, allowing its local specificities to become subsumed in global generalities.
I know it's a little more complicated than an angsty blogpost. But, really, isn't this what it boils down to? Taking sides on the playground of global politics? Choosing teams? "You look like you have a good GDP, I want you." Bullies win, outcasts sit out, the little ones get pummeled. Do we want to play this game? Of course. Dissidents are called punks and punched out. Better make good with the punchers. Be friends. Allies. Thing is, I'm not sure powers HAVE allies. Agents, yes. And armies. The rest participate in their games, their wars, their agendas. For what?
I, for one, would prefer not to be sacrificed at the alter of material greed, cultural mimicry, and political ambition. But who the hell am I?
2.12.08
Perspectives on the Mumbai Attacks
For anyone interested in India-Pakistan relations, and each one's perception of each other; or for anyone interested in the sheer potency of the media and the messages they disperse, these videos on YouTube are an absolute must watch.
I cannot express the depth of my confusion, frustration, and despair at the utter distortion of information, and the loss of a perfectly good opportunity to properly address the misunderstandings between India and Pakistan, and analyze the issue with greater intricacy than this, which is little more than slander.
It would be impossible to provide factual correction for all the discrepancies I noticed, but here's a couple:
1. According to the December 2nd edition of The Hindu online, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has not pointed a finger at Pakistan. Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, has mentioned the likelihood of involvement by Pakistan-based elements. Again, NOT Pakistan the nation, but organisations/elements originating in/operating out of Pakistan. This is a crucial distinction.
2. There are by no means separatist movements in 25 of India's 28 states. There is violent unrest and political dissidence with some separatist sentiment in a handful of problematic regions, but none of them are addressed with any measure of subtlety in this report.
As an alternative, here is a link to an article by Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid, who examines the issue briefly, with considerably greater clarity and less agenda than the "news report" linked above.
And here he is again, speaking on Al Jazeera, along with Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management.
I cannot express the depth of my confusion, frustration, and despair at the utter distortion of information, and the loss of a perfectly good opportunity to properly address the misunderstandings between India and Pakistan, and analyze the issue with greater intricacy than this, which is little more than slander.
It would be impossible to provide factual correction for all the discrepancies I noticed, but here's a couple:
1. According to the December 2nd edition of The Hindu online, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has not pointed a finger at Pakistan. Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, has mentioned the likelihood of involvement by Pakistan-based elements. Again, NOT Pakistan the nation, but organisations/elements originating in/operating out of Pakistan. This is a crucial distinction.
2. There are by no means separatist movements in 25 of India's 28 states. There is violent unrest and political dissidence with some separatist sentiment in a handful of problematic regions, but none of them are addressed with any measure of subtlety in this report.
As an alternative, here is a link to an article by Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid, who examines the issue briefly, with considerably greater clarity and less agenda than the "news report" linked above.
And here he is again, speaking on Al Jazeera, along with Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management.
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