SHAMSUL ISLAM
It is generally believed that the Congress cadres were behind this genocide. This is true but there were other forces too which actively participated in this massacre and whose role has never been investigated. Those who were witness to the genocide of 1984 were stunned by the swiftness and military precision of the killer marauding gangs (later on witnessed during the Babri mosque demolition, burning alive of Dr. Graham Steins with his two sons and recent pogrom of the Muslims in Gujarat) who went on a burning spree of the innocent Sikhs. This was beyond the capacity of the Congress thugs.
I have an important RSS document which may throw some light on the unhidden aspects of the genocide. It was authored and circulated by a veteran ideologue of the RSS, Nana Deshmukh on November 8, 1984. Interestingly, this document was published in the Hindi Weekly Pratipaksh edited by George Fernandes (Defence Minister of India 1999-2004, and presently a great pal of the RSS) in its edition of November 25, 1984 titled ‘Indira Congress-RSS collusion’ with the following editorial comment:
“The author of the following document is known as an ideologue and policy formulator of the RSS. After the killing of Prime Minister (Indira Gandhi) he distributed this document among prominent politicians. It has a historical significance that is why we have decided to publish it, violating policy of our Weekly. This document highlights the new affinities developing between the Indira Congress and the RSS. We produce here the Hindi translation of the document.”
This document may help in unmasking the whole lot of criminals involved in the massacre of innocent Sikhs who had nothing to do with the killing of Indira Gandhi. This document may also throw light on where the cadres came from, who meticulously organized the killing of Sikhs. Nana Deshmukh in this document is seen outlining the justification of the massacre of the Sikh community in 1984. According to him the massacre of Sikhs was not the handiwork of any group or anti-social elements but the result of a genuine feeling of anger among Hindus of India.
This document also shows the true degenerated and fascist attitude of the RSS towards all the minorities of India. The RSS has been arguing that they are against Muslims and Christians because they are the followers of foreign religions. Here we find them justifying the butchering of Sikhs who according to their own categorization happened to be the followers of an indigenous religion.
The RSS often poses as a firm believer in Hindu-Sikh unity. But in this document we will hear from the horse’s mouth that the RSS like the then Congress leadership, believed that the massacre of the innocent Sikhs was justified. Nana Deshmukh in this document is seen outlining the justification of the massacre of the Sikh community in 1984. His defence of the carnage can be summed up as in the following.
1. The massacre of Sikhs was not the handiwork of any group or anti-social elements but the result of a genuine feeling of anger among Hindus of India.
2. Deshmukh did not distinguish the action of the two security personnel of Mrs. Indira Gandhi, who happened to be Sikhs, from that of the whole Sikh community. From his document it emerges that the killers of Indira Gandhi were working under some kind of mandate of their community. Hence attacks on Sikhs were justified.
3. Sikhs themselves invited these attacks, thus advancing the Congress theory of justifying the massacre of the Sikhs.
4. He glorified the ‘Operation Blue Star’ and described any opposition to it as anti-national. When Sikhs were being killed in thousands he was warning the country of Sikh extremism, thus offering ideological defense of those killings.
5. It was Sikh community as a whole which was responsible for violence in Punjab.
6. Sikhs should have done nothing in self-defence but showed patience and tolerance against the killer mobs.
7. These were Sikh intellectuals and not killer mobs which were responsible for the massacre. They had turned Sikhs into a militant community, cutting them off from their Hindu roots, thus inviting attacks from the nationalist Indians. Interestingly, Deshmukh would not mind having militant Hindus. Moreover, he treated all Sikhs as part of the same gang and defended attacks on them as a reaction of the nationalist Hindus.
8. He described Indira Gandhi as the only leader who could keep the country united and on the killing of such a great leader such killings could not be avoided.
9. Rajiv Gandhi who succeeded Mrs. Gandhi as the Prime Minister of India and justified the nation- wide killings of Sikhs by saying, “When a huge tree falls there are always tremors felt”, was lauded and blessed by Nana Deshmukh at the end of the document.
10. Shockingly, the massacre of Sikhs was being equated with the attacks on the RSS cadres after the killing of Gandhiji and we find Deshmukh advising Sikhs to suffer silently. Everybody knows that the killing of Gandhiji was inspired by the RSS and the Hindutva Ideology whereas the common innocent Sikhs had nothing to do with the murder of Mrs. Indira Gandhi.
11. There was not a single sentence in the Deshmukh document demanding, from the then Congress Government at the Centre, remedial measures for controlling the violence against the minority community. Mind this, that Deshmukh circulated this document on November 8, 1984, and from October 31 to this date Sikhs were left alone to face the killing gangs. In fact November 5-10 was the period when the maximum killings of Sikhs took place. Deshmukh was just not bothered about all this.
The Deshmukh document did not happen in isolation. It represented the real RSS attitude towards Sikh genocide of 1984. The RSS is very fond of circulating publicity material, especially photographs of its khaki shorts- clad cadres doing social work. For the 1984 violence they have none. In fact, Deshmukh’s article also made no mention of the RSS cadres going to the rescue of Sikhs under siege. This shows up the real intentions of the RSS during the genocide.
There is not a single sentence in the Deshmukh document demanding, from the then Congress Government at the Centre, remedial measures for controlling the violence against the minority community. Importantly, Deshmukh circulated this document on November 8, 1984, and from October 31 to this date Sikhs were left alone to face the killing gangs. George Fernandes while making this document public in 1984 wrote that it showed ‘Indira Congress-RSS collusion’. Nanavati Commission must investigate whether this collusion was confined to political sphere or went beyond to killing fields.
The Deshmukh document is reproduced below, translated here from Hindi
MOMENTS OF SOUL SEARCHING
Indira Gandhi ultimately did secure a permanent place at the doorstep of history as a great martyr. With her dynamism borne out of her fearlessness and dexterity, she was able to take the country forward like a colossus for over a decade and was able to build an opinion that she alone understood the realities of the country, that she alone had the ability to run the decadent political system of our corrupt and divided society, and probably that she alone could keep the country united. She was a great lady and her death as a brave leader had added to her greatness. She was killed by a person in whom she kept faith despite several complaints. Such an influential and busy personality was killed by a person who had the duty to protect her person. This act came as a blow not only to her admirers in the country and the world but also her critics. This cowardly and treacherous act of killing not only ended the life of a great leader but also killed, in the name of the Panth, the mutual faith of humanity. Explosion of sudden arson and violent hysteria throughout the country was probably a direction-less and improper expression of the hurt, anger and feeling of loss of her followers. Lakhs of her followers used to see her as the only defender, powerful protector, and a symbol of united India. It is a different matter whether this is right or wrong.
For these innocent and uninformed followers, the treacherous murder of Indira Gandhi was the tragic culmination of the poisonous campaign of separatism, antagonism and violence conducted over the previous three years in which hundreds of innocents had to lose their invaluable lives and the sanctity of religious places was destroyed. This campaign assumed an ominous pace after the painful army action in June which, in the eyes of most of the people of the country, had become necessary to protect the sanctity of the religious places. Barring a few exceptions, the Sikh community observed silence for a long time on the barbaric massacres and heinous killings of innocent people, but they condemned the long-pending army action with anger and dangerous explosiveness. The country was stunned at their attitude. The army action was compared to the “gallu ghara” action of Ahmed Shah Abdali in 1762 to desecrate the Harmandir Sahib. Without going into the objectives of the two incidents, Mrs. Gandhi was pushed into the category of Ahmed Shah Abdali. She was termed the enemy of the Sikh panth and big prizes were announced on her head. On the other hand Bhindrawale who was guilty of heinous crimes against humanity in the name of religion was hailed as a martyr. Open display of such feelings in different parts of the country and abroad played a special role in increasing the distrust and alienation between the Sikhs and the rest of Indians. In the background of this distrust and alienation, stunned and bewildered people accepted the validity of the rumours of celebrations by the Sikhs at the heinous murder of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards in retaliation of the army action. Of these the most hurting explanation was that of Giani Kripal Singh who being the Head Granthi considered himself to be the sole spokesman of the Sikh community. He said that he expressed no sorrow at the death of Indira Gandhi. This statement added fuel to the fire of boiling anger. No immediate and natural condemnation of this despicable statement by an important leader came from responsible Sikh leaders, intellectuals or organization. Therefore the already angered common and unimaginative people took it as correct that the Sikhs celebrated the death of Indira Gandhi. Because of this belief, selfish elements could succeed in making the common people become violent against the hapless Sikhs.
This was a most explosive situation which needed utmost patience and skilful conduct on behalf of our Sikh brothers. I am saying this, being a life member of the RSS, because on January 30, 1948 a Hindu fanatic, who was a Marathi and had no relation with the RSS, rather was a bitter critic of the Sangh, committed unfortunate killing of Mahatma Gandhi. On this occasion we also suffered the sudden eruption of hysteria, loot and atrocities of misdirected people. We ourselves saw how selfish elements who were well acquainted with this incident, deliberately declared a murderer to be a member of the RSS and also spread the rumour that the RSS people were celebrating throughout the country death of Mahatma Gandhi, and thus they succeeded in diverting the love and the feeling of loss and hurt in the hearts of people for Gandhi. Such feelings were spread against Swayamsewaks and their families, particularly in Mahrashtra.
Having gone through such experiences myself, I can understand the strong reaction and feeling of innocent Sikh brothers who became of victims of sudden eruption of people’s violent hysteria. In fact, I would like to condemn in strongest words the inhuman barbarity and cruelty on Sikh brothers in Delhi and elsewhere. I feel proud of all those Hindu neighbours who protected lives and property of troubled Sikh brothers without caring for their lives. Such things one being heard from all over Delhi. These things have practically increased the faith in natural goodness of human behavior and particularly faith in Hindu nature.
I am also worried at the Sikh reaction in such delicate and explosive situation. As an activist engaged in national reconstruction and unity for half a century and being a well wisher of Sikh community I am hesitating in saying that if reactive armed action by Sikhs is even partly true then they have not been able to evaluate the situation correctly and comprehensively and as a result could not respond according to the situation. Here I wish to draw the attention of all my countrymen including Sikhs that in a similar difficult situation arising out of murder of Mahatma Gandhi when in the hysteria against the RSS crimes of destruction of property, heinous burning alive of children, inhuman cruelty etc. were being committed and the news was reaching Nagpur from all over India, then the ‘dictator’ of the RSS known as the so-called big private army, the then head of the Sangh late M.S. Golwalkar issued an appeal in Nagpur on February 1, 1948 to the lakhs of armed young followers throughout the country in the following unforgettable words:
‘I direct all my Swayamsewak brothers that despite spread of provocation due to lack of understanding, they should adopt cordial attitude towards all and remember that this mutual distrust and improper hysteria is the result of the love and respect that the whole country has for Mahatma who made the country great in the eyes of the world. We salute such great respected departed soul’.
These were not empty words to hide cowardice and helplessness in the hopeless situation. In those life threatening serious moments he proved that every word of his appeal had a meaning. On the evening of February 1, hundreds of Swayamsewaks in Nagpur urged for armed resistance and resisting till the last drop of their blood to stop the probable attack on their leader the same night. And some associates of Guruji told him of a conspiracy against his life and requested to shift his residence to a safe place before the attack, Guruji told them in such a black moment also that if the same people whom he had truly and with full ability, served throughout his life wanted to take his life, then why and for whom he should save his life. Thereafter he cautioned them in stern voice that even if a drop of blood of his countrymen was shed in saving him, then such a life would be useless for him. History is a witness that lakhs of Swayamsewaks spread throughout the country followed this directive word by word. Though they had to digest vulgarities in exchange of their patience and tolerance but there was a faith to give them patience that whatever may happen to them in present condition, history will definitely prove them innocent.
I hope that in present difficult situation my Sikh brothers will also show the above-referred patience and tolerance. But I am deeply pained to know that rather than displaying such tolerance and patience at some places they have retaliated against the crowd with arms and played into the hands of such selfish elements who were eager to spread the trouble. I am surprised how a section of our society considered to be most disciplined, organized and religious, adopted such a negative and self-defeating attitude. May be they could not get proper leadership at the moments of such a crisis. Through my scanty study and understanding of Sikh history I consider that such a nonpolitical reaction of Sikhs in moments of such a crisis came from their complete involvement with teachings of love, tolerance and sacrifice of Sikh nature. Warrior nature of Sikh religion was a short time provision against barbarity of foreign Mughals which was taught by tenth Guru. For him Khalsa was a relatively small part of a broad Hindu-Sikh brotherhood and was designed as an armed hand to defend Hindu community and its traditions. Guru Govind Singh laid down for Khalsa followers five KS (Kesh, Kripan, Kangha, Kara and Kachha) and ‘Singh’ in the name of Khalsas. This was a symbol of their being soldiers. But unfortunately today these only are being projected as basic and necessary forms of Sikh religion.
I am sorry to say that Sikh intellectuals too have failed to understand that conversion of Sikh religion into Khalsaism is a much later event and this was due to deliberate plan of British imperialists to divide and rule in Punjab. Its aim was to cut the Sikhs off from their Hindu environ. Unfortunately, after independence power hungry politicians kept alive for their own interest the unnaturally born problems of separation and equal existence, and carried forward the game of imperialists to divide and rule by their vote bank politics. This improper equating of Sikhs with militant Khalsaism is not only the basic root of separatist tendencies in some parts of Sikh community, but it also raised militancy and faith in the power of weapons to the level of religious worship.
This religious worship gave rise to terrorist movement like Babbar Khalsa in the second decade and recently Indira Gandhi was killed as a result of
terrorist wave under the leadership of Bhindrawale and a long ‘hit list’ is yet to be executed.
I used to imagine that Sikh community has freed itself totally from illiteracy, ignorance, frustration and defeatism in which it was in the fifth decade of 19th century after losing its freedom and which was exploited by cunning British imperialists and selfish Sikh elites for their selfish interests. It is clear that in eighth decade Sikhs adorning the places of high responsibility represent highly educated, laborious, vigilant, relatively rich, enlightened and active section of Indian society in every walk of life. In nineteenth century their experiences and vision was limited to the boundaries of the then Punjab but today they are spread not only throughout India but throughout the world, and they are in a situation to directly know the conspiracies of big powers which are being hatched against independent and united India rising strongly in the world. In such an advantageous situation they should know their historical development as an integral part of India.
Such a revaluation of history will give them the opportunity to see many wrong formulations of their own religion and past which has been systematically drilled into their brains by wrong and distorted historical writings by British administrators and intellectuals about nature and development of their religion. Such an attempt will take them to their real roots.
This is the time that our Sikh brothers should search their hearts so that they can get rid of the false description inserted by British imperialists and power greedy opportunist people into their basic religious nature. Removal of such false descriptions is necessary to bridge the gulf of distrust and alienation between two communities of similar destiny, nature and similar traditions. I am afraid that without such a self-introspection and revaluation of history they would not be able to live with peace among themselves and with other countrymen. A disinterested analysis of their own enlightened interests will be enough to make them understand that their fate is indivisibly linked with the destiny of India. Such an understanding will save them from falling prey to the disruptive and destructive interests of foreign powers.
I disbelieve (sic) that my Sikh brothers will accept the cautious words of spiritual expression of a well-wisher.
Lastly, it is not to deny the truth that sudden removal of Indira Gandhi from Indian political scene has created a dangerous void in the Indian common life. But India has always displayed a characteristic inner strength in the moments of such crisis and uncertainty. According to our traditions, responsibility of power has been placed on the inexperienced shoulders of relatively young person in a lively and peaceful manner. It will be hasty to judge the potentialities of his leadership at this time. We should give him some time to show his ability.
On such challenging juncture of the country, in the meanwhile he is entitled to get full cooperation and sympathy from the countrymen, though they may belong to any language, religion, caste or political belief.
In the capacity of a nonpolitical constructive worker I only hope and pray that God bless him with more mature, balanced, inner strength and ability to give an impartial Govt. to the people so that he can take the country to real prosperous unity and glory.
Guru Nanak Divas
November 8, 1984
Nana Deshmukh
Shamsul Islam can be contacted at notoinjustice@gmail.com
10 April, 2009
09 April, 2009
Sri Lankan authorities blocking investigation of editor’s murder
The following is a press release from Reporters Without Borders on April 8 and forwarded by the Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong:
Reporters Without Borders has gathered information from various sources that supports the theory that the Sri Lankan authorities are blocking the investigation into the murder of Sunday Leader editor Lasantha Wickrematunge in Colombo on 8 January, exactly three months ago today.
Government officials, including Keheliya Rambukwella, said at the end of January that President Mahinda Rajapaksa would announce “very important details” about the murder in February. But since then, there has been nothing to confirm the existence of a political will to solve the case. Wickrematunge’s family and colleagues have been forced to conclude that the authorities have no interest in arresting either the perpetrators or instigators.
“Members of the government have made contradictory statements about the motives and identity of this leading journalist’s murderers,” Reporters without Borders said. “It would be better if the investigation were given proper resources. We urge President Rajapaksa to assign members of the criminal investigation police to the case and to formally request the help of international experts in solving the murder.”
Wickrematunge’s murder in the capital marked a dramatic escalation in press freedom violations in Sri Lanka and Reporters without Borders – which is a member of the International Mission for Press Freedom in Sri Lanka – will continue to insist that it is not left unpunished.
Wickrematunge’s widow, Sonali Samarasinghe, herself a journalist, said in an open letter to police inspector general Jayantha Wickremaratna in mid-March that: “There has still been no credible breakthrough in the investigation. No murder weapons, no suspect, no post mortem report has yet been made public.”
Wickrematunge, who has just been awarded a UNESCO press freedom prize posthumously, was never given the police protection he requested.
Wickrematunge was killed by men on motorcycles as he was driving to work. They blocked his car’s path near Malagalage primary school, smashed its window and apparently beat him about the head and body with steel bars. He was taken unconscious to a hospital where he died from his head injuries. Several witnesses said no shots were heard and no bullet impacts were found. Strangely, the autopsy findings have never been released.
The attack took place just several hundred metres from an air force checkpoint but the assailants were able to get away. One of the motorcycles was found by the police but it is still not known if it was of any help in tracking down the assailants.
Wickrematunge knew that he was being watched and was in danger. That morning he had seen two helmeted men near his home. He had told friends about it but finally decided to drive to work anyway. A relative said a motorcycle seen parked near his home belonged to the security forces.
The investigation was assigned to Colombo’s Mount Lavinia police station and a police source it was not given any special priority. The authorities said four teams were assigned to this case and to an attack on MTV, a Colombo TV station, but no significant results have been reported. Several of Wickrematunge’s colleagues have voiced concern that the Criminal Investigation Department was kept out of the case. His widow even filed a court petition for it to be transferred to the CID, but her request was denied.
Police spokesman Ranjith Gunasekara told journalists that the investigation was focusing on the calls Wickrematunge received on the day of his murder. Gunasekara created confusion in early March by claiming that the police had not received the forensic report from the “government analyst” (GA) although the GA insisted in statement to the press on 5 March that he had sent it several weeks earlier to Officer Hemantha Adikari at Mount Lavinia police station.
The police announced the arrest of a suspect but it was just a passer-by who stole Wickrematunge’s mobile phone from the scene of the murder. At the start of this month, a court ordered that this suspect continue to be held until 16 April.
In an interview for an international TV station, Wickrematunge’s widow said he had written several times to the police inspector general to tell him about the repeated threats and to request protection. The police ignored his requests. “Lasantha always said that if he was killed, it would be by the government (…) Our reports about the suffering of the civilian population did not sit well with the patriotism of the military.”
The authorities have made contradictory and in some cases defamatory comments about Wickrematunge. The president’s brother, defence minister Gotabaya Rajapaksa, said in an interview for a foreign TV station: “Who is Lasantha? A tabloid publisher. Why is the world worried about one man? He criticized everybody. So everybody had a reason to kill him.” He went on to make similar comments to the Australian TV station SBS: “He has antagonised so many people. He had criticised and reported wrong things about all persons.”
The Sunday Leader, now being edited by his brother, Lal Wickrematunge, has continued to be subjected to pressure from government circles since his murder. A significant loss of advertising income is now threatening its economic survival.
President Rajapaksa called Wickrematunge a “terrorist journalist” during an interview with a Reporters without Borders representative in Colombo in October 2008, three months before his murder.
Sri Lanka was ranked 165th out of 173 countries in the Reporters without Borders 2008 press freedom index. This was the lowest ranking of any democratic country.
Reporters Without Borders has gathered information from various sources that supports the theory that the Sri Lankan authorities are blocking the investigation into the murder of Sunday Leader editor Lasantha Wickrematunge in Colombo on 8 January, exactly three months ago today.
Government officials, including Keheliya Rambukwella, said at the end of January that President Mahinda Rajapaksa would announce “very important details” about the murder in February. But since then, there has been nothing to confirm the existence of a political will to solve the case. Wickrematunge’s family and colleagues have been forced to conclude that the authorities have no interest in arresting either the perpetrators or instigators.
“Members of the government have made contradictory statements about the motives and identity of this leading journalist’s murderers,” Reporters without Borders said. “It would be better if the investigation were given proper resources. We urge President Rajapaksa to assign members of the criminal investigation police to the case and to formally request the help of international experts in solving the murder.”
Wickrematunge’s murder in the capital marked a dramatic escalation in press freedom violations in Sri Lanka and Reporters without Borders – which is a member of the International Mission for Press Freedom in Sri Lanka – will continue to insist that it is not left unpunished.
Wickrematunge’s widow, Sonali Samarasinghe, herself a journalist, said in an open letter to police inspector general Jayantha Wickremaratna in mid-March that: “There has still been no credible breakthrough in the investigation. No murder weapons, no suspect, no post mortem report has yet been made public.”
Wickrematunge, who has just been awarded a UNESCO press freedom prize posthumously, was never given the police protection he requested.
Wickrematunge was killed by men on motorcycles as he was driving to work. They blocked his car’s path near Malagalage primary school, smashed its window and apparently beat him about the head and body with steel bars. He was taken unconscious to a hospital where he died from his head injuries. Several witnesses said no shots were heard and no bullet impacts were found. Strangely, the autopsy findings have never been released.
The attack took place just several hundred metres from an air force checkpoint but the assailants were able to get away. One of the motorcycles was found by the police but it is still not known if it was of any help in tracking down the assailants.
Wickrematunge knew that he was being watched and was in danger. That morning he had seen two helmeted men near his home. He had told friends about it but finally decided to drive to work anyway. A relative said a motorcycle seen parked near his home belonged to the security forces.
The investigation was assigned to Colombo’s Mount Lavinia police station and a police source it was not given any special priority. The authorities said four teams were assigned to this case and to an attack on MTV, a Colombo TV station, but no significant results have been reported. Several of Wickrematunge’s colleagues have voiced concern that the Criminal Investigation Department was kept out of the case. His widow even filed a court petition for it to be transferred to the CID, but her request was denied.
Police spokesman Ranjith Gunasekara told journalists that the investigation was focusing on the calls Wickrematunge received on the day of his murder. Gunasekara created confusion in early March by claiming that the police had not received the forensic report from the “government analyst” (GA) although the GA insisted in statement to the press on 5 March that he had sent it several weeks earlier to Officer Hemantha Adikari at Mount Lavinia police station.
The police announced the arrest of a suspect but it was just a passer-by who stole Wickrematunge’s mobile phone from the scene of the murder. At the start of this month, a court ordered that this suspect continue to be held until 16 April.
In an interview for an international TV station, Wickrematunge’s widow said he had written several times to the police inspector general to tell him about the repeated threats and to request protection. The police ignored his requests. “Lasantha always said that if he was killed, it would be by the government (…) Our reports about the suffering of the civilian population did not sit well with the patriotism of the military.”
The authorities have made contradictory and in some cases defamatory comments about Wickrematunge. The president’s brother, defence minister Gotabaya Rajapaksa, said in an interview for a foreign TV station: “Who is Lasantha? A tabloid publisher. Why is the world worried about one man? He criticized everybody. So everybody had a reason to kill him.” He went on to make similar comments to the Australian TV station SBS: “He has antagonised so many people. He had criticised and reported wrong things about all persons.”
The Sunday Leader, now being edited by his brother, Lal Wickrematunge, has continued to be subjected to pressure from government circles since his murder. A significant loss of advertising income is now threatening its economic survival.
President Rajapaksa called Wickrematunge a “terrorist journalist” during an interview with a Reporters without Borders representative in Colombo in October 2008, three months before his murder.
Sri Lanka was ranked 165th out of 173 countries in the Reporters without Borders 2008 press freedom index. This was the lowest ranking of any democratic country.
Cultural misfits and the language of the gun
ANDREW LAM
Commentary
New America Media
Editor's Note: It's hard to find a cultural explanation as to why Cho Sung-hui, the Virginia Tech shooter, or Jiverly Linh Phat Wong, the Binghamton killer, did what they did. But both immigrants chose to empower themselves, if only for a brief while, with the language of guns, writes NAM editor Andrew Lam. He's the author of Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora
Whenever a minority commits a heinous crime, it seems to beckon us in the media to search beyond an individual motive for a cultural one. We saw it in the case of Cho Sung-hui of Virginia tech, and now, in the latest case involving Jiverly Linh Phat Wong -- (or Voong). He blocked the back exit of a civic community center in Binghamton, N.Y., where immigrants had gathered to learn English and shot 13 people to death before killing himself.
It is a habit of “finding the ethnic angle” that is endemic in the work of American journalists in an age of cultural diversity, and in order to sound credible, we often ask so-called experts to give their insights.
Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Northeastern University and an expert on mass murderers, offered his take. "He was going to take his life, but first he was going to get even," Levin said the day after the Binghamton incident. "He was going to get sweet revenge against the other immigrants who had looked down upon him, among whom he had lost face. To him, that was an extremely important thing."
The keywords here are “revenge” and “lose face.” Those are the popular terms we in the media like to throw around when we think of the inscrutable Asians. To use them well is to impress the Early Show, whose anchors were easily impressed.
But revenge sounds a bit like a “martial arts movie” motive that hasn’t panned out. Shame is part of the equation, surely, but it doesn’t explain enough. Every day around the world, millions of Asians “lose face,” as it were. But they don’t turn into lunatics and kill innocent people. Besides, the extreme outcome of shame in East Asia, most pronounced in Japan and increasingly in South Korea, is suicide, not genocide. Shame is not always a bad thing. In Confucian-bound societies, shame motivates students and workers to improve their lot, and to keep society bound to a fixed moral standard.
Yet, how do we explain the actions of Cho, the 23-year-old English major, who killed 33 people, and Wong (or Voong) who killed 14, before taking their own lives? How to get inside the head of someone whose rambling letter mailed to a local TV station before his blazing murder-suicide bid is now giving psychologists a field day? The media now brand him as “depressed,” a “loner” and “delusional.”
Perhaps there’s another way to understand him, one that is somewhere between culture and psychology.
The opposite of a cosmopolitan has always seemed to me a kind of aphonic drifter. While he may move from one civilization to the next, he is disconnected to both. The successful border crosser is blessed with the power of metamorphosis and the gift of articulation. His counterpart, alas, finds himself tongue-tied and trapped in a defective chrysalis, unable to, but deeply desiring, change.
What keeps him from that covetous transformation is language, the loose tongue, that cunning go-between ability to slide between worlds. Cho spoke with a speech impediment that made him a pariah while in school. Wong, though having renamed himself and passed the U.S. citizenship test, was nevertheless defeated by the English language. He was reportedly “frustrated” by his inability to speak English despite two decades in America, and became, as his ex-co-workers described him, “quiet.”
A day after the Binghamton incident, a Vietnamese American blogged in his native tongue on the language issue, while sympathizing with the shooter. “America is a country full of foreigners, but what [distinguishes] 'natives' from 'immigrants' is an ability to speak English well. English for the Vietnamese overseas can be an issue of survival, and sometimes it’s an issue of life and death, as in the tragedy we just witnessed. I am not trying to defend Wong’s crimes... But I think I understand how humiliating it is to not be able to speak English in America.”
Shame, indeed, binds the tongue. Thus, while the successful border crosser uses language to overcome shame by refusing silence, while he finds ways to articulate his shame until he rearranges it and redefines himself, his counterpart remains retiring, finding no articulate way to transform himself in the new world.
If the Asian shame-based culture is still prominent, keeping its citizens in line and well behaved, it is the gun culture in America that is most conspicuous. It is there on TV and video games and the Internet and the silver screen, and it is the most accessible language for the tongue-tied. For them the gun –- be it in video games or at the practicing range -- speaks volumes.
Cho posted a video before his killing spree and his speech was largely incomprehensible, but what screamed out were the guns he displayed. They were his language.
Wong went to the firing range every Saturday, newspapers reported. It is there that he was most articulate.
So many famous immigrants have entered America’s public space through their power of language -- be it men or women of letters, like Ha Jin or Salman Rushdie, or musicians like Yo Yo Ma and Lang Lang. But there is another way to enter America’s consciousness –- through acts of violence -- and become infamous.
For some who feel powerlessness and marginalized but desiring change, the gun can be seductive. It provides power. It speaks in a language everybody understands. It speaks across color lines. It opens doors for the invisible into the public space.
Unfortunately, it is the language of annihilation and not creation. It speaks up once or twice, but often the user succumbs to his curse: that of silence.
Commentary
New America Media
Editor's Note: It's hard to find a cultural explanation as to why Cho Sung-hui, the Virginia Tech shooter, or Jiverly Linh Phat Wong, the Binghamton killer, did what they did. But both immigrants chose to empower themselves, if only for a brief while, with the language of guns, writes NAM editor Andrew Lam. He's the author of Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora
Whenever a minority commits a heinous crime, it seems to beckon us in the media to search beyond an individual motive for a cultural one. We saw it in the case of Cho Sung-hui of Virginia tech, and now, in the latest case involving Jiverly Linh Phat Wong -- (or Voong). He blocked the back exit of a civic community center in Binghamton, N.Y., where immigrants had gathered to learn English and shot 13 people to death before killing himself.
It is a habit of “finding the ethnic angle” that is endemic in the work of American journalists in an age of cultural diversity, and in order to sound credible, we often ask so-called experts to give their insights.
Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Northeastern University and an expert on mass murderers, offered his take. "He was going to take his life, but first he was going to get even," Levin said the day after the Binghamton incident. "He was going to get sweet revenge against the other immigrants who had looked down upon him, among whom he had lost face. To him, that was an extremely important thing."
The keywords here are “revenge” and “lose face.” Those are the popular terms we in the media like to throw around when we think of the inscrutable Asians. To use them well is to impress the Early Show, whose anchors were easily impressed.
But revenge sounds a bit like a “martial arts movie” motive that hasn’t panned out. Shame is part of the equation, surely, but it doesn’t explain enough. Every day around the world, millions of Asians “lose face,” as it were. But they don’t turn into lunatics and kill innocent people. Besides, the extreme outcome of shame in East Asia, most pronounced in Japan and increasingly in South Korea, is suicide, not genocide. Shame is not always a bad thing. In Confucian-bound societies, shame motivates students and workers to improve their lot, and to keep society bound to a fixed moral standard.
Yet, how do we explain the actions of Cho, the 23-year-old English major, who killed 33 people, and Wong (or Voong) who killed 14, before taking their own lives? How to get inside the head of someone whose rambling letter mailed to a local TV station before his blazing murder-suicide bid is now giving psychologists a field day? The media now brand him as “depressed,” a “loner” and “delusional.”
Perhaps there’s another way to understand him, one that is somewhere between culture and psychology.
The opposite of a cosmopolitan has always seemed to me a kind of aphonic drifter. While he may move from one civilization to the next, he is disconnected to both. The successful border crosser is blessed with the power of metamorphosis and the gift of articulation. His counterpart, alas, finds himself tongue-tied and trapped in a defective chrysalis, unable to, but deeply desiring, change.
What keeps him from that covetous transformation is language, the loose tongue, that cunning go-between ability to slide between worlds. Cho spoke with a speech impediment that made him a pariah while in school. Wong, though having renamed himself and passed the U.S. citizenship test, was nevertheless defeated by the English language. He was reportedly “frustrated” by his inability to speak English despite two decades in America, and became, as his ex-co-workers described him, “quiet.”
A day after the Binghamton incident, a Vietnamese American blogged in his native tongue on the language issue, while sympathizing with the shooter. “America is a country full of foreigners, but what [distinguishes] 'natives' from 'immigrants' is an ability to speak English well. English for the Vietnamese overseas can be an issue of survival, and sometimes it’s an issue of life and death, as in the tragedy we just witnessed. I am not trying to defend Wong’s crimes... But I think I understand how humiliating it is to not be able to speak English in America.”
Shame, indeed, binds the tongue. Thus, while the successful border crosser uses language to overcome shame by refusing silence, while he finds ways to articulate his shame until he rearranges it and redefines himself, his counterpart remains retiring, finding no articulate way to transform himself in the new world.
If the Asian shame-based culture is still prominent, keeping its citizens in line and well behaved, it is the gun culture in America that is most conspicuous. It is there on TV and video games and the Internet and the silver screen, and it is the most accessible language for the tongue-tied. For them the gun –- be it in video games or at the practicing range -- speaks volumes.
Cho posted a video before his killing spree and his speech was largely incomprehensible, but what screamed out were the guns he displayed. They were his language.
Wong went to the firing range every Saturday, newspapers reported. It is there that he was most articulate.
So many famous immigrants have entered America’s public space through their power of language -- be it men or women of letters, like Ha Jin or Salman Rushdie, or musicians like Yo Yo Ma and Lang Lang. But there is another way to enter America’s consciousness –- through acts of violence -- and become infamous.
For some who feel powerlessness and marginalized but desiring change, the gun can be seductive. It provides power. It speaks in a language everybody understands. It speaks across color lines. It opens doors for the invisible into the public space.
Unfortunately, it is the language of annihilation and not creation. It speaks up once or twice, but often the user succumbs to his curse: that of silence.
Media organizations expose role of Sri Lankan paramilitary groups
The following is a statement issued by the Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong:
Five media organizations in Sri Lanka, issuing an investigative report entitled, 'The Resurgence of Terror and the paramilitary forces in Sri Lanka,' stated that covert operations are carried out by paramilitary groups that have the patronage of an ultra-powerful authority in carrying out terror operations. The report referred mainly to attacks on many journalists, including assassinations. The report reveals that this terror group is able to pass barricades and checkpoints because of an efficient network that facilitates the transport of these attackers.
The report refers to various attacks, these being: the 6th January attack on the Sirasa Media Network building which was set on fire, the assassination of the editor, Lasantha Wickrematunge on 8th January, the attack on the Max TV station on 23rd February, the attack on editor Upali Tennakoon on 24th February, the abduction of editor N. Vidyadaran on 26th February and the abduction of Prof. Dhammika Ganganath Dissanayaka on 12th March. All these attacks occurred this year. Further, earlier attacks took place last year on Guruparan, a journalist with Suryan FM, the attack on Keith Noyar, Deputy Editor of the Nation newspaper, the brutal attack and attempted abduction of journalist Namal Perera and the media secretary of the British High Commission, Mahendra Ratnaweera.
In one instance an armed group that entered Max TV and brutally attacked the security personnel and journalists of the station were proved to be police officers from the Mirihana Police Station. Nothing was done by way of prosecuting these officers. Instead a senior officer arrived and expressed regret stating that it had been a mistake.
This report was presented to leaders from the Congress of Religions on the 7th April. The religious leaders, who listened to the representation of the five media organisations undertook to bring the report to the notice of the president of Sri Lanka. Earlier the US State Department, in their annual report on human rights also mentioned that: 'paramilitaries and others believed to be "working with awareness of the government "carried out unlawful killings, torture and kidnappings of civilians with impunity".'
That the Ministry of Defence has become an ultra-powerful authority and that the death squads operate under the patronage of the existing regime, are facts commonly known throughout the country. That the policing system has failed to uphold the rule of law and is in a pathetic condition is also a routinely repeated, non-controversial statement. That the politicisation of the police and the armed forces prevents their conduct from being scrutinised or investigated by any legal authority is also uncontested except by the government spokesman whose sole task is to poo-poo all allegations of the government’s involvement in criminal activities. The spokesman for the police, for example, when questioned about this report by the BBC Sinhala Service retorted that making such allegations against the police and military was an insult to war heroes.
Under normal circumstances a report of this nature would be responded to by the government which would initiate a high level inquiry into the allegations. Such a report would also be responded to by the country's judiciary which would direct the relevant authorities to respond by way of investigations and actions to such allegations. However, the condition that has been reached within Sri Lanka is that the state apparatus no longer responds to allegations of crimes by state agencies by any form of serious action.
Therefore it is not surprising that the five leading media organisations had to go before the Congress of Religions to present their report. When the legal authority completely fails people turn to those who represent the moral authority of the country to gain their interest in taking up the lost cause of investigation of crimes. What the report reveals may not be anything new to these leaders of various religions who naturally would have links to their congregations. The challenge for the Congress of Religions is as to whether they will raise their moral voice against widespread lawlessness that encourages any and every form of crime. Above all will the voices of morality in the country prove capable of raising their voices against the ultra-powerful authority that stands above the law?
The leader of the opposition also raised the issue of the suppression of media freedoms and stated that if journalists are killed and the Inspector General of Police fails to conduct effective investigations he would remove the IGP and others responsible for such inaction if he was in power. If the Congress of Religions wants to raise its voice on the present situation in a credible manner it should question as to why the government does not take action by way of the conduct of investigations into the crimes, including those mentioned in this media report. Thus, those who represent the country's moral authority needs, today, to confront those who represent the country’s legal authority who fail to uphold the law. There is today a significant conflict between the very foundations of morality and the callous neglect of the legal obligations of the state. At this juncture should the Congress of Religions and others who claim to represent the moral authority of the country fail to confront those in power who have allowed the undermining of the rule of law, they will disappoint not only the journalists but also the whole country.
While the leaders of the religions face this challenge Mr. Santha Fernando, a well known committed Christian social activist has also been held under arrest for no justifiable reason. Even attempts to engage in acts of charity and compassion have now come under attack by the same ultra-powerful authority that uses powers of arrest and detention without any regard to the principles established by law. The religious leaders may themselves come under such threat if they do not use their moral authority now to cause a change of the situation for the better.
For the full media report kindly see: http://colombotoday.com/english/articles/1375.htm
# # #
About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional non-governmental organisation monitoring and lobbying human rights issues in Asia. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984.
Five media organizations in Sri Lanka, issuing an investigative report entitled, 'The Resurgence of Terror and the paramilitary forces in Sri Lanka,' stated that covert operations are carried out by paramilitary groups that have the patronage of an ultra-powerful authority in carrying out terror operations. The report referred mainly to attacks on many journalists, including assassinations. The report reveals that this terror group is able to pass barricades and checkpoints because of an efficient network that facilitates the transport of these attackers.
The report refers to various attacks, these being: the 6th January attack on the Sirasa Media Network building which was set on fire, the assassination of the editor, Lasantha Wickrematunge on 8th January, the attack on the Max TV station on 23rd February, the attack on editor Upali Tennakoon on 24th February, the abduction of editor N. Vidyadaran on 26th February and the abduction of Prof. Dhammika Ganganath Dissanayaka on 12th March. All these attacks occurred this year. Further, earlier attacks took place last year on Guruparan, a journalist with Suryan FM, the attack on Keith Noyar, Deputy Editor of the Nation newspaper, the brutal attack and attempted abduction of journalist Namal Perera and the media secretary of the British High Commission, Mahendra Ratnaweera.
In one instance an armed group that entered Max TV and brutally attacked the security personnel and journalists of the station were proved to be police officers from the Mirihana Police Station. Nothing was done by way of prosecuting these officers. Instead a senior officer arrived and expressed regret stating that it had been a mistake.
This report was presented to leaders from the Congress of Religions on the 7th April. The religious leaders, who listened to the representation of the five media organisations undertook to bring the report to the notice of the president of Sri Lanka. Earlier the US State Department, in their annual report on human rights also mentioned that: 'paramilitaries and others believed to be "working with awareness of the government "carried out unlawful killings, torture and kidnappings of civilians with impunity".'
That the Ministry of Defence has become an ultra-powerful authority and that the death squads operate under the patronage of the existing regime, are facts commonly known throughout the country. That the policing system has failed to uphold the rule of law and is in a pathetic condition is also a routinely repeated, non-controversial statement. That the politicisation of the police and the armed forces prevents their conduct from being scrutinised or investigated by any legal authority is also uncontested except by the government spokesman whose sole task is to poo-poo all allegations of the government’s involvement in criminal activities. The spokesman for the police, for example, when questioned about this report by the BBC Sinhala Service retorted that making such allegations against the police and military was an insult to war heroes.
Under normal circumstances a report of this nature would be responded to by the government which would initiate a high level inquiry into the allegations. Such a report would also be responded to by the country's judiciary which would direct the relevant authorities to respond by way of investigations and actions to such allegations. However, the condition that has been reached within Sri Lanka is that the state apparatus no longer responds to allegations of crimes by state agencies by any form of serious action.
Therefore it is not surprising that the five leading media organisations had to go before the Congress of Religions to present their report. When the legal authority completely fails people turn to those who represent the moral authority of the country to gain their interest in taking up the lost cause of investigation of crimes. What the report reveals may not be anything new to these leaders of various religions who naturally would have links to their congregations. The challenge for the Congress of Religions is as to whether they will raise their moral voice against widespread lawlessness that encourages any and every form of crime. Above all will the voices of morality in the country prove capable of raising their voices against the ultra-powerful authority that stands above the law?
The leader of the opposition also raised the issue of the suppression of media freedoms and stated that if journalists are killed and the Inspector General of Police fails to conduct effective investigations he would remove the IGP and others responsible for such inaction if he was in power. If the Congress of Religions wants to raise its voice on the present situation in a credible manner it should question as to why the government does not take action by way of the conduct of investigations into the crimes, including those mentioned in this media report. Thus, those who represent the country's moral authority needs, today, to confront those who represent the country’s legal authority who fail to uphold the law. There is today a significant conflict between the very foundations of morality and the callous neglect of the legal obligations of the state. At this juncture should the Congress of Religions and others who claim to represent the moral authority of the country fail to confront those in power who have allowed the undermining of the rule of law, they will disappoint not only the journalists but also the whole country.
While the leaders of the religions face this challenge Mr. Santha Fernando, a well known committed Christian social activist has also been held under arrest for no justifiable reason. Even attempts to engage in acts of charity and compassion have now come under attack by the same ultra-powerful authority that uses powers of arrest and detention without any regard to the principles established by law. The religious leaders may themselves come under such threat if they do not use their moral authority now to cause a change of the situation for the better.
For the full media report kindly see: http://colombotoday.com/english/articles/1375.htm
# # #
About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional non-governmental organisation monitoring and lobbying human rights issues in Asia. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984.
08 April, 2009
A journalist must express himself through media, not by shoe throwing
Jarnail Singh (left), correspondent of Dainik Jagran, who flung a shoe towards Home Minister P. Chidamabaram at his press conference in New Delhi on Tuesday. Below: The shoe whizzes past Chidambaram.
B.R.P.BHASKAR
Comment
Indo Asian News Service
Jarnail Singh, correspondent of the Hindi daily Dainik Jagran, was following the well-established Indian media tradition of imitation when he hurled a shoe at Home Minister P. Chidambaram at his press conference in New Delhi.
There was a slight departure from tradition, though. The Indian media usually imitates the West. Many newspapers are indebted to the West not only for their journalistic style but also for their names. Jarmail Singh imitated not a westerner, but an Arab, Muntazer al-Zaidi of Iraq, who had attracted attention worldwide by hurling a pair of shoes at President George Bush at a Baghdad press conference late last year.
Muntazer’s was an act of protest against the US atrocities in Iraq. He became a hero across the Arab world instantly. He also found admirers in anti-US circles elsewhere.
Jarnail Singh’s was an act of protest against the Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) report absolving Congress leader Jagdish Tytler of complicity in the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. He became a hero to at least a section of the Sikh community instantly. Quite possibly he has also found admirers in anti-Congress circles elsewhere.
Muntazer was tried by an Iraqi court and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment on a charge of assaulting a foreign head of state. Jarnail Singh was let off by police in less than two hours as Home Minister P. Chidambaram forgave him immediately and did not want the police to prosecute him.
When Muntazer and Jarnail Singh hurled shoes they were registering political protests, not performing any journalistic function. Like any other human being, the journalist has multiple identities. When his political or social identity overrides his journalistic identity, it is a clear sign that he is failing as a media practitioner. It testifies to his professional weakness. It is professional grounding that enables the journalist to overcome the pulls of other identities.
Ideally, a media person must express himself through the media. At least that is what his professional training must equip him to do. But, then, the media has limitations. A media person who becomes conscious of these limitations is entitled to step out of the professional bounds and use other means to put across his ideas.
However, so long as he functions within the framework of journalism, he has an obligation to ensure that his conduct is consistent with the requirements of the profession. Media persons must have good working relations with newsmakers. Shoe-throwing is not conducive to healthy interaction between newspersons and newsmakers.
Colleagues have described Jarnail Singh as a serious journalist, not given to maverick conduct. His action cannot be explained merely in terms of dissatisfaction over the home minister’s answer to his question about the CBI giving Jagdish Tytler a clean chit. Quite obviously he was giving vent to the sense of hurt in Sikh minds over the administration’s failure to bring to book those responsible for the killings.
Nearly 3,000 Sikhs are believed to have been done to death in Delhi as Indira Gandhi’s supporters went on a rampage after her assassination by her Sikh bodyguards. According to eyewitness accounts, Congress leaders like H.K.L. Bhagat, Tytler and Sajjan Kumar had instigated the riotous mobs.
Twenty-five years after the reprisal killings, the system has not been able to render justice to the victims. Since some Congress leaders of Delhi have been personally implicated, the party has a special responsibility to assuage the feelings of the victims. Delhi has just seven seats in the Lok Sabha. Is the Congress party so short of leaders there that it needs to nominate Tytler and Sajjan Kumar as candidates?
The CBI’s credibility as an investigating agency has been called into question often. The agency is directly under the prime minister. Use of the official machinery by those in authority to serve their political interests is not entirely unknown. It is necessary for those on the two sides of the political divide to realise that the credibility of such institutions needs to be protected. When the CBI named Communist Party of India -Marxist (CPI-M) politburo member Pinarayi Vijayan, who is a former electricity minister of Kerala, as an accused in a corruption case arising from a deal between the State Electricity Board and the SNC Lavalin company of Canada, the party charged the central government with implicating him with a political motive. Yet when the alleged Israeli missile scandal broke, the CPI-M demanded that the CBI be asked to look into it.
While the sense of grievance of the Sikhs is genuine, the current furore over Tytler’s role is essentially political. An eyewitness account may not be sufficient for a judicial commission to indict a person. The investigating agency will need evidence that a court will consider credible to launch prosecution.
The Shiromani Akali Dal, which has rushed in with a reward of Rs. 2 lakhs to Jarnail Singh for bringing the Sikh grievance to the fore, was a part of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, which was in power at the centre for six years. It must, therefore, bear its share of responsibility for the denial of justice to the Sikh community.
Communalism, Minority Identity and Secularism in the 2009 elections
CYNTHIA STEPHEN
Countercurrents.org
“Majorities are of two sorts: (1) communal majority and (2) political majority. A political majority is changeable in its class composition. A political majority grows. A communal majority is born. The admission to a political majority is open. The door to a communal majority is closed. The politics of political majority are free to all to make and unmake. The politics of communal majority are made by its own members born in it.” – Dr. B. R. Ambedkar.
These prophetic words are very relevant in today’s India. “The world’s largest democracy” prides itself on the fact that its voters are showing more and more maturity in the results the elections throw up. People-groups which have not hitherto played a major role in electoral alliances are beginning to gain importance and “rainbow coalitions” are the rule rather than the exception. A political majority is sought to be built to fight elections and gain power. But what is happening in the context of the communal majority?
For instance, the results of the recently Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir show up a glaring fault-line, one that Ambedkar refers to in the quotation. Never before had voters in J&K ever returned 10 BJP representatives to the assembly, all from Jammu. The divide between the Kashmir valley and Jammu was thrown into sharp relief. But the emotive issue which ended in such polarization, just before the election, was of the agitation on the issue of the allotment of land for amenities for pilgrims going to Amarnath. While the issue was communalized, the dividends were political. Gujarat is another clear case in point, as is a recent controversy: Varun Gandhi and his rabble-rousing speech which has been exploited both by the media and the BJP to maximum dramatic effect.
The birthing of India took place on the hopeful though tearful dawn of the 15th of August 1947, when British Imperialism conceived and delivered offspring which were almost like conjoined twins: torn apart into two on the basis of religious identity but held together by a shared trauma of birth, history, geography and blood-ties. It was an ominous portent. The two newly-born countries had a ruling class whose class-caste identities were clear and unambiguously elitist, but in India at least, their secular credentials were not under doubt. On 26th January 1950, and the founding dream of India: as a sovereign republican democracy – became a reality, not chiefly by the efforts of the Congressmen who had led the anti-colonial movement for India’s political freedom, but by the tireless efforts of one man, whose numerous contributions to his country was crowned by the singular effort to produce the Constitution of India: Dr. B R Ambedkar, head of the drafting committee of the Constituent Assembly. But as he presented to the nation the most important work of his life, he stated: “On the 26th January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In politics we will be recognising the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In our social and economic life, we shall by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril. We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment else those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of democracy which this Constituent Assembly has so laboriously built up.”
But now, in the India of the third millennium, equality continues to be denied, and contradictions abound. Communalism has taken the centre-stage, leaving its bloody footprints on the sands of the sixty-odd years of time that India has existed.
The Constitutional values of Equality and non-discrimination are the bedrock on which rests the edifice of rights and freedoms of Indian citizens. The Constitution recognizes, even celebrates, the diversity and plurality of the country and its citizens, and guarantees equality before the law to every citizen. But the very idea that our country is universally secular, democratic and plural in experience is problematic. It may be so for the privileged. But women, Dalits, children, Christians and Muslims, especially those belonging to the lower economic and social strata, and rural, forest, hill and desert-dwelling populations experience a different, harsher reality - of unrelenting exclusion, violence and deprivation.
But the spirit of Equality was violated by one of the earliest executive actions performed by the first President of India, Shri Rajendra Prasad. He signed the rank discriminatory Presidential Order 1950 in August that year, in which an apocryphal third paragraph was introduced, which effectively denied the benefits of reservations to members of the Scheduled castes who were Sikhs, Buddhists, Christians (and Muslims). This was modified in 1956 to include Sikhs in reservations and in 1990 to include Buddhists. And despite many assurances, recommendations and protests, the fact is that Christians and Muslims of Dalit origin continue to be denied the very amenities that are theirs by right. Thus the principle of nondiscrimination on the basis of religion which was embedded in the DNA of the Indian state, has been bypassed by this order, even though the order is against the spirit as well as the legal position of the Constitution, and there the matter continues to stand.
Thus, clearly, while the de jure position is that every citizen in the country is equal before law, the reality – the de facto position – is that the religious and other minorities in fact face systemic discrimination. The rule of the dominants, namely those who follow a Brahminical and casteist mode of life, prevails. Ironically, though this category is in a numerical minority, at best about 15% of the country’s population overall, they comprise an overwhelming majority in the government, the academic, the political sphere, the judiciary and the private sector. The very poor implementation of reservations at all levels in jobs and employment, barring the lowest or class D category – is testimony to the discriminatory nature of our society and policy. Thus even if the law provides proactive measures for development of those who are backward or poor, the ‘iron frame’ of privilege will work to exclude those who are eligible for the benefits and try to appropriate them for itself. And if about 40% of our population is below the poverty line, that is, too poor to afford survival-level food consumption – then we need to ask how representative, fair and democratic our political and social structure actually are.
The silver lining to this cloud is the consolidation of the lower castes, both in the political and educational spheres. This has brought fresh thinking and new talent to the fore, even if the persons concerned are inexperienced and less exposed to the nature of the establishment, and for that reason are better able to bring about much-needed changes in it. The impetus given by the Mandal Commission report to this process - and the backlash in the form of the “Kamandal” – the consolidation and mobilization of the saffron forces to counter this – has yet to be fully understood. The Mandal Commission evolved an index based on 11 indicators, subdivided into three categories – social, educational and economic – for the definition of the OBCs, and caste was not the sole criterion. Three of the indicators concerned caste, while the others referred to other impediments to the progress of the people group including early marriage – a barrier to education – and other criteria such as percentage of the caste who owned at least kuccha housing.
Christophe Jaffrelot, in his “India’s Silent Revolution: The rise of the low castes in North Indian politics” points out that the entire purpose of the exercise of the Commission was to give the OBCs access to power, not jobs. He quotes from the report – “ It is not at all our contention that by offering a few thousands jobs to OBC candidates we shall be able to make 52% of the Indian population as forward”. The report goes on to say that “an essential part of the battle against social backwardness is to be fought in the minds of the backward people. In India government service has always been looked upon as a symbol of prestige and power. By increasing the representation of OBCs in government services, we give them an immediate feeling of participation in the governance of this country. When a backward class candidate becomes a Collector or a Superintendent of Police, the material benefits accruing from his position are limited to the members of his family.. [B]ut the psychological spin off of this phenomenon is tremendous; the entire community of that backward class feels socially elevated. Even when no tangible benefits flow to the community at large the feeling that it now has its ‘own man’ in the ‘corridors of power’ acts as a morale booster.” The report further says “reservation will certainly erode the hold of the higher castes on the services.”
How is this relevant to the discourse on communalism? It has a very important bearing on the discourse, because before Mandal, conversion to “other” religions was an important, and often the only option for upward social mobility of disadvantaged groups. Thus India saw large-scale conversions at various times in the past to Islam, at a time in its history where Muslims were the ruling class, for example in Gujarat, Central India and in Bengal. Similarly the latter part of British rule in India, after the East India Company lost its hold on the affairs of the colonial project, and the Crown took over, saw a surge in the numbers of people from the untouchable and lower castes who became Christians because of a similar process – from being excluded from access to the corridors of power, they saw the virtues of becoming co-religionists of the ruling class so as to feel a sense of belonging and identity with the powers-that-be. Thus the conversion process, at least in the past, had a lot to do with the contemporary political processes.
In the present day, the rise in saffron assertion has closely paralleled the growth of the political aspirations of the lower castes following the Mandal Commission. The Sangh Parivar also kicked in around the same time with a thrust into the communities of the subalterns with their Vanvasi Kalyan, Ekal Vidyalayas, and the Bajrang Dal. Thus the threat perception of the ruling classes – that the processes unleashed by the Mandal Commission would succeed in subverting their hold on power – caused them to, on the one hand, reach out to the subaltern classes to build a constituency among them, and on the other, drive a wedge between the so-called “Hindus” and the Minorities by demonising them by harping “differences” between the minorities and the “Hindus”. The organizations using the name of Ram such as the Ram Sena are usually composed of the more dominant caste, thereby underscoring the inherent caste-class divide and power relations implied in the relationships (Hanuman – Bajrang Bali – the devotee of Lord Shri Ram).
As the wheels of Advani’s Rath rolled over the Indian landscape in the 1990s and subsequently, the power surge - Orissa, Chhatisgarh, MP, Bihar, Delhi - suggests a seemingly broad-based support for the RSS- sponsored communal agenda. But straws in the wind suggest that we have not yet seen the real face of Fascism. Bangar Laxman, Uma Bharathi and Kalyan Singh were all elevated to positions of power and later discarded, after their communities appeared to buy into the Parivar’s agenda. All of them were Dalits or BCs. Narendra Modi, though no one thinks of his caste, is also said to belong to a BC community – the Teli caste. He too has been used to do some major dirty work for the Parivar. Soon the time will come when he too will be dispensed with. Even Advani – with his Sindhi origin and his householder status – too does not fit into the Fascist scheme of the RSS. Soon, he too will bite the dust and a quintessential RSS man – single, Brahmin or upper-caste will either be projected for leadership. Alternatively, the BJP itself will be eclipsed and become a footnote in Indian politics, while an upper-caste preferably Brahmin “Brahmachari” from the RSS will wrest control of the political space presently occupied by the BJP. Hardline Brahminism, Patriarchy, and Fascism will combine to try and occupy democratic spaces and take over the governance. The situation of the Dalits, religious minorities and women will see a rapid decline.
With this end in mind, the ruling class have set into motion a series of processes aimed at exploiting the existing fault-lines in Indian society and channeling the desire of the subaltern classes to be close to the seat of power by enabling formations such as the Dharm Raksha Sena, the Bajrang Dal, etc. They also appropriate local linguistic sensibilities by infiltrating or taking them over – such as happened in Karnataka with the Kannada Rakshana Vedike. It is ironical that one section of Kannada “Abhimanis” bought into the saffron agenda because even a cursory glance will reveal the non-Brahmin provenance of the linguistic and cultural heritage of the Kannada people – Basava, Akkammahadevi, Kanakadasa and other luminaries who have enriched the literature and philosophy of this ancient land and language can hardly be termed Brahminical.
But the sad irony is that the true inheritors of the legacy of social struggle, progressive and subaltern assertion appear to have lost the capacity to counter the communal agenda. Instead they have become pawns in the hands of those who propagate the Fascistic saffron communal agenda. Most in India are aware that the Sangh Parivar, and chiefly the RSS, its intellectual fountainhead – is actually a vehicle for Fascism. In the south, the vibrant non-Brahmin movement in Tamil Nadu has kept the Parivar at bay in Tamil Nadu. The Left and the relatively larger percentage of Islamic-Christian populations has to some extent retarded their progress in Kerala. But while Karnataka appears to have been won over, the first real support for the Parivar in the South was actually in Andhra Pradesh, because the first ally of the BJP was the TDP which enabled the NDA to rule in Delhi for a whole term for the very first time. But Karnataka’s social realities are very different from AP, where the minorities rallied together to send the TDP packing in the state elections, to punish it for its dalliance with the BJP. Even in Karnataka, the pockets of support for the BJP are not widespread, but only in parts of the state – the coastal and North-western areas. The South and most of the North-eastern part of Karnataka do not seem to be much enamoured of the Parivar. But the secular political forces have failed to see the writing on the wall and come together to counter its agenda. This has caused the BJP to come to power in the state on a negative vote. Will our politically savvy voters now save the day for our state, even though the leaders seem to betray them time after time?
All is not lost - thinkers and scholars, writers and grassroots political activists, and newer political formulations are waking up to the realities. People in Karnataka were shocked to see the ugly face of the Parivar in their own backyard or rather in their own drawing rooms, as TV channels gave blanket coverage to footage of the public beating of women in a restaurant in Mangalore, and some footage emerged of unprecedented attacks on churches in the town too. In the same region, for the past two years there were communal incidents involving the sale of beef – mainly against Muslims. As one astute grassroots political activist in Bangalore pointed out, the violence against minorities is carefully orchestrated. They target Muslim for their Beef-eating and selling, Christians for conversions, and Dalits are targeted for casteist atrocities if they become assertive. It is not as if Dalits or Christians don’t eat or trade in beef; or that Muslims or Christians are not asserting. And conversions happen both among Dalits and Muslims, but they are not targeted on this issue. They target these three groups on three different issues so that they cannot come together to oppose the Parivar’s agenda. In fact, on some issues there are bound to be differences between the three subaltern groups. And the Parivar is fishing in these waters to gain political mileage.
The RSS has shown ingenuity in enlisting youths from subaltern groups and co-opting them into their agenda, at a time when secular and even progressive democratic forces have ceded their spaces. Where are the active students’ movements of the 70s and 80s? Have the educational institutions and universities actively discouraged the activity of these groups? Or did changed social expectations de-politicise our youth so that they can no longer distinguish between fascism and democracy? How can we educate young people about the dangers of fascism? Even the strong trade union movements of the 80s have been weakened by internal contradictions, by attrition in policies and by sheer economic compulsions. Thus the existing political awareness in society has been
To go back to the quotation cited at the beginning of this paper, has our inaction succeeded in making what was surely only a communal majority into a political majority? Is it too late already? A peep into the future suggest that there may still be time. There is still space for sections of society who have so far been marginalized from these processes to come to the fore, such as women, youth and the professional class, at least those from the newly upwardly mobile classes. Their involvement and fresh thinking, their identification of issues and location of solutions will bring in a new vibrance to our maturing democratic system.
Cynthia Stephen is an independent researcher based in Bangalore. She can be contacted at cynstepin@yahoo.com
Countercurrents.org
“Majorities are of two sorts: (1) communal majority and (2) political majority. A political majority is changeable in its class composition. A political majority grows. A communal majority is born. The admission to a political majority is open. The door to a communal majority is closed. The politics of political majority are free to all to make and unmake. The politics of communal majority are made by its own members born in it.” – Dr. B. R. Ambedkar.
These prophetic words are very relevant in today’s India. “The world’s largest democracy” prides itself on the fact that its voters are showing more and more maturity in the results the elections throw up. People-groups which have not hitherto played a major role in electoral alliances are beginning to gain importance and “rainbow coalitions” are the rule rather than the exception. A political majority is sought to be built to fight elections and gain power. But what is happening in the context of the communal majority?
For instance, the results of the recently Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir show up a glaring fault-line, one that Ambedkar refers to in the quotation. Never before had voters in J&K ever returned 10 BJP representatives to the assembly, all from Jammu. The divide between the Kashmir valley and Jammu was thrown into sharp relief. But the emotive issue which ended in such polarization, just before the election, was of the agitation on the issue of the allotment of land for amenities for pilgrims going to Amarnath. While the issue was communalized, the dividends were political. Gujarat is another clear case in point, as is a recent controversy: Varun Gandhi and his rabble-rousing speech which has been exploited both by the media and the BJP to maximum dramatic effect.
The birthing of India took place on the hopeful though tearful dawn of the 15th of August 1947, when British Imperialism conceived and delivered offspring which were almost like conjoined twins: torn apart into two on the basis of religious identity but held together by a shared trauma of birth, history, geography and blood-ties. It was an ominous portent. The two newly-born countries had a ruling class whose class-caste identities were clear and unambiguously elitist, but in India at least, their secular credentials were not under doubt. On 26th January 1950, and the founding dream of India: as a sovereign republican democracy – became a reality, not chiefly by the efforts of the Congressmen who had led the anti-colonial movement for India’s political freedom, but by the tireless efforts of one man, whose numerous contributions to his country was crowned by the singular effort to produce the Constitution of India: Dr. B R Ambedkar, head of the drafting committee of the Constituent Assembly. But as he presented to the nation the most important work of his life, he stated: “On the 26th January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In politics we will be recognising the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In our social and economic life, we shall by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril. We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment else those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of democracy which this Constituent Assembly has so laboriously built up.”
But now, in the India of the third millennium, equality continues to be denied, and contradictions abound. Communalism has taken the centre-stage, leaving its bloody footprints on the sands of the sixty-odd years of time that India has existed.
The Constitutional values of Equality and non-discrimination are the bedrock on which rests the edifice of rights and freedoms of Indian citizens. The Constitution recognizes, even celebrates, the diversity and plurality of the country and its citizens, and guarantees equality before the law to every citizen. But the very idea that our country is universally secular, democratic and plural in experience is problematic. It may be so for the privileged. But women, Dalits, children, Christians and Muslims, especially those belonging to the lower economic and social strata, and rural, forest, hill and desert-dwelling populations experience a different, harsher reality - of unrelenting exclusion, violence and deprivation.
But the spirit of Equality was violated by one of the earliest executive actions performed by the first President of India, Shri Rajendra Prasad. He signed the rank discriminatory Presidential Order 1950 in August that year, in which an apocryphal third paragraph was introduced, which effectively denied the benefits of reservations to members of the Scheduled castes who were Sikhs, Buddhists, Christians (and Muslims). This was modified in 1956 to include Sikhs in reservations and in 1990 to include Buddhists. And despite many assurances, recommendations and protests, the fact is that Christians and Muslims of Dalit origin continue to be denied the very amenities that are theirs by right. Thus the principle of nondiscrimination on the basis of religion which was embedded in the DNA of the Indian state, has been bypassed by this order, even though the order is against the spirit as well as the legal position of the Constitution, and there the matter continues to stand.
Thus, clearly, while the de jure position is that every citizen in the country is equal before law, the reality – the de facto position – is that the religious and other minorities in fact face systemic discrimination. The rule of the dominants, namely those who follow a Brahminical and casteist mode of life, prevails. Ironically, though this category is in a numerical minority, at best about 15% of the country’s population overall, they comprise an overwhelming majority in the government, the academic, the political sphere, the judiciary and the private sector. The very poor implementation of reservations at all levels in jobs and employment, barring the lowest or class D category – is testimony to the discriminatory nature of our society and policy. Thus even if the law provides proactive measures for development of those who are backward or poor, the ‘iron frame’ of privilege will work to exclude those who are eligible for the benefits and try to appropriate them for itself. And if about 40% of our population is below the poverty line, that is, too poor to afford survival-level food consumption – then we need to ask how representative, fair and democratic our political and social structure actually are.
The silver lining to this cloud is the consolidation of the lower castes, both in the political and educational spheres. This has brought fresh thinking and new talent to the fore, even if the persons concerned are inexperienced and less exposed to the nature of the establishment, and for that reason are better able to bring about much-needed changes in it. The impetus given by the Mandal Commission report to this process - and the backlash in the form of the “Kamandal” – the consolidation and mobilization of the saffron forces to counter this – has yet to be fully understood. The Mandal Commission evolved an index based on 11 indicators, subdivided into three categories – social, educational and economic – for the definition of the OBCs, and caste was not the sole criterion. Three of the indicators concerned caste, while the others referred to other impediments to the progress of the people group including early marriage – a barrier to education – and other criteria such as percentage of the caste who owned at least kuccha housing.
Christophe Jaffrelot, in his “India’s Silent Revolution: The rise of the low castes in North Indian politics” points out that the entire purpose of the exercise of the Commission was to give the OBCs access to power, not jobs. He quotes from the report – “ It is not at all our contention that by offering a few thousands jobs to OBC candidates we shall be able to make 52% of the Indian population as forward”. The report goes on to say that “an essential part of the battle against social backwardness is to be fought in the minds of the backward people. In India government service has always been looked upon as a symbol of prestige and power. By increasing the representation of OBCs in government services, we give them an immediate feeling of participation in the governance of this country. When a backward class candidate becomes a Collector or a Superintendent of Police, the material benefits accruing from his position are limited to the members of his family.. [B]ut the psychological spin off of this phenomenon is tremendous; the entire community of that backward class feels socially elevated. Even when no tangible benefits flow to the community at large the feeling that it now has its ‘own man’ in the ‘corridors of power’ acts as a morale booster.” The report further says “reservation will certainly erode the hold of the higher castes on the services.”
How is this relevant to the discourse on communalism? It has a very important bearing on the discourse, because before Mandal, conversion to “other” religions was an important, and often the only option for upward social mobility of disadvantaged groups. Thus India saw large-scale conversions at various times in the past to Islam, at a time in its history where Muslims were the ruling class, for example in Gujarat, Central India and in Bengal. Similarly the latter part of British rule in India, after the East India Company lost its hold on the affairs of the colonial project, and the Crown took over, saw a surge in the numbers of people from the untouchable and lower castes who became Christians because of a similar process – from being excluded from access to the corridors of power, they saw the virtues of becoming co-religionists of the ruling class so as to feel a sense of belonging and identity with the powers-that-be. Thus the conversion process, at least in the past, had a lot to do with the contemporary political processes.
In the present day, the rise in saffron assertion has closely paralleled the growth of the political aspirations of the lower castes following the Mandal Commission. The Sangh Parivar also kicked in around the same time with a thrust into the communities of the subalterns with their Vanvasi Kalyan, Ekal Vidyalayas, and the Bajrang Dal. Thus the threat perception of the ruling classes – that the processes unleashed by the Mandal Commission would succeed in subverting their hold on power – caused them to, on the one hand, reach out to the subaltern classes to build a constituency among them, and on the other, drive a wedge between the so-called “Hindus” and the Minorities by demonising them by harping “differences” between the minorities and the “Hindus”. The organizations using the name of Ram such as the Ram Sena are usually composed of the more dominant caste, thereby underscoring the inherent caste-class divide and power relations implied in the relationships (Hanuman – Bajrang Bali – the devotee of Lord Shri Ram).
As the wheels of Advani’s Rath rolled over the Indian landscape in the 1990s and subsequently, the power surge - Orissa, Chhatisgarh, MP, Bihar, Delhi - suggests a seemingly broad-based support for the RSS- sponsored communal agenda. But straws in the wind suggest that we have not yet seen the real face of Fascism. Bangar Laxman, Uma Bharathi and Kalyan Singh were all elevated to positions of power and later discarded, after their communities appeared to buy into the Parivar’s agenda. All of them were Dalits or BCs. Narendra Modi, though no one thinks of his caste, is also said to belong to a BC community – the Teli caste. He too has been used to do some major dirty work for the Parivar. Soon the time will come when he too will be dispensed with. Even Advani – with his Sindhi origin and his householder status – too does not fit into the Fascist scheme of the RSS. Soon, he too will bite the dust and a quintessential RSS man – single, Brahmin or upper-caste will either be projected for leadership. Alternatively, the BJP itself will be eclipsed and become a footnote in Indian politics, while an upper-caste preferably Brahmin “Brahmachari” from the RSS will wrest control of the political space presently occupied by the BJP. Hardline Brahminism, Patriarchy, and Fascism will combine to try and occupy democratic spaces and take over the governance. The situation of the Dalits, religious minorities and women will see a rapid decline.
With this end in mind, the ruling class have set into motion a series of processes aimed at exploiting the existing fault-lines in Indian society and channeling the desire of the subaltern classes to be close to the seat of power by enabling formations such as the Dharm Raksha Sena, the Bajrang Dal, etc. They also appropriate local linguistic sensibilities by infiltrating or taking them over – such as happened in Karnataka with the Kannada Rakshana Vedike. It is ironical that one section of Kannada “Abhimanis” bought into the saffron agenda because even a cursory glance will reveal the non-Brahmin provenance of the linguistic and cultural heritage of the Kannada people – Basava, Akkammahadevi, Kanakadasa and other luminaries who have enriched the literature and philosophy of this ancient land and language can hardly be termed Brahminical.
But the sad irony is that the true inheritors of the legacy of social struggle, progressive and subaltern assertion appear to have lost the capacity to counter the communal agenda. Instead they have become pawns in the hands of those who propagate the Fascistic saffron communal agenda. Most in India are aware that the Sangh Parivar, and chiefly the RSS, its intellectual fountainhead – is actually a vehicle for Fascism. In the south, the vibrant non-Brahmin movement in Tamil Nadu has kept the Parivar at bay in Tamil Nadu. The Left and the relatively larger percentage of Islamic-Christian populations has to some extent retarded their progress in Kerala. But while Karnataka appears to have been won over, the first real support for the Parivar in the South was actually in Andhra Pradesh, because the first ally of the BJP was the TDP which enabled the NDA to rule in Delhi for a whole term for the very first time. But Karnataka’s social realities are very different from AP, where the minorities rallied together to send the TDP packing in the state elections, to punish it for its dalliance with the BJP. Even in Karnataka, the pockets of support for the BJP are not widespread, but only in parts of the state – the coastal and North-western areas. The South and most of the North-eastern part of Karnataka do not seem to be much enamoured of the Parivar. But the secular political forces have failed to see the writing on the wall and come together to counter its agenda. This has caused the BJP to come to power in the state on a negative vote. Will our politically savvy voters now save the day for our state, even though the leaders seem to betray them time after time?
All is not lost - thinkers and scholars, writers and grassroots political activists, and newer political formulations are waking up to the realities. People in Karnataka were shocked to see the ugly face of the Parivar in their own backyard or rather in their own drawing rooms, as TV channels gave blanket coverage to footage of the public beating of women in a restaurant in Mangalore, and some footage emerged of unprecedented attacks on churches in the town too. In the same region, for the past two years there were communal incidents involving the sale of beef – mainly against Muslims. As one astute grassroots political activist in Bangalore pointed out, the violence against minorities is carefully orchestrated. They target Muslim for their Beef-eating and selling, Christians for conversions, and Dalits are targeted for casteist atrocities if they become assertive. It is not as if Dalits or Christians don’t eat or trade in beef; or that Muslims or Christians are not asserting. And conversions happen both among Dalits and Muslims, but they are not targeted on this issue. They target these three groups on three different issues so that they cannot come together to oppose the Parivar’s agenda. In fact, on some issues there are bound to be differences between the three subaltern groups. And the Parivar is fishing in these waters to gain political mileage.
The RSS has shown ingenuity in enlisting youths from subaltern groups and co-opting them into their agenda, at a time when secular and even progressive democratic forces have ceded their spaces. Where are the active students’ movements of the 70s and 80s? Have the educational institutions and universities actively discouraged the activity of these groups? Or did changed social expectations de-politicise our youth so that they can no longer distinguish between fascism and democracy? How can we educate young people about the dangers of fascism? Even the strong trade union movements of the 80s have been weakened by internal contradictions, by attrition in policies and by sheer economic compulsions. Thus the existing political awareness in society has been
To go back to the quotation cited at the beginning of this paper, has our inaction succeeded in making what was surely only a communal majority into a political majority? Is it too late already? A peep into the future suggest that there may still be time. There is still space for sections of society who have so far been marginalized from these processes to come to the fore, such as women, youth and the professional class, at least those from the newly upwardly mobile classes. Their involvement and fresh thinking, their identification of issues and location of solutions will bring in a new vibrance to our maturing democratic system.
Cynthia Stephen is an independent researcher based in Bangalore. She can be contacted at cynstepin@yahoo.com
07 April, 2009
Waqar Khan, campaigner for communal amity, is no more
Ram Puniyani writes:Waqar Khan (picture on the right), a dear and close friend, passed away today, following a heart attack.
Waqar bhai has been very active in the field of communal harmony since the 1992-93 Mumbai riots. In Dharavi, he rendered yeomen service for the sake of communal amity.
He made a few very popular films, including Hum Sab Ek Hain which was a delight to watch. His films got a very appreciative response from the communities where it had been screened. The photograph which he shot showing the clergy of four religions has become a landmark contribution and became a popular sticker. He helped us in many secular initiatives, with full enthusiasm.
He came from a modest background. His insight into the issue was profound and many of us, including myself, learnt a lot from him. It is a personal loss to me.
It is a sad loss for the secular movement and the cause of communal amity.
Please see write-up on Waqar Khan which appeared at the News21 website, a journalism initiative of the Carnegie and Knight Foundations in 2007
Campaigner against capital punishment warns of ‘culture of death’
ANNETTE FUENTESNew America Media
Editor's Note: Sister Helen Prejean (photo on right), known for her crusade against the death penalty and her book "Dead Man Walking," warns that the "culture of death" is still celebrated despite waning support for the death penalty in states around the country.
Sister Helen Prejean says it took her 40 years to “wake up” to the social injustices around her in New Orleans, but maybe it would have happened faster “if I had grown up in California.”
With the mesmerizing cadence of a preacher and the down-home humor of her Louisiana upbringing, Prejean spoke at the Diablo Valley Peace and Justice Center in Walnut Creek on March 30. A nun of the order St. Joseph of Medaille, the 60-year-old described awakening to her calling: a crusade against capital punishment. “Enlightenment is a gift,” she said to a packed auditorium. “It’s always a surprise. You never know when it comes and you can’t make it happen.”
Prejean is one of the most visible public figures in the movement to ban the death penalty, owed in great measure to her first book, “Dead Man Walking,” and its 1995 Hollywood film adaptation starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn. Sarandon won an Oscar for her portrayal of the nun. Prejean won wider celebrity. She uses it in her ceaseless campaign to raise consciousness about capital punishment.
Her own consciousness about the criminal justice system began in the early 1980s as nuns brought back stories of liberation theology from their work with the poor in Latin America. Prejean began to work with the poor in her own backyard, in St. Thomas public housing projects, which abutted the convent property. “That’s where all the violence happens,” she explained.
When someone asked her to be a pen pal to a Louisiana State Penitentiary inmate, Prejean said, “Sure. I was an English major. I can write pretty letters.” The inmate was Patrick Sonnier, a confessed murderer, and Prejean began a two-year journey into the heart of darkness of death row where she formed a friendship with Sonnier and became a fervid opponent of capital punishment.
“The first time I visited him, I’m scared, I’m so out of my element. I thought, ‘He murdered somebody!’ I could hear his leg irons dragging across the floor. That was the first sound I hear from him. Then I heard a Cajun accent,” she recalled. “I thought his face would mirror that he had murdered someone. But he was smiling and said, ‘Thank you for visiting me.’”
Prejean visited Sonnier in the role of spiritual advisor until his execution by electrocution in 1984. Since then, she has accompanied five others to their deaths, an act motivated by her belief that all humans are deserving of compassion. “In the web of life, if we can say about some human beings that they are disposable and cut them out of the web of life,” she said, “we have to turn a switch inside ourselves to say, ‘You are not human like us.’”
Official support for the death penalty has been waning in states around the country, Prejean noted, with New Mexico the latest to ban it. But she wagged her finger at California. “You have 600 people on death row. You have got to figure this out. How does this happen?” she said. “Is it connected to any system you have? Why 600? It’s all about changing consciousness.”
Prosecutors and their frequent bias in favor of seeking the death penalty are part of the system that needs changing, Prejean asserted. “After prosecutors say they’re going after murder one, they put on the blinders and say, ‘We’re going after the death penalty.’” In Louisiana, that attitude is part of a “culture of death,” she said, that prosecutors seem to celebrate. “Louisiana is so bad,” Prejean said. “They give each other this little award—the Louisiana Prick award. It shows a pelican flying with a hypodermic needle in its beak.”
To overturn the “culture of death” fostered by capital punishment, Prejean calls for simple, vocal activism by ordinary people. “People are not so enthusiastic about the death penalty as they used to be,” she said, noting that among Catholics, support has dropped significantly to 49 percent. “The more voices raised and the more dialogue, legislators will start to listen. Especially the voices of young people. They love to be loved by young people.”
06 April, 2009
Binayak Sen's arrest: what does it say about us?
The following is a press statement issued by Arundhati Roy at Raipur, Chattisgarh, on April 6 and appearing at the HARDNEWS website
Dr Binayak Sen has been in prison for 22 months, arrested under one of India's most draconian laws, the Chattisgarh Special Public Security Act. This Act has such a vague, diffused definition of 'Unlawful Activity' that it renders every person guilty unless he or she can prove their innocence. Dr Sen's bail application was dismissed twice, both times at the very outset, by the High Court of Chattisgarh and by the Supreme Court of India. On neither occasion was there a discussion on the merits of the case. On the 2nd of December 2008 the High Court of Chattisgarh once again turned down his bail application, without a discussion on the merits of the case, saying that there had been no change in circumstances.
But there has been a change in circumstances. To begin with, the charge-sheet has been filed. 64 witnesses have been examined by the prosecution. Not one of them has provided legally admissible evidence to support the accusations in the charge-sheet. Even the jail officials, the Superintendent and the Jailer, who were called as witnesses by the Prosecution, have ruled out the possibility of Dr Sen being a carrier of letters given to him by Narayan Sanyal (said to be a senior Maoist leader) who is a high security prisoner in Raipur Jail. (It should be mentioned here that Narayan Sanyal has a medical condition which requires surgical intervention from time to time, which is why the jail authorities permitted Dr Sen to visit him regularly.)
That Dr Sen should continue to be in prison when the case against him has almost completely fallen through says a great deal about the very grave situation in Chattisgarh today. There is a civil war in this state. Hundreds are being killed and imprisoned. Hundreds of thousands of the poorest of the poor are hiding in the forests, fearing for their lives. They have no access to food, to markets, to schools or healthcare. The thousands who have been moved into the camps of the government-backed peoples' militia, the Salwa Judum, are also trapped in sordid encampments, which have to be guarded by armed police. Hatred, violence and brutality is being cynically spread, pitting the poor against the poorest.
There is very little doubt that Dr Sen is in prison because he spoke out against this policy of the State Government, because he opposed the formation of the Salwa Judum. His incarceration is meant to silence dissent, and criminalize democratic space. It is meant to create a wall of silence around the civil war in Chattisgarh. It is meant to absorb all our attention so that the stories of the hundreds of other nameless, faceless people - those without lawyers, without the attention of journalists - who are starving and dying in the forests, go unnoticed and unrecorded.
Tomorrow is World Health Day. Dr Binayak Sen spent the best part of his life working among the poorest people in India, who live far away from the government's attentions, with no access to clinics, hospitals, doctors or medicines. He has saved thousands from certain death from malaria, diarrhea, and other easily treatable illnesses. And yet, he is the one in jail, while those who boast openly about mass murder are free to go about their business, and even stand for elections.
What does this say about us? About who we are and where we're going?
04 April, 2009
Pakistan not about to fall into Taliban hands, says journalist
VIJI SUNDARAM
News Report
New America Media
Editor's Note: Western analysts are mistaken in believing that Pakistan is falling into the hands of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir. Mir told an audience in Berkeley, Calif. this week. Viji Sundaram is an editor at New America Media.
BERKELEY, Calif. – Pakistan’s arguably most celebrated investigative journalist and editor Hamid Mir said that it is understandable why “Western analysts” mistakenly think that Pakistan is falling into the hands of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, when only 2 percent of the country’s population inhabits the “red area” where the two groups are concentrated.
“When you are sitting in New York, or D.C., or San Francisco and reading the newspapers, you are justified in forming this opinion,” Mir told the gathering in the library of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism on Wednesday, taking a dig at the Western media. But he quickly noted that the West should not undermine the threat posed by that minority population of five million because “even 500 suicide bombers can create hell.”
Mir, 42, is best known as the only journalist to have interviewed Osama bin Laden, twice before the 9/11 attacks and once after.
He has put such major political figures as former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Afghan President Hamid Karzai in the hot seat on Geo TV, Pakistan’s popular TV station, where Mir is executive editor. He is currently writing an authorized biography of Osama bin Laden.
The March 27 suicide bombing of a mosque in the restive Khyber region of Jamrud in Pakistan that claimed the lives of 58 people and injured around 160 more, proved that President Obama was wrong in calling that region a safe haven of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Mir said. Only 12 of the worshippers in the two-story mosque belonged to the Pakistani security force and the country’s intelligence agency.
That border region has also claimed the lives of several of his colleagues who were covering the war, said Mir. Many others have quit journalism, altogether.
“I’m able to share all this information with you due to the sacrifices of my cameraman and my guide,” Mir said.
He said the area is so dangerous because, unlike most of the rest of Pakistan, the government has no control over it.
Located between the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA), is governed directly by the federal government through a special set of “draconian” laws called the Frontier Crimes Regulations that were instituted by the British in 1890, according to Mir. Those laws deny basic human rights to the people of FATA and have prevented the region from partaking in the socio- economic development that the rest of Pakistan has experienced. “That area is one of the most underdeveloped areas in the world,” Mir said.
He said that no part of the $11 billion aid given by the Bush administration to Pakistan in the last seven years was spent in developing the FATA region, which has no roads, no hospitals and zero employment, save for those who work in the flourishing opium trade.
“So if an 18-year-old wants employment, he’ll go to the Taliban, and if an 80-year-old wants help, he too will go to the Taliban,” Mir said.
The tipping point at which the tribal people in those border regions turned against the United States came in 2003, when former President George W. Bush began pressuring Musharraf to begin military operations against them, Mir said. And when innocent children were killed in those operations, the Pashtuns were incensed.
“For a Pashtun, if somebody kills my child, I will take revenge,” Mir said. “So bad U.S. policy isolated that area and led to bloody suicide bombings.”
Mir asserted that the stepped-up drone (unmanned aircraft) attacks by the United States – 46 in the last eight months-- are claiming very few Taliban operatives.
“In the 11 drone attacks I covered, only two low-level Taliban men were killed,” he said. “But I saw dozens of women and children killed.”
According to Mir the “most important problem” the two countries face is that there is no proper border between them. The porous border, Mir said, is more than 1,250 miles long and has only two legal entry points. An estimated 13 million Pashtuns live on the Pakistani side of the border and about the same number live in Afghanistan. All Taliban are Pashtuns.
Mir asserted that the Taliban-generated violence could only end:
* If a border were built between Pakistan and Afghanistan, just as the fencing a few years ago of the so-called “Line of Control” between India and Pakistan has helped control the violence in the India-controlled region of Kashmir.
* If India and Pakistan begin peace talks to solve the Kashmir dispute.
* If the FATA regions are governed like the rest of Pakistan.
* If some of the $1.5 billion per year in non-military aid for five years the Obama administration has promised Pakistan goes to those regions to build schools, hospitals and roads. “Girls should not be prevented from going to school,” he said.
Talking to the Taliban is “not a bad idea,” either, Mir added.
Asked in a private interview if he knew where bin Laden currently was, Mir laughed and said: “He’s wandering freely in those mountainous regions of Pakistan.”
News Report
New America Media
Editor's Note: Western analysts are mistaken in believing that Pakistan is falling into the hands of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir. Mir told an audience in Berkeley, Calif. this week. Viji Sundaram is an editor at New America Media.
BERKELEY, Calif. – Pakistan’s arguably most celebrated investigative journalist and editor Hamid Mir said that it is understandable why “Western analysts” mistakenly think that Pakistan is falling into the hands of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, when only 2 percent of the country’s population inhabits the “red area” where the two groups are concentrated.
“When you are sitting in New York, or D.C., or San Francisco and reading the newspapers, you are justified in forming this opinion,” Mir told the gathering in the library of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism on Wednesday, taking a dig at the Western media. But he quickly noted that the West should not undermine the threat posed by that minority population of five million because “even 500 suicide bombers can create hell.”
Mir, 42, is best known as the only journalist to have interviewed Osama bin Laden, twice before the 9/11 attacks and once after.
He has put such major political figures as former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Afghan President Hamid Karzai in the hot seat on Geo TV, Pakistan’s popular TV station, where Mir is executive editor. He is currently writing an authorized biography of Osama bin Laden.
The March 27 suicide bombing of a mosque in the restive Khyber region of Jamrud in Pakistan that claimed the lives of 58 people and injured around 160 more, proved that President Obama was wrong in calling that region a safe haven of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Mir said. Only 12 of the worshippers in the two-story mosque belonged to the Pakistani security force and the country’s intelligence agency.
That border region has also claimed the lives of several of his colleagues who were covering the war, said Mir. Many others have quit journalism, altogether.
“I’m able to share all this information with you due to the sacrifices of my cameraman and my guide,” Mir said.
He said the area is so dangerous because, unlike most of the rest of Pakistan, the government has no control over it.
Located between the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA), is governed directly by the federal government through a special set of “draconian” laws called the Frontier Crimes Regulations that were instituted by the British in 1890, according to Mir. Those laws deny basic human rights to the people of FATA and have prevented the region from partaking in the socio- economic development that the rest of Pakistan has experienced. “That area is one of the most underdeveloped areas in the world,” Mir said.
He said that no part of the $11 billion aid given by the Bush administration to Pakistan in the last seven years was spent in developing the FATA region, which has no roads, no hospitals and zero employment, save for those who work in the flourishing opium trade.
“So if an 18-year-old wants employment, he’ll go to the Taliban, and if an 80-year-old wants help, he too will go to the Taliban,” Mir said.
The tipping point at which the tribal people in those border regions turned against the United States came in 2003, when former President George W. Bush began pressuring Musharraf to begin military operations against them, Mir said. And when innocent children were killed in those operations, the Pashtuns were incensed.
“For a Pashtun, if somebody kills my child, I will take revenge,” Mir said. “So bad U.S. policy isolated that area and led to bloody suicide bombings.”
Mir asserted that the stepped-up drone (unmanned aircraft) attacks by the United States – 46 in the last eight months-- are claiming very few Taliban operatives.
“In the 11 drone attacks I covered, only two low-level Taliban men were killed,” he said. “But I saw dozens of women and children killed.”
According to Mir the “most important problem” the two countries face is that there is no proper border between them. The porous border, Mir said, is more than 1,250 miles long and has only two legal entry points. An estimated 13 million Pashtuns live on the Pakistani side of the border and about the same number live in Afghanistan. All Taliban are Pashtuns.
Mir asserted that the Taliban-generated violence could only end:
* If a border were built between Pakistan and Afghanistan, just as the fencing a few years ago of the so-called “Line of Control” between India and Pakistan has helped control the violence in the India-controlled region of Kashmir.
* If India and Pakistan begin peace talks to solve the Kashmir dispute.
* If the FATA regions are governed like the rest of Pakistan.
* If some of the $1.5 billion per year in non-military aid for five years the Obama administration has promised Pakistan goes to those regions to build schools, hospitals and roads. “Girls should not be prevented from going to school,” he said.
Talking to the Taliban is “not a bad idea,” either, Mir added.
Asked in a private interview if he knew where bin Laden currently was, Mir laughed and said: “He’s wandering freely in those mountainous regions of Pakistan.”
03 April, 2009
UK media regulatory authority fines BBC £150,000
Ofcom, Britain’s media regulatory authority, has fined the BBC £150,000 over the lewd phone calls Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand made to actor Andrew Sachs on Radio 2 last year.
A report at BBC's website says:
The media regulator said the fine reflected "the extraordinary nature and seriousness of the BBC's failures" and the "resulting breaches" of its code.
The BBC said it accepted Ofcom's findings and added that the material "should never have been broadcast".
Brand resigned over the affair and Ross was suspended for three months.
The fine relates to two episodes of the Russell Brand show broadcast on 18 and 25 October 2008.
'Gratuitously offensive'
Ofcom said the BBC broadcast explicit, intimate and confidential information about Georgina Baillie, the granddaughter of the Fawlty Towers actor, without obtaining consent either from her or Sachs.
"This not only unwarrantably and seriously infringed their privacy but was also gratuitously offensive, humiliating and demeaning," it said.
Ofcom fined the corporation £70,000 for breaching rules on generally accepted standards and offensive material.
It also imposed a £80,000 fine for failing to adhere to rules which protect members of the public from unwarranted infringements of privacy.
Ofcom has also directed Radio 2 to broadcast a summary of its findings.
Creative risk
The regulator noted that broadcasters should be allowed to enjoy creative freedom to explore issues and ideas "without undue interference".
"Creative risk is part of the BBC's public service role," it said. "However, so is the management of that risk."
Ofcom said it found in its investigation that despite Brand's show being considered to be "high risk" by the BBC prior to the incident, the broadcaster had ceded responsibility for managing some of that risk to people working for the presenter.
Ofcom's Stewart Purvis told the BBC the incident had come about because of "underlying flaws" in BBC systems.
"When the BBC decided to outsource this programme to an independent production company, it didn't put in place what we call compliance systems. In other words, ways of staying within the rules," he said.
"The executive producer of the programme was a senior figure in the agency which represented Russell Brand and a line producer was loaned by the BBC to the production company, of which Russell Brand is one of the owners."
There was therefore no one at the BBC who was "absolutely in editorial control of the whole process," he added.
Ofcom also noted in its report that Brand's interests "had been given greater priority than the BBC's responsibility to avoid unwarranted infringements of privacy, minimise the risk of harm and offence and to maintain generally accepted standards."
'Riddled with holes'
A BBC spokesman said: "As we said last October, this material should never have been broadcast and we apologised unreservedly for that.
"The BBC has since taken comprehensive action to deal with what were unacceptable failures in editorial judgement and compliance which led to the broadcast."
Ofcom also raised concerns over the BBC's assurances that it was improving compliance.
The watchdog noted it had received similar assurances as recently as the summer of 2008, following its investigations into competitions and voting in BBC programmes.
"Ofcom therefore expects BBC management to ensure that these latest improvements are fulfilled effectively and quickly," it said.
Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said that while the fine itself was "relatively trivial", the incident represented a "huge" breach of trust for licence fee payers.
"It is clear from this damning report that the BBC's safeguards were riddled with holes," he said. "The public needs to know that this is never going to happen again."
In a related ruling, Ofcom found Chris Moyles's Radio 1 breakfast show breached broadcasting rules by allowing Brand to refer to Georgina Baillie during an appearance on the programme.
On the show, broadcast on 21 October, Brand said he had "in inverted commas, recently 'met'" a woman he described as "Andrew Sachs's granddaughter".
The comedian went on to laughingly claim he had "'met' her brains out".
Though Miss Baillie was not named in the programme, Ofcom found she was likely to be identifiable and that it had therefore infringed her privacy.
BBC's Response
In response to today's Ofcom ruling, the BBC issued the following statement:
"We accept Ofcom's findings.
"As we said last October, this material should never have been broadcast and we apologised unreservedly for that.
"We note that Ofcom has found that senior management acted swiftly to mitigate the offence and damage caused by the breaches of the Code.
"The BBC has since taken comprehensive action to deal with what were unacceptable failures in editorial judgement and compliance which led to the broadcast.
"This has included a comprehensive review of compliance across Audio & Music, and a new policy ensuring presenters and their agents cannot be the Executive Producer responsible for compliance on their own shows.
"In addition and as is well-known, two very senior managers and Russell Brand resigned and Jonathan Ross was suspended without pay for 12 weeks."
A report at BBC's website says:
The media regulator said the fine reflected "the extraordinary nature and seriousness of the BBC's failures" and the "resulting breaches" of its code.
The BBC said it accepted Ofcom's findings and added that the material "should never have been broadcast".
Brand resigned over the affair and Ross was suspended for three months.
The fine relates to two episodes of the Russell Brand show broadcast on 18 and 25 October 2008.
'Gratuitously offensive'
Ofcom said the BBC broadcast explicit, intimate and confidential information about Georgina Baillie, the granddaughter of the Fawlty Towers actor, without obtaining consent either from her or Sachs.
"This not only unwarrantably and seriously infringed their privacy but was also gratuitously offensive, humiliating and demeaning," it said.
Ofcom fined the corporation £70,000 for breaching rules on generally accepted standards and offensive material.
It also imposed a £80,000 fine for failing to adhere to rules which protect members of the public from unwarranted infringements of privacy.
Ofcom has also directed Radio 2 to broadcast a summary of its findings.
Creative risk
The regulator noted that broadcasters should be allowed to enjoy creative freedom to explore issues and ideas "without undue interference".
"Creative risk is part of the BBC's public service role," it said. "However, so is the management of that risk."
Ofcom said it found in its investigation that despite Brand's show being considered to be "high risk" by the BBC prior to the incident, the broadcaster had ceded responsibility for managing some of that risk to people working for the presenter.
Ofcom's Stewart Purvis told the BBC the incident had come about because of "underlying flaws" in BBC systems.
"When the BBC decided to outsource this programme to an independent production company, it didn't put in place what we call compliance systems. In other words, ways of staying within the rules," he said.
"The executive producer of the programme was a senior figure in the agency which represented Russell Brand and a line producer was loaned by the BBC to the production company, of which Russell Brand is one of the owners."
There was therefore no one at the BBC who was "absolutely in editorial control of the whole process," he added.
Ofcom also noted in its report that Brand's interests "had been given greater priority than the BBC's responsibility to avoid unwarranted infringements of privacy, minimise the risk of harm and offence and to maintain generally accepted standards."
'Riddled with holes'
A BBC spokesman said: "As we said last October, this material should never have been broadcast and we apologised unreservedly for that.
"The BBC has since taken comprehensive action to deal with what were unacceptable failures in editorial judgement and compliance which led to the broadcast."
Ofcom also raised concerns over the BBC's assurances that it was improving compliance.
The watchdog noted it had received similar assurances as recently as the summer of 2008, following its investigations into competitions and voting in BBC programmes.
"Ofcom therefore expects BBC management to ensure that these latest improvements are fulfilled effectively and quickly," it said.
Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said that while the fine itself was "relatively trivial", the incident represented a "huge" breach of trust for licence fee payers.
"It is clear from this damning report that the BBC's safeguards were riddled with holes," he said. "The public needs to know that this is never going to happen again."
In a related ruling, Ofcom found Chris Moyles's Radio 1 breakfast show breached broadcasting rules by allowing Brand to refer to Georgina Baillie during an appearance on the programme.
On the show, broadcast on 21 October, Brand said he had "in inverted commas, recently 'met'" a woman he described as "Andrew Sachs's granddaughter".
The comedian went on to laughingly claim he had "'met' her brains out".
Though Miss Baillie was not named in the programme, Ofcom found she was likely to be identifiable and that it had therefore infringed her privacy.
BBC's Response
In response to today's Ofcom ruling, the BBC issued the following statement:
"We accept Ofcom's findings.
"As we said last October, this material should never have been broadcast and we apologised unreservedly for that.
"We note that Ofcom has found that senior management acted swiftly to mitigate the offence and damage caused by the breaches of the Code.
"The BBC has since taken comprehensive action to deal with what were unacceptable failures in editorial judgement and compliance which led to the broadcast.
"This has included a comprehensive review of compliance across Audio & Music, and a new policy ensuring presenters and their agents cannot be the Executive Producer responsible for compliance on their own shows.
"In addition and as is well-known, two very senior managers and Russell Brand resigned and Jonathan Ross was suspended without pay for 12 weeks."
Castro commends US-China strategic and economic dialogue
Following is a piece written by former Cuban President Fidel Castro in his column “Reflections by Comrade Fidel” on the G-20 summit in London. It is reproduced from the official Cuban website.
Today the G-20 Summit began. The experts in economic matters have made an enormous effort -- some, with experience in important international positions; others, as learned researchers. The subject is a complex one, the language is new and demands that we be familiar with the terms, the economic facts, the international agencies and the political leaders who have the greatest weight on the international scene. Therefore, our desire to simplify and to explain intelligibly what is happening in London, just as I see it.
Nobody was surprised that Obama was the star of the London summit. He represents the most powerful and wealthiest country in the world. He is favored by special circumstances. Bush, lying, cynical, war-mongering and nasty, is not there. Neither is McCain, mediocre and ignorant, thanks precisely to Obama’s amazing victory, a black man in the country of racial discrimination, where a majority of white voters cast their ballots for McCain, but not in enough numbers to compensate for the votes of more than 90% of black and mixed race Americans, citizens of Latino origin, the poor and those affected by the crisis. He has just been elected when other G-20 leaders are at the point of concluding their mandates and Obama will be the probable president of the United States for the next eight years. It isn’t strange that news from London revolve around him.
What the world deems important is what comes out of it there, that is, if anything comes out at all. Each one of the participants has their own national and even personal objectives, as political leaders who shall be judged by history.
Obama’s objective is, in the first place, to change the image of his country, the principal responsible party for the tragedy from which the world is suffering and the party being rightly blamed for the current devastating economic crisis, in which he has absolutely no political responsibility. As Joseph Stiglitz, the former economic head of the International Monetary Fund and now MIT professor, points out: “He ought to come to say that he is guilty of nothing and that he is trying to solve it as quickly as he can.”
His main European ally, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, is the Summit host, wildly hoping to alter the current anti-Labor Party tendency unleashed by the nonsense of his predecessor Tony Blair. Buckingham Palace honored Obama and his wife Michelle with a reception. The president gave the elderly Queen a modern digital recorder, product of sophisticated American technology, an Ipod with songs and images of the Queen’s state visit to the U.S. in 2007 and a book with musical scores signed by Richard Rogers. No words were to be exchanged with Her Highness about the mundane G-20 meeting.
Brown, on the other hand, is pulling out all stops with the crisis. He hopes to change the regulation of the banking system, promote economic growth, increase cooperation and put an end to protectionism. He recognizes that the negotiations will be difficult.
His motto: “It is better to look ahead than to look back”. Clearly if the voters were to look back, he would win very few votes.
The desire of both allies in the heart of the G-20 is to minimize the differences between France and Germany.
Sarkozy doesn’t hide his displeasure with United States policy. He is explosive. He recently threatened to walk out of the summit. Yesterday, on Europe 1 Radio, he declared that for now there is no satisfactory agreement about the Summit, but he did soften his threats to leave the table if there is no move towards greater regulation: “I will not be associated with a Summit that doesn’t end with greater regulations.” He assures that the negotiators have not reached any agreement.
The draft of the Summit’s communiqué, already making the rounds among journalists, speaks of measures to reestablish global growth, keep markets open and encourage global trade. “We must get results, there is no choice,” Sarkozy insisted yesterday.
A few days ago Obama announced that the United States proposes to introduce changes in its system of regulation and supervision, in the hope that this declaration would fulfill a part of the European demands, snatching away one of those flags.
Sarkozy rejoined that his endeavor to put an end to tax havens is serious.
Very close to Sarkozy’s positions, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, demands that the agreement not include either the requirement of a tax stimulus plan for the advanced countries, or that debate be opened up about the announcement of a new international currency which is the emerging countries’ demand to the G-7.
“The world is at a crossroads,” Merkel said. “We must do everything possible so that the crisis is not repeated.”
“We have to go further than what was discussed in Washington,” and she added that everything agreed to in London must come with a guarantee that it will be applied. “There must not be one single place, or one single product or one single institution without supervision and transparency.”
Merkel revealed herself to be on the side of increasing International Monetary Fund funding and stepping up aid to developing countries which are essentially suffering from the impact of the crisis.
Increasing IMF resources already appears to be a reality. The president of Mexico said when he arrived in London that he is negotiating a line of credit with the IMF for 26 billion euros. Yesterday in London John Lipsky, the number-two man in the International Monetary Fund, informed that the IMF would provide Mexico with a line of credit for 47 billion dollars in order to guarantee the availability of cash flow in case the market situation worsens because of the crisis. The figure is larger than that requested by Mexico.
As in the IMF, the United States has the majority of shares, without its support such a credit would not be possible and so this underpins Obama’s influence at the London Summit.
The news cables were announcing that Obama would be meeting with Dimitri Medvédev and Hu Jintao, the presidents of Russia and China, to talk about the tricky problems facing both countries with the United States.
In the superpower’s bilateral encounters with the two great powers, economic problems will surely be tackled, or perhaps agreements that have been patiently discussed and approved through their diplomatic representatives will be announced.
Today, April 2nd, I read a long and detailed dispatch from the Xinhua News Agency, dated the 1st, reporting that “President Hu Jintao of China and President Barack Obama of the United States agreed today that their respective countries will work together to build a positive, cooperative and full relationship in the 21st century.”
“Furthermore, the presidents decided to establish the bilateral mechanism of Strategic and Economic Dialogues.”
“The new commitment, assumed by both heads of state during their meeting in London, will outline the direction and provide a major boost to sustained, solid and stable development of relations between the two nations.”
“The relationship between China and the United States continues to be one of the most important bilateral relationships in the world in the 21st century, one in which humankind faces enormous opportunities and challenges. In the new era, the two nations have important responsibilities in regards to world peace, stability and development and they also share wide interests.”
“The two parties ought to maintain the rhythm of the times and always conduct the bilateral ties from a strategic, long-range perspective.”
“They must respect and take into consideration the fundamental interests of the other party and take advantage of opportunities, just as they must work together to face up to the challenges of the century.”
“Establishing the China-USA Strategic and Economic Dialogues Mechanism is an important step to promote the bilateral relationship to an even greater extent. Thus, the earlier strategic dialogue between the two countries has been raised to a new level.”
“At a time when the international financial crisis continues to spread, the two nations must support one another and work together to weather the storm, and this will favor the primary mutual interests of China and the United States”.
“China and the United States should not only improve the exchanges and cooperation in areas such as the economy, the fight against terrorism, proliferation, transnational crime, climate change, energy and the environment, but they must also strengthen communication and coordination in regional and world issues.”
Such an agreement cannot be discussed in a 60-minute meeting. It was already drawn up in all its details.
China, whose allies today on the Asian continent invaded and plundered it a mere seven decades ago, is now moving forward to a top position in the world economy.
It is the United States’ prime creditor and calmly discusses with the president of that powerful country the rules that will govern relations between two nations in a world fraught with risks.
Perhaps the Xinhua dispatch transmits one of the most important news related to the G-20 Summit.
Today it began and concluded as I was writing these lines! Amazing!
02 April, 2009
Is the US experiencing its first brain drain?
VIVEK WADHWA
News Analysis
New America Media
Editor’s Note: When high-skilled immigrants and foreign students completing their degrees in the United States both consider returning to their home countries, it might be a sign that the United States is experiencing its first brain drain in history. NAM contributing writer Vivek Wadhwa has been tracking the effects of globalization on labor markets as a professor at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering and Harvard Law School's Labor and Worklife Program. Immigration Matters regularly features the views of immigration experts and advocates.
The United States has long served as a magnet for the world's talented scientists, engineers and mathematicians. But, this trend may now be reversing and the United States may be experiencing the first brain drain in its history.
Between 1990 and 2007, the proportion of immigrants in the U.S. labor force increased from 9.3 percent to 15.7 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Approximately 45 percent of the growth of the workforce over this period consisted of immigrants.
They came for the traditional reasons – education, professional opportunities, a chance at a better life. With them, many of these immigrants brought high levels of education and advanced skills. As a result, immigrants have contributed disproportionately to the most dynamic part of the U.S. economy -- the high-tech sector. In Silicon Valley, over 50 percent of the startups over the last decade have had an immigrant as a chief executive or lead technologist. Immigrants have co-founded firms such as Google, eBay, Intel and Yahoo, to name a few.
Now many are going back. While the economic downturn has caused a rise in xenophobia and the enactment of populist legislation to restrict the hiring of foreign nationals by some financial institutions, the economies of India and China have been rising. Some of the most highly skilled workers in American corporations are returning to the lands where they were born and foreign students who would normally be the next generation of U.S. science and engineering workers are buying one-way tickets home.
There are no hard numbers available, but anecdotal evidence suggests a sizeable reverse migration of skilled talent is in progress. Our team of academics at Duke, UC Berkeley and Harvard interviewed hundreds of company executives, surveyed more than 1,000 foreign students and more than 1,000 returnees, and made multiple trips to India and China to understand the trend.
What we learned should alarm policy-makers who are concerned about long-term U.S. competitiveness.
The average age of the skilled workers we located was in the low 30s, and more than 85 percent had advanced degrees -- precisely the type of people that the United States needs to fuel economic recovery. Among the strongest factors cited by these ex-immigrants as a reason for coming to the United States were professional and educational development opportunities. Ironically, this was the same reason they returned home. And, they had advanced their careers in the process.
Respondents reported that they have moved up the organizational chart by returning home. Only 10 percent of the Indian returnees held senior management positions in the United States, but 44 percent found jobs at this level in India. Chinese returnees went from 9 percent in senior management in the United States to 36 percent in China. Opportunities for professional advancement were considered to be better at home than in the United States by 61 percent of Indians and 70 percent of Chinese. These groups also felt that opportunities to start a business were significantly better in their home countries.
Surprisingly, visa status was not the most important factor determining their decision to return home -- even U.S. citizens and permanent residents were returning home. Three out of four indicated that considerations regarding their visa or residency permit status did not contribute to their decision to return to their home country. In fact, 27 percent of Indian respondents and 34 percent of Chinese held permanent resident status or were U.S. citizens. In addition to job opportunities, the returnees we surveyed were lured by social factors such as closeness to friends and ability to care for aging parents.
The rationale for returnees moving home was echoed by responses of surveyed foreign nationals currently enrolled in U.S. universities. These groups have traditionally represented a disproportionate percentage per capita of advanced degree students. During the 2004–2005 academic year, roughly 60 percent of engineering doctoral students and 40 percent of master’s degree students were foreign nationals, and foreign nationals made up a significant share of the U.S. graduate student population in all STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine) disciplines.
In the past, the overwhelming majority of these students worked in the United States after graduation. The five-year stay rate for Chinese holding Ph.D.s has been 92 percent and for Indians 85 percent. Most end up staying permanently. Yet, the overall consensus among students we surveyed was that the United States was no longer the destination of choice for their professional careers.
Most students in our sample wanted to stay in the United States, but only for short periods. Among respondents, 58 percent of Indian, 54 percent of Chinese, and 40 percent of European students said that they would stay in the United States for at least a few years after graduation, if given the chance. However, only 6 percent of Indian, 10 percent of Chinese, and 15 percent of European students said they wanted to stay permanently. The largest group of respondents— 55 percent of Indian, 40 percent of Chinese, and 30 percent of European students— wants to return home within five years.
Visa concerns were more evident among students. More than three-fourths of these students expressed concern about obtaining work visas, and close to that number worry that they will not be able to find U.S. jobs in their field. Few said they found anything but a warm reception here from the American people. But their concern over work visas could only have been exacerbated by the ongoing attempts to curtail work possibilities for foreign nationals in the United States.
Further, the students' assessment of their individual opportunities mirrored their view for the future of the U.S. economy. The survey found that only 7 percent of Chinese students, 9 percent of European students, and 25 percent of Indian students believe that the best days of the U.S. economy lie ahead. Conversely, 74 percent of Chinese students and 86 percent of Indian students believe that the best days for their home countries’ economies lie ahead.
The anti-immigrant groups will no doubt celebrate the departure of foreigners. But the impact of a reverse brain drain could potentially be profound and long lasting for the United States. The country is effectively exporting its economic stimulus.
Vivek Wadhwa co-authored his survey of returnees (http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/united-states-losing-immigrants-who-spur-innovation-and-economic-growth.aspx) and foreign students(http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/foreign-national-students-in-united-states-plan-to-return-to-native-countries.aspx) with the Kauffman Foundation.
News Analysis
New America Media
Editor’s Note: When high-skilled immigrants and foreign students completing their degrees in the United States both consider returning to their home countries, it might be a sign that the United States is experiencing its first brain drain in history. NAM contributing writer Vivek Wadhwa has been tracking the effects of globalization on labor markets as a professor at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering and Harvard Law School's Labor and Worklife Program. Immigration Matters regularly features the views of immigration experts and advocates.
The United States has long served as a magnet for the world's talented scientists, engineers and mathematicians. But, this trend may now be reversing and the United States may be experiencing the first brain drain in its history.
Between 1990 and 2007, the proportion of immigrants in the U.S. labor force increased from 9.3 percent to 15.7 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Approximately 45 percent of the growth of the workforce over this period consisted of immigrants.
They came for the traditional reasons – education, professional opportunities, a chance at a better life. With them, many of these immigrants brought high levels of education and advanced skills. As a result, immigrants have contributed disproportionately to the most dynamic part of the U.S. economy -- the high-tech sector. In Silicon Valley, over 50 percent of the startups over the last decade have had an immigrant as a chief executive or lead technologist. Immigrants have co-founded firms such as Google, eBay, Intel and Yahoo, to name a few.
Now many are going back. While the economic downturn has caused a rise in xenophobia and the enactment of populist legislation to restrict the hiring of foreign nationals by some financial institutions, the economies of India and China have been rising. Some of the most highly skilled workers in American corporations are returning to the lands where they were born and foreign students who would normally be the next generation of U.S. science and engineering workers are buying one-way tickets home.
There are no hard numbers available, but anecdotal evidence suggests a sizeable reverse migration of skilled talent is in progress. Our team of academics at Duke, UC Berkeley and Harvard interviewed hundreds of company executives, surveyed more than 1,000 foreign students and more than 1,000 returnees, and made multiple trips to India and China to understand the trend.
What we learned should alarm policy-makers who are concerned about long-term U.S. competitiveness.
The average age of the skilled workers we located was in the low 30s, and more than 85 percent had advanced degrees -- precisely the type of people that the United States needs to fuel economic recovery. Among the strongest factors cited by these ex-immigrants as a reason for coming to the United States were professional and educational development opportunities. Ironically, this was the same reason they returned home. And, they had advanced their careers in the process.
Respondents reported that they have moved up the organizational chart by returning home. Only 10 percent of the Indian returnees held senior management positions in the United States, but 44 percent found jobs at this level in India. Chinese returnees went from 9 percent in senior management in the United States to 36 percent in China. Opportunities for professional advancement were considered to be better at home than in the United States by 61 percent of Indians and 70 percent of Chinese. These groups also felt that opportunities to start a business were significantly better in their home countries.
Surprisingly, visa status was not the most important factor determining their decision to return home -- even U.S. citizens and permanent residents were returning home. Three out of four indicated that considerations regarding their visa or residency permit status did not contribute to their decision to return to their home country. In fact, 27 percent of Indian respondents and 34 percent of Chinese held permanent resident status or were U.S. citizens. In addition to job opportunities, the returnees we surveyed were lured by social factors such as closeness to friends and ability to care for aging parents.
The rationale for returnees moving home was echoed by responses of surveyed foreign nationals currently enrolled in U.S. universities. These groups have traditionally represented a disproportionate percentage per capita of advanced degree students. During the 2004–2005 academic year, roughly 60 percent of engineering doctoral students and 40 percent of master’s degree students were foreign nationals, and foreign nationals made up a significant share of the U.S. graduate student population in all STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine) disciplines.
In the past, the overwhelming majority of these students worked in the United States after graduation. The five-year stay rate for Chinese holding Ph.D.s has been 92 percent and for Indians 85 percent. Most end up staying permanently. Yet, the overall consensus among students we surveyed was that the United States was no longer the destination of choice for their professional careers.
Most students in our sample wanted to stay in the United States, but only for short periods. Among respondents, 58 percent of Indian, 54 percent of Chinese, and 40 percent of European students said that they would stay in the United States for at least a few years after graduation, if given the chance. However, only 6 percent of Indian, 10 percent of Chinese, and 15 percent of European students said they wanted to stay permanently. The largest group of respondents— 55 percent of Indian, 40 percent of Chinese, and 30 percent of European students— wants to return home within five years.
Visa concerns were more evident among students. More than three-fourths of these students expressed concern about obtaining work visas, and close to that number worry that they will not be able to find U.S. jobs in their field. Few said they found anything but a warm reception here from the American people. But their concern over work visas could only have been exacerbated by the ongoing attempts to curtail work possibilities for foreign nationals in the United States.
Further, the students' assessment of their individual opportunities mirrored their view for the future of the U.S. economy. The survey found that only 7 percent of Chinese students, 9 percent of European students, and 25 percent of Indian students believe that the best days of the U.S. economy lie ahead. Conversely, 74 percent of Chinese students and 86 percent of Indian students believe that the best days for their home countries’ economies lie ahead.
The anti-immigrant groups will no doubt celebrate the departure of foreigners. But the impact of a reverse brain drain could potentially be profound and long lasting for the United States. The country is effectively exporting its economic stimulus.
Vivek Wadhwa co-authored his survey of returnees (http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/united-states-losing-immigrants-who-spur-innovation-and-economic-growth.aspx) and foreign students(http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/foreign-national-students-in-united-states-plan-to-return-to-native-countries.aspx) with the Kauffman Foundation.
New UC admission policy will diminish Asian student population
VIVIAN PO
New American Media
SAN FRANCISCO- Last week, more than 50 educators and community leaders came together for a panel discussion at the Kabuki Hotel in San Francisco to criticize the new University of California admissions policy. Meant to promote diversity, panelists say, it could backfire instead, and decrease freshmen Asian American student enrollment starting in 2012, while increasing UC’s white student population. The admissions rate for African American and Latino students will edge up only slightly, if at all.
The panel discussion was sponsored by Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education, a national organization that advocates for a more prominent Asian Pacific American position in the education field.
Panelists described the new policy as discriminatory and something that was done “behind closed doors.” They said it caused anger in the Asian American community and public distrust in the system.
UC Regents claim the new admissions policy, adopted on Feb. 4, would promote diversity on campuses. But under the new policy, the Asian admissions rate is projected to drop from 36 percent to as low as 29 percent. For other groups the admissions rate will increase: Caucasians from 34 percent to as high as 44 percent, African Americans from 4 to 5 percent and Latinos from 19 percent to as high as 22 percent. Moreover, fewer students overall will receive an admission guarantee (10 percent of high school graduates statewide vs. 12.5 percent now.) under the policy,
Former UC Associate President Patrick Hayashi explained that the Asian Pacific Islander community was not overreacting. UC’s own research on the policy change indicates white students would be the big winner while API students would suffer the most, he said, with African American and Latino students gaining marginal increases. Hayashi asked UC to delay the implementation of the new policy and allow further discussion or modifications.
Asian students will be impacted by two major changes in the admissions policy: the elimination of two SAT subject tests as a UC admissions requirement and the widening of the pool of students who are guaranteed admission based on their rank in their own high school class ( from 4 percent to 9 percent).
Hayashi commented that canceling the SAT II subject test is going backwards in education reform, because the subject test was designed to lessen the pressures and negative impacts on low-income, immigrant and underrepresented communities. Professor Emeritus Ling-chi Wang of UC Berkeley also agreed that the subject test is a better way to appraise capable students and compare students from different high schools.
Korean American college student Ju Hong who volunteered and participated at the discussion described the new changes as unfair. Hong, who came to the United States at 12, said “Immigrant and low income students usually don’t have the financial advantages to take extra courses to perform well in the reasoning tests. They look at the subject tests as their chance to show their real academic ability.”
UC President Mark Yudof, on the other hand, explained in a letter aimed at critics of the policy that although the subject examinations will no longer be required, students are still encouraged to take the tests and submit their scores, just as AP exam scores are submitted now.
However, what angers the Asian community the most was how UC poorly publicized the new proposal. There was a lack of public attention before it was adopted.
Henry Der, former member of the California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC), first learned about it when Yudof spoke of the proposal before CPEC in December 2008, without putting it on CPEC’s agenda. “He just made some brief comments. It was difficult for CPEC commissioners to question him in any meaningful manner,” Der said. In addition, the California Legislative Analyst’s Office did not release a report on the policy change until January.
On Feb. 3, one day before the new admissions policy was adopted, 11 Asian American state legislators signed a letter, asking UC Board of Regents Chairman Richard Blum to hold back the vote to no avail.
Nina Robinson, UC's director of policy and external affairs for student affairs, denied that there wasn’t enough information for the public to learn about the process. She said the proposal had gone through two full rounds of reviews in the Academic Senate and voted on by faculty. “ We have answered every question and concern that came to our office,” she said. Robinson thought that people did not react because they either thought the proposal would not go through or they were just unaware of it.
More information on current UC’s Comprehensive Review can be found at http://www.ucop.edu/ucal/admissions/general_info/uc_reviews/freshman_app.html.
New American Media
SAN FRANCISCO- Last week, more than 50 educators and community leaders came together for a panel discussion at the Kabuki Hotel in San Francisco to criticize the new University of California admissions policy. Meant to promote diversity, panelists say, it could backfire instead, and decrease freshmen Asian American student enrollment starting in 2012, while increasing UC’s white student population. The admissions rate for African American and Latino students will edge up only slightly, if at all.
The panel discussion was sponsored by Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education, a national organization that advocates for a more prominent Asian Pacific American position in the education field.
Panelists described the new policy as discriminatory and something that was done “behind closed doors.” They said it caused anger in the Asian American community and public distrust in the system.
UC Regents claim the new admissions policy, adopted on Feb. 4, would promote diversity on campuses. But under the new policy, the Asian admissions rate is projected to drop from 36 percent to as low as 29 percent. For other groups the admissions rate will increase: Caucasians from 34 percent to as high as 44 percent, African Americans from 4 to 5 percent and Latinos from 19 percent to as high as 22 percent. Moreover, fewer students overall will receive an admission guarantee (10 percent of high school graduates statewide vs. 12.5 percent now.) under the policy,
Former UC Associate President Patrick Hayashi explained that the Asian Pacific Islander community was not overreacting. UC’s own research on the policy change indicates white students would be the big winner while API students would suffer the most, he said, with African American and Latino students gaining marginal increases. Hayashi asked UC to delay the implementation of the new policy and allow further discussion or modifications.
Asian students will be impacted by two major changes in the admissions policy: the elimination of two SAT subject tests as a UC admissions requirement and the widening of the pool of students who are guaranteed admission based on their rank in their own high school class ( from 4 percent to 9 percent).
Hayashi commented that canceling the SAT II subject test is going backwards in education reform, because the subject test was designed to lessen the pressures and negative impacts on low-income, immigrant and underrepresented communities. Professor Emeritus Ling-chi Wang of UC Berkeley also agreed that the subject test is a better way to appraise capable students and compare students from different high schools.
Korean American college student Ju Hong who volunteered and participated at the discussion described the new changes as unfair. Hong, who came to the United States at 12, said “Immigrant and low income students usually don’t have the financial advantages to take extra courses to perform well in the reasoning tests. They look at the subject tests as their chance to show their real academic ability.”
UC President Mark Yudof, on the other hand, explained in a letter aimed at critics of the policy that although the subject examinations will no longer be required, students are still encouraged to take the tests and submit their scores, just as AP exam scores are submitted now.
However, what angers the Asian community the most was how UC poorly publicized the new proposal. There was a lack of public attention before it was adopted.
Henry Der, former member of the California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC), first learned about it when Yudof spoke of the proposal before CPEC in December 2008, without putting it on CPEC’s agenda. “He just made some brief comments. It was difficult for CPEC commissioners to question him in any meaningful manner,” Der said. In addition, the California Legislative Analyst’s Office did not release a report on the policy change until January.
On Feb. 3, one day before the new admissions policy was adopted, 11 Asian American state legislators signed a letter, asking UC Board of Regents Chairman Richard Blum to hold back the vote to no avail.
Nina Robinson, UC's director of policy and external affairs for student affairs, denied that there wasn’t enough information for the public to learn about the process. She said the proposal had gone through two full rounds of reviews in the Academic Senate and voted on by faculty. “ We have answered every question and concern that came to our office,” she said. Robinson thought that people did not react because they either thought the proposal would not go through or they were just unaware of it.
More information on current UC’s Comprehensive Review can be found at http://www.ucop.edu/ucal/admissions/general_info/uc_reviews/freshman_app.html.
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