The World Social Forum: a worm’s eye view

If there was one thing I learnt at the World Social Forum in Mumbai/Bombay, it was patience. Patience while trying to choose from among the scores of simultaneous events that were taking place at any given time. Patience while trying to get from one event to another, steering my way through the 100,000 people who had gathered to speak, dance, sing, march, listen, act, network and organise around every conceivable issue with any bearing on the well-being of humanity. Patience while straining to listen to voices that were barely audible in large enclosures with poor acoustics, made worse by the unrelenting din of celebration and protest outside. Patience while waiting for speeches to be translated, line-by-line, into the three or four most commonly understood languages of the audience. Another world was possible, but it was going to require a hell of a lot of patience.

But if there was one insight I took away with me from the WSF, it was the nearly ubiquitous and obliging acceptance of what would surely have been considered ‘inconveniences’ in the world we had left behind. After hours of arcane discussion on trade-offs between efficiency and equity in university lectures on global democracy, the WSF was living proof that people were indeed willing and able to sacrifice some efficiency for more equity. For if acoustics weren’t as good as they ought to have been, it was because the refusal to accept corporate and government sponsorship had precluded the use of a fancy convention centre; if extensive translation was required it was because the WSF had attracted far more than the global English-speaking chatterati; if there were more events than could humanly be attended, it was because non-hierarchical principles of organisation permitted virtually anyone who wanted to organise an event to do so; and if the narrow streets that linked various zones of the sprawling NESCO grounds in Goregaon were clogged with humanity, it was because every available space had been appropriated for noisy, vibrant, sometimes heart-rending and always inspirational expressions of dissent.

Nobody can really tell you what the WSF was like, or about. With a programme that was 97 pages long containing an average of 11 events on each page, the WSF was actually 1067 different events. Spread over 4 days with 3 sessions per day, this meant that there were approximately 89 different events taking place at any given time. These figures refer only to the speaking events – plenaries, seminars and workshops; they give no sense of the cultural performances, bookstalls, art exhibits, organisational information booths, food courts, film screenings and impromptu exchanges that were an integral part of every delegate’s experience.

One of the most remarkable things about the WSF in Mumbai was the massive and highly visible presence of grassroots groups – particularly South Asian groups – representing people who are usually thought of as marginalized, deprived and vulnerable in the extreme: dalits (‘untouchables’), adivasis (tribal peoples), people of alternative sexualities. In this regard, an event organised by Rainbow Planet (17/1) represented – for me – everything that was right about the WSF. Organised as a space for people of alternative sexualities in which to celebrate their difference, it featured testimonials by ‘ordinary’ people speaking about the joy and struggle of being queer. These were not academics, policymakers, NGO careerists or people speaking in any sort of formal representational capacity. They were simply individuals speaking for and about themselves as lesbians, sex workers, hijras (eunuchs). Even as they provided harrowing accounts of physical, sexual and emotional abuse that they had personally suffered, I was struck by the confidence, fearlessness and dignity with which they asserted their right to love and be loved as they chose. Nobody here was a victim. Speaking in Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu, they defied the stereotypical image of queer activism in India as urban, westernised, deracinated and somehow ‘inauthentic’. None of the accusations that people like me seem infuriatingly vulnerable to – homosexuality as import from the decadent west – seemed to apply here. Most impressive and heartening perhaps, was the audience: cross-class, predominantly Indian and numbering in the hundreds. This in a country where sodomy between consenting adults is a crime incurring a potential 10 year prison sentence, and where lesbianism is not even taken cognisance of by the law.

But this wasn’t the story everywhere. At a Globalise Resistance seminar (18/1) entitled ‘The Future of the Movement: how radical should we be?’, (featuring, incidentally, three white men), George Monbiot made the scathing observation that for the most part, the WSF had been captured by an international intellectual class. Noting that although at least 75% of the participants were Indian and a large proportion of these were dalits and adivasis, he asked why so few of the panels (barring those dealing exclusively with ‘their’ problems) featured speakers from these groups. Monbiot pointed to an undeniable divide between the people ‘out there’ demonstrating, drumming and dancing on the streets and those ‘in here’ deliberating, discussing, ‘discoursing’. In a sense, this made the WSF a microcosm of class distinctions that existed in the world outside. A radical movement, Monbiot argued, is one where the ideas come from the grassroots and are formulated by intellectuals. The argument clearly struck a chord with the audience, precipitating a lively and sometimes rancorous debate (particularly when Monbiot explicitly attacked the Socialist Workers’ Party and other elements of the ‘old’ hierarchical left, much to the chagrin of Alex Callinicos). Some argued that it was pointless to agonise over the authenticity of ideas – how ‘organic’ they were – but more important to look at whether they resonated with the people one claimed to represent. Italian trade unionist Luciano Mulbauer suggested that speaking in terms of ‘representation’ was itself misguided – it is very difficult to represent the unorganised, for example. One ought to focus on creating spaces in which people could meet and interact under circumstances that permitted as free an exchange of views as possible.

Asma Jehangir (a prominent Pakistani human rights lawyer) brought a different perspective to the issue of division between the ‘grassroots’ and ‘intellectuals’. In a seminar entitled ‘Securing a Just Peace’ (20/1), organised by ActionAid and featuring mostly South Asian peace activists, she suggested that there should be a division of labour of sorts between the two, with activism needing to be backed up by research, empirical data and blueprints for alternatives, which then had to be communicated effectively both to decision-makers and the general public.

It is difficult to convey the sheer diversity of issues discussed at the events that I attended or to do any justice to the depth of knowledge and experience that many of the panellists demonstrated and to the intensity of the discussions that ensued. Besides those mentioned above, they included sessions on globalisation and the nation-state, non-violent interposition in armed conflict, potential for increased cooperation between Brazil and India, the Sri Lanka pilot project of the Non-violent Peace Force, the apartheid wall in Palestine, unilateralism and reform of the UN (singularly disappointing for a lack of imagination in the tired proposals for UN reform that were rehashed), development-induced displacement, fundamentalism and secularism, and a CND conference. En route from one event to another, I ran into Naga dancers, hip hop artistes, adivasi troupes from virtually every state in India, Bangladeshis and Africans wearing Oxfam T-shirts and singing ‘Make Trade Fair’, the Tamil Nadu Antique Percussionists Union, pro-democracy Burmese activists, refusenik Israeli soldiers, loud and impeccably organised contingents of Korean students, Tibetan monks. Everywhere I looked, the most unlikely people were making connections with one another: an elderly white woman squats in the dust to take a photograph of four, giggling Maharashtrian women; an African woman in a colourful and flamboyant turban breaks away from her group to dance with Indian trade unionists; the woman I have just translated something for hands me her business card – she is a Brazilian MP from the Partido Renovador Trabalhista; women from Orissa watch performing Malaysian drag queens with fascination and amusement; hijras watch a documentary on dalits, riveted by testimonies from people who had been forced to eat human excreta and subjected to other degrading treatment.

Clearly, no one here was alone in her struggle. Solidarity was an oft-recurring motif at the WSF. Solidarity with people under occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and others caught in the crossfire in the ongoing ‘war on terror’. But also, prominently, solidarity with Palestine, articulated movingly by an activist from the Palestine Solidarity Committee in South Africa at a brilliantly organised seminar on the Apartheid Wall (PENGON, 19/1). Expressing his anguish at the poor attendance at that particular seminar, he said that as a South African he recognised apartheid when he saw it and that there was no other way to describe what Israel was doing in the Occupied Territories through its construction of a massive, illegal wall. Solidarity came also from Indians, from Achin Vanaik at the CND conference (18/1). Reminding us that the struggle for a Palestinian state was perhaps the longest running anti-colonial self-determination movement in the world – certainly longer than its Indian counterpart – Vanaik sent a chill through the audience when he suggested that if an equivalent percentage of the Indian population had died in the struggle, the death count would have run into tens of millions.

But there was another very specific kind of solidarity that seemed to be emerging at the WSF – an axis of altermondialisation if you will, comprising India, Brazil and South Africa. The symbolism of the opening and closing plenaries was unmistakable: performances by adivasi groups, Instituto from the favelas of Brazil, and Siwela Sonke Dance Theatre from Soweto at the opening; Indian Ocean, Gilberto Gil, and a 10-country African ensemble at the closing. Nor could one ignore the fact that the WSF was going back to Porto Alegre from Mumbai and possibly on to South Africa the year after. Or that only a few days later, Brazilian President Lula was to be chief guest at India’s Republic Day celebrations. Or that the previous June, the three countries had signed an agreement committing themselves to coordinating negotiating positions on a wide range of issues and forming a new ‘G3’. Clearly something was afoot and the WSF was only part of a more wide-ranging, multilevel process. The significance of these and other developments was discussed at a session entitled ‘Building Bridges between India and Brazil’ (19/1). While many of those present (particularly state and IGO officials) were excited by the possibilities that this opened up, activists were more divided. Some were uncomfortable with the very idea of thinking in terms of counter-hegemonic alliances of states – as someone put it in another session, we ought to be building non-power oppositions to power. Others felt that the truly emancipatory links between the three countries would be those forged within civil society (between the Movimento Sem Terra and the Narmada Bachao Andolan, for example); even within the activist community there were bound to be varying degrees of comfort with the new G3 (think of the differences between how MST relates to the ruling PT in Brazil and how the NBA relates to the rightwing BJP in India). Still others saw the potential for tactical, contingent alliances between civil societies and states in the G3, as evidenced by their ability to work towards the same ends at Cancun for example. How ever the G3 evolves, it seems inevitable that linkages between these enormously rich and complex societies will develop along many different, and perhaps contradictory, dimensions.

No one could have missed the rich symbolism of Indo-Pakistani solidarity at the opening and closing plenaries and indeed through all six days of the WSF. Being South Asian is something I have never really experienced in any tangible, meaningful sense. The very identity has always struck me as vague and amorphous – something that can only be experienced at a great distance in London or New York and certainly meaning less and less to me the closer I get to South Asia. But sitting on the maidan at the opening ceremony surrounded by Bangladeshis, listening to the Pakistani sufi rock band Junoon perform on a Bombay stage brought a lump to my throat. Suddenly, South Asian-ness was as irrationally stirring and potent an impulse as nationalism. I felt it again and again over the next few days – when my Pakistani friend translated from Hindi into English for my South Indian ears, when I saw Indian and Pakistani and PACE flags tied together, when the Indian singer Shubha Mudgal sang ‘Hum dekhenge’ by the Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz at the closing ceremony.

What did India do for the WSF? It clearly diversified participation as never before, bringing tens of thousands of South Asian activists and grassroots groups who had not even heard of the WSF a year earlier. The first three forums seem to have been dominated by European and Latin American activists. At least two of the speakers I heard remarked that this year felt, not like the fourth social forum, but like the first *World* Social Forum. At one seminar a representative of the regional government of Tuscany commented on how in Mumbai, the global South had finally entered into the WSF process in a big way. The demands being voiced were more radical than before – but it was a radicality of non-violence that was heard here, coming as it did from a long tradition of non-violent resistance. Of course there was a pressing need for more access and inclusiveness. Africans were severely underrepresented (numbering, I believe, only 400) – but even this was apparently an improvement over previous years. India also demonstrated, as Chico Whittaker eloquently testified at the opening plenary, that the WSF process could work splendidly in an entirely different political culture and context.

What did the WSF do for India? Bombay is, at the best of times, an incorrigibly contradictory place – a city of glittering wealth and the site of vast poverty, at once the most liberal and eclectic of Indian cities and a bastion of rightwing Hindu fundamentalism. The WSF gave those of us who believed in autonomy and choice and freedom, a space in which to feel like we were the ones in charge. Like February 15 here in Britain, it was hard not to feel like we had the upper hand. It is difficult to describe the sense of energy and excitement and empowerment that one felt listening to Amarjeet Kaur and Tanika Sarkar mince no words as they railed against the Hindu right, or watching men walk shirtless into Azad Maidan with the words ‘Gay and Proud’ emblazoned across their chests in body paint, or dancing at the post-WSF queer party at Mikanos cheering on aforementioned drag queens from Malaysia (Islamic? Mahathir?), even as the Shiv Sena burnt books in neighbouring Pune and dug up cricket pitches elsewhere to disrupt forthcoming India-Pakistan matches. Together with Arundhati Roy’s tirade against the Project for a New American Century, Mustafa Barghouti’s defiance in the face of Ariel Sharon’s apartheid tactics and the hundreds of groups protesting against Bretton Woods-induced impoverishment, the WSF was like a gigantic middle finger in the face of imperialism, fundamentalism, fascism and neo-liberalism.

On a more mundane level, the WSF showed that another India was possible. This was an India where - for the most part - events started on time, drinking water was always available, food was relatively cheap and plentiful, garbage was cleared by the end of each day even before you had left, telephones worked, toilets were clean. If you wanted to see ‘India shining’*, you should have been at the WSF.

* The slogan on a series of propaganda advertisements, replete with fat-cat images of middle class prosperity, being run by the current government in anticipation of forthcoming elections.