India - Warnings for "the lady of big things"
elsa.d | 16.11.2010 13:48 | Social Struggles
Freedom of expression, once enshrined as the core of democracy, seems no longer acceptable if it embarrasses official policy or stands in the way of lucrative deals between nations.
Why else would India’s government, who vaunts itself as the world’s largest democracy, allow a mob of Hindu fundamentalists to trash the home of writer and social activist Arundhati Roy after she accused India of brutal military occupation in Kashmir and added the incendiary remark ‘Kashmir was never an integral part of India?’
Why else would India’s government, who vaunts itself as the world’s largest democracy, allow a mob of Hindu fundamentalists to trash the home of writer and social activist Arundhati Roy after she accused India of brutal military occupation in Kashmir and added the incendiary remark ‘Kashmir was never an integral part of India?’
WARNINGS FOR ‘THE LADY OF BIG THINGS’
By Uli Schmetzer
www.uli-schmetzer.com
MANILA, November 16, 2010 - Freedom of expression, once enshrined as the core of democracy, seems no longer acceptable if it embarrasses official policy or stands in the way of lucrative deals between nations.
Why else would India’s government, who vaunts itself as the world’s largest democracy, allow a mob of Hindu fundamentalists to trash the home of writer and social activist Arundhati Roy after she accused India of brutal military occupation in Kashmir and added the incendiary remark ‘Kashmir was never an integral part of India?’
And why would U.S. President Barack Obama keep silent on the issue of disputed Kashmir during his visit to India this month though one of his original campaign promises was to tackle the Kashmir crisis which on the Indian subcontinent has been at the root of bloody conflicts for decades just as occupied Palestine has been at the root of the endless Middle East crisis.
The reasons are embedded in pragmatism: Indians have been weaned on the belief Kashmir is theirs and have ignored that for decades as many as 700,000 Indian troops are beating up and terrifying Kashmiris, a mainly Moslem nook on the mountainous convergence of Pakistan, India and China. Both Pakistan and India have claims to the strategic state, though the majority of Kashmiris want neither, preferring independence.
Then came Obama.
He signed lucrative bilateral deals during his visit to India this month but kept silent on Kashmir, perhaps to stifle criticism of U.S. human rights abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan. After all his visit followed that of a senior Chinese delegation to New Delhi during which Indian foreign minister S.M. Krishna was quoted telling his Chinese guests he expected them to show the same ‘understanding’ for the delicate issue of alleged human rights abuses in Kashmir as India had shown for the delicate issue of China’s alleged human rights abuses in Tibet.
Quid-pro-Quo on all sides.
The U.S. president, whose unfulfilled campaign promises are dragging him towards mediocrity, is already a favorite butt on sensationalist rightwing Fox television in the U.S. just as Arundhati Roy has become a favorite whipping-lady for the equally fanatical Hindu media. This media, both newspapers and TV channels, generated the hate campaign that mobilized a mob last Sunday to trash her home, all filmed of course by two of those channels who arrived to take up key camera positions well before the mob did.
For millions in and outside India, Roy, the award-winning author of ‘The God of Small Things’ has become an icon of the struggle for social global justice. Needless to say she chided the U.S. President for caving in to capitalist interests over human rights in Kashmir, a state where Indian generals and officers have practiced extra-judicial killings, brutal treatment of the population and massive arrests of so-called ‘separatist or Moslem terrorists’ that served to win military medals and promotions.
Today Kashmir is a state where troops shoot - not unlike Israeli soldiers in the West Bank - ‘stone-throwing’ youths and drag entire families off to prison camps for alleged subversive activities which in nearly all cases amount to unarmed protests against Indian occupation.
“I spoke about justice for the people of Kashmir who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world…..Kashmiris live in terror of what is becoming a police state,” Roy said this month after the Hindu media demanded she should be charged with sedition.
The feisty author, who gave up writing books to concentrate on her battle for social justice and economic equality, reinvented herself from a celebrated literary idol into an acrimonious critic of an Indian democracy she feels benefits a minority of the affluent leaving in poverty and backwardness the majority of one billion Indians.
Once a coveted figure in the upper class parlors of India she enraged more and more of her fellow citizen with her stubborn defense of the Maoist rebels in remote Indian regions she has visited herself, living among so-called ‘terrorists’ and experiencing the slave-like exploitations and abject poverty in those regions, the root-cause of the rebellion.
An attractive woman with the voice and pen of a dissident firebrand she first fought against the mega-dams and development projects whose construction routed millions from the land. With the help of statistics she constantly proved that these projects were falsely promoted by regional and federal officials as economic milestones when in fact they added only further hardships and in reality enriched only a few developers and their cronies.
Over the years she placed her immense literary talent and social conscience at the service of India’s poor, the battle against unjust laws, against the cruel subjugation of women and the curse of a caste system that still survives in its most obnoxious forms in rural areas. These battles have converted her from a once glorified writer into a scourge for the government, for the rising middle class and Hindu fundamentalists who see her as a modern-day demon.
But her repost to these fake peddlers of religion incensed these even more: ‘The mullahs of the Islamic world and the mullahs of the Hindu world and the mullahs of the Christian world are all on the same side. And we are against them.”
No wonder these mullahs send out their brainwashed followers to do her harm.
Ends
Uli Schmetzer, a foreign correspondent for 40 years
was the Chicago Tribune’s bureau chief in New Delhi.
He is the author of ‘Times of Terror’ and ‘Gaza’. Both books
are available on www.amazon.com
By Uli Schmetzer
www.uli-schmetzer.com
MANILA, November 16, 2010 - Freedom of expression, once enshrined as the core of democracy, seems no longer acceptable if it embarrasses official policy or stands in the way of lucrative deals between nations.
Why else would India’s government, who vaunts itself as the world’s largest democracy, allow a mob of Hindu fundamentalists to trash the home of writer and social activist Arundhati Roy after she accused India of brutal military occupation in Kashmir and added the incendiary remark ‘Kashmir was never an integral part of India?’
And why would U.S. President Barack Obama keep silent on the issue of disputed Kashmir during his visit to India this month though one of his original campaign promises was to tackle the Kashmir crisis which on the Indian subcontinent has been at the root of bloody conflicts for decades just as occupied Palestine has been at the root of the endless Middle East crisis.
The reasons are embedded in pragmatism: Indians have been weaned on the belief Kashmir is theirs and have ignored that for decades as many as 700,000 Indian troops are beating up and terrifying Kashmiris, a mainly Moslem nook on the mountainous convergence of Pakistan, India and China. Both Pakistan and India have claims to the strategic state, though the majority of Kashmiris want neither, preferring independence.
Then came Obama.
He signed lucrative bilateral deals during his visit to India this month but kept silent on Kashmir, perhaps to stifle criticism of U.S. human rights abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan. After all his visit followed that of a senior Chinese delegation to New Delhi during which Indian foreign minister S.M. Krishna was quoted telling his Chinese guests he expected them to show the same ‘understanding’ for the delicate issue of alleged human rights abuses in Kashmir as India had shown for the delicate issue of China’s alleged human rights abuses in Tibet.
Quid-pro-Quo on all sides.
The U.S. president, whose unfulfilled campaign promises are dragging him towards mediocrity, is already a favorite butt on sensationalist rightwing Fox television in the U.S. just as Arundhati Roy has become a favorite whipping-lady for the equally fanatical Hindu media. This media, both newspapers and TV channels, generated the hate campaign that mobilized a mob last Sunday to trash her home, all filmed of course by two of those channels who arrived to take up key camera positions well before the mob did.
For millions in and outside India, Roy, the award-winning author of ‘The God of Small Things’ has become an icon of the struggle for social global justice. Needless to say she chided the U.S. President for caving in to capitalist interests over human rights in Kashmir, a state where Indian generals and officers have practiced extra-judicial killings, brutal treatment of the population and massive arrests of so-called ‘separatist or Moslem terrorists’ that served to win military medals and promotions.
Today Kashmir is a state where troops shoot - not unlike Israeli soldiers in the West Bank - ‘stone-throwing’ youths and drag entire families off to prison camps for alleged subversive activities which in nearly all cases amount to unarmed protests against Indian occupation.
“I spoke about justice for the people of Kashmir who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world…..Kashmiris live in terror of what is becoming a police state,” Roy said this month after the Hindu media demanded she should be charged with sedition.
The feisty author, who gave up writing books to concentrate on her battle for social justice and economic equality, reinvented herself from a celebrated literary idol into an acrimonious critic of an Indian democracy she feels benefits a minority of the affluent leaving in poverty and backwardness the majority of one billion Indians.
Once a coveted figure in the upper class parlors of India she enraged more and more of her fellow citizen with her stubborn defense of the Maoist rebels in remote Indian regions she has visited herself, living among so-called ‘terrorists’ and experiencing the slave-like exploitations and abject poverty in those regions, the root-cause of the rebellion.
An attractive woman with the voice and pen of a dissident firebrand she first fought against the mega-dams and development projects whose construction routed millions from the land. With the help of statistics she constantly proved that these projects were falsely promoted by regional and federal officials as economic milestones when in fact they added only further hardships and in reality enriched only a few developers and their cronies.
Over the years she placed her immense literary talent and social conscience at the service of India’s poor, the battle against unjust laws, against the cruel subjugation of women and the curse of a caste system that still survives in its most obnoxious forms in rural areas. These battles have converted her from a once glorified writer into a scourge for the government, for the rising middle class and Hindu fundamentalists who see her as a modern-day demon.
But her repost to these fake peddlers of religion incensed these even more: ‘The mullahs of the Islamic world and the mullahs of the Hindu world and the mullahs of the Christian world are all on the same side. And we are against them.”
No wonder these mullahs send out their brainwashed followers to do her harm.
Ends
Uli Schmetzer, a foreign correspondent for 40 years
was the Chicago Tribune’s bureau chief in New Delhi.
He is the author of ‘Times of Terror’ and ‘Gaza’. Both books
are available on www.amazon.com
elsa.d
