Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Adivasis, Afghanistan, Armenian Genocide, Arundhati Roy, Authoritarian, Ayodhya, Babri Masjid, BJP, Capitalism, Chhattisgarh, Communalism, Dalits, Developing Countries, Fascism, Free Market, ganga, George Bush, Gujarat, Hindu, Hindutva, India, Jharkhand, Kashmir, L.K. Advani, liberal democracy, Mohammed Afzal, Mumbai Attacks, Muslim, Narendra Modi, Non-Aligned Movement, Orissa, P. CHidambaram, Pakistan, Ram Janmabhoomi, Soviet Union, Totalitarian, West Bengal
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3 July 2009
Source: Outlook India
While we’re still arguing about whether there’s life after death, can we add another question to the cart? Is there life after democracy? What sort of life will it be? By democracy I don’t mean democracy as an ideal or an aspiration. I mean the working model: Western liberal democracy, and its variants, such as they are.
So, is there life after democracy?
Attempts to answer this question often turn into a comparison of different systems of governance, and end with a somewhat prickly, combative defence of democracy. It’s flawed, we say. It isn’t perfect, but it’s better than everything else that’s on offer. Inevitably, someone in the room will say: ‘Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia…is that what you would prefer?’
Whether democracy should be the utopia that all ‘developing’ societies aspire to is a separate question altogether. (I think it should. The early, idealistic phase can be quite heady.) The question about life after democracy is addressed to those of us who already live in democracies, or in countries that pretend to be democracies. It isn’t meant to suggest that we lapse into older, discredited models of totalitarian or authoritarian governance. It’s meant to suggest that the system of representative democracy-too much representation, too little democracy-needs some structural adjustment.
The question here, really, is: what have we done to democracy? What have we turned it into? What happens once democracy has been used up? When it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning? What happens when each of its institutions has metastasised into something dangerous? What happens now that democracy and the Free Market have fused into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted imagination that revolves almost entirely around the idea of (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Abducted Women, Africa, Ashis Nandy, Babri Masjid, Bengal, Bengal Famine, Calcutta, Colonialism, Concentration Camps, Cyprus, Development, Dispossession, Empire, Gandhi, Gandhian, Genocdie, Gujarat, Gurkhas, Hindu, Hindu Militants, Hindu Nationailsm, Hinduism, Holocaust, Hybridity, Imperialism, India, Ireland, Islam, Lahore, Middle Class, Migration, Modernity, Muslim, Nazi, Oppression, Pakistan, Palestine, Partition of Bengal, Patriarchy, Postcolonial, Punjab, Racism, Rajputs, Saadat Hassan Manto, Sikhs, South Asia, Victims, White Supremacy
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Source: Manas
Outside South Asia, the partition of India evokes little recognition. As the British left India, the largest single migration in history took place: well over ten million, and perhaps as many as fifteen million, people crossed borders, and a million or more became the victims of murderous assaults. Both the Governments of India and Pakistan established commissions for the “recovery” of abducted women who numbered in several tens of thousands. Numbing as these figures are, they barely register in world histories: perhaps that indifference to the calamity that afflicted India and Pakistan betokens the view that (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Anticolonial Nationalism, Azad, Bengal, Colonialism, Divide and Rule, Gandhi, Genocide, Hindu, Imperialism, Independence, India, Modernity, Muslim, Nation-State, National Liberation, Nationalism, Pakistan, Partition, Punjab, Racism, Self-Determination, Violence, White Supremacy
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Source: Sarai
Independence did not come to South Asia as a single, identifiable event in 1947, though that is way most South Asians like to remember it. The slow, painful process of dismantling British India began with the great Calcutta riots and ended with the genocide in Punjab.
I was (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Anticolonial Nationalism, Colonialism, Gandhi, Genocide, Hindu, Imperialism, Independence, India, Modernity, Muslim, Nation-State, National Liberation, Nationalism, Pakistan, Partition, Racism, Self-Determination, Violence, White Supremacy
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Source: Sanhati
A sketch of Ashis Nandy’s recent lecture at UC Berkeley. March 13, 2009
It was not hatred, but a strong undercurrent of humanity, that was the surprising finding of research on the traumatic bloodbath of the Partition, iconoclastic Indian researcher Ashis Nandy told an audience March 3 at the University of California.
Nandy made some unconventional points: Even in the terrible bloodbath that claimed the lives of millions, as many as one in four people among survivors said they were saved by the other community, and their fondest memories were still of (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent, Middle East, North America | Tags: Al Jazeera, Anti-Imperialist, Arabs, Ariel Sharon, Collective Punishment, Colonialism, Counterinsurgency, Diplomatic Relations, fundamentalism, Gaza, Hindu, Hindutva, Imperialism, India, Indian government, Indian Troops, Israel, Israeli Weapons, Kashmir, Massacre, Massive Bombardment, Mumbai, Mumbai Attacks, Mumbai Terrorists, New Delhi, Non-Alignment, Obama, Obama's Silence, Pakistan, Pakistan's Foreign Policy, Pakistani Leftists, Palestine, Palestinians, Paletinian, Racism, Targeted Assissinations, Tel Aviv, Underdeveloped World, Underdevelopment, United States, Vietnam War, Warsaw Ghetto, Washington, White Supremacy, Zionist
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11 January 2009
Source: Counterpunch
The horror and the massacres continue in Gaza. The scenes of carnage being broadcast by Al-Jazeera are unbearably painful. Police stations, schools, universities, ministries, houses, crowded mosques, ambulances, paramedics, etc. were and are being targeted by the Israeli air force and now ground troops have entered to “finish the job” as the Israelis call it. Hundreds of innocents have been killed and thousands injured and there seems to be no end in sight. This is not a war but a massacre of a population that has been deprived of everything for more than 18 months by the Israeli embargo and is now being bombed to oblivion. The nearest equivalent is the massacre of the Jews in (more…)
