[Reader-list] Re: Reader-list digest, Vol 1 #509 - 2 msgs

[Mir Taqi Mir]

Dear Zainab, Shuddhabrata Sengupta and all others,

Across the jhelum,
where baramulla burns today
in the cluster of old houses burning
is an empty house
of my grandmothers younger sister
widowed early she died old
of incurable heartache
her husband
he married a azad kadshmiri 
in azad kashnir in 1948.

As a Kashmiri, i can say with the humbleness of my past and present.....
It is not about the statistics of death and killings
the issue at hand 
is about the politics of which we have become unwitting (or willing) accomplice, the politics of "cleansing of the opposition" (religious, ethnic, sub nationalistic and ideological) YOU WILL FIND ALL THE VARIOUS KINDS OF VICTIMS IN KASHMIR (Kashmir is not only about the victims of State Repression, as Mr. Sengupta would like us to believe by his perverse statistics)

The issue at hand, as never before, is not only about Muslims in Gujarat, but also about Sikhs in Delhi and the Pandits/Nationlistic Kashmiris of Kashmir and Bangladeshi Hindus, Pakistani Hindus, who WE all have all kept so silent about, because TV did not not impinge on our senses then as powerfully as it does in the case of Gujarat.(I am willing to be as crude as this) 

I am really repelled by the thought that anybody can 'consciously and perversely' collate an entire statistics of death and political killings (a selective collation to suit his own political ideology) without even making a mention of the 'terrorist' killings, the killings of  muslims by muslims, the killings of Pandits, the killing of communists,  the killing of pacifists, the killings of MY indian soldiers.......by 'hired guns' from across the border of Kashmir. At the same time, i find it 'communal in thought' that anybody can even say that because a particular community is only a  refugee in their own country, so it's less a pain for them than the killings of 'muslims' in Kashmir. How do you measure pain Mr. Sengupta? in number of deaths, in tears? or simply as unequivocal pain?
 
The crisis of my country is not about Muslims. It is not about Hindus. It is about POWER. Relegious conflicts/ Caste conflicts/Ethnic conflicts/ Sub-national conflicts are the only excuse and the source for a rich harvest of votes.The hesterically and the 'genetically privileged' want to perpetuate their feifdom at any cost, 
in Delhi and in Kashmir. 
In case of Kashmir, the Abdullah Family, (with 5% puiblic vote, promoted by NDTV, AAJTAK and all the Indian English Newspapers) the second most blatant family after the Nehru's 
may already be on its way to becoming yet again, the future ruler of J&K . 
Did it ever strike anyone, that both, the Nehru and Abdullaha dynasty, owe their origins to the same RISHIVAR? 

What i want to stress is, the present crisis of my India, is really not about Gujarat or about the 'Hindus and Muslims' or about a 'minority and a majority' or about 'sub - nationalities' (As in the case of jammu & kashmir and Assam, Mizoram, Nagaland, Manipur, Arunachal- you may say) , But the crisis is about the 'politics' of violence so actively practiced by our political class, implemented by our beaurucratic class and OVELOOKED by people like you and me.  
 
How long do you think, can we be selective in our protests and condemnation of 'the impact of Mullahs and Acharyas's on our political life? 
(both constitute our respectible political class now, they are twins, didnt you know?) 
Are we only going to wake up when innocents in Godhra and Gujarat actually start to die? Why has nobody actually had anything to say about some religious head of Lucknow proclaiming 'a fatwa' against Muslim MLA's of BSP for being part of the present UP government???? Are they only Muslims and not anything else beyond their religious identity? Why has nobody protested against the terroroist attack on a hindu temple in Jammu? or about the physical assault by the Jammu head of Shiv Sena on A.G. Lone of Hurriyet Conference? 

To Zainab, i would say, - why is any menifestation of Hindu religiousity or hindu assertion (bhajans. aartis, jagratis whatever...... ) ever a threat to you? India IS a Hindu majority country, no? We have chosen to be part of a HIndu Majority secular state in 1947. 

And Zainab, how can You so easily condone loudspeaker announcements of azan and friday congregations on the main roads of Bombay and not feel ever so threatened by the religious assertion of people of our own faith, without thinking of the consequences (similar as ours) on the majority public? 
 
All my life in Kashmir, the only religious sound i have heard is the sound of 'azan' loudspeakered FIVE times a day into my consciousness. It is really the only religious sound i ever heard in KASHMIR. I did not ever hear a peal of a temple bell in Kashmir, till i came down to the plains. Only then did i realise that we have done some serious damage to our own people in Kashmir who remained Hindu. They hate me, Zainab! because i am a kashmiri muslim.....  

To you Zainab and to all my friends i say, i need help. I need some better solution than i have. My own solution is very simlple. I need people who can go along with me to Gujarat to offer ourselves as Indians, in place of innocent Muslims and Hindus being stabbed and burnt to death there. Hai Koi? 

my dad hates all Hindus,
when a good friend calls
and I am not home
he says to me
"some Hindu called for you",
or "that Hindu girl from Delhi."
  
Mir.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: <reader-list-request at sarai.net>
To: <reader-list at sarai.net>
Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2002 10:18 AM
Subject: Reader-list digest, Vol 1 #509 - 2 msgs


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> Today's Topics:
> 
>    1. Call for volunteers (Jeebesh Bagchi)
>    2. To Zainab - Gujarat and Elsewhere (Shuddhabrata Sengupta)
> 
> --__--__--
> 
> Message: 1
> From: Jeebesh Bagchi <jeebesh at sarai.net>
> To: reader-list at sarai.net
> Date: Tue, 7 May 2002 17:05:32 +0530
> Subject: [Reader-list] Call for volunteers
> 
> Dear All,
> 
> Please pass on this appeal. Maybe someone on this can move into Ahmedabad and
> post from there.
> 
> best
> Jeebesh
> ----------------------------------------
> From: majlis [mailto:majlis at vsnl.com]
> Sent: Monday, May 06, 20026:58 PM
> 
> Appeal for Volunteers & Funds to Set Up Short Term Centers
> in Relief Camps in Ahmedabad
> 
> The communal holocaust, which has ravaged Gujarat, has left in its wake
> colossal loss of life and property and displacement of people. While the
> number of dead and injured is at least countable, the number of missing
> people who have vanished without a trace is much larger. The relief dole
> promised by the government is a mere trickle. In most cases it adds insult to
> the injury.
> 
> At the other level, the plea to punish the guilty has fallen on deaf ears.
> Even the minimum requirement of filing FIRs against the offenders has become
> a herculean task. A whole community is trying to cope with loss of dignity
> and self-respect. In addition, women are trying to cope with sexual
> violations and police brutalities. The few NGOs who have been struggling with
> the enormous task of recording statements, collecting data and registering
> FIRs are overworked and getting burnt out.
> 
> To cope with this reality, Majlis, along with two grass root level groups in
> Ahmedabad, Sanchetana and Vikas Adhyayan Kendra, will co-ordinate support
> initiatives in three areas in Ahmedabad ? Gomtipur, Shah-e-Alam and Daria
> Khan. We will co-ordinate batches of ten volunteers to go to Ahmedabad for
> one week each, over a period of next two months.
> 
> St. Xavier?s Institute in Ahmedabad has volunteered to provide accommodation.
> The host groups will arrange for a vehicle to take the volunteers from the
> hostel to camps and the volunteers will work along with the local activists
> in each area. The expenses to be incurred by the volunteers would be the
> train fare and food. For those volunteers who cannot afford, train fare and
> minimum daily expenses will be provided.
> 
> The volunteers will be placed in one of the centers for the entire period and
> will be assisted by members of the local group. The work will be specified by
> the local group and would include recording statements of victims, filing
> FIRs, obtaining hospital reports, ensuring that the relief declared by the
> government reaches the recipients, making a list of missing persons and
> ensuring that the declared requirement for availing compensation is adhered
> and helping out with other legal initiatives.
> 
> The working conditions are harsh, the heat is killing and coming face to face
> with human tragedy of such magnitude is emotionally draining. Knowledge of
> Hindi is essential and knowledge of Gujarati will be of great help. It is
> important to mention that a schedule for less than seven days will not be
> practical. The volunteers may contact us with personal details and the time
> frame during which they are available for this project at the earliest.
> 
> E-mail: majlis at vsnl.com Telephone: (022) 6160252 Fax: 022-6148539
> 
> This appeal is also for funds for relief work and to sustain local
> initiatives. With the impending monsoon and the threat of closing down the
> relief camps, the displaced people are faced with even greater hardships.
> Hence time becomes a very important factor in this initiative. The donation
> for relief can be made by Money Orders, a/c payee cheques, or DDs to Majlis
> payable at Mumbai.
> 
> Hope to hear from you soon. We shall appreciate if you could spread this
> message to the widest circle.
> 
> Flavia Agnes / Veena Gowda
> 
> Majlis, A-2/4 Golden Valley, Kalina, Mumbai ? 400 098
> 
> --__--__--
> 
> Message: 2
> From: Shuddhabrata Sengupta <shuddha at sarai.net>
> Reply-To: shuddha at sarai.net
> Organization: Sarai : The New Media Initiative
> To: reader-list at sarai.net
> Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 01:46:36 +0530
> Subject: [Reader-list] To Zainab - Gujarat and Elsewhere
> 
> Dear Zainab, (and Pratap, Jeebesh and others)
> 
> I have been thinking about a lot of the issues raised by you (Zainab, and the
> responses to them) . I am writing this also in order to connect with a whole
> lot of similar issues that faced me in the autumn of 1984, when I saw my city
> (Delhi) go up in flames, and when more violence (in terms of the number of
> people being killed) was unleashed within three days, than has occurred in
> Gujarat over the last two months.
> 
> This is not to belittle the violence in Gujarat, but to try and see it not as
> an exception, but as a part of a larger pattern. Many people have reacted
> indignantly, and rightly so, at George Fernandes's trivialization of the
> violence done to women in Gujarat in the course of the debate in Parliament,
> But in another sense,  what really disturbs me is the fact that he has not
> spoken untruly. (And lets make no mistake about the fact that i detest him
> entirely for his defence of the ruling dispensation and the regime that
> carried out the pogrom in Gujarat). But, in a perverse sense, what he said is
> true. Gujarat is not an exception, the kind of violence that we have seen
> there, happens everyday, in many places. And hardly anyone talks about them.
> 
> This does not mean that we should see the suffering of the women in Gujarat
> as "less worthy of attention". Rather, it means that we should seriously
> think about what makes it so normal that these things can happen, and that we
> can pretend that they don't, or ignore them, or be silent and embarassed
> about them. Why does it take a Gujarat to make us sit up and think about the
> complicity of the state and people in police and paramilitary uniforms in
> violence?
> 
> I started by talking about the anti-sikh pogrom in 1984, which was
> orchestrated in Delhi by the then ruling secular party, which is spearheading
> the opposition to Narendra Modi today.
> 
> I remember 1984 very clearly. I shaved a young Sikh man who lived for those
> few days in our house with his family, and over the years I have seen him
> become a schrizophrenic, still stuck and lost in 1984. Gujarat will have its
> own toll in the years to come in terms of the number of people who will
> gradually find their sanity succumbing to their nightmares and their
> memories.
> 
> I saw, on my way home from school, mobs burn Sikhs to death with burning
> tyres, and saw policemen protect the mobs, not the victims. I learnt early, (
> I was sixteen at that time) that no violence of this scale can ever take
> place without the direct connivance of the power of the state, no matter who
> or which party, controls the state. I learnt early, that the feeling of
> insecurity, that violence of this order brings with it, is the most important
> foundation of the consent we give to the power that the state has over us.
> The situation returns to "normalcy" and we say (in relief) that the body
> count could have been higher, and we thank the army for stepping in and
> cleaning up, and life, well, goes on. Until the next time.
> 
> But remember, some places in this country have lived through this for decades
> on end.They haven't ever had the luxury of  waiting for the "next time".
> 
> Take Kashmir, for example. It made no difference whether you had a Congress,
> NDA or Third Front (JD +/- Left) government in power. The pattern of violence
> in Kashmir by the state has remained the same, and constant, for the last
> thirteen years.
> 
> The conservative estimate of non combatant (militant or military) civilian
> casualties (deaths of ordinary people) in Kashmir is said to be 35,000 -
> people since 1989. (this is from a coloumn by Chindu Sreedharan - "The Lost
> Generation" on the impact of violence on Children in Kashmir that appears
> regularly in Rediif.com at
> http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/dec/11childin.htm )
> 
> That is roughly 2,692 people each year for the last 13 years. I am taking
> these figures from sources that are not sympathetic to Kashmiri separatists.
> Chindu Shreedharan is a fellow of the National Foundation of India.
> 
> Figures given out by human rights organizations working in Kashmir, or by
> Kashmiri separatist groups tend to be much higher and converge generally
> around the apporximately '80, 000 dead since 1989' figure.
> 
> The truth probably lies between the underevaluation of the conservative
> figure and the exaggeration of the human rights actvists and separatists. But
> let us, to err on the side of caution, stick to the conservative estimate.
> 
> Now lets turn to missing people. According to the New York-based Human Rights
> Watch, in September 1998, the non-governmental Association of Parents of
> Missing People stated that 2,000 people had disappeared between 1990 and 1998
> alone after being taken into custody in Kashmir, and that there were no legal
> remedies for discovering their fate. That's an average of 250 per year. If
> you multiply that by 13 years you get an estimate of about 3,250 missing
> persons. If you add that figure to the estimate of people dead you get -
> 35,000 + 3,250 = 38,250 people. Estimate of people dead and missing each year
> for the last 13 years -  2,942 people.
> 
> The civilian casualty figures breakup between January and April this year in
> Kashmir, taken from the  Kashmir Live section of the Indian Express Website
> (www.expressindia.com)  is as follows
> Total Civilians 133
> Men  78
> Women 23
> Children 32
> 
> Now, compare this to the casualties in Gujarat - official  estimate  - 822
> (including Godhra) dead. Unofficial estimate of the number of people dead -
> 2,000.  (source - Communalism Combat - Genocide Gujarat 2002 - March/April
> 2002, Year 8, No.77-78)
> 
> Let us compare  compare the 'official' estimate in Gujarat, to the
> 'conservative' estimate in Kashmir), so as to minimize any possibilty of
> exaggeration in either case.
> 
> If you look at the number of people living as 'internal refugees' as a result
> of violence in India, than you get the figure of some some 350,000 Kashmiris
> (Pandits and Muslims)  and more than 157,000 others in Northeast India.
> Additionally, there are about 17,000 refugees from the Indian held part of
> Kashmir, who are currently living in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir.  (source -
> WorldWide Refugee Information Website - Country reports for India and
> Pakistan, 2000 - http://www.refugees.org/world/countryrpt/scasia/india.htm)
> 
> The number of people living in 'relief and rehabilitation camps' in Gujarat
> at the moment is - 113,697. (source - Communalism Combat - Genocide Gujarat
> 2002 - March/April 2002, Year 8, No.77-78)
> 
> I have not mentioned 'rape' because numbers are far harder to get, but the
> ground realities suggest that the use of rape as a weapon of aggression has
> been near perfected by the armed forces and paramilitaries of the Indian
> state in Kashmir and the North East.
> 
> Whatever we do, whichever set of numbers we take, we realize that a tragedy -
>  at least of the same proportions, if not higher, as what has happenned in
> Gujarat, in terms of violence, killings, rape, arson and disappearances, has
> been happening over the last thirteen years in Kashmir.
> 
> Arguably, the situation that obtains in Kashmir is similar in many respects
> to that which is true of the north eastern states of India as well. But
> figures are less known. Partly, there is an active Kashmiri diaspora, which
> keeps tabs on what is going on in Kashmir, and Pakistan of course has its own
> axe to grind in the matter, but since there is less of a Naga or a Manipuri
> diaspora, much less news gets out of these places. What we do know is that
> the Indian State did not hesitate to use even its air force in bombings of
> villages in Mizoram even as far back as in 1966. And the military has
> (through the Armed Forces Special Powers Act) virtually had much of the north
> east in the vice like grip of near martial law.
> 
> Today, we recognize the violence in Gujarat as the manifestations of Fascism,
> and rightly so. But I think, that many of us, who are not communal, not
> Hindutva-vaadis, are comfortable with making the identification between
> Hindutva and Fascism, which is un-deniable, while at the same time, we are
> not ready or not prepared to make the identification when it comes to the
> agencies of the Indian state in its more secular manifestations.
> 
> Perhaps we should think carefully before assuming that this is the only
> identification (in terms of 'fascism' ) that can be made. The abstract
> machinery of the state in India (regardless of whether Hindutva-vaadis are in
> power or not, acts just as brutally, when it wants to, and hardly anyone in
> the 'secular' camp takes notice of the lethality of its actions).
> 
> This is evident from the history of Kashmir. In both cases, Gujarat, and
> Kashmir, the overwhelming majority of victims of organized violence have
> happenned to be Muslims. (Kashmiri Pandits have sufferred at the hands of the
> fascism of Kashmiri Muslim/seperatists militants, but the scale of their
> suffering - in numerical terms, pales in comparison to the violence unleashed
> by the Indian state's armed forces on the mainly muslim inhabitants of
> Kashmir valley, that is why all numbers I have referred to are only of
> civilain, non-miliant, non-military casualties). Now, it is a matter of fact,
> that barring a few killings of informers, (and in an earlier phase of a few
> prominent Kashmiri Pandits. amarnath pilgrims or other pro-India
> personalities) militants in Kashmir, have a great deal to lose from killing
> civilians because it ends up antagonizing the local population.
> 
> There have been instances of civilan "collateral damage" in the instance of
> bomb explosions. But the majority of killings that take place in Kashmir are
> not due to bomb explosions. They are due to armed bodies of men coming into
> neighbourhoods and villages, picking people and using them as 'human shields'
> from behind whom they open fire , or taking them away and shooting them in
> 'encounters'. It doesn't make tactical sense for Kashmiri militants to use
> civilans as human shields, or to torch muslim majority villages, because
> these "mass killings" cost them the little support they may have in the
> civilian population. The Indian Army and paramilitary forces do this as a
> matter of routine. The miliants on their part, take large numbers of
> hostages, kill them and extort and inflict many other privations on the same
> civilian population, but these have an incremental effect, and so are
> affordable for the militants, in that the suffering they cause is immediately
> offset by another set of sufferings with greater numbers on its side. Thus
> retaining a perverse and macabre balance of terror between the state (army
> and para-militaries) and the proto-state (militant outfits).  I have
> absolutely no sympathy for Kashmiri nationalism of any variety (Islamist or
> secular), just as I have absolutely no sympathy for the Indian state's claim
> on the people or territory of Kashmir. Both contribute to the body count.
> 
> But, it seems to me, that one set of Muslim deaths and testimonies of
> victimhood, are somehow seen as being more central, more traumatic, than
> another. Kashmir, is sufficiently distant, sufficiently "other" for us not to
> bother about. Gujarat isn't. It is India's most industrialized, most
> urbanized, fastest growing state. It is as "mainstream India" as you can get.
> It is impossible to ignore in a way that we have grown accustomed to ignore
> or not care about Kashmir. The only reason why anyone says anything about
> Kashmir is "it is an inalienable part of India". No one, has to say, Gujarat
> is an "inalienable part of India" becase they know it is. It is the anxiety
> about the Indian state's dubious record in Kashmir that makes people say "the
> in-alienable part of India" statement, even as they ignore the mounting body
> count in Kashmir.
> 
> This "weighing" of lives and deaths, this banal decision to give a much
> greater importance to  the suffering of one set of people over another
> (whether deliberately or by ommission) lies at the heart of fascism. In
> telling us that some of us are more important than others, the fascist state
> erects its most important edifice, the confidence that it imparts on a
> section of the population that the state will enact, unleash or patronize a
> violence unto others, unto a "them" whom "We" are never going to be. "We" are
> given to believe that "we" will never have to suffer what people in Kashmir
> suffer, because "we" are part of the Indian "mainstream". Then, when for
> once, violence occurs in the heart of the "mainstream" at a comparable scale
> to what happens outside it, "we" all get disturbed. When 'normalcy' finally
> is restored, let us say if and when the present chief minister of Gujarat is
> removed, the mainstream (secular and communal) of public life will return to
> its hum-drum, "mainstream" pre-occupations. The margins, places like Kashmir,
> will continue to exist as "Gujarat's" , but that is another matter.
> 
> When the sangh parivar values the deaths of the Hindus who died at Godhra
> over the deaths of the Muslims who died in Ahmedabad or Baroda, that is one
> kind of everyday fascism.
> 
> Similarly, when we value the deaths of people who happen to be Muslims who
> died in Gujarat, (as victims of Hindu Fascism) even as we forget, ignore, are
> indifferent to the equal number of deaths of people who happen to be Muslims
> who die in Kashmir routinely, we may be guilty of another,
> "secular-nationalist" variety of fascism.
> 
> Or, forget whether people are Muslims or not, forget the whole arithmetic of
> minority and majority, and think instead of the numbers who die in custody in
> India. At the last count  (year 2000) 1,143 people died in police custody in
> prisons all over India - and the majority of these deaths is likely to have
> been due to torture, and that there are at present close to 60 people
> awaiting the death penalty all over India. (source  - Amnesty International
> Country report 2000). India has yet to ratify the  UN Convention against
> Torture which it signed in October 1997, nor had it invited the UN Special
> Rapporteur on torture to visit the country. This means that there are no
> remedies in International Law for any Indian citizen to appeal against the
> violation of his/her right to be protected from torture, should the state in
> India be the party that executes the act of torture. No political party
> (right wing, left wing, centrists, secular, communal, pro-dalit, regional or
> whatever) has ever made the ratification of the convention against torture,
> or the abolition of the death penalty a public issue - and this silence means
> that the broad spectrum of political parties are unanimous (by ommission or
> commission) in their tacit or active support to the torture and executions
> carried out by the Indian state.
> 
> In this country, we all have skeletons in our respective closets, and the
> uncounted dead to account for. In either case, some deaths are seen as more
> deserving of commemoration than others. The truth is, every instance of
> violent death, every disappearance, that takes place, no matter where, is
> just as sad, just as much of a nightmare for those it leaves grieving.
> 
> The resistance to fascism, can begin only when we stop devaluing other
> peoples lives and deaths, no matter who those people are. The resistance to
> fascism must begin with the recognition of the fact that the greatest
> devaluation of the lives of people has occurred, routinely, at the hands of
> the state that we submit to daily, through many acts of obedience.
> 
> Who knows what remedies, what forms of association, how many little and
> everyday solidarities we will have to build in the years to come to face this
> fascism. I am not as sanguine as Pratap is about the "Mayawatis" of this
> world, because I am sure that in the assertion of their 'identitiis' and in
> the airing of their victimhood, they will create their own militias, and
> their own neo-Buddhist/Ambedkarite fascism. If we can have Hindu, Sikh  and
> Muslim and Secular Fascism in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and Tamil
> (Hindu and Christian) and Sinhala (Buddhist) Fascism in Sri Lanka, it only
> points to the bewildering array of possible south asian sub-continental
> fascisms that still lie in wait. A neo-Buddhist/Dalit fascism is just as
> likely or unlikely as any other variety.
> 
> The second most important lesson, to my mind, in terms of building a politics
> that can combat fascism, is to give up the illusion that any one is innocent.
> All our 'identities' are complicit in the everyday politics of fascism. Every
> constrcution of "us" and "them" is equally guilty, whether it is made on
> communal, secterian, ethnic, caste or national lines. It is only by moving
> towards an everyday form of politics that has room for sckepticism about the
> claims that "we" make on ourselves, and the claims that are made about us, or
> on our behalf, that we can actually question the hold that 'everyday' fascism
> has over us.
> 
> I look forward to the gradual, corrosion of the certainties of who "we" and
> they are by a sckepticism that is born of the
> 
> This is why, I don't think, unlike Pratap, that the answer to Hindu fascism
> is to create our own "shakhas". We will then have created our 'own' fascism.
> If the right has successfully mimicked the left, I don't think that the
> answer to it lies in re-mimicking the right ( or re-re-mimicking the left?).
> 
> Rather, I want to think about what we can do to make all 'shakhas', all
> uniforms, all anthems, all 'sangathans' equally unattractive and dull. So
> that we do not  even have to enter the tactical terrain of setting one kind
> of identity as an antidote to another. Of saying "Indians" when we might be
> uncomfortable saying "Hindus".
> 
> This might require us to take the battle on to the register of a playful
> irreverence towards all forms of authority and identity formation,  per se.
> That is one place where the fascists can never get. They have condemned
> themselves to certitude and seriousness, they can never be heretics and
> irreverential. They want to win. We must be prepared to subvert every
> victory, including those of our own. This means that we might have to speak a
> language that seeks to dissolve power rather than to take it  over to make it
> better, that seeks to reject rather than reform the state.
> 
> Those of us who have no icons to defend, no identities to protect, no nations
> to nurture, no faiths to believe in and no birthplaces to build temples for
> might be well placed to initate a wave of non-serious heresy that may well be
> the last (and only) stumbling block in the path of every kind of fascism, be
> it of the riotous right, the lethal left, or of the dead centre.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --__--__--
> 
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