[Reader-list] Re: A few words from the same time zone

[Britta Ohm]

Dear Shuddha, dear PP, dear all,

I spent yesterday's afternoon at a big demonstration in this time zone, in
Berlin, only two train-hours away from where Shuddha, Monica and Jibesh are
installing the images of Delhi, and as war-torn as Kassel once was.

The demonstration was set out to protest against the American global war
strategy and Bush in particular, who happens to be in town till today, and
it was one of the most peaceful demonstrations we ever had in Berlin, with
more than 20 000 people less voicing their protest and not in the least
getting violent but showing ('demonstrating') how a peaceful existence can
be lived (I'm very sentimental here, and am more than happy to be so, as it
is far from self-evident that this is Germany, it felt like another time
zone). It was just the police having to rush in at the end, obviously driven
by it's own image that Berlin has to turn into a civil war-zone in the
anticipation of every US-President after Kennedy. This was exactly what CNN
had projected beforehand and it were just these few minutes of aggressive
and manufactured police-raid which were aired on the same channel in
self-fulfilling prophecy in the evening, conveniently neglecting a whole day
of a completely different message, or rather: of the actual message itself.

It is in this that the cynicism lies, and in it's flip-side which showed in
an interview the day before on German public television. President Bush gave
his first interview ever to a German correspondent (I could not believe it
myself), in which he managed to treat the chap like a mentally retarded
representative of a far-away country (to avoid the no longer existing or
rather about to be re-invented term "Third World-country"). Asked about what
he thinks about the mounting protests in Berlin anticipating his visit, he
said: "I have never been to Germany (well, that's no news, he's hardly been
anywhere), and I'm looking forward to seeing a country in which different
voices can be raised. That's democracy." Really? Is that all that democracy
is about? Isn't there quite a difference between pluralism and democracy?

So whatever form the protest takes, and the variety of forms are inherently
limited, it will fit into the anticipation and justification of current
US-policy which will go ahead with what it is planning to do one way or the
other, but definitely. Bush made it very clear that Germany has just
appeared on his map by coincidence and will disappear as quickly - he has
not come to visit Germany anyway, it's a stopover on his way to Putin.
Germany is a 'dealt with'-country and Third World in a re-defined world
order (and is struggling to become a 'proper partner' again with a
right-conservative candidate for chancellorship in the pipeline), there are
no lessons to be learned from here which would have any influence on a
global scale now.

The even bigger cynicism - or rather tragedy - lies in the obvious
dependency of the sane (and unfortunately very cynical) voices facing the
unfolding horror-scenario in India on an invention or a prevention by a
US-policy which is war- and not peace- or dialogue-driven, which has no
knowledge of and interest in the finer truths of life and politics and which
might by now know better where India is situated on the map than it knows
where Germany is, but hasn't got a clue in what context to set the latest
developments and what forces it is actually dealing with. The Hindutva-led
NDA-government is caught in the same contradiction of wanting desperately
US-attention whilst at the same time shouting that it does not need any
interference which is the safest way to a war happening. No different from
the US-government in this respect, it is able to turn protest as well as
support into a legitimisation for this war. This is the cynisism of
conservative post-modern governance which seems to have refined the modern
Divide-and-Rule-Concept beyond democratic control.

Yet there is a difference and a hope which I think lies in two aspects of
democracy (apart from many others like the protection of minority rights
etc.): the right to resistance (which very much includes the resistance to
pollution of the mind) and the concept of majorities, political majorities
that is. I know that you all know that and that this does not seem to help
in the momentary situation where the world and India in particular is
heading for disaster with nations round the globe sheepishly assembling
behind a leafless Bush promising protection and victory through 'final
solutions' (none of our h'ble politicians today had the guts to utter even
one critical word after Bush's utterly mediocre and 'Axis of Evil'-loaded
speech in parliament) and India that in parts has changed beyond recognition
as far as the re-definition of the majority along cultural and religious
lines is concerned and where 26 or so coalition partners as sheepishly
assemble behind a saffron hawk barely able to stand who promises the same.

But I have seen the same people I saw in the streets of Berlin yesterday at
peace marches in Bombay and Delhi in the past weeks; they may not be
organised enough, they may not be enough in number still, some of them may
talk nonsense, but the last thing that helps at this very crucial point in
time is to become cynical oneself, no matter how cynical the cynisism is,
and by that reproduce the cynicism that is prevailing in the political
arena. The idea of purification through war is the most grotesque of ideas
commonly entertained by intellectuals and is itself part and parcel of
fascist thought. India and Delhi might not have been through a war like
Germany has, thank God, but weren't 1984 or Gujarat now enough to show that
anything but purification is happening that way? That there will be no
relief unless it is achieved in negotiation and acceptance of complexities?
Civil society in Germany has lost far more through the war than it is since
trying to regain under big efforts and frequent setbacks. There is no
guarantee of set-free positive forces after cruelty, the loss is always
bigger, and the problems do not really get solved but shifted. And I doubt
very much that civil society would have re-developed in Germany hadn't it
been with the help and force both of the US and its allies, particularly
Britain. It was an urgently needed help and a loss of choice both, inflicted
upon us by ourselves. We were Afghanistan once, but we were more lucky.

India has never been Afghanistan and is not now, even though it will
probably never be the same again after all that Hindutva has already
achieved. But there will be noone to come for rescue now unless you do it
yourself, as there will come noone for rescue for vast parts of the rest of
the planet unless we do it ourselves. Now.


Shuddha, all the best for Kassel, I very much hope to see you there soon.
Best regards  --- Britta







----------
>Von:
>

> Dear Shuddha,
>
> Please enjoy yourself. You are a few time zones away
> from Delhi, that ffffffff! place. Don't bother about
> the fffffffff! place. As traffic red-lights in Delhi
> used to put it, RELAX. Tell us about where you are.
>
> You are eloquently concerned about imminent War. I had
> hoped you'd be concerned about War-Mongering. That is
> to say, the Logic of Fascist Governance.
>
> You are in a place where, once (oops! how can I use
> that word? But funnily enough, sitting in a place
> where War has never happened, I can!), war happened.
> In the ffffffffff! place, War has never happened. The
> traders who support this fascist government want this
> war to happen. They will profit from it, for God's
> sake! How can you tell them to not profit? How else
> will they sell their surplus?
>
> Elsewhere, War rages. Lone has been gunned down. The
> media didn't go to the meeting, to find out what it
> was that Lone had to say. They swooped down only after
> he was shot. (it seems that after the meeting
> finished, he was walkingaway, and then a Gunman
> appeared, and sprayed bullets.) It SEEMS: It seems
> because I don't know! Nobody's TELLING me! I don't
> think anybody will tell me. Rajdeep, what are you
> doing?
>
> The atmosphere here is very, very cynical. In such an
> atmosphere your thoughts, Shuddha, sound sentimental.
>
> "I would like you to be able to say to me, Shuddha,
> you are talking nonsense."
>
> Shuddha, you are talking nonsense. So am I. Like you,
> I have no control over what this fascist government is
> doing. We have absolutely no control. This government
> has transformed our thoughts into so much "waffle".
> They know we are dis-organised. More importantly, they
> know we are just not in touch with the fascisised
> proletariat they have managed to create.
>
> There exists today, a "dominant" ideology, and a
> "dominant". This "dominant" has been created despite
> you and me. This "dominant" has been created not to
> spite you and me, but to exist inspite of us. Not in
> spite of us. But inspite of us.
>
> Your posting speaks from a position of "unlearning"
> the dominant. You have "unlearned" the dominant. Who
> else is "unlearned"?
>
> There will be no war. The traders that support the war
> will make sure that there will be no war. That is to
> say, against Pakistan. About the other wars (you spoke
> of them in your May 8, 2002, posting), I am not so
> sure.
>
> So enjoy yourself. You are in a place that experienced
> war and then managed to create a civil society where,
> for the first time in the history of nations, a party
> got votes because it had a merely environmental
> agenda. Pray, from that place, that War happens here
> so that, AT LAST, civil society stops waffling and
> starts doing something.
>
> yours unworriedly,
> pp
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>  --- Shuddhabrata Sengupta <shuddha at www.sarai.net>
> wrote: > Dear all at Reader List
>>
>> I am sitting right now in a city a few time zones
>> away from Delhi, which was
>> once devastated by war. Its factories, its roads and
>> its houses were once made
>> into cratered into nothingness by intensive aerial
>> attack. Me and some of us
>> from Sarai, inhabitants of this list, are installing
>> a work in a far away
>> exhibition replete with images of our city, Delhi,
>> the city of Sarais, the city
>> of Sarai. There are cyclists breaking through the
>> winter fog on the ISBT
>> bridge, there are the strange bleak landscapes of a
>> city that postpones its
>> existence on to a perennial tomorrow. Our work goes
>> by a name that recalls the
>> co ordinates of our city – 28.28 N/77.15 E – this is
>> how you can find delhi on
>> any map of the world. But a map, whether in a book ,
>> or in a bomber aircrafts
>> navigational system is only a set of co ordinates,
>> it says nothing about
>> people, about lives, about houses, lived in,
>> recently demolished by the
>> municipal authorities or waiting to be bombed and
>> flattened into a void. I am
>> worried that the images in our work might be the
>> last of a Delhi that is yet to
>> know the reality of what war, and especially what a
>> war of the cities is like.
>>
>> Perhaps there is in me only the anxiety of great
>> distance, an uncanny feeling
>> of foreboding that makes me see and anticipate war
>> engulf my city, everytime I
>> switch on the TV in my antiseptic hotel room.
>> Perhaps that makes my fears and
>> my worries exaggerated and unrealistic. I would like
>> you to be able to say to
>> me, Shuddha, you are talking nonsense. Today I read
>> in the website of a
>> newspaper that I read each day in the morning in
>> delhi that the Indian
>> government had pulled out the war book. This is the
>> set of guidelines that the
>> state works on in a state of war. This is the
>> document where the state lays
>> down how to set out blackout procedures, how to put
>> black paper on windows, how
>> to hand out gas masks. But imagine the task of
>> putting out a million fires.
>> Imagine the horror of a moderately sized nuclear
>> weapon just a little more
>> powerful than Hiroshima, frozen suspended over the
>> sky of Delhi, or Lahore,
>> hanging in a nanosecond’s interval away from full
>> impact. There is a voice in
>> my head that says that there cannot be and will not
>> be war, that even the most
>> cussed fascist prime minister, and the worst
>> adventurist general will think
>> twice before sending us rushing into this madness,
>> that there are American
>> troops on both sides of the international border
>> that divides the countries
>> that have amassed a million men on the border in
>> full battle preparedness. I
>> hope this is the case. But honestly, for the first
>> time in my memory I am
>> really worried. And perhaps my worries are
>> compounded by distance. For the
>> first time in my memory Delhi is a city that is
>> beginning to have a
>> conversation with itself. Sometimes lackluster,
>> sometimes heated, sometimes
>> tepid, but we are talking, and we have things to
>> think about in a way I don’t
>> recall us having had in a long time. And I really
>> worried that this tiny space
>> in the imagination that we have laid claim to might
>> disappear in a way that
>> none of us are prepared to face the consequences of.
>>
>> I am hoping that someday soon this list, the city it
>> animates (dimly) and all
>> of us can step back and say that all this talk of
>> war between India and
>> Pakistan was just alarmist nonsense, and that we can
>> get on with life and talk
>> about other things, other places, other times.
>> Noticing, for instance, how
>> brightly the glare of war has cast the killings in
>> Gujarat into a dark shadow
>> of amnesia. If war happens, the only thing that I
>> hope we will learn is, not to
>> forget so easily.
>>
>> --
>> Shuddhabrata Sengupta
>> SARAI:The New Media Initiative
>> Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
>> 29 Rajpur Road
>> Delhi 110 054
>> India
>> Phone : (00 91 11) 3960040
>>
>>
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