[Reader-list] Congratulations America

[Nagraj Adve]

Dear Gautam,
Nice piece of writing (as usual) but since I have in recent times
acquired a somewhat bleak view of larger political change, I was
throughout today thinking of the 2004 elections in India and what
heppened thereafter. Manmohan Singh came to power on the back of a
emphatic rejection of economic reforms (and the BJP variant of
communal politics). He then proceeded to anoint Montek Ahluwalia and
Chidambaram (he of the Dow Chemicals fame) in key positions. His first
trip outside Delhi was to Bombay where he expressed a wish that Bombay
become Shanghai, after which about 3 lakh people were forcibly thrown
out of their jhopad pattis.
I don't know how to say what I will without sounding arrogant. I too
am deeply glad that Obama is President and not McCain (and also that
Sarah Palin is not VP); Obama's vote if nothing else means too much
for black Americans, others in America (as your mail says) and for so
many others the world over. But for me he more so reflects change that
has already happened in the US and elsewhere, which his administration
will try their best to blunt. On foreign policy it is now old hat that
Democrats have been little different from Republicans since Vietnam,
including Clinton. On this too, Obama will reflect some change but
only slightly if I were to believe statements he has made on Pakistan,
Iraq and particularly his vice president's views on Iraq.
The key difference would perhaps be on domestic policy in the US,
particularly on the nature of intervention in the massive economic
crisis t faces. One hopes rather than lend money to banks alone, his
administration might push welfare, public spending, etc. Quite likely.
Without letting this mail run on for too long, he is President because
people are emphatically demanding more. So let's see how we can demand
even more (and also change things more fuindamentally) rather than be
easily satisfied. I can say that without being one iota less happy
that Obama has won.
Naga

On 05/11/2008, gautam bhan <gautam.bhan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear All,
>
>  I dont usually post on the list, but thought I'd share a piece I
> wrote for elsewhere.
>
> - gautam
>
> Cross-posted from Kafila.org
>
> A Letter from America
>
> I was out all night in Oakland, California, last night. One of the
> most "dangerous" cities in the country, crime statistics say. Usually,
> that's always code for historic black neighborhoods. This one is no
> different. Close to us are some of the districts and towns worst hit
> by the foreclosure crisis: one in three homes in parts of California
> are now owned by banks and not people. A generation of voters in this
> district remember what it was like not being able to vote because they
> were black. This is part of the America that has elected Obama.
>
> My students are predominantly white. This is Berkeley, California,
> with some of the most progressive affirmative action [what in India we
> call reservation] policies, and so many, many of them are also Asian
> American and Latino. There are still preciously few African America
> students at the college level, even at subsidized public universities.
> My students are mostly about twenty. They have the freedom not to
> remember Reagan and Thatcher. They use the word "past" rarely and look
> only in one direction. They are a generation long described as the
> apathetic children of technology. They are an America that has not
> easily inherited the arrogance that so easily slips in with power.
> This is another part of America that has elected Obama.
>
> I saw the election results come in with community organisers,
> activists, people who work in everyday America. Their tears are tears
> I recognize from the defeat of the Hindutva and India Shining. They
> are tears of relief and of belief. Tears that remind you that the
> slow, thankless, everyday work of social change has a horizon that is
> bigger than our individual lives. This is another part of America that
> has elected Obama.
>
>
> There was a different America on the streets last night - in ten years
> of going in and out of this country, I have never seen it like this.
> Cars were honking, people walking the streets openly crying and
> celebrating with strangers, spontaneous gatherings of people at every
> corner, public buses lit up, hope and joy were in abundance. America
> doesn't do public displays of politics or affection - it doesn't rush
> out on streets for much other than sports. It hasn't, in any case, for
> a very long time. Jesse Jackson, one of the most famous black
> Americans other than Martin Luther King, openly crying amidst millions
> in Grant Park in Chicago is a sight I wont lightly forget.
>
> Not everything will change with Obama, but change they will. Race will
> not disappear, but it will never be the same again. Structural
> inclusion and inequality might not vanish tomorrow, but its pipes and
> planks will be made visible. America might not change all that angers
> much of the world towards it, but it will not be able to so easily be
> so naked in its power. To think of Obama is not to judge whether this
> hope will turn out to be real or false — the point is that it is hope
> at all. This hope, even if all its promises fail after a time, will
> have unintended consequences. Unintended consequences that, in stories
> of the everyday, are in the end what help people change their lives.
> Leaders come and go, but it is the unintended consequences of hope
> that leave lasting, if infinitesimal, change.
>
> After eight years of Bush, Sept 11, a financial crisis, two divisive
> wars, deepening poverty, and horrid clashes on moral values, this
> landslide victory is the story of a scarred, hurt, and scared nation,
> shaken from its arrogance by a series of blows, trying to slowly look
> inside and heal itself. No matter what we think of America, its
> imperialism, its role in global successes and tragedies alike, that is
> a process all of us, in every country who have ever tried to think of
> change can understand and support.
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