[Reader-list] Fwd: As the Fires Die: The Terror of the Aftermath By Biju Mathew

[Shilpa Phadke]

As the Fires Die: The Terror of the Aftermath

As the smoke lifts from Mumbai, skepticism must prevail over those
conjectures which support the official state narrative. It is crucial to
increase the pressure for transparency and accountability at this moment to
ensure that India doesn't slide into the same state as post-9/11 USA.

By Biju Mathew

This piece originally appeared in Samar
31<http://www.samarmagazine.org/archive/issue.php?issue_num=31>,
published online December 1st, 2008.

The deaths continue even as I write this. The death toll stands at 195. And
of the several hundred injured some may not survive. It is now official. The
siege is over. The last of the gunmen inside the Taj Hotel has been shot
dead. The Oberoi/Trident hotel was cleared earlier today and the Nariman
House Jewish Center at the corner of Third Pasta Lane on the Colaba Causeway
was stormed close to 24 hours ago. The other targets - the Leopold Cafe (a
popular tourist hangout), the CST railway terminus (also called the Victoria
Terminus), the Metro Cinema, the Cama Hospital, all seem to be targets the
gunmen attacked as they zoned in on the hotels and Nariman House. In the end
this has become a story of two sets of men with guns.

The human story of the innocents who died, the hotel staff who kept their
cool and moved guests around the hotel through the service entryways and
exits, those who helped each other escape, will not really make it to the
headlines. The maintenance worker at the Oberoi who shielded guests and took
the bullets in his stomach will remain unsung. The hospital orderlies who
ran in and out with stretchers carrying the wounded - each time not knowing
if they will make it back themselves to the ambulance, will not be noted.
The several trainee chefs at the Taj who fell to bullets even as other
kitchen workers escorted guests away from the firing and hid them inside a
private clubroom will not be written up in the book of heroes. The young
waiter at Leopold who was to leave to work in a Cape Town restaurant will
soon be forgotten. The two young men who dragged an Australian tourist shot
in the leg away from the Leopold entrance and carried her to a taxi will not
even identify themselves so that she can thank them. These stories, in as
much as they are told, will remain on the lips of only the workers, the
guests and the tourists who helped each other. The officials will try and
produce a clean story to tell the world. And we know the clean story is
untrue.

The official story that has already begun to emerge is one that may have
some facts embedded in it. But we must remember that between every two facts
is a lot of conjecture. The conjectures that unite the few facts (16 gunmen,
AK47s, grenades, passports of multiple nationalities, boats on which at
least some of them arrived, a dead Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) chief, Hemant
Karkare, who was heading the investigation against the Hindu Right wings'
terror campaign, the gunmen trying to identify British and American
citizens) makes the story. The story then is as much a product of the
conjecture as it is of the facts. And there are certain stories that we are
already oriented towards. The conjectures that create that story - the story
we are already prepared for - is the one the State will dole out for our
consumption. Already the conjectures that will serve the State, are out
there in great profusion.

Several reporters have noted that the gunmen were clean-shaven, dressed in
jeans and T-shirts. The silent conjecture is that they were expecting and
were surprised by the fact that these men did not have beards and did not
sport the Muslim prayer cap. Every newspaper worth its salt - the Times of
India, the Jerusalem Post, the Independent from the UK, among scores of
others - have already run commentary on the unsecured coastline of India.
The conjectural subtext is that securing the coastline is possible and if
India had done so, this attack would have been prevented.

There is also a quick labeling going on -- India's 9/11. The subtext is that
India could and should act as the US did after 9/11 - decisively and with
great aggression. There is also the subtext that the Indian State is soft on
terror that adds to the US-tough-on-terror contrast. Sadanand Dhume, writing
in the Wall Street Journal, has castigated the Indian government for
withdrawing the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) and for preventing states
like Gujarat from passing their own version of the draconian
worse-than-Patriot Act legislations. Neither Mr. Dhume, nor the several
reporters who will now write stories about how the POTA repeal represents
the Indian State's soft attitude towards terror will ever feel the need to
explain how POTA could have prevented this attack.

The dead are on the floor. The vultures are moving in. The conjecture will
try to unite the country into a series of unexamined positions. That POTA
must be recalled. That States must be allowed to pass even more draconian
laws. That Hindu terror is not a big issue and must be forgotten for now -
especially now that we may not find an honest policeman or woman to head the
ATS. That the defense budget must go up. That the coastline must be secured.


None of the well educated masters of the media will write that the 7000 odd
kilometer coastline cannot be protected - that all it will translate to is
billions in contracts for all and sundry including Israeli and American
consultants. Nobody will write that a hundred POTAs will not prevent a
terror attack like this one; that Guantanamo Bay has not yielded a single
break through. Nobody will write that higher defense budgets have been more
often correlated with insecure and militarized lives for ordinary citizens.
Nobody will write that almost without exception all of US post 9/111
policies have been disasters. Bin Laden is still around, I am told and so is
the Al Qaeda. The number of fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, Hindus and
Jews have probably gone up over the last decade. So much for good policy.
But the conjecture will go on.

The foreign hand and its internal partner will be floated without ever
naming anything precise. But the country will read it just as it is meant to
be read - Pakistan and the Indian Muslim. Everything will rest on the
supposed confession of the one gunman who has been captured. A Pakistani
from Faridkot, I am told. Why should we believe it? Didn't the same Indian
State frame all the supposed accomplices in the Parliament attack case?
Didn't the same Indian State claim that the assassins of Chattisinghpura
were from across the border until that story fell apart? And more recently,
didn't the same Indian State finally agree that all the accused in the Mecca
Masjid bombings were actually innocent? And even if Mr. Assassin supposedly
from Faridkot did say what he did say - why should we believe him? Why is it
so difficult to believe that he has his lines ready and scripted? If he was
willing to die for whatever cause he murdered for, then can he not lie? Oh
the lie detector test - that completely discredited science that every
militarized State trots out. And the media love the lie detector test
because it is the best scientific garb you can give to conjecture.

I certainly don't know the truth. But I do know that there is more than
enough reason for skepticism. The problem is that we need a new theory of
the State. We need to re-understand the State.

There is such unanimity when it comes to analyzing the Pakistani State -
that the ISI, and if not all of the ISI, at least a segment of it, is a
rogue element Furthermore, that its bosses may not be sitting in Islamabad,
but perhaps elsewhere in the country or even abroad. If we can accept that
about the Pakistani State, why is it so difficult to accept it about the
Indian State? We all know that Colin Powell was a kind of a patsy - a fall
guy, who trotted out some lies on behalf of a segment of the
neo-conservative movement firmly entrenched within the American State (which
Obama will not touch). We also know that if the ISI has a rogue element in
it, it was in good part created by the CIA. Then why do we think that the
same guys couldn't render another State - such as the US - itself hollow
from the inside.

The contemporary State is a different being. For every story of
money-corruption you hear, there could just as well be one of
political-corruption. Every vested interest who locates himself inside the
State apparatus is not just a vested interest going after money but could
just as well be securing the space for creating a certain politics. The RSS
has a long history of trying to take over the bureaucracy, doesn't it? So do
the neo-cons and so do the jamaatis. Then why do we believe in a theory of
the State that is unified and with liberal goals?

The history of the liberal State and its relationship with capitalism of all
types is a simple one. The longer that relationship persists the more
corrupt and hollow the liberal State gets, leaving the space open for
political ideologies to occupy its very insides. The logic for this is
inherent in the very system. If profit is above all, then given the power
the State has, it must be bought. Cheney is no different from Shivraj Patil,
and Ambani is no different from Halliburton. They are both part of the story
of hollowing the State out. And once the hollowing process begins, every
ideological force can find its way in, as long as it has resources. The
archetypal bourgeois liberal State is over. It never really existed, but
what we have at the end of four decades of neo-liberalism bears no
resemblance to the ideal formulation whatsoever. What we have instead is a
series of hollowed out States with their nooks and crannies, their
departments and offices populated with specific neo-conservative ideological
interests. The US has its variant. India has its. And Israel its very own.
It is incapable of delivering the truth, and not just the truth, it is only
capable of producing lies.

If this story of skepticism makes sense then we have only one choice. To
understand that it is crucial to increase the pressure for transparency at
this moment, to be relentless in our demand for openness and detail, in our
call to ensure that no investigation or inquiry that was in place be halted
and that every one of these be subjected to public scrutiny. It is our
responsibility to reject the discourse of secrecy based on security and
demand specific standards of transparency. What we should demand is that
every senior minister and every senior intelligence officer be examined and
the records be made available to the public. What we must demand is that an
officer of impeccable record be found to replace Hemant Karkare. What we
must demand is that we get explanations of how a POTA clone would have
stopped this crime. What we must ask is how POTA or the Patriot Act could
have ever helped prevent terror? What we must do is support the Karkare
family in their demand for a full investigation of his death in the company
of the encounter specialist- Salaskar. What we must have is an open debate
on every single case of terror over the last decade in India.

When I am in Bombay, I always stay at a friend's on Third Pasta Lane. Each
afternoon I would walk out and see the Nariman House. I have wondered what
the decrepit building was. I have always contrasted the drabness of the
building with the colorful sign on the next building that announces Colaba
Sweet House. The next time I won't wonder. I will know that it was one of
the places where the drama that inaugurated India's renewed march towards
fascism unfolded. Unless we act. Unless we act with speed and determination
demanding transparency and accountability and a careful rewriting of the
story of terror in India. Only a renewed movement can ensure that India
doesn't slide into the same state as post 9/11 USA.

Biju Mathew is a member of the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate and the
Coalition Against Genocide and is a co-founder of the New York Taxi Worker
Alliance.



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