[Reader-list] "Chidambaram's Dominoes Are Beginning To Fall"

[Sanjay Kak]

Succinct.
Let's hope he's right!
Apologies for cross-posting etc.
Best
Sanjay Kak

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Chidambaram's Dominoes Are Beginning To Fall

By Trevor Selvam

http://www.countercurrents.org/selvam170410.htm

17 April, 2010

The dominoes are knocking over each other at such a rapid pace that
India should not be surprised if Naxalites and Maoists find curious
backers in the highest echelons of the State. Not because people up
there are particularly endeared to Naxalite strategy and tactics, but
some of them are reconsidering their options and have realized that in
this insane rush towards ramrodding India into a neo-liberal Valhalla,
a large majority of the citizens of India are being ripped apart, torn
asunder and shoved into the gutters, sewers, swamps and bogs of this
nation. Something is going wrong and if a course correction is not
made now, things are going down the tubes to hell in a hand basket.
The collateral damage has been so obvious that no less than the
Central Government’s own offices have declared the attempts at
displacing the “poorest of the poor” (the PM’s own words), and the
forced evacuation and hamletization of aboriginal people, as the
“biggest land grab since Columbus. ” Whoever drafted that phrase or
statement is an extraordinarily thoughtful and historically wary
person. Because she or he knew what was around the bend. And it has
come about faster than the powers ever imagined. It was supposed to
have been done surreptitiously, quietly and with the fanfare and dog
and pony show associated with 9% growth drowning out the screams of
the displaced. It did not pan out that way.

Indians, be they analysts, economists, bureaucrats, historians,
scientists, advocates, IAS officers and even retired senior commanders
in the services are not unconscious and ahistorical babblers. After
all Indians bore the brunt of the British Empire for two hundred
years. The process of colonization is such that it leaves behind a
genealogy of awareness, of remembrance, the ability to connect the
dots and not be taken for a ride. Indians pass on the lessons of their
parents’ generation to their next in line. To put it bluntly, Indians
are not fools. They do not take kindly to the incessant repetition of
official speak. Just as Iraqis and Afghanis aren’t either. Indians
know that occupation, whether it is by goras or by their proxies are
never tolerated quietly.

The sons and daughters and the grandchildren of freedom fighters, of
Gandhian activists, of Sarvodaya activists, followers of Vinoba Bhave,
of the Congress Socialists, of the followers of “Nehruvian socialism”,
of the followers of JP Narayan, of those the British chose to call
“terrorists” and old-style retired Communists from the Tebhaga and
Telengana period, know where “the buck stops.” They may not be
supporters of the Maoists, but they know that this time around,
something is going terribly wrong and this mad race to “modernize”
India has only one group of takers—those who salivate over the glam
and glitter of Ratan Tata, Narendra Modi, the Ambanis, the Jindals,
the Mallyas and their main backers, Chidambaram, Ahluwalia, Kamal Nath
and a handful of others.

The dominoes are beginning to fall. And despite the clear cut
statement by the PM’s office that all statements on the Maoist issue
will only come from the Home Minister’s office, within twenty four
hours, Mr. Digvijay Singh spoke up, and he is no small fish.

“He (Mr Chidambaram) is treating it purely as a law and order problem
without taking into consideration the issues that affect the tribals,"
Digvijay Singh, wrote in the Economic Times. Further on he went on to
say, “We can't solve this problem by ignoring the hopes and
aspirations of the people living in these areas... In a civilised
society and a vibrant democracy, ultimately it is the people who
matter," he added.

Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyar, the former Minister of Petroleum and
Panchayati Raj had at one time this to say about Chidambaram. “His
deposition over four sessions in the witness-box has shown him up to
have been a most incompetent minister of state for internal security
(1986-89) and most negligent as minister in charge of the
investigation into Rajiv Gandhi's assassination from May 24, 1995,
till his defection to the TMC on April Fool's Day, 1996. ” And in an
add-on to Digvijay Singh’s recent article in the Economic Times, Aiyar
said, "Digvijay is not one hundred per cent right, he is not even one
thousand per cent right, he is one lakh per cent right." At an MSN
India site, the following is stated. “ And at a conference on The
Dynamics of Rural Transformation, organised by Planning Commission
member Mihir Shah, Aiyar presented a paper which said "the consistent
failure of the state governments concerned, and the total lack of
conscientiousness on the part of the Centre in urging the states
concerned to conscientiously implement, in letter and spirit, the
provisions of PESA -- Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to
Scheduled Areas) Act -- have contributed more than any other single
factor to the aggravation of the situation in forest areas. This has
facilitated the mushrooming of insurgency directed against the state
in the heart of India."
In the article in The Economic Times on Wednesday, Digvijay Singh
further accused Chidambaram, of "intellectual arrogance". There are
many in the Congress, including those who are close to Mrs. Sonia
Gandhi and her son, who have maintained a significant distance from
the genocidal verbiage of “wiping out, sanitizing and cleansing” that
has come from the entourage of Mr. Chidambaram, his Police and
Paramilitary as well as the loyal mainstream media. In the final
analysis, there is nothing sanctified about “law and order” and they
know it. Because lawlessness has been a defining character of
governance in the Indian countryside.

The chips are going to fall, one by one. It is only a matter of time,
before Indians from all walks of life will speak up. It does not have
to be the tireless voices of the Roys, the Navlakhas, Sundars,
Bhusans, Himanshu Kumars only. And it will not be the voices of
Justice PB Sawant and Suresh, Professor Yash Pal, Drs. Giri, Bhargava
and Subramanium who officiated in the Indian Peoples Tribunal either.
Soon other journals and magazines will join Tehelka, Outlook,
Mainstream, Open magazines and occasionally The Hindu and even 24
Ghanta (the Kolkata TV channel), as well. Because, there is a
tradition in India of quietly re-visiting the past and not simply
concocting a present. There is a tradition of thoughtfulness and a
renaissance mentality that gently warns against the rabid promotion of
the “us and them” dichotomy. There is a tradition in India of being
alert to upstarts who want to steal the show.

Actors, actresses, scientists, sports personalities will also speak
up. News channels, despite the corporate sponsorship they enjoy, will
eventually break their bondage and slip in the truth from the hills
and rivers of Dandakaranya. There is a limit to how much an entire
nation can be duped into this proto-fascist frenzy. Shades of George
Bush, post-911! It lasted for a while and Ms. Susan Sonntag, Gore
Vidal and a host of others were similarly brutally abused for
questioning the rabid war-mongering and xenophobia that followed. So
will it happen in India. Even in the Bombay movie tradition, there is
a long list of Sahnis, Kapoors, Azmis, Abbas, the heirs in Bengal of
Bijon Bhattacharya and Shombhu Mitra and the musical tradition of
Salil Choudhury, Sahir Ludhianvi, Majrooh Sultanpuri and others all
over the country will come out and have their voices be heard.

This is a fork in the road. And if you take the wrong end of the fork,
there is no retreat. Hidden agendas will not work in this India.
Whether you are a Maoist supporter or not, the facts are clear that
the Maoists are NOT on the wrong side of history. You cannot juggle
the reality by endlessly discussing the dichotomy of law and order
versus development. This is a falsification of the debate. To thump
your chest and bemoan the plight of “ our Jawans” as the CPI(Marxist)
and the BJP recently did in Parliament, smacks of the same
anti-intellectual tradition that followed 911 in the US.

The Maoists have, as per their own interpretations, clearly figured
out what is going disastrously wrong and they have chosen to highlight
this. Their fight has been a fight of resistance, albeit violent. And
while the Maoists did not choose violence as their first step ( the
counter-Maoists can continue to whine away about the Maoists
constitutional edict to seize power by armed struggle etc,
highlighting the aspect of power seizure as if it is an overnight coup
d’état and not a long drawn out struggle for structural change) they
have no choice but to defend their gains. For a long time, the fathers
and mothers of liberalization sold the story to the media and who in
turn parroted it out, day in and out that India needed to
“liberalize.” Behind that well chosen misnomer, the Indian state sold
a bill of goods to India’s proto-gullible middle class that
questioning this “liberalization” would amount to un-patriotic
activity. And the bloggers, twitterers, facebookers went all out to
spread the same gospel. Well, that balance is now being tipped. Scores
of blogs and sites have now hit out hard against this one sided
misrepresentation.

If India was the same nation, it was some fifteen years ago, it would
not attract much attention, either internally or externally. The times
have changed. Today, what happens in Dantewada is written about in
Washington DC, in San Francisco, in Moscow, in Amsterdam, London,
Singapore, Paris and Johannesburg within hours. Call it what you will,
there are representatives of the new media, stationed everywhere,
picking up on each other’s pronouncements and belting out stories
instantaneously. And some of these stories do not bode well for the
folks who quietly promoted the camp of the suave and cocky Mr. P.
Chidambaram. Because word has gotten around that within the ruling
corridors that there is considerable double taking or to put it
somewhat euphemistically some soul searching going on. Mr. Chidambaram
had some vague notions that one day he would be an applicant for the
position of the PM of this country. Dynasty or not, the Gandhi family
knows that Chidambaram is a chip of the old block. For those of you
who remember, this is the progeny of the Old Congress Syndicate. The
ruling class of India are not a monolithic block and they continue to
have their own skirmishes and cock-fights like Morarji Desai and
Sanjiva Reddy on one side and the VV Giris, Indira-clan on the other
side. Let us not forget that out of the Indian electorate of 714
million, 153,482,356 voted for the Congress party (21% of the
electorate) and Manmohan Singh had to run in Assam and Chidambaram
required a recount to get their seats. Within the UPA, there are
plenty of forces who are not going to put up with the high-handedness
of the Chidambaram coterie.

Somewhere amongst the denizens in India’s ruling corridors there are
families, groupings, influences that have a long lineage going back to
India’s struggle to free itself from Britain. In that lineage,
non-alignment did well. Playing one superpower against the other.
Despite the hidebound theories of the ruling classes’ propensities,
the fact is that after all is said and done, the ruling class is not
united. On the one hand there are the outright compradors and on the
other side are the compromisers who desperately wish for a new
superpower. There has always been an Indian state of mind, which
eventually shakes itself out of its torpor and calls a spade a spade.

The people of India and I mean those who do not read blogs and do not
know who George Dick Obama could be, vote with their fists, when they
are kicked around too much. Mrs. Indira Gandhi found that out. The BJP
realized that in no time. Karat and Yechury smarted under the same
blows and Buddhadev Bhattacharya is going to find it out pretty soon.
Even though voter turn out in India is still hardly anything to be
proud of, when Indians do vote they vote with their minds.