[Reader-list] Arundhati Roy in Karachi

[Inder Salim]

Dear All,

"You must be either very dumb or very rich if you fail
to notice that development stinks", says Gustavo Esteva, a Mexican
activist and development critic. And in a article, couple of years
back, Arundhati Roy wrote, “ The world is journeying on a terrible
path “.

I want to know who disagrees with the above two statements. And those
who see the fanatic Muslim terrorist as the most poisonous growth in
the happiness producing paddy fields of the world , which we urgently
need  weeding,  then I disagree.

The charge against Arundhati Roy is that why she chose not to speak
the language of US in Pakistan.  The boy ( Taliban boy ) should be
killed instantly the moment he said that ‘woman’ and ‘plastic bags’
should be banned. That is perhaps, the argument.

Now who has put this tag ‘Taliban’ on the forehead of millions of
Muslims in the world, who else, but the USA. Are not talking about the
masters who play this game? If not why?

 Is ISI and the Pakistani Establishment the only masters of this boy?
What if USA/West is the hidden master of this game, and if that is a
possibility, then how the police, who is thief himself will catches
the thief?  Seeing it from a perspective of treatments on canvas, this
handling of Af-Pak issue by USA is as unaesthetic as Iraq war was.
This is bound to generate ugliness, but unfortunately, they are
probably content with their actions, as usual.

  Looking seriously at the problem ,  I think 9/11 was a long term
investment for USA/West to harvest dividends. The threat, which is
more projected than real,  to their securities has already hardened
the boarders, and the  excuse to inspect/control the weapons in our
backyards has become real. They almost say, that we should know what
is  happening in your homes. The trouble is that our knowledge of
their homes does not reveal that hidden agenda.

Meanwhile, they will make us forget that it was their willingness in
the first place to manufacture these weapons of mass destruction, so,
we all will believe that ‘they there’ are right  and ‘we here’ are
wrong. They design the guns and bombs, they finance it, they
distribute it, and they decide how to fix the responsibility.

We already know that taking a stand against the boy with disdain for ‘
they there’ is a demand of times, some sort of pragmatism, so we need
to say yes, yes, let us kill the boy and thousand and thousand of
other like him. We want development, even if it ‘stinks’.

This sound called USA/West has already killed half a million in Iraq
and we still believe that the enemy of humanity is this terrorist,
this terrorist only.  We must be naïve to give all the benefit of
doubts to them. ( here, them and us is not a black and white contrast,
but we need to know how much of fiction is weaved in the us-like as
them-like, or even, vice versa. )

Sad, if we think that to kill this boy is the remedy to our ills, then
how to let us go ahead with killing the entire Taliabanized  society
in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which runs in millions.  Mr. Jamal, a
Pakistani Journalist said that there are half a million hard core
units ( Jihadis/individuals ) from Madarasas ( schools ) in Pakistan.
First, how to mark one by one, and how to change the programmed grey
matter inside the head. As Ashish Nandy rightly pointed out that
Modern societies have no previous  experience to deal with a person
who is willing to die, for a cause, which is not necessarily valid for
rest of us.

The trouble begins when for example, a Megaphone Company is delighted
to sell its product to thousands of mosques in thousands of villages
in the these two countries. They are happy to push the sales, but have
the so called peace generating  companies ever campaigned against the
sale of their product to these companies. They should have reminded
them that the muezzin does not need scientific means to push religion
in the minds of people, but goodwill, trust, compassion and simplicity
etc. But they do the reverse, they tell them lies, and try all the
tricks to sell their product, and so  why it is surprises us if we get
a Tabliban from such promotions. This is just a case in the point.

The trouble begins here, for example, terrorist uprising in Kashmir
created all the violence against the innocent people in the valley.
Both Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims suffered terribly, and now, yes, when
there is a visible mistrust against them (  terrorists) in the valley,
and we feel people are returning back to normal life, how are we going
to define ‘peace’ and ‘development’ in real sense of the word. What is
normal life? And if it means a return to the decadence and a dumb
chase of American style of living, at a terrible cost of our
environment and cultural moorings, then what should I say.

This I am saying, even if people will forget  the core Kashmir issue
which is presently unresolved.

Just by killing the  remaining 3000 odd terrorist in the valley, I
don’t know what we, the so called peace loving people, are going to
achieve.

 I never said, that the presence of terrorists in the valley is/was a
future catalyst to resolve the issues which I have raised, but their
absence too wont change the rules of the game which are nothing ,but
what Gustavo’s ‘stink’ generating projects talk about.

Will  there be a solid peace in the region. I doubt. The propaganda
right now is that the  terrorist caused the delay in development.
Logically, yes, but what development.

May be we need to define this animal called development first before
we go to define the terrorist.

The trouble begins, here again , as Mr. Jamals interviewer pointed
out, that the Terrorist can not lead a normal life even after the
issue is resolved. So how to treat the situation?

So what is the way out ?

Love and regards
Inder salim








On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 6:07 PM, Kshmendra Kaul <kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Arundhati Roy (AR) is in fashion. Rebel in fashion. A rebel with many causes to whine about with no solutions to offer. Since her grip on realities is uncertain, all that she can indulge in is vague intellectualising. That has always been in demand. Greater the obtuseness, easier it is to be highly thought of by unthinking minds.
>
> Zubeida Mustafa knowingly or unwittingly brings out the vaguness of AR when she says "Roy’s advice to avoid being ‘with us or against us’ has implications she didn’t elucidate". Zubeida goes on to say "In times when action is needed and a position has to be taken — even if verbally — inaction or neutrality unwittingly props up the status quo."
>
> How shallow minded AR is, gets highlighted in what are ostensibly quotes from her speech(es) at the WAF meet.
>
> AR: "In India, there are two kinds of terrorism: one is Islamic terrorism and the other Maoist terrorism. But this term terrorism, we must ask, what do they mean by it. "
>
> KK: Note the word "they". Who is this "they"? Why did AR fail to mention that there is also public discourse on 'Hindu terrorism' and 'Economic terrorism'.  Even on 'State terrorism' to some degree. What is this "they" she is trying to create? Or, is she trying to say there is no 'terrorism' in India and that it is just a figment of the imagination of the "they"?
>
> AR: "I’m here to understand what you mean when you say Taliban."
>
> KK : AR also spoke about a Taliban Boy. How did she know the boy was "Taliban" if she is yet to understand what they mean by "Taliban" in Pakistan? She seems to have her own understanding of that term "Taliban". Why doesnt she tell us what she means by "Taliban"?
>
> AR (On Taliban): "Do you mean a militant? Do you mean an ideology? Exactly what is it that is being fought? That needs to be clarified.
> I think both needs to be fought. But if it’s an ideology it has to be fought differently, while if it’s a person with a gun then it has to be fought differently."
>
> KK: Is AR such an ignorant idiot that she cannot see that militancy finds it's justifications and reassurances from the ideology? What is shameful about AR is that she uses the term 'militant' for those who have indulged in the most heinous of acts as Taliban and that has gravitated many women in Pakistan (under threat to their lives) to step-out and speak-out against the Taliban.
>
> AR: "In India, they have been fighting insurgencies military since 1947 and it has become a more dangerous place."
>
> KK: Note the "they" word again. But, what would AR have India do with those that she herself calls "insurgencies"? AR vagueness without any solutions. And, some doublespeake. In India she often hints at support for separatists. Why does she not espouse for India similar attitudes that she advocates in Pakistan where she proclaims "I think both needs to be fought" (whether militant or ideology)?
>
> AR (on the 'Taliban Boy'): "He was made in a factory that is producing this kind of mind(set). (The question is) who owns that factory, who funds it? Unless we deal with that factory, dealing with the boy doesn’t help us."
>
> KK: So what should be done about the 'Taliban Boy' while AR indulges in her vaguness of 'who owns the factory, who funds it?'? AR does not want her "Taliban Boy" dealt with. Should we in the meantime invite her 'Taliban Boy' to kill some more; behead some more; rape some more?
>
> AR: "The RSS has infiltrated the (Indian) army as much as various kinds of Wahabism or other kinds of religious ideology have infiltrated the ISI or the armed forces in Pakistan."
>
> KK: Note the words "as much". AR seems to know much more about the Indian Army then the rest of India knows for her to bring about an equivalence in the 'religion infiltration' into the Armed Forces of India and Pakistan. More likely is that she knows very little about the anxieties in Pakistan about the extent to which there is widespread suspicion (in Pakistan and elsewhere) about the continued influence exerted within the ISI and the Armed Forces of Pakistan by hardline religious ideology inspite of major efforts (especially by Musharraf) to unshackle them.
>
> Kshmendra
>
> --- On Wed, 5/13/09, Shuddhabrata Sengupta <shuddha at sarai.net> wrote:
>
>
> From: Shuddhabrata Sengupta <shuddha at sarai.net>
> Subject: [Reader-list] Arundhati Roy in Karachi
> To: "reader-list at sarai.net list" <reader-list at sarai.net>
> Date: Wednesday, May 13, 2009, 8:07 AM
>
>
> Dear All,
>
> The Delhi based writer Arundhati Roy has recently been in Karachi,
> Pakistan at the invitation of civil society organizations and womens
> rights groups. Here are two reports from Dawn, a Karachi based daily,
> about meetings she attended (with an organization titled 'Womens
> Action Forum') and interactions she had. I hope that they will be of
> interest to people on the list.
>
> regards,
>
> Shuddha
> ------------------------------
> 1.
>
> Arundhati Roy and the WAF
> By Zubeida Mustafa
> Wednesday, 13 May, 2009
> http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/
> pakistan/11-arundhati-roy-and-the-waf--02
>
> ‘WOMEN to reclaim public spaces: a programme of defiance and
> resistance.’ That is how the Women’s Action Forum defined the meeting
> it held last Friday to mobilise public opinion against extremism.
>
> Although WAF’s concern to protect the space women have created in the
> public mainstream has been on its agenda for some time, this goal has
> acquired urgency in the wake of the events in Swat. The Nizam-i-Adl
> Regulation in Malakand Division has brought people face to face with
> the ugly reality of the Talibanisation phenomenon in the rural
> backwaters as well as in modern urban centres.
>
> The Karachi meeting was well-attended by WAF’s standards. It is not
> easy to mobilise women for any cause in this city of multiple
> identities. The metropolis has a diversity of populations, cultures,
> languages and economic interests posing a challenge to bring women
> together on a single platform. Learning from its experience of the
> lawyers’ movement that had succeeded in uniting the extreme right and
> centrist political parties and the professionals on a single-point
> agenda for two years, WAF also decided to make Talibanisation and
> women the focal issue.
>
> That strategy paid off. Women had already been galvanised by the
> video showing the flogging of a teenaged girl in Swat that activist
> Samar Minallah courageously brought to the world media’s attention,
> invoking in the process the wrath of the Taliban whose fatwa declared
> her as wajibul qatl. The oppression of women is an issue that cuts
> across classes to touch every female raw nerve. Whether it is the
> smartly turned-out high-society woman or the working woman who slaves
> all day long to feed an army of children and a drug-addict husband or
> even the heavily veiled orthodox woman, each type, with few
> exceptions, has expressed her horror at the flogging incident.
>
> Hence on this occasion WAF managed to bring a diverse crowd together
> — the activists reaching out to the grassroots such as Amar Sindhu
> from Sindh University Hyderabad, Parveen Rahman from the Orangi Pilot
> Project and Sadiqa Salahuddin whose Indus Resource Centre runs
> schools in the interior of Sindh, as well as the elites sitting side
> by side with the three van-loads of women from Neelum Colony who
> clean the homes of the rich and will be starting their adult literacy
> classes from next week, courtesy Shabina’s Garage School.
>
> The variety of speakers focusing on the theme of women’s oppression
> by the Taliban found a responsive audience. But the question that
> made many ponder was: what next? Can this interest be sustained? If
> they had not already started probing for answers, the thought-
> provoking speech by Arundhati Roy, the renowned Indian writer and
> activist, did the trick. Coming from New Delhi on a solidarity
> mission to WAF’s meeting. Roy raised four issues:
>
> • What do we mean by the Taliban and what gave birth to them?
>
> • Define your own space and do not surrender it.
>
> • Don’t allow yourself to be forced into making choices of the ‘with
> us or against us’ type.
>
> • Don’t be selective in your injustices.
>
> These should provide food for thought for those struggling against
> oppression. Without being specific, Roy exhorted her audience to look
> into the structures and systems that lead to a situation of such
> extreme oppression, some of which is rooted in the class conflict.
> She believes one has to take a ‘total view’ of the matter, which she
> admitted she had come to Pakistan to understand.
>
> The fact is that we live in a largely grey area where the lines are
> not sharply drawn. There is a lot of overlapping between issues
> touching gender, class, ethnicity, culture, political power and
> economic gains. It is this reality one has to recognise and see how
> the contradictions can be addressed. The demand to take sides
> unambiguously, expressed so vividly in the days following 9/11 by
> George Bush as ‘You are with us or against us,’ can create a dilemma
> for people when negotiating these grey areas.
>
> Roy’s advice to avoid being ‘with us or against us’ has implications
> she didn’t elucidate. In times when action is needed and a position
> has to be taken — even if verbally — inaction or neutrality
> unwittingly props up the status quo. If the status quo has been
> created by inimical forces ostensibly now fighting their self-created
> Frankenstein, where does one go?
>
> The practical approach would be to prioritise strategies that can be
> adapted to changing circumstances. And what should these be? Here Roy
> has a point when she says that one cannot be selective in the
> justices one espouses and the injustices one denounces. In this
> context Pakistanis find themselves trapped between the devil and the
> deep sea. Attempting to rectify a problem here and another there
> really doesn’t help because our entire state structure is colonial,
> as a booklet titled Making Pakistan a Tenable State points out.
>
> Produced by 17 intellectuals, with Dr Mubashir Hasan as the driving
> force, the book describes the state structure as being ‘based on the
> concentration of political and administrative power in the steel
> frame of the civil services under the protection of the armed forces.
> The structure could be defined as feudal-military-bureaucratic.’
>
> The problem is systemic. In a state ruled by ‘a government of the
> elites, by the elites, for the elites’ it is inevitable that it is
> authoritarian and exploitative. Change can come when there is
> mobilisation of the people for change. When WAF mobilises women to
> fight against injustices it prepares them to also fight for change.
> The need is to empower them and instill confidence in them.
>
> Two women I have written about who are fighting for change come from
> the poorest of the poor and theirs is not a feminist agenda. They are
> fighting to have a roof above their heads. One is the wife of Walidad
> from Muhammad Essa Khaskheli who came all the way to Karachi in the
> heat of summer to save her goth from being snapped up by a feudal in
> the neighbourhood.
>
> The other is Parveen whose one-room ‘mansion’ in a katchi abadi of
> Clifton is now under threat of demolition. She is resisting the
> exploitative system that cannot provide shelter to the poor.
> Initially she hesitated — was it ‘proper’ for a woman to protest she
> had asked me. When encouraged she decided it was. These are women on
> the way to empowerment and that is WAF’s agenda.
>
>   2.
>
> ‘I’m here to understand what you mean by Taliban’
> by Salman Siddiqui
> Friday, 08 May, 2009
> http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/
> pakistan/arundhati-roy-sal-02
>
> Is there a threat of Talibanisation engulfing the entire region?
>
> I think it has already engulfed our region. I think there’s a need
> for a very clear thinking (on this issue of Talibanisation). In
> India, there are two kinds of terrorism: one is Islamic terrorism and
> the other Maoist terrorism. But this term terrorism, we must ask,
> what do they mean by it.
>
> In Pakistan, I’m here to understand what they mean by this term. When
> we say we must fight the Taliban or must defeat them, what does it
> mean? I’m here to understand what you mean when you say Taliban. Do
> you mean a militant? Do you mean an ideology? Exactly what is it that
> is being fought? That needs to be clarified.
>
> I think both needs to be fought. But if it’s an ideology it has to be
> fought differently, while if it’s a person with a gun then it has to
> be fought differently. We know from the history of the war on terror
> that a military strategy is only making matters worse all over the
> world. The war on terror has made the world a more dangerous place.
> In India, they have been fighting insurgencies military since 1947
> and it has become a more dangerous place.
>
> Swat and the Taliban boy
>
> It is very important for me to understand what exactly is going in
> Swat. How did it start? A Taliban boy asked me why women can’t be
> like plastic bags and banned. The point is that the plastic bag was
> made in a factory but so was the boy. He was made in a factory that
> is producing this kind of mind(set). (The question is) who owns that
> factory, who funds it? Unless we deal with that factory, dealing with
> the boy doesn’t help us.
>
> Water is the main issue
>
> One danger in Pakistan is that we talk about the threat of Taliban so
> much that other important issues lose focus. In my view, the problem
> of water in the world will become the most important problem.  I
> think big dams are economically unviable, environmentally
> unsustainable and politically undemocratic. They are a way of taking
> away a river from the poor and giving it to the rich. Like in India,
> there’s an issue of SEZs (Special Economic Zones), whereby the land
> of the people are given to corporations. But the bigger problem is
> that there are making dams and giving water to the industries. This
> way the people who live in villages by the streams and rivers have no
> water for themselves. So building dams is one of the most
> ecologically destructive things that you can do.
>
> Fight over Siachen glacier
>
> There are thousands of Pakistani and Indian soldiers deployed on the
> Siachen glacier. Both of our countries are spending billions of
> dollars on high altitude warfare and weapons. The whole of the
> Siachen glacier is sort of an icy monument to human folly. Each day
> it is being filled with ice axes, old boots, tents and so on.
> Meanwhile, that battlefield is melting. Siachen glacier is about half
> its size now. It’s not melting because the Indian and Pakistani
> soldiers are on it. But it’s because people somewhere on the other
> side of the world are leading a good life….in countries that call
> themselves democracies that believe in human rights and free speech.
> Their economies depend on selling weapons to both of us. Now, when
> that glacier melts, there will be floods first, then there will be a
> drought and then we’ll have even more reasons to fight. We’ll buy
> more weapons from those democracies and in this way human beings will
> prove themselves to be the stupidest animals on earth.
>
> Money and the Indian elections
>
> Whatever system of government you have, whether it is a military
> dictatorship or a democracy, and you have that for a long time,
> eventually big money manages to subvert it. That has begun to happen
> even in a democracy (like India). For example, political parties need
> a lot of publicity, but the media is also run by corporate money. If
> you look at the big political parties like the Congress and the BJP,
> you see how much money is being put out just in their advertising
> budgets. Now where does all that come from?
>
> RSS and the Indian establishment
>
> The RSS has infiltrated everything to a great extent. In India, we
> have 120-150 million Muslims and it’s considered a minority…It’s
> impossible to not belong to a minority of some sort in India. Caste
> or ethnicity or religion or whatever, in some way everyone belongs to
> a minority. The fights that many of us are waging against the RSS and
> against the BJP are to say that we live in a society which
> accommodates everybody. Everybody doesn’t have to love everybody, but
> everybody has to be accommodated.  The RSS has infiltrated the
> (Indian) army as much as various kinds of Wahabism or other kinds of
> religious ideology have infiltrated the ISI or the armed forces in
> Pakistan. They are human beings like everyone else and they too get
> influenced.
>
> Indian media and sensationalizing of news coming out from Pakistan
>
> I think the media in both countries play this game. Whenever
> something happens here, they hype it up there, while when something
> happens there, they hype the news here. We say that we live in times
> of an information revolution and free press, but even then nobody
> gets to know the complete picture…
>
> The Pakistani media is a little different from the Indian media. They
> stand on a slightly different foundation. But both share the problem
> of a lack of accountability…The trouble in India is that 90 per cent
> of their revenue comes from the corporate sector…there’s increasing
> privatization and corporatization of governance, education, health,
> infrastructure and water management. So in India you see an open
> criticism of governance, but very rarely criticism of corporations.
> It’s a structural problem. It’s not about good people or bad people.
> It’s just that you can’t expect a company to work against itself.
> This is a very serious issue which needs to be sorted out.
>
> Is the Indian army a sacred cow?
>
> The Indian army is quite a sacred cow especially on TV and Bollywood.
> But at the same time if you talk to the people in the Indian army,
> they say that they feel that the media is very critical of them. I
> don’t share that view. I think it is a sacred cow. People are willing
> to give them a lot of leeway.
>
> Women and their fight for justice
>
> When women fight for justice, we must fight for every kind of justice…
> We must fight for justice for men and justice for children. Because
> if you fight for one kind of justice and you tolerate another, then
> it’s a pretty hollow fight. You may not be able to fight every
> battle, but you should be able to put yourself on the line and say I
> believe this.
>
>
>
> Shuddhabrata Sengupta
> The Sarai Programme at CSDS
> Raqs Media Collective
> shuddha at sarai.net
> www.sarai.net
> www.raqsmediacollective.net
>
>
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