Yesterday I was looking up the internet for some information on the Communist Party of America and thought it worth investigating if there was ever an alliance of blacks [esp the Black Panthers movement] and communists.

I found quite a bit of material going back to '20s and '30s until the witch-hunt of McCarthy era.[Even suggestions that Barack Obama has had connections in Chicago and is a creation of the KGB!!]

This alliance, though apparantly fragile has a striking parallel in India today.
Like blacks in America, the lowest caste people in the Indian society have been mostly deprived of opportunities of livelihood, education, decent living space, etc.A vast majority are forced to take up hard labour as land-less labourers generation after generation.With globalisation huge industrial establishments are coming up snatching big chunks of fertile land, further marginalising these sections. The number of these people easily runs into a few hundred millions.

A fraction of these have taken to arms and are now fighting the Indian State for land-reforms.The State instead of addressing the underlying economic problems is passing new draconian laws declaring these as 'terrorist organisations'.They are spreading fast in their reach though and a number of districts - a few hundred - have their presence.
Many times there are killings from either side - the government and the armed gangs.They have a number of factions but more or less all claim to operate under the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology.

My project would be to study the american history of blacks and how the government suppressed the communist movement, and where they stand today.

Luckily, the first publisher I talked to in India has enthusiastically welcomed the idea of a book on this topic.

I would like to know if you can suggest some reading.

thanks.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
[W B Yeats]

Of late I have written on many issues - Iran - suppression of the ordinary people opposing the election results there; China suppressing the minorities; western europe trying further to marginalise the already marginalised like the immigrants from east europe or blacks; India - innumerable acts of violence and suppression by the state of its own disprivileged peoples...And I have not written about it but Russia suppressing dissident voices whether of ordinary citizens in its erstwhile empire or simply killing the journalists... the list goes on.

If these suppressed people resort to non-electoral, violent means and butcher a few in power, technically, i.e. legally a line is crossed.

I really do not think actually there is a line anymore.

And Yeats wrote that in 1919.

Medha Patkar is an Indian social activist, mainly known for her fight against the Govt of India against a mega-dam in central India. She has been championing the cause of the displaced and those who would be displaced once the dam is built. Her opposition highlighted the human cost that is being born by the natives of the land in the name of mainstream 'development' - whether large-scale mining, construction of huge dams or industrialisation.
Of late she has also taken up causes of landless labour, tribals suffering due to mining, homeless in big Indian cities,farmers who have to forefeit their tilling lands for industrial projects, etc. etc.

She got Right Livelihood Award, also known as alternate Nobel Prize in 1991, and many more subsequently including Human Rights Defender Award from Amnesty International, Best political campaigner by the BBC, etc.
In short she is the voice of alternative development in India, going on the lines of Mahatma Gandhi, through peaceful and non-violent means.

Recently, a major scandal [yet another one] has come out in open in the state I come from. Ex-Chief Minister of the state and the current Agriculture minister in the central government of India has been embroiled. A huge tract of land about 20,000 hectares has been acquired from a number of villages making the small land-holders and farmers destitute.Project is to build a holiday resort there for the well-off. Land has been bought under spurious names and at throw-away prices citing the project as 'government project', when it is a plain commercial venture.It has not been bought at going rate, else it would have cost the investors millions of dollars.The holiday resort is to have water-sports too. The water is going to come from a dam that supplies water to a nearby city of 4 million people. Eventually this city will not have water, so it is proposed to be supplied from another distant dam, again affecting local people in that area!
She has been fighting for these people for over a year now.I wrote last week an article as a contribution to the on-going debate in a local newspaper on this issue.I do not know if they will publish it at all, given politicisation of media. I had sent a copy to a few concerned including her.
[Lavasa is the name of the place where this racket has been going on.
'Andolan'[means agitation] is the state-level-magazine of National Alliance of People's Movement. Medha Patkar's movement is part of this alliance.I write for this magazine every month.
She uses an honorory suffix of '-ji' while addressing me!]

This morning I was delighted to receive her e-mail as follows -

Dear Chandrashekarji,

Thank you for your valuable contribution to the Lavasa debate, especially the last article, which is candid, clear and to the point.

We have always been appreciating your clarity on issues, promptness, contentful writings and countering comments sent for ‘Andolan’.

Your paintings / drawings / pictures too are of a very high quality, as recognized by all.

Thank you so much for being with us, with all support.

With best regards

Medha Patkar

I just finished reading 'The Attack' by Yasmina Khadra. This is a nom the plume of an algerian ex-military official - Mohammed Moulessehoul.The original is in french, I read the translation.Not a superlative literary transaltion [unlike Anais Nin, or Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy novels] but conveys the sense ok.It is quite a manageable read time-wise too - about 3 hours - 250-odd pages.

It is about a suicide bomber.

Of late I have been interested in this topic and intend reading two books suggested by dawno
[link]
a soon as my local library gets hold of them.

Meantime, looking up the library catalogue this book came up. It is a good read for the backdrop on this phemnomenon though I would say it is relevant more to the Palestinian problem, than muslim suicide bombers everywhere per se.

Let me know if anyone has read it, how you find it...

Recently the French President Nicolas Sarkozy said - Burqa is not welcome in France.He said this in an address to the parliament, an important and formally official occasion.

One of the magazines I write for reported this incident commenting that social reform like banning of burqa by muslim women has to come from within that community.Such utterances in fact make the task of the reformers more difficult. Their other point is his statement smacks of cultural superiority and is therefore unwarranted.

Following is my impression about the issue.

At the outset let us be absolutely clear that Sarkozy's stand on burqa practice of muslim women has nothing whatsoever to do with their liberation or social reform.Simple fact is a majority of white europeans do not like immigrants in general and specifically muslims among them. Sarkozy is just playing to this gallery. In October 2006, Jack Straw, the then British foreign secretary [He was earlier Home Secretary] also expressed similar opinion on burqa.

This statement by Sarkozy is an indication of the dilemma the West faces. On the one hand they have to say officially that they are liberal and sound politically correct.On the other hand they can not in the heart of hearts accept that the third world culture is at par with theirsbecause their electorate does not believe so. Then statements on such literally superficial matters are made.

Being officially liberal means saying all cultures are equal. As a concession they may concede that cultures may be different but they are equal!So the culture of aborigins in Australia, of tribes in Africa and high society in France are equal. They are not. They are just different. Equality implies some least common denominator. It does not obtain across cultures except in exploitation [which is no culture].But nobody wants to admit that publicly.Then this dilemma resorts to the idea of Human Rights. Human Rights are conveniently forgotten when drones bomb Afghan wedding parties killing women and children, when wars are imposed, when weapons of mass destruction are supplied to the third world for money.

Look at France. The much touted french revolution is credited with having bestowed the values of liberty, equality and fraternity to the world. Revolution was over in 1799. Until the decade of 1960s, the french had colonies in Africa, Asia and North America.Untold pillage and atrocities happened to the colonised during that period of more than one-and-half century.There was no liberty-equality-fraternity for the colonised.

But saying burqa undermines muslim women's human rights serves both the purposes - it gives vent to their disapproval of immigrants and is also a politically correct stand.Actually wearing a veil and being forced to wear a veil are two different things. The West deliberately confuses these. And since it is impossible to know the veil-wearing muslims women's own feeling about it the world over, it is assumed that they have been forced into it.

For example, in a place like Darfur, women are raped en masse. Not only are they raped but disfigured for life so that the community knows that they have been raped. A common practice is to cut the foot of a raped woman, making her disabled for life. This is real violation of human rights.Whether she wears burqa or not is not going to save her from her fate. Such genuine problems are relegated wih cheap sloganeering like Sarkozy's.

If burqa is objectionable, different valid grounds could be cited. For example, social security in public places.You never know if a burqa clad person is a suicide bomber. Or, in schools where wearing a uniform is mandatory because rich or poor, all pupils must be taught to look the same while there.But objections are never raised on these grounds. They are raised on the grounds of Human Rights of which the West has been and continues to be the biggest violator.