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South Asia Citizens Wire | 05 October, 2005 [1] Bangladesh: The rise of Islamist extremism - Are mainstream Muslims blameless? (Mahfuzur Rahman) [2] India - US : Obituary of an Indian 'Body Bag' (Sumanta Banerjee) [3] US: So the Jains, They Have a Problem With Beef in the School Lunches. Who They Gonna Call? (Suketu Mehta) [4] Book Review: 'Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India by William Gould' (Francesca Orsini) ______ [1] The Daily Star October 05, 2005 THE RISE OF ISLAMIST EXTREMISM ARE MAINSTREAM MUSLIMS BLAMELESS? by Mahfuzur Rahman The country [Bangladesh] is finally awakening to the reality of Islamist extremism. To be sure we still hear a Government minister saying that the August 17, 2005 bombings were not "such a big deal". We also heard an "intellectual" saying the other day that the extremists who were behind the bomb attacks had as much right to extremism as those of our countrymen who fought for liberation of the country in 1971. One can never be sure that these statements can be dismissed merely as an expression of political expedience, in the first case, or crass idiosyncrasy, in the second. Nevertheless, after years of denial, the political establishment has finally acknowledged that that Islamist extremism existed in the country. Never before have we seen such an emergence of consensus on the threat the extremists pose. This of course has not been followed by a consensus on what to do to meet the extremist threat. The differences of approach to the problem go beyond the existing political blame game that by itself can seriously weaken any resolve to fight Islamist extremism. It has been suggested, for example, that while the problem is real, it is fairly easily containable. For one thing, it has been argued, that the soil of Bangladesh is not fertile enough for a sustainable growth of extremism; the present spate of violence will die down. The argument amounts to little more than wishful thinking, but it has been made and I believe the view is fairly widely shared. Others recognize the problem but feel that strengthened law enforcement is all that is needed. Yet others have been less sanguine and have felt that the threat of extremists is serious enough to call for extraordinary anti-terrorist measures such as setting up of a "war council". In general, the present surge of extremism has so far been seen as a law and order problem. I think this is a grave error of judgment. To combat Islamist extremism, we need to look at the roots of the problem. Going to the roots may sound like a cliché, but we can do with this one. Terrorism and violence, like just about anything else, do not grow out of thin air. They need an environment to thrive. I believe 'mainstream' Muslims themselves supply an important part of that environment. This would almost certainly raise a huge number of eyebrows. But it is time we talked about the issue. First, I need a working definition of 'mainstream' Muslim. While I accept that no definition can be fully satisfactory here, by a 'mainstream' Muslim I mean someone who believes in one God, Koran and His Prophet (pbuh) even if he, or she, does not always abide by all that He has ordained. He prays daily, even if not five times a day, prescribed by the holy books. He normally goes to the mosque for the Friday congregation. He is expected to fast during the month of Ramadan. He spends for charity, even if what he spends may not add up to the proportion of his wealth that he is supposed to spend under the rules of zakat. He considers a once in a lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca an obligation, even though he often finds arguments to avoid it as long as he can. He is reverential to religious leaders and listens to their sermons as a matter of piety. He accepts the Koran as the word of God, and neither questions its edicts nor sees any contradiction in it. He knows at least the rudiments of the Koran by heart, sometimes recites them or hears them recited. He recites the Koran or hears the recitation, without understanding it, but has little difficulty in accepting a translation offered to him by traditional interpreters of the Book. There is little in him to suggest that he is prone to violence and would certainly shudder at the thought of himself as an Islamist suicide bomber. He does not participate in terrorist acts. I take issue with those who claim that the terrorists are a 'tiny minority' among Muslims, if by this it is meant that there are only a handful of individuals who are engaged in acts of terrorism. The number of terrorists world-wide is not longer small. Nevertheless, in the Islamic world as a whole, mainstream Muslims, defined broadly as above, would vastly outnumber those whom we can call Islamist terrorists. They would certainly far outnumber terrorists in countries like Bangladesh where, till recently, Islamist terrorism had been at bay. Ordinary Muslims do not go about killing people. Yet mainstream Muslims bear a large share of responsibility for the surge of Islamist terrorism. In many cases this may be unwitting, an act of omission rather than commission; the consequences, nevertheless, are the same. The culpability of mainstream Muslims derives largely from their lack of will or power to openly ask searching questions in matters of religion. This is perhaps the most important factor that creates an environment where Islamist extremism thrives. There surely are instances of exceptional individual heterodoxy. But a large majority of Muslims do not make searching inquiries in matters of religion or challenge dogma. Their equanimity and reticence have some major ramifications. Take, for instance, the sermons he hears in the local mosque, at the Friday congregations, and elsewhere. In many cases, along with calls for piety, the sermons will call for solidarity of the Muslim /ummah/, as if it has been under attack all over the world. It is strange that over fourteen hundred years after it was born, after it long established itself as one of the major organized faiths, now with a billion adherents to it, Islam is still presented as a religion under threat from infidels. Often /imams/ in mosques still end their supplication to God with /Fa-ansurna ala al quaomil kaafereen/ -- "Help us against the community of non-believers" And the mainstream Muslim never thinks it proper to ask why is it still necessary to call for divine protection for Islam and whether denunciation of the /kafirs/ is still called for. He probably does not also ask himself what the impact of the relentless anti-infidel rhetoric may be on young and excitable Muslim minds in the congregation. The example of Islam -in- danger sermons is an important one in the present context, because here is an issue where mainstream Muslims could ask pertinent questions. But there are many other examples of mainstream reticence. It is important to examine some of the ways the critical spirit is thwarted, and fanaticism spread, and see where the mainstream Muslim stands. It has of late been recognised that /madrasas/, or religious schools, have been a potent breeding ground for religious hatred and intolerance. The Taliban in Afghanistan were actually the eponymous /madrasa/ students, mostly raised in Pakistan. This is an obvious example, an extreme one too. But tens of thousands of these /madrasas/ are scattered across the Islamic world and they certainly do not spread the message of tolerance to dissent or of universal brotherhood. Yet Muslims in general do not speak against the spread of /madrasa/ education, though there has been some criticism from them in recent times. It looks as if it is a matter of impiety to criticize /madrasa/ education On the other hand, the role of the mosque in the spread of Islamic extremism has still to be adequately recognised by mainstream Muslims. It is only after the London suicide bombings of July 2005 that their role came to public attention. An often repeated argument of apologists eager to dismiss any Islamic connection of some of the acts of terror in recent times has been that the terrorists were 'modern educated' and were not products of /madrasas/. But many of them were regular visitors to mosque and in all probability avid listeners of fiery sermons from their /imams/. This was true of the London bombers. But fiery sermons are only one potential ingredient of extremism. Growing religious fundamentalism in general, through /madrasa/ education and other ways, has been a powerful contributing factor. In fact rousing calls for /jihad/ are relatively rare in the country and fanatical preachers like Omar Bakri or al-Masri of London probably have no counterpart in Bangladesh, though one can never rule this out. Fiery rhetoric is not absent though. It is only necessary to remember that the rout of the Taliban was followed by loud denunciations of the United States and call for /jihad/ from the mosques in many parts of the Muslim world, including Dhaka and elsewhere in the country. But the tilt to religious fundamentalism has continued in parallel with, if not independently of, loud rhetoric. It has been quietly achieving what rousing sermons may not always have been able to do: the closing of the mind to critical inquiry and rational thinking. And the very same mosques attended by the extremists are also the ones that mainstream Muslims attend. Extremists do not have mosques of their own. They share the house of God with other Muslims. These Muslims do not protest fiery speeches and the prospective young fanatic does not hear the protest. They do not question the orthodoxy and Muslim youths do not hear the question. The passivity of mainstream Muslims is not born simply of fear of retribution, though such fear may be real enough in some cases. An important reason why they do not protest against extremist sermons in mosques is that it is not in their tradition and training to ask critical questions about the major precepts of Islam. They can discuss matters of religion as much as they like so long as the discussion strengthens their Faith and are in the nature of piety or devotion, but they may not ask probing questions that sound like criticism of Islam. There are also areas where the stances of mainstream Muslims have the undesired effect of bolstering those of the Islamist extremists. Many mainstream Muslims are often, and rightly, sympathetic to causes that extremists also promote and are eager to die for. There are regions of the world where Muslims have suffered gross injustices at the hands of foreign powers. The Middle East is an obvious example. Many extremists have taken up the cause of the oppressed there and elsewhere. Mainstream Muslims have also voiced protest and frustration at these injustices. It is not, however, usual for them to make it abundantly clear that their support for the cause of the oppressed has nothing to do with religion, or that they would protest with equal vigour injustices to other communities around the world. If the extremist thinks in the circumstance that he has the support of the mainstream Muslim, the latter is not entirely without blame. In his equanimity as a Muslim, the mainstream Muslim often ignores the danger signs which should have told him to stop, think and talk. It is hardly conceivable that the scores or so of the extremists who planted the 500 bombs throughout Bangladesh in August this year did not pray in the same local mosque where other Muslims prayed hours or days before the attacks. They may even have rubbed shoulders against each other as they stood in serried ranks before God the Merciful. The mainstream Muslims might not have known about extremist designs but they must have known the fundamentalist streak that the extremist proudly show. But they never talked to each other in any meaningful way. Mainstream Muslims never drew the fundamentalists into a debate about their ideas, ideologies, and the reasons for their rage. Clandestine activities designed for violence and terror cannot long survive in open societies. And an open society is one where people ask question, inquire into things long taken for granted, and where sacred cows are few and far between. It is time mainstream Muslims left their reticence behind and worked towards creating a truly open society. The longer they postpone it, the more likely will it be that extremists will triumph. This is not to suggest that a diehard core of Islamist extremists cannot create havoc in almost any society. The danger from terrorists who are willing to kill themselves in order to kill others for what they consider true Islam is all too real. The danger increases in a world where, like most other phenomena, extremism is globalised and local forces of terror can count on support from rich and powerful allies abroad. Neither should one underestimate the ability of a determined band of Islamist political activists to exploit people's religious susceptibilities to achieve their objective. Nonetheless, we can ignore only at our peril the responsibility of mainstream Muslims for the present upsurge of extremism in the country, and the role they can play in combating it. /Mahfuzur Rahman, former United Nations economist, is currently researching in religious fundamentalism. An earlier and very different version of the article was recently published in Mukto-mona.com, a free- thinkers' website./ ______ [2] Economic and Political Weekly September 24, 2005 OBITUARY OF AN INDIAN 'BODY BAG' The story of Hatim Kathiria, the young Indian who enlisted in the US army only to be killed in Iraq, is the story of the US need for "outside labour" in its army, of twisted notions of jehadi and of middle-class India's obsession with the US. by Sumanta Banerjee At the end of August this year, Indian newspapers came up with headlines reporting the death of Hatim Kathiria, a 23-year old Indian who had joined the US army, and was sent to Iraq where he was killed in a rocket attack. He was the second US soldier of Indian origin to die in Iraq. In November 2003, Udai Singh, a sergeant in the US army, was killed in the battle zone. Commenting on their death, an Indian correspondent of a leading national daily based in Washington went gaga: "The death of Army Specialist Hatim Kathiria and Sergeant Uday Singh, has an important subtext. One was a Muslim and the other a Sikh, and together with Lt Neil Prakash, who recently returned from Iraq after winning a Silver Star for courage under fire, they represent the very best of India's secular traditions at a time when some countries specialise in exporting fundamentalist jihadis" (Chidanand Rajghatta in The Times of India, August 29, 2005). But there are other subtexts to these events which escape the attention of the Indian correspondent, who seems to be totally indifferent to Washington's motives behind a dishonest and cruel war that is using young people as cannon fodders in Iraq. At around the same time when he was celebrating the heroism of the Indian soldiers in Iraq, Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a 24-year old American soldier killed in Iraq was leading a sit-in near the Texas ranch of president Bush posing the poignant question: "Why did my son die ?" Hundreds joined her in candlelight vigils calling for an end to the war in Iraq. While here is a courageous mother giving voice to thousands of grieving American families who had lost their sons in an unnecessary war, our Indian journalist chooses to join the war-mongering chorus of the US mainstream media. To be fair to him however, in the course of the chest-pounding, he unwittingly provides us with some interesting figures. Quoting the 2000 US census, he says that there were some 450 India-born people who were serving in the US armed forces. He guesses that the "number may have increased significantly as many recent immigrants are signing up at the prospect of a quick citizenship even as native-born Americans balk at enlisting". There are at least three subtexts to this little piece of information. One, the manner in which the US is using recruits from India to carry out its dirty war in Iraq. Two, the motivations among certain sections of Indians which lead them to join the US army in its war of depredations against the Iraqi people. Three, by allowing our citizens to join a foreign army and serving its militarist goals in a war situation (where New Delhi purports to be neutral), is not the Indian government compromising its stated position (of not joining military operations) on the Iraq war? To deal with the first, we must recall the past. The US had always been notorious for hiring mercenaries from outside its own forces to conduct its aggressive policy abroad - a military equivalent of what is being touted today as "outsourcing" in the economy of globalisation. In the 1960s, when engaged in a war in Vietnam, in order to lessen the mortality rates among its own soldiers it conscripted local Vietnamese to fight the National Liberation Front - in what the then American top military brass termed as "changing the colour of the corpses" to describe the casualties! In Iraq today, it is employing the same strategy by trying to recruit more policemen and soldiers from among the Iraqis. The insurgents - who, to register their rage, indulge in aimless bomb blasts resulting in the death of innocent citizens - occasionally display some sense by targeting these recruiting centres. But it is not only soldiers that the US needs in Iraq to carry out its military operations. There is a host of systems that require to be manned to sustain those operations - provision of supplies, running and maintaining technology, moving trash, etc. Manual labour from developing countries outside Iraq serve most of these purposes in the battle zone. Indian labour in US army it is well known by now that Indian labourers had been working for US forces - as revealed sometime ago by the kidnapping of one such group by the insurgents, whose release was brought about through long drawn-out secret negotiations. The policy to recruit such labourers from the poor countries to serve the US soldiers in Iraq follows the colonial tradition of camp-followers - the non-military appendages (like cooks, barbers, washermen), who accompanied them in the battle zones. The Indian youth Hatim Kathiria who was killed in a rocket attack in Baghdad was another such unfortunate appendage. Although not an ordinary manual labourer (he had a degree in computer engineering), he was used by the US army in the same way to serve its operational interests. He was put in charge of a computer system that kept track of US army supplies. Motivation This brings us to the second subtext - what led a trained Indian engineer (who would not have remained unemployed in India, unlike the hundreds of unskilled labourers who migrate to west Asia every year in search of better pay) to emigrate to the US, and voluntarily join the army there? What is the psychology that makes a young educated Indian participate in a war that lacks any justification (as distinct from the anti-Nazi second world war), and that too against a people in a faraway land who do not threaten Indians? The newspaper reports about Hatim Kathiria's background give us interesting insights into the mentality of a new generation of ambitious professionals. Hatim came from a middle class Bohra Muslim family in Dahod in Gujarat. After doing a bachelor's degree in software, he went to the US to earn a master's degree. He worked for sometime as a gas station attendant at Fort Worth, near Dallas, and then decided to enlist into the US army - hoping that a stint in the armed forces would help fund a college scholarship. He signed up in 2004, and was soon assigned to a battalion in Iraq, where he met his death. While sincerely mourning his death and expressing sympathies for his family (which tried to dissuade their only son from joining the US army), we at the same time cannot but wonder how an educated middle class Indian youth can be so desperate to earn a degree from a US university as to take the extreme step of joining the US army and aid it in a war of plundering another nation. The reactions of Hatim Kathiria's relatives - as reported in the newspapers - are quite revealing. His mother, who used to conduct tuition classes to collect money for his US trip, said: "His ambitions took him to the US and then to Iraq," and then added: "but he died a martyr's death." Here we tumble into another confusing subtext - the concept of martyrdom ! This Muslim family considers their son as a "shaheed" according to the traditional Islamic concept. How do the Iraqi insurgents who killed this co-religionist of theirs describe him? To carry the argument further, the jehadi suicide bombers who have killed more innocent Iraqis than US soldiers, are hailed as martyrs by their patrons; but how do they depict these non-combatant victims of theirs in their jehadi phraseology? The Americans have invented the term "collateral damage" for such killings of innocent people. Have the Iraqi jehadis found an Islamic term? To continue with the subtext - in the same newspaper report, a cousin of Hatim's said: "We are proud of Hatim who died for the US army" (The Indian Express, September 5, 2005). This gives another twist to the tragedy. It recalls the loyalist rhetoric of the parents of the Indian soldiers who died for "His Majesty" in the battlefields of Burma during the second world war. Do we find again among our middle classes today an urge to renew self-identification with the interests and values of the dominant world power - the power being the US now? If Hatim's cousin is proud of his sacrifice for the US army, there are thousands of other Indians who every day proudly flash their subservience to the US - the call-centre employees who cultivate American accent to please their clients, the executives in MNC firms who try desperately to imbibe the values and ape the habits of their American bosses, the media barons and their employees who have internalised the ethics and norms of the US-led neo-liberalisation. This brings us to the third subtext - the role of the Indian state. It is caught up in a web of contradictions. While the present government is trying to put up an image of neutrality in conflict situations involving the US - in Iraq or Iran, it has no control over the choice of its citizens, who can emigrate abroad and operate in a way that totally negates the government's official policies. They can choose to be smugglers or freebooters abroad. It is the amoral norms of our society and erosion of ideological values inside our country that shape their motivations. Hatim Kathiria was not a victim of the Iraq war, but of our own system which promotes greed, individualism, and a fierce rush for material success - all in the name of "upward mobility", "competitive spirit" and similar notions that are being perpetually hammered into the minds of the Indian youth by our political leaders and their kept media. _____ [3] New York Times Magazine October 2, 2005 SO THE JAINS, THEY HAVE A PROBLEM WITH BEEF IN THE SCHOOL LUNCHES. WHO THEY GONNA CALL? By Suketu Mehta It was the night of this year's New York primary, and when a billionaire like Mayor Michael Bloomberg holds a party to celebrate his candidacy, it's no small affair. The spacious ballroom of the Marriott in downtown Brooklyn was overflowing with free beer and pigs-in-blankets, and a band revved up the throngs of supporters. "We love Mike! We love Mike!" they chanted. Among the supporters was Alex Martins, a goateed Indian lawyer in a business suit and a Hawaiian shirt. He was flanked by three fellow Indians in shirt-sleeves who looked a little lost. Martins waved a big blue Bloomberg poster enthusiastically and joined in the chant; his entourage stood around silently. Martins's companions were wearing "Mike '05" buttons, but it was safe to assume that they had little clue what the mayor's political platform was. They were at the Marriott because, being relatively new immigrants, they wanted things "fixed" - visas, jobs, business permits - and Martins is a master at this. If Martins was attending the event, they would join him. They told me they don't have much trust in politicians because they had known the ones back home in India. ("Politicians are like creatures," one of them, a computer programmer from Mumbai, said. "They're like sharks.") But they were hoping that through their association with Martins, who is on the board of the New Era Democrats, a political club that has endorsed Bloomberg, they might see some results. Martins is a slim, dark man of 40 who looks understandingly at you over the top of his glasses as he speaks. "Within this week I will solve your problem" is one of his favorite phrases. When I first asked for his card, Martins gave me four. One identified him as an immigration and personal-injury lawyer affiliated with the firm Frenkel, Hershkowitz & Shafran. A second card testified to his role as C.E.O. of Ara Global Trading, "Importer and Distributor of Exclusive Wines." Two others actually belonged to his wife, Maureen Martins, D.D.S., of Bright Smile Dental Care in Flushing and Valley Stream, N.Y. ("We love to see you smile.") He frequently conducts business out of her offices. Martins is not a high-profile mover and shaker in New York City politics. But he does play a role in helping to meet the needs of many of the city's residents - particularly South Asian immigrants. He is a fixer, an expediter: a link between the vast, anonymous, forbidding face of the system and the immigrant cabby or student or maid, perhaps without papers, fresh off a long-haul flight at J.F.K. In the absence of powerful elected officials - there's not a single South Asian holding a major elected office in New York - the Indian community has to rely on other conduits to power. Martins fills that role by running a favor bank, brokering the barter of services - for instance, a largely Indian taxi company agrees to distribute campaign literature in return for his intervention with officials on the Taxi and Limousine Commission. Martins's fees are not made explicit, but the people who come to him are more or less aware of what they need to do to pay him back, because they come from countries where the trading of influence is necessary to survival. Historically, every immigrant group that has come to New York has relied on people like Martins: a man of connections, a man you call when your son is caught shoplifting or your cousin needs a visa or your nephew needs a city job. He is not a politician - not yet, at least - but he is a political creature. He is the representative who helps new immigrants reach their elected representatives. For the politicians whom Martins deals with, the benefits of helping a new immigrant are often not immediately apparent, because most of the immigrants are not citizens and can't vote. But some of these immigrants have money, and many of them will, eventually, become citizens and remember who came to their assistance when they were new to the country. The politicians are also keenly aware that New York's demographics are changing. This year, for the first time in history, non-Hispanic whites make up a minority of the city's voters. Which means that every New York politician seeking citywide office now has to form a coalition: no one can win on the basis of appealing to a single voting bloc, whether it's whites, blacks or Hispanics. Politicians will need the support of the Jains, the Catholics from Goa, the Sikhs - all the people who turn to Martins to get things fixed. "How's the sick and the dying?" Marty Golden, a New York state senator, asked Dr. Narmesh Shah on a recent summer day, walking into a pizza parlor next to Golden's Brooklyn office in the 22nd District in Bay Ridge. Martins, who was sitting with Shah, had arranged this meeting between the senator and the doctor, a recent Indian immigrant seeking a fellowship in cardiology at a city hospital. Golden momentarily confused Shah with another doctor that Martins had taken to him for a favor. The senator freely confessed he couldn't keep track of all Martins's clients: "You bring me so many people, I don't know!" Shah was not paying Martins anything for the contact with Golden, though Shah did arrange for a free checkup for a friend of Martins's - a priest from Goa who lacked health insurance. And Martins was offering nothing to Golden, though in the past Martins has organized registration drives to get Indian and other minority voters, who typically vote Democratic, to cast their ballot for Golden, who is a Republican. After the meeting, Golden wrote a recommendation for Shah to New York Methodist Hospital. Eventually, Shah may be called upon to return the favor that Martins did for him. The payouts in Martins's favor bank are immediate; the fees and deposits can be claimed long into the future. Golden, it turned out, had recently returned from a trip to Israel, and Martins knew precisely when the senator left and when he came back. "Alex knows how to get a hold of me," Golden said. When a new immigrant faces problems, the senator explained, Martins is the man to call: "He knows the numbers to dial. There's nothing wrong with it - it has been part of the fabric of this country for 200 years." Immigrants learn about Martins through word of mouth, from family to family. As Golden put it, "They learn who are the can-do people." Martins grew up in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), the son of an officer in the merchant marine. He started running a catering business at age 14. Then he started manufacturing bakery equipment ("kneaders, grinders and hollow waffle machines"). Later he ran a nightclub, and when his father, a devout Catholic, found out about the club, he threw Alex out of his house. "And that's why I left the country," Martins says. He had become friendly with the United States consul general in Mumbai, Harry Cahill, who introduced him around at the United States Chamber of Commerce and arranged for his American visa. Martins immigrated to New York at 18 and enrolled for a bachelor's degree in finance and marketing at Baruch College. His nightclub experience in India was useful when he got a job as the headwaiter at Michael's Pub in Manhattan. He realized that the city was teeming with business opportunities for immigrants like himself, and he soon opened a Nathan's hot-dog franchise near City Hall. But a couple of incidents made Martins realize that the place of immigrants in the city was still precarious. One day, as he recalled it to me, he was riding on the E train and the pages of the newspaper that he was reading brushed against the man seated next to him. The man launched into a diatribe against immigrants. "Go back to your own country!" he barked. Martins said that he felt intimidated but that he managed to speak up in his own defense; he said that America was a land of immigrants, and that his fellow passenger didn't have the right to tell Martins to get out. "Since that time I've wanted to be an immigration attorney," Martins said. He later got a law degree from N.Y.U. Martins has a keen sense of the hurdles that Indian immigrants face, especially in finding work in city government. When it comes to jobs in administrative offices, Martins says that he has seen that "always someone else is given a chance. There is always discrimination in the high-level offices. It's how the British and the Portuguese ruled us" - that is, by denying Indians higher-level positions in government. Martins decided that he wouldn't be just a run-of-the-mill lawyer; he would help immigrants by aggressively cultivating politicians. "In the Indian community," he says, "there was always a problem: people couldn't approach the politicians the right way. They're not confident." He would explain to the Indians he spoke with, "If they want our support, they need to get our work done." He also worked to educate the politicians about Indian culture: who is Ganesh, the elephant-headed Hindu god? What is the Sikh religion? He often took politicians on visits to the Indian community's houses of worship. Martins quickly figured out that to deal with what former Mayor David Dinkins once called New York's gorgeous mosaic, you have to wear a gorgeous tie. He showed me a photo from a 2004 fund-raiser for the Congress of Italian-Americans Organization (CIAO), in which he appeared with one arm around Bloomberg and his other around a diminutive Italian grandmother named Mary Crisalli Sansone, the founder of the organization. Martins was sporting a particularly vivid tricolor tie. "It's not the Italian flag, in fact," he confessed, "but it's close." He has ties for his visits to every ethnic community, with an approximation of the colors of their national flags. When he went to meet Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, he wore a tie that sported the green, white and saffron of the Indian flag. Not long ago, New York's Jain community had a festival, and Martins arranged an appearance by Louis Gelormino, an attorney who has served in the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations. The Jains are ideal New Yorkers: nonviolent and rich. They are largely made up of diamond merchants and other entrepreneurs from India, and they follow a religion that mandates extreme pacificism. The Jains, though, had some highly specific demands, which they were not shy about expressing to Martins. "They want beef not to be served in the public schools that their children go to," he explained to me. The Jains are also opposed to the eating of eggs, as well as root vegetables like onions, garlic and potatoes, which cannot be uprooted without killing the entire plant. Martins was sympathetic but firm: "I said to the community leaders, 'This is not possible.' I said, 'It is very difficult to have an eggless cake for you.' " Martins often serves the function of gently explaining the limits of political power to the communities he works with - for instance, that New York City is not going to ban hamburgers in the schools any time in the foreseeable future. Still, he managed to restore the Jains' faith in the political system by arranging for city approval for parking outside their temple in Queens. New York politicians, knowing Martins's links with the Indian community, often reach out to him with opportunities for his constituency. The Democratic state senator John Sabini was recently walking along the street in Jackson Heights when he saw a Pakistani cabby driving a taxi that was clearly from New Orleans. Sabini flagged down the driver and discovered that the cabby was an evacuee and had his wife and 20-month-old baby with him in the car. Sabini found the cabby hotel accommodations through the city's marketing agency and a job through the owner of a taxi fleet. The taxi-fleet owner has since offered a job to any driver from the Gulf Coast. Shams Tarek, a Bangladeshi immigrant and top aide to Sabini, explains that Sabini's office will actively seek out Martins and ask him "if he knows any Sikh cabbies, or anybody from the South who's impacted by the hurricane." One of Martins's clients is a car service in Queens, whose drivers are mostly from the Indian subcontinent. He intervenes on their behalf with the Taxi and Limousine Commission, whose leadership Martins is well acquainted with. If you hired one of their cars on the day before the New York primary, you were handed, along with your receipt, a campaign flyer for Renee Lobo, one of the candidates for City Council that Martins is backing. It was a narrowly aimed form of campaign advertising, since the car service operates in her district. Despite his deft political touch, Martins has also had some frustrations with the Indian community. Of the community's older, less aggressive leaders, he says: "They are losers. They come to me when they need work; after the work is done, they forget about me. They are short-term-goal people." Still, Martins says that he is hopeful that this situation is changing. He cites the example of Representative Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, an Indian-American who had a realistic chance of becoming governor in the last election. "We have to get the young people volunteering for political campaigns," Martins says. "I would like to see an Indian mayor of New York." Some in the city are resistant to Martins's charms. "He's a great self-promoter," said a political aide to a state senator who spoke on condition of anonymity because his boss often works with Martins. "We think he's more talk than substance. He's a name-dropper. He loves to say he's got a direct line to our office. It makes him look good that he can tell someone, 'I can call the senator and it's done.' That's his shtick." And is it indeed done, I asked, when Martins calls the senator's office? "We try to help as many people as we can just for that rainy day when we might need help," the aide said. "We're just trying to build allies." Is self-promotion a bad thing in politics? I asked. "What kind of question is that?" the aide protested. "It's all about contacts, and your name getting out there. It's all about going to the dinner or the fund-raiser and someone seeing you across the room and recognizing your face." Recently, in a booth at the Delhi Palace, a restaurant in Jackson Heights that he has been patronizing for years, Martins gathered with three acquaintances to find a job for one of them - a woman on the Taxi and Limousine Commission who was trying to find a new line of work as a photographer. One of the assembled diners, Terry Lewis, an African-American constituent liaison for Senator Sabini's office, began by noting that every month he gets the ABC Television postings for office jobs, which he offered to make available to the woman. The other man at the booth was Sam Gandhi, a cigarette wholesaler who is considering going into the dialysis business with Martins. Lewis told Gandhi, who is always on the lookout for a good business deal, about some economic development areas possibly opening in Harlem and near the junkyards behind Shea Stadium. Gandhi had another business idea: an all-in-one wedding hall for Indians in Jackson Heights. Martins, though, steered him away from the idea of Jackson Heights as a locale, citing the difficulties in arranging for city approval for the parking. Gandhi has experienced the benefits of being Martins's friend. He recently paid $100 to attend a fund-raiser for the New Era Democrats, organized by Martins, which was attended by Bloomberg and Raymond W. Kelly, the New York police commissioner. "I got my picture with Ray Kelly," Gandhi said. He put it up in his Queens office. "I think it works sometimes," he said. "If someone comes to rob me, it might help. If he knows Kelly, he might think, Let me get the hell out of here!" Martins took out two bottles of red wine from a bag. Both of the wines were Indian, and one had a picture of an Indian classical dancer on the front. Lewis sampled a wine and pronounced it "palatable." I asked Martins if he had ever considered entering politics himself. "If the time comes, I will take the challenge," he said. He said he could see himself running in a state or city contest, from neighborhoods like Richmond Hill, Ozone Park or Flushing, which have lots of South Asians. Gandhi observed that Martins doesn't charge fees from the people for whom he arranges meetings and does favors. "He wants to be in public office," Gandhi said, "and this is the way to start, by letting people know he's there for them." So this was the structure of Martins's life in the city: a little business, a little law, a little socializing, a little campaigning. "I am a wine drinker, and I love the concept of blending," Martins said. He brought out a bottle of his latest import, an Australian chardonnay. "In the day, I love to fight cases, and in the night I have my passionate business." As the level in the wine bottle descended, the conversational range expanded, and the group began discussing topics of national and then international importance. "I could find bin Laden," Martins declared at one point. This would be done, he said, by "squeezing the bin Laden family." He put a hand up in the air and closed his palm. The opinion of the table was that the Bush administration probably knows where bin Laden is but has a vested interest in not capturing him. Martins, though, it was agreed, could find him. If anyone could do it, he could. He could fix it. Suketu Mehta is the author of "Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found," which was recently released in paperback by Vintage. ______ [4] Economic and Political Weekly September 17, 2005 Reviews HETEROGENEOUS POLITICAL LANGUAGES ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India by William Gould; Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society 11, Cambridge University Press and Foundation Books, New Delhi, 2005; pp 275, Rs 695. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Francesca Orsini Hindu nationalism has been the subject of much study in recent years, whether in its 19th century roots, or in the reformist religious movements like the Arya Samaj, or in the "hard" ideology of Savarkar and Golwalkar's Hindutva, or in the more diffuse form of public sphere discourse of early 20th century India. The two main perspectives from which scholars have approached the subject have been to look retrospectively either for the prehistory of the rise of the BJP in the 1980s or for the causes of "Muslim alienation", the Pakistan movement and Partition. William Gould's book is rooted firmly in the second perspective, though it suggests at the same time that to take solely Hindutva ideologues as the forefathers of latter-day Hindu nationalism may be too narrow a focus, for he argues that Hindu nationalism was more widespread than historians have supposed. Taking up cues scattered in the work of Gyan Pandey, Zoya Hasan and Mukul Kesavan, his book documents the pervasive presence of the idiom of Hindu nationalism among Congressmen in the United Provinces from 1930 to 1947. The book revolves around one central argument - that the persistence of a widespread political language of Hindu nationalism within Congress worked powerfully against its explicit ideology of secularism. It alienated Muslim masses and, eventually, many of Congress's own Muslim supporters. Congress politicians employed "heterogeneous" political languages of secularism, civic nationalism and Hindu nationalism and appeared "deaf to the possible contradictions in their political language". Especially at the local level, they continued to work with the ideas and manpower of Hindu organisations even after the Congress high command had banned such overlap. Gould is alert to the peculiar circumstances and challenges that each phase presented - the boycott of foreign cloth during the campaign for civil disobedience, the campaign for "Harijan uplift" and against separate representation for the "depressed classes", the 1935 provincial elections and the first experience of running a provincial ministry, the difference between the riots of the early 1930s and those during Congress rule, and the Muslim mass contact campaign and the Pakistan movement. He is very keen not to suggest a linear history of inevitable descent into the polarisation and violence of Partition. Rather, he presents these two decades as a sequel of possibilities that were repeatedly missed due to the persistent "deafness" of Congress activists and leaders to the Hindu strain in their political discourse. "Soft" Hindu Nationalism The Congress version of Hindu nationalism was "softer" than that of the Arya Samaj or the Hindu Mahasabha or the RSS, though it revolved around a similar sense of cultural identity - familiarity with and affection for Hindu heroes, a view of the nation as mother, patriotism infused with devotional fervour and a strong spirit of self-sacrifice, the repeated use of Hindu symbols, rituals and images as a pool of metaphors, the ideal of a Vedic/Aryan golden age, etc. What distinguished Congress Hindu nationalism from the other, "harder", forms was its benevolent inclusiveness, the idea that Hinduism, like India, could and would effortlessly embrace and tolerate other communities and other religions. That this benevolent inclusivism would not appear so benevolent to other religious minorities seems hardly surprising now but, Gould shows, Congress activists and scribes in UP seemed never to worry about the fact that their strongly-held views about Indian/Hindu culture clashed with their ideology of secularism. Neither attitude was purely strategic or instrumental, this book argues, so theirs was not a case of hypocritically or mendaciously subscribing to a secular stance in public while being privately opposed to it. Rather, it seems to have been a case of genuine historical contradiction, surely a common enough occurrence, in which one holds two opposing desires and strives to attain both. The result is usually some sort of compromise or contradiction. The tragedy, in this case, was that although in this period Congress did successfully transform itself from an anti-colonial movement, with rhetoric and weapons aimed at the colonial state, into a ruling party, it was unable to find effective ways of changing its Hindu nationalist language and creating a political language that would attract and encourage Muslim masses. As Gyan Pandey has already pointed out, until the mid-1930s Congress avoided the question of Muslim separatism rather than developing a political strategy, and the Muslim mass contact campaign of 1938 and 1939 was a classic case of too little, too late. Gould identifies four ways in which the ostensibly secular UP Congress - but the example could probably be extended to other regions - espoused the language of Hindu nationalism, especially at the local level. First, there were the activities of Hindu preachers and holy men who were not controlled or controllable and who mixed the language of nationalism with that of Hindu religion. Second, festivals and temples were used as meeting areas and points of mobilisation, useful for bypassing colonial censorship but hopelessly marked as Hindu. Third, the political rhetoric of Congressmen included a liberal use of religious figures and symbols, most famously that of "Ramrajya" but also, as the cover of the book shows, it imaginatively identified Gandhi with Shiva and mixed the bonfire at Holi with the burning of Ravana. Fourth, ideas of sin and pollution were evoked, for example in the case of the cow, in ways that stigmatised Muslims as brutal killers and enemies. While the use of religious symbols in nationalist rhetoric was not limited to Hindus and maulvis also used them as part of their political language, Gould records the objections of local Muslims to such wide and indiscriminate use of Hindu language and symbols and their resistance to Congress attempts at using their festivals and religious places for political mobilisation. Communal Polarisation Recently, the work of Charu Gupta and others has highlighted the 1920s as the decade in which communal polarisation started on a mass scale, while others have taken Congress' refusal to share power with the Muslim League in the provincial government of 1937 as a radical turning point in UP politics, Gould in this book suggests that the early 1930s also played an important role for political orientations later on. Though the boycott of foreign cloth and the campaign for harijan uplift and against the separate representation for scheduled castes did not involve Muslims directly, the aggressive picketing of Muslim cloth dealers who refused to submit and the reclaiming of untouchables as Hindus in ways that smacked of Arya Samaj "shuddhi" and "sangathan" worried local Muslims. The cloth boycott was the precipitating cause of the terrible Kanpur riot of 1931, which prompted the first extensive Congress report into the problem of Hindu-Muslim conflict, but the political language of this report Gould, strangely, does not quote or analyse. While the UP Congress ministry of 1937 did its best to ensure that it would not appear to represent only Hindu interests - starting a Muslim mass contact campaign and opening a publicity office that encouraged representations from Muslims - the press close to the Muslim League cried foul and called it a "Hindu Raj". Interestingly, Gould notes, complaints reaching the publicity office concerned "as much issues of symbolic significance as of material importance"- Muslims objected to the use of "Vande Mataram" as a nationalist anthem and complained that handbills and circulars from Congress offices were always in Hindi, and in "90 per cent Hindi Sanskrit" as one critic put it (p 227). It was this popular image of Congress as "Hindu Raj" that explains the "ambiguous and wavering nature" of popular Muslim support for Congress in the 1940s, Gould argues. The final chapter of the book highlights the growth of a strong and vocal opposition to the demand for Pakistan which "helped to build up a momentum of "Hindu" opposition in the province", once again blurring the boundaries between Congress, the Arya Samaj and the Hindu Mahasabha. While Congress was accused by the RSS and the Mahasabha of appeasing Muslims, locally militant youth organisations grew and prepared for a civil war. Gould also detects a shift in the writings of provincial Congress leaders like Sampurnanand and Purushottam Das Tandon at this time: Tandon for example, who was known as the "Gandhi of UP", rejected ahimsa in favour of a more militant stance, while calls for the "defence of Hindu culture" resonated with unmistakably political overtones. Rather than being something that hit the province from outside, Partition in UP appears in Gould's account as growing out of widespread and gruesome local clashes and an incandescent political climate. Once again, he is keen to draw attention to figures like Maheshwar Dayal Seth, who continued to provide a link between the Congress and Hindu Sabhas between 1940 and 1945, at a time when political faultlines were ostensibly drawn. Gould's account and his argument are compelling, especially because he so carefully avoids sweeping generalisations or linear causality. He uses the concept of "political language", not just in the sense of political rhetoric but also in Quentin Skinner's sense of "illocutionary force" (the "act in the utterance") to suggest that words and symbols did matter and were, seen in the context of the speaker's political actions, as effective as the actions themselves. The example he offers is that of Sampurnanand's statements on Hindi language and culture, which acquired a "communal" meaning from his being the provincial minister of education. Gould borrows Bakhtin's notion of "heteroglossia" as a methodology for understanding political ideas as espoused by individuals and groups, which "are best studied as something hybrid, or as a form of dialogue". Actually, heteroglossia for him both indicates the space between the meaning of an utterance as given by the speaker and that produced by the audience, but primarily highlights the fact that Congress' nationalist language was always heterogeneous "from top to bottom" (p 12). Political language is also for Gould a way of showing the overlap between Congress and Hindu organisations, an overlap that clearly struck contemporary Muslims, even if direct links cannot be established. His primary sources are partly Hindi pamphlets and proscribed political literature, but predominantly the Police Abstracts of Intelligence and Native Newspaper Reports. These offer him a wealth of local evidence, but are perhaps not so amenable to an analysis of language, which would require longer and more articulated passages. Surprisingly, for a study of political language, even the writings of the "hybrid" UP Congress politicians that Gould focuses on, the Sampurnanands and Purushottam Das Tandons, on the left of the political spectrum but staunchly Hindu in their cultural orientation, are paraphrased rather than quoted. Nor is the question of Hindi political language(s) vs English political language even mentioned. Perhaps he found none in their writings, but that itself would have been worth mentioning. Similarly, "heterogeneity" as the space between the speaker and the audience is theorised rather than demonstrated. On the other hand, by holding fast to historical events and incidents, Gould is able to show that language mattered in ways unforeseen by those who used it. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2005&leaf=09&filename=9127&filetype=html _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on matters of peace and democratisation in South Asia. 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