No Nuclear Heads, Please

War Clouds Gather.

Hannah Arendt famously wrote on the significance of common sense. She argued that often we believe, in the Humanities, that common sense does not aid us in our rational pursuit of scientific truth. Yet, common sense is what keeps people alive, allows them to hope, and returns them to  a sense of order. Why must we believe that the sun will rise tomorrow, that human beings will live in co-existence, that they will be ready to hear one another out? The will to live is the most important thing we have, and it is the legacy we leave for our children. The devastation brought by war are so huge, we see it all around us. Those who are wired into television and the net, respond to the crises of impending war, by continuously following the barrage of news reports, the continuous hectoring, and the ways in which the State responds to a crises.

We need to believe that the relations between two countries will represent the will of the people to live, and not to die. To succumb to the threats of terrorists who attack both our countries, Indian and Pakistan, simultaneously, would be to set up a huge morass of destruction. It is to fall into the hands of the enemy itself. The enemy lies secretly waiting to bring life to a halt. The nation state becomes its chamber maid, clearing up after its mindless terror tactics. The socialization of young people through theological motifs of the  imminent end of the world is its hidden weapon. It does so, which ever religion pushes its cards forwards, by feeding young people the rhetoric of death as cleansing. It is a Malthusian exercise, which believes that the poor are indeed excess,  that they are human masses, who can be rendered extinct in active or passive ways.

War as vengeance is part of this rhetoric, which ceaselessly works to collect people together as an ideological machine, well oiled and constantly moving into war zones. Once war is declared between two countries, it takes years to counter the physical suffering it brings forth. The number of people who die from cancer, from poverty, from neglect is the consequence of the daily costs of development. Unless we are able to count our losses in demographic terms, which involve understanding the fate of the Dalits in our country, we cannot proceed to present ourselves as Developed. The material symbols of development show that the functional aristocracies of post modern societies are well placed, and the scientists and technologists control the landscape of representation. Yet, while putting space ships in orbit, what have we done to alleviate the suffering of the poor? Our continuing and unabated indexes of poverty are an embarrassment to us.

To move into the realm of issuing orders that define victory, a free rein to the Army, crossing the LOC,  constitutes breaking the rules of democratic governance and comes as a real shock to the Nation. Neglect of the poor leads to more deaths in any country, than threats of war.

 Capitalism believes in war as a necessary axiom of its own ideology. The working class must remain enslaved in the factories of production, agriculture must submit to chemical infusions of excessive degree, technology must take the onus of mass production, 19^th century  type genocides of the peasantry, through starvation, or as voluntary cannon fodder must proceed. Not surprisingly, the drug and medical industry treats the harm caused in war and by environmental damage for its own monetary profits, as an intended consequence of iatrogeny.

There is no  quick solution to climate change, which some Prime Ministers and Presidents do not even accept as a life style induced conflagration of the ozone. We can only slow down the degree by which gassing of peaceful populations by consent of industrialists and politicians takes place. How did Punjab for instance allow gmt crops to be planted, and the stalks to be burnt by the farmers? Was it common sense to allow the city of Delhi to be submerged in dense smog for four months? How do we benefit from the decisions made by the government which includes using petroleum carbon to be used as a fuel in Delhi? Does more instant electricity for malls in Delhi make up for the damage the air quality does to the lungs and blood circulation of newly born infants?

All these questions are surely  worthy of debates in parliament. Hierarchical federal politics, like hierarchical pluralism is a problem in itself.  We cannot run into war without debate, without legal ramifications. Indians always remained aware that their country was blessed by a certain luminousness,  in which ideas prevailed, that wisdom could come from anywhere. Adi Sankara had to respond to the Chandal, he had to reconfigure his own opinions. We, as a people, have always reacted to urgent crises in myriad ways.

Once war is declared, our freedoms will be taken away from us, our daily routines will be marked by the dirge of listening to the lists of dead every day, announced over radio and tv. We will be rationed for food, standing in queues, listening to the confounding rhetoric of an  ‘eye for an eye’ theology, quite misplaced in today’s creative global citizens and human rights forums, where people of different countries work side by side.

Prof Susan Visvanathan is the author of  The Children of Nature – The Life and Legacy of Ramana Maharshi  published by Roli  Lotus imprint, 2010

Bomb Blasts in Jammu

Terrorists Attack in Pulwama on 14^th February 2019

Delhi gets its political climate, and its seasons from its North West and North East borders. The British built the capital in 1912, in order to establish their sovereignty over India, and to be closer to Shimla. Yet, the people of Delhi inheriting all the venom of the past, have always remained loyal to the city, with its dust storms from Rajasthan desert Thar, and the cold winds that blow from the Himalayas, and the view of the Terai as a silver line in the clouds, that greets them when they fly back from the North East.

Delhi - ites are least sympathetic  to or intimidated by terrorists. The call to arms made to college students and to the unemployed, whether in Jammu and Kashmir, or in Assam, or in Jharkhand, or in the various states of the North East leaves the migrant worker to Delhi baffled. The rural population moves to Delhi for work, and in slum settlements, and instant housing prefabricated by noveau riche magnates, they quickly make their living, for the wages are better than where they lived earlier. When luck runs out, they return to their villages for brief periods to recuperate, but they are back as soon as they are employed in the city.

The paramilitary forces who risk their lives in the borders are people who see serving their country as an honourable profession. They are not mercenaries. They come from farming families, and thousands compete against one post, which also represents gainful employment. It involves repayment of debts, education for their children, and the hard won gains of having gone to courts to settle the matter of pensions payable to them. The paramilitary is part of the grid operations of the Army, Police and State and Centre representatives, who discuss the mode of operation, in places where civil war is imminent.

Needless to say, the citizen’s forum is always active on behalf of the people who are being monitored. Wherever rape or injury has been committed, there is immediate reporting by journalists. The documentation of war crimes are part of the occupational obligations of many Human Rights Organisations, who make this data available. The Military and Police represent the coercive arm of the state, and is under the jurisdiction of Parliament and Judiciary. The idea of democracy is therefore legally represented by the constitutional impetus of keeping institutions alive.

Each of the forty men who were killed in the bomb blast at Pulwama  on 14^th February 2019 had obligations to family, which they had set aside, to return to duty. What were their thoughts as they set out on a new assignment? Was it a job like any other, to drive out into the cold and lose their lives in a fraction of a moment? The tragedy was something that the Nation experienced sorrowfully, so soon after Republic Day. One of the soldiers  killed came from Lakkidi village in Wayanad, Kerala. It is an obscure village, where there is a temple to Sita, for it is believed that it was here that Luv and Kush were born, and that she was absorbed into the Earth. These legends are what the Indian subcontinent is always composed of, where extra terrestrial time, and local time converge. The soldier had hoped to retire from the CRPF in two years, and focus on his children.

His brother told journalists that they were sorry to lose him, but proud that he had died for his country.

In these deaths, the Nation comes together, because the sacrifice soldiers make for their country are expressions of how they represent their love for the country as being the sole goal, in their possible martyrdom.

Kashmiris have presented themselves as scapegoats in the confrontation between the Military and their dream of a promised homeland. The pellet injuries that Kashmiri children have been blinded with become the most terrible evidence of how the Nation state sees forms of warfare as legitimate in contexts of civil war. How can human rights activists deal with the infiltration of terrorists among the Kashmiri civilians? India has a political sensibility which while not trying to get back Pakistan occupied Kashmir, will not give up Jammu, Ladakh  and Kashmir. There is no possibility of the further severance of the subcontinent.

Kashmiri school children doing  Central School examinations know that the idea of the homeland is tied inextricably with the Nation. Pakistan becomes an ally of Saudi Arabia,  and of China, when it requires aid. Kashmiris are to be found in every nook and corner of India, either as merchants or as refugees. The problem of borders cannot be solved by expressing enmity with neighbouring countries, whether it is China or Pakistan. The first step towards healing is for the presentation of occupational rights to Defence personnel, along with the line of duty which premises that citizens cannot be treated as if they are enemies. The unholy alliance that terrorists have with anybody who provides them with guns and money is something that cannot be condoned.

Miners Lives

 The drowning  of miners, in mid December 2018, who were working  manually, in rat hole mines in agricultural land, in the Jaintia hills in Meghalaya, came as a  severe shock to readers of newspapers. However, they  naturally presumed that the State would handle it, and went back to their duties. What a shock it was, when no help was forthcoming, and the miners died the most terrible and tragic death, where the water rushes in, and the lungs burst, and their tears wash away in the mud, and their screams cannot be heard. They would have thought of their families in those last seconds, being aware that they had not thought that when they left home, they would never see their homes again.

Rockets to Mars, and the space mission are domestic subjects of great pride. However, rural populations are left to their own devices. When the State camouflages as a political party with vested interests, then it dips into the exchequer to spend more money on defence, beat up the drums of battle, and cuts on those grants which provide relief to  the rural poor, such as medical aid and education.  JNU Professors, such as Mohan Rao, Geetha Nambissan and Rama Baru, have presented us with important data describing the prioritization of primary health care and school education in the post 1947 era. What followed was the rampant corporatization of these, when the rapid industrialization ideology placed itself over the economic bases of village India. Those who are biased toward rapid industrialization have not learned from the lessons that the 19 century placed before us. The genocide of the peasantry was a given, because the need to move faster and faster into modernism, factory production and rapid transport meant that whole villages would be decimated of their  working population. The move to Mars, and the six newly discovered hospitable planets {six new planets discovered.www.phys org.) are only the  proverbial carrot to the donkey, since  humans are being told by the conglomerate elites of the war industry, combined with telecommunication, medicine and food industries, that the end is in sight, and lets just give up on planet earth.

Since there are no medical facilities available in rural areas, or viable schooling, the Alternatives project has gained momentum in India. People know that they have recourse to traditional healing, and so the State machinery has also promoted it as one way of thinking about palliative medicine as a back up for diseases like cancer and life style induced illnesses. What follows is the corporatization of  production of herbs to be found in hilly or mountainous areas. The tribals are pushed out of their homes as a result of plantation economies which affect their way of life. Consequently they join the labour force, and the fight for wages is something that affects them on a daily bases.They travel vast distances, keeping with them their sense of honour about being wage workers, and survive with difficulty. The middle man, or contractor is always present to glean his commission from the little that they earn.

Philanthrophy in India is still a minimal contribution  usually made to a religious organization, and shown as tax deductible.  This is a good economic measure which benefits those who are in power, as not only do they get to skim off large sums of money by cheating the poor of their citizenship rights, they also come away with an aura of having done their duty to them, by pledging petty sums. By using the idea of karma, the concept of religious duty is also fulfilled, as the philanthropist completes his ledger after providing tin sheds to workers, and crèches to the children of the working class. Like any other occupation, the charitable organization uses its profits to pay salaries and leave  a carbon trail of hotel stays, foreign visits and seminar lunches. The solution is proper wages and health and educational rights to workers, not charity.

Manual scavengers, and miners know that they are entering the bowels of the earth. They depend on luck, and accept their fate as the poorest of the poor. Jawaharlal Nehru University, for instance, has still not invested in a waste water removal truck, which the neighbouring IIT has. The manual scavengers, come to work on motorcycles, bringing their children along on some days when they cannot be looked after at home. The children watch their fathers divesting themselves of their  outer clothing and entering into the sewers without masks or gloves or sufficient compensation. No health insurance is provided to them. Sulabh Latrines has made a rational organization the bases of social reformation, the pioneer being a JNU trained Sociologist Dr Pathak, who was Prof Yogendra Singh’s student.

 The construction of an engineering college is now being presented to the Faculty as fait accompli decision of the vice chancellor, Prof Jagadish Kumar, who has allegedly taken a loan, and has placed faculty as the loan debtors,  which means the faculty is  named as responsible for the loan repayment.  This news  follows a report in The Wire on 2nd April  2018 , that UGC has not promised the VC funding for his proposed college on JNU campus. Kerala has 168 engineering colleges, and its return to farming by the new age farmer is a response to the entropy induced by overbuild in its rice lands, and coastal zones.

Looking for body parts after a disaster is one of the most frightening aspects of the routine work of rescue teams. We have to return to the idea of being human and having empathy for others as a return to the normal, rather than succumbing to the vision of a selected few entering space crafts to enjoy the splendor of the universe.