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By Philip A Farruggio

Now that Trump has ‘ Muskrat’ using his chainsaw on this and then that within the federal government, beware MAGA seniors. This writer sat in a coffee shop right before the election, next to seven elderly MAGA men. How did I know? Easy, by the Trump 2024 baseball caps they all wore. I’m a baby boomer and these old guys ( I refuse to say ‘ Fools’ in hopes of reaching them and their fellow MAGAs) were definitely near or above 80 years old. Before they ended their morning breakfast with hand holding prayers ( with one guy doing the ‘ Speaking in tongues’ bit) their consensus was for Trump to ‘ Deport those drug carrying lazy illegals on DAY ONE’. My better half was outraged at this rhetoric, and came close to confronting these guys. She didn’t and thank goodness they were finished with their little circus and left.

I would have liked to give those old MAGA lemmings the story of my late parents, when they were ready for assisted living, followed by a nursing home. We had to get them to apply for Medicaid by ‘ Spending down’ their money ( which was very meager). Thank goodness they then were able to be placed in a nursing home nearby. This was 25 years ago, when Uncle Sam subsidized Florida Medicaid BDS ( Before DeSantis). I wanted to go into the parking lot of that coffee shop and shake a few of those old baseball cap wearing men. Most of them looked like how my parents looked in 2000, going by their attire. These guys had to be retired working stiffs. ” What’s going to happen to you when you get frail and need to go into a nursing home dude? Do you have the $10k to $20k a month to stay there? Trump and his ‘ Muskrat’, along with Captain Ron DeSantis want to cut federal aid for Medicaid, and your lovely Red States are going to cut it down locally. Keep praying guys.”

Philip A Farruggio is a free lance columnist, host of a radio interview show and lifelong Anti War Activist.

28 February 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Edward Curtin

Eighty-nine years ago this month, the film Modern Times, starring Charlie Chaplin, was released. Considered one of the greatest movies ever, it was a comedic but savage critique of industrial capitalism and a prescient indictment of the alienated modern life to come, as Chaplin’s character, the Little Tramp, worked on an assembly line where he suffered a nervous breakdown from the stress and repetitive nature of the work.

But the film ends on a hopeful note, as the Little Tramp and his beloved Ellen hit the road and walk away from the mechanized life. It is a poetic call to replace the iron discipline of the machine life with rebellious spontaneity.

In All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture (Basic Books, 1988), Stuart Ewen writes:

In Modern Times we confront a factory world which increasingly usurps human initiative. Within the scope of the film, people are trapped beneath the thumb of productivity, their bodies and souls shaped and overwhelmed by the assembly line. The priorities of such a world submerge human needs; misery and homelessness abound. People are seen as useful only if they can be plugged into the productive apparatus. Otherwise they are tossed aside like garbage.

Today, the Little Tramp, has been replaced by big Trump and his sidekick, Elon Musk, owners and operators of the new AI Digital factory Internet system, posing as saviors of the Little Tramp.

Just the other day, Musk, with an imagined twinkle in his eye and little boy grin, tweeted out on his bullhorn X (Twitter): “We are on the event horizon of the singularity.”

By the “Singularity” is meant the time when the machines – computers and artificial intelligence – exceed human control and dominate society. For technologists like Musk and his ilk in and out of government and in Silicon Valley, the idea of a machine run world is heaven on earth. A place where death will be defeated by synthetic means and love reduced to a passionless technique. This is the myth of the machine that has grown from a superstitious cult to a world-wide religion with the cell phone its cult object.
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Up in the lake and down in the river the ice is breaking up. In the house a few little black bugs have appeared. The maple sap is running. And we have seen flocks of robins and cedar waxwings eating leftover berries that have clung to the bare ruined choirs of the trees and bushes. Even the turkey vultures have returned to perch everywhere, looking down like caring teachers over students’ desks, as if to say – wake up, look around, these are resurrection days.
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By the late 1980s, the “Little Tramp” was pitching computers for IBM in a series of advertisements. His problems were again portrayed as caused by industrial chaos, but as Ewen writes:

But this time the solution is different. Beleaguered Charlie is saved by the computer, the quintessential modern instrument of order, control, surveillance. Here the frenetic conditions of modern life are solved by modern technology. The 1936 film had pointed an idealistic way out. The ad points the way back in. The critique has been turned on its head, packaged and used against itself.

Now the “smart phone” is sold as the way out and the way in, as resurrection battles singularity.
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Even the bears are waking up around here. A guy I know said that on his way home the other night he saw one walking down Main Street. Now this is a nice little tourist town in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, not a town in northern Canada, so I was a bit surprised by his sighting. It became somewhat clearer after I asked him where he was coming from and he said he had been down in The Well, a local bar, having a few drinks with an old girlfriend who had told him he had always been her true love but she had to marry the local police chief for protection. Confused, he asked her what did she need protection from. When she said – life, and got up and said good night, he ordered another round. Soon after that the bear appeared.
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Now we have crossed over to a country led by a man and his sidekick so sick that no words are needed. Their use of artificial intelligence is fulfilling the dream of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the Italian fascist, friend of Mussolini, and founder of the art movement called futurism, whose claim was that “the entire human drama revolves around the machine.” It was a ruse for power cached within an artistic manifesto based on the belief that the machine was the new god with supernatural powers beyond human control – very similar to AI and the alleged final coming of the singularity. “War,” said Marinetti, “is the father of all things . . . the culminating and perfecting synthesis of progress.”

Trump Gaza Video | Trump Posts Video Of AI-Generated ‘Future Of Gaza’ After US Takeover

Anyone who thinks this is what it means to Make America Great Again had better think quick – you have been deluded. This video is a shocking, psychopathic, and fitting result of years of U.S. supported genocide in Gaza.
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I look forward to Ash Wednesday on March 5, the day on which as a young man I went to church to have the priest rub ashes on my forehead and say, “Remember, Ed, that you are dust and back to dust you will return.”

I no longer go to the priests, but I will still feel the ashes and those sacred words. I will do so on a little tramp up by the lake and into the woods, where perhaps I will detect the tracks of that bear my friend saw walking through town. He exists in us all.

And the night before that walk, I will drink deeply from the well – what my father learned to call “the smiles” from his Irish Uncle Tim, a blacksmith for the NY Fire Department, who so called the Irish whiskey he drank – and I will smile, knowing I will die with the winter and be resurrected in the spring as the sap rises.

It is Resurrection time, and despite the machine people, God rises in us all as we resist their machine dreams, and rejoice.

Edward Curtin is an independent writer whose work has appeared widely over many years.

28 February 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Norman Solomon

Donald Trump’s power has thrived on the economics, politics, and culture of war. The runaway militarism of the last quarter-century was a crucial factor in making President Trump possible, even if it goes virtually unmentioned in mainstream media and political discourse. That silence is particularly notable among Democratic leaders, who have routinely joined in bipartisan messaging to boost the warfare state that fueled the rise of Trumpism.

Trump first ran for president nearly a decade and a half after the “Global War on Terror” began in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The crusade’s allure had worn off. The national mood was markedly different than in the era when President George W. Bush insisted that “our responsibility” was to “rid the world of evil.”

Working-class Americans had more modest goals for their government. Distress festered as income inequality widened and economic hardships worsened, while federal spending on war, the Pentagon budget, and the “national security” state continued to zoom upward. Even though the domestic effects of protracted warfare were proving to be enormous, multilayered, and deeply alienating, elites in Washington scarcely seemed to notice.

Donald Trump, however, did notice.

Pundits were shocked in 2015 when Trump mocked the war record of Republican Senator John McCain. The usual partisan paradigms were further upended during the 2016 presidential campaign when Trump denounced his opponent, Hillary Clinton, as “trigger happy.” He had a point. McCain, Clinton, and their cohort weren’t tired of U.S. warfare — in fact, they kept glorifying it — but many in non-affluent communities had grown sick of its stateside consequences.

Repeated deployments of Americans to war zones had taken their toll. The physical and emotional wounds of returning troops were widespread. And while politicians were fond of waxing eloquent about “the fallen,” the continual massive spending for war and preparations for more of it depleted badly needed resources at home.

Status-Quo Militarism

President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton represented the status quo that Trump ran against and defeated. Like them, he was completely insulated from the harsh boomerang effects of the warfare state. Unlike them, he sensed how to effectively exploit the discontent and anger it was causing.

Obama was not clueless. He acknowledged some downsides to endless war in a much-praised speech during his second term in office. “Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue,” he affirmed at the National Defense University. “But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.”

New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer hailed that instance of presidential oratory in a piece touting Obama’s “anguish over the difficult trade-offs that perpetual war poses to a free society.” But such concerns were fleeting at the White House, while sparking little interest from mainstream journalists. Perpetual war had become wallpaper in the media echo chamber.

President Bush’s messianic calls to rid the world of “evil-doers” had fallen out of fashion, but militarism remained firmly embedded in the political economy. Corporate contracts with the Pentagon and kindred agencies only escalated. But when Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2016, being a rigid hawk became a negative with the electorate as pro-Trump forces jumped into the opening she provided.

Six weeks before the election, Forbes published an article under the headline “Hillary Clinton Never Met a War She Didn’t Want Other Americans to Fight.” Written by Doug Bandow, former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, the piece exemplified how partisan rhetoric about war and peace had abruptly changed. Clinton “almost certainly would lead America into more foolish wars,” Bandow contended, adding: “No one knows what Trump would do in a given situation, which means there is a chance he would do the right thing. In contrast, Clinton’s beliefs, behavior, and promises all suggest that she most likely would do the wrong thing, embracing a militaristic status quo which most Americans recognize has failed disastrously.”

Clinton was following a timeworn formula for Democrats trying to inoculate themselves against charges of being soft on foreign enemies, whether communists or terrorists. Yet Trump, deft at labeling his foes both wimps and warmongers, ran rings around the Democratic nominee. In that close election, Clinton’s resolutely pro-war stance may have cost her the presidency.

“Even controlling in a statistical model for many other alternative explanations, we find that there is a significant and meaningful relationship between a community’s rate of military sacrifice and its support for Trump,” a study by scholars Douglas Kriner and Francis Shen concluded. “Our statistical model suggests that if three states key to Trump’s victory — Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin — had suffered even a modestly lower casualty rate, all three could have flipped from red to blue and sent Hillary Clinton to the White House.” Professors Kriner and Shen suggested that Democrats might want to “reexamine their foreign policy posture if they hope to erase Trump’s electoral gains among constituencies exhausted and alienated by 15 years of war.”

But such advice went unheeded. Leading Democrats and Republicans remained on autopilot for the warfare state as the Pentagon budget kept rising.

On the War Train with Donald Trump

In 2018, the top Democrats in Washington, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, boasted that they were fully aligned with President Trump in jacking up Pentagon spending. After Trump called for an 11% increase over two years in the already-bloated “defense” budget, Pelosi sent an email to House Democrats declaring, “In our negotiations, congressional Democrats have been fighting for increases in funding for defense.” The office of Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer proudly stated: “We fully support President Trump’s Defense Department’s request.”

By then, fraying social safety nets and chronic fears of economic insecurity had become ever more common across the country. The national pattern evoked Martin Luther King’s comment that profligate military spending was like “some demonic destructive suction tube.”

In 2020, recurring rhetoric from Joe Biden in his winning presidential campaign went like this: “If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever alter the character of our nation.” But Biden said nothing about how almost 20 years of nonstop war funding and war making had already altered the character of the nation.

At first glance, President Biden seemed to step away from continuing the “war on terror.” The last U.S. troops left Afghanistan by the end of August 2021. Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly weeks later, he proclaimed: “I stand here today, for the first time in 20 years, with the United States not at war.” But even as he spoke, a new report from the Costs of War Project at Brown University indicated that the “war on terror” persisted on several continents. “The war continues in over 80 countries,” said Catherine Lutz, the project’s co-director. The war’s cost to taxpayers, the project estimated, was already at least $8 trillion.

Biden’s designated successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, displayed a traditional militaristic reflex while campaigning against Trump. In her acceptance speech at the Democratic convention she pledged to maintain “the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” Such rhetoric was problematic for attracting voters from the Democratic base reluctant to cast ballots for a war party. More damaging to her election prospects was her refusal to distance herself from Biden’s insistence on continuing to supply huge quantities of weaponry to Israel for the horrific war in Gaza.

Supplementing the automatic $3.8 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Israel, special new appropriations for weaponry totaling tens of billions of dollars enabled mass killing in Gaza. Poll results at the time showed that Harris would have gained support in swing states if she had called for an arms embargo on Israel as long as the Gaza war continued. She refused to do so.

Post-election polling underscored how Harris’s support for that Israeli war appreciably harmed her chances to defeat Trump. In 2024, as in 2016, Trump notably benefitted from the unwavering militarism of his Democratic opponent.

Overseas, the realities of nonstop war have been unfathomably devastating. Estimates from the Costs of War Project put the number of direct deaths in major war zones from U.S.-led actions under the “war on terror” brand at more than 900,000. With indirect deaths included, the number jumps to “4.5 million and counting.” The researchers explain that “some people were killed in the fighting, but far more, especially children, have been killed by the reverberating effects of war, such as the spread of disease.”

That colossal destruction of faraway human beings and the decimation of distant societies have gotten scant attention in mainstream U.S. media and politics. The far-reaching impacts of incessant war on American life in this century have also gotten short shrift. Midway through the Biden presidency, trying to sum up some of those domestic impacts, I wrote in my book War Made Invisible:

“Overall, the country is gripped by war’s dispersed and often private consequences — the aggravated tendencies toward violence, the physical wartime injuries, the post-traumatic stress, the profusion of men who learned to use guns and were trained to shoot to kill when scarcely out of adolescence, the role modeling from recruitment ads to popular movies to bellicose bombast from high-ranking leaders, and much more. The country is also in the grip of tragic absences: the health care not deemed fundable by those who approve federal budgets larded with military spending, the child care and elder care and family leave not provided by those same budgets, the public schools deprived of adequate funding, the college students and former students saddled with onerous debt, the uncountable other everyday deficits that have continued to lower the bar of the acceptable and the tolerated.”

While the warfare state seems all too natural to most politicians and journalists, its consequences over time have been transformational for the United States in ways that have distinctly skewed the political climate. Along the way, militarism has been integral to the rise of the billionaire tech barons who are now teaming up with an increasingly fascistic Donald Trump.

The Military-Industrial-Tech Complex

While President Trump has granted Elon Musk unprecedented power, many other tech moguls have rushed to ingratiate themselves. The pandering became shameless within hours of his election victory last November.

“Congratulations to President Trump on a decisive victory,” Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote. “We have great opportunities ahead of us as a country. Looking forward to working with you and your administration.” Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, Whole Foods, and the Washington Post, tweeted: “wishing @realDonaldTrump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love.”

Amazon Web Services alone has numerous government contracts, including one with the National Security Agency worth $10 billion and deals with the Pentagon pegged at $9.7 billion. Such commerce is nothing new. For many years, thousands of contracts have tied the tech giants to the military-industrial complex.

Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, and smaller rivals are at the helm of corporations eager for government megadeals, tax breaks, and much more. For them, the governmental terrain of the new Trump era is the latest territory to navigate for maximizing their profits. With annual military outlays at 54% of all federal discretionary spending, the incentives are astronomical for all kinds of companies to make nice with the war machine and the man now running it.

While Democrats in Congress have long denounced Trump as an enemy of democracy, they haven’t put any sort of brake on American militarism. Certainly, there are many reasons for Trump’s second triumph, including his exploitation of racism, misogyny, nativism, and other assorted bigotries. Yet his election victories owe much to the Democratic Party’s failure to serve the working class, a failure intermeshed with its insistence on serving the industries of war. Meanwhile, spending more on the military than the next nine countries combined, U.S. government leaders tacitly lay claim to a kind of divine overpowering virtue.

As history attests, militarism can continue for many decades while basic democratic structures, however flawed, remain in place. But as time goes on, militarism is apt to be a major risk factor for developing some modern version of fascism. The more war and preparations for war persist, with all their economic and social impacts, the more core traits of militarism — including reliance on unquestioning obedience to authority and sufficient violence to achieve one’s goals — will permeate the society at large.

During the last 10 years, Donald Trump has become ever more autocratic, striving not just to be the nation’s commander-in-chief but also the commandant of a social movement increasingly fascistic in its approach to laws and civic life. He has succeeded in taking on the role of top general for the MAGA forces. The frenzies that energize Trump’s base and propel his strategists have come to resemble the mentalities of warfare. The enemy is whoever dares to get in his way.

A warfare state is well suited for such developments. Pretending that militarism is not a boon to authoritarian politics only strengthens it. The time has certainly come to stop pretending.

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

28 February 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Tariq Ali

To the victors, the spoils. A hundred years ago, after the conclusion of the First World War, the British Empire and its French ally broke up the old Ottoman-dominated Arab world and created new countries (Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia), principalities and outposts (the Gulf States, southern Yemen) and puppet states (Egypt, Iran), as well as laying the foundations on which Israel would be built, after the Second World War.

To the victors, the spoils. A hundred or so years later, after the collapse of the Communist world, the triumphant United States moved rapidly to balkanize the Arab world and remove all real and imagined threats to its hegemony. A tally of the 21st-century wars that have wrecked the Middle East provides a horrific balance sheet, by any standard. How is the situation they created viewed by the imperial strategists in Washington? ‘Freedom’ and ‘democracy’ are even more remote than they were under the authoritarian-nationalist Arab dictatorships. Even the most cynical occupants of the White House and the Pentagon find it difficult to justify in public the mess they have created.

Over the past year alone, the occupied Palestinian segment of the Arab world has been subjected to the most savage assault by the West, acting through its ever-loyal relay, Israel. The medieval Crusades were brutal, but the lack of technical superiority in weapons on either side gave the Arabs, fighting on their own lands, an advantage. This time Israel and its Western allies have been starving and killing Palestinians. Images of infant bodies being devoured by dogs wandering through deserted streets are a chilling symbol of the full-spectrum nature of this destruction. The British Prime Minister now wants to convince Trump to change the definition of genocide, to avoid future legal embarrassment. Western civilization/barbarism at play. Curiously enough, Trump, judging by his own remarks, may be less keen on killing than the leader of the British Labour Party.

On the face of it, American hegemony in the region is virtually complete. The us embarked on a global policy of divide, occupy, buy and rule. What started in earnest with the Yugoslav civil war has now become a regular feature of us strategy supported by Britain and most of the eu. The gains made by the West in the world’s richest energy zone since the defeat of the Axis powers in 1945 have been breathtaking. A brief survey of the region can help to highlight what has been lost and signal the direction in which it is heading.

Saudi Arabia

The first foreign call made by Trump after his 2025 inauguration was to the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman (mbs). Few were surprised. True, mbs had ordered the execution and dismemberment of a critic, Jamal Khashoggi, who backed another faction in the royal family and wrote regularly for the us press, criticizing mbs for ultra-liberalism and involvement in the Yemen war. Khashoggi’s family had been lampooned in Cities of Salt, the celebrated tetralogy by the exiled Saudi novelist, Abdurrahman Munif.¹ Khashoggi’s uncle was the personal doctor of the founding monarch, Ibn Saud, and became a rich and influential businessman. This proximity to Saudi and Jordanian royals led Jamal to imagine that he was untouchable, an error of judgement that cost him his life. He traipsed along happily to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to collect an official document. Captured by an mbs assassination team, or firqat el-nemr (‘leopard squad’), he was shot dead and dismembered, his body parts packed neatly in separate parcels. The Turkish secret police filmed the whole business, since the Consulate was naturally under surveillance. They prevented Khashoggi’s remains from leaving the country and Erdoğan exposed the Leopard Prince to global scrutiny. American colleagues professed themselves shocked and Khashoggi was granted a Time cover and matching obituary; but mbs was secure. The fuss soon died down. With the Israelis killing over two hundred Palestinian journalists in Gaza, a solitary Saudi, despite the victim’s high-society contacts in Riyadh and Washington, seems a bagatelle.

Saudi cynics supporting mbs could point out that the modernization of Saudi Arabia has always required the elimination of dissenters. When the British created the Kingdom after the First World War, its structures were masterminded by St John Philby of British intelligence. Fluent in Arabic and Koranic interpretations, he was on a search mission for reliable allies against the Ottoman Empire. He picked the most fanatical Islamic sect available, the Wahhabis, uniting it with an easily controllable local tribe under a dim-witted leadership, rebuffed and isolated more capable non-Wahhabis on the Peninsula, and turned the combination against the Ottoman Empire. The Wahhabis regarded mainstream Islam—Sunni and Shia—as the enemy. Key personnel were put on the imperial British payroll. It was a master-stroke; the late offspring produced by this marriage—al-Qaeda remnants and isis—carry on the same tradition today.

During the Second World War, Britain handed the Kingdom to the United States. The ceremony took place on St Valentine’s Day in 1945. The location was the uss Quincy, moored in the Suez Canal. President Roosevelt and the King, Ibn Saud, signed a concordat that would guarantee perpetual single-family rule. fdr retained the monarchy as a safeguard against perceived radical nationalist and communist threats.² These were not discussed. Roosevelt instead opened the conversation on the Quincy by asking the King his views on the Jewish refugees in Europe. What to do? The memorandum of the conversation informs us:

The President asked His Majesty for his advice regarding the problem of Jewish refugees driven from their homes in Europe. His Majesty replied that in his opinion the Jews should return to live in the lands from which they were driven. The Jews whose homes were completely destroyed and who have no chance of livelihood in their homelands should be given living space in the Axis countries which oppressed them. The President remarked that Poland might be considered a case in point. The Germans appear to have killed three million Polish Jews, by which count there should be space in Poland for the resettlement of many homeless Jews . . .³

Ibn Saud wanted assurances that Arab lands would not be taken by the Jews: ‘His Majesty stated that the hope of the Arabs is based upon the word of honour of the Allies and upon the well-known love of justice of the United States, and upon the expectation that the United States will support them.’

The sons of Ibn Saud ruled the state with an iron fist. In the 1950s, the King and his Princes began trying to increase their share of revenue from Saudi oil production, managed by us-controlled Aramco which made sure that strikes were savagely crushed, workers deported to their country of origin and no Saudi employees were permitted entry to the company cinema. Jim Crow laws prevailed. Hardly surprising, given that a large chunk of white us employees belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. The anti-colonial wave that swept through the Arab world did not leave the Kingdom unaffected. In 1956, the Egyptian leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser had defied Britain and France, nationalized the Suez Canal and declared: ‘Let the imperialists choke on their rage.’ Joined by eight-year-old Israel, the imperial powers invaded Egypt. In America’s Kingdom, Robert Vitalis provides a unique account of this period, destroying many mythologies in the process.⁴ The two Saudi figures that come off best are the former Oil Minister, Abdullah Tariki, and the veteran Saudi diplomat, Ibn Muammar. Tariki, a shrewd, skilful, incorruptible technocrat, argued for the state takeover of Saudi oil in the late 1950s, and was demonized by Aramco. Both men staunchly defended Saudi interests against the us oil giant from the start.

Tariki helped split the royal family, publicly exposing the corruption of the then Crown Prince Faisal. In 1961 Tariki and the dissident Prince Talal, a supporter of Arab nationalism, accused Faisal of demanding and obtaining a permanent commission from the Japanese-owned Arabian Oil Company (aoc). The story went public in a Beirut newspaper. An enraged Faisal issued a denial and demanded proof. It was provided. Faisal was shamed. Tariki was sacked and fled into exile. Vitalis informs us that an Aramco spy who met him during his time in Cairo reported back to his superiors:

I asked him how he would envisage a change in regime. He said that it would be very simple. A small army detachment can do the job by killing the king and Faisal. The rest of the royal family will run for cover like scared rabbits. Then the revolutionaries will call Nasser for help.⁵

This option no longer applies, but continuing chaos in the region could unsettle the Kingdom as happened after 9/11 (hits orchestrated by Osama bin Laden and carried out mainly by Saudi citizens).

King Faisal was assassinated in 1975 by a nephew, also named Faisal, who had studied at Berkeley and the University of Colorado Boulder in the late sixties. But he had laid the foundation of present-day Saudi Arabia, with its reliance on Wahhabism for social control. Though his brother and father before him had sought to institutionalize Wahhabi beliefs, they were more relaxed about it. After the first Gulf War in 1990, the us military arrived;  American bases in Saudi Arabia and Qatar were used to launch the war against Iraq. Foreign armies have historically provided one sort of protection; Wahhabi theology another.

For almost a century now the Wahhabi Kingdom has served the needs of the West. mbs is the grandson of its founder. His father, Salman (b. 1935) is not long for this world and, short of a civil war, little can prevent mbs from becoming King. Even in the unlikely case of domestic opposition, he is strongly backed by the us and Israel, as are Jordan and the uae states (a Qatari friend once joked: ‘We are the United Arab Emirate States of America’). mbs was preparing to seal a compact with his rival for us affections in the region, but Israel let him down by reacting to Hamas’s October 7 attack with a full-blown genocidal response, isolating itself from a majority of the non-Western world. The Saudis did nothing. Their tiny rival Qatar outshone them yet again: the images and reporting on Al Jazeera provided a sharp contrast to the fake news on Western networks. Had it not been for Gaza, there is no doubt that mbs and Netanyahu would have done a deal already. As they will.

Egypt

Since the 1970s, Egypt has been the biggest success story for the us in the Middle East. Conversations in Cairene cafes are often punctuated by dates rather than years. The day King Farouk was toppled by a radical officer’s rebellion. The day Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. The last day of the Six Day War, which marked the virtual end of Arab nationalism. Anwar Sadat, Nasser’s successor, took power in 1970, fought against Israel in 1973, then made ‘peace’ with Israel at Camp David in 1978. Three years later, he was shot dead by soldier assassins during a military parade marking the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. His successor, Vice-President Hosni Mubarak, barely escaped with his life.⁶ Mubarak deepened relations with Israel, banned the use of live ammunition at ceremonial parades and settled down to enjoy the corrupt fruits of a brutal dictatorship. His name came to stand for torture, amorality, cynicism, duplicity, corruption, greed and opportunism—and, most importantly, blind loyalty to the us and Israel. The High Command of the Egyptian Army did not go down this route involuntarily. They agreed to sell out. In 2024 the Army received $1.3 billion.

In 2011, the mass movement known as the Arab Spring erupted in Tunisia, toppled the dictator and rapidly spread to Egypt. With its public headquarters in Tahrir Square, the struggle to get rid of Mubarak turned out to be hugely popular. Once this became obvious, the Muslim Brotherhood joined the fight. The spectacle in the Square was livestreamed on Al Jazeera. There was one demand: ‘Democracy!’ The Egyptian Army stationed its tanks in the square and was greeted by the students as the saviour of democracy. ‘The Army and the people are one hand’ became a popular chant, but this was an expression of hope rather than a fact.

Mubarak rang his friends in the us and Israel for help. The Clintons tried to save him, but it was too late. The Army realized that in order to preserve its own rule, Mubarak had to go. The military leaders of the scaf who took charge had no illusions in democracy whatsoever. They set about dividing the masses, targeting women in particular. For its part, the movement did not occupy the state tv building situated just behind the Square to broadcast their demands and let the voices of the people be heard day and night. Political consciousness grew by leaps and bounds but the ‘revolution’ was ultra-cautious. Liberty was foregrounded, but Fraternity (Arab unity) and Equality (social justice) remained in the shade. The us and Israel had backed Mubarak’s dictatorship, but there was very little visible opposition to them—no symbolic burning of the Stars and Stripes, no sighting of a Palestinian flag, no demand for elections to a constituent assembly to prepare a new constitution. The Left forces were tiny. Liberals dominated the spectacle before the Brotherhood decided to join, led by Mohammed Morsi. The latter then became the only seriously organized political force. Their brightest leaders, with some idea of political strategy and tactics, had been expelled, leaving an extremely mediocre layer in command.

As I wrote at the time, while the Arab upheavals did resemble Europe in 1848, not every aspect of life was called into question:

Social, political and religious rights are becoming the subject of fierce controversy in Tunisia, but not elsewhere yet. No new political parties have emerged, an indication that the electoral battles to come will be contests between Arab liberalism and conservatism in the shape of the Muslim Brotherhood, modelling itself on Islamists in power in Turkey and Indonesia, and ensconced in the embrace of the us.⁷

American hegemony in the region had been slightly dented but no more than that; the scratch was easily repaired. The post-despot regimes remained weak. Unlike in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, new constitutions enshrining social and democratic needs never emerged. The military in Egypt and Tunisia ensured nothing rash happened. The Muslim Brotherhood won the elections and Morsi became President, but was useless on every front. The people were offered very little and the Brotherhood became unpopular. The Army took charge and General Sisi, a former intelligence chief, organized a quick election, winning liberal backing.

Sisi is still in power (now more unpopular than Mubarak), doing as he is bid by Washington and Jerusalem. The cult created for him was grotesque, including bras and men’s underwear with his image on the front. Liberal euphoria didn’t last long. He is now loathed by large sections of the population. This makes him nervous about taking in a million Gazans, in order to empty the Strip on us-Israeli orders and hand it over to global real estate. Were he to do so, he might need to seek asylum elsewhere. And while Arab people have been cautious since 2011, their quiescence should not be taken for granted.

The Arab Spring varied from country to country, but nowhere did it challenge the system. It was comforting to think of the upsurges as revolutions, but that stage was never reached. Mass uprisings on their own do not constitute a revolution—that is, a transfer of power from one social class, or even layer, to another that leads to fundamental change. The actual size of the crowd is not a determinant. It is only when, in its majority, it develops a clear set of social and political aims that it may become one. If not, it will always be outflanked by those who do, or overwhelmed by the state that will move to recapture lost ground very rapidly.

Egypt after 2011 was the clearest example of this. No organs of autonomous power ever emerged. The Muslim Brotherhood’s errors included factionalism, stupidity and over-eagerness to reassure the us, Israel and the national security apparatuses that it would be business as usual. As for a constituent assembly, little such thinking was taking place, in Egypt or elsewhere. When new mass mobilizations erupted against Morsi, even larger than those that led to the toppling of Mubarak, the Left suggested that some of those who swelled the crowd were army and police units in civilian gear. Others already saw the Army as their saviour and, in more than a few instances, applauded the military’s brutality against the Muslim Brothers. The result? The ancien régime was soon back in charge. If the original was not a revolution, the latter was hardly a counter-revolution. Simply the military reasserting its role in national politics. It was they who had decided first to dump Mubarak, then Morsi.

Who will dump them? Another mass mobilization? Until the West-backed Israeli assault on Gaza, this was difficult to imagine. Social movements incapable of developing an independent politics are fated to disappear. But, contrary to appearances, Gaza has revived political consciousness. The Army permitted a few large pro-Palestinian demonstrations, allowing people to vent their anger; but this also helped to concentrate attention on the weaknesses of the Army and the shame it had brought the country by its total failure to help the Gazans. Netanyahu had the Egyptian generals in his thrall. And not just them. Jordan did not ban mass demonstrations, but it did nothing for the Palestinians. The Saudis and their cousins in the Gulf were inflicted by self-paralysis. A few friendly noises. Little else. Never before have leaders of the Arab world been so united behind the Stars and Stripes while their people were being butchered.

Libya

In Libya, the old regime was destroyed by nato after a six-month bombing spree in which up to 50,000 people died. There is convincing proof that Gaddafi was prepared to negotiate and offered numerous concessions to his own people and the West. In Loved Egyptian Night, Hugh Roberts has effectively demolished the ‘humanitarian intervention’ case that was being put forward by Obama adviser Samantha Power and some on her left.⁸ The motive for the nato intervention was regime-change; to complete the mopping-up of residual Arab nationalism. Three jihadi groups took power, while armed tribal gangs of one sort or another roamed the country, demanding their share of the loot. Hardly a revolution, by any criterion.

Gaddafi had been flattered by the British and French into abandoning his nuclear pretensions and more. Blair’s debased political adviser, Anthony (Lord) Giddens went to Tripoli to thank him in person, comparing the Libyan leader’s awful writings to his own ‘Third Way’, and returned to inform Guardian readers that Libya would soon become the Norway of Africa. A generous tip to the London School of Economics ensured that Gaddafi’s favourite son was provided with a PhD, crafted by Anne-Marie Slaughter. Sarkozy’s praise was equally forthcoming, winning him Libyan financial backing for his election campaign. All appeared to be going well until the Arab Spring allowed the West to have its way. First the un ‘duty to protect’ propaganda campaign against a purported genocide-in-waiting, then nato’s aerial bombardment and the lynching of Gaddafi, allegedly sodomized with a red-hot iron bar after his whereabouts were leaked by us intelligence, while Clinton, Obama’s Secretary of State, crowed: ‘We came. We saw. He died.’ Five years later, she lost to Trump.

Syria

In the 1960s there were serious attempts to lay the foundations of a unified Arab world, with three major countries, Egypt, Syria and Iraq, run by popular radical-nationalist governments, on which the hopes of so many rested. It came to naught because of their own mistakes. Egypt bought off. Iraq re-colonized and divided. What would be Syria’s fate? Here, too, the mass uprising of 2011 was largely genuine and reflected a desire for political change. Western powers were involved but could have been outflanked. Had Assad agreed to negotiations during the first six months, or even later, there might have been a constitutional settlement. Instead, he embarked on repression. The tragically familiar Sunni–Shia battlelines were re-drawn. Once the opposition decided to take up arms, the die was cast. A civil war began and a large section of the movement was drawn into a confessional umbrella backed by the us and its allies. Turkey, Qatar and the Saudis poured in weaponry and volunteers to their side. The notion that the Syrian National Coalition (snc) was the carrier of a Syrian revolution was as risible as the idea of the Brotherhood playing the same role in Egypt. A brutal civil war with atrocities on both sides ensued. Did the regime use gas or other chemical weapons? We do not know. The strikes envisaged by the us were primarily designed to prevent Assad’s military from defeating the opposition. Until December 2024, the Iranians and Russians kept the regime in power. Most Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, including many who started the uprising, were only too aware that us strikes would not make their country better. Those at home feared both sides.

After repeated assaults on the Palestinians, the Israelis have gone into over-stretch mode and occupied parts of Syria in an informal alliance with hts, the Turkish-supported offshoot of Al-Qaeda, and the Syrian Kurds. The Israeli-Kurdish alliance is becoming a feature in the region. So preoccupied are the Kurdish leaders with their own situation that they have thrown in their lot with the us-Israeli cartel. They appear not to have noticed the killing fields in Palestine. They will be disappointed once again. Of course, and understandably, many Syrians celebrated the departure of Assad, but so did Netanyahu and Washington. The alliance is a marriage made in Hell. And the news coming out of the ‘liberated’ country is not good. Revenge killings galore. Syria is no longer a sovereign state. The post-colonial period has come to an end. The us wants the Gulf model adopted by the conquered territories. It’s not going to be easy.

Iran

Why is Israel so desperate to knock out Iran? Any sovereign well-armed state in the region is seen by the Zionist leaders as posing a threat to their creation. They’ve had a run of striking successes over the past twenty years: Iraq destroyed, Libya divided, Syria now taken over by a Turkish-Israeli combination, which has cut a deal with sections of the Baathist apparatus. But there have been some unintended consequences. The us decision to regime-change Iraq in 2003 meant handing some authority to the Shia clerical outfits there. This changed Iran’s status overnight. With their co-religionists in power in Baghdad, the Islamic Republic became a major factor in the region, stronger than ever before and wielding more influence. It is also getting to the stage where it could acquire nuclear weapons relatively rapidly and the Zionist military-intelligence establishment feels threatened. While the whole world knows that Israel has 300 nuclear warheads and missiles that could reach anywhere in Europe or Central Asia, any potential rival still needs to be destroyed.

For the us, Iran’s sovereignty and its oil are a dangerous combination. Washington wants to control both, so that China and Russia will have to get an American greenlight before they can trade with the Islamic Republic. For its part, the clerical leadership is divided. The turbaned ones have been tricked before. They backed the us in Iraq and Afghanistan, and got very little in return. Their anti-imperialism is that of fools. National self-interest is what really matters—and that means preventing the collapse of the clerical system. Another 2022-style revolt is to be avoided at all costs. Reports from Tehran suggest many women these days walk around with heads uncovered in the streets, just like in Beirut. The law ‘on hijab and chastity’, passed by the Majlis, has been suspended. But the population has been hard hit by the economic crisis caused by us sanctions, symbolized by widespread power cuts, and the urban middle classes loathe the regime. Some would like change brought by outside intervention, but many value the relative peace and security of their state, by comparison to the devastation that Western intervention has brought to their neighbours in Afghanistan and Iraq. A Syrian-style operation would be virtually impossible here. The Revolutionary Guards are not a pushover, however shaken by their recent defeats, and there is no force inside the country that could defeat them militarily. If anything, it is they who might be provoked to replace the existing regime with hardliners. Despite the defeats in Lebanon and Syria, the Iranian military can still strike back at Israel. If Trump demands too much and the Guide caves, action by the pasdaran cannot be excluded.

Israel–Palestine

And what of Israel? Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, two leading Jewish critics of Israel, yet, for many decades, staunch opponents of a single-state solution, have now stated publicly that Israel should no longer exist. What they mean, of course, is Israel as presently constituted: an apartheid settler state, a colonial monster that has been wreaking revenge on the Palestinian Arabs, from the 1948 Nakba on, for past sufferings inflicted by Europeans on the Jews. Despite some disagreements on whether they should adopt a more friendly attitude to Arab nationalism, the bulk of Zionist leaders decided to stick with the powers that had created them, ignoring the crucial help they got from Stalin in the shape of Czech weaponry in 1948. Hence the decision to join Britain and France in invading Egypt in 1956 and attempting to topple Nasser. They did so without us permission and Eisenhower was livid. Neither Israel nor Britain made the same mistake again.

But the problem remained. Revisionist Israeli historians like Benny Morris published revealing research exposing the Nakba, which he also continued to justify. A former idf paratrooper himself, Morris admitted everything that Palestinian leaders and intellectuals had been saying was true. Yes, villages were forcibly emptied, houses were stolen, Arab women were raped by Israeli soldiers. Yes, there were massacres. But so what? A superior social order was taking over and large-scale ethnic cleansing was central to the Zionist project. As Morris told a Haaretz interviewer, ‘Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history.’⁹ Jewish supremacist arguments of this type are common in Israel today, where at least 70 per cent of the population justifies the genocide in motion. The aim of the Zionist leaders, regardless of party differences or doctrinal divides, was always the creation of Eretz Israel. Invented history, crazed references to the Old Testament, downplaying of genetic and archaeological evidence, constant weaponization of the Judeocide—all were brought into play to make it clear that no peaceful settlement with the Palestinians was ever possible.¹⁰

Benny Morris has just provided a new analysis of the changes in Israeli society since October 7. He begins by asserting that Israel is not currently committing genocide in Gaza: ‘The prosecutor in The Hague and all the learned professors, from Omer Bartov on down, who talk about a genocide, are wrong.’ There is no deliberate intention to wipe out the Palestinians: ‘Many of them have been killed, but this is no policy.’ However, Morris writes, the genocide may be in the offing: ‘Israel may be on the way there, already deep in the loop that leads to mass murder, shaping the public’s hearts and minds.’ Some may already be there, citing ‘Amalek’, the biblical enemy to be exterminated, with a nod to the Palestinians; speaking about uprooting them, exiles and transfers—just like the Nazis before 1940, Morris notes. Religious Zionists openly declare their desire to flatten Nablus and Jenin:

The dehumanization that has to take root before mass murder is already here. Once upon a time, a minister in Israel talked about ‘cockroaches in a bottle’ and was reprimanded. Today there are hardly any reprimands. The Jewish public appears largely indifferent to the mass killing in Gaza, including of women and children. It is apathetic toward the starving of Palestinians in the West Bank by means of banning them from working in Israel, and to the violent harassment of Palestinians there, including in the past year as many were killed at the hands of settlers.

The dehumanization is evident every day, apparent from the soldiers’ testimonies; from the killing of civilians in Gaza; from the brutality shown by soldiers and jailers while detainees, some from Hamas and some civilians, are led half-naked to the detention camps; from the routine of beatings and torture in the detention camps and prisons themselves. The Jewish-Israeli public is indifferent to all of it. And apparently the political gatekeepers are too. They are relentlessly buffeted by acts of injustice and corruption, by manipulations from all around, therefore helpless in the face of this overflowing cruelty. These are all signs of the dehumanization that precedes and promotes genocide.¹¹

Unlike the bbc, cnn and French tv networks, Morris wants to make this dehumanization known. He is not indifferent; but his Zionism remains unshaken. He ascribes equal blame to the Palestinians for their ‘dehumanization of Jews’. True, their uprooting in 1948 and the oppression they had suffered since 1967 in the West Bank at the hands of the Jews, ‘frequently with brutality and always with humiliation’, played a part in this priming of Arab hearts and minds, Morris admits. It will only be deepened by ‘the mass killing and displacement of the past 15 months.’ He then ‘goes back into history’, like Netanyahu and his father (also a historian), to describe all the massacres that have been inflicted upon the Jews, ‘mainly by Christians but also by Muslims’, over the past 2,000 years.

Morris wants another state for the Palestinians but knows it is ‘unimaginable’; and if there is no second state, there will be a ‘proper’ genocide. He does not dwell too much on who has prevented a second state—the plo? Hamas? Or the Zionist entity whose ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Palestinians he continues to defend? All the evidence shows that it was Ben Gurion who instigated the Nakba in 1948. It was he who ordered the idf to kill if Palestinians resisted the expulsions, which they did. Morally there is no difference whatsoever between Ben Gurion then and Netanyahu today.¹²

Twenty years ago, the Hebrew poet Aharon Shabtai warned his people about Ben Gurion:

nostalgia

The dumpy little man
With the scourge in his hand,
In his free time
Runs his fingers
Over the keys of a baby grand . . .
He’ll help solve the economy’s problems:
The unemployed will man the tanks,
Or dig graves,
And, come evening,
We’ll listen to Schubert and Mozart . . .
But now, who will I meet
When I go out for dinner?
Gramsci’s jailers?
What clamour will rise
up through the window facing the street?
And when it’s all over,
My dear, dear reader,
On which benches will we have to sit,
Those of us who shouted ‘Death to the Arabs’
And those who claimed they ‘didn’t know.’

The tragedies have multiplied since you wrote these words, dear Aharon. For many years I believed there were two options. Two states of the same size or a single state with equal rights for all. Had Zionism been so inclined either would have been possible, if neither totally satisfactory. But Ben Gurion, Morris, Begin, Sharon, Netanyahu prevailed in the end. The PLO continued to think that the US would force through a deal and finally surrendered at Oslo. Israel now behaves like a junior partner of the Great Satan. Leaders need to be killed? Countries need to be bombed, divided and bombed again? Just do it. In return, Israel gets to devour more Palestinians. And if the million and a half don’t want to become refugees, will the Zionists be allowed to exterminate them wholesale? It’s their fault, after all, for being Palestinian in the first place.

Notes

1 See the portrait by Sabry Hafez, ‘An Arabian Master’, nlr 37, Jan–Feb 2006.

2 The us did the same in Japan after the War. American interests, it was argued, entailed keeping Hirohito on the throne, despite the fact that he had authorized the attack on Pearl Harbor.

3 Office of the Historian, ‘Memorandum of Conversation Between the King of Saudi Arabia (Abdul Aziz Al Saud) and President Roosevelt, 14 February 1945, Aboard the uss Quincy’, Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1945.

4 Robert Vitalis, America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier, Stanford 2006.

5 Vitalis, America’s Kingdom, p. 234.

6 There is a matchless account of the Egyptian Army after Nasser’s triumph and the petty rivalries and stupidities at the top that led to serious political setbacks in the region: Hazem Kandil, Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen: Egypt’s Road to Revolt, London and New York 2012.

7 Tariq Ali, ‘This Is an Arab 1848, But us Hegemony Has Only Been Dented’, Guardian, 22 February 2011.

8 Hugh Roberts, Loved Egyptian Night: The Meaning of the Arab Spring,London and New York 2024. The first chapter gives a sober and unanswerable account of what happened in Libya. Pages 109–13 provide a withering critique of soas’s Gilbert Achcar, whose arguments were ‘exactly the position of the Western powers’. The book’s title is a scathing reference to Kipling’s appeal to the McKinley White House, in well-polished tragic-imperial mode: ‘Take up the White Man’s burden / And reap his old reward: / The blame of those ye better / The hate of those ye guard / The cry of hosts ye humour / (Ah, slowly!) towards the light: / “Why brought ye us from bondage, / Our loved Egyptian night?”’ (1899).

9 See the candid interview, apparently intended for an Israeli-only audience, reprinted by nlr: Benny Morris, ‘On Ethnic Cleansing’, nlr 26, March–April 2004.

10 See Rashid Khalidi, ‘The Neck and the Sword’, nlr 147, May–June 2024.

11 Benny Morris, ‘It’s Either Two States or Genocide’, Haaretz, 30 January 2025.

12 For a remarkable study of the idf, see Haim Bresheeth-Zabner, An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defence Forces Made a Nation, London and New York 2020.

Tariq Ali: Writer, journalist and film-maker Tariq Ali was born in Lahore in 1943. He owned his own independent television production company, Bandung, which produced programmes for Channel 4 in the UK during the 1980s.

28 February 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Ram Puniyani

The economic plight of minorities, particularly Muslims has been a very disturbing factor for all those who would like the society to strive for equality and justice. If we see the origin of Muslim community in India apart from the spread of Islam through Arab traders from 7^th Century AD in Malabar Coast, the majority conversions have been mainly from the victims of caste oppression who were also economically deprived sections of society. During what is called the Mughal period, the Muslim King ruled from Delhi-Agra. During this the structure of society where landlords were Hindus in great numbers the economic plight of large sections of Muslims remained similar to poor Hindus.

After the 1857 uprising the backlash from the British was directed more against Muslims as Bahadur Shah Zafar was the one who was leader of this rebellion. The Muslim community had to face the bigger brunt of the British wrath. Post Independence the biases and myths against Muslims were highlighted and gradually they became major targets of the communal forces. As other communities were coming forward and lifting themselves through education and jobs, Muslims lagged behind due to multiple reasons, including the prevalent propaganda against them and the inheritance of their economic backwardness.

Our Constitution recognized the social and economic backwardness of dalits and Adivasis giving them the reservation which held the communities in some way. While at National level of OBC’s got 27% reservations in 1990, some states on their own had brought this earlier also. By and large these OBC reservations were strongly opposed by Organizations like “Youth for Equality”.

Even the reservations for Dalits other sections started getting opposed at large level like the anti Dalit and anti caste violence of 1980s and then in mid 1985 in Gujarat. Meanwhile as the Constitution did not recognize the reservations on the basis of religion, the minorities kept languishing in economic backwardness. Some states did try to incorporate Muslims in OBC quota but any move to uplift this community through quotas was strictly opposed by the Hindu Nationalist forces. The economic status for this community was a terrible mix of insecurity due to violence and economic deprivations due to lack of jobs and ghettoization, which was the direct outcome of violence. Every time some talk of reservation for Muslims came up it was strongly countered by the Hindutva politics and they cried hoarse about ‘appeasement of Muslims’. This also put some brakes on the intentions of the state to undertake the implementation of recommendations of the committees.

One recalls that after the Sachar Committee came out with the report in 2006, Dr. Manmohan Singh, the then Prime Minister of the country, stated its intention to undertake the reforms to improve the lot of this hapless community. “The component plans for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes will need to be revitalized. We will have to devise innovative plans to ensure that minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, are empowered to share equitably in the fruits of development. They must have the first claim on resources. The Centre has a myriad other responsibilities whose demands will have to be fitted within the over-all resource availability.”

State did try to understand the economic plight of Muslims through the Gopal Singh Committee, Ranganath Mishra Commission and finally through Sachar Committee. Most of these reports pointed out that the economic condition of Muslims is pathetic and has worsened over a period of last many decades.

This was propagated by BJP company as “This is what the Congress manifesto says,” he (Narendra Modi) claimed, “They will take stock of the gold that (our) mothers and sisters have, they will count and assess it, and then they will distribute that wealth, and they will give it to those people that Dr Manmohan Singh’s government had said – that Muslims have the first right to the nation’s wealth.”

It is in this light that one welcomes a new report from US-India Policy Institute and Centre for Development Policy and Practice, ‘Rethinking Affirmative Action for Muslims in Contemporary India’. The report has been prepared by Hilal Ahmad, Mohammad Sanjeer Alam and Nazeema Parveen. This report takes an approach away from the quota for Muslims. They recognize that Muslim community has different economic layers. While few of them are prosperous who don’t have to be considered for reservations. For the majority of sections of Muslims they suggest a religion neutral approach, focusing more on caste. Here caste-occupation is what should be looked at.

Already an increase in the ceiling is being campaigned by many to increase. With that apart from other things more Muslims categories can also be accommodated in OBC and dalit quotas. The report uses CSDS-Lokniti data. The authors of the report also consider the perceptions of Muslim communities. As reservations for Muslim is like a ‘red rag to the bull’ for the BJP and its ilk, the report talks more of accommodating these sections related to occupation based OBC. The Pasmanda Muslims, (Low caste ones’) the most deprived among Muslims, do fall in the category of Dalits. Many a Christian communities also fall in this category, which also need state support for a decent livelihood.

The report also considers the changing nature of the state and calls it ‘Charitable state’ which uses the word Labharthi for those who benefit from the state schemes. As per Hilal Ahmad, one of the authors of the report as far as state is concerned there is a shift from “…’group centric approach’ to ‘space centric’ welfarism.

They recommend a rational, secular sub categorisation of OBCs. Existing schemes and programs need to be jacked up. Affirmative action is the need of the hour. Here given all other qualifications-experience being equal; preference is given to the marginalized (Caste, Gender) for the selection for a job. There are many artisans in these communities; up-scaling their technology should help them.

The report is comprehensive and keeps the limitations of the present situation where the ruling politics treats minorities close to second class citizens. The million rupee question is, will the current dispensation following sectarian nationalism implement such a report with sincerity, overcoming their political biases’?

27 February 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Sumanta Banerjee

“Let  me  have  men  about  me  that  are  fat; Sleek-headed  men  and  sleep  o’nights”

Julius  Caesar  in  Shakespeare’s  play  Julius  Caesar

Two  recent  events  which  have  caught  media  headlines  deserve  close  examination.  THE  TIMES  OF  INDIA  of  February  17,  2025  on  its  first  page  carried  two  reports  side  by  side.  The  first  on  the  left  described  how  eighteen  pilgrims  died in  a  stampede  in  New  Delhi  Railway  Station  while  scrambling  for  seats  in  trains  in  their eagerness  to  reach  Prayagraj  (once  known  as  Allahabad)  to  attend  the  Maha Kumbh  and  take  a  dip  in  the  holy  Ganga.    The  second  report  highlighted  the  plight  of  Indians  who  sneaked  their  way  into  the  US   illegally  in  their  greed  for  dollars  and  were  now  being  deported  back  to  India,  shackled  in  chains  and  handcuffs.  These  two  spectacles  sum  up  the  nature  of  the  present  psyche  which  controls  the  attitude  and  behavior  of  our  people.   The  psyche  is  made  up  of  an   amoral  and  irresponsible  religious  frenzy  among  Indians  living  here on  the  one  hand,  and  financial  greed  of  Indians  looking  for  fortunes  abroad  on  the  other.   Both  the  impulses  are  motivated  by  what  they  believe  will  bring  salvation  to  them  in  their  respective  spheres  of  operation.

The  religious  sphere

To  take  up  the  first  case  of  the  stampede  in  the  New  Delhi  railway  station,  which  followed  soon  after  a  larger  stampede  at  the  Prayagraj  site  of  the  Maha  Kumbh  itself  that  claimed  more  lives,   it  exemplifies  the  typical    outbursts  of  fanatical  worshipping  of   deities  by  their  devotees  even  at  the  risk  of  losing  their  lives.  There  had  been  numerous  cases  in  the  past  of  similar  killings in  stampedes  at  religious  gatherings.  This  raises  a  fundamental  question  that  goes  beyond  the  immediate  case  of  accidents  at  the  Kumbh  Mela.

While  a  worried  administration  is  trying  to  institute   better  safety measures  like  crowd  control  to  avoid  such  calamities  in  future,  it  is  yet  to  tackle  the  problem  at  the  source  –  the  popular  motivation  that  drives  thousands  to  travel  to  these  pilgrimage  spots  to  seek  blessings  from  their  deities.  Both  the  administration  and civil  society  groups,  while  respecting  the  religious  faith  of  these  people,  should  try  to   disabuse  them  of  blind  trust  in  attaining  salvation  only  through  joining  such  suffocating  mass  gatherings,  and  persuade  them  instead  to   practice  their  religion  and  follow  the  rituals  within  the  precincts  of  their  homes  and  local  temples.

They  should  also  warn  these  pilgrims  about  the  health  hazards  that  they  face  when  following  traditional  collective  rituals  like  dips  in  the  Triveni  Sangam  during  the  Maha  Kumbh.  For  instance,  it  has  now  been  exposed  that  the  Ganga  and  Yamuna  rivers,  considered  holy  by   these  pilgrims  who  took  bath  on  that  occasion,  contain  “untreated  sewage  and  human  and  animal  excreta”,  according  to  the  findings  of  the  CPCB (Central  Pollution  Control  Board).  Dermatologists  in  a  hospital  in  Ranchi  are  treating  devotees  who  have  returned  from  the  Maha  Kumbh  with  skin  ailments  like  severe  itching  and  rashes.  In  view  of  these  findings,  civil  society  groups  should  organize  health  camps  at  these  pilgrimage  sites,  and  caution  pilgrims  before  they  drink   these  river  waters,  which  they  worship  as  holy.

Further,  it  is  also  necessary  to  draw  the  attention  of  these  pilgrims  to   the  numerous  cases  of  traffic  accidents  that  kill  devotees  both  on  their  way  to,  and  their  way  back  from  the  pilgrimage  spots,  which  are  their  destinations  for  seeking  blessings.  The  latest  such  case  is   the  death  of  four  pilgrims  who  after  `purifying’  themselves  by  bathing  at  the  Maha  Kumbh,  started  their  return  journey    on  the  night  of  February  23  when   their  SUV  collided  with  a  truck  in  Mirzapur  in  Uttar  Pradesh.  Social  activists  from  civil  society  groups  can  approach  the  survivors  and  pose  the questions:  “Why  couldn’t  your  deities  save  your  dear  and  near  ones,  even  when  they  were  travelling  to  pay  respects  to  those  deities  ?   Why  do  you  still  trust  your  deities  who are  betraying  you  ? ”  When  talking  to  them,  they  can  remind  them  of  these  words  of  frustration  and  despair  uttered  by  Manju  Kushwaha,  wife  of  Manoj,  who  lost  his  life  in  the  stampede  of  pilgrims  going  to  Maha  Kumbh at  the  New  Delhi  railway  station  on  February  15.  Describing  Manoj’s  devotion,  she  said:  “He  was  very  religious.  He  used  to  chant  Hanuman  Chalisa  every  morning.  On  the  day  of  the  incident  also,  he  prayed,  but  Hanumanji  didn’t  save  his  life.”  (Re:  Her  interview  with  The  Wire,  February  19,  2025).

Such  efforts  by  social  activists  to  rouse  the  inquiring  spirit  of  the  devotees  should  not  be  denounced  as  anti-religious.  They  are  in  conformity  with  the  fundamental  duty  laid  down  by  our  Constitution  which  enjoins  us  to  “develop  the  scientific  temper,  humanism  and  the  spirit  of  inquiry  and  reform.”

The  socio-political  sphere

When  we  turn  to  the  secular  sphere  of  public  rallies  and  gatherings  which  are  organized  to  welcome  some  celebrities  from  the  political  or  film  world  or  other,  we  witness  the  same  mass  frenzy  of  worshiping  these  figures  (their  images  re-invigorated  by  the  media)  in  public  gatherings   that  often  result  in  stampedes –   ending  up  in  deaths  like  on  a  recent  occasion  of  public  welcome  to  a  popular  film  star  in  Hyderabad.  I  keep remembering  the  lines  composed  by  the  early  20^th  century  English-Irish  poet  W.B. Yeats:  “The  ceremony  of  innocence  is  drowned/The  best  lack  all  conviction,  while  the  worst  /Are  full  of  passionate  intensity.”  (The  Second  Coming).  Doesn’t  this  verse  sum  up  the  present  situation  in  our  country  ?

Such  manifestations  of  popular  `passionate  intensity’  are  not  confined  within  the  borders  of  India.  Many  among  these  Indians  are  driven  by  the  same  unbridled  excitement  to  rush  to  the  US,  their  new  pilgrimage  where  they  furiously  compete  to  gain  blessings  from  their  new  deity  of  wealth  in  Washington.  Once  reaching  the  shores  of  their  dreamland  of  dollars  (mainly  through  the  donkey  route  charted  out  by  dubious  travel  agents),  the  Hindu  immigrants  among  them  abandon   Lakshmi,  the goddess  of  wealth  whom  they  used    to  worship  in  their homeland,  and  replace  her  with   US  President  Trump.  But  their  new  deity  Trump  has  also  disappointed  them  as  evident  from  his  eviction  of  illegal  Indian  immigrants,  who  are  arriving  in  India  shackled  in  chains.  Their  dream  of  acquiring  dollars  is  thus  dashed  forever.  What  is  even  worse,  now  they  have  to  pay  back  the  money  which  they  took  as  loan  from  creditors  to  cover  their  journey  to  the  US  dreamland.

When  searching  for  the  material  motivations  that  led  these  Indians  to  the  US,  we  find  an  irrational  craze  among  them  that  incapacitated  their  ability  to  judge  the  possible  consequences.  This  is  parallel  to  the  blind  faith  in  deities  among  devotees  at  pilgrimages  which  disables  their  thinking  power  to  prevent  stampedes  and  deaths  –  the  price  which  they  pay  for  their  ill-judgment.  Similarly, the  Indian  returnees  from  the  US  are  now  paying  the  price  for  their  blind  faith  in  the  dollar  empire  which  has  disappointed  them.  They  are  scrambling  to  collect  money  to  pay  back  those  from  whom  they  borrowed  money  to   pay  the agents  who  duped  them  into  undertaking  that  perilous  journey.

Will  these  disenchanted   Indian  returnees  (shall  we  call  them  ex-morons  ?)  try  to  disabuse  their  successors  –  another  new  generation  of  Indians  who  are  dreaming  of  making  fortunes  in  the  US,  and  prevent  them  from  repeating  their  moronic  misadventure  ?

The  Political  Godman

Let  us  now  turn  our  attention  to  the  political  godman  under  whose  blessings  these  aberrations  are  taking  place.  Narendra  Modi’s  popularity  among  the  vast  masses  is  an  outburst  of  imbecility  of  these   morons  who  keep  on  putting   trust  in  him,  despite  repeated  betrayals. They  prefer  to  ignore  their  own  domestic  immediate  economic  problems,  and  instead  go  all  ga ga  over  Modi’s  efforts  to  morph  himself  into  an  upmarket  brand  as  Vishwa Guru  in  the  global  political  scenario.  Dressed  in  a well fashioned  political  attire  designed  by  the  domestic  media,  Modi  prances  around  on  the  ramps  of  the  global  political  fashion  shows,  like  the  G-20  summit  in  Brazil  in  2024  and  the  SCO  (Shanghai  Cooperation  Organization)  meetings.  But  in  his  domestic  backyard   at  home,  the  economy  is  fast  declining,  with    rising  unemployment,  inflation and  marginalization  of  vast  sections  of  the  population   which  are  struggling  for  access  to  economic  opportunities,  housing  facilities, health  care  and  education.  Modi’s  political  bombast  of  India  becoming  a  bullet  train  is  in  sharp  contrast  with the  slow  speed  of  the  bullock  cart  at  which  the  country  is  moving  under  his regime.  The  paradox  reminds  me  of  an  old  Bengali  saying  that  targets  bumptious  characters  who  parade  their  eloquence  while  hiding  their  incompetence  –  Mathaye  ghomta,  ponde nangta  (They cover  their  heads  under  expensive  veils, but  keep  their  backsides  naked).

Yet,  Modi  is  assured  of  a  continuing  support  from  a  crowd   of  sycophants,  charlatans,  a  bemused  looking  audience,  and  a  naïve  electorate  which  is  put  in  a  bubble  of  promises  of  prosperity  during  elections.  His  monthly  speech  Maan-ki-Baat  is  pure  drivel,  but  is  lapped  up  by  listeners  as  a  voice  from   God !  While  the  wider  public  are  taken  in  by  his  claim  that  he  is  a  non-biological  personality  born  from  God’s  sperm,  even  the  educated  elite  believe  that  he  is  endowed  with  an  MA  degree in  Entire  Political  Science  from  the  Gujarat  University –  a  dubious-sounding course  of  studies  that  is   found  in  no  other  respectable  academic  institutions.  Attempts  to  inquire  into  the  authenticity  of  Modi’s  educational  qualification   have  been  stymied  by  the  administration.

In  his  well-planned  scheme  of   projecting  himself  as  a  savior,  Modi  has  recruited  a  bunch  of  mercenaries  in  the  media,  mainly  the  television  channels,  who  propagate  that  there  are  order  and  design  in  Modi’s  policies  which  might  be  adversely  affecting  the  people  now,  but  would  be  beneficial  for  them  in  future.  Known  as  the  Godimedia,  they  come  up  with  catchy  slogans  in  support  of  Modi’s  promises.

Going  back  to  my  initial  attempt  to  unravel  the  Indian psyche,  with  which  I  began,  I  can  only  end  up  with  the  desperate  query  –  when  will  our  people  unmoor  themselves  from  the  bog  of  violent  religious  frenzy,  casteist  discrimination  and  political  manipulation,  which  has  been  created  by  the  BJP  ?  Do  we  have  to  wait  for  another  new  generation   of  social  reformers  (like  those  in  the  nineteenth  century)  to  come  up  and  help  our  people  to  revive  their  thinking  powers  and  rescue  them   from  the  socio-political  morass  into  which  they  are  submerging  themselves  as  morons  ?

Sumanta Banerjee is a political commentator and writer, is the author of In The Wake of Naxalbari’ (1980 and 2008); The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta (1989) and ‘Memoirs of Roads: Calcutta from Colonial Urbanization to Global Modernization.’ (2016).

27 February 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Mujeeb Rahman Kinalur

The recent hunger strike by V P Suhara, a 73-year-old Muslim women’s rights activist from Kerala, brought attention to the contentious issue of Sharia and women’s rights in India. Suhara’s courageous stance, demanding equal inheritance rights for Muslim women, echoed the struggles of countless women who have been denied their rightful share of property and dignity.

A Complex Issue

The debate on Sharia and women’s rights is complex and multifaceted. Sharia, or Islamic law, is based on the Quran, Hadith, and the consensus of Islamic scholars. However, its interpretation and application have been a subject of debate, particularly in the context of women’s rights.

Inheritance

Under Sharia, daughters typically inherit half the share of sons. This has led to numerous cases of women being denied their rightful inheritance.

Marriage and Divorce

Sharia permits polygamy, allowing men to have up to four wives. However, women are not granted the same right. Additionally, the process of divorce, known as “talaq,” can be initiated by the husband alone, often leaving women without recourse.

Custody and Guardianship

In cases of divorce, Sharia often grants custody of children to the father or his family, leaving mothers with limited rights.

Islamic Feminism and Progressive Islam

Islamic feminism, as argued by scholars like Amina Wadud and Asma Barlas, seeks to reinterpret Sharia in a way that promotes gender equality. Wadud’s concept of “gender jihad” emphasizes the need for a feminist interpretation of the Quran, one that challenges patriarchal interpretations and promotes women’s rights (Wadud, 2006). Barlas, on the other hand, argues that the Quran does not support patriarchy and that a feminist reading of the text can help to promote women’s empowerment (Barlas, 2002).

Progressive Islam, a movement that emerged in the 1990s, seeks to reinterpret Sharia in light of modern human rights standards. Scholars like Khaled Abou El Fadl and Omid Safi argue that Sharia can be reformed to promote justice and equality, and that Islamic law is not inherently opposed to women’s rights (Abou El Fadl, 2001; Safi, 2003).

The Stand of Secular Parties in India

Secular parties in India, including the Congress and Marxist parties, have historically advocated for a Uniform Civil Code (UCC). However, their stance on Sharia law and personal laws has been nuanced.

Marxist Party’s Stand

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has emphasized the need for reform in various personal laws, rather than implementing a UCC. In a 2009 press statement, the party argued that the recommendation for a UCC by the Supreme Court would have a “reverse effect” on national integration, given the context of communal politics.

Congress Party’s Stand

The Congress party has also expressed concerns about implementing a UCC, citing the need to protect the rights of minority communities. However, the party has not taken a clear stance on reforming Sharia law or the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1937.

National Debate and Reforms

Suhara’s hunger strike sparked a national debate on the issue, with many calling for reforms to the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1937. The Act governs the inheritance rights of Muslims in India and has been criticized for its discriminatory provisions against women.

Government Response

In response to Suhara’s hunger strike, Union Minister of State for Minority Affairs, Kiran Rijiju, met with her in the presence of Suresh Gopi, Union Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas and Tourism.

The debate on Sharia and women’s rights is complex and multifaceted. While Sharia has been interpreted in ways that discriminate against women, there are also modern interpretations and reforms that promote gender equality. As Suhara’s hunger strike reminds us, the struggle for women’s rights is far from over. It is essential to continue the dialogue and debate to ensure that Sharia is interpreted in a way that promotes justice, equality, and human rights for all.

References:

– Wadud, A. (2006). Inside the Gender Jihad: Women’s Reform in Islam. Oneworld Publications.

– Barlas, A. (2002). Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Quran. University of Texas Press.

– Abou El Fadl, K. (2001). Speaking in God’s Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women. Oneworld Publications.

– Safi, O. (2003). Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism. Oneworld Publications.

Mujeeb Rahman Kinalur is an author and cultural critic based in Calicut, Kerala.

27 February 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Satya Sagar

Over four decades ago, as a South Indian growing up in the ‘Hindi heartland’ of Madhya Pradesh, I learned something that blew my mind – that Hindi was in fact the language of a minority of people in northern India.

As a ‘Madrasi’ child,  everything I heard around me sounded like ‘Hindi,’ and little did I guess that there was more to this story than the simplistic idea that everyone from Rajasthan to Bihar via Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh spoke ‘Hindi.’

This deep insight about Hindi came from my guru and mentor Trilochan Singh (aka Trilochan Shastri), who was not just a major poet in Hindi, Awadhi, and Urdu but also a linguist of great repute, having compiled an entire Hindi-Bangla dictionary at the Benares Hindu University in the sixties. He was a master of no less than at least seven Indian languages and very familiar with a dozen more.

As a young student just out of school I used to visit Trilochan ji every evening and he explained to me that Hindi was an infant language. A mere fledgling when compared to over a dozen other tongues in vogue in northern India for centuries – from Awadhi (in which Tulsi’s Ramcharitra Manas was composed) and Bhojpuri (Kabir’s mother tongue) to Maithili (the language of Vidyapati’s 14th-century love poems) and Braj Bhasha (Mirabai and Amir Khusro’s poetry and bhajans).

Modern Standard Hindi formally took shape only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It emerged through deliberate standardization efforts by scholars, writers, and nationalists seeking a unified language for India’s independence movement. While drawing from Khari Boli dialect and ancient Sanskrit vocabulary, today’s Devanagari-written Hindi was also consciously developed to distinguish itself from Urdu through vocabulary choices and script.

As Prof. Alok Rai has explained in his brilliant book ‘Hindi Nationalism’,  the creation of a ‘pure’ Hindi and a ‘pure’ Urdu by  religious fanatics on both sides was the original Partition of the subcontinent that took place much before the physical division of India and Pakistan in 1947. (And ironically, in both countries these ‘national’ languages are not particularly popular even today and have to be imposed on linguistically diverse populations by the state machinery).

The first Hindi-advocacy organization (Hindi Sahitya Sammelan) wasn’t established until 1893, and Hindi only became India’s official language post-independence in 1947. This modern standard form differs significantly from the diverse historical languages of North India, making standardized Hindi essentially a product of recent ‘nation-building’ efforts. And let me make it very clear that here the problem is not with the concept of ‘nation-building’ per se but about whose idea of ‘nation’ is being foisted over everyone else’s.

Within north India it is clear that the imposition of Hindi has stunted the development of regional languages, depriving them of the institutional support needed to thrive. For example, Maithili, spoken by over 34 million people in Bihar and Nepal, was denied recognition as an independent language for decades, being classified as a ‘dialect’ of Hindi. Similarly, Bhojpuri, spoken by over 50 million people, has been relegated to the status of a “folk language,” with little support for its literary or educational development.

Within the so-called ‘Hindi belt’ itself, the state-sponsored promotion of Hindi has also created a linguistic hierarchy, with Hindi speakers often looking down on speakers of other Indian languages as “provincial” or “backward.” This attitude is reminiscent of the way the despicable caste system works and is deeply harmful to the social fabric of the nation. By privileging Hindi over other languages, a form of cultural imperialism is perpetuated, that alienates non-Hindi speakers and undermines their sense of identity and belonging.

The result has been a cultural and linguistic homogenization that impoverishes both India’s heritage as well as local populations and the correlation is not accidental at all. A simple statistical analysis will show that the parts of India where Hindi has been successfully imposed also have the highest rates of poverty, illiteracy, attacks on women and communalism.

Again, while Hindi is often portrayed as the “link language” of India, this narrative overlooks the fact that many Indian languages are older, richer, and more historically significant. Languages like Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Marathi, and Odia have literary traditions that date back centuries, if not millennia. Tamil, for instance, is one of the oldest living languages in the world, with a literary history spanning over 2,000 years. The Sangam literature of Tamil Nadu is a testament to the sophistication and depth of this language.

Similarly, Bengali has produced Nobel laureates like Rabindranath Tagore, whose works have left an indelible mark on world literature. However, let me point out that producing great literature is not necessary to justify preserving one’s mother tongue, just as one’s mother need not be a genius or celebrity for us to love her.

Linguistically, in terms of vocabulary, grammar, and creative output, many Indian languages surpass Hindi easily. The literacy rates in mother tongues like Tamil, Malayalam, Bangla, Khasi, Manipuri, Mizo and Kannada are higher than in Hindi-speaking states, reflecting the strong educational and cultural foundations of these languages. The vibrant translation and publishing industries in these languages further demonstrate their vitality and relevance. For instance, the Tamil publishing industry produces thousands of books annually, while Malayalam and Bengali cinema and literature have gained international acclaim.

The simple fact is that India is a land of unparalleled linguistic diversity, home to over 19,500 languages and dialects, as recorded by the People’s Linguistic Survey of India. This diversity is not just a statistic; it is the very fabric of India’s cultural, historical, and social identity. By promoting Hindi as a ‘national’ language, its proponents ignore the fact that a vast majority of Indians do not speak Hindi as their first language. Forcing Hindi on these populations is not just impractical; it is an affront to their linguistic and cultural identities.

There is no doubt that the current attempt by the Modi regime through the New Education Policy, which makes Hindi a compulsory language to be taught in schools nationally, is nothing more than a continuation of similar efforts at ‘linguistic colonialism’ over the last 75 years of the Indian Republic. The foisting of the language of the urban, upper castes of some parts of India over the entire country has been opposed for long by the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu since the days of Periyar and continues to be resisted, very rightly, even today. There are strong sentiments against imposition of Hindi in neighbouring Karnataka too.

The warning is clear: Hindi cannot be pushed down the throats of India’s diverse cultures without serious consequences. The people of India will not stand by as their languages, traditions, and histories are marginalized in the name of a biased idea of national unity.

And it does not matter how many times the Hindi-wallahs took a dip in the Ganges during Mahakumbh. Some sins cannot be washed away but many sinners can be.

Satya Sagar is a journalist and public health worker and can be reached at sagarnama@gmail.com

27 February 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Cedric Prakash

February will always be a painful month for some particularly the Jafri family: on 28 February 2002, Ehsan Jafri, a former Member of Parliament and an authentic and much-loved citizen of secular India was murdered; on 1 February 2025, his wife Zakiaben was called to her eternal reward

In the death of Zakiaben the people of India have lost a great soul! She was a woman of strength and substance. She suffered much since that fateful day, when her dear husband Ehsan Jafri was brutally murdered. Since then, as a victim- survivor, she has fought relentlessly for justice not merely for herself but all women and others – who are victims of an unjust and violent system

The Gujarat Carnage 2002 can easily rate as one of the bloodiest chapters in post-independent India. The burning of the S-6 compartment of the Sabarmati Express (from Faizabad to Ahmedabad) some distance away from the Godhra railway station on  27 February (resulting in the deaths of 59 innocent people) was (and is) strongly condemned … Several persons were convicted for this act, though there was (and  is )still a raging debate on what caused the fire. The sad fact is that any death – particularly the tragic ones – is bound to leave a great void in the lives and the hearts of the loved ones whom they have left behind.

What followed this, was however, a carnage beyond comprehension and totally unjustifiable. Apparently (and this from eye witness accounts), the then Chief Minister of the State convened a meeting of some high level BJP and Government functionaries very late evening of  27 February.  What transpired at this meeting has two different versions – but the actions that resulted were blatantly obvious: Muslims all over Gujarat were brutalized, raped, dispossessed of their lands and houses and murdered. The intensity of violence for days on was a crime against humanity. Thousands were affected all over Gujarat! Numbers, pale into insignificance, when one recollects the brutality of what took place. For weeks and then months, rampaging mobs indulged in some of the most despicable acts. Besides, the law and order mechanism had not merely abdicated its responsibility but were also seen actively involved in this carnage.

Zakia’s life became intrinsically linked to the search for justice after the tragic events of 28 February 2002, when a mob attacked the Gulbarg Society, killing 69 people, including her husband. The massacre at Gulbarg Society remains one of the most horrific episodes of the 2002 post-Godhra carnage.A mob of over 15,000 people descended upon the Muslim-majority area, looting homes, setting them ablaze, and killing at least 69 people, including Ehsan Jafri. Despite Ehsan desperate attempts to seek police help, no assistance arrived, despite the proximity of police stations.

On 21 November2002, the Concerned Citizens’ Tribunal  consisting of several eminent citizens and headed by Justice V. Krishna Iyer (a former Judge of the Supreme Court of India), made public a report entitled ‘Crime Against Humanity’, on the Gujarat Carnage.  This report was written on the basis of more than 2000 oral and written testimonies, both individuals and collective, from victim-survivors and also from independent Human Rights Groups, Women’s Groups, NGOs, academics and others.  The Tribunal, in its findings and recommendations, clearly indicts the  Government  of  Gujarat  and  holds  them  responsible  for  the  unfettered  violence,   murder, arson and looting that took place in  Gujarat that year.

The findings of the Citizens’ Tribunal also corroborate with the findings of several other fact-findings of  independent and impartial groups. These include:

• what took  place in Gujarat was  not merely communal  violence or riots;  it was a  genocide,  a carnage,  an ethnic cleansing,  designed  to wipe out , to marginalise an entire community.
• it was well-planned and well-executed.   It was not a “spontaneous reaction” as some people make it out to be.  The preparations must have taken several months.   Sometime earlier, a widely circulated Gujarati daily listed several hotels run by the Chilya community which had non-Islamic names.   During the carnage, most of their hotels were razed to the ground.  A meticulous census   was conducted on the Muslims and Christians of Gujarat in 1999.  The data helped marauding mobs   know exactly whom to attack and where.
• it was  meant  to break  the  backbone of an economy generated/owned by Muslims;it succeeded to a great extent.
• the  middle-class   ( including  several  well-to-do  and  educated   women )   were blatantly involved  in the  violence;  there were  very  few people  who were willing to  come  out  and  take  a  stand  to  prevent  what  was   happening.
• in   some  areas,  adivasis  and  dalits  were  used  very effectively in  the arson and looting  of  Muslim  homes  and  establishments.
• it was clearly a State-sponsored  genocide.  The Citizens’ Tribunal has indicted in addition to the Chief Minister and politicians, several high-ranking bureaucrats and police officials.  The SanghParivar was given a free hand to do what they wanted.  The police were apparently given clear instructions not to take any action.  There is also evidence to show that some were encouraged to join in the violence – which they did, with ruthless finesse.  State Ministers and leaders of ‘the Parivar’ were seen leading the mobs. (a couple of them even were in the Police Control room at the time of the violence). (The ‘Tehelka’ sting operation which was made public in October 2007 provides ample evidence to substantiate these facts).

In December 2003, the then Chief Justice of India V.N. Khare presiding over a Divisional Bench of the Supreme Court criticized the Government of Gujarat saying, “I have no faith left in the prosecution and the Gujarat Government. I am not saying Article 356. You have to protect people and punish the guilty. What else is raj dharma? You quit if you cannot prosecute the guilty.” In a landmark ruling on  8 February 2012, the Acting Chief Justice of Gujarat Bhaskar Bhattacharya, very emphatically stated, “Gujarat government’s inadequate response and inaction (to contain the riots) resulted in an anarchic situation which continued unabated for days on…the state cannot shirk from its responsibilities”.

In the context of the many cases and the fact that several fingers were pointing to the connivance of the Modi Government, the Supreme Court of India appointed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into certain cases, very specially a complaint made by Zakia Jafri with regard to the murder of her husband, the former Member of Parliament Ahsan Jafri and several others. It is common knowledge that the role even played by the SIT was highly questionable.  There were speculations and plenty of ‘leakages’, of the final SIT Report.  Whatever it says and does not say; lapses and manipulations therein; the complicity and the culpability of the powerful and of vested interests, is beyond doubt.

The pro-Government responses of others are on expected lines: “2002 was just an aberration in fact a distraction”; “look at the way, we have progressed since; the roads, the shopping malls, the riverfront, the flyovers…in fact all the industrialists want to come only to Gujarat”; “didn’t they deserve it, after all, they are but terrorists”; “why is the same importance  not being given to the massacre of the Sikhs in 1984 and for that matter, to the Hindu pundits in Kashmir?”; “We Muslims need to move on…” The rationalisations are typical.  They come from the educated elite and also from those who are afraid to deal with the past. Statements like these often gripped by fear…Fear seems to rule the roost… the truth is, a sizeable section of the population is terribly afraid of the plain truth. Besides, many suffer from selective amnesia!

One person who fought relentlessly these past many years was Zakia Jafri. She was the voice of many of the victim-survivors . However, on 24 June 2022,the Supreme Court dismissed her plea. Zakiaben had moved a Special Leave Petition (SLP) before the Supreme Court of India demanding a thorough probe into the larger conspiracy behind the violence. The SLP, where CJP secretary Teesta Setalvad was the second petitioner, showcased investigative lapses as well as complicity of people in power at the time in allowing the violence to continue unabated. The judgement dismissing her plea rocked the conscience of the nation.
The court observed that, “As a matter of fact, all those involved in such abuse of process, need to be in the dock and proceeded with in accordance with law.”Not surprisingly therefore the above extract was also quoted in a complaint filed on behalf of the State by one Darshansinh B Barad, Police Inspector, Detection of Crime Branch, Ahmedabad City, just a day after the judgment was delivered. In the complaint dated June 25, 2022, Barad asks for an FIR to be registered against Setalvad, former Gujarat Director General of Police (DGP) R.B Sreekumar and former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt . Teesta and Sreekumar were arrested . after spending a considerable of time in jail were granted bail. Bhatt was already in jail at that time,on  another charge.  He still continues to be in jail, these past many years. The case on all three – is still not closed chapter.

When Zakia died on 1 February she was with her daughter Nishrin ( aka Nargis)  and son-in-law Najid. Both Nishrin and Najid are residents in the United States but have been coming down to India to spend  some time with Zakia . Nargis has vivid and powerful memories of her mother. In a voice choked with emotion she says, “that morning my mother was not too well – but we really did not think that it was going to be her last moments; she called out to me ‘Nargis, Nargis’ and then breathed her last” Nargis has fond memories of her mother saying, “my mother was the daughter of a farmer, who married at the age of 21 and made Ahmedabad her home. She adapted very beautifully to her new environment- even choosing to wear a sari happily and proudly as her preferred dress. After 2002, she was convinced that she had to fight for justice; she did so with plenty of personal pain. However she was also able to transcend the killings and violence of 2002, and had no bitterness towards anyone”.  Nargis adds for good measure , “my mother came from Rustampur , a village in the Khandwa district of  MP. She used to take great pride in saying that her house was opposite Ashok and Kishore Kumar’s house,’ghantaghar ki samnay’!”

Najid  remembers the warm and loving treatment he always received from his mother-in-law- from ensuring that  non-spicy food was prepared for him to  having a  fan specially installed for him. “ Her love was for all.  She did not speak ill of anyone. In every sense of the word she was a great and wonderful mother.” The same sentiments are shared by Tanveer , her elder son who lives in Surat and Zuber her youngest who lives in the United States.

Zara Chowdhary, author of The Lucky Ones: A Memoir, in a recent interview puts it poignantly saying,  “Zakia Jafri was more than a widow seeking justice. She was a mother, a grandmother, a community member. She carried others with her. That reminds me of a story my friend Zehra Mehdi shares about the Shia tradition of demanding justice. Hazrat Zainab, daughter of Hazrat Ali and granddaughter of Prophet Muhammad, survived the massacre of her family. She stood before the tyrant who had slaughtered them and demanded justice—not just for her personal loss, but for her entire community. That distinction is crucial.”

Zara adds, “In marginalised communities, we never carry our burdens alone. Dalit liberation movements embody this as well—you walk with your entire community. Out of hundreds of Gujarat cases, Zakia Jafri’s was the one that insisted: this wasn’t just a personal tragedy; it was an attack on an entire people. That difference—seeing oneself as part of a larger struggle—is what fuels me. I am not writing alone. I am not walking alone. Even the dead are with me. And whatever comes, it comes for all of us”

Zakia was truly a woman of strength and substance; her resilience and her calm demeanour in the face of all odds – easily bear testimony to a woman who can be called ‘Mother India’. Whilst relentlessly pursuing the cause of justice for all, she held no bitterness no rancour, epitomising the best of womanhood and motherhood. Today as we remember the Gujarat Carnage of 2002 – we salute Zakia Jafri – one o India’s greatest women!

Fr. Cedric Prakash SJ is a human rights, reconciliation and peace activist/writer. Contact: cedricprakash@gmail.com

27 February 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ranjan Solomon

The world has entered a new era in global politics. In just the three weeks that Trump has been in power, he has created disarray on a range of issues. The world is rather despondent but clearly unwilling to allow the USA to assume the reigns of super power to which all others, especially, the weak must pay obeisance. A major democracy – if you can any longer reckon that the USA is a bona fide democracy – has faulted, and faltered. It makes-believe that there exists a political pyramid where Trump seeks to sit atop and issues orders the world around that must be fulfilled. Don’t they know that an era of multilateralism has been launched has ended? The world now finds itself in a bitter contest with Trump.

Almost every democracy which boasts its system is superior to so-called autocratically-oriented political systems has succumbed to the fault lines of democracy. An election every couple of years does not imply there is a functional democracy. With a vote percentage of 66% in the elections, it was clear that people’s enthusiasm for Washington is fast evaporating.

The crisis in the Middle East has further complicated matters. Trump had announced he would end the, and restore peace. It turns out that Trump is a mere wind bag. 25-plus days after his arrival in the Oval office, he has no solutions. Trump has injected chaos and an overdose of tactless and unachievable proposals as prospective solutions. Each step he takes creates more turmoil.

Despite the horrors that Israel inflicted on them, supported by the USA and a handful of Europeans, the people of Gaza have demonstrated their resilience. They are clear that they are here to stay. The sight of Gazans flowing in relentless streams is a sign of their hopes and dreams. By contrast, Israel is emptying out. Two million or more have left – bag, baggage, pension funds and investments. They see neither security nor peace as a prospect under the Zionists. Israeli coffers are emptying with the flight of people and capital and industry is at a standstill.

The progressive website Countercurrents.org website Kerala, India reports that “the death toll from Israel’s genocide in Gaza has reached 48,239, with 111,676 others injured, according to the Health Ministry on Thursday. Many bodies remain trapped under rubble and in the streets, with rescue teams unable to reach them due to ongoing Israeli restrictions. In the last 24 hours, 17 more bodies arrived at hospitals, including 14 recovered from the rubble and 3 killed or succumbed to injuries…Israel’s ongoing deadly assault in the occupied West Bank has nearly emptied several refugee camps. Some 40,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced since Israel’s military operation dubbed “Iron Wall” launched in the northern Jenin refugee camp on 21 January”.

Gazans need time to fully overcome damage from the ruthless killing spree and destruction of all things valued. Yet the audacious determination of the Palestinians and the colossal pledges of support from other Arab States, and wide sections of the international community, assure Gaza a new future. Egypt confidently announced its intentions to join the rebuilding rather than to create an entity that the USA prefers to auction for profit.

Trump refuses to countenance the exchange of hostages in drips and drabs. He wants all of the exchanges to happen ‘just now’. He has promised to let all hell loose if his wish and command does not work. He announces that we will then take over and own it and operate it. Callous imperialist arrogance!

In conversations with Palestinian comrades, I enquired their vision of the future as they viewed it. They reject the intimidation of the USA and the way Israel is confusing facts-on-the-ground. They speak with confidence that “in droves our people have returned to their homes in Gaza unafraid to face the wrath of Israel’s war machines”.

They steadfastly stand by the letter and spirit of the ceasefire agreement. Trump’s whims and fancies are wild ambitions and dreams and are already in the ashes of history. They assert: “We Palestinians are a people with dignity and rights and refuse to be pressed into solutions that are half-baked, and promoted by political know-nothings like Jared Kushner. They proudly claim: “Palestinian history in the land goes back millennia. Our roots are cultural, religious, and sociological”.

Countries like Egypt and Jordan who were once prone to support the USA-Israel alliance, are also training their guns on Trump’s proposals. King Abdullah II was seen as being intimated in his one-on-one with Trump. Away from the optics, he spoke more forthrightly. Arabs believe they have an Arab solution just as the Palestinians are convinced that they do not require a romantic-colonized ‘Riviera’ to replace the Gaza of their preference and design.  Not a single Arab trusts that Gazans will be allowed to return to Gaza once they are ethnically cleansed. This is a despicable bid to steal Gaza and replace the population.

The Arab League has collectively dismissed Trump’s plan with downright contempt. The world has slighted Trump’s devious proposal to shift the Gazan people to Jordan and Egypt because it “threatens the region’s stability, risk of expanding the conflict, and undermine prospects for peace and coexistence among its peoples.”

Netanyahu, probably the man most desperate for a face-saving formula, has suggested that Saudi Arabia could create a Palestinian State there. Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Prime Minister, struck down the idea with fury. Each idea of Trump and Netanyahu has come a cropper. After all, ethnic cleansing contradicts international law and there is zero tolerance for it.

It feels as if the ‘MAGA’ bunch of oligarchs sits together for brainstorming sessions on a ‘Future Search’ for Gaza and come up with wild ideas. With no connect to the ground and their eye exclusively on profit and self-advantage, they just don’t get it right.

Trump will shift uneasily and retract his grandiose plans and bullying threats with a face saver. He has angered far too many countries with his extreme covetousness. He wants Greenland, Canada, Panama Canal, and Gulf of Mexico as Americas. The outbursts from the EU, Canada, Mexico and the people of the street everywhere has exposed him as the most contemptible President that the USA has ever had.

The ‘Battle of tariffs’ is another one Trump is beginning to lose. He is ening weaker, more amenable countries to accept his foul deals. In his talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who derives huge satisfaction from having got a White House meeting with Trump, India may have just ended up with India on the losing side. In the optics of the Trump-Modi Bonhomie, Bhabani Shankar Nayak, political economist and Professor of Management, asks: “Is India Buying America’s Nuclear Junk?”

India is signing up to deals with the US that may not be in India’s interests. Trade arrangements and purchases will get more costly.  The US dollar will further rise and our economy will confront. Modi’s visit was no success story even though the Godi media will say it was. India must maintain its integrity. That is a tough ask of country that is essentially weak and under the control of a small band of oligarchs – just as in the USA. India’s democracy is much too weak. Dignity and assertion; these must constitute India’s leadership ideals, not caving in to bully USAQ. .

Trump treats the world as business under a command structure. This entire political extravaganza will crumble. Global politics cannot be handled as if it were sheer business. The manner in which Trump signs order after order in the presence of the media, and keeps his mind on other things, demonstrates that the USA will soon lose serious governance.  The oligarchs will desert him if the gains are not commensurate. He would soon lose qualified bureaucrats on the pretext he is fighting the deep-state. Under Elon Musk and the newly established DOGE (department of government ethics), power will shift to a small group of oligarchs. Trump will without doubt lose control; he is a tired and confused septuagenarian.  Trump is already looking fatigued and often sounds incoherent. He is fuzzy, repeats himself, and is ambiguous about his ideas. There is speculation that his health can displace him. The instability can have far-reaching ripple effects around the world.

China will, perhaps, deal USA it toughest blow. That trade war is on and it was the US started it with tariffs with harsh measures. China retaliated against US tariffs by imposing counter tariffs by imposing an additional 10% ad valorem duty on imports from China. China announced tariff measures targeting specific American products, with tariffs ranging from 10% to 25% ad valorem. These tariffs, which took effect on February 10, 2025, impact products such as coal, crude oil, liquefied natural gas, agricultural machinery, and large-engine vehicles. The USA will confront irreversible economic punishment. The US imposed tariffs on Chinese goods to address concerns over intellectual property theft, forced technology transfer, and trade imbalances. China has responded by imposing its own tariffs on US goods, leading to a tit-for-tat trade war. The impact of these tariffs is being felt by businesses and consumers on both sides, with increased costs and reduced trade volumes. The situation remains fluid, with further negotiations possible to mitigate the effects of these tariffs. Clearly China has the upper hand in this bitter war. Trump sought to patch up his blunders with made desperate calls to the Chinese President who refused to even take his calls.

With all the prevailing antagonism against the USA, Trump will have to climb down from his high horses. Trump threatened BRICS. Donald Trump has been quite vocal about his stance on BRICS nations, particularly regarding their efforts to reduce the US dollar’s dominance in global trade. He has threatened to impose 100% tariffs on BRICS countries if they pursue de-dollarization efforts.

He had warned that if BRICS nations want to proceed with de-dollarization, the US will respond with tariffs. The BRICS nations, which include Brazil, Russia, China, South Africa, and India, have been working towards reducing their dependence on the US dollar in global trade. They’ve been exploring alternative currencies and payment systems, which has led to tensions with the US.

BRICS has large and rapidly growing economies with a combined GDP of over $16 trillion.Each BRICS country has a unique economic profile, with strengths in industries

BRICS countries are home to numerous innovation hubs. Moreover, BRICS countries have over 3.2 billion people and a growing middle class who drive the engines of consumer demand and economic growth. They are strategically located, with access to key markets, resources, and trade routes and are increasingly influential in global governance, with membership in organizations like the G20, WTO, and IMF. With potential to enhance South-South cooperation, BRICS can open up partnerships among emerging economies. BRICS can dismiss the idea, but his dream is just that. A dream.

On the Ukraine front, Trump knows that Putin is a tough nut to crack. Russia has prevailed both on the battle field as well as diplomatically. Zelensky has to fend for himself simply because he is an illegitimate President. His own people barely trust him. EU countries will scream and shout but will not pay out and make the needed sacrifices. Trump sees greater benefit in dumping Zelensky who he has referred to as acutely corrupt, and a country on the brink. The skeletons are tumbling out of the cupboard.

These are challenging times and a new future is unfolding. The era of old-style colonialism could face demise if they continue undeterred. The new alliances that evolve should revitalize and remodel the UN and multilateral agencies so they neutralize the US as the hegemon. Global governance must discard and convert from the current western-dominated pattern to one which is universal and collective in their truest sense.

Ranjan Solomon is a political commentator

27 February 2025

Source: countercurrents.org