The Rational World

15 things successful CEOs want you to know

2012-01-29T04:25:00.002+05:30

As a young CEO of a growing company, I find that the most valuable insight I’m gaining these days has been from other CEOs. Certainly this realization isn’t revolutionary – YPO, EO, Mindshare and a host of other organizations are set up just for this kind of knowledge exchange.

But who has time for that? This is a social media world. We’re live in 140-character sound bites. So I decided to ping my favorite CEOs via Twitter to see what kind of wisdom they could drop on me. Here’s the great advice they shared.

source: http://gigaom.com/2012/01/28/corbett-15-things-ceos-want-you-to-know/

Daniel Ek, CEO, Spotify

Figure out what the top five most important stuff is, focus relentlessly on that and keep iterating. Less is more.

Dennis Crowley, CEO, FourSquare

Don’t let people tell you your ideas won’t work. If you have a hunch that something will work, go build it. Ignore the haters.

Sarah Prevette, Founder, Sprouter

Just do it. Get it out there, absorb the feedback, adjust accordingly, hustle like hell, persevere and never lose your swagger.

Sarah Lacy, CEO, PandoDaily

Follow your gut. it may be wrong, but you won’t regret it if you fail. You’ll regret it if you ignore your gut and fail.

Craig Newmark, Founder, Craigslist

Treat people like you want to be treated. Apply to customer service.

Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO, VaynerMedia

Do work for your customers, not for press or VCs. The end user is what matters long term.

Matt Mullenweg, CEO, Automattic

Only reinvent the wheels you need to get rolling.

Jason Goldberg, CEO, Fab.com

Pick one thing and do that one thing — and only that one thing — better than anyone else ever could.

Alexis Ohanian, CEO, Reddit

Make something people want. Then give more damns than anyone else about it and you’ll make something they love.

Chris Brogan, President, Human Business Works

Buy @ericries’s book. Beyond that? Build a platform. This is the big year.

Matt Howard, CEO, ZoomSafer

Startup wisdom: The number one job of a CEO is to not run out of money.

Brian Wong, CEO, Kiip

Always be learning from others. Whenever you meet someone, you don’t want something from them, you want to learn from them.

Seth Priebatsch, Chief Ninja, SCVNGR and LevelUp

Something my dad taught me: Ask forgiveness, not permission!

Hooman Radfar, Founder, Clearspring

Give away the wins, own the loses. Your job is to curate greatness.

Alexa Hirschfeld, CEO, Paperless Post

Users and employees are key predictive indicators of a company’s success; press and investors generally months behind.

Train Your Brain to Focus

2012-01-20T02:43:00.000+05:30

Next time you are sitting in a meeting, take a look around. The odds are high that you will see your colleagues checking screens, texting, and emailing while someone is talking or making a presentation. Many of us are proud of our prowess in multitasking, and wear it like a badge of honor._________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Multitasking may help us check off more things on our to-do lists. But it also makes us more prone to making mistakes, more likely to miss important information and cues, and less likely to retain information in working memory, which impairs problem solving and creativity._________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Over the past decade, advances in neuroimaging have been revealing more and more about how the brain works. Studies of adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) using the latest neuroimaging and cognitive testing [PDF] are showing us how the brain focuses, what impairs focus — and how easily the brain is distracted. This research comes at a time when attention deficits have spread far beyond those with ADHD to the rest of us working in an always-on world. The good news is that the brain can learn to ignore distractions, making you more focused, creative, and productive.Here are three ways you can start to improve your focus.Tame your frenzy.Frenzy is an emotional state, a feeling of being a little (or a lot) out of control. It is often underpinned by anxiety, sadness, anger, and related emotions. Emotions are processed by the amygdala, a small, almond-shaped brain structure. It responds powerfully to negative emotions, which are regarded as signals of threat. Functional brain imaging has shown that activation of the amygdala by negative emotions interferes with the brain's ability to solve problems or do other cognitive work. Positive emotions and thoughts do the opposite — they improve the brain's executive function, and so help open the door to creative and strategic thinking._________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________What can you do? Try to improve your balance of positive and negative emotions over the course of a day. Barbara Fredrickson, a noted psychology researcher at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, recommends a 3:1 balance of positive and negative emotions, based upon mathematical modeling of ideal team dynamics by her collaborator Marcial Losada, and confirmed by research on individual flourishing and successful marriages. (Calculate your "positivity ratio" at www.positivityratio.com). You can tame negative emotional frenzy by exercising, meditating, and sleeping well. It also helps to notice your negative emotional patterns. Perhaps a coworker often annoys you with some minor habit or quirk, which triggers a downward spiral. Appreciate that such automatic responses may be overdone, take a few breaths, and let go of the irritation._________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________What can your team do? Start meetings on positive topics and some humor. The positive emotions this generates can improve everyone's brain function, leading to better teamwork and problem solving.Apply the brakes.Your brain continuously scans your internal and external environment, even when you are focused on a particular task. Distractions are always lurking: wayward thoughts, emotions, sounds, or interruptions. Fortunately, the brain is designed to instantly stop a random thought, an unnecessary action, and even an instinctive emotion from derailing you and getting you off track._________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________What can you do? To prevent distractions from hijacking your focus, use the ABC method as your brain's brake pedal. Become Aware of your options: you can stop what you are doing and address the distraction, or you can let it go. Breathe deeply and consider your options. Then Choose thoughtfully: Stop? or Go?What can your team do? Try setting up one-hour distraction-free meetings. Everyone is expected to contribute and offer thoughtful and creative input, and no distractions (like laptops, tablets, cell phones, and other gadgets) are allowed.Shift Sets._________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________While it's great to be focused, sometimes you need to turn your attention to a new problem. Set-shifting refers to shifting all of your focus to a new task, and not leaving any behind on the last one. Sometimes it's helpful to do this in order to give the brain a break and allow it to take on a new task._________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________What can you do? Before you turn your attention to a new task, shift your focus from your mind to your body. Go for a walk, climb stairs, do some deep breathing or stretches. Even if you aren't aware of it, when you are doing this your brain continues working on your past tasks. Sometimes new ideas emerge during such physical breaks._________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________What can your team do? Schedule a five-minute break for every hour of meeting time, and encourage everyone to do something physical rather than run out to check email. By restoring the brain's executive function, such breaks can lead to more and better ideas when you reconvene._________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Organizing your mind, and your team members' minds, will yield a solid payoff in the year ahead. Adding "high-quality focus" is a great place to start. Try holding a no-multitasking meeting and see what happens when everyone in the room gives their undivided attention. Have you ever tried this in your organization? If not, do you think it would fly?

Engage Yourself!

2011-12-11T08:43:00.001+05:30

Engage Yourself! Written by Mitch McCrimmon, Ph.D. Sunday, 13 March 2011 19:00 Are you waiting for your manager to engage you? If you were a business would you wait for customers to come to you or would you seek them out?Top-down approaches to engagement expect you to wait for your manager to engage you, a bit like being an animal in a zoo just waiting to be fed.Not many organizations encourage you to think like an independent business person, but entrepreneurs are much more engaged than employees. Yes, they get to keep their own profits too, but it's more than money. They're highly motivated because they feel in control of their own agendas and careers.By contrast, with an employee mindset, you can only take direction from your boss, work hard and hope to be noticed. You may not be as passive as an animal in a zoo but there is a limit to how engaged you will ever feel if you need your boss to engage you.Engagement versus self-engagementEmployee engagement has a very limited focus on motivating employees to work hard in their jobs. It's up to the organization or its managers to do the engaging.Self-engagement, with its independent contractor slant, is about you involving yourself and shaping your own destiny, just as you would do if you really were self-employed and building your own business.With self-engagement you proactively search for opportunities to contribute more. You're always looking for new ways to get involved in emerging trends and problem areas. You network and ask loads of questions in your search for new ways of contributing, looking for "new business" for yourself.Perhaps you have had experience of a job morphing into something different over time as new responsibilities are added and old ones dropped. Self-engagement simply means that you drive this role-morphing process yourself.Recall John F. Kennedy's famous quote: "Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country." You might reply: "Why should I think about what I can do for the organization? I'm in it for myself" Well, your organization is your customer and helping customers succeed is the only way your business can be successful. Asking that question shows that you have an employee mindset, not an independent contractor one.How to engage yourselfOK, so how do you do it?The first step is to start thinking like a self-employed contractor not a conventional employee. With an employee mindset, you might feel that you had a good day or week when you didn't see your boss. Now you need to start treating your boss and other managers as your customers.You should have a short term and a long term objective. In the short term, your goal should be to shape your job so that you are doing the kinds of work you most enjoy and finding ways to contribute more. Longer term, your goal could be to shift your role in a new direction or take on greater responsibilities.Your feeling of engagement will develop as you gain confidence in your ability to shape your role. Frustration with a lack of control over career progress is a major reason why employees leave. They may complain about other things but there is an underlying resentment of feeling powerless to influence their own success. As soon as you start engaging yourself, this frustration should evaporate and you should feel in charge.Start by looking for interesting projects that you can sign up to. Find out what key players are doing, those who could become customers and could potentially offer you a new role at some future point. Too busy? Everyone is extremely busy, but we can always find time for things that are really important to us. To take on more, think creatively about how you can unload other things.To engage yourself, ask questions of internal customers every chance you get in order to diagnose their needs and unearth opportunities for you to contribute more. Ask questions like:• What are you working on at the moment?• What new trends (or initiatives) are you focusing on?• What issues are keeping you awake at night these days?• How is your ABC initiative going? What's going well and not so well?When you get some initial answers, drill down with further questions such as:• What sorts of obstacles are you up against?• What options do you see for addressing those issues?• What is the potential impact of this project on the business? (or certain specific aspects)• What sort of input/support would you value from others?If some managers are suspicious of your motives, explain that you are simply interested in what's going on in the business beyond your own role or that you want to learn more about what the organization is doing.Your aim is to sell yourself to your customers, but this doesn't have to mean talking about how great you are. Just showing interest in what other people are doing goes a long way toward selling yourself. Also, your questions alone, without any suggestions from you, could generate some fresh thinking about a problem that might help a customer move forward.Tone of voice is important too. If you sound like a police interrogator, you won't get very far. You need to adopt a respectful manner that suggests an eagerness to learn from the experience of key players. So, you might ask a question like: "In your experience, what is the best way to handle issues like that?" This sounds like you are asking for advice and people are flattered by that, so again you are subtly selling yourself.You might object that the managers you need to get closer to are too busy. But that's true for external contractors as well. They also find it very hard to get clients to spare any time to see them. So, you need to think creatively. Try an email question or see if you can get to people who have some influence with your key prospect.Ask around to learn what issues or initiatives your main prospective customers are working on. Learn all you can about their pet projects and then ask questions about how they are going. It's important to focus on a manageable number of key players, not likely more than a half dozen at any one time while dropping those who aren't receptive.Making an immediate impactYour boss is your number one customer at the moment. You can engage yourself more fully in your current role by taking any initiative you can think of to improve the way your function operates. You don't need to come up with all the ideas yourself, however. Asking questions of your colleagues and your boss can generate novel improvement ideas.The key is to think of your job as your business, continually asking yourself how you can manage your business more effectively. Make your boss understand that you see him or her as your customer. To best meet your boss's needs, you should regularly ask questions to ensure that you are focusing the majority of your time and effort on the right priorities.Your goal is to make sure you are investing the bulk of your time and talent in those activities that add the most value in your boss's eyes. Most employees simply assume they know what those activities are, unless their boss tells them otherwise (employee mindset) but your boss's priorities change and you need to keep abreast of them, just as you would do as an external contractor with real customers.It's a good idea to get your boss (your customer) to agree to regular update meetings where you run through what's gone well and what priorities you are currently emphasizing. Such meetings are a selling opportunity. By reviewing what has been going well (not just where the problems are) you're letting your customer know how much you have done for him or her. Also, by discussing current priorities, you can realign them if necessary and get your customer's buy-in to your current focus.Taking more initiative along these lines is a better way to boost self-respect and pride than simply doing your job well. If you regard your job as your business and engage yourself in it, you should look forward to coming to work more than you do now, feel more engaged and be more motivated to contribute in line with your full potential.source: http://www.lead2xl.com/engage-yourself.html

Harvard Business School Essay Analysis, 2011–2012

2011-07-20T06:52:00.000+05:30

The 2011–2012 MBA application season is officially afoot. Harvard Business School (HBS) has just released its essay questions, maintaining its tradition of being the first school to do so each year. HBS usually strikes first in early May, and the other top 15 schools follow suit shortly after, throughout May and even into early June.

The HBS watchers among you will notice two significant changes this year, the first of which is that the school has released almost all new questions. Of the six essay prompts that HBS offered last year, only one remains—the school’s famed “three accomplishments” essay. The second major change is to a streamlined application that offers candidates few options. For the past few years, HBS has required MBA candidates to respond to two essay questions, allowing them to choose from among four. Now applicants face four mandatory questions, leaving them nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. So, this change could limit your ability to play to your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses. Our analysis of HBS’s essay questions follows:

1. Tell us about three of your accomplishments. (600 words)

This mainstay of the Harvard MBA application challenges the applicant to quickly “wow” the reader by recounting three individual accomplishments that, together, reveal a true depth of experience. Generally, candidates should showcase different dimensions of themselves within the three subsections of this essay. Applicants can select from their professional, community, personal, academic (must be truly outstanding), athletic, interpersonal, experiential and entrepreneurial accomplishments, but certainly, no formula for the right mix of stories exists.

This essay—along with its sister essay, which follows—is one of HBS’s longest in terms of word limit, and many candidates treat it as three mini essays. Remember, though, that constructing individual stories within 200-word subsets can be quite challenging. Keep in mind that the experiences you choose to describe are crucial and that shamelessly bragging in this (or really any) essay is unwise. No one wants to hear “I am awesome because….” However, if you have a story that is truly worth telling (that is unquestionably “awesome”), the reader will naturally conclude on his/her own that you too are indeed “awesome” after learning how you performed. In fact, this question previously read, “What are your three most substantial accomplishments, and why do you view them as such?” This year, HBS has dropped the portion of the question that asked, “Why do you view them as such?” We believe this indicates that the admissions committee is content to glean this information from your discussion of the experience itself.

Candidates often wonder if the three stories they discuss in this essay must all link thematically. An essay in which each accomplishment described flows naturally into the next is good, but candidates should not fret if their essay covers three distinct stories instead. Moreover, we have seen many an applicant skip a formal introduction and simply launch into a story, grabbing and holding the reader’s attention by placing him/her in the middle of the action.

Note: Avoid beginning each accomplishment with such phrases as “My first significant accomplishment is…” and “My second most significant accomplishment is….” Because many candidates actually do present their essays this way, you risk losing your reader’s interest almost immediately if you do so as well. Further, by telling the reader what each accomplishment is in the first sentence, you kill the mystery, and your reader is left with nothing to discover—nothing is driving him/her to want to continue reading your story.

2. Tell us three setbacks you have faced. (600 words)

HBS obviously wants to learn about your ability to overcome, because they want to know about not one, not two, but three different setbacks you have faced. If you have not encountered any obstacles in your life, then HBS seemingly does not want you! Well, that may be a bit extreme, but clearly HBS is acknowledging that success is earned, not given, and requires a certain resilience and fortitude.

The word “setback” should not be construed to mean outright “failure” and is instead fairly broad—it incorporates events that happened to you, not just those you yourself created. So if, for example, you went to a football tryout and earned your way onto the team, only to break your ankle in your first game, that is a setback—the unfortunate break derailed your initial plans, but you did not cause it. Basically, the experience was still a tough one and required you to pick yourself up and refocus your energies. Of course, if you created a problem for yourself—say, for example, you started a small business that ultimately failed because you were still employed full-time elsewhere and thus were not completely committed to the venture—that experience is fair game as well. Do not be afraid to stand accountable for your actions, and do not seek to shirk responsibility by only sharing stories in which things happened to you.

Although this question is not directly asked, it is implied: What did you learn? The setbacks you choose to describe are important, but your ability to overcome or learn from a setback that could not be redeemed is crucial and must be conveyed.

3. Why do you want an MBA? (400 words)

If you are planning to spend $100,000 in tuition and $100,000 in living expenses (minimum) and to accept the opportunity cost of two years of missed salary, we hope your answer to this question is already crystal clear. However, if not, now is the time for you to examine this aspect of your future carefully and develop clear—and genuine—goals. Do not try to guess what HBS “wants” or game the system by trying to present yourself as something a friend told you to be. You cannot be anything or anyone that you are not and will not fool anyone by offering insincere career plans.

This HBS essay question incorporates both aspects of a typical personal statement question: “What are your short- and long-term goals?” and “How can our school help you achieve them?” In writing your essay, you should present solid educational goals that pertain to your career aspirations, but take care not to take a rigid “My career goals are…” approach. Because this question is so open-ended, we feel that HBS is seeking to understand your purpose and the impact you hope to have. We also believe that the admissions committee is interested in learning about the particular tools you need (and the school can provide) to help you get there, but your response needs to be a thoughtful discussion of the specifics and not a clichéd lauding of the case method or the program as a general whole.

4. Answer a question you wish we’d asked. (400 words)

As we noted earlier, because all of HBS’s essay questions are now mandatory, you have “nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.” Yet this question may provide a bit of latitude. If you have not yet had the chance in your HBS application to share a few crucial stories about yourself, this is the place to do so. Because this question is so flexible, you have the opportunity to create a question that allows you to present these important stories you still need to tell. However, this essay should not be just a story “receptacle.” You still need to be thoughtful about what the school already knows about you from the other essays and portions of your application and then ensure that you, as we are constantly saying at mbaMission, keep the reader learning. Ask yourself, “What does the admissions reader know about me thus far?” Then, scour your memory for key experiences that will help fill in the gaps in your story and present a more complete and compelling image of you as a candidate. Thinking strategically with this essay will ensure that you have offered a full picture of yourself.

Note: We strongly advise against simply reusing the best essay you wrote for another school and changing the question ever so slightly to appear original here. HBS will easily recognize a slightly altered and basically redundant Stanford, Chicago Booth or Wharton essay. You will need to actually work at this—after all, as the school clearly demonstrates in essay question two, HBS does not want people who take the easy way out.

Source: http://www.mbamission.com/blog/2011/05/10/harvard-business-school-essay-analysis-2011%E2%80%932012/

This Email Got One Stanford Student A Huge Job At Foursquare Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-email-got-one-stanford-student-a-huge-job

2011-07-19T08:48:00.001+05:30

Two years ago, a Stanford business school student named Tristan Walker sent Foursquare cofounders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai an email out of the blue, asking for a job.

Today, Tristan is Foursquare's director of business development. During his tenure, he's built partnerships between Foursquare and huge brands such as Bravo, MTV, CNN, New York Times, NBA and Starbucks.

To celebrate the two year anniversary of the email, Tristan just published it on his personal blog, along with some notes:

Today marks two years since i sent my very first email to dennis and naveen (wow i was such a nerd! ha). naveen sent a reminder to team foursquare today and i thought i’d share it on my blog. Man, how times have changed:

Hey Dennis and Naveen

How’s it going? Hope all is well!

My name is Tristan Walker and Im a first year student (going into my
second year) at Stanford Business School (originally from New York).
Im a huge fan of what you both have built and excited about what you
guys have planned for FourSquare. It is an awesome , awesome service.

I would love to chat with you guys at some point, if you’re available,
about FourSquare. This year, I’m looking to help out and work
extremely hard for a startup with guys I can learn a ton from. Dennis,
with your experience at Google and the Dodgeball product, and Naveen,
with your experience at Sun and engineering in general, I know I could
learn a great deal from you both!

Before business school, I was an oil trader on Wall Street for about
two years and hated it! Moved out to the Bay/Stanford to pursue my
passion for entrepreneurship and the startup world. This past spring I
had the opportunity to work for Twitter as an intern and learned a
ton. Solidified my commitment to working at a startup that I’m
passionate about, and FourSquare is one of those startups that I
believe in.

I know you guys are probably getting inundated with internship-type
requests, but thought it’d be worth a shot! I can assure you Im humble
and Im hungry! Let me know if you’d be interested in chatting further.
I definitely look forward to hearing from you.

Stay awesome!
Tristan
@tristanwalker

———————————————————————-
tristan j. walker | mba class of 2010
stanford graduate school of business

A few things to note here:

i spelled foursquare “FourSquare”…capital F and capital S….TWICE! (so taboo these days) ha. Talk about green…and who says “stay awesome!” (hilarity!)
i sent this email after really thinking hard about this post from Jenn Van Grove at Mashable (thx jenn!). After reading, i IMMEDIATELY started to think about the potential for merchants and brands to start interacting with customers in ways that have never been done before. I read that post in May of that year I believe and signed up that same day
After my using foursquare everyday for about two months I knew i had to work for the company. On July 16th i scoured the internets, found Dennis and Naveen’s emails (#crazytristan) and shot them an email right away. This was before they even had @foursquare.com email addresses (and well before our series A round).
This is the first of 8 emails i sent Dennis/Naveen. They both must have thought I was crazy. On the 8th email Dennis replied

“you know what, i just may take you up on some of this, are you ever in nyc?”

-dennis

You could tell he was a bit annoyed (sorry dennis! oh well…ha) I thought on it for a little bit, and replied back (something along the lines of…):

hey dennis, yeh I was planning on being in ny tomorrow [i was in LA at the time!…and no, i definitely had zero plans to be in NYC] how about we meet up live at your offices?

-tristan

then i booked my flight that night, flew out the following morning, hung out with him and naveen for a week and one month later I was full time at good ol foursquare

which brings me to the last point. a lot of folks ask me how Ive been able to secure some pretty cool spots at awesome companies and my answer is always the same. “be so enamored with the product that you would work for the company even if they didnt hire you….more importantly find where the needs are within the organization and be willing to do whatever it takes to help them fill the need (work for free even!)…and MOST importantly make sure that youre filling a need that the organization doesnt have the resources to fill on its own. If a company is not willing to let a hungry, passionate, smart, unpaid advocate of the product help the organization to fill that need (when it doesnt have the resources to do it itself) then you probably shouldnt be working at the company anyway. They’re just being arrogant”…Dennis and Naveen made pretty clear that their passion was with product (and theyre the best in the world at it). I knew i could help them (without much guidance and hand holding) to think through the business opportunities / potential for foursquare. And i did it for free (for 30 days at least :)). I gained their trust, which was most important.

The past two years for me have been nothing short of amazing. Dennis/Naveen didnt have to but they gave me a shot and really did change my life. I owe those guys a ton and im truly appreciative of it all. Now, back to work…. :)

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-email-got-one-stanford-student-a-huge-job-at-foursquare-2011-7#ixzz1SW9jPmIR

Nine Things Successful People Do Differently

2011-05-30T23:50:00.000+05:30

Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren't sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. The intuitive answer — that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others — is really just one small piece of the puzzle. In fact, decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do.

1. Get specific. When you set yourself a goal, try to be as specific as possible. "Lose 5 pounds" is a better goal than "lose some weight," because it gives you a clear idea of what success looks like. Knowing exactly what you want to achieve keeps you motivated until you get there. Also, think about the specific actions that need to be taken to reach your goal. Just promising you'll "eat less" or "sleep more" is too vague — be clear and precise. "I'll be in bed by 10pm on weeknights" leaves no room for doubt about what you need to do, and whether or not you've actually done it.

2. Seize the moment to act on your goals. Given how busy most of us are, and how many goals we are juggling at once, it's not surprising that we routinely miss opportunities to act on a goal because we simply fail to notice them. Did you really have no time to work out today? No chance at any point to return that phone call? Achieving your goal means grabbing hold of these opportunities before they slip through your fingers.

To seize the moment, decide when and where you will take each action you want to take, in advance. Again, be as specific as possible (e.g., "If it's Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I'll work out for 30 minutes before work.") Studies show that this kind of planning will help your brain to detect and seize the opportunity when it arises, increasing your chances of success by roughly 300%.

3. Know exactly how far you have left to go. Achieving any goal also requires honest and regular monitoring of your progress — if not by others, then by you yourself. If you don't know how well you are doing, you can't adjust your behavior or your strategies accordingly. Check your progress frequently — weekly, or even daily, depending on the goal.

4. Be a realistic optimist. When you are setting a goal, by all means engage in lots of positive thinking about how likely you are to achieve it. Believing in your ability to succeed is enormously helpful for creating and sustaining your motivation. But whatever you do, don't underestimate how difficult it will be to reach your goal. Most goals worth achieving require time, planning, effort, and persistence. Studies show that thinking things will come to you easily and effortlessly leaves you ill-prepared for the journey ahead, and significantly increases the odds of failure.

5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good. Believing you have the ability to reach your goals is important, but so is believing you can get the ability. Many of us believe that our intelligence, our personality, and our physical aptitudes are fixed — that no matter what we do, we won't improve. As a result, we focus on goals that are all about proving ourselves, rather than developing and acquiring new skills.

Fortunately, decades of research suggest that the belief in fixed ability is completely wrong — abilities of all kinds are profoundly malleable. Embracing the fact that you can change will allow you to make better choices, and reach your fullest potential. People whose goals are about getting better, rather than being good, take difficulty in stride, and appreciate the journey as much as the destination.

6. Have grit. Grit is a willingness to commit to long-term goals, and to persist in the face of difficulty. Studies show that gritty people obtain more education in their lifetime, and earn higher college GPAs. Grit predicts which cadets will stick out their first grueling year at West Point. In fact, grit even predicts which round contestants will make it to at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The good news is, if you aren't particularly gritty now, there is something you can do about it. People who lack grit more often than not believe that they just don't have the innate abilities successful people have. If that describes your own thinking .... well, there's no way to put this nicely: you are wrong. As I mentioned earlier, effort, planning, persistence, and good strategies are what it really takes to succeed. Embracing this knowledge will not only help you see yourself and your goals more accurately, but also do wonders for your grit.

7. Build your willpower muscle. Your self-control "muscle" is just like the other muscles in your body — when it doesn't get much exercise, it becomes weaker over time. But when you give it regular workouts by putting it to good use, it will grow stronger and stronger, and better able to help you successfully reach your goals.

To build willpower, take on a challenge that requires you to do something you'd honestly rather not do. Give up high-fat snacks, do 100 sit-ups a day, stand up straight when you catch yourself slouching, try to learn a new skill. When you find yourself wanting to give in, give up, or just not bother — don't. Start with just one activity, and make a plan for how you will deal with troubles when they occur ("If I have a craving for a snack, I will eat one piece of fresh or three pieces of dried fruit.") It will be hard in the beginning, but it will get easier, and that's the whole point. As your strength grows, you can take on more challenges and step-up your self-control workout.

8. Don't tempt fate. No matter how strong your willpower muscle becomes, it's important to always respect the fact that it is limited, and if you overtax it you will temporarily run out of steam. Don't try to take on two challenging tasks at once, if you can help it (like quitting smoking and dieting at the same time). And don't put yourself in harm's way — many people are overly-confident in their ability to resist temptation, and as a result they put themselves in situations where temptations abound. Successful people know not to make reaching a goal harder than it already is.

9. Focus on what you will do, not what you won't do. Do you want to successfully lose weight, quit smoking, or put a lid on your bad temper? Then plan how you will replace bad habits with good ones, rather than focusing only on the bad habits themselves. Research on thought suppression (e.g., "Don't think about white bears!") has shown that trying to avoid a thought makes it even more active in your mind. The same holds true when it comes to behavior — by trying not to engage in a bad habit, our habits get strengthened rather than broken.
If you want change your ways, ask yourself, What will I do instead? For example, if you are trying to gain control of your temper and stop flying off the handle, you might make a plan like "If I am starting to feel angry, then I will take three deep breaths to calm down." By using deep breathing as a replacement for giving in to your anger, your bad habit will get worn away over time until it disappears completely.

It is my hope that, after reading about the nine things successful people do differently, you have gained some insight into all the things you have been doing right all along. Even more important, I hope are able to identify the mistakes that have derailed you, and use that knowledge to your advantage from now on. Remember, you don't need to become a different person to become a more successful one. It's never what you are, but what you do.

Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. is a motivational psychologist, and author of the new book Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals (Hudson Street Press, 2011). She is also an expert blogger on motivation and leadership for Fast Company and Psychology Today. Her personal blog, The Science of Success, can be found at www.heidigranthalvorson.com. Follow her on Twitter @hghalvorson

Harvard Business School Essay Analysis, 2011–2012

2011-05-21T09:16:00.001+05:30

May 10th, 2011

The 2011–2012 MBA application season is officially afoot. Harvard Business School (HBS) has just released its essay questions, maintaining its tradition of being the first school to do so each year. HBS usually strikes first in early May, and the other top 15 schools follow suit shortly after, throughout May and even into early June.

The HBS watchers among you will notice two significant changes this year, the first of which is that the school has released almost all new questions. Of the six essay prompts that HBS offered last year, only one remains—the school’s famed “three accomplishments” essay. The second major change is to a streamlined application that offers candidates few options. For the past few years, HBS has required MBA candidates to respond to two essay questions, allowing them to choose from among four. Now applicants face four mandatory questions, leaving them nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. So, this change could limit your ability to play to your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses. Our analysis of HBS’s essay questions follows:

1. Tell us about three of your accomplishments. (600 words)

This mainstay of the Harvard MBA application challenges the applicant to quickly “wow” the reader by recounting three individual accomplishments that, together, reveal a true depth of experience. Generally, candidates should showcase different dimensions of themselves within the three subsections of this essay. Applicants can select from their professional, community, personal, academic (must be truly outstanding), athletic, interpersonal, experiential and entrepreneurial accomplishments, but certainly, no formula for the right mix of stories exists.

This essay—along with its sister essay, which follows—is one of HBS’s longest in terms of word limit, and many candidates treat it as three mini essays. Remember, though, that constructing individual stories within 200-word subsets can be quite challenging. Keep in mind that the experiences you choose to describe are crucial and that shamelessly bragging in this (or really any) essay is unwise. No one wants to hear “I am awesome because….” However, if you have a story that is truly worth telling (that is unquestionably “awesome”), the reader will naturally conclude on his/her own that you too are indeed “awesome” after learning how you performed. In fact, this question previously read, “What are your three most substantial accomplishments, and why do you view them as such?” This year, HBS has dropped the portion of the question that asked, “Why do you view them as such?” We believe this indicates that the admissions committee is content to glean this information from your discussion of the experience itself.

Candidates often wonder if the three stories they discuss in this essay must all link thematically. An essay in which each accomplishment described flows naturally into the next is good, but candidates should not fret if their essay covers three distinct stories instead. Moreover, we have seen many an applicant skip a formal introduction and simply launch into a story, grabbing and holding the reader’s attention by placing him/her in the middle of the action.

Note: Avoid beginning each accomplishment with such phrases as “My first significant accomplishment is…” and “My second most significant accomplishment is….” Because many candidates actually do present their essays this way, you risk losing your reader’s interest almost immediately if you do so as well. Further, by telling the reader what each accomplishment is in the first sentence, you kill the mystery, and your reader is left with nothing to discover—nothing is driving him/her to want to continue reading your story.

2. Tell us three setbacks you have faced. (600 words)

HBS obviously wants to learn about your ability to overcome, because they want to know about not one, not two, but three different setbacks you have faced. If you have not encountered any obstacles in your life, then HBS seemingly does not want you! Well, that may be a bit extreme, but clearly HBS is acknowledging that success is earned, not given, and requires a certain resilience and fortitude.

The word “setback” should not be construed to mean outright “failure” and is instead fairly broad—it incorporates events that happened to you, not just those you yourself created. So if, for example, you went to a football tryout and earned your way onto the team, only to break your ankle in your first game, that is a setback—the unfortunate break derailed your initial plans, but you did not cause it. Basically, the experience was still a tough one and required you to pick yourself up and refocus your energies. Of course, if you created a problem for yourself—say, for example, you started a small business that ultimately failed because you were still employed full-time elsewhere and thus were not completely committed to the venture—that experience is fair game as well. Do not be afraid to stand accountable for your actions, and do not seek to shirk responsibility by only sharing stories in which things happened to you.

Although this question is not directly asked, it is implied: What did you learn? The setbacks you choose to describe are important, but your ability to overcome or learn from a setback that could not be redeemed is crucial and must be conveyed.

3. Why do you want an MBA? (400 words)

If you are planning to spend $100,000 in tuition and $100,000 in living expenses (minimum) and to accept the opportunity cost of two years of missed salary, we hope your answer to this question is already crystal clear. However, if not, now is the time for you to examine this aspect of your future carefully and develop clear—and genuine—goals. Do not try to guess what HBS “wants” or game the system by trying to present yourself as something a friend told you to be. You cannot be anything or anyone that you are not and will not fool anyone by offering insincere career plans.

This HBS essay question incorporates both aspects of a typical personal statement question: “What are your short- and long-term goals?” and “How can our school help you achieve them?” In writing your essay, you should present solid educational goals that pertain to your career aspirations, but take care not to take a rigid “My career goals are…” approach. Because this question is so open-ended, we feel that HBS is seeking to understand your purpose and the impact you hope to have. We also believe that the admissions committee is interested in learning about the particular tools you need (and the school can provide) to help you get there, but your response needs to be a thoughtful discussion of the specifics and not a clichéd lauding of the case method or the program as a general whole.

4. Answer a question you wish we’d asked. (400 words)

As we noted earlier, because all of HBS’s essay questions are now mandatory, you have “nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.” Yet this question may provide a bit of latitude. If you have not yet had the chance in your HBS application to share a few crucial stories about yourself, this is the place to do so. Because this question is so flexible, you have the opportunity to create a question that allows you to present these important stories you still need to tell. However, this essay should not be just a story “receptacle.” You still need to be thoughtful about what the school already knows about you from the other essays and portions of your application and then ensure that you, as we are constantly saying at mbaMission, keep the reader learning. Ask yourself, “What does the admissions reader know about me thus far?” Then, scour your memory for key experiences that will help fill in the gaps in your story and present a more complete and compelling image of you as a candidate. Thinking strategically with this essay will ensure that you have offered a full picture of yourself.

Note: We strongly advise against simply reusing the best essay you wrote for another school and changing the question ever so slightly to appear original here. HBS will easily recognize a slightly altered and basically redundant Stanford, Chicago Booth or Wharton essay. You will need to actually work at this—after all, as the school clearly demonstrates in essay question two, HBS does not want people who take the easy way out.

WikiLeaks: India accused of widespread torture

2010-12-18T01:41:00.000+05:30

NEW DELHI — Indian security forces fighting a 20-year insurgency in Kashmir beat suspects, used electricity on them and tortured them with water, the Red Cross told U.S. officials according to a leaked diplomatic cable.

The 2005 cable, released by WikiLeaks and published by the Guardian, documents systematic prisoner abuse by Indian police and paramilitary forces based on visits the International Red Cross made to detention centers in Kashmir and elsewhere between 2002-2004.

It said that among 1,500 detainees that the Red Cross staff met, more than half reported "ill-treatment." Of the 852 cases the agency recorded, 171 detainees said they had been beaten, while the rest said they had been subjected to one or more of six forms of torture.

Video: Assange: Rape probe a ‘smear campaign’ (on this page)
These included use of electricity on suspects, suspending them from the ceiling and putting a roller or a round metal object on the thighs of the person and then having somebody sit on it, crushing muscles. Others had their legs stretched 180 degrees, or were subjected to various forms of water torture. More than 300 cases of sexual abuse were reported.

"There is regular and widespread use of IT (ill-treatment) and torture by security forces during interrogation. This always takes place in the presence of officers," the cable said.

The Red Cross said that it had raised the issue of prisoner abuse with the Indian government for more than a decade, but because the practice continued, "it is forced to conclude that the GOI (government of India) condones torture."

Simmering anger
Although the allegations relate to 2002 to 2004, they are likely to ruffle feathers in the Indian government, which bristles at any external involvement in Kashmir which it considers an integral part of the country.

The disclosures come at a time when popular anger is simmering in Kashmir over abuse by security forces, even though militant violence that New Delhi blames on Pakistan has fallen.

This summer the Kashmir Valley, at the heart of 60 years of hostility between India and Pakistan, saw the biggest student protests against Indian rule in decades after a 17-year-old died when he was hit by a police tear gas shell.

The region has since quietened, and India says it will release the contours of a political solution to the protests in a few months, which some analysts say will involve greater autonomy for the region.

Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables also reveal that India remained steadfast in its belief that the Mumbai attacks of 2008 carried out by Pakistan-based militants had some kind of support from Pakistan security agencies and that Islamabad had done very little to act against the guilty.

Timeline: WikiLeaks timeline (on this page)
According to a January 2009 cable, the Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon reacted strongly to U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Richard Boucher saying during a meeting that Washington had not yet reached the conclusion that the Pakistani security agencies were directly involved in the attacks, carried out by the Lashkar-e-Taiba group.

"Let's not insult one another by telling a story that the Pakistan Army was not involved," said Menon, according to the cable.

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.."The Pakistan Army paid wages to Lashkar-e-Taiba and sustained the organization, and until these ties were severed, India would continue to regard the Pakistani security services as complicit in the Mumbai attacks," the cable quoted Menon as saying.

Menon concluded, "They're either unwilling to take action, or incapable, or both; any way you look at it, they're involved."

Another U.S. embassy cable quoted Indian Home Minister P.Chidambaram as telling FBI Director Robert Mueller in February this year Pakistan had "done damn near nothing" to prosecute the Mumbai suspects.

Pakistan denies state involvement and has put seven men on trial over the attacks.

'Viruses or toxins'
Another leaked cable revealed that U.S. officials fear lax security at Indian laboratories could make the facilities targets for terrorists seeking biological weapons.

The cable sent from the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi in June 2006 said Indian government officials regarded the chances of a bioterror attack here as extremely small. Regardless, India's surveillance system and its public health system were ill-prepared for the possibility, the cable said.

Video: Assange: The man behind the cypher (on this page)
But a greater concern appeared to be the danger that terror groups could take advantage of weak security at Indian laboratories to steal "bacteria, parasites, viruses or toxins" for use in attacks elsewhere, according to the 2006 cable.

"Terrorists planning attacks anywhere in the world could use India's advanced biotechnology industry and large bio-medical research community as potential sources of biological agents," the cable read. "Given the strong air connections Delhi shares with the rest of the world and the vulnerabilities that might be exploited at airports, a witting or unwitting person could easily take hazardous materials into or out of the country."

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40713113/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/

Will Focus Make You Happier?

2010-11-22T02:10:00.000+05:30

A November 15 article in the New York Times cited a recent study from Harvard happiness experts Daniel Gilbert and Matthew Killingsworth, who used an iPhone app to contact some 2,200 individuals and get a total of roughly 250,000 replies as to how each person was feeling and what they were doing at the time they were contacted. Not surprisingly, the people who reported the highest levels of pleasure were having sex when contacted (not sure what they felt after being interrupted). And they were highly focused on what they were doing, at least prior to the interruption.

The surprise came from the 99.5% of people who were not having sex when contacted. Nearly half of them reported that their minds were wandering when contacted; in other words, half of them were not focused on whatever it was they were doing. Those who were focused reported significantly higher levels of happiness than those who were not.

As an expert on ways to achieve peak performance as well as expert on attention deficit disorder (A.D.D.) and the crazy busy pace of modern life, this study caught my eye. So...unless we're having sex, half of us at any given moment are not focused on what we're doing. Not only does such lack of focus lead to unhappiness, it also leads to errors, wasted time, miscommunication and misunderstanding, diminished productivity, and who-knows-how-much global loss of income (there'll be a study on that soon, no doubt).

All of which cries out the question, why such rampant lack of focus? And what remedies can we apply?

One might suggest we all take Ritalin for our culturally-induced A.D.D., but not only would that be medically inadvisable, we're pretty much already doing the equivalent. Just look at the lines at Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts, not to mention the sales of Mountain Dew, Red Bull, and the rest.

But why such lack of focus in need of so much caffeine? If Killingsworth and Gilbert had done their study 100 years ago, or even 20 years ago, would they have found the same results? At any given moment, have half the minds in the USA — or the world — always been wandering? Or is this a new phenomenon?

My money — and available research — says it's new, or at least it's grown worse of late. 30% to 40% of people's time in the workplace is spent tending to unplanned interruptions, and then reconstituting the mental focus the interruption caused. I'm sure that was not the case 20 years ago simply because the tools of interruption were not so plentiful. And all the distraction has created blocks in thinking and feeling deeply. We're being superficialized and sound-bit.

Through my lectures, I've had the chance to ask thousands of people, "Where do you do your best thinking?" Rarely do I get the response, "At work." The most common response? "In the shower." The shower is one of the last places left where we're not often interrupted. But who knows, maybe the next hot gift item will be a waterproof BlackBerry.

If technology lures us to lose focus, I also believe a deeper conflict is at work, one that indeed was in force 100 years ago, and 1000 years ago as well. It is the paradox that even though we are never so happy or productive as when we are intensely focused in a given activity, we also avoid and resist entering such focused states. But why? If modern research demonstrates the great rewards of focus, why would anyone resist it?

Simple physics. Nature tends toward disorder. Focus imposes order. So focus requires energy. It requires work. It can hurt. People often avoid pain and work. We humans have mixed feelings about expending energy, even if we know it will bring us pleasure. For example, in the Harvard study, the second-rated activity in terms of happiness was physical exercise. And how many of us avoid that?

So what's my solution to the problem of fractured focus?

First, recreate boundaries that technology has broken down so that you have some time actually to think when you're at work. Turn it off. Close the door. Don't jump online the minute you feel frustrated or vexed. Push on. Grapple with the problem. Go deep. Persist. Don't allow intrusions into the precious process of creative thought.

Second, try to spend as much time as you can at the intersection of three spheres: what you're good at, what you like to do, and what adds value to the world, i.e., what someone is willing to pay you to do. At the intersection of those spheres lies a land of joy and productivity that can successfully compete with force of entropy, of disorder, that tilts us all toward lassitude. When you infuse work with pleasure, then you want to work, even though it hurts at times.

So, since you can't have sex all day, and no one can exercise for much more than an hour or maybe two, pick tasks that you have skill at, that you like to do, and then set the bar just a little higher each day. Focus will follow. And with focus, you'll gain both pleasure and success.

Quotes from "THE BUDDHA"

2010-08-01T05:05:00.000+05:30

A dog is not considered a good dog because he is a good barker. A man is not considered a good man because he is a good talker.
Buddha

A jug fills drop by drop.
Buddha

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.
Buddha

All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.
Buddha

All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?
Buddha

Ambition is like love, impatient both of delays and rivals.
Buddha

An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.
Buddha

An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.
Buddha

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
Buddha

Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.
Buddha

Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence.
Buddha

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
Buddha

Do not overrate what you have received, nor envy others. He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind.
Buddha

Ennui has made more gamblers than avarice, more drunkards than thirst, and perhaps as many suicides as despair.
Buddha

Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.
Buddha

Every human being is the author of his own health or disease.
Buddha

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.
Buddha

Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering. Some suffer too much, others too little.
Buddha

He is able who thinks he is able.
Buddha

He who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye.
Buddha

He who loves 50 people has 50 woes; he who loves no one has no woes.
Buddha

Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.
Buddha

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
Buddha

However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?
Buddha

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.
Buddha

I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.
Buddha

In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.
Buddha

In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then beleive them to be true.
Buddha

It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.
Buddha

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.
Buddha

It is better to travel well than to arrive.
Buddha

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.
Buddha

Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue.
Buddha

Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful.
Buddha

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.
Buddha

On life's journey faith is nourishment, virtuous deeds are a shelter, wisdom is the light by day and right mindfulness is the protection by night. If a man lives a pure life, nothing can destroy him.
Buddha

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.
Buddha

Teach this triple truth to all: A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity.
Buddha

The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.
Buddha

The mind is everything. What you think you become.
Buddha

The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.
Buddha

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.
Buddha

The tongue like a sharp knife... Kills without drawing blood.
Buddha

The virtues, like the Muses, are always seen in groups. A good principle was never found solitary in any breast.
Buddha

The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.
Buddha

The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you freed.
Buddha

The wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve.
Buddha

There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.
Buddha

There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it.
Buddha

There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills.
Buddha

Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace.
Buddha

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
Buddha

Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
Buddha

To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.
Buddha

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one's family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one's own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.
Buddha

To keep the body in good health is a duty... otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.
Buddha

To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one's own in the midst of abundance.
Buddha

Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of Unity are already two.
Buddha

Virtue is persecuted more by the wicked than it is loved by the good.
Buddha

We are formed and molded by our thoughts. Those whose minds are shaped by selfless thoughts give joy when they speak or act. Joy follows them like a shadow that never leaves them.
Buddha

We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.
Buddha

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.
Buddha

What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person is clinging to his piece of debris? What's the proper salutation between people as they pass each other in this flood?
Buddha

What we think, we become.
Buddha

Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.
Buddha

When one has the feeling of dislike for evil, when one feels tranquil, one finds pleasure in listening to good teachings; when one has these feelings and appreciates them, one is free of fear.
Buddha

Without health life is not life; it is only a state of langour and suffering - an image of death.
Buddha

Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.
Buddha

You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.
Buddha

You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.
Buddha

You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.
Buddha

Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.
Buddha

Retaining a Workforce That Wants to Quit

2010-07-08T21:47:00.000+05:30

In each of the past three months, more employees quit their jobs than were terminated, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is good news for the economy but bad for individual businesses: when jobs become more plentiful, the first to exit are often the business's most ambitious employees — the innovators, the risk-takers, the future leaders. The cost of replacing an employee is estimated at up to 250 percent of annual salary.

An AchieveGlobal survey of 738 managers revealed that about one in four employees planned to leave their jobs within a year. A study reported in the May issue of Harvard Business Review revealed that 12% of high-potential employees were actively searching for a new job.

Why are employees walking away from their jobs, even with unemployment still hovering near 10 percent? Our studies show that the three biggest reasons are a lack of growth opportunities, dissatisfaction with compensation, and employees feeling their contributions aren't being recognized. Growth and recognition are particularly important to younger workers, who have higher expectations of their employers than others do and are defecting in large numbers.

Regrettably, too many managers unwittingly encourage employees to walk out because they regard them as replaceable cogs in a wheel. The key to retaining valued employees is to manage them person-to-person rather than with one-size-fits-all management. Every employee marches to a different drummer; successful managers don't make them parade in lockstep. Here are two keys for managing person-to-person:

1.

Personalize the position. Not everybody wants to manage people. Don't force a brilliant solo performer to do it. Let those with bean counter personalities count the beans and let free spirits become free of boring tasks. Not everybody likes to travel. Don't put those employees into sales or service jobs that cover large territories. Understand employees' preferences before you create a team.

When you set up training programs, ask employees to identify the strengths they want to develop and weaknesses to shore up. Ask employees to suggest special projects they'll find interesting; they can provide valuable ideas for the business. All this is increasingly possible as work becomes more specialized and there's less need for can-do-everything employees.
2. Personalize the rewards. Businesses are giving Christmas turkeys to employees who don't have an oven. They'll do much better by learning what each of their valued employees wants most and providing it. Young parents often put flextime at the top of their wants list. Many young people expect a collegial environment and lots of mentoring and encouragement.

Across-the-board perks eventually become seen as entitlements, anyway. Witness what happened in April at the Carlsberg brewery in Copenhagen: It allowed the brewers unlimited beer drinking at lunch and gave each brewer two cases of free beer monthly — but when it eliminated drinking during working hours the brewers went on strike.

The most common reason why managers are recognition misers is lack of time, our studies show. But it takes little effort to make a commendation that has impact. Be specific with your praise: A perfunctory "You did a nice job" isn't nearly as strong as "I want to thank you for what you did on this project because it increased output by 24 percent and our department's number one in the company."

Retention initiatives do pay off, even in high-turnover industries. Over the past three years Service Experts LLC, a business segment of Lennox International Inc. (and, full disclosure, a client of ours), has reduced the voluntary attrition rate of its service technicians by over 50% in the US and Canada. This is notable for an industry (maintenance, repair and replacement of heating and cooling systems) where technicians often leave for small pay increases or self-employment. One of the company's top mandates was to improve its retention rate. It made retention metrics and incentives part of the managers' balanced scorecard.

UPS has made retention work by making employee development one of managers' prime responsibilities, and by giving employees a shot at upward mobility within the firm: more than three quarters of its 44,000 managers and most of its vice presidents began their careers loading or driving trucks.

Sometimes you can even increase retention by recognizing that employees may want to leave: My Maid Service, a small house cleaning service, has lost only one employee in a 42-member workforce this year and last — because, recognizing that cleaning other people's houses isn't a career of choice, it builds the employees skills for work elsewhere if they agree to stay for two years. Earlier average tenure had been four months.

But if you don't have the pull to redesign your company's retention program, the simplest way to keep the employees you value is to ask them: What do I need to do to keep you here?

Source : http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/07/retaining_a_workforce_that_want.html

Some of the Awesomest Men Bods - Emulate them

2010-05-29T21:27:00.003+05:30

My Exercise routine
Monday : (BACK, LATS) - Pulley down behind/front neck, v-bar pulldown, Seated row, Superman
Tuesday : (BICEPS) - Barbell, Dumbbell, Pitcher, Hammer
Wednesday : (CHEST) - Inclined, Plane & Decline Dumbbell bench press, Bent-arm pullover, Fly
Thursday : (LEGS, TRICPES) - Legs-4 + Rope triceps ext., Body dips, Overhead triceps ext.,
Friday : (SHOULDER + BICEPS) - Military press, Side laterals, Front 2 dumbbell, Smith Machine + Dumbbell, 21

Push-ups, Pull-ups Everyday
Forearms, Crunches Every alternate day

GMAT Vocabulary List

2010-05-19T08:57:00.006+05:30

A-List

abaft
(adv.) on or toward the rear of a ship
The passengers moved abaft of the ship so as to escape the fire in the
front of the ship.
abnegation
(n.) a denial
The woman's abnegation of her loss was apparent when she began to
laugh.
abrogate
(v.) to cancel by authority
The judge would not abrogate the law.
abysmal
(adj.) very deep
The abysmal waters contained little plant life.
accretion
(n.)growth by addition; a growing together by parts
With the accretion of the new members, the club doubled its original size.
acquiesce
(v.) to agree without protest
The group acquiesced to the new regulations even though they were
opposed to them.
acrimony
(n.) sharpness or bitterness in language or manner.
The acrimony of her response was shocking.
addled
(adj.) rotten
The egg will become addled if it is left unrefrigerated.
adjure
(v.) solemnly ordered
The jurors were adjured by the judge to make a fair decision.
aggrandize
(v.) to make more powerful
The king wanted to aggrandize himself and his kingdom.
aghast
(adj.) astonished; amazed; horrified; terrified; appalled
Stockholders were aghast at the company's revelation.
allegory
(n.) a symbolic description
allude
(v.) to refer indirectly to something
The story alludes to part of the author's life.
allure
(v.; n.) to attract; entice; attraction; temptation; glamour
Singapore's allure is its bustling economy.
amass
(v.) to collect together; accumulate
Over the years the sailor has amassed many replicas of boats.
ameliorate
(v.) to improve or make better
A consistent routine of exercise has shown to ameliorate health.
amiss
(adj.; adv.) wrong; awry; wrongly; in a defective manner
Seeing that his anorak was gone, he knew something was amiss .
anaphylaxis
(n.) an allergic reaction
The boy's severe anaphylaxis to a series of medications made writing
prescriptions a tricky proposition.
anoint
(v.) to crown; ordain;
A member of the monarchy was anointed by the king.
apocryphal
(adj.) counterfeit; of doubtful authorship or authenticity
The man who said he was a doctor was truly apocryphal.
apposite
(adj.) suitable; apt; relevant
Discussion of poverty was apposite to the curriculum, so the professor
allowed it.
apprehensive
(adj.) fearful; aware; conscious
The nervous child was apprehensive about beginning a new school year.
approbatory
(adj.) approving or sanctioning
The judge showed his acceptance in his approbatory remark.
arduous
(adj.) laborious, difficult; strenuous
Completing the plans for the new building proved to be an arduous affair.
aromatic
(adj.) having a smell which is sweet or spicy
arrogate
(v.) to claim or demand unduly
The teenager arrogated that he should be able to use his parent's car
aseptic
(adj.) germ free
askance
(adv.) a sideways glance of disapproval
The look askance proved the guard suspected some wrongdoing.
asperity
(n.) harshness
The man used asperity to frighten the girl out of going.
aspersion
(n.) slanderous statement; a damaging or derogatory criticism
The aspersion damaged the credibility of the organization.
assay
(n.) to determine the quality of a substance.
Have the soil assayed.
assiduous
(adj.) carefully attentive; industrious
It is necessary to be assiduous if a person wishes to make the most of
his time at work.
astringent
(n.; adj.) a substance that contracts bodily tissues; causing contraction;
tightening; stern, austere
astute
(adj.) cunning; sly; crafty
The astute lawyer's questioning convinced the jury of the defendant's
guilt.
atrophy
(v.; n.) to waste away, as from lack of use; to wither; failure to grow
A few months after he lost his ability to walk, his legs began to atrophy.
The atrophy of the muscles was due to the injury.
augment
(v.) to increase or add to; to make larger
They needed more soup so they augmented the recipe.
august
(adj.) to be imposing or magnificent
The palace was august in gold and crystal.
austere
(adj.) having a stern look; having strict self-discipline
The old woman always has an austere look about her.
aver
(v.) to affirm as true
The witness was able to aver the identity of the defendant.
awry
(adj; adv.) crooked(ly); uneven(ly); wrong; askew
Hearing the explosion in the laboratory, the scientist realized the
experiment had gone awry.
azure
(adj.) the clear blue color of the sky
The azure sky made the picnic day perfect.

B-List

baroque
(adj.) extravagant; ornate; embellished
The baroque artwork was made up of intricate details which kept the
museum-goers enthralled.
bastion
(n.) a fortified place or strong defense
The strength of the bastion saved the soldiers inside of it.
batten
(v.) to gain
The team could only batten by drafting the top player.
bauble
(n.) a showy yet useless thing
The woman had many baubles on her bookshelf.
beholden
(adj.) indebted to
The children were beholden to their parents for the car .
behoove
(v.) to be advantageous; to be necessary
It will behoove the students to buy their textbooks early.
bellicose
(adj.) quarrelsome; warlike
The bellicose guest would not be invited back again.
bemuse
(v.) to preoccupy in thought
The girl was bemused by her troubles.
bereft
(v.; adj.) to be deprived of; to be in a sad manner; hurt by someone's
death
The loss of his job will leave the man bereft of many luxuries.
beseech
(v.) to ask earnestly
The soldiers beseeched the civilians for help.
besmirch
(v.) to dirty or discolor
The soot from the chimney will besmirch clean curtains.
betroth
(v.) to promise or pledge in marriage
biennial
(adj.; n.) happening every two years; a plant which blooms every two
years
blighted
(adj.) causing frustration or destruction
The blighted tornado left only one building standing in its wake.
blithe
(adj.) happy; cheery; merry; a cheerful disposition
The wedding was a blithe celebration.
bode
(v.) to foretell something
The storm bode that we would not reach our destination.
brevity
(n.) briefness; shortness
On Top 40 AM radio, brevity was the coin of the realm.
brindled
(adj.) mixed with a darker color
In order to get matching paint we made a brindled mixture.
broach
(v.) to introduce into conversation
Broaching the touchy subject was difficult.
brusque
(adj.) abrupt in manner or speech
His brusque answer was neither acceptable nor polite.
bumptious
(adj.) arrogant
bungler
(n.) a clumsy person
The one who broke the crystal vase was a true bungler.
burgeon
(v.) to grow or develop quickly
The tumor appeared to burgeon more quickly than normal.
burlesque
(v.; n.) to imitate in a non-serious manner; a comical imitation
His stump speeches were so hackneyed, he seemed to be burlesquing of
his role as a congressman.
burly
(adj.) strong; bulky; stocky
The lumberjack was a burly man.
burnish
(v.) to polish by rubbing
The vase needed to be burnished to restore its beauty.

C-List

cabal
(n.) a group of persons joined by a secret
The very idea that there could be a cabal cast suspicion on the whole
operation.
callow
(adj.) being young or immature
With the callow remark the young man demonstrated his age.
calumny
(n.) slander
I felt it necessary to speak against the calumny of the man's good
reputation
canard
(n.) a false statement or rumor
The canard was reported in a scandalous tabloid.
candid
(adj.) honest; truthful; sincere
People trust her because she's so candid.
cant
(n.) insincere or hypocritical statements of high ideals;
caprice
(n.) a sudden, unpredictable or whimsical change (capricious:(adj.) changeable; fickle)
captious
(adj.) disposed to find fault
A captious attitude often causes difficulties in a relationship.
carte blanche
(n.) unlimited authority
The designer was given carte blanche to create a new line for the fall.
cascade
(n; v.) waterfall; pour; rush; fall
The hikers stopped along the path to take in the beauty of the rushing
cascade.
catharsis
(n.) a purging or relieving of the body or soul
He experienced a total catharsis after the priest absolved his sins.
cavil
(v.) to bicker
The children are constantly cavil
censure
(n.; v.) a disapproval; an expression of disapproval; to criticize or
disapprove of
chaffing
(n.) banter; teasing
The king was used to his jesters good-natured chaffing.
chagrin
(n.) a feeling of embarrassment due to failure or disappointment
To the chagrin of the inventor, the machine did not work.
charlatan
(n.) a person who pretends to have knowledge; an impostor; fake
The charlatan deceived the townspeople.
chicanery
(n.) trickery or deception
The swindler was trained in chicanery.
chimera
(n.) an impossible fancy
Perhaps he saw a flying saucer, but perhaps it was only a chimera.
choleric
(adj.) cranky; cantankerous; easily moved to feeling displeasure
chortle
(v.) to make a gleeful, chuckling sound
citadel
(n.) a fortress set up high to defend a city
cloture
(n.) a parliamentary procedure to end debate and begin to vote
coalesce
(v.) to grow together
The bride and groom coalesced their funds to increase their collateral.
coda
(n.) in music, a concluding passage
coddle
(v.) to treat with tenderness
A baby needs to be coddled

Should prostitution be legalized?

2009-12-19T02:53:00.007+05:30

A very typical argument for legalization of sex trade from typical liberals goes like: Since the government is unable to provide work or resources to these women and they chose to trade sex for money and hence becoming independent, What wrong will legalizing trade would do? Besides legalizing trade would perhaps result in safety of prostitutes rather than heckles from pimps, Respect to these human beings and probably education to their children, Medical help etc etc

Everything seems fine with this argument except the starting assumption, Why shouldn't government come forward to help these women do a job that they feel honorable? A prostitute certainly doesn't find her job respectable perhaps because society doesn't think so.

Are these women not capable of doing anything but trading their body?
Are liberals not calling these women incapable of doing anything but trading their body? Can't our government(Owner of a emerging market, World's emerging power) spend a billion or so to get these women do a clerical, tailoring, or sales personal job?

Morality is a relative term, for some, it's very important and for some others, it isn't. So, saying that support morality isn't really correct but to say that GIVE THEM CHANCE, SO THAT THEY CHOSE WHAT THEY FEEL HONORABLE is absolutely correct, Making sex trade legal will never make this business honorable, however oldest it may be, and so would never liberate these women, would never give respect to these women. Albeit they might feel safer from pimps, education to their kids merely because of their social status could still be a farther dream.

Come September by Arundhati Roy

2009-12-09T19:21:00.000+05:30

Howard Zinn: Well, thank you. [Applause]. This is a very nice crowd. [Laughter] Thank you Patrick Lannan for that introduction. I almost recognized myself. [Laughter] I'm here to introduce Arundhati Roy. I say this in hushed tones. Really, I never thought I would introduce Arundhati Roy.

I first encountered her - not personally - I encountered her when somebody said to me you must read The God of Small Things, which I did. And then, to almost everybody I met I said, you must read The God of Small Things. [Laughter]. And I was so struck by that book. You know, the passion, the eloquence, the beauty of language. I thought she must have written seven books before this. No. This is her first novel. I thought, well she will write seven books after this. No. This is her novel. Next thing I knew, I was reading essays of hers.

David Barsamian showed me an interview which I listened to. An interview he did with her. Anthony Amove told me about her. People talked about her. I read this book of essays called Power Politics and another book of essays, Cost of Living and what I realized was that this was not just a novelist. This was a person who cared about what was going on in the world; who is speaking out, devoting her energy now to speaking out against the enormous corporations in India that were driving poor people off their lands. She was defying the Supreme Court of India. Anybody who defies a Supreme Court is worth listening to, [laughter] you see. The Supreme Court referred to her as "that woman" [laughter] and she was held in contempt of court, which, of course, is an honor. [Laughter]

What it was about her is that she was taking this enormous talent that she had, which everybody now recognized, which millions of people around the world recognized by buying her book and reading The God of Small Things, she was taking this enormous talent and she was not putting it at the service of the other publishers who were demanding more novels from her, or begging her to write more novels, or movie producers who were saying, oh we must turn this into a movie.

No, she was taking her energy and her passion and her talent and putting it to the service of people: people in India and people around the world. And she was talking about war, and talking about globalization and talking about all of the controversial things that made the Supreme Court think that she was "that woman." This struck me because I've always had a very special, special admiration for those people who write poetry and novels and plays but who don't only do that; who take time out and speak to what is going on at the moment in the world on behalf of the children of the world, on behalf of people everywhere. This is what she has done.

She grew up...I don't know if I should go through her biography. That's what they do in introductions, right? [Laughter] A little bit. She grew up in Kerala which is a special place in India and studied architecture, which some people say accounts for the precision of her language. Who knows? There's a mystery there...about what's behind the way she uses language. She wrote screenplays. She also worked at all sorts of very ordinary jobs which is always helpful for enlarging a person's vision. And then, at a certain point, she sat down and wrote The God of Small Things. Or, she stood up and wrote The God of Small Things. I can't imagine how she wrote it, you see. [Laughter]

You might have gathered that I think it's a real honor to introduce Arundhati Roy. So, here she is.

[Applause]

Reading

EnterArundhati Roy: Thank you. I wish I could see you all better but it's quite dark out there. I'm so delighted to be here, and I'm so delighted that Howard Zinn is here to introduce me because I've never met him before but I think he's such a magical human being. Thank you, Howard. [Applause]

Just now, Howard asked me how do you decide what event or lecture you say yes to and how do you decide what you say no to? And I said I think it's perhaps one out of fifty on the average that I agree to do and I am very happy and proud to be doing this one because I know that those who have gone before me are people that I really admire and respect. So thank you to the Lannan Foundation for inviting me.

I have so many things to say and I hope I don't take too long to say them to you. I'm a writer, and so I've actually written what I want to say, for two reasons. One, because I'm sure that you are much more interested in the way I write than in the way I speak. And, second, because the things I have to say are complicated, dangerous things in these dangerous times and I think we have to be very, very precise about what we're saying and how we say them and the language that we use. So I hope it's okay if I read it out to you.

My talk today is called "Come September."

Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world. I'm beginning to believe that vanity makes them think so. That it's actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us. The public narrative, the private narrative - they colonize us. They commission us. They insist on being told. Fiction and nonfiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons that I don't fully understand, fiction dances out of me, and nonfiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning.

The theme of much of what I write, fiction as well as nonfiction, is the relationship between power and powerlessness and the endless, circular conflict they're engaged in. John Berger, that most wonderful writer, once wrote: "Never again will a single story be told as though it's the only one." There can never be a single story. There are only ways of seeing.

So when I tell a story, I tell it not as an ideologue who wants to pit one absolutist ideology against another, but as a story-teller who wants to share her way of seeing. Though it might appear otherwise, my writing is not really about nations and histories; it's about power. About the paranoia and ruthlessness of power. About the physics of power. I believe that the accumulation of vast unfettered power by a State or a country, a corporation or an institution - or even an individual, a spouse, a friend, a sibling -regardless of ideology, results in excesses such as the ones I will recount here.

Living as I do, as millions of us do, in the shadow of the nuclear holocaust that the governments of India and Pakistan keep promising their brain-washed citizenry, and in the global neighborhood of the War Against Terror (what President Bush rather biblically calls "The Task That Never Ends"), I find myself thinking a great deal about the relationship between Citizens and the State.

In India, those of us who have expressed views on Nuclear Bombs, Big Dams, Corporate Globalization and the rising threat of communal Hindu fascism - views that are at variance with the Indian Government's - are branded 'anti- national.' While this accusation doesn't fill me with indignation, it's not an accurate description of what I do or how I think. Because an 'anti-national' is a person who is against his or her own nation and, by inference, is pro some other one.

But it isn't necessary to be 'anti-national' to be deeply suspicious of all nationalism, to be anti-nationalism. Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century. Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead. [Applause] When independent- thinking people (and here I do not include the corporate media) begin to rally under flags, when writers, painters, musicians, film makers suspend their judgment and blindly yoke their art to the service of the "Nation," it's time for all of us to sit up and worry. In India we saw it happen soon after the Nuclear tests in 1998 and during the Cargill War against Pakistan in 1999. In the U.S. we saw it during the Gulf War and we see it now during the "War Against Terror." That blizzard of Made-in-China American flags. [Laughter]

Recently, those who have criticized the actions of the U.S. government (myself included) have been called "anti-American." Anti-Americanism is in the process of being consecrated into an ideology.

The term "anti-American" is usually used by the American establishment to discredit and, not falsely - but shall we say inaccurately - define its critics. Once someone is branded anti-American, the chances are that he or she will be judged before they are heard, and the argument will be lost in the welter of bruised national pride.

But what does the term "anti-American" mean? Does it mean you are anti-jazz? Or that you're opposed to freedom of speech? That you don't delight in Toni Morrison or John Updike? That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias? Does it mean that you don't admire the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear weapons, or the thousands of war resisters who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam? Does it mean that you hate all Americans?

This sly conflation of America's culture, music, literature, the breathtaking physical beauty of the land, the ordinary pleasures of ordinary people with criticism of the U.S. government's foreign policy (about which, thanks to America's "free press", sadly most Americans know very little) is a deliberate and extremely effective strategy. It's like a retreating army taking cover in a heavily populated city, hoping that the prospect of hitting civilian targets will deter enemy fire.

But there are many Americans who would be mortified to be associated with their government's policies. The most scholarly, scathing, incisive, hilarious critiques of the hypocrisy and the contradictions in U.S. government policy come from American citizens. When the rest of the world wants to know what the U.S. government is up to, we turn to Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Howard Zinn, Ed Herman, Amy Goodman, Michael Albert, Chalmers Johnson, William Blum and Anthony Amove to tell us what's really going on.

[Applause]

Similarly, in India, not hundreds, but millions of us would be ashamed and offended if we were in any way implicated with the present Indian government's fascist policies which, apart from the perpetration of State terrorism in the valley of Kashmir (in the name of fighting terrorism), have also turned a blind eye to the recent state-supervised progrom against Muslims in Gujarat. It would be absurd to think that those who criticize the Indian government are "anti-Indian" - although the government itself never hesitates to take that line. It is dangerous to cede to the Indian government or the American government or anyone for that matter, the right to define what "India" or "America" are or ought to be.

To call someone "anti-American", indeed to be anti-American, (or for that matter, anti-Indian or anti-Timbuktuan) is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those the establishment has set out for you. If you're not a Bushie you're a Taliban. If you don't love us, you hate us. If you're not Good, you're Evil. If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists.

Last year, like many others, I too made the mistake of scoffing at this post- September 11th rhetoric, dismissing it as foolish and arrogant. But I've realized it's not foolish at all. It's actually a canny recruitment drive for a misconceived, dangerous war. Everyday I'm taken aback at how many people believe that opposing the war in Afghanistan amounts to supporting terrorism, of voting for the Taliban. Now that the initial aim of the war - capturing Osama bin Laden (dead or alive) - seems to have run into bad weather, the goalposts have been moved. It's being made out that the whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban regime and liberate Afghan women from their burqas, we are being asked to believe that the U.S. marines are actually on a feminist mission [laughter, applause]. (If so, will their next stop be America's military ally Saudi Arabia?) [Laughter]

Think of it this way: in India there are some pretty reprehensible social practices against "untouchables", against Christians and Muslims, against women. Pakistan and Bangladesh have even worse ways of dealing with minority communities and women. Should they be bombed? Should Delhi, Islamabad and Dhaka be destroyed? Is it possible to bomb bigotry out of India? Can we bomb our way to a feminist paradise? [Laughter] Is that how women won the vote in the U.S? Or how slavery was abolished? Can we win redress for the genocide of the millions of Native Americans upon whose corpses the United States was founded by bombing Santa Fe? [Applause]

None of us need anniversaries to remind us of what we cannot forget. So it's no more than co-incidence that I happen to be here, on American soil, in September - this month of dreadful anniversaries. Uppermost on everybody's mind of course, particularly here in America, is the horror of what has come to be known as 9/11. Nearly three thousand civilians lost their lives in that lethal terrorist strike. The grief is still deep. The rage still sharp. The tears have not dried. And a strange, deadly war is raging around the world. Yet, each person who has lost a loved one surely knows secretly, deeply, that no war, no act of revenge, no daisy-cutters dropped on someone else's loved ones or someone else's children, will blunt the edges of their pain or bring their own loved ones back. War cannot avenge those who have died. War is only a brutal desecration of their memory.

To fuel yet another war - this time against Iraq - by cynically manipulating people's grief, by packaging it for TV specials sponsored by corporations selling detergent and running shoes, is to cheapen and devalue grief, to drain it of meaning. What we are seeing now is a vulgar display of the business of grief, the commerce of grief, the pillaging of even the most private human feelings for political purpose. It is a terrible, violent thing for a State to do to its people. [Applause]

It's not a clever-enough subject to speak of from a public platform, but what I would really love to talk to you about is Loss. Loss and losing. Grief, failure, brokenness, numbness, uncertainty, fear, the death of feeling, the death of dreaming. The absolute relentless, endless, habitual, unfairness of the world. What does loss mean to individuals? What does it mean to whole cultures, whole people who have learned to live with it as a constant companion?

Since it is September 11th we're talking about, perhaps it's in the fitness of things that we remember what that date means, not only to those who lost their loved ones in America last year, but to those in other parts of the world to whom that date has long held significance. This historical dredging is not offered as an accusation or a provocation. But just to share the grief of history. To thin the mists a little. To say to the citizens of America, in the gentlest, most human way: "Welcome to the World." [Applause]

Twenty-nine years ago, in Chile, on the 11th of September 1973, General Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in a CIA-backed coup. "Chile should not be allowed to go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible," said Henry Kissinger, Nobel Peace Laureate, then the U.S. Secretary of State.

After the coup President Allende was found dead inside the presidential palace. Whether he was killed or whether he killed himself, we'll never know. In the regime of terror that ensured, thousands of people were killed. Many more simply "disappeared". Firing squads conducted public executions. Concentration camps and torture chambers were opened across the country. The dead were buried in mine shafts and unmarked graves. For seventeen years the people of Chile lived in dread of the midnight knock, of routine "disappearances", of sudden arrest and torture. Chileans tell the story of how the musician Victor Jara had his hands cut off in front of a crowd in the Santiago stadium. Before they shot him, Pinochet's soldiers threw his guitar at him and mockingly asked him to play.

In 1999, following the arrest of General Pinochet in Britain, thousands of secret documents were declassified by the U.S. government. They contain unequivocal evidence of the CIA's involvement in the coup as well as the fact that the U.S. government had detailed information about the situation in Chile during General Pinochet's reign. Yet, Kissinger assured the general of his support: "In the United States as you know, we are sympathetic to what you're trying to do," he said. "We wish your government well."

Those of us who have only ever known life in a democracy, however flawed, would find it hard to imagine what living in a dictatorship and enduring the absolute loss of freedom means. It isn't just those who Pinochet murdered, but the lives he stole from the living that must be accounted for too.

Sadly, Chile was not the only country in South America to be singled out for the U.S. government's attentions. Guatemala, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, El Salvador, Peru, Mexico and Colombia - they've all been the playground for covert - and overt - operations by the CIA. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been killed, tortured or have simply disappeared under the despotic regimes that were propped up in their countries. If this were not humiliation enough, the people of South America have had to bear the cross of being branded as people who are incapable of democracy - as if coups and massacres are somehow encrypted in their genes.

This list does not, of course, include countries in Africa or Asia that suffered U.S. military interventions - Vietnam, Korea, Indonesia, Laos, and Cambodia. For how many Septembers for decades together have millions of Asian people been bombed, and burned, and slaughtered? How many Septembers have gone by since August 1945, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary Japanese people were obliterated by the nuclear strikes in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? For how many Septembers have the thousands who had the misfortune of surviving those strikes endured that living hell that was visited on them, their unborn children, their children's children, on the earth, the sky, the water, the wind, and all the creatures that swim and walk and crawl and fly? Not far from here, in Albuquerque, is the National Atomic Museum where Fat Man and Little Boy (the affectionate nicknames for the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) were available as souvenir earrings. Funky young people wore them. A massacre dangling in each ear. But I'm straying from my theme. It's September that we're talking about, not August.

September 11th has a tragic resonance in the Middle East, too. On the 11th of September 1922, ignoring Arab outrage, the British government proclaimed a mandate in Palestine, a follow-up to the 1917 Balfour Declaration which imperial Britain issued, with its army massed outside the gates of Gaza. The Balfour Declaration promised European Zionists a national home for Jewish people. (At the time, the Empire on which the Sun Never Set was free to snatch and bequeath national homes like a school bully distributes marbles.)

How carelessly imperial power vivisected ancient civilizations. Palestine and Kashmir are imperial Britain's festering, blood-drenched gifts to the modem world. Both are fault lines in the raging international conflicts of today.

In 1937, Winston Churchill said of the Palestinians, I quote, "I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." That set the trend for the Israeli State's attitude towards the Palestinians. In 1969, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said, "Palestinians do not exist." Her successor, Prime Minister Levi Eschol said, "What are Palestinians? When I came here (to Palestine), there were 250,000 non-Jews, mainly Arabs and Bedouins. It was a desert, more than underdeveloped. Nothing." Prime Minister Menachem Begin called Palestinians "two-legged beasts." Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir called them "grasshoppers" who could be crushed. This is the language of Heads of State, not the words of ordinary people.

In 1947, the U.N. formally partitioned Palestine and allotted 55 per cent of Palestine's land to the Zionists. Within a year, they had captured 76 per cent. On the 14th of May 1948 the State of Israel was declared. Minutes after the declaration, the United States recognized Israel. The West Bank was annexed by Jordan. The Gaza strip came under Egyptian military control, and formally Palestine ceased to exist except in the minds and hearts of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian people who became refugees. In 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza strip.

Over the decades there have been uprisings, wars, intifadas. Tens of thousands have lost their lives. Accords and treaties have been signed. Cease-fires declared and violated. But the bloodshed doesn't end. Palestine still remains illegally occupied. Its people live in inhuman conditions, in virtual Bantustans, where they are subjected to collective punishments, twenty-four hour curfews, where they are humiliated and brutalized on a daily basis. They never know when their homes will be demolished, when their children will be shot, when their precious trees will be cut, when their roads will be closed, when they will be allowed to walk down to the market to buy food and medicine. And when they will not. They live with no semblance of dignity. With not much hope in sight. They have no control over their lands, their security, their movement, their communication, their water supply. So when accords are signed, and words like "autonomy" and even "statehood" bandied about, it's always worth asking: What sort of autonomy? What sort of State? What sort of rights will its citizens have?

Young Palestinians who cannot control their anger turn themselves into human bombs and haunt Israel's streets and public places, blowing themselves up, killing ordinary people, injecting terror into daily life, and eventually hardening both societies' suspicion and mutual hatred of each other. Each bombing invites merciless reprisal and even more hardship on Palestinian people. But then suicide bombing is an act of individual despair, not a revolutionary tactic. Although Palestinian attacks strike terror into Israeli citizens, they provide the perfect cover for the Israeli government's daily incursions into Palestinian territory, the perfect excuse for old-fashioned, nineteenth-century colonialism, dressed up as a new fashioned, twenty-first century "war".

Israel's staunchest political and military ally is and always has been the U.S. The U.S. government has blocked, along with Israel, almost every U.N. resolution that sought a peaceful, equitable solution to the conflict. It has supported almost every war that Israel has fought. When Israel attacks Palestine, it is American missiles that smash through Palestinian homes. And every year Israel receives several billion dollars from the United States - taxpayers money.

What lessons should we draw from this tragic conflict? Is it really impossible for Jewish people who suffered so cruelly themselves - more cruelly perhaps than any other people in history - to understand the vulnerability and the yearning of those whom they have displaced? Does extreme suffering always kindle cruelty? What hope does this leave the human race with? What will happen to the Palestinian people in the event of a victory? When a nation without a state eventually proclaims a state, what kind of state will it be? What horrors will be perpetrated under its flag? Is it a separate state that we should be fighting for or, the rights to a life of liberty and dignity for everyone regardless of their ethnicity or religion?

Palestine was once a secular bulwark in the Middle East. But now the weak, undemocratic, by all accounts corrupt but avowedly nonsectarian P.L.O., is losing ground to Hamas, which espouses an overtly sectarian ideology and fights in the name of Islam. To quote from their manifesto: "we will be its soldiers and the firewood of its fire, which will burn the enemies."

The world is called upon to condemn suicide bombers. But can we ignore the long road they have journeyed on before they have arrived at this destination? September 11, 1922 to September 11, 2002 - eighty years is a long time to have been waging war. Is there some advice the world can give the people of Palestine? Should they just take Golda Meir's suggestion and make a real effort not to exist?

In another part of the Middle East, September 11th strikes a more recent cord. It was on the 11th of September 1990 that George W. Bush, Sr., then President of the U.S., made a speech to a joint session of Congress announcing his government's decision to go to war against Iraq.

The U.S. government says that Saddam Hussein is a war criminal, a cruel military despot who has committed genocide against his own people. That's a fairly accurate description of the man. In 1988, Saddam Hussein razed hundreds of villages in northern Iraq, used chemical weapons and machine guns to kill thousands of Kurdish people. Today we know that that same year the U.S. government provided him with $500 million in subsidies to buy American farm products. The next year, after he had successfully completed his genocidal campaign, the U.S. government doubled its subsidy to $1 billion. It also provided him with high quality germ seed for anthrax, and helicopters and dual-use material that could be used to manufacture chemical and biological weapons. So it turns out that while Saddam Hussein was carrying out his worst atrocities, the U.S. and the U.K. governments were his close allies.

So what changed? In 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. His sin was not so much that he had committed an act of war, but that he had acted independently, without orders from his master. This display of independence was enough to upset the power equation in the Gulf. So it was decided that Saddam Hussein be exterminated, like a pet that has outlived its owner's affection.

The first Allied attack on Iraq took place on January '91. The world watched the prime-time war as it was played out on T.V. (In India in those days you had to go to a five-star hotel lobby to watch CNN.) Tens of thousands of people were killed in a month of devastating bombing. What many do not know is that the war never ended then. The initial fury simmered down into the longest sustained air attack on a country since the Vietman War. Over the last decade American and British forces have fired thousands of missiles and bombs on Iraq. In the decade of economic sanctions that followed the war, Iraqi civilians have been denied food, medicine, hospital equipment, ambulances, clean water - the basic essentials.

About half a million Iraqi children have died as a result of the sanctions. Of them, Madeleine Albright, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, famously said, "It's a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it." "Moral equivalence" was the term that was used to denounce those of us who criticized the war on Afghanistan. Madeleine Albright cannot be accused of moral equivalence. What she said was just straightforward algebra.

A decade of bombing has not managed to dislodge Saddam Hussein, "the Beast of Baghdad". Now, almost 12 years on, President George Bush, Jr. has ratcheted up the rhetoric once again. He's proposing an all-out war whose goal is nothing short of a regime change. The New York Times says that the Bush administration is following, quote, "a meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress, and the Allies of the need to confront the threat of Saddam Hussein." Andrew. H. Card, Jr., the White House Chief of Staff, described how the administration was stepping up its war plans for the fall, and I quote, "From a marketing point of view", he said, "you don't introduce new products in August." This time the catch-phrase for Washington's "new product" is not the plight of Kuwaiti people but the assertion that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. "Forget the feckless moralizing of peace lobbies", wrote Richard Perle, a former advisor to President Bush, "We need to get him before he gets us."

Weapons inspectors have conflicting reports of the status of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and many have said clearly that its arsenal has been dismantled and that it does not have the capacity to build one. However, there is no confusion over the extent and range of America's arsenal of nuclear and chemical weapons. Would the U.S. government welcome weapons inspectors? Would the U.K.? Or Israel?

What if Iraq does have a nuclear weapon, does that justify a pre-emptive U.S. strike? The U.S. has the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world and it's the only country in the world to have actually used them on civilian populations. If the U.S. is justified in launching a pre-emptive strike on Iraq, why, then any nuclear power is justified in carrying out a pre- emptive strike on any other. India could attack Pakistan, or the other way around. If the U.S. government develops a distaste for, say, the Indian Prime Minister, can it just "take him out" with a pre-emptive strike?

Recently the United States played an important part in forcing India and Pakistan back from the brink of war. Is it so hard for it to take its own advice? Who is guilty of feckless moralizing? Of preaching peace while it wages war? The U.S., which George Bush has called "the most peaceful nation on earth", has been at war with one country or another every year for the last fifty.

Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons. They're usually fought for hegemony, for business. And then of course there's the business of war.

Protecting its control of the world's oil is fundamental to U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. government's recent military interventions in the Balkans and Central Asia have to do with oil. Hamid Karzai, the puppet President of Afghanistan installed by the U.S., is said to be a former employee of Unocal, the American-based oil company. The U.S. government's paranoid patrolling of the Middle East is because it has two-thirds of the world's oil reserves. Oil keeps America's engines purring sweetly. Oil keeps the Free Market rolling. Whoever controls the world's oil, controls the world's market. And how do you control the oil?

Nobody puts it more elegantly than The New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman. In an article called, "Craziness Pays", he said, "The U.S. has to make it clear to Iraq and U.S. allies that...American will use force without negotiation, hesitation or U.N. approval." His advice was well taken. In the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan as well as in the almost daily humiliation the U.S. government heaps on the U.N. In his book on globalization, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman says, and I quote, "The hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist. McDonalds cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas...and the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps." Perhaps this was written in a moment of vulnerability, but it's certainly the most succinct, accurate description of the project of corporate globalization that I have read.

After the 11th of September 2001 and the War Against Terror, the hidden hand and fist have had their cover blown - and we have a clear view now of America's other weapon - the Free Market - bearing down on the Developing World, with a clenched, unsmiling smile. The Task That Never Ends is America's perfect war, the perfect vehicle for the endless expansion of American imperialism. In Urdu, the word for Profit, as in "p-r-o-f-i-t", is fayda. Al Qaida means The Word, The Word of God, The Law. So, in India, some of us call the War Against Terror, Al Qaida versus Al Fayda - The Word versus The Profit (no pun intended.)

For the moment it looks as though Al Fayda will carry the day. But then you never know...

In the last ten years of unbridled Corporate Globalization, the world's total income has increased by an average of 2.5 percent a year. And yet the numbers of poor in the world has increased by 100 million. Of the top hundred biggest economies, 51 are corporations, not countries. The top 1 percent of the world has the same combined income as the bottom 57 percent and that disparity is growing. And now, under the spreading canopy of the War Against Terror, this process is being hustled along. The men in suits are in an unseemly hurry. While bombs rain down on us, and cruise missiles skid across the skies, while nuclear weapons are stockpiled to make the world a safer place, contracts are being signed, patents are being registered, oil pipe lines are being laid, natural resources are being plundered, water is being privatized, and democracies are being undermined.

In a country like India, the "structural adjustment" end of the Corporate Globalization project is ripping through people's lives. "Development" projects, massive privatization, and labor "reforms" are pushing people off their lands and out of their jobs, resulting in a kind of barbaric dispossession that has few parallels in history. Across the world, as the "Free Market" brazenly protects Western markets and forces developing countries to lift their trade barriers, the poor are getting poorer and the rich richer. Civil unrest has begun to erupt in the global village. In countries like Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Bolivia and India, the resistance movements against Corporate Globalization are growing. To contain them, governments are tightening their control. Protesters are being labeled "terrorists" and then being dealt with as such. But civil unrest does not only mean marches and demonstrations and protests against globalization. Unfortunately, it also means a desperate downward spiral into crime and chaos and all kinds of despair and disillusionment which as we know from history (and from what we see unspooling before our eyes), gradually becomes a fertile breeding ground for terrible things - cultural nationalism, religious bigotry, fascism and of course, terrorism.

All these march arm-in-arm with corporate globalization.

There is a notion gaining credence that the Free Market breaks down national barriers, and that Corporate Globalization's ultimate destination is a hippie paradise where the heart is the only passport and we all live happily together inside a John Lennon song. ("Imagine there's no country...") But this is a canard.

What the Free Market undermines is not national sovereignty, but democracy. As the disparity between the rich and poor grows, the hidden fist has its work cut out for it. Multinational corporations on the prowl for "sweetheart deals" that yield enormous profits cannot push through those deals and administer those projects in developing countries without the active connivance of State machinery - the police, the courts, sometimes even the army. Today Corporate Globalization needs an international confederation of loyal, corrupt, preferably authoritarian governments in poorer countries to push through unpopular reforms and quell the mutinies. It needs a press that pretends to be free. It needs courts that pretend to dispense justice. It needs nuclear bombs, standing armies, sterner immigration laws, and watchful coastal patrols to make sure that it's only money, goods, patents, and services that are being globalized - not the free movement of people, not a respect for human rights, not international treaties on racial discrimination or chemical and nuclear weapons, or greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, or god forbid, justice. It's as though even a gesture towards international accountability would wreck the whole enterprise.

Close to one year after the War against Terror was officially flagged off in the ruins of Afghanistan, in country after country freedoms are being curtailed in the name of protecting freedom, civil liberties are being suspended in the name of protecting democracy. All kinds of dissent are being defined as "terrorism". All kinds of laws are being passed to deal with it. Osama bin Laden seems to have vanished into thin air. Mullah Omar is supposed to have made his escape on a motorbike. (They could have sent TinTin after him.) [Laughter] The Taliban may have disappeared but their spirit, and their system of summary justice is surfacing in the unlikeliest of places. In India, in Pakistan, in Nigeria, in America, in all the Central Asian republics run by all manner of despots, and of course in Afghanistan under the U.S.-backed, Northern Alliance.

Meanwhile down at the mall there's a mid-season sale. Everything's discounted - oceans, rivers, oil, gene pools, fig wasps, flowers, childhoods, aluminum factories, phone companies, wisdom, wilderness, civil rights, eco-systems, air - all 4,600 million years of evolution. It's packed, sealed, tagged, valued and available off the rack. (No returns). As for justice - I'm told it's on offer too. You can get the best that money can buy.

Donald Rumsfeld said that his mission in the War Against Terror was to persuade the world that Americans must be allowed to continue their way of life. When the maddened king stamps his foot, slaves tremble in their quarters. So, standing here today, it's hard for me to say this, but "The American Way of Life" is simply not sustainable. Because it doesn't acknowledge that there is a world beyond America.

[Applause]

But fortunately, power has a shelf life. When the time comes, maybe this mighty empire will, like others before it, overreach itself and implode from within. It looks as though structural cracks have already appeared. As the War Against Terror casts its net wider and wider, America's corporate heart is hemorrhaging. For all the endless, empty chatter about democracy, today the world is run by three of the most secretive institutions in the world: The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization, all three of which, in turn, are dominated by the U.S. Their decisions are made in secret. The people who head them are appointed behind closed doors. Nobody really knows anything about them, their politics, their beliefs, their intentions. Nobody elected them. Nobody said they could make decisions on our behalf. A world run by a handful of greedy bankers and C.E.O.'s whom nobody elected can't possibly last.

Soviet-style communism failed, not because it was intrinsically evil but because it was flawed. It allowed too few people to usurp too much power. Twenty-first century market-capitalism, American style, will fail for the same reasons. Both are edifices constructed by the human intelligence, undone by human nature.

The time has come, the Walrus said. Perhaps things will become worse and then better. Perhaps there's a small god up in heaven readying herself for us. Another world is not only possible, she's on her way. Maybe many of us won't be here to greet her, but on a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing.

Thank you. [Applause]

Thank you.

I just want to say that, you know, I was so terrified of coming to America, because, when you read the papers and when you watch whatever you get to see on TV, which is Fox News, you know, in India [laughter], you know... this corporate media just makes out as if everybody in America is, you know, a clone of George Bush. [laughter] I'm just so glad that I came because it just reaffirms my faith in humanity to see you here and to not have tomatoes thrown at me.

Thank you. [Applause]

Conversation

Howard Zinn: We're just going to sit up here. [Laughter] Arundhati just said to me, Well, we can talk about the things I left out. [Laughter] Well, I guess. . .. what did you leave out? [Laughter] I was sitting there, listening to you, and thinking: there it was. There it is.

Arundhati Roy: OK. Let's go. [Laughter]

Zinn: You don't want me to say anything nice about? OK. But really, what I thought as I was sitting there, is there is this mastery of detail, all expressed in the most poetic and beautiful way. That combination is so hard to achieve. I know this is not a lead-in to a conversation, it's a final statement. [Laughter] [Applause]

Let me ask you this, Arundhati. How did you come to decide, after writing The God of Small Things, that you were not going to immediately sit down and write another novel?

Roy: Well, actually, I would have had to decide to sit down and write another novel. In that I've never believed in this thing of having a single profession and doing it, doing the same thing all your life. It's like your brain is growing in one direction, like some tumor. I never...a lot of people keep saying to me that you must be under a lot of pressure from your publishers to write another book. Well, I think that's, I mean, it's a bit dishonest to put it that way for me because no one can pressurize me, you know. They don't have a handle on me. It's a relief. If I wanted to accept that pressure, it would be a pressure.

And I just think that very soon, actually, very soon after I finished writing The God of Small Things, and it came out, India did, you know, it's nuclear tests, and I recognized the fact that here was, you know, the papers, and lots of public people, and writers and painters, and everybody was standing up and applauding this horrible act. And I realized then that, you know, staying quiet was as political an act as speaking out. and I had this space to make a statement And if I didn't, it was something that I couldn't live with. Which was when I wrote The End of Imagination.

And also, I think being involved in the kinds of things I've been involved in in the last few years have been wonderful for me because I've met the most extraordinary people. I've been close to the most extraordinary political happenings. And I also know that when I'm ready to write another book, if I'm ready to write? I keep saying The God of Small Things was a collaboration between me and a little bit of magic. And you have to know how to wait, you know. It'll come. If it doesn't, that's all right, but if it does, it will come. You can't, you can't just force...you know it's not some factory product.

Zinn: No one would accuse that of being a factory product.

Roy: No. [Laughter] No, I mean the next.

Zinn: It was interesting what you said about, you know, turning to the political world from writing a novel. You encountered people.., you suddenly found all these people you could work with and do things with and the writer, working alone, writing a novel or a poem doesn't experience that. And the writers who never come out of their study, you know, or out of their agent's office, right, and get out into the struggle and turmoil of the world, they are missing something, you know, very, very important.

Roy: I think the truth is that I was actually always a political person. Obviously, it's not something that suddenly happens to you. So, when I was studying architecture, by the time I was in 4th year, I knew that I would never practice architecture. I had become very interested in town planning and how cities came to be the way they were and how land use plans, and architectural plans, are designed to exclude most people and make them illegal. You know, the whole business of the citizen, and the non-citizen.

So, in a sense, The God of Small Things is also a very political book. I don't think... obviously I was never the kind of person who was only in their agent's office because I didn't have an agent. I didn't even know there were such things, until you know, I wrote The God of Small Things...

Zinn: I'm sorry to have brought it up.

Roy: No. [Laughter] But, you're right. I think the business of getting into the world, and living your life, Living and then writing about what you live, is what interests me. And the idea that, I mean...I live in times, and I think that those times are here in America now, but they've been in India for a while, where, when you write something, the worst thing that can happen to you is not a bad review, you know. Some how it's injected directly into life and you never know what's going to happen if you write a book. I mean, The God of Small Things... I was, of course, taken to court for corrupting public morality...

Zinn: Yes.

Roy: ... which I had a technical problem with because, I said, at least he should have said, "further corrupting public morality". [Laughter]

Zinn: When I read about that charge against you I immediately went back to The God of Small Things because I wanted to see what pages they were...[laughter]...that were possibly corrupting public morality and I found them. [Laughter] It was wonderful. [Laughter]

You said before you were always a political person. I mean, not from the age of three or four or five. You said something about when you were somehow finishing work at the school of architecture at some point you decided, no, this was not for you. So something must - did something happen?

Roy: Well, actually, you know, absurdly, it does start from the age of three or four because I lived in a...you know my mother came from this very little village in Kerala called Kottayam and she belongs to a very parochial community called the Syrian Christians and she married a Bengali, you know, outside the community. And then made the mistake of marrying him and then divorcing him and came back to the village. And so we grew up sort of outside the realm of all the protections that that society chose to offer its members. So from a very young age, one was aware of the fact that you were not going to be given those protections. You had to constantly try to understand what was going on and how to survive in this space and how not to go under. So my mother is very political, not in this overt way but I think the minute you loose the protection of this nuclear family that protects you from the world you're on your own. And then politics is in your life. You have to ride the waves. You have to understand it.

Zinn: You were on your own, as a woman, which is a special situation. I mean, not just in India, I suppose being a woman on your own anywhere...

Roy: Yes.

Zinn: ...is something to deal with but I imagine that maybe in India there was something about that?

Roy: It was... though my mother and I are great mates now, when I was 17 I left home and I was on my own, being "that woman" as the Supreme Court judges write to call me. I think...you see what happens in India is that the "real life" is so frightening that the middle class really protects itself and really turns inwards. It's almost blind. It's almost like they have some lenses that fall over their eyes and they can't see. They can't see the horrors around because that's the only way to survive in some sense. I think when you fall out of that cozy, little nest and there's no safety net, you realize that it's not all that horrible, actually. I don't think that you can ever unlearn that, once you've been there, however briefly, or however temporarily. You don't forget. You don't forget, whatever happens to you. I keep thinking that there are people in the world who are safe, and there are people in the world who are unsafe. And if you're unsafe you always seek out the unsafe. Whatever happens to you in your life, you're always sort of taking that walk. So it was the best university, I think, to go to.

Zinn: It's interesting what you say about the middle class, blinding itself, protecting itself from what is happening to so much of the population. And this is so much the history of the United States which developed perhaps the largest middle class. That is, the United States has had enough wealth so it could bribe enough people in the population to create a middle class which became useful as a buffer between the very rich and that part of the population which could not even rise into the middle class. So the middle class, in the United States, has always been enticed by the establishment into thinking that it can rise into the upper class and not told that it can also descend. [Laughter]. The result is that the United States educational system teaches us from the very beginning that we are not a class society. To use the term "class", in the United States...it's just a term you use for school, right. [Laughter] "This is my class" sort of thing.

Roy: "I'm in 6th class."

Zinn: Yes. The idea of a class society is something that has always made people in power nervous. If anybody brings up the idea of class - class conflict, class struggle - you mustn't talk about that. We're brought up in the United States to believe that we're one big happy family. [Laughter]

Roy: And aren't you?

Zinn: [Laughter] We all have the same interests. In fact we have the language to try to make that imprint on the American people. The language of national interest, the phrase is "national interest"?

Roy: I'm familiar with it.

Zinn: ...assuming we all have the same interest: Exxon and I.

Roy: Enron and I. [Laughter]

Zinn: Enron and you. [Laughter] Yes. So it takes...but there's a perception that people in the United States have growing up, especially people in the working classes of the United States, they know that their interests and Exxon are not the same. And they show it.

Roy: Well, the thing is, in India it's so complicated that the more, the longer you live there, the more confused you get because when you think of class in India you have so many other things too. You have caste which is a complex business because...I grew up in Kerala which had the first ever democratically elected Marxist government in the world. But all the leaders of the Marxist party are Brahmins. [Laughter] It's a very complex way they use all these things. Indian democracy must be one of the most fascinating beasts on earth. Then you have such a complicated network of region and religion and language. So you have a situation where you have a country where we have I think it's 18 or 19 official languages, and hundreds and hundreds of dialects. You can't...you know the Supreme Court functions in English. Nobody can understand what's going on in there. I mean, even if you speak English you can't understand. [Laughter]

Zinn: Yes.

Roy: Imagine when they gave a judgment about me. They said, "vicious stultification and vulgar debunking cannot be permitted to pollute the pure stream of justice". [Laughter].

Zinn: That's what you were doing?

Roy: I had to look up in the dictionary to figure out what they meant and at the end of it they just kept saying, "but the respondent is not behaving like a reasonable man". [Laughter] At least I can follow what they're saying. But people from the Narmada valley, they have no idea what is this court, how do you file a police case? Or if there is a police case filed against you, what does it say, what are you supposed? It's like living ...it's like if I was living in Czechoslovakia or something. How would I function? And that's the way most Indians have to function in India.

Zinn: We don't understand our Supreme Court either. [Laughter] [Applause] The whole object of going to law school...

Roy: We're not meant to understand.

Zinn: ...is to not allow people to understand what you're saying.

Roy: Exactly. [Laughter] One of the reasons that the court got very angry with me was because when they filed this case, I said I won't get a lawyer and I will write my own reply, which I did. It was perfectly legal. I checked it with a lawyer. But it was written in language that ordinary people could understand. It was published in the press and that they didn't like. So every time I went to court they got a rash, like, why is she here? Take her away.

Zinn: Well, defending yourself is not something you're supposed to do because you're taking a job away from people who are desperately unemployed... [Laughter]...need work. So they don't like people to defend themselves.

But it's interesting. During the Vietnam war, we began to get used to people defending themselves in court because we had these anti-war protesters were part of this new '60s generation. Forget the experts, forget the professionals, we don't have any faith in them. All these lawyers are over 30. We don't want... and we don't trust professionals. We want to speak for ourselves. It was such a refreshing thing, actually. That they were breaking through this notion that somebody must speak for you. So, in trial after trial that took place of anti-war protestors, people represented themselves which made judges very nervous, made the prosecution very nervous, but enabled the honest feelings of the defendants to come across to the court.

Roy: But in India the whole thing about contempt of court... it has a very sinister edge to it because...the Supreme Court is actually the most powerful institution in India. As the government and the politicians get more and more corrupt, the Supreme Court has started making huge decisions on their behalf. So the Supreme Court decides whether a dam should be built or not, whether slums should be cleared or not, whether industry should be in the city or outside, whether privatization should be endorsed, whether structural adjustment is a good thing or not. All these decisions which affect the lives of millions of people are being taken now in the Supreme Court and the contempt of court act - law - says that while you can criticize a judgment, you cannot put a series of judgments together and say what is the Supreme Court up to? What is the politics of the Supreme Court? Supposing I have evidence that a Supreme Court judge was corrupt? Supposing I had him on film taking a bribe? It's not admissible in court because you can't lower the dignity of the court by saying that a judge is corrupt. [Laughter] This is the situation.

Even when I went to prison for contempt of court and came out - we had a big press conference, there were hundreds of journalists, a lot of senior editors spoke out quite bravely about this act. They are most scared of the court; more scared of the court than of politicians, and a normal journalist ...it's not that you're going to have a death sentence if you commit contempt of court, but six months in prison you're going to lose your job, you're going to have maybe two or three years of a criminal trial, you have to hire a lawyer, no one is willing to take the risk. So there's just dead silence on that subject. It's very, very frightening. And that's what I said in my affidavit. A judicial dictatorship is as bad as any other kind of dictatorship. [Applause]

Zinn: We have a situation where the Supreme Court does make decisions which are important but not usually on the most important things. And by that I mean on issues of war and peace. That is, when it comes to issues of war and peace, the Supreme Court may just as well not exist.

Roy: Well, that's true...

Zinn: They just defer to the power of the President, just as Congress defers to the power of the President. There's no democracy in foreign policy. You brought up the issue...you said democracy in India is very complicated. Well, democracy in the United States is very complicated because we have democracy and we don't have democracy. It's here and it's not here.

Roy: And it's gone.

Zinn: Yes. And you have democracy once in four years, for a moment. [Laughter]

Roy: Yes.

Zinn: And even there you don't have democracy. [Applause]

You are supposed to have political democracy with elected representatives and so on, but you certainly don't have economic democracy. You don't have democracy in the work place. You don't have democracy in every day life. There is a pretense that you have democracy in political life but...

Roy: You have elections.

Zinn: Yes.

Roy: Elections are democracy.

Zinn: Yes, elections. Imagine, you go into the voting booth and you pull the chain, [laughter] and you have fulfilled your duty. And that's it. And then you can sit back and let the President do what he wants. During the Vietnam war... there are Americans who are naive enough to believe the constitution of the United States, to believe what they learned in junior high school about American democracy and they learned that we have three branches - everybody learns the same thing, you must have some things that everybody learns - and here what we learn is that we have three branches of government. The teacher always makes a diagram on the board [laughter] which is very... because you can't imagine it in you head. [laughter] You can keep two things but not three things in your head. [Laughter]

And so you have three branches of government: the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. And what you learn is that there are checks and balances [laughter] and that each branch is there to check the other. And when you sit there, as a young person, you say this is marvelous. Nothing bad can happen. [Laughter] And then you grow up and you see nothing but bad things happen.

During the Vietnam War, the President decides on war or I should say the President and the people around him, some of them unknown to the public, others not known to the public. The President and the people around him decide on war. He goes to Congress. To me it's absurd that liberal people today... the most courage that some Congressmen can muster up against the war in Iraq is to say let Congress vote on it. As if we don't know the history of Congressional obsequiousness.

That we don't know the history of Congress approving every war that has ever been fought in one way or another. What happened during the Vietnam War is that a number of G.Is, and this is one of the glorious things about the Vietnam war was the uprising of soldiers against the war and the organization of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, wonderful dramatic scenes of that kind of resistance. There were these G.Is who refused to go to Vietnam. They said the Constitution says Congress must declare war. Congress has not declared war.

And they had learned in junior high school that the job of the Supreme Court is to it that things are constitutional. So they appealed to the Supreme Court. And what did the Supreme Court do? It said, we can't handle this. The Supreme Court - they have black robes, you think they have power, and they shrink into the distance as war appears. So it's left then to the people, which happened during the Vietnam War. And I think what you're talking about in India, it's left to the people of India.

I saw that film - a wonderful film was made about Arundhati's little tiff with the Supreme Court. I didn't know how to describe it. [Laughter] I didn't want to say a war with the Supreme Court.

Roy: Flirtation. [Laughter]

Zinn: A little encounter with... there's a wonderful film made about it which you should see and it was great to see the huge crowds of people supporting you during that. I'm sure it was because of those huge crowds that the Supreme Court went easy on you, didn't sentence you to life imprisonment. [Laughter]

Roy No, life was not on the cards, fortunately.

Zinn: But I liked what you said about the...that in India there's a kind of inherent anarchism which will save India.

Roy: We hope. I think it's like... trying to corporatize India is like trying to put an iron grid on the ocean. I just think even though Fascists are not disciplined, they're... hopefully they'll mess it up.

Zinn: I think we can count on them to mess it up.

Roy: I hope so.

Zinn: We need that. We'll try our best. We'll accomplish a lot, but we do really need them to mess it up.

Roy: Absolutely.

Zinn: But I think we can count on it. [Laughter]

Roy: Yes.

Zinn: Because they do it.

Roy: They do it. The only trouble Howard, is that in India right now, I think few Americans know about this, but in March this year, the BJP which is the Bharatija Janata Party is part of what they call the Sangh Parivar, a whole sort of family of Hindu right wing organizations. The BJP is the political end of it and what's called the RSS - the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh - is the cultural guild. Now the Prime Minister, the Home Minister, the disinvestment minister, all these people belong to the RSS. The RSS has been preparing the ground for this kind of right wing - India is only for the Hindus thing - since the late '20s and they are open admirers of Hitler and his methods and so on, and in March this year there was a massacre of Muslims in Gujarat. As soon as the massacre was over, the Gujarat government, headed by the BJP, wanted to hold elections because they felt that they would win the election because they'd polarized the vote.

All over India they have what are called (untranslatable) which are branches where young people, 10-year-old children, are being indoctrinated into religious bigotry and hatred, and how to create communal trouble, and how to rewrite history books, and all this is happening. So the Fascists will definitely mess it up. In fact the reason they're so desperate is because in State after State they were losing the election. But you see, now, whether they're in power or not, they've injected this poison into the veins of a very complex country and that's very frightening, very, very frightening, to have to deal with on a daily basis.

You cannot imagine the things that happened in Gujarat - little children were... 2,000 people were killed, women were raped, women had their stomachs slit open and their fetuses pulled out. Not one or two but many, many. Little children were forced to drink petrol then matches were put down their throats and they just blew up like bombs. It's a very, very frightening situation just now. This government in India keeps saying, we're natural allies of the U.S. So there hasn't...it's not just a coincidence that this was not reported or that it's being suppressed. The whole nuclear flashpoint with Pakistan was mostly due to the fact that the Indian government wanted to distract attention from - the world's attention from - Gujarat to this, and it was very, very successful in doing that.

Zinn: Well, if I hadn't read what you wrote about Gujarat and what happened there, I would never have known, because people in the United States do not know what's happening in India. People in the United Sates generally know very little about what is happening in the rest of the world.

Roy: Thanks to the "free press".

Zinn: Yes. [Laughter] It's clear that what we need more and more is this interchange across boundaries.

Roy: Yes. Real globalization.

Zinn: People's globalization. [Applause] I see the world with chalk lines dividing everybody. And I see us as having the job of, little by little, walking across those?

Roy: And rubbing them off.

Zinn: ..and rubbing those chalk lines out.

Roy: That's why I keep saying that I think that literature is the opposite of a nuclear bomb. When I wrote The God of Small Things I would go to Estonia, and Finland, and hear from China, people would say, oh, but this was my childhood. One of the reasons why I never wanted it to be made into a film was because I thought there are six or seven million films going on in people's heads and this one filmmaker will come and take it away. Let it be the world's childhood. [Applause]

The idea that there is that; that there is... that human beings across the world do share love, and terror, and gentleness, and these things which literature links up and which nuclear bombs just build the walls and separate.

ZINN: I think your coming here does that. Not only your writing does that but your coming here and us listening to you and knowing that we are part of a 'carass'. Have any you have read Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle? Kurt Vonnegut is remarkable? this remarkable, interesting, odd mind. In Cat's Cradle he talks about a 'carass'. A carass is when people feel an affinity with one another. They don't know exactly why but it crosses all lines. It crosses national, racial, sexual... it crosses all lines. That's what we depend on.

Roy: Yes. It's like I'd never been to Pakistan. Delhi and Pakistan - I mean Lahore - are maybe a one-hour flight away from each other. I went to Pakistan last month. I had to go from Delhi to Dubai to Islamabad to Lahore. It took me 18 hours. There is so much in the Indian press and equally in the Pakistan press about anti-Indian demonstrations and anti-Pakistan demonstrations and we're all going to kill each other and everybody hates everybody and so on.

I landed in Lahore and within seconds we were all sitting at this dining table and I felt like I was in Delhi. It was just so sad and the audience that came... people were just in tears, not because of me or what I said or anything, just because it's such a relief not to always be subjected to this media's representation of government positions. I really feel that the media, the corporate media, has played a terrible part in all this and people are just going to have to blow holes in this dam between them and insist on listening to independent real voices, real human beings. [Applause]

Zinn: We were saying to one another, when you were not listening, that it's very hard to end a conversation on stage.[Laughter] And so the thought was that we would finish by Arundhati reading something that you would like to read to all of us.

Roy: OK. It'll just be two minutes and I just want to leave you with a thought, with a way of seeing. This is part of the essay that I wrote when India tested nuclear weapons in 1998. It's quite a long essay so this is just a very small extract, a very personal part of it.

"In early May 1988, I left home for three weeks. While I was away, I met a friend of mine whom I've always loved for, among other things, her ability to combine deep affection with a frankness bordering on savagery. [Laughter]

"I've been thinking about you", she said..."about The God of Small Things -- what's in it, what's over it, under it, around it, above it??"

She fell silent for a while. I was uneasy and not at all sure that I wanted to hear the rest of what she had to say. She, however, was sure that she was going to say it. "In this last year - less than a year actually - you've had too much of everything - fame, money, prizes, adulation, criticism, condemnation, ridicule, love, hate, anger, envy, generosity - everything. In some ways it's a perfect story. Perfectly baroque in its excess. The trouble is that it has, or can have, only one perfect ending." Her eyes were on me, bright, with a slanting, probing brilliance. She knew that I knew what she was going to say. She was insane.

She was going to say that nothing that happened to me in the future could ever match the buzz of this. That the whole of the rest of my life was going to be vaguely dissatisfying. And, therefore, the only perfect ending to the story would be death. [Laughter] My death.

[Laughter]

You've lived too long in New York, I told her. There are other worlds. Other kinds of dreams. Dreams in which failure is feasible. Honorable. Sometimes even worth striving for. Worlds in which recognition is not the only barometer of brilliance or human worth. There are plenty of warriors that I know and love, people far more valuable than myself, who go to war each day, knowing in advance that they will fail. True, they're less successful in the most vulgar sense of the word, but by no means less fulfilled.

The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead.

"Which means exactly what", she said, looking a little annoyed. [Laughter]

I tried to explain, but didn't do a very good job of it because sometimes I need to write to think. So I wrote it down for her on a paper napkin and this is what I wrote:

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget.

Roy: Thank you. [Applause]

Thank you.

How deep shall we dig? By Arundhati Roy

2009-12-03T23:59:00.000+05:30

RECENTLY, A young Kashmiri friend was talking to me about life in Kashmir. Of the morass of political venality and opportunism, the callous brutality of the security forces, of the osmotic, inchoate edges of a society saturated in violence, where militants, police, intelligence officers, government servants, businessmen and even journalists encounter each other, and gradually, over time, become each other. He spoke of having to live with the endless killing, the mounting `disappearances', the whispering, the fear, the unresolved rumours, the insane disconnection between what is actually happening, what Kashmiris know is happening and what the rest of us are told is happening in Kashmir. He said, "Kashmir used to be a business. Now it's a mental asylum."

The more I think about that remark, the more apposite a description it seems for all of India. Admittedly, Kashmir and the North East are separate wings that house the more perilous wards in the asylum. But in the heartland too, the schism between knowledge and information, between what we know and what we're told, between what is unknown and what is asserted, between what is concealed and what is revealed, between fact and conjecture, between the `real' world and the virtual world, has become a place of endless speculation and potential insanity. It's a poisonous brew which is stirred and simmered and put to the most ugly, destructive, political purpose.

Each time there is a so-called `terrorist strike', the Government rushes in, eager to assign culpability with little or no investigation. The burning of the Sabarmati Express in Godhra, the December 13th attack on the Parliament building, or the massacre of Sikhs by so called `terrorists' in Chittisinghpura are only a few, high profile examples. In each of these cases, the evidence that eventually surfaced raised very disturbing questions and so was immediately put into cold storage. Take the case of Godhra: as soon as it happened the Home Minister announced it was an ISI plot. The VHP says it was the work of a Muslim mob throwing petrol bombs. Serious questions remain unanswered. There is endless conjecture. Everybody believes what they want to believe, but the incident is used to cynically and systematically whip up communal frenzy.

The U.S. Government used the lies and disinformation generated around the September 11th attacks to invade not just one country, but two — and heaven knows what else is in store.

The Indian Government uses the same strategy not with other countries, but against its own people.

Over the last decade, the number of people who have been killed by the police and security forces runs into the tens of thousands. Recently several Bombay policemen spoke openly to the press about how many `gangsters' they had eliminated on `orders'. Andhra Pradesh chalks up an average of about 200 `extremists' in `encounter' deaths a year. In Kashmir in a situation that almost amounts to war, an estimated 80,000 people have been killed since 1989. Thousands have simply `disappeared'. According to the records of the Association of Parents of Disappeared People (APDP) in Kashmir more than 3,000 people have been killed in 2003, of whom 463 were soldiers. Since the Mufti Mohammed Sayeed Government came to power in October 2002 on the promise of bringing a `healing touch', the APDP says there have been 54 custodial deaths. But in this age of hyper-nationalism, as long as the people who are killed are labelled gangsters, terrorists, insurgents or extremists, their killers can strut around as crusaders in the national interest, and are answerable to no one.

The Indian state's proclivity to harass and terrorise people has been institutionalised by the enactment of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA). It has been promulgated in 10 States. A cursory reading of POTA will tell you that it is draconian and ubiquitous. It's a versatile, hold-all law that could apply to anyone — from an Al-Qaeda operative caught with a cache of explosives to an Adivasi playing his flute under a neem tree, to you or me. The genius of POTA is that it can be anything the Government wants it to be. We live on the sufferance of those who govern us. In Tamil Nadu it has been used to stifle criticism of the State Government. In Jharkhand 3,200 people, mostly poor Adivasis accused of being Maoists, have been named in FIRs under POTA. In eastern Uttar Pradesh the Act is used to clamp down on those who dare to protest about the alienation of their land and livelihood rights. In Gujarat and Mumbai it is used almost exclusively against Muslims. In Gujarat after the 2002 state-assisted pogrom in which an estimated 2000 Muslims were killed and 150,000 driven from their homes, 287 people have been accused under POTA. Of these, 286 are Muslim and one is a Sikh! POTA allows confessions extracted in police custody to be admitted as judicial evidence. In effect, under the POTA regime, police torture tends to replace police investigation. It's quicker, cheaper and ensures results. Talk of cutting back on public spending.

Last month I was a member of a peoples' tribunal on POTA. Over a period of two days we listened to harrowing testimonies of what goes on in our wonderful democracy. Let me assure you that in our police stations it's everything: from people being forced to drink urine, to being stripped, humiliated, given electric shocks, burned with cigarette butts, having iron rods put up their anuses to being beaten and kicked to death.

POTA courts are not open to public scrutiny. POTA inverts the accepted dictum of criminal law — that a person is innocent until proven guilty. Under POTA you cannot get bail unless you can prove you are innocent — of a crime that you have not been formally charged with. Technically, we are a nation waiting to be accused. It would be naïve to imagine that POTA is being `misused'. On the contrary. It is being used for precisely the reasons it was enacted. Of course if the recommendations of the Malimath Committee are implemented, POTA will soon become redundant. The Malimath Committee recommends that in certain respects normal criminal law be brought in line with the provisions of POTA. There'll be no more criminals then. Only terrorists. It's kind of neat.

Today in Jammu and Kashmir and many North Eastern States the Armed Forces Special Powers Act allows not just officers but even Junior Commissioned Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers of the army to use force on (and even kill) any person on suspicion of disturbing public order or carrying a weapon. On suspicion of! Nobody who lives in India can harbour any illusions about what that leads to. The documentation of instances of torture, disappearances, custodial deaths, rape and gang-rape (by security forces) is enough to make your blood run cold. The fact that despite all this India retains its reputation as a legitimate democracy in the international community and amongst its own middle class is a triumph.

The Armed Forces Special Powers Act is a harsher version of the Ordinance that Lord Linlithgow passed in 1942 to handle the Quit India Movement. In 1958 it was clamped on parts of Manipur which were declared `disturbed areas'. In 1965 the whole of Mizoram, then still part of Assam, was declared `disturbed'. In 1972 the Act was extended to Tripura. By 1980 the whole of Manipur had been declared `disturbed'. What more evidence does anybody need to realise that repressive measures are counter-productive and only exacerbate the problem?

Juxtaposed against this unseemly eagerness to repress and eliminate people, is the Indian state's barely hidden reluctance to investigate and bring to trial, cases in which there is plenty of evidence: the massacre of 3000 Sikhs in Delhi in 1984, the massacre of Muslims in Bombay in 1993 and in Gujarat in 2002 (not one conviction to date!); the murder a few years ago of Chandrashekhar, former president of the JNU students union; the murder 12 years ago of Shankar Guha Nyogi of the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha are just a few examples. Eyewitness accounts and masses of incriminating evidence are not enough when all of the state machinery is stacked against you.

Meanwhile, economists cheering from the pages of corporate newspapers inform us that the GDP growth rate is phenomenal, unprecedented. Shops are overflowing with consumer goods. Government storehouses are overflowing with foodgrain. Outside this circle of light, farmers steeped in debt are committing suicide in their hundreds. Reports of starvation and malnutrition come in from across the country. Yet the Government allowed 63 million tonnes of grain to rot in its granaries. 12 million tonnes were exported and sold at a subsidised price the Indian Government was not willing to offer the Indian poor. Utsa Patnaik, the well known agricultural economist, has calculated foodgrain availability and foodgrain absorption in India for nearly a century, based on official statistics. She calculates that in the period between the early 1990s and 2001, foodgrain absorption has dropped to levels lower than during the World War-II years, including during the Bengal Famine in which 3 million people died of starvation. As we know from the work of Professor Amartya Sen, democracies don't take kindly to starvation deaths. They attract too much adverse publicity from the `free press'.

So dangerous levels of malnutrition and permanent hunger are the preferred model these days. 47 per cent of India's children below three suffer from malnutrition, 46 per cent are stunted. Utsa Patnaik's study reveals that about 40 per cent of the rural population in India has the same foodgrain absorption level as Sub-Saharan Africa. Today, an average rural family eats about 100 kg less food in a year than it did in the early 1990s. The last five years have seen the most violent increase in rural-urban income inequalities since independence.

But in urban India, wherever you go, shops, restaurants, railway stations, airports, gymnasiums, hospitals, you have TV monitors in which election promises have already come true. India's Shining, Feeling Good. You only have to close your ears to the sickening crunch of the policeman's boot on someone's ribs, you only have to raise your eyes from the squalor, the slums, the ragged broken people on the streets and seek a friendly TV monitor and you will be in that other beautiful world. The singingdancing world of Bollywood's permanent pelvic thrusts, of permanently privileged, permanently happy Indians waving the tri-colour and Feeling Good. It's becoming harder and harder to tell which one's the real world and which one's virtual. Laws like POTA are like buttons on a TV. You can use it to switch off the poor, the troublesome, the unwanted.

There is a new kind of secessionist movement taking place in India. Shall we call it New Secessionism? It's an inversion of Old Secessionism. It's when people who are actually part of a whole different economy, a whole different country, a whole different planet, pretend they're part of this one. It is the kind of secession in which a relatively small section of people become immensely wealthy by appropriating everything — land, rivers, water, freedom, security, dignity, fundamental rights including the right to protest — from a large group of people. It's a vertical secession, not a horizontal, territorial one. It's the real Structural Adjustment — the kind that separates India Shining from India. India Pvt. Ltd. from India the Public Enterprise.

It's the kind of secession in which public infrastructure, productive public assets — water, electricity, transport, telecommunications, health services, education, natural resources — assets that the Indian state is supposed to hold in trust for the people it represents, assets that have been built and maintained with public money over decades — are sold by the state to private corporations. In India 70 per cent of the population — 700 million people — live in rural areas. Their livelihoods depend on access to natural resources. To snatch these away and sell them as stock to private companies is beginning to result in dispossession and impoverishment on a barbaric scale.

India Pvt. Ltd. is on its way to being owned by a few corporations and of course major multinationals. The CEOs of these companies will control this country, its infrastructure and its resources, its media and its journalists, but will owe nothing to its people. They are completely unaccountable — legally, socially, morally, politically. Those who say that in India a few of these CEOs are more powerful than the Prime Minister know exactly what they're talking about.

Quite apart from the economic implications of all this, even if it were all that it is cracked up to be (which it isn't) — miraculous, efficient, amazing, etc. — is the politics of it acceptable to us? If the Indian state chooses to mortgage its responsibilities to a handful of corporations, does it mean that this theatre of electoral democracy that is unfolding around us right now in all its shrillness is entirely meaningless? Or does it still have a role to play?

The Free Market (which is actually far from free) needs the state and needs it badly. As the disparity between the rich and the poor grows, in poor countries states have their work cut out for them. Corporations on the prowl for `sweetheart deals' that yield enormous profits cannot push through those deals and administer those projects in developing countries without the active connivance of the state machinery. Today Corporate Globalisation needs an international confederation of loyal, corrupt, preferably authoritarian governments in poorer countries, to push through unpopular reforms and quell the mutinies. It's called `Creating a Good Investment Climate.'

When we vote in these elections we will be voting to choose which political party we would like to invest the coercive, repressive powers of the state in.

Right now in India we have to negotiate the dangerous cross-currents of neo-liberal capitalism and communal neo-fascism. While the word capitalism hasn't completely lost its sheen yet, using the word fascism often causes offence. So we must ask ourselves, are we using the word loosely? Are we exaggerating our situation, does what we are experiencing on a daily basis qualify as fascism?

When a government more or less openly supports a pogrom against members of a minority community in which up to 2,000 people are brutally killed, is it fascism? When women of that community are publicly raped and burned alive, is it fascism? When authorities see to it that nobody is punished for these crimes, is it fascism? When a 150,000 people are driven from their homes, ghettoised and economically and socially boycotted, is it fascism? When the cultural guild that runs hate camps across the country commands the respect and admiration of the Prime Minister, the Home Minister, the Law Minister, the Disinvestment Minister, is it fascism? When painters, writers, scholars and filmmakers who protest are abused, threatened and have their work burned, banned and destroyed, is it fascism? When a government issues an edict requiring the arbitrary alteration of school history textbooks, is it fascism? When mobs attack and burn archives of ancient historical documents, when every minor politician masquerades as a professional medieval historian and archaeologist, when painstaking scholarship is rubbished using baseless populist assertion, is it fascism? When murder, rape, arson and mob justice are condoned by the party in power and its stable of stock intellectuals as an appropriate response to a real or perceived historical wrong committed centuries ago, is it fascism? When the middle-class and the well-heeled pause a moment, tut-tut and then go on with their lives, is it fascism? When the Prime Minister who presides over all of this is hailed as a statesman and visionary, are we not laying the foundations for full-blown fascism?

That the history of oppressed and vanquished people remains for the large part unchronicled is a truism that does not apply only to Savarna Hindus. If the politics of avenging historical wrong is our chosen path, then surely the Dalits and Adivasis of India have the right to murder, arson and wanton destruction?

In Russia they say the past is unpredictable. In India, from our recent experience with school history textbooks, we know how true that is. Now all `pseudo-secularists' have been reduced to hoping that archaeologists digging under the Babri Masjid wouldn't find the ruins of a Ram temple. But even if it were true that there is a Hindu temple under every mosque in India, what was under the temple? Perhaps another Hindu temple to another god. Perhaps a Buddhist stupa. Most likely an Adivasi shrine. History didn't begin with Savarna Hinduism, did it? How deep shall we dig? How much should we overturn? And why is it that while Muslims who are socially, culturally and economically an unalienable part of India are called outsiders and invaders and are cruelly targeted, the Government is busy signing corporate deals and contracts for Development Aid with a government that colonised us for centuries? Between 1876 and 1892, during the great famines, millions of Indians died of starvation while the British Government continued to export food and raw materials to England. Historical records put the figure between 12 million and 29 million people. That should figure somewhere in the politics of revenge, should it not? Or is vengeance only fun when its victims are vulnerable and easy to target?

Successful fascism takes hard work. And so does Creating a Good Investment Climate.

It's interesting that just around the time Manmohan Singh, the then Finance Minister, was preparing India's markets for neo-liberalism, L.K. Advani was making his first Rath Yatra, fuelling communal passion and preparing us for neo-fascism. In December 1992 rampaging mobs destroyed the Babri Masjid. In 1993, the Congress Government of Maharashtra signed a power purchase agreement with Enron. It was the first private power project in India. The Enron contract, disastrous as it has turned out, kick-started the era of Privatisation in India. Now, as the Congress whines from the side-lines, the BJP has wrested the baton from its hands. The Government is conducting an extraordinary dual orchestra. While one arm is busy selling the nation's assets off in chunks, the other, to divert attention, is arranging a baying, howling, deranged chorus of cultural nationalism. The inexorable ruthlessness of one process feeds directly into the insanity of the other.

Economically too, the dual orchestra is a viable model. Part of the enormous profits generated by the process of indiscriminate privatisation (and the accruals of `India Shining') helps to finance Hindutva's vast army — the RSS, the VHP, the Bajrang Dal and the myriad other charities and trusts which run schools, hospitals and social services. Between them they have tens of thousands of shakhas across the country. The hatred they preach, combined with the unmanageable frustration generated by the relentless impoverishment and dispossession of the Corporate Globalisation project, fuels the violence of poor on poor — the perfect smokescreen to keep the structures of power intact and unchallenged.

However, directing peoples' frustrations into violence is not always enough. In order to `Create a Good Investment Climate' the state often needs to intervene directly.

In recent years the police has repeatedly opened fire on unarmed people, mostly Adivasis at peaceful demonstrations. In Nagarnar, Jharkhand; in Mehndi Kheda, Madhya Pradesh; in Umergaon, Gujarat; in Rayagara and Chilika, Orissa; in Muthanga, Kerala. People have been killed.

In almost every instance, those who have been fired upon are immediately called militants (PWG, MCC, ISI, LTTE). The repression goes on and on — Jambudweep, Kashipur, Maikanj.

When victims refuse to be victims, they are called terrorists and are dealt with as such. POTA is the broad-spectrum antibiotic for the disease of dissent. This year 181 countries voted in the U.N. for increased protection of human rights in the era of the War on Terror. Even the U.S. voted in favour of it. India abstained. The stage is being set for a full scale assault on human rights.

So how can ordinary people counter the assault of an increasingly violent state?

The space for non-violent civil disobedience has atrophied. After struggling for several years, several non-violent peoples' resistance movements have come up against a wall and feel quite rightly, they have to now change direction. Views about what that direction should be are deeply polarised. There are some who believe that an armed struggle is the only avenue left. Others increasingly are beginning to feel they must participate in electoral politics — enter the system, negotiate from within. (Similar is it not, to the choices people faced in Kashmir?) The thing to remember is that while their methods differ radically, both sides share the belief that (to put it crudely) — Enough is Enough. Ya Basta.

There is no debate taking place in India that is more crucial than this one. Its outcome will, for better or for worse, change the quality of life in this country. For everyone. Rich, poor, rural, urban.

Armed struggle provokes a massive escalation of violence from the state. We have seen the morass it has led to in Kashmir and across the North East.

So then, should we do what our Prime Minister suggests we do? Renounce dissent and enter the fray of electoral politics? Join the roadshow? Participate in the shrill exchange of meaningless insults which serve only to hide what is otherwise an almost absolute consensus? Let's not forget that on every major issue — nuclear bombs, big dams, the Babri Masjid controversy, and privatisation — the Congress sowed the seeds and the BJP swept in to reap the hideous harvest.

This does not mean that the Parliament is of no consequence and elections should be ignored. Of course there is a difference between an overtly communal party with fascist leanings and an opportunistically communal party. Of course there is a difference between a politics that openly, proudly preaches hatred and a politics that slyly pits people against each other.

And of course we know that the legacy of one has led us to the horror of the other. Between them they have eroded any real choice that parliamentary democracy is supposed to provide. The frenzy, the fair-ground atmosphere created around elections takes centre-stage in the media because everybody is secure in the knowledge that regardless of who wins, the status quo will essentially remain unchallenged. (After the impassioned speeches in Parliament, repealing POTA doesn't seem to be a priority in any party's election campaign. They all know they need it, in one form or another.)

Whatever they say during elections or when they're in the Opposition, no government at the State or Centre, no political party right/left/centre/sideways has managed to stay the hand of neo-liberalism. There will be no radical change from "within".

Personally, I don't believe that entering the electoral fray is a path to alternative politics. Not because of that middle-class squeamishness — `politics is dirty' or `all politicians are corrupt', but because I believe that strategically battles must be waged from positions of strength, not weakness.

The targets of the dual assault of communal fascism and neo-liberalism are the poor and the minority communities (who, as time goes by are gradually being impoverished.) As neo-liberalism drives its wedge between the rich and the poor, between India Shining and India, it becomes increasingly absurd for any mainstream political party to pretend to represent the interests of both the rich and the poor, because the interests of one can only be represented at the cost of the other. My "interests" as a wealthy Indian (were I to pursue them) would hardly coincide with the interests of a poor farmer in Andhra Pradesh.

A political party that represents the poor will be a poor party. A party with very meagre funds. Today it isn't possible to fight an election without funds. Putting a couple of well known social activists into Parliament is interesting, but not really politically meaningful. Not a process worth channelising all our energies into. Individual charisma, personality politics, cannot effect radical change.

However, being poor is not the same as being weak. The strength of the poor is not indoors in office buildings and courtrooms. It's outdoors, in the fields, the mountains, the river valleys, the city streets and university campuses of this country. That's where negotiations must be held. That's where the battle must be waged.

Right now those spaces have been ceded to the Hindu Right. Whatever anyone might think of their politics, it cannot be denied that they're out there, working extremely hard. As the state abrogates its responsibilities and withdraws funds from health, education and essential public services, the foot soldiers of the Sangh Parivar have moved in. Alongside their tens of thousands of shakhas disseminating deadly propaganda, they run schools, hospitals, clinics, ambulance services, disaster management cells. They understand powerlessness. They also understand that people, and particularly powerless people, have needs and desires that are not only practical humdrum day to day needs, but emotional, spiritual, recreational. They have fashioned a hideous crucible into which the anger, the frustration, the indignity of daily life, and dreams of a different future can be decanted and directed to deadly purpose. Meanwhile the traditional, mainstream Left still dreams of `seizing power', but remains strangely unbending, unwilling to address the times. It has laid siege to itself and retreated into an inaccessible intellectual space, where ancient arguments are proffered in an archaic language that few can understand.

The only ones who present some semblance of a challenge to the onslaught of the Sangh Parivar are the grassroots resistance movements scattered across the country, fighting the dispossession and violation of fundamental rights caused by our current model of "Development". Most of these movements are isolated and (despite the relentless accusation that they are "foreign funded foreign agents") they work with almost no money and no resources at all. They're magnificent fire-fighters, they have their backs to the wall. But they do have their ears to the ground. They are in touch with grim reality. If they got together, if they were supported and strengthened, they could grow into a force to reckon with. Their battle, when it is fought, will have to be an idealistic one — not a rigidly ideological one.

At a time when opportunism is everything, when hope seems lost, when everything boils down to a cynical business deal, we must find the courage to dream. To reclaim romance. The romance of believing in justice, in freedom and in dignity. For everybody. We have to make common cause, and to do this we need to understand how this big old machine works — who it works for and who it works against. Who pays, who profits.

Many non-violent resistance movements fighting isolated, single-issue battles across the country have realised that their kind of special interest politics which had its time and place, is no longer enough. That they feel cornered and ineffectual is not good enough reason to abandon non-violent resistance as a strategy. It is however, good enough reason to do some serious introspection. We need vision. We need to make sure that those of us who say we want to reclaim democracy are egalitarian and democratic in our own methods of functioning. If our struggle is to be an idealistic one, we cannot really make caveats for the internal injustices that we perpetrate on one another, on women, on children. For example, those fighting communalism cannot turn a blind eye to economic injustices. Those fighting dams or development projects cannot elide issues of communalism or caste politics in their spheres of influence — even at the cost of short-term success in their immediate campaign. If opportunism and expediency come at the cost of our beliefs, then there is nothing to separate us from mainstream politicians. If it is justice that we want, it must be justice and equal rights for all — not only for special interest groups with special interest prejudices. That is non-negotiable.

We have allowed non-violent resistance to atrophy into feel-good political theatre, which at its most successful is a photo opportunity for the media, and at its least successful, simply ignored.

We need to look up and urgently discuss strategies of resistance, wage real battles and inflict real damage. We must remember that the Dandi March was not just fine political theatre. It was a strike at the economic underpinning of the British Empire.

We need to re-define the meaning of politics. The `Ngo'isation of civil society initiatives is taking us in exactly the opposite direction. It's de-politicising us. Making us dependant on aid and hand-outs. We need to re-imagine the meaning of civil disobedience.

Perhaps we need an elected shadow parliament outside the Lok Sabha, without whose support and affirmation Parliament cannot easily function. A shadow parliament that keeps up an underground drumbeat, that shares intelligence and information (all of which is increasingly unavailable in the mainstream media). Fearlessly, but non-violently we must disable the working parts of this machine that is consuming us.

We're running out of time. Even as we speak the circle of violence is closing in. Either way, change will come. It could be bloody, or it could be beautiful. It depends on us.

© Arundhati Roy
(This is based on the first I.G. Khan Memorial Lecture delivered at Aligarh Muslim University on April 6, 2004.)

What Have We Done to Democracy? Of Nearsighted Progress, Feral Howls, Consensus, Chaos, and a New Cold War in Kashmir by Arundhati Roy

2009-12-03T23:43:00.000+05:30

While we're still arguing about whether there's life after death, can we add another question to the cart? Is there life after democracy? What sort of life will it be? By "democracy" I don't mean democracy as an ideal or an aspiration. I mean the working model: Western liberal democracy, and its variants, such as they are.

So, is there life after democracy?

Attempts to answer this question often turn into a comparison of different systems of governance, and end with a somewhat prickly, combative defense of democracy. It's flawed, we say. It isn't perfect, but it's better than everything else that's on offer. Inevitably, someone in the room will say: "Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia... is that what you would prefer?"

Whether democracy should be the utopia that all "developing" societies aspire to is a separate question altogether. (I think it should. The early, idealistic phase can be quite heady.) The question about life after democracy is addressed to those of us who already live in democracies, or in countries that pretend to be democracies. It isn't meant to suggest that we lapse into older, discredited models of totalitarian or authoritarian governance. It's meant to suggest that the system of representative democracy -- too much representation, too little democracy -- needs some structural adjustment.

The question here, really, is what have we done to democracy? What have we turned it into? What happens once democracy has been used up? When it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning? What happens when each of its institutions has metastasized into something dangerous? What happens now that democracy and the free market have fused into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted imagination that revolves almost entirely around the idea of maximizing profit?

Is it possible to reverse this process? Can something that has mutated go back to being what it used to be? What we need today, for the sake of the survival of this planet, is long-term vision. Can governments whose very survival depends on immediate, extractive, short-term gain provide this? Could it be that democracy, the sacred answer to our short-term hopes and prayers, the protector of our individual freedoms and nurturer of our avaricious dreams, will turn out to be the endgame for the human race? Could it be that democracy is such a hit with modern humans precisely because it mirrors our greatest folly -- our nearsightedness?

Our inability to live entirely in the present (like most animals do), combined with our inability to see very far into the future, makes us strange in-between creatures, neither beast nor prophet. Our amazing intelligence seems to have outstripped our instinct for survival. We plunder the earth hoping that accumulating material surplus will make up for the profound, unfathomable thing that we have lost. It would be conceit to pretend I have the answers to any of these questions. But it does look as if the beacon could be failing and democracy can perhaps no longer be relied upon to deliver the justice and stability we once dreamed it would.

A Clerk of Resistance

As a writer, a fiction writer, I have often wondered whether the attempt to always be precise, to try and get it all factually right somehow reduces the epic scale of what is really going on. Does it eventually mask a larger truth? I worry that I am allowing myself to be railroaded into offering prosaic, factual precision when maybe what we need is a feral howl, or the transformative power and real precision of poetry.

Something about the cunning, Brahmanical, intricate, bureaucratic, file-bound, "apply-through-proper-channels" nature of governance and subjugation in India seems to have made a clerk out of me. My only excuse is to say that it takes odd tools to uncover the maze of subterfuge and hypocrisy that cloaks the callousness and the cold, calculated violence of the world's favorite new superpower. Repression "through proper channels" sometimes engenders resistance "through proper channels." As resistance goes this isn't enough, I know. But for now, it's all I have. Perhaps someday it will become the underpinning for poetry and for the feral howl.

Today, words like "progress" and "development" have become interchangeable with economic "reforms," "deregulation," and "privatization." Freedom has come to mean choice. It has less to do with the human spirit than with different brands of deodorant. Market no longer means a place where you buy provisions. The "market" is a de-territorialized space where faceless corporations do business, including buying and selling "futures." Justice has come to mean human rights (and of those, as they say, "a few will do").

This theft of language, this technique of usurping words and deploying them like weapons, of using them to mask intent and to mean exactly the opposite of what they have traditionally meant, has been one of the most brilliant strategic victories of the tsars of the new dispensation. It has allowed them to marginalize their detractors, deprive them of a language to voice their critique and dismiss them as being "anti-progress," "anti-development," "anti-reform," and of course "anti-national" -- negativists of the worst sort.

Talk about saving a river or protecting a forest and they say, "Don't you believe in progress?" To people whose land is being submerged by dam reservoirs, and whose homes are being bulldozed, they say, "Do you have an alternative development model?" To those who believe that a government is duty bound to provide people with basic education, health care, and social security, they say, "You're against the market." And who except a cretin could be against markets?

To reclaim these stolen words requires explanations that are too tedious for a world with a short attention span, and too expensive in an era when Free Speech has become unaffordable for the poor. This language heist may prove to be the keystone of our undoing.

Two decades of "Progress" in India has created a vast middle class punch-drunk on sudden wealth and the sudden respect that comes with it -- and a much, much vaster, desperate underclass. Tens of millions of people have been dispossessed and displaced from their land by floods, droughts, and desertification caused by indiscriminate environmental engineering and massive infrastructural projects, dams, mines, and Special Economic Zones. All developed in the name of the poor, but really meant to service the rising demands of the new aristocracy.

The hoary institutions of Indian democracy -- the judiciary, the police, the "free" press, and, of course, elections -- far from working as a system of checks and balances, quite often do the opposite. They provide each other cover to promote the larger interests of Union and Progress. In the process, they generate such confusion, such a cacophony, that voices raised in warning just become part of the noise. And that only helps to enhance the image of the tolerant, lumbering, colorful, somewhat chaotic democracy. The chaos is real. But so is the consensus.

A New Cold War in Kashmir

Speaking of consensus, there's the small and ever-present matter of Kashmir. When it comes to Kashmir the consensus in India is hard core. It cuts across every section of the establishment -- including the media, the bureaucracy, the intelligentsia, and even Bollywood.

The war in the Kashmir valley is almost 20 years old now, and has claimed about 70,000 lives. Tens of thousands have been tortured, several thousand have "disappeared," women have been raped, tens of thousands widowed. Half a million Indian troops patrol the Kashmir valley, making it the most militarized zone in the world. (The United States had about 165,000 active-duty troops in Iraq at the height of its occupation.) The Indian Army now claims that it has, for the most part, crushed militancy in Kashmir. Perhaps that's true. But does military domination mean victory?

How does a government that claims to be a democracy justify a military occupation? By holding regular elections, of course. Elections in Kashmir have had a long and fascinating past. The blatantly rigged state election of 1987 was the immediate provocation for the armed uprising that began in 1990. Since then elections have become a finely honed instrument of the military occupation, a sinister playground for India's deep state. Intelligence agencies have created political parties and decoy politicians, they have constructed and destroyed political careers at will. It is they more than anyone else who decide what the outcome of each election will be. After every election, the Indian establishment declares that India has won a popular mandate from the people of Kashmir.

In the summer of 2008, a dispute over land being allotted to the Amarnath Shrine Board coalesced into a massive, nonviolent uprising. Day after day, hundreds of thousands of people defied soldiers and policemen -- who fired straight into the crowds, killing scores of people -- and thronged the streets. From early morning to late in the night, the city reverberated to chants of "Azadi! Azadi!" (Freedom! Freedom!). Fruit sellers weighed fruit chanting "Azadi! Azadi!" Shopkeepers, doctors, houseboat owners, guides, weavers, carpet sellers -- everybody was out with placards, everybody shouted "Azadi! Azadi!" The protests went on for several days.

The protests were massive. They were democratic, and they were nonviolent. For the first time in decades fissures appeared in mainstream public opinion in India. The Indian state panicked. Unsure of how to deal with this mass civil disobedience, it ordered a crackdown. It enforced the harshest curfew in recent memory with shoot-on-sight orders. In effect, for days on end, it virtually caged millions of people. The major pro-freedom leaders were placed under house arrest, several others were jailed. House-to-house searches culminated in the arrests of hundreds of people.

Once the rebellion was brought under control, the government did something extraordinary -- it announced elections in the state. Pro-independence leaders called for a boycott. They were rearrested. Almost everybody believed the elections would become a huge embarrassment for the Indian government. The security establishment was convulsed with paranoia. Its elaborate network of spies, renegades, and embedded journalists began to buzz with renewed energy. No chances were taken. (Even I, who had nothing to do with any of what was going on, was put under house arrest in Srinagar for two days.)

Calling for elections was a huge risk. But the gamble paid off. People turned out to vote in droves. It was the biggest voter turnout since the armed struggle began. It helped that the polls were scheduled so that the first districts to vote were the most militarized districts even within the Kashmir valley.

None of India's analysts, journalists, and psephologists cared to ask why people who had only weeks ago risked everything, including bullets and shoot-on-sight orders, should have suddenly changed their minds. None of the high-profile scholars of the great festival of democracy -- who practically live in TV studios when there are elections in mainland India, picking apart every forecast and exit poll and every minor percentile swing in the vote count -- talked about what elections mean in the presence of such a massive, year-round troop deployment (an armed soldier for every 20 civilians).

No one speculated about the mystery of hundreds of unknown candidates who materialized out of nowhere to represent political parties that had no previous presence in the Kashmir valley. Where had they come from? Who was financing them? No one was curious. No one spoke about the curfew, the mass arrests, the lockdown of constituencies that were going to the polls.

Not many talked about the fact that campaigning politicians went out of their way to de-link Azadi and the Kashmir dispute from elections, which they insisted were only about municipal issues -- roads, water, electricity. No one talked about why people who have lived under a military occupation for decades -- where soldiers could barge into homes and whisk away people at any time of the day or night -- might need someone to listen to them, to take up their cases, to represent them.

The minute elections were over, the establishment and the mainstream press declared victory (for India) once again. The most worrying fallout was that in Kashmir, people began to parrot their colonizers' view of themselves as a somewhat pathetic people who deserved what they got. "Never trust a Kashmiri," several Kashmiris said to me. "We're fickle and unreliable." Psychological warfare, technically known as psy-ops, has been an instrument of official policy in Kashmir. Its depredations over decades -- its attempt to destroy people's self-esteem -- are arguably the worst aspect of the occupation. It's enough to make you wonder whether there is any connection at all between elections and democracy.

The trouble is that Kashmir sits on the fault lines of a region that is awash in weapons and sliding into chaos. The Kashmiri freedom struggle, with its crystal clear sentiment but fuzzy outlines, is caught in the vortex of several dangerous and conflicting ideologies -- Indian nationalism (corporate as well as "Hindu," shading into imperialism), Pakistani nationalism (breaking down under the burden of its own contradictions), U.S. imperialism (made impatient by a tanking economy), and a resurgent medieval-Islamist Taliban (fast gaining legitimacy, despite its insane brutality, because it is seen to be resisting an occupation). Each of these ideologies is capable of a ruthlessness that can range from genocide to nuclear war. Add Chinese imperial ambitions, an aggressive, reincarnated Russia, and the huge reserves of natural gas in the Caspian region and persistent whispers about natural gas, oil, and uranium reserves in Kashmir and Ladakh, and you have the recipe for a new Cold War (which, like the last one, is cold for some and hot for others).

In the midst of all this, Kashmir is set to become the conduit through which the mayhem unfolding in Afghanistan and Pakistan spills into India, where it will find purchase in the anger of the young among India's 150 million Muslims who have been brutalized, humiliated, and marginalized. Notice has been given by the series of terrorist strikes that culminated in the Mumbai attacks of 2008.

There is no doubt that the Kashmir dispute ranks right up there, along with Palestine, as one of the oldest, most intractable disputes in the world. That does not mean that it cannot be resolved. Only that the solution will not be completely to the satisfaction of any one party, one country, or one ideology. Negotiators will have to be prepared to deviate from the "party line."

Of course, we haven't yet reached the stage where the government of India is even prepared to admit that there's a problem, let alone negotiate a solution. Right now it has no reason to. Internationally, its stocks are soaring. And while its neighbors deal with bloodshed, civil war, concentration camps, refugees, and army mutinies, India has just concluded a beautiful election. However, "demon-crazy" can't fool all the people all the time. India's temporary, shotgun solutions to the unrest in Kashmir (pardon the pun), have magnified the problem and driven it deep into a place where it is poisoning the aquifers.

Is Democracy Melting?

Perhaps the story of the Siachen Glacier, the highest battlefield in the world, is the most appropriate metaphor for the insanity of our times. Thousands of Indian and Pakistani soldiers have been deployed there, enduring chill winds and temperatures that dip to minus 40 degrees Celsius. Of the hundreds who have died there, many have died just from the elements.

The glacier has become a garbage dump now, littered with the detritus of war -- thousands of empty artillery shells, empty fuel drums, ice axes, old boots, tents, and every other kind of waste that thousands of warring human beings generate. The garbage remains intact, perfectly preserved at those icy temperatures, a pristine monument to human folly.

While the Indian and Pakistani governments spend billions of dollars on weapons and the logistics of high-altitude warfare, the battlefield has begun to melt. Right now, it has shrunk to about half its size. The melting has less to do with the military standoff than with people far away, on the other side of the world, living the good life. They're good people who believe in peace, free speech, and in human rights. They live in thriving democracies whose governments sit on the U.N. Security Council and whose economies depend heavily on the export of war and the sale of weapons to countries like India and Pakistan. (And Rwanda, Sudan, Somalia, the Republic of Congo, Iraq, Afghanistan… it's a long list.)

The glacial melt will cause severe floods on the subcontinent, and eventually severe drought that will affect the lives of millions of people. That will give us even more reasons to fight. We'll need more weapons. Who knows? That sort of consumer confidence may be just what the world needs to get over the current recession. Then everyone in the thriving democracies will have an even better life -- and the glaciers will melt even faster.

Arundhati Roy was born in 1959 in Shillong, India. She studied architecture in New Delhi, where she now lives. She has worked as a film designer and screenplay writer in India. Roy is the author of the novel The God of Small Things, for which she received the 1997 Booker Prize. Her new book, just published by Haymarket Books, is Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers. This post is adapted from the introduction to that book.

The Last Sermon of the Last Prophet

2009-11-22T20:13:00.000+05:30

Prophet Muhammad (SAWS) delivered his last sermon (Khutbah) on the ninth of Dhul Hijjah (12^th and last month of the Islamic year), 10 years after Hijrah (migration from Makkah to Madinah) in the Uranah Valley of mount Arafat. His words were quite clear and concise and were directed to the entire humanity.

After praising, and thanking Allah he said:

"O People, lend me an attentive ear, for I know not whether after this year, I shall ever be amongst you again. Therefore listen to what I am saying to you very carefully and TAKE THESE WORDS TO THOSE WHO COULD NOT BE PRESENT HERE TODAY.

O People, just as you regard this month, this day, this city as Sacred, so regard the life and property of every Muslim as a sacred trust. Return the goods entrusted to you to their rightful owners. Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you. Remember that you will indeed meet your LORD, and that HE will indeed reckon your deeds. ALLAH has forbidden you to take usury (interest), therefore all interest obligation shall henceforth be waived. Your capital, however, is yours to keep. You will neither inflict nor suffer any inequity. Allah has Judged that there shall be no interest and that all the interest due to Abbas ibn ‘Abd’al Muttalib (Prophet’s uncle) shall henceforth be waived…

Beware of Satan, for the safety of your religion. He has lost all hope that he will ever be able to lead you astray in big things, so beware of following him in small things.

O People, it is true that you have certain rights with regard to your women, but they also have rights over you. Remember that you have taken them as your wives only under Allah’s trust and with His permission. If they abide by your right then to them belongs the right to be fed and clothed in kindness. Do treat your women well and be kind to them for they are your partners and committed helpers. And it is your right that they do not make friends with any one of whom you do not approve, as well as never to be unchaste.

O People, listen to me in earnest, worship ALLAH, say your five daily prayers (Salah), fast during the month of Ramadan, and give your wealth in Zakat. Perform Hajj if you can afford to.

All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over black nor a black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action.

Learn that every Muslim is a brother to every Muslim and that the Muslims constitute one brotherhood. Nothing shall be legitimate to a Muslim which belongs to a fellow Muslim unless it was given freely and willingly. Do not, therefore, do injustice to yourselves.

Remember, one day you will appear before ALLAH and answer your deeds. So beware, do not stray from the path of righteousness after I am gone.

O People, NO PROPHET OR APOSTLE WILL COME AFTER ME AND NO NEW FAITH WILL BE BORN. Reason well, therefore, O People, and understand words which I convey to you. I leave behind me two things, the QURAN and my example, the SUNNAH and if you follow these you will never go astray.

All those who listen to me shall pass on my words to others and those to others again; and may the last ones understand my words better than those who listen to me directly. Be my witness, O ALLAH, that I have conveyed your message to your people".

(Reference: See Al-Bukhari, Hadith 1623, 1626, 6361) Sahih of Imam Muslim also refers to this sermon in Hadith number 98. Imam al-Tirmidhi has mentioned this sermon in Hadith nos. 1628, 2046, 2085. Imam Ahmed bin Hanbal has given us the longest and perhaps the most complete version of this sermon in his Masnud, Hadith no. 19774.)

Majoritarianism - The hidden face of rising India

2009-11-08T18:41:00.007+05:30

High Court Orders protection to runaway Hindu-Muslim couple Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/High-court-orders-protection-to-runaway-Hindu-Muslim-couple/articleshow/5204888.cms

Love jihad: Karnataka joins probe
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Love-jihad-Karnataka-joins-probe/articleshow/5166592.cms

As you can see, On one account, High Court is ordering Police Protection to the couple, perhaps because the girl is Muslim and the boy Hindu and on the other account Kerala High Court as well as Kartnataka Gov't is calling CID probe into Love Jihad(Marriage between Muslim boy and Hindu girl and then subsequent conversion).

I can not be sure in saying whether there are organization involve in such activity or not, however what i do know is www.hindujagruti.org/news/6389.html

Alas, Newspapers like TOI always poses this hidden agenda of fanatic hindus like, Fox poses the hindden jewish agenda, Al-jazeera carries Muslim agenda and so on and so forth.

The height of hatred and fanaticism amongst Hindus can only be understood by looking at their role model/hero Mr Modi, who is responsible for mass murder of thousands of innocent Muslims of Gujarat. What baffles me most is senior politicians like Mr Acharya's support of Moditv/fascism.

Unfortunately, this isn't it, Congress gov't has always been carrying hidden hindutva agenda, so all those Police men who were involved in Godhra killings and then subsequently promoted by Modi gov't remained on top sits despite innumerable number of cases against these state sponsored terrorists.

It's high time Muslims of India start migrating from their present places to place where they would feel safe, Place where they would be in Majority or if not majority then place where fascism couldn't touch them.

Besides migration, Political representative and a political party would be required at the same time Muslims must also take steps in supporting India, because we love India, the India where we were born and will die, the India which we won't let fascists/hindutva take over, the India which belongs to people of all religion and ethnicity, the India where i need not sing Vande Matram (cause I'm not a polytheist) to prove my love for my land.

Democracy

2009-10-03T22:11:00.001+05:30

Arundhati Roy
Democracy: Who's She When She's At Home?

Last night a friend from Baroda, India, called. Weeping. It took her fifteen minutes to tell me what the matter was. It wasn’t very complicated. Only that Sayeeda, a friend of hers, had been caught by a mob. Only that her stomach had been ripped open and stuffed with burning rags. Only that after she died, someone carved ‘OM’ on her forehead. Precisely which Hindu scripture preaches this? Our Prime Minister justified this as part of the retaliation by outraged Hindus against Muslim ‘terrorists’ who burned alive 58 Hindu passengers on the Sabarmati Express in Godhra. Each of those who died that hideous death was someone’s brother, someone’s mother, someone’s child. Of course they were. Which particular verse in the Qur’an required that they be roasted alive? The more the two sides try and call attention to their religious differences by slaughtering each other, the less there is to distinguish them from one another. They worship at the same altar. They’re both apostles of the same murderous god, whoever he is. In an atmosphere so vitiated, for anybody, and in particular the Prime Minister, to arbitrarily decree exactly where the cycle started is malevolent and irresponsible.

Right now we’re sipping from a poisoned chalice — a flawed democracy laced with religious fascism. Pure arsenic. What shall we do? What can we do? We have a ruling party that’s haemorrhaging. Its rhetoric against Terrorism, the passing of pota, the sabre-rattling against Pakistan (with the underlying nuclear threat), the massing of almost a million soldiers on the border on hair-trigger alert, and most dangerous of all, the attempt to communalise and falsify school history text-books — none of this has prevented it from being humiliated in election after election. Even its old party trick-the revival of the Ram mandir plans in Ayodhya — didn’t quite work out. Desperate now, it has turned for succour to the State of Gujarat. Gujarat, the only major State in India to have a bjp government, has, for some years, been the petri dish in which Hindu fascism has been fomenting an elaborate political experiment. Last month, the initial results were put on public display.

Within hours of the Godhra outrage, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (vhp) and the Bajrang Dal put into motion a meticulously planned pogrom against the Muslim community. Officially the number of dead is 800. Independent reports put the figure at well over 2,000. More than a hundred and fifty thousand people, driven from their homes, now live in refugee camps. Women were stripped, gang-raped, parents were bludgeoned to death in front of their children. Two hundred and forty dargahs and 180 masjids, were destroyed in Ahmedabad the tomb of Wali Gujarati, the founder of the modern Urdu poem, was demolished and paved over in the course of a night. The tomb of the musician Ustad Faiyaz Ali Khan was desecrated and wreathed in burning tyres. Arsonists burned and looted shops, homes, hotels, textile mills, buses and private cars. Hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs.

A mob surrounded the house of former Congress MP Iqbal Ehsan Jaffri. His phone calls to the Director-General of Police, the Police Commissioner, the Chief Secretary, the Additional Chief Secretary (Home) were ignored. The mobile police vans around his house did not intervene. The mob broke into the house. They stripped his daughters and burned them alive. Then they beheaded Ehsan Jaffri and dismembered him. Of course it’s only a coincidence that Jaffri was a trenchant critic of Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, during his campaign for the Rajkot Assembly by-election in February. Across Gujarat, thousands of people made up the mobs. They were armed with petrol bombs, guns, knives, swords and tridents. Apart from the vhp and Bajrang Dal’s usual lumpen constituency, Dalits and Adivasis took part in the orgy. Middle-class people participated in the looting. (On one memorable occasion a family arrived in a Mitsubishi Lancer). The leaders of the mob had computer-generated cadastral lists marking out Muslim homes, shops, businesses and even partnerships. They had mobile phones to coordinate the action. They had trucks loaded with thousands of gas cylinders, hoarded weeks in advance, which they used to blow up Muslim commercial establishments. They had not just police protection and police connivance, but also covering fire.

While Gujarat burned, our Prime Minister was on MTV promoting his new poems. (Reports say cassettes have sold a hundred thousand copies). It took him more than a month — and two vacations in the hills — to make it to Gujarat. When he did, shadowed by the chilling Mr Modi, he gave a speech at the Shah Alam refugee camp. His mouth moved, he tried to express concern, but no real sound emerged except the mocking of the wind whistling through a burned, bloodied, broken world. The next we knew, he was bobbing around in a golf-cart, striking business deals in Singapore.

The killers still stalk Gujarat’s streets. The lynch mob continues to be the arbiter of the routine affairs of daily life: who can live where, who can say what, who can meet who, and where and when. Its mandate is expanding quickly. From religious affairs, it now extends to property disputes, family altercations, the planning and allocation of water resources ... (which is why Medha Patkar of the nba was assaulted). Muslim businesses have been shut down. Muslim people are not served in restaurants. Muslim children are not welcome in schools. Muslim students are too terrified to sit for their exams. Muslim parents live in dread that their infants might forget what they have been told and give themselves away by saying ‘Ammi!’ or ‘Abba!’ in public and invite sudden and violent death.

Warning has been given: this is just the beginning.

There have been hundreds of outraged letters to journals and newspapers asking why the "pseudo-secularists" do not condemn the burning of the Sabarmati Express in Godhra with the same degree of outrage with which they condemn the killings in the rest of Gujarat. What they don’t seem to understand is that there is a fundamental difference between a pogrom such as the one taking place in Gujarat now, and the burning of the Sabarmati Express in Godhra. We still don’t know who exactly was responsible for the carnage in Godhra. The government says (without a shred of evidence) it was an isi plot. Independent reports say the train was set on fire by an enraged mob. Either way, it was a criminal act. But every independent report says the pogrom against the Muslim community in Gujarat — billed by the government as spontaneous ‘retaliation’ — has at best been conducted under the benign gaze of the State and, at worst, with active State collusion. Either way the State is criminally culpable.

And the State acts in the name of its citizens. So as a citizen, I am forced to acknowledge that I am somehow made complicit in the Gujarat pogrom. It is this that outrages me. And it is this that puts a completely different complexion on the two massacres.

After the Gujarat Massacres, at its convention in Bangalore, the rss, the moral and cultural guild of the bjp, of which the Prime Minister, the Home Minister and Chief Minister Modi himself are all members, called upon Muslims to earn the ‘goodwill’ of the majority community. At the meeting of the national executive of the bjp in Goa, Narendra Modi was greeted as a hero. His smirking offer to resign from the post of chief minister was unanimously turned down. In a recent public speech he compared the events of the last few weeks in Gujarat to Gandhi’s Dandi March — both, according to him, significant moments in the Struggle for Freedom.

While the parallels between contemporary India and pre-war Germany are chilling, they are not surprising. (The founders of the rss have, in their writings, been frank in their admiration for Hitler and his methods). One difference is that here in India we don’t have a Hitler. We have instead, a travelling extravaganza, a mobile symphonic orchestra. The hydra-headed, many-armed Sangh Parivar — with the bjp, the rss, the vhp and the Bajrang Dal, each playing a different instrument. Its utter genius lies in its apparent ability to be all things to all people at all times.

The Parivar has an appropriate head for every occasion. An old versifier with rhetoric for every season. A rabble-rousing hardliner for Home Affairs, a suave one for Foreign Affairs, a smooth, English-speaking lawyer to handle TV debates, a cold-blooded creature for a Chief Minister and the Bajrang Dal and the vhp, grassroots workers in charge of the physical labour that goes into the business of genocide. Finally, this many-headed extravaganza has a lizard’s tail which drops off when it’s in trouble, and grows back again: a specious socialist dressed up as Defence Minister, who it sends on its damage-limitation missions — wars, cyclones, genocides. They trust him to press the right buttons, hit the right note.

The Sangh Parivar speaks in as many tongues as a whole chorus of trishuls. Is this the Hindu rashtra that we’ve all been asked to look forward to? Once the Muslims have been "shown their place", will milk and Coca-Cola flow across the land? Once the Ram mandir is built, will there be a shirt on every back and a roti in every belly? Will every tear be wiped from every eye? Can we expect an anniversary celebration next year? Or will there be someone else to hate by then? Alphabetically — Adivasis, Buddhists, Christians, Dalits, Parsis, Sikhs? Those who wear jeans, or speak English, or those who have thick lips, or curly hair? We won’t have to wait long. It’s started already. Will the established rituals continue? Will people be beheaded, dismembered and urinated upon? Will foetuses be ripped from the mother’s womb and slaughtered? (What kind of depraved vision can even imagine India without the range and beauty and spectacular anarchy of all these cultures? India would become a tomb and smell like a crematorium).

No matter who they were, or how they were killed, each person who died in Gujarat in the weeks gone by deserves to be mourned. It can say several contradictory things simultaneously. While one of its heads (the vhp) exhorts millions of its cadres to prepare for the Final Solution, its titular head (the Prime Minister) assures the nation that all citizens, regardless of their religion, will be treated equally. It can ban books and films and burn paintings for ‘insulting Indian culture’. Simultaneously, it can mortgage the equivalent of 60 per cent of the entire country’s rural development budget as profit to Enron. It contains within itself the full spectrum of political opinion, so what would normally be a public fight between two adversarial political parties, is now just a Family Matter. However acrimonious the quarrel, it is always conducted in public, always resolved amicably, and the audience always goes away satisfied it has got value for money — anger, action, revenge, intrigue, remorse, poetry and plenty of gore. It is our own vernacular version of Full Spectrum Dominance.

But when the chips are down, really down, the squabbling heads quieten, and it becomes chillingly apparent that underneath all the clamour and the noise, a single heart beats. And an unforgiving mind with saffron-saturated tunnel vision works overtime.

There have been pogroms in India before, every kind of pogrom — directed at particular castes, tribes, religious faiths. In 1984, following the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the Congress Party presided over the massacre of three thousand Sikhs in Delhi, every bit as macabre as the one in Gujarat. At the time, Rajiv Gandhi, never known for an elegant turn of phrase, said, "When a big tree falls, the ground shakes". In 1985 the Congress swept the polls. On a sympathy wave! Eighteen years have gone by. Nobody has been punished.

Take any politically volatile issue — the nuclear tests, the Babri Masjid, the Tehelka scam, the stirring of the communal cauldron for electoral advantage — and you’ll see the Congress Party has been there before. In every case, the Congress sowed the seed and the bjp has swept in to reap the hideous harvest. So in the event that we are called upon to vote, is there a difference between the two? The answer is a faltering but distinct ‘yes’.

Here’s why: It’s true that the Congress Party has sinned, and grievously, and for decades together. But it has done by night what the bjp does by day. It has done covertly, stealthily, hypocritically, shamefacedly, what the bjp does with pride. And this is an important difference.

Whipping up communal hatred is part of the mandate of the Sangh Parivar. It has been planned for years. It has been injecting a slow-release poison directly into civil society’s bloodstream. Hundreds of rss shakhas and Saraswati shishu mandirs across the country have been indoctrinating thousands of children and young people, stunting their minds with religious hatred and falsified history. They’re no different from, and no less dangerous than, the madrasahs all over Pakistan and Afghanistan which spawned the Taliban. In States like Gujarat, the police, the administration, and the political cadres at every level have been systematically penetrated. It has huge popular appeal, which it would be foolish to underestimate or misunderstand. The whole enterprise has a formidable religious, ideological, political, and administrative underpinning. This kind of power, this kind of outreach, can only be achieved with State backing.

Madrashas, the Muslim equivalent of hothouses cultivating religious hatred, try and make up in frenzy and foreign funding, what they lack in State support. They provide the perfect foil for Hindu communalists to dance their dance of mass paranoia and hatred. (In fact they serve that purpose so perfectly, they might just as well be working as a team).

Under this relentless pressure, what will most likely happen is that the majority of the Muslim community will resign itself to living in ghettos as second-class citizens, in constant fear, with no civil rights and no recourse to justice. What will daily life be like for them? Any little thing, an altercation in a cinema queue or a fracas at a traffic light, could turn lethal. So they will learn to keep very quiet, to accept their lot, to creep around the edges of the society in which they live. Their fear will transmit itself to other minorities. Many, particularly the young, will probably turn to militancy. They will do terrible things. Civil society will be called upon to condemn them. Then President Bush’s dictum will come back to us: "Either you’re with us or with the terrorists".

Those words hang frozen in time like icicles. For years to come, butchers and genocidists will fit their grisly mouths around them (‘lip-synch’, filmmakers call it) in order to justify their butchery.

Mr Bal Thackeray of the Shiv Sena, who has lately been feeling a little upstaged by Mr Modi, has the lasting solution. He’s called for civil war. Isn’t that just perfect? Then Pakistan won’t need to bomb us, we can bomb ourselves. Let’s turn all of India into Kashmir. Or Bosnia. Or Palestine. Or Rwanda. Let’s all suffer forever. Let’s buy expensive guns and explosives to kill each other with. Let the British arms dealers and the American weapons manufacturers grow fat on our spilled blood. We could ask the Carlyle group — of which the Bush and Bin Laden families are both shareholders — for a bulk discount. Maybe if things go really well, we’ll become like Afghanistan. (And look at the publicity they’ve gone and got themselves).

When all our farm lands are mined, our buildings destroyed, our infrastructure reduced to rubble, our children physically maimed and mentally wrecked, when we’ve nearly wiped ourselves out with self-manufactured hatred, maybe we can appeal to the Americans to help us out. Airdropped airline meals, anyone?

How close we have come to self-destruction. Another step and we’ll be in free-fall. And yet the government presses on. At the Goa meeting of the bjp’s national executive, the Prime Minister of Secular, Democratic India, Mr A.B. Vajpayee, made history. He became the first Indian Prime Minister to cross the threshold and publicly unveil an unconscionable bigotry against Muslims, which even George Bush, and Donald Rumsfeld would be embarrassed to own up to. "Wherever Muslims are", he said, "they do not want to live peacefully". Shame on him. But if only it were just him: in the immediate aftermath of the Gujarat holocaust, confident of the success of its ‘experiment’, the bjp wants a snap poll. "The gentlest of people", my friend from Baroda said to me, "the gentlest of people, in the gentlest of voices, says, ‘Modi is our hero’".

Some of us nurtured the naïve hope that the magnitude of the horror of the last few weeks would make the Secular Parties, however self-serving, unite in sheer outrage. On its own, the bjp does not have the mandate of the people of India. It does not have the mandate to push through the Hindutva project. We hoped that the 27 allies that make up the bjp-led coalition at the Centre would withdraw their support. We thought, quite stupidly, that they would see that there could be no bigger test of their moral fibre, of their commitment to their avowed principles of secularism.

It’s a sign of the times that not a single one of the bjp’s allies has withdrawn support. In every shifty eye you see that faraway look of someone doing mental maths to calculate which constituencies and portfolios they’ll retain and which ones they’ll lose if they pull out. Except for Deepak Parekh of hdfc, not a single ceo of India’s Corporate Community has condemned what happened. Farooq Abdullah, Chief Minister of Kashmir and the only prominent Muslim politician left in India, is currying favour with the government by supporting Modi because he’s nursing the dim hope that he may become Vice-President of India very soon. And worst of all-Mayawati, leader of the bsp — the great hope of the lower castes, is on the verge of forging an alliance with the bjp in UP.

The Congress and the Left parties have launched a public agitation asking for Modi’s resignation. Resignation? Have we lost all sense of proportion? Criminals are not meant to resign. They’re meant to be charged, tried and convicted. As those who burned the train in Godhra should be. As the mobs, and those members of the police force and the administration who planned and participated in the pogrom in the rest of Gujarat should be. As those responsible for raising the pitch of the frenzy to boiling point must be.

The Supreme Court has the option of acting against Modi and the Bajrang Dal and the vhp suo motu (when the Court itself files charges). There are hundreds of testimonies. There’s masses of evidence. But in India if you are a butcher or a genocidist who happens to be a politician, you have every reason to be optimistic. No one even expects politicians to be prosecuted. To demand that Modi and his henchmen be arraigned and put away, would make other politicians vulnerable to their own unsavoury pasts — so instead they disrupt Parliament, shout a lot, eventually those in power set up commissions of inquiry, ignore the findings and between themselves make sure the juggernaut chugs on.

Already the issue has begun to morph. Should elections be allowed or not? Should the Election Commission decide that? Or the Supreme Court? Either way, whether elections are held or deferred, by allowing Modi to walk free, by allowing him to continue his career as a politician, the fundamental, governing principles of democracy are not just being subverted, but deliberately sabotaged. This kind of democracy is the problem, not the solution. Our society’s greatest strength is being turned into her deadliest enemy. What’s the point of us all going on about ‘deepening democracy’, when it’s being bent and twisted into something unrecognisable?

What if the bjp does win the elections? (The buzz is that engineering a war against Pakistan is going to be the bjp’s strategy to swing the vote). After all, George Bush had an 80 per cent rating in his War Against Terror, and Ariel Sharon has a similar mandate for his bestial invasion of Palestine. Does that make everything all right? Why not dispense with the legal system, the Constitution, the press — the whole shebang — morality itself, why not chuck it and put everything up for a vote? Genocides can become the subject of opinion polls and massacres can have marketing campaigns.

Fascism’s firm footprint has appeared in India. Let’s mark the date: Spring, 2002. While we can thank the American President and the Coalition Against Terror for creating a congenial international atmosphere for its ghastly debut, we cannot credit them for the years it has been brewing in our public and private lives.

It breezed in in the wake of the Pokhran nuclear tests in 1998. From then onwards, the massed energy of bloodthirsty patriotism became openly acceptable political currency. The ‘weapons of peace’ trapped India and Pakistan in a spiral of brinkmanship — threat and counter-threat, taunt and counter-taunt. And now, one war and hundreds of dead later, more than a million soldiers from both armies are massed at the border, eyeball to eyeball, locked in a pointless nuclear standoff. The escalating belligerence against Pakistan has ricocheted off the border and entered our own body politic, like a sharp blade slicing through the vestiges of communal harmony and tolerance between the Hindu and Muslim communities. In no time at all, the godsquadders from hell have colonised the public imagination. And we allowed them in. Each time the hostility between India and Pakistan is cranked up, within India there’s a corresponding increase in the hostility towards the Muslims. With each battle cry against Pakistan, we inflict a wound on ourselves, on our way of life, on our spectacularly diverse and ancient civilisation, on everything that makes India different from Pakistan. Increasingly, Indian Nationalism has come to mean Hindu Nationalism, which defines itself not through a respect or regard for itself, but through a hatred of the Other. And the Other, for the moment, is not just Pakistan, it’s Muslim. It’s disturbing to see how neatly nationalism dovetails into fascism. While we must not allow the fascists to define what the nation is, or who it belongs to, it’s worth keeping in mind that nationalism, in all its many avatars — socialist, capitalist and fascist — has been at the root of almost all the genocides of the twentieth century.

On the issue of nationalism, it’s wise to proceed with caution. And there will not always be spectacular carnage to report on. Fascism is also about the slow, steady infiltration of all the instruments of State power. It’s about the slow erosion of civil liberties, about unspectacular day-to-day injustices. Fighting Fascism means fighting to win back the minds and hearts of people. Fighting it does not mean asking for rss shakhas and the madrashas to be banned, it means working towards the day when they’re voluntarily abandoned as a bad idea. It means keeping an eagle eye on public institutions and demanding accountability. It means putting one’s ear to the ground and listening to the whispering of the truly powerless. It means giving a forum to the myriad voices from the hundreds of resistance movements across the country who are speaking about real things — about bonded labour, marital rape, sexual preferences, women’s wages, uranium dumping, unsustainable mining, weavers’ woes, farmers’ worries. It means fighting displacement and dispossession and the relentless, everyday violence of abject poverty. Fighting it also means not allowing your newspaper columns and prime-time TV spots to be hijacked by their spurious passions and their staged theatrics, which are designed to divert attention from everything else.

While most people in India have been horrified by what happened in Gujarat, many thousands of the indoctrinated are preparing to journey deeper into the heart of the horror. Look around you and you’ll see in little parks, in big maidans, in empty lots, on village commons, the rss is marching, hoisting its saffron flag. Suddenly they’re everywhere, grown men in khaki shorts marching, marching, marching. To where? For what? Their disregard for history shields them from the knowledge that Fascism will thrive for a short while and then self-annihilate because of its inherent stupidity. But unfortunately, like the radioactive fallout of a nuclear strike, it has a half-life that will cripple generations to come. These levels of rage and hatred cannot be contained, cannot be expected to subside, with public censure and denunciation. Hymns of brotherhood and love are great, but not enough. Historically, Fascist movements have been fuelled by feelings of national disillusionment. Fascism has come to India after the dreams that fuelled the Freedom Struggle have been frittered away like so much loose change.

Independence itself came to us as what Gandhi famously called a ‘wooden loaf’ — a notional freedom tainted by the blood of the thousands who died during Partition. For more than half a century now, the hatred and mutual distrust has been exacerbated, toyed with and never allowed to heal by politicians, led from the front by Mrs Indira Gandhi. Every political party has tilled the marrow of our secular parliamentary democracy, mining it for electoral advantage. Like termites excavating a mound, they’ve made tunnels and underground passages, undermining the meaning of ‘secular’, until it has just become an empty shell that’s about to implode. Their activity has weakened the foundations of the structure that connects the Constitution, Parliament and the courts of law — the configuration of checks and balances that forms the backbone of a parliamentary democracy. Under the circumstances, it’s futile to go on blaming politicians and demanding from them a morality they’re incapable of. There’s something pitiable about a people that constantly bemoans its leaders. If they’ve let us down, it’s only because we’ve allowed them to. It could be argued that civil society has failed its leaders as much as leaders have failed civil society. We have to accept that there is a dangerous, systemic flaw in our parliamentary democracy that politicians will exploit. And that’s what results in the kind of conflagration that we have witnessed in Gujarat. There’s fire in the ducts. We have to address this issue and come up with a systemic solution.

Can we not find it in ourselves to belong to an ancient civilisation instead of to just a recent nation? To love a land instead of just patrolling a territory? The Sangh Parivar understands nothing of what civilisation means. It seeks to limit, reduce, define, dismember and desecrate the memory of what we were, our understanding of what we are, and our dreams of who we want to be. What kind of India do they want? A limbless, headless, soulless torso, left bleeding under the butcher’s cleaver with a flag driven deep into its mutilated heart? Can we let that happen? Have we let it happen?

The incipient, creeping fascism of the past few years has been groomed by many of our ‘democratic’ institutions. Everyone has flirted with it — Parliament, the press, the police, the administration, the public. Even ‘secularists’ have been guilty of helping to create the right climate. Each time you defend the right of an institution, any institution (including the Supreme Court), to exercise unfettered, unaccountable powers that must never be challenged, you move towards fascism. To be fair, perhaps not everyone recognised the early signs for what they were.

The national press has been startlingly courageous in its denunciation of the events of the last few weeks. Many of the bjp’s fellow travellers who have journeyed with it to the brink are now looking down the abyss into the hell that was once Gujarat, and turning away in genuine dismay. But how hard and for how long will they fight? This is not going to be like a publicity campaign for an upcoming cricket season.

But politicians’ exploitation of communal divides is by no means the only reason that fascism has arrived on our shores. Over the past fifty years, ordinary citizens’ modest hopes to live of dignity, security and relief from abject poverty have been systematically snuffed out. Every ‘democratic’ institution in this country has shown itself to be unaccountable, inaccessible to the ordinary citizen, and either unwilling, or incapable of acting, in the interests of genuine social justice. Every strategy for real social change — land reform, education, public health, the equitable distribution of natural resources, the implementation of positive discrimination — has been cleverly, cunningly and consistently scuttled and rendered ineffectual by those castes and that class of people who have a stranglehold on the political process. And now corporate globalisation is being relentlessly and arbitrarily imposed on an essentially feudal society, tearing through its complex, tiered, social fabric, ripping it apart culturally and economically.

There is very real grievance here. And the fascists didn’t create it. But they have seized upon it, upturned it and forged from it a hideous, bogus sense of pride. They have mobilised human beings using the lowest common denominator — religion. People who have lost control over their lives, people who have been uprooted from their homes and communities who have lost their culture and their language, are being made to feel proud of something. Not something they have striven for and achieved, not something they can count as a personal accomplishment, but something they just happen to be. Or, more accurately, something they happen not to be. And the falseness, the emptiness of that pride, is fuelling a gladiatorial anger that is then directed towards a simulated target that has been wheeled into the amphitheatre.

How else can you explain the project of trying to disenfranchise, drive out or exterminate the second-poorest community in this country, using as your footsoldiers the very poorest (Dalits and Adivasis)? How else can you explain why Dalits in Gujarat, who have been despised, oppressed and treated worse than refuse by the upper castes for thousands of years, have joined hands with their oppressors to turn on those who are only marginally less unfortunate than they themselves? Are they just wage slaves, mercenaries for hire? Is it all right to patronise them and absolve them of responsibility for their own actions? Or am I being obtuse? Perhaps it’s common practice for the unfortunate to vent their rage and hatred on the next most unfortunate, because their real adversaries are inaccessible, seemingly invincible and completely out of range? Because their own leaders have cut loose and are feasting at the high table, leaving them to wander rudderless in the wilderness, spouting nonsense about returning to the Hindu fold. (The first step, presumably, towards founding a Global Hindu Empire, as realistic a goal as Fascism’s previously failed projects — the restoration of Roman Glory, the purification of the German race or the establishment of an Islamic Sultanate).

One hundred and thirty million Muslims live in India. Hindu fascists regard them as legitimate prey. Do people like Modi and Bal Thackeray think that the world will stand by and watch while they’re liquidated in a ‘civil war’? Press reports say that the European Union and several other countries have condemned what happened in Gujarat and likened it to Nazi rule. The Indian Government’s portentous response is that foreigners should not use the Indian media to comment on what is an ‘internal matter’ (like the chilling goings-on in Kashmir?). What next? Censorship? Closing down the Internet? Blocking international calls? Killing the wrong ‘terrorists’ and fudging the DNA samples? There is no terrorism like State terrorism.

But who will take them on? Their fascist cant can perhaps be dented by some blood and thunder from the Opposition. So far only Laloo Yadav of Bihar has shown himself to be truly passionate: "Kaun mai ka lal kehta hai ki yeh Hindu rashtra hai? Usko yahan bhej do, chhati phad doonga!" (Which mother’s son says this is a Hindu Nation? Send him here, I’ll tear his chest open). Unfortunately there’s no quick fix. Fascism itself can only be turned away if all those who are outraged by it show a commitment to social justice that equals the intensity of their indignation.

Are we ready to get off our starting blocks? Are we ready, many millions of us, to rally not just on the streets, but at work and in schools and in our homes, in every decision we take, and every choice we make? Or not just yet.... If not, then years from now, when the rest of the world has shunned us (as it should), like the ordinary citizens of Hitler’s Germany, we too will learn to recognise revulsion in the gaze of our fellow human beings. We too will find ourselves unable to look our own children in the eye, for the shame of what we did and did not do. For the shame of what we allowed to happen.

This is us. In India. Heaven help us make it through the night.

Ref.: From OUTLOOK INDIA Magazine, 6 May 2002

Something that i went through accidentally

2009-07-20T02:20:00.001+05:30

This is something that i accidentally went through and felt awe inspiring. I'm not one of those who chose to involve in propaganda through different means and neither am i an anti-Semite. These links that i went through are revelation to me and very baffling as well as disturbing, Just wanted to share to make others aware of happenings around us.

Neo-conservatism is a political philosophy that emerged in the United States of America, and which supports using American economic and military power to bring liberalism, democracy, and human rights to other countries.

Proponents of Neo-Conservatism and their contributions to the world disaster…

Henry Martin "Scoop" Jackson (Religion Christian)
Jackson also led the opposition within the Democratic Party against the SALT II treaty, and was one of the leading proponents of increased foreign aid to Israel.
Jackson received substantial financial support from Jewish-Americans who admired his pro-Israel views, but Jackson's support of the Vietnam War resulted in hostility from the left wing of the Democratic Party.

Paul Dundes Wolfowitz(Religion Jewish)
As Deputy Secretary of Defense, he was "a major architect of President Bush's Iraq policy and ... its most hawkish advocate." In the first emergency meeting of the U.S. National Security Council on the day of the attacks, Rumsfeld asked, "Why shouldn’t we go against Iraq, not just al-Qaeda?" with Wolfowitz adding that Iraq was a "brittle, oppressive regime that might break easily—it was doable," and, according to John Kampfner, "from that moment on, he and Wolfowitz used every available opportunity to press the case."

Douglas J. Feith (born July 16, 1953)
In February 2007, the Pentagon's inspector general issued a report that concluded that Feith's office "developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers."

Richard Norman Perle(Religion Jewish)
Perle had long been an advocate of regime change in Iraq. He was a signatory of the 26 January 1998 PNAC Letter sent to US President Bill Clinton that called for the military overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime. He also linked Saddam to Osama Bin Laden just a few days after 9/11, proclaiming in an interview on CNN on Sept 16, 2001: "Even if we cannot prove to the standards that we enjoy in our own civil society that they were involved, we do know, for example, that Saddam Hussein has ties to Osama Bin Laden..."

Felix George Rohatyn(Religion: Jewish)
Rohatyn is a former partner in the Jewish Lazard Freres investment bank. In September the French oil company, "Total," invested $2 billion in the production of oil in Iran. Rohatyn is seeking to Veto this project due to Israel's hostility toward Iran

What a former neo-conservatism supporter has to say about Neo-Conservatism.

Michael Lind (born April 23, 1962 in Austin, Texas) is an American writer.
A former neoconservative, Lind criticized the American Right in Up From Conservatism: Why the Right is Wrong for America (1996) and Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics (2004)
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/lind1.html

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism

Iran and West, A quick observation on Media's role in the conflict

2009-07-02T02:33:00.005+05:30

When Iran was suffering from post election chaos, then according to western media ruling party was calling it western attack just for the sake of gaining nationalists support. Now, albeit the opposition has started speaking in same tone as ruling party, west is unable to digest and unfortunately even economist like platform have been maligned with the venomous and shrewd steps taken perhaps on the behalf of western power/powers.

This is what economist has to say about situation.
"More formidable is Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, an ex-president who supported the main opposition candidate, Mir Hosein Mousavi. At the weekend Mr Rafsanjani spoke publicly for the first time about the vote, calling on the government to investigate the complaints of the defeated candidates in a “fair review” of the election. The ex-president has played a cautious game so far. At first he exerted influence by letting others speak on his behalf. His daughter was briefly arrested after addressing one public gathering. He is also rumoured to be in Qom, trying to garner support for the creation of a new council, of three or more ayatollahs, which would counter the power of the supreme leader. Such a change would represent a seismic shift in the power structures of the Islamic republic, but there is, so far, no evidence that he has succeeded."

Source: http://www.economist.com/world/mideast-africa/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13937163&source=features_box3

On the other hand, lets see what a non-western/non-beneficial media has to say about situation in Iran. This is what "The Hindu" has to say about situation.

Mr. Rafsanjani openly came out with a statement endorsing the supreme leader
"The developments following the presidential vote were a complex conspiracy plotted by suspicious elements with the aim of creating a rift between the people and the Islamic establishment and causing them to lose their trust in the [Vilayat-e faqih] system. Such plots have always been neutralised whenever the people have entered the scene with vigilance,"

He praised Ayatollah Khamenei for extending the Guardian Council’s move to extend the deadline by five days to review issues pertaining to the elections and removing ambiguities surrounding them. “This valuable move by the leader to restore the people’s confidence in the election process was very effective,” he pointed out. In a separate meeting with a delegation of Majlis members on Thursday, Mr. Rafsanjani said his attachment to Ayatollah Khamenei was “endless” and that he enjoyed a close relationship with the supreme leader and he fully complied with the Vilayat-e faqih.

Mr. Larijani on West

"On Monday, while addressing the Executive Committee meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Conference at Algiers, Mr. Larijani lashed out at the U.S. policy of “interfering” in the internal affairs of the Middle East countries. He advised Mr. Obama to abandon the policy. “This change will be beneficial both to the region and to the U.S. itself”."

Source: http://www.hindu.com/2009/07/02/stories/2009070254740800.htm

Ignored miracle

2009-06-27T19:02:00.004+05:30

The nomad Mongols debilitated the Islamic civilization and conquered the Arab, Persia region. The height of barbarism can be understood by imagining mahal made of Persian heads, which was used as a trick to weaken the opponents will to fightback barbarians and then subsequently, Arab governors accepted the mongol ruling, but then the conquerors were conquered without any realization of defeat.
Then came the Turks and made the same mistake, never realized that they had been conquered not by human beings but by the faith and so even though the civilization has been conquered their faith has conquered the barbarian conquerors. SUCH WAS THE FAITH........
and this my dear friend has been understood by the neo-conquerors much better than the believers themselves, So be ready for their palpable venomous attack on your strength, your faith.
Had the faith not existed, the mongols could have easily made a Hindustani-head Mahal instead of Taj-Mahal, The Indians never realized the savior, the book that stopped the mongols, the book that made killing innocent equivalent to killing humanity, the book that gradually changed the mongol character from a mass killer to a mughal character of Taj Mahal creator.

I may differ from his stand about Islam but i thought he is very honest.

2009-02-01T15:54:00.000+05:30

Historian Benny Morris: Was Mistake Not To Complete Transfer in '48

Survival of the Fittest (an interview with Historian Benny Morris)
By Ari Shavit Haaretz, Magazine Section, 9 January 2004

Benny Morris says he was always a Zionist. People were mistaken when they labeled him a post-Zionist, when they thought that his historical study on the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem was intended to undercut the Zionist enterprise. Nonsense, Morris says, that's completely unfounded. Some readers simply misread the book. They didn't read it with the same detachment, the same moral neutrality, with which it was written. So they came to the mistaken conclusion that when Morris describes the cruelest deeds that the Zionist movement perpetrated in 1948 he is actually being condemnatory, that when he describes the large-scale expulsion operations he is being denunciatory. They did not conceive that the great documenter of the sins of Zionism in fact identifies with those sins. That he thinks some of them, at least, were unavoidable.

Two years ago, different voices began to be heard. The historian who was considered a radical leftist suddenly maintained that Israel had no one to talk to. The researcher who was accused of being an Israel hater (and was boycotted by the Israeli academic establishment) began to publish articles in favor of Israel in the British paper The Guardian.

Whereas citizen Morris turned out to be a not completely snow-white dove, historian Morris continued to work on the Hebrew translation of his massive work "Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001," which was written in the old, peace-pursuing style. And at the same time historian Morris completed the new version of his book on the refugee problem, which is going to strengthen the hands of those who abominate Israel. So that in the past two years citizen Morris and historian Morris worked as though there is no connection between them, as though one was trying to save what the other insists on eradicating.

Both books will appear in the coming month. The book on the history of the Zionist-Arab conflict will be published in Hebrew by Am Oved in Tel Aviv, while the Cambridge University Press will publish "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited" (it originally appeared, under the CUP imprint, in 1987). That book describes in chilling detail the atrocities of the Nakba. Isn't Morris ever frightened at the present-day political implications of his historical study? Isn't he fearful that he has contributed to Israel becoming almost a pariah state? After a few moments of evasion, Morris admits that he is. Sometimes he really is frightened. Sometimes he asks himself what he has wrought.

He is short, plump, and very intense. The son of immigrants from England, he was born in Kibbutz Ein Hahoresh and was a member of the left-wing Hashomer Hatza'ir youth movement. In the past, he was a reporter for the Jerusalem Post and refused to do military service in the territories. He is now a professor of history at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be'er Sheva. But sitting in his armchair in his Jerusalem apartment, he does not don the mantle of the cautious academic. Far from it: Morris spews out his words, rapidly and energetically, sometimes spilling over into English. He doesn't think twice before firing off the sharpest, most shocking statements, which are anything but politically correct. He describes horrific war crimes offhandedly, paints apocalyptic visions with a smile on his lips. He gives the observer the feeling that this agitated individual, who with his own hands opened the Zionist Pandora's box, is still having difficulty coping with what he found in it, still finding it hard to deal with the internal contradictions that are his lot and the lot of us all.

Rape, massacre, transfer

Benny Morris, in the month ahead the new version of your book on the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem is due to be published. Who will be less pleased with the book - the Israelis or the Palestinians?

"The revised book is a double-edged sword. It is based on many documents that were not available to me when I wrote the original book, most of them from the Israel Defense Forces Archives. What the new material shows is that there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought. To my surprise, there were also many cases of rape. In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah [the pre-state defense force that was the precursor of the IDF] were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves.

"At the same time, it turns out that there was a series of orders issued by the Arab Higher Committee and by the Palestinian intermediate levels to remove children, women and the elderly from the villages. So that on the one hand, the book reinforces the accusation against the Zionist side, but on the other hand it also proves that many of those who left the villages did so with the encouragement of the Palestinian leadership itself."

According to your new findings, how many cases of Israeli rape were there in 1948?

"About a dozen. In Acre four soldiers raped a girl and murdered her and her father. In Jaffa, soldiers of the Kiryati Brigade raped one girl and tried to rape several more. At Hunin, which is in the Galilee, two girls were raped and then murdered. There were one or two cases of rape at Tantura, south of Haifa. There was one case of rape at Qula, in the center of the country. At the village of Abu Shusha, near Kibbutz Gezer [in the Ramle area] there were four female prisoners, one of whom was raped a number of times. And there were other cases. Usually more than one soldier was involved. Usually there were one or two Palestinian girls. In a large proportion of the cases the event ended with murder. Because neither the victims nor the rapists liked to report these events, we have to assume that the dozen cases of rape that were reported, which I found, are not the whole story. They are just the tip of the iceberg."

According to your findings, how many acts of Israeli massacre were perpetrated in 1948?

"Twenty-four. In some cases four or five people were executed, in others the numbers were 70, 80, 100. There was also a great deal of arbitrary killing. Two old men are spotted walking in a field - they are shot. A woman is found in an abandoned village - she is shot. There are cases such as the village of Dawayima [in the Hebron region], in which a column entered the village with all guns blazing and killed anything that moved.

"The worst cases were Saliha (70-80 killed), Deir Yassin (100-110), Lod (250), Dawayima (hundreds) and perhaps Abu Shusha (70). There is no unequivocal proof of a large-scale massacre at Tantura, but war crimes were perpetrated there. At Jaffa there was a massacre about which nothing had been known until now. The same at Arab al Muwassi, in the north. About half of the acts of massacre were part of Operation Hiram [in the north, in October 1948]: at Safsaf, Saliha, Jish, Eilaboun, Arab al Muwasi, Deir al Asad, Majdal Krum, Sasa. In Operation Hiram there was a unusually high concentration of executions of people against a wall or next to a well in an orderly fashion.

"That can't be chance. It's a pattern. Apparently, various officers who took part in the operation understood that the expulsion order they received permitted them to do these deeds in order to encourage the population to take to the roads. The fact is that no one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres."

What you are telling me here, as though by the way, is that in Operation Hiram there was a comprehensive and explicit expulsion order. Is that right?

"Yes. One of the revelations in the book is that on October 31, 1948, the commander of the Northern Front, Moshe Carmel, issued an order in writing to his units to expedite the removal of the Arab population. Carmel took this action immediately after a visit by Ben-Gurion to the Northern Command in Nazareth. There is no doubt in my mind that this order originated with Ben-Gurion. Just as the expulsion order for the city of Lod, which was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, was issued immediately after Ben-Gurion visited the headquarters of Operation Dani [July 1948]."

Are you saying that Ben-Gurion was personally responsible for a deliberate and systematic policy of mass expulsion?

"From April 1948, Ben-Gurion is projecting a message of transfer. There is no explicit order of his in writing, there is no orderly comprehensive policy, but there is an atmosphere of [population] transfer. The transfer idea is in the air. The entire leadership understands that this is the idea. The officer corps understands what is required of them. Under Ben-Gurion, a consensus of transfer is created."

Ben-Gurion was a "transferist"?

"Of course. Ben-Gurion was a transferist. He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst. There would be no such state. It would not be able to exist."

I don't hear you condemning him.

"Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here."

When ethnic cleansing is justified

Benny Morris, for decades you have been researching the dark side of Zionism. You are an expert on the atrocities of 1948. In the end, do you in effect justify all this? Are you an advocate of the transfer of 1948?

"There is no justification for acts of rape. There is no justification for acts of massacre. Those are war crimes. But in certain conditions, expulsion is not a war crime. I don't think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands."

We are talking about the killing of thousands of people, the destruction of an entire society.

"A society that aims to kill you forces you to destroy it. When the choice is between destroying or being destroyed, it's better to destroy."

There is something chilling about the quiet way in which you say that.

"If you expected me to burst into tears, I'm sorry to disappoint you. I will not do that."

So when the commanders of Operation Dani are standing there and observing the long and terrible column of the 50,000 people expelled from Lod walking eastward, you stand there with them? You justify them?

"I definitely understand them. I understand their motives. I don't think they felt any pangs of conscience, and in their place I wouldn't have felt pangs of conscience. Without that act, they would not have won the war and the state would not have come into being."

You do not condemn them morally?

"No."

They perpetrated ethnic cleansing.

"There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide - the annihilation of your people - I prefer ethnic cleansing."

And that was the situation in 1948?

"That was the situation. That is what Zionism faced. A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on."

The term `to cleanse' is terrible.

"I know it doesn't sound nice but that's the term they used at the time. I adopted it from all the 1948 documents in which I am immersed."

What you are saying is hard to listen to and hard to digest. You sound hard-hearted.

"I feel sympathy for the Palestinian people, which truly underwent a hard tragedy. I feel sympathy for the refugees themselves. But if the desire to establish a Jewish state here is legitimate, there was no other choice. It was impossible to leave a large fifth column in the country. From the moment the Yishuv [pre-1948 Jewish community in Palestine] was attacked by the Palestinians and afterward by the Arab states, there was no choice but to expel the Palestinian population. To uproot it in the course of war.

"Remember another thing: the Arab people gained a large slice of the planet. Not thanks to its skills or its great virtues, but because it conquered and murdered and forced those it conquered to convert during many generations. But in the end the Arabs have 22 states. The Jewish people did not have even one state. There was no reason in the world why it should not have one state. Therefore, from my point of view, the need to establish this state in this place overcame the injustice that was done to the Palestinians by uprooting them."

And morally speaking, you have no problem with that deed?

"That is correct. 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."

And in our case it effectively justifies a population transfer.

"That's what emerges."

And you take that in stride? War crimes? Massacres? The burning fields and the devastated villages of the Nakba?

"You have to put things in proportion. These are small war crimes. All told, if we take all the massacres and all the executions of 1948, we come to about 800 who were killed. In comparison to the massacres that were perpetrated in Bosnia, that's peanuts. In comparison to the massacres the Russians perpetrated against the Germans at Stalingrad, that's chicken feed. When you take into account that there was a bloody civil war here and that we lost an entire 1 percent of the population, you find that we behaved very well."

The next transfer

You went through an interesting process. You went to research Ben-Gurion and the Zionist establishment critically, but in the end you actually identify with them. You are as tough in your words as they were in their deeds.

"You may be right. Because I investigated the conflict in depth, I was forced to cope with the in-depth questions that those people coped with. I understood the problematic character of the situation they faced and maybe I adopted part of their universe of concepts. But I do not identify with Ben-Gurion. I think he made a serious historical mistake in 1948. Even though he understood the demographic issue and the need to establish a Jewish state without a large Arab minority, he got cold feet during the war. In the end, he faltered."

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that Ben-Gurion erred in expelling too few Arabs?

"If he was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. I know that this stuns the Arabs and the liberals and the politically correct types. But my feeling is that this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the matter had been resolved once and for all. If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country - the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full expulsion - rather than a partial one - he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations."

I find it hard to believe what I am hearing.

"If the end of the story turns out to be a gloomy one for the Jews, it will be because Ben-Gurion did not complete the transfer in 1948. Because he left a large and volatile demographic reserve in the West Bank and Gaza and within Israel itself."

In his place, would you have expelled them all? All the Arabs in the country?

"But I am not a statesman. I do not put myself in his place. But as an historian, I assert that a mistake was made here. Yes. The non-completion of the transfer was a mistake."

And today? Do you advocate a transfer today?

"If you are asking me whether I support the transfer and expulsion of the Arabs from the West Bank, Gaza and perhaps even from Galilee and the Triangle, I say not at this moment. I am not willing to be a partner to that act. In the present circumstances it is neither moral nor realistic. The world would not allow it, the Arab world would not allow it, it would destroy the Jewish society from within. But I am ready to tell you that in other circumstances, apocalyptic ones, which are liable to be realized in five or ten years, I can see expulsions. If we find ourselves with atomic weapons around us, or if there is a general Arab attack on us and a situation of warfare on the front with Arabs in the rear shooting at convoys on their way to the front, acts of expulsion will be entirely reasonable. They may even be essential."

Including the expulsion of Israeli Arabs?

"The Israeli Arabs are a time bomb. Their slide into complete Palestinization has made them an emissary of the enemy that is among us. They are a potential fifth column. In both demographic and security terms they are liable to undermine the state. So that if Israel again finds itself in a situation of existential threat, as in 1948, it may be forced to act as it did then. If we are attacked by Egypt (after an Islamist revolution in Cairo) and by Syria, and chemical and biological missiles slam into our cities, and at the same time Israeli Palestinians attack us from behind, I can see an expulsion situation. It could happen. If the threat to Israel is existential, expulsion will be justified."

Cultural dementia

Besides being tough, you are also very gloomy. You weren't always like that, were you?

"My turning point began after 2000. I wasn't a great optimist even before that. True, I always voted Labor or Meretz or Sheli [a dovish party of the late 1970s], and in 1988 I refused to serve in the territories and was jailed for it, but I always doubted the intentions of the Palestinians. The events of Camp David and what followed in their wake turned the doubt into certainty. When the Palestinians rejected the proposal of [prime minister Ehud] Barak in July 2000 and the Clinton proposal in December 2000, I understood that they are unwilling to accept the two-state solution. They want it all. Lod and Acre and Jaffa."

If that's so, then the whole Oslo process was mistaken and there is a basic flaw in the entire worldview of the Israeli peace movement.

"Oslo had to be tried. But today it has to be clear that from the Palestinian point of view, Oslo was a deception. [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat did not change for the worse, Arafat simply defrauded us. He was never sincere in his readiness for compromise and conciliation."

Do you really believe Arafat wants to throw us into the sea?

"He wants to send us back to Europe, to the sea we came from. He truly sees us as a Crusader state and he thinks about the Crusader precedent and wishes us a Crusader end. I'm certain that Israeli intelligence has unequivocal information proving that in internal conversations Arafat talks seriously about the phased plan [which would eliminate Israel in stages]. But the problem is not just Arafat. The entire Palestinian national elite is prone to see us as Crusaders and is driven by the phased plan. That's why the Palestinians are not honestly ready to forgo the right of return. They are preserving it as an instrument with which they will destroy the Jewish state when the time comes. They can't tolerate the existence of a Jewish state - not in 80 percent of the country and not in 30 percent. From their point of view, the Palestinian state must cover the whole Land of Israel."

If so, the two-state solution is not viable; even if a peace treaty is signed, it will soon collapse.

"Ideologically, I support the two-state solution. It's the only alternative to the expulsion of the Jews or the expulsion of the Palestinians or total destruction. But in practice, in this generation, a settlement of that kind will not hold water. At least 30 to 40 percent of the Palestinian public and at least 30 to 40 percent of the heart of every Palestinian will not accept it. After a short break, terrorism will erupt again and the war will resume."

Your prognosis doesn't leave much room for hope, does it?

"It's hard for me, too. There is not going to be peace in the present generation. There will not be a solution. We are doomed to live by the sword. I'm already fairly old, but for my children that is especially bleak. I don't know if they will want to go on living in a place where there is no hope. Even if Israel is not destroyed, we won't see a good, normal life here in the decades ahead."

Aren't your harsh words an over-reaction to three hard years of terrorism?

"The bombing of the buses and restaurants really shook me. They made me understand the depth of the hatred for us. They made me understand that the Palestinian, Arab and Muslim hostility toward Jewish existence here is taking us to the brink of destruction. I don't see the suicide bombings as isolated acts. They express the deep will of the Palestinian people. That is what the majority of the Palestinians want. They want what happened to the bus to happen to all of us."

Yet we, too, bear responsibility for the violence and the hatred: the occupation, the roadblocks, the closures, maybe even the Nakba itself.

"You don't have to tell me that. I have researched Palestinian history. I understand the reasons for the hatred very well. The Palestinians are retaliating now not only for yesterday's closure but for the Nakba as well. But that is not a sufficient explanation. The peoples of Africa were oppressed by the European powers no less than the Palestinians were oppressed by us, but nevertheless I don't see African terrorism in London, Paris or Brussels. The Germans killed far more of us than we killed the Palestinians, but we aren't blowing up buses in Munich and Nuremberg. So there is something else here, something deeper, that has to do with Islam and Arab culture."

Are you trying to argue that Palestinian terrorism derives from some sort of deep cultural problem?

"There is a deep problem in Islam. It's a world whose values are different. A world in which human life doesn't have the same value as it does in the West, in which freedom, democracy, openness and creativity are alien. A world that makes those who are not part of the camp of Islam fair game. Revenge is also important here. Revenge plays a central part in the Arab tribal culture. Therefore, the people we are fighting and the society that sends them have no moral inhibitions. If it obtains chemical or biological or atomic weapons, it will use them. If it is able, it will also commit genocide."

I want to insist on my point: A large part of the responsibility for the hatred of the Palestinians rests with us. After all, you yourself showed us that the Palestinians experienced a historical catastrophe.

"True. But when one has to deal with a serial killer, it's not so important to discover why he became a serial killer. What's important is to imprison the murderer or to execute him."

Explain the image: Who is the serial killer in the analogy?

"The barbarians who want to take our lives. The people the Palestinian society sends to carry out the terrorist attacks, and in some way the Palestinian society itself as well. At the moment, that society is in the state of being a serial killer. It is a very sick society. It should be treated the way we treat individuals who are serial killers."

What does that mean? What should we do tomorrow morning?

"We have to try to heal the Palestinians. Maybe over the years the establishment of a Palestinian state will help in the healing process. But in the meantime, until the medicine is found, they have to be contained so that they will not succeed in murdering us."

To fence them in? To place them under closure?

"Something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another."

War of barbarians

Benny Morris, have you joined the right wing?

"No, no. I still think of myself as left-wing. I still support in principle two states for two peoples."

But you don't believe that this solution will last. You don't believe in peace.

"In my opinion, we will not have peace, no."

Then what is your solution?

"In this generation there is apparently no solution. To be vigilant, to defend the country as far as is possible."

The iron wall approach?

"Yes. An iron wall is a good image. An iron wall is the most reasonable policy for the coming generation. My colleague Avi Shlein described this well: What Jabotinsky proposed is what Ben-Gurion adopted. In the 1950s, there was a dispute between Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharett. Ben-Gurion argued that the Arabs understand only force and that ultimate force is the one thing that will persuade them to accept our presence here. He was right. That's not to say that we don't need diplomacy. Both toward the West and for our own conscience, it's important that we strive for a political solution. But in the end, what will decide their readiness to accept us will be force alone. Only the recognition that they are not capable of defeating us."

For a left-winger, you sound very much like a right-winger, wouldn't you say?

"I'm trying to be realistic. I know it doesn't always sound politically correct, but I think that political correctness poisons history in any case. It impedes our ability to see the truth. And I also identify with Albert Camus. He was considered a left-winger and a person of high morals, but when he referred to the Algerian problem he placed his mother ahead of morality. Preserving my people is more important than universal moral concepts."

Are you a neo-conservative? Do you read the current historical reality in the terms of Samuel Huntington?

"I think there is a clash between civilizations here [as Huntington argues]. I think the West today resembles the Roman Empire of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries: The barbarians are attacking it and they may also destroy it."

The Muslims are barbarians, then?

"I think the values I mentioned earlier are values of barbarians - the attitude toward democracy, freedom, openness; the attitude toward human life. In that sense they are barbarians. The Arab world as it is today is barbarian."

And in your view these new barbarians are truly threatening the Rome of our time?

"Yes. The West is stronger but it's not clear whether it knows how to repulse this wave of hatred. The phenomenon of the mass Muslim penetration into the West and their settlement there is creating a dangerous internal threat. A similar process took place in Rome. They let the barbarians in and they toppled the empire from within."

Is it really all that dramatic? Is the West truly in danger?

"Yes. I think that the war between the civilizations is the main characteristic of the 21st century. I think President Bush is wrong when he denies the very existence of that war. It's not only a matter of bin Laden. This is a struggle against a whole world that espouses different values. And we are on the front line. Exactly like the Crusaders, we are the vulnerable branch of Europe in this place."

The situation as you describe it is extremely harsh. You are not entirely convinced that we can survive here, are you?

"The possibility of annihilation exists."

Would you describe yourself as an apocalyptic person?

"The whole Zionist project is apocalyptic. It exists within hostile surroundings and in a certain sense its existence is unreasonable. It wasn't reasonable for it to succeed in 1881 and it wasn't reasonable for it to succeed in 1948 and it's not reasonable that it will succeed now. Nevertheless, it has come this far. In a certain way it is miraculous. I live the events of 1948, and 1948 projects itself on what could happen here. Yes, I think of Armageddon. It's possible. Within the next 20 years there could be an atomic war here."

If Zionism is so dangerous for the Jews and if Zionism makes the Arabs so wretched, maybe it's a mistake?

"No, Zionism was not a mistake. The desire to establish a Jewish state here was a legitimate one, a positive one. But given the character of Islam and given the character of the Arab nation, it was a mistake to think that it would be possible to establish a tranquil state here that lives in harmony with its surroundings."

Which leaves us, nevertheless, with two possibilities: either a cruel, tragic Zionism, or the forgoing of Zionism.

"Yes. That's so. You have pared it down, but that's correct."

Would you agree that this historical reality is intolerable, that there is something inhuman about it?

"Yes. But that's so for the Jewish people, not the Palestinians. A people that suffered for 2,000 years, that went through the Holocaust, arrives at its patrimony but is thrust into a renewed round of bloodshed, that is perhaps the road to annihilation. In terms of cosmic justice, that's terrible. It's far more shocking than what happened in 1948 to a small part of the Arab nation that was then in Palestine."

So what you are telling me is that you live the Palestinian Nakba of the past less than you live the possible Jewish Nakba of the future?

"Yes. Destruction could be the end of this process. It could be the end of the Zionist experiment. And that's what really depresses and scares me."

Source: http://www.deiryassin.org/bennymorris.html

Though late, It's true ...

2009-01-18T19:55:00.000+05:30

When the black man was degraded on the basis of his color, Alleged was called Racist.
When the jew was abhorred on the basis of his religion, alleged was called Anti-Semitic.
When the prophet of Islam was caricatured, It was called Freedom of Expression.

and they became what they hated most..........

2009-01-18T19:30:00.001+05:30

I couldn't sleep because of this exhilarating compassion that "The iron wall" has stirred in my heart for innocent Palestinians. Right at 2:28 i logged off my computer after watching the documentary and now It's 3:36 in the morning but I'm still awake. For whole 1hr 8minutes my brain has been storming with only one question, How can i solve Israel-Palestine conflict or i can be of some help. Albeit it was pretty clear to me from the history of expansion of Israeli settlement that Israel doesn't want a solution in long term, Palestinians have lost majority of the portion of their land from Oslo convention onwards and are living in Central Earth Jail and hence Hamas would never accept long term solution. The economically progressive portion of Palestinian city has been encircled by 20ft tall concrete wall, The Muslims living in Israel have been divided through different types of so called security measurements to avoid rebel from within Israel though i feel rebellion is bound to happen under such circumstance. A truce is of course possible but not permanent solution, but right now i'm not interested in truce because truce in my opinion is always preparation of another war. In chess you do not start attacking opponent unless you are at advantage. You strategies, you keep your weapons at correct position so as to be in advantage at time of war. Truce give time to both party, to prepare for more ghastly and barbaric war.

The UN security force at the border of Israel-Palestine sounds perfect solution for time being, which is being brokered by French supremo Sarkozy and Egyptian president Hosni al Mubarak. But what will happen in long run?, The Palestinian will gain power,missiles(60km range)? which is against Israeli interest, then what will Israeli do?They will bomb Palestinian arsenal and conflict will restart.

For Palestinians it's about survival and for Israeli its not about survival in short run but certainly it will be about survival in long run. For survival humans can stoop down to any level. So, I'm damn sure this conflict is going to be the longest and most bloody of all the wars world has ever had.

I do not have much expectations from President Obama because he didn't have balls to call a spade, spade. When asked about Israeli aggression in Palestine. He said, he or any other father will attack those attacking his home, where his two daughters are sleeping. Needless to say the Palestinian missiles from Iran are hardly able to reach Israel(Only 1 Israeli was killed by rocket attack from April to the start of war), With 40Km range they can reach up to nearest 1st or 2nd city of Israel. But that's no excuse of bombarding missile. What was missing in his statement was the 6 months of Gaza blocked and the long suffering of Palestinians expelled from their own land, forcing the population to fight for their freedom or live ghetto life as given by Zionist regime. Hamas is calling Palestinians to live like a tiger for a day or die, which sounds better option for anyone with a little self esteem.

I would like to ask Mr Obama and other Zionist supporters, Would you live peacefully when expelled from your land, your state blocked by occupiers, not letting basic medicines from UN to reach hospitals? (120 Palestinians were killed in hospital alone during 6 months of Gaza blocked). If u say Yes, U do not have balls to speak the truth. i.e. your a dishonest person. If no, U r a terrorist.

It's 4:52 and i can see only one just solution, which can be long lasting.
The answer lies in game of CHESS, The players stop killing opponent at stalemate. If either of the two party is more powerful, they will chose to go on war like Israel has chosen. So the solution is, empower Palestine(through UN etc) just equal to Israel and there will be peace in the region as never before.

I'm unable to make out any way through which Palestine could be empowered just equal to Israel. It seems impossible but may be Iran is trying to do the same. Thankfully by god grace i'm feeling sleepy after writing this utterly useless solution.

Guten Morgen

and they became what they hated most...............the oppressed became oppressor.

Not Again by Arundhati Roy

2009-01-03T00:29:00.000+05:30

Recently, those who have criticised the actions of the US government (myself included) have been called "anti-American". Anti-Americanism is in the process of being consecrated into an ideology. The term is usually used by the American establishment to discredit and, not falsely - but shall we say inaccurately - define its critics. Once someone is branded anti-American, the chances are that he or she will be judged before they're heard and the argument will be lost in the welter of bruised national pride.

What does the term mean? That you're anti-jazz? Or that you're opposed to free speech? That you don't delight in Toni Morrison or John Updike? That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias? Does it mean you don't admire the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear weapons, or the thousands of war resisters who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam? Does it mean that you hate all Americans?

This sly conflation of America's music, literature, the breathtaking physical beauty of the land, the ordinary pleasures of ordinary people with criticism of the US government's foreign policy is a deliberate and extremely effective strategy. It's like a retreating army taking cover in a heavily populated city, hoping that the prospect of hitting civilian targets will deter enemy fire.

To call someone anti-American, indeed, to be anti-American, is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those that the establishment has set out for you: If you don't love us, you hate us. If you're not good, you're evil. If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists.

Last year, like many others, I too made the mistake of scoffing at this post-September 11 rhetoric, dismissing it as foolish. I've realised that it's not. It's actually a canny recruitment drive for a misconceived, dangerous war. Every day I'm taken aback at how many people believe that opposing the war in Afghanistan amounts to supporting terrorism.

Uppermost on everybody's mind, of course, particularly in the US, is the horror of what has come to be known as 9/11. Nearly 3,000 civilians lost their lives in that lethal terrorist strike. The grief is still deep. The rage still sharp. And a strange, deadly war is raging around the world. Yet, each person who has lost a loved one surely knows that no war, no act of revenge, will blunt the edges of their pain or bring their own loved ones back. War cannot avenge those who have died. War is only a brutal desecration of their memory.

To fuel yet another war - this time against Iraq - by manipulating people's grief, by packaging it for TV specials sponsored by corporations selling detergent or running shoes, is to cheapen and devalue grief, to drain it of meaning. We are seeing a pillaging of even the most private human feelings for political purpose. It is a terrible, violent thing for a state to do to its people.

The US government says that Saddam Hussein is a war criminal, a cruel military despot who has committed genocide against his own people. That's a fairly accurate description of the man. In 1988 he razed hundreds of villages in northern Iraq and killed thousands of Kurds. Today, we know that that same year the US government provided him with $500m in subsidies to buy American farm products. The next year, after he had successfully completed his genocidal campaign, the US government doubled its subsidy to $1bn. It also provided him with high-quality germ seed for anthrax, as well as helicopters and dual-use material that could be used to manufacture chemical and biological weapons.

It turns out that while Saddam was carrying out his worst atrocities, the US and British governments were his close allies. So what changed?

In August 1990 Saddam invaded Kuwait. His sin was not so much that he had committed an act of war, but that he acted independently, without orders from his masters. This display of independence was enough to upset the power equation in the Gulf. So it was decided that Saddam be exterminated, like a pet that has outlived its owner's affection.

What if Iraq does have a nuclear weapon? Does that justify a pre-emptive US strike? The US has the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world. It's the only country in the world to have actually used them on civilian populations. If the US is justified in launching a pre-emptive attack on Iraq, why, any nuclear power is justified in carrying out a pre-emptive attack on any other. India could attack Pakistan, or the other way around.

Recently, the US played an important part in forcing India and Pakistan back from the brink of war. Is it so hard for it to take its own advice? Who is guilty of feckless moralising? Of preaching peace while it wages war? The US, which George Bush has called "the most peaceful nation on earth", has been at war with one country or another every year for the past 50 years.

Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons. They're usually fought for hegemony, for business. And then, of course, there's the business of war. In his book on globalisation, The Lexus And The Olive Tree, Tom Friedman says: "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps." Perhaps this was written in a moment of vulnerability, but it's certainly the most succinct, accurate description of the project of corporate globalisation that I have read.

After September 11 and the war against terror, the hidden hand and fist have had their cover blown - and we have a clear view now of America's other weapon - the free market - bearing down on the developing world, with a clenched, unsmiling smile. The Task That Never Ends is America's perfect war, the perfect vehicle for the endless expansion of American imperialism.

As the disparity between the rich and poor grows, the hidden fist of the free market has its work cut out. Multinational corporations on the prowl for "sweetheart deals" that yield enormous profits cannot push them through in developing countries without the active connivance of state machinery. Today, corporate globalisation needs an international confederation of loyal, corrupt, preferably authoritarian governments in poorer countries, to push through unpopular reforms and quell the mutinies. It needs a press that pretends to be free. It needs courts that pretend to dispense justice. It needs nuclear bombs, standing armies, sterner immigration laws, and watchful coastal patrols to make sure that it is only money, goods, patents and services that are globalised - not the free movement of people, not a respect for human rights, not international treaties on racial discrimination or chemical and nuclear weapons, or greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, or, God forbid, justice. It's as though even a gesture towards international accountability would wreck the whole enterprise.

Close to one year after the war against terror was officially flagged off in the ruins of Afghanistan, in country after country freedoms are being curtailed in the name of protecting freedom, civil liberties are being suspended in the name of protecting democracy. All kinds of dissent is being defined as "terrorism". The US secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, said that his mission in the war against terror was to persuade the world that Americans must be allowed to continue their way of life. When the maddened king stamps his foot, slaves tremble in their quarters. So, it's hard for me to say this, but the American way of life is simply not sustainable. Because it doesn't acknowledge that there is a world beyond America.

Fortunately, power has a shelf life. When the time comes, maybe this mighty empire will, like others before it, overreach itself and implode from within. It looks as though structural cracks have already appeared.

Soviet-style communism failed, not because it was intrinsically evil but because it was flawed. It allowed too few people to usurp too much power: 21st-century market-capitalism, American-style, will fail for the same reasons.

India's shame by Arundhati Roy

2008-12-27T13:20:00.000+05:30

The Guardian, Friday 15 December 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/dec/15/india.kashmir

Five years ago this week, on December 13 2001, the Indian parliament was in its winter session. The government was under attack for yet another corruption scandal. At 11.30 in the morning, five armed men in a white Ambassador car fitted out with an improvised explosive device drove through the gates of Parliament House. When they were challenged, they jumped out of the car and opened fire. In the gun battle that followed, all the attackers were killed. Eight security personnel and a gardener were killed too. The dead terrorists, the police said, had enough explosives to blow up the parliament building, and enough ammunition to take on a whole battalion of soldiers. Unlike most terrorists, these five left behind a thick trail of evidence - weapons, mobile phones, phone numbers, ID cards, photographs, packets of dried fruit and even a love letter.

Not surprisingly, prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee seized the opportunity to compare the assault to the September 11 attacks in the US only three months previously.

On December 14 2001, the day after the attack on parliament, the Special Cell (anti-terrorist squad) of the Delhi police claimed it had tracked down several people suspected of being involved in the conspiracy. The next day, it announced that it had "cracked the case": the attack, the police said, was a joint operation carried out by two Pakistan-based terrorist groups, Lashkar- e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. Three Kashmiri men, Syed Abdul Rahman Geelani, Shaukat Hussain Guru and Mohammad Afzal, and Shaukat's wife, Afsan Guru, were arrested.

In the tense days that followed, parliament was adjourned. The Indian government declared that Pakistan - America's closest ally in the "war on terror" - was a terrorist state. On December 21, India recalled its high commissioner from Pakistan, suspended air, rail and bus communications and banned air traffic with Pakistan. It put into motion a massive mobilisation of its war machinery, and moved more than half a million troops to the Pakistan border. Foreign embassies evacuated their staff and citizens, and tourists travelling to India were issued cautionary travel advisories. The world watched with bated breath as the subcontinent was taken to the brink of nuclear war. All this cost India an estimated pounds 1.1bn of public money. About 800 soldiers died in the panicky process of mobilisation alone.

The police charge sheet was filed in a special fast-track trial court designated for cases under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Some three years later, the trial court sentenced Geelani, Shaukat and Afzal to death. Afsan Guru was sentenced to five years of "rigorous imprisonment". On appeal, the high court subsequently acquitted Geelani and Afsan, but upheld Shaukat's and Afzal's death sentence. Eventually, the supreme court upheld the acquittals and reduced Shaukat's punishment to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment. However, it not just confirmed, but enhanced Mohammad Afzal's sentence. He was given three life sentences and a double death sentence.

In its judgment on August 5 2005, the supreme court admitted that the evidence against Afzal was only circumstantial, and that there was no evidence that he belonged to any terrorist group or organisation. But it went on to endorse what can only be described as lynch law. "The incident, which resulted in heavy casualties, had shaken the entire nation," it said, "and the collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender."

Spelling out the reasons for giving Afzal the death penalty, the judgment went on: "The appellant, who is a surrendered militant and who was bent upon repeating the acts of treason against the nation, is a menace to the society and his life should become extinct." This implies a dangerous ignorance of what it means to be a "surrendered militant" in Kashmir today.

So, should Afzal's life be extinguished? His story is fascinating because it is inextricably entwined with the story of the Kashmir Valley. It is a story that stretches far beyond the confines of courtrooms and the limited imagination of people who live in the secure heart of a self-declared "superpower". Afzal's story has its origins in a war zone whose laws are beyond the pale of the fine arguments and delicate sensibilities of normal jurisprudence.

For all these reasons it is critical that we consider carefully the strange, sad and utterly sinister story of the December 13 attack. It tells us a great deal about the way the world's largest "democracy" really works. It connects the biggest things to the smallest. It traces the pathways that connect what happens in the shadowy grottoes of our police stations to what goes on in the snowy streets of Paradise Valley, and from there to the malign furies that bring nations to the brink of nuclear war. It raises specific questions that deserve specific, and not ideological or rhetorical, answers. What hangs in the balance is far more than the fate of one man.

For the most part, the December 13 attack was an astonishingly incompetent "terrorist" strike. But consummate competence appeared to be the hallmark of everything that followed: the gathering of evidence, the speed of the investigation by the Special Cell, the arrest and charging of the accused and the three-and-a-half-year-long judicial process that began with the fast-track trial court.

The operative phrase in all of this is "appeared to be". If you follow the story carefully, you will encounter two sets of masks. First, the mask of consummate competence (accused arrested, "case cracked" in two days flat), and then, when things began to come undone, the benign mask of shambling incompetence (shoddy evidence, procedural flaws, material contradictions). But underneath all of this - as several lawyers, academics and journalists who have studied the case in detail have shown - is something more sinister, more worrying. Over the past few years the worries have grown into a mountain of misgivings, impossible to ignore.

The doubts set in as early as the day after the parliament attack, when the police arrested Geelani, a young lecturer at Delhi University. His outraged colleagues and friends, certain that he had been framed, contacted the well-known lawyer Nandita Haksar and asked her to take on his case. This marked the beginning of a campaign for the fair trial of Geelani. It flew in the face of mass hysteria and corrosive propaganda that was enthusiastically disseminated by the mass media. But despite this, the campaign was successful, and Geelani was eventually acquitted, along with Afsan Guru.

Geelani's acquittal blew a gaping hole in the prosecution's version of the parliament attack. The linchpin of its conspiracy theory suddenly tuned out to be innocent. But in some odd way, in the public mind, the acquittal of two of the accused only confirmed the guilt of the other two. There was bloodlust that had to be satiated. When the government announced that Afzal, Accused No 1 in the case, would be hanged on October 20 2006, it seemed that most people welcomed the news not just with approval, but with morbid excitement. But then, once again, the questions resurfaced.

To see through the prosecution's case against Geelani was relatively easy. He was plucked out of thin air and transplanted into the centre of the "conspiracy" as its kingpin. Afzal was different. He had been extruded through the sewage system of the hell that Kashmir has become. He surfaced through a manhole, covered in shit (and when he emerged, policemen in the Special Cell pissed on him. Literally.) The first thing they made him do was a "media confession" in which he implicated himself completely in the attack. The speed with which this happened made many of us believe that he was indeed guilty as charged. It was only much later that the circumstances under which this "confession" was made were revealed, and even the supreme court was to set it aside, saying that the police had violated legal safeguards.

From the very beginning there was nothing pristine or simple about Afzal's case. His story gives us a glimpse into what life is really like in the Kashmir Valley. It is only in the Noddy Book version we read about in our newspapers that security forces battle militants and innocent Kashmiris are caught in the crossfire. In the adult version, Kashmir is a valley awash with militants, renegades, security forces, double-crossers, informers, spooks, blackmailers, blackmailees, extortionists, spies, both Indian and Pakistani intelligence agencies, human rights activists, NGOs and unimaginable amounts of unaccounted-for money and weapons. There are not always clear lines that demarcate the boundaries between all these things and people; it is not easy to tell who is working for whom.

Truth, in Kashmir, is probably more dangerous than anything else. The deeper you dig, the worse it gets. At the bottom of the pit are the Special Operations Group and Special Task Force (STF), the most ruthless, indisciplined and dreaded elements of the Indian security apparatus in Kashmir, which play a central role in the Afzal story. Unlike the more formal forces, they operate in a twilight zone where policemen, surrendered militants, renegades and common criminals do business. They prey upon the local population, particularly in rural Kashmir. Their primary victims are the thousands of young Kashmiri men who rose up in revolt in the anarchic uprising of the early 1990s and have since surrendered and are trying to live normal lives.

In 1989, when Afzal crossed the border to be trained as a militant, he was only 20. He returned with no training, disillusioned with his experience. He put down his gun and enrolled himself in Delhi University. In 1993, without ever having been a practising militant, he voluntarily surrendered to the Border Security Force. Illogically enough, it was at this point that his nightmares began. His surrender was treated as a crime and his life became hell. Afzal's story has enraged Kashmiris because what has happened to him could have happened, is happening and has happened to thousands of young Kashmiri men and their families. The only difference is that their stories are played out in the dingy bowels of interrogation centres, army camps and police stations where they have been burned, beaten, electrocuted, blackmailed and killed, their bodies thrown out of the backs of trucks for passers-by to find. Whereas Afzal's story is being performed like a piece of medieval theatre on the national stage, in the clear light of day, with the legal sanction of a "fair trial", the hollow benefits of a "free press" and the all pomp and ceremony of a so-called democracy.

In documents submitted to the court, Afzal describes how, in the months before the attack on parliament, he was tortured in the camps of the STF - with electrodes on his genitals and chillies and petrol in his anus. He talks of how he was a constant victim of extortion. He mentions the name of Deputy Superintendent of Police Devinder Singh, who said he needed him to do a "small job" for him in Delhi. (Singh has subsequently admitted on record to having tortured Afzal in exactly the ways Afzal has described.) Afzal has also said that from the time he was arrested up to the time he was charged (a few months), his younger brother Hilal was held in illegal confinement in a police camp in Kashmir. As ransom.

Even today, Afzal does not claim complete innocence. It is the nature of his involvement that is being contested. For instance, was he coerced, tortured and blackmailed into playing even the peripheral part he played? In a gross violation of his constitutional rights, from the time he was arrested and right through the crucial phase of the trial when the real work of building up a case is done, Afzal did not have a lawyer. He had nobody to put out his version of the story, or help him or anyone else sift through the tangle of lies and fabrications and propaganda put out by the police. Various individuals worked it out for themselves. Today, five years later, a group of lawyers, academics, journalists and writers has published a reader (December 13th: The Strange Case of the Parliament Attack, published by Penguin India). It is this body of work that has fractured what, only recently, appeared to be a national consensus interwoven with mass hysteria.

Through the fissures, those who have come under scrutiny - shadowy individuals, counter-intelligence and security agencies, political parties - are beginning to surface. They wave flags, hurl abuse, issue hot denials and cover their tracks with more and more untruths. Thus they reveal themselves.

The essays in the Penguin book raise questions about how Afzal, who never had proper legal representation, can be sentenced to death without having had an opportunity to be heard, without a fair trial. They raise questions about fabricated arrest memos, falsified seizure and recovery memos, procedural flaws, vital evidence that has been tampered with, false telephone records, false testimonies, legal lacunae, material contradictions in the testimonies of police and prosecution witnesses, and the outright lies that were presented in court and published in newspapers. They show how there is hardly a single piece of evidence that stands up to scrutiny.

And then there are even more disturbing questions that have been raised, which range beyond the fate of Afzal. Some of these are critical for a country that is claiming to be a responsible nuclear power. Here are 13 questions for December 13:

Question 1: For months before the attack on parliament, both the government and the police had been saying that parliament could be attacked. On December 12 2001, the then prime minister, AB Vajpayee, warned of an imminent attack. On December 13 it happened. Given that there was an "improved security drill", how did a car bomb packed with explosives enter the parliament complex?

Question 2: Within days of the attack, the Special Cell of the Delhi police said it was a meticulously planned joint operation of Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba. They said the attack was led by a man called "Mohammad" who was also involved in the hijacking of flight IC-814 in 1998. (This was later refuted by the Central Bureau of Investigation.) None of this was ever proved in court. What evidence did the Special Cell have for its claim?

Question 3: The entire attack was recorded live on CCTV. Two Congress party MPs, Kapil Sibal and Najma Heptullah, demanded in parliament that the CCTV recording be shown to the members. They said that there was confusion about the details of the event. The chief whip of the Congress party, Priyaranjan Dasmunshi, said, "I counted six men getting out of the car. But only five were killed. The closed circuit TV camera recording clearly showed the six men." If Dasmunshi was right, why did the police say that there were only five people in the car? Who was the sixth person? Where is he now? Why was the CCTV recording not produced by the prosecution as evidence in the trial? Why was it not released for public viewing?

Question 4: Why was parliament adjourned after some of these questions were raised?

Question 5: A few days after December 13, the government declared that it had "incontrovertible evidence" of Pakistan's involvement in the attack, and announced a massive mobilisation of almost half a million soldiers to the Indo-Pakistan border. The subcontinent was pushed to the brink of nuclear war. Apart from Afzal's "confession", extracted under torture (and later set aside by the supreme court), what was the "incontrovertible evidence"?

Question 6: Is it true that the military mobilisation to the Pakistan border had begun long before the December 13 attack?

Question 7: How much did this military standoff, which lasted for nearly a year, cost? How many soldiers died in the process? How many soldiers and civilians died because of mishandled landmines, and how many peasants lost their homes and land because trucks and tanks were rolling through their villages and landmines were being planted in their fields?

Question 8: In a criminal investigation, it is vital for the police to show how the evidence gathered at the scene of the attack led them to the accused. The police have not managed to show how they connected Geelani to the attack. And how did the police reach Afzal? The Special Cell says Geelani led them to Afzal. But the message to look out for Afzal was actually flashed to the Srinagar police before Geelani was arrested. So how did the Special Cell connect Afzal to the December 13 attack?

Question 9: The courts acknowledge that Afzal was a surrendered militant who was in regular contact with the security forces, particularly the STF of Jammu and Kashmir police. How do the security forces explain the fact that a person under their surveillance was able to conspire in a major militant operation?

Question 10: Is it plausible that organisations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Mohammad would rely on a person who had been in and out of STF torture chambers, and was under constant police surveillance, as the principal link for a major operation?

Question 11: In his statement before the court, Afzal says that he was introduced to "Mohammed" and instructed to take him to Delhi by a man called Tariq, who was working with the STF. Tariq was named in the police charge sheet. Who is Tariq and where is he now?

Question 12: On December 19 2001, six days after the parliament attack, police commissioner SM Shangari identified one of the attackers who was killed as Mohammad Yasin Fateh Mohammed (alias Abu Hamza) of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, who had been arrested in Mumbai in November 2000 and immediately handed over to the Jammu and Kashmir police. He gave detailed descriptions to support his statement. If police commissioner Shangari was right, how did Yasin, a man in the custody of the Jammu and Kashmir police, end up participating in the parliament attack? If he was wrong, where is Yasin now?

Question 13: Why is it that we still do not know who the five "terrorists" killed in the parliament attack are?

These questions, examined cumulatively, point to something far more serious than incompetence. The words that come to mind are complicity, collusion, involvement. There is no need for us to feign shock or shrink from thinking these thoughts and saying them out loud. Governments and their intelligence agencies have a hoary tradition of using strategies such as this to further their own ends. (Look up the burning of the Reichstag and the rise of Nazi power in Germany in 1933; or Operation Gladio, in which European intelligence agencies created acts of terrorism, especially in Italy, in order to discredit militant groups such as the Red Brigades.)

The official response to all of these questions has been dead silence. As things stand, Afzal's execution has been postponed while the president considers his clemency petition. Meanwhile, the Bhartiya Janata party (now in the opposition) announced that it would turn "Hang Afzal" into a national campaign. But it does not seem to have taken off. Now other avenues are being explored. The main strategy seems to be to create confusion and polarise the debate on communal lines. In the business of spreading confusion, the media, particularly television journalists, can be counted on to be perfect collaborators. On discussions, chat shows and "special reports", we have television anchors playing around with crucial facts, like young children in a sandpit. Torturers, estranged brothers, senior police officers and politicians are emerging from the woodwork and talking. The more they talk, the more interesting it all becomes.

One character who is rapidly emerging from the shadowy periphery and wading on to centre-stage is deputy superintendent Devinder Singh. He was showcased on the national news (CNN-IBN), in what was presented as a "sting" operation with a hidden camera. It all seemed a bit unnecessary, however, because Singh has been talking a lot these days. He has done recorded interviews, on the phone as well as face to face, saying exactly the same shocking things. Weeks before the sting operation, in a recorded interview with Parvaiz Bukhari, a freelance journalist, he said, "I did interrogate and torture him [Afzal] at my camp for several days. And we never recorded his arrest in the books anywhere. His description of torture at my camp is true. That was the procedure those days and we did pour petrol in his ass and gave him electric shocks. But I could not break him. He did not reveal anything to me despite our hardest possible interrogation ... He looked like a 'bhondu' [fool] those days, what you call a 'chootya' [idiot] type. And I had a reputation for torture, interrogation and breaking suspects. If anybody came out of my interrogation clean, nobody would ever touch him again. He would be considered clean for good by the whole department."

This is not an empty boast. Singh has a formidable reputation for torture in the Kashmir Valley. On TV, his boasting spiralled into policy-making. "Torture is the only deterrent for terrorism," he said. "I do it for the nation." He did not bother to explain why or how the "bhondu" that he tortured and subsequently released allegedly went on to become the diabolical mastermind of the parliament attack. Singh then said that Afzal was a Jaish militant. If this is true, why was the evidence not placed before the courts? And why on earth was Afzal released? Why was he not watched? There is a definite attempt to try to dismiss this as incompetence. But given everything we know now, it would take all of Singh's delicate professional skills to make some of us believe that.

The official version of the story of the parliament attack is very quickly coming apart at the seams. Even the supreme court judgment, with all its flaws of logic and leaps of faith, does not accuse Afzal of being the mastermind of the attack. So who was the mastermind? If Afzal is hanged, we may never know. But LK Advani, the leader of the opposition, wants him hanged at once. Even a day's delay, he says, is against the national interest. Why? What is the hurry? The man is locked up in a high-security cell on death row. He is not allowed out of his cell for even five minutes a day. What harm can he do? Talk? Write, perhaps? Surely, even in Advani's own narrow interpretation of the term, it is in the national interest not to hang Afzal? At least not until there is an inquiry that reveals what the real story is and who actually attacked parliament?

A genuine inquiry would have to mean far more than just a political witch-hunt. It would have to look into the part played by intelligence, counter-insurgency and security agencies as well. Offences such as the fabrication of evidence and the blatant violation of procedural norms have already become established in the courts, but they look very much like just the tip of the iceberg. We now have a police officer admitting - boasting - on record that he was involved in the illegal detention and torture of a fellow citizen. Is all of this acceptable to the people, the government and the courts of India?

Given the track record of Indian governments (past and present, right, left and centre) it is naive - perhaps utopian is a better word - to hope that today's politicians will ever have the courage to institute an inquiry that will, once and for all, uncover the real story. A maintenance dose of pusillanimity is probably encrypted in all governments. But hope has little to do with reason.

What does Islam teach?

2008-05-04T15:03:00.001+05:30

"In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most merciful.
Say: He is Allah, the one and only! Allah, the Eternal, Absolute:
He begetteth not nor is he begotten And there is nothing comparable to him."

Duty towards parents
"We have enjoined on man kindness to his parents" (46:15)

Duty towards the poor
"Anyone who looks after and work for a widow and a poor person is like a warrior fighting for Allah's cause.. or like a person who fasts during the day and prays all night"(Bukhari)

Brotherhood
"None of u have faith unless he loves for his brother what he loves for himself" (Bukhari)

Patience
"O ye who believ! seek help with patient perseverence and prayer; for Allah is with those who patiently persevere."(2:153)

Forgiveness
Take to forgiveness and enjoin good and turn aside from the ignorant.(7:199)

Kindness
Those who are kind and considerate to Allah's creatures, Allah bestows his kindness and affection on them..(Abu Dawud)

Justice
"O u who believe! Stand out firmly for Allah as just witness; and let not the enmity and hatred of others make u avoid justice. Be just: that is nearer to piety."(5:8)

Humanitarianism
"Visit the sick, feed the hungry And free the captives." (Bukhari)

Self Control
"The strong man is not the one who is strong in wrestling but the one Who controls himself in anger" (Bukhari, Muslim)

Education
"Seeking knowledge is obligatory upon every Muslim make and female" (Mishkat)

Duty to Children
"Fear Allah, the almighty, and be fair and just to all ur children." (Bukhari, Muslim)

Duty towards One's wife
"... the best of u are those who are the best to their wives" (At-Tirmidhi)

Smile
"Ur smile for ur brother is charity" (Bukhari)

Jihad
"The best Jihad is to speak a word of justice to an oppressive ruler." (Ibn Majah)

Racial Equality
"There is no superiority for an Arab over a non-Arab and for a non-Arab over Arab nor for white over the black nor for black over the white except in piety. Verily the noblest amongst u is he who is most pious.

Cleanliness
"Allah loves those who turn to him constantly and He loves those who keep themselves pure and clean." (2:22)

Duty towars Non-Muslims
"Whoever harms a non-Muslim citizen has harmed me." - Prophet Muhammad

Importance of Salah
"The key to paradise is Salah and the key to Salah is purification." (Mishkat)

Unity
Hold fast, all together, by the rope which god stretches out for u, be not divided among yourselves.."(3:103)

"It(the Quran) is simply a reminder to all the worlds." (38:87)

"And the servents of Allah are those who walked on the earth n humility and when the ignorant address them, they say 'Peace' (25:63)

"Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from error.."(2:256)

"Any man who grows a tree or plant and then a bird or a human being eats from it, it will be counted as charity in his credit."

"Anyone who believes in God and the last dayshould not harm his neighbor...should entertain his guest generously and should say what is good or keep quiet." (Bukhari)

"Allah is the protector of those who have faith from the depths of darkness He will lead them forth into light." (2:256)

"Do not unbelieves see that the heavens and earth were joined together(as one unit creation) before we clove them asunder? (21:30)

"Repel evil with what is better" then will he between whom thee was hatred become as it were thy friend and intimate!" (41:34)

"Invite all to the way of the lord with wisdom and beautiful preaching; and argue with them in ways that are best and most gracious." (16:125)