Sikh Genocide 1984 The Plan (MUST SEE)
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=pRtdDm6DDDI
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Genocide of Gujrat, India
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=3lzJPLJ50y0
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Hindu Extremists Killing minorities in India (Part 1of 5)
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=zyYo62MdjTQ
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Demolition of the Babri Mosque 
on’t forget
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=benqtb1bVog
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ALL SIKHS AND MUSLIMS AND CHRISTIANS MUST SEE..BAN THE RSS
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=2T0e-UN4uX4
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Obama holds key economy talks
Aljazeera.net – 1 hour ago
Barack Obama, the US presidential-elect, is holding talks with key economic advisers in Chicago in a bid to develop plans to aid the struggling US economy.
On the White House Want a Security Post? Say Nothing. New York Times
Obama calling on economic experts for their advice The Associated Press
Times Online – USA Today – CNN – TIME
all 4,410 news articles »
US Engages Russia on Arms and Missile Defense
New York Times – 1 hour ago
By Ellen Barry MOSCOW – Russia on Friday received new proposals from the United States to reduce nuclear arms and provide greater access to the Bush administration’s planned missile defense system, as leaders in Washington moved to calm tensions …
Medvedev hails US-Russia ties at new GM plant Reuters
What the Russian papers say RIA Novosti
WB govt to set up new industries at Singur : Buddhadev
The West Bengal government will announce in a few days plans to set up new industries at Singur after the exit of the Tatas Motors from there and has several proposals in hand, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has said.
US clamps down on Iran
Washington : The Bush administration has moved to clamp down on Tehran by barring financial institutions from routing certain money transfers through the United States on behalf of Iranian banks, Iran’s government and others in the country.
Specifically, the Treasury Department announced Thursday that it is revoking Iran’s so-called “U-turn” license that until now has allowed for such money transfers under certain conditions.
“This regulatory action will close the last general entry point for Iran to the US financial system,” the department said in a release.
What about India! NO relief for the Starving MASSES as the captured Economy feeds the Money machine , the Indigenous masses must Die!
Despite the slide in the price of crude oil in the international market, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry on Thursday ruled out any cut on the retail price of petrol and diesel on the plea that oil marketing companies were still making losses on the sale of diesel, kerosene and domestic LPG.
“I am not aware of any proposal to cut fuel prices. At present, the reduction is not under active consideration,” Petroleum Secretary R.S. Pandey said.
He said margins on sale of petrol have turned positive, but there were under-recoveries on sales of diesel, domestic LPG and kerosene. Besides, the rupee-dollar parity and international oil prices were fluctuating on a day-to-day basis.
on the other hand , despite the change has come and Ameriac waits for President elect OBAMA to end the Cursed age Of Warcrimes as BUSH is AMBUSHED on Election day, The US Treasury Department is preparing to open its $700 billion bailout package to companies outside the traditional banking sector, 2008: Year of financial crisis
the Washington Post reported on Friday.
The initiative would make it easier for the Treasury Department to help a broader variety of firms if their troubles put the wider financial system at risk, the newspaper reported.
However, the companies would still have to be financial firms that fall under federal regulators, it said, citing unnamed sources.
The plan, to be announced late next week at the earliest, could ultimately involve “hundreds of billions” of dollars in the $700 billion program, the Post said.
Companies best positioned to receive the government money may be those that resemble banks and engage in lending to businesses or consumers, the newspaper said. Treasury Department officials are evaluating which financial companies could become a bank or thrift holding company and remain viable in the long run, it said.
The Marxists in India pose to be the mainstream resistance against Fascism and Imperialism. It is up against Communalism but it never mentions the social fabrics or the Manusmriti which divided Indian Society into more than SIX thousand castes!The Marxists in India never recognises Indigenous Identity or nationality and join the parliamentary parliamentary Right and Left, Gandhian and socialist, Pro US and RSS forces to crush whatsoever Peoples` resistance! Now, asking the government to thoroughly probe reports of Hindutva elements penetrating the army, the CPI(M) on Friday said the arrest of former and serving officers in the Malegaon blast had brought the sanctity of armed forces into question.
But the Marxist leader dies to defend the SAFRON Indian Army Sanctity as the RSS defends the MANUSMRITI!
“So far there was a sanctity about the armed forces and that sanctity we maintained and upheld. Now that is clearly breaking down. So there is a requirement for immediate attention and correction,” party Politburo member Sitaram Yechury told reporters here.
Noting that such incidents had “disturbing implications” for national security, he said terrorism by itself was “anti-national and the State should move against it irrespective of which quarter it came from.”
Even as Lt Colonel Srikant Purohit ‘confessed’ to his role in the Malegaon blasts, a Colonel posted in Deolali and a Major came under ATS scanner for interrogation in connection with the probe into the blasts.
Related Stories
Malegaon blasts: Antony assures of action against Army officer
Hindu outfits gear up to provide legal aid to Malegaon accused
Malegaon blasts accused suspected to have J&K linksA Lt. Colonel in Madhya Pradesh was reportedly picked up for questioning but there was no official word on it. More arrests are not ruled out.
Lt Colonel Srikant Purohit, who was recently arrested by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) for questioning in the Malegaon blast case has reportedly confessed his role in the revenge attack.
According to reports, Purohit told the ATS officials that he prepared the blue print of the conspiracy and provided ammunitions for the September 29 ‘revenge’ attack in Malegaon, which claimed the lives of at least six people.
The 37-year-old officer has confessed to providing the logistics and explosives to a radical Hindu outfit ‘Abhinav Bharat’, who carried out the blast.
Lt Col Srikant Purohit was arrested by the Maharashtra ATS on Nov 5 in connection with the September 29 Malegaon blast.
Defending Fascism the marxists in India Criticises Corporate Imperialism by Zionist United states of America. It opposes Indo US Nuke Deal and clings to Power Hegemony and NDA GOI led by Superslave Washington planted Prime Minister until the Deal as well as Strategic reallianc in US lead was finalised and the War zone in Middle East shifted right into our Heart, the Peace zone of Indian ocean! It skiped the responsibility to lead anti US anti Imperialist Movement. It boasts to save India from global Recession justifying its former association with the World bank Gangsters. Its Government in three states West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura are engaged in Capitalist marxist development welcoming Massacre specialists like henry Kissinger and salem, union carbide and Dows, corporates like Tatas and Zindals, MNCs like Metro Cash and Carry. It does everything to make way for Monopolistic Aggression! At the same time it has no time to expose Chettiar Chidambaram, RBI and FINMIN stealing Public MOney and feeding Money Machine just because the Marxists in India are led by the Zionist Brahmins for whom the sanctitity and sustenance of Brahaminical hegemony is the queastion of Life and death. it has forgot Idelogy and the legacy of Marx, Lenin, Mao and Che. But it pays homage to the revolutionaries worldwide!
Slowdown in the world’s leading economies such as the US, the UK and Japan are likely to deepen even further, while the BRIC countries
are also showing signs of either a downturn or a slowdown, the 30-member block of industrialised nations OECD said today.
The seven major economies of the world– the US, the UK, Japan, Canada, France, Germany and Italy– are expected to see a continued weakening outlook with cyclical slowdowns at levels not seen so far in this decade, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said, citing its Composite Leading Indicators (CLIs) data for September 2008.
The CLI is an analytical instrument of OECD designed to provide early signals of turning points between upswings and downswings in the growth cycle of economic activity. OECD also noted that the latest data for major non-OECD countries also point towards a downturn in China and a slowdown in Russia and India.
“The message from Brazil is mixed by the latest data showing tentative signs of a possible downturn,” the OECD said.
The CLI for the United Kingdom fell by 1.4 points in September 2008 and was 7.5 points lower than a year ago.
According to the OECD, CLI for China decreased 0.7 point in August 2008 and was 3.2 points lower than a year ago. The CLI for India fell by one point in August 2008 and was 6.6 points lower than in August 2007. Also the CLI for Russia decreased by 2.7 points in September and was 2.2 points lower than a year ago.
Now see how Amusing it may sound!
Referring to effects of ongoing global financial meltdown on India, CPI(M) MP Sitaram Yechury on Friday said government should focus on empowerment of people to ensure success of its monetary policies.
“Seventy per cent of Indian population lives on less than Rs 20 per day. You have to raise purchasing power of people to sell what you produce,” he said while addressing a panel discussion on “Crisis Economy” during first alumni meet of JNU.
Accusing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of making a u-turn on privatisation, he said, “Singh favoured full integration with global financial market in 2006, but now he speaks of how to insulate our economy from global financial effects.”
Yechury, who was JNUSU president in 1977, advocated reliance on internal resources to redress current credit crunch.
“Bush has left a debt of USD 10.33 trillion for Obama. Time will tell how he tackles it but we cannot rely on US,” he said.
Explaining the cause of global meltdown, Executive Director of Pepsico India, Vivek Bharti said that financial innovation went ahead of financial regulation in US.
He claimed the worst of this crisis was already over and interventions that have taken place will lead to a phase of stability now.
Prof P K Chadha, Economic Advisor to Prime Minister, laid emphasis on improving condition of agriculture and research related to it.
“Our economy is integrated to global world. So, we need a balance approach to address the situation,” he said.
INDIAN armed forces alligned with US zionist Military power is SAFRON enough to wipe out the Minorities, aboriginal people and indigenous Communities to create and sustain Favourable demography and Vote Bank in defence of Manusmriti Apartheid Hegemony!
We have seen how the cruel Most realities of AFPSA has aliegnated entire North East and Kashmir from the mainstream India!
We have also witnessed how the Histroic Repression of Agrarian Revolt in India, the NAXAL Movement, thundering SPRING was glorified and submerged into the Safron Nationality Resurgence as the Incarnation of dictator Indira Gandhi into Goddess DURGA, the Killer of Indigenous Negroid, Anarya and dravid Demonised resistance in this geopolitics justjust after Liberation of BANGLADESH followed by a Gandhian socialist Marxist Hindutva Pro US Total revolution!
We saw and felt how the Saffron Police, PAC and army Personnel dealt with Riot torn Minorities in different parts of India. Personally, as a professional journalist in UP during 1984 to 1990, I had to witness the corpotarised Anti Muslim Riots and the Anti Sikh Genocide riots and the biased role of Indian army!
The Police is once again exposed in Maharashtra!
But the Malegaon Hindutva Bomb exploded to expose the skin of the SAFFRON Indian Army so much so that it happened never before!
Indian History is in fact an ANTHROPOLOGY OF A GENOCIDE Infinite!
Thus, the Change in America in November revolution Week invokes the Dreams of our Ancestors once again!
My friends!
I am surrounded by My Helpless Faceless People Massacred in Killing fields Infinite! may We Stand United Ever to Defend Our BLOOD, FLESH and Bones? Have We Any Spinal Cord At All to Encounter the Troubled TIME Harmonised or Should We Retreat with Shattered dreams of Our Ancestors? Hunt for First Puppy in White House May Well End in India!
I saw my father to visit the slums and refugee villages, riot torn minorities countrywide and spent his life to mobilise a National movement. I have no Property to inherit. but I have inherited the Legacy of Resistance uncompromising from my Father and it is the Folk Tradition of our people very closely associated with nature. Thus, I feel quite at home in North east, Himalays, Jharkhand, chhattisgargh, Orissa and south India more than Bengal where I am based. Here, iI see how Marxist Brahminical Hegemony and its Regimented Gestapo is engaged in Deleting our People from life, livelihood, History and Geography!
A Colonel posted in Deolali and a Major may face interrogation in connection with the probe into the Malegaon blasts as concerns over more officers coming under the scanner on Friday rattled the Armed forces.
As Mumbai’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) sought permission from the Defence Ministry to question more Army personnel, there were reports that a retired Lt General and a couple of serving Colonels could also be involved.
A Lt Colonel in Madhya Pradesh was reportedly picked up for questioning but there was no official word on it. More arrests are not ruled out.
Government’s worries were voiced by Defence Minister A K Antony who said the alleged involvement of serving Lieutenant Colonel S P Purohit in the Malegaon blasts was a matter of serious concern.
Necessary action will be taken against him by the Defence Ministry on the basis of the Maharashtra police’s investigation report in the case.
Evading a direct reply on the involvement of more serving officers, including one holding a senior rank, Antony said the Army was fully assisting the investigation ‘without any hesitation’ and so was the Defence Ministry.
“On the part of the Army, without any hesitation, they are fully assisting and cooperating with the investigating agencies. We are waiting for a report from the Maharashtra police and I can tell you, we are taking it seriously,” he added.
“We are awaiting the (Maharashtra police) report (in the case). We will take all necessary action on the basis of the report,” Antony said, when asked to react on the involvement of a serving Military Intelligence officer in the blast.
Pointing out that the Maharashtra police and the Intelligence Bureau were investigating the whole issue, he said the inquiry by the agencies outside the MOD was going on.
Police and central security agencies are also trying to trace the links of two of the persons arrested in connection with the Malegaon blasts to Jammu and Kashmir amidst suspicion that the RDX used in the Maharashtra town could have been smuggled from the militancy-hit state.
A senior official of ATS apprised the Army on Friday afternoon over the missing laptop of Purohit and sought their cooperation in locating it, official sources said.
They said Purohit’s laptop, which could throw light on blast, has gone missing after he was shifted to Mumbai to assist the ATS in investigations from his place of posting Panchmari in Madhya Pradesh.
They suspect Purohit, after being posted in Military Intelligence, used his contacts built during his tenure in Jammu and Kashmir where he was stationed with the 41 Rashtriya Rifles.
Sameer Kulkarni, another of the nine arrested persons, is also alleged to have travelled to J and K earlier in 2008 and the security agencies now want to find out his links in that state.
To achieve socialism, the most militant workers must be organized into a revolutionary socialist party. The ISO is committed to playing a role in laying the foundations for such a party. We aim to build an independent socialist organization, rooted in workplaces, schools and neighborhoods that, in fighting today’s struggles, also wins larger numbers to socialism.
–From the ISO “Where We Stand”
My father was always involved in Refugee Movement since 1952.
He led the Peasants` Insurrection in DHIMRI Block in the Terai of Nainital in 1958.
Movements and Insurrections are part of my Existence, I dare say!
I had been a Marxist since my Childhood.
Only difference it made when I beagn to read about our People, indigenous, aboriginal, refugees, out castes, underclasses, minorities, rural and slum people accross the Globe cutting off political borders!
It made a huge difference while I tried to find the traces of our massacred ancestor and their roots in world history!
it also made a Huge difference when I read AMBEDKAR and came to know all about Manusmriti and apartheid Hegemonies! Then I could Identify myself with our Negroid people!
Thus, I supported BARRACK OBAMA as Martin Luther King also shared the DREAM of our parents and ancestors!
It’s been an interesting week of politics and people watching, thanks to Tuesday’s victory of President-elect Barack Obama (with wife Michelle after his victory.
So, AMERICA HAS elected a fresh new President. Who is BLACK. NEGROID!
A BLACK LASH ahead. Neither RED nor BLUE. It is BLACK all over!
It is a historic win because he will be the first large-eared Democrat to lead this nation. Also, Paris Hilton actually voted.
Jesse Jackson cried on television. Spike Lee made fun of him hours later.
CNN used “Star Trek” technology to beam in cor-respondents and pointless celebrities.
Michelle Obama wore an unfortunate dress that reminded people of Hades.
Washington residents took the White House in a manner reminiscent of the mob that stormed the palace during the French Revolution.
MARXISTS DO not reduce politics to bourgeois elections. “The modern representative state,” Engels argues, “is an instrument for exploiting wage labor by capital.” However, unlike anarchists, socialists consider the electoral arena an important place to disseminate propaganda and elect representatives of the working class, when conditions permit this.
“The workers must put up their own candidates in order to preserve their independence, to count their forces, and to bring before the public their revolutionary attitude and party standpoint,” Marx wrote. This is particularly important in the United States, where the two-party system creates a lock on the electoral system that exclude independent working-class voice.
Politics involves much more than elections. Indeed, as a means of challenging capitalism, bourgeois elections are the lowest form of struggle. The highest forms are those that mobilize the active power of the rank and file–strikes, occupations, mass protests. Without these, revolution would not be possible; and without revolution, capitalism cannot be eliminated.
Anyone who has ever gotten involved in even the smallest struggle knows that without organization, little can be accomplished. An individual can’t change much, no matter how committed he or she is to changing the world. To take on an employer in a single workplace, to protest a fare hike or to oppose a war, organization is necessary. To take on the entire edifice of capitalist power obviously requires organization of another order.
The most obvious case for organization is that the other side is very organized and has the whole machinery of the state and lots of resources at its disposal. The ruling class will literally stop at nothing to protect its wealth and privilege. To effectively challenge it, our side must be well organized and capable of mobilizing millions of people.
An account has already been opened with a private bank in Pune to offer monetary help to all those Hindus being wrongly hunted for alleged terrorist acts, Himani Savarkar, said.
11/7/2008
Following the historic victory of Illinois Senator Barack Obama in the Presidential elections in the United States on Tuesday evening, leaders in Bihar on Wednesday expressed their joy over the Senator’s win calling it a change of ‘epic proportion’.
Five Janata Dal (U) Lok Sabha members from Bihar put in their papers on Friday to protest against violence inflicted on north Indians in Maharashtra.
The MPs are Prabhunath Singh, George Fernandes, Rajiv Ranjan Singh Lallan, Kailash Baitha and Meena Singh.
Party sources on Friday said that Alva’s case could be referred to the Central Disciplinary Action Committee of the party headed by Defence Minister A K Antony.
Srinagar (PTI): Friday prayers could not be offered at Jamia Masjid on Friday for the second time in the past three months as authorities strictly enforced restrictions to thwart march called by separatist forces here.
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Reuters
Posted: Nov 07, 2008 at 1747 hrs IST
Kolkata, November 7: The Oscars academy has restored a rare print of a controversial film by Satyajit Ray that was banned by Indian censors for glorifying monarchy in a Himalayan kingdom that acceded to India.
Made in 1971, “Sikkim” was about the Himalayan redoubt of the same name ruled by the Chogyals before it acceded to India in 1975 amid some criticism that New Delhi had browbeaten its tiny neighbour. China opposed India’s claim on Sikkim until 2005.
THE GUILTY PEOPLE
- Not being globalized can be life saving for a nation
Cutting Corners
Ashok Mitra
True, the daily miseries encountered by millions and millions of the poor in the country are indescribably grim. And yet, how does one ignore the reality currently unfolding in the stockyard of our stock markets, with scores of families getting ruined, persons engaged in stock-broking firms all of a sudden losing their jobs, a few desperate ones, who have seen their assets disappear in the course of a week’s hurricane, choosing to commit suicide? A sullen anger, mixed with a sense of fright on account of not knowing what is in store tomorrow, hangs in the air. In a large number of cases, those rendered paupers by the share-market devastation were more sinned against than sinning: they were led up the garden path and soon lost their bearing, prudence got juxtaposed with temptation; once they crossed the threshold, they did not know what had hit them.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081107/jsp/opinion/story_10075412.jsp
November 7
16:10 07/11/2008 |A senior North Korean diplomat said the country is ready for dialogue with the U.S., in Pyongyang’s first official reaction to the election of Barack Obama.
Russia commemorates legendary 1941 Red Square parade
15:54 07/11/2008 |A parade took place on Moscow’s Red Square on Friday to commemorate the legendary military parade of 1941 and in honor of the country’s World War II effort.
November 9
http://www.mnweekly.ru/national/20081106/55355334.html
The Week In Review
Barack Obama President-elect : Remember for ever the Fourth of November
His struggle against Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, was by and large fairly civilised, although many in the Republican Party raised issues that could only be described as calumnious. In the absence of Barack Obama, John McCain would certainly have been a good President. But he comes from a party that is associated with the financial meltdown, and he still believes in the free market and trickle-down economics that has brought ruin upon America and on the world. But perhaps the greatest weakness of Senator McCain was the Vice-President he had chosen.
Sarah Palin is certainly a capable Governor of Alaska, but she does not have the breath of knowledge required of any person operating from Washington. She was the butt of the comedy shows. Her ill-luck would have it that comedian Tina Fey of the heavily watched Saturday Night Live show is almost a look alike; in short bits of the show broadcast around the world, people found it very difficult to distinguish the real Sarah Palin from the comedian; the latter really made her look very ridiculous.
We have already spoken about Palin’s intellectual limitations. It now appears that she was even worse. Palin thought that Africa was one country — she did not know about continents. She was unable to name the countries even in her own continent North America, perhaps the easiest of all general knowledge questions that any 11-yr old around the world can answer correctly. One wonders whether she had ever looked at a terrestrial globe. Even her claim about her mastery of international relations because she could see Russia from her window rested on untrue evidence. In the event of Senator John McCain having been elected President, Sarah Palin would have been one heartbeat away from the presidency. God be praised for the final outcome.
We must stress that we do not believe that this need be the end of Sarah Palin. She is obviously a very intelligent person who can learn if she puts her mind to it. She can also energise her party as even Senator McCain cannot. She will probably be back in 2012.
Barack Obama, President-elect
On Tuesday night, late in the evening when it became clear that to him that he had lost the race, Senator McCain gave an outstandingly gracious “concession” speech; he asked all who had voted for him to bring their cooperation to the new President.
Shortly thereafter, President-elect Barack Obama appeared on a wide rostrum at Grant Park, Chicago to address the 200,000+ crowd that had come to celebrate his victory. Assurances were earlier given that precautions had been taken to guarantee his security; given past experience, many were quite concerned about this. When Barack Obama appeared and spoke, all were impressed, even overwhelmed by his serious bearing. He did smile but only when he had just walked in and then not much. He spoke in a sombre tone; there was not a shadow of gloating or triumphalism in his voice or his bearing. One felt that he had been overawed by his success, and that he had seen the titanic responsibilities awaiting him. Myself, a Hindu, got the impression that he had, like Prince Arjun in the chariot on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, seen God Almighty and the Universe and everything it contains in the mouth of the Lord.
When he spoke, his words rang out like short peals of thunder. “To those who would tear this world down – we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security – we support you. And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright – tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.”
He thanked all who helped him and acknowledged the support he had received from his family. He also had some very gracious words for Senator McCain. When he had done, he walked away, and must have started working almost immediately.
Back to the source
For those to whom this may mean something, Barack Obama is an ardent admirer of Mahatma Gandhi. Anybody studying Martin Luther King, the architect of the change in community relations in America, must perforce make his way ultimately to Mahatma Gandhi. He is reported to have written the following in an article: “In my life, I have always looked to Mahatma Gandhi as an inspiration, because he embodied the kind of transformational change that can be made when ordinary people come together to do extraordinary things…That is why his portrait hangs in my Senate office; to remind me that real results will not just come from Washington, they will come from the people.”
God Speed, Barack Obama!
http://www.mauritiustimes.com/071108soobarah.htm
The Encyclopedia of World History. 2001.
d. The New Context of the 18th Century
Outside Europe, the older pattern of the rise and decline of major states continued, with the predominant gunpowder states entering periods of reduced effectiveness. However, in Europe, the development of the centralized monarchies opened the way for growing power at the beginning of the great socioeconomic transformations of early modernization. 1
1700–1800
NON-EUROPEAN EMPIRES. The OTTOMAN EMPIRE continued to be a major power but lost a series of wars and considerable territory, especially to Russia and Habsburg Austria. The administrative system and the military became increasingly ineffective as corruption and internal rivalries grew. Local governors in Egypt, North Africa, and the Balkans grew more independent, and attempts at administrative and military reform had little effect. Finally, a more comprehensive reform effort strongly influenced by European models as undertaken by SELIM III (1789–1807), but he was overthrown by conservative opponents of reform (See 1789–1807). The MUGHAL EMPIRE experienced succession conflicts and the growing power of provincial governors (See 1526–1761 (1857)). Mughal authority was seriously threatened by a revival of Hindu forces under the Marathas and the Rajputs and the emergence of the SIKHS as a new militant religious community (See 1500). However, the expansion of European powers brought the Mughal Empire to an end. Portuguese influence declined and was replaced by the growing power of the EAST INDIA COMPANIES (See 1761, Jan. 14) of the British, French, and Dutch. In a series of conflicts, the British ultimately defeated the Dutch (1759) and the French (1763). The English East India Company gained full control of Bengal and Bihar by 1764 but ruled in the name of the Mughal emperor. By the early 19th century, the British controlled nearly all of India. The formal end of the Mughal Empire followed a major revolt in many areas of northern India in 1857–58. The last Mughal was deposed, and in 1858 THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA ACT by the British Parliament created direct rule by the monarch of England, ending government by the East India Company and the Mughals. Other major non-European empires also declined during the 18th century. The collapse of the Safavid state in Iran brought a period of warfare and disunity to Iran. By the end of the 18th century, the Qing dynasty in China exhibited the characteristics of decline. The strength of the military was reduced; the bureaucracy became increasingly corrupt and inefficient. Large-scale revolts, like that of the White Lotus Society (1796–1804), emphasized the growing weakness of the empire (See 1796–1804). 2
EMERGING GREAT POWERS. Some states in Europe made an important transition during the 18th century to new centralized systems that could draw strength from the growing commercialization of society and the beginnings of industrialization. As a result, by the end of the century, France, Great Britain, and Prussia, along with the Russian Empire, displaced Spain, Habsburg Austria, and Portugal as major powers in European and global affairs. The Dutch Republic became a preeminent commercial power with large overseas possessions but was not a significant military presence. 3
ROYAL ABSOLUTISM was the primary force in developing strong central governments in some of the emerging powers. FRANCE was earliest, with the effective absolutism of LOUIS XIV (r. 1643–1715), but his successors were less effective and French monarchical absolutism came to an end with the FRENCH REVOLUTION, beginning in 1789 (See Overview). During the reign of Frederick II, the Great (1740–86), Prussian royal absolutism and great-power status were confirmed. RUSSIA modernization, centralization, and expansion in both Europe and Asia were strengthened by CATHERINE THE GREAT (r. 1762–96) as Russia became a major intercontinental power, with some overseas expansion into North America and northern Pacific islands. The AUSTRIAN HABSBURGS gained territories at the expense of weaker neighbors like Poland and the Ottoman Empire, but were less successful than Prussia and Russia in improving the effectiveness of their royal absolutism. The reforms and policies of Maria Theresa (r. 1740–80) and Joseph II (r. 1780–90) were not sufficient to create administrative unity among the scattered Habsburg domains. In SPAIN and PORTUGAL reform efforts by leaders like the Marquis de Pombal in Portugal failed to revive effective state power. In POLAND the state simply ceased to exist as nobles limited the ability of monarchs to institute reforms and Russia, Prussia, and Austria took control of all of Poland in three partitions (1772, 1793, 1795) (See 1794, March 24). 4
PARLIAMENTARY STATES. The centralized parliamentary state in ENGLAND provided the effective support for expansion. English colonial settlements in North America and the expansion of the East India Company in India created a global empire during the 18th century. After its successful revolt against Habsburg control at the beginning of the 17th century, the DUTCH REPUBLIC emerged as a significant commercial power. The Dutch created an overseas empire with holdings in North and South America, South Africa, and the Indian Ocean basin, especially in southeast Asia; its wealth made it an important political force in Europe. By the middle of the 18th century, it had become a minor European power and its commercial preeminence was lost to Britain, although the Dutch still maintained a small but important overseas empire. 5
“WORLD WARS” OF THE 18TH CENTURY. Many of the conflicts among the European powers involved clashes beyond the European continent. They were primarily European wars fought on a global scale, with two chief lines of conflict: the struggle for continental domination in Europe and the battle for control of overseas colonies and naval access to them. In the continental struggle, France, Prussia, and Russia became the great powers, and in global maritime empires, Great Britain was the major force. The European names of the most important global wars in creating this power structure are the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14) (See 1701–14), which began the reduction of French power in North America; the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48) (See 1740–48); and the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), which resulted in France’s loss of most of its overseas empire in India and North America; finally, there were the wars of the era of the French Revolution and Napoleon (See Overview), which were fought in North America, Asia, and Africa as well as in Europe.
http://www.bartleby.com/67/578.html
The British Presence in India in the 18th Century
By Professor Peter Marshall
A wall carving of a battle between British and Indian soldiers At the start of the 18th century, the East India Company’s presence in India was one of trade outposts. But by the end of the century, the Company was militarily dominant over South India and rapidly extending northward.
Page 1 of 6
1. East India Company
2. Regional politics
3. A new empire in India
4. Company government
5. Territorial expansion
6. Find out more
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East India Company
British involvement in India during the 18th century can be divided into two phases, one ending and the other beginning at mid-century. In the first half of the century, the British were a trading presence at certain points along the coast; from the 1750s they began to wage war on land in eastern and south-eastern India and to reap the reward of successful warfare, which was the exercise of political power, notably over the rich province of Bengal. By the end of the century British rule had been consolidated over the first conquests and it was being extended up the Ganges valley to Delhi and over most of the peninsula of southern India. By then the British had established a military dominance that would enable them in the next fifty years to subdue all the remaining Indian states of any consequence, either conquering them or forcing their rulers to become subordinate allies.
‘…India became the focal point of the Company’s trade.’
At the beginning of the 18th century English commerce with India was nearly a hundred years old. It was transacted by the East India Company, which had been given a monopoly of all English trade to Asia by royal grant at its foundation in 1600. Through many vicissitudes, the Company had evolved into a commercial concern only matched in size by its Dutch rival. Some 3000 shareholders subscribed to a stock of £3 200 000; a further £6 million was borrowed on short-term bonds; twenty or thirty ships a year were sent to Asia and annual sales in London were worth up to £2 million. Twenty-four directors, elected annually by the shareholders ran the Company’s operations from its headquarters in the City of London.
Towards the end of the 17th century India became the focal point of the Company’s trade. Cotton cloth woven by Indian weavers was being imported into Britain in huge quantities to supply a worldwide demand for cheap, washable, lightweight fabrics for dresses and furnishings. The Company’s main settlements, Bombay, Madras and Calcutta were established in the Indian provinces where cotton textiles for export were most readily available. These settlements had evolved from ‘factories’ or trading posts into major commercial towns under British jurisdiction, as Indian merchants and artisans moved in to do business with the Company and with the British inhabitants who lived there.
Regional politics
The East India Company’s trade was built on a sophisticated Indian economy. India offered foreign traders the skills of its artisans in weaving cloth and winding raw silk, agricultural products for export, such as sugar, the indigo dye or opium, and the services of substantial merchants and rich bankers. During the 17th century at least, the effective rule maintained by the Mughal emperors throughout much of the subcontinent provided a secure framework for trade.
‘The Mughal empire had disintegrated…’
The Company’s Indian trade in the first half of the 18th century seemed to be established on a stable and profitable basis. Those who directed its affairs in London could see no case for military or political intervention to try to change the status quo. The British did, however, start to intervene in Indian politics from the 1750s, and revolutionary changes in their role in India were to follow. This change of course can best be explained partly in terms of changed conditions in India and partly as a consequence of the aggressive ambitions of the local British themselves.
Conditions in India were certainly changing. The Mughal empire had disintegrated and was being replaced by a variety of regional states. This did not produce a situation of anarchy and chaos, as used once to be assumed. Some of the regional states maintained stable rule and there was no marked overall economic decline throughout India.
‘A successful kingmaker…could become prodigiously rich.’
There were, however, conflicts within some of the new states. Contestants for power in certain coastal states were willing to seek European support for their ambitions and Europeans were only too willing to give it. In part, they acted on behalf of their companies. By the 1740s rivalry between the British and the French, who were late comers to Indian trade, was becoming acute. In southern India the British and the French allied with opposed political factions within the successor states to the Mughals to extract gains for their own companies and to weaken the position of their opponents. Private ambitions were also involved. Great personal rewards were promised to the European commanders who succeeded in placing their Indian clients on the thrones for which they were contending. A successful kingmaker, like Robert Clive, could become prodigiously rich.
What opinion in Britain came to recognise as a new British empire in India remained under the authority of the East India Company, even if the importance of the national concerns now involved meant that the Company had to submit to increasingly close supervision by the British state and to periodical inquiries by parliament. In India, the governors of the Company’s commercial settlements became governors of provinces and, although the East India Company continued to trade, many of its servants became administrators in the new British regimes. Huge armies were created, largely composed of Indian sepoys but with some regular British regiments. These armies were used to defend the Company’s territories, to coerce neighbouring Indian states and to crush any potential internal resistance.
Company government
By the end of the century, however, opinions were changing. India seemed to be suffering not merely from an unfortunate recent history but from deeply ingrained backwardness. It needed to be ‘improved’ by firm, benevolent foreign rule. Various strategies for improvement were being discussed. Property relations should be reformed to give greater security to the ownership of land. Laws should be codified on scientific principles. All obstacles to free trade between Britain and India should be removed, thus opening India’s economy to the stimulus of an expanding trade with Europe. Education should be remodelled. The ignorance and superstition thought to be inculcated by Asian religions should be challenged by missionaries propagating the rationality embodied in Christianity. The implementation of improvement in any systematic way lay in the future, but commitment to governing in Indian ways through Indians was waning fast.
The conquests that had begun in the 1750s had never been sanctioned in Britain and both the national government and the directors of the Company insisted that further territorial expansion must be curbed. This proved a vain hope. The Company’s new domains made it a participant in the complex politics of post-Mughal India. It sought to keep potential enemies at a distance by forming alliances with neighbouring states. These alliances led to increasing intervention in the affairs of such states and to wars fought on their behalf. In Warren Hastings’s period the British were drawn into expensive and indecisive wars on several fronts, which had a dire effect on the Company’s finances and were strongly condemned at home. By the end of the century, however, the Company’s governor general, Richard Wellesley, soon to be Marquess Wellesley, was willing to abandon policies of limited commitment and to use war as an instrument for imposing British hegemony on all the major states in the subcontinent. A series of intermittent wars was beginning which would take British authority over the next fifty years up to the mountains of Afghanistan in the west and into Burma in the east.
(A Brief Summary)
Kittur, Belgaum: 1824-29
http://india_resource.tripod.com/revolts.html
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The introduction of this article does not adequately summarize the article. To comply with Wikipedia’s lead section guidelines, it should be expanded. (September 2008)
Federally Administered Tribal Areas
????? ?????? ????? ???
Capital
• Coordinates Peshawar
• 34°00′N 71°19′E? / ?34, 71.32
Population (2008)
• Density 6,500,000 (Estimate) [1]
• 115.3/km²
Area
27220 km²
Time zone PST (UTC+5)
Main language(s) Pashto (official)
Urdu (national)
Status Tribal Areas
• Districts • 7 Agencies
• Towns •
• Union Councils •
Established
• Governor/Commissioner
• Chief Minister
• Legislature (seats) 1st July 1970
• Owais Ahmed Ghani
• none
• none (n/a)
Website FATA
The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan are areas outside the four provinces bordering Afghanistan, comprising a region of some 27,220 km² (10,507 sq mi). The other area of Pakistan also outside the provinces is Azad Kashmir.
1 Geography
2 Governance
3 FATA before independence
3.1 Ancient history
3.2 Turko-Pashtun Era
3.3 Mughal Empire
3.4 Durrani Empire
3.5 Sikh Rule
3.6 British Raj
3.6.1 First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-42)
3.6.2 Annexation of Sindh and the Punjab (1843-49)
3.6.3 Sandeman system
3.6.4 “Policy of Masterly Inactivity” or Close Border Policy
3.6.5 Forward Policy and Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-79)
3.6.6 Scientific Frontier and Durand Line (1893)
3.6.7 “Hit and Run” Policy and war with tribes (1897-98)
3.6.8 Withdrawal and concentration policy
4 FATA after Independence
4.1 1947–1979
4.2 1979–1991
4.2.1 Soviet invasion
4.2.2 Civil war
4.2.3 Taliban rule in Afghanistan and its influence on the FATA
4.3 2007 anti-militancy campaign
5 Extension of adult franchise to the FATA
6 Economy
6.1 Mining
6.2 Industrialization
6.3 Reconstruction Opportunity Zones (ROZs)
6.4 Irrigation projects
7 Education
8 Health
9 See also
10 References
11 External links
Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA)
District map of NWFP and FATA.The FATA are bordered by: Afghanistan to the west with the border marked by the Durand Line, the North-West Frontier Province and the Punjab to the east, and Balochistan to the south.
Census Population Urban
1951 1,332,005 -
1961 1,847,195 1.33%
1972 2,491,230 0.53%
1981 2,198,547 -
1998 3,176,331 2.69%
The head of each tribal Agency is the Political Agent. The Agent wields extensive powers. Each Agency, depending on its size, has about 2 to 3 Assistant Political Agents, about 3 to 4 Tehsildars and 4 to 9 Naib Tehsildars with the requisite supporting staff. Each FR is headed by the DC/DCO (for FR Peshawar, DC/DCO Peshawar and so on). Under his supervision there is one Assistant Political Agent and about 1 or 2 Tehsildars and Naib Tehsildars, as well as support staff. Each Agency has roughly 2 to 3 thousand Khasadars and levies and 5 to 9 Wings of FC for maintenance of law and order in the Agency and borders security.
There are scant sources on the ancient history of the tribal belt, excepting tribal annals. Successive invaders have passed through this area or incorporated it within their empire. These included the Aryans (before 500 BC), thereafter the Achaemenian (as a result of Cyrus the Great’s conquests), Graeco-Scythian invasions (324-320 BC) under Alexander the Great, Mauryans (313-232 BC), Greco-Bactrians (185-90 BC), and Sakas from 97 BC. During the first millennium CE, Parthians, Yue-chi (i.e. Kushans), Sassanians, White Huns and Turks followed in succession. They have the admixture of various warriors who passed through this area. For instance, the Afridis have “an admixture of Greek blood.”[5]
The spread of Islam in the tribal belt dates back to the rise of the Turkish dynasty in Ghazni from about 960 AD. Mahmud of Ghazni conquered and incorporated areas of the subcontinent up to Lahore. Ghorid Sultan Muizzuddin Muhammad, with his headquarters in Ghor, subdued the north part of the subcontinent and was the founder of Muslim supremacy in Delhi in 1206. The fall of the Ghorids was followed by successive incursions of various forces from Central Asia. The most notable of these were those of conquerors Genghis Khan in 1221 and of Timur in 1398.
Babur (1526–1530), a descendant of Timur, came down from Central Asia to Kabul in 1504. He was the founder of the Mughal dynasty (1526–1857) in the subcontinent. The support of the tribesmen helped him in his conquest of India. “In all these expeditions there is no doubt that Babur’s armies were greatly strengthened by tribal contingents supplied by the Yusufzais and other tribes”.[citation needed] Not only Babur, but also the remaining Mughal rulers greatly “depended on Afghan mercenaries”. At the same time Babur’s main adversaries were the tribesmen on their own home ground. These stood on the lines of communication which a prospective conqueror of Hindustan, who starts from Central Asia, must secure and maintain through the hill country intervening between Kabul and the Jihlam [Jhelum] River[7]. Many years were to elapse before Babur could do this, and reading between the lines of his story, we can see very clearly that he was in a continual state of anxiety and annoyance over difficulties that in fact he was never able entirely to resolve. Later emperors of his line were no more successful in achieving enduring solutions.”[citation needed]
When Nadir Shah, the King of Persia, invaded India in 1739, the Afghan/Pashtun contingent became the corps d’elite of his army, hence the name “pusht: ribs or bones structure”. The Afghan/Pashtun corps of cavalry, numbering between 4000 and 16,000, was commanded by Nur Muhammad Khan, an Abdali of Alizai clan. They accompanied the king to India and “participated in all the dangers and successes of that campaign.”[citation needed] Ahmad Khan was the commander of the Abdali contingent from Afghanistan. He was the bodyguard of King Nadir Shah of Iran. When Nadir Shah, after his successful invasion of India, was returning to Persia, the tribes had closed the defiles and besieged him. His forces could not win against them in spite of loyal support of Afghan Abdalis, and “had paid a heavy toll in cash to the mountaineers” to get a passage. [8]
The Durrani ruler of Lahore, Shah Zaman (1793–1800), the grandson of Ahmad Shah under compulsion of infighting at Kabul withdrew from Lahore in 1799 and appointed a Sikh leader, Ranjit Singh as his viceroy. Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1799–1839) was an ambitious and capable ruler. He established Sikh rule in the Punjab. When he could not expand his empire towards east and south due to the presence of English, he decided to move towards the west. He was able to overrun the trans-Indus plains including Peshawar and Bannu.
During early 19th century, the British had established their supremacy over the subcontinent except Balochistan, Sindh and the northwest tribal belt. All of these areas are now part of Pakistan. These were practically independent but theoretically under Kabul. The NWFP west of the tribal belt and the Punjab had become independent of Kabul under Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh.
It was understood both in London and Calcutta, which was then the headquarters of the ruling East India Company, that the Emir of Afghanistan was entering into secret negotiations with Russia. Accordingly, in 1838, the Government of India declared war against Afghanistan. Since Ranjit Singh, the ruler of the Punjab, would not give passage to the East India Company’s army through his territory, Lord Auckland, the British Governor-General of India (1838-42), decided to dispatch his forces through Sindh. Earlier, Governor-General Lord Minto (1807-13), as a precaution against the threat of French invasion, had concluded a treaty of “eternal friendship” with the Amir of Sindh in 1809. Now, Auckland forced the Amir to agree to give passage to the English army and to contribute money towards the Afghan war and threatened him with “power to crush and annihilate them,” and that they “will not hesitate to call it into action, should it appear requisite, however remotely, for either the integrity or safety” of the British empire. [9]
As a consequence of the defeat in Afghanistan, to rehabilitate their prestige, the East India Company forced a war on Sindh, defeated the Baloch forces of the Talpurs at the battles of Miani and Dabo, and annexed the province of Sindh in 1843. After the death of Ranjit Singh, there were a series of revolutions in the Punjab. The English fought two wars in the Punjab against Sikhs in 1846 and 1848-49 and after successively defeating them annexed the province of the Punjab in 1849. Beyond the plains of Sindh and the Punjab which the Company forces had conquered, there lived the Pathan and Baloch tribes in the hills.
The arrangement made by Sandeman is known as the Sandeman System. It rested on the occupation of central points in Kalat and tribal territory in considerable force, linking them together by fair-weather roads, and leaving the tribes to manage their own affairs according to their own customs and working through their chiefs and maliks. The maliks were required to enlist levies paid by government but regarded as tribal servants.
The Punjab Government under the overall direction of the British Government in India followed a policy that required guarding the frontier to minimize the tribal raids and, in case of raids, send military expeditions for reprisals. “Non-aggression on tribal territory and non-interference in tribal affairs” were the objectives of this policy.[citation needed] Following their defeat in the First Anglo-Afghan War (1838-42) the British had realized that the task of ruling over the tribal territory in NWFP and Afghanistan was beyond their resources in India. Thus they followed the policy of “masterly inactivity” or “close door policy” and their interest in the affairs of the tribal area in NWFP and Afghanistan remained minimal.
There was a change in British policy after 1876, owing to the conquest of Sindh (1843) and the Punjab (1849), as well as to concern among British strategists in London about the advance of the Russian armies in Turkestan. The policy of Benjamin Disraeli, who became prime minister of Britain in 1874, was to build a strategic line of defence against Russian advance in Central Asia. It was felt that sooner or later the British and the Russian forces would confront each other in Central Asia. This thinking led the British to increase their sphere of influence in Afghanistan. In 1876 Lord Lytton, the Viceroy of India wrote to the Secretary of State for India that:
Afghanistan before the Durand agreement of 1893.Lord Lytton (1876-80) put forward the idea of a scientific frontier. Military experts came to be divided into two groups – the forward and the backward. The backward group advocated that Indus should be the frontier line because the tribesmen were troublesome and fanatic and would not tolerate interference; it was difficult to fight in the mountains; and it was very expensive to have British Cantonments in the tribal territory.
In the beginning the British had adopted an attitude of conciliation. Frontier duties were abolished, free trade was established, medical facilities were provided and tribesmen were recruited in the army and the police. Since this policy could not remove the basic cause of the trouble—the economic needs of the area–it failed. The tribesmen continued to plunder the British territory. To check this, the policy of reprisals—fines, blockades and expeditions—was adopted. These methods were used to force the tribesmen to come to terms. This was called the “Hit and Run Policy”. It also did not succeed.
After the 1897-98 war with tribes, the controversy between the backward and the forward schools assumed a new meaning. Now the controversy was whether the tribal territory up to the Durand Line should be occupied or should the British fall back upon Indus. The tribes who had neither been consulted nor considered did not like this change and interference in their affairs. They resented the loss of their independence and uprisings continued.
The year 1947 marked a turning point in the history of the Tribal Areas, as a new and independent state of Pakistan replaced the British raj. With the termination of British rule, all the agreements and treaties which bound the Tribal Areas with the British government in Delhi were abrogated under the Indian Independence Act 1947.
The decade-long war in Afghanistan had a negative impact on the tribal areas and their infrastructure. With Pakistan becoming the frontline state in the war of resistance against the Soviet forces, the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan virtually ceased to exist. The tribal belt became the main supply route for the Mujahideen fighting the Soviets. The tribal areas provided a base for the Mujahideen, and weapons, supplies, and other war sustenance efforts were routed from these areas.[citation needed]
With the withdrawal of the Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989, there was a bloody war between the Soviet-installed Afghan regime and the Afghan Mujahideen groups. Because security and peace were lacking in Afghanistan, there was no question of the Afghan refugees returning to their country. The tribal areas, therefore, continued to be the home of millions of Afghan refugees.
In 1996, Kabul fell to the student militia known as the Taliban. As a result of nearby Taliban, the writ of the government of Pakistan in the FATA became less effective. Some people of the FATA joined the Taliban in fighting against the Northern Alliance. Movement of men and material across the international border between Pakistan and Afghanistan was unregulated. Several aspects of the FATA’s culture have been influenced, and in some cases the traditions of tribal people were affected by the more conservative interpretation of Islam favoured by the Taliban[11] . A large number of people from different regions of Pakistan and the world entered Afghanistan to join what they claimed was jihad against the Northern Alliance.
On June 4, 2007, the National Security Council of Pakistan met to decide the fate of Waziristan and take up a number of political and administrative decisions to control “Talibanization” of the area. The meeting was chaired by President Pervez Musharraf and it was attended by the Chief Ministers and Governors of all 4 provinces. They discussed the deteriorating law and order situation and the threat posed to state security. To crush the armed militancy in the Tribal regions and the NWFP, the government decided to intensify and reinforce law enforcement and military activity, take action against certain madrassahs, and jam illegal FM radio stations.[12]
The neutrality of this section is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page. (May 2008)
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There is no banking system, and smuggling of opium and other contraband is routine, according to a July 2007 report in The New York Times.[4]
Please see the discussion on the talk page. (May 2008)
Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.
The FATA contain proved commercially viable reserves of marble, copper, limestone and coal. However, in the current socio-political conditions, there is no chance of their exploitation in a profitable manner.[citation needed]
Industrialization of the FATA is another route or remedy proposed for a rapid breaking up of the tribal barriers and promoting the cause of integration.[citation needed] The process of industrialization through a policy of public / private partnership would not only provide employment opportunities and economic benefits but also assist in bringing the youth of the tribal area at par with those of the developed cities in the rest of the country.
The concept of setting up ROZs in FATA and Afghanistan is an element in the United States Government’s counter-terrorism and regional economic integration strategies.
Water is scarce in the FATA. When the British forces occupied Malakand they started work on the Amandara headworks to divert the water from the Swat River through a tunnel to irrigate the plains of Mardan and Charsadda. The aim was not to get more wheat or sugarcane, but to ‘tame the wild barbarian tribes’.[citation needed]
The Federally Administered Tribal Areas literacy rate is 17.42%, which is below the 43.92% average in Pakistan. 29.51% of the males and only 3% of females receive education.[13]
There is one hospital bed for every 2,179 people in the FATA, compared to one in 1,341 in Pakistan as a whole. There is one doctor for every 7,670 people compared to one doctor per 1,226 people in Pakistan as a whole. 43% of FATA citizens have access to clean drinking water.[13]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federally_Administered_Tribal_Areas
A Tax Revolt or Revolting Taxes?
by Joseph Thorndike
A series of revenue measures followed, including the notorious Stamp Act of 1765. Colonial leaders complained that stamp taxes were unconstitutional, insisting that direct levies designed to raise revenue — rather than regulate trade — were the preserve of colonial legislatures. To drive the point home, political and commercial leaders organized a series of protests, including a remarkably effective boycott of British goods. Parliament eventually gave in, rescinding the stamp tax in 1766.
http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/readings.nsf/ArtWeb/1BC5839831CD15EE852570DD0061D496?OpenDocument
TRIBAL MOVEMENTS IN CENTRAL INDIA AGAINST
OVER-INDUSTRIALISATION
By Felix Padel and Samarendra Das for the SAAG 2006
India’s present investment boom, as it opens its markets and “resources” to foreign
companies, has a shadow side too few are aware of. Essentially, the boom is at the
expense of uprooting indigenous communities all over central India, and at the cost of
permanent damage to India’s environment. The “mineral wealth” lying in the mountains
of Orissa, Chattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand States – a non-renewable resource
- is being opened up to an unprecedented scale of mining and metal manufacture by
Indian as well as foreign companies. Extracting vast quantities of iron-ore, bauxite,
chromite, coal etc from these mountains not only affects the immediate and long-term
well-being of India’s environment. It also leads to mass dispossession. Even more so the
huge factories which process this ore into metal, and the huge dams being constructed. It
is a little-known fact that supplying electricty and water to metal factories has always
been one of the main reasons for big dams.
Adivasis show an increasing determination to stand up and refuse to be displaced.
Even the most generous “R & R packages” offer only cash and promises of jobs (which
in practice are rarely kept): not land for land (as required by international standards set by
the International Labour Organisation etc). This means Adivasis inevitably lose their
traditional lifestyle of cultivating their own food as their own masters. This is what lies
behind the police killing of 14 Adivasis at Kalinganagar on 2nd January, who were
protesting against a steel plant about to be constructed on their land – the most highprofile
of a long train of similar events.
This situation is also connected to the spread of Naxalite and Maoist influence in
these areas, and the recent escalation to a state of war and mass displacement in the
Bastar region of Chattisgarh, famous as India’s “tribal heartland”, where at least 60,000
Adivasis have been displaced within the last one year (June 2005-June 2006), as part of a
military policy to starve the Maoists of their support base. An estimated 670 villages of
exceptional beauty lie burnt and abandoned. Here too, the driving force is the State’s
plans for more mines and metal factories.
What should be or could be our role as anthropologists in relation to these swiftly
unfolding events?
One need is for anthropologists to speak out about what is at stake here: the
qualities of tribal society, the reasons why displacement and loss of their land and selfsufficiency
lead to a cultural genocide, and consequently, the validity of Adivasis’
struggle to keep their land and culture intact. As I suggest in this paper, this needs to start
off through a questioning of popular and semi-official concepts about the nature of tribal
society and development.
Another role can be to analyse the power structures which impose these changes
on Adivasis, including the mining companies themselves, as a means not just to affirm
the validity of these movements to maintain Adivasis’ lifestyle, but actually bringing
anthropology into another world of possibility, which opens up when we invert our usual
perspective and make the social structure of the world’s rich and powerful into our object
of study, as opposed to our usual role of analysing the world’s most marginal or
traditional communities. Felix Padel’s first book, The sacrifice of human being: British
rule and the Konds of Orissa (1995), pioneered analysing the colonial power structure
imposed over a tribal people during the 19th and 20th centuries. The book we are now
writing together analyses the invasion of aluminium companies into the same tribe’s
territory, and the indigenous movement to prevent their mountains being mined for
bauxite and people’s land being taken over by metal factories and dams.
Corporations in particular cry out to be understood afresh through the tools of
social anthropology. It is increasingly clear that nowadays large mining and other
companies have an influence and impact over and above that of elected Governments. As
anthropologists we need to ask: What are these impacts? How do these companies
exercise such power, trans-nationally? And how can we contribute to civil society by
using our expertise in social structure and symbolism to analyse the web of relationships
and the value system of those who are imposing changes not just over tribal India, but
over all of us?
For the highly complex structures of power which dominate life in modern society
are surely visible in their most naked, starkest form in what has been and is being
imposed on tribal people in the name of “development”. If so, then analyzing this process
of imposition, in a way that involves seeing it through the eyes of those being imposed
upon or resisting, gives anthropologists our most potent way to reflect back from the
traditional societies we know about to our own modern society.
The genocidal impact on India’s Adivasis is replicated in almost every country
where tribal societies have managed to survive into the 21st century. The parallels with
events all over the Americas, Africa, and elsewhere in Asia and Australasia are very
strong. Analysing these parallels uses our understanding of events in the world’s remotest
corners to cast light onto the mainstream social system we are part of ourselves.
This reflection back to “us” is all the more necessary because several of the
mining companies involved in the most controversial Indian projects are based in London
or other foreign cities, and all the projects are facilitated by a background situation
dominated by financial imperatives which derive from World Bank-orchestrated loans,
and policies designed by the DFID (Department For International Development of the
British Government). In every country, the World Bank and financially dominant foreign
governments play a similar role controlling or manipulating policy and facilitating the
entry of multi-national corporations “behind the scenes”. Is it not time for anthropologists
to analyse this system of control head-on and call into question its defining concepts?
There has obviously been a general process of displacing mining and heavy
industry from Western Europe eastwards, towards East Europe and Asian countries, as
well as southwards to Africa. While officially this is invariably couched in terms of
bringing “development” and “foreign investment”, when seen from the viewpoint of
those displaced, it is actually based on the most rampant dispossession and exploitation.
Financial investment in many cases is a direct cause of displacement. As Dai Sing Majhi,
one of the leaders of the Lanjigarh movement, expressed this, “They are flooding us out
with money”. Literally, money coming into the area buys up Adivasis’ land and resources
and buys them out.
This brings up a more painful level of the reflection back to “us”. Could it be that
we are materially “over-developed”, and that this over-development is based on
dispossession in the “fourth world” of indigenous people? Cars and supermarkets are
among the most obvious symbols of “over-development” to anyone who comes fresh to
life in Britain from the third world. The choice of models and brands, and the rapid
turnover and wastage, tell a story which links material prosperity in the West directly
with the poverty and exploitation in the East. Since every car and all the aluminiumwrapped
goods in the supermarket use, and essentially destroy and waste (despite
recycling claims), metals that are mined and manufactured in highly exploitative
conditions far from our eyes. In this sense our own lifestyle here is not separate from the
struggle of tribal people in India against the imposed industrialisation of their own land.
Anthropology excels in understanding relationship, and the elements which give
structure to social relationships. The main tendency has always been to study tribal
societies as if they were separate entities. In fact they have always existed in relationship
to neighbouring peoples. A few of the best studies focused on this, and some also
suggested that “the administration operating from various centres” be included in the
overall social structure of a land or a people.1
Some recent anthropology subjects colonial life and its discourse to
anthropological analysis. What is a matter of urgency is to understand the power
structures which are imposing changes onto tribal societies now, as part of the whole
pattern of relationships which have formed between Adivasis and outsiders, including the
administration: a pattern which is in many ways oriented towards exploiting and
dispossessing indigenous people.
Vedanta Resources and the fight for Orissa’s Bauxite Malis
Focusing here in most detail on Orissa, famous for its ancient cultural traditions, not least
those of diverse tribal societies, the names Vedanta and Kalinganagar are today’s
symbols of the extreme pressures which tribal people face, as well as of powerful
movements to prevent industries taking over tribal territory.
For Orissa is in the throes of great controversy just now about plans to expand
bauxite-mining and aluminium manufacture on the one hand, iron-mining and steel plants
on the other, as well as new mega-dams for supplying both industries. A British
registered company called Vedanta Resources is highest profile in the aluminium field,
though projects by several other aluminium companies also make headlines. The killings
which took place on 2nd January at Kalinganagar were brought on by the Indian company
Tata’s attempts to construct a new steel plant there. This event has put the spotlight on
numerous iron-ore and steel projects in the State, particularly the terrible effects of largescale
iron-mining in north Orissa and over 70 sponge-iron factories there, and a highly
controversial deal with the Korean company Posco (Pohang Steel Company) to mine
Orissa’s iron and build a huge new steel plant and new port facilities near Paradeep.
Vedanta’s huge alumina refinery is nearly complete at Lanjigarh in southwest
Orissa, right on the source of the Bamsadhara river where it forms below the Niyamgiri
mountain range. The location was dictated by a lease to mine bauxite on the northwest
ridge of this range, though environmental clearance to carry out mining there has not yet
been granted. The ridge is extensively forested right up to its summit, and is sacred to the
Konds. Beyond the summit, in the valleys and hill-slopes of the Niyamgiris, live one of
Orissa’s most traditional tribes, the Dongria Konds.
What follows is a brief history of the aluminium industry in Orissa, recounted as a
way into comprehending the complex structures behind today’s situation.
Back in the 1920s several of the biggest mountains in south Orissa were identified
as sources of good quality bauxite, when a geologist named Fox outlined the very plans
for an integrated aluminium industry in south Orissa which are being pushed forward
now, 80 years later. Plans based on mountain-top mines, refineries and smelters, big
dams harnessing Orissa’s biggest rivers, a railway network, and port facilities for export.
The base rock of these mountains had recently been named Khondalite after the Konds
(early British sources usually called them Khonds) – a naming which acknowledges the
close relationships which exists between these mountains and this people. 2 Most of the
bauxite mountains occur in Kond territory, and when asked their religion by Census
officials Konds have often answered simply Pahar or Donga (Mountains).
In the 1950s-60s Indal (Indian aluminium), a subsidiary of Alcan (Aluminium
Canada), built an aluminium smelter at Hirakud in northwest Orissa, processing bauxite
mined and refined to the north of Orissa. This obtained hydro-power and water from the
State’s first mega-dam of the same name, near Sambalpur, which displaced at least
160,000 people, more than 50% of them Adivasis. Few if any were properly rehabilitated.
The dam was justified in terms of irrigation – a canal system irrigates about twice the area
of cultivated land indundated by the reservoir; hydro-power – of which an inordinate
proportion went to the smelter – and flood control – though major floods in 1980 and 1999
caused by the need for sudden release of heavy rainwater to save the dam, caused more
damage and loss of human life than anything that had occurred previously.3
In the 1970s an extensive survey was carried out of the bauxite mountains.4 This
resulted in the setting up of a new Orissa-based aluminium company in 1980, Nalco
(National Al.Co.), which established an extensive mine on top of the biggest mountain
(Panchpatmali in Koraput district), a refinery nearby at Damanjodi, powered and watered
by the Upper Kolab dam (which displaced an estimated 3,000 and 14,000 people
respectively, mostly Adivasis) and its smelter at Angul (central Orissa), linked by a new
railway through the south Orissa mountains (Koraput-Rayagada). Nalco is a Public
Sector Utility (PSU), which makes a large profit for the State. Attempts to privatise it in
2003 met with stiff resistance from employees.5
Subsequent attempts to set up bauxite mines and aluminium factories have been
opposed by large-scale movements, in which Adivasis and Dalits have played a central
role, facing frequent arrests and beatings by the police and “company goons”. First came
an attempt to mine the top of Gandhamardan in west Orissa by Balco (Bharat Al.Co.),
another PSU. This is another exceptionally well-forested range. Local people made great
sacrifices to oppose Balco’s plans. When their husbands were jailed, women stopped the
police and company vehicles by putting their babies in the vehicles’ path, to show they
had no future if the mountain was mined. The company went so far as to construct a
colony for several hundred employees – never used and now taken over by the jungle,
after the Minsistry of Environment and Forests denied clearance to the project in 1987.
In 1993, several companies made a concerted effort to set up bauxite mines and
factories in Kashipur, an isolated region in Rayagada District, against strong opposition.
The front-runner was a consortium called Utkal, whose basic plan was to mine bauxite on
Bapla Mali and refine it in a big factory on the site of a small Kond village called
Ramibera. At first the consortium consisted of Tata and Indal with Norsk Hydro
(Norway’s biggest corporation). Between 1998 and 2000 as the local movement against
Utkal gathered strength, Tata left, and Alcan bought up a major share in its subsidiary
Indal, and sold it on to Hindalco (Hindustan Al.Co), India’s other major al.co, which had
been set up by the Birla family in the 1960s in collaboration with the US company
Kaiser.
As opposition to Utkal hardened, so did local politicians’ anger with the Adivasis
who stood in the way of development plans. On 16th December 2000, police opened fire
on a gathering of Adivasis opposed to Utkal in the village of Maikanch. Days earlier
there had been meetings in Rayagada organised under the World Bank’s scheme of
Business Partners for Development, while the DFID had commissioned a report on Utkal
from the Centre for Development Studies at Swansea University, whose team witnessed
the tension in the build-up to this event: armed youths blocking the road to Maikanch,
and politicians of all three main parties calling those supporting the company “patriots”,
and those those who opposed the project “traitors”, who should be “taught a lesson”.6
On the 15th people from many villages had gathered at Maikanch, Konds, Jhorias
(Jharnia), Dalits and others. A group of politicians and journalists from Kashipur and
Rayagada tried to pass Maikanch and cow them. They came off worst in the fight and
evidently (pulling Ministry strings) called out the armed police to come the next day.
men retreated up the hill, afraid of provoking a fight, leaving the women and children as a
pacifying factor between themselves and the police. But the police got into a fight with
the women, “laid their hands on them”. So the men came nearer, down the hill. The
police retreated out of the village, and opened fire. Two Jhoria men and a youth died at
Maikanch, and a dozen were seriously wounded.
Far from cowing opposition, the movement against Utkal had won the moral
high-goround and hardened its resolve. Norsk withdrew, under pressure from human
rights activists in Norway, leaving the consortium to two different companies from the
original three: from Tata + Indal + Norsk, it had become Alcan + Hindalco – and yet it
remained inscrutably, the same Joint Company venture.
Also, an Enquiry into the causes of the Maikanch killings was set up. This was
headed by a Judge named P.K.Mishra, who took extensive evidence, and altogether 3
years to file a report. Witnessing one session of this Enquiry on 29 May 2002, we saw a
senior executive of Utkal who professed ignorance about company accounts and a
missing sum of 70 crore rupees, allegedly used by Utkal officials for bribes. We also saw
an Adivasi woman and a Dalit woman taking the stand. Each kept her hands clasped in
Johar/Namaste in an appeal for truth and justice, as they recounted how the police had
attacked them that day. Mishra’s verdict in the Report was ambiguous, censoring certain
police officers, but condoning the project.
Vedanta started up while Utkal was stalled, compensating for earlier company
defeats by moving swiftly to start construction of its Lanjigarh refinery. The company’s
original name was Sterlite. It already had a major share of India’s copper and zinc
industry when it bought up Balco in March 2001 in a notoriously undervalued
privatisation sell-off of a PSU.7 Sterlite bought a controlling 51% share in Balco, which
gave it a new centre at Korba in Chattisgarh, where Soviet assistance had helped build a
refinery and smelter back in the 1960s-70s, supplied with bauxite from several mountaintop
mines in central India (especially Amarakantak and Mainpat).
The great prize for all the aluminium companies is Orissa’s bauxite, which is of a
better quality than Chattisgarh’s (higher alumina content in relation to silica and iron),
allowing it to be refined at a lower temperature, saving costs. Sterlite had let go the leases
on Gandhamardan and Sosubohu Mali (Mother-in-law Daughter-in-law Mountain) on the
east of Kashipur (where it had also met opposition), but retained Niyamgiri’s north-west
ridge. Orissa’s recent history is a patchwork of MoUs (Memoranda of Understanding)
between the Orissa Mining Corporation (OMC) and a large range of Indian and foreign
mining companies. All the biggest mountains in south Orissa have now been the focus of
such deals.
Vedanta is not primarily an India company. In December 2003 it was launched on
the London stock exchange as Vedanta Resources Plc (VRP), through the services of the
world’s highest paid mining executive, Brian Gilbertson, in order to raise funds for
modernising its Balco facilities at Korba and building the Lanjigarh refinery, whose
design was entrusted to an Australian firm named Worley. By the end of January 2004,
the Collector of Kalahandi, Saswat Mishra, had persuaded half a dozen Kond villages to
accept financial compensation and a concrete house on Vedanta’s behalf, and these were
given a sudden order to vacate their villages, which were immediately bulldozed along
with their embedded sacred stones. Amoro devata bi nasht kole ( “they even destroyed
our gods”) as one woman said. These villagers were moved in police trucks to
“Vedantanagar”, a new colony, where they became a captive labour pool, living without
land between refinery and mountain.
So technically, the Lanjigarh refinery is being built by an Indian company,
Vedanta Alumina Ltd (VAL), based in Mumbai. But actually, VAL is a subsidiary of the
London company, Vedanta Resources Plc. During the ‘90s, several cases were brought
against Sterlite for non-payment of taxes and conjuring its profits out of India via a
holding company in Mauritius, Twinstar Trading. Now the route for collecting profits
abroad is streamlined.
The head of Sterlite-Vedanta is Anil Agarwal, who owns a multi-million house in
London and is on Forbes’ list as one of the world’s top billionaires. The other Directors
of Vedanta Resources included some people of great influence: Sir David Gore Booth
had been Britain’s High Commissioner to India (1996-8), Jean-Pierre Rodier had been a
senior executive in Pechiney (France’s aluminium company, which had helped set up
Nalco and was now merging with Alcan), Naresh Chandra (India’s Home Sec. 1990,
Cabinet Sec. 1990-2, Senior Adviser to the PM 1992-5, and India’s Ambassador to the
US 1996-2001), and P.Chidambaram, who left to become India’s Finance Minister in the
Govt. elected in May 2004.
The major investors in Vedanta include Barclays, Deutsche Bank and ABN
Amro. Financial investment is pouring into what was a remote area of west Orissa, much
of it, according to common knowledge, in the form of bribes. The refinery is nearly
complete.
An enquiry and strong report from the CEC (Central Empowered Committee,
advisory body to India’s Supreme Court), recommending closure of the whole project on
environmental grounds has gone unheeded by the Supreme Court, which has repeatedly
delayed judgement in the case during the very space of time when the refinery is fast
nearing completion. It will be hard to order the dismantling of a modern, brand new
alumina refinery, however dangerous for the environment its siting may be, right at the
start of the Bamsadhara river. Adivasi opposition under the Niyamgiri Surakshya Samiti
(Niyamgiri Protection Society) was at first relatively muted in the face of violent attacks
and arrests by police and goons. These culminated in the alleged murder of Sukra Majhi,
a Kond leader run down alone in the evening of 27th March 2005, on the newly metalled
road to Lanjigarh.8
Recently though, opposition to the refinery has swelled, as local people witness
the corruption which Vedanta has brought to the area on many levels, and awareness
increases of the environmental effects on what has been an extremely fertile area. The
refinery’s red mud pond (a notorious source of pollution, where a ton of toxic waste is
dumped for every ton of alumina produced) is sited right beside the Bansadhara, one of
Orissa’s major rivers, near its source. Adivasi families have been torn into opposing
factions. There have been numerous, though unrecorded cases of rape, work deaths in the
harsh conditions at the refinery site, suicide and even murder in an area that previously
had a low crime rate.
Huge bribes have reportedly been offered to facilitate environmental and forest
clearance for the mining lease on top of the mountain. Yet this has not been forthcoming:
the Supreme Court’s delay in passing judgement has not allowed Vedanta to start bauxite
mining, while it has allowed the refinery to be finished, for the case involves
environmental clearance to mine Niyamgiri, as well as whether to allow the refinery. If
this clearance is given and Niyamgiri starts to be mined it is a clear violation of India’s
legal system on several counts. What heightens this symbolism is the name and deity
associated with this mountain range. Niyam means Law or Rule, and the local god,
worshipped by Hindus and Adivasis, is Niyam Raja: Lord of Law. As a Dongria shaman
tells his story:
“There are five brothers, and the youngest one is Niyam Raja…
Niyam Raja wondered what to do and decided to become the guardian of
the streams and mountain range. So he decided to stay on the top of the mountain,
and created mango, jackfruit, pineapple, orange, banana, and seeds. He said to
us “Now live on what I have given you.” Actually Niyamgiri is the first Dongria,
he is one of us, but he wants to stay at the top. We like to be here at his feet.
At the top you have all the herbs and plants creating a magnetic force
which keeps us healthy. We worship Niyam Raja by sacrificing goats and pigs.
We have to offer him the first taste, otherwise he won’t accept our offering. That
is why we don’t disturb anything on the top part of the mountain. Niyamgiri is
sacred for us.” 9
It seems that Dongrias have a clearer understanding about the life-giving role of these
mountains than most scientists. The majority of experts in bauxite have long since limited
their expertise to studying how to extract it and measure its properties for the al.co.s. Yet
it is generally known that the bauxite cappings on top of mountains promote exceptional
fertility in a wide surrounding area. Large tracts of the tropical forests of Brazil and the
Guianas, west Africa, and north Australia are associated with a wealth in bauxite.
Aluminium is the commonest mineral in the soil, forming around 8% of the earth’s crust.
Its bonding properties play an important role in the soil’s ability to retain moisture.
Bauxite’s percentage of aluminium is the most concentrated of any rock, at up to 50% or
higher. The layer of bauxite, usually 10-30 feet thick just below a hardened outer crust,
retains moisture near the mountain summits even in the hot season, releasing the
monsoon rain throughout the year in numerous streams that form on the mountain’s
flanks. It is this water-retaining capacity that is under threat. Where bauxite is mined, the
surrounding area hardens and fertility-promoting qualities go into reverse. The results can
be seen around Panchpatmali, where a process of dessication has taken place all around
the mountain. The Dongrias’ taboo on cutting trees on Niyamgiri goes deep in their
culture and religion. Who are we to say their concept of a “magnetic force” created by the
wild plants and trees on top of the mountain is superstition?
And the environmental degradation that is certain to follow if Niyamgiri is mined
is replicated in numerous other Malis, whose fate hangs in the balance. Near Karlapat to
the west, Khandual Mali is now leased to the world’s biggest mining company, BHP
Billiton, which is sponsoring social work in Orissa to pave its way with “good works”.
Utkal is all set to go ahead and build its refinery in Kashipur to be fed by a mine on Bapla
Mali (Bat Mountain), and a police post has been built near Kucheipadar to intimidate
Kond resistance, alongside numerous arrests and other forms of intimidation. Just to the
south, Hindalco has got clearance to build another refinery at Kansariguda, applying for
clearance to mine Kodinga Mali; Larsen and Toubro has plans for similar mines on
Kuturu Mali and Siji Mali; Jindal plans a mine on Mali Parbat; Nalco reportedly has
plans to expand its operations onto Deo Mali, Orissa’s highest mountain; a company
called Jimpex has carried out a survey of the mountains in the remote area of the Kuttia
Konds in southwest Kandhamahal district, where several villages are known to have been
marked for displacement; and a Canadian company called Continental Resources has
taken over the lease for Gandhamardan.
And without waiting for clearance to mine Niyamgiri, Vedanta is already starting
construction of the new smelter it plans to supply from Lanjigarh. This is near
Jharsaguda. Hindalco too plans another smelter in northwest Orissa. The DFID has given
a grant for expanding the use of water and hydro-power from the Hirakud dam for
multiple industries. New dams are also planned: a Lower Suktel dam (Balangir district)
has already met determined resistance, which in turn elicited ferocious police
repression.10 There is likewise both heavy investment in and resistance to plans for a
massive new dam called Polavaram south of Orissa in Andhra Pradesh, where one
element is likely to be Jindal’s plans for bauxite mining at Anantagiri and a refinery and
smelter near Vishakhapatnam.
Several of Orissa’s biggest reservoirs have a close association with the aluminium
industry. The Upper Indravati project involved seven dams. It reversed the Indravati’s
flow from south to north, where part of it is channeled along canals, where richer farmers
have bought up land for intensive fertilizer-based farming, and part of it joins the Tel
river. Vedanta has had a pipe constructed to bring water from the Tel near Kesinga to its
Lanjigarh refinery, a distance of about 50 kms. The pipe is in place, but leaders in
Kesinga have called a series of strikes, and are unwilling to allow their water to be taken
to Vedanta’s factory.
Indravati displaced about 40,000 people. As in all of Orissa’s big dams, no
proper record was kept of those displaced, and few if any were properly resettled while
their compensation at a rate of Rs.14,000/- per acre for land taken has never been paid.
Surrounding villages who were promised electricity from the huge hydro-power to be
generated are still without any. Two of the four turbines got silted up and stopped
working after a short time. The loss of forest alone has been horrific: the reservoir’s sides
are a ghost-city of dead trees, and displaced people have felled much of the remaining
forest all around the reservoir, simply to sell the wood as a means to survive. The project
was funded by loans from the World Bank. As a tribal women said to a WB official
visiting a site to be affected in April 1993, “If we starve, you also bear a responsibility”.
A movement against the dam had been crushed by mass arrests in April 1992.11
For Orissa’s indigenous and cultivating population then, all these projects spell
worse poverty and a destruction of their accustomed lifestyle. Hence the movements of
indigenous people and activists, facing great odds and taking risks, but a steady stream
running through Orissa’s history since Gandhi’s time and before. These movements
across Orissa are increasingly well co-ordinated and supported both by intellectuals and
activists in India as well as from abroad. The Kashipur movement in particular has long
been seen as the cutting edge of People’s Movements in India.
For the mainstream, non-cultivating, urban and town-based population, the
industry promises a whole new era of prosperity, kicked off by huge sums of FDI
(Foreign Direct Investment), where those with initiative and business acumen can make a
quick fortune.
Yet the aluminium industry’s history world-wide clearly shows the tendency of a
struggle for profits between the companies and local governments at the expense of
indigenous people – a struggle which the companies always win, backed up by the
world’s most powerful governments. 12 The companies’ profit starts from getting bauxite
cheap. Its value rises exponentially along the production line, especially with the huge
subsidies the industry invariably receives in costs of electricity, water etc.
Social Structure of a Company
The situation outlined above unfolding in Kashipur and Lanjigarh is replicated in its
structural features across all the continents. Probably a majority of the world’s surviving
indigenous peoples have faced displacement and a consequent onslaught on their culture
and community from mining companies in recent years. As anthropologists, what can we
offer in the way of a clear analysis of these structural features?
In its formal internal structure, a company such as Vedanta shows hierarchy in
quite an extreme form from Directors and many layers of officials, down to those who
mine Vedanta’s bauxite (around 50-75 rupees per day at Vedanta’s mines in Chattisgarh)
and others who do the hardest labouring jobs.
But at the unformalized level of what actually happens, a company is not a
discrete entity. Vedanta alumina (VAL) is a subsidiary of Vedanta Resources, and both
form part of a conglomerate of interlocking companies. Then there are the lawyers who
work for Vedanta, the Banks which invest in Vedanta, the political parties which become
close to Vedanta….
And the security forces they hire to patrol their sensitive projects such as
Lanjigarh. For villagers in that area, Vedanta is half-way to being their new authority, in
control of jobs, housing, electricity and water supply, education, medical care, law and
order…. The new factory and those in charge of it dominate their world now. Police
tactics co-ordinate with the company’s designs. At Maikanch and Kalinganagar, why
were the police supporting the companies against those being dispossessed of their land
by the company?
The way society divides when a mining company enters a new area is another
structural feauture. Splitting Kond villagers into those who have accepted compensation
and those who have refused it is a classic divide-and-rule tactic, used by companies to
divide the opposition. In Kashipur and Lanjigarh, many such tactics have repeatedly
splintered the movement, though without managing to destroy it. In general, those who
follow the company at any cost, rise some way up its hierarchy, while those who do not
stay down. So families and villages become divided by different interests and levels of
prosperity that never existed before. Commenting on this division generally within the
large local area affected, people say:
Jo Loko companyro paise khauchanti support korichanti.
Jo loko companyro paise nahee khauchanti virod korichanti.
Those who eat the company’s money support it.
Those who don’t eat the company’s money don’t.
“Paise khauchanti” refers particularly to accepting bribes, and the almost universal
conviction that the companies “buy people up” through various forms of donation or
bribe.
In many ways, the dividing line between company and government is very
tenuous. They form policy and take action together through business deals and shared
interests, and also connect through “revolving doors”, as in P.Chidambaram’s transition
from being a Vedanta Director (business executive), to becoming the Indian
Government’s Minister of Finance. Do his business interests and aims as director of
Vedanta not continue to inform his policies as Finance Minster?
And Sir David’s place among the Directors indicates a definite though discrete
link with the UK Government. The DFID’s role in Orissa comes into crucial question
here. They helped lay the groundwork of “liberalization” that allows a British registered
company to lease land and build factories in Orissa. They are known to have helped
Vedanta set up in London. The DTI (Dept for Trade and Industry of the British
Government) advertised Vedanta’s Lanjigarh project as an investment and employment
opportunity. The biggest question is whether the DFID’s main purpose in Orissa is really
“poverty eradication” and “development”, or whether promoting British commercial
interests is actually a higher priority – whether, in Vedanta’s case, there is a strong
ulterior motive of gaining access, through a company financed and registered in Britain,
to Orissa’s bauxite and expanding metal production?
The DFID co-ordinates its policy closely with the World Bank, whose loans are
bigger to Orissa than to any other State. Orissa is India’s most badly indebted State. It can
only repay its loans + interest with massive further loans.13 Obviously, behind closed
doors, the Orissa Govt. has been persuaded that the only way out is to open up their
mineral assets to foreign companies. And in a way, perhaps this is why Orissa entered the
debt trap – lured there by the very projects which created the initial infrastructure for
future foreign-controlled mining projects. The loans ensured it is the Govt., and even
more the people of Orissa, who bear the real cost, while foreign companies are
guaranteed the final profits.
A brief history of Alcan’s relationship with British industry makes these
connections clear. The company was vital as a source for Britain’s arms industry during
the first and second world wars. During the 1960s its interests in Guyana and Ghana were
supported by threats from the WB to withdraw loans to those countries. 14 It also acquired
control of the British Aluminium Corp., and now controls the major share of aluminium
plants in Britain. The threats make it clear that Alcan has the strongest support from the
US as well as British Governments. In Britain and the US, a regular, guaranteed supply of
aluminium at the cheapest possible rate is a matter of highest concern, since it supplies
one of the arms industry’s basic resources, and “aerospace/defence” is central to both
nations’ economy. This is why aluminium is classed as a “strategic metal” by the US
Administration, meaning its supply is to be guaranteed and stockpiled.
. The connection between companies and political parties is another key part of the
social structure. During the expansion of aluminium companies in the USA from the
1940s on, for example, Alcoa (Aluminum Company of America) was closely associated
with the Republican party, Reynolds with the Democrats. Utkal in Kashipur was
supported by an “All-Party Committee” from the three dominant parties from the early
1990s. Vedanta’s links have been closer with the BJD and BJP parties, under Orissa’s
present Chief Minister, Naveen Pattnaik. In May, his administration made a joint
statement with Vedanta about setting up a new Vedanta University in the State, making
clear his full support for the Lanjigarh refinery. Meanwhile the Congress party has taken
a firmer stand against the Vedanta deal and refinery, stressing the transgressions of the
law.
But what difference do elections really make? If the Congress party come to
power in Orissa, will they continue to try and prevent companies like Vedanta taking
over tribal land, or will they succumb to pressures behind the scenes – pressures from
foreign consultants backed by the WB and DFID, as well as “inducements” from the
companies? In the US and UK too, no Government confronts the power of the big
companies head-on: if a major part of Britain’s revenue comes out of arms manufacture
and sales, is it surprising if regulations controlling export to countries using them for
internal repression have regularly been broken? And if revenue generated by exploiting
Orissa’s “mineral wealth” appears to be needed right now, not least to pay off the vast
debt to the WB, what party elected in Orissa is going to be able to withstand the pressure
and inducements, and say “No” to more mining deals?
In other words a company’s political connections and finances are extremely
complicated. But in anthropological terms, at the same time, the basic power structure
imposing itself on Adivasis is in some ways very simple. They understand better than any
social scientist the rough end of the company’s power, and how it affects the behaviour of
the administration towards them.
As anthropologists we are trained to look at the difference between how a society
represents itself, and how it actually behaves – the emic and etic viewpoints. Companies
are an interesting case, in that their “façade of caring” often contrasts starkly with their
methods of manipulation and domination. BHP Billiton has been working carefully to
build up a caring image in Orissa before it starts up any mining, through workshops with
NGOs and a mobile eye clinic.
Vedanta’s promotional literature emphasizes their CSR (Corporate Social
Responsibility), and the benefits they bring to those they have displaced in education and
medicine. The choice of name is highly significant. Vedanta encompassing the whole
body of ancient Vedic and Upanishadic knowledge. What does the name signify? What
does it mean that a company with this name invades an area so ruthlessly, as part of its
plan to become India’s biggest aluminium producer? That it wishes to mine the sacred
Niyamgiris? And what is the relationship between company codes of behaviour and the
Adivasi codes of behaviour of those displaced or opposing the project?
From a tribal point of view, the company is essentially invading their territory,
taking over their land and common space, and bringing in outsiders who serve the
company or set up many side businesses. The police are completely with the company,
arresting people who oppose it, and failing to register assaults on tribal people, including
the death of Sukra Majhi and others.
The most striking model for this kind of takeover of a territory is a slow invasion
staged by another company, many years ago: a British company, and one of the world’s
first registered companies. The East India Company set a model of legal and financial
manipulation, backed always by the threat of force, to gain ever more territory, until it
had become the Government of India, uniting a vast area under its control. Its first
priority, like any company, was to make a profit. The hierarchy it established to make its
profit is essentially still in place: the Collector in charge of a District is a post inherited
from when he was the Company’s Tax Collector. So how did a Company become a
Government back then? And is the same thing happening today, in a different, more
complex form?
Company Indian Government UK Govt.
Vedanta Resources in London DFID, DTI & other
and its investors, including Ministries
Barclays Bank
VAL office, Mumbai Central Ministries of Finance, Mining, DFID ,WB & UN
Envir. & Forests, etc Agenbcies in Delhi &
Korba complex, where Vedanta Orissa & their Consultants
Controls Balco’s integrated alu-
industry within Chattisgarh
The elected Govt. of Orissa & the
administration, Civil, Police, Forestry
The Lanjigarh project, The Collector, SP, DFO and the hierarchy
Hierarchy of officials of Police, Forestry officials etc
& employees
Daily contract labour on bauxite
mines and construction
______________________________________________________________________________________
The displaced and affected villagers,
and the movement against Vedanta
Social Structure of an aluminium company
This diagram suggests a model for Vedanta’s social structure in its internal and external
aspects, with head offices abroad, and co-ordination with certain Ministries and officials
in the Indian and foreign Governments. Contrast in salaries alone shows the extent of the
hierarchy: from the pay of a top Vedanta official or foreign consultant for the DFID and
other agencies, down to the daily contract labour in a bauxite mine etc, for about 50/-
rupees per day. And outside and below the model, those who are displaced without
rehabilitation, those who are forced or choose to remain outside the Vedanta system.
Dumont’s Homo Hierarchicus stressed the hierarchical aspects in Indian society, but isn’t
this type of company hierarchy, that grew up in the West, a type even more extreme?
The question of development
Now that we have a model of the companies’ social structure, how can we gauge the
effects on what anthropologists usually study – the social structure of a tribal
community?
The convention in company and government discourse is to assume that
industrialisation increases people’s standard of living through a handful of main indices,
such as income, education, mortality rate. But statistics are easy to manipulate, and even
if they could be collected in a perfectly neutral way, they tell a very one-sided story. In
fact, none of the big displacements in Orissa kept even the most basic statistics to show
the number of displaced and where they resettled.
And the indices themselves are highly flawed: a higher income does not mean a
higher standard of living, because prices are rising, and money has assumed far greater
importance than it used to have. Tribal people in Lanjigarh villages before Vedanta came
grew most of their own food, so had relatively small financial needs. A tribal family
working its land for instance, needs to hire people to work in the fields at the busiest
times of year. But no-one, even from the same village, will work for 30/- rupees a day
any more, since the Company pays 70/- a day for stone-crushing. Tribal people in
Vedanta’s colony for the displaced may have got cash compensation and their children
get more schooling, but does this make up for the land and sense of community they lost?
And how much of this schooling is a form of indoctrination?
social structure into the various domains conventional in anthropology:
Religion & value system: Underminined by loss of connection with the land and divisions in the
community, and the penetration of money into relationships. The very act of breaking up the earth
for mining and construction contradicts the traditional reverence for Darni Penu, the Earth Deity.
Traditional values, beliefs, norms of behaviour are thus torn apart, and shared festivals for first
fruits of various crops etc that traditionally bring a village together fall into disuse.
Kinship & Clan system: Strong tensions emerge within and between families according to the stand
different individuals take seeking employment or opposing the company. One of the biggest splits
was between the six villages who accepted compensation for their land, who were displaced to
“Vedantanagar” colony, and those which refused, and were left just outside the refinery walls. The
first group will never grow their own food again and have lost the spatial community of a Kond
village. Their fortunes now depend on pleasing company officials. The second group are also
affected at every level, and blame the first group for giving in to the pressure and allowing the
company in.
Political organisation: The process of land acquisition for the company involved side-lining the gram
sabha (village council): according to the “Panchayat Raj” (empowerment of local government),
no project should buy up tribal land without a due process of consulting this council. This sidelining
effectively rendered village political organisation powerless. Almost every aspect of life
that a village used to decide for itself is now in the hands of the company hierarchy.
Education: Most schools in tribal villages are set up with no understanding about indigenous knowledge
and values, so indirectly or directly undermine them
Economy: The most basic change is from owning land and growing their own food to dependence on the
company for earning a living: a complete break from the traditional, largely self-sufficient
economy that defined their lives just 3 years ago.
Effects on tribal social structure
If any culture on earth is sustainable in the true sense of a lifestyle that does not damage
the environment and can sustain itself for hundreds of years, a tribal culture is, where
people grow their own food, and interact with nature without taking too much and
basically without waste. Their concept of niyam, as rule or law, is very strong, and so are
communal values of sharing and equality. Yet company literature actually suggests they
are bringing Adivasis a more “sustainable” lifestyle! The use of this word “sustainable”
has actually lost any environmental content and the new concept of “sustainable mining”,
disseminated in the report by the world’s 10 biggest mining companies on Mining,
Minerals and Sustainable Development (MMSD), has come to mean simply “profitable
over a number of consecutive years”.15
Corporate culture comes down to a single value: profit. Companies are legally
bound to put the aim of profit for shareholders above any other consideration. Green
issues are only considered important in their PR aspect. 16
In the name of “development” enormous sums have been allotted to tribal areas,
and almost none of it reaches the people or helps to pull them out of poverty. 17 Much of
the money, such as loans for the Indravati reservoir, has actually reduced tribal people to
a far worse poverty than they ever endured while living on their own land.
The main concept of development which generates projects from the DFID to the
DKDA (Dongria Kond Development Agency) is “evolutionist” in its concept of fixed
stages of development from “primitive” to “modern, industrialized”, and based in the idea
that financial investment stimulates development. Obviously, big industrial projects
represent a very one-sided kind of development, neglecting community values at the
expense of material change, and they follow a model of change set by the West. Social
evolutionism came out of Darwin’s theory of how species have evolved, but in many
ways the application to society was done badly: every species has its own line of
development, there is no single path.
Obviously tribal people wish for development in the overall sense of better water
supply, education, healthy care, as well as better administration and justice from the law,
but they wish to be in charge of the process. To quote Bhagwan Majhi, one of the leaders
of the Kashipur movement against Utkal:
“We ask one fundamental question: How can we survive if our lands are
taken away from us? We are tribal farmers. We are Earth Worms. Like fishes
that die when taken out of water, a farmer dies when his land is taken away
from him. So we won’t leave our land. We want permanent development.
Provide us with irrigation to our lands. Give us hospitals. Give us medicines.
Give us schools and teachers. Provide us with lands and forests. The forests
we want. We don’t need the company. Get rid of the company.
We do not oppose development. In fact we all want development. But
what we need is stable development. We won’t allow our billions of years old
water and land to go to ruin just to pander to the greed of some officers. We
ask them not to get engaged in these destructive works. Stop this work. Give
us what we want if you really mean development. We tell this to our leaders.
But the government has not even agreed to talk to us. They should think that
nature is not only for just one or two, or three or four generations. Nature
has created us, it helps us survive.
Being rulers, how can you adopt policies that would destroy our land
in the coming 30-35 years? Stop the company. We ask these questions. They
say that you are fools. You don’t understand, if you did, you would not
oppose the company. The collector says this. The SP [Superintendant of
Police] says this.
I put a question to the SP. I asked him, Sir, what is development? What
worth is development if it ends up in relocation of people? The people, for whom
development is meant, should reap benefits. After them, the succeeding
generations should reap the benefit. That is development. It should not be merely
to cater to the greed of a few officers. To destroy the age-old resources is not
development.” (from an interview in A. & S.Das’ film, Matiro Puko)
In the name of development, a cultural genocide is being waged against Adivasis: a slow
death of everything which made their life meaningful.
Those who die in police shootings as at Maikanch and Kalinganagar are the most
blatant deaths. These shootings follow a pattern set by the colonial rulers. General Dyer’s
slaughter in Amritsar in 1919 is the biggest, most infamous shooting on a crowd. But
similar shootings took place in Orissa during the “Quit India” movement in 1942, in
Balasore and Koraput Districts. The biggest police shootings in Koraput were against
largely tribal crowds attacking the police stations at Pappardahandi and Maithili, where
15 and 5 people died respectively. For leading the latter attack, Lakshman Naik was
executed by hanging in August 1943.
But this bloodshed is only the highest profile deaths. Well over one million people
have been displaced by big industry in Orissa since Independence, over half of them
Adivasis. Few indeed ever received adequate compensation. The rules restricting sale of
tribal lands to non-tribals, which form part of the 5th Schedule of India’s Constitution,
have not been applied properly. This is the verdict of B.D.Sharma, ex-Collector of Bastar,
and ex-Commissioner for Scheduled Tribes and Castes. As he says, the dominant attitude
from the present administration seems to be that “a good tribal is a displaced tribal”.18
How can we even begin to know how many people have died from this displacement, in
work accidents, from starvation, suicide, murder? Bhubaneswar is full of tribal refugees
living in slums. What will they preserve of their culture and society?
For Adivasis, these big projects are not development at all. If pushed to admit that
they obviously have not raised most oustees’ standard of living, supporters of further
industrialisation bring in another argument which justifies Adivasis’ displacement as a
“sacrifice” they have to make “for the nation’s progress”. Essentially, this is the modern
idiom of human sacrifice – the “price of progress” in an endless stream of modern
“consumer durables”. Until we destroy the whole earth? And why should Adivasis of all
people be sacrificed?
The main trend is to depict resistance to industrialisation as “anti-development”,
and the tribal people themselves as “primitive” and “backward”. One stereotyped
argument that is often repeated, which was first used against Verrier Elwin, is to distort
any positive view of Adivasi society or idea that they should be allowed to remain in their
villages on their own land, into the intention to “keep them in a museum” – “Do you
want to keep them in a museum? How can we let them remain in their primitive state?”
To understand the origin of this stereotype, one needs to comprehend the role
which anthropology played during British times. Many administrators and missionaries
wrote books about the tribes of central India. The theoretical or ideological framework
almost without exception is “evolutionist”, promoting the idea that tribal society
represents a “primitive stage of development” (Padel 1995). Modern anthropology rejects
this view, and looks on tribal societies as no less sophisticated than mainstream society:
more developed than us in many areas, less developed in others. The areas where tribal
societies are more highly developed than us include a huge sensitivity and knowledge
about relating to nature – in effect, the art of living sustainably.
The same administrators who wrote ethnographic volumes defining tribal
societies through negative stereotypes, also set up ethnographic museums which
displayed tribal artifacts, and even lifesize models of tribal family groups (in
Bhubaneswar museum for instance), which again emphasize the idea that Adivasis are
“primitive”. These museums “preserve” tribal culture by taking their tools, instruments
and dresses from villages and placing them in museum cases to gather dust, where their
life as objects of daily use simply dies. Everywhere, ethnographic museums have
supplemented a political reality of systematically destroying tribal culture. In the US
countless such museums preserve beautifully the artifacts of America’s indigenous tribes
who suffered genocide from European settlers and soldiers. In Orissa, this process of
death-by-museum continues today. Alongside the Damanjodi and Kolab dam
development projects which dispossessed thousands of tribal families in Koraput District
during the 1980s, the authorities paid for an ethnographic museum in Koraput town, to
preserve a memory of the cultures they were destroying.
“Genocide” is thus not too strong a word for what is happening to Orissa’s
Adivasis: a slow death. Not literally the physical death of every individual, as happened
in the paradigm cases of America’s and Australia’s tribes. But a psychic death:
technically, “ethnicide” – the killing-off of cultures. And without their culture, seeing the
sudden confiscation of the land where their ancestors lived and the collapse of their
communities, no longer able to grow their own food and forced to eke a living through
degrading, exhausting coolie work for the very projects which destroyed their homes,
Orissa’s displaced Adivasis exist in a living death, witnessing the extermination of all
they have valued. The fact that their artifacts and traditional hand-made, home-dyed barkcloths
are safe in museums adds insult to their loss: these too are preserved in a living
death.
So “preserving them in museums” is part of the genocide. And their traditional
lifestyle, which Adivasis are risking their lives to maintain in Kashipur or Kalinganagar,
is not primitive at all. It’s highly developed and a lot more sustainable than mainstream
lifestyles.
Commemorating Kalinga through Steel
The mountains in north Orissa are as rich in iron as those in south Orissa are rich in
bauxite. In fact what this means is that the Iron quantity is slightly higher in north Orissa:
there the alumina content goes for waste. In south Orissa’s refineries, it is the iron content
that goes for waste. Hitler, or one of his metallurgists is said to have remarked that “he
who controls Orissa’s iron, controls the world”.19
The iron-ore mines are already extensive, and around 80 sponge iron factories in
north Orissa process the iron-ore into a form acceptable to a steel plant. Orissa presently
has 3 or more working steel plants, the biggest at Rourkela run by SAIL (Steel Authority
of India Ltd). Deals recently signed plan a huge expansion, in the mining as well as steel
plants: over 30 new steel plants, most of them in an area named Kalinganagar
The first event in Indian history fully attested by inscriptions was Ashoka’s
conquest and slaughter of the Kalinga people in the 3rd century BC. This is because
Ashoka set up inscriptions all over his Mauryan empire commemorating this conquest.
These were almost India’s first inscriptions. Ashoka was adopting and Indianising what
was essentially a Greek custom, from Greek influence at his father’s court. But Ashoka’s
inscriptions had an element of honesty and self-criticism unique in history. Far from
glorifying his conquest, he is ashamed of it, because of the thousands of Kalinga people
he had slaughtered and enslaved. Two of these inscriptions are cut on rock faces in
Orissa, where the Kalinga lived. To justify his rule, Ashoka describes his administration
in terms of dharma – human law based on divine law – and promises justice for everyone,
including the “forest tribes”.20
Konds, who call themselves is Kuwinga, are probably essentially the same people
as the Kalinga. From early British Gazetteers it is clear that as Orissa’s Rajas near the
coastal areas came under British control they threw out large populations of Konds, in
order to increase the revenue from their lands and make them more “profitable”. These
joined the main concentration of Konds in central-west Orissa, where Konds number
around a million – Orissa’s largest tribe. Konds still live in many parts of Orissa’s coastal
plain. A recently constructed Arati steel plant has displaced Konds from villages close to
the city of Cuttack.21
Whether or not Konds are one and the same as the Kalinga people, to planners the
name evokes merely Orissa’s “glorious past”. Hence “Kalinganagar”, an “industrial park”
13,000 hectares in size in Jajpur District where various companies have drawn up plans
for new steel plants. Another supremely ironic naming, since the outrage which Orissa’s
indigenous people suffer now evokes the outrage which Kalinga suffered at Ashoka’s
hands.
Orissa’s present plans for expanding iron-ore mining and steel plants are on a
staggering scale. Head of the list is the Orissa Govt.’s deal with Posco, whose main
objective is Orissa’s iron, but agreed to set up a steel plant in Orissa if it could import a
certain percentage of iron-ore from outside India. At a range near Keonjhar named
Gandhamardan (like the bauxite-range in west Orissa), Rio Tinto Zinc has been involved
in tests in a joint venture with SAIL, with “illegal” unregistered mines adjacent to the
Public Sector mines. The negative impact on tribal villagers is hard to convey. Streams
from the mountain they always relied on are running dry, forest is disappearing, and their
life is dominated by the earth-moving vehicles operating above and all around them.22
Plans for Kalinganagar’s steel plants were formulated during the 1990s, when
land acquisition was entrusted to IDCO (the Industrial Development Corp. of Orissa).
Presently two steel plants are working, and two or three others are at an advanced stage
of construction. The biggest working one belongs to Nilachal Ispat Nigam Ltd. It
displaced 639 families, of which only 183 have members working for the company.23
On 9th May 2005, a company called Maharashtra Seamless Steel planned a puja to
propitiate the earth (Bhumi) on the site chosen for their steel plant. Film footage shows
the authorities disarming seated Adivasis of their bows and arrows, before attacking them
with lathis, the event culminating in a woman run over by a truck and killed, and many
arrests. 24 women from Chandia and other villages were arrested and kept locked up for
over 3 weeks.24 Since then, Maharashtra Seamless has cancelled their project.
Two days after this on 11th May, another Bhumi Puja in west Orissa caused
similar violence. This was to inaugurate construction of the Lower Suktel dam project in
Balangir District, displacing at least 26 tribal villages. Already the authorities had tried to
force people to accept advance compensation, though most refused. Villagers beaten by
the police at this event, whom we met, were still stunned at the violence, saying, surely
this is how police behaved during the Freedom Struggle against the British Raj? 25
Adivasi religion tends to honour the Earth above other deities, so they are incensed by
Hindu pujas to the Earth performed by Brahmin priests as a prelude to dishonouring the
Earth by bulldozers which level it – especially when the piece of Earth in question is their
own land.
The two biggest steel plants planned at Kalinganagar are by Tata and Mittal..
Tata’s attempt to set up a big new steel plant at Gopalpur in south Orissa was defeated by
a popular movement in 1996. On 23 July 2005 Tata performed their Bhumi Puja at
Kalinganagar, despite a protest by around 3,000 Adivasis. A public hearing on the issue
came 4 days later on the 27th! And so the ground was laid for the Kalinganagar massacre.
On 2nd January 2006 the Jajpur District authorities were determined to inaugurate
construction of Tata’s steel plant, which Adivasis from various villages were determined
to prevent. When the authorities refused dialogue with Adivasi leaders, protestors broke
through a police cordon. After a policeman was killed, police opened fire on the crowd,
and firing continued a long time. The final death toll was 12 Adivasis dead (later rising to
14), and 70 badly wounded. Dead and wounded included women and children. Six
Adivasi corpses were returned for cremation two days later with their hands cut off, and
genitals mutilated.26
From then till now (Jan.-April) Jajpur Adivasis have blockaded National Highway
200 from north Orissa, affecting transportation of iron-ore being taken for export via
Paradeep. This blockade is organised by a local Adivasi organisation set up in the
Kalinganagar area in 2004, Bisthapan Birodhi Jan Mancha (People’s Platform Against
Displacement), whose demands include proper land-for-land compensation and
punishment for the officials responsible for the massacre, including Saswat Mishra, who
had been posted as Collector here in Jajpur District after his evident “success” promoting
Vedanta as Kalahandi Collector. The Adivasi blockade like the massacre has divided
opinion in Orissa. Some mainstream commentators have depicted these Adivasis as
“terrorists” who “asked for it” or “outsiders”, since 80% of them are of the Ho tribe, who
may have migrated from the area north of Orissa in the early 20th century. The Orissa
Govt. has rushed a new “R & R policy” (Resettlement and Rehabilitation) through the
Legislative Assembly, determined to end the blockade as soon as possible for fear of its
negative impact on potential investors, and the stalling of Tata’s steel plant.
This new R & R policy was effectively written for the GoO by the DFID and UN
officials overseeing policy in Orissa.27 It still falls short of compensating land for land
lost, and its intension of making those displaced “stakeholders” in the project is little
more than nice words: it does not mean being in a position to dictate policy about what
happens on their dispossessed lands.
Meanwhile, protests against iron mining and sponge-iron plants in north Orissa
have been growing in strength. In one case, near Orissa’s biggest steel plant at Rourkela,
several of these factories had been targeted by a large crowd of protestors on 24 March
2006, complaining of lack of compensation, heavy pollution and the Govt.’s failure to
ensure factories’ compliance with laws restricting pollution, more employment of local
people (since the tendency in all these projects is to bring in outsiders, who get more jobs
than locals do). Police charged the crowd, and arrested about 100 people, many of them
women and schoolchildren, who have been held for several months. 28 In another case,
on 20th May, security forces from Bhushan Steel Company opened fire on a crowd of
protestors during construction of the boundary wall for a steel plant in Dhenkanal
District. Ten were injured, but this time, the Collector arrested 5 of the company officials
in charge. 29
The history of Iron and steel is also the history of war and conquest, from the start
of the iron age to the various steps in the development of steel, to the US steel magnates
known as “the robber barons”, who formed many of the patterns of modern company
behaviour, to the steel companies such as Krupp who fuelled the first world war, to the
use of local bauxite, limestone & dolomite in Orissa’s steel plants. Arms companies use
as much steel as they ever did, while it is as true now as in 1951 that
“at the very core of the military-industry complex… Aluminum has become the
most important single bulk material of modern warfare. No fighting is possible,
and no war can be carried to a successful conclusion today, without using and
destroying vast quantities of aluminum… Aluminum makes fighter and transport
planes possible. Aluminum is needed in atomic weapons, both in their
manufacture and in their delivery… Aluminum, and great quantities of it, spell the
difference between victory and defeat…” 30
The civil war in Bastar
Tata’s steel plant in Orissa may have been stalled by the Kalinganagar protest, just as its
plans for a steel plant at Gopalpur were stopped by a movement in 1996. In neighbouring
Chattisgarh the civil war has created a climate where tribal resistance is greatly
weakened, and Tata’s plans for a steel plant at Chitrakut in Bastar (just beside the area’s
largest waterfall on the Indravati river) are moving ahead. Several MoUs for mining and
metal factories have been signed for the Bastar region. Since over 60, 000 tribal people
have been removed from their villages by the war, their ability to fight displacement has
been seriously weakened.
Latest reports from a BBC correspondent suggest that the number of displaced
Adivasis has reached 100,000, and that destruction of villages and forced relocation of
their population has become a routine practice by the Salwa Judum and security forces,
carried out with beatings, killings and rape. It is even said that villagers refusing to join
Salwa Judum are punished with 7 lashes and a fine of Rs.700/-. From June 2005-June
2006 the official death toll in the war inflicted by the Maoists numbered 191 civilians, 25
paramilitaries (including soldiers of the Naga battalion brought to Bastar in 2005), and 12
SPOs (Salwa Judum). The death toll inflicted by security forces on civilians and Maoists
is not forthcoming. It is unlikely to be lower, and could be significantly higher than these
figures.31
Bastar shows how quickly the division of society over mining issues can descend
to the extreme level of civil war. Briefly, Naxalites have controlled the remoter parts of
Bastar for over 20 years.32 Their base there has got stronger, and alliance with Nepal’s
highly successful Maoist uprising has turned them into Maoists, in the popular mind at
least, so that the terms Maoist and Naxalite are almost synonymous now. Within the last
year, the Indian army has launched a full-scale war against them, partly to try and prevent
Maoists’ power increasing to the level it has in Nepal, since the PM has declared this war
against the Maoists the greatest internal security threat India has ever faced. And partly in
order to impose rapid industrialisation on the Bastar region without the kind of protests
which have held up projects in Orissa. The forced relocation of over 600 tribal villages
has been spurred by trying to cut the Maoists’ support base. It also opens up the land to
be taken over much more easily by corporate ventures.
The war really took off when Salwa Judum (“Peace March”) was founded in June
2005 as a tribal youth militia against the Naxalites. It was started by a tribal politician of
the ruling BJP party, Mahendra Karma. Advertised as a “spontaneous uprising of the
Adivasis against the Naxalites” it was actually a police-armed and –trained militia, which
has effectively divided most Adivasi communities in Bastar, polarizing people into
having to take either the Naxal or the Salwa Judum side. There are reports of police and
army burning tribal villages suspected of supporting the Maoists, and forcing the youth
among the refugees to train as Salwa Judum cadres, where they automatically get a salary
as SPOs (Special Police Officers). This instigates the Maoists to attack and kill Salwa
Judum people, and there have been a number of gruesome cold-blooded killings by
Maoists of tribal Salwa Judum members. Yet the Maoists too are largely Adivasis, even if
their leadership may be from outside Bastar. 33
And atrocities of the security forces and Salwa Judum against Maoists and
civilians are not reported. The Chattisgarh Govt. passed a special Security Act earlier this
year which imposes a complete censorship on reports on the Bastar war that do not
follow Govt. sources, and journalists who have tried to bring out real news or reveal the
real status of Salwa Judum have been hounded. 34
The dominant model of warfare now is the US-led war in Iraq, and the Bush
administration’s rejection of the Geneva Convention on the spurious basis that terrorists
sometimes target civilians and do not observe the conventions of warfare either, brings a
degeneration in the rules of war. In Bastar too, it is clear that numerous atrocities are
being committed by both sides, even though only one side’s atrocities are being given
coverage in the media – the side labelled “terrorists”. Yet both sides are clearly using
terror as a weapon.
This civil war is thus a classic example of the “resource curse”, where a region’s
mineral (or other natural resource) wealth becomes a cause for a breakdown in social
norms, leading to civil war (as in Chattisgarh) and impoverishment (Orissa).35 Many
countries in Africa and South America have gone down this road. In Columbia for
example, the polarisation of large areas between FARC (and other communist-inspired
military groups) and right-wing militias supported by the army, has long targeted anyone
who makes an independent stand for human rights. And in Peru, the rise and fall of
Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) serves as a close model for what has happened in
Nepal and Bastar: the high level of exploitation combined with Govt. attempts to impose
projects and displace indigenous people allowed the most extremist faction of Maoists to
emerge as Sendero Luminoso, which was as uncaring of indigenous people and their
traditions as the mainstream was.
Mao himself imposed rapid industrialisation, aimed at maximizing steel
production, with unparalleled ruthlessness: 30 million people are said to have died as a
result of his enforced shift away from agriculture to industry. 36 Most of the Maoists in
Bastar appear to have little respect for tribal traditions, and by undermining the old
patterns of leadership and political organisation they may have weakened the very
tradition of resistance which Bastar has been so famous for. Since the widespread
rebellion in 1910, Bastar Adivasis have shown a strong ability to unite in direct action,
which paid off in resistance to plans for a steel plant at Mavalibhata in 1992. 37
Bastar is India’s tribal centre. The best books on tribal India are about Bastar’s
most famous tribes, the Muria and Maria Gonds.38 Until June 2005 the position of
Bastar’s Adivasis was still generally free-er than elsewhere in India, in the sense of being
less controlled and imposed on and less displaced, even though the level of exploitation
had steadily increased.
If Bastar shows the extreme form of dispossession and de-tribalisation by civil
war, Orissa shows a slower genocide. Both patterns were set long ago throughout North
and South America, where settlers gradually took over almost all the land that had
belonged to indigenous people, and justified doing so by a rigid set of negative
stereotypes about the indigenous people, and a mindset completely closed to “the other”,
whose land they invaded. More tribes were exterminated than survived. In many cases,
conflict was brought on by miners pursuing the mineral wealth in the mountains, gold
and silver first, followed by other minerals. Often soldiers or settlers pursued a conscious
policy of genocide. 39
Orissa’s Chief Minister, Naveen Patnaik, has staked much on a series of deals
with mining companies, in the belief that exploiting the State’s rich mineral resources
will transform Orissa from poor to rich, and pay off its debts. In the Orissa Assembly on
4th Dec. 2004 he stated:
“No-one – I repeat no-one – will be allowed to stand in the way of Orissa’s
industrial development and the people’s progress.”
But who defines the people’s progress? It is a striking feature of the whole controversy
that the voices of Adivasis have rarely been heard. The media and staged events in
Bhubaneswar give them only snippets of coverage, compared to the Ministers and others
at the apex of the power structure. The same Naveen Patnaik wrote in his introduction to
his book The garden of Life: an introduction to the healing plants of India (1993):
“The fundamental philosophy of Ayurveda says that suffering is a disease…, that
man is interdependent with all other forms of life. Spirit is described as the
intelligence of life, matter as its energy. Both are manifestations of the principle
of Brahman, the oneness of life.
To the founders of Ayurveda… The man who recognizes how he is linked
with universal life is a man who possesses a sound soul because he is not isolated
from his own energies, nor from the energies of nature. But as the highest form of
life, man also becomes its guardian, recognizing his very survival depends on
seeing that the fragile balance of nature, and living organisms, is not disturbed.
In Ayurvedic terms this means that man must prevent wanton destruction.
What he takes he must replace, to preserve the equilibrium of nature. If he cuts
down a tree for his own uses, he must plant another. He must ensure the purity of
water. He must not poison the air… If a man wilfully disturbed the balance of
living things, he disturbed himself.”. 40
This is a great description of the philosophy of advaita Vedanta. Presumably when he
wrote these words in America, Naveen did not know he would one day try and impose a
programme of rapid industrialisation in his native Orissa. Speaking against this
programme, Kishen Pattnayak, a leader of Orissa who followed the Gandhian socialist
path, summarised the argument as follows:
“Orissa has enormous mineral reserves. This is considered to be the biggest asset
to increase the prosperity of Orissa. This is really a myth. Mining areas of Orissa
have never been known for being rich or developed. Now the condition is
becoming much worse……A few national/multi-national companies and their
contractors and those ministers and officials helping these companies in unlawful,
unethical manner become the owners of huge property. Orissa as a state is not
going to get any benefit from this……Overall the state and the people will suffer
the loss, only a small class of rich people will be created. Rich will become richer,
poor poorer. Mining is a curse to the indigenous people and the environment.” 41
For Adivasis then, the idea of more projects displacing them is anathema, and a case of
over-industrialisation, not real development at all.
Anthropologists have often served the administration as well as mining
corporations, as gatherers of data and legitimizers of imposed change.42 How do we help
to build up a concensus in favour of allowing Adivasis their land and separate identity?
How do we build an authoritative critique of the genocidal policies still being imposed on
indigenous people before it is too late?
REFERENCES
1. This is from Evans-Pritchard’s Nuer (1940), which is excellent on Nuer inter-relationships with their
neighbours, the Dinka. He was with the Nuer in South Sudan during the time of their effective conquest by
British-led forces, and must have witnessed the complete disruption of their normal life. Although he
sketched out the need for anthropological analysis of the administration, he did not actually do it, perhaps
because during the 1940s it was still too hard to escape the colonial paradigms of discourse, and might have
been seen as too subversive to the establishment.
2. Fox, C.S. 1932, Bauxite and Aluminous Laterite. (2nd edition) London: Technical Press, pp.135-6.
3. Viegas, Philipx 1992.,“The Hirakud Dam Oustees: Thirty Years After”, in Thukral, Enakshi Ganguly ed.
Big Dams, displaced people: Rivers of sorrow, rivers of change. Delhi: Sage.
4. Rao, M.G. & P.K.Rama October 1979. East coast bauxite deposits of India. Report by the Geological
Survey of India.
5. Jojo, Bipin K. 2002, ‘Political economy of large dam projects: a case study of Upper Kolab Project in
Koraput District, Orissa’, in Thakaran ed. 2002. On the attempt at Nalco’s disinvestment see V.Sridhar in
Frontline 17 Jan. 2003.
6. From an interview with Ian Barney, whose report for DFID gives a reasonably balanced account of the
Utkal project up until the Maikanch firing: Ian Barney A.B. Ota, B. Pandey & R. Puranik 2001. Engaging
stakeholders: lessons from three eastern India Business case studies. Swansea: centre for development
studies and Bhubaneswar: Resource Centre for the social dimensions of business practice.
7. Bidwai, Praful 2001. “Balco’s privatization”, in Alternative economic survey 2000-2001. 2nd
generation reforms: Delusions of development, By Alternative Survey Group, Delhi: Rainbow Publishers,
Azadi Bachao Andolan & Lokayan.
8. PUDR (People’s Union for Democratic Rights) May 2005, Investigation into the impact on people due
to the Alumina projects in south Orissa, Bhubaneswar. On Vedanta, our main sources include VRP’s
anuual reports and “Nostromo Research” 2005, Ravages through India: Vedanta Resources plc Alternative
Report, London and the India Resource Center, Delhi.
9. Quoted from A. & S.Das’ film Matiro Puko, Company Loko (Earth Worm, Company Man) about
Orissa’s indigenous people’s response to mining.
10. Interveiews with villagers opposing the Lower Suktel dam appear in Matiro Puko.
11. Quotation from Catherine Caufield, 1998, The World Bank and the poverty of nations. London: Pan,
p.227. On the Indravati movement, see State of Orissa’s Environment: a Citizens’ Report, 1994,
Bhubaneswar: Manoj Pradhan & Council of Professional Social Workers, pp.144-5.
12. Graham, Ronald 1982, The aluminium industry and the third world. London: Zed: the best overall
account of the aluminium industry.
13. Govt. of Orissa, Finance Dept.: Fiscal and Governance Reforms, Bhubaneswar 2001.
14. Graham 1982 on Alcan, passim.
15. Moody, Roger 2005. The risks we run: Mining, Communities and Political Risk Insurance. Utrecht:
International Books.
16. Bakan, Joel 2004, The Corporation: the pathological pursuit of profit, London, Constable.
17. Sainath, P. 1996, Everybody likes a good drought: Stories from India’s poorest districts, Penguin.
18. B.D.Sharma, Press release, Mysore, 22 Feb. 06, forestrights@yahoogroups.com.
19. Hitler’s interest in Orissa’s bauxite/aluminium and iron-ore is outlined in an article in Oriya by Ajit
Mahapatra in Samaj (3 May 2005), who met one of Hitler’s key metal experts, and the widow of another.
20. Romila Thapar: Asoka and the decline of the Mauryas, Delhi OUP 1961.
21. L.E.B.Cobden-Ramsay: Feudatory States of Oriss, Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1910, no.21 of the
Bengal District Gazeteers. The Konds displaced by the Arati company’s steel plant have a court case in
process for compensation etc, and invited us to visit but so far we have not been able to do so.
22. Footage of iron-mining on Gandhamardan is shown in Matiro Puko.
23. Some of those displaced (though only 25 of the 183 families working for the company) live in
Gobarghati, the resettlement colony. Families who cannot get work for the company have to travel 15 kms
daily to work crushing stones for construction, for just 40 rupees a day. Of the other steel companies that
have started up at Kalinganagar, Mesco and Jindal displaced 50-60 families each, and Rohit 12 families. A
corridor linking the plants has displaced 28 families. From Pradhan, Satapathy Feb. 2006. Police firing at
Kalinganagar: a report by People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), Orissa.(www.pucl.org/Topics/Dalit
-tribal/2006/kalinganagar.htm)
24. Matiro Puko shows footage of this police att.ack, as well as the arrested women.
25. Lower Suktel villagers interviewed in Matiro Puko.
26. Pradhan 2006, news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4686638. Early reports (but not Pradhan’s Report)
say that five or six of the dead had been taken away injured by police who returned them later as the
mutilated corpses (ind_media@rediffmail.com). Kin burnt the dead without requesting independent
verification of the genital mutilation.
27. A Committee on R & R was formed on 6th Jan. which declared its results in mid-April, based on a
policy drafted with UNDP/DFID guidelines (agamiorissa@yahoogroups.com). But this does not offer land
for land as the Adivasis demanded, and International Labour Organisation regulations require.
28. About 40 sponge iron factories operate in Sundargarh District alone. Most lack proper approval or
safety measures (an article in Sambad dated 11/4/06 names 4 factories where workers had recently been
killed). Nepaz, the focus of protest, is the District’s largest. It started up in 2002, without the required Gram
Sabha permission. The gherao outside this and 4 other factories on 24th March was attended by about 5,000
people, supported by a local MLA. They were demanding statutory pollution controls, more employment
for locals, and proper development of the surrounding area. According to news reports the police attacked
first, and after people entered the Nepaz factory gates, police lathi-charged and made a first wave arrests.
More followed in the evening to dispel a road block, and more the following night and morning, tracing
protestors to their villages. A month after these arrests no bail had been granted, even for the schoolchildren
whose ages had been falsified. Such “false charges” have been a consistent weapon used to harass those
who protest against industrial projects. Informatiion from Voice for Child Rights Orissa
(vcrorissa@yahoo.com) and a freelance journalist (pradeep_baisakh@yahoo.com).
29. Statesman news service, see epgorissa@gmail.com.
30. Dewey Anderson, Aluminum for Defence and Prosperity,. Washington: US Public Affairs Institute,
1951.
31. Gill McGivering: “Journey with Naxalites”, June 2006 at bbc.co.uk, and “Chattisgarh – the ugly
physiognomy of counter-insurgency” via vskvizag@yahoo.co.in..
32. Bastar was a single District till 2000, when it was divided into three.
33. Among many recent articles see “Naxals regrouping to strike back at Naga jawans” 26/2/06 (www.epao.
net/GP.asp?src=9.13.270206.feb06), “K.P.S.Gill as Chattisgarh State Security Adviser” 19/4/06
(thehindu.com), “Naxalite antidote: ten troopers for a rebel” 23/4/06 (telegraphinidia.com), “An appeal to
stop the most heinous kind of displacement in Chattisgarh” (April 2006 at gnsaibaba@gmail.com &
sanjay.gathia@gmail.com), and the PUDR Report April 2006: Where the State makes war on its own
people at www.pudr.org/pages/salwa.judum.pdf, Statement from Amnesty International dated 10/3/06
criticising atrocities by Maoists and State forces alike, and particularly the formation of Salwa Judum.
34. On the censorship and harassment of journalists: an article in the Times of India 17/2/06 on a statement
from the International Federation of Journalists in London urging India’s President not to assent to the
Special Public Security Bill passed by the Chattisgarh Assembly (indiatimes.com).
35. Michael Ross, Jan.1999, “The political economy of the resource curse”, in World Politics no.51.
36. Jung Chang: Mao, the unknown story (London: Cape 2005), and Wild Swans: three daughters of China
(NY: Simon & Schuster 1991). 30 million people are estimated to have died of starvation at this time and
anyone who tried to inform the great leader of what was really happening was liquidated.
37. Nandini Sundar: Subalterns and sovereigns: an anthropological history of Bastar 1854-1996, 1997. On
the steel plant defeated during the 1990s, see the writings of B.D.Sharma, ex-Collector of Bastar and ex-
Commissioner for Scheduled Tribes and Castes, who opposed the project vociferously.
38. W.V.Grigson: The Maria Gonds of Bastar (1938), Verrier Elwin: The Muria and their Ghotul (1947).
39. Darwin witnessed a general undertaking bthe extermination of tribal people in Argentina in the 1830s.
“Ishi’s tribe” was exterminated by settlers in California during the 1860s.
40. Naveen Patnaik, Doubleday, New York 1993.
41. This is part of a passage intended as a forward for our book on the aluminium industry, Out of this
earth: Orissa’s indigenous lifestyle and the aluminium cartel. Kishenji died in September 2004.
42. Chapter 7 of Felix Padel’s book The sacrifice of human being analyses the role of the anthropologist in
the colonial social structure.
Felix Padel is a freelance anthropologist trained at Oxford and Delhi Universities. His first book analysed
the imposition of colonial structures over a tribal society. For the past 4 years he has been researching and
writing a sequel to this with the Orissa writer and film-maker Samarendra Das about attempts to set up an
aluminium industry based on mining the Konds’ mountains, and the indigenous movement against.
From Times OnlineNovember 7, 2008
(Charles Rex Arbogast/AP)
Rahm Emanuel agonised over the offer from Barack Obama as he also coveted a top job in Congress
Image :1 of 2
Video: Obama prepares for office
‘Attack dog’ takes job as Chief of Staff
Victorious Obama to pick White House team
Bush unveils details of transition to Obama
Others say the take-no-prisoners partisan nicknamed Rahmbo is a perfect fit for the almost preternaturally serene Mr Obama, who will need political strongmen around him if he is to push through the radical changes he seeks.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article5106463.ece
Rahm Emanuel: A Tough Taskmaster for Obama
By James Carney / Washington Friday, Nov. 07, 2008Rahm Emanuel talks with Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama.
Alex Brandon / AP
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Facebook Yahoo! Buzz Mixx Permalink Reprints Related Throughout the presidential campaign, Republicans took delight in portraying Barack Obama as all talk and no action. But his naming of Illinois congressman Rahm Emanuel as his White House chief of staff shows that the Democratic President-Elect has no intention of letting that charge stick.
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Obama may speak beautifully and inspirationally about hope and change, about bipartisan cooperation and a better America. But he clearly understands that you just can’t sit around talking about all the good things you want to do when you get to the White House and then expect them to happen all by themselves. Which means you can’t hire a staff that’s going to gather at work every day, hold hands and sing Kumbaya.
See pictures of the world reacting to Obama’s win.)
(See pictures from the historic Election Day.)
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1857368,00.html?imw=Y
Clinton: Obama made good choice for chief of staff
By ADAM GOLDMAN – 13 hours ago
NEW YORK (AP) — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in her first public appearance since former rival Barack Obama was elected president, praised his choice for White House chief of staff, a former top aide to her husband.
“President-elect Obama made an excellent choice,” she said of Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel, adding that he “understands both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.”
“He gets things done,” she said at a news conference Thursday night before she and former President Clinton were honored at a gala at the newly refurbished Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. “Rahm is determined and effective.”
She also called on Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, the Senate’s longest-serving Republican, to resign after he was convicted of corruption charges.
The event at which the Clintons spoke kicked off the opening weekend of the Intrepid after a nearly two-year restoration. President Bush next week will deliver a Veterans Day address on the famous World War II aircraft carrier.
Clinton, a New York Democrat, said she talked with Obama after his historic victory, which made the Illinois senator the first African-American elected to the White House, and promised to work with him as he faces challenging times taking office.
“I want to be a good partner with him in the Senate,” said Clinton, his former rival for their party’s presidential nomination. “The Senate is going to be the place that determines whether his agenda is successful. We are going to work together. We are going to work across the aisle.”
Clinton said that Obama has to move quickly on national security and the economy. He was wise to begin preparing for his transition into the White House, she said.
“I give him credit for being ahead of the curve,” she said. “I think he’ll put together a good team.”
Asked whether she would join an Obama administration, Clinton said: “I want to be the best senator I can be from New York.”
Stevens, who has secured billions of dollars in federal funds for his state, was clinging to a narrow lead in a re-election bid after being found guilty of lying on Senate records to hide hundreds of thousands of dollars in home renovations and gifts he received from a millionaire businessman. He is appealing and told voters he’s not a convicted felon — at least not until the appeal process is over.
But Stevens, Clinton said, has to go.
“I think that he should step down, and I think that we may actually win that seat still,” she said.
An exit poll and incomplete ballot results had Stevens, a 40-year incumbent, with a very slight lead over Democratic rival Mark Begich, the mayor of Anchorage. More than 60,000 absentee and questioned ballots remained to be counted Thursday, so the outcome may be days in coming.
Democrats jockeying for top Obama Cabinet posts
From Ed Henry
CNN White House Correspondent
(CNN) — To the victor belong the spoils, and after eight years out of the White House, Democrats want to be spoiled with high-profile jobs.
Senior Democrats say Sen. John Kerry is gunning to be the next secretary of state.
”For every senior job, there is probably 10 qualified people, and it’s hard to be the person to tell the nine that they are not the number one pick,” said former Clinton White House press secretary Joe Lockhart.
Senior Democrats say Sen. John Kerry is jockeying to be secretary of state — and has a good case after endorsing President-elect Barack Obama over Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries.
But some Democrats worry he can veer off message, just like Vice President-elect Joe Biden.
And that notion keeps New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel in the hunt. Watch more on the Obama transition to power »
Health care is another top priority, and a natural fit in the Cabinet would be well-respected former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.
But Democratic sources say Howard Dean, a doctor who had a strong run as the Democratic National Committee chairman, is hungry for the job.
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Speculation about Obama’s treasury secretary has centered on Lawrence Summers, though he’s faced controversy for sexist comments he made while serving as president of Harvard University.
Another name being mentioned? Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.
“Though he’s not a person who would stay four or eight years, given his age, but to get things started, [he] would be a fabulous choice,” said Alan Blinder, the former vice chairman of the Fed.
Plugged-in Democrats say there’s also serious talk of Obama briefly keeping Robert Gates, President Bush’s defense secretary, on board to show that the new president is not just looking for “yes men.”
“I think you need a mixture of loyalists, people that President Obama trusts and works with, and people from the outside who bring a different perspective, who can question his decision, question his judgment,” Lockhart said. Watch more on whether Gates will stay on »
One advantage Gates may have is that he’s not lobbying for the job. Oftentimes, insiders who lobby too hard for Cabinet posts end up not getting them.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/07/dems.position/
Vanishing jobs, stressed consumers in US feed downturn
WASHINGTON (AP): The unemployment rate has bolted to a 14-year high and Ford Motor announced plans on Friday for more layoffs, the latest in a vicious cycle of vanishing jobs and stresses on American consumers that is spelling deeper trouble for the already sinking U.S. economy.
The Labor Department said that another 240,000 jobs were cut last month, as the jobless rate zoomed to 6.5 percent in October from 6.1 percent in September. Last month’s total matches the rate in March 1994.
Meanwhile, Ford Motor Co. provided further evidence of the weakening economy, saying it plans to cut about 2,260 more jobs and that it burned through $7.7 billion in cash in the third quarter.
Unemployment has now surpassed the high seen after the last recession in 2001. The jobless rate peaked at 6.3 percent in June 2003.
October’s decline marked the 10th straight month of payroll reductions, and government revisions showed that job losses in August and September turned out to be much deeper. Employers cut 127,000 positions in August, compared with 73,000 previously reported. A whopping 284,000 jobs were axed in September, compared with the 159,000 jobs first reported.
So far this year, a staggering 1.2 million jobs have disappeared.
Ford said it lost $129 million in the third quarter and went through $7.7 billion in cash. The company said it will cut another 10 percent of its North American salaried work force costs as it tries to weather the worst economic downturn in decades.
And more ominous news was looming Friday as General Motors Corp. was expected to release a gloomy earnings report for the third quarter.
Racing to assemble his new Democratic Cabinet, President-elect Barack Obama will huddle with economic advisers later on Friday. His team has been in close contact with the Bush administration to pave the way for a smooth hand-off of power.
On the crucial jobs front, the situation is likely to move from bad to worse next year. Many expect the jobless rate to climb to 8 percent, possibly higher, next year. In the 1980-1982 recession, the unemployment rate rose as high as 10.8 percent before inching down.
Stressed consumers are cutting back on their shopping and trying to trim their debt. Economists believe consumers cut back on borrowing in September, as another report to be released Friday is expected to show.
Nearly half a million Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits in the last week alone, and skittish shoppers handed many retailers their weakest sales since 1969, government reports out Thursday showed.
The Labor Department said new filings for jobless benefits clocked in at 481,000, a dip from the previous week but a still-elevated level that suggests companies are resorting to big layoffs to cope with the economy’s downturn.
Hartford Financial Services Group Inc., Circuit City Stores Inc., drug maker GlaxoSmithKline PLC, chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc., auto parts maker Dana Holding Corp., cable operators Comcast Corp. and Cox Communications Inc. and Fidelity Investments are among the companies that recently have announced layoffs.
To provide fresh relief, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats, in a lame-duck session later this month, would push to enact another round of economic stimulus to provide more relief, which could include extending jobless benefits.
A $168 billion package, including tax rebates for people and tax breaks for businesses, was rolled out earlier this year. Short of a package of $100 billion or more, the House could press the Senate to pass a smaller $61 billion measure that would bankroll public works projects to help generate new jobs and would extend unemployment benefits.
Companies are begging for help, too. The leaders of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler and the president of the United Auto Workers union came to Capitol Hill to discuss billions of dollars more in financial help.
Reeling from layoffs and watching their wealth shrink as home values and nest eggs have been clobbered, shoppers turned extra frugal last month and sent sales at many retailers down sharply.
Michael P. Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers, summed up the situation as “awful.”
According to the ICSC-Goldman Sachs index, sales fell 1 percent, the weakest October performance since at least 1969 when the index began.
Target Corp. and Costco were among the many retailers reporting sales declines last month. Even teens stayed away from malls. American Eagle Outfitters Inc. and Abercrombie & Fitch Co. reported drops in sales. But Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer, logged a sales gain as shoppers hunted for bargains.
The Federal Reserve ratcheted down interest rates last week to 1 percent and left the door open to further reductions in a bid to prevent a drawn out recession in the United States.
The country’s economic state has rapidly deteriorated in just a few months. The economy contracted at a 0.3 percent pace in the July-September quarter, signaling the onset of a likely recession. It was the worst showing since 2001 recession, and reflected a massive pullback by consumers.
As U.S. consumers watch jobs disappear, they’ll probably retrench even further.
That’s why analysts predict the economy is still shrinking in the current October-December quarter and will contract further in the first quarter of next year. All that more than fulfills a classic definition of a recession: two straight quarters of contracting economic activity.
Rich nations should abandon ‘unsustainable’ lifestyle: Wen
Beijing (PTI): Appealing to the developed world to abandon their unsustainable and lavish lifestyle, Chinese Premier Wen Jibao on Friday said that global financial crisis should not be allowed to undermine climate change efforts. “The developed countries have a responsibility and an obligation to respond to global climate change by altering their unsustainable way of life,” the official Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying.
Addressing a high-level conference on climate change jointly hosted by China and United Nations today he made these remarks and said that his government has always “laid great importance” to climate change. Representatives of governments, international and non-governmental organisations from nearly 100 countries are taking part in the conference that focuses on technology development and transfer.
Premier Wen also urged developed nations to help developing countries to cope with the global climate change. The meet brainstormed on the international negotiation process on climate change.
The conference will cover a wide array of topics including the current status of technology transfer and best practices, mechanism for overcoming barriers to technology transfer, roles and potential collaboration of public and private sectors, among others.
The Chinese government has set a target of reducing energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 20 per cent and major pollutant emissions by 10 per cent from the 2005 levels by 2010 to protect environment, save energy and ensure a sustainable development.
Wen said at the conference that China “has confidence to fulfill this goal”.
‘Surcharged emotions’ of ‘patriotic’ students: BJP on ABVP protest
New Delhi (PTI): A day after ABVP activists protested against S A R Geelani at a seminar, the BJP on Friday termed it as an expression of “surcharged emotions” by “patriotic” students.
“The surcharged emotions of patriotic students can’t be simply ignored,” party spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy told reporters here today reacting to the incident.
A group of ABVP activists yesterday went on a rampage at Delhi University, vandalising the venue of a seminar in protest against presence of S A R Geelani, acquitted in the Parliament attack case and spat on him.
Around 50 youths damaged property and hurled abuses on Geelani at the seminar on ‘Communalism, Fascism and Democracy, Rhetoric and Reality’, disrupting the programme briefly.
“His (S A R Geelani) association with militants can’t be denied and one can simply say that he was just saved by the skin and the shroud of mistrust still prevails about him,” Rudy added.
He alleged that the coming together of pseudo-secular sympathisers and certain radical groups had emerged in the university community meeting.
The party, however, said that the protest by the student body could have been “more hygienic.”
“The Bharitiya Janata Party has taken note of the protest by ABVP activists at a Delhi University seminar and we certainly feel that the nature of protest should be more hygienic,” Rudy said.
‘Obama’s presidential acceptance speech partly written in London’
London (PTI): Barack Obama’s electrifying presidential acceptance speech in Chicago in the US, widely lauded all over the globe, was partly written by a Liberal Democrat tax lobbyist in a London flat in Notting Hill.
Obama’s speech to hundreds of thousands of supporters in Chicago on Tuesday night was one of the most widely-watched and repeated political addresses in recent history.
According to ‘The Daily Telegraph’, parts of the speech were crafted by Jacob Rigg, 27, a volunteer adviser to the Obama campaign, in his flat in Notting Hill, west London.
Rigg works for ‘The Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners’, which lobbies and advises on tax issues.
Rigg said the inspiration for the Chicago speech was the most celebrated piece of oratory in American history, Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 address at Gettysburg.
Lincoln’s speech, made two years before the end of the American Civil War, spoke of the “unfinished work” and the “great task remaining” of building a democratic republic.
In his speech, Obama had said: “The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America – I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you – we as a people will get there.”
Having worked in Washington as a lobbyist, Rigg has links with some of Obama’s Senate staff, the report said.
Working from home in his own time, Rigg was involved in writing the President-elect’s speech, contributing via phone, e-mail and video conferences.
Rigg said he had also drafted a significant speech the world will never hear, the one that Obama would have given if he had lost the election, according to the daily.
Rizwanur Rehman case: SC to hear Todi’s plea on Nov. 10
New Delhi (PTI): Industrialist Ashok Todi, who is fearing arrest in the Rizwanur Rehman case, on Friday moved the Supreme Court challenging the order of a Kolkata trial court issuing non-bailable warrant against him and other accused for their failure to appear before it.
A Bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan posted the matter for hearing on November 10 after Todi’s counsel said that his surrender would lead to his arrest and therefore the petition should be heard on an urgent basis.
Senior advocate Harish Salve, appearing for Todi, who has been chargesheeted for alleged abetment of suicide of his son-in-law Rehman, said that despite the October 13 order of the apex court there was no protection to the industrialist.
The apex court had earlier said that trial in the case would not commence till the Calcutta High Court decides a petition filed by Todi challenging CBI’s decision to chargesheet him in the case.
Todi, along with six others, was chargesheeted by the CBI on September 22 for alleged abetment of Rizwanur’s suicide. A Metropolitan Magistrate in Kolkata has asked the accused to appear before it on October 27 but they had failed to abide by the order leading to the issuance of NBW.
In the beginning of the matter, when Salve mentioned the petition, the Bench said the accused can cooperate in the proceedings related to the case.
However, Salve said the arrest warrant was coming in the way and the surrender of the accused would lead to his arrest and the previous order of the apex court would become meaningless.
Islamabad (PTI): Americans have backed an international order that focuses on engagement and dialogue for resolving global challenges by voting for President-elect Barack Obama, a Pakistani minister said on Friday.
St John’s (Antigua) (AP): Antigua’s Prime Minister wants to rename the island’s highest mountain peak “Mount Obama” in honor of the US president-elect.
New Delhi (PTI): Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit might return to power for the third consecutive term in Delhi, a pre-poll survey on Friday claimed, predicting a scrape through for the Congress in the coming Assembly polls.
New Delhi (PTI): Accusing the Orissa Government of not taking any action, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad on Friday demanded immediate arrest of those involved in the killing of Swami Laxmanananda in Kandhamal district of the state.
From technology giants like Microsoft (MSFT) to agricultural employers such as New York State’s Torrey Farms, businesses tend to have a pretty straightforward take on immigration policy: If workers from other countries want to come to the US, government should let them in. This is a controversial stance among Americans who fear losing their jobs. But companies say the economy overall will be stronger with more workers, whether they’re designing software, milking cows, or performing other tasks that Americans can’t or won’t do.
Waiting Game
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/The_high_barriers_facing_foreign_workers_in_US/articleshow/3684802.cms
NEW YORK: Most Americans say the country’s financial crisis has hurt their confidence in the Federal Reserve, according to a Reuters/University of
Michigan survey released on Friday. The poll found sentiment toward banks and other financial institutions, like insurance firms and mutual funds, has also deteriorated.
WASHINGTON: The government says the nation’s unemployment rate bolted to a 14-year high of 6.5 percent in October as employers slashed 240,000 Right approach for different stages of career
jobs. It was stark proof the economy is almost certainly in a recession.
Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt to guide him in channelising the economy, a media report says.
Further, the report stated that Obama might use this opportunity to appoint his first Treasury Secretary.
The advisory board has 17 members including former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, whose name has also been connected with the Treasury job, and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who would also be at the meeting at the Chicago Hilton today, the daily said.
ill slow further next year amid weaker demand for their exports.
people with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Thursday.
In the middle of October, 11 US equity research analysts were laid off.
ministers, Jean-Claude Juncker, said on Friday.
GM warns of cash crisis next year
7 Nov 2008, 2225 hrs IST, AGENCIES
NEW YORK: US car maker General Motors warned on Friday that it would run out of cash in the first half of next year unless economic and market conditions “significantly improve.”
Genocide in India:
A Planned Program
It all began in Godhra – or so the right-wing saffron combine (Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP)and Bajrang Dal) and its government in Gujarat maintain.
On February 27, the coach of a train carrying ‘kar sevaks’ (religious workers) was set on fire by a mob, killing 58 of them. Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, calling this a “terrorist attack”, dubbed the carnage that ensued from the next day as a justified “reaction”. It left more than 700 killed, with the numbers still mounting, and tens of thousands homeless.
However, investigation reveals that what happened did not have its genesis in Godhra — it lay in the long-term plan to cleanse Gujarat state of its 8.73 per cent Muslim population. As part of its game plan, the VHP had even issued pamphlets calling for the economic boycott of Muslims. And no one was spared – not even judges, police officers, Members of Parliament, pregnant women, infants, children, young men, greying older men and women, teenaged girls, mothers.
These events are memorable for the intensity of the violence, the brutality and meticulous manner of destruction. Muslims were attacked in cities and villages across the state, their property burnt or looted and their houses and business establishments reduced to ashes. Entire Muslim localities have been reduced to rubble, mosques all over the state have been burnt, Korans reduced to ashes and temples have started sprouting in impromptu places where there were shops or mosques.
All this while law enforcing agencies watched and took part actively along with politicians, peoples’ representatives and professionals from all walks of life in utterly destroying the foundation of civil society.
Everywhere in capital Ahmedabad and in smaller towns and villages, refugees of this carnage now live in camps, schools or people’s houses. The numbers could be about 35,000 or more in Ahmedabad alone. In rural areas like Sardarpura in Mehsana district, the victims have shifted to other villages which are more friendly. Though they have been given clothes, food and shelter, toilet facilities are non-existent and bathing a forgotten luxury.
Only a small Citizen’s Initiative (a loose grouping of concerned individuals and non-government organisations) is distributing relief supplies. This Initiative has also started building toilets apart from providing desperately needed psychiatric counselling services. But there is a lot more that needs to be done. The task is not easy; at least in Mumbai, during the post-Babri Masjid demolition riots in 1992-93, there was a massive outpouring of relief from all sections of society, which is absent in Gujarat. The contrast is more marked as there was such an outpouring of relief after last year’s earthquake in the state.
For the survivors of the genocide at Naroda near Ahmedabad, justice and sanity are now alien. “Why don’t you export Muslims to another country?” asked Iqbal Malik, an auto rickshaw driver from Naroda, where the carnage claimed over 20 lives.
Shah Alam mosque, a historic symbol of religious unity, is now a refuge for over 6,000 people. Community leaders are providing food, and even clothes and people live under large tents. “Only Allah is our protector. We have no one else now,” said greying Zubeidabibi Ahmed Mia, who escaped with her life.
Tales of horror abound. Said Salimbhai from Naroda, “We saw young women being raped and killed, pregnant women speared to death with their unborn children. People came with petrol cans, they exploded cooking gas cylinders in our houses. The police watched and when we pleaded for help, they told us to run away or we would be shot.”
Rehmanbhai Shakhubhai, admitted in the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital said he lost three children in the attack and only his daughter, who was to get married on March 18, survived. “The Bajrang Dal came shouting ‘Jai Sri Ram’. They burnt everything. Only my wife and daughter are alive,” he said. Afsana, his daughter, sits on the bed, her head shaved, her hands burnt and her torso covered in bandages. “They set fire to my brothers after dousing them with petrol. I tried to save them but the mob surrounded me and I had to run away. Who will marry me now,” she asked?
“I saw Jaideep Patel with a revolver, inciting crowds,” said Mansuri Yusuf, an employee of the Ahmedabad Municipal Transport Services. “He said ‘finish all the Muslims’. There were two Ahmedabad municipal corporators with him and a local criminal.” Dr Patel, the Gujarat state VHP President has since denied this allegation.
“Even 10 days after the carnage, there was no help from the government. It is the Muslim community which has given us clothes food and shelter,” said Yusuf.
Similarly, at the municipal school at Dariyakhan Gummat, survivors of another carnage say that only the Muslim community is helping the 5,000 people in the camp.
In Mora village, all 106 homes belonging to members of the Bohra community have been destroyed. “A mob looted my father’s cycle shop and burnt my husband’s tailoring shop. I managed to break the window of my house and run out. My family of 14 stayed in a small bathroom for three days. We had no food or water. I used to hit my children and tell them to stay quiet. I refuse to go back there — we will be killed. What will we do now?” wept Farida Abbasi Boliwalla, whose family has incurred a loss of Rs 900,000 (1US$=Rs 48).
Another woman, preferring anonymity said that in the Godhra GIDC area, all factories of Muslims were burnt and looted in the presence of the police. There are several Bohra settlements in all parts of Panchmahals district where Godhra is located and the entire losses could amount to Rs 200 million, she said.
“The VHP also threatened the convoys which were escorting Muslims and tried to attack them. They threw stones and chased the trucks. They tried to burn my grandchildren but we managed to rescue them. They kept saying “Yahan se Muslim hatao” (Drive out all Muslims),” said 35-year-old Miriam Yakub Sayed.
The long-term plan to decimate the Muslim population is now becoming clear. A resident of Dekwa village of Halol taluka, a store owner, said three months ago meetings were held near Pawagadh, under the guise of social upliftment by the VHP and the Bajrang Dal. “Even at mohallas (street corners), secret meetings were held to tell people that the Muslims were their enemies,” he said.
The Bajrang Dal has been paying people and giving them trishuls (tridents) to kill Muslims, adds the resident. “They tell Muslims that they will pay them Rs 5,000 not to offer namaz (prayers). Voters’ lists have been used to identify and kill our people,” he added.
Thirty km from Godhra, Sofia (name changed) had gone to celebrate Bakri Id at her mother’s house in Randhikpur village. Their homes were burnt and a large group fled the village. They travelled from village to village and on the way to Panivela, the group, which had eight women including Sofia, were assaulted by upper caste people from her village who then gang raped her and other girls and left them on the road. She could name the perpetrators – they include a doctor, a lawyer and a local sarpanch (elected village head). She sat on the road for a day and a night before the police found her.
“When I recovered I was the only one alive, there was no one else. My mother was killed as well,” she said. The 22-year-old can barely articulate her experience and she is in desperate need of counselling and help to recover from her trauma.
Sundarpur village in Mehsana district, has 700 homes of Muslims in a population of 3,500. The mob came on the evening of February 28 and started burning houses. “By the time the police came, everything was burnt. Their plan was very clear,” said residents.
While the death toll is still mounting, there are three major questions which need to be addressed from a long-term point of view — security, sanity and justice.
Most people don’t want to return to their homes – who will guarantee their safety? There is a terrible sense of loss, that no justice will ever be done and the perpetrators of these events will go scot-free.
Moreover, the rural areas are being totally neglected and there are no interventions. People don’t have any money and are dependent on relief only from the Muslim community. Understandably, there is a tremendous sense of isolation.
Women, especially those who have seen the violence and have been sexually assaulted, are bereft of any specialised interventions. Some women have lost their entire families. Older women and men too have been assaulted and in some cases, have no one left. Many children have been attacked and their future seems forever tainted by these incidents. This is a major area where some intervention is necessary. Reaching out to the people is important as also providing some cash allowance.
The government’s lack of interest and justification of this violence is compounding the situation. The important thing now is to reach out and let those affected know that all of us care deeply about what has happened and help them to fight for justice as well.
– It all began in Godhra – or so the right-wing saffron combine (Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP)and Bajrang Dal) and its government in Gujarat maintain.
On February 27, the coach of a train carrying ‘kar sevaks’ (religious workers) was set on fire by a mob, killing 58 of them. Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, calling this a “terrorist attack”, dubbed the carnage that ensued from the next day as a justified “reaction”. It left more than 700 killed, with the numbers still mounting, and tens of thousands homeless.
However, investigation reveals that what happened did not have its genesis in Godhra — it lay in the long-term plan to cleanse Gujarat state of its 8.73 per cent Muslim population. As part of its game plan, the VHP had even issued pamphlets calling for the economic boycott of Muslims. And no one was spared – not even judges, police officers, Members of Parliament, pregnant women, infants, children, young men, greying older men and women, teenaged girls, mothers.
These events are memorable for the intensity of the violence, the brutality and meticulous manner of destruction. Muslims were attacked in cities and villages across the state, their property burnt or looted and their houses and business establishments reduced to ashes. Entire Muslim localities have been reduced to rubble, mosques all over the state have been burnt, Korans reduced to ashes and temples have started sprouting in impromptu places where there were shops or mosques.
All this while law enforcing agencies watched and took part actively along with politicians, peoples’ representatives and professionals from all walks of life in utterly destroying the foundation of civil society.
Everywhere in capital Ahmedabad and in smaller towns and villages, refugees of this carnage now live in camps, schools or people’s houses. The numbers could be about 35,000 or more in Ahmedabad alone. In rural areas like Sardarpura in Mehsana district, the victims have shifted to other villages which are more friendly. Though they have been given clothes, food and shelter, toilet facilities are non-existent and bathing a forgotten luxury.
Only a small Citizen’s Initiative (a loose grouping of concerned individuals and non-government organisations) is distributing relief supplies. This Initiative has also started building toilets apart from providing desperately needed psychiatric counselling services. But there is a lot more that needs to be done. The task is not easy; at least in Mumbai, during the post-Babri Masjid demolition riots in 1992-93, there was a massive outpouring of relief from all sections of society, which is absent in Gujarat. The contrast is more marked as there was such an outpouring of
relief after last year’s earthquake in the state.
For the survivors of the genocide at Naroda near Ahmedabad, justice and sanity are now alien. “Why don’t you export Muslims to another country?” asked Iqbal Malik, an auto rickshaw driver from Naroda, where the carnage claimed over 20 lives.
Shah Alam mosque, a historic symbol of religious unity, is now a refuge for over 6,000 people. Community leaders are providing food, and even clothes and people live under large tents. “Only Allah is our protector. We have no one else now,” said greying Zubeidabibi Ahmed Mia, who escaped with her life.
Tales of horror abound. Said Salimbhai from Naroda, “We saw young women being raped and killed, pregnant women speared to death with their unborn children. People came with petrol cans, they exploded cooking gas cylinders in our houses. The police watched and when we pleaded for help, they told us to run away or we would be shot.”
Rehmanbhai Shakhubhai, admitted in the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital said he lost three children in the attack and only his daughter, who was to get married on March 18, survived. “The Bajrang Dal came shouting ‘Jai Sri Ram’. They burnt everything. Only my wife and daughter are alive,” he said. Afsana, his daughter, sits on the bed, her head shaved, her hands burnt and her torso covered in bandages. “They set fire to my brothers after dousing them with petrol. I tried to save them but the mob surrounded me and I had to run away. Who will marry me now,” she asked?
“I saw Jaideep Patel with a revolver, inciting crowds,” said Mansuri Yusuf, an employee of the Ahmedabad Municipal Transport Services. “He said ‘finish all the Muslims’. There were two Ahmedabad municipal corporators with him and a local criminal.” Dr Patel, the Gujarat state VHP President has since denied this allegation.
“Even 10 days after the carnage, there was no help from the government. It is the Muslim community which has given us clothes food and shelter,” said Yusuf.
Similarly, at the municipal school at Dariyakhan Gummat, survivors of another carnage say that only the Muslim community is helping the 5,000 people in the camp.
In Mora village, all 106 homes belonging to members of the Bohra community have been destroyed. “A mob looted my father’s cycle shop and burnt my husband’s tailoring shop. I managed to break the window of my house and run out. My family of 14 stayed in a small bathroom for three days. We had no food or water. I used to hit my children and tell them to stay quiet. I refuse to go back there — we will be killed. What will we do now?” wept Farida Abbasi Boliwalla, whose family has incurred a loss of Rs 900,000 (1US$=Rs 48).
Another woman, preferring anonymity said that in the Godhra GIDC area, all factories of Muslims were burnt and looted in the presence of the police. There are several Bohra settlements in all parts of Panchmahals district where Godhra is located and the entire losses could amount to Rs 200 million, she said.
“The VHP also threatened the convoys which were escorting Muslims and tried to attack them. They threw stones and chased the trucks. They tried to burn my grandchildren but we managed to rescue them. They kept saying “Yahan se Muslim hatao” (Drive out all Muslims),” said 35-year-old Miriam Yakub Sayed.
The long-term plan to decimate the Muslim population is now becoming clear. A resident of Dekwa village of Halol taluka, a store owner, said three months ago meetings were held near Pawagadh, under the guise of social upliftment by the VHP and the Bajrang Dal. “Even at mohallas (street corners), secret meetings were held to tell people that the Muslims were their enemies,” he said.
The Bajrang Dal has been paying people and giving them trishuls (tridents) to kill Muslims, adds the resident. “They tell Muslims that they will pay them Rs 5,000 not to offer namaz (prayers). Voters’ lists have been used to identify and kill our people,” he added.
Thirty km from Godhra, Sofia (name changed) had gone to celebrate Bakri Id at her mother’s house in Randhikpur village. Their homes were burnt and a large group fled the village. They travelled from village to village and on the way to Panivela, the group, which had eight women including Sofia, were assaulted by upper caste people from her village who then gang raped her and other girls and left them on the road. She could name the perpetrators – they include a doctor, a lawyer and a local sarpanch (elected village head). She sat on the road for a day and a night before the police found her.
“When I recovered I was the only one alive, there was no one else. My mother was killed as well,” she said. The 22-year-old can barely articulate her experience and she is in desperate need of counselling and help to recover from her trauma.
Sundarpur village in Mehsana district, has 700 homes of Muslims in a population of 3,500. The mob came on the evening of February 28 and started burning houses. “By the time the police came, everything was burnt. Their plan was very clear,” said residents.
While the death toll is still mounting, there are three major questions which need to be addressed from a long-term point of view — security, sanity and justice.
Most people don’t want to return to their homes – who will guarantee their safety? There is a terrible sense of loss, that no justice will ever be done and the perpetrators of these events will go scot-free.
Moreover, the rural areas are being totally neglected and there are no interventions. People don’t have any money and are dependent on relief only from the Muslim community. Understandably, there is a tremendous sense of isolation.
Women, especially those who have seen the violence and have been sexually assaulted, are bereft of any specialised interventions. Some women have lost their entire families. Older women and men too have been assaulted and in some cases, have no one left. Many children have been attacked and their future seems forever tainted by these incidents. This is a major area where some intervention is necessary. Reaching out to the people is important as also providing some cash allowance.
The government’s lack of interest and justification of this violence is compounding the situation. The important thing now is to reach out and let those affected know that all of us care deeply about what has happened and help them to fight for justice as well.
– Meena Menon
March 21, 2002
Top
By arrangement with Womens Feature Service
http://www.boloji.com/wfs/wfs009.htm
Incidents of Genocide in IndiaKrishna Kumari Areti, ICFAI
Abstract
The author jots down the incidents of Genocide in India from the date of independence till date. India witnessed the first genocide at the time of partition immediately after the independence. The two-nation theory led to the division of the country and the Hindus in India and Muslims in Bengal migrated to their destined homelands. In this process several lives were lost on both sides and women were kidnapped and raped and at times murdered. In this article the mass murders and rapes of thousands of women at the time of partition was elaborately discussed. The then Hyderabad State underwent trauma in the hands of the Razakar who had invaded the villages of Telangana and created havoc. Ultimately the problem was solved with the intervention of the then Home Minister. But, Kashmir remained as an unending and unresolved problem between both the nations. The author suggests for a strong domestic law to safeguard the unity in diversity of India
http://works.bepress.com/krishnaareti/1/
Palash Biswas
Filed under: Uncategorized
Interesting Read! Very detailed blog,thanks for sharing
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