Gladly Beyond Any Distance

I have always viewed Colin Powell with discomfort and mistrust for his role in the Bush administration’s war on Iraq. Yet this weekend, as he endorsed Obama, he redeemed himself to a great extent in my eyes; less for his endorsement - because I’m not sure how much that matters in terms of actual votes, though it is a significant nail in the Republican intellectual coffin - but much more for this statement:

I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.”

Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim; he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian.

But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America.

Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?

Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, “He’s a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.” This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards — Purple Heart, Bronze Star — showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old.

And then, at the very top of the headstone, it didn’t have a Christian cross; it didn’t have the Star of David; it had crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, and he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he can go serve his country, and he gave his life.

Over this troubling US Presidential process, one of the most troubling moments for me was when a supporter of McCain’s said to him at a rally that Obama was Arab, and his response was “No ma’am… he’s a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.” Add to that the sleight of a campaign that conflates racism with Islamophobia and uses Hussein, Obama’s middle name, as shorthand for suspecting all his credentials.

Almost as problematic as the Republican campaign on this, has been the Democrats’ response, or lack thereof. Less appalling in degree from McCain’s instinctual ‘No, Ma’am, he’s a decent family man’ in his rebuttal to the Arab comment, it corrects the premise that Obama is Muslim, because his professed faith is Christian, but it never goes beyond to address this question: why should it matter if he was Arab and/or Muslim? Can’t Arabs be decent family men, and American Muslims aspire to be Presidents of the US? As Naomi Klein says:

What is disturbing about the campaign’s response is that it leaves unchallenged the disgraceful and racist premise behind the entire “Muslim smear”: that being Muslim is de facto a source of shame.

Ditto being Arab. Obviously, it will take many geography and history lessons from Joe Biden to clarify that ‘Arab’ and ‘Muslim’ are not necessarily the same identities.

So for an Indian sitting in America, struggling with anger over remarks of this kind, as well as struggling with anger and despair over what’s going on back home - the persecution of Christians in Orissa and Karnataka, the continued persecution of Muslims, a growing fundamentalism across communities and caste and class violence in general - I have to say Colin Powell’s comment gives some cheer in uncheerful times. It also reminds me that with all my despair over violence in India, at the time I left last year, it had a Sikh Prime Minister, a Muslim President, and a Catholic and a Hindu as leaders of the two biggest political parties, besides an atheist as the Speaker of the House. We are not perfect in any way (very far from it), but there is a history of syncretism in the sub-continent that has been, and should continue to be, a strength we draw upon and expand, rather than abuse. Syncretic, plural cultures that have had some inspiration from the Arab world so vilified in certain American conversations today.

Like comfort food, I often return to simpler - and sometimes, more profound - truths of childhood. One particular poem I remember clearly encountering as a ten year old, was Leigh Hunt’s encomium to the sufi saint Ibrahim Bin Adham, or Abou Ben Adhem, in which ‘exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold’. Let’s hope that same exceeding peace prevails amongst others in the US like Colin Powell, who have the courage, if somewhat belatedly, to seek justice beyond popularity.

So Black Mamba tagged me the other day:

Post 5 links to 5 of your previously written posts. The posts have to relate to the 5 key words given (family, friend, yourself, your love, anything you like). Tag 5 other friends to do this meme. Try to tag at least 2 new acquaintances (if not, your current blog buddies will do) so that you get to know them each a little bit better.

I was determined to do this, not only because I like Black Mamba (and I do), but because I had to prove Tabula Rasa wrong; he said BM wouldn’t get a cheep out of me (this childish tit-a-tat has, in fact, gone on since we were about ten. I love it.).

Result: near failure. Not because of my lack of output - though it certainly could be a lot more consistent than it is now - but because I rarely seem to write about anything other than politics and the big bad world outside. Of course, there’s a lot of me in there - the personal is political and vice-versa - but not in ways that are necessarily familiar or familial. sigh. Looking back, I think it was because I was determined, when I started out, not to make this a blog of the kind that led the blog-o-boom: the vicarious exploration of other people’s private lives and lesions. Frankly, I found that sort of blogging both terrifying and self-indulgent. I also felt I had nothing to offer of value online, that could remotely interest a set of unknown readers. Ashwin persuaded me otherwise; a lot of his argument had to do with the description of the blogging community he comes from: the techies. Clearly there was a space for blogging about one’s interests, one’s passions, rather than about oneself.

I realise now that I have - somewhere along the way - gone to the other extreme of the pendulum and am dangling hopelessly from an oblique position of self-denial. I find that many of the blogsters I read, write about themselves and theirs with humour and insight. I kid you not: I *like* reading them! If I don’t see these blogs as self-indulgent, is there possibly space for me to sneak back in a bit of me and mine into this blog? Black Mamba, you didn’t think you’d lead to an orgy of reflexivity now, did ya??

With this long preamble, here’s my meagre offering for the tag.

Family: A bit of a stretch, but to my extended family in Raichur. Also a cheeky aside to my pun-tashtic family (not really a post at all, but wothehell, I love xkcd).

Friend: about a friend in Gujarat, and her struggles with fundamentalisms.

Yourself: a post about ‘being an action hero‘. Also my previous stab at being tagged.

Your love: music and poetry. Unsurprisingly, a post about Gangubai Hangal that conveys both my awe-struck admiration and her comments on caste. And a tribute to Kaifi Azmi.

Anything you like: a whimsical post on Durga Puja and JK Rowling. And a diatribe against the news in India today.

…and I tag those I haven’t tagged before: Anindita (in the spirit of disclosure and familial-ity, my gorgeous sis-in-law who normally tags _me_), Mangs, Lalit and (relatively new) blog buddies: Pranav and Suzanna (whose blog I promised some time ago I would explore, and this is a great way to begin!).

The only downside to having lots of friends across the globe is that you worry about them when things fall apart. In Gujarat, for instance, or Pakistan. Or Kenya. A few of us have been trying to contact friends there over the past few days, but it’s been tough. I’ve been reading Global Voices and Ethan Zuckerman’s blog, and watching Al Jazeera’s coverage on YouTube.

For those of you who came in late, violence has broken out across Kenya over the disputed election victory of President Mwai Kibaki, though ethnic tensions are believed to underlie much of the violence. As The Economist puts it:

THE decision to return Kenya’s 76-year-old incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, to office was not made by the Kenyan people but by a small group of hardline leaders from Mr Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe. They made up their minds before the result was announced, perhaps even before the opposition candidate, Raila Odinga, had opened up a lead in early returns from the December 27th election. It was a civil coup.

According to the BBC, over 180,000 people have been displaced and more than 300 killed.

This is today’s news update from the Kenyan blogger M., writing at Thinker’s Room:

• Official death toll is now 300. Unofficial death toll is much larger
• Yesterday there were skirmishes in Bahati, Maringo, Kangemi, Arwings Kodhek, Industrial Area and Thika Road
• A man was killed on Thika Road when police fired in the air, severing an electrical cable that fell on him
• ODM rally was moved to Saturday
• At long last Mwai Kibaki addressed the nation in a lackluster speech long on hot air, ambiguity, vagueness and lethargy and short of concrete solutions
• Archbishop Desmond Tutu arrived and met with the ODM leadership. The grapevine has it that Kibaki initially refused to meet with him. Subsequently it turned out that a meeting was indeed scheduled for this day.
• Again proving that no matter how low the bar is, stupidity will always find a way to slither under, Government Spokesman Alfred Mutua, rose eyed lens firmly on, castigates the international community for interfering.
• Flies on the wall allege that Kibaki himself is pretty amenable to negotiation. But as is the hallmark of his regime other elements in his administration are taking hardline positions.
• Same flies say that Kibaki is willing to form a coalition government with the opposition. This I have to see to believe.
• Nairobi water company allays fears that the city water supply is poisoned.

Blog aggregators for Kenya can be found at Kenya Unlimited and Mashada. Reading bloggers’ accounts on them seemed horrifically akin to reading stories of communal violence in India; substitute ethnicities for religion and caste identities, and there you have it. Stupid, unnecessary, maiming horror. As they say in Swahili (or at least I hope this is correct), we need wakati wa amani; a time of peace.

***

Update: in an extraordinary combination of technology and activism, Kenyan bloggers have created an amazing website to track the violence in Kenya, at Ushahidi (in fact, I want to check with them if we can develop something similar for India, and elsewhere). Add serendipity to that: Ashwin saw this, and suggested to his friend, Nick Rabinowitz, that this was the perfect place for the timeline tool he’d created. Sure enough, a few emails later, here it is, an extremely useful addition to the Ushahidi site: the timeline of events. Yay for all those who put this together, and a special yay for Nick!
Image from the Thinker’s Room.

So it’s been over a month and a half of silence. Online. A whole lot of words and work and wrath offline. Beyond the holidays and the happy happy, there were the days of listening to stories of women raging, of women exhausted of raging, the nights of waking up thinking about them. Of P who spoke to me only two days ago, from a tiny village a few hours from Bangalore, at the end of her taut and stretched tether, because her husband and his family, not content with abusing her for a mere 2 lakh rupees in dowry, had pushed her into sex work. She is now safe at home with her parents, and a case has been registered against her husband and his family. Of M, who had to suffer being married at 14, beaten and bruised by her husband for the next 14 years, and then finally had the courage to walk out of the marriage, taking her children with her. M is also a poet and a police woman. Hers is a story worth writing about, but not today.

Today’s post is for N. For being the right kind of strong. P, M and N - and all the other women whose stories I hear on an almost daily basis - made me ashamed of my awkwardness around writing about what I know and do most: working with the police (and women’s and children’s organisations) trying to make the system as responsive to violence against women and children as possible. In an earlier post, I spoke about this strange awkwardness, but enough is ’nuff. Diffidence is sometimes stupid, and sometimes it can be downright dangerous. ‘Changing the system’ is as much about changes within, as it is about making us - those without - responsive to, and informed by, these changes.

N’s story is not unusual: she worked in a multi-national corporate, well-known in its sphere. She became progressively more unhappy at work, considering that the General Manager (GM) - and therefore, but naturally, many of the staff - seemed to think that work satisfaction equated with an environment of ‘humour’, of sexual or racist jokes, not even generally directed, but specifically targeted against colleagues. Finally, when the jokes were directed against her, with the GM repeatedly offending and upsetting her, she had enough; she didn’t want to return to the office, she didn’t want to see her GM’s face ever again, she went home in a tumult of rage and disbelief at what was happening to her. What she did next is unusual: she protested.

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The horrific massacre of a Dalit family two months ago at Kherlanji. The excruciating social boycott of Dalits in Kadakol for the past four months because they ‘dared’ to take water directly from the village tank (rather than have two intermediate caste representatives pouring water for them, as they have done for centuries). Neither story made the front pages of our national newspapers.

In the midst of it all, Karnataka celebrated its Suvarna Karnataka Rajyothsava (as I’ve said elsewhere, the State’s golden jubilee celebrations), and over this weekend, I finally managed to read The Hindu’s special issue for the occasion. In it, the first article was by Gangubai Hangal, one of the most extraordinary musicians I have ever had the privilege to hear. In a concert we organised in college, over ten years ago, I remember her voice exploding within and without me, making my fanciful imagination feel that it was capable of bringing the house down, in many more ways than one. What power, I had thought then. What unbridled, untrammeled, ecstatic power.

And yet, the story she told in ‘The Golden Song’ (Gangubai Hangal, The Hindu’s Suvarna Karnataka special issue, Pp 4-8, November 1, 2006) moved me beyond the music. Two stories. One of her mother’s, and the other, of her own.

I was born in pre-Independent India, a period when caste discrimination was rampant. Shukravarapete in Dharwad was a locality full of Brahmins. Even now it’s an area dominated by them. My mother, Ambabai, a devout woman, was conscious of this caste factor, and lived a low profile, quiet life. I still remember how one afternoon an old Brahmin mendicant came to our house asking for water. My mother was in a dilemma. She explained the predicament to him and he remarked, “Does water have a caste? Please give me water to drink…” and my mother duly gave him water and a piece of jaggery. He blessed my mother and left. But my mother reeled under the shock of having given water to an upper caste man and was gripped by fears of social ostracisation for many days to come.

The incident reminds me of another from my own life. I was a young girl and faced a similar predicament right under the nose of the iconic figure who strived to abolish untouchability from this country. It was the Belgaum Congress of 1924 and the Mahatma was to grace the occasion. I was thrilled that I was going to sing before Gandhiji, but also scared stiff that I would be asked to clear all the plantain leaves after lunch, as I belonged to one of the lower castes. I sang. Gandhiji came up to me and blessed me. Pandit Sawai Gandharva was impressed too. On the one hand I was overjoyed by their appreciation, but on the other, I was paralysed by the worst fears. I quietly walked up to my teacher and asked him if I had to sit separately for lunch and clear the leaves. He held me close, and said: “Nothing of the kind, don’t worry…”

They were difficult times. But I’m grateful to music in more than one way. It gave me a unique identity and pushed all other identities to the background.

I wonder what Amartya Sen might say about that; perhaps he needs ‘Identity and Violence - Part 2. What I surprisingly missed out in Part 1‘. There’s much to be grateful for, in that Gangubai Hangal could survive the inherent pain of her genealogy through the genius of her music, but others of more mundane identities and lives continue to struggle with the violence implicitly - and very much explicitly - still alive in the caste system. Caste… untouched?

I’m too sickened by all that’s going on around and about me to write much today. I’m just going to point towards the various online petitions I’m signing and the on-ground protests I’m sympathising with - and hope that somehow, somewhere, something changes for the better… Tomorrow better be another day. Or as Yoda might say: Another day tomorrow better be.

About the siege in Lebanon, a description from within, and anti-siege protests from within Israel (the latter much tougher to find online than the former). And two petitions against it: Justice for Lebanon and Save Lebanese Civilians.

About the Right to Information Act of India and the government’s proposed amendment: to remove file notings from much of the decision-making conveyed to citizens (so what does that leave of the ‘information’ given to us by ‘public servants’ and ‘polity-cians’, hmm?). A petition against the amendment.

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If you’re lucky, you’ve been able to blog about it. If not, you’ve been fuming in offline silence over the Indian government/ISPs’ inept blocking of blogsites over the past couple of days. But in the midst of all this cyberspace critique, a news item in early June seems to have passed under the radar of many bloggers. Or was there a blackout there too? And this time, by the mainstream media?

On June 5th 2006, The Hindu carried a story on the first ever statistical analysis of its kind: a survey of the social profile of more than 300 senior journalists in 37 Hindi and English newspapers and television channels in Delhi. As Newswatch India commented, if sex, religion and caste are to be taken together, more than two-thirds of the top media professionals in the India come from less than 10 per cent of its population. Shocker (or is it really?): there is not a single Dalit or Adivasi amongst these top 315 media decision-makers. Hindu upper caste men hold 71% of these jobs, and Muslims, only 3%. Interestingly, a gender analysis gives the most positive spin, but there too, mainly in the English electronic media: women account for 32 per cent of the top jobs. In the English print media, women form 6 per cent of top editorial positions and 14 per cent and 11 per cent in the Hindi print and electronic media. But there is no woman amongst the few OBC (Other Backward Classes) decision-makers: groups that suffer ‘double disadvantage’ are almost entirely absent from those surveyed.

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