THE RIGHT WING IS INHERENTLY ANTI-NATIONAL BECAUSE OF ITS CLASS CHARACTER

The understanding of internationalism is must in every debate on Nationalism. 

The Left has never hidden the element of internationalism in its definition of nationalism. It has openly been a part of international communist movement and international civil rights movement. And the Right-Wing has often used this honest admission as stick to beat the left with. 

However, the Right Wing has been absolutely dishonest about its deep rooted international moorings. 

The left's problem is that it has shied away from exposing the international linkages of the Right-Wing groups. The left must expose the comprador character of the Right-Wing elite. It must show how the right wing elite is a part of the global capitalist class and how it is engaged in pauperizing its nation to appease its Western master. 

The BJP govt is against NGOs that come from abroad and work in India but they have ignored the fact that their NRI friends of RSS in America are not Indian citizens. They have their careers to protect and their loyalty is with the nation that they are citizens of.

And knowing the reach of CIA one is sure that many of the American Friends of RSS must we working for Uncle Sam to perform acts ranging from communal riots to influencing elections in India with their money. This is not new in 1968 questions were raised in parliament about use of PL80 funds by CIA operatives to interfere in Indian elections.   

The Right-Wing because of its its very class-allegiances is inherently anti-national and this must reach to the people.

The Left's also needs to be cautious in its assessment of forces that shape the international discourse. Many a times these forces, largely residing in the West, are the hand-maiden of imperialist forces. Therefore, these forces representing "international good"  need to be thoroughly scrutinized.

THE STORY OF OPPRESSION IN A DALIT NAME

Some 20 years ago, I came face-to-face with this Dalit reality while serving on board an Indian naval destroyer. As officer of the day (OOD) I embarked on my 'rounds' of the ship at 9 PM sharp. The quartermaster at the gangway piped and announced the commencement of rounds on the ship's PA system. This was to alert all the 'off-working hour' duty personnel to be on their post to report cleanship and safety of their part of the ship.

Besides, inspecting the mess decks and galleys the OOD also inspects the bathrooms and toilets during the rounds. The job of cleaning the toilets is done by a special branch in the Navy known as "Topass''. To accord a modicum of dignity to sailors of the Topass branch, the navy calls them “sanitary hygienists”. The education eligibility or entry into this branch is VI standard.

During my rounds a young duty-Topass was standing outside the sailor's toilets to report. He saluted me, I reciprocated. But my eyes shifted to his faded name tally, which hardly revealed his name.

I asked him his name.

He replied, NAHAK.

I said, NAYAK form Orissa.

He said, no sir, my name is NAHAK and I am from Orissa.

I reconfirmed.

The moment he repeated Nahak, I remembered these lines from a poem by Faiz, "Sheeshe ka Messiah",

"Tum Nahak Tudke chun chun kar daaman mein Chipaee bethe hou..."

I told myself but NAHAK means USELESS. How could a person be named USELESS?

I finished the rounds, went back to the wardroom, lit a cigarette and thought to myself... in that one particular name there is so much history. It shouts out the story of centuries of Dalit oppression and exploitation in India.

Nahak’s name is his pain and his reality. It is much more than the pain Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) felt in Dewaar when he understands the meaning of the words, “Mera Baap chor hai”, inscribed on his arm by the oppressing classes to remind him of his status and position in the  society.  

 

DEATH OF HANUMANTHAPPA IS TRAGEDY AND THE OTHER NINE ARE MERE STATISTICS

Arnab Goswami is not a journalist. He is a part of a dangerous propaganda machinery that creates binaries, "double binds" to induce schizophrenia in society.

On the JNU issue he created the Hanumanthappa-Afzal Guru binary, where the channel asked “If Afzal guru is a martyr then who is Hanumanthappa”.

On 3 February 10 Indian Army Soldiers at a post (20,000 feet high) on the Siachen glacier were reported missing after an avalanche buried their post. The army launched rescue operations but for some reason the Northern Army Command declared all ten to be dead after 24 hrs of search. And on the same day, 4 February 2016, Prime Minister Modi offered his condolences through a tweet. All this while the army’s operation to dig out the bodies of the dead soldiers was on.  

Five days later on 9 February 2016, the media reported that one soldier, Lance Naik Hanumanthappa was found to be miraculously alive after being buried under 25 feet of snow for six days. The news of his rescue and survival went viral. Some sections of the media credited his regular practice of Yoga as the reasons for his survival. The nation was urged to pray for Hanumanthappa’s health. He was brought to Army’s Research and Referral hospital at Delhi.

On 9 February 2016 (same date on which anti-India slogans are raised in JNU), the Prime Minister visited Hanumanthappa in the Army hospital in Delhi. There are videos that show the PM standing next to the dying patient in the intensive care unit. Inside the ICU, PM was without a mask and is chatting with doctors and the Army chief.

Hanumanthappa suddenly becomes the symbol of extreme sacrifice and grit. Arnab Goswami and others anchors yell at JNU students calling them anti-national for raising pro-Pakistan slogans, especially when Hanumanthappa was fighting for his life.

On 11 February Hanumanthappa is declared dead. Incidentally, on the same day there is another protest rally in JNU where JNSU President Kanahiya Kumar raises slogans for freedom from capitalism, poverty, casteism and exploitation. This video is then doctored; the slogan of ‘azadi-azadi’ from his earlier speech is juxtaposed against the backdrop of anti-national slogans.

Hanumanthappa’s funeral is televised live. Nobody bothers about the names of the other 09 soldiers killed by the avalanche. No TV channel tracks their grieving families. These 09 unknown soldiers simply fade away (as have others since independence) because the propaganda machinery had no use of them. Death of Hanumanthappa is converted into a tragedy while the other nine are mere statistics.  

The selective use and appropriation of Lance Naik Hanumanthappa and complete obliteration of the other 09 Soldiers from public memory only goes to show how one body-bag was used for political propaganda aimed at polarizing society. 

"REASON IS TREASON" IN RSS RAJ

India has a RSS problem. Its stand against the cult of violence is ambiguous. This Janus-faced, cultural-politico outfit is the wounded-remnant of the British divide-and-rule policy that juxtaposed nationalism with religion. Its primary interest is to preserve the wealth of the few upper caste Indians.  In order to sustain the inequalities in society and preserve class and caste privileges of the rich it uses the religious card. It is for this reason that RSS hates Dalits who challenge caste hierarchies. Its agenda is to convince Hindus to believe - cow is bigger than country - India is Hindutva and Hindutva is India. 

Emboldened by BJP’s massive victory in 2014 Lok Sabha polls, RSS launched a ‘cultural war’ in the country. The Sangh parivaar ideologues have used the term ‘war’ to describe the current atmosphere of intolerance in the country for two reasons. One, war conjures up feelings of patriotism and makes it simpler to insist, “once at war, reason is treason.”  Secondly, makes it simpler to dub doubters and dissenters as enemies and thus violence against them is justified. The idea is to instil fear in the minds of ordinary citizens, make them feel obliged to Hindu Gods for their existence in India. 

A systematic propaganda machinery operates 24X7 to vilify the ‘lifestyles’ of Sangh’s main enemies - minorities and Liberals. Labelled unpatriotic, public opinion is turned against them with tales of their irreverence to the cow or for their identity that embraces humanism and dignity for each life. The vicious vilification campaign against the voice of reason does not even spare prestigious national educational institutions.

Indian Navy’s New Strategy Fails to Track the Oceanic Decline

In less than a decade, the Indian Navy has revised its strategic outlook. The latest vision statement, Ensuring Secure Seas: Indian Maritime Security Strategy was released on October 26, 2015. Besides internal communication there are two reasons that the capital-intensive navy has to periodically justify its role and mission. First, to address the controllers of the national purse strings and secondly to cater to the changing international security environment. The budgetary authorities find the history of European navies that brought colonialism to Asian shores an inadequate justification for a strong Navy. Therefore, the latest document attempts to educate the defense bureaucracy that the Indian Navy needs multi-billion dollar investments in modern naval platforms because it is all set to assume its pan-oceanic role and is no longer confined to performing coastal and constabulary functions.

The second palpable reason for publication of the strategy is geo-political changes since the publication of Freedom to Use the Seas: India’s Maritime Strategy in 2007. The growing Chinese challenge to American hegemony in Asia; the repositioning of US naval assets to Asia-Pacific; Japan’s metamorphosis from a pacifist to a ‘normal’ aggressive power and India’s ambition to pop out of the strategic closet, to make security of oceanic trade lanes the dominant discourse.

The strength of the strategic document is the clarity with which it articulates the Indian Navy’s need to grow in tune with the government’s ‘Act East’ policy and the desire to play a larger role in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and beyond. It balances Navy’s obligations in coastal waters with its customary zeal to perform ‘out of area’ while remaining rooted to ‘principles of self-defense and the tenets of Panchsheel’.

Navies and trade are Siamese twins. The US Office of Naval Intelligence reiterated this reality in its 1922 document - The US Navy as an Industrial Asset that articulated the Navy’s role in protecting and furthering overseas investments for US business leaders. The ‘way points’ – the guiding principles in the latest strategic outline refer to navy-business association in terms of ‘Navy for National Development’. However, it explicitly states that its primary role is to play a decisive role in ‘preventing war and conflict’ and ‘bringing it to conclusion’. The document does not shy away from acknowledging the centrality of ‘sea control’ during conflict as a prerequisite for most naval operations’. The earlier documents refrained from talking about this aspect primarily because establishing ‘hostile zones’ and being a net security provider is a difficult proposition.

The document makes nuanced distinction between coastal security and coastal defense. Coast Guard is one of the main stakeholder in coastal security however, defending the coast against external aggression and invasion falls within the naval purview. This is important because a stream of post-Cold war invasions by the US Navy in the Middle East have shown that small and medium navies are incapable of offering resistance against assault by big navies. The total paralysis of Iraqi and Libyan navies in the wake of the US invasion informs that coastal defense strategy should be the lynchpin of any naval strategy rooted in defending the nation. Traditional ways are grossly inadequate. Medium navies must focus on devising innovative technologies to tackle invasions.

The recent Indian Maritime Security Strategy doesn’t skirt the issue of new technologies and grants it adequate space. However, there is much more ground that needs to be covered. Take for example, LOCUST- Low-Cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Swarming Technology program, the latest technology that the US navy is on the verge of perfecting. LOCUST systems are designed to launch a number of networked autonomous, surface, subsurface and aerial drone’s in offensive mode. A simpler analogy is to visualize the coordinated attack by ‘Tidi Dal’ on cotton crops in India. The US started research on these technologies about fifteen years ago and is now experimenting with 3-D printers to build these swarm drones on board ships. By now these concepts should be a part Indian Navy’s strategic lexicon.

The strategy-blue print sends important signals to two important maritime stakeholders. Emphasis on future naval warfare informs design and technical institutes in the country to imagine the possibilities of using civilian technologies like 3-D printers for naval use. It also forewarns naval architects to be prepared to face the challenges of integrating newer technologies with old platforms that are likely to be in operation till at least 2035.

Like most strategic discourses, Indian Maritime Security Strategy adheres to the concept of ‘fixity’ that hinges on rigidity and repetition. One disagrees with the basic premise of the document that ‘the 21st century will be the century of the seas for India and that the seas will remain a key enabler in her global resurgence’. Both technology and shifting power balance in the global political economy is challenging the Western ‘Command of the Commons’. Cyber technologies, and changes in oil economy are denting the importance of Sea Lanes of Communication. However, the biggest threat that sea power faces today is from the Chinese ‘Belt and Road’ initiative that envisages providing alternative routes for international trade. The Eurasian rail and road links, extending from China to Europe through central Asia and Russia are designed to attract a huge amount of international trade away from the Oceans. In a few years’ time it may become factually incorrect to say that 90 per cent of the global trade flows through the Oceans. Once Oceans are not the first choice for international trade, the relevance of the Western navies will be challenged. This could be the biggest blow to Western hegemony that has sustained itself for past centuries by commanding the service sector – the insurance and re-insurance regimes- on the global commons. This aspect needs to be included in all our strategies because our alliances and force levels will be largely determined by changes in the global political economy.

Kejriwal, visit Cuba: Learn Urban Farming to Reduce Delhi’s Pollution

In 1946, India was hit by acute food shortages. ‘Grow More’ campaign was launched by the British government. Army released a lot of its machinery for digging wells, leveling ground etc. Viceroy’s private secretary, G.E.B. Abbey, wrote to Mahatma Gandhi to inform him that ‘in Delhi a considerable part of the central vista’ was to be ploughed up and the gardens of bungalows were to be used for growing vegetables on a large scale. 

Gandhi’s, 21 February 1946, letter to the Viceroy further suggested that that small and medium sized vessels of the Royal Indian Navy, which were on patrol or guard duty during the war, be converted for the purpose of fishing to provide an additional source of food. Gandhi also suggested that a law be passed to convert all public gardens into fields growing vegetables.

After the demise of Soviet Union when Cuba was faced with acute food shortages it turned to urban farming to collectively meet its growing food needs. Today in Cuba more than 35,000 acres of urban gardens produced 3.4 million tons of food. In Havana, 90% of the city's fresh produce came from local urban farms and gardens, all organic. More than 200,000 Cubans worked in the expanding urban agriculture sector.

We need to trigger our minds and think as to why we grow only grass in most of the urban towns and cities. Why don’t we grow the much needed organic vegetables and wheat on India gate lawns? Actually during the industrial revolution there was strong economic logic in switching land use. Growing grass curtailed agricultural activity and ensured the movement of labour from farms to factories. But fields could not be completely abandoned because there was a lurking fear that industry may fail and economy may have to revert to agriculture. Thus lush-green lawns became a part of a hedging strategy that eventually created the rural-urban binary. Today, we are culturally conditioned to think of green grass lawns as beautiful and the thought of interspersed crops and concrete as ugly as well as unacceptable.

The radical solutions offered in 1946, to ‘grow more’ are more valid in twenty first century Delhi or any metropolitan town that is struggling with ‘pollute less’ strategies. The idea of converting gardens into farms is as relevant as it was seven decades ago. Today, urban households are not just subjected to soaring food prices but also to vegetables that stale and chemically treated. The lack of organic farming coupled with unhygienic transportation is an urban nightmare. The trucks carrying vegetables add enormously to polluting the city. Total green area under Delhi Development Authority (DDA) is in the range of 5000 hectares (12,350 acre). In Lutyens Bungalow zone (LBZ) 5,600 acres of land grows only grass. To maintain manicured grass in LBZ gardens the government spends Rs.70, 000/acre, every month. If only total grasslands of Delhi could be used to grow organic vegetables, it could meet Delhi’s vegetable needs locally. Not only will it help Delhi have fresh, organic vegetables it will also reduce the number of trucks that bring vegetable to Delhi from other states, reducing the pollution levels considerably.

WHEN US MILITARY AIRCRAFT SMUGGLED GOLD INTO INDIA

In 1950s, India, a gold guzzler had banned import of gold. In sharp contrast, the bullion markets in Hong Kong and Macau were free of government controls, incentivising the Chinese syndicates to smuggle gold into India where the price of yellow metal was highest in Asia. Normally, gold entered India hidden in boats and the bulkheads of ships and was smuggled in through the dock gates by the ship’s crew concealing gold ingots in their bodily cavities. 

In June 1954, Custom House, Calcutta (now Kolkata) confiscated 560 bars of gold worth £61,000 from Eastern Queen, a vessel owned by the Hong Kong based Indo-China Steam Navigation Company. Almost six months later, on 29 December 1954, at about 8.30 a.m. near the crossroad of Canning Street and Clive Street in Calcutta, the customs team intercepted the courier, a ‘respectable’ person hired by the smugglers. This was an intriguing catch, because “an entirely different racket unconnected with the Chinese traffic” emerged after the case unravelled. The new players neither belonged to the Hong Kong-Macau network, nor were they using the sea route to smuggle in the yellow metal. 

The carrier was W.B. Zadkar, a 37 year-old, ground engineer of the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), Calcutta, where he had been working since the mid-1940s. Prior to joining BOAC, he was in the Indian Air Force. 

Zadkar was apprehended when he was about to reach his destination at 164, Cotton Street, Calcutta, the house of the president of Bullion Merchants Association of India, to deliver two tin boxes that had landed on Christmas night in a KLM flight.

One box contained 10 bars weighing approximately 50 tolas (583.20 grams) each, and the other had 42 bars of smaller size, each weighing approximately 10 tolas (116.63 grams). The custom official reported that rough illustrations on the small bars read: “NM Rothscheld (Rothschild) & Sons RMR” and “10 tolas 999.0”. 

Zadkar was initiated into the gold smuggling racket by an unknown person who used to call up at his office phone using different names. The mysterious man, who looked like an “Arab or a Westerner but not a Chinese” had first met Zadkar at Grant Hotel, Calcutta. Five months prior to being apprehended, Zadkar had got a cable from London that stated “Shipped two carpets on Thai”, which meant that two boxes of gold had been dispatched on their plane. 

During his five-month-old association with the smuggling gang, Zadkar handled gold worth £31,000. For three-and-a-half months Zadkar’s job was confined to take over the stuff from the plane parked at the tarmac and deliver it to people waiting outside the gate in a car. Later, he was asked to deliver the stuff directly to various locations in Calcutta. 

The most intriguing revelation in Zadkar’s testimony was that on at least six occasions he had picked up gold from the “chokes” in the USA Air Force planes, MATS Skymaster”. India had an agreement with the US government that permitted Military Air Transport Services (MATS) planes night halt facilities at New Delhi and Calcutta airports. The customs’ report corroborated that in the period between the months of August and December, 1954, nine US Air Force Douglas C-54 Skymaster planes and two Thai Airways aircraft night stopped at Dum Dum airport. These planes were prohibited from carrying arms, ammunition and military personnel in uniform; however, they often violated these guidelines.

Zadkar’s revelation about the involvement of US military aircraft in the smuggling net led the customs collector, Calcutta to seek Ministry of External Affairs’ (MEA) permission to rummage the US army aircraft. The MEA was reluctant to give a blanket clearance to search military aircraft because such flights could be searched only on confirmed suspicion that they were carrying arms, ammunitions and other military hardware. This particular incident triggered an inter-departmental debate within the government at New Delhi. The customs department argued that the immunity accorded to military aircraft was invalid if it indulged in smuggling of contraband goods, because such acts violated the customs regulations. Customs department wanted explicit permission to rummage foreign military planes, without having to wait for permissions from New Delhi. 

Finally, on 1 February 1955, the Ministry of Finance (Revenue Division) passed an order stating that “if the customs authorities have a definite suspicion that any article (including those other than arms) are being smuggled into or from India in military aircraft, they will be perfectly within their right to search such aircraft and their personnel.” Incidentally, with effect from the first of July 1955, the Indian government levied handling and housing charges on all US military aircraft using civil airports in India. 

This article is based on a secret Ministry of external affair file of 1955 at the National Archives of India, New Delhi