Article d'Yldune Lévy

C’est un homme, dans un bureau, comme tant d’autres hommes dans tant d’autres bureaux auxquels il ressemble sans ressembler à rien. Celui-là dispose d’un pouvoir spécial, certainement dû au fait que son bureau occupe le dernier étage d’une quelconque tour d’un palais de justice.

On dit qu’il instruit, qui ? quoi ? Il instruit. Il écroue. Il interroge. Il rend des ordonnances, de pâles ordonnances, où quelques articles de loi, une poignée de formules convenues et de considérations vagues se concluent par d’impénétrables mesures de contrôle judiciaire. Benjamin, certainement trop apprécié comme épicier à Tarnac, sera assigné à résidence chez sa mère en Normandie, où il n’a jamais vécu, à 30 ans. Manon et moi, qui partagions tout à Fleury, n’avons plus le droit de nous voir maintenant que nous sommes "libres". Julien peut se mouvoir dans toute la couronne parisienne, non traverser Paris, au cas où lui viendrait la tentation de prendre d’assaut l’Hôtel de Ville, sans doute.

Tel ami qui le visitait au parloir de la Santé doit se garder de le croiser désormais, sous peine de réincarcération. L’homme au bureau construit un dédale de murs invisibles, un labyrinthe d’impossibilités factices où nous sommes censés nous perdre, et perdre la raison. Il y a un ordre dans cet écheveau d’absurdités, une politique de désorientation sous les accents neutres du judiciaire.

On nous libère en prétextant qu’il n’y a pas de "risque de concertation frauduleuse" pour ensuite nous interdire de nous voir et nous exiler ici ou là, loin de Tarnac. On autorise un mariage tout en en faisant savamment fuiter le lieu et la date. On fragnole (1), à coup sûr, mais pas seulement.

C’est par ses incohérences qu’un ordre révèle sa logique. Le but de cette procédure n’est pas de nous amener à la fin à un procès, mais, ici et maintenant, et pour le temps qu’il faudra, de tenir un certain nombre de vies sous contrôle. De pouvoir déployer contre nous, à tout instant, tous les moyens exorbitants de l’antiterrorisme pour nous détruire, chacun et tous ensemble, en nous séparant, en nous assignant, en starifiant l’un, en faisant parler l’autre, en tentant de pulvériser cette vie commune où gît toute puissance.

La procédure en cours ne produit qu’incidemment des actes judiciaires, elle autorise d’abord à briser des liens, des amitiés, à défaire, à piétiner, à supplicier non des corps, mais ce qui les fait tenir : l’ensemble des relations qui nous constituent, relations à des êtres chers, à un territoire, à une façon de vivre, d’oeuvrer, de chanter. C’est un massacre dans l’ordre de l’impalpable. Ce à quoi s’attaque la justice ne fera la "une" d’aucun journal télévisé : la douleur de la séparation engendre des cris, non des images. Avoir "désorganisé le groupe", comme dit le juge, ou "démantelé une structure anarcho-autonome clandestine", comme dit la sous-direction antiterroriste, c’est dans ces termes que se congratulent les tristes fonctionnaires de la répression, grises Pénélope qui défont le jour les entités qu’ils cauchemardent la nuit.

Poursuivis comme terroristes pour détention de fumigènes artisanaux au départ d’une manifestation, Ivan et Bruno ont préféré, après quatre mois de prison, la cavale à une existence sous contrôle judiciaire. Nous acculer à la clandestinité pour simplement pouvoir serrer dans nos bras ceux que nous aimons serait un effet non fortuit de la manoeuvre en cours.

Ladite "affaire de Tarnac", l’actuelle chasse à l’autonome ne méritent pas que l’on s’y attarde, sinon comme machine de vision. On s’indigne, en règle générale, de ce que l’on ne veut pas voir. Mais ici pas plus qu’ailleurs il n’y a lieu de s’indigner. Car c’est la logique d’un monde qui s’y révèle. A cette lumière, l’état de séparation scrupuleuse qui règne de nos jours, où le voisin ignore le voisin, où le collègue se défie du collègue, où chacun est affairé à tromper l’autre, à s’en croire le vainqueur, où nous échappe tant l’origine de ce que nous mangeons, que la fonction des faussetés, dont les médias pourvoient la conversation du jour, n’est pas le résultat d’une obscure décadence, mais l’objet d’une police constante.

Elle éclaire jusqu’à la rage d’occupation policière dont le pouvoir submerge les quartiers populaires. On envoie les unités territoriales de quartier (UTEQ) quadriller les cités ; depuis le 11 novembre 2008, les gendarmes se répandent en contrôles incessants sur le plateau de Millevaches. On escompte qu’avec le temps la population finira par rejeter ces "jeunes" comme s’ils étaient la cause de ce désagrément. L’appareil d’Etat dans tous ses organes se dévoile peu à peu comme une monstrueuse formation de ressentiment, d’un ressentiment tantôt brutal, tantôt ultrasophistiqué, contre toute existence collective, contre cette vitalité populaire qui, de toutes parts, le déborde, lui échappe et dans quoi il ne cesse de voir une menace caractérisée, là où elle ne voit en lui qu’un obstacle absurde, et absurdement mauvais.

Mais que peut-elle, cette formation ? Inventer des "associations de malfaiteurs", voter des "lois anti-bandes", greffer des incriminations collectives sur un droit qui prétend ne connaître de responsabilité qu’individuelle. Que peut-elle ? Rien, ou si peu. Abîmer à la marge, en neutraliser quelques-uns, en effrayer quelques autres. Cette politique de séparation se retourne même, par un effet de surprise : pour un neutralisé, cent se politisent ; de nouveaux liens fleurissent là où l’on s’y attendait le moins ; en prison, dans les comités de soutien se rencontrent ceux qui n’auraient jamais dû ; quelque chose se lève là où devaient régner à jamais l’impuissance et la dépression. Troublant spectacle que de voir la mécanique répressive se déglinguer devant la résistance infinie que lui opposent l’amour et l’amitié. C’est une infirmité constitutive du pouvoir que d’ignorer la joie d’avoir des camarades. Comment un homme dans l’Etat pourrait-il comprendre qu’il n’y a rien de moins désirable, pour moi, que d’être la femme d’un chef ?

Face à l’état démantelé du présent, face à la politique étatique, je n’arrive à songer, dans les quartiers, dans les usines, dans les écoles, les hôpitaux ou les campagnes, qu’à une politique qui reparte des liens, les densifie, les peuple et nous mène hors du cercle clos où nos vies se consument. Certains se retrouveront à la fontaine des Innocents à Paris, ce dimanche 21 juin, à 15 heures. Toutes les occasions sont bonnes pour reprendre la rue, même la Fête de la musique.

Etudiante, Yldune Lévy est mise en examen dans l’"affaire de Tarnac".

(1) Il manque assurément au vocabulaire français un verbe pour désigner la passion que met un assis à rendre, par mille manœuvres minuscules, la vie impossible aux autres. Je propose d’ajouter pour combler cette lacune à l’édition 2011 du Petit Robert le verbe "fragnoler" d’où découlent probablement le substantif "fragnolage", l’adjectif "fragnolesque" et l’expression argotique "T’es fragno !" dont l’usage est attesté et ne cesse de se répandre.

Arundhati Roy

Original in Outlook India

We've forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage
in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed
us that we were watching "India's 9/11". And like actors in a Bollywood rip-off
of an old Hollywood film, we're expected to play our parts and say our lines,
even though we know it's all been said and done before.As tension in the region
builds, US Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that if it didn't act fast to
arrest the 'Bad Guys' he had personal information that India would launch air
strikes on 'terrorist camps' in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing
because Mumbai was India's 9/11.But November isn't September, 2008 isn't 2001,
Pakistan isn't Afghanistan and India isn't America.




So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through
the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive
at our own conclusions.It's odd how in the last week of November thousands of
people in Kashmir supervised by thousands of Indian troops
lined up to cast
their vote, while the richest quarters of India's richest city ended up looking
like war-torn Kupwara—one of Kashmir's most ravaged districts.The Mumbai attacks
are only the most recent of a spate of terrorist attacks on Indian towns and
cities this year. Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Guwahati, Jaipur and Malegaon
have all seen serial bomb blasts in which hundreds of ordinary people have been
killed and wounded. If the police are right about the people they have arrested
as suspects, both Hindu and Muslim, all Indian nationals, it obviously means
something's going very badly wrong in this country.If you were watching
television you may not have heard that ordinary people too died in Mumbai.
They were mowed down in a busy railway station and a public hospital. The
terrorists did not distinguish between poor and rich. They killed both with
equal cold-bloodedness. The Indian media, however, was transfixed by the rising
tide of horror that breached the glittering barricades of India Shining and
spread its stench in the marbled lobbies and crystal ballrooms of two incredibly
luxurious hotels and a small Jewish centre. We're told one of these hotels is an
icon of the city of Mumbai. That's absolutely true. It's an icon of the easy,
obscene injustice that ordinary Indians endure every day. On a day when the
newspapers were full of moving obituaries by beautiful people about the hotel
rooms they had stayed in, the gourmet restaurants they loved (ironically, one
was called Kandahar), and the staff who served them, a small box on the top
left-hand corner in the inner pages of a national newspaper (sponsored by a
pizza company I think) said 'Hungry, kya?' (Hungry eh?). It then, with the best
of intentions I'm sure, informed its readers that on the international hunger
index, India ranked below Sudan and Somalia. But of course this isn't that war.
That one's still being fought in the Dalit bastis of our villages, on the banks
of the Narmada and the Koel Karo rivers; in the rubber estate in Chengara; in
the villages of Nandigram, Singur, Lalgarh in West Bengal; in Chhattisgarh,
Jharkhand, Orissa; and the slums and shantytowns of our gigantic cities. That
war isn't on TV. Yet. So maybe, like everyone else, we should deal with the one
that is.There is a fierce, unforgiving fault line that runs through the
contemporary discourse on terrorism. On one side (let's call it Side A) are
those who see terrorism, especially 'Islamist' terrorism, as a hateful, insane
scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit and has nothing to do with
the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics.
Therefore, Side A says, to try and place it in a political context, or even try
to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime in
itself.

Side B believes that though nothing can ever excuse or justify
terrorism, it exists in a particular time, place and political context, and to
refuse to see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people
in harm's way. Which is a crime in itself.The sayings of Hafiz Saeed, who
founded the Lashkar-e-Toiba (Army of the Pure) in 1990 and who belongs to the
hardline Salafi tradition of Islam, certainly bolster the case of Side A. Hafiz
Saeed approves of suicide bombing, hates Jews, Shias and Democracy, and believes
that jehad should be waged until Islam, his Islam, rules the
world.


Among the things he has said are: "There cannot be any
peace while India remains intact. Cut them, cut them so much that they kneel
before you and ask for mercy."And, "India has shown us this path. We would like
to give India a tit-for-tat response and reciprocate
in the same way by
killing the Hindus, just like it is killing the Muslims in Kashmir."But where
would Side A accommodate the sayings of Babu Bajrangi of Ahmedabad, India, who
sees himself as a democrat, not a terrorist? He was one of the major lynchpins
of the 2002 Gujarat genocide and has said (on camera):"We didn't spare a single
Muslim shop, we set everything on fire...we hacked, burned, set on fire...we
believe in setting them on fire because these bastards don't want to be
cremated, they're afraid of it.... I have just one last wish...let me be
sentenced to death.... I don't care if I'm hanged...just give me two days before
my hanging and I will go and have a field day in Juhapura where seven or eight
lakhs of these people stay.... I will finish them off...let a few more of them
die...at least twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand should die."And where, in
Side A's scheme of things, would we place the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh bible,
We, or Our Nationhood Defined by M.S. Golwalkar 'Guruji', who became head of the
RSS in 1944. It says:"Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in
Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly
fighting on to take on these despoilers. The Race Spirit has been
awakening."Or:"To keep up the purity of its race and culture, Germany shocked
the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races—the Jews. Race pride
at its highest has been manifested here...a good lesson for us in Hindustan to
learn and profit by."Of course, Muslims are not the only people in the gun
sights of the Hindu Right. Dalits have been consistently targeted. Recently in
Kandhamal in Orissa, Christians were the target of two-and-a-half months of
violence which left more than 40 dead. Forty thousand people have been driven
from their homes, half of whom now live in refugee camps. All these years, Hafiz
Saeed has lived the life of a respectable man in Lahore as the head of the
Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which many believe is a front organisation for the
Lashkar-e-Toiba. He continued to recruit young boys for his own bigoted jehad
with his twisted, fiery sermons. On December 11, the UN imposed sanctions on the
Jamaat-ud-Dawa and the Pakistani government succumbed to international pressure,
putting Hafiz Saeed under house arrest. Babu Bajrangi, however, is out on bail
and continues to live the life of a respectable man in Gujarat. A couple of
years after the genocide, he left the VHP to join the Shiv Sena. Narendra Modi,
Bajrangi's former mentor, is still the chief minister of Gujarat. So the man who
presided over the Gujarat genocide was re-elected twice, and is deeply respected
by India's biggest corporate houses, Reliance and Tata. Suhel Seth, a TV
impresario and corporate spokesperson, has recently said, "Modi is God." The
policemen who supervised and sometimes even assisted the rampaging Hindu mobs in
Gujarat have been rewarded and promoted.


The RSS has 45,000 branches, its own range of charities and
seven million volunteers preaching its doctrine of hate across India. They
include Narendra Modi, but also former prime minister A.B. Vajpayee, current
Leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani, and a host of other senior politicians,
bureaucrats and police and intelligence officers.And if that's not enough to
complicate our picture of secular democracy, we should place on record that
there are plenty of Muslim organisations within India preaching their own narrow
bigotry.So, on balance, if I had to choose between Side A and Side B, I'd pick
Side B. We need context. Always.In this nuclear subcontinent, that context is
Partition. The Radcliffe Line which separated India and Pakistan and tore
through states, districts, villages, fields, communities, water systems, homes
and families, was drawn virtually overnight. It was Britain's final, parting
kick to us. Partition triggered the massacre of more than a million people and
the largest migration of a human population in contemporary history. Eight
million people—Hindus fleeing the new Pakistan, Muslims fleeing the new kind of
India—left their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Each of
those people carries and passes down a story of unimaginable pain, hate, horror,
but yearning too. That wound, those torn but still unsevered muscles, that blood
and those splintered bones still lock us together in a close embrace of hatred,
terrifying familiarity but also love. It has left Kashmir trapped in a nightmare
from which it can't seem to emerge, a nightmare that has claimed more than
60,000 lives. Pakistan, the Land of the Pure, became an Islamic republic, and
then, very quickly a corrupt, violent military state, openly intolerant of other
faiths. India on the other hand declared herself an inclusive, secular
democracy. It was a magnificent undertaking, but Babu Bajrangi's predecessors
had been hard at work since the 1920s, dripping poison into India's bloodstream,
undermining that idea of India even before it was born. By 1990, they were ready
to make a bid for power. In 1992, Hindu mobs exhorted by L.K. Advani stormed the
Babri Masjid and demolished it. By 1998, the BJP was in power at the Centre. The
US War on Terror put the wind in their sails. It allowed them to do exactly as
they pleased, even to commit genocide and then present their fascism as a
legitimate form of chaotic democracy. This happened at a time when India had
opened its huge market to international finance, and it was in the interests of
international corporations and the media houses they owned to project it as a
country that could do no wrong. That gave Hindu Nationalists all the impetus and
the impunity they needed. This, then, is the larger historical context of
terrorism in the subcontinent, and of the Mumbai attacks.It shouldn't surprise
us that Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Toiba is from Shimla (India) and L.K.
Advani of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is from Sindh (Pakistan).In much the
same way as it did after the 2001 Parliament attack, the 2002 burning of the
Sabarmati Express and the 2006 bombing of the Samjhauta Express, the Government
of India announced that it has 'incontrovertible' evidence that the
Lashkar-e-Toiba backed by Pakistan's ISI was behind the Mumbai strikes. The
Lashkar has denied involvement, but remains the prime accused. According to the
police and intelligence agencies, the Lashkar operates in India through an
organisation called the 'Indian Mujahideen'. Two Indian nationals—Sheikh Mukhtar
Ahmed, a Special Police Officer working for the Jammu and Kashmir Police, and
Tausif Rehman, a resident of Calcutta in West Bengal—have been arrested in
connection with the Mumbai attacks. So already the neat accusation against
Pakistan is getting a little messy.

Almost always, when these stories unspool, they reveal a
complicated global network of foot-soldiers, trainers, recruiters, middlemen and
undercover intelligence and counter-intelligence operatives, working not just on
both sides of the India-Pakistan border, but in several countries
simultaneously. In today's world, trying to pin down the provenance of a
terrorist strike and isolate it within the borders of a single nation-state is
very much like trying to pin down the provenance of corporate money. It's almost
impossible.In circumstances like these, air strikes to 'take out' terrorist
camps may take out the camps, but certainly will not 'take out' the terrorists.
And neither will war. (Also, in our bid for the moral high ground, let's try not
to forget that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the LTTE of neighbouring
Sri Lanka, one of the world's most deadly terrorist groups, were trained by the
Indian army.)

Thanks largely to the part it was forced to play as America's
ally, first in its war in support of the Afghan Islamists and then in its war
against them, Pakistan, whose territory is reeling under these contradictions,
is careening towards civil war. As recruiting agents for America's jehad against
the Soviet Union, it was the job of the Pakistan army and the ISI to nurture and
channel funds to Islamic fundamentalist organisations. Having wired up these
Frankenstein's monsters and released them into the world, the US expected it
could rein them in like pet mastiffs whenever it wanted to. Certainly it did not
expect them to come calling in the heart of the Homeland on September 11. So
once again, Afghanistan had to be violently re-made. Now the debris of a
re-ravaged Afghanistan has washed up on Pakistan's borders. Nobody, least of all
the Pakistan government, denies that it is presiding over a country that is
threatening to implode. The terrorist training camps, the fire-breathing mullahs
and the maniacs who believe that Islam will, or should, rule the world is mostly
the detritus of two Afghan wars. Their ire rains down on the Pakistan government
and Pakistani civilians as much, if not more, than it does on India. If at this
point India decides to go to war, perhaps the descent of the whole region into
chaos will be complete. The debris of a bankrupt, destroyed Pakistan will wash
up on India's shores, endangering us as never before. If Pakistan collapses, we
can look forward to having millions of 'non-state actors' with an arsenal of
nuclear weapons at their disposal as neighbours. It's hard to understand why
those who steer India's ship are so keen to replicate Pakistan's mistakes and
call damnation upon this country by inviting the United States to further meddle
clumsily and dangerously in our extremely complicated affairs. A superpower
never has allies. It only has agents.On the plus side, the advantage of going to
war is that it's the best way for India to avoid facing up to the serious
trouble building on our home front.The Mumbai attacks were broadcast live (and
exclusive!) on all or most of our 67 24-hour news channels and god knows how
many international ones. TV anchors in their studios and journalists at 'ground
zero' kept up an endless stream of excited commentary. Over three days and three
nights, we watched in disbelief as a small group of very young men armed with
guns and gadgets exposed the powerlessness of the police, the elite National
Security Guard and the marine commandos of this supposedly mighty,
nuclear-powered nation. While they did this, they indiscriminately massacred
unarmed people, in railway stations, hospitals and luxury hotels, unmindful of
their class, caste, religion or nationality.

Part of the helplessness of the security forces had to do with
having to worry about hostages. In other situations, in Kashmir for example,
their tactics are not so sensitive. Whole buildings are blown up. Human shields
are used. (The US and Israeli armies don't hesitate to send cruise missiles into
buildings and drop daisy cutters on wedding parties in Palestine, Iraq and
Afghanistan.) But this was different. And it was on TV.The boy-terrorists'
nonchalant willingness to kill—and be killed—mesmerised their international
audience. They delivered something different from the usual diet of suicide
bombings and missile attacks that people have grown inured to on the news. Here
was something new. Die Hard 25. The gruesome performance went on and on. TV
ratings soared. Ask any television magnate or corporate advertiser who measures
broadcast time in seconds, not minutes, what that's worth.Eventually the killers
died and died hard, all but one. (Perhaps, in the chaos, some escaped. We may
never know.) Throughout the stand-off, the terrorists made no demands and
expressed no desire to negotiate. Their purpose was to kill people and inflict
as much damage as they could before they were killed themselves. They left us
completely bewildered. When we say 'Nothing can justify terrorism', what most of
us mean is that nothing can justify the taking of human life. We say this
because we respect life, because we think it's precious. So what are we to make
of those who care nothing for life, not even their own? The truth is that we
have no idea what to make of them, because we can sense that even before they've
died, they've journeyed to another world where we cannot reach
them.

One TV channel (India TV) broadcast a phone conversation with
one of the attackers, who called himself 'Imran Babar'. I cannot vouch for the
veracity of the conversation, but the things he talked about were the things
contained in the 'terror e-mails' that were sent out before several other bomb
attacks in India. Things we don't want to talk about any more: the demolition of
the Babri Masjid in 1992, the genocidal slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002,
the brutal repression in Kashmir. "You're surrounded," the anchor told him. "You
are definitely going to die. Why don't you surrender?" "We die every day," he
replied in a strange, mechanical way. "It's better to live one day as a lion and
then die this way." He didn't seem to want to change the world. He just seemed
to want to take it down with him.If the men were indeed members of the
Lashkar-e-Toiba, why didn't it matter to them that a large number of their
victims were Muslim, or that their action was likely to result in a severe
backlash against the Muslim community in India whose rights they claim to be
fighting for? Terrorism is a heartless ideology, and like most ideologies that
have their eye on the Big Picture, individuals don't figure in its calculations
except as collateral damage. It has always been a part of—and often even the aim
of—terrorist strategy to exacerbate a bad situation in order to expose hidden
fault lines. The blood of 'martyrs' irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists need
dead Hindus, Communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist terrorists
need dead Muslims. The dead become the demonstration, the proof of victimhood,
which is central to the project. A single act of terrorism is not in itself
meant to achieve military victory; at best it is meant to be a catalyst that
triggers something else, something much larger than itself, a tectonic shift, a
realignment. The act itself is theatre, spectacle and symbolism, and today, the
stage on which it pirouettes and performs its acts of bestiality is Live
TV.

Even as the Mumbai terrorists were being condemned by TV
anchors, the effectiveness of their action was magnified a thousand-fold by TV
broadcasts.

Through the endless hours of analysis and the endless op-ed
essays, in India at least there has been very little mention of the elephants in
the room: Kashmir, Gujarat and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Instead, we
had retired diplomats and strategic experts debate the pros and cons of a war
against Pakistan. We had the rich threatening not to pay their taxes unless
their security was guaranteed (is it alright for the poor to remain
unprotected?). We had people suggest that the government step down and each
state in India be handed over to a separate corporation. We had the death of
former prime minister V.P. Singh, the hero of Dalits and lower castes and
villain of upper-caste Hindus, pass without a mention. We had Suketu Mehta,
author of Maximum City and co-writer of the Bollywood film Mission Kashmir, give
us his version of George Bush's famous 'Why They Hate Us' speech. His analysis
of why "religious bigots, both Hindu and Muslim", hate Mumbai: "Perhaps because
Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness." His
prescription: "The best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even
more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever." Didn't George Bush ask Americans
to go out and shop after 9/11? Ah yes. 9/11, the day we can't seem to get away
from.Though one chapter of horror in Mumbai has ended, another might have just
begun. Day after day, a powerful, vociferous section of the Indian elite, goaded
by marauding TV anchors who make Fox News look almost radical and left-wing,
have taken to mindlessly attacking politicians, all politicians, glorifying the
police and the army, and virtually asking for a police state. It isn't
surprising that those who have grown plump on the pickings of democracy (such as
it is) should now be calling for a police state. The era of 'pickings' is long
gone. We're now in the era of Grabbing by Force, and democracy has a terrible
habit of getting in the way.Dangerous, stupid television flash cards like the
Police are Good, Politicians are Bad/ Chief Executives are Good, Chief Ministers
are Bad/ Army is Good, Government is Bad/ India is Good, Pakistan is Bad are
being bandied about by TV channels that have already whipped their viewers into
a state of almost uncontrollable hysteria.Tragically, this regression into
intellectual infancy comes at a time when people in India were beginning to see
that the business of terrorism is a hall of mirrors in which victims and
perpetrators sometimes exchange roles. It's an understanding that the people of
Kashmir, given their dreadful experiences of the last 20 years, have honed to an
exquisite art. On the mainland we're still learning. (If Kashmir won't willingly
integrate into India, it's beginning to look as though India will
integrate/disintegrate into Kashmir.)It was after the 2001 Parliament attack
that the first serious questions began to be raised. A campaign by a group of
lawyers and activists exposed how innocent people had been framed by the police
and the press, how evidence was fabricated, how witnesses lied, how due process
had been criminally violated at every stage of the investigation. Eventually the
courts acquitted two out of the four accused, including S.A.R. Geelani, the man
whom the police claimed was the mastermind of the operation. A third, Shaukat
Guru, was acquitted of all the charges brought against him but was then
convicted for a fresh, comparatively minor offence.

The Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of another of the
accused, Mohammad Afzal. In its judgement, the court acknowledged that there was
no proof that Mohammad Afzal belonged to any terrorist group, but went on to
say, quite shockingly, "The collective conscience of the society will only be
satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender. " Even today we
don't really know who the terrorists that attacked Indian Parliament were and
who they worked for.More recently, on September 19 this year, we had the
controversial 'encounter' at Batla House in Jamia Nagar, Delhi, where the
Special Cell of the Delhi police gunned down two Muslim students in their rented
flat under seriously questionable circumstances, claiming that they were
responsible for serial bombings in Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad in 2008. An
Assistant Commissioner of Police, Mohan Chand Sharma, who played a key role in
the Parliament attack investigation, lost his life as well. He was one of
India's many 'encounter specialists', known and rewarded for having summarily
executed several 'terrorists'. There was an outcry against the Special Cell from
a spectrum of people, ranging from eyewitnesses in the local community to senior
Congress Party leaders, students, journalists, lawyers, academics and activists,
all of whom demanded a judicial inquiry into the incident. In response, the BJP
and L.K. Advani lauded Mohan Chand Sharma as a 'Braveheart' and launched a
concerted campaign in which they targeted those who had dared to question the
integrity of the police, saying it was 'suicidal' and calling them
'anti-national'. Of course, there has been no inquiry.Only days after the Batla
House event, another story about 'terrorists' surfaced in the news. In a report
submitted to the court, the CBI said that a team from Delhi's Special Cell (the
same team that led the Batla House encounter, including Mohan Chand Sharma) had
abducted two innocent men, Irshad Ali and Moarif Qamar, in December 2005,
planted 2 kg of RDX and two pistols on them, and then arrested them as
'terrorists' who belonged to Al Badr (which operates out of Kashmir). Ali and
Qamar, who have spent years in jail, are only two examples out of hundreds of
Muslims who have been similarly jailed, tortured and even killed on false
charges.This pattern changed in October 2008 when Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism
Squad (ATS), which was investigating the September 2008 Malegaon blasts,
arrested a Hindu preacher, Sadhvi Pragya; a self-styled godman, Swami Dayanand
Pande; and Lt Col Prasad Purohit, a serving officer of the Indian army. All the
arrested belong to Hindu Nationalist organisations, including a Hindu
supremacist group called Abhinav Bharat. The Shiv Sena, the BJP and the RSS
condemned the Maharashtra ATS, and vilified its chief, Hemant Karkare, claiming
he was part of a political conspiracy and declaring that "Hindus could not be
terrorists". L.K. Advani changed his mind about his policy on the police and
made rabble-rousing speeches to huge gatherings, in which he denounced the ATS
for daring to cast aspersions on holy men and women.On November 25, newspapers
reported that the ATS was investigating the high-profile VHP chief Praveen
Togadia's possible role in the Malegaon blasts. The next day, in an
extraordinary twist of fate, Hemant Karkare was killed in the Mumbai attacks.
The chances are that the new chief, whoever he is, will find it hard to
withstand the political pressure that is bound to be brought on him over the
Malegaon investigation.While the Sangh parivar does not seem to have come to a
final decision over whether or not it is anti-national and suicidal to question
the police, Arnab Goswami, anchorperson of Times Now television channel, has
stepped up to the plate.

He has taken to naming, demonising and openly heckling people
who have dared to question the integrity of the police and armed forces. My name
and the name of the well-known lawyer Prashant Bhushan have come up several
times. At one point, while interviewing a former police officer, Arnab Goswami
turned to the camera; "Arundhati Roy and Prashant Bhushan," he said, "I hope you
are watching this. We think you are disgusting." For a TV anchor to do this in
an atmosphere as charged and as frenzied as the one that prevails today amounts
to incitement as well as threat, and would probably in different circumstances
have cost a journalist his or her job.So according to a man aspiring to be
India's next prime minister, and another who is the public face of a mainstream
TV channel, citizens have no right to raise questions about the police. This in
a country with a shadowy history of suspicious terror attacks, murky
investigations, and fake 'encounters'. This in a country that boasts of the
highest number of custodial deaths in the world and yet refuses to ratify the
International Covenant on Torture. A country where the ones who make it to
torture chambers are the lucky ones because at least they've escaped being
'encountered' by our encounter specialists. A country where the line between the
Underworld and the Encounter Specialists virtually does not exist.How should
those of us whose hearts have been sickened by the knowledge of all of this view
the Mumbai attacks, and what are we to do about them? There are those who point
out that US strategy has been successful inasmuch as the United States has not
suffered a major attack on its home ground since 9/11. However, some would say
that what America is suffering now is far worse. If the idea behind the 9/11
terror attacks was to goad America into showing its true colours, what greater
success could the terrorists have asked for? The US army is bogged down in two
unwinnable wars, which have made the United States the most hated country in the
world. Those wars have contributed greatly to the unravelling of the American
economy and, who knows, perhaps eventually the American empire. (Could it be
that battered, bombed Afghanistan, the graveyard of the Soviet Union, will be
the undoing of this one too?) Hundreds of thousands of people, including
thousands of American soldiers, have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The frequency of terrorist strikes on US allies/agents (including India) and US
interests in the rest of the world has increased dramatically since 9/11. George
Bush, the man who led the US response to 9/11, is a despised figure not just
internationally but also by his own people. Who can possibly claim that the
United States is winning the war on terror?Homeland security has cost the US
government billions of dollars. Few countries, certainly not India, can afford
that sort of price tag. But even if we could, the fact is that this vast
homeland of ours cannot be secured or policed in the way the United States has
been. It's not that kind of homeland. We have a hostile nuclear weapons state
that is slowly spinning out of control as a neighbour, we have a military
occupation in Kashmir, and a shamefully persecuted, impoverished minority of
more than a hundred and fifty million Muslims who are being targeted as a
community and pushed to the wall, whose young see no justice on the horizon, and
who, were they to totally lose hope and radicalise, end up as a threat not just
to India, but to the whole world. If 10 men can hold off the NSG commandos and
the police for three days, and if it takes half-a-million soldiers to hold down
the Kashmir Valley, do the math. What kind of Homeland Security can secure
India?Nor for that matter will any other quick fix.Anti-terrorism laws are not
meant for terrorists; they're for people that governments don't like. That's why
they have a conviction rate of less than two per cent. They're just a means of
putting inconvenient people away without bail for a long time and eventually
letting them go. Terrorists like those who attacked Mumbai are hardly likely to
be deterred by the prospect of being refused bail or being sentenced to death.
It's what they want.What we're experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative
result of decades of quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet's squelching under
our feet.The only way to contain (it would be naive to say end) terrorism is to
look at the monster in the mirror. We're standing at a fork in the road. One
sign says 'Justice', the other 'Civil War'. There's no third sign and there's no
going back. Choose.

Passports to progress (Daniel Barenboim)

Dear friends,

In the spirit of conductor Barenboim's call for non-violent resistance against the occupation, I pass the attached photo from our Al-Quds newspaper...it was taken in the village of Bilin.

Barenboim's article below is powerful, albeit I would take issue with the automatic assumption that a state, any state, has a right to be "Jewish," "Muslim," "Christian," or otherwise.

Snowed in, thinking of loved ones in Gaza (+50% population under 18) without lights, heat or gas,
Sam

------------------------------------------

Comment

Passports to progress

Israelis and Palestinians alike should join me in taking dual citizenship - for we share one destiny

Daniel Barenboim
Wednesday January 30, 2008

Guardian

I have often said that the destinies of the Israeli and Palestinian people are inextricably linked and that there is no military solution to the conflict. My recent acceptance of Palestinian nationality has given me the opportunity to demonstrate this more tangibly.

When my family moved to Israel from Argentina in the 1950s, one of my parents' intentions was to spare me the experience of growing up as part of a minority - a Jewish minority. They wanted to me to grow up as part of a majority - a Jewish majority. The tragedy of this is that my generation, despite having been educated in a society whose positive aspects and human values have greatly enriched my thinking, ignored the existence of a minority within Israel - a non-Jewish minority - which had been the majority in the whole of Palestine until the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Part of the non-Jewish population remained in Israel, and other parts left out of fear or were forcefully displaced.

In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict there was and still is an inability to admit the interdependence of their two voices. The creation of the state of Israel was the result of a Jewish-European idea which, if it is to extend its leitmotif into the future, must accept the Palestinian identity as an equally valid leitmotif. The demographic development is impossible to ignore; the Palestinians within Israel are a minority but a rapidly growing one, and their voice needs to be heard now more than ever. They now make up approximately 22% of the population of Israel. This is a larger percentage than was ever represented by a Jewish minority in any country in any period of history. The total number of Palestinians living within Israel and in the occupied territories (that is, greater Israel for the Israelis or greater Palestine for the Palestinians) is already larger than the Jewish population.

At present Israel is confronted with three problems: the nature of the modern democratic Jewish state - its very identity; the problem of Palestinian identity within Israel; and the problem of the creation of a Palestinian state outside of Israel. With Jordan and Egypt it was possible to attain what can best be described as an ice-cold peace without questioning Israel's existence as a Jewish state. The problem of the Palestinians within Israel is a much more challenging one to solve, theoretically and practically. For Israel it means, among other things, coming to terms with the fact that the land was not barren or empty, "a land without a people" - an idea that was propagated at the time of its creation. For the Palestinians, it means accepting the fact that Israel is a Jewish state and is here to stay.

Israelis must accept the integration of the Palestinian minority, even if it means changing certain aspects of the nature of Israel; they must also accept the justification for and necessity of the creation of a Palestinian state next to the state of Israel. Not only is there no alternative, or magic wand, that will make the Palestinians disappear, but their integration is an indispensable condition - on moral, social, and political grounds - for the very survival of Israel.

The longer the occupation continues and Palestinian dissatisfaction remains unaddressed, the more difficult it is to find even elementary common ground. We have seen so often in the modern history of the Middle East that missed opportunities for reconciliation have had extremely negative results for both sides.

For my part, when the Palestinian passport was offered to me, I accepted it in the spirit of acknowledging the Palestinian destiny which I, as an Israeli, share. A true citizen of Israel must reach out to the Palestinian people with openness, and at the very least an attempt to understand what the creation of the state of Israel has meant to them.

May 15 1948 is the day of independence for the Jews, but the same day is al-Nakba, the catastrophe, for the Palestinians. A true citizen of Israel must ask himself what the Jews, known as an intelligent people of learning and culture, have done to share their cultural heritage with the Palestinians. A true citizen of Israel must also ask himself why the Palestinians have been condemned to live in slums and accept lower standards of education and medical care, rather than being provided by the occupying force with decent, dignified and liveable conditions - a right common to all human beings.

In any occupied territory, the occupiers are responsible for the quality of life of the occupied, and in the case of the Palestinians, the different Israeli governments over the past 40 years have failed miserably. The Palestinians, naturally, must continue to resist the occupation and all attempts to deny them basic individual needs and statehood. However, for their own sake, this resistance must not express itself through violence. Crossing the boundary from adamant resistance (including non-violent demonstrations and protests) to violence only results in more innocent victims, and does not serve the long-term interests of the Palestinian people.

At the same time, the citizens of Israel have just as much cause to be alert to the needs and rights of the Palestinian people (both within and outside Israel) as they have to their own. After all, in the sense that we share one land and one destiny, we should all have dual citizenship.

· Daniel Barenboim is a conductor and pianist, and co-author with Edward Said of Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society danielbarenboim.com

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2248820,00.html

Bush Peace Hallucinations Continue

U.S. President George Bush landed in Israel yesterday on his first Presidential trip to the country. He participated in a press conference in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in what both men termed a “historic” and “monumental” occasion. After listening to both so-called leaders make their opening comments and fielding questions from journalists, the only groundbreaking revelation I could register was that the naiveté of President Bush, either real or a charade, only served the agenda of one party in the region - Hamas. The radical Islamists at Hamas could not have recruited a better cheerleader for their movement if they tried.


My opinion may be extreme, but then again, I live in an extremely violent limbo under Israeli military occupation, shaped by a policy both men continuously refuse to call by its true name – state terror.


Again, my opinion is certainly subjective - but then again, I started my day by reading a communique from the real world: a report issued from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs titled, Gaza Humanitarian Situation Report: Power Shortages In The Gaza Strip (8 January 2008). The report states the background of the issue; on 28 June 2006 the Israeli Air Force bombed the power plant in the Gaza Strip destroying all six transformers and cutting 43% of Gaza’s total power capacity. The report says “households in the Gaza Strip are now experiencing regular power cuts” and goes on to note that “the irregular [electricity] supply causes additional problems. Running water in Gaza is only available in most households for around eight hours per day. If there is no power when water is available, it cannot be pumped above ground level, reducing the availability of running water to between four and six hours per day.” The result of this single punitive measure, as stated in this report, is that if Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utility “cannot provide its own emergency power supply because of its own fuel shortages, it has to pump raw sewage into the sea which damages the coastline in Gaza, southern Israel and Egypt.”


In another report, released the same day, the World Food Program spokesperson Kirstie Campbell says 70 percent of the population of Gaza has to choose between putting food on the table or a roof over their heads.


For President Bush and Prime Minister Olmert, the fallout expected from the information in these disturbing reports, released one day before President Bush arrived in Israel, was not even worthy of worry. As a matter of fact, the reality that Israel has successfully placed 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, over 50% of them children, in the dark and under the most draconian siege in recent history did not even make it to the footnotes of either leader’s comments.


Instead, much more important issues were on Bush’s agenda. The need to realize and work on a “vision” for the future was in the forefront of President Bush’s mind. According to President Bush, "the parties" should now sit down and "negotiate a vision" – the parties being Israel, the 4th strongest military might in the world and a 40+ year occupier, and the Palestinians, the yet-to-be state of an occupied and displaced people who have been dispossessed by the State of Israel for 60 years and while on the receiving end of a brutal Israeli military occupation for over four decades.


Both Bush and Olmert did send one united message to the world. The two-state solution was still the aim of the negotiations. Reading between the lines, we can infer that the specter of a single state, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, is the most frightening vision of all. The terrifying notion of Palestinians (Muslims and Christians) and Israelis (Jews, Muslims, and Christians) living side by side with equal national and civil rights, has never been so apparent since the struggle in South Africa to end racist white supremacy under Apartheid. To ensure that a one-state solution does not materialize in historic Palestine, the U.S. and Israel talk about a two-state solution, but meantime, the U.S. bankrolls Israel as it continues to create facts on the ground that make any viable Palestinian state impossible.


Prime Minister Olmert was clear beyond a doubt: President Bush has been very, very good for Israel. Olmert was nearly jumping for joy as he praised President Bush for increasing the comprehensive U.S. aid package to Israel to a whopping $30 billion.


The issue of Israeli settlement-building in the occupied territory, including East Jerusalem, was raised repeatedly by journalists asking questions. Again, Israel’s Olmert made no excuses; Jerusalem is different, he said, and no one should expect settlements to stop there. As for the other settlements, he said it was complicated and began elucidating the lexicon of "outposts," "population centers," etc. If only this entire settlement enterprise were not threatening Israel’s very own citizens and future, Olmert’s blather would have made excellent comedy material – not to mention President Bush’s weird facial expressions as he sought to evade the barrage of questions asking if the U.S. was ready to apply pressure on Israel to make good on its talk of freezing settlements. The best President Bush was able to come up with impromptu was to remind us all that Israel has been promising for over four years to stop settlements but has yet to do so. Even that came with a chuckle, as if the human tragedy these settlements are causing was a side show. Rarely has Mr. Bush given so persuasive an impression of being detached not just from the facts but from any sort of empathy for the victims of this appalling situation.


All in all, it looks like President Bush came to Israel to speak about Iran. Not only did Mr. Bush seem much more enthused about threatening Iran from Israel; his glaring inability to articulate a basic understanding of the Palestinian-Israeli issue left seasoned Israeli journalists chuckling in disbelief at the President’s replies. The local press corps noted every opportunity seized by Olmert to hitch a ride on each one of President Bush’s superficial comments, lauding the importance of the Bush visit, the Bush commitment to peace, and the Bush courage in confronting the region's difficulties.


Well, next President Bush arrives in my Israeli-occupied city of Al-Bireh/Ramallah. He plans to land two blocks away from my home, in a sports field where I happen to be developing as a commercial project for the Friends (Quaker) School. We were notified today that our street will be one of the many that will be under 100% lockdown. We were advised we would be risking our lives if we went to our rooftop to watch the charade unfold. Public notices from the Palestinian police chief warned that absolutely no protests would be tolerated. In short, we were told to stay indoors. Even our local newspaper advised a civil society campaign I work with that an ad we submitted to be published in today’s newspaper, conveying a message to Bush via a cartoon, would require special approval from the newspaper’s management, given the special circumstance that Bush is in town. (As I write, I’m being advised that our ad**, as is, was refused!) So much for running a business, economic development, and freedom of the press. So much for Palestinian democracy too.


As an American and a Palestinian, if I could advise Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on how to greet President Bush today, I would ask him to declare the end of the Palestinian Authority, which Israel has consciously and systematically destroyed. I would ask him to announce that the Palestinians will not accept Rambo-style diplomacy and will revert to international law as the only reference point for resolving the conflict. I would ask President Abbas to request America’s support for non-violent resistance against 60 years of dispossession and 40 years of military occupation by calling for a strategy of boycotting, divestment and sanctions*** on Israel until Israel joins the community of law-abiding nations.


But that’s not all. If I were President Abbas I would tell the world that the Palestinian people will remain committed to the two-state solution until the end of 2008, and after that, if the international community fails yet again to end this nightmare of occupation, the Palestinian people will return to their original strategy of calling for one democratic secular state, where Palestinians and Israelis of all religions can live in dignity and mutual respect as equals - one person, one vote, with appropriate arrangements for cultural autonomy for all.


President Abbas could lead now, or we could all sit and wait amid the increasing numbers of funerals, until the climax of the reality forced upon us by Israeli policy engenders a violent path to the same one-state solution that so many fear.


* See www.ochaopt.org
** Newspaper ad refused by Al-Quds Newspaper is the one at top of this article or may be viewed at http://www.epalestine.com/Bush_visiting_Palestine_highres.jpg.
*** See www.bds-palestine.net and www.bigcampaign.org


- Sam Bahour is a business consultant and may be reached at sbahour@palnet.com.

Endless consumption

ZNet Commentary
The Fantasy of Endless Consumption December 25, 2007
By Sudhanva Deshpande

Almost suddenly, the lower middle class has become a subject of Hindi films.

Consider the film Ta Ra Rum Pum. A racing car driver falls in love with, and eventually marries, a pianist, the daughter of a rich businessman. The hero is profligate, spending lavishly on parties and other luxuries. But this is not a problem, because the hero keeps winning every race he enters and because he buys everything on credit.

Till, one day, he runs into the evil driver at a race, and has a crash. He loses ten races on the trot, and is finally sacked by the team he races for, which promptly employs the evil driver. The installments begin to pile up, and eventually, the couple lose all they had.

Till the utterly predictable happens: the hero gets back to the race track, beats evil driver, salvages his name and career, and eventually moves back into the same fancy house he and his family had to vacate an hour earlier. This time, with the pledge that he will not buy things on credit.

The film itself is terrible. But sometimes, it is more fun to look at what a film could have been. Every narrative is pregnant with other possibilities; whether the end is tragedy or farce could well depend on which Marx wrote the screenplay, Karl or Groucho.

Ta Ra Rum Pum is a fantasy. It is a fantasy because it tells us, in the end, that our consumption need not be financed by debt. This is of course ridiculous, as anyone who has salivated at the latest plasma TV or a three-bedroom apartment knows. What used to be thought of as consumer durables are no longer so durable - the latest music system, or car, or refrigerator muscles out models released barely a couple of years ago.

In an earlier day and age, the middle class' craving for consumption was satisfied by foreign trips, and by dowry. No more. No more do you have to wait for a rich uncle to return from London or Dubai with flashy goggles, a Walkman, and a bottle of Johnny Walker. No more is extortion through marriage the only way to acquire a Bajaj scooter of dubious fuel-efficiency. Not that these avenues, benign as well as benighted, are no longer in use. Just that these are no longer the only ones available. Your bank calls you on Diwali-eve to give you a pre-approved loan of half a million rupees. What for, you ask. The call centre employee at the other end is incredulous: "You mean don't want to buy anything?"

Debt servicing becomes a critical part of the monthly budget. Some cope, some don't. Those who do, trapeze from one high-paying job to the next higher-paying job. Consumption has to be kept up. The only way to do so is to ensure that you don't hang around in the same company too long. This is of course the very opposite of what our fathers and uncles believed in. In those Five Year Plan days, you joined a company and grew with it. Today, though, if you want to keep up with servicing your debt, fidelity to job is anathema.

Companies evolve all sorts of ways to retain employees. Perquisites and paid holidays are what the upper end of the spectrum get. At the lower end, things are murkier. After courts ruled that companies cannot coerce employees to remain by making them sign bonds, companies - especially in the IT sector - make potential employees pay for getting jobs. You pay, say, forty or sixty or eighty thousand rupees at the time of joining, and the company pays you your salary, plus, say, two thousand rupees per month - this is from the money you paid at the point of joining. Forty thousand divided by two thousand is twenty - so you are compelled to stay with the company for at least twenty months. As soon as those twenty months are over, though, you are ready to move to another job.

Whatever else you may or may not do, though, living without debt is not an option. Be forever unsatisfied, Shah Rukh Khan tells us: do not be santusht (satisfied). The size of the moneyed middle class may be a matter of dispute, but the survival of corporations, and of consumer capitalism itself, depends upon the ability of corporations to draw more and more people into the web of consumption, whether they can afford it or not. Accordingly, the middle class - or, more precisely, the lower middle class - is suddenly thrusting itself into our imagination, via films and television.

The film I began with, Ta Ra Rum Pum, becomes interesting for this reason: it actually depicts the experience of the lower middle class, lusting after consumption but unable to service the resultant debt.

The career of the most interesting screenplay writer currently working in the Hindi film industry could be explained by this fact, that he is able to capture the experience of the lower middle class. I am talking about Jaideep Sahni, and his filmography includes Company, Bunty aur Bubli, Khosla ka Ghosla, Chak de India. Company, a story of a lower middle class Bombay boy who rises to become a gangster; Bunty aur Bubli, a story of two small-town lower middle class kids and their adventures on the margins of illegality; Khosla ka Ghosla, a story of a lower middle class family struggling to get back the plot of land they have sunk in their lives savings to buy; and Chak de India, a story of a lower middle class hockey player who fights, along with a bunch of mostly lower middle class girls, to redeem his reputation as a patriot.

The lower middle class of Jaideep Sahni's films is very different from the middle class of the old Basu Chatterjee-Amol Palekar films, largely because the nature of the middle class itself has changed, along with their attitudes, perceptions, aspirations and frustrations. That much is obvious enough. What is not so immediately obvious is that while Jaideep Sahni's middle class is upwardly mobile - or at least aspires to be upwardly mobile, using means fair and not so fair - the world they inhabit is, in the end, a world of fantasy. It is a world where a family has to neither sell its old house nor take a home loan to buy a new one, or a world where India can achieve sporting success on the world stage purely on the basis of grit and determination.

But the relationship between the upper and lower middle class is not without its own tensions either. The upper middle class have only disdain for the lower middle class. One recent film explores this tension quite pointedly: Bheja Fry, a take off on the French film Le Dîner de cons. The premise of the film is simple: a bunch of wealthy friends get together every Friday and invite an "idiot" and make fun of him. The "idiot" obviously does not realise he is being made fun of. What Bheja Fry is able to depict beautifully is the utter disdain that the upper middle class has for the lower middle, its callousness, its self-centeredness, and its complete inability to see anything from the other's point of view, even if the other happens to be your own wife.

Yet, this lower middle class still has to be drawn into the cycle of endless consumption. In one sense, that is the great drama being played out on Indian television as well. Consider the so-called "reality shows" and "talent hunts." There is nothing "real" about them at all, nor is the purpose of the shows to hunt talent.

But that is not the point. Look at the individuals you see on these shows: most of them are from smaller towns, and most of them belong resolutely to the lower middle class. It is critical that this class be dished out the fantasy of unimaginable fame and unimaginable riches, even if that fantasy is to last merely a moment. In its ephemerality, in fact, the fantasy mimics the act of consumption itself: the moment of consumption is the very moment of utter boredom, the very moment when one has to start looking for the next moment of climactic release, the next moment of fantasy.

It is only fitting then, that the instrument of drawing the lower middle class into the fantasy of fame, riches and endless consumption is the ubiquitous mobile phone. The illusion of "reality" is made possible by the mobile phone, by the act of "voting." That the act of voting is simultaneously an act of consumption (you have to first buy a mobile phone, then you have to buy a pre- or post-paid plan, then you have to vote, for which again you pay) is neither coincidental nor trivial. The only reality in the reality shows is the reality of consumption. And who takes part in this reality of consumption? Overwhelmingly, it is the lower middle class, otherwise hidden from public view in cities like Solapur or Siliguri or Silchar.

To draw the lower middle class into the cycle of endless debt is critical, because that is the only thing that will sustain the endless consumption of the wealthy.

One final point about Hindi cinema. The fact that these kind of films are being made today is directly related to the multiplex boom. Only the multiplex, with its higher ticket prices per seat as well as with its multiplicity of screenings, makes possible the margins that enable such, relatively small budget and somewhat offbeat films, possible. In turn, the multiplex is itself made possible by the middle class's increased ability to spend on ephemeral consumption. And the multiplex, which originated in the affluent sections of our metros, has now moved to other areas as well: to the less affluent sections in the metros, as well as to non-metros. In other words, the condition that makes these films possible in the first place - the multiplex model of revenue generation - is also predicated on the very phenomenon the films reflect - the drawing of the lower middle class into the fantasy of endless consumption.

Sudhanva Deshpande is an actor and director with Jana Natya Manch, and works as editor with LeftWord Books, New Delhi. He can be reached at deshsud@rediffmail.com.

Mail à la police sans réponse depuis trois ans

> Monsieur,Madame
> Je vous écris pour vous faire part d'une arrestation à
> la quelle j'ai assisté. Cela s'est passé le Jeudi 30
> Décembre 2004 à 17h45 environ devant le café Starbucks
> du Forum des Halles à Paris.
> Les policiers ont sauté sur le suspect juste devant
> l'endroit où mon amie et moi même étions assis. Le
> suspect étant apparemment maitrisé, un policier a
> entrepris de frapper avec un matraque les jambes du
> suspect. Ensuite,un autre policier lui a dit: "Lèves
> toi pédé".
> Je voudrais savoir si ce que j'ai vu est une procédure
> normale,et sinon, que comptez vous faire?
> Salutations distinguées,

Dinner in Beirut...

Robert Fisk: Dinner in Beirut, and a lesson in courage

Published: 29 September 2007

Secrecy, an intellectual said, is a powerful aphrodisiac. Secrecy is exciting. Danger is darker, more sinister. It blows like a fog through the streets of Beirut these days, creeping down the laneways where policemen – who may or may not work for the forces of law and order – shout their instructions through loud-hailers.

No parking. Is anyone fooled? When the Lebanese MP Antoine Ghanem was assassinated last week, the cops couldn't – or wouldn't – secure the crime scene. Why not? And so last Wednesday, the fog came creeping through the iron gateway of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt's town house in Beirut where he and a few brave MPs had gathered for dinner before parliament's useless vote on the presidential elections – now delayed until 23 October. There was much talk of majorities and quorums; 50 plus one appears to be the constitutional rule here, although the supporters of Syria would dispute that. I have to admit I still meet Lebanese MPs who don't understand their own parliamentary system; I suspect it needs several PhDs to get it right.

The food, as always, was impeccable. And why should those who face death by explosives or gunfire every day not eat well? Not for nothing has Nora Jumblatt been called the world's best hostess. I sat close to the Jumblatts while their guests – Ghazi Aridi, the minister of information, Marwan Hamade, minister of communications, and Tripoli MP Mosbah Al-Ahdab and a Beirut judge – joked and talked and showed insouciance for the fog of danger that shrouds their lives.

In 2004, "they" almost got Hamade at his home near my apartment. Altogether, 46 of Lebanon's MPs are now hiding in the Phoenicia Hotel, three to a suite. Jumblatt had heard rumours of another murder the day before Ghanem was blown apart. Who is next? That is the question we all ask. "They" – the Syrians or their agents or gunmen working for mysterious governments – are out there, planning the next murder to cut Fouad Siniora's tiny majority down. "There will be another two dead in the next three weeks," Jumblatt said. And the dinner guests all looked at each other.

"We have all made our wills," Nora said quietly. Even you, Nora? She didn't think she was a target. "But I may be with Walid." And I looked at these educated, brave men – their policies not always wise, perhaps, but their courage unmistakable – and pondered how little we Westerners now care for the life of Lebanon.

There is no longer a sense of shock when MPs die in Beirut. I don't even feel the shock. A young Lebanese couple asked me at week's end how Lebanon has affected me after 31 years, and I said that when I saw Ghanem's corpse last week, I felt nothing. That is what Lebanon has done to me. That is what it has done to all the Lebanese.

Scarcely 1,000 Druze could be rounded up for Ghanem's funeral. And even now there is no security. My driver Abed was blithely permitted to park only 100 metres from Jumblatt's house without a single policeman checking the boot of his car. What if he worked for someone more dangerous than The Independent's correspondent? And who were all those cops outside working for?

Yet at this little dinner party in Beirut, I could not help thinking of all our smug statesmen, the Browns and the Straws and the Sarkozys and the imperious Kouchners and Merkels and their equally smug belief that they are fighting a "war on terror" – do we still believe that, by the way? – and reflect that here in Beirut there are intellectual men and women who could run away to London or Paris if they chose, but prefer to stick it out, waiting to die for their democracy in a country smaller than Yorkshire. I don't think our Western statesmen are of this calibre.

Well, we talked about death and not long before midnight a man in a pony tail and an elegant woman in black (a suitable colour for our conversation) arrived with an advertisement hoarding that could be used in the next day's parliament sitting. Rafiq Hariri was at the top. And there was journalist Jibran Tueni and MP Pierre Gemayel and Hariri's colleague Basil Fleihan, and Ghanem of course. All stone dead because they believed in Lebanon.

What do you have to be to be famous in Lebanon, I asked Jumblatt, and he burst into laughter. Ghoulish humour is in fashion.

And at one point Jumblatt fetched Curzio Malaparte's hideous, brilliant account of the Second World War on the eastern front – Kaputt – and presented it to me with his personal inscription. "To Robert Fisk," he wrote. "I hope I will not surrender, but this book is horribly cruel and somehow beautiful. W Joumblatt [sic]." And I wondered how cruelty and beauty can come together.

Maybe we should make a movie about these men and women. Alastair Sim would have to play the professorial Aridi, Clark Gable the MP Al-Ahdab. (We all agreed that Gable would get the part.) I thought that perhaps Herbert Lom might play Hamade. (I imagine he is already Googling for Lom's name.) Nora? She'd have to be played by Vivien Leigh or – nowadays – Demi Moore. And who would play Walid Jumblatt? Well, Walid Jumblatt, of course.

But remember these Lebanese names. And think of them when the next explosion tears across this dangerous city.