Samstag, 13. Dezember 2008

Will there be War?

No, not yet.

Last Wednesday, people in Bombay formed a human chain. It was two weeks since the bombs had gone off, and from Virar to Colaba people congregated for a few minutes to form a chain of a hundred kilometres. It was to remember the victims of 26/11, and to remind each other that the soldarity among the survivors still held.

But there were many gaps in that chain. After the saturation bombings of TV images, there was little live reporting. And the next morning, the newspapers buried the event in the inside pages.

The front pages, instead, were full of Pakistan. How Pakistan needed to be taught a lesson, how that country was in denial by blaming India for the attacks rather than taking a look at itself, how India needed to free Pakistan from its own demons . The shouts for war are growing louder. I was startled by the voice of a man whom I know well, a reasonable and warm-hearted human being. He said: "We have to finally show the Pakistanis that we mean business".

The statement of Arun Shourie, member of parliament for the BJP, in the debate on the terror attacks, got wide coverage. Who wants to listen to Gandhi, he seemed to ask, who wants the Mahatma's bland admonition, that 'an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind': "Not an eye for an eye, but an eye for two eyes!", he shouted in Parliament. "Not a tooth for a tooth, but a tooth for a whole jaw!" - the broken tooth being Bombay, and the jaw to be broken being Pakistan.

But there are also sane voices, authoritative ones.

Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said quite clearly that war is not an option, and numerous commentators explained why. In the 'Indian Express Shekhar Gupta warned that it would be a short war, with no permanent strategic gains for India. The US and the world community would do their best to stop the two nuclear States from spinning out of control. In fact a war would hurt India's interests, because it would bring down the civilian government in Pakistan, and with it its fledgling democracy, by restoring Army rule. Kashmir would be back on the front-burner, and with it the legitimacy of all these terrorist outfits in Pakistan. A war would reduce the pressure on them along the Afghan border. In short, it would strengthen the network which had brought havoc to Bombay rather than weaken it.

Finally, there was the voice of the electorate. Six States voted in regional elections, and from the villages of central India to the borders with Burma in the East and with Pakistan in the West, the verdict seemed unanimous: terrorism is bad, but so is the terrorism of poverty. Give us not only police security, but also food security, and we will (re-)elect you. (As I write, the results from Jammu&Kashmir are not yet in).

Yet, among the classes that count when it comes to military war - the urban electorate, the political class, the social and economic elites - there is no doubt that nerves are badly frayed, that frustration over Pakistan is at a high, that teeth are clenched. One more spark, and war could explode.

I remember a similar moment in 2002, after the attack against the Indian Parliament by the 'Lashkar-e-Toyba', among others. The Indian Army mobilised, Pakistan followed suit, and both moved their tank regiments to the border, staring at each other within shooting distance. For months, there was a delicate balance between war and no-war. Then, in May 2002, a three-man commando stormed into an Indian Army camp in Kaluchak near Jammu and killed 34 people, most of them wives and children of soldiers. Not only the politicians were furious, even the Army was bristling, rearing to strike back. For a moment it seemed that this had been the last straw, that an inflection point had been crossed. It took the whole weight of Western diplomacy - and Prime Minister Vajpayee's dithering - to stop India from crossing the border.

What will it be this time? What will happen if the next Indian city is attacked? Because make no mistake about it: the next attack will come. Internal security is in shambles, and to build it up will take five years, according to experts. And, as Shourie said in the same speech (rightly this time): The security apparatus will be preparing for yesterday's attack - yesterday's targets, yesterday's tactics - and not tomorrow's. And when it comes, the political masters will probably buckle under the pressure from an angry public and from their own frustration.

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But then, isn't traditional war old-fashioned and deja-vu, almost as old as a medieval clash of swords and lances, of horses and war elephants?

Earlier this week, when I took a train into town, I passed the Office of the Bombay Municipal Corporation, the Mantralaya, the Police Headquarters, the Gateway of India on my way to the Alibagh ferry. It reminded me of Kabul.

My earliest recollection of the Afghan capital is of a town with wide boulevards, with bustling bazaars and lawns in front of Government buildings, where people sat in groups and chatted. When I last visited, Kabul was in a state of siege, with police controls and security checks everywhere, the gardens full of sandbags instead of almond trees.

What I see in Mumbai today are the same signposts of war: police everywhere, X-Ray frames, even sandbags. And, in the last two weeks, the sound of helicopter rotors overhead. Of course, there still are the traffic jams, the beauty of 'Queen's Necklace', Rajabhai Tower and the Oval, the hawkers and the party-goers, the beggars and the tiffinwallahs. But by clinging to these securing images, aren't we screening out, unconsciously, all the tell-tale signs of a state of siege?

We are in a new kind of war, in which the concept of a frontline with trenches and bunkers seems like a romantic idea. Maybe our conscious mind refuses to accept that the new global warfare, like global trade, has no fixed borders anymore. We still cling to our old-fashioned concept of war so that we can create our comfortable private spaces, so that (at least in our heads) there is still the wide expanse of an open and friendly city.

But if we look closely, we will find that our unconscious selves have already internalised the fears of the new war. We worry when we send the children to school. When we take our morning stroll or drive to town, our eyes are alert instead of carefree or inward-looking. When I entered the train compartment yesterday, everyone looked at me intently, and observed my every movement - how I placed my shopping bag in the overhead compartment, how I took of my rucksack, and what I took out of it. Later, when I passed under the X ray frame at the Gateway and the beeper went off, the police asked what was in my bag. I said 'Laptop' and the officer, repeated loudly 'Computer' to his men, exchanging meaningful glances with them, as I unpacked it.

I was a bit angry, upset that I had passed through three checks on my way into town - MY town. But then I remembered the list of names and places which Mohammed Ansari had mentioned in his statement to the police. Ansari is the local Lashkar-e-Toyba accomplice who last February had reccied possible locations for the 'fedayeen' attack against Bombay. The list contained not only city landmarks and transport hubs, not only the Gateway and the famous hotels, the Government buildings and the Stock Exchange. There were also Temples and churches, suburban railway stations and picknick spots.

Among them was Mount Mary Church, not two hundred metres from where I live. Suddenly I realised, with a start, that war was not a distant thunder anymore, in far-away Kabul and Kandahar. Kandahar is also the name of a restaurant in the Oberoi Hotel in Bombay.

Will there be War? Aren't we in it already?


Freitag, 5. Dezember 2008

The Audacity of Hope?

The Audacity of Hope?

Dear Friends

Yesterday, one week after the terror attack in Bombay, I went to the Gateway of India, right next to the Taj Mahal Hotel.

I was not alone. A man called Suparn Verma had said on his blog passionforcinema.com last Saturday that he would stand in front of the Taj at six p.m. on December 3. What started as a one-man action became a tsunami. Thanks to blogs, Twittr, SMSes and E-Mails over 20’000 people descended on South Bombay, crowding not just the Gateway, but spilling over into the Regal Roundabout, and from there into the streets leading away from it, down the Colaba Causeway, past Leopold Café, right to the Nariman House lane.

There were no platforms, no official speakers, no public address system, no prepared agenda. People just walked along, stood around, assembled in small groups. From time to time slogans came up somewhere in the crowd, and died down, then someone started the National Anthem, making everyone stand still and join the singing, before the throng started again towards nowhere in particular, some with candles, some without.

Presumably, people had had the same reaction as we had, when the heard about it. They responded to the electronic messaging because they wanted to commemorate the dead, express their gratitude towards the soldiers, to the Hotel staffs. Or they wanted to express their disgust at the politicians and the State for having allowed terror to take over our life. The anger was palpabe. I saw an elderly Parsi gentleman standing in the middle of the road with others. A policeman nudged him gently aside, so that the cars stuck in the crowd could move again. He reacted sharply, brushed away the hand of the cop, and said something like ‘Leave me alone’.

Some people had come with placards, from small A4 sheets to large banners. They wore their agenda on their sleeves: ‘We the People’, said one, ‘Accountability and Anger’,’Enough of Gandhigiri. Now it’s tit-for-tat’. Some people cried ‘We want War’, ‘Ane eye for two eyes’ and ‘Pakistan Murdabad’ – ‘Death to Pakistan’. But if the mood turned belligerent at times, it wasn’t so much against Pakistan as against the politicians. A poster read: ‘We would prefer a dog visit out house than a politician’, another: ‘There are a few more terrorists in India, and they are Politicians’.

But on the whole, it was a peaceful demonstration of Bombay’s citizens, yearning for peace, surprised and relieved that they suddenly found themselves not alone, without the agenda of political parties, without the hammering voices of politicians. Many had done some homework, came with ‘agendas for action’.They attracted volunteers, decided to stay connected, to get engaged, to stand up and be counted.

It was a moving display of ‘people’s power’. I had not seen anything like that for 37 years. In December 1971, almost to the day, thousands of people had marched from the Gateway to Kala Ghoda, from there to Flora Fountain, and on to MG Road and Victoria Terminus. It had been in support of the Bangladesh freedom fighters and the Indian Army which had taken on the Pakistan Army. But another year also came to mind, again almost to the day: December 1992. In comparison to 1971, the demonstrations, against the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992, were a few lonely vigils at Flora Fountain and outside Mantralaya, and the exuberance of 1971 was replaced by fear and a deep sense of sadness.

This time, it was a mix of both. There was hope in the air, exhilaration that so many people came together, not only here, but also in Delhi, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad. There was a new-found sense of ‘yes, we can’. But, unlike that recent night at Grant Park, Chicago, it was tempered by grief, a sense of angry impotence, and a deep-felt concern for the survival of ‘the Idea of India’. But there was anger also, and it had a clear edge over the other feelings. There was a sense of ‘Yes, we can (throw you out)!’.

Is this, perhaps, India’s Obama moment? A few days before, I had written to a friend that in India ‘the Audacity of Hope’ had been overtaken by the ‘Audacity of Terrror’. Do I now have to revisit this pessimistic conclusion? Do the bombs and grenades and gunshots made us stand up, rather than silencing us? Will they provide a catharsis, a chance to clean up public life, politics, a ‘call to arms’ for Civil Society, to take responsibility, get engaged?

I don’t know, and doubts persist. How can a multitude of groups, people, friends, neighbours take responsibility beyond their personal lives? Who will give leadership, who will, as the ‘Times of India’ titled an article, provide ‘the face of Mumbai’, like Rudi Giuliani did after 9/11?

From the steps of Regal Cinema, as I looked at the multitude of people floating in all directions, not aggressively, vaguely focussed, waiting for nothing in particular to happen, I felt a deep void of leadership. In India today, all the leaders seem to be politicians, and they have perverted the very concept of leadership. The good men shy away from politics, and there is a huge empty space waiting to be filled. Because ultimately, there must be leadership, there is no alternative to it.

There must be a Gandhi somewhere around, a man, a woman who can give shape, focus, expression to that diffuse sense of revolt and hope. Nobody seems to believe that an Indian Obama could suddenly appear on the horizon.In the last few weeks, newspapaers have convincingly argued that in the political system of India, its size and and social complexity, its many faultlines and different aspirations, this just isn’t possible.

But that was before 26/11.

The attacks on Bombay have woken up the urban middle class, the upper-class elite, the businessmen and the media, like nothing has before, perhaps since 1947. Will it last, turn from anger and enthusiasm into action and transformation? I doubt it will, if there aren’t leaders rising from this movement, giving clarity, focus and organisational force to it.

And yet, I wonder. Maybe, just maybe, technology has changed the rules of the game. The networking capacities of the net and the mobile phone have perhaps done away with the old model of ‘a leader, a cadre, an organisation, a mass following’. Maybe we are at the threshold of ‘a million mutinies, now’ - grassroot mutinies, spontaneous, focussed around local, topical, burning issues, with the capacity to mobilise thousands of people within hours, keeping them networked, then letting them disperse again, coming together around another issue, another set of people.

Maybe this is an audacious hope. Maybe it is just a momentaneous reaction, a gut response to the ‘audacity of terror’ and the huge public insecurity.

But then, as Gandhi, as Barack Obama have shown, one has to ‘dare to dream’.

December 4, 2008