All posts by SANSAD

ICW statement on “Hindus for Trump”

Solidarity Links

Resist Bigotry, Recover Solidarity: Say No to “Hindus for Trump”

 

February 12, 2018:  We, the members of India Civil Watch (ICW) reject unequivocally the rank opportunism of “Hindus for Trump” (henceforth HFT) that leads them to offer to pay for President Trump’s proposed wall at the Mexican border as long as it will facilitate their own presumed ability to stay in the U.S.

 

The enthusiastic support of HFT’s members – immigrants or children of immigrants themselves – for Trump’s racist anti-immigration policies is the worst kind of political expediency. Supporting thus the bigoted and vindictive policies of an administration that openly expresses racist contempt against immigrants, minorities, and non-white populations of the world is an affront to South Asian communities in the U.S., a diverse population in terms of class, caste and status, which often shares with other Americans of color their struggles for dignity and a stable livelihood, and aspirations for lives free of racist and sexist discrimination.

 

HFT’s demands for exceptional treatment in the immigration process are based in ‘model minority’ rhetoric, and an expectation that their class status should grant them immunity from America’s social hierarchies and legal regimes. They would however do well to heed Dalip Singh Saund, the first Asian-American elected representative in U.S. Congress, who compared caste in India with race in the U.S. while demanding civil rights for all.

 

HFT’s support for Trump’s “merit-based” immigration system is consistent with their opposition to affirmative action (known as “reservations”) in India, designed to provide access to jobs and educational opportunities to those suffering from centuries of oppression under India’s caste system. A large proportion of Indian immigrants are from communities of privilege that have benefited from caste hierarchy, which denied economic and social opportunities to generations of those consigned to so-called “lower caste” communities. It is not surprising that HFT is an avid supporter of the Islamophobic and casteist policies of Indian Prime Minister Modi, who, inspired by Hindu Supremacist ideology (known as “Hindutva”) sees non-Hindus and oppressed castes as permanent second-class citizens.

 

HFT’s embrace of white supremacist rhetoric about immigration is particularly contradictory given the discrimination and exploitation that Indian workers historically faced in the U.S. It was barely a hundred years ago that Punjabi farm workers laboring in the fields of California made common cause and built community with Mexican immigrants working alongside them, navigating exclusionary laws around land ownership and civil rights, but also drawing hope in the commonality of their lived experiences.

 

ICW believes that our political work should be based on relationships of solidarity and a recognition of shared histories of neocolonial exploitation as seen in the shining example of the drivers from the New York Taxi Workers’ Alliance who staged an impromptu strike at JFK to protest against Trump’s Muslim ban. We list below a brief sampling of statements from South Asian and Indian groups fighting for labor, immigrant, and minority rights that have explicitly dissented from groups like HFT that support Trump’s bigoted policies.

 

A community that has produced a Ravi Ragbir who stands for the rights of the undocumented, should not have to settle for a Shalli Kumar (founder of ‘Hindus for Trump’), who seeks to ingratiate himself to white supremacists for a shameful seat at the table of injustice. Indian Americans can draw inspiration and take pride in a Kshama Sawant who fights for working people, instead of being embarrassed globally by a Nikki Haley who serves the dangerously militaristic foreign policies of the Trump administration. ICW calls on Indian communities in the U.S. to actively participate in anti-racist, anti-caste and and anti-colonial politics, both in the U.S. and in India.

 

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List of Statements:

 

India Civil Watch is a collective of Indian-Americans committed to furthering progressive politics in the USA and India. For more information, please write to indiacivilwatch@gmail.com

 

 

SANSAD Events

Book launch with David Barsamian

Panel: David Barsamian, Lindsay Brown, Annie Ross, Dionne Bunsha

Moderator: Samir Gandesha

Saturday, February 24, 2 pm – 4 pm
Harbor Centre Rm 7000
515 W Hastings Street, Vancouver
Global Discontents is a compelling new set of interviews with Noam Chomsky, who identifies the “dry kindling” of discontent around the world that could soon catch fire. In wide-ranging interviews with David Barsamian, his longtime interlocutor, Noam Chomsky asks us to consider “the world we are leaving to our grandchildren”: one imperiled by the escalation of climate change and the growing threat of nuclear war. If the current system is incapable of dealing with these crises, he argues, it’s up to us to radically change it. These ten interviews examine the latest developments around the globe: the devastation of Syria, the reach of state surveillance, growing anger over economic inequality, the place of religion in American political culture, and the bitterly contested 2016 U.S. presidential election. In accompanying personal reflections, Chomsky describes his own intellectual journey and the development of his uncompromising stance as America’s premier dissident intellectual.David Barsamian: One of America’s most tireless and wide-ranging investigative journalists, David Barsamian has altered the independent media landscape, both with his weekly radio show Alternative Radio—now in its 32th year—and his books with Noam Chomsky, Eqbal Ahmad, Howard Zinn, Tariq Ali, Richard Wolff, Arundhati Roy and Edward Said. His new book with Noam Chomsky is Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy. He lectures on world affairs, imperialism, capitalism, propaganda, the media, the economic crisis and global rebellions.
David Barsamian is the winner of the Media Education Award, the ACLU’s Upton Sinclair Award for independent journalism, and the Cultural Freedom Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. The Institute for Alternative Journalism named him one of its Top Ten Media Heroes. He is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center. In 2017 the South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy presented him with their Lifetime Achievement Award. He has collaborated with the world-renowned Kronos Quartet in events in New York, London, Vienna, Boulder and elsewhere.
Barsamian was deported from India due to his work on Kashmir and other revolts. He is still barred from traveling to “the world’s largest democracy.”

Lindsay Brown is a Vancouver writer, designer and activist. Her book, Habitat 76, an illustrated history of Vancouver’s 1976 UN Habitat Conference on Human Settlements was published in 2017.

Dionne Bunsha is an award-winning author and journalist. She is the author of the acclaimed non-fiction book, Scarred: Experiments with Violence in Gujarat (Penguin India, 2006) about the aftermath of the communal violence in Gujarat. As a Senior Assistant Editor for Frontline magazine (www.frontline.in) in Mumbai, India, she travelled extensively to report on human rights, social justice and environmental issues.  Dionne writes for The Guardian, The Hindu newspaper, the New Internationalist, Guernica, Toronto Star and The Tyee. Dionne was a Knight International Journalism Fellow at Stanford University in 2008-09. Currently, Dionne coordinates a project mapping indigenous knowledge for Lower Fraser First Nations and teaches communications at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

 

Samir Gandesha is an Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and Director of the Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University. His recent books include  Reification and Spectacle: On the Timeliness of Western Marxism and Aesthetic Marx.

Annie Ross is an Indigenous (Maya) teacher and artist working along and with community in Canada. She teaches Environmental Ethics in First Nations Studies at Simon Fraser University.

Organized by South Asian Network for Secularism (SANSAD) and co-sponsored by the Institute for the Humanities, Simon Fraser University

Canada must sign the Ban Treaty

Solidarity Links
Vancouver Sun
Canada must change course on nuclear disarmament
M.V. RAMANA
LAUREN J. BORJA
Published on: December 10, 2017

On Sunday, Japanese-Canadian Setsuko Thurlow was recognized at the award ceremony for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. But rather than celebrating this momentous occasion, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has dismissed the effort for which the prize is being awarded: the creation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, also known as the Ban Treaty. The treaty bans the development, production, possession, use, and threat of use of nuclear weapons and was adopted by 122 countries at the United Nations this year.

The Nobel was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), the group that advocated for the Ban Treaty. In turn, ICAN chose to have Thurlow, one of the last living survivors of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, receive the award along with its executive director. Thurlow immigrated to Canada as an adult and has tirelessly advocated for the abolition of nuclear weapons. She was made a member of the Order of Canada in recognition of her work emphasizing the cataclysmic humanitarian consequences of war and the need for peace. Her speeches recounting the sheer horror of that fateful day in August 1945 when the people of Hiroshima were burnt, blasted, and irradiated by the bomb dropped by the U.S. helped propel the campaign for the Ban Treaty.

One of those moving speeches was delivered at the United Nations earlier this year when the Ban Treaty was being negotiated. But there was no Canadian delegation present to hear it. Canada’s absence was likely due to a note last year from the U.S. Mission to NATO with clear instructions: “The United States calls on all allies and partners to vote against negotiations on a nuclear weapons treaty ban, not to merely abstain. In addition, if negotiations do commence, we ask allies and partners to refrain from joining them.”

Canada’s government did refrain. When the Ban Treaty opened for signature at the United Nations in September of this year, Canada was not among the 53 nations that signed.

The Canadian government offers a rationale and an alternative. It claims that the Ban Treaty was “certain to be ineffective” because of lack of participation by nuclear weapon states. Trudeau went as far as to deem the treaty “sort of useless” in Parliament, even before negotiations concluded and the contours of the treaty finalized.

The government’s preferred alternative disarmament strategy involves what is sometimes called a step-by-step approach involving the negotiation and implementation of a series of arms control treaties. There are two problems with this approach. First, the two main treaties that have been talked about — a ban on nuclear weapons explosions and a ban on the production of fissile material to make nuclear weapons — have been stalled since 1996. Differing views among the nuclear weapon states have prevented even the commencement of negotiations on the latter treaty. The second problem with the step-by-step approach is that it allows the nuclear weapon states to establish the pace of disarmament.

The leading nuclear weapon states today are shifting farther away from even this glacial approach to disarmament. Earlier this year, Christopher Ford, a Trump administration official, stated: “The traditional post-cold war approach of seeking to demonstrate disarmament bona fides by showing steady numerical movement towards elimination…has largely run its course and is no longer tenable.”

This leaves Canada in a tight spot. In October of this year, after the announcement about Thurlow and the peace prize, Prime Minister Trudeau told reporters: “any time you’re going to talk about moving forward on a nuclear-free world, you have to focus on the countries that already have nuclear weapons and therefore look at reducing that amount.”

If this were indeed true, Canada should stop talking about a nuclear-free world, or it should start calling upon the United States—its ally—to reduce its arsenal. At a time when there is widespread concern that nuclear weapons might be used on the Korean peninsula, it is critical that we continue talking about the importance of a nuclear-free world. Abandoning the pursuit of nuclear disarmament would be an unfortunate choice. Encouraging the United States to move towards eliminating nuclear weapons would be timely, but perhaps not so palatable to the Trump administration as it embarks on upgrading its nuclear weapons at an estimated cost of $1.25 trillion.

If Prime Minister Trudeau does not find either of these options appealing, the international community now offers him an alternative: join the vast majority of countries in banning nuclear weapons.

M.V. Ramana is professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the UBC’s Liu Institute for Global Issues, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs; Lauren J. Borja is a post-doctoral fellow at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs.

No country for Afrazul

South Asia Bulletin

No country for Afrazul

Today Rajsamand is no faraway place. And the Shambhulals know they can get away with murder

Written by Syeda Hameed | Updated: December 12, 2017 11:06 am

rajasthan hacking, afrazul khan, Rajasthan hate crime, Rajsamand, Shambhulal, Indian express columnsShambhulal Regar, and (inset) Mohammed Afrazul.

As a member of the (erstwhile) Planning Commission, I looked after Rajasthan for 10 years as one of my three allocated states. After wandering all over the country, I wrote a book recording my experiences. The book was titled ‘Beautiful Country: Stories from Another India’. The India I saw was truly beautiful but mostly unseen because it was off the beaten circuit of media and tourism. I wrote about one such spot, Rajsamand, which is best known for the splendid Kumbhalgarh Fort surrounded by the longest wall second only to the wall of China. I stood looking at the wildlife sanctuary surrounding the Fort. I drove around the lovely Rajsamand Lake. A nearby village, Khelwara, seemed to me ideal for village-tourism where visitors would experience the lifestyle of Mewar. My Rajasthan chapter began with hope because I saw this state soar, leaving behind its BIMARU tag.

Today Rajsamand has got a new tag. It will go down in the history of world horrors as the spot where a man was hacked to death and burnt for his grievous sin of being Muslim.

Afrazul Khan was a migrant labourer from Malda district of West Bengal who for three decades was engaged in seasonal work in Rajasthan. The man who hacked and burnt him was Shambhulal Regar, described by Anand Shrivastava, IG Udaipur range, as someone with a “fairly successful marble trading business”. The very first reports show no previous connection between the two. The video, which by now has been watched across the world, shows Shambhulal taking him behind his bike as if to show him the job to be done. Afrazul Islam was carrying his tools, one of which was an axe. This became, in a matter of minutes, a weapon with he was hacked to death before being set on fire.

This incident was captured on camera. Then came the words. In videos shot after the murder, the murderer shouted into the camera: Love jihad, Babri Masjid, Hindu girls, Padmavati. He screamed revenge against “these people” who have polluted his land. He, Shambhulal, will dispense justice by hacking and burning a 48 year-old migrant labourer a lesson for the entire “quom”. Afrazul will pay for the sins of his people. This heinous act, which many are scared to watch, is not only witnessed but filmed by Regar’s 14 year-old nephew and uploaded for the world.

In college I had read a poem of W.B. Yeats called ‘Sailing to Byzantium’. Its opening line has been haunting me since yesterday. “This is no country for old men”, Yeats wrote before sailing away to saner lands. I tell myself in the same vein, this is no country for Muslims. But while there are many Rajsamands, there is no Byzantium.

This is no country for Afrazul’s wife Gulbahar, for his daughters Joshanara, Rejina and Habiba. Indeed, this is no country for the 200 plus migrant labourers from Malda who work here. Messages hailing the killer are doing the rounds. One says “Love jihadiyon savdhaan, jaag utha hai Shambhulal Jai Shri Ram”.

On the day Afrazul’s killing was reported, the media was filled with reports of hate crimes against Muslims. The Vadodara corporator and BJP candidate for Dabhoi Assembly, Shailesh Mehta, is reported to have said that the “dadhi-topi” population of Dabhoi must be reduced because “there should be no population of Dubai” in Dabhoi. What is being suggested in this campaign speech? Shambhulals are getting the official nod to continue their mission of hacking Afrazuls. Hysterical families from Saiyadpur in Malda are phoning, urging their breadwinners to leave these killing fields of Rajsamand.

These hate-Muslims-kill-Muslims incidents are reported almost daily. Leaders express “sympathy” and dole out cash but give the goons open license to kill so long as it is dadhi-topi they target. The police generally responds to the powerful.

Women and men of courage stand up to agitate. In this case, the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, Dalit Shoshan Mukti Manch and 30 Rajasthan organisations have come forward to express their anguish. Activists from Delhi and other states are shouting ‘Muslim Lives Matter’.

This tragedy, too, will quickly fade from public memory in the cacophony of election results. Police will sink back into its habitual inertia, tick it off as another “dadhi-topi” case of “these people”. A few activists, journalists and lawyers will struggle to keep the issue alive. But the fabric of the nation, which began fraying with the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, has been torn to shreds after a quarter century. A complicit state has looked the other way and the incendiary rhetoric has become legitimised.

The question before the hate merchants is: What to do with us Muslims? This huge population of dadhi-topi? All of us cannot be hacked and burnt or be ethnic-cleansed. But we can be beaten into submission, therefore hate crimes are allowed free run. Shambhulals know they can get away. Those who announce prizes for severed heads of dissenters are valorised, jallads are garlanded, killers are given perpetual license to kill.

As I write this piece, I think of my visit to Rajsamand and my dream of making it part of a tourist circuit. I think of my animated talks with district officials in the evenings after walking tours across the wonder spots of Rajsamand.

For Rajasthan, I had written a hopeful epigraph in my book — in the words of Allama Iqbal: “Tu shaheen hai, parvaaz hai kaam tera/ Tere saamne aasmaan aur bhi hain (You are a falcon your mission is to soar/ There are many skies you must scale yet)”.

All that seems very far away in 2017 when the bones of Afrazul Khan have been placed in a kafan in Malda — a gift of hatred from Rajsamand.

Today, Muslims and all those who stand with them need to recall Faiz Ahmed Faiz. “Ya khauf se darguzrein ya jaan se guzar jaaein/ Marna hai ya jeena hai ek baat theher jaaye”. Either we banish fear or we die/ Decide once for all, will it be death or life.

The writer is a former member, Planning Commision