When we participate in acts of condemnation of largescale violence, we are moral beings. In our moral shoes, perhaps we continuously manufacture the contours and hues and textures of things that are worthy of condemnation. In doing so, we create repertories of power into which we offer tickets of membership only selectively.

But of course we do! You are absolutely right. All morality is enmeshed within repertories of power, within claims to the truth. And there is always a foundational discursive violence that accompanies the production of regimes of truth. But you still have to act in the world, fashion politics in the world. On what terms will you do it, knowing that to make any claim is to participate in a prior moment of ‘truth’ production?

Such that most other reactions (which do not ‘’sound” as rational, well-researched, reasonable, compassionate) become demonised or variously, trivialised or ignore-worthy.

Yes, but to whom do they become ignore-worthy? To me right? But I am not the only one in the world, and as it happens, my speech doesn’t actually carry very much weight. Okay, let me put it this way. The way I see it is, if I start by accepting that there are no transcendental claims to be made, no higher moral order on which the ‘truth’ of my claims can be based, and I am always in that sense pitching to my group of language-users and hoping to convert those who are not, then within my discursive space I will fashion my arguments in the form of universalist claims and hope that they sound more ‘rational’ more ‘just’ more ‘compassionate’ than the rest. Because what other form can my claim take?

What I must do, however, is continually pay attention to the genealogies of power which produce both my ‘truth’ and what I consider to be ‘just’ ‘reasonable’ ‘compassionate’, as well as the ‘irrational’ ‘unjust’ ‘grotesque’ ‘violent’ and so on.

When we stand in these shoes where very few can be accorded the privilege of being as reasonable and just and sensitive as us, are we creating and disseminating violent moral orders?

There is a danger I think in using the word ‘violence’ so loosely and for so many diverse and disparate process and actions, that it finally loses any clarity as a conceptual or descriptive category. This is not in anyway to state that moral orders are not violent. Certainly, some moral orders are extremely violent (caste, for instance). But the violence of a moral order is not defined or decided a priori, I would think. It emerges in working out, in living through it, in it. What begin as emancipatory orders, often turn violent – actually existing socialisms, for instance. But how do you decide this when the moral order doesn’t exist?

I’m only too willing admit of the inherent violence of my patriarchy-less, class-less, caste-less, labour-less, freedom-of-desire, equality-for-all moral order but I doubt its on the horizon any time soon ;)

I see two streams of reactions- that of anger (coloured by class, gender, ethnicity, political alignment) emanating from loss and vengeance. This perhaps informing the masculine calls for muscle-flexing across the border. The other being that of lament at loss and a rational call for justice without the hullabaloo of the nation-state with an injured masculinity.

I suppose my discomfort lies in the ‘violence is unfair when it is ghastly and gory and unreasonable” stance. When we participate in acts of condemnation of largescale violence, we are moral beings. In our moral shoes, perhaps we continuously manufacture the contours and hues and textures of things that are worthy of condemnation. In doing so, we create repertories of power into which we offer tickets of membership only selectively. Such that most other reactions (which do not ”sound” as rational, well-researched, reasonable, compassionate) become demonised or variously, trivialised or ignore-worthy. When we stand in these shoes where very few can be accorded the privilege of being as reasonable and just and sensitive as us, are we creating and disseminating violent moral orders? Of a kind that says the world is right in only it looks at things through our reasonable, rational, compassionate lenses? I wonder…

We could even argue, as Bataille has done or Zizek has done on some occasions, that there is something to be said for orgiastic violence qua violence. That is expresses, a la Baudrillard, the ‘repressed’ in vast monstrous form that which western hegemony has produced.

And none of these are merely academic wanking in my opinion. They give us a richer way to understand the genealogies of violence. But I don’t see why ‘recognizing the subjectivity of the person who chooses violent strategies’ and what you term ‘condemnation’ of those strategies are mutually exclusive. Again certainly ‘justice’ is a relative term. However lets not forget the genealogy of that term too and its location within a modern juridical discourse that interpellates us all and our understandings of the ‘legitimacy’ of violence. So I would be wary of deploying this term…

We don’t have to rely on Gandhian pacifism or left-of-centrism to fashion a critique. I’m increasingly coming round to the feeling that as of now there is actually nothing to do but wait it out, for there is actually no immediate ‘solution’ in that sense. There are of course long term political processes that have to be put in place. But I don’t have any trouble condemning attacks on unarmed civilians, nor calling this ‘terrorist’ activity. I don’t see why a rich understanding of both the ways in which we are implicated in the violence of the state, and the subjectivities that produce terrorist action, precludes my taking a position on the latter. Since I am privileged and protected by my class, I can with equal impunity condemn police action in Jamia Nagar and terrorist violence in Mumbai….

We could hardly say enough about the inherent problems with a theorist subjecting the self to analysis, or the complexities that arise when trying to interpret such an analysis. Nivedita tries to place herself in the position of a third party, rational observer, and the better she is able to scramble to that outpost of dry land, the better she is likely able to see. In this case at least, I don’t think she does (or can) get very far – which is part of the reason her prescription of this undefined absolute justice is so unsatisfying. Are we to pit Lashkar-e-Insaaf against Lashkar-e-Taiba?

In any case, thats not why I said the author sounded elitist. That remark referred only to her characterization of those who work at the Taj. As an aside, I really don’t think its a mortal sin even if that description did come off as being faintly classist – many of the authors on kafila belong to this privileged group and it would only be human if they occasionally slipped into the elitism they criticize. As to whether Nivedita meant to imply that the Taj staff are exploited and share no ownership of their place of work, – I’ll leave you with her words.

“Bit puzzling, this. The Taj (you do mean the luxury hotel, not the monument?) belongs spatially to the waiters, drivers and cleaners? Yes, they inhabited the same space, and they died there like the people they waited upon, and whose toilets and cars they cleaned, but the space certainly did not belong to them. Think – do they even use the same lifts as the customers?”

Those are either very poorly chosen words (which would be out of character for the author) or betray a perfectly human slip into a class identity – of the kind that shekhar gupta for instance is being ripped to shreds for.

As far as the way the media covered Mumbai – thats a separate issue. There may be much to criticize there but equally – we heard many voices and saw many images and obviously the ones you remember have a lot to do with the perspective you bring to the table. That apart – the burning Taj did affect people like Vir Sanghvi or Simi Garewal or any of the hundreds of other voices we heard. My criticism was in expecting them to tell you a story that was not influenced by this personal connection. Which is why I asked Nivedita how much of this cool rationality she normally expects from someone shaken up? The media has not purely played this incident out as an exercise in classist narrative. It has given you a story that is personal – because the news this time was personal. Vir sanghvi is not creating an urban legend because he is classist. Instead that is the only truthful story to tell – if you’ve lived your life drinking scotch at the Taj and getting to know the waiters, then this is the kind of story you tell – of a scared clientele and of a heroic staff. You can play that theme differently but only with a conscious detached effort – and thats an effort we should not expect from someone who may be personally affected. Some in the media have been more ‘objective’ but Nivedita chooses to ignore them entirely.

Finally, as for the families of those killed, they’ve sounded more helpless and exhausted then ‘rational’. If stunned shock happens to sound like the rationality you are looking to find in them, then sure we can call them rational. Incidentally its not only those who get killed (or their families) who are affected by something like this. They are only the worst hit, but please don’t assume that everyone you say is ‘hijacking’ the debate is not ‘actually affected’. If 200 odd deaths were the only costs of something like this, terrorism would be a pretty small problem.

Ultimately I’m not saying the media is perfect, or that there are not perspectives that have been ignored (unfairly) in the narratives we’ve heard. All I’m saying is – you don’t need to appeal to classism to explain much of this. Theres a simpler explanation, which also has the virtue of greater empathy and a little more kindness.

Indeed, every working class person who lives their lives within the mesh of violence, deprivation and desperation we have woven around us, without succumbing to the random urge to hit or kill somebody is heroic. Normalcy is these times for a bulk of humanity is heroic no? But we will never hear about that will we?

I wanted throw in the idea ”’we, the safe people” who live the ”safe life” (ensconced in class, ethnicity, gender, innocence, intellect, whatever) are probably not just innocent subjects of the bad state. We participate in violent processes (very often within and in consonance with state spaces) in our everyday lives, and see justice coloured in terms of the just lives that we live. So for us to pass the buck on to the bad state for acts of marginalisation is a bit disingenuous, we participate in many of these exclusions than we give ourselves credit for. For those of us, who are bad subjects of the bad state, justice would be coloured quite differently, I believe.

What I’m hinting at is the subjectivity with which we establish ”our safe justice” as the cornerstone of the lifeworlds that we are part of, that happen to warmly welcome anyone else that wants to join our party.

It is easy to colour the terrorist as irrational and violent. The plot thickens if one begins to look at her as someone who plays the violent state with greater confidence than us.

As for the subjectivity of the affected and your wondering if those affected can be calm or rational…if you look at the families of those killed at CST or the police officers’ families, they have been extraordinarily rational in their grief. Here it is important to remind ourselves that it is not always the actual affected who react like this; it is those who have always believed politics is superfluous, corrupt and dangerous, who only trust managerial and military solutions, who have hijacked the public debate on mumbai.

And Atreyee and w.t.f.ittabari, I believe despite all the confusion and greys, justice remains a cornerstone. And pursuing it sometimes requires that we blur the distinction between ‘normal’ and ‘crazy’ people. To put ourselves in every shoe possible, and remind ourselves of our violent collective unconsciousness. I believe Nivedita would argue that the terrorist is not heroic, nor are the hotel staff, nor are we. We live our safe lives within the violent apparatus of the modern nation-state, which continuously excludes and marginalises those that are expendable.

Implicit in Gnani’s piece was the message that the hostages in the Taj did not deserve our sympathies because the people who drive over pavement dwellers in their BMWs were the same as those being held hostage there. That sort of thinking does strike me as “dangerous and divisive” as Siddharth another poster pointed out.

While Gnani would have us believe that the “elite” media’s interest in the Taj was simply because of the “elite” Page 3 victims, in fact the coverage of the incident included many stories of brave employees and the fierce sense of duty and loyalty shown by the staff in protecting guests in the hotel. Gnani’s class hypothesis therefore rings hollow. I as a consumer of TV journalism watched the live coverage with concern for all those in the hotel, the poor and rich, the servers and the served, the owner and the inhabiter. Watching the live action at Taj also did not take away from the horror and anger I felt for the victims at VT station, another venerable institution in the city.

But apparently I and the employees of the Taj are laboring under a false consciousness for caring for the institution in this manner. I am supposed to “think” instead about how these employees first and foremost were class victims of that institution and the terror attack only next. Apparently commenting on the institutional, emotional or historical character of a building is too messy for Niveditaji who is persistent in her defense of class as the sole explanation for all that is happening. I am not denying that class is an important variable but I do not buy that it is the decisive explanatory factor in every situation.

(Irrelevant point 1: I do know the difference between the Taj in Agra and the Taj Hotel in Mumbai. Interesting you should mention the Taj monument which itself was built on the backs of slave labour and gross abuse. Interesting also how time has made essentially inequitable monuments of another era such as the Taj or the Red Fort into public spaces that hold significance to many sections of our society. If it were the actual monuments under attack, I wonder if you would be supporting a post which denounced them as symbols of ruling class oppression in the country and hence, unworthy of our sympathy. I think not. Or would you sidestep that by saying only dead monuments of the wealthy deserve our sympathy and not living ones)

Which makes me wonder if every poster on Kafila who disagrees with the class hypothesis is going to be singled out for sarcasm and ridicule. I am surprised that Niveditaji instead of attacking my comments directly on the Gnani Sankaran post as others who argued over it did, has instead chosen the comment as an example for a different post on elite anger. A sleight of hand this and really puzzling as I had no idea 1) I was revealing my elitist anger by reflecting on the plight of the Taj employees 2) I was suggesting we have NO TIME TO THINK 3) that my post somehow revealed that Simi Garewal, Kabir Bedi and I are unanimous in our support of carpet bombing Pakistan as the ONLY solution? How on earth did that happen?

Separately, the post makes an excellent point about the dissonance between the socio-economic classes and the political class in this country over the attacks. The nature of engagement between these two groups has been changing these past two decades. As a political economist studying the country I could not agree more. The past two decades have seen a migration of the socio-economic elite from government and political positions to the private sector altering the nature of their economic and power contracts with the political class. While the political class was a key partner and ally to the socio-economic class and often the two were the same in the regulated, license-raj period that picture has altered. We now see a more complex love-hate relationship between these groups. Which is why I will have to respectfully disagree with the conclusion that the two groups are actually saying the same thing today. Amidst the shrill voices asking for unilateral action we also hear voices asking for better internal governance, more personal responsibility, caution in our approach to terrorism and greater engagement with Pakistan as these “elites” realize that a stable South Asia will also be better for India. All those you label as elites, therefore, are not speaking in the same voice or expressing the same righteous anger.

(Irrelevant point 2:For every Simi Garewal, Preity Zinta and Kabir Bedi, we also see a Sharmila Tagore and Rahul Bose who speak with different temperaments and intents. I mention these personalities as I see their qualifications for commenting on terrorism and war to be roughly the same. It seems film personalities are the most appropriate and informative talking heads of our times).

Thank you for your ideas on terrorism. Could not agree with you more. Thank you also for synthesising a lot of what we have been discussing on this site these past few days. It made for a very compelling and interesting read.

However if you think you can engage in dialogue with psychopaths always remember how Theo Van Gogh died..

He kept screaming ‘please.. cant we talk about it’ while he was stabbed to death on the pavement.

If you blur the line between normal people and crazy people in exuberance for equality then that is injustice too.

Don’t confuse Iraq with Afghanistan.

people in the streets are wiser than their page3 counterparts. their politics is beyond that propagated by NDTV or TOI kinda jumboree.

may the soul/sole of page3s rest in peace/pieces
amen!

b) Unconditional love

c) over-dose of unwanted “gyan”

so may it b,amen!

Could you kindly shed some light on the root cause of the Jehadi terrorists killing innocents around the world?

And, what solution do you have in mind for the Hindu Terrorism. What could be their motivation?

Justice is a grand word, it carries weight, it inspires cynics like me. I am perplexed about the contours of the justice you hint at. Is it merely the cliched ‘the state should not marginalise/discriminate against the Muslim populace kind of justice?’ Is it something broader, grander? In this period of perplexion where the predictable right and wrong (or right and left) answers are failing us, perhaps it is time for us to look into mirrors and ask ourseves what about our mirror-images informs how we construct our brand of justice? Some guy’s justice lies in killing thousands to establish state for those he believes are his kith and kin and some guy’s justice lies in employing police terror to wipe out the ‘bad’ terror. All our perspectives are just when we look into the mirror. Trouble begins when the mirrors are positioned adjacent to each other at critical angles.

I don’t know what my thoughts on war are. But very tentatively, on violence, is the romantic image of the heroic jumper-into-the-water not a little tarnished if i were to introduce the other story about him- that he then drinks some country liquor, goes home and beats up his wife? Do we not choose our favourite pacifist images strategically? Are our goodnesses, heroisms, peaces and moralities not political?

The War on Terror will be used as a cover by governments to advance their agendas (what better example than the Bush administration), by politicians to burnish their image (take your pick), by the media to increase their profits, by individuals to settle scores (nuke the bastards).

This is disappointing, perhaps, but not surprising. These are terrorists of a different stripe as we have articulated in Terrorism – 3: Turning In where we propose a test to tell non-terrorists apart from terrorists in disguise.
(http://thesouthasianidea.wordpress.com/2008/12/05/terrorism-–-3-turning-in/)

We also need to ask how we have arrived at this state. Partly because we have taken our eyes off the content of early childhood education.

Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer asked why the educated middle class was more bigoted than the illiterate masses. His answer: “Because it is educated.”

We have tried to explore this in Why is Pakistan Half Illiterate? which also examines the situation in India. (http://thesouthasianidea.wordpress.com/2008/10/06/why-is-pakistan-half-illiterate/)

This has been followed up by the formation of an International Coalition for Education Reform in Pakistan to see how we can engage with the problem (http://icerp.wordpress.com).

1. You seem to reject completely the notion that employees can actually be emotionally invested in their place of work. That the relationship could possibly be deeper than the sort of simplistic, worker-in-chains image you paint. In making that kind of implicit generalization you betray an elitism of the sort you’ve criticized…one where it is only a privileged few who are allowed to entertain notions of fulfilling work.

So yes, the Taj does belong to more people than you think. That doesnt mean its a central theme in the ‘other india’s’ life, but certainly it holds meaning for many, many people in different ways – as a place of work, as a landmark, as a coffee shop or a place to sleep.

2. I wonder if you normally expect clear, rational detached discourse from people affected by fear and tragedy? Unlike most acts of terror in India in the recent past, unlike much of the other violence perpetrated against or by the state, these incidents *did* more immediately affect the ‘elite’ – who do possess voice and influence. Do you really expect them to be uniformly rational and evenhanded? Should you?

3. Isnt an appropriate response to a frightened and possibly witless simi garewal, ignoring or sympathizing with her – rather than choosing this moment to issue a patronizing lecture on the class divide within India? Again, I don’t necessarily disagree with what you say, but its kicking people when they are more down.

We’re asked today, not to stop thinking, but to act. And by that I don’t mean carpet bomb Pakistan tomorrow, or indulge in a witch-hunt against minorities (none of which is going to happen, your low opinion of the Indian state notwithstanding). Rather I refer to the need to offer comfort and help in rebuilding. No?