I entered Yunus’s house. He was allotted 150 square meters of land to build his home. Parts of the house were done up with brick and cement. The roof was still kutcha, raw – in the process of construction. You could see the incompleteness of the roof from the opening around the right hand side from which rain likely comes into the house (as does sunshine). I asked Yunus,

Ghar mein barsaat ka pani aata hai kya? Baarish se pareshaani nahi hoti?

(Does not the water from the rain come inside the house? Does it not cause inconvenience?)

Aata to hai, Yunus said with his easy attitude, optimistic voice and a sense of anxiety all mixed into one, haan aata to hai. The rain comes inside the house. Par ab kya kar saktey hai? What can you do? Jab baarish ki cheente aati hai, toh hum bacchon ko chaadar/kapda odha dete hai – when the water from the rain comes in, we cover the children with sheets/cloth.

Yunus’s home is a reflection of his own dreams, hopes and  aspirations. The entry to the house has been done up with beautiful mosaic tiling. There is a little step that leads into the house which is made of pieces of white, blue, red and yellow tiles. The house itself is one room which has been expanded vertically. Yunus has built a wooden loft to make space for himself, his wife and his children. There is a mori, the sqaure space which doubles up as a bathing space as well as the area to wash utensils. Clothes are washed outside the house. The toilet is also outside the house. Yunus says there are ten toilets for 410 houses in the area. A broom is hung from the wall as also are plastic bags from various shopping malls. I gaze at his place …

Home, that endearing space

House, in a city where this possession is prized, valued and loved

House – personal or matter of policy?

Home – personal or matter of policy?

The next time around, I am taken to Rehnuma’s ghar, her home. But this is not Rehnuma’s house. It is rented. Her brothers and father are building a house next to the rented jhonpada/hutment. I ask Rehnuma – when did you start the construction.

Yesterday, she says.

When will the house be completed?

Tomorrow, she answers.

So soon? I ask astonished.

Yes, no brick and cement to be used. This land is disputed. Demolitions have happened here. So, we are afraid to build something pucca/concrete.  When the house is done tomorrow, we will take our belongings and go there.

Meanwhile, her mother complains that the road outside the house is a mess – hamaare neta ko bol dege ki us mein mitti daal dein.

I ask Rehnuma where the toilets are.

Jungle mein jaate hai. Yeh badi mushkil hai. We have to go to the jungles – that is a big problem.

We move on. I am told that most people build their homes with bamboo poles and tin sheets – easy to build and dismantle. Most  people have a little stilt outside their houses to prevent the rain water from coming inside.

And then we were passing Wadala yesterday, in the BEST bus. At one point, we came across a stretch which was a deep pool of water. The driver stopped the bus. A minute later, the passengers stood up to see what is going on. Then, one of them shouted – drive on! The driver pressed the accelerator and strode ahead. As we moved on, we splashed all the water into the houses which were built on the pavements. Some had water inside their homes. We added more. Residents of the houses came out on the street and yelled abuses at the bus driver. But we had crossed the stretch …

Each day, I move across the city and watch how people have built their houses – someone else’s doors and windows help in making privacy for someone else. Door numbers and house numbers. Some poster of a Congress Neta or a MNS flag adorning some balconies. A ladder connecting the top and bottom floors. The top floor like a bunk – you squeeze to get inside. Some houses on footpaths. Some on hills. Some along railway tracks. And the concrete houses that have been built in the suburbs and edges of the city – some people doubling their homes as shops and trading spaces. Some running beauty parlours inside. Some have reorganized the space and adorned it with beautiful things. And it amazes me to no end how each house is a reflection of the family’s dreams and aspirations, is a source of their politics and consciousness, is their place in the city. And I wonder …

House – personal or matter of policy?

Home – personal or matter of policy?

Photo credit: Salman Usmani

Bharatendu Prakash Singhal, 78, is a Hindutva ideologue, a retired IPS officer and a former BJP Rajya Sabha MP. On a Sunday afternoon I visited him to discuss his opposition to the decriminalization of gay sex by the Delhi High Court. He is preparing to appeal against it in the Supreme Court. Singhal explained that he wasn’t opposed to private consensual sex between same-sex adults, he didn’t want such adults prosecuted or persecuted, but he merely wanted the law to remain on paper as a deterrent. This is the transcript of a recorded interview; a much shorter, edited version has appeared this morning in Open magazine, where I work.

So the judgement has not come in your favour.
What can you do when the judge does not even taken notice of what you have put forth as evidence? There is just one paragraph in connection with the averments made by us. There is massive propaganda from the other side, that they are being harassed under 377. In my 35 years in the IPS I saw not a single case registered under 377 and no case of police harassment.

If it is not used what’s the point in having it?
It is a paper tiger. It inhibits people from freely becoming homosexuals.

But what’s the point of having a law that is not to be implemented?
For implementation of any criminal law you need a complainant and a witness. Sodomy is being conducted in closed rooms and neither party will complain because it’s a mutual consent matter.

That is precisely what the High Court order applies to – consensual homosexual activity. What is the problem?
Now male-sex-male…

Or female with female?
No, we’re talking of male sex with male. 377 does not refer to lesbians or eunuchs.

Because it specifies that penetration has to take place.
Yes. They included eunuchs and all to give it the shape of a cause. This is fraud.

From your point of you only male-to-male is to be criminalised, lesbians are fine?
It is male-to-male that is causing all the harm. Lesbians only end up in suicide. Male-to-male breeds diseases. Female-to-female are harming themselves only. When lust takes over, men pick up boys, threaten them not to go to the police.

But if that’s been happening despite 377, so what good is the law?
It’s a paper tiger. 35 cases came to the courts in 140 years under IPC 377. It was not hurting anyone.

Another argument is that people who are gays feel that their desire, their very existence is being criminalised. Why? You don’t have to endorse it, but why do you to call it crime?
I have an urge to steal your motorcycle. Why should my desire be criminalised?

But in this case it’s consensual, it’s more like the lending of a motorcycle!
What about adultery – consenting adults? The whole question is that of morality in society, of social morals. That is the casualty.

The judgement recognises this, but quoting Ambedkar, it says laws cannot be governed by public morality. They are governed by Constitutional morality.
If the Constitution is lacking in enforcing public morality then there is something wrong with it or its interpretation. The Constitution prescribes not just fundamental rights but also duties. (Digs out his copy of the Constitution and reads.) Fundamental duties say, “Follow the noble ideas of our national struggle… to value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture!” In this comes our public morality!

The high court judgement quotes Nehru as saying we are a nation that is inclusive.
Then we should not bother about arresting dacoits either. We should be inclusive.

Isn’t there a problem in equating homosexuality with dacoity?
Why? Homosexuals have also been transcending the law. How can you differentiate between the violation of one law and another?

In this case they’re saying the law is wrong.
That’s what they think, but so long as the law was there they had no business in indulging in it, but they were.

That’s why they challenged the law in court.
But all this while they’ve been violating a law equal to theft and dacoity! They talk of consenting adults, why should gambling be an offence? Five-seven consenting adults playing, what is wrong with it? What’s wrong with Sati, as a devout wife if someone wants to commit it?

But the argument about Sati is that public pressure forces the widow into Sati.
That is murder. (Narrates an example of a woman in Sitapur prevented from committing Sati, and the husband’s body didn’t burn completely despite a lot of effort.) She was not being forced and yet committed Sati.

Do you want Sati legalised?
I think it should be anybody’s freedom just like you want the right to sodomy! What suits you is okay…

You mean if Sati is legalised you will support consenting homosexual activity?
No! Sati was a crime because people were forcing widows to sit on the pyre. That is murder, not Sati. The rich heritage of our composite culture has to be taken care of…

That is fundamental duties in the Constitution, can’t be legally enforced unlike fundamental rights.
It is not possible to prove a negative thing in court.

Talking of heritage, scholar named Devdutt Patnaik has written about the presence of homosexuality and a broad-minded view of gender in ancient times.
Nobody denies it. But there was nothing loose about the morals.

According to one story he quotes, Shiva bathes in the Yamuna and becomes a gopi just to be able to dance with Krishna.
So what? Where is the immorality about it? When no other man is permitted there Shiva converts!

He says according to one’s karma one could be born as a man with a woman’s heart ot vice-versa.
I can’t understand this. Let’s focus on 377.

I’m talking of culture and heritage. The UK Hindu Council’s general secretary Anil Bhanot has welcomed the judgement and has said that Hindu scriptures describe the homosexual condition as a biological one and although they give parents advice on how to avoid a homosexual child during insemination, they do not condemn such children as unnatural.
In Manusmriti punishment was described for homosexuality…

Mild punishment.
Punishment was punishment even if it was to stand in the sun for a few hours.

Certainly not ten years in jail.
Those were ancient times.

Queer rights activist Ashok Row Kavi wrote a letter to the then RSS chief KS Sudarshan when the film Fire was being attacked. He wrote in the letter that LGBT communities have always existed in India since he time of the Vedas and the Puranas, and says that Hindu mythlogy regonises ten different male genders alone. He said Hindu religion has been more sophisticated on the question of gender than Western culture. He says 377 comes from St. James’ Bible!
When Manu has prescribed a punishment ages ago, you can’t play fraud by saying it’s Victorian. Progress is defined by the spiritual evolution one gains on the planet. Progress is not measured in terms of money or physical pleasure.

There’s this book, Same Sex Love in India, which says same-sex love has flourished in India since ancient times.
Aberrations can’t be quoted as flourishing. There was a survey by Wikipedia in 2004 of 44 countries asking if they would like this to be an offence. 83% in India opposed it! So that is our culture.

But recently, on the eve of the pride parade in Delhi, a newspaper survey said 51% people have no problem with homosexuals.
Neither do I! I don’t have any problem with homosexuals. Do you? Homosexuality has existed since the beginning of time, doesn’t mean it’s a healthy thing. The Center of Disease Control in the US has done a study on how homosexuality breeds diseases. Besides it’s completely unnatural. The anus is designed only for exit of things. It is not for entry. Therefore the mucus membrane of the anus is soft and can be torn with the slightest of rough material. Whereas the vaginal mucus membrane is tough. If it was natural the anal mucus membrane would have been equally tough. Secondly, when a woman is desirous of sex, the entire vaginal canal is irrigated by a very slimy fluid to make coitus pleasurable and easy. No such lubrication takes place in the anus.

Why is why gays use lubricants.
Yeah! Artificial lubricants! They’re doing an artificial job! You can’t call it natural.

Okay may be it’s unnatural.
That is all that our fight is.

But lots of things are unnatural. Like we’re not born with clothes but we wear them.
Why is obscenity a crime? It provokes. A nude woman will provoke so many boys on the street. It hits our culture.

But if people are doing it in private?
They were doing it in private already, who was stopping them?

377’s fear, guilt, criminality, harassment by the police.
That is all bogus and imaginary. I asked them, please give examples. They said there were any number of cased but the only example they ever had was the Lucknow example. I will tell you what happened in Lucknow. When the police raided this place in Lucknow, they were boys and boys, and they were supposed to be doing HIV-AIDS work, teaching them condom and all that sort of thing. The recovery memo shows video cassettes, explicit sodomy taking place, provoking them. There were all things that were promoting homosexuality. No condom was found, it was a gay orgy.  (Tries to find the Lucknow memo in his papers, instead hands over an internet printout of something else.) See, in America they do detailed study, unlike India. Risky behaviour, promiscuity, low life-span… You can say what’s the problem if they are reducing their life span but they’re infecting others.

But WHO, UNAIDS have all welcomed the high court order…
Remember this, USA controls WHO and has millions of dollars at stake in promoting this.

This document that you have given me for instance, from nationalmorality.com, has a lot to say about the Bible and family values. Seems to be coming from evangelist propaganda.
And what you have given me is coming from gay propaganda!

But the argument about AIDS is that unprotected sex can spread AIDS amongst gay and straight alike. The argument is that decriminalising homosexuality helps NGOs like Naz work with homosexuals on safe sex.
The Lucknow case is a classic case where they were caught red-handed. There was not a whiff of AIDS control. Only pornography. Why do they need it for AIDS control. They were running a brothel. Which is still an offence, you may remove 377 but running a brothel is still an offence.

Sir somebody who says he’s gay and desires sex only with a man, is not attracted to women. What will you say to such a person?
What will you say to a person who says he wants to have sex with only a dog. They will say this is absurd, there’s no connection. Why not? It’s a question of physical attraction too. The moment you start talking of love it’s disgusting! You can say it’s a question of lust and I want to satisfy it. That’s okay.

There is indeed lust, and there are people who want to satisfy it with only their own sex.
They have been having it.

But you are against it.
No, not at all!

So what are you against?
I am against that anything be done openly which promotes and provokes others to follow it.

But if anything is obscene it’s illegal anyway.
Did you see the kind of obscene actions they did during the parade here? Did the police take any action?

Yours is a nuanced position.
I feel homosexuality is a crime against humanity. You may punish it or not. That is why it carries a strong stigma in society.

But if you are against homosexuality then don’t you want the loopholes in 377 done away with and prosecutions to go up and reduce the incidence of homosexuality in society?
No! There are so many things the government has to do. This is something society has to take care of. That is why there’s a stigma about homosexuals. (In a TV studio) one of the activists told me sir, when I walk on the street people call me (pauses to think) the Hindi word for catamite. He said they abuse me. I said if you indulge in it why do you consider it an abuse. You should wear it as a title!

Guest post by ANANT MARINGANTI

Speaking of successful litigation, one day after what some may call the makings of India’s rainbow coalition celebrated the Delhi High Court’s final verdict in the Naz Foundation case, agricultural workers in Andhra Pradesh celebrated a favorable interim order in the APVVU (AP Agricultural Workers Union) case. Judge N.Ramamohana Rao of AP High Court ignored the Additional Solicitor General’s objections and ordered that the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme wage rates be revised up from Rs 80 per day to the prevailing minimum wage of Rs 119 (111 and 112 in some areas) per day set by the Government of Andhra Pradesh. This will remain in force for 8 weeks. Of course, a favorable interim order does not imply that the final verdict will be favorable. But it bolsters the confidence of the contestants. It is a precious gift of time for solidarity building. And in this particular case, it will put an additional amount of a whopping Rs 31-40 per each of the 100 work days in a year in the hands of those availing work under the NREGA. It did not bring tears to the eyes, but in a general clime of judicial unresponsiveness to the claims of the poor it made many heave a sigh of relief.

Behind this petition are two related campaigns of national relevance – Minimum wages and NREGA rules. Minimum wages are to be statutorily revised periodically by state governments. However, in practice state governments often flout their norms. Further, in many cases, government agencies themselves pay less than minimum wages. These are rationalized on several grounds. For example those versed in the lore of the Right to Information Campaign remember that the long march to the RTI began in Rajasthan in the early 90s, when the activists of the nascent Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan discovered to their amazement that the state government refused to pay the statutory minimum wage on the ground that the quantum of developmental funds was limited. By paying less than minimum wage, the government agencies said they were able to spread the goodies to more workers. It took the good offices of a senior civil servant in Delhi to persuade the Rajasthan government that this was sheer folly. In some cases, governments argue that revising minimum wages will result in imbalances in the economy. Often, there is simply no explanation. Changes in governments, transfers of concerned officials, rain, elections… anything can obstruct the movement of files in government offices.

In this particular instance, the Government of Andhra Pradesh delayed revision of the minimum wage by three years for no apparent reason. That is, after the 2002 revision, the next revision was effected on October 17, 2008, instead of in 2005. But quite inexplicably, the NREGS fixed its wage rate in January 2009 at Rs 80 and refused to change it. When the APVVU petitioned the High Court through Advocate Balagopal, the Additional Solicitor General raised an objection – on the ground that to become eligible for the AP revised minimum wage rate of Rs 119; workers would have to work for 9 hours a day with half an hour of break.

This objection, frivolous on first sight, looks bizarre when set against the backdrop of the crisis that has slowly engulfed many rural households in Andhra Pradesh over the last couple of decades. Essentially, in all of the villages, the soft connective tissue of collective life, the seemingly insignificant local practices of cushioning vulnerable households have worn off leaving many individuals exposed to crises and some rapidly wasting away after a household crisis – which could be anything from a medical emergency to the marriage of a daughter. Itenerant activists in rural Andhra Pradesh occasionally come back to the city with doubt gnawing at their minds – may be what they just saw and heard of was a starvation death! But in the absence of a standard definition, local officials interpret starvation quite literally. If on examination the viscera reveal traces of a meal, if the pot in the house contains a few grains, or the unwashed plate in the house has an uneaten morsel in it… it is clearly not a starvation death. Tidbids like these are captured in death certificates, in muttered complaints and entreaties from old men and women, resigned angry gestures of young men. One picks them up along the development trail, they sit among other stories of heroism, outrage, pain, surprise and wonderment in the travel kit. But one has to be always watchful –pulling out one of these half burnt stories is a surefire way to kill a party. So, one puts them away, arranged carefully at the back of one’s mind.

Historically, farm workers in many unirrigated areas in Andhra Pradesh have been able to sustain themselves through multiple strategies. Some of them had access to small patches of land gained either through customary rights or through the land redistribution in the 70s. In these patches, they planted millets which required little water and just a little tending but ensured the bare minimum of nutrition for a few months of the year. This allowed able bodied workers to leave their families behind and go to the city to seek work. Also supporting the families during such times were the small ruminants – goats. It is a standing joke among veterinarians that goats are the mobile ATMs for the poor. Families knew how to pick up edible leaves from fields under cultivation. Occasionally they could collect firewood from some of the common lands. Over the last two decades much of this has disappeared. There is nothing very romantic about any of this. The past was certainly not golden. Just that pain and suffering comes via other routes now.

Beginning late 80s, a variety of wasteland development programs transformed the rural landscape, gradually supplanting collective (if somewhat differentiated by caste hierarchies) usufruct rights with individual commercial rights. In many villages dalits who had summer cropping rights to lakebeds saw a gradual divestment of these. Open forest patches turned into community forest groups which were delimited by user group or self help group formations and excluded non members. (User groups are those who have access to some means of production. Self Help Groups are those with none. ) Complicating the story further, although not exclusively, user group and self help group categories often mapped on to caste groupings. With donor organizations’ fixation with more bang for the buck, development agencies usually concentrated on the relatively resourceful caste groups which stood a better chance of showing results in terms of resource accumulation at the end of a project cycle.

Overall, although the actual composition varies from district to district, the rural agricultural worker category everywhere comprises some of the most vulnerable social groups. For such groups, an upward revision of minimum wage can mean the difference between starvation and malnutrition. By no stretch of imagination can an interim order that puts some money in the hands of the poor can be made comparable with the Naz Foundation’s victory. The AP High Court judge’s comments are not even particularly profound. He merely cautioned the Addl. Solicitor General in the most pedantic of words. “ A 7-hour workschedule is the yardstick for earning a minimum wage in a day. If the wages paid are less than proportionate it can lead to later day claims which can be very difficult to verify.” Yet, he put 30 rupees more at the end of a 7 hour long work day in the hands of agricultural workers. At least for eight weeks when it will be reviewed in light of fresh objections by the state and central governments. I feel like echoing sentiment of the day: yay! Time to celebrate. But to be honest, words are inadequate to describe what I feel.

Disclaimer: There is no other motive to setting the APVVU in juxtaposition to the Naz Foundation, save grabbing a little preordered attention value. I am as baffled as anyone else by the apparent incommensurality of the worlds inhabited by the two. I toyed with the idea of prefacing this story with something like – “I share the joy of the Naz Foundation victory, but …” OR “while we celebrate the joy of the Naz Foundation victory, let us also cheer for …” Both conjunctives ‘But’ and ‘Also’ sound dishonest. If there is a thread in the constitution through which I can connect the Naz Foundation verdict to the APVVU interim verdict, it is so thin that I cannot quite see it. I need that thread to fall in love with the Constitution again.

There are surprisingly few constitutional cases in India which have had the same symbolic power that cases like Roe v. Wade (affirming the right of abortion) or Brown v. Board of Education (dissolving racial segregation in schools) have had in the political history of the United States.  For sure, there are a  number of important constitutional cases which have contributed significantly to the democratic history of India. Kesavananda Bharati’s espousal of the basic structure doctrine, Maneka Gandhi’s introduction of due process in Art.21, but these cases  seem to have an appeal largely within the legal fraternity. They are also cases where the relief sought by the petitioners have had little to do with the final outcome of the case, and it is highly doubtful whether his Holiness Kesavananda Bharati had any investment in the long term impact of the basic structure doctrine (not to mention that Kesavananda Bharati just doesn’t roll of the tongue as easily- in terms of recall value).  Is it possible then that Naz Foundation v. Government of Delhi is the first equivalent of a case whose name conjures up the history of particular struggle, celebrates the victory of a particular moment and inaugurates new hopes for the future.

Before we argue about why Naz has the potential to become a Roe v. Wade, it would perhaps be useful to establish what Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board of education did for the history of struggles for rights in the US.  R v. Wade stands as the dividing line between the Liberals and the Conservatives in the US and in the third presidential debate between Obama and McCain, a significant portion of time was spent discussing judicial nominations, particularly to revisit Rv. Wade. Every Republican president since 1980 has asked for an overturning of Roe v. Wade.

R v. Wade emerged at a time when many feminists and women’s rights activists were encouraging State legislatures is to liberalise their abortion laws. Given the rather haphazard success in the arena of legal reform, another strategy was to shift the battle to the courts and success in cases like R v. Wade made it irrelevant whether or not there was a success in policy reform. There have been a fair number of critics of this strategy too, with people arguing that political reform is generally more desirable and longer lasting than judicial reform. Ruth Ginsberg for instance has argued that Roe v. Wade actually halted a political process that has been moving in a reform direction.
So the first characteristic of cases like Wade is the use of the judiciary and innovative interpretations of the Constitution to settle a controversial area and establish rights for unpopular minorities or to establish a ruling against public morality as defined by the majority. But if this were the only criteria then there would be many more cases with the same appeal and power as Wade and Brown.
Both Wade and Brown represent moments in the history of struggle that finally culminated in a judicial victory. These victories have been higher significant because they generally exist in the realm of what we could call the radical politics of impossibility. What would have been impossible to imagine is suddenly made possible through an innovation that  does not merely change the conditions of the group whose rights and demands are in question, but  changes the horizon of possibility for the law and for constitutional interpretation itself.

Thus Roe v. Wade did as much for the expansion of the idea of privacy as it did in establishing the right of women to terminate their pregnancy. These cases are also marked by the fact that they often open a Pandora’s box and are in that sense not the culmination of struggle, but the beginning of one. But even these two reasons would not be enough to establish what is special and enduring about Brown and Wade. These are after all matters of public reason, and public reason rarely the accounts for why things have a special place in our hearts. It therefore might be appropriate then to turn to reasons of the heart to see why something becomes a Roe v. Wade.
When Obama was a senator, he voted against the confirmation of John Roberts, the current chief justice of the United States, and a well known conservative.   In his speech in the Senate, Obama said Justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or a footnote in a casebook. It is about how our laws affect the daily reality of people’s lives – whether they can make a living and care for their families; whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation. Obama added that while  he would agree with 95% of the decisions arrived at by Roberts, ‘ in those 5% of hard cases, the constitutional text will not be directly on point. The language of the statute will not be perfectly clear. Legal process alone will not lead you to a rule of decision. In those circumstances, your decision about whether affirmative action is an appropriate response to the history of discrimination or whether the general right of privacy encompasses a more specific right for women to control their reproductive decisions, the critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge’s heart.

The real success of Wade, Brown and Naz foundation can then be measured not only by their contribution to democratic ethos or the Jurisprudence that they inaugurate but by the tears that they provoke. The spontaneous outburst of emotion on the pronouncement of the Delhi High Court, the tears of joy that people had while listening to the judgment in Court hall No. 1 of the Delhi High court, or from people following it on the news, the telephone calls with people wishing each other happy Independence Day after the judgement – these are the things that legendary cases like Wade and Brown are made of. And these are all the ingredients that seemed to be present in the Naz foundation decision. When was the last time you remember crying about a constitutional decision? Naz foundation decision has also enabled the rekindling of our romance with a text whose recent career has left one a little brokenhearted – the constitution. Justice Pathak in Kesavananda Bharati  says that “the constitution is not an arena of quibbling by lawyers with long persons. It is a Heritage or possession and it should be the object of your love”.
The Naz foundation judgement once again makes the constitution worthy of our love and affection. It is of course too early to say whether this romance with Naz will stand the test of time,  and like all relationships there will be disenchantment, disgruntlement and perhaps even cynicism that will creep in, but for now let us enjoy the slightly trippy lightheadedness that only a new love is capable of providing and toast the much delayed but very welcome arrival of the Roe v. Wade of India.

Guest post by ANURAG ACHARYA, student from Nepal at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Peaceful coexistence among nations does not encompass coexistence between the exploiter and the exploited, the oppressor and the oppressed.

- Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara

The 1800 km open border between India and Nepal has always been a matter of dispute between the two countries. While India has glorified the open border as its grace and gratitude towards a landlocked nation, Nepal has had to accept the miseries of sharing an open border with a bigger and powerful nation as a price for a trade transit. It goes without saying that whenever there has been a proposal or a debate within Nepal about the possibility of opening a trade route across the Himalayas to our north to tap the world’s largest market for Nepalese goods, it has attracted serious concerns from the South block. Bound by the unfair Indo-Nepal treaty of 1950 which prevents Nepal from independently conducting its international affairs and thwarts Nepal’s ambition to exploit the huge trade potential with China, an end to Nepal’s historical dependence on India has not materialized yet. While the treaty gives India a free hand to interfere in Nepal’s foreign affairs, citing its own domestic security, it has seriously impaired Nepal’s right to trade access, as a landlocked nation under the International Law. The treaty also stands in clear violation and entrenchment of a sovereign nation’s  right to conduct its external and internal affairs independently. However, weak diplomacy on Nepal’s part and unsympathetic attitude on the Indian side has ensured that Nepal stays dependent on India for all its exports and imports.

Twenty districts of Nepal share boundary with India out of which 51 places in 21 districts are under dispute. Buddhi Narayan Shrestha, a noted border expert and former Director General of Department of Survey, Government of Nepal, says – as much as 60,000 hectare of land in these areas has been under intense debate between the two countries. As a member of the seven members Civic Committee for Border Concern team that visited Susta of Nawalparasi district in Nepal area to investigate the reported encroachment of Indian soldiers into the Nepalese territory, Mr. Shrestha said that 14,000 hectares of Nepalese land have been encroached upon. The team revealed that Indian farmers were found building houses in those areas and about 1000 Indian BSF were stationed there.

When the Parliamentary Investigating Committee comprising of Constituent Assembly members, Human Right Activists, Border experts and Journalists visited the border areas  of  Dang, Kailali and Kanchanpur districts in June after there were reports of atrocities from across the borders, the local people broke down before the camera. To the shock and horror of the entire country, the victims complained of the exploitation and abuse that they have been bearing for many years. As the television channels reported live, almost every village reported number of cases of torture and rape by the Indian BSF. Nur Jahan, a local resident of Susta was inconsolable as she revealed how Indian BSF would ransack the village and beat up poor villagers including women and the children. She complained that they sexually abused Nepali women and hit them in sensitive parts. But not everyone was as brave as Nur Jahan. The victims from areas like Lalbhuji and Bhajani of Kailali district and  Laxmipur, Tribhuwan Basti and Kalika in Kanchanpur district complained of similar horrific incidents. Many were so petrified of the consequence that they refused to show their face in the camera. It was shocking to hear that men and women who went across the border for work or to buy goods were often forcefully detained by the BSF who demanded ransom from the family. Nepali women in these areas are terrified of falling prey to BSF abuses but are still forced to go across since it is only market in the area.

During my Stay in JNU, many of my Indian friends have asked me “We like Nepal and Nepali people so much. Why do you guys hate Indians so much?”

Actually, Nepalis don’t hate Indians. In fact, we love Indian food, we enjoy Indian movies and music and we support Indian cricket team with as much passion because we feel a sense of nearness that the shared culture and kinship across the border has brought. What we do hate is the fact that Indian State has never treated Nepal with the respect and dignity that a sovereign nation is entitled to. From Nehru to Manmohan Singh, India has always used diplomatic coercion to meddle into Nepal’s internal matters citing its security interests. Prof. S.D Muni, the renowned Indian scholar and an expert in Indo-Nepal relation, in his article “Dealing with the New Nepal” (The Hindu, 15 September 2008) emphasized on the need for a change in the Indian attitude towards Nepal as he writes “India can no longer pursue its strategic and economic interests on the basis of its old colonial mindset and bureaucratised traditional tools of diplomacy.”.

Whether anybody in India wants to believe or not, India has been bullying Nepal all these years, influencing the formation as well bringing down the government. It is not a hidden fact that the Prachanda government had been unpopular with the South block after his statement that “Nepal from now on, will keep equidistance between its two neighbors and try to balance its interests.” Prachanda had made a historic blunder of having a dinner in Beijing before stopping by for Lunch in New Delhi for which he was ultimately made to pay the price. The South block saw these “radically changing air” in Nepal as a potential threat to Indian influence in the newly formed Himalayan Republic and Prachanda’s excitement over the prospect of opening a trade routes across the Himalayan frontiers couldn’t have made it worse. What followed then was one of the most blatant violations of diplomatic protocol by the present Indian ambassador Rakesh Sood, who went frantic making reckless statements in the media about an issue that was purely internal to Nepal, discussing the “grave issue” with the President and leaders from different political parties. Few people were surprised when Prachanda resigned from the government just before his much anticipated Beijing visit after the President bypassed his decision to remove the army chief and other political parties including the ones in the government refused to support him after the decision had been taken to remove the army chief. Debates on whether the decision to remove the army chief was right or wrong apart, what happened with the government proved once again that Nepal still has a long way to go before being sovereign de facto.

The bullying attitude shown by the Indian State at the diplomatic level has inspired similar attitude and behavior against the Nepalese at the local level – whether it is the misbehavior by the Indian BSF against the poor villagers in the borders, or a derogatory portrayal of Nepalese men and women in the Indian movies. It is wrong to say that India has imperialistic intentions against Nepal at policy level but it is also true that India has treated Nepal little more than a tiny buffer state where it can use its covert moves and its currency as it pleases. Today the truth stares right at the face of the Indian government as more and more victims have testified against the BSF assaults. People holding land certificates and living in the area for generations are being chased away from their land. Farmers who have worked sweat and blood in their fields have been robbed of their harvests. Even the Parliamentary investigating committee has gone on records saying that there has been encroachment and abuse by the BSF. But with the new government led by a rejected leader with no legitimacy to be in power, Indian Government will have little difficulty in ignoring the agony from across the borders. Ambassador Sood has already given his verdict nullifying all the victim pleas, claiming that these are only media rumors (may be he forgot to say that all those pleading victims were paid artists). And like an obedient pupil, Nepal’s new Minister for external affairs looked more like manager for Indian Affairs as she stood by his side acknowledging the verdict. However the recent visit from Indian foreign secretary is an indication that the agonies of the poor men and women in the bordering villages have not gone unheard and after disgraceful weeks of apathy, finally Nepalese government is trying to attract New Delhi’s attention to the case.
To be very honest, the present political crisis in Nepal is as much a contributor to what is happening in Susta and other border villages. Nepal is in a transition phase with law and order almost non existent in the country. These kind of tacit acts of aggression are not a new phenomena in international arena. It is natural for Nepal to feel insecure being a smaller nation in the power equation. The present crisis has brought out strong national sentiments among the Nepalese which is manifested in the form of an anti-Indian sloganeering in the country. Dejected at the incapability of its government to provide security to its people, the people are getting frustrated and taking to the streets. The Indian Embassy in Kathmandu witnesses protest demonstrations almost everyday.

To those Indians who have been following what has happened in the last six weeks in Nepal, it will be clear that Nepal has been denied a safe transition into a new republic and frustrated on all grounds with encroachment upon its government and the borders.  For such Indians,  the answer to the question –“why does my neighbour dislike me so much”- will be obvious.

Guest post by GAIL OMVEDT

The 2009 Lok Sabha elections in India were projected to be a historical turning point just as the 2008 Presidential elections in the U.S. were a turning point.  But the nature of that expected turning point was very different.

Five years ago, even two years before the elections, no one in the U.S. would have expected that a “Black” man with two Muslim names and one African name could have been elected President of the United States.  Yet it happened, and it happened not simply because Barack Husain Obama ran a brilliant campaign and is proving the most effective president in dealing with the economic and social crises besetting the world today, but also because of the racial transformation the U.S. has undergone in recent decades.In India, the 2009 elections have seemed to project an equally significant turning point. Throughout the election campaign, it appeared as if the two major “national” parties, the Congress and the BJP, were losing their hold, that a coalition would be formed based on regional leaders, that a “hung parliament” was in the offing.  Even the most optimistic pro-Congress prediction – emerging from Meghnad Desai of the U.K. – had seen the Congress emerging as the largest party but with only 160 seats. At the same time, what most Indians have termed “identity factors” (caste, religious affiliation, region) seemed to be emerging as of primary importance.  Symbolizing these were a host of “OBC” leaders representing different regions, and above all Mayawati, the Dalit woman leading the Bahujan Samaj Party.  Of all the contending non-Congress, non-BJP leaders, she was the one who captured major national and international attention, whether favorable or unfavorable (Newsweek described her as “Anti-Obama”, others more sympathetically).  She was obviously compared to the U.S. President Obama, as representing aspirations of the sections of society previously considered most “low”, deprived, “untouchable.”

We know now, or seem to know, that this has not happened.  “Regional” leaders have been sidelined; Mayawati’s BSP “has failed,” the Congress has emerged as the single largest party, practically capable of forming the government on its own, humbling previously dissident allies like Sharad Pawar’s National Congress Party, rejecting the help of Mulayam’s SP and similar smaller parties, apparently able to form the government.  The CPI(M) – experienced as “fascist” in West Bengal, opposing every kind of “liberalization” at the centre while courting capitalists in its Bengal stronghold – has suffered the worst blow in history.  Most of the “national” and “international” commentators have been breathing a sigh of relief, and not only because the Congress now appears “free” of its Left allies’ demands. Even more than the demise of the Left, the commentators have been celebrating the apparent demise of regional/caste/religion-based politics.  Three examples from The Indian Express of 17 May will illustrate this:

“Celebrate the defeat of opportunism, obfuscation and obscurantism…the era of votebank politics as we have known it is over” (Pratap Bhanu Mehta)

“2009 is a historic election. It ends the idea that our politics will fragment” (editorial).

“Politics of aspiration has won over politics of grievance….The Indian voter has always rejected arrogance and pomposity but has sometimes been forgiving towards those with whom she might have found affinity of caste, religion or ethnicity.  By junking that, the voter has now shown new maturity” (Shekhar Gupta).

Gupta’s politically correct use of “she” is amusing, given the lack of significant progress in putting women representatives in the Lok Sabha.  Aside from this, it is clear that “votebank politics” and similar phrases are but code-words to say that caste issues, the problems of religious minorities, and questions of linguistic-national identity seemed to be overcome: one again a “national” party, with a rhetoric primarily of development (“inclusive development” is the codeword), has re-established itself.  This is the celebration we are confronted with in most national “analysis”.

Yet, aside from the Left’s debacle, the celebration is hogwash.  Two “regional” leaders remain, proudly holding to their own states, perhaps more unconcerned about the central government than the centre is concerned about them.  Nitish Kumar in Bihar, Naveen Patnaik in Orissa, show the continuing force of regional (linguistic) nationalism. In Punjab, in spite of the fact that after the shoe-throwing incident forced Congress to withdraw Tytler and Sajan Kumar from New Delhi, in spite of the fact that the Badal family controlling the Shiromani Akali Dal (the main current representative of Sikh nationalism) was notorious for treating the region as its fiefdom, the SAD actually polled a larger percentage of votes in 2009, its best since 1966 when Punjab was reorganized on a linguistic basis.

In Maharashtra, Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena – which might be described as the distorted, “goonda” face of national-linguistic Marathi/national sentiment, won over a lakh votes in every one of Mumbai’s six constituencies.  The result was to split the BJP-Shiv Sena opposition votes and give the victory to Congress in five constituencies; only Priya Dutt won by a larger margin than the votes of the MNS.  In Tamilnadu, Congress continues to depend on “Dravidian” parties in Tamilnadu; it has no significant presence of its own.  In Andhra, the Telegu Desum Party and the new, Kapu-based party of Chiranjiivi, remain significant deciders in the voting.  Finally, in Kashmir, if the apparently  high voting in 2008 was call“vote for democracy”, the 2009 overall percentage of about 26% in the Valley should be called, according to one commentator, a “vote against [Indian] democracy.”

In one of the more perseptive analyses, Atul Kohli challenged the idea of a “historic mandate” to Congress and summed up the situation as follows:

“more than half the voters continue to vote for parties other than the two main ones….the electorate has not switched away from voting for a variety of local parties based on caste, class, religion and charismatic individuals.  The underlying fragmentation of the electorate is real and continues” (Indian Express, 19 May)

And the BSP is far from being a failure, even if the hype had been raised too high.  It has gained in seats since 2004, and is now – with 6.09%% of the national vote – the third largest party in India, after Congress (29.02%) and BJP (19.2%).  It has increased its seats from 19 to 21 – in contrast to the Left (decline from 59 to 24) and BJP (decline from 138 to 116).   Congress may look good in terms of seats won, but this is solely due to the “first past the post” electoral system.  The long-term decline of India’s major “national” party has not been arrested (see Appendix).

Caste and linguistic-national (“regional”) identities are linked.  Caste-conscious political analysis has always stressed that the centre represens Brahmanic control; the states a non-Brahman, even anti-Brahman, “dominant” caste control.  This is true in varying ways, since caste itself has its regional-linguistic specifics. Nitish Kumar has not only given development; he also represents a nonBrahman politics. Naveen Patnaik, in turn is a Kayastha (Karan in Oriya terminology; and the conflict between Kayasthas and Brahmans is a historic one throughout India: the Kayasthas represented a “shudra” intelligentsia that rose to power by providing services to Muslim rulers equal to those of Brahmans.  In Maharashtra, for example, the “Thackerays” are Kayasthas, and Bal Thakre’s father, Prabodhankar Thakre, was a part of the nonBrahman movement of his day.

Sikhism, in turn, the domimamt force in the Punjab, has had a strong anti-Brahman streak from the beginning, continuing in spite of the problems of Jat Sikh “dominance.”.

And what of Mayawati?  Most of her dalit supporters are now saying that “sarvajan” politics has failed; what they mean by this is the much celebrated alliance with Brahmans (who constitute approximately 12% of the area’s population.  But with the BSP the problem is different.  Not only Mayawati, but her Dalit supporters have continued to use the term “dalit” and to see things in terms of “dalit”.  This emphasis on Dalits (as opposed to OBCs or “bahujans”) is a problem of the last decade or two.  Mayawati’s party is after all the Bahujan Samaj Party, and was built deliberately by Kanshiram to unite Dalits with the “ex-shudra” castes and with religious minorities.  He himself – when he came to Maharashtra and other southern states after the first BSP victory in UP in 1993 –  was ready to court the Kunbi-Maratha, knew that Shivaji had been taken as a shudra until he bought off Brahmans enough to get a “ksatriya” coronation, and brought, along with Ambedkar, the names of Jotirao Phule, Shahu Maharaj, and Periyar to national attention. Kanshiram was also interested in a program of alternative development, which has had historical roots in the approaches of Phule and Shahu Maharaj.

In other words, the BSP was – before Mayawati – the only political party in India to consciously project itself as a broad, national, party of the majority oppressed castes and religious groups.  BAMCEF – the name of Kanshi Ram’s first organization, Backward and Minority Classes Employees Federation – expressed this.  BSP still has the potentiality of becoming this – a national opposition party representing what Maharashtrians call a “Phule-Ambedkarite” alternative developmental ideology that would contrast with the “Gandhi-Nehruvian” standard developmentalism of Congress.  (This would also have its regional/national specifics: Basava-Ambedkar in Karnataka, for instance; Periyar-Iyothee Thass-Ambedkar in Tamilnadu).  But the BSP has failed to project any genuine political-ideological alternative in the last few years.  Should it do so, it would be a potentially much more forceful alternative as a national party.

“OBC” politics, as we have noted, is linked to the question of “regionalism,” or national-linguistic sentiment not only in India but at a subcontinental level.  There are today many movements going on directed towards some kind of autonomy in the region, within India and on India’s borders.  Tibet (with echoes in regions of HImachal Pradesh in India), Kashmir, the former Khalistani/Punjabi movement (which echoes in Punjab-Pakistan), the Madhesi movement in Nepal which has its social structural similarities to Bihar, the autonomy/independence movements in Nagaland, Mizoram, even Manipur, the currently defeated movement of Tamils in Sri Lanka with its links to Tamilnadu in India.

All of these movements have had tremendous force, but they all of these have so far been articulated separately, without any effort at communication among themselves. The possibilities – “spectre” in Marx’s terminology – haunting India and the other existing “nation-states” of the subcontinet is that of a political force that might pose an alternative federalism, a genuine decentralization, a stripping of the gross powers of the centre in India and neighboring countries.  National-linguistic sentiments up to now have often taken a distorted form, have sometimes been connected with regressive social forces.  For example, the desire for a separate identity for Sikhs has been expressed in terms of forcing dress codes on women.  If such distortions are overcome, and an alternative federalism is posed to unite the different linguistic nationalities, it would have tremendous implications not only for India but for the entire south Asian region — and for the neighboring areas of China and Russia as well.

APPENDIX

Year     Cong    BJP   BSP
——————————————–
1952     45.00    03.10
1957     47.80   05.90
1962    44.70    06.40
1967     40.80    09.40
1971     43.70    07.40
1977     34.50    —–
1980     42.70    —–
1984     48.10    07.40
1989     39.50    11.50
1991     36.50    20.10
1996     28.80    20.29   3.64
1998     25.72    25.38   4.66

1999    28.3   23,75               4,16

2004    26.44               22.16

2009    29.02   19.12   6.98

While expanding the territorial jurisdiction of high courts in such cases, the SC took cognizance of the principle contained in Article 226(2), which empowers a high court to issue directions to entities located outside its territory. [Manoj Mitta]

So now that we have one group of criminals less to deal with, I have a proposal: Criminalize English TV news channels.

Watching Times Now yesterday after the Delhi High Court ruling on Section 377, I was overcome by a growing sense of bewilderment. I could hear Dominic Emmanuel (Director of the Delhi Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church) and Kamal Farooqui (Chairman of the Delhi Minorities Commission), saying quite cearly and more than once, to my surprise, that they welcome the decriminalization of homosexuality, that homosexuals should not be treated as if they were criminals. Okay, correct that – I could barely hear these statements over the insistent, aggressive and disruptive interruptions  of the anchor Arnab Goswami, who had obviously pre-set this “discussion” rigidly as a face-off between Reactionary Clerics/Minorities and Gay Rights Activists, while he himself was super hero, Anchorman. So each time they said “we welcome” etc.,  Anchorman would swoop in, bellowing, “So are you saying that they dont have rights, Sir, are you saying they should not have rights. Over to Anjali Gopalan (Naz) – Anjali, they say homosexuals should not have rights, what do you say?”

Anjali would exhaustedly respond to Arnab’s question as if these two had not spoken at all, and so the maddening thing went on, the two “representatives of minorities” being goaded and goaded until they came right down to expressing all the prejudices that all of mainstream society holds, Anjali trying to respond sensibly, and Arnab shouting everybody else down. Finally, the Naz counsel Tripti Tandon after several efforts managed to climb back into this chaotic scenario to say that she took positively the statements of Farooqui and Emmanuel welcoming decriminalization, as they marked a step forward in the debate. It was only at that point that I realised I had not been hallucinating, that the two had indeed been expressing views more complicated than simple homophobia.

When I stopped hyperventilating with rage and switched to the Hindi channel CNEB anchored by Rahul Dev, it was the proverbial zameen-aasman ka fark. Noise decibels were low, Rahul Dev was courteous, heard people out, seemed to  modify his initial formulations on the basis of what  others said…

Of course, it is another matter that all news channels including CNEB seemed to have dutifully followed Moily’s mysterious statement that the government would take into account the views of the Church before taking a decision on 377. Why the Church? Why were minority community spokesmen (and men they were), produced on every news channel to express views far more reactionary than those of Emmanuel or Farooqui? Why on earth in a secular democracy, should religious leaders’ views be uniquely privileged on this issue? And if they must be aired, why not also have a few frothing-at-the-mouth hindutvavaadis? After all, the main party in the case, opposing decriminalizing of Section 377, is VHP’s BP Singhal.

So – criminalize NDTV, Times Now and IBN-CNN.  The charges?

* They have relentlessly and single-mindedly dumbed down public debate to the level of British tabloids.

* Their anchors are pretty much illiterate – I want documented proof of how many words they read per year (that are not in their scripts or rolling off on their prompters).

* The anchors, brash and loud in their ignorance, take over every discussion, speaking on an average three times as much as every invited panelist, supposedly an expert in his or her field.

* Each discussion is pre-formatted to a “Big Fight” scenario – invited speakers are clearly told what the “line” is they are to follow. (For instance, Sanjay Shrivastava, asked to speak on one of these channels on the attacks on Indians in Australia, was told – “We are inviting the Australian High Commissioner. We want you to attack him.” Sanjay refused to go for that discussion.) If during the discussion the black-and-white crudity of the Fight is disturbed, the anchor’s role is to bulldoze all possibilities of complexity away. Arnab as Anchorman is a perfect case in point.

There was a possibility of taking the discussion with Emmanuel and Farooqui towards discussing what they meant by welcoming decriminalization while opposing legalization of homosexuality, for example. The latter, as Emmanuel rightly points out in his article in Indian Express, raises fundamental questions about the nature of the “natural family”. As queer activists, we want those questions to be raised – we want a debate to begin on the sacrosanct and mythical Indian Family.  We want too, an informed discussion on the “gay gene” theory of homosexuality. (Anchorman at one point derisively and confidently interrupted one of the Reactionary Clerics with “Dont you know, it’s genetic?”)  While we see the strategic value of this argument -  (if it is genetic, then nobody who is homosexual can help it, or God made us this way, and it also means that homosexuality cannot spread, you are either born one or you are not) – we also want to introduce the more fundamental questions about how “natural” or genetic heterosexuality is. We want a public debate on the assumed naturalness of maleness and femaleness, on the assumed naturalness and desirability of the patriarchal heterosexual family unit.

But no, we are condemned to act forever, on TV channels, as dull foils to illuminate by contrast, the shiny progressiveness of Anchorman and Anchorwoman.

It is precisely a decade of intense debate and discussion between the left parties, the women’s movement and queer movement, that has resulted in the profound shift in the homophobic attitudes of both of the former till as late as the late-1990s. Today, if the CPM is the only political party to welcome the High Court decision without any prevarication, we must count it as a victory for processes of democratic dialogue and transformation.

And finally, a word to all the ulemas and priests and archbishops and other “religious leaders” who are up in righteous rage against “sexual anarchy” and the abrogation of God’s word. You might do well to remember that respect for difference and diversity is what keeps a secular democracy healthy – and that means diversity of all kinds. You might like to check out what the thousands and thousands celebrating the judgement today feel about Hindutvavaadi attacks on minorities, you might like to check out how many of us have marched in defence of secular freedoms, worked with victims of communal violence, extended our legal expertise to defend those illegally arrested under anti-terrorism laws.

Do not make the mistake of so grievously mis-recognizing your allies in a modern democracy.

So – here we are folks, in a historic judgement this morning, Delhi High Court has read down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code to exclude consensual sex among adults. Congratulations to the group of tireless activists who have helped to bring this about, and congratulations to all of us who count ourselves as part of the queer community.

So many difficult and lonely journeys have meandered to this point, so many kinds of  love that had not “dared to speak its name”… and still such a long way to go…

But right now – CELEBRATE!

And do you know what Justice Muralidharan anchored his judgment to? Jawaharlal Nehru’s words moving the Objectives Resolution in 1946. Here is the concluding part of this amazing judgement:

“CONCLUSION 129. The notion of equality in the Indian Constitution flows from the ‘Objective Resolution’ moved by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru on December 13, 1946. Nehru, in his speech, moving this Resolution wished that the House should consider the Resolution not in a spirit of narrow legal wording, but rather look at the spirit behind that Resolution.

Nehru said, ‘Words are magic things often enough, but even the magic of words sometimes cannot convey the magic of the human spirit and of a Nation’s passion…….. (The Resolution) seeks very feebly to tell the world of what we have thought or dreamt of so long, and what we now hope to achieve in the near future.”

130. If there is one constitutional tenet that can be said to be underlying theme of the Indian Constitution, it is that of ‘inclusiveness’. This Court believes that Indian Constitution reflects this value deeply ingrained in Indian society, nurtured over several generations. The inclusiveness that Indian society traditionally displayed, literally in every aspect of life, is manifest in recognising a role in society for everyone. Those perceived by the majority as “deviants’ or ‘different’ are not on that score excluded or ostracised. 131. Where society can display inclusiveness and understanding, such persons can be assured of a life of dignity and nondiscrimination. This was the ’spirit behind the Resolution’ of which Nehru spoke so passionately. In our view, Indian Constitutional law does not permit the statutory criminal law to be held captive by the popular misconceptions of who the LGBTs are. It cannot be forgotten that discrimination is antithesis of equality and that it is the recognition of equality which will foster the dignity of every individual.

132. We declare that Section 377 IPC, insofar it criminalises consensual sexual acts of adults in private, is violative of Articles 21, 14 and 15 of the Constitution. The provisions of Section 377 IPC will continue to govern non-consensual penile non-vaginal sex and penile non-vaginal sex involving minors. By ‘adult’ we mean everyone who is 18 years of age and above. A person below 18 would be presumed not to be able to consent to a sexual act. This clarification will hold till, of course, Parliament chooses to amend the law to effectuate the recommendation of the Law Commission of India in its 172nd Report which we believe removes a great deal of confusion. Secondly, we clarify that our judgment will not result in the re-opening of criminal cases involving Section 377 IPC that have already attained finality. We allow the writ petition in the above terms.”

Ah, the magic lurking in the dry legalese:

We declare that Section 377 IPC, insofar as it criminalises consensual sexual acts of adults in private, is violative of Articles 21, 14 and 15 of the Constitution.

You can download here (.pdf) the full text of the judgement – 105 pages long.

Photograph via Dawn: Aisam Ul-Haq Qureshi (R) of Pakistan celebrates a point with partner Prakash Amritaj (L) of India, as they play against Rameez Junaid of Australia and Philipp Marx of Germany in a Men’s Doubles match on the fifth day of the 2009 Wimbledon Tennis Championships. — AFP

A Pakistani and an Indian. A Muslim and a Hindu. Both tennis players. They say they’re on the same wavelength on “every subject”. On every subject? I wonder. And then:

‘The politics never comes into it. He could be purple with polka dots for all I care,’ he [Amritraj] said, gesturing towards his partner.

But here’s something even more interesting: Qureshi’s people prefer a Hindu to a Jew!

Lahore-based Qureshi, 29, is no stranger to controversial doubles partnerships — nor difficulties with the national authorities.

In 2002, his decision to play doubles at Wimbledon with Israel’s Amir Hadad was denounced by the Pakistani tennis federation, which threatened to ban him from the Davis Cup team.

But there has been no repeat of the furore this time, showing how attitudes have moved on in the intervening years, according to Pakistan’s top player.

‘People in Pakistan have been wishing me all the best,’ Qureshi told AFP.

[...]

‘Whether they were Indians or Pakistanis in the crowd, they forgot, they were cheering for one team,’ Qureshi said.

‘I was hugging his parents, they were kissing me, he went to greet my parents after the match,’ the world number 278 added. [AFP report in Dawn, I first saw it in The Hindu.]

Having won round two, they will face Mahesh Bhupathi and Bahamian Mark Knowles in round three. May the best men win :)

Posted in Frontiers, Mirror Worlds, Politics, Violence-Conflict Tagged: Aisam Ul-Haq Qureshi, Amritraj-Qureshi, India-Pakistan, Prakash Amritraj, sports and politics, Wimbledon ]]> http://kafila.org/2009/06/30/when-pakistanis-and-indians-cheered-for-the-same-team/feed/ 0 Shivam Vij http://kafila.org/2009/06/29/my-review-of-anand-teltumbdes-khairlanji-a-strange-and-bitter-crop/ http://kafila.org/2009/06/29/my-review-of-anand-teltumbdes-khairlanji-a-strange-and-bitter-crop/#comments Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:31:54 +0000 Shivam Vij http://kafila.org/?p=2929 ]]>

Khairlanji: A Strange and Bitter Crop By Anand Teltumbde; Navayana, New Delhi, 2008, 214 pp.; Rs 190; ISBN 978-81-89059-15-6

Anand Teltumbde is a noted Bombay-based Dalit intellectual who also wears the hat of a business executive. He has written this book about the lynching of a Dalit family in a Maharashtra village in 2006 to ensure that the incident is not easily erased from memory. He quotes Milan Kundera: “The struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” In other words, he sees this book as being a seminal work on the Khairlanji atrocity.

The book begins with Abel Meeropol’s song Strange Fruit, written in 1936 (and not 1939, as the book incorrectly states) about the lynching of two black youth. It is from this song that the book derives its sub-title, “A Strange and Bitter Crop,” which once again reinforces the book’s ambition. Billie Holiday’s rendition of Strange Fruit (in 1939) soon became an anthem for the anti-lynching movement in the US, but does Teltumbde’s book achieve its ambitious goal?

The book’s first chapter is a narration of the events of 29 September 2006, when Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange’s family was lynched to death. The atrocity is reduced in this narrative to a dry report, as if it were from the file of a district magistrate. Sample this:

Farming is the predominant occupation of the village with 373 hectares of agricultural land, of which 262 hectares—over 70 percent—are under irrigation from the Pench canal. In Khairlanji, 178 families own agricultural land. Though they are mostly marginal landholders, owing to assured irrigation the villagers harvest multiple crops such as rice, wheat and pulses… [pp. 29-30]

Instead of a crisply written reconstruction of the bone-chilling lynchings, one is burdened with too many irrelevant details, stitched together so wryly that they are unlikely to hold the interest of the general reader. Books on caste that have withstood the test of memory, such as Baby Kamble’s The Prisons We Broke or Om Prakash Valmiki’s Joothan, have invested in the craft of storytelling. To move the indifferent about the everyday caste violence, that is what we need the most: good storytelling.

The dry telling is made worse by self-righteous rhetoric. Teltumbde writes, for instance: “Khairlanjis are not confined to villages… They are manifest even in our towns and cities, sections of which have clad themselves in metal and glass in recent years… Every day millions are crushed and killed in spirit…” (pp. 13-14). Our cities do have caste, but do we see public lynchings? Such liberal (and repeated) use of “Khairlanjis” takes something away from the tragedy of Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange.

In the absence of original research and fieldwork, the telling of the Khairlanji incident gives us nothing new. Teltumbde mentions that when Bhaiyyalal’s daughter Priyanka had stood first in class ten, the Khairlanji villagers had felicitated her. But then how did the same villagers rape and murder her because of her caste? There’s something here that is amiss. Teltumbde seems to have not even interviewed Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange— 200 pages later that seems to have dawned upon him and an appendix titled “Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange Speaks” has been added. This is a transcript of Bhotmange’s press conference on 6 November 2006. He is asked whether he saw the incident with his own eyes. “He takes a deep breath and sits quietly. He does not speak.” How much of the lynching did Bhaiyyalal see, if at all? There’s a version of Bhaiyyalal’s eyewitness account in the book. Bhaiyyalal had initially claimed to have seen everything, and then, in court, retracted, thus becoming a ‘hostile witness’ in his own case. These are the ambiguities that a book published two years later should address and resolve.

That is not all: it is not just the CBI that gave a clean chit to many of the accused. It is also Bhaiyyalal himself, who first named and then stopped naming a local Nationalist Congress Party leader; in fact, he now lives with another NCP leader. So much so that he is estranged from his wife’s cousin Siddharth Gajbhiye, the prime witness in the case. What happened in the intervening months? Did Bhaiyyalal become the victim of a larger politics? Sadly, the book sheds no light on any of this. Teltumbde seems not to have attended any court hearing or interviewed any witnesses.

The protests over Khairlanji were led by the people; Dalit leaders were shamed into following. A book that claims to be analytical could have benefited from contextualising Khairlanji within Maharashtra’s Dalit movement and Dalit electoral politics. Instead, Teltumbde is content with telling you the obvious: that Khairlanji broke the myth of a progressive Maharashtra of Phule and Ambedkar.

The book’s only value is in the chapter “Post-Khairlanji”, which tells you of the repression of the anti-Khairlanji protestors, of the humiliating harassment by the police of people such as Dr Milind Mane and Ashu Saxena that the mainstream press had mostly ignored.

The media’s prejudice is explained at length in another chapter. Teltumbde does point out that it is not only the caste-composition of newsrooms but also commercial considerations that come in the way of the media while covering Dalit issues. But that does not explain why the media ‘ignored’ the Khairlanji incident for nearly a month. He dismisses the idea that the remoteness of the village had something to do with this. But really, how many national dailies have reporters in villages? For such coverage the media depends on the language press, which took the side of the perpetrators in this case and thus prevented news from coming out. The single most instrumental role in the media finally covering Khairlanji was played by Kishore Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti who emailed its fact-finding report to journalists. The VJAS’ role is underplayed. Teltumbde does not mention even once that the incident got wide attention after Sabrina Buckwalter’s story appeared in The Times of India. Where local Dalit activists have come together as a network and duly informed the press, several reports of Dalit atrocities from far and wide have appeared.

Chapters Five to Eight, which make up half the book, are not about Khairlanji at all. You are left wondering what thoughts like these are doing in a book on the lynching of a Dalit family:

It is an interesting paradox that while globalisation is euphorically spoken about as rendering nation-states increasingly irrelevant, compressing the world into a global village, security considerations about the same nation-states have created the paranoia of war against terror…

Teltumbde writes about whatever crosses his mind: neoliberalism, Naxalism, socio-economic zones and land-grab, Hindutva and Gujarat, Nandigram and police high-handedness, Salwa Judum. The book begins to read like an anthology of activist pamphlets. That is not to devalue activism, for activist literature in our times makes for a more authentic first draft of history than our newspapers. But one expects much more from a book.

The next chapter is an analysis of anti-caste laws and their implement-ation. This is not the first time such an exercise has been undertaken, and it seems like a space-filler in the absence of greater material on Khairlanji. The chapter, “The Political Economy of Atrocities,” tells you less about atrocities and more about the rise and consolidation of OBC politics, without co-relating those developments with the increase in Dalit atrocities. Teltumbde mentions how the post-1991 rural crisis hit Dalits, but not why most of the farmers committing suicide are OBCs. Another chapterclaims to be about “Exploding Myths”, but the sketchy arguments again leave you with more questions than answers. For instance, Teltumbde says that atrocities as public spectacles have increased, yet the tables he produces say that the incidence of arson, which is presumably both a kind of atrocity and a public spectacle, has declined. He does not even seek to explain the anomaly. Then, he disagrees with those who see caste atrocities as nothing but land disputes, thus ignoring the role of caste consciousness. He attributes this school of thought to those in the business of “marxist economic determinism” and yet, a few pages later, argues that future “Khairlanjis” can be prevented by “building of true class consciousness”! The argument is not elaborated. Teltumbde complains of increasing caste violence in Maharashtra by quoting a statistic that says that Maharashtra’s position amongst other states in cases of caste violence actually came down from number three in 1998-1999 to number ten in 2005. He complains about Mayawati diluting the Pevention of Atrocities Act in Uttar Pradesh (in 2007, she gave orders to her officers not to register too many cases under the Act), without acknowledging that if Dalit assertion under Mayawati had meant increasing numbers of FIRs, then scholars like Teltumbde would be quoting those to show how Dalit violence had actually increased under her rule. Heads you win, tails you lose.

The books leaves several other issues unresolved. Such as the question of who put up that banner across Vidarbha, with photographs of the almost naked dead bodies of the female victims, and a call to Dalit men to rise in protest?And what happened to Khairlanji after? What is Bhaiyyalal doing now? What about the court judgement in the case? The OBCs have been demonised through-out the book to the extent of giving the impression that the twice-born upper castes don’t commit atrocities. But Teltumbde fails to tell us anything about the Kunbi and Kalar castes of Khairlanji village, who lynched Bhaiyyalal’s family, beyond the fact of their being peasant castes? What, for example, is the history of their relations with Dalits? What are their political affiliations as a community? These are details that would significantly impact our understanding of the Khairlanji incident. Finally, the postscript mentions many atrocities that took place in Maharashtra after Khairlanji. Perhaps they could have been done justice by being written about in some detail. One wonders if the great post-Khairlanji Dalit uprising against caste violence had an impact on caste violence in the region thereafter? Did the possibility of another Dalit outburst affect the state’s response to later incidents?

All Teltumbde wants to talk about is Shudra oppressors, neoliberalism, Naxalism and the State—Khairlanji being a mere symbolic peg on which to hang all these ‘larger’ issues. Which is why you are surprised to read, on the second-last page:

Khairlanji soon got transformed into a symbol — a symbol of atrocity —shorn of reality. Dalits ceased to see any other caste crime beyond Khairlanji. This tendency to create symbols out of reality, and to discard reality thereafter, can be easily seen among dalits.

There’s another problematic symbol used here. The book is part of a series on atrocities called ‘HoloCaste’. This is not just a bad pun; it devalues both the Holocaust and violence against Dalits. It is time to use our own idioms, to tell our own stories, because the Dalit movement is still waiting for its own Abel Meeropol and Billie Holiday.

[An edited version of this review by me has appeared (.pdf here) in the May-June 2009 issue of Biblio.]

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Posted in Bad ideas, Countryside, Excavation Tagged: Anand Teltumbde, Dalit atrocities, Dalit literature, Dalits, Khairlanji ]]> http://kafila.org/2009/06/29/my-review-of-anand-teltumbdes-khairlanji-a-strange-and-bitter-crop/feed/ 2 Shivam Vij cover http://kafila.org/2009/06/29/iran-inquilab-zindabad/ http://kafila.org/2009/06/29/iran-inquilab-zindabad/#comments Sun, 28 Jun 2009 22:39:21 +0000 Shuddhabrata Sengupta http://kafila.org/?p=2921 ]]>

Once upon a time, only a hundred or so years ago, and earlier, Iranians were our neighbours. Many were friends, relatives – uncles, grandparents, ancestors, some were husbands, wives and lovers. And cities like Delhi, Lucknow, Murshidabad and Hyderabad spoke Persian better than they spoke English, or even Hindi. The distance from Tehran and Isfahan to Delhi, Lucknow and Lahore, or across the water from Bandar Abbas to Bombay or Karachi, in miles and in the imagination, seemed less than what we can even begin to understand today.

The Bengal renaissance had one of its points of origin in a Persian broadsheet called Mirat ul Akhbar published by Ram Mohan Roy in Calcutta. The first Iranian talking film and the last ‘Irani’ restaurant both have their origins in Bombay. The Sabk-e-Hindi, or the ‘Indian Style’ continued to adorn the more ornate fringes of Persian poetry in Iran. The miniatures painted in the ateliers of Delhi and Agra owed a great deal to the paints, brushes, colours and visions of visiting masters from Tabriz. The sitar and the sarod came from Iran, and stayed on. We shared jokes and stories, poets, prophets and pranksters, wine and spices, surnames (Kirmani, Rizvi, Mashadi, Yazdi) and clan histories, heresies and wisdom and a thousand other things that neighbours, friends, cousins and lovers share.

Then came another time, closer to our times, and Iranians were once again friends, some were comrades, in colleges and universities in Aligarh, Delhi, Pune and Bangalore.  They were the best footballers in Aligarh, the best dancers in Pune, they told the wildest jokes in Delhi, some of them were poets, some were athletes, some were fops, others saw themselves as revolutionaries. In the early and mid eighties of the last century, thousands of Iranians, fugitives from the tightening madness of the Islamic Republic (like their predecessors, fugitives from the lunacy of the Shah) came to India for respite. If you listen to Iranians who once lived in Delhi and Aligarh, and are now scattered across the world in Toronto, Berlin, Paris, Stockholm, Melbourne and Isfahan, they tell you a little known, or forgotten, story of betrayal. Of how the Iranian theocracy’s spies, (exactly like the Shah’s hated SAVAK) aided and abetted by Indian intelligence agents, harassed and intimidated hundreds of Iranian students and exiles in india. Some committed suicide.Others were blackmailed into returning in the name of their families, and many were imprisoned immediately, or sent to die at the front of a nasty war. Some perished in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison. Others, those who could resist going back to Iran, soon had to leave India, bitter and saddened to leave the cities that to them felt closest to home.

The first, and only ‘revolution’ I encountered as a child was born and betrayed in Iran. I was eleven years old in 1979, when the Shah of Iran was deposed, and I can still recall vividly, the elation I saw in blurred radio-photo images in newspapers, as I scanned them in Delhi. The streets of Tehran, to my eleven year old imagination, were the most thrilling place to be. It seemed to me, that young people, not more than ten to twelve years older than me, people who could have been my elder brothers and sisters, were changing history. The long shadow of Khomeini’s beard, a senseless war between a despotic regime in Iraq and the Iranian theocracy, and the betrayal of the 1979 revolution by the regime that became the Islamic Republic of Iran taught me to understand, at a fairly young age, that the withering and atrophying of ideals can be the cruellest gift that history holds out to those who hold dreams dear.

Ever since then, I have followed what happens to people in Iran as one would the fortunes of close relatives cut off by history. I have always dreamed of going to Tehran and Isfahan, tried to learn Persian, tried to follow the chaotic, joyous, anarchic and melancholic edges of Persian cyberspace, tried, whenever possible to know and learn more about Iran, and tried my very best to avoid the gushing Iranophilia (’No, not all Iranian films are fantastic, many are boring, formulaic and predictable’) that I know is as irritating to intelligent Iranians as gushing Indophilia is to me.

Today, as ever before, the millions of people on the streets of Tehran, Isfahan, Tabriz, Mashhad and elsewhere who  up have risen up against the recent ’stolen election’ have shown the world the face of an Iran that hardly anyone knew, or at least one that many preferred not to know.

This is an Iran that I have tried to know, at a distance, from Delhi, for a while. I have followed it in the testaments of Iranian exiles and Iranian dissidents like Akbar Ganji and Shirin Ebadi and thousans of others, imprisoned, tortured, killed, blackmailed and blacklisted, in the statements of anonymous and underground and lesser known Anarchist, Communist and Socialist Iranians, Iranian feminists, Iranian workers, Iranian civil rights activists, Iranian bloggers, Iranians both religious and non-religious who no longer believe that the Islamic Republic’s regime means anything to them, Iranian filmmakers, artists, poets, writers, philosophers, scientists and doctors, Iranian gay and lesbian activists, ordinary, decent, hard working, god fearing, sceptical and apolotical Iranians who just want to be left in peace and spared the depradations of a regime grown fat on the lard of corruption, priviledge and hypocrisy. Today, millions of these people, men, women, children, older people, pensioners, war veterans, former Islamists, believers and non-believers, are showing us that they, and not the Khamenei-Ahmedinijad cartel will write the contemporary history of Iran.

Today, many of the protestors in Tehran, are taking to the streets with placards that carry poems and aphorisms taken from Iran’s rich literary heritage. A poem, by the much loved Iranian poet Ahmed Shamlou, could be read as a poetic allegory for the regime presided over by Khamenei and Ahmedinijad. I am sure it is being read as that today on the streets of Tehran.

In This Blind Alley by Ahmed Shamlou

(Translated by Ahmad Karimi Hakkak, published in Strange Times, My Dear: The P.E.N Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature edited by Nahid Mozaffari and Ahmad Karimi Hakkak, Arcade Publishing, New York, 2005)

“They smell your breath
lest you have said; I love you
They smell your heart
These are strange times, my dear

They flog love
at the roadblock
Let’s hide love in the larder

In this crooked blind alley, as the chill descends
they feed fires
with logs of song and poetry
Hazard not a thought
These are strange times, my dear

The man who knocks at your door in the noon of the night
has come to kill the light
Let’s hide light in the larder

There, butchers
are posted in passageways
with bloody chopping blocks and cleavers:
These are strange times, my dear

They chop smiles off lips
and songs off the mouth
Let’s hide joy in the larder

Canaries barbecued
on the flames of lilies and jasmines,
These are strange times, my dear

Satan, drunk on victory
squats at the feast of our undoing,
Let’s hide God in the larder.”

At the same time as the streets of Tehran construct their defiance with silence and the reading of poems during the day and the rooftops of Tehran articulate their anger with slogans that invoke both the greatness of god and the fervent desire for ‘death to the dictatorship’ , we in India are sitting amidst the rising stench of a profound, sullen, stupor about Iran.

We have turned our back on our neighbours, our friends, our sometime cousins. We have betrayed, and are continuing to betray those who dream of an ordinary, decent, non-theocratic, open society in Iran, where people will not be harassed for showing the hair on their heads, or jailed for reading certain books or agitating for a fair wage, or sentenced to death for being in love with a person of a certain gender. We are failing to realize that the victory of the forces opposed to the Ahmadinejad clique represent a profound transformation in the Muslim world, where the automatic call to ‘politics by prerformed piety’ is no longer working. This could well be the begining of the end of Islamic fundamentalism, and a return to a broad based, class based, secular-democractic politics in the Islamicate world, just as the Khomeinist putsch signalled the glamorous inauguration of contemporary Islamic Fundamentalism in the world and the derailing of the Iranian revolution against the tyranny of the Shah by a fascist clerical clique.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, the challenger to Ahmadinejad, may well have been associated with the establishment of the Islamic Republic (as prime minister) in the early years of the Iran Iraq war, but his long exile and distance from politics following his removal from power, may have either led him to realize that the regime as it exists is unredeemable, or, he may be carried by forces that emanate from the popular hatred of the Islamist regime that may even be beyond his control. Not all those who are arrayed in the anti-Ahmedinijad faction are angels in waiting. Prominent amongst them is the corrupt and opportunist Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, whose opposition to Ahmedinijad has less to do with his love of liberty and more to do with his insatiable lust for power. He derailed the revolution before and handed it on a platter to the Islamists, he may derail the revolution again, and hand it on a platter to other vested interests.

Whatever be the case, there can be no mistaking the fact that the real movers of history at present are neither Mousavi, nor Rafsanjani, nor Ahemdinijad or the ‘Supreme Leader’ Ayatollah Khamenei. History is being made, not by leaders and candidates, by Ayatollahs and clerics, but by ordinary people gathering in their millions.Their resistance may have begun as a protest from within the Moussavi camp against electoral fraud, but it has rapidly become far more generalized. Today, the protests are about things much greater than a stolen election alone, they are about the fundamental directions that politics, culture and society will take in iran today. Even if the Khamenei-Ahmedinijad clique wins the day with repression and violence, it will have lost the night. Iran by night will continue to resonate with anger and rage. The dreams dreamt in Tehran will infect the nightmares of the Supreme Leader.

That the government of India, which has to protect its cynical interests in the realpolitik of the region should shake hands with the hated Ahmadinejad in Moscow, under the tutelage of (Ras)Putin is not surprising (after all they also cosy up to the junta in Rangoon for the same reason).

Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh Shaking Hands With Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

That there should be nervousness and anxiety in the corridors of Tata Steel, Essar, Reliance Petrochemicals and ONGC Videsh (each with substantial investments in Iran garnered by schmoozing with the Ahmadinejad-Khamenei cartel) is not in itself surprising. That the moribund and pathetic sycophancy of the so-called Communist Party of India (Marxist), which functioned, (while it functioned), as the front office of the Iranian regime in India (how many more dead communists and leftists in Iran would it have taken for the CPI(M) to recognize the fascism of Khomeini-Khameini-Ahmadinejad? ) should have rendered it speechless in the face of the current developments is not surprising. That the tired hacks of the Urdu press should provide apologies for clerical-klepto-fascism in iran is not surprising.

While none of this is surprising, it is nevertheless, deeply, profoundly saddening.

Remember the pious sloganeering of ‘Hands off Iran’ which exercised the Karats and the Bardhans, and even the more effete and niche apparatchiki of student Maoism in JNU and elsewhere, only last year? Iran was suddenly the most important issue in Indian politics, it appeared that how India’s foreign policy oriented oneself towards Iran’s nuclear ambitions could even make or break governments in India. Where are those people who shouted ‘Hands off Iran’? Where are they now, when the people of Iran need some real solidarity, and not the masquerade of ‘anti-Imperialism’ by proxy that our ‘radical’ mob-masters are so good at. Where are they now, when strong and vocal expressions of support for freedom and democracy in Iran could make a real difference?

I have already heard some snide remarks and whispers (which have attempted to  relieve the obscenity of the stunning silence in India regarding Iran) about how the protests in Iran are all engineered, about how they are all ‘elitist elements’ and about how Ahmadinejad needs all the support he can get from ‘people like us’.

If this is indeed the case, how can one explain the following statement of 23rd June, put out by militant Industrial workers (by no means the ‘velvet revolutionaries’ of the elite enclaves of North Tehran). And there are many more.

“…We workers, under the present conditions, when social protests have taken the form of a mass and a huge movement has come on the scene to achieve its demands, see it as our right to put forward the demands of fellow workers and to raise our banner. These demands are as follows:

1. Immediate increase in the minimum wage to over 1 million tomans [$1010] a month.

2. An end to temporary contracts and new forms of work contracts.

3. The disbanding of the Labour House and the Islamic Labour Councils as government organisations in the factories and workshops, and the setting up of shoras [councils] and other workers’ organisations independent from the government.

4. Immediate payment of workers’ unpaid wages without any excuses.

5. An end to laying-off workers and payment of adequate unemployment insurance to all unemployed workers.

6. The immediate release of all political prisoners including the workers arrested on May Day, Jafar Azimzadeh, Gholamreza Khani, Said Yuzi, Said Rostami, Mehdi Farahi-Shandiz, Kaveh Mozafari, Mansour Osanloo and Ebrahim Madadi, and an end to surveillance and harassment of workers and labour leaders.

7. The right to strike, protest, assemble and the freedom of speech and the press are the workers’ absolute right.

8. An end to sexual discrimination, child labour and the sacking of foreign workers.

Workers! Today we have a duty to intervene, to pose our demands independently and by relying on our own united strength, together with other sections of society, to work towards achieving our human rights.

The Free Trade Union of Iranian Workers. “

To this statement could be added calls to strike by workers in the Khodro Automobile Plant, of Bus Drivers and Transport Workers and even of the lower echelons of the bureaucracy. These voices will only grow, and if workers in the Oil Industry go on strike, as they did in 1978 and again in 1997, then the Regime’s days are clearly numbered .

Each of these calls have led to intimidation by the Basij, the gangs of Islamist thugs maintained by the state, even as regular units of the police, army and even some sections of the elite Revolutionary Guards seem reluctant to use force against striking and demonstrating people. The Basij have been particularly brutal with young women, who are seen as leading protests and especially vocal in their opposition to the repression unleashed by the regime.

Neda Agha Soltan

The death of Neda Agha Soltan, a 26 year old student of Islamic Philosophy and a largely apolitical music enthusiast, by anonymous sniper fire has catalysed even more fervent opposition, and her memory seems to be in the process of being transformed into a symbol of the many who (especially the young) who have died or been gravely injured in the last few days.

And yet, we in India are surrounded by a silence about Iran. This silence cannot be explained away as indifference, as a lack of curiosity, as yet another sign of Indian narcissism. Because if it is any of those it also signals a deeply unhealthy refusal to engage with our neighbourhood, and with the wider world. Sometimes, this refusal to engage comes weighed down by a pathetic ignorance of the history of our neighbourhood. “What is happening in Iran cannot be real”, goes this line of thinking, because, “actually they are a country of acquiescent fundamentalists, the majority of whom will finally toe the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad line”.

What this pathetic willingness to capitulate to the Mullahcracy in Iran does not understand is that what is going on in Iran is nothing new. The Islamists lost their moral legitimacy in Iran a long time ago, they actually risk losing their power now. The recent history of Iran is a continuous narrative of the opposition by different sections of the population against this regime. The difference this time, is that all the different sections of the population, women, workers, intellectuals, students, young people, the urban poor, and even some elements in the establishment, seem to have come together to signal that they have run out of patience with the fraud perpetrated on the people of Iran in the name of the Islamic Republic.

Those who ignore this forget Iranian history. They forget that  twenty thousand women had protested against the veil in Tehran as long ago as the 8th of March, 1979 (in the early days of the Iranian revolution).

That uprisings by workers, by Kurds, by Arab minorities were put down with lethal force. That the extrajudicial killings (the ‘Chain Murders’) in 1988 are still a fresh memory.

That thousands of people participated in militant demonstrations against land evictions in Meshed ordered by the regime in 1992

That this year, marks the 10th anniversary of the brutal suppression of the protests in Tehran University campuses that left many students dead in dormitories.

That workers have struck again and again, in courageous illegal strikes, in key sectors of the economy, risking death and imprisonment.

That civil rights activists and dissidents such as Akbar Ganji and Saeed Hajjarian much like our own Binayak Sen have acted for many years, despite disabling imprisonment and assasination attempts, as beacons of conscience with their principled opposition to an increasingly cynical regime.

If we choose to forget, or ignore these realities, the people of Iran will never forgive us, and the thousands of years of things we have shared will drown in their bitter alienation from our lives. Our neighbours will shun us, because we shunned them when they needed us most.

Students in Indian universities, workers, teachers, intellectuals, activists, artists and anyone who cares for freedom, for decency in India, need to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Iran today. We need petitions to be signed, statements to be released, marches and demonstrations to be organized, sit-ins and boycotts of official Iranian delegations to be put into place. We need to put pressure on Indian corporations to explain their complicity with the brutal Khamenei-Ahmadinejad dictatorship, and we need to ask our government how it explains its complicity through silence with state terror in Iran. We need exactly what needed to be done in Delhi, Calcutta, Bangalore, Trivandrum, Bhopal, Lucknow and Bombay when South Africa practiced Apartheid, when Israel bombed Lebanon or Gaza, when the USA attacked Iraq and even, as my memory serves me, when the Shah of Iran came calling in 1978.

We need to say that today, we are all with the people of Iran. That our silence by rage, and our roar by night, will join the wave that has begun in Tehran. Then, and then alone can we repay the debt we owe, over thousands of years, to our friendship with the people of Iran.

We should remember this the next time, and  whenever, anyone says ‘Inquliab Zindabad’ within earshot. For decades, those words, have brought together all those committed to liberty and justice in India, and even those who have pretended, or are pretending to be committed to liberty and justice in India. Both those words are taken from Farsi, the common and exalted language of Iran.

(Cross posted on Sarai Reader List)

A few weeks before the national elections, www.SmartVote.in organized an open house where people could meet candidates contesting from various parliament assemblies in Bangalore and ask questions to them. Captain Gopinath was contesting from the prestigious Bangalore South constituency. He was one among the favourite candidates – honest, accountable and upright. Many questions were fielded to him during the open house ranging from what he would do about corruption to how he would improve the conditions in the city. One of the questions raised to him was how would he ensure that people’s opinions were reflected in the passage of important bills. To this, he replied that he would constitute a special committee comprising of people such as Mohandas Pai of Infosys and Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, among others, who he would consult on bills and legislation before casting his vote. He seemed to suggest that these persons’ opinions reflected those of the masses and hence, consultation would them would automatically imply obtaining views from the public. This both concerned and surprised me – how and why are corporates considered to be representing my opinion?

Just yesterday, news broke out that PM Manmohan Singh has called upon Nandan Nilekani to head the Unique ID Authority of India and implement the project. It appears that Nilekani has been promoted almost to the rank of a cabinet minister. On what basis was such a decision made and why was Nilekani the choice? It concerns me even more because in the past, Infosys’s own track records on accountability have been suspect and that Chief Ministers have held shares and stocks in Infosys. Moreover, Infosys was criticized for accumulating land under the Bhoomi e-governance project.Why is it believed that corporates can be more accountable than governments and/or politicians? What places them above these institutions and actors?

Advocates of free market liberalism would proclaim that corporates are more responsible and ensure that tasks are executed efficiently because they must deliver to their clients. But to pose the corporation as the efficient and accountable opposite of the unaccountable government is again going against the grain of the principles of freedom – it is like replacing one hegemonic institution with another under the presumption that the corporation is likely to be more upright.

For now, the question remains why Nilekani and why a unique ID card for “efficient” delivery of services to the poor. How does one understand this paradigm shift in the distribution of public goods and resources?

I came across this delightful piece of information in the historian K P Padmanabha Menon’s History of Kerala (vol.3, AES reprint,2001, pp.498-500) which was written in the early 20th century. He quotes from “a paper published in the Madras Review (vol.2, p.250)”; we do not know which year this was published, but there is good reason to think that it was in the early 20th century. The paper is about a truly exciting institution – ‘marriage’ which produced not a heterosexual conjugal couple, but a same-sex  (male) couple bound by ‘friendship’!

It is by now well-known that the conjoining of Brahmanical and Victorian morality outlawed a range of marriage practices that existed in Kerala in the 19th and 20th centuries, ranging from looser marital ties to polyandry; this ‘marriage’ for friendship is one of those. The author of the piece from which Menon quotes does not call it marriage, but the ceremonies described clearly resemble forms of marriage common among the matrilineal and non-brahminic communities of Kerala in the 19th century.The differences are however more interesting, since reciprocity seems all-important in this marriage! The community which practised this was the dalit Kannan Pulayas of south Kerala (then known as Travancore), who were among the ’slave castes’.

Equally interesting, perhaps, is the narrator’s ‘unholy glee’ despite the supercilliousness evident in the confession about having discovered this practice among “these degraded people” — I won’t say more… here is it!

“The most important ceremony after a child is born is the ceremonial entrance into friendship, the binding of the tie which unites man with man until death. It gives me pleasure to find that the ceremonial friendship, instances of which are to be met with among many races, exists among these degraded people even now. The Christian master never dreams that among his serfs is a custom that sheds a world of light on the verse in his Bible which says that there is a friend which sticketh closer than a brother. Here is some small shred of evidence for the primitive identity of the human race, and here is morality, yet entirely distinct from the family. There is real affection and the tie is dissolvable only with death.

” A Pulaya can have only a single friend and he should be a member of a different Illam [clan], as all illamites are held to be relatives. A man loses his title, if he marries into the family of his friend.

“A Pulaya boy, when he is between ten and fifteen years of age, contracts a voluntary friendship with some other boy of the same age and locality, and when the friendship has ripened, the parents are informed of it. If the boy is not socially inclined, his father selects a friend for him from a family of his own standing, or, if practicable, of a higher standing. The father may of course overrule the will of the boy. The two parents agree among themselves to meet in the house of either of them for the purpose of solemnizing the friendship. on the fixed day, the Vallon [local notable] and some other officials and thirty two men of the Kara [a local territorial unit], go with the parent guest to the house of the parent host. The latter takes them first to the toddy shop and then back to his house. The parents walk with their arms over each other’s shoulder. The guests are then feasted in the regular Pulaya fashion. Both for dinner and the preliminary refreshments, the parents have to eat from the same dish. After the feast is over, the host asks ‘I ask of your lords (i.e., the Vallon, etc.) and others assembled whether I may be permitted to buy friendship by paying money.’ When he says ‘yes’, he gives 120 chs. [chakrams -- a small silver coin] to the other parent and declares that he has got a friend for his son. The two boys then clasp hands, and they are henceforth never to quarrel. The parent guest has some other day to become host and go through identically the same forms.

” The friend is now regarded as a member of the family. in theory all that the two friends possess are to be enjoyed in common. The friend comes in and goes out as he pleases. There is no important thing done without consulting him. He is an important factor in all ceremonies, especially in marriage.I suspect also, that the friend has some claim over a man’s wife. In theory the two friends have but one life…”

We find an analogue of this custom of entering into friendship existing in Nepal, and it is curious that practices bearing such close resemblance should exist in countries lying so far apart as Nepal and Travancore…

[later, in his description of Pulaya marriage, Menon describes how the friend of bridegroom takes part in the marriage ceremony  as almost a 'shadow bridegroom'. Perhaps this was a version of polyandry which was very common in rural Kerala, a practice and which lasted very long, right into the 1970s. I don't think this information is merely of antiquarian interest.Even its obvious relevance to contemporary political struggles does not exhaust its significance. There is a history of the intense male homosociality so visible in everyday life in Kerala, that we need to investigate; maybe this is a start-- Devika]

This is a news flash from rainy Ranikhet, from RUKUN ADVANI of Permanent Black.

Balbir Punj owns a hotel called ‘Windsor Lodge’ on Ranikhet’s outskirts. (When it comes to personal money-making, BJP ideologues seem to have no problems naming their properties after the Queen of England.) Last week Punj came to his Lodge and went to the Kalika temple opposite the property. He did not notice a large bull there, but the bull noticed him: it charged straight for him and before Punj knew what was happening he had been thrown up in the air and gouged in the front. His arm is now in a sling. It being specially embarrassing for a BJP Hindu to be thus cast aside by a cow, Punj has been desperately downplaying his injuries. However, he asked Khanduri to immediately pen the bull, and the bull has been removed from the Kalika temple.

Believe it or not, that is one of the findings of a new survey on Kashmir, conducted in both India and Pakistan.

And some more disbelief here:

A majority of Pakistanis say Pakistan’s government does not provide support to militant groups that conduct attacks against civilians in India, while a majority of Indians tend to believe it is providing support.

Pakistani attitudes about such groups are complex. Less than half (39%) believe that such groups operating in Kashmir help either the security of Kashmiris, though few (9%) say it hurts security. In the context of the conflict in Kashmir, large majorities of Pakistanis say that attacks on Indian government officials are rarely or never justified. Attacks on security-related personnel in India–policemen, intelligence agents, military and paramilitary troops–are rejected by a plurality.

Asked about the possibility of the government “putting pressure on India by supporting militant groups in occupied Kashmir,” 37 percent favored it, while 26 percent opposed it and 37 percent did not provide an answer.

But perhaps more tellingly,

Overall both sides endorse their own governments’ approach to the conflict over Kashmir, especially Pakistanis (Indians 57%, Pakistanis 68%).

The full report is here.

लालगढ़ मुक्त कराया जा रहा है. पिछले आठ महीने से जिस इलाके में पश्चिम बंगाल की मार्क्सवादी सरकार की पुलिस नही घुस पा रही थी , उस पर केन्द्र सरकार के सशस्त्र बल की सहायता से अब बंगाल की पुलिस धीरे–धीरे कब्जा कर रही है. केन्द्रीय गृह मंत्री पी. चिदंबरम ने कहा ज़रूर था कि यह कोई युद्ध नहीं हो रहा है क्योंकि कोई भी राज्य अपनी ही जनता से युद्ध नहीं करता लेकिन लालगढ़ में अभी चल रहे सैन्य अभियान की रिपोर्ट दे रहे पत्रकार लगातार यह बता रहे है कि वहां स्थिति किसी युद्ध क्षेत्र से कम नहीं है. गांव के गांव वीरान हो गए हैं.हजारों की तादाद में आदिवासी शरणार्थी शिविरों में पनाह ले रहे हैं. ध्यान देने की बात है कि ये शिविर भी राज्य सरकार नहीं चला रही है. पहले दो बडे शिविर तृणमूल कांग्रेस के द्वारा स्थापित किए गए. लालगढ़ की जनता के लिए शिविर स्थापित करने के बारे में बंगाल की सरकार अगर नहीं सोच पाई तो ताज्जुब नहीं क्योंकि उसके हिसाब से वह उसकी जनता नहीं है, वह तो शत्रु पक्ष की जनता है!दूसरे शब्दों में वह गलत जनता है. सही जनता वह है जो मार्क्सवादियों के साथ है.

लालगढ़ में पिछले आठ महीने से एक विलक्षण जन आंदोलन चल रहा था. बुद्धदेव भट्टाचार्य के काफिले पर हमले के बाद पुलिस ने जिस तरह लालगढ़ के आदिवासियों को प्रताड़ित किया, उसने साठ साल से भी ज़्यादा से असह्य गरीबी और अमानुषिक परिस्थितियों को झेल रही आदिवासी जनता के भीतर सुलग रही असंतोष की आग को भड़का दिया. लेकिन ध्यान दें, इन पिछड़े आदिवासियों ने कितनी राजनीतिक परिपक्वता का परिचय दिया! उन्होंने ‘पुलिस संत्रास विरोधी जनसाधारण समिति’ बनाई और लगभग हर संसदीय राजनीतिक दल से सहयोग मांगा. वह उन्हें मिला नहीं. लालगढ़ ने कहा , यहां हमारा अपमान करने वाली पुलिस और हमारी उपेक्षा करने वाले प्रशासन का स्वागत नहीं है. पुलिस और प्रशासन की उनके जीवन में अप्रासंगिकता का आलम यह है कि राज्य विहीन आठ महीनों में इस समिति ने ट्य़ूबवेल लगवाया जो बत्तीस साल के जनपक्षी वाम शासन में नहीं हो सका था, स्कूल चलाया, सड़क बनाई जो बत्तीस साल से नहीं थी और इस बीच अपराध की किसी घटना की कोई खबर नहीं मिली. एक तरह से यह जनता का स्वायत्त शासन था.
संसदीय दलों के सहयोग देने से इनकार की स्थिति में लालगढ़ में पहले से सक्रिय माओवादियों को अपना क्षेत्र विस्तार करने का अवसर दिया. नांदीग्राम में विरोधी इलाके को वापस कब्जे में लेने के सी.पी.एम. के अभियान की याद ने अगर समिति को माओवादियों का समर्थन स्वीकार करने की ओर ढकेला तो क्या इसे आश्चर्यजनक माना जाना चाहिए? यह भी ध्यान रहे कि आठ महीनों में माओवादियों की ओर से भी कोई हिंसक अभियान नहीं चलाया जा सका था. बल्कि अगर आप उनके बयान देखें तो वे किसी क्रांतिकारी मुक्ति-अभियान की बात नहीं कर रहे थे. वे तो यह कह रहे थे कि वाम मोर्चे की सरकार ने किसी केंद्रीय विकास योजना को भी चलाने में कोई दिलचस्पी नहीं दिखाई.

हाल में अपने अबाधित बत्तीस साल के शासन के गौरव का गान करते हुए वाम मोर्चे ने राष्ट्रीय अखबारों में जो रंगीन विज्ञापन दिए हैं, वे गरीबी और अपमान के तीन दशकों की कहानी को छिपाने में असफल रहे हैं. वाम दलों की दिलचस्पी जनता की ज़िन्दगी को खुशहाल बनाने में नहीं रही, सिर्फ अपने प्रभाव क्षेत्र के विस्तार में और जनता को आज्ञाकारी बनाने में ही उसकी ताकत लगी. किसी भी असहमति को कुचल देने और किसी विरोधी शक्ति को न पनपने देने के लिए चौकन्नी सी.पी.एम. की क्रूरता की कथा उसके सत्ता में आते ही सुन्दरबन के मारिचझापी हत्याकांड से शुरू हो जाती है. सिंगुर और नान्दीग्राम तक आते-आते क्रूरता और दमन के इस शासन को चुपचाप मानने से जनता ने इंकार करना शुरू कर दिया. जनता के शासन के विरुद्ध जनता के इस प्रतिवाद को वामदलों और उनके बुद्धिजीवियों ने विचारधारात्मक पाप ठहराया. आखिर जो शासन मार्क्सवादी विचारों पर आधारित है, जनता को उसके विरुद्ध जाने का अधिकार ही कैसे दिया जा सकता है!

लालगढ़ से आने वाली तस्वीरें देखिए: ये जीवित नरकंकाल हैं, भूख की निरंतरता में ज़िन्दगी को दांतों से पकडे हुए! इनके-जैसे मौत की कगार पर झूल रहे लोगों के लिए जो सहारा खोजा गया, यानी, राष्ट्रीय ग्रामीण रोजगार योजना, उसका कार्ड भी पार्टी के कब्जे में था. यह तब पता चला जब चुनाव नतीजों के बाद सी.पी.एम के प्रति नफरत से भरी जनता ने उसके दफ्तरों और नेताओं के घरों पर हमला शुरू कर दिया. इलाका दखल की बंगाल राजनीति के अनुसरण में खेजुरी में तृणमूल कांग्रेस ने और लालगढ़ में माओवादियों ने इस जन असंतोष की आड़ में सी.पी.एम. के दफ्तरों को जलाना, उसके सदस्यों को इलाके से बाहर करना, लूटना और उनकी हत्या करना शुरू कर दिया. लालगढ में आदिवासियों के नए आन्दोलनात्मक प्रयोग को इस तरह माओवादियों ने विकृत कर दिया. आगजनी और हत्याओं ने ढहती हुई राज्य सरकार को सहारा दे दिया. हमारे मित्र कुमार राणा ने ठीक ही लिखा कि जब तक यह आंदोलन बहिष्कार की तकनीक पर चल रहा था, तब तक राज्य के पास उसे भंग करने का नैतिक अधिकार नहीं था. जैसे ही खुलेआम पीठ पर ए.के.47 लटकाकर माओवादी नेता किशनजी ने प्रेस को संबोधित किया, राज्य ने इस प्रतीक का अर्थ समझ लिया. इसके बाद इसके लिए कोई गुंजाइश नहीं थी कि केन्द्र सरकार खामोश बैठे. एक तरह से माओवादियों ने एक लोकप्रिय जनान्दोलन की हत्या करने का इंतजाम कर दिया.

लालगढ पर राज्य का फिर से कब्जा हो जाएगा. फिर से सी.पी.एम. के दफ्तरों पर उसके झंडे टंग गए हैं. पर क्या सी. पी.एम. जनता के अंदर उसके प्रति पल रही घृणा की आग से बच पाएगी? क्या यह सच नहीं है कि सी.पी.एम. ने बंगाल पर शासन करने का अधिकार खो दिया है और अगर उसे लोकतांत्रिक मूल्यों का ज़रा भी लिहाज है तो कायदे से उसे शासन छोड देना चाहिए. सी.पी.एम. से यह उम्मीद करना व्यर्थ है क्योकि सी.पी.एम. संसदीय राजनीति को सिर्फ एक रणनीति मानती है, उसका लक्ष्य है एक पार्टी की हुकूमत. तीस साल में उसने सोचा कि इस हुकूमत की जड़ें पक्की हो गई हैं. यही सोवियत संघ और पूर्वी योरोप की पार्टियों ने सोचा था. ऐतिहासिक भौतिकवाद की दुहाई देने वाले जब इस गफलत में पड़ जाते हैं कि वे इतिहास के नियामक हैं तो वह उनसे निर्मम बदला लेता है. सी.पी.एम. की यह इतिहास से साक्षात्कार की घडी है.

[Part of  Series. Introduction: For Movement]

Tanger, Morroco, June 2009

Sometimes you just have to seek the travel moment. Yes, the best moments are unexpected, everyday, hidden. Sometimes though, the textbook travel guide moments, mass produced as they are, still work. Try this for a classic travel guide must-do: you drive down to the south of Spain, get to a ferry, put your car in the hold and cross the water in an hour long ride from Europe to Africa. West to.. well… not West. Continent to Continent. Universe to Universe. It’s a [good] travel writer’s worst nightmare and a travel publisher’s wet dream.

The twist, of course, is that when you cross the ferry from Algeciras in Spain, you can go [as I did] not directly to Tanger, but to Cuetta, a city of about seventy thousand which [ready for it?] is Spanish. One of the three cities and a few naval bases and fortresses that are “European” while being in Africa. So my ferry from Europe to Africa was actually Europe to Europe, and then a drive to a land border into Morroco. Serves me right for chasing the moment. Europe, apparently, is harder to shake than it seems. Damn it.

The other twist is that “Africa” in that essential non-Europe-ness of it starts actually at the ferry pier in Spain, where an approaching car is met by the classic desi-style “helpers” clad with forms, tips, insider secrets, and the perfect ferry price. There are about four young men dressed in classic Sarojini-jeans and tight t-shirts when we pull in and they take us happily to the “ticket counter” which we realize ten minutes later is actually a travel agency. Classic. No prices are displayed, everything seems to happen rather randomly and there is a smell in the air of convenient pricing. At the ferry point across, Europe seemed to have conceded some ground to other ways of managing. I was beginning to feel at home.

I was traveling with an American and a Portuguese, in a car with Portuguese license plates. My friend told me tales of being chased by dozens of touts everywhere because of the license plates of the car. I shuffled a bit uncomfortably. I was about to ride into Morroco in a car with European plates. It felt …. wrong, somehow. But how? In my years in the US, I was firmly and insistently an “other.” I insisted on it. I was “brown people”, the “global south” was my place, my part of the world. Morroco was my part of the world. I wasn’t either European, or white. Why would touts chase me?  I was somehow, in my head, closer to the Morrocans than either one of my friends. Funny, isn’t it? Apparently, I am one with the global South. I, an elite Indian with enough capital to drive into Morroco in a European car on holiday, am apparently closer to the Morrocon young men trying to peddle five euro margins off a ferry ticket than my friends in the car we share. Where are good slaps in the face when you need them?

We needn’t have worried though. We arrived in Tanger, looking for the global South. The cities without grids, the cities of informality, the cities where the “rich and the poor lived side by side”, where “modernity and tradition meet”, the cities yet to come, the cities constantly unmade, the maximum cities, the cities where travel clichés came true. We came instead to Tanger which, we discovered happily, didn’t really give a shit about us. Welcome to the post-tourist city of the “global South.” Tanger glitters. Brand new airport, brand new roads, brand new waterfront bars and hotels, brand new train stations. You know something is happening when the train stations in a city are made of shiny new glass. New developments are everywhere, more housing units in construction than anywhere I’ve seen other than the peripheries of Indian and Chinese cities. Even the medina, the “old” city of Tanger had broadened its roads, opened up new cafés and hotels. The touts were nowhere to be seen – the city considered us idly and then went on its way. I loved it, relishing the snub of a city that didn’t have to pander but could still welcome you. Our post-colonial selves, apparently, aren’t all that post: a fuck you to the world elite still feels good.

Yet something felt missing. I looked around, disappointed at the city for not being “Morrocan” and at myself for searching for something “Morrocan.” Yet some part of my dissapointment I still keep. Developers – in Tanger, I found out, it was two big companies [sound familiar?] – build like developers, no matter where they are. A city that has a long history of managing the presence of Spain, England, France and Morroco itself for so many years, defiantly remaining international in its own way, was now becoming international in another way: it was beginning to look placeless. Global, you could call it. A fascimilie of so many cities – a coverging point for cities built by developer design. Overnight, lego blocks of identical apartment buildings laid out next to each other have spread like weeds over its landscape. Is this the new cosmopolitanism – a sense of familiar placelessness everywhere you go? I didn’t want Tanger to be “Morrocan” but I wanted it to be something, something more than the city I saw.

But then I think maybe the city is actually taking its time to make up its mind about me. Cities hold many secrets. In many of them, my own city included, you have to put in the time to discover them. I think this as I write on a scrap of borrowed paper in a café. Tanger is a city of cafes. Dozens of them line every street, serving coffee and desserts. They’re full of addas that would make Kolkata proud. The best part about Tanger’s cafes though is that they have stadium seating – all the seats face outward to the seat. Friends sitting together sit on the same side of the table, side by side, watching the world go by, sometimes even when the tables are inside the café! The cafes feel like Tanger. A city that has seen many peoples come through trying to claim it and has quietly watched them come and go, as it does today, sitting on seats that face the street. Perhaps this is Tanger. An expectant city that has seen it all. A post-tourist city. A city that won’t put on its Sunday best for you. A city that defies the traveler’s selfishness. A city that is sitting back in one of it’s cafes, waiting to see what will come next. Getting back into the European license plates to head to Fes and the “real Morroco” [we never learn, do we?], I look back curiously, still unsure as to what I’ve seen.

This is a guest post by AKHIL KATYAL

Topicality is a homage one pays to the short-term memory that the new media both triggers and complains against in its customers. In the long-term of course, where trend is all important, the topical is only a category of the banal. But it is under the shelter of such a necessary topicality – the topical is always necessary – that I hope to sneak in a scandal.

Everyone is talking about the queer pride marches that are going to happen in four cities in India at the end of this month. Most liberal reportage is obviously supportive, if not triumphant. For these cities themselves, it is seen as a step into a liberal urban culture which tolerates, even enjoys difference. All the talk about the ‘gay community’ or ‘lgbt community’ that the Indian media – and the activists – have been dabbling in for at least a decade now, seems to be reaching its logical climax: the community is expressing itself. Every city seems to have its own pet lgbt community or at least aspires to.

The media is hungry for its reactions – was the gay community happy with a certain gay-themed film?, what are the community’s reactions to ongoing court case against section 377?, what does the community feel about this, about that? – as if the community was one big speaking animal. The pattern is repeated in the four metropolitans and it sets the model for smaller towns to replicate in a future – cities are all plotted onto this calendar of betterment – one behind the other, all with the same dream. In this liberal vision – which most of us repose our trust in – all cities potentially look alike – fed by a similar criteria. All cities will have a slot for sexual difference that it will yearly celebrate.

Now do not get me wrong. When I speak like this, at worst, I am conflicted and at best, self-conscious. And neither of these make for impressive persuasion. But I seriously want to see the underside of the liberal and calculate the stakes involved. When everyone reposes their trust in one dream, or when a large section of people becomes unanimous, there must be something necessarily wrong with it. Well not necessarily, but it almost always is. For instance, this entire trust in the language of rights, particularly rights for the sexual minorities. The liberal democrat in us supports ‘sexual rights as human rights’ unflinchingly. We fight in the courts for it, we write it out in our banners and slogans and we constantly raise awareness campaigns about ‘our own’ rights. The matter of sexuality has been framed wholesale as ‘the right to be who I am’. We are all equal, we are all different and we have the right to this difference. This is the miracle of identity politics. Of course to even minimally sustain this illusion of different identities, we have to necessarily supply them with a set of unique characteristics. You can not practically maintain distinction if you do not outline its features. So every time you hear – that the ‘gay community’ should not be stereotyped, or that the ‘lgbt community’ is facing an endless battle against the media which stereotypes it – you are not seeing something which identities fear and can avoid – you are rehearsing something which is inherent in identities. They sustain themselves through stereotypes – this is the theoretical truth that we better learn about identities.

The journalist who writes a stupid article about the homosexuals – perhaps even a homophobic one – shares his grounds with the sexuality rights activist – both believe in the existence of ‘homosexuals’, both are quite sure that they are, in some significant way, different from the ‘heterosexuals’, both join hands in making this first supposition. And the language of rights makes it difficult for us to think that it can be otherwise. The language of rights is by its very nature, universal and projected onto an always better and better future. It encompasses the all and the always. The biggest skepticism we must have amidst our investment in rights is to see what questions it has made us stop asking – that if nothing else, was the lesson of Zizek in his famous 1999 lecture on human rights and its discontents. For instance, the sexual minority is a given, we have stopped asking how it came to be, that is considered an irrelevant question, the gay and straight and bisexual are a given, we are even proud to be gay or straight or bisexual – that is the whole thrust of pride – but we have stopped asking how this gay and straight came to be, what are the long-term stakes involved in sustaining this distinction, or when did we become forever different? And Zizek goes so far as claiming identity politics to be a game of apartheid – a distinction set on false basis of people being distinguishable by one or other of their properties – ethnic, sexual orientation, or anything else. When I say false, I mean something specific. False, not to mean, that it does not unfold or does not have its material effects. False, here, instead, that which is not a given and can never be taken as such, that which is made up by some specific interests – always having both advantages and disadvantages. And that which should be ideally dumped when you understand the huge disadvantages it will cause in the long run.

But coming back to the activist and the ‘stupid’ journalist – who both share a supposition – they are both within the misguided legacy of late nineteenth century sexology and psychoanalysis in Europe that produced this homosexual – itself through pained processes of stereotyping – where the sexologists perversely listed the differences that a set of people have in relation to those who are ‘normal’. (I say ‘misguided’ because it often markets itself as the only way to understand same-sex desire – as being homosexual – it seems to function as the more credible, scientific, truthful term – underlying all other ways. Of course it does this by working almost as a term of science; for instance, the londebaz (the one who has a habit for boys), which uses the idiom of habit, is necessarily seen only as one of the ‘local’ ways of understanding the ‘homosexual’ – which is an all serving definition – and which, one can argue, itself uses the specific idiom of interiority, as against habit. Which is truer – the londebaz or the homosexual? Is that the right question to ask?) For Iwan Bloch who wrote The Sexual Life of Our Time (1908), the homosexual body was a body forever different from that of the heterosexual – look at what he writes: ‘More especially after removing any beard or moustache that be present, we sometimes see much more clearly the feminine expression of face in a male homosexual…Still more important for the determination of a feminine habitus are direct physical characteristics…’. He ridiculously perseveres in outlining this difference, speaking about a less developed muscular system (if only he could see what has become of the muscle-mary type among gay men), deposits of fat which make these men look like women, even fairer complexion et. al. He sounds stupid by the end of it. Of course he has no way of understanding femininity in men except this, or masculinity in women. And he is fully convinced that all homosexuals look like this. The stereotype is not the additional feature of identities; it is its structural makeup. It is what went into its creation.

It is a well rehearsed argument that what sexology only described, psychoanalysis irrevocably made into a matter of truth about one’s self. In that way, psychoanalysis was much more demoniac because it was more subtle. It always had something up its sleeve. Once Freud sat with his patients, and listened to them, making them revisit their childhoods and then coming to identify sexual truths about them through such sittings, the damage was forever done. I mean damage in a very particular way. When all stories begin to sound alike. Because once Freud made sexuality as something excavable – that going back into your childhood or earlier life, you narrativize episodes of the past – you make them mean something for the present – he already made all instances of desire only instrumental enough to mean something about the person’s sexuality – only important enough to name that person – homosexual or heterosexual. So for instance let us say there is this girl, young – she says that in her childhood, she had desired this woman who was her maid, wanted to be with her, wanted to sleep next to her, and then later, as she grew up, she desired her father, wanted all his favours, wanted to bear him a child, and then again later – note how a life is already being made into a chronological flatline, a prerequisite for narrative – she wanted to stay with an aunt, and win her favour. Freud would be at pains to make sense of this narrative. I think disparate instances of desire must have struck a bad chord with Freud because he always wanted to place them together, make them mean something in relation to each other, and by the end of it, have an answer, even if an unconvincing one, about what the person really is. So this girl would be interpreted as having an unconscious homosexual current of feelings – which, of course for her times, was expressed in particular ways – and that this undercurrent, is hidden beneath a more visible heterosexual side to her. He would place one type of sexuality (homosexuality) beneath another (heterosexuality) – one type of current of feelings buried under another – in a tiered schema. Of course the basis of all of this is the architecture of the secret – the real game of psychoanalysis. What you hide always seems to be truer than what you show – nothing else would have driven Freud more than this maxim. And of course desire for some one of the same sex had to be hidden in peculiar ways and expressed in some others – hence it came to be thought of as the truth par excellence of the person involved – her hidden grail. Now see, something peculiar has happened – in the way we understand desire and sexuality and their relation to each other – and I will tell you how. But before that you would have already noticed that Freudian psychoanalysis has set up a peculiar model of understanding life and those who live it – which is later rehearsed in the coming-out story, in the discussions of one’s past that a sexual minority support group meeting always triggers, in endless counseling sessions, in the way we so nonchalantly say, the first I knew I was gay when….The homosexual would become the foundational basis of the lesbian and gay rights movements. Her existence would become irrefutable. What was a product of peculiar forms of narrative making – Freud near his patient on the couch, or more generally of the Freudian – would now be a subject position – taken as a given. When an editorial call for contributions asks for gay and lesbian personal narratives, it does something very peculiar. It not only recruits those stories, but also triggers the story tellers to make gay or lesbian the driving force of the way they remember, to strike up a certain mood, and connect all those instances of desire, which till now lay fallow. The result is not simply the gay story but the instance of the becoming gay of the story teller – a formalization of this way of arranging lives and desires.

At this instance, and amidst all the euphoria of the pride marches, we have to make a decision – as activists or any of those invested in the liberal democratic ideal of imagining a small percent of homosexuals in any given society and then giving them rights to live and love (ending up producing a huge percent of untheorized, unthought of heterosexuals who are doomed to their problems and power, of necessarily being the violators) – we have to make a decision of what we are going to make the pivotal front line concept of our activism. I am not raising this question for the first time. It has been raised before, and by stronger voices. It seems that we have played the game with sexuality – understood here as sexual orientation, lesbian or straight – for way too long, and in some ways we might continue to, despite our wishes, but perhaps hopefully not. These four city marches will make identities based on a sexual orientation a matter of unflinching pride. There will be banners saying for instance, Proud to be Lesbian. The language in the courts is that of sexual minority – always framing sexual orientation as so integral to a person, that it becomes a matter of self-respect, a criterion of her minimal dignity. But have identities delivered their radical promise? Have we not thrown in our lot with them without understanding all the stakes – or why do we, knowing that there are many disadvantageous stakes involved, persevere in backing them up? It is a question that strikes at our very abilities and hopes of making a radical break, or at least shifting from one significant way of thinking and acting, to another. It is well known that in places where sexual rights of lgbt people have been recognized – instances of homophobic violence has not decreased but instead escalated. We should not flinch away from asking the question: how is it that identities choreograph interaction between people, who are on its basis, considered forever different from each other? Is the pact of difference that identities make us sign, always already a violent pact? Where does this pact of difference lead us to – what do the major evident examples of apoliticization of sexual identities and their community ghettoization teach us? Becoming exactly the things that they first sough to disturb – even right-wingers, conservative republican, family-oriented gay men or women – normalized beyond repair – now scorning at another set of people, considering another set as abnormal.

We should not celebrate identities without thinking where they tend. A certain branded group which organizes parties for gay men in Delhi does not allow people in drag or people who do not meet certain dress codes. A Gay Bombay group picnic event had this to say in talking about the space they are trying to create: ‘GB, as a support group, has created this comfort/safe space for gays. Many people at the event may be “newbies” (those still coming to terms with their sexuality and/or those who have mustered the courage to come to such an event for the first time). We request you to be sensitive to the comfort levels of others and to behave and dress accordingly.’ It further lists indulging in hanky panky in its things-not-to-do list. Who is this newbie who should be safely led into a community, offered a smooth entry into a system of codes determined by an exclusion of such and such things, such and such people or acts? Is it really about the newbie or the ones paving an ideal way for this imagined kid? Another friend in his research noted that the thikri – the loud clap of the hijras – was banned in the Kolkata pride because it was not considered suitable, or serious enough, or too attention grabbing for a march calling for human rights of a community – now on a threshold of a fuller citizenship – what with the verdict of Delhi high court case against section 377 of the IPC already being framed as panacea par excellence by some. Can we consider all our usages of the language of sexual identity independent of these misusages – are we not always, already complicit by using the same idiom? What will we leave behind when we win this identitarian game? What will the gay and lesbian people – now, though not yet, but we speculate – full citizens of the State – fashion themselves like to become the bearers of the gifts of the state – gifts, which are huge – progressively as we go on, shared insurance, sharing of property, adopting children, marrying even etc. Already the signs are underway of what this citizenship entails. A participant on the Delhi pride organizing committee e-list called for standardization on how we should behave, and another person I know, was annoyed that the hijras spoiled the first Delhi gay pride march. These are not disparate instances. They form somewhat of the tendency inherent in identitarian movements. We cannot be blind to them and several of us have not been and have thought of solutions. I must say that the solution does not lie within identities. It does not lie in defining people on the basis of their desires.

I come to the end but perhaps the most important part. We must change the pivotal front line concepts of our activism. We must have this urgent debate on whether we would not want to dump sexual orientation altogether – slowly or rapidly – from our banners and slogans. We can strategically fight one sort of fight in the courts but do we have to carry on using that language outside as well. Sexual orientation – gay or straight – poses as the condition of the person. A condition is a primal basis for definitions to accrue, for stereotypes to form, for normalization to occur. It is the theoretical and practical imaginary of prejudice. Desire, on the other hand, erupts in a certain moment and then subsides. It can not be pinned down as a condition. It is synchronic, as opposed to this diachronic sexuality demon. Sexual orientation is less flexible than desire. If one calls oneself gay – it is an act projected into the past and future. One is gay often implies, that one was and will be. It is primarily on a model of temporal consistency that identities breed. Identities have a huge temporal province, unlike desire – that is why we can trace them all the way back. If a gay person were to experience desire for women, it would only be framed as an exception, or at best, another identity – which many have called an anti-identity, not a sexual identity at all, in fact beyond the pale of this game – bisexual. It is the baggage of all the narratives that Freud made us write in order to arrive at a truth about ourselves, where sexuality was the best and the deepest truth. Only in a retrospective narrative-making – and psychoanalysis is nothing else but this – that aims to link one instance of desire with another instance of desire, can one instance emerge as an exception if compared to a larger number of others.

Desire is not heterosexual or homosexual. If we politicize desire, if we put it more often on our banners and slogans – which we partially do, but I think not fully, and not to its maximum capacity – then we perform the best of tricks. We talk about all the issues related to same-sex desire, violence, love et. al. without defining the people on its basis. Because desire is structured differently from sexual orientation – it is not what we are, that which is always the beginning of ushering limits – but instead, that which we feel. This way, we do not hand out the same coming-out story to all – with its simple template of invisibility-silence-unfreedom to visibility-voice-freedom. So much so that all the limits that identities will usher, and they necessarily do, will be paradoxically experienced as freedom by that person coming out. For the record, I think coming out is a deplorable metaphor, one of giant compromises of sexuality-based movements. It is a kind of pinning-down experienced as flight. And I think the biggest misfortune of identities – that which it cannot escape because that is what makes it – is that all stories begin to sound similar. A theoretically limited set of characteristics and episodes become iconic of let’s say, the lesbian life, and then all the newbies would aim to toe this line to count as a lesbian. Same goes for gay. Desire might have iconic moments, especially in popular culture, but it does not have iconic characteristics or properties. It is experienced as unpredictable and varies with taste. It is situational as opposed to conditional. More over it is never a matter of defining one person because desire is always relational – always appearing amidst more than one. It does not discriminate between people as gay or straight – and offers a model beyond identities – where all the issues that identities hoped to engage are still engaged without its collateral damages. Its canvass is also huger and its impulse is not inherently minoritizing. You can talk of several provisional forms of stigmatized desires – same-sex desire, female desire, trans-desire – without christening the lives of people involved. You will notice that I want to retain the raw passion for what several think might to be the alternative. It should be a trigger for a big debate within activism, and this is not a thing only possible in some distant future, it is something we can start doing right now. Politicizing desire, not sexual orientation.

Current media discussions about Lalgarh seem to miss out one crucial fact: Till less than a month ago, it was not a Maoist fortress, but a place where a fascinating experiment with a new kind of democratic politics was being undertaken. Maoists were certainly present, but they were constrained to go along with the mood inside Lalgarh, as earlier posts on Kafila have pointed out. This mood was certainly not one of forming ‘dalams’ or squads of roving Maoist guerillas. In fact, as People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCPA) leader Chhatradhar Mahato told Times of India a couple of days ago, ‘if the state government had done even 10 percent of what we have done, the situation would have been very different.’

For over five months, the PCPA, with popular participation, built reservoirs, dug tanks and tube-wells, revived irrigation canals and built roads. The Lalgarh Sanhati Mancha, based in Kolkata, collected money and helped set up a health centre in Katapahari. Much of this work was accomplished at one-fifth or one-sixth the costs shown by the panchayats – on the rare occasion they ever undertook such work. A committee with five men and five women would take decisions on a day to day basis. Compare this with any other place where Maoists are active and the difference is immediately apparent. The Maoists, known for their allergy towards, and impatience with any kind of developmental work, had to actually put up with all this.

In fact, Koteswara Rao (alias Kishanji), a senior leader in charge of Maoist operations in the Jharkhand-Bengal region, even cited to journalists as evidence of CPI(M) failure, that ‘the CPI(M) government is not implementing any Central government project’. The reference here is clearly to the non-implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) – revealing the extent to which issues here are different from the ones that Maoists like to take up. It is the long story of neglect, poverty and destitution in many parts of West Bengal that lies behind the desire for ‘independence’ amongst the tribal people of this region.That is why, when the people succeeded in ousting the police and CPM – undoubtedly with Maoist backing – they immediately got down to developmental work. Such an initiative could only have been undertaken in a participatory and democratic mode, based as it was on voluntary popular initiative.

All this will, in a few days from now, be in the past. Already marauding Maoist gangs have taken over and emerged in their most preferred mode -  the model of Maoist-dominated areas of Chhattisgarh or Andhra – will be replicated. Soon there will be just two forces – armed Maoist gangs and the armed state forces. All possibilities of peaceful democratic politics and all developmental activities, including through schemes like NREGA, will be made impossible. The brief spring of popular democracy will fade in memory. One can in fact wager that from now on, Maoist diktat will decree NREGA and such other governmental schemes ‘unlawful’. For along with them and development, comes the state.

True to their style, Maoist cadres who have been freely roaming around so far, will henceforth come only under cover of darkness, leaving the hapless inhabitants of Lalgarh to face the brutality of the security forces. This has already begun. Those arrested and tortured will be the common folk while the guerillas move to safer havens.

It is important to state all this because, once again, mainstream media – especially (but not only) television – reports have begun to portray the Lalgarh story as if all along, Maoists have been in control of the situation. This is a story that suits both the ruling CPM and the media that wants quick sound-bytes avoiding all complexity.

The story of the emergence of Maoist influence in the area is quite classic. In the background lies decades of grinding poverty, neglect and exploitation. But that is not all. As we have been repeatedly saying in our earlier posts, from about 2000 onwards, the state government and the CPM has been in an aggressive mode, crushing every democratic protest all over West Bengal, by labelling it ‘Maoist’. Young men and women have been picked up, framed and tortured by the police; ordinary people – including older people -  have been routinely harassed. In Lalgarh, the story of this brutality has surpassed anything, elsewhere in the state.

Today’s Times of India carries a transcript of an interview of ‘Manoj’, a young 25 year-old Maoist leader of Lalgarh. His story is worth reading and thinking about.

He narrates the woes of the local populace thus: ‘When it rains here, the dirt tracks turn muddy and we are forced to drag ourselves and our cattle through the muck. We are not able to ride our bicycles or use carts. We don’t have clean drinking water. People are forced to drink filthy, yellow water. After sunset, we live in the dark as there is no electricity here. No jobs either.’ He then goes on to say:

In 2002, we got tired of being treated like rodents. So, the villagers got together and demanded development in our area. This infuriated the local CPM bosses. The police and Marxists slapped false cases on us, accusing us of working for the People’s War Group (PWG). They branded us Maoists. So we began to think we might as well join the Maoists.

Manoj speaks of how his family of Congress supporters, shifted their loyalty to the Trinamool Congress when the TMC was formed. By the way, Chhatradhar Mahato himself used to be a TMC supporter – and this is the supposed ‘basis’ of the CPM-NDTV allegation that the TMC has been supporting the Maoists. The truth really is that once the repression began after 2002, and especially after the Salboni blast last November, people increasingly moved towards the Maoists. Manoj’s story is a case in point. One day he and many others were arrested as ‘Maoists’ and lodged in jail. It was there, he tells us, that he met a Maoist leader and converted to Maoism.

The CPM is fond of narcissistically flaunting its world record of thirty two years in power – with no apparent anti-incumbency – as ‘proof’ of its performance in governance. Yes, that some important positive initiatives were taken in the first ten years it was in power. That was what secured it its firm base and saw it through for the next ten years. In the meantime, the party steadily became a corrupt party of self-seekers and power brokers.  The rise of Hindutva in the 1990s actually gave it a fresh lease of life with minorities strongly supporting it and liberal and left-wing public opinion completely closed towards any criticism of the CPM and LF. Inside the state, however, people see the year 2000 – the the year of the accession of Buddhadeb Bhattacharya as CM – as the turning point after which Maoist-hunting became the general mode of suppressing all oppositional voices.

It is only now becoming clear that in the last two decades the CPM and LF has not undertaken any developmental activity whatsoever in the state. What has happened instead, is that a new kind of virtually totalitarian power has been put in place, in which the local panchayat, the MLA, the district administration, the police and the ubiquitous ‘party’ act in tandem. There is no avenue of appeal against local corruption, non-implementation of schemes like the NREGA (West Bengal has the worst performance on this score), absence of simple developmental activity like provision of water and electricity. There have been starvation deaths in neighbouring areas in West Midnapore and in the tea gardens in the north but there is no way of even making the CPM acknowledge this.

In no other state is it possible to find such a completely closed situation where power speaks only to itself.

And classically, in such situations, no piecemeal correction is possible. Discontent builds up slowly into anger, waiting for the opportune moment to strike. That moment began with Nandigram which showed the arrogance of the party bosses in dealing with peasants who have long supported them. The successive elections since then have shown that the dam has now broken. Mass anger was waiting to burst forth and the Maoists were waiting in the wings, ready to take over, riding on the crest of that anger. They have indeed taken over. In this part of West Midnapur we are in for a long haul.

But the lesson here is not only for the CPM. It is also for the Congress, the UPA and everyone else: The poorest of the poor cannot be left to fend for themselves while the elites party. The beginnings made through the NREGA, RTI and the Forest Act – broughtinto being through the pressure of mass movements -  need to be continued and their implementation monitored.

But by far the most important lesson is that armed and violent conflict becomes almost inevitable when all avenues of democratic politics are squashed, when power assumes the supreme arrogance of the kind that CPM has in West Bengal. Even in this adverse situation, let us remember, the people of Lalgarh continued with the democratic experiment for five brief and shining months – but the inevitable spiral of violence that had been unleashed on them was bound to come full circle. When the CPM and the Indian state have eliminated all possibilities of democratic dissent, all that is left is is the Maoist strategy of armed struggle that has no room for any anti-state voices except itself.

A shorter version of this article was published in the Times of India (Sunday Times, 21 June 2009)

Guest post by a friend via Monica Narula and the Sarai Reader list, with thanks.

June 15th/16th, 2009

I accidentally broke two glasses and a bowl. Yesterday, I was visiting a good friend of mine, K., who lives in the City Center, around the corner from Tehran University, between  Enghelab and Azadi Square. I was in the midst of kicking my legs up to stretch out onto the couch and my clumsy foot hit the edge of the small table nearby, knocking two glasses and a bowl onto the tile floor. My head was turned away when the accident happened, so the sound of so much glass breaking really took me and N., who had also come with me, by surprise.
I remember reading something by Jalal Toufic about tripping, stumbling, falling. This was in the context of vampire movies, I believe, specifically, when the protagonist finds himself tripping before he enters the house where the vampire sleeps during the day. Trips and
stumbles belong to the category of the clumsy foot, including not only things that
fall but also accidental kicks and knocks. I suspect Toufic utilizes the aid of hallucinogenic narcotics, or, his use of them in the past has permanently affected his perception when watching and thinking about films, given his surrealistic analysis conversing without looking at each other and yet do not bump into each other, trip, for no apparent reason on smooth pl aces, indeed such a person, not the one to trip on stairs or to bump into bodies in motion (in fact, I am quite choreographed in crowds), but sometimes I find myself performing the clumsiest act in the moment when I expect it the least.
precaution (in states of altered
consciousness the same is the case with: disposed and predisposed,
occupied
and preoccupied, monition and premonition; probably one becomes a sage
only
when one no longer needs presages), in the sense that one must
forewarn by
guessing where the false threshold is and warning about it and about
being
, pp. 16)
a long walk from Valiasr Street, past
Enghelab Square and Tehran University, joining the million-man silent
march
that took place yesterday starting at 4 PM. The march had been
organized by
Opposition supporters, those aligned towards Moussavi and Karroubi,
through
word-of-mouth and Facebook the night before. No official permission
had been
granted for the demonstrators to gather, but the sheer number of people,
young and old, in conservative Islamic clothes and in the tightest,
shiniest
new fashions, students and civil servants, families and groups of
singles,
what appeared as the entire spectrum of Iranian society proved to be
such a
force of numbers that the police stood to the side and observed, looking
relaxed, even bored.
having officially met with Moussavi, who voiced his concerns to him
yesterday, announced on state TV and radio that the Council of
Guardians will
set up an investigation into the allegations of fraud and tampering of
the
votes in this election. As the New York Times and BBC wrote last night,
perhaps this is a way for the regime to buy time (the investigation
period is
10-days), hoping that the promise of an investigation will settle
people back
down and pacify them, but in any case it is clear that the persistence
of the
Opposition and its supporters have caused the government, whether out
of fear
or cleverness, to mediate a deal. The absolute lack of police force
against
the demonstration yesterday (keeping in mind that without an official
permission, the march was technically illegal) proved that the orders
from
above had changed their course. In a very smart manner, Moussavi had
issued
an order to his supporters gathering that the march should be
conducted in
absolute silence. With no access to text-messaging, most websites such
as
Facebook or web blogs shut down as well as satellite TV signals
scrambled and
march through a human network of friends-telling-friends, notes being
passed,
and signs being held up. At times, an unknowing, overenthusiastic
individual
or group would begin chanting
and the rest of the crowd would quickly hush
them, telling them that this was a silent march. Instead of angry
shouts, the
-sign for victory (or, in an
American context, peace). Some held up pictures of Moussavi or
Karroubi in
their other hand; some held up their mobile phone, video recording or
taking
demonstr The crowds kept on coming, walking into the distant horizon
was hidden from view either due to distance or the heavy smog that
settles
during warm summer days upon Tehran.
Rumor had it that the march extended all the way to the other side of
town,
to Imam Hossein Square, adding an additional symbolic element to the
march
th
century massacre of Imam Hossein – the
on – and his followers by the Ummayad Caliph
martyrdom at Karbala was a driving force in the 1979 Revolution,
transformed
-political
model for resistance outside of the Western philosophical tradition of
Hegelian dialectics and Marxist class struggle. According to Shariati,
himself a French-educated i
unique to Islam, one who combined ethics with faith and who sacrificed
himself for justice to be served, therefore a role model for every
individual
seeking reform. The Revolutionaries related to Hossein on many different
levels: as a devout man, as a political and religious leader, as a
community
organizer or as a criticizer of injustice, using the example of his
martyrdom
for their own cause: every time the police would shoot and kill
demonstrators, the ceremony of mourning began around their martyrdom,
more demonstrators would be shot and killed and so continuing the cycle.
still used today by the revolutionary ideology to stress
the honor of self-
of death, in order to secure freedom for future generations.
N. and I found it uncanny that the police  doing anything yesterday.
After two days of mass clashes between protestors and the government,
the
police had laid down their guard. We walked past the headquarters for
Road &
Traffic police and saw numerous parked police vans and motorcycles in
the
courtyard. A range of uniforms occupied the courtyard, gathered in
groups
spread all over the compound. Many of the young men (indeed, most of the
police and military are ruddy-faced, sun-soaked, bearded young men, some
exhibiting such diamond-in-the-rough physical beauty, their eyes almond
shaped, their noses substantial, with rosy cheeks, dark skin, and 3-day
stubble, it feels almost sinful to think of them in such a manner) were
leaning against the iron bars that circled the courtyard, peeping out
from
between, looking at the crowds passing by. I made eye contact with
many of
them, not sure what I could read in their eyes, which looked to me
completely
poker-faced. Why were they just standing there, I thought? Seeing so
many of
them, knowing that more were in the building, not being able to judge
their
strategy for the day
by the police gathered in the cou
they
were so big, so shiny, but almost toy- e that inside
were bullets and how easy it can be to die. If I had tripped,
something else
may have happened, they would have noticed me. Imagine if I had broken
glass
in front of them  surely that would have been a sign of attack!
Premonitions
and precautions  the ability to feel that something is going to happen
and
making sure to avoid being stuck in a slippery spot when it does. So
what
could have lead me, in an altered state of consciousness (surely,
since all
of the past days  events, as with last w
like some oceanic dream), to not pay attention to my foot and its
relation
with its surroundings, causing me to break so much glass? I was
preoccupied
with thinking about writing while the streets were occupied by
millions; it
is not even an option to dispose of one system for another, although I
would
say that the people are predisposed to flights of fancy, therefore it
cannot
be sure if in the ten days they will tire of what they demand so
fervently
at monition means, but my premonition is electric.
Swollen by subconscious processes linking my immediate circumstances to
other, supernatural forces at hand, the lack of articulation I have been
feeling (the articulation of this feeling has, itself, needed days to
grow)
manifests itself in a bodily gesture that precautions caution: broken
glass.
Square. Later, reports that one person had been killed and many shot
when a
crowd of demonstrators foolishly decided to attach the compound of the
Basiji
volunteer militia. And it is not to be taken for granted, the rumor
that new
additions to the Basiji forces have been flown in from Lebanon  why?
Because
of their supposed detachment from the situation, guaranteeing that the
beauty
ploughshares, to abandon ship and escape to the islands of alienation
that
have been beckoning them. Why did the crowd break the silence and
attack,
endangering the other millions who had, for hours, tried to channel
their
energies to a different level? Did the attack occur at the moment of
broken
glass? I can only guess where the threshold is (that door, opening to
the way
of no-return), but I do not believe the direction of attack and
confrontation
lair and seeing that you have arrived too late, the last rays of the
sun are
disappearing, it is too much of a risk to remove t
to stab the sleeping undead with a wooden stake. He is about to awaken!
Indeed, violence has only been erupting Tehran in the pre-dusk hours,
when
the clouds cover the sun and it slowly begins to give way to crepuscular
shades of purple and orange.
I remembered another slip, trip, fall yesterday, happening well before
the
which can be debated as to whether that would make it a cognitive or a
psychological error, or even, a spiritual one. In any case, my language
failed, on separate occasions, temporarily  each time it did so, it
left me
blank, silent not out of a will to be silent, but out of powerlessness.
However, in one case, the failure of language became a slip of the
tongue, a
mis-articulation paired with an inability-to-articulate. It happened
when N.
walked
from Enghelab Square, through the silent demonstration, asking people
where
-minutes worth of useful information,
in the sense that the directions they gave were only valid for 5-
minutes of
walking in the direction they specified, afterwards we would be forced
to ask
again where we were and where we should be going. Having realized that
we had
walk two blocks back up and to make a left, continue two blocks, and
then
us, walking at a slow pace. Each time N. and I tried to hurry past
them, they
seemed to unconsciously step in our way  their bodies filled the
breadth of
the sidewalk, not physically, but in the manner of their movements,
how they
swayed unpredictably from side to side, taking a step in front of your
step-
whose-goal-was-to-step-ahead. I uncontrollably uttered an
indistinguishable
grunt or roar out of frustration; a younger man walking with the ladies
someone was behind them, moving aside to let N. and I. march forward. N.
laughed, saying they were moving like cows. I asked her if she had
heard my
-in-in-volun-vorun-vollll-
tary-rary-
my feet, grunted again in frustration (more like a growl), and started
to
Farsi nor English nor German, nothing comes out write, I have no more
so I opted for
managing to get my full sentence out to N., who stood there laughing in
had ever yelled at me. My heart immediately sank, my head grew dizzy,
I felt
the same feeling I felt when I had lost a present my mother had given
me as a
small child, a feeling of absolute having-disappointed. I laughed
nervously,
faint smile on her lips  the meaning I received from what she said
contradicted her expression. She crossed the street and walked faster
ahead
myself  what had I said that was so offensive? What could have
possibly put
My sentence came back to me. I had experienced a state of utter
without thinking about it.
be un
a frustrated N. She wa
with me
happening? Language, for me, is a very important thing, my only tool and
talent
find myself only with a particular affinity for language, in its
spoken and
present myself. In retrospect, all of this was a preface to the
breaking of
the glass (note – pre-face, before the showing of the face, as opposed
to the
removing of the face; yesterday at the University of Tehran, student
demonstrators had gathered behind the closed gates of the campus,
covering
their faces with surgical masks, sunglasses and headscarves to avoid
being
recognized. They held up signs carrying numerous political messages
and a
number of them stood near, telling passers-by to refrain from taking
photographs:
visible and active, then we should also be aware of cuts in language,
strange
accidents and contingencies, as in the way the English language brings
together as montage the face and sacrilege under the rubric defacement
). The breaking was an indirect and physical
confirmation of what was happening all along: loosing language, the
ability
to articulate; loosing balance, the ability to navigate and feel out a
space.
r and my slippages were a sign that his
spell was easy to fall under, his seduction great.
The false threshold is that of resistance, the door that opens onto
the site
of the undead. The true threshold, what has yet to be crossed, is the
threshold of subjectivity: the door that leads to a room of mirrors in
which
an individual sees his own reflection repeated unto infinity. Another
moment
of precaution, or, premonition: N. and I had a conversation on the
corner of
Valiasr Street and Enghelab, as crowds of people shoved past our bodies,
turning the corner towards the unseen and unknown, joining the march
(these
crowds, just arriving, were not aware of the law of silence in place
for the
day, and so, for us, their chants expressed a far more acute will-to-
violence
than what we later saw was actually the case). The story of how we had
made
demonstration is important: for some days, N. and I had
been planning on visiting K. The day before, given the clashes
occurring up
and down Valiasr, we decided it would not be a good idea. Yesterday,
with the
promise of the march, we decided it would be a perfect opportunity to
visit
K., since he lives so close to Enghelab and from his rooftop we could
view
the events passing by with relative security, in case they turned
violent.
great spot. When I arrived at the house from buying a pack of
cigarettes and
a peach-flavored soda, I saw R. in a manic frenzy, telling us that we
need to
leave now, that a friend is coming with a car, that we should hurry
up. I had
just received a phone call from my sister, who, with my mom, has been
visiting our extended family in the city of Hamedan (6 hours west of
Tehran)
since last week. The entire time that R. was rushing us to leave, I
attempted
to multitask speaking with my sister, scarfing down leftovers for
lunch, pack
my bag and try a
the house, the entire time my sister telling me an incredible story
about how
she had been terribly sick the past few days, plagued by migraine
headaches,
wrenching stomach pains and nosebleeds, and how women from our family
had
decided to come save her, placing her in bed and each taking on
different
healing roles: one praying above her head, another feeding her salty
yoghurt
healing energies, another casting incense over her, one crying, one
pressing
was beginning to grow
impatient. I was running after R. and B., N. at my side, to the car, my
mobile, testifying to her near-death
experience and complete recovery without the aid of medicine or a
doctor,
only the tenderness of the women in our family. I told my sister I
love her
and that I have to go now, as the car began moving, turning off our
street
and onto the highway, speeding through traffic to get towards Valiasr
Square
as fast as possible. R. was receiving numerous phone calls,
instructing him
to arrive soon, informing him that the crowds were amazing and the
march was
going on as planned. B. was filming from the car window. R. had his
hand out
in a victory-sign. Yet, N. and I sat in silence. It was not that there
was
nothing to say; there was just no way of speaking, I felt. What had
happened,
why were we here in this car, where were we going? I was confused, I
thought
towards this demonstration, which at that moment felt like a death
trap. And
know if I should resist or why I felt the need to resist.
When we parked the car close to Valiasr Street, R. and B. ran out
ahead of
us. R. turned around and told us to memorize where the car was parked
so that
when necessary, we could reconvene and go back home together. N. had
stopped
up ahead, turning corners with them and eventually ending up on Valiasr
Street. At this point, N. told me that it would probably be a good
idea to
if the demo got bad. I started writing while speed walking and
realized I
so I stopped to the side and began quickly
copying the address onto a second sheet of paper. N. complained that
it was
not going to work like this, that we had already lost R. and B., who
were
much further up ahead and swarmed in a crowd of people also speeding
towards
Enghelab. I responded that there is no other way for me to write the
address
began running. It was difficult, as there were so many people on the
street.
sewer, running what felt to be a concrete tightrope. Looking back, I
saw N.
nt to lose her in all of this. After a
distance, double-checked to make sure it was really her. She was about
to
disappear around the corner of Enghelab  the point of no return, I
thought
what could be happening around there? I had to catch her before she
took the
few extra steps necessary, otherwise, it would be over, no hope of
contact,
and our mobiles had no reception anymore. I yelled her name, she turned
around, and I managed to quickly get up to her and pass her the note
with the
address written on it. She thanked me and then took one step forward,
turned
follow, I waited and looked back to see where N. was, I saw her from
afar and
waved my arms, holding up victory signs with both hands. Both of us were
completely dehydrated. We bought two warm waters and stood there on the
corner, in silence.
N. started speaking to me in Farsi. We normally speak English when we
are
alone together, with B. and R. we speak Farsi and other Farsi-occasions
include when in shops, restaurants or taxis (the taxi drivers try and
rip us
off if they hear us speaking a foreign language). It came to me as a
surprise
that N. was speaking in Farsi, even more so because she was trying to
express
something quite complicated. The language was challenging her ease of
expression. I tried to follow along and felt that I understood the
sense of
what she was saying, connecting it to other thoughts I had. N. was
speaking
about a sense of powerlessness she had begun to feel. I had noticed
that ever
since a certain point the previous night, N. had put up an invisible
wall,
turning silent, her face and gestures hard to read. I felt her distant
to me
and this troubled me. Once again, another surreal moment: standing,
wedged in
the corner of the entrance to a pharmacy, with swarms of peo2ple
shoving past
us, moving towards some greater force attracting them, N. and I stood
unsure
of what to do, speaking about powerlessness, standing at a threshold
and not
up: it was when the Basiji had arrived on our street the other night
and R.
already written, from that point on, R. changed, his anxiety was
channeled
into panic, he began attempting to control what little of the immediate
situation he could: he told me to begin writing, dictating to me what
to say;
he told N. to call her friends abroad, putting the exact words in her
mouth;
he asked frantically if we had a poster of Ahmadinejad we could hang
in the
house, in case anyone came to search; he told us that from now one we
have to
be extra careful, we have to hide our tapes, cameras and computers, we
cannot
let anyone into the house that we do not know; he told us that
sometimes the
secret service pretends to be the postal delivery man, that we should
not be
so easily fooled; and ominously, he told us that we should keep
separate, for
if one of us were to be caught it would be bound time for the others
to be
arrested, but at least some of us could escape with proper notice. For
what?
How had we come to this situation? R. was the one who had yelled at the
Basiji, it was his own decision, none of us would have supported him
if he
had consulted us beforehand. The situation was dangerous in general,
but now
it had become particularly dangerous for us, not because we all acted
out,
but because R. acted out. And his response? To tell us what we have to
do,
how we have to think, what we have to say and write and how we have to
act. A
system of values, clearly distinguishing between right (us) and wrong
(them)
was put into place at this moment. A force of power, weak and self-
conscious,
dragged us with it, subjecting us to its authority, telling us to make
up for
As N. described this
feeling, I began to see the reason for my silence in the car. I
thought of
the last report I had written and began feeling sick at parts of it,
the tone
it had, as if someone else were speaking through my words, as if I were
possessed by a greater being.
. She asked me: why are you writing? I asked her:
Previously, I may have responded differently, in fact, I think I ended
my
last report with an implicit motivation for writing: to let the world
know
what we are going through. But how did I manage to let my subjectivity
slip
past me, transforming into a collective voice? When was the moment in
which
. What is there to know? To know what not to know, as Michael
public
secret, as is the case with most important social knowledge, knowing
what not
to know? Then what happens to the inspired act of defacement? Does it
destroy
the secret, or further empower it? For are not shared secrets the
basis of
our social institutions, the workplace, the family and the state? Is
not such
public secrecy the most interesting, the most powerful, the most
mischievous
pp. 2)
be easily articulated, certainly not on the ground, face-to-
Taussig, pp. 6)
that we were standing at the real threshold, the threshold over whom
one step
forward would lead to the loss of subjectivity. Subjectivity is at
stake here
develop a new language; I thought to myself, that when I write I want to
write outside of the given categories of fiction, non-fiction,
journalism,
criticism, etc. There is something complicated going on and it is
important
to stress that there is nothing right or wrong in this situation:
images of
the police and military violence against the Iranian people have been
spreading like wildfire in the past days; writers, whether journalists
or
bloggers or individuals like myself who are looking for a channel to
clarify
their experiences have described what they have seen and indeed, this
has
necessitated descriptions of the violence against the people. Although
all
these experiences are true, they really happened and it is important
to make
clear how real everything is here through such documentation, a
question of
representation arises and which is, in my mind, what complicates the
entire
violence without transforming into violent language? To extend the
argument,
properties of spreading, word for word, into every nook and corner of
reality, multiplying endlessly. On the one hand, a tidal wave occurs,
the
representation of violence overwhelms and moves one to action; on the
other
it is a viral dissemination by language, violent as it is, that joins
in the
individual to a collective will of ethical retribution. This
retribution may
take the way of revenge, or of a demonstration, but it may also take a
much
more sinister, unconscious manifestation, that of a will to power, to
react
instead of act, creating those who, so moved by representing reality,
chose
to force others to react with them, creating a force that replicates the

To articulate a narration that examines violence and justice, not only
as a
concept but as a practice  or a narration that acts with violence (even
unconsciously, as it may have been doing so far) and its concomitant
justice
(who will reply to my voice?)  requires a voice-over that is never
present
as such. Much like the angel of death, this narrative is a story that,
through its telling, prolongs the
perish during the course of events that the story provides. By life, I
mean
to say that through writing, I can remember that I lived through this,
which
be alive, alone, myself, even when in
a demonstration of millions.
I received a moving e-mail from a friend yesterday, who prefaced it by
saying
that she knows it may sound all too strange, but that she envies me
being
here. For me, this had a different meaning, as if she we
like to live, f Now, after
all this, I finally wish to learn to live! But without a comma? Does the
meaning then depend on an infinitive construction  to live finally? Is
this
a complete verb? What would it mean? To live  And am I
able to show, describe, write about, in any way practice how to live?
Do I
live more because I have passed one threshold (come to this country),
yet
another (participate in the events here through observation) and await
one
step before a final threshold from which I cannot return (losing my
subjectivity  either through physical death or through relinquishing my
agency to authority)?
Today, there was a similar march, significant in numbers although less
than
yesterday, along Valiasr Street, from Valiasr Square to Tajrish
Square. The
march was also silent and its purpose was to convene onto the
headquarters of
TV/Radio, near where I am staying. There, in front of the state-run
broadcasting center, heavily fortified by military, police and plain-
clothes
personnel for the past few days, a wave of hundreds of thousands,
stretching
up and down Valiasr as far as I could see standing on my tip-toes, sat
themselves down onto the pavement, waved green flags, held up signs with
images and text on them, and observed the law of silence. There was
something
s demonstration. I had seen signs announcing the
demo for today, although I thought that everyone would meet at Valiasr
Square
and march further south towards the main cemetery and the railway
station,
but N. called me earlier this afternoon to tell me that the
demonstration had
been canceled due to security concerns. Apparently, last night the
police/Basiji had raided hundreds of homes and arrested many people,
jumping
the death toll from one killed during the demonstration itself
yesterday at
Azadi Square to seven in total, when counting those killed in their
own homes
last night. This crackdown was a serious matter, a perfect complement
to the
feigned generosity of the police standing by, watching in boredom
during the
march yesterday. Of course, one should not expect anything more: no
violence
during the day only presupposes even greater violence, stealthier,
crueler,
at night. Perhaps the helicopters flying by yesterday were zooming in
and
taking photographs of the crowd, and perhaps the security forces later
scanned faces and picked ones at random to target for the evening. Who
knows?
Regardless, today seemed like a calm day. N. dropped by in the afternoon
after class. I was no longer staying with B. and R. and instead I had
gone
back to my own, single apartment. The previous days I needed a sense of
community and company to make sense of the situation, I needed to feel
d so I had been living unofficially with B. and R.,
where N. also lived, absorbing a particular rhythm that no longer had
the
were developing between and around us.
When N. came over, I saw that I had run out of cigarettes so I ran
downstairs
to pick up some smokes as well as a few things for an afternoon snack.
As I
walked to the supermarket, I saw cars backed up on my street, turning
around
the corner and lining up all the way to Valiasr Street down the hill.
Many
people were walking down towards the main street. I thought to myself
that I
guess the demonstration was taking place after all. In the store, I
browsed
for a few snacks, bought a couple of phone cards and paid. The clerk
leaned
he pulled back his head and shot a greeting to a few older, bearded
men who
came in the shop. His secrecy was strange. This was a relatively
affluent
neighborhood, there was no reason to fear, then again, maybe he has
found
unexpected pressure on him and his shop from someone. I resisted the
temptation to walk down to see the demonstration, especially since I had
accidentally locked N. in my apartment. I went back up and told her
that the
demo had taken place anyway and she confirmed that R. had called her
and told
her about it and asked if she had taken the camera by mistake, as he
wanted
to document it. I realized that in my confusion and browsing (I take
ages to
by groceries, I deliberate too much), I had forgotten to buy what I had
originally gone downstairs for: cigarettes. I went back downstairs
again,
decided to go down the hill to Valiasr Street and take a look. When I
got
down, I saw that the streets were full. I tried to eavesdrop on the
conversations, my usual way of assembling information (I particularly
enjoy
the exaggerations and contradictions in what people say to one
another). I
asked an older man for a light and asked him about the demonstration:
had
people gathered at Valiasr Square and walked up, because it seemed that
arriving, but walking down from Tajrish Square further up north? He
said that
, but the
crowds extend down to Valiasr Square, except that from Vanak on
Ahmadinejad
supporters are gathered. They had been brought by the busload, emptied
onto
the streets and told to show their support for the President. I asked if
there had been clashes between the two groups and he said, yes, and
that the
Basiji had also driven through the crowd a few times in the past hour. I
looked down onto TV/Radio Headquarters, known as Jaam-e-Jam, and saw
police
snipers hiding behind trees and bushes, observing the crowd closely. I
saw a
group of Basijis gathered in the driveway of Jaam-e-Jam, talking to one
another. All of a sudden, the crowd began chanting. Many started
hissing, an
the government and the President with cheap slogans. Many of the older
women
observe simple silence. I found myself fuming  I was so angry that a
select
few were willing to selfishly spoil the situation for everyone
involved, just
because they felt the need to violently proclaim what they thought to be
silence was; today felt tense, broken up, individuated into smaller
groups,
people seemed to be watching and waiting for something, rather than
bathing
in the confidence and satisfaction of the leveling power of silence. I
walked
towards a group of older women and began complaining to them
need to be quiet! It is so important to be silent, especially now in
this
unleash the Basiji, who are just waiting for an excuse to arrest,
beat, stab,
shoot, whatever, to inflict punishment onto the crowd. Soon those who
were
chanting stopped, but the mood remained very uncomfortable. I saw R.,
he came
and tapped me on the shoulder. He was furiously smoking, sucking on his

exclaimed how beautiful the turn out today had been. He shuffled back
and
forth nervously and then, when I turned my head, walked away and
disappeared.
After R. left, I saw a man walking towards me, he was wearing a
baseball cap,
sunglasses and a surgical mask to avoid being recognized. He walked in
silence through the crowd, holding up in one hand a sheet of paper
upon which
Underneath the text, there was a collection of eight images, taken
from the
international media, of individuals who had been wounded or killed
during the
demonstrations in the past days. These images were the same ones
circulating
through AP and Reuters, reproduced in the New York Times and the BBC.
One
showed a woman being beaten by a group of Basiji and police. Another
showed a
dead body in the back of a pick-up truck. The most disturbing was the
image
of a middle-aged man, fallen onto the pavement, his head had, for lack
of a
better word, exploded from a close-range, point-blank gunshot. In the
same
hand that the man used to hold up this sheet of paper, he held a single,
long-stemmed, white gladiola flower. He walked in absolute silence,
valiantly
displaying the images. A crowd of people huddled around him and
followed him
looking up at the images. All of them scrambled to get closer, hands
shooting
up into the air with mobile phones taking pictures of the picture, or
of the
sure. The group of people surrounding him naturally increased
and decreased, people came and went, but everyone seemed to be
attracted to a
single point of view, fixating their motions and gaze onto the raised
arm
holding the sheet of paper and the flower, confirming their experience
of
this event with the necessary mobile phone photograph. I thought to
myself
how beautiful this image was, of people taking images of an image, and
how
I
thought about the power of the silence, in the demonstration as a
whole and
at this one moment, in which more than mourning was occurring,
mourning that
precipitates silence out of honor, but which also, typically, demands
wails
and screams. No wails and screams here, just wet, wide-open eyes and the
shutter click of camera phones. What I am seeing, the observation of
silence,
the awareness of representation in the gestures that people are
taking, the
words. Unlike words,
silence, however, leaves much open room. Its power comes from the
range of
interpretations possible, as well as the possibility for silence,
since it is
demanded, but it remains as it is, pervading the space of those who
experience it, saying, silently, to pay attention more acutely, to think
individually, to try and figure out what is going on and why there is
silence
to begin with.
The silence of the man and his images, of those gathered around him,
of those
-
to learn to live, finally, the most I can show is that one must not
privilege
disaster as authentic experience, nor must one valorize struggle as
deep in
meaning. Finally, I come to where all these thoughts stem from: how to
develop a new language to articulate what is going on here, to which I
must
add, a language that articulates not being able to articulate, knows
what not
to know? While writing this report, a paper I had written a few years
ago
comes to my mind, and I think parts of it are suitable to lead the
process
forward: Seven years before writing On the Concept of History,  Walter
Benjamin outlined his theory of mimesis in On the Mimetic Faculty,
which
would serve as a basis for his greater project to read non-texts. The
natural
which man creates analogies and similarities to the natural stimuli he
encounters. Benjamin focuses his argument on language as mimesis:
language is
far from a system of signs; instead, it is the bearer of a nonsensuous
similarity that guarantees wholeness in the experience of the world. The
perception of meaning occurs at brief moments, flashes of gnosis, which
simulates the entire world through language. Language has its roots in
the
inexpressible: to read what was never written, such reading is the most
ancient  reading before all languages, from the entrails, the stars, or
dances.  What is the most crucial, for me, at this moment is to try and
operate in an in-between state, especially in regards to language. In my
earlier slippages, I encountered the power of a language removed from
access
to subjectivity and individual, sensuous perception. In realizing this
alienation from my own self, I now feel that there are other things
that can
be read beyond what I immediate see and perceive, a defacing that faces,
revealing and hiding, back and forth, contradicting itself like the
blind
prophet who augurs. The in-between-state, what this entire experience
has
actually (also as in currently) been/is, feels hallucinogenic, yet in
this
altered state of consciousness I feel myself much more only when I force
myself to open my eyes in the water. At night, the honking of
invisible cars
endless circularity; in the silent demonstrations, each sound bears more
weight, a human voice feels offensive and needs to be quickly hushed;
the hum
of the TV, the velocity of the news reported, in combination with
shuffling
through online versions of newspapers, creates a wall of information
that
here. What is written is not to be read: the language I am searching for
exists in my nonsensuous similarity to the environment, the
possibility of
changing into air or rocks or trees, the circularity of chants and
silences
open to any and every and no meaning all at the same time, an image of
an

When we were at  yesterday, we turned on Iranian state-run TV to
see whether they were reporting about the demonstration that day. On one
channel we saw a wildlife documentary about turtles. Another channel was
airing some after-school program about mathematics. The news station was
reiterating the county-by-county tally of the election results,
showing how
the votes were broken down between the four candidates in every
municipal
exclaimed N. Millions of people
gathered outside for the past three hours and all they show on
national TV is
turtles. Nothing is happening at all, the world is permanently the way
it has
always been, time circling in loops. Coming from outside and then to
watch
Toufic, p
the cause of a return-to-
of the whack on the brain (the first vote counts came in within 1 hour
of the
-run TV has managed to masterfully enact.
feeling that what united the people was a certain impatience and
desire for a
leader, for someone to tell them what to do. In my opinion, the
importance of
such demonstrations goes beyond demanding one authority over another. In
fact, for me Moussavi has become completely unimportant  I, among
others,
was realistic before the elections and after that Moussavi, or any
politician, is a savior who will come to change everything wrong with
this
country. His position is most likely decided, I doubt the vote will be
revoked and even if it is and he becomes President, it is less of
importance
to me than what the circumstances of the situation have produced and
how they
came into existence in the first place. Rather than following, being
pulled,
pushed, forced into silence or acceptance, it is important to feel and
experience, to be unsure, to speak when it is necessary to speak, to
participate when it is desired to participate, allowing for the
structures of
authority that are in place and that can easily replicate themselves to
become malleable in the face of a strong will, at the hands of each
have come to

After a few rounds of call and response, one of the neighbors shouted
from
y related to the current
st
cause and they returned back indoors. The nerve! Why should I ruin the
which is so intelligent in how it reveals and hides, in how it perfectly
embodies the most powerful form of social knowledge  knowing what not to
know  for a direct, cheesy and (dare I say) trite invocation for
someone, an
old man who may look friendly but who was Prime Minister in this
country from
1981-89 and who also, in his time, imprisoned and killed many students,
effectively enacting this regime  implicit
approval? What need do I have for a leader, someone to replace the
form but
whose content is still basically the same?
er completely novel, and no act can ever be quite
appearance of meaning that must be transmitted among subjects through
replications, which teeter between a known pattern and its innovation,
or,
recreation. The variation is usually minor, but significant in that
the event
cannot be experienced in a present-present, but as a past-present
representation, in which the past action is bound to an authoritative
present
interpretation. The revolution is a representation, assuming the
temporary
satisfaction of internal, spiritual flows, yet rewriting the same form,
different in immediate content alone, onto the body. The subject is
unknowingly recreated  into the same creation. The power of this
moment is
the ability to have a reform movement that needs no leader to save the
people: the people save themselves, subtle and clever, indirect and
playful,
through using the structures that keep the system in place against
itself, as
a mirror reflection that shatters when the vampire throws his glance.
How play fits into this becomes an issue of the bodies involved, and
play
creates relations between bodies that are primarily individual to
individual,
channeling and connecting subjective energies. For me, one of the
interesting
-conscious
guilt towards the
describing  whether out in the street, amongst demonstrators, at home
writing,
more subtle way, a way that views situations as more than just physical
surfaces, rather as sensuous environments. The repression and guilt is
especially strong when I sense the sexual aro
appearance brings forth, but that is more the result of an immediate,
fetishistic connection between sex and death which is a direction I do
not
pressing subjectivity, similar to the trips and falls of language and
feet,
exacerbated by the altered states of consciousness that turtles,
mathematics
and public secrets provoke through amnesiac lapses. It is almost as if
the
militancy of the moment, in its will-to-authority (control and be
controlled)
as such. But when it comes up, I am realizing, it offers an
opportunity to
play with the immediate situation, a play-dough situation in which one
can
explore the many sensations that a language-other-than-words provides
in its
openness.
On my way home last night, a car drove around the corner,
flashed its lights at me, honked and then screeched to a halt next to
me. The
window rolled down: two girls, neither wearing headscarves, dressed to
go
out, the smell of perfume oozing from out of the car window. One of
them, the
driver, a dark haired, red-lipsticked, charcoal eyed young woman asked
me in
-sign, smiled and
asked me where I was coming from. I told them I had been at the silent
march
on Enghelab earlier and was now coming home. They were immediately
excited,
asking me all the details: what was it like, what happened, how many
people
were there, was it true that 15 people were shot? I asked them if they
had
been there and they said no, they were too afraid to go. In return, I
scolded
them for their mistake, declaring that it had been a truly inspiring and
beautiful day, stressing how important the silence was. They giggled
and I
heard the girl in the passenger seat, who had tiny features, pale skin
and
light brown curly hair say that she found my way of describing the
situation
demonstration the next day, to take place at Valiasr Square at 5 PM. The
driv
girls burst out in excitement, switching to English and asking me to
come
with them to a party. I declined the offer and the driver held out her
hand
I gave her a high five and then she wished me much luck and blew me a
kiss. I
I had never in my life had two girls try and pick me up and now it
happened,
years.
Earlier that day, N. and I took a break from the silent march and
found a
very small and well-
toilet and I lay down on the grass and smoked a cigarette. I noticed
many
young men in the park, gathered in groups, which is in no way unusual
in a
society traditionally used to self-segregation between the sexes,
except for
the fact that all the young men were quite handsome, quite athletic,
quite
well dressed, and quite physical with one another. They exchanged
furtive
glances between groups and many loitered around the entrance to the
public
toilets. Some were sitting on benches, their legs spread open, their
arms
behind their heads, tapping, as if they were waiting for something to
come
by, showing off their figures and their packages in anticipation. This
was
only a small section of the park, coincidentally around where I had
decided
to lie down and wait for N. to return from the bathroom. When N. came
back, I
attracted to the combination of tan skin, youthful arrogance, big eyes
and
perma-stubble on exhibition at the park. As we got up to leave, I saw
that
the rest of the park was filled with elderly men playing backgammon,
completely oblivious to the well-hidden cruising going on a few meters
away.
I wondered to myself if this was a product of the day s energy, in which
everything had been turned into an incomprehensible chaos, or if these
young
men were park regulars, and if, on normal evenings, the tone is much
more
amplified than it was at that moment  the street-fest atmosphere of the
demonstration and the mixing of Tehranis from all over made it hard to
feel
the situation out. In both of these examples, these instances express
for me
an impossibility of denying the body, or even, of material in favor of
ideology. The Gnostic urge to purge the earthly for the greater,
cosmic spark
is not an emotion that subjects, speaking from my own I , feel
naturally. In
fact, the power of ideology s seduction makes it even more necessary, I
believe, to let subjective, fleshly attractions pervade and enrich the
greater events occurring too-fast-too-powerful to be truly understood:
sexuality is a play whose rules are easy to understand and in which
trial,
error and experimentation are the only ways of learning, offering the
opportunity to slip, trip and fall. The necessity to feel one s body
even
more exists in such moments, when the body is at the brink of letting
itself
go for something it does not and cannot know, something which, with a
step
past the false threshold, will be too late to articulate.

Guest posted by a friend via Monica Narula and the Sarai Reader list, with thanks. Apologies for formatting.

June 14th, 2009

8:45 PM

It‟s still less than ten days before the official beginning of summer. Although the weather may be warm and the blossoms are gone, it is, according to the position of the Earth in relation to the Sun, spring. Tehran Spring. A period of political liberalization under a Reformist government, backed by popular approval against the Soviet-backed Socialist system in Czechoslovakia in 1968 has come to be known as the Prague Spring. Infamous for the brutality of the Soviet and Warsaw Pact tanks rolling into the city of Prague eight months after President Alexander Dubcek loosened restrictions on speech, the media and travel, millions of demonstrators were crushed within seconds, although they remained peaceful the entire time. Czechoslovakia remained occupied by Soviet military forces until 1990, when the Socialist system collapsed. The Prague Spring may have not been successful from a populist, anti-authoritarian perspective, but it indicated a trend, rising in Europe and the world at the time, that unrest existed on many levels: cultural, economic, social, and, most importantly, ideological. The demonstrations in Prague temporarily shadowed the International Marxist movement, popular amongst intellectuals in Western Europe, as the USSR proved once again that the utopian yearning for revolution had seceded to authority hungry for control. During the early months of the Prague Spring, inspired by the Socialist reformist experiment in Czechoslovakia, students in Paris and other Western European cities set the university ablaze, workers went on strike, and the bureaucracy collapsed.

A glimmer of hope, only temporary, until the moment of the Grand Compromise between the „68ers and De Gaulle’s government occurred one month later, effectively paralyzing Leftism in the West until even today. This paralysis was confirmed by the multilateral Soviet crushing of the reformist movement later that summer. Foucault‟s take on the Iranian Revolution has always been controversial. His articles in France were read with disdain, as Foucault effectively stepped outside of his typically meticulous mode of analysis to embrace a Hegelian “Spirit” embedded deep within his psyche. He praised the “collective will of the Iranian people” as an undeniable, inspirational force to be reckoned with and to learn from. He was, per chance, nostalgic for “true”, “authentic” revolutionary movement, a nostalgia whose origins lay potentially in the dashed hopes of May 1968. Yet, in an interview between Foucault and journalists Claire Briere and Pierre Blanchet (“Iran: The Spirit of a World Without Spirit”), Foucault exhibits moments in which his analytical clarity shines: “It is true that Iranian society is shot through with contradictions that cannot in any way be denied, but it is certain that the revolutionary event that has been taking place for a year now, and which is at the same time an inner experience, a sort of constantly recommenced liturgy, a community experience, and so on, all that is certainly articulated onto the class struggle: but that doesn‟t find expression in an immediate, transparent way.”

Today, the left-leaning newspaper “Ehtemad-e-Melli” (National Trust) published an empty white page as its front cover. Underneath the newspaper‟s logo and date, it was written that here there should have been an article written by Moussavi and Karroubi together, but unfortunately the newspaper received strict orders from Ahmadinejad that it was not allowed to print this feature. Voice of America‟s Farsi-language service just showed footage, taken by an Italian visitor to Tehran, of a crowd of demonstrators from yesterday cornering a police officer that had been beating numerous individuals,
forcing him to stop and then attacking him, taking his baton and beating him in turn. This lasted for a second. The footage showed the crowd of demonstrators helping the police officer up to his feet. His helmet had been lost in the fight, his body armor was falling off. His face was red and his eyes wide open in shock. He was panting, trying to breathe and re-orient himself. The same crowd that at one point were being beaten by him and then a moment later were beating him were now helping him, holding on to his shoulder, guiding him to an open doorway, embracing him and chanting together, at one another, “Peace” and “Freedom”. The police officer looked grateful, almost as if he had been beaten to his senses. This footage is very important, in my opinion, to show that the use of violence from the side of the regime‟s authority may be matched in self-defense, but it is not the means that the Opposition, or at least a large section of it, is using. And certainly not to the brutal extent that the police, and especially the Basiji, are inflicting violence on the crowds gathered here.

I am trying to restrain myself from valorizing or overdramatizing what is taking place here. Iranians, I myself being one (although I did not
grow up
here), are prone to exaggeration. For me, there is something in the
historical wave of events that manifest themselves, go into hiding,
and then
reappear: indeed I have been accused of being Hegelian and, actually,
I enjoy
the accusation. Last week it was the Summer of Love 1969. This week, I
dare
to say, is Prague Spring Redux: Tehran Spring 2009 (notice that the time
travel in my observations so far sticks exclusively to the „60s).
“People are dying and this guy is just walking around with a
knife,” moaned
an old man on our street. I wonder if someone had been stabbed, we
heard some
people arguing loudly from the living room and ran to the balcony.
Whoever
was here had already passed through, the argument was in its aftermath
and
two men were moving a trash bin that had been tipped over and emptied
onto
the street back to its place. The old man was trailing behind, wailing
about
“those” guys (the Basiji) who are circling the city, carrying
secret knives
that they wield on anyone that sparks their anger in the slightest bit.
About thirty minutes before, after a day of relative calm in our
neighborhood, which last night was witness to cars honking and
demonstrators
clashing with the police until 4 AM, we heard some noise out on our
street.
We went onto the balcony and heard many people talking, the sound of
honking
cars had returned. As our balcony has an obstructed view, we decided
to go up
onto the roof to see what was happening on Valiasr Street. A few
friends were
visiting and we had just engaged in a 2-hour conversation about the
situation
here, what can be done, what should be done, criticism of the
Opposition and
testimony to all of our individual experiences in the past two days.
When we
reached the roof we quickly saw what was happening: a trash bin had
been set
on fire at the entrance to our street, right on Valiasr. A group of
young men
were taking the responsibility upon themselves to move a second trash
bin
from across our house further up towards Valiasr, to set that one on
fire,
too. In a split second we heard the roar of motorcycle engines and a
group of
people screaming “Go! Go! Run” at the head of the street. The crowd
gathered
near the burning trash bin quickly dispersed, running in our
direction. The
men who were moving the trash bin towards Valiasr stopped in their
tracks and
left the bin standing in the middle of the street. From our vantage
point, we
saw a group of men on motorcycles zoom by, abruptly turn onto our
street and
begin their pursuit of the men and women who were running away fast,
aggressively announcing (I suppose to the men who had been moving the
trash
bin), “Don‟t even think about it!” The Basiji, or, level 3 of
this terrible
real-life video game: unrecognizable amongst the crowd, in everyday
clothes,
bearing a deep anger that stems from somewhere I do not want to know,
believing fervently in this regime, many shell-shocked from their
youth in
the Iran-Iraq War, many common criminals who have gotten away with petty
theft and family stabbings, all well trained to show no fear, to
pursue with
vengeance and to act with speed and sleuth, disappearing as fast as they
appear. If they had orders to do it, they would kill. Instead, they
prefer
breaking arms, groping women, or stabbing someone in the side with the
goal
of minimal damage and maximal suffering. First and foremost, their
role is to
fear and intimidate. As they drove past our house chasing the crowd,
they
sternly yelled at everyone gathered on the street, spit coming out of
their
tense mouths, their temples bulging with blood and adrenalin: “GO
HOME! GET
OUT OF HERE! YOU BETTER GET OUT OF MY WAY OR I WILL KILL YOU!” A few
screams
from women too distant to see and a few shouts of defiance from men on
our
street. The Basiji turned around and parked their motorcycles in front
of our
house. An old woman told them to leave immediately, to which their
response
was a brutal shove, move out of our way lady and don’t think about
saying a
word. We quickly ducked our heads so that they wouldn‟t see us
watching them.
When I looked around me, I noticed many of the neighbors had gathered on
their roofs and balconies, similarly crouched away from the Basiji‟s
view.
The men remounted their motorcycles and drove off. As they drove away,
a few
of them forcefully kicked the trash bin, still standing in the middle
of the
road, knocking it onto its side, trash spilling everywhere. A moment
later,
an older man came out of his car and began cursing the Basiji – “So
they come
and throw garbage all over our streets, is this enforcing the law?” A
few
young men came from behind a tree where they were hiding and swept the
trash
back into the bin, lifting it back up. They then started their self-
appointed
task of moving the bin towards Valiasr to set it on fire. Apparently the
Basiji had not fully disappeared, I believe one was hiding around the
corner
observing what was happening, as I heard a yell and then, within a
flash, a
new team of motorcyclists returned. They drove past the men who had been
moving the trash bin and who were now running away and one motorcyclist
smacked one in the head with his open palm. Once again, they
threatened to
kill if everyone did not leave immediately and go home. They returned
to the
bin, got off their motorcycle, and pushed it towards the sewage drain
on the
side of the street, tipping it over into the dirty water. This time,
they
stood on our street, marching back and forth, clenching their fists and
yelling threats to what appeared to be no one actually on the street
– of
course, the Basiji knew that people indoors could hear them, and of
course
they suspected that many of us were hiding on our roofs, peeping over
the
corner to take brief glances. I looked up again and then, all of a
sudden, I
heard a whoosh behind me and looked back to see R., who had ran up to
the
roof and who at this moment, standing far enough away from the edge to
avoid
being seen, shouted at the top of his lungs, “Death to
Dictatorship!” As
quickly as R. came, he ran back downstairs. Shit, I thought. I looked
at N.
and the few friends of ours who were visiting. We were huddled
together and
all of us hung our heads down, wondering what would happen now – why
did R.
do that? He may have endangered all of us! But at the same time, yes, of
course, more people should have such courage to stand up to these
neighborhood bullies, there is no lie, we all hate them, so why do we
cower
away? The Basiji were now revving their motorcycles, circling in front
of our
house, energizing. B. ran up with her camera and we quickly told her
to be
careful, to put the camera down. She crept up to the roof‟s edge and
mounted
the camera with a mini-tripod onto the side of the building, pressed
record
and crept away. Amazing: our very own surveillance camera!
R. came back to the roof. I stood up and slowly walked away to the side,
where I could look down onto the street without fear of being noticed.
And
then I saw it: it seemed that this particular Basiji group‟s leader
had come
to see what had happened. R. walked more towards the edge of the roof
and
then I noticed that the older bearded Basiji saw him. The man pulled
out a
walkie-talkie radio from one pocket and moved his jacket to the side to
reveal a pistol. He said something into the radio and then took the
pistol
out and held it up, pointing the gun at R., who immediately ducked
down and
crawled quickly back to the stairwell. I motioned to everyone else to
step
back, whispering “he has his gun out!” We all shuffled to the back
of the
roof. I tiptoed, crouching low, to the front, the man was still there,
he
still had his gun in his hand. He told the other Basiji to leave. They
followed orders tout de suite and quickly remounted their motorcycles
and
drove away. One of them stayed behind and took out a pen and a notepad
and
began writing down the different house numbers. I only saw this for a
brief
second, I don‟t know how many numbers he wrote or if he wrote down
ours
particularly, I could only overhear his conversation with the Basiji
holding
the gun: “Number twenty-six”. Not our house. A few minutes later,
the one put
his notepad up and the other put his gun back underneath his jacket.
Then
they walked away. A silence overtook our street. We all gathered back
again,
slowly, on the roof‟s edge and watched for anything else. After ten
minutes
and not a sign of activity, other than a few people walking to their
homes, I
decided to go back downstairs.
B. and R. were downstairs and as I took out my computer, R. told me to
write
this message and to send it to as many people as I can:
They have guns. They pointed it at us. They are not afraid to shoot.
They
took down house numbers. For now, we are safe. But we can’t be sure.
There
are four of us here: two filmmakers, an artist and a writer. We are not
alone, but there are many of them and they are ready for violence.
This is a
coup d’etat and, if things get worse, there will be a crackdown. If
that is
the case, they may come back, and we may be arrested, questioned, put in
jail, who knows. Let the world know our situation.
9:21 PM
ALLAHU AKBAR.
ALLAHU AKBAR.
ALLAHU AKBAR.
We are on the roof again. Everyone in this city is on the roof. It is
the
most apocalyptical moment I have ever experienced in my life. I can‟t
see
anyone, it is pitch black, except for the distant orange glow of
Valiasr‟s
lights.
MARG BAR DIKTATOR.
MARG BAR DIKTATOR.
MARG BAR DIKTATOR.
Echoing from everywhere, from every roof, to our right, to our left,
front
and back, people, voices of men and women, invisible to my eyes but a
resounding wave of unbelievable power, are screaming at the top of their
lungs: ALLAHU AKBAR. GOD IS GREAT. MARG BAR DIKTATOR: DEATH TO
DICTATORSHIP.
The city seems as if it were about to explode. The sky is rumbling
with the
call-and-response, spontaneously orchestrated by the people, growing in
number as the minutes pass – more and more people coming outside,
joining in,
adding their passionate voices into the mix. Clouds are boiling above,
it
starts to rain, lightning flashes from behind the mountains to the
North of
the city. There is absolute silence in the city, except for the
chanting of
thousands gathered on the safety of their roofs. A low bass note of cars
driving by on Valiasr Street. Shots are being fired, I don‟t know if
the
police are shooting, if it‟s a tear gas canister being set off
somewhere, or
if someone has personally decided to fire a shot to add to the drama
of the
moment.
Now whistling starts. There are four of us up on the roof: three men
and one
woman. The three males begin chanting ALLAHU AKBAR – in response,
female
neighbors, somewhere close enough to hear us, complement our low tenor
with
their higher pitched response: ALLAHU AKBAR. And all of a sudden, the
honking
starts again, cars add their melody to this eerie crescendo resounding
through Tehran‟s night sky.
I am not a religious person. I never say “God is Great” and I never
pray
(except sometimes when I am flying and there is turbulence). Why am I
joining
in, chanting ALLAHU AKBAR as I sit and write, squatting in a corner on
the
roof where there is a cover from the rain so that my computer doesn‟t
get
wet? Why does it feel so natural to say just that: ALLAHU AKBAR? If I
wanted
to, I could have stuck with the more politically charged “Death to
Dictatorship”. But there are very clear reasons why I, and I am not
alone (of
course, this is not to doubt that other people may have stronger
religious
sentiments than I do), choose to participate in this, with absolute
confidence in saying it: ALLAHU AKBAR.
It is an invocation. On the one hand, it is strategic for all of us to
use
this system‟s own language against it: by saying ALLAHU AKBAR, we
show that
we are not against the Islamic Republic. We show not only a unity with
one
another, but also with the same system that has stolen our vote, spat
on our
integrity, the same system that sends its police and plain-clothes
militia
men to the streets to beat and stab people in the name of “God”.
They may
chant ALLAHU AKBAR in their heads as they beat demonstrators, they may
believe that their actions are holy and approved by God, they may view
us as
base, worthless, not-even-humans, yet, we say the same thing to their
face,
we confront them with the power of an invocation that maybe –
speaking for
myself – we don‟t believe in, but they do. The trembling of not-our-
God, but
their-God. If this system, as it legally perceives itself, is
sanctioned by
the will of some God, if this system‟s leader rules as regent of the
Messiah
who will return to take his rightful place, then this system must also
confront the many-faces of a moody God, expressed by its people who
stand now
and invoke the same God whose name is uttered by the lips of murderers.
On the other hand, the meaning of this expression is less important
than the
simplicity it evokes and how it brings a community together, in this
case, a
community that cannot even see one another, wrapped in the shadow of the
night. This same expression was used in the 1979 Revolution –
repeating it
shows that it can be utilized again, even against the System who came to
power through its use. Our parents said ALLAHU AKBAR thirty years ago,
investing this system with power through their moment of unity. Once
the dust
settled, things quickly changed, divisions became clear, such
invocations
became less and less important, less unifying. Today, for the Children
of the
Revolution to repeat the words of their parents is, somehow, a
confirmation
of this nation‟s historical fate and an insistence that history
cannot be so
easily forgotten.
10:11 PM
I ran out of cigarettes and went outside to buy a few more packs for the
house. Assuming that by now the shop on Valiasr Street was closed, I
walked
up the hill in the other direction to the late night store. When I
stepped
onto the street, I saw that the trash bin directly in front of our
house had
been set on fire. The wind was spreading the ashes into the air. I
couldn‟t
keep my eyes open as I walked past. As I walked up the hill, I saw all
our
neighbors gathered with their families on the street, chanting ALLAHU
AKBAR
and throwing firecrackers. There is a construction site a few doors
down from
us and as I walked by, I saw the Afghani workers gathered outside,
their arms
closed, observing the well-to-do group of women across from them,
chatting
amongst themselves. There is a metal trash can next to the
construction site.
I quickly walked by the workers and the trash can and then, all of a
sudden,
I yelped out of fear as a figure next to me appeared, almost as if from
nowhere, moaning ALLAHU AKBAR. I looked and notice that one of the
Afghani
workers had been hiding in the trash can, covering it with a piece of
cardboard, waiting for someone like me to walk past, only to jump up in
surprise, waving his arms in the air and tremulously chanting ALLAHU
AKBAR.
He laughed at my shock and I began to laugh, too. A few small children
screamed in glee, giggling at the man who had been hiding in the trash
can.
The entire time on my walk up the hill to the store, I received
suspicious
glances from the people I walked past. It was most likely due to the
fact
that I was dressed in all black and that I have a well-trimmed beard.
Maybe
the black wasn‟t so important, but beards in Iran aren‟t “young
and trendy”,
they are the sign of Islamic fundamentalism and therefore, I can
easily be
mistaken for a Basiji and/or Ahmadinejad supporter. To all those
disapproving
glances, I simply returned a smile and a flash of a victory-sign,
immediately
easing the tension.
11:27 PM

I received a phone call earlier this afternoon while I was watching the live broadcast of Ahmadinejad‟s acceptance speech/supporter‟s rally at Tehran’s main square from London-based curator. I turned the television set’s volume down as the cheering and chanting of the crowd, paired with the invocation of the Prophet Mohammad‟s daughter Fatima Zahra, whose saint day was today, was driving me crazy. I watched in disbelief how what looked to be thousands upon thousands of supporters gathered at Valiasr Square, filling every nook and cranny available, waving Iranian flags and religious banners, cheering as Ahmadinejad took stage, led prayer, and began denouncing the “enemies of the nation”, the foreign “spies” who had infiltrated the country and where trying to interfere with our “democracy”, the “dirty, morally corrupt” demonstrators of the Opposition, declaring that Iranians have rightfully chosen their divinely sanctioned future and that Iran will be strong, cannot be harmed, will never be touched nor even dare to be touched by any of its antagonists under his leadership. It was too much for me to know that most likely, somewhere else in the city, any attempt on demonstrators part to gather was being brutally repressed, while thousands had most likely been shuttled into Tehran from remote villages, paid, housed and fed by Ahmadinejad‟s various charities to come and display their presence, their support. I picked up the phone and the curator asked me what the situation is like here and whether it would be safe for him to continue on his planned trip and come on Thursday. I told him that regarding safety, if his trip were scheduled for today then it probably wouldn‟t be such a good idea, but by Thursday everything should be fine, although I made clear that I can in no way predict where things will go in one hour let alone in so many days. I reminded him that most likely no artists would be interested in meeting to discuss art, that there were many more important issues on the table these days and that trying to find time for appointments, studio and gallery visits would probably be next to impossible. However, I urged him to really consider coming, to not be afraid, and to take the opportunity to see this moment of history and try and engage with it through conversations as much as he can. In his heavy German accent he responded: “Oh no, if it is dangerous today than I cannot come on Thursday, I must postpone my trip, although I do not know when I can make it again.” He handed the phone over to a colleague of his that I had been in touch with. I founded the whole situation so very amusing, especially with the footage of Ahmadinejad‟s rally playing in the background. Once again, self-declared, politically-minded curators shying away from what is truly possible, from what does not exist in representation. I suppose it is exhilarating to think about it, to conduct an interview after the event, but for so many, as soon as it becomes physical, real, as soon as it breaks out onto the streets or confronts them with bodies, then it is too much.

Better wait and attempt to frame it in the exhibition context! I hope he comes; there is nothing to be afraid of. Life, although strange and exciting, is somehow carrying on here as normal. We just heard from Voice of America that the police and military forces have raided Tehran University and that there has been a major clash there. Legally, the government does not have permission to enter university grounds. Not even during the one year of protests and demonstrations during the 1979 Revolution, many of which took place at universities across the country, did the Shah‟s forces attack students on university property itself. “The last time such an offense occurred was 44 years ago”, P. told me. The police have begun shooting now, switching from rubber bullets to real ones. Apparently 11 people were killed yesterday, but it is not clear whether this is true or a rumor, or even if it is true, if they were killed due to gunshot wounds. But tonight, it is confirmed: police are shooting. This means that by tomorrow, there will be a steadily rising death toll to consider.

R. just called the house. B.‟s mouth is wide open. I‟m dying to know what he is saying. Now B. shares the news with us: Ayatollah Saanei, a very important, Reformist-leaning cleric, has arrived in Tehran from the city of Qom and is now staying at Khomeini‟s former house, asking upon all the highest members of the Islamic clergy, and especially the Council of Experts, to convene there.

1:53 AM

After R.‟s phone call, we had a late midnight dinner of khoresht-e-karafs (lamb and celery stew with rice). We then slowly moved into the living room for our, what has now become standard, television/internet news briefing, seeing how the days events have been recapped. B. downloaded a selection of articles from major international newspapers and passed her computer around while BBC Farsi‟s “Sedaye Shoma” (Your Voice) program aired, broadcasting sent-in footage from today‟s riots, emails written describing the situation here, and phone calls from viewers from Iran and abroad expressing their opinion about the post-election events. Most of the viewers sympathized with the Opposition movement and the program‟s moderator had to stress that in no way does BBC Farsi take a position either with or against the election
results. One Ahmadinejad supporter, however, called in, a man living in London. Unlike the rest of the individuals who wrote emails, telephoned, and sent video clips, all of whom spoke calmly and clearly with well-deliberated language, open to the program moderator‟s questions and Devil‟s advocate-style provocations, this particular man immediately blared off in a violent and aggressive tone. I could barely understand him, he was speaking so furiously and so fast, but from what I pieced together he was (1) denouncing the BBC as a foreign propaganda agent of the CIA and MI6, (2) giving proof to this by providing the example of Zahra Rahnavard‟s phone call yesterday to BBC Farsi, (3) accusing all the demonstrators of being “spoiled rich kids” with no “aim or goal”, and (4) declaring that if things progressed as they were, the entire country would fall apart. The program‟s moderator attempted successively to intervene and re-direct this man‟s focus on an important point: given the lack of media outlets for the Iranian Opposition, what other recourse does someone like Zahra Rahnavard have to express her position than to utilize a service such as BBC Farsi? Since the Iranian government is systematically censoring any form of opposition to the election results, does the freedom to express one‟s opinion in a public context such as the BBC immediately implicate the international media as agents provocateurs?

The man didn‟t address these questions, blaring away, repeating how all Opposition
supporters are rich and spoiled (notwithstanding the fact that the man was supposedly calling from London, a city not so easy to live in let alone immigrate to from a third world nation when one isn‟t rich or at least a benefactor of opportunity). Thankfully, he was cut off and the program moved on to the next caller. I started sifting through B.‟s downloaded articles and was quite impressed by the New York Times‟ NewsBlog, the Lede, which has been updated almost half-hourly with a collection of quotes, comments and conversation threads from different newspapers, online news sources such as Facebook and TehranBureau.com and blogs. A few things stuck out, especially amidst all the testimonies from individuals in Iran, news that for me was now all too familiar through my experiences the past two days. One was about the employees from the Interior Ministry who resigned from their jobs in protest of the ministry‟s handling of the votes: “One employee of the Interior Ministry, which carried out the vote count, said the government had been preparing its fraud for weeks, purging anyone of doubtful loyalty and importing pliable staff members from around the country.„ They didn‟t rig the vote,‟ claimed the man, who showed his ministry identification card but pleaded not to be named. „They didn‟t even look at the vote. They just wrote the name and put in the number in front of it.‟” (NY Times, “Memo from Tehran – Reverberations as Door Slams on Hope of Change”, Bill Keller, Published June 13, 2009)

The second was from the official Islamic Republic News Agency, a memo announcing that Ahmadinejad has received three congratulations on his election to a second term so far: “Tehran, June 13 IRNA – Following President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad‟s  andslide victory in the 10th Presidential Elections, Syrian, Egyptian and Palestinian leaders cabled messages of congratulations Saturday on his re-election. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Leader of the Egyptian Ikhwan al-Muslimin Mohammmad Mehdi Akef, Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), and Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement in separate messages congratulated President Ahmadinejad on his victory. They wished him success and prosperity.”

The Lede itself cynically comments, how ironic that the three (rather,
four)
congratulatory remarks come from one dictatorial state (ie. Syria) and
three
illegal, internationally-recognized terrorist organizations! Not
surprising
though, given Iran‟s massive financial aid programs under Ahmadinejad
in the
past four years to the Syrian government, Hizbollah in Lebanon (note
the lack
of comment so far in the wake of this past week‟s Lebanese elections)
and the
Palestinian Resistance. What about Hugo Chavez? When is he coming to
town?
While I was reading these articles, news footage showed the crowds
gathered
to demonstrate at Iranian Embassies abroad: Berlin, London, Paris,
Toronto,
Dubai. Meanwhile, reports were streaming in that the same street
battling
that was occurring in Tehran was also taking place, with the same
severity,
in cities around the country: Shiraz, Isfahan (a traditionally
conservative
city), Mashhad (Iran‟s most important pilgrimage capital, also
traditionally
conservative, and the second largest city population-wise after
Tehran) and
Tabriz (Moussavi‟s hometown). In the popular uprisings under Khatami
or
Rafsanjani (which were significantly different from this time around,
consisting mainly of students), never had the violence spread so fast
and
with such vigor to other major cities. If anything there were small
turnouts
that quickly dispersed, not to show up again. Once again, another
element
bearing too much similarity to 1979 – a nationwide series of
demonstrations
and clashes, a leveling of social and economic contradictions,
unification
under religious rhetoric and the protest of clerics through self-
enclosure at
home and the call for an assembly of review. This is becoming all too
quickly
uncanny.
R. said that he had been out earlier this evening at Chahar-Ra
Parkway, a
major intersection of Valiasr with the Chamran and Hemmat Highways
further up
north. There, he saw a major crowd of protestors gathering, this time
however
completely peacefully. They held their hands up in the air and
melodiously
chanted “Allahu Akbar”, walking towards the intersection with the
police at
their side. They started a round of prayers, acting in a cool and
collected
manner, resisting any display of force and not looking or directing
their
actions at the police. R. said how beautiful it was, in the eerie glow
of the
humongous LCD screen hanging from the highway overpass at Chahar-Ra
Parkway,
flashing advertisements for video cameras, to see a crowd choosing to
act in
a non-violent, pro-active way, as they had done a few days before
during the
pre-election celebrations. The police attempted to provoke them, even
hitting
a few on the sides, but those hit simply got back up and walked away.
There
was no show of resistance. R. went on to say how at a certain point,
even
some police officers began chanting “Allahu Akbar”, joining the
ranks of the
demonstrators. After all, the police are just “doing their job”,
and like
many of us when we are at work, it doesn‟t mean one believes in
everything
one “has” to do. This is the key, a sign of weakness in the whole
structure
of militarized authority: the subjectivities involved in the conflict.
If
these subjectivities can be activated, directly addressed, then the
tides can
change, sides are crossed, a wave of contradictions may reveal the
formation
of unexpected communities. Amongst the crowd gathered, in between their
invocations, R. reported that he saw people whispering in each
others‟ ears,
spreading news, giving advice on how to behave, supporting one
another, and,
most importantly, telling each other where to be and at what time
tomorrow.
Moussavi‟s campaign has called upon all the Opposition supporters to
gather
tomorrow in Tehran at 4 PM at Enghelab Square (Revolution Square, in
the City
Center near to the University). From there, the demonstrators are to
form a
peaceful protest, they are instructed to pray and to maintain calm, even
under the face of fire, and to march slowly towards Azadi Square
(Freedom
Square, the next main square after Enghelab, many kilometers down the
road,
where the Azadi Tower, a symbol of Tehran, stands). Further plans
include
marching past Azadi and down south, towards Imam Khomeini‟s sanctuary
outside
of the city, near the airport. Moussavi‟s wife, Zahra Rahnavard,
announced
that they will attempt to secure permissions for the demonstration.
This is,
however, quite implausible, and most likely the demonstration will face
serious challenges from not only the police, who may be violent, but the
Basiji, who are hands-down deadly and who can speed through the crowd
and
discreetly wreck havoc, provoking the peace with their anger. If the
demonstration turns violent, it is another score for the coup d‟etat,
one
that they can use to show that all those gathered are simply rabble-
rousers,
good-for-nothings, spies, etc. It is very important to stay peaceful,
to keep
focused. Demonstrations are scheduled in other major Iranian cities as
well,
also at 4 PM, an attempt to nationally unite the Opposition and its
supporters in the hope that something can come out of this, that this
time it
won‟t be ignored.

From a friend via Monica Narula and the Sarai Reader List, with thanks.

June 13, 2009

9:05 PM

The satellite signal for BBC Farsi just turned off. I had spoken a few minutes earlier with my father and forgot where I was and that probably my phone call was being monitored. In fact, about 5 minutes into my phone conversation, I heard a faint click on the phone and my father‟s voice all of a sudden sounded very far away, muffled, as if he were on conference call. I was reminded by my friends in the other room that I should be a bit more prudent about what I say and how I say it – maybe it wasn‟t such a good idea to start off my conversation with “There‟s been a revolution”. We‟ve been camping out at home for the past 48 hours. Last night we were awake, in front of the television until 6AM. Slept in until noon and since then, we‟ve been on high alert, full of testosterone, exchanging our disappointment, confusion, worries, nervousness interspersed with information, hear say, opinions and the occasional, very necessary, joke. The house has turned into a news room, all of our computers open and
connected to the internet.

A few of us are writing about the previous day‟s events as they develop; one of us is uploading video footage from today and posting it online; another is sifting through the continuous updates on Facebook profiles, delivering news-from-the-ground to us as it takes place through picture albums and wall posts. I‟ve been looking through a variety of newspapers‟ online versions: New York Times, LA Times, Guardian, Al-Jazeera, Washington Post. I‟m trying to see how what has been so unreal today on the streets here is being covered by the international media, and, as if it should be a surprise, it is quite disappointing for me. All reports cover basic facts, speculate about the future of Iran, and provide a selection of photographs from the demonstrations today. All reports maintain their professional distance, attempting to mediate between the passionate debates that have been taking place here not only today, but in the past two weeks as these elections drew nearer. I don‟t believe these opinions can be mediated, though. That‟s where the confusion lies.

I find my oral fixation to have become quite extreme in the past day: I am popping small bites of anything any chance I get into my mouth: dates, nuts, fruit, cold pizza, leftover rice. I am drinking tea non-stop, smoking through a pack of cigarettes in a matter of a few hours. It doesn‟t help that all of us are tense in our own idiosyncratic ways – Reza paces from room to room,making phone calls and reporting on the alternative hear-say media that has developed into a complex system of analysis, rumor and melodrama in a period of twelve hours; Bani photographs, video records, smokes; Natascha is silent, smacking her mouth in bewilderment, writing in the corner with a clear, focused fire. We‟ve somehow become a family focused on “sticking through it together”. I started writing much later than everyone else because I forgot to bring my computer with me last night. I also resisted it, semi-consciously, because I thought that to merely write about the details of each moment (the only thing I could possibly imagine doing, given my inability to even understand what these details mean individually, let alone as part of the greater picture) would be too banal, potentially trite. After talking to Natascha, who has been my voice of reason and inspiration since the day I arrived in Tehran, I decided to get over myself and to just let go. No one is reading this but me. This is an exercise of focus. And focus is very important in such a circumstance in which no one knows what is going on: the dangers of ignorance. I need to focus to get rid of the passionate waves of anger, anxiety and sadness that come over me. If I do not focus, I will become violent, giving in to that particular form of interaction and display that those in control here want: a pandemic, psychological violence that replicates itself amidst a society, to distract and divide.

Because I started so late, much has happened, making it a difficult task to recount from the beginning. But I think the context is important. The basic course of events is this: we voted yesterday, we sat and waited for the results around midnight, at that point it was announced that Ahmadinejad had won approximately 67% of 5 millions votes that had been counted, with Moussavi taking around 21% of the votes (the others, Karroubi and Rezai, trailed unrealistically far behind with 0.9% and 2% respectively). As the night progressed, the votes kept coming in – 5 million, 10 million, 15 million – and still the percentage of votes per candidate remained almost exactly the same. To me, this seemed a mathematical impossibility! Furthermore, BBC Farsi reported that the original 5 million votes, counted less than 2 hours after the polls closed, were those of nomadic tribes and military personnel. Supposing that the nomads are illiterate and their vote was hand-written for them and that the military unabashedly supports Ahmadinejad, the original percentile was almost believable. Yet, by 15 million, the numbers still hadn‟t budged. What about Tehran – in this campaign an oppositional breeding ground, especially in the northern neighborhoods of the city? What about Moussavi‟s home region of Azerbaijan, his wife’s home in Luristan? And is it possible that not one person from Karroubi‟s home, also in Luristan, voted for him?

The numbers for Rezai‟s 2% of the circa 25-27 million votes cast on Friday (a number that is also mathematically implausible, given the statistic of 84% of the voting-age population participating in these elections, making the total number of votes more around 35-40 million) totaled around 230,000. Given Rezai’s position as former head of the  Revolutionary Guard, an organization numbering up to 2 million, is it possible that so few supported him in this election?

All of this made no sense. By 3AM, the newspaper Kayhan, itself semi-officially backed by the Supreme Leader, reported that Ahmadinejad had won the election. IRNA, the official Islamic Republic of Iran‟s news agency, announced Ahmadinejad’s victory around the same time, even though the votes had not all been count. Hope clung on Tehran‟s votes as potentially turning the race towards a different direction. These hopes, what we were waiting for until 6 AM, quickly collapsed as soon as it became clear that something much bigger, much more serious had happened: a coup d’etat.

Even at this moment, almost 24 hours after the polls closed last night, no statistics have been presented on the regional makeup of the votes. It is unknown what percentage of the votes for or against Ahmadinejad comes from the Capital, from cities all around Iran, from villages, from the countryside, from wandering tribes and from expatriates living, working, and/or studying abroad. In this situation, there is no finger-pointing: there‟s no Florida to blame. According to BBC Farsi, never before in the 30 years of Iran’s presidential elections have the votes been so unusually tallied, with no indication of where they come from. Last night, a friend of ours came by for a late dinner and told us that he had been driving by a polling station in Qeitarieh, an affluent neighborhood of northern Tehran, and had witnessed a physical fight between supporters of Moussavi and plain-clothes “Basiji” – self-appointed Islamic militiamen who have gained more and more authority under Ahmadinejad‟s presidency in the past four years. Supposedly, the Basiji had beaten up a few individuals and quickly left the scene. The polls were still open at the time of the fight. Most likely this was not a solitary case; it just happened that our friend had witnessed this particular incident. When I heard this story, I thought it was just a moment of unnecessary yet to-be-expected fanaticism from some punks, pumped up with testosterone and election fever. Now, in retrospect, I see something much more sinister in this story.

It‟s especially cruel how, for the past week, there had been no attempt to stop supporters for each of the candidates from spilling out on the streets every night from sundown to sunrise. What we saw here over the course of a week was unbelievable: a surreal display of carnival, an excitement in anticipation of a much hoped for change that showed itself in crowds of men and women singing, dancing and chanting clever slogans, gathered from that day‟s political flops, in the middle of the street, stopping traffic and blocking turnabouts. Some of the things we heard on the street, such as “Death to this Violent Government”, “No More Lies”, “The Police have to dance”, “Death to Dictatorship”, as well as the slew of accusations thrown daily by the candidates at one another, exposing the perceived corruption, lies, money laundering and infringement of human rights (including naming specific individuals) that has infested the Islamic Republic‟s thirty years, all combined to form a political landscape so-far unimaginable here.

How is this possible, we asked ourselves, in a country infamous for crackdowns on any form of organized public gatherings as much as for indirectness and secrecy from the side of its politicians as to its inner workings? The sweet smell of a strange, very Iranian form of post-revolutionary, homegrown “democracy” filled our days and nights with energy and curiosity.

For the first few nights, only a handful of police officers and information agents could be seen, weaving through the crowds gathered on Valiasr Street, seeming as if they were more there to prevent a stampede or a fight breaking loose between overenthusiastic gangs of young men, seizing the political climate to break loose, show off, and have some long overdue fun. As the elections approached nearer, the police became less and less present, almost invisible. Alright, we thought, we proved to them that we are not a threat, we are not violent, we simply have something legitimate to say and we want to have fun saying it. I thought to myself that one should not underestimate the political potential of a good party. I thought to myself, this is beautiful, the Summer of Love 1969 sees its second manifestation in Iran of 2009. I thought there will be no need for a revolution, this is a social revolution of love, desire and bodies flowing through the streets, playing, experimenting, laughing, intensely experiencing their environment.

Indeed, I thought, it is almost as if the people on the street are metamorphosizing into nature itself: strapping maple branches onto their arms, making crowns of oleander, waving palm fronds, throwing flowers at one another. It‟s so pancosmic – catastrophic transubstantiation in the face of an imminent disaster. If only we had perceived the imminent disaster and turned ourselves into trees or bushes or flowers! Now, in retrospect, this one week of freedom seems to have been a very Roman moment of grandiose distraction from the plans that were being hatched while people were too busy having fun to notice. This delirious week of Bacchanalia drew to an official close at 3 AM on Thursday, June 11th. The Election Oversight Committee announced that by this time, all demonstrations of support for any candidate were to be banned and all campaign material (flyers, posters, billboards, etc) were to be cleaned up. Thursday came and went, completely calm, the night was quiet and the streets were empty. No sign of the elections was to be seen – it was amazing to me how fast the cleaning crews had done their job, erasing all signs of a week-long party in less than six hours. No one wore green, very few held up the ubiquitous victory-sign as I walked through the streets.

Friday, the day of the elections, was similarly calm. In fact, other than the half- kilometer line stretching out of the Zafaraniye School that I passed at 8 AM on my way to Tochal for an early morning hike, I wouldn‟t have known there was anything particularly unique about this election. Something uncanny: the weather! Every night for the past week, ominous clouds would gather at sunset, colored dark brown. The wind would begin to blow, spreading dust into the air, causing an immediate sneeze-attack followed by an itchy throat. Then, as it grew darker, the sky would turn brilliantly purple, lightning would strike followed by shattering thunder. I may be using very dramatic language to describe the weather, but for me it was a very intense impression to see that even the sky was as unpredictable and tempestuous as the streets. In fact, the night before the election, after a day of calm and quiet, the most intense of these storms occurred: I was sitting on the balcony with Natascha and a wind broke loose that blew everything off the table, roaring through the street, bending tree branches, echoing from the corner. A flash of lightning struck the empty pool in our neighbor‟s yard, followed by the loudest thunder I have ever heard.

Natascha ran back into the house and I followed. It began raining hard for about thirty minutes and then, all of a sudden, it cleared, the air became cool, and the silence of the evening returned. This is most unusual weather for this time of the year in Tehran. Every time I have visited Tehran, it has always been during the period of May through August, and I have never seen such regular, tempestuous weather. Tehran rarely rains during the summer – it is usually dry, hot, dusty and scorching. Why this year, all of a sudden? Global warming? Friends from Berlin say the weather there is autumnally cool, also unusual for the season – maybe strange weather has become a phenomenon everywhere, but the coincidence of the weather‟s alignment with the political “climate” here is, for me, very interesting. Maybe the weather should have been more of a sign that things were not to pass so smoothly, that the quiet of Thursday and Friday was the “eye of the storm”.

The first half of the storm was the thirst-quenching, drought-curing water of carnival; the second half of the storm began today: the violent hurricane that rips the city apart, leaves destruction in its path, kills as it rolls through with an unexpected force. And now, in retrospect, the Basiji bullies who our friend saw assaulting Moussavi supporters at the polls in Qeitarieh Friday evening were not bored punks, they were the shots-fired-too-soon, the miscalculated early gusts, the premature signs of the storm that a major intervention had been taken, potentially while the people celebrated in the streets and observed the Sabbath of calm before casting their votes. Manipulating distraction and the illusional appetizer of “freedom” to their benefit, these Basiji were the preliminary harbingers of a hijacked future for this country. Moreover, their gangster-like assault on voters foreshadowed the maneuvers that the police would take that night while people slept – or stayed awake glued in confusion to satellite TV. Absent physically for one week, the police were hiding, well-trained. An hour after the polls closed Friday, the police were unleashed en masse to the Interior Ministry, where the ballots from the nation had been collected to be counted. Simultaneously, the mayor of Tehran announced that from midnight, Saturday June 13th on, any demonstrations for or against the candidates will be illegal and will be strictly disciplined. A clash occurred as the situation unfolded – once the first percentages were announced, demonstrators gathered near the Interior Ministry, to be quickly broken up by the police.

From this point, one dream ended and another began, both unreal. The military state. After our late breakfast, we decided to head out to the street. This was around 3 PM. Up till then, we had heard rumors that Moussavi was going to give a speech somewhere in Tehran and lead a demonstration to TV/Radio Central Headquarters. This was quickly confirmed as a false lead. We waited, waited to see if he would say anything, going into news room mode: Facebook videos and updates on organized demonstrations at Vanak Square, 7th Tir Square, Fatemi Square, Valiasr Square paired with BBC Farsi‟s call-ins from Moussavi supporters on the streets. The highlight of all this, right before we left the house, was a phone call from Moussavi‟s wife, Zahra Rahnavard, to BBC Farsi. Answering questions about Moussavi‟s position regarding the situation, Rahnavard directly addressed the “Iranian people”: They have played with your vote and are playing with your integrity! Stand strong! Do not give up! We became curious, or maybe we just couldn‟t stand being in the house, repeating the same news, speculating, worrying, and wondering anymore.

We started to walk down Valiasr Street, the 21 kilometer North-South thoroughfare that is Tehran‟s quintessential “main street”, running from Tajrish Square at its northernmost point to its terminus at Meydan-e-Rah-Ahan in the southern part of the city. Traffic had come to a standstill on both sides of the street, cars and buses packed like tin cans and moving mere inches forward. The side walks were filled on both sides of the street with people, some standing outside of their shops or houses observing the street, others carrying on their usual daily business, and others walking, like us, fervently south, towards Vanak Square where the riots were supposed to be taking place. Soon we heard police sirens and saw a stretch of black police vans drive through the traffic, ordering cars and motorcyclists out of their way. The vans were filled with Robo-Cop clad police officers, other vans had cages attached to them, and the entire procession was followed by a chain of motorcycles, mounted two-by-two with police offers wielding batons.

For me it was extremely unsettling that every time we stopped on the sidewalk to take a look at the show of military force, the police offers would turn their heads simultaneously and look at us directly in the eyes. It felt that they had an extra sense, able to perceive individuals from the crowd who posed any danger or criticism towards them. Their glare sent shivers down my back, as if they were memorizing my features in order to remember to come after melater. We decided it would be best to split up as a group, to not take pictures, to stop as little as possible, and to try and calm down – we were surely emitting a very tense energy. My face was contorted into a permanent scowl – I had to try and lighten it, to smile, to walk with a relaxed pace, to pretend that I was simply out for an ice cream. We walked alongside the stretch of police vans and motorcycles for around twenty minutes, when, at a major traffic intersection, the entire chain of police turned off of Valiasrstreet and drove onto the Niyayesh Highway. Natascha mentioned that their strategy must be a divide-and-conquer method – maybe some were going to other parts of town where demonstrations were also occurring, while others were trying to come up to Vanak from the side, in an attempt to take the demonstrators gathered there by surprise.

As soon as we passed this intersection, we could see a crowd gathered up ahead, and then all of a sudden people began running, screaming “Go! Go! Go! They‟re coming”. From behind the crowd we saw a group of police officers marching forward into the street, a man ran past me yelling “They‟re hitting everyone, go!” We ran. Natascha disappeared from sight. I ran, following Reza and Bani into a side street where we could peep our heads from a parking garage and take a look at what was happening. Crowds ran past and the group of police officers made it to the street where we were hiding. They were about to come down this street when all the cars parked on Valiasr began honking vigorously, turning the police‟s attention to this unapproved display of solidarity. The police quickly jumped into the street and began climbing over cars, kicking car doors, waving their batons, and telling the drivers to stop honking. We walked back up to Valiasr and saw that the police were now weaving through the traffic, walking back further down. The cars kept honking at them, men and women holding up victory signs from their windows. Reza and Bani decided to walk down to Mirdamad Street, where the Vanak protest had managed to spread.

I told them I would find Natascha first and then slowly trail them. We parted ways and I walked up two blocks to find Natascha. We deliberated what to do and decided that we were already too far away from home to go back. Should we pretend to not know how to speak Farsi if they catch us? How far down should we go? We decided that at this point, being caught is not even an option, nor is being beaten. Being so removed from this context, I had to admit to myself that I had never been in such a situation and therefore, do not know how to act. Not knowing what to do is extremely dangerous. We walked slowly towards Mirdamad, cautiously gauging the mood, tensing our bodies to begin running as soon as a signal was given from up ahead. We passed by a pedestrian bridge and decided we should go onto it in order to overlook the street. The bridge seemed like a safe place, at least for the moment it was removed from the traffic of the side walk, but of course it could potentially turn into a trap if it were to be used as an escape route and stampeded by fleeing demonstrators. From above, we could see the impressive line of cars stretching as far back and as far forward as we could see; we could see the crowds waving their hands in protest at Mirdamad and further ahead, a mass of bodies at Vanak which were, from our vantage point, indiscernible.

I think we were on the bridge for more than an hour and this whole time we could see the back and forth clashes between the demonstrators and the police. There would be moments of pause, then the demonstrators would gather and wave their arms, chanting “Death to Dictatorship”. They would be allowed to assemble for a few minutes and then the police would swoop down and begin hitting, dispersing the crowd like a forest fire. The demonstrators would run up the street towards our bridge but then slow their pace, regroup, and inch their way forward, only to re-assemble where they had been before. This whole time, cars, seeing that traffic was no longer moving, began honking ferociously, men and women opened their car doors and came out on the street, held up their hands in victory-signs or waved green banners, and began cheering.

We started to cheer to – I screamed my lungs out – from the bridge, the unification of voices and car honks cascaded into a rumbling wave of support and solidarity, seeming as if it were the cause of the lightning and thunder on the horizon. During my time on the bridge, I was amused by an Azeri Turkish family – mom, dad, three children and grandmother – sitting next to us on the bridge, leaning their backs against the railing and passing out snacks of crackers and nuts and candies amongst one another. The dad was pointing out where to look, trying to describe what was happening to the children. The grandmother had her hands over her mouth and would begin waving and panting as soon as she saw the crowds clashing with the police. The children seemed so very excited, as if they had not an inkling of an idea that what they were witnessing was, from a number of possible adjectives, serious, historical, severe, etc. As the family tensed and relaxed and ate their snacks, their actions gave me the impression that for them, this was serious entertainment, as though they were watching a Hollywood action movie in the cinema.

It was a beautiful moment to observe them, to see their ability to remove themselves from the immediate situation while sensing that they were eagerly anticipating this moment for ages. This was for them, maybe I am assuming here, the chance of a lifetime for a movie-turned-into-reality that could, if all went well, alter their lives. Eventually the clashes became heavy. A major crowd had gathered at Mirdamad and this time the police unleashed stronger force onto them. As the crowd began running away, the cars started honking and the police became enraged, following the crowd further up the street, towards our bridge. We sensed that at any moment up to a hundred people could try and escape onto the bridge, only to be followed by the police, effectively trapping us where we sat, so Natascha and I decided to take the split-second opportunity and run. We stormed down from the bridge and began running up Valiasr, taking a look behind us only to see that the police were still in pursuit. I didn‟t look long enough to see if they were hitting people, I just saw metal and helmets and raised batons and decided to run as fast as I could. We ran past a truck that had been left parked onto the side of the road, filled with bricks.

I later found out that the driver of this truck had been arrested with the suspicion that he was delivering bricks to the demonstrators, so that they could use them against the police. I imagined picking up a brick and throwing it blindly into the crowd, but this fantasy faded fast as I continued forward, knowing that the only power I had at that moment was to try andavoid getting hurt. Slowly we calmed down, realizing that we were no longer being pursued, and as Natascha and I caught our breath, we decided it would be best to go home. We had seen enough for the day to know how serious the situation was. It was important to experience the streets as they unfolded, as bodies collided and cars honked and news spread from mouth to mouth, a major difference from sitting at home watching TV and trying to piece together information from various internet sources. We still hadn‟t heard anything from Reza and Bani, who had been much further ahead than us, and we hoped that they were alright. In fact, a minibus was parked at Mirdamad, and while we were on the bridge we saw that the police were trying, in their efforts to break up the demonstrators, to grab anyone that failed to run away fast enough and throw them into the mini bus. Hopefully Reza and Bani hadn‟t been arrested, especially since both of them were trying to video record what was happening down there. Natascha called Bani but Bani hung up on her call.

I told Natascha not to worry for now, just to breathe and to drink some water, have a quick energy-booster snack, and to try and get home. Natascha bought some chocolate and I quickly grabbed a pistachio milkshake from a street-side stall and we walked up Valiasr, stopping at regular intervals to eavesdrop on conversations – some people were recounting what they had witnessed from being in the demonstrations, others were spreading rumors, while others were talking about the 1979 Revolution, exchanging advice on what can be done today. A crowd was gathered around a street-side vendor selling books written by Sadeq Hedayet, an Iranian intellectual from the „40s and „50s who had written extensive, anti-authoritarian allegorical stories during the time of the Shah. As we approached our street, we saw a motorcade of police officers drive by: twelve motorcycles in total, the officers holding up their palms in a Fascist gesture of power, the head of the motorcade holding a baton of red flashing light. They drove past us and then back down, metaphorically flexing their muscles, confirming the militarization of authority taking place before our eyes. Finally they turned around and speeded towards TV/Radio Central Headquarters, where they most likely would either receive intelligence reports and/or station themselves to prevent a public attack.

On our street corner, two women in their mid-to-late thirties stood, watching the procession of police officers, conversing in disbelief. I stood next to them to listen to their conversation. They began to cry, all the while holding up their hands in a victory-sign, waving at the honking cars that drove by. One of the women said to the other: “Just let them kill us now, watch, tomorrow they will put cyanide in the city’s main water reservoir.” I tapped her on the shoulder and gently rubbed her back, telling her to calm down, wait, and hope for the best. I wished her good health and walked back with Natascha to our house. Natascha had just gotten off the phone with Bani, who had confirmed that they were alright – they had found a perfect spot at Mirdamad, on the balcony of a shopping center, from which they could safely observe and film the demonstrations. They were on their way home as well. And they were bringing pizza back!

11:28 PM

The police just drove by our house, 8 motorcycles, two officers clad in black riot armor waiving their batons in the air. Natascha broke into the living room from the kitchen and said “They’re on our street! They’re driving by!” We ran to the front balcony to take a look and caught the last motorcycles speeding past – Natascha said she saw a group of women and their children, what seemed to be a family, chased by the police into our street and up the hill. Shortly after we had collected onto the balcony, the police drove back, calm, seemingly satisfied. Whether these women were innocently caught up in the situation, or whether they had provoked the police, this I do not know.

At this point, we saw our neighbors collected onto their roof – they had a much better view so we asked them what is going on. They told us that a group of protestors set a trash can on fire at the entrance to our street.

We began to smell the burning rubber. Our neighbors asked us if our satellite TV, internet and mobile phone networks have also been shut down – we confirmed all three with a resounding yes.

Going to the roof now to try and see better – no TV, no internet, it’s something to do, at least.

12:01 AM

Just got back from the outside, after the observing from our rooftop Bani and I walked up to the intersection of our street and Valiasr. The trash can was no longer burning, but the air was filled with an orange haze. The weather itself has decided to revolt once again, continuing its unusual trend, this time even more appropriate: lightning and thunder fill the overcast sky. It truly feels apocalyptic.

A friend came over and is trying to fix our satellite signal. He is on the roof with a roll of aluminum foil, and the others are sitting in the living room while Reza is yelling out the bathroom window. It worked! We have a terrible connection to BBC Farsi, but it is some contact nevertheless. Reza just read a report (I still haven’t managed to figure out where he gets his news from) from employees of the Interior Ministry who quit their jobs today, announcing that they personally know there was a fraud and that the actual hand-counted number of reports is as follows: 16 million for Moussavi, 13 million for Karroubi, 5 million for Ahmadinejad and 2 million for Rezai. Who knows if this is true or not?

The mood has become what I imagine what a revolutionary or pre-civil war situation must feel like: all communication networks other than the official state-run media shut down (which, by the way, is only airing religious programs, flooding the airways with prayers); communiqués delivered by the Opposition without any physical appearance or any idea of their whereabouts; semi-official documents circulating via unknown sources amongst the population, delivering conflicting news; the only way to keep updated on the latest  developments is by resorting to hear-say, rumor and eavesdropping on conversations in the street; talk of hangings, assassinations, mass mobilization and what could-have-been; not knowing who supports who on the street (anyone could be part of a plain-clothes militia); neighbors gathering at the entrance to their streets, acting as guardians or even, as checkpoints. There is talk of giving it more time, and yet people eventually have to sleep, when will things stop? The sounds outside seemed to have been dying down, but now the car honks have started again, more than ever. How late will things go tonight? How many have been hospitalized or even killed? The police are now using electronic sting guns. Where is Moussavi? Why has he disappeared? Maybe, one rumor goes, they’ve arrested him, or maybe he‟s left the country, delivering his communiqués from across the border in Turkey – an Opposition government in exile!!

“So this is what a coup d’etat looks like,” said a friend today.

You go to bed and wake up the next day and see the police everywhere. The “military”
government announces its unprecedented victory, calling it a sign of “divine approval”. And any sign of unrest is immediately dealt with through a show of the police state‟s force. Is this it? Being in the middle of such events  makes it difficult to try and compare it with what one knows from history, or, the image of that history that one has in one’s mind. Hashemi Rafsanjani is under house arrest. An unholy alliance (as Natascha just told me, “there is not much holiness left in this situation”) is forming between him, the Leader of the Council of Experts, former hard-liner President of the Islamic Republic, and the Reformist Opposition led by Moussavi. The Council of Experts is a body of Shi’ite Islamic clerics, appointed during the early Khomeini era for life, to regulate the activity of the velayat-e-faqih, the Guardianship of the Cleric. Under Khomeini they had no power, given Khomeini‟s extraordinary combination of roles: Leader of the Revolution, Source of Emulation (marja‟i taqlid – the highest point of religious authority a Shi‟ite cleric can attain) and Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic. However, since Khomeini‟s death, the Council of Experts have, legally, the right to intervene on matters of state regarding the Supreme Leader’s decisions, even to the extent that if need be, they may remove the Supreme Leader from power. Not once in the thirty years since the Revolution has this Council convened to discuss a decision the Supreme Leader has made. In fact, rumor has it that most who sit on this Council are far removed from the political climate, preferring the academic environment of the religious seminaries in Qom than the hot-seat of Islamic politics in Tehran. However, Rafsanjani, as the leader of this Council, is the only person who can legally intervene in this situation. Khamenei has issued his official approval of the election results and has even recently issued a statement telling people to “keep quiet and behave themselves”.

Until this point, many hoped that Khamenei would ask for a recount, or announce a second round of elections, but his approval of Ahmadinejad quickly put these possibilities far away from reality. With his support, no one, not even Moussavi, can legally act against the election results – otherwise, there will be severe consequences. Rafsanjani remains the only person: his expressed disapproval of Ahmadinejad and his support of the Opposition’s campaign in the past few weeks may lead him to assemble the Council of Experts to question Khamenei‟s statement of approval. As this has never been done, it is not  imaginable what would happen if such a confrontation of power would occur. As this can be done, Rafsanjani, occupying the position of the so-to-speak “Homo Sacer” – he who is inside and outside of the law at the same time – has been placed under house arrest by the Supreme Leader.

Tension! What strikes me as the most strange is how Rafsanjani, a core leader of the Revolution and historically an extremely conservative hard- liner, can align himself with the Reformist Opposition? Is he simply bearing a grudge against Ahmadinejad, who unexpectedly beat him in the previous elections four years ago and who formally denounced him and his family as “criminal” in last week’s round of debates? Or, is he vying for power against Khamenei, with whom he has always had a troubled relationship and against whom he may also feel a grudge since it was Khamenei, a relatively unimportant yet extremely zealous cleric underneath Khomeini‟s leadership, who was appointed as Supreme Leader and not him? Or, could it be something else?

The Basiji arrived onto our street. They were a group of ten tall, burly, bearded men, all wearing similar outfits consisting of boxy, white dress shirts, oversized khakis and dirty, clog-like black boots, holding in both hands large pieces of wood, baseball-stick like. The Basiji were chasing a group of women and young men, slamming their make-shift “baseball bats” onto the sides of parked cars and closed doors. The women were screaming at them, something the equivalent of “fuck off”, bringing the Basiji‟s blood to a boil: they were foaming at the mouth, raising their bats to hit the women, cursing them, telling everyone standing by watching – whether out of defiance or curiosity – to go home. When a woman popped her head out of her door to tell some of the Basiji that no, indeed, THEY should be the ones to go home, one of the men hurled himself at her. She quickly slammed the door in his face, to which his response was a forceful blow of his “bat” against her door.

At this moment, one of the Basiji from further up the street yelled to his comrades to hurry up and follow him. The men ran away, charged with energy, raising their sticks in preparation for the next crowd they would encounter. I feel that there is so much hatred against these men, who have entrusted themselves (with the approval of Ahmadinejad‟s government) to control the people through intervening with their values of what they deem to be moral and “Islamic”, enforcing their will through violence and bullying. Some, melodramatically, fear that if Ahmadinejad remains for the next four years, the Basiji will develop into a neighborhood-police institution with unlimited ability to enforce what they, at the moment, believe to be true and appropriate. The recruitment and militarization of these civilians, the unofficial granting of full authority to their activities as well as the fact that many of them come from socio-economically troubled, abusive backgrounds may, at worst, create a Taliban-like situation in this country that would not be easy to solve in the future, even after Ahmadinejad‟s term is over.