Urumi - The plight of a postmodern narrative !
I went to see 'Urumi' the much hyped big budget Malayalam movie directed by Santosh Sivan and scripted by Shankar Ramakrishnan without much expectation as the initial comments from my friends were not that encouraging. And that helped me a lot to digest the embarrassing moments and to appreciate the glimpses of visual imagery at times. It gives me a consolation that the popular culture has not rotten much to get overwhelmed by these kind of big budget productions.
The movie as a whole is nothing new or path breaking in either film grammar or its aesthetic, political or historic or contents. To speak about the positioning and presentation of historic characters, it made me to think that the film crew conceived them as hallucinated, semi& lunatic or arrogant mortals.
The central character 'Kelu Kotthuval' is presented as arrogant,daring, and conscious of his destiny. There are excess melodrama in all these characterizations so that we will fail to translate the character to a historic lattice.
Almost all the characters are living in a state of fantasy or erotic hedonism. And that makes it lesser modern, not at all real, and for worse a semi- cooked postmodern narrative.
Post-modern narratives will aim to negate the basic building blocks of society such as economy, class contradictions, productive relations, natural dialectics and will amplify the superfluous, secondary, derived relations of the social fabric. Here the senseless depiction of sexual anarchy takes over the movie ad a whole and reduces the freedom struggle to a mere patriarchal revenge.
Here European invasion of Kerala is presented ad the historic pretext or prelude to the environmental exploitation of the multinational corporate driven - government auded collaboration to loot the natural resources. The NGO - civil society inspired, indigenously mobilized resistance wins their land rights at the end. So far so good, though I pity the rationale and cognizance of this point if view.
As usual in commercial cinema , the movie progresses without exposing any of the thematic elements. No worries, no compliant as I don't expect this much cerebral efforts from them.
May be we can forgive Prithviraj for his whims and fancies of s new actor turned producer. But I am sad to see this sort of an infantile film sense from Santosh Sivan again and again, an icon if Indian cinematography. And it reinforces my belief that technology is not a replacement for cerebral aesthetics. Film may be a power language but at the end what matters who speaks it out and what do we say.
Erasure
A tombstone
Awaiting its pearl
With its salt and saliva
Welcomes red wild roses
And wishes luck
to count down stars
Melting tones
Winter greens
Lush of lust
They were craving for depths
Smelling mud, a skull laughed
If it withers, can life become?
Road taken from calm rails
Unto this last ring of hope
All colours are a hue and tint
But a bliss of fire from far
Never heard of corridors
That lives beyond light
Yet darkness wore shades
Happiness hidden from colours
Sinking sorrow
With a drunken vessel
Still shores loved its senses
Beams so young
clouds so long
They could meet in vapours
Stirring rain
Striking gold
All in a day's harm
Smiling leaves
Embraced the roots
Heart and its wrinkles
Heaps of hopes in hollow
Hands had enough
Harness the mask
Dance to the dusk
Day longs thereafter
Stretches of skin
Marked its white
Fair faces drowned
And lived in nymphs
Loud old voices
Lean line of thought
Tone down mirrors
Open for stillness
Closed this erasure
Away from the seizure
None could erase the epitaph
Though fate was rewritten
In mirage and rage
Infinite stars and finite spans
They loved this soliloquy
Long long tentacles
Craving for memoirs
Made a mirror of seizure
And sleepy monster lied in charm
'Where there is an ill, there is a will'
Unfilled sky thus rained in still
Gokul B.Alex
.
Destiny of a Decade
Stolen Spaces and Marching Ants !
Time is a tyrant! And a decade is a mere dust in the sands of history but it means much more in the life of a human being. In the mainstream media recap, we see a decade as a sequence of events and tale of newsmakers. Seldom does it lead to interpretation and introspections. In such an attempt, we can see that a decade means different for each strata of society. In the lives of upper class, technology and social media invaded personal experiences to the deepest. Simulations stimulated their desires and plenitude of choices pampered their lives. The working class had to confront tightening labour laws and insecure way of life. Labour increasingly became a mobile commodity integrated to the supply chains and global delivery models. The poor were encircled by spiralling prices and weakening welfare state schemes. Rather than growth, poverty trickled down to the downtrodden.
Under the pretext of globalization, world economy became an integrated financial market. World became flat in that sense. The poor were erased from the flash memories of the elite and the aspiring ones. On the other hand, because of digital divide and growing economic disparity, world became more and more opaque. Adding to the woes of the wretched, Mother Nature created havoc to the millions in the forms of thunderstorms, earth quakes, floods, Tsunami and cyclones. More than anything these calamities exposed the callousness of the governments and the micro-politic agenda of the donor agencies. India saw the massive earthquake in Gujarat (2001) which took more than 30,000 lives.
Indian polity saw the resurgence of coalition governments in Centre adding a new dimension to federalism. The Tehelka expose took the political bureaucracy by storm. The Gujarat riot will always remain as a blot of this decade. The failure of Agra summit put Indian diplomacy in no man’s land. Indo – US nuclear deal generated much acrimony and put an end to the love –hate relationship between UPA and left. Maoists aided by the inflow of weapons from Bangladesh and Myanmar became the serious threat to Indian internal security. The political economy of Kashmir improved marginally and gave way to democratic process.
The same decade saw the upsurge and retreat of globalization. The hype of Y2K puzzle disappeared in thin air. None bothered to count the millions lost in preparing precautionary steps. The alliance of Time Warner and America Online (2000) became the big hit of the millennium. The honeymoon of techies did not last longer. The Tech crunch (2001) and the dotcom bubble were the preludes for the recessions to come. In this sound and fury, all ignored that it was the collapse of minnows which led to the formation of monopolies in technology.
Silicon Valley emerged as the hub of information technology. IT revolution was nothing but the use of existing computer communication platforms for financial and international trade networks. The wave of globalization of labour and capital was accelerated by internet technologies. In Doha round of negotiations of World Trade Organization (2001), it was USA, European Union and Japan which stood for agricultural subsidies retreating from their previous support for neo-liberalism. Though it exposes the hypocrisy of imperialism, more evident is their losing faith in the free market principles. The changing tides of world economy favoured the labour capitals like China, India, Indonesia, Brazil and ASEAN nations. The fundamental importance of productive forces in a political economy was amplified by this.
Corporate capitalism exposed its wilderness and chaos with the collapse of the American Energy sector giant ‘Enron’ in 2001. Sarbanes-Oxley laws tried to take grip on US corporate governance. The roller coaster ride of free market capitalism met an unexpected twist from the high heavens itself. American Hedge fund investment groups started collapsing. Mortgage giants like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae bailed out their prestige. None could save the fate of sinking Lehman Brothers, 150 years old Investment Bank. Entire financial market in the developed economies felt the tremors. The recent market updates reveal that US economy hasn’t yet circumvented the recession despite the massive government bailout.
This decade witnessed the madness of American imperialism as they invaded fragile nation states using their military might. The aerial attacks on the twin towers of World Trade Centre in September 11, 2001 became the launch pad of American neo-colonial interests. Greed for Oil and urge to retain the dollar hegemony led them to cook up stories against the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. When American Missiles bombarded the planning ministry in Iraq (2003), world conscience was a mute spectator. On the other hand, geopolitical interests in Central Asia and the hunt for Osama Bin Laden were the reasons for the Afghan invasions (2001).
Almost ten years on, the war on terror is on going. Taliban and Opium trade in Afghanistan is on rise again. Incapable to curb this, US-NATO army is busy murdering civilians in the Af-Pak border. Abu Gharib jail tortures exposed the savage side of American civilization. The controversial Guantanamo prison opened by USA to detain the war prisoners (2002) is on the verge of closing down.
Organized crime and terrorism were the perennial disturbances for the entire decade. Few realised these as the fruits of social anarchy spread by the proliferation of market economy world wide. The Somali young terrorist holding the American weapon exemplifies the dialectical relation between imperialism and terrorism. US shipped more than 40 tons of weapons into the ports of Somalia. The new decade will tell us who the recipients were. We saw terrorism getting the religious tint everywhere from Indonesia to Colombia. The state of affairs rekindles the memories of crusades in history.
The entire Islamic nations who were against the American oil greed were tainted as terrorists. Thus political Islam was equated with terrorism. By sabotaging the democratic governments in Islamic nation states Imperialism sowed the seeds of theocracy. Yet we failed to realize that terrorism was best exploited by Imperialism to fragment the opposing nation states. Baltic nations and South East Asia stands as the victim to these experiments. But world polity relishes in the convenience of forgetting.
The world continues to be hot and simmering for the Palestinians with Israel breaching all the limits of atrocity. Palestine lost their iconic leader Yasser Arafat in the middle of this decade. All throughout this decade this West Asian strip of land was stripped of all the human rights. Goldstone commission appointed by UN (2009) was a mild solace to their concerns.
The decade saw the transformation of culture industry from a mass media to hegemony over human capital. The decade began with the arrival of Survivor – the Reality show, first of its kind. It was an instant hit in USA. With ‘Idea Star Singer’ making waves all over Kerala just all in this decade we can sense the spread of a global mass culture. Social media became the second nature of netizens. Twitter, MySpace, Facebook and Orkut satisfied the tribal instinct of millions of people. Yet there are concerns of privacy and information security in these social networks. Identity of individual was lost somewhere in the networks. Wikipedia became the ultimate source of anything and everything on universe. The potentials of these sources take us also to the concerns on the authenticity and ideological intentions. The potentials of music were best explored by Apple Inc with their ‘iPod’.
One cannot ignore the winning strides of science in this decade. And we salute in the memory of seven space scientists who shed their life with the burning Colombia Space shuttle (2003). The Genome project (completed first stage in 2003) and the Chandrayan moon mission (began in 2008) were crowing achievements of the decade. SARS and bird flu consumed many lives world wide. It revealed the vulnerability of the healthcare systems world wide. Climate change concerns became a political issue in no time. Development politics and environmental politics locked horns in various international forums. Much hyped Copenhagen summit (2009) failed to deliver any progressive results though it created a coalition of developing nations.
In this decade, imperial states, non-state actors, NGOs and the donor agencies were the key players in the world polity. Identity politics and micropolitics were their weapons for fragmentation of democracies world wide. They scan even the smallest space of every individual. On one side, they weakened the democracies by instigating ideologies of decentralization of power through micropolitics. On the other end, they created political anarchy by funding identity politics and exporting political terrorism. At the end of this drama, as a saviour of democracy, US imperialism marches to foreign soils to liberate the people and deliver them to the world market. Confrontation between democratic nation states and market forces happened to be the major current of this eventful decade. A society wandering in stolen spaces; it is the gift of this decade.
Gokul B.Alex
ഒരു 'ഉപഹാര'സ്മരണ
ഒരു മധ്യാഹ്നത്തിന്റെ നിനവില്
അവളെനിക്കു 'രണ്ടാമൂഴം' വച്ച് നീട്ടി
ഒരു പകല്ക്കിനാവിന്റെ ഉറക്കച്ചടവില്
ഞാനതിന് പുറം ചട്ടയില് തലോടി മയങ്ങി
തെരുവിന്റെ ഊഷ്മാവിനെ ഞാന് അറിഞ്ഞില്ല
ഓരങ്ങളിലെ ഉന്മാദ ലഹരിയെ ഞാന് കുറുകെ കടന്നു
ഒരിക്കലും പൂക്കാത്ത ചന്ദന തൈമാവും മധുരം നിനച്ചു
വിറയ്ക്കുന്ന എന്റെ ചുണ്ടുകള് പ്രണയത്തെ തെറ്റിദ്ധരിച്ചു
ഓളങ്ങളില് നിലയക്കാത്ത കയങ്ങളുണ്ടെന്നു ഞാന് അറിഞ്ഞില്ല
ചുവന്ന പുകച്ചുരുളുകളുടെ പോരുളെന്തെന്നു ഇനിയും എനിക്കറിയില്ല
കത്തികരിഞ്ഞ നിലങ്ങളെ സാക്ഷി, ഞാന് അകലങ്ങിളില് ഈര്പ്പം നുകര്ന്നു
പകര്ച്ചപ്പനിയെ പേടിച്ചരണ്ട നാട്ടില് ഞാന് കോമാളിയുടെ ഭാവപകര്ച്ച തേടി
ഇനിയൊരിക്കലും വഴാങ്ങാത്ത ഊഴങ്ങളില് ഞാന് ഊഴിയിട്ടു
വഴിയോരങ്ങളിലെ സീല്ക്കാരങ്ങളില് വിടരുന്ന പാലപ്പൂക്കളെ ഞാന് കണ്ടില്ല
ഭീമന് വൈദേഹിയെയും പാഞ്ചാലി രാമനെയും അറിഞ്ഞിരുന്നെങ്കില്!
വടവൃക്ഷം ബാക്കിയായി, പിന്നെ കുറെ താപസ വാല്മീകങ്ങളും
നിസംഗം, നിശൂന്യം, നിര്ലജ്ജം, നിര്വ്യാജം നീരദങ്ങളെ ഞാന് പ്രണയിച്ചു
സത്യം അസത്യത്തെ തെടുന്നുവേന്നറിയാന് നന്നേ വൈകി
പിഴക്കാത്ത കണക്കുകളില് അഭിരമിക്കുന്ന കാലങ്ങളെ പഴി പറഞ്ഞു ഞാനും
ഞാനില്ലാത്ത നിലാവും നീര്നായകളും നാല്കവലകളില് നായാടി
ചെമ്പന് പുകച്ചുരുളിന് ധൂമമായി ഞാന് അലിയട്ടെ അക്ഷരച്ചുരളുകളില്
വേണ്ട! ബാക്കി വയ്ക്കാന് ഓര്മയുടെ അക്ഷയപാത്രങ്ങളൊന്നും തന്നെ
അവളെനിക്കു 'രണ്ടാമൂഴം' വച്ച് നീട്ടി
ഒരു പകല്ക്കിനാവിന്റെ ഉറക്കച്ചടവില്
ഞാനതിന് പുറം ചട്ടയില് തലോടി മയങ്ങി
തെരുവിന്റെ ഊഷ്മാവിനെ ഞാന് അറിഞ്ഞില്ല
ഓരങ്ങളിലെ ഉന്മാദ ലഹരിയെ ഞാന് കുറുകെ കടന്നു
ഒരിക്കലും പൂക്കാത്ത ചന്ദന തൈമാവും മധുരം നിനച്ചു
കല്പിത കാലത്തിന്റെ പ്രവചനങ്ങള് എന്റെ നെറുകയില്
ചന്ദ്രബിംബവും ജാലകം ചാരിനിന്നവളും നല്ല മരീചികകള്
വിറയ്ക്കുന്ന എന്റെ ചുണ്ടുകള് പ്രണയത്തെ തെറ്റിദ്ധരിച്ചു
ഓളങ്ങളില് നിലയക്കാത്ത കയങ്ങളുണ്ടെന്നു ഞാന് അറിഞ്ഞില്ല
ചുവന്ന പുകച്ചുരുളുകളുടെ പോരുളെന്തെന്നു ഇനിയും എനിക്കറിയില്ല
കത്തികരിഞ്ഞ നിലങ്ങളെ സാക്ഷി, ഞാന് അകലങ്ങിളില് ഈര്പ്പം നുകര്ന്നു
പകര്ച്ചപ്പനിയെ പേടിച്ചരണ്ട നാട്ടില് ഞാന് കോമാളിയുടെ ഭാവപകര്ച്ച തേടി
ഇനിയൊരിക്കലും വഴാങ്ങാത്ത ഊഴങ്ങളില് ഞാന് ഊഴിയിട്ടു
വഴിയോരങ്ങളിലെ സീല്ക്കാരങ്ങളില് വിടരുന്ന പാലപ്പൂക്കളെ ഞാന് കണ്ടില്ല
ഭീമന് വൈദേഹിയെയും പാഞ്ചാലി രാമനെയും അറിഞ്ഞിരുന്നെങ്കില്!
വടവൃക്ഷം ബാക്കിയായി, പിന്നെ കുറെ താപസ വാല്മീകങ്ങളും
നിസംഗം, നിശൂന്യം, നിര്ലജ്ജം, നിര്വ്യാജം നീരദങ്ങളെ ഞാന് പ്രണയിച്ചു
സത്യം അസത്യത്തെ തെടുന്നുവേന്നറിയാന് നന്നേ വൈകി
പിഴക്കാത്ത കണക്കുകളില് അഭിരമിക്കുന്ന കാലങ്ങളെ പഴി പറഞ്ഞു ഞാനും
ഞാനില്ലാത്ത നിലാവും നീര്നായകളും നാല്കവലകളില് നായാടി
ചെമ്പന് പുകച്ചുരുളിന് ധൂമമായി ഞാന് അലിയട്ടെ അക്ഷരച്ചുരളുകളില്
വേണ്ട! ബാക്കി വയ്ക്കാന് ഓര്മയുടെ അക്ഷയപാത്രങ്ങളൊന്നും തന്നെ
.
ഗോകുല് ബി. അലക്സ്
Intellect Explorer
Random Thoughts, Chaotic Knols and Vivid Dreams unfold here ...
It will expand and explore, in and through the times to come.
Beyond the deadlines ! Keep watching this space.
Gokul B.Alex
It will expand and explore, in and through the times to come.
Beyond the deadlines ! Keep watching this space.
Gokul B.Alex
Capitalism and the Paradise lost
The Economic Crisis! for whom?
An economic crisis is not made in a day; not in a month or not even in a year. It heaps up gradually; gaining momentum when everything else slows down. Once it is accepted as arrived, it will be a rather late confession. The recent economic crisis is also not different. The 2008 economic crisis hunted down the once almighty financial institutions of United States of America. Lehman Brothers, founded in 1850 became its first famed victim. It was a primary dealer in the U.S. treasury market. Mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the next in the queue. This list includes the insurance giant AIG in the US, Northern Rock in the UK, and Fortis and Dexia in Belgium.
After a lot of pandemonium, they were royally bailed out. But none gave any importance to the many voiceless who were out of their payrolls all of a sudden. The millions of jobless just became mere percentage numbers of little interest. The unemployment index in the US kept ticking up again and again.
There is a line of thought that names the economic crisis as a result of credit crisis. They attribute the crisis to the sub-prime mortgage business. The subprime mortgages typically came with a low interest for the first few years, and then a drastic increase. The risks were usually not fully explained, and many borrowers were told they could easily refinance the mortgage in a few years to keep their interest rate low. But in 2005-2006, it came time to pay the piper.
Interest rates on the subprime mortgages shot up. Many new home owners were unable to pay or refinance. The crisis should have been confined to the US home owners. Unfortunately the banks and lenders making these loans had sold the debt to investors. The debt assets had been diced up and sold to other investors and banks around the world, in complicated financial packages that few people seemed to fully understand.
During 2007, nearly 1.3 million US housing properties were subject to foreclosure activity, up 79% from 2006. Nobody seemed to have any ideas who owned these ‘worthless’ debts, spread out throughout the whole worldwide financial system. Suddenly banks weren’t willing to lend to each other any longer, resulting in a ‘credit crunch,’ a period where there is little liquidity (or money) in the system because nobody is lending. The losses started to roll in. By July 2008, major banks and financial institutions around the world reported losses of approximately $435 billion.
This simply means that U.S. banks were blindly giving away the loans to people with poor credit histories. But they don’t have any complaints at the gargantuan sum of money that fills up the bourses of the Wall Street hedge fund managers. Even after being bailed out, banking monoliths like Citigroup were paying their top echelons with hefty sums of money.
Only a few analyse the pitfalls in the US risk management system based on the use of financial derivatives, which exacerbated the crisis. It demands a deeper enquiry in to this angle.
The capitalist economists are trying hard to find out an intellectual remedy to the trouble that has engulfed the world economy at large. But they fail to acknowledge the inherent nature of objective contradictions in the capitalist system that breeds crisis and economic slumps time and again.
The subprime mortgage crisis and the credit crunch aren’t the only factors in the 2008 economic crisis. Oil prices shot up to a record high, driven by the increasing energy needs of China and India and other emerging economies. This has dramatically affected consumers in North America and Europe in two ways. Consumers have been forced to pay much higher prices for fuel to fill their cars and heat their homes, and at the same time the increased food cost has driven up food prices dramatically, because it takes fuel to produce and transport food. Food has become so much more expensive in the developing world that it has resulted in food riots in some instances.
The current decade has seen a significant commodities boom, after a commodities depression in the 1980s and 1990s saw prices at extreme lows. By 2008, oil had reached a level that people could no longer afford, going above $100 a barrel for the first time in history in January 2008. But even this high seemed like nothing by the time July rolled around, when oil reached $147 a barrel. There has been a rapid slowdown in North American and European economies. On 30 September the UK revealed that it had zero growth for the past quarter. This analysis into the commodity boom explains the housing bubble-bust theory partly.
The role of the international finance capital (its peculiar and speculative nature) and the vicious cycles of dollar hegemony in this mayhem cannot be minimised. The finance capital in US economy got upper edge over the industrial capital even as early as 1960s. We can trace the seeds of the present economic crisis there itself. US industrial giants transferred their capital into the risky streams of investment banking. The giants like General Electric and Citibank entered the finance capital arena with their full throttle. Apparently, the US money economy expanded by leaps and bounds though the real economy was lagging way behind. The consumption in the economy also risen sharply reaching 70% of the US GDP. Out of this amount, a large sum was credit money in nature. Thus the credit economy dwarfed the real economy by many orders of magnitude.
The contradiction between the international finance capital and the national sovereignty is worth mention here. The dollar hegemony over other currencies was a need for the international market forces too. The US imperialism and its proxies like International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank tweaked and twisted the national governments to facilitate this spread of dollar umbrella. Thanks to this, the US finance capital with all its infectious diseases penetrated into the world economy.
The rest is history, full of sound and fury and panic in the golden corridors of wealth. The further grim side of this event was that the very same crisis was used by the wealthy to exploit the downtrodden masses. Trillions of money was pumped into the bourses of the rich, all out of the shrinking pockets of the millions of poor.
Gokul B.Alex
Maoism In India: Making Of A Myth
Wounded Tiger, Hidden Falcon
Marxism was never embraced like this. The media barons who are arch rivals of communism, like Malayala Manorama and Indian Express are moving earth and heaven pleading to Indian state to have a chat with the Maoists. Their broadsheets are laying down hundred many reasons for the Maoist insurgency and the heinous crimes which they practice ruthlessly. Where Marx was aspersed, Mao becomes the chant! What a twist! Many civil society intellectuals are joining this bandwagon, raising their voices for the historic causes of Maoism. The same folks are found fighting the mainstream left parties at every possible opportunity. This visible contradiction exposes the apolitical platform leveraged by Maoist outfit.
In this backdrop, we see Maoism looming large as a powerful phenomenon in the contemporary socio-political arena. Following their international trails, we can see that they have many links with International splinter groups of Maoism world wide and Revolutionary International Movement (RIM), Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) of Canada and it takes us to their connections with LTTE and Islamist terrorists operating in South Asia and South East Asia.
There are reports that they even have links with Hindutva fringe groups of RSS clan in India. This relation is unaffected by their love-hate relationship with BJP and VHP. A Maoist caught in Mumbai conceded that he was funded by Medha Patkar and Shiva Sena. Suspected Naxalite Arun Ferreira in his narco-analysis test has alleged that many political parties, including Shiv Sena and its chief Bal Thackeray, have been funding Maoist activities in Mumbai.
The narco-analysis report, a copy of which is available with PTI, quoted Ferreira as saying, “Bal Thackeray and his party Shiv Sena and the BJP student wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) had given us funds regularly for Maoists activities in Mumbai.” This shocking revelation came when Ferreira, a city resident, was asked about the funding of the activities of the banned outfit CPI (Maoist) in the country’s financial capital.
[Source : http://darkindia.wordpress.com/2008/08/17/shiv-sena-abvp-funded-maoists-says-naxalite-during-narco-test/]
This combination seems impossible from a plain political perspective. And it leads us to think about the breeding grounding of these diverse forms of polity. Thus Maoist movement is transforming itself into a potent mixture for fringe groups of all kind. This is the new form of polity devised by Imperialism. Rather than striking an enemy from outside, create Trojan horses inside and make them proliferate using money, persuasion, ideology and what not. This was successful as against USSR. And the same Imperial polity is gaining ground in communist nations and developing countries world wide.
 |
| Maoist Affected States in India |
Seeing the Maoist love relationships with the Civil Society intellectuals like Arundhati Roy, BRP Bhaskar and Swami Agnivesh, we can see that Maoism is becoming the full fledged army for executing the praxis of NGOisation of Indian polity. NGOisation of Indian polity has been expanding in Indian soil since 1970’s. Indian Maoism has become the cutting edge tool in their hand. Maoist agenda of capturing the Indian state from the comprador bourgeoisie goes hand in hand with the Imperial agenda of fragmenting Indian nation state. The same agenda of fragmentation was preached in veils by various flavours of Identity politics like Dalit, Feminist kinds. By invoking the divisive identities of caste, tribe, religion and gender, Imperialism aims to fragment the national identity. This ideology has roots in the ethnographic works of Franz Fanon and Jacques Derrida.
Mao never formed a doctrine of Maoism. All that he had done was to form a theoretical praxis in context of revolutionizing the Chinese Economy of 1920’s. It was before the decolonization spree in Asia and Latin America. Thus the nature of nation state under Mao’s period was poles apart from that of today. Theory of Protracted Peoples War as developed by Mao was to be applied in semi-feudal, semi-colonial countries. Such a denomination does not suit the Indian Political Economy ruled by big bourgeoisie in lieu with the semi-feudal caste ridden social fabric.
Mao exhorted his comrades to work with people like a fish swimming in water. It was never a device to terrorise the people. According to the Institute of conflict management, Indian Maoists are partially funding their terrorist activities with profits from illicit opium, poppy and cannabis crops. It is reported that they have unlicensed opium fields in Jharkhand and Bihar. According to the 2008 Mohanty commission of inquiry, the CPI-Maoist and its front groups were behind extensive cannabis cultivation in Orissa. One group, People’s War, which later merged with the CPI-Maoist, was allegedly in charge of between 7,500 and 10,000 acres of sown with cannabis. This makes them apparent heir to the nick name ‘Red Taliban’.
There are also reports that some Magsaysay award winners funnel their money to help the Maoist movement in India. Interestingly, Magsaysay award is funded by Ford Foundation and Rockfeller Brothers Fund. As exposed by the leftist academic James Petras in 1970’s, Ford foundation has deep rooted ties with CIA. Thus the vicious circle framed by the Imperialist agenda find it comfortable to use the veneer of Maoism to reach the masses.
As explained by Comrade Baburam Bhattarai from Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) [UCPN(M)] below, Maoist tactics of overthrowing the state ruled by a class through the use of barrel of a gun stems from the socio-political nature of the state.
“In the specific conditions of Nepal, though we are in the stage of transition from feudalism to capitalism, in our case the feudal system had been basically led by an autocratic monarchy for thousands of years. In most third world countries autocratic monarchy has already been abolished, and in those countries though the basic foundation of society is still semi-feudal, semi-colonial, the political superstructure was led by bourgeois democrats. But in our case even the political superstructure was dominated by the autocratic feudal monarchy, the national bourgeoisie was very weak and they could not carry forward the bourgeois democratic revolution. It was the proletarian party which had to take the lead to abolish the autocratic monarchy and introduce a bourgeois democracy, which could be again transformed through struggle into New Democracy, a proletarian democratic system”
[Source :http://southasiarev.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/nepal-interview-with-bhattarai—fusing-peoples-war-and-insurrection/#more-4581]
In India such a historic necessity of violent means to overthrow the state does not arise when we have the democratic framework and a secular socialist constitution in hand. Neither the Maoists nor their think tanks are naïve enough to practice something which they do not believe. And there are reports that Maoists are aiming to capture the Indian state by 2035. This being their stated goal one may assume that they are the breeds who are fighting for the cause of tribal people by their own means. We are mistaken. They have targeted mines owned by National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC). Today, 40% of the top 50 mineral-rich districts in India are affected by Naxalite violence, with repeated attacks on any symbol of authority, both private and public, including mining sites. Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh are the worst-affected states. But interestingly none of the private miners have come against the Maoists so far. The same corporate big wigs raise the alarm at the slightest initiation of strike by trade unions. When India is bleeding on its mineral rich states none of the corporate are seemingly worried about the deterioration of ‘investment climate’.
Brinda Karat, the Polit Bureau member of CPI(M) has alleged that Maoists have struck a deal with the MNC’s in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh to hand over 10,000 acres of land in throw away prices. This does not surprise many vigilant observers as Indian Maoists are said to have more than 1500 crore at their disposal. Thus Maoists are creating a worm hole within the Indian state suitable for the MNC’s and imperialism. They use ultra modern cartographic devices to map the mineral resources in these lands. There are even reports that Maoists posses more advanced Geographic Positioning System ( GPS ) devices which can make the Indian army envious.
[Source:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-toi/special-report/The-Maoist-empire-Rs-1500cr-and-counting/articleshow/5783114.cms ]
On the bleak side of this issue, we see the mainstream politicians divided and undecided on how to tackle this gravest threat to the internal security of India. Some like P Chidambaram and Manmohan Singh are advocating the twin uses of army and development as a way-out from this imbroglio. Others like left parties and BJP are for facing the Maoists politically and ideologically without elaborating the means. Nevertheless their continuing debacles in elections and among the masses are stopping them from going further than rhetoric.
This sort of plight tells us a sorry tale. On one side we have a very potent mixture of Maoist terrorists and their imperial intelligentsia and on the other side we have a feeble state which has become a mere facilitator for US-European Union imperium. In between we have poor tribal people and fateful CRPF, BSF jawans sandwiched to the death-trap. The insurgency is going to accentuate with the growing clout of Jihadists in South Asia. The tie up between these terrorist groups is intensifying in the aftermath of US sponsored war on terror. And there are reports that Maoists are backing the regrouping of LTTE cadres in south India and Malaysia.
The relationship between Imperialism and terrorism is indeed dialectical as proved by this vicious circle. With the growing clout of imperialism in state and civil society, the terrorist outfits will proliferate into the dissident masses. Only if the nation states like India and others in South Asia take initiatives to halt the penetration of Imperialism into their state machinery and curb the money flow into the hands of terrorist outfits, there can be a peaceful climate to survive. With a government which is subservient to the imperial intentions, that is unlikely to happen in the near future. Yet there can be twists in every tale, as history is not always a tale told by an idiot!
Gokul B.Alex
iffk
14th INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL OF KERALA
14th International film festival of Kerala is my first film festival experience. I like and enjoyed it. This festival shares so many ideas and knowledge. A STEP INTO THE DARKNESS
Nation :Turkey
Direction: Atil Inac
Producer Ayfer Ozgurel, Avni Ozgurel
Editing:aziz Imamoglu
This film narrated the influence of terrorism I like its story and narration .It is the mirror of the present face of the world.
WHAT THE SOFI SAID
Direction: Atil Inac
Producer Ayfer Ozgurel, Avni Ozgurel
Editing:aziz Imamoglu
This film narrated the influence of terrorism I like its story and narration .It is the mirror of the present face of the world.
WHAT THE SOFI SAID
Nation :India(Keralam)
Direction: Priyanandan
Producer;Prakash Bare
Editing:Venugopal
This film story integrate the religious legend of North Kerala
This story also narrates the Hindu-Muslim relation.
TRUE NOON
Direction: Priyanandan
Producer;Prakash Bare
Editing:Venugopal
This film story integrate the religious legend of North Kerala
This story also narrates the Hindu-Muslim relation.
TRUE NOON
Nation :Tadjikistan
Direction: Nosir Saidov
Producer;Rustami Joni
Editing:Dilovar Sultonov
This film telling the relation of human mind.An old man is the center character of this film.
TRAIN IN THE TENTH FLOOR
Direction: Nosir Saidov
Producer;Rustami Joni
Editing:Dilovar Sultonov
This film telling the relation of human mind.An old man is the center character of this film.
TRAIN IN THE TENTH FLOOR
Nation :India(keralam)
Direction: Joshy Mathew
Producer;Jos Thomas
Editing:Bina Paul
Sankaran is the main character ,he is suffering from schizopherenia.After the dismissal fom his job is leaving in a mental hospital. His family members forgete him but he sending mails daily .Nobody replay to him After Sankaran’s death a letter got his son now his metalfeeligs are changing.This film concluded on this statement that is schizopheriana is a traditional deaseas.
Direction: Joshy Mathew
Producer;Jos Thomas
Editing:Bina Paul
Sankaran is the main character ,he is suffering from schizopherenia.After the dismissal fom his job is leaving in a mental hospital. His family members forgete him but he sending mails daily .Nobody replay to him After Sankaran’s death a letter got his son now his metalfeeligs are changing.This film concluded on this statement that is schizopheriana is a traditional deaseas.
All is not green here !
The Valley that never was silent
This year is marked by United Nations as the year for Biodiversity conservation. And it is the right time to retrospect into the undercurrents of the Silent Valley movement which is one of the most-heard efforts that took place in India to conserve the diverse natural resources.
The site of struggle
Silent Valley was never silent. The 830 hectare long tropical rain forest carries the legendary myths of Mahabharata in its streams. The legend goes like this. Known otherwise as ‘Sairandhri’, Silent Valley was the area visited by the Pandavas in exile. It was a solace for their woeful heart. They bathed in the river that bubbled through this lush green forest. In memory of their mother’s absence, they named this river as ‘Kuntipuzha’. ‘Kunti’ was their mother and ‘Puzha’ is the Malayalam word for river. This valley is located in the area of Nilgiri hills in Palakkad District in Kerala.
Robert Bright, a British botanist was behind this landmark exploration that unveiled the Silent Valley. Once in the not-so-distant past he ventured into the area. He discovered an uninhabited, barely penetrable forest, where after nightfall there was silence- unlike other forests, the Cicadas comforting call could not be heard here after dusk. Thus Sairandhri, the unpronounceable was rechristened as Silent Valley.
Thereafter British government proposed building a dam on the Kunti River and to create a reservoir in the Silent valley. The dam which would be 130 Metres high would be built between two hillocks in a natural gorge through which the river runs. That however was dropped by the British. In Independent India the Kerala Electricity Board (KSEB) had started work on it in 1973, but shortage of funds delayed things till 1976. The time when the government decided to resume the hydro electric project coincided with the period when international NGOs began concentrating on the developmental discourses in third world nation states.
Manufacturing a Movement
In the work ‘Third Force: the rise of transnational civil society, Ann Florini proclaims that civil society opposition to big dam building in India was mounted during the 1970s and 1980s. She writes: “The campaign against the Silent Valley hydroelectric project in Kerala, one of the first to eventually draw support from the international NGOs, was a harbinger of trends to come. Grass root mobilization against the project emerged in 1976 when a group of local teachers began assisting villagers who feared the loss of their livelihoods from the destruction of forest resources. At the same time, the World Wildlife Fund for Nature began to highlight internationally the project’s negative environmental consequences on the pristine Silent Valley Forests and the endangered lion-tailed monkey. The Silent Valley campaign grew in size and strength over the subsequent decade. Domestic and foreign critics and opponents wrote letters, staged protests, lobbied officials and filed court cases to halt the project. During the same time, environmental issues increased in prominence domestically in India and internationally in the aftermath of the United Nations Conference on Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972. As a result of the sustained opposition, the silent valley project was halted in 1984.” The government eventually abandoned the project in 1983 and declared Silent Valley as a national park in 1984.
UN Chronicle mentions the same conference as the first earth summit: “Held in Stockholm, Sweden from 5 to 16 June 1972, the UN Scientific Conference, also known as the First Earth Summit, adopted a declaration that set out principles for the preservation and enhancement of the human environment, and an action plan containing recommendations for international environmental action.”
This new paradigm thus became a devise for international NGOs to intrude into the non-political society (Otherwise known as civil society) in India. In their discourses, environment was conceived as something to be conserved and development was a sustainable practice. This notion confronted the Industrial planning envisaged by Socialist and decolonized states around the world.
Revisiting the Environmental Paradigm
Environment is not a monolithic entity to be conserved. It is a dynamic form comprising of natural habitat, human habitat, inhabitation formed by the interaction of man and nature and finally the ideology. Natural habitat cannot be left untouched by human beings in their life process. It will be modified and becomes human habitat. The further social development by human society in a given human habitat will become an inhabitation.
Decolonized governments in India and elsewhere were formed by capitalists and hence followed the Industrialization without heeding to the genuine concerns of displaced local people. This apolitical space was utilized by NGOs to promote the ideology of eco-conservation. In disguise this was an attempt to sabotage the Industrial initiatives in third world.
Why NGOs want to stall big dams? It is precisely because they are funded by donor agencies promoting the interests of US Imperialism. A market economy like US can thrive only when production of goods elsewhere is stopped or frozen. For seamless production across a nation, a reliable energy source is indispensable. And water is the most eco-friendly source of large energy potential with least amount of pollution and least chances of environmental and man made disasters.
NGO ideology is against big dams because only such meta-narratives can induce a national production harnessing electricity. Water achieves its sublime utilization potential when it is converted to electricity, which is nothing but a matter to energy conversion. A big dam is not only a generator of energy but an integrator for a nation of diverse cultures. It can integrate various productive sectors through irrigation and electricity. We know that Aswan dam in Egypt became the site of a national identity. Thus big dams are the inhabitation that humans can create in a country or state having rivers and large coastlines. Thus big dams suits India, especially Kerala where we are bestowed with aplenty of rivers.
Similarly, biodiversity is not a quality of nature devoid of human intervention. By human labour, nature becomes more diverse and agriculture is the most advanced form of biodiversity where a second productive nature is created on the fertile earth using maximum potential of soil and ground water. Keeping natural habitat untouched by indigenous population is always in the interest of the foreign market.
NGOs shed tears for the trees cut, ignoring the plight of millions of Indians with dry throat and empty stomach. Dollars were funnelled to their intestines. The NGOs ravaging against the use of Kunti River for irrigation are muted when it comes to the consumption of bottled water in a land of 44 rivers. Reading through the subsequent periods, we can see that the NGO ideology was a prelude to the civil society organizations that promoted Religious extremism, Dalitism, Feminism, Gay-lesbian rights and Naxalism. These ideologies were taken as the surrogates to intrude into nation states with the agenda of the imperium to fragment the nation states.
Thus Silent Valley is an evergreen victim to the Imperial agenda to freeze the industrial and agricultural initiatives with a national perspective. And Environmental NGOs have replaced the national perspective with the localization agenda which is the product of globalization itself. This ideology continue to ripe more sites of fissure in Indian state through purchasing more and more marginalized lives using foreign funds and donor agencies.
Gokul B.Alex
The Blind and Brutal
And the Blood Bath Continues
"In another daring attack, Naxals blew up a bus on Dantewada-Sukma road in Chhattisgarh on Monday. Around 50 people, including security personnel who were on the bus, were feared dead in the attack."
The Central Home minister P.Chidambaram is crying in national channels for more mandate from the PM to curb this atrocity. He can continue to cite hundred more political reasons again and again. The reaction was different years ago when AP Chief Ministger Chandrababu Naidu was attacked by Naxals. Andra government formed a special police force to wipe off Naxals from Andra region. Unless and until the echelons of power and money are attacked, this brutal state of affairs is sure to continue. All the media and the civil society organisations will go on playing their jesters until then.
Gokul B.Alex
'clarity is rhythm'
കഥ തുടങ്ങിയില്ല !
കഥയില്ലയ്മകളുടെ നേര്കാഴ്ചകള്
സത്യന് അന്തികാടിന്റെ അമ്പതാമത്തെ ചിത്രം മോശമാകില്ല എന്ന പ്രതീക്ഷകളോടെ കൈരളി സിനിമയില് ചെന്ന ഏറേ പേര് നെടുവീര്പോടെ ഇറങ്ങുന്ന കാഴ്ച ... ഒപ്പം ഒരു മഴയുള്ള സായാഹ്നും നഷ്ടപെട്ട ഞാനും. മധ്യവര്ഗത്തിന്റെ ജീവിതത്തിലെ നിമിഷങ്ങളുമായി വരാറുള്ള അന്തിക്കാട് മാഷ് ഇത്തവണ തന്റെ തന്നെ പഴയ ചിത്രങ്ങളുടെ വിഴുപ്പുമായിട്ടാണ് ( മനസിനക്കരെ, യാത്രക്കാരുടെ ശ്രദ്ധയക്ക് , ... ) ഇത്തവണ കഥ തുടരും എന്ന ചിത്രത്തിലൂടെ വന്നത്. മിശ്രവിവാഹം എന്ന സാമൂഹ്യ വിഷയത്തെ അവലംബിച്ച് കഥ തുടങ്ങാന് ശ്രമിക്കുന്നു. ധീരയായ നായികയെയും മതത്തിന്റെ ഇടുങ്ങിയ ചട്ടങ്ങളില്ലാത്ത ആധുനികനായ യുവാവിനെയും ആദ്യം നമുക്ക് കാണാം. ആകസ്മികമായ ഭര്ത്താവിന്റെ മരണം നായികയെ ജീവിതത്തിന്റെ വിഷമ വക്ത്രതിലാക്കുന്നു. ഈ സംഭവം കഥയുടെ വഴിതിരിവും ഉല്പ്രേരകവും ആകേണ്ടുനതാണ്.
പക്ഷെ കഥ അവിടം തൊട്ടു വട്ടം തിരിയുന്നു. നായികയെ രണ്ടു കുടുംബങ്ങളും, ഭര്ത്താവിന്റെ സുഹൃത്തുക്കളും കൈ ഒഴിയുന്നു. ഒപ്പം ദൌര്ഭാഗ്യങ്ങളുടെ ഖോഷയാത്രയും. അവിശ്വസനീയമായ ഈ രംഗങ്ങള് സിബി മലയില് ചിത്രങ്ങളുടെ പകര്പ്പായി തോന്നുന്നു. അധ്വാന വര്ഗത്തില് നിന്നും നായകന് രംഗ പ്രവേശം ചെയ്യുന്നു. നായികയ്കും കുഞ്ഞിനും നായകന്റെ പരിസരം അഭയം നല്കുന്നു. അപനിര്മിച്ച ഒരു തൊഴിലാളി സമൂഹത്തെ നമുക്കിവിടെ കാണാം. നായികയെ ഈ യാഥാര്ത്ഥ്യത്തിന്റെ ഉടഞ്ഞ ചില്ലില് നിന്നും സൌഭാഗ്യത്തിന്റെ ദന്തഗോപുരതിലീക് നായകന് പിടിച്ചുയര്ത്തുന്നു. ഇവിടെ നായികയുടെ വിദ്യാഭ്യാസം ആണ് തുനക്ക് എത്തുന്നത്.
നായിക വീണ്ടും കച്ചവട മൂല്യം ഉള്ള ചരക്കാകുന്നു. നായിക കടല് കടക്കുമ്പോള് നായകന് ആഗ്രഹങ്ങള് ഭക്തിയില് മുക്കുന്നു. ഇവിടെ നായകന് തന്റെ കാമം കരഞ്ഞു തീര്കുമ്പോള് നായിക മുതലാളിത്തം പ്രതിനിധീകരിക്കുന്ന സൌഭാഗ്യങ്ങളാണ്. ദുര്ബലമായ തിരകഥയും ഹാസ്യവും കൊണ്ട് ചിത്രം ഇവിടെ അപുര്ണമായി ദഹന കേടാകുന്നു. ഇസ്ലാം മതത്തിനെ കുറിച്ചുള്ള പകര്പ്പുകള് തികച്ചും പ്രതിലോമാകരംയിരിക്കുന്നു. ഒപ്പം ഭാഗ്യന്വേഷനത്തിന്റെ വഴിയെ പോകുന്ന തൊഴില്ലാളി വര്ഗ്ഗവും. എന്തായാലും ഇന്നത്തെ മധ്യവര്ഗതിനിഷ്ട പെടുന്ന ചീരുവകള് ചേര്ത്തിട്ടുണ്ടെങ്കിലും ചിത്രം അതിന്റെ സമഗ്രതയില് പരാജയപെടുന്നു.
ഗോകുല് ബി. അലക്സ്
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)