Politics Over Menstruation

Kabir Deb

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness”. ~ Karl Marx.

If we stand on the platform that Marx established then we can have a clear view of how Sabarimala fight is “not just for women” but it is also “for the politics of the state”. Oppression itself, in the present state, is the fundamental product of politics and we cannot deny that after witnessing oppression of Dalits, women and poor in the name of religion based politics. Forget who is Ayyappa or any other Lord and just focus on the politics that has been established by a coalition of more than one party. Today Sabarimala issue is a clear fight for the women of India and it is to be supported but in contrast, should we forget that how easy it is for the political party to establish a double game out of a single issue.

I don’t want to enter the issue of religion, for it is a place which is way more dirty than any other issue. As we all know, that the political parties which are obsessed with religious politics, and it can be Hinduism or Muslim or Christianity etc., can itself create religion as an easy means to pierce women empowerment with the help of politics. Present scenario of politics runs like this which shapes India as the most unsafe country in the world. Politics gives birth to a chain which runs from power to oppression. Fight over Sabarimala in itself constructs an easy road for the coalition of different party to walk to power. As the Communist Party fights with the Constitution as its armour, BJP, RSS and Congress fights against the Constitution in the name of faith. We all know that India runs on the wheel of religion and so it is a critical point where we should decide that how serious could be the impact of this coalition for Kerala to stay safe from being a patriarchal state because no matter which party comes in power after the 2019 election (heart believes in Communist Party), a change could be drastic for the state in each and every way.

India today stands in the back foot, for its own fault, and the fight over Sabarimala can be a changing point and the feminists should keep this in mind because India needs feminism but at the same time, it cannot lose Communist Party in Kerala which fights for feminism. For me, the issue still appears to be a nonsense one because why should feminism strictly focus on religion when it is the most fundamental reason for the oppression of women? Discrimination over religion is the most relevant and crystal clear thing if we keep feminism in our mind because feminism always fights against the oppressive religion.

No matter whether it is Ayyappa or Shiva or Jesus or Muhammad, every religion comes to one central point: Oppression of women and poor. Hinduism works in multiple angles to oppress women for its Brahminian oppressive philosophy. Christianity stands against women for the blasphemy of the need of division (during its early years, Christianity taught a spiritual unity that at least potentially mitigated the harshness of Roman law, in which women were considered non-citizens with no legal rights. Inequality was everywhere in this system, for example, while men’s adultery was assumed, women’s was punishable by death). Islam gives birth to violence against women in the name of beating of wives which is still prevalent and their oppression in the name of rights and overburdened work. As we work on the statistics of the mass which believes in oppression, we can see that except the urban and rural areas near urban areas, only few areas exist where women know about the blasphemy and oppressive religion.

In a nation, which has got its illiteracy rate of 70%, I still don’t get how can the educated intellectuals ignore the utilisation of politics by the BJP, RSS and Congress to bring the devotees together as one entity and to bring a tension in the whole nation in the name of faith! The nation which hardly works to bring down the illiteracy level has got the mass, in maximum, which never bothers to care about the Constitution as they believe religion is the only truth. Today when Sabarimala issue burns as breaking news, four women got gang raped in one night and for me, that should be the biggest concern rather than an opium named religion. It is not about “Why should women be denied to enter during their menstrual period in Sabarimala?” rather the bigger picture that pops out of the issue is that “Politics today is being played over menstruation interlinking it with religion” and that is the saddest thing. The country which is still deprived of napkins for women in rural areas during menstruation just because of religious immorality, a serious fight to be beneath the umbrella of the same oppressive religion is the biggest irony!

Menstruation is not impure and it cannot be because it is a biological phenomenon which is responsible for our birth. Obscenity is when political parties find a woman’s menstruation as the biggest issue to play politics on and no one cares to establish the clear picture of political obscenity. Parties which established the hashtag trend of “Love Jihad”, “Moral Policing”, “No Valentines Day”, “No New Year Celebration”, “Mass Molestation” today works to bring the devotees of Ayyappa which are many in number to declare a war against the state in the name of celibacy to fight against feminism. So, the bigger question here is, should our focus be more on the strengthening of the political scenario of the country after the honourable Supreme Court eradicated the ban on the entry of women in any religious institution since it violates the Articles 14, 15, 17, 25, 26 of the Constitution or should we keep on giving opportunities to the political parties to establish a way more strong foundation of patriarchy in the state and country to play politics on menstruation?

At last, since religion is the opium of the masses, so a more serious fight on Sabarimala may create a crack over Kerala which would be a worse scenario for women empowerment and political organisations of Kerala! For me, feminism is a better platform than religion because the former works on human rights while the latter breaks human rights to create war. Constitutional battle should be kept on the hands of the law rather than giving the opportunists an easy road to attain power using the opium of our nation. Feminism, for me, stands against religion and works for reformation.

Biting into Apple: The Giant’s Revenues Fall

Binoy Kampmark

The worm has gotten into Apple, and is feasting with some consistency.  Revenue has fallen. Chief executive Tim Cook is cranky.  The celebrated front of Apple’s wealth – the iPhone with its range of glittering models – has not done as well as he would have hoped.  Dreams of conquering Cathay (or, in modern terms, the Chinese market) have not quite materialised.

In a letter to Apple’s investors, Cook explained that “our revenue will be lower than our original guidance for the quarter, with other items remaining broadly in line with our guidance.”  This somewhat optimistic assessment came with the heavily stressed caveat: “While it will be a number of weeks before we complete and report our final results, we wanted to get some preliminary information to you now.  Our final results may differ somewhat from these preliminary estimates.”

The reasons outlined were various, but Cook, in language designed to obfuscate with concealing woods for self-evident trees, suggested that the launches of various iPhone types would “affect our year-to-year compares.” That said, it “played out broadly in line with our expectations.”  While Cook gives the impression of omniscience, he is far from convincing.  Why go for the “unprecedented number of new products to ramp”, resulting in “supply constraints” which led to limiting “our sales of certain products during Q1 [the first quarter]”?  Such is the nature of the credo.

Where matters were not so smooth to predict were those “macroeconomic” matters that do tend to drive CEOs potty with concern.  While there was an expectation that the company would struggle for sales in “emerging markets”, the impact was “significantly greater… than we had projected.”  China, in fact, remained the hair-tearing problem, singled out as the single biggest factor in revenue fall.

“In fact,” goes Cook’s letter of breezy blame, “most of our revenue shortfall to our guidance, and over 100 percent of our year-over-year worldwide revenue decline, occurred in Greater China across iPhone, Mac and iPhone.”  The slowing of China’s economy in the second half of 2018, with a slump in the September quarter being the second lowest in the last 25 years, deemed a significant factor.

The irritating tangle of world politics also features; as ever, Apple can hardly be responsible for errors or misjudgements, and prefers, when convenient, to point the finger to the appropriate catalyst.  The United States has not made matters easy for the Apple bottom line in its trade war spat with Beijing.  “We believe that the economic environment in China has been further impacted by rising trade tensions with the United States.”

While it is never wise to consult the view of economists without caution (their oracular skills leave much to be desired), the feeling among the analysts is that a further contraction is nigh.  “We expect a much worse slowdown in the first half, followed by a more serious and aggressive government easing/stimulus centred on regulating the property market in big cities,” claims chief China economist at Nomura, Ting Lu.  But chin up – a rebound is bound to happen in the latter part of 2019.

The Apple vision is, however, dogmatically optimistic, an indispensable quality to any cult.  China remains customary dream and object, a frontier to conquer.  It is stacked with Apple friendly innovators (“The iOS developer community in China is among the most innovative, creative, and vibrant in the world.”) and loyal customers who have “a very high level of engagement and satisfaction.”

Product fetishism only carries you so far.  The iPhone models are not exactly blazing a trail of enthusiasm in other countries either.  Users in Brazil, India, Russia and Turkey can count themselves as being more reluctant.

Some of this dampening is due, in no small part, to a certain cheek on the part of the tech giant, one nurtured by years of enthusiastic, entitled arrogance.  In late 2017, for instance, the company revealed that it was slowing down iPhones with old batteries in an attempt to prevent undesired shutdowns.  But the company did not feel any great desire to inform users of this fiddling, and it took the published findings of an iPhone user to replace his iPhone 6’s battery, thereby restoring performance to accepted levels, to kick the hornets’ nest.

As Chris Smith explains, “The fix was implemented via an update last January [2017], but Apple didn’t accurately inform users of what was going to happen to chemically aged batteries.”  Class action suits followed in the United States; Brazilian authorities insisted that the company inform iPhone users on how to have their batteries replaced within 10 days.

The bite on Apple has had its predictable shudder on the markets.  Investors ran off some $75 billion on the company’s stocks.  The Nasdaq fell by 3 percent; the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2.8 percent.  An environment of chaos has greeted us in 2019, and fittingly, Apple remains at the centre of it, a company as responsible for modern technological worship as any.  As with any central dogma, disappointments are bound to happen, an irrepressible function of misplaced belief.

Opal Tower structural flaws expose rot in Australian construction industry

John Wilson

As more information surfaces concerning the severe structural faults in the $165 million, 36-storey Opal Tower in the Sydney suburb of Homebush, it is apparent that the problems stem from a broader crisis caused by self-regulation and the culture of cost-cutting throughout the construction industry.

On Christmas Eve, cracks appeared in a six-metre by three-metre pre-cast panel on level 10 of the tower complex, which has been occupied for less than 12 months. Residents in the building’s 392 apartments and businesses on the ground floor were ordered to evacuate. On Saturday, they were told they must wait at least another week before they can reoccupy the building because the specific cause of the cracks has yet to be identified.

A report on the cause of the cracking is due on Friday. To carry out its investigation, the builder of Opal Tower, Icon, has been tearing down walls in some apartments. One resident commented on Facebook: “All of our personal belongings have been thrown in a pile and our furniture is damaged. We received absolutely no notice that they were going to be doing work in our property and this is just appalling.”

Opal Tower resident’s belongs pushed aside during investigation

The most revealing aspect of the Opal Tower faults is that few experts in the building industry appear surprised.

A report presented in April 2018 to the federal, state and territories’ Building Ministers’ Forum (BMF) stated: “Those involved in high-rise construction have been left largely to their own devices. Where there has been supervision, this has generally been by private building surveyors (also known as certifiers) whom critics argue are not independent from builders and/or designers.”

It noted: “We have heard that there is a high incidence of building products in the market that are not compliant with the standards set out in the NCC [National Construction Code], resulting in inferior and sometimes dangerous products being used in the construction of buildings.”

The report was commissioned in the wake of the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London that killed at least 72 people and the similar, but not deadly, fire at the Lacrosse tower building in Melbourne in 2014.

On January 4, Geoff Crittenden of the Welding Technology Institute of Australia told the Sydney Morning Herald that “about 85 percent of the 600,000 tonnes of fabricated steel imported into Australia every year is non-compliant.”

The initial response of the New South Wales (NSW) government and sections of the media was to call for a crackdown on “dodgy certifiers” and “cowboy certifiers.” This transparent attempt to scapegoat one element in the whole chain of construction is now wilting under a deluge of information.

Robert Hart from Engineers Australia told the Australian Financial Review last week that blaming certifiers alone was “missing the point.” He noted that the NSW government had ignored 100 proposed changes to building industry regulation outlined in a 2016 report which it had commissioned.

“They’ve received so many warnings that the situation is critical, but they’ve done nothing,’’ Hart said. “You talk about people fiddling while Rome burns, but the man responsible for sorting this out, [Minister for Innovation and Better Regulation] Matt Kean hasn’t even picked up the fiddle. It’s bloody ridiculous… It’s really appalling. Will someone have to die before they’ll take it seriously?”

On January 4, Australian Subcontractors Association spokeswoman Louise Stewart indicted the “toxic culture” of pressure put on subcontractors by major building companies to cut costs.

She stated: “The subcontractors are asked to price jobs at the tender stage and even if the work is won, the prices are then shopped around and they are expected to drop their rates. It’s the nature of the industry, that’s the way it’s been working for years and it’s part of the problem.”

Stewart noted: “Fifty years ago, builders employed large work forces and the trades were employed by the builder. Now almost none of the trades are employed by the builder. They are all subcontractors. And the subcontractors are played off against each other to get the lowest price. It’s destroying the industry. It’s eroding the quality of projects.”

Two-bedroom apartments in Opal Tower were sold for around $930,000, while single-room studio apartments sold for $600,000. Media commentators have speculated that their value will have at least halved. Some owners are already demanding that the developer, Ecove Group, buy back their units. It is highly likely that they will be left to bear massive losses.

Opal Tower apartment temporary bracing in place “in case” there is a problem

In NSW, the developer or construction company must repair the damage if “major” defects in a building emerge within six years of its completion, and two years for “minor” defects. However, these purported protections have been weakened by legal rulings that have defined “major” as meaning a situation in which a building is uninhabitable.

In a 2014 decision, the full bench of the High Court found that Brookfield Multiplex did not owe a duty of care to compensate owners of the Chelsea apartment tower in the Sydney suburb of Chatswood for losses they had suffered due to defects. Colin Grace, a lawyer who acted for the Chelsea Owners Corporation, noted in December last year: “It [the ruling] had a significant notional impact. It implied builders don’t have a statutory duty of care to the end user.”

In January 2018, the NSW government introduced a “Strata Building Bond” requiring developers to put aside 2 percent of the total cost of the building work to cover any repairs needed during the first two years after it is occupied. However, as Colin Grace noted: “Unless we deal with the fundamental problem of making better construction and better reviews and stages and certification, it won’t change at all.”

Even when legal rights are in place, they do not necessarily offer protection. At the Elara Apartments, which was completed in 2007 in Canberra’s northern suburbs, structural problems led to cracks in the walls. The owners were forced to take legal action against the builder and Master Builders Fidelity Fund, which issues warranty insurance certificates to builders. The day after owners re-commenced legal proceedings in 2017, the builder went into voluntary administration.

The repairs ended up costing about $20 million, or $120,000 per apartment, which owners had to pay while they continue to pursue legal action against the Fidelity Fund. In December 2018, lawyers for the Fund claimed in court that a five-year limitation on claims had expired, so the owners were not entitled to any compensation—which in any case is capped at a maximum of $85,000. There are other reports of owners facing similar situations.

The residential building construction in Australia is worth over $150 billion per year. A speculative housing boom has been one of the main drivers of economic growth and employment in Australia since the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. The impact of this frenzied speculation is now beginning to be laid bare, with workers and residents burdened with huge mortgage debts or high rental payments for defective products.

At every level of government, in bank boardrooms and across the building industry, the main concern is not the plight of home-owners however. It is the fear that the revelations of sub-standard construction will cause a sharp fall in new home purchases and an even greater slump in property prices.

As the WSWS reported on Saturday, there is clear evidence that the housing boom is over. Sydney’s median property price fell by around 10 percent in 2018, equivalent to roughly $100,000 per dwelling. This took the total fall since the city’s market peak in early 2017 to 11.1 percent, the sharpest correction in over 35 years. The annual decline in Melbourne, the country’s second largest city, was 9.1 percent, or an average of about $75,000 per property.

Sri Lankan Central Bank governor calls for extended IMF program

Saman Gunadasa

Presenting his annual economic “road map” for 2019, Central Bank governor Indrajit Coomaraswamy called on the Sri Lankan government last week to request the International Monetary Fund (IMF) resume its loan bailout program—and extend its terms—to avert the country’s growing financial problems. Coomaraswamy’s “remedy” for the island’s economic crisis is to impose another round of austerity measures on working people.

The IMF last November suspended the final $500 million instalment of its $1.5 billion loan to Sri Lanka after bitter infighting within Colombo’s political elite. President Maithripala Sirisena sacked pro-US Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, replaced him with former President Mahinda Rajapakse, and then dissolved parliament. Sirisena, however, was compelled to reinstate Wickremesinghe as prime minister in mid-December, amid considerable international pressure, particularly by the US, after the Sri Lankan Supreme Court overruled the president’s political coup.

“There are provisions to extend the [IMF] program by another year” which are “worth considering,” Coomaraswamy said. Senior deputy bank governor, Nandalal Weerasinghe, told the media that the bank would investigate how much more financial aid was needed and the sort of conditions that would be attached to an extension of IMF loan repayments.

The IMF’s $1.5 billion bailout loan, awarded in 2016, included a reduction of the budget deficit to 3.5 percent of the GDP in 2020. This was to be achieved by increasing taxes, slashing the country’s meagre welfare programs and “restructuring the economy”—i.e., further privatisation of state-owned enterprises.

Pointing to Sri Lanka’s precarious financial situation, Central Bank governor Coomaraswamy said that foreign reserves had fallen to $6.94 billion last year amid a $1 billion outflow from rupee-denominated government securities. Of that outflow, 42 percent occurred since October, when the bitter factional fighting erupted in Colombo. The value of the local stock market fell by 23 billion rupees during the year, with a 13 billion rupee decline since October.

The capital market outflow was the main factor in a 19 percent depreciation of the Sri Lankan rupee against the US dollar last year that forced up the cost of imported essentials.

Coomaraswamy said that the Central Bank would respond to the capital outflow by cutting the volume of rupee bonds held by foreigners. “In view of the increased volatility in global financial markets we intend to reduce the threshold for foreign investment in rupee-denominated bonds from 10 percent to 5.” US financiers are the main investors in the Colombo security market.

The Central Bank governor also noted that the government is required to make a $1 billion repayment in mid-January with total repayments of $2.9 billion due by the end of the year. He said that the Central Bank is currently attempting to secure additional loans from all available sources, including Panda and Samurai bonds, and swaps with the Reserve Bank of India and the People’s Bank of China.

While Sri Lankan exports are in decline, import prices are increasing. As a result the trade deficit had widened to $8 billion by September. Sri Lanka, Coomaraswamy continued, is a “twin deficit” country with trade and budget deficits, and admitted that the country has been battered by the global crisis. “The economy faced heightening challenges in 2018, emanating mainly from global economic, financial and geo-political developments.”

Sri Lanka’s economic growth rate fell to an annualized 2.9 percent in the third quarter of 2018, down from the 3.6 in the second quarter. The Central Bank estimates that the growth rate in 2018 will be 3 percent, a decline from the 3.2 percent recorded in 2017.

The three major international rating agencies—Moody’s, Fitch and S&P—responded to the IMF’s suspension of its final loan instalment, by immediately downgrading Sri Lanka’s credit rating.

Referring to the new credit rating, Coomaraswamy said: “Now that we have been downgraded, we have had to renegotiate with various financing sources… If we have an undisciplined budget and poor policies, we will be downgraded again. We will lose access to capital markets.”

The Central Bank governor warned the new Wickremesinghe government not to make any political concessions to popular sentiment in Sri Lanka’s forthcoming elections. “I get very disturbed because everybody, even fairly well-informed people, say the election is coming so they will have to loosen policy…We cannot keep making the same mistakes.” The government has to be “careful to ensure there is no fiscal slippage, despite the elections.”

State Minister of Finance Eran Wickramaratne told the Dailyft that Colombo has decided to begin discussions with several organisations, including the IMF and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) US aid program. The newspaper reported that further IMF intervention was “crucial to encouraging the government to stick to its fiscal consolidation policies.”

Political uncertainty about the government, however, continues. Wickremesinghe’s United National Party does not have an outright majority in the parliament and President Sirisena will continue to use his powers to undermine the government.

Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera, who was supposed to present his 2019 budget last year, is now scheduled to present it in March. He has told the media that the budget will be a “surprising one,” indicating that there may be some concessions because provincial council and presidential elections are due to be held this year.

In all likelihood, however, the IMF will insist on another round of harsh austerity measures that will set the stage for the eruption of mass struggles against the government and the Sri Lankan capitalist state by workers, students and the rural poor.

UK Integrity Initiative heavily involved in Skripal affair

Robert Stevens

The Institute for Statecraft (IoS) and its Integrity Initiative (II) constitute a secret propaganda network tied to the UK security services. They bring together high-ranking military and intelligence personnel, journalists and academics to manufacture and disseminate propaganda serving the geo-political aims of British imperialism and its allies.

The IoS was founded in 2006 and the II in 2015. But their secret role in promoting fake news and disinformation was exposed only in November and December of 2018 by hacking group Anonymous.

A document published by Anonymous shows funding for the II totalled £582,635 in 2017-18, with £480,635 coming from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the rest from NATO.

Funding shot up to £2.6 million in 2018-19, with £1.96 million from the FCO and the rest from the US State Department, NATO and the American neoconservative Smith Richardson Foundation. Facebook, which plays in integral role in imposing censorship on behalf of US imperialism, donated £100,000.

The Working Group on Syria Propaganda and Media (WGSPM) produced a briefing on the II last month documenting the role played by leading figures in the UK Ministry of Defence, US Army and senior intelligence figures. It noted, “The involvement of these senior officers from military intelligence and information warfare units suggests that the MoD rather than the FCO is driving the Integrity Initiative programme.”

On January 4, a fourth trove of documents was made public by the Anonymous collective, taken from the internal servers of the IoS and II. These include many documents related to the poisoning last March of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury.

British Prime Minister Theresa May, without citing any evidence, immediately accused Russia of attempting to assassinate the pair using the nerve agent novichok, thereby ramping up global tensions. The II leaks indicate that the moves against Russia over the Skripal affair were scripted well in advance, with the IoS planning a detailed anti-Russia propaganda war, including suggested achievable objectives.

A 2015 document written by IoS “team member” Victor Madeira is titled “Russian Federation Sanctions.” It lists “potential levers” to achieve Russian “behaviour change,” “peace with Ukraine,” “return [of] Crimea,” and “regime change.” Such “levers” span almost every conceivable area, including “civil society,” “sports,” “finance” and “technology.”

Under “intelligence” Madeira calls for the simultaneous expulsion of “every RF [Russian Federation] intelligence officer and air/defense/naval attaché from as many countries as possible”—citing as a precedent the expulsion of over 1,000 Soviet officials from the UK in September 1971. The May government expelled over 100 Russian diplomats from over 20 countries just days after the Skripals’ poisoning.

Madeira has lectured at the University of Buckingham. The WGSPM quoted the university’s website: “Dr. Victor Madeira comes to us from Cambridge (where he has been a lecturer and tutor for four years, working with Professor Christopher Andrew and Sir Richard Dearlove and the Institute for Statecraft in London, directed by Chris Donnelly, where he is a senior fellow working on 21st century security architecture.” Dearlove is the former head of the UK foreign intelligence service MI6.

The head of the IoS is Chris Donnelly, formerly a reserve officer in the British Army Intelligence Corps. He previously headed the British Army’s Soviet Studies Research Centre at Sandhurst.

Between 1989 and 2003, he was special adviser to four NATO secretaries general. An online biography confirms that Donnelly is, among many things, an honorary colonel in Specialist Group Military Intelligence (SGMI) and sits on the official team responsible for scrutinizing the current reform of the UK’s Reserve Forces for the defence secretary. SGMI is a Ministry of Defence (MoD) operation based at Denison Barracks in Berkshire, England. It is part of the 1st Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Brigade, which became operational on September 1, 2014.

Another leaked document shows that in October 2016, Donnelly met UK General Sir Richard Barrons. The account of their meeting is chilling in light of the Skripal affair that followed and the escalation of tensions with Russia, including demands by leading generals that the UK prepare for military conflict.

Either Donnelly or Barrons reportedly stated that “if no catastrophe happens to wake people up and demand a response, then we need to find a way to get the core of government to realise the problem and take it out of the political space.”

The speaker continued: “We will need to impose changes over the heads of vested interests. We did this in the 1930s. My conclusion is it is we who must either generate the debate or wait for something dreadful to happen to shock us into action. We must generate an independent debate outside government. We need to ask when and how do we start to put all this right. Do we have the national capabilities [and/or] capacities to fix it? If so, how do we improve our harnessing of resources to do it? We need this debate now. There is not a moment to be lost.”

The Donnelly/Barrons meeting came just one month after the Financial Times leaked a letter from Barrons to the MoD making clear that the British military had to prepare for a major war. In his letter, Barrons demanded the upgrading of military and intelligence hardware, capabilities and personnel necessary to prosecute an extended air, land and sea confrontation against heavily armed state opponents, particularly Russia.

Just days after the poisoning of the Skripals, the IoS proposed that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office “study social media activity in respect of the events that took place, how news spread, and evaluate how the incident is being perceived” in various countries. Within days, the II’s “Operation Iris” swung into operation. As well as monitoring media coverage with its own team, it recruited the global investigative solutions firm Harod Associates to analyse social media activity related to the Skripals affair.

On March 11, just seven days after the poisonings, II set out what it called the necessary “narrative.” It declared, “Russia has carried out yet another brutal attack, this time with a deadly nerve agent, on someone living in Britain.”

The May government’s account of how the Skripals came to be poisoned was shot through with inconsistencies, with the wider public increasingly sceptical at its ever-changing story. The II raised concerns that the government was “far too weak,” declaring, “[I]t’s essential the government makes a much stronger response this time.”

It proposed 11 “possible, realistic first actions,” including such authoritarian measures as banning Russian state news services RT and Sputnik from operating in the UK. Its first demand was to publicly attack the Putin government with a barrage of propaganda “through regular media, social media, and with the assistance of specialists such as those at the Institute of Statecraft.”

A number of senior journalists at the BBC, Times/Sunday Times, Guardian and Financial Times are listed as supportive of the IoS/II in an earlier leaked document. These media outlets each played a central role in disseminating government propaganda throughout the Skripal affair. The named journalists include David Aaronovitch and Dominic Kennedy at the Times, Natalie Nougayrede and Carole Cadwalladr at the Guardian, Edward Lucas at the Economist, Neil Buckley at the Financial Times, and Jonathan Marcus at the BBC.

Another figure who has played a central role for II is security consultant Dan Kaszeta. Invoices from his consultancy reveal he was paid over £2,000 to write anti-Russian articles published by the II. These included a puff piece on Porton Down, the UK’s chemical weapons laboratory, which has the capability to produce novichok. His piece insisted that Porton Down, located just a few miles from Salisbury, could not possibly have anything to do with the presence of novichok in Salisbury.

Trump deploys troops to central Africa following disputed Congo election

Eddie Haywood

In the wake of a hotly contested poll December 30 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the Trump administration has deployed a contingent of troops to nearby Gabon, for the purpose of “protecting US assets from possible violent demonstrations” following the election to determine a successor to longtime leader Joseph Kabila. Election results which had been expected to be released Sunday by election officials have been delayed indefinitely due to a delay counting all ballots.

Trump sent a letter to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Friday informing Congress that he had ordered the indefinite deployment of around 80 troops to Gabon to protect US citizens and embassy officials in the DRC. Trump’s letter noted that the first soldiers arrived in the country on Wednesday with the “appropriate combat equipment and supported by military aircraft.” The letter also stated that more troops could be deployed to Gabon, the Republic of Congo and the DRC “as needed.”

By deploying troops to the region, Washington is making it clear that it intends to install a pliant government in Kinshasa that will ensure that America’s economic interests in the country are secured. Trump’s proclamations of “America First” in foreign policy does not mean a retreat from the intervention in the affairs of other nations or the flowering of peace; rather it means the naked pursuit of American imperialist geopolitics by economic and military means against adversaries and allies alike.

The military operation must also be understood within the framework of America’s imperialist aims in Africa of reasserting America’s geopolitical dominance despite its economic decline relative to its global rivals. To this end, Washington has escalated its military operations in nearly every corner of Africa with the key aim of neutralizing Beijing’s vast economic influence on the continent.

Washington’s latest military maneuver puts into practice the strategy laid out in a speech delivered last month by Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton in which he identified the entire African continent as a field of “great power” competition between the United States and its two main competitors, China and Russia, which have been increasing their investments in many Africa countries. Bolton denounced Beijing and Moscow for “predatory practices” that “threaten the financial independence of African nations; inhibit opportunities for US investment; interfere with US military operations; and pose a significant threat to US national security interests.”

In recent years, Kabila has run afoul of the US and Europe by developing closer economic ties to Beijing, hammering out several economic investment agreements worth billions of dollars, something which the imperialist strategists in Washington regard as intolerable.

Also fueling the western imperialists’ lack of confidence has been the inability of the government to secure the Eastern provinces, long wracked by paramilitary skirmishes, home to the greatest concentration of the country’s immense mineral wealth. According to recent estimates, the DRC has $24 trillion in untapped raw resources, including cobalt and coltan, two metals that are critical to the growing smartphone and electric vehicle industries.

Last month’s poll in the DRC came after a two-year delay in holding elections to determine the successor of President Joseph Kabila, who postponed elections before his term expired in December 2016, which set off a series of demonstrations and social unrest in the capital city Kinshasa and across the country.

Kabila, who came to power in 2001, has backed his ruling party’s candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary to be his successor. Washington in contrast has favored Shadary’s opponent, wealthy businessman Martin Fayulu, a former oil executive educated in the United States and France.

Both Shadary and Fayulu belong to the tiny layer of parasitic elites that make up the Congolese bourgeoisie, hoarding the massive resource wealth of the Congo among themselves and cutting lucrative contracts, while the Congolese masses experience widespread social misery, with the majority existing on little more than $1 per day.

As the Minister of the Interior and Security under the Kabila government, Shadary was tasked with carrying out the regime’s violent repression of demonstrators and political opponents, in particular the recent bloody campaign in Kasai province, in which his forces carried out crimes against humanity, including rape, torture, and numerous indiscriminate killings.

Fayulu was employed by American oil giant Exxon-Mobil from 1984 to 2003, first as an auditor, then promoted to director-general, from which he oversaw the company’s operations across the African continent. After resigning from Exxon-Mobil, Fayulu returned to Kinshasa and won a parliament seat in 2006.

The presidential contest comes amid an explosion of political and social tensions rocking the central African nation, with recent protests against the deeply unpopular Kabila government, and ongoing rebel skirmishes in the eastern provinces. Adding to this toxic mix is a renewed outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in recent weeks.

On the day before the poll, Kabila provoked an eruption of social anger as scores of protesters poured into the streets of Kinshasa and various cities after the president’s last-minute decision to arbitrarily bar 1 million people from participating in the poll, on the absurd claim that voters afflicted with Ebola could infect hundreds of people participating in the polls.

On Saturday, the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI), the official body tasked with counting the vote, announced that the results of the poll will be postponed for another week. As of late Sunday, reports suggested that Fayulu had taken a clear lead in the poll.

International election observers have voiced concerns for the potential of irregularities in the vote tally, along with the fear that by postponing the tally the Kabila government is stalling to provide time to ensure a victory for Shadary. The Catholic church, which wields significant power within the Congo, has warned of a large-scale uprising if the poll appears fraudulent.

In the run-up to the poll on Sunday, the Catholic Church organized and placed 41,000 election observers at polls around the country. The church, in rebutting the government’s proclamation of a delay, stated to the media that they had determined a clear winner.

Although the Church did not publicly announce Fayulu by name, according to the Washington Post a senior Western official and a presidential adviser stated that the Catholic Church had indeed concluded that Fayulu was the victor.

In an interview Friday presidential adviser Kikaya Bin Karubi condemned the Church’s conclusion of the tally, and ominously warned the Church was “breaking constitutional and election laws and are looking to start a popular revolt that they will be responsible for.”

Tensions with Washington and Europe reached a crescendo on December 29 when Kabila, facing immense pressures from Western governments to step aside peacefully, defiantly booted the European Union ambassador from the country.

For its part, the EU, under an initiative begun by Washington during the Obama administration, has imposed sanctions and travel bans on several key figures in the Kabila government, including Kabila himself, along with freezing the assets in European banks held by several Kabila officials.

The extreme breakdown and deterioration of relations between Washington and Europe and the Kabila government was made clear when during a media interview in the days before the poll, Kabila was asked what advice he would impart to his successor, to which he answered, “The biggest recommendation is that he listen to the voice of the Congolese and not follow that of the United States, Europe or elsewhere."

China’s moon landing to exacerbate tensions with US

Peter Symonds

China’s landing of a scientific probe on the far side of the Moon has led to a rash of media speculation, in the US in particular, about a new international space race amid heightened tensions between the two countries over economic issues, including trade, and a massive American military build-up in Asia against China.

Washington reacted with shock when the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957 and in 1961 became the first country to put a human being into space. Yuri Gagarin completed one full orbit in his Vostok spacecraft and successfully returned to Earth. The United States poured billions into the NASA space program, recognising that at stake was not only national prestige but vital military applications. As a result, the US became the first nation to put someone on the Moon—Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969.

China has now achieved a space first of its own. While probes have previously been landed on the Moon, China’s Chang’e-4 was the first to make a soft landing on the side that is perpetually facing away from the Earth—the so-called far side of the Moon. According to the China National Space Administration, the probe landed at 10.26 a.m. Beijing time after hovering to allow a suitable site to be located. A photo—the first close-up image of the Moon’s far side—was beamed back to Earth via a relay satellite previously positioned 80,000 kilometres from the Moon.

The first close-up image of the far side of the moon Credit: China National Space Administration

China’s space agency declared that the mission’s success had “opened a new chapter in humanity’s exploration of the moon.” The instruments aboard Chang’e-4 and its lunar rover include cameras, ground-penetrating radar and spectrometers that provide data that will assist in understanding the Moon’s geology. The lander also carries biological experiments to see if seeds will germinate and silkworm eggs will hatch in the Moon’s low gravity.

In an article entitled “The space race is back on—and China is in the lead,” Guardian journalist Mary Dejevsky commented: “The first response of the US space agency, NASA, was generous, as scientists to scientists: what China had managed was a ‘first for humanity and an impressive accomplishment.’ The response in political and military quarters in Washington, as in Moscow, however, is likely to reflect trepidation.”

In 2003, China became only the third country after the US and Russia to successfully put astronauts into space using its own rockets. Since then, it has sent 11 astronauts into space so far, and in 2016, two of them spent 30 days in China’s own space station. Last year, China launched 36 rockets into space—more than any other country, including the US which launched 30.

Moreover, China’s space agency has ambitious plans. Another Moon landing of the Chang’e-5 is scheduled later this year. By 2022, China is aiming to have its third space station fully operational. It plans to begin building a base on the Moon in 2025 and to man it by 2030. Probes to Mars are also planned. While the budget for the China National Space Administration is still significantly less than for NASA, it is greater than any other country.

China’s space program has already provoked considerable nervousness in Washington. While profitable business opportunities are involved, the concern above all is that the US could be eclipsed by China in military applications, which are inherent in any space program. Large multi-stage rockets, accurate guidance systems and stable communications are just the most obvious developments that have potential military spin-offs.

The US press has highlighted the China’s ability to shoot down satellites, which it demonstrated in 2007 when it destroyed one of its own satellites. China is also developing a global navigation system, BeiDou, with clear military significance, independent from the operational American, Russian, and nearly operational European ones. BeiDou has a high-precision mode only available to the Chinese military, and will be fully operational globally by 2020.

Washington, however, is the chief driver of military rivalry in space. In September 2016, a congressional sub-committee convened a hearing, entitled “Are we losing the space race to China?” which criticised the Obama administration for not devoting the necessary resources to winning the race. President Trump signed a new space-policy directive in December 2017 outlining plans for manned missions to the Moon and Mars. The US is aiming to return to the Moon by 2023.

The renewed US space effort is explicitly connected to military plans. Last year the Trump administration announced the establishment of a new branch of US armed forces by 2020 to be known as Space Force, which will operate independently of the other branches—the army, navy, air force, marines and coast guard. In a clear indication that it will get congressional approval, $12 billion was allocated this year for its establishment.

In making the announcement, Vice President Mike Pence declared that the Space Force would be an “elite group of war fighters specializing in the domain of space.” A huge space command already exists within the US Air Force. Established in 1982, it is headquartered at the Peterson Air Force base in Colorado and oversees 30,000 personnel. It includes the Space and Missile Center, monitors ballistic missile launches and manages the Defense Department’s satellites.

In an emphatic declaration, Pence insisted, “We must have American dominance in space, and so we will.” In the sphere of manned space flight, the US has ground to make up after its space shuttle program had to rely on Russian launches. When the International Space Station in which the US and Russia have collaborated is decommissioned—Trump has mooted ending funding by 2025—China’s space station could be the only one in orbit.

At the same time, China’s space program suffered a major setback with the failed launch in 2017 of the Long March 5, a new heavy lift rocket needed for its more ambitious projects.

A worried editorial in the Financial Times yesterday, entitled “China and the US should be allies, not foes, in space,” suggested “greater collaboration between all space powers would be far preferable to the secretive rivalry that characterised the early US-Soviet space race.” While noting Trump’s plans for a Space Force, the newspaper put the onus on China “to show it commitment to global co-operation” so as to defuse “legitimate concerns about the militarisation of space.”

In reality, it is the US that has sought to isolate China from US-led space programs. None of the astronauts sent to the International Space Station has been Chinese. In 2011, US legislation specifically excludes scientific exchanges with China involving NASA. Its sponsor, Republican Frank Wolf, slammed China, declaring: “We don’t want to give them the opportunity to take advantage of our technology, and we have nothing to gain from dealing with them.”

Wolf’s comments are today the basis of the deepening US trade war with China, in which the Trump administration has made alleged Chinese intellectual property theft and its drive for technological advances, as part of the “Made in China 2025,” the main bones of contention. Far from collaborating with China in space projects, the US space program is intimately connected to an escalating arms race. Under conditions in which the US is aggressively preparing for war with China, the current undeclared “space race” is even more ominous than the previous rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union.

US shutdown could leave millions without food stamps

Kate Randall

As the US government shutdown continues, millions of Americans face the prospect of being cut off from food stamps. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, provides benefits that allow some of the nation’s poorest households to buy food.

More than 19 million households, or about 39 million people in the US, currently receive food stamps. The average monthly benefit is $245. Now even this minimal aid stands to be withdrawn—partially in February and completely in March—if the government shutdown drags on.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has furloughed approximately 95 percent of employees in Food and Nutrition Services, the office that oversees the SNAP program. So as USDA workers go without pay, food stamp recipients’ benefits may also be slashed.

Come February, the SNAP program faces a $1.8 billion shortfall. If this were spread out evenly across the 19 million households that receive SNAP benefits, each would see a cut of about $90 per month, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).

If the shutdown that began December 22 stretches into March, current SNAP recipients would receive no money. Even if the Trump and administration and Congress come to an agreement to end the shutdown by February, households could experience a substantial delay in receiving their benefits due to operational and bureaucratic challenges at the USDA.

The average monthly SNAP benefit—which could easily be spent by any one of the millionaires in the White House or Congress for a single meal at an upscale restaurant—can mean the difference for food stamp recipients between going hungry or just getting by. Many of these households now face the threat of taking a further hit to their budgets, forcing families to choose between food and making payments for rent, utilities, health care or other basic necessities.

Small businesses would also feel the pinch. According to an April 2018 CBPP report, in fiscal year 2017, SNAP recipients redeemed about $63 billion in benefits at about 260,000 retailers. About 80 percent of these retailers were considered small businesses, including local convenience stores and small independent grocers. Those businesses serving low-income neighborhoods would be particularly hard hit.

As one of the last remaining vestiges of the safety net for workers and the poor, the food stamp program has come under bipartisan attack over the last decade. In 2014, President Obama signed legislation that cut $8.7 billion in food stamp benefits over the next decade, causing 850,000 households to lose an average of $90 a month. The Obama administration considered this to be an acceptable compromise with House Republicans’ demands to slash between $20.5 billion and $39 billion from the program.

The Trump administration sought but failed to pass far-reaching changes to the SNAP program in the farm bill passed in December. House Republicans’ version of the bill could have forced states to impose work requirements on SNAP beneficiaries ages 49 to 59. Those proposals would have resulted in benefit cuts for up to 1.1 million households, according to an estimate by Mathematical Policy Research.

Trump’s proposals also targeted SNAP participants ages 18-49 who are not raising minor children in their homes. The average income of this group of food stamp recipients is just 33 percent of the poverty line, placing them among the poorest of the poor. Trump proposed scrapping work requirement waivers for this age group of SNAP recipients.

Under a particularly harsh, longstanding provision of SNAP law, 18- to 49-year-old without children are limited to receiving just three months of benefits out of every three years for those months in which they are not employed at least 20 hours a week. While participation in a training program counts toward fulfilling this requirement, states are not required to provide work training to these individuals—and most don’t.

Due to the extremely harsh nature of this rule, beginning in 1996 SNAP law also included a provision that lets states seek waivers from the USDA from this three-month cutoff in areas where unemployment is high. Trump’s proposal would have eliminated the most commonly used waivers, further punishing those individuals who cannot find work or job training by cutting off their food benefits.

Having failed to pass these draconian changes, the Trump administration is now seeking to implement them through executive action.

Abel Visiting Scholar Program 2019 for Mathematics PhD Scholars in Developing Countries

Application Deadline: 1st April, 2019 for research visits between September 1, 2019 – December 31, 2019

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries

About the Award: The program is designed for post doctoral mathematicians in the early stages of their professional careers.   It is designed to offer the opportunity for a ‘research sabbatical,’ a necessary complement to teaching and other academic duties for mathematicians desiring to also sustain a viable research program.

Type: PhD

Eligibility: Applicants must

     1.   hold at the time of application a PhD in Mathematics,

     2.   be based in a developing country at the time of application

     3.   hold a position in a university/ research institution

     4.   be in the early stages of their professional careers, more precisely: the applicants  should

            4. 1) not yet be of full professorial rank but have a working contract in a university/ college

            4. 2) be under 40 years of age at the day of the application deadline.

The maximum age may be increased by up to three years in the case of an individual with a broken career pattern (applicants who wish to apply for the April 30, 2017 deadline should be born on or after August, 31, 1974). This should be noted in the application together with the reason for the broken career pattern.

 Applications from women mathematicians are strongly encouraged.

Selection Criteria: The selection criteria is based on the the quality of the project and the benefit/added value for the home institution/country.

Selection: A selection committee decides which applications are successful.

The Selection Committee consists of

• • a) a member chosen by the Abel board

• • b) a member chosen by CDC

• c) a third member chosen by the IMU EC

The time of members of the committee is three years for the members b) and c) with a maximum of two periods. The Abel Board decides for a).

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: The grant can cover for one month and only for the applicant:

1. travel costs to the host institution (economy flight or equivalent) Please note that the flight will be booked and directly paid by the IMU Secretariat.
2. accommodation expenses (monthly rent should not exceed 1,200 USD – in case you expect higher accommodation cost, please explain in your application the expected higher cost)
3. travel health insurance
4. Basic living cost  (daily allowance based on living cost of the visiting country/city, This amount includes the cost for public transport and all other living costs). For a list please go here.
5. visa costs

The total maximum amount is 5,000 USD per grantee.
Family expenses and any other costs cannot be covered.

Duration of Scholarship: 1 month. In case the length of the visit exceeds one month, the candidate should provide evidence of financial support from the host institution to cover the living expenses beyond the first month.

How to Apply: Each application must include:

1. The completed Online Application Form
2. A curriculum vitae including a list of recent publications
3. A research plan for the visit
4. An official invitation from the institution of the international research partner
5. One letter of recommendation If the letter of recommendation is not written by the international research partner (the host), the application should include a statement from the host approving the research plan.
6. A copy of the PhD certificate
7. A statement about the current employment status/ position in the home institution signed and stamped by your employer. The statement should include the duration of your employment
8. A budget estimation. Please, use the Tentative Budget Form. (for more information see ‘Financial Support’)
9. In case you are planning to stay for more than one month you must attached a proof of the matching funds for your living costs from the host institution
10. Please submit the completed bank information form in order to receive your funds.

Please merge all required documents into one (1) PDF file.
Please always send your application form cc to “cdc.grants@mathunion.org”.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Ignorance is Power in a Casteist System

Prerna S

With the recent surge of sheer “ignorance” about what is Brahmanical patriarchy and treating it as a concept that never existed before the discussion that took off on Twitter, it is perhaps important to see where exactly does this ignorance configure in a casteist system. Jaahil, ganwar, dehaati[1]: these were three words that I often heard in my Brahmin upbringing whenever my lower-caste grandmother’s family was referred to. They were used to not only remind everyone that my grandmother is indeed from a shudhra family, lucky enough to be married to my Iyer grandfather, but also to refer to my grandmother’s own ignorant ways of being and living as a consequence of her caste. Her ignorance was deemed as not only the result of but symptomatic of her caste—a defining characteristic to be lower caste is to be lowly, ignorant and not know the best ways of life. Ignorance and caste was taught to me as simultaneous: if you find someone ignorant, ask them their caste—they are probably not Brahmins. Ignorance thus, has always been a primary way of perpetuating a casteist system and reinforcing it through various modalities of unknowing.

Knowledge and power has always been thought to inform each other, like it did in my Brahmanical household: to be a Brahmin is to be the knower- to be knowledgeable and learned was the job of the Brahmin and hence the stakeholder of knowledge resources was a Brahmin (and a Brahmin male). However, with the preoccupation of understanding power relations with knowledge, we have often not considered the ways in which ignorance produces and reinforces power. Ignorance has recently been studied as socially produced, managed, cultivated and systematically perpetuated as a state of being. What theorists like Proctor and Schiebinger shown us is that ignorance can also be “deliberately engineered” to perpetrate dominant regimes of knowledge. Epistemologies of ignorance and racial privilege have thus been studied in order to understand this oft ignored connection between wielding power through systematic ignorance. To understand ignorance in this way is to see it as processual—as constantly being produced and pervasive. Caste too, needs to be read through the forms of ignorance that reinforce its hold on the society.

Caste is not determined by the colour of one’s skin or any unsubtle physical aspect of the body; it does get written on the body but not through it. Physicality is attached to caste as an afterthought as it is not intrinsic to caste to be physically visibilized in order to function: it often forms the various ways in which caste gets justified although it is not the criteria through which it gets created. This is not to say caste is much more complex than race wherein epidermal visibility, or as Fanon would put it: epidermalization of inferiority plays a part; it is to state that caste is always in the state of unknowing: you won’t know a person’s caste until you know their surname, their occupation, their identification in the reservation system while on the admission list in a college. In other words, caste isn’t known naturally but asks for active knowing. In this inquiry lies its most entrenched discrimination.

In this structure of active knowing, ignorance takes different forms in the caste system. First of the most frequent kind is seen in those sectors which commend merit over social categories as their system of differentiation. Gopal Guru in his essay on the corporate sector talks of this “veil of ignorance” which in fact reproduces caste system that it claims to have no engagement with. By focusing on merit as the ultimate deciding factor for recruitment and promotions, corporate sector also creates the category of demerit. This demerit is what Gopal Guru argues, “is the result of a historical disadvantage and exclusion of dalits from the opportunity structures.” Merit is also a product and not an intrinsic value that is tapped onto, and this active ignorance towards caste doesn’t translate to eradicating the prejudices of the caste system, or rising above it: it functions well within and through its core.

Second kind could be to not know until one knows, which may sound like any progress from ignorance to knowledge. However, within the precincts of caste system this linear progression towards knowing someone’s caste from the state of unknowing is where the systematic play of discrimination becomes clear. To know someone belongs to the untouchable caste is to not always already know they are untouchable: caste needs to be spelled out first in order to know the status of untouchability. Historically, this has been determined through someone’s occupation wherein those regarded as untouchables did menial jobs for the upper caste. Cleaning after the upper caste has always been the occupation of those who are seen as unclean and impure, and ignoring their caste is dangerous as it means to clean up for oneself. In other words, caste is asked when assigning certain kinds of work deemed as appropriate for that particular caste, lest one has to do menial jobs by themselves. Caste system requires this inquiry: it may not always be a direct question but also works through presumption, yet it indicates how caste functions not on visual perception but on mental cognition: it has to be asked for, inquired into, categorised and systematically produced. Hence, in this manner, caste is always unknown until it is made known.

Another layer is opened by the question: who does not know their caste? The answer to this is simple: nobody. Everyone knows their caste, even those who claim to not know or function through its classifications. Akhil Katyal writes in a poem:

One day, when he was about ten or twelve, he asked his mother,
“What is my caste?
Some boys in the school were asking, I didn’t know what to say.”
The mother, got up in the middle of her supper,
“Beta, if you don’t know it by now, it must be upper.”

Ignorance about your caste thus isn’t lack of knowledge but indeed, knowledge of its own kind. Not knowing one’s caste is perhaps because structures of life have not compelled one to know it: one’s life is built around privileges of being generic and indeed, general. Caste does not jumpstart when being general turns into the (reservation category of) General: one needn’t enter actively into the reservation system to function in a caste system. To be generic/General is to have the privilege of leading one’s life having to not know their social standing. Unknowing here is the privilege of not having to know one’s status as upper caste: it is the lower castes who need to be reminded, and these reminders translate into a natural sedimentation of the position and privilege of upper caste persons. Knowledge of one’s caste is not always a powerful phenomenon: indeed, knowing one’s caste is the first step to knowing which opportunities will remain inaccessible throughout life.

Yet another manifestation is not having to know, not wanting to know and yet functioning in and through the state of this unknowing. This spells out how caste system is perpetuated by those who do not know their acts are casteist, and when told, claim to not see caste. Ignorance of caste here is touted as innocence, as complete non-knowledge stemming from unworldliness when it comes to evils like caste. Being educated within a casteist system while not having heard the word caste in relation to oneself or having learnt it as a story of the past, one leads oneself to believe that the blame of casteism comes in a world they had deemed as always-already post-caste. Dhrubo Jyoti in their response to a young boy jazz band’s name “Bhangijumping” spells the insidiousness of this ignorance clearly:

Your “honesty” is already winning accolades because to be caste-aware is apparently to say “Oh I didn’t know”, without seeing that your ignorance is what killed our foremothers, and made us slave in your house while you fiddled with your playstation.

To have the power of engaging in an act without knowing its casteist origin or implication, to be ignorant of the casteism in everyday acts shows how casual ignorance can be the most dangerous form of casteism. To not know one’s casteism is to practice it vehemently: ignorance here is thus not lack of knowledge but a tool through which caste needn’t have visible acts of horror committed to be reproduced.

Caste thus functions through unknowing and its various indices: it is reminded to those who can only go about their life if they know their caste. This helps those at the higher echelons to function without having to know their own caste on a daily basis. Unknowing in its present continuous form is how caste manifests itself: it is contiguous, continuous and is a processual tussle between those who have to know and those who need not. In reminding my grandmother her caste through her assumed and reinforced characteristic of ignorance was to produce the power of my structural ignorance: to not know her lack of knowledge of the best ways of life is indeed produced by those who control the access to knowledge. To name her as always already ignorant was to produce the privilege of my Brahmin grandfather and parents who could do the constant calling, the naming without having to be called and named.