US-backed Chadian forces invade Nigeria as Pentagon prepares broader war in West Africa

Thomas Gaist

Chadian soldiers invaded northern Nigeria and seized the towns of Malam Fatouri and Damasak and asserted control over portions of the northeast Borno State Monday, after crossing the Cameroonian border in a force numbering thousands.

Long convoys including Chadian tanks and some 200 troop transport trucks crossed the border into Nigeria Monday, witnesses in Niger told the Associated Press.

The invasion takes place in the context of a major escalation by Washington and the European powers of their military presence throughout West Africa, and was spearheaded by Chadian forces, including the Special Anti-Terrorist Group (SATG), that have received extensive training and cutting-edge equipment from the US military.

Chadian President Idriss Deby has built close relations with Washington and Paris since taking power at the head of a coup in 1990. The Deby regime plays a lead role in the US-funded Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Partnership and is helping to coordinate the African Union (AU) multinational force of some 8,700 troops called for by the AU in January.

Chadian units fought alongside Western forces during the 2013 French-led invasion of Mali, and the Chadian government has since authorized the permanent stationing of thousands of French troops in its capital at N’Djamena.

Since February, US Special Forces have been leading war games alongside Chadian and other African military units in territories centered around the Lake Chad Basin. In the course of joint maneuvers, training and technology transfer operations known as Operation Flintlock 2015, US forces established a “command and control and information sharing system” with local military leaders that will allow close coordination between AFRICOM and local forces, according to a US general.

As the International Committee of the Fourth International argued in its 1991 manifesto, “Oppose Imperialist War & Colonialism,” the dismantling of the Soviet Union and the launching of the first Gulf War marked the beginning of a renewed drive by the US and European states to impose more direct forms of colonial rule in Africa through military means.

The ICFI noted from the very beginning of the post-USSR period that, unable to balance any longer between Washington and the Stalinist regime in Moscow, Africa’s national elite would accept ever-deeper integration into the structures of world imperialism.

“The cynical abandonment by the Soviet bureaucracy of its longstanding ‘clients’ in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America has removed all reasons for restraint and compromise on the part of the imperialists,” the manifesto stated.

“Recognizing the change in the international environment, the leaders of the national bourgeoisie are seeking desperately to work out an accommodation with imperialism that would still permit them to hold on to power,” the ICFI wrote. “Far from striving to liberate their countries from the grip of international finance capital, the national bourgeoisie beg for the establishment of ‘special enterprise zones’ in which the imperialists are permitted the unrestrained exploitation of the region’s natural and human resources.”

“The struggle against imperialism must be waged by the working class on the basis of an international revolutionary program. The liberation of the masses cannot be achieved through the alteration of borders in favor of this or that country, but through the overthrow of the national bourgeoisie and the destruction of the imperialist-drawn borders of the national-state system which is an absolute barrier on the economic development of the oppressed countries,” the ICFI wrote.

The accelerating militarization of Nigeria and bordering areas comes as the latest confirmation of the analysis made by the ICFI more than two decades ago. The total subordination of the African bourgeoisie to the Western financial elites makes clear that Africa’s masses can achieve real independence only through an international revolutionary movement led by the working class.

The US and European governments are asserting direct control over the continent’s cheap labor and natural resources. Colonial-style occupation forces are conspiring with national governments and militaries throughout the continent, making a mockery of the African states’ nominally “independent” status.

In addition to the US Africa Command’s (AFRICOM) growing military network, which reaches in every corner of the continent, France already maintains an occupation force of thousands headquartered in Chad and tasked with counterinsurgency operations throughout the Sahel desert, including Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Mauritania and Chad.

The German government is preparing to get in on the action, announcing plans in January to develop independent military operations in West Africa, supposedly for the purpose of targeting Boko Haram.

The German army is also developing a regional expeditionary Pioneer Regiment in coordination with Ghana, and German troops are already forward-deployed to outposts in Somalia, Central Africa, Sudan and Western Sahara.

US and European strategists view Africa as a critical stake in their global power struggle with the Stalinist regime in Beijing.

“From Pivot to Symmetry? Integrating Africa in the Rebalance to Asia,” an award-winning 2014 thesis published by the US Air War College, argues that the Obama administration’s strategic pressure campaign against China, the “pivot to Asia,” can succeed only if combined with coordinated political-military pressure against Chinese positions in Africa, which include substantial investments in oil and uranium production in West Africa and the Sahel.

“Ultimately, the unregulated predation of African resources could lead to regional hegemony, exercised by China. Therefore, Africa must be included in the US strategic shift to Asia if China’s rise is to be managed,” Lieutenant-Colonel Pierre Gaudilliere wrote.

“Accepting the leadership of allies and the ownership of African partners provides a way to cope with growing Chinese power in Africa,” the military officer wrote, highlighting the confidence of the imperialist war planners in the loyalty of Africa’s nationalist elites.

Gaudilliere recommends “entanglement of China in a multilateral and cooperative web” in order to stymie efforts by Beijing “to protect its ever-growing interests on African soil.”

Claims that Boko Haram has affiliated with Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are being repeated endlessly by the US media and echoed by African political and military leaders in defense of the escalation.

“A new axis of evil has emerged—and it’s spreading across two continents. Nigerian extremist group Boko Haram declared formal allegiance to ISIS in a disturbing new message, according to reports,” the New York Daily Newswarned Monday.

J. Peter Pham of the Atlantic Council, a leading spokesman and theorist on behalf of US imperial policy in Africa, is peddling similar claims that the rise of Boko Haram is bound up with a global surge of jihadi groups.

“Rather than trying to expand [like Al Qaeda] from the center, the Islamic State is mushrooming all over the place,” Pham said.

Chadian General Zakaria Ngobongue commented this week that the region is beset by a cancer of “extremism” and demanded a sustained international military intervention.

Far from fighting against “Islamist militants” and “extremism,” however, the US is clearly pushing ahead with longstanding plans to assert more direct US control over Nigeria, which produces some 2.5 billion barrels of oil per day and is home to West Africa’s main pipelines. This is the real source of the endless media hysteria over Boko Haram, in reality a tiny tribal-sectarian militia which many experts say commands as few as 5,000 fighters.

Media furor over Hillary Clinton’s use of private email

Patrick Martin

Hillary Clinton, the presumed front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, held a press conference at the United Nations Tuesday to address the media uproar over her exclusive use of a private email account while serving as US secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

The press conference followed a long-scheduled address by Clinton to a UN meeting on the status of women. Clinton made a brief statement on that subject and criticized the letter sent by 47 Republican senators to Iran aimed at scuttling a negotiated agreement on Iran’s nuclear program before taking a series of press questions on the email controversy.

The media uproar—all five Sunday television interview programs devoted the bulk of their time to the subject—seems timed to impact Clinton’s announcement of her presidential candidacy, which has been widely predicted for early April.

Republican congressmen and sections of the media, spearheaded by Fox News, aim to use the email issue to revive their campaign against Clinton over the events of September 2012 in Benghazi, Libya, when Islamic fundamentalists attacked a US diplomatic facility and CIA annex, killing US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

Clinton’s use of a private account for all of her electronic correspondence was known since last summer to members of the bipartisan House committee investigating the Benghazi attack, but the fact did not become public until March 4, when the New York Times published a front-page report on the issue.

According to reports by the Times and the Associated Press, Clinton transitioned a private server that handled both personal and political email during her 2008 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, using it throughout her four years at the State Department to communicate with other members of the Obama administration, foreign governments, members of Congress, the public at large, and family and friends.

The private account was not secret. Those receiving email from Clinton would have seen a URL ending in @clintonemail.com rather than @state.gov. The main revelation in the Times account was not that Clinton used the @clintonemail.com address for her correspondence, but that she used only that address. The AP added the fact that the email account was hosted on a server physically located at the Clinton family home in Chappaqua, New York, rather than in a US government facility.

Media pundits and Democratic and Republican politicians have criticized Clinton for a lack of “transparency.” Clinton’s efforts to conceal her official actions from the American people are, in fact, part of a pervasive regime of state secrecy that encompasses every institution of government and both political parties.

Those who seek to puncture the veil of secrecy and expose to the public the conspiracies, crimes and lies of the government, such as Julian Assange, Chelsea (Bradley) Manning and Edward Snowden, are denounced as traitors and spies by all factions of the political and media establishment and either imprisoned or forced into exile.

At Tuesday’s press conference, Clinton said that, in hindsight, her use of the same account for both private and official email had been a mistake, while claiming that she had done so purely for the convenience of carrying only one electronic device. Until 2011, cell phones provided federal officials were permitted to use only one email account, so two accounts would have required two phones.

Clinton declared that the Secret Service guarded the Chappaqua home and that she never used email to send classified materials, in an effort to refute suggestions that the private email server could have exposed US government secrets.

Last fall, in response to a routine State Department request to former secretaries of state to supply old records for archival purposes, Clinton turned over 55,000 pages of emails. The State Department is currently reviewing these to determine which will be made public.

Questioning at the press conference focused on which emails Clinton had turned over and which she held back, and what happened to those withheld. Clinton’s answers were both vague and carefully hedged.

She said that there were a total of 60,000 emails on her private server, of which about half were related to official business and about half wholly private. The number of emails cannot be directly compared to the pages of emails turned over, so it is not clear what proportion of the emails have been divulged or if any remain.

Clinton was asked three times during the press conference why she alone should determine which emails are turned over to the State Department and which are withheld as private and apparently deleted. In each case she gave a variation of the same response, saying at one point, “For any government employee, it is that government employee’s responsibility to determine what’s personal and what’s work-related.”

This is transparently evasive, since Clinton, the former first lady, US senator and presidential candidate before becoming secretary of state, was anything but a typical federal employee. Most federal employees must comply, as a condition of employment, with regulations requiring that all official communications pass through government-controlled accounts and servers.

High-ranking officials, by contrast, have regularly used private email accounts in the two decades since this form of communication became commonplace. Bush White House officials conducted official business on a private gw43.com domain, as well as on a server run by the Republican National Committee—for which, of course, they were roundly denounced by Democrats, including Clinton herself as a senator and 2008 presidential candidate.

Prospective Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush used a private server for all his email during his eight years as governor of Florida. Early this year he made public a large portion of it, following the same procedure as Hillary Clinton. Bush and his aides, without any outside or independent review, made the selection of what email to divulge.

In both Republican and Democratic administrations, top officials conducted their email with an eye to maintaining control over the records, while insisting that lower-ranking government workers use the federal email system exclusively. In 2012, for example, the State Department issued several orders to its staff to that effect, while Clinton did as she pleased.

Only in 2013, amid mounting concerns over cyberattacks and leaks of classified information—particularly the exposure by Snowden of massive NSA international and domestic spying—did the Obama administration push through a new law that required all public officials, including cabinet members, to use the government email system exclusively for official business. This law took effect in 2014, more than a year after Clinton left the State Department.

That timeline did not stop Republican congressmen from hinting that Clinton might be guilty of a “crime” for using a private email server, or for maintaining control of her email records after leaving government. Given the actual crimes for which Clinton shared responsibility during her four years in the Obama administration—illegal wars, drone missile assassinations, mass illegal surveillance, conspiracies for regime-change in Ukraine, Australia and a dozen other countries—the charge of special privilege in email is small potatoes.

The email furor must be understood as a manifestation of the bitter struggle between factions of the US ruling elite that are seeking to manipulate the 2016 election campaign and shape the policies of the next US administration. Clinton is the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, with the backing of the entire Democratic Party establishment. Jeb Bush leads a large field of Republican hopefuls, in large measure due to his ability to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from Wall Street interests and tap his family’s connections in the military-intelligence apparatus.

There are more than 300 million people in the United States, a complex, diverse and deeply class-divided society, but all political life is channeled through two right-wing parties controlled by the financial aristocracy. The prospect that the presidential campaign will be reduced to a conflict between two families—the sixth presidential campaign by a Bush vs. the fourth by a Clinton—testifies to the narrow and oligarchical character of 21st century America.

The exact contours of the divisions within the US ruling elite remain murky, and may not coincide with partisan conflicts between Democrats and Republicans, but erupt within the parties themselves. It is evident, for example, that the Obama White House was reluctant to come to Clinton’s defense.

White House spokesmen repeatedly deferred questions to their State Department counterparts. President Obama told CBS News Saturday that he had learned of Clinton’s use of a private email system only from news reports. White House spokesman Josh Earnest later modified this claim, saying that Obama knew Clinton’s email address, but was not aware of the private server in Chappaqua.

Obama brands Venezuela “threat to national security”

Bill Van Auken

President Barack Obama on Monday sharply escalated US threats against Venezuela, issuing an executive order formally declaring a “national emergency” to deal with what he termed “the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” posed by the Venezuelan government.

The order, on its face, turned reality inside out. Far from Venezuela posing a threat to the US, successive US governments have repeatedly intervened in Venezuela’s affairs, sponsoring coups, like the failed attempt to overthrow the late president Hugo Chavez in 2002, and funding and promoting a right-wing opposition that has organized violent campaigns aimed at destabilizing and bringing down the elected government.

This latest action, with its assertion of a “national emergency” and threat to “national security,” suggests that more direct intervention is under contemplation, including by military means.

Obama’s decree claimed that the supposed “threat” was the result of the Venezuelan government’s “erosion of human rights guarantees, persecution of political opponents, curtailment of press freedoms, use of violence and human rights violations and abuses in response to antigovernment protests, and arbitrary arrest and detention of antigovernment protesters, as well as the exacerbating presence of significant public corruption.”

He stressed that his actions served to “implement and expand upon” the “Venezuelan Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act,” passed by the US Congress and signed into law by Obama last December.

The hypocrisy of this measure is breathtaking. Needless to say, there are no “Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act” pertaining to any of Washington’s murderous and dictatorial allies, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, similar invocations of “human rights” have been used to justify military interventions and the toppling of governments from Libya to Ukraine.

The substance of the executive order—at least what has been made publicly available—is far less sweeping than either its title or motivation. It imposes sanctions on seven Venezuelan military, intelligence, police and prosecutorial officials whom it claims were involved in human rights violations. One senior administration official, speaking on a media conference call on condition of anonymity, even stressed that Obama’s order “does not sanction the Venezuelan government and also does not target the Venezuelan people.”

Among the most prominent to be targeted for sanctions is Maj. Gen. Justo Noguera Pietri, the former head of the country’s National Guard, who was appointed last year to head the Venezuelan Corporation of Guayana (CVG), the state-owned conglomerate that includes steel and aluminum plants and other industrial enterprises.

Also on the list is Katherine Nayarith Harrington Padron, a federal prosecutor who is handling the trials of members of Venezuela’s right-wing opposition accused of fomenting the violent protests last year that led to the deaths of at least 43 people, the majority of them members of the security forces or supporters of the government. Others include the heads of the country’s intelligence service and national police.

The penalties levied against the seven named officials are the freezing of any assets they may hold in the US and the revocation or denial of any visas admitting them to the US. It is by no means clear that any of them have such holdings or have obtained or applied for any visas.

State Department spokesman Jen Psaki asserted Tuesday that the Obama administration’s actions are not aimed at “promoting unrest in Venezuela…or undermining its government.” Instead, she said, the new sanctions were designed “to persuade the government to change their behavior.”

The statement backing the new round of sanctions calls for the release of Venezuelan “political prisoners,” including what it said were “dozens of students.” The government in Caracas insists that all those being held for trial are charged with criminal acts of violence during the so-called salida or “exit” campaign waged by the US-backed Venezuelan right last year seeking the downfall of President Nicolas Maduro. US officials also named Leopoldo Lopez and mayors Daniel Ceballos and Antonio Ledezma.

Lopez has been jailed since February of last year on charges of incitement to riot, arson against a public building and other offenses. He is one of the principal Venezuelan recipients of funding through the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which has attempted to foster a rightist opposition to the government. Ceballos was the mayor of San Cristobal in Venezuela’s Tachira state on the Colombian border, where the violent anti-government protests began in February of last year. He defied a court order to instruct his police to quell the violence, instead providing political and material support to the anti-government mobs.

Antonio Ledezma, a veteran right-wing politician and Caracas mayor, has been charged with conspiracy in relation to an alleged plot in conjunction with Lorent Gómez Saleh, the leader of a far-right student group, which also received NED funding, to carry out terrorist bombings and other attacks. The government has made public videos in which Saleh boasted of his ties to the Colombian army and his plans to buy guns and explosives. He also named Ledezma as a key ally and supporter. Colombia was forced to extradite Saleh to face terrorism charges.

President Maduro has responded to the threat from the US with a turn toward a further militarization of his government and a bid to secure increased dictatorial powers. In a speech Monday night, the Venezuelan president denounced Obama for moving to “personally carry out the task of overthrowing my government and intervening in Venezuela to control it.”

In addition to naming Gen. Gustavo Gonzalez Lopez, one of the officials sanctioned by Washington, as minister of interior, Maduro selected a navy admiral to take over the secretariat of the presidency. Military officers, either active or retired, had already held at least one quarter of Maduro’s cabinet seats along with 11 out of the 32 governorships and directorships of key agencies and enterprises.

Maduro also used his speech to call for passage of an “enabling law” that would allow him to rule by decree without seeking legislation through parliament. He said that such powers were needed to counter “imperialist aggression” and defend Venezuela’s national sovereignty.

In reality, the Maduro government has repeatedly sought accommodation with US imperialism, with the president himself promoting the illusion that Obama is merely the victim of bad advisers. In a recent speech, he appealed directly to the US president, declaring, “I regret that in a year in which I made public appeals to you, I sent you a letter, I sent you emissaries, you have in an arrogant way refused to speak to me. I’m as much a president as you are.”

Meanwhile, Maduro’s so-called “Bolivarian Socialist” government continues to provide uninterrupted oil supplies to the US, while concluding lucrative contracts with US-based energy firms such as Chevron and Halliburton. The transnational banks enjoy some of the most profitable conditions in the world in Venezuela, even as the economic crisis imposes ever-harsher conditions on the working class, with roughly half the country’s households living in poverty.

Extraordinary powers in the hands of an increasingly militarized government will inevitably be turned against the Venezuelan working class and poor and utilized in defense of capitalist private property and the interests of the bourgeois layers that form the real social base of the Maduro government.

Venezuelan workers cannot accept a choice between the corrupt Maduro government and the military, on the one hand, and US imperialism and its right-wing Venezuelan political agents, on the other. They must forge their political independence in a struggle for genuine socialism as the only viable means of opposing imperialist aggression and capitalist oppression.

Greece and the dictatorship of finance capital

Nick Beams

The value of every crisis, as has often been remarked, is that it strips away the outer forms of political phenomena to reveal their essential characteristics. The Greek debt crisis and the attempts of the Syriza-led government to renegotiate the terms of repayment with the European Union constitute a striking case in point.

Events since the January 25 election victory of Syriza have laid bare, once again, the essential truth established by Marxism that beneath all the paraphernalia of so-called bourgeois democracy—parliaments, elections, votes and constitutions—the capitalist state and the governments that serve it represent the dictatorship of capital.

Likewise, they have exposed the pretensions of petty-bourgeois organisations like Syriza, supported by all the pseudo-left organisations around the world, that there is some way of countering this dictatorship through radical phrase-mongering and tactical manoeuvres within the framework of bourgeois politics.

Last Sunday, in an interview with the Belgian daily De Tijd, the head of the country’s central bank and a member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB), Luc Coene, made clear that finance capital would brook no opposition to its demands.

The will of the Greek people, who voted in their millions against the five years of mass unemployment, poverty and degradation imposed by the troika (European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank), count for nothing. The austerity policies, which have devastated the economy—output is 26 percent below where it was before 2008—destroying lives and hopes, will continue unabated.

Striking the pose of a stern school headmaster, only with a much more powerful weapon than a cane in his hand, Coene said the Greek people had been sold “false promises” and would “understand quickly” that there was not a “different way.”

He declared, “Reform is the only way. Tell me where the money should come from if the Greeks do not want to repay other European countries?”

Contained in this statement are all the lies that have accompanied the “bailout” program. There has been an ongoing propaganda campaign to portray the Greek people as lazy spongers, living off of the generosity of European governments and financial institutions and unwilling to pay their debts.

In fact, the so-called bailout was never aimed at assisting the Greek people. It has been used to bail out the European banks and hedge funds. Of the €226.7 billion in loans provided by the countries of the euro zone and the International Monetary Fund, just 11 percent has gone to directly finance Greek government spending.

The rest of the money has been used either to finance interest payments to the banks or avoid a write-down of their bad loans. The vast bulk of the money has been used in a round-robin operation, coming into Greece only to flow straight back out again into the coffers of the European banks.

The aim of this carefully contrived scheme was to ensure that any default by the Greek government would not have an adverse impact on the European banking system. As a result, the troika can now tighten its grip on the Greek people even further. As Coene put it: “If they leave the euro, it will be ten times worse for them. Ten times.”

The other big lie accompanying the bailout operation is the claim that there is “no money” and therefore the Greek people must pay. That has also been exposed.

Coene’s interview was published on the very eve of the beginning of the European Central Bank’s “quantitative easing” program, which began on Monday. Over the course of the next 18 months, the ECB will pump more than €1 trillion into the European financial system through purchases of government bonds.

There is money aplenty. But none of it will be used to finance economic expansion, new industrial or infrastructure projects, or a lessening of unemployment, which remains at more than 11 percent across the euro zone.

The hundreds of billions of euros created by the ECB to buy bonds will flow into the financial markets, enabling the banks to offload toxic assets while pushing stock prices—and the fortunes of the financial oligarchy—higher.

Meanwhile, the same institution lectures the Greek people on their duty to pay back every euro owed to the banks.

The ECB’s bond-buying and money-printing operation is being used to finance what amounts to the largest Ponzi scheme in economic history. Across Europe, government bonds are bringing historically low and even negative yields. This means that any purchaser who held a government bond until its maturity would suffer an overall loss on the transaction.

Of course, bond investors have no such intention. They are buying bonds, driving up their price and lowering their yields (the two move in an inverse relationship), in the expectation that ECB intervention will drive the price of the bonds they have acquired even higher and they will be able to make a capital gain by selling them.

As with all Ponzi schemes, the ECB operation is creating the conditions for another financial crisis. And this time, because of the direct involvement of the central banks, it has the potential to be even more serious than that which led to the devastation inflicted on the Greek and world economy. In short, the financial criminals who brought about the 2008 financial crash, none of whom has been even charged, let alone prosecuted, are preparing to do it all again.

No less graphic than the laying bare of the dictatorship of finance capital is the exposure of the class character of petty-bourgeois organisations such as Syriza. In recent weeks, an international campaign has been mounted to pass off Syriza’s total capitulation to the EU, barely one month after it came to power, as a “tactic” or clever manoeuvre to gain time and fight another day. It is nothing of the sort.

The grovelling of Syriza flows from its class character, rooted not in the working class, but in sections of the Greek bourgeoisie and wealthier sections of the middle class, which it attempted to cover over with radical sounding phrases.

Politically naïve and inexperienced people may have been fooled. If so, they should learn from the experience and correct their mistake by taking up a political struggle to expose the pseudo-left groups that continue to promote the poisonous fiction that Syriza represents a step forward for the working class.

However, those who exercise the dictatorship of finance capital were never taken in. They knew from the outset with whom and what they were dealing, and acting accordingly. So confident were they in their assessment of the bourgeois character of Syriza, they did not feel obliged to offer even a concessionary fig leaf. They demanded and received total capitulation.

The working class in Greece and internationally must draw the lessons from this bitter experience. The dictatorship of finance capital cannot be confronted, much less defeated, with a program of “left” phrases and half-measures. It must be overturned through the fight for workers’ power and the implementation of an international socialist program, starting with the expropriation of the banks and finance capital.

The Paradox Of Women's Day: Commercialization, Depoliticization And CommodificationOf A Dynamic Radical Revolutionary Idea

Shalu Nigam

This women's day is being celebrated with much vigor on the social media, the mainstream media as well as otherwise. There are well articulated ideas about women's empowerment that were raised and lively debates spanned over the range of issues including those related to a heated passionate arguments generated by the ban on the documentary relating to gang rape held in December 2012.

Further, not only this year, but for past few years, I have been receiving sms's on my mobile phone and emails wishing me `happy women's day' on March 8. These were the messages from banks, brands selling women clothes and accessories, health and wellness clinics as well as from beauty parlours among others.  Some of these also offer discount on this special occasion! For instance, a beauty parlour launched recently announced free manicure, pedicure and hairdos with 50% discount because `women are special and on the women's day they need to feel special' says the tag line. Another of its competitor advertised, “pamper the woman for a day, she cares for you for her whole life'. A cosmetic product company offered special discount on the women's day on the “Exotic eyeliner for the special woman, because your eyes speak much more than you think”. Another one selling women's branded clothes declared, “This women's day, indulge for the `woman of substance' in your life”. All these announcements use the special occasion of women's day to promote the culture of consumption by alluring men and women to spend lavishly on luxuries as they `deserve' the opulence.

 Also, the newspapers and electronic media were full of advertisements which attempt to sell range of products – from diamonds sets and gold jewelry to fancy lingerie sets, kitchen accessories, branded clothes and various life style products specifically on the occasion of women's day. The purpose is to `empower' women as consumers in exercising choices and spend `because they are worth it'. The capitalist patriarchy promotes a culture which endorse women as `ideal' wives, mothers, homemakers and office goers who after work take care of family and still fit in the `image of beautiful women' thus fostering double and triple discrimination against women. Regressive ideologies are being pushed by market forces that commodify women's body. The promotion of culture of consumption in the guise of women's day celebration has been growing over the years. The concern here is not the consumption or repressive practices and regressive trends per se but the manner in which these are promoted while using the occasion of women's day thus depoliticizing the concept of women's day celebration while diluting and dampening the spirit with which it has been created. Such commercialization of women's day to exploit women goes against the spirit of the celebration. This marketization of the concept of `woman of substance' that promotes the image of `an ideal woman' has acted to reify and reiterate the capitalistic patriarchy in its vituperative and virulent form.  

Moreover, two days back, I overheard a few young girls chatting cheerfully in a metro between Gurgaon – Delhi about celebrating women's day. One of them said her boyfriend got her a huge card, chocolates, flowers and gifts, all she wanted. The other shared that she went to her hometown and met her mother and bought her saris and went out for dinner with her family. The third one proudly pointed out that she got several gifts from the multinational company in which she is working and that there was a party at the office where typical management bosses – all males, greeted the staff. Besides, one woman management staff shared her views about managing work life balance. The fourth one highlighted the way celebrations for the women's day started a week before where a big multinational company called experts to share views on self defense mechanisms, yoga classes, stress management, activities like nail arts, hair and makeup contests, art of successful dressing, image building and branding, movie screening and special coupons were handed out for spa to women employees.

The ground realities exhibit that situation has changed for worse as women's vulnerabilities have been enhanced and intensified in the globalised age in the modern India. A journey of around 100 years of women's day celebration in the country probably has not made a significant dent on the situation of women as is reflected in a divide between the two Indias – the one which still is facing violence and dealing with the basic livelihood and survival issues, and the others for whom the beauty treatments, spa, vacations, makeup, nail design art, and gifts are more important than the basic women's rights. One section is struggling strive for basic necessities and the other is pushed towards depoliticization. These fragmented realities together are creating situation where women's position is weakening becoming fragile and susceptible. The necessity to strive for social, economic and political roles for women has been pushed back due to by backlash by capitalistic and regressive forces. Capitalism fuelled by patriarchy is resulting in a different kind of social order where social segmentation is pushing women to the peripheries while coercion and oppression is exhibiting in newer and virulent manner in the form of commodification, domination, alienation and isolation.

These different events happening around me also made me think that this is not the idea with which the celebration for international women's day was called for in the early 1900s across US, Germany, Russia and other countries. What I had read is that international women's day was initiated to demand political rights for women which include right to vote, right to hold public office, end sex discrimination and promote equal rights of women. The struggle for `Bread and Roses' or `Bread and Peace' were more political in nature which has linked right to employment, right to livelihood and equality rights and demanded end of World War I. These were the beginning of a great dynamic revolution – a step to bring about structural change in the world pushing inequalities and discrimination based on gender and class and changing the power equation to create a better world conceptualized of the ideas of equality and justice.

And being associated and engaged with the social, human rights and women's movements in India, I myself have witnessed the women's day celebration in a myriad ways. Multitudes of strategies have been evoked over the years while mobilizing men and women to bring radical social transformations, challenging oppressive practices while contesting patriarchy and imperialism. In fact, over the years, I got several opportunities to participate in marches, dharnas and protests being organized specifically to highlight the significance of this day which end up with well articulated speeches and impressive dialogues that calls for mobilization on women questions.  At times, in association with the local grassroot organizations and political organizations, the international women's day is celebrated while focusing on different themes like violence against women, legal literacy sessions for women, melas and morchas among others events or call on experts to speak on the issues on women's emancipation with the purpose to spread message of women's liberation. Focus has been laid on collective rights to raise consciousness on women's question. However, this form of celebration of women's day is getting lesser attention these days and what is being promoted is the commercial form of celebration.

Though recently with the emergence of donors' well as international organizations the concept of celebrating international women's day has been changing within the so called `development sector' too. Today these International organizations, funders and donors organizations often in association with corporations, trusts, foundations and government departments celebrate the International women's day in a different manner. The website of International Women's Day (IWD) did list various events with the different themes every year. http://www.internationalwomensday.com/esearch.asp?country=98#.VPvwSJofpjo The UN organizations also do calls for themes every year to celebrate the women's day giving a different meaning to women's day celebrations and designing it in new form.

However, if we look back, in the colonial India, many women in India participated at par with men fighting against the white Western men to oppose colonialism. But today the crusade has to be fought every day within our own fraternity and community that is marginalizing and oppressing women. Also, the corporations are entering in and exploiting women and men in new ways. The war today therefore is to be waged not only against patriarchy but capitalist patriarchy, neo-liberalism and imperialism in its new avatar in the modern Indian independent nation. The strategies to root out systemic structural discrimination and eliminate regressive ideologies are required in the modern independent state where women are made vulnerable because of gendered division of labour within homes as well as in public and work spaces where patriarchy legitimizes social hierarchies and policies of liberalization operate to exploit women.

The Constitution is premised on equality and that too substantive equality. Yet, more than six decades after independence, the percentage of women in Parliament is 11.4 (62 women out of 545 MPs in Lok Sabha and 28 women out of 245 MPs in Rajya Sabha) when women constitute half of the country's population.  India ranked 114 out of 142 countries in the Global Gender Gap Report 2014. What does it implies? Are women oppressed? Are they exploited, discriminated and subjugated? The nuanced layers of analysis with indicate that probably yes women are marginalized in multitude of ways. Because when corporations celebrate women's day the male bosses still are called to inaugurate women's day because for women breaking the glass ceiling is still a difficult task. Because sexual harassment exists at work place and women are denied the opportunities to participate or contribute equally. Because millions of women are still employed in non formal sectors where basic labour rights are violated, they are deprived of minimum wages and are compelled to work in derogatory hazardous and exploitative work conditions in an informal work environment. Because more than a million of women today are working as scavengers, street vendors, in agriculture, fisheries or mining without any provisions for social security. Because millions of women still need to walk miles to fetch water. Because millions of tribal women are surviving on forest produce and even that right is being taken away to benefit big corporations. Because women are assaulted within homes and in public places – female foeticide, domestic violence, rape, sexual assault and all forms of violence exist not only in statistics of National Crime Record Bureau but within and around us – every day and everywhere.  Because women are killed for making marriage related decisions or reproductive choices on their own. Because sex trafficking still exist. Because million of women are still living in state of hunger even if they are employed in farming or agricultural sector.

I wonder if attempts are being made to usurped and commercialized women's day celebration by various actors to depoliticize it and making it banal and futile. The celebration of women's day is being much hyped in today's world but is it being celebrated in the same spirit and with similar intention to bring social transformation with which it was initiated a century back, I certainly doubt that. Capitalism is reinforcing patriarchy and altering human ties where emphasis is on individualistic culture rather than the spirit of sustaining collective communities or strengthening social relations. This paradox of celebrating a day seems to be absurd when in actual practice in their day to day lives women are denied their basic rights or opportunities and they are hardly respected as citizens or human beings. Though such celebrations may have symbolic appeal in raising the awareness about the women's issues yet, merely commemorating women's day in this fashion could not contribute to the elimination of patriarchal culture. Endowing gifts on a particular day neither empower women or draw attention to their accomplishments or do anything to reduce struggles they face in their daily lives; neither does it remind the givers of those gifts to challenge the status quo. Merely giving or receiving chocolates, cards or gift items promote culture of consumption rather than the culture of respect or equality. The celebratory text messages or slogans are doing no good rather than just promoting momentary complacency, though taken otherwise these are gentle reminders and may act to sensitize in long run.

Women's emancipation entails changing the mindset, initiating revolution and bringing radical transformation in the ways contemporary capitalist patriarchal society operates. It demands meaningful understanding and interventions in day to day to struggles of women situated in different contextual background. Focusing on prejudices, stereotypes and discriminatory attitudes that have denied women of their constitutional or human rights is essential.  The women's liberation movement in the modern Indian society needs to focus on the issues relating to struggle for substantive equality, freedom from violence and survival issues. Commercialization is not a solution; the answer lies in political and social mobilization around everyday issues relating to women lives on daily basis. The need is to strive for dignity and respect at the work place, within homes and public spaces and reimagining the new world order based on social justice. To sum up I just recall the lines of the poem, Bread and Roses

“As we come marching, marching in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: "Bread and roses! Bread and roses!"

As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!

As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient cry for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for—but we fight for roses, too!

As we come marching, marching, we bring the greater days.
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler—ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses!”

Hacking Consciousness: The Stanford University Video Series

Reviewed by William T. Hathaway

https://www.youtube.com/watch

This new Stanford video series investigates consciousness as the source of not only the human mind but also of all energy and matter. Consciousness is seen as the essence of the universe, a unified field which gives rise to and pervades all manifest phenomena. Five scientists from different disciplines describe how we can contact this field and use it to improve our lives. The series, designed by Michael Heinrich, is now available free on YouTube.

The intellectual background of the series is a fascinating conflict affecting all of us that is now going on in science and philosophy, centering on the question, What is the basis of the universe? In the 19th century advances in physics, chemistry, and biology led to an empiricist understanding of nature, and Enlightenment philosophy replaced superstition and myth. Leading thinkers in all these disciplines agreed that the universe is just matter in motion governed by natural laws which are open to human understanding. Reality is fundamentally material. Humans and other animals interact with an objective, external world through sensory input mediated by our consciousness, which is a neuro-chemical phenomenon of our brain cells. Thoughts are just reflections of the material world in the brain.

Early in the 20th century, though, experiments by physicists shattered this view of the world. Their studies of subatomic particles revealed facts incompatible with the classical materialist paradigm. Matter, supposedly the basis of the universe, proved to be insubstantial at the quantum scale, disappearing into wave functions that have only potential existence. Also at this scale the position and speed of an elementary particle are interrelated in such a way that it is impossible to know both of them. The more exactly one is determined, the more uncertain the other becomes, so motion can't be predicted.

More amazing yet, an objective world independent of the observer doesn't exist. The particles and the observer are linked at the quantum scale; the very act of observation affects the matter being observed. The realm of discrete objects is transcended and everything becomes united in an indivisible whole that is inherently subjective, since nothing else exists but that. Matter is continually emerging from and dissolving back into an abstract, nonmaterial unified field. The unified field is the ultimate reality, the source of the manifest universe. The frontier of science now lies in discovering more about this transcendental field.

This research sent shock waves not just through science but through the whole culture. Idealist philosophers, who maintain that the universe is fundamentally just thoughts and who had been pushed out to the fringes of philosophy by 19th-century empiricism, now seized upon these facts as proof that matter doesn't exist. Even some distinguished physicists such as Niels Bohr and James Jeans went to the extreme of trying to replace physical reality with human consciousness. The new knowledge also inspired postmodern philosophy, which declares reality to be a totally subjective collection of individual narratives without any overarching coherence.

The materialists, including many conventional physicists, fought back, deriding these theories as solipsistic nonsense based on unwarranted conclusions drawn from scanty evidence. They were confident that research in the future would confirm their view. But none has appeared, and the two sides have been at loggerheads for decades now. In true dialectical fashion a materialist thesis has been challenged by an idealist antithesis, and the two sides are locked in conflict. According to dialectics, this clash of mutually exclusive opposites will lead to a new synthesis that incorporates elements of both but at a higher level of knowledge. This is how science progresses, how our understanding of the world increases.

In the first session of Hacking Consciousness, John Hagelin, who has a PhD from Harvard in quantum physics, discusses how that synthesis is emerging now and from a surprising angle. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who had a master's degree in physics and then studied metaphysics with one of the great swamis of India, was able to fuse these two contradictory positions into a new wholeness. His knowledge of both sides of the dichotomy enabled him to develop a new paradigm that overcomes the binary opposition and gives us a deeper understanding of matter.

His starting point was the fact that both the universe and our minds have a similar, parallel structure. Both are composed of layers progressing from gross to subtle, from manifest to potential, each state very different from the previous. The gross, macroscopic level of the universe is the reality we perceive with our senses. The laws of classical mechanics accurately describe its activities.

Beneath it lie molecular, atomic, and subatomic levels whose activities can't be accurately described by classical mechanics. The new science of quantum mechanics was developed to explain these levels of reality. Then physicists discovered that quanta -- the tiniest physical unit -- manifest out of quantum fields which in turn have their source in a unified field of unmanifest potentiality. The laws of nature differ enough at these levels so that each needs to be dealt with on its own terms. We can't necessarily apply the laws of one level to another; they are related but still quite different realities. For example, dynamism is far greater at the finer levels than at the surface: nuclear power is millions of times stronger than chemical power.

The mind has a similar progression. The surface level is our ordinary thinking awareness which mediates our sense impressions of the macroscopic level of the universe. Beneath that surface lie subtler, subconscious levels of mental activity that science is beginning to explore. Underlying it all is a transcendental field out of which thoughts arise and which mystics, artists, and philosophers of all cultures have contacted and described as a reservoir of creativity and dynamism.

Maharishi revived the ancient Vedic technique of Transcendental Meditation, which allows the mind to effortlessly move from the surface down through the subconscious until it reaches this source of thought, an abstract, unbounded field where all thoughts fall away and the mind is left alert but nonactive, aware of its own nature, of its oneness with the universe. Here in the silent, thought-free state of transcendental consciousness the split between subject and object, observer and observed, is overcome, and the ultimate reality of unity is experienced. This is the state of samadhi, in which the mind absorbs some of the concentrated energy of that unified field and emerges ready for more fulfilling activity.

Maharishi realized that thoughts are the mental equivalent of quanta and that the unified field we experience in samadhi is the same as the unified field underlying the universe. This discovery affects all of our lives because it shows that each of us contains the essence of the universe; in fact in the state of samadhi, where our individual boundaries fade and we merge with wholeness, each of us is the universe. But when we come out, we're back in the boundaries of surface reality, and there to say that we are the universe is mere solipsism. Each reality needs to be respected on its own terms.

Other teachers from the Orient have taken the idealist position and stated that the manifest universe is just maya, an illusion. But Maharishi integrated the materialist and idealist positions and showed that both are true at their own level. These levels are different realities with their own laws of nature that are valid there. Our surface world really is composed of matter in motion, and that matter and its motions can be reliably measured. The fact that it manifests out of a nonmaterial unified field doesn't make it an illusion. Manifestations are real at their level.

Hagelin presents theoretical and experimental evidence that the unified field of physics and the unified field of consciousness are identical -- i.e., that during the meditative state, human awareness directly experiences the unified field at the foundation of the universe.

The other speakers in the series discuss the implications of this new knowledge for their disciplines. They include Tony Nader, an MD with a PhD in physiology from MIT; Jon Lipman, an architect and vastu expert; Pamela Peeke, an MD and nutritionist; and Fred Travis, a brain-wave expert with a PhD in neuroscience.

Goodbye Secularism! Enter Theocracy!!

Subhash Gatade

To the question whether the Hindus ever ate beef, every Touchable Hindu, whether he is a Brahmin or a non-Brahmin, will say ‘no, never'. In a certain sense, he is right. From times no Hindu has eaten beef. If this is all that the Touchable Hindu wants to convey by his answer there need be no quarrel over it. But when the learned Brahmins argue that the Hindus not only never ate beef but they always held the cow to be sacred and were always opposed to the killing of the cow, it is impossible to accept their view...

-          B. R. Ambedkar

"Did the Hindus never eat Beef?" Dr Ambedkar has dealt with this specific issue holistically in his various writings and has also tried to link it with emergence of 'untouchable' castes.

At a time when the saffrons are keen to appropriate Ambedkar  - who had time and again cautioned his followers about the dangers of Hindu Raj and appealed to them to fight the twin enemies of  Brahminism and Capitalism - and present him as someone who not only endorsed the Hindutva project but also opposed beef eating as cow was sacred to Hinduism, it would be opportune to pose this question afresh before them.

You may encounter either complete silence or sudden eruption supposedly to 'drown' the question itself. Either way they would demonstrate that they very well understand that getting into debate over this issue has the possibility and potential of subverting the very edifice built by them which blames 'outsiders' especially Islam or Muslim rulers for many of the ills of our society. They very well know that there is a world of difference between the idea of Hindutva promoted by them and what Ambedkar thought.

Taking into consideration this complete dissonance in both viewpoints and keen to lure Dalit masses in their dubious project of Hindu consolidation, the saffrons have devised a clever strategy of carving out a sanitised version of Ambedkar devoid of his revolutionary vision and bracketing him in its pantheon of leaders - comprising of Hedgewar, Savarkar, Golwalkar etc – whom it considers as 'Pratah Smaraniya' (worth remembering in the morning) . And glossing over his direct attacks on Hinduism and his declaration in mid-thirties that 'he may be born a Hindu but would not die a Hindu' and implementing it ultimately by accepting Buddhism along with lakhs of his followers few months before his death, they are keen to project him as a Hindu social reformer to befool the Dalit masses.

For a politics which is based on exclusion and hatred of 'others' one cannot expect anything better. Selective amnesia vis-a-vis his contributions is an integral part of their project of adopting or assimilating Ambedkar to suit needs of their divisive politics.

Interestingly this approach of selective appropriation or remembrance of leaders who were not quite amenable to the project of Hindu Rashtra is not limited to them only. It is extended even to those personalities/leaders also whose worldview largely converges with the saffrons themselves.

Take the case of Swami Vivekanand, who is much celebrated and glorified in the Hindutva circles as one of their own. Not a day passes when Sangh and the plethora of affiliated organisations forget to lay claim to his legacy. While the RSS shies away from probing the past Vivekanand is more objective in revisiting it and thus one discovers that he is also not on the same page on the issue of beef eating with them.

While speaking to a large gathering at the Shakespeare Club, Pasadena, California, USA (2 February 1900) on the theme of "Buddhistic India" he is reported to have said:

“You will be astonished if I tell you that, according to old ceremonials, he is not a good Hindu who does not eat beef. On certain occasions he must sacrifice a bull and eat it.” 

Ram Puniyani tells us in his write-up "Beef, Pink Revolution and Identity Politics" (http://www.carvaka4india.com/2014/05/beef-pink-revolution-and-identity.html) that this is corroborated by other research works sponsored by the Ramakrishna Mission established by Swami Vivekananda himself. One of these reads:

 “The Vedic Aryans, including the Brahmanas, ate fish, meat and even beef. A distinguished guest was honoured with beef served at a meal. Although the Vedic Aryans ate beef, milch cows were not killed. One of the words that designated cow was aghnya (what shall not be killed). But a guest was a goghna (one for whom a cow is killed). It is only bulls, barren cows and calves that were killed.” 

Savarkar, Pioneer of the concept of 'Hindutva' seems more blunt where he emphasises ‘the cow is neither God nor mother but purely a useful animal. We should not worship it but we must breed and nurture the animal because we can reap the best advantages from it'. In his Marathi book 'X kirane' he also lambasts cow worship by  saying that if someone from the animal kingdom is worth worshipping, then why not start worshipping pig also as  among the nine lives/avatar of Vishnu , there is one which is Varahvatar(Varah stands for pig) also. He also mentions that there are references even in 'Vedas when cow was slaughtered' (..'gomedhhi vedadikat turalakpane ullekhile aahet' X- kirane,(Savarkar,Marathi book, Page 16) Interestingly he also hints that at its 'destruction' when it 'ceases to be worthy of sustenance'

Animals such as the cow and buffalo and trees such as banyan and peepal are useful to man, hence we are fond of them; to that extent we might even consider them worthy of worship;!.. Does it not follow then that when under certain circumstances, that animal or tree becomes a source of trouble to mankind, it ceases to be worthy of sustenance or protection and as such its destruction is in humanitarian or national interests and becomes a human or national dharma? (emphasis mine)

It is an open secret that the saffrons while eulogising Vivekanand, Savarkar etc prefer to keep mum about many such aspects of their 'explosive' observations.

For them 'Maunam sarvatra sadhanam' (Silence serves the purpose)

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 “My brief was to prevent any ban on cow slaughter. It was important for us in the dairy business to keep weeding out the unhealthy cows so that available resources could be utilised for healthy and productive cattle. I was prepared to go as far as to allow that no useful cow should be killed. This was the point on which the Shankaracharya and I invariably locked horns and got into heated arguments. I constantly asked him, ‘Your Holiness, are you going to take all the useless cows which are not producing anything and look after them and feed them till they die? You know that cannot work.' He never had any answer to my query.”

(V Kurien, 'Father of White Revolution,' in his autobiography)

A valid question at this juncture could be why does one wants to 'rake up' such uncomfortable questions, which can provoke the band of 'self-proclaimed defenders of faith and culture' rather the 'brigade of hurt sentiments'.

The immediate context to look into this aspect has to do with the Presidential assent to a bill lying with his office for around twenty years which pertained to banning beef. It was mid-nineties when Shiv Sena-BJP government was holding reins of power in the state of Maharashtra for the first time, when it had passed this bill called 'Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Bill, 1995 which proposed blanket ban on the slaughter of bulls, bullocks and calves, in addition to cows. With the changed dispensation at the centre and state, the Phadanvis government lost no time in pursuing the bill, which has finally got clearance.

Definitely Maharashtra does not happen to be the first state to issue a ban. Many Indian states have already passed laws which ban or regulate slaughter of cows but the Maharashtra bill has gone one step further than them. It has also banned sale of beef products also. And the punishment suggested for violation of this law is draconian to say the least. Mere possession of beef or beef products will then be punishable by a fine of Rs10,000 ($160) or five years in prison. In other states such meat can be consumed if it is brought in from other states where there is no such ban but there is no such possibility in Maharashtra.

With the passage of the bill Maharashtra has become a state where eating beef is more dangerous than sexually harassing a woman. A perpetrator of sexual harassment would get a maximum sentence of two years whereas if the police spot you holding piece of beef in your hand, then you can be interned for five years. One rather discovers that there seems to be a competition for more stringent punishment especially among BJP ruled states when it comes to banning cow slaughter. Few years back M.P. government had passed Gauvansh Vadh Pratishedh ( Sanshodhit) Act which had duly received Presidential nod where the punishment for 'slaughtering cow or its progeny, transporting them for slaughter or storing beef was up to seven years in jail.

This move to 'criminalise food habits of people' has been rightly criticised for its economic, social and dietary impact. Perhaps the hardest hitting comment about the ban came in from rather unexpected quarters. Famous writer Salman Rushdie tweeted to say:

'Congratulations Maharashtra: it is now safer to be a cow than a woman, Dalit, Muslim in the state.'

One can easily imagine the economic impact this move may have on the lives of lakhs of people engaged in this work at various levels. According to a report which appeared in 'Mint'

'[3]0,000-35,000 animals (buffaloes and bulls) are slaughtered in Maharashtra every day and on average each animal gives 150kg of meat. Around 1.5 million people are directly employed by the industry and are involved in transportation of animals, butchering them, processing meat and transporting beef to either domestic or international markets.

Looking at the fact that the state plays a pivotal role in supplying hide to tanneries in Kolkata and Chennai it would spell a doom for leather trade in the state as well. e.g. The Deonar slaughterhouse based in Mumbai supplies 450 animal hides a day, mainly buffaloes to these tanneries.

This move would also adversely impact the farmer community as it will have to continue spend water and fodder for bullocks that are useless for farm work. In a country where we are still far away from meeting the basic hunger of people, the upkeep of bullocks, buffaloes that cannot be sent to slaughterhouses will fell on the farmer, which will further impoverish them. As can be envisaged it will have a negative impact on the economies of poor households and would also affect milk production.

An important fallout of this move would be its negative impact on the intake of cheap proteins by a vast majority of people - dalits, adivasis, Muslims, Christians etc - for whom beef happens to be the cheapest source of protein as it costs nearly one-third of mutton or gosht and forms important part of traditional food habits of people. As of now the overall per capita consumption of meat in India is among the lowest in the world. According to a FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) report in in 2007, India logged in last in a total of 177 countries. Its annual consumption of meat per person was just 3.2 kg at a time when Americans were eating as much as 125 kg per head and the world average was 38. 7 kg. 

If we go for further break-up of the meat consumed, another FAO report titled 'Livestock Information, Sector Analysis and Police branch' tells us that the 'largest consumed meat in India is beef. The per capita consumption of beef is 26 lakh tonnes as compared to 6 lakh tonnes mutton and 14 lakh tonnes of pork.

The low consumption of meat has nothing to do with the fact that majority of Indians are vegetarian. In fact, as the well-known 'People of India project' undertaken by late Kumar Suresh Singh had demonstrated that nearly 88 per cent of India's communities count themselves among the meat-eaters, though they are not particular about the type. (1993) This mammoth project involving over 500 sociologists and 3,000 researchers studied more than 4,000 communities over eight years, which  produced a report which had exploded the stereotype of every community.

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Perhaps a first step to galvanise resistance to this motivated move by the people in power which directly impinges on the food habits of people, impacts the availability of cheap proteins to them, burdens the farmers further with livestock which is practically useless for them, severely attacks livelihoods of lakhs of people, has the possibility of furthering inter-communal divide and is an attempt to force-feed Brahminical ideas about diet to the broad masses of people would be to explain the great hiatus which exists between what the BJP led NDA government seems to preach and practice.

People very well remember when Narendra Modi was leading the campaign of BJP against UPA II government last year he had made speeches that the government was subsidising slaugherhouses and was engaged in promoting meat exports. He had used the word "pink revolution" alluding to beef exports in his speech supposedly to exploit majoritarian sentiments. In one of his meetings in Bihar in April 2014 he had said :

“This country wants a Green Revolution but those at the Centre want a Pink Revolution,” .. “When animals are slaughtered, the colour of their flesh is pink.” (http://www.hindustantimes.com/Images/popup/2015/1/06_01_15-metro1c.jpg)

At another pre-parliamentary poll meeting he said :

“The (UPA) government is not willing to provide subsidy to a person who keeps a cow but if a person wants to set up a slaughterhouse, he gets assistance,”(-do-)

One of his blog entry shared his ‘agony':

 “It saddens me, that present UPA Government led by Congress is promoting slaughtering of cows and exporting beef to bring ‘Pink Revolution'”.

Women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi in her election meetings in September 14 even alleged that illegal slaughter and export of animals in the country was funding terrorist activities.

It is a different matter that once they were in power choosing 'pragmatism over politics' was their mantra. It was not for nothing that during the first eight months of this fiscal one witnessed quantum jump in meat exports.

India sold meat and meat products worth $3.3 billion during April-November 2014 compared to $2.8 billion in the same period the previous year, registering a 16.74% jump. Buffalo meat constituted about 97% of the total livestock products exported from the country as the export of cow meat is banned in India. (do)

According to the reporter who filed the above story, neither Nirmala Seetharaman, Cabinet minister in Modi government was available for comment, nor four spokespersons of the BJP bothered to respond to 'explain' this quantum jump. And it was left to Congres leader Manish Tewari to 'expose their duplicity and sanctimoniousness'. He said :

“While in Opposition the Prime Minister is at the forefront of slamming the purported pink revolution and when in government he is at the forefront of promoting it as evidenced by the rise in export figures,”..“This nation needs to know where the PM and his government stand on it. If they were so against it, why has it not been banned? ..

Discussing this issue of how 'politicians manipulate Hindu sentiments around cow slaughter' Shoib Daniyal rightly concludes : 

This contradictory approach to the issue of cow protection shows that it is treated more as a political rather than religious matter. Cow protection sentiments are exploited by the state and politicians to mobilise people and catch votes, targeting poor Muslims and Dalits by accusing them of cow slaughter. Of course, since other factors are clean ignored (as a result of economic considerations), these laws do nothing to actually improve the lot of cattle in the country.

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My question is, how can the state impose a certain food culture on people? The state has nothing to do with food. They can give certain food to people depending on the market, but cannot impose that you can or cannot eat certain food items. If beef eating is bad for Brahmins or Baniyas or certain upper castes, then the state is imposing that on the rest of the society. So the state is actually becoming a theocratic state. This is how the RSS ideology is being pushed. 

This move by Maharashtra government about banning beef evoked strong protest in different universities of Hyderabad  - EFLU (English and Foreign Languages University), Central and Osmania Universities of Hyderabad - where a ‘Beef Festival' was organized as indication of protest. The students marked it as a protest against the attempts of 'the RSS driven NDA Government to impose its Hindutva cults and the Manu culture', express 'their freedom to eat food of their choice'. Terming it a 'suppression of the food culture by the "fascist forces" of India', it was emphasised that it is a mode of discrimination against the already marginalized communities and would badly impact the livelihood of communities whose economy is associated with leather and meat.

One also witnessed protest against the ban on beef in Maharashtra in Chennai also where a group of lawyers held a beef eating protest. There is no law banning cow slaughter in Tamil Nadu, there is fear that Tamil Nadu may also clamp down on beef.

According to newspaper reports The Democratic Youth Federation of India, the youth wing of the Communist Party of India Marxist, has decided to hold a nationwide ‘Beef Festival' to protest the ban in Maharashtra, DYFI national president, M.B. Rajesh said in Kozhikode. He called the decision a “fascist move” and  also resolved to join hands with all pro-democracy forces to hold protest programmes against the ban on beef.

Few years back when then the BJP led government in Karnataka had enacted similar law the state had witnessed widespread protests which saw coming together of different groups including Rajya Raitha Sangha (state farmer organisation), Komu Souharda Vedike (Communal Amity Forum), the Dalit Sangharsha Samiti, which fights for the rights of Dalits, and the Beef Merchants Association and many civil liberty activists and intellectuals. One rally in Bengaluru drew more than 20,000 people where the late U R Ananthmurthy, well known Kannad author and professor, tore up a copy of the bill and lambasted the then state government for a communally motivated bill. In his brief speech he emphasised how this move would make criminals out of ordinary dalits, Muslims and Christians, and would put farmers in distress because they would not be able to sell off their cattle.

One can foresee that we may witness similar 'criminalisation' on the streets of Maharashtra in the days to come with the Hindutva zealots aiding the police in their attempts to discipline people. Interested people can refer to an earlier piece of mine which describes impact of any such majoritarian move on innocents.

There are reports that the association of meat traders is planning to move the courts to challenge the ban, but one does not know whether people, formations, organisations who are working for the betterment of different sections of society or political parties are coming together to challenge this 'communally motivated' move  on streets or not. Looking at the fact that an ally of the ruling dispensation in the state - Swambhimaani Shetkari Sangathana - which has base among peasants and farmers has expressed apprehensions over this law, it would not be out of place to plan some intervention and slowly gather voices of opposition. It should be kept in mind that other BJP ruled states - which have not yet passed similar laws e.g. Haryana- are also contemplating similar moves and it is of key importance that Maharashtra which wears its ‘progressive' tag on its sleeves should break new grounds in resisting this move and create such an ambience that the people in power in the state are compelled to revisit the decision.

We should bear in mind that it is not a question of those thousands of traders and their associates who are engaged in meat trade, it is a question which touches every cross-section of society. It is therefore high time that right from nutrition experts, right to food activists, civil liberty activists and intellectuals to dalit, farmer as well as anti-communal organisations everybody should join hands to oppose this move which is essentially a very organised albeit concealed attack on people's right to food under the specious argument that their choice of food supposedly hurts sentiments of a privileged few.

It is high time that India, which yearns to become an economic superpower in the 21st century, should take a radical rupture from all such remnants of ‘jurassic park' mentality centering around the logic of ‘purity' and ‘pollution' which have proved to be its bane all these years.