There’s an old story about a miser who had caused all his wealth to be converted into a chunk of gold. Every night he would take the gold out from where he had hid it in a hole in the garden and gloat over it. One day the inevitable happened – a thief found the gold and stole it. The miser was weeping over the stolen gold when a sage happened by. He told the man – “Take a stone and put it in the hole and take it out every night and gloat over it, imagining it’s your gold. It will do you precisely as much good as your gold which you put in the garden.”

I’m reminded of this story each time I consider how the Incredible Democracy of India (IDI) treats that part of it which is called Kashmir. (It actually treats the states of the North East a good deal worse, but the difference is that the North East doesn’t exist as far as the average “mainstream” Indian is concerned – most of them have literally never heard of it.)

A potted history of Kashmir since the 1930s: Kashmir actually comprises three parts: Ladakh, with a Buddhist majority, in the east; Kashmir, with a Muslim majority, in the centre, and Jammu, with a Hindu majority in the south. Overall, though, it was a Muslim-majority state ruled by a Hindu king who wanted to remain independent after the British quit the subcontinent in 1947. While various negotiations were going on about its final status, Pakistan sent in “tribal irregulars” to take over the territory. These “irregulars” (including a fair supply of the troops of the new Pakistan army) whipped the ass of the Maharaja of Kashmir’s forces and only failed to capture Srinagar, the capital, because they allegedly spent so much time looting and raping on the way.

Meanwhile the Maharaja of Kashmir was persuaded to a temporary accession to what was then the Dominion (self-ruled state without formal independence from the British) of India. The accession was explicitly stated to be temporary, a measure that would allow India to send forces to face the “tribal irregulars” (which seems a pretty specious reason when you come to think of it – I don’t see why one country can’t send forces to help another unless the latter merges into it). The then Prime Minister of India, Nehru, explicitly promised a plebiscite on the issue of accession – as soon as peace was achieved. It was a promise he never intended to keep.

While the Indian army forced the “tribal intruders” back from Srinagar, about a third of the state still was in the hands of the invaders when Nehru went to the United Nations and accepted a UN-ordered ceasefire, which means that a third of the state still remains in Pakistani territory. Meanwhile, Nehru locked up the most important Kashmiri leader, Sheikh Abdullah, and began imposing a succession of puppet regimes in rigged elections, something that continued well into the 1980s. These puppets, not unnaturally, had a price for keeping their side of the bargain – they could steal all they wanted. Kashmir’s villages to this day don’t have electricity, running water, or roads – and yet, because of certain “privileges” allegedly afforded the state, the right wing Hindu parties of India insist that Kashmir has always been “pampered”.

Meanwhile, Pakistan, unwilling to come to terms with the fact that it didn’t control all of Kashmir, and smarting after 1971 because of the loss of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) at India’s hands (an Indian blunder of monumental proportions, as I have argued elsewhere) – and having failed at inciting a popular uprising against India in 1965 – took advantage of the Indian government’s monumental incompetence and venality to help sponsor a genuine uprising against India in 1989. This soon degenerated into a mindless jihad, with Hindu Kashmiris (Pandits) being ethnically cleansed and the movement soon fragmenting. That jihad, and the counter-violence imposed by India, which has one of the world’s largest occupation forces in situ, continues today.

Current crisis: Every year, large numbers of Hindu pilgrims make a trek to the Amarnath cave in the Himalayas. This used to be a relatively minor affair till the eighties, but with the rise of Hindu right wing fundamentalism the number of pilgrims has increased many times and the organisation of this pilgrimage is now openly associated with Hindu right wing parties and corporate houses. While there has always been heavy security cover for this pilgrimage, you understand that the pilgrimage is entirely through Kashmir and that it depends on the co-operation of the local people. These are the same Kashmiris who feel alienated and suppressed by the Indian state. Fine so far?

Earlier this year, in a move that might have seemed logical but was strictly speaking illegal, the state’s then Governor (a right wing Hindu fundamentalist ex-general named SK Sinha, and we all know the Indian army is politically neutral, don’t we? Ha, ha) transferred 40 hectares of forest land to the Amarnath trip organisers to create shelters for the pilgrims. The politicians of Kashmir seized on this as a pretext for protests, calling this the thin edge of a demographic wedge designed to transform Kashmir’s Muslims into a minority in their own land. Utter garbage, of course, but the alienated, unrepresented, and oppressed Kashmiris seized on this opportunity to come onto the streets in masses so great the government lost its nerve, removed the Hindunazi Sinha from his post, and revoked the transfer order.

At once the Jammu region, most of which has a Hindu majority and through which all roads to Kashmir pass, exploded in a protest organised by the Hindu Taliban against the revocation of the transfer. These mass protests, unlike the Kashmiri protests (which had long since passed out of the control of the politicians and become a genuine mass movement) were, and are, carefully directed Hindunazi “nationalist protests” (how a protest against the revocation of an illegal transfer can be nationalist is beyond me, but I’m neither a Hindutwit nor a nationalist). Since all roads that now pass to Kashmir must go through Jammu, the Hindunazis then began a blockade of Kashmir – which the Indian government and the corporate media are only reluctantly admitting even exists, and have done nothing to end.

Kashmiri fruit growers, their produce rotting with no way to export them to the Indian plains, decided the only way out was to send them to the pre-1947 market – the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, the road to which had long since been blocked off by loyal patriotic nationalist Indian occupation forces. Said forces fired on the (completely unarmed) marchers who tried to cross the border, killing several including a prominent Kashmiri separatist politician.

And that did it.

Ever since then, the people of Kashmir have decided enough is enough. Every day they are coming out in the thousands, braving barricades and curfews and the nationalist patriots who manage to kill innocent bystanders while shooting at unarmed marchers. Day by day the movement’s getting stronger…until, for a few days, the Indian government decided that if it did nothing, the Kashmiris, a soft and lazy race according to Nehru, would tire themselves out and stop of their own accord. No such thing happened. The Kashmiris aren’t sure if they want freedom (“azadi”) or to be part of Pakistan, but they know damned well they don’t want to be part of India. And no reasonable person will blame them. So now the patriotic nationalists are shooting to kill unarmed protestors, and the same people who were condemning China for crushing the violent riots by the stooges of the Bush-bemedalled feudal theocrat Dalai Alpaca in Lhasa a few months ago are cheering on the murder of these completely unarmed protestors.

So, should India hold on to Kashmir?

The arguments for retaining Kashmir: Here are some arguments I’ve heard for India holding on to Kashmir:

The keystone theory: according to this line, much beloved of the Muddle Class, if Kashmir is allowed to secede, then other parts of India will also follow and India will fall apart. Very impressive article of faith, I’m sure, somewhat marred by the fact that these same worthies love to go on about how India is a unique nation, of unity and harmony in diversity. How India will fall apart if it really is that strong is something they don’t, wisely in my opinion, try to explain.

The minority theory: According to this theory, the Kashmiri protests are the work of a small minority; the vast majority are content to remain under the Indian boot. Apart from the fact that these people don’t seem to have taken a look at what’s actually going on in Kashmir, the so-called Indian freedom movement was also the handiwork of a tiny fraction of the country’s population, who were outnumbered many times over by that part of the Indian populace who actively collaborated and helped maintain British rule. By these peoples’ argument, then, India should have still been a colony.

The two-nations theory: according to this idea, India is a unique secular experiment (unlike Pakistan) and allowing Kashmir to secede will knock the bottom out of that experiment. Try telling the story of Indian secularism to the victims of anti-Muslim pogroms who still live in refugee camps or ghettoes and watch their attackers roam about freely all about the glories of Indian secularism. 

The eternal borders theory: Hilarious, since the nation state is a completely new concept in Asia and the Indian nation, and its “eternal borders”, are just sixty years old.

The strategic bulwark theory: Kashmir can’t be let go since it’s a strategic bulwark against Pakistan, say the “strategists”. Umm, I thought we had a nuclear arsenal to deter Pakistani attack? If you say Kashmir can’t be let go in order to fight a war against Pakistan, you admit the nuclear arsenal is useless. Make up your mind.

The democracy theory: India is a democracy, Kashmir won’t be if it’s independent. Right, tell that to the Kashmiris who have seen decades of rigged elections.

The independent-Kashmir-won’t-be-viable theory: Once we let it go, in my opinion, what the hell does it matter what happens to it? It’s no longer our business.

The what-will-happen-to-the-poor-Kashmiris theory: They’re poor innocents who will be taken over by the Taliban…a racist, condescending argument which in any case also ignores the point that what happens once we get out is none of our business anyway.

The banish all Muslims to Kashmir theory: Beloved of Hindunazi idiots. Not even worth commenting on.

There may be other theories stupid and hilarious by turns, but these are the main ones.

Right, my take:

Let Kashmir go.

I believe I’ve already mentioned several points invalidating the usual arguments against letting go of Kashmir. So I won’t repeat them. Instead, here are my arguments why we should let it go:

In the first place, we have no right to rule a people against their will. If they haven’t been reconciled to Indian rule in sixty years, they never will be. Let them go.

I see many Indian journalists who foamed at the mouth condemning China for crushing the Dalai Vicuna’s vile and violent stooges have no problem demanding India crush these unarmed protests.

Then, we can’t keep spending billions on keeping Kashmir. This is an argument that should have come from the capitalist class, which insists that we live in a globalised world without borders, but for some reason has not. Remember that India is among the worst places to live in if you go by the Human Development Index and not by the lies spouted by the so-called Prime Minister, the Bush worshipper Manmohan Singh, who has never won an election in his life yet is the “leader” of this “democracy”, the Incredible Democracy of India I mentioned above.       

If India doesn't have to spend to hold on to Kashmir, something that has done it no good at all and is like a cancerous growth on he body of the nation, it will have much more money left over for social projects. I would also say (although I live in the North East) that the North East is even more of a draining wound than Kashmir and needs to be let go of.

Simple economics would tell one that when something is more of a liability than an asset, it's time to get rid of it. if India truly believes in a capitalist future and all it entails, it should have no qualms about ridding itself of Kashmir and the North East - and then maybe large parts of North India as well.

Otherwise let's have an end to all the "logic of the market economy" rhetoric, once and for all.

But, either way, let’s not be like the miser and his chunk of unused gold.

Let Kashmir go.

There may be many things that separate an American from an Indian in terms of worldview, but in some things we’re identical…

Consider:

Americans think they’re loved by people all around the world, despite all the evidence to the contrary. They’ve so conditioned themselves into believing they’re loved that any evidence to the contrary must be the work of “evildoers”.

Indians think they’re loved by everyone, if not all over the world, at least in this part of the world. Therefore, if there’s proof that they aren’t exactly the darlings of the other countries, they put it down to “jealousy” or “irrational enmity”.

Americans think they’re a shining beacon of democracy even though their democracy involves choosing between two parties which, once examined critically, show no difference at all.

Indians think they’re a beacon of democracy even though democracy here consists of merely holding elections and, once examined, except for the extreme Left and extreme Right (both unelectable) none of the other parties seems to have any significant difference at all.

Americans think other nations should be eternally grateful for the help they may, or may not, have extended at some remote point in past history. Recall the anti-French hysteria after Paris declined to join in the invasion of Iraq, citing the two World Wars.

Indians think other nations should be eternally grateful for the help they may, or may not, have extended at some point of history. For instance, the idea that Bangladeshis should be eternally grateful because India had a hand in fomenting their independence from Pakistan.

Americans are champions of revisionist history, in which they invented everything, achieved everything, and have never done wrong. This attitude is spread by films and the popular media.

Indians are champions of revisionist history, in which they invented everything (including atom bombs and spaceships, millennia ago), achieved everything, and have never done anything wrong.

When defeated in combat, Americans console themselves by conjuring up fantasy scenarios in which they could easily have won (Vietnam).

When defeated in combat, Indians console themselves by conjuring up fantasy scenarios in which they could easily have won (China, 1962).

Both countries pretend to be egalitarian but have deep and abiding contempt for indigenous peoples.

Both countries profess to secularism but religion and politics are inextricably and deliberately entangled.

Both countries have systematically betrayed the principles on which they were founded.

No wonder the Great Indian Muddle Class loves all things American so much.   

This is still a part of the world, believe it or not, where men still think it kind of macho to drag on a cigarette, throw the stub down, and grind their heel down on it. And there are, incredibly, women who still think smoking is a sign of rebellion against society. Idiocy is not extinct…

At the same time, it’s estimated that by 2010, that is, two years from now, one million people a year will die in this country from smoking related causes alone. Just think about that. That’s several times the population of some of the smallest nations.

Now let’s imagine that there was some kind of terrorist organisation capable of killing a grand total of one million people, let alone one million (and of course the number will rise) every year. Can you imagine the sot of outcry that would rise from the streets, and the steps the government would take, with mass public support, to stamp out all democratic freedoms, to imprison all enemies including left wing bloggers like some I could name, to crush out the very possibility of such a threat arising? Can you? Of course you can.

So, when we have a readymade kill-a-million-a-year crisis on hand, what does the government do? Silly question. Nothing, of course.

I’ve met idiots who defend their smoking by arguing that by smoking they are providing employment to the people who grow and process tobacco, and to the small shopkeeper who sells them their cancer sticks. By the same logic we should also smoke because smoking provides employment to oncologists, surgeons, and morticians. And we should support terrorist groups because by doing so we provide employment to explosive manufacturers, armament merchants and likewise, not to mention the construction firms that are supposed to clean up and rebuild after bomb blasts.

OK, now as to the actual measures taken by the government.

The health minister – who actually seems to be on the ball on this one – wants to display pictures on tobacco packets showing what tobacco actually does to the average human being – cancerous lungs, destroyed gums, and all, like the ones shown on the illustration, of Thai cigarettes. (There is a current compulsory warning on the cigarette packets, in thin attenuated script in English which no one ever reads or understands: CIGARETTE SMOKING IS INJURIOUS TO HEALTH. It might as well not exist.) The tobacco lobby – of course – is fighting back hard. It’s fighting back so hard that the government is on the verge of junking the idea in favour of putting “mild” photos (a scorpion, for instance) on the packet instead. Does anyone think that will work? No. Does anyone actually want it to work? No.

Just as certain governments actually protect and promote terrorist organisations that are ostensibly opposed to them, because the organisations are just too damn useful, (and you know whom I am talking of, don’t you?) the government has no intention of halting smoking. It brings in far too much tax money. That tax money is more important than a piffling million dead a year. The latter, since all attempts at birth control have been more or less abandoned in this country, is the only means of population control, after all!

OK, now I think that smoking is so ingrained in this nation that extirpating it will require a hell of a lot more than scary photos on cigarette packs, and “educating people” won’t work. It can’t and it never has. But one thing will work, and at once. And the government’s money will just keep flowing in, which is really all they care about.

So here’s my suggestion: impose a 1000% tax on tobacco. Just do it and when people get hurt in their wallets, see the consumption drop like a lift out of control…

Not that, again, commonsensical solutions like that will ever achieve a thing.

The usual form of child abuse, the one we're all familiar with, is the one where children as young as four or five are sexually abused and/or put to work.

In Delhi and also here in Jaipur, I discovered another way.

It started sort of "innocently" enough. Since I was accompanied by a European woman, and since I myself am often mistaken for a European, the usual kids trailing after us wouldn't have surprised us. It became odd when they began asking for money even to be seen in our company; I remember a boy, aged around ten, on the steps of the Jama Masjid in Delhi asking for fifty rupees straight out. These are also children who would normally be expected to be in school during the day. They weren't dressed like the usual street kids, after all.

What it works like is this. The parents, even in this day and age, have so many children they can't begin to feed and clothe and take care of them all. They basically feed them breakfast and throw them out of the house for the day with orders not to return till sunset and often not to return without a certain amount of money - be that whatever amount. The parents don't care how the child feeds itself during the day, just that the money comes in.

Also, I wrote a year or so back about a kid the media named "Prince" who fell into an uncovered tube-well. When he was rescued by the army after a couple of days (in the full glare of TV cameras) politicians descended on his family and his village with promises of largesse. Predictably, even as the media swiftly moved on, there was a rash of other kids in India falling into wells. Most died, of course, but the phenomenon isn't quite over yet. Either kids have a magical tendency to fall into wells, or parents are deliberately throwing their children into wells in order to reap a windfall like "Prince's" family. I think some of you my doubt this; but when a couple has at least six or eight children they can't feed, they are often willing to risk "expending" one in the expectation of gaining a lot in material terms.

Of course, this doesn't figure in the calculations of Indian politicians. The idea of restricting population growth has long since been abandoned; it's even called a positive thing, a "demographic dividend".

So expect many more kids asking for money or falling into wells.

I was in Delhi with my girlfriend when a pair of extremely rude cops turned up and searched our hotel room in the name of "security". This was on 25 January, the day before "Republic Day". The  idea is that terrorists would be liable to strike on Republic Day.

The whole thing was reduced to a farce when they searched only my stuff, not hers. If I'd hidden a bomb or narcotics in her bags they would have passed unnoticed.

The next day, as for a week or more in advance, Delhi was closed down for a military parade no one in his or her right mind has watched in years.

If this Republic day is such a terrorist magnet that the entire life of a city has to be turned upside down and innocents harrassed in the name of a ritual nobody gives a damn about any more, and especially since nobody seems to even know what the Republic is for (someone known to me opined that it was the day the army was founded) - why don't we simply discard it?

Answer: because it would deprive the politicians of an opportunity to strut their damned stuff in front of TV cameras - that's all.

I could spit.

So you all love or like or are at least to some extent interested in India. Right?

Guess what, it’s time – again - to face up to the truth.

Sometimes I imagine that we live in a civilised country, one that at least has some kind of rule of the law. Each time I’m swiftly disillusioned.

On Saturday 24 November, in Dispur, the suburb of the city of Guwahati that functions as the makeshift capital of the state of Assam, something happened. This something is what I want to tell you about today. Please read it carefully and pass it on if at all you feel that it is worth passing on.

First: some background.

Earlier in this blog I’ve talked about India’s peculiar form of “affirmative action” – the idea that social justice can be achieved by reserving employment and educational positions for the “lower” castes and tribes, regardless of individual economic status and ability. It’s played havoc with Indian society for the last fifty years and promises to keep causing havoc for the foreseeable future, because it’s too valuable a tool for the politicians to ever let go of.

Inevitably, therefore, the beneficiaries of this are the people who are numerous enough to matter politically…who can influence election results by their votes. Also, predictably, the castes and tribes who have been granted reservation will do pretty much anything to stop other castes and tribes from being granted reservations also – because it would cut into the pie of reservation. You cannot, after all, reserve more than a hundred per cent of jobs and college positions. So, if you’re a backward people of little political relevance, you will get neither reservation nor any other help – you’re really not of any importance. You may as well not exist.

Such was the position of the Adivasis of Assam.

Who are the Adivasis? The word “Adivasi” means “Aboriginal”. They are members of a clutch of tribes – Oraons, Santhals, Mundas, Kheroas, Murmus and others – whose forefathers were brought by the British as forced labour (just as the British exported Indians as slave labour to the Caribbean and South East Asia) to work in the tea gardens of Assam. Their original home is in Central India, in the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, and Chattisgarh, and their largest numbers are still to be found in those states. Although they belong to different tribes, they mostly look the same – curly haired, flat nosed, sturdy, and their skin colour is the mahogany brown of the East African, with whom it’s not impossible that they share genetic origin. They are also, all, without exception – even in their original states – marginalised and neglected, so that they are among the most enthusiastic recruits of India’s armed Maoist rebellion. In those states they have been given Scheduled Tribe (ST) status – which entitles them to reservation. But not in Assam, where a section of them briefly rebelled under a group known as the Adivasi Cobra Militants of Assam (ACMA) which is now in a state of “ceasefire” with the government.

Four years ago, the Chief Minister of Assam, Tarun Gogoi, urgently needed every vote he could scrape together to win the elections to the state legislature. He then had to, at last, turn to the Adivasis, who had been given hitherto nothing – no schools, no housing, no drinking water fit for a human, nothing. Standard practice, in fact, for India, where you matter only if you’re rich or upper middle class. Well, as I said, the Adivasis, who are among the few groups who could have profited from the dubious benefits of reservation, were suddenly of some political importance and were promised ST status and reservations “within ten days”. Tarun Gogoi won the election, and – surprise, surprise – promptly forgot his promise. Four years went by, Adivasi labourers began to literally starve to death or die of diarrhoea (more than a hundred died, so that the government of Assam said the tea garden owners should be booked for murder) in tea gardens, and finally the All Adivasi Student’s Association of Assam (AASAA) decided to call a rally in Guwahati in protest against governmental and industrial neglect. This was called for 24 November.

Now – as is becoming increasingly clear – the state government’s intelligence agencies had warned of mounting Adivasi anger and the probability of violence, and had pleaded for some kind of security arrangements during the rally. The government did nothing. (I’ll refer to the excuses they made for doing nothing in a moment.)

So what happened? Thousands of Adivasis streamed into Guwahati for the rally. As is the norm in India, many of them didn’t even know why they were going – they were told to go, so they went. Some of them were leaving their native villages for the first time in their lives, excited at the prospect of seeing a big city. There were men and women with babies, teenagers and children, all brought in by bus. The rally was supposed to be held in a field. Permission had been given by the government for the rally, but not for a protest march planned to be taken from the field to the state legislature. So a protest march was illegal. OK so far?   

Again, let me make a couple of things clear. In Indian politics, just saying a march or a meeting is illegal has no effect at all on anything. At most it makes the march or whatever more likely because of the chance of politically rewarding symbolic arrests. Everybody knows this. The state government could not but have known it. Yet they arranged no security cover, did nothing. Apparently they thought just banning the march would stop it from occurring, which personally I find incredible. But that’s their excuse.

Secondly, violence is an intrinsic part of Indian politics. It happens everywhere and is to be expected at every major political rally, especially when the rally is all about “protests”. The state government, therefore, knew a march was going to happen and it would more than likely turn violent – and it still did nothing.

Well, so the rally turned into a march to the state legislature even before all the Adivasis brought into the capital had quite finished arriving at the field. According to the AASAA organisers, the rally had turned into a march by the time they, themselves, had arrived at the rally venue. This may or may not be true, but it has little or no connection with what happened next.

According to the official story, this is what happened then:

Trouble began when thousands of Adivasi or tribal people, backed by the All Assam Adivasi Students' Association (AAASA), took out a protest march through the city streets demanding scheduled tribe status.

"Residents of Guwahati and the protesters clashed in the streets after the agitators went on a rampage damaging about 100 vehicles and destroying shops. The angry locals retaliated by attacking the protesters," a senior police official said wishing not to be named.

More than 130 protesters were injured in the attack.

Police fired teargas shells to disperse the protesters when they tried to break a security cordon to take out the march through the city streets.

"Local residents armed with sticks and iron rods, besides crude implements, attacked the fleeing protesters and beat them mercilessly," Parag Moni Aditya, a witness, said.

"The mob attack took place after the protesters started damaging vehicles and shops belonging to commoners in the area," the police official said.

The official story, as fleshed out by reporters, goes on that the protestors, who were armed with bows and arrows, smashed up cars and buses, vandalised shops, beat up people at random, and then only when they had almost reached the state assembly did the police beat them back with batons and tear gas, and by firing in the air. The protestors then broke and ran for cover, and this was when the local residents, who had been at the receiving end of the protestors’ violence, came out to take revenge and beat up anyone they could find in retaliation, for hours on end. The police then finally managed to calm things down and take the injured to hospital – the Guwahati Medical College Hospital (GMCH). The final death toll was one dead and “up to 300” injured. 

This story stinks.

In the first place, the Adivasis have always taken out rallies with bows and arrows. The bow and arrow is an integral part of Adivasi culture, as intrinsic to Adivasis as maroon robed monks are to Tibetan Lamaism. Adivasis use the bow and arrow as a cultural symbol, and many of them are good archers. India’s Olympic archery team is largely composed of Adivasis. Taking out a rally with bows and arrows does not connote hostile intent, any more than Indian Sikhs brandishing swords means that they are about to chop someone’s head off.

Then, even after the Adivasis allegedly smashed up a (widely varying in different reports) number of cars and beat up people for “an hour” and more, when the GMCH released a list of injured, of the 188 names (as reported in the Assamese newspaper Asamiya Pratidin) all but eight were Adivasis (easily recognised by their surnames) and only two were local residents of Dispur. Adivasis smashed up cars and shops and beat up people for an hour – and only two locals were injured enough to be hospitalised?

Now, another thing. Of the 180 Adivasi injured, the majority were young and female – in their teens. Even according to the people on the spot, the “violent” Adivasis all got away and it was the remainder – the women, children, and the villagers who had come to see the city – who were chased through the lanes and beaten.

Then, according to what we in the North East of India saw on our television screens – and as you can see in the photos – the police, far from “cooling things down” – enthusiastically joined in beating the protestors, even those who had been arrested and surrounded. They were hounded like the fox hunt, dragged out of whatever shelter they could find, and beaten with anything the mob could lay hands on – iron rods, planks studded with nails, bricks, stones, anything.

So this is what happened. The fleeing protestors ran from the police tear gas and batons into unfamiliar lanes where they were scattered, alone, and surrounded and annihilated by hordes of people armed with everything from sickles to cricket bats. At least one woman was stripped naked (see photo) and chased down the street while onlookers took photos with cellphone cameras.

Some of them dived into ditches and entered houses looking for shelter. A few found protection – one of the photos shows an Assamese man stopping the mob from beating an Adivasi woman lying on the street.

Most did not. Dragged out of hiding, they were beaten till corpses littered the street – the unofficial death toll is 20, and among the photos I posted are those of corpses, one of them in a ditch.

However, the official toll remains at one. I wonder what happened to the rest? Did they turn into zombies and get up and walk away? Do we have Dr Frankenstein at work here?

As for the rest, even after arrest, they were beaten by the police and the locals, and humiliated by making them catch their ears and do sit-ups (a punishment used for children in Indian rural schools).

Now what did the Indian media do? The response was curious and bizarre. If you’re Indian, you will probably know of the Nandigram episode in the Communist-ruled state of West Bengal. If you don’t, just click on this link for details. It was used by the ultra-pro-American Indian media to put pressure on the Communists, who are the main obstacle in the way of turning India into a camp follower of the US. The Nandigram episode, with the riots in Calcutta that followed, was (and is) being made great use of by the Congress party of India’s so-called “prime minister” Manmohan Singh (who loves to be photographed being patted by George W Bush like a pet dog) to put the Communists on the defensive. The news of Nandigram and the Calcutta riots played on Indian media, both print and electronic, for weeks. Endlessly, over and over and over.

But Assam is ruled by the same Congress Party.

Now, on the evening of 24^th November, the “mainstream” news channels (NDTV24x7 and Headlines Today) began running the Guwahati riots as “breaking news”. Then, suddenly, without any explanation at all, and within an hour, the “breaking news” disappeared – and very soon after that (within the early evening) all mention of the Guwahati riots disappeared from the TV screens. And this from channels which are so eager for scoops they compete to cover drunk actors and homeless models. Amazing or what? 

Only the local channels of North East India and the local newspapers covered – and continue to cover – the aftermath. The “mainstream” media prefer to spend their time on a movie festival in Goa and on the ridiculous and manipulative (not to mention unreadable) Taslima Nasreen (who just happens to be another stick to beat the Communists with).  

Now, as I said, the Adivasis still live in large numbers in Bihar, Chattisgarh, and most of all in Jharkhand in Central India. It’s therefore an emotive issue in those parts, and politicians from those states arrived to check things out for themselves (the idea was to get publicity – not for any social service, please understand that). Well, when one of them – Arjun Munda, the former Chief Minister of Jharkhand – arrived in Guwahati, he went to the GMCH to see the wounded. He saw that they were being somehow patched up and dispatched to their villages as fast as possible. Even those who were desperately injured, with fractured skulls and so on, were being sent back to villages where there are no health facilities at all.

Somehow, this does not come as a surprise. If you can’t see the dead and the wounded, they might as well not exist. This is something that Indian politicians have known for long. Also, if they don’t exist, they do not need to be given financial aid.

And if they die once they return to their villages, that’s the end of the matter. They will have died of anything but their injuries – or so the report will claim. This is the country where tribal people who died after eating rotting mango seed kernels because they were starving were said to have died because they got food poisoning after they ate a “traditional food”, after all.

The Assam state government of Tarun Gogoi’s Congress Party has "transferred” a couple of junior policemen. No further action has been taken. None of the men who assaulted fleeing protestors, even though clearly caught on TV and photographs, has so far been arrested. 

I have two requests.

The first: If you care about what I have written in this blog post, please pass this on to your various online fora. The facts are being hidden, not just from the world, but from the people of India.

The second: these Adivasis are mostly highly exploited labourers in the tea gardens of Assam. Please stop buying Assam tea. Your money will only go to fatten obscenely rich garden owners, while the labourers will continue to die.

I apologise for the quality of the photographs, but, as usual, I had to cut them out of papers and scan them. They are not available online any more – if they ever were.

This is the reality of our “emerging superpower”.

Some acts have consequences that may not have been quite intended, and sometimes the consequences can be both farcical and revealing.

About a month ago, the US astronaut Sunita Williams arrived in India to an entirely media-instigated hero’s welcome. The media – and, following it, the politicians – fell over her; absolutely salivated at “our” Sunita, the local girl who made good, and never mind that she has just one Indian parent (the other is Slovenian, if I’m not mistaken) – who migrated to the US and was an American citizen since well before she was born.

Well, before I get sidetracked into discussing the usual Indian practice of inventing Indian connections of anyone who makes good abroad, however remote, let me stick to Williams. She was asked to address a question-and-answer session with young people. She was expected to give inspiring quotes and fire them up with enthusiasm. Instead, and to her own considerable embarrassment, the kids regaled her with congratulations about how lucky she was to have been born to parents (sic) who had escaped India, and how the only ambition of virtually every child there was to leave India by hook or by crook.

And this is the India Shining our politicians love to project as a superpower in the making (it’s always in the making; nobody cares to hazard a guess when it will actually be made).

This is the country people literally risk their lives and limbs to leave, being smuggled in container trucks and tramp steamers from country to country until they reach the promised land (aka Amreeka – as I mentioned before, to the average North Indian, all other countries that aren’t Pakistan are America; it isn’t necessarily the United States that they aim for, it’s just that any Western country will do as long as it’s “Amreekan”).

This is the country where parents steer their children towards educational streams whose primary value lies in their ability to command employment abroad, and the children are desperately applying to foreign universities just as early as they can; and in the vast majority of cases, once they get their admission, will do almost anything to avoid returning to the nation of their birth. There are exceptions, of course, but they are relatively rare – make that very rare.

And don’t think I blame them; this emerging superpower is absolutely the worst place to expect reward for hard work and talent; from the cradle to the funeral pyre the system encourages, positively battens on, mediocrity, dullness, and conformity. Imagine, for example, a physics student - in India he can't even do research, because for all intents and purposes serious research in Indian universities has ceased, and there is absolutely no way he can get competent faculty guidance or even decent library facilities. Nor can he expect a remunerative and satisfying position afterwards. Why wouldn't he want to leave? Why would he ever want to come back?

And this also happens to be the land where the media cheer as the stock market reaches hitherto unknown heights while well over a hundred million people try and survive on one meal a day.

Sometimes the truth comes from the mouths of babes and sucklings. And sometimes it’s difficult to pretend that the truth wasn’t spoken – like when a staged interaction with your pet pseudo-Indian blows up in your face.

It would have been hilarious if it weren’t so sad underneath it all.

It’s even more interesting than they intend, and for different reasons entirely…

For non-Indians reading this, a little background would probably be in order.

In 2002, in the Western Indian state of Gujarat (long known as a hotbed of Hindu Nazi organisations) a carriage of a train was burnt near a railway station called Godhra (photo above). 58 people were burnt alive, among them a number of Hindu fascist “pilgrims” (in reality they were the Hindu equivalent of the Nazi SturmAbteilung, SA). The Hindu fascist government of Gujarat, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP (the name means Indian People’s Party, which sounds like a left wing party, and ought to teach you not to judge a book by its cover) claimed that the fire had been set by a Muslim mob from the locality and organised a pogrom (photo, above left) in retaliation. Over the next week and a bit, a minimum of two thousand Muslims, including old men, women and children, were murdered by “vengeful” Hindu mobs “venting their anger”. These mobs were remarkably well trained and equipped for the systematic destruction of Muslim establishments and furnished with information about precisely which shops or houses in mixed localities were owned by Muslims. Rather an odd “spontaneous outpouring of anger”, wasn’t it? Doesn’t it seem more likely that they were just waiting for a casus belli?

Hindu middle class chitchat across the country at the time all went the same way: “The Muslims should be taught a lesson”. Hindu middle classes in Gujarat had better things to do: jumping into cars, they drove to Muslim shops and looted everything they could lay hands on, right in broad daylight in front of TV cameras.

The BJP Chief Minister of Gujarat, a Hitler fan by the name of Narendra Modi, did absolutely nothing to quell the violence – his police were specifically told not to interfere while Hindu mobs murdered and looted. Ultimately when there were no more Muslims at hand to kill (the survivors had fled to relatively well defended Muslim ghettoes) the pogrom died down. The national government at Delhi, then led by the same BJP, did nothing to interfere to establish law and order (which by the Constitution it could have done). Narendra Modi used the communal polarisation caused by the riots to return to power in elections held soon afterwards. The Muslims who survived the pogrom still live in ghettoes or in makeshift refugee camps, while not one of the murderers has been convicted to date and the few who were arrested are all out on bail.

Incidentally, a commission of inquiry concluded that the fire in the railway carriage that started the whole thing was an accident…

Clear so far?

OK, so fast forward to 2007. Gujarat is due to go to elections again at the end of this year. A government led by the de facto right wing monarchist (but not, officially, Hindu fascist) Congress Party is in power in Delhi. Narendra Modi continues in power in Gujarat, but many of his erstwhile lieutenants (some of them even more deeply implicated in the pogrom than he himself is) have turned against him and gone over to the Congress, which is the only other party in the state of any electoral strength. Still, it seems more likely than not that Narendra Modi will still win the elections that are coming.

Now remember something: the Congress is an allegedly secular party that professes to be the ideological enemy of the BJP (it’s a different thing that their ultra-right wing economics and their slavish pro-American foreign policies are identical, and that the Congress had sucked up to religious fundamentalists often enough in the past). The Congress had called (and still calls) Narendra Modi a murderer. Yet, after three and a half years in power in Delhi, the Congress still has not lifted a finger against Modi!

Right, now back to the present. Elections are looming in Gujarat. The stakes are slightly higher than just victory or defeat in a state election. You see, the crown prince of the nation, Rahul Gandhi himself, is overseeing the election in Gujarat, and the Congress desperately needs a victory to justify promoting Gandhi to the throne. At the same time, the Congress government in Delhi is under threat from the Left, which is propping it up, over the Congress making its Nuclear Deal with Bush. The Congress would like to dissolve Parliament and go for fresh elections, if only it could hope to win, so that it could go worship Bush without let or hindrance. If it wins the state elections in Gujarat, it might summon the courage to go for national elections. If it doesn’t, it most likely will say goodbye to the deal and hold on to what it has of power in Delhi for the present.

So do you see how high the stakes are?

So what happens when I turn on the TV? I switch to the news channel Headlines Today, which is owned by the India Today group. The India Today group is a totally mercenary concern owned by one Aroon Purie who sells his lead stories and prime content in his media outlets to the highest bidder and has, in the past, strongly supported invading Iraq and demanded that India send troops to help. This same Aroon Purie had supported the BJP after the Gujarat pogrom and even distributed CDs in praise of Narendra Modi free with his magazine, India Today. So he should be supporting Modi now, right?

Wrong.

What Headlines Today is showing, over and over and over again (virtually without pause for the last twenty four hours) is a sting investigation by the magazine Tehelka (which had earlier exposed corruption and bribery in Indian defence circles). This sting shows BJP and associated Hindu fascist organisation members openly boasting about their roles in the 2002 pogrom and recounting how Modi helped, encouraged and protected them. In grisly detail they discuss the murders of individual Muslims, like a pregnant woman whose uterus was cut open and her baby chopped to pieces before she was burnt alive. And also of the case of the former politician Ehsan Jaffri, cut to pieces and burnt alive after he spent hours on the phone begging contacts even in Delhi (including Rahul Gandhi’s mum, Dowager Empress Sonia Gandhi) for help against besieging Hindu mobs. (Interestingly, I recall India Today in the aftermath of the pogrom blaming Jaffri’s murder on himself – he wouldn’t have been killed, the magazine said, if he hadn’t fired on the mob in self defence with his revolver. Huh.)

Odd, odd timing.

I mean, nobody in his right mind ever doubted that Narendra Modi and his men had planned, instigated, and carried out the 2002 pogrom. Nobody in his right mind ever thought that these facts were hidden all these years, and needed a sting operation to bring them to light.

So consider the facts: a mercenary media house known for supporting the powers that be suddenly exposes material calculated to turn public (and most notably Muslim) sympathy towards the ideological “enemies” of the people “exposed”. Also note that having sucked up to Bush and repeatedly voted against Iran at the IAEA, the Congress has lost whatever Muslim sympathy it retained after its total failure of governance.

It’s so obvious that Headlines Today has been bribed by the Congress to break the “sting” now that I don’t see anyone taking it seriously for an instant. Also, of course, everyone knows that this “expose” will achieve nothing. I would personally love to see Narendra Modi hanged in public by his intestines, but I know perfectly well that this is not going to happen, no sir, not in a billion years. Whether it’s Modi or the Congress (loaded with ex-Modi bumchums like the sleazeball Gordhan Zadaphia) that wins, the “expose” will be promptly and speedily buried thereafter. Not that the Congress is likely to win. Modi has it about wrapped up, anyway.

So, yes, it’s a circus, and not really an interesting one.

The interest lies in something the makers of this “expose” never intended.

See, the Nuclear Deal is just about done for. The thing is, the right wing hasn’t given up on it yet. Nor has the American ambassador, David Mulford, who is well known for ordering Indian politicians around and who yesterday met BJP head honcho LK Advani to try and get the BJP and Congress together to support the Nuclear Deal in parliament and somehow salvage it. Advani is notoriously pro-American (he had, in 2003, promised the Americans that India would send troops to Iraq, something that was only torpedoed by opposition from the left and centrist parties) and certainly would love a subordinate alliance with the Americans, even at the cost of linking up informally with the Congress.

But now, after the “expose”, how on earth is the BJP supposed to sup at the same table with the Congress, in anything at all? At least in the short term, it’s impossible, and as Bush’s hatchet man Nicholas Burns pointed out, there is no “long term” for the deal. It’s now or never. And after this “expose”, it’s likely never.   

The oft-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley, as the poet Burns said.            

I’ve read rather a lot of people writing here on Multiply and elsewhere about Myanmar and why India should help the pro-democracy movement (such as it is) there.

On the surface, it’s common sense. We profess to be a democracy. We should support other democracies. Of course, in reality the argument is dangerously facile, as the Bush regime’s policies have consistently demonstrated. But still the point stands. Myanmar has got a terrible regime, a really vile one, no doubts about that. It’s brutal, opaque, contemptuous of its own people and corrupt to the core (but, uh, apart from Myanmar, which other countries could I name with precisely the same features in their governments?) – nobody, except maybe the junta itself, denies that. Fine.

So, the choice should be simple, right? Help anyone and everyone who wants to overthrow the regime.

Only it’s not that easy.

India is helping the junta economically, infrastructurally, and militarily. India is backing it all the way.

Now, before I go further, so there isn’t any doubt about what my personal feelings are, let me make my stand clear.

While I’m not a supporter of venal military regimes, I am aware of India’s reasons for backing the Myanmar dictatorship. And for once I understand them.

Let’s see the actual situation (as per India’s view) in Myanmar.

First, India does not think Aung San Suu Kyi will ever get to power any time soon, and probably never. The reason for this is that the junta is well-versed in the art of crushing public protest. Mass demonstrations may have brought down the odd East European regime, but they will achieve absolutely nothing against a government that is willing to use any amount of lethal force necessary to stay in power. In order to do that, the junta has even deliberately moved its capital from Yangon to Naypyidaw, so that the government is separated from the people and the army will not hesitate to fire on a citizenry it does not consider as part of itself. And since it’s not a single-man dictatorship, the death or incapacitation of one general will simply mean another moves up to fill the slot. So, conventional colour coded Western paid and backed “revolutions” are not going to work. Ergo, India has to live with the regime or help overthrow it.

How would India overthrow it? Would sanctions work? Of course not: sanctions only hurt poor people and actually force them to support the government, since it becomes a lifeline for them. A sanction-targeted people are a people suffering not for their own fault and who will support the government which is actually at fault, but which will just garner their support. And for other reasons, namely Myanmar’s natural resources, neither ASEAN nor India want it sanctioned.

Then, what about backing violent rebellions? From 1988 to 1991, India was a total supporter of Suu Kyi and even hosted and feted Myanmarese hijackers instead of handing them over to justice, something that would come back to haunt India in 1999 when Pakistani hijackers forced an Indian plane to Taliban controlled Afghanistan. India allowed the Myanmarese emigres to train and arm for a “freedom struggle”. All this achieved…nothing. All it did was alienate the regime.

So what were the results of alienating the regime? The immediate result was the sharply increased influence of China. Historically Myanmar’s people weren’t pro-China. They are more South Asians than South East Asians and till the 1930s Myanmar was an administrative part of British India. All that India did was push them into China’s arms. And the Indian establishment is – whatever it says on the surface – hostile to China.

Now, let’s see what Myanmar can offer India.

Despite all the talk of the Nuclear Deal, now collapsing, India actually is going to depend on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future to meet its energy needs. A lot of the energy has to come from natural gas. The closest source of natural gas that exists close to India is in Myanmar. Myanmar needs money, India needs gas.

Do you still need me to spell that part of it out?

The second reason is the geopolitics of North East India. This part of the country is riddled with insurgencies. Many of the insurgent groups have set up bases in the parts of North Western Myanmar where the regime’s control is, let us say, less than absolute. All of the Baptist Naga rebel groups of North Eastern India have camps in Myanmar, and have developed close linkages with the Kachin narco-terrorist gangs of Myanmar (like the Kachin Independence Army) and the Karens further south. The KIA also hosts other Indian terrorist groups like the People’s Revolutionary Army of Kangleipak (PREPAK), United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and many others. The KIA arms and trains these groups for a fee and is a major supporter of jade smuggling, gun running, and opium production. The terrain being heavily forested and mountainous, it’s difficult for the Myanmarese to destroy their terrorists because they flee over to India; and Indian terrorists, similarly pressed, cross over to Myanmar. The only way to crush the enemies India and Myanmar have in common is to co-operate militarily. Clear so far?

The third part of it is the fact that – at long last – the Indian government is realising the fairly obvious fact that the North East of India is a ready-made gateway to the thriving market economies of South East Asia. Hanoi is actually, as the crow flies, closer to me as I write this than New Delhi, the national capital, is. And if India was to use that gateway, the easiest way was to develop road and rail linkages through Myanmar. And also a large part of North East India’s economy is integrated with that of Myanmar. In this town it’s easy to buy Myanmarese processed fruit and textiles, for instance. That’s another good reason to develop the border crossing, at a place called Moreh in Manipur state, and infrastructure in Myanmar. It’s just national self-interest.

So these are the excellent reasons Delhi has for sucking up to the junta in Naypyidaw.

There are the counter-arguments of course. Most of them come from theoreticians sitting far from the action.  

I’ve read a pair of Indians “intellectuals” in the