by ARUNDHATI ROY, The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060313/roy
On his triumphalist tour of India and Pakistan, where he hopes to wave imperiously at people he considers potential subjects, President Bush has an itinerary that's getting curiouser and curiouser.
For Bush's March 2 pit stop in New Delhi, the Indian government tried very hard to have him address our parliament. A not inconsequential number of MPs threatened to heckle him, so Plan One was hastily shelved. Plan Two was to have Bush address the masses from the ramparts of the magnificent Red Fort, where the Indian prime minister traditionally delivers his Independence Day address. But the Red Fort, surrounded as it is by the predominantly Muslim population of Old Delhi, was considered a security nightmare. So now we're into Plan Three: President George Bush speaks from Purana Qila, the Old Fort.
Ironic, isn't it, that the only safe public space for a man who has recently been so enthusiastic about India's modernity should be a crumbling medieval fort?
Since the Purana Qila also houses the Delhi zoo, George Bush's audience will be a few hundred caged animals and an approved list of caged human beings, who in India go under the category of "eminent persons." They're mostly rich folk who live in our poor country like captive animals, incarcerated by their own wealth, locked and barred in their gilded cages, protecting themselves from the threat of the vulgar and unruly multitudes whom they have systematically dispossessed over the centuries.
So what's going to happen to George W. Bush? Will the gorillas cheer him on? Will the gibbons curl their lips? Will the brow-antlered deer sneer? Will the chimps make rude noises? Will the owls hoot? Will the lions yawn and the giraffes bat their beautiful eyelashes? Will the crocs recognize a kindred soul? Will the quails give thanks that Bush isn't traveling with Dick Cheney, his hunting partner with the notoriously bad aim? Will the CEOs agree?
Oh, and on March 2, Bush will be taken to visit Gandhi's memorial in Rajghat. He's by no means the only war criminal who has been invited by the Indian government to lay flowers at Rajghat. (Only recently we had the Burmese dictator General Than Shwe, no shrinking violet himself.) But when Bush places flowers on that famous slab of highly polished stone, millions of Indians will wince. It will be as though he has poured a pint of blood on the memory of Gandhi.
We really would prefer that he didn't.
It is not in our power to stop Bush's visit. It is in our power to protest it, and we will. The government, the police and the corporate press will do everything they can to minimize the extent of our outrage. Nothing the happy newspapers say can change the fact that all over India, from the biggest cities to the smallest villages, in public places and private homes, George W. Bush, the President of the United States of America, world nightmare incarnate, is just not welcome.
The title of your blog is totally incorrect and blatantly false. The reasons are below.
ReplyDeleteI just saw President Bush's speech to a select Indian crowd in Delhi that was televised throughout India. I should say that the attitude, content and above all the delivery was really good. I come across such ridicule in the net about your president, which the poor man actually does not deserve. A speech such as this doesn’t come out of morons even if there are very good speechwriters to back it up. Its just not about the speech but its about what Bush is planning vis-à-vis India on a long term basis.
The point about the Indian protest was that it has got nothing to do with common Indian people.
The core protester group:
1. Communist - No comments about followers of Stalin and Lenin. Guess who their best friends are ?? Kim-Il-Sung, Castro, Iranian Mullahs, etc...
An old Tamil (my mother tongue) saying is that one is known by his friends...
2. Radical and moderate Muslims groups - Although most of the Indian Muslim population are docile a small section still live in 7th century and look towards Arabian Muslim culture for everything. The problem is that a small section of 150 million is still a big number. Do not feel ashamed or sorry if these guys burn American Flags of effigies of G.B. You cannot expect anything better from them than this.
3. Politicians - There is one huge crooked gang of politicians in India whose single agenda apart from looting the country is to try to get the Muslim votes by any method. If needed they will go to Mecca, renounce their religion (most of them are Hindus), pander to Islamic terrorists in the name of negotiations, just to get those minority votes. Mr. Bush has offered these morons a great opportunity to show to the Muslims as to how they care about them. We in India call this as Pseudo secularism.
4. General crowd – Just announce a meeting anywhere in India with a few known faces, you certainly will get a big crowd. The general crowd comes to see what’s all this about. Have some entertainment watching this entire ruckus and back home without knowing what this is all about.
5. Intellectuals – We have this unique breed in India, 99.5% of whom are communist sympathizers and who love to hate USA on just about any matter. Over the years they somehow have squeezed themselves into the media, and all other opinion making forums and sound their drum against anything that is done to help the poor by the way of liberalizing trades, cutting the red tape etc. They get angry when things start improving in a way that has not been advocated by Marx or Lenin etc. For these intellectual giants this is just not possible. They prefer to look away and blatantly spread misinformation about things that do not fall in the line of their intellectual dogma.
As one can see none of the above groups represent India. These are simply backward looking people who just give importance only to their own ego and faith. One end of the spectrum of such groups are the communists and in the other end the Islamists. Both are dogmatic and unwilling to accept anything even if the facts are spread before them.
So as an Indian my views are: -
1. George Bush is certainly not some one as is being demonized by most of the world media.
2. He has his own goals and priorities, as would any head of a country. I could very clearly see the paradigm shift that he is trying to make with regards to Indo-American relations. A country with a billion plus population with a growing economy and a solid law abiding and tolerant majority population is not some thing a country like USA could ignore. A mature head of a country knows about this and realizes that these guys have lot in common with us and its time we get together. George Bush has done just that which means he certainly is an intelligent man and not a moron as he is made out to be.
3. George Bush has not done the same with Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya or Syria because those criterion stated above wouldn’t apply even a bit.
4. Iraq’s ruling clique needed a solid spanking. G.B did just that. Else it was a question of time before Mr. Hussein and co. would have started collaborating with Al-Qaida, Iranian Mullahs and other malcontents for creating a much more dangerous middle east.
5. Iran is another fit case for a similar action. A mullah administration is an oxymoron. Sooner it goes, better it is for the world. GB talking about this does not hint in any way that he is a warmonger.
6. George Bush might not have made this world a better place. But he certainly put the fear of god into the minds of terrorists.
7. George Bush is certainly not a Mahatma Gandhi. But the Saddam Husseins, fanatical Mullahs and Kim-il-Sungs are not even fit to be called as Humans. So any one protesting for these gentlemen are either aliens in this planet or intellectually, morally and spiritually bankrupt.
Since the majority of the infected Indian media have started projecting that there have been great protests in India against Bush, this detailed note is necessary to give out the true story about the so called protests which is nothing more than a mindless and an uncivilized demonstration by an assorted grouping of the religious lumpen, the amnesia stricken sovietphiles and pseudo leftist intellectuals.
Regards
D.Rajesh
Bangalore, India
Ummmm, How old are you?
ReplyDeleteWell Iam 11 years younger than you and don’t have this pastime of blog hunting. I was just going thro this casually and came across a few blogs like yours that either were not quite straight about Bush or felt a bit sad about protesting Indians. I decided to place the facts on the board to convince both the sides that there was neither a spontaneity nor an intention by the average Indian to do such and GB afterall doesnt seem to be a bad man. That too your highlighting of some one like Arundhati Roy’s comments on this certainly convinced me to post this. If I have time I will try to expose to you who this Arundhati Roy and her ilk are and what they really want.
ReplyDeleteOf course it will not be through some scurrilous writing about her life etc, but in the same intellectual language that she uses to write about others. So much for an useless lady.
A bit of my thoughts are at http://drajesh24.blogspot.com/
Thanks for the commentary on a blog that sees little save for blog spam and my father's angry-white-guy rantings, but George Bush has done more for the proliferation of terror than the eradication of it. Those who claim this resource consolidation/market expansion/petrodollar assurance war is a War On Terror don't believe it for a minute, so that makes you and your ilk dupes, doesn't it? At this point in my world, support for BushCo can only be seen as a character flaw. No offense, Mr. Rajesh.
ReplyDeleteThe world needs solutions to problems that don't involve mass murder, and your cavalier acceptance of BushCo's methodology, as well as your reverence for the man himself, tends to make me love Ms. Roy all the more.
Do you reject collectivism out of hand? Are all socialists misguided? Is there nothing to be gleaned from their continued striving to put the wretched of the earth before profits? Isn't social equity a desirable goal?
Of course it is, in my world.
Mr. Peter,I had to blog on this subject, from the basics!
ReplyDeleteSee my blog, if you have time to spare.