Book Review

An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire
By Arundhati Roy
Penguin Books
Pages 350 Price 295


Accumulation of excessive power breeds arrogance. It is not true with the military might alone. Dams, business corporations, media, legislature, lobbies, armed forces, all have the tendency to gather power and abuse it. In the book under review Arundhati Roy indicts the sole superpower, the United State of America for its brutal ways with power, about physics, paranoia and ruthlessness of power. Power without ideology, without moral underpinnings, without principles leads to injustice. It must be resisted, not by violence but with a plea for justice. She is clear in her mind that being anti-nationalism is not being anti-national, for nationalism has been the root cause of all genocides in the world. So the writers, musicians, artists, journalists (not of the corporate variety) beware! Do not shrink-wrap yourself in those bits of coloured clothes that go under the name of national flags. They first constrict you thought and are then used to shroud the dead before burial.


Although the politicians and ideologues give vent to people’s frustrations, they fail to perceive the root causes. They do not seem to move beyond blaming their political rivals and cloning the same prescriptions of accelerating economic growth, lifting trade barriers, giving industries and business a free reign and forcing welfare recipients to work and continually refurbishing the security set up to protect businesses and quelling mutinies in the servants’ quarters. Few of us realize that economic development that is rooted in the models that sees people as a means rather than beneficiaries is responsible for all the mess. Economists can today barely think beyond the American model of economy. Indeed the situation is so very serious that America’s success is today emerging as the root cause of the problems of the world. Globalisation and Free Market is shifting power away from governments and financial institutions driven by a single imperative, the quest for short term financial gain. This has concentrated massive economic and political power in the hands of a few elite.


What the so called Free Market is out to destroy is not merely sovereignty, but democracy. The MNCs on the prowl for enormously profitable deals know fully well that they can push through those deals and administer those projects in developing countries only with the active connivance of state machinery-the police, the courts, sometimes even the army. Today these MNCs need a clique of loyal, corrupt, authoritarian governments in poorer countries to push through unpopular reforms. They need a press that pretends to be free, courts that pretend to dispense justice. They want money, technology, goods and patents to move freely across borders, but not the free movement of people, not a respect for human rights, not international treaties on racial discrimination, or chemical nuclear weapons, or greenh-ouses gas emissions, climate change, or even covenant against genocide. It is as though even a gesture towards international accountability would wreck the whole enterprise. Since war industry has to sell weapons, so wars have to be manufactured at frequent intervals for test of ever new missiles and bombs. And to manufacture wars, the diplomats, the corporate media have to create justification. Iraq offers the classic instance of as to how the West first propped Saddam in his confrontation with Iran, then highly monopolized US media demonized him, kicked up the chimera of WMDs and then the two liars-Bush and Blair-pounced upon the poor nation to devastate it, only to sell the contract for reconstruction to Bechtel and other MNCs. A campaign against Iran is currently on to surround it on faked charges of supporting insurgents within Iraq.


Globalisation mantra is a fusion of neo-liberalism with neocolonialism. Colonialism in its original form meant grabbing the lands and resources of the developing world, enslaving the people and dumping surplus goods there. Today it is all about creating enclaves of rich in those lands, fencing off those areas from the poor and the ugly, tapping all their energy resources, shifting all the polluting industries there and curbing people’s freedom in the very name of protecting them. Those that defy the ingress of MNCs have therefore to be branded terrorists. So ‘if you are not a Bushite, you are Saddamite, if you are not good, you are evil, if you are not with America, you are with terrorists’. No neutral space has to be allowed.


And those who fund the war campaigns on the either side of the political divide have to be rewarded with cushy post-war contracts in the lands devastated by wars. Between 1990-2002, the Bechtel contributed $3.3 million to campaign funds of both Democrats and the Republicans. Since 1990, it has won more than 2000 government contracts worth more than $11 billion. An incredible return on investment. Only the very naďve would then expect a respite from wars.


The electoral democracy today has become a cynical manipulation. It offers us a vastly reduced space. Kerry was singing paeans of Israel as much as Bush did. To think that this space constitutes real would be naďve. It is replicated by the smaller minions. If the BJP was overtly fascist, the Congress is engaged in slyly pitting one community against another.


Roy’s writing is uncannily pungent. Massively documented with facts, she connects the prints of the imperial hands in a wide variety of fields, from politics to media, from financial institutions to business corporations, from entertainment channels to technology. It is a masterly exposition of the designs of the MNCs on the world’s resources and the minds of the people, except those who do not want to see.


So next the time when suicide bomber blows himself in Ramallah or Ramadi, think of the road he has travelled to reach there.




MNC-Military-Bureaucrat Nexus

· In 2004, 587 rich individuals of the world owed $1.9 trillion—combined GDP of 135 poorest countries.

· Scale of Horror of Neoliberalism: Enron power was so very expensive that Government of Maharashtra thought it was cheaper not to buy electricity from the them and pay them $220 million a year not to produce electricity.

· Bechtel group and Saddam were old business acquaintances. Many of their dealings were dealt by Donald Rumsfeld, the man who lost his job as the Defence Secretary of the US. In 1988 after Saddam gassed thousand of Kurds, Bechtel signed contracts with his government to build a dual-use chemical plant in Baghdad.

· Bechtel-Bush(senior)-Reagan make a team.

· Former Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger was Bechtel general counsel and director

· Former Deputy Energy Secretary W. Kenneth Davis was Bechtel’s founder president.

· Riley P. Bechtel the compamy president is on the president’s Export Council.

· Former secretary of State George P. Shultz who is on the Bechtel group was the Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Committee for liberation of Iraq.

· Jack Sheehan, a retired marine Corp General is a senior vice president at Bechtel.

· No wonder why Bechtel was awarded reconstruction contracts in Iraq to the tune of $ two billion.

· Between 2001-02, nine out of 30 members of the US Defence Policy group were connected to companies. They were awarded military contracts worth $76 billion.




Empirespeak

· Thomas Friedman wrote : America has to make it clear to Iraq and US allies that … America will use force without negotiations, hesitation or UN approval.’ Article titled ‘Craziness Pays’, The New York Times, Feb. 24, 1998.

· ‘Hidden hand of the Market will never flourish without hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonald Douglas. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps’. Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalisation

· Strong growth in the poorer parts of the world will be needed to sustain enough growth in the West to maintain adequate levels of employment and to enable Western govts to deal with their pressing social problems. Felix Rohatyn quoted in “World Capital: The need and the risks “New York Review of Books, July 14, 1994

Reading is more important today than it ever was — it is crucial to being an informed citizen, to succeed in one’s chosen career, and to personal fulfillment. As the world becomes more complex, reading is increasingly important.


A Book Holds a House of Gold

A Book is like a Garden Carried in the Pocket

A Book Tightly Shut is, but a Block of Paper

Celebrating Mostar
Architectural History of the City 1452-2004
By Amir Pasic
Pages 186, Price Bar coded


War in Bosnia, in the heart of Europe, came as a rude shock to the entire civilized world. It wrecked the Europe’s image as much as it shattered the Muslim belief that reign of racism had ended in at least the modern world. Porgroms aimed at ethnic cleansing by the well-armed Serbs claimed nearly two lakh lives. The country’s infrastructure was pounded to dust and majority of its people were compelled to flee.


Bosnia and Herzegovina had developed into a plural and religiously tolerant society during the Ottoman rule spread over half a millennium. Muslims identified as Bosniaks lived with Eastern Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats. Muslims had absorbed mixed traits, both from Turkish culture and the Western influences. The Turks had showed extreme tolerance towards various Christian denominations based on the imperial decree (ahitname). It was here that architecture and literature of the East and West blended together and rich interactions took place.


As the Ottoman empire shrank and finally collapsed, Bosnia and Herzegovina passed under the control of Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and following First World War became part of the Federative Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia. Though Muslims were under pressure to opt either the Serb or Croat religious affiliations in the initial day of Marshal Tito’s rule, the Muslim identity came to be recognized by 1963.


But with the fall of Soviet Union in the wake of crumbling of communist ideology, the state of Yugoslavia lost the ideological glue and began to break. The war over Bosnia and Herzegovina, a region of mixed demography, underwent cataclysmic times. Serbs, heavily armed by the Serb dominated Yugoslavia, first went on the rampage against Muslim-Croat army. Later, Croat army turned against Muslims. During the second war and ethnic cleansing, ‘Stari Most’, the historic bridge over river Neretva which dissects the city historic of Mostar collapsed due to target bombing by Croats on November 9, 1993.


This came as a defining moment in the history of the region. The scenic pedestrian bridge had spanned cultural differences between the Croat dominated West and the Muslim dominated East. Moreover it was crowning achievement of an extraordinarily creative era of Islamic culture. It was constructed to outlast people and grasp eternity.


Amir Pasic, a Bosnian architect and a visiting fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was immensely agonized by the cataclysmic events. He mobilized people all over Europe and America to fund the project to rebuild Mostar and primarily the bridge as it was symbolic of the unity among the Bosnian people. He was helped by Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture, Istanbul and Agha Khan Trust for Culture. His dream was realized when he could see the new bridge constructed at the place of the Old Bridge in 2004. It was another symbolic event attended by several heads of state and cultural groups from Europe.


The aesthetically illustrated book is however a narrative of history of Mostar spread over a millennium. It systematically chronicles the development and expansion of Mostar since the First World War. Poor editing and grave violation of rules of syntax do mar the superb quality of the book.

Dr. Amir Pasic (pronounced Pasij) was the Director of Urban Planning and Preservation of Cultural Heritage Prostor in Mostar and was teaching at the Mostar University since 1981 till the outbreak of war. He was also the consultant for the Mostar Project by the Agha Khan Cultural Trust and the Samarkhand Rehabilitation Project. Maqbool Ahmed Siraj interviewed him in Riyadh where Dr. Pasic made a presentation at the International Congress of Handicrafts and Tourism in November 2006. He interviewed him for the Islamic Voice. Excerpts :


Why did you take up the reconstruction of Old Bridge of Mostar?

For more than four centuries, the Old Bridge in Mostar reigned as the Bosnian city’s defining landmark. A masterpiece of Ottoman architecture commissioned in 1566 by Suleiman the Magnificent, the pedestrian arch bridge over the Neretva River gracefully connected the two sides of the city, symbolizing a link between cultures and religions that had coexisted for centuries. But during the 1992-1995 conflict between Bosnian Muslims, Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs, the Old Bridge became one of the war’s most famous casualties. On November 9, 1993, Croat artillery shells hit the bridge’s weak spot and the historic icon collapsed into the river. The symbol of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s cultural diversity lay in ruins.


Has it helped the reconstruction of Bosnia?

Certainly. You need a very strong symbol, and the bridge is the crown monument of Bosnia. My goal was to reconstruct the elegant, single-arch structure in its original design, using the same methods and materials employed by Turkish architects half a millennium ago.


With so much of bad blood in the heart of Europe, how was your appeal for re building an Islamic landmark received?

In the beginning no one took my appeal seriously. But my presentations started attracting media attention, which was instrumental for raising money. By July 1998, nearly three years after the war’s end, UNESCO and the World Bank pledged their support for the reconstruction project and launched a joint appeal for additional funding.


In total, the World Bank, the European Bank and five nations-Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Turkey, Italy, and the Netherlands-committed funds to the rebuilding. Additional assistance came from international organizations such as the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in Geneva and the World Monuments Fund in New York; individual donors; and the many universities and professional schools around the world with which Pasic had formed partnerships.

Muslims in Indian Economy
By Omar Khalidi
Three Essays Collective
B-957-Palam Vihar, Gurgaon
Haryana
240 pages, Rs. 275



Boston based Indian author, Omar Khalidi’s books on Indian Muslims closely follow a pattern. By now, contours of his quest are etched in broad relief, i.e., turning the Urdu speaking Muslims into a critical mass which is capable of turning into a power block. Muslims in Indian Economy sets out to assess the economic worth of the community. The author is plain about his objective: to investigate the economic condition of Urdu-speaking community. So, ethnically diverse Tamil, Malayali, Bengali, Kashmiri and Assamese Muslims fall outside his domain of painstaking research. Khalidi’s current exercise neatly falls into his theory of developing a consociational community through political and economic linkages which could be developed into a critical mass despite its wide spatial distribution. Khalidi has, however, not attempted ‘how this could be achieved?’ aspect. He had outlined this theory in his previous books, Muslims in Indian Politics.


Khalidi has assiduously dug a mountain of historical data on Muslim participation in landholding and farming, artisanship, security forces (ahle e saif) and bureaucracy (ahle qalam), four key areas where they dominated during the 650 years of rule. They had little or next to nil association with business activity. The mercantile communities like Bohras, Khojas, Konkani Muslims, Kutchi Memons were essentially converts to Islam from Hinduism and fortunately continued to practice their traditional activity even after their advent to the new faith. Partition dealt a major blow to Muslim economy in Muslim minority states as it almost erased their presence in bureaucracy, nullified the prospects of their recruitment, triggered discrimination and almost completely blocked their entry into police, army and other security forces. On the eve of Partition, 25,000 Muslim employees of Central Government who opted for Pakistan left by a special train to Karachi with 60,000 tons of baggage. Old timers still have that image of the steam locomotive chugging out of the New Delhi railway station fixed on their retina. They almost emptied the Central Secretariat at Delhi of Muslims. Statistics reveal that Muslims were represented far in excess of their proportion in states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Hyderabad. Muslim representation in Army, Police and other security forces ranged between 33-36 per cent. Jinnah and the Muslim League myopically raised the chimera of their under representation in a ‘Congress ruled, Hindu dominated post partition India’.


Zaminadari Abolition Act dispossessed the people of large land holdings in UP and Bihar. Artisans dependant on the Zamindars felt the pinch indirectly.


Qualified Muslims in the North kept on looking for greener pastures across borders till nearly a quarter century of creation of Pakistan. But 1971 Indo-Pak War plugged that escape route and blotted out even those prospects.


Laws such as Evacuee Property Act were in operation till after 15 years of Partition. Banks were refusing to lend money to Muslim entrepreneurs against guarantees of landed properties as they suspected every Muslim of being a potential migrant. Even as entrenched a businessman as Mustafa Rashid Shervani of GEEP Industries of Allahabad was a victim of such circumstances. He was declared a ‘high risk borrower’.


Lag in modern education which lends employability and discrimination further aggravated the prospects of Muslims. Some businesses did come up after 1971. But communal riots put paid to the hopes of the entrepreneurs. Pogroms and systematic destruction of business in the wake of demolition of Babri Masjid and post-Godhra riots in Gujarat in 2002 extinguished the prospects. Theory of discrimination in jobs is an old one. But it is difficult to establish through court-admissible evidences. Khalidi does supplement his arguments with a few blatant examples of discrimination, mainly from Hyderabad where Army action dislodged the Nizam who had stubbornly resisted the accession of his state with India despite non-contiguity with Pakistan. However, bias has been more pronounced at policy level e.g., refusal to list certain occupational groups among Muslims in OBC category even though same groups within Hindus have access to reservation. Inordinate delay in tabling of Gopal Singh Committee Report in Parliament is yet another classic instance of evading realities. Denial of communal data is another carefully maintained official pretence to keep the real situation under wraps.


Bright patches are few and far between. Dharavi in Mumbai was in news for its booming export enterprises. But 1992-93 riots spelled doom. Baghban community of Kolhapur organized itself in cooperatives and gained some foothold in horticultural trade. Some builders here and there have amassed fortunes. There are few names among manufacturers and still fewer among industrial houses. Gulf remittances did propel some real estate ownership in areas such as Kerala and Hyderabad. It led to growth of some enclaves of prosperity. But real economic growth is conspicuous by its absence.


Khalidi points out resistance towards science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) as one major stumbling block in attainment of modern education by Muslims. Scam-tainted Muslim banks and fraudulent interest-free societies have been the bane of the Muslim economy.


Khalidi’s book excels in sensitively portraying the linkages between communal mindset and its implications for as large a community as Muslims of India. It is an important addition at a time when Sachar Committee report is focusing on the socio-economic situation of the community. Khalidi has undertaken stupendous effort in mobilising data from afar. It is a must read for all those who would like to have a hard-headed assessment of the community’s lot, minus its fads, foibles, follies and fallacies.