The so-called West doesn’t like freedom of expression. When I began working at Al Jazeera, then investigating Al Qaeda, the Qatari company was violently targeted. When I was at the BBC, we had a source who was trying to tell the world that Tony Blair’s government was deceiving the public about evidence for an invasion of Iraq. The scientist David Kelly was allegedly driven to suicide. Afterwards, millions were made refugees, wounded or killed, in and around Iraq. Journalists who tried to be free to express themselves were driven out. The head of the BBC was removed.

When The Guardian tried to reveal the Edward Snowden revelations about everyone in Britain being bugged by the secret services, David Cameron sent in the heavies – not to kill editor Alan Rusbridger – but to smash up Guardian computers. Snowden had to flee to Moscow with the aid of Wikileaks. The mass surveillance state had already been used against Wikileaks for having the temerity to believe it was free to expose U.S. military killing of civilians. Thousands more than who died in Paris have been extra-judicially assassinated by President Obama’s drones. There was no place in the Western mainstream media for blame on NATO nations for aiding Israel as it killed and maimed thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza over the summer.

Britain bans TV stations. And as the recent dramatic reconstruction of the work of U.S. journalist Gary Webb – Michel Cuesta’s “Kill the Messenger” – tries to explain, the careers of Western reporters are destroyed if they try and publish stories against the state. Webb killed himself. Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings died when his car exploded in LA after he took down – in an article – the commander of Western forces in Afghanistan.

One doesn’t need violent conspiracy theories to understand where the most pernicious attacks on freedom of expression come from in the West. They come from a system of powerful corporate advertiser-funded journalism that prevents real issues of life and death from ever reaching the consciousness of ordinary people in Western Europe. It was the great French revolution that set the scene. For all its benefits, the worst wars in the history of civilisation have been secular and driven by values embedded in perversions of the European enlightenment – not in religion. It has been the search for resource exploitation and profit that has killed more than any ten-year old girl strapped into a suicide vest by Boko Haram.

That’s why it sounds so absurd when liberal commentators try to resuscitate “Clash of Civilisations” rhetoric after Paris. They claim superiority for allowing freedom of expression, for supporting journalism. But they were the ones cheering on as NATO bombed journalists at Serbian TV during the war on Yugoslavia in 1999. They were the ones cheering as NATO bombed journalists at Libyan TV in 2011. They are the ones who cheerlead wars that kill journalists and anyone else in their way.

The liberal defence appears to be that the threat against free expression posed by Islam is too great. Only printing cartoons and launching wars can save us from this religion. But when they namecheck “Islam”, do they even know that the unprecedented march of medieval Islam was precisely because unlike other religions of the Book, it offered freedom of expression? Maybe they think history is irrelevant.

Or is this actually nothing to do with Islam? Is this just propaganda from a Western press that isn’t free? Is there just a playbook for Western journalists in which “Islam” can be swapped for “Socialism in 1930s Spain”, “Communism in Russia”, “Maoism in China”, “Bolivarism in Latin America”, “Non-Aligned Movement in Asia”?  It doesn’t matter what it is – just that it is seen as the enemy because that is in the interests of hegemonic Western capital.

Journalists in the West who have fought to tell the truth about 20th/21stcentury interventions in the developing world – they have destroyed the lives of billions – know what it’s like. Fight against the system, and power will threaten your livelihood. And, more likely than not, you’ll be left with nothing but the ability to say “told you so” after a scale of slaughter is unleashed that not only kills more than ISIS could ever dream of but also catalyses the deluded to carry out atrocities like those in Paris.

There is something suicidal about elite media responses to the Charlie Ebdo massacre. It’s not only that what goes for journalism ignores the fact that the worst slaughters in history – world wars – trace their lineage from secularism. It’s that journalists seem unaware of what questions to ask about the European enlightenment, let alone the French Revolution.

“Liberté, égalité, fraternité” did not so much concern the freedom to publish anti-Semitic or Islamophobic cartoons in Charlie Ebdo magazine. It was about the revolutionary emancipation of the dispossessed. Satire aimed at Marie-Antoinette, not the sans-culottes; the slave-masters of Haiti not the slaves. In due course, the so-called terror at the hands of secular Saint-Just and Robespierre would be as nothing compared to what happened with the ensuing retrenchment of power. Who knows what the Jacobins would have made, a quarter of a millennium on, about rising religious fundamentalism in America and corporations as Gods in Europe? Zhou-en Lai, Communist China’s first premier, had it right – whether he was referring to 1789 or 1968 – when he said it was too early to give his assessment of events in Paris.

But, now, a rotten Western journalism accompanies an entire Western economic crisis. There’s mass austerity because of gigantic, corrupt financial services but no context of the logical need for a complete overhaul of society. The response of the so-called free press has been to write and broadcast as if only sovereign debt ratings rule civic life. Journalism ceases to be free when all mainstream political debate in Western countries centres on pleasing a miniscule percentage of the one percent about deficit reduction. Western journalists appear not to be free to question whether society really is just what gilt-traders tell them.

As for guilt for Western war crimes, there is fear of terrorist attack from “the other.” Fear is what “free” Western journalists use when they cover NATO militarism. And ever greater restrictions on press freedom in NATO countries prevent journalists from talking about something more cataclysmic and eschatological. Recent world events suggest that Western corporations think they have found a way out of the crisis, a kind of final solution. It’s arguably the reductio ad absurdum of the powerful counter-revolutionary forces unleashed by the guillotining of the Jacobins: an out and out, overt, world war.

Lethal, foreign interventions appear on the world scene as if they are the twitches of a dying superpower. No amount of socio-economic strife at home can prevent NATO governments from perceiving military existential threats. Journalists repeat lies and forget history. Wars are prepared against the great powers of the 21st century. NATO plays war games for attacks on China – and, of course, Russia. A breathless Western journalism about Ukraine allows no dissent so that all developments are seen through the prism of Russian expansionism, not NATO’s. But, they merely posture against Russia, China and India. And in Africa and Latin America, there are signs that they sense the game is already up.

One region – dominated, as it happens, by Islam – remains in focus. It doesn’t matter that Saudi Arabia has been the financial source for ISIS. Fossil fuel profits of the Middle East are paramount. Environmental catastrophe isn’t even an issue. Nor are repeated defeats in Mesopotamia. To explain this to the people, NATO powers require a “free” press of fake stenographer-journalists who repeat what’s leaked to them. It can be fake dossiers, redlines and fake WMD and it’s all in the context of a fundamental misunderstanding of the post-1789 world.

So journalists excuse Israeli atrocities. Palestinian cartoonists don’t count when they are persecuted. They look the other way as freedom-fighters threaten the oil-fields of Eastern Saudi Arabia. It doesn’t occur to the journalists that Saudi is the financial source of so much Islamist funding. In this maelstrom, cowering in the face of Western decline, EU servant-rulers of capital transform into suicide bombers. President Hollande armed the Islamist rebels fighting secular Bashar Al-Assad. The Charlie Ebdo killers were part of that movement. It was on the road to Damascus, that the French taxpayer, like taxpayers in Britain and America, facilitated those who committed the atrocities in Paris.

Afshin Rattansi is the presenter of the current affairs TV show, Going Underground, on RT, broadcast in Britain 

courtesy : 'africana-orientalia'

BJP leaders speak in contradictory terms; PM's denial not enough

An unimaginable crisis has gripped our country. Only a straightforward, clear declaration by the Prime Minister can clear it. I am referring to the advertisement issued by the Government of India's I.B. Ministry on the Republic Day carrying in the background a watermark of the Preamble to the Constitution. But a devious interloping was done by publishing the Preamble as it was in 1950, thus deliberately omitting the words “Socialist” and “Secular” from the Preamble which have been in the existing Preamble since 1976. This interpolation clearly shows that B.J.P. ministers are trying to flaunt their status of being corporate friendly and stooges of the R.S.S. boss. I have no problem with how the ministers present themselves. But the Indian government would be guilty of serious constitutional lapses and cannot be allowed to continue in office if by its word or action it conceals the mandate of the present Preamble containing “Secularism” and “Socialism”. In that context the Union Government would be an interloper because the Supreme Court has held that the “Preamble is the key to the Constitution” and therefore the objectives of “Socialism” and “Secularism” must govern the programmes and policies of the Government of India. The perverted suggestion that Socialism and Secularism were not in the original Preamble and were incorporated in 1976 is ludicrous because the governments have to follow the Constitution as it exists.  

Another strained argument is that the word Socialism was not in the original Preamble. It is immaterial because the government is to see the present Preamble. Even this fatuous explanation shows ignorance of the facts and the law. At the time of framing the Constitution it was clearly understood that in India we were setting up a Socialist State. This was brought out specifically by Dr. Ambedkar in reply to Prof K.T. Shah, who wanted “Socialism” to be incorporated in the Constitution at the drafting stage. Dr. Ambedkar, while refusing to do so for technical reasons, explained that Socialism as such was already included in the directive principles. He explained thus: “What I would like to ask Prof. Shah is this: ‘If these directive principles to which I have drawn attention are not socialistic in their direction and in their content, I fail to understand what more socialism can be.’”    

As for the equally fatuous argument of the effect of incorporating Socialism in the Preamble in 1976, the Supreme Court pointed the fallacy as far back as 1983: “Though the word ‘Socialism’ was introduced into the Preamble by a late amendment of the Constitution that Socialism has always been the goal is evident from the directive principles of State policy. The amendment was only to emphasise the urgency.”   

May I also remind the Prime Minister and his colleagues that according to Article 75(4) of the Constitution of India, they took the oath before entering their office which requires them to swear in the name of God that they would bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India. The oath covers the Preamble to the Constitution existing at the time of taking the oath and not to the original Preamble or Constitution framed in 1950. Anyone suggesting to the contrary would be taking the ludicrous stand that the oath would not oblige the ministers to follow the mandate of over 100 amendments to the Constitution. President Obama would have been horrified by this interpretation of the Union ministers because it would mean that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution brought in almost a hundred years after the original Constitution (from which we have incorporated Article 14 of our Constitution, and which is the sheet anchor of equality and non-discrimination for any citizen). If that was the interpretation Obama could never have been the President because the original US Constitution did not have the 14th Amendment which was one of the biggest weapons for ending racial discrimination in the U.S.

B.J.P. leaders speak in contradictory terms. While Mr. Venkaiah Naidu says that the government is for Secularism in the Preamble, his colleague and lawyer Ravi Shankar Prasad says the government wants to delete it. There can be no hedging on Secularism. In fact, even to talk of deleting the word “Secularism” from the Preamble would not only be an act of sedition but also an impossible exercise. This is because the Supreme Court in Bommai's case (1974) categorically held that “Secularism is a part of the basic structure of the Constitution” and the “Preamble is a part of the provisions of the Constitution.”

In the Keshvanand Bharti case (1973) the Supreme Court held that the power to amend (Article 368 of the Constitution) did not enable Parliament to alter the basic structure of the framework of the Constitution. Thus Secularism being a part of the basic structure of the Constitution is non-amendable. Secularism, being part of the basic structure of the Constitution, must be held to have been incorporated automatically in the Preamble to the Constitution right from the beginning in 1950.

No, Mr. Prime Minister, a mere denial, and that too contradictory, is not enough. A covert attempt to undermine the force and strength of the Preamble cannot wish away the fears in the country, especially amongst the minorities. A full-throated public repudiation in “Man ki Bat” and on T.V. was given by the Prime Minister that his government unequivocally and without any hesitation believed in the mandate of Secularism in the existing Preamble of the Constitution of India. The public statements of the Shiv Sena, an ally of the B.J.P., reflect the danger of silence on the part of Prime Minister Modi. He must therefore speak out immediately because to speak is a moral duty and to keep silent a sin and unforgivable.  

courtesy : “The Tribune”, Monday, February 09, 2015 

Why the ‘Valentine Day’ is Becoming Popular in India?

A Sociological Perspective

Coinciding with the emergence of a liberalised economy since the 1980s, Valentine’s Day has become a popular festival in India among urban youth, provoking hostile reactions from some. Instead of passing moral judgment over this festival, it needs to be objectively assessed within larger changes taking place in traditional Indian social life, more particularly the shaky arranged-marriage system.

Evidently, the celebration of the St Valentine’s Day (popularly known as Valentine Day) has almost become a predictable routine in India; cards and gifts are exchanged and  the entire atmosphere becomes radiant with red colour, love, romance  and festivities. However, it is a different matter that most young persons who participate in this gaiety may not be aware of the history and various connotations of this Western festival.1 Nevertheless, the loud celebration of Valentine Day among the urban Indian youth, stubbornly  defying antagonism of the  opponents, requires an explanation. It cannot just be dismissed as an undesirable effect of market economy and capitalistic culture of the West or moral corruption caused by westernisation and globalisation. It is rather symptomatic of changing youth culture all over the world. However, particularly in India, apart from this kind of universalistic trend, it is also indicative of the wide-ranging changes taking place in traditional Indian social life, reflected by growing individualism among youngsters and the shaky arranged marriage system of India.

Not Only in India

Conspicuously, with escalating globalisation, the practice of celebrating  the Valentine Day spread to Asian countries such as Japan,  China, Singapore,  Korea, Philippines, Thailand, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Pakistan,  and  west  Asia. In India also, coinciding with the emergence of liberal economy since the 1980s, Valentine Day has become a popular festival. It has become an occasion mostly for youngsters of urban India to exhibit their feelings of love and affection. The traditional Indian notion that love need not be vulagarised by expressing it overtly is now gradually displaced. Apparently, the youngsters  of urban  India  enthusiastically  articulate  their  feelings  of  love particularly painting  Indian academic campuses  red with fresh roses and sparkling  cards.  Various promotional programmes supported by market-oriented electronic media, the flourishing card business, and growing hospitality industry have not only legitimised it, but have also given an impetus to it.

Predictably, this sudden public outburst of personal sentiments of love gave a jolt to certain sections of Indian society. Particularly, two extremist camps, the leftist radicals on the one hand and the orthodox fanatics on the other condemn this new phenomenon as an undesirable effect of westernisation and globalisaion. The leftists suspect a hidden agenda behind this new “festival of love”, blaming neo-imperialism of the West for sponsoring blatant commercialisation aimed at the emerging Indian middle class. The conservatives, on the other hand, though concur with the radicals regarding the “conspiracy theory” of the West behind this love carnival, differ in their indictment. They despise the cultural pollution being fuelled by alien forces allegedly destroying traditional Indian culture and morally corrupting the Indian youth. Orthodox forces spearheaded by the Hindu and Islamic fanatics, being more aggressive and violent in their   protest,   often raid card shops and attack the love-intoxicated young people.2

However, such hasty value judgments, particularly in India, need to be objectively scrutinised in the specific context of changing Indian society. For, of late, in addition  to the  Valentine Day, other cultural  innovations  such  as New Year Eve festivity on 31 December,  or jubilation  on Friendship  Day or euphoria  on Rose  Day  are   also   in  vogue   mostly among  the  urban  youth.3   Even the  increasingly noisy celebrations of traditional Indian festivals like Navratri, Ganeshotsav,  or Gokulashtami  are  often contrary  to the sentiments traditionally associated with these religious events. Nonetheless,  for the younger generation all these occasions have acquired  a new meaning,   providing  an  opportunity to hang  out  and  mingle  with  their  peers, often signifying their urge to be noticed and to be connected.

Traditional Indian society, based on agricultural economy and primordial institutions like joint family, kinship, caste, and village community has been radically changing with the exposure to modernising forces. The emergent modern values of individualism, freedom, liberty, equality, and secularism and the accompanying processes of competition, consumerism, industrial capitalism, large-scale migration, and urbanisation have diminished the importance of those traditional institutions. Due to enhanced industrialisation and concomitant rural- urban migration there has been a steady rise in the urban population of India. The urban population in India has gone up gradually from about 11% in 1901 to 17% in 1951 and then to  28% in  2001 (Kundu 2011: 8). In 2011 it has grown to 31% (Census 2011).

As a result, an urban society privileging privacy and anonymity is growing, which has weakened traditional social bonds and authority structures based on village, caste and kinship.  The scarcity of housing  facilities in urban  areas  not only increases  the  cost of housing,  but also constricts the size of dwellings, compelling  the  urban  middle  class  to live in nuclear families.

Further, the high cost of basic urban amenities such as transport, education, and health services, oblige both the husband and wife to earn.  Enhanced employment   opportunities for women   in cities augment this process.  Obviously, the traditional institutions of family and kinship have crumbled, weakening conventional mechanisms of social control and making the long-established custom of arranged marriages   unsustainable. Not surprisingly, the Valentine Day is relatively much more popular in urban centres than in rural India.

Traditionally, when village life was throbbing, kinship was vibrant, caste was influential, and customary match- makers were helpful, the arranged marriage was the time-honoured practice. The  village  elders,  schoolteachers, senior  relatives,  Nais, and  the  Brahmins used  to locate  a suitable  match  for the grown-up  children  of the  village. Such marriages were mostly held within the limits prescribed by caste norms regarding endogamy and exogamy (Uberoi 1993). Besides, they were considered desirable too in view of the social solidarity of the traditional communities (Gupta 1976). Now, however, the dispersal of families, due to migration, has not only weakened family  and kinship  ties  but  has  also made the role of traditional matchmakers redundant and  the  custom  of arranged marriage unsuitable.

Times They Are Changing …

The alternative social innovations such as brief and awkward “interviews” of prospective marital candidates, matrimonial  advertisements in print media, directories of eligible bachelors published by caste associations, so-called marriage melas,  ironically also known as swayamvaram, and marriage-related websites have emerged as functional substitutes to traditional matchmakers. However, the young generation, born and brought up in modernising India, craves for personal space in these highly personal matters like the choice of spouse, find such mechanisms not very satisfying. And, the institution of dating, functioning effectively in the highly individualistic societies of the West, has not been institutionalised in India.

Yet, marriage is an inevitable stage in the normal lives of most grown-up young men and women. Hence, youngsters find the Valentine Day, New Year Eve, Friendship Day, Rose Day, as appropriate occasions to look for friends and life partners. Admittedly, in every society, festivities have a tension-releasing function allowing the participants to transgress the limits of routine life. However, in the absence of institutionalisation of norms regarding “proper” behaviour on such junctures young boys and girls, at times, go haywire and often wreak havoc with their own lives. Their deviant behaviour thus provides a lever in the hands of self-appointed moral police to hit them hard, accusing them of blindly imitating alien cultures when it comes to Valentine Day celebration or some such western practices. Nevertheless, the same people ignore the uproarious conduct of the youth on the tradi- tional Indian festivals, like Navratri or Ganesh Chaturthi or Gokulashtami, which also have almost the same function of sociability for the urban youth.

Apparently, it is now impossible to revert to the safety net of traditional institutions. Gupta (1976: 83), who found strong empirical evidence in support of arranged marriage   in his study,   also noted that in the long-run romantic ideal will prevail. Therefore, the only option left to contemporary Indian society is to allow the young some space in their private life, if necessary,  guiding  and counseling  them regarding  proper con- duct on such occasions and evolving proper ways of chaperoning  them  so that  they  can be protecting  them  from devastatingly self-destructive  actions

Thus, celebration of the Valentine Day and all such festivals has a communicative function. Message communicated by the urban Indian youth is: such innovative festivities need not be perceived as a problem, but as a solution to the problem of vanishing institutions of arranged marriage  in India, along with other traditional practices.

Notes

1      Although there is no single authentic version of its origin, the Valentine Day in the current form has become popular in the west only in the modern   times.  And there  are  significant  regional variations  including  the date  and manner  of its celebration. See (i)  DeSousa,  Katie (2013), “Where Did Saint Valentine’s Day Come from Anyway?”,  viewed on 19 December 201302/where-did-saint-valentines-day-come-from- anyway/),  (ii)  Dyk, Natalie  Van (2013),  “The Reconceptualisation of Valentine’s  Day in the United   States:   Valentine’s  Day  as  a  Phenomenon of Popular Culture”, Bridges: An Under- graduate Journal of Contemporary Connections,1(1), viewed   on  19  December   2013  (http://scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=bridges_contempoy _connections),  (iii) Haag, Pamela (2013), “Valentine Day: Its Gory, Unromantic  Secret History”,  viewed on  19  December  2013  (http://bigthink.com/ harpys-review/valentines-day-its-gory-unromantic-secret-history),  and   (iv)   “Valentine’s Day”, Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia,  visited on  19  December   2013   (http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/ Valentine’s_Day).

2    Of course, such sentiments are expressed elsewhere also. See (i) Glazov, Jamie (2010), “Hating Valentine’s”, viewed on 23 December  2013 (http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jamie- glazov/hating-valentine%     E2%    80%99s/), (ii)  “Valentine’s Day for All: A Marxist Defense of the Romantic Day”, viewed on 23 December 2013 (http://thevarsity.ca/2012/02/13/valen- tines-day-for-all/), and (iii) (a) “Fatwas of Muslim Scholars Concerning  Valentine’s Day”, viewed on 26  December 2013 (http://www.is- lamweb.net/emainpage/index.php?page = articles &id=156435); also see (b)  (http://jami- abinoria.org/months/valentine&islam.htm).

3    Lately, the Indian youth also have adopted the “Friendship Day” as a festival.  See (i) http:// www.friendshipday.org/when-is-friendship-day html, and (2) http://www.timeanddate.com/ holidays/india/friendship-day, viewed on 30 December 2013. According to some reports an elaborate tradition of celebration of Valentine Week has been built up beginning with 7 February, which is celebrated as the Rose Day and marks   the commencement of  the  Valentine Week followed by  8 February:  Propose Day, 9 February:  Chocolate Day, 10  February:  Teddy Day, 11  February:  Promise  Day, 12 February: Hug Day, 13 February:  Kiss Day, and 14 February:   the   grand   finale;   Valentine   Day.  See: http://news.oneindia.in/2011/02/07/rose-day- marks-the-start-of-valentine-week-2011- aid0116.html (viewed on 30 December 2013).

References

Census (2011): Rural Urban Distribution of Popula- tion, Census  of  India  (New  Delhi:  Ministry Home Affairs), viewed on 12 January 2014, http://censusindia. gov.in/2011-prov results/ paper2/data_files/india/Rural_Urban_2011.pdf

Gupta, Giri Raj (1976): “Love, Arranged Marriage and the Indian  Social  Structure”, Journal  of Comparative Family Studies, 7(1), 75-85.

Kundu,  Amitabh  (2011):  Trends  and  Processes of Urbanisation in India (London:  Human  Settlements  Group  International Institute for Environment and Development  and New York: Population and Development  Branch United Nations Population Fund).

Uberoi, Patricia, ed.  (1993):  Family, Kinship and Marriage in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press).

*****

Pravin J Patel (pravin1943@gmail.com) is a sociologist, formerly with M S University, Baroda and vice chancellor of Sardar Patel University, Gujarat. The article was originally published in Economic and Political Weekly, May 10, 2014, Vol.XLIX No 19, PP.19-21.