The Pinteresque pause for truth
Harold Pinter, the British playwright, poet, screenwriter, and Nobel laureate who died on Thursday at the age of 78 after a long battle with cancer, was
one of the most remarkable and influential voices of his generation. In a great body of work that included more than 30 plays, numerous essays, poetry
as well as stage and screen direction, he captured with an unerring and often terrifying instinct the uncertainties and ambiguities of life in the post-modern
era. Dominatin g English theatre from the 1950s, he infused a distinct political sensibility into a theatre scene that had, until then, been largely steeped
in gentility. Beginning with plays like The Room, The Birthday Party, and The Caretaker, in which Mr. Pinter strongly signalled his engagement with oppression,
the prospect of violence, and the struggle for power in a range of situations and locations, he developed an urgent political voice that made him one of
the most outspoken critics of fascism and repression in recent times. Whether it was his early registration as a conscientious objector, his support to
the anti-apartheid movement, his criticism of Turkey’s suppression of the Kurds, or his strong opposition to the Iraq war (for which he famously lashed
out at Messrs Bush and Blair), he believed in the “compulsive” search for truth through the art of his drama. In his Nobel address in 2005, he pointed
out that “as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.”
Mr. Pinter explored other forms of power, including domestic power, and the unspecified menace that remains hidden beneath the often glittering surface
of the lives of ordinary people. Many of his later plays like Betrayal and Moonlight, and his last play, Celebration, reflected the constant ambivalence
of life, of memory, and of human relationships. He believed that “below the word spoken is the thing known and unspoken.” The famous ‘pause’ he injected
into his playwriting became part of a genre of drama that came to be known as ‘Pinteresque.’ Apart from writing plays, essays, and poetry, he collaborated
with directors on screenplays for films, and even directed the plays of others. Although known as a somewhat ‘prickly’ personality, Mr. Pinter was famous
for his friendships, his love for poetry, cricket, and bridge. His biographer Michael Billington has said that “like all truly first-rate writers, he mapped
out his own country with its own distinctive topography.” It is a terrain that is instantly recognisable and profoundly human.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Blood borders: How a better Middle East would look -- Ralph Peters
International borders are never completely just. But the degree of injustice they inflict upon those whom frontiers force together or separate makes an enormous difference — often the difference between freedom and oppression, tolerance and atrocity, the rule of law and terrorism, or even peace and war.
The most arbitrary and distorted borders in the world are in Africa and the Middle East. Drawn by self-interested Europeans (who have had sufficient trouble defining their own frontiers), Africa’s borders continue to provoke the deaths of millions of local inhabitants. But the unjust borders in the Middle East — to borrow from Churchill — generate more trouble than can be consumed locally.
While the Middle East has far more problems than dysfunctional borders alone — from cultural stagnation through scandalous inequality to deadly religious extremism — the greatest taboo in striving to understand the region’s comprehensive failure isn’t Islam but the awful-but-sacrosanct international boundaries worshipped by our own diplomats.
Of course, no adjustment of borders, however draconian, could make every minority in the Middle East happy. In some instances, ethnic and religious groups live intermingled and have intermarried. Elsewhere, reunions based on blood or belief might not prove quite as joyous as their current proponents expect. The boundaries projected in the maps accompanying this article redress the wrongs suffered by the most significant “cheated” population groups, such as the Kurds, Baluch and Arab Shia, but still fail to account adequately for Middle Eastern Christians, Bahais, Ismailis, Naqshbandis and many another numerically lesser minorities. And one haunting wrong can never be redressed with a reward of territory: the genocide perpetrated against the Armenians by the dying Ottoman Empire.
Yet, for all the injustices the borders re-imagined here leave unaddressed, without such major boundary revisions, we shall never see a more peaceful Middle East.
Even those who abhor the topic of altering borders would be well-served to engage in an exercise that attempts to conceive a fairer, if still imperfect, amendment of national boundaries between the Bosporus and the Indus. Accepting that international statecraft has never developed effective tools — short of war — for readjusting faulty borders, a mental effort to grasp the Middle East’s “organic” frontiers nonetheless helps us understand the extent of the difficulties we face and will continue to face. We are dealing with colossal, man-made deformities that will not stop generating hatred and violence until they are corrected.
As for those who refuse to “think the unthinkable,” declaring that boundaries must not change and that’s that, it pays to remember that boundaries have never stopped changing through the centuries. Borders have never been static, and many frontiers, from Congo through Kosovo to the Caucasus, are changing even now (as ambassadors and special representatives avert their eyes to study the shine on their wingtips).
Oh, and one other dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history: Ethnic cleansing works.
Begin with the border issue most sensitive to American readers: For Israel to have any hope of living in reasonable peace with its neighbors, it will have to return to its pre-1967 borders — with essential local adjustments for legitimate security concerns. But the issue of the territories surrounding Jerusalem, a city stained with thousands of years of blood, may prove intractable beyond our lifetimes. Where all parties have turned their god into a real-estate tycoon, literal turf battles have a tenacity unrivaled by mere greed for oil wealth or ethnic squabbles. So let us set aside this single overstudied issue and turn to those that are studiously ignored.
The most glaring injustice in the notoriously unjust lands between the Balkan Mountains and the Himalayas is the absence of an independent Kurdish state. There are between 27 million and 36 million Kurds living in contiguous regions in the Middle East (the figures are imprecise because no state has ever allowed an honest census). Greater than the population of present-day Iraq, even the lower figure makes the Kurds the world’s largest ethnic group without a state of its own. Worse, Kurds have been oppressed by every government controlling the hills and mountains where they’ve lived since Xenophon’s day.
The U.S. and its coalition partners missed a glorious chance to begin to correct this injustice after Baghdad’s fall. A Frankenstein’s monster of a state sewn together from ill-fitting parts, Iraq should have been divided into three smaller states immediately. We failed from cowardice and lack of vision, bullying Iraq’s Kurds into supporting the new Iraqi government — which they do wistfully as a quid pro quo for our good will. But were a free plebiscite to be held, make no mistake: Nearly 100 percent of Iraq’s Kurds would vote for independence.
As would the long-suffering Kurds of Turkey, who have endured decades of violent military oppression and a decades-long demotion to “mountain Turks” in an effort to eradicate their identity. While the Kurdish plight at Ankara’s hands has eased somewhat over the past decade, the repression recently intensified again and the eastern fifth of Turkey should be viewed as occupied territory. As for the Kurds of Syria and Iran, they, too, would rush to join an independent Kurdistan if they could. The refusal by the world’s legitimate democracies to champion Kurdish independence is a human-rights sin of omission far worse than the clumsy, minor sins of commission that routinely excite our media. And by the way: A Free Kurdistan, stretching from Diyarbakir through Tabriz, would be the most pro-Western state between Bulgaria and Japan.
A just alignment in the region would leave Iraq’s three Sunni-majority provinces as a truncated state that might eventually choose to unify with a Syria that loses its littoral to a Mediterranean-oriented Greater Lebanon: Phoenecia reborn. The Shia south of old Iraq would form the basis of an Arab Shia State rimming much of the Persian Gulf. Jordan would retain its current territory, with some southward expansion at Saudi expense. For its part, the unnatural state of Saudi Arabia would suffer as great a dismantling as Pakistan.
A root cause of the broad stagnation in the Muslim world is the Saudi royal family’s treatment of Mecca and Medina as their fiefdom. With Islam’s holiest shrines under the police-state control of one of the world’s most bigoted and oppressive regimes — a regime that commands vast, unearned oil wealth — the Saudis have been able to project their Wahhabi vision of a disciplinarian, intolerant faith far beyond their borders. The rise of the Saudis to wealth and, consequently, influence has been the worst thing to happen to the Muslim world as a whole since the time of the Prophet, and the worst thing to happen to Arabs since the Ottoman (if not the Mongol) conquest.
While non-Muslims could not effect a change in the control of Islam’s holy cities, imagine how much healthier the Muslim world might become were Mecca and Medina ruled by a rotating council representative of the world’s major Muslim schools and movements in an Islamic Sacred State — a sort of Muslim super-Vatican — where the future of a great faith might be debated rather than merely decreed. True justice — which we might not like — would also give Saudi Arabia’s coastal oil fields to the Shia Arabs who populate that subregion, while a southeastern quadrant would go to Yemen. Confined to a rump Saudi Homelands Independent Territory around Riyadh, the House of Saud would be capable of far less mischief toward Islam and the world.
Iran, a state with madcap boundaries, would lose a great deal of territory to Unified Azerbaijan, Free Kurdistan, the Arab Shia State and Free Baluchistan, but would gain the provinces around Herat in today’s Afghanistan — a region with a historical and linguistic affinity for Persia. Iran would, in effect, become an ethnic Persian state again, with the most difficult question being whether or not it should keep the port of Bandar Abbas or surrender it to the Arab Shia State.
What Afghanistan would lose to Persia in the west, it would gain in the east, as Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier tribes would be reunited with their Afghan brethren (the point of this exercise is not to draw maps as we would like them but as local populations would prefer them). Pakistan, another unnatural state, would also lose its Baluch territory to Free Baluchistan. The remaining “natural” Pakistan would lie entirely east of the Indus, except for a westward spur near Karachi.
The city-states of the United Arab Emirates would have a mixed fate — as they probably will in reality. Some might be incorporated in the Arab Shia State ringing much of the Persian Gulf (a state more likely to evolve as a counterbalance to, rather than an ally of, Persian Iran). Since all puritanical cultures are hypocritical, Dubai, of necessity, would be allowed to retain its playground status for rich debauchees. Kuwait would remain within its current borders, as would Oman.
In each case, this hypothetical redrawing of boundaries reflects ethnic affinities and religious communalism — in some cases, both. Of course, if we could wave a magic wand and amend the borders under discussion, we would certainly prefer to do so selectively. Yet, studying the revised map, in contrast to the map illustrating today’s boundaries, offers some sense of the great wrongs borders drawn by Frenchmen and Englishmen in the 20th century did to a region struggling to emerge from the humiliations and defeats of the 19th century.
Correcting borders to reflect the will of the people may be impossible. For now. But given time — and the inevitable attendant bloodshed — new and natural borders will emerge. Babylon has fallen more than once.
Meanwhile, our men and women in uniform will continue to fight for security from terrorism, for the prospect of democracy and for access to oil supplies in a region that is destined to fight itself. The current human divisions and forced unions between Ankara and Karachi, taken together with the region’s self-inflicted woes, form as perfect a breeding ground for religious extremism, a culture of blame and the recruitment of terrorists as anyone could design. Where men and women look ruefully at their borders, they look enthusiastically for enemies.
From the world’s oversupply of terrorists to its paucity of energy supplies, the current deformations of the Middle East promise a worsening, not an improving, situation. In a region where only the worst aspects of nationalism ever took hold and where the most debased aspects of religion threaten to dominate a disappointed faith, the U.S., its allies and, above all, our armed forces can look for crises without end. While Iraq may provide a counterexample of hope — if we do not quit its soil prematurely — the rest of this vast region offers worsening problems on almost every front.
If the borders of the greater Middle East cannot be amended to reflect the natural ties of blood and faith, we may take it as an article of faith that a portion of the bloodshed in the region will continue to be our own.
• • •
WHO WINS, WHO LOSES
Winners —
Afghanistan
Arab Shia State
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Free Baluchistan
Free Kurdistan
Iran
Islamic Sacred State
Jordan
Lebanon
Yemen
•
Losers —
Afghanistan
Iran
Iraq
Israel
Kuwait
Pakistan
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
Syria
Turkey
United Arab Emirates
West Bank
The most arbitrary and distorted borders in the world are in Africa and the Middle East. Drawn by self-interested Europeans (who have had sufficient trouble defining their own frontiers), Africa’s borders continue to provoke the deaths of millions of local inhabitants. But the unjust borders in the Middle East — to borrow from Churchill — generate more trouble than can be consumed locally.
While the Middle East has far more problems than dysfunctional borders alone — from cultural stagnation through scandalous inequality to deadly religious extremism — the greatest taboo in striving to understand the region’s comprehensive failure isn’t Islam but the awful-but-sacrosanct international boundaries worshipped by our own diplomats.
Of course, no adjustment of borders, however draconian, could make every minority in the Middle East happy. In some instances, ethnic and religious groups live intermingled and have intermarried. Elsewhere, reunions based on blood or belief might not prove quite as joyous as their current proponents expect. The boundaries projected in the maps accompanying this article redress the wrongs suffered by the most significant “cheated” population groups, such as the Kurds, Baluch and Arab Shia, but still fail to account adequately for Middle Eastern Christians, Bahais, Ismailis, Naqshbandis and many another numerically lesser minorities. And one haunting wrong can never be redressed with a reward of territory: the genocide perpetrated against the Armenians by the dying Ottoman Empire.
Yet, for all the injustices the borders re-imagined here leave unaddressed, without such major boundary revisions, we shall never see a more peaceful Middle East.
Even those who abhor the topic of altering borders would be well-served to engage in an exercise that attempts to conceive a fairer, if still imperfect, amendment of national boundaries between the Bosporus and the Indus. Accepting that international statecraft has never developed effective tools — short of war — for readjusting faulty borders, a mental effort to grasp the Middle East’s “organic” frontiers nonetheless helps us understand the extent of the difficulties we face and will continue to face. We are dealing with colossal, man-made deformities that will not stop generating hatred and violence until they are corrected.
As for those who refuse to “think the unthinkable,” declaring that boundaries must not change and that’s that, it pays to remember that boundaries have never stopped changing through the centuries. Borders have never been static, and many frontiers, from Congo through Kosovo to the Caucasus, are changing even now (as ambassadors and special representatives avert their eyes to study the shine on their wingtips).
Oh, and one other dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history: Ethnic cleansing works.
Begin with the border issue most sensitive to American readers: For Israel to have any hope of living in reasonable peace with its neighbors, it will have to return to its pre-1967 borders — with essential local adjustments for legitimate security concerns. But the issue of the territories surrounding Jerusalem, a city stained with thousands of years of blood, may prove intractable beyond our lifetimes. Where all parties have turned their god into a real-estate tycoon, literal turf battles have a tenacity unrivaled by mere greed for oil wealth or ethnic squabbles. So let us set aside this single overstudied issue and turn to those that are studiously ignored.
The most glaring injustice in the notoriously unjust lands between the Balkan Mountains and the Himalayas is the absence of an independent Kurdish state. There are between 27 million and 36 million Kurds living in contiguous regions in the Middle East (the figures are imprecise because no state has ever allowed an honest census). Greater than the population of present-day Iraq, even the lower figure makes the Kurds the world’s largest ethnic group without a state of its own. Worse, Kurds have been oppressed by every government controlling the hills and mountains where they’ve lived since Xenophon’s day.
The U.S. and its coalition partners missed a glorious chance to begin to correct this injustice after Baghdad’s fall. A Frankenstein’s monster of a state sewn together from ill-fitting parts, Iraq should have been divided into three smaller states immediately. We failed from cowardice and lack of vision, bullying Iraq’s Kurds into supporting the new Iraqi government — which they do wistfully as a quid pro quo for our good will. But were a free plebiscite to be held, make no mistake: Nearly 100 percent of Iraq’s Kurds would vote for independence.
As would the long-suffering Kurds of Turkey, who have endured decades of violent military oppression and a decades-long demotion to “mountain Turks” in an effort to eradicate their identity. While the Kurdish plight at Ankara’s hands has eased somewhat over the past decade, the repression recently intensified again and the eastern fifth of Turkey should be viewed as occupied territory. As for the Kurds of Syria and Iran, they, too, would rush to join an independent Kurdistan if they could. The refusal by the world’s legitimate democracies to champion Kurdish independence is a human-rights sin of omission far worse than the clumsy, minor sins of commission that routinely excite our media. And by the way: A Free Kurdistan, stretching from Diyarbakir through Tabriz, would be the most pro-Western state between Bulgaria and Japan.
A just alignment in the region would leave Iraq’s three Sunni-majority provinces as a truncated state that might eventually choose to unify with a Syria that loses its littoral to a Mediterranean-oriented Greater Lebanon: Phoenecia reborn. The Shia south of old Iraq would form the basis of an Arab Shia State rimming much of the Persian Gulf. Jordan would retain its current territory, with some southward expansion at Saudi expense. For its part, the unnatural state of Saudi Arabia would suffer as great a dismantling as Pakistan.
A root cause of the broad stagnation in the Muslim world is the Saudi royal family’s treatment of Mecca and Medina as their fiefdom. With Islam’s holiest shrines under the police-state control of one of the world’s most bigoted and oppressive regimes — a regime that commands vast, unearned oil wealth — the Saudis have been able to project their Wahhabi vision of a disciplinarian, intolerant faith far beyond their borders. The rise of the Saudis to wealth and, consequently, influence has been the worst thing to happen to the Muslim world as a whole since the time of the Prophet, and the worst thing to happen to Arabs since the Ottoman (if not the Mongol) conquest.
While non-Muslims could not effect a change in the control of Islam’s holy cities, imagine how much healthier the Muslim world might become were Mecca and Medina ruled by a rotating council representative of the world’s major Muslim schools and movements in an Islamic Sacred State — a sort of Muslim super-Vatican — where the future of a great faith might be debated rather than merely decreed. True justice — which we might not like — would also give Saudi Arabia’s coastal oil fields to the Shia Arabs who populate that subregion, while a southeastern quadrant would go to Yemen. Confined to a rump Saudi Homelands Independent Territory around Riyadh, the House of Saud would be capable of far less mischief toward Islam and the world.
Iran, a state with madcap boundaries, would lose a great deal of territory to Unified Azerbaijan, Free Kurdistan, the Arab Shia State and Free Baluchistan, but would gain the provinces around Herat in today’s Afghanistan — a region with a historical and linguistic affinity for Persia. Iran would, in effect, become an ethnic Persian state again, with the most difficult question being whether or not it should keep the port of Bandar Abbas or surrender it to the Arab Shia State.
What Afghanistan would lose to Persia in the west, it would gain in the east, as Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier tribes would be reunited with their Afghan brethren (the point of this exercise is not to draw maps as we would like them but as local populations would prefer them). Pakistan, another unnatural state, would also lose its Baluch territory to Free Baluchistan. The remaining “natural” Pakistan would lie entirely east of the Indus, except for a westward spur near Karachi.
The city-states of the United Arab Emirates would have a mixed fate — as they probably will in reality. Some might be incorporated in the Arab Shia State ringing much of the Persian Gulf (a state more likely to evolve as a counterbalance to, rather than an ally of, Persian Iran). Since all puritanical cultures are hypocritical, Dubai, of necessity, would be allowed to retain its playground status for rich debauchees. Kuwait would remain within its current borders, as would Oman.
In each case, this hypothetical redrawing of boundaries reflects ethnic affinities and religious communalism — in some cases, both. Of course, if we could wave a magic wand and amend the borders under discussion, we would certainly prefer to do so selectively. Yet, studying the revised map, in contrast to the map illustrating today’s boundaries, offers some sense of the great wrongs borders drawn by Frenchmen and Englishmen in the 20th century did to a region struggling to emerge from the humiliations and defeats of the 19th century.
Correcting borders to reflect the will of the people may be impossible. For now. But given time — and the inevitable attendant bloodshed — new and natural borders will emerge. Babylon has fallen more than once.
Meanwhile, our men and women in uniform will continue to fight for security from terrorism, for the prospect of democracy and for access to oil supplies in a region that is destined to fight itself. The current human divisions and forced unions between Ankara and Karachi, taken together with the region’s self-inflicted woes, form as perfect a breeding ground for religious extremism, a culture of blame and the recruitment of terrorists as anyone could design. Where men and women look ruefully at their borders, they look enthusiastically for enemies.
From the world’s oversupply of terrorists to its paucity of energy supplies, the current deformations of the Middle East promise a worsening, not an improving, situation. In a region where only the worst aspects of nationalism ever took hold and where the most debased aspects of religion threaten to dominate a disappointed faith, the U.S., its allies and, above all, our armed forces can look for crises without end. While Iraq may provide a counterexample of hope — if we do not quit its soil prematurely — the rest of this vast region offers worsening problems on almost every front.
If the borders of the greater Middle East cannot be amended to reflect the natural ties of blood and faith, we may take it as an article of faith that a portion of the bloodshed in the region will continue to be our own.
• • •
WHO WINS, WHO LOSES
Winners —
Afghanistan
Arab Shia State
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Free Baluchistan
Free Kurdistan
Iran
Islamic Sacred State
Jordan
Lebanon
Yemen
•
Losers —
Afghanistan
Iran
Iraq
Israel
Kuwait
Pakistan
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
Syria
Turkey
United Arab Emirates
West Bank
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Cutting off Chain of Hate
Cutting off the chain of hate
Mihir Shah
Martin Luther King's profound inversion of Nietzsche's critique of Christianity is a beacon of light for all those who still dream of making a change in
the world.
If injustice is a large fact of the world we live in, so is hate. And there is no surprise here. For, the very intensity of injustice provokes anger. Which
fuels hate. Capitalism has created unimaginable material prosperity for millions. But hunger and distress remain widespread. The early years of the 21st
century have seen hungry people rioting in 37 countries. Eighty per cent of the world's population still lives below the international poverty line. The
World Ba nk speaks of an almost unnoticed "silent famine" enveloping large parts of the globe.
Adding hurt to this absolute distress are widening disparities. A recent World Bank study reveals that between 1820 and 1992, the income share of the bottom
60 per cent of the world's population halved to around 10 per cent, while the share of the top 10 per cent rose to more than 50 per cent. A United Nations
report covering the period 1950-1998, also reveals growing inequalities within nations. These inequalities revolve around multiple axes of class, community,
region, religion and gender. Religion has emerged as a central axis of conflict. Violence as a response to perceived injustice is on the rise, reflecting
in part the failure of democracies to function effectively across the world.
The fruits of India's own development have been shared very unequally, especially in certain geographies (Adivasi enclaves, drylands, hills) and with specific
social groups (Dalits, Muslims). India witnessed the fastest growth of high networth individuals worldwide in 2007. In the "other India," across 200 districts,
lakhs of people are either committing suicide or taking to the gun.
Martin Luther King suggests a different response to injustice — the path of love. But the love he spoke of was no ordinary love. In an essay written in
1957, King elaborated the very different meanings of three words for love in the Greek New Testament. Eros, in Platonic philosophy, means the yearning
of the soul for the realm of the divine. It has come now to mean a sort of aesthetic or romantic love. Philia signifies the intimate love between friends,
a reciprocal love, where we love because we are loved. But the love King advocates is best expressed in the Greek word agape. Agape implies understanding.
It intimates a "creative, redeeming goodwill for all, an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. Agape is not a weak, passive love. It is love
in action." Thus explained, agape comes very close to the ideal of lokasangraham — action motivated ultimately by the holding together of the peoples of
the world — the climax of the enunciation of karma yoga in Chapter 3 of the Bhagavad Gita.
Through a profound inversion of Nietzsche's critique of Christianity, King provides a reconceptualisation of the relationship between power and love. Nietzsche
sought to determine the conditions of a new affirmation of life by overcoming what he regarded as the nihilistic despair produced by Christian values.
King interrogates the very terms of this problematique by providing a radical restatement of his own spiritual tradition. He questions the legacy of viewing
love and power as polar opposites, where love appears as a rescinding of power, and power as a rejection of love. This again is similar to the case against
sanyaas (abdication of action) in the Bhagavad Gita. King argues that "power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental
and anaemic." And this new understanding of power helps King positively formulate the unbreakable bond between love and justice: "power at its best is
love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love."
Love must necessarily take on the larger structures of injustice that stand in its way. This love includes but goes well beyond isolated acts of kindness.
At the same time, because love is our weapon, we do not seek to defeat anyone and must try not to end up humiliating those positioned against us. For the
struggle is not against persons, it is for transformation of the opponent's view and the system of oppression. And even more for the self-renewal of those
who work for change. As King says, "to retaliate with hate and bitterness would do nothing but intensify the hate in the world. Along the way of life,
someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can be done only by projecting the ethics of love to the centre of
our lives."
Such an organic link between inner transformation of the individual and larger social change is invariably missing in our politics. But there is more. In
our pursuit of structural change we cannot overlook the immediacy and enormity of suffering. Sadly, this has been the record of many movements for justice.
The millennial quest, based on various teleological certainties of the dynamic of History (with a capital H), has often led to people being treated as
cannon fodder. The finiteness of their life-times appears to have little import for leaders who ineluctably belong to classes quite distinct from those
who suffer injustice. As a result, the desperation for finding tangible solutions appears much less evident in leaders than for the masses they lead.
We are confronted with a paradox. Narrow preoccupation with daily issues results, for example, in the sterile "economism" of the working class. But the
quest for millennial goals of a distant Shangri-la means a striking lack of concern for real-time solutions and an unyielding "protest for the sake of
protest." The former reflects a complete absence of broader vision, the latter a cruel neglect of immediate anguish. The challenge of creative politics
is to strike an imaginative balance between the two, without disadvantaging either.
We must stop viewing conflict as an arena of our victory over the "other." It is better regarded as a problem in search of a solution. A conflict needs
not so much a victory, as a resolution. Indeed, a "defeat" that moves society forward on the moral landscape, that empowers the disadvantaged and sensitises
those in power, deepening democracy in the process, could even be preferred to a "victory" that fails to achieve any of these.
A key to moving forward in this direction is to give up the antediluvian unitary and insurrectionist conception of Revolution (with a capital R). The unique
appeal of "scientific socialism" was its claim to have discovered the "laws of motion of society" that predicted the inexorable coming of a new dawn. This
teleology has ended up becoming the chief weakness of Marxism. If change is visualised in these terms, means-ends questions will be run roughshod over
and horrors of the Stalinist kind will continue to be perpetrated. Indeed, it would appear that without fana or annihilation of the ego as expounded in
Sufi theosophy, without an outpouring of agape love that Martin Luther King evoked, movement towards a more just social order will remain a delusion.
Spiritual standpoint
Such a spiritual standpoint finds strong support in recent advances in Neuroscience and Economics, both of which have traditionally been bastions of selfishness
as the central motive of human behaviour. Neurobiologists like Donald Pfaff marshal a new understanding of genes, neuronal activity and brain circuitry
to explain our concern for the other. The path-breaking work of economists like Samuel Bowles questions standard textbook assumptions of the selfish homo
economicus and emphasises the role of altruism in the very survival of humankind in the difficult years ahead.
A one-track, single-event notion of revolution must also be discarded because it leads to complete neglect of crucial nitty-gritty detail that forms the
heart of the transformation we dream of. It is this dry spadework that also contains solutions to immediate distress. Running mid-day meals in schools
under active supervision of mothers, local people managing sanitation and drinking water systems, social audits in vibrant gram sabhas, participatory planning
for watershed works, women leading federations of self-help thrift groups and workers running industrially safe, non-polluting factories as participant
shareholders — all these and many more are the immediate, unfinished, feasible tasks of an ongoing struggle for change.
Unfortunately, activists typically push these questions into a hazy future, to be all answered after the revolution, so to speak. One of the greatest weaknesses
of the socialist project in the 20th century was its failure to flesh out the details of possible alternatives to a capitalist society. These are difficult
questions that necessitate intricate answers. And we need to begin looking for these here and now, in the living laboratories of learning of our farms
and factories, villages and slums. Not in some imaginary distant future after a fictitious insurrection. Why do we forget that this love in action for
justice constitutes a large part of the change that we must still dare to dream of?
(The writer is a social activist living and working for the last two decades with the Adivasis of central India.)
Monday, October 13, 2008
The dangers of Tamil chauvinism
The dangers of Tamil chauvinism
Malini Parthasarathy
The latest campaign in Tamil Nadu masterminded by a desperate LTTE must not be allowed to undermine the sound policy decision upheld by successive Indian
governments since 1991 to stay out of Sri Lanka’s internal affairs.
Time appears to have stood still for most Tamil Nadu’s politicians who seem completely insulated from the complex ground realities that mark India’s new
political landscape. India’s political establishment and civil society are anxiously grappling with the enormity of the horrific new threat to Indian society
— terrorism — fast becoming an everyday reality on the streets. But oddly enough, seemingly oblivious of the contradiction, political parties in Tamil
Nadu, led by the MDMK and the PMK, have recently plunged into high-pitched activity aimed at garnering support for the LTTE, a deadly terrorist organisation.
These parties have launched a campaign in the State ostensibly to express solidarity with the Sri Lankan Tamils trapped in the war zone in northern Sri
Lanka but the timing of this campaign which appears to have materialised overnight, is a dead giveaway. The Sri Lankan army, just two kilometres away from
the LTTE’s administrative capital, Kilinochchi, has successfully encircled the Tigers and their leader who are virtually trapped in their bunkers. For
the first time in years, the Sri Lankan government appears to be on the brink of a major success in its battle with terrorism. There is now the very real
prospect of the capture of the elusive LTTE chief, Velupillai Prabakaran, who is behind the assassination of a former Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi.
Tamil Nadu’s politicians clearly have different standards for India and for Sri Lanka. It would appear that they accept that battling terrorism in India
and saving Kashmir from Islamist jihadis are important national tasks but not so in Sri Lanka which has been menaced for more than two decades by the LTTE.
It was the LTTE which pioneered terrorism in South Asia and produced two generations of suicide bombers who have claimed numerous high-profile victims.
For far too long have the legitimate aspirations of the Sri Lankan Tamils been held hostage to the hegemonic ambitions of the LTTE chief Prabakaran who
has consistently sabotaged all attempts to find political solutions to the ethnic conflict.
When Pakistani generals and Islamist militants characterise the separatist uprising in Kashmir as a “freedom struggle,” the collective Indian national consciousness
is understandably outraged. Politicians in India are rarely exercised over concerns that the human rights of innocent citizens are often trampled upon
in police action against terrorists or their perceived accomplices. There is indeed a broad-based political consensus behind the Indian state when it takes
strong steps to root out terrorism.
It is therefore all the more incongruous that the political parties in Tamil Nadu, including the ruling DMK and its principal challenger the AIADMK have
decided to work themselves into a frenzy over the alleged violation of the “human rights” of the Sri Lankan Tamils in the context of the military action
against the LTTE. Evidently, the game plan of the LTTE and its supporters is to rally Tamil chauvinist sentiment and translate that into pressure on New
Delhi to signal its disapproval to Colombo, thereby weakening its moral authority in the eyes of the Sri Lankan Tamil community.
There is a strong sense of déjÀ vu, listening to the rhetoric and speeches of leaders in Tamil Nadu, whose understanding of the Sri Lankan political situation
is mired in a time-warp, their images of the ethnic conflict drawing primarily from scenes of two decades ago, particularly the flashpoint of 1983, when
the Wellikada prison massacre highlighted dramatically the plight of the Sri Lankan Tamil community and brought thousands of refugees to Indian shores.
But after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the Indian national psyche recoiled from a continued engagement with the Sri Lankan ethnic crisis.
Since the 1990s, New Delhi’s policy has been to acknowledge the terrorist character of the LTTE and the imperative of a military confrontation with that
organisation, while continuing to offer moral encouragement to Colombo to find a political solution that would provide a framework to empower the Tamil
community. Meanwhile, India made clear its utter repugnance for the LTTE by banning it not just because it was involved in the murder of Rajiv Gandhi but
because it viewed the LTTE as a terrorist movement that would continuously strive to stimulate the secessionist sentiment in Tamil Nadu as long as Sri
Lanka continued to have ethnic strife.
The situation in Sri Lanka itself has undergone profound changes since the 1980s, when it was easier to conceptualise purely political solutions and rule
out military responses to the violent dimensions of the conflict. At that point in time, it was indeed possible to sideline the militant groups of Sri
Lankan Tamil politics by engaging the political interlocutors in the Tamil community such as the urbane leaders of the TULF, notably Appapillai Amirthalingam,
who recognised the key to political empowerment lay in the democratic process. But with the ruthless elimination of every credible interlocutor in the
Tamil community by the LTTE which insisted that it was the sole representative of the Sri Lankan Tamils, the space for a political solution has narrowed
over the years, rendering null and void the several exercises seeking a devolution of power to the Tamil community.
Yet the Thirteenth Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution which was a consequence of the Indo-Sri Lankan Agreement of 1987, envisaging devolution of power
to provincial councils has become a touchstone for the resolution of the ethnic conflict. The Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, has made it clear
that he remains committed to a political solution of this sort. In a meeting with the All Party Representative Conference (APRC) last Saturday, Mr. Rajapaksa
emphasised that it was the duty of the Sri Lankan state “to ensure to the Tamil people of the North the same democratic rights as enjoyed by the people
in all parts of the country.” He also took care to explain that the military action against the LTTE was against terrorism and not against the Tamil community.
The Sri Lankan President has acquired unprecedented political space for his military campaign against the LTTE. Several factors including the rebellion
of the powerful LTTE commander Karuna and the fact that there is now in place an elected provincial council in the Eastern Province have rendered irrelevant
many of the points in the earlier Sri Lankan Tamil political platform. That there is a credible and workable political solution now in sight has made it
easier for Colombo to launch military operations against the LTTE. It is indeed the sovereign right of Sri Lanka as it is of India to eliminate any terrorist
organisation that poses a fundamental threat to its survival as a nation.
The parties in Tamil Nadu which have strong ties to the LTTE such as the MDMK and the PMK are in the forefront of this new campaign which has sprung to
life overnight after decades of silence. Their rhetoric is dated and wearily familiar. The MDMK’s Vaiko, brimming with moral indignation, has lashed out
at the Centre for allegedly sending military assistance to Sri Lanka which was “unleashing a genocidal attack on the Tamil race”. Likewise the PMK’s leader
S. Ramadoss has alleged that “the situation on the island threatens to eliminate the entire Tamil race”.
That the LTTE’s shadow lurks behind this new campaign is evident in the demand of Dr. Ramadoss that the Union government recognise the “Eelam Tamils struggle
for their rights.” There is also an implied acceptance of the LTTE’s claim to be the only authentic representative of the Sri Lankan Tamils in the declaration
of Dr. Ramadoss that the LTTE is “acting as a fortress for ethnic Tamils.”
As the LTTE has presumably calculated, this binge of competitive chauvinism has compelled Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi to up the ante on this issue, adding
for good measure, his own dramatic assertion that unless the Centre cooperates in stopping the attacks on the Sri Lankan Tamils, not only would the Sri
Lankan Tamils perish but so also would the “Tamils in Tamil Nadu.” The strategic design behind the campaign to “express solidarity” with the Sri Lankan
Tamils that is now under way in Tamil Nadu should not be underestimated.
For the last decade or so, New Delhi has successfully resisted the various attempts made by the LTTE and its supporters in Tamil Nadu to force it to intervene
in the Sri Lankan ethnic crisis. If New Delhi were to express its disapproval, even implicitly, of Sri Lanka’s sovereign right to recapture its own national
territory from the LTTE, it would weaken the moral authority of India’s own actions in regard to its struggle against terrorism and the separatist agitation
in Kashmir. This latest campaign in Tamil Nadu masterminded by a desperate LTTE must not be allowed to undermine the sound policy decision upheld by successive
Indian governments since 1991 to stay out of Sri Lanka’s internal affairs.
Malini Parthasarathy
The latest campaign in Tamil Nadu masterminded by a desperate LTTE must not be allowed to undermine the sound policy decision upheld by successive Indian
governments since 1991 to stay out of Sri Lanka’s internal affairs.
Time appears to have stood still for most Tamil Nadu’s politicians who seem completely insulated from the complex ground realities that mark India’s new
political landscape. India’s political establishment and civil society are anxiously grappling with the enormity of the horrific new threat to Indian society
— terrorism — fast becoming an everyday reality on the streets. But oddly enough, seemingly oblivious of the contradiction, political parties in Tamil
Nadu, led by the MDMK and the PMK, have recently plunged into high-pitched activity aimed at garnering support for the LTTE, a deadly terrorist organisation.
These parties have launched a campaign in the State ostensibly to express solidarity with the Sri Lankan Tamils trapped in the war zone in northern Sri
Lanka but the timing of this campaign which appears to have materialised overnight, is a dead giveaway. The Sri Lankan army, just two kilometres away from
the LTTE’s administrative capital, Kilinochchi, has successfully encircled the Tigers and their leader who are virtually trapped in their bunkers. For
the first time in years, the Sri Lankan government appears to be on the brink of a major success in its battle with terrorism. There is now the very real
prospect of the capture of the elusive LTTE chief, Velupillai Prabakaran, who is behind the assassination of a former Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi.
Tamil Nadu’s politicians clearly have different standards for India and for Sri Lanka. It would appear that they accept that battling terrorism in India
and saving Kashmir from Islamist jihadis are important national tasks but not so in Sri Lanka which has been menaced for more than two decades by the LTTE.
It was the LTTE which pioneered terrorism in South Asia and produced two generations of suicide bombers who have claimed numerous high-profile victims.
For far too long have the legitimate aspirations of the Sri Lankan Tamils been held hostage to the hegemonic ambitions of the LTTE chief Prabakaran who
has consistently sabotaged all attempts to find political solutions to the ethnic conflict.
When Pakistani generals and Islamist militants characterise the separatist uprising in Kashmir as a “freedom struggle,” the collective Indian national consciousness
is understandably outraged. Politicians in India are rarely exercised over concerns that the human rights of innocent citizens are often trampled upon
in police action against terrorists or their perceived accomplices. There is indeed a broad-based political consensus behind the Indian state when it takes
strong steps to root out terrorism.
It is therefore all the more incongruous that the political parties in Tamil Nadu, including the ruling DMK and its principal challenger the AIADMK have
decided to work themselves into a frenzy over the alleged violation of the “human rights” of the Sri Lankan Tamils in the context of the military action
against the LTTE. Evidently, the game plan of the LTTE and its supporters is to rally Tamil chauvinist sentiment and translate that into pressure on New
Delhi to signal its disapproval to Colombo, thereby weakening its moral authority in the eyes of the Sri Lankan Tamil community.
There is a strong sense of déjÀ vu, listening to the rhetoric and speeches of leaders in Tamil Nadu, whose understanding of the Sri Lankan political situation
is mired in a time-warp, their images of the ethnic conflict drawing primarily from scenes of two decades ago, particularly the flashpoint of 1983, when
the Wellikada prison massacre highlighted dramatically the plight of the Sri Lankan Tamil community and brought thousands of refugees to Indian shores.
But after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the Indian national psyche recoiled from a continued engagement with the Sri Lankan ethnic crisis.
Since the 1990s, New Delhi’s policy has been to acknowledge the terrorist character of the LTTE and the imperative of a military confrontation with that
organisation, while continuing to offer moral encouragement to Colombo to find a political solution that would provide a framework to empower the Tamil
community. Meanwhile, India made clear its utter repugnance for the LTTE by banning it not just because it was involved in the murder of Rajiv Gandhi but
because it viewed the LTTE as a terrorist movement that would continuously strive to stimulate the secessionist sentiment in Tamil Nadu as long as Sri
Lanka continued to have ethnic strife.
The situation in Sri Lanka itself has undergone profound changes since the 1980s, when it was easier to conceptualise purely political solutions and rule
out military responses to the violent dimensions of the conflict. At that point in time, it was indeed possible to sideline the militant groups of Sri
Lankan Tamil politics by engaging the political interlocutors in the Tamil community such as the urbane leaders of the TULF, notably Appapillai Amirthalingam,
who recognised the key to political empowerment lay in the democratic process. But with the ruthless elimination of every credible interlocutor in the
Tamil community by the LTTE which insisted that it was the sole representative of the Sri Lankan Tamils, the space for a political solution has narrowed
over the years, rendering null and void the several exercises seeking a devolution of power to the Tamil community.
Yet the Thirteenth Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution which was a consequence of the Indo-Sri Lankan Agreement of 1987, envisaging devolution of power
to provincial councils has become a touchstone for the resolution of the ethnic conflict. The Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, has made it clear
that he remains committed to a political solution of this sort. In a meeting with the All Party Representative Conference (APRC) last Saturday, Mr. Rajapaksa
emphasised that it was the duty of the Sri Lankan state “to ensure to the Tamil people of the North the same democratic rights as enjoyed by the people
in all parts of the country.” He also took care to explain that the military action against the LTTE was against terrorism and not against the Tamil community.
The Sri Lankan President has acquired unprecedented political space for his military campaign against the LTTE. Several factors including the rebellion
of the powerful LTTE commander Karuna and the fact that there is now in place an elected provincial council in the Eastern Province have rendered irrelevant
many of the points in the earlier Sri Lankan Tamil political platform. That there is a credible and workable political solution now in sight has made it
easier for Colombo to launch military operations against the LTTE. It is indeed the sovereign right of Sri Lanka as it is of India to eliminate any terrorist
organisation that poses a fundamental threat to its survival as a nation.
The parties in Tamil Nadu which have strong ties to the LTTE such as the MDMK and the PMK are in the forefront of this new campaign which has sprung to
life overnight after decades of silence. Their rhetoric is dated and wearily familiar. The MDMK’s Vaiko, brimming with moral indignation, has lashed out
at the Centre for allegedly sending military assistance to Sri Lanka which was “unleashing a genocidal attack on the Tamil race”. Likewise the PMK’s leader
S. Ramadoss has alleged that “the situation on the island threatens to eliminate the entire Tamil race”.
That the LTTE’s shadow lurks behind this new campaign is evident in the demand of Dr. Ramadoss that the Union government recognise the “Eelam Tamils struggle
for their rights.” There is also an implied acceptance of the LTTE’s claim to be the only authentic representative of the Sri Lankan Tamils in the declaration
of Dr. Ramadoss that the LTTE is “acting as a fortress for ethnic Tamils.”
As the LTTE has presumably calculated, this binge of competitive chauvinism has compelled Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi to up the ante on this issue, adding
for good measure, his own dramatic assertion that unless the Centre cooperates in stopping the attacks on the Sri Lankan Tamils, not only would the Sri
Lankan Tamils perish but so also would the “Tamils in Tamil Nadu.” The strategic design behind the campaign to “express solidarity” with the Sri Lankan
Tamils that is now under way in Tamil Nadu should not be underestimated.
For the last decade or so, New Delhi has successfully resisted the various attempts made by the LTTE and its supporters in Tamil Nadu to force it to intervene
in the Sri Lankan ethnic crisis. If New Delhi were to express its disapproval, even implicitly, of Sri Lanka’s sovereign right to recapture its own national
territory from the LTTE, it would weaken the moral authority of India’s own actions in regard to its struggle against terrorism and the separatist agitation
in Kashmir. This latest campaign in Tamil Nadu masterminded by a desperate LTTE must not be allowed to undermine the sound policy decision upheld by successive
Indian governments since 1991 to stay out of Sri Lanka’s internal affairs.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
From a Big Boost for Obama to a Sharp Blow. By JEFF ZELENY; Carl Hulse contributed reporting from Washington.. NASHUA, N.H..
On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, Senator Barack Obama delivered a message to supporters: 'Do not take this race for granted. I know we had a nice boost over the last couple of days, but elections are a funny business.
It was a prescient warning.
Mr. Obama, who arrived here five days ago after a commanding triumph in the Iowa caucuses, had planned to leave New Hampshire on a similar high. But a defeat by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton here on Tuesday evening startled Mr. Obama and ensured that the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination remained fully engaged.
We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change,' Mr. Obama said, speaking at a rally of crestfallen supporters. We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics that will only grow louder and more dissonant in the days and weeks to come.
For the last five days here, Mr. Obama made one appeal above all to the legions of voters who turned out at rallies from dawn to dusk to see him: Prove that Iowa was not a fluke. He made that pitch again and again to audiences, which spilled from gymnasiums into side rooms and from opera houses onto snow-covered sidewalks, a tableau of young and old pressed closely together as they cheered his historic candidacy.
In the end, though, it was another historic candidacy -- that of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton -- that appealed to more voters in New Hampshire, particularly women who broke with Mr. Obama in significant numbers in the closing hours of an accelerated campaign here.
Mr. Obama was counting on a New Hampshire victory to serve as a permission slip for Democratic leaders across the country to step forward to support his candidacy. He was hoping to trade the title of insurgent candidate for the perilous crown of front-runner. But the race is now a draw between the two rivals -- with John Edwards of North Carolina, who came in a distant third, vowing to continue -- and a furious scramble lies ahead.
With a confidence buoyed by a series of polls that consistently showed Mr. Obama leading Mrs. Clinton by as many as 10 percentage points, the Obama campaign was shaken by the loss as the final ballots were tabulated from a primary election held on a glorious springlike day where a record number of Democrats turned out.
If Mr. Obama had hoped to leave New Hampshire as a soaring victor, on his way to seizing the air of inevitability that had belonged for months to Mrs. Clinton, his narrow loss underscored the challenges that lie ahead for turning a political movement into an electoral success. As he addressed his supporters in a gymnasium at Nashua High School on Tuesday evening, he showed no signs of relinquishing his fight.
When we've been told we're not ready or we shouldn't try or we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people,' Mr. Obama said. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Throughout the evening, the confidence of Mr. Obama's campaign gradually fell as returns poured in from across the state, which never put him over Mrs. Clinton. Aides said they believe that women rallied behind Mrs. Clinton in the final hours of the race, when news coverage was dominated by accounts of her nearly breaking into tears as she answered a voter's question.
With Mr. Obama winning in Iowa and Mrs. Clinton winning in New Hampshire, a fresh dose of uncertainty was injected into the race as it moves to Nevada and South Carolina before contests in 22 states take place on Feb. 5. Mr. Obama was still hoping to win a crucial union endorsement in Nevada, where he dispatched his top aides from Iowa to organize the state.
Since Mr. Obama's victory in Iowa, the volume of calls and inquiries into his campaign had more than doubled, with financial contributors, policy supporters and volunteers eager to join the campaign. He is flying on Wednesday to New York, in the heart of Mrs. Clinton's territory, to hold a fund-raiser and to stage a campaign rally in New Jersey. Both states are among those with contests on Feb. 5.
I am still fired up and ready to go,' Mr. Obama said. First of all, I want to congratulate Senator Clinton on a hard-fought victory here in New Hampshire. She did an outstanding job.
Those words seemed to be the only kind ones spoken between the two on Tuesday evening. In the final days of the race, Mrs. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton raised sharp questions about the viability of Mr. Obama's candidacy, and Democrats were bracing for a combative race to come, with two well-financed campaigns and a series of primaries and caucuses ahead.
A victory for Mr. Obama, which even most of Mrs. Clinton's advisers were predicting, would have opened the door for many Democratic leaders to coalesce around his candidacy.
As supporters filed out of the rally on Tuesday evening, Mr. Obama's advisers declined to discuss the election results. They said they were moving on to the races ahead.
But Mr. Obama's words from a rally on Monday, perhaps, provided the best explanation.
It is very important for us all to be clear,' Mr. Obama said, 'that we have not won anything yet.
It was a prescient warning.
Mr. Obama, who arrived here five days ago after a commanding triumph in the Iowa caucuses, had planned to leave New Hampshire on a similar high. But a defeat by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton here on Tuesday evening startled Mr. Obama and ensured that the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination remained fully engaged.
We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change,' Mr. Obama said, speaking at a rally of crestfallen supporters. We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics that will only grow louder and more dissonant in the days and weeks to come.
For the last five days here, Mr. Obama made one appeal above all to the legions of voters who turned out at rallies from dawn to dusk to see him: Prove that Iowa was not a fluke. He made that pitch again and again to audiences, which spilled from gymnasiums into side rooms and from opera houses onto snow-covered sidewalks, a tableau of young and old pressed closely together as they cheered his historic candidacy.
In the end, though, it was another historic candidacy -- that of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton -- that appealed to more voters in New Hampshire, particularly women who broke with Mr. Obama in significant numbers in the closing hours of an accelerated campaign here.
Mr. Obama was counting on a New Hampshire victory to serve as a permission slip for Democratic leaders across the country to step forward to support his candidacy. He was hoping to trade the title of insurgent candidate for the perilous crown of front-runner. But the race is now a draw between the two rivals -- with John Edwards of North Carolina, who came in a distant third, vowing to continue -- and a furious scramble lies ahead.
With a confidence buoyed by a series of polls that consistently showed Mr. Obama leading Mrs. Clinton by as many as 10 percentage points, the Obama campaign was shaken by the loss as the final ballots were tabulated from a primary election held on a glorious springlike day where a record number of Democrats turned out.
If Mr. Obama had hoped to leave New Hampshire as a soaring victor, on his way to seizing the air of inevitability that had belonged for months to Mrs. Clinton, his narrow loss underscored the challenges that lie ahead for turning a political movement into an electoral success. As he addressed his supporters in a gymnasium at Nashua High School on Tuesday evening, he showed no signs of relinquishing his fight.
When we've been told we're not ready or we shouldn't try or we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people,' Mr. Obama said. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Throughout the evening, the confidence of Mr. Obama's campaign gradually fell as returns poured in from across the state, which never put him over Mrs. Clinton. Aides said they believe that women rallied behind Mrs. Clinton in the final hours of the race, when news coverage was dominated by accounts of her nearly breaking into tears as she answered a voter's question.
With Mr. Obama winning in Iowa and Mrs. Clinton winning in New Hampshire, a fresh dose of uncertainty was injected into the race as it moves to Nevada and South Carolina before contests in 22 states take place on Feb. 5. Mr. Obama was still hoping to win a crucial union endorsement in Nevada, where he dispatched his top aides from Iowa to organize the state.
Since Mr. Obama's victory in Iowa, the volume of calls and inquiries into his campaign had more than doubled, with financial contributors, policy supporters and volunteers eager to join the campaign. He is flying on Wednesday to New York, in the heart of Mrs. Clinton's territory, to hold a fund-raiser and to stage a campaign rally in New Jersey. Both states are among those with contests on Feb. 5.
I am still fired up and ready to go,' Mr. Obama said. First of all, I want to congratulate Senator Clinton on a hard-fought victory here in New Hampshire. She did an outstanding job.
Those words seemed to be the only kind ones spoken between the two on Tuesday evening. In the final days of the race, Mrs. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton raised sharp questions about the viability of Mr. Obama's candidacy, and Democrats were bracing for a combative race to come, with two well-financed campaigns and a series of primaries and caucuses ahead.
A victory for Mr. Obama, which even most of Mrs. Clinton's advisers were predicting, would have opened the door for many Democratic leaders to coalesce around his candidacy.
As supporters filed out of the rally on Tuesday evening, Mr. Obama's advisers declined to discuss the election results. They said they were moving on to the races ahead.
But Mr. Obama's words from a rally on Monday, perhaps, provided the best explanation.
It is very important for us all to be clear,' Mr. Obama said, 'that we have not won anything yet.
Retooled Campaign and Loyal Voters Add Up. By MICHAEL POWELL. MANCHESTER, N.H.. The Clintons rarely make the same mistake twice.
In Iowa, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton stood defeated and surrounded herself with graying politicians and Clinton administration veterans, including former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and a former presidential buddy, Terry McAuliffe.
But at the cavernous gymnasium where Mrs. Clinton claimed victory on Tuesday night, the scene was a do-over, a chance to show a re-energized campaign.
Aides carefully packed the aluminum stands with children, teenagers and young adults, along with just the faintest sprinkling of elders. Hardly a veteran politician was to be seen.
She waded through the crowd and climbed a small stage where she stood alone -- President Bill Clinton and their daughter, Chelsea, were seated nearby -- and laid out her new campaign message. It said she had found words that were true to herself and that she would use that to represent the voiceless.
Over the last week, I listened to you and, in the process, found my own voice,' she said.
We came back tonight because we spoke loudly and clearly,' Mrs. Clinton said. So tomorrow we are going to get up, roll up our sleeves and get going.
The Democratic campaign has been all about rhetorical borrowings on all sides, and Mrs. Clinton sounded lines echoing those of Senator Barack Obama and John Edwards.
Her teary eyes on Monday in Portsmouth added to the power of her new narrative, as aides told it. As the television networks sounded her victory, Mr. McAuliffe, former head of the Democratic National Committee, declared that moment a signal of Mrs. Clinton's lifelong passions.
The victory fires new life into her campaign and leaves the Democratic Party with the tightest of horse races. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll showed her and Mr. Obama neck and neck nationally.
For supporters waiting in the gymnasium at Southern New Hampshire University here, it was a night of flipping stomachs and sweaty palms.
God, God, God,' said Nick Draws, a college student who stared at the vast television screens when 2,000 votes separated the candidates at 9 p.m. 'This is painful.
A few days ago, a moment so tense seemed unlikely. Mr. Obama came out of the Midwest at a gallop after winning the Iowa caucuses with a swath of the youth vote. His rallies here had a festive feel, and the moment seemed dim for Mrs. Clinton.
The unexpected closeness of the vote also suggested the depth of support for Mrs. Clinton, particularly among older and working-class voters. At her headquarters at the university here, many supporters spoke of rooting for one Clinton or another for a decade and a half.
I haven't stopped rooting for her a very long time,' Mary Maggette of Nashua said. I wasn't going to leave her in a time of trouble.
Caroline Florom, 38; her husband, Vaughn Tamzarian, 48; and their five children -- the youngest in a double-wide stroller -- arrived next, after voting.
The most dramatic moment of their day was at 8 a.m., when they decided whom they were going to vote for.
We went to hear both of them speak this weekend, and we stayed up until 3 a.m. last night listening to their speeches again on C-Span,' Ms. Florom said of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama. We like them both.
But in the end, she was the one bringing up the real issues about the middle class like college loans. His speeches felt like pep rallies.
She added that the couple had let their older boys help decide and that all chose Mrs. Clinton.
The strain of the primary slog was clearly visible lately. Mrs. Clinton struggled to find a way to counterpunch at her younger rival, who has acquired rock-star status with his followers, without being seen as too negative.
It is a measure of the Obama wave that several of Mrs. Clinton's supporters said Tuesday that they had nearly faltered. In Concord, Mark Anderson waved a 'Hillary' sign as Mrs. Clinton shook hands outside a school. Mr. Anderson said he could have been waving an Obama sign.
I have gone back and forth almost every day,' he said. I would feel very comfortable with either candidate.
Mrs. Clinton kept moving, trying to break through the invisible wall that sometimes seems to separate this private woman from her supporters. She began giving voters long hugs -- startling some -- and discussing carefully her feelings.
When she grew teary-eyed, television played the moment as a faux pas. But in New Hampshire, some supporters say they saw those tears and softened. In the gym here, backers said they saw in her teary eyes a reason to embrace this sometimes formal candidate.
I was moved,' said Barbara Arning, a retired teacher from Milford. I thought it was very sincere. She was in control and speaking with emotion. That's fine with me.
Some people said that Mrs. Clinton is what she is and that she had campaigned in the earnest, non-electric, fashion that is faithful to her persona.
I don't know where the negativity comes from,' Jim Neilsen, a retired sociology professor, said as he waved a small flag. This is the place where the real candidates get their act together.
But at the cavernous gymnasium where Mrs. Clinton claimed victory on Tuesday night, the scene was a do-over, a chance to show a re-energized campaign.
Aides carefully packed the aluminum stands with children, teenagers and young adults, along with just the faintest sprinkling of elders. Hardly a veteran politician was to be seen.
She waded through the crowd and climbed a small stage where she stood alone -- President Bill Clinton and their daughter, Chelsea, were seated nearby -- and laid out her new campaign message. It said she had found words that were true to herself and that she would use that to represent the voiceless.
Over the last week, I listened to you and, in the process, found my own voice,' she said.
We came back tonight because we spoke loudly and clearly,' Mrs. Clinton said. So tomorrow we are going to get up, roll up our sleeves and get going.
The Democratic campaign has been all about rhetorical borrowings on all sides, and Mrs. Clinton sounded lines echoing those of Senator Barack Obama and John Edwards.
Her teary eyes on Monday in Portsmouth added to the power of her new narrative, as aides told it. As the television networks sounded her victory, Mr. McAuliffe, former head of the Democratic National Committee, declared that moment a signal of Mrs. Clinton's lifelong passions.
The victory fires new life into her campaign and leaves the Democratic Party with the tightest of horse races. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll showed her and Mr. Obama neck and neck nationally.
For supporters waiting in the gymnasium at Southern New Hampshire University here, it was a night of flipping stomachs and sweaty palms.
God, God, God,' said Nick Draws, a college student who stared at the vast television screens when 2,000 votes separated the candidates at 9 p.m. 'This is painful.
A few days ago, a moment so tense seemed unlikely. Mr. Obama came out of the Midwest at a gallop after winning the Iowa caucuses with a swath of the youth vote. His rallies here had a festive feel, and the moment seemed dim for Mrs. Clinton.
The unexpected closeness of the vote also suggested the depth of support for Mrs. Clinton, particularly among older and working-class voters. At her headquarters at the university here, many supporters spoke of rooting for one Clinton or another for a decade and a half.
I haven't stopped rooting for her a very long time,' Mary Maggette of Nashua said. I wasn't going to leave her in a time of trouble.
Caroline Florom, 38; her husband, Vaughn Tamzarian, 48; and their five children -- the youngest in a double-wide stroller -- arrived next, after voting.
The most dramatic moment of their day was at 8 a.m., when they decided whom they were going to vote for.
We went to hear both of them speak this weekend, and we stayed up until 3 a.m. last night listening to their speeches again on C-Span,' Ms. Florom said of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama. We like them both.
But in the end, she was the one bringing up the real issues about the middle class like college loans. His speeches felt like pep rallies.
She added that the couple had let their older boys help decide and that all chose Mrs. Clinton.
The strain of the primary slog was clearly visible lately. Mrs. Clinton struggled to find a way to counterpunch at her younger rival, who has acquired rock-star status with his followers, without being seen as too negative.
It is a measure of the Obama wave that several of Mrs. Clinton's supporters said Tuesday that they had nearly faltered. In Concord, Mark Anderson waved a 'Hillary' sign as Mrs. Clinton shook hands outside a school. Mr. Anderson said he could have been waving an Obama sign.
I have gone back and forth almost every day,' he said. I would feel very comfortable with either candidate.
Mrs. Clinton kept moving, trying to break through the invisible wall that sometimes seems to separate this private woman from her supporters. She began giving voters long hugs -- startling some -- and discussing carefully her feelings.
When she grew teary-eyed, television played the moment as a faux pas. But in New Hampshire, some supporters say they saw those tears and softened. In the gym here, backers said they saw in her teary eyes a reason to embrace this sometimes formal candidate.
I was moved,' said Barbara Arning, a retired teacher from Milford. I thought it was very sincere. She was in control and speaking with emotion. That's fine with me.
Some people said that Mrs. Clinton is what she is and that she had campaigned in the earnest, non-electric, fashion that is faithful to her persona.
I don't know where the negativity comes from,' Jim Neilsen, a retired sociology professor, said as he waved a small flag. This is the place where the real candidates get their act together.
Friday, January 4, 2008
An Epic Undertaking.
(By William Spiegelman The Wall Street Journal Asia.) Alan Bennett said that a classic is "a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have. Better still: It's the book you want to have read but don't want to suffer through again or even for the first time. You want points for sophistication, education and possession of cultural capital as compensation for long-ago pain and boredom. The "Aeneid" is Europe's most important written epic. Schoolboys have cursed it for more than two millennia. Thomas Jefferson's copy was the most scanned, indeed dog-eared, book in Monticello's library. Robert Lowell entitled a poem "Falling Asleep Over the Aeneid. Many readers have known similar somnolence. But no one has denied its importance. Translators, dramatists and opera composers have adapted it. Poets in many languages have imitated it. Dante took Virgil for his guide through two-thirds of "The Divine Comedy. Lowell, a summa cum laude classics major and a man of soaring ambition from adolescence on, knew what he was doing: Virgil represented for him -- and every other Western writer of epics -- the model of The Poet. Virgil's predecessor Homer is much easier to absorb, especially in the "Odyssey," but Homer, whoever he was (we know nothing about him), sang his poems. Virgil wrote a book. The Book. It is not boring. Although everyone also acknowledges the longueurs of part two, the first half -- what many of us read in school -- is gripping, and even the second contains plenty to admire. Much of the epic's enduring importance resulted from a famous misreading of the fourth of Virgil's "Eclogues" (37 B.C.). The author, writing about the newborn son of the Consul Pollio, said that the child would initiate a new golden age in which lion would lie down with lamb and peace and plenty come again. Bravo! Early Christians got a look and found a prediction of Christ. They took Virgil for a Christian in all but name, a magic prophet, all of whose works deserved close attention. And that's why Dante could use him as a guide, the repository of classical, pagan wisdom whose rationality suffices to get Dante through Hell and then up to the top of the mountain of Purgatory where reason must be succeeded by Christian faith. Dante turns around and finds that Virgil has vanished, replaced by Beatrice, the embodiment of love. It is one of world literature's saddest moments. On its own, even without our sense of its cultural heritage or literary primacy, the "Aeneid" continues to astonish; it is as much a book for our millennium as it was for Dante's and for Virgil's contemporaries. Ezra Pound called his own epic "Cantos" "a poem containing history," and Virgil's epic is, as every Latin student remembers, the roll call of Roman, especially Augustan, glory. Following decades of civil war, after the death of Julius Caesar and the takeover by his great-nephew Octavius, whom the Roman Senate subsequently rechristened the August One, Rome began to develop and solidify its empire and also to establish peace at home. Home, of course, came to include most of the known world, which Rome had conquered. The "Aeneid" is patriotic propaganda, written at the request and for the pleasure of the emperor, but it's also much more. It acknowledges the price and sadness of empire as well as the glory. Its characters have free will, but they also operate under the will of the gods. People are both accountable for their actions and exonerated. Destiny controls everything, except when it doesn't. Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt" -- "Here are the tears of things, and the facts of mortality touch our minds": The famous line distills Virgilian sorrow. The first book of the poem begins, as an epic is supposed to, in the middle of things. Aeneas and his tempest-tossed ragtag band of survivors from Troy have washed up on the shores of Carthage in North Africa. The remnants of one empire are looking for the land they have been fated to settle, where their new kingdom, the second Troy, will arise. In Carthage another new kingdom is rising, that of Dido of Sidon, another refugee. The Trojans look at the pictures on the walls of her city and they find . . . themselves! Their story, the whole tragedy of Troy, has preceded them, has entered the realm of history and myth. They are looking at their past, the source of their tears. Virgil's epigrammatic concision -- "lacrimae rerum" -- neatly, dispassionately embodies a stoic wisdom about history and human life. Mortality and its touches get to us all. Ever since St. Augustine said that he wasted too many tears as a young man crying over Dido, readers have been most drawn to Book 4, the love story of two national leaders, each widowed, each resistant to and finally succumbing to the force of Eros. Venus and Juno concoct a trick to make them fall in love, but we know that Virgil's gods are merely part of his epic machinery; the love affair can be understood perfectly in human terms alone. It's the heart of Virgil's tragic vision, and it still leaves us wondering: Is the hero a dutiful, perhaps priggish man who must go off to Italy? Italiam non sponte sequor," he says to Dido when commanded by Mercury to lift anchor and raise sails. I'm not seeking Italy out of my own choice. Both falling in love, and then relinquishing it, the motto is the same: Don't blame me. Or is he just like any other fellow, taking his caddish pleasure and then heading into the sunrise? Enjoying a roll in the Carthaginian hay before sailing off to the as-yet-undiscovered land where the gods have guaranteed him a new bride and a new legacy. What's a guy to do? And what's a woman to do? Unlike that other spurned heroine, Medea, Dido has no children to kill. She can't get back at her man in that way. As an early desperate housewife -- a raging queen, rather -- she has but one choice, the classic one. Seduced and abandoned, Dido places a curse on Aeneas, asks for eternal enmity between their two nations, mounts her funeral pyre and kills herself as the Trojans sail away. She asks for an avenger to arise. Roman readers would know him: Hannibal, who tried to cross the Alps hundreds of years after Dido's demise and would suffer defeat as well. The same first readers would have also been alert to a more contemporary parallel. A noble leader seduced and detained by an African (read: foreign, untrustworthy) woman? They would remember Cleopatra, the serpent of the Nile who led a noble Roman named Anthony off course and destroyed his manhood. Such struggles -- between love and duty, commitment to self and to nation -- have echoed down history's, and literature's, corridors ever since. Virgil had an impossible task, which he succeeded in performing. He wrote a great political and historical poem that transcends propaganda and remains new and fresh because of its humanity. Also because of its style: Virgil took Homer's fluid hexameter lines and hammered them into Latin, an uncongenial language. In so doing he set the standard for any artist who tries to do the impossible. Like his hero, Virgil was fated to establish a new empire, in this case a literary one. His excellent modern translators, from John Dryden, at the end of the 17th century, to Robert Fagles, two years ago, have all tried to "English" the original Latin, to represent their poet in a way that does justice to both the past and the present, to the original and to contemporary audiences. Every generation retranslates the masterpieces of the ancient world. Such efforts prove that a classic is something that is perennially young. Mr. Spiegelman first read Virgil at Cheltenham High School in Wyncote, Pennsylvania..
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