http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0606-04.htm
Subject: A South Asian Colloquy (article)
From
-well written article about the dliemma of intervention vs.
imperialism… - –
A South Asian Colloquy
by Huck Gutman
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0606-04.htm Published on Wed, June 5,
2002 in Dawn (Karachi, Pakistan) and June 9 in The Statesman (Kolkata,
India)
In recent days, a remarkable colloquy has taken place in the American media
between two men widely regarded as the greatest contemporary Indian
novelists. Amitav Ghosh, in America’s most important progressive weekly
magazine, The Nation, argued that a new imperialism is in the air: “The idea
of empire…has recently undergone a strange rehabilitation in the United
States.”
Within a week, Salman Rushdie wrote an essay for The New York Times,
asserting of Kashmir that “right now it’s the most dangerous place in the
world,” and asking whether a fear of ‘imperial’ intervention might not be
allowing the world to slide into a nuclear conflagration.
I do not know if Rushdie was specifically responding to Ghosh, or whether
the two essays simply address a region and an issue that is on everyone’s
mind at this historical moment. Although Americans know little about
Kashmir, they are nonetheless troubled by reports that over a million
troops, Indian and Pakistani, are massed at the Line of Control and on the
two countries’ common border. The possibility that sporadic violence could
lead to war, and war to the two nations ‘going nuclear,’ has currency in the
American press. (One recent national story asserted with pseudo-scientific
certainty that a nuclear exchange would produce 12 million fatalities - not
13 million, not 28.467 million, not just an ‘incomprehensible number’.
Here is the lead of Thom Shanker’s front-page story in the national paper of
record, The New York Times: “An American intelligence assessment, completed
this week as tensions between India and Pakistan intensified, warns that a
full-scale nuclear exchange between the two rivals could kill up to 12
million people immediately and injure up to seven million, Pentagon
officials say.” The numerical exactitude is staggering in its arrogant
assertion that hypothetical guesswork is somehow an accurate measurement of
future events.)
The thought of a nuclear war is profoundly unsettling. And, not knowing what
might happen in South Asia nor how to keep the unthinkable from happening,
Americans welcome guidance. The American populace, largely people of
goodwill, want to know what sort of role, if any, the United States can play
in forestalling threats to world peace.
The politicos in Washington are not similarly inclined to seek out advice.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice-President Richard Cheney seem
to have the world figured out, knowing instinctively who the good guys and
the bad guys are. For them, as for President Bush to whom they are the
central advisers, it is all a matter of stopping terrorism against the
United States: ‘If you’re not with us then you are against us’. This is tied
to the corollary that if terrorism is visited upon Americans, it is evil; if
terrorism targets those who are not American, it is regrettable and maybe
even bad - or maybe only the ways things are.
But the American public wants to learn about what might be, what should be,
done. Enter Amitav Ghosh. Enter Salman Rushdie. Both men are remarkably
thoughtful, and both are brimming with insight. The concerns of each,
however, are almost diametrically opposed to the other.
Mr. Ghosh reported that the notion of empire is resurgent on both left and
right in America and Britain. His assessment is accurate: “Those who embrace
the idea of empire frequently cite the advantages of an imperial peace over
the disorder of the current world situation.” But, Ghosh argues, the
peace-making function of empire is triply compromised. First, resort to
empire is compromised by history. In the twentieth century the imposition of
peace almost inevitably provoked enormous conflict. As Ghosh writes, “The
peace of the British, French and Austro-Hungarian empires was purchased at
the cost of a destabilization so radical as to generate the two greatest
conflicts in human history: the world wars.”
Second, empire is compromised by internal logic, as Ghosh brilliantly
argues. “In a world run by empires, some people are rulers and some are the
ruled: It is impossible to think of a situation where all peoples possess an
empire. On the other hand, the idea of the nation-state, for all its
failings, holds the great advantage that it can indeed be generalized to all
peoples everywhere.”
Third, empire is undermined by its own inbuilt dynamic of endless expansion
and relentless assertion. “An imperium also generates an unstoppable push
toward overreach, which is one of the reasons it is a charter for
destabilization.”
Ghosh is eloquent in reminding us all, post-colonizers and post-colonized
alike, that imperial ambitions lead to catastrophe. In particular, he
questions whether intervention by powerful nations can, in the long run, do
anything more than destabilize the world by creating a new colonial imperium
convinced of its right to exert control over the nations of the world. Even
with the best of intentions, imperial interventions ultimately undermine the
national autonomy of every country but the superpowers.
Mr. Rushdie, seems, seems, to be responding to Ghosh. He abjures the general
to look at the specific, the present ongoing conflict over Kashmir. He sees
a narrow partisan political agenda impelling Prime Mister Vajpayee to
nationalism and militancy in order to position the BJP so that it can win
out in the next general election. Further, he sees this as a repetition of
Mr. Vajpayee’s previous militancy over Kashmir, which also took place
shortly before general elections were forthcoming.
Rushdie clear-sightedly compares this to the similarly narrow partisan
political agenda impelling President Musharraf. Mr. Musharraf needs to
satisfy the very Islamist radicals who sided with him when he overthrew
President Nawaz Sharif. That overthrow, Rushdie reminds us, was justified on
the grounds that Mr. Sharif reined in Muslim terrorists, instead of
insisting upon national autonomy, when the Americans pressured him to do so.
(The American baseball player Yogi Berra, who often slaughtered the English
language, nonetheless came up with memorable bon mots in his verbal
confusion. One of them, Rushdie would assert, is appropriate to both India
and Pakistan today: ‘It is dij’ vu all over again.')
These partisan agendas of the current leaders of India and Pakistan are
propelling both nations ever closer to war and, indeed, nuclear
confrontation. In this context, Rushdie maintains, “The point is to make the
world safer for us all. The situation can only be stabilized if India and
Pakistan are both forced to back away, preferably to outside of Kashmir’s
historic, unpartitioned borders.”
He goes on to suggest that an imperial solution may be necessary, even as he
echoes Ghosh’s concerns about such a step. Rushdie says, “This ‘hands off
Kashmir’ solution will have to be externally imposed on the reluctant
principals and will require that a large peacekeeping force be sent to the
region to support Kashmir as an autonomous area. But who in the West wants
that - it’s just the old colonialist-imperialist power trip, isn’t it?”
But his Ghosh-like question raises other questions, especially given the
context: the possibility of a nuclear war of tragic proportions. And so
Rushdie asks, “What’s the alternative? Do you have a better idea? Or shall
we just stand back and keep our post-colonial, non-imperialist fingers
crossed? Will it take mushroom clouds over Delhi and Islamabad to make us
give up our ingrained prejudices and try something that might actually
work?”
It is possible to imagine these two essays in the American media as adda* in
a disembodied form. It is as if the two of them, Salman and Amitav, are
sitting across the table from one another in the Indian Coffee House,
initiating an intellectual-political discussion which dozens of onlookers
are privileged to hear.
It is impossible to say who is right. Nothing could be more laudable than
trying to prevent a nuclear holocaust - unless it is trying to prevent the
world from falling back into a regime of militaristic colonialism.
It is possible that if they talked on in this adda in the American press,
the two interlocutors might come up with common ground. After all, Ghosh
acknowledges that “there can be no doubt that political catastrophes can
often be prevented by multilateral intervention, and clearly such actions
are sometimes necessary,” even though he proceeds to once again remind us
that even the possibility of securing intervention can itself initiate
violence.
Perhaps their common ground might be the necessity for the international
community to intervene in the affairs of autonomous nation-states when
nuclear conflagration or genocide might result if such intervention were
absent. Perhaps they might agree, in the long metaphysical night, that the
only way to guarantee such intervention would not re-establish an imperial
order which no one (except self-aggrandizing imperialists) wants, would be
to initiate such intervention through the United Nations. And to insist that
such intervention be carried out with troops under the leadership of the
UN - not First-World - military command. Perhaps they might agree that
United Nations intervention will only work if nations can put aside (however
unlikely this may seem) considerations of their own partisan advantage in
the interest of preserving world peace and the human dignity of all people.
Perhaps. Their adda might continue, should continue, into the late hours of
the night. Our collective future may well depend on how we resolve the
thorny problem of disentangling intervention and imperialism.
- “Adda” is a Bengali term for extended and informal intellectual
conversation.
The writer was Fulbright Visiting Professor of English at Calcutta
University. He is an author and columnist.
A
“Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.” – Unknown