Won't Wait for the World to Change

Detecting Starvation in Participatory Democracies

2009-12-12T10:55:00.000-08:00

Amartya Sen has famously claimed that famines do not occur in democracies[i], but it is not immediately clear why this should be so. After all, inequality, deprivation, economic exploitation and denial of access to basic human needs are endemic in democracies around the world, even the United States. Do the processes of legislative accountability, a free press, free movement within the country, the rule of law, social security provisions and the political freedoms associated with a democracy guarantee that we will never see a repeat of likes of the Bengal Famine of 1943? In this paper I propose a bottom-up process that detects which citizens are unable to obtain basic human needs, through the participation of the people in the local political structures. The process design addresses the issues involved in the definition of deprivation, provides rapid identification of deprived citizens, and aggregation and reporting upwards into district/county, state and federal administration to ensure that immediate local responses are back-filled with resources that sustain them for the long run. Thus it can deal not only with nutritional deprivation, but also other human needs. The model will use India as an example.
Most countries, whether democratic or not, have disaster response mechanisms that kick-in when there are major events such as flood, earthquake, hurricane or terrorism. Pre-warning periods are generally short, ranging from days in the cases of weather related events, to none at all for earthquakes. There is usually no debate about the fact that the event has occurred, or that help is needed; only the extent of the damage and the ways in which to help the affected populace need to be determined and acted upon. Generally, in regions prone to these events, or where there is a likelihood of their occurrence, plans are already in place for rapid execution. International assistance is usually prompt, as in the Tsunami of 2004, even though some governments may refuse aid, as did Myanmar recently. The quality of the immediate response and the follow-up action are usually subject to intense media scrutiny as these are the events that form the basic raw material for the twenty-four hour news channels.

Starvation, epidemics and other more subtle deprivations of basic human needs are very different from the sudden intense disaster. There are usually chronic conditions such as lack of economic or natural resources, political or military conflicts, or the aftermath of exploitation that set the stage for an acute phase. As these have usually been in place for some years, they are no longer in the news, and no one is held specifically accountable for their removal. Berg claims that in the large parts of the developing world “malnutrition is everybody’s business but nobody’s responsibility” (Banik 2007:5).

These usually start in poorer or remote localities that are not covered by the media, leading to a delay in detection. Whether or not they are occurring is open to political debate since they are usually an intensification of a deprivation that is chronic; they are usually slow to build up over weeks and months; the causes are not easily understood and the steps needed to be taken to help those affected are not only controversial, but some could actually hurt the affected people in the long run.

The first step is setting up a system of measures and thresholds that provide a detection mechanism. In the examples that follow, I will use administrative terms, types of work performed and commodities from India, explaining them in terms of equivalent US terms in the footnotes. Setting up a monitoring system on a national or even district level would be impossible as agreement on the measures and their thresholds could not be reached. However this can be accomplished at the local level: in the village (Gram) or urban neighbourhood (ward or area in terms of the Panchayati Raj legislation). While guidelines could be provided on suggested measures and thresholds, the ultimate decision needs to be local. It also needs to be revalidated periodically.

A Deprivation Detection Model

This model detects conditions of deprivation at the local level by setting up lists of commodities produced and consumed with the corresponding quantities and prices, and recording daily family income for different types of work or economic strata. An exchange entitlement mapping uses allocation percentages and the production and consumption prices to identify the groups that don’t earn enough to purchase the minimum quantity of commodities needed to maintain a healthy nourished life. This is to be constructed and maintained at the local level, by the Gram Panchayat or Ward Committee. The examples of commodities, types of work performed and income allocations are given for illustrative purposes; it is expected that the exact details would be formulated by each local body, based on their circumstances.

Sen has detailed the difficulties in detecting and aggregating measures of poverty and deprivation within and across countries and communities: the “head-count measure… has at least two drawbacks… it takes no account of the extent of the (income) shortfall (from the poverty line, and) it is insensitive to the distribution of income among the poor” (Sen 1981:10). He goes onto criticize the biological approach to the definition of poverty in terms of nutritional requirements as their translation into commodity requirements depends on the food habits of a diverse population. The simplistic views of Karl Marx that “in a given country, at a given period, the average quantity of the means of subsistence necessary for the labourer is practically known” (Sen 1981:18 quoting Marx in Das Kapital), do not map to a complex reality. As Megill has pointed out, Marx’s rejection of the market was partly due to his positivist belief that the people’s commodity needs could be computed and planned for; he rejected the multiplicity of goods that even the simplest human society needs and produces. Therefore large-scale aggregate measures that detect and report poverty are not practical: we need a localized approach.

In order to realistically model basic human needs Sen suggests that a hybrid vector of commodity requirements be used, e.g. “amounts of calories, proteins, housing, schools, hospital beds” (Sen 1981:25). In order to make this amenable to easy measurement, local knowledge has to be used to translate every element into a commodity vector that lists the commodities essential for a family to remain nourished and healthy. Note that these commodities are to be measured in terms of direct consumption in their natural units, and not in terms of the cash needed to acquire them. In addition, the current prices per unit need to be recorded on a regular basis. Table 1 is an example of a Consumption Commodity Vector, with prices in Indian Rupees and sample quantities for a family of four. In addition, a Production Commodity Vector similar to the Consumption Commodity Vector needs to be created that shows the commodities produced and their prices in the local area.

Consumption Commodity Vector

For the consumption commodities that are not self-produced, an Exchange Entitlement Mapping has to be performed for every significant socio-economic segment in the local population, focusing primarily on those at-risk. This involves estimates of their daily income, and their likely allocation of that income to the types of commodities. This must include allowance for non-essential purchases since this is not a model for a concentration camp. Local knowledge of market and labour conditions, behaviour patterns and economic stratification is needed to carry out this breakdown, but should be feasible at the village level. Table 2 is an example of the Income Vector, with examples of the daily income earned by a standard family in different lines of work.

Income Vector

The quality weightage adjusts for the fact that persons in the higher stratification need to preserve a higher standard of life even if it is a façade. Srivastava points out that during famines in the late nineteenth century, the higher castes and classes had a false sense of respectability, and could not participate in relief works or go to the poor houses (Srivastava 1968:335-336), and therefore suffered more during famines and periods of shortage.

Income Allocation

Table 3 is an example of the allocation of the expenses to the major areas of spending by the different types of workers. It takes into account that persons belonging to different economic strata have different expenditure priorities.

These four tables are then used to create a dashboard where we compute the margin between the income allocated for a type of need and the current cost on a daily basis. If the margin is less than Rs. 5, the cell is in yellow; it is shown in red when negative. In the example below, the Kisan is unable to afford food and shelter at the current income level of Rs. 75 per day and the local authorities should either invoke National Rural Employment Guarantee Yojana, a social security scheme of the central government that guarantees 100 working days in a year for every rural laborer and pays Rs. 100 per day or provide subsidized food and shelter. Note also that the higher strata are equally affected by the food prices and need support of some sort, or are forced to re-allocate their expenditure.

Dashboard

This dashboard could be easily implemented using a spreadsheet for local purposes, but using a web-based application with distributed daily data collection from various local functionaries and online display of the results is a better approach. By putting this on the Panchayat website, it becomes easily accessible to the public. Subsidiary information about data entry times and sources as well as drill-down into the calculations would be added functionality.
Elected village committees (Gram Panchayats) reporting into district level organizations (Zilla Parishads) are already involved in decentralized planning using software tools and portals developed by the National Informatics Center. Implementation of the proposed solution could easily be achieved on this platform (Planning Commission website).

Reporting Up the Chain

As Sen points out, “there is very little alternative to accepting the element of arbitrariness in the description of poverty, and making that element as clear as possible” (Sen 1981:22). By setting the measures and thresholds in a participatory process at a local level, it is the people most affected by this arbitrariness who make the decisions. The aggregation across the district or higher level administrative constructs needs to use the local metrics as their basis, not the measures themselves. Instead of averaging the commodity vector over a larger geographical unit, it is the number of reds and yellows in the metrics that should be aggregated. This way the disadvantaged tribal community that is facing starvation and is showing a red in its nutrition metric is not drowned out by the nearby district headquarters which has enough food to eat. Superimposing the dashboard on zoom-able maps with red/yellow/green dots to show the aggregates would be the best format.

At the state and national levels, these aggregated local level metrics need to be compared with other measurements of the economy, sample surveys, administrative reports etc and divergences between the reporting sources investigated. These can lead to fine-tuning of the traditional aggregated measurements as well as guidelines for use at the local level. This is needed to avoid moral hazards in the mis-application of central aid, as it is in the interest of the local political structures to exaggerate the magnitude of the problem being faced so as to show their constituents how much they are doing for them. Level-setting exercises that compare the basic data and the thresholds with independent sources and gaining consensus from all the agencies involved will reduce this risk.

In addition, steps need to be taken to ensure that there is no deprivation of political rivals by leaving them out of the monitoring, or the relief measures. As Banik has pointed out repeatedly, starvation and its relief is highly politicized; any process that is designed must counteract the basic tendency to ensure that political capital results from any relief undertaken. This can also be guaranteed by openness in the computation and display of the monitors, especially by making them available for review on the web by the public without logins or restrictions.

Conclusion

This paper describes an approach to the prevention of starvation and improvement in nutrition based on local participatory democracy and the use of information and communication technology (ICT). If applied to India as an example, it would require the setup and maintenance of commodity consumption and production and income vectors, daily data entry of sample data points for prices and incomes, and regular monitoring of the reports on local, district and state levels. The Panchayati Raj model that has been created in the country has already created the basic infrastructure needed for this exercise.

The political will and the administrative ability to perform this activity have already been demonstrated in Purulia, West Bengal. In order to effectively fight starvation in at-risk populations, Banik mentions at least three processes that mirror the proposals in this paper, albeit without the formalized approach and use if ICT. First, the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] party workers monitor food and water availability, as well as distressed families and arrange for them to be registered to receive relief. Second, the elected panchayat representatives monitor their communities and reach out through the Zilla Parishad to the district administration to ensure that relief is provided to those who need it. Third, three-member block level committees that include representatives from the Gram Panchayat, the administration and a social worker, monitor the transport and distribution of subsidized food from the Public Distribution System. Banik credits the innovations in Purulia to alert Panchayat representatives who “appeared more capable of identifying potentially vulnerable individuals and households… since they feared loss of political support if they ignored the plight of people close to destitution”. However, over-politicization of aid can be counter-productive as “Panchayat representatives regularly added and deleted households from BPL (Below the Poverty Line) depending on political affiliation” (Banik 2007:170). The setup phase when the vectors and thresholds are created on a local basis help reduce this arbitrariness compared to an aggregated poverty line threshold for income.

Why do democracies do better when fighting famine? I would argue that firstly they allow the information about the critical conditions in affected localities flow from the bottom-up, from the people actually affected, through administrative reporting to decision-makers. There are also other channels such as the press, intelligentsia and political workers, both from the ruling and opposition parties, and institutions such a parliament that bring the situation to public notice. Secondly, once they are out in the open, in a democracy the ruling party needs to at least show that they are taking action, or be out of office. Finally, there are the courts at the state and federal level that can investigate and intervene. None of these institutions can do the same in a closed dictatorial government.

References

Banik, Dan.(2007) Starvation and India’s Democracy. (Oxon: Routledge).
Megill, Allan. (2002) Karl Marx: The Burden of Reason (Why Marx Rejected Politics and the Market). (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield).
Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Govt. of India. (2007) The State of the Panchayats: A Mid-term Review and Appraisal. (New Delhi).
Planning Commission, Govt. of India. Manual for Integrated District Planning. http://panchayat.gov.in/data/1234765558648~Manual%20for%20Integrated%20District%20Planning%20-%20Planning%20Commission.pdf. Accessed May 24, 2009.
Sen, Amartya. (1981) Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Fulfilment. (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Srivastava, Hari Shanker. (1968) The History of Indian Famines and Development of Famine Policy [1858-1918]. (Agra: Sri Ram Mehra & Co.).
[i] Banik quotes Sen in ‘Food Battles: Conflicts in the Access to Food’, Food and Nutrition, 10:81-89

From Freud to Eternity: Psychoanalysis and the “Oceanic Feeling”

2009-12-12T10:49:00.000-08:00

Romain Rolland’s reaction to the carnage of World War I, and his perception of the hypocrisy of the established church, inspired him to search for a universal religion that would unite all mankind. His mystical experiences in late childhood had prompted him to study mysticism both in the East and the West, and led to his belief that the “oceanic feeling” common to many mystics was the source of a true religious feeling. In 1927 he wrote to Sigmund Freud asking him to analyze it. Freud, while admitting that the phenomenon posed a difficult problem, labeled it a universal regressive tendency towards the pre-Oedipal stage when the baby felt at one with its environment while being breast-fed. His atheism and his reliance on the traditions of western culture, philosophy and history did not allow him a different explanation. The fact that his estranged disciple, Carl Jung considered mysticism important may also have played a role in Freud’s response. Unfortunately this characterization led to generations of Freudians denigrating the role of spiritual or mystical feelings in their patients and considering them to be a part of the patient’s psycho-pathology. In order to rehabilitate these important parts of our mental life, new schools of psychoanalytic thought have recently developed, overturning this part of Freud’s legacy and successfully treating patients to whom mysticism, spirituality and meditation form an integral part of their life experiences.

Introduction

Rolland was born into a Catholic family, but by the time he went to secondary school he had established a personal credo based on a Nature God, influenced by Spinoza. He also had several experiences that he later recognized as being mystical, leading to his conception of an “ocean of being”, and the term “oceanic feeling”. Rolland wrote to his mother, after a mystical experience in the Swiss Alps, that “it is there where I felt most of myself … mixed into the infinite soul of Divine Nature …(it is that Divinity) who I am, who in spite of yourself you are, and in whose bosom we will all be united”[i]. He studied the mysticism of the East and the West, and his own intuitive ideas resonated with the concept of individual souls united in a universal Being, as expressed in Vedanta. Rolland later quoted Vivekananda: “He is present in every being! Thus we are all manifold forms of Him. There is no other God to seek for! He alone is worshipping God, who serves all beings!”[ii].

Mysticism has a wide range of meanings, so we will try to restrict it to what Rolland would have meant. Zaehner said that mysticism is an experience of unity in the mind “with someone or something other than oneself”. Rolland studied William James who was more specific: “In mystic states we both become one with the absolute and we become aware of our oneness” and gain “insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect” [iii]. Religion is rarely mentioned, except in Christian mysticism where the experience is through “the felt presence of God”. James’s description is similar to the Hindu concept of samadhi, which is an alternate state of consciousness achieved through meditation when your individual soul, the atma, connects to the universal soul, the paramatma, or Being. Rolland noted that James, in his book The Varieties of Religious Experience, has “a collection of mystic witness coming from his Western contemporaries…All unknowing as they were, they realized states identical with the characteristic samadhi of India”[iv]. Mystical experiences can be triggered in different ways: by visual experiences such as looking at mountains or historical ruins, by using drugs or practicing Yoga. The Sanskrit root of yoga means unity, signifying physical and mental practices that bring the individual into unity with the universal Being.

According to Parsons, the period from 1880 to 1930 was the earliest period of the interaction between religion and psychological studies: “Freud, William James and Carl Jung are the psychologists most readily associated with this period … several noted scholars of their generation – Delacroix… Marechal … Flournoy … Morel … Bucke… Hocking … Leuba…- placed the psychological study of mysticism at the forefront of their research”[v]. It is in this context that the Rolland-Freud correspondence on the “oceanic feeling” takes place.
In response to Freud’s book analyzing religion, The Future of an Illusion, Rolland wrote in December 1927 asking him to do “an analysis of spontaneous religious sentiment or, more exactly, of religious feeling…the simple and direct fact of the feeling of the ‘eternal’ (which can very well not be eternal, but simply without perceptible limits, and like oceanic as it were)”. He thought that Freud would classify it under Zwangsneurosen[vi], but he often “had occasion to observe its rich and beneficent power” on “great souls of the West” and “great minds of Asia”, and that he was about to write a book on two of them “who revealed an aptitude for thought and action which proved strongly regenerating for their country and for the world”. He also said that he was familiar with this sensation, and “found in it a source of vital renewal… without this constant state… affecting in any way my critical faculties”[vii].

The two great minds that Rolland referred to are Ramakrishna Parahamsa and Swami Vivekananda. Ramakrishna, an unlettered village priest from Bengal, became well-known in the latter half of the nineteenth century for his simple teachings of the Vedanta and ecstatic visions of the Mother Kali. Moving to the temples on the banks of the Ganges at Dakshineswar, a suburb of Calcutta, he taught Hindu philosophy through parables. A seventeen year-old Narendranath Dutta came to visit him, had a mystical experience in his presence and stayed on, eventually becoming his chief disciple. After the death of the master, and several years of a walking pilgrimage in India, Swami Vivekananda, as Narendranath became known, founded the Ramakrishna Mission which now has many branches all over the world.

Rolland’s deeper understanding of the “oceanic feeling” came from his knowledge of Hindu spiritual practices such as yoga, and the teachings of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. He seems to be the friend who has told Freud that “through the practices of Yoga, …and by peculiar methods of breathing, one can in fact evoke new sensations and co-anesthesia’s in oneself, which he regards as regressions to primordial states of mind that have long ago been overlaid”[viii]. As Rolland wrote in his letter to Freud, he is constantly in this connected state, yet able to maintain his critical faculties, presumably through these practices. Rolland distinguished between the mystical experience that occurs rarely, and that too due to a trigger, and the mystical state in which one always feels connected. The former he associated with his youth when he had “transient experiences of unity”. The latter is “a mature mysticism that was the result of an existential process”[ix].

It is this mature mysticism that Gupta recounted many times about Ramakrishna: “Suddenly the Master went into samadhi and sat thus for a long time. His body was transfixed, his eyes wide and unwinking, his breathing hardly perceptible. After a long time he drew a deep breath, indicating his return to the world of sense”[x]. Gupta also quoted Ramakrishna: “reasoning and discrimination vanish after the attainment of God and communion with Him in samadhi. …‘I’ and ‘you’…become silent when he is truly aware of Unity”. This may appear to contradict Rolland’s claim of always feeling connected yet in charge of his critical faculties, but can be understood when we contrast his experience with those triggered by the use of drugs. In those cases the experiences are unpredictable and the critical faculties may be impaired by the drugs.

Freud took over eighteen months to answer the question raised about the “oceanic feeling”. Writing in the first chapter of Civilization and its Discontents, he first stated that the question caused him “no small difficulty”, partly due to his inability to discover this feeling in himself. He described it as “a feeling of an indissoluble bond, of being one with the external world as a whole”, but one that “sounds so strange and fits in so badly with the fabric of our psychology”. Reasoning from his theory of the development of the ego, he said it was due to the persistence of a primary ego-feeling “which corresponded to a more intimate bond between the ego and the world about it” and persisted “side by side with the narrower and more sharply demarcated ego-feeling of maturity” [xi]. Firmly embedded in the materialism inherent in the Enlightenment, Freud looked for an answer in sensations of the external world. Not only did he misinterpret the “oceanic feeling” as a feeling based on material sensations, he put it down as an immature regression to babyhood. This position is to constrain the Freudians’ understanding of mysticism and even “recent portrayals of Indian mysticism … in terms of regression, manic denial, depersonalization and derealization”[xii].

Rolland was not amused. In his Life of Vivekananda, he complained that psychologists, for example Pierre Janet, placed “awareness of the present, of present action, the enjoyment of the present” above “disinterested action and thought”; and at the bottom “the whole world of imagination and fancy”. Going further, he claimed that “Freud asserts that reverie … is nothing but the debris of the first stage of evolution”. Finally he recommended that the Freudian doctors needed psychological treatment themselves: “This depreciation of the most indispensable operation of the active mind…is in danger of becoming a pathological aberration. Physician, heal thyself!”. It appears that the Protestant work ethic and emphasis on action permeated a science studied the mind and thought processes. Rolland recognized this when he says that “psycho-pathologists… are … servants of a proud and Puritanical faith” [xiii].

Rolland sent copies of his biographies of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda that contained these complaints, to Freud in January 1930. Freud addressed Rolland’s criticism of psychoanalysis in two ways. First, he deflected some of the blame on to “C. G. Jung, who is a bit of a mystic himself and hasn’t belonged to us for years”. Second, he explained that the terms that they use, such as “regression, narcissism, pleasure principle are of a purely descriptive nature” and are value-neutral; so “reflecting is a regressive process without losing any of its dignity or importance in being so”. He seemed to be claiming that psychoanalysts can overload ordinary words and use them as technical terms but it is not their fault if lay persons interpret them on a scale of values. He then attacked the role that mystics place on intuition “to solve the riddle of the universe” when it is “worthless for orientation in the alien external world”[xiv]. Again he stresses the worldly aspect of his psychoanalytic theories. Not surprisingly, this is the last substantive response from Freud to Rolland in a correspondence that started in 1923. Interestingly, in the letter Freud writes that he will now try to “penetrate into the Indian jungle” and admits he “really ought to have tackled it earlier, for the plants of this soil shouldn’t be alien to me; I have dug to certain depths for their roots. But it isn’t easy to pass beyond the limits of one’s nature”. A confirmation that Freud has not escaped the influence of the “Oriental Renaissance”, yet has not studied it deeply as yet.

Schwab has documented the extensive influence on German, French and British artists and intellectuals that occurred following the colonization of Bengal at the end of the eighteenth century. From 1792 a stream of works translated from Sanskrit were to be circulated and discussed in Europe, leading to what he has termed the “Oriental Renaissance”. Hugo, Vigny, Michelet, Lamartine, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wagner and Tolstoy are just a few of those influenced by Indian works such as the Bhagavad-Gita and the Upanishads. But Freud seemed to have escaped its influence completely, at least in his analysis of the “oceanic feeling”, while he did admit having some acquaintance with Indian thought in his correspondence with Rolland.

Discussion

Freud believed that it was the sensual experience of the person that helped develop his or her inner world. This included external sensations such as touching and seeing, as well as sensations internal to the body. To develop an Oedipus complex, one had to be aware of the mother, the father and the sensations one felt in their presence. This was a view that predominated in the West, especially after the Enlightenment: anything worth studying had to be observable through the senses. Rolland believed instead that there was something deeper inside man that came from within the soul. This is the reason that Rolland disagrees when psychologists place “awareness of the present”, i.e. sense processing, above “imagination and fancy”. The Eastern, or more specifically Hindu, concept that the soul is reborn in different physical bodies and remains connected to the universal Being at all times did not resonate with Freud, it was “beyond the limits of (his) nature”.

This difference in their understanding of causation in the development of man’s psychology was the real problem here. Just like Weber, opposing Marx, claimed that the ideas in Calvinism may have led to capitalism, the argument between Freud and Rolland was whether the mind was built from a clean slate by the sensations encountered, or it came pre-configured to some extent and deeply connected to all other souls including a universal soul, Being. Just like the origins of capitalism, the reality is more complex than either was willing to admit. In the case of Freud, he would be hard-pressed to explain the differences in human behavior when the sensual environment was the same, especially at a very young age. Rolland pursued a Unitarian religion that all mankind could subscribe to, but forgot that the “oceanic feeling” didn’t occur naturally and the mystic performed arduous mental and physical labor before achieving the meditative state. Ashokananda points out that man is divine in potential, but “one needed recourse to dogma, mystical techniques and a guru to awaken what was innate and gain realization”[xv]. Thus most adherents would have to rely on faith and dogma rather than personal experience and a new Catholicism would thus emerge. This is probably why the Hindu religion is so different from the philosophy it is based on.

Hindu philosophy has a more complex view of human development: reincarnation means that the starting point for the human mind is not a clean slate, and later development of the personality depends on both the environment (in some sense fate) as well as the actions carried out by the individual (karma). Thus, while there is a deep unifying connection with the universal Being, and each person is born primed to behave in certain ways, the sensations of life also have a part to play. When it is time for the cycle to repeat itself in the next incarnation, only the balance sheet is transferred, so to speak, and the transactions forgotten.

Freud’s analysis of the “oceanic feeling” was taken very seriously by his colleagues and successors, who rejected all consideration of mysticism. Recently, some psychoanalysts are able to take a broader view of mysticism and the therapeutic benefits of meditation. Roland describes a patient in Mumbai who usually keeps her meditative and spiritual life a secret from her therapists since she has had negative experiences when she brought them up with classical Freudians; they consider meditation as regressive rather than therapeutic. After being in therapy with a progressive therapist the patient says: “meditation is better than psychoanalysis…but best of all is meditation and psychoanalysis”[xvi]. Vaidyanathan has collected several articles that favor a progressive view of Hinduism and mysticism in psychoanalysis.

Conclusion

Freud’s discussion of the “oceanic feeling” in Civilization and its Discontents and his correspondence with Rolland betray an unwillingness to consider that there is a psychoanalytic reality outside what he could comprehend using the traditions of western culture, philosophy and history. His psychoanalytic theory was universally applicable, there would be Oedipal myths in all societies, and the development of the individual’s psychological processes would be the same all over the world. As Parsons states, “While Freud sought to displace religion, psychoanalysis was still quite Western, carrying the values of his humanism, religious upbringing and scientific training”. Not that Freud was unaware of the teachings of the East: these had been translated and influenced European thought since the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Freud and Rolland, just ten years apart in age, were both products of Western Europe’s malaise of the second half of the nineteenth century that would result in the wars and conflicts of the twentieth. The late nineteenth century was a time for overthrowing old ideas and concepts, like the final dispatch of monarchy in France in 1848. Using the scientific method as the primary tool, Marx was to question history and economics, Darwin biology, and Freud our understanding of the mind. Each thinker was revolutionary for his time and his origins, but all were firmly rooted in the scientific Enlightenment; for example, Freud went to great lengths to proclaim the scientific basis of his theories, despite widespread skepticism. Rolland, however, was an artist, working in music, literature and the theatre, yet he gained his fame as the conscience of Europe with his anti-war stance which was recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize. He questioned the nationalism in politics and religion that led to war, and promoted the unity of all mankind. Artists of the nineteenth century, like Rolland, were willing to look to the East and use the products of the “Oriental Renaissance” to find solutions to the problems that faced Man. Unfortunately, due to the dismissive treatment received by both mysticism and the “oceanic feeling” from Freud, the early psychoanalysts could not use this source for their insights. It is only recently that the field has matured away from Freud’s dismissive interpretation to include the fruits of mysticism.

Works Referenced

Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and its Discontents. Tr. and Ed. James Strachey. New York: Norton, 1961
Gupta, Mahendranath. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. Tr. Swami Nikhilananda. Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1942.
Parsons, William Barclay. The Enigma of the Oceanic Feeling: Revisioning the Psychoanalytic Theory of Mysticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Roland, Alan. Shakuntala in Vaidyanathan.
Rolland, Romain. The Life of Vivekananda and the Universal Gospel. Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1931.
Schwab, Raymond. The Oriental Renaissance: Europe’s Discovery of India and the East, 1680-1880. Tr. Gene Patterson-Black and Victor Reinking. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.
Vaidyanathan, T.G. and Jeffrey J. Kripal, Ed. Vishnu on Freud’s Desk: A Reader in Psychoanalysis and Hinduism. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Prof. Paul Robinson: MLA 247: European Thought in the 20th Century
[i] Parsons, pg. 56
[ii] Rolland, pg. 166
[iii] Parsons, pg. 5 quotes R C Zaehner and William James. It is interesting to note that the metaphor recalls Freud’s reference to Schiller’s Diver.
[iv] Rolland, footnote pp 346-347.
[v] Parsons, pg. 8
[vi] Translates as ‘compulsive neuroses’
[vii] Parsons, pg. 173
[viii] Freud, pg. 21. This connection is made by Parsons based on an analysis of the Freud-Rolland correspondence.
[ix] Parsons, pg. 104
[x] Gupta, pg. 175
[xi] Freud, pp 11-15.
[xii] Parsons, pg. 10, 124
[xiii] Rolland, pg. 335, 343.
[xiv] Parsons, pp 176-77
[xv] Parsons, pg. 116
[xvi] Roland in Vaidyanathan, pg. 420

Harry Belafonte: The Secret Soldier

2009-12-12T10:44:00.000-08:00

It is well known that Harry Belafonte was a strong supporter of the Civil Rights Movement, a member of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.’s inner circle, and close to the students who led the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); he was a prolific fund raiser, not just through his own concerts and appearances, but by roping in fellow artists from the USA and overseas . It is less well known that he was, through his “Rat Pack” contacts, friendly with the Kennedy brothers, especially Robert, and acted as a conduit between Dr King and the administration. What is not known at all, however, are his political views at the time. He wrote no articles, gave few speeches and kept his positions on the issues of the time to himself. Recently, he has been more outspoken, speaking out against the Bush administration, especially its handling of Hurricane Katrina and the war in Iraq. He has even supported Hugo Chavez, the left-leaning President, while on a visit to Venezuela. As he turned 80 this year, and is expected to have mellowed with age , we can deduce that he held radical political views in the 1950’s and later, but was very careful to keep them secret. A close look at his history, his associates and his actions during the 1950’s and 60’s shows that not only was he a secret radical, but he had very good reasons to be circumspect about his ideological views during the McCarthy era.

Beginnings

Harry Belafonte was born in 1927 to Caribbean immigrants in New York, but spent his formative years, ages eight through thirteen, in his mother’s native Jamaica, living in Kingston as well as in the countryside near the Blue Mountains. Growing up in a black-majority country gave him a sense of self that wasn’t possible in a racially segregated USA . In 1944, Belafonte dropped out of school to enlist in the Navy and started his political education at the hands of dock-workers and fellow-seamen. He read W. E. B. Du Bois ’s Color and Democracy, opening him to radical thoughts at a time when the Soviet Union was an ally against fascism. After leaving the Navy, Belafonte saw his destiny on the stage and performed at the American Negro Theatre. Paul Robeson was in the audience one night, and that sparked a long friendship that would change Belafonte’s life in many ways.

In 1948 the fifty-year old Robeson was at the pinnacle of his career, having “made a name for himself as an American football player, as a fine singer of Opera and slave spirituals, as a capable actor (notably in Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones) and finally, as a bold speaker for the cause that he championed with a passion, the fight for social justice” . His outspoken radical views had set him on a collision course with the US government, just as the Cold War was setting in. Belafonte watched as his mentor was harassed by the FBI and even had his passport revoked in 1951 by the State Department. Unable to perform in the US after his performance at Peekskill in New York was disrupted by demonstrators, and not allowed to travel abroad for performances, Robeson was entangled in a legal fight to get his passport back while his career languished. The price he paid for his radical passion was very dear indeed; Belafonte saw this and never forgot. In 2000, Belafonte “was a featured speaker at a rally in Cuba, honoring the American Soviet spies, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Tears, one observer reported, ‘streaked down’ Belafonte's face, ‘as he recalled the pain and humiliation his friend [Paul] Robeson had been forced to endure’ in 1950s America” .

Quiet Involvement in the Civil Rights Movement

During the early 1950’s, Belafonte was quietly involved in protests; he walked a picket line in November 1950 when W.E.B. Du Bois was arrested . As he recently stated: ”I came back [from the Second World War], like millions of us did, with an expectation that those principles for which we fought would be fully revealed and embraced by the American government and the American people -- the war was about democracy, the war was about ending white supremacy, the war was about ending colonialism -- only to discover that the Allies, the British, the French, the Dutch and the Americans, all who were at the forefront of the democratic charge, having victoriously won that war, did not upon the celebration of victory do anything but go back to business as usual” .

Belafonte was also a friend of Stanley Levison, who “had served in effect as a financial pillar of the (US)CP [United States Communist Party] during the height of its persecution” , and was a close confidant of Dr King for many years until J. Edgar Hoover maneuvered the Kennedy brothers into getting Dr King to break off all contact with Levison . After the lynching of Emmet Till, a fourteen year-old Chicago youth visiting Mississippi in the summer of 1955, Levison and Bayard Rustin organized ‘In Friendship’, a concert featuring Belafonte along with Coretta Scott King, a trained singer as well as Dr. King’s wife, and Duke Ellington, to raise funds to support the movement against lynching.

Belafonte chose to live in New York, rejecting the shallow show business life in Los Angeles, preferring to follow his “benign idiosyncratic politics” to where his friends in the unions and radical politics were. But aware of the intense scrutiny of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and potential surveillance by the FBI , Belafonte stayed in the background.
During the early days of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which started in December 1955, Dr. King asked for a meeting with Belafonte at Adam Clayton Powell’s church in Harlem. “Belafonte was wary of preachers and established Negro leaders, partly because he thought they had never supported his idols W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson…King said that he had heard that Belafonte cared deeply about the race struggle, quite apart from his career in show business” . Almost the same age, they soon struck up a close friendship that lasted till Dr. King’s death in 1968. Belafonte not only raised money for the movement, but advised Dr. King on finances, and taxes, and arranged life insurance to benefit Dr. King’s family in case anything should happen to him.
By 1956, Belafonte was at the peak of his popularity as a singer, having sold 1.5 million copies of his album Calypso: the first artist in the world to have made a Platinum hit. He was nominated for the Spingarn Medal that year for opening the doors of several prestigious performing venues to black artists, such as Palmer House in Chicago and the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. In addition, he was cited for his painstaking care to make sure that he was not treated separately from his fellow blacks . He devoted increasing amounts of time to the movement by hosting strategy and planning sessions at his New York apartment and taking part in fund-raising concerts.

The Youth Movement & SNCC

Youth and young people were very important to Belafonte and he took part in the Prayer Pilgrimage at the Lincoln Memorial in May 1957, along with Mahalia Jackson, Sammy Davis Jr. and Sidney Poitier, popular Afro-American artists. It was held to commemorate the third anniversary of the Brown decision, and protest against the opposition to integration in education in the southern states. He spoke at the event: :”All my life I have firmly believed that as an artist and a human being, I cannot isolate myself from the struggles of my people; that their victories are my victories and their defeats are my defeats” . In late 1959, Belafonte along with Jackie Robinson and Sidney Poitier helped sponsor Project Airlift that brought 81 students from Africa to study in the US . He joined his old friends in helping youth and students, working with Bayard Rustin in A. William Randolph’s Youth March for Integrated Schools in 1958 and 1959. In the last Youth March, Belafonte was mired in controversy as E. Frederic Morrow, the only black political appointee in the Eisenhower administration, blocked him from accompanying the four youth delegates to meet the President. Morrow writes: “It annoys me personally to see someone like Belafonte suddenly emerge as a knight in shining armor to lead Negro youth against the forces of discrimination and segregation. I just wonder where he has been all these years when his voice and his money and his prestige would have been very helpful in these areas” . It appears that Belafonte had managed to keep such a low profile that after several years of intensive support to the movement, his contribution has gone unnoticed by the White House and members of the black middle class. But Belafonte continued to focus on the youth movement.

After the spontaneous student sit-ins of February 1960, Belafonte provided an initial contribution so that SNCC could open an office and have a permanent staff in the summer of 1961. At a meeting held between14-16 July with SNCC in Washington DC, Belafonte discussed what it would take to have 100,000-200,000 students mobilized for voter registration activities. James Forman, Executive Secretary of SNCC, wrote to him in December 1963: “Since the summer of 1961 your commitment to our struggle has not faltered and you have on many occasions enthusiastically given your time, your money, and encouraged your friends to support us. We shall never forget this” .

When the SNCC leaders were almost all burnt-out and exhausted by mid-1964, especially after the failure to seat the integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party instead of the segregated delegation at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City , Belafonte arranged a tour of Africa for them. It was an eye-opening experience to visit countries where there were “Black people in charge. Black people doing for themselves”. It opened them to the pan-African ideas that would be brought to the fore by Stokely Carmichael in the future. John Lewis, Chairman of SNCC, also ran into Malcolm X at an unscheduled stop in Kenya, leading to some collaboration in 1965 just before the former Nation of Islam leader was murdered .

Early Strategic Vision

On several occasions, Belafonte was ready to participate in direct action. In May 1961 Belafonte wanted to ride in the first Freedom Ride being organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), to test the implementation of anti-segregation laws governing interstate travel through the South. But Dr. King dissuaded him, and he was not on the bus when it is firebombed outside Anniston . Belafonte, however, continued to help plan activities such as voter registration, working with Gardner Taylor, a prominent Baptist preacher, and Dr. King .

Belafonte understood that the strategic power wielded by Dr King had to be carefully preserved and kept above politics and in-fighting. During the 1960 presidential election campaign, after John Kennedy called Coretta Scott King when Dr King was arrested, and Robert Kennedy quietly worked to free him, many around Dr King, including his father, felt that Dr King should come out in support of Kennedy. But Belafonte felt that Dr King “shouldn’t play the game like a politician, at a lesser level” and his advice was heeded. Even though Belafonte himself had the ear of the future President , he wanted Dr King to remain aloof from party politics.
During that time, Belafonte seems to have had a clear policy that he would not give any speeches. When Belafonte was asked to speak at Iowa State University in February 1960, Dr King explained that he had “heard him [Belafonte] say on occasions that he limits his activities to the artistic field” when responding to the request. This was the reaction to “speak on a topic regarding man’s religious expression through music, with some emphasis on the contribution made by negro spirituals and folk music” . Belafonte was very careful to stick to his art, even though much of the proceeds from this art went to the movement.

Plain Speaking

Recently however, he has earned the ire of the establishment, especially the conservatives, by his outspoken criticism of the Iraq war that connects it to world terrorism in a way that the Administration could never imagine: ”Bush has led us into a dishonorable war that has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people...What is the difference between that terrorist and other terrorists?" . In an interview with Wolf Blitzer soon after, not only does he refuse to retract what he says, but goes further: “President George Bush, I think Cheney, I think Rumsfeld, I think all of these people have lost any moral integrity… We are in this war immorally and illegally“. He seems to be carrying on the legacy of Dr King, who said in his last sermon at Ebenezer before he was assassinated: “God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless unjust war [such] as Vietnam. And we are the criminals in that war! We have committed more war crimes almost than any other nation in the world, and I’m going to continue to say it“ . With parallels between the wars in Iraq and Vietnam on the minds of Americans more than ever, Belafonte is doing what Dr. King might have done, if he were still alive.

Casting Bush as a terrorist echoes the words used by Belafonte’s mentor Robeson, who in 1952 “charged that the US was committed to a policy of cultural and economic genocide against black Americans (with the tactic of lynching as the basic mode of keeping the rebellious in line)”. At the Arts Presenters Member Conference, Belafonte said “We've come to this dark time in which the new Gestapo of Homeland Security lurks here, where citizens are having their rights suspended” . Wolf Blitzer castigated Belafonte for using this Nazi analogy, and Blitzer even had a quote from Barack Obama to show that Belafonte is isolated in his opinions . But once again this is similar to Robeson who invoked the comparison with the Nazis in his writings: “I stood in Dachau in 1945 and saw the ashes and bones of departed victims. I might have seen the ashes of some of my brothers in Groveland, Florida just the other day—or in Martinsville a few months back” .

Belafonte recently visited Venezuela with Danny Glover, the famous actor, and Cornel West, Professor of Religion at Princeton. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Hugo Chavez, he again called George Bush a terrorist and out of touch with millions of Americans: “No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we are here to tell you, not hundreds, not thousands but millions of the American people, millions, support your revolution”. Belafonte was especially irked that in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, when offers of help came from all over the world, including Venezuela, the Bush administration arrogantly declined all assistance, yet could not provide the help needed by the survivors of that disaster.

Moderation Leads to Success

Belafonte describes himself as an autodidact, but he has never forgotten the lessons given by his professors in the University of Life. He lives his life like “Professor” Robeson: “I am a radical. I am going to stay one until my people are free to walk the earth” . He drew his inspiration from the spirituals of the masses, but was neither a black-separatist nor anti-white, and was an internationalist in every way. Belafonte, a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 1987, has traveled all over world, trying to bring freedom to children every where. He lives his life as his mentor did: “Every artist, every scientist, every writer must decide now where he stands. …The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or slavery” . Although he was discreet in the past, Belafonte now has no qualms about speaking out against oppression and supporting the forces of freedom.

His other “Professor”, Dr. King, has embedded a deeply pacifist viewpoint in him. Just as Dr. King, to the consternation of his hosts, asked India to unilaterally disarm during his visit to India in 1959, Belafonte says: “I don't think soldiers should be anywhere in the world. I mean, that is a moral and a basic philosophy. I think that the only way to end wars is to have no military” . He admits that it will take time to get there, but the process has to start sometime.
Both of these “professors” contributed to his working discreetly for the movement. Robeson by his example of what happened to those who publicly refused to toe the line, and Dr. King by his example of how moderation, a type of non-violence in itself, could lead to success. Instead of attacking head-on, as many urged him to, Dr. King was a master at deftly disengaging when it would pay off in the long run. On the Edmund Pettus Bridge, during the second Selma March in March 1965, Dr. King turned away, even as the state troopers parted, so that he did not risk violence, violate a Federal court order, and be responsible for a complete breakdown in the dialogue between the movement and the Administration. Belafonte learnt that it was important to preserve himself for the marathon that was the reality of the movement, rather than expend all the energy in a sprint that wouldn’t reach the finish line. By preserving his freedom to pursue his career, travel all over the world, and show the moderate side of the movement, he was also able to earn a great deal of money for the movement. Only now, when he has achieved all he needed to, and in a time when international media coverage provides far more protection than it did in the 50’s and 60’s, does he dare to bare his secret radical views. His philosophy is very aptly stated in his own words: “My social and political interests are part of my career. I cannot separate them. My songs reflect the human condition. The role of art isn't just to show life as it is, but to show life as it should be.”

Works Cited
Blitzer, Wolf, Harry Belafonte Lashes Out (Interview with Harry Belafonte), January 23, 2006. http://transcripts.cnn.com/transcripts/0601/23/sitroon.03.html
Branch, Taylor, Parting The Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.
Darby, Henry E. & Margaret N. Rowley, King on Vietnam and Beyond, Phylon, Vol. 47, No.1 (1st Qtr. 1986), pp. 43-50.
Gates, Henry Louis Jr., Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man, New York: Random House, 1997.
Goodman, Amy, “We Have Got to Bring Corporate America to Its Knees” – Harry Belafonte on Racism, Poverty, John Kerry, War and Resistance (Interview of Harry Belafonte on the program Democracy Now!), June 15, 2004, http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/15/1410245

King, Martin Luther Jr., Edited Clayborne Carson, The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., New York: Warner Books, 1998.
King Papers, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University:
Belafonte, Harry, Jackie Robinson, Sidney Poitier (African-American Students Foundation, Inc.), Letter to Martin Luther King, Jr., 11/13/1959. Location: MLKP, MBU, Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers, 1954-1968, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Mass. Box 19 Folder 5 (CSKV87-A10) [591113-003]
Jones, Robert L., Letter to Martin Luther King, Jr. 2/10/1960. Location: NAACPP, DLC, National Association for Advancement of Colored People Papers, 1909-1955, Library of Congress, Washington D.C., Group III-G2 (CSKV90-A15) [600210-005]
King, Martin Luther, Jr., Letter to Robert L. Jones, 2/24/1960. Location: MLKP, MBU, Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers, 1954-1968, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Mass. Box 40, Folder 138 (CSKV87-A10) [600224-005]
Lerner, Gerda, Time for Freedom, 5/17/1957. Location: ICMAC, McDonald & Associates, Chicago, Ill. [570517-037]
Levison, Stanley D., Minutes of Board Meeting, 3/7/1960 Location: APRC, DLC A. Philip Randolph Collection, Library of Congress, Washington D.C. (CSKV90-A13) [600307-002]
McDonald, Dora E., Letter to Martin Luther King, Jr., 6/20/1961. Location: MLKP, MBU, Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers, 1954-1968, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Mass. Box 54 (CSKV87-A10) [610620-003]
Morrow, E. Frederic (United States, White House), Letter to Jim Hagerty, 4/10/1959. Location: EMFR, KabE, E. Frederic Morrow Records, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kan. [590410-009]
Morrow, E. Frederic (United States, White House), Journal Entry, 4/18/1959. Location: EMFR, KabE, E. Frederic Morrow Records, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kan. [590418-003]
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, List of proposed recipients of Spingarn Medal, 5/6/1957. Location: NAACPP, DLC, National Association for Advancement of Colored People Papers, 1909-1955, Library of Congress, Washington D.C., Group III-G2 (CSKV90-A15) [570506-011]
Sims, Harold R. (United States National Student Association), American Student Speaks of Civil Rights Affirmation and Pledge of the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, 5/17/1957. Location: MLKJP, GAMK, Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers (Series I-IV), Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia. [570517-018]
Wofford, Harris (United States, White House), Letter to John F. Kennedy, 5/29/1961. Location: RFKGC, MwalK, Robert Francis Kennedy Papers, Attorney General’s General Correspondence, John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Mass., Box 68 Harris Wofford Folder. [610529-022]
Wofford, Harris (United States, White House), Memo to Kenneth P. O’Donnell, 6/12/1961. Location: WHMLK, MwalK, While House Names Folder, John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Mass. [610612-012]
Lewis, John with Michael D’Orso, Walking with the Wind, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1998.
Prashad, Vijay, Comrade Robeson: A Centennial Tribute to an American Communist, Social Scientist, Vol. 25, No. 7/8 (Jul-Aug 1997), pp 39-50.
Radosh, Ronald, Harry's Hatreds, New York Post, 10/24/2002
SNCC Papers, Media Section, Green Library, Stanford University.

How Kissinger “Lost” India

2009-12-12T10:41:00.000-08:00

After Mao Tse Tung took control over China, and Chiang Kai Shek retreated to the island of Formosa late in the 1940’s, there was much finger-pointing within the United States administration to place the blame on specific individuals, especially within the State Department, for having “lost” China. The Cold War had just started, and this was seen as a huge victory for Communism. Early in the 1970’s, India was similarly “lost” from American influence by the actions of Henry Kissinger, then National Security Adviser to President Nixon. Kissinger’s actions during the civil war in Pakistan drove a non-aligned India into the Soviet sphere of influence; ironically this happened while he was working to re-open diplomatic relations with China. The “tilt” policy practiced by Kissinger and Nixon, not only alienated the world’s largest democracy and a natural ally of the United States, but in conjunction with other events, laid the seeds of the 9/11 disaster thirty years later.

On independence from Britain in 1947, colonial India was partitioned into two sovereign states: India and Pakistan. The Muslim-dominated western and eastern parts of the sub-continent respectively formed Islamic West and East Pakistan, separated by a thousand miles of a secular India, albeit with a Hindu majority . The princely states, over three hundred kingdoms that owed allegiance to the British Monarch, were theoretically free to join either nation. As small areas surrounded by the other state would not be viable, Muslim kingdoms within the central landmass, such as Hyderabad, acceded to India, as did Hindu kingdoms within Pakistan. The Hindu-ruled kingdom of Kashmir, with a majority Muslim population, was on the north western border of the peninsula and could viably be part of either state. On acceding to India, it was attacked by Pakistani irregulars in 1948 and a UN brokered cease-fire divided it at the Line of Control which is the operational border between India and Pakistan. Kashmir remains a bone of contention and wars were fought in 1965 and 1999 by Pakistan to get full control of the province. Pakistan has also sponsored and provided bases for terrorist groups within Indian-controlled Kashmir that demand “independence”.

Unlike India which has evolved into a vibrant multi-party democracy with regular competitive elections, freedom of expression, smooth transfers of power and armed forces that remain under civilian control, Pakistan has seen a series of experiments in democracy, dictatorship and military rule. Its strategic location at the edge of the Middle East, just south of both Russia and China, had made it an important component of United States policy in that region during the Cold War. This led to disproportionate military aid, and the unbalanced growth of the military forces in the country compared to civil society. Even though there has been a great deal of multilateral lending to help develop industry and agriculture, it has been overshadowed by the amounts spent on the military . As Wilcox says, “Within Pakistan, American alliance assistance came to have three effects: to strengthen the armed services within the political system, to strengthen the central government against other centers of authority in society, and to strengthen Pakistan against India” .

Thus it is no mystery to understand why the armed forces took over from the civilian government in 1959, and General Ayub Khan became the President. In 1965, assuming that India was still vulnerable after its China war in 1962, and needing to bolster public opinion and confidence in his armed forces, Ayub Khan attacked India. Instead of the swift decisive victory that was expected, the Pakistan Army was forced into a stalemate that required Soviet mediation at Tashkent to broker a cease-fire, after the United States refused to mediate . This led to two changes that set the stage for the civil war to come. Firstly, India’s Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Sastri, died while negotiating at Tashkent, resulting in the selection of Indira Gandhi as the leader of the country. Secondly, in 1967 a set of younger officers, led by General Yahya Khan, removed Ayub and his disgraced colleagues from power.

Yahya Khan very soon established a legal framework to elect legislators who would then create a new constitution for the country and elections were held at the end of 1970 for national and provincial assemblies. At that time there were four contiguous provinces in the west with a total population of 55 million, and a single province in the East with a population of 75 million. In the twenty years since independence, significant fissures had emerged between the provinces, especially between East Pakistan and the provinces in the west. While the East earned most of Pakistan’s foreign exchange, it was the least developed, and had a per capita income 20% lower than that of the west. Most importantly, the people living in the East were culturally, temperamentally and physically different from the West Pakistanis . This led them to be more tolerant of Hindus, and many years after partition there were still many Hindus living in Bangladesh . Living in the low-lying but fertile river delta, the poor people of that region were often subject to natural disasters such as flooding and cyclones.

In East Pakistan the dominant political party was the Awami League led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Elections that were to be held in September 1970 were postponed due to a cyclone that caused much devastation and loss of life, and finally completed in December. Due to the step-motherly treatment by West Pakistan governments since independence and a popular perception that relief efforts were not satisfactory, the Awami League swept the polls in the East, capturing 167 seats out of the 169 available. As the East had the most seats, and the votes in the West was split between the Pakistan People’s Party led by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and several other parties, Mujib’s party had the majority in a house of 302 seats and he should have been made Prime Minister. Bhutto’s party came a late second with 81 seats.
The election result was greeted with shock in West Pakistan and led to weeks of negotiation between the military dictatorship, Bhutto, Mujib and the leaders of the other parties. Mujib proposed a six-point program that would have led to a great deal of autonomy for the provinces, but this was not acceptable to the west. Early in March 1971, Mujib, frustrated with the delays in the transition of power, declared autonomy for East Pakistan, taking over the civilian administration, but stopping short of full independence and thus remaining within Pakistan. After negotiations failed in Dacca, on March 25 Yahya Khan declared an emergency in the East, expelled foreign journalists and let the Army, mainly made of West Pakistanis, loose on the civilian population. According to Hersh, “over the next weeks and months, the West Pakistani army expanded its march of horror, slaughtering Awami League supporters, students and intellectuals on a scale not seen since the Third Reich” . This genocide is estimated to have killed upto 3 million people and forced almost 10 million to leave their homes and take refuge in India. The West Pakistan army was opposed by the Mukti Bahini which was an amalgam of the more militant members of the Awami League with the Bengali regiments of the army, such as the East Pakistan Rifles. Mujib was arrested and put into solitary confinement in West Pakistan, and some senior members of the Awami League who escaped the killings set up a government-in-exile in Calcutta for the new country in the making: Bangladesh.
Against the international outcry against the Pakistan government’s actions and India’s appeal for help, was contrasted the silence of the Nixon administration. Even though Bangladesh was a cause celebre in the United States outside the official circles, both the State Department and the White House were very guarded in their public pronouncements against Pakistan. The US Consulate in Dacca had a clandestine radio transmitter and was able to send detailed reports about the genocide that were followed by a formal note of dissent from American policy signed by diplomats at the consulate, the State Department and AID . But Nixon and Kissinger had a secret agenda and didn’t want that to be disturbed by the events in Pakistan.

When Nixon won the presidential election in 1968, he was determined to be “hands-on” in his foreign policy, and chose Henry Kissinger as his National Security Adviser. Kissinger was an academic who had only played advisory roles in previous administrations, and had “no respect for career diplomats” ; as a result foreign policy was completely controlled from the White House, sidelining William Rogers, the Secretary of State, and the State Department. In order to secure a grand foreign policy victory and firmly establish Nixon’s legacy, Kissinger embarked on expanding the current United States-Soviet Union superpower relationship to include China and make it a triangular relationship. The inclusion of China would not only counter-balance the Soviet Union, but would help America in its negotiations to get out of the quagmire in Vietnam.

Kissinger “viewed the regional crises as inherently linked to triangular diplomacy” , and was not interested in the details of the history of the region or the motivations of the leaders there. He was convinced that anything that happened in the world was orchestrated by one of the three powers, and local factors did not merit consideration. In addition to ignoring experts and career diplomats, Kissinger felt that there was no need to monitor or accommodate public opinion , so what “mattered was how the Soviets, and in particular, the Chinese viewed American policy” . As Pakistan was Kissinger’s conduit to China, “Yahya Khan held the key to Nixon’s re-election” . In the initial phase of the conflict “Peking completely backed Pakistan, charged Indian interference, and noted that internal strife was part of the internal affairs of Pakistan” , and Kissinger may have been concerned that any American criticism or interference in the civil war would have put his grand plan at risk.

Instead of staying out of the conflict, Kissinger pretended to make an attempt to reconcile India and Pakistan, making a trip to both capitals in July 1971. When he vanished from public sight in Islamabad for some time, pleading an indisposition, it was speculated that he was in secret talks with Mujib. But it was revealed two weeks later that he had secretly flown to Beijing for talks with Zhou En Lai, and this duplicity “renewed Indian distrust of the American role in the East Pakistan crisis” and the “secret trip to China via Pakistan sent a message of support for Pakistan” . In addition, Kissinger had secretly been warning the Indian Ambassador in the United States about possible Chinese reaction to any Indian intervention , making it clear to India that it needed the Soviet Union in its corner.

On August 9, 1971, India and the Soviet Union signed a 20-year treaty of peace, friendship and cooperation, signaling closer ties between the two countries, the end of India’s non-alignment, and including “the news that Russia would provide India with more arms” . Since 1964, the Soviets had already been supplying sophisticated weaponry, including aircraft, as well as the opportunity to manufacture them in India . The clear message from Kissinger that the US would support China in any action against India, less than a decade after India’s China War, forced India to conclude this treaty that had been proposed by the Soviets many months before, but rebuffed at that time.

Late in November, Yahya Khan chose to force resolution of the conflict by attacking India in the West. After an initial setback, India struck back in the West, completely immobilizing the Pakistan Air Force and Navy and gaining some ground, but not attempting to go further. In the East, the Indian Army, working in collaboration with the Mukti Bahini in pre-planned moves, conducted a two week campaign to liberate the people and create the state of Bangladesh: they were welcomed everywhere as liberators. Even then Kissinger tried his best to reverse an un-winnable situation by branding India as the aggressor, putting pressure on the Soviets to arrange a quick cease fire and ordering the Seventh Fleet with the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise into the Bay of Bengal. Pakistan, after being rebuffed in its attempt to invoke secret US treaty obligations that required American involvement in the war, surrendered in the East on 14 December. India immediately halted military operations, and on 17 December recognized the new country and its leader Mujibur Rahman who had been released by Pakistan.
Anatoly Dobrynin, Moscow’s Ambassador in Washington is quoted as having pointed out the irony to Kissinger of a situation “where [the Soviets] were lined up with what looked like [the Americans] had always thought was a pillar of democracy [i.e. India] while [the US] were lined up with the Chinese”
Kissinger focused on his grand plan to create a triangular super power relationship and open diplomatic relations with China, and decided that nothing should disturb its implementation. Keeping his eye on the goal to have Nixon re-elected in 1972, he deliberately ignored Pakistan’s bloody civil war and tried to thwart India’s actions to resolve the crisis. Using his position in Washington, he threatened India with dire consequences if it intervened, including the possibility of Chinese attack that the US would not interfere with . This forced India to move closer to the Soviets in self-defence. The world’s largest democracy and a natural ally of the United States and its people was forced into an alliance with a communist dictatorship.

There may be some who defend Kissinger by pointing out that the policy was Nixon’s, that the President had a personal animosity against Indian leaders, especially Indira Gandhi, and Kissinger was just following orders. However, Hersh quotes a 1979 interview with Indira Gandhi: “It was not so much Mr. Nixon talking as Mr. Kissinger, because Nixon would talk for a few minutes and would then say ‘Isn't that right, Henry?’, and from then on Henry would talk on for quite a while. I would talk with Henry rather than Nixon”
In addition, while Kissinger cited the likely Chinese reaction to any US pressure on Pakistan as a reason to do nothing, his understanding was flawed. In his October visit to China he was surprised by Zhou En Lai’s” glaring lack of interest in discussing the Indo-Pakistani conflict” . Yet in November Kissinger still told New Delhi that if there was an India-Pakistan conflict, China would intervene and the US would not help . Siddiqui states that Chinese support for repression wasn’t there, especially as Communists were targeted for extermination in East Pakistan. When Pakistan Peoples Party Chairman Bhutto went to China in November 1971, Zhou En Lai was quoted as having said “Chinese military aid was for meeting the threat of external aggression and not for the repression of the people”.

While Kissinger followed the usual practice of supporting repression by a client state, no matter what the circumstances, it was the Reagan administration that later demonstrated that transition from a dictator to democracy was possible, as was done in the cases of the Phillipines and South Korea . Thus the defence usually put forward that there was no alternative to supporting a repressive regime in order to avoid a complete breakdown in the country was not valid. It is surprising that even now, the Bush administration “quietly acquiesced as Musharraf amended Pakistan’s constitution in a way that extended his presidency for another five years and gave him the power to dissolve parliament.”

The “Tilt” created a military class in Pakistan that overbalanced the civilian administrators and politicians and continually needed a justification for more military aid. During the Cold War it was the Soviet Union and China that needed to be countered, a game that Pakistan played well with all three superpowers in the 1970’s. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Pakistan was a conduit for American aid to the Jihadis, mostly through the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), using the funds and equipment to build-up experienced commanders like Osama Bin Laden. The Taliban were born in the madrasas of Pakistan, and took over Afghanistan completely after the Soviet defeat and withdrawal. During the 1980’s, the Jihadis used Kashmir as a training ground for terrorists while America looked the other way. The relationships forged between the American intelligence and military establishment and Pakistan during the tilt proved stronger than the increasing evidence that the Taliban and Bin Laden were just using India as a training ground for an attack on the West. Until right after 9/11, Pakistan regular army, special forces and intelligence units were working closely with the Taliban: forces that were trained and funded by the United States.

The relationship between the United States and India would not recover from Kissinger’s actions for three decades, until Bill Clinton visited India in 2000 , and re-started the dialogue. Since then, especially during the Bush administration, the strategic cooperation between India and the United States has been growing in many areas, including joint military exercises. Closer cooperation between the world’s oldest democracy and the world’s largest should be beneficial not just to their people, but to the rest of the world.

Works Cited
Hanhimaki, Jussi. The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Hersh, Seymour M. The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House. New York: Summit Books, 1983.
Mann, James. Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet. New York: Penguin Books, 2004.
Siddiqui, Abdul Rahman. East Pakistan: the End Game. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2004
Wilcox, Wayne. The Emergence of Bangladesh. Washington D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1973.

Animesh Mukherjee
Gerald Dorfman
MLA 243: Problems in American Foreign Policy
Final Paper
June 4, 2007

Racism in Post-Revolutionary France:

2009-12-12T10:32:00.000-08:00

The French Revolution of 1789 marked an inflection point in the attitudes towards race and slavery in France. For more than a century before the revolution, slavery was not legal in continental France, while an increasing number of African slaves became essential for agricultural production in the French West Indies. The revolution, with its slogan “Liberté. Equalité. Fraternité.”, should have automatically freed the slaves and made them citizens, along with the previously freed blacks and mulattos. On the contrary, during the century that followed, French attitudes towards race and the colonized hardened into brutal exploitation. The progressive experiments at constitution building at home had one feature in common: all enforced a separate set of exploitative laws and policies on the colonies. By contrast, the monarchy and even Napoleon, with his famous Code, considered all the people except slaves, as equal subjects, no matter where they lived. Physical slavery was finally abolished in 1848, but this did not stop the growing economic and mental slavery of the colonized people in the Caribbean, Africa and the Far East. Even today the citizens of the countries that were previously colonies are paying the price of the mental slavery to Europe that developed during the colonial period.

Before the Revolution, Legally, “There are no slaves in France”

During the seventeenth century, as France developed its colonies in the West Indies, particularly Martinique, Guadeloupe and Saint-Domingue, it faced a shortage of laborers. Very few of the original inhabitants, the Caribs and the Arawaks, had survived the encounter with the Europeans, and farmers from France could not get acclimatized to the hot weather and were easily sickened by tropical diseases. To resolve this problem, slaves were brought from Africa to work on the farms. As their numbers grew, the legal basis of slavery in the colonies was decreed in the Code Noir (1685). This law applied only to the colonies in the Americas, and “in the early years of French colonial slavery, at least, the king, his ministers and the parlementaires all cooperated to uphold the tradition of France as a land free of slaves”[i]. As the colonies grew however, and more and more returnees or visitors to France brought their slaves with them, there was pressure from the slave-owners to change this viewpoint, whilst others attempted to control the growing black population at home.

The Edict of October 1716 set conditions whereby slave owners could bring their slaves to France without fear of their being set free, with restrictions on the purpose and maximum duration of the visit. Instead of the previous appeals to “customary practice” in order to free slaves who had been brought to French soil, this provided the first statutory basis for slaves to claim their freedom[ii]. As the Edict was not registered by the parlement of Paris, it was used to argue that slaves were free in France. In case the courts did recognize the edict, lawyers argued that violation of the conditions regarding registration of the slaves, or the purpose of the trip and its duration, merited freeing the slaves. The courts under the jurisdiction of the parlement of Paris used this tactic to grant freedom to most of the slaves who applied for it.

In 1738, as increased numbers of slaves were being brought to France, the edict was reinforced but once again it was not registered by the parlement. However there were now two groups that wanted restrictions on the travel of slaves to the mainland. Firstly, colonial administrators did not favor the return of slaves who had been to France as they were thought to be troublemakers. Whether they returned as slaves or were freed, their experiences on the continent opened them to the possibilities of freedom, and the stories they told their fellow slaves only increased the general discontent. Secondly, some administrators on the mainland were disturbed over perceived threats to racial purity and exaggerated fears that whites were being outnumbered by blacks, even though they formed a tiny fraction of the population. This was the beginning of the use of race rather than status, “free” or “slave”, in the legal controls.
On August 8 1777 there was major change in legislation that was based on skin color alone, since “the government is intent to cleanse France of blacks”[iii]. This law prohibited the importation of blacks into France but did not disturb the status of those already there. It also attempted to stop the intermingling of blood, but a proposed article against interracial marriage was opposed by the church and didn’t survive the draft stage.

With the development of the liberation philosophy, Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu and de Pansey all wrote against slavery. Especially de Pansey, who castigated Christianity for creating and maintaining rather than removing slavery, and wanted to extend the freedom of the slaves in France to the colonies and linked anti-despotism to anti-slavery[iv]. However, while the theoreticians of the coming revolution were to use slavery as one of the examples to argue for freedom from the monarchy, the post-revolutionary regimes were too dependent on the production of the colonies, to completely free the slaves.

Racism Develops

As the number of freed slaves increased both in the colonies and France, race started to become an important characteristic: not just between whites and blacks, but even amongst the “blacks” from the other colonies such as India[v]. Laws based on race rather than status, started emerging, ushering in a trend of differentiating between humans based on race.

There was a progressive redefinition of the meaning of race that started in the seventeenth century. Initially associated with lineage and the concept of nobility, race transcended the inherited biological character to posit that diet, education and “placing the individual in a family with a long history of noble deeds”[vi] counted to develop a person’s race. In 1684, Bernier proposed to divide all of humankind into mostly four or five species or races of men: the Europeans (which included not just whites, but also people of the Mediterranean, Arabia, Persia, India, Siam and even Native Americans), African, Asians (China and Japan) and the Samoeds of Lapland. This equation of race and species ignoring skin color changed in the late eighteenth century: from that time race was synonymous with skin color.

For example, in the post-revolutionary battle for supremacy over the most important French colonial possession, Saint-Domingue, the many re-alignments between the grand blancs, (the white farm owning aristocracy), the petits blancs (bourgeois whites who were traders and artisans), the mixed race mulattos, and the slaves who had freed themselves, were based as much on race as they were on their republican or monarchial political views. The racism of the petits blancs was typical: ”This was the type for whom race prejudice was more important than even the possession of slaves, of which they had few. The distinction between a white man and a man of color was for them fundamental. It was their all. In defense of it they would bring down the whole of their world”[vii].

The question whether the differences between men were differences of race or of species was strongly debated in the nineteenth century. According to Blanckaert, one school of thought held that “species is defined not in the outward resemblance of forms, but on the continuing fecundity of the métis”, i.e. the mixtures between the purported species. If intermixtures survived and were themselves able to propagate, then they were part of the same species, and any outward difference was that of race. This was no value-neutral scientific debate: it formed the basis of arguments for and against miscegenation, as well as the treatment of the mulattos.
Apart from experiments on animals and plants, selected studies were made of mixed race families. Many concluded that “regeneration of the human species, or the return of all the colored races to the white type … was by means of perpetual cross breeding of the métis with the primordial, now European, white race”. Thus even those who supported miscegenation did it for a racist reason[viii]. This supremacist ideology was reinforced by Gobineau who in 1853 said that groups that remained the most pure enjoyed a relative superiority, although there were others like Paul Broca whose participation in the Republican clubs of 1848 led him to argue against this position.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the division of mankind on the basis of skin color and the supremacy of white skin triumphed. Not only did the whites believe in their natural superiority, but they used it to justify colonialism. In the colonies like the French West Indies, where there had been significant mixing of the races, social and economic advancement was seen in marrying someone lighter skinned: “marrying up” was transformed into “marrying white”. This was natural in a society where white colonists were at the top of the economic pyramid[ix], and led to the development of an inferiority complex about language, culture and customs that were not “white”.

From Adventurers to Economic Exploitation: Bourgeois Colonialism

In the years after Columbus’s landfall in the Caribbean, Spain, Portugal, Britain, France and later the Netherlands, after overcoming Spanish domination, competed with one another to exploit the newly discovered lands in the Americas. While there was much debate for and against the pursuit of “God and Gold”, and much dissension between the powers, each pursued the expansion of their colonies[x]. The adventurers who had been looking for quick riches were supplanted by settlers who took over the land from the natives and set up farms. The European powers would eventually use the colonies as sources of raw materials and, in some cases, markets for their industrial products. Britain, starting its Industrial Revolution before the continent, was the leader in this.

The revolutionary changes in France after 1789 reinforced this expansion of the bourgeois interests. For example, even though slavery was abolished in 1794 by the Assembly, Napoleon later capitulated to the commercial interests and reinstated slavery in 1802. This prompted the final stage of the insurrection that led to the freedom of the colony of Saint-Domingue and establishment of Haiti. The restoration of 1815 brought back a monarchy that was influenced by the commercial interests; Louis Blanc characterized it aptly: ‘France was a nation of warriors doomed to impotence because it was governed by shopkeepers’[xi]. The 1830 revolution was once again hijacked by the bourgeoisie “the workers…had been badly disillusioned in 1830, having made a revolution then and let the bourgeoisie run off with the profits”[xii]. Only the 1848 revolution abolished slavery universally throughout France and its colonies. This attitude towards material success, even if it came at a moral cost, can be seen in the autobiography of Earnest Renan (1823-1892), which demonstrated a strong moral position, but didn’t condemn his distant relative, Monsieur Z who made his money in the slave trade[xiii]. Thus morals and principles were sacrificed to commercial interests, and exploitation justified by racism.
By the latter half of the nineteenth century, France was following in the footsteps of the English and commercial interests were very active. For example the city of Lyons, whilst far from any port, concerned itself with colonization and “confronted serious problems both in securing a dependable supply of raw silk and reliable markets for the finished products”[xiv]. Changing their focus from just sending missionaries to the Far East, the city established a local geographic society and created business undertakings to exploit the colonies. This support for colonization began in 1830 with an address to the King that stressed the value of setting up enterprises in Algeria. While Lyons had previously been trading with China for its silk business, it set up enterprises in the new colonies in Indo-China so that it could import silk and export its products. This is just an example of how important the colonies had become for the bourgeois.
Import and export of commodities at terms extremely favorable to France was not enough, and the colonial government established monopolies for the exploitation of populace through its addictions. In Indo-China “the opium monopoly constituted one of the most perfect administrative organizations of the colony, it is indeed the only indirect tax which functions well and which causes the administration no variations”. Laffey goes on to say that the “opium monopoly has always been the most important of the direct taxes. Its only real defect lay in its immorality and that addiction is spreading to France”. Along with the liquor monopoly “it seems difficult to make the Annamite understand the benefit of civilization consists in selling him at a high cost a product of prime necessity” [xv]. Pagden quotes Benjamin Constant: “Commerce had not in any way altered the nature of humankind, since commerce and warfare are only two different means to achieve the same end, that of possessing that which is desired”.

Divergence of Laws and Policies between Home and Colony

The opium trade in Indo-China illustrated another aspect of colonization: having separate laws and policies at home and in the colonies, and denying the colonial subjects the constitutional rights granted at home. The French only developed this strategy in the post-Napoleonic period: during the monarchy, French colonies were considered a part of sovereign France, governed by the same laws and their inhabitants equal citizens, except for the slaves. For example, as Pagden points out, the 1664 charter of the Compagne des Indes decreed that all American Indians who converted to Christianity should be treated as French natives.

During the 1789 revolution, plantation and slave owners from Saint-Domingue claimed 18 seats in the Assembly, but Mirabeau turned fiercely on them: “You claim representation proportionate to the number of inhabitants. The free blacks are proprietors and tax-payers, and yet they have not been allowed to vote. And as for the slaves, either they are men or they are not; if the colonists consider them to be men, let them free them, and make them electors and eligible for seats; if the contrary is the case, have we in apportioning deputies according to the population of France, taken into considerations the number of our horses and our mules?”[xvi]. This illustrates that at that time the colonies were treated the same as any other part of France.
This principle of equality continued in the Code Napoleon and its application to the lands conquered in Europe: Napoleon’s goal was a greater France created by conquest with a single constitution and rule of law.

The British denied equal treatment to both the colonizers and the colonized. In North America the English settlers were denied the same status as the residents of Britain and did not have seats in Parliament, leading to the complaint of “no taxation without representation”. Edwin Burke observed that the “oriental despotism” practiced by Warren Hastings, the Governor General of Bengal, did not treat the colonized Indians as fellow subjects[xvii]. Later this exploitative model used by the British was applied by France in its nineteenth century colonies in Algeria, Africa and Indo-China leading to laws and official practices that would never be accepted back in France.

Civilization, Colonization and Culture

Mahatma Gandhi was once asked what he thought about western civilization. Famously, he answered: “I think it would be a good idea!”[xviii]. He would have agreed with Césaire who said: “what fundamentally is colonization? To agree on what it is not: neither evangelization, nor a philanthropic enterprise, nor a desire to push back the frontiers of ignorance, disease and tyranny, nor a project undertaken for the greater glory of God, nor an attempt to extend the rule of law”[xix]. In fact, Césaire vehemently argues that colonization is the opposite of civilization. The brutal behavior and policies adopted in the colonies would leak back to the home country in due course, destroying all that western civilization had built. He goes further and equates the treatment of the colonized with that visited upon Europe by Hitler. Césaire sees Hitler as a natural progression of colonization, in that he “applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India and the blacks of Africa”[xx].

On the supposed modernization of the colonies by the colonizers he counters: “no one knows at what stage of material development the same countries would have been if Europe had not intervened”, giving the example of Japan which became a major power even though it was never colonized. It is not difficult to find at the present time numerous failed states, dictatorships and struggling economies amongst the ex-colonies of the European powers and wonder how much of this was caused by the aftermath of colonization.

The imposition of French language, religion and culture on the colonial subjects was mandatory, with French replacing the local language for official purposes. Even those who opposed slavery, such as the Abbé Gregoire, a delegate to the Assembly in 1789, did not respect the native or African cultures; his ideal was that all were assimilated into Catholicism. While skin color was not a source of difference to him, language, culture and religion were[xxi]. In the Antilles, the native patois language was discouraged, Paris was considered as the center of all culture and any higher education had to be garnered only by travelling to the French capital. In Vietnam, the written script was replaced by the Latin alphabet, making centuries of literature unavailable to future generations who would now be completely dependent on French literature. As Benjamin Constant pointed out: “earlier the conquerors expected the deputies of conquered nations to appear on their knees before them. Today it is man’s morale that they wish to prostrate”[xxii]. The colonized lost confidence not only in their culture but even in the color of their skin: the aspiration to be “white” is the legacy of colonialism. For example, Fanon describes the superior airs and behavior not only of the ones who had been to Paris and returned to Martinique, but even those who just booked their travel!

Thus we see that slavery was replaced by racism, glory-seeking kings and adventurers by the bourgeois seeking exploitative profits, and the rule of law by policies of subjugation. The revolution of 1789 indeed led to many changes in France and its interactions with other nations. The enlightened ideas of the eighteenth century that led to the revolution were supposed to liberate not just France, but the whole world. Instead they led to paradigms that enslaved the minds and destroyed the language, culture and religion of the colonized.

Works Cited

Blanckaert, Claude. “Of Monstrous Métis? Hybridity, Fear of Miscegenation, and Patriotism from Buffon to Broca.” Peabody Color 42-72.
Boulle, Pierre H. “Francois Bernier and the Origins of the Modern Concept of Race.” Peabody Color 11-27
Césaire, Aimé, Discourse on Colonialism, Trans. Joan Pinkham. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Press, 1967
Hart, Jonathan. Contesting Empires. New York: Palmgrave Macmillan, 2005.
James, C L R. The Black Jacobins. New York: Random House, 1963.
Laffey, John. Imperialism and Ideology: An Historical Perspective. Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2000.
Pagden, Anthony. “Fellow Citizens and Imperial Subjects: Conquest and Sovereignty in Europe’s Overseas Empires” 28-46 in History & Theory: Studies in the Philosophy of History, Theorizing Empire. Ed. Philip Pomper, Volume 44 No 4, Dec 2005
Peabody, Sue. There are No Slaves in France: The political culture of race and slavery in the ancient regime. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996
---. The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.
Renan, Earnest. The Memoirs of Earnest Renan. Trans. J. Lewis May. London: Geoffrey Bles, 1935.
Robertson, Priscilla. Revolutions of 1848: A Social History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952.Sepinwall, Alyssa Goldstein. “Eliminating Race, Eliminating Difference.” Peabody Color 28-

[i] Peabody No Slaves, pg 12
[ii] Peabody No Slaves, pg 17
[iii] Peabody No Slaves, pg 117
[iv] Peabody No Slaves, pg 105
[v] Peabody No Slaves, pg 68
[vi] Boulle, pg 12
[vii] James, pg 34
[viii] Blanckaert
[ix] Fanon, pg 43
[x] Hart, pg 12
[xi] Robertson, pg 16
[xii] Robertson, pg 32
[xiii] Renan, pg 79
[xiv] Laffey
[xv] Laffey, pg 37
[xvi] James, pg 60
[xvii] Pagden, pg 33
[xviii] http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gandhi
[xix] Césaire, pg 10
[xx] Césaire, pg 14
[xxi] Sepinwall, pg 28
[xxii] Pagden quoting Constant in “The Spirit of Conquest”, pg 77

Scapegoating Trumps Science during Crises

2009-12-12T10:30:00.000-08:00

Scapegoating is the act of blaming an innocent person or a group when things go wrong, and it has been a part of human behavior for thousands of years. We would expect that modern education, ways of thinking, and the application of the scientific method have defeated this human trait, at least amongst the practitioners of science. However, we find that this is not so, and in times of crisis, even science is trumped by scapegoating. During the medical crisis created in the early 1980’s by HIV/AIDS, instead of objectively looking for the causative agent, the biomedical community focused on the lifestyle choices of some of the victims: the gay community. The behavior of the physicians and scientists displayed the same elemental characteristics observed when scapegoating is analyzed in history and literature. Further, by replacing our naïve understanding of the methods of scientific reasoning, with one based on the history of the scientific process, we understand why the biomedical community acted as they did. Let us start with a definition of scapegoating.
The word ‘scapegoat’ is said to originate from William Tyndale’s translation of Leviticus Chapter 16 Verse 10 (Douglas 6), that describes a ritual of the tribes of Israel in which two goats are chosen for sacrifice. Whilst one goat is slaughtered and the burnt meat offered to God, the transgressions of the congregation are whispered into the ear of the other goat, which is then driven into the desert. The goat that escapes is the scapegoat, the vehicle through which the sins of the tribe are driven away. This origin differs significantly from the modern usage of the term, where we always refer to scapegoats as those who are blamed for a crime or an event, and punished for what has happened even though they are innocent. We don’t let them escape; instead we sacrifice them on the altar of false accusation. History and literature have many examples of this, especially in connection with epidemics.
Epidemics have always been a challenge for the medical profession, and many physicians, for example Nostradamus and Hippocrates, have built their reputations by trying to cure the diseases that ravaged society during their times. In the past, these physicians have based their understanding of these diseases on the metaphysical: Hippocrates believed that fevers were due to an imbalance in the body’s fluids and the positions of the stars could predict its onset (Sherman 57). Modern scientists look instead for material causes and adopt a scientific methodology that promotes objectivity, peer review and double-blind trials[i]. The biomedical community is supposed to have left behind the biases and subjectivity imposed by the human mind, but it appears that scapegoating is still an inherent part of their behavior.
By studying many examples of scapegoating in history and literature, Girard has identified three “stereotypes of persecution” that can be used to characterize it (Reader 107-117). Firstly, as a pre-condition for its occurrence, there is “an extreme loss of social order evidenced by the disappearance of the rules and ‘differences’ that define cultural divisions” (108). This homogeneity is echoed in The Plague: “these exiles of the plague…looked like everybody else, nondescript” (Camus 183). The plague strikes indiscriminately, ignoring differences of age, wealth, and social standing. This loss of differences between individuals leads to a cultural and institutional collapse as human relationships disintegrate. All life, and most death, now revolves around the plague, and the individual’s position at home, at work, and in the community, built over many years, is no longer important. The affected populace then starts surmising about the causes of this collapse, inevitably drawing the wrong conclusions.
This leads to the second stereotype: the accusation that a group of people have committed crimes which violate the strictest taboos, and brought about the cultural collapse. Allegations include violent crimes against authority such as parricide, sexual crimes such as rape or incest, or religious crimes such as the profanation of the host. These are fundamental crimes that “attack the very foundations of cultural order, the family and the hierarchical differences without which there would be no social order” (Girard, Reader 110). The populace has now coalesced into a mob, which believes that there are a small number of people who have committed these crimes, and caused the crisis to unfold. All they need to do is to identify these criminals and destroy or drive them away. No proof is needed, either of the existence of the crimes, or the involvement of the accused; the social disintegration is proof enough of both.
Finally, based on numerous examples, Girard shows that the people accused of these grave crimes are consciously chosen, not because there is proof of their guilt, but because they are the most vulnerable members of society. Paradoxically, they are chosen because in the midst of all the homogeneity, they still retain some semblance of difference. Minorities, the disabled, and even royalty are the stereotypical victims of scapegoating (112-113). In some circumstances, the innocent are intentionally chosen as the scapegoats in order to prevent the vicious cycle of vengeance that characterizes blood feuds (Girard, Violence 86). As they are not involved in the original dispute, and these marginalized members of society are powerless, the cycle of revenge is broken by choosing them as victims. Let us use these three stereotypes to analyze the HIVS/AIDS epidemic in the United States.
In the summer of 1981, it was noticed that some young men in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York were exhibiting combinations of rare disease symptoms. On further investigation, all the patients were found to have impaired immune systems: unable to fight common diseases like pneumonia and tuberculosis, they were dying. As the patients displayed symptoms of more than one disease at a time, it was labeled Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome [AIDS], and different causes were postulated. These ranged from the use of possibly toxic designer drugs, repeated exposure to a combination of infectious agents, or a new infectious agent altogether (Cochrane 178). In the face of spiraling infection rates and deaths, and confusing test results that few scientists could agree upon, prejudice took the place of reason. Ignoring the intravenous drug use of some, and the poor nutritional and general health of most of the victims, researchers and the Centers for Disease Control quickly characterized it as a sexually transmitted disease limited to the gay community; stigmatizing the victims before starting to fight the disease and its spread (14).
By focusing on the sexual lifestyle choices of gay men, the research community passed up other possibilities, and were blindsided with respect to the spread of AIDS in Africa where it is more common amongst heterosexuals (180, 189). The “focus on groups at risk rather than risky activities” (Goldstein 45), increased the marginalization of the “4H” minorities: Homosexuals, Haitians, Hemophiliacs and Heroin-addicts, the groups most affected by AIDS. Heterosexuals have not been considered primarily at risk in North America due to these prejudiced policies, yet in Newfoundland, AIDS is almost completely transmitted through heterosexual contacts (22). Due to the possibility of homophobic stigmatization in close-knit communities, persons at risk of AIDS didn’t get themselves tested, leading to widespread infection.
Looking at the genesis of the AIDS pandemic using the stereotypes identified by Girard, we find that all the elements of scapegoating are present. In the beginning of 1982, the medical community recognized that there was an epidemic that was growing quickly, and rapidly disseminated information about the cases that were being observed (Epstein 49). Although it would be the end of 1983 before it would “achieve the status of a ‘Worldwide Health Problem’ as the headline …in the New York Times” would claim, medical professionals had already recognized it as a health crisis; one that threatened to plunge the world into chaos (55), fulfilling the first stereotype. The second stereotype, violation of a taboo, or sexual crime, was the ‘abnormal’ sexual lifestyle of the homosexuals. Just the name ‘sodomy’ evoked memories of the Old Testament and the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Cochrane gives numerous examples of the opinions expressed in writing by health officials in San Francisco and the U.S. Public Health Service that linked the AIDS epidemic to the gay lifestyle, and especially to the May 1975 repeal of California’s sodomy laws (22-24). While it was expected that conservative leaders like Jesse Helms claimed that AIDS was a scourge brought down on gays because of their sexual lifestyle (Epstein 52), a similar conclusion by the biomedical community was not. Finally, as a minority that had traditionally been hidden in the closet, gays were the stereotypical scapegoats. We see that all three stereotypes identified by Girard can be applied to understand the behavior of the biomedical community and human nature, the innate behavior developed over thousands of years to preserve the species, trumps the scientific method of reasoning that was invented comparatively recently. Closer scrutiny of this so-called objective scientific process yields an understanding of why this is so.
A scientist using the scientific method supposedly gathers observations that lead to a hypothesis, which is then used to predict a new set of experimental results; the correctness of the prediction validates the hypothesis. Reproducible experiments, and peer review of research findings ensure that facts, rather than prejudice, supposition, or intuition are the basis for understanding the phenomenon being studied. However, as Kuhn points out, the potentially vast number of possible experimental observations in the real world, as well as limitations of the instrumentation used, mean that even the first set of observations are already constrained by a “paradigm” (41) that is believed by the scientist. Scientists do not start from first principles, looking at each possible observation as a data point, but rather start with an assumption of what they already expect to find and design experiments accordingly. These initial assumptions are not necessarily based on scientific facts, but rather on the personal biases of the scientists involved, or the organizations funding their research. This makes it easy to understand the prejudice against gays in the research funded by the conservative Reagan administration of the 1980’s: the scientists were formulating research proposals that reinforced the homophobic views of those controlling the research funds. There are rare instances when a completely different viewpoint is adopted by a scientist, who then proceeds to create a brand new paradigm; Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein are examples of scientists who were revolutionaries, leading to the overthrow of one paradigm by another. As Kuhn describes, this has been the real history of science, and it is not always the experimental validation of a theory that makes a paradigm successful, but rather the personal choice of the scientists involved. This could be due to several reasons, including “idiosyncrasies of autobiography and personality” and “the nationality or the prior reputation of the innovator” (151-152). Thus scapegoating of the gay community by the medical profession in the early 1980’s is not an anomaly; this is how science works, guided by the human nature of its practitioners.
Recognizing that science in practice almost always differs from the idealized process is very important, not just for the scientific community, but for humanity. Epstein points out that Robert Gallo, one of the co-discoverers of the HIV/AIDS link, initially had no interest in a syndrome that was reportedly caused by the gay lifestyle. His interest was piqued only when the research of Luc Montagnard in France showed that AIDS may be linked to a retrovirus, Gallo’s area of specialization (68). Therefore, the scapegoating of homosexuals misdirected efforts that may have led to an earlier development of a test for the virus. Scapegoating is just one way in which the scientific methodology fails to live up to its promise.
Science also falls short of the ideal due to the search for fame, recognition and funding by individual scientists and their arrogance when showered with accolades. Hooper describes the search for a cure to the polio epidemic that scourged the United States from the 1920’s. After Jonas Salk created the first polio vaccine early in the 1950’s, the search continued for a stronger polio vaccine that could be administered orally as a single dose. Mass immunization, especially in the developing world, could not be easily carried out as a series of three injections given months apart. There was a race between groups of scientists in the United States and Europe to create the first oral polio vaccine. All used a live virus created by taking the actual virus that afflicts humans and then attenuating its potency by growing it in a biological medium. These growth mediums were mostly prepared from monkey kidneys, filtered to remove bacteria. As retroviruses had not been discovered at that time, some mediums used may have inadvertently been contaminated with Simian Immune Virus [SIV], a close relative of the HIV. During human trials in the Belgian Congo, using vaccines possibly prepared using chimpanzee kidneys, SIV in the laboratory animals may have mutated into HIV in the humans who received the vaccine. The earliest AIDS cases, and HIV tainted blood have been found in samples collected in the late 1950’s in the Congo, coinciding with polio vaccine trials conducted at about the same time, providing strong circumstantial evidence to support this hypothesis. The enormity of this possibility, both in human and legal terms, has stymied efforts to test polio vaccine samples from that era for HIV, in order to verify whether they were contaminated. But maybe this is just an instance of science being the scapegoat?
Putting this allegation, that one variant of the live polio vaccine was the source of HIV, under the microscope we can see some distinct patterns. Once again there is a social collapse: the horrific spread of AIDS in Africa. Once again there is the breaking of a taboo: mixing the biological matter of different species to produce the vaccine, which could be termed the ultimate form of miscegenation. In fact, Hooper specifically mentions transplants of animal into humans as a possible source of new human viruses (816). And once again a victim: the scientist. Of course, in this case the allegation could easily be proved or disproved with a simple test of the stored polio vaccines. The demand by Hooper that this be done, may be the most telling evidence that this is not an act of scapegoating: no proof is needed to condemn a scapegoat.
Science, and its first cousin Technology, have transformed the lives of all humanity in ways that are both good and bad. Whether the good outweighs the bad is difficult to judge, and requires us to make value judgments not just with respect to science, but with respect to life itself. This is what scientists and technologists do all the time, yet claim to have an objective process. Our analysis of scapegoating in the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the real history of scientific discovery shows that much of what happens in science is not objective, but affected by external factors. It is time to recognize this and take control of the process. The first step would be a de-mystification of science and its processes, by publicizing the reality behind the way it appears to work.
Educating the lay public about the drawbacks of the real processes of science may be viewed by scientists as a means to seize political control of their profession, and a throwback to the times of Galileo; his was an example of a scientist who was forced to recant his scientific results to conform with the religious authorities of the time. But there is already an implicit social, political, even religious bias in real science; making it explicit lets us confront the biases head-on and deal with them up-front as stated assumptions. Only then can scientists focus on the problems that face humanity, not scapegoats nor themselves.
Works Cited
Camus, Albert. The Plague. Trans. Stuart Gilbert. New York: Vintage International, 1991.
Cochrane, Michelle. When AIDS Began. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Douglas, Tom. Scapegoats. London: Routledge, 1995.
Epstein, Steven. Impure Science. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996
Garrett, Laurie. Betrayal of Trust. New York: Hyperion, 2000.
Girard, Rene. The Girard Reader. Ed. James G. Williams. New York: Crossroad, 1996.
---, Violence and the Sacred. Trans. Patrick Gregory. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.
Goldstein, Diane E. Once Upon a Virus. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2004.
Hooper, Edward. The River. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1999.
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1962.
Sherman, Irwin W. The Power of Plagues. Washington, D.C.: ASM Press, 2006.

[i] In a double-blind trial the efficacy of a treatment is tested by pairing up test subjects who share significant characteristics such as age, sex, ethnicity etc., and then giving one the treatment and the other a placebo. By keeping the identity of the person actually being treated secret, and both under close observation, the efficacy is measured.

An Imaginary Dialog: Socrates meets a Skeptic

2009-03-07T11:45:00.000-08:00

Socrates and Skepticus meet in Piraeus at Polemarchus’s house, where Socrates had just a few weeks ago had the discussions that are detailed in Book One of Plato’s Republic. The group has just had dinner and is settling down to an evening of discussion. As a newcomer to the group, Skepticus asks the first question.

Skepticus: Tell me, Socrates, what is the most important thing to learn about?

Socrates[1]: The form of the good is the most important thing to learn about, and that it is by their relation to it that just things and the others become useful and beneficial. You know that even the fullest possible knowledge of other things is of no benefit to us, any more than if we acquire any possession without the good[2].

Skepticus: We haven’t understood what is good as yet, so how can we begin to decipher its pattern? You must explain.

Socrates: The masses believe pleasure to be the good, while the more refined believe it to be knowledge. But they cannot show us what sort of knowledge it is, but in the end are forced to say that it is knowledge of the good[3] -- as if we understood what they mean when they utter the word “good”[4].

Skepticus: That sort of circular reasoning does not lead us to a conclusion. I have heard it said that good has three meanings. In one of its meanings, good, they say, is that by which utility may be gained, this being the most principal good and virtue; in another meaning, good is that of which utility is an accidental result, like virtue and virtuous actions; and thirdly, it is that which is capable of being useful; and such is virtue and virtuous action and the good man and the friend, and gods and good demons. But in describing as good what is useful or what is choiceworthy for its own sake or what is contributory to happiness, one is not exhibiting the essence of the good but stating one of its properties[5].

Socrates: What about those who define the good as pleasure? Are they any less full of confusion than the others? Or aren’t even they forced to admit that there are bad pleasures? I suppose it follows, doesn’t it, that they have to admit that the same things are both good and bad?[6]
Skepticus: The properties that indicate something is good belong either to the good only, or to other things as well. But if they belong to other things as well, they are not, when thus extended, characteristic marks of the good. On the other hand, if they belong only to the good, it is not possible to derive from them a notion of the good[7]. This would lead to circular reasoning.
Socrates: Isn’t it clear, then, that there are lots of serious disagreements about the good? Yet this is what every soul pursues, and for its sake does everything. The soul has a hunch that the good is something, but it is puzzled and cannot adequately grasp just what it is or acquire the sort of stable belief about it that it has about other things[8].

Skepticus: If we closely examine any of our opinions, not just about the good, we can find contradictions of equal weight in the views expressed by various thinkers. Hence the only stable position is to suspend judgment and come to a state of quietude in respect to matters of opinion. The man who opines that anything is by nature good or bad is forever disquieted: when he is without the things which he deems good, he believes himself to be tormented by things naturally bad and he pursues after the things which are, as he thinks, good. On the other hand the man who determines nothing as to what is naturally good or bad neither shuns nor pursues anything eagerly; and, in consequence, he is unperturbed[9].

Socrates: Must we remain thus in the dark about something of this kind and importance[10]?

Skepticus: This lack of understanding is not just about the good, but is equally true about the notion of evil. This is because nothing is by nature either good, or evil or indifferent. By indifferent I mean “that which contributes neither to happiness nor to unhappiness”. Things that move by their very nature, move all men alike. But as we are not all moved alike by the so-called goods, there is nothing good by nature. In fact it is impossible to believe either all the views now set forth, because of their conflicting character, or any of them. As there does not exist any agreed criterion or proof, I am reduced to suspending judgment, and consequently I am unable to affirm positively what the good by nature is[11].

Socrates has been unable to shake off Skepticus’s argument that deciding whether something is good or bad is impossible if we consider all the opinions expressed on it by various people. Socrates has himself admitted that some things that are thought to be good, can also be bad. Skepticus has won the first round and declared himself indifferent to the good. Socrates now moves the argument from the good, to the form of the good, hoping that the abstraction will be easier to deal with, compared to the concrete.

Socrates: Let’s set aside what the good itself is for the time being. Instead, let me tell you about what seems to be an offspring of the good. We say that there are many beautiful, many good, and many other such things, thereby distinguishing them in words. We also say that there is a beautiful itself and a good itself, and posit a single form or pattern belonging to each. We say that one class of things is visible but not intelligible, while the forms are intelligible, but not visible[12].

Skepticus: I also distinguish between appearances, which are affective sense impressions, and the reality of the underlying objects. So while some things may appear to be good, we need to judge whether they are really good, and if we are unable to do so, we must suspend judgment and declare that we do not have an opinion whether they are really good. Tell me more about the form of the good, as understanding that may help in judging whether something is good or not.

Socrates: That what gives truth to the things known and the power to know to the knower is the form of the good. Just like the colors of things seen in the light of the sun are more clearly visible than when they are illuminated by the lights of the night, when the soul focuses on something that is illuminated both by truth and what is, it understands, knows and manifestly possesses understanding. Knowledge and truth are goodlike, but the state of the good is yet more honored. Not only do the objects of knowledge owe their being known to the good, but their existence and being are also due to it; although the good is not being, but something yet beyond being, superior to it in rank and power[13].

Skepticus: Where does this form of the good reside and how is it used by the soul? How do we use this to pass judgment on appearances and determine reality?

Socrates: There are these two kinds of things, the sensible, which you call appearances or the objects of sense perception, and the intelligible, also called the objects of thought. The sensible can be further subdivided into images starting with shadows, then reflections in bodies of water, and the originals of these images—that is, the animals around us, every plant, and the whole class of manufactured things. The intelligible can also be divided into a section where the soul, using the images we have described, is forced to base its inquiry on hypotheses, and proceeding to a conclusion. In the other subsection it makes its way to an unhypothetical first principle, proceeding from a hypothesis, but without the images used in the previous subsection, using forms themselves and making its investigation through them. This is what reason itself grasps by the power of dialectical discussion, treating its hypotheses, not as first principles, but as genuine hypotheses in order to arrive at what is unhypothetical and the first principle of everything. Thus the four subsections correspond to four conditions in the soul: understanding, thought, belief and imagination[14].

Imagination is used to convert the images that are in the visible realm to objects in the mind that preserve their essential properties, but can be willfully changed by the mind. Beliefs are conclusions that are arrived at without reasoning. Those who start from hypotheses and use forms to come to a conclusion, like mathematicians, are engaged in thought. When someone reviews these hypotheses very closely and distills a genuine first principle and then uses it, and only forms but not images, to argue using the power of dialectical discussion to a conclusion, it is called understanding[15].

Skepticus: Thus the form of the good, as well all other forms, is in our imagination, and we use these forms, not images, along with hypotheses to engage in thoughts that lead to conclusions. But as the initial hypotheses cannot be proved, the conclusion we arrive at is on shaky ground. However, I admit that I am still intrigued by your concept of the form of the good and want you to explain what you mean by it.

Socrates expounds on his metaphor of the cave[16], which has most humans strapped into a fixed position able to look only at shadows of real objects created by a fire, and able to only indirectly associate the sounds and smells with these shadows. It is only when they are freed and taken out of the cave into the sunlight that they are able to appreciate reality, and understand the forms including the form of the good. Skepticus doesn’t dispute that humans have a difficult time consistently converting the sense impressions into opinions that everyone agrees on, and instead of assuming that there is a tunnel out of the cave, prefers to suspend judgment.

Socrates: The realm revealed through sight should be likened to the prison dwelling, and the light of the fire inside it to the sun’s power. If you think of the journey upward out of the cave as the upward journey of the soul to the intelligible realm, the last thing to be seen is the form of the good, and it is seen only with toil and trouble. Once one has seen it, however, one must infer that it is the cause of all that is correct and beautiful in anything, that in the visible realm it produces both light and its source, and that in the intelligible realm it controls and provides truth and understanding; and that anyone who is to act sensibly in private or public must see it[17].

Skepticus: While you have constructed an elaborate metaphor that explains why the form of the good is important and how it influences not just the good, but also truth and understanding, you have not described the form itself. It appears to me that we are both shackled in the cave, peering at shadows.

Socrates: This is exactly what I am trying to explain. Those who have not been led out of the cave into the light cannot comprehend the forms, but they remain enamored of the shadows they have seen all their lives. Only those who have been outside can make the judgments about reality while others see only the appearances, the shadows, and cannot apprehend reality. Their souls need to be made receptive to reality through a proper education.

Skepticus: This assumes that the soul is apprehensible, but that seems to be in dispute, with some asserting that the soul has no existence, others that it has existence and the rest have suspended judgment. If we are to make a decision regarding these conflicting claims, and we decide that the soul doesn’t exist, then it is inapprehensible. On the other hand, if we decide that the soul does indeed exist, with what instrument do we so decide? If it is by the intellect, which is the least evident part of the soul – as is shown by those who agree about the real existence of the soul, though differing about the intellect—then that is absurd as they will be proposing to decide and establish the less questionable matter by the more questionable. Thus there is no way to decide if the soul is apprehensible[18].

Even if the apprehensibility of the soul were to be granted, we cannot decide whether the soul has the ability to apprehend the form of the good. In order to prove that the soul of man can apprehend the form of the good, we need the corroboration from the soul of another animal. But why should we believe that other animal, so we would need a further corroboration, and so on ad infinitum[19].

Socrates: But then you can believe nothing!

Skepticus: The skeptic sets out to pass judgment on the sense appearances and ascertain which are true and which false, but finds contradictions of equal weight, and being unable to decide between them, suspends judgment. This leads to a state of quietude with respect to matters of opinion[20].

This dialog between Socrates and Skepticus illustrates the difficulty of defining the good as well as the form of the good to the satisfaction of a skeptic. Socrates starts by trying to define good, but after getting stuck in contradictions of his own making, as well as Skepticus’s, he attempts to raise the level of abstraction. However, Socrates’s exposition on the form of the good focuses more on its properties and why it is not evident to humans (as most live in the cave), but not so much on what it is. By contrast, Socrates does a better job describing the form of good poetry[21]with concrete examples of what it should and should not include.

The skeptic not only challenges Socrates in terms of arguments, but eventually the foundation of his thinking. Skepticus believes that by suspending judgment, and accepting the quietude of the inability to know reality, man is happier. Plato believes in knowledge, rather than the willful acceptance of ignorance, as the source of happiness. This fundamental difference of opinion on what makes us truly happy that separates Plato and Sextus Empiricus (and their proxies, Socrates and Skepticus) is all the more relevant today as the explosion of knowledge and data has dimmed our understanding. Accepting that we cannot form an opinion on all that is non-evident leads to mental peace, now more than ever before.

Works Cited
Empiricus, Sextus. Outlines of Pyrrhonism. Trans. R. G. Bury. Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1990.
Plato. Republic. Trans. C.D.C. Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2004.

Animesh Mukherjee
Chris Bobonich
MLA 209: Reason & Reality
Final Paper
March 24, 2007

Notes

[1] Many of Socrates dialogues here are copied verbatim from Plato’s Republic, Trans. Reeve. Quotation marks are not used in order to leave the flow uninterrupted, but every quotation is footnoted with the source. Similarly, some of the arguments given by Skepticus use the text from Sextus Empiricus, Trans. Bury verbatim. The original work in the paper is the juxtaposition of these dialogues to attempt to form a conversation that never happened, as well as a commentary on the arguments.
[2] Plato 505a
[3] Plato 505b5
[4] Plato 505c1
[5] Empiricus III, 171-174
[6] Plato 505c6-c11
[7] Empiricus III, 173
[8] Plato 505d-e
[9] Empiricus I, 26-28.
[10] Plato 506a
[11] Empiricus III, 182.
[12] Plato 507b10
[13] Plato 508e thru 509b9
[14] Plato 509d6 thru 511e5
[15] This interpretation of understanding is based on a conversation with Chris Bobonich
[16] Plato 514a thru 517a6
[17] Plato 517b thru 517c5
[18] Empiricus II, 31-33.
[19] Empiricus II, 36.
[20] Empiricus I, 26-28.
[21] Plato 377e

Is Unilateral Disarmament a Moral Choice?

2008-12-23T17:03:00.000-08:00

In 1959, after his early victories in the African-American freedom struggle, Martin Luther King Jr. visited India to learn more about Gandhian non-violence in its country of origin. At the end of that visit he made “an appeal to the people and government of India…to call for universal disarmament, and…declare itself for disarmament unilaterally”[1]. Unsurprisingly, his suggestion was not taken up, although India did take a leading role in the non-aligned movement. Notwithstanding an early stand against nuclear weapons, India was to test its own just fifteen years later. The nation that gained independence from its colonial masters through peaceful non-violent means was determined to preserve its freedom by building up a modern military that included nuclear weapons. Examining the moral choices that confront a modern state that wants to live in peace, both inside and outside its borders, as well as meet the economic aspirations of its citizens, we find that India partially made the correct choice when it failed to heed King’s advice. Developing nuclear weapons was correct, but building up a modern army, navy and air force with heavy weapons and almost a million personnel was a waste of valuable resources.

Disarmament Defined

As the word can have a wide range of meanings, first of all I need to define what I mean by disarmament. I do not intend it to mean that all offensive weapons of any kind are to be outlawed, and that even the police forces are not allowed to carry guns. That would open the state to being ruled by criminal gangs and thugs. Most reasonable persons will accept that small arms which allow the individual to defend herself, lawfully regulated and registered, would not be a violation of disarmament. As Teichman notes, Quakers who are otherwise against the violence of war are not against the need for armed police and the “violence of the magistrate”[2]. Small sea and aircraft such as coast guard cutters and helicopters needed to defend the state against pirates, smugglers and terrorists could also be used. Armored personnel carriers, protected bunkers at the borders and reinforced concrete shelters for essential services and civil servants would also be allowed. Heavy weapons, missiles, fighters, long-range bombers, artillery, battleships and frigates would be banned, as well as weapons of mass destruction of any kind. Thus the state would have a self-defense capability to a certain extent, but would be unable to take offensive action against other states. This is similar to the conditions imposed on Japan and Germany after World War II. In the Indian context, this would mean that while the army, navy and air force would need to be disbanded and its equipment disposed off, the paramilitary forces such as the Border Security Force, the Coast Guard, Central Reserve Police Force, and the state police and civil defense forces would be retained.

Threats to a Nation

We next need to examine the threats that a modern state such as India faces. These could be internal, such as armed insurrection or terrorism by a group that does not feel that the participative democratic processes have worked for them. Assuming that heavy weaponry could not have been brought into the country or seized by such a group, this threat could be dealt with by the police forces. For example, the past troubles in Punjab or the current problems with the Maoists need to be tackled with a combination of political and police action. Disarmament does not affect the outcome in these cases as bombing, strafing or use of heavy weapons would not be appropriate.
In the case of external threats, there are four possibilities. Firstly, countries that share a border with India, possibly along with their allies, could attempt to take control of border areas because they covet the resources available there. The best defense against an enemy being able to hold onto such an acquisition for too long would be the creation of participative democratic institutions and polity throughout the state. As Machiavelli notes, an invader would “always need the backing of the local people to take over a province”[3]. Holding on to the new acquisition, even if it was acquired through treachery, is difficult: “anyone who becomes master of a city accustomed to its freedom, and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it”[4]. In any case, the persons who helped the invader “in the hope of bettering themselves…find themselves deceived…when they discover that things have got worse…(as) a new prince must always harm those over whom he assumes authority, both with his soldiers and with a thousand other hardships that are entailed in a new conquest”[5]. Thus the best defense against acquisition is freedom, the rule of law and participative democracy.
This threat can be mounted in more subtle forms: aggressors could “under the cloak of economic, military and technical aid…dominate the economic and military structures of…nations”, or take over “by raising and manipulating puppet governments”[6]. In addition, corporations or criminal gangs could gain control of a state. These are once again threats that would not be fought using a modern army, but rather with participative democracy and the rule of law.
The second threat is blocking access to trade, especially essential resources from other countries. This could take several forms ranging from blocking participation in banking, transportation, or commercial transactions, and export controls etc. For example, it is illegal for persons and corporations in the US to trade with Cuba. Even travel is restricted, in spite of the presence of large numbers of Cuban immigrants in the US. While a blockade of this kind cannot be overcome by armed forces, a strong navy can prevent the blockade of ports and protect cargoes. India, Malaysia and Singapore cooperate to keep the Straits of Malacca safe for ships by combating piracy. However, as pirates seldom have access to large vessels, the navies of these countries don’t need battleships to fight them.
The third form of aggression is from terrorists who have an agenda to destroy the way of life or are against the ideology or theology of the state. Al Qaeda does not plan to invade and take over the US, but objects to its ideological positions and actions taken by the US to promote its interests in the world. However, as Al Qaeda has no large economic or physical structures that can be targeted and destroyed, but rather operates under cover within otherwise peaceful societies, the use of modern weaponry to target it is limited. On the contrary, in Afghanistan the civilian deaths that accompany NATO airstrikes blur the moral difference between the terrorists and the forces that fight them in the eyes of the populace.
Finally we have the case when a powerful nation wages war in support of its ideological stance, for access to resources, or to support an ally. The United States waged a war in Vietnam in order to prevent the free communist northern part of the country from freeing the southern part from French colonial rule, as it was afraid that this would trigger a series of communist takeovers of newly emerging nations all over the world; the so-called domino effect. Escalating from advisory and training missions established in 1954, the US was to participate in a rapidly escalating ground war, as well as use napalm, defoliants, high explosives and cluster bombs not only in the conflict, but also on the neighboring countries of Laos and Cambodia. The proceedings edited by Duffet catalog the illegal and immoral acts perpetrated by the US government on a people half-way around the world. The United States Air Force considers all military, economic, political and psychosocial components of a state as legitimate targets. The last includes “the moral strength of the people as manifested in their internal stability, unity, national will…this is often reduced in terms of morale”[7]. This is the justification for cluster bombing of civilian targets that include schools, hospitals, factories and farms, where defoliants were also used to destroy crops.
In three of the four possible threats that are sketched above, invasion, blockade and terrorism, a modern military with heavy weapons cannot be used as a defense. To defend itself from being divided up amongst its neighbors, a state could use such an army to guard its frontiers, but the best strategy is to ensure that its citizens could keep up a prolonged insurgency against the occupiers, and make it too expensive to hold onto. The most powerful military force in the world is finding that it needs political solutions in Iraq, rather than just more troops. However when subjected to an overwhelming force that seeks to destroy rather than acquire, there is only one defense: offense. If North Vietnam had nuclear weapons and long range missiles capable of reaching US population centers, the extensive bombing of its cities could never have been considered by the US.
So far we have discovered that most external and internal threats can be overcome without a large modern military force, except that the ability to strike a decisive blow against an enemy can act as a strategic deterrent. Thus we see that disarmament in terms of dismantling the modern heavy military forces is a moral choice as long as the following three specific measures are taken.

Three-step Disarmament Program

The first step is the creation of a free participative democracy with the rule of law and ensuring that the minimum social needs of food, shelter, health care and education are met. This provides channels for internal dissension to be resolved peacefully, and external parties have few wedge issues to use to divide the populace. The ultimate goal is a civilian populace involved in their government at local, state and federal levels, and united in their determination to preserve it. Even if external aggressors manage to take parts of the state for themselves, the next step that needs to be taken will help ensure that they fail.
The second measure that has to be taken is the development of police and paramilitary forces with light weaponry and armor well integrated with the populace. These forces can be used to patrol the border, against terrorists and criminals and also in case of natural disasters. By having short service commissions in these forces and creating a reserve force in the population, it provides a pool for a quick call-up in case of threat, or trained insurgents in case a resistance movement is needed against an occupier. This is the model followed by the Swiss and copied successfully by Israel. By focusing on self-defense by a trained citizenry, rather than creating a force capable of external aggression, the state has a mobile and flexible force that is useful in peacetime as well as during war.
The third and final measure is the development of long-range strategic weapons including nuclear weapons that can deter a potential aggressor. The stalemate of mutually assured destruction, and the negative moral consequences of threatening to use weapons of mass destruction against civilian targets notwithstanding, this is the most efficient way of assuring the safety of its populace. Is it really such a bad moral choice after all? Teichman[8] argues that a weak populace facing genocide can, if embarked in a just war, “do whatever is judged essential to win”.
One fundamental moral concern for a state is the safety and security of its citizens. Assuming that a state treats its citizens well, provides equal political and social opportunities for their advancement and does not provoke its neighbors, it should be able to live peacefully without external aggression. In the aftermath of the Japanese defeat in World War II, Ho Chi Minh was able to free Vietnam from centuries of foreign rule, first by the Chinese and then by the French and Japanese. But the country was divided and it took almost twenty years of fighting till it was reunited in 1975. During this time the government of the northern part was unable to fulfill its moral obligation to protect its citizenry from the attacks by the US, and in fact these attacks spread to Laos and Cambodia. The only defense against these attacks by a super-power would have been a strategic long-range weapon system capable of hitting targets in the US. This is the reason why the war was in Vietnam and not in China or the Soviet Union.

Objections

There can be at least three objections to this position on disarmament. The first argument is that of the pacifists: you can not make peace by preparing for war. According to Teichman, while there are many forms of pacifism which hold that war is intrinsically and essentially evil, they are wrong when they say that there are absolutely no situations in which taking up arms would be the lesser evil in a forced choice. Preparation for this forced choice is morally right. But this does not mean it is right to choose war when there is no forced choice[9].
Secondly, while national defense is the justification for developing the strategic weapon systems, a change in the political climate of the country could lead to it being used for offensive actions, both militarily and morally. Alternatively the weapons may be taken over by terrorists, hence it is better not to build them in the first place. This is a difficult argument to refute, but as long as adequate safeguards are built into the triggering systems and the control of the weapons is jointly held by the three branches of government, the executive, judiciary and legislature, it is a controllable risk.
Finally, it could be argued that the country could join into a mutual defense pact with other countries that would guarantee its safety in case of aggression. There are several arguments against this suggestion. The United Nations is supposed to provide this protection, but is too unwieldy and racked by the interests of the permanent members of the Security Council to be effective. Joining military pacts such as NATO require the country to take an ideological position that in fact can have the opposite effect: instead of guaranteeing peace, it will guarantee the addition of specific enemies to the roster of potential aggressors. A good example of a coalition coming to the rescue was the 1991 expulsion of Iraq from its invasion of Kuwait. It could however be argued that if Kuwait had been considered to be a prickly acquisition rather than a rich country with a small native population outnumbered by expatriate workers who would turn tail as soon as it was attacked, the attack would never have taken place in the first place.
While we have been exploring events and threats that a country may be subjected to, we haven’t as yet explored legitimate uses of aggression. We have recently had several examples where intervention was used and was somewhat effective, and others where it should be used. Bosnia, Sudan, Cambodia are all examples where external aggression was used to control internal oppression. Darfur, Myanmar, North Korea and possibly Zimbabwe are places where we would like to see external aggressors help free an oppressed people. But the mixed results in many of these interventions, even if they were UN sponsored and used peace keeping troops from member countries, as well as the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, mean that this cannot be a good reason to involve heavy military forces. For police actions and natural disasters, the light paramilitary approach proposed will work.

Conclusion

Teddy Roosevelt is credited with saying: “Carry a big stick, but tread softly”. While we should be wary of taking support for a moral position from the adventurer who built his political career on the fictional exploits of the Rough Riders in Cuba, there is much to be said for his advice. Countries that have neglected to build strong internal defenses but have relied on heavy fortifications, like the Maginot line, have often been surprised by an enemy more flexible or amoral than themselves; the Germans were willing to wage war on neutral Belgium to go around the strong defenses of the French in World War I. Those who have relied solely on the morale and fighting power of its citizenry, like North Vietnam have suffered unnecessarily from the aggression of a super-power.
I have proposed the use of a deterrent threat that if carried out may be considered to be morally wrong. It could be argued that even if it was not actually carried out, but it averted war, from a Utilitarian point of view, this is better. For an Absolutist both the threat and the preparation that is needed in order to effectively make it are as bad a performing the deed[10]. However, until war is abolished for ever, I have no choice but to support the Utilitarian position.

Works Referenced

Duffet, John, Ed., Against the Crime of Silence: Proceedings of the Russell International War Crimes Tribunal. New York: O’Hare Books, 1968.
King, Martin Luther, Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.. Ed. Clayborne Carson. New York: Warner Books, 1998.
Machiavelli, Niccolo, The Prince. Tr. and Ed. Robert M. Adams. New York: Norton, 1992.
Teichman, Jenny, Pacifism and the Just War: A Study in Applied Psychology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986.
[1] King, pg. 129
[2] Teichman, pg 31 & 40
[3] Machiavelli, pg 5
[4] Machiavelli, pg 15
[5] Machiavelli, pg 5
[6] Duffet, pg 105
[7] Duffet, pg 243 quoting from ‘Fundamentals of Aerospace Weapons Systems’, USAF ROTC
[8] Teichman, pp 109-110
[9] Teichman, pg 100
[10] Teichman, pg 120

----
Animesh Mukherjee
Chris Bobonich
MLA 252: Basic Issues in Philosophy
Final Paper
June 9, 2008

Preserving Diversity in Democracy

2008-12-20T10:48:00.000-08:00

In a democratic government the opinion of the demos, the citizens, is supposed to control decision-making. This can be through participation, as for example in ancient Athens where each citizen was required to serve the polis for a few weeks every year, actually sharing the burden of government. Alternatively, it can be through representation, where the citizens vote for candidates from amongst themselves, who then perform some of the work of government for a limited time. Democratic government has been in practice a mixture of these two forms, and a fundamental problem has been to preserve diversity of opinion and participation. Preventing dictatorship by the majority, or catering just to the needs of a powerful minority, is important in all branches of the government: executive, judicial and legislative. This can only be achieved by preserving diversity on a variety of dimensions, and taking active steps to make sure that every citizen has a chance to participate and be heard: we need a government that involves each individual.

Importance of Diversity

In the biological world, diversity invigorates life, as more variation in each of the interdependent life forms leads to natural selection from a wider range, and therefore a better chance to create an improved life form that survives in the struggle for existence. In social and political systems, we need to ensure that a wide variety of voices and opinions are heard, and all sections of society, no matter how small in number or diverse in their opinion, have a chance to prosper and thrive. Their actual fate should be based on natural selection, not the arbitrary actions of any dominant group or class. Political and social groups or classes can be considered as varieties of the same species, homo sapiens and their ability to utilize and adapt in the competition with all the other species on the planet is the key to their survival. Unchecked, individuals or groups would do all that is needed to propagate at the cost of the other varieties of humans, other species and even the planet.
Government is a tool used in this struggle for existence[1], invented because the long-term survival and prosperity of society requires a controlling authority. When this is taken over by a single ideology or class, all the varieties that arise as a natural response to changes in the physical environment and the biological ecosystem no longer have a voice in shaping the future. The societies that have stopped listening to the varieties in their midst eventually end up out-of-step with the nuances of the ground reality and are replaced, sometimes at great human and social cost, by a new structure that is more in tune with reality. Only political systems that ensure that every voice has the freedom to speak and participate are able to make the infinite course corrections needed over time to ensure that they are in tune with the rest of the planet.

The Purpose of Government

The fundamental purpose of government is to regulate and control man’s struggle for existence. It does this through the organizations that provide the defense, law and order, justice, financial, communication, health, education, welfare and other needs of the nation; this is true even in monarchies and dictatorships. In the case of democracies, there is an additional purpose: “increase the sum of good qualities in the governed, collectively and individually”[2]. This is to be done specifically to help meet the three criterion needed for a government to be successful: the people must be willing to accept its rule, be willing and able to do what is needed to keep it standing, and do what it needs of each of them to fulfill its purposes[3]. This requires the citizens to participate not just in electing their representatives, but engage in the work of government. The regular participation in this work by each and every citizen, not just leaving it to an “other” who runs the government[4], is the hallmark of democracy.
Mill distinguishes between the normal educative task of the government, i.e. to provide a basic education to each citizen, and the “degree in which [political institutions] can promote the general mental advancement of the community… virtue, and in practical activity and efficiency”[5] through the engagement of every citizen. Personal participation in some aspect of government work by each citizen moves them from theoretical posturing to a deeper understanding of the practical difficulties involved in implementing policy in a complex world, making them better citizens. Mill claims that government has the most influence in taking the people to the next level of civilization, that a despotic rule creates a “mentally passive people”[6] and the “ideally best government… is that in which the sovereignty…is vested in the entire aggregate of the community; every citizen not only having a voice…but being…called on to take an actual part in the government, by the personal discharge of some public function”[7]. The problem is to design the political process so that it harnesses the diversity of that aggregate.

Dimensions of Diversity

In the social and political sphere, diversity takes many forms. There is gender, ethnicity, language, culture, level of education, religious belief or the lack of it, age, sexual orientation, political affiliation etc. These, and many other parameters, are important dimensions of diversity that any democracy has to serve, without letting any one voice drown out the others. Unfortunately the “one-man one-vote” model used in most democracies, as well as problems in financing participation and candidature have ensured that only a narrow slice of the “aggregate of the community” actually can participate. Most of the citizens are relegated to merely voting for their representatives every four or five years, unable to make their voices or ideas heard; only rarely do they participate, that too just at the local level.
Historically, participative democracy has only worked at the local level since the citizens have other responsibilities at work or on the farm to look after. Therefore, they can only devote part of their time to government work and cannot travel very far. If participation required them to spend days or weeks at a central location, it would limit the range of citizens who could take part. Increasing complexity of the job, and the professional training needed for most government positions have reduced the posts that can be effectively performed by citizen-participants. Hence, citizen participation in the actual work of the government in most countries is limited to the legislative branch, advisory positions, or jury-duty.
People’s representatives are chosen from a constituency to fulfill legislative functions. Diversity can sometimes be preserved by the choice of constituency and the number of seats allotted. For example in the United States Senate, there are two seats for each state of the Union, providing Vermont, a very small state in terms of land area and population with the same number of votes as California, which has a population, land and economy larger than most countries in the rest of the world. This balances the votes that California has in the Congress in which seats are allotted based on population. Thus, the opinion and diversity represented by Vermont is preserved[8].
Time is also an important dimension of diversity. A recent feeling amongst the citizenry, brought on by current events, should not completely take over the policies and programs of the government. The time dimension is used in various ways in the United States. First, elections in the US are on a fixed timetable, with Congress, the Executive and the Senate on two-, four- and six-year cycles respectively. Instead of elections being called when the timing is convenient to those in power or due to the pressure of current events, a rhythm is maintained. Second, all the positions are not offered up for election every cycle, but only a fraction. This preserves continuity, instead of a wholesale changeover. Third, there are term limits imposed on all offices, ensuring that new blood, and therefore new ideas are brought in regularly, another form of diversity.
Geography dominates most political entities. Apart from the fact that national or state governments are based on geographical entities, almost all democracies organize their political posts using geography. While this may make sense for the purposes of organizing a set of governmental functions, it makes less sense for political purposes. It emphasizes one dimension of diversity, geography, to the detriment of others such as sexual orientation. Assume, for example, that homosexuals are randomly distributed as ten percent of the population. In a system of representation based on geography, they would never be able to get a representative elected without support from other groups, yet on purely democratic principles, they should get ten percent of the representatives if the whole nation or state is considered. Mill describes and recommends a way to resolve this issue.

Mill’s Suggestion

Mill points out that while many consider democracy as the dictatorship of the majority, in reality it is that of the minority. Consider a purely representative government where the people elect their representatives to a Parliament, which is the legislative body. Suppose that the candidate with the most votes is elected, so at most she needs 51% of the vote, but usually a lot less[9]. Hence, the legislator is in practice chosen by a minority. Suppose further that the rules of the house require that bills be passed based on a simple majority. Once again, only 51% of the legislators need assent, each of whom represent a minority, therefore perpetuating control by the minority. In practice, legislators do not usually vote on their own conscience, but follow the party line. In addition, very few bills are simply a position on one side or another, but have many sometimes conflicting or unrelated parts in them. For example in the US Congress a few months ago, the Democratic Party added a clause requiring a timetable for withdrawal of the troops from Iraq, to the bill financing the war. Thus, Republicans who support the war and want to assent to the bill cannot do so. The solution being proposed to this is the line item veto: the President should be able to accept only parts of a bill that she finds acceptable. Thus, the link between the will of the people and the legislation that is implemented is in practice a very tenuous one in representative government.
Mill attempts to tackle the first problem, the quality of representation, by diversifying the geographical constituency to one based on interests. Based on suggestions by Hare and Fawcett, he proposes that in addition to the local candidates on the ballot, the voter should be able to choose or write-in others who are candidates in other constituencies. Additionally, in order to make sure that a person’s vote counts in all cases, he proposes that the voter express her order of preference on the ballot. For each seat in the ballot, the voter would not just put one vote, but give the names of candidates in order of preference. Once a candidate has received enough votes to be elected, the remaining ballots that have her as the first choice would be counted as per their second choice. Continuing this way through all the ballots, would result in a more diverse body than the system used currently[10].
It appears that this system has been adopted in a simplified form in some European countries as the system of proportional representation. However, in Mill’s United Kingdom, the US and many countries influenced by Anglo-Saxon concepts of law and politics, the system continues to be the flawed first-past-the post system. Of course, implementing this system of counting votes needs a centralized tallying center, or the use of technology to tally the preferences over the entire country. Thus, in the case of the US it goes against the bottom-up approach to political organization: here the county is the unit of organization for elections, not a federal body.

The American Way

Alexis de Tocqueville describes many aspects of the American political system in the early nineteenth century that support both diversity and participation. The first of this was the concept of the township. Settled by 2000-4000 persons, this was the lowest level of granularity in the political system where the “organization of the township preceded that of the county, the county that of the state, the state that of the Union”. For example, in New England, the body of voters appointed their fellow-citizens to various paid full- and part-time positions to carry out the work of governing, but for any action other than upholding the law, they would have to bring their proposals in front of the general assembly. No system of representation is required at the local level where “law and government are closer to those governed”. The administrative and technical skills needed for the nineteenth-century American township were well within the reach of its ordinary citizens and could be rotated amongst all who were willing and able. The township provided a minimal level of government, since the citizen was supposed to be “master in his own affairs where he is free and answerable only to God” [11], making it less intrusive and controlling than modern government.
At the next levels of government, the county, the state and the Union, the act of governing requires full-time application of skill and knowledge, but the citizen still has a participatory role as the “public, mainspring of the whole checking machinery”[12]. For example, in Massachusetts, Justices of the Peace appointed by the Governor form Sessions Courts where actions could be brought against public officials or even townships[13]. The decrees from these courts, while enforcing administrative rules, were judicial in nature and enforced by the county Sheriff. Thus, while the increasing complexity of public administration as we progress to the larger geographical units requires full-time professionals, but they are ultimately made answerable to the people at a local level. Not only does this provide participation, but increases diversity: the opinion of local citizens affected by the administration is placed as a check over what could become an over-professionalized bureaucracy.
Of course, from our modern point of view the diversity described by de Tocqueville is incomplete: women and African-Americans were denied their voice, as were most persons who did not fit into the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant mold. However, the systems and institutions created were easily extended to include these dimensions of diversity as societal changes forced the dominant class to accept them, as well as others, as equal.

Conclusion

We need to create stable systems of government that evolve naturally over time, adapting to the myriad changes in the political, social and physical environment by tuning into the many dimensions of diversity. Every individual citizen must be given a chance to participate and contribute, and this means using modern technology to change the way governments operate.
In modern manufacturing there has been a move away from the “large batch step process” in which a factory was organized to perform many small manufacturing steps on a large batch of parts. The diverse demands of the consumers coupled with better flow of information between all participants in the process have led to the redesign of manufacturing processes so that smaller batches are processed and the final product individualized for each consumer. Companies such as Toyota now claim to have achieved an “economic order quantity”[14] of just one car, meaning that their manufacturing processes are agile enough to build each vehicle to order. This raises the question: can we build political and social systems that involve each individual? During the last century we have seen the failure of mass movements on the left and the right, and the totalitarianism that results when we stop engaging the individual, albeit a confused, opinionated, diverse person, in politics. Fortunately, just as in manufacturing, we now have technology that promotes the communication paths between the individuals that belong to each dimension of diversity and the institutions that govern them. Just as retailing is being re-oriented to service the “long tail”[15], politics and government needs to re-configure itself to serve all the dimensions of diversity.
While the technology required to create a government based on each individual is advancing every day with the development of social networks, the political and administrative frameworks needed for this lag way behind. The US has the technology to enable these changes, but its dependence for its constitution on the exact thoughts of the Founding Fathers, make it unlikely to take political diversity to the next stage. Countries that joined the democratic club after being liberated from colonialism may be better suited to the changes needed, but most lack the access to technology needed to pull it off. This leaves countries like Russia, China, India, and Brazil that are grappling with the problems of diversity while enjoying explosive economic growth. These are the new frontiers where we need more diversity in democracy.

Animesh Mukherjee
Paul Robinson
MLA 9: European Thought & Culture
Final Paper
December 16, 2008

Works Referenced
Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species. In Darwin, selected and edited by Philip Appleman. New York: Norton, 2001.
De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America. Tr. Gerald E. Bevan. London: Penguin Books, 2003.
Liker, Jeffrey K. The Toyota Way. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004.
Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1951.
[1] Darwin defines the term: “…including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny” on pg. 108.
[2] Mill, pg. 259. While he quotes Bentham, the text and the reference to Bentham’s classification of man’s qualities as moral, intellectual and active, evoke Plato’s The Republic.
[3] Mill, pg. 237
[4] It is common in most democracies to forget that democracy is “government of the people, by the people and for the people”, and concentrate on what “they”, the government being outside the people, can do “for the people”.
[5] Mill, pg. 262
[6] Mill, pg. 272.
[7] Mill, pg. 278, emphasis added.
[8] The example is from de Tocqueville.
[9] If there are two candidates, one of them needs at least 51% to win. However, if there are three, four or five candidates, the minimum percentage needed to win becomes 34%, 26% or 21%.
[10] Mill, pp 344-370.
[11] De Tocqueville, pg. 52, pg. 74.
[12] Mill, pg. 261
[13] De Tocqueville, pp. 89-92
[14] Defined as the number of parts that have to be produced in a batch in order to minimize the production costs. This used to be based on just the setup cost and the per piece processing cost, but is now based on the entire cost chain starting with customer acquisition cost, inventory and costs for disposing of excess parts produced, as well as loss of business due to inability to meet the customer’s specific need in time.
[15] The concept that if we were to plot a graph of consumer preferences with the number of persons who want a specific product or configuration, it typically has a sharp drop off after the commonly sold set of characteristics, and then a long line (tail) where there is just a little demand for each of many different variants. The internet has made it possible for the consumers who require these diverse versions of the product meet up with their producers in a way that traditional brick-and-mortar cannot. Take for example a musical genre that has little demand and therefore cannot get a mainstream label to produce and market its CDs. The internet allows these artists to sell the music directly as downloads to its aficionados, creating a diverse market.

Re-thinking Indian Democracy

2008-12-08T09:18:00.000-08:00

Watching the news on Indian TV these last weeks as we collectively analyze the carnage in Mumbai leads to soul-searching in so many ways. It takes an effort to get over the shock and horror of the terror acts committed, to mourn the dead and honour the brave, but we need also to think deeply about what we have seen and heard and understand what India needs to do so that the nation can get back on track.

Everyone has to participate

The first step is that we need to take our nation back. Take it back from those to whom we have entrusted it for over 60 years, and give it to the people, all the citizens who deserve far, far better. Shake off the colonialism of the mind, the attitude that there is a “they” that is the government, that they are the “mai-baap” of us all and control our collective destiny. It is time for the second freedom struggle.

What does it mean to be free? Rabindranath Tagore defined it in terms of knowledge, unity, truth, striving for perfection and above all, holding our heads high at all times. Unfortunately, we have lost all of these in the political institutions we have created in the last sixty years. Not a single political party in the country practices transparency in its leadership, its internal organization or its accounts. The people have no knowledge of what really happens inside them, or inside the government. Steps like the Right To Information Act have given us some reactive oversight after the fact, but there is no proactive participation in decision making by the people.

Truth is usually the first casualty once a politician or an officer takes charge. Sometimes this is a strategic need, but in most cases it is used to hide something that pampers some interest that the public shouldn’t get to know about. Fortunately we have a courageous press that probes and reveals much more than those in power want us to know about. But truth shouldn’t be something we have to extract as if we were a nation of dentists, it should be offered up to us as the partners that we are in this undertaking, as our right. This means that not only should the press probe and discover, but every government agency should openly offer everything it knows to its citizens. We don’t want the sound bites of seasoned politicians, we want the hard facts from professionals who can participate in discussions that help us understand what is being done in our name. And be willing to change their plans based on our feedback.

In India we have a billion people who each day have to fight for survival, fight to get ahead and keep the place that they have carved for themselves. Everyone strives for perfection in their own way, but we see that many of those we have given privileged positions, to carry out the work that we have delegated to them, forget that they have to continually strive for perfection too. A position of power and responsibility in the public or private sector, in a corporation or a NGO or even in the family carries with it the expectation that the person holding the position is in a daily struggle to do a better job, anticipate what might go wrong, and help the nation succeed.

As a nation, each one of us has to hold our head high and look the politician, the officer, the manager, the organizer and the patriarch in the eye and demand competence and truth, action and participation, or ask them to abdicate and let someone better do the job. But this cannot be a one-way street: each of us have to do our part in taking this nation to greatness. For too long we have each considered our civic duty consists in paying our taxes and turning up to vote. We need to take part: this is how we do it.

Home and Around

Like everything else, it begins at home. We cannot be a great nation until each one of us takes care of the part that has been entrusted to us. Once we do that, we need to look outside our boundaries and see what help our neighbours need. Not just the neighbours who live in the adjoining flat, but those who live in the adjoining slum. Join or form a neighbourhood association and work together to improve the collective lives of all who live around you. Make sure that you reach out to the adjacent neighbourhoods and coordinate with them to make your part of the city or town secure, clean, with good roads and drinking water. Reach out to the incumbent politicians and local officers and make it clear to them who the boss is. Help them get rid of crime in the neighbourhood, and make sure that they are supportive. Else they will lose your support in the next election.

Prepare for disasters: not just terror attacks, but fire, heavy rain, earthquake or flood. Organize community meetings to get everyone involved, make sure that there are people trained in first aid, keep essential supplies, create maps/plans of your neighbourhood that would help in case of emergency and choose and train volunteers to organize a response should anything happen. Hold drills and refresher training from time to time. This is not just at home, but at work and in the school. Don’t wait for someone else to ensure your safety, do it yourself.

Once we have an involved citizenry looking after their homes, workplaces and neighbourhoods, we need to take the next step: we need to transform the existing government setup into something that is geared up to meet the people’s needs. The first step is to create elective posts of local representatives for each department that is directly concerned with the people. For example, at an annual general meeting of all the neighbour associations that fall under a police thana, two representatives should be chosen who have the right to supervise the actions of the police in these neighbourhoods. They would have the right to visit the lockup at any time of the day of night, accompany the police on any raids they make, and also help anyone in their neighbourhood with the police. In order to give them teeth, they need to have access to officers higher in the chain of command. Some remuneration has to be provided and some reimbursement for expenses, by the association and there should be a limit that no one can hold this position twice in succession.

Similar representatives should be chosen for water, public health, electricity, gas, roads, garbage etc and we need to make sure that procedures of these department recognize the supervision by these local citizens. By making the parts of the administration that interact directly with the people part of the community, and making the members of the community part of them we will improve efficiency, reduce corruption and ensure the right prioritization of resources that meets local needs. This will go a long way to making everyone’s immediate lives better. It will also make us all better citizens as we better understand what it takes to run a neighbourhood, a ward, and a part of a city.

For the larger units of administration like the entire city, district, state or the nation, other changes are needed to make them more responsive to the citizens and for the citizen to participate fully in their operations. But in the meantime, if the citizens use the neighbourhood groups to educate themselves about the issues faced in the larger units, discuss the pros and cons of the policy and legislation and invite participation in these deliberations from the elected representatives and political parties, they can participate more completely in the elections. Not base their votes on a little knowledge gleaned in the campaigning period, but through a better understanding of the issues and the players.

Gathering Intelligence and Working with the Community

There are calls now for new legislation to counter terror, for a centralised force to fight terror, to get politics and law and order out of the mix, and concentrate on this new enemy we have. These are all misguided attempts: the answer is to look within for the solution, to act locally, to understand how terror works and be able to detect it before the attack.

We will never conquer terror until we conquer smuggling. We will never conquer smuggling until we defeat drug dealers and petty crimes. We will never defeat drug dealers until we have a clean police force that focuses on really being a part of the neighbourhood and fighting all the types of crime that occurs. This will happen when the people work with the police, not fear them. This means that police must be professional, and paid well and trained well. Recruitment should be open and transparent and the feedback of the neighbourhood associations must be taken into account for appointment to the top posts. Instead of a colonial police that enforces the raj of the state or the local politician, we must have a police that is with the people. Then the people will be with the police.

People should feel encouraged to look to the police to solve their problems, and they will bring the intelligence that will stop terror. The newcomer to the locality, the theft of materials that may be used in bomb-making, the presence of arms and ammunition, are all sights that may be noticed, especially by those who live on the margins of our society. If they feel that reporting these things bring more trouble than it is worth, we will never have the intelligence that we need.

The same goes for the health services: unless the people trust that they will be helped, and not put in greater hardship, they will not go for treatment. This could delay the detection of a biological attack, as patterns of illness and outbreaks need to be correlated to understand if an attack is in progress.

The information and tips that the police get needs to be analysed centrally so each and every police person should use SMS to send in reports to their local thana, which are automatically relayed onto state and central servers for immediate correlation. This should be expanded to include health services, neighbourhood associations, the press and other sources so that enough data is available for correlation.

This is of course the place for the central forces: to analyse the intelligence in time, or when the terrorist has been stealthy enough, and when the warning signs are too many and confusing. A central agency can help in three ways. First of all, by correlating the information from all over the country, matching the patterns with information gained from other intelligence agencies, and applying the knowledge and experience of those who have been fighting terror for many years. Secondly, by training first responders in detecting and fighting terrorists and ensuring that they have the equipment and procedures that ensure they can work together with the central forces. Finally, the central forces can step into the breach to backup the local forces.

The final step is to appoint the spokesman. During these chaotic events when everyone is looking for information, there has to be an authoritative source that can reach out through the media, the internet, through localized SMS to inform the affected people and the rest of the country and even the world about what has happened and what action is being taken. It is at these times that keeping quiet does a lot of harm and allows rumours to circulate. Every city, every state and the centre should have a single source for information which has intimate knowledge of what is happening, but divulges only that part of it that wont harm operational activities, yet keep the right amount of information flowing. A quick initial briefing, and then hourly updates would not only keep morale up, but could be used to enlist the help of the people to apprehend the culprits.

The responses to the heart-rending events need to be thought through carefully. Lets us all work together to build a better India from the ashes of our naïveté, getting involved and participating in democracy.

Oriental Renaissance

2008-02-17T10:28:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, in a post, someone asked the question: "what has India contributed to the West in intellectual terms?". What are the ideas from India that have become part of the mainstream Western intellectual tradition?

This question intrigued me and I went looking. Didn't have to look too far before I found Raymond Schwab's "The Oriental Renaissance". First published in French in 1950 and translated into English in 1984, by Patterson-Black and Reinking with an excellent foreword by Edward Said, the book is subtitled "Europe's Rediscovery of India and the East, 1680-1880" (Columbia University Press). His basic thesis is that the exploration and conquests in the Middle East and India during the establishment of imperialism inspired a vanguard of scholars like Anqueteil (translated Persian and Sanskrit to French), Jones (translated Sanskrit to English), Prinsep and others who brought Indian philosophy and religious concepts to the West. The conquest of Bengal in 1773 and the establishment of the East India company in what is now known as Kolkata led to a couple of decades of the export of ideas. It was only by about 1820 that English ideology changed from a reverence of Indian ideas and philosophies to a revulsion for anything native.

But, as Schwab points out, the "damage" was done. He details the influence that ideas from India had on the intellectuals of the period in France, Germany and England including Lamartine, Hugo, Wordsworth, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Nietzche and Wagner. It is truly eye-opening to read his quote from Wordsworth:

And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused...
A motion anda spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things
("Tintern Abbey")

This needs further attention, especially the reason for the change of the British viewpoint early in the nineteenth century.

Understanding Jihad

2008-02-10T08:17:00.000-08:00

In the past few years, especially after 9/11, we have all been more aware of the word 'jihad' and the various meanings it has. The most innocuous, as defined by my teacher when we were studying the Koran, is "struggle" which can mean an inner struggle to find Allah. The most dangerous is the jihad being waged by Al-Qaeda. Between these two extremes, what is the reality?

Last night I read portions of 'The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of non-Muslims' edited by Andrew Bostom. It was an eye-opener to see that the Koran, the Hadith and the interpretations of Islamic scholars through the centuries were much closer to the Al-Qaeda vision of jihad than the gentler, softer inner search for peace. I use this word as it is also very common to hear that Islam is a search for peace.

This is not just what the Muslim religious leaders think, but it has influenced how the religion has spread, how the political and military leaders have acted from the time of Mohammed, and explains why Islam was able to in a mere 70 years after Mohammed's death rule from Spain to the border of India. It was the duty of Muslims to participate in razzia (raids) at least once a year and kill the able bodied infidels who would not convert and enslave their women and children. Others, especially the people of the Book (Jews, Christians) were sometimes allowed to keep their religious practices, but had to pay a poll-tax (jizaya) in order to do so. Even then, they were second class citizens: for example, a Muslim could kill one of them and it would not be a capital offence.

The only bulwark in the East against this Islamic expansion was India. Muhammad bin Qasim (715 CE) was the first to achieve success, but was recalled after 3 years. It took almost 300 years before Mahmud of Ghazni attacked in 1000 CE. In between there were raids as well as some expansion of Islam from those left behind by Qasim, but India largely held out for 300 years after Spain and the nearby regions of France succumbed. But the enormous wealth that India possessed at the time was a magnet for adventurers for the next 600 years. Eventually some of them settled and ruled, but for the majority it was the loot, the killing of infidels and the expansion of Islam that were the goals.

It can be argued that this was the way of the world in the medieval period, and not just Muslims, but Christians and others behaved in the same way. That is true, but in the modern period they have all at least changed their philosophy to that of peace. Again, it might be argued that this is hypocritical, taking just the history of the 20th century as an example: states and peoples have looted, killed, invaded, enslaved and destroyed more effectively than at any other time in the past. Tamurlane is charged with killing 100,000 people in Delhi alone. The fire-bombing of Dresden killed as many in one night during World War II, not to mention the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

So, to understand Jihad, we need to understand civilization too, and understand the violence inside Man. Maybe my teacher was right after all: it is this inner struggle to find God that all of mankind has to succeed at, that we all have to change from external aggression to an internal search for truth, to change our pattern of behavior so that we find Peace and Love. It is this jihad that we all have to undertake, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, if we are to change the world.

Land Tenure Practices of the British in Iraq 1920 - 1932

2007-07-15T16:43:00.000-07:00

This is a paper written last summer while learning about Iraq and why the US is involved in a war there. It is really eye-opening that the the problems in Iraq were created by the Brits, who copied a lot of what they did in India.

It may be a bit long, compared to the usual blog, but got to tell the story right.
Animesh

---

Land Tenure Practices of the British in Iraq 1920 - 1932

Introduction

Democracy, as we usually understand it, is the system that provides every member of the state an equal opportunity to achieve success in life. This is enabled through a set of institutions such as a representative legislature, a responsive and independent judiciary with the ability to enforce its laws, a state led by an effective executive that implements the policies of the legislature and maintains peace inside the state and with its neighbors, a health system that ensures each citizen is healthy and productive, an education system that gives everyone the chance to make use of their intellectual faculties to get ahead, and the freedom to pursue their spiritual beliefs or religion. This is the ideal, and even bastions of democracy like the USA have not achieved it. These were the goals of the League of Nations mandate for Iraq to Great Britain, and the mandate was terminated in 1932 by a declaration that the new Iraqi state would adhere to these principles[1] and had already achieved a great deal towards realizing them. Unfortunately this was not really the case, and we will look at just one aspect of the state, the distribution and ownership of land, and see that instead of the democratic ideal, a series of laws and administrative steps starting from the Ottoman times had done exactly the opposite. Land ownership was concentrated in the hands of a few elites, leaving the rest of the populace impoverished and struggling to make ends meet. In the absence of any social measures to reduce exploitation and provide services like health and education, the British had created an oppressive feudal state rather than a modern democracy by the time the mandate ended in 1932.

In a primarily agricultural nation (this was before oil became important in Iraq) the important measures of success for a state are measured by its land tenure policies:

- how is land ‘owned’ and ‘worked’, and how is that ownership managed over time

- how is the agricultural and other output from the land distributed between the owner, producer, local institutions, and the state

- who is responsible for changes in land use, improvements in irrigation, soil conservation, ecology, environment and conflict management between agriculture, forestry, mineral rights, nature preservation and urban growth

- how the relationships between the various stakeholders, current and future are managed

In Iraq, we will look at the period starting in 1858, when the Tanzimat reforms were attempted and ending in 1932 when the Land Settlement Act was promulgated, to sketch the pattern of responses to these questions and their consequences. We see that there is a close correlation between the approach adopted by the state towards land tenure and the subsequent non-development of democratic institutions. In addition we will examine the land tenure practices that the British adopted in India, and their previous track record in changing the land tenure practices in a large country.

Land Ownership Until Mid-Nineteenth Century

Traditionally tribes in the geographical area now known as Iraq, and in the adjoining lands, were nomadic in nature. They did not hold fixed areas of land for long periods of time, but rather occupied land that they could defend and then cultivated it. If the rivers changed course, the land was over worked, or they were forced out by other tribes, they moved on to other land. Rather than private ownership of land by individuals, it was used in common by the entire tribe, with shares of the produce given to the shaykhs and other office-holders[2]. The share paid to the shaykh included payments for the “guest-house” (the place where tribal functions were held and outside visitors entertained) and the “coffee-maker” (qawaji, the man who made coffee). If the tribe had to pay tax to the Ottomans, this was the shaykh’s responsibility.

The position of the shaykh was primarily that of a military leader, a patriarch who gained his position increasingly by inheritance, but not necessarily primogeniture. The leader was chosen based on proven skills, not just because he was the eldest. While the position carried prestige and power, it did not provide private property or inordinate wealth. Hence they did not form a “class” in the modern sense as the private property they had was substantially more than that of the tribesman, nor the lifestyle very different. The shaykh class was created after 1858 and cemented into existence by the British, especially the Land Settlement Act of 1932[3].

Until the mid-nineteenth century, the tribal people were mostly engaged in subsistence agriculture or animal husbandry, growing or rearing only what was needed for their own needs and some minimal trading. Urban centers were small and life, while hard, was uncomplicated.

Ottoman Reforms

After the mid-nineteenth century there were several changes in this region as the Ottoman Empire started to modernize. They took greater administrative control of the area, organized it into vilayets (provinces), brought the telegraph and steam navigation on the river. More than anything else it opened what was a subsistence agricultural existence into market-based commercial agriculture.

In 1858, the progressive Governor, Midha Pasha attempted to change the land tenure from the collective tribal ownership of lands that were subject to shifting nomadic cultivation to individual tapu ownership. This was part of the overall reforms in the Ottoman Empire at that time, bringing Western ideas of individualism to a collectivist society. Before this, the land was ‘owned’ by the tribe, the extent of their ownership being what they could protect from other tribes. It wasn’t owned in the way we think in terms of private property, as the tribe was interested only in the use of the land, moving into another area when it needed to be left fallow. The reforms accelerated the sedentarization of tribes as plots of land were allocated to those shaykhs and urbanites who understood the implication of the new system and power of paper over possession. While the reforms were stopped part way through, and most land remained state property, it did create a small landowning class that had control of thousands of acres of agricultural land.

During the period 1871 to 1912, agricultural production increased 60-fold, possibly as a result of the shift to commercial farming based on tapu rights. Ownership of land leads to a long view that can contemplate improvements such as irrigation, development of markets as regular deliveries of agricultural produce are assured, and the utilization of credit, which is obtained by mortgaging the land, to increase cropped acreage. Thus the reforms while flawed in terms of identifying the appropriate owners, and helping to eliminate the tribal way of life, made it possible for these provinces to enter into the agricultural market. It also provided revenue for the state and the growth of the elite. Ironically, most of the grain produced was sold in India, enhancing British interest in the region.

The change of ownership of the land from communal to private property in the hands of the shaykhs, as well as the introduction of commercial agriculture contributed to the deconstruction of tribal society, as it led to the growth of urban areas and wealth. Firstly, the military prestige and command of the shaykh was lost as the members of the tribe were converted to peasants and good farmers and foremen were more valuable than warriors. Secondly, a dissatisfied tribal, now a peasant, could move to another estate or the urban centers, thus loosening the bonds of the tribe. Thirdly, the shaykh, by becoming a member of a propertied class, lost his former relationship with the other members of the tribe[4].

Thus by time of the fall of the Ottomans during World War I, the region had evolved from a tribal society into a mixture of urban and rural populations, great disparity in wealth and property ownership and increasing urbanization.

British & Monarchic Period 1920 - 1932

After stabilizing its hold on the provinces of Baghdad and Basra (Mosul was added later) in 1920, the British were mandated by the League of Nations to create a modern state of Iraq. Borrowing heavily from their experience in India and working from a romanticized view of the tribal system and the shaykh, they attempted to reverse the disintegration of the tribal system. There was also a pragmatic reason: after an intense debate between the British administrators Dowson, Dobbs and Longrigg on whether the government should give land tenure to the peasant or the shaykh, the latter was chosen on grounds of expediency[5]. Given the mood of the British people against a long and expensive nation-building exercise, they chose to use a small number of intermediaries to control a large number of people[6].

The British not only upheld the tapu distribution of 1858 (in spite of the large numbers of disputes as the Ottomans had taken many of the records with them), but introduced lazmah as a new class in the 1932 Land Settlement law. Thus they effectively reinforced the ownership of most of the land by just a few persons. The rest of the rural population was to eke out a miserable existence[7].

Resultant Pattern of Land Tenure

In the century from 1858 (when private ownership of land was introduced) to 1958 (when a revolution abolished the monarchy), Iraq had changed completely from a communal, nomadic, subsistence-based, mainly rural society into a highly stratified, modern, market-oriented state with an enormous concentration of land ownership.

Batatu provides some statistics that show the land ownership position in 1958. Firstly, the majority of the land had been distributed under the tapu and lazmah laws. Third came miri land that was theoretically leasehold, but actually never changed hands. While all land theoretically belonged to the state, it had actually been given away free of charge to private owners[8].

Ownership Type	Area Covered (Million dunum*)	Percentage
Tapu (1858)	12.48	38.8%
Lazmah (1932)	10.59	32.9%
Mulk (Urban)	0.26	0.8%
Waqf (Charitable)	0.44	1.4%
Miri (Leasehold)	4.68	14.6%
Unsettled Title	3.7	11.5%
Total	32.15	100.0%

*1 dunum = 0.168 acre

Who were these private owners? In terms of total numbers, they were quite substantial, over a quarter million in number. However, summarizing the data[9], we see that a few owners hold almost 1000 times more land on an average than the majority:

Estate Size (dunum)	Number of Holders	Percentage of land owned	Index of Ownership
<500	246000	30%	1
> 500 & <>	6876	40%	48
> 10000	252	30%	976

The index of ownership is assumed as 1 for the average size of the holdings under 500 dunum. The next group of owners, almost 7000 in number, own almost 50 times the land of the smallest landowners. The largest landowners, just 252 of them, each own almost 1000 times that owned by the smallest. This was surely a basis for gross inequalities.

The role of the shaykh in the ownership of land is borne out by further statistics. Of the 49 estates larger than 50,000 dunum, 22 are owned by tribal shaykhs, 12 by Sadah (descendants of the Prophet), and 11 by merchants[10]. Thus the British policy of favoring the shaykhs ensured that they became large land owners.

This concentration of wealth was aggravated by the rent, tax and other burdens on the peasantry. From the produce of the land it was customary to divide almost a quarter amongst the village guards, the coffee-man (qawaji), the guest-house, the man of god, the crop measurer and the supervisor of civil works. From what was left, the peasant received between an eight (during the British time) to one-half (if he provided the seeds and it was a difficult land to till), i.e. 10-38% of the produce. With poor tax collection methods in most areas, the land owner was the beneficiary as the amount meant for the state remained with him. Moreover, the reduced state revenue meant that social services like health and education, as well as improvements in irrigation and transportation could not be funded, affecting the poor rather than the rich.

The Indian Experience

Great Britain, through the East India Company, started colonization of India from near the end of the eighteenth century, although they were engaged in trade for almost a century before that. At this time, India was ruled by the Mughals for the most part, but there were also many local kings, mainly Hindu. Unlike the Mughals, who had left land ownership relatively untouched[11] when they conquered, the British applied their principles of private property and ownership. Motivated partially by their ideology as developed by Locke, and also by the need to assign tax collection responsibility to individuals who could meet the targets, they changed land ownership patterns through their Permanent Settlement[12]. This was the recording of the ownership of the land and the setting up of the annual tax demand for each estate, payable in cash. While the initial set of zamindars, as the tax farmers were termed, were those who were incumbent at the time of the Mughals and local rulers, through auctions these were transferred to those who could more effectively collect the tax demand[13]. This disrupted the societal relationships in the rural areas, bringing in commercial interests that were more interested in turning a quick profit through the difference between the tax collected and that paid, rather than the long term interests of the agrarian society. Coupled with the British destruction of local manufacturing industries in cloth, dyeing, iron works etc, so that the products of the Industrial revolution could be sold in these new markets, this led to widespread surplus of labor as well as poverty. In addition, maintenance of civil works such as irrigation channels which was formerly performed from village funds, was neglected.

The result in India was the creation of a vast commercial agriculture enterprise that provided the Empire with food and cash, but impoverished the people and destroyed the infrastructure and economic relations built over centuries.

Conclusion

Britain, almost against its will, was given a mandate by the League of Nations to create a modern state in Iraq. Against its will in several ways:

- Britain wanted to divide up the lands of the Ottoman Empire after World War I between itself and France, creating colonies like the one they had in India

- Woodrow Wilson’s 14-point agenda, the establishment of the League of Nations and growth of Arab nationalism (ironically catalyzed by the British against the Ottomans) created the Mandate which meant that they were to create the state of Iraq at great expense and get out

- The British population was weary of war and foreign adventures and wanted to have nothing to do with the expensive project of creating a modern state

They however decided to take on the challenge, but chose expediency over thoroughness, and their established ideas of state control over democracy, and created a state that had a monarch imposed from outside, a set of landed shaykhs with wealth and power to countervail against the King, a government apparatus that was constrained in terms of scope, budget and power, and a set of warring ethnicities that were intentionally divided to help rule them better. In addition, they made a land tenure system that was riddled with inequity even more unequal, creating a very small class of very rich landowners, and marginalizing the common people even more than when they came to Iraq in the first place.

In the area of land tenure the British followed the practice they had in India of choosing the system that made it easier for the state and maximized tax revenues, but at the cost of building democracy. By 1958, this led to revolution and the next phase of the development of the state of Iraq.

Bibliography

Baden-Powell, B.H., Land Revenue and Tenure in British India, Clarendon Press, 1907
Batatu, Hanna, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq, Princeton University Press, ISBN 0 691 05241 7, 1978.
Dodge, Toby, Inventing Iraq, Columbia University Press, ISBN 0 231 13166 6, 2003.
Dowson, Ernest and Sheppard, V.L.O., Land Registration, H.M Stationery Office, 1956
Farouk-Sluglett, Marion & Sluglett, Peter, Iraq Since 1958, I. B. Tauris, ISBN 1 86064 622 0, 1987.
Frykenberg, Robert Eric, Editor, Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History, The University of Wisconsin Press, ISBN 0 299 05240 0, 1969
Habib, Irfan, The Agrarian System of Mughal India 1556-1707, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0 19 562329 0, 1999.
Meouchy, Nadine and Sluglett, Peter, Editors, The British and French Mandates in Comparative Perspectives, Brill, ISBN 90 04 13313 5, 2004
Owen, Roger, Editor, New Perspectives on Property and Land in the Middle East, Harvard University Press, ISBN 0 932885 26 8, 2000
Robb, Peter, Editor, Rural India Land, Power and Society under British Rule, Curzon Press, ISBN 0 7007 0161 3, 1983
Solami, Declaration Of The Kingdom Of Iraq, May 30, 1932<>

[1] Solami

[2] Batatu, pp 71-72

[3] Batatu, pg 64

[4] Batatu, pg 99

[5] Dodge, pg 112

[6] Batatu, pg 88

[7] Batatu, pg 141

[8] Batatu, pg 53

[9] Batatu, pg 54

[10] Batatu, pg 57

[11] Frykenberg, pg 45

[12] Baden-Powell, pg 154

[13] Habib, pg 196